Glen, I just paid for a subscription so that I can say this one FACT. The PODESTA EMAILS
WERE NOT THE RESULT OF A HACK.
Please stop reporting this nonsense. The cover story was all part of the plan (approved by
HRC) to shift attention to a Trump-Russia collusion narrative that has always been fiction.
Guccifer 2.0 was created out of this same scheme. The meta data on the files prove that it's
impossible that those emails were hacked, they had to be downloaded on a local device
(thumbdrive most likely).
The FISA Abuse, the spying on Trump, The plan to implicate collusion, the Flynn frameup,
the Impeachment, The Mueller investigation were not the base crimes, those were all part of a
cover up. By you insinuating that the DNC server got hacked (which there is zero evidence
for), you are wittingly or unwittingly complicit in perpetuating the lie that it was. You're
missing a much, much bigger story here. The biden laptop isn't even the tip of the icebeg
here.
Ask yourself this; "Why would dozens of high level DOJ, FBI, CIA and Whitehouse officials
in the Obama Administration put their careers on the line and commit literally hundreds of
felonies all in an effort to obstruct/neutralize Trump?" That is first question any true
journo should be asking right now.
You mention in this article that the media is basically over-compensating for helping Trump
win in 2016. That is extremely naive on your part. The media/twitter/facebook/CNN/MSNBC, etc.
is too well orchestrated, too well coordinated to be operating even vaguely independently. This
is project Mockingbird happening on a scale almost unimaginable. Maybe even the Intercept was
intercepted. Why would the publication that you founded not allow you to publish this? If you
look back at 2016, the entire media industrial complex was just as coordinated as it is now,
they just got sloppy because they were certain Trump wasn't going to win. Who's being naive now
Kay?
I also get frustrated with what I see as a naive interpretation, by figures like Dan
Bongino, Tim Pool, etc. I wonder if there is a fear by some to point behind the curtain, that
they will be attacked and cancelled for "conspiracy theories."
Neither Tim or Dan are really journalists and besides, this story is so massive and so
incomprehensibly large in scope/scale/magnitude that we shouldn't get too frustrated.
The main point to remember here is that none of this has anything to do with Trump. Look at
the timeline in its entirety, the best we are able to do and then plot a graph of the Media
Industrial Complex's behavior. They were out to derail Trump from the moment he came down the
escalator and it's not because he's a womanizer or that he's a game show host. They couldn't
afford to have an non-establishment player come in and wreck their plans. The question is, what
the f#$% were their plans? Why did they risk so much to keep him out of the WH?
My view is that the constant sturm und drang about the corruption of the elections (voter
suppression, mail fraud, ballot harvesting, etc, etc) is a ploy to distract from the fact that
the real corruption already happened long before the election.
The real corruption is even mentioned by Glenn in his draft: the SELECTION process.
The media do what they're told, and what they are doing is keeping up the drumbeat of
election corruption. In other words, they've been told to distract all attention from the real
story.
The real story is that, to the people who control candidate selection, IT DOESN'T MATTER WHO
WINS.
That is the whole point of controlling the selection process. Oh yes, I know the media hates
Trump and so do the establishment. Really? The same establishment that just benefitted from the
greatest upward transfer of wealth in human history, during a pandemic panic, under Trump?
Bezos has gained over 70 billion in net worth this year, under Trump. You think he hates Trump?
Really?
You think Biden will do less? Or perhaps you think he would do more than the greatest upward
transfer of wealth in human history?
Republicans versus Democrats is a con game. It's a kabuki theatre of manipulation of
parochial tribalism, a Punch n Judy Show for the rubes.
As was once mentioned in the UT threads at Salon, isn't it time for a second political
party, Mr Greenwald?
It's not about their plans. It's just a non-violent (so far) class war. Trump is a vessel
for the working classes to carry their dissatisfaction of elite leadership. It's easier to
communicate directly to the people now due to social media, so the traditional media can't tell
the people how to vote (can't declare a candidate to be beyond the pale any more, squashing
their chances, and they used to have that power). The media are part of the elite leadership,
they don't like the working classes not listening to them, and they don't like the loss of
power. That's their agenda.
They have taken to "any means necessary" to keep that power, even though now it's basically
lying and obfuscation. They are trading off their legacy trustworthiness for short term
benefit, but they are destroying that foundation of trust as well. That happens slowly but
surely as more people see through them. Takes too long in the experience of everyone who is
reading this, because we're well ahead of the curve. The average mid level elite is a working
professional with kids too busy and not interested enough to dig to the next level and has been
taking their word - but they too see the truth every time they really look and over time that
is going to go as we all hope it will. It's just going to take a while.
"The guy who co-founded one of the current-day major online journalism outlets isn't really
a journalist" - Someone Posting to the Comments on an Article by a Guy Who Co-Founded One of
the Current-Day Major Online Journalism Outlets
There is good cause to question the Snowden story. He was CIA. Once a CIA agent, always a
CIA agent. It's plausible that he was inserted into booz allen hamilton in an attempt to harm
the NSA (on behalf of the CIA). Tell me this Glen, how did Snowden evade the largest
dragnet/manhunt ever on the planet to evade the authorities and make it to Moscow? Am I the
only one who finds this a little fishy? As someone who has been in software for 40 years, when
I heard him on Joe Rogan podcast about a year ago, I didn't find his backstory credible at all.
He sounds intelligent, but when you get beyond that and listen to him from a technological
perspective, his story doesn't add up. I find it hard to believe.
Why would a "patriot" doing work on behalf of the CIA be thrown to the wolves? Why wouldn't
they cover for him after it was released? I haven't been in software for 40 years, but I
believe that the Snowden story is extremely credible.
Snowden was a libertarian high school dropout hacker
The Deep State hired 800,000 employees/contractors around the Beltway after 9/11 on a war
footing, so anyone that was seen as clean and patriotic may not have needed a lot of standard
credentials by the usual bureaucratic managerial idiot types working for the Feds
I've been told that military field grade IT is all from the 1990s, dunno about national
security agencies, but unless you have actually worked with national security IT stuff I'm not
sure why your views should hold much weight
Senior people I know in the military and national security apparatus have told me that
corruption, waste and inefficiency are rampant (80-90%?)
Sorry, but I've heard that "anything CIA is automatically X" way too many times in my life.
Often from people trying to sell books about how we never landed on the Moon (you'd be amazed
how many ex-[alphabet agency] agents "back up" these claims with the worst sort of
pseudo-authoritative malarkey).
Hah! They "helped" Trump by running two billion dollars' worth of 95% negative coverage. It
made Trump look like the victim of a massive smear campaign by partisan hacks. What have they
been doing to "over-compensate", exactly? Make it 99%?
Whether or not they helped Trump, Greenwald's article claimst that journalists feel
responsible for Trump being elected last time so they are trying not to make the same
'mistake'. At least that's what Glenn is asserting here.
They're not wrong. They helped elect him with their sheer negativity. I've seen these people
argue the point, and they always point the finger at other journalists somehow NOT being
negative enough. It's never themselves.
So there's no collective soul-searching going on, no self-awareness, only a drive to be
angrier and finger-wagging with less concern for the actual facts of any given matter. They
don't realize how transparent it's become for those not already personally invested in the
extant narratives.
This, I think, is why we are seeing many more people defect to Trump rather than away from
him; when one is personally and deeply invested in a narrative, it's an article of faith.
Imagine you walk into church one day and the pastor says "this just in: the Archangel Gabriel
was a child molestor who felt up Baby Jesus". Next week, they accuse the Virgin Mary of the
same. Would a member of the faithful just roll with that, or consider moving to another church
altogether just to avoid the emotional whiplash?
More to the point, the head of Crowdstrike, the company run by a known Russia-hater the
Democrats sent their server to instead of the FBI, and who never provided that server to the
FBI, admitted in a Senate hearing that there was, in fact, no evidence of hacking. He was under
oath that time. Russiagate remains one of the most successful propaganda campaign in
history.
Just before or just after Trump's 2016 election I was in a Manhattan restaurant with my
domestic partner talking with strangers from DC. It turned out that they worked in the State
Dept. and they told us that since Trump questioned the veracity of some things the intelligence
establishment had said, they would absolutely bring him down. We were shocked but have
remembered this throughout the FISA debacle,the Mueller mess,the impeachment and this election
cycle.
Right. Thank you. I wrote to Matt T. about this same issue in his article. I'm hoping they
will do the investigation required for them to amend their articles. It really is a fundamental
mistake to perpetuate this propaganda.
It's literally in the Mueller report that the DNC server was hacked, without a shred of
evidence. As Fox Mulder said "Trust No One". Matt & Glen really need to get to the point
where they chuck everything they think they know and start over. Everything has been a lie. Why
would anyone believe ANYTHING the FBI or DOJ of Obama WH put out at this point? The MSM has no
credibility, FBI/DOJ/CIA? This cancer has metasticized to the point where the patient is on
life support.
We need to understand that Trump is Chemo. It takes an outsider to come in, someone who
didn't need this job, someone who couldn't be bought, to come in and kill that cancer.
Just to offer some confirmation for that, Here is a CNN article from the time: "A phishing
email sent to Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta may have been so sophisticated
that it fooled the campaign's own IT staffers, who at one point advised him it was a legitimate
warning to change his password."
However, they also report that the link was from " [email protected] ." I searched
for whether that email address had been reported as malicious on the day that the story broke.
Far from being "sophisticated", it was just a phishing link that was going around randomly, and
had already been reported to this spam reporting site:
So, despite (much of) the media converging on a "sophisticated spear phishing" narrative,
this looks to be a link that was sent to a large number of people over a long period, and just
a case of random spam phishing that got lucky.
re: "so sophisticated that it fooled the campaign's own IT staffers"
I'm not a google mail user, but in general it is pretty rare for a phishing email to NOT
have extended headers (server route log) that reveal a bogus or weird looking origin.
"Alleging" would be more accurate. They've been acting quite more brazenly as a
misinfo/disinfo arm of the DNC. Whether or not the DNC has deep enough connections with the CIA
to provide a useful and reliable data/policy bridge is another question, but both DNC and GOP
likely have enough connections to establish semi-functional "lamprey" networks just due to
their longevity and resulting personal/professional contacts therein.
Hi Frank. " The PODESTA EMAILS WERE NOT THE RESULT OF A HACK.
Please stop reporting this nonsense. The cover story was all part of the plan (approved by
HRC) to shift attention to a Trump-Russia collusion narrative that has always been fiction.
Guccifer 2.0 was created out of this same scheme. The meta data on the files prove that it's
impossible that those emails were hacked, they had to be downloaded on a local device
(thumbdrive most likely)."
Based on the forensics that was my conclusion but beware of these rabbit holes. It has never
been discussed that those details can also be faked (the meta data.) Certainly Gucifer which
seemed like damage control. I am unsure of the claims about his being backtracked tho.
So it's possible that the evidence is faked having accepted the conclusions of VIPS
analysts.
Could be. It would also mean that it was the first time Wikileaks published something that
wasn't authentic. Assange knows where the emails came from and he asserted that they didn't
come from Russia.
Note to all: You must use actual (historical) ISP speeds as of the specific months in
question. They increased a good deal in the months that followed in that area.
I agree that there was a massive fake Russia story created by GPS Fusion, the Clinton
campaign, Clinton allies, with the help of US intelligence, often willing and sometimes just
incompetent.
But there is definitely some evidence of a DNC hack. Among other things, the Dutch
intelligence services seem to have observed evidence in their spying on the Internet Research
Agency - reported by mutliple sources including Dutch media. What the nature of the hack was
and how it gibes with the evidence that there must have been a person on the ground to transfer
the data files that fast is of course fair to discuss.
There is also evidence, both purposely forgotten in media coverage after Jan 2017, of an
attempted RNC hack and the overt public hack and release of Colin Powell's email to embarass
and hurt Trump. There is plenty of other evidence of Internet Research Agency activity that was
pro-BLM and anti-Trump, making their more likely overall goal the sowing of chaos than only
supporting Trump. Thus the need for GPS/Clintonistas/Intelligence/Mueller's team to spin a
narrative.
I became a fan of yours when I was in law school at UC Hastings in 2003. Your the best, for
sure. But fuck...
I got to be honest...I'm glad the press is ignoring this story. There's just too much at
stake. Biden might be losing his edge, his family might be trading in his name, but who gives a
shit? The alternative is worse by light years.
And yeah, I don't trust the "people" out there to get it right. The "people" are rubes.
Those idiots voted for this piece of shit once before, they'll do it again, in a heartbeat.
More importantly, you really want to do Rudy Giuliani's work for him? I don't know, I don't
get it...why so eager to make the campaign's case for them? It's not a rhetorical question. I
just don't get it.
Alex: you are saying that we should not have independent press, that the media ought to be
agents of propaganda, consciously decieving the public for the greater good.
Maybe Biden is the lesser evil in this election. But without actual journalists like Glenn
we could never know.
I get the frustrations over Trump. He is a disaster. But the answer to that disaster does
not concist in advocating for more lies and propaganda.
I have yet to hear a reasonable case for Trump being either the greater evil or a disaster.
Many of the allegations against Trump have remained that - allegations - but in Biden's case
some of the same accusations (particular about racism) is in his Senate record. He was a
terrible candidate to position against Trump, and he picked as his veep the only person in the
entire primary season to get blown out by a single phrase from Tulsi Gabbard - who the rest of
the party's establishment absolutely despised because Hillary said so.
With Trump? Roaring economy brought to a halt not even by coronavirus, but massive economic
lockdowns that break the economy down to virtually Blue-State (down) / Red-State (up)
comparisons. Democrats were accusing Trump of "meddling" when he was still a candidate and
nonetheless pressured a Detroit factory into staying in the US. The man understands economic
leverage, and to ignore or deny that is like denying the Sun heats the Earth.
Three Middle East peace deals leading to an equal number of Nobel nominations. He is roasted
for de-escalating international tensions, lauded only when he fires missiles at nations
Democrats think need shooting at, and then castigated for killing a terrorist leader in the
same nation they were cheering him for firing missiles at.
I see very little criticism of Trump that isn't associated with bald-faced party-based
opposition, from establishment Republicans who hated his cockblocking of JEB BUSH FOR GODSAKE
to Democrats who still think Hillary's shit job as Secretary of State (ruining more nations
than Trump has cut peace deals for) is beyond reproach.
Speaking as a lifetime independent, please: the naked, incessant and baseless fury
demonstrated by Democrats and the Radical Left since 2016 has NOT been a selling point for
us.
Biden has been credibly accused of actually pinning a staffer against the wall and stuffing
his fingers up her vagina. The media didn't attack her story, but her college credentials, and
dumped the story after.
Biden has actually authored racist legislation and in recent years spoke of "being able to
work across the aisle" - with racist segregationists.
Trump's been merely ACCUSED of a shit-ton of things. But I don't join lynch-mobs. Same
reason the lynching of Justice Kavanaugh (seriously, you guys went after him over "I like beer"
and school calendars you had to try and reinterpret as codebooks?) made me see the Democratic
Party as a progressively more lunatic outfit. Reducing impeachment to "who needs criminal
charges? we really just hate the guy" wasn't a winner with us independents either, not just
speaking for myself there.
A pox on both your damned parties, and thank Trump for being that pox.
Gee Alex, elitist much? You don't like Trump so the people making an informed choice is not
a worthy goal? Anyone who disagrees with your world view is a rube who is not smart enough to
see the light - as defined by you? And you wonder why Trump won last time. The left is
populated by arrogant asses who think because they came out of college with a degree in some
worthless major, they are smarter than everyone else. Well, I went to college to but got a
degree in engineering vice sociology but I guess I'm just an educated rube.
Your law school tuition dollars were clearly wasted. Most of the people/rubes/idiots I know
and love learned the difference between "your" and "you're" in high school - and acquired
critical thinking skills at the same time. Too bad you missed out.
Yeah, we the people (rubes) are fn sick of the fn lawyers (especially from UC Hastings)
being in political control of our country and want a non-political person to clean up. What's
so hard for you to understand?
How's your guy doing you fucking rube? Great choice! Job well done!! If you ever wonder why
nobody gives a shit about your opinion, the fact that you chose a fucking reality star who ran
every business he ever owned into the ground, and fancies a bizarre hairdo, that's why no one
cares what you say. You're fucking stupid.
bahahahahaha...go crawl back into your fucking prol shit hole dwelling and latch onto
Tucker's teat. You're a fucking joke and always will be, no matter how special your dear leader
makes you feel.
Our local sanitation workers are much more thoughtful and respectful actually. I am voting
for Biden but I find this lawyer's response detestable. We need to grow up and stop with ad
hominem attacks that do nothing to advance the discussion.
Morals and ethics obviously mean nothing to a lawyer. If this was Don Jr, you would be out
for blood. As an independent voter, I want to know that I'm not voting for a piece of shit that
has been compromised by the Russians and Chinese! People like you, the FAKE NEWS media, and
antifa, etc are a major reason why I won't ever give my vote to Biden!
Elitists like Alex G. made the election of Donald Trump as president both inevitable and
necessary. The more he disses the "people" aka "rubes," the more President Trump's re-election
becomes equally inevitable and necessary. To borrow from Sen. Ted Cruz's exchange with Twitter
CEO Jack Dorsey, "Who the hell made Alex G. the final authority on how and what people should
think, say and do?"
One thing we know for sure is Alex G. never learned any humility or manners growing up. To
substantiate this, he stands condemned out of his own mouth. Last thing this country needs is
to have an authoritarian demagogue like him anywhere near the levers of power.
Please go back and fact check the old stories that made us hate Trump in the first place.
They've proven to be lies. He isn't perfect, but Biden will destroy this country. He's beyond
corrupt. Go look at the source materials.
Arrogant, smug D party loyalist goons and assholes like you are a very large part of why
people voted for Trump in 2016 and will vote for him in this election. T-R-0-L-L
I believe in the democratic system. The people may make mistakes, but so can anyone else. An
average of all the people is more accurate than randomly picking subsets of people to make
decisions. You say that you and your friends are not a random subset, you are better than
average. Your opponents say the same thing. We have a system for resolving these disputes.
Maybe you can invent a better one, but "I'm right and my opponents are wrong" is not a new
approach.
In answer to your "Why" question, perhaps Mr. Greenwald believes the same thing.
Glenn - new subscriber today (saw you with Tucker Carlson). As a conservative voter, I
support your new venture, not because your story is critical or suspicious of Biden, but
because we need more talented journalists willing to just investigate possible corruption and
inform the public. I also support Matt Taibbi for the same reason. The last line of your
article sums it up best for me.
"The whole point is that the press loses its way when it cares more about who benefits from
information than whether it's true."
Good luck, I hope you find this new path rewarding professionally and financially.
Agreed, I also like reading Quillette for it's equal publication of articles (they printed
that big article from the Environmentalist who demonized Environmentalism after he was banned
from his original publisher), and I also like reading Sharyl Attkisson as well.
I find it interesting how Glenn sees all the propoganda from these agencies in the media,
but fails to see the full extent of it in social media and therefore is unable to report on it
adequately. The DNC server hack is more of the same.
I paid for a subscription precisely because I believe that, despite what you may or may not
personally believe, you don't allow it to influence your pursuit of the truth. I want the truth
- nothing less and nothing more.
I just signed up, too, for that very reason. When those in positions of power put on a mask
and practice deception, they must be exposed. Sunlight is the cure for the disease of
corruption.
Personally, having read your work going back to Cato Institute and Volokh, I'm happy you're
independent and I can directly fund you. I'm willing to throw even more money at your projects.
Consider crowdfunding video documentary teams and other large projects. Your following after
all of this is going to be as large as ever.
I've supported him here as well because I think he is an important voice right now. There
are few journos out there right now who have Glenn's credibility who are willing to take on
media groupthink. But it is a tough environment. With NYT offering their digital for 4$ a month
that gives access to all of their writers/content, it is very difficult for writers like Glenn
to compete.
If this is humor, this is very dark humor. The saddest thing of all in this is that very
little of Glenn's excellent article is new. One of Donald Trump's presidency greatest
accomplishment has been to show me how the main stream media 'plays' its dirty games... The
entire mainstream media collectively abandoned its integrity during the last decade.
It's beyond what Orwell could have ever possibly imagined. Targeted gaslighting on an
individual basis using social media to brainwash people into believing whatever they want you
to believe?
I just paid for an annual subscription out of a total frustration with the current
outrageous, unfair, evil and dishonest media situation in the US (and elsewhere also).
Totalitarism is approaching and I have decided to participate in the fight against the
threatening darkness. Good luck.
"... I hope you don't mind me opining that the story as written is most likely to be a complete fiction, designed to hide the real source of the fantasy story book that is the Steele dossier. The main mission here being to admit that the dossier was indeed a pack of lies but with the important corollary that J Steele did indeed do some sort of research to dig up the dirt on Trump. Heaven forbid that it ever was discovered that himself, Pablo Miller and Sergei Skripal made the whole thing up over a meal of Zizzi's garlic bread and risotto, washed down with white wine and a bottle of Vodka over at the Mill. ..."
After more than four years of Russiagate we finally learn (paywalled
original ) where the Steele dossier allegations about nefarious relations between Trump and Russia came from:
A Wall Street Journal investigation provides an answer: a 40-year-old Russian public-relations executive named Olga Galkina
fed notes to a friend and former schoolmate who worked for Mr. Steele. The Journal relied on interviews, law-enforcement records,
declassified documents and the identification of Ms. Galkina by a former top U.S. national security official.
In 2016, Ms. Galkina was working in Cyprus at an affiliate of XBT Holding SA, a web-services company best known for its
Webzilla internet hosting unit. XBT is owned by Russian internet entrepreneur Aleksej Gubarev.
That summer, she received a request from an employee of Mr. Steele to help unearth potentially compromising information
on then-presidential candidate Donald Trump 's links to Russia, according to people familiar with the matter. Ms. Galkina was
friends with the employee, Igor Danchenko, since their school days in Perm, a Russian provincial city near the Ural mountains.
Ms. Galkina often came drunk to work and eventually got fired by her company. She took revenge by alleging that the company
and its owner Gubarev were involved in the alleged hacking of the Democratic National Committee. A bunch of other false allegations
in the dossier were equally based on Ms. Galkina's fantasies.
So the Steele Dossier that kicked off 4 years of Russiagate hysteria among the US ruling class was cooked up by two Russian
alcoholics from Perm. "Gogolesque" does not begin to describe the grotesque credulity & stupidity of the American elites.
The tales in the dossier were real disinformation from Russians but not '
Russian disinformation ' of the
American Newspeak variant.
The FBI, and others involved, knew very early on that the Steele dossier was a bunch of lies. But the issue was kept in the
public eyes by continues leaks of additional nonsense. All this was to press Trump to take more and more anti-Russian measures
which he did with
unprecedented generosity . The accusations about a Trump-Russia connection were the 'Russia bad' narrative that pressed and
allowed Trump to continue the anti-Russian policies of the Obama/Biden administration.
A similar string of continuous policies from the Obama/Biden administration's 'Pivot to Asia' and throughout the four years
of Trump is the anti-China campaign.
We now hear a lot about Hunter and Joe Biden's
corrupt deals with Chinese entities. These accusations come with more evidence and are far more plausible than the stupid
Steele dossier claims. Their importance is again twofold. They will be used to press a potential President Joe Biden to act against
China but they will primarily be used to intensify a public anti-China narrative that creates public support for such policies.
I don't know how or at what level, but we are being played. A narrative is being aggressively rammed down our throats about
China in
exactly the same way it was being aggressively rammed down our throats about Russia four years ago;
two unabsorbed
nations
the US government has long had
plans to attack and undermine .
Russiagate was never really about Trump. It was never about his campaign staff meeting with Russians, it was never about a
pee tape, it was never about an investigation into any kind of hidden loyalties to the Kremlin. Russiagate was about
narrative managing the United States into a new cold war with Russia with
the ultimate target being its far more powerful ally China, and ensuring that Trump played along with that agenda.
...
If Biden gets in we can expect the same thing: a president who advances escalations against both Russia and China
while being accused of the other party of being soft on China. Both parties will have their foot on the gas toward brinkmanship
with a nuclear-armed nation, with no one's foot anywhere near the brakes.
""Gogolesque" does not begin to describe the grotesque credulity & stupidity of the American elites."
Not at all. The "elites" know what's going on; it's being done for their benefit, after all. It's the "normals" who are being
sheared of the little wool left on our backs. Just one more true grand larceny before the whole thing falls apart. And for this
we need a real enemy. From the great Antiwar.com:
It's like living in a "B" movie. Probably many of the same sorts of people behind it too. The lack of imagination and knowledge
in these propaganda narratives tells you a lot about the mediocrities behind them. In considering these US foreign policy excesses,
real and imagined, I keep thinking at some point reality is going to raise its ugly head and Washington will collapse in a puddle
of spite. I expect the next adminstration to be overwhelmed by its domestic problems, along with quite a few other countries.
I look at what is going on in Western societies today and I think of the movie Brazil.
I think this stuff will matter more if Trump wins than if Biden wins. (I'm thinking 3:2 odds in favor of Biden, by the way).
If Biden wins, Republicans will make a lot of noise, but that's about it. Without a huge majority of Congress, they can't do
even what little token effects Democrats had to "stop Trump". Then, whenever Harris takes over, she can just distance herself
from the whole thing.
If Trump wins, however, the flag humpers in the administration will have the ammunition they need in the fight over Russiagate.
Not to shut it down, but to take control of it for their own political ends, and perhaps take down someone famous in the media
and intimidate the rest - in a replay of the post-9/11 Bush era (not that it ever stopped). So you can thank Democrats for handing
them the setup to do all that, not to mention for nominating Biden, if that is the path we take.
More realistically, Trump still loses, but Dems might fail to get an effective majority in the Senate (something like a 51-49
majority might not be enough in practice, because the most conservative Democrats in the Senate vote Republican half the time.).
Again it makes no difference for foreign policy, but it could really change how the country responds to economic hardship, now
baked in due to the virus.
The MIC needs a Cold War to boost military expenditure. The bigger the boogeyman the more money will be spent the more profits
will be generated.
They don't want a hot war as all those profits are meaningless if you are reduced to ashes.
The last thing the MIC can afford is for peace and goodwill amongst nations to break out. There is absolutely no profit in
that.
Eisenhower warned against the rise of the MIC for this very reason. If war is profitable then to keep generating more profits
you need to keep on generating more wars.
Trump proposed to ally with Russia against China. MAGA clearly implies the US was, is weakening, one way out (classical) is
to ally (perhaps only lightly) with one of the other two strong powers. This was total anathema to part of the PTB, mostly represented
(officially) by Dems. An all-out attack on Trump thus took place (before he was elected, because all was known) as a stooge for
Russia, etc. Russia 3x, Russiagate, all of it clumsily made-up rubbish.
Surely now with Hunter's lap-top and the exposé of Biden-China ties (pay to play at the highest level, potentially billions,
not minor corruption chicken-sh*t..) it is possible to grasp that one faction of what some call the Deep State is more pro-China
i.e. the aspirations towards that type of society (I leave that aspect aside ..) and the opportunities for money extraction /
deals - see tech etc. / also sales (MIC, etc.) favor China. The noise about Chinese incursions (Tibet, sea.. etc.), Chinese human-rights
violations (Uighurs, etc.), and the OBOR initiative have always been somewhat glancing more pro-forma than anything else..
It was the 'Dem' faction of the duopoly, Obiman + Biden who 'did' Ukraine, an anti-Russian move (on the face of it. Perhaps
it was just an extraction scheme, Mafia style. Of course they had the keen involvement of Germany and support from France.)
I have boiled down complex issues to just one "narrative arc", a simplification if you will, I am aware there is much more
to it all
Question. There is a well-know board on which sit, amongst many others:
Mary T. Barra (CEO Gen. Mot.)
Carlos Ghosn (Renault etc.)
H. Kruger (BMW)
Elon Musk
Henry Paulson
Lloyd Blankfein
Laurence Fink (Blackrock)
M. L. Corbat (Citigroup)
Tim Cook
Michael Dell (Dell co.)
S. Nadella (Microsoft)
IMO, the current Imperial policy goals of the Outlaw US Empire will continue regardless who wins. IMO, the ultimate question is
if the Empire has enough power to continue on its current track. As most know, I see a drowning empire trying to disrupt the rapid
rise of two strategically bound nations and those allied with them. China just finished planning and publishing its 14th 5-year
plan. This Global Times editorial is supremely
confidant for good reason:
"The fifth plenary session of the 19th CPC Central Committee is leading the country forward. China has the capital and ability
to do so. In this turbulent world, the meeting has provided a practical and significant guide for our direction, goal and tactics.
Despite the many problems, China's political philosophy can constantly generate positive energy to solve the problems, instead
of letting the problems crush positive energy.
"At the moment, China is facing the most problems and challenges. However, the country is also the most confident now. Other
countries have posed many difficulties, but they provide reference and proof that we are doing better . As the world suffers
from shrinking demand and negative growth, we are demanding real and comprehensive growth to realize new achievements in six areas.
The country is self-driven ." [My Emphasis]
It's been announced that "The 19th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) will hold a press conference Friday
to introduce the guiding principles of its fifth plenary session."
As for Russia's direction, that was very clearly mapped out by Putin and Lavrov's recent Valdai Club speeches and Q & A sessions
and other interviews over the past ten days or so. Compared to the drowning Outlaw US Empire, China and Russia combine to offer
the world two not so different examples that are clearly superior to Neoliberal Parasitism. And the longstanding Imperial edict
of the Outlaw US Empire saying no threat of a better example can be allowed to exist forms the basis for the confrontation. However,
it's no longer just China and Russia that provide such threats as a majority of the world's nations want to join Win-Win and scupper
Zero-sum. So the already joined contest between two differing ideological blocs will escalate until the drowning Outlaw US Empire
finds it no longer possess the power to dominate outside its borders, but will still have its domestic populace to exploit until
they too revolt.
The similarities are there, except that Trump's investigation had not one document of compromat even after 3 years, whilst Biden's
already has many from day 1.
Yes, the deepstate attacks Russia from the left, and China from the right, but this does not imply that members of the body
politic are not subservient to either side, ever.
Only that Trump was never a Russian stooge, nor did they ever hold compromising documents over him, whilst Biden seems the
Cleon of the modern age, that his business partners say he is. Is this compromat? Maybe, but at the very least this is graft.
And that should be enough to send him into the gutter.
This is a good report as is usually the case here at MoA. Yet, there is nothing really new in this at all other than the details
of how the Western empire goes about enforcing its will on the world.
Sense August 6, 1945 the Imperial policy has been "Global full spectrum domination." and to that end it was determined that Russia
and China were to be considered one enemy and must be attacked simultaneously.
In the 75 years sense that date when the Western empire declared the world belonged to it and it alone to rule the Western empire
has slaughtered innocent people across the globe tens of millions of them, additionally in the last 20 years alone the Western
empire has displaced over 37 million people, kicked them out of their homes destroyed their towns and communities. For 75 years
non stop slaughter of innocent people.
Western Liberal Democracy and indeed Western civilization itself is an utter and contemptible failure irredeemable in any form
which we might recognize as "democracy'
Why do media corporations put out remake after remake of popular movies? Is it because they lack imagination, or is it that
audiences prefer the familiar.
They use the same war propaganda time after time because the audience falls for it more easily if they've heard it before.
I agree with Michael, however, that we are in dire planetary straits at this point.
Apparently, our ruling overlords are putting in a Hail Mary plan to slow down the destruction of the ecosystem. I don't believe
that it is the virus that made them screech the brakes on the global economy back in March. They have a plan to reset and scale
back consumption.
We all knew it couldn't last forever, anyway, right?
I'm not so sure about the overall conclusions, instead I'm sidetracked by the attempt to whitewash Russiagate. I guess they
finally figured out they had to come up with some kind of lame excuse to brush it off.
"It wasn't me! It was some crazy drunk Russian woman from Perm! She was angry!"
Well that explains everything. They must have been so scared :D
Because that's what people do when they get fired isn't it? Instead of getting a new job (or drinking a bit more, or sliding
down the slippery slope of society) they make up and tell stories about politicians in other countries. Not to blackmail anyone,
oh no, only to try to tarnish the reputation of the old boss to get revenge. Stuff like this is why watching soap operas (including
"Friends") is bad for you :)
"We need a scapegoat but we don't have any good ones available right now, however someone we know has an aunt in Perm who
will do anything for money"
It still doesn't make sense but now instead of a problem that doesn't make sense they have a solution that doesn't make sense.
They probably threw a party to celebrate how smart they were.
"A narrative is being aggressively rammed down our throats about China": I usually respect Caitlin's work a lot but how does
this jive with the MSM and Techno-platforms desperate attempts to block all circulation of anything to do with the Biden corruption
scandals? Digging deeper into these issues is toxic not just for Biden, but for a significant segment of the neoliberal elite.
The economic elites need time to decouple their profits from China before any real head-to-head battle commences, Biden (or
Kamala) will bark a lot but bite much less given the probable wealth-vaporization of increased hostilities with China.
P.S. the number of COVID cases in Sweden is exploding, so to quote one of my favourite movie reviewers (The Critical Drinker)
can the Sweden trolls please "just go away now".
I don't argue popularity, but strength. Trump is a weakling, both as a person and as a president IMO.
US presidential system won't allow true leaders but puppets (or easily manipulated persons), it is all I'm saying. Do we need
more than last 4 years of Trump's reign as a proof?
Because the U.S. public is close to brain dead We can't detect obvious lies no matter how brazen.
Let's suppose I told you something was absolutely true and I literally started out by saying, 'Once upon a time there was an
evil stepmother ...'. Or I told you about about a villainous neighbor while literally playing a sad song on a violin.
I do not consider myself a genius, in fact I was a neocon but good God, I could just tell I was being lied to just by the pattern
of the stories. I didn't know what the truth was but I knew they were lying.
A doozy with FOX promoting genocide against Iran
FOX news does a story about the terrorist attack in France and in the very next segment without any commercial breaks they
interview a Congressman about Iran. Now they did not say Iran was responsible but clearly this was a puppet show to make just
that association. In addition to the standard blood libel, the Congressman talked about a tweet the Ayatollah made in 2014, so
it was not as if there even was any newsworthy item to discuss about Iran. It was just to frame them for something they did not
do.
On top of the 2001 Sino-Russian Friendship Treaty, both nations also signed an agreement in 2008 officially ending all territorial
disputes between the two countries. With no exceptions, the border between Russia and China is fixed.
In addition northeast China (or that area historically known as Manchuria) is now
a rustbelt area and is deindustrialising.
People especially young people are moving away from this part of the country and into the cities farther south to find more job
opportunities. According to
this Mercatornet.com
article , fertility rates in this part of Northeast Asia across all ethnic groups are the lowest in the world and this part
of China is heading for demographic collapse.
Probably the only people in China and Russia who still have fantasies about seizing one another's territories in Northeast
China and the Russian Far East are gameboys who spend too much time playing computer games or nattering with one another on their
blogsites and who would suffer cardiac arrest the moment they step away from the screen (or who would suffer cardiac arrest anyway
from playing games two or three days straight).
US economy and US life in general is wholly dependent on China. Face masks or pharmaceuticals, car parts or building materials,
it comes from China. No, we cannot resume making these things in US, we do not know how. When 3M was told to get busy and make
masks under Defence Procurement authority all they could do was refer to Chinese subsidiary. Clear enough it is the "subsidiary"
that has the whip hand. What do we have for them? Treasury bonds? Or we can start handing over real estate. Maybe if we give them
the West Coast they will supply us for a time.
One of the big stalls with the Foxconn-Racine plant has been there are no American engineers to hire. Just none. All Chinese
staff would be easier. Or Chinese lords supervising American coolies.
US basically does not trade with Russia. They have unloaded US paper securities. All we get from them is service as a bogeyman.
If we needed another bogey we could get that easy, make up some shit as always.
Mostly true but it's not because the US cant make these products it's because the shareholder class decided long ago
their portfolios would be better enhanced by cheaper labor costs outside the US.
And just as important, the US consumer prefers a "bargain price" and wants cheap goods more than a living wage, especially
those consumers who own some stocks (52% of Amerikkkans own at least some shares, usually in a 401k plan) and believe they too
are participating in the global wealth machine.
BTW, nearly as much stuff is made in Mexico and exported into the US as is made in China and products from both countries are
made by multinational corporations whose ownership consists largely Amerikkkan/western elites.
The problem isn't national-based, it is class based and international .
They are only trying to trick us into believing the problem is we are lazier than the Chinese.
The Chinese authorities have been prosecuting corrupt officials for many years. The prospect of certain USAi officials like
the Biden family carpetbaggers and their Chinese associates being prosecuted in public courts in China with no plea bargaining
and all those other niceties would be a delight for eyes and ears.
Be careful with those threats USAi, it could come back to haunt you.
I hope you don't mind me opining that the story as written is most likely to be a complete fiction, designed to hide the
real source of the fantasy story book that is the Steele dossier. The main mission here being to admit that the dossier was
indeed a pack of lies but with the important corollary that J Steele did indeed do some sort of research to dig up the dirt
on Trump. Heaven forbid that it ever was discovered that himself, Pablo Miller and Sergei Skripal made the whole thing up over
a meal of Zizzi's garlic bread and risotto, washed down with white wine and a bottle of Vodka over at the Mill.
I am with you Corkie. That is about the strength of it. The WSJ is BS from front page to last.
Yesterday, former Vice President Joe Biden was again insisting that the scandal involving
Hunter Biden's laptop was Russian disinformation despite the direct refutation of that claim by
the FBI .
In her interview with Joe Biden, CBS anchor Norah O'Donnell did not push Biden to simply
confirm that the emails were fake or whether he did in fact meet with Hunter's associates
(despite his prior denials). Instead O'Donnell asked: "Do you believe the recent leak of
material allegedly from Hunter's computer is part of a Russian disinformation campaign?"
Biden responded with the same answer that has gone unchallenged dozens of times:
"From what I've read and know the intelligence community warned the president that
Giuliani was being fed disinformation from the Russians. And we also know that Putin is
trying very hard to spread disinformation about Joe Biden. And so when you put the
combination of Russia, Giuliani– the president, together– it's just what it is.
It's a smear campaign because he has nothing he wants to talk about. What is he running on?
What is he running on?"
It did not matter that the answer omitted the key assertion that this was not Hunter's
laptop or emails or that he did not leave the computer with this store.
Recently, Washington Post columnist Thomas Rid wrote
said the quiet part out loud by telling the media:
"We must treat the Hunter Biden leaks as if they were a foreign intelligence operation --
even if they probably aren't."
Let that sink in for a second. It does not matter if these are real emails and not Russian
disinformation. They probably are real but should be treated as disinformation even though
American intelligence has repeatedly r ebutted that claim. It does not even matter that the
computer has seized the computer as evidence in a criminal fraud investigation or that a Biden
confidant is now giving his allegations to the FBI under threat of criminal charges if he lies
to investigators.
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It simply does not matter. It is disinformation because it is simply inconvenient to treat
it as real information.
Bastiat , 3 hours ago
I should have lost the capacity for shock in reaction to this Mockingbird crap but the
sheer naked audacity of it still gets me.
Carbon Skidmark , 3 hours ago
I don't know what is worse. The concept that hiding crimes is no longer that important or
the lack of response to the crimes by so many.
jin187 , 3 hours ago
I don't know what's worse. The fact that our supposed news networks do this, or the fact
that in spite of the vast majority of Americans saying they distrust them, they still let
them get away with it. They still watch, and read, and listen. TBH, I don't think the lack of
MSM coverage is an issue with this particular story. I think the average Democrats and RINOs
are just covering their eyes and ears with this one. They want Trump to lose so bad, they
don't care if day one of the Biden administration is him handing suitcases of military
hardware blueprints to the Chinese. Anyone with a (D), never Trump, keep the swamp churning.
That's all they care about.
Four chan , 25 minutes ago
the laptop and its contents are 100% verified with clean chain of control.
UndergroundPost , 3 hours ago
It's now clear the Democrat Party under the Biden / Clinton Dynasties is nothing more than
a fully compromised, corrupt and criminal extension of the Communist Party of China
SDShack , 3 hours ago
Absolutely! The timelines of everything line up perfect. These laptops were dropped off at
the computer shop in early 2019. Work was done, but not paid for. The owner tried to get paid
and have the laptops picked up for 3 months. No go, so abandoned property now belongs to the
computer shop. All perfectly legal. It's now fall 2019 and the Impeachment Sham related to
Ukraine is starting. Computer shop realizes that laptops belonged to Demorat VP son being
caught up in the entire Impeachment Sham. Computer shop guy realizes he is holding dynamite
with lit fuse so he contacts FBI. FBI does nothing, then gets involved, then sits on the
story. This is all end of 2019.
Meanwhile, demorat primaries are starting and Bernie is the leader. DNC can't have Bernie
win, so they try to game the system to stop him just like 2016. But no one early on can do
it. Senile Joe fails first. Then Kamalho, who was the favorite, flames out. Then all the
others. It's now early 2020 and the DNC is hemorrhaging money and in disarray. Then look what
happens, the DNC miraculously unities around Senile Joe to stop the Angry Berd, with Kamalho
being the fallback position as VP. It is clear that the CCP ordered the DNC to do this
because they had the goods on Corrupt Joe, and the DNC needs the Chicom money. They all
figured they had it all covered up. They never figured on the crazy cokehead son blowing it
all up. The timelines all line up, and explain why Senile Joe rose from the dead in the
primaries to be the anointed one, along with Kamalho. The CCP got the candidates they bought
and paid for.
GoldmanSax , 1 hour ago
100% true but the republican government refuses to prosecute their buddies. The US has 1
party and we ain't invited.
Robert De Zero , 3 hours ago
It isn't real, we hope it isn't real, you can't prove it's real, 50 experts said it isn't
real, Russia planted it, Russian disinformation, Rudy is compromised, Rudy might be a Russian
agent, Rudy almost banged a 24 YO and he can't be trusted, It's not about Joe we don't care,
Hunter isn't running, Bobulinski has a funny name so he can't be trusted...NOT ONCE ASKING IF
THIS IS a MAJOR PHUCKING PROBLEM.
The problem isn't RUSSIA, it's you bastards in the Big Lies Media!
GoldmanSax , 1 hour ago
Why hasn't the patriotic republicans arrested the evil democrats? Whats the hold up?
tonye , 3 hours ago
At some point we are going to have to break up the corporate media conglomerates.
All of them.
And start racketeering prosecutions.
Salsa Verde , 3 hours ago
Facts mean nothing in a country where emotional outbursts are now considered gospel.
Stable-Genius , 3 hours ago
I think we need to bring back the death penalty in every state and not keep housing these
criminals for lifetimes.
Zorch , 2 hours ago
Wait! What does Gretta say?
VisceralFat1 , 3 hours ago
so... the hunter laptop is fake
and global warming is real
got it
jin187 , 3 hours ago
You just summed up the only thing 90% of students actually learn from 12 years of public
school.
rwe2late , 3 hours ago
correct on both points
Zerogenous_Zone , 3 hours ago
duh...
the Feds have plenty of laptops that have incriminating evidence of our elected leaders
(Wasserman Schultz, Iman Brothers, Weiner, DNC Servers, etc...), Dems and Repubs
at issue is if we REALLY knew the depths of treason from said leaders, we'd run out of
rope and tall trees...
so...anyone who votes Democrat, is complicit in my eyes (and they don't need to vote
Republican) and deserve the heat of the truth, strong enough to melt all the
snowflake-SJW's
Carbon Skidmark , 3 hours ago
ban laptops...it's so simple...no laptops and bad things stop happening
Zerogenous_Zone , 3 hours ago
/sarc
banned public schools first...they're indoctrination centers of controlled deception
NO critical thinking...NO innovative strategies
ONLY State sponsors 'information' filtered by the snowflakes anti-social media platforms
and e-encyclopedia (Schmoogle)
11b40 , 3 hours ago
Ban email & instant messages. Life would be immediately better.
CosmoJoe , 3 hours ago
Dorsey looks like a fvcking homeless person. What a clown. I'd love to rip that ring right
out of his nose.
sunhu , 2 hours ago
losers anger is always fun to watch
chubbar , 3 hours ago
The media is acting against the best interests of the USA. Think about it, "IF" the
allegations are true, we need to find out BEFORE we elect someone who is selling out our
country for personal gain, not after. WHY would the media think differently unless they don't
care whether the allegations are true or not? Are they working for China? Is the DNC? These
are appropriate lines of inquiry given the wholesale censoring the media has levied on the
Biden corruption story. The FBI sat on this for months and it has Child ****, which means
children remain at risk until the FBI goes in and stops it. WTF is wrong with Wray that he
allows this to go on?
somewhere_north , 3 hours ago
Dude, if it was for real Hunter Biden would have been arrested by now. You can't seriously
believe they're just holding back their damning evidence. The obvious conclusion is they
don't have it.
Mr. Universe , 2 hours ago
...except those pictures of a naked Hunter with his niece and the emails of the family
trying to keep a lid on Mom's protestations.
You see lots of pics of Hunter Biden with a blacked out bitch. No way of knowing who he's
actually with.
hugin-o-munin , 2 hours ago
Yeah like duh really man, I mean come on man. Stop thinking so much man, hang ten and
chill bruh.
8-(
Im4truth4all , 2 hours ago
Has Comey, Clapper, Strozk and the list goes on ad infinitum, been arrested? No.
ebear , 1 hour ago
"The obvious conclusion is they don't have it."
An inference, by itself, is not a conclusion.
Soloamber , 2 hours ago
Wray inherited a completely screwed up Comey FBI .
He is not a culture changer .
glasshour , 3 hours ago
Stop calling these people mainstream. There is nothing mainstream about them because
nobody watches their crap.
Joe Rogan's show last night got more views than all of them combined.
WhatDoYouFightFor , 3 hours ago
Hunter is still walking around free, system is F'd. Nothing will right the United States
at this point.
Zerogenous_Zone , 3 hours ago
it's the Hillary conundrum, right?
IF they get Hunter, it's 'election interference'...
deceitful godless individuals...
randocalrissian , 3 hours ago
But but but Her Emails
slightlyskeptical , 3 hours ago
he will always be free on these items as the evidence was all acquired illegally and
likely doctored to all hell.
jin187 , 3 hours ago
This is why I said the day Trump got elected that these people just need to disappear to a
blacksite in Yemen. The best way to drain the swamp is waterboarding all the ones we know to
find the ones we don't know.
Ghost of Porky , 3 hours ago
If Trump rescued 30 drowning children with his helicopter the CNN headline would read
"Trump Increases Carbon Footprint to Risk Superspreader Event.
Stable-Genius , 3 hours ago
Exactly - so tired of MSM and their opinionated lies
pstpetrov , 3 hours ago
Yes Liberals are all about disinformation and Trump has the moral high ground.
randocalrissian , 3 hours ago
Best joke I've heard in October. Well played, sir!
otschelnik , 3 hours ago
How would the MSM react if Don Jr. flew into China on AF1 with his father, met with
Chinese central committee members and intelligence officials, formed a Joint Venture with
them and then got a 5 million dollar no interest loan from the head of a private oil company,
who's chairman used to work in intelligence?
Imagine that. How would ABC MSNBC CNN NPR WaPo NYT PBS broadcast that?
glasshour , 3 hours ago
Better question, who cares. Nobody watches that junk anymore.
fanbeav , 3 hours ago
Liberal sheeple still do.
randocalrissian , 3 hours ago
Let's get the case in a court of law so allegations and wild claims can be proven or
disproven. But wait, this was timed so court isn't an option. So all we are left with is the
sniff test. Smells like baby diaper needs changed.
slightlyskeptical , 3 hours ago
How did they react when it was Kushner doing the traveling and getting the money for his
business?
Iconoclast422 , 3 hours ago
the computer has seized the computer as evidence
Why does every article have these little tidbits that make me think every writer has
stroked out in 2020?
11b40 , 3 hours ago
You see that, too? Something is wrong in the editing process. Sloppy, I guess, or
foreign.
Santiago de Mago , 3 hours ago
I noticed that in several articles today... almost like they are being written by AI
bots.
"My Macaroni And Cheese Is A Lesbian Also She Is My Lawyer"
balz , 3 hours ago
Every time you see someone saying they are a "journalist" at a MSM, don't forget to tell
them they are wrong and their job-title is "propagandist".
Shut. It. Down. , 2 hours ago
Some of the emails have already been verified by the outside recipient or sender.
Next you'll tell me all the sex videos were photoshopped by Putin.
KayaCreate , 1 hour ago
I lost 5 mins of my life watching Hunters **** getting kicked around by a probable minor
while smoking crack. You could tell it was him as his fake teeth glowed in the dark.
Cephisus , 3 hours ago
The media are scum.
Bill of Rights , 3 hours ago
Funny isn't it, every time the Globalist are exposed its " Disinformation " ..Hows that
Russian Collusion evidence coming along? its only been four years.....
American2 , 2 hours ago
The only question remaining to ask is simply this: Who is more enfeebled, Joe Biden; or
the networks and ABC, NBC, CBS, NY Times, WaPo, LA Times?
CosmoJoe , 3 hours ago
I have been out of f*cks to give when it comes to the MSM for a decade now. What is so
comical is that when the MSM so overtly covers for candidates, it backfires horribly. You
can't hyperventilate over an anonymously sourced Trump tax return story and yet ignore the
Biden laptop. People see right through that.
randocalrissian , 3 hours ago
Trump's taxes were made public. Nobody knows where Biden's (or whoever's) laptop came
from. Giuliani is already very late with the promised salacious details. How many people do
you think are really changing their vote to the Domestic Terrorist in the WH?
IndicaTive , 3 hours ago
I know of one person
Invert This MM , 3 hours ago
You are a freaking Share Blue Clown. Nobody buys your monkey dung
IndicaTive , 3 hours ago
You know me so well, after 3 months of trolling here.
Invert This MM , 2 hours ago
You really are one stupid fuuk. You just outed one of your sockpuppets and I was purged in
the Google crack down. I have been posting here for 12 years. You monkeys are really
stupid.
Invert This MM , 2 hours ago
Hey Monkey, I was purged during the Google shake dawn. Been here 14 years. Like a complete
moron, you just outed one of your sockpuppets. Dumbass
replaceme , 3 hours ago
No serious Dem thinks the laptop isn't Hunter's - your supposed to ignore it, or pretend
it has nothing to do with Joe. The Russians, booga boogah
invention13 , 3 hours ago
No, his taxes weren't made public. Claims about his taxes were made public - there is a
difference which you seem happy to elide.
CosmoJoe , 3 hours ago
Trump's taxes as reported by the NY Times were NOT made public, what gives you that idea.
The info was leaked to the Times.
jin187 , 3 hours ago
This is what I want to know. How is it that the NYP is still banned from Twitter based on
them obtaining information "illegally or illicitly", when we know for a fact now that they
didn't? At the same time, I'm pretty sure that the NYT and their followers are still happily
linking and chatting away about the story on how they illegally obtained Trump's tax
returns.
wearef_ckedwithnohope , 3 hours ago
Matt Taibbi has written a series of articles bemoaning the current state of
journalism.
replaceme , 3 hours ago
What's journalism?
invention13 , 3 hours ago
I'm beginning to think it is something that never really existed - just an ideal in some
people's minds.
Shillelagh Pog , 2 hours ago
Journalism is putting down on paper your, or someone you like, or is paying you for,
feelings, duh.
slightlyskeptical , 3 hours ago
He has the same issues with his journalism.
starcraft22 , 1 hour ago
The laptop is real. The media is the foreign disinformation.
Stable-Genius , 3 hours ago
Just shocking how MSM is so quick to dismiss this shocking evidence. We know it's not part
of their brainwashing echo chamber of lies for their low IQ and low informed voters but had
this been one of Trump's sons laptops - this would be MAJOR HEADLINES for the next 12
months.
Remember the 4 year Russiangate investigation, 40 million to Robert Mueller all based on a
bought and paid dossier paid for by the DNC/Clinton foundation, corrupt FBI, FISA warrants
all to spy and setup Trump to incriminate him for the VERY same crimes they were in FACT
committing.
Ar15ak47rpg7 , 2 hours ago
Note to all Zero HEDGERS....there seems to be no difference between the scrubbing of
comments on Twitter and Facebook and ZH. The free flow of ideas on ZH no longer exist. Just
like the Drudge Report the Deep Stater's have gotten to the Tylers. Beware
One of these is not like the others.. , 2 hours ago
I concur, the more thoughtful the post, the more likely it seems to vanish.
ebear , 1 hour ago
I must be an idiot then. As much as I'd like to add that badge to my collection, my stuff
never seems to get scrubbed. Damn!
Urfa Man , 3 minutes ago
Gulag and the shrews that run it are putting big financial pressure on ZH to censor us.
This month I've twice tried to post a URL for the news article that details the censorship
here, but go figure, those posts get scrubbed.
It's all because of you and me. The Bolsheviks at Gulag say this comment section hurts
feelings and therefore must be dominated and controlled with an iron fist.
Gulag Bans ZeroHedge From Ad Platform
If you replace "Gulag" with the name of a major search engine and conduct a search using
the words in italics above - via a search engine like duckduckgo - the results will probably
point you to the news article that gives the details of this ZH censorship and why your
comments disappear.
lacortenews com is the domain that carries the news report
Good luck. There's not much left of free speech or the original freedom of the
internet.
unionbroker , 3 hours ago
A business associate of mine told me with a straight face that he didn't trust Bobulinski
because he had a Russian sounding name. He is on Twitter a lot so maybe that explains it.
slightlyskeptical , 3 hours ago
I don't trust him either. He has already changed his story. he requested to meet Joe Biden
and then later he didn't request it. . And he met him, but he didn't have a meeting with him.
He confirmed that on Fox last night.
Stable-Genius , 3 hours ago
I trust him 100% #imwithhim
remember Dr Christine Ford and her fake as story against Kavanaugh - this is much more
realistic than her fake as
Republicans can play dirty too
jin187 , 2 hours ago
Yeah, this is what it's come to, so **** it. I hope Rudy is out there right now handing
out suitcases of cash to anyone willing to come forward with any lies about Biden, Pelosi,
Schumer, just like our side's Gloria Steinem.
Zerogenous_Zone , 3 hours ago
bring him in under oath and actually investigate...
BUT that would be 'election interference' (you know, the whole Hillary conundrum,
right?)
rule of law is now changed to morality of feelings...if it makes me feel insignificant, it
CAN'T be TRUE!!
WAAAHHHHHH
Stable-Genius , 3 hours ago
he will testify under oath watch - and he won't be like pencil neck Schiff and those other
cowards and plea the 5th
rwe2late , 3 hours ago
???
you could watch the Tucker Carlson show interview instead of your imagined one.
Uh... did watch it. And yes, the story he tells there about meeting Biden is not the same
as the one he told before. Riddle me this: if this is real, why would they hopelessly
compromise their chain of evidence by dribbling it to the public like this?
Stable-Genius , 3 hours ago
because no one in the MSM would dummy - they are all in DEEP ****
somewhere_north , 3 hours ago
They don't have to use the MSM, or any media. They simply arrest Hunter Biden, then drop
all the info at once instead of tantalizingly holding the smoking guns out of our view. All
they are doing here, if they actually have anything, is risking the lives of their witnesses
and giving the perps a lot of warning. That's to say nothing about compromising the evidence
to the point of inadmissability. It's running a risk for no gain whatsoever.
rwe2late , 3 hours ago
stuff is only out of your view if your eyes are closed
rwe2late , 3 hours ago
"not the same" ?
missed your weblink (not that you could be making stuff up, cough, cough.)
also, how that would have any significant bearing on the whole matter,
including most MSM news censorship and Russia nonsense ?
RedNeckMother , 3 hours ago
Who told you that bulls hit?
calculator , 2 hours ago
It's entirely possible he is military intelligence and was sent undercover to infiltrate
the Bidens and discover their treachery. The CIA and FBI sure as hell don't appear to be
doing it. Since we may very well be in a shooting war with the CCP at some point in the near
future, it shouldn't surprise anyone that the military is actually doing their jobs to ensure
we are not compromised.
SDShack , 3 hours ago
We must treat the Hunter Biden leaks as if they were a foreign intelligence operation --
even if they probably aren't."
Cmon Turley, parse these words> Why does the WaPo say 'WE MUST' treat these leaks this
way? This implies that the WaPo is BEING ORDERED to treat these leaks this way! So WHO has
power over the WaPo? Is that power direct, or financial, or BOTH? Also the assumption the
WaPo is trying to propagate is that the Foreign Intelligence Operation is...THE
RUSSIANS...but could it not actually be the CCP that is pulling the WaPo strings? Doesn't the
CCP revelation go to the central heart of the entire Corrupt Joe matter, as well as the
financial angle for the Bezo's Amazon WaPo? Even in their lies, the nuggets of hidden truth
are exposed.
Amel , 3 hours ago
Asking yourself why the CIA control of the MSM favors a Manchurian candidate over Trump ?
Because the CIA's own survival is valued above national security.
invention13 , 3 hours ago
For they same reason they had to treat the Russian collusion allegations as though they
were real.
LetThemEatRand , 3 hours ago
Same reason there was no outrage at the Obama child cages at the Mexico border. Or outrage
at all of the wars Obama started. Or outrage at all of the drone killing under Obama.
Most Blue Team members are satisfied getting their news from MSM, leaving MSM able to
shape the narrative almost completely. There are a handful of guys like Jimmy Dore on the
left who call out the rest of the left on this. Pretty scary, actually.
factorypreset , 3 hours ago
It sure seems like the press is helping to squash this whole thing by asking any questions
in such a way that Joe doesn't perjure himself.
mtl4 , 3 hours ago
Yesterday, former Vice President Joe Biden was again insisting that the scandal
involving Hunter Biden's laptop was Russian disinformation despite the direct refutation of
that claim by the FBI.
All makes perfect sense in a time when you chose your gender in the morning while getting
dressed, you only need to be accused of anything to completely ruin your reputation (unless
your a politician in which case there are no laws). So why would anyone deal with reality at
a time when we've gotten so good at simply ignoring it.
In the final debate, Joe Biden ensured that mudslinging and innuendo about Donald Trump
substituted for a discussion of what America's actual national interests are towards
Russia.
Final presidential debates have traditionally centered on national security, but the
October 22 showdown between President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden was
almost entirely devoid of any substantive foreign policy discussion. Instead, Biden launched
a fusillade of attacks on Trump about Russia that represented a seamless continuity with the
calumnies that many Democrats have directed at the president ever since he was first
elected.
There are a number of factors that make us suspicious of Russian involvement. Such an
operation would be consistent with Russian objectives, as outlined publicly and recently by the
Intelligence Community, to create political chaos in the United States and to deepen political
divisions here but also to undermine the candidacy of former Vice President Biden and thereby
help the candidacy of President Trump. For the Russians at this point, with Trump down in the
polls, there is incentive for Moscow to pull out the stops to do anything possible to help
Trump win and/or to weaken Biden should he win. A "laptop op" fits the bill, as the publication
of the emails are clearly designed to discredit Biden.
Such an operation would be consistent with some of the key methods Russia has used in its
now multi-year operation to interfere in our democracy – the hacking (via cyber
operations) and the dumping of accurate information or the distribution of inaccurate or
misinformation. Russia did both of these during the 2016 presidential election –
judgments shared by the US Intelligence Community, the investigation into Russian activities by
Special Counsel Robert Mueller, and the entirety (all Republicans and Democrats) on the current
Senate Intelligence Committee.
Such an operation is also consistent with several data points. The Russians, according to
media reports and cybersecurity experts, targeted Burisma late last year for cyber collection
and gained access to its emails. And Ukrainian politician and businessman Adriy Derkach,
identified and sanctioned by the US Treasury Department for being a 10-year Russian agent
interfering in the 2020 election, passed purported materials on Burisma and Hunter Biden to
Giuliani.
Jim Clapper
Former Director of National Intelligence
Former Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence
Former Director of the National Geospartal Intelligence Agency
Former Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency
Mike Hayden
Former Director, Central Intelligence Agency
Former Director, National Security Agency
Former Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence
Leon Panetta
Former Director, Central Intelligence Agency
Former Secretary of Defense
John Brennan
Former Director, Central Intelligence Agency
Former White House Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Advisor
Former Director, Terrorism Threat Integration Center
Former Analyst and Operations Officer, Central Intelligence Agency
Thomas Finger
Former Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Analysis
Former Assistant Secretary for Intelligence and Research, Department of State
Former Chair, National Intelligence Council
Rick Ledgett
Former Deputy Director, National Security Agency
John McLaughlin
Former Acting Director, Central Intelligence Agency
Former Deputy Director, Central Intelligence Agency
Former Director of Analysis, Central Intelligence Agency
Former Director, Slavic and Eurasian Analysis, Central Intelligence Agency
Michael Morell
Former Acting Director, Central Intelligence Agency
Former Deputy Director, Central Intelligence Agency
Former Director of Analysis, Central Intelligence Agency
There are now much stronger arguments to believe that both Harvard mafia players and Browder
were puppets of certain intelligence agencies.
Notable quotes:
"... Just how much this changed is partly witnessed in the life of bill browder - a person well known to most here... so, clearly russia made changes to try to protect itself from the encouraged kleptocracy that was in full swing in the early 1990s ..."
"... You mention Bill Browder. He is the grandson of Earl Browder, General Secretary of the Communist Party USA from 1930-1945. It is now freely admitted that Earl was always in the employ of the FBI. Bill simply continues the family business, which is Get Russia. The odds that Bill is an independent actor and is not working for .gov are same as odds that Easter Bunny is real. ..."
@ 26 eric... thanks... unfortunately it seems michael hudson hasn't really commented on
russia in any significant way unless one goes back 5 years or so... i wonder how things have
changed since?? here is a link to the articles that top up using russia as the search term -
https://michael-hudson.com/?s=russia
i enjoyed the paul craig roberts - michael hudson article from 2019 on pcr's website...
again, i am not informed enough to make an informed comment on pcr's conclusions from march
of 2019... he and however much of the article hudson contributed - might be exactly right,
especially in the conclusions of the 3rd to last paragraph in the article.. i don't know...
thanks for the ongoing conversation..
@ Jen | Oct 24 2020 23:04 utc | 29 / 31.. thanks jen.. i haven't been to marks website in
a long time! i recall moscow exile.. is he still posting their?? regarding central banks and
nabiullina the head of russias central bank... i am not sure how many know this but the
position of being the head of a central bank in any country is not a position that is decided
upon by the country itself, or at least not in any democratic way... and the country is
supposed to not get involved in the politics of it either as i understand it... instead these
people are suggested in some other way - not elected - and while they do have to work with
the political leadership - they can't be gotten rid of easily as i understand it.. i think a
lot of this has to do with the way the international institutions work and how if a country
wants to be a part of this same international system of money, they need to accept the
structure as it is opaquely set up as... thus the central banks are under specific guidelines
that they have to follow that comes from somewhere outside the actual country.... i would
love someone to correct me on all this, but it is my present understanding of how this
particular system works... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_bank
As for what happened in Russia during the breaking up of the USSR and the transition of
Russia during the 1990's - one could argue the agenda of the Harvard plan for Russia was to
exploit russia for it's resource rich territory and install people like Yletsin who would
happily go along with this madness..
Just how much this changed is partly witnessed in the life of bill browder - a person
well known to most here... so, clearly russia made changes to try to protect itself from the
encouraged kleptocracy that was in full swing in the early 1990s ... just how much they
have managed to ween themselves off private finance - i have no idea... it sounds like they
are in the same boat as the rest of the planet in being beholden to private finance....
Of course private verses public finance is a confusing topic that keeps on getting
revisited here at moa and for good reason... i don't really know how all this interfaces with
everything else.. i appreciate erics particular vantage and am curious to hear of others
viewpoint as well.. thanks jen.. i have some other comments to read now on this topic from
H.Schmatz @ 28
You mention Bill Browder. He is the grandson of Earl Browder, General Secretary of the
Communist Party USA from 1930-1945. It is now freely admitted that Earl was always in the
employ of the FBI. Bill simply continues the family business, which is Get Russia. The odds
that Bill is an independent actor and is not working for .gov are same as odds that Easter
Bunny is real.
@ old hippie... yes, i was aware of that - thanks.. if you haven't seen it yet - the movie
the Russian guy made on Browder is quite good - worth the watch, but i think you have to pay
for it now.. there was a time where you could watch it for free... yes indeed, the son worked
or works for the same folks as the father did...here is a link to the movie.. http://magnitskyact.com/
here is an interesting link that i found just looking for a link to the movie... if you
haven't watched the movie, this is a good start and covers it from a particular angle.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOx78CBq0Ck
Earl Browder was an interesting dude who led an interesting life..
I have not yet read the whole transcript of Putin´s long intervention in the Valdai
Discussion Club, and thus, I do not know how deep he went about last frenzy on "regime
change" intends in the post-Soviet space, but in case he did not put it clear enough,
background of the recent explosions of regime change intends in countries surrounding Russia
( Spoiler: it was all there in a 2019 Reand Corporation file...)
"... When everything is fine, and the macro economic indicators are stable, various funds are building up their assets, consumption is on the rise and so on. In such times, you hear more and more that the state only stands in the way, and that a pure market economy would be more effective. But as soon as crises and challenges arise, everyone turns to the state, calling for the reinforcement of its supervisory functions. This goes on and on, like a sinusoidal curve. This is what happened during the preceding crises, including the recent ones, like in 2008. ..."
"... So, again, no model is pure or rigid, neither the market economy nor the command economy today, but we simply have to determine the level of the state's involvement in the economy. ..."
"... In the U.S., since 1980, money has increasingly become the source of political power. This is dictatorship. The U.S. has transformed itself from an imperfect democracy, into an almost perfect 'oligarchic dictatorship' where the corporations oversee the government, rather than the government overseeing the market. This is the very definition of fascism. And under such a system, the U.S.'s market economy has been transformed into an economy of serial monopolies. ..."
"... i continue to believe the planet is being screwed by big finance.. ..."
"... Very true jadan, your view on Putin, and every time I read an excerpt or a speech by him I notice he is far above our western "leaders" with their meaningless chatter and hollow phrases. ..."
Most of the commentators on yesterday's
post were right. It was the Russian President Vladimir Putin
who said this :
Many of us read The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry when we were children and remember what the main character said:
"It's a question of discipline. When you've finished washing and dressing each morning, you must tend your planet. It's very tedious
work, but very easy."
I am sure that we must keep doing this "tedious work" if we want to preserve our common home for future generations. We must
tend our planet.
The subject of environmental protection has long become a fixture on the global agenda. But I would address it more broadly
to discuss also an important task of abandoning the practice of unrestrained and unlimited consumption – overconsumption – in
favour of judicious and reasonable sufficiency, when you do not live just for today but also think about tomorrow.
We often say that nature is extremely vulnerable to human activity. Especially when the use of natural resources is growing
to a global dimension. However, humanity is not safe from natural disasters, many of which are the result of anthropogenic interference.
By the way, some scientists believe that the recent outbreaks of dangerous diseases are a response to this interference. This
is why it is so important to develop harmonious relations between Man and Nature.
I found the excerpt remarkable because it included this, on might say, anti-capitalistic statement:
.. an important task of abandoning the practice of unrestrained and unlimited consumption – overconsumption – in favour of judicious
and reasonable sufficiency, when you do not live just for today but also think about tomorrow.
That 'green' statement will rile those people who argue for free markets and a right to sell bullshit in ever more flavors. In
their view the fight against such 'communists' thinking must be renewed.
As the full English transcript of Putin's speech and the two and a half hour Q&A
is now available I can also quote another interesting
passage where Putin talks about capitalism and the role of the state. His standpoint seems very pragmatic to me:
Question : Mr President, there has been much talk and debate, in the context of the global economic upheavals, about the
fact that the liberal market economy has ceased to be a reliable tool for the survival of states, their preservation, and for
their people.
Pope Francis said recently that capitalism has run its course. Russia has been living under capitalism for 30 years. Is it time
to search for an alternative? Is there an alternative? Could it be the revival of the left-wing idea or something radically new?
Putin: Lenin spoke about the birthmarks of capitalism, and so on. It cannot be said that we have lived these past 30
years in a full-fledged market economy. In fact, we are only gradually building it, and its institutions. [..]
You know, capitalism, the way you have described it, existed in a more or less pure form at the beginning of the previous century.
But everything changed after what happened in the global economy and in the United States in the 1920s and 1930s, after World
War I. We have already discussed this on a number of occasions. I do not remember if I have mentioned this at Valdai Club meetings,
but experts who know this subject better than I do and with whom I regularly communicate, they are saying obvious and well-known
things.
When everything is fine, and the macro economic indicators are stable, various funds are building up their assets, consumption
is on the rise and so on. In such times, you hear more and more that the state only stands in the way, and that a pure market
economy would be more effective. But as soon as crises and challenges arise, everyone turns to the state, calling for the reinforcement
of its supervisory functions. This goes on and on, like a sinusoidal curve. This is what happened during the preceding crises,
including the recent ones, like in 2008.
I remember very well how the key shareholders of Russia's largest corporations that are also major European and global players
came to me proposing that the state buy their assets for one dollar or one ruble. They were afraid of assuming responsibility
for their employees, pressured by margin calls, and the like. This time, our businesses have acted differently. No one is seeking
to evade responsibility. On the contrary, they are even using their own funds, and are quite generous in doing so. The responses
may differ, but overall, businesses have been really committed to social responsibility, for which I am grateful to these people,
and I want them to know this.
Therefore, at present, we cannot really find a fully planned economy, can we? Take China. Is it a purely planned economy? No.
And there is not a single purely market economy either. Nevertheless, the government's regulatory functions are certainly important.
[..]
We just need to determine for ourselves the reasonable level of the state's involvement in the economy; how quickly that involvement
needs to be reduced, if at all, and where exactly. I often hear that Russia's economy is overregulated. But during crises like
this current pandemic, when we are forced to restrict business activity, and cargo traffic shrinks, and not only cargo traffic,
but passenger traffic as well, we have to ask ourselves – what do we do with aviation now that passengers avoid flying or fly
rarely, what do we do? Well, the state is a necessary fixture, there is no way they could do without state support.
So, again, no model is pure or rigid, neither the market economy nor the command economy today, but we simply have to determine
the level of the state's involvement in the economy. What do we use as a baseline for this decision? Expediency. We need
to avoid using any templates, and so far, we have successfully avoided that.
Then comes a paragraph that shows where Russia differs from the current 'western' economic policies of negative interest rates
and deflation:
Of course, the Central Bank and the Government are among the most important state institutions. Therefore, it was in fact through
the joint efforts of the Central Bank and the Government that inflation was reduced to 4 percent, because the Government invests
substantial resources through its social programmes and national projects and has an impact on our monetary policy. It went down
to 3.9 percent, and the Governor of the Central Bank has told me that we will most likely keep it around the estimated target
of around 4 percent. This is the regulating function of the state; there is no way around it. However, stifling development through
an excessive presence of the state in the economy or through excessive regulation would be fatal as well. You know, this is a
form of art, which the Government has been applying skilfully, at least for now.
Keeping inflation up by a bit will make it easier for Russian consumers and companies to pay back their loans. It is economically
healthier than the deflationary policies of western societies.
Russia is well on its way to overtake Germany as the fifth biggest economy. Putin's pragmatic positions towards the role of the
state in the economy and his relative generous policies of social programs and large national projects have contributed to that.
The many questions and answers on foreign policy in the Valdai talk show a similar pragmatism on other issues. For those interested
in those here is again the link to the transcript
.
Posted by b on October 24, 2020 at 18:00 UTC |
Permalink
Putin was (is) an important figure in rescuing Russia from the collapse, and western carpetbagging, of the nineties but in no
way has he moved Russia towards communism or prepared the path (structurally) for a future communist state. Despite everything
that Putin has achieved, in no way has he created a system that is separate from that of the west. The external impostion of sanctions
(by the west) has had much more effect than anything Putin has done (in terms of separting from western dogma).
This talk of "overconsumption" is totally irrelevant to Russia (Russians are still largely poor and "under"-consume) as well
as much of the rest of the world. And Russia is a huge producer of the resources (oil, gas, coal), and a huge consumer of these
same resources, that we are told are destroying the world. So Putin is not really addressing Russians or the majority of the world,
and western governments are used to hearing this kind of guff (because they say the same, frequently).
So, Putin is not referring to a Communist (economic) state; he is referring to a mixed economy just like every other western
state (yes you could also say "just like every other state in the world" but what I am demonstrating is that, at best, Putin desires
to adhere to conventional western economic dogma).
Putin is 68 and the average life expectancy on Russia is 72 (only 65 for males). Putin will be gone soon enough and what he
has built is a proud independent nation that is integrated into the world economy and is well able to defend itself. But he has
not changed the fundamental economic relations that were established in Russia after the collapse of the USSR.
So, this "remarkable...anti-capitalistic statement" is either meaningless or a signal of compliance to western/world capitalist
elites who, perhaps, wish to bring the free-market to an end and entrench their position as a permanent elite - and that would
not be communism, rather it would be feudalism.
With the advent of the industrial revolution, capitalism, mass education, democracy and then the proto-communist states it
was thought impossible (and undesireable) that social structures could regress. But, has the (within technical capacities) ability
to capture data on everyone all of the time (and analyze and interpret that data in real time) and deep understandings of behavoiuralism,
human psychology and sophisticated, convincing and all pervasive propaganda resulted in a fundamental change? In short, that it
is no longer held that all humans are free, can make their own choices, and are capable of organising society for and by themselves
(even as some kind of future objective) - and that this has been replaced by a belief that humanity is best run by a "benevolent"
elite.
I'm not sure that the concept of neo-liberalism is really applicable to Russia. What happened under Yeltsin was a simple pillage
of the state, as anyone would do if they can, as he was too drunk to notice. The same thing is happening today in UK.
Putin has spent his time trying to recover from that situation to more control, as a conservative nationalist, but its not
so easy.
"... I am confident that what makes a state strong, primarily, is the confidence it's citizens have in it. That is the
strength of a state. People are the source of power, we all know that."
Yes! 'People are the source of power' is the definition of democracy.
In the U.S., since 1980, money has increasingly become the source of political power. This is dictatorship. The U.S. has
transformed itself from an imperfect democracy, into an almost perfect 'oligarchic dictatorship' where the corporations oversee
the government, rather than the government overseeing the market. This is the very definition of fascism. And under such a system,
the U.S.'s market economy has been transformed into an economy of serial monopolies.
Russia is rapidly developing; the U.S. is rapidly failing. No need to wonder why!
Depending upon who you ask
, somewhere between 33% and 70% of Russia's economy is still state controlled. You can never say "we" when talking about
directing a capitalist market economy because "The Market" will always be boss. Though Russia suffered a catastrophic capitalist
counterrevolution, it is this large share of the economy that is not entirely subservient to market forces that gives Putin the
luxury of talking in terms of "we" , despite his submissive attitude towards capitalism.
The fact is that capitalism ( "The Market" ) cannot develop Russia. This has been the case for more than a hundred years,
which is why they had a revolution in the first place and why the privatizations have been halted and are now (grudgingly) being
reversed.
Putin's strength lies not in his ideology because his strength of conviction to that ideology is that of an overcooked noodle.
This happens to work out OK though because his ideology is neoliberal capitalism. Clinging to that ideology isn't serving any
leader in the world right now, as we can see in Europe and the US. Rather, Putin's strength is in his patriotic pragmatism. He
doesn't want to build "Socialism with Russian Characteristics" , but pragmatics forces him in that direction.
Russia will be moving to a progressive income tax regime from 2021 onwards. The current personal income tax regime is a flat
13%. From next year, individuals earning 5 million rubles or more annually will be subject to a 15% tax rate. Sounds like little
but these sorts of reforms have to take time and have to be done in small increments.
It's my understanding that the bulk of Russia's tax receipts currently come from the energy sector. I'm sure way back in 1998
Putin wrote a PhD dissertation on the use of natural resources as the basis of economic development and growth, and taxation of
energy companies would be one method of using land resources to achieve this growth.
Keeping inflation up by a bit will make it easier for Russian consumers and companies to pay back their loans. It is economically
healthier than the deflationary policies of western societies.
That's a great idea, except both government and household debt in Russia are among the lowest in the world (probably the lowest
of any industrialized country). Both Putin and the foreigners who fawn over him, including myself not very long ago, are the first
to tout this fact. This way inflation in the Russian economy means consumers get to enjoy rising costs of living, and the state
and companies rising costs of raw materials, energy etc. while there's virtually no debt on the other side of the equation for
inflation to devalue. There's still a lot of corporate sector debt in Russia, but the bulk of it is still, incredibly, denominated
in dollars, euros, Swiss franc, and so on. Ruble inflation and falling exchange rates don't make this debt to cheaper to service,
but of course the opposite.
It's a great thing that the rate of home ownership (without associated mortgage debt) is so high in Russia, and it's probably
the only result of the privatization drive that was actually a good outcome. There's no reason that Russians should now be loaded
up with huge debts in order to own a house or an apartment. Access to personal credit for things like a car is difficult and expensive
in Russia, which obviously means a lot of people can't afford a car, but on the other further helps to ensure the indebtedness
of households is kept low. At the same time, like Putin (and b) does here, many in Russia apparently want to pretend that their
economy is like a Western economy, and that accordingly its households are partially relieved financially by inflation when they
actually only suffer from increased prices. It's absolutely bizarre.
The reality is that Russia's leadership has an unparalleled commitment toward, and talent for, getting the worst of all worlds
economically. Thanks to them Russia is probably the only major economy in the world with high inflation but microscopic domestic
currency debt (and correspondingly low investment in the domestic economy). This way Russia has gotten to enjoy, historically,
very high inflation but much lower growth rates than other developing economies. (The high growth rates in the 2000's came from
high raw materials prices, resulting merely in accumulation of foreign exchange reserves which the Russian government itself then
said could not be efficiently converted into rubles and invested in the Russian economy. Growth in industrial and agricultural
production, or in fixed assets like infrastructure, was accordingly much smaller, if even existent.)
There's also the continuing Wild West capitalism where oligarchs have gotten to keep their stolen assets in potash, gold mining,
coal mining etc., even in strategic industrial sectors like steelmaking, power engineering or the automotive industry, while at
the same time even Chinese investors are discouraged from investing through opaque regulation and unpredictable Russian state
intervention. In other words, stability for the oligarchs who openly tried to destroy the Russian state and turn it into a Hong
Kong-style neo-feudal hellhole, and who today just as before continue to asset strip the last residues of Soviet-era manufacturing,
but a Great Wall against the Asians who want to come in and develop petrochemicals plants, e-commerce, timber industry or whatever.
Through the entire 2000-2012 era, the Russian government came down like a hawk on ruble-denominated debt, while corporations
(both private and state-owned) could take out basically unlimited loans in foreign currency. State-owned companies like Rosneft
actually led the foreign currency indebtedness, helping enormously to ensure that Russia's only real advantage and asset in the
post-Soviet era, the trade surplus resulting from its oil and gas exports, is sent out of the country as interest payments to
American and European banks, rather than (as China has done) paying for the imports of Western machinery and technologies to help
develop domestic manufacturing.
Certainly, Russian companies are now much more restricted in the amounts of foreign currency credit they can accept, but access
to ruble credit is highly limited as well. The result is of course austerity in the economy, with anemic growth and falling living
standards.
Another important "benefit" was that the West had an easy way to put pressure on the ruble. They simply forbade Russian companies
from rolling over their debt, forcing them to come up with huge sums of foreign currency in short order. That crashed the rouble,
thereby dramatically forcing up prices (and equivalently, inflation) in the, by its own design, almost completely import-dependent
Russian economy. The crash in oil prices (again, simply limiting Russia's income in dollar terms, much of which they needed simply
to pay back Western creditors anyway) was just icing on the cake.
One could keep going like this forever. If China and South Korea had political and corporate elites with this mentality, and
with this level of commitment to neo-liberalism and globalization, but (critically!) only to its worst aspects and outcomes, these
countries would have been very lucky to be at the level of development of Thailand today. That's the reality and attacking people
who raise these criticisms as enemies of Russia, as many did to me in the last thread about thread on these topics, does nothing
to help matters. In fact, with "friends" like you, maybe Russia does not need enemies.
I've been having fun listening and reading the reactions and selected excerpts in the media to the long, very long Putin conference,
three hours with the question and answer segment, the most substantial and interesting, but five hours total considering that
he appeared two hours late, no doubt preparing until the last minute and over the speech as could be seen in the notes that he
held and that somehow the sound technicians did not filter out completely, which was a bit annoying.
Checking out the chaotic notes that I took, there is one little detail that most surely won't get any attention, his recourse
to widely used popular expressions like when he asks himself rhetorically:
what is a strong state? What are its strengths?
The Russian word for strength could be translated as power too, and any an every Russian recalls the great hero of the dark
90's, the late Serguey Bodrov in the film "The Brother 2", partly filmed in Chicago, Bodrov asks a panicked businessman: Tell
me American, where is the power? is the power in money? I think the power is in truth . a phrase that everybody knows and
feels proud of in Russia.
Vlad not only plays complex accords for foreign consumption, he plays for the home team first, just in case .
Putin, like all politicians, is more about what he says and less about what he does.
Fair enough, i challenge anyone in his position to do better... I actually admire the man, but let's not delude ourselves.
Russia stands to benefit from global warming more than any other country in spite of all the damage it will still cause it. On
the overall balance, it will average out ahead of everyone else, in relative terms, so don't look to them for answers.
As for "the State"... so what if it's his mates who benefit instead of oligarchs, what is the difference when most of the people
in Russia are broke and have no realistic prospects or chances of progressing beyond their predetermined fates? The cynic in me
ultimately thinks he just wants the oligarchs to pay their taxes to make his job easier, keep the people happy, so he can get
reelected more easily.
@ Eric | Oct 24 2020 21:10 utc | 18.. eric, i was intrigued by your ideas in the previous thread and i am again here... how do
you come by this particular vantage point?? do you have a particular background in finances, or is it just a special interest
that you have cultivated to come by the position you share in your post here? i am genuinely curious! i don't have enough knowledge
to comment and wish someone like Michael Hudson could comment on this specific topic that you seem to excel at holding a very
specific and fairly negative outlook on with regard Russia... thanks for your comments either way.. it is above my pay grade to
respond with any authority..
i continue to believe the planet is being screwed by big finance.. it seems hard to see thru the maze a way out of
this... your suggestion that russia is also caught in this maze would not surprise me... what is the way out, if i might be so
bold??
I think your post points to a fundamental worrisome feature of Russia. It's very unclear who actually has a stake in the prosperity,
power or even existence of the Russian state in 50 or 100 years' time. People can pretend that the Russian Orthodox Church plays
this role but there's very little to suggest it really does. India, I think, unfortunately struggles with the same problem, but
the destruction of India at the hands of British goes a long way to explain it in my view. In China or Iran, with all the issues
of their own that those two countries have, there's however very little ambiguity in this regard.
I'm not even sure I would place the blame on Western-style representative democracy in Russia, as the same basic problem seems
to have been there both before the October Revolution and at the very least during the post-Stalin era of the Soviet Union. The
question is if Russia, despite everything, as a Christian civilization isn't ultimately a participant in the Western world's anomie
and decline.
Yes! Absolutely capitalism is rapidly destroying the planet. Of this there is no question. Nothing can be left alone: 'undeveloped'
land must be 'developed', i.e. forests cut down and replaced by subdivisions, parking lots, McDonald's, office buildings, etc.
Capitalism is truly insidious: look at how the once mighty Amazon rainforest has been utterly wiped out by greedy cattle farmers
looking for a quick buck with the blessing of Bolsonaro. Where there were once massive old growth forests across N. America, there
are now only 'tree museums', i.e. national parks which save less than 1% of what there once was before Europeans came and destroyed
everything–in the name of profit. Capitalism not only destroys natural resources, it destroys people: slavery has been replaced
by wage slavery: and the wage slave's earnings from his 'mcjob' invariably go to his landlord, or other parasites. Your employer
is your master in capitalism: he is your god and you serve him. Any excess profit you make all goes to him, not you. If you look
at him wrong, or have a bad attitude you are replaced–and NO good reference for you! What a miserable shit system craptialism
is.
I have been strongly influenced by Michael Hudson's writings over several years now. Basically everything in that post is either
a point he already made about Russia or a direct application of his overall thinking on Russia's economy. For this reason I was
very surprised by the hostility of certain commenters, in particular karlof1, who also could be called followers of Michael Hudson.
karlof1 even suggested I should spend a couple of years researching Russian economic development, even though I've quite obviously
already done that (which doesn't mean everyone has to agree with my conclusions). I have to wonder if he and Martyanov either
never came across Hudson's criticisms of Russian economic policy (one of the actually less harsh examples
here - if you search
his site michael-hudson.com you can find others) or consider him also an ignorant anti-Russian commentator but are able to appreciate
him in spite of that.
I wrote about this part of Putin's speech back on the 22nd when he made this appraisal:
" only a viable state can act effectively in a crisis ."
I bolded the text then and I've done so again because that's one of the most important points he raised, IMO, particularly
in relation to the clearly unviable Outlaw US Empire and EU. I even turned my commentary into a short article at my VK space that
will be expanded once I digest all the Q & A.
I recently made an observation about Russia's banking and finance systems in that they're controlled by the public via the
state, not by some private entities separate from the state doing all they can to avoid any type of regulation and oversight,
which was based on this item I linked here at the
time. I later made the observation that the moral/ethical grounding of who/what's in charge of those systems matters greatly when
it comes to making an equitable society--and it will matter even more as we get into the having steady-state economies as resource
depletion mounts into the crisis it will eventually become. Putin showed that he knows and understands all that, which is well
beyond the capacity of the vast majority of those known as politicians--especially those in Neoliberal nations. Putin used the
term "balance" 7 times, imbalance once, in his speech. I suggest readers use the CTRL-F function to search the text for that term
to see what it's in reference to so they can learn a bit more about the man and his mind and the importance of seeking balance
in attaining equitability.
At the tail end of the Q & A, Putin is asked: "what you can advise and offer to Russian youth?" Putin's answer conforms completely
with his policy toward the promotion of families and urging young people to strive for their aspirations -- unlike many Western
politicos, he backs his admonitions with robust policies to make them possible, something I've long admired about him. Here's
most of Putin's reply:
"But what can we offer? We believe we will give young people more opportunities for professional growth and create more
social lifts for them. We are building up these instruments and creating conditions for people to receive a good education,
make a career, start a family and receive enough income for a young family.
"We are drafting an increasing number of measures to support young families. Let me emphasise that even during the pandemic,
most of our support measures were designed for families with children. What are these families? They are young people for the
most part.
"We will continue doing this in the hope that young people will use their best traits – their daring striving to move
ahead without looking back at formalities that probably make older generations more reserved – for positive, creative endeavours.
Eventually, the younger generation will take the baton from the older generation and continue this relay race, and make Russia
stronger."
The difference in that regard between Putin's vision and his actions when compared to the Outlaw US Empire and other Neoliberal
nations is beyond stark--it's as if they inhabit two different solar systems.
The reason Putin's hated by the West is he took an unviable Russia and made it more than viable again. IMO, he's the unequaled
Dean of what few Statesmen exist in today's world, which makes him an asset for humanity.
There used to be a regular commenter at Mark Chapman's Kremlin Stooge / The New Kremlin Stooge - I forget his KS name but he
was a physicist (and not a very good-tempered one at that, he had regular shouting matches with one other commenter Yalensis there)
-- but he was of the opinion that interest rates set by the Central Bank of Russia have been too high and have discouraged small
business investment in Russia. The head of the CBR may still be Elvira Nabiullina -- I haven't checked lately. She and others
in the government who help set monetary policies in Russia are suspected of being neoliberal and Atlanticist in their outlook.
As President, Putin is not responsible for setting domestic policies - that's Prime Minister Mishustin's job.
Putin spoke all that in a very specific environment (in a room full of rabid liberals/pro-capitalists), so we should be care about
its content.
There are some incongruousness in his speech we must correct here:
1) It is a myth the State, during the golden age of liberalism (16th-19th Centuries) was "minimal". On the contrary: there
was a ton of State intervention in the people's daily life - including the right of the State to separate whole families and use
their children in servile labor. The difference here is that the gross of that intervention was directed to the dispossessed,
i.e. the working classes. There was also a ton of regulations over slave ownership. The age of classical liberalism is considered
one of minimum State because the freedom of the powerful slave owners and industrialists was almost zero; it's the History told
from the point of view of the capitalists. That's why Putin clearly said "[capitalism] the way you have described it [...]"
2) The mixed system between what he calls "State intervention" (welfare of the people, command or planned economy) and "free
market" is the scientific definition of socialism. Marx wasn't an idealist: he was a materialist. He knew a direct transition
to communism was impossible, therefore he imagined a system of transition, where communism and capitalism would exist together.
This transition system was called socialism. That's why China, still governed by a Marxist-Leninist Party, considers itself socialist
and not capitalist, or even "mixed" for that matter;
Another observation: the Western countries didn't enter deflation/low inflation because of ZIRP/NIRP. They were already suffering
from it before those policies. The opposite is the true: precisely because they were having a too low inflation, they resorted
to ZIRP/NIRP.
Yep re my comment @ 29: Nabiullina is still CBR head according to her Wikipedia entry. Since becoming CBR head back in 2012 or
2013, she has consistently followed a policy of tackling inflation first to the extent of keeping interest rates higher than they
perhaps should be. This probably helps explain some of the issues Eric @ 18 raises about Russians' access to personal credit.
Interestingly Nabiullina's Wikipedia entry shows she worked with Alexei Kudrin in the past. Kudrin has a reputation for preferring
neoliberal economic policies. Currently he is Inspector General in the Russian govt's audit office where he can mouth off all
he likes about how he'd reform Russian economic policies if he got the chance but not actually do much damage: a case of Putin
keeping potential enemies somewhere where they can be watched.
Eric does raise the issue about how Russian oligarchs were allowed to keep their gains and not be forced to pay back taxes
they owed way back in the early 2000s, but this was on condition that they not meddle in Russian federal politics and buy influence,
and pay all their future taxes and other obligations, like paying their employees, promptly and in accordance with Russian laws.
Those who refused ended up in prison (Khodorkovsky) or fled overseas (Berezovsky). Roman Abramovich paid an unusual penalty: he
was made Governor of Chukotka in far eastern Siberia near the Bering Sea for a couple of years at least. He paid for all that
territory's infrastructure improvements. Of course the people there must love him!
So why are not all barflies writing and thinking about the role of the state in the economy within the context of current private
control of finance in the West?
What is blinding you all to not state the obvious role issue of those that own global private finance not being any "state"
of transparency?
We are in a civilization war about the fact that a current state in our world, China, has a public finance core of government
which is opposed to the Western cult of global private finance. Wake up.
Reading the entrails of the Russian economy that has been ravaged for decades by the cult of private finance and its followers
in Russia does us no service to b's question of what role the state should have in the national and world economy. Because Russia
is still having to operate with the shit show called empire they are limited in their response. I was taught 50 years ago that
a 2% inflation rate was optimal but because Russia is trying to build its population, it is spending more money supporting that
segment of the overall population and saying the inflation rate is worth the investment.
The role of the state in the economy
History has shown positive results from what are called mixed economies. The US is a mixed economy with the state, at various
levels, supporting energy, transportation, USPS, water, sewage treatment, police and fire protection, education, SSI, regulations,
etc. There are and have been attempts to privatize all those things under the canard that the service can be provided "better"
with profit as the motive other than service to others.
There is no magic mixed economy formula for any one state and it will change over time like Russia is choosing to do. But the
state has limited control of the economy if the tools of finance are privately held and not integrated into state functionality....and
it is my understanding that the Central Bank in Russia for example is not entirely a sovereign entity...what sayest our most recent
barfly, Eric?
Please join in a more reasoned contextual discussion of our world. I am tired of reading about "ism"s. More reality please.
Thank you b for continuing this conversation. The speech and Q&A were most interesting. They were consistent with what Putin has
said before, but done so this time with more confidence as even the oppression of the covid situation was dealt with in honorable
fashion - if one can honor a virus, that is. It is always, with Putin, that the people come first, and he made that statement
at the beginning.
Countries, all countries, have that obligation in their governance that it be for the people's welfare. So, to him, whatever
system a country has is only important in that respect and each country, drawing on its own history and its assets, decides for
itself what that style of governance will be.
This is different from any outside system being touted as the ideal. There isn't an ideal. It all depends on how the people
wish to be governed, based on what they feel is important to them. That is democracy in its loosest terms. He said several times
that any philosophy of government imposed by outsiders will never work.
At the same time, his support for the UN system on a world wide basis is as unconditional as his first premise.
I meant to add that casting my mind back to the last debate, the one thing being said about the people was Biden intensely eyeing
us and telling us about the empty chair at the kitchen table - nice!
.. an important task of abandoning the practice of unrestrained and unlimited consumption – overconsumption – in favour of
judicious and reasonable sufficiency, when you do not live just for today but also think about tomorrow.
We need to land somewhere between North Korea and the US on consumption. John Judge used to talk about how 30 houses on a street
need 30 lawnmowers. Why not buy one lawnmower, share it and maintain it? I ditched my lawns long ago as that is also over consumption
but I use it as an example of what type of society we have built.
"... I am confident that what makes a state strong, primarily, is the confidence it's citizens have in it. That is the strength
of a state. People are the source of power, we all know that."
It is not just confidence it is having an educated competent citizenry. Our top education institutions, especially the ivy
league, are cranking out students trained to protect the status quo hence things will not changed easily.
Moon is going to end up on the Russian disinformation agitators list.
@ Posted by: psychohistorian | Oct 25 2020 0:05 utc | 32
This "mixed economies won the Cold War" is an old story already. Eric Hobsbawn left a letter claiming just before he died,
in 2012.
The problem with the Scandinavian economies is this: who's gonna do the dirty jobs? You cannot simply make a nation of designers
and white collar workers. The social-democracies of the post-war solved this problem with the Third World countries, but now those
countries are not accepting this role anymore.
Besides, there's the objective fact even the Scandinavian economies are declining, with inequality skyrocketing since the end
of the 1990s. They, too, are susceptible to the laws of capitalism.
"Strengthening our country and looking at what is happening in the world, in other countries, I want to say to those who are still
waiting for the gradual demise of Russia: in this case, we are only worried about one thing -- how not to catch a cold at your
funeral", Putin said on Thursday at a meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club.
That's an interesting question. How are the underclass workers (construction, janitors, street sweepers) wage and social benefits
in the Nordic countries in comparison with China, S. Korea and Japan?
Those are important points. It seems to be a common pattern in neoliberal economics. The answer to "why" that I pieced together
is this: It is all about the oligarchs in combination with their immediate overseas business partners. Typically they own a considerable
portion of the foreign-jurisdiction bonds lent to their own nations. It is a straightforward money laundering arrangement.
The Russian government cannot simply remove the domestic oligarchs**, no more than a US or EU government could do the same
against equivalent local business powers. Rather, they come to a livable equilibrium. Preventing investment from China, EU etc,
is, in addition to defending national sovereignty, also a case of the government defending the domestic oligarchs from foreign
rivals -- rivals who would have greater financial resources with the backing of their own larger home regions.
However, the big difference in the case of Russia, compared to most countries victimized by the neoliberal pattern, is that
the government is powerful enough to quite reliably protect the local oligarchs from their foreign rivals, including pretty much
anything that the foreign rival's home governments can possibly throw at them (i.e. the various regime change toolbox). This protection
is a massively valuable service. For this reason, the Russian government can, if it is halfway decent and perhaps above-average
in managing the difficult internal politics, negotiate a better (i.e. more long-term sustainable) arrangement with the local oligarchs,
in terms of how the citizens are affected.
[** but with all the sanctions etc, this balance of power actually shifts]
You do realize that the Russians have three (3) vaccines, and the Chinese one (1) in late stage 3 trials, with Sputnik V due to
complete theirs next month and to go into serial production shortly. Putin's strategy is to vaccinate, vaccinate, vaccinate.
Mishustin is busy holding trade fairs promoting the Russian arctic. Business residency for $$RUB$$$. Ski resorts on the Kola peninsula...
While his enemies implode under the second COVID-19 wave....
Thank you Alicia for putting up that interview. I like very much the articles Orlov writes, and many of them I find translated
in French. He has humour, unlike more well known geopolitics analysts. Try this one:
That Valdai speech / Q&A was a master class in governance.
While Putin thinks and talks like a sane man, Western leaders reveal daily that they are now not sanity-capable, not logic-capable,
not sanity-capable, not shame-capable.
Putin shows a commanding grasp of his nation's people, economy, culture, history, environment, geo-strategic needs, impressively
rattling off numbers, statistics, reason, rationale, logic and pragmatic good sense. In all that, he reminds me of that other
great world-class leader, Lee Kuan Yew, whom Kissinger once called the Wise Man of Asia. Russia is fortunate to be governed by a world-class leader and his team today, but good luck to the Great Toilet Bowl Stirrers
in the West.
Putin: "But I would address it more broadly to discuss also an important task of abandoning the practice of unrestrained and unlimited
consumption – overconsumption – in favour of judicious and reasonable sufficiency, when you do not live just for today but also
think about tomorrow..... After all, it is within our power to stop being egoistical, greedy, mindless and wasteful consumers....
We just need to open our eyes, look around us and see that the land, air and water are our common inheritance from above, and
we must learn to cherish them, just as we must cherish every human life, which is precious. This is the only way forward in this
complicated and beautiful world. I do not want to see the mistakes of the past repeated."
Was Putin talking about Russians? or about Americans? Who are those exceptional 4% of the global population who demands to consume 40% of global resources?
Putin: "So, we want the voice of our citizens to be decisive and to see constructive proposals and requests from different social
forces get implemented.... what you call your political system is immaterial...."
It doesn't matter if it is a 'democratic' or 'socialist', but governments that primarily serve the people's needs (not the
elite's greed) will listen to, and DO, the people's will. Out of that, the people give their CONSENT to be governed.
Today, ALL governments use a mix of democratic and socialist tools, eg. China, Russia, UK, USA. But, unlike the West, who boast
that their system is more perfect, China and Russia serve their people primarily.
As Deng said, it does not matter if the cat is black or white.
How much of America's policy's are run out of pure jealousy of Russia and China ?
Rather than being a supper power, they have regressed into immature petulant juvenile tantrums.
Self-distruction and self-harm.
Putin is a "statesman". A few squalid pretenders in the political class here may aspire to that title, but It is not a badge you
pin on yourself, it is awarded by general acclaim. Putin has stepped into the vacuum of world leadership left by the US Idiocracy
when Trump took over with the help of his free market, anti-government cohort, the Koch's, Robert Mercer, Paul Singer, and etc.
Putin is the champion of arms control, multilateralism & cooperation, and following this address certainly, environmentalism.
All attempts to demonize Putin on the part of the neoliberal US oligarchy collapse when the diminutive Russian Mongol begins to
speak. I join in the applause. It is so refreshing to listen to a leader talking sense for a change! I don't care if he is a benevolent
authoritarian anti-democrat, I am so grateful for his intelligent leadership that I salute! And I thank b for bringing this Valdai
event to our attention. The poverty and ideological blindness of our media conglomerates is just outrageous!
"Overconsumption" , in and of itself, isn't the problem. The problem is the distortion of value that capitalist empire
introduces. If the effort required to acquire some thing accurately reflected the effort to produce that thing then consumption
would be naturally self-limiting. After all, who could every day consume products containing two days worth of effort if they
had to work two days for every day worth of their consuming? "Overconsumption" can only occur because the empire expropriates
massive amounts of produced value from its vassals and uses that robbed value to buy off its domestic population. Likewise, capitalism
over-rewards certain portions of the domestic population (typically no-skill "professionals" such as journalists and middle
managers) who act as "insulation" for the elites from the working class.
Note that you don't see "overconsumption" among factory workers in Bangladesh or Malaysia. Child slave laborers working
on African cocoa plantations for your Hershey bars could never be accused of "overconsumption" . It would even be unjust
to accuse Chinese workers, as much as their standards of living have exploded over the last couple decades, of indulging in
"overconsumption" .
When China is successful in replacing the US$ with a scientifically managed "currency basket" for international trade
and currency reserve then the problem of "overconsumption" will correct itself and the Global North will go on a diet.
I am not sure that will be possible though without some "kinetic" events between now and then.
On the role of the state on the economy...and on everything else...things not discussed at Valdai, nor at MoA for that matter,
and which contribute to promote the disintegration of states so wished by the neorreactionaires due the lose of confidence of
citizens in the state-
Making the broth to fascism, on the verge of coming "curfews" to be stablished in Spain ,and other European countries...One
wonders why the hell Thiel & associated, those owners of hedge funds and managers of our personal data on behalf of already fascist
givernment like that in the US, need to follow trying to implant their so wished feudal state where the masses are submitted into
slavery, when all that is this already here...and without complaints from our part...
(...)A recent article by Carlota García Encina, an analyst at the Elcano Royal Institute, described the coronavirus pandemic
as "an opportunity for NATO." Specifically, it stated that "the universality of the coronavirus means that NATO must defend
the 30 as if they were one, going from" one for all and all for one "to" all for all ".
In 2003, and anticipating events like the cheating poker player who anticipates his results, NATO released - it was not
secret - the Urban Operations in the Year 2020 report, a socio-economic analysis of the situation in Europe where it anticipated
a crisis unprecedented in the history of capitalism, where urban poverty "could grow significantly in the future, leading to
possible uprisings, civil unrest and threats to security that will require the intervention of local authorities".
The analysis was only a preview of the crisis that the capitalist system was forging. The United Nations evaluated in 2019,
and counting on the data as of December 31, 2018 (that is, less than a year and a half after the "coronavirus crisis"), that
26.1% of the population in Spain, and 29.5% of those under 18 years of age were in a situation of poverty. That more than 55%
had difficulties to make ends meet, and that 5.4% had severe deficiencies (access to electricity, drinking water, heating,
etc.). Official unemployment was 13.78%, more than double the EU average, and youth unemployment was 30.51% among those under
25 years of age. We insist, before the State of Alarm decreed on March 14, 2020.(...)
(...)Any investigation of an event ("coronavirus crisis") has to start from the circumstances that surround it to obtain accurate
conclusions, and not the other way around. The origin of this crisis that is impoverishing millions of people cannot be limited
to March 14, 2020, because as we have seen, the problem came from long before.
If we add to this that many of the decisions that are transforming society towards a privatist model (locked up at home)
and individualistic (normalizing the suppression of rights) were made based on the criteria of a "committee of experts" that
has not existed, we can never set off an alarm that this is not just a "fucking virus."
But the second question that we need to verify is the deterrent effect of the exercise of those rights which imply these
decisions, because even the left is accepting the official account of the events with astonishing passivity.(...)
(...)Paul Von Hindenburg, who came to power thanks to his family fortune, and with credentials manufactured by that fortune,
ended the German Weimar Constitution of 1919 by signing the Reichstag Fire Decree and ushering in something that at the time
of being approved no one called fascism. In the current context, the succession of regulations of this "new exceptionality"
grants an extraordinary delegation of functions to the police or civil guard officers.
With this empowered power, there is no place to turn back. The curfew that will be established in the next few hours may
one day be eliminated from the BOE, but the meaning of this measure is that mass psychology incorporates a disciplined attitude
towards the reality that surrounds us into its behavior.
And what surrounds us is what we already know. Faced with the question of whether or not we should comply with the restrictions
imposed by the State (confinement, isolation, no meetings, no leisure), we must ask ourselves (as we should have done before
March 14) if we are willing to accept or not that poverty and repression are part of our lives .
The stock market crash of 1987, the savings and loan debacle, the tech bubble, the Asian tigers meltdown, the world "recession"
of 2008 and today's global slump (which preceded the pandemic, a point neglected by the apologists for capitalism,) show that
capitalism doesn't work as advertised, even on its own limited terrain. All claims about how "I" (whether it's Putin, Trump, Boris
Johnson, Macron, a miscellaneous German, whoever) am smart enough to solve the minor details of finance responsible have been
proven by history to be lies. Whether born of sincerely felt megalomania or calculated perfidy doesn't matter, instability and
inequality (which is a bad thing, not a good one, no matter what secret feelings may be harbored,) *are* the normal operations
of market economies.
When you add to that the way the global capitalist system is creating a global environmental crisis, the shamelessness of the
capitalist apologists is staggering. Putin is a fool.
The fraud Proyect seems to think Xi is actively commanding the Chinese economy in such a fashion as to be personally responsible
for, well, everything, conveniently omits that Xi is to be condemned precisely for *not* taking charge the way needed, for advancing
the power of the Chinese bourgeoisie even at the expense of the future of China. But then, Proyect is anticommunist/pro imperialist,
a champion of barbarism using pious phrases.
Lastly, the notion that "overconsumption" is the problem, is basically an attack on the masses of the people. The problem is
the accumulation of capital, of money, which is not consumed, but "invested" for yet more money. There's a fake left website called
Crooked Timer where the oh-so-refined-sensibilities of a clot of academics is offended by the rabble eating meat...but they're
not offended by billionaires having more money than they can spend! This is the same thing. The pursuit of money, profit, is not
overconsumption, but that, not overconsumption, distorts the economy. Starting with vague notions like overconsumption reflects
a deep ideological disorientation...or a commitment to capitalism, imperialism and ultimately barbarism.
Things not discussed at Valdai...on the "eco-scam", how the Spanish IBEX35 giants, private great corporations on energy, transports
and clothing, claim thousands of millions from European Funds ( which come from tax payers money, not from the private bank accounts
of European officials, do not forget...) on the alibi of "energetic transition" and "sustainability"....This is the new scam after
that of rescuing big banks in 2008, for the bailing out and profit of those of always while the population impoverishes at galloping
pace and without any prospect of recovery, austerity seems to be our only prospect...
On the "pipelines war", also discussed at Valdai, of which it is part the alleged "Navalny poisoning" also briefly discussed without
naming that unimportant, at Russian and world level, person, how to explain that Germany must cut off Nord Stream 2 pipeline
development on the grounds of not linking its energetic sovereignty to Russia, and then Europe must link its energetic sovereignty
to Israel, when the EU has been an historical defender of Palestinian people´s rights and with this link Europe will be submitted
to blackmail on the part of Israel anytime it dares criticize Israel´s apartheid measures against Palestinians?
After diplomatically recognizing Israel, the UAE signed a contract through the MRLB with the Israeli company EAPC (which manages
the Eilat-Ashkelon pipeline) to transport crude oil to Europe without having to cross the Suez Canal
Very true jadan, your view on Putin, and every time I read an excerpt or a speech by him I notice he is far above our western
"leaders" with their meaningless chatter and hollow phrases. That's why you will never read the slightest alinea by Putin in der
Spiegel,le Monde ,or le Figaro.The vile venal journo's can't afford to print it and keep up their unmerited credibility at the
same time.Same for Lavrov,Assad,Xi and Khadafi.
American grocery stores - 80 pct of the items are not necessary and are likely harmful to some degree. Junk food outlets, it's
been known for decades that this stuff leads to obesity, diabetes, and who knows what else. The authorities could mandate changes
to low fat, sugar and salt contents that would apply to all of them with no real harm to their business, but it doesn't get done
because the right people get paid off.
Putin stands out like a shining light amongst what are called world leaders.
Some are just bosses of crime syndicates, follow my eyes (USA). Others are just hopeless idiot figure-heads, like Trudeau.
(I am biased, particularly dislike him. Macron is in the same bin.)
Putin's statements about the 'economy' are calculatedly 'judicious' and unassailable. Note, he only says one has to question
the role of the State in the 'economy' in the sense of control of it, with the State as a mega-regulator + law-maker wielding
authority from the top - not as negotiator, as far as I have understood Putin.
That 'State control' should be different in different conditions -- regions, epochs, etc., is a truism. Putin projects the
feel of 'reasonable control' and 'piloting' (encouraging xyz.. or the opposite..) which rejects both despotic, authoritarian stances,
often 'arbitrary' (or experienced as such), as well as, on the other side, anarchy and unbridled profiteering -> racketeering,
monopolies, cartels, fraud, violence, coercion, etc. Some call that capitalism, others gangsterism.
Russia, land + ressource rich, with a 'low' population density, with well-educated ppl (as compared to many others), its 'economy'
at least not plunging or even stagnant (GDP per capita or some such), is well positioned to put forward such 'reasonable' thoughts.
Humanity's dilemma or rather looming disaster sink-hole - see: ressource extraction, trashing the environment, irreversible
tipping points, 'peak oil' (gone out of fashion with fracking in the US), and other over-consumption (sand for ex.), destruction
(soils.. rivers.. ocean.. global warming..), over-population, global warming.. will not be reversed or in any way solved, by reasoned
Putin-type discourse. (see pnyzx at 4, vk 30, psychohistorian 32 and others..)
For sure, Putin's job is not to solve the world's problems but to protect and nurture Russia and its people and he does that
very well.
"while at the same time even Chinese investors are discouraged from investing through opaque regulation and unpredictable Russian
state intervention."
I wonder if they are becoming more open to western investors. Nordstream 2's financing is ~50% European, and this from Oilprice.com:
". . . .No wonder, then, that a number of banks have pledged a total of $9.5 billion in funding for Novatek's second LNG project,
the Arctic LNG 2. According to a Reuters report, the China Development Bank and German Euler Hermes are among the lenders that
have made pledges, and French Pbifrance is yet to decide on the funding. The China Development Bank is, unsurprisingly, the most
generous backer of the $21-billion Arctic LNG 2 project, with $5 billion.
Arctic LNG 2 will have a liquefaction capacity of $19.8 [sic] million tons of LNG annually divided among three liquefaction
trains."
PS - Good to see you posting after you were virtually assaulted last week.
Den lille Abe,
I nowadays start to read comments from the "bottom up" - in order not to fall into the traps of some trolls, some of those I know
by name, and this prevents me to read their comments. In other words, if you continue reading from top down, you don't know who's
comment you read...
Interesting transcript. Simple, no-frills English.
Judging from the English subtitles in Oliver Stone's 4-part series The Putin Interviews, Putin is no stranger to refreshingly
frank, clear and unambiguous communication, No wonder Russians love him.
Huge contrast with the mendacity of pseudo-Christian ratbags masquerading as Western Leaders on the world stage. Evidence of
the Scum Mo Government's laughably opaque and unaccountable corruption is seeping out of every crack in the facade of what passes
for 'democracy' in Oz.
China is looking at Russia like a hungry pork chop.
See Bear and the Dragon by Tom Clancy. But China has better tech and Russia *still* has
better snipers.
NachoLiebor , 36 minutes ago
Toria Nuland and Hilldawg tried to goad Russia into a war with the EU and US over the
Ukraine.
So, what's your point?
Revolution_starts_now , 32 minutes ago
operation "Jumping Jack Flash". Why should Trump not unleash some fica warrants on
Biden?
Even if he wins he is doomed before he takes office.
They did it to Trump, why not pass along the favor?
Magnum , 40 minutes ago
Highly recommended is a look at The Magnitsky Act
Specifically the role of Bill Browder, his history and involvement. Piraya Films created
this and it was banned. I believe you can still watch it. Obama admin was a complete
disaster. It is in everyone's interest to get along with Russians, who are different
culturally but mean no harm to us.
the Amish are compelled to pit Caucasian against Caucasian. The browns are easier to
control.
NachoLiebor , 44 minutes ago
Never again. Never ever again.
The people (and I use the term loosely) responsible for this fabricated Russian witch
hunt
against President Trump need to be put somewhere they can't hurt anyone ever again.
Ideology in Practice , 49 minutes ago
The crimes against Kavanaugh and Flynn were perhaps more heinous than the ones directly
carried out against Trump.
But he should seek vengeance at this point since every person they injure is a way of
injuring him too.
NachoLiebor , 17 minutes ago
Flynn was a lure and the [DS] swallowed him whole.
Xena fobe , 25 minutes ago
Republican and Trump supporter, Eric Early is challenging Adam Schiff. Early has a chance.
People are furious about rioting, covid lock downs, the homeless, etc.
Didymus , 40 minutes ago
" Authoritarian liberals "
Nimrod doesn't understand the difference between authoritarianism and totalitarianism.
Authority is good. Parents have authority. Marxist regimes are totalitarian. The USA is a
totalitarian neoliberal empire.
milo_hoffman , 13 minutes ago
It will continue and continue and continue until some very high ranking prep walks happen
or some people are put up against the wall.
Zorba's idea , 20 minutes ago
"When one chooses to decieve, what a tangled web they weave." That's as modestly as one
could explain the mountainous corruption and Tyrranical Lawlessness our constitutional
republic has been subjected too. Next comes Robespierre, I suppose. Jefferson's tree is
parched.
DonGenaro , 23 minutes ago
I've known for some 30+ years that the USG had devolved into a glorified crime
syndicate
(because nothing is beneath those that start wars for profit ).
Russiagate just made it obvious to all but the most willfully-ignorant.
bshirley1968 , 2 minutes ago
" All anybody (if they're a Democrat) has to do to escape accountability and justice for
very serious crimes is to shout "Russia!"
All anybody (if their republican) has to do to escape accountability and justice for any
crime or delinquency of responsibility is shout "Fake News!"
It's an old game......they call it the "blame game"......and it cuts both ways.
Just sayin'.
cjones1 , 16 minutes ago
The fabricated Russiagate investigation was a conspiracy used against the Trump campaign
and his administration by Obama administration officials who enga grrr ed in official
misconduct, corruption, and worse to keep a lid on investigating rampant national security
violations associated with the Clintons, Bidens, and who knows who engaged in money grubbing,
"pay to play" diplomacy.
The Obama administration's deal with the Iranians provided ample cash for Gen. Soleimani
to post bounties on U.S. personnel.
The Democratic party and their sympathizers in the MSM and Social Media have become a
clear and present danger to our 1st Amendment rights in enjoying a free press.
Good thing Trump came along because this undermining of the United States government by
the Democratic party's supporters in and outside of government is coming into clear view.
RNC's national spokesperson Liz Harrington battled CNN's Christiane Amanpour for
refusing to engage with allegations of corruption against Joe Biden and his family after years
of hyping unverified Trump-Russia allegations.
"Why don't you want to report this? This is one of the most powerful families in
Washington," she asked. "And you're okay with our interests being sold out to profit Joe Biden
and his family, while we're suffering during a pandemic from communist China?"
Russia is done with the European Union. At last week's Valdai Discussion Forum Russian
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made this quite clear with this statement.
Those people in the West who are responsible for foreign policy and do not understand the
necessity of mutually respectable conversation–well, we must simply stop for a while
communicate with them. Especially since Ursula von der Leyen states that geopolitical
partnership with current Russia's leadership is impossible. If this is the way they want it,
so be it. (H/T Andrei Martyanov)
Lavrov's statements echo a number of statements made in recent months by Russian leadership
that there is no opportunity for diplomacy possible with the United States.
We can now add the European Union to that list. Pepe
Escobar's latest piece goes over Lavrov's comments about the European Union and they are
devastating, as devastating as when he and Putin described the U.S. as " Not
Agreement Capable " a few years ago.
Lavrov reiterated this with the following comments at Valdai last week.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/zV_W3b_4G50
But as badly as the U.S. has acted in recent years in international relations, unilaterally
abrogating treaty after treaty, nominally with the goal of remaking them to be more inclusive,
Lavrov's upbraiding of the current leadership of the European Union is far worse.
Because they have gone along with, if not openly assisted, every U.S.-backed provocation
against Russia for their own advantage. From Ukraine to MH-17, to Skripal to now Belarus and
the ridiculous Navalny poisoning, the EU has proved to be worse than the U.S.
Because there can be no doubt the U.S. views Russia as an antagonist. We're quite clear
about this. But Europe plays off U.S. aggression, hiding in the U.S.'s skirts while telling
Russia, usually through German Chancellor Angela Merkel, "Be patient, we are reluctantly going
along with this." But really they're happy about it.
You do not negotiate with monkeys, you treat them nicely, you make sure that they are not
abused, but you don't negotiate with them, same as you don't negotiate with toddlers. They
want to have their Navalny as their toy–let them. I call on Russia to start wrapping
economic activity up with EU for a long time. They buy Russia's hydrocarbons and hi-tech,
fine. Other than that, any other activity should be dramatically reduced and necessity of the
Iron Curtain must not be doubted anymore.
And the truth is that Russia is dealing with monkeys in the U.S. and toddlers in the EU. And
Martanyov's right that it's time Putin et.al. simply turn their backs on the West and move
forward.
Lavrov's statements at Valdai were momentous. They sent a clear signal that if Europe wants
a future relationship with Russia they will have to change how they do business.
The problem is however, that the EU is suffused with arrogance on the eve of the U.S.
election, mistakenly thinking Joe Biden will beat Trump.
Merkel has betrayed Putin at every turn since 2013. And Germany's appalling behavior over
the Alexei Navalny poisoning was the last straw.
That what was another sabotage effort to stop the Nordstream 2 pipeline and add grist to
Trump's re-election mill was given even a cursory glance by the highest levels of the German
government was insulting enough.
That Merkel allowed her Foreign Minister Heiko Maas to run his mouth on the subject, and
then throw the decision to sanction Russia (again) over this to the EU parliament and give it
any kind of political play was truly treacherous.
Germany has taken the lead in advancing "European integration" and therefore prioritizes
Eastern European member states that push for a more aggressive stance towards Russia.
Economic connectivity with Russia is no longer an instrument for building trust and
cooperation in the pan-European space, rather it was intended to strengthen Germany's
position as the center of the EU. Moscow should work with Berlin to construct Nord Stream 2,
but not forget why Nord Stream 1 was built while South Stream was blocked.
This is a point I've been making for years. Nordstream 2 is a political tool for Germany to
reroute gas coming in from Russia which Merkel can use as a political lever over Poland and the
Visegrads.
And it is the Poles who have consistently shot themselves in the foot by not reconciling
their relationship with Russia, banding together with its Eastern European brothers and
securing an independent source of Russian gas. Putin and Gazprom would happily provide it to
them, if they would but ask.
But they don't and instead turn to the U.S. to be their protectors from both Russia and
Germany, rather than conduct themselves as a sovereign nation.
That said, I think Mr. Diesen misses the larger point here. It is true Germany under Merkel
is looking to expand its control over the EU and set itself up as a superpower for the next
century. Putin himself acknowledged
that possibility at Valdai. That may be more to dig at the U.S. and warn Europe rather than
him actually believing it.
Because under Merkel and the EU Germany is losing its dynamism. And it may even lose control
over the EU if it isn't careful. If you look at the current situation from a German perspective
you realize that Germany's mighty export business is surrounded by hostile foreign powers.
Russia -- Merkel cut off the country from Russian markets. Even though some of the trade
with Russia has returned since sanctions over Crimea went into place in 2014 she hasn't
fought the U.S.'s hyper-aggressive use of sanctions to improve Germany's position.
The U.K. -- French President Emmanuel Macron looks like he's engineered a No-Deal Brexit
with Boris Johnson which will put up major export barriers for Germany into the U.K. cutting
them off from that market.
The U.S. – Trump has all but declared Germany an enemy and when he wins a second
term will tighten the screws on Merkel even tighter.
China – They know that the incoming Great Reset, which will have its Jahr Null
event in Europe likely next year, is all about consolidating power into Europe and sucking it
away from the U.S., a process Trump is dead-set against.
However, don't think for a second that the Commies that run the EU and the World Economic
Forum are teaming up with the Commies in China. Oh no, they have bigger plans than that.
And what's been pretty clear to me is Europe's delusions that it can subjugate the world
under its rubric, forcing its rules and standards on the rest of us, including China, again
allowing the U.S. to act as its proxy while it tries to maintain its standing.
I know what you're thinking. That sounds completely ludicrous.
And you're right, it is ludicrous.
But that doesn't mean it isn't true. This is clearly the mindset we're dealing with in The
Davos Crowd. They engineered a mostly-fake pandemic to accelerate their plans to remake the
world economy by burning it down.
The multi-polar world will see the fading U.S. and U.K. band together while Russia and China
continue to stitch together Asia into a coherent economic sphere. Trump is right to pull the
U.S. out of Central Asia and has gotten nothing but grief from the U.S. establishment while
Europe, through NATO, continues trying to expand to the Russian border, now with openly backing
the attempted coup in Belarus.
This was the dominant theme at Valdai and the focus of Putin's opening remarks.
Blaming Russia seems to be today's version of the dog ate my homework.
ariadnatheo, 1 day ago
I am disappointed that Russia once again interfered in the US elections without using
Novichok.
TrishArch, 1 day ago
Always Russia's Fault. Little wonder no one listens to biden.
The_Celotajs, 1 day ago
Like Russian President Vladimir Putin once said, Russia has no need to interfere in the
United States Elections when they have the Democrats doing it to themselves.
brianeg, 15 hours ago
There was of course an obvious Russian connection and that was the $3.5 million given by the
wife of the Mayor of Moscow to Hunter. Was this a birthday present or what?
Doodle_Dandy, 1 day ago
One wonders when Masha and the Bear will get the blame?
Many of us read The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry when we were
children and remember what the main character said: "It's a question of discipline. When
you've finished washing and dressing each morning, you must tend your planet. It's very
tedious work, but very easy."
I am sure that we must keep doing this "tedious work" if we want to preserve our
common home for future generations. We must tend our planet.
The subject of environmental protection has long become a fixture on the global
agenda. But I would address it more broadly to discuss also an important task of
abandoning the practice of unrestrained and unlimited consumption – overconsumption
– in favour of judicious and reasonable sufficiency, when you do not live just for
today but also think about tomorrow.
We often say that nature is extremely vulnerable to human activity. Especially when
the use of natural resources is growing to a global dimension. However, humanity is not
safe from natural disasters, many of which are the result of anthropogenic interference.
By the way, some scientists believe that the recent outbreaks of dangerous diseases are a
response to this interference. This is why it is so important to develop harmonious
relations between Man and Nature.
No cheating please. Guess. Who said the above?
Please let us know your first guess in the comments.
Wow! What a mind blunder! Of course, it was VVP. Too much reading! Ha!! Pepe's article
has its own merits. Even more important is
this revealing editorial , "How Russophobia Wrought Death of the United States:"
"The surprise election in 2016 of Donald Trump to the White House so disturbed the
political class that it was compelled to delegitimize his presidency by alleging that it
was due to Russian interference. The relentless and irrational Russophobia to undermine
Trump by his domestic political enemies has only transpired to fatally weaken American
global power. The political squabbling and infighting has wreaked havoc on the moral
authority and legitimacy of American institutions of governance. The legislative
government, the presidency, the judiciary, the intelligence apparatus, the legacy media,
and so on. Every supposed pillar of American democracy has been eroded over the past four
years with alarming speed.
"A big part of this precipitous demise is due to Russophobia: the relentless sowing of
doubt and confusion in American institutions, primarily the presidency, with insinuations
of Russian interference. In their attempts to delegitimize Trump, his domestic enemies
among the U.S. establishment have ended up delegitimizing public esteem of American
democracy. How paradoxical! America's own worst enemy turns out to be itself ." [My
Emphasis]
I've long maintained that the enemies of the USA and its people are ALL Domestic
and have been from the outset. Lots of truth fit into that short essay!
The tone sounds like Vladimir Putin in English translation and the timing of B's post
suggests he said it during his closing speech at this year's Valdai Club meetings. Putin
has always been keen on conservation issues and often spends what free time he has in short
camping adventures. The Siberian tiger conservation program is a pet project of his.
The other possibility might be Chinese President Xi Jinping as the ideas of modest
consumption or consumption that fulfills a person's needs and of humans living in harmony
with nature appear in the speech, and these ideas have been incorporated into recent
Chinese government policies. The drive to eradicate poverty not only achieves one goal
(fulfilling people's needs) but also helps achieve the other, as impoverished communities
are often driven by forces beyond their control into marginal areas where they end up
upsetting the ecology and destroying in order to survive. Among other things his also
brings exotic pathogens in contact with humans through the disturbance of plant and animal
life (insects in particular) and the consumption of bushmeat and its trade.
Significantly in recent years much of the Earth's land surface as measured by satellites
that has become greener has been in China and India as a result of large-scale conservation
and tree-planting schemes and better use of land. This has sometimes involved relocating
entire rural communities in parts of China to areas where they can access services that
help to improve their lives. An example might be a community I read about recently that
lived on top of a small mountain or plateau where the only access to schools and markets
was through a winding series of narrow staircases cut into the mountain's sides. One child
did not start going to school until she was 11 years old because her mother was afraid that
she'd fall while using the stairs. The local authority later built a bridge connecting the
mountain to lower areas, cutting travel time from 3 hours to 1 hour. Recently the entire
community agreed to relocate and its old village on top of the mountain is to be preserved
and developed as a tourist attraction.
Note that not all the questions and answers after the speech have been transcribed
yet.
This is another of Mr.Putins masterpieces of common sense and analysis, courteously and
clearly telling truth as no global 'leader' even could let alone would.
It is an exceptionally important and wide-ranging analysis of the nature of humans, the
planet, and governance.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the General Services Administration (GSA)
undermined the Trump transition team by violating a memorandum of understanding between the
Trump transition team and the GSA - when they complied with requests from the FBI and special
counsel Robert Mueller's office to provide private records on members of Trump's team ,
according to a Senate report released on Friday.
The majority staff report from both the Senate Committee on Finance and the Committee on
Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs claims that officials from both the FBI and
Mueller's office " secretly sought and received access to the private records of Donald J.
Trump's presidential transition team, Trump for America, Inc. "
"They did so," the report continues, "despite the terms of a memorandum of understanding
between the Trump transition team and the General Services Administration.. . -- the
executive agency responsible for providing services to both candidates' transition teams --
that those records were the transition team's private property that would not be retained at
the conclusion of the transition."
According to the report, the GSA - without notifying the White House - reached out
to the FBI following Michael Flynn's resignation as national security adviser and offered to
retain records from the Trump transition team in early 2017. The records compiled eventually
made their way into Mueller's office, according to the report.
"At bottom," continues the report, " the GSA and the FBI undermined the transition process
by preserving Trump transition team records contrary to the terms of the memorandum of
understanding, hiding that fact from the Trump transition team, and refusing to provide the
team with copies of its own records."
" These actions have called into question the GSA's role as a neutral service provider, and
those doubts have consequences ," the report reads. "Future presidential transition teams must
have confidence that their use of government resources and facilities for internal
communications and deliberations -- including key decisions such as nominations, staffing, and
significant policy changes -- will not expose them to exploitation by third parties, including
political opponents ."
1 play_arrow
911bodysnatchers322 , 4 hours ago
1) Was this illegal surveillance?
2) Was this spying before a FISA warrant was given?
3) Did this occur before the special council was incepted (ie before may 2017)?
4) Which attorneys on his team requested this information?
5) Which US employees at GSA approved the FBI's request?
6) Why did the GSA approve the request, despite the MOU from TTT?
7) Will the employees cry out for mommy or for God when they are executed for treason
(participants in seditious conspiracy against a lawful president)?
8) If they aren't executed, will president trump please give any us citizen a pre-pardon
for carrying out justice against these employees after they are fired, and the sum total of
their assets seized and divested to the us taxpayer base and they are homeless?
Thank you congressmen. Reclaiming our time
3O4jF"> Macho Latte play_arrow Mzhen , 5 hours ago
November 29, 2019 – The history of Flynn prosecutor Brandon Van Grack – from
the Special Counsel's Office to the prosecution of Flynn
It can't be repeated enough...the Weissman "investigation" and Clinton campaign were doing
exactly what President Trump was falsely accused of...using disinformation obtained from
RUSSIAN sources (the Steele Dossier) to influence an election and undermine the peaceful
transfer of power.
booboo , 4 hours ago
more specifically they knew the charge would not stick because you can't charge someone
for obstruction for calling out your prosecutor.
4whatitsworth , 3 hours ago
Mr Muller please confirm that the name of the firm that produced the Christopher Steele
dossier was Fusion GPS.. Muller hmmm Fusion GPS "I'm not familiar with that," - what a lying
peice of ****!
Metastatic Debt , 3 hours ago
Feds only solve crimes they manufacture or entrap for political gain, gain internally for
promos or externally for glory.
That agency was founded by a black mailing, cross dressing weirdo.
No wonder it's corrupt. That was Its core makeup.
UserLevel9000 , 4 hours ago
He was a frontman. He didn't even read the report. Didn't you see the interview?
Short of killing him, our government exhausted all resources in order to remove Trump.
What's the term? Ah yes, a ******* coup.
Im 44yo but I hope I live long enough for the historians to connect the dots and write the
story. Much like JFK, all involved will be dead and will never pay for their crimes against
this country and attack on one of the most important protections we have as a Republic- a
peaceful transfer of power.
Mzhen , 4 hours ago
Who, specifically, has his name on the Mueller team letter to the GSA. Brandon Van Grack.
The same prosecutor who spent years persecuting General Flynn, before being forced to
withdraw from the case. The same Brandon Van Grack who was part of a failed sting operation
against George Papadopoulos.
Totally_Disillusioned , 3 hours ago
The ENTIRE bureaucracy was against Trump and made EVERY EFFORT to sabotage, obstruct and
deny President Trump's full authority over the Executive Branch.
High Vigilante , 4 hours ago
Another scandal by globalists and Demsheviks every single day. Each worse than
Watergate.
Contagion Deleverage , 4 hours ago
The implications of Mueller having access to SECRET information pertaining to Donal Trump
is remarkable and powerful. I believe that this is the source for leaking important and
damaging information on Trump, his closest advisors, and critically, their plans and
capabilities!
Reaper , 4 hours ago
The prosecutor was the criminal.
Secret Weapon , 5 hours ago
The trash in DC really hates the average American. I guess they meant it when they called
us "deplorable".
chubbar , 3 hours ago
When you say "GSA did this" or "FBI did that", you are being lazy in your reporting. There
are actual PEOPLE who made those decisions, not some nameless entity. What has to happen is
that these actual people need to be found, charged and tried for these crimes. Otherwise,
let's just call everything legal if no laws are to be enforced and quit bringing up the
details of their treachery.
ConanTheContrarian1 , 1 hour ago
Ever read a gov't document? "It was decided....", "It seemed best....", etc. NEVER "I
decided" or "Joe and Maxine decided". Ten thousand coverups and misdirections per
department.
getsometoo , 4 hours ago
How do these bureautards get off thinking they're going dispose a duly elected President?
Seriously, don't they understand the people would never allow it. What would it take for the
people to utterly wipe out the FBI? To execute every damn one of them for treason? There's
only around 35-40,000 of them. We could hang every damn one of them in a weekend.
Sonofabitches. These people must absolutely lose their jobs. Then the guilty leadership must
hang.
Sigh. , 4 hours ago
So. GSA is Deep State. Never would've figured that.
Barrock , 4 hours ago
Even the GSA is part of the swamp! Who would've figured? The USA needs to cut the annual
budget hugely. The government needs a complete rehaul.
Walking Turtle , 3 minutes ago
Seems Mr. Trump is positioned now to do pretty much that.
His recent creation per EO of GSA "Schedule F" employment lays waste to the "non-fireable"
Senior Executive Service's stranglehold on Executive Branch administrative process. Sched F
appointees are strictly at-will, serving at the sole pleasure of the President. Failure to
serve as directed carries severe consequences, including jail time.
Moreover, a Sched F appointee can reportedly be placed above the SES wonk at the head of a
recalcitrant agency. (Currently that means ALL of them - 80+ iirc.) Puts the BRIT-LOYAL
Senior Executive Service under actual Constitution-loyal Executive Branch supervision.
Betsy and Thomas d of American Intelligence Media (.mp3 podcast @link) have plenty good
reason LOVE this, as does YT. The SES Policy Wonk Armee, otoh,
does not .
Panic in DC. Long time coming; HERE NOW. DC-region dentists are gonna' clean right UP with
all the gnashing of teeth and consequent self-inflicted damage to the dentition of those
Swamp Rats imvho. And that is all. 0{;-)o[
Bigboot , 36 minutes ago
What happened to all the expos\'es of the Hunter Laptop we were told were coming out?
Isn't it amazing, stultifying and incredibly nightmarish that we are heading into the
election and NOT ONE of the Democrat criminals has been indicted? My God, there's
something
really rotten in the state of America (cf Shakespeare, I know America is not a state).
Total corruption at all levels. God save us from the Government and all its rotten
agencies.
gcjohns1971 , 40 minutes ago
Government does not believe in Democracy or in the Republic.
They work for other masters. And they assert exclusive right to choose which ones.
Good questions to ask include:
Which ones?
On what basis is their choosing?
What is in it for the rest of us?
Why should we continue to enable a "government" on such a self-serving basis?
Leguran , 44 minutes ago
These actions have called into question the GSA's role as a neutral service provider, and
those doubts have consequences?????
No ****! Who the hell is supposed to trust government when those in top positions feel
free to do exactly what they please. That MOU was an agreement, the government's word.
Republicans in the Senate, you are all dirt bags with no values. At least the Democrats do
not claim to have values.
That court order directed him to stop claiming the "Russian troll" company, Comcord (
their ads were typical clickbait , not 'meddling') was connected to the Russian
government - because he had produced no evidence at all to substantiate that.
He also would have had access to information that casted serious doubt on the alleged
hacking.. nevermind 'collusion' - they NEVER had any evidence of a hack.
How do we know, apart from the lack of any credible evidence ever actually produced?
Well, for one, the testimony of the president of CrowdStrike which Adam Schiff
deliberately suppressed during impeachment.
is a game and tech journalist from the US. Aside from writing for RT, he hosts the podcast
Micah and The Hatman, and is an independent comic book writer. Follow Micah at @MindofMicahC
It's safe to say that Hunter Biden, the son of former vice president and current
presidential candidate Joe Biden, is having a rough time. After the contents of his laptop,
including details of his international business dealings, came into the public domain, it
transpired that the computer had been the
subject of a subpoena in a money-laundering investigation. Now, former business partners
are beginning to turn on him, and one of them has said that he's turning "
everything " over to the FBI and the Senate. Another one claimed that Biden was
consulted with regard to Hunter's foreign deals.
During the second and final presidential debate, Biden made a key mistake when it came to
addressing these issues. Instead of simply stating that he had no comment to make, he decided
to
blame Russia for the fact that Hunter's emails had been leaked from the laptop's hard
drive. Ah yes. So we're back to that old 'reliable' narrative. I'm assuming that Joe may have
missed the embarrassment that was the Mueller
investigation .
Maybe Biden doesn't like Russia. Whether he does or doesn't is inconsequential. It is a very
bad idea to blame his problems on a foreign power. In fact, it's not the proper behavior of
someone who wants to be president. Here's the truth. Hunter Biden's dealings across the pond
likely had some issues. It's hard to say exactly what these might be, because there's an
ongoing investigation. I don't think that Biden is so dumb that he doesn't realize that this
hurts his chances of the presidency. However, there is a big lack of responsibility here.
Blaming what's happening on anyone except Hunter is a bit silly. I'd even argue that it's
incredibly irresponsible.
What's even more obvious is the desperation. Biden and the Democrats in general want this
story, whatever it is, to be squashed. It's why you have seen so little coverage on
left-leaning TV networks. If Donald Trump Jr was in a similar situation it would be a story on
every single one of them, and likely the subject of a Don Lemon lecture or five.
What Biden may not realize is that when voters see something being blamed on Russia, they
tend to roll their eyes. It invokes the image of Boris and Natasha grabbing a laptop in the
hopes of finally grabbing the moose and squirrel. It's cartoonish. And what happens if the
worst-case scenario for Biden comes true and his son is indicted for something? Well, at that
point it's more than just a ' Russian disinformation campaign' . It's very real
indeed.
And this is where Biden could end up with plenty of egg on his face. If he and his son are
in trouble, then no amount of blaming another country is going to change that. And it wouldn't
surprise me if this becomes a major factor in the upcoming election. Why would you vote for
someone who can't, or won't, take responsibility for what is going on with their own
family?
What Biden needs to do at this point is come clean on what his level of involvement was, and
simply be a dad to his son instead of a politician. Then again, Biden has been a politician
longer than he's been a father, so it's hard saying which hat he plans on wearing for the next
two weeks.
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The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author
and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
MakeAmericaFree 1 day ago The world is witness
to the blatant corruption and deceit at the highest levels of American government. Trump has
tried to clean things up and he has a lot more left to do. We should wish him well in those
efforts. I am starting to think Attorney General William Barr has capitulated though. Where are
all the indictments, Mr. Barr? Reply 14 ariadnatheo MakeAmericaFree 1 day ago Barr? The CIA
offspring? He does what he is told, not necessarily by his official boss SJMan333 1 day ago If
Joe is running against another regular Republican politician, Hunter Biden's corruption would
have been a non-issue. The US politics is a cesspool of corruption, money laundering, sex and
all forms of moral decay. Each politician is in it for self-serving purposes. Position, power,
money, etc etc. A big section of naive Americans believe their politicians are there to serve
the people's interests. Politicians from both sides of the aisle have a tacit understanding NOT
to cross a red line. They will never accuse their opponents of corruption. 'You make your
money, I make mine.' is their omerta. They put up huge shows of debating with each other in
public purportedly in defense of the people's welfare and benefits. Behind closed door, they
celebrate their loots from the nation's tax money and illegal brides from businesses in
camaraderie together. I don't like Trump. But his exposure of the alleged crimes of the Biden
family is something to be applauded, even he's doing it for self-serving purposes. DukeLeo 1
day ago Joe Biden is using Hillary's methods. Not wise. You don't use the same fraud twice.
shadow1369 DukeLeo 1 day ago Well the CIA have used the same lies for 75 years. White Elk
shadow1369 1 day ago Must be a bit worn out by now. Reply 2 shadow1369 White Elk 1 day ago You
would think so, you would also think that everybody would have seen through them by now, but
not at all. The CIA orchestrated coup in Kiev used exactly the same methods as the one they
orchestrated in Iran in 1953. The details of Operation Ajax are now publicly available, but few
bother to look into it. allan Kaplan White Elk 1 day ago Not worn out but perfected! Lois
Winters 1 day ago I am not surprised at anything Biden says after seeing his performance in
these debates. He is obviously a tired old man and relies on sheafs of notes with the same old
so called empathic statements to the citizens of America. It is a wonder that he's a
presidential candidate at all. After all the original candidates finally were eliminated, no
one but these two want this thankless job. allan Kaplan 1 day ago Now that the shameless "mind
managers" the msm propagandists are in the opens, we, the people (an old cliche) must start
making noises of holding these anti-American mouth pieces accountable. Compel to change the FCC
Rules to take away their broadcasting licensees, penalized those self proclaimed journalists of
zero integrities, jailed most of them, and never again allow such ego bloated nincompoops ever
to come near the radio and TV stations and banned them from entering any newspaper offices as
well. Other punitive measures must be enacted to deface and disregard these paid mouths of fake
news and disinformation msm Complex! I'm starting a business of manufacturing toilet bowls and
the pubic urinals with the faces impregnated into the ceramic of all those who exploited
American freedom of speech to advance their personal careers and that would certainly include
almost all the politicians and the tech giants etc. What do you think as a statement to test
the real FREE SPEECH?
This week's perhaps overly dramatic
announcement
Wednesday night
by the heads of multiple federal agencies - foremost among them Director of National
Intelligence John Ratcliffe - alleging new major efforts by Russia and Iran to interfere in the US presidential
election formed a key question and talking point by debate moderator Kristen Welker Thursday night.
Welker even referenced as somehow undisputed and settled "truth"
the
now debunked "Russian bounties" story
. Over a month ago the Pentagon and other intelligence heads
concluded after an exhaustive investigation that
there's
simply no evidence
to suggest Russian military intelligence paid Afghan fighters to target Americans.
Russia was certainly paying attention to the debate and was not amused. The Kremlin on Friday blasted what it said
was
"Russophobia"
at the center of the debate
.
Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov
told
journalists Friday that
"
competition
in Russophobia
has become a constant in all US electoral processes, regrettably."
"We are fully aware of this and can only express regret," he added as quoted in TASS.
"After all, probably, it is the American electorate who is the target audience of these debates, that is, common
Americans. It is up to them to decide who won the debate, not us," the spokesman said.
Indeed the American public is by and large likely growing tired of the endless Russia scapegoating too.
National security pundit and research fellow at Columbia University's Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies
Richard Hanania had this to say about just how vapid foreign policy questions have become in this election (when
they are offered at all):
Notice how the entire debate on foreign policy was about who was "nicer" to China, Russia, or some other
"enemy," not say whether we should go to war more or less often.
There's
a primitiveness and stupidity surrounding discussions of foreign policy that we don't accept elsewhere
,
he
pointed
out
.
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Over the years Putin himself has increasingly mocked and laughed about the degree to which he personally gets
blamed for almost all ills of American society - from election meddling to "weaponizing" race relations to
supposedly seeking to take out the national power grid.
An early example comes from 1992 when the then- Lithuanian Defence Minister called Russia a
country "with vague prospects" while at the same time asserting that "in about two years' time
[it] will present a great danger to Europe" (FBIS 22 May 92 p 69).
Vague prospects but great danger. Given the vague demographic
prospects of his own country , it was a rather ironic assertion given that Lithuania's
future would appear to be a few nursing homes surrounded by forest. But he said it in the days
of the full EU/NATO cargo cult. In 2014 U.S. President Obama immortalised this in an
interview :
But I do think it's important to keep perspective. Russia doesn't make anything.
Immigrants aren't rushing to Moscow in search of opportunity. The life expectancy of the
Russian male is around 60 years old. The population is shrinking. And so we have to respond
with resolve in what are effectively regional challenges that Russia presents.
In the emerging post-Cold War-era Russia, no matter how poor it is in many key areas, can be
#2 in the world for many years to come. Only when China rises in the next 20 years or a new
kind of President emerges in the United States will that change. Until then Vladimir Putin can
play his games to his heart's content.
Of course all of these headscratchers assume that the exchange rate of the ruble is the true
measure of Russia's economy; which is a pretty silly and
misleading idea .
* * *
But at the same time Russia is an enormous, dangerous, existential threat functioning with
enormous effectiveness in all dimensions.
So, on the one hand Russia is a failing country, with a trivial economy, a greatly
over-rated military led by someone who is always facing a catastrophe at home. Nothing to worry
about there: presently weak and future uncertain. On the other hand, Russia has a tremendously
powerful military, an economy that does whatever its ever-young autocratic permanent ruler
wants it to. Its propaganda power is immense and unbeatable, the background determinant of the
world's action. Russophrenia.
And, out of the blue, COVID gives him another opportunity to bamboozle the helpless West and
undermine its precious Rules-Based International Order. Somehow. See if you can make sense
of this incoherence :
This should worry the West once the pandemic has passed. Not because Russia poses a
serious long-term threat to our interests; it doesn't, although Putin would prefer us to
think that his shrivelled realm does. But because Russia is not the only authoritarian state
seeking to learn lessons from the current crisis which could be used in a future
conflict.
Russophrenics are unaffected by reality. Russia's success? Forget maleficence and try
competence . Its military is designed to defend the country, not rule
the world : a less expensive and attainable aim. Its economy -- thanks to Western sanctions
-- has made it probably the only
autarky in the world . Election interference is a falsehood designed to damage Trump and
exculpate Clinton which has been picked up by Washington's puppies. But don't bother with mere
evidence; As the author of this New
Yorker piece explains :
Such externally guided operations exist, but to exaggerate their prevalence and potency
ends up eroding the idea of genuine bottom-up protest -- in a way that, ironically, is
entirely congenial to Putin's conspiratorial world view.
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Scott Adams understands the process perfectly:
Absence of evidence is evidence.
Pretty crazy isn't it? And getting crazier.
All this would be funny if it were Ruritania ranting at the Duchy of Strackenz.
But it isn't: it's the country with the most destructive military in the world and a proven
record of using it ad libitum that is sinking into this insanity. And that's not good for any
of us.
PGR88 , 7 hours ago
Russia merely wants to protect itself, its culture, and its interests from an increasingly
insane American globalist deep state.
teutonicate , 1 hour ago
Russophrenia... Or How A Collapsing Country Runs The World
Much as cabalist-run propaganda mill The Strategic Cultural Foundation would like it to be
true, Russia is not collapsing. The only thing wrong with Russia is that it is a
predominantly White Christian country that refuses to kowtow to Israel - and therefore in
cabaliist-dominated Western political circles it must be defined as the enemy - regardless of
reality.
It must really irk cabalist central bankers and globalists that Russia simply doesn't need
them. It is has a real economy that doesn't completely depend on being pumped up with an
endless supply of rapidly devaluing fiat.
@Menes
losphere that came the closest to ruling the whole world. And China knows that Russia is a
part of European civilization, that will switch sides as soon as geopolitics and geoeconomics
change.
Au contraire , the fact that NATO exists is why Russia has to partner with China, to
ensure its own national survival. If anything, it's NATO that has no feasible future because
the USA is not even a European country, masquerading as the "protector" of Europe, against
Russia! The Chinese saying "one mountain cannot contain two tigers" applies to the USA because
it has no business being the dominant power in NATO to keep Russia out of Europe.
Russia is too weak to disengage with EU. Technologial superiority is still on the side of EU
and the USA (EU mostly acts as a vassal of the USA.) They need to suffer this humiliation, and
try to gain strength.
Sergey Lavrov, Russia's Foreign Minister, is the world's foremost diplomat. The son of an
Armenian father and a Russian mother, he's just on another level altogether. Here, once again,
we may be able to see why.
Let's start with the annual meeting of the Valdai Club , Russia's premier think tank. Here we
may follow the
must-watch presentation of the Valdai annual report on "The Utopia of a Diverse World",
featuring, among others, Lavrov, John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, Dominic Lieven
of the University of Cambridge and Yuri Slezkine of UCLA/Berkeley.
It's a rarity to be able to share what amounts to a Himalayan peak in terms of serious
political debate. We have, for instance, Lieven – who, half in jest, defined the Valdai
report as "Tolstoyian, a little anarchical" – focusing on the current top two, great
interlocking challenges: climate change and the fact that "350 years of Western and 250 years
of Anglo-American predominance are coming to an end."
As we see the "present world order fading in front of our eyes", Lieven notes a sort of
"revenge of the Third World". But then, alas, Western prejudice sets in all over again, as he
defines China reductively as a "challenge".
Mearsheimer neatly remembers we have lived, successively, under a bipolar, unipolar and now
multipolar world: with China, Russia and the US, "Great Power Politics is back on the
table."
He correctly assesses that after the dire experience of the "century of humiliation, the
Chinese will make sure they are really powerful." And that will set the stage for the US to
deploy a "highly-aggressive containment policy", just like it did against the USSR, that "may
well end up in a shooting match".
"I trust Arnold more than the EU"
Lavrov, in his introductory remarks, had
explained that in realpolitik terms, the world "cannot be run from one center alone." He
took time to stress the "meticulous, lengthy and sometimes ungrateful" work of diplomacy.
It was later, in one of his interventions, that he unleashed the
real bombshell (starting at 1:15:55; in Russian, overdubbed in English): "When the European
Union is speaking as a superior, Russia wants to know, can we do any business with Europe?"
He mischievously quotes Schwarzenegger, "who in his movies always said 'Trust me'. So I
trust Arnold more than the European Union".
And that leads to the definitive punch line: "The people who are responsible for foreign
policy in the West do not understand the necessity of mutual respect in dialogue. And then
probably for some time we have to stop talking to them." After all, European Commission
president Ursula von der Leyen had stated, on the record, that for the EU, "there is no
geopolitical partnership with modern Russia".
Lavrov went even further in a stunning, wide-ranging
interview with Russian radio stations whose translation deserves to be carefully read in
full.
Here is just one of the most crucial snippets:
Lavrov: "No matter what we do, the West will try to hobble and restrain us, and undermine
our efforts in the economy, politics, and technology. These are all elements of one
approach."
Question: "Their national security strategy states that they will do so."
Lavrov: "Of course it does, but it is articulated in a way that decent people can still
let go unnoticed, but it is being implemented in a manner that is nothing short of
outrageous."
Question: You, too, can articulate things in a way that is different from what you would
really like to say, correct?"
Lavrov: "It's the other way round. I can use the language I'm not usually using to get the
point across. However, they clearly want to throw us off balance, and not only by direct
attacks on Russia in all possible and conceivable spheres by way of unscrupulous competition,
illegitimate sanctions and the like, but also by unbalancing the situation near our borders,
thus preventing us from focusing on creative activities. Nevertheless, regardless of the
human instincts and the temptations to respond in the same vein, I'm convinced that we must
abide by international law."
Moscow stands unconditionally by international law – in contrast with the proverbial
"rules of the liberal international order" jargon parroted by NATO and its minions such as the
Atlantic Council.
And here it is all
over again , a report extolling NATO to "Ramp Up on Russia", blasting Moscow's "aggressive
disinformation and propaganda campaigns against the West, and unchecked adventurism in the
Middle East, Africa, and Afghanistan."
The Atlantic Council insists on how those pesky Russians have once again defied "the
international community by using an illegal chemical weapon to poison opposition leader Alexei
Navalny. NATO's failure to halt Russia's aggressive behavior puts the future of the liberal
international order at risk."
Only fools falling for the blind leading the blind syndrome don't know that these liberal
order "rules" are set by the Hegemon alone, and can be changed in a flash according to the
Hegemon's whims.
So it's no wonder a running joke in Moscow is "if you don't listen to Lavrov, you will
listen to Shoigu." Sergey Shoigu is Russia's Minister of Defense, supervising all those
hypersonic weapons the US industrial-military complex can only dream about.
The crucial point is even with so much NATO-engendered hysteria, Moscow could not give a
damn because of its de facto military supremacy. And that freaks Washington and Brussels out
even more.
What's left is Hybrid War eruptions following the RAND corporation-prescribed
non-stop harassment and "unbalancing" of Russia, in Belarus, the southern Caucasus and
Kyrgyzstan – complete with sanctions on Lukashenko and on Kremlin officials for the
Navalny "poisoning".
"You do not negotiate with monkeys"
What Lavrov just made it quite explicit was a long time in the making. "Modern Russia" and
the EU were born almost at the same time. On a personal note, I experienced it in an
extraordinary fashion. "Modern Russia" was born in December 1991 – when I was on the road
in India, then Nepal and China. When I arrived in Moscow via the Trans-Siberian in February
1992, the USSR was no more. And then, flying back to Paris, I arrived at a European Union born
in that same February.
One of Valdai's leaders
correctly argues that the daring concept of a "Europe stretching from Lisbon to
Vladivostok" coined by Gorbachev in 1989, right before the collapse of the USSR, unfortunately
"had no document or agreement to back it up."
And yes, "Putin searched diligently for an opportunity to implement the partnership with the
EU and to further rapprochement. This continued from 2001 until as late as 2006."
We all remember when Putin, in 2010, proposed exactly the same concept, a common house
from Lisbon to Vladivostok , and was flatly rebuffed by the EU. It's very important to
remember this was four years before the Chinese would finalize their own concept of the New
Silk Roads.
Afterwards, the only way was down. The final Russia-EU summit took place in Brussels in
January 2014 – an eternity in politics.
The fabulous intellectual firepower gathered at the Valdai is very much aware that the Iron
Curtain 2.0 between Russia and the EU simply won't disappear.
And all this while the IMF, The Economist and even that
Thucydides fallacy proponent admit that China is already, in fact, the world's top
economy.
Russia and China share an enormously long border. They are engaged in a complex,
multi-vector "comprehensive strategic partnership". That did not develop because the
estrangement between Russia and the EU/NATO forced Moscow to pivot East, but mostly because the
alliance between the world's neighboring top economy and top military power makes total
Eurasian sense – geopolitically and geoeconomically.
And that totally corroborates Lieven's diagnosis of the end of "250 years of Anglo-American
predominance."
It was up to inestimable military analyst Andrey Martyanov, whose latest book I reviewed as
a must
read , to come up with the utmost deliciously
devastating assessment of Lavrov's "We had enough" moment:
"Any professional discussion between Lavrov and former gynecologist [actually
epidemiologist] such as von der Leyen, including Germany's Foreign Minister Maas, who is a
lawyer and a party worm of German politics is a waste of time. Western "elites" and
"intellectuals" are simply on a different, much lower level, than said Lavrov. You do not
negotiate with monkeys, you treat them nicely, you make sure that they are not abused, but
you don't negotiate with them, same as you don't negotiate with toddlers.
They want to have their Navalny as their toy – let them. I call on Russia to start
wrapping economic activity up with EU for a long time. They buy Russia's hydrocarbons and
hi-tech, fine. Other than that, any other activity should be dramatically reduced and
necessity of the Iron Curtain must not be doubted anymore."
As much as Washington is not "agreement-capable", in the words of President Putin, so is the
EU, says Lavrov: "We should stop to orient ourselves toward European partners and care about
their assessments."
Not only Russia knows it: the overwhelming majority of the Global South also knows it.
Russia is a European Country with a European Culture they should leave the door open.
Politics change, and it would be a terrible shame if the West lost Russia and vice versa.
Russia is a European Country with a European Culture they should leave the door open.
Politics change, and it would be a terrible shame if the West lost Russia and vice
versa.
Most of the Europeans I know (and I know quite a few because I live in Europe) do not
consider Russians to be European. It's not the Russians who have closed the door they are
merely ensuring it doesn't hit them in the nose. That is indeed a shame, because, as Escobar
suggests, the EU is setting itself to be colonised by the global south, as is the U.K. and
the Hegemon. 1992 and beyond was indeed a great squandering of opportunity.
Look at the EU's persistent irrationality trying to negotiate with the UK. How long have
Brexit talks been blocked by EU Elite intransigence?
They cannot even cope internally. The Dark Heart of Europe keeps trying to kill
freedom & individual rights. In response, the Christian Populist members of the EU have
positioned themselves to veto Merkel's fascist budget trap. (1)
While all 27 EU heads of state and government approved the budget and recovery package
at a summit in July, national parliaments must still ratify the budget and a so-called Own
Resources Decision, which provides the EU with legal guarantees from its member countries
regarding budget revenues.
Council President Charles Michel declared triumphantly that he had succeeded in ensuring
there would be strong rule-of-law protections as part of the package. But Hungarian Prime
Minister Viktor Orbán and Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki also claimed
victory, saying the wording had been softened enough to give them the ability to veto any
proposed regulation.
Everyone should abandon attempts to do business with the EU. The only solution is to end
the flailing unworkable mess in an peaceful and orderly manner.
Of course, the SJW Sharia Globalist MegaCorporations hate that idea. It would derail their
goal of undercutting infidel (Christian & Jewish) workers via faux-refugee migration.
Culturally, the old Communist East that is within the EU, has more in common with Russia
than with the Western Europeans
Tho it is taking time for the old anti-Russian instincts to fade away
And even within the West, there are regions and countries – the
perhaps-soon-independent Flanders, and much of Italy as things proceed – for whom this
also is in part true
Russia is NOT Europe. Anyone who considers this either has no clue of history and has
never been there, or both, or has just been to Moscow for a while and has the wrong
impression.
Contemporary Russia is a military descendand of the Golden Horde, (Altun Orda), absorbing
the tartar, nogai and kalmyk nobility by resettling them to Moscow upon conquest. Their
medieval rulers had tartar titles such as beylerbeg, used tartar outfits and arabic script on
their coins. Russian state organised its existence based on military districts similar to
those of the mongols (hence Belarus for example – white russia – white is the
mongolian west wing of the army district in the mongol system, before that belarus was call
Zhmutia).
Russia is also spiritual descendant of the Byzantine and Bulgarian states (bulgarians such
as Saint Cyprian and Grigori Tsamblak actually delivered byzantine ortodoxy rites to russia
due to similarity of languages, not greeks). Old church slavonic is actually old bulgarian,
and this greek-slavonic culture has its peculiarities – in the eastern rites, the
person closest to god is not the richest , but the one who has more faith. This in
consequence makes those societies look for "saints" as rulers, and be never content with the
people they rule them. Stability is achieved only with mild tyranny or the presence of
extraordinary rulers, hence the economy is always behind the collective west. Anyway, the
topic is too damn long, the short story is – don't ever beleive Russia is part of
europe such as austria for example.
Russia is not part of Europe. It is something else – just like Malta, that speak
semitic and the locals look like north africans, but some people say it is Europe.
The westernization of the muscovite tsardom only started in the 17-th century, and the
process has been stopped several times (napoleon, one of the alexander kings, bolsheviks, now
putin). the westerners still beleive Russia can be subdued because the slavs are savages and
lack economy.
Eastern ortodoxy brings a peculiar mindset, that is hard to grasp by western politicians, and
it is not materialistic – it brings things like being content with your position in the
world without wanting more stuff, and the same time each one has to reach god by himself and
no other authority is valid. Pepe doens't grasp this aspect – the overwhelming
non-commercial, truth seeking part of the russians that westerners cannot see because of
savage and poor looks and blunt directness. It will play us all a bad joke in the next
war.
Mearsheimer did nice work popping the pus out of the Israel lobby so we could all go, Ew,
so it's sad to see him fixate on discredited CIA realist doctrine when the civilized world
has moved on:
De Zayas should have been at Valdai instead of Mearsheimer because this is what the G-192
thinks, that is, what everybody thinks. If the SCO has to enforce this consensus at gunpoint,
they're fine with that. We should be too. It's everybody in the world including us against
the CIA regime, hostis humani generis.
Great Pepe Escobar. Excellent article. See '75 years after 'Stunde Null,' collapse in
Russian-German relations is driven by Berlin's renewed desire to dominate Europe' by Glenn
Diesen explaining Germany role on that.
Some stupid (that is to say all of them) loud mouthed low browed EU bigwig only needs to
get a bit too fresh and uppity with Turkey's Erdogan, (you know the kind of thing, some third
rate tosser starts sounding off about 'human rights' to make himself look big and pompous),
and therefore tick Erdogan off a bit too much, for Erdogan to retaliate by unleashing 3
million plus 'refugees' into the EU. Knowing the absolutely appalling lack of caliber and
intelligence of EU bigwigs, this will inevitably happen in the near future. Just watch this
space.
That day will certainly head the eventual and inevitable dissolution of the EU.
It's just all so fucking clear and obvious to anyone who's got a brain.
The trouble with this 'analysis' is very very simple:
Namely, that the brainless *SHIT* which runs the EU – who, by, the way are real deal
undemocratic unelected unaccountable tyrants and dictators – *absolutely* could not
give a fuck about *real* ethnic genetic Europeans.
All they care about are third worlders, of whom they wish to stuff as many into the EU as
possible. Remember Merkel?
Most intelligent Europeans know this.
The Russian high command knows this.
The Chinese know this.
Culturally, the old Communist East that is within the EU, has more in common with Russia
than with the Western Europeans
From another point of view the old West has now more in common with communist-like
totalitarian zeitgeist and rule of propaganda then old communist East, only colours changed
from red to anti-white globo homo.
Not happy with that having experienced 17 years of vanishing red rule, now seeing it
rebranded on the rise again in one of the EU bound countries affected (Czechia). Just
saying.
@Steven80
hat is the stuff that can be found in prayers ahead of meals yap, redneck and conservative
assholes and meaning of them has nothing to do with availability of Mac Donald's or home
deliveries.
For us death, hunger, desperation and bestial violence are fresh memories. They are in each
and every family. We know where suffering came from and because of which of earthly reasons.
("Why" is a much deeper question and the answer is in reflection inside Orthodox Christian
teachings.)
So, long story short. That's why S. Lavrov, since nobody there cares about warnings, now
even more politely says: "F ** k off, you lawless hypocrites."
We in the West therefore live under the unyielding yoke of Modernism, whereby we have
become so used to its shallow, arid materialism, that has been carefully and artfully crafted
for us over the past 150 years; its wall-to-wall advertising and huckstering; its population
of zombified careerists and status-seekers, that we are now like the proverbial goldfish in
its bowl, blissfully unaware that there is a wider, more varied and fulfilling world outside
the narrow confines it inhabits.
One thinks of Hamlet: "I could be bound in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite
space, were it not that I have bad dreams".
I know many Europeans too, and many Russians. Contrary to what you say, the Europeans I
know consider Russians to be Europeans. The fact that nearly all Russians in Europe have
white skin, blue eyes, blonde to light brown hair, come from the same Continent, and share
European values, helps a lot!
Eastern ortodoxy brings a peculiar mindset, that is hard to grasp by western
politicians, and it is not materialistic – it brings things like being content with
your position in the world without wanting more stuff, and the same time each one has to
reach god by himself and no other authority is valid.
Bollocks. I know many Russians personally. They are indistinguishable from western
Europeans, to me they are just like Finns and Swedes, even the accent.
Every time the Russians leave the door open, it ends up with a Western attempt on Russia.
The West represents roughly 10% of the world population, is declining rapidly and brings
nothing to the table except promises of nuisance. If I were Russian, I would ditch relations
with the globohomo West and seek partnerships among the 90%.
If you speak of the capacity to project her troops on any point on Earth, you're right.
The thing is, they don't need it and probably regard it as vanity of fools. If on the other
hand you consider their capacity to incinerate you before you incinerate them, well, dream
on.
@MLK
this was a gift to Russia and Germany, but it's much worse than that. Why isn't anyone else
curious as to who got what in return?
The blockage of Nordstream 2 is about The Dark Heart of Europe not Russia. Christian
Europe is terrified of Mutti Mullah Merkel's highly authoritarian regime. Why would any of the
V4 nations accept energy dependency on flows via Germany?
This is one of Putin's few serious errors. He would be much better off pushing gas projects
that flowed through Christian European nations thus allowing them leverage against German
anti-Christian SJW aggression.
Current US is a colossus with the feet of clay. Dems in their mad attempts to undermine
Trump succeeded in undermining America. Just wait for November 3.
Putin's and Xi's policy towards the US follows the saying "when you see your enemy
committing suicide, do not interfere". The same applies to the EU, as well as Brexited UK.
Times are a-changing. The West is destroying itself and behaving as if it's it is still hale
and healthy. It was said that when God wishes to punish someone, He takes away that person's
mind. This applies to countries, particularly to the Empires.
That's a deranged dream of neocons, and it won't come true. The policies of Russia and China
are sane and pragmatic, whereas the policies of the Empire and its sidekicks are suicidal.
As far as civilizational divide goes, Russia is neither Europe nor Asia, it is a separate
civilization. When the US and Europe succeed in destroying themselves, many Russians would miss
them due to cultural ties with their predecessors, but that won't drive Russian policies. Not
just Putin's (in fact, he appears to have a soft spot for Europe, characteristic of his
generation), but policies of whoever runs Russia after him. There would be no gorbys or
yeltsins any more.
Europe is a glove on the US hand and is easily led around by its nose by the CIA and MI6
that infest the MSM and run one false flag after another.
Politicians in the EU are mediocre creatures that crave the dollars stuffed into their
pockets by the US. They are enjoying the ride while it lasts until they go down with the
US.
@Steven80
es who make up modern Sweden–the Scanians, the Goths and the Svear. Both Kiev and
Novgorod were founded by them and the original, etymological basis for Russia is "Rus". The
royal line, beginning with Rurik and the nobility of the Rus , were of a Scandinavian-Slavic
blend.
Though Muscovy may have later become dominated by the descendants of the Mongols and their
allies, the northern, forested part of Russia features a native set of peoples who only rarely
evince the features of their fully conquered brethren in the steppe lands of the south. In all
truth, Putin, whom I believe was born in Tver, could easily pass for one of my Nordic cousins
And that is the blue-eyed truth.
I'm a British Brexit voter – primarily because the EU is run by arseholes with an
absolutely loathing for any sort of democratic accountability.
So Russia's impression of the EU is totally realistic.
For four years I have had to watch the spectacle of the UK trying to form a fair deal, when
the EU's explicit goal has been to punish the UK for leaving pour encourager les autres.
What a waste of time. The EU only understands blunt force and blunt actions.
Indonesia Refuses To Host American Spy Planes Amid Sino-US Cold War
The US and China are smack dab in the middle of a new Cold War. The observation in itself
should not be startling to readers - as President Trump's trade war metamorphosed into a
technology war over the Chinese tech companies' global dominance. Rapidly deteriorating
relations between both superpowers, especially since the virus pandemic, has resulted in
increased military action in East Asia.
In the last couple of years, we've pointed out the US has constructed a Lockheed Martin
F-35 stealth jet "friends circle" around China. More recently, there's been a significant
uptick in US spy planes changing their transponder codes to disguise themselves during
operations near China.
In the attempt to increase spy plane presence in East Asia, US officials made multiple
"high-level" attempts in July and August to Indonesia's top defense and government
officials to clear the way to allow Boeing P-8 Poseidon maritime surveillance planes to
land and refuel on the Southeast Asia country.
Four senior Indonesian officials familiar with the matter told Reuters that defense
officials rejected the US proposal because Indonesia has a well-established policy of
foreign policy neutrality - and does not permit foreign militaries to operate across its
archipelago.
Reuters notes the P-8 "plays a central role in keeping an eye on China's military
activity in the South China Sea, most of which Beijing claims as its territory."
Indonesia rejected the US spy plane presence because it has developed increased economic
and investment ties with China over the years.
"It does not want to take sides in the conflict and is alarmed by growing tensions
between the two superpowers, and by the militarization of the South China Sea," Indonesia's
Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi told Reuters.
"We don't want to get trapped by this rivalry," Retno said in an interview in early
September. "Indonesia wants to show all that we are ready to be your partner."
Dino Patti Djalal, a former Indonesian ambassador to the US, said the "very aggressive
anti-China policy" projected by the US has become troubling for Indonesia.
"It's seen as out-of-place," Djalal told Reuters. "We don't want to be duped into an
anti-China campaign. Of course, we maintain our independence, but there is deeper economic
engagement, and China is now the most impactful country in the world for Indonesia."
Greg Poling, a Southeast Asia analyst from the Washington, DC-based Center for Strategic
and International Studies, said Washington's attempt to pressure Indonesia into giving up
land rights so US spy planes can fly in and out of the country is an example of "clumsy
overreach."
"It's an indication of how little folks in the US government understand Indonesia,"
Poling told Reuters. "There's a clear ceiling to what you can do, and when it comes to
Indonesia, that ceiling is putting boots on the ground."
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Both China and the US have recently ramped up military exercises in the South China Sea.
The US has increased naval freedom of navigation operations, submarine deployments, and spy
plane flights, while China has increased naval missions in the region.
To sum up, the new cold war has pressured Southeast Asian countries to take sides; they
must choose between the US and or China. As for Indonesia, they quickly decided to be
neutral with a lean towards China. Does this mean China's gravity in terms of its size and
its influence is overwhelming the US?
"From the onset of the pandemic in Russia, we have focused on preserving lives and
ensuring safety of our people as our key values. This was an informed choice dictated by
our culture and spiritual traditions, and our complex, sometimes dramatic, history. If we
think back to the great demographic losses we suffered in the 20th century, we had no other
choice but to fight for every person and the future of every Russian family.
"So, we did our best to preserve the health and the lives of our people, to help parents
and children, as well as senior citizens and those who lost their jobs, to maintain
employment as much as possible, to minimise damage to the economy, to support millions of
entrepreneurs who run small or family businesses.
"Perhaps, like everyone else, you are closely following daily updates on the pandemic
around the world. Unfortunately, the coronavirus has not retreated and still poses a major
threat. Probably, this unsettling background intensifies the sense, like many people feel,
that a whole new era is about to begin and that we are not just on the verge of dramatic
changes, but an era of tectonic shifts in all areas of life.
"We see the rapidly, exponential development of the processes that we have repeatedly
discussed at the Valdai Club before. Thus, six years ago, in 2014, we spoke about this
issue when we discussed the theme The World Order: New Rules or a Game Without Rules. So,
what is happening now? Regrettably, the game without rules is becoming increasingly
horrifying and sometimes seems to be a fait accompli."
This is the 17th session of the Valdai Club, and I ask: Where is there an equivalent in
the so-called democracies of the West which are allegedly the guardians of free speech and
debate, where there supposedly exists a "marketplace of ideas"?
The Q & A portion of Putin's Valdai Club Speech transcript
have been posted, and they run longer than his speech. In his first query, I completely agree
with Putin that too many people have yet to learn the fundamental lesson the pandemic ought
to have taught:
"However, the pandemic is playing into our hands when it comes to raising our awareness of
the importance of joining forces against severe global crises. Unfortunately, it has not yet
taught humanity to come together completely, as we must do in such situations."
But his answer wasn't directed at ignorant citizens. Putin's ire was directed at the
Outlaw US Empire:
"I am not referring now to all these sanctions against Russia; forget about that, we will
get over it. But many other countries that have suffered and are still suffering from the
coronavirus do not even need any help that may come from outside, they just need the
restrictions lifted, at least in the humanitarian sphere, I repeat, concerning the supply of
medicines, equipment, credit resources, and the exchange of technologies. These are
humanitarian things in their purest form. But no, they have not abolished any
restrictions, citing some considerations that have nothing to do with the humanitarian
component – but at the same time, everyone is talking about humanism .
"I would say we need to be more honest with each other and abandon double standards. I am
sure that if people hear me now on the media, they are probably finding it difficult to
disagree with what I have just said, difficult to deny it. Deep down in their hearts, in
their minds, everyone is probably thinking, 'Yes, right, of course.' However, for
political reasons, publicly, they will still say, 'No, we must keep restrictions on Iran,
Venezuela, against Assad .' What does Assad even have to do with this when it is ordinary
people who suffer? At least, give them medicines, give them technology, at least a small,
targeted loan for medicine. No." [My Emphasis]
If I could speak to Putin, I'd tell him that they have no hearts, they are soulless,
completely bereft of any sense of morality, and cannot be reasoned with whatsoever. They are
ghouls, incapable of being shamed or made to feel guilt. You look at them and see a human,
but they're not human at all; they are parasites cloaked in human form. They differ little
from the Nazis of 75+ years ago and need to be eliminated once and for all. The pandemic has
fully exposed them for what they are.
@134 Has anybody seen a comment yet from the Honorable Chrystia Freeland or the Lima Group
regarding the election result in Bolivia? Maybe they are too busy strangling Venezuela.
"... The sustained tosh from the good old boys at state, cia, fbi & nsa isn't worthy of comment, given that it is 100% evidence-free accusations which surprise surprise 'just happens' to align with these provenly corrupt organisations' most prioritsed foreign policy goals. ..."
Last month, national security prosecutors at the Justice Department were told to look at any
ongoing investigations involving Iran or Iranian nationals with an eye toward making them
public.
The push to announce Iran-related cases has caused internal alarm, these people said, with
some law enforcement officials fearing that senior Justice Department officials want to
reveal the cases because the Trump administration would like Congress to impose new sanctions
on Iran.
U.S. officials on Wednesday night accused Iran of targeting American voters with faked but
menacing emails and warned that both Iran and Russia had obtained voter data that could be
used to endanger the upcoming election.
The disclosure by Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe at a hastily called
news conference marked the first time this election cycle that a foreign adversary has been
accused of targeting specific voters in a bid to undermine democratic confidence -- just four
years after Russian online operations marred the 2016 presidential vote.
The claim that Iran was behind the email operation, which came into view on Tuesday as
Democrats in several states reported receiving emails demanding they vote for President
Trump, was leveled without specific evidence .
...
Metadata gathered from dozens of the emails pointed to the use of servers in Saudi Arabia,
Estonia, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates, according to numerous analysts.
The emails are under investigation, and one intelligence source said it was still unclear who
was behind them.
...
... the evidence remains inconclusive.
The claims that Iran is behind this are as stupid as the people who believe them.
I for one trust (not) those 50 former intelligence officials who say that all emails are
Russian disinformation. They are intended to 'sow discord' which is something the U.S. has
otherwise never ever had throughout its history.
More than 50 former senior intelligence officials have signed on to a letter outlining their
belief that the recent disclosure of emails ... "has all the classic earmarks of a Russian
information operation."
...
While the letter's signatories presented no new evidence, they said their national security
experience had made them "deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant
role in this case" and cited several elements of the story that suggested the Kremlin's hand
at work.
"If we are right," they added, "this is Russia trying to influence how Americans vote in
this election, and we believe strongly that Americans need to be aware of this."
No, this doesn't make any sense. It is not supposed to do that.
Posted by b on October 22, 2020 at 7:21 UTC | Permalink
The sustained tosh from the good old boys at state, cia, fbi & nsa isn't worthy of
comment, given that it is 100% evidence-free accusations which surprise surprise 'just
happens' to align with these provenly corrupt organisations' most prioritsed foreign policy
goals.
We know that these yarns align in syncopation with
what the amerikan empire most wants to promulgate, yet bereft of even a a cunt hair's worth
of evidence, the only truth which can be inferred from this foggy bottom tosh is the obvious
one - that is that the empire is becoming so desperate they will happily toss their
credibility with the many to the winds if they can, please sir, just convince a few of the
few.
Stuff like this is a suitable test of how the media are supposed to represent our interests
and help us in not getting fooled. You report, and afterwards you test what your readers
believe.
Independently of questionable bias issues serious newspapers will defend news like this
with formal justifications of journalistic code
- neutrality and objectivity: we just report but don't judge.
- null hypothesis of trustworthiness: official sources are to be trusted unless proven
otherwise. At least, proven otherwise by someone we consider trustworthy.
The propaganda is already embedded in the lofty ethics codes journalists will proudly adhere
to.
"Other documents that have emerged include FBI paper work that reveals the bureau's
interactions with the shop's owner, John Paul Mac Isaac, who reported the laptop's contents
to authorities. The document shows that Isaac received a subpoena to testify before the U.S.
District Court in Delaware on Dec. 9, 2019 . One page appears to show the serial
number for a MacBook Pro laptop and a hard drive that were seized by the agency."
https://www.ibtimes.sg/signed-receipt-hunter-bidens-name-delaware-laptop-repair-store-surfaces-52672
So the FBI kept Hunter Biden's bomb shell HDDs under wraps for almost a year. Enough time
to figure out they where not filled with Russian kompromat.
If you needed a leaked email to understand why it was corrupt for Hunter Biden to be getting
50k a month to be on the board of a Ukranian energy company, then you are likely already so
propagandized that you will vote for Joe Biden no matter what gets printed.
Really this propaganda is a brilliant move for those who control what is in print. They
have a clear circle of blame in Russia, Iran, or China, who are to blame for everything, and
this allows the media to limit the scope of discussion greatly by suppressing real criticisms
towards actual problems (the Bidens being corrupt across multiple generations) and deflecting
that energy into hating Russia, China, and Iran, which are the main targets for imperialism.
It is also a crude and vague lie to use anonymous sources to blame foreign entities for these
types of things, which actually makes it an elegant argument for a simpleton as it is
difficult if not impossible to disprove.
Because the media is really owned and operated by so few people who all have a hive-mind
about money and power, the messages are consistent, even though ridiculous, and they resonate
with many of the readers who really ought to know better, but have become inured to the
damaging effects of the lies they have consumed for decades. Stories like these will keep
working for a long time. If one of the sources in the article reported 'Up is Down, Left is
Right!', there would be a wave of car accidents until they issued a retraction.
The Russians ( Putin / Lavrov) say ever so politely that the US is not agreement-capable.
I add that the US ( politicians, Wall Streeters, MSM, think tanks ) are:
-- not truth-capable;
-- not ethics-capable;
-- not shame-capable;
-- not honour-capable.
What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world, but loses his soul?
He turns into a ghoul without a soul, says I, a devil without human-ness!
How dare they call us deplorables when they are the despicables?
More than 50 former senior intelligence officials have signed on to a letter outlining
their belief that the recent disclosure of emails ... "has all the classic earmarks of a
Russian information operation."
Do American journalists actually believe it's still in Russia interest to re-elect Trump?
Washington-Kremlin relations have deteriorated rapidly under Trump.
Posted by: Et Tu | Oct 22 2020 9:35 utc | 9 -- "In America, Truth is a Foreign Agent and
World Peace is a threat to National Security."
Nice one... Meet Mr Truth, un-registered foreign agent !!! and Mr World Peace, national
security threat !!!
American leadership would not be so despicable IF they do not pretend to be "spreading
freedom / democracy" when they wreak their global malice.
They do not even care for their own people (covid19 fiasco, anyone?), but pretend to care
for the Chinese people so much they would regime-change the CCP; they pretend to care for the
Russian people so much they would sooner shoot Putin's plane from the sky; they pretend to
care for the Iranian people so much they block their access to covid19 medicines.
Here's a part of a comment I posted back in February 2020 that none of you took
seriously.
Posted by: Circe | Feb 28 2020 20:29 utc | 124:
The planet of extremely bad karma SATURN is moving into Bloomberg's sign, Aquarius, right
after mid-March and forming a square to Biden's sign, Scorpio. This is a very malefic
aspect.
People under these two signs, Aquarius and Scorpio ie Bloomberg and Biden will
experience obstacles, setbacks and challenges, create hidden enemies , and aging
will be accelerated and serious health issues could emerge.
So I was criticized for injecting astrology into that election thread, mostly by
AntiSpin.
Turns out as usual I hit the mark.
Bloomberg lost close to a BILLION dollars and failed badly in the primaries. That's what I
call a major setback. However, as of December after a 6-month retrograde into Capricorn,
Saturn is returning to Aquarius, so it ain't over for Bloomberg and things will get
complicated for Biden , for the U.S. and the rest of the world.
I also stated back then that nominating Joe Biden would be a greater risk for Dems than
nominating Bernie Sanders because Joe Biden was heading for serious astrological head winds
relating to something unseen at the time involving a serious family issue.
While I was certain that whatever the issue was would come to light and could affect him
in the Presidential campaign, I couldn't figure out the family aspect at the time, since he
appears to have a solid marriage and tragedy is in the rear view now.
Last night however it all suddenly became clear and I've come to the realization that I
was 100% right when I wrote that comment back in February 2020. Tonight I realized that the
family issue...is Hunter Biden!
I was sounding the alarm that something bad would come to light because Saturn was headed
into Aquarius, Biden's Home and Family sector squaring Biden's sign.
However, to make matters worse, it turns out that Hunter Biden is an Aquarian and Saturn
the karmic taskmaster is headed on a collision course to upend his life.
At the time I wrote the comment I obviously couldn't predict exactly what would unfold,
how or the precise timing, only that it would be bad and that's why I warned back then that
Democrats should have chosen Bernie. I believed Bernie could beat Trump and I was right,
because Trump is in total mental meltdown and self-destructing with his handling of the
pandemic.
Now even if Saturn will square Biden's Scorpio that's not to say that Biden won't still
win, but we are approaching a very bad full moon on October 31st. There is massive tension
building, subterfuge lurking and the situation is going to get ugly. A battle royal is
brewing. This is a powder keg moment.
Trump will not behave at the debate today. Must see t.v. With Obama's scorching speech
yesterday seething in Trump's brain, and his Iran stunt unravelling and ineffective at
distracting from the spotlight from Obama and the laptop bone clenched between his teeth;
he's a rabid dog fit to be tied. Give him a padded cell, already.
As for the U.S. and the world: The pandemic started with Saturn crossing Pluto's path in
Capricorn and entering full force into Aquarius in March when the world shut down.
So what will happen when karmic Saturn crosses Pluto again on it's way out of Capricorn
and enters Aquarius for the next 3 years?
Fasten your seat belts everyone...we're heading into major turbulence. There's so much
karmic tension gathering steam; it's very scary.
How much does it cost to get a trip to the moon?
I'll get back to sleazy Giuliani and his Pandora's box. There's too much to unpack there
than meets the eye. Just know that when circumstances appear too convenient-it's because they
are.
Trump's dirty play is a day late and a dollar short plus he's not playing with a full
deck. Must be one of those Covid long-term effects.
It's time...to get these scum-sucking, misery mongers out of the damn White House
already!
You know the US government is suffering from severe Alzheimer's disease when it claims that
Iran (of all nations) sent threatening emails to Democrat voters demanding that they vote for
a President who authorised the murder of a popular Iranian military general back in early
January this year.
Brian Kilmeade and morning crew run the fake Iranian emails story by former CIA station
Chief Daniel Hoffman.
Kabuki Actor Hoffman:
'[Uses opportunity to say Iranian Mantra] Iran has been attacking us for years, they have
attacked our shipping in the Gulf (???, that's a new one) blah-blah-blah.
'Iran and Russia are attacking our democracy because that is what they fear most about
America. Democracy would be the end of both regimes (Iran has no other motive to dislike the
U.S. such as us killing their top General, the Stuxnet virus, murderous sanctions, ...)'
So they hate us because of our freedoms, a classic.
Kabuki Actor Kilmeade:
'Can't we do something about this?' [note, the U.S. is the perpetual victim, never the
bully]
'Can't we pushback?' [The aggrieved victim, the U.S. is defending itself]
'Iran is doing this, Russia is sending bombers, can't we blow up an oil well?'
Kabuki Actor Kilmeade represents the entire degenerate U.S. public, unable to process
information that views another country as having rational motives or our Intel agencies of
being deceptive.
God, if you exist, You must hate this more than I do. How long?
All that rubbish is distraction. Discussing it is just playing to Borg's music.
They come up with so outlandish and jaw dropping crap that half he people thinks "it is so
outlandish it gotta be true, who would lie so much?" and other half that knows better is in
such a shock and disbelief that it needs some time to come to its senses and start tearing
apart the lie piece by piece BUT.... Time is lost, distraction worked and MSM/Borg come up
with next outrageous lie for next round. Russia, China, Navalny etc. etc.
And while marry go round Borg is doing it's deeds in dark while people is obsessing with
Trump's knickers.
Barack oblamblam held off until as long as he possibly could, a move most likely connected to
two realities, (1) not wanting to contradict what he, oblamblam said back in march "do not
underestimate Joe's ability to screw anything up" and (2) Oblamblam's desire not to be
found to be associated with sleepy joe's blatant corruption. Mud sticks n all that. Oblamblam
was much more subtle in lining up wedges to be trousered. eg. Try as people might they have
yet to uncover how a community worker turned prez found the dough to purchase a 45 acre
Martha's vineyard estate off a notorious billionaire and Oblambam is reluctant to do anything
which could prompt those questions,
Hence it wasn't until the 2020 election was mostly over that some DNC extortionists
managed to convince oblam to say a few words, or else, to the Philadelphia african american
males who chose to stay home on election day 2016.
Barack can claim 'he paid his dues' whilst keeping as much space as he can organise
between himself and crooked joe, who has already brought oblamblam's prezdency into disrepute
with the shameless & ugly ukraine rort that he and his bagman hunter had concocted.
There we mentioned the philly speech oh rabid, irrationally superstitious dembot.
Here's my prediction
Trump re-elected I fortell will mean more racist murdering thugs on the street. an guess what
they'l be In uniform and directly or indirectly trained by Israel.
And then there's the military presence on your streets -- you ain't seen nothing yet.
Wake the f up your gunna be massively oppressed by a fascist govenment ya skin couloir won't
matter, nore who you voted for. You already live in a one party dictatorship.
ie the elite. Face it your redundant as a human being replaced by a micro-chip.
Revolt I tell you revolt !!
The greater American public are about to become the next oppressed Palistinians ! oppressed
devalued and slowly distroyed. Like a frog in a heated pan.
You won't notice till it's to late will you ?
No really, will you ?
Journalism love's that high minded nonsense.
They write what they are paid to write.
Looking at the guardian wrt Assange
these clowns are beneath contempt.
Don't know if you are familiar with the box populi blog.
There a very good set of chapters from a book about journalist ethics.
i'm just surprised they haven't brought in venezuela and bolivia yet. that's supposed to be
sarcasm, but reality keeps outstripping sarcasm. i am actually worried they are ramping up
for a war in biden's first 100 days, either against iran or some serious provocation of
russia like provoking some incident in azerbaijan and blaming armenia. they're f/n batshit.
mark2 i think you're correct about more jackbooted government thugs on the street, but that's
gonna happen under either trump or crime bill joe/copmala. you're right about the israeli
training too, they trained cops in that kneeling on the throat technique. field tested on
palestinians.
Idiotic.
The united States was once a nest of excellence in nearly everything. Now it s a hub of naked
idiocy.
The Russians have nothing to fear from the US or Nato, except in the economy but they can fix
it. The Iranians have enough of what it takes to keep the Zio anglos away and at bay:
thousands of missiles to target Israel, Saudiland, a 25 year economic alliance program with
Beijing.
And clearly the time and opportunity where it was possible to still erase in a single coup
the Iranian military might is over.
"Breaking WaPo: The U.S. government has concluded that Iran is behind a series of threatening
emails arriving this week in the inboxes of Democratic voters, according to two U.S.
officials. https://washingtonpost.com/technology/202"
Posted by: librul | Oct 22 2020 12:52 utc | 22 When you hear, "Russians", just substitute in
your mind "witches", the weight of evidence is the same.
Absolutely correct. You win the thread.
Neither Iran nor Russia nor China give a rat's ass about the US election. There may be
literally thousands of private enterprise hackers who want to breach US election servers
precisely to get the Personal Identifying Information which is coin of the realm on the Dark
Web, but they couldn't care less about the election itself. It's physically impossible for
any country outside of the US to significantly influence the election in a country of 300
million people - and every country knows that. The only country that *doesn't* know that is
the US, which is why it spends scores and hundreds of millions of dollars - up to five
billion in Ukraine, allegedly - to influence foreign elections. That's the level of effort
needed to influence a foreign election more than the influence of the actual inhabitants of
that nation. But every time some private group in Russia launches an ad campaign for a couple
hundred thousand bucks tops, with zero effect on the US election, Putin gets blamed for some
plan to mastermind the overthrow of "democracy."
I rather liked Obama's speech If for no other reason than the tone was completely
different from the two candidates.
1. I'm tired of Trump's narcissism .
2. Can't stand Biden's fake 'I'm one of you'. He is corrupt, feels guilty about it, and
has to reassure us that he's Lunch Box Joe .
I've noticed this about Biden for a while, he conjures up these fake memories ...
'You know what I'm talking about because I've been on that park bench at noon when you only
have 20 minutes to eat your lunch because that whistle going to blow and you have to run
back to your Tuna canning station or lose your job and with that your health insurance,
car, and home.'
Okay this is not a literal quotation but it is a pattern and you know what I'm talking
about :-)
Pretzelatack @ 26
Yes to all you say their.
Re-reading my above comments they sound pretty harsh !
I am sorry, and do apologise !
It was part desperation and part morbid humour in the spirit of b's post.
Comparing Americans to a frog in pan may be a bit much !
I am in the U.K. we had a gen election one year ago !
I WAS THAT FROG IN A PAN.
Now I live in a pox ridden bankrupt banana republic run by a bunch of Israel bootlickers.
I don't go down well at party's.
And it's not superstition when the facts start to align with planetary motion.
How do you explain the Moon's effect on nature?
You think it's the only celestial body in the Solar System that influences life on Earth?
That cosmic order is inescapable. Astrology is thousands of years old dating back to the
Babylonians and has evolved through centuries of study and cannot, should not be dismissed as
mere superstition.
I'm not an expert at all, but I recognize order and higher authority when I see it and
believe me those planets are there for a reason and they rule everything. They're like
carrots and sticks (IMHO mostly sticks). Now who put them there and to what ultimate purpose
besides order and evolution is another matter.
I don't often bring it into a discussion, especially not to throw a discussion off topic,
except when I intuitively feel fate present in important events both personally and on a
universal scale.
This is a time of fated/karmic events, the pandemic being the most important (lesson) of
these.
I think a more appropriate title would be "Fascist Season" . . . Fascism has come of age here
in the land of the fee. The "intelligence agencies" create disinformation campaigns to
overthrow the elected President while the "justice department" et al withhold evidence and
fail to prosecute all the oligarchs and crooks who are busy censoring
information and preparing to rig and disrupt the
impending presidential election.
But technology and the "progressive" (pun intended) destruction of the US Constitution has
led the dumbed-down US masses (don't forget Canada and Australia lol) into a whole new world
of Orwellian lock-downs and wholesale economic destruction aimed at finishing off what was
left of the US middle class. Soon we will have our cash taken away and replaced with a
digital currency that can
always be taken away or tailored for limited use, subject to negative interest rates that it
cannot escape, etc. And all this is ushered in via
hyperinflation leading to a collapse of the bond and equities markets, and finally the
collapse of the US dollar (and all other Western fiat currencies).
The USA is so naive. They have been interfering in so many elections using money,
blackmail,CIA operations. There was no way for other countries with less means to do the same
to the USA. Now with social media they can, and they are absolutely right to take their
revenge for all the troubles they got into with the USA plotting to promote a pro-US
leader.
Now the battle is equal and the USA does not have the monopoly of interfering in other
countries election!
Tit for tat...
All these stories are risible. Note the struggle to clarify who these 'malign'
Régimes are attacking the US, and why.
Russia-R-R for Trump, but Iran-Ir-Ir for Trump doesn't quite hit the spot so now Iran is
trying to damage Pres. Trump (from one of the articles..) .. is Iran trying to promote the
election of Kamala Harris? What? Russia is for Trump and Iran against ?
The fall-back is a blanket, these evil leaders are trying to 'undermine democracy',
influence 'US voters', meddle in 'our freedom-loving' politics, etc.
The attempt to stir up the spectre of threatening enemies far off is a hackneyed ploy. In
the case of the USA, it is now melded with the promotion and control of planned internal
strife, with internal enemies being natives (not islamist terrorists who sneak in and are
under cover before erupting in murderous madness..) - Color Revolution Style.
-- BLM + Antifa haven't been active recently (or not in MSM top stories) as the election
is approaching. Such would be upping the Trump vote for "law-and-order."
(imho from far off..) Many in the US don't take any of this seriously, it is just
game-playing, false alarm, pretend concern.
"Oh wow, Iran is targetting Trump, did you know, real serious, did you hear, tell me is
Zoe-chick divorcing that creep Edmond, I want to know, did you have that interview with Gov.
X for the job? Is she hot? How much "
The credentialised class and the movers and shakers just roll their eyeballs, and the poor
are in any case stuck in a desperado cycle of struggle against misery, what is going on with
Putin / Iran / Xi is off the radar.
Vilification of China (hate hate hate); claimed by the media and the pundits and our
"Fearless Covid Conquering Leader" and all the good little parrots, to be the source of evil
itself... Scapegoat extraordinaire... Hacking and Cheating and Aggressing and exercising
Brutality towards its own citizens... The worst of the worst per our "intelligence" apparatus
(and blind ideologues). Existential threat numero uno.
But wait!
The US is being attacked! Attacked they say; by all of the "bad" guys simultaneously.
The forces of evil out there are broad and out to get us. They hate our (imagined)
freedoms.
Evidence (not):
Justice Department pushing Iran-connected charges in HBO hack, other cases
U.S. government concludes Iran was behind threatening emails sent to Democrats
U.S. intelligence agencies say Iran, Russia have tried to interfere in 2020 election
Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say
Invariably in all cases, The Voice of "Intelligence" (not bloody likely from ANY of this
crew) deeply intoned to impart the "certainty", neatly encapsulated in the words "highly
likely", delivered without a scrap of proof but loud, prominent, regular, mind numbing
pontification.
Trust me! We lie, We cheat, We steal; and that is just the tip of the iceberg.
The US, all on its own, engenders distrust within the population because the US and all
its political and Executive, and Legislative and Judicial and "intelligence" bureaucracies
are corrupt to the core... Worse, they make no bones about it if you pay attention. And
Partisanship is nothing but distraction because they are ALL corrupt and morally bankrupt;
without empathy, remorse, sense of guilt or shame.
It was the US itself that thought it could subjugate the world through its faux
"democratic" business practices and its claim of natural superiority... Its self declared
Rules of Order instead of adhering to and supporting consensus established International
LAW... Hegemon pompously declaring it has a RIGHT to Full Spectrum Dominance and slavish
obedience.
Not the Iranians, not the Russians, not the Chinese, not the CCP, not the North Koreans,
not the Venezuelans; none of them are disrupting, threatening or meddling in the US
elections.
If you believe what the morons are smearing across the public consciousness through every
communication medium possible you are a sucker... Totally disconnected any critical thinking
faculties that may have been present. The very definition of sheeple... baaaa! (the sound
drowns out reason and thought).
The rest of the World beyond NATO and Five Eyes isn't attacking the US or its
institutions. They have all been attacked every which way from Sunday BY the US and its
Satraps (targets of, victims of, and willing accomplices to our sophisticated excessively
funded and supported global protection racquet).
The US, our Government, always blames our designated and non-compliant, non-obeisant
existential threats for all the things we do to them.
And all this cacophony of alleged evil "attacks" from outside right now?
Look!!! Look!!! Over here!
Don't pay any attention to who and what decided to put us in the position we find
ourselves in and what we have done to vast swaths of the world's populations "over
there".
Now go vote for one of two degenerate teams, both of which are headed by supremely
unqualified psychopaths.
The CIA really needs a new playbook. The Russia/Iran thing is laughable to the rest of the
world, and to many 'Americans' as well. Unfortunately Partisans run the country, and those
folks are addicted to the Kool Aid of MAGA – just different versions.
This October is like an Advent Calendar of October Surprises with plenty of time still on
the clock for some great Golden Shower or Democratic child orgy deep fakes. Who the hell
knows at this point – the acceleration of events this year makes Future Shock look like
an Ambien commercial.
Trump is toast and good riddance. And sure Biden et al are war criminals and corrupt
creatures of the Swamp. The Establishment is a much easier target to resist vis a vis policy
than a crazy cretin without any policy but his own self-aggrandizement.
"Astrology believers tend to selectively remember predictions that turn out to be true,
and do not remember those that turn out false. Astrology has not demonstrated its
effectiveness in controlled studies and has no scientific validity.[6]:85;[11] The study,
published in Nature in 1985, found that predictions based on natal astrology were no better
than chance, and that the testing "...clearly refutes the astrological hypothesis."[10] "
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrology
As for getting voter US state voter databases, most states allow people to purchase part of a
voter's information. Other parts like birth dates remain private. But the publicly available
list is probably enough as it identifies party affiliation, voting history as when dates they
voted (not how they voted). All the other private information is more useful to identity
thieves and Indian scam centers. And as one poster noted, those databases like gold on dark
web.
As for email addresses that implies those must be acquired through party officials and
candidates off donor lists. Off hand I do not know that an email address is required to
register to vote--I seriously doubt it. I know that Bernie famously refused to give his donor
database to Hillary. The emails imply some sort of inside job or some false flag.
Just read the story on Truthout of voters in Alaska & Florida, and possibly Pennsylvania
and Arizona receiving threatening messages if they should vote against Trump. "We know you're
a Democrat and we have access to your voting records..." Metadata indicates servers located
in the kingdoms of Israel's new friends...
Well, I just went to the Board of Elections website for my county here in Ohio and I can,
with a few clicks, generate a report from their site of a county listing of voters filtered
in over a half-dozen ways - i.e. by Party affiliation and including addresses. Comes under
the heading of "Voter and Candidate Tools."
So some concoct a tale which blames Iran, Russia, etc. for information freely available
from your State's BOE? This information has always been available, but not exploited before
in this way by US neo Nazis.
So, even though your ballot is secret, intimidation is easy to engage in based solely on
Party affiliation of record. If Trump loses, should some people expect bricks through their
windows, or perhaps fire-bombings? Trump and his supporters are certainly ratcheting up the
apocalyptic messaging, working themselves into a frenzy - that is obvious and not even
debatable.
I never read Dante; which circle of hell are we entering now?
Everyone here knows I was 100% behind Bernie Sanders for the Presidency because I felt he was
the right person for these times, but the mass is dumb and blind. I agree with the comment I
read on the previous thread I think by someone called Horseman that portrays Bernie's goal as
moving the Dem Party to the Left and not sheepdogging, but recognizing the stakes involved
superceded Left purity.
At the same time I was totally against Biden because he is much more Zionist than Bernie,
therefore more corrupt, as Zionism is counter-evolutionary being inherently supremacist,
entitled, and undemocratic.
However, Trump is exponentially worse! He is a fascist Zionist and totally depraved. There
is a choice here of monumental significance. Short term loss for greater future gain.
Biden is very flawed, but I'm inclined to view a man who suffered multiple life-altering
tragedies to reach this point and who is grappling with embracing a son, Hunter, who probably
was destroying his life, than a narcissistic less than evolved baby-man pig with a god
complex who squandered life and daddy's money on material and artificial pursuit and has no
notion of humanity, as the only sane choice.
Yes, Joe Biden should face his flaws and answer for whatever corruption exists in him, but
that laptop issue should not be a reason to stop people from getting Trump, the most corrupt
President in my lifetime next to Bush OUT. That goal is paramount. This is 2nd to the
pandemic in fated events. If people do not make the right choices and learn something from
these events then let this planet devolve into hell because that will be what is deserved!
The stakes right now are astronomical and super-fated!
Don't blow a singular opportunity to get rid of that Fascist pig Trump over a laptop
that's really a Pandora's box being used by Shmeagol Gollum Giuliani as a trap to unleash
misery for years to come.
This is clearly the Deep State and imperial establishment spouting obvious nonsense in order
to discredit themselves and therefore to help in Trump's reelection bid! Henry Kissinger told
me so! What incredibly subtle and intricate plans they have!
Or... maybe it is just a bunch of incompetent baboons in the Deep State control room
randomly flipping switches and pulling levers in the desperate hopes that something,
anything, works.
Nah! This is all part of the Great Plan! It just seems like abject stupidity because we
cannot grasp its intricate complexities.
All these new threads are defaulting to election threads. Sorry, b.
But I'll bite.
In the case of a Biden victory, which do you think will happen first?:
1) Renewed hostilities w/ Assad in Syria leading to his violent ousting and thrusting the
west into violent confrontation w/ Russia...
Or...
2) Forcible entry into the Armenian/Azerbaijan conflict and establishing a no-fly
zone...
Or...
3) a combination of both and would throw us into a direct confrontation with either Russia
or Iran or both?
It looks like the demonizing of Iran is ramping up with the mail-threats telling dims to
vote Trump or else. Dims don't like hostile, foreign powers helping the Don and swaying
elections. It's a nice tip-off as to what Biden and the dim establishment might consent to
once Obama-era sycophants and technocrats move back in to the White House.
Seems to be the year of anniversaries; another's being celebrated today but not by the Outlaw
US Empire. China
& North Korea Celebrate 70th Anniversary of China's intervention in Outlaw US Empire's
invasion of Korea , which is how it's being portrayed, "China, N. Korea stand together
'for self-protection against US hegemony' like 70 years ago" reads the headline at the link.
To mark the anniversary, China has published an official
history , explaining its decision "To resist US aggression and aid Korea, China had no
choice but to fight a war;" the 3-volume work is The War to Resist US Aggression and Aid
Korea . From China's perspective, it defeated Outlaw US Empire forces; so, it's not
"forgotten" at all. Xi's using the occasion to give a major speech, the subject of which
hasn't been disclosed.
Just 12 days to go until the refusals to abide by the outcome day arrives. If one wants to
look, there's lots of illegal foreign influence happening but from sources that go
unmentioned: Corporations that have foreign owners, which most do, who provided campaign
contributions in any form to any entity associated with the election.
HeHeHe!!! The first bits of Putin's appearance at the Valdai Club today
are being published . In a jab back at those accusing Russia of interfering in elections
and such Putin said:
"Strengthening our country and looking at what is happening in the world, in other
countries, I want to say to those who are still waiting for the gradual demise of Russia: in
this case, we are only worried about one thing -- how not to catch a cold at your
funeral."
There's more, although a transcript has yet to be published.
There's a thread right before this one on International Events. Why don't you go spew your
poisonous Trump Kool-Aid there instead of polluting with Trumpian-laced propaganda here?
I know-I know, Election threads raise the common sense factor further and that leads to
Trump's demise, so you can't help but rush in to correct that dangerous shift. Why
don't you do something equally meaningless like pounding sand down a rat hole?
After the Russiagate fiasco I thought the Americans had learned their lesson, but it seems I
was wrong.
Honestly, this may be the beginning of an irreversible process of ideological polarization
of the American Empire.
The thing is it's one thing to wage propaganda warfare against a foreign enemy to your
domestic audience: the foreign enemy will be destroyed either way, so they will never be able
to tell their version of the story, plus the domestic audience can give itself the luxury of
living the lie indefinitely as it doesn't affect their daily lives. Plus they'll directly
benefit from the conquest of a foreign enemy, e.g. cheaper gas to your car after the
destruction and conquest of Iraq; the abundance in the shelves of Walmarts after the
subjugation of China, and so on.
It's a completely different story when you wage propaganda warfare against yourself: the
Trump voter knows he/she didn't vote for Trump because of Russian influence, while the Hilary
Clinton/Joe Biden voter knows he/she didn't vote in either of them because of Chinese
influence. But each part will believe the half of the lie that benefits them against the
other, creating a vicious cycle of mistrust between the two halves.
Meanwhile, the American economy (capitalism) continues to decline. Time is running up:
It was a shock-and-awe moment when lawmakers gave the package a thumbs up. Yet in the
months since, the planned punch has not materialized.
The Treasury has allocated $195 billion to back Fed lending programs, less than half of
the allotted sum. The programs supported by that insurance have made just $20 billion in
loans, far less than the suggested trillions.
The programs have partly fallen victim to their own success: Markets calmed as the Fed
vowed to intervene, making the facilities less necessary as credit began to flow again.
So, the very announcement of the Fed it would lend indefinitely and unconditionally made
such loans unnecessary!
I didn't like it at the beginning, but the term "Late Capitalism" is growing on me.
MSM pushing the the Iran angle shows that they are more anti-Iran than anti-Trump.
What effect would Iran intend by sending fake threatening emails from right-wing guns nuts
to Democrats? I doubt it would discourage those Democrats from voting (for Biden), and I
doubt Iran would think it would. The only effect it would have is to increase the fear,
distrust, and disgust Democrats already have for those groups - which is "sowing discord",
not "meddling with elections".
The Trump regime pushes this because it makes Trump look good & makes Iran look bad
(at least the way it's been framed). MSM generally doesn't like Trump, but prints this
because hyping fear & loathing toward Iran matters more to them than dumping Trump.
Great that they are working on it, I was taking notes but kind of lousy its not easy to
listen and write at the same time. Started kind of nervous, but right now it is Putin at his
most relaxed and eloquent.
It is interesting to see how Putin is way more at ease when answering journalist's
questions than when exposing his part of the event. Right now they asked him about his image,
punk, criminal etc etc. Answer: my function is the main thing, and I do not take it
personally, now the chinese will ask.
In case the truth gets lost in your purposely misleading translation. This hare-brained
scheme was cooked up by Trump and his newly-appointed right-hand bootlicker RATcliffe, at DNI
and delivered to the American people by the latter as a desperate distraction minutes after
Obama smacked down Trump on every air wave.
It immediately gave off an offensive odor, as I stated previously, of Trump turd floating
in golden toilet.
And that's why Chris Wray looked so awkward and uneasy behind that RAT.
Three hours of serious talking about any and all world problems. I wonder how long Lunch Box
Joe could hold on his own. The orange man probably could do it, but just talking about
himself. The US need someone like VVP.
I ought to listen while also reading the Russian close-captioning so I can rebuild my
Russian language facility and catch the body language messages, but I still need to read/hear
it all in English. As for his response to questions, IMO Putin knows what to expect from
media reporters but not from other experts in the audience whose questions are usually more
complex. Then there's the need to remain tactful, although there are times when he does need
to get indignant, as with the issue of illegal sanctions that harm nations's abilities to
deal with the pandemic--the utter immorality and inhumanity of the Outlaw US Empire that
never gets the attention it deserves.
What would Iran gain by scaring lower end of the spectrum Democrats into voting for Trump,
is that desirable for Iran?
Ah ... but it was a pump fake, Iran thought that people would think that the emails were
genuine, arrest a few of the Proud Boys and this would hurt Trump by associating him with a
domestic terror group. Not only is this scenario convoluted but it is extremely risky because
it might scare a handful of impressionable Democrats into voting for Trump and any
investigation would uncover hacking of some kind.
Most likely suspect, Israel. They have the means to hack and the contacts in the U.S. to
suggest Iranian origin.
As Putin said, Russia was able to find "balance" in its reaction to COVID; and as with China
but unlike the Outlaw US Empire, it put the safety of the Russian people first and foremost.
The Empire is experiencing yet another big outbreak nationwide and has yet to put the
interests of its citizenry first.
Is Circe deranged?
I don't know but I doubt if she spends trillions of dollars each year on murdering inocent
men women and children.
Mmmmm
Perhaps to people living in a ''loony bin'' (America) people outside must seem quite strange
!
I live near Glastonbury finest bunch of people you'd ever meet. Not known for genocidel
tendency's.
Any ways Iran, Russia interfering in America's elections -- -- - pure paranoid delusion
(weaponised)
The Mighty Wurlitzer has
begun to sound more like the New York Philharmonic tuning up while riding the Empire State Express
as it crashes endlessly into Grand Central Station.
Dear Circe, each language is a world view, I wish I had the resources available today when
I was younger, I would speak as many as possible, I consider that with the means available
today speaking half a dozen would be no problem at all. You have the blessing and the curse
of speaking english, so no need for anything else, but that is your problem, you are so
relaxed about it that you're not able to spell correctly the name of one of your best known
cities, San Francisco, with a c before the s.
Again, come up with something else, the bot label is as primitive as your knowledge of your
own language and geography.
kiwiklown@14: They do not even care for their own people (covid19 fiasco, anyone?), but pretend to care
for the Chinese people so much they would regime-change the CCP; they pretend to care for the
Russian people so much they would sooner shoot Putin's plane from the sky; they pretend to
care for the Iranian people so much they block their access to covid19 medicines.
Well said, although rather sad! The last pretension reveals exactly the mentality that was
behind the genocide upon the Native American centuries ago, resorting to tactics such as
passing out smallpox infected blankets, dispensation of whisky, as well as outright
slaughters of course.
Gruffy @ 68
Maybe but she martches to a different drum beat. Not the trump drum beat of war that you
follow, and will lead you all over the cliff.
Don't get me wrong ! You'd have to squeeze my nuts pretty dam hard (tears in my eyes) before
I'd vote for Biden.
But you must know two things -- -
A. Trump is bat shit crazy and has his finger on the button whilst the Dems are money mad and
there is know profit in Armageddon.
And
B. I'm antifa my hobby is smashing the filthy fascists !!
Who's streets ? Our streets !!
Without mentioning its name, Putin in his speech pinned the tail on
the donkey regarding TrumpCo's pandemic failure:
"The values of mutual assistance, service and self-sacrifice proved to be most important.
This also applies to the responsibility, composure and honesty of the authorities, their
readiness to meet the demand of society and at the same time provide a clear-cut and
well-substantiated explanation of the logic and consistency of the adopted measures so as not
to allow fear to subdue and divide society but, on the contrary, to imbue it with confidence
that together we will overcome all trials no matter how difficult they may be.
"The struggle against the coronavirus threat has shown that only a viable state can act
effectively in a crisis ..." [My Emphasis]
Yes, it didn't begin with Trump, but he sure did accelerate the process of making the
domestic part of the Outlaw US Empire dysfunctional, which for me makes this "silly season"
even worse than usual.
I view this as shit-against-the-wall policy. You throw it up there. Sometimes it sticks,
sometimes it doesn't.
This is how lowly vermin do foreign policy nowadays.
Remember the story -- first reported as Russians, then Iranians -- paying bounty to the
Talibs to kill (as if they needed motivation) American soldiers?
Well, in that case, I guess neither story really stuck, but you see where I'm going with
this. It's all shite
And silly season continues with self-proclaimed anti-fascists who don't know what fascists
are.
Fascism doesn't necessarily have anything to do with race or religion. Is there any racial
difference between Ukropians and Russians? Fascism is simply a tool that capitalists use to
smash class consciousness. Literally any differences can be used by the capitalists to direct
the violent mobs at their victims, even differences that are completely imaginary and don't
really exist except in the group mind of the mob.
Now I wonder... who is it that will attack someone for saying "But ALL lives
matter!" ? Who is smashing class consciousness?
And this is why the USA is turning into a failed state and Russia isn't:
"Nevertheless, I am confident that what makes a state strong, primarily, is the
confidence its citizens have in it . That is the strength of a state. People are the
source of power , we all know that. And this recipe doesn't just involve going to the
polling station and voting, it implies people's willingness to delegate broad authority to
their elected government, to see the state, its bodies, civil servants, as their
representatives – those who are entrusted to make decisions, but who also bear full
responsibility for the performance of their duties .
"This kind of state can be set up any way you like. When I say 'any way,' I mean that what
you call your political system is immaterial. Each country has its own political culture,
traditions, and its own vision of their development. Trying to blindly imitate someone else's
agenda is pointless and harmful. The main thing is for the state and society to be in
harmony .
"And of course, confidence is the most solid foundation for the creative work of the
state and society. Only together will they be able to find an optimal balance of freedom and
security guarantees ." [My Emphasis]
What a brilliant collection of words emphasizing the absolute requirement for the state to
do its utmost to support and develop its human capital--its citizens--while also saying
citizens have their own duty to ensure the quality of the state, which means installing
representatives that will work for them and promote their interests first and foremost since
they are the backbone of the state. Don't feed and care for the citizenry as in the USA and
you'll have a corrupt, feeble state when it comes to keeping itself strong. And IMO the
primary difference that's making Russia stronger while the USA atrophies is that Russia
listens to its people and genuinely cares for and acts in their interests while in the USA
the demands of the citizenry have fallen on deaf ears for decades, regardless the political
party running the government.
Gruffy is trying to conflate perpetrator as opposed to the victim/ victems !
Classic -- -
US geo-politics.
Blame shifting fascist tactic.
Learned far right tactic.
Or
Psychopathic projection.
Example -- --
US attacks Iran &Russia but blames them for attacking The US.
Also Gruffy I note how you side step a point well made by
Asking a deliberately distracting question. Yawn
"Blame shifting" absolutely is part of smashing class consciousness. Shift the blame
for people's difficulties from capitalism to various parts of the working class. Those who
participate violently in this process are fascists and perpetrators. Of course, they are also
victims because they are destroying their own class consciousness. Class consciousness is
necessary if they are ever to be able to address the real issues causing them hardship.
When the question and answers segment comes online it is worth reading his opinion about
the Karabakh conflict and how it is a very difficult situation for Russia since both
countries involved, Armenia and Azerbaijan are part of a common family. The question implied
that Russia would unequivocally side with Armenia based on religion, to which Putin answered
that 15% of Russia population professes the islamic faith and that he considers Azerbaijan a
country as close to Russia as Armenia, with over two million nationals from each of the
warring countries living in Russia and as part of a very influential and productive
community.
Interesting too his take on Turkey, admitting that there are a lot of disagreements Putin
had good words for Erdogan admitting that he is independent and that he is someone able to
uphold his word, the Turk Stream project, it was agreed upon and completed, compared to the
europeans to whom he did not spare in his almost contemptuous words insinuating their lack of
sovereignty.
Gruffy error !!
In this context the 'mob'
Is trump followers.
The thugs in uniform.
The proud boys.
The US forces abroad and at home.
Gruffy 'you' ARE the mob.
I feel you watched to many cowboy films portraying native Americans as the bad guys! It
shows.
I won't be replying more. as I see your very shabby diversionary tactic. Nice try though. We
see you !! What you are and what you do.
Thanks for your reply! Even before the Q&A Putin skewers both the Empire and EU in
this paragraph:
"Genuine democracy and civil society cannot be imported.' I have said so many times. They
cannot be a product of the activities of foreign 'well-wishers,' even if they 'want the best
for us.' In theory, this is probably possible. But, frankly, I have not yet seen such a thing
and do not believe much in it. We see how such imported democracy models function. They are
nothing more than a shell or a front with nothing behind them, even a semblance of
sovereignty. People in the countries where such schemes have been implemented were never
asked for their opinion, and their respective leaders are mere vassals. As is known, the
overlord decides everything for the vassal . To reiterate, only the citizens of a
particular country can determine their public interest." [My Emphasis]
And that "particular country" is one where both the citizens and the government share
"confidence" in each other such that they work in "harmony." Thus the #1 goal of the Outlaw
US Empire to sow chaos within nations so such confidence and harmony can't be established;
and if they are, then destroyed.
No one has ever lied to American people more than the American regime and her terrorizing
intelligence community organization, Snowden is the living proof of this . Anyone still alive
and living on this planet if it ever believed a word on anything coming out of the USG not
only is a fool and a total idiot but his/her head must be seriously checked. Regardless of
their party affiliations they have no shame of lying cheating steeling those United
oligarchy' Secretary of State is the proof that.
This poster is on neither "side" . More like Putin looking in pain over Azerbaijan and
Armenia killing each other at the prompting of some third party that doesn't care about
either of them. This poster is neither faux left nor right wing; however, this poster's
grandmother was Cherokee. There is no anger directed your way for your failure to understand,
though.
If Americans had any backbone they would be on the streets protesting about this sham
election prior to the election, of false choice no choice.
You earn your democracy or you loose your democracy.
Iran, Russia bashing ! Just how low have you people sunk.
No hind sight, no insight and no foresight !
No hope. Spineless.
Totally weird! You all, please get behind re-electing Trump. He is doing such a good job of
destroying the US empire and its pretensions. If you are really a leftist, this is a GOO:-D
thing!
The alternative is to vote Independent or Green but they don't have a chance right
now.
Walking only 3 miles on Wilshire Blvd in Los Angeles , going west I have counted 47 homeless
(male,females,wht,black,Asian)asking for handouts. These lost soles are the ones who have
paid the price for the for ever wars to secure the Israel' realm,
The propose of yesterday's security show at FBI was to convince the public that all negative
comments and cretics coming their way by internet blogs, email , media etc. is not really
from disfranchised Americans public, but rather foreign countries operation that they do not
like our democracy and way of life, It was solely meant to make people not to subscribe and
believe what negativity they hear or read on US( non existing)democracy ,
This is a cheap standard operation by totalitarian regimes.
53
That money went to the ESF,what else do you think is levitating stocks and bonds ?
You assumed wrongly, but Kudlow let slip they(ESF) were broke and actually stated the money
was going to them in a presser.
I dunno why I'm bothering to do this because astrology is such a lame easily disproven
superstition that gets by because there are just so many con artists making predictions that
occasionally some must be correct - the stopped clock effect, but here goes.
The moon's effect on our planet's oceans is proven to be caused by a known phenomenon,
gravity. These stars whose positions we are told influence our human lives (just another
anthrocentric load of bulldust what about beings on other planets?) are thousands of light
years away from earth, meaning when the con-artists draw up their star charts or WTF they
call 'em, they are looking at formations that happened thousands of years ago - all different
depending on a particular star's distance from earth.
Claiming to be able to predict anything rational from such a mish mash of incorrect data is
risible, sad really and goes much to explain the house dembot's mania.
As for oblammer in Miami? I guess the dnc know where quite a few oblammer bodies are
buried.
My view is changing, Biden is so crooked that even though if he wins, the corporate media
will try hard to leave him alone, but he's just too clumsy, so that some dems are going to
side with the rethugs to impeach him and fast, however that may be what the oligarchy is
counting on, as that brings bad karmala harris to the fore, a women so unpopular with dem
rank and file she withdrew from the primary before any votes were cast, how's that for
'democracy'.
This is the real issue, both dem & rethug prez candidates are crooks through and
through, if the dems win, then the spotlight the corporate media shone on orangeutan will be
turned off. At least some of trump's worst rorts were stopped by a fear of being found out,
but if the dems win dopey joe will have no such constraint - until he does something so over
the top eg kick off nuclear war, that the media finally wakes up. too late but at least now
they're awake.
Posted by: vinnieoh | Oct 22 2020 16:04 utc | 45 If Trump loses, should some people expect
bricks through their windows, or perhaps fire-bombings?
That is the threat. If either side loses, there will be massive civil unrest - at least
it's very likely that is (part of) "the plan" - whatever the plan actually is. In any event,
plan or not, it's predictable. Most of the preppers I follow on Youtube are urging everyone
to stock up on food and water because there's a good chance that everyone will be back on
movement restrictions of some sort, if not full-on martial law, within the next couple
months. As I said before, this country is going to start looking like Turkey or Italy in the
70's when the Grey Wolves and the Red Brigades were terrorizing those countries. It may not
be "civil war", but it's likely to be uglier than what happened this summer.
There will be cries of joy in the streets and maybe some celebratory looting, all from the
urban left.
Trump's supporters might assemble peacefully in a very sparse manner, but I would bet most
would simply take the newly alotted time from the Biden-victory to prep and ready a little
more before the real fireworks begin. Violence would only erupt from the urban left attacking
those demonstrations.
Real men are lying in wait. The city is not their playground any longer.
Posted by: Debsisdead | Oct 22 2020 11:21 utc | 19 -- "Barack can claim 'he paid his dues'
whilst keeping as much space as he can organise between himself and crooked joe, who has
already brought oblamblam's prezdency into disrepute with the shameless & ugly ukraine
rort that he and his bagman hunter had concocted."
Thanks for your astute observations. Am learning much.
A compromised man never escapes blackmail: he is but a tool in the hands of his owners. It
is not IF, but WHEN he will be used / abused. Over and over again, like a banker's boot
stomping on his arrogant face.
But then, who is to say that Obanger Obummer was unaware of his VP, that Basement-Biding
Bidet Biden's 'arrangements' for wealth accretion? And more (there is always more), who is to
say that Obanging Ohumming gets NO share therefrom at some 'convenient' time?
Evil thinks himself clever to hide in the dark, yet lives in daily fear of the light.
Thusly Obanging Ohummer's calculations that you noted above, and his dark demeanour these
days. He knows he is walking on a knife edge, with a sword hanging over his head, and a
safety net (those 17 intelligence agencies?) that can turn into a fowler's snare (sorry,
mixed metaphors!)
Yet, looking at the happier demeanour (she used to scowl all through 2017/2018) on that
shallow face called Michelle Ohummer, we can guess that she thinks they have escaped clean
with their 'rewards of office'.
Christian J. Chuba @17 asked, "How long?" I ask, how does an immoral leadership ever going
to turn moral? When does America get the leadership that she deserves?
@71 karlof1 - "only a viable state can act effectively in a crisis" - Putin
What a brilliant equation from Putin. Even more penetrating and useful than the formerly
existing observation that socialist-style societies have performed best in response to the
virus. Putin's criterion cuts exactly to the essence of the thing.
What the US has demonstrated from the virus response is that it is not a viable state. The
benchmark now exists. Thanks for bringing it over.
I have a friend of Cherokee ancestry. She told me how once she was speaking with an elder
woman of the tribe, and described herself as "one-eighth Cherokee".
The old woman shook her head and said, "The Cherokee spirit cannot be diluted."
Should any here be interested, Wikipedia has aa extensive listing of governmental scandals
for the 20th and 21st century administrations. Note the number of executive, legislative and
judicial scandals for each administration. Note also the volume of scandals as
administrations go from Franklin D. Roosevelt through to D.J. Trump for both executive and
legislative branches. The political parties of the malfeasant are of interest as well -
trending can be discerned, maybe, for the observant.
I'd have more hope for Russia if the Russian ruling class weren't so obsessed with the
West and didn't send their children to Western (woke) schools, etc.
theallseeinggod , 7 hours ago
They're not doing that well, but they're not repeating many of the west's mistakes.
Normal , 5 hours ago
Now the West has rules only for poor people.
Helg Saracen , 6 hours ago
Advice to Americans (for the sake of experiment): prohibit lobbying in US and the right of
citizens with dual citizenship to hold public office in US. I assure - you will be surprised
how quickly Russians go from non-kosher to kosher for Americans and how American politicians,
the media will convince Americans of this at every intersection. :) Ha ha ha
Nayel , 5 hours ago
If the [Vichy] Left in America weren't so determined to project their own Bolshevik
leanings on to a possible great ally that their ideology now fears, Russia would be just
that: a great ally that could help America shake the Bolsheviks that have infiltrated the
American government and plan the same program their Soviet forefathers once held over
Russia...
Arising 2.0 , 1 hour ago
Western zionist controlled propaganda reminds me of Mohamed Ali- he used to talk up the
******** so much before a fight that when the time came to fight the opponent was usually
traumatised or confused. Until Ali met with Joe Frazier (Russia) who didn't fall for all the
pre-fight BS.
ThePinkHole , 39 minutes ago
Time for a pop quiz! Name the two countries below:
Country A - competency, attention to first principles, planning based on reality,
consistency of purpose, and unity of execution.
Country B - incompetency, interfering in everything everywhere, planning based on hubris
and sloppy assumptions, confusion, and disunity.
(Source: Adapted from Patrick Armstrong)
foxenburg , 3 hours ago
This one is always good for a laugh....the Daily Telegraph's Con Coughlin explaining in
2015 how Putin will fail in Syria...
We have all this talk of the 'Ruskies' when in fact it is not the ordinary Russian people
but rather a geopolitical power struggle. The ordinary US citizen or European just wants to
maintain their liberty and be able to profit from their endeavours. The rich and powerful
globalists who hide behind their military are the ones that play these games. I am no friend
of Putin but equally I am no friend of our own political establishment that have been
captured by Wall Street. I care about Main Street and as the US dollar loses its privilege
there will be real pain to share amongst our economies. The last thing we need is for the
elites of the Western alliance to profit with cold/hot wars on the backs of ourselves.
Having been behind the iron curtain as a young Merchant Navy Officer I found ordinary
citizens fine and even organized football matches with the local communist parties. People
have the same desires and aspirations and whether rich or poor we should respect each others
cultures and territories. http://www.money-liberty.com/gallery/Predictions-2021.pdf
You would be justified in thinking that the various news conferences put on by US law
enforcement and intelligence officials in which foreign actors – Russia, China and Iran
are the usual suspects – are accused of meddling in all things American are little more
than a giant practical joke, a parody of how a government should behave, instead of the damning
indictment of reality that they are.
The most recent iteration of this embarrassing spectacle took place on Wednesday evening,
during a hastily convened press conference suspiciously timed to coincide with former president
Barack Obama's inaugural stump speech in support of Democratic presidential candidate Joe
Biden.
Normally, the citation of such coincidences would relegate any subsequent analysis to the
rabbit hole of conspiracy theory. However, we do not live in normal times. The press conference
was convened by the Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe, who was in turn
accompanied by the Director of the FBI, Christopher Wray.
Ratcliffe has come under fire from Congressional Democrats for his
selective declassification of documents pertaining to allegations of Russian involvement in
the 2016 US presidential campaign. Former CIA director John Brennan, who was the subject of
some of the leaked documents, accused Ratcliffe of releasing them to
"advance the political interests" of President Donald Trump ahead of the November 3
election.
The declassification caper was followed by Ratcliffe's
unsolicited intervention regarding the acquisition by the FBI of computer hard drives
allegedly belonging to Joe Biden's son, Hunter. Ratcliffe declared that the contents of the
drives were not part of a Russian disinformation campaign and thereby drew the ire of
Democrats, who view the sordid computer story as a smear campaign against the former vice
president.
The October 21 press conference followed in the path of Ratcliffe's prior interventions, and
appeared to be little more than an insufficiently sourced allegation wrapped in highly
politicized conclusions.
Ratcliffe claimed the US intelligence community had " confirmed that some voter
registration information has been obtained by Iran, and separately, by Russia ." This was
the gist of the press conference, and it added virtually nothing to the
statement released by Ratcliffe in August in which he noted that the US intelligence
community was " primarily concerned about the ongoing and potential activity by China,
Russia, and Iran ."
What made Ratcliffe's announcement even less spectacular was the fact that the data he
accused Iran and Russia of stealing was publicly available, leading some anonymous intelligence
officials to speculate that the hacking operations were little more than an effort to avoid
paying the fees associated with accessing this data. As far as crimes go, this one was
eminently forgettable.
Ratcliffe noted that the US officials " have already seen Iran sending spoofed emails
designed to intimidate voters, incite social unrest, and damage President Trump ,"
referring to a scheme alleged to have been implemented by Iran, using this information,
to
disseminate emails to potential voters claiming to be from the controversial Proud Boys
organization, that threatened physical violence unless the recipient voted for Trump in the
coming election.
The purpose of this scheme appears to be less about actually changing votes (voting is done
in secret, so the sender of the letter would have no way of confirming an outcome, thereby
negating the threat) and more about undermining confidence in the electoral process as a whole.
Both Iran and the Proud Boys have denied any involvement in the letter writing campaign.
This latest incursion by the US intelligence community into the topic of election
interference by outside powers has been loudly condemned by the Democrats, with the House
Homeland Security Committee, chaired by Mississippi Democrat Bennie Thompson, tweeting "
Ratcliffe has TOO OFTEN politicized the Intelligence Community to carry water for the
President ."
But Ratcliffe's actions only continue in the vein of a history of electioneering by the US
intelligence community during contentious presidential elections. Much of the Democrats'
current ire against Ratcliffe stems from his exposing documents that point to similar
politically motivated interventions by John Brennan and others during the 2016 election,
ostensibly for the purpose of undermining the campaign of then-candidate Trump.
The fact is, what passes for domestic US politics is virtually impossible to manipulate by
outside agencies. The effort by
Cambridge Analytica to predict voting preferences in 2016 by accessing the confidential
online data of millions of Americans has been shown to have been spectacularly ineffective, and
it exceeded by some way the sophistication and data collection activities attributed to foreign
powers such as Russia, China, and Iran.
The mind of the American voter is influenced by a wide variety of inputs that are highly
individualized and, in many instances, virtually unquantifiable. The notion that a
sophisticated data mining organization such as Cambridge Analytica, or the intelligence
services of any of those three nations, could succeed in doing over the course of months what
American political organizations have been struggling to achieve over two-plus centuries is not
only laughable, but insulting.
Yet the level of domestic political insecurity that exists today is such that both political
parties, lacking confidence in their own inherent messaging capability, have succumbed to the
psychosis of political victimhood, blaming others for their own inherent failures. By allowing
the work of the US intelligence community to be used as a foil in this self-destructive blame
game, a succession of US intelligence professionals, led by John Brennan, James Clapper, James
Comey, Richard Grenell, John Ratcliffe, and others, have turned the once respected profession
of intelligence into a politicized joke.
In this, however, it is in good company, joined by both political parties, the US media and,
frankly speaking, the US electorate. American democracy is a mirror image of the nation it
purports to serve, and, at the moment, the reflection displayed is a thoroughly tragic one.
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author
and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
Is this 50 former Intel officials or 50 former national security parasites? Real Intel
officials should keep quite after retirement. National security parasites go to politics and
lobbying. One telling sign that a particular parson is a "national security parasite" is his
desire to play "Russian card"
From comments: "Did the 50 former intelligence officials find the Iraqi weapons of mass
destruction yet?"
Hours before Politico
reported the existence of a letter signed by '50 former senior intelligence officials' who say
the Hunter Biden laptop scandal "has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information
operation" - providing "no new evidence," while they remain "deeply suspicious that the Russian
government played a significant role in this case," Tucker Carlson obliterated their (literal)
conspiracy theory .
According to the Fox News host, he's seen 'nonpublic information that proves it was Hunter's
laptop ,' adding " No one but Hunter could've known about or replicated this information ."
" This is not a Russian hoax. We are not speculating ."
TUCKER: "This afternoon, we received nonpublic information that proves it was Hunter's
laptop. No one but Hunter could've known about or replicated this information. This is not a
Russian hoax. We are not speculating." pic.twitter.com/cl2ktdmdVc
Meanwhile, the Delaware computer repair shop owner who believes Hunter dropped off three
MacBook Pros for data recovery has a signed work order bearing Hunter's signature . When
compared to the signature on a document in his paternity suit, while one looks more formal than
the other, they are a match.
Going back to the '50 former senior intelligence officials' and their latest Russia
fixation, one has to wonder - do they think Putin was able to compromise Biden's
former business associate , Bevan Cooney, who gave investigative journalist Peter Schweizer
his gmail password - revealing that Hunter and his partners were engaged in an
influence-peddling operation for rich Chinese who wanted access to the Obama
administration?
Did Putin further hack Joe Biden in 2011 to make him take a meeting with a Chinese
delegation with ties to the CCP - arranged by Hunter's group, two years they secured a massive
investment of Chinese money?
The implications boggle the mind.
Here's the clarifying sentences from the '50 former senior intelligence officials' that
exposes the utter farce of it all:
While the letter's signatories presented no new evidence , they said their national
security experience had made them "deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a
significant role in this case" and cited several elements of the story that suggested the
Kremlin's hand at work.
"If we are right," they added, "this is Russia trying to influence how Americans vote in
this election, and we believe strongly that Americans need to be aware of this."
"Hunter Biden's laptop is not part of some Russian disinformation campaign."
And then there's the fact that no one from the Biden campaign has yet to deny any of the
'facts' in the emails. lay_arrow jin187 , 2 hours ago
Totally ridiculous. This ******** beating around the bush for both sides pisses me off.
Dump all the laptop contents on Wikileaks if it's real. Let the people sort it out. If you
say it's not real, prove it. If Biden wants me to believe it's not real, then stand behind a
podium, and say clear as day into a pile of cameras that's it's all a forgery, and that
you've done nothing wrong.
Instead we have Giuliani swearing he has a smoking gun, but as far as I can tell he's just
pointing his finger underneath his shirt. Biden on the other hand, keep using weasel words to
imply it's fake, but never denies it outright. It's almost like he's trying to hedge his bet
that no one will manage to prove it's real before he gets into office, and makes it
disappear.
Roacheforque , 7 hours ago
To play the "Russian Card" yet again should be beyond embarrassing. An insult to the
intelligence of anyone with an IQ over 80. And so it's harmful to the left wingnut
derangeables. Like Assad's chemical weapons and Saddam's WMDs, it is now code for pure
********. Not even code, just more like a signal.
A signal that say's "guilty as charged - we got nothin' but lies and BS over here".
East Indian , 4 hours ago
An insult to the intelligence of anyone with an IQ over 80.
They know their supporters wont find this insulting.
Kayman , 4 hours ago
@vulvishka.
538 ? North Korea has better propaganda.
Don't forget to go all in, like you did with Hillary.
Antedeluvian , 2 hours ago
Unfortunately, some very bright people are sucked into the conspiracy theory. I know one.
Very bright lawyer. She says, "I still think there is substantive evidence of Russian
collusion." I can point to a sky criss-crossed with chemtrails (when you see these
"contrails" crossing at the same altitude, this is one sure clue these are not from regular
passenger jet traffic) and she refuses to look up. She KNOWS I am an idiot (a PhD scientist
idiot at that) because I get news and analysis on the web from sites that just want to sell
me tee shirts and coffee mugs (well, she is partly right there!) whereas she gets her news
from MSNBC, a venerable and trustworthy news source.
4DegreesOfSeparation , 6 hours ago
More Than 50 Former Intel Officials Say Hunter Biden Smear Smells Like Russia
"If we are right," the group wrote in a letter, "this is Russia trying to influence how
Americans vote."
DescendantofthePatriots , 7 hours ago
That ****, James Clapper, signed his name at the top of this list.
Known liar, saboteur, and sneak.
The cognitive dissonance in our country is astounding. The fact that they would take these
people's opinion over hard fact is astounding.
No wonder why we're sliding down the steep, slippery slope.
strych10 , 8 hours ago
So... let me get this straight.
50, that's 10 times five, fifty former intelligence officials are going with a convoluted
narrative about a ludicrously complicated Russian Intelligence disinformation campaign
involving planted laptops and at least half a dozen patsies when the two words "crack
cocaine" explain the entire thing?
I'm not sure what's more terrifying; That these people think everyone else is dumb enough
to believe this or that they're actually retired intelligence officials
.
Who the actual **** is running this ****show? The bastard child of Barney Fife and
Inspector Clouseau?
Seriously, "Pink Panther Disinformation Operation" is more believable at this point.
Someone Else , 9 hours ago
This needs to get out, because a FAVORITE method of the Deep State, Democrats and the
media (but I repeat myself) is to parade some sort of a stupid letter with a bunch of
signature hoping to look impressive but that really don't mean a damn thing.
Notre Dame graduates against the Supreme Court nominee, Intelligence agents alleging
collusion, former State Department operatives against Trump. Its grandstanding that has been
overdone.
moneybots , 8 hours ago
The letter by 50 former intelligence officials is itself, disinformation.
otschelnik , 8 hours ago
Remember when Weiner's attorney turned over Huma's home laptop to SDNY/FBI with all of
Shillary's emails, and the FBI sat on it for a month and then Comey deep sixed them without
even looking at them?
So now the FBI subpeona'd Hunter's laptop and burried it? Deja vu all over again.
enough of this , 8 hours ago
The FBI and DOJ constantly hide behind self-serving excuses to refuse the release of
documents and, when forced to do so, they release heavily redacted files. They offer up the
usual pretexts to fend off public disclosure such as: the information you seek cannot be
disclosed because it involves an ongoing investigation, or the information you seek involves
national security, or our methods and sources will be jeopardized if the information you seek
is divulged to the public. But it seems the ones who would be most harmed by public
disclosure are the corrupt FBI and DOJ officials themselves
Cobra Commander , 7 hours ago
A short 4 years ago the FBI and CIA were all concerned about "Kompromat" the Ruskies might
have on Candidate Trump; concerned enough to spy on his campaign and open a
counter-intelligence operation.
There are troves of Kompromat material, actual emails and video, on Joe, Hunter, and the
whole Biden family; not made-up DNC-funded dossiers claiming a Russian consulate in
Miami.
Now when it's Candidate Biden, everyone be all like, "Meh."
Cobra!
The Fonz...before shark jump , 5 hours ago
we gotta listen to the 50 former intelligence agents...you know the ones that had lone
superpower status in the early 90s and then pissed it all away with 9/11 and infinity wars in
middle east hahahahah ok buddy lol... histories D students....
Occams_Razor_Trader_Part_Deux , 7 hours ago
Signed by James Clapper and John Brennan;
You mean, the 2 Bozos who under the threat of perjury said there was NO evidence of
Russian Collusion and the Trump campaign................. and 2 hours later called Trump
'Putin's puppet' on CNN.............
"... When the matter of truth is depicted as a possible threat to those that govern a country, you no longer have a democratic state. True, not everything can be disclosed to the public in real time, but we are sitting on a mountain of classified intelligence material that goes back more than 60 years. ..."
"... From this recognition, the whole matter of declassifying material around the Russigate scandal in real time, and not highly redacted 50 years from now, is essential to addressing this festering putrefaction that has been bubbling over since the heinous assassination of President Kennedy on Nov. 22nd, 1963 and to which we are still waiting for full disclosure of classified papers 57 years later. ..."
"... These intelligence bureaus need to be reviewed for what kind of method and standard they are upholding in collecting their "intelligence," that has supposedly justified the Mueller investigation and the never-ending Flynn investigation which have provided zero conclusive evidence to back up their allegations and which have massively infringed on the elected government's ability to make the changes that they had committed to the American people. ..."
"... Just like the Iraq and Libya war that was based off of cooked British intelligence (refer here and here ), Russiagate appears to have also had its impetus from our friends over at MI6 as well. It is no surprise that Sir Richard Dearlove, who was then MI6 chief (1999-2004) and who oversaw and stood by the fraudulent intelligence on Iraq stating they bought uranium from Niger to build a nuclear weapon, is the very same Sir Richard Dearlove who promoted the Christopher Steele dossier as something "credible" to American intelligence. ..."
"... In other words, the same man who is largely responsible for encouraging the illegal invasion of Iraq, which set off the never-ending wars on "terror," that was justified with cooked British intelligence is also responsible for encouraging the Russian spook witch-hunt that has been occurring within the US for the last four years over more cooked British intelligence, and the FBI and CIA are knowingly complicit in this. ..."
"... "The Central Intelligence Agency violated its charter for 25 years until revelations of illegal wiretapping, domestic surveillance, assassination plots, and human experimentation led to official investigations and reforms in the 1970s." [emphasis added] ..."
"... On Dec. 22, 1974, The New York Times published an article by Seymour Hersh exposing illegal operations conducted by the CIA, dubbed the "family jewels". This included, covert action programs involving assassination attempts on foreign leaders and covert attempts to subvert foreign governments, which were reported for the first time. In addition, the article discussed efforts by intelligence agencies to collect information on the political activities of US citizens. ..."
"... Largely as a reaction to Hersh's findings, the creation of the Church Committee was approved on January 27, 1975, by a vote of 82 to 4 in the Senate. ..."
"... In addition, the Church Committee produced seven case studies on covert operations, but only the one on Chile was released, titled " Covert Action in Chile: 1963–1973 ". The rest were kept secret at the CIA's request. ..."
"... Among the most shocking revelation of the Church Committee was the discovery of Operation SHAMROCK , in which the major telecommunications companies shared their traffic with the NSA from 1945 to the early 1970s. The information gathered in this operation fed directly into the NSA Watch List. It was found out during the committee investigations that Senator Frank Church, who was overseeing the committee, was among the prominent names under surveillance on this NSA Watch List. ..."
"... According to Garrison's team findings, there was reason to believe that the CIA was involved in the orchestrations of President Kennedy's assassination but access to classified material (which was nearly everything concerning the case) was necessary to continue such an investigation. ..."
"... Though Garrison's team lacked direct evidence, they were able to collect an immense amount of circumstantial evidence, which should have given the justification for access to classified material for further investigation. Instead the case was thrown out of court prematurely and is now treated as if it were a circus. [Refer to Garrison's book for further details and Oliver Stone's excellently researched movie JFK ] ..."
"... On Oct. 6th, 2020, President Trump ordered the declassification of the Russia Probe documents along with the classified documents on the findings concerning the Hillary Clinton emails. The release of these documents threatens to expose the entrapment of the Trump campaign by the Clinton campaign with help of the US intelligence agencies. ..."
"... Trey Gowdy, who was Chair of the House Oversight Committee from June 13th, 2017 – Jan. 3rd, 2019, has stated in an interview on Oct. 7th, 2020 that he has never seen these documents. Devin Nunes, who was Chair of the House Intelligence Committee from Jan. 3rd, 2015 – Jan. 3rd, 2019, has also said in a recent interview that he has never seen these documents. ..."
"... Reprinted with permission from Strategic Culture Foundation . ..."
"Treason doth never prosper; what is the reason? Why, if it prosper, none dare call it
treason." – Sir John Harrington.
As Shakespeare would state in his play Hamlet, "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark,"
like a fish that rots from head to tail, so do corrupt government systems rot from top to
bottom.
This is a reference to the ruling system of Denmark and not just the foul murder that King
Claudius has committed against his brother, Hamlet's father. This is showcased in the play by
reference to the economy of Denmark being in a state of shambles and that the Danish people are
ready to revolt since they are on the verge of starving. King Claudius has only been king for a
couple of months, and thus this state of affairs, though he inflames, did not originate with
him.
Thus, during our time of great upheaval we should ask ourselves; what constitutes the
persisting "ruling system," of the United States, and where do the injustices in its state of
affairs truly originate from?
The tragedy of Hamlet does not just lie in the action (or lack of action) of one man, but
rather, it is contained in the choices and actions of all its main characters. Each character
fails to see the longer term consequences of their own actions, which leads not only to their
ruin but towards the ultimate collapse of Denmark. The characters are so caught up in their
antagonism against one another that they fail to foresee that their very own destruction is
intertwined with the other.
This is a reflection of a failing system.
A system that, though it believes itself to be fighting tooth and nail for its very
survival, is only digging a deeper grave. A system that is incapable of generating any real
solutions to the problems it faces.
The only way out of this is to address that very fact. The most important issue that will
decide the fate of the country is what sort of changes are going to occur in the political and
intelligence apparatus, such that a continuation of this tyrannical treason is finally stopped
in its tracks and unable to sow further discord and chaos.
When the Matter of "Truth" Becomes a Threat to "National Security"
When the matter of truth is depicted as a possible threat to those that govern a
country, you no longer have a democratic state. True, not everything can be disclosed to the
public in real time, but we are sitting on a mountain of classified intelligence material that
goes back more than 60 years.
How much time needs to elapse before the American people have the right to know the truth
behind what their government agencies have been doing within their own country and abroad in
the name of the "free" world?
From this recognition, the whole matter of declassifying material around the Russigate
scandal in real time, and not highly redacted 50 years from now, is essential to addressing
this festering putrefaction that has been bubbling over since the
heinous assassination of President Kennedy on Nov. 22nd, 1963 and to which we are still
waiting for full disclosure of classified papers 57 years later.
If the American people really want to finally see who is standing behind that curtain in Oz,
now is the time.
These intelligence bureaus need to be reviewed for what kind of method and standard they
are upholding in collecting their "intelligence," that has supposedly justified the Mueller
investigation and the never-ending Flynn investigation which have provided zero conclusive
evidence to back up their allegations and which have massively infringed on the elected
government's ability to make the changes that they had committed to the American
people.
Just like the Iraq and Libya war that was based off of cooked British intelligence
(refer here
and here ),
Russiagate appears to have also had its impetus from our friends over at MI6 as well. It is no
surprise that Sir Richard Dearlove, who was then MI6 chief (1999-2004) and who
oversaw and stood by the fraudulent intelligence on Iraq stating they bought uranium from
Niger to build a nuclear weapon, is the very same Sir Richard Dearlove who promoted the
Christopher Steele dossier as something "credible" to American intelligence.
In other words, the same man who is largely responsible for encouraging the illegal
invasion of Iraq, which set off the never-ending wars on "terror," that was justified with
cooked British intelligence is also responsible for encouraging the Russian spook witch-hunt
that has been occurring within the US for the last four years over more cooked British
intelligence, and the FBI and CIA are knowingly complicit in this.
Neither the American people, nor the world as a whole, can afford to suffer any more of the
so-called "mistaken" intelligence bumblings. It is time that these intelligence bureaus are
held accountable for at best criminal negligence, at worst, treason against their own
country.
When Great Figures of Hope Are Targeted as Threats to "National Security"
The Family Jewels
report , which was an investigation conducted by the CIA to investigate itself, was spurred
by the Watergate Scandal and the CIA's unconstitutional role in the whole affair. This
investigation by the CIA reviewed its own conduct from the 1950s to mid-1970s.
The Family Jewels report was only partially declassified in June 25, 2007 (30
years later). Along with the release of the redacted report included a six-page summary with
the following introduction:
"The Central Intelligence Agency violated its charter for 25 years until revelations of
illegal wiretapping, domestic surveillance, assassination plots, and human experimentation led
to official investigations and reforms in the 1970s." [emphasis added]
Despite this acknowledged violation of its charter for 25 years, which is pretty much since
its inception, the details of this information were kept classified for 30 years from not just
the public but major governmental bodies and it was left to the agency itself to judge how best
to "reform" its ways.
On Dec. 22, 1974, The
New York Times published an article by Seymour Hersh exposing illegal operations conducted
by the CIA, dubbed the "family jewels". This included, covert action programs involving
assassination attempts on foreign leaders and covert attempts to subvert foreign governments,
which were reported for the first time. In addition, the article discussed efforts by
intelligence agencies to collect information on the political activities of US
citizens.
Largely as a reaction to Hersh's findings, the creation of the Church Committee was
approved on January 27, 1975, by a vote of 82 to 4 in the Senate.
The Church Committee also published an interim
report titled "Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders", which investigated
alleged attempts to assassinate foreign leaders, including Patrice Lumumba of Zaire, Rafael
Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, Ngo Dinh Diem of Vietnam, Gen. René Schneider of Chile
and Fidel Castro of Cuba. President Ford attempted to withhold the report from the public, but
failed and reluctantly issued Executive
Order 11905 after pressure from the public and the Church Committee.
Executive Order 11905 is a United States Presidential Executive Order signed on February 18,
1976, by a very reluctant President Ford in an attempt to reform the United States Intelligence
Community, improve oversight on foreign intelligence activities, and ban political
assassination.
The attempt is now regarded as a failure and was largely undone by President Reagan who
issued Executive
Order 12333 , which extended the powers and responsibilities of US intelligence agencies
and directed leaders of the US federal agencies to co-operate fully with the CIA, which was the
original arrangement that CIA have full authority over clandestine operations (for more
information on this refer to my papers
here and
here ).
In addition, the Church Committee produced seven case studies on covert operations, but
only the one on Chile was released, titled " Covert Action in
Chile: 1963–1973 ". The rest were kept secret at the CIA's request.
Among the most shocking revelation of the Church Committee was the discovery of
Operation SHAMROCK ,
in which the major telecommunications companies shared their traffic with the NSA from 1945 to
the early 1970s. The information gathered in this operation fed directly into the NSA Watch
List. It was found out during the committee investigations that Senator Frank Church, who was
overseeing the committee, was among the prominent
names under surveillance on this NSA Watch List.
In 1975, the Church Committee decided to unilaterally declassify the particulars of this
operation, against the objections of President Ford's administration (refer here and
here for more information).
The Church Committee's reports constitute the most extensive review of intelligence
activities ever made available to the public. Much of the contents were classified, but over
50,000 pages were declassified under the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records
Collection Act of 1992.
President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas on Nov. 22nd, 1963. Two days before his
assassination a hate-Kennedy handbill (see picture) was circulated in Dallas accusing the
president of treasonous activities including being a communist sympathizer.
On March 1st, 1967 New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison arrested and charged Clay Shaw
with conspiring to assassinate President Kennedy, with the help of David Ferrie and others.
After a little over a one month long trial, Shaw was found not guilty on March 1st, 1969.
David Ferrie, a controller of Lee Harvey Oswald, was going to be a key witness and would
have provided the "smoking gun" evidence linking himself to Clay Shaw, was likely murdered on
Feb. 22nd, 1967, less than a week after news of Garrison's investigation broke in the
media.
According to Garrison's team findings, there was reason to believe that the CIA was
involved in the orchestrations of President Kennedy's assassination but access to classified
material (which was nearly everything concerning the case) was necessary to continue such an
investigation.
Though Garrison's team lacked direct evidence, they were able to collect an immense
amount of circumstantial evidence, which should have given the justification for access to
classified material for further investigation. Instead the case was thrown out of court
prematurely and is now treated as if it were a circus. [Refer to Garrison's book for further details and
Oliver Stone's excellently researched movie JFK ]
To date, it is the only trial to be brought forward concerning the assassination of
President Kennedy.
The Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) was created in 1994 by the Congress enacted
President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, which mandated that all
assassination-related material be housed in a single collection within the National Archives
and Records Administration. In July 1998, a staff report
released by the ARRB emphasized shortcomings in the original autopsy.
The
ARRB wrote , "One of the many tragedies of the assassination of President Kennedy has been
the incompleteness of the autopsy record and the suspicion caused by the shroud of secrecy that
has surrounded the records that do exist." [emphasis added]
Asked about the lunchroom episode [where he was overheard stating his notes of the autopsy
went missing] in a May 1996 deposition, Finck said he did not remember it. He was also vague
about how many notes he took during the autopsy but confirmed that 'after the autopsy I also
wrote notes' and that he turned over whatever notes he had to the chief autopsy physician,
James J. Humes.
It has long been known that Humes destroyed some original autopsy papers in a fireplace at
his home on Nov. 24, 1963. He told the Warren Commission that what he burned was an original
draft of his autopsy report. Under persistent questioning at a February 1996 deposition by
the Review Board, Humes said he destroyed the draft and his 'original notes.'
Shown official autopsy photographs of Kennedy from the National Archives, [Saundra K.]
Spencer [who worked in 'the White House lab'] said they were not the ones she helped process
and were printed on different paper. She said 'there was no blood or opening cavities' and
the wounds were much smaller in the pictures [than what she had] worked on
John T. Stringer, who said he was the only one to take photos during the autopsy itself,
said some of those were missing as well. He said that pictures he took of Kennedy's brain at
a 'supplementary autopsy' were different from the official set that was shown to him.
[emphasis added]
This not only shows that evidence tampering did indeed occur, as even the Warren
Commission acknowledges, but this puts into question the reliability of the entire
assassination record of John F. Kennedy and to what degree evidence tampering and forgery have
occurred in these records.
We would also do well to remember the numerous crimes that the FBI and CIA have been guilty
of committing upon the American people such as during the period of McCarthyism. That the FBI's
COINTELPRO has been implicated in covert operations against members of the civil rights
movement, including Martin Luther King Jr. during the 1960s. That FBI director J. Edgar Hoover
made no secret of his hostility towards Dr. King and his ludicrous belief that King was
influenced by communists, despite having no evidence to that effect.
King was assassinated on April 4th, 1968 and the civil rights movement took a major
blow.
In November 1975, as the Church Committee was completing its investigation, the Department
of Justice formed a Task Force to examine the FBI's program of harassment directed at Dr. King,
including the FBI's security investigations of him, his assassination and the FBI conducted
criminal investigation that followed. One aspect of the Task force study was to determine
"whether any action taken in relation to Dr. King by the FBI before the assassination had, or
might have had, an effect, direct or indirect, on that event."
In its report
, the Task Force criticized the FBI not for the opening, but for the protracted continuation
of, its security investigation of Dr. King:
"We think the security investigation which included both physical and technical
surveillance, should have been terminated in 1963. That it was intensified and augmented by a
COINTELPRO type campaign against Dr. King was unwarranted; the COINTELPRO type campaign,
moreover, was ultra vires and very probably felonious."
In 1999, King Family
v. Jowers civil suit in Memphis, Tennessee occurred, the full transcript of the trial can
be found here
. The jury found that Lloyd Jowers and unnamed others, including those in high ranking
positions within government agencies, participated in a conspiracy to assassinate Dr. King.
During the four week trial, it was pointed out that the rifle allegedly used to assassinate
King did not have a scope that was sighted, which meant you could not have hit the broad side
of a barn with that rifle, thus it could not have been the murder weapon.
This was only remarked on over 30 years after King was murdered and showed the level of
incompetence, or more likely, evidence tampering that was committed from previous
investigations conducted by the FBI.
The case of JFK and MLK are among the highest profile assassination cases in American
history, and it has been shown in both cases that evidence tampering has indeed occurred,
despite being in the center of the public eye. What are we then to expect as the standard of
investigation for all the other cases of malfeasance? What expectation can we have that justice
is ever upheld?
With a history of such blatant misconduct, it is clear that the present demand to declassify
the Russiagate papers now, and not 50 years later, needs to occur if we are to address the
level of criminality that is going on behind the scenes and which will determine the fate of
the country.
The American People Deserve to Know
Today we see the continuation of the over seven decades' long ruse, the targeting of
individuals as Russian agents without any basis, in order to remove them from the political
arena. The present effort to declassify the Russiagate papers and exonerate Michael Flynn, so
that he may freely speak of the intelligence he knows, is not a threat to national security, it
is a threat to those who have committed treason against their country.
On Oct. 6th, 2020, President Trump ordered the declassification of the Russia Probe
documents along with the classified documents on the findings concerning the Hillary Clinton
emails. The release of these documents threatens to expose the entrapment of the Trump campaign
by the Clinton campaign with help of the US intelligence agencies.
The Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe released some of these documents
recently, including former CIA Director John Brennan's handwritten notes for a meeting with former
President Obama, the notes revealing that Hillary Clinton approved a plan to "vilify Donald
Trump by stirring up scandal claiming interference by the Russian security service."
Trey Gowdy, who was Chair of the House Oversight Committee from June 13th, 2017 –
Jan. 3rd, 2019, has stated in an interview on Oct. 7th, 2020 that
he has never seen these documents. Devin Nunes, who was Chair of the House Intelligence
Committee from Jan. 3rd, 2015 – Jan. 3rd, 2019, has also said in a recent interview that
he has never seen these documents.
And yet, both the FBI and CIA were aware and had access to these documents and sat on them
for four years, withholding their release from several government-led investigations that were
looking into the Russiagate scandal and who were requesting relevant material that was in the
possession of both intelligence bureaus. Do these intelligence bureaus sound like they are
working for the "national security" of the American people?
The truth must finally be brought to light, or the country will rot from its head to
tail.
Crucially, China is not the Soviet Union: China has no messianic ideology to export; China
is not engaged in regime change operations to create an ideological sphere of influence;
China's relationships with foreign nations are transactional rather than sentimental; China's
economy dwarfs that of the USSR; China already possesses one-fourth of the world's scientific,
technological, engineering, and mathematics workforce; China's "Belt and Road Initiative" is an
order-setting geoeconomic strategy with no Soviet parallel; China spends two percent or less of
it GDP on its military vs. the estimated 9 to 15 percent of the USSR -- and China has not built
a nuclear arsenal to match that of either the United States or Russia.
Equally important, the United States of the 2020s is not the America of the early Cold War.
As the Cold War began, the United States produced one-half or more of the world's manufactures.
It now makes about one-sixth. During the Cold War, the United States was the uncontested leader
of a bloc of dependent nations that it called "the free world." That bloc is now in an advanced
state of decay. Further, legacy U.S. alliances formed to contain the USSR have little relevance
to American contention with China: US-European alliances like NATO are withering and no Asian
security partner of the United States wants to choose between America and China.
Since 1950, the Taiwan issue has been a casus belli between the United States and
China. But U.S. allies see it as a fight among Chinese to be managed rather than joined. If the
U.S. mismanages the Taiwan issue, as it now appears to be doing, it will have no overt allies
in the resulting war. No claimant against China in the South China Sea is prepared to join the
U.S. in naval conflict with China. In short, this time is different. Sino-American relations
have a history and dynamic that do not conform to those of the US-Soviet contest. And the
United States is not equipped to inspire and lead opposition to China. The US-China contention
is far broader than that of the Cold War, in part because China, unlike the determinedly
autarkic USSR, is part of the same global society as the United States. The battlefields
include global governance, geoeconomics, trade, investment, finance, currency usage, supply
chain management, technology standards and systems, and scientific collaboration, in addition
to the geopolitical and military domains in which the Cold War played out.
The United States is isolated on a widening list of issues. It has withdrawn or excluded
itself from a growing number of multilateral instruments of global and regional governance and
is no longer able to lead the international community. Americans have repeatedly declined to
recapitalize or cooperate in reforming international financial institutions to meet new global
and regional investment requirements. This has led China, India, and other rising powers to
create supplementary lenders like the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the New
Development Bank.
Four years ago, the U.S. unilaterally decided that geopolitics are inherently driven by
great power military rivalry that precludes cooperation. The newly pugnacious U.S. stance
legitimizes xenophobia and justifies bilateral approaches to foreign relations that ignore
issues like global terrorism, pandemic diseases, climate change, migration, nuclear
proliferation, or regional tensions, and cripple the global governance and international
coordination needed to tackle them. The United States is going out of its way to demonstrate
its indifference to the interests and sensibilities of its past and potential partners. It is
withdrawing from international organizations it can no longer dominate. These actions amount to
unilateral diplomatic disarmament and the creation of politico-economic vacuums for others --
not just China -- to fill.
Future historians will puzzle over why Americans have chosen to dismantle and discard the
connections and capacities that long enabled the United States to direct the trend of events in
most global and regional arenas. When they unravel this mystery, they will also need to explain
the simultaneous collapse of the separation of powers structure on which the American republic
was founded and on which its liberties were built. Fortunately for post-Constitutional America,
China's political system, despite the stability and prosperity it has fostered, has even less
appeal beyond China's borders. Both China and the United States are now repelling other nations
rather than attracting them. If the U.S.-China contest were military and didn't go nuclear, the
United States, with its battle-hardened and uniquely lethal military, would enjoy insuperable
advantages. But armed conflict is not the central element in the Sino-American
confrontation.
After World War II, the United States made the rules. American statesmen crafted a world
order that expressed American ideals and served American interests. In the post-Cold War period
Washington began to disengage from the global institutions and norms it had sponsored. The
United States has failed to ratify international compacts that regulate a widening range of
arenas of importance to it. These include conventions on the law of the sea, nuclear testing,
the arms trade, human rights, and crimes against humanity. Washington has withdrawn from or
suspended compliance with conventions on the laws of war and agreements on arms control,
combating climate change, and trade and investment. It has ceased to participate in or sought
to sabotage a growing list of United Nations specialized agencies and related institutions.
Notwithstanding the current global pandemic, these include the World Health Organization.
America's withdrawal from its traditional role in global rule-setting and enforcement
deprives it of the dominant influence it long exercised through the institutions it created.
Other great powers remain wedded to the American-led order expressed in the United Nations
Charter, but America's exemption of itself from the comity of nations and its spontaneous
metamorphosis from world leader to global dropout have left it unable to aggregate the power of
other nations to its own. Washington's resort to abusive language, threats and coercive
measures has grown as its capacity to apply its power non-coercively has declined, further
reducing the numbers of foreign allies, partners, and friends willing to bandwagon with
America.
The decline in U.S. clout is made even more consequential by the fact that China has
resources, including money, to offer its partners. The United States does not. The United
States' budget is in chronic deficit. Even routine government operations must now be funded
with debt. America has spent trillions of borrowed dollars on wars in the Islamic world that it
can neither win nor end. Its "forever wars" siphoned off the funds needed to keep its human and
physical infrastructure at levels competitive with those of China and other great economic
powers. They also crippled U.S. statecraft by defunding non-military means to advance American
interests abroad and curtailing U.S. contributions to the international institutions charged
with assuring global peace and development.
Coercive approaches to statecraft are inherently alienating. Claims to superiority that are
not empirically substantiable are unpersuasive. Asking countries to choose between China and
the United States, when China is clearly rising and America is simultaneously stagnating and
declining, guarantees the progressive eclipse of American prestige and power. Advocating
democracy abroad while deviating from it at home destroys rather than enhances American
credibility. America's addiction to debt risks eventual financial collapse even as it limits
immediate policy options both at home and abroad.
Unless the United States cures its fiscal feebleness, rebuilds the capacities and competence
of its government, upgrades its human and physical infrastructure, and reopens itself to trade,
investment, and immigration, America's roles in global governance, trade, investment, finance,
supply chain management, technology standards and systems, and scientific collaboration will
continue to contract as those of China and others expand. The United States' capacity to
innovate will decline, as will American well-being and self-confidence. This diminishment of
the United States is not the consequence of Chinese predation but of American hubris, political
ineptitude, and diplomatic decrepitude .
The essence of any s trategy is the efficient linkage of resources and capabilities to
feasible objectives. Current U.S. China policy is strategy-free. With neither resources nor
institutional capabilities to back it, it amounts to puerile fantasy. U.S. China policy at
present is a classic example of demonizing a foreign foe to rally support at home and divert
attention from festering political, economic, and social problems. This approach is highly
unlikely to result in a Cold War-style victory for the United States or the Enlightenment
values that gave birth to it. Quite the opposite. Written by Chas
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China wins, India loses in Trump's gamble on crushing Iran by Fatemeh Aman
Authoritarian liberals have unleashed a censorious syndrome peculiar to our national
character, dating to 17th century Quaker hangings in Boston.
A n inhabitant of Twitterland named "Willow Inski" took to the keyboard on Oct. 11,
asking why anyone still accepts official accounts of the crucial theft of emails from the
Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign manager John Podesta in the spring of
2016.
Excellently observed, Willow. And at just the right moment. At this point we are amid a
frenzy of what Hannah Arendt called "defactualization" in a 1971
essay she titled "Lying in Politics." Facts are fragile, Arendt astutely observed, because
they can so easily be manipulated to produce a desired image. "It is this fragility," she
wrote, "that makes deception so very easy up to a point, and so tempting."
The latest example of this phenom concerns the emails of Hunter Biden, candidate Joe's errant
son, which persuasively incriminate both in very profitable influence-peddling schemes when
Papa was Barack Obama's veep.
Nobody denies the facts as published last week in The New York Post , not even Biden
père et fils , but the facts are once again mutilated with assertions that it is
another case of the Rrrrrrussians spreading disinformation.
This is what we get after four years of the Russia collusion b.s., otherwise known as
Russiagate. Anything goes if implicating Russia solves a political problem for the Democrats
and keeps the war machine going for the Pentagon and the national security state. It defers the
moment -- at some point it will come -- when the press is exposed for its radically stupid
overinvestment in the Russiagate nonsense. The price America has already begun to pay is very
high.
Willow's expression of perplexity comes after an especially lively season of revelations as
regards what must count as the largest disinformation op in U.S. history. It is now six months
since the Russiagate hoax -- and I am fine with President Donald Trump's term for it -- began
its final crash into a pile of piffle. While it remains to be seen whether more evidence of
political chicanery is coming, what evidence we already have is more than sufficient to
identify Russiagate as the probable criminal fraud it was from the start.
I am refreshed that Willow Inski, who describes herself as an "attorney, wife, mother, proud
American," sees through this extravagant ruse. And yet, as she notes, a lot of people don't. A
lot of people are "still taking at face value" all the misinformation, disinformation, and
outright lies our newspapers, magazines, and broadcasters have purveyed incessantly for the
past four years.
Why is a very large question. All possible answers are disturbing. But here is another big
one we get to before that: When we consider together all its many consequences, has Russiagate
destroyed what remained of American democracy before illiberal liberals, spooks, law
enforcement, and the press colluded to erect the dreadful edifice?
The Damage Done
Your columnist's answer rests on the most scrupulously precise definition of Russiagate one
can manage: What we have witnessed these past four years is an attempted palace coup against a
sitting president.
Cold comfort it is that the gang that couldn't shoot straight bungled the job. It has also
created a Democratic default position: When wrongdoing by Democrats is credibly exposed,
automatically blame Russia. Among much else, that has led to unnecessary tension with a nuclear
power. This damage will long stay with us.
Russiagate's foundation stone -- baseless allegations that Moscow was responsible for the
2016 DNC email intrusions -- crumbled long ago. We've known since July 2017 that nobody hacked
the email servers in question.
This was confirmed by the Dec. 5, 2017, closed-door congressional
testimony of Shawn Henry, president of CrowdStrike, the firm the Democrats hired to examine
the DNC servers. It was made public only on May 7, 2020. Henry said under oath: "There's not
evidence that they [the emails] were actually exfiltrated. There's circumstantial evidence but
no evidence that they were actually exfiltrated. "
The emails were most likely compromised by someone with direct access to them, probably a
DNC insider. 'Twas a leak, not a hack.
But incessant propaganda and a sloppy but effective coverup have kept the fable going
since then. All has been open game these past years, scabrous, apparent false-flag poisonings
-- the Skripals, Alexei Navalny --
baseless tales of Russian bounties on U.S. soldiers' heads. The press has reported this
sort of rubbish for years as if it were confirmed fact. Spectral evidence has reigned.
It is this coverup that has been falling
apart since last spring.
First came news that the collusion case against Michael Flynn, Trump's first national
security adviser, was bogus and that Flynn entered his two guilty pleas when prosecutors
threatened to indict his son if he refused. When the Justice Department dropped its case
against Flynn, it simultaneously forced the House Intelligence Committee to release documents
showing that no "evidence" of a Russian email hack ever existed, even as the Democrats, the
spooks, and the press missed no chance to bang on about it.
Those who got my goat at the time were people such as Adam Schiff, the Democratic
congressman from Hollywood and leader of the charge on Capitol Hill, who knew there was no
evidence of Russian involvement but repeatedly insisted they had seen it whenever they faced a
CNN camera.
You are right, Ms. Inski: Crowdstrike, the grossly corrupt firm that was supposed to have
all the evidence one could ever want, never had any. Former FBI Director James Comey admitted
in testimony that the FBI asked for but never gained possession of the DNC server, even though
this would be the "best practice." We can surmise that this was so, so that the bureau
could deny responsibility for what amounts to a psyop perpetrated against Americans. In June
2019 it was
reported that CrowdStrike also never gave the FBI a final report because none was ever
produced since the FBI never asked for one.
Among the congressional testimonies released last spring, two top Clinton campaign
operatives, Podesta and Jake Sullivan,
acknowledged that they met after Trump's election with the principals of Fusion GPS, the
infamous orchestrator of the Steele Dossier, to keep the Russiagate ball rolling. What a
difference speaking under oath makes.
Actually, what got my goat a second time was that none of this, as in none, was reported in
The New York Times or anywhere else in the mainstream media. Our once-but-no-more
newspaper of record has made an absolute dog's dinner of itself since its leadership decided to
buy into the Russiagate junk. At this point I am convinced its ties to the spooks are as dense
and corrupt as they were during the worst of the Cold War decades, when the publisher
signed a
covert agreement to cooperate with the CIA.
Clinton Approved Plan
As if any more reports were needed to deflate the Russiagate balloon, the evidence continues
to accumulate. At the end of September John Ratcliffe, director of national intelligence,
informed Senator Lindsey Graham that intelligence agencies had information "alleging that
U.S. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had approved a campaign plan to stir up a scandal
against U.S. Presidential candidate Donald Trump by tying him to Putin and the Russians'
hacking of the Democratic National Committee." Some of us
knew this four years ago.
While Ratcliffe's letter adds that spookworld "does not know the accuracy of this
allegation," it goes on to note that the intel in question was serious enough for John Brennan,
then the CIA director, to brief President Barack Obama about it and forward it to Comey and
Peter Strzok, respectively FBI director and deputy assistant director of counterintelligence at
the time. This is the referral, of course, that Comey now claims he
cannot recall a damn thing about.
Given the Podesta and Sullivan testimonies, the Ratcliffe disclosures stitch the case: In
my view, the Clinton campaign's active role in starting and prolonging the Russiagate
propaganda operation is now open-and-shut. (It was first reported
in October 2017 by Consortium News and
predicted by me in Salon on July 26, 2016 and three days before the
2016 election by CN 's editor).
I wrote back then in Salon :
"Making lemonade out of a lemon, the Clinton campaign now goes for a twofer. Watch as
it advances the Russians-did-it thesis on the basis of nothing, then shoots the messenger,
then associates Trump with its own mess -- and, finally, gets to ignore the nature of its
transgression (which any paying-attention person must consider grave)."
Declassifications Ignored
In the matter of goats, the Ratcliffe letter seems to have gotten Trump's. A week later he
took to Twitter
calling for the declassification , without redaction, of all documents related to the
Russiagate probes.
Although Trump did not issue an official order to this effect, this amounts to a direct
challenge to what he has been all along referring to as the Deep State. (Trump first "ordered"
the declassification, and was ignored, in September 2018.) Last Thursday Ratcliffe formally
requested an investigation of the "Intelligence Community Assessment" of January 2017, a
worthless put-up job that purported to confirm Russian "meddling." The CIA's inspector general
ignored an earlier such request.
Will more come out? Will the investigation Trump ordered earlier this year by Assistant U.S.
Attorney John Durham get all the way to the bottom? This is hard to say. We've since had
credible reports that CIA Director Gina Haspel, known for authorizing post–2001
torture and destroying evidence of it, has personally blocked the release of Russiagate-related
documents from the CIA's files. And the repellent Haspel may win this one, given the record in
such matters.
The Russiagate "narrative" is at this point so preposterous that these recent disclosures
have also gone either badly reported or unreported in mainstream media. We ought not expect
more in days to come. The press has only one alternative at this point: Either black it out or
allege that Russia is using people such as Ratcliffe, just as we're now asked to believe Moscow
is manipulating The New York Post .
What an ungodly mess Russiagate has made of our splendid republic.
We have watched an attempted coup not much different from the CIA's covert ops elsewhere
over the decades, then gave the coup plotters three years to investigate the plot, and no one,
as things now appear, will be brought to justice for these travesties.
Send in the historians. One hopes they're already here.
The CIA, in breach of its charter, has now licensed itself to operate on U.S. soil in a
probably unprecedented alliance with domestic law enforcement and a major political party. And
it has told us in open defiance that it has no intention of submitting itself to executive or
congressional control. No voice is raised, we must note with astonishment.
Government Without a Press
In 1787, when he was our new nation's minister in Paris, Jefferson wrote home to a friend that "were it left to
me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a
government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter." We are stuck with a
government without newspapers now, given the ties our press has consolidated its ties with
political and bureaucratic power in the course of imposing the Russiagate ruse upon us.
They only look like newspapers now. The liberal media are now bulletin boards for those
they serve -- the Democratic Party, the spooks, and all the interests these two represent. Do
they think that, once Trump leaves office, they can cavalierly reclaim the credibility they
have profligately squandered in the service of Russiagate?
I see no chance of this. And here we have a silver lining: Russiagate will prove a key
moment in the emergence of independent media (such as Consortium News ) as important
sources of accurate information and perspectives. This is already evident. At this point The
New York Times is to sound reporting what Applebee's is to a proper tavern serving good
draft beer.
The worst consequence of Russiagate, in my view, is the swoon of hysteria it has sent
many Americans into, a syndrome peculiar to our national character dating to the Quaker
hangings in Boston during the early 1660s and repeated many times since. We are divided once
again between the paranoid and the rational.
And there is an ideological distinction here that we must not miss. Willow Inski is a
conservative and appears to be a Trumper. She addressed Paul Sperry, a New York Post
reporter closely following the Russiagate debacle and also a conservative.
The paranoids, the Puritan preachers, the witch hunters, those who think censorship is a
fine thing are this time one and all authoritarian liberals apparently determined to make
everyone think as they do or else see to their banishment from the circles of the elect.
Let us debate opinions until the kingdom comes. But these people propose to debate facts
because they understand the fragility Arendt noted all those years ago. This is not on.
"Under normal circumstances the liar is defeated by reality, for which there is no
substitute," Arendt wrote. "No matter how large the tissue of falsehood that an experienced
liar has to offer, it will never be large enough, even if he enlists the help of computers, to
cover the immensity of factuality."
One hopes Arendt turns out to be right. One hopes the immensity of factuality eventually
prevails. "Defactualization" in the service of all the Russiagate rubbish has gravely
undermined numerous of our key institutions. As things now stand, this leaves us well short of
what we need to reconstruct a working democracy.
Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for the International
Herald Tribune , is a columnist, essayist, author and lecturer. His most recent book is
Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century (Yale). Follow him on Twitter
@thefloutist .His web site is
Patrick Lawrence . Support his
work via his Patreon site
.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of
Consortium News.
This do not have Congressmen Schiff so this version did not got traction. Yet. Because Boris
Johnson is generally very close, as his behaviour during Skripals false flag suggests. BTW why
they need to inflate "Russian threat" if their own people can be sufficient for the annihilation
of the United Kingdom. Still let's wait for the Guardian to tell us about those evil
Russians
On Monday the UK Ministry of Defence confirmed a hugely embarrassing incident involving a
security and operations lapse aboard the British nuclear submarine HMS Vigilant while it
temporarily was docked during a mission at a US naval base, specifically Naval Submarine Base
Kings Bay in Georgia.
The officer in charge of overseeing the vessel's nuclear warheads arrived to his shift
"staggering drunk" while strangely carrying a bag of barbecue chicken .
The scene immediately sparked concern that the officer, later identified as Lt. Commander
Len Louw "was not in a fit state to be in charge of nuclear weapons" as there was something
"seriously wrong" according to
UK media reports .
... ... ...
The BBC noted
that as the weapons engineering officer on the submarine he was "responsible for all weapons
and sensors on board." The sub is armed with Trident ballistic missiles and is thus subject to
stringent safety and security measures.
And more astounding, according to the Daily Mail , i
s that :
The Royal Navy officer had been preparing to start a shift during which they would offload
the 16 nuclear missiles - which each weigh 60 tons and have the combined power to kill almost
the entire population of the UK.
He reportedly clocked in for his shift after a full night of drinking aboard one of only
four submarines that make up the UK's nuclear deterrent.
A week ago the nuclear sub was in the news due to a reported COVID-19 outbreak after crew
members were caught
breaking port call rules to go to strip clubs and bars.
No doubt American military authorities at Kings Bay naval base will also have serious
questions, considering they've just witnessed a significant operations lapse aboard a foreign
allied 'top secret' nuclear submarine docked in US waters.
_arrow
No1uNo , 17 hours ago
I raced Yachts with a UK Submarine commander for over a decade, this story is so out of
sync with the character and personalities recruited into probably one of the most responsible
jobs in the world - that the narrative asks many more questions than the story.
- Either he was spiked with a narcotic behaviour cocktail or what's being asked of him is
not within his ethics code that something broke.
Freeman of the City , 17 hours ago
Well stated, Military Esprit de corps standard of officer conduct, period. No one rises to
this level of responsibility without deep long term vetting.
This 'news' story sounds more like agitprop to undermine confidence in elite UK submariner
forces. Sedition within the UK govt, from Labour or Marxists...
Propaganda Phil , 17 hours ago
It came out 6 years ago that most of everyone manning our missile silos were cheating on
testing and using drugs. 9 USAF officers fired and around 100 were caught cheating. It only
was discovered when 2 of the cheaters were caught in a drug investigation.
& Secret Service getting high and banging hookers in Colombia.
Getting guys wasted ain't new. He just got caught.
No1uNo , 17 hours ago
Missile silos are a very different thing, such people can be inspected observed or called
out as needed. Subs are gone for months at a time and decisions made on own recognisance. As
Freeman says the vetting process is lengthy and those who get through it are precise
thoughtful engineering types and committed team players. Aside of that Subs are frequently
used to pick up and drop off espionage packages in locations that would create international
incidents if caught. The recruitment process is very very careful, whatever one's views on
Nuclear subs or nation states. I feel he was 'got at'
No1uNo , 16 hours ago
I still find this story incredible, these guys are not that well paid, most take it v.
carefully before going to richer defence sector for a few years before retirement. The hammer
can drop on them when they realise who they were fighting as 'enemies' were really desperate
people pushed to the edge by geopolitical designs and greed acquisitions of Military
Industrial Intelligence Complex. More will come out: honey trap, interrogation and drugging
or possibly as Propaganda Phil says - he lost it - perhaps from a drunken epiphany that
caused him to doubt belief in what he was doing?
Doctor Faustus , 15 hours ago
Maybe there was a family connection somewhere that allowed this officer in. Remember
Hunter Biden? Got kicked out of the Navy for cocaine. Only way he got in was through his dad,
Joe Biden.
Propaganda Phil , 14 hours ago
Like wrongway McCain the disaster of a pilot and admiral's son.
indus creed , 14 hours ago
Didn't McCain cause some major damage on the deck with some deaths? The affair was all
hushed up. He reportedly was escorted away by Navy police, as the sailors onboard wanted to
kill him.
Arrow4Truth , 13 hours ago
"who they were fighting as 'enemies' were really desperate people pushed to the edge by
geopolitical designs and greed acquisitions of Military Industrial Intelligence Complex."
Well said. It's never, ever delivered in that package, but instead called "National defence"
as Freeman put it. When one determines that the scenario you described is true it blows the
national defense theory all to hell... but most never make that jump because the repetitive
indoctrination has been soooo effective. Any argument that they must be alert to the
possibility that the "nation" could be under attack at any moment loses all it's luster when
one realizes that the "national interest" is the cause.
Ex-Oligarch , 14 hours ago
Upvoted, not because this behavior is unthinkable for military officers, but because of
the idea that the officer may have been drugged, or intentionally removing himself from his
command position.
Something about this story stinks.
Let's start with this: why was a British submarine offloading its nuclear missiles in a US
port?
U4 eee aaa , 13 hours ago
Just blame Putin. They do it everywhere else.
tyberious , 17 hours ago
Damn Russians!
Helg Saracen , 17 hours ago
Was it Novichok? :)
Eyes Opened , 9 hours ago
Yeah ... he slept it off ... like the other "victims" ... 😷
aaronvta , 16 hours ago
It was later verified that he had been drinking vodka. Authorities are looking into the
possibility of Russian influence.
Peterus , 17 hours ago
Oh well, that's an unfortunate lapse. But the more important thing for continuous safety
and prosperity of UK is that army hit diversity quotas for 2022 in sex, sexual orientation
and bame categories.
land_of_the_few , 16 hours ago
Their army can have tr@nny parties with spin the bottle to decide who gets the clinic pass
to have their t1ts sliced off -to make them a small, tubby boy! for real, yeah! - and who
gets the testosterone syringe for their butt cheeks so they can be proper Barnum & Bailey
sideshow exhibits.
Maybe UK needs soldiers that are already used to elective mutilation and self-inflicted
degradation?
Dr. Bendover , 17 hours ago
Now maybe Hunter Biden has a place to look for a real job.
Eyes Opened , 9 hours ago
I bet he curses like a sailor.. and he has a pipe... sure he's halfway qualified already
!! 🧐
trysophistry , 17 hours ago
Coming to a theater near you, The Hunt for a Molson Blue October.
Westsail32 , 15 hours ago
The Royal Navy officer had been preparing to start a shift during which they would
offload the 16 nuclear missiles - which each weigh 60 tons and have the combined power to
kill almost the entire population of the UK.
Definitely a missed opportunity.
Alice-the-dog , 16 hours ago
So what? The Democratic Party is hoping you elect a senile old criminal who doesn't
remember where he is and has trouble forming a comprehensible sentence to be in charge of the
entirety of US nuclear weapons.
thunderchief , 17 hours ago
"His condition was as fitting and useful and also as waistful and reckless, at the same
time, as the UK's need for a nuclear armed submarine fleet."
My own comment.
koan , 15 hours ago
U.S.S Hunter Biden
Svastic , 16 hours ago
I am surprised he didn't turn up in full drag. It's in keeping with the British character.
Furthermore, officers are often picked for their political correctness and old-boy
connections. Many are ho-mos.
Yamaoka Tesshu , 17 hours ago
Love how the "Daily Mail" hams up the fake nuke fear by telling us each missile can kill
everyone in the UK. In truth the Vigilant can deliver less destructive power than a single
B-52. But it's far more effective at looting the taxpayer while at the same time holding him
hostage to the threat of annihilation.
Anyone seeing through the scamdemic can analyze that template and discover it fits nicely
over the nuclear weapons con job.
This is the only conspiracy theory that cheers people up. But they downvote anyway. Just
like telling gays AIDS is fake. They get mad when they should be relieved.
Mad Muppet , 8 hours ago
Let me guess: he was drinking Vodka. Russian Vodka!!!!
I just knew it was Putin's fault.
Herodotus , 15 hours ago
The Russians drugged him. DNA samples taken from the barbecue chicken places its origin in
or around the Duchy of Muscovy.
10LBS_SHIT_5LB_BAG , 15 hours ago
They also laced the BBQ bag with Novichocken.
Helg Saracen , 15 hours ago
Oy vey! :)
Smiddywesson , 13 hours ago
Drunk while returning to the ship is one thing, drunk on duty is another, a career ending
incident.
Genoves , 13 hours ago
I prefer officials drunks that officials killing people.
TheRecluse , 13 hours ago
So whats wrong with Barbecue chicken? It goes down great after getting drunk.
Captain Archer , 13 hours ago
"Big Bo" Can't be beat.
seryanhoj , 12 hours ago
He could reheat it real quick in the reactor.
oracle_man , 14 hours ago
Yo Ho Ho And A Bottle Of Rum Fifteen men on a dead man's chest Yo ho ho and a bottle of
rum Drink and the devil be done for the rest Yo ho ho and a bottle of Rum!
"... I always thought the Steele Dossier was poor trade craft; way too over the top. An example being jumping around on a bed and urinating on multiple prostitutes. It puzzled me why they would tell such far out stories. Why stretch credulity?. SWMBO's response was that such behavior is so ubiquitous and frequent among democrat elites that they just assume everyone is doing it. To them it's not far out in the least, it's just a typical Saturday night. I begin to think that she is on to something. ..."
A Bidengate summary from the Daily Mail"Documents appear to show Hunter Biden's
signature on $85 receipt for repair of laptops left at Delaware store at center of email
scandal - while other paperwork reveals FBI's contact with owner
A receipt from The Mac Shop in Wilmington, Delaware appears to show Hunter Biden's
signature for work on three laptops for $85
It has not been verified yet if that signature is actually Biden's
FBI paperwork also shows that shop owner John Paul Mac Isaac received a subpoena to
testify before the US District Court in Delaware in December 2019
Last week the New York Post published a report saying e-mails obtained from the laptop
show Joe Biden allegedly was in on his son Hunter's business deals
House Intel chair Adam Schiff said the 'smear' on Biden 'comes from the Kremlin'
DNI John Ratcliffe said the laptop is not a Russian disinformation campaign
Biden's campaign says the Democratic nominee engaged in no wrongdoing "
-------------
Well, pilgrims, he sure looks comfy in the tub. I still wonder who took the pictures. Was it
the gal in California who later sued him over paternity of her child/fetus, whatever.
Did he take the pictures himself? Interestingly, the Bidens have not denied the implicit
charge of corruption, bribery, etc., etc. that is the mass of incriminating e-mail traffic on
the hard drive. And then, there are the disgusting sex videos. Does anyone think that these
were faked?
SWMBO says that the Bidens have set a new standard for depraved and addled stupidity. As
usual, she is right. pl
It's interesting that Bidens, Epsteins, Clintons, Hollywood types, Weiners, et al engage
in all of the sordid behaviors that they accused Trump of in the "Steele Dossier" (and then
some).
I always thought the Steele Dossier was poor trade craft; way too over the top. An
example being jumping around on a bed and urinating on multiple prostitutes. It puzzled me
why they would tell such far out stories. Why stretch credulity?. SWMBO's response was that
such behavior is so ubiquitous and frequent among democrat elites that they just assume
everyone is doing it. To them it's not far out in the least, it's just a typical Saturday
night. I begin to think that she is on to something.
Rudy Guiliani and Steve Bannon stated this morning that more information will be
forthcoming within 24-48 hours. The Q folks are thinking that it will be released on Thurs
morning for maximum effect at the later in the evening debate. The Admiral who oversaw the
Bin Laden raid has endorsed Joe Biden in spite of being a pro life and 2nd amendment
advocate. Things are getting interesting to say the least.
Another oxymoron, like "government worker" - "intelligence" officials.
Self important parasites....oh wait....selfless patriots who "risk their lives every day" for
America.
The Bidens are not involved, one Biden is. Joe Biden is not responsible for his son's
idiocy. I do believe he has massive addiction issues but I need a lot more proof that he took
all 3 of his computers in for work and the bill was only $85.00. I need the name of that
repair shop it is much more expensive where I live.
"Don't worry about investors," [James Biden] said, according to the executive,
who spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing fear of retaliation.
"We've got people all around the world who want to invest in Joe Biden."
End quote
Anybody claiming Politico is a Russian disinformation operation?
While I hope and pray for a Trump victory, I am not so sure that he will be able to
overcome systematic rigging. What is your opinion on the level of rigging that is going
on?
All sorts of worms from all over the place are crawling up and endorsing the slime ridden
corrupt Bidens. Who knows what sort of pressure must have been put on them to do that. And if
that is so, can you imagine the level of pressure the democrat machine must have put on those
who are in charge of conducting the election? Look at the commission on presidential debates
for God's sake. Absolutely, no hint of neutrality there!
The media is pulling the wool over everyone's eyes just like in the last election. The
polls are all for democrats, again, just like the last election. Methinks the difference this
time might just be the magnitude of vote rigging that the democrats will do. How much more
will that be versus the last time? Enough to swing the election?
BillWade:
That's the same (Obama) Admiral who said that Trump should be gone:
"......then it is time for a new person in the Oval Office -- Republican, Democrat or
independent -- the sooner, the better."
Like the other retired brass and "intelligence" officials, just more swamp creatures wailing
about an "outsider" disturbing their little world of endless losing wars and a foreign policy
of bending over.
NancyK, Which is worse, voting for someone with dementia or voting for someone pretending
to have dementia?
I haven't heard anything about Joe's brother or sister-in-law having a drug problem, have
you? Maybe they just have a pay to play problem, any thoughts?
Hillary certainly looked wonderful in her Chinese cut clothing in the 2016 debates. Joe's
got those nice 3 Red Flags going for him on his campaign poster, maybe he should wear a rice
farmer's hat to the upcoming debate, no?
I decided to vote today instead of Nov 5th as you had recommended. Did I do the right
thing?
You think Joe is innocent of all that has been done by his family? You think druggy Hunter
deserved to get a senior vice president position at MBNA straight after graduating from
college at $100k a year or that seat at Burisma at $50k a month? Do you think he deserved all
of that not because of his dad's influence but because he was so smart and because he
graduated from yale? If you believe all of that, you must be smoking some strong stuff.
Here is something you can read to improve your knowledge. This is not how a normal cv
looks like, for sure.
Brats like Hunter don't get these amazing deals because they are smart or create value for
their employers because of their work. He got these deals because it is a way of paying off
his father, the guy who then bats for these employers in the senate or the white house.
@ NancyK.. true - biden senior is not responsible for biden junior... however it seems
junior got the gig thanks daddys connections and willingness to fire the prosecutor so that
junior could continue to have the job! that is the part you appear to be turning a blind eye
to.... senior has major dirt on him due all this.. either you think it is a made up russian
propaganda set up, or you think it isn't... there is enough info at present to show that it
isn't a set up, but that daddy was using his position as vp unscrupulously or criminal
depending on how you want to filter it.. the fact the media want to push it under the carpet
with whatever excuse they provide, doesn't change any of it..
14 House seats in California GOP districts flipped a few weeks after the GOP "won" on
election night. It took that long for all the third party "harvested votes" to go through the
government employee union dominated election office verification procedures.
This election when the GOP turned tables and did their own "vote-harvesting" the Democrat
AG and Secy of State cried foul, sent the GOP a cease and desist letter to stop or face fines
and punishment. GOP said go pound sand. And the Dems had to back down since the law was too
vague to even be enforced.
Unfortunately this means the Democrats in this state will only double down on their "vote
harvesting". As if winning or losing California matters - except in the House. One guesses,
after the 2020 census California will lose a few House seats anyway, due to the state's
outflow of population and the reluctance of illegals to participate in the census in the
first place.
Don't forget, it was "term limits" that led to this one-party, one agenda domination of
this state. Never ever think "term limits" is an answer for anything.
Term limits only created a huge power vacuum, and in swooped the Democrat back public
sector unions running a steady string of revolving door talking head flunkies out of the
public sector union world, who immediately passed super-majority legislation that only
solidified their permanent domination. It happened so fast since 2000, few in the state knew
what hit them.
In 2016, they added "vote- harvesting" - allowing third parties to help fill out and
collect mail-in ballots and drop them off by the car loads, which technically must be checked
and verified, but in such volumes as to overwhelm the election offices - Cloward-Pivens on
steroids- a favorite technique of Barry Soetoro.
"... "The whole point of the Intelligence Community since the end of World War II was that whatever propaganda the CIA produces, whatever disinformation campaigns they engaged were never supposed to be directed domestically," he said. "That was the point of the NSA, the CIA, and all those intelligence communities." ..."
"... "What we have seen since 2016 going back to the 2016 campaign is incessant involvement in U.S. domestic politics. Working with journalists to disseminate purely for partisan ends. If you want to talk about things like violating norms, and dangers to democracy, what's more dangerous than allowing the CIA constantly to be manipulating our politics by making cover for the Biden campaign by claiming anonymously that the Russians are behind the story and therefore you disregard it. Even if the Russians why does that alleviate the responsibility of journalists to evaluate the emails and to examine whether or not Joe Biden actually engaged in misconduct?" Greenwald asked. ..."
Glenn Greenwald appeared on Tucker Carlson's FOX News show Monday night to criticize
the media for its lack of response to the Hunter Biden laptop story. Greenwald also criticized
intel community activity in domestic elections and posed the question that even if Russians are
behind the story it just requires journalistic investigation in case Biden is compromised.
"Adam Schiff is seriously the most pathological liar in all of American politics that I've seen in all of my time covering
politics and journalism," Greenwald said on 'Tucker Carlson Tonight.' "He just fabricates accusations at the drop of the hat at
the other people change underwear. He's simply lying when he just asserts over and over that the Russians or the Kremlin are
behind the story. He has no idea whether or not that is true. There is no evidence to support it."
"And what makes it so much worse is that the reason that the Bidens aren't answering basic
questions about the story," Greenwald said. "Basic questions like did Hunter Biden drop that
laptop off of the repair shop? Are the emails authentic? Do you know denied that they are. Do
you claim that any have been altered or are any of them fabricated? Did you in fact meet with
Barisma executives? The reason they don't answer the questions is because the media has
signaled that they don't have to. That journalists will be attacked and vilified simply for
asking."
Victor Davis Hanson: Will Our Next Revolution Be French, Russian, Maoist, Or
American?
Glenn Greenwald: Media and Intel Community Working Together To Manipulate The American
People
Trump Rips Coronavirus Coverage: "People Aren't Buying It CNN, You Dumb Bastards"
"The whole point of the Intelligence Community since the end of World War II was that
whatever propaganda the CIA produces, whatever disinformation campaigns they engaged were never
supposed to be directed domestically," he said. "That was the point of the NSA, the CIA, and
all those intelligence communities."
"What we have seen since 2016 going back to the 2016 campaign is incessant involvement
in U.S. domestic politics. Working with journalists to disseminate purely for partisan ends. If
you want to talk about things like violating norms, and dangers to democracy, what's more
dangerous than allowing the CIA constantly to be manipulating our politics by making cover for
the Biden campaign by claiming anonymously that the Russians are behind the story and therefore
you disregard it. Even if the Russians why does that alleviate the responsibility of
journalists to evaluate the emails and to examine whether or not Joe Biden actually engaged in
misconduct?" Greenwald asked.
"The much bigger point is the way that the information is being disseminated," he said. "It
is a union of journalists who have decided that their only goal is to defend Joe Biden and
election him president of the United States working with the FBI, CIA, NSA not to manipulate
our adversaries or foreign governments, but to manipulate the American people for their own
ends. It's been going on for four straight years now and there's no sign of it stopping anytime
soon." Related Videos
"It went on to target broadcasters, a ski resort, Olympic officials and sponsors of the
games in 2018. The GRU deployed data-deletion malware against the Winter Games IT systems and
targeted devices across the Republic of Korea using VPNFilter."
The Russian hackers' alleged attempt to cover their tracks included using certain
snippets of code and techniques to try to confuse investigators into think they were from
China and North Korea.
The UK's National Cyber Security Centre, a branch of GCHQ, believe Russia's aim was to
sabotage the running of the games, the Foreign Office said .
####
So as usual, nothing but the Foreign Orifice's word and they wouldn't make stuff up,
especially on order when the government is under heavy domestic pressure? No. Never.
I wonder if Tokyo has been asked for comment or given 'evidence?' Again, absence of
information gives it away.
Other outlets are putting out this FO press release with little comment, as usual.
"The Russian hackers' alleged attempt to cover their tracks included using certain
snippets of code and techniques to try to confuse investigators into think they were from
China and North Korea."
Just by the most marvelous coincidence, other bogus source codes in the Marble Framework
tickle trunk are those of China, North Korea and Iran.
If this is the caliber of the workforce that currently inhabits our intel agencies, someone
explain to me why they still deserve to exist.
Apparently, 50 former intel agents have run to Politico to sign a letter, a favorite tactic
during the Trump era to push non-authoritative nonsense as authoritative, claiming that the
Hunter Biden email scandal is actually Russian misinformation.
... ... ..
Oh, it has all the classic earmarks? Well, that settles it, right? I mean, who needs actual
evidence of to push a wild, partisan conspiracy theory when you are trying to counter a myriad
of evidence to the contrary, including an actual receipt that shows the laptop was dropped off
at the repair shop by Hunter Biden.
Update (1930ET) : In yet another death blow to Adam Schiff and the '50 former senior
intelligence officers' "Russia, Russia, Russia" claims, the FBI and DOJ have told a Fox News
producer that they do not believe that Hunter Biden's laptop and its contents are part of a
Russian disinformation campaign , confirming that the 'current' intelligence community agrees
with DNI Ratcliffe's comments yesterday.
We look forward to the reporting from other mainstream media news agencies now that federal
law enforcement has confirmed this is not a 'hoax' and we assume that the NYPost will once
again be allowed to tweet since this is now as 'factual' as anything thrown at Trump for the
last five years.
y_arrow Fizzy Head , 9 hours ago
Excuse me, but Who cares what these "former" senior officials think? I want names and
party affiliations, that will tell the tale.
and furthermore, if these former guys can muster up a letter why can't the real officials
muster up something, anything? They've known for months!! This is growing more ridiculous as
time goes by.
Han Cholo , 8 hours ago
"former" -- Meaning they are mostly looking from the outside in and have no clue.
The CIA's domestic propaganda campaign has been massively successful over the past four
years. There are tens of millions who literally believe that Trump is a Russian agent. They
believe that everyone should wear masks on their faces, forever, and they believe there are
Nazis everywhere. They believe there were no riots this summer, that thousands of blacks are
murdered every year by police, and that Christians are trying to establish a theocracy in the
US. They believe that little children should be able to have their genitals surgically
removed. They believe that the 2016 election was stolen, but that the one coming up cannot
be, even if ballots without postmarks show up on trucks ten days after November 3rd.
These are just a few of their insane beliefs that have been put into their heads through
social media and television.
Trump never had any power to stop this. Both the Democrats and Republicans are completely
in thrall to the intelligence and police agencies. It's all an act. There's no democracy left
in this country and there is no chance of reforming this system, ever. It has to collapse or
be seized and turned mercilessly against those who are perpetrating this horror show.
Dragonlord , 59 minutes ago
FBI and CIA betraying the country is no longer surprising, what surprising is how fast
tech giants jump onto the scum train even though some only exist less than 20 years. This
reveal why quickly the globalists can turn anyone into scumbags.
Finally, depths of Biden corruption proves our hypothesis that the so called ruling class
like Nancy, Obama, Clinton, etc, are not at the top echelon, there is a group or class of
people higher than them. They are probably the overlord class of the globalists.
philmannwright , 56 minutes ago
The FBI has always been a tool. Recall J Edgar.
Big Tech has enabled all of this. NSA/Data collection - Big brother goodbye freedom. seems
like a natural progression.
Gold Pedant , 1 hour ago
Hahaha, William Colby is the third man in the newspaper clipping above, but he isn't even
mentioned. Well after he retired from the CIA, he was assassinated to send a message. Look up
"WHO MURDERED THE CIA CHIEF?" It's a good quick read.
"Colby was fired on Nov. 2, 1975, as head of the CIA after being accused of talking too
much. He was said to have been too candid in testimony to congressional investigators; he had
long ago aroused the ire of the agency's old guard for trying to channel more effort into the
gathering, evaluation and analysis of information and less into covert operation."
And Lisa Page, Andrew McCabe, Weissman, Sally Yates, Bruce And Nellie Ord, James Baker,
Comey, Rosenstein, the entire brench of the FISA Court, and about 500 Senators and
Congressmen out of 535. It's a start.
Eastern Whale , 1 hour ago
"National Security" in the US is the get out of free card for politicians and the rich
with clout. paedophile, corruption, murder you name it.
PigmanExecutioner , 23 minutes ago
Anytime I hear "Russia" or "Democracy" these days, I have to ponder for the fate of
mankind. Imagine being that infantile in one's worldview and devoid of the ability to
critically analyze information? "National Security" is a made up term to excuse criminal
actions that somehow leaked out through unauthorized channels.
philmannwright , 1 hour ago
So, we have all been educated on how when the Democrats accuse, they are most likely
projecting upon their target their own behavior. Over and over again we see the blatant and
obvious hypocrisy in almost everything we hear from the likes of Hillary, Pelosi, Schumer,
Shiff, Obama, and on and on.
It stands to reason then, that what is going on now is no different and involves all of
them, including the left wing media - they are actually and in reality agents of the
Kremlin/China/the communist world order, aligned in agenda, and working toward tipping the
largest Domino, and I believe they have the U.S. teetering on the ropes.
It seems like it's either 1) the left is a national security risk or 2) Trumpers, welcome
to reeducation camp.
kudocast , 46 minutes ago
Yes we agree that JFK and MLK were assassinated by a group including the CIA, NSA, FBI,
Mafia, Nixon, LBJ, Bush and more.
But to suggest that Trump is in a similar situation as JFK and MLK, and on their moral,
intellectual, and visionary level is ludicrous.
Trump's a criminal, looting, lying, incompetent idiot. Why would the CIA, NSA, FBI, and
others waste their time trying to destroy Trump? Fat Orange Man accomplishes that all by
himself, no assistance required.
PigmanExecutioner , 31 minutes ago
Imagine thinking that the US was any different than the Soviet Union all these decades?
They just hid the tyranny better due to all the material distractions.
KGB, CIA.............All the same demons.
Automatic Choke , 23 minutes ago
my aha moment came when i started subscribing to John Williams "Shadow Govt Statistics" to
track the markets.....way back nearly 20 years ago. it quickly became clear that our trusted
government financial agencies were no more trustworthy than the old soviet "5 year plans"
that we all (in the US) used to laugh at. a mirror is a painful thing.
turkey george palmer , 54 minutes ago
empire looks pretty shaky. suppose a lot will go wrong. at least we have bill and melinda
talking about basic human rights are a threat to the population and only those who are
billionaires can decide what goes in your body. ok sure.
they say there will be a trade your debt for ubi. give up personal property. live where
and how by state dictate. unplanned breeding a crime. isolation camps for non compliance.
wonder where all the property will end up. I know there's only one type of person they all
say are the bad ones just one color. mein
A grand jury in Pennsylvania indicted the six men for "conspiracy, computer hacking,
wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, and false registration of a domain name," the DOJ
announced on Monday, describing them as officers in Unit 74455 of the Russian Main
Intelligence Directorate, or GRU.
The indictment identifies them as Yuriy Sergeyevich Andrienko, Sergey Vladimirovich
Detistov, Pavel Valeryevich Frolov, Anatoliy Sergeyevich Kovalev, Artem Valeryevich
Ochichenko and Petr Nikolayevich Pliskin.
According to the charges, they used malware like KillDisk, Industroyer, NotPetya and
Olympic Destroyer to attack everything from networks in Ukraine and Georgia to the Olympics
held in PyeongChang two years ago – in which Russian athletes were not allowed to
participate under their national flag, due to doping allegations made by a disgruntled
doctor.
The six are also accused of undermining "efforts to hold Russia accountable for its use
of a weapons-grade nerve agent, Novichok, on foreign soil" – referring to the March
2018 claims by the British government that Russia "highly likely" used the toxin
against a former spy and his daughter, an accusation Moscow repeatedly denied.
Assistant Attorney General for National Security John C. Demers has
claimed that "No country has weaponized its cyber capabilities as maliciously or
irresponsibly as Russia, wantonly causing unprecedented damage to pursue small tactical
advantages and to satisfy fits of spite."
Monday's indictment is hardly a surprise, considering that NATO and US officials have
blamed the 2017 NotPetya outbreak on Moscow for years, even though the malware struck
numerous Russian companies – from the central bank to the oil giant Rosneft and
metal-maker Evraz – as well.
The October 2019 Georgia attack was "in line with Russian tactics,"declared
CrowdStrike, the same security company that was tasked with dealing with the 2016
"hack" of the Democratic National Committee. CrowdStrike's president had secretly
admitted to Congress that they had no actual evidence of the hack itself.
The indictment also accuses the "GRU officers" of trying to breach the Organisation
for Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). The international body faced a scandal after
whistleblowers revealed that a report blaming chemical attacks in Syria on the country's
government omitted details that did not fall in line with the narrative pushed by the US and
the UK.
In announcing the indictment, the DOJ thanked the authorities in Ukraine, Georgia, New
Zealand, South Korea, and UK "intelligence services" – as well as Google,
Facebook and Twitter – for "significant cooperation and assistance" with the
investigation.
The same "GRU unit" and Kovalev specifically were previously indicted by Special
Counsel Robert Mueller for alleged "meddling" in 2016 US elections. As with Mueller's
indictments, Monday's charges have largely symbolic value; the accused are not likely to ever
see the inside of a US courtroom. The only indictment that was actually contested in court
– against the so-called IRA troll farm – was dropped by the DOJ in
March, due to lack of evidence.
Russia's military intelligence has not gone by the name of GRU since 2010.
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Fight it all you want, but there's nothing you can do. "The emails are Russian" is going to
be the official dominant narrative in mainstream political discourse, and there's nothing you
can do to stop it. Resistance is futile.
Like the Russian hacking narrative, the Trump-Russia collusion narrative, the Russian
bounties in Afghanistan narrative, and any other evidence-free framing of events that
simultaneously advances pre-planned cold war agendas, is politically convenient for the
Democratic party and generates clicks and ratings, the narrative that the New York Post
publication of Hunter Biden's emails is a Russian operation is going to be hammered and
hammered and hammered until it becomes the mainstream consensus. This will happen regardless of
facts and evidence, up to and including rock solid evidence that Hunter Biden's emails were not
published as a result of a Russian operation.
This is happening. It's following the same formula all the other fact-free Russia hysteria
narratives have followed. The same media tour by pundits and political operatives saying with
no evidence but very assertive voices that Russia is most certainly behind this occurrence and
we should all be very upset about it.
"To me, this is just classic textbook Soviet Russian tradecraft at work," Russiagate founder
and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper is heard assuring CNN's audience .
"Joe Biden – and all of us – SHOULD be furious that media outlets are spreading
what is very likely Russian propaganda," begins and eight-part thread by Democratic Senator
Chris Murphy, who claims the emails are "Kremlin constructed anti-Biden propaganda."
"It's not really surprising at all, this was always the play, but still kind of
head-spinning to watch all the players from 2016 run exactly the same hack-leak-smear op in
2020. Even with everyone knowing exactly what's happening this time," tweets MSNBC's Chris
Hayes.
"How are you all circling the wagons instead of being embarrassed for peddling Russian ops
18 days before the election. It's not enough that you all haven't learned from your atrocious
handling of 2016 -- you are doubling down," Democratic Party think tanker Neera Tanden
tweeted in admonishment of
journalists who dare to report on or ask questions about the emails.
Virtually the entirety of the Democratic Party-aligned political/media class has streamlined
this narrative of Russian influence into the American consciousness with very little inertia,
despite the fact that neither Joe nor Hunter Biden has disputed the authenticity of the emails
and despite a complete absence of evidence for Russian involvement in their publication.
This is surely the first time, at least in recent memory, that we have ever seen such a
broad consensus within the mass media that it is the civic duty of news reporters to try and
influence the outcome of a presidential general election by withholding negative news coverage
for one candidate. There was a lot of fascinated hatred for Trump in 2016, but people still
reported on Hillary Clinton's various scandals and didn't attack one another for doing so. In
2020 that has changed, and mainstream news reporters have now largely coalesced along the
doctrine that they must avoid any reporting which might be detrimental to the Biden
campaign.
"Dem Party hacks (and many of their media allies) genuinely believe it's immoral to report
on or even discuss stories that reflect poorly on Biden. In reality, it's the responsibility of
journalists to ignore their vapid whining and ask about newsworthy stories, even about Biden,"
tweeted The Intercept 's Glenn
Greenwald recently.
"You don't even have to think the Hunter Biden materials constitute some kind of
earth-shattering story to be absolutely repulsed at the authoritarian propaganda offensive
being waged to discredit them -- primarily by journalists who behave like compliant little
trained robots ," tweeted journalist Michael
Tracey.
Last month The Spectator 's Stephen L Miller described how the consensus
formed among the mainstream press since Clinton's 2016 loss that it is their moral duty to
be uncritical of Trump's opponent.
"For almost four years now, journalists have shamed their colleagues and themselves over
what I will call the 'but her emails' dilemma," Miller writes. "Those who reported dutifully on
the ill-timed federal investigation into Hillary Clinton's private server and spillage of
classified information have been cast out and shunted away from the journalist cool kids'
table. Focusing so much on what was, at the time, a considerable scandal, has been written off
by many in the media as a blunder. They believe their friends and colleagues helped put Trump
in the White House by focusing on a nothing-burger of a Clinton scandal when they should have
been highlighting Trump's foibles. It's an error no journalist wants to repeat."
So "the emails are Russian" narrative serves the interests of political convenience,
partisan media ratings, and the national security state's pre-planned agenda to continue
escalating against Russia as part of its
slow motion third world war against nations which refuse to bow to US dictates, and you've
got essentially no critical mainstream news coverage putting the brakes on any of it. This
means this narrative is going to become mainstream orthodoxy and treated as an established
fact, despite the fact that there is no actual, tangible evidence for it.
Joe Biden could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and the mainstream
press would crucify any journalist who so much as tweeted about it. Very
little journalism is going into vetting and challenging him, and a great deal of the energy
that would normally be doing so is going into ensuring that he slides right into the White
House.
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If the mainstream news really existed to tell you the truth about what's going on, everyone
would know about every questionable decision that Joe Biden has ever made, Russiagate would
never have happened, we'd all be acutely aware of the fact that powerful forces are pushing us
into increasingly aggressive confrontations with two nuclear-armed nations, and Trump would be
grilled about
Yemen in every press conference.
But the mainstream news does not exist to tell you the truth about the world. The mainstream
news exists to advance the interests of its wealthy owners and the status quo upon which they
have built their kingdoms. That's why it's
so very, very important that we find ways to break away from it and share information with
each other that isn't tainted by corrupt and powerful interests.
* * *
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"... The neocon/NATO aggressive expansionism has many purposes, but one is surely domestic repression: to gaslight and cause fear-the-foreign-bogeyman trauma among the American and British people as a whole and make most of them become docile and lose their critical thinking skills and their ability to analyze their own societies. ..."
"... One of the best ways to lobotomize the publics of the US and UK is to very gradually impose martial law in the name of protecting national security and ensuring peace and harmony at home. ..."
The neocon/NATO aggressive expansionism has many purposes, but one is surely domestic
repression: to gaslight and cause fear-the-foreign-bogeyman trauma among the American and
British people as a whole and make most of them become docile and lose their critical
thinking skills and their ability to analyze their own societies.
One of the best ways to lobotomize the publics of the US and UK is to very gradually
impose martial law in the name of protecting national security and ensuring peace and harmony
at home.
After several color revolutions succeeded, the Russiagate/Spygate op was carried out in
the US, with British assistance. This op has been largely successful, though there has been
limited resistance against its whole fake edifice as well as with the logic of Cold War2.0.
Nevertheless, Spygate has shocked many tens of millions of Dems into a stupor, while millions
more are dazed and manipulated by the Chinese bogeyman being manufactured by Trump.
The most dangerous result of the martial law lite mentality caused by Spygate and its MSM
purveyors is the growing support for censorship of free speech coming mostly from the Dems,
such as Schiff and Warner. The danger inherent in this trend became very clear when FaceBook
and Twitter engaged in massive and unprecedented arbitrary censorship of the New York Post
and of various Trump-related accounts.
This is the kind of thing you do during Stage 1 of a coup. Surely it was at least in part
an experiment to see how various power points in the US would respond. Even though Twitter
ended the censorship later, it was probably a successful experiment designed to gauge
reactions and areas of resistance.
In November, there could be further, more serious experiments/ops. If so, the current
expansionist movements being made and planned by the US and NATO may well be integral parts
of a new non-democratic model of "American-style democracy" -- not constitution-based but
"rules-based."
And that's by design. False flags like Scripal Novichok saga are just a smoke screen over UK
problems, the ciursi of neoliberalism in the country, delegitimization of neoliberal elites and
its subservience to the USA global neoliberal empire, which wants to devour Russia like it
plundered the USSR in the past.
But why outgoing MI6 chief decided to tell us the truth? This is not in the traditions of the
agency.
After years of focusing on combating terrorism, US Special Forces are preparing to turn
their attention to the possibility of future conflict with adversaries Russia and China. The
outgoing head of MI6, the UK's clandestine intelligence service, says that the perceived threat
posed by Russia and China against the UK is overstated and distract from addressing the UK's
domestic problems. Meanwhile, his replacement insists that the threat posed by Russia and China
is real and is growing in complexity. Rick Sanchez explains. Then former US diplomat Jim Jatras
and "Going Underground" host Afshin Rattansi share their insights.
The Senate Judiciary Committee is meeting for a for a final day of deliberations before the
confirmation of Judge Amy Coney Barrett, President Trump's controversial pick for the US
Supreme Court. RT America's Faran Fronczak reports. RT America's Trinity Chavez reports on the
skyrocketing poverty across the US as coronavirus relief funds dry up and the White House
stalls on additional stimulus. RT America's John Huddy reports on the backlash against Facebook
and Twitter for their suppression of an incendiary new report about Democratic nominee Joe
Biden's son Hunter Biden and his foreign entanglements.
Debunking 'fattest lie in modern political history' (Full show) 14 Oct, 2020 23:31 16
Follow RT on
Newly declassified documents continue to demolish "Russiagate," the discredited conspiracy
theory that US President Trump "colluded" with Russia to win the 2016 election. The documents
show how circular reporting, unverified gossip and conflicts of interest all worked to create
the years-long "Russiagate" frenzy. RT America's Alex Mihailovich has the details. Then former
UK MP George Galloway joins Rick Sanchez to share his analysis.
US Supreme Court nominee Judge Amy Coney Barrett faces her final day of questions before US
senators on Wednesday. RT America's Faran Fronczak has the details. Twitter has unveiled a new
set of policies to try to stem misinformation from spreading on its platform during the 2020 US
presidential election. RT America's John Huddy has the details. The legal and media analyst
Lionel of Lionel Media and conservative commentator Steve Malzberg weigh in. Plus, RT America's
Natasha Sweatte reports on NASA's search for "super-habitable" planets outside the Solar
System.
It appears the "Russia, Russia, Russia" cries from Adam Schiff and his dutiful media peons
is dead (we can only hope) as Director of National Intel John Ratcliffe just confirmed to Foxx
Business' Maria Bartiromo that:
"Hunter Biden's laptop is not part of some Russian disinformation campaign."
As Politico's Quint Forgey details
(@QuintForgey) , DNI Ratcliffe is asked directly whether accusations leveled against the
Bidens in recent days are part of a Russian disinformation effort.
He says no:
"Let me be clear. The intelligence community doesn't believe that because there is no
intelligence that supports that."
" We have shared no intelligence with Chairman Schiff or any other member of Congress that
Hunter Biden's laptop is part of some Russian disinformation campaign. It's simply not true.
"
"And this is exactly what I said would I stop when I became the director of national
intelligence, and that's people using the intelligence community to leverage some political
narrative."
"And in this case, apparently Chairman Schiff wants anything against his preferred
political candidate to be deemed as not real and as using the intelligence community or
attempting to use the intelligence community to say there's nothing to see here."
"Don't drag the intelligence community into this. Hunter Biden's laptop is not part of
some Russian disinformation campaign. And I think it's clear that the American people know
that."
So "the emails are Russian" narrative serves the interests of political convenience,
partisan media ratings, and the national security state's pre-planned agenda to continue
escalating against Russia as part of its
slow motion third world war against nations which refuse to bow to US dictates, and
you've got essentially no critical mainstream news coverage putting the brakes on any of it.
This means this narrative is going to become mainstream orthodoxy and treated as an
established fact, despite the fact that there is no actual, tangible evidence for it.
Joe Biden could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and the mainstream
press would crucify any journalist who so much as tweeted about it. Very
little journalism is going into vetting and challenging him, and a great deal of the
energy that would normally be doing so is going into ensuring that he slides right into the
White House.
If the mainstream news really existed to tell you the truth about what's going on,
everyone would know about every questionable decision that Joe Biden has ever made,
Russiagate would never have happened, we'd all be acutely aware of the fact that powerful
forces are pushing us into increasingly aggressive confrontations with two nuclear-armed
nations, and Trump would be grilled about
Yemen in every press conference.
But the mainstream news does not exist to tell you the truth about the world. The
mainstream news exists to advance the interests of its wealthy owners and the status quo upon
which they have built their kingdoms. That's why it's
so very, very important that we find ways to break away from it and share information
with each other that isn't tainted by corrupt and powerful interests.
As we detailed previously, as the Hunter Biden laptop scandal threatens to throw the 2020
election into chaos with what appears to be solid, undisputed evidence of high-level corruption
by former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter, the same crowd which peddled the
Trump-Russia hoax is now suggesting that Russia is behind it all .
To wit, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, who swore on National television
that he had evidence Trump was colluding with Russia - now says that President Trump is handing
the Kremlin a "propaganda coup from Vladimir Putin."
Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) has gone full tin-foil , suggesting that Giuliani was a 'key
target' of 'Kremlin constructed anti-Biden propaganda.'
2/ Russia knew it had to play a different game than 2016. So it built an operation to cull
virulently pro-Trump Americans as pseudo-assets, so blind in their allegiance to Trump that
they'll willingly launder Kremlin constructed anti-Biden propaganda.
Yet, if one looks at the actual facts of the case - in particular, that Hunter Biden appears
to have dropped his own laptops off at a computer repair shop, signed a service ticket , and
the shop owner approached the FBI first and Rudy Giuliani last after Biden failed to pick them
up, the left's latest Russia conspiracy theory is quickly debunked .
This is the story of an American patriot, an honorable man, John Paul Mac Issac, who tried
to do the right thing and is now being unfairly and maliciously slandered as an agent of
foreign intelligence, specifically Russia. He is not an agent or spy for anyone. He is his own
man. How do I know? I have known his dad for more than 20 years. I've known John Paul's dad as
Mac. Mac is a decorated Vietnam Veteran, who flew gunships in Vietnam. And he continued his
military service with an impeccable record until he retired as an Air Force Colonel. The crews
of those gunships have an annual reunion and Mac usually takes John Paul along, who volunteers
his computer and video skills to record and compile the stories of those brave men who served
their country in a difficult war.
This story is very simple – Hunter Biden dropped off three computers with liquid
damage at a repair shop in Wilmington, Delaware on April 12, 2019. The owner, John Mac Issac,
examined the three and determined that one was beyond recovery, one was okay and the data on
the harddrive of the third could be recovered. Hunter signed the service ticket and John Paul
Mac Issac repaired the hard drive and down loaded the data . During this process he saw some
disturbing images and a number of emails that concerned Ukraine, Burisma, China and other
issues . With the work completed, Mr. Mac Issac prepared an invoice, sent it to Hunter Biden
and notified him that the computer was ready to be retrieved. H unter did not respond . In the
ensuing four months (May, June, July and August), Mr. Mac Issac made repeated efforts to
contact Hunter Biden. Biden never answered and never responded. More importantly, Biden stiffed
John Paul Mac Issac–i.e., he did not pay the bill.
When the manufactured Ukraine crisis surfaced in August 2019, John Paul realized he was
sitting on radioactive material that might be relevant to the investigation. After conferring
with his father, Mac and John Paul decided that Mac would take the information to the FBI
office in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Mac walked into the Albuquerque FBI office and spoke with an
agent who refused to give his name. Mac explained the material he had, but was rebuffed by the
FBI. He was told basically, get lost . This was mid-September 2019.
Two months passed and then, out of the blue, the FBI contacted John Paul Mac Issac. Two FBI
agents from the Wilmington FBI office–Joshua Williams and Mike Dzielak–came to John
Paul's business . He offered immediately to give them the hard drive, no strings attached.
Agents Williams and Dzielak declined to take the device .
Two weeks later, the intrepid agents called and asked to come and image the hard drive. John
Paul agreed but, instead of taking the hard drive or imaging the drive, they gave him a
subpoena. It was part of a grand jury proceeding but neither agent said anything about the
purpose of the grand jury. John Paul complied with the subpoena and turned over the hard drive
and the computer.
In the ensuing months, starting with the impeachment trial of President Trump, he heard
nothing from the FBI and knew that none of the evidence from the hard drive had been shared
with President Trump's defense team.
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The lack of action and communication with the FBI led John Paul to make the fateful decision
to contact Rudy Giuliani's office and offer a copy of the drive to the former mayor. We now
know that Rudy accepted John Paul's offer and that Rudy's team shared the information with the
New York Post.
John Paul Mac Issac is not responsible for the emails, images and videos recovered from
Hunter Biden's computer. He was hired to do a job, he did the job and submitted an invoice for
the work. Hunter Biden, for some unexplained reason, never responded and never asked for the
computer. But that changed last Tuesday, October 13, 2020. A person claiming to be Hunter
Biden's lawyer called John Paul Mac Issac and asked for the computer to be returned. Too late.
That horse had left the barn and was with the FBI.
John Paul, acting under Delaware law, understood that Hunter's computer became the property
of his business 90 days after it had been abandoned.
At no time did John Paul approach any media outlet or tabloid offering to sell salacious
material . A person of lesser character might have tried to profit. But that is not the essence
of John Paul Mac Issac. He had information in his possession that he learned, thanks to events
subsequent to receiving the computer for a repair job, was relevant to the security of our
nation. He did what any clear thinking American would do–he, through his father,
contacted the FBI. When the FBI finally responded to his call for help, John cooperated fully
and turned over all material requested .
The failure here is not John Paul's . He did his job. The FBI dropped the ball and, by
extension, the Department of Justice. Sadly, this is becoming a disturbing, repeating
theme–the FBI through incompetence or malfeasance is not doing its job.
Any news outlet that is publishing the damnable lie that John Paul is part of some
subversive effort to interfere in the United States Presidential election is on notice. That is
slander and defamation. Fortunately, the evidence from Hunter Biden's computer is in the hands
of the FBI and Rudy Giuliani and, I suspect, the U.S. Senate. Those with the power to do
something must act. John Paul Mac Issac's honor is intact. We cannot say the same for those
government officials who have a duty to deal with this information.
"As this is so obvious one must ask what the real reason for the anti-Russian pressure
campaign is. What do those who argue for it foresee as its endpoint?"
I ask myself this question seemingly every day. Could U.S bureaucrats be so short sighted
where they cannot see the culture they are creating? Any sane follower of international
relations understands that poking a nuclear power with a stick is the work of fools. My
nightmare, that I have feared since I was a child, is a nuclear confrontation that would
result in the end of the human race.
Does rationality and common sense ever win out in Washington? I fear that our "endgame"
will result in a mushroom cloud....
Not sure who this Andrei Martyanov is, but underlying all the comments is the proposition
that Putin-managed capitalism works great, will work great forever, will not have a crisis
ever and will make Russia totally independent in all ways. Stated so forthrightly, no doubt
it sounds too stupid to admit to. Nonetheless this is the claim. I say capitalist restoration
did not improve the Russian economy in the way implied by Martyanov. Putin is still a
Yeltsinite, even if he is sober enough to pass for competent.
I take the opposite view: Looking from today, Russia is lucky that the USSR collapsed in
1991. It shed its debt, its currency passed through hyperinflation, and their economy
collapsed and rebuilt. The US and most Western countries still have that coming for them, and
soon.
Plus beyond that the strict Communist/Marxist atheism over 70+ years lead to a rebirth of
Christian values in Russia, their biggest advantage in this cultural war. And they practice
science, not scientism.
Note: Russia and China are more capitalist than the US, for quite some time now. (12+
years)
@110 Abe as far as I understand it, the economic argument goes like this: take the number of
rubles generated/spent/whatever in Russian economic activity, then use the current conversion
rate to convert that into an "equivalent" amount of US dollars.
Then see what you can buy with that many US dollars.
If you went shopping in the USA, the answer would be that this many US dollars doesn't buy
you much, ergo, Russian economic activity is pathetically low.
An example: the Russian government might budget xxx (fill in the figure) rubles to buy new
T-90 tanks. In Washington they would convert that into US dollars, and then declare that this
is chicken-feed. Hardly enough to buy less than 10 Abrams tanks.
Only the Russians aren't buying Abrams tanks from the USA, and are not spending dollars.
They are buying T-90 tanks, and for the amount of rubles spent they'll get 50 tanks.
Every metric the US analyst are using tells them that the USA is vastly, vastly
outspending the Russians on military equipment, to the point where it is obvious that the
Russian military must be destitute and decrepit.
But if they every took the time to look they'll see 50 brand-spanking new T-90 main battle
tanks. Weapons that their assumptions say that the Russians can't afford, and would wonder
"Huh? Where'd they come from?"
@ Posted by: Andrei Martyanov | Oct 18 2020 4:11 utc | 96
I agree that comparing Russia's economy with the likes of Italy and Spain is ridiculous,
but it's not that simple. Capitalism is not what is appears to be.
If a (capitalist) nation wants to get something from another (capitalist) nation, it needs
to export something. There's no free lunch in international trade: if you want to import, you
have to export or issue sovereign debt bonds (treasury bonds).
In this scenario, either Russia produces everything it needs in its own territory or it
will have to export in order to import the technology it needs to do whatever it needs to do.
Remember: the Russian Federation is a capitalist nation-state, it has to follow the laws of
motion of capitalism, which take precedence over whatever Putin wants. To ignore that
economic laws exist is to deny any kind of theory of collapse; nation-states would then be
eternal, natural entities with no entropy.
Even if Russia produces everything it needs in its own territory, it is still capitalist.
It would need, in order to "substitute imports", to super-exploit its own labor force
(working class) in order to extract surpluses for its industrialization efforts. That's what
the USSR did during Stalin.
If Russia is doing the imports substitution in the classical way (the way Latin America
did during the liberal dictatorships of the 1950s-1980s), then it is trying to sell
commodities to industrialized countries in order to import technology and machinery necessary
to industrialize its own territory. That is probably the case here.
Assuming this more probable case, then I'm sorry to tell you it won't work. It may work in
the short or even medium term, but it will ultimately fail in the long term. The thing is
that, in a system of capitalist exchange between an agrarian and an industrial nation-state,
the industrial nation-state will always have the advantage (i.e. have a trade surplus).
That's because of Marx's labor theory of value: industrialized commodities ("manufactured
goods") have more intrinsic value than agrarian/raw material commodities - just think about
how many kilos of bananas Brazil would have to export to the USA in order to import one
single unit of an iPhone 12, to use an contemporary example. As a social result,
industrialized countries have a higher organic composition of capital (OCC) than agrarian
countries, as they need more value to just keep themselves afloat (as a metaphor: it's more
expensive to keep a big mansion than a little flat in a stationary state). Value (wealth)
then tends to flow from lower OCC to the higher OCC, this is the material base that divides
the First and Third World countries until today.
To make things even worse, raw materials/agricultural products have an inelastic demand,
which means their prices fall when production rises, and their prices rise when production
falls, relative to overall demand. You will pay whatever the water company will charge you
for the cubic meter of water - but you won't consume more or less water because of its price,
hence the term "inelastic": demand tends to be more or less constant on a macroeconomic
level. The same problem suffers the commodity exporter nations: there will come a stage where
their exports' overall value will collapse vis-a-vis the machinery and technology they need
to import.
As a result, the commodity exporter nations will have to get more debt overseas, by
issuing more T-bonds, just to keep the trade balance afloat. What was the quest for progress
becomes a vicious battle for mere survival. A debt crisis is brewed.
And that's exactly what happened to the Latin American countries in the 1980s-1990s: their
debt exploded and they were put to their knees by the USA (the country that issues the
universal fiat currency). The USA then charged their debt, which triggered a wave of
privatizations of everything those countries had built over decades. This is what will happen
to Russia if it falls for the lure of imports substitution.
That's why I urge the Russians to review their concepts and try to get back to the Soviet
times. It doesn't need to be exactly how it was before: you can make the due reforms and
adopt a more or less Chinese model of socialism. That's the only way out, if the Russian
people doesn't want to be enslaved by the liberals (capitalists).
@vk from what i'm reading (stephen cohen: soviet fates and lost alternatives) the chinese
adopted something like bukharin's nep policies, which stalin did his best to wipe out in the
ussr. i've got some problems with cohen's last book, "war with russia?" but he has a lot of
good information on the history of the ussr.
@ Posted by: pretzelattack | Oct 18 2020 15:14 utc | 118
On the surface, yes: the comparison between Reform and Opening Up and NEP are
irresistible. But it is not precise: the only merit it has is in the fact that it is fairer
than simply classifying Deng Xiaoping's reforms as neoliberalism (Trotskysts, Austrian
School) or capitalism (liberals).
The key here is the difference of the nature of the Chinese peasant class and the Russian
peasant class. The Chinese peasant class, besides suffering a lot (millions of dead by
famine) in the hands of a liberal government for decades (Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist
Government) (while the Russian equivalent - the "February Revolution" - only lasted a few
months, engulfed by their insistence on continuing with the meat-grinder of WWI), had a
different historical subtract.
Chinese late feudalism was much more developed, much more manufactured-centered than
Russian late feudalism. As a result, the Chinese peasant was much more proletarian-minded
than the feudal Russian peasant. Also, the Chinese didn't have the kulak problem (peasant
petite-bourgeoisie) - instead, they had regional warlords who self-destructed during the
chaotic republican period (1911-1949). When the warlords were gone, what was left was a much
more proletarian-minded, egalitarian-minded, small peasantry. This peasantry didn't bother to
migrate to the cities to work in the industry or to start their own factories in the
countryside itself. That's why Deng Xiaoping's Reform and Opening Up was successful - not
because of his genius, but because he was backed up by a capable people.
The Chinese peasantry, for example, didn't hoard or directed their grain surplus to
exports in order to starve the proletariat to death in the cities - they sold it to the
Chinese market. The Chinese peasantry also trusted their central government (CCP) and saw
itself as part of the project - in complete opposition to the feudal-minded Russian kulak,
who saw his piece of land as essentially an independent and self-sufficient
cell/ecosystem.
That's why the Reform and Opening Up was successful (it survives until the present times)
and the NEP soon failed - following the good harvest of 1924, came the awful harvest of 1926,
which triggered a shit show where the peasantry hoarded the grain and almost starved the USSR
to extinction, and which led to Stalin's ascension and the dekulakization process (forced
collectivization).
i should add that i know little about the actual history of communism, but capitalism is
revealing itself as a monstrous failure, and not all the propaganda in the world is
succeeding at covering that up.
I know how economic reasoning comes to that conclusion, but IRL comparing such different
countries only by GDP metric is insane and beyond stupid.
Eg. Russia has GDP similar to California!
Yes, in US centric GDP metrics that favors and cheats US itself (surprise!).
But. One of those countries sent man in space, produces everything, has vast resources and
is self sufficient nuclear superpower.
Other one cant even feed and provider water to its population without outside help.
GDP means nothing when sh*t hits the fan. What will "richer" country do if it goes to war
with "poorer"? Throw money at them while they launch nukes at it?
@ Posted by: pretzelattack | Oct 18 2020 16:11 utc | 122
There certainly are similarities between the NEP and the Reform and Opening Up. It's very
possible Deng Xiaoping took Lenin as inspiration.
Forgot to mention the Scissors Crisis, which erupted in 1923, and triggered the NEP. That
crisis is one more evidence that shows manufactured products are inherently more valuable
than raw materials/agrarian products.
Again, for products of Western "education" basic logic and ability for a basic
extrapolation seem beyond the grasp: there are no issues for Russia to produce anything,
other than time and some money. Country which produces best hi-tech weapons in the world,
dominates world's nuclear energy market (this is not your iPhone "hi tech") and has a full
enclosed cycle for aerospace industry, among many other things, will have little trouble in
substituting pretty much anything. I remember a bunch of morons, who pass for "analysts",
from either WSJ or WaPo declaring 6 years ago that sanctions will deny Russia access to
Western extraction technologies. Sure, for a country whose space program alone will crush
whole economies of UK or Germany should they ever try to recreate it, will have "problems"
producing compressor or drill equipment with the level of Russia's metallurgy and material
science. Generally speaking, West's present pathetic state is a direct result of utter
incompetence across the board in a number of key fields of human activity and your post, most
likely based on some BS by Western media, is a good demonstration of this state of the
affairs.
Per immigration policy, you can easily find a a truck load of resources, especially on the
web-sites of Russian diplomatic missions (Embassies, Consulates etc.), easily available. Per
cats--Russian love for cats is boundless and intense. You may say that Russia is a
cat-obsessed country;)
vk@120 posits a mystical cultural difference in Russian and Chinese peasants, which
unfortunately has pretty much the same content as the hypothesis of a racial difference. That
the morally superior race is supposed to be Chinese doesn't really help. As often, some
strange assertions of facts that aren't so accompany such bizarre thinking. The rich peasants
in China (what would be kulaks in Russian history,) were notorious for moneylending. As ever,
the inevitable arrears ended in the moneylender's family taking the land. Collectivization
came early in China, well along the way by 1956. And a key aspect of it was the struggle
against the Chinese equivalent of the kulak class. As for the insistence that private farming
is superior, the growth of inequality in land drove millions, a hundred million or more, into
the cities. Without residence permits this floating proletariat was effectively
superexploited by the new capitalist elements, as Deng meant them to do. Nor did the warlords
discredit themselves, not as a group. If anything the young warlord who forced Chiang to
reject active war against the Communists, in order to fight the Japanese invaders, was the
one who kept the GMD (KMT in Wade-Giles,) from discrediting itself. [Xian incident] And what
warlords had to do with the Chinese rich peasantry *after* the Revolution is a complete
mystery.
Socially, the deliberate uneven development promoted by Deng and his successors, is
eroding the social fabric of the larger countryside. This, in addition to the neocolonial
concessions, the growing links to the Chinese bourgeoisie of the diaspora suggest that as
Dengists may go even back/forward to a new form of warlordism. The thing about comparing
Bukharism/NEP to Dengism/the "Opening" is that Bukharin's program failed spectacularly. But
modern China is not next door to Nazi Germany. Even more to the point, Stalin's victory over
Hitler has provided a kind of moral shield for China, even under Deng, inspiring fear of
losing a general war. If Bukharin had beaten Stalin, we can be as sure as any hypothetical
can be, the USSR would have been defeated, not victorious. In modern China, the Bukharin won.
There is an excellent chance the national government of today's China will be defeated.
That article describes a 110 MW turbine that has now finally been put into production
(while Siemens, General Electric etc. produce utility-class gas turbines up to about 600 MW,
with far higher efficiency and most likely reliability). The article further describes 40 GW
of thermal electrical production to be "modernized" until 2031 (11 years from now), and
apparently a microscopic 2 GW of new capacity from "domestic and localized" 65 MW turbines to
be commissioned 2026-2028. (I don't understand Russian so I had to rely on Yandex's machine
translation.) That's admittedly some kind of progress, but is simply not going to cut it.
Nowhere close.
Imagine if China set the ambition to build its own semiconductors and its own turbofans
for its stealth fighters sometime around 2040. Imagine if China was still producing a third
of the amount of electricity of the United States instead of about double, etc., and
considered this to be adequate. It would be akin to abandoning its ambitions for
technological and industrial independence from the West, and that is exactly what Russia is
doing in the realm of gas turbines. There is apparently no capability and no seriousness
going into translating Russia's world-class research and science into actual large-scale,
modern industrial production, and everything points to this continuing, while you can blather
on all you want about people with "Western education" simply not getting anything.
That's admittedly some kind of progress, but is simply not going to cut it. Nowhere close.
That's admittedly you switching on "I am dense" mode and trying to up the ante with 600
MW, which are a unique product, while you somehow miss the point that 110 MWt MGT-110 of
fully Russian production has completed a full cycle of industrial tests and operations (an
equivalent of military IOC--Initial Operational Capability) and is in a serial production.
But instead of studying the issue (even if through Yandex translate) with Siemens which when
learning about MGT-110 offered Russia 100% localization with technology transfer, Russians
declined, you go into generalizations without having even minimal set of facts and
situational awareness. In fact 110 MWt turbines are most in demand product for a variety of
applications. Get acquainted with this.
I am not going to waste my time explaining to you (you will play dense again) what IOC
means and how it relates to serial production, I am sure you will find a bunch of unrealted
"argumentation".
Imagine if China
I don't need to imagine anything, as well as draw irrelevant parallels with China.
There is apparently no capability and no seriousness going into translating Russia's
world-class research and science into actual large-scale, modern industrial production, and
everything points to this continuing, while you can blather on all you want about people
with "Western education" simply not getting anything.
This is exactly what I am talking about. Hollow declarations by people who can not even
develop basic factual base.
It's great to see you here with your excellent facts and perspectives on Russia. I'm sorry
you have to deal with people whose minds are too small to grasp the immense scale of Russia -
scale in physical size, civilizational depth and importance to the balance of power in the
world.
Russia alone stopped the creeping gray hegemony from the west that had looked like it
would just ooze over the whole world and suffocate it in bullshit and tribute payments. And
then China joined in the fun. The world has a future now, when a decade ago this didn't seem
possible, at least from my view in the US. Geopolitically, Russia gave us this future, and
China has come to show us how much fun it's going to be.
@ Posted by: steven t johnson | Oct 18 2020 20:05 utc | 127
There's no mysticism here because we know how the kulaks emerged in Russia: they were the
result of the catastrophic capitalist reforms of the 1860s, which completely warped the old
feudal relations of the Russian Empire.
The reforms of the 1860s were catastrophic for two reasons:
1) it freed the peasants slowly. The State serfs - the last who gained their freedom -
were left with no land. A complex partition system of the land, based on each administrative
region, created a distorted division of land, where very few peasants got huge chunks of land
(the future kulaks) and most received almost nothing (as Lenin demonstrated, see his first
book of his Complete Works, below the rate of subsistence);
2) it tried to preserve the old feudal privileges and powers of the absolutist
monarchy.
As a result, the Russian Empire had a bizarre economic system, a mixed economy with the
worst of the two words: the inequality and absolute misery of capitalism and the backwardness
and lack of social mobility of feudalism.
But yes, you're right when you state Mao's era was not an economic failure. His early era
really saw an attempt by the CCP to make an alliance with the "national bourgeoisie", and
this alliance was indeed a failure. This certainly led to a more radical approach by the CCP,
still in the Mao era (collectivization). Life quality in China greatly increased after 1949,
until the recession of the Great Leap Forward (which was not a famine, but threw back some
socioeconomic indicators temporarily back to the WWII era). When the Great Leap Forward was
abandoned, China continued to improve afterwards.
All of this doesn't change the fact that China's "NEP" was a success, while the original
NEP wasn't. Of course, there are many factors that explain this, but it is wrong to call late
Qing China as even similar to the late Romanov Russia.
I'm not saying Stalin's reform were a failure. Without them, they wouldn't be able to
quickly import the Fordist (Taylorist) method they needed to industrialize. The USSR became a
superpower in just 19 years - a world record. The first Five-Year Plan was a huge morale
boost and success for the Soviet people - specially because it happened at the same time as
the capitalist meltdown of 1929.
--//--
@ Posted by: Eric | Oct 18 2020 20:53 utc | 128
The thing with semiconductors (and other very advanced technologies) is that it is an
industry that only makes sense for a given nation to dominate if they're going to mass
produce it. That usually means said production must be export oriented, which means competing
against already well-established competitors.
China doesn't want to drain the State's coffers to fund an industry that won't at least
pay for itself. It has to change the wheels with the car moving. That's why it is still
negotiating the Huawei contracts in the West first, why it still is trying to keep the
Taiwanese product flowing first, only to then gradually start the heavy investment needed to
dominate the semiconductor technology and production process.
They learned with the Soviets in this sense. When computers became a thing in the West,
the USSR immediately poured resources to build them. They were able to dominate the main
frame technology, and they were successfully implemented in their economy. Then came the
personal computers, and, this time, the Soviets weren't able to make it integrate in their
economy. The problem wasn't that the Soviets didn't know how to build a personal computer
(they did), but that every new technology is born for a reason, and only makes sense in a
given social context. You can't just blindly copy your enemy's technology and hope for the
best.
The world has a future now, when a decade ago this didn't seem possible, at least from my
view in the US. Geopolitically, Russia gave us this future, and China has come to show us
how much fun it's going to be. Many thanks to you and your people.
Thank you for your kind words. As my personal experience (my third book is coming out
soon)shows--explaining economic reality to people who have been "educated" (that is confused,
ripped off for huge tuition and given worthless piece of paper with MBA or some "economics"
Bachelor of "Science" on it) in Western pseudo-economic "theory" that this "global"
"rules-based order" is over, is pretty much an exercise in futility. And if a catastrophe of
Boeing is any indication (I will omit here NATO's military-industrial complex)--dividends,
stocks and "capitalization" is a figment of imagination of people who never left their office
and infantile state of development and swallowed BS economic narrative hook, line and sinker
without even trying to look out of the window. They still buy this BS of US having "largest
GDP in the world" (in reality it is much smaller than that of China), the
de-industrialization of the United States is catastrophic (they never bothered to look at
2018 Inter-agency Report to POTUS specifically about that)and its industrial base is
shrinking with a lighting speed, same goes to Germany which for now retains some residual
industrial capability and competences but:
This is before COVID-19, after it Germany's economy shrank worst among Western nations,
worse even than the US. It is a long story, but as Michael Hudson stated not for once in his
books and interviews, what is "taught" as economics in the West is basically a
pseudo-science. Well, it is. Or, as same Hudson stated earlier this year:"The gunboats don't
appear in your economics textbooks. I bet your price theory didn't have gun boats in them, or
the crime sector. And probably they didn't have debt in it either." And then they wonder in
Germany (or EU)how come that EU structures are filled with pedophiles, "Green" fanatics and
multiculturalists. Well, because Germany (and EU) are occupied territories who made their
choice. And this is just the start. What many do not understand here is that overwhelming
majority of Russians do not want to deal with Europe and calls for new Iron Curtain are
louder and louder and the process has started. Of course, there is a lot of both contempt and
schadenfreude on Russian part. As Napoleon stated, the nation which doesn't want to feed own
army, will feed someone else's. Very true. Modern West worked hard for it, let it "enjoy"
now.
It's good to see you commenting here as barflies seem more inclined to listen to you than
me. Did you watch Russian documentary on
The Wall , which I learned about from Lavrov's meeting with those doing business
within Russia on 5 Oct? I asked The Saker if his translation team would take on the task of
providing English subtitles or a voice over but never got a reply one way or the other. IMO,
for Russia to avoid the West's fate it must change its banking and financial system from the
private to the public realm as Hudson advocates most recently in this podcast . As for Mr.
Lavrov, he surprised the radio station interviewers by citing Semyon Slepakov's song "America
Doesn't Like Us," of which barfly Paco thankfully provided a translation of the
lyrics.С наилучшими
пожеланиями
крепкого
здоровья и
долгих лет
жизни!
I think you an Grieved misunderstand somewhat where I am coming from here. Michael Hudson
would be (and has been) the first to describe how Russia's elites (and to a large extent it
seems also the people) bought into a bogus neoliberal ideology teaching that somehow Russia
needs to earn the money it needs to build its own economy in the form of foreign currency
through export revenues. Apparently these economists and politicians in Russia never bothered
to look how Western economies actually operate (as opposed to what they preach to countries
they want to destroy), or for that matter how China has developed its economy (in all of
these countries, the necessary credit is created on a keyboard.) The export revenues that
Russia earns in the form of dollars and euros are sold to the central bank for the roubles
that Russia's government needs to function. Bizarrely, this creates just as much inflation as
it would if the central bank had just created the roubles without "backing" foreign currency.
In fact, there is more inflation created, because in times of high oil prices, corresponding
amounts of roubles are suddenly thrown into a domestic market that is underdeveloped, for
example in its infrastructure and its food processing. There are reasons why China can expand
its money supply by much greater proportions each year and still suffer far less inflation
than Russia.
Unlike China, Russia had already attained much of the technological expertise for the
equipment that it later decided it was unable to produce inside the country. A good example
of this are the turboexpanders whose design was perfected (though the basic idea was a bit
older) by Pyotr Kapisa in the 1930's in the USSR. This same technology went into the
turbopumps of the rocket engines in the Energia boosters. These engines are still to this
day, 30 years after the Soviet collapse, imported by the United States. As these rocket
engines including the turbopumps are still produced in Russia, the know-how to manufacture
was obviously not lost.
I read just the other day that as part of its import substitution program, Russia is
considering to produce the turboexpanders for processing natural gas (separating methane from
ethane) inside the country. Russia, with the world's largest natural gas reserves and
production, and as I described already possessing the expertise to produce the turboexpanders
needed for cryogenic separation, chose to hand over possibly billions of dollars to the West
to import this machinery over the years, only to be helpless when the West introduced
technological sanctions against its oil and gas sector. Very likely, in a couple of years we
will receive the announcement that the drive to produce them domestically has been abandoned,
after it was realized that their production will require new factories and new machinery,
which do not fall out of the sky in Russia as they apparently do in the West and in China.
Putin will announce that great business awaits whichever Western investor ready to provide
the funds. (Spoiler: They won't! The West is not very interested in investing into building
up Russia's industrial capabilities, preferring instead to loot its natural resources and to
suck out its skilled worked and scientists.)
While Russia sits and waits for higher oil prices or foreign dollar credit on the one
hand, and with unemployed skilled labor and rotting industrial infrastructure on the other
hand, China spends the equivalent of trillions of dollars (in yuan, obviously) into fixed
capital (not least infrastructure) each year. The funds for this are all created by
keystrokes by the PBOC and provide employment for the domestic workforce. You don't have to
ponder long on which model has been hugely successful, and which has been an unmitigated
disaster.
I can't find the exact figures right now, but Russia produces something like 300,000 STEM
graduates every year, more than the United States. (I may very well have read this originally
on your blog, by the way.) Many of them will still be forced to emigrate to find gainful
employment, even 20 years after the 1990's ended and Putin became President. These graduates
remain even in post-Soviet times of a very high quality, and undergraduate students in Russia
are trained at a higher level in mathematics and physics than in particular Americans are
even as post-graduates. By refusing to invest in its own scientific infrastructure and
industry the way China has done and does, Russia gives away all the education and training
that were provided to these students, especially to the same Western countries that are
seeking to destroy Russia. This is completely unforgivable.
I should add that I myself study physics in Germany. I have great appreciation for the
Russian methods of teaching mathematics and physics, as many do here. I have learned,
preferentially, mathematical analysis from Zorich, mechanics, electrodynamics etc. from
Landau-Lifschitz, much about Fourier series from Tolstov, and so on, and have very often been
awestruck and inspired in a mystical fashion by these works. I am not somehow unaware of the
unparalleled quality (in particular after the destruction of Germany in WWII) of the USSR's
and Russia's math/physics education or unfamiliar with the achievements of the USSR in
science and engineering. It's precisely because I am familar with them that it
frustrates me immensely how Russia's potential is needlessly wasted.
What many do not understand here is that overwhelming majority of Russians do not want to
deal with Europe and calls for new Iron Curtain are louder and louder and the process has
started. Of course, there is a lot of both contempt and schadenfreude on Russian part.
Andrei (132), do you have a link to an opinion poll that supports this? Thanks
in advance.
@ Digby | Oct 19 2020 0:28 utc | 136.. if you haven't already listened to the lavrov
interview that b linked to in his main post - it is a question and answer thing - you would
benefit from doing so and it would help answer you question some too.. see b's post at this
spot -"In a wide ranging interview with Russian radio stations" and hit that link
@ james (137)
Well, I looked into the interview. While it is informative in its own right (at some point it
briefly touches on Russo-Japanese relations), and some of the interviewers do show some
concerns, I'm still not sure how it helps answer my question (maybe I missed something?). My
initial impression was that Mr. Martyanov was referring to Russian civilians - not just radio
interviewers.
Thanks anyway for the heads up.
@ 138 digby... my impression was the radio interviewers questions were a reflection of the
general sentiment of the public.. i could be wrong, but it seems to me they have completely
given up on the west based on what they ask and say in their questions to lavrov...
on another note, you might enjoy engaging andrei more directly on his website which i will
share here...
The moment the New York Post reported on some of the sleazy, corrupt details contained on
Hunter Biden's hard drive, Twitter and Facebook, the social media giants most closely connected
to the way Americans exchange political information, went into overdrive to suppress the
information and protect Joe Biden. In the case of Facebook, though, perhaps one of those
protectors was, in fact, protecting herself.
The person currently in charge of Facebook's election integrity program is Anna Makanju .
That name probably doesn't mean a lot to you, but it should mean a lot – and in a
comforting way -- to Joe Biden.
Before ending up at Facebook, Makanju was a nonresident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic
Council. The Atlantic Council is an ostensibly non-partisan think tank that deals with
international affairs. In fact, it's a decidedly partisan organization.
In 2009, James L. Jones, the Atlantic Council's chairman left the organization to be
President Obama's National Security Advisor. Susan Rice, Richard Holbrooke, Eric Shinseki,
Anne-Marie Slaughter, Chuck Hagel, and Brent Scowcroft also were all affiliated with the Atlantic Council
before they ended up in the Obama administration.
The Atlantic Council has received massive amounts of foreign funding over the years. Here's
one that should interest everyone: Burisma Holdings donated $300,000
dollars to the Atlantic Council, over the course of three consecutive years, beginning in
2016. The information below may explain why it began paying that money to the Council.
Not only was the Atlantic Council sending people into the Obama-Biden administration, but it
was also serving as an outside advisor. And that gets us back to Anna Makanju, the person
heading Facebook's misleadingly titled "election integrity program."
Makanju also worked at the Atlantic Council. The following is the relevant part of Makanju's
professional bio from her page at the Atlantic Council
(emphasis mine):
Anna Makanju is a nonresident senior fellow with the Transatlantic Security Initiative.
She is a public policy and legal expert working at Facebook, where she leads efforts to
ensure election integrity on the platform. Previously, she was the special policy adviser for
Europe and Eurasia to former US Vice President Joe Biden , senior policy adviser to
Ambassador Samantha Power at the United States Mission to the United Nations, director for
Russia at the National Security Council, and the chief of staff for European and NATO Policy
in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. She has also taught at the Woodrow Wilson School
at Princeton University and worked as a consultant to a leading company focused on space
technologies.
Makanju was a player in the faux Ukraine impeachment. Early in December 2019, when the
Democrats were gearing up for the impeachment, Glenn Kessler
mentioned her in an article assuring Washington Post readers that, contrary to the Trump
administration's claims, there was nothing corrupt about Biden's dealings with Ukraine. He made
the point then that Biden now raises as a defense: Biden didn't pressure Ukraine to fire
prosecutor Viktor Shokin to protect Burisma; he did it because Shokin wasn't doing his job when
it came to investigating corruption.
Kessler writes that, on the same day in February 2016 that then-Ukrainian President
Poroshenko announced that Shokin had offered his resignation, Biden spoke to both Poroshenko
and Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk. The White House version is that Biden gave both men pep
talks about reforming the government and fighting corruption. And that's where Makanju comes
in:
Anna Makanju, Biden's senior policy adviser for Ukraine at the time, also listened to the
calls and said release of the transcripts would only strengthen Biden's case that he acted
properly. She helped Biden prepare for the conversations and said they operated at a high
level, with Biden using language such as Poroshenko's government being "nation builders for a
transformation of Ukraine."
A reference to a private company such as Burisma would be "too fine a level of
granularity" for a call between Biden and the president of another country, Makanju told The
Fact Checker. Instead, she said, the conversation focused on reforms demanded by the
International Monetary Fund, methods to tackle corruption and military assistance. An
investigation of "Burisma was just not significant enough" to mention, she said.
Let me remind you, in case you forgot, that Burisma started paying the Atlantic Council a
lot of money in 2016, right when Makanju was advising Biden regarding getting rid of
Shokin.
Receive a daily recap featuring a curated list of must-read stories.
That's right folks, the Facebook executive currently blocking all of the negative evidence
of Hunter and Joe Biden's corrupt activity in Ukraine is the same person who was coordinating
the corrupt activity between the Biden family payoffs and Ukraine.
You just cannot make this stuff up folks.
The incestuous networking between Democrats in the White House, Congress, the Deep State,
the media, and Big Tech never ends. That's why the American people wanted and still want Trump,
the true outsider, to head the government. They know that Democrats have turned American
politics into one giant Augean Stable and that Trump is
the Hercules who (we hope) can clean it out.
"... Russia is militarily secure and the 'west' knows that. It is one reason for the anti-Russian frenzy. Russia does not need to bother with the unprecedented hostility coming from Brussels and Washington. It can ignore it while taking care of its interests. ..."
"... As this is so obvious one must ask what the real reason for the anti-Russian pressure campaign is. What do those who argue for it foresee as its endpoint? ..."
"... The nightmare scenario for the Anglo-Americans is a Germany-Russia-China triangle. If that happens it is game over! ..."
"... They don't want an actual war. They just ratchet up the tensions to keep Europe subdued and obedient and Russia off balance and thereby prevent any rapprochement between the two. ..."
"... The strong hatred and hostility coming from the US and the EU are due to the understanding that they don't have much time, and they must act now, or tomorrow it will be too late. ..."
"... Years ago Barack Obama gave speech to West Point graduates, proclaiming US moral and racial superiority (because they mix'n's*it) over whole world, Goebbels would be proud. Germany has long history of hating all those Slavs, and Israel... Lets not go there with how they threat those inferior brown people. ..."
"... Of course that end-point is money for military contractors and power for the FP elite in government and think-tanks which also means money. Yes, there are true-believers who see a mighty struggle between "good" (the USA) an "evil" (Russia/China) but they are incompetent. As for the American people they will believe whatever the NY Times says since they are militantly ignorant of history, geography, foreign affairs in general, and, above all, political science. ..."
"... The USA is lucky the USSR collapsed in 1991. If it managed to somehow survive for mere 17 years more, it would catch the 2008 capitalist meltdown ..."
"... It looks like the USA imported the Irish and imported their luck, too. ..."
"... This loathing was made blatantly manifest during WWII, of course, but it didn't die out because that generation and more likely their children remain with us. Ditto the generational Anglo-American hatred of Russians (yes, for the UK, and their haute bourgeoisie, it has deeper historical roots than the 20thC) and the USSR even more... ..."
"... "Maas added that Germany takes decisions related to its energy policy and energy supply 'here in Europe', saying that Berlin accepts ' the fact that the US had more than doubled its oil imports from Russia last year and is now the world's second largest importer of Russian heavy oil .'" [My Emphasis] ..."
"... The neocon/NATO aggressive expansionism has many purposes, but one is surely domestic repression: to gaslight and cause fear-the-foreign-bogeyman trauma among the American and British people as a whole and make most of them become docile and lose their critical thinking skills and their ability to analyze their own societies. ..."
"... One of the best ways to lobotomize the publics of the US and UK is to very gradually impose martial law in the name of protecting national security and ensuring peace and harmony at home. ..."
"... At the time, I thought it was just Trump and his followers freaking out, now I think it's the NatSec people, who have finally seen the truth of their situation. As one can see in the Atlantic Council piece B posted, they are still trying to keep the old narrative patched together too. ..."
"... As I've said numerous times -- Fuck the US Empire and it's minion bitches. Jesse Ventura commented this past week that EVERY US Incumbent politician should be voted out of office this election. 99% of them are scum. ..."
"... That was the whole point of the first Cold War. It is the whole point of creating a Cold War 2.0. Absolutely nothing has changed. ..."
"... If the Russian Federation really has an ongoing imports substitution program, then this explains everything. Germany is an exports-oriented economy. It wants to integrate with the Russian economy in the sense to keep it as an agrarian-extrativist economy to feed it with cheap commodities to feed their industry. Germany's ideal Russia is Brazil. ..."
"... A Russia that also exports high-value commodities (manufactured commodities) is a direct threat to Germany, as it competes with it directly in the international market. That's the reason Germany doesn't want the BRI to come to Europe, as Merkel once said: Europe must not become China's peninsula. China is Germany's main competitor, as it is also a big manufacturing exporter. ..."
"... Perhaps the US only has one script in the playbook: to balkanise, disrupt and foster 5th columns until their opponent becomes a dysfunctional or failed state. ..."
"... The US and EU attempts to break Russia's independent foreign policy are just stepping stones to the eventual goal of a breakup Russia itself, never forget Albright's comments in the 90s about how Siberia shouldn't belong to Russia alone. ..."
"... We may yet see a Cuban missile crisis scenario but it looks more likely to be caused by arms sales to Taiwan than conflict in the Caucasus. ..."
"... I also think its naive to see these as "fires burning at Russia's borders" instead of as deliberately set bear traps . Azerbaijan is in a strategic location between Russia and Iran and the conflict with Armenia comes just before Russia is about to sell advanced weapons to Iran. ..."
Over the last years the U.S. and its EU puppies have ratcheted up their pressure on Russia.
They seem to believe that they can compel Russia to follow their diktat. They can't. But the
illusion that Russia will finally snap, if only a few more sanctions ar applied or a few more
houses in Russia's neighborhood are set on fire, never goes away.
The fires burning at Russia's borders in the Caucasus are an add-on to the disorder and
conflict on its Western border in neighboring Belarus, where fuel is poured on daily by
pyromaniacs at the head of the European Union acting surely in concert with Washington.
Yesterday we learned of the decision of the European Council to impose sanctions on
President Lukashenko, a nearly unprecedented action when directed against the head of state
of a sovereign nation.
...
It is easy enough to see that the real intent of the sanctions is to put pressure on the
Kremlin, which is Lukashenko's guarantor in power, to compound the several other measures
being implemented simultaneously in the hope that Putin and his entourage will finally crack
and submit to American global hegemony as Europe did long ago.
...
The anti-Russia full tilt ahead policy outlined above is going on against a background of the
U.S. presidential electoral campaigns. The Democrats continue to try to depict Donald Trump
as "Putin's puppy," as if the President has been kindly to his fellow autocrat while in
office. Of course, under the dictates of the Democrat-controlled House and with the
complicity of the anti-Russian staff in the State Department, in the Pentagon, American
policy towards Russia over the entire period of Trump's presidency has been one of never
ending ratcheting up of military, informational, economic and other pressures in the hope
that Vladimir Putin or his entourage would crack. Were it not for the nerves of steel of Mr.
Putin and his close advisers , the irresponsible pressure policies outlined above could
result in aggressive behavior and risk taking by Russia that would make the Cuban missile
crisis look like child's play.
The U.S. arms industry lobby, in form of the Atlantic Council, confirms
the 'western' strategy Doctorow describes. It calls for 'ramping up on Russia' with even more
sanctions:
Key to raising the costs to Russia is a more proactive transatlantic strategy for sanctions
against the Russian economy and Putin's power base, together with other steps to reduce
Russian energy leverage and export revenue. A new NATO Russia policy should be pursued in
tandem with the European Union (EU), which sets European sanctions policy and faces the same
threats from Russian cyberattacks and disinformation. At a minimum, EU sanctions resulting
from hostilities in Ukraine should be extended, like the Crimea sanctions, for one year
rather than every six months. Better yet, allies and EU members should tighten sanctions
further and extend them on an indefinite basis until Russia ends its aggression and takes
concrete steps toward de-escalation.
It also wants Europe to pay for weapons in the Ukraine and Georgia:
A more dynamic NATO strategy for Russia should go hand in hand with a more proactive policy
toward Ukraine and Georgia in the framework of an enhanced Black Sea strategy. The goal
should be to boost both partners' deterrence capacity and reduce Moscow's ability to
undermine their sovereignty even as NATO membership remains on the back burner for the time
being.
As part of this expanded effort, European allies should do more to bolster Ukraine and
Georgia's ground, air, and naval capabilities, complementing the United States' and Canada's
efforts that began in 2014.
The purpose of the whole campaign against Russia, explains the Atlantic Council author, is
to subordinate it to U.S. demands:
Relations between the West and Moscow had begun to deteriorate even before Russia's watershed
invasion of Ukraine, driven principally by Moscow's fear of the encroachment of Western
values and their potential to undermine the Putin regime. With the possibility of a further
sixteen years of Putin's rule, most experts believe relations are likely to remain
confrontational for years to come. They argue that the best the United States and its allies
can do is manage this competition and discourage aggressive actions from Moscow. However, by
pushing back against Russia more forcefully in the near and medium term, allies are more
likely to eventually convince Moscow to return to compliance with the rules of the liberal
international order and to mutually beneficial cooperation as envisaged under the 1997
NATO-Russia Founding Act.
The 'rules of the liberal international order' are of course whatever the U.S. claims they
are. They may change at any moment and without notice to whatever new rules are the most
convenient for U.S. foreign policy.
But as Doctorow said above, Putin and his advisors stay calm and ignore such trash despite
all the hostility expressed against them.
One of Putin's close advisors is of course Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. In a
wide
ranging interview with Russian radio stations he recently touched on many of the issues
Doctorow also mentions. With regards to U.S. strategy towards Russia Lavrov diagnoses
:
Sergey Lavrov : [...] You mentioned in one of your previous questions that no matter what we
do, the West will try to hobble and restrain us, and undermine our efforts in the economy,
politics, and technology. These are all elements of one approach.
Question : Their national security strategy states that they will do so.
Sergey Lavrov : Of course it does, but it is articulated in a way that decent people can
still let go unnoticed, but it is being implemented in a manner that is nothing short of
outrageous.
Question : You, too, can articulate things in a way that is different from what you would
really like to say, correct?
Sergey Lavrov : It's the other way round. I can use the language I'm not usually using to
get the point across. However, they clearly want to throw us off balance , and not only by
direct attacks on Russia in all possible and conceivable spheres by way of unscrupulous
competition, illegitimate sanctions and the like, but also by unbalancing the situation near
our borders, thus preventing us from focusing on creative activities. Nevertheless,
regardless of the human instincts and the temptations to respond in the same vein, I'm
convinced that we must abide by international law.
Russia does not accept the fidgety 'rules of the liberal international order'. Russia
sticks to the law which is, in my view, a much stronger position. Yes, international law often
gets broken. But as Lavrov
said elsewhere , one does not abandon traffic rules only because of road accidents.
Russia stays calm, no matter what outrageous nonsense the U.S. and EU come up with. It can
do that because it knows that it not only has moral superiority by sticking to the law but it
also has the capability to win a fight. At one point the interviewer even jokes
about that :
Question : As we say, if you don't listen to Lavrov, you will listen to [Defense Minister]
Shoigu.
Sergey Lavrov : I did see a T-shirt with that on it. Yes, it's about that.
Yes, it's about that. Russia is militarily secure and the 'west' knows that. It is one
reason for the anti-Russian frenzy. Russia does not need to bother with the unprecedented
hostility coming from Brussels and Washington. It can ignore it while taking care of its
interests.
As this is so obvious one must ask what the real reason for the anti-Russian pressure
campaign is. What do those who argue for it foresee as its endpoint?
Posted by b on October 17, 2020 at 16:31 UTC | Permalink
thanks b.... that lavrov interview that karlof1 linked to previously is
worth its weight in gold...
it gives a clear understanding of how russia sees what is
happening here on the world stage... as you note cheap talk from the atlantic council 'rules
of the liberal international order' is no substitute for 'international law' which is what
russia stands on.... as for the usa campaign to tar russia and claim trump is putins puppet..
apparently this stupidity really sells in the usa.. in fact, i have a close friend here in
canada from the usa with family in the usa has bought this hook, line and sinker as well..
and he is ordinarily a bright guy!
as for the endpoint - the usa and the people of the usa don't mind themselves about
endpoints... it is all about being in the moment, living a hollywood fantasy off the ongoing
party of wall st... the thought this circus will end, is not something many of them
contemplate.. that is what it looks like to me.. maga, lol...
Belarus - this is happenstance, not long term planning. Like Venezuela - indeed neither
original Presidential candidate nor his wife had a Wikipedia entry a week or so before being
announced as candidate (much like Guaido 2 weeks before Trump "made" him President.
Yes the Western media make the most of it, and yes there are many in place in and besides the
media whose job it is to maximise any noise. But little is happening in Belarus. Sanctioning
is all anyone can do now. (Sanctions = punishment therefore proof of guilt without trial or
evidence).
US pressure is based on the Dem vs Rep "I am tougher on Russia than you" game spurred on
by the MIC.
European pressure is based on the Euro Defence force concept and a low key but real desire to
rid itself of Nato. So again we have Nato saying "without US/us Europe would be soft on
Russia" and Europe saying we are tough on Russia whatever.
What do those who argue for it foresee as its endpoint?
It is about driving a wedge between Europe and Russia. The nightmare scenario for the
Anglo-Americans is a Germany-Russia-China triangle. If that happens it is game
over!
They don't want an actual war. They just ratchet up the tensions to keep Europe subdued
and obedient and Russia off balance and thereby prevent any rapprochement between the
two.
Putin has repeatedly stated he wants a Lisbon to Vladivostok free trade area.
The Anglo-Americans will never permit that. That Europe is committed to a course that is
against their own best interest shows just how subservient they are to the
Anglo-Americans.
I think it was the first head of NATO that said the purpose of the organization is to
"keep the Russians out, the Germans down and the US in"
There is no endpoint. Those who argue for it, the Western think-tank industry and security
and intelligence industry, are recipients of huge sums of money. It is bread and butter for
large numbers of people. And the acceptance of the conclusions and advice of the immense
stacks of papers thus produced mean money towards the defense industry and the cyber warfare
industry. In the end, all this is driven by elites' fear of their own populations. Sowing FUD
(Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) makes these populations docile. Rinse and repeat.
>>As this is so obvious one must ask what the real reason for the anti-Russian pressure
campaign is.
The reason was probably the new Russian Constitution, which is basically a declaration of
independence from the West. This has caused serious triggerings in western elites, although
their reaction took some time to crystalise due to the Covid Pandemic.
>>What do those who argue for it foresee as its endpoint?
The endpoint is - EU and NATO move into Ukraine, Moldova, Serbia, Georgia, Belarus,
Armenia.
A puppet government of someone like Navalny is installed Russia. That government further
gives up Crimea, Kaliningrad and Northen Caucasus. In the long run, a soft partition of Russia into 3 parts follows (as per the Grand
Chessboard 1997).
The possibility for that happening is overall negative, as the West is on a long term
decline, that is, it will be weaker in 2030, and even weaker in 2040 or 2050.
OECD economies were 66 % of the world economy in 2010 but that share is estimated to drop
to 38 % of the world economy in 2050 (with further drops after that).
The strong hatred and hostility coming from the US and the EU are due to the understanding
that they don't have much time, and they must act now, or tomorrow it will be too
late.
Well, the hostility in "western" "elite" (rulers) towards Russia is on much more primal level
than money and power IMO. It is pure racial hatred combined with Übermensch God complex.
Main controllers in modern "west" are US, Israel and Germany.
Years ago Barack Obama gave speech to West Point graduates, proclaiming US moral and
racial superiority (because they mix'n's*it) over whole world, Goebbels would be proud.
Germany has long history of hating all those Slavs, and Israel... Lets not go there with how
they threat those inferior brown people.
"What do those who argue for it foresee as its endpoint?"
Of course that end-point is money for military contractors and power for the FP elite in
government and think-tanks which also means money. Yes, there are true-believers who see a
mighty struggle between "good" (the USA) an "evil" (Russia/China) but they are incompetent.
As for the American people they will believe whatever the NY Times says since they are
militantly ignorant of history, geography, foreign affairs in general, and, above all,
political science.
The problem as I see it is Europe generally, and Germany in particular. Why do they follow
Washington diktats?
Well let's see, the USA is $30 trillion in debt and counting, faces an upcoming economic
depression to rival the 'great' one, with a citizenry on the brink of civil war and a
political system that makes a 'banana republic' look like ancient Greece. Desperate is as
desperate does.
As this is so obvious one must ask what the real reason for the anti-Russian pressure
campaign is. What do those who argue for it foresee as its endpoint?
For a very simple reason: there's no other option. Capitalism can only work in one way. There's a limit to how much capitalism can reform
within itself without self-destructing.
The West is also suffering from the "Whale in a Swimming Pool" dilemma: it has grown so
hegemonic, so big and so gloated that its strategic options have narrowed sharply. It has not
much more room for maneuver left, its bluffs become less and less effective. As a result, its
strategies have become increasingly linear, extremely predictable. The "whale in a pool
dilemma" is not a problem when your inner workings (domestic economy) is flourishing; but it
becomes one when the economy begins to stagnate and, ultimately, decline (albeit slowly).
On a side note, it's incredible how History is non-linear, full of surprises. The Russian
Federation is inferior to the Soviet Union in every aspect imaginable. Except for one factor:
it now has an ascendant China on its side in a time where the West is declining. (Historical)
context is everything.
The USA is lucky the USSR collapsed in 1991. If it managed to somehow survive for mere 17
years more, it would catch the 2008 capitalist meltdown and have an opportunity to gain the
upper hand over capitalism (plus have a strong China on its side). Socialism/communism
wouldn't have been demoralized the way it was in the 1990s, opening a huge flank for
revolutions in the Western Hemisphere (specially Latin America). NATO would be much weaker.
Since the USSR was closed to capitalism, the USA wouldn't be able to enforce as crippling
economic sanctions on China and the USSR. The USSR would be able to "reform and open up" in a
much safer environment (by copying China, instead of Yeltsin's neoliberalism), thus gaining
the opportunity to make a Perestroika that could actually work.
But it didn't happen. Well, what can I say? It looks like the USA imported the Irish and imported their luck,
too.
Abe @7 - I would agree and have raised somewhere (old age?) that part of what we are seeing
in this latest western-NATO cooked up charade re Navalny is, in part at least, a deep
historical supremacist loathing of the Slavs an in general and the Russians in particular by
the haute bourgeois Germans. This loathing was made blatantly manifest during WWII, of
course, but it didn't die out because that generation and more likely their children remain
with us. Ditto the generational Anglo-American hatred of Russians (yes, for the UK, and their
haute bourgeoisie, it has deeper historical roots than the 20thC) and the USSR even more...
The pressure on Russia is enormous and I would enlarge on the economic sanctions aspect
(siege warfare): Belarus, Armenia-Azerbaijan (Erdogan once again playing his role for the
US/NATO - in this business, Iran is also a target), Kyrgyzstan - all on or very close to
Russia's borders and thus dividing and draining (intention) Russia's focus and $$$$ (the
Brzezinski game) in order to open it up to the western corporate-capitalist bloodsuckers. And
I suspect that as the US (and UK) economies drain away, so these border country "revolts,"
"protests" etc. will grow...
Russia really needs to join with China in full comity. Bugger the west - they do not
respect the rights of either country to their own culture, societal structures, mores,
perspectives...nor apparently even those countries' rights to their own coastal waters, air
space...
One wonders how the USA would react to Chinese and/or Russian warships in the Gulf or
traversing (lengthwise) the Atlantic or Pacific????
"Maas added that Germany takes decisions related to its energy policy and energy supply 'here in Europe', saying
that Berlin accepts ' the fact that the US had more than doubled its oil imports from Russia last year and is now the
world's second largest importer of Russian heavy oil .'" [My Emphasis]
Now isn't that the interesting bit of news!! The greatest fracking nation on the planet needs to import heavy oil (likely
Iranian, unlikely Venezuelan) from its #1 adversary. As for the end game, I've written many times what I see as the goal and
don't see any need to add more.
"The Russians are coming' is a long standing fear built the American psyche almost from the
very start.
Russian colonization of the California Territory outnumbered the US population.
The Monroe Doctrine was all about that,not S.America at all. The Brits ruled S.America by
mercantile means until
WWI cut the sea lanes, then and only then did it fall into the sphere of Yankee control.
Then there is Alaska. The Sewards Folly documents are almost certainly fakes, the verified
Russian copy says a 100year LEASE,not a sale. The National Archives refuses examination by any
but its own experts. Unless they are forgeries and they know it there can be no real reason for
their stance.
There is much more background to the antipathy than many are aware.
@bjd (4) You nailed it, my friend. Cold wars are immensely profitable for certain sectors of
the economy and the parasites who run them. The supreme imperative is always to have
enemies--really big, bad, dangerous enemies--whether real or imagined. I will be voting for
Biden, but I don't have much hope for positive change in American foreign policy. Russia,
China, Iran, Venezuela, etc. will continue to be vilified as nations to be feared and hated.
The neocon/NATO aggressive expansionism has many purposes, but one is surely domestic
repression: to gaslight and cause fear-the-foreign-bogeyman trauma among the American and
British people as a whole and make most of them become docile and lose their critical
thinking skills and their ability to analyze their own societies.
One of the best ways to
lobotomize the publics of the US and UK is to very gradually impose martial law in the name
of protecting national security and ensuring peace and harmony at home.
After several color
revolutions succeeded, the Russiagate/Spygate op was carried out in the US, with British
assistance. This op has been largely successful, though there has been limited resistance
against its whole fake edifice as well as with the logic of Cold War2.0. Nevertheless,
Spygate has shocked many tens of millions of Dems into a stupor, while millions more are
dazed and manipulated by the Chinese bogeyman being manufactured by Trump. The most dangerous
result of the martial law lite mentality caused by Spygate and its MSM purveyors is the
growing support for censorship of free speech coming mostly from the Dems, such as Schiff and
Warner. The danger inherent in this trend became very clear when FaceBook and Twitter engaged
in massive and unprecedented arbitrary censorship of the New York Post and of various
Trump-related accounts. This is the kind of thing you do during Stage 1 of a coup. Surely it
was at least in part an experiment to see how various power points in the US would respond.
Even though Twitter ended the censorship later, it was probably a successful experiment
designed to gauge reactions and areas of resistance. In November, there could be further,
more serious experiments/ops. If so, the current expansionist movements being made and
planned by the US and NATO may well be integral parts of a new non-democratic model of
"American-style democracy" -- not constitution-based but "rules-based."
"As this is so obvious one must ask what the real reason for the anti-Russian pressure
campaign is. What do those who argue for it foresee as its endpoint?"
I think the answer is clear. The US economy is collapsing and likewise those wedded to the US
dollar system. The USA spent 90% more than it received last year.
They are desperate to have access to Russia's largely untapped resources and it doesn't want
any competition for its position as world hegemon. Thus Russia and China are in the
crosshairs.
Fortunately the corruption in the USA has resulted in a weaker military capability over time
and they are reduced to behaving in clandestine and terroristic ways to try and achieve this.
The turmoil enveloping the USA is scape goated on Trump and Covid19 but is ultimately due to
their faltering economy and a big helping of financial corruption. Talk about your chickens
coming home to roost
Sounds like thunder, all those chickens. I appeared to me that whomever is in charge here, they started pulling all the levers they
could lay a hand on a couple weeks back in terms of stirring up trouble. Throwing sand in the
eyes of ones enemy.
At the time, I thought it was just Trump and his followers freaking out, now I think it's
the NatSec people, who have finally seen the truth of their situation. As one can see in the
Atlantic Council piece B posted, they are still trying to keep the old narrative patched
together too.
Politfiction, or what could have happened if is an entertaining but futile exercise.
Everybody agrees, there was no need for the USSR to dissolve, it was like a big jackpot for
an amazed rival that rushed to declare himself the winner. The price has been high, on both
sides of the fence but of course with a lot more victims and destruction on the other side of
the fallen wall. Gorbachov a tragic figure and Yelstyn a sinister one, in spite of his being
a clown, a tragic one at that, bombing his parliament and laughing at the world together with
the degenerate Clinton, the 90's were somber indeed. The west paid its price, a self declared
victory that did not bring any benefit, the peace dividend never was, to the contrary,
military budgets never stopped growing year after year. The end of history was proclaimed, no
need to match or better the rival ideology, there is none, so proles you better stop
complaining, or else and that's where we are.
Just to repeat the obvious, for the US actually to go to war is out of the question these
days -- the US public would not tolerate the casualties. Therefore other methods have to be
found to achieve the same objectives -- the maintenance of an eternal enemy in 1984 style, to
keep up military budgets and world hegemony, neither of which are the elite ready to abandon.
Economic sanctions have been the weapon of choice in the age of Trump, but there isn't really
any other. Sometimes they are better aimed and sometimes not.
In any case I am not sure I agree that the EU is really submissive to the US in this
respect. They don't want to offend the US, and some leaders have genuinely swallowed the
Kool-Aid, but others haven't, and the continuation of Nordstream 2 is where they haven't.
Doctorow wrote "Of course, under the dictates of the Democrat-controlled House and with the
complicity of the anti-Russian staff in the State Department, in the Pentagon, American
policy towards Russia over the entire period of Trump's presidency..."
The Senate is more
important for foreign affairs and has been Republican for Trump's entire term. The House was
also Republican for half of Trump's term. Lastly the "staff" is not really able to run things
in the presence of a minimally competent administrator, at the head of the State Department,
acting under leadership of a competent, energetic president. There is no sign Doctorow is
particularly intelligent or insightful.
I have long ago lost track of where the bar's consensus on Turkey is, whether the failing
US means Erdogan must become the follower of the skilled, brave and indefatigable Putin...or
whether his sultanship is suicidally persisting in thinking Russia cannot actually deliver
anything his sultanship really needs and wants. At any rate it is entirely unclear what
"international law" Lavrov thinks supports Russia.
As to the China Russia "alliance," the difficulty is that Putin has so very little to
offer.
I can hazard a guess to answer your final question. I think corruption is probably the main
reason. Those involved in this are mostly interested in self-enrichment through the
gullibility of their societies. I don't think the stenographers and the hot-heads neo liberals
pushing for a show-down with Russia are intent on committing suicide by igniting a hot war
with Russia, but they hope that Moscow could be intimidated and surrender eventually. As you
rightly said, it is a pipe dream of course, but they get paid heavily for the hot air they
emit.
'As this is so obvious one must ask what the real reason for the anti-Russian pressure
campaign is. What do those who argue for it foresee as its endpoint?'
The endpoint is quite clear: 'Global Governance, by Global Institutions under control of
the 'Globalists' (i.e. the Davos crowd).' For this, the 'Globalists' must subdue Russia.
Russia is not only blocking the 'Globalist's' plans in its own right, but, since 2013, it
has been protecting other nations from falling prey to 'Globalist' colonization (Syria,
Eastern Ukraine, Iran, Venezuela, Libya, Belarus, etc.). And Russia is the lynch-pin to
enable the 'Globalists' to corner China.
In addition, together with China, Russia is offering the world an alternative to
'Globalism', a 'Multi-Polar World Order' that is much more attractive than becoming a
'Globalist' vassal.
For the 'Globalists' time has become critical. They are facing revolts in their home
countries (Trump, Brexit, Gilets-Jaunes, etc.). The main source of their geo-political power,
(since they can no longer challenge Russia and China militarily) the U.S. dollar, is on the
verge of collapse as the World's reserve currency. And the economic growth of China means
that China has become the most important trading partner for most of the World's nations.
The window of opportunity for the 'Globalists' to create their 'Global Governance' system
may have already closed. But, as usual, the losers of any war are usually the last to know.
The desperation with which the 'Globalists' are fighting their last battles, against Trump,
against Russia, against Brexit, is testimony to the fact that for the 'Globalists' losing
this war means their extinction as a ruling elite.
c'mon steve.... what is the usa offering
turkey here?? they could give a rats ass about turkey, or any other country in the middle
east, excluding their 24/7 darling israel... the usa presence on the world stage is meant to
sabotage any and all who don't bow down to the exceptional nations philosophy of 'might makes
right'... the obvious benefits of russia-china synergy are apparent to both countries and
they continue to capitalize on this, in spite of what you read in the usa msm.. russia as a
lot to offer china... the fact that the nation apparently masquerading as a gas station has
so much to offer is also the reason that all the pillage of the 90's hasn't turned out the
way the harvard boys had envisioned... that you can't see the vast wealth and value of russia
has nothing to do with the reality on the ground... keep the blinders on, lol...
The EU's attitude to the US is much like its attitude to Britain and Brexit. They don't want
to split with the US, because, after all, there might be war, and NATO would be needed, but
it's becoming increasingly less likely. In the same way, they would have preferred to stay in
good relations with Britain, until Britain insisted on a hostile Brexit. Basic interests come
first, and that will also be the case in the future with the US.
Russia and China are already de-facto alliance. Militarily they cooperate at every level
and will soon extend shared anti ballistic shield over China too. It is clear to any outside
enemy (except for most retarded ones) that nuclear attack on one will be treated as attack on
both of them. Not having formal alliance is somewhat an advantage (eg. limited attack on one
of them by enemy that can be easily handled will not complicate situation) as it controls
escalation. Lack of escalation control led to WW1 so...
Apart for military, Russia is one of rare fully self sufficient countries in the world.
Having vast natural resources and territory, knowledge and industrial capacity to built
EVERYTHING they need, they can afford to be sanctioned by whole world and close borders
completely if needed. Having 100% secure land borders with China and already huge (and
increasing) trade, including oil & gas, only make Russia's self sufficiency even more
stable. It also strategically benefits China, as its main weakness is lack of those same
resources Russia has in abundance and is willing to share.
So, if sh*t hits the fan, and Russia and China say f*ck it and close borders to rest of
the world (even though China trade profits wouldn't be happy), both countries form self
sufficient symbiosis that can carry on for centuries.
Which brings me to all those little fires US is starting in Russia's neighborhood. They
don't matter. Unlike USSR, Russia's mission is self preservation only, not changing whole
world into communist utopia (even though @VK here repeatedly fails to acknowledge it). And
survive it will. All it needs is to wait few generations.
Unlike Russia, collective west is going down the drain. Soon enough, all those Slav hating
in Bundestag, UK parlament and elsewhere will have more urgent problem of Islamic head
choppers that became majority in their countries, while US will have problem to recruit
enough men,women and "others" from pool of rainbow colored too-fat and unfit, godless faggot
from broken family snowflakes.
As China has been mentioned, I think it is worth saying that although I have full confidence
that Putin will maintain his usual good sense in international conflicts, I have more doubts
about the Chinese regime. I don't really understand their policy, which is becoming more
nationalistic and edgy. I don't see why. They have great economic success; they should be
more relaxed, but they aren't. The first signs came with their attitude towards the Muslims
in China. One, the concentration camps in Xinjiang - in that case the Uyghur jihadists in Syria
must have provoked anxiety in Beijing. But also increasing pressure on the Hui Muslims in
central China (who are native Han) to become more "national". Some years ago they weren't
bothered. Now they are.
This suggests that the question of Taiwan could blow up, apart from HongKong. They are
less tolerant in Beijing.
It is about driving a wedge between Europe and Russia. The nightmare scenario for the
Anglo-Americans is a Germany-Russia-China triangle. If that happens it is game
over!
It is a tired and false concept. There cannot be a "triangle" which includes Germany, due
to Germany's increasingly diminishing status. Moreover, Russians do not view Europe as a
viable part of Russia's future--the cultural gap is gigantic and continues to grow--the only
place of Europe in general, and Germany in particular, in Russian plans is that of a market
for Russia's hydrocarbons and other exports. A rather successful program of
export-substitution in Russia in the last 6 years dropped technological importance of Germany
for Russia dramatically. In some fields, such as high-power turbines made Germany irrelevant,
as Siemens learned the hard way recently.
"U.S. and its EU puppies have ratcheted up their pressure...
The 'rules of the liberal international order' are of course whatever the U.S. claims they
are. They may change at any moment and without notice to whatever new rules are the most
convenient for U.S. foreign policy."
Outstanding assessment and thank you for addressing it.
As I've said numerous times -- Fuck the US Empire and it's minion bitches. Jesse Ventura
commented this past week that EVERY US Incumbent politician should be voted out of office
this election. 99% of them are scum.
Every politician, corporate CEO Banker and Media whore, Judge, CIA filth should have a
pitchfork held to their throat and be tried for treason and war crimes. MIC/Pentagon should
be destroyed. Majority of Americans are propagandized dumbfucks. Sounds a bit like an
American Cultural Revolution is exactly the medicine.
There will come a day for reckoning and true justice, hopefully it is sooner than later.
There should be no mercy. For those committing their treasonous crimes, they know better but
have chosen poorly, they should be broken.
Russia, Putin and Lavrov have remained the adults in the room while the Empire Brats
tantrum themselves.
Anyone else notice that the Anti-Russia rhetoric increased after Snowden was trapped in
Russia?
I agree with Ike and others who think the US money situation is the problem. But I also
think that the underlying endpoint is hyperinflation, not just the loss of the dollars'
"reserve status." Hyperinflation is when so much "money" has been produced that it no longer
has any value and the Central Bank cannot control what comes next.
There is a point at which people want to get rid of dollars and panic buy or "invest" in
assets, or anything solid or simply anything (Gold, land etc. bread) At which time the money
they want to get rid of looses value continuously, as others don't want it either. A Rush for
the exits happens.
Who has the MOST money - the Rich and the sovereign Nations? (Althought the latter may
also be in the same situation as the US.) Russia has more or less got rid of all it's US
holdings. The Chinese must be alarmed by the thought of the Fed issuing ONLY new-digicoins,
and then the US simply refusing to pay debts to the Chinese at some future point. They might
want out now. Not so much dumping everything but a steady reduction of US denominated
"assets" or reserves.
Most of this becomes self-sustaining panic, as happened in the Weimar Rep. What can be
considered "assets" to grab? ie Russia, minerals and it's Gold, China and its Gold. Then the
choice might be to invest in the US military and use it while there is a residue of belief in
the Dollar.
The only thing about a panic exit is that it happens very quickly. About a month or two
between when the first bright sparks try to get out and when everyone else tries to grab part
of a rapidly restricted choice of things to buy with an unending pile of "empty" dollars.
Germany should've been conquered by the Soviet Union entirely as it was won with Soviet,
largely Russian, blood. Germany is increasingly irrelevant to Russia's needs now as Martyanov
points out above. Germany's existence today should be that of a Russian oblast, same with
Eastern Ukraine from Kharkiv to Mariupol and Belarus.
Ask yourself what Germany produces that Russia can't produce for itself with import
substitution schemes or similar schemes within a 10 year period. Russia's GDP by PPP is the
size of Germany's already and depending on how it deals with the impact of COVID, may
continue an upward year-on-year growth trend (People's Republic of China is the only major
economy forecast to expand in fiscal quarter this year). The fact of the matter is that
Russia's population is much larger, its industrial base, at least in heavy industry, is
nearly self sufficient (not much light industry to speak of) and Germany depends on Russian
oil and gas to keep its lights on. Russia can carry on without Germany just fine. There may
be a noticeable impact now if Russia were cornered into doing that, but it's nothing that
can't be overcome in short order.
Thank you, b, and before reading comments, I will give my take on your last question:
As this is so obvious one must ask what the real reason for the anti-Russian pressure
campaign is. What do those who argue for it foresee as its endpoint?
The whole 'rules based order' became very clear when the Trans Pacific Partnership, TPP,
was being debated,and what happened then is what many have noted, the 'rules' were all to
advantage the US. So, you might say that was the beginning of the end for the oligarchy. And
the partnership reformed after it had taken out that problem, to be fair to all participants.
All the oligarchy can do is keep on keeping on until it can't. This is really about survival
for that class of individuals who intend to keep on being in charge here in the US and
wherever its tentacles have reached. The only endpoint they see is their continuance. And I
suppose their fear is that it is simply not possible for that to be the case.
Hopefully there will just come a point where, as in Plato's Republic, the dialogue simply
moves on. There, it begins in the home of the ancient one, Cephalus, with a polite
discussion, and the old man says his piece, to which Socrates responds:
"What you say is very fine indeed, Cephalus...but as to this very thing, justice, shall
we so simply assert that it is the truth and giving back what a man has taken from another,
or is to do these very things sometimes just and sometimes unjust? Take this case as an
example of what I mean: everyone would surely say that if a man takes weapons from a friend
when the latter is of sound mind, and the friend demands them back when he is mad, one
shouldn't give back such things, and the man who gives them back would not be just, and
moreover, one should not be willing to tell someone in this state the whole truth."
"What you say is right," he said.
[Allan Bloom translation]
In the dialogue, the old man leaves to 'look after the sacrifices', handing down the
argument to his heir, Polymarchus. To me, Socrates has adroitly caused this to come about in
much the fashion that Lavrov answers his press questioners in the link b provides. That is,
he has done so with diplomacy, and a lesson to his younger companions which perhaps Cephalus
is no longer able to understand. Quod erat demonstrandum.
Yet in your disparaging comments of Europe and Germany in particular you proceed to show
how successful the Anglo-Americans have been in creating a wedge between Europe and Russia
actually validating my original point.
"Keep the Russians out, the Germans down and the US in"
That was the whole point of the first Cold War. It is the whole point of creating a Cold War 2.0. Absolutely nothing has changed.
By whom exactly? US & several euro puppets? Typical racist thinking that Europe and
its former colonies are somehow "the world" or "the international community".
Meanwhile opinion of Russia is positive in India (1,3 billion people, more than the whole
West combined) and China (1,4 billion, more than the whole West combined).
Those who don't spend for their own weapons, spend for their master's weapons (like
europuppets).
Btw your master (US) spends on weapons too. What are you going to do about it?
As was rightly pointed out in that discussion, British foreign policy towards Europe was
to ensure that no single power was to be allowed to achieve hegemony over Europe. The famous
"balance of power"
@ Posted by: Andrei Martyanov | Oct 17 2020 19:41 utc | 36
If the Russian Federation really has an ongoing imports substitution program, then this
explains everything. Germany is an exports-oriented economy. It wants to integrate with the Russian economy in
the sense to keep it as an agrarian-extrativist economy to feed it with cheap commodities to
feed their industry. Germany's ideal Russia is Brazil.
A Russia that also exports high-value commodities (manufactured commodities) is a direct
threat to Germany, as it competes with it directly in the international market. That's the
reason Germany doesn't want the BRI to come to Europe, as Merkel once said: Europe must not
become China's peninsula. China is Germany's main competitor, as it is also a big
manufacturing exporter.
Unlike China, Russia lacks the weight of population and reliance on the globalist capitalist
system to throw around, China will not shut itself up for Russia when it can trade with EU
& Turkey instead.
Russia is increasingly put into weak position, where Russian troops are sent to do the
dying, while the Chinese business whoop in afterwards to get all the juicy business deals. In
other words, Russia does the dying while China enriches itself.
Russia only hope is that it becomes friendly with the EU, otherwise, it is going to be
crushed between two superpowers, the EU and China.
I think the point of the sanctions and all the pressure on Russia is an appeal to Russian
elite, Just a reminder that they are isolated from the rest of the elite and hope that it
would help them throw Russian nationalists from power. I think this might succeed as Putin
did no really take on the new Russian capitalist class, and that will probably be his
undoing.
@vk 36 That's the reason Germany doesn't want the BRI to come to Europe
BRI in Europe - 16 countries:
Austria*, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Italy,
Lithuania, Luxembourg, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Ukraine
* shaky
SCMP - Aug 17, 2020:
China's rail shipments to Europe set records as demand surges for Chinese goods amid
coronavirus
> July saw 1,232 cargo trains travel from Chinese cities to European destinations –
the most ever in a single month > Once regarded as merely ornamental, freight service along belt and road trade routes has
become increasingly important as exporters turn to railway transport. . .
here
Lavrov, Shoigu and Putin are calm, but the domestic economic situation is not.
While I have noted before that Russia is better positioned to survive low oil prices than
Saudi Arabia - it doesn't mean this is fun.
Couple that with COVID-19 economic losses, and stresses on the domestic Russian economy are
enormous.
Among other signs: after bouncing around in the 60s for some time, the ruble just hit 80 to
the USD. Anecdotally, I am hearing a lot of direct personal accounts of businesses not being
able to pay their people because their own customers aren't paying.
Russia has done relatively little extra to assist with COVID-19 related economic harms, so
this isn't great either.
@ laguerre -- The interview with Pepe Escobar deals with the whole range of issues in the
hybrid war against China, but the information you're looking for Regarding the suppression
and re-education of Muslim terrorists starts just past the 1-hour point.
the Chinese regime. I don't really understand their policy, which is becoming more
nationalistic and edgy.
No, it's become more multi-national and sensible. Take the BRI: Launched in 2013, it was
initially planned to revive ancient Silk Road trade routes between Eurasia and China, but the
scope of the BRI (Belt & Road Initiative) has since extended to cover 138 countries,
including 38 in sub-Saharan Africa and 18 in Latin America and the Caribbean.
they should be more relaxed
China has been an open target for the US, which doesn't even mention China any more (Pompeo)
but dumps on the "CCP" (Chinese Communist Party). China (like Russia) has not responded in
kind.
their attitude towards the Muslims in China
The US State Dept slash CIA has been fomenting terrorism in Xinjiang for years and China has
had to contend with it.
the question of Taiwan could blow up
Taiwan like some other places in the world, including Hong Kong, has been another place where
the US has fomented instability. This has increased recently with Taiwan "president" Tsai
declaring that Taiwan (January this year, BBC interview) is a separate country, which it
isn't. China is being pushed to do his Abe Lincoln thing and save the union.
They are less tolerant in Beijing
Chinese by nature are tolerant, and Beijing has been tolerant in the face of US naval fleets
and bomber visits in their near seas, plus political attacks, sanctions and tariffs.
66 watch what they do and have done and not what they.
Construction started four years ago on enlarging and modernization of the railway marshaling
yards in Duisburg.
The volume of Chinese freight trains arriving daily is already quite amazing and planned to
increase to one every hour next month 24/7.They are not returning empty. The oil and gas
pipeline corridors also had ten plus railway tracks built alongside .Germany is already at the
center of the BRI expansion into Germany and it started four years ago.
@ Posted by: H.Schmatz | Oct 17 2020 21:40 utc | 60
That's why Germany is not full anti-China.
--//--
@ Posted by: Don Bacon | Oct 17 2020 22:12 utc | 66
Just because Germany doesn't want it, it doesn't mean it's not getting.
--//--
@ Posted by: c1ue | Oct 17 2020 22:18 utc | 67
I agree. Capitalism is a dead end for Russia. It's all about when Putin dies. After he dies, it will be a coin flip for Russia: it could
continue its course or it could get another Yeltsin.
Germany being against BRI is news to me. Any proof? And it is very unlikely that China will be able to fool the europeans lile the
american. The EU has regulations and aren't purely about profit.
Perhaps the US only has one script in the playbook: to balkanise, disrupt and foster 5th
columns until their opponent becomes a dysfunctional or failed state. Then send in the
acronyms (IMF etc), establish a provisional administration under trusted local elites but
commandeer resource-rich areas under direct provincial command. That's US imperialism and it
won't stop until they encounter opposition effective enough to resist it. That's why they'll
never forgive Putin for Syria. In the end they want to finish doing to Russia (by other
means...) what the Germans began in '41; and not just Russia, but anywhere their markets are
prevented from calling the shots.
thank you, @72. the chinese learned much from their century of humiliation & clearly one
of the important lessons was trade both ways, rather than take their silver, sell them tea,
silks & porcelain & need nothing they offered.
That's an excellent observation, and a concept I had not encountered before. Thank you.
How consciously China holds that narrative, if at all, I couldn't say.
But it's a great dynamic - kind of like keeping your enemies close. And if the German
increase in reciprocal railroad trade with China is as it was stated up-thread, it would seem
to be working.
@78, thank you, grieved...i've long admired you. in times such as these it can be a challenge
to keep sight of the positive but as china prospers & wishes her trading partners to as
well, & so long as russia continues to strive toward the high road rather than descend to
the barroom floor perhaps we can also learn to rise...i'm reminded of a sufi saying: 'rise in
love do not fall'. may we all.
Do they even think about an endpoint? Is it really on their radar?
Or is this all being done because they are spoilt, and are throwing a tantrum because they
aren't getting their way?
I assume that there are sober heads in the Pentagon that wargame possible "endpoints". If
not sober at the beginning then sober when the results play out to their bitter end.
Or... maybe not. Post-retirement board seats are at stake, dammit! Full steam ahead and
damn the torpedoes!
I'm truly astonished that you don't know the truth of Xinjaing - in sum, that the
concentration camps are a huge lie that can be revealed as such by any satellite, and that
China has developed a progressive and worthy solution to the foreign-provoked terrorism
within its border.
Fortunately, Qiao Collective, a great expert source on China, has recently compiled a
treasure trove of links to know the truth:
Based on a handful of think tank reports and witness testimonies, Western governments
have levied false allegations of genocide and slavery in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.
A closer look makes clear that the politicization of China's anti-terrorism policies in
Xinjiang is another front of the U.S.-led hybrid war on China.
This resource compilation provides a starting point for critical inquiry into the
historical context and international response to China's policies in Xinjiang, providing a
counter-perspective to misinformation that abounds in mainstream coverage of the autonomous
region.
Posted by: Andrei Martyanov | Oct 17 2020 19:41 utc | 36
Andrei
A good justification on Russian German transitional relation, and we hope Russia is not
fooled again, by hopes. Those of us who hope for containing and reducing western dominance
over the world affairs, politics and economy, hope that Russians have learned from their
experience of the 90's joining G7, seat at NATO, joining western sanctions on smaller powers,
etc. all those efforts were the carrots thrown at Russia to tame the bear, one would think up
to Georgian war, it worked, that war perhaps woke the bear. Russians felt they are part of
Europe,part of western community of privileged nations (first world) but all that was a decoy
to move the NATO to Russian borders. I hope Russians once for all have learned, as long as
they have a big modern military and plenty of energy resources that is not under the western
(you read US) control they will never be accepted as a "western" country, Ironically, Russia
is the largest European country.
As a strategist you know better than most to circumvent western power and to bring back
the rule of international law, it would be impossible without having the Russian defensive
political and military power (as in Syria) on the side of resistance. We just hope you are
right Russia, will not be bought out again. IMO as you say, is just impossible for Germany,
or even France to decouple from the US grip on europe.
Seems to me its been terribly effective.
Russian economy pretty weak heavily reliant on raw materials, fracturing at the periphery.
China and Russia seem less than alies.
Seems US has Germany, France by the short hairs.
US had to bail them out in 2009.
Europe is having some problems with solvency and cohesion - whats a bureaucrat to do?
Its not really about the sovereigns, that's only for appearances.
@ 77
The Century of Humiliation from 1842 to 1949 and the contemporary discourse around it are a
driving narrative of contemporary Chinese history, foreign policy, and militarization of its
surrounding regions like the South China Sea. The expansion of the Chinese navy in numbers,
mission, and aggression is directly fueled by China's previous weakness and exploitation at
the hands of western nations. . . .
here
The US economy is definitely in trouble, but the US has spent roughly $2 trillion this year
to help its economy = a bit under 10% of 2019 GDP.
The difference is structural. The US economy is a service one - and lockdowns are literally
the best way to damage it.
The Russian economy is still heavily dependent on natural gas and oil sales. Despite the
initial devaluation, ongoing low oil prices plus increasing competition in natural gas (for
example, Azerbaijan is now selling natural gas to Italy) is hurting its economy.
Nor has Russia spent much to compensate for COVID-19 losses beyond its existing health and
social safety nets - the Russian plan was $73B / 5 trillion rubles = 4.3% of 2019 GDP.
I am anti-war and I am an anti-war crimes liberal (examples of war crimes: ethnic cleansing,
proof of genocide, torture, collective punishment via deprivation and occupation of
dispossessed land). Yet, I am also a non-interventionist except in extreme circumstances but
I am against regime change for the sake of neutralizing competing powers or converting them
religiously or politically.
All this implies exercising the highest integrity and blocking out all external influence
and pressure if one is a true liberal, and relying solely on conscience and wisdom.
Therefore, I don't like the term liberal sullied and usurped by fake liberals,
neoliberals and Zionist liberals, and I also take offense to the way liberal as a
general term is denigrated in this article.
Germany is an exports-oriented economy. It wants to integrate with the
Russian economy in the sense to keep it as an agrarian-extrativist economy to feed it with
cheap commodities to feed their industry. Germany's ideal Russia is Brazil.
True, it was about 10 years ago. Economic reality, of course, is such that Germany already
beat the record by consecutive 20 months of real economy shrinkage. In general, Germany's
energy policy is suicidal and Russia is increasingly independent from imports.
A lot to be
done in the future yet, of course, but as the whole comedy with high-power turbines and
Siemens demonstrated, Russia can do it on her own, plus General Electric is always there,
sanctions or no sanctions. It is a complicated matter, but it is Germany which increasingly
becomes irrelevant for Russia as an old image of technologically-advanced Germans getting
their hands on Russia's resources and ruling the world--this image is utterly obsolete,
completely false and doesn't correspond to the reality "on the ground".
It is really a simple
thing which many Westerners cannot wrap their brains around, that the country which has a
space program which operates ISS and second fully operational global satellite navigation
constellation, or which produces hypersonic weapons and whose shipbuilding dwarfs that of
Germany will have relatively little troubles in developing other crucial industries and
removing Western interests from those. Simple as that.
@90 Very true. Every time I read someone proclaiming that the Russian economy is no bigger
than Italy's, or Spain's, or ..... (fill in the blanks) I simply think to myself: "This word,
I do not think it means what you think it means".
Because it should be obvious to everyone that Italy can not produce all the things that
Russia produces.
Equally, Spain can not produce all the things that Russia produces.
So if someone has measured "economy" in such a way that the numbers for Russia are the
same as the number for Italy - or Spain - is simply admitting that their economic models are
flawed.
The US and EU attempts to break Russia's independent foreign policy are just stepping stones
to the eventual goal of a breakup Russia itself, never forget Albright's comments in the 90s
about how Siberia shouldn't belong to Russia alone.
Ultimately, though the US and EU nation
states are nothing more than tools of the globalist elite whose dream of a fully economically
integrated world where the power of labour is completely crushed by the power of capital to
move instantly across the planet is already falling apart. The economic elite have already
pillaged all of the minor nations in the world and the two grand prizes, Russia and China are
too powerful to attack directly now. unable to control their unbridled greed they've begone
the process of auto-self cannibalism, destroying their own states (or killing their hosts as
Michael Huddson would say) in order to completely centralize all capital within the 0.1%.
This will make them very rich, however hundreds of millions of Americans, Australians,
Canadians, Japanese and Europeans will be impoverished in order to do this. When this is
eventually realized by the majority of the people in these states, the economic elite will be
lucky if they "just" lose everything but their lives in mass nationalization campaigns. I see
very little evidence that the Russian or Chinese states would be willing to offer safe harbour for the criminal oligarchs of the West, like London has offered to criminal Oligarchs
fleeing justice in Russia
Before posting here monetarist propaganda BS form Western "economic" sources learn to
distinguish monetary expression of product and actual product in terms of quantity and
quality.
Just to demonstrate to you: for $100,000 in a desirable place in the US you will be
able to buy a roach-infested shack in a community known for meth-labs and high crime, for
exactly the same money in Russia you will buy a superb brand-new house in a desirable
location.
To demonstrate even more, for a price of a single Columbia-class SSBN ($8 billion+)
which does not exist other than on paper yet, Russia financed and produced her 8-hulls state
of the strategic missile submarines.
UK economy is dwarfed by Russia even in accordance by
IMF and World Bank, in fact, it is, once one excludes still relevant RR and few other
manufacturers, is down right third world economy. I am not going to post here all data from
IMF, but even this can explain why you posted a BS. Anyone "counting" real economic sector in
USD and Nominal GDP has to have head examined and is probably dumbed down through "economics"
programs in Western madrasas, aka universities.
In related news, learn what Composite Index of National Capability (CINC) is and check
energy consumption and production of Germany and Russia, just for shits and giggles.
And of course, Martyanov @96 is absolutely correct - the relative values of currencies are
proved to be nothing more than the entries of bookkeepers and bankers, all "sound and fury,
signifying nothing." What matters is what the home unit of currency will buy at home.
A better question is as Andrei suggests, what does it cost for Russia to produce something
that works, as opposed to what it costs the US to produce something that doesn't work because
of theft and cost inflation in the delivery chain?
The ultimate - MAD - question that the US should ask itself is this: How much does it
cost Russia to destroy the US, compared with the cost involved for the US to destroy
Russia?
~~
The cost of living is higher in the US. The cost of doing anything is higher. But none of
that means the quality of the result is greater - I certainly don't hear anyone lately saying
the living is good, compared to what people pay for it.
Were it not for the nerves of steel of Mr. Putin and his close advisers, the
irresponsible pressure policies outlined above could result in aggressive behavior and risk
taking by Russia that would make the Cuban missile crisis look like child's play.
We may yet see a Cuban missile crisis scenario but it looks more likely to be caused by arms
sales to Taiwan than conflict in the Caucasus.
I also think its naive to see these as "fires burning at Russia's borders" instead of as
deliberately set bear traps . Azerbaijan is in a strategic location between Russia and
Iran and the conflict with Armenia comes just before Russia is about to sell advanced weapons
to Iran.
Alex Gibney's new, four-hour documentary on election meddling does little to seek the facts,
and descends into conspiracy. Vladimir Putin meddles in the 2016 election.
(By Willrow Hood/Shutterstock)
With the U.S. presidential election only several weeks away, the specter of Russian election
interference has again become a mainstay media topic. Four years removed from the 2016
election, researchers and politicians are still trying to make sense of what happened: what
exactly did the Russians do, and what lessons are we to draw from it? Filmmaker Alex Gibney --
who is enjoying a rising profile with his hotly anticipated COVID-19 documentary Totally
Under Control -- has applied himself to these questions with a freshly released deepdive
into Russian election meddling.
Agents of Chaos is an epic-length documentary, spanning four hours across two
episodes, released last month on HBO. The first episode opens with a prelude of sorts. To
explain the roots of Russian information warfare, Gibney walks us through the 2014 Euromaidan
Revolution in Ukraine, Russia's subsequent annexation of Crimea, and the outbreak of the
ongoing Donbass War. The Ukrainian conflict, claims Gibney, was the stomping ground for a
nascent industry of Russian internet trolls looking to smear the new government in Kiev as
'fascists' and 'neo-nazis.'
The Ukraine tie-in is thought-provoking, but altogether unsatisfying in its execution. For
one, the strategic circumstances are not at all the same. The film is anchored around the idea
that Russia wants to sow chaos, but the Kremlin's approach to Ukraine was guided by concrete
policy goals that involved supporting specific politicians and parties. It is also comically
shortsighted to claim that Russian internet trolls sought to "drive a wedge" between eastern
and western Ukraine, when the country's two halves are already separated by centuries of
Imperial
history and the bitter legacy of two world wars. To the
extent that Russian trolls were "targeting" eastern Ukrainians, they were already speaking to
an overwhelmingly pro-Russian and anti-Maidan audience. None of this bears any resemblance to
the trolls' activities in America. Without so much as an attempt to square these circles, the
Ukraine analogy feels contrived.
Drawing on the help of cybersecurity researcher Camille François and several Russians
with first-hand knowledge, Gibney proceeds to outline the Russian internet trolling operation.
Almost all of the work was done from the Internet Research Agency (IRA), a chaste office on the
outskirts of St. Petersburg. The film tells us little that we don't already know from the
Mueller investigation and Senate intelligence committee report: there was a concerted effort by
certain Russian nationals to impersonate American activists, political groups, and media
outlets for the purpose of undermining "Americans' trust in democratic institutions." The goal
was not necessarily to elect Donald Trump, but to strain the American political system by
facilitating conflict between polarized factions.
But how much did the Kremlin know of, and to what extent did they endorse, the IRA's
activities? Agents of Chaos provides no substantive answers. The film's only evidence of
a link between the IRA and the Kremlin is that the former received funding from Yevgeny
Prigozhin, a major Russian businessman with ties to Vladimir Putin. Not only is there no proof
that the IRA coordinated directly with any Russian government agency, but it's not even clear
to what extent Prigozhin himself oversaw the IRA's agenda. Gibney admits as much, but claims
it's all part of a plausible deniability ploy: Putin shields himself by delegating unsavory,
extra-legal tasks to private cronies who technically don't work for him. This is probably true
in a general sense, but it doesn't get us any closer to understanding the level on which
specific decisions to interfere in U.S. politics were made.
A similar problem emerges in Gibney's discussion of Fancy Bear, a Russian cyber espionage
group. Gibney proceeds on the assumption that Fancy Bear is the hacking arm of Russian military
intelligence (GRU), which itself has not been conclusively established with publicly verifiable
information. Gibney posits that Fancy Bear's American activities were conducted with blessing
from the Kremlin, an even more flimsy assumption. A responsible analysis of Russian election
interference has to grapple with countless nuances: were the actual hacks conducted by GRU
personnel, or contractors? Was there an order to target the DNC, or did an overeager operator
make a unilateral decision? If the former, on what level was the order given? Who set Fancy
Bear's agenda, and how closely did they stick to said agenda? Was the Kremlin truly interested
in destroying American institutions, or was it perhaps driven by the more pragmatic goal of
signaling its cyber capabilities to Washington as a deterrent against future American meddling
in Russian politics?
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To truly understand what the Russians did, we have to understand how and by whom the orders
were given, how they trickled down the chain of command, and how closely they were followed by
field operators. You have to understand institutional forces, like the longstanding rivalry
between the GRU and SVR that could lead the former to take unsanctioned risks. You also have to
consider that, as with any Caesarist system,
Putin's many subordinates sometimes take the initiative in doing things to please him that he
himself would never have approved of.
Gibney jettisons all these complexities, instead resigning himself to a convenient
abstraction: the "Russians" did it. And who are the "Russians?" Well, it all boils down to the
guy in charge. This conceit of an omnipresent leader is simply not a realistic view of how any
political system, let alone Putin's Russia, operates, but it is all too often used by
journalists and politicians as a substitute for serious Russia analysis.
The rest of the film is a fairly linear exploration of the major milestones in the Russian
meddling saga: the Assange-DNC imbroglio, the FBI counterintelligence investigation into the
Trump campaign, and a précis of Trump's questionable contacts with Russians. It is here
that the film's editorial stance is fully laid bare: the Obama administration and U.S.
intelligence community are portrayed as patriots doing their best to foil a foreign plot on
American soil -- their only mistake is not going far enough in prosecuting the Trump campaign
(and, in Comey's case, having the gall to announce an investigation into Hillary's use of
private email servers).
Trump and the Trump campaign, meanwhile, are de facto -- if not de de jure -- traitors who
colluded with a foreign government to win the election. Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew
McCabe was given a sympathetic platform to dismiss serious objections to the FBI's behavior,
especially concerning the FISA warrant to surveil Trump campaign associate Carter Page. McCabe
was not asked to comment on FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, who pleaded
guilty to submitting falsified documents to renew a surveillance warrant against Page.
Page, meanwhile, was maligned as an eccentric stooge too "unsophisticated" to realize that he
was being used by his "Russian spy handlers" to establish a backchannel with the Trump
campaign.
The film offers an uncritical platform to some of the more outrageous Trump-Russia
conspiracies that even the mainstream news networks were reluctant to publish, including the
notion that the Kremlin wanted to use Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort as an intermediary to
secure a deal with a potential Trump administration for the partition of Ukraine.
Gibney proceeds to recount all the stations of the cross of the Russiagate narrative; these
include the Trump Tower meeting, Trump's infamous request for Russians to hack Hillary Clinton,
alleged Russian efforts to suppress the black vote, and alleged coordination between wikileaks
and the Trump campaign. That part of the film feels less like a critical-minded documentary and
more like a heartfelt homage to the old 'stab in the back' theory of the 2016 election --
namely, the idea that Clinton never really lost, but was instead betrayed by fellow Americans
who conspired against her with a hostile foreign power.
Agents of Chaos was branded as a fresh look at Russian election interference, cutting
past the fog surrounding intelligence work to uncover the truth of what really happened in
2016. What we got instead was a summa of Russiagate's greatest hits, packaged and
presented with all the slick polish that can be expected from an award-winning filmmaker.
"National security," concludes Gibney in his closing narration, "isn't just about our
enemies. It's also about us. National security starts at home, with our own resilience, our own
politics, and the honor of our leaders." I commend these words without reserve. Nevertheless,
there is room for a nuanced discussion about Russian interference in 2016 and what can be done
to deter foreign meddling in the future. Whether or not Agents of Chaos adds anything of
value to that discussion is a rather different matter.
If the film offers any unique strain of thinking, it lies in Gibney's poignant observation
that Russian interference only worked to the extent that it did because we are needlessly
vulnerable to such incursions. Any foreign agent working to destabilize American society would
find no shortage of socio-political faultlines to exploit, of bitter resentments to manipulate.
The Russians didn't do that -- we did that to ourselves. Mending our torn social fabric is, in
this sense, one of the foremost national security challenges of our time.
Mark Episkopos writes on defense and international relations issues. He is also a PhD
student in History at American University .
What we , the general public know , is that Manafort would not disclose all of what he
did with the Russians. We know that he was deeply indebted to them. That he was fearful for
the safety of his family. And ultimately fell on his sword, rather than come clean.
He did not do it to save Trump. Trump did not understand That Manafort was more evil
than he was. Stone got to Trump to hire Manafort. Manafort was the best source for the
interference. He got deep into the politics of the Russians and others.
Trump was just a stooge. Carter,et al were wannabes. Flynn was corrupt, but wanted to be
a powerful player on the national scene. He like everyone else in Trump's orbit , played
Trump. The Russian thing got out of control because of Session's misstatements. If he had
conducted the investigation, the whole Russia gate would have been buried.
The interference was simply the clever use of social media.. and the gullibility of too
many ordinary citizens. Who wanted to think that they knew the secret. Never minding that
there were no secrets.
Just ordinary politicians, their handlers, the misfits and a few savvy operatives that
took advantage of the simpleton in the oval office. How we could have elected Trump is the
disgrace of the matter. We did this because the citizenry hated Clinton more than we
understood. Pretty simple.
Facebook pages are easy to monetize when large enough. IRA was a profitable company
using that business model, mostly on Russian social network VK.
"... IRA's Facebook spending between 2015 and 2017 at just $73,711.
Russian-linked accounts spent $4,700 on [Google] platforms in 2016"
Far from proving the Russian threat, it proves the hard work of American domestic
agencies and the media on their own propaganda operation.
I would add that this sort of highly effective professional gaslighting beats any
Stalinist system of propaganda and censorship. I don't know if America can still consider
itself a free country with such top-effort malicious missinformation
The 2016 election debacle is a self-inflicted wound, but the democrats and deep states
elites can't bear to look in the mirror at their own corrupt natures, so they concoct a
Russia straw-man to bear the blame.
The average Joe Shmuck in the street is too stupid to realize he has been conned, so the
elites get away with their appalling conduct.
Careers were made on the basis of this dis-information imbroglio called, Russian
interference. The victors in this information war waged upon the American people by the
stalwart "liberal press," have inflicted damage on the American psyche which is
incalculable.
Sounds like it's an apologia for US intervention in the Ukraine fomenting a coup in
2014. News for Gibney: the coup installed government in the Ukraine was in fact heavily
supported by extreme neo-Nazi Ukrainian nationalist factions. That's not Russia-bot
dis-info. I have better things to do with 4 hours of my life.
I know people who fought and died on both sides of the war in Ukraine. Many of those who
fought for the US-backed junta were actual live neonazis. By contrast, my friends who
fought for Donbass are the best people that I know.
Now I have learned that this is all Russian propaganda. Whom should I believe? Alex
Gibney or my own lying eyes and ears?
It could only be treason that caused Hilary Clinton not to be acclaimed as Madame
Presidente. Russian mind control rays created the zombie Deplorables who thwarted her
assured victory. Hell Hath No Fury like a Clinton scorned.
This is a simple story. The American empire took advantage of the end of the Cold War by
marching eastward and adding nations to its collection of vassal states. It wanted Ukraine,
but its democratically elected President refused. The Obama team organized coup that led to
much violence, so Russia was blamed. The people of Crimea disliked the turmoil so 94% voted
to rejoin Russia. Russia reannexed Crimea as requested. Russian troops did not invade, they
were already there for a century. More here:
Indeed. Russia built the Crimea. It was an Ottoman backwater before Catherine the Great
and Potemkin began building new cities and ports, and it was only an accident of internal
USSR border manipulations in the '50s that caused it to be part of the Ukraine instead of
Russia after 1991. Russia in 2014 just reclaiming what is rightfully its territory.
"But how much did the Kremlin know of, and to what extent did they endorse, the IRA's
activities?"
You have got to be joking. Every intelligence agency in the world knows that the IRA is
an FSB front organization. Most do not even consider this to be a secret. I conclude that
the author is either willfully blind or himself in Russian pay.
I thought Taxi to the Darkside, by Alex Gibney, was pretty good. From this overview at
any rate, his Russia-gate film sounds very poorly researched -- at best. For goodness
sakes, all you have to do is look at the electoral choices of Ukrainians since their
independence in 1991 to see the stark geographic division in that country, something every
competent political scientist has known since forever. And yet, for Gibney, that stark
east-west division was a fiction created by Russian bots?
More than a dozen young visiting scholars from China had their visas abruptly terminated in
a
letter from administration of the University of North Texas (UNT), Denton, on August 26, in
a letter dated August 26! The letter informed the students that they could return to campus
from their lodgings to pick up belongings, but all other access was closed to them. The
students and fellows were
given no explanation . They were left with no legal basis to be in the U.S. and began
scrambling for the very few and very expensive flights back to China.
At first the UNT administration simply stated that all those funded by the Chinese
Scholarship Council (CSC) were terminated. According to Wikipedia , the CSC is the main
Chinese agency for funding Chinese students abroad (currently 65,000 with 26,000 of them in the
US) and an equal number of foreign students in China, some from the US. (Americans interested
in CSC scholarships to study in China can easily find information here . There is nothing secret or nefarious about CSC; the
US has agencies that offer similar aid to scholars.)
The University at last offered an explanation of sorts in a statement by its spokesperson,
the Vice President for Brand Strategy and Communication (VP for BS and C) as
reported on September 10 by the North Texas Daily: "UNT took this action based upon
specific and credible information following detailed briefings from federal and local law
enforcement." The VP for BS and C was "unable" to provide more details. Local police later
denied any role in such briefings. It was the feds who provoked the discharges.
If these young students were doing something illegal or in violation of University rules,
then they should be told what it is and presented with evidence so they could answer such
charges. That is what we in the U.S. claim to believe in. If their crime is simply soaking up
ideas, that is what education is all about and most assuredly that is what science is all
about. If certain areas of research are classified, then scholars working in those areas should
be screened and get classifications. And if the US does not want CSC-sponsored students here,
then reasons should be given and no more visas allowed. None of that has been done. The
students were found guilty of something, they know not what, and dismissed!
Although UNT may not be well known nationally, it is rated
as an
"R1" or top tier research university , one of about 130 institutions falling into that top
category and receiving federal research funding. It is troubling that such action by an
institution in this category and the beneficiary of federal largesse has not drawn more
condemnation for its action. And it is even more troubling that this occurs in an atmosphere of
anti-Chinese hostility in the wake of Covid-19, marked by physical attacks on Chinese
Americans.
Have we forgotten the racism directed against Chinese and codified into federal law the
Chinese Exclusion
act of 1882 , the only U.S. law ever enacted to prevent all members of a specific
ethnic or national group from immigrating to the U.S.? Other such legislation followed, such as
the Immigration Act of 1924 which effectively barred all immigration from Asia, including of
course Chinese. The rationale given by the politicians for all such heinous legislation was
that Chinese were stealing "our jobs". Sound familiar? Notoriously the Chinese Exclusion Act of
1882 gave rise to the "Driving Out" period where Chinese were physically attacked to the point
of brutal massacres designed to drive Chinese out of unwelcoming communities, the most infamous
being the Rock Springs and Hells Canyon Massacres.
The anti-Chinese and anti-Asian sentiment has continued down the years in one form or
another but it has had a resurgence recently with the meme that China's prosperity has been at
the expense of Americans. This narrative does not remind us that U.S. corporations and
investors offshore jobs for greater "returns," but claims that Chinese are pilfering our
technology.
Up to 2008,
Chinese were 17% of the total defendants charged under the EEA; from 2009-2015 under Obama this
percentage tripled to 52%. 21% of Chinese were never convicted of espionage, twice the
rate for non-Asians. In roughly half the cases involving Chinese the alleged beneficiary of the
espionage was an American entity; roughly one third had an alleged Chinese beneficiary.
In sum a much higher rate of indictment for Chinese but a lower rate of convictions. So the
additional "attention" given Chinese was not warranted. It seems that something changed after
2009. What was it? This time was the period when Obama's Asian Pivot was put into play. The
Pivot targeted China both militarily by moving 60% of US Naval forces to the Western Pacific
and economically with the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) designed to isolate China from its
neighbors. Is the increased harassment of Chinese under the EEA another aspect of the strategy
expressed openly in the Pivot?
This legal attack on Chinese has continued under the present administration, but the NTU
case adds a new wrinkle. Here there was no legal action, but an action apparently taken by the
University. However, hidden pressure to oust the students came from a federal agency or
agencies. This should be no surprise since it fits in with FBI Director Christopher Wray's
"Whole of Society" approach to confronting China unveiled last February and
reiterated din July when he said, "We're also working more closely than ever with partner
agencies here in the U.S. and our partners abroad. We can't do it on our own; we need a
whole-of-society response. That's why we in the intelligence and law enforcement communities
are working harder than ever to give companies, universities , and the American people
themselves the information they need to make their own informed decisions and protect their
most valuable assets." (Emphasis, jw) It looks like the FBI and or its "partner agencies" gave
UNT officials "the information they needed" to throw out the Chinese students without any
reason given or charge made.
Consider the position of those UNT officials when they found themselves visited by federal
"authorities" and "asked' to cooperate. When the FBI "asks" for cooperation, it is making an
offer that is perilous to refuse. It would take considerable courage to say "no". But that is
precisely what the UNT administrators should have done if they were to live up to the presumed
values and ideals of our society and universities. The question also arises as to how many
other universities have been approached to take similar steps. It seems unlikely that UNT is
alone. But it is very likely that other Universities, wealthier and with a bevy of VP's for BS
and C, might have handled the whole matter in a discrete way and in a way that makes it appear
that such suspensions are not a wholesale matter. Perhaps other more "polished" university
authorities would not own up to the dirty deeds but keep them as secret as possible.
Let us take it a step further. What if you were approached by one of these federal agents
and "requested" to keep an eye on a Chinese colleague, friend, neighbor or co-worker. Would you
have the courage to refuse? And as the confrontation with China heats up, a peace movement is
arising to counter it. In fact, anti-interventionists are popping up across the spectrum on
left and right to oppose policies that take us on the road to war with China. Will the peace
advocates be targeted in the same way, on the sly as well as within a "legal" framework by the
FBI and other federal agencies? And will the precedent established in cases like the UNT case
make such federal actions more acceptable? Will those working for peace be labeled as puppets
of Xi?
"First they came for the Chinese," it might be said. And in the future, under the "Whole of
Society" approach, they may come for anyone who chooses to work for peace with China rather
than take a path to war. Anti-Chinese racism, repugnant in and of itself, is also one part of
setting the stage for a new and more dangerous McCarthyism. It is time to stop the madness
before it devours us all.
I'll join the chorus calling New York Times columnist Bret Stephens "brave" for last week's
takedown of his
newspaper's "1619 Project." But I'd also like to ask him: What took you so long?
The 100-page collection of 18 articles that infamously claimed America's "true founding"
date is not 1776, but 1619 – the year enslaved Africans were first brought to these
shores – has received withering criticism since it was published
in August 2019 .
Ten months ago some of the nation's leading historians – including Pulitzer
Prize winners Gordon Wood and James McPherson –
wrote the Times to challenge a wide array of its claims, which the newspaper and its
partner, The Pulitzer Center, were disseminating free of charge
in the nation's classrooms . The historians were especially troubled by its assertion that
the Revolutionary War was fought to preserve slavery and the project's near total erasure of
the contributions of whites to dismantling slavery and working for freedom. Their letter
described these failings as "a displacement of historical understanding by ideology."
Their criticisms were
echoed and extended by others including
Leslie M. Harris, an African American professor of history at Northwestern University, who said
she "vigorously disputed" some central claims of the project when she helped fact-check it
before publication. "Despite my advice," she
wrote in Politico seven months ago , "the Times published the incorrect statement about the
American Revolution anyway."
Stephens' sharply written broadside breaks no new ground. What it does provide is a skillful
synthesis and endorsement of these voluminous critiques in the Times – by a Timesman.
That is significant. But his decision to write the essay so long after the project's mistruths
have been laid bare – and months after it was honored with a George Polk Award and a
Pulitzer Prize – suggests more rot at the Gray Lady and in American journalism.
As Stephens (pictured) himself suggests, the precipitating event was Phillip W. Magness'
Sept. 19 article in
Quillette , which revealed that the Times has "taken to quietly altering the published text
of the project itself after one of its claims came under intense criticism." Most significant,
the paper had scrubbed the claim that 1619 was "our true founding" from the online text without
acknowledgment.
This is not mere editing, but stealthy expurgation intended to cover up the paper's
journalistic malpractice.
This sketchy conduct, presumably approved by New York Times Magazine Editor Jake Silverstein
and others, warrants far more than a column. It demands a published response from the paper's
executive editor, Dean Baquet, that acknowledges the misdeed and states whether Baquet knew of
and/or approved the secret changes. Baquet must also detail the paper's response and explain
why the Times still stands by the project, given the need for such major corrections.
In this context, a column by someone with no authority at the Times beyond his opinion seems
part of a strategy to acknowledge a problem without fixing it. For all his bravery in writing
this piece, Stephens is the perfect foil for the Times, one that creates an escape hatch for
1619 acolytes.
It is relevant that Stephens – a conservative who came to the Times after a Pulitzer
Prize-winning stint at the Wall Street Journal – is the columnist whom so many liberal
Times subscribers love to hate. One of the few scribes at the paper who does not incessantly
preach to its woke choir, he has generated strong pushback from colleagues and readers for his
opinions on
climate change and the
Middle East . This may explain why the
New York Times Guild initially felt comfortable sending a now deleted Tweet criticizing the
editors for running Stephens' 1619 piece, which, it said, "reeks."
Stephens' standing makes it easier for many Times readers to dismiss or ignore his
devastating critique. Imagine the impact a similar piece might have had if it been written by
David Brooks or Nicholas Kristof.
Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger appears to be unconcerned by the allegations. The man who
forced editorial page editor James Bennet to resign because he ran a
controversial op-ed by Sen. Tom Cotton , issued a brief statement
Sunday that ignored the journalistic and factual issues raised by Stephens and others, and
instead insisted that the 1619 Project was "a journalistic triumph" whose publication is "the
proudest accomplishment of my tenure as publisher."
[ Baquet echoed Sulzberger's
comments in a note to his staff on Oct. 13, when this column was posted. Without directly
addressing the ethical and factual issues raised, he asserted that "the project fell fully
within our standards as a news organization" and that it "fill(s) me with pride."]
The deeper issue raised by Stephens' column is that the 1619 Project is just one example of
the degree to which the Times and other mainstream news outlets have displaced traditional
journalistic practice with ideology. Informed by the tenets of social justice and
critical race theory that have long dominated the humanities departments at leading
universities, journalists have abandoned a commitment to the elusive ideal of objectivity for a
naked embrace of results-oriented activism masquerading as reportage. In this regard,
journalism is a symptom, rather than cause, of the deep-seated cultural relativism that
pervades American culture.
The essence of the 1619 Project is the idea that America is a permanently racist nation
whose founding ideals were lies. This is the capital T truth it seeks to advance. It dismisses
facts that undermine that narrative, distorting the historical record because they are seen as
roadblocks in the arc that bends toward justice. This approach relies on one of the most
dangerous engines of dishonesty in human history: the notion that the means justify the
ends.
That the Pulitzer board would bestow its prize for commentary to the lead writer of the 1619
Project, Nikole Hannah-Jones, despite damning scholarly critiques, suggests how deeply this
activist approach has infected journalism.
This impulse now drives much of the coverage in the Times, the Washington Post, the New
Yorker, NPR, and other prestigious news organizations. The clearest example is reporting on
Donald Trump, whom the left sees as an existential threat. This is the capital T truth they
advance through stories that insistently eschew nuance to portray the president as a
monster.
From climate change to identity politics, examples of their tendentious coverage are legion.
But none is more thoroughgoing and dishonest than the years-long coverage claiming Trump
colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election.
My RealClearInvestigations colleagues are among those
who followed the leads and dug up the facts mainstream outlets refused to and, so, got the
story right. Tom Kuntz, a former Times editor who leads RCI,
detailed how the Times and the Post relied on untrustworthy anonymous sources, unfair
innuendo and cherry-picked facts to advance this narrative in a series of stories that won both
papers a Pulitzer Prize in 2018.
This effort to distort the truth continues unbowed and unabated. Last week,
New Yorker writer Dexter Filkins wrote that Christopher Steele's dossier – opposition
research paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign that claimed the Russians had been
cultivating Trump as an asset for decades – "has been neither proved nor
disproved."
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In fact, much of it has been debunked and the key parts of it that haven't been probably
never will because you can't prove a negative – one can't ever prove that there is no
videotape showing Trump paid Russian prostitutes to pee on a Moscow hotel bed the Obamas had
slept in.
Shane Harris of the Washington Post encapsulated the ongoing dishonesty in an article last
week acknowledging, after a fashion, damning new intelligence tying the Clinton campaign to
Russiagate. In a single paragraph he both denied overwhelming evidence that the Clinton
campaign helped generate that now debunked scandal while also insisting that the conspiracy
theory was legitimate. Harris wrote:
"Trump allies have seized on the intelligence as evidence that Clinton was in some way
involved in ginning up an investigation of Trump to tie his campaign to Russia. The president
has consistently denied the charge as a 'hoax,' even though multiple investigations have
documented numerous instances in which his campaign sought Russian assistance in damaging
Clinton."
There is hardly any evidence that the Trump campaign "sought" such assistance. The most that
can be said is that it was receptive to offers of dirt on Clinton at the infamous
June 2016 Trump Tower meeting . Her campaign, by contrast, used people like Steele to
actively seek compromising material on Trump, which appears to have included Russian
disinformation.
Such reporting is so brazen that it suggests a far deeper problem than any one story.
Indeed, the deeply misleading Trump/Russia coverage and the 1619 Project are not deviations
from the norm. They are the new standard at prestigious outlets that are committed to pursuing
their notion of the capital T truth – inconvenient facts be damned.
The problem with American imperialism that like tiger it can't change its spots. In this
sense Trump vs Biden is false dilemma. "Bothe aare worse" as Stalin quipped on the other
occasion. Both still profess "Full Spectrum Dominance" doctrine at the expense of the standard of
living of the USA people (outside of top 10 or 20%)
The problem with Putin statement is that both candidates are marionette of more powerful
forces. Trump is a hostage of Izreal lobby, which in the USA are mostly consist of rabid
Russophobes (look art Schiff, Schumer and other members of this gang). Biden is a classic
neoliberal warmonger, much like Hillary was, who voted for Iraq war, contributed to color
revolution in Ukraine, and was instrumental in the conversion of Dems into the second war party.
So there is zero choice in the coming election unless you want to punish Trump for the betrayal
of his electorate, which probably is the oonly valid reason to vote for Biden in key states;
otherwise you san safely ignore the elections as youn; influence anythng. In a deep sense this is
a simply legitimization procedure for the role of the "Deep State", not so much real elections as
both cadidates were already vetted by neoliberal establishment
The key problem with voting for Bide is that this way you essentially legitimizing Obama
administration RussiaGate false flag operation. But as Putin said, chances for extending the
Start treaty might worse this self-betrayal.
Like much of the American public, the Russian public is no doubt weary of the prior couple
years of non-stop 'Russiagate' headlines and wild accusations out of Western press, which all
are now pretty much in complete agreement came to absolutely nothing. This is also why the
whole issue has been conspicuously dropped by the Biden campaign and as a talking point among
the Democrats, though in some corners there's been meek attempts to revive it, especially
related to claims of "expected" Kremlin interference in the impending presidential
election.
Apparently seeing in this an opportunity for some epic trolling, Russian President Vladimir
Putin in an interview with Rossiya 1 TV days ago said it was actually the Democratic Party and
the Communist Party which have most in common.
Putin was speaking in terms of historic Soviet communism in the recent interview (Wednesday)
detailed in Newsweek. "The Democratic Party is traditionally closer to the so-called liberal
values, closer to social democratic ideas," Putin began. "And it was from the social democratic
environment that the Communist Party evolved."
"After all, I was a member of the Soviet Communist Party for nearly 20 years" Putin added.
"I was a rank-and-file member, but it can be said that I believed in the party's ideas. I
still like many of these left-wing values. Equality and fraternity. What is bad about them?
In fact, they are akin to Christian values."
"Yes, they are difficult to implement, but they are very attractive, nevertheless. In
other words, this can be seen as an ideological basis for developing contacts with the
Democratic representative."
The Russian president also invoked that historically Russian communists in the Soviet era
would have been fully on board the Black Lives Matter movement and other civil rights related
causes. "So, this is something that can be seen, to a degree, as common values, if not a
unifying agent for us," the Russian president said. "People of my generation remember a time
when huge portraits of Angela Davis, a member of the U.S. Communist Party and an ardent fighter
for the rights of African Americans, were on view around the Soviet Union."
So there it is: Putin is saying his own personal ideological past could be a basis of
"shared values" with a Biden presidency, again, it what appears to be a sophisticated bit of
trolling that he knows Biden won't welcome one bit. Or let's call it a 'Russian endorsement
Putin style'. The Associated Press and others described it as Putin "hedging his bets",
however.
Another interesting part of the interview is where the Russian TV presenter asked Putin the
following question:
"The entire world is watching the final stage of the US presidential race. Much has
happened there, including things we could never imagine happening before but the one constant
in recent years is that your name is mentioned all the time," Zarubin said. "Moreover, during
the latest debates, which have provoked a public outcry, presidential candidate Biden called
candidate Trump 'Putin's puppy.'"
"Since they keep talking about you, I would like to ask a question which you probably will
not want to answer," the interviewer continued. "Nevertheless, here it is: Whose position in
this race, Trump's or Biden's, appeals to you more?"
And here's Putin's response:
"Everything that is happening in the United States is the result of the country's internal
political processes and problems," Putin said. "By the way, when anyone tries to humiliate or
insult the incumbent head of state, in this case in the context you have mentioned, this
actually enhances our prestige, because they are talking about our incredible influence and
power. In a way, it could be said that they are playing into our hands, as the saying
goes."
But on a more serious note Putin pointed out that contrary to the notion some level of
sympathy between the Trump administration and the Kremlin, much less the charge of "collusion",
it remains that US-Russia relations have reached a low-point in recent history under Trump. The
record bears this out.
Putin underscored that "the greatest number of various kinds of restrictions and sanctions
were introduced [against Russia] during the Trump presidency."
"Decisions on imposing new sanctions or expanding previous ones were made 46 times. The
incumbent's administration withdrew from the INF treaty. That was a very drastic step. After
2002, when the Bush administration withdrew from the ABM treaty, that was the second major
step. And I believe it is a big danger to international stability and security," Putin
explained.
"Now the US has announced the beginning of the procedure for withdrawing from the Open
Skies Treaty. We have good reason to be concerned about that, too. A number of our joint
projects, modest, but viable, have not been implemented – the business council project,
expert council, and so on," he concluded.
But then on Biden specifically Putin said that despite "rather sharp anti-Russian rhetoric"
from the Democratic nominee, it remains "Candidate Biden has said openly that he was ready to
extend the New START or to sign a new strategic offensive reductions treaty."
"This is already a very significant element of our potential future cooperation," Putin
added of a potential Biden presidency.
Before the first Trump-Biden debate, moderator Chris Wallace listed the six subjects that
would be covered:
The Trump and Biden records, the Supreme Court, COVID-19, the economy, race and violence in
our cities, and the integrity of the election.
According to a recent Gallup survey, Wallace's topics tracked the public's concerns -- the
top seven of which were the coronavirus, government leadership, race relations, the economy,
crime and violence, the judicial system, morality and family decline.
As an issue, national security did not even break Gallup's Top 10. It ranked below education
and homelessness, just above climate change.
Which raises a question?
Can a nation as divided as we are and as distracted as we are by the most lethal pandemic in
100 years, the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, and the worst racial crisis
since the 1960s, conduct a global policy to contain the ambitions of two rival great powers on
the other side of the world and to create a U.S.-led democratic world order?
Can we build, lead and sustain alliances of dozens of nations to contain Vladimir Putin's
Russia and Xi Jinping's China as we did the Soviet Union during more than 40 years of the Cold
War?
Are we still up to it? And must we Americans do it?
Or should we let the internal problems and pressures on these two nations do the primary
work of containing their external ambitions?
Case in point: Vladimir Putin's Russia. While our Beltway elites are obsessed with Russia
and Putin, seeing in them a mortal threat to our democracy, close observers are seeing
something else.
"Putin, Long the Sower of Instability, Is Now Surrounded by It," runs a headline in
Thursday's New York Times. The theme also appears in The Financial Times in a story headlined,
"Putin Watches as Flames Engulf Neighborhood."
Consider the situation today in Russia's "near abroad," the former republics of the USSR
that broke from Moscow's rule between 1989 and 1991.
The Baltic States -- Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia -- are already in the U.S.-led NATO
alliance. Georgia in the Central Caucasus, the birthplace of Stalin, fought a war against its
Russian neighbor in 2008 and is now a friend and de facto ally of the United States.
Ukraine, the most populous of the 14 republics to break away from Moscow, is now the most
hostile to Moscow, having watched its Crimean Peninsula in the Black Sea be amputated by Putin
in 2014.
Now, Belarus, Russia's closest neighbor to the west, is in a political crisis with weekly
demonstrations demanding the ouster of Putin's ally, longtime autocrat Alexander Lukashenko,
after a fraudulent election.
Putin could be forced to do what he has no desire to do -- forcefully intervene to put down
a popular uprising that could cause Belarus to follow Ukraine into the Western camp.
Now, in the South Caucasus, two former republics of the USSR, Azerbaijan and Armenia, are
again in an open war over Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian enclave wholly within Azerbaijan.
While Armenia, an ally of Russia, is pleading for intervention by Moscow to halt the war,
Turkey is aiding the Azeris militarily, and they seem to be gaining the upper hand.
Four thousand miles away, in Russia's Far East, in the city of Khabarovsk, which is as close
to China as Dulles Airport is to D.C., anti-Putin rallies have become a constant feature of
politics.
Last summer, Putin's political rival Alexei Navalny was poisoned with Novichok, a nerve
agent developed in Soviet laboratories. Navalny has now become a live martyr and more potent
adversary as the Kremlin has failed to come up with a satisfactory explanation for what appears
to have been an attempted assassination. New German and French sanctions on Russian officials
could be forthcoming.
Russians are tiring of Putin's 20-year rule. His popularity, though high by European
standards, is near its nadir. And Russians have suffered mightily from the coronavirus and what
it has done to their economy.
Now, the pro-Putin regime in Kyrgyzstan on the Chinese border appears to have been
overthrown after another fraudulent election, and Beijing is telling everyone to stay out.
And how have Putin's imperial adventures gone?
While his intervention in Syria saved the regime of Bashar Assad and Russia's sole naval
base in the Mediterranean, the war continues to bleed Mother Russia.
Putin's intervention on the side of the rebels in Libya, however, has not gone well. Last
year's rebel drive to capture the capital of Tripoli failed, and the rebel forces have been
forced to retreat back to the east.
Meanwhile, Russia's economy remains only one-tenth the size of China's economy, and its
population is also only one-tenth that of China.
Perhaps time is on America's side in the rivalry with Russia, and war avoidance remains as
wise a policy as it was during the Cold War.
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of "Nixon's White House Wars: The Battles That Made and
Broke a President and Divided America Forever."
I couldn't finish this article. The notion that Russia has any "expansionist aims" is so
far-fetched that I wonder what the weather is like on "Planet Pat." Pat, to summarize, has no
real problems with a drive for American hegemony, but just thinks that it ought to be
achieved for less.
Pat was right and I was wrong back in the 1990s when he saw the threat of outsourcing. Now
he's wrong about Russia and Vladimir Putin. I saw a recent press conference in which Putin
did an on-the-spot translation of a question asked by a German journalist (in German) into
Russian for his Russian audience. Can anyone imagine the clowns that we've see on our screens
in these "debates" doing anything like that? Russia is governed by serious men who are doing
their best, although they make mistakes like everyone else. The United States is governed by
freaks that should be in a circus sideshow.
Though Buchanan has had a great career as a sceptic of yankee imperialism, some times his
views are infected by the remnants of a belief in it he has been unable to fully shake.
He cultivates a reputation for "non-interventionism," but Mr. Buchanan has been
fundamentally faithful to the Establishment, always careful to leave Russia and China cast as
enemies.
It's been a while since he has taken a break from carnival barking the next Most Important
Election Ever with an Exceptional!, RussiaBadChinaToo column like this one. The propaganda
pronouns, personalization of the autocratic bad guys, and cliché buzzwords are
many , and it's important to pull back a bit to examine how "Mr. Paleoconservative"
wraps them in his faux dissidence:
Can a nation as divided as we are and as distracted as we are by the most
lethal pandemic in 100 years, the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, and the
worst racial crisis since the 1960s, conduct a global policy to contain the
ambitions of two rival great powers on the other side of the world and to
create a U.S.-led democratic world order ?
Can we build, lead and sustain alliances of dozens of nations to
contain Vladimir Putin's Russia and Xi Jinping's China as we
did the Soviet Union during more than 40 years of the Cold War?
Are we still up to it? And must we Americans do it?
Or should we let the internal problems and pressures on these two nations do the
primary work of containing their external ambitions?
See how it works? Uncle Sam's ( our ) prophylactic goodness goes unquestioned, the
evil "ambitions" of others presumed. By suggesting that maybe "we" can't afford to protect
the rest of the world so much these days, Mr. Buchanan endorses the narrative.
It's telling that Mr. Buchanan remains on record endorsing the bipartisan Beltway premise
that (July 7, 2017) "Americans are rightly angry that Russia hacked the presidential election
of 2016." (That bit's omitted in today's column, what with the more immediate need to herd
enough GOP sheep back to the polls to legitimatize the system.) The columns and comment
threads of July 20 and 24, 2018, and May 31, 2019 -- where I first asked Mr. Buchanan's fans
why he seemed willfully ignorant of the observations of people like William Binney -- are
further evidence.
His fans rationalize that he's doing what he can without losing his platform, but Mr.
Buchanan effectively serves Washington. Look around and think critically for yourself and
you'll see that when it comes to electoral politics he's Stagehand Right in the puppet show,
and in discussions of US imperialism the Right sash of the Overton window.
Russia is not threatening or bothering anyone, the USA is threatening and bothering pretty
well everyone. the people of Crimea overwhelmingly wanted and voted to leave Ukraine, Russia
did not TAKE it. Get over it children.
Pat Buchanan is correct: "war avoidance remains as wise a policy as it was during the Cold
War."
But it is a difficult policy when neither Washington nor Moscow has the control they had
during the Cold War, especially with the hegemonic rise of China. Chaos is producing the
conditions where any nation will have to go to war: existential threat. Ordering the world
can avert our destruction – in theory – but only by accepting some harsh
realities. https://www.ghostsofhistory.wordpress.com/
I've always had a soft spot for Pat Buchanan. But lately (the last few years) his articles
appear more and more workmanlike. In other words just going through the motioms.
In this article he seems to have accepted the official narrative on almost everything.
"Last summer, Putin's political rival Alexei Navalny was poisoned with Novichok,"
Novichok appears to be the most inefficient lethal poiaon in existence with around 75%
survival rate, yet Buchanan accepts the narrative without question. Pat Buchanan up to the
90's would have laughed at this.
There is a liberal democratic strain in Russia with some power that wants what the west
has, celebrations for homosexuals, radical feminism and maybe women with penises too. I have
met a few young Russians that don't like Putin. We will see. If by some miracle the US can
continue to run an economy not thru work but by having the Federal Reserve creating money and
distributing it, then maybe Russia will lose Putin and start looking more like a multi-culti
western country too. But more likely, the US will suffer a major economic fall and then
perhaps Russia will think twice before turning Russian beauties into western style women
telling men to stop "mansplaining".
What Putin has to do if he hopes to keep Russia from turning into a Cultural Marxist
cesspool is find someone that believes in and can continue his policies but if he's like
Trump and is surrounded by people that want to be far left, Russia will become a western
style country too after Putin leaves office. If Russia wants to stay Russian and Europe has
any hope of turning the tide against its destruction, a new international movement has to be
popularized that values European / Western traditions and values the different peoples and
cultures of the world. The western European countries will first need to develop some self
respect so they have a reason to preserve their peoples and traditions.
This article is surprising in its comprehensive lack of factuality.
1. A gallop poll (not referenced) tells us what we already know: The American public does
not think like the elite tell them to think. How rude. Well, our government might be 'of, by,
and for' somebody, but it ain't 'The people.'
2. Contain Russia? And the Soviet Union and China did not serve to contain the US?
3. Are we still up to it? Up to what? American exceptionalism? The rest of the world is
starting to take issue with that. A century of 'Yankee Go Home' has grown teeth.
4. The Baltic states are as much use to Russia as they were to Sweden. Don't overestimate
their importance as anything other than a springboard for another group that does not
represent its populace: NATO.
5. Georgia 'fought a war against Russia ' and lost.
6. Ukraine suffered a violet coup. Crimea 'self-amputated' via legal referendum.
7. Belarus. Well, now. Belarus is like Ukraine pre-Maidan. The fog of diplomacy is much too
thick and oily to really see who is pulling whose strings there.
8. Putin could be forced to do anything. Time will tell what he and Mr. Lavrov have in mind.
Let's not limit his set of options and condemn him for something he hasn't done yet. That's
political TINA.
9. Azerbaijan and Armenia are suddenly at war. Again, at whose instigation? Why now? Is this
a resurrection of the Crusades since it is a Muslim country fighting a Christian country? Old
bigotry drug out of history's spare room and repurposed? Again, do either the Azerbaijanis or
the Armenians personally want any of this? Maybe Gallup can take a poll.
10. Khabarovsk is in an uprising? Again, who says? Why now? And aren't the same things going
on in American cities? You keep talking about sudden unprovoked uprisings as if they are
popular revolutions. I don't think that word means what you think it means.
11. Navalny does Novichok. Really? The dissident with less than five percent popularity in
Russia? The political court jester with Western style health issues taken down by the deadly
poison genetically modified to miss its target? This is a joke, right?
12. You've got a point about Russians being tired of Putin. I was there for three weeks in
2018 on a trip across Siberia on the Trans Siberian Railroad and spoke to people in places
like Ulan Ude (as close to Mongolia as Dulles is the D.C.) and Khabarovsk (ditto.) I found
that how people perceive Putin depends on which side of the 'Crazy Nineties' they sit. People
who remembered the Soviet era and reconstruction were more likely to support Putin
unconditionally, including a school teacher I spoke with who remembered trading lessons for
lunch, whereas younger people acknowledged what he did for Russia but just wanted a change of
face in the Kremlin. One man admitted that there are no alternatives worth considering.
Hardly a stinging repudiation. By the way, I was also in Vladivostok, as close to North Korea
as Dulles is to , well, you know. Not much dissent there. Yes, it's a military town but is as
secular as any western jarhead city.
13. Russia 'remains' one tenth the size of China? How imprudent.
14. Putin's imperial adventures are 'failing' and 'bleeding' Mother Russia? And how have ours
been doing lately?
15. Time is on America's side? Time is a fickle ally and has a habit of switching sides in
the long run.
This article contains significant spin with little or no analysis. Did you have someone do
your homework for you?
Exactly. The Pat Buchanan of the 1990's or even the 00's would rather have asked:
"Is it in America's interest to have either Russia or China so unstable and backed into
a corner by NATO expansion or other U.S. policy that they and their large nuclear arsenals
might come under the command and control of more desperate and unstable men than their
current leaders?"
As a previous commenter notes above, it's as is someone else is writing these columns
under Pat's byline now.
Russia has many nukes but it won't do them any good. All the forces in WW II had extensive
supplies for gas warfare. All had masks and elaborate tactics ready. No one used gas attacks
because they knew about the gas horrors from WW I. Even facing destruction of an army or city
no one wanted to release that genie from the bottle. Russia could let loose a nuclear barrage
then quickly witness the end of Russia. The Chinese are sensible as they refrain from wasting
money for a massive nuclear arsenal.
Can we build, lead and sustain alliances of dozens of nations to contain Vladimir
Putin's Russia and Xi Jinping's China
Russia is not expanding. Rather, as pointed out, it's the US/NATO that has expanded all
the way up to the Russian border, a threatening move. China is a competitor, not a militarily
expansionist country. With their economy they can wheel and deal better than the US but whose
fault is that?
forcefully intervene to put down a popular uprising that could cause Belarus to follow
Ukraine into the Western camp.
Just another made in the US color revolution, not popular at all. Ukraine is hardly an
example to follow. Much of the rest is about how Russia is collapsing, people rising up
against Putin, etc etc. All stuff that's been said for the past hundred years. Before it was
because they were communist. Now it's because what?
Perhaps time is on America's side
No. Demographics, Mr Buchanan, demographics. The US has turned itself into a semi-Brazil
where a good third of the population is non-white and getting larger. The greatest resource
of any country is it's people and in this regard the US has diversified itself into chaos and
a downward spiral.
Seldom have so many commentators agreed in their criticism of a post. Seldom has a post on
UR been so inept, so unfit for publication. Maybe the truth is quite banal: aging
commentators who once used to be intellectual powerhouses have simply succumbed to senile
infantilism. In addition to Pat Buchanan, another obvious example is Michel Chossudovsky.
Paul Craig Roberts is also not doing well. Like great athletes, they simply don't know when
to quit.
I don't see any deviation in Buchanan's argument (since he turned "paleo right wing") that
the USA should mind its own business and stay out of foreign entanglements.
Biden will surely win the US presidency over the dopey Trump. Biden is the perfect tool of
the "deep state," elements of which arranged for his winning of the Democrat's nomination.
Expect a hot war with Iran, the revival of the "Trans Pacific Partnership," mass amnesty,
continued loss of industry, curtailment of constitutional rights and much more money thrown
at the educational establishment to train up the population for the "jobs of tomorrow" etc
etc.
@No Friend Of
The Devil
href="https://russia-insider.com/en/new-constitution-means-russias-political-stability-strong-while-west-sinks/ri30819">
https://russia-insider.com/en/new-constitution-means-russias-political-stability-strong-while-west-sinks/ri30819
@Petermx
left" (the Russian far left would rather send all trannies to the Gulag), but the "liberals",
which in Russia is what they call the deregulation-obsessed corporate right wing.
A "liberal" means someone larping as a local Tory, in the sense of wanting to privatize
everything, sell it off, and then let in all of Central Asia as cheap workers. These days
they are also the ones who will accept child trannies in exchange for offshore perks. Not the
far left. The Russian far left would hang the Western far left on lamp posts, and send their
families to fell wood in Siberia.
Putin's political rival Alexei Navalny was poisoned with Novichok, a nerve agent
developed in Soviet laboratories. Navalny has now become a live martyr and more potent
adversary as the Kremlin has failed to come up with a satisfactory explanation for
what appears to have been an attempted assassination.
Just as they've failed to "come up with a satisfactory explanation" for the Skripal
obvious lies and idiocy.
Ditto the MH17 lies and idiocy
or the 'Russian hacking' lies and idiocy
or the 'Russian aggression in Ukraine' lies and idiocy..
Is that the way it works now Pat, you simply parrot the puerile piles of puke put out by
the ((narrative machine)) as if it was all God's truth?
When we all know it's the opposite.
Perhaps time is on America's side in the rivalry with Russia,
You're not Pat Buchannan.
Buchannan simply could not have uttered such an egregiously grotesque gargantuan infamy of
perfidious, pusillanimous palaver- even if he tried.
He'd choke on such words, (I'd hope ; )
"America's side"
If this is America's side, then God speed to Vlad Putin!
@TGD s a
comeuppance for 'four hundred years of slavery, genocide and a systemic racism that has had
the White man's knee on POC's necks for four hundred years and counting..
All of that ends in January, 2021.
A packed SC will end the Second Amendment, and it will be all she wrote.
So why does Buchannan allow an article full of horseshit about Putin and Russia to get
published in his name? When the reason for the 'most important election ever', is wokeness',
and the war on Iran (and possibly Russia) that will come when ((wokeness) is firmly in power
again?
@Patricus re
MAD.
• further, the US refused to denounce "first use of nuclear weapons" with a no first
use policy. This indicated(s) their intention. Russia still has a no first use policy with
caveats. US is the aggressor here.
• if you understand the above, then all other US plays come into focus. Why they killed
the INF treaty in order to move into Europe nuclear missiles of that prohibited range, why
they have started to try and reduce nuclear payload so that they can use nuclear weapons
without triggering the nuclear threshold of nuclear retaliation by pleading low yield etc.
I thought I was the only one who cringed when Paul Roberts mixed in his obviously
misguided opinions in with obvious facts. Seems Giraldi is the last man standing. We need new
authorities on truth.
I have been a fan of Pat Buchanan's most of my life. But since the Trump phenomenon began
I can't for the life of me understand what has happened to him. It's as if he has drunk the
Qanon Kool-Aid.
Not sure if Pat is writing his own articles these days but this sure qualifies as
establishment drivel. It's America that has troops in Poland near Russia's border as well as
trying to topple leaders in the region that are friendly to Putin and Russia. If Putin moved
troops and missile batteries near the Rio Grande the American establishment would literally
have a coronary.
Pat writes as if Putin is on a worldwide offensive against America and its interests but
it's been thankfully stymied. Most of what Putin and Russia have done and are doing has been
a reaction and in response to the unrest and instability that American actions have helped
bring to certain countries and regions.
What with the proven sterling safety record that Novichok has demonstrated in recent
assassination attempts, I understand it is now in Phase #3 trials as a treatment for
covid.
Yes! Well said, Rurik! I haven't read such great alliteration since Spiro Agnew's
"nattering nabobs of negativity" when referring to the Nixon hating press. (Speech written by
William Safire).
Why have you become an Old Cold Warrior again, Pat?
One is reminded – that pretty much all of the problems that Russia faces in its
'near abroad' – Ukraine, Belorussia, etc. – have been deliberately created by the
west. Given that Russia could still obliterate the west if it really felt that it had been
backed into a corner, is that wise?
What with the proven sterling safety record that Novichok has demonstrated in recent
assassination attempts, I understand it is now in Phase #3 trials as a treatment for
covid.
@Patricus
much as I think it does, they'd be willing to launch if we foolishly backed them into a
corner. It was seriously discussed in the Kremlin in the 1980's.
China's smaller arsenal is not a matter of the supposed uselessness of nukes. China has
advantages over Russia in population, wealth and production, sea routes, and a number of
other factors which make nukes less of a necessity, and they're also building on their own
past legacy as a poor nation, while Putin's Russia is hanging on to the arsenal of a
superpower whose infrastructure was laid down when the USSR had more resources and manpower
to call on than Russia does today. Apple-Orange.
This actually sounds like someone telling the truth for once about Russia and the Putin
regime!
Unfortunately there's been far to much blather about Putin over the years,oh and all his
hyperbole about super weapons
The Russian economy is not just one tenth of china its also not particularly
competitive,languishing in 30 th position in terms of global business rating
Its demographics are terrible without any chance of recovery
And to cap it all China will soon try and claim parts of eastern Russia as Chinese
Buchanan is 82 years old next month. For several years now, the input of his "assistants"
has been more and more noticeable. This article, however, appears to have been entirely ghost
written by one or more of them. It sounds entirely out of character with what Buchanan was
writing even last year.
Buchanan must retire immediately. If he does not, more ghost written articles like this will
irremediably taint his legacy.
I have held Mr Buchanan in high regard ever since I became aware of him in the 1990s. Sadly,
I will not read any new articles "written" by him.
I am pretty ignorant about poisons, and I'm a bit allergic to conspiracy theories, but on
this Novichok business I can't help wondering, If the stuff is really so toxic as is claimed,
then why is it that more than one supposed victim has survived?
To the contrary, Patrick hit a home run with this post. Putin still uses his KGB tactics
and allies to do his dirty work for him, especially poisoning political opponents and
cracking down on the media. Putin has enriched himself and his oligarch pals under the guise
of muscular Orthodoxism. Putin has always put into play policies designed to expand "Mother
Russia".
You are just too damn stubborn to admit these facts.
Russia and the Putin regime have set themselves against the USA,therefore why should
Buchanan agree with a regime who have people pushing for the destruction of America and the
US led international order????
Wouldn't that simply make Buchanan a traitor by supporting a foreign regime ?
I would have loved to see the faces of John McCain and "F the EU" Nuland if Putin had done
so. The Russian forces would have mopped up the coup leaders in a week, and Obama/Biden could
have done nothing but complain to the UN. It's very likely that many Ukrainian lives would
have been saved.
Buchanan's incredible statement that Putin "amputated" the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine,
when the vast majority of those who lived there voted to return to Mother Russia, is patently
ridiculous. C'mon Pat, return to your senses or it's time to retire.
Speaking of ghost writers, the Tom Parsons (1984) act here is a little too much for the
real Corvinus. The "home run" and "damn" are out of character, too.
Next time, aim more for that Unitarian Sunday School teacher voice.
"Speaking of ghost writers, the Tom Parsons (1984) act here is a little too much for the
real Corvinus. The "home run" and "damn" are out of character, too."
Right on cue is the Russian bot. I guess your programming does not tire in trying to
denigrate your social betters.
"Next time, aim more for that Unitarian Sunday School teacher voice."
As to Russian aggressiveness, you have to admit they did have the temerity to expand right
up to their own borders, thereby surrounding us on all sides: our NATO in the west, our
Ukraine and Georgia in the south, our arctic in the north, and our Japan and South Korea in
the east.
Fester suggests USA should take preemptive action and drain the USA nuclear stockpile for
the sake of South Chicago–the pinnacle of USA freedom -- democracy and societal values.
Then when global cooling returns to USA -- re-open the coal mines and build gas guzzlers.
Powerful nations tend to expand. I guess Pat is saying Russia is weak to make major
expansions. They did destroy Syria and annexed Crimea, that is it for now. His assessment of
Russia's weakness is ok. I doubt though Putin poisoned the opposition leader, not because he
cannot be mean. But because it seems amateurish. Russia failing to poison and kill an
individual? I don't know.
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orientation
Roman Dobrokhotov, who is the editor-in-chief of the publication.
Dobrokhotov. As I live and breathe -- a "kreakl"!!!!
In September 2018, in collaboration with "Bellingcat" Eliot Higgins, "The Insider"
conducted an investigation, allegedly publishing copies of official documents of the Russian
Federal migration service for passport application in the name of Alexander Petrov, one of
the suspects of the British authorities in the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal, which
may indicate his connection with the Russian special services.
In February 2020, "The Insider", jointly with "Bellingcat"and "Der Spiegel", conducted
an investigation and stated that the murder of Zelimkhan khangoshvili in Berlin in August
2019 was organized by the special unit of the FSB "Vimpel". They said that the FSB special
assignment Centre was preparing a repeat killer, Vadim Krasikov, for this murder, and they
also gave some details of Krasikov's movements around Europe.
On November 10, 2017, "The Insider" received from"The World Forum for Democracy"an award for innovation in democracy with the following wording:
"'The Insider' is an investigative publication that seeks to provide its readers with
information about the current political, economic and social situation in Russia, while
promoting democratic values and highlighting issues related to human rights and civil
society. In addition, 'The Insider' carries out the project 'Antifake', the task of which is
to systematically expose false news in the Russian media, which helps its audience to
distinguish real information from false news and propaganda".
In 2019, "The Insider" and "Bellingcat" received the European Press Prize for
establishing the identity of the two men allegedly responsible for the poisoning of Sergei
and Yulia Skripal .
How drole! "The insider" likes to shout out "Fake!" yet seems to work closely with
"Bellingcat".
If nothing is going to happen to the people that committed these crimes, what exactly is
the purpose of all of these releases? A cruel reminder that our leaders are above the law and
there's nothing we can do about it?
I don't need or want to see another ******* Hillary email, I want to see indictments.
NAV , 3 hours ago
Well, if there's nothing we can do about it, I guess I'll just go back to eating, drinking
and making merry. At least Noah built an ark.
systemsplanet , 1 hour ago
Releases like these give the FBI cover for their false flags.
Who would be surprised to find people organizing to respond? No one.
A major False Flag is coming that will be orchestrated by the FBI and blamed on the
right.
BaNNeD oN THe RuN , 1 hour ago
what exactly is the purpose of all of these releases?
Running out the clock.
Durham is "writing a report", not drafting indictments. How much clearer could things
be?
gro_dfd , 3 hours ago
The legal system lost credibility when Hillary was not indicted for her clearly illegal
e-mail system, among her many crimes.
insanelysane , 3 hours ago
Yes. She had the server to circumvent FOIA which was illegal. The deep state Dems and
repubs allowed the narrative to become about which emails were classified or not classified.
That didn't really matter as any state department emails not going through the state
department system was illegal.
Hulk , 2 hours ago
As a federal whistleblower myself, this is exactly what I experienced, years ago. And this
is exactly why whistleblowers are few and far between now. WHistle blowing, in a system this
corrupt, only serves to destroy the whistleblowers life.
These people really need to hang as they may have destroyed the country...
Zionism_is_racism , 2 hours ago
The FBI agent who reviewed Weiner's laptop was told by the DOJ at the time, if he blew the
whistle he would be prosecute.
He's one of the ones who is still a live.
He came out in a book written about it.
The book neve made it to J controlled MSM.
It would blow the top off of all of this.
The data on Weiner's laptop documents the most egregeous crimes against children by the
top of the government. It's a list of pedos, money laundering, Epstein Mossad operations
etc.
MitchRyderAndTheDetroitWheels , 3 hours ago
Comey's job was to protect the elite just like Mueller. Two useless bastids.
bobroonie , 3 hours ago
The DOJ ignored 33,000 deleted subpoenaed emails and Barr ignores an on going coup...
jim942 , 2 hours ago
Trump is no angel, but his greatest accomplishment is exposing the deep state for what it
is.
Revolution_starts_now , 3 hours ago
Jim Comey "Ignored"
Is that what they are calling a lucrative book deal pay off?
St. TwinkleToes , 2 hours ago
The Klinton Krime Kartel (KKK) are worse than Mexican drug cartels. At least with the
Mexicans, they paint their cartel logo on the side of their vehicles are aren't afraid to
release photos of their heavily armed masked army and rival cartel victims.
With the Pantsuit Hag, shes got every alphabet agency, big technopolies, the Democrat
communist Media Industrial complex coving up her phat azz.
Geocen Trist , 3 hours ago
Well I guess ... Comey and Hillary are Freemasons.
play_arrow
Surftown , 1 hour ago
The club.
Remember when CIA head Deutch was lax w personal computer? Plead guilty day before Clinton
left office. Clinton pardoned him.
remember when Gen Petraeus gave info to Mossad GF and got Slapped on wrist?
remember when others of lesser rank go to jail for forgetting something?
the club.
MarketTruth , 2 hours ago
"What difference does it make?"
-- H. Clinton
"Wipe the e-mail server... with a cloth?"
-- H. Clinton
chubbar , 2 hours ago
She sold out the US, she's a traitor! We have people serving life sentences for less. WTF
is it going to take to get these people arrested and tried for their crimes? WTF is Barr and
Durham doing???
Most of you probably remember James Comey investigated the Clinton email scandal, the
Clinton Foundation and made the decision to not recommend prosecution by the DOJ.
Well, it turns out that the Clinton Foundation was audited by law firm DLA Piper. One of
the executives of the firm was in charge of the Clinton Foundation audit. His name: Peter
Comey.
( Yep, James Comey's brother. Cozy, isn't it? )
Wait, it gets even cozier.
DLA Piper executive Douglas Emhoff is taking a leave of absence from the firm. Who is
Douglas Emhoff?
He is the husband of Democrat Vice Presidential Candidate... Kamala Harris !!
Pretty cozy, right?
Max21c , 2 hours ago
WTF is Barr and Durham doing???
covering up as much as they can of the serious and real crimes of the intelligence
community and secret police community and sweeping as much of it under the rug as they
possibly can while pretending to investigate a very narrow range of crimes that they are
allowed to look at by the Gestapo higher ups and Washington elites ....
They're not allowed to open Pandoras box of all the crimes and criminal activities carried
out by the intelligence community and secret police community against American citizens and
civilians by the military, military intel, military secret police, NSA, CSS, DIA, special
contractors and other foreign cutouts, FBI & CIA et cetera....
SnottyBubbles , 3 hours ago
The whistleblower was calculated, paranoid, and smart. He knew the TS/SCI nature of his
evidence. He did not take the FBI bait to reveal TS classified evidence outside of a SCIF.
The FBI didn't pursue the classified nature or the specific evidence the whistleblower
offered to provide.
Rest assured that if he had revealed his classified evidence outside of a SCIF, he would
have been disappeared.
To add insult to this hoax investigation, the classified Secret investigation document
could not be discussed outside of a SCIF.
This is a great example of why I could not get out from under my TS/SCI career long
clearances fast enough. Nothing good ever befalls the possessor of the clearance.
Dying-Of-The-Light , 3 hours ago
This reminds me of the London trader who told the CFTC that the bank he worked for kept
rigging the silver spot price. He even told them the exact time the next hit would take place
(and it did), plus he offered to fly to the USA and testify in person. The CFTC first ignored
him completely and then arrogantly dismissed his offer to testify in person.
The CFTC spent 5 years pretending to investigate the constant and obvious bankster
manipulation of the silver paper market. It ended its absurdly long process of so called,
'Examination' by finding there was no evidence of big bank traders rigging the spot price of
paper silver.
This with the Clinton Crime outfit is of course worse because this goes to the heart of
government, but really when government is rotten to the core it is not surprising that
everything connected to it also becomes ridden by corruption. This is why banksters turned
into complete fraudsters, starting with the Fed. This is why big Corp is riddled with
corruption. This is why all so called, 'Regulatory' bodies are nothing more than window
dressing for the sheep; handing out the odd hand slap fine now and then for banking crimes
that should result in prison sentences for senior management. This results in the crime being
endlessy repeated. It is always, 'Business as usual' for those with political and monetary
power. For the rest of us it is always, 'Suck it up peasant'.
steelframe7 , 1 hour ago
Durham has already made a career out of this and documents keep showing up that he hasn't
seen. Now we have thousands of Clinton emails he hasn't seen. DNI just declassified a lot
more documents that he hasn't seen?
Who is going to read all this? how many more investigations will this generate?
Barr and Co. seem to be saying that they can't reveal anything until they can reveal
everything.
Of course its' complicated but these are supposed to be really smart people.
It seems to me that Trump should tell Barr to lay out a progress report for the public,
together with a to do list and yesterday would not be too soon.
Boxed Merlot , 2 hours ago
... the FBI, who clearly was hellbent on protecting Hillary ...
As noted before, this organization's success at infiltrating the highest echelons of
"organized" criminal miscreants was not without price. As part of their indoctrination into
this underbelly of human "achievement" came their desire, ability and decision to employ
those self-same attributes to their own internal structure as evidenced by their current
total disregard for the citizenry's well-being, trust and confidence in what was hitherto
believed to be a uniform "rule of law". Disgusting. jmo.
curtisw , 2 hours ago
" You can call us wrong, but don't call us weasels. We are not weasels."
--- Jimmy "The Weasel" Comey
MoreFreedom , 2 hours ago
This should be handled like Schiff handled his "whistleblower". The Senate should start
holding hearings on it, but McConnell is doing what? Not helping Trump and exposing the
conspirators.
typeatme , 2 hours ago
Pity about you losing your Pension there Jimmy....Comes from having NOT done your
JOB...
And being a Felon...
Boxed Merlot , 2 hours ago
... losing your Pension there Jimmy...
His pension is way down the list of importance. He was set up well ahead of time, not the
least of which was being a VP at GS. He's a groomed and staked individual, well placed for
his ability to author a book exclaiming his beneficence towards humanity while deflecting any
possible attention to his real purpose of employing whatever means necessary to deceive,
manipulate and recruit additional soldiers in his quest to obfuscate equality, success and
hope in the citizenry of the US. jmo.
enjoy
bustersdad , 3 hours ago
It's okay, he's above the law right...
BugMan , 3 hours ago
Mike Pompeo Says He Has Hillary Clinton's Deleted Emails and Will Begin Releasing Them
Before Election Day (VIDEO)
It time to make him accountable at the election box. Not that it matter much as Biden is yet another neocon and Zionist, but
stil...
American people are tied of sliding standard of living, permanent wars and jingoism. Trump might share Hillary fate in 2020,
because any illusion that he is for common fold, who voted for him in 2016 now disappeared. So he is not better then neocon Biden and Biden is new bastard. So why vote for the old bastard if we have new, who might be
slightly better in the long run
This is a very expensive foreign policy, that doesn't benefit the USA. It has potential to
raise the price of oil significantly.
Notable quotes:
"... Behind the move was pressure from the Zionist lobby. President Trump is in need of campaign funds and the lobby provides those. ..."
"... I can also see this green lighting Israeli or joint American-Israeli strikes on alleged Iranian nuclear weapons development sites and other military and petro-state assets. ..."
"... It's disgusting to watch the people of the US/UK/EU go along with this. Western elites are fat, lazy, vicious, and cruel. ..."
"... Paul wrote: "Perhaps a Biden administration would be just as much a Zionist captive as the Trump administration." Yes at least as much or more zionist. Nothing about Harris or Biden (or the DNC) says they won't be. ..."
"... I nominate president Eisenhower as slightly less zionist on one occasion: during the Anglo,French, Zionist Suez invasion of 1956 Eisenhower remarked after numerous UN resolutions condemning the bandit state's aggression ' Should a nation which attacks and occupies foreign territory in the face of United Nations disapproval be allowed to impose conditions on its withdrawal?' ..."
"... "The EU is trying to prop up the US Empire in response to its decline, instead of trying to free itself. " ..."
"... Donald Trump talked up his Iran policy in a profanity-laden tirade on Friday, telling conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh that Tehran knows the consequences of undermining the United States. ..."
"... "Iran knows that, and they've been put on notice: if you fuck around with us, if you do something bad to us, we are going to do things to you that have never been done before." ..."
The U.S. has imposed
new sanctions on Iran which will make ANY trade with the country very difficult:
[T]he Trump administration has decided to impose yet further sanctions on the country ,
this time targeting the entirety of the Iranian financial sector. These new measures carry
biting secondary sanctions effects that cut off third parties' access to the U.S. financial
sector if they engage with Iran's financial sector.
Since the idea was first floated publicly , many have argued that sanctioning Iran's
financial sector would eviscerate what humanitarian trade has survived the heavy hand of
existing U.S. sanctions.
Behind the move was pressure from the Zionist lobby. President Trump is in need of
campaign funds and the lobby provides those. The move is also designed to preempt any
attempts by a potentially new administration to revive the nuclear agreement with Iran:
This idea appears to have first been introduced into public discourse in an
Aug. 25, 2020, Wall Street Journal article by Mark Dubowitz and Richard Goldberg urging
the Trump administration to "[b]uild an Iranian [s]anctions [w]all" to prevent any future
Biden administration from returning to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the
nuclear accord between Iran and the world's major powers on which President Donald Trump
reneged in May 2018.
The new sanctions will stop all trade between the 'western' countries and Iran.
The Foreign Minister of Iran responded with defiance:
Amid Covid19 pandemic, U.S. regime wants to blow up our remaining channels to pay for food
& medicine.
Iranians WILL survive this latest of cruelties.
But conspiring to starve a population is a crime against humanity. Culprits & enablers
-- who block our money -- WILL face justice.
In response Iran will continue its turn to the east. Russia, China and probably India will
keep payment channels with Iran open or will make barter deals.
The Europeans, who so far have not dared to counter U.S. sanctions on Iran, are likely to be
again shown as the feckless U.S. ass kissers they have always been. They will thereby lose out
in a market with 85 million people that has the resources to pay for their high value products.
If they stop trade of humanitarian goods with Iran they will also show that their much vaunted
'values' mean nothing.
The European Union claims that it wants to be an independent actor on the world stage. If
that is to be taken seriously this would be the moment to demonstrate it.
Posted by b on October 9, 2020 at 16:37 UTC | Permalink
Unconscionable but what is new with pompass and his ghouls; treasury dept responsible for
cranking up the sanctions program was formerly headed by a dual citizen woman who resigned
suddenly after being exposed as an Israeli citizen-not hard to understand that sentiment in
that dept has not changed.
The other aspect here is the FDD as key supporter of these severe sanctions; very virulent
anti-Iranian vipers nest of ziocons with money bags from zionist oligarch funders.
Ho-hum. As I wrote earlier, just the daily breaking of laws meaning business as usual. As
noted, Russia has really upped the diplomatic heat on EU and France/Germany in particular,
and that heat will be further merited if the response is as b predicts from their past,
deplorable, behavior.
Much talk/writing recently about our current crisis being similar in
many ways to those that led to WW1, but with the Outlaw US Empire taking Britain's role. I
expect Iran's Iraqi proxies to escalate their attacks aimed at driving out the occupiers.
IMO, we ought to contemplate the message within this Strategic Culture editorial when it comes to the hegemonic relationship between
the Outlaw US Empire and the EU/NATO and the aims of both. The EU decided not to continue
fighting against the completion of Nord Stream, but that IMO will be its last friendly act
until it severs its relations with the Outlaw US Empire. With the Wall moved to Russia's
Western borders, the Cold War will resume. That will also affect Iran.
thanks b... it is interesting what a pivotal role israel plays in all of this... and why
would there be concern that biden would be any different then trump in revoking the jcpoa? to
my way of thinking, it is just pouring more cement and sealing the fate of the usa either
way, as an empire in real decline and resorting to more of the same financial sanctions as a
possible precursor to war.. frankly i can't see a war with iran, as the usa would have to
contend with russia and china at this point... russia and china must surely know the game
plan is exactly the same for them here as well.. as for europe, canada, australia and the
other poodles - they are all hopeless on this front as i see it... lets all bow down to the
great zionist plan, lol...
Yeah but at least Trump didn't start any new wars. /s
The Eurotools in Brussels are absolutely disgusting. A weaker bunch of feckless,
milquetoast satraps is difficult to imagine. The EU perfectly embodies the 21st century
liberal ethic: spout virtue signaling nonsense about peace, freedom, human rights and the
"rules based international order" while licking the boots of Uncle Scam and the Ziofascists
and going along with their war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Russia and China need to step up their game and boldly circumvent the collective
punishment sanctions that are choking the life out of Iran, Syria and Venezuela. They still
let the rogue states of the west get away with far too much.
The Teheran men will not surrender to the yankee herds and hordes. And less so the
telavivian.
It s easy to see that in the medium run this cruelly extended crime plays in chinese, russian
and shia hands.
And they must start immediately a backlash handing hundreds of special forces and weapons
opver to the Houthi hands.
Of course there is a war on, and it has been gathering force for some time.
Iran is but one more skirmish or battle. However, Xi and Putin are using what I call the
"Papou yes". You must always say "yes" as this way you avoid direct conflict, but then you
go and do exactly what you were going to do in the first place . The person who does the
demanding - having had his/her demands "met" has nothing further to add and will go away. (I
have seen this effective technique in action).
At the moment it appears that the aim of the subversive (military/CIA/NGO) wings of the
Empire are to start as many conflicts as possible. To isolate and overextend Russia, leading
to it's collapse. (As they claim to have done before.)
The "Alternative axis" is just carrying on with it's own plan to overextend and eventually
let the US dissolve into its own morasss. The opposition are trying to follow their own plan
without giving an opening for the US/NATO to use its numerical military advantage, by not
taking the bait.
The ultimate battle is for financial control of the worlds currency, or in the case of the
US, to halt the loss of it's financial power. To avoid that The next step could be the
introduction of a Fed. owned controlled and issued "digi-dollar", When all outstanding
"dollar assets" are re-denominated into virtual misty-money which is created exclusively by
the Fed. Banks become unnecessary as the Fed becomes the only "lender" available, Congress
redundant, debts no longer matter and so on. Who cares about the reserves held by China and
overseas "investors" if their use or even existence can be dictated by the Fed?
They have already published a "trial balloon" about introducing a digi-dollar.
Iran? the US is throwing ALL its cards into what looks like it's final battle to preserve
the dollars supremacy. Why cut ALL the Iranian financial system out of their sphere of
influence? Because it (thinks) it can and by doing so cower the wavering into obeying.
Thanks 'b', very well timed. I was actually heading to the open thread with this article
until I saw your piece. This Asia Times
article focuses on three key points:
- Iran has replaced the dollar with the Yuan as its main foreign currency
"This may become the east wind for the renminbi (yuan) and provide a new oil currency option
for traders in oil-producing countries, including Iran," an editorial on qq.com said. "
- Several large banks in Iran are developing a gold encrypted digital currency called
PayMon and had issued more than 1,000 crypto-currency mining licenses, which could promote
the development of crude oil. Domestic traders use cryptocurrency to import goods and bypass
American banks.
- The Iranian-Swiss Joint Chamber of Commerce
"Switzerland had received a special exemption from US supervisory authorities to allow the
SHTA operations."
It remains to be seen how effective the Swiss Humanitarian Trade Agreement actually is.
Some say it is nothing but a US propaganda stunt. Hopefully, that is not the case.
What does Iran need that they cannot get from China and Russia? The USA has cheap corn, and
the EU has... what, cheese? Other than that I don't see why Iran needs to trade with the
empire and its more servile vassals anyway.
Strange, that ther is a jewish or Israeki ´ animosity agains Iran (or agains tthe
Medtans -- as thy are all named in all Greek records(H, that theer is a jewish animosity
against, that ther is a jewish anikisit agains Iran (or the Medtans -- as thy are old ptt in
all Greek Strenge(Hellemistic) tales, Cyrur+s the Great is reported to have liberatet the
Jews of Babilon end sent them back to Jerusalem . So, "PRIMO SON VENETANO, SECUNDO SON
CHRISTANO" -- STILL A COMMONLY ACCEPTED SAYING INVENEZIA WHEB I VISITED ABD AKED IT IN THE
THE YEAR OF 1´2917! Iran (or the Medtans -- as thy are old ptt in all Greek
Strenge(Hellemistic) tales, Cyrur+s the Great is reorted to have liberatet te´he Jews
of Babilon end sent them back to Jerusalem . So, "PRIMO SON VENETANO, SECUNDO SON CHRISTANO"
-- STILL A COMMONLY ACCEPTED SAYING INVENEZIA WHEB I VISITED ABD AKED IT IN THE THE YEAR OF
1´2917! ellenistic) tales, Cyrur+s the Great is reorted to have liberatet te´he
Jews of Babylon end sent them back to Jerusalem . So, "PRIMO SON VENETANO, SECUNDO SON
CHRISTANO" -- STILL A COMMONLY ACCEPTED SAYING INVENEZIA WHEB I VISITED ABD AKED IT IN THE
THE YEAR OF 2017
Quite impressed with all the theories about Europe and its behavior. The answer is very
simple, Europe is occupied by a foreign power, it is a colony. And all the qualifiers are
quaint.
I disagree. What did the EU did on Iran, compared to Russia and China? It stopped most trade with Iran, including the purchase of iranian oil, and it stopped all
investment projects. INSTEX is a joke. Meanwhile Germany recently banned Hezbollah.
Yes, they did vote for the JCPOA in the UN. I look at actions rather than words though,
and EU has imposed de facto sanctions on Iran.
Moreover, German FM Maas told Israel recently that efforts are underway to keep the Iran
arms embargo. (He is also a big "Russia fan" - sarc off)
In other words, we "support" the JCPOA, but in practice with arms and trade embargoes on
Iran continuing.
Yeah right.
Posted by: powerandpeople | Oct 9 2020 20:15 utc | 24
No, its not so simple, unless you claim that european russophobia started with the US and
did not exist before it. Guy Mettan has a good book on it. It is a thousand years old issue,
involving Catholicism, France, Germany, Sweden, Britain, and others.
Yes, the US wants to divide the EU and Russia. But the EU itself is rotten from
within.
Politics are more important than the economy, German Chancellor Merkel said in relation to
Russia.
"Drang nach Osten" - "Drive to the East".
Germany dreams of capturing Eastern Europe and using is as some sort of colonised labor
pool similar to what Latin America is for the US.
And this is why the EU, without any prodding, eagerly took the lead in the attempt of
colour revolution in Belarus, where it played far bigger role than the US.
Signing and adhearing to the JCPOA turned Europe and Iran from opponents into partners.
This is a great diplomatic achievement. However, no part of the JCPOA made the two allies or
obliged the European side to wage an economic war with the USA on behalf of Iran. On the
contrary, the Iranians would be the first to say they are no friends of Europa. They have
been complaining about "Western meddling" in their region for years. (Note that they don`t
differentiate but always speak collectively of "the West").
So that`s their chance to show the world how much of a sovereign nation they are and that
they can handle their problems without the "meddling" of the "despicable" Europeans. There is
no obligation - neither legal nor moral - for Europe to take the side of Iran in the US-Iran
conflict.
And actually it is both sides - both Iran and the USA - who are unhappy with the current
European neutrality.
Thanks to MoA for being one of the only honest brokers of news on Iran in the English
language. As an American citizen living abroad (in EU) I have a more jaded and at the same
time worried feeling about this.
Along with all the other stuff, including the current threat to close the U.S. embassy in
the Iraqi "Green Zone" and the accompanying military maneuvers, which would spark war in the
region, I see this hardening and expansion of sanctions as yet the next clue that the U.S.
and Donald Trump's regime are looking toward re-election and a hot war with/on Iran. Rattling
the cage ever more and backing Iran into the corner with brutal, all-encompassing sanctions
is already an act of war, usually the first prior to bombs falling. I can also see this green lighting Israeli or joint American-Israeli strikes on alleged Iranian nuclear weapons
development sites and other military and petro-state assets.
I hope I'm wrong but we've all seen this before and it never ends well. If the EU shows a
spine, or more likely Russia and/or China step in directly, perhaps the long desired
neocon/neolib/Zionist hot war against Iran can be avoided.
I think it is very important for the US to kill another 500,000 children via sanctions, in
order to demonstrate the importance of freedom and democracy and observing international law.
While reading this post I was thinking what MoA wrote in the last two paragraphs. And also
that Iran will just continue to turn to China, Russia, and others in the East.
It's disgusting to watch the people of the US/UK/EU go along with this. Western elites are
fat, lazy, vicious, and cruel.
"Europeans can not be helped. Ironically, it is their own rejection of their WW2 past that
causes them to reject the multipolar world and sovereignty as "primitive things from the
past"
plus, as you point out elsewhere, there are longer histories at play: the Crusades against
the Slavs, the Moors and the Turks (and the Arabs, in fact), the invention of "western
civilization" in the 19th century (Arians vs Semites, Europe vs Asia, ecc) ...
plus, there is the persisting aspiration for world domination, partly frustrated by WW1
and the upheavals of the XXth century, which transformed the UK and the whole of Europe (with
Japan, Australia, etc) in a junior partner of the new US Empire
(that's the other lesson learned from WW2: no single european power could dominate the
continent and the world, but they could dominate as junior partners under the new young
leader of the wolf pack, the US)
plus, there are is a class war that can be better fought, by national oligarchies, within
globalist rethoric and rules
plus, there are the US deep state instruments of domination over european national
states
but Europeans (and Usaians) do understand the language of force, and they have - at the
moment - encountered a wall in their attempts at expansion, in Iran, China, Russia,
Venezuela, ecc; an alternative multipolar alliance is taking shape
so they might attempt to win a nuclear war by 20 million deaths to 2 (or 200 to 20, who
cares), but they might also decide to tune down their ambitions and return to reality;
maybe
@m (#35)
EU promised to uphold JCPOA. They can't because of the US and they are doing next to nothing
to change that. EU isn't neutral. They are stooges. Iran is right to complain about it, the
US isn't.
Trump is a man of peace, he hasn't started any new wars - whatever that means, lol.
As far as
I know economic blocade is tantamount to war. If he wins reelection expect renewed kinetic
attacks on venezuela and Iran. He's already lined up his zionist coalition with arabic
satraps to launch his Iran quagmire. Trump is a deal maker, he understands the economy and
will bring back manufacturing jobs to Murikkka, lol. I'm sure Boeing execs in deep trouble
would love to sell plane to the Iranians but Mr. MIGA just made that impossible. Nothing to
worry about, there's always the next socialist bailout for Boeing funded by taxpayers -
suckers as Trump would call them. So much for winning, can't fix deplorable and stupid...
Btw b, Trump's opposition to the Iran deal has nothing to do with money or the zionist
lobby. Stable genius opposed JCPOA in 2015 even before announcing his run for the presidency.
It's not about the mula but all about the mollah's, lol: The Donald in his own words at a tea
party event in 2015 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIDNonMDSo8
Ever since the Iranian revolution of 1979 multiple US regimes in DC have been totally
successful in making majority Iranian people everywhere in the world, understand that the US
is their chronic strategic enemy for decades to come. At same time, these US regimes have
equally been as successful in making American people believe Iran is their enemy.
The difference between this two side's belief is, that, Iranian people by experiencing US
regime' conducts have come to their belief, but the American people' belief was made by their
own regime' propaganda machinery. For this reason, just like the people to people relation
between the US and Russian people, Before and after the fall of USSR the relation between US
and Iran in next few generations will not come to or even develop to anything substantial or
meaningful. One can see this same trajectory in US Chinese relations, or US Cuban. Noticeably
all these countries relation with US become terminally irreparable after their revolutions,
regardless of the maturity or termination of the revolution. As much as US loves color
revolutions, US hates real revolutions. The animosity no longer is just strategic it has
become people to people, and the reason and blame goes to Americans since they never were
ready to accept the revolutions that made nations self-servient to their interests. The
bottom line truth is the US / and her poodles in europe know, ever since the revolution Iran
no longer will be subservient to US interests.
This is leverage to bargain away the oil pipeline to germany. That is what is behind it. You
scratch my back, the US is saying to the EU, in particular, Germany....
It's an
Economy based on Plunder! , so that's why sanctions here, there and everywhere!! But the
real problem is we aren't participating in the Plunder!! Sometimes you gotta use extreme
sarcasm to explain the truth of a situation, and that's what Max and Stacey do in their show
at the link. 13 minutes of honest reporting about the fraudulent world in which we live. As
for Jerome Powell, current Fed Chair, he's complicit in the ongoing criminal activity just as
much as the high ranking politicos. Bastiat laid it out 180 years ago, but we're living what
he described now. And that's all part of what I wrote @40 above. The moral breakdown occurred
long ago but took time to perfect.
I think it is crazy that EU allows US to manage SWIFT to the point they invent new entities
to sidestep SWIFT and US sanctions (which are weak and ineffective, but that is the
trajectory of their weak attempts at independence). Force SWIFT to equally service all legal
transactions according to EU law, and let US cut itself off from all international financial
transfers if it doesn't like using EU's SWIFT. US corps won't allow that to happen, it's just
that EU refuses to call US bluff. Of course they are now praying for Biden presidency, but if
they can't assert themselves it is all ultimately the same thing.
These 'foreign policy experts' think the trade war with China has been a mistake. But they
think Trump is too soft on Russia and he hasn't been tough enough on NK, Iran and Venezuela.
It has become a standard trick for outgoing US administrations to saddle the incoming
administration with set in stone policies and judicial appointments.
"Behind the move was pressure from the Zionist lobby. President Trump is in need of
campaign funds and the lobby provides those. The move is also designed to preempt any
attempts by a potentially new administration to revive the nuclear agreement with Iran."
Perhaps a Biden administration would be just as much a Zionist captive as the Trump
administration.
The danger for the world is the Trump administration may go even further than additional
sanctions. So I refer to the previous post, US policy remains the same whatever bunch are the
frontmen.
When that attempt failed they worked on convincing the Sultan of Turkey to give them
someone else's homeland. The Zionist Zealot Mr Kalvariski became the administrator of the
Palestine Jewish Colonization Association with the aim of establishing a jewish suprematist
ghetto. Following that flop the Zionists turned to the hapless British and were rewarded by
Balfour with his notorious British government double cross of the Arabs. Now it's the turn of
the US and assorted captive nations to uphold and support tyranny and Talmudic
violence.
I am SLOWLY coming to the conclusion that DaTrumpster understands DaDeepState better than any
of us armchair pundits. His patient - and yes, perhaps faulty strategy - he's still standing
after ALL DaCrap that's been thrown at him.
All the 'EXPURTS' - including MoA - can only see part of DaPicture at best.
I've been as hard on DaTrumpster as anyone on DaConservative side - but I am SLOWLY coming to
understand WTF just might be going on.
Point - don't be too sure of your immediate inclinations - we ALL see through DaGlass DARKLY!
SWIFT is only a messaging system – SWIFT does not hold any funds or securities, nor
does it manage client accounts. Behind most international money and security transfers is the
Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT) system. SWIFT is a vast
messaging network used by banks and other financial institutions to quickly, accurately, and
securely send and receive information, such as money transfer instructions.
Paul wrote:
"Perhaps a Biden administration would be just as much a Zionist captive as the Trump
administration." Yes at least as much or more zionist. Nothing about Harris or Biden (or the DNC) says they won't be.
And hasn't it always been that way from one president to the the next? Was there ever one
that was less zionist than the predecessor? (Maybe they're all so close this is an impossible
question to answer, that too could be the case).
The sitting executive branch gives the favors right now and anyone incoming gives the
favors after they win and thus each election becomes a double windfall for the lobby
group?
A zionist double dip . Maybe most US voters could grasp it like that.
I can't back this up (much like my previous comment in this thread) but it's my
impression. It would probably take a lot of work to make sure it's right; one would have to
scrutinize so much over so many decades.
I nominate president Eisenhower as slightly less zionist on one occasion: during the
Anglo,French, Zionist Suez invasion of 1956 Eisenhower remarked after numerous UN resolutions
condemning the bandit state's aggression ' Should a nation which attacks and occupies foreign
territory in the face of United Nations disapproval be allowed to impose conditions on its
withdrawal?'
This could be a useful quote for todays world.
Later, in 1964, Eisenhower approved his hand picked emissary's US $150 million so called
Johnston Plan to steal the waters of the Jordan River and further marginalize the Palestine
Arabs and surrounding Arab states.
Sanctions aren't the story. Once all the players have left the JCPOA, either Israel or the US
can claim Iranians are at the point of producing a nuclear weapon. Without the JCPOA and
inspections of Iranian nuclear facilities it will be impossible to prove or deny the
allegations. Thus giving either the US or Israel justification it wants to conduct military
strikes against Iran. The only things stopping this from happening is if the EU stays in the
JCPOA...
Exactly the aim. I said so in an earlier post. This is all part of the program to create a
false justification to conduct military strikes inside Iran. At this point, I'm really
surprised that the U.S. even tries to construct these narratives after Obama's Syria and
Libya operations didn't even really bother, save for a few probably fake "chemical weapons"
attack they alleged Assad committed. Libya I don't remember hearing anything. The embassy
maybe? After the Soleimani strike and the shootdown of the U.S. drone, not to mention the
alleged Iranian attacks on ARAMCO's oil facilities, I'm really quite surprised something more
serious (not to minimize the awful acts of war which the sanctions definitely are) hasn't
already happened. It will soon, especially if Trump gets re-elected. Wonder what all of his
"no new wars" supporters will say then?
Everybody reading knows what SWIFT is. That's a nice attempt to circumscribe the overall
sanctions regime and paint it as "no big deal."
Crush Limpbro - Checked out your site. You've got a long way to go before you can
criticize MoA. Hope that comment draws a few clicks to keep you going, but I would caution
other barflies to use a proxy; could be a honey trap to collect IP addresses.
This United States imposed and Zionist inspired siege on Iran and its people will only
further strengthen the political and economic bonds with Russia and China. Meanwhile, the US
collapses from its internal social limitations and its abandonment of public healthcare
responses to the Corvid 19 pandemic. Europe it close behind the US in this respect.
What exactly is this 'Justification'.. . 'to conduct military strikes against Iran' that
you refer to hasbara boy? Failure to obey foreign imposed zionist diktats?
Would this 'justification' apply to the bandit state if it refused to abide by the NNPT
for example?
No double standards pass the test here.
Yet another proof that "Western values" and their "rules based international order" mean
exactly nothing.
In the past, the West at least kept up some pretense that it was wrong to target unarmed
civilians (still, they flattened Driesden; Hiroshima; North Korea, Vietnam, Laos). Today,
they do not care to be seen openly, cruelly, brutally, sadistically killing civvies. These
American bastards say, "... it is not killing if the victims drop dead later, like, not right
now. " Or, "... it became necessary to destroy Iran in order to save Iran."
Iran is perfectly correct to call this a crime against humanity for the West to starve a
population of food and medicine. This will boomerang just as the opium-pushing in China will
boomerang on the West.
Meanwhile, just as those drug-pushing English bastards earned themselves lordships and
knighthoods; just as presidential bastards retire to their Martha Vineyard mansions; so the
current crop of bastards in American leadership will retire to yet more mansions, leaving the
next couple generations to meet Persian wrath. The American way is to "win" until they are
tired of winning, no?
But in truth, in objective reality, only those who have lost their human-ness are capable
of crimes against humanity.
The US is cruising for a bruising in the middle east fucking with Iran like this. Not that the US hasn't deserved a good knockout punch the past 19 years since invading and
destroying Afghanistan and Iraq, etc, etc. Regardless of their rhetoric, how the European rogues and rascals (France, Germany and the
UK) can sleep at night is beyond me.
Yes Psychochistorian @ 1, At the nation state level, EU support for blockade terror and
sanction torture (BT&ST), against reluctant nation states and non compliant individuals
within those nation states, logically suggests EU nation states are not independent sovereign
countries <=EU nation states exist in name only? Maybe its just like in the USA, these
private monopoly powered Oligarcks (PMPO), own everything (privately owned copyrights,
patents, and property) made possible by rules nation states turn into law. The citizens of
those privately owned EU nation states are victims <=in condition=exploitable. Maybe PMPOs
use nation states <=as profit support weapons, to be directed against <=any and all
<=competition, whereever and however <=competition appears.
The hidden suspects <=capital market linked crowds through out the world..
Media is 92% owned by six private individuals, of the seven typical nation state layers of
authority and power: 5 are private and two are public. Additionally, few in the international
organizations have allegiance to historic cultures of the nation state governed masses. It is
as if, the named nation states are <=threatened by knee breaking thugs, but maybe its not
threat, its actual PMPO ownership.
If one accepts PMPO <=to be in control of all of USA and all of allied nation state,
one can explain <=current BT&ST events. But private Oligarch scenarios <=raise
obvious questions, why have not the PMPO challenged East eliminated <=Israel, MSM
propaganda repeatedly blames or points to Israel <=to excuse the USA leaders for their
BT&ST policies. Seems the PMPO are <=using the nation states, they own <=to
eliminate non complying competition.
What is holding the East back? Russia and China each have sufficient oil, gas and
technology to keep things functional, so why has not the competition in the East taken Israel
out, if Israel is directing the USA to apply BT&ST against its competitors? Why is the
white House so sure, its BT&ST policies will not end up destroying Israel? Maybe because
Israel has no real interest <=in the BT&ST policy <=Israel is deceptions:fall guy?
The world needs to pin the tail on the party driving USA application of BT&ST because no
visible net gain to Governed Americans seems possible from BT&ST policies?
I think Passer @ 17 has hit the nail on its head. "The EU is trying to prop up the US
Empire in response to its decline, instead of trying to free itself. "
Sanctions aren't the story. Once all the players have left the JCPOA, either Israel or the
US can claim Iranians are at the point of producing a nuclear weapon.
So you put that forward as a justification for attacking Iran militarily, but that means
according to your logic you also have justification for attacking Israel or the US
militarily. The rules are the same for all, right?
Economic warfare is certainly effective. However, time is running out for these weapons as
America's lock on the world economy grows weaker. With a rapidly approaching expiry date, the
word out may be to use em or lose em.
In a zero-sum great game, it makes sense to deploy such weapons now insofar as an
opponent's loss is always a gain for oneself.
Donald Trump talked up his Iran policy in a profanity-laden tirade on Friday, telling
conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh that Tehran knows the consequences of undermining the
United States.
"Iran knows that, and they've been put on notice: if you fuck around with us, if you do
something bad to us, we are going to do things to you that have never been done
before."
What a shit show we are seeing. What is the next phase of this civilization war that is not
a war because there are not enough dead bodies for some I guess?...but it sure looks like
war to me.
Well for the first time in history Iran's symbolic "Red Flag" is still flying above the
popular Jamkaran Mosque Holy dome. Perhaps the USA and its running dogs body count has risen
in Iraq and Afghanistan? How would we know. These things are disguised from the fearless
press in those countries ;)
Perhaps the dead and mangled are many but we do know that the US chief killer in
Afghanistan was reduced to ashes immediately following General Shahid Qassem Suleimanis
murder by the USA whilst on a diplomatic mission in Iraq.
In respect of b's observation above, the illegal occupier of Palestine is more likely
tipping millions into the Harris Presidency as well as the possible Trump Presidency. I doubt
either Harris or the biden bait and switch stooge would restore the JCPOA. Besides they would
not be invited to sit at the table any time soon IMO. They would likely refuse to any
conditions of reversing the sanctions and then carry on about all that 'unreasonable demands
by a terrorist state' stuff etc etc.
No, Iran will be getting on with its future in a multilateral world where the United
Nations has been reduced to pile of chicken dung by the USA while most other nations go along
with global lunacy.
You know what's telling about the bootlickers who hem and haw about U.S. policy with the T
Administration, but never mention Trump as the real source of it even when profuse Zionist
shit spills from his mouth on Limbaugh's show proving he's a Ziofascist pig?
What's telling is that these usual suspects jumped all over ARI @64 for zeroing in on
Trump's precise intentions with Iran but they gave a pass to the real HASBARIST in the room,
Crush Limbraw @60, exposing himself, putting his HARD-ON FOR TRUMP on full display.
@60 we ALL see through DaGlass DARKLY!
Speak for yourself- you Zionist MORON!
Ahhhhhh, you can always count on the DUPLICITY of MOA'S weathervane james and friends. Me,
I ain't here to win a popularity contest like weathervane; I'm here to kick ass when I
witness duplicity in action. My friend here is the truth that I'll defend to the grave.
********
Noooo, dum-dums Putin will not come to Iran's rescue when he's warm in bed with his
Zionist Oligarchs and Russian squatters whom he pays homage to from time to time when he
visits Ziolandia thanking them for choosing the stolen West Bank over Russia.
Iran knows that, and they've been put on notice. That's Trump blowhard
driving the drumbeat.
Just rescue me from my self-destructive self for 4 more years, oh kings of Zion and
Wall Street, and I'll give you WAR!!! all in CAPS with three exclamation points. The GREATEST
war you've ever seen.
When I read the Great Reset article on the World Economic Forum website it seems to me that
the western Globalists, in concert align the US and EU. That accounts for the basic vassal
arrangements that predominate but allow for some nonalignments on certain issues.
That is precisely what the Belarusian authorities announced when Tikhanovskaya left Minsk,
that she was helped in her way out, but we know how the MSM acts, they stick to their own
script, just like a Hollywood movie.
The Belarusians must be watching with great attention what is happening in Kirguizia,
riots and complete chaos, and thinking how lucky they were to avoid the color rev that was in
the menu for them, which the same methods, discredit the oncoming election, claim fraud after
it, use similar symbols like the clenched fist and the heart, new flag, start transliterating
family and geographical names to a mythical and spoken by a very small minority language and
then nobody knows if to spell Tikhanovskaya, Tsikhanouskaya or like the politically incorrect
but street wise Luka called her, Guaidikha. And that is Kirguizia, how about a shooting war
in Armenia and Azerbaijan, all those conflicts were unimaginable when the USSR existed, but
the empire even on his way down is insatiable.
There is over a million jews of Russian origin living in Israel, 20% of the population,
with deep roots in Russia, language, culture and relatives. Do not let partisanship for the
Dems blind you, a true successful leader is someone that defends his country's interests
while at the same time tries to have good relations with everybody else, obviously that
balance is not easy to achieve in a world full of conflicting interests, but so far Putin
seems to be balancing his act while not loosing sight of the main thing, Russia.
Putin will not come to Iran's rescue when he's warm in bed with his Zionist
Oligarchs
If Putin is so close to Zionists, then why does Russia block the Zionist regime-change in
Syria? Why has Russia denied Israel and USA entreaties to allow them to bomb Iran?
Not as strange as a mythological demigoddess that turned sailors into swain and that now
enjoys to plunge into the mud with her creatures. A bot, what an easy label, it has lost any
meaning.
special beings who was born with two extra eyes...in the back of my head.
Alaska yellow fin sole, not bad, from Bristol Bay, but the Melva -a tunafish species with
more oil in its meat- I cooked for lunch, just caught, has a lot more fish oil with its rich
contents of vitamin D, add sunny Mediterranean weather and that is my pill for today, trying
to keep the bug at bay.
Circe, why don't you do what your namesake would have done and whip yourself up some meds to
calm down? You're starting to lapse into excessive use of upper case, italics, exclamation
points, bolding, profanity, and of course, insults.
This may help. It looks like the orange man is in fact going down, so you will soon have
Joe and Kamal empowered to dismantle the evil Putin-Netanyahu-Trump axis, and put the US back
on the path to truth and justice.
The unilateral and illegal-under-JCPOA sanctions mean it's time for EU to either confront the
extraterritorial US policy it has clearly rejected in principle, or (more likely) acknowlege
that it remains in practice just a collection of 'client states'. A sad moment for me, but
useful for clarity.
Hard to understand but you guys are incapable of spelling the name of a once great US
city, San Francisco. I heard it has changed a lot, got to see long time ago, before the
digital craze.
This is a brief but subtle post by b, with quiet but telling headline. Perhaps, just
guessing, a new take on the post he was having difficulty with earlier? The question of the
EU is an interesting one - not to be considered as virulent as the former Soviet Union, but
somehow as tugged at by the components thereof...
Sanctions on Iran? We do know what Iran is capable of; surely we have not forgotten?
Indeed, by pressing these sanctions at this late date, the Trump administration surely has
not forgotten either the effect sanctions had on Russia. They were postive to that country's
independent survival, though the immediate effect was demonstrably harsh. So now, sanctions
on Iran? One doesn't have to be a world leader to suppose similar cause, similar effect.
Ah, Paco has a wonderful meal of a beneficial fish called the Melva! Bravo, Paco; all is
not lost! But you have hooked the sea-serpent as well -- take care! That one - carefully
remove the hook and set it free ;)
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"... The myth that Donald Trump is Vladimir Putin's puppet just won't die, even though ample evidence demonstrates that the president's policy toward Russia has actually been surprisingly hardline and confrontational. Such pervasive paranoia has led to a rebirth of McCarthyism in the United States and is preventing a badly needed reassessment of U.S. foreign policy. In short, threat inflation with respect to Russia and an obsession with the phantom danger of presidential treason continues to poison our discourse. ..."
The consequences of the last McCarthy era were steep and lasted a generation; we can't afford a repeat.
The myth that Donald Trump is Vladimir Putin's puppet just won't die, even though ample evidence demonstrates that the president's
policy toward Russia has actually been
surprisingly hardline and confrontational. Such pervasive paranoia has led to a rebirth of McCarthyism in the United States and
is preventing a badly needed reassessment of U.S. foreign policy. In short, threat inflation with respect to Russia and an obsession
with the phantom danger of presidential treason continues to poison our discourse.
The end of the exhaustive FBI and Mueller commission investigations into "Russia collusion" was never going to put the treason
innuendoes to rest. Subsequent developments, such as
unsupported charges that Moscow paid financial bounties to the Taliban to kill U.S. troops in Afghanistan, served to keep the
narrative alive. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi epitomized the ongoing efforts to make imputations of disloyalty stick. "With [Trump],
all roads lead to Putin,"
Pelosi said in late June 2020. "I don't know what the Russians have on the president, politically, personally, or financially."
In a September 21 Washington Postop-ed ,
former New York Times correspondent Tim Weiner echoed Pelosi's perspective. He asserted that
despite the investigation by former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, despite the work of congressional intelligence committees
and inspectors general -- and despite impeachment -- we still don't know why the president kowtows to Vladimir Putin, broadcasts
Russian disinformation, bends foreign policy to suit the Kremlin and brushes off reports of Russians bounty-hunting American soldiers.
We still don't know whether Putin has something on him. And we need to know the answers -- urgently. Knowing could be devastating.
Not knowing is far worse. Not knowing is a threat to a functioning democracy.
Only visceral hatred of Donald Trump combined with equally unreasoning suspicions about Russia, much of it inherited from the
days of the Cold War, could account for the persistence of such an implausible argument. Yet an impressive array of media and political
heavyweights have adopted that perspective.
As during the McCarthy era in the 1950s, challenging the dominant narrative entails the risk of severe damage to reputation and
career. In September 2020, TheIntercept 's Glenn Greenwald disclosed in an interview with Megyn Kelly that
he had been blacklisted at MSNBC, primarily because he'd disputed the network's unbridled credulity about Russia's alleged menace
and President Trump's collusion with it. When Kelly asked him how he knew he was banned, Greenwald responded: "I have tons of friends
there. I used to go on all the time. I have producers who tried to book me and they get told, 'No. He's on the no-book list.'"
Although an MSNBC spokesperson denied that there was any official ban, the last time Greenwald had appeared on a network program
regarding any issue was in December 2016, just as the Russia collusion scandal was gaining traction. The timing was a striking coincidence.
Greenwald insisted that he was told about being on the no-book list by two different producers, and he charged that his situation
was not unique: "[I]t's not just me but several liberal-left journalists -- including Matt Taibbi and Jeremy Scahill -- who used
to regularly appear there and stopped once they expressed criticism of MSNBC's Russiagate coverage and skepticism generally about
the narrative."
It would be bad enough if blows to careers were the extent of the damage that paranoia about Russia and Trump had caused. But
that mentality is inhibiting any effort to improve relations with a significant international geostrategic player that possesses
several thousand nuclear weapons.
The opposition to any conciliatory moves toward Russia has reached absurd and toxic levels. Critics even condemned the Trump administration's
April 2020 decision to issue a joint declaration with the Kremlin to mark the date when Soviet and U.S. forces linked up at the Elbe
River during World War II, thereby cutting Nazi Germany into two segments. The larger purpose of the declaration was to highlight
"nations overcoming their differences in pursuit of a greater cause." The U.S. and Russian governments stressed that a similar standard
should apply to efforts to combat the coronavirus. It should have been noncontroversial, but some
condemned it as "playing into Putin's hands."
That theme has been even more prominent since Trump's decision to move some U.S. troops out of Germany. Even some members of the
president's own party seem susceptible to the argument. During recent House Armed Services Committee hearings, Congressman Bradley
Byrne invoked Russia. "From a layperson's point of view, it looks like we've reduced our troop presence in Europe at a time that
Russia is actually becoming more of a threat,"
Byrne said
. "It looks like we're pulling back, and I think that bothers a lot of us." Such arguments have been surprisingly common since the
administration announced its plans in late spring. Allegations that Trump is "doing Putin's bidding" continue to flow, even though
some of the troops withdrawn from Germany are going to be redeployed farther east
in Poland -- a step the Kremlin will hardly regard as friendly.
George Beebe, vice president and director of programs at the Center for the National Interest, aptly
describes the potential
negative consequences of fomenting public fear of and hatred toward Russia. He points out that
the safe space in our public discourse for dissenting from American orthodoxy on Russia has grown microscopically thin. When
the U.S. government will open a counterintelligence investigation on the presidential nominee of a major American political party
because he advocates a rethink of our approach to Russia, only to be cheered on by American media powerhouses that once valued
civil liberties, who among us is safe from such a fate? What are the chances that ambitious early-or mid-career professionals
inside or outside the U.S. government will critically examine the premises of our Russia policies, knowing that it might invite
investigations and professional excommunication? The answer is obvious.
Indeed it is. America went through such stifling of debate during the original McCarthy era. The impact lasted a generation and
was especially pernicious with respect to policy toward East Asia. Washington locked itself into a set of rigid positions, including
trying to orchestrate an international effort to shun and isolate China's communist government and see every adverse development
in the region as the result of machinations by Beijing and Moscow. The result was an increasingly futile, counterproductive China
policy until Richard Nixon had the wisdom to chart a new course in the early 1970s. This ossified thinking and lack of debate also
produced the disastrous military crusade in Vietnam.
America cannot afford such folly again. Smearing those who favor a less confrontational policy toward Moscow as puppets, traitors,
and (in the case of accusations against Tulsi Gabbard) "
Russian assets " will not lead to prudent policies. Persisting in such an approach will exacerbate dangerous tensions abroad
and undermine needed political debate at home.
Ted Galen Carpenter, a senior fellow in security studies at the Cato Institute and a contributing editor at The American
Conservative , is the author of 12 books and more than 850 articles on international affairs.
966 pages and not one single proof. They go from telling how some businessmen from America and Russia do business together
(which is indication of what exactly? Hunter Biden was doing business with the same oligarch) to saying that if Trump (and other
opposition to hillary) went to see the Podesta' emails from wikileaks that was proof that Trump AND Russia together made the leaks
(what? If some dirt comes out over your opponent it is just normal to go and see what's about); and the only proof they provide
for this assertion (in a 966 page report) is one sentence: "The DNC said Russia had hacked their servers" - not one single proof
offered for that. After all, the DNC would never lie, would they?
And again, please name one policy Trump enacted which does benefit Russia in any way. If they truly helped Trump to get elected
(and they are still doing it) then they must be getting something out of it. So what it is, that Russia is getting from Trump?
"From a layperson's point of view, it looks like we've reduced our troop presence in Europe at a time that Russia is actually
becoming more of a threat,"
Troops weren't really reduced though. Troops were moved to Belgium and Italy (Italy, who's been occupied during WWII and who
still is precluded access to certain areas of their sovereign territory because of American occupation, and Belgium, the Capital
of the European Union, a subservient vassal to American policies, who would rather damage herself and her SMEs rather than growing
some b*lls and promote policies for her people's benefits). The move to Poland was to be expected, but what is really worrying
is that if the US moves nukes to Poland (as German politicians, from both the left and the right are starting to complain about
these nukes sitting under their bottoms) then the 1997 NATO-Russia treaty will crumble, and if that crumbles, Europe will be in
danger. What the author suggests (that America gets out of conspiratorial idiocy and gets back to cooperation) is actually the
best way to maintain peace and stability. Of course the other way (and this is not an either/or, this is complementary action)
is to get Europe to take independent decisions, take the reins of her defence, and tell the US to stop stuffing the East with
weapons and take their nukes back on the other side of the Ocean (after all we've got France who's got nukes as well, and there
is little chance Russia would actually nuke Europe, as they are part of geographical Europe and they'd suffer the consequences
as well to some degree).
EDIT: plus, there is literally zero proof that Russia wants to invade Europe and have a war in Europe (as part of Russia is
European as well). Yes last time they did win the war, but at what cost? This "protecting Europe" rhetoric is just a way to keep
control over Europe. Europa Faber Fortunae Suae , it is really time for it, isn't it Europe?
Actually, "protecting Europe" is about providing bodyguard services to Germany. For which Germany pays less than nothing. Except
in Germans paying for the liberal left think tanks and loss-generating MSM. And them then talking about Russian interference in
US elections, roflol.
NATO is like all other government bureaucracies - once you create one it is nearly impossible to disband. Whole industries
have grown up around it, and think tanks keep moving people in and out of government to ensure continuation of this mission (which
is to keep lots and lots of money flowing into industries that have no purpose.)
Germans and Italians benefit if troops on their soil keep buying their tchotchkes and baubles.Their governments are also staffed
by the same think tank people.
The troop reduction is leverage to try to get Germany to pay their way. The President is not happy with us paying their way,
perpetually, as the Washington establishment (including Biden) would have it.
It would be a tragic irony if the West blindly stumbled into a conflict with Russia after having avoided it during the dangerous
Cold War years. But history shows wars can start in that way.
https://www.ghostsofhistory...
Sure, absolutely. I have said for years (and still say) that we should have better relations with Russia. There was a real
opportunity to improve the relationship due to shared interests against Islamic extremism.
Too bad Trump blew the opportunity. First, he asked for illegal Russian election help on live TV. Then, Trump and his people
lied about their contacts with Russia, lied some more about the purpose of the Trump Tower meeting, and just kept on lying about
their contacts with Russia. Then his cowtowing to Putin in Helsinki without an official US interpreter or offical record just
put gas on what just a smoldering pile of suspicion that could have been much more easily discredited. So Trump brought a lot
of this on himself.
How different might it have been if Flynn, Don, Jr. and everyone else had said, "Hell, yes, we're talking to Russia because
it is in the national interest of the United States to have better relations with Russia, and we're proud to be working in that
direction." Might have taken the wind out of the Dems sails, or at least make them look stupid. Instead, Trump and his lies just
fed into the whole investigation -- why lie if you did nothing wrong?
Since Flynn, Trump has had no apparent advisors worth the title. If he were operating completely in the dark and making policy
decisions based on feel alone it would look much the way it does. Nor do I believe that most of this is his fault, other than
his jettisoning Flynn at the first sign of DNC hatred. That to them (and to future talent) was a clear sign his house was made
of straw and vulnerable to being taken down.
There's probably some truth to the claim that potential advisors were cautious after Flynn was canned. Of course, there is
no reason to assume that Trump would follow anyone's advice.
Flynn was working for Turkey on our dime, and pleaded guilty for lying to the FBI under oath. He had to go. He was a worthless
"advisor" who was in it for himself, and his son too.
Russia interfered extensively in our election to help Trump. Trump encouraged that help. Trump doesn't want to hear any reports
of continued Russian interference in our election. Trump refuses to do everything he can to prevent Russian interference.
Change Trump to Obama and RWers would be currently storming the gates they'd be freaking out so much. Their partisanship easily
overwhelms their patriotism.
America's anti russian paranoia stems from american failures the past 20 years. That paranoia originates from America's ruling
class not its people. America had 4 periods of anti-Russian/soviet paranoia, always coming at a time america felt weak
Before Germany's reunification in 1990, the Russians and the Americans reached an understanding that NATO would not expand
eastward, in return for Russia's not opposing the reunification. Unfortunately, the US/NATO violated this understanding starting
in 1999 when Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic were admitted to NATO. More former East Block countries were admitted in later
years. The expansion of NATO coupled with US interference in Ukraine and its support of the Maidan Revolution in 2014 have resulted
in a deterioration in US - Russia relations. It would be a real stretch to blame this deterioration on Trump.
Trump has been the most Russia-friendly president. His initial instinct or policy view about Russia is rational! He knows the
US cannot be in war with both China and Russia at the same time. His goal was/is to divide these two countries that are very close
recently, so the US would pivot to China without fearing fighting with Russia too.
Having said that, his ineptitude, corrupt mind, and everything is transactional attitude messed that up by mixing his private
business and diplomacy contaminating the whole affair. The US is going to pay big time for Trump's mistakes.
There is plenty to criticize about America's policy towards Russia going back to the expansion of NATO, which was entirely
counter-productive, but this is just fighting one conspiracy with another. The leaders of the Trump campaign wanted to obtain
information on Clinton from Russian intelligence and were disappointed when the Russians didn't deliver. Trump lied repeatedly
about his involvement with Russia and took "anti-Russian" actions only when forced to by the entire Congress, which until 2019
was entirely under Republican control. The tone of this article is thoroughly dishonest and shows contempt for TAC's readers.
Our elite, drunk from imagined Cold War win, made up plans to control universe. It always felt artificial -- globalization
being good for us, while saturating China with our industry. While from the beginning refusing all Russia's overtures to normalize
relations. Clearly, Russia as a more formidable military and scientific entity had to be subjugated first, while China, overwhelmed
by rapid development would have acquiesced to being our manufacturing colony. China turned out not timid, while Russia being pushed
and demonized -- struck independent course. Chinese and Russian objectives were converging for along time. .But we stuck to the
script. Trump abandoned the script,hoping to charm Russia into our fold. The establishment disagrees, so without a clue in how
to proceed in global domination -- - confusion reigns.
While China was under Western thumb we'd become used to thinking of them as mere "coolies", but they proved to be more intelligent
than us, by our own methodology. The government works for the benefit of the people, not just a fraction of it, and it seems is
far more popular than our own. They deserve their hard earned wealth.
Russia is a different story, and will take decades to overcome the damage done by Yeltsin. Your views on Trump-Russia I agree
with but he was hampered by the fake conspiracy cooked up by Hillary C. and the Spy agencies.
Why is Democratic and a good chunk of Republican establishment still fixated on Russia? Even if economically, technologically,
geographically and demographically -- China is a threat to our own technological dominance, what is left of it.
I think the answer is a potent blend of fear and hatred. Fear is easy to explain. Russia has always been militarily and
scientifically advanced, and after Cold War displayed somewhat deceptive image of its weakness. Thus, no rush to finish them off.
Hatred part goes deeper then classical British empire Russophobia. It goes back to hundreds of years of slavery conducted out
of Crimea by successive empires, Khazars, Tatars, Ottomans. The wealth was accumulated from the millions of Slavs sold into Slavery
-- and the wealth went into Byzantine empire, and following the Venetian sack of Constantinople, the wealth went into Venice and
many German and French feudal cities, including Vatican. Nearly exclusive slave trade rights was in the hands of Jewish traders.
Twice Russians broke down slave trade -- first by Russian ruler in 10 century, where in Crimea Russians took Christianity. And
following centuries of occupation -- again, in 18th century by Catherine the Great -- this time for good.
But the banking set up in Venice was the foundation of modern banking in Europe, dictating wars ever since. The move of
European banking in early 18th century was cemented by the entry of Rothshield international banking into UK. Not only that
UK had by 1815 the debt twice its GDP, from which it did not recover until WWI, but continued as limping empire -- but it became
a loudest purveyor of Russophobia since. Russophobia and money lords walk hand in hand. This is the irrational part of the
equation. And the outcome is the fury that Russia "escaped" so many times. The mere notion that these inferior people -- whose
ethnicity is the very meaning if the word slave in German , French and English -- would aspire to equality, is unthinkable.
The rational part of the fear -- Russia is technologically advancing. Thus -- no effort is to be spared in degrading their
capabilities. Following their own line if thinking -- they fear revenge.
It is for that reason that Trump's notion of accepting Russian partnership -- is unacceptable. Even if for the purposes of
global domination. They would prefer taking their chances with China. Too late.
Russia has been damaged, but has reestablished political macro stability through constitutional change, by reviving State Council
function, and by creating massive reserves. Asia is a massive market independent of controlled straits, canals or islands. This
is at present fairly obvious. And challenges to status quo are well under way, while we still dream if the empire.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday dropped a little October surprise said his
department has Hillary Clinton's 'deleted' emails and will release them before the
election.
"We're getting them out," Pompeo told Fox News Dana Perino.
TheGhostOfJamesOtisJr 17 minutes ago (Edited)
Shandong Carter Heavy Industry received all email, including classified material, sent to
Hillary Clinton's private server based on an Intelligence Community Investigator General (ICIG)
report. The ICIG determined all Hillary Clinton email was being forwarded to " [email protected] ",
an address possibly connected to the Chinese equipment manufacturer Shandong Carter Heavy
Industry The ICIG alerted FBI agent Peter Strzok who strangely did not seem alarmed by the
connection despite the fact all but four of the emails sent to Hillary Clinton's private email
server were forwarded to that address, roughly 600,000 in total.(
pdf , p14/105)
https://www.grassley.senate.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2019-08-14%20Staff%20memo%20to%20CEG%20RHJ%20-%20ICIG%20Interview%20Summary%20RE%20Clinton%20Server.pdf
The following is an excerpt from testimony by Frank Rucker of the ICIG, "Mr. Strzok seemed
to be 'aloof and dismissive.' [Rucker] said it was as if Mr. Strzok felt dismissive of the
relationship between the FBI and ICIG and he was not very warm." - (
pdf p15/105)
The FBI later determined the email address was set up by a Clinton IT staffer named Paul
Combetta. The FBI dismissed the possible China connection because they found no evidence to
contradict Combetta's claim he "had no connection to, and had never heard of, ' Shandong Carter
Heavy Industry Machinery CO., Ltd.'''(
pdf p104/105) That's an odd statement because IT staffers wouldn't normally be expected to
have relationships with Chinese heavy industry. IT workers usually set up email addresses for
others.
Paul Combetta is the IT staffer who used BleachBit to erase emails on Clinton's private
email server.( pdf
p38 ) . Perhaps this is why the FBI didn't consider it necessary to question Combetta in
front of a Grand Jury .( pdf , p127 ) That this didn't demonstrated
criminal intent to the FBI is beyond comprehension. Obviously this goes beyond mere bias and
borders on obstruction of justice. The numerous attempts to debunk this story are almost
comical when combined with other evidence, namely Peter Strzok's leaking to the press:
December 15, 2016 Peter Strzok: " Think our sisters have begun leaking like mad. Scorned
and worried, and political, they're kicking into overdrive. "
April 10, 2017 Peter Strzok: " I had literally just gone to find this phone to tell you I
want to talk to you about media leak strategy with DOJ before you go. "
April 22, 2017 Peter Strzok: " Article is out! Well done, Page. "
There is only one important matter at this time. And that is confirming ACB to the SC prior
to the so-called election. All this other stuff can wait. Lose and it's all pointless
anyway.
As we disregarded Russian fears and ignored the chance for a true partnership, Steve worried
about the resumption of hostile relations between our two countries and possibly a new Cold
War.
Jim Comey Ignored State Department Whistleblower on HIllary's Crimes With Classified
Material by Larry C Johnson
One year before Jim Comey was immersed in his plot to overthrow Donald Trump, the duly
elected President of the United States, a brave Foreign Service Officer at the U.S. Department
of State came forward with firsthand information of Hillary Clinton's rampant abuse of
Classified material. The man, a senior State Department diplomat who had served as the acting
Ambassador (Chargé d'Affaires) in the Asia Pacific
region under President Clinton, also was a veteran of the U.S. Army during the Vietnam
War.
The letter from this whistleblower is stunning and I am going to present it in total. It is
dated 10 January 2016. You can read it for yourself here
starting at page 121 . I became aware of this letter thanks to the assiduous research and
writings of Charles Ortel (he wrote about this recently
at the American Thinker ).
The letter explains in great detail how Hillary and her cabal of sychophants used an
unclassified system to disseminate Top Secret and Secret intelligence. But the Senior Diplomat
did not stop there. He explained carefully and specifically who the FBI needed to interview and
the questions they needed to ask. You do not need to take my word for it. You can read the
letter for yourself.
And what did the sanctimonious, smug buffoon heading up the FBI do? Nothing. But this senior
Foreign Service Officer was dogged in making sure the FBI had the information. He called FBI
Headquarters and could not get any confirmation that his letter was accepted. Not satisfied, he
walked into the FBI's Washington Field Office. The results of this meeting were reported to
three FBI Agents working on the Hillary Clinton investigation. Named in the report are Peter
Strzok and Jonathan Moffa (the third name is blacked out).
Here is the report in its entirety. Please note that the State Department official delivered
the information on the 27th of January 2016, but the report was not written up until four weeks
later–22 February 2016. (You can see the original on the
FBI website here starting at page 11.)
I do not know if John Durham has seen these documents. I am posting to make sure that he
does. There is no evidence that Inspector General Horowitz examined these documents or
interviewed the Foreign Service Officer. With Secretary of State Pompeo's promise that Hillary
emails will be forthcoming, I think it is worthwhile to revisit what this brave whistleblower
tried to bring to the attention of the FBI, who clearly was hellbent on protecting Hillary
rather than pursing justice and upholding the law. Shameful.
Unfortunately the formatting on this website cuts off the sides of the letter and makes it
unreadable for me - anyone else having this problem? (MacAirBook- Safari)
Great find and wish I could read it. Thanks, LJ. Share your appreciation of the American
Thinker website.
Sad but I suspect that the shear number of those in Government that have a vested interest
in this will ensure that nothing continues to be the outcome.
Deap: I had the same formatting problem. But you can find the letter by clicking on the
link in the post which states "here starting at p. 121."
When you get to the FBI Vault, click on the PDF on the left side of the page, near the
top, entitled "Hillary Rodham Clinton part 23 of 23.pdf."
When the PDF opens, scroll down to page 121. The letter will be found at pp. 121 to 131.
Page 132 (HRC 10114) may be the postage receipt for the letter when it was originally sent,
but it is illegible.
I haven't tried to find the American Thinker article which is referenced in this post, but
it may provide context.
I found the Ortel article at American Thinker. Google "Charles Ortel American Thinker" and
you can find a page with Ortel's articles and blogs. The article is entitled "James Comey and
Robert Mueller have Massive Clinton Foundation Problems." It appears that Mr. Ortel has a
significant interest in the Clinton Foundation.
Carter Page is interviewed by Sharyl Atkinsson on C-Span 2/ Book TV this weekend.
Chilling, interesting perspective. Page's book is out: Abuse and Power.
Apparently Atkinson, of Sinclair Broadcasting, has had her own troubles with illegal
surveillance.
Often Book tv replays programs, sometimes late, when it can be recorded.
Thanks all for the tips to access this link. Got it. All I can remember is Barry Soetoro
stating ...but Hilary didn't mean any harm running her separate insecure server.
The beginning pages of this link re-capping the strings of false and highly hedged
statements about Benghazi were bone chilling to read too. I guess we should be grateful Biden
did not pick Susan Rice for VP, but then he did much worse, he picked Kamala Harris.
And oh yeah, lock her up!
PS: is there some comfort seeing my spell check still does not recognize the word
"Kamala"? The gods of small favors strikes again.
am so very happy that you have been able to get the documents to prove what became so very
obvious to so many who did not have access to documents but who just had working brains. They
help us to understand what was going on with HRC's computer situation and with Jim Comey's
FBI.
You mention Hillary's "cabal of sychophants." There was no one more eager to become a
card-carrying member of that cabal than Comey himself. I do remember an interview on
television--don't have the date nor can I remember the media outlet that broadcast it--in
which Comey gushed about how wonderful it would be for Hillary to win since his wife and
daughters and even he himself were excited about possibly having the first female POTUS.
It seemed to me at the time that it was not an appropriate statement for the head of the
FBI to make on national television--especially with all the questions about Hillary's emails
and her obliterated computer--not to mention also the tarmac meeting in AZ between Bill and
Loretta Lynch (supposedly to discuss grandchildren). I thought then and still think that the
old Peter Principal was really being played out in the FBI at the time.
I don't remember the timeline of all this. But all I remember is how rotten things seemed
were the District of Columbia.
The myth that Donald Trump is Vladimir Putin's puppet just won't die, even though ample
evidence demonstrates that the president's policy toward Russia has actually been
surprisingly hardline and confrontational. Such pervasive paranoia has led to a rebirth of
McCarthyism in the United States and is preventing a badly needed reassessment of U.S. foreign
policy. In short, threat inflation with respect to Russia and an obsession with the phantom
danger of presidential treason continues to poison our discourse.
The end of the exhaustive FBI and Mueller commission investigations into "Russia collusion"
was never going to put the treason innuendoes to rest. Subsequent developments, such as
unsupported charges that Moscow paid financial bounties to the Taliban to kill U.S. troops
in Afghanistan, served to keep the narrative alive. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi epitomized the
ongoing efforts to make imputations of disloyalty stick. "With [Trump], all roads lead to
Putin,"
Pelosi said in late June 2020. "I don't know what the Russians have on the president,
politically, personally, or financially."
In a September 21 Washington Postop-ed
, former New York Times correspondent Tim Weiner echoed Pelosi's perspective. He
asserted that
despite the investigation by former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, despite the
work of congressional intelligence committees and inspectors general -- and despite
impeachment -- we still don't know why the president kowtows to Vladimir Putin, broadcasts
Russian disinformation, bends foreign policy to suit the Kremlin and brushes off reports of
Russians bounty-hunting American soldiers. We still don't know whether Putin has something on
him. And we need to know the answers -- urgently. Knowing could be devastating. Not knowing
is far worse. Not knowing is a threat to a functioning democracy.
Only visceral hatred of Donald Trump combined with equally unreasoning suspicions about
Russia, much of it inherited from the days of the Cold War, could account for the persistence
of such an implausible argument. Yet an impressive array of media and political heavyweights
have adopted that perspective.
As during the McCarthy era in the 1950s, challenging the dominant narrative entails the risk
of severe damage to reputation and career. In September 2020, TheIntercept 's Glenn
Greenwald disclosed in an interview with Megyn Kelly that
he had been blacklisted at MSNBC, primarily because he'd disputed the network's unbridled
credulity about Russia's alleged menace and President Trump's collusion with it. When Kelly
asked him how he knew he was banned, Greenwald responded: "I have tons of friends there. I used
to go on all the time. I have producers who tried to book me and they get told, 'No. He's on
the no-book list.'"
Although an MSNBC spokesperson denied that there was any official ban, the last time
Greenwald had appeared on a network program regarding any issue was in December 2016, just as
the Russia collusion scandal was gaining traction. The timing was a striking coincidence.
Greenwald insisted that he was told about being on the no-book list by two different producers,
and he charged that his situation was not unique: "[I]t's not just me but several liberal-left
journalists -- including Matt Taibbi and Jeremy Scahill -- who used to regularly appear there
and stopped once they expressed criticism of MSNBC's Russiagate coverage and skepticism
generally about the narrative."
It would be bad enough if blows to careers were the extent of the damage that paranoia about
Russia and Trump had caused. But that mentality is inhibiting any effort to improve relations
with a significant international geostrategic player that possesses several thousand nuclear
weapons.
The opposition to any conciliatory moves toward Russia has reached absurd and toxic levels.
Critics even condemned the Trump administration's April 2020 decision to issue a joint
declaration with the Kremlin to mark the date when Soviet and U.S. forces linked up at the Elbe
River during World War II, thereby cutting Nazi Germany into two segments. The larger purpose
of the declaration was to highlight "nations overcoming their differences in pursuit of a
greater cause." The U.S. and Russian governments stressed that a similar standard should apply
to efforts to combat the coronavirus. It should have been noncontroversial, but some
condemned it as "playing into Putin's hands."
That theme has been even more prominent since Trump's decision to move some U.S. troops out
of Germany. Even some members of the president's own party seem susceptible to the argument.
During recent House Armed Services Committee hearings, Congressman Bradley Byrne invoked
Russia. "From a layperson's point of view, it looks like we've reduced our troop presence in
Europe at a time that Russia is actually becoming more of a threat," Byrne
said . "It looks like we're pulling back, and I think that bothers a lot of us." Such
arguments have been surprisingly common since the administration announced its plans in late
spring. Allegations that Trump is "doing Putin's bidding" continue to flow, even though some of
the troops withdrawn from Germany are going to be redeployed farther east
in Poland -- a step the Kremlin will hardly regard as friendly.
George Beebe, vice president and director of programs at the Center for the National
Interest, aptly describes
the potential negative consequences of fomenting public fear of and hatred toward Russia.
He points out that
the safe space in our public discourse for dissenting from American orthodoxy on Russia
has grown microscopically thin. When the U.S. government will open a counterintelligence
investigation on the presidential nominee of a major American political party because he
advocates a rethink of our approach to Russia, only to be cheered on by American media
powerhouses that once valued civil liberties, who among us is safe from such a fate? What are
the chances that ambitious early-or mid-career professionals inside or outside the U.S.
government will critically examine the premises of our Russia policies, knowing that it might
invite investigations and professional excommunication? The answer is obvious.
Indeed it is. America went through such stifling of debate during the original McCarthy era.
The impact lasted a generation and was especially pernicious with respect to policy toward East
Asia. Washington locked itself into a set of rigid positions, including trying to orchestrate
an international effort to shun and isolate China's communist government and see every adverse
development in the region as the result of machinations by Beijing and Moscow. The result was
an increasingly futile, counterproductive China policy until Richard Nixon had the wisdom to
chart a new course in the early 1970s. This ossified thinking and lack of debate also produced
the disastrous military crusade in Vietnam.
America cannot afford such folly again. Smearing those who favor a less confrontational
policy toward Moscow as puppets, traitors, and (in the case of accusations against Tulsi
Gabbard) "
Russian assets " will not lead to prudent policies. Persisting in such an approach will
exacerbate dangerous tensions abroad and undermine needed political debate at home.
Ted Galen Carpenter, a senior fellow in security studies at the Cato Institute and a
contributing editor at The American Conservative , is the author of 12 books and more
than 850 articles on international affairs.
966 pages and not one single proof. They go from telling how some businessmen from
America and Russia do business together (which is indication of what exactly? Hunter Biden
was doing business with the same oligarch) to saying that if Trump (and other opposition to
hillary) went to see the Podesta' emails from wikileaks that was proof that Trump AND
Russia together made the leaks (what? If some dirt comes out over your opponent it is just
normal to go and see what's about); and the only proof they provide for this assertion (in
a 966 page report) is one sentence: "The DNC said Russia had hacked their servers" - not
one single proof offered for that. After all, the DNC would never lie, would they?
And again, please name one policy Trump enacted which does benefit Russia in any way. If
they truly helped Trump to get elected (and they are still doing it) then they must be
getting something out of it. So what it is, that Russia is getting from Trump?
"From a layperson's point of view, it looks like we've reduced our troop presence in
Europe at a time that Russia is actually becoming more of a threat,"
Troops weren't really reduced though. Troops were moved to Belgium and Italy (Italy,
who's been occupied during WWII and who still is precluded access to certain areas of their
sovereign territory because of American occupation, and Belgium, the Capital of the
European Union, a subservient vassal to American policies, who would rather damage herself
and her SMEs rather than growing some b*lls and promote policies for her people's
benefits). The move to Poland was to be expected, but what is really worrying is that if
the US moves nukes to Poland (as German politicians, from both the left and the right are
starting to complain about these nukes sitting under their bottoms) then the 1997
NATO-Russia treaty will crumble, and if that crumbles, Europe will be in danger. What the
author suggests (that America gets out of conspiratorial idiocy and gets back to
cooperation) is actually the best way to maintain peace and stability. Of course the other
way (and this is not an either/or, this is complementary action) is to get Europe to take
independent decisions, take the reins of her defence, and tell the US to stop stuffing the
East with weapons and take their nukes back on the other side of the Ocean (after all we've
got France who's got nukes as well, and there is little chance Russia would actually nuke
Europe, as they are part of geographical Europe and they'd suffer the consequences as well
to some degree).
EDIT: plus, there is literally zero proof that Russia wants to invade Europe and have a
war in Europe (as part of Russia is European as well). Yes last time they did win the war,
but at what cost? This "protecting Europe" rhetoric is just a way to keep control over
Europe. Europa Faber Fortunae Suae , it is really time for it, isn't it Europe?
Actually, "protecting Europe" is about providing bodyguard services to Germany. For
which Germany pays less than nothing. Except in Germans paying for the liberal left think
tanks and loss-generating MSM. And them then talking about Russian interference in US
elections, roflol.
NATO is like all other government bureaucracies - once you create one it is nearly
impossible to disband. Whole industries have grown up around it, and think tanks keep
moving people in and out of government to ensure continuation of this mission (which is to
keep lots and lots of money flowing into industries that have no purpose.)
Germans and Italians benefit if troops on their soil keep buying their tchotchkes and
baubles.Their governments are also staffed by the same think tank people.
The troop reduction is leverage to try to get Germany to pay their way. The President is
not happy with us paying their way, perpetually, as the Washington establishment (including
Biden) would have it.
It would be a tragic irony if the West blindly stumbled into a conflict with Russia
after having avoided it during the dangerous Cold War years. But history shows wars can
start in that way.
https://www.ghostsofhistory...
Sure, absolutely. I have said for years (and still say) that we should have better
relations with Russia. There was a real opportunity to improve the relationship due to
shared interests against Islamic extremism.
Too bad Trump blew the opportunity. First, he asked for illegal Russian election help on
live TV. Then, Trump and his people lied about their contacts with Russia, lied some more
about the purpose of the Trump Tower meeting, and just kept on lying about their contacts
with Russia. Then his cowtowing to Putin in Helsinki without an official US interpreter or
offical record just put gas on what just a smoldering pile of suspicion that could have
been much more easily discredited. So Trump brought a lot of this on himself.
How different might it have been if Flynn, Don, Jr. and everyone else had said, "Hell,
yes, we're talking to Russia because it is in the national interest of the United States to
have better relations with Russia, and we're proud to be working in that direction." Might
have taken the wind out of the Dems sails, or at least make them look stupid. Instead,
Trump and his lies just fed into the whole investigation -- why lie if you did nothing
wrong?
Since Flynn, Trump has had no apparent advisors worth the title. If he were operating
completely in the dark and making policy decisions based on feel alone it would look much
the way it does. Nor do I believe that most of this is his fault, other than his
jettisoning Flynn at the first sign of DNC hatred. That to them (and to future talent) was
a clear sign his house was made of straw and vulnerable to being taken down.
There's probably some truth to the claim that potential advisors were cautious after
Flynn was canned. Of course, there is no reason to assume that Trump would follow anyone's
advice.
Flynn was working for Turkey on our dime, and pleaded guilty for lying to the FBI under
oath. He had to go. He was a worthless "advisor" who was in it for himself, and his son
too.
Russia interfered extensively in our election to help Trump. Trump encouraged that help.
Trump doesn't want to hear any reports of continued Russian interference in our election.
Trump refuses to do everything he can to prevent Russian interference.
Change Trump to Obama and RWers would be currently storming the gates they'd be freaking
out so much. Their partisanship easily overwhelms their patriotism.
America's anti russian paranoia stems from american failures the past 20 years. That
paranoia originates from America's ruling class not its people. America had 4 periods of
anti-Russian/soviet paranoia, always coming at a time america felt weak
Before Germany's reunification in 1990, the Russians and the Americans reached an
understanding that NATO would not expand eastward, in return for Russia's not opposing the
reunification. Unfortunately, the US/NATO violated this understanding starting in 1999 when
Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic were admitted to NATO. More former East Block
countries were admitted in later years. The expansion of NATO coupled with US interference
in Ukraine and its support of the Maidan Revolution in 2014 have resulted in a
deterioration in US - Russia relations. It would be a real stretch to blame this
deterioration on Trump.
Trump has been the most Russia-friendly president. His initial instinct or policy view
about Russia is rational! He knows the US cannot be in war with both China and Russia at
the same time. His goal was/is to divide these two countries that are very close recently,
so the US would pivot to China without fearing fighting with Russia too.
Having said that, his ineptitude, corrupt mind, and everything is transactional attitude
messed that up by mixing his private business and diplomacy contaminating the whole affair.
The US is going to pay big time for Trump's mistakes.
There is plenty to criticize about America's policy towards Russia going back to the
expansion of NATO, which was entirely counter-productive, but this is just fighting one
conspiracy with another. The leaders of the Trump campaign wanted to obtain information on
Clinton from Russian intelligence and were disappointed when the Russians didn't deliver.
Trump lied repeatedly about his involvement with Russia and took "anti-Russian" actions
only when forced to by the entire Congress, which until 2019 was entirely under Republican
control. The tone of this article is thoroughly dishonest and shows contempt for TAC's
readers.
Our elite, drunk from imagined Cold War win, made up plans to control universe. It
always felt artificial -- globalization being good for us, while saturating China with our
industry. While from the beginning refusing all Russia's overtures to normalize relations.
Clearly, Russia as a more formidable military and scientific entity had to be subjugated
first, while China, overwhelmed by rapid development would have acquiesced to being our
manufacturing colony. China turned out not timid, while Russia being pushed and demonized
-- struck independent course. Chinese and Russian objectives were converging for along
time. .But we stuck to the script. Trump abandoned the script,hoping to charm Russia into
our fold. The establishment disagrees, so without a clue in how to proceed in global
domination -- - confusion reigns.
While China was under Western thumb we'd become used to thinking of them as mere
"coolies", but they proved to be more intelligent than us, by our own methodology. The
government works for the benefit of the people, not just a fraction of it, and it seems is
far more popular than our own. They deserve their hard earned wealth.
Russia is a different story, and will take decades to overcome the damage done by Yeltsin.
Your views on Trump-Russia I agree with but he was hampered by the fake conspiracy cooked
up by Hillary C. and the Spy agencies.
Why is Democratic and a good chunk of Republican establishment still fixated on Russia?
Even if economically, technologically, geographically and demographically -- China is a
threat to our own technological dominance, what is left of it.
I think the answer is a potent blend of fear and hatred. Fear is easy to explain.
Russia has always been militarily and scientifically advanced, and after Cold War displayed
somewhat deceptive image of its weakness. Thus, no rush to finish them off.
Hatred part goes deeper then classical British empire Russophobia. It goes back to
hundreds of years of slavery conducted out of Crimea by successive empires, Khazars,
Tatars, Ottomans. The wealth was accumulated from the millions of Slavs sold into Slavery
-- and the wealth went into Byzantine empire, and following the Venetian sack of
Constantinople, the wealth went into Venice and many German and French feudal cities,
including Vatican. Nearly exclusive slave trade rights was in the hands of Jewish traders.
Twice Russians broke down slave trade -- first by Russian ruler in 10 century, where in
Crimea Russians took Christianity. And following centuries of occupation -- again, in 18th
century by Catherine the Great -- this time for good.
But the banking set up in Venice was the foundation of modern banking in Europe,
dictating wars ever since. The move of European banking in early 18th century was cemented
by the entry of Rothshield international banking into UK. Not only that UK had by 1815
the debt twice its GDP, from which it did not recover until WWI, but continued as limping
empire -- but it became a loudest purveyor of Russophobia since. Russophobia and money
lords walk hand in hand. This is the irrational part of the equation. And the outcome is
the fury that Russia "escaped" so many times. The mere notion that these inferior people --
whose ethnicity is the very meaning if the word slave in German , French and English --
would aspire to equality, is unthinkable.
The rational part of the fear -- Russia is technologically advancing. Thus -- no
effort is to be spared in degrading their capabilities. Following their own line if
thinking -- they fear revenge.
It is for that reason that Trump's notion of accepting Russian partnership -- is
unacceptable. Even if for the purposes of global domination. They would prefer taking their
chances with China. Too late.
Russia has been damaged, but has reestablished political macro stability through
constitutional change, by reviving State Council function, and by creating massive
reserves. Asia is a massive market independent of controlled straits, canals or islands.
This is at present fairly obvious. And challenges to status quo are well under way, while
we still dream if the empire.
Former FBI Director James Comey testified to Congress last Wednesday that he did not
remember much about what was going on when the FBI deceived the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act (FISA) Court into approving four warrants for surveillance of Trump campaign
aide Carter Page.
Few outsiders are aware that those warrants covered not only Page but also anyone Page was
in contact with as well as anyone Page's contacts were in contact with – under the
so-called two-hop surveillance procedure. In other words, the warrants extend coverage two
hops from the target – that is, anyone Page talks to and anyone they, in turn, talk
to.
At the hearing, Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Lindsay Graham reviewed the facts (most
of them confirmed by the Department of Justice inspector general) showing that none of the
four FISA warrants were warranted.
Graham gave a chronological rundown of the evidence that Comey and his "folks" either
knew, or should have known, that by signing fraudulent FISA warrant applications they were
perpetrating a fraud on the court.
The "evidence" used by Comey and his "folks" to "justify" warrants included Page's
contacts with Russian officials (CIA had already told the FBI those contacts had been
approved) and the phony as a three-dollar bill "Steele dossier" paid for by the
Democrats.
Two Hops to the World
But let's not hop over the implications of two-hop surveillance , which apparently remains
in effect today. Few understand the significance of what is known in the trade as "two-hop"
coverage. According to a former NSA technical director, Bill Binney, when President Barack
Obama approved the current version of "two hops," the NSA was ecstatic – and it is easy
to see why.
Let's say Page was in touch with Donald Trump (as candidate or president); Trump's
communications could then be surveilled, as well. Or, let's say Page was in touch with
Google. That would enable NSA to cover pretty much the entire world. A thorough read of the
transcript of Wednesday's hearing, particularly the Q-and-A, shows that this crucial two-hop
dimension never came up – or that those aware of it, were too afraid to mention it. It
was as if Page were the only one being surveilled.
Here is a sample of The New York Times 's typical coverage
of such a hearing:
"Senate Republicans sought on Wednesday to promote their efforts to rewrite the
narrative of the Trump-Russia investigation before Election Day, using a hearing with the
former F.B.I. director James B. Comey to cast doubt on the entire inquiry by highlighting
problems with a narrower aspect of it.
"Led by Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Republicans on the Senate Judiciary
Committee spent hours burrowing into mistakes and omissions made by the FBI when it applied
for court permission to wiretap the former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page in 2016 and
2017. Republicans drew on that flawed process to renew their claims that Mr. Comey and his
agents had acted with political bias, ignoring an independent review that debunked
the notion of a plot against President Trump."
Flawed process? Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz pinpointed no few
than 17 "serious performance failures" related to the four FISA warrant applications on Page.
Left unsaid is the fact that Horowitz's investigation was tightly circumscribed. Basically,
he asked the major players "Were you biased?" And they said "No."
Chutzpah-full Disingenuousness
Does the NYT believe we were all born yesterday? When the Horowitz report was
released in early December 2019, Fox News' Chris Wallace found those serious performance
failures "pretty shocking." He quoted an
earlier remark by Rep. Will Hurd (R,TX) a CIA alumnus:
"Why is it when you have 17 mistakes -- 17 things that are misrepresented or lapses --
and every one of them goes against the president and for investigating him, you have to say,
'Is that a coincidence'? it is either gross incompetence or intentionality."
Throughout the four-hour hearing on Wednesday, Comey was politely smug – a hair
short of condescending.
There was not the slightest sign he thought he would ever be held accountable for what
happened under his watch. You see, four years ago, Comey "knew" Hillary Clinton was a
shoo-in; that explains how he, together with CIA Director John Brennan and National
Intelligence Director James Clapper, felt free to take vast liberties with the Constitution
and the law before the election, and then launched a determined effort to hide their tracks
post election.
Trump had been forewarned. On Jan. 3, 2017, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY),
with an assist from Rachel Maddow, warned Trump not to get crosswise with the "intelligence
community," noting the IC has six ways to Sunday to get back at you.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/fotKK5kcMOg
Three days later, Comey told President-elect Trump, in a one-on-one conversation, what the
FBI had on him – namely, the "Steele Dossier." The media already had the dossier, but
were reluctant (for a host of obvious reasons) to publish it. When it leaked that Comey had
briefed Trump on it, they finally had the needed peg.
New Parvenu in Washington
After the tête-à-tête with Comey on Jan. 6, 2017, newcomer Trump didn't
know what hit him. Perhaps no one told him of Schumer's warning; or maybe he dismissed it out
of hand. Is that what Comey was up to on Jan. 6, 2017?
Was the former FBI director protesting too much in his June 2017 testimony to the Senate
Intelligence Committee when he insisted he'd tried to make it clear to Trump that briefing
him on the unverified but scurrilous information in the dossier wasn't intended to be
threatening?
It took Trump several months to figure out what
was being done to him.
Trump to NYT: 'Leverage' (aka Blackmail)
In a long Oval Office interview
with the Times on July 19, 2017, Trump said he thought Comey was trying to hold the
dossier over his head.
" Look what they did to me with Russia, and it was totally phony stuff. the dossier Now,
that was totally made-up stuff," Trump said. "I went there [to Moscow] for one day for the
Miss Universe contest, I turned around, I went back. It was so disgraceful. It was so
disgraceful.
"When he [Comey] brought it [the dossier] to me, I said this is really made-up junk. I
didn't think about anything. I just thought about, man, this is such a phony deal. I said,
this is – honestly, it was so wrong, and they didn't know I was just there for a very
short period of time. It was so wrong, and I was with groups of people. It was so wrong that
I really didn't, I didn't think about motive. I didn't know what to think other than, this is
really phony stuff."
The Steele dossier, paid for by the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign
and compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele, includes a tale of Trump cavorting
with prostitutes, who supposedly urinated on each other before the same bed the Obamas had
slept in at the Moscow Ritz-Carlton hotel.
Trump told the Times : "I think [Comey] shared it so that I would think he had it
out there. As leverage."
Still Anemic
Even with that lesson in hand, Trump still proved virtually powerless in dealing with the
National Security State/intelligence community. The president has evidenced neither the skill
nor the guts to even attempt to keep the National Security State in check.
Comey, no doubt doesn't want to be seen as a "dirty cop," With Trump in power and Attorney
General William Barr his enforcer, there was always the latent threat that they would use the
tools at their disposal to expose and even prosecute Comey and his National Security State
colleagues for what the president now knows was done during his candidacy and presidency.
Despite their braggadocio about taking on the Deep State, and the continuing
investigations, it seems doubtful that anything serious is likely to happen before Election
Day, Nov. 3.
On Wednesday, Comey had the air of one who is equally sure, this time around, who will be
the next president. No worries. Comey could afford to be politely vapid for five more weeks,
and then be off the hook for any and all "serious performance failures" – some of them
felonies.
Thus, a significant downside to a Biden victory is that the National Security State will
escape accountability for unconscionable misbehavior, running from misdemeanors to
insurrection. No small thing.
Sen. Graham concluded the hearing with a pious plea: "Somebody needs to be held
accountable." Yet, surely, he has been around long enough to know the odds.
Given his disastrous presidency, either way the prospects are bleak: no accountability for
the National Security State, which is to be expected, or four more years of Trump.
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the
Saviour in inner-city Washington. His 27-year career as a CIA analyst includes serving as
Chief of the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch and preparer/briefer of the President's Daily
Brief. He is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). This
originally appeared at Consortium
News .
U.S. Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe recently declassified information
indicating the CIA obtained intelligence in 2016 that the Russians believed the Clinton
campaign was trying to falsely associate Russia with the so-called hack of DNC computers. CIA
Director John Brennan shared the intelligence with President Obama. They knew, in other words,
that the DNC was conducting false Russian flag operation against the Trump campaign . The
following is an exclusive excerpt from The Russia Lie that tells the amazing story in
detail:
On March 19, 2016, Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman, John Podesta, surrendered his emails
to an unknown entity in a "spear phishing" scam. This has been called a "hack," but it was not.
Instead, it was the sort of flim-flam hustle that happens to gullible dupes on the
internet.
The content of the emails was beyond embarrassing. They
showed election fraud and coordination with the media against the candidacy of Bernie
Sanders. The DNC and the Clinton campaign needed a cover story.
Blaming Russia would be a handy way to deal with the Podesta emails. There was already an
existing Russia operation that could easily be retrofitted to this purpose. The problem was
that it was nearly impossible to identify the perpetrator in a phishing scheme using computer
forensic tools.
The only way to associate Putin with the emails was circumstantially.
The DNC retained a company that called itself "CrowdStrike" to provide assistance.
CrowdStrike's chief technology officer and co-founder, Dmitri Alperovitch, is an anti-Putin,
Russian expat and a senior fellow at the Atlantic
Council .
With the Atlantic Council in 2016, all roads led to Ukraine. The Atlantic Council's list of
significant contributors includes
Ukrainian billionaire Victor Pinchuk.
The Ukrainian energy company that was paying millions to an entity that was funneling large
amounts to Hunter Biden months after he was discharged from the US Navy for drug use, Burisma,
also appears prominently on the Atlantic Council's donor list.
Arseniy Yatsenyuk, the Western puppet installed in Ukraine,
visited the Atlantic Council's Washington offices to make a speech weeks after the
coup.
Pinchuk was also a
big donor (between $10 million and $20 million) to the Clinton Foundation. Back in '15, the
Wall Street Journal published an investigative
piece , " Clinton Charity Tapped Foreign Friends ." The piece was about how Ukraine was
attempting to influence Clinton by making huge donations through Pinchuk. Foreign interference,
anyone?
On June 12, 2016, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange
announced : "We have upcoming leaks in relation to Hillary Clinton . . . We have emails
pending publication."
Two days later, CrowdStrike fed the Washington Post a
story , headlined, "Russian government hackers penetrated DNC, stole opposition research on
Trump." The improbable tale was that the Russians had hacked the DNC computer servers and got
away with some opposition research on Trump. The article quoted Alperovitch of CrowdStrike and
the Atlantic Council.
The next day, a new blog – Guccifer 2.0 – appeared on the
internet and announced:
Worldwide known cyber security company CrowdStrike announced that the Democratic National
Committee (DNC) servers had been hacked by "sophisticated" hacker groups.
I'm very pleased the company appreciated my skills so highly))) But in fact, it was easy,
very easy.
Guccifer may have been the first one who penetrated Hillary Clinton's and other Democrats'
mail servers. But he certainly wasn't the last. No wonder any other hacker could easily get
access to the DNC's servers.
Shame on CrowdStrike: Do you think I've been in the DNC's networks for almost a year and
saved only 2 documents? Do you really believe it?
Here are just a few docs from many thousands I extracted when hacking into DNC's
network.
Guccifer 2.0 posted hundreds of pages of Trump opposition research allegedly hacked from the
DNC and emailed copies to Gawker and The Smoking Gun . In raw form, the opposition research was
one of the documents obtained in the Podesta emails, with a notable difference: It was widely
reported the document now contained "
Russian fingerprints ."
The three-parenthesis formulation from the original post ")))" is the Russian version of a
smiley face used
commonly on social media. In addition, the blog's author deliberately used a Russian
VPN service visible in its emails even though there would have been many options to hide
any national affiliation.
Under the circumstances, the FBI should have analyzed the DNC computers to confirm the
Guccifer hack. Incredibly, though, the inspection was done by CrowdStrike, the same Atlantic
Council-connected private contractor paid by the DNC that had already concluded in The
Washington Post that there was a hack and Putin was behind it.
CrowdStrike would declare the "hack" to be the work of sophisticated Russian spies.
Alperovitch described it as, " skilled
operational tradecraft ."
There is nothing skilled, though, in ham-handedly disclosing a Russian identity when trying
to hide it. The more reasonable inference is that this was a set-up. It certainly looks like
Guccifer 2.0 suddenly appeared in coordination with the Washington Post 's article that
appeared the previous day.
FBI Director James Comey
confirmed in testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee in January 2017 that the FBI's
failure to inspect the computers was unusual to say the least. "We'd always prefer to have
access hands-on ourselves if that's possible," he said.
But the DNC rebuffed the FBI's request to inspect the hardware. Comey added that the DNC's
hand-picked investigator, CrowdStrike, is "a highly respected private company."
What he did not reveal was that CrowdStrike never corroborated a hack by forensic analysis.
In testimony released in 2020, it was revealed that CrowdStrike
admitted to Congressional investigators as early as 2017 that it had no direct evidence of
Russian hacking.
CrowdStrike's president Shawn Henry testified, "There's not evidence that [documents and
emails] were actually exfiltrated [from the DNC servers]. There's circumstantial evidence but
no evidence that they were actually exfiltrated."
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The circumstantial evidence was Guccifer 2.0.
This was a crucial revelation because the thousand ships of Russiagate launched upon the
positive assertion that CrowdStrike had definitely proven a Russian hack. Yet this fact was
kept from the American public for more than three years.
The reasonable inference is that the DNC was trying to frame Russia and the FBI and
intelligence agencies were going along with the scheme because of political pressure.
Those who assert that it is a "conspiracy theory" to say that CrowdStrike would fabricate
the results of computer forensic testing to create a false Russian flag should know that it was
caught doing exactly that around the time it was inspecting the DNC computers.
On Dec. 22, 2016, CrowdStrike caused an international stir when it claimed to have uncovered
evidence that Russians hacked into a Ukrainian artillery computer app to help pro-Russian
separatists. Voice of America later determined the claim
was false , and CrowdStrike retracted its finding.
Ukraine's Ministry of Defense was forced to eat crow and admit that the hacking never
happened.
If you wanted a computer testing firm to fabricate a Russian hack for political reasons in
2016, CrowdStrike was who you went out and hired.
Nobody can even imagine of inflicting on the USA the same damage as CIA/FBI sponsored
Russiagate did.
And who authorized this CIA honcho to classify other countries as "enemy states"? He revealed
himself as yet another "national security parasite" and probably should be fired on the
spot.
US intelligence, the Pentagon, and national security officials are closely monitoring how
America's rivals and enemies "react" to Thursday night's shock news of President Trump's
coronavirus diagnosis, for which he's since said to be exhibiting mild symptoms.
"The U.S. military stands ready to defend our country and its citizens," Joint Staff
spokesperson Col. Dave Butler said Friday, according to
Politico . "There's no change to the readiness or capability of our armed forces."
"What we are anticipating is that the Russian actors and probably the Iranians will play
this up," one anonymous defense official also added. Further the countries of China and North
Korea are also being monitored, according to the report.
Specifically US intelligence will scrutinizing any "subtle increase in activity against us,
knowing we are preoccupied, and the opportunity to test us, perhaps," Marc Polymeropoulos, a
former CIA Senior Intelligence Service officer,
described to Politico.
The former CIA officer emphasized that "Our enemies will see us in a vulnerable state."
Ex-Oligarch , 6 hours ago
It's not the foreign adversaries we need to worry about.
Peter Royce Clayon da Turd , 5 hours ago
Herbert Walker Bush almost did in Reagan and got away with it. To be honest, I think he
ran EVERYTHING after that assassination attempt anyway, so the powers that be got what they
wanted. Would also explain why Ronnie could not recall Iran Contra.
Philo Beddoe , 6 hours ago
Pro tip.
Ahem, try monitoring domestic adversaries.
reTARD , 6 hours ago
By US Intelligence agencies, you mean the same 17 US Intelligence agencies that were
complicit in Russiagate, 9/11, etc.? LMAO.
KekistanisUnite , 6 hours ago
It's not the Russians or Iranians I'm concerned about.
goldenspiral9 , 6 hours ago
Lol. PuuhleeZe. This scripted tv show is getting ridiculous.
WTFUD , 6 hours ago
WTF - US Intelligence - The same NWO filth who dun 9/11.
That's a relief. sarc
LetThemEatRand , 6 hours ago
I wonder if our elected officials really believe their own ******** that they are the one
thing standing between an invasion and the nation's security. Most of them probably don't,
but they are glad that we allow them to spend trillions in tax dollars for bunkers and other
measures of keep them safe in the event of a war that they may start.
Captain Scarlet , 6 hours ago
Speaking from Britain I can honesty say that the BBC is one of Trump's premier foreign
adversaries.
Dzerzhhinsky , 6 hours ago
The BBC was the first official Government propaganda outlet in the world. They have a long
history of lying.
yerfej , 6 hours ago
When I listen to the BBC (or CBC) I am reminded that there are many people on this planet
with glossy degrees in some garbage but yet they can't actually think or relate to anyone but
their college cliques.
44magnum , 6 hours ago
The only adversaries we have are the ones the government tells us we have. Who to like who
to hate.
ay_arrow
Pied - Piped - Piper , 5 hours ago
Rubio desperately attempting to remain viable after he's already dead
politically......
Hulk , 5 hours ago
"US intelligence, the Pentagon, and national security officials are closely monitoring how
America's enemies "react" to Thursday night's shock news of President Trump's coronavirus
diagnosis, for which he's since said to be exhibiting mild symptoms"
and so far, Schumer, Piglosi, Feinstein, Biden, Nadler Obama, Brennan, Comey, Mueller and
his team of winners, havent tried a thing !!!
Is-Be , 5 hours ago
Putin calls all other countries "partners" and the MIC call everyone "adversaries".
One of these is not the same as the other.
Hint: You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.
ZENDOG , 6 hours ago
Are they looking at the FBI ??
Lots of traitors there.
Thraxite , 4 hours ago
Dude forgot his paranoia medication. What a loony.
Aussiestirrer , 2 hours ago
Never pass up an opportunity to run a false flag operation.
President Trump has gotten rid just about everyone in this article I found 3 years ago
> The ATLANTIC COUNCIL is funded by BURISMA, GEORGE SOROS OPEN SOCIETY FOUNDATION &
others. It was a CENTRIST, MILITARISTIC think tanks,now turned leftist group
> JOE BIDEN extorted Ukraine to FIRE the prosecutor investigating BURISMA, HUNTER's
employer.
> LTC VINDMAN & FIONA HILL met MANY TIMES with DANIEL FRIED of the ATLANTIC
COUNCIL. FIONA HILL is a former CoWorker of CHRISTOPHER STEELE !
> AMBASSADOR YOVANOVITCH is connected to the ATLANTIC COUNCIL, is PRAISED in their
documents, gave Ukraine a "do not prosecute" list, was involved in PRESSURING Ukraine to not
prosecute GEORGE SOROS Group.
> BILL TAYLOR has a financial relationship with the ATLANTIC COUNCIL and the US UKRAINE
BUSINESS COUNCIL (USUBC) which is also funded by BURISMA.
> TAYLOR met with THOMAS EAGER (works for ADAM SCHIFF) in Ukraine on trip PAID FOR by
the ATLANTIC COUNCIL. This just days before TAYLOR first texts about the "FAKE" Quid Pro Quo
!
> TAYLOR participated in USUBC Events with DAVID J. KRAMER (JOHN MCCAIN advisor) who
spread the STEELE DOSSIER to the media and OBAMA officials.
> JOE BIDEN is connected to the ATLANTIC COUNCIL, he rolled out his foreign policy
vision while VP there, He has given speeches there, his adviser on Ukraine, MICHAEL CARPENTER
(heads the Penn Biden Center) is a FELLOW at the ATLANTIC COUNCIL.
> KURT VOLKER is now Senior Advisor to the ATLANTIC COUNCIL, he met with burisma
"... Senate hearings in Washington have laid bare the failures of the FBI investigation, showing there was never any evidence of 'collusion', and it was all a campaign to 'get Trump'. ..."
"... Wednesday's hearing focused particularly on court warrants obtained by the FBI under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to spy on Trump campaign aide Carter Page, which Committee Chair Lindsey Graham characterized as "a stunning failure of the system." ..."
"... Comey appeared to dodge many of the questions, using a tactic made familiar to the American public during Watergate, responding with a standard "I don't recall." ..."
"... In testimony last week, FBI agent William Barnett, who headed Robert Mueller's investigation into former national security advisor Michael Flynn, revealed that, from his perspective, there was never any evidence to justify an investigation into Flynn's ties to Russia. ..."
"... Barnett claimed that Comey exhibited clear bias in pursuing such alleged ties between Trump and Russia, stating that his superiors in the FBI were simply motivated by a desire to "get Trump." He believed there was nothing there to be found, and the Mueller investigation ultimately did come up with no evidence of collusion between President Trump and Russia. ..."
"... Graham accused the Clinton campaign of "basically trying to create a distraction, accusing Trump of being a Russian agent to distract from her email server problems." ..."
"... Graham pointed out to Comey that a primary document used to attain the FISA warrant "was absolutely full of misinformation and complete lies. Did you know there is no Russian consulate in Miami, and the dossier mentions there was one?" ..."
"... "Do you also know that Michael Cohen's adventures in Prague never happened? The dossier asserts that Michael Cohen went to Prague on some venture for Trump and Russia, and it never happened! And they know it never happened!" ..."
"... "The attorney general went on to say, 'The law-enforcement and intelligence apparatus of this country were involved in advancing a false and utterly baseless Russian collusion narrative against the president.'" ..."
"... US Senator Ben Sasse eventually got Comey to own up. He prefaced his questioning by saying the many wrongs cataloged in the Horowitz Report were "not just saddening and infuriating," but "also really embarrassing." ..."
"... Comey is doing what criminals who are well-educated attorneys do, and that is to avoid saying anything that could be used in his prosecution and claiming to either be unaware of or to not recall key events and proceedings. ..."
"... Looks like it was compartmentalized so much because it was a scam that the ones who actually didn't know what was going on would've blew the whistle. ..."
Senate hearings in Washington have laid bare the failures of the FBI investigation, showing
there was never any evidence of 'collusion', and it was all a campaign to 'get Trump'.
The US Senate Judiciary Committee questioned former FBI Director James Comey during a
hearing this week over the recent Horowitz report. That report on the FBI's Trump-Russia probe
laid out significant omissions in how the FBI handled its investigation.
Wednesday's hearing focused particularly on court warrants obtained by the FBI under the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to spy on Trump campaign aide Carter Page, which
Committee Chair Lindsey Graham characterized as "a stunning failure of the
system."
'They were trying to take down the president'
Graham began the proceedings by noting that the goal of the Senate's investigative hearing
"is to understand how our system got off the rails. ... What kind of system is it that the
FBI director has no clue about the most important investigation maybe in the history of the
FBI?"
"When does it become obvious," Graham asked, "that the people in charge had a
deep-seated bias against Trump?" He took that question further by asserting the appearance
of a deep-state soft coup against the president, noting that the omissions in the FBI's process
"weren't random; they were politically oriented against the president they were trying to
take down!"
And, for the record, Graham noted, "The FBI ignored exculpatory evidence, altered
documents from the CIA, had interviews where the sub-source disavowed the accuracy of the
document, and never submitted any of that information to the court!"
Comey appeared to dodge many of the questions, using a tactic made familiar to the American
public during Watergate, responding with a standard "I don't recall." (During the Nixon
Watergate hearings many witnesses prefaced their vague answers with "to the best of my
recollection" to avoid the possibility of later being convicted of perjury. After all, who
can prove the witnesses' memory wasn't clear? They didn't say something didn't happen, just
that, to the best they could remember, it didn't happen.)
Graham began to lose patience with Comey's persistent vaguery and stated at one point,
"Everybody's responsible, but nobody is responsible. Somebody needs to be responsible for
misleading the court . What astounds me the most is that the director of the FBI, in charge of
this investigation and involving a sitting president, is completely clueless about any of the
information obtained by his agency."
Pounding his fist, Graham noted that the information to the courts that Comey had
characterized as merely "inadequate" was "criminally inadequate!""How could the
system ignore all that?" Graham asked, "How could the director of the FBI not know all
of this?"
Recent declassification of FBI documents related to the Mueller report provided Senate
Republicans with new fuel to light under Comey's feet. Graham used the declassified documents
to point out that Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe summarized the 2016
presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton as using "fabrications" , as Graham put it, to
"link Trump to Russia and the mob."
Comey could only respond, "I can't answer that. I've read Mr. Ratcliffe's letter, which I
have trouble understanding."
In testimony last week, FBI agent William Barnett, who headed Robert Mueller's investigation
into former national security advisor Michael Flynn, revealed that, from his perspective, there
was never any evidence to justify an investigation into Flynn's ties to Russia.
Barnett claimed
that Comey exhibited clear bias in pursuing such alleged ties between Trump and Russia, stating
that his superiors in the FBI were simply motivated by a desire to "get Trump." He
believed there was nothing there to be found, and the Mueller investigation ultimately did come
up with no evidence of collusion between President Trump and Russia.
At Wednesday's hearing, Graham summarized the end result of the Mueller investigation,
saying,
"After two-and-a-half years, and $25 million, and 60 FBI agents, that job is done,
and not one person has been charged with colluding with the Russians in the Trump world. Not
one. ... How are we supposed to trust this system without fundamentally changing it?"
Graham accused the Clinton campaign of "basically trying to create a distraction,
accusing Trump of being a Russian agent to distract from her email server problems."
Graham pointed out to Comey that a primary document used to attain the FISA warrant "was
absolutely full of misinformation and complete lies. Did you know there is no Russian consulate
in Miami, and the dossier mentions there was one?"
Graham became more emphatic when asking,
"Do you also know that Michael Cohen's
adventures in Prague never happened? The dossier asserts that Michael Cohen went to Prague on
some venture for Trump and Russia, and it never happened! And they know it never
happened!"
Democrats at the hearing tried to shore up Comey's defense and turn the case against Trump
by claiming he had sided with Russian President Vladimir Putin regarding US intelligence
agencies. They implied that Trump had defamed US intelligence by saying the various agencies'
work was "concerning."
As if to establish this was all demonization of the FBI by the Trump administration,
Democratic Senator Dick Durbin quoted US Attorney General William Barr, the ultimate head of
the FBI, as stating the FBI's Russia investigation was "abhorrent." Durbin noted,
"The attorney general went on to say, 'The law-enforcement and intelligence apparatus of
this country were involved in advancing a false and utterly baseless Russian collusion
narrative against the president.'"
(It was AG William Barr who assigned Horowitz the role of investigating and reporting on the
Mueller investigation.)
To that Comey responded, "He says that a lot. I have no idea what on earth he's talking
about."
Exhibiting some apparent mental fog, Comey said, "The notion that the attorney general
believes that was an illegitimate endeavor to investigate -- that mystifies me."
Even CNN summarizedComey
's testimony on Wednesday as a "mea culpa."
US Senator Ben Sasse eventually got Comey to own up. He prefaced his questioning by saying
the many wrongs cataloged in the Horowitz Report were "not just saddening and
infuriating," but "also really embarrassing."
Comey responded,
"I think I share your reaction, Senator Sasse. The collection of
omissions, failures to consider updates It's embarrassing. It's sloppy. I run out of words.
There's no indication that people were doing bad things on purpose, but that doesn't mean it's
not embarrassing."
Sasse next asked Comey, "Doesn't that point at you? ... You were the leader!" to
which Comey responded, "This reflects on me entirely, and it's my responsibility . I'm not
looking to shirk responsibility."
Sasse further pointed out, "Horowitz's report talks about a FISA [warrant application]
process that was riddled with errors. Every single place they looked, it was crap! ... Where
were you?"
At that point, Comey reverted to diffusing personal responsibility by saying the whole
agency was too relaxed about how the process worked, acknowledging that, as a result, Inspector
General Horowitz had "found problems in every FISA application."
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
David Haggith is an author published by Putnam and HarperCollins. He is publisher of
The Great Recession Blog and writes for over 50 economic news
websites. His Twitter page of economic humor is @EconomicRecess .
Dachaguy 10 hours ago 1 Oct, 2020 10:34 AM
Comey's actions speak to an effort to stage a coup. As Lindsey Graham pointed out at Brett
Kavenaugh's confirmation hearings for a Supreme Court appointment a year or so ago, attempts
to remove a sitting President in a time of war can amount to treason and possible death
sentence by a military court. America has been in a state of war since Sept. 14, 2001, 3 days
after 9-11.
FreedomRain Dachaguy 7 hours ago 1 Oct, 2020 01:15 PM
"It was all a mistake. Actually, it was a joke. Nobody got hurt..." - Comey
Richard Coleman Dachaguy 10 hours ago 1 Oct, 2020 10:41 AM
No, Einstein. A "state of war" exists when Congress in joint session votes a Declaration of
War such as happended after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
Odinsson 10 hours ago 1 Oct, 2020 10:40 AM
Jim Comey portrays himself these days to be a cross between Col. Klink and Sgt. Shultz from
Hogan's Heroes - an incompetent leader who knows nothing.
Comey is doing what criminals who
are well-educated attorneys do, and that is to avoid saying anything that could be used in
his prosecution and claiming to either be unaware of or to not recall key events and
proceedings.
By taking this approach Comey makes his guilt readily apparent regardless of the
smirk on his face which reveals his opinion of himself to be mentally superior to those
interviewing him and to have outwitted them.
In order to convict Comey for his crimes it will
be necessary for prosecutors to prove his misdeeds by presentation of communications, working
papers, and the testimony of others involved.
If Joe Biden is elected, then Jim Comey will
get a pass for he would most likely testify against Obama, Biden, and other administration
officials in exchange for a reduced sentence.
Cyaxares_425bc 7 hours ago 1 Oct, 2020 01:23 PM
If Trump is NOT re-elected in 2020 these investigations of sedition & Federal election
interference by the FBI will be dropped by the Harris/Biden administration. (Did I say
Harris/Biden? Yes, I did).
Comey, McCabe, Steele, and others will be let off the hook, and
probably lauded by the left wing Democrats. This election is much more than appointments to
the Supreme Court & left wing ANTIFA mobs. Comey & McCabe need to be humiliated &
jailed, with Felony conviction records.
shadow1369 9 hours ago 1 Oct, 2020 12:01 PM
We have known the whole thing was a fraud from day one, evidence that we were right has been
in the public domain for years, and still none of these weasels are in jail. Unbelievable.
Reilly 6 hours ago 1 Oct, 2020 02:36 PM
The silent almost four year coup continues unabated by the remnants of the Obama and
Clintonite administration and life long deep state actors in the US government. The only
thing that will stop their prosecution is for the democrats to win the election. All the main
coup actors are democrats or life long deep state actors, only an election loss will scuttle
their long term goals for the USA.
YouLost 9 hours ago 1 Oct, 2020 11:32 AM
Just One reason they need Biden to win at any cost or else [some actors of ] the deep state are going down.
UnableSemen 6 hours ago 1 Oct, 2020 02:37 PM
Comey was trying to ingratiate himself to Hillary because he thought she would win. I'm sure
the pay code for Attorney General is higher than that for FBI Director.
ddeg 8 hours ago 1 Oct, 2020 12:26 PM
Amazing stuff, Comey, Clinton and Crew, etc. They are all "sure" when they make their
allegations but when it comes they are to answer for their allegations it becomes "I can't
recall". The American people fooled by these people are truly dumb.
RedRaindrop 10 hours ago 1 Oct, 2020 10:22 AM
What I want to know is... what was Alexander Downers role in it. The FSB could probably tell
me, but I'll wait for the official version from Canberra.
Rabidsmurf01 8 hours ago 1 Oct, 2020 12:14 PM
Looks like it was compartmentalized so much because it was a scam that the ones who actually
didn't know what was going on would've blew the whistle.
"... AP is hardly the Ministry of Truth, dictating Newspeak under the penalty of torture. As it turns out, it doesn't have to be. A bit of updated style – and thought – guidance announced on Twitter from time to time will do. ..."
Used as the journalism Bible by most English-language media, the AP Stylebook has updated its guidance for employing the word 'riot,'
citing the need to avoid "stigmatizing" groups protesting "for racial justice."
While acknowledging the dictionary definition of riot as a "wild or violent disturbance of the peace," AP said the word
somehow "suggests uncontrolled chaos and pandemonium."
Worse yet, "Focusing on rioting and property destruction rather than underlying grievance has been used in the past to stigmatize
broad swaths of people protesting against lynching, police brutality or for racial justice " the Stylebook account tweeted on
Wednesday.
The claim that something has been used in the past in a racist way has already led to banishing many English terms to the Orwellian
"memory hole." It certainly appears the AP is trying to do the same with "riot" now.
Instead of promoting precision, the Stylebook is urging reporters to use euphemisms such as "protest" or "demonstration."
It advises "revolt" and "uprising" if the violence is directed "against powerful groups or governing systems,"
in an alarming shift in focus from what is being done towards who is doing it to whom .
There is even a helpful suggestion to use "unrest" because it's "a vaguer, milder and less emotional term for a condition
of angry discontent and protest verging on revolt."
Translated to plain English, this means a lot more mentions of "unrest" and almost no references to "riot," in media
coverage going forward, regardless of how much actual rioting is happening.
Mainstream media across the US have already gone out of their way to avoid labeling what has unfolded since the death of George
Floyd in May as "riots." Though protests in Minneapolis, Minnesota turned violent within 48 hours, before spreading to other
cities across the US – and even internationally – the media continued calling them "peaceful" and "protests for racial
justice."
Yet in just the first two weeks of the riots, 20 people have been killed and the property damage has
exceeded $2 billion , according
to insurance estimates – the highest in US history.
AP is no stranger to changing the language to better comport to 'proper' political sensitivities. At the height of the riots in
June, the Stylebook decided to capitalize"Black" and "Indigenous" in a "racial, ethnic or cultural sense."
A month later, the expected decision
to leave "white" in lowercase was justified by saying that "White people in general have much less shared history and culture,
and don't have the experience of being discriminated against because of skin color."
Moreover, "Capitalizing the term 'white,' as is done by white supremacists, risks subtly conveying legitimacy to such beliefs,"
wrote AP's vice-president for standards John Daniszewski.
The Associated Press Stylebook and Briefing on Media Law, as its full name goes, has effectively dictated the tone of English-language
outlets around the world since it first appeared in 1953. It is also required reference material in journalism schools.
So when it embraces vagueness over precision and worrying about "suggestions" and "subtly conveying" things over
plain meaning, that rings especially Orwellian – in both the '1984' sense of censoring speech and thought and regarding the corruption
of language the author lamented in his famous 1946
essay 'Politics and the English language.'
AP is hardly the Ministry of Truth, dictating Newspeak under the penalty of torture. As it turns out, it doesn't have to be.
A bit of updated style – and thought – guidance announced on Twitter from time to time will do.
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent
those of RT.
Nebojsa Malic is a Serbian-American journalist, blogger and translator, who wrote a regular column for Antiwar.com from
2000 to 2015, and is now senior writer at RT. Follow him on Twitter @NebojsaMalic
I draw your attention to the irrefutable fact that Mr. Cohen said that the Buk missile, which
brought down Malaysian Flight 370 over the skies of Donbas, was the Ukraine government "playing
with its new toys and made a big mistake." -- and I draw your attention to the irrefutable fact
that Mr. Cohen said that the Buk missile, which brought down Malaysian Flight 370 over the skies
of Donbas, was the Ukraine government "playing with its new toys and made a big mistake."
He was a real giant in comparison with intellectual scum like Fiona Hill, Michael McFaul and other neocons.
Notable quotes:
"... I tried to explain to American friends what was happening, but quickly realized that ultimately, even friends believe what they read in the newspapers, and the newspapers were pushing the Washington line. Except for Steve Cohen. Steve was the only major figure in America who insisted on remembering the Russian-speaking Ukrainians who, like my family members, distrusted and hated the new Kiev government. He spoke of neo-Nazi paramilitiaries who fought for the US-backed government committing war crimes against civilians in eastern Ukraine. He spoke the truth, regardless of how unwieldy it was. ..."
"... There's a lot to say about Steve. He was extraordinarily kind, never forgetting that in geopolitics, the ones who have the most to lose aren't strategists but everyday individuals impacted by policy. He was a consummate teacher, insisting on giving mentees the skills to navigate the world, a real proponent of the Teach a man to fish philosophy. He had facets and stories and memories; he lived life with empathy and gusto. ..."
"... Steve's insistence on speaking the truth about Ukraine and US-Russia relations drew all sorts of attention. America was hurtling toward a new cold war with Russia, and Steve well, from the perspective of Washington's foreign policy establishment, Steve was fucking up the narrative. Steve talked about inconvenient things, things like US-backed war criminals and America's own meddling in Russian affairs; in the process, he himself had become inconvenient. ..."
"... After all, this wasn't some random blogger. This was one of America's foremost Russia experts, a tenured professor at Princeton and New York University, someone who didn't just write about history but had dinner with it, had briefed US presidents, and was friends with legends like Mikhail Gorbachev. Steve had clout earned from decades of brilliant work; by 2014, he was using that clout to throw a wrench in the think tank world. ..."
"... It was something far colder, more sustained, something that ironically the Soviets did to dissidents: a relentless crusade to render the target untouchable, a leper without a platform. The barrage of articles and diatribes hurled at Steve in the national press painted him as not just a dissenter but a supporter of dictators and murderers. It was a vicious, prolonged assault carried out by think tank toadies, the kind of people who win races by kneecapping the competition. ..."
"... I'd often talk with Steve after a new hatchet job or smear on national television. Of course, the attacks were hurtful -- the only way to not be affected was to not care, and Steve cared. But I also noticed he was remarkably free of bitterness. Every time I thought he'd snap, he'd return the next day to write, discuss, keep fighting. ..."
"... It took me a couple of years to understand that what kept Steve going was faith in his beloved institutions. He believed in academia, in scholarship, in discourse, debate, and civility. He believed in the capacity of everyday people to explore and engage with their world, he believed in Russia, and he always believed in America. He believed in these things far more than he believed in the power of today's warmongers. ..."
"... In 1967 Noam Chomsky wrote an article in the NY Review entitled "the Responsibility of Intellectuals" the first sentence ran like this: "IT IS THE RESPONSIBILITY of intellectuals to speak the truth and to expose lies.". Stephen Cohen did precisely that when all the parrots and pundits were lined up against him. ..."
"... Always I was skeptical of prevailing scholarly interpretive trends on the Soviet experience that were echoed by colleagues claiming expertise on the subject. Cohen provided the foundation for my skepticism and invigorated my lectures on American foreign policy. ..."
"... Once Cohen plied his knowledge against the hysterical narrative that culminated in 4 years of frothing neo-McCarthyism (by the freakin' "left," no less), we were no longer gonna see him on the PBS newshour any more likely than we would and will see chris hedges, chomsky, or margaret kimberly. ..."
"... His book War With Russia? was an oasis of counter-narrative when I picked it up. Losing voices like his is immeasurable as we hurtle toward total war with Russia and/or China, both of whom are finally, naturally, and perfectly predictably beginning to draw a line in the sand. ..."
I first reached out to Stephen Cohen because I was losing my mind.
In the spring of 2014, a war broke out in my homeland of Ukraine. It was a horrific war in a
bitterly divided nation, which turned eastern Ukraine into a bombed-out wasteland. But that's
not how it was portrayed in America. Because millions of eastern Ukrainians were against the
US-backed government, their opinions were inconvenient for the West. Washington needed a clean
story about Ukraine fighting the Kremlin; as a result, US media avoided reporting about the
"wrong" half of the country. Twenty-plus million people were written out of the narrative, as
if they never existed.
I tried to explain to American friends what was happening, but quickly realized that
ultimately, even friends believe what they read in the newspapers, and the newspapers were
pushing the Washington line. Except for Steve Cohen. Steve was the only major figure in America
who insisted on remembering the Russian-speaking Ukrainians who, like my family members,
distrusted and hated the new Kiev government. He spoke of neo-Nazi paramilitiaries who fought
for the US-backed government committing war crimes against civilians in eastern Ukraine. He
spoke the truth, regardless of how unwieldy it was.
And so I e-mailed him, asking for guidance as I began my own writing career. Of course,
there were many who clamored for Steve's time, but I had an advantage over others. Steve and I
were both night owls, real night owls, the kind who have afternoon tea at three am. It
was then, when the east coast was sleeping, that he became my mentor and friend.
There's a lot to say about Steve. He was extraordinarily kind, never forgetting that in
geopolitics, the ones who have the most to lose aren't strategists but everyday individuals
impacted by policy. He was a consummate teacher, insisting on giving mentees the skills to
navigate the world, a real proponent of the Teach a man to fish philosophy. He had
facets and stories and memories; he lived life with empathy and gusto.
But one thing Steve taught me is to stick to my strengths, and truth be told, there are
others who can describe his life better than I. I'll stick to what I learned during our
conversations at three in the morning, which is that, above all else, Stephen F. Cohen was a
man of faith.
Steve's insistence on speaking the truth about Ukraine and US-Russia relations drew all
sorts of attention. America was hurtling toward a new cold war with Russia, and Steve well,
from the perspective of Washington's foreign policy establishment, Steve was fucking up the
narrative. Steve talked about inconvenient things, things like US-backed war criminals and
America's own meddling in Russian affairs; in the process, he himself had become
inconvenient.
After all, this wasn't some random blogger. This was one of America's foremost Russia
experts, a tenured professor at Princeton and New York University, someone who didn't just
write about history but had dinner with it, had briefed US presidents, and was friends with
legends like Mikhail Gorbachev. Steve had clout earned from decades of brilliant work; by 2014,
he was using that clout to throw a wrench in the think tank world.
The DC apparatchiks couldn't discredit Steve's credentials or track record -- he'd predicted
events in Ukraine and elsewhere years before they occurred. They couldn't intimidate him --
he'd faced far worse threats, like the KGB. Instead, they set out to turn him into an
America-hating, Putin-loving pariah.
This went beyond an ad hominem campaign. It was something far colder, more sustained,
something that ironically the Soviets did to dissidents: a relentless crusade to render the
target untouchable, a leper without a platform. The barrage of articles and diatribes hurled at
Steve in the national press painted him as not just a dissenter but a supporter of dictators
and murderers. It was a vicious, prolonged assault carried out by think tank toadies, the kind
of people who win races by kneecapping the competition.
I'd often talk with Steve after a new hatchet job or smear on national television. Of
course, the attacks were hurtful -- the only way to not be affected was to not care, and Steve
cared. But I also noticed he was remarkably free of bitterness. Every time I thought he'd snap,
he'd return the next day to write, discuss, keep fighting.
It took me a couple of years to understand that what kept Steve going was faith in his
beloved institutions. He believed in academia, in scholarship, in discourse, debate, and
civility. He believed in the capacity of everyday people to explore and engage with their
world, he believed in Russia, and he always believed in America. He believed in these things
far more than he believed in the power of today's warmongers.
Steve liked movies and would often end a lecture with a movie reference to drive home the
thesis. When I think of him, I think of the ending of The Shawshank Redemption , the
line about Andy Dufresne crawling through filth and coming out clean on the other side. Steve
didn't live in a movie; I can't claim he emerged unscathed. What he did was come through
without bitterness or cynicism. He refused to turn away from the ugliness, but he didn't allow
it to blind him to beauty. He walked with grace. And he lost neither his convictions nor his
faith.
Lev
Golinkin Lev Golinkin is the author of A Backpack, a Bear, and Eight Crates of Vodka,
Amazon's Debut of the Month, a Barnes & Noble's Discover Great New Writers program
selection, and winner of the Premio Salerno Libro d'Europa. Golinkin, a graduate of Boston
College, came to the US as a child refugee from the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkov (now
called Kharkiv) in 1990. His writing on the Ukraine crisis, Russia, the far right, and
immigrant and refugee identity has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los
Angeles Times, CNN, The Boston Globe, Politico Europe, and Time (online), among other venues;
he has been interviewed by MSNBC, NPR, ABC Radio, WSJ Live and HuffPost Live.
Pierre Guerlain says: October 1, 2020 at 12:42 pm
In 1967 Noam Chomsky wrote an article in the NY Review entitled "the Responsibility of
Intellectuals" the first sentence ran like this: "IT IS THE RESPONSIBILITY of intellectuals
to speak the truth and to expose lies.". Stephen Cohen did precisely that when all the
parrots and pundits were lined up against him. He was a Mensch. History will bear him
the historian out.
Valera Bochkarev says to Lance Haley: October 1, 2020 at 11:09 am
Hmm, who's the apologist here ?
If the Ukraine is SO sovereign how is it I did not see any outrage in your diatribe
against 'Toria, Pyatt and the rest orchestrating the Maidan putsch or the $5Billion US spent
on softening up the ukraine for the regime change ?
I believe in numbers, as in the number of military bases any given country has surrounding
the ones it wants to subvert, in the amount of money allocated to vilify and eventually bring
down the "unwanted" regimes and the quantity and 'quality' of sanctions imposed against those
regimes; and the sum of all of the above perpetrated against humanity in the past 75 or so
years.
Your vapid drivel, Mr Haley, evaporates almost without a trace once seen with those
parameters in mind.
Numbers don't lie.
Michael Batinski says: September 30, 2020 at 5:48 pm
Let me add from the perspective of an American historian who taught for forty years in a
midwestern university. From the start I depended on William Appleman Williams to keep
perspective and to counter prevailing interpretive trends.
Always I was skeptical of
prevailing scholarly interpretive trends on the Soviet experience that were echoed by
colleagues claiming expertise on the subject. Cohen provided the foundation for my skepticism
and invigorated my lectures on American foreign policy.
I will always be thankful.
Michael Batinski
Tim Ashby says: September 30, 2020 at 2:37 pm
The smothering agitprop in America trumps even Goebbels and co. with its beautifully
dressed overton window and first-amendment-free-press bullshit.
Once Cohen plied his knowledge against the hysterical narrative that culminated in 4 years
of frothing neo-McCarthyism (by the freakin' "left," no less), we were no longer gonna see
him on the PBS newshour any more likely than we would and will see chris hedges, chomsky, or
margaret kimberly.
Let's face it, we were lucky to win the editorial fight to even give him
space in the Nation.
His book War With Russia? was an oasis of counter-narrative when I picked it up. Losing
voices like his is immeasurable as we hurtle toward total war with Russia and/or China, both
of whom are finally, naturally, and perfectly predictably beginning to draw a line in the
sand.
"... For societies to evolve and flourish, we all need to accept other people's viewpoints and continue open-minded, civil and respectful dialogue. In science, scientists always question everything; why shouldn't we question everything in life without personalizing and demonizing those you disagree with? It's become impossible to have rational fact-based discussions with these inflexible ideological zealots. ..."
"... The intelligentsia has created a toxic environment of indoctrination where freedom of thought and speech is outlawed. The student "mob" will enforce the process of re-education, utilizing lies, propaganda, peer-pressure and fear of cancellation. No student or adult should be intimidated, bullied or harassed to the point of unwavering compliance. There is something systematically rotten in our educational system, and it needs to be purged of these radical ideologues. These are fascist tactics - USA-style. ..."
The bitter divisions in
America are turning neighbour against neighbour and tearing families apart, amid an atmosphere
of indoctrination where freedom of thought and speech is outlawed. I fear we're on the road to
civil war.
2020 has been one hell of a year. It included getting Brexit done, Covid-19, big-tech
tyranny featuring extreme censorship by Twitter, Google, Facebook and Amazon as well as the
stealth implementation of a social credit framework by Silicon Valley oligarchs as they plunder
the economy under the diversionary power grab by pay-to-play politicians implementing
quasi-permanent unlawful lockdowns. I'm sorry to say that the USA will become a banana
republic.
In addition, the global economy is in the worst economic depression in history - one that
will only deepen as unemployment rates skyrocket as we enter the last few months of
2020.
I bet most folks wish they could put a bullet in the head of 2020 and move straight on into
2021, but there are three months left - 2020 is only 75% done. What else could go wrong?
Well in the USA, we still have to deal with a presidential election and the appointment of
Justice Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court of the United States - two things that the left
are fighting tooth and nail to stop.
Since Donald Trump was elected president of the United States in 2016, US politics have not
only become highly toxic, they have also become radioactive. The swamp's resist-everything
Democratic Party, enabled by FBI bias and animus that was spun like a spider's web by the
feckless fake news media and echoed by Hollywood's hypocritical perverts, made
numerous attempts to stage a coup d'etat (carefully read the declassified letter below) of
the democratically elected president. The CIA referred an investigation to the FBI that the
Hillary Clinton campaign was colluding with Russia to impact the 2016 presidential election.
The FBI lied to the FISA judges to spy on the Trump campaign, and no one was ever
prosecuted.
Why have
FISA judges Collyer, Mosman, Conway and Dearie, who signed off on those warrants, and were
lied to by the FBI to illegally obtain those same warrants to spy on a political opposition
party during a presidential election, done nothing? Why have these Judges remained silent? Is
the entire system a stitch-up?
Now, the narrative has shifted at warp speed. It's no longer about Russian collusion. The
new narratives that matter are virtue signalling, identity politics, critical race theory,
record hypocrisy and a
dual justice system where
murder, looting and arson are justified because those on the right are all Nazis and the
radicalized left's enforcers,
ANTIFA and BLM thugs, are only " peaceful protestors
."
And nothing will interfere with this narrative. For example, the BLM mob influenced the
prosecutors by getting them to charge BLM supporter Larynzo Johnson with "
wanton endangerment " when he ran up to two police officers and shot them while rioting.
Why was this blatant assassination rampage not prosecuted as attempted murder? Is the BLM mob
now dictating charging decisions? Johnson's attempted murder of police officers has quickly
disappeared as it interferes with the media mob's narrative.
The media have drummed these themes into the heads of the public and driven a wedge between
family members, close friends and co-workers that has polarized America to the brink of civil
war. Life has become so bad in the USA that many of my several decades-old friendships recently
ended when they became unable to respect any individual opinion that differed from their own.
That has happened to me. Friends for decades have been consumed by Trump Derangement Syndrome
and are cancelling me.
For societies to evolve and flourish, we all need to accept other people's viewpoints and
continue open-minded, civil and respectful dialogue. In science, scientists always question
everything; why shouldn't we question everything in life without personalizing and demonizing
those you disagree with? It's become impossible to have rational fact-based discussions with
these inflexible ideological zealots.
I just had a long conversation with Hudson, my friend's son. He is 18 years old and is a
popular American football playing, honour-list senior attending a private school in California.
Hudson graduates this spring, and he hopes to be accepted and attend a college where he will
play football. There are around 2,000 students in his private high school. From our
conversation, I gleaned that most of Hudson's teachers and the student population are very
liberal and intolerant of anyone who has differing views.
What I found most shocking was how Hudson's teachers "teach". Today's students are not
educated; they are indoctrinated. By that, I mean "teachers" are only telling half-truths or
half of the story, so any "conclusions" the students are allowed to reach on their own are
based on inaccurate data. These teachers incorporate their bias into an indoctrination cocktail
with a dash of critical race theory in order to get the students to conform to the teacher's
world view. Hudson explained how "the loudest students at school are liberal -- I guess it's
over 98%."
Regarding the comments Hudson reads on social media channels from his school friends, he
says all are supportive of Joe Biden becoming the 46th president of the United States; none are
supporting Trump. When I asked why, he responded, "Your life would be ruined, and you would
not get into college."
On 3 November, Hudson will be voting in his first presidential election. He will be voting
for Donald Trump. But he is too fearful to discuss politics at school with his peers.
He is too
afraid to discuss politics with anyone but his parents. Terrorizing students is repugnant
and must be stopped.
The intelligentsia has created a toxic environment of indoctrination where freedom of
thought and speech is outlawed. The student "mob" will enforce the process of re-education,
utilizing lies, propaganda, peer-pressure and fear of cancellation. No student or adult should
be intimidated, bullied or harassed to the point of unwavering compliance. There is something
systematically rotten in our educational system, and it needs to be purged of these radical
ideologues. These are fascist tactics - USA-style.
Was this racism censored by Twitter? No, Jack Dorsey, Twitter's CEO, gave Kendi $10
million
That said, don't expect things to improve anytime soon; in fact, COVID-19 will be used as an
excuse to reset the economy. What does that mean? The oligarchs in Wall Street and in Silicon
Valley will manipulate this election result, so Kamala Harris will be the de facto 46th
president of the United States.
... ... ...
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
Mitchell Feierstein is the CEO of Glacier Environmental Fund and author of 'Planet Ponzi: How the World Got into This
Mess, What Happens Next, and How to Protect Yourself.' He spends his time between London and Manhattan.
But at 1000 I dutifully tuned my "record player" (joe reference) to CSPAN-3. Comey claims
that he knew little of "Crossfire Hurricane," the FBI run clandestine campaign against Trump
and all his vassals and works. This, in spite of his having been Director of the FBI while it
was carried out. "I knew nussing, nussing" was his basic response to just about every question.
Graham, the chairman of the judiciary committee got lathered up about that and laughed at the
idea, laughed openly. He and Comey used to be pals.
"... In the infamous Steele dossier , prepared for the Clinton campaign by a 'former' British spy, the first entry that is tying the Trump campaign to the 'Russian DNC hack' was allegedly written on July 28 2016. ..."
"... The president of Crowdstrike, the cybersecurity company which investigated the DNC leak, later said that his company never found any proof that Russia had hacked the DNC. ..."
"... The claims made in the Ratcliffe letter fit the timeline of the scandal as it developed. They supports the assertion that the Clinton campaign made up 'Russiagate' from whole cloth. It was supported in that by a myriad of media and by dozens of high level anti-Trump activists in the FBI and CIA. ..."
"... "There was no transition because they came after me trying to do a coup. They came after me spying on my campaign. They started from the day I won and even before I won. From the day I came down the escalator with our First Lady. They were a disaster. They were a disgrace to our country. And we've caught 'em. We've caught 'em all. We've got it all on tape. We've caught 'em all." ..."
"... The need to then cover for murder added to the urgency to propagate the whole "Russiagate" fiction. The US' misnamed "intelligence community" and mass media both were complicit in the murder of Rich, so they had additional motivation to lead the public off the scent with an entirely fabricated false narrative. ..."
"... I doubt that it was solely a Clinton operation. After all, CIA director Mike Morrell kicked it off with his piece in the NY Times, which signaled some significant level of support at least parts of the intelligence community. ..."
"... The whole Russiagate affaire was very reminiscent of the Ken Starr inquisition, which yielded nothing until Bubba cavalierly incriminated himself with Monica. Trump has yet to prove himself that stupid. ..."
"... Remember when Tulsi Gabbard called out Hillary Clinton about getting the media to support her Russiagating of her? ..."
"... "Great! Thank you @HillaryClinton You, the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long, have finally come out from behind the curtain. From the day I announced my candidacy, there has been a concerted campaign to destroy my reputation. We wondered who was behind it and why. Now we know -- it was always you, through your proxies and powerful allies in the corporate media and war machine, afraid of the threat I pose. It's now clear that this primary is between you and me. Don't cowardly hide behind your proxies. Join the race directly." ..."
"... Seriously, Mr. President? You have been given a personal intelligence briefing from your CIA Director that one of the candidates to succeed you in the Presidency is an actual, bought and paid-for agent of Russia? And you don't go public because Ole Meanie Mitch won't let you ? ..."
"... This said to me that Obama knew it was all BS from the beginning. Of course, there have been gobs of disclosures and evidence since that it was fake and BS, and none whatsoever that it was real. ..."
"... Thanks to Wikileaks, we have a copy of an email exchange between Hillary's Campaign Manager, John Podesta and longtime Democratic operative Brent Budowsky talking about how Hillary should take on The Donald. Budowski tells Podesta: "Best approach is to slaughter Donald for his bromance with Putin, but not go too far betting on Putin re Syria."" ..."
"... The Russiagate fabrication was a political convenience for the Dems, but it allowed Trump and his NATO/EU agents to sanction, pressurise, interfere with Russia in every dimension, because Trump 'had to' to show they he was not Russia's sock puppets! ..."
"... The video I just watched and linked to on the Week in Review thread makes this observation: The Ds burned the US-Russia relationship while the Rs made no real protest; now we have the Rs burning the US-China relationship while the Ds make no real protest. ..."
"... Assange announced on June 12, 2016 that a new tranche of DNC emails had been leaked to Wikileaks and was being prepared for publication. The effort to manufacture the false narrative about Russian hacking began immediately after that, likely within minutes of the announcement. ..."
"... A "populist outsider" will NEVER be allowed to win the Presidency. It was claimed that Obama was also a "populist outsider" yet he served the Deep State/Empire and the US establishment very well. ..."
"... Russiagate was primarily a means of initiating a new McCarthyism as part of a plan to counter Russia and China. ..."
Where the allegations that Russia intervened in the 2016 presidential elections made up by
the Clinton campaign?
A letter sent by Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe seems
to suggest so :
On Tuesday, Ratcliffe, a loyalist whom Trump placed atop U.S. intelligence in the spring,
sent Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) a letter claiming that in late July 2016, U.S. intelligence
acquired "insight" into a Russian intelligence analysis. That analysis, Ratcliffe summarized
in his letter, claimed that Clinton had a plan to attack Trump by tying him to the 2016 hack
of the Democratic National Committee.
...
Ratcliffe stated that the intelligence community "does not know the accuracy of this
allegation or to the extent to which the Russian intelligence analysis may reflect
exaggeration or fabrication."
The letter says that then CIA Director John Brennan briefed President Obama on the
intelligence. He reported that the Russians believed that Clinton approved the campaign plan on
July 26 2016.
So U.S. intelligence spying on Russian intelligence analysts found that the Russians
believed that Clinton started a 'Trump is supported by the Russian hacking of the DNC'
campaign. The Russian's surely had reason to think that.
Emails from the Democratic National Committee were published by Wikileaks on July 22
2016, shortly before the Democratic National Convention. They proved that during the primaries
the DNC had actively worked against candidate Bernie Sanders.
On July 24 Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook went on CNN and made, to my knowledge,
the very first
allegations (video) that Russia had 'hacked' the DNC in support of Donald Trump.
It is likely that the Russian analysts had seen that.
Mook's TV appearance was probably a test balloon raised to see if such claims would
stick.
Two days later Clinton allegedly approved campaign plans to emphasize such claims.
In the infamous Steele
dossier , prepared for the Clinton campaign by a 'former' British spy, the first entry that
is tying the Trump campaign to the 'Russian DNC hack' was allegedly written on July 28
2016.
The president of Crowdstrike, the cybersecurity company which investigated the DNC leak,
later said that his company
never found any proof that Russia had hacked the DNC.
There are suspicions that Seth Rich, an IT administrator for the DNC and Bernie Sanders
supporter, has leaked the DNC emails to Wikileaks . Rich was murdered on July 10 2016 in
Washington DC in an alleged 'robbery' during which nothing was stolen.
The claims made in the Ratcliffe letter fit the timeline of the scandal as it developed.
They supports the assertion that the Clinton campaign made up 'Russiagate' from whole cloth. It
was supported in that by a myriad of media and by dozens of high level anti-Trump activists in
the FBI and CIA.
Posted by b on September 30, 2020 at 16:04 UTC |
Permalink
Are you trying to tell me b that "We came, we saw, he died" Clinton is suspected of
wrongdoing?/snark
I am all for bringing down the whole house of corrupt cards that fronts for the private
finance cult. The Clintons are just examples of semi-recent to recent corruption. Obama is in
that boat as is Biden and others.
But just remember that Trump was already entirely corrupt before (s)elected into power.
Trump is just another front for global private finance evil that humanity must face.
Another "conspiracy theory" turned into conspiracy fact.
With regards to Killary being "supported in that by a myriad of media and by dozens of
anti-Trump activists...", well, it's a pay-to-play world and CGI was the
piggybank at that particular time...
thanks b... the timeline certainly fits and is consistent here.... larry johnson at sst has
an article up on the same topic... how much of this is coming out now due the election and
how much of it is coming out now, just because it happens to be coming out now??
It's hard to tell when Trump is ever being truthful, but in last night's debate he clearly
stated:
"There was no transition because they came after me trying to do a coup. They came after
me spying on my campaign. They started from the day I won and even before I won. From the day
I came down the escalator with our First Lady. They were a disaster. They were a disgrace to
our country. And we've caught 'em. We've caught 'em all. We've got it all on tape. We've
caught 'em all."
Whether that is indicative of an imminent substantial October surprise i guess we will all
have to wait and see.
The murder/robbery of Seth Rich has frequently been described as "botched" , which I
have always felt was a strange way to describe a murder. It is as if the mass media were
trying to exculpate the murderer even though we are supposed to not know who the murderer
actually is.
So nothing was taken from Rich, but perhaps that is because the murderer couldn't find
what he was looking for? The USB thumb drive with the purloined emails, maybe? Of course, by
the time Rich was murdered the emails had already been passed along to Wikileaks, but I
suppose the murderer might not have known that at the time. That would make an effort to
retrieve the emails "botched" , wouldn't it? This suggested to me from the moment that
I heard it that those in the mass media who seeded the story of a robbery being
"botched" in fact were knowingly covering for the effort to control the leak which was
what was "botched" .
The need to then cover for murder added to the urgency to propagate the whole
"Russiagate" fiction. The US' misnamed "intelligence community" and mass media
both were complicit in the murder of Rich, so they had additional motivation to lead the
public off the scent with an entirely fabricated false narrative.
With no evidence at all my suspicion is that Rich was killed as a crime of passion committed
by a hotheaded member of his own family, which would explain both the family's reticence and
the somewhat muted investigation.
There are suspicions that Seth Rich, an IT administrator for the DNC and Bernie Sanders
supporter, has leaked the DNC emails to Wikileaks. Rich was murdered on July 10 2016 in
Washington DC in an alleged 'robbery' during which nothing was stolen.
That explains why Bernie Sanders suddenly became the "sheep dog". He flat out doesn't want
to be assassinated and doesn't want his family to be also assassinated.
While it would be a boon for the nation, I rather doubt Trump will have Barr indict the
Clintons for their crimes or go after the daily fraud committed at the Fed or on Wall Street.
I doubt Trump has any inkling that in order to truly make America Great Again he must first
destroy the Financial Parasites who caused America's downfall in the first place. Thirty-four
days to go.
Assange repeatedly stated russia didn't leak the emails. i saw no compelling reason to think
he would lie about it. then when the steel dossier came out it was so over the top and reeked
of fabrication. the whole thing was so far fetched and then ratcheted up 1000 fold after she
lost the election as an excuse. she never took any responsibility for her loss.
i think what amazes me most is how the media, and everyone following along, believed this
story that drove the narrative for years. this ridiculous obsession with russia was all part
of a coverup to distract the public from how rotten to the core the dnc is.
The mention of Seth Rich in connection with Russiagate prompted a hazy recollection of an
article over at SST by Larry C Johnson (LCJ), who has been exposing flaws in the Russiagate
fiasco for several years. LCJ deduced from the publicly-available Wikileaks/DNC files that
they couldn't have been hacked over the WWW because the timestamp for each file indicated
that those files came from a portable device, a thumb drive. From that info, and Assange
being very upset about the murder of Seth Rich, LCJ concluded that Rich sent the DNC files to
Wikileaks.
I looked up SST's "Russiagate" files and found the relevant article dated August 28, 2019
from which the following brief extract is the section mentioning file-types which LCJ found
so compelling...
... An examination of the Wikileaks DNC files shows they were created on 23 and 25 May and 26
August respectively. The fact that they appear in a FAT system format indicates the data was
transfered to a storage device, such as a thumb drive.
How can you prove this? The truth lies in the "last modified" time stamps on the
Wikileaks files. Every single one of these time stamps end in even numbers. If you are not
familiar with the FAT file system, you need to understand that when a date is stored under
this system the data rounds the time to the nearest even numbered second.
Bill examined 500 DNC email files stored on Wikileaks and found that all 500 files
ended in an even number -- 2, 4, 6, 8 or 0. If a system other than FAT had been used, there
would have been an equal probability of the time stamp ending with an odd number. But that is
not the case with the data stored on the Wikileaks site. All end with an even number.
...
I doubt that it was solely a Clinton operation. After all, CIA director Mike Morrell kicked
it off with his piece in the NY Times, which signaled some significant level of support at
least parts of the intelligence community.
The whole Russiagate affaire was very reminiscent of the Ken Starr inquisition, which
yielded nothing until Bubba cavalierly incriminated himself with Monica. Trump has yet to
prove himself that stupid.
I suspect that Hillary was delighted at the prospect of revenge for all she and Bubba had
gone through in the 1990s...except that she totally blew it...
Remember when Tulsi Gabbard called out Hillary Clinton about getting the media to support her
Russiagating of her? Here it is, you can see she blames Hillary as the source of the story:
"Great! Thank you @HillaryClinton You, the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption,
and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long, have
finally come out from behind the curtain. From the day I announced my candidacy, there has
been a concerted campaign to destroy my reputation. We wondered who was behind it and why.
Now we know -- it was always you, through your proxies and powerful allies in the corporate
media and war machine, afraid of the threat I pose. It's now clear that this primary is
between you and me. Don't cowardly hide behind your proxies. Join the race directly."
The Ballad of Tulsi and Hillary shows us how much the US and the world lost by the media
supporting Hillary in her plan to Russiagate the world.
The letter says that then CIA Director John Brennan briefed President Obama on the
intelligence. He reported that the Russians believed that Clinton approved the campaign plan
on July 26 2016.
I was one of those who thought that the whole Russia conspiracy was dubious from day one,
although I might have been kind of, "Well, maybe " for a day or so.
But that line from your post I quoted above points to one of the earliest and most
convincing pieces of evidence to me that the whole thing was fake. It was reported early on
that Obama had been briefed on the Russian interference and he wanted to go public to the
American people about what was going on, but Senator Mitch McConnell wouldn't agree to
it!
Seriously, Mr. President? You have been given a personal intelligence briefing from your
CIA Director that one of the candidates to succeed you in the Presidency is an actual, bought
and paid-for agent of Russia? And you don't go public because Ole Meanie Mitch won't let
you ?
This said to me that Obama knew it was all BS from the beginning. Of course, there have
been gobs of disclosures and evidence since that it was fake and BS, and none whatsoever that
it was real.
Even with all the revelations debunking the whole Russiagate narrative, the Deep State has
been successful in instilling in the news media, Hollywood, political elites of both parties,
and the overwhelming base of the democratic party that Russia somehow "installed" Trump, that
he is a Putin "puppet/puppy" (your choice), and any resistance to establishment democratic
party power is due to Russian manipulation of social media, and in general Russia (etc.) is
fundamental to causing social and political problems. It took America about seven years to
get over McCarthyism. Russiagate will stay in American discourse for a long time.
The dangerous part of Russiagate is that it has reached the level of hysteria that it can
be used by American Deep State to justify direct and dangerous confrontations with Russia up
to and including war. Russiagate pales the propaganda about Saddam and WNDs. Let us remember
that two days into the US invasion of Iraq, the invasion had a 72% approval rating according
to Gallup. Any conflict with Russia will probably have even higher approval levels.
Between Trump and Biden, it is Biden who will be the most likely to start the final
conflagration.
@hoarsewhisperer I trust that the time stamps indicates that a FAT format was used at a
certain stage. What I don't recall is that how this would exclude workflows which involve an
USB stick at any later stage after a hack. I think this technical proof is not as decisive as
it seems and calculating huge statistical odds does not change that. The fact that the NSA
has not come up with proof, now that does mean something. Something Baskervillish.
Found it interesting that in the very mainstream 'Friends' sitcom it was already a joke in
the 90s that "gi joe looks after american foreign oil interests".
Except for a few conflict sitreps there really hasn't been much of note posted here this
year.
Former NSA Technical Director Bill Binney has also argued that the data could not have been
hacked because internet speeds at the time were not sufficient for the transfer of the data
when it was extracted. He claims that the speed was consistent with saving to a thumb drive.
The word "botched" could have been invented to explain why nothing was stolen, in order to
put off those who questioned the motive.
No witness came forward but it could be that someone saw the shooting from a distance and
yelled at the perp.
"Ratcliffe's letter, which is based on information obtained by the CIA, states that Hillary
decided on 26 July 2016 to launch the Russia/Trump strategem. But the CIA was mistaken. The
Clinton effort started in 2015--December 2015 to be precise.
Thanks to Wikileaks, we have a copy of an email exchange between Hillary's Campaign
Manager, John Podesta and longtime Democratic operative Brent Budowsky talking about how
Hillary should take on The Donald. Budowski tells Podesta:
"Best approach is to slaughter Donald for his bromance with Putin, but not go too far betting
on Putin re Syria.""
Larry Johnson wrote today in his article "I Told You Long Ago, Hillary's Team Helped
Fabricate the Trump Russia Collusion Lie by Larry C Johnson"
If I remember correctly Obummer signed legislation making it ok for the press to openly lie
to everyone in the us! HR4310, legalized propaganda for US consumption. He gave us fake news!
The constant stream of US, UK, NATO, EU fabrications framing Russia, from MH17, Skripal,
'interfering in elections' garbage, the Navalry poisoning, coupled with endless provocations
like interfering in the Syrian settlement, twisting the OPCW work, attempting to destroy the
Iran nuclear agreement and so much more appear to -finally - running out Russia's strategic
patience with the Trump administration.
1. 24 September Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov:
"...the incumbent US administration has lost its diplomatic skills almost for good."
"we have come to realise that in terms of Germany and its EU and NATO allies' conduct, ...it
is impossible to deal with the West until it stops using provocations and fraud and starts
behaving honestly and responsibly."
The Russiagate fabrication was a political convenience for the Dems, but it allowed Trump
and his NATO/EU agents to sanction, pressurise, interfere with Russia in every dimension,
because Trump 'had to' to show they he was not Russia's sock puppets!
Looks like Russia might be shifting strategy from strictly going through the defined and
agreed processes in relation to problems with the West to perhaps not engaging so
meticulously.
After all, what's the point when the agreed processes are ignored by the other party?
So, does "impossible to deal with" mean "will not deal with"?
The video I just watched and linked to on the Week in Review thread makes this observation:
The Ds burned the US-Russia relationship while the Rs made no real protest; now we have the
Rs burning the US-China relationship while the Ds make no real protest.
Many other nations
are watching, some already having joined the China-Russia bloc while others get ready as they
watch what little remains of US soft power go down the tubes thanks to Imperial tactics being
deployed onto US streets. Meanwhile, lurking not too far away is the coming escalation of the
financial crisis which Trump's Trade War has exacerbated. Those running this show are myopic
to the max--in order to post an economic recovery, the markets existing in those nations now
being alienated will be essential since the domestic market will be far too weak to fuel a
recovery by itself, even with enlightened leadership.
"On July 24 Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook went on CNN and made, to my knowledge, the
very first allegations (video) that Russia had 'hacked' the DNC in support of Donald
Trump."
It is not the case that it was the first such allegation. To my knowledge, the first such
allegation that was published was published on 14 June 2016 in the Washington Post,
headlining "Russian government hackers penetrated DNC, stole opposition research on Trump"
and I provide here an archived link to it instead of that newspaper's link, so that no
paywall will block a reader from seeing that article: https://archive.is/T4C2G
powerandpeople @28: "So, does "impossible to deal with" mean "will not deal with"?"
Highly unlikely. The Russians will continue to pursue reason even after the war on Russia
goes hot. If the Russians give up on diplomacy then that means Lavrov is out of a job. The
Russians are capable of walking and chewing gum, or shooting and talking as the case may be,
at the same time.
By the way, I think the same is true for the Chinese, even if they have not done much
shooting lately. When America's war against them goes hot they will keep the door to
diplomacy open throughout the conflict. Neither of these countries wants a war and it is the
US that is pushing for one. They will be happy to stop the killing as soon as the US does.
Personally I think that may be a mistake because when the war goes hot and the US suffers
some military defeats and sues for peace, if America still has the capability to wage war
then the peace will just be temporary. The US will use any cessation of hostilities to rearm
and try to catch its imagined enemies off guard.
Whether or not the US will be able to rearm after significant military defeats in its
current de-industrialized condition is another matter.
How can the US possibly contemplate a war with China? The US cannot function without China's
production. To cite just one example; eighty percent of US pharmaceuticals are produced in
China. The US needs China far more than China needs the US. A war with China is a war the US
cannot win.
Assange announced on June 12, 2016 that a new tranche of DNC emails had been leaked to
Wikileaks and was being prepared for publication. The effort to manufacture the false
narrative about Russian hacking began immediately after that, likely within minutes of
the announcement.
We already knew that Hillary had engaged Steele in Spring 2016 as what was termed an
"insurance policy". This "insurance" angle makes no sense: 1) Hillary was the overwhelming
favorite when she engaged Steele and had virtually unlimited resources that she could call
upon. And, 2) the bogus findings in Steele's dossier could easily be debunked by any
competent intelligence agency so it wasn't any sort of "insurance" at all.
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That Hillary started Russiagate is not surprising. This limited hangout, which is
so titillating to some, is meant to cover for a far greater conspiracy than Hillary's
vindictiveness.
We should first recognize a few things:
the Empire is a bi-partisan affair;
the Presidency is the lynch-pin of the Empire;
it became apparent in 2013-14 that the Empire (aka "World Order") was at grave risk as
Russia's newfound militancy showed that her alliance with China had teeth.
the 2016 race was KNOWN to be rigged via Hillary's collusion with DNC and Sanders'
sheepdogging (Note: After the collusion became know, Hillary gave disgraced Debra
Wasserman-Shultz a high-level position within Hillary's campaign - further angering
progressives). Why does it surprise anyone that the General Election was also rigged?
These facts lead to the following conclusions:
A "populist outsider" will NEVER be allowed to win the Presidency. It was claimed that
Obama was also a "populist outsider" yet he served the Deep State/Empire and the US
establishment very well.
Hillary's 2016 "campaign mistakes" were likely deliberate/calculated to allow Trump to
win. MAGA Nationalist Trump was the Deep State's favorite. This explains why Trump
announced that he would not investigate the Clintons within days of his being elected and
why Trump picked close associates of all his 'Never Trump' Deep State enemies to fill key
posts in his Administration such as: John Brennan's gal Gina Haspel for CIA Director; John
McCain's guy Mike Pence as VP; the Bush's guy William Barr for Attorney General; and the
neocon's John Bolton for NSA.
Russiagate was primarily a means of initiating a new McCarthyism as part of a plan to
counter Russia and China.
David @32: "How can the US possibly contemplate a war with China?"
Sadly, the United States is suffering from delusions of exceptionality. Mass psychosis.
The importance of industrial capacity is radically underestimated by the top economic
theorists (and thus advisors) in the West, and except for some of the deplorable working
people in America and perhaps about five or six Marxists in the country, the rest of the
American population is equally delusional. "Well, if we can't get it from China then we
will just order it from Amazon!
is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer and author of ' SCORPION
KING : America's Suicidal Embrace of Nuclear Weapons from FDR to Trump.' He served in the
Soviet Union as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, in General Schwarzkopf's staff during
the Gulf War, and from 1991-1998 as a UN weapons inspector. Follow him on Twitter @RealScottRitter The US seeks to
pressure Russia by threatening to reactivate nuclear capability mothballed under the New START
treaty if Moscow refuses to renegotiate. All it will accomplish by this is prove it habitually
cheats on arms control.
According
to Politico, "The Trump administration has asked the military to assess how quickly it
could pull nuclear weapons out of storage and load them onto bombers and submarines" when
the New START treaty limiting the size of the US and Russian strategic nuclear arsenals expires
in February. Politico sources its story "to three people familiar with the discussions."
According to these sources, the request was made to the US Strategic Command as "part of a
strategy to pressure Moscow into renegotiating the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty before
the US presidential election."
What is curious about this report is that US Strategic Command already knows the answer to
the request. To meet the level of warhead reductions mandated under the treaty, the US has
decreased the number of warheads carried on the Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic
missile (ICBM) from three to one, and on its
Trident D-5 submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) from up to 14 to around 5 or
6.
The deactivated warheads were
reclassified as either active or inactive. Active warheads are kept fully assembled and
subjected to the same level of maintenance and upgrades as their operational counterparts, and
can be reactivated in accordance with guidelines already established by US Strategic Command.
Inactive warheads have been partially disassembled, and their reactivation would take longer
than for their active counterparts, but is similarly regulated by US Strategic Command
directives. Moreover, the US regularly
conducts tests where it reconverts the Minuteman III ICBM to a three-warhead configuration
to practice for the very activities suggested in the Politico article. The timelines associated
with this reconversion are well known to US Strategic Command. It is not publicly known whether
the US Navy conducts similar re-conversion flight tests of its Trident D-5 SLBMs.
One aspect of this request that, if it were implemented, would fall outside the existing
reactivation guidelines set by US Strategic Command is if the US were to reconvert its fleet of
Trident ballistic missile submarines from its current configuration under New START to one
where no restrictions applied. This possibility raises some interesting questions about US
compliance with New START.
According to Section 1 , paragraph 3
in Part Three of the Protocol to the treaty,
"If an ICBM launcher, SLBM launcher, or heavy bomber is converted by rendering it
incapable of employing ICBMs, SLBMs, or nuclear armaments, so that the other Party can confirm
the results of the conversion, such a converted strategic offensive arm shall cease to be
subject to the aggregate numbers provided for in Article II of the Treaty and may be used for
purposes not inconsistent with the Treaty."
To meet its obligations under New START, the US converted four SLBM launchers on each of its
14 Trident ballistic missile submarines – a total of 56 – to remove them from the
permitted number of launchers. This conversion was done by removing the gas generators of the
ejecting mechanism from the launch tube and bolting the tube covers shut.
On February 27, 2018, the Russian Foreign Ministry
protested the American actions, noting that, in regard to the Trident conversions, they
were "converted in such a way that the Russian Federation cannot confirm that these
strategic arms have been rendered incapable of employing SLBMs."
The Russians were concerned that the Trident SLBM conversions were not irreversible, as
required under the terms of the treaty, and that the 56 launchers listed as having been
"rendered incapable of employing SLBMs" should rather have been categorized as
"non-deployed launchers" and not excluded from the total aggregate count. To put it
bluntly, the Russians were accusing the United States of cheating on the New START
Treaty.
If true, the threat made by Marshall Billingslea in his interview with the Russian Kommersant paper on
September 21 to "reconvert our weapons" , if applied to the Trident ballistic missile
submarine launch tubes, would not only confirm the Russian suspicions, but certify the US as an
untrustworthy negotiating partner in any future arms control negotiations, either with Russia
or China.
Washington already has one strike against it in this regard: its contention that the Mk 41
launcher used on the Aegis Ashore anti-ballistic missile system could not be used as a cruise
missile launcher, and, as such, did not constitute a violation of the Intermediate-Range
Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. This was shown to be a lie when, less than a month after the US
withdrew from the INF Treaty, it conducted a flight test of a cruise missile fired from the
same Mk 41
launcher .
If the Politico reporting is accurate, the US military has been ordered to carry out an
exercise that is redundant insofar as the data is already known, and which does nothing to
further US strategic capabilities. Moreover, if the US plans on increasing its SLBM launch
capability by reactivating the 56 SLBM launchers ostensibly rendered inoperable under New
START, Marshall Billingslea would be undermining his own stated objective of trying to pressure
Russia back to the negotiating table before the November 2020 presidential election. After all,
who in their right mind would be willing to negotiate with a proven cheater?
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author
and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
Clinton approved an advisor's proposal to "vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal
claiming interference by Russian security services" in July 2016, according to information
declassified on Tuesday by Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe. The bombshell
revelation was made public in a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee chair Lindsey Graham (R-S.
Carolina), in response to a request for information related to the FBI's Crossfire Hurricane
(i.e. Russiagate) probe.
By the end of July 2016, US intelligence agencies had picked up chatter that their Russian
counterparts not only knew of the scheme, but that Clinton was behind it – though the
declassified material stresses that the American intelligence community "does not know the
accuracy" of the claim that Clinton had green-lighted such a plan, or whether the Russians
were exaggerating. However, then-CIA director John Brennan apparently followed up that
assessment by briefing then-President Barack Obama on Clinton's Russian smear scheme, according
to his handwritten notes – suggesting the spy agencies were very much aware what was
going on.
The news made a splash among the president's supporters and other Russiagate skeptics, one
of whom observed the timing of the events described in the declassified material dovetailed
seamlessly with the timetable in which Russiagate was unveiled to the public. Clinton staffer
Robby Mook appeared on CNN on July 24, 2016 to claim that "Russian state
actors broke into the [Democratic National Committee]" and "stole" the campaign's
emails "for the purpose of actually helping Donald Trump."
Former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele filed his report around the same date,
accusing the Trump campaign of colluding with Russian security services to hack the DNC and
dump the emails via Wikileaks. The false information that made up the infamous "peepee
dossier" – collected under contract from opposition research firm Fusion GPS –
was used to justify securing a FISA warrant for Trump campaign aide Carter Page. That warrant,
and others that followed, have since been declared invalid, as it was discovered the Obama
administration had "violated its duty of candor" on its application for every
warrant.
Just a month before the 2016 election, Obama's intelligence agencies announced that they
believed Russia was responsible for hacking the DNC – allegations it has since emerged
were made without even examining the server on which the emails were stored.
More than a year after the release of special counsel Robert Mueller's report shocked
Russiagate true believers with the absence of the promised proof of collusion, the colossal
conspiracy theory has all but unraveled.
Today, the Arctic has increasingly become identified as a domain of great prosperity
and cooperation amongst world civilizations on the one side and a domain of confrontation and
war on the other.
In 2007, the Russian government first voiced its support for the construction of the
Bering Strait rail tunnel connecting the Americas with the Eurasian continent- a policy which
has taken on new life in 2020 as Putin's Great Arctic Development strategy has wedded itself
to the northern extension of the Belt and Road Initiative (dubbed the Polar Silk Road). In
2011, the Russian government re-stated its pledge to build the $64 billion project .
####
On September 26, President Trump announced that a long-overdue project would receive
Federal support which involves connecting Alaska for the first time with Canada and the lower
48 states via a 2570 km railway.
In his Tweet announcing the project, Trump said:
####
I'd never read about the sale of Alaska to America by Russia in any detail before but just
by looking at the map it was clear that it made sense. Indefensible against a rapidly growing
country, so sell early for a good price or lose it and get nothing.
As for Ehret's hypothesis, we know that t-Rump sees things in a deal oriented way and not
simply 'You must be destroyed (TM)' way, though his methods of reaching such deals 'Maximum
Pressure (TM)' are none too bright and result in less than a normally negotiated deal. But,
if we look at the ends rather than the means, improving trade links is surely to America's
(and others) advantage.
One thing that does strike me from the maps of the proposed increased US-Asia links is
that having those function normally is not compatible with the current strategic goal of
trying to contain China. So, what is the point of the US Pacific Fleet? Just Free-Dumb of
Navigation (FONOPS) cruises for pensioners?
Update (1712ET): Online sleuths such as The Last Refuge are already connecting dots between
when the Trump-Russia allegations surfaced and the newly released briefing timeline
.
TheLastRefuge
@TheLastRefuge2 ·
Sep 29, 2020 This is additionally important for a specific reference point. Clinton ally,
and former acting CIA Director Mike Morell first published the Clinton created Russia narrative
(in the New York Times) less than a week after this July 26, 2016, briefing by Brennan.
The Reckoning @sethjlevy This conversation between
@jaketapper and
@RobbyMook happened on July 25th. The Reckoning @sethjlevy On day 1 of the Democrat
Convention as Wikileaks began their DNC releases Mook's interview uses the release to begin
spinning the Trump Russia tale. This was planned, prepared, purposeful and the beginning of one
of the most damaging psy op disinformation campaigns in US history.
https://twitter.com/sethjlevy/status/963977316547399680?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1311019881039618049%7Ctwgr%5Eshare_3&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Fus-intelligence-investigated-hillary-clinton-over-alleged-plan-smear-trump-russia
Sean Davis @seanmdav ·
Sep 29, 2020 Replying to @seanmdav Today's declassification confirms that from the
beginning, the FBI knew its anti-Trump investigation was based entirely on Russian
disinformation. Brennan and Comey were personally warned. They responded by fabricating
evidence and defrauding the courts. https:// judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/
09-29-20_Letter%20to%20Sen.%20Graham_Declassification%20of%20FBI's%20Crossfire%20Hurricane%20Investigations_20-00912_U_SIGNED-FINAL.pdf
BenTallmadge @BenKTallmadge https:// twitter.com/benktallmadge/
status/1310676483501768705?s=21 BenTallmadge @BenKTallmadge Replying to @BenKTallmadge
Alexander Vindman was working at thé US embassy in Moscow when the wife of former mayor
wired $3.5M to Hunter Biden, right before Russia took Crimea H/t @grabaroot https://
twitter.com/playstrumpcard /status/1310648949393502214?s=21 https:// twitter.com/playstrumpcard
/status/1310648949393502214
Meanwhile, this is being downplayed by intelligence officials as Russian disinformation,
which DNI Ratcliffe has refuted.
Chuck Ross @ChuckRossDC · 3h Intel officials came out
within minutes to claim Russian disinfo in the Ratcliffe letter. We didn't find out for nearly
three years that Russian disinfo might have been in the dossier.
https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-4&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1311056956023595009&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Fus-intelligence-investigated-hillary-clinton-over-alleged-plan-smear-trump-russia&siteScreenName=zerohedge&theme=light&widgetsVersion=219d021%3A1598982042171&width=550px
Jeremy Herb @jeremyherb New statement from Ratcliffe on unverified Russian intel: "To be
clear, this is not Russian disinformation and has not been assessed as such by the Intelligence
Community. I'll be briefing Congress on the sensitive sources and methods by which it was
obtained in the coming days."
5:35 PM · Sep 29, 2020
* * *
On September 7, 2016, US intelligence officials forwarded an investigative referral to
former FBI officials James Comey and Peter Strzok concerning allegations that Hillary Clinton
approved a plan to smear then-candidate Donald Trump by tying him to Russian President Vladimir
Putin and Russian hackers , according to information given to Sen. Lindsey Graham by the
Director of National Intelligence.
According to Fox News' Chad Pergram, "In late July 2016, U.S. intelligence agencies obtained
insight into Russian intelligence analysis alleging that U.S. Presidential candidate Hillary
Clinton had approved a campaign plan to stir up a scandal against U.S. Presidential candidate
Donald Trump," after one of Clinton's foreign policy advisers proposed vilifying Trump "by
stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services."
Chad Pergram @ChadPergram ·
Sep 29, 2020 Replying to @ChadPergram 5) DNI info to Grahm: On 07 September 2016, U.S.
intelligence officials forwarded an investigative referral to FBI Director James Comey and
Deputy Assistant Director of Counterintelligence Peter Strzok regarding 'U.S. Presidential
candidate Hillary Clinton's approval of a plan..
Chad Pergram @ChadPergram 6) DNI info to Graham:...concerning U.S. Presidential candidate
Donald Trump and Russian hackers hampering U.S. elections as a means of distracting the
public from her use of a private mail server.'"
2:51 PM · Sep 29, 2020
In response to your request for Intelligence Community (IC) information related to the
Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) Crossfire Hurricane Investigation, I have declassified
the following:
In late July 2016, U.S. intelligence agencies obtained insight into Russian intelligence
analysis alleging that U.S. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had approved a campaign plan
to stir up a scandal against U.S. Presidential candidate Donald Trump by tying him to Putin and
the Russians' hacking of the Democratic National Committee. The IC docs not know the accuracy
of this allegation or the extent to which the Russian intelligence analysis may reflect
exaggeration or fabrication.
According to his handwritten notes, former Central Intelligence Agency Director Brennan
subsequently briefed President Obama and other senior national security officials on the
intelligence, including the "alleged approval by Hillary Clinton on July 26. 2016 of a proposal
from one of her foreign policy advisors to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal
claiming interference by Russian security services."
On 07 September 2016. U.S. intelligence officials forwarded an investigative referral to FBI
Director James Comey and Deputy Assistant Director of Counterintelligence Peter Strzok
regarding "U.S. Presidential candidate I lillary Clinton's approval of a plan concerning U.S.
Presidential candidate Donald Trump and Russian hackers hampering U.S. elections as a means of
distracting the public from her use of a private mail server."
As referenced in his 24 September 2020 letter to your Committee, Attorney General Ban has
advised that the disclosure of this information will not interfere with ongoing Department of
Justice investigations. Additional declassification and public disclosure of related
intelligence remains under consideration; however, the IC welcomes the opportunity to provide a
classified briefing with further detail at your convenience.
Respectfully,
i RatcliiTc
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Wikileaks
In 2017, it was claimed that the "blame Russia" plan was hatched "within twenty-four hours"
of Clinton losing the election - while the US intelligence investigation predates that by
several months.
New book by 'Shattered' by Clinton insiders reveals that "blame Russia" plan was hatched
"within twenty-four hours" of election loss.
The authors detail how Clinton went out of her way to pass blame for her stunning loss on
"Comey and Russia."
"She wants to make sure all these narratives get spun the right way," a longtime Clinton
confidant is quoted as saying.
The book further highlights how Clinton's Russia-blame-game was a plan hatched by senior
campaign staffers John Podesta and Robbv Mook. less than "within twenty-fourhours" after she
conceded:
That strategy had been set within twenty -four hours of her concession speech. Mook and
Podesta assembled her communications team at the Brooklyn headquarters to engineer the case
that the election wasn't entirely on the up-and-up. For a couple ofhours, with Shake Shack
containers littering the room, they went over the script theywould pitch to the press and
the public. Already. Russian hacking was the centerpieceof the argument.
The Clinton camp settled on a two-pronged plan -- pushing the press to cover how"Russian
hacking was the major unreported story of the campaign, overshadowed by thecontents of stolen
e-mails and Hillary*s own private-server imbroglio.'' while"hammering the media for focusing
so intently on the investigation into her e-mail, whichhad created a cloud over her candidacy
." the authors wrote.
"... The DemoRats have never been a party dedicated to peace; the only ones thinking that are the walking bong-holes who assuage their cognitive dissonance by telling themselves that. Both the demorats and their willing accomplices 'across the aisle' have led us into constant war for nearly eight decades. Lilliputian Big enders and Little enders all. ..."
"... Screw the war mongers and the MIC. ..."
"... If you read the article, it's obvious that [neo]liberals/whores are the apogee of hypocrisy. ..."
"... Perpetual war is about $$$. It knows no party. Never has and never will. ..."
Feral, yes; rabid, absolutely; smart... not so much. Why is anyone surprised?
The DemoRats have never been a party dedicated
to peace; the only ones thinking that are the walking bong-holes who assuage their cognitive dissonance by telling themselves
that. Both the demorats and their willing accomplices 'across the aisle' have led us into constant war for nearly eight decades.
Lilliputian Big enders and Little enders all.
Yup. It's always about the money. As Fitts would say, that screeching you hear is the cash flow drying up for the rentiers.
The murdering of women and children be damned. Hillary's demonic cackle is but the grotesque cherry on top:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fgcd1ghag5Y
Here's what Matt hopes you don't remember: When the cancel mob came for him, he was the
"upper class Twitter Robespierre" ratting on his colleagues.
Yasha Levine Sep 18
Between the pandemic, the economic collapse, the fires and the toxic fumes, and the
fact that I'm currently fighting an eviction, I know there are much more pressing issues to
get worked up about these days. But as someone who got his start in journalism at The eXile
and who has been on the receiving end of our "cancel culture" so many times I lost count, I
can't let it go.
####
Plenty more at the link.
There's very much 'don't put one's head above the parapet unnecessarily' about all
this so no wonder Levine feels betrayed. Yes, people change and see things differently later
in life and deal with it in their own ways. Maybe we all live too long .
The eXile also reflected closely what I myself saw and heard first hand while I was
studying in Russia in the mid-1990s, that it bore no resemblance to what the western
journalists were reporting. This on the back of all their lies and willful ignorance during
the break up of Yugoslavia and the subsequent civil wars. It put me off being a journalist
(which was a good thing)!
There's other interesting stuff including by Anatole Lieven in Prospect Magazine which is
stuff familiar and oft discussed by us already.
HSBC allowed fraudsters to transfer millions of dollars around the world even after it
had learned of their scam, leaked secret files show.
Britain's biggest bank moved the money through its US business to HSBC accounts in Hong
Kong in 2013 and 2014.
Its role in the $80m (£62m) fraud is detailed in a leak of documents –
banks' "suspicious activity reports" – that have been called the FinCEN Files.
HSBC says it has always met its legal duties on reporting such activity.
Why is it that the "Free World" has so many corrupt institutions, especially when it comes
to dealing with loadsa lolly?
The West has so many internal financial traitors, who, essentially, are traitors and
deceivers to whole populations of Western free society, and who make it too easy for enemies
of the "Free World" to use the blatant dishonesty and hypocrisy of Western financial
institutions as a glaring example of Western perfidy.
95% of Russians think that all Western financiers are thieves. Just walk around any hell
hole of a Russian shitsville town out in the sticks and you will find that to be true!
And get this!
Clearly distraught about the enormity of this financial swindle perpetrated by HSBC, the
BBC feels it duty bound to point out a Putin connection with this ginormous financial
scam:
He definitely did it! Past tense: completed in the past -- "laundered"
However, in the first line of the body of the article, enter the modal auxiliary verb
"may" in order to indicate probability, and slight probability at that:
One of Vladimir Putin's closest friends may have used Barclays Bank in London to
launder money and dodge sanctions, leaked documents suggest.
And Deutsche Bank was well in on the money laundering scam as well:
FinCEN Files: Deutsche Bank tops list of suspicious transactions
Leaked documents shed a light on Deutsche Bank's central role in facilitating
financial transactions deemed suspicious. Many of these could have enabled the circumvention
of sanctions on Iran and Russia.
Financial intelligence data about the accounts of Russians in American banks has been
published
08:46 21.09.2020 (updated: 09:04 21.09.2020)
MOSCOW, September 21 – RIA Novosti. Cassandra, an international consortium of
investigative journalists, has released classified data from the US Treasury Department for
Combating Financial Crimes (FinCEN) regarding suspicious banking transactions.
According to media reports, the beneficiaries of some transactions are, amongst others,
Russian politicians and businessmen.
The consortium declined to comment on how it got the secret documents. At the same
time, the investigators themselves noted that suspicious transactions do not always indicate
a violation of the law.
An "international consortium", eh?
No explanation of how the data was acquired, eh?
And in any case, big transfers of dough don't necessarily mean that such transfers are
illegal.
So why make an issue out of it?
I wonder if this International Consortium has ever taken a peek at poroshenko's money
transactions and offshore subterfuges?
Oh look!
The address of "Cassandra":
1710 Rhode Island Ave NW | 11th floor
Washington DC 20036 USA
As regards Putin's pal since childhood who "may have used Barclays Bank in London to
launder money and dodge sanctions", Vedomosti reports this morning:
14 minutes ago Rotenberg has called the media data on transactions through a London bank nonsense
Aha! A denial from a Russian -- and a Russian 4×2 to boot!
That can only mean he is guilty as accused.
The data on suspicious transactions carried out by Russian businessmen Arkady and Boris
Rotenberg through the London bank Barclays is nothing more than nonsense, RBC reports with
reference to a representative of Arkady Rotenberg.
"The data on suspicious transactions that Russian businessmen Arkady and Boris
Rotenberg carried out through the London bank Barclays, published by the international
investigative project Cassandra, is nothing more than delusion", the message says.
Representatives of other members of the Rotenberg family said that they did not settle
through British banks and did not directly or indirectly own Ayrton, which is mentioned in
the Cassandra report, the newspaper reports.
Earlier, experts of the international investigation project "Cassandra" published a
report on the results of a study of the documents of the US financial intelligence (FinCEN)
that came at their disposal. Amongst the financial transactions that the banks reporting to
FinCEN found suspicious, in particular, were those of Ayrton Development Limited. The
company, according to the BBC, was deemed by Barclays to be owned by the sanctioned Arkady
Rotenberg. According to the report, 26 transactions carried out in the interests of the
Rotenbergs were classified as suspicious.
Leningrader Arkady Rotenberg was a sambo pal of Putin. He has clearly enjoyed considerable
enrichment during the Putin tyranny.
In 2000, the Evil One created Rosspirtprom, a state-owned enterprise controlling 30% of
Russia's vodka market, and put Rotenberg in control.
In 2001, Rotenberg and his brother founded the SMP bank, which operates in 40 Russian
cities with over 100 branches, more than half of them in the Moscow area. SMP oversees the
operation of more than 900 ATM-machines. SMP bank also became a leading large-diameter gas
pipe supplier.
In 2007, Gazprom rejected an earlier plan to build a 350-mile pipeline and instead paid
Rotenberg $45 billion to lay a 1,500 mile pipeline to the Arctic Circle.
O'Bummer signed an executive order instructing his government to impose sanctions on the
Rotenberg brothers and other close friends of President Putin because of the Russian
"annexation" of the Crimea.
For all his wealth, though, Arkady Rotenberg is not that smart at everything he does: In
2005, Rotenberg married his second wife Natalia Rotenberg, who is about 30 years his junior.
Their two children, Varvara and Arkady, live in the United Kingdom with Natalia. They
divorced in 2015 in the U.K. While the financial details of the divorce are private, the
agreement includes division of the use of a £35 million Surrey mansion and a £8
million apartment in London. The couple's lawyers obtained a secrecy order preventing media
in the U.K. from reporting on the divorce, but the order was overturned on appeal.
And only then, after having assured everyone and everything that the dose of the
terrible poison Novichok was received precisely at home, Mr. Navalny, a dissenting person,
was for some reason not at all afraid of this "irrefutable fact", and barely having opened
his eyelids from a cloudy "comatose" slumber, was already prepared -- almost in his hospital
robe -- to rush back.
To Moscow.
His home country.
Where allegedly, he was almost wiped off the face of the earth by "insidious poison
murderers".
Putin proposed, "exchanging guarantees of non-interference in each other's internal
affairs, including electoral processes, including using information and communication
technologies and high-tech methods."..
####
That is some excellently timed next level trolling from Pootie-McPoot-Face.
Of course the USA will never agree to such a proposal, because (a) it does not regard its
meddling as 'interference' but as the bringing of the gift of freedom, (b) it stands on its
absolute right of judgment as to what is a situation that requires more democracy and what is
not, and (c) it probably knows at some level that Russia did not meddle in the US elections,
and that it would therefore in that case be constraining its own behavior in exchange for
nothing.
But then, when refused – I imagine the US will try to extract something from the
offer, such as "A-HA!! So you ADMIT to meddling in our elections!! – Russia can
obviously claim, "Well, we tried."
Truth be told: political operatives own and run our MSM. This is why the press is called
the 'Fourth Estate'.
They are more correctly described as a Fifth Column , one far more open and sworn to
destroy our country and its foundational citizens – and taxpayers – as any that
ever operated during World War II. You would think this would be of vital interest to people
who loudly declare themselves to be "Nazi-punchers", but who time and again show themselves to
be merely low-level street terrorists informed and inspired by Mao's Red Guard and the
irredeemable thugs of the African National Congress.
One wonders what's preventing them from
mimicking the Red Terror waged by the leftists of Spain, when the battle for "freedom" involved
the disinterment of the graves of Catholic clergy to better pose the corpses in blasphemous
positions. Imagine how depraved those Mostly Peaceful protesters had to have been for even a
leftist-supporting site such as Wikipedia to baldly state
The violence consisted of the killing of tens of thousands of people (including 6,832
Roman Catholic priests, the vast majority in the summer of 1936 in the wake of the military
coup), attacks on the Spanish nobility, industrialists, and conservative politicians, as well
as the desecration and burning of monasteries and churches.
Directly in the crosshairs this time are small and medium-sized owner-operated businesses
– the true backbone of American freedom and prosperity – who have largely been
sacrificed in exchange for the knock-kneed offerings of Danegeld from our giant conglomerates,
all of whom have prospered immensely from the suffering and privation brought on by the
Democratic lockdown of society – and the total shutdown of our economy.
Think! – have you read a single article charting how the government war on small
business directly enriched Amazon.com and
world's richest autocrat, Jeff Bezos? . who then funnels his windfall into a newspaper that
blatantly pimps for the Democratic Party, which translates into a vast payday for the DNC, not
least from its newly-approved partnership with the shadowy and many-tentacled Soros-surrogate
group, BLM?
The result is what you'd expect when a fringe group operates with the full cooperation and
partnership of major industry and both political parties (don't confuse Trump with a
standard-issue Republican, please – he may have terrible flaws, but that isn't one of
them) – 10% of the population holding the other 90% in a chokehold with only one set of
rules: no arrest and prosecution for Bolshevik violence and terror ..but the zero-tolerance
heavy hand of corrupt Leviathan coming down hard against any and all citizens who fight back
or, eventually – inevitably – who even struggle against their restraints.
Short of the sudden arrival of celestial horsemen to punish the guilty and reward the
set-upon, it has become clear that the only answer is the one that the Powers That Be claim to
be dead set against: racial separatism. (Particularly when we consider that all that will be
necessary to turn America into Hell on earth will be the adoption of Ibram Kendi's First Law,
sometimes known as equality of outcome :
To fix the original sin of racism, Americans should pass an anti-racist amendment to the
U.S. Constitution that enshrines two guiding anti-racist principals: Racial inequity is
evidence of racist policy and the different racial groups are equals.
Could any "amendment" be more terrifyingly totalitarian than this?)
White and black separation would, instead, accomplish two goals, both more important than
Kendi's quick fix: we would learn soon enough about actual equality of outcomes (which
is why no Communist, black or white, wants anything to do with the creation of one more failed
basket-case black state), and much more importantly, white families can sleep secure in their
beds at night, without worrying about Apache raids at midnight, egged on and recorded for
"posterity" by that Fourth Estate/Fifth Column referred to up top. Because the fact of the
matter is that, even should some combination of government and law-enforcement halt the burning
and looting of America – as things stand now, none of the worst malefactors will ever see
the inside of a prison cell .which means any ceasefire will only be temporary, to be violently
ripped asunder the moment they sense white Americans have at last lowered their guard once
more. And living in perpetual paranoid readiness for violent uprisings and mindless destruction
is no way to live at all.
Trump has it half right, a border wall is the answer: only it needs to run
lengthwise , between the Southern and Northern borders. If we don't use the next four
years to plan out such a separation, fretting over our children's children will be a fruitless
exercise – those who aren't murdered will be captured and 'go native' .and in case you
haven't looked at a globe lately, there's no place left to run.
As a recovering journalist, I can point out that even on a rinkydink rag in a small city,
where I got fired for being a real journalist back in the early '70's; he who owns the
presses and distribution networks calls the tune. It's a matter of working-class (no matter
how middle-class your income or social-status) versus the ownership class. The latter wins
every time.
"Then there are the Chinese. OK, they really are communists, but who is it that has
bought into the nonsense about them oppressing poor, innocent, religious head choppers? Who
cares even if those lies were true? Yep, that's millennial morons."
Actually it was the USG through funding of various think tanks and NGOs that started the
whole fiasco with the MSM pushing the narrative. You know people with power in established
organizations, who tend to be much older. I wouldn't blame the people at the bottom so much for
the decisions made at the top.
Ahead of the 2020 U.S. elections, foreign states will continue to use covert and overt
influence measures in their attempts to sway U.S. voters' preferences and perspectives, shift
U.S. policies, increase discord in the United States, and undermine the American people's
confidence in our democratic process."
What America is yet again conniving to do is to discredit any domestic political dissent
against the fraud of "American Democracy" by connecting this dissent to those nations that
are the latest targets of America's Two Minutes of Hate campaign.
This is a standard American tactic that the USA always resorts to when it fears its own
citizens are starting to question the fairy tale of American "Democracy and Freedom." Thus,
during the Cold War, the USA even to discredit some elements of the Civil Rights movement as
being assets of the Soviet Union.
The great Orwellian hypocrisy of America's pants-wetting complaints that other countries
are meddling in America's (fake) democracy is that the United States itself is guilty of
regime changing, balkanizing, and colonizing scores of foreign nations dating back over a
century to the USA's regime change and eventual colonization of the Hawaiian Kingdom.
Bottom Line: America needs to drink a big up of Shut the F*ck Up with its pathetic Pity
Party whining about foreigners trying to influence its bogus democracy.
The Washington Post , whose sole owner
is a CIA contractor , has published yet another anonymously sourced CIA press release
disguised as a news report which just so happens to facilitate longstanding CIA foreign
policy.
True to form ,
at no point does WaPo follow standard journalistic protocol and disclose its blatant financial
conflict of interest with the CIA when promoting an unproven CIA narrative which happens to
serve the consent-manufacturing agendas of the CIA for its new cold war with Russia.
And somehow in our crazy, propaganda-addled society, this is accepted as "news".
The CIA has had a hard-on for the collapse of the Russian Federation
for many years , and preventing the rise of another multipolar world at all cost has been
an open agenda of US imperialism since the fall of the Soviet Union. Indeed it is clear
that the escalations
we've been watching unfold against Russia were in fact
planned well in advance of 2016, and it is only by propaganda narratives like this one that
consent has been manufactured for a new cold war which imperils the life of every organism on
this planet.
There is no excuse for a prominent news outlet publishing a CIA press release disguised as
news in facilitation of these CIA agendas. It is still more inexcusable to merely publish
anonymous assertions about the contents of that CIA press release. It is especially inexcusable
to publish anonymous assertions about a CIA press release which merely says that something is
"probably" happening, meaning those making the claim don't even know.
None of this stopped The Washington Post from publishing this propaganda piece on behalf of
the CIA. None of it stopped this story from being widely shared by prominent voices on social
media and repeated by major news outlets like
CNN , The New
York Times , and
NBC . And none of it stopped all the usual liberal influencers from taking the claims and
exaggerating the certainty:
The CIA-to-pundit pipeline, wherein intelligence agencies "leak" information that is picked
up by news agencies and then wildly exaggerated by popular influencers, has always been an
important part of manufacturing establishment Russia hysteria. We saw it recently when the
now completely debunked claim that Russia paid bounties on US troops to Taliban-linked
fighters in Afghanistan first surfaced;
unverified anonymous intelligence claims were published by mass media news outlets, then by
the time it got to spinmeisters like Rachel
Maddow it was being treated not as an unconfirmed analysis but as an established fact:
If you've ever wondered how rank-and-file members of the public can be so certain of
completely unproven intelligence claims, the CIA-to-pundit pipeline is a big part of it. The
most influential voices who political partisans actually hear things from are often a few
clicks removed from the news report they're talking about, and by the time it gets to them it's
being waved around like a rock-solid truth when at the beginning it was just presented as a
tenuous speculation (the original aforementioned WaPo report appeared on the opinion page).
The CIA has a well-documented history of
infiltrating and manipulating the mass media for propaganda purposes, and to this day the
largest supplier of leaked information from the Central Intelligence Agency to the news media
is the CIA itself. They have a whole process for
leaking information to reporters they like (with an internal form that asks whether
the information is Accurate, Partially Accurate, or Inaccurate), as was
highlighted in a recent court case which found that the CIA can even leak documents to
select journalists while refusing to release them to others via Freedom of Information Act
requests.
The way mainstream media has become split along increasingly hostile ideological
lines means that all the manipulators need to do to advance a given narrative is set it up
to make one side look bad and then share it with a news outlet from the other side. The way
media is set up to masturbate people's confirmation bias instead of report objective facts will
then cause the narrative to go viral throughout that partisan faction, regardless of how true
or false it might be.
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The coming US election and its aftermath is looking like it will be even more insane and
hysterical than the last one, and the enmity and outrage it creates will give manipulators
every opportunity to slide favorable narratives into the slipstream of people's hot-headed
abandonment of their own critical faculties.
And indeed they are clearly prepared to do exactly that. An
ODNI press release last month which was uncritically passed along by the most prominent US
media outlets reported that China and Iran are trying to help Biden win the November election
while Russia is trying to help Trump. So no matter which way these things go the US
intelligence cartel will be able to surf its own consent-manufacturing foreign policy agendas
upon the tide of outrage which ensues.
The propaganda machine is only getting louder and more aggressive. We're being prepped for
something.
* * *
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'It's Easier to Fool People Than to Convince Them That They Have Been Fooled'
- Mark Twain
palmereldritch , 49 seconds ago
And prior to Bezos/CIA ownership the paper was managed by heirs whose ownership stake
was originally acquired through a bankruptcy sale by a board member/trustee of The Federal
Reserve.
So maybe it was just a share transfer...
Freeman of the City , 1 minute ago
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free"
We can both be right. Russia cockblocking Israel's ability to just roll over Assad's
Syria, their relationship with Iran, etc. are big factors. It's been pretty funny to watch
American Progressives rant and rave about Russia like warmonger rednecks in the 80's who just
watched Rocky IV.
"Life is hard, it's harder if your stupid" - John Wayne
Freeman of the City , 18 seconds ago
'It's Easier to Fool People Than to Convince Them That They Have Been Fooled'
- Mark Twain
palmereldritch , 49 seconds ago
And prior to Bezos/CIA ownership the paper was managed by heirs whose ownership stake was
originally acquired through a bankruptcy sale by a board member/trustee of The Federal
Reserve.
So maybe it was just a share transfer...
Freeman of the City , 1 minute ago
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free"
Once I'd seen this mention of The Russian Playbook (aka KGB, Kremlin or Putin's Playbook), I saw the expression all over the place.
Here's an early – perhaps the earliest – use of the term. In October 2016, the Center for Strategic and International studies ("
Ranked #1 ") informed us of the "
Kremlin Playbook " with this ominous beginning
There was a deeply held assumption that, when the countries of Central and Eastern Europe joined NATO and the European Union
in 2004, these countries would continue their positive democratic and economic transformation. Yet more than a decade later, the
region has experienced a steady decline in democratic standards and governance practices at the same time that Russia's economic
engagement with the region expanded significantly.
And asks
Are these developments coincidental, or has the Kremlin sought deliberately to erode the region's democratic institutions
through its influence to 'break the internal coherence of the enemy system'?
Well, to these people, to ask the question is to answer it: can't possibly be disappointment at the gap between 2004's expectations
and 2020's reality, can't be that they don't like the total Western values package that they have to accept, it must be those crafty
Russians deceiving them. This was the earliest reference to The Playbook that I found, but it certainly wasn't the last.
Of course, all these people are convinced Moscow interfered in the 2016 presidential election. Somehow. To some effect. Never
really specified but the latest outburst of insanity is this
video from the Lincoln Project . As Anatoly Karlin observes:
"I think it's really cool how
we Russians took over America just by shitposting online. How does it feel to be subhuman?" He has a point: the Lincoln Project,
and the others shrieking about Russian interference, take it for granted that American democracy is so flimsy and Americans so gullible
that a few Facebook ads can bring the whole facade down. A curious mental state indeed.
What can we know about The Playbook? For a start it must be written in Russian, a language that those crafty Russians insist on
speaking among themselves. Secondly such an important document would be protected the way that highly classified material is protected.
There would be a very restricted need to know; underlings participating in one of the many plays would not know how their part fitted
into The Playbook; few would ever see The Playbook itself. The Playbook would be brought to the desk of the few authorised to see
it by a courier, signed for, the courier would watch the reader and take away the copy afterwards. The very few copies in existence
would be securely locked away; each numbered and differing subtly from the others so that, should a leak occur, the authorities would
know which copy read by whom had been leaked. Printed on paper that could not be photographed or duplicated. As much protection as
human cunning could devise; right up there with
the nuclear
codes .
And so on. It's all quite ridiculous: we're supposed to believe that Moscow easily controls far-away countries but can't keep
its neighbours under control.
There is no Russian Playbook, that's just projection. But there is a "playbook" and it's written in English, it's freely available
and it's inexpensive enough that every pundit can have a personal copy: it's named "
From Dictatorship To Democracy: A Conceptual Framework for Liberation " and it's written by
Gene Sharp (1928-2018) . Whatever Sharp may have thought he
was doing, whatever good cause he thought he was assisting, his book has been used as a guide to create regime changes around the
world. Billed as "democracy" and "freedom", their results are not so benign. Witness Ukraine today. Or Libya. Or Kosovo whose long-time
leader has just been indicted for numerous crimes
. Curiously enough, these efforts always take place in countries that resist Washington's line but never in countries that don't.
Here we do see training, financing, propaganda, discord being sown, divisions exploited to effect regime change – all the things
in the imaginary "Russian Playbook". So, whatever he may have thought he was helping, Sharp's advice has been used to produce what
only the propagandists could call "
model interventions "; to the "liberated" themselves, the reality is
poverty ,
destruction ,
war and
refugees
.
Reading Sharp's book, however, makes one wonder if he was just fooling himself. Has there ever been a "dictatorship" overthrown
by "non-violent" resistance along the lines of what he is suggesting? He mentions Norwegians who resisted Hitler; but Norway was
liberated, along with the rest of Occupied Europe, by extremely violent warfare. While some Jews escaped, most didn't and it was
the conquest of Berlin that saved the rest: the nazi state was killed . The USSR went away, together with its satellite governments
in Europe but that was a top-down event. He likes Gandhi but Gandhi wouldn't have lasted a minute under Stalin.
Otpor was greatly aided by NATO's war on Serbia. And, they're only
"non-violent" because the Western media doesn't talk much about
the violence ; "non-violent" is not the first word that
comes to mind in this video of Kiev 2014 . "Colour revolutions"
are manufactured from existing grievances, to be sure, but with a great deal of outside assistance, direction and funding; upon inspection,
there's much design behind their "spontaneity". And, not infrequently, with mysterious sniping at a expedient moment – see
Katchanovski's research
on the "Heavenly Hundred" of the Maidan showing pretty convincingly that the shootings were " a false flag operation" involving
"an alliance of the far right organizations, specifically the Right Sector and Svoboda, and oligarchic parties, such as Fatherland".
There is little in Sharp's book to suggest that non-violent resistance would have had much effect on a really brutal and determined
government. He also has the naďve habit of using "democrat" and "dictator" as if these words were as precisely defined as coconuts
and codfish. But any "dictatorship" – for example Stalin's is a very complex affair with many shades of opinion in it. So, in terms
of what he was apparently trying to do, one can see it only succeeding against rather mild "dictators" presiding over extremely unpopular
polities. With a great deal of outside effort and resources.
Patrick Armstrong was an analyst in the Canadian Department of National Defence specialising in the USSR/Russia from 1984
and a Counsellor in the Canadian Embassy in Moscow in 1993-1996. He retired in 2008 and has been writing on Russia and related subjects
on the Net ever since.
One of the most vibrantly alive people I met, André Vltchek, just died . Though he barely
made it past his mid-fifties he got in a lot more living than a hundred average Americans who
live to collect their pensions. Allah yarhamhu.
In honor of this great Truth Jihadi we're replaying this 2018 interview:
The West claims to be the "free world" -- the global leader in human rights,
humanitarianism, and free expression. Globetrotting independent journalist André Vltchek , who joins us from Borneo,
isn't buying it. His latest
essay begins:
Western culture is clearly obsessed with rules, guilt, submissiveness and punishment.
By now it is clear that the West is the least free society on Earth. In North America and
Europe, almost everyone is under constant scrutiny: people are spied on, observed, their
personal information is being continually extracted, and the surveillance cameras are used
indiscriminately.
Life is synchronized and managed. There are hardly any surprises.
One can sleep with whomever he or she wishes (as long as it is done within the 'allowed
protocol'). Homosexuality and bisexuality are allowed. But that is about all; that is how far
'freedom' usually stretches.
Rebellion is not only discouraged, it is fought against, brutally. For the tiniest
misdemeanors or errors, people end up behind bars. As a result, the U.S. has more prisoners per
capita than any other country on Earth, except the Seychelles.
Andre taunted rightwing elites and illness – with a passion. I guess one of them
caught up.
Living hard seems like a death-wish, maybe it was. Staring at darkness messes people up
and he traveled again and again into the hearts of darkness across the planet because he
wanted to be a modern Wilfred Burchett. He was one of the greats. My condolences to his
family and friends.
Peace to Stephen Cohen too. You both will be missed.
André Vltchek was not an intellectual heavyweight. What is fascinating about his
life-story is how and who financed. That should be easy for insiders to fish out, and
insiders there be.
As to my humble opinion, Chomsky was neither. From all angles, his pre-fabricated
prestige, his in-group attitudes, his encrusted prestance, pettiness, pedantry, always within
convention, his factoid approach, the channels of communication, the lack of any systemic
approach, his "good guys bad guys" copper´ approach, did not warrant the few hours
listening in on his tune and omni-presence. His numb personality, contrary to the combative
Vltchek is noted as a minor.
Some "intellectuals" have half a page of original content in them over the course of a
life-time (not the same as career (n´est ce pas Pinker?)), most have none. "History
repeat itself", through the bull-horns of public intellectuals. They both practiced a sort of
journalism that is superficial (accent on the superficial) agenda driven.
Ex-CIA John Kiriakou stated that the CIA was attempting to recruit just about anyone that
they were able to starting in the sixties ranging from Hollywood actors/actresses, musicians,
writers, journalists, artists, business people, just about anyone. Operation Mockingbird is
still widely used even if it is no longer regerred to it as Operation Mockingbird.
André Vltchek (1962-2020) was the son of a Czech nuclear physicist father, and a
Russian-Chinese artist-architect mother, born in Soviet-era St Petersburg (then Leningrad).
He spent part of his childhood as well in the famous Czech beer city of Pilsen.
Western culture is clearly obsessed with rules, guilt, submissiveness and
punishment.
What culture is not? Every single population on Earth wants to survive, Westerners want
non-Aryans to survive, but the mechanism is always the same. The Stasi, the Gestapo, the CIA,
the KGB – they all breathed air, and they all tortured dissenters. Turkey was almost
overthrown in 2016. The Shah of Iran was, as were Hosni Mubarak and Gaddafi in Egypt and
Libya. Bashar is facing quite a lot of criticism for being free – that critique comes
in the form of bombs and jihadi freedom fighters. The Saudi Prince is wise for strangling and
beheading Khashoggi. The USSR disintegrated after they had shut down the GULAG.
As a result, the U.S. has more prisoners per capita than any other country on Earth,
except the Seychelles.
In 2012, the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in [the DPR of Korea] estimated 150,000 to
200,000 are incarcerated, based on testimonies of defectors from the state police bureau,
which roughly equals 600–800 people incarcerated per 100,000. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate
The World Prison Brief puts the United States' incarceration rate at 655 per 100,000.
Okay. If the West is the least free society on the planet, why the heck do all these
third-world people keep trying to move there? It is plain that Vltchek's thinking flunks the
real-world reality test.
The reality is, the rest of the world is worse off than the West, or people wouldn't keep
trying to leave the third world for the West.
@Anon ey want to have freedom of their stupid religious beliefs, not freedom from
religion. They still don't know that freedom of religion is not worth anything if it also
doesn't guarantee freedom from religion.
Thomas Jefferson tried very hard to explain this to them, but Yankee morons have never
learned what Jefferson tried to teach them. (With some notable exceptions, though, who,
however, have absolutely no political power.)
Vltchek is/was right: American/Western civilization [sic] (siphilization, rather) is
bankrupt and inhuman. It can only offer an abundance of material goods and military weapons
as if the only goals of human life were material things and warfare.
Anatol Lieven's recent piece, How
the west lost , describes this moral defeat of the 'west' after its dubious 'victory' in
the cold war:
Accompanying this overwhelmingly dominant political and economic ideology was an American
geopolitical vision equally grandiose in ambition and equally blind to the lessons of
history. This was summed up in the memorandum on "Defence Planning Guidance 1994-1999," drawn
up in April 1992 for the Bush Senior administration by Under-Secretary of Defence Paul
Wolfowitz and Lewis "Scooter" Libby, and subsequently leaked to the media. Its central
message was:
...
While that 1992 Washington paper spoke of the "legitimate interests" of other states, it
clearly implied that it would be Washington that would define what interests were legitimate,
and how they could be pursued. And once again, though never formally adopted, this "doctrine"
became in effect the standard operating procedure of subsequent administrations. In the early
2000s, when its influence reached its most dangerous height, military and security elites
would couch it in the terms of "full spectrum dominance." As the younger President Bush
declared in his State of the Union address in January 2002, which put the US on the road to
the invasion of Iraq: "By the grace of God, America won the Cold War A world once divided
into two armed camps now recognises one sole and pre-eminent power, the United States of
America."
But that power has since failed in the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan, during the 2008
financial crisis and now again in the pandemic.
"For our part, we more than once described a balanced and mutually acceptable framework
for future agreements in this sphere during our contacts with the American negotiators. Aware
of the difficulties on the path forward in light of how widely different our approaches are,
we proposed extending the New START as it was originally signed.
"We do not want any unilateral advantages, but we will not make any unilateral concessions
either. A deal may be possible if the United States is ready to coordinate a new document on
the basis of the balance of interests, parity and without expecting Russia to make unilateral
concessions. But this will take time. We can have time to do this if the treaty is
extended."
As predicted, the Outlaw US Empire makes an offer it knows will be refused so it can then
blame Russia for being an unreliable negotiating partner--a trick we've all seen before.
That the Steele dossier was potentially based on the words of a Russian spy should have been
a red flag against its use. It seems that the FBI had not informed the FISA court about the
dubious sourcing of the dossier allegations.
Igor Danchenko, the premier sub-source for the Steele dossier, had
earlier worked for the Democrat affiliate Brookings Institute:
New information strikes the strongest blow yet at the foundations of the Russian collusion
narrative. April 4, 2019: A protestor outside the White House demanding the release of the full
Mueller Report. (By
bakdc/Shutterstock)
In a September 24th letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-SC),
Attorney General Bill Barr
revealed that the "primary sub-source" for the Steele dossier was the subject of an FBI
counterintelligence investigation in 2009. The source's Russian ties had been called into
question, and the individual was considered a possible national security threat, according to
Attorney General Barr's letter. This sub-source has elsewhere been identified as
Russian national Igor Danchenko.
This latest revelation in the Russiagate saga lands just over a month before the election,
chipping away further at one of the main lines of criticism that many on the left have leveled
against President Trump -- and bolstering suggestions from the president's own camp that the
FBI and other executive agencies engaged in substantial misconduct during the transition period
in 2016. Allegations contained in the Steele dossier justified FISA warrants against Trump
campaign advisor Carter Page and inspired many of the collusion claims that have been floated
in the four years since Trump's election victory.
The attorney general's letter attributes the finding to a now-declassified footnote in the
inspector general's report on the dubious FISA warrants. The footnote reports that the
individual later identified as Christopher Steele's primary source was under FBI investigation
from 2009 to 2011; the investigation was terminated because the subject "had apparently left
the United States."
The FBI found that Danchenko had been in contact with two known Russian intelligence
officers in 2005 and 2006. In his exchanges with one of these contacts, the Steele sub-source
openly expressed his desire to join the Russian diplomatic service. All of this was known to
the FBI's Crossfire Hurricane team as early as December 2016 -- five months before Robert
Mueller was even appointed to investigate collusion charges originating from Danchenko.
A few other interesting details:
Specifically, the FBI received reporting indicating a research fellow for an influential
foreign policy advisor in the Obama Administration was at a work-related event in late 2008
when they were approached by another employee of the think tank ("the employee"). The
employee reportedly indicated that if the two individuals at the table "did get a job in the
government and had access to classified information" and wanted "to make a little extra
money," the employee knew some people to whom they could speak. According to the research
fellow, there was no pretext to the conversation; the employee had not been invited to the
table
And if that weren't enough, "one interviewee did note that the Primary Sub-source
persistently asked about the interviewee's knowledge of a particular military vessel." Real
subtle there, Igor.
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It now seems likely that the panic about foreign influence which swept over our politics for
four years rested on the word of not just a Russian spy, but the worst Russian spy of all time.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Declan Leary is the Collegiate Network Fellow at The American Conservative and a
graduate of John Carroll University. His work has been published at National Review ,
Crisis, and elsewhere.
Following a long line of very arrogant american imperial "negotiators", mr oblivion
billingslea used standard "negotiating" techniques like
(a) accusing the other side of crimes Americans have committed first and forever, eg,
extreme lying, bad faith argumentation, military aggression, foreign government security
breaching, assassination and poisoning [as in american presidents and independent thinkers],
and of course, electoral cheating;
(b) putting the opponent in the "negotiation process" on the defensive or back foot by
stating false news allegations amplified by the media controlled by the american empire;
(c) offering nothing useful or commitable to be done by the empire, and yet
"magnanimously" demanding the moon as opponents' concessions, eg, russian, iranian and
chinese nuclear weapons limits, but not for nato's development and deployment, and; (d) after
making impossible demands, the imperials accuse the opponents of hostility and unwillingness
to "negotiate".
The russians can skillfully agree by stating that they only require the americans to
reduce their nukes to 320 pieces like china, and in less than five years.
This is why it is very important for sovereign nations to read the guidebook, called the
"idiot's guide on running the american empire", and developing deep and lasting
solutions.
As for the other american imperial military "advantages", eg, constellation of
"aggression" satellites, andrei forgot to mention that these can be shot or burned down in
minutes easily by russia, china and even iran, as these stations cannot hide or run away in
earth orbits.
Replenishment of weapons and military supplies after 3 months is rather doomed as the
cheap, mass production and manufacturing facilities do not exist. Which must be re-created
somehow but now
American lands are the targets. Much, Much Different Than WW2 !!
And of course, russia can always nuke down the USA and its vassal countries, and thus
permanently ruin their economies for a decade or more, they don't know how to run defense --
this was always the fatal weakness of all bullies - if they'll have enough time to "learn
it"... let's see... I doubt this.
Let's see americans try to start and conduct a nuclear war after too many spy, internet
and gps satellites are shot down. Russia can even do this today using conventional
explosives, and the world will be shocked how helpless the american military and economy can
be made even without using russian nukes.
There are countries still immune to the numerous american imperial diseases that are
already documented daily in zerohedge postings. The better countries still have lots of
parents telling their kids to study and work hard so they can have better lives than their
ancestors.
In oregon and california, they teach unemployable kids to burn something or somebody
sometime before dinner.
CdVision • 11 hours ago
I was about to say that what now comes out of the US & Trump's mouth in particular, is
Orwellian. But that credits it with too much gravitas. The true comparison is Alice in
Wonderland:
"Words mean whatever I want them to mean".
Reminiscence of the Future.. ( http://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2020/09/russia-steals-everything.html)
Russia "Steals Everything" !! (Not just China, oops... ???!!!!)
And Jesus Christ was an American and was born in Kalamazoo, MI. It is a well-known fact. So
Donald Trump, evidently briefed by his "utterly competent and crushingly precise aids", knows
now that too! !!! LOL
> US President Donald Trump claims that Russia developed hypersonic weapons after
allegedly stealing information from the United States.
> According to him, "Russia received this information from the Obama administration,"
Moscow "stole this information." Trump said that "Russia received this information and then
created" the rocket, reports TASS.
> "We have such advanced weapons that President Xi, Putin and everyone else will envy
us. They do not know what we have, but they know that it is something that no one has ever
heard of. "
->We are the foremost and always number one. Everything is invented only by us, the
rest can only either steal, or be gifted with our developments for good behavior. This
situation is eternal, unchanging, everyone lags behind American Tikhalogii at least 50 years
(the time frame was chosen so that even a 20-year-old would lose heart, "what's the point of
trying to catch up, it won't work anyway, in my lifetime"). It was, is, and will be, this is
the natural course of events.
All this is delivered in the format of the classic Sunday sermon of the American
provincial Protestant church, coding the parishioners for further deeds and actions. And it
worked effectively, creating in some basalt confidence "we are better because we are better",
in others - "I don't mind anything for joining this radiant success, I'm ready for anything,
I'll go for any hardships and crimes, if only There".
Only now it worked. In a situation where the frequency of pronouncing such mantras is more
and more, emotions are invested in them too, but in fact everyone understands that this is
what autohypnosis does not work.
The poor have stolen from the United States, if you look at it, literally everything. And
5G and the superweapon of the gods. Moreover, a pearl with a characteristic handwriting is
not copy / paste, but move / paste, you bastards. Therefore, the United States does not even
have any traces of developments left - the guys just sit in an empty room, shrug their hands,
"here we have a farm of mechanical killer dolls, with the faces of Mickey Mouse overexposed,
and now look - traces of bast shoes and candy wrappers from "Korkunov" only, ah-ah-ah, well,
something like that, ah. "
At the same time, there are no cases of sabotage, espionage - whole projects were simply
developed, developed, brought to a working product, and then the hob - and that's it, and
disappeared. And this became noticeable only after years. And all the persons involved are
like "wow, wow."
Psychiatric crazy fool of the head, no less.
But due to the fact that all of the above theses are driven very tightly into the template
for the perception of the world, both those who voiced these theses and the listeners are
satisfied.
Because the post-American post-hegemonic world is not terrible because in some ratings
another country will be higher there, and Detroit will never be rebuilt "as it was". It is
scary because it is not clear how to live for people who had no support in the form of global
goals, faith, philosophy of life, and all this was replaced by narcissism on the basis of
"successful success is my second self".
This means that the moment when this issue has to be resolved must be delayed to the last.
Leaving the whole topic on the plane "we were offended, we are offended, we were dishonest,
which means we have the right to any action" is not a bad move.
It's a pity that it doesn't really affect the essence of what is happening.
If all the energy wasted on peddling Russiagate had instead been used to push real
political alternatives to Trump's programs the Democrats and their voters would likely be in
a better position.
The Ds defeated that possibility when they conspired to derail Sanders and promote
Clinton. As a result, Obama's legacy is Trump. But there was a Deep State faction pulling
Obama's strings that's likely supporting the attempt to foment a domestic Color Revolution,
yet for the life of me I can't see why as all the grifters are getting billions--unless--it's
perceived that Trump's stalled their imperialist projects or stopped what they hoped to
accomplish via JCPOA. In other words, we need a better motive for Russiagate than the mere
disruption of Trump's administration.
The Nexus is Ukraine, where the DNC, Obama and others were heavily involved with corruption,
money into their pockets and money laundered for campaign uses, illegally brought back into
the US.
It was never Russia or Russians. It was always the Podesta-Clinton-Obama operatives and
their true believers in FBI and DOJ, working with the Russophobes in NGOs and the State
Dept.
The desperation as Trump became a real possible President and then an actual elected
President was to cover their crimes in Ukraine and the illegal actions to spy on Trump and
set up Trump campaign associates.
The difficult call now is how high up do the present investigators have cover to save the
institutions of the FBI and DOJ? A real take down would go to Obama, Biden, Clapper, Comey,
Brennan, Podesta, Clinton and all their lieutenants. It would collapse the CIA, State, FBI,
DOJ, and all the lying experts on Russia who perjured to Congress.
Red Ryder gets it -- Ukraine is the specific catalyst, linked to the New Cold War against
Russia and the corruption of the Democrats involved in that conflict.
There is also Flynn and his dirt on Obama's Syria/ISIS policy -- remember his Al Jazeera
interview about Obama's "wilful decision" to ignore DIA reports on ISIS. Flynn knows the US
and its allies had some kind of links to ISIS and Nusra Front (Al Qaeda) in Syria.
And there is also the more general concern, raised by Karlof1, about the Presidency and
the empire.
I found this barb delivered by Lavrov during his presser with Zarif I linked to on the open
thread to be very curious when thought about in the context of Russiagate:
"The fact that the United States has threatened to impose sanctions on those who defy the
American interpretation of the current situation serves as further proof of Washington's
desire to move like a bull in a china shop, putting ultimatums to everyone and punishing
everyone indiscriminately because, in my view, the incumbent US administration has lost
its diplomatic skills almost for good ." [My Emphasis]
Red Ryder @8 & profk @10 connect Ukraine and the outing of the Empire's role in the
creation of Daesh. Yes, it seems much is related to Russia's Phoenix-like rise and outwitting
the Empire's buffoons beginning in 2013 that's generated the above behavior noted by Lavrov.
If TrumpCo does get a second term, unless the entire foreign policy team is dumped and
replaced, its agenda will go nowhere other than further into the hole they've dug for
themselves over the past 20 years--almost every nation is now against Bush's USA as many now
know who the terrorists really are and where they live.
What if the goal of 2016 election was to set up the 2020 American color revolution? If so
Trump needed to win. Obama and the FBI did the groundwork here at home. There is some debate
if the first Trump dossier was actually the second one to cover for the Cody Shearer one that
was given to Strobe Talbot to give to Christopher Steele. Still it had the same goal as to
foster doubt about the legitimacy of 2016 that is currently culminating with the gun toting,
fire bombing hissy fit of the children of liberal privilege. Now if those blasted supreme
righties would just show up, and the whole thing can go really hot like it did in Ukraine,
Libya, Egypt, almost Syria, and any country I might be forgetting. Notice the Trump
administration is parroting the left's white supremacist conspiracy. Its all really bad
theater, but does anyone really care the crumbing infrastructure and the looming economic
collapse when you can instead root for your team. Yes, I am guilty of the later too. Added
bonus we already have a twofer of enemies (Russian and China) for yet another elitist war.
I very doubt that it was "Russiagate" who make it difficult for Trump to pursue the policies
he had been advocating during his election campaign...In fact, "Russiagate" has long ago been
debunked and we have not seen Trump worrying a bit about the average American Joe, most
flagrant during this pandemic...I doubt he would had behaved different were the "Russiagate"
to have never existed..
Simply, electoral "promises" almost never are fullfilled in the already dating decades
neoliberal order, both from the right or the "alleged" liberal left...
On the same grounds, we could affirm then that conspiracy theories about Obama´s
birth place made it difficult for Obama to pursue the policies he had been advocating during
his election campaign....
That Trump has ties to Russian oligarchs is, to my view, out of doubt for anyone following
a bit some writers who use to deeply research their analyses out there like John Helmer....
That these oligarchas had anything to do, in this respect, with the Kremlin, it is doubtful,
but highly likely related to business shenanigans amongst them and Trump & Co...related
to illegal bribes and money laundering...
What have been largely proved is that Trump and his administration have been using big
data management corporations and social networks engineering to manipulate elections and give
coups eveywhere ( as the thorough research I posted at the Week in Review leaves in evidence
it happened in several countries in Latin America , which leads us to suspect that they would
not resist the desire to use the same methods in the US...before...and after the 2016
elections...having Bannon ad chief of campaign and then as chief of staff in 2016 so as that
does not add for tranquility, with what legal methods is respected for achieving whatever
goal..as the last events have clearly showed...
It was during Trump´s mandate that the war on Yemen continued towards total
erradication of Yemenis, especially of Shia belief, by indiscriminate bombing and blockade of
essential goods...that Qasem Soleimani was murdered without any justified reason...that NATO
started a cheeky build up in Russian borders who remained still free of it...that the US
withdrew from most international agreements leaving US/Russia, US/Iran, US/LatinAmerican
relations at its lowest levels, by underminig any remaining trust...Trump reinstated and made
even harsher sanctions against everybody who was not already a "puppet regime", including
Venezuela, Cuba, Argentina, Russia, Iran, China, and, even looping the loop, against puppet
governments in the EU...
I very doubt it was Russiagate which kept him from releasing his tax records as requested
by governance transparecny, returning the ammounts of money defrauded in the "University
Loans" affair, clarifying his ties to Epstein network, stopping sowing hatred and divide
amongst US population, build the most world wide network of far-right extremists since post
WWII around the world but especially in Europe to undermine what of "democracy" remains left,
labeled and declared as "terrorists" any political party abroad who does not go along and
oppose his puppet government´s corrupt policies anywhere, lit the Middle East on fire
by continuously provoking Iran, Lebanon, Syria, sent his regime envoys to the EU to twist arm
so that the European countries dedicate more budget to buy provedly ineffective arms from the
US when the money is most needed for socio-economic and health issues in the middle of a
pandemic, not to mention the requisition of health supplies´ cargos in the very Chinese
tarmac which had been previously ordered and bought by European countries which needed them
urgently, criminalized, and tried to label them as second cathegory citizens, a great part of
US population of non-white foreign descent through whose hard work and shameful labor
conditions US thrived along all these decades, well, you name it, the list would be almost
for a book...or two...
To blame all this mess on "Russiagate" is, well, in the best case, underestimating the
readership here...
Oh please, b: "legal jeopardy", don't make me laugh. It's been four years . The whole
political part of Trump's career he's been under the tutelage of mafia consigliere Roy Cohn.
Even better known, he's flown on the Lolita Express, and the FBI has a trove of videos etc
from Epstein's safe (hmm, what else does the latter have in common with Roy Cohn besides the
Trump connection). Bottom line, he's a deeply compromised individual who's concluded long
ago, and correctly, that he's in over his head and better off just playing along. He's had no
reservations appointing professional Russophobes like Fiona Hill; in fact, which of his
appointees has not been a Cold Warrior besides perhaps T-Rex, who was a mere Venezuela
hawk because of some old Exxon bad blood, and who was quickly ditched anyway. Even now, his
own FBI director spouts RussiaGate red meat, and the Donald is doing squat about it.
What does it all matter to Trump? He doesn't have a good name to clear. He didn't run for
president expecting to win, let alone to carry out this or that specific program. This
Vale Tudo carnival atmosphere clearly suits him: if his opponents can make baseless
accusations, so can he. If they can expect to skate beyond some meaningless fall guys, so can
he. To actually uphold the law--it's just not how he rolls.
Had he mostly contented himself with playing president on TV and enjoying the perks of the
office, and understood you can't just let a pandemic kill off your own voters, all would've
been dandy. But, predictably, his ego got the better of him, and he just had to be the
statesman who was finally going to bring China to heel. Again, merely tweeting about it
could've been ignored, but by appointing an array of rabid ideologues who went to work on
"decoupling", he's sided with a Deep State which will hate him regardless, against
Corporate America which went into China to, you know, make money. In this way, he's made
himself enemies a Republican can ill afford; combine this with his personal style (or lack of
it), and just about nobody has his back any more. So the machine goes about purging this
alien body from its system.
when do the American people get to investigate Truman, Ike, John McCain, JFK, Johnson, Bush,
Obama, FBI, Trump, 9/11, CIA, invasion of Iraq, wall street, the US Treasury, the military,
Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon and the like..?
,==He did it==> he did not do it, <=someone else did it, ==>avoids the basic
problem:
America has a government that
a.) conducts wars to protect the economic interest of its favored few.
b.) uses law , to grant feudal lords wealth creating by extracting bits of wealth from
Americans.
c.) conducts nearly all its affairs in classified secret..
d.) is un accountable for the money it spends.
e.) is un accountable for the genocides it conducts in foreign lands.
f.) has two crime families which divide and conquer the citizens to control all election
outcomes
g.) has given to private bankers, its power to print money, control the economy, and tax the
people.
h.) has not adhered to the Bill of Rights or the un amended constitution.
i.) refuses to require private media to speak only the truth.
j.) Refuses to comply with and orto enforce the 1st and 4th amendment<=papers and effects
t/b secure
expand this list as you like
and
Americans have
a.) no access to the USA. <= 3 votes, insolation of state or voting district,
out 527 positions don't get it & none for the President
b.) must pay to the USA taxes and have no input as to how such taxes are collected or
used,
c.) must register their presence to the USA with id numbers
d.) must obey USA laws which Americans had no say in writing, or passing.
e.) must endure foreign wars and domestic programs that serve no legitimate domestic
interest.
expand this list as you like.
You are onto something there...I do not recall whose US think tank analyse I read about US
youth tending ideologically to the left...the same could be said of any youth around the
world after they have been left without future prospect and past opportunities to rise
through the social ladder by rampant savage neoliberal capitalism...
I said at the time that the Ukrainian experiment of 2014 was a general dressed rehearsal
for a future planned authoritarian fascist rule in most of the world, especially the West,
once the prospects, already known by the elites, of collapsing capitalism are obvious for the
general public and cause the consequent uprising..It is in this context that the pandemic and
its sudden impoverishing outcome fits, along with the "orchestrated" violent riots at various
locations, to justify martial law...
Notice that "rewritting of history of WWII" in favor of fascism is a feature of any US
administration since the fall of the USSR...
Past days I read that Roger Stone, former Trump advisor, if i am not wrong also implied in
a corruption case, advised Trump to declare martial law after winning in Novemeber...It is in
that context that all the noise we have been hearing all these past months about the riots,
militias, coups, and so on fit...What we have not heard about is about hundreds of thousands
of evictions, inacabable line ups for food banks, and the total socio-economic disaster more
than anything willingly built by TPTB...
Recal that they "built their own reality, and when you are catching up with that reality,
they build another one"...
It is difficult to teach old chickenhawk a new tricks. Looks like she is a real "national
security parasite" and will stay is this role till the bitter end.
"America's world management, NATO, the European Union and the construction of establishments and
alliances the US constructed after World War II have taken a hit." took hit because of the crisis of neoliberalism
not so much because of Russia resistance to the USA neoliberal domination and unwillingness to became a vassal state a la EU
states, Japan and GB.
Her hostile remark confirms grave mistake of allowing immigrants to occupy high position in the US foreign policy hierarchy.
They bring with themselves "ancient hatred"
Only a blind (or a highly indoctrinated/brainwashed) person is unable to see where all these neocon policies are leading...
Notable quotes:
"... America's world management, NATO, the European Union and the construction of establishments and alliances the US constructed after World War II have taken a hit ..."
"... "They lost the entire US political class ..."
Fiona Hill, the National Security Council's senior director for European and Russian affairs
till 2019, says divisions are rising inside the Kremlin over the knowledge of persevering with
a "dirty tricks" marketing campaign that's had combined outcomes and will now face diminishing
returns.
On the one hand, Russia's 2016 affect operations succeeded past the Kremlin's wildest goals.
The US-dominated, unipolar world that Putin has lengthy railed in opposition to is now not.
America's world management, NATO, the European Union and the construction of establishments and
alliances the US constructed after World War II have taken a hit. "On that ledger, wow, yes,
basically over-fulfilled the plan," mentioned Hill.
At the identical time, getting caught in the act of making an attempt to sabotage US
democracy has proved pricey. "They lost the entire US political class and politicized ties so that the whole future of
US-Russia relations now depends on who wins in November," she mentioned.
Somewhat a side note, but has some relevance. The West has used against Russia the same
memes and tropes the German Nazis used against Jews, the Soviet Union, and Slavic
peoples. The great Jewish conspiracy to destroy German is being regurgitated as Putin
wants to destroy American democracy. But the second half the Nazi attack was the Jews wanted
to destroy European civilization, and not just Germany. This is where the crap about "rules
based order" comes in. Some also used the term "liberal democracies". Same theme: Russian
wants to destroy the entirety of the Western order--not just making sure Hillary lost the
election (and now Biden).
But here is the thing. The West with American leadership looks at this struggle over a
rules based order as a life and death struggle. It is not just about economic competition and
dominance. The underlying propaganda base is rather deadly.
"... Accompanying this overwhelmingly dominant political and economic ideology was an American geopolitical vision equally grandiose in ambition and equally blind to the lessons of history. This was summed up in the memorandum on "Defence Planning Guidance 1994-1999," drawn up in April 1992 for the Bush Senior administration by Under-Secretary of Defence Paul Wolfowitz and Lewis "Scooter" Libby ..."
"... In the early 2000s, when its influence reached its most dangerous height, military and security elites would couch it in the terms of "full spectrum dominance." ..."
"... Bhadrakumar describes how the 'west', through its own behavior, created a mighty block that now opposes its dictates. He concludes ..."
"... Quintessentially, Russia and China contest a set of neoliberal practices that have evolved in the post-World War 2 international order validating selective use of human rights as a universal value to legitimise western intervention in the domestic affairs of sovereign states. On the other hand, they also accept and continuously affirm their commitment to a number of fundamental precepts of the international order -- in particular, the primacy of state sovereignty and territorial integrity, the importance of international law, and the centrality of the United Nations and the key role of the Security Council. ..."
"... The rules are follow the dictates of our western neo-colonial institutions like the World Bank, the IMF et all. ..."
"... Its a pretty simple concept backed by the attack dog of the US military. ..."
"... 'Rules based order' was always a euphemism for exceptionalism of one kind or another. The term was invented to avoid having to say 'rule of law', which invited criticism because even the most minimal amount of law (such as Geneva conventions, ICC etc) was rejected in practice and in policy by the leading members of the actually existing world order. ..."
"... Rumor says the "Wolfowitz Doctrine" also envisioned the balkanization of Russia (the document is still classified, but it leaked to a NYT journalist at the time, who published a report on it). ..."
"... It is not over in the sense that the West hasn't given up in its attempts to take over the world. But as the "exceptionalist" western countries decline, they will go even crazier and crazier and there will be full blown hysteria. ..."
"... In this sense, the rule based order will be over as there will be only disorder and animalistic, crazed western rage and bullying. The West is like a trapped animal. It will start pouncing, raging and snarling like a wild animal. This is the real nature of the West. A hungry wild animal that needs to feed. ..."
"... But behind the liberal mask, there are hateful eyes and gnashing teeth, and hunger and greed for other people's resources. ..."
"... Expressed in words, the West's face says "I'm the best and you are nothing! Give me your stuff! And this is how it will forever be!" ..."
"... As Putin has said, the US is no longer agreement capable. ..."
"... Instead of bringing Russia into the Western liberal democracies (with the threat of major nuclear war now drastically reduced) the now Anglo-Zionist Empire just looted it. ..."
"... Actually the Trump Administration has done far more against Russia than all US administrations from the last 30 years. Do not listen what they say, look at what they do. Right now the US in a full blown Cold War with Russia with ever increasing attacks ..."
"... Rules based international order .... the U.S. functions as the the Supreme Court for the U.N. , 'we have invoked snapback sanctions and extended the arms embargo on Iran indefinitely and are enforcing it'. UN, 'but your vote failed'. ..."
"... Rules based International Order is the dog whistle for global private finance controlled economies. It is sad that we are in a civilization war with China/Russia about who runs international finance going forward and yet there is no discussion of the subject but instead all sorts of proxy conflicts. ..."
"... The US is not just facing relative decline -- the fact that others are catching up in key ways. The US is also facing absolute decline -- the fact that it is suffering a degradation of capacities and is losing competitive battles in key areas. Examples of absolute decline include the Russian and Chinese military-technological revolutions based on anti-ship and hypersonic missiles and air defense systems; Chinese 5G; China's demonstrative success in suppressing COVID and its overall manufacturing power; the declining quality of life for most Americans; and the collapse of American institutional competence. ..."
"... Related to this, we can't separate these dynamics from the political economy of the states in question. China, in particular, is showing that an interventionist state, with high levels of public ownership, is essential to qualitative power, human security, and economic and social development. ..."
"... Psssst, learning Russian is easier than Chinese and we already know a few Russian words, such as novichok. ..."
"... Russia after the Cold War was a shambles and today it remains a weak economy with a limited role on the world stage, concerned mainly with retaining some of its traditional areas of influence. China is a vastly more formidable competitor. If the US (and the UK, if as usual we tag along) approach the relationship with Beijing with anything like the combination of arrogance, ignorance, greed, criminality, bigotry, hypocrisy and incompetence with which western elites managed the period after the Cold War, then we risk losing the competition and endangering the world. [my emphasis] ..."
"... It is not over in the sense that the West hasn't given up in its attempts to take over the world. ..."
"... The contest between the Empire and the upstarts is not over by a long shot. What the West HAS lost is the "inevitability" argument. But for the upstarts to actually prevail in their "multi-lateral" vision, they have to actually entice countries to join them despite threats and intimidation from the Empire. ..."
"... The Empire's power-elite KNOW that Russia, China, and allies of Russia-China don't want to be subject to their "rules-based order". The Empire is actively working to undermine, subvert, and divide the countries that oppose it. While also securing their own territories/population via intimidation and propaganda. ..."
"... On rules based disorder and the capitulation of Merkel and her BND lapdogs to the 'hate Russia' fulminations of the UKUSA morons. I see that the German Parliament has NOT TAKEN its red pills these days and is reluctant to swallow the BS. ..."
"... My late father as an army officer prosecuted Japanese war criminals for their atrocities now the Anglo-Zionists are the pre-eminent war criminals and their leaders loudly proclaim "our values" as a pathological and propagandistic form of projection. Is it possible they are unaware of their blatant hypocrisy ? ..."
"... There is no "international law" and no "international order." There is only relative power. And when those powers clash, as seems inevitable, the world is in for a major nuclear war, and probably preceded by several more regional wars. Meanwhile, the US internally is collapsing into economic disaster, social unrest, political and social oppression, infrastructure failure, and medical disasters. We'll probably be in martial law sometime between November 3 and January 21 if not beyond that period, just for starters. ..."
"... America's "Rules-Based International Order" is a Goebbelsian euphemism for a Lies-Based Imperial Order, led by the USA and its war criminal allies (aka the self-styled Free World). ..."
"... The true nature of this America-led order is exposed by the USA's war of aggression against Iraq (which violated international law and had no United Nations sanction) and its decades-long War on Terrorism, which have murdered hundreds of thousands of people and maimed, immiserated, or refugeed millions of more people. ..."
"... The Empire is very much alive and dangerous. Ask Iran, ask Syria, as the Palestinians, ask the Russians, ask the Chinese. Ask numerous African nations. Even Pangloss was not so stupidly naive. ..."
"... quite right. 'Rules based order' was always a euphemism for exceptionalism of one kind or another. ie US and its "allies" is basically asking the rest of the world to finance their (the US et al) version of a welfare state. ..."
"... China and rest of the worlds foreign central banks stopped growing their foreign exchange reserves (on net) in 2014 leaving the US in a sort of limbo. ..."
"... "Major powers maintaining cooperation, at least not engaging in Cold War-style antagonism, is the important foundation of world peace. China is committed to maintaining cooperation among major powers, as well as being flexible in the balance of interests acceptable to all parties. The problem is the Trump administration is hysterically shaping decoupling and confrontation between Beijing and Washington, and has been mobilizing more forces to its side at home and abroad. Those US policymakers are deliberately splitting the world like during the Cold War. ..."
"... The first 'Cold War' was entirely contrived. The US knew the Soviet Union was weak and had no agenda beyond maintaining security and its own reconstruction after WW2. There was no threat of a Western European invasion, or of the USSR spreading revolution globally. All that Cold War ideology is a lie. And the same lying is taking place about China today. No difference. ..."
"... It's good to see discussion here of the nefarious role of the American far-right neocon warmongers in the State Department, intelligence services and military leadership just before the turn of the new century. What I have never seen clearly explained, however, is the connection between these very dangerous forces and the equally cynical and reactionary Israeli politicians and the Mossad, as well as Saudi Arabian officials. ..."
The 'western' countries, i.e. the United States and its 'allies', love to speak of a 'rules based international order'
which they say everyone should follow. That 'rules based order' is a way more vague concept
than the actual rule of law:
The G7 is united by its shared values and commitment to a rules based international order.
That order is being challenged by authoritarianism, serious violations of human rights,
exclusion and discrimination, humanitarian and security crises, and the defiance of
international law and standards.
As members of the G7, we are convinced that our societies and the world have reaped
remarkable benefits from a global order based on rules and underscore that this system must
have at its heart the notions of inclusion, democracy and respect for human rights,
fundamental freedoms, diversity, and the rule of law.
That the 'rules based international order' is supposed to include vague concepts of
'democracy', 'human rights', 'fundamental freedoms', 'diversity' and more makes it easy to
claim that this or that violation of the 'rules based international order' has occurred. Such
violations can then be used to impose punishment in the form of sanctions or war.
That the above definition was given by a minority of a few rich nations makes it already
clear that it can not be a global concept for a multilateral world. That would require a set of
rules that everyone has agreed to. We already had and have such a system. It is called
international law. But at the end of the cold war the 'west' began to ignore the actual
international law and to replace it with its own rules which others were then supposed to
follow. That hubris has come back to bite the 'west'.
Anatol Lieven's recent piece, How
the west lost , describes this moral defeat of the 'west' after its dubious 'victory' in
the cold war:
Accompanying this overwhelmingly dominant political and economic ideology was an American
geopolitical vision equally grandiose in ambition and equally blind to the lessons of
history. This was summed up in the memorandum on "Defence Planning Guidance 1994-1999," drawn
up in April 1992 for the Bush Senior administration by Under-Secretary of Defence Paul
Wolfowitz and Lewis "Scooter" Libby, and subsequently leaked to the media. Its central
message was:
...
While that 1992 Washington paper spoke of the "legitimate interests" of other states, it
clearly implied that it would be Washington that would define what interests were legitimate,
and how they could be pursued. And once again, though never formally adopted, this "doctrine"
became in effect the standard operating procedure of subsequent administrations. In the early
2000s, when its influence reached its most dangerous height, military and security elites
would couch it in the terms of "full spectrum dominance." As the younger President Bush
declared in his State of the Union address in January 2002, which put the US on the road to
the invasion of Iraq: "By the grace of God, America won the Cold War A world once divided
into two armed camps now recognizes one sole and pre-eminent power, the United States of
America."
But that power has since failed in the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan, during the 2008
financial crisis and now again in the pandemic. It also created new competition to its role due
to its own behavior:
On the one hand, American moves to extend Nato to the Baltics and then (abortively) on to
Ukraine and Georgia, and to abolish Russian influence and destroy Russian allies in the
Middle East, inevitably produced a fierce and largely successful Russian nationalist
reaction. ...
On the other hand, the benign and neglectful way in which Washington regarded
the rise of China in the generation after the Cold War (for example, the blithe decision to
allow China to join the World Trade Organisation) was also rooted in ideological arrogance.
Western triumphalism meant that most of the US elites were convinced that as a result of
economic growth, the Chinese Communist state would either democratise or be overthrown; and
that China would eventually have to adopt the western version of economics or fail
economically. This was coupled with the belief that good relations with China could be
predicated on China accepting a so-called "rules-based" international order in which the US
set the rules while also being free to break them whenever it wished; something that nobody
with the slightest knowledge of Chinese history should have believed.
The retired Indian ambassador M.K. Bhadrakumar touches on the same points in an excellent
series about the new Chinese-Russian alliance:
Bhadrakumar describes how the 'west', through its own behavior, created a mighty block that
now opposes its dictates. He concludes:
Quintessentially, Russia and China contest a set of neoliberal practices that have evolved in
the post-World War 2 international order validating selective use of human rights as a
universal value to legitimise western intervention in the domestic affairs of sovereign
states. On the other hand, they also accept and continuously affirm their commitment to a
number of fundamental precepts of the international order -- in particular, the primacy of
state sovereignty and territorial integrity, the importance of international law, and the
centrality of the United Nations and the key role of the Security Council.
While the U.S. wants a vague 'rules based international order' China and Russia emphasize an
international order that is based on the rule of law. Two recent comments by leaders from China
and Russia underline this.
China firmly supports the United Nations' central role in global affairs and opposes any
country acting like boss of the world, President Xi Jinping said on Monday.
...
"No country has the right to dominate global affairs, control the destiny of others or keep
advantages in development all to itself," Xi said.
Noting that the UN must stand firm for justice, Xi said that mutual respect and equality
among all countries, big or small, is the foremost principle of the UN Charter.
No country should be allowed to do whatever it likes and be the hegemon or bully, Xi said.
"Unilateralism is a dead end," he said.
...
International laws should not be distorted or used as a pretext to undermine other countries'
legitimate rights and interests or world peace and stability, he added.
The Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov went even further by outright rejecting the 'western rules' that the 'rules
based international order' implies:
Ideas that Russia and China will play by sets of Western rules under any circumstances are
deeply flawed , Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview with New
York-based international Russian-language RTVI channel.
"I was reading our political scientists who are well known in the West. The following idea
is becoming louder and more pronounced: it is time to stop applying Western metrics to our
actions and stop trying to be liked by the West at any cost . These are very reputable people
and a rather serious statement. It is clear to me that the West is wittingly or unwittingly
pushing us towards this analysis. It is likely to be done unwittingly," Lavrov noted.
"However, it is a big mistake to think that Russia will play by Western rules in any case,
just like thinking this in terms of China."
As an alliance China and Russia have all the raw materials, energy, engineering and
industrial capabilities, agriculture and populations needed to be completely independent from
the 'west'. They have no need nor any desire to follow dubious rules dictated by other powers.
There is no way to make them do so. As M.K. Bhadrakumar concludes
:
The US cannot overwhelm that alliance unless it defeats both China and Russia together,
simultaneously. The alliance, meanwhile, also happens to be on the right side of history.
Time works in its favour, as the decline of the US in relative comprehensive national power
and global influence keeps advancing and the world gets used to the "post-American century."
---
P.S.
On a lighter note: RT , Russia's state sponsored international TV station, has recently
hired Donald Trump
(vid). He will soon host his own reality show on RT . The working title is reportedly:
"Putin's Apprentice". The apprenticeship might give him a chance to learn how a nation that has
failed can be resurrected to its former glory.
Posted by b on September 22, 2020 at 17:59 UTC | Permalink
The Liberal International Order or Pax Americana are synonyms for The
Rules Based Order. The plan that was followed for years was the outline given by Zbigniew
Brzezinski and the Trilateral Commission in The Grand Chessboard to "contain" the ambition of
Russia, China, and Iran over their interest to expand into Central Asia and the Middle East.
Brzezinski changed
in 2016, so did Kissinger, Brzezinski wrote that it was time to make peace and to integrate
with Russia, China and Iran. But the elites had changed by then, newer people had taken
over and no longer followed Brzezinski.
The rules are follow the dictates of our western neo-colonial institutions like the World
Bank, the IMF et all. We will own you and you will do what we say and those are the rules.
Any challenge to our authority will lead to war, economic ruin or both.
Its a pretty simple concept backed by the attack dog of the US military.
'Rules based order' was always a euphemism for exceptionalism of one kind or another.
The term was invented to avoid having to say 'rule of law', which invited criticism
because even the most minimal amount of law (such as Geneva conventions, ICC etc) was
rejected in practice and in policy by the leading members of the actually existing world
order.
Rumor says the "Wolfowitz Doctrine" also envisioned the balkanization of Russia (the document
is still classified, but it leaked to a NYT journalist at the time, who published a report on
it).
It is not over in the sense that the West hasn't given up in its attempts to take over the
world. But as the "exceptionalist" western countries decline, they will go even crazier and
crazier and there will be full blown hysteria.
In this sense, the rule based order will be over as there will be only disorder and
animalistic, crazed western rage and bullying. The West is like a trapped animal. It will start pouncing, raging and snarling like a wild
animal. This is the real nature of the West. A hungry wild animal that needs to feed.
All the liberalism is just self-congratulation about how exceptionalist it is. It is born
out of narcisism and self-obsession during the "good times" of the West.
But behind the liberal mask, there are hateful eyes and gnashing teeth, and hunger and
greed for other people's resources.
The real face of it is hateful and snarling. And it will be fully exposed during the next
10 years, as the West goes crazy and it becomes a hungry wild animal that desperately needs
to feed.
Expressed in words, the West's face says "I'm the best and you are nothing! Give me your
stuff! And this is how it will forever be!"
Countries need to stay out from the wild animal and carry a big stick just in case, until
it succumbs from its internal hatreds and contradictions.
As Putin has said, the US is no longer agreement capable. As b. outlines. the US elites no
longer follow the rule of law. This is even true within the US. The US inherited the role
formerly played by the British Empire after WW2.
The national security apparatus of both the
US and the Soviet Union kept the Cold War going. Notice how soon after JFK was assassinated
Khrushchev was deposed. Gorbachev rightly stopped the Soviets superpower regime. As Dmitri Orlov points out - Empire hollowed out the Soviet Union and he sees it doing the same to the
US.
Instead of bringing Russia into the Western liberal democracies (with the threat of major
nuclear war now drastically reduced) the now Anglo-Zionist Empire just looted it. The life
expectancy of Russians fell 7 years in a decade until rescued by Putin.
It can now be seen
that the Nixon-Kissinger opening up to China was not to gain access to its large market
potential but to gain access to hundreds of millions of cheap, disciplined, and educated
workers. The elites starting in the 70s became greedier. Jet travel,electronic communication,
and computers allowed the outsourcing of manufacture.
The spread of air conditioning allowed
even the too hot south to be a location. First in the US as the factories began their march
through the non union southern states onto Mexico. Management from the north could now live
in air conditioned houses, drive air conditioned cars and work in air conditioned offices.
The 70s oil inflation led to stagnation as the unionized labor were powerful enough to get
cost of living raises. With the globalization of labor union power in the US has been
destroyed. As Eric X Li points out China's one party rule actually changes policies easier
than the Western democracies.
So China's government hasn't joined in with the West in just
creating wealth for the top 1% and debt for the real economy.
As b. pointed out, the Anglo
Zionist policies created the mutual benefit partnership of Russia and China. The Chinese belt
and road initiative appears to be intent on creating a large trading zone that could benefit
those involved. The US is just using sanctions and the military to turn sovereign functioning
countries that don't go along with it into failed states and their infrastructure turned to
rubble
Now, the US is forced into puppeteering the UN in order to maintain the illusion of the
'rules based order,' even as it slides further and further away from any meaningful
international cooperation:
Fortunately for the world, the United States took responsible action to stop this from
happening. In accordance with our rights under UNSCR 2231, we initiated the snapback process
to restore virtually all previously terminated UN sanctions, including the arms embargo. The
world will be safer as a result.
The United States expects all UN Member States to fully comply with their obligations
to implement these measures. In addition to the arms embargo, this includes restrictions
such as the ban on Iran engaging in enrichment and reprocessing-related activities, the
prohibition on ballistic missile testing and development by Iran, and sanctions on the
transfer of nuclear- and missile-related technologies to Iran, among others. If UN Member
States fail to fulfill their obligations to implement these sanctions, the United States is
prepared to use our domestic authorities to impose consequences for those failures and ensure
that Iran does not reap the benefits of UN-prohibited activity.
Actually the Trump Administration has done far more against Russia than all US
administrations from the last 30 years. Do not listen what they say, look at what they
do. Right now the US in a full blown Cold War with Russia with ever increasing attacks.
Pompeo talks more or less continually about "China's bullying behaviour". To me it is
wonderful that he can say this with a straight face. (Perhaps it is a result of his lessons
in the CIA on "how to lie better".)All the countries that have engaged with China have
benefitted from it, whether as salesmen or as recipients of aid or loans at advantageous
rates. The countries that have engaged with America have mostly (All?) lost. (The fifty+
countries invaded and wrecked since WW2 or the NATO "allies" or the countries attacked with
sanctions.) Either their economies were destroyed or billions upon billions of dollars were
paid to the US MIC. The NATO member countries have got what from their membership? Formerly,
they had "Protection" from an imaginary Soviet threat, more recently "Protection" from an
equally imaginary Russian threat! Some bargain, that!
Rules based international order .... the U.S. functions as the the Supreme Court for the
U.N. , 'we have invoked snapback sanctions and extended the arms embargo on Iran
indefinitely and are enforcing it'. UN, 'but your vote failed'.
U.S, 'we have the right to seize cargo between any two countries transported in
international waters based on U.S. federal appeals court decision even though the transaction
in no way involves the U.S. We call this Freedom of Navigation and why we need to have
aircraft carriers in the South China Sea and Arabian Gulf'
Rules based International Order is the dog whistle for global private finance controlled
economies.
It is sad that we are in a civilization war with China/Russia about who runs international
finance going forward and yet there is no discussion of the subject but instead all sorts of
proxy conflicts.
Thanks for the posting b as it gets to the core myths around the global private finance
jackboot on the neck of countries in the West.
The US is not just facing relative decline -- the fact that others are catching up in key
ways. The US is also facing absolute decline -- the fact that it is suffering a degradation
of capacities and is losing competitive battles in key areas. Examples of absolute decline
include the Russian and Chinese military-technological revolutions based on anti-ship and
hypersonic missiles and air defense systems; Chinese 5G; China's demonstrative success in
suppressing COVID and its overall manufacturing power; the declining quality of life for most
Americans; and the collapse of American institutional competence.
Related to this, we can't separate these dynamics from the political economy of the states
in question. China, in particular, is showing that an interventionist state, with high levels
of public ownership, is essential to qualitative power, human security, and economic and
social development.
Capitalism might enrich a few, but it is the primary cause of America's relative and
absolute decline.
US and allied military analysts have been talking over the last year or so of the need to
enter a single focus and total "wartime" posture throughout our societies, with all financial
and industrial output directed to the "war". This has influenced the information/ propaganda
efforts, but also the uptick in military manoeuvres around Taiwan and renewed NATO pressure
directed at Russia (including the recent provocative B52 flights). Don't think Russia/China
can be tricked into over-reacting, but some kind of loss-of-life military confrontation may
be what the rules-based side is looking for as the population at large will probably not
accept a "wartime sacrifice" regimen without such.
Whilst Russia and China are creating a truly new, unique and creative alliance and a
market of everything, in Australia the "authorities" are sicking their police dogs on poor
grannies sitting on park benches. This image of five brainless armed state goons in a show of
force over two quiet little grannies really puts things into perspective. It must be that New
World Order that Soros and puppets always talked about.
Psssst, learning Russian is easier than Chinese and we already know a few Russian words,
such as novichok.
The post scriptum stopped the clock for me. Has our host slipped into our drink there a
profound prophecy, disguised as jesting?
Many agree something big will happen (break?) soon, possibly with the elections. The other
thing is the Americans' ability to change course, drop all baggage, and run off in a new,
even the opposite direction with unfettered enthusiasm (and ferocity). No people has a
greater capacity for almost instant renewal, once it chooses to.
I also notice that the spoof takes good aim at The Donald's peculiarities, though in a
fair and human way. The proverbial Russian warmth, or a humorous invitation?
Meanwhile, I enjoy my newfound optimism in these dark times. Thanks b!
Thanks b and on Anatol Lieven in the Prospect story (fairy story?)...
Russia after the Cold War was a shambles and today it remains a weak economy with a limited
role on the world stage, concerned mainly with retaining some of its traditional areas of
influence. China is a vastly more formidable competitor. If the US (and the UK, if as usual
we tag along) approach the relationship with Beijing with anything like the combination of
arrogance, ignorance, greed, criminality, bigotry, hypocrisy and incompetence with which
western elites managed the period after the Cold War, then we risk losing the
competition and endangering the world. [my emphasis]
Lieven simply does not see it. Has it ever occurred to Lieven that colonialism just might
be rejected by both Russia and China and that there might be no competition? Does Lieven
watch too much football?
What is it that endangers the world in Lieven's petite cortex? This verbose Lieven
tosh is littered with fancy sentences trawled from here and there but always presented to us
from a narrow dimensional mind with limited analysis and seemingly zero interrogation.
again:- "then we risk losing the competition and endangering the world"...
So Lieven thinks the current behaviour of the US hegemon and its collaborator the UK is
innocuous? These were the two nations that blithely squandered the "peace dividend" from the
end of cold war as he describes and have led us to this time of perpetual war. A perpetual
war that he does not mention, does not allude to, does not treat as an important driver
behind the current global mistrust and disengagement from the USUK drive for global
dominance.
Lieven is putting lipstick on his pig and screaming about losing the competition to the
imagined wolf outside his prison.
It is not over in the sense that the West hasn't given up in its attempts to take over
the world.
I agree. The contest between the Empire and the upstarts is not over by a long shot. What the West HAS lost is the "inevitability" argument. But for the upstarts to actually
prevail in their "multi-lateral" vision, they have to actually entice countries to join them
despite threats and intimidation from the Empire.
_________________________________
Passer by @Sep22 20:15 #14
Right now the US in a full blown Cold War with Russia with ever increasing attacks.
Yes. We still see the narratives like of Trump as Putin-lover despite the debunking of
Russiagate and the clear evidence of Cold War tensions. The incessant propaganda reeks of
desperation.
<> <> <> <> <> <>
Some seem to think that the Empire is cornered.
Aha! We've got you now, you scoundrels!
LOL.
The Empire's power-elite KNOW that Russia, China, and allies of Russia-China don't want to
be subject to their "rules-based order". The Empire is actively working to undermine,
subvert, and divide the countries that oppose it. While also securing their own
territories/population via intimidation and propaganda.
On rules based disorder and the capitulation of Merkel and her BND lapdogs to the 'hate
Russia' fulminations of the UKUSA morons. I see that the German Parliament has NOT TAKEN its
red pills these days and is reluctant to swallow the BS. It would be satisfying to see the
collective wisdom of the Parliament to exceed that of the BND. But then that is a low bar.
"For our part, we more than once described a balanced and mutually acceptable framework
for future agreements in this sphere during our contacts with the American negotiators. Aware
of the difficulties on the path forward in light of how widely different our approaches are,
we proposed extending the New START as it was originally signed.
"We do not want any unilateral advantages, but we will not make any unilateral concessions
either. A deal may be possible if the United States is ready to coordinate a new document on
the basis of the balance of interests, parity and without expecting Russia to make unilateral
concessions. But this will take time. We can have time to do this if the treaty is
extended."
As predicted, the Outlaw US Empire makes an offer it knows will be refused so it can then
blame Russia for being an unreliable negotiating partner--a trick we've all seen before.
I agree. The contest between the Empire and the upstarts is not over by a long shot.
What the West HAS lost is the "inevitability" argument. But for the upstarts to actually
prevail in their "multi-lateral" vision, they have to actually entice countries to join them
despite threats and intimidation from the Empire.
Yes, the big question remaining is to predict what will happen and when. This is what the
real deal is. And I'm sure they are working on that in the Intel agencies. It can certainly be predicted that the US and the EU will be significantly weaker in 2030
that today. Will this be enough is the question.
We now have some new information about US long term health as published by CBO. Very
interesting numbers.
They predict lower population growth and lower GDP growth for the US than previously
estimated, as well as higher debt rates. US federal debt is to reach 195 % of GDP by 2050 under best case scenario.
Analysts also seem to agree that the Covid 19 crisis further weakened the US vis a vis
China, as the Chinese economy significantly outperformed almost everyone else this year, more
than expected before the crisis.
I will also mention two important recent numbers. This year:
1. China, for the first time, became the biggest trading partner for the EU, beating the
US.
2. China's retail market overtook the one of the US.
Posted by: vk | Sep 22 2020 19:05 utc | 4 -- "....Eurasia is where most of human civilization
lives, it's the "World Island" - the world island not in the military sense, but in the
economic sense. Every path to human prosperity passes through Eurasia - that's why the USA
can't "let it alone" in the first place, while the reverse is not true, that is, Eurasia can
give to the luxury of letting the Americas alone."
Excellent observation, VK.
Even if the World Island (thanks for your formulation) trades with itself, within itself,
there is sufficient mass to last a century, during which the arrogantly exceptional West
might just wake up from their Century of Humiliation.
Meanwhile, inertia alone will ensure that the West forgets that their vaunted
"civilisation" was fed, watered, enriched by the Silk Route that came from the East -- from
the Middle Kingdom (China) and from the Middle East (which is "middle", as you pointed out
above, because all wealth passes through that region).
Yes there are rules which are observed more by their breach than their observance: The Geneva
Conventions. Just ask Julian Assange.
I find it incredible that the Anglo-Zionist captive nations can sign, ratify, incorporate
into domestic law and then sign the additional protocol, making themselves high contracting
parties, which requires them to report all and any breaches to Geneva, then ignore all the
above commitments. One of these commitments includes educating their citizens on the basic
provisions of the conventions. Again they haven't bothered, that could expose their hypocrisy
to the public.
Even the bandit statelet signed but I am yet to see just one example of its application in
the seventy plus years of its barbaric and bloodthirsty occupation of Palestine.
Interestingly, the conventions prohibit the occupied from signing away one iota of their
territory to the occupier. So much for what Claude Pictet's Commentary to the Fourth Geneva
Convention calls "alleged annexations." This book is available from the ICRC.
My late father as an army officer prosecuted Japanese war criminals for their atrocities
now the Anglo-Zionists are the pre-eminent war criminals and their leaders loudly proclaim
"our values" as a pathological and propagandistic form of projection. Is it possible they are
unaware of their blatant hypocrisy ?
It seems the New World Order has some familiar and unsurprising antecedents:
Anatol Lieven comes from an educated and cultured family in Britain's upper middle class
layer. His older siblings - he is the youngest of five children - include a High Court judge
(Dame Natalie Lieven), a Cambridge University professor / historian (Dominic Lieven) and a
psychologist / linguistics researcher (Elena Lieven). They haven't done badly for a family from the old Baltic German
aristocratic elite that used to serve the Russian empire as administrators for the
Livonia governorate.
The British Lievens might see themselves as gatekeepers and interpreters of what the
ruling classes desire (or appear to desire) and communicate that down to us. Hence their
positions in intellectual and academic occupations - no engineers, technicians or academics
in the physical or biological sciences among their number.
Anatol Lieven is right though about "competition", in the sense I believe he is using it:
it is "competition" for supposed global leadership and influence as only the British and
Americans understand it. Life as British and American elites understand it is the annual
football competition writ large; there can only be one winner and the worst position to be in
is second place and every other place below it. Never mind that what Russia and China have in
mind is a vision of the world with multiple and overlapping leadership roles dispersed among
nations according to various criteria: this ideal is simply too much for the Anglosphere
elites to understand, let alone digest and accept.
Still, I wonder why Anatol Lieven is teaching in a university in Qatar of all places.
Family influence and reputation must only go so far.
if you aren't at least a little prepared for a
disruption in critical supplies, and choose instead to waste time commenting on online
forums, it won't matter how up to date you are on "rules based international order" vs.
"international law". at that point the reality will be something like this: if you aren't
holding it, you don't have it, and if you can't defend it, you won't be keeping it for long.
Got that absolutely right.
There is no "international law" and no "international order." There is only relative
power. And when those powers clash, as seems inevitable, the world is in for a major nuclear
war, and probably preceded by several more regional wars. Meanwhile, the US internally is
collapsing into economic disaster, social unrest, political and social oppression,
infrastructure failure, and medical disasters. We'll probably be in martial law sometime
between November 3 and January 21 if not beyond that period, just for starters.
This month is National Preparedness Month. I recommend watching the following videos from
well-known "preppers" who have been warning about this stuff for years.
And this one from The Urban Prepper, an IT guy who is exceptionally well organized and
logical in his videos. I recommend subscribing to his channel. He avoids most of the
excessive "doom and gloom" hype that afflicts a lot of prepper channels and is oriented more
about urban survival than "backwoods bushcraft" since most people live in cities. Prepping 101: Prepping
Architecture Diagram for Gear Organization
And if you don't watch anything else, watch this one from Canadian Prepper - he's
absolutely right in this one and it specifically applies to the barflies here: What is Really Going
On? Its WORSE Than You Think
Meanwhile, inertia alone will ensure that the West forgets that their vaunted "civilisation"
was fed, watered, enriched by the Silk Route that came from the East -- from the Middle
Kingdom (China) and from the Middle East (which is "middle", as you pointed out above,
because all wealth passes through that region).
Posted by: kiwiklown | Sep 22 2020 23:41 utc | 39
Oh, and this one from Canadian Prepper in which he muses about whether and why we actually
*want* the SHTF situation to occur. This one would resonate with a lot of the commentary here
about the social malaise and the psychological reasons for it. Maybe nothing really new for
some, but definitely relevant.
Still, I wonder why Anatol Lieven is teaching in a university in Qatar of all places.
Family influence and reputation must only go so far.
Thank you that backgrounder explains a lot. Perhaps like Englanders before him he finds
Qatar, safe and rewarding PLUS mounds of finest hashish and titillating company. From my
understanding it is a grotesque abuser of human rights and everyone has a price.
America's "Rules-Based International Order" is a Goebbelsian euphemism for a Lies-Based
Imperial Order, led by the USA and its war criminal allies (aka the self-styled Free World).
The true nature of this America-led order is exposed by the USA's war of aggression
against Iraq (which violated international law and had no United Nations sanction) and its
decades-long War on Terrorism, which have murdered hundreds of thousands of people and
maimed, immiserated, or refugeed millions of more people. These crimes against humanity have
been justified by Orwellian American lies about "Weapons of Mass Destruction," "fighting
terrorism," or the curious events of Sept. 11th.
This America "Rules-Based" order is one drenched in the blood of millions of people--even
as it sanctimoniously disguises itself behind endless propaganda about defending liberal
democracy or the rule of law.
Truly, America and its allies can take their malignant Rules-Based Disorder back to Hell,
where they all belong.
"Thus your "side note" has no "relevance" whatsoever."
You sound like some podunk UN official from a podunk country trying to impress a waitress
in a NYC bar. The Empire is very much alive and dangerous. Ask Iran, ask Syria, as the
Palestinians, ask the Russians, ask the Chinese. Ask numerous African nations. Even Pangloss
was not so stupidly naive.
Thank you - YES that is the answer and always has been PLUS there will be no pipeline from
Iran through Afghanistan to Pakistan and on to China. There will be NO overland pipeline or
rail route to sound the death knell to the maritime mafia.
Please vote for trump 2020. no president destroy America from inside like what trump did. The goal is to accelerate American empire destruction and grip in this world.
What better way to put such clown along his circus in white house. he will make a mess of everything and will definitely bring
America down
i hope he win 2020 and America explode into civil war and chaos. With America destroyed internally , they wont have time to invade
Venezuela or Iran
Remember , if Biden win 2020 , American foreign policy will revert into normalcy that means
seeking alliance with EU and 5 eyes in a more meaningful way , aka giving them preferential
treatment on trade..
all that to box in china and russia , reenable TPP , initiate the delayed venezuela overt
invasion other than covert
this is dangerous for the whole world , not that it will save US in the long run but it
will increase real shooting conflict with china and russia.. So focus on trump victory in 2020 , the more controversial the win the better , lets push america into chaos
I appreciate the time and thought that goes into a post like this; all without a popup ad
trying to sell me ANOTHER item I just bought via Amazon, in spite of the fact that I am among
the least likely to want another right now. Voice of reason crying in the wilderness and all
that.
The rule The Capitalist Ogres promote as the heart of Civilization is simply the age-old
Golden Rule. Those with the gold, make the rules.
@ptb quite right.
'Rules based order' was always a euphemism for exceptionalism of one kind or another. ie US and its "allies" is basically asking the rest of the world to finance their (the US
et al)
version of a welfare state.
as US et al can no longer fund their own unaffordable welfare promises made to their own
electorates, they have to call on the rest of the world to do so (China has been effectively
funding the US budget deficit since they entered the WTO.
and the EU (mainly Germany) was doing the same before China's entry into WTO)
China and rest of the worlds foreign central banks stopped growing their foreign exchange
reserves (on net) in 2014
leaving the US in a sort of limbo.
Well, you're sorta correct; it was all those nations including China that bought Outlaw US
Empire debt. China certainly knows better now and for almost a decade now it's purchases--and
those of the rest of the world -- of said debt have declined to the point where a huge crisis
related to the debt pyramid threatens all those aside from the 1% living within the Outlaw US
Empire. The Judo involved was very instructive.
"Trump's UN
address censured" headlines Global Times article that reviews yesterday's UNGA.
Domestic BigLie Media didn't like what it heard from Trump:
"Commenting on the US' performance, many Western media tended to view US as being
'isolated,' and its unilateral efforts 'widely derided....'
"Some US media outlets cannot stand Trump's accusations. A WSJ report said many Democrats
blamed Trump for "isolating the US and diluting American influence in the WHO or other
bodies."
It went on to say Trump's threat of withdrawal is often used as leverage to "influence
partner countries, or get allies to pay more for shared defense."
"Some US media linked Trump's address to his widely blamed effort to re-impose sanctions
on Iran, saying his address came as 'UN members push back against Washington,' AP
reported.
"Wednesday's Washington Post article reported that the Trump administration walked on a
'lonely path' at the UN where the US attacked WHO, and embarked on the 'widely derided'
effort to snap back Iran sanctions.
"A week before the UN General Assembly, US media NPR predicted that the US 'appeared to be
isolated' at this year's General Assembly, saying that Trump's 'America First' agenda left
him out of sync with America's traditional allies as it has a long record of pulling out of
international agreements, including one meant to tackle the world's climate crisis."
So, Trump's attack on China's environmental record was beyond hypocritical and ought to be
termed psychopathic prevarication. The best comment from the article well describes the
Trumptroll @53:
"'Trump's smears and attacks against China were apparently aimed at campaigning for his
reelection. Only his die-hard fans - those who do not care about truth but support him -
will buy his words ,' Ding Yifan, a researcher at the Institute of World Development of
the Development Research Center of the State Council, told the Global Times." [My
Emphasis]
And isn't that really the basic issue--the truth? 75 years of lies by the Outlaw US Empire
to cover it's continuous illegalities and subversion of its own fundamental law while killing
and displacing tens of millions of people. Guardian of the Free World my ass! More like
Guardian of the Gates of Hell.
Yes, I'm biased, but anyone seeking truth and invoking the Rule of Law would find themselves
at odds with the Outlaw US Empire. Today's Global Times Editorial makes
the following key observations:
"Major powers maintaining cooperation, at least not engaging in Cold War-style antagonism,
is the important foundation of world peace. China is committed to maintaining cooperation
among major powers, as well as being flexible in the balance of interests acceptable to all
parties. The problem is the Trump administration is hysterically shaping decoupling and
confrontation between Beijing and Washington, and has been mobilizing more forces to its side
at home and abroad. Those US policymakers are deliberately splitting the world like during
the Cold War.
"The impulse to promote a cold war is the ultimate version of unilateralism, and shows
dangerous and mistaken arrogance that the US is almighty. Everyone knows that the US is
declining in its competitiveness under the rules-based international system the US itself
initiated and created. It wants to build a new system more beneficial to itself, and allow
the US to maintain its advantage without making any effort. This is simply impossible."
My research is pointing me to conclude the First Cold War was contrived so the Outlaw US
Empire could impose privately owned finance and corporations and the political-economies
connected to them upon the world lest the collective forces that were the ones to actually
defeat Fascism gain control of their national governments and shape their political-economies
into the public/collectively owned realm where the benefits would flow to all people instead
of just the already powerful. That's also the intent of imposing a Second Cold War. Some seem
to think there's no ideological divide at play, but as I've ceaselessly explained there most
certainly is, thus the intense demonization of both Russia and China--the Strategic
Competition also is occurring in the realm of Ideas. And the only tools available for the
Outlaw US Empire to use are lies, since the truths involved would encourage any neutral
nation to join the Win-Win vision of China and Russia, not the Zero-sum bankruptcy pushed by
the Parasites controlling the Empire.
@ karlof1 | Sep 23 2020 15:56 utc | 84 and forward with the links and quotes...thanks
I do like the confirmation Pepe quote, thanks
It is sad to understand that much of the US population does not have the mental clarity to
see that Trump is no different than Biden when it comes to fealty to the God of Mammon. Way
too many Americans think that replacing Trump with Biden will make things all better.
The end of the rules based international order/global private finance cannot end soon
enough, IMO
Thanks for your reply! As I discussed with the Missus last night, IMO only the people
regaining control over the federal government can rescue themselves from the multiple
dilemmas they face--the most pressing being the Debt Bomb and control of the monetary and
fiscal systems by private entities as exemplified by the Federal Reserve and Wall Street,
both of which employ the Financial Parasites preying on the nation's body-politic. Undoing
all the past wrongs requires both Congress and the Executive be captured by The People who
can then write the laws to end the wrongs while arresting and prosecuting those responsible
for the last 20+ years of massive fraud. The biggest components would be ending the Federal
Reserve, Nationalizing all the fraudster banks, writing down the vast majority of debt, and
disbanding NATO thus ending the overseas empire. Those are the most fundamental steps
required for the USA to avoid the coming calamity brought about by the Neoliberals. I also
have finally developed my thesis on where, why and how that philosophy was developed and put
into motion.
The first 'Cold War' was entirely contrived. The US knew the Soviet Union was weak and had
no agenda beyond maintaining security and its own reconstruction after WW2. There was no
threat of a Western European invasion, or of the USSR spreading revolution globally. All that
Cold War ideology is a lie. And the same lying is taking place about China today. No
difference.
The key issues for the US were:
1. it needed western european capitalist states to buy US manufactured exports. Those
states had to remain capitalist and subordinate to the US, i.e. to avoid what Acheson called
'neutralism' in world politics.
2. the US wanted gradual decolonization of the British and French empires so that US firms
could access markets and resources in those same territories. but the US feared revolutionary
nationalism in the colonies and the potential loss of market access by the former colonial
powers, which would need resources from the post-colonial world to rebuild after WW2.
The key event which cemented the 'Cold War' in Europe was the division of Germany, which
Carolyn Eisenberg shows was entirely an American decision, in her important book, Drawing the
Line.
The driving force of all this, though, was the economic imperatives of US capitalism. The
US needed to restore and save capitalism in Western Europe and Japan, and the Cold War was
the ideological framework for doing so. The Cold War ideology also allowed the US to frame
its meddling in Korea, Guatemala, Iran, etc.
The late historian Gabriel Kolko wrote the best analyses of these issues. His work is much
better than the New Left 'revisionist' US historians.
I agree with your recap and second your appraisal of Gabriel Kolko. Eisenberg's work
somehow escaped my view but will no longer thanks to your suggestion.
But I see more to it all as the First Cold War had to occur to promote the
financialization of the USA's industrial Capitalism which began within the USA in 1913 and
was abruptly interrupted by the various market crashes, the failure of the international
payments system and subsequent massive deflation and Great Depression. A similar plan to
outsource manufactures to its colonies and commonwealth and financialize its economy was
began in the UK sometime after the end of the US Civil War. At the time in England, the
school of Classical Political-Economists and their political allies (CPE) were attempting to
rid the UK and the rest of Europe of the last vestiges of Feudalism that resided in the
Rentier and Banking Classes, the former being mostly populated by Royalty and its
retainers. Land Rent was the primary source of their income while it was the stated intent of
the CPE to change the tax burden from individuals and businesses to that of Land Rent and
other forms of Unearned Income. That movement came swiftly on the heels of the abolition of
the Slave Trade which was a vast source of Royal income. Recognizing this threat to the basis
of their wellbeing, the Royals needed to turn the tables but in such a manner where their
manipulation was secret because of the vast popularity of the CPE's agenda. Thus began the
movement to discredit the CPE and remove their ideas from discourse and later completely from
the history of political-economy. And there was another problem--German Banks and their
philosophy inspired by Bismarck to be totally supportive of German industry, which provided
the impetus for its own colonial pursuits primarily in Africa.
Within that paragraph is my thesis for the rise of Neoliberalism, much of which Dr. Hudson
documents but hasn't yet gotten to/revealed the root cause of the counter revolution against
the CPE. IMO, that reactionary movement underlies far more, particularly the growing
animosity between the UK and Germany from 1875 to 1914. As Eisenberg's research proves,
there's much more past to be revealed that helps to resolve how we arrived at the times we
now face.
Indeed, as Hudson and Max Keiser ask: Why pay taxes at all since the Fed can create all
the credit required. I've written about the pros and cons of Secession here before which are
quite similar to those existing in 1861. In Washington for example, how to deal with all the
Federal property located there. Just as Ft. Sumter didn't belong to South Carolina, the many
military bases there don't belong to Washington. Trying to seize it as the South Carolinians
attempted in 1861 merely creates the casus belli sought by Trump. Now if you could get the
vast majority of the military stationed in Washington to support your cause, your odds of
resisting would greatly improve.
IMO, trying to regain public control over the Federal government would be much easier.
Thank you brother karlof1, YES, the minotaur indeed but where is Theseus and Ariadne when
we need them? Please don't tell me that Biden and Harris are the 'chosen ones' - that would mock the
legend and prove that the gods are truly crazy :))
It seems to me that a review is required, that we need to turn back the clock to an earlier
analysis whose veracity has only been boosted by subsequent events. So here from
2011: "On November 3, 2011, Alan Minsky interviewed me on KPFK's program, 'Building a
Powerful Movement in the United States' in preparation for an Occupy L.A. teach-in." Here's a
brief excerpt to remind people what this is all about:
"Once people realize that they're being screwed, that's a pre-revolutionary situation.
It's a situation where they can get a lot of sympathy and support, precisely by not doing
what The New York Times and the other papers say they should do: come up with some neat
solutions. They don't have to propose a solution because right now there isn't one –
without changing the system with many, many changes. So many that it's like a new
Constitution. Politics as well as the economy need to be restructured. What's developing now
is how to think about the economic and political problems that are bothering people. It is
not radical to realize that the economy isn't working. That is the first stage to realizing
that a real alternative is needed. We've been under a radical right-wing attack – and
need to respond in kind. The next half-year probably will be spent trying to spell out what
the best structure would be."
It's good to see discussion here of the nefarious role of the American far-right neocon
warmongers in the State Department, intelligence services and military leadership just before
the turn of the new century. What I have never seen clearly explained, however, is the
connection between these very dangerous forces and the equally cynical and reactionary
Israeli politicians and the Mossad, as well as Saudi Arabian officials.
Like many others, I
have been slowly won over to the position that the attacks of 9-11, and especially the
totally unprecedented collapses of the three WTC towers, could only have been caused by the
precisely timed explosion of previously installed demolition materials containing nanothermite. But if one accepts that position the immediately subsequent question is "Who
planned and carried out the attacks?" Many people have claimed it was the Mossad, others that
it was the Mossad in concert with the US neocons etc., -- many of whom were Israeli/US dual
citizens -- but even now, so many years after the horrific events, I can find no coherent
account of how such conspirators, or any others for that matter, might actually have carried
out WTC building demotions. Do any of you know of sources on the matter that have made good
progress on connecting the dots and explaining what precisely happened -- the easier part --
and how exactly it was carried out, by whom, and how they have managed to get away with it
for all this time?
Lieven: If the US (and the UK, if as usual we tag along) approach the relationship with
Beijing with anything like the combination of arrogance, ignorance, greed, criminality,
bigotry, hypocrisy and incompetence with which western elites managed the period after the
Cold War, then we risk losing the competition and endangering the world.[my emphasis]
Uncle Tungsten: Lieven simply does not see it. Has it ever occurred to Lieven that
colonialism just might be rejected by both Russia and China and that there might be no
competition? Does Lieven watch too much football?
What is it that endangers the world in Lieven's petite cortex?
-------
It is clear to me that Tungsten does not understand Lieven because Lieven does not cross all
t's and dot all i's. There can be two reasons for Lieven style: (1) a British style, leaving
some conclusions to the reader, it is not elegant to belabor the obvious (2) Lieven works in
a pro-Western feudal state and that particular piece appeared in a neo-liberal outfit where
it is already a clear outlier toward (what I see as) common sense. Neo-liberals view
themselves as liberals, "tolerating a wide spectrum of opinion", but with clear limits about
the frequency and content for the outliers of their tolerance.
Back to "endangering the world", how "loosing competition to China" can result in huge
mayhem? I guess that Tungsten is a little dense here. The sunset of Anglo-Saxon domination
can seem like the end of the world for the "members" of that domination. But a longer
historical perspective can offer a much darker vision of the future. First, there is a clash
of two blocks, one with superior industrial production, domination of markets of assorted
goods -- both as importer and exporter, etc, the other with still superior military
technology and combative spirit.
Recall (or check) the situation in east Asia ca. 1240 AD. One of the major power was Song
China, after a calamitous defeat roughly 300 years later, diminished Song China succeeded in
developing all kinds of practical and beautiful goods and vibrant commerce while having quite
inept military. The second major power was the Mongols. You can look up the rest.
USA stresses the military types of pressures, and seeing its position slipping too far,
they may resort to a series of gigantic "provocations" -- from confiscation of property by
fiat, like they did to Venezuela, to piracy on open seas, no cargoes can move without their
approval and tribute, from there things can escalate toward nuclear war.
More generally, western decline leads to decrease of wealth affecting the lower classes
first but gradually reaching higher, enmity toward competitors, then hatred, such processes
can have dire consequences.
Importantly, these are speculations, so stopping short of spelling them out is reasonable.
However, give some credit to Lieven for "the combination of arrogance, ignorance, greed,
criminality, bigotry, hypocrisy and incompetence with which western elites managed the period
after the Cold War".
On the rule-based world order. Scattered thoughts.
The article by Lieven was good in one aspect: it at least mentioned the crazy economic
template aka imho 'religion' that lead to a part of this mess. For the rest, hmm. The 'rules based international order' was always pretty much a phoney scaffold, used for
presentation to hide, cover up, legitimised many goings on (after WW2 I mean.)
Like a power-point extolling xyz product, with invented or 'massaged' charts and all.,
with tick boxes for what it positive or followed. (Fairness, Democracy, etc. etc. as
'Natural' 'Organic' etc. Total BS.)
In these kinds of discussions I am always reminded of the 'rights of the child' which in
CH are taught in grade 3-5, with a boiled down text, logo type pix, etc. It is very tough on
teachers, and they often only pretend to push the content. There are many immigrant children
in CH and the natives know that the 'rights' are not respected and not just in 'jungles'
(anarchist / animalistic hot spots) as they say. The kids go nuts - as they still more or
less believe that they 'have a voice' as it called -- the parents follow the kids, lotsa
troubles. OK, these are aspirations - but 'democracy' (purposely used as a calling card
following advice from a well-know ad agency..) is so as well. And presenting aspirations that
can't possibly be achieved in any way, when not a smiley joke about meeting God or flying to
Mars, and is socially important, is not well received.
Anyway, since the invasion of Iraq (totally illegal according to any standards) leading to
the biggest demos in the world ever, a loud indignant cry, which invasion the UN condoned,
ppl (in my experience, in CH, F, It) no longer have a shred of belief in 'international
rules'. Which of course makes them more 'nationalist' in the sense of acting in the
community, close at hand, as the Intl order is a shit-scene.
The fact that large part of population consider Democratic leadership criminal and anther
part Trump administration criminal is a new factor in 2020 elections. Look like neoliberal Dems
made another blunder in unleashing American Maidan in those circumstances.
Thanks to Judge Emmet Sullivan refusing the DOJ's request to drop the Michael Flynn case, a
cache of explosive documents has now been released to the public revealing that at least one
FBI agent on Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team thought the case was a politically motivated
"dead end," and others bought professional liability insurance as their bosses were continuing
the investigation based on " conspiracy theories. "
In one case, FBI agent William J. Barnett said
during a Sept. 17 interview that he believed Mueller's prosecution of Flynn was part of an
attitude to "get Trump," and that he didn't want to pursue the Trump-Russia collusion
investigation because it was "not there" and a "dead end," according to
Fox News .
Barnett, during his interview, detailed his work at the FBI, and his assignment to the
bureau's original cases against Flynn and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.
Barnett said the Flynn investigation was assigned the code name "Crossfire Razor," which was
part of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation -- the bureau's code name for the original
Trump-Russia probe.
Barnett told investigators that he thought the FBI's Trump-Russia probe was "opaque" and
"with little detail concerning specific evidence of criminal events."
" Barnett thought the case theory was 'supposition on supposition,'" the 302 stated, and
added that the "predication" of the Flynn investigation was "not great, " and that it "was
not clear" what the "persons opening the case wanted to 'look for or at.'"
After six weeks of investigating, Barnett said he was "still unsure of the basis of the
investigation concerning Russia and the Trump campaign working together , without a specific
criminal allegation." -
Fox News
When Barnett approached agents about what they thought the 'end game' was with Flynn -
suggesting they interview the former National Security Adviser "and the case be closed unless
derogatory information was obtained," he was cautioned not to conduct an interview, as it may
tip Flynn off that he was under investigation.
"Barnett still did not see any evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and the
Russian government," the 302 states. "Barnett was willing to follow any instructions being
given by the deputy director as long as it was not a violation of the law."
Insurance over "conspiracy theories"?
Another revelation from documents in the Flynn case comes in the form of text messages
released on Thursday in which agents bought liability insurance, fearing they would be sued
over an investigation into Flynn based on "conspiracy theories."
"We all went and purchased professional liability insurance," one analyst texted on Jan. 10,
2017 - 10 days before Trump was inaugurated, according to
Just The News .
"Holy crap," responded a colleague. "All of the analysts too?"
"Yep," replied the first analyst. "All the folks at the Agency as well."
"Can I ask who are the most likely litigators?" responded a colleague. "As far as
potentially suing y'all."
"Haha, who knows .I think the concern when we got it was that there was a big leak at DOJ
and the NYT among others was going to do a piece," the first analyst texted back.
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The explosive messages were attached to a new filing by Flynn's attorney Sidney Powell,
who argued to the court that is considering dismissing her client's guilty plea that the
emails show "stunning government misconduct" and "wrongful prosecution."
A hearing is scheduled for next Tuesday.
" There was no case against General Flynn ," Powell wrote in the new motion. " There was
no crime. The FBI and the prosecutors knew that. This American hero and his entire family
have suffered for four years from public abuse, slander, libel, and all means of defamation
at the hands of the very government he pledged his life to defend." -
Just The News
Thanks to Judge Sullivan's hatred of Flynn, the world now knows how much more corrupt the
Mueller investigation was.
ay_arrow
novictim , 1 minute ago
"We all went and purchased professional liability insurance," one analyst texted on
Jan. 10, 2017 - 10 days before Trump was inaugurated, according to
Just The News .
Ok.
BUT NOT A SINGLE ONE OF THESE PROTECTORS OF THE CONSTITUTION BLEW THE WHISTLE.
None of these FBI agents seeing egregious abuse of power by the FBI leveled at a
decorated Lt. Gen. had the moral fortitude to stand up and say "NO!". They all hated Trump
so much that they simply bought protection insurance for themselves.
FIRE ALL OF THEM.
play_arrow
J J Pettigrew , 2 minutes ago
A soft coup attempt...
does this qualify as "swaying an election"? Like the 2018 election that gave the House
to the Dems and Pelosi her power?
Or is this an attempt to flip an election from 2016?
They always accuse others of that which they themselves are guilty...ALWAYS. At least
they let us know what they are up to. Like who is in bed with Russian oligarchs.....Hunter
gets the 3.5 million
play_arrow
Everybodys All American , 6 minutes ago
Judge Sullivan has no choice. If he does not drop this case now then he is in serious
violation of the law in a big time way. Anything is possible from this idiot but he will be
impeached and removed if he does not dismiss this case for sure now.
lay_arrow
whackedinflorida , 8 minutes ago
It has been fairly obvious that if Sullivan refused to dismiss the case and insists on
having a hearing, a large amount of government misconduct would ultimately be disclosed.
Leftists are willing to believe anything if it fits their narrative, and ignore second
order effects of what they do. By the end of this, the charges against Flynn will be
dismissed (or he will be pardoned), and the prosecutors will be the ones facing the justice
system. Its almost as if Sullivan is doing Trump's bidding.
Show More Replies
otschelnik , 10 minutes ago
To start going up the food chain as to how this ****show got started we need to know a
couple of pieces of information which the deep state is jealously hiding from us:
1) WHO WERE THE CONTRACTORS ACCESSING THE NSA DATABASE? This will draw a straight line
back to the Democrat party.
2) WHO WERE THE FBI AGENTS TAKING LIABILITY INSURANCE? These are the same as USSR NKVD
henchmen shooting kulaks and political prisoners in the back of the head.
ay_arrow
Fabelhaft , 8 minutes ago
Flynn's courage reduces Mueller's battlefield manner to the shell-shocked infirmaries of
WW1.
lay_arrow 1
Aubiekong , 16 minutes ago
If we lived in a country of law and order. The democratic leadership would all be in
prison along with all those involved in the "investigation".
gaaasp , 32 minutes ago
When can Flynn speak freely?
turbojarhead , 26 minutes ago
I think you nailed it-Flynn cannot interview due to his legal case-the man who knows
where ALL the bodies are buried, SPECIFICALLY in the Iran deal. It ALMOST seems like
Sullivan-maybe at the behest of others-has been desperate to keep Flynn from being able to
speak up for 4 years...
Maxter , 1 minute ago
It doesn't make much sense that Flynn knows where all the bodies are buried but never
told the Trump team before all this mess.
Colm O'Toole @ 26, Uncle Tungsten @ 32, David G @ 33:
I am also sad to hear of Andre Vltchek's passing. He used to be an occasional contributor
to Off-Guardian.org.
His death is being treated as suspicious by Turkish police authorities. I myself am rather
puzzled by the decision to travel overnight by car from Samsun to Istanbul, given his state
of health (according to the report that Colm O'Toole linked to) and the length of the car
journey (about nine hours) when he could have travelled by plane.
The dossier compiled by British spy Christopher Steele, paid through the firm Fusion GPS by
Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, was used by the FBI to obtain a warrant to spy on
Trump campaign aide Carter Page in October 2016, prior to the presidential election. The
warrant was renewed after Donald Trump got elected president and finally expired sometime in
late 2017.
In a redacted,
two-page memo made public on Thursday by Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), the US
Department of Justice reveals that Steele's "primary sub-source" (PSS) had been under
FBI investigation in 2009 as a possible Russian agent. The FBI team going after Trump
("Crossfire Hurricane") became aware of this in December 2016 and interviewed the PSS in
January 2017 – then renewed the Page FISA warrant three more times anyway.
"In December 2016, the CROSSFIRE HURRICANE team identified the Primary Sub-source used by
Christopher Steele and, at that time, became familiar with the 2009 investigation. The
CROSSFIRE HURRICANE team interviewed the Primary Sub-source over the course of three sequential
days in January 2017. At that time, the 2009 investigation remained closed. The 2009
investigation remains closed to this day," says the DOJ memo.
The reason the FBI had closed the investigation, as the memo reveals, was that the PSS had
left the US in September 2010. The FBI said "consideration would be given to re-opening the
investigation in the event" the person returned to the US. For whatever reason, though the
PSS did return at some point, the investigation was never reopened.
While the DOJ memo does not name the PSS, some enterprising internet sleuths fingered him in
July as one Igor Danchenko. His attorney Mark E. Schamel confirmed the identification to the
New York
Times a day after RT reported on it. Danchenko had worked as a researcher for the Brookings
Institution until 2010. This lines up with the memo saying he was working at a think tank in
Washington, DC when some coworkers suspected him of being a "Russian spy."
The FBI's investigation came up with nothing much beyond a September 2006 "contact with a
known Russian intelligence officer," and him being "very familiar" with a
"Washington, DC–based Russian officer."
Flimsy as that seems now, it was a lot more than they ever had on Carter Page. It didn't
help that FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith had altered evidence to make Page look like a foreign
agent, when he in fact was not. In August, Clinesmith pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of
making a false statement.
When he sent over the memo to Graham, Attorney General Bill Barr wrote that additional
classified information that "bears upon the FBI's knowledge concerning the reliability" of the
Steele dossier may be declassified by the Director of National Intelligence soon, as it won't
interfere with the criminal investigation conducted by US Attorney John Durham.
The Steele Dossier has been the keystone of 'Russiagate' – the manufactured scandal
accusing Trump of having ties or "colluding" with Russia during the 2016 election – from
the very beginning. It had already emerged that the "Crossfire Hurricane" team had interviewed
Danchenko in January 2017 and established that the Dossier was fabricated, but proceeded to use
it to spy on Trump, framing Carter Page as a Russian agent anyway. At the time, they
already knew that Danchenko had been under FBI investigation as a suspected Russian agent
– but it didn't seem to bother them in the least.
Simply put, this means Crossfire Hurricane team members – such as former agent
Peter Strzok and his paramour Lisa Page, as well as FBI director James Comey and his deputy
deputy Andrew McCabe, ought to have some explaining to do.
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
Thos intelligence nets are becoming more and more sophisticated. They essentially represent a
hidden political force that influences the elections.
From comments: "This is so convoluted and Byzantine and no one is offering documentation,
just allegations."
Notable quotes:
"... Rarely in the news, however, is the role played by Israeli cybersecurity startups in the creation of the Russiagate narrative itself. Incubated within the Israeli military apparatus and benefiting from an uninterrupted stream of billions in U.S. taxpayer dollars, these "private Mossads" have been present behind the scenes throughout the numerous Russia-related scandals fomented by the mainstream press to sow partisan discord among the American electorate and line the pockets of network executives. ..."
"... The Senate's inquiries uncovered a consistent thread of IDF-linked cybersecurity firms and intelligence assets coordinating and facilitating meetings between the coterie of Russian characters that make up the Russiagate universe and the Trump campaign, including protagonists like Guccifer 2.0, the hacker who released Hilary Clinton's infamous emails to Wikileaks via a cell phone registered in Israel. ..."
"... "These guys came out of the military intelligence army unit, and it's like coming out with a triple Ph.D. from MIT. The amount of knowledge these guys have in terms of cybersecurity, cyber-intelligence [is] just so beyond what you could get [with] a normal education that it's just unique there are hundreds and hundreds of Israeli start-up companies that the founders are guys who came out of this unit." ..."
"... Michael Flynn, who was himself also working in an advisory capacity with the "consortium of cyber-spy companies run by former Israeli intelligence officers" known as the NSO Group, that is comprised of several of the Israeli startups summoned before the committee for voluntary, closed-door testimony. ..."
"... One of the NSO companies questioned by the Senate committee in relation to Russian interference, Psy-Group, is currently under investigation in California, where it was caught red-handed actually trying to rig a local election for a paying customer. ..."
"... Butina's former lover, Paul Erickson joked about being a CIA asset and had built a phony reputation as a man of staunch moral Christian values. Erickson worked for several Republican campaigns dating back to the late '80s, including a stint as national policy director for Pat Buchanan's '92 White House run. He first achieved international notoriety as Mobutu Sese Seko's lawyer, reportedly accepting a $30,000 lobbying contract to obtain a U.S. visa for the African despot, which was ultimately denied. ..."
"... It was Erickson's long-standing ties to the NRA and the organization's former president David Keene, which set the stage for the Maria Butina story as a Russian infiltrator looking for " access to U.S. political organizations ." Erickson had worked with Keene as a registered foreign agent since the 1990s and formed part of the NRA's efforts to forge closer ties to Israel since at least 2011. ..."
"... A con-artist by most accounts, Erickson is described by a Republican legislator as "the single biggest phony I've ever met in South Dakota politics." South Dakota was where Yale-educated Erickson came up in the political arena and where he's left a long trail of burned business associates and friends. In 2019, Erickson pled guilty to wire fraud and money laundering , admitting he had bilked 78 people of $2.3 Million over 22 years and was sentenced this past July to seven years in federal prison. ..."
A Senate investigation reveals that a consortium of Israeli hacking and surveillance firms
coordinated and facilitated meetings between Trump campaign operatives and Russia during the
2016 campaign, but they don't really want to talk about it.
Alleged Russian interference in the 2020 presidential election is headline news, once again,
as a Ukrainian lawmaker is charged by the Trump administration "in a sweeping plot to sow
distrust in the American political process," reports the Associated Press.
Microsoft also made claims that it detected "hacking attempts targeting U.S. political
campaigns, parties and consultants" by agents from Russia, China, and Iran. In a September 10
blog
post , Microsoft's Tom Burt, Corporate Vice President of Customer Security & Trust,
listed three groups from each region that Microsoft "observed" carrying out their cyber
operations.
Rarely in the news, however, is the role played by Israeli cybersecurity startups in the
creation of the Russiagate narrative itself. Incubated within the Israeli military apparatus
and benefiting from an uninterrupted stream of billions in U.S. taxpayer dollars, these
"private Mossads" have been present behind the scenes throughout the numerous Russia-related
scandals fomented by the mainstream press to sow partisan discord among the American electorate
and line the pockets of network executives.
Evidence of their activities has been exposed -- though not pursued -- in the latest volume
of a U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee investigation on Russian interference in the 2016
presidential election, which shows how then-candidate Donald Trump personally embarked on a
parallel campaign on behalf of Israel to block a UN resolution condemning Israeli settlements
in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Originally
submitted by Egypt, UNSCR 2334 strips Israeli settlements
beyond the 1967 borders of any "
legal validity " in the eyes of the international community and brands them a "flagrant
violation under international law." Russia, a permanent member of the UN Security Council, had
refused all of the advances made by Trump's operatives to use its veto power against the
measure, and Trump himself would
prevail upon Egyptian President al-Sisi -- whom Trump calls his "
favorite dictator " -- to
withdraw the declaration . Together with Israeli pressure, UNSCR 2334 seemed destined to
languish in obscurity as Egypt
acquiesced and delayed the vote to "permit them to conduct an additional meeting of the
Arab League's foreign ministers to work on the resolution's wording."
The Senate's inquiries uncovered a consistent thread of IDF-linked cybersecurity firms
and intelligence assets coordinating and facilitating meetings between the coterie of Russian
characters that make up the Russiagate universe and the Trump campaign, including protagonists
like Guccifer 2.0, the hacker who
released Hilary Clinton's infamous emails to Wikileaks via a cell phone registered in
Israel.
George Birnbaum, a former chief of staff to Benjamin Netanyahu and GOP operative, told the
committee how Trump aide Rick Gates had inquired about using "Israeli technology" to collect
dirt on opponent Hillary Clinton at a March 2016 meeting, explaining to the senators what would
be so attractive about Israeli companies, specifically:
"These guys came out of the military intelligence army unit, and it's like coming out
with a triple Ph.D. from MIT. The amount of knowledge these guys have in terms of
cybersecurity, cyber-intelligence [is] just so beyond what you could get [with] a normal
education that it's just unique there are hundreds and hundreds of Israeli start-up companies
that the founders are guys who came out of this unit."
The unit Birnbaum is referring to is the IDF's Unit 8200, where these "hundreds and
hundreds" of tech startups are born right in the bowels of the Israeli national security state
and propagate throughout the world and the United States, in particular.
Described as " private Mossads "
for hire, many of the Israeli hacking and surveillance firms that moved behind the scenes,
brokering meetings between Trump's people and Russian oligarchs like Oleg Deripaska during the
height of the so-called Russian "collusion," were working through a "key middle man" with close
ties to then-Trump National Security Adviser, Michael Flynn, who was himself also working
in an advisory capacity with the "consortium of cyber-spy companies run by former Israeli
intelligence officers" known as the NSO Group, that is comprised of several of the Israeli
startups summoned before the committee for voluntary, closed-door testimony.
While the American public was fed one Russophobic scandal after another, and Robert Mueller
held court in the press for two years straight, no one -- especially Mueller -- was paying
attention to this perverse network of Israeli surveillance companies who operated the virtual
scaffold upon which the Russiagate narrative was being constructed and whose fellow Unit 8200
graduates in other subsectors of the cybersecurity industry are deeply ensconced in highly
questionable activities surrounding the coming 2020 election.
THE NSO GROUP
The NSO
Group gained notoriety when it was identified as the developer of Pegasus, the iPhone
spyware that
was found installed on slain Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi's phone in the days leading
up to his gruesome death. NSO's cell phone tracking technology has been associated with other
ghastly events, such as the scandal involving Pegasus in Mexico, where a team of international
investigators looking into the disappearance of 43 students in Ayotzinapa was targeted by the
spyware, as well as Mexican
journalists and their families.
One of the NSO companies questioned by the Senate committee in relation to Russian
interference, Psy-Group, is currently under investigation in California, where it was
caught red-handed
actually trying to rig a local election for a paying customer. Another, Circles, was
founded by a former Israeli intelligence officer and is "known for covertly intercepting phone
calls, text messages, and tracking locations of unaware citizens," according to a report by
Forensic News .
In 2018, Haaretz published
an expose on the company disclosing the extent to which Circles and the Israeli espionage
industry is helping "world dictators hunt dissidents and gays," among other nefarious
opportunities available in the "global commerce" of surveillance technologies.
An NSO rep peddles software services at annual European Police Congress in Berlin, April 28,
2020. Hannibal Hanschke | Reuters
The middle man the Senate investigation identified is Walter Soriano; singled out for his
association with several Russian oligarchs like Oleg Deripaska and Dmitry Rybolovlev, who
bought
Trump's West Palm Beach mansion in 2008. The Senate report accuses Soriano and Israeli
cybersecurity companies of coordinating "between the Trump Campaign and Russia," but fails to
pursue the matter beyond that.
The UN resolution denouncing Israeli settlements would pass on December 23, 2016, after four
temporary Security Council members, Malaysia, New Zealand, Senegal, and Venezuela reportedly
took matters into their own hands and moved the vote forward. UNSCR 2334 became official as
a result of a historic breach of established pro-Israel policy by the United States, which
abstained from the vote. Widely reported as Obama's "
parting shot " to Netanyahu and the incoming administration, the passing of the resolution
went against Obama's own record of using U.S.' veto power to banish similar
proposals .
President-elect Donald Trump would take office in a matter of weeks and the Mueller
investigation kicked off the barrage of Russophobic content peddled over the digital airwaves
night after night. Stories like
Maria Butina's were plastered all over the media to buttress the Russiagate
narrative.
THE LEGEND OF MARIA BUTINA
Butina's former lover, Paul Erickson joked
about being a CIA asset and had built a phony reputation as a man of staunch moral
Christian values. Erickson worked for several Republican campaigns dating back to the late
'80s, including a stint as
national policy director for Pat Buchanan's '92 White House run. He first achieved
international notoriety as Mobutu Sese Seko's lawyer, reportedly accepting a $30,000 lobbying
contract to obtain a U.S. visa for the African despot, which was ultimately denied.
It was Erickson's long-standing ties to the NRA and the organization's former president
David Keene, which set the stage for the Maria Butina story as a Russian infiltrator looking
for "
access to U.S. political organizations ." Erickson had
worked with Keene as a registered foreign agent since the 1990s and formed part of the
NRA's efforts to forge
closer ties to Israel since at least 2011.
Prosecutors would paint Butina as a seductress, ensnaring Erickson in a "duplicitous
relationship," but it was the cunning GOP operative who first spotted Butina during a 2013
trip to Moscow with Keene. Butina and Erickson would meet again in Israel one year later
where they would begin their 'love affair' during which he would become "integral to Butina's
activities," assisting the Russian gun enthusiast "in developing relationships with individuals
and organizations involved in U.S. politics," according to the Senate Intelligence
Committee.
Maria Butina poses for a photo at a shooting range in Moscow, April 22, 2012. Pavel Ptitsin
| AP
A con-artist
by most accounts, Erickson is
described by a Republican legislator as "the single biggest phony I've ever met in South
Dakota politics." South Dakota was where Yale-educated Erickson came up in the political arena
and where he's left a long trail of burned business associates and friends. In 2019, Erickson
pled guilty to
wire fraud and money laundering , admitting he had bilked 78 people of $2.3 Million over 22
years and was sentenced this past July to
seven years in federal prison.
The NRA has been forging ties to the Israeli security state for years now. In 2013, Trump's
former National Security Adviser, John Bolton, joined a delegation of 30 in Jerusalem for a
10-day tour of Israel's police institutions. The honorary NRA member stated on that
occasion, that Israel could "serve as a model for American security." The legend of Maria
Butina, itself, was seeded in Israel that same year when an "obscure" Israeli gun-rights group
posted on
Facebook that she had announced to have signed a cooperation agreement with the NRA
and "neighboring countries" to promote gun rights at a meeting with its members.
Butina would meet with Erickson and Keene two weeks later in Moscow, along with Alexander
Torshin, former deputy governor of Russia's central bank and lifetime NRA member. Torshin, who
has been targeted by U.S. sanctions, traveled with Butina to the United States to "discuss
U.S.-Russian economic relations" in April 2015. The pair met with several senior American
officials, like Federal Reserve vice chairman and former Israel central bank chief, Stanley
Fischer; the Treasury undersecretary for international affairs, Nathan Sheets and others in a
meeting "
moderated " by AIG CEO Maurice "Hank" Greenberg. The details of the high-level meeting, two
months before Donald Trump made his announcement to run for president, have never been made
public.
Feature photo | Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., speaks during a Senate Judiciary Committee
business meeting to consider authorization for subpoenas relating to the Crossfire Hurricane
investigation, the code name for the counterintelligence investigation undertaken by the FBI in
2016 and 2017 into links between Trump and Russian officials, June 11, 2020. Carolyn Kaster |
AP
Raul Diego is a MintPress News Staff Writer, independent photojournalist, researcher,
writer and documentary filmmaker.
I always said it was Israeli influence not Russian. How obvious can it get. But we have
Trump constantly kissing the Israeli ass while being kicked in the teeth and Congress bending
over backwards pedaling lies about Russia for Israeli benefit.
Is there anyone on our side in DC?
Ok, so we have the israelis, synonymous with deep state, responsible for wtc '93, wtc
9/11, the arab spring, the afghan conflict, the iraq conflict, problems with Iran, training
antifa/blm, equipping and training the messican cartels, the farc, and tupac amaru. Being the
worlds controlling supplier of MDMA. As well as giving U.S. technology to the chinese, and
direct involvement with the release of covid 19. And hiring osama bin laden to build a
highway in the sudan, then embezzling $800 million from bin ladens project, and blaming it on
the U.S. It's time for the world to put their collective heads back into where the sun does
shine.
A satirical video using "deepfake" technology to show US President Donald Trump as coming to
work for RT after the November election was taken very seriously by 'Russiagate' peddlers at
the Daily Beast and the Lincoln Project.
"... Cohen had the courage to take on the entire ruling elites of this country and their messianic supremacist ideology by himself, almost completely alone. ..."
"... He opposed the warmongering nutcases during the Cold War, and he opposed them again when they replaced their rabid hatred of the Soviet Union with an even more rabid hatred of everything Russian. ..."
First, he was a man of immense kindness and humility . Second, he was a man of total
intellectual honesty . I can't say that Cohen and I had the same ideas or the same reading of
history, though in many cases we did, but here is what I found so beautiful in this man: unlike
most of his contemporaries, Cohen was not an ideologue , he did not expect everybody to agree
with him, and he himself did not vet people for ideological purity before offering them his
friendship.
Even though it is impossible to squeeze a man of such immense intellect and honesty into any
one single ideological category, I would say that Stephen Cohen was a REAL liberal , in the
original, and noble, meaning of this word.
I also have to mention Stephen Cohen's immense courage . Yes, I know, Cohen was not deported
to GITMO for his ideas, he was not tortured in a CIA secret prison, and he was not rendered to
some Third Word country to be tortured there on behalf of the USA. Stephen Cohen had a
different kind of courage: the courage to remain true to himself and his ideals even when the
world literally covered him in slanderous accusations, the courage to NOT follow his fellow
liberals when they turned PSEUDO-liberals and betrayed everything true liberalism stands for.
Professor Cohen also completely rejected any forms of tribalism or nationalism, which often
made him the target of vicious hatred and slander, especially from his fellow US Jews (he was
accused of being, what else, a Putin agent).
Cohen had the courage to take on the entire ruling elites of this country and their
messianic supremacist ideology by himself, almost completely alone.
Last, but most certainly not least, Stephen Cohen was a true peacemaker , in the sense of
the words of the Holy Gospel I quoted above. He opposed the warmongering nutcases during the
Cold War, and he opposed them again when they replaced their rabid hatred of the Soviet Union
with an even more rabid hatred of everything Russian.
I won't claim here that I always agreed with Cohen's ideas or his reading of history, and I
am quite sure that he would not agree with much of what I wrote. But one thing Cohen and I
definitely did agree on: the absolute, number one, priority of not allowing a war to happen
between the USA and Russia. It would not be an exaggeration to say that Stephen Cohen dedicated
his entire life towards this goal.
first "met" Steve through
his
1977 essay
"Bolshevism and Stalinism." His cogent, persuasive, revisionist argument that there are always alternatives in
history and politics deeply influenced me. And his seminal biography,
Bukharin
and the Bolshevik Revolution
, challenging prevailing interpretations of Soviet history, was to me, and many, a model of
how biography should be written: engaged and sympathetically critical.
At the time, I was too accepting of conventional wisdom. Steve's work -- and soon, Steve himself -- challenged me to be
critical-minded, to seek alternatives to the status quo, to stay true to my beliefs (even if they weren't popular), and to ask
unpopular questions of even the most powerful. These are values I carry with me to this day as editorial director of
The
Nation
, which Steve introduced me to (and its editor, Victor Navasky) and for which he wrote a column ("Sovieticus") from
1982 to 1987, and many articles and essays beginning in 1979. His last book,
War
with Russia?
was a collection of dispatches (almost all posted at
thenation.com
)
distilled from Steve's weekly radio broadcasts -- beginning in 2014–on
The
John Batchelor Show
.
T
he experiences we shared in Moscow beginning in 1980 are in many ways my life's most meaningful. Steve introduced me
to realms of politics, history, and life I might never have experienced: to Bukharin's widow, the extraordinary Anna
Mikhailovna Larina, matriarch of his second family, and to his eclectic and fascinating circle of friends -- survivors of the
Gulag, (whom he later wrote about in
The
Victims Return
) dissidents, and freethinkers -- both outside and inside officialdom.
From 1985 to 1991, when we lived frequently in Moscow, we shared the intellectual and political excitement, the hopes and the
great achievements of those
perestroika
years.
We later developed a close friendship with Mikhail Gorbachev, a man we both deeply admired as an individual and as a political
leader who used his power so courageously to change his country and the world. Gorbachev also changed our lives in several
ways.
Our marriage coincided with
perestroika
.
In fact, Steve spent the very first day after our wedding, our so-called honeymoon, at the United Nations with Gorbachev and
the news anchor Dan Rather (Steve was consulting for CBS News at the time). Then, on our first anniversary, in 1989, we were
with President Bush (the first) and Gorbachev on Malta when they declared the end of the Cold War. And we think of our
daughter, Nika, now 29 years old, as a
perestroika
baby
because she was conceived in Russia during the Gorbachev years, made her first visit to Moscow in July 1991 and since then has
been back some 40 times. In a moving moment, a year after Raisa Maksimovna died, Gorbachev remarked to Steve that our marriage
and partnership reminded him of his with Raisa because we too seemed inseparable.
Steve has often regretted that many of the Russian friends he made after 1985 did not know about his earlier Moscow life. He
first visited the Soviet Union in 1959. But it was those pre-
perestroika
years,
1975 to 1982, that gave Steve what he once told me was his "real education. Not only in Russian society but in Russian
politics, because I began to understand the connection between trends in society, trends in the dissident movement, and trends
in the nomenklatura." They were "utterly formative years for me."
They also informed his writings, especially his pathbreaking book
Rethinking
the Soviet Experience
, which was published at the very time Gorbachev came to power. "There was a lot of tragedy," Steve
used to say, "but also a lot of humor and warmth when people had little more that personal friendships and ideas to keep them
company." From 1980, when I first traveled to Moscow with Steve, to 1982 when neither of us could get a visa (until 1985 when
Gorbachev became leader), we lived in that Russia, spending many nights in friends' apartments and kitchens drinking into the
night, and listening to uncensored, often pessimistic, thinking about the present and future of Russia.
I later became Steve's collaborator in smuggling
samizdat
manuscripts
out of Russia to the West, and bringing
samizdat
books
back to Russia and distributing them. By the time I joined him, Steve had managed to send dozens of such books to Moscow, and
satisfying friends with a selection ranging from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Varlam Shalamov, George Orwell, and Robert Conquest
to the
Kama
Sutra
and, of course, the
samizdat
version
of Steve's own book on Bukharin. I learned from Steve that one had to keep forbidden documents and manuscripts on one's person
at all times, knowing that the KGB frequently searched apartments and hotel rooms. At a certain point, Steve's shoulder bag
became so heavy that he developed a hernia on his right side. After surgery, he started carrying his bag on his left side, but
developed a second hernia there, as well. He liked to say that the worst the KGB ever did to him was to cause him two hernias!
In fact, it was
samizdat
manuscripts
that first brought us together. In 1978, Steve heard that I had a diplomatic passport, which would have exempted me from a
customs search, and was about to travel to Moscow. (At the time my father was the United States representative to the United
Nations in Geneva.) Through a mutual friend, Steve asked if I would bring out
samizdat
documents
being held for him in Moscow. I would have been happy to do so, but Steve had been misinformed. I didn't have a diplomatic
passport.
S
teve could sometimes seem like a tough guy, but those who won his trust knew he was a person of great generosity,
loyalty, and kindness. He was known in our New York City neighborhood on the Upper West Side as an impresario/organizer and
longtime supporter of basketball tournaments for local, often poor, kids. In the United States and Russia, Steve mentored and
supported young scholars. In the last decade, he set up fellowships for young scholars of Russian history at the several
universities where he'd he studied and taught: Indiana University, Princeton, New York University, and Columbia. He lent his
support to the establishment of Moscow's State Museum of the History of the Gulag -- and to its young director and team.
Life with Steve was never boring. He was supremely independent, the true radical in our family, unfailingly going to the root
of the problem. He spoke his mind. He had a CD with a dozen variations of "My Way" -- from Billy Bragg to Frank Sinatra. And as
The
Chronicle of Higher Education
subtitled its 2017 profile of Steve, he "was the most controversial Russia expert in
America."
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The
Nation
's work.
Through all our years together, Steve was my backbone, fortifying me for the battles
Nation
editors
must wage (often with their own writers, sometimes including Steve!), and giving me the personal and political courage to do
the right thing. But never more so than when we entered what might be called the "Russiagate era."
While Steve liked to say it's healthy to rethink, to have more questions than answers, there was a wise consistency to his
political analysis. For example, as is clear from his many articles in
The
Nation
in these last decades, he unwaveringly opposed American Cold War thinking both during the Cold War and since the
end of the Soviet Union. He was consistent in his refusal to sermonize, lecture, or moralize about what Russia should do. He
preferred to listen rather than preach, to analyze rather than demonize.
This stance was no recipe for popularity, which Steve professed to care little about. He was courageous and fearless in
continuing to question the increasingly rigid orthodoxies about the Soviet Union and Russia. But in the last months, such
criticism did take its toll on him. Along with others who sought to avert a new and more dangerous Cold War, Steve despaired
that the public debate so desperately needed had become increasingly impossible in mainstream politics or media. Until his
death he'd been working on a short article about what he saw as the "criminalization of détente." The organization he
established, the American Committee on East-West Accord, tried mightily to argue for a more sane US policy toward Russia.
He fared better than I often did confronting the controversies surrounding him since 2014, in reaction to his views on
Ukraine, Putin, election interference, and more. Positions he took often elicited slurs and scurrilous attacks. How many times
could he be labeled "Putin's puppet"? "Putin's No.1 American apologist"? Endlessly, it seemed. But Steve chose not to respond
directly to the attacks, believing -- as he told me many times when I urged him to respond -- that they offered no truly substantive
criticism of his arguments, but were merely ad hominem attacks. What he did write about -- he was increasingly concerned about
the fate of a younger generation of scholars -- was the danger of smearing those who thought differently about US policy toward
Russia, thereby silencing skeptics and contributing to the absence of a needed debate in our politics, media, and academy.
M
ikhail Gorbachev often told Steve how deeply influenced he was by his writings, especially his biography of Bukharin.
Steve first met Gorbachev in 1987 at the Soviet Embassy in Washington. It was a reception for America's "progressive
intelligentsia" -- which Steve found funny, because he considered himself a maverick and didn't like labels. But he was there
that day, and within a few minutes a Kremlin aide told Steve that the general secretary wanted to talk to him. Minutes later,
Mikhail Sergeevich approached and asked Steve, assuming the author of Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution must be eminent
and of a "serious" age: "
Deistvitelno
[really] -- you
wrote the book, or was it your father?"
Steve finally achieved that "serious" age Gorbachev spoke of! But his heart, spirit and mind remained youthful till the very
end. Maybe it's because of his love of Jerry Lee Lewis's rock and roll, or New Orleans blues or Kentucky bluegrass, or his
passion for basketball (shared with our daughter Nika and his 16-year-old grandson, Lucas), or his quest for a good anecdote
(his annual anecdote lectures at Princeton and later NYU drew large crowds). Maybe it's because we continued our walks in
nearby Riverside Park for as long as was possible -- walks full of loving and spirited argument and talk. Perhaps it's because,
while Steve was a very serious person, he didn't take himself seriously.
O
n Saturday, Mikhail Gorbachev sent these words about Steve:
Dear Katrina,
Please accept my sincere condolences on Steve's
passing. He was one of the closest people to me in his views and
understanding of the enormous events that occurred in the late 1980s in Russia and changed the world.
Steve was a brilliant historian and a man of
democratic convictions. He loved Russia, the Russian intelligentsia, and
believed in our country's future.
I always considered Steve and you my true
friends. During perestroika and all the subsequent years, I felt your
understanding and unwavering support. I thank you both.
Dear Katrina, I feel deep sympathy for your
grief and I mourn together with you and Nika.
Blessed memory for Steve.
I embrace you,
Mikhail Gorbachev
19.09.20
F
or 40 years, Steve was my partner, companion, co-conspirator, best friend, fellow traveler, mentor, husband (for 32
years), co-author. I will be forever grateful to him for introducing me to
The
Nation
, to Russia, for a life that has been full of shared adventure, friendship and passion, and for our beloved
daughter, Nika.
MOST POPULAR
1
Katrina vanden Heuvel
TWITTER
Katrina
vanden Heuvel is editorial director and publisher of
The
Nation
, America's leading source of progressive politics and culture. She served as editor of the magazine from 1995 to
2019.
Herbert Weiner
says:
September 22, 2020 at 11:53 pm
My condolences for the passing of Stephen who fought the post Cold War policies against Russia with a balanced analysis--so
contradictory to the intellectuals who gloat in our victory and are unrealistic to the "threat" posed by Russia which desperately
needs peace and friendship with the West and, especially, us.
He has shown that you can criticism and condemn Stalinism
while also condemning our anti-Soviet policies. He walked that tightrope which I applaud. May his memory be a blessing.
Erwin Borda
says:
September 22, 2020 at 10:44 pm
Dear Katrina, at this time of America's political confusion, pain and intellectual despair, the lost of Steve is really big.
He has been a source of inspiration to many, and the true defender of Russia in the middle of political adversity. Steve being an
intellectual giant always exposed his ideas in a humble and honest way. What a lost for America and for the world!
Rest in Peace Steve! And for you Katrina and Nika my most sincere condolences!
God Bless you all!
Valera Bochkarev
says:
September 22, 2020 at 8:56 am
Boots, Applebaums, Kristols and Joffes of this world will come and go as specks of dirt clogging up our civilization while never
measuring up to courageous moral and intellectual giants like Professor Cohen. His intellect, insight and humility will always be
a shining beacon for those that have high hopes for humanity. Rest in peace, Steve Cohen. You've led a righteous and honorable
life, Sir.
Pierre Guerlain
says:
September 22, 2020 at 2:43 am
I started reading Steve's articles in connection with the conspiracy theory that Russiagate is and then I watched many videos of
him in interviews. I came to admire such a courageous man who was slandered by people who knew nothing, nothing about Russia, the
country Steve knew so well but also nothing about geopolitics, international relations and the tricks of intel services. Always
competent and with a gift for clear exposition, Steve warned about what is one of the gravest dangers: war with Russia. I too
admired Gorbachev and saw how he was hoodwinked by people who unknowingly prepared Putin's rise. A great courageous thinker is
gone and we miss him.
Ann Wright
says:
September 21, 2020 at 7:53 pm
I admired Steve's perspective from 1992 when I was in the second group that wasIn the US Embassy in Tashkent, Uzbekistan and two
years later with the Us Embassy in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan for two years from 1994-1996. I've been back to Russia twice in the past
three years and
I agree totally with His view of the stupidity of another Cold War!!!
John Stewart
says:
September 21, 2020 at 5:12 pm
Katrina, thank you so much for sharing your thoughts. I took two courses with Professor Cohen at Princeton in 1973 and 1974, and
he was without question the best lecturer I had in seven years of higher education. He became my intellectual mentor, although I
was too shy to ever really talk with him. I graduated in Politics and Russian Studies in 1977, and he was an inspiration. I am
especially saddened by his death because I have been thinking of picking up Russian studies soon when I retire and I wanted his
advice on where I should do a Masters degree, with whom, and what topics needed someone to pick up. He was a great man, and a
voice of sense about Russia. He will be greatly missed.
John Connolly
says:
September 21, 2020 at 3:10 pm
Dear Katrina: Thank You for this personal sharing of Your life with Stephen Cohen; and sincere condolences to You, Nika and
Lucas.
I really appreciate Your clarity and candor about the unique position Steve occupied in the academic, intellectual and political
firmament ... never completely clear to me until Your explication. Steve regularly engaged and sometimes enraged me with some of
his positions -- some of them seeming to me ill-considered defenses of cloddish Stalinist bureaucrats or malevolent Russian
authoritarians ... but I read everything he wrote in 'The Nation' and anywhere else I came across him. As a longtime Trotskyist/
Socialist I could find plenty to argue about with Brother Cohen, but also found great appreciation for the fact that
almost
no one else was currently thinking and writing about Russia or the Soviet experience with the rigor, insight, depth of experience
and skill that Stephen owned and shared with us all.
It goes without saying he will be missed by You his dearest and closest
ones; but he will be sorely missed too by those of us in Your extended 'Nation' Family, and the Progressive millions he so widely
taught and influenced to 'think different'.
When Vladimir Putin got charge of Russia, there was no sign that he would do better than the
drunk he had replaced. An ex KGB officer seemed like a choice more driven by nostalgia rather
than ideology, but Putin had many more assets going for him than first met the eyes:
patriotism, humanism, a sense of justice, cunning ruse, a genius economist friend named Sergey
Glazyev whom openly despised the New World Order, but above all, he embodied the reincarnation
of the long lost Russian ideology of total political and economical independence. After a few
years spent at draining the Russian swamp from the oligarchs and mafiosis that his stumbling
predecessor had left in his trail of empty bottles, Vlad rolled his sleeves and got to
work.
Because his opponents had been looting the planet for 250 years through colonization insured
by a military dominance, Vlad knew that he had to start by building an invincible military
machine. And he did. He came up with different types of hypersonic missiles that can't be
stopped, the best defensive systems on the planet, the best electronic jamming systems, and the
best planes. Then to make sure that a nuclear war wouldn't be an option, he came up with stuff
which nightmares are made of, such as the Sarmat, the Poseidon and the Avangard, all
unstoppable and able to destroy any country in a matter of a few hours.
Putin said that Russia is the only country in the world that has hypersonic weapons even
though its military spending is a fraction of the U.S. military budget. Russian Defense
Minister Sergei Shoigu, left, and Chief of General Staff of Russia Valery Gerasimov, right,
attend the meeting.
With a new and unmatched arsenal, he could proceed to defeat any NATO force or any of its
proxies, as he did starting in September 2015 in Syria. He proved to every country that
independence from the NWO banking system was now a matter of choice. Putin not only won the
Syrian war, but he won the support of many New World Order countries that suddenly switched
sides upon realizing how invincible Russia had become. On a diplomatic level, it also got
mighty China by its side, and then managed to protect independent oil producers such as
Venezuela and Iran, while leaders like Erdogan of Turkey and Muhammad Ben Salman of Saudi
Arabia decided to side with Russia, who isn't holding the best poker hand, but the whole deck
of cards.
Ending in the conclusion that Putin now controls the all-mighty oil market, the unavoidable
energy resource that lubricates economies and armies, while the banksters' NATO can only watch,
without any means to get it back. With the unbelievable results that Putin has been getting in
the last five years, the New World Order suddenly looks like a house of cards about to crumble.
The Empire of Banks has been terminally ill for five years, but it's now on morphine, barely
realizing what's going on.
Tragedy and hope
Since there is no hope in starting WW3 which is lost in advance, the last banzai came out of
the bushes in the shape of a virus and the ensuing media creation of a fake pandemic. The main
focus was to avoid a catastrophic hyperinflation of the humongous mass of US dollar that no one
wants anymore, to have time to implement their virtual world crypto-currency, as if the
chronically failing bankers still have any legitimacy to keep controlling our money supplies.
It seemed at first that the plan could work. That's when Vlad took out his revolver to start
the Russian roulette game and bankers blew their brains out upon the pressure on the
trigger.
He called a meeting with OPEC and killed the price of oil by refusing to lower Russia's
production, taking the barrel to under 30 dollars. Without any afterthought and certainly even
less remorse, Vlad killed the costly Western oil production. All the dollars that had been
taken out of the market had to be re-injected by the Fed and other central banks to avoid a
downslide and the final disaster. By now, our dear bankers are out of solutions.
... ... ..
The New World Order is facing the two most powerful countries on the planet, and this fake
pandemic changed everything. It showed how desperate the banksters are, and if we don't want to
end up with nuclear warheads flying in both directions, Putin and Trump have to stop them
now.
Terminate the BIS, the World Bank, the IMF, the European Central bank, the EU, NATO, now.
Our world won't be perfect, but it might get much better soon.
Easter resurrection is coming. This might get biblical.
"... The blogger Caitlin Johnstone accurately states that these most of these mainstream corporate journalists are really *narrative managers* in that their primary role is to peddle the official narrative of the US corporate/political establishment for any given topic. ..."
"... I would add that the managing editors of these "journalists"/narrative managers would be more honestly described as "handlers," to use the parlance of spooks. ..."
"... Waste of time. They control the media. The Internet may have lots of influence, but it still does not set "consensus reality" - that remains with the MSM. The MSM issues one coordinated narrative. The Internet is all over the place. Without one coordinated narrative, you can't set "reality". ..."
"... In addition, those who issue the narrative and control the MSM have the power. People want to believe those in power, due to cognitive dissonance - otherwise they'd have to accept that everyone ruling their lives is a corrupt liar. The electorate may *say* they understand that their rulers are corrupt - but they can't act* on that realization without compromising their own internal belief systems. So again, waste of time to try ..."
snake , Sep 22 2020 0:59 utc | 22 can we not invent a method that can counter this tactic of using propaganda to control
the narrative?
1) Hack them. Release their planning documents, emails, phone calls, etc. showing how the scam was set up.
2) Waste of time. They control the media. The Internet may have lots of influence, but it still does not set "consensus reality"
- that remains with the MSM. The MSM issues one coordinated narrative. The Internet is all over the place. Without one coordinated
narrative, you can't set "reality".
3) In addition, those who issue the narrative and control the MSM have the power. People want to believe those in power, due to
cognitive dissonance - otherwise they'd have to accept that everyone ruling their lives is a corrupt liar. The electorate may *say*
they understand that their rulers are corrupt - but they can't act* on that realization without compromising their own internal belief
systems. So again, waste of time to try.
Well....as always, and especially if it involves anything even remotely relating to 'Russia', or Iran, or whatever adversarial
operational target of the day might be -- one can reliably count on our very own "Izvestia on the Hudson" to faithfully execute
their officially sanctioned nation security state propaganda mission by dutifully steno-graphing as much dis/mis-information as
their NSA/CIA/Pentagon handlers request (require) from them.
It was a shock on arriving at the New York Times in 2004, as the paper's movie editor, to realize that its editorial dynamic
was essentially the reverse. By and large, talented reporters scrambled to match stories with what internally was often called
"the narrative." We were occasionally asked to map a narrative for our various beats a year in advance, square the plan with
editors, then generate stories that fit the pre-designated line.
Reality usually had a way of intervening. But I knew one senior reporter who would play solitaire on his computer in the
mornings, waiting for his editors to come through with marching orders. Once, in the Los Angeles bureau, I listened to a visiting
National staff reporter tell a contact, more or less: "My editor needs someone to say such-and-such, could you say that?"
The bigger shock came on being told, at least twice, by Times editors who were describing the paper's daily Page One meeting:
"We set the agenda for the country in that room.
The blogger Caitlin Johnstone accurately states that these most of these mainstream corporate journalists are really *narrative
managers* in that their primary role is to peddle the official narrative of the US corporate/political establishment for any given
topic.
I would add that the managing editors of these "journalists"/narrative managers would be more honestly described as "handlers,"
to use the parlance of spooks.
In fact, it would be apt to described venerable institution of journalism itself as an intelligence operation.
@snake | Sep 22 2020 0:59 utc | 22 can we not invent a method that can counter this tactic of using propaganda to control the
narrative?
1) Hack them. Release their planning documents, emails, phone calls, etc. showing how the scam was set up.
2) Waste of time. They control the media. The Internet may have lots of influence, but it still does not set "consensus
reality" - that remains with the MSM. The MSM issues one coordinated narrative. The Internet is all over the place. Without one
coordinated narrative, you can't set "reality".
3) In addition, those who issue the narrative and control the MSM have the power. People want to believe those in power,
due to cognitive dissonance - otherwise they'd have to accept that everyone ruling their lives is a corrupt liar. The electorate
may *say* they understand that their rulers are corrupt - but they can't act* on that realization without compromising their own
internal belief systems. So again, waste of time to try.
It would be interesting if Durham prove result revealed in October, not matter how
whitewashed they are.
From comments below it is lear that for this particular subset neoliberal elite lost all
legitimacy
Notable quotes:
"... Told to Erase Laptop Containing Investigation of Anthony Weiner Laptop ..."
"... Robertson alleges that the FBI did nothing for a month after discovering Clinton's emails on the Anthony Weiner laptop. It was only after he spoke with the U.S. Attorney's office overseeing the case, he claims, that the agency took action. ..."
"... Robertson's assertions match up with a Wall Street Journal report from 2018 . In that report, text messages between agent Peter Strzok and his girlfriend, lawyer Lisa Page, indicated the former had been called to discuss the newly discovered emails on September 28th. Those emails wouldn't be revealed until former Director James Comey notified Congress about them on October 28th. ..."
"... A book written by James B . Stewart in 2019 asserts that FBI agents had referred to the discovery of Hillary Clinton's emails as an "oh s***" moment." One agent admitted there were "ten times" as many emails as Comey admitted to publicly. ..."
"... These allegations make it difficult to say Comey did not lie to the public – if not Congress . ..."
"... Recently released documents from the DOJ show multiple FBI officials had "accidentally wiped" their phones after the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) requested them . ..."
"... Erasing evidence is a consistent theme for the Obama-era FBI. Meanwhile, the Senate Homeland Security Committee has voted to authorize over three dozen subpoenas and depositions of some of these officials, including Comey. ..."
"... The difficulty is not just that Comey and his underlings were obstructing justice to benefit Clinton, and made a total **** show of it. It is that Sessions was, "to protect the DOJ"... and Barr, also, clearly, as long he continues to run interference for Comey, Clinton, et al, is also obstructing justice. Barr has crafted a veneer, it seems... in the Durham probe... to provide himself plausible deniability. That veneer can remain plausible only as long as Durham does nothing, and fails to make the files public. ..."
"... It was the NYPD. And, that cadre of NYPD officers recognized what was likely to happen when they did turn it over to the FBI. So they made copies. And, the copies got distributed to the cloud. ..."
"... The emails are in the stellarwind database , according to William Binney. So are all the texts that the Mueller crew "erased." IntercoursetheEU is correct - every email and text ever sent is archived in that database. ..."
"... Where is that slimy, former CIA Director who wouldn't shut-up on national TV from late 2016 to early 2020? Hhmm, not a freaking peep nor have I seen any recent images. How about the dirtball, prior FBI Dir? His Twitter acct has only had "quotes" posted for about a month now. ..."
"... Clapper? Another Trump trasher on constant TV the last few years.....where is he? NOT A PEEP. Why wouldn't he keep trashing to diminish DJT's election chances? ..."
"... Brennan was on an MSNBC panel last week pale, sweating, moving around in his seat at the mere mention of John Durham. Not his usual cocky self that's for sure. ..."
FBI agent John Robertson, the man who found Hillary Clinton's emails on the laptop of
Anthony Weiner, claims he was advised by bosses to
erase his own computer.
Former FBI Director James Comey, you may recall, announced days before the 2016 presidential
election that he had "learned of the existence" of the emails on Weiner's laptop .
Weiner is the disgraced husband of Clinton aide Huma Abedin.
Robertson alleges that the manner in which his higher-ups in the FBI handled the case was
"not ethically or morally right."
His startling claims are made in a book titled, "October Surprise: How the FBI Tried to Save
Itself and Crashed an Election," an excerpt of which has been published by the
Washington Post .
Told to Erase Laptop Containing Investigation of Anthony Weiner Laptop
Robertson alleges that the FBI did nothing for a month after discovering Clinton's emails on
the Anthony Weiner laptop. It was only after he spoke with the U.S. Attorney's office overseeing the case, he claims,
that the agency took action.
"He had told his bosses about the Clinton emails weeks ago," the book contends . "Nothing
had happened."
"Or rather, the only thing that had happened was his boss had instructed Robertson to
erase his computer work station."
This, according to the Post report, was to "ensure there was no classified material on it,"
but also would eliminate any trail of his actions taken during the investigation.
FBI Did Nothing About Hillary Clinton's Emails For Months?
Robertson's assertions match up with a Wall Street Journal
report from 2018 . In that report, text messages between agent Peter Strzok and his girlfriend, lawyer Lisa
Page, indicated the former had been called to discuss the newly discovered emails on September
28th. Those emails wouldn't be revealed until former Director James Comey notified Congress about
them on October 28th.
A book written by James B . Stewart in 2019 asserts that FBI agents had referred to the
discovery of Hillary Clinton's emails as an "oh s***" moment." One agent admitted there were "ten times" as many emails as Comey admitted to publicly.
These allegations make it difficult to say Comey did not lie to the public – if not
Congress .
Robertson's story is being revealed as U.S. Attorney John Durham is investigating the FBI's
role in the origins of the Russia probe into President Trump's campaign.
Recently released documents from the DOJ show multiple FBI officials had "accidentally
wiped" their phones after the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) requested them .
Erasing evidence is a consistent theme for the Obama-era FBI. Meanwhile, the Senate Homeland Security Committee has voted to authorize over three dozen
subpoenas and depositions of some of these officials, including Comey.
Democrats seem skittish about what Durham is uncovering .
Four House committee chairs last week
asked for an "emergency" review of Attorney General William Barr's handling of Durham's
probe.
"We are concerned by indications that Attorney General Barr might depart from longstanding
DOJ principles," a letter to the IG reads .
They contend Barr may "take public action related to U.S. Attorney Durham's investigation
that could impact the presidential election." Top Democrats have also been threatening to impeach Barr over the investigation.
Kevin Clinesmith, one of the FBI officials involved in gathering evidence in the Russia
investigation, pled
guilty last month to making a false statement. He was accused by the Inspector General of altering an email about former Trump campaign
adviser Carter Page.
President Trump's Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, said in July that he expects further
indictments and jail time to come out of Durham's probe. Democrats, Comey, and others at the FBI might be a little nervous.
DaiRR , 12 hours ago
DemoRat operatives still pervade the DOJ and to a lesser extent the FBI. Treasonous F's
all of them. Andrew Weissmann is an evil a Rat as any of them and he should be tried,
disbarred and punished for all his lying and despicable crimes while at the DOJ. Of course
MSNBC now loves paying him to be their "legal analyst".
MissCellany , 13 hours ago
What, like with a cloth or something?
RoadKill4Supper , 12 hours ago
"What difference, at this point, does it make?"
FBGnome , 3 hours ago
The current election would be at stake.
Unknown User , 14 hours ago
Unless the Swamp does it. Not just a post or a website disappear, people disappear.
Sense , 13 hours ago
The difficulty is not just that Comey and his underlings were obstructing justice to
benefit Clinton, and made a total **** show of it. It is that Sessions was, "to protect the
DOJ"... and Barr, also, clearly, as long he continues to run interference for Comey,
Clinton, et al, is also obstructing justice. Barr has crafted a veneer, it seems... in the
Durham probe... to provide himself plausible deniability. That veneer can remain plausible
only as long as Durham does nothing, and fails to make the files public.
Only if Durham proceeds to use the files, and/or makes the files public, will we find
out if we get prosecutions, or if we get more obstruction under Barr's watch. So, Barr is
carrying a pretty big hammer. It isn't at all clear what he intends to do with that hammer,
or how he intends to use it if he does.
A wild card, perhaps, in the potential for an Senate or House investigation including
Barr's forced participation... in response to which he might be compelled to answer the
unasked question ? Makes it kind of hard to see how "investigating Barr"... poses a threat
to Barr, or Trump... rather than a threat to those investigating him ? The fact they're
even twittering about it suggests more than awareness about the content of that
information... and thus maybe complicity in the effort to cover it up ?
That would explain most of the events of the last four years.
And, as a note, it wasn't "the FBI" that "found the e-mails" (and other files) on the
Weiner laptop.
It was the NYPD. And, that cadre of NYPD officers recognized what was likely to happen
when they did turn it over to the FBI. So they made copies. And, the copies got distributed to the cloud.
It is not possible, I'd think, that Julian Assange didn't get a copy... in case you
wonder why Barr's DOJ is still prosecuting journalism. I doubt they're doing that because
of past publication... rather than in an effort to prevent future publication. Because Assange... in all likelihood... might be the only journalist left in the
world... who will not be coerced into withholding publication.
ElmerTwitch , 12 hours ago
The emails are in the stellarwind database , according to William Binney. So are all the texts that the Mueller crew "erased." IntercoursetheEU is correct - every email and text ever sent is archived in that
database.
The DOJ is indeed protecting Obama, Hillary, Comey, Brennan, Clapper et al.
by claiming "the emails are gone! The texts are gone, too!"
sparky139 , 12 hours ago
What is the stellarwind database
TheReplacement's Replacement , 1 hour ago
Look up NSA.
takeaction , 15 hours ago
As all of us here on ZH understand. NOTHING WILL EVER HAPPEN... And Trump Team....if you are reading this... THIS IS THE BIGGEST LET DOWN OF YOUR ENTIRE PRESIDENCY...
No_Pretzel_Logic , 14 hours ago
takeaction - I disagree. I think things are happening right now....out of the
country.
TRIALS.....
Where is that slimy, former CIA Director who wouldn't shut-up on national TV from late
2016 to early 2020? Hhmm, not a freaking peep nor have I seen any recent images. How about
the dirtball, prior FBI Dir? His Twitter acct has only had "quotes" posted for about a
month now.
Clapper? Another Trump trasher on constant TV the last few years.....where is he? NOT A
PEEP. Why wouldn't he keep trashing to diminish DJT's election chances?
I'm telling ya, I think they are on a certain Caribbean Island. And my wager is that
Trump is going to toss a wild curveball into this election about the 3rd week of Oct.
Treason convictions announced, is my bet.
maggie2now , 13 hours ago
Brennan was on an MSNBC panel last week pale, sweating, moving around in his seat at the
mere mention of John Durham. Not his usual cocky self that's for sure. HRC was online
flapping her yap with Jennifer Palmieri not too long ago trying to convince the Biden
campaign not to concede the 2020 election under any circumstances. As for Clapper, I don't
know - maybe hiding in a remote location ****ting himself?
MoreFreedom , 12 hours ago
They've shut up because their actions betray them. Publicly they say Trump is a Russian
spy or puppet, while under oath, in a closed room, representing their former government
position and top secret clearance, they've no information to support it. That shows an
anti-Trump political motivation, regarding their prior actions in government. It's also
defrauding the public and government.
YouJustCouldnt , 2 hours ago
Couldn't agree more. How many times have we been here before!
20 years on from 9/11 - From the thousands of experts on the Architects and Engineers
for 9/11 Truth , the latest news is that The National Institute of Standards and Technology
( NIST ) is now more than a week late in issuing its "initial decision" on the pending
"request for correction" to its 2008 report on the collapse of World Trade Center Building
7. Big Whoop - and just another nothing burger.
Ms No , 15 hours ago
Uhhhh.....yeah.
We have seen this type of thing since JFK. If you hadn't long ago figured this out then
you are either an amateur or a paid internet herd-moving troll/anti-human.
Some of us aren't part of the herd.
(((Anthony Weiner))), just like (((Mossad Epstein honeypot))) and (((lucky Larry
Silverstein))), countless other examples that blow statistical likelihood way beyond
coincidence.
Not rocket science. Its a mob and these are their puppets and fronts. They dont just own
the FBI. They own all branches of your government and all the alphabets.
Enjoying the covid hysteria and run-up to WWIII?
Unknown User , 14 hours ago
If by (((they))) you mean the British who created the OSA and then the CIA. They also
created all the think-tanks, like the CFR. They own the Fed and run the worldwide banking
cartel. The British Crown owns all the countries of the Commonwealth. And they started the
COVID-19 delusion. Yes. Make no mistake. It is (((THEY))).
VWAndy , 15 hours ago
An he didnt go public with it either.
occams razor. they are all corrupt.
Stackers , 15 hours ago
Anyone who thinks that anybody beyond this low level flunky, Kliensmith, is going to get
any kind of prosecution is dreaming. None of these people will face any consequences to
their outright sedition and they know it. Disgusting.
radical-extremist , 15 hours ago
She created a private personal server to purposely circumvent the FOIA system and any
other prying eyes. Her staff was warned not to do it, but they refused to confront her
about it. They were so technically inept that they didn't understand emails are copied on
to servers everywhere...including the pentagon and the state department. And Huma's laptop
that her perv husband used to sext girls.
She maintained and exchanged Top Secret information on a personal/private/unsecured
server in her house. That is a crime punishable with prison time...and yet she skates.
High Vigilante , 15 hours ago
This guy should avoid walking out in dark.
His name was Seth!
Bay of Pigs , 13 hours ago
We have to face reality. If Durham doesn't indict some of these people before the
election, nothing is going to happen. It's the end of the line. Time has run out.
"We bullsh#tted some folks...."
dogfish , 13 hours ago
Trump is a charlatan and a fraud. The only winners with Trump are the Zionist they are
Trumps top priority.
play_arrow
OCnStiggs , 13 hours ago
Good thing NYPD copied the HD on that laptop for just this occurrence. There reportedly
at least two copies in safes in NYC. Criminality of the highest order that eclipses by
100,000,000 whatever happened in Watergate. These FBI people need to hang.
Sparehead , 13 hours ago
Safe in NYC? Like all the evidence of criminal banking activity that was lost in World
Trade Center 7?
4Y_LURKER , 12 hours ago
Oh look! We found passports even though steel and gold was vaporized by jet
fuel!!
Those sneaky Russians are well aware Biden is doing a good enough job of subverting his
own campaign.
They know he, like his opponent, offers no relief from the constant militarism and forever
wars that the American public is fed up with.
They know he, like his opponent, is corrupt and represents corporate interests and that
the American public sees him as out of touch and incapable of offering anything in terms of
substantive change.
They know that so long as Biden doesn't offer any kind of viable alternative to the status
quo his candidacy is going to be weak and ineffectual and that there isn't much of anything
they could do that could possibly enhance that effect.
So, they're content to sit back and let nature take its course. In other words, they
realize the best way to interfere in the American elections... is by NOT interfering with
them.
And how could the Americans possibly counter such a strategy? The deviousness is off the charts. Damn those Russians!
Unfortunately in his brilliant analysis of USA-Russia relations Stephen Cohen never pointed out that the USA policy toward
Russia is dictated by the interests of maintaining global neoliberal empire and the concept of "Full Spectrum Dominance" which was
adopted by the USA neoliberal elite after the collapse of the USSR.
Like British empire the USA neoliberal empire is now overextended, metropolia is in secular stagnation with deterioration
standard of living of the bottom 80% of population, so the USA under Trump became more aggressive and dangerous on the international
arena. Trump administration behaves behaves like a cornered rat on international arena.
Notable quotes:
"... On Friday, 18 September, professor Steve Cohen passed away in New York City and we, the "dissident" community of Americans standing for peace with Russia – and for peace with the world at large – lost a towering intellectual and skillful defender of our cause who enjoyed an audience of millions by his weekly broadcasts on the John Batchelor Show, WABC Radio. ..."
"... from the start of the Information Wars against Russia during the George W. Bush administration following Putin's speech at the Munich Security Conference in February 2007, no voice questioning the official propaganda line in America was tolerated. Steve Cohen, who in the 1990s had been a welcome guest on U.S. national television and a widely cited expert in print media suddenly found himself blacklisted and subjected to the worst of McCarthyite style, ad hominem attacks. ..."
"... the opposition to Steve was led by experts in the Ukrainian and other minority peoples sub-categories of the profession who were militantly opposed not just to him personally but to any purely objective, not to mention sympathetic treatment of Russian leadership in the territorial expanse of Eurasia. ..."
"... Almost no one outside our 'dissident' community is concerned about the possibility of Armageddon in say two years' time due to miscalculations and bad luck in our pursuing economic, informational and military confrontation with Russia and China. ..."
"... My point in this discussion is that in the last decade of his life Stephen Cohen became one of the nation's most fearless and persistent defenders of the right to Free Speech. ..."
"... It was forced upon him by The New York Times, The Washington Post and other major media who pilloried him or blacklisted him over his unorthodox, unsanctioned, nonconformist views on the "Putin regime." It was forced upon him by university colleagues who sought to deny his right to establish graduate school fellowships in Russian affairs bearing his name and that of his mentor at Indiana University, Professor Tucker. ..."
"... In the face of vicious personal attacks from these McCarthyite forces, in the face of hate mail and even threats to his life, Steve decided to set up The American Committee and to recruit to its governing board famous, patriotic Americans and the descendants of the most revered families in the country. In this he succeeded, and it is to his credit that a moral counter force to the stampeding bulls of repression was erected and has survived to this day. ..."
On Friday, 18 September, professor Steve Cohen passed away in New York City and we, the
"dissident" community of Americans standing for peace with Russia – and for peace with
the world at large – lost a towering intellectual and skillful defender of our cause who
enjoyed an audience of millions by his weekly broadcasts on the John Batchelor Show, WABC
Radio.
A year ago, I reviewed his latest book, War With Russia? which drew upon the
material of those programs and took this scholar turned journalist into a new and highly
accessible genre of oral readings in print. The narrative style may have been more relaxed,
with simplified syntax, but the reasoning remained razor sharp. I urge those who are today
paying tribute to Steve, to buy and read the book, which is his best legacy.
From start to finish, Stephen F. Cohen was among America's best historians of his
generation, putting aside the specific subject matter that he treated: Nikolai Bukharin, his
dissertation topic and the material of his first and best known book; or, to put it more
broadly, the history of Russia (USSR) in the 20 th century. He was one of the very
rare cases of an historian deeply attentive to historiography, to causality and to logic. I
understood this when I read a book of his from the mid-1980s in which he explained why Russian
(Soviet) history was no longer attracting young students of quality: because there were no
unanswered questions, because we smugly assumed that we knew about that country all that there
was to know. That was when our expert community told us with one voice that the USSR was
entrapped in totalitarianism without any prospect for the overthrow of its oppressive
regime.
But my recollections of Steve also have a personal dimension going back six years or so when
a casual email correspondence between us flowered into a joint project that became the launch
of the American Committee for East West Accord (ACEWA). This was a revival of a
pro-détente association of academics and business people that existed from the mid-1970s
to the early 1990s, when, following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the removal of the
Communist Party from power, the future of Russia in the family of nations we call the
'international community' seemed assured and there appeared to be no further need for such an
association as ACEWA.
I hasten to add that in the original ACEWA Steve and I were two ships that passed in the
night. With his base in Princeton, he was a protégé of the dean of diplomats then
in residence there, George Kennan, who was the leading light on the academic side of the ACEWA.
I was on the business side of the association, which was led by Don Kendall, chairman of
Pepsico and also for much of the 1970s chairman of the US-USSR Trade and Economic Council of
which I was also a member. I published pro-détente articles in their newsletter and
published a lengthy piece on cooperation with the Soviet Union in agricultural and food
processing domains, my specialty at that time, in their collection of essays by leaders in the
U.S. business community entitled Common Sense in U.S.-Soviet Trade .
The academic contingent had, as one might assume, a 'progressive' coloration, while the
business contingent had a Nixon Republican coloration. Indeed, in the mid-1980s these two sides
split in their approach to the growing peace movement in the U.S. that was fed by opposition in
the 'thinking community' on university campuses to Ronald Reagan's Star Wars agenda. Kendall
shut the door at ACEWA to rabble rousing and the association did not rise to the occasion, so
that its disbanding in the early '90s went unnoticed.
In the re-incorporated American Committee, I helped out by assuming the formal obligations
of Treasurer and Secretary, and also became the group's European Coordinator from my base in
Brussels. At this point my communications with Steve were almost daily and emotionally quite
intense. This was a time when America's expert community on Russian affairs once again felt
certain that it knew everything there was to know about the country, and most particularly
about the nefarious "Putin regime." But whereas in the 1970s and 1980s, polite debate about the
USSR/Russia was entirely possible both behind closed doors and in public space, from the
start of the Information Wars against Russia during the George W. Bush administration following
Putin's speech at the Munich Security Conference in February 2007, no voice questioning the
official propaganda line in America was tolerated. Steve Cohen, who in the 1990s had been a
welcome guest on U.S. national television and a widely cited expert in print media suddenly
found himself blacklisted and subjected to the worst of McCarthyite style, ad hominem
attacks.
From my correspondence and several meetings with Steve at this time both in his New York
apartment and here in Brussels, when he and Katrina van der Heuvel came to participate in a
Round Table dedicated to relations with Russia at the Brussels Press Club that I arranged, I
knew that Steve was deeply hurt by these vitriolic attacks. He was at the time waging a
difficult campaign to establish a fellowship in support of graduate studies in Russian affairs.
It was touch and go, because of vicious opposition from some stalwarts of the profession to any
fellowship that bore Steve's name. Allow me to put the 'i' on this dispute: the opposition
to Steve was led by experts in the Ukrainian and other minority peoples sub-categories of the
profession who were militantly opposed not just to him personally but to any purely objective,
not to mention sympathetic treatment of Russian leadership in the territorial expanse of
Eurasia. In the end, Steve and Katrina prevailed. The fellowships exist and, hopefully,
will provide sustenance to future studies when American attitudes towards Russia become less
politicized.
At all times and on all occasions, Steve Cohen was a voice of reason above all. The problem
of our age is that we are now not only living in a post-factual world, but in a post-logic
world. The public reads day after day the most outrageous and illogical assertions about
alleged Russian misdeeds posted by our most respected mainstream media including The New
York Times and The Washington Post . Almost no one dares to raise a hand and
suggest that this reporting is propaganda and that the public is being brainwashed. Steve did
exactly that in War With Russia? in a brilliant and restrained text.
Regrettably today we have no peace movement to speak of. Youth and our 'progressive' elites
are totally concerned over the fate of humanity in 30 or 40 years' time as a consequence of
Global Warming and rising seas. That is the essence of the Green Movement. Almost no one
outside our 'dissident' community is concerned about the possibility of Armageddon in say two
years' time due to miscalculations and bad luck in our pursuing economic, informational and
military confrontation with Russia and China.
I fear it will take only some force majeure development such as we had in 1962 during the
Cuban Missile Crisis to awaken the broad public to the risks to our very survival that we are
incurring by ignoring the issues that Stephen F. Cohen, professor emeritus of Princeton and New
York University was bringing to the airwaves week after week on his radio program.
Postscript
In terms of action, the new ACEWA was even less effective than its predecessor, which had
avoided linking up with the peace movement of the 1980s and sought to exert influence on policy
through armchair talks with Senators and other statesmen in Washington behind closed doors of
(essentially) men's clubs.
However, the importance of the new ACEWA, and the national importance of Stephen Cohen lay
elsewhere.
This question of appraising Stephen Cohen's national importance is all the more timely given
that on the day of his death, 18 September, the nation also lost Supreme Justice Ruth Ginsburg,
about whose national importance no Americans, whether her fans or her opponents, had any
doubt.
My point in this discussion is that in the last decade of his life Stephen Cohen became
one of the nation's most fearless and persistent defenders of the right to Free Speech. It
was not a role that he sought. It was thrust upon him by the expert community of international
affairs, including the Council on Foreign Relations, from which he reluctantly resigned over
this matter.
It was forced upon him by The New York Times, The Washington Post and other major media
who pilloried him or blacklisted him over his unorthodox, unsanctioned, nonconformist views on
the "Putin regime." It was forced upon him by university colleagues who sought to deny his
right to establish graduate school fellowships in Russian affairs bearing his name and that of
his mentor at Indiana University, Professor Tucker.
In the face of vicious personal attacks from these McCarthyite forces, in the face of
hate mail and even threats to his life, Steve decided to set up The American Committee and to
recruit to its governing board famous, patriotic Americans and the descendants of the most
revered families in the country. In this he succeeded, and it is to his credit that a moral
counter force to the stampeding bulls of repression was erected and has survived to this
day.
[If you found value in this article, you should be interested to read my latest collection
of essays entitled A Belgian Perspective on International Affairs, published in
November 2019 and available in e-book, paperback and hardbound formats from amazon, barnes
& noble, bol.com, fnac, Waterstones and other online retailers. Use the "View Inside" tab
on the book's webpages to browse.]
It was all about Full Spectrum Domination. McFaul is not intellectual, he is a propagandist. Actually mediocre, obnoxious
propagandist. In like Professor Cohen, intellectually he is nothing with academic credentials.
The level and primitivism lies about Ukraine would name any serious academic flash. It was about encircling
Russia.
McFaul was behind Magnitsky which in best conspiracy tradition raises questions whether he works for MI6? We now know who
Browder was and suspicious that he was Magnitsky killer or facilitator/financer (by hiring the jail doctor who traded Magnitsky)
are very strong in view of "cui bono" question.
Notable quotes:
"... He is definitely not at the same level as Stephen F.Cohen. This is very alarming for the US, that people like him could have any power decision on Foreign Policy, and could explain the slow decline of the USA. ..."
"... McFaul is intellectually incoherent and disingenuous. Cohen wasted him ..."
"... We all know the truth... US economy heavily dependent on producing weapons and ammunition ..."
"... Mc Faul is clearly not supposed to have been in the positions of power, where he was. Something is fundamentally wrong with America. I think there is a crisis of personnel. Where are all these incredibly smart, high IQ people Harvard, Princeton, and the Ivy Leagues are supposedly pumping out? ..."
McFaul is definitely not an academic, but much more a mediocre high civil servant. He is
also very post modern in his approach. He is here to sell his book, not to argue ideas. He is
incapable of building a rhetorical argument, and of having any political vision or strong
analytical intelligence.
He is definitely not at the same level as Stephen F.Cohen. This is
very alarming for the US, that people like him could have any power decision on Foreign
Policy, and could explain the slow decline of the USA.
Confronted to people like Putin who is
obviously an Old fashion politician like de Gaulles or Churchill, the Cold War can only lead
us to catastrophe.
Great facts from Prof. Cohen. Faulty logic from McFaul ("you cannot use those
variables..."). McFaul will not get far in understanding Russia with this twisted approach,
ie pretending like nothing (NATO, missile treaty, regime changes) happens.
Very informative debate! I think McFaul has only contributed to the new cold war with the
treaties he helped write and the ill-informed advice he provided to the neoconservative Obama
administration. Mr. Stephen Cohen is brilliant and I only wish he was more influential in
shaping today's foreign policy. Though thankfully, McFaul is also no longer influential in
shaping U.S. foreign policy.
Very low from McFaul. Bringing personal attacks on him from social media as "facts" and
"arguments" ("McFaul is a pedophile") . This not a level of academic argument from McFaul. He
is no match to Cohen.
It's so easy to understand! Russia is doing same thing usa will do when china starts to
open military bases in latin America. Its not hard to imagine and in decade or to you will
not have to imagine you will have that reality. Many Latin America countries will be interconnected with china with economic and military
agreements than one day they will try to
brig Mexico in China's sphere of influence if they refuse china can let's say "help" opposition
to come in power and sign everything China wants.
I would like to see what American "experts"
will say. How many of them will think that Mexico as a sovereign natio have right to sign any
agreement it wants maybe even Russia can open military base and bring nuclear weapons to
border of USA. So what it's their democratic right, isn't it?
1:13:33 - 1:13:58 I swear by the
all-powerful Albert Einistine that you are lying AND YOU KNOW IT. Russians said A BILLION
times that U.S.A slowly but SURELY preparing for what they called "a calamitous war" by
moving its lethal weapons nearer and nearer to the Russian territories.
We all know the
truth... US economy heavily dependent on producing weapons and ammunition but the very very
very main reason [for harassing Russia and the rest of world] is because the Rothschild
family wants GLOBAL DOMINATION. SOLD FACT (ask ANY Russian intelligence officer about it and
you will see what i mean).
I have read Professor Cohen's last two works ("Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives" and
"War with Russia?") and found them very informative and persuasive, but seeing him here
expanding upon his key arguments is even more rewarding.
He shouldn't have to be brave to
hold to his position, given his reputation as a scholar, but regrettably he is made to appear
out of step with the critical mass of opinion makers who see more value promoting conflict
with Russia than working towards a sensible accommodation.
I'm not an "expert" from Stanford, but as I recall the USSR imploded and the US [CIA etc]
was totally surprised -so called pundits and experts in the US did not see it coming, then
the next thing we get is US mainstream media claimed victory in the cold war, just blanket
assertions that US won the cold war because the US is virtuous and clean and good, and we did
it by the clear superiority of US way of life or some such crap.
Charles Krauthammer, for
example. Now so called media and historians try to convince us that Reagan lead disarmament,
but as I recall he blocked it at most points, for example, it was Gorbachev not Reagan who
was out front and did all the leading at Reykjavik, and Reagan threw away Gorbachev's
historic offer to totally disarm on the grounds that Star Wars was a more important priority,
on Richard Perle's advice.
Now we are seeing something similar under Trump in which the US is
again uninterested in peace and far more interested in wars by proxies and drones and global
hegemony and control running the 7 seas and space to boot.
Michael Foley is a liar of course US was involved I was me in US Army force and my friends
used to travel to Georgia way before 2008 and of course everybody knows 2008 Russia and
Georgia went to war with each other but our soldiers US government soldiers were teaching
Georgians fighting with the NATO forces and all orange resolutions and Geo like him involved
in Overturning government was famous Victoria Nuland
Interesting debate and I hope Cohen is right, and is not the first of its kind. But still
the FIRST EVER free debate about the New Cold War in the United States is (so far) still on
Youtube. While listening to the two professors I found myself noting the difference in the
presentation of facts from a career oriented politician/academic who is influenced by a
forced narrative (McFaul) and one (Cohen) who is an academic historian who is in dissent and
can speak freely (he is retired).
Keep in mind that Prof. McFaul has a career to worry about.
It shows a LOT! Here we can see how political pressure can influence a debate. McFaul is
still quite deserving of accolades for his courage to even say what he did in this debate.
And note how much free speech is missing in American society in the fact that this sort of
thing is very difficult to achieve in a collapsed democracy. Note also that McFaul also stuck
to "the Narrative" big lies like the so-called Crimea "annexation" when he would have known
the truth of it....There are other examples. Americans are denied the fact that the public
vote taken in Crimea was over 90% IN FAVOUR of joining Russia (again). This fact is simply
too large for McFaul to be unaware of and yet most Americans are wallowing in this fake news.
Or censored omissions. FWIW, Galearis
Prof. McFaul is a partisan. He bases his opinion of detailed facts, so detailed that he
misses the bigger picture. The bigger picture is that he claims to be a sovereigns, but
only when it comes to the US sovereignty. How about Russia's sovereignty?
Or Ukraine's whose
government has been toppled by a (among others) US sponsored coup? How about Syria
sovereignty? He furthers the view that the US had a fair posture towards Russia, which is
not. This is also demonstrated by his personal deep dislike of Putin, which is something that
both a real statesman or a real scholar should not influence opinions and actions.
McFaul's
perspective is also flawed by the conflation of his (and Obama's) wishes and reality: that is
that they don't like Putin and think to deal with Russia as if Putin was not there,
but he is. You deal with the reality, not with your wishes. Putin is legitimate and strong
Russia's president, whether McFaul likes him or not. A real respect for sovereignty demands
respect for the head of the state you deal with. You don't question his legitimacy, as well
as they don't questioned Clinton's, Bush's, Obama or Trump legitimacy. His point of view is
that everything goes on in the world should have the US sanction, otherwise is not good.
This
is imperial hubris, this is arrogance. This flaws his opinion in so far everything is
measured upon american likes and dislikes. THis is not statesmanship, this is not
scholarship, this is partisanship. He is also intellectually dishonest because he confuses a
debate on right and wrong, which should be based on certain assumptions, with a debate on
party interests, which has nothing to do with right and wrong, and is based on different
assumptions. Indeed he is the less fit person in a debate on responsibility for the New Cold
War because he was involved in its development and acquisition.
Partisanship is admitted, but
shouldn't be disguised as neutrality or given any relevance just because of knowledge of
technical details he knows - much of them are, frankly, irrelevant. His points are weak and
inconsistent with geopolitical and a realist view of the international relations, they are
biased by universal-liberal ideology, they are US-centric, he forgets too many essential
points about the whole story. For instance he talks about the missed chance for Russian
democracy (here a debate about what democracy is: his assumption is that the US democracy is
.... please, don't make me laugh), but he doesn't mention that Soviet people voted in
referenda and overwhelmingly wanted the USSR to keep on existing, but he forgets this
"detail".
He forgets how the so much beloved Elcin sent the tanks against the parliament,
many people were killed, how he allowed the pillaging of Russian people and resources by
criminal oligarchs (many of them happily hosted by the UK and presented as political
dissidents), and how the Russian 1996 were HEAVILY rigged and meddled by the US in order to
reconfirm Elcin as a president. He complains about Putin being appointed by Elcin out of
nothing. Well I can't recall any American complaints at that time, maybe because they thought
he could be an alcoholic puppet like Elcin and that was clearly something the US liked and
supported. So what about Obama (fake) words about wishing a strong Russia?
Obama spoke
derogatory words about Russia. The only American interests about Russia is that is a militarily and strategically weak provider of cheap natural resources and that is not in tne
position of competing for anything. I will stop here, although I could write pages and pages
about McFlaws .... ooops! McFaul's inconsistency both as a scholar and even more as a
statesman's advisor, but the debate was among a great intellectual with a clear vision of the
world, and a small professor taken with insignificant details and too much love for Obama and
blind believe in liberal universal ideology.
Mc Faul is clearly not supposed to have been in the positions of power, where he was.
Something is fundamentally wrong with America. I think there is a crisis of personnel. Where
are all these incredibly smart, high IQ people Harvard, Princeton, and the Ivy Leagues are
supposedly pumping out?
Prof. Cohen astonishing realpolitik ingenuity when asked "what the security interests of
Ukraine and Georgia are" ( 1:16:21 ) unveils to me his
understanding of politics as kind of imperialistic chess game where the US stands against the
USSR (or RF for that matter). I have experienced the same feelings from his other debates (I
remember one memorable at Munk Debates in 2015) - as if the historic fears, desires and
dreams (of NATO or EU membership as the only effective shield against Russian military power)
of so many ex-soviet countries means absolutely nothing - as if they were mere puppets of US
"regime". As though the legitimate wishes of these sovereign countries means nothing at all.
He is so surprised by that question he suddenly can't retrieve even the definition of what
security interests of a country actually means - a rather strange quality in a historian.
Ultimately he comes up with "they should make peace with their neighbors" - say this to
countries that were along their history subjects of Soviet violent repression, military
invasions, ethnic genocides and such. "I don't think Russian is a threat to them". Absolutely
ridiculous.
This Michael McFaul individual is such severe laughing-stock completely out of touch with
reality. Stephen Cohen's version of the "new cold war" is much closer to reality and we
should not forget the nefarious entities that pull the strings in D.C. U.S. covert
involvement throughout eastern Europe and especially the Ukraine is more than evident. Putin
and Russia in general is not stupid and see right through U.S. covert meddling on Russia's
border. And those "peaceful demonstrators" in Syria that MacFaul dearly praises are mere
agents of the CIA/Mossad complex. Where are they now?
Monroe doctrine doesn't care about the democratic rights of countries in the western
hemisphere to enter into any alliance or partnership with USA's rival. Also, there's still no
evidence of Russian hacking which is basis of their religion of RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA !
Sure, since in Ukraine you guys didn't push money in mysterious organisations that would
support the "democratic" narrative. I don't like NATO in my country and I see nato presence
as an existential threat for Russia! Look back at the Cuba crisis it's exactly the SAME! You
no good morally and ethically corrupt poor excuses of mouth pieces
Either that Faul person is delusional or he is outright lying - Did Turkey not get
threatened with sanctions when they decided to trade with Russia on anti missile weapons.
You know Obama is a straight faced liar . Furthermore , we genocided innocent Christians
and Muslims in three countries and created a diaspora of migrants to Europe. So , we are
supposed to believe that all those PhDs did not foresee that , most people think that it was
your intentional outcome all along . So it goes now in Venezuela. Mcfaul is one of many who
just carry the water and carry out orders . It's almost as if , the powers that be want the
USA to fall . Because they can not be this stupid .
Call Cohen tells the truth the other guy just lying a United States started that whole
thing in Syria they backed up Isis they backed up all the terrorists and because they want to
split the country up and give Israel that major part of it cuz they want the natural
resources the oil out of there and everything else because that's what they do everywhere
they go they want a natural Resorts and they don't care how many people they kill
You know Obama is a straight faced liar . Furthermore , we genocided innocent Christians
and Muslims in three countries and created a diaspora of migrants to Europe. So , we are
supposed to believe that all those PhDs did not foresee that , most people think that it was
your intentional outcome all along . So it goes now in Venezuela. Mcfaul is one of many who
just carry the water and carry out orders . It's almost as if , the powers that be want the
USA to fall . Because they can not be this stupid .
Prof. McFaul is a partisan. He bases his opinion of detailed facts, so detailed that he
misses the bigger picture. The bigger picture is that he claims to be a sovereignist, but
only when it comes to the US sovereignty. How about Russia's sovereignity? Or Ukraine's whose
government has been toppled by a (among others) US sponsored coup? How about Syria
sovereignty? He furthers the view that the US had a fair posture towards Russia, which is
not. This is also demonstrated by his personal deep dislike of Putin, which is something that
both a real statesman or a real scholar should not influence opinions and actions. McFaul's
perspective is also flawed by the conflation of his (and Obama's) wishes and reality: that is
that they donì't like Putin and think to deal with Russia as if Putin was not there,
but he is. You deal with the reality, not with your wishes. Putin is legitimate and strong
Russia's president, whether McFaul likes him or not. A real respect for sovereignty demands
respect for the head of the state you deal with. You don't question his legitimacy, as well
as they don't questioned Clinton's, Bush's, Obama or Trump legitimacy. His point of view is
that everything goes on in the world should have the US sanction, otherwise is not good. This
is imperial hubris, this is arrogance. This flaws his opinion in so far everything is
measured upon american likes and dislikes. THis is not statesmanship, this is not
scholarship, this is partisanship. He is also intellectually dishonest because he confuses a
debate on right and wrong, which should be based on certain assumptions, with a debate on
party interests, which has nothing to do with right and wrong, and is based on different
assumptions. Indeed he is the less fit person in a debate on responsibility for the New Cold
War because he was involved in its development and acutisation. Partisanship is admitted, but
shouldn't be disguised as neutrality or given any relevance just because of knowledge of
technical details he knows - much of them are, frankly, irrelevant. His points are weak and
inconsistent with geopolitical and a realist view of the international relations, they are
biased by universal-liberal ideology, they are US-centric, he forgets too many essential
points about the whole story. For instance he talks about the missed chance for Russian
democracy (here a debate about what democracy is: his assumption is that the US democracy is
.... please, don't make me laugh), but he doesn't mention that Soviet people voted in
referenda and overwhelmingly wanted the USSR to keep on existing, but he forgets this
"detail". He forgets how the so much beloved Elcin sent the tanks against the parliament,
many people were killed, how he allowed the pillaging of Russian people and resources by
criminal oligarchs (many of them happily hosted by the UK and presented as political
dissidents), and how the Russian 1996 were HEAVILY rigged and meddled by the US in order to
reconfirm Elcin as a president. He complains about Putin being appointed by Elcin out of
nothing. Well I can't recall any American complaints at that time, maybe because they thought
he could be an alcoholic puppet like Elcin and that was clearly something the US liked and
supported. So what about Obama (fake) words about wishing a strong Russia? Obama spoke
derogatory words about Russia. The only American interests about Russia is that is a
militarly and strategically weak provider of cheap natural resources and that is not in tne
position of competing for anything. I will stop here, although I could write pages and pages
about McFlaws .... ooops! McFaul's inconsistency both as a scholar and even more as a
statesman's advisor, but the debate was among a great intellectual with a clear vision of the
world, and a small professor taken with insignificant details and too much love for Obama and
blind believe in liberal universal ideology.
Mc Faul is clearly not supposed to have been in the positions of power, where he was.
Something is fundamentally wrong with America. I think there is a crisis of personnel. Where
are all these incredibly smart, high IQ people Harvard, Princeton, and the Ivy Leagues are
supposedly pumping out?
I won't, for a second, try to justify the expansion of N.A.T.O. up to the borders of
Russia. But I simply cannot get past the belief that the N.A.T.O. expansion was fueled by a
(not implausible) fear that a non-Soviet Russia would eventually try to surround its borders
with Moscow-friendly governments, just as Stalin did before, during, and after WWII. Russia
has been invaded from the west so many times that the lingering fear of it is almost in the
Russian people's genetic code. What the rest of the world sees as Soviet & post-Soviet
Russian paranoia and expansionism could plausibly be seen by the Russians as a prudent
precaution against further western aggression. I don't AGREE with this, but I can imagine how
the Russian psyche might be so inclined. I don't agree with the N.A.T.O. expansion, but I can
also see how western paranoia about Russian expansionism would fuel the resulting western
"encroachment". Ask people in Latvia, Lithuania & Estonia (and, for that matter, Finland)
who were alive in WWII if their fear of Russian expansion is based in reality, or is merely
paranoia. Be prepared for "VERY STRONG" answers.
Why does 'our' US/Euro left leave me a pronounced impression that they have some special
axe grinding on Russia? Is my take on this wrong? And try as I may to ignore it, my gut
reaction to our younger author is highly unfavorable. I shall re-watch tomorrow hoping to
listen more obectively.
Prof. Cohen astonishing realpolitik ingenuity when asked "what the security interests of
Ukraine and Georgia are" ( 1:16:21 ) unveils to me his
understanding of politics as kind of imperialistic chess game where the US stands against the
USSR (or RF for that matter). I have experienced the same feelings from his other debates (I
remember one memorable at Munk Debates in 2015) - as if the historic fears, desires and
dreams (of NATO or EU membership as the only effective shield against Russian military power)
of so many ex-soviet countries means absolutely nothing - as if they were mere puppets of US
"regime". As though the legitimate wishes of these sovereign countries means nothing at all.
He is so surprised by that question he suddenly can't retrieve even the definition of what
security interests of a country actually means - a rather strange quality in a historian.
Ultimately he comes up with "they should make peace with their neighbors" - say this to
countries that were along their history subjects of Soviet violent repression, military
invasions, ethnic genocides and such. "I don't think Russian is a threat to them". Absolutely
ridiculous.
This Michael McFaul individual is such severe laughing-stock completely out of touch with
reality. Stephen Cohen's version of the "new cold war" is much closer to reality and we
should not forget the nefarious entities that pull the strings in D.C. U.S. covert
involvement throughout eastern Europe and especially the Ukraine is more than evident. Putin
and Russia in general is not stupid and see right through U.S. covert meddling on Russia's
border. And those "peaceful demonstrators" in Syria that MacFaul dearly praises are mere
agents of the CIA/Mossad complex. Where are they now?
I think it's fair to say that the US won the cold war, the eastern block was broke, there
soviet union was a nightmare for humanity, the west was seen as a bright light and it was. So
let's put aside propaganda, ask anyone from the eastern block and they will tell you that
what Russia created was a genocide. Just look how fast all of those counties jumped to enter
NATO. Soviet union collapsed. It's a very nice discussion and I learn a lot from this, there
are a lot of things that US and Russia could have done to prevent another cold war, I think
what we are with is with a belief in human wisdom, if there is any left.
"... There is no chance of mending relations and even less of achieving some security partnership between US and Russia. The rift will only keep on widening as US political and financial elites are growing increasingly desperate (and thus even more aggressive) while Russia abandons its attempts to please the haters and moves its focus on to its future prospective partners who have genuine interest in cooperating with Russia and achieving common goals.... including opposing the common enemy if you like! Well at least I hope so: the only reason why US wish to get closer to Russia would be to stab it in the back... one more time! ..."
Speaking as an Independent, I say that our country, the USA, has engineered past confilcts and wars in order to feed the military
industrial complex. Not so much that it results in a nuke-shooting war, but in a regular non-nuke shooting war. The solution?
Send the sons and daughters of the politicians into direct combat, every time they approve another war. That should keep things
a bit more peaceful.
Professor Cohen is this nation's most objective and therefore most valuable thinker on Russia! The charge that his views are
"not patriotic" is a compliment rather than the insult they intended. A scholar's views are only valuable to the public and, more
importantly, policy makers, if they are OBJECTIVE!!! Which is to say that he follows the FACTS wherever they lead!
Any "discussion" with no mention of the supranational central bank cartel is intentional deceptive omission. The "brass ring"
is forced use of petro-dollars. The central bank stock holders and bankers loaning all dollars into existence as national debt,
do not care who owns land. They care who pays off national debts and interest on debt. Civil war is their racket. There are no
sovereign nations. No genuine nations that create their medium of exchange publicly. No national people. Just participants in
an extortion or its victims. The "Elite" collect on money they created as loans in their central banking accounts. All others
are only human numbers assigned billing addresses.
Welcome to the New World Order ....where Multinational corporations rule & their profits are what are most important..... NOT
nation states it's the 99.9% against the .01% and they use MSM propaganda & fear to control the DUMB masses thinking
I just discovered John Batchelor Show on which Cohen has a guest spot- I just was drawn to this man's thinking, probably because
I had made up my mind about Russia during the Ukraine crises. Seeing the US has ruin every country we have gone into- I'm on Russia's
side, especially where Russia and Ukraine has a history, on that side of the world.
38:49 - Apologies for the somewhat Utopian
question here. I agree with everything Cohen has said, but regarding cause of jihadist terrorism ( ie implosion of the economies
in the region), does it make sense to discuss primarily this game of terrorist whack a mole (bombing, invading and crushing Jihadist
insurgencies)? Is there any point in talking about a pro active policy of recreating sustainable, stable economies in the region?
What would that even look like?
Not very many average Americans would be able to easily access and watch this. Average Americans still consume mainly mainstream
media. Too bad, because this lecture would have opened their eyes and have blown up their brain-contaminated minds by the CNN,
the New York Times and alike.
I agree wholeheartedly Loane. Have always been extremely impressed with and appreciative of Cohen's carefully & thoughtfully
considered contribution. We in the US have gone a bit off the deep end when it comes to this deeply embedded belief in exceptionalism
and superiority, and have been extremely rude to much of the rest of the world in the process. It amazes me how patient Russia
has been with us, waiting for us to come around to a more sober understanding of the world we live in today. I have to conclude
that what we are experiencing here in the US is a perennial phenomenon that comes with the end of all empires throughout history,
the mission creep of over-extending resources and the big one, seemingly blind hubris.
There is no chance of mending relations and even less of achieving some security partnership between US and Russia. The rift
will only keep on widening as US political and financial elites are growing increasingly desperate (and thus even more aggressive)
while Russia abandons its attempts to please the haters and moves its focus on to its future prospective partners who have genuine
interest in cooperating with Russia and achieving common goals.... including opposing the common enemy if you like! Well at least
I hope so: the only reason why US wish to get closer to Russia would be to stab it in the back... one more time!
NATO'S reason to exist ended when the Warsaw Pact was demolished. It was created to confront the socialist Warsaw Pact but
today ALL of the members of the pact are part of NATO, except Russia. So why is it still operating? Who are they confronting?
They are a bunch of bureaucrats looking for a reason to stay employed in an organization that lost its excuse to be. However,
their behavior has gone from increasing security to actually becoming a menace to trigger a nuclear war to destroy life on earth.
It will take a Republican President to turn our relationships with hostile nations around. For some irrational reasoning, the
current administration refuses negotiation with it's enemies. Somehow this is going to create understanding. and a less dangerous
world. I don't see a continuation of this Administrations policy anything but reckless . I am assuming this policy has been one
determined through Clinton, and will remain so. Clinton has said on a number of occasions, it is the Obama Administration's policies
that will be hers as well. As an ex cold warrior, who has spent a lot of time chasing Soviet boomers in the North Atlantic, I
am not willing to gamble my children and grand children's lives . It is a dangerous and ego driven pissing match. Let us start
talking , This administration and families can climb into their luxury nuclear bomb proof bunkers...... My family and most Americans
don't have that luxury.
Dr. Cohen, so Putin gave the Northern Alliance to the USA after 911 to bludgeon Afghanistan for hiding Bin Laden? Paul Craig
Robert, David Ray Griffin and a growing list of Americans believe 911 was a total bamboozle. If that is true which it looks increasingly
like it was, does that mean Putin was playing along with the our Reichstag fire? What does that make Putin? NATO should have been
totally remade after 1986, but it wasn't and we simply missed a huge opportunity not for worldwide U.S. hegemony, but for a new
umbrella of security by super powers in alliance. Obviously, the proliferation of ethno-religious groups was in Putin's mind when
he welcomed us into Afghanistan, but damn it man, tell people EXACTLY why we and the Russians want to be in the Golden Crescent
besides the extraction of minerals.
Julia Ioffe is a joke -- she is essentially a typical "national security parasite" and of the level that surprisingly, is
lower that Max Boor, although previously I thought this is impossible. Julia Ioffe is very typical of the anti-Russian thinking
in the West.
This incessant Russophobia constantly being trumpeted by the Washington militarist imperialists must stop. It's putting the
world on the brink of nuclear war.
Stephen Cohen's a godsend along with a handful of the other intellectuals out there speaking and writing the truth that penetrates
the miasma of disinformation, half-truths and exaggerations emanating from the state-corporate nexus in the American mass media.
Cohen, along with John Pilger, James Petras, Robert Parry, Michael Parenti, John Pilger, Eva Bartlett, Diana Johnstone and
Paul Craig Roberts must be read widely in order for folks to get a grasp of where the Washington imperialist ruling class is driving
the world.
at 25:40 he just destroys her totally. what
a point he made, amazing!! "thank you professor" the guy on the left wants to end Cohen's carnage of the so called experts. Cohen
made minced meat out of em. Fact after fact...stonewalled em both. Listen to her, ISIS doesn't have nuke's, she obviously doesn't
have a clue.
Cohen is always cogent and convincing. One area I wish some historian would look into is how "Russia-gate" is not echoing Cold
War themes, but echoing themes from the German Nazis in particular their belief about a great Jewish conspiracy against Europe.
Even Putin recently remarked on all these accusations: "It reminds me of anti-Semitism, A dumb man who can't do anything would
blame the Jews for everything." Look at how Putin is drawn and pictured on major outlets. The NYTimes blamed resistance to TPP
on Putin.
The Russians like the Jews are behind every social problem. Popular culture shows and speaks of Russia in the same way Nazi
propagandists wrote about Russia.
Undermining Western liberal democracies, Jews were compared to spiders catching people in the webs. Same with Putin. Pick up
Hitler's speech after the invasion of the Soviet Union justifying it., Echos? Accidental rhetoric of conspiracies ?
"to look past a long list of transgressions and abuses..." this is what I absolutely hate about America, they are all so stupid
and ignorant to their own countries misdeeds it is unbelievable, infuriating beyond belief. The US is currently fighting 7 wars
simultaneously, which it all started itself under false pretences and hid the real reason beneath a thick layer of BS propaganda
and misinformation.
The secession of Crimea is the least egregious event of the entire conflicts history. The EU and US have pumped billions of
dollars into the coup which took place weeks before the Crimean referendum, on the 20th of February 2014, 2 weeks prior to that,
an intercepted phone conversation between Victoria Nuland (Assistant Secretary of State of the United States to Europe) and Geoffrey
Pyatt (US Ambassador to the Ukraine) was leaked on February 4th, 2014. In this phone conversation, they describe key positions
within the Ukrainian government being filled by Klitshko and Yatz... fast forward a few weeks, who do we see? Klitsh and Yatz!
It was the most obvious sponsored coup in history.
Putin snatched the Crimean peninsula from NATO, who wanted to seize Russias military harbour in Sevastopol (which the Russians
have used to supply Syria, this was one and a half years before they entered the conflict directly, apart from being a very important
strategic harbour in general), by suggesting a referendum to the local government and they accepted.
Why? Because they were ethnic Russians and knew who gained power in Kiev, the neo-Nazi, Bandera-worshipping OUN, which the
US has nourished, supported and developed for the last 100 years within the Ukrainian territory. These Nazis hate Russians, they
have a deep seeded hatred of all things Russian which has been indoctrinated and drilled into them by the CIA for decades, the
first thing they did after seizing power was to demote the Russian language from the official list of languages of the Ukraine.
They have since honoured Ukrainian Nazi-collaborators from WWII by erecting statues, renaming streets, creating new holidays
etc. This is just one example of US misinformation and propaganda, nothing they say accurately describes the truth, nothing, not
one thing has it's bases in reality. Be it about Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, and what have you, it's all lies and propaganda
to mask their intentions.
North Korea is another example. North Korea is a hornets nest they kick once in a while to scare the Japanese and South Koreans
into tolerating US occupation longer. Everything North Korea does is a direct response to threats and intimidations by the US.
They staged a drill off the coast of North Korea which they called "Decapitation" for F's sake.
They have ratcheted up the tension again these past few months to sneak in their THAAD weapons stations, before the new President
was chosen. And these THAAD systems have absolutely nothing to do with North Korea, it's against China and Russia, North Korea
is a pretext.
The still active war, which has merely been under a seize fire for decades, against North Korea, could have been ended before
there was colour television, but the US needs North Korea to exist in order to justify their occupation of S.Korea and Japan.
And by the way, the CrowdStrike guy testified in 2017 that there was ZERO PROOF that the Russians hacked the DNC, but Schiff
hid that for 2 years until John Ratcliff threatened to declassify it, then Schiff's sorry ass released the interviews. So, this
man was 100 percent right, there is ZERO PROOF the Russians or anyone hacked the DNC. Its a damned lie, and it was always a lie.
As usual, the journalists and leftist have nothing to offer- no facts, no forensic evidence, no truth. Only speculation hyperbole
and hysteria. I don't believe Russia are the good guys but give me a break in all this crap!
why did cohen tell everyone even potential 'terrorists' that there is too much of exactly what 'terrorists' wish to get their
hands on in the former soviet states?!!? if he is 'so afraid' of 'terrorism...' WHY did he say THAT?!!? not very bright... or
perhaps he is FOS. idk?! wth?! SMH. maybe e is trying to inform people who r not 'terrorists,' so that people know n can figure
out how to address the issues...?
Yet, for any terrorists who wanted to know how to get materials he spoke of, now they may know a region where they could potentially
go to attain the materials... maybe in 'terrorists' circles they all know this already? it just seems concerning, is all...
Beth Lemmon, 2 years ago (edited)
Love Stephen Cohen, he is spot on and right about most if not all points, he's fair, wicked smart and sober minded. However
he isn't right about POTUS Trump. If anyone has been watching this type of discourse about world geopolitics it looks like the
NWO wants wars to depopulate the earth, set up a OWG and a utopia. It's so blatantly obvious to those who are honest and not ideologically
possessed.
They recruit their stupid Antifa army and zombie possessed minions to do their dirty work in the streets. They want send our
amazing military to do the fighting wars that are just to feed the MIC, and does nothing for America's good.
Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God
"... In a world that is increasingly confusing and awash with propaganda, Cohen's death is a
blow to humanity's desperate quest for clarity and understanding. ..."
Stephen F Cohen, the renowned American scholar on Russia and leading authority on US-Russian
relations, has died of lung cancer at the
age of 81.
As one of the precious few western voices of sanity on the subject
of Russia while everyone else has been frantically flushing their brains down the toilet,
this is a real loss. I myself have cited Cohen's expert analysis many times in my own work, and
his perspective has played a formative role in my understanding of what's really going on with
the monolithic cross-partisan manufacturing of consent for increased western aggressions
against Moscow.
In a world that is increasingly confusing and awash with propaganda, Cohen's death is a blow
to humanity's desperate quest for clarity and understanding.
I don't know how long Cohen had cancer. I don't know how long he was aware that he might not
have much time left on this earth. What I do know is he spent much of his energy in his final
years urgently trying to warn the world about the rapidly escalating danger of nuclear war,
which in our strange new reality he saw as in many ways completely unprecedented.
The last of the many books Cohen authored was 2019's
War
with Russia? , detailing his ideas on how the complex multi-front nature of the post-2016
cold
war escalations against Moscow combines with Russiagate and other factors to make it in
some ways more dangerous even than the most dangerous point of the previous cold war.
"You know it's easy to joke about this, except that we're at maybe the most dangerous moment
in US-Russian relations in my lifetime, and maybe ever," Cohen told The Young Turks in 2017. "And the reason is that we're
in a new cold war, by whatever name. We have three cold war fronts that are fraught with the
possibility of hot war, in the Baltic region where NATO is carrying out an unprecedented
military buildup on Russia's border, in Ukraine where there is a civil and proxy war between
Russia and the west, and of course in Syria, where Russian aircraft and American warplanes are
flying in the same territory. Anything could happen."
Cohen repeatedly points to the most likely cause of a future nuclear war: not one that is
planned but one which erupts in tense, complex situations where "anything could happen" in the
chaos and confusion as a result of misfire, miscommunication or technical malfunction, as
nearly
happened many times during the last cold war.
"I think this is the most dangerous moment in American-Russian relations, at least since the
Cuban missile crisis," Cohen told Democracy
Now in 2017. "And arguably, it's more dangerous, because it's more complex. Therefore, we
-- and then, meanwhile, we have in Washington these -- and, in my judgment, factless
accusations that Trump has somehow been compromised by the Kremlin. So, at this worst moment in
American-Russian relations, we have an American president who's being politically crippled by
the worst imaginable -- it's unprecedented. Let's stop and think. No American president has
ever been accused, essentially, of treason. This is what we're talking about here, or that his
associates have committed treason."
"Imagine, for example, John Kennedy during the Cuban missile crisis," Cohen added. "Imagine
if Kennedy had been accused of being a secret Soviet Kremlin agent. He would have been
crippled. And the only way he could have proved he wasn't was to have launched a war against
the Soviet Union. And at that time, the option was nuclear war."
"A recurring theme of my recently published book War with Russia? is that the new Cold War
is more dangerous, more fraught with hot war, than the one we survived," Cohen wrote
last year . "Histories of the 40-year US-Soviet Cold War tell us that both sides came to
understand their mutual responsibility for the conflict, a recognition that created political
space for the constant peace-keeping negotiations, including nuclear arms control agreements,
often known as détente. But as I also chronicle in the book, today's American Cold
Warriors blame only Russia, specifically 'Putin's Russia,' leaving no room or incentive for
rethinking any US policy toward post-Soviet Russia since 1991."
"Finally, there continues to be no effective, organized American opposition to the new Cold
War," Cohen added. "This too is a major theme of my book and another reason why this Cold War
is more dangerous than was its predecessor. In the 1970s and 1980s, advocates of détente
were well-organized, well-funded, and well-represented, from grassroots politics and
universities to think tanks, mainstream media, Congress, the State Department, and even the
White House. Today there is no such opposition anywhere."
"A major factor is, of course, 'Russiagate'," Cohen continued. "As evidenced in the sources
I cite above, much of the extreme American Cold War advocacy we witness today is a mindless
response to President Trump's pledge to find ways to 'cooperate with Russia' and to the
still-unproven allegations generated by it. Certainly, the Democratic Party is not an
opposition party in regard to the new Cold War."
"Détente with Russia has always been a fiercely opposed, crisis-ridden policy
pursuit, but one manifestly in the interests of the United States and the world," Cohen
wrote in another
essay last year. "No American president can achieve it without substantial bipartisan
support at home, which Trump manifestly lacks. What kind of catastrophe will it take -- in
Ukraine, the Baltic region, Syria, or somewhere on Russia's electric grid -- to shock US
Democrats and others out of what has been called, not unreasonably, their Trump Derangement
Syndrome, particularly in the realm of American national security? Meanwhile, the Bulletin of
Atomic Scientists has recently reset its Doomsday Clock to two minutes before
midnight."
And now Stephen Cohen is dead, and that clock is inching ever closer to midnight. The
Russiagate psyop that he predicted would pressure Trump to advance dangerous cold war
escalations with no opposition from the supposed opposition party
has indeed done exactly that with nary a peep of criticism from either partisan faction of
the political/media class. Cohen has for years been correctly
predicting this chilling scenario which now threatens the life of every organism on earth,
even while his own life was nearing its end.
And now the complex cold war escalations he kept urgently warning us about have become even
more complex with the
addition of nuclear-armed China to the multiple fronts the US-centralized empire has been
plate-spinning its brinkmanship upon, and it is clear from the ramping
up of anti-China propaganda since last year that we are being prepped for those aggressions
to continue to increase.
We should heed the dire warnings that Cohen spent his last breaths issuing. We should demand
a walk-back of these insane imperialist aggressions which benefit nobody and call for
détente with Russia and China. We should begin creating an opposition to this
world-threatening flirtation with armageddon before it is too late. Every life on this planet
may well depend on our doing so.
Stephen Cohen is dead, and we are marching toward the death of everything. God help us
all.
People are just now starting to realize that possible alternate path. But the Demoncrats
in the USA must first be put down, politically euthanized, along with their neocon
never-Trump Republican partners. And that cleaning up is on the way. Trump's second term will
be the advancement of the USA-Russia initiative that is so long overdue.
PerilouseTimes , 48 minutes ago
Putin won't let western billionaires rape Russia's enormous natural resources and on top
of that Putin is against child molesters, that is what this Russia bashing is all about.
awesomepic4u , 1 hour ago
Sad to hear this.
What a good man. It is a real shame that we dont have others to stand up to this crazy pr
that is going on right now. Making peace with the world at this point is important. We dont need or
want another war and i am sure that both Europe and Russia dont want it on their turf but it
seems we keep sticking our finger in their eye. If there is another war it will be the last
war. As Einstein said, after the 3rd World War we will be using sticks and stones to fight
it.
Clint Liquor , 44 minutes ago
Cohen truly was an island of reason in a sea of insanity. Ironic that those panicked over
climate change are unconcerned about the increasing threat of Nuclear War.
thunderchief , 41 minutes ago
One of the very few level headed people on Russia.
All thats left are anti Russia-phobic nut jobs.
Send in the clowns.
Stephen Cohen isn't around to call them what they are anymore.
Eastern Whale , 55 minutes ago
cooperate with Russia
Has the US ever cooperated with anyone?
fucking truth , 3 minutes ago
That is the crux. All or nothing.
Mustafa Kemal , 49 minutes ago
Ive read several of his books. They are essential, imo, if you want to understand modern
russian history.
Normal , 1 hour ago
The bankers created the new CCP cold war.
evoila , 19 minutes ago
Max Boot is an effing idiot. Tucker wiped him clean too. It was an insult to Stephen to
even put them on the same panel.
RIP Stephen.
Gary Sick is the equivalent to Stephen, except for Iran. He too is of an era of competence
which is and will be missed as their voices are drowned out by neocon warmongers
thebigunit , 17 minutes ago
I heard Stephen Cohen a number of time in John Bachelor's podcasts.
He seemed very lucid and made a lot of sense.
He made it very clear that he thought the Democrat's "Trump - Russia collusion schtick"
was a bunch of crap.
He didn't sound like a leftie, but I'm sure he never told me the stuff he discussed with
his wife who was editor of the left wing "The Nation" magazine.
Boogity , 9 minutes ago
Cohen was a traditional old school anti-war Liberal. They're essentially extinct now with
the exception of a few such as Tulsi Gabbard and Dennis Kucinich who have both been
ostracized from the Democrat Party and the political system.
So, it appears the War on Populism is building
toward an exciting climax. All the proper pieces are in place for a Class-A GloboCap color
revolution , and maybe even civil war. You got your unauthorized Putin-Nazi president, your
imaginary apocalyptic pandemic, your violent identitarian civil unrest, your heavily-armed
politically-polarized populace, your ominous rumblings from military quarters you couldn't
really ask for much more.
OK, the plot is pretty obvious by now (as it is in all big-budget action spectacles, which
is essentially what color revolutions are), but that won't spoil our viewing experience. The
fun isn't in guessing what is going to happen. Everybody knows what's going to happen. The fun
is in watching Bruce, or Sigourney, or "the moderate rebels," or the GloboCap "Resistance,"
take down the monster, or the terrorists, or Hitler, and save the world, or democracy, or
whatever.
Trump represent new "national neoliberalism" platform and the large part of the US neoliberal elite (Clinton gang and large part
of republicans) support the return to "classic neoliberalism" at all costs.
Highly recommended!
The essence of color revolution is the combination of engineered contested election and mass organized protest and civil disobedience
via creation in neoliberal fifth column out of "professionals", especially students as well as mobilizing and put on payroll some useful
disgruntled groups which can be used as a foot soldiers, such as football hooligans. Large and systematic injection of dollars into
protest movement. All with the air cover via domination in a part or all nation's MSM.
He served as US ambassador in Chich Republic from 2011 to 2014. Based on his experience wrote that book
Democracy's Defenders published by The Brookings Institution, a neoliberal think tank, about the role of US embassy in neoliberal
revolution in Czechoslovakia (aka Velvet Revolution of 1989) which led to the dissolution of the country into two. BTW demonstrations
against police brutality were an essential part of the Velvet Revolution
Notable quotes:
"... Same tactics - color revolutions they (Soros, Nuland/Kagan, Eisen, McCain when alive) used to overthrow Orthodox countries in Eastern Europe. Belarus the latest. Ukraine (Orange, Maidan) 2014. Georgia (Rose rev). Serbia, Montenegro. Use young people who have bad sense of history and are more sympathetic to the "West." ..."
This is, without ANY question, one of Tucker's most important segments that he has ever done. IT IS EXTREMELY-RARE THAT
"""they""" ARE EXPOSED, BY-NAME, SO OPENLY AND DIRECTLY, BUT, IT HAPPENED, TONIGHT.
Please bring back Dr. Darren Beattie back. More info. on the color revolutions, Mr. Eisen, crew, and their relationship
to mail in voting fraud and their impact on the 2020 election is needed. If Mr. Eisens methods are to be used in the 2020 election
mass awareness is needed.
This is not about Trump. The endgame of the deep state is to enslave people through social division. The election is a wrestling
match for entertainment.
Sheesh, he looks scared. I hope he's being well protected now. Darren is a very brave man who is trying to tell the citizens
of the US that there is malice aforethought towards the President and this election. It is now not a choice between Republicans
or Democrats, it is a fight between good and evil. I'm sure Trump and his team are aware of the playbook and will do everything
they can to sort this, with God's help. It may get hairy, but trust the plan.
I have a feeling dems will "rig for red" to frame republicans for voter fraud, overlooking the overwhelming amount of voter
fraud in favor of Biden Harris. Causing outrage and calls to remove the President from office and saying Biden actually won.
When he really did not. Be prepared. Stay strong.
Same tactics - color revolutions they (Soros, Nuland/Kagan, Eisen, McCain when alive) used to overthrow Orthodox countries
in Eastern Europe. Belarus the latest. Ukraine (Orange, Maidan) 2014. Georgia (Rose rev). Serbia, Montenegro. Use young people
who have bad sense of history and are more sympathetic to the "West."
american people still don't know and can't understand what's happening and what their government is doing, even right now
it's happening in Belarus, it happened in Ukraine, Venezuela, Hong Kong and etc. and now it's happening in your own country,
wake up people and don't forget who's behind all this - a NGO founded by CIA called NED (National endowment for democracy),
Soros and his NGOs and the deep state.
"... Russian military leaders view the "colour revolutions" as a "new US and European approach to warfare that focuses on creating destabilizing revolutions in other states as a means of serving their security interests at low cost and with minimal casualties. ..."
"... the activities of radical public associations and groups using nationalist and religious extremist ideology, foreign and international nongovernmental organizations, and financial and economic structures, and also individuals, focused on destroying the unity and territorial integrity of the Russian Federation, destabilizing the domestic political and social situation -- including through inciting "color revolutions" -- and destroying traditional Russian religious and moral values ..."
Worldwide media use the term Colour Revolution (sometimes Coloured Revolution
) to describe various
related movements that developed in several countries of the former Soviet Union , in the People's Republic of
China and in the Balkans during the early-21st century. The term has
also been applied to a number of revolutions elsewhere, including in the Middle East and in the
Asia-Pacific region,
dating from the 1980s to the 2010s. Some observers (such as Justin Raimondo and Michael Lind ) have called the events a
revolutionary
wave , the origins of which can be traced back to the 1986 People Power Revolution (also known
as the "Yellow Revolution") in the Philippines .
Participants in colour revolutions have mostly used nonviolent resistance , also called
civil resistance .
Such methods as demonstrations, strikes and interventions have aimed to
protest against governments seen as corrupt and/or authoritarian and to advocate democracy , and they have built up
strong pressure for change.
Colour-revolution movements generally became associated with a specific colour or flower as
their symbol. The colour revolutions are notable for the important role of non-governmental
organisations (NGOs) and particularly student activists in organising creative
non-violent resistance .
Such movements have had a measure of success as for example in the Federal Republic of
Yugoslavia 's Bulldozer
Revolution (2000), in Georgia 's Rose Revolution (2003) and in Ukraine 's Orange Revolution (2004). In most but not
all cases, massive street-protests followed disputed elections or requests for fair elections
and led to the resignation or overthrow of leaders regarded by their opponents as authoritarian . Some events have been called "colour revolutions", but differ from the
above cases in certain basic characteristics. Examples include Lebanon's Cedar Revolution (2005) and
Kuwait 's Blue Revolution
(2005).
Russia and China share nearly identical views that colour revolutions are the product of
machinations by the United States and other Western powers and pose a vital threat to their
public and national security.
The 1986 People Power Revolution (also
called the " EDSA " or the "Yellow"
Revolution) in the Philippines was the first successful non-violent uprising in the
contemporary period. It was the culmination of peaceful demonstrations against the
rule of
then-President Ferdinand Marcos – all of which
increased after the 1983 assassination of
opposition Senator Benigno S. Aquino,
Jr. A contested snap election on 7 February 1986 and a
call by the powerful Filipino Catholic
Church sparked mass protests across Metro Manila from 22–25 February.
The Revolution's iconic L-shaped Laban sign comes from the Filipino term for
People Power, " Lakás ng Bayan ", whose acronym is " LABAN " ("fight").
The yellow-clad protesters, later joined by the Armed Forces , ousted
Marcos and installed Aquino's widow Corazón as the country's eleventh
President, ushering in the present Fifth
Republic .
Long-standing secessionist sentiment in Bougainville eventually led to conflict with
Papua New Guinea. The inhabitants of Bougainville Island formed the Bougainville
Revolutionary Army and fought against government troops. On 20 April 1998, Papua New
Guinea ended the civil war. In 2005, Papua New Guinea gave autonomy to Bougainville.
in 1989, a peaceful demonstration by students (mostly from Charles University ) was attacked by
the police – and in time contributed to the collapse of the communist government in
Czechoslovakia.
The 'Bulldozer Revolution' in 2000, which led to the overthrow of
Slobodan Milošević . These demonstrations are usually considered to be the
first example of the peaceful revolutions which followed. However, the Serbians adopted an
approach that had already been used in parliamentary elections in Bulgaria (1997) ,
Slovakia (1998) and
Croatia (2000) ,
characterised by civic mobilisation through get-out-the-vote campaigns and unification of
the political opposition. The nationwide protesters did not adopt a colour or a specific
symbol; however, the slogan " Gotov je " (Serbian Cyrillic:
Готов је , English: He is finished
) did become an aftermath symbol celebrating the completion of the task. Despite the
commonalities, many others refer to Georgia as the most definite beginning of the series of
"colour revolutions". The demonstrations were supported by the youth movement Otpor! , some of whose members
were involved in the later revolutions in other countries.
Following the Rose Revolution in Georgia, the
Adjara
crisis (sometimes called "Second Rose Revolution" or Mini-Rose
Revolution ) led to the
exit of Chairman of the Government Aslan Abashidze from office.
Purple
Revolution was a name first used by some hopeful commentators and later picked up by
United States President George W. Bush to describe the coming of
democracy to Iraq following the 2005 Iraqi
legislative election and was intentionally used to draw the parallel with the Orange
and Rose revolutions. However, the name "purple revolution" has not achieved widespread use
in Iraq, the United States or elsewhere. The name comes from the colour that voters' index
fingers were stained to prevent fraudulent multiple voting. The term first appeared shortly
after the January 2005 election in various weblogs and editorials of individuals supportive
of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The term
received its widest usage during a visit by U.S. President George W. Bush on 24 February 2005 to
Bratislava , Slovak
Republic, for a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin . Bush stated: "In recent
times, we have witnessed landmark events in the history of liberty: A Rose Revolution in
Georgia, an Orange Revolution in Ukraine, and now, a Purple Revolution in Iraq."
The Tulip
Revolution in Kyrgyzstan (also sometimes called the "Pink Revolution") was more violent
than its predecessors and followed the disputed 2005 Kyrgyz
parliamentary election . At the same time, it was more fragmented than previous
"colour" revolutions. The protesters in different areas adopted the colours pink and yellow
for their protests. This revolution was supported by youth resistance movement KelKel .
The Cedar
Revolution in Lebanon between February and April 2005 followed not a disputed election,
but rather the assassination of opposition leader Rafik Hariri in 2005. Also, instead of the
annulment of an election, the people demanded an end to the Syrian occupation of
Lebanon . Nonetheless, some of its elements and some of the methods used in the
protests have been similar enough that it is often considered and treated by the press and
commentators as one of the series of "colour revolutions". The Cedar of Lebanon is the symbol of the
country, and the revolution was named after it. The peaceful demonstrators used the colours
white and red, which are found in the Lebanese flag. The protests led to the pullout of
Syrian troops
in April 2005, ending their nearly 30-year presence there, although Syria retains some
influence in Lebanon.
Blue Revolution was a term used by some Kuwaitis to refer to
demonstrations in Kuwait in support of women's suffrage
beginning in March 2005; it was named after the colour of the signs the protesters used. In
May of that year the Kuwaiti government acceded to their demands, granting women the right
to vote beginning in the 2007 parliamentary elections. Since there was
no call for regime change, the so-called "blue revolution" cannot be categorised as a true
colour revolution.
In Belarus, there have been a number of protests against President Alexander Lukashenko , with
participation from student group Zubr . One round of
protests culminated on 25 March 2005; it was a self-declared attempt to emulate the
Kyrgyzstan revolution, and involved over a thousand citizens. However, police severely
suppressed it, arresting over 30 people and imprisoning opposition leader Mikhail Marinich .
A second, much larger, round of protests began almost a year later, on 19 March 2006,
soon after the presidential
election . Official results had Lukashenko winning with 83% of the vote; protesters
claimed the results were achieved through fraud and voter intimidation, a charge echoed
by many foreign governments.
Protesters camped out in October Square in Minsk over the next week, calling variously for
the resignation of Lukashenko, the installation of rival candidate Alaksandar
Milinkievič , and new, fair elections.
The opposition originally used as a symbol the white-red-white former flag of Belarus ; the
movement has had significant connections with that in neighbouring Ukraine, and during
the Orange Revolution some white-red-white flags were seen being waved in Kiev. During
the 2006 protests some called it the " Jeans Revolution " or "Denim
Revolution",
blue jeans being considered a symbol for freedom. Some protesters cut up jeans into
ribbons and hung them in public places. It is
claimed that Zubr was responsible for coining the phrase.
Lukashenko has said in the past: "In our country, there will be no pink or orange, or
even banana revolution." More recently he's said "They [the West] think that Belarus is
ready for some 'orange' or, what is a rather frightening option, 'blue' or ' cornflower blue '
revolution. Such 'blue' revolutions are the last thing we need". On
19 April 2005, he further commented: "All these coloured revolutions are pure and simple
banditry."
In Myanmar (unofficially called Burma), a series of anti-government protests were
referred to in the press as the Saffron Revolution
after Buddhist monks ( Theravada Buddhist monks normally
wear the colour saffron) took the vanguard of the protests. A previous, student-led
revolution, the 8888
Uprising on 8 August 1988, had similarities to the colour revolutions, but was
violently repressed.
The opposition is reported to have hoped for and urged some kind of Orange revolution,
similar to that in Ukraine, in the follow-up of the 2005 Moldovan
parliamentary elections , while the Christian
Democratic People's Party adopted orange for its colour in a clear reference to the
events of Ukraine.
A name hypothesised for such an event was "Grape Revolution" because of the abundance
of vineyards in the country; however, such a revolution failed to materialise after the
governmental victory in the elections. Many reasons have been given for this, including a
fractured opposition and the fact that the government had already co-opted many of the
political positions that might have united the opposition (such as a perceived
pro-European and anti-Russian stance). Also the elections themselves were declared fairer
in the OSCE election monitoring reports than had been the case in other countries where
similar revolutions occurred, even though the CIS monitoring mission strongly condemned
them.
Green Movement is a term widely used to describe the 2009–2010
Iranian election protests . The protests began in 2009, several years after the main
wave of colour revolutions, although like them it began due to a disputed election, the
2009 Iranian
presidential election . Protesters adopted the colour green as their symbol because it
had been the campaign colour of presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi , whom many
protesters thought had won the elections .
However Mousavi and his wife went under house arrest without any trial issued by a
court.
The Kyrgyz Revolution of 2010 in
Kyrgyzstan (also sometimes called the "Melon Revolution") led to the
exit of President Kurmanbek Bakiyev from office. The
total number of deaths should be 2,000.
Jasmine Revolution was a widely used term for the
Tunisian
Revolution . The Jasmine Revolution led to the exit of President Ben Ali from office and
the beginning of the Arab Spring .
Lotus Revolution was a term used by various western news sources to describe the
Egyptian Revolution of 2011
that forced President Mubarak to step down in 2011 as part of the Arab Spring , which followed the Jasmine
Revolution of Tunisia. Lotus is known as the flower representing resurrection, life and the
sun of ancient Egypt. It is uncertain who gave the name, while columnist of Arabic press,
Asharq Alawsat, and prominent Egyptian opposition leader Saad Eddin Ibrahim claimed to name
it the Lotus Revolution. Lotus Revolution later became common on western news source such
as CNN. Other names,
such as White Revolution and Nile Revolution, are used but are minor terms compare to Lotus
Revolution. The term Lotus Revolution is rarely, if ever, used in the Arab world.
In February 2011, Bahrain was also affected by protests in Tunisia and Egypt. Bahrain
has long been famous for its pearls and Bahrain's speciality. And there was the Pearl
Square in Manama, where the demonstrations began. The people of Bahrain were also
protesting around the square. At first, the government of Bahrain promised to reform the
people. But when their promises were not followed, the people resisted again. And in the
process, bloodshed took place (18 March 2011). After that, a small demonstration is taking
place in Bahrain.
An anti-government protest started in Yemen in 2011. The Yemeni people sought to resign
Ali Abdullah Saleh as the ruler. On 24 November, Ali Abdullah Saleh decided to transfer the
regime. In 2012, Ali Abdullah Saleh finally fled to the United States(27 February).
A call which first appeared on 17 February 2011 on the Chinese language site Boxun.com in the United States
for a "Jasmine revolution" in the People's Republic of China and repeated on social
networking sites in China resulted in blocking of internet searches for "jasmine" and a
heavy police presence at designated sites for protest such as the McDonald's in central
Beijing, one of the 13 designated protest sites, on 20 February 2011. A crowd did gather
there, but their motivations were ambiguous as a crowd tends to draw a crowd in that area.
Boxun experienced a denial of service attack
during this period and was inaccessible.
Protests started on 4 December 2011 in the capital, Moscow against the results of the parliamentary
elections, which led to the arrests of over 500 people. On 10 December, protests erupted in
tens of cities across the country; a few months later, they spread to hundreds both inside
the country and abroad. The name of the Snow Revolution derives from December - the month
when the revolution had started - and from the white ribbons the protesters wore.
Many analysts and participants of the protests against President of Macedonia Gjorge
Ivanov and the Macedonian
government refer to them as a "colourful Revolution", due to the demonstrators throwing
paint balls of different colours at government buildings in Skopje , the capital.
In 2018, a peaceful revolution was led by
member of parliament Nikol Pashinyan in opposition to the
nomination of Serzh
Sargsyan as Prime Minister of Armenia ,
who had previously served as both President of Armenia and prime
minister, eliminating term limits which would have otherwise
prevented his 2018 nomination. Concerned that Sargsyan's third consecutive term as the most
powerful politician in the government of Armenia gave him too much political influence,
protests occurred throughout the country, particularly in Yerevan , but demonstrations in solidarity with
the protesters also occurred in other countries where Armenian diaspora live.
During the
protests, Pashinyan was arrested and detained on 22 April, but he was released the
following day. Sargsyan stepped down from the position of Prime Minister, and his
Republican Party decided to
not put forward a candidate. An interim
Prime Minister was selected from Sargsyan's party until elections were held, and protests
continued for over one month. Crowd sizes in Yerevan consisted of 115,000 to 250,000 people
at a time throughout the revolution, and hundreds of protesters were arrested. Pashinyan
referred to the event as a Velvet Revolution. A vote was
held in parliament, and Pashinyan became the Prime Minister of Armenia.
Many have cited the influence of the series of revolutions which
occurred in Central and Eastern Europe in the late 1980s and early 1990s, particularly the
Velvet Revolution
in Czechoslovakia in 1989. A
peaceful demonstration by students (mostly from Charles University ) was attacked by the
police – and in time contributed to the collapse of the communist government in
Czechoslovakia. Yet the roots of the pacifist floral imagery may go even further back to the
non-violent Carnation Revolution of Portugal in
April 1974, which is associated with the colour carnation because carnations were worn, and the 1986 Yellow Revolution in
the Philippines where demonstrators offered peace flowers to military personnel manning
armoured tanks.
Student movements
The first of these was Otpor! ("Resistance!") in the Federal Republic of
Yugoslavia, which was founded at Belgrade University in October 1998 and
began protesting against Miloševic' during the Kosovo War . Most of them were already veterans
of anti-Milošević demonstrations such as the 1996–97 protests
and the 9 March
1991 protest . Many of its members were arrested or beaten by the police. Despite this,
during the presidential campaign in September 2000, Otpor launched its " Gotov je " (He's finished) campaign that
galvanised Serbian discontent with Miloševic' and resulted in his defeat.
Members of Otpor have inspired and trained members of related student movements including
Kmara in Georgia, Pora in
Ukraine, Zubr in Belarus and
MJAFT! in Albania. These
groups have been explicit and scrupulous in their practice of non-violent resistance as advocated
and explained in Gene
Sharp 's writings. The massive
protests that they have organised, which were essential to the successes in the Federal
Republic of Yugoslavia, Georgia and Ukraine, have been notable for their colourfulness and use
of ridiculing humor in opposing authoritarian leaders.
Critical analysis
The analysis of international geopolitics scholars Paul J. Bolt and Sharyl N. Cross is that
"Moscow and Beijing share almost indistinguishable views on the potential domestic and
international security threats posed by colored revolutions, and both nations view these
revolutionary movements as being orchestrated by the United States and its Western democratic
partners to advance geopolitical ambitions."
Russian
assessment
According to Anthony Cordesman of the Center for
Strategic and International Studies , Russian military leaders view the "colour revolutions" as a "new US and
European approach to warfare that focuses on creating destabilizing revolutions in other states
as a means of serving their security interests at low cost and with minimal casualties."
Government figures in Russia , such as Defence Minister
Sergei Shoigu (in
office from 2012) and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (in office from 2004), have
characterised colour revolutions as externally-fuelled acts with a clear goal to influence the
internal affairs that destabilise the economy, conflict with the law and represent a new form of warfare. Russian President
Vladimir Putin has
stated that Russia must prevent colour revolutions: "We see what tragic consequences the wave
of so-called colour revolutions led to. For us this is a lesson and a warning. We should do
everything necessary so that nothing similar ever happens in Russia".
The 2015 presidential decree The Russian Federation's National Security Strategy (
О Стратегии
Национальной
Безопасности
Российской
Федерации ) cites "foreign sponsored
regime change" among "main threats to public and national security," including
the activities of radical public associations and groups using nationalist and religious
extremist ideology, foreign and international nongovernmental organizations, and financial
and economic structures, and also individuals, focused on destroying the unity and
territorial integrity of the Russian Federation, destabilizing the domestic political and
social situation -- including through inciting "color revolutions" -- and destroying
traditional Russian religious and moral values
Chinese view
Articles published by the Global Times , a state-run nationalist tabloid, indicate that Chinese
leaders also anticipate the Western powers, such as the United States, using "color revolutions" as a means to undermine the one-party state. An article published on 8 May 2016 claims: "A
variation of containment seeks to press China on human rights and democracy with the hope of
creating a 'color revolution.'" A 13 August 2019
article declared that the 2019 Hong Kong extradition
bill protests were a colour revolution that "aim[ed] to ruin HK 's future."
The 2015 policy white paper "China's Military Strategy" by the State Council
Information Office said that "anti-China forces have never given up their attempt to
instigate a 'color revolution' in this country."
Azerbaijan
A number of movements were created in Azerbaijan in mid-2005, inspired by the examples
of both Georgia and Ukraine. A youth group, calling itself Yox! (which means No!), declared its opposition to
governmental corruption. The leader of Yox! said that unlike Pora or Kmara , he wants to change not just the leadership,
but the entire system of governance in Azerbaijan. The Yox movement chose green as its colour.
The spearhead of Azerbaijan's attempted colour revolution was Yeni Fikir ("New Idea"), a
youth group closely aligned with the Azadlig (Freedom) Bloc of opposition political parties.
Along with groups such as Magam ("It's Time") and Dalga ("Wave"), Yeni Fikir deliberately
adopted many of the tactics of the Georgian and Ukrainian colour revolution groups, even
borrowing the colour orange from the Ukrainian revolution.
In November 2005 protesters took to the streets, waving orange flags and banners, to protest
what they considered government fraud in recent parliamentary elections. The Azerbaijani colour revolution finally fizzled out with the police riot on 26
November, during which dozens of protesters were injured and perhaps hundreds teargassed and
sprayed with water cannons.
On 5 February 2013, protests began in Shahbag and later spread to other parts of
Bangladesh following
demands for capital punishment for Abdul Quader Mollah , who had been
sentenced to life imprisonment, and for others convicted of war crimes by the International
Crimes Tribunal of Bangladesh . On that
day, the International Crimes
Tribunal had sentenced Mollah to life in prison after he was convicted on five of six
counts of war crimes . Later
demands included banning the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami party
from politics including election and a boycott of institutions supporting (or affiliated with)
the party.
Protesters considered Mollah's sentence too lenient, given his crimes. Bloggers and online activists called for additional protests at Shahbag.
Tens of thousands of people joined the demonstration, which gave rise to protests across the
country.
The movement demanding trial of war criminals is a protest movement in Bangladesh, from 1972
to present.
Belarus
In Belarus , there have
been a number of protests against President Alexander Lukashenko , with
participation from student group Zubr . One round of protests
culminated on 25 March 2005; it was a self-declared attempt to emulate the Kyrgyzstan
revolution, and involved over a thousand citizens. However, police severely suppressed it,
arresting over 30 people and imprisoning opposition leader Mikhail Marinich .
A second, much larger, round of protests began almost a year later, on 19 March 2006, soon
after the presidential election
. Official results had Lukashenko winning with 83% of the vote; protesters claimed the results
were achieved through fraud and voter intimidation, a charge echoed by many foreign
governments.
Protesters camped out in October Square in Minsk over the next week, calling variously for the
resignation of Lukashenko, the installation of rival candidate Alaksandar Milinkievič ,
and new, fair elections.
The opposition originally used as a symbol the white-red-white former flag of Belarus ; the movement has had
significant connections with that in neighbouring Ukraine, and during the Orange Revolution
some white-red-white flags were seen being waved in Kiev. During the 2006 protests some called
it the " Jeans
Revolution " or "Denim Revolution", blue
jeans being considered a symbol for freedom. Some protesters cut up jeans into ribbons and hung
them in public places. It is
claimed that Zubr was responsible for coining the phrase.
Lukashenko has said in the past: "In our country, there will be no pink or orange, or even
banana revolution." More recently he's said "They [the West] think that Belarus is ready for
some 'orange' or, what is a rather frightening option, 'blue' or ' cornflower blue ' revolution. Such 'blue'
revolutions are the last thing we need". On 19
April 2005, he further commented: "All these colored revolutions are pure and simple
banditry."
In Burma (officially called Myanmar), a series of anti-government protests were referred to
in the press as the Saffron Revolution after
Buddhist monks ( Theravada Buddhist monks normally wear
the colour saffron) took the vanguard of the protests. A previous, student-led revolution, the
8888 Uprising on 8
August 1988, had similarities to the colour revolutions, but was violently
repressed.
A call which first appeared on 17 February 2011 on the Chinese language site Boxun.com in the United States for
a "Jasmine revolution" in the People's Republic of China and repeated on social networking
sites in China resulted in blocking of internet searches for "jasmine" and a heavy police
presence at designated sites for protest such as the McDonald's in central Beijing, one of the 13
designated protest sites, on 20 February 2011. A crowd did gather there, but their motivations
were ambiguous as a crowd tends to draw a crowd in that area.
Boxun experienced a denial of service attack during
this period and was inaccessible.
In the 2000s, Fiji suffered numerous coups. But at the same time, many Fiji citizens
resisted the military. In Fiji, there have been many human rights abuses by the military.
Anti-government protesters in Fiji have fled to Australia and New Zealand. In 2011, Fijians
conducted anti Fijian government protests in Australia. On 17 September
2014, the first democratic general election was held in Fiji.
In 2015, Otto
Pérez Molina , President of Guatemala, was suspected of corruption. In Guatemala City,
a large number of protests rallied. Demonstrations took place from April to September 2015.
Otto Pérez
Molina was eventually arrested on 3 September. The people of Guatemala called this event
"Guatemalan Spring".
Moldova
The opposition is reported to have hoped for and urged some kind of Orange revolution,
similar to that in Ukraine, in the follow-up of the 2005 Moldovan
parliamentary elections , while the Christian
Democratic People's Party adopted orange for its colour in a clear reference to the events
of Ukraine.
A name hypothesised for such an event was "Grape Revolution" because of the abundance of
vineyards in the country; however, such a revolution failed to materialise after the
governmental victory in the elections. Many reasons have been given for this, including a
fractured opposition and the fact that the government had already co-opted many of the
political positions that might have united the opposition (such as a perceived pro-European and
anti-Russian stance). Also the elections themselves were declared fairer in the OSCE election
monitoring reports than had been the case in other countries where similar revolutions
occurred, even though the CIS monitoring mission strongly condemned them.
On 25 March 2005, activists wearing yellow scarves held protests in the capital city of
Ulaanbaatar , disputing
the results of the 2004 Mongolian
parliamentary elections and calling for fresh elections. One of the chants heard in that
protest was "Let's congratulate our Kyrgyz brothers for their revolutionary spirit. Let's free
Mongolia of corruption."
An uprising commenced in Ulaanbaatar on 1 July 2008, with a peaceful meeting in protest of
the election of 29 June. The results of these elections were (it was claimed by opposition
political parties) corrupted by the Mongolian People's Party (MPRP).
Approximately 30,000 people took part in the meeting. Afterwards, some of the protesters left
the central square and moved to the HQ of the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party –
which they attacked and then burned down. A police station was also attacked. By the night
rioters vandalised and then set fire to the Cultural Palace (which contained a theatre, museum
and National art gallery). Cars torching, bank
robberies and looting were reported. The
organisations in the burning buildings were vandalised and looted. Police used tear gas, rubber
bullets and water cannon against stone-throwing protesters. A 4-day
state of emergency was installed, the capital has been placed under a 2200 to 0800 curfew, and
alcohol sales banned, rioting not
resumed. 5 people
were shot dead by the police ,
dozens of teenagers were wounded from the police firearms and disabled and
800 people, including the leaders of the civil movements J. Batzandan, O. Magnai and B.
Jargalsakhan, were arrested. International
observers said 1 July general election was free and fair.
In 2007, the Lawyers' Movement started in Pakistan with the aim of restoration
of deposed judges. However, within a month the movement took a turn and started working towards
the goal of removing Pervez Musharraf from power.
The liberal opposition in Russia is represented by several parties and
movements.
An active part of the opposition is the Oborona youth movement. Oborona
claims that its aim is to provide free and honest elections and to establish in Russia a system
with democratic political competition. This movement under the leadership of Oleg
Kozlovsky was one of the most active and radical ones and is represented in a number of
Russian cities. During the elections of 8 September 2013, the movement contributed to the
success of Navalny in Moscow and other opposition candidates in various regions and towns
throughout Russia. The "oboronkis" also took part with other oppositional groups in protests
against fraud in the Moscow mayoral elections.
Since the 2012 protests, Aleksei Navalny mobilised with support of
the various and fractured opposition parties and masses of young people against the alleged
repression and fraud of the Kremlin apparatus. After a strong
campaign for the 8 September elections in Moscow and the regions, the opposition won remarkable
successes. Navalny reached a second place in Moscow with surprising 27% behind Kremlin-backed
Sergei Sobyanin
finishing with 51% of the votes. In other regions, opposition candidates received remarkable
successes. In the big industrial town of Yekaterinburg, opposition candidate Yevgeny Roizman received the majority
of votes and became the mayor of that town. The slow but gradual sequence of opposition
successes reached by mass protests, election campaigns and other peaceful strategies has been
recently called by observers and analysts as of Radio Free Europe "Tortoise Revolution"
in contrast to the radical "rose" or "orange" ones the Kremlin tried to prevent.
The opposition in the Republic of Bashkortostan has held protests demanding
that the federal authorities intervene to dismiss Murtaza Rakhimov from his position as
president of the republic, accusing him of leading an "arbitrary, corrupt, and violent" regime.
Airat
Dilmukhametov , one of the opposition leaders, and leader of the
Bashkir National Front , has said that the opposition movement has been inspired from the
mass protests of Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan. Another
opposition leader, Marat
Khaiyirulin , has said that if an Orange Revolution were to happen in Russia, it would
begin in Bashkortostan.
From 2016 to 2017, the candlelight protest was going on in South Korea with the aim to force the ousting
of President Park
Geun-hye . Park was impeached and removed from office, and new presidential
elections were held.
In Uzbekistan , there
has been longstanding opposition to President Islam Karimov , from liberals and Islamists.
Following protests in 2005, security forces in Uzbekistan carried out the Andijan massacre that successfully
halted country-wide demonstrations. These protests otherwise could have turned into colour
revolution, according to many analysts.
The revolution in neighbouring Kyrgyzstan began in the largely ethnic Uzbek south, and
received early support in the city of Osh . Nigora
Hidoyatova , leader of the Free
Peasants opposition party, has referred to the idea of a peasant revolt or 'Cotton
Revolution'. She also said that her party is collaborating with the youth organisation
Shiddat , and that she
hopes it can evolve to an organisation similar to Kmara or Pora. Other nascent
youth organisations in and for Uzbekistan include Bolga
and the freeuzbek
group.
When groups of young people protested the closure of Venezuela's RCTV television station in June 2007, president
Hugo Chávez
said that he believed the protests were organised by the West in an attempt to promote a "soft
coup" like the revolutions in Ukraine and Georgia. Similarly,
Chinese authorities claimed repeatedly in the state-run media that both the 2014 Hong Kong protests
– known as the Umbrella Revolution – as well as
the 2019–20 Hong Kong
protests , were organised and controlled by the United States.
In July 2007, Iranian state television released footage of two Iranian-American prisoners,
both of whom work for western NGOs, as part of a documentary called "In the Name of Democracy."
The documentary purportedly discusses the colour revolutions in Ukraine and Georgia and accuses
the United States of attempting to foment a similar ouster in Iran.
Other
examples and political movements around the world
The imagery of a colour revolution has been adopted by various non-revolutionary electoral
campaigns. The 'Purple Revolution' social media campaign of Naheed Nenshi catapulted his platform from 8%
to become Calgary's 36th Mayor. The platform advocated city sustainability and to inspire the
high voter turn out of 56%, particularly among young voters.
In 2015, the NDP of Alberta earned a majority
mandate and ended the 44-year-old dynasty of the Progressive
Conservatives . During the campaign Rachel Notley 's popularity gained momentum,
and the news and NDP supporters referred to this phenomenon as the "Orange Crush" per the
party's colour. NDP parodies of Orange flavoured Crush soda logo became a popular meme on
social media.
"... One NGO called the Transatlantic Democracy Working Group (TDWG) was bold or reckless enough to draw the parallels between the Color Revolution in Belarus and the events playing out against Trump explicitly ..."
"... Now, would the reader care to take a guess as to who runs the Transatlantic Democracy Working Group? If you guessed Norm Eisen, you would be correct. ..."
In our report on Never
Trump State Department official George Kent , Revolver News first drew attention
to the ominous similarities between the strategies and tactics the United States government
employs in so-called "Color Revolutions" and the coordinated efforts of government bureaucrats,
NGOs, and the media to oust President Trump.
Our recent follow-up to this initial report focused specifically on a shadowy, George Soros
linked group called the Transition Integrity Project (TIP), which convened "war games"
exercises suggesting the likelihood of a "contested election scenario," and of ensuing chaos
should President Trump refuse to leave office. We further showed how these "contested election"
scenarios we are hearing so much about play perfectly into the Color Revolution framework
sketched out Revolver News' first installment in the Color Revolution series.
This third installment of Revolver News ' series exposing the Color Revolution
against Trump will focus on one quiet and indeed mostly overlooked participant in the
Transition Integrity Project's biased election "war games" exercise -- a man by the name of
Norm Eisen.
As the man who implemented the David Brock blueprint for
suing the President into paralysis and his
allies into bankruptcy , who helped mainstream and amplify the Russia Hoax, who drafted
10 articles of impeachment for the Democrats a full month before President Trump ever
called the Ukraine President in 2018 , who personally served as special counsel
litigating the Ukraine impeachment, who created a template for Internet censorship of world
leaders and a handbook for mass mobilizing racial justice protesters to overturn democratic
election results, there is perhaps no man alive with a more decorated resume for plots against
President Trump.
Indeed, the story of Norm Eisen – a key architect of nearly every attempt to
delegitimize, impeach, censor, sue and remove the democratically elected 45th President of the
United States – is a tale that winds through nearly every facet of the color revolution
playbook. There is no purer embodiment of Revolver's thesis that the very same regime
change professionals who run Color Revolutions on behalf of the US Government in order to
undermine or overthrow alleged "authoritarian" governments overseas, are running the very same
playbook to overturn Trump's 2016 victory and to pre-empt a repeat in 2020. To put it simply,
what you see is not just the same Color Revolution playbook run against Trump, but the same
people using it against Trump who have employed it in a professional capacity against targets
overseas -- same people same playbook.
In Norm Eisen's case, the "same people same playbook" refrain takes an arrestingly literal
turn when one realizes that Norm Eisen wrote a classic Color Revolution regime change manual,
and conveniently titled it "The Playbook."
Just what exactly is President Obama's former White House Ethics Czar ( yes, Norm Eisen
was Obama's ethics Czar ), his longtime friend since Harvard Law School, who recently
partook in war games to simulate overturning a Trump electoral victory, doing writing a
detailed playbook on how to use a Color Revolution to overthrow governments? The story of Norm
Eisen only gets more fascinating, outrageous, and indispensable to understanding the planned
chaos unfolding before our eyes, leading up to what will perhaps be the most chaotic election
in our nation's recent history.
-- -- -- -- -- -- -
"I'd Rather Have This Book Than The Atomic Bomb"
Before we can fully appreciate the significance of Norm Eisen's Color Revolution manual "The
Playbook," we must contextualize this important book in relation to its place in Color
Revolution literature.
As a bit of a refresher to the reader, it is important to emphasize that when we use the
term "Color Revolution" we do not mean any general type of revolution -- indeed, one of the
chief advantages of the Color Revolution framework we advance is that it offers a specific and
concrete heuristic by which to understand the operations against Trump beyond the accurate but
more vague term "coup." Unlike the overt, blunt, method of full scale military invasion as was
the case in Iraq War, a Color Revolution employs the following strategies and tactics:
A "Color Revolution" in this context refers to a specific type of coordinated attack that
the United States government has been known to deploy against foreign regimes, particularly
in Eastern Europe deemed to be "authoritarian" and hostile to American interests. Rather than
using a direct military intervention to effect regime change as in Iraq, Color Revolutions
attack a foreign regime by contesting its electoral legitimacy, organizing mass protests and
acts of civil disobedience, and leveraging media contacts to ensure favorable coverage to
their agenda in the Western press.
[Revolver]
This combination of tactics used in so-called Color Revolutions did not come from nowhere.
Before Norm Eisen came Gene Sharp -- originator and Godfather of the Color Revolution model
that has been a staple of US Government operations externally (and now internally) for decades.
Before Norm Eisen's "Playbook" there was Gene Sharp's classic "From Dictatorship to Democracy,"
which might be justly described as the Bible of the Color Revolution. Such is the power of the
strategies laid out by Sharp that a Lithuanian defense minister once said of Sharp's preceding
book (upon which Dictatorship to Democracy builds) that "I would
rather have this book than the nuclear bomb."
Gene Sharp
It would be impossible to do full justice to Gene Sharp within the scope of this specific
article. Here are some choice excerpts about Sharp and his biography to give readers a taste of
his significance and relevance to this discussion.
Gene Sharp, the "Machiavelli of nonviolence," has been fairly described as "the most
influential American political figure you've never heard of."
1 Sharp, who passed away in January 2018, was a beloved yet "mysterious" intellectual
giant of nonviolent protest movements , the "father of the whole field of the study of
strategic nonviolent action."
2 Over his career, he wrote more than twenty books about nonviolent action and social
movements. His how-to pamphlet on nonviolent revolution, From Dictatorship to
Democracy , has been translated into over thirty languages and is cited by protest
movements around the world . In the U.S., his ideas are widely promoted through activist
training programs and by scholars of nonviolence, and have been used by nearly every major
protest movement in the last forty years .
3 For these contributions, Sharp has been praised by progressive heavyweights like Howard
Zinn and Noam Chomsky, nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize four times, compared to Gandhi,
and cast as a lonely prophet of peace, champion of the downtrodden, and friend of the left .
4
Gene Sharp's influence on the U.S. activist left and social movements abroad has been
significant. But he is better understood as one of the most important U.S. defense
intellectuals of the Cold War, an early neoliberal theorist concerned with the supposedly
inherent violence of the "centralized State," and a quiet but vital counselor to
anti-communist forces in the socialist world from the 1980s onward.
In the mid-1960s, Thomas Schelling, a Nobel Prize-winning nuclear theorist, recruited
29-year-old Sharp to join the Center for International Affairs at Harvard , bastion of the
high Cold War defense, intelligence, and security establishment. Leading the so-called "CIA
at Harvard" were Henry Kissinger, future National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy, and future
CIA chief Robert Bowie. Sharp held this appointment for thirty years. There, with Department
of Defense funds, he developed his core theory of nonviolent action: a method of warfare
capable of collapsing states through theatrical social movements designed to dissolve the
common will that buttresses governments, all without firing any shots. From his post at the
CIA at Harvard, Sharp would urge U.S. and NATO defense leadership to use his methods against
the Soviet Union. [Nonsite]
We invite the reader to reflect on the passages in bold, particularly their potential
relevance to the current domestic situation in the United States. Sharp's book and strategy for
"non violent revolution" AKA "peaceful protests" has been used to undermine or overthrow target
governments all over the world, particularly in Eastern Europe.
Gene's color revolution playbook was of course especially effective in Eastern Bloc
countries in Eastern Europe:
Finally, there is no shortage of analysis as to the applicability of Sharp's methods
domestically within the USA in order to advance various left wing causes. This passage
specifically mentions the applicability of Sharp's methods to counter act Trump.
Ominous stuff indeed. For readers who wish to read further, please consult
the full Politico piece from which we have excerpted the above highlighted passages. There
is also a fascinating documentary on Sharp instructively titled "
How to Start a Revolution ."
This is all interesting and disturbing, to say the least. In its own right it would suggest
a compelling nexus point between the operations run against Trump and the Color Revolution
playbook. But what does this have to do with our subject Norm Eisen? It just so happens that
Eisen explicitly places himself in the tradition of Gene Sharp, acknowledging his book "The
Playbook" as a kind of update to Sharp's seminal "Dictatorship to Democracy."
And there we have it, folks -- Norm Eisen, former Obama Ethics Czar, Ambassador to
Czechoslovakia during the "Velvet Revolution," key counsel in impeachment effort against Trump,
and participant in the ostensibly bi-partisan election war games predicting a contested
election scenario unfavorable to Trump -- just happens to be a Color Revolution expert who
literally wrote the modern "Playbook" in the explicitly acknowledged tradition of Color
Revolution Godfather Gene Sharp's "From Dictatorship to Democracy."
Before we turn to the contents of Norm Eisen's Color Revolution manual, full title "The
Democracy Playbook: Preventing and Reversing Democratic Backsliding," it will be useful to make
a brief point regarding the term "democracy" itself, which happens to appear in the title of
Gene Sharp's book "From Dictatorship to Democracy" as well.
Just like the term "peaceful protestor," which, as we pointed out in our George Kent essay
is used as a term of craft in the Color Revolution context, so is the term "democracy" itself.
The US Government launches Color Revolutions against foreign targets irrespective of whether
they actually enjoy the support of the people or were elected democratically. In the case of
Trump, whatever one says about him, he is perhaps the most "democratically" elected President
in America's history. Indeed, in 2016 Trump ran against the coordinated opposition of the
establishments of both parties, the military industrial complex, the corporate media,
Hollywood, and really every single powerful institution in the country. He won, however,
because he was able to garner sufficient support of the people -- his true and decisive power
base as a "populist." Precisely because of the ultra democratic "populist" character of Trump's
victory, the operatives attempting to undermine him have focused specifically on attacking the
democratic legitimacy of his victory.
In this vein we ought to note that the term "democratic backsliding," as seen in the
subtitle of Norm Eisen's book, and its opposite "democratic breakthrough" are also terms of art
in the Color Revolution lexicon. We leave the full exploration of how the term "democratic" is
used deceptively in the Color Revolution context (and in names of decidedly
anti-democratic/populist institutions) as an exercise to the interested reader. Michael McFaul,
another Color Revolution expert and key anti-Trump operative somewhat gives the game away in
the following tweet in which the term "democratic breakthrough" makes an appearance as a better
sounding alternative to "Color Revolution:"
Most likely as a response to Revolver News' first Color Revolution article on State
Department official George Kent, former Ambassador McFaul issued the following tweet as a
matter of damage control:
Being a rather simple man from a simple background, McFaul perhaps gave too much of this
answer away in the following explanation (now deleted).
Trump has lost the Intelligence Community. He has lost the State Department. He has lost the military. How can he continue to
serve as our Commander in Chief ?
With this now-deleted tweet we get a clearer picture of the power bases that must be
satisfied for a "democratic breakthrough" to occur -- and conveniently enough, not one of them
is subject to direct democratic control. McFaul, Like Eisen, George Kent, and so many others,
perfectly embodies Revolver's thesis regarding the Color Revolution being the same
people running the same playbook. Indeed, like most of the star never-Trump impeachment
witnesses, McFaul has been an ambassador to an Eastern European country. He has supported
operations against Trump, including impeachment. And, like Norm Eisen, he has actually
written
a book on Color Revolutions (more on that later).
Norm Eisen's The Democracy Playbook: A Brief Overview:
A deep dive into Eisen's book would exceed the scope of this relatively brief exposé.
It is nonetheless important for us to draw attention to key passages of Eisen's book to
underscore how closely the "Playbook" corresponds to events unfolding right here at home.
Indeed, it would not be an exaggeration to say that regime change professionals such as Eisen
simply decided to run the same playbook against Trump that they have done countless times when
foreign leaders are elected overseas that they don't like and want to remove via
extra-democratic means -- "peaceful protests," "democratic breakthroughs" and such.
First, consider the following passage from Eisen's Playbook:
If you study this passage closely, you will find direct confirmation of our earlier point
that "democracy" in the Color Revolution context is a term of art -- it refers to anything they
like that keeps the national security bureaucrats in power. Anything they don't like, even if
elected democratically, is considered "anti-democratic," or, put another way, "democratic
backsliding." Eisen even acknowledges that this scourge of populism he's so worried about
actually was ushered in with "popular support," under "relatively democratic and electoral
processes." The problem is precisely that the people have had enough of the corrupt ruling
class ignoring their needs. Accordingly, the people voted first for Brexit and then for Donald
Trump -- terrifying expressions of populism which the broader Western power structure did
everything in its capacity to prevent. Once they failed, they viewed these twin populist
victories as a kind of political 9/11 to be prevented by any means necessary from recurring.
Make no mistake, the Color Revolution has nothing to do with democracy in any meaningful sense
and everything to do with the ruling class ensuring that the people will never have the power
to meddle in their own elections again.
The passage above can be insightfully compared to the passage in Gene Sharp's book noting
ripe applications to the domestic situation.
It is instructive to compare the passage in Eisen's Color Revolution book to the passage in
Michael McFaul's Color Revolution book
First off, it is absolutely imperative to look at every single one of the conditions for a
Color Revolution that McFaul identifies. It is simply impossible not to be overcome with the
ominous parallels to our current situation. Specifically, however, note condition 1 which
refers to having a target leader who is not fully authoritarian, but semi-autocratic. This
coincides perfectly well with Eisen's concession that the populist leaders he's so concerned
about might be "illiberal" but enjoy "popular support" and have come to power via "relatively
democratic electoral processes."
Consulting the above passage from McFaul's book, we note that McFaul has been perhaps the
most explicit about the conditions which facilitate a Color Revolution. We invite the reader to
supply the contemporary analogue to each point as a kind of exercise.
A semi-autocratic regime rather than fully autocratic
An unpopular incumbent (note blanket negative coverage of Trump, fake polls)
A united and organized opposition (media, intel community, Hollywood, community groups,
etc)
Enough independent media to inform citizens of falsified vote (see full court press in
media pushing contested election narrative, social media censorship)
A political opposition capable of mobilizing tens of thousands or more demonstrators to
protest electoral fraud ( SEE BLACK LIVES MATTER AND ANTIFA )
On point number four, which is especially relevant to our present situation, Eisen has an
interesting thing to say about the role of a contested election scenario in the Orange
Revolution, arguably the most important Color Revolution of them all.
Finally, let's look at one last passage from Norm Eisen's Color Revolution "Democracy
Playbook" and cross-reference it with McFaul's conditions for a Color Revolution as well as the
situation playing out right now before our very eyes:
A few things immediately jump out at us. First, the ominous instruction: "prepare to use
electoral abuse evidence as the basis for reform advocacy." Secondly, we note the passage
suggesting that opposition to a target leader might avail itself of "extreme institutional
measures" including impeachment processes, votes of no confidence, and, of course, the good
old-fashioned "protests, strikes, and boycotts" (all more or less peaceful no doubt).
By now the Color Revolution agenda against Trump should be as plain as day. Regime change
professionals like McFaul, Eisen, George Kent, and others, who have refined their craft
conducting color revolutions overseas, have taken it upon themselves to use the same tools, the
same tactics -- quite literally, the same playbook -- to overthrow President Trump. Yet again,
same people, same playbook.
We conclude this study of key Color Revolution figure Norm Eisen by exploring his
particularly proactive -- indeed central role -- in effecting one of the Color Revolution's
components mentioned in the Eisen Playbook -- impeachment.
-- -- -- –
The Ghost of Democracy's Future
We mentioned at the outset of this piece that Norm Eisen is many things -- a former Obama
Ethics Czar (but of course), Ambassador to Czechoslovakia, participant in the now notorious
Transition Integrity Project, et cetera. But he earned his title as "legal hatchet man" of the
Color Revolution for his tireless efforts in promoting the impeachment of President Trump.
The litany of Norm Eisen's legal activity cited at the beginning of this piece bears
repeating.
As the man who implemented the David Brock blueprint
for suing the President into paralysis and his
allies into bankruptcy , who helped mainstream and amplify the Russia Hoax, who drafted
10 articles of impeachment for the Democrats a full month before President Trump ever
called the Ukraine President in 2018 , who personally served as DNC co-counsel for
litigating the Ukraine impeachment
If that resume doesn't warrant the title "legal hatchet man" we wonder what does? We
encourage interested readers or journalists to explore those links for themselves. By way of
conclusion, it simply suffices to note that much of Eisen's impeachment activity he conducted
before there was any discussion or knowledge of President Trump's call to the Ukrainian
President in 2018 -- indeed before the call even happened. Impeachment was very clearly a
foregone conclusion -- a quite literal part of Norm Eisen's Color Revolution playbook -- and it
was up to people like Eisen to find the pretext, any pretext.
Despite their constant invocation of "democracy" we ought to note that transferring the
question of electoral outcomes to adversarial legal processes is in fact anti-Democratic -- in
keeping with our observation that the Color Revolution playbook uses "democracy" as a term of
art, often meaning the precise opposite of the usual meaning suggesting popular support.
Perhaps the most important entry in Eisen's entry is the first, that is, Eisen's
participation in the infamous David Brock blueprint on how to undermine and overthrow the Trump
presidency.
The Washington Free Beacon attended the retreat and obtained David Brock's
private and confidential memorandum from the meeting. The memo, "
Democracy Matters: Strategic Plan for Action ," outlines Brock's four-year agenda to
attack Trump and Republicans using Media Matters, American Bridge, Citizens for
Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) , and Shareblue.
This leaked memo was written before President Trump took office, further suggesting that all
of the efforts to undermine Trump have not been good faith responses to his behavior, but a
pre-ordained attack strategy designed to overturn the 2016 election by any means necessary. The
Color Revolution expert who suggests impeachment as a tactic in his Color Revolution "playbook"
was already in charge of impeachment before Trump even took office -- -Citizens for
Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) is run by none other than Norm Eisen.
But the attempt to overturn the 2016 election using Color Revolution tactics failed. And so
now the plan is to overthrow Trump in 2020, hence Norm Eisen's noted participation in the
Transition Integrity Project. Looking around us, one is forced to ask the deeply uncomfortable
question, "transition into what?"
To conclude, we would like to call back to a point we raised in the first piece in our color
revolution series. In this piece, we noted that star Never Trump impeachment witness George
Kent just happens to be running the Belarus desk at the State Department. Belarus, we argued,
with its mass demonstrations egged on by US Government backed NGOS, its supposed "peaceful
protests" and of course its contested election results all fit the Color Revolution mold
curiously enough.
One NGO called the Transatlantic Democracy Working Group (TDWG) was bold or reckless enough
to draw the parallels between the Color Revolution in Belarus and the events playing out
against Trump explicitly. In response to a remark by a twitter user that the TDWG's remarks
about Belarus suggested parallels to the United States, the TDWG ominously replied:
Now, would the reader care to take a guess as to who runs the Transatlantic Democracy
Working Group? If you guessed Norm Eisen, you would be correct.
Stay tuned for more in Revolver.news' groundbreaking coverage of the Color
Revolution against Trump. Be sure to check out the previous installments in this series.
"... these "contested election" scenarios we are hearing so much about play perfectly into the Color Revolution framework sketched out Revolver News' first installment in the Color Revolution series. ..."
"... the man who implemented the David Brock blueprint for suing the President into paralysis and his allies into bankruptcy, who helped mainstream and amplify the Russia Hoax, who drafted 10 articles of impeachment for the Democrats a full month before President Trump ever called the Ukraine President in 2018, who personally served as special counsel litigating the Ukraine impeachment, who created a template for Internet censorship of world leaders and a handbook for mass mobilizing racial justice protesters to overturn democratic election results, there is perhaps no man alive with a more decorated resume for plots against President Trump. ..."
"... Indeed, the story of Norm Eisen – a key architect of nearly every attempt to delegitimize, impeach, censor, sue and remove the democratically elected 45th President of the United States ..."
"... In Norm Eisen's case, the "same people same playbook" refrain takes an arrestingly literal turn when one realizes that Norm Eisen wrote a classic Color Revolution regime change manual, and conveniently titled it "The Playbook." ..."
In our report on Never Trump State Department official George Kent, Revolver News first
drew attention to the ominous similarities between the strategies and tactics the United
States government employs in so-called "Color Revolutions" and the coordinated efforts of
government bureaucrats, NGOs, and the media to oust President Trump.
Our recent follow-up to this initial report focused specifically on a shadowy, George
Soros linked group called the Transition Integrity Project (TIP), which convened "war games"
exercises suggesting the likelihood of a "contested election scenario," and of ensuing chaos
should President Trump refuse to leave office. We further showed how these "contested election" scenarios we are hearing
so much about play perfectly into the Color Revolution framework sketched out Revolver News' first installment in the Color
Revolution series.
This third installment of Revolver News' series exposing the Color Revolution against
Trump will focus on one quiet and indeed mostly overlooked participant in the Transition
Integrity Project's biased election "war games" exercise -- a man by the name of Norm
Eisen.
As the man who implemented the David Brock blueprint for suing the President into
paralysis and his allies into bankruptcy, who helped mainstream and amplify the Russia Hoax,
who drafted 10 articles of impeachment for the Democrats a full month before President Trump
ever called the Ukraine President in 2018, who personally served as special counsel
litigating the Ukraine impeachment, who created a template for Internet censorship of world
leaders and a handbook for mass mobilizing racial justice protesters to overturn democratic
election results, there is perhaps no man alive with a more decorated resume for plots
against President Trump.
Indeed, the story of Norm Eisen – a key architect of nearly every attempt to
delegitimize, impeach, censor, sue and remove the democratically elected 45th President of
the United States – is a tale that winds through nearly every facet of the color
revolution playbook. There is no purer embodiment of Revolver's thesis that the very same
regime change professionals who run Color Revolutions on behalf of the US Government in order
to undermine or overthrow alleged "authoritarian" governments overseas, are running the very
same playbook to overturn Trump's 2016 victory and to pre-empt a repeat in 2020. To put
it simply, what you see is not just the same Color Revolution playbook run against Trump, but
the same people using it against Trump who have employed it in a professional capacity
against targets overseas -- same people same playbook.
In Norm Eisen's case, the "same people same playbook" refrain takes an arrestingly
literal turn when one realizes that Norm Eisen wrote a classic Color Revolution regime change
manual, and conveniently titled it "The Playbook."
Just what exactly is President Obama's former White House Ethics Czar (yes, Norm Eisen was
Obama's ethics Czar), his longtime friend since Harvard Law School, who recently partook in
war games to simulate overturning a Trump electoral victory, doing writing a detailed
playbook on how to use a Color Revolution to overthrow governments? The story of Norm Eisen
only gets more fascinating, outrageous, and indispensable to understanding the planned chaos
unfolding before our eyes, leading up to what will perhaps be the most chaotic election in
our nation's recent history.
... ... ...
A deep dive into Eisen's book would exceed the scope of this relatively brief exposé.
It is nonetheless important for us to draw attention to key passages of Eisen's book to
underscore how closely the "Playbook" corresponds to events unfolding right here at home. Indeed, it would not be an exaggeration to say that regime change professionals such as
Eisen simply decided to run the same playbook against Trump that they have done countless
times when foreign leaders are elected overseas that they don't like and want to remove via
extra-democratic means -- "peaceful protests," "democratic breakthroughs" and such. ... ... ...
Counter disinformation network can't revive the dead chicken of neoliberal ideology.
Neoliberal elite lost legitimacy and as such has difficulties controlling the narrative.
That's why all this frantic efforts were launched to rectify the situation.
Anti-Russian angle of Atlantic council revealed here quite clearly
The paper's biggest single recommendation was that the United States and EU establish a
Counter-Disinformation Coalition, a public/private group bringing together, on a regular basis,
government and non-government stakeholders, including social media companies, traditional
media, Internet service providers (ISPs), and civil society groups. The Counter-Disinformation
Coalition would develop best practices for confronting disinformation from nondemocratic
countries, consistent with democratic norms. It also recommended that this coalition start with
a voluntary code of conduct outlining principles and agreed procedures for dealing with
disinformation, drawing from the recommendations as summarized above.
In drawing up these recommendations, we were aware that disinformation most often comes from
domestic, not foreign, sources. 8 While Russian and other disinformation players are
known to work in coordination with domestic purveyors of disinformation, both overtly and
covertly, the recommendations are limited to foreign disinformation, which falls within the
scope of "political warfare." Nevertheless, it may be that these policy recommendations,
particularly those focused on transparency and social resilience, may be applicable to
combatting other forms of disinformation.
That's naive take. Wary knows quite a bit about Antifa. Most probably the key people are
iether FBI agents or informants. The problem is that he find Antifa activities politically
useful. That's why he does not want to shut it down. This again put FBI in the role of kingmaker,
like under Comey.
Also don't forget that Brennan faction of CIA is still in power and that means the "deep
state" still is in control like was the case during Mueller investigation.
In May of 2017, President Trump did the right thing and fired FBI Director James Comey, the
individual at the center of the attempt to overturn the 2016 election results. Comey
orchestrated the spying efforts on President Trump and his campaign, which included the FBI
improperly applying for four separate Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court warrants to
eavesdrop on campaign aide Carter Page. He also authorized a politically motivated
investigation into Lt. General Michael Flynn and encouraged the entrapment of Flynn by his FBI
agents in an infamous White House interview.
Clearly, Comey was a disastrous FBI Director; however, the President made a terrible choice
when he replaced him with Christopher Wray, a bureaucrat who has not reformed the agency in any
meaningful way. He also seems to be incapable of identifying the real threats that are facing
the country.
In testimony on Thursday before the House Homeland Security Committee, Wray made a series of
remarkable claims. He stated that Antifa is not a group but is more of "an ideology or maybe a
movement." He also refused to identify Chinese efforts to interrupt the 2020 election and again
focused attention on activities from Russia.
With these remarks, Wray is doing the bidding of the Democrats and following their talking
points. Regarding Antifa violence, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-NY),
claimed it was a "myth."
Nadler has been in his congressional cocoon for too long. Antifa has been active for several
years, but since the death of George Floyd on May 25, it has intensified its activities around
the country. Millions of Americans have seen the frequent and disturbing video footage of
rioting and looting throughout the country. According to U.S. Congressman Dan Crenshaw (R-TX),
"there have been more than 550 declared riots, many stoked by extremists, Antifa and the BLM
(Black Lives Matter) organization."
In his comments to Wray at the committee meeting, Crenshaw also noted the rioters have done
an extensive amount of damage. He stated that "between one and two billion dollars of insurance
claims will be paid out. That doesn't come close to measuring the actual and true damage to
people's lives, not even close."
Crenshaw is right as many of our urban areas, such as New York, Washington D.C.,
Minneapolis, Seattle, Portland among others have been devastated by a series of violent
protests. In the past few months, scores of monuments have been destroyed, and significant
damage has been done to businesses and public buildings. The group has also attacked innocent
civilians and targeted police officers. As Crenshaw asserted in this rebuttal to Wray, Antifa
matches the definition of a domestic terrorist organization.
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T
he US media's three-year obsession with the mostly fictitious allegations of "Russiagate" has all but obscured, even
deleted, important, potentially historic, developments inside that nation itself, still the world's largest territorial
country. One of the most important is the Putin government's decision to invest $300-to-$400 billion of "rainy day" funds in
the nation's infrastructure, especially in its vast, underdeveloped provinces, and on "national projects" ranging from
education to health care and family services to transportation and other technology. If successfully implemented, Russia would
be substantially transformed and the lives of its people significantly improved.
Not surprisingly, however, the plan has aroused considerable controversy and public debate in Russia's policy elite, primarily
for two reasons. The funds were accumulated largely due to high world prices for Russia's energy exports and the state's
budgetary austerity during the decade after Putin came to power in 2000, and they have been hoarded as a safeguard against
Western economic sanctions and/or a global economic depression. (Russia's economic collapse in the Yeltsin 1990s, perhaps the
worst modern-day depression in peacetime, remains a vivid memory for policy-makers and ordinary citizens alike.)
There is also the nation's long, sometimes traumatic, history of "modernization from above," as it is termed. In the late 19th
century, the czarist regime's program to industrialize the country, "to catch up" with other world powers, had unintended
consequences that led, in the accounts of many historians, to the end of czarism in the 1917 revolution. And Stalin's
"revolution from above" of the 1930s, based on the forced collectivization of the peasantry, which at the time accounted for
more than 80 percent of the population, along with very rapid industrialization, resulted in millions of deaths and economic
distortions that burdened Soviet and post-Soviet Russia for decades.
Nor are Russia's alternative experiences of modernization from below inspiring or at least instructive. In the 1920s, during
the years known as the New Economic Policy, or NEP, the victorious Bolsheviks pursued evolutionary economic development
through a semi-regulated market economy. It had mixed -- and still disputed -- results, and it was brutally abolished by Stalin in
1929. Decades later, Yeltsin's "free-market reforms" were widely blamed for the ruination and widespread misery of the 1990s,
which featured many aspects of actual de-modernization.
With all this "living history" in mind, Putin's plan for such large-scale (and rapid) investment has generated the controversy
in Moscow and resulted in three positions within the policy class. One fully supports the decision on the essentially
Keynesian grounds that it will spur Russia's annual economic growth, which has lagged below the global average for several
years. Another opposes such massive expenditures, arguing that the funds must remain in state hands as a safeguard against the
US-led "sanctions war" (and perhaps worse) against Russia. And, as usual in politics, there is a compromise position that less
should be invested in civilian infrastructure and less quickly.
Running through the discussion is also Russia's long history of thwarted implementation of good intentions. To paraphrase a
prime minister during the 1990s,
Viktor
Chernomyrdin
, "We wanted things to turn out for the best, but they turned out as usual." In particular, it is often asked,
what will be the consequences of putting so much money into the hands of regional and other local officials in provinces where
corruption is endemic? How much will be stolen or otherwise misdirected?
Nonetheless, Putin seems to be resolute. He is also insistent that his ambitious plan to transform Russia requires a long
period of international peace and stability. Here again is plain evidence that those in Washington who insist Putin's primary
goal is "to sow discord, divisions, and instability" in the world, especially in the West, where he hopes to find "modernizing
partnerships," do not care about or understand what is actually unfolding inside Russia -- or Putin's vision of his own
historical role and legacy.
Stephen F. Cohen
Stephen F. Cohen is a professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at New York University and
Princeton University. A
Nation
contributing
editor, his most recent book,
War
With Russia? From Putin & Ukraine to Trump & Russiagate
, is available in paperback and in an ebook edition. His weekly
conversations with the host of
The
John Batchelor Show
, now in their seventh year,
are
available at www.thenation.com
.
Published Sept. 18, 2020
Updated Sept.
19, 2020,
9:37
a.m. ET
Stephen F. Cohen, an eminent historian whose books and commentaries on Russia examined the rise and fall of Communism,
Kremlin dictatorships and the emergence of a post-Soviet nation still struggling for identity in the 21st century, died on
Friday at his home in Manhattan. He was 81.
His wife, Katrina vanden Heuvel, the publisher and part owner of The Nation, said the cause was lung cancer.
From the sprawling conflicts of the 1917 Bolshevik revolution and the tyrannies of Stalin to the collapse of the Soviet
Union and Vladimir V. Putin's intrigues to retain power, Professor Cohen chronicled a Russia of sweeping social upheavals
and the passions and poetry of peoples that endured a century of wars, political repression and economic hardships.
A professor emeritus of Russian studies at Princeton University and New York University, he was fluent in Russian, visited
Russia frequently and developed contacts among intellectual dissidents and government and Communist Party officials. He
wrote or edited 10 books and many articles for The Nation, The New York Times and other publications, was a CBS-TV
commentator and counted President George Bush and many American and Soviet officials among his sources.
In Moscow he was befriended by the last Soviet leader, Mikhail S. Gorbachev, who invited him to the May Day celebration at
Red Square in 1989. There, at the Lenin Mausoleum, Professor Cohen stood with his wife and son one tier below Mr. Gorbachev
and the Soviet leadership to view a three-hour military parade. He later spoke briefly on Russian television to a vast
audience about alternative paths that Russian history could have taken.
Loosely identified with a revisionist historical view of the Soviet Union, Professor Cohen held views that made him a
controversial public intellectual. He believed that early Bolshevism had held great promise, that it had been democratic
and genuinely socialist, and that it had been corrupted only later by civil war, foreign hostility, Stalin's malignancy and
a fatalism in Russian history.
A traditionalist school of thought, by contrast, held that the Soviet experiment had been flawed from the outset, that
Lenin's political vision was totalitarian, and that any attempt to create a society based on his coercive utopianism had
always been likely to lead, logically, to Stalin's state terrorism and to the Soviet Union's eventual collapse.
Professor Cohen was an enthusiastic supporter of Mr. Gorbachev, who after coming to power in 1985 undertook ambitious
changes to liberate the nation's 15 republics from state controls that had originally been imposed by Stalin. Mr. Gorbachev
gave up power as the Soviet state imploded at the end of 1991 and moved toward beliefs in democracy and a market economy.
Image
Mr. Cohen first came to international attention in 1973 with his biography of Lenin's protégé Nikolai Bukharin.
"Stephen Cohen's full-scale study of Bukharin is the first major study of this remarkable associate of Lenin,"
Harrison
Salisbury's wrote in a review
in The Times. "As such it constitutes a milestone in Soviet studies, the byproduct both
of increased academic sophistication in the use of Soviet materials and also of the very substantial increase in basic
information which has become available in the 20 years since Stalin's death."
After Lenin's death, Mr. Bukharin became a victim of Stalin's Moscow show trials in 1938; he was accused of plotting
against Stalin and executed. His widow, Anna Mikhailovna Larina, spent 20 years in exile and in prison camps and campaigned
for Mr. Bukharin's rehabilitation, which was endorsed by Mr. Gorbachev in 1988.
Ms. Larina and Professor Cohen became friends. Given access to Bukharin archives, he found and returned to her the last
love letter that Mr. Bukharin wrote her from prison.
In "Rethinking the Soviet Experience" (1985), Professor Cohen offered a new interpretation of the nation's traumatic
history and modern political realities. In his view, Stalin's despotism and Mr. Bukharin's fate were not necessarily
inevitable outgrowths of the party dictatorship founded by Lenin.
Richard Lowenthal, in a review for The Times, called Professor Cohen's interpretation implausible. "While I do not believe
that all the horrors of Stalinism were 'logically inevitable' consequences of the seizure of power by Lenin and his
Bolshevik Party," Mr. Lowenthal wrote, "I do believe that Stalin's victory over Bukharin was inherent in the structure of
the party's system."
As Professor Cohen and other scholars pondered Russia's past, Mr. Gorbachev's rise to power and his efforts toward glasnost
(openness) and perestroika (restructuring) cast the future of the Soviet Union in a new light, potentially reversing 70
years of Cold War dogma.
Cohen succumbed to lung cancer at his home in Manhattan, on Friday, according to his wife
Katrina vanden Heuvel, who is also the part-owner and publisher of The Nation magazine, where
he worked as a contributing editor.
A native of Kentucky, he was a prolific and prominent scholar in his field, serving as a
professor emeritus of Russian studies at Princeton University and New York University. As a
frequent visitor to Russia, Cohen became well-connected among leading Soviet dissidents,
politicians and thinkers in the 1980s, even befriending Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev.
Cohen also advised former US President George Bush, senior, in the late 1980s, and assisted
Anna Larina, the widow of Nikolai Bukharin, to rehabilitate her husband's name during the
Soviet era. He had earlier written a biography of the journalist and politician, which argued
that had Bukharin succeeded Vladimir Lenin as Bolshevik leader, rather than Joseph Stalin, the
Soviet Union would have enjoyed greater openness, and perhaps even democracy.
Breaking with many American academics and political commentators, Cohen was highly critical
of Washington's approach to Russia following the collapse of the Soviet Union. He warned of the
dangers of NATO expansion and argued that much of the economic devastation seen in Russia
during the 1990s could be traced to bad-faith policies and advice from the United States.
His principled, and patriotic stand, led to smears from members of the think tank racket and
both liberal and neoconservative interventionists, keen to stoke tensions with Moscow. Cohen
was labelled a Putin apologist. He responded by saying that he saw him as being "in the Russian
tradition of leadership, getting Russia back on its feet."
After the election of Donald Trump, Cohen found himself in the crosshairs of the mainstream
media for challenging the now-debunked Russiagate narrative, which he said was being used to
sabotage bilateral relations and trigger a "new Cold War" with Moscow.
The unsubstantiated claim that Trump's presidential campaign "colluded" with the
Kremlin would likely make a US-Russia detente "impossible" and could even help fuel an
actual war between the two nations, Cohen argued. He lamented that Special Counsel Robert
Mueller's probe into the conspiracy theory, which found no evidence of collusion, would do
little to tone down the fiery rhetoric and anonymously sourced media hysteria concerning Russia
and its alleged influence over the US political system.
The author of numerous books and countless articles, Cohen was a frequent guest on RT, where
he often used his air time to sound the alarm over the dangerous state of US-Russia relations,
lamenting that the hostility was both unnecessary and potentially calamitous.
Photograph Source: Bundesarchiv, B 145 Bild-P098967 – CC BY-SA 3.0 de
It is time for the United States to debate the downsizing, if not the dissolution, of the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). U.S. national security would be strengthened by the
demise of NATO because Washington would no longer have to guarantee the security of 14 Central
and East European nations, including the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.
European defense coordination and integration would be more manageable without the
participation of authoritarian governments in Poland and Hungary. Key West European nations
presumably would favor getting out from under the use of U.S. military power in the Balkans,
the Middle East, and Southwest Asia, which has made them feel as if they were "tins of shoe
polish for American boots."
Russia would obviously be a geopolitical winner in any weakening -- let alone the demise --
of NATO, but the fears of Russian military intervention outside of the Slavic community are
exaggerated. The East European and Baltic states would protest any weakening of NATO, but it
would be an incentive for them to increase their own security cooperation.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was created seven decades ago as a political
and military alliance to "keep the United States in Europe; the Soviet Union out of Europe; and
Germany down in Europe." The collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989; the Warsaw Pact and the East
European communist governments in 1990; and the Soviet Union in 1991 marked the high water mark
for the alliance.
For the past three decades, however, the United States has weakened NATO by forcing a
hurried and awkward expansion on the alliance. Most recently in 2020, North Macedonia was
admitted as its 30th member, further weakening the integrity of the alliance. Did President
Donald Trump actually believe that the presence of North Macedonia as well as 13 other Central
European states would strengthen U.S. security?
The enlargement of NATO demonstrated the strategic mishandling of Russia, which now finds
the United States and Russia in a rivalry reminiscent of the Cold War. President Bill Clinton
was responsible for bringing former members of the Warsaw Pact into NATO, starting in the
late-1990s; President George W. Bush introduced former republics of the Soviet Union in his
first term. German Chancellor Angela Merkel deserves credit for dissuading Bush from seeking
membership for Ukraine and Georgia.
The United States justified the expansion of NATO as a way to create more liberal,
democratic members, but this has not been the case for the East European members. Russia,
moreover, views the expansion as a return to containment and a threat to its national security.
Russia was angered by the expansion from the outset, particularly since President George H.W.
Bush and Secretary of State James Baker assured Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and Foreign
Minister Eduard Shevardnadze that the United States wouldn't "leap frog" over Germany if the
Soviets pulled their 380,000 troops out of East Germany.
NATO's success from 1949 to 1991 was marked by a common perception of the Soviet threat,
which is the key to solidarity in any alliance framework. In 2020, however, the 30 members of
NATO no longer share a common perception of the Russian threat in Europe. The United States has
one view of Russia; the key nations of West Europe have a more benign view; and the East
Europeans perceive a dire threat that the others do not share. The United States has always
expressed some dissatisfaction with the asymmetric burden sharing and risk sharing within the
alliance, and the Trump administration has threatened to withdraw from NATO over the burden
sharing issue.
Turkey has rapidly become the outlier within NATO, and there have been a series of
confrontations in the eastern Mediterranean that threaten the integrity of the alliance. Greek
and Turkish warships collided in August, creating the first such confrontation between the two
navies since 1996, when the Clinton administration mediated the problem. The United States no
longer acts in such diplomatic capacities, so French President Emmanuel Macron has stepped into
the breach by sending jet aircraft to the Greek island of Crete as well as warships to exercise
with the antiquated Greek navy. Greece and Turkey, which joined NATO together in 1952, are
rivals over economic zones in the Mediterranean where there are important deposits of oil and
natural gas. Greece and Turkey have squabbled since 1974 over the divided island of Cyprus.
Turkey and France have additional differences over Turkey's violations of the UN arms
embargo on Libya. The two NATO allies had a confrontation in the Mediterranean when a French
warship tried to inspect a Turkish vessel. Last week, France joined military exercises with
Greece and Italy in the eastern Mediterranean following a Turkish maritime violation of
contested waters. Paris backs Athens in the conflicting claims with Ankara over rights to
potential hydrocarbon resources on the continental shelf in the Mediterranean.
President Macron took a particularly tough line in stating that he was setting "red lines"
in the Mediterranean because the "Turks only consider and respect a red-line policy," adding
that he "did it in Syria" as well. Macron's tough stance is somewhat surprising in view of the
concern of France and other European NATO countries regarding Turkey's ability to turn on the
refugee spigot, which would cause economic problems in southern Europe. Turkey has been using
the refugee issue as leverage since 2015, when huge numbers of refugees in West Europe led to a
rightward shift in European politics.
There is also the problem of Turkey's purchase of the most sophisticated Russian air defense
system, the S-400, which was developed to counter the world's most sophisticated jet fighter,
the U.S. F-35. As a result of the purchase of the S-400 system, the United States reneged on
the sale of eight F-35s to Turkey at a loss of $862 million, creating additional problems
between Trump and Turkish President Recip Tayyip Erdogan. Turkey had planned to buy 100 F-35s
over the next several years, and had begun pilot training in the United States.
Trump's constant harangues about burden sharing have created more friction within NATO.
Trump falsely takes credit for increased European defense spending, but it was the Obama
administration that successfully arranged greater Canadian and European defense spending in
2014 in the wake of Russia's seizure of Crimea. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg panders
regularly to Trump on the issue of increased defense spending, ignoring Trump's false claims
that NATO spending will increase by $400 billion annually. The $400 billion is in fact the
increased spending over an eight-year period.
With Trump's drift toward isolationism and unilateralism ("America First"), there is
incentive for the European Community to take control of its own "autonomous" defense policy.
The Europeans have reason to believe that a second presidential term for Trump could lead to a
sudden U.S. withdrawal from NATO. The unilateralist character of U.S. foreign and defense
policy strengthens the case for building European defense cooperation along side of an
undetermined transatlantic relationship with the United States.
New Documents Reveal Secret British Efforts To Arm, Assist And Propagandize 'Moderate
Rebels' In Syria
In November 2018 some anonymous people published a number of documents that had been
liberated from a clandestine British propaganda organization, the Integrity Initiative
.
The same group or person who revealed the Integrity Initiative papers has now
released several dozens of documents about another 'Strategic Communication' campaign run by
the British Foreign Office. The current release reveals a number of train and assist missions
for 'Syrian rebels' as well as propaganda operations run in Syria and globally on behalf of the
British government.
Most of the documents are detailed company responses to several solicitations from the
Foreign Office for global and local campaigns in support of the 'moderate rebels' who are
fighting against the Syrian government and people.
The documents lay out large scale campaigns which have on-the-ground elements in Syria,
training and arming efforts in neighboring countries, command and control elements in Jordan,
Turkey and Iraq, as well as global propaganda efforts. These operations were wide spread.
Most of the documents are from 2016 to 2019. They detail the organization of such operations
and also portrait persons involved in these projects. They often refer back to previous
campaigns that have been run from 2011/2012 onward. This is where the documents are probably
the most interesting. They reveal what an immense effort was and is waged to fill the
information space with pro-rebel/pro-Islamist propaganda.
The documents are not about the 'White Helmets' which were a separate British run Strategic
Communication campaign financed by various governments. While the operations described in the
new documents were coordinated with U.S. efforts they do not reference the CIA run campaigns in
Syria which included similar efforts at a cost of $1 billion per year.
The various projects and the detailed commercial offers to implement them from various
notorious companies are roughly described in the above two links. I will therefore refrain from
repeating that here. Some of the documents' content will surely be used in future Moon of
Alabama posts. But for now I will let you rummage through the stash.
Please let us know in the comments of the surprising bits that you might find.
Posted by b on September 18, 2020 at 15:51 UTC |
Permalink
Documents the "war crimes industry" of the UK, and others, as expressed in Libya and Syria.
Assad has indicated he will pursue reparations from the nations that have killed 400,000
citizens, destroyed or stolen his industrial infrastructure (whole factories broken down and
trucked into Turkey).
One reason why the US and UK and France want Assad dead is the tens of billions of dollars
they will have to pay the Syrian people for the genocidal war waged for a decade in order to
kill Assad and break Syria into pieces.
This confirms the UK has essentially kept the same military doctrine it adopted by necessity
in 1945, which is: attach itself to the USA, focus on intelligence, punch above your weight.
Ideologically, they rationalize that by attributing themselves the role of the cultured
province of the USA; "Greece to the USA's Rome".
The British were always fascinated with intelligence/paramilitary forces. In their vision,
it gives you (a nation) an air of sophistication, a civilizing aspect to the nation that
wages this kind of warfare.
After the Suez fiasco of 1956, the UK gave up direct interventions in the Middle East. It
now only intervenes there under the skirt of the USA. Of course, whenever they can, they do
that with their weapon of choice, which is intelligence. So, yeah, these documents don't
surprise me.
Question: I'll start with the hottest topic, Belarus. President of the Republic of Belarus
Alexander Lukashenko visited Bocharov Ruchei. Both sides have officially recognised that change
within the Union State is underway. This begs the question: What is this about? A common
currency, common army and common market? What will it be like?
Sergey Lavrov: It will be the way our countries decide. Work is underway. It relies on the
1999 Union Treaty. We understand that over 20 years have passed since then. That is why, a
couple of years ago, upon the decision of the two presidents, the governments of the Russian
Federation and the Republic of Belarus began to work on identifying the agreed-upon steps that
would make our integration fit current circumstances. Recently, at a meeting with Russian
journalists, President Lukashenko said that the situation had, of course, changed and we must
agree on ways to deepen integration from today's perspective.
The presidential election has taken place in Belarus. The situation there is tense, because
the opposition, backed by some of our Western colleagues, is trying to challenge the election
outcome, but I'm convinced that the situation will soon get back to normal, and the work to
promote integration processes will resume.
Everything that is written in the Union Treaty is now being analysed. Both sides have to
come to a common opinion about whether a particular provision of the Union Treaty is still
relevant, or needs to be revised. There are 31 roadmaps, and each one focuses on a specific
section of the Union Treaty. So, there's clearly a commitment to continue the reform, a fact
that was confirmed by the presidents during a recent telephone conversation. This is further
corroborated by the presidents' meeting in Sochi.
I would not want that country's neighbours, and our neighbours for that matter, including
Lithuania, for example, to try to impose their will on the Belarusian people and, in fact, to
manage the processes in which the opposition is unwittingly doing what's expected of it. I have
talked several times about Svetlana Tikhanovskaya's situation. Clearly, someone is putting
words in her mouth. She is now in the capital of Lithuania, which, like our Polish colleagues,
is strongly demanding a change of power in Belarus. You are aware that Lithuania declared Ms
Tikhanovskaya the leader of the Republic of Belarus, and Alexander Lukashenko was declared an
illegitimate president.
Ms Tikhanovskaya has made statements that give rise to many questions. She said she was
concerned that Russia and Belarus have close relations. The other day, she called on the
security and law-enforcement forces to side with the law. In her mind, this is a direct
invitation to breach the oath of office and, by and large, to commit high treason. This is
probably a criminal offense. So, those who provide her with a framework for her activities and
tell her what to say and what issues to raise should, of course, realise that they may be held
accountable for that.
Question: Commenting on the upcoming meeting of the presidents of Russia and Belarus in
Sochi, Tikhanovskaya said: "Whatever they agree on, these agreements will be illegitimate,
because the new state and the new leader will revise them." How can one work under such
circumstances?
Sergey Lavrov: She was also saying something like that when Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin
went to Belarus to meet with President Lukashenko and Prime Minister Golovchenko. She was
saying it then. Back then, the opposition was concerned about any more or less close ties
between our countries. This is despite the fact that early on during the crisis they claimed
that they in no way engaged in anti-Russia activities and wanted to be friends with the Russian
people. However, everyone could have seen the policy paper posted on Tikhanovskaya's website
during the few hours it was there. The opposition leaders removed it after realising they had
made a mistake sharing their goals and objectives with the public. These goals and objectives
included withdrawal from the CSTO, the EAEU and other integration associations that include
Russia, and drifting towards the EU and NATO, as well as the consistent banning of the Russian
language and the Belarusianisation of all aspects of life.
We are not against the Belarusian language, but when they take a cue from Ukraine, and when
the state language is used to ban a language spoken by the overwhelming majority of the
population, this already constitutes a hostile act and, in the case of Ukraine, an act that
violates its constitution. If a similar proposal is introduced into the Belarusian legal field,
it will violate the Constitution of Belarus, not to mention numerous conventions on the rights
of ethnic and language minorities, and much more.
I would like those who are rabidly turning the Belarusian opposition against Russia to
realise their share of responsibility, and the opposition themselves, including Svetlana
Tikhanovskaya and others – to find the courage to resist such rude and blatant
manipulation.
Question: If we are talking about manipulation, we certainly understand that it has many
faces and reflects on the international attitude towards Russia. Internationally, what are the
risks for us of supporting Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko? Don't you think 26 years
is enough? Maybe he has really served for too long?
Sergey Lavrov: The President of the Republic of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, did say it
might have been "too long." I believe he has proposed a very productive idea –
constitutional reform. He talked about this even before the election, and has reiterated the
proposal more than once since then. President of Russia Vladimir Putin supports this attitude.
As the Belarusian leader said, after constitutional reform, he will be ready to announce early
parliamentary and presidential elections. This proposal provides a framework where a national
dialogue will be entirely possible. But it is important that representatives of all groups of
Belarusian society to be involved in a constitutional reform process. This would ensure that
any reform is completely legitimate and understandable for all citizens. Now a few specific
proposals are needed concerning when, where and in what form this process can begin. I hope
that this will be done, because President Alexander Lukashenko has repeatedly reaffirmed
carrying out this initiative.
Question: Since we started talking about the international attitude towards Russia, let's go
over to our other partner – the United States. The elections in the US will take place
very soon. We are actively discussing this in Russia. When asked whether Russia was getting
ready for the elections in the US at the Paris forum last year, you replied: "Don't worry,
we'll resolve this problem." Now that the US elections are around the corner, I would like to
ask you whether you've resolved it.
Sergey Lavrov: Speaking seriously, of course we, like any other normal country that is
concerned about its interests and international security, are closely following the progress of
the election campaign in the US. There are many surprising things in it. Naturally, we see how
important the Russian issue is in this electoral process. The Democrats are doing all they can
to prove that Russia will exploit its hacker potential and play up to Donald Trump. We are
already being accused of promoting the idea that the Democrats will abuse the mail-in voting
option thereby prejudicing the unbiased nature of voting. I would like to note at this point
that mail-in voting has become a target of consistent attacks on behalf of President Trump
himself. Russia has nothing to do with this at all.
A week-long mail-in voting is an interesting subject in comparing election systems in
different countries. We have introduced three-day voting for governors and legislative assembly
deputies in some regions. You can see the strong criticism it is subjected to, inside Russia as
well. When the early voting in the US lasts for weeks, if not months, it is considered a model
of democracy. I don't see any criticism in this respect. In principle, we have long proposed
analysing election systems in the OSCE with a view to comparing best practices and reviewing
obviously obsolete arrangements. There have been instances in the US when, due to its
cumbersome and discriminatory election system, a nominee who received the majority of votes
could lose because in a national presidential election the voting is done through the Electoral
College process rather than directly by the people. There have been quite a few cases like
that. I once told former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in reply to her grievances
about our electoral system: "But look at your problem. Maybe you should try to correct this
discriminatory voting system?" She replied that it is discriminatory but they are used to it
and this is their problem, so I shouldn't bother.
When the United States accuses us of interference in some area of its public, political or
government life, we suggest discussing it to establish who is actually doing what. Since they
don't present any facts, we simply recite their Congressional acts. In 2014, they adopted an
act on supporting Ukraine, which directly instructed the Department of State to spend $20
million a year on support for Russian NGOs. We asked whether this didn't amount to
interference. We were told by the US National Security Council that in reality they support
democracy because we are wreaking chaos and pursuing authoritative and dictatorial trends
abroad when we interfere in domestic affairs whereas they bring democracy and prosperity. This
idea is deeply rooted in American mentality. The American elite has always considered its
country and nation exceptional and has not been shy to admit it.
I won't comment on the US election. This is US law and the US election system. Any comments
I make will be again interpreted as an attempt to interfere in their domestic affairs. I will
only say one thing that President Vladimir Putin has expressed many times, notably, that we
will respect any outcome of these elections and the will of the American people.
We realise that there will be no major changes in our relations either with the Democrats or
with the Republicans, as representatives of both parties loudly declare. However, there is hope
that common sense will prevail and no matter who becomes President, the new US Government and
administration will realise the need to cooperate with us in resolving very serious global
problems on which the international situation depends.
Question: You mentioned an example where voters can choose one president and the Electoral
College process, another. I even have that cover of Time magazine with Hillary Clinton and
congratulations, released during the election. It is a fairly well-known story, when they ran
this edition and then had to cancel it.
Sergey Lavrov: Even the President of France sent a telegramme, but then they immediately
recalled it.
And these people are now claiming that Alexander Lukashenko is an illegitimate
president.
Question: You mentioned NGOs. These people believe that NGOs in the Russian Federation
support democratic institutions, although it is no secret to anyone who has at least a basic
understanding of foreign and domestic policy that those NGOs act exclusively as institutions
that destabilise the situation in the country.
Sergey Lavrov: Not all of them.
Question: Can you tell us more about this?
Sergey Lavrov: We have adopted a series of laws – on public associations, on
non-profit organisations, on measures to protect people from human rights violations. There is
a set of laws that regulate the activities of non-government organisations on our territory,
both Russian and foreign ones.
Concepts have been introduced like "foreign agent," a practice we borrowed from "the world's
most successful democracy" – the United States. They argue that we borrowed a practice
from 1938 when the United States introduced the foreign agent concept to prevent Nazi ideology
from infiltrating from Germany. But whatever the reason they had to create the concept –
"foreign agent" – the Americans are still effectively using it, including in relation to
our organisations and citizens, to Chinese citizens, to the media.
In our law, foreign agent status, whatever they say about it, does not prevent an
organisation from operating on the territory of the Russian Federation. It just needs to
disclose its funding sources and be transparent about the resources it receives. And even that,
only if it is engaged in political activities. Initially, we introduced a requirement for these
organisations that receive funding from abroad and are involved in political projects to
initiate the disclosure process. But most of them didn't want to comply with the law, so it was
modified. Now this is done by the Russian Ministry of Justice.
Question: Do you think that NGOs are still soft power?
Sergey Lavrov: Of course. In Russia we have about 220,000 NGOs, out of which 180 have the
status of a foreign agent. It's a drop in the ocean. These are probably the organisations,
funded from abroad, that are more active than others in promoting in our public space ideas
that far from always correspond to Russian legislation.
There is also the notion of undesirable organisations. They are banned from working in the
Russian Federation. But there are only about 30 of them, no more.
Question: Speaking about our soft power, what is our concept? What do we offer the world?
What do you think the world should love us for? What is Russia's soft power policy all
about?
Sergey Lavrov: We want everything that has been created by nations and civilisations to be
respected. We believe nobody should impose any orders on anyone, so that nothing like what has
now happened in Hollywood takes place on a global scale. We think nobody should encroach on the
right of each nation to have its historical traditions and moral roots. And we see attempts to
encroach upon them.
If soft power is supposed to promote one's own culture, language and traditions, in exchange
for knowledge about the life of other nations and civilisations, then this is the approach that
the Russian Federation supports in every way.
The Americans define the term "soft power" as an attempt to influence the hearts and minds
of others politically. Their goal is not to promote their culture and language, but to change
the mood of the political class with a view to subsequent regime change. They are doing this on
a daily basis and don't even conceal it. They say everywhere that their mission is to bring
peace and democracy to all other countries.
Question: Almost any TV series out there shows the US president sitting in the Oval Office
saying he's the leader of the free world.
Sergey Lavrov: Not just TV series. Barack Obama has repeatedly stated that America is an
exceptional nation and should be seen as an example by the rest of the world. My colleague Mike
Pompeo recently said in the Czech Republic that they shouldn't let the Russians into the
nuclear power industry and should take the Russians off the list of companies that bid for
these projects. It was about the same in Hungary. He then went to Africa and was quite vocal
when he told the African countries not to do business with the Russians or the Chinese, because
they are trading with the African countries for selfish reasons, whereas the US is establishing
economic cooperation with them so they can prosper. This is a quote. It is articulated in a
very straightforward manner, much the same way they run their propaganda on television in an
unsophisticated broken language that the man in the street can relate to. So, brainwashing is
what America's soft power is known for.
Question: Not a single former Soviet republic has so far benefited from American soft
power.
Sergey Lavrov: Not only former Soviet republics. Take a look at any other region where the
Americans have effected a regime change.
Question: Libya, Syria. We stood for Syria.
Sergey Lavrov: Iraq, Libya. They tried in Syria, but failed. I hope things will be different
there. There's not a single country where the Americans changed the regime and declared victory
for democracy, like George W. Bush did on the deck of an aircraft carrier in Iraq in May 2003,
which is prosperous now. He said democracy had won in Iraq. It would be interesting to know
what the former US President thinks about the situation in Iraq today. But no one will,
probably, go back to this, because the days when presidents honestly admitted their mistakes
are gone.
Question: Here I am listening to you and wondering how many people care about this? Why is
it that no one understands this? Is this politics that is too far away from ordinary people who
are nevertheless behind it? Take Georgia or Ukraine. People are worse off now than before, and
despite this, this policy continues.
Will the Minsk agreements ever be implemented? Will the situation in southeastern Ukraine
ever be settled?
Returning to what we talked about. How independent is Ukraine in its foreign policy?
Sergey Lavrov: I don't think that under the current Ukrainian government, just like under
the previous president, we will see any progress in the implementation of the Minsk agreements,
if only because President Zelensky himself is saying so publicly, as does Deputy Prime Minister
Reznikov who is in charge of the Ukrainian settlement in the Contact Group. Foreign Minister of
Ukraine Kuleba is also saying this. They say there's a need for the Minsk agreements and they
cannot be broken, because these agreements (and accusing Russia of non-compliance) are the
foundation of the EU and the US policy in seeking to maintain the sanctions on Russia.
Nevertheless, such a distorted interpretation of the essence of the Minsk agreements, or rather
an attempt to blame everything on Russia, although Russia is never mentioned there, has stuck
in the minds of our European colleagues, including France and Germany, who, being co-sponsors
of the Minsk agreements along with us, the Ukrainians and Donbass, cannot but realise that the
Ukrainians are simply distorting their responsibilities, trying to distance themselves from
them and impose a different interpretation of the Minsk agreements. But even in this scenario,
the above individuals and former Ukrainian President Kravchuk, who now heads the Ukrainian
delegation to the Contact Group as part of the Minsk process, claim that the Minsk agreements
in their present form are impracticable and must be revised, turned upside down. Also, Donbass
must submit to the Ukrainian government and army before even thinking about conducting reforms
in this part of Ukraine.
This fully contradicts the sequence of events outlined in the Minsk agreements whereby
restoring Ukrainian armed forces' control on the border with Russia is possible only after an
amnesty, agreeing on the special status of these territories, making this status part of the
Ukrainian Constitution and holding elections there. Now they propose giving back the part of
Donbass that "rebelled" against the anti-constitutional coup to those who declared these people
terrorists and launched an "anti-terrorist operation" against them, which they later renamed a
Joint Forces Operation (but this does not change the idea behind it), and whom they still
consider terrorists. Although everyone remembers perfectly well that in 2014 no one from
Donbass or other parts of Ukraine that rejected the anti-constitutional coup attacked the
putschists and the areas that immediately fell under the control of the politicians behind the
coup. On the contrary, Alexander Turchinov, Arseniy Yatsenyuk and others like them attacked
these areas. The guilt of the people living there was solely in them saying, "You committed a
crime against the state, we do not want to follow your rules, let us figure out our own future
and see what you will do next." There's not a single example that would corroborate the fact
that they engaged in terrorism. It was the Ukrainian state that engaged in terrorism on their
territory, in particular, when they killed [Head of the Donetsk People's Republic] Alexander
Zakharchenko and a number of field commanders in Donbass. So, I am not optimistic about
this.
Question: So, we are looking at a dead end?
Sergey Lavrov: You know, we still have an undeniable argument which is the text of the Minsk
Agreements approved by the UN Security Council.
Question: But they tried to revise it?
Sergey Lavrov: No, they are just making statements to that effect. When they gather for a
Contact Group meeting in Minsk, they do their best to look constructive. The most recent
meeting ran into the Ukrainian delegation's attempts to pretend that nothing had happened. They
recently passed a law on local elections which will be held in a couple of months. It says that
elections in what are now called the Donetsk and Lugansk people's republics will be held only
after the Ukrainian army takes control of the entire border and those who "committed criminal
offenses" are arrested and brought to justice even though the Minsk agreements provide for
amnesty without exemptions.
Question: When I'm asked about Crimea I recall the referendum. I was there at a closed
meeting in Davos that was attended by fairly well respected analysts from the US. They claimed
with absolute confidence that Crimea was being occupied. I reminded them about the referendum.
I was under the impression that these people either didn't want to see or didn't know how
people lived there, that they have made their choice. Returning to the previous question, I
think that nobody is interested in the opinion of the people.
Sergey Lavrov: No, honest politicians still exist. Many politicians, including European
ones, were in Crimea during the referendum. They were there not under the umbrella of some
international organisation but on their own because the OSCE and other international agencies
were controlled by our Western colleagues. Even if we had addressed them, the procedure for
coordinating the monitoring would have never ended.
Question: Just as in Belarus. As I see it, they were also invited but nobody came.
Sergey Lavrov: The OSCE refused to send representatives there. Now that the OSCE is offering
its services as a mediator, I completely understand Mr Lukashenko who says the OSCE lost its
chance. It could have sent observers and gained a first-hand impression of what was happening
there, and how the election was held. They arrogantly disregarded the invitation. We know that
the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) is practically wholly
controlled by NATO. We have repeatedly proposed that our nominees work there but they have not
been approved. This contradicts the principles of the OSCE. We will continue to seek a fairer
approach to the admission of members to the organisation, but I don't have much hope for this.
Former OSCE Secretary General Thomas Greminger made an effort with this for the past three
years but not everything depended on him – there is a large bloc of EU and NATO countries
that enjoy a mathematical majority and try to dictate their own rules. But this is a separate
issue.
Returning to Crimea, I have read a lot about this; let me give you two examples. One
concerns my relations with former US Secretary of State John Kerry. In April 2014, we met in
Geneva: me, John Kerry, EU High Representative Catherine Ashton and then Acting Foreign
Minister of Ukraine Andrey Deshchitsa. We compiled a one page document that was approved
unanimously. It read that we, the representatives of Russia, the US and the EU welcomed the
commitments of the Ukrainian authorities to carry out decentralisation of the country with the
participation of all the regions of Ukraine. This took place after the Crimean referendum.
Later, the Americans, the EU and of course Ukraine "forgot" about this document. John Kerry
told me at this meeting that everyone understood that Crimea was Russian, that the people
wanted to return, but that we held the referendum so quickly that it didn't fit into the
accepted standards of such events. He asked me to talk to President Vladimir Putin, organise
one more referendum, announce it in advance and invite international observers. He said he
would support their visit there, that the result would be the same but that we would be keeping
up appearances. I asked him why put on such shows if they understand that this was the
expression of the will of the people.
The second example concerns the recent statements by the EU and the European Parliament to
the effect that "the occupation" of Crimea is a crude violation of the world arrangement
established after the victory in World War II. But if this criterion is used to determine where
Crimea belongs, when the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic joined the UN after WWII in 1945,
Crimea did not belong to it. Crimea was part of the USSR. Later, Nikita Khrushchev took an
illegal action, which contradicted Soviet law, and this led to them having it. But we all
understood that this was a domestic political game as regards a Soviet republic that was the
home to Khrushchev and many of his associates.
Question: You have been Foreign Minister for 16 years now. This century's major foreign
policy challenges fell on your term in office. We faced sanctions, and we adapted to them and
coped with them. Germany said it obtained Alexey Navalny's test results. France and Sweden have
confirmed the presence of Novichok in them. Reportedly, we are now in for more sanctions. Do
you think the Navalny case can trigger new sanctions against Russia?
Sergey Lavrov: I agree with our political analysts who are convinced that if it were not for
Navalny, they would have come up with something else in order to impose more sanctions.
With regard to this situation, I think our Western partners have simply gone beyond decency
and reason. In essence, they are now demanding that we "confess." They are asking us: Don't you
believe what the German specialists from the Bundeswehr are saying? How is that possible? Their
findings have been confirmed by the French and the Swedes. You don't believe them, either?
It's a puzzling situation given that our Prosecutor General's Office filed an inquiry about
legal assistance on August 27 and hasn't received an answer yet. Nobody knows where the inquiry
has been for more than a week now. We were told it was at the German Foreign Ministry. The
German Foreign Ministry did not forward the request to the Ministry of Justice, which was our
Prosecutor General Office's ultimate addressee. Then, they said that it had been transferred to
the Berlin Prosecutor's Office, but they would not tell us anything without the consent of the
family. They are urging us to launch a criminal investigation.
We have our own laws, and we cannot take someone's word for it to open a criminal case.
Certain procedures must be followed. A pre-investigation probe initiated immediately after this
incident to consider the circumstances of the case is part of this procedure.
Some of our Western colleagues wrote that, as the German doctors discovered, it was "a sheer
miracle" that Mr Navalny survived. Allegedly, it was the notorious Novichok, but he survived
thanks to "lucky circumstances." What kind of lucky circumstances are we talking about? First,
the pilot immediately landed the plane; second, an ambulance was already waiting on the
airfield; and third, the doctors immediately started to provide help. This absolutely
impeccable behaviour of the pilots, doctors and ambulance crew is presented as "lucky
circumstances." That is, they even deny the possibility that we are acting as we should. This
sits deep in the minds of those who make up such stories.
Returning to the pre-investigation probe, everyone is fixated on a criminal case. If we had
opened a criminal case right away (we do not have legal grounds to do so yet, and that is why
the Prosecutor General's Office requested legal assistance from Germany on August 27), what
would have been done when it happened? They would have interviewed the pilot, the passengers
and the doctors. They would have found out what the doctors discovered when Navalny was taken
to the Omsk hospital, and what medications were used. They would have interviewed the people
who communicated with him. All of that was done. They interviewed the five individuals who
accompanied him and participated in the events preceding Navalny boarding the plane; they
interviewed the passengers who were waiting for a flight to Moscow in Tomsk and sat at the same
bar; they found out what they ordered and what he drank. The sixth person, a woman who
accompanied him, has fled, as you know. They say she was the one who gave the bottle to the
German lab. All this has been done. Even if all of that was referred to as a "criminal case,"
we couldn't have done more.
Our Western partners are looking down on us as if we have no right to question what they are
saying or their professionalism. If this is the case, it means that they dare to question the
professionalism of our doctors and investigators. Unfortunately, this position is reminiscent
of other times. Arrogance and a sense of infallibility have already been observed in Europe,
and that led to very regrettable consequences.
Question: How would you describe this policy of confrontation? When did it start (I mean
during your term of office)? It's simply so stable at the moment that there seems no chance
that something might change in the future.
Sergey Lavrov: President of Russia Vladimir Putin has repeatedly spoken on this topic. I
think that the onset of this policy, this era of constant pressure on Russia began with the end
of a period that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union, a time when the West believed it
had Russia there in its pocket – it ended, full stop. Unfortunately, the West does not
seem to be able to wrap its head around this, to accept that there is no alternative to
Russia's independent actions, both domestically and on the international arena. This is why,
unfortunately, this agony continues by inertia.
Having bad ties with any country have never given us any pleasure. We do not like making
such statements in which we sharply criticise the position of the West. We always try to find
compromises, but there are situations where it is hard not to come face to face with one
another directly or to avoid frank assessments of what our Western friends are up to.
I have read what our respected political scientists write who are well known in the West.
And I can say this idea is starting to surface ever stronger and more often – it is time
we stop measuring our actions with the yardsticks that the West offers us and to stop trying to
please the West at all costs. These are very serious people and they are making a serious
point. The fact that the West is prodding us to this way of thinking, willingly or unwillingly,
is obvious to me. Most likely, this is being done involuntarily. But it is a big mistake to
think that Russia will play by Western rules in any case – as big a mistake as like
approaching China with the same yardstick.
Question: Then I really have to ask you. We are going through digitalisation. I think when
you started your diplomatic career, you could not even have imagined that some post on Twitter
could affect the political situation in a country. Yet – I can see your smile – we
are living in a completely different world. Film stars can become presidents; Twitter,
Instagram, or Facebook can become drivers of political campaigns – that happened more
than once – and those campaigns can be successful. We are going through digitalisation,
and because of this, many unexpected people appear in international politics – unexpected
for you, at least. How do you think Russia's foreign policy will change in this context? Are we
ready for social media to be impacting our internal affairs? Is the Chinese scenario possible
in Russia, with most Western social media blocked to avoid their influence on the internal
affairs in that country?
Sergey Lavrov: Social media are already exerting great influence on our affairs. This is the
reality in the entire post-Soviet space and developing countries. The West, primarily the
United States, is vigorously using social media to promote their preferred agenda in just about
any state. This necessitates a new approach to ensuring the national security. We have been
doing this for a long time already.
As for regulating social media, everyone does it. You know that the digital giants in the
United States have been repeatedly caught introducing censorship, primarily against us, China
or other countries they dislike, shutting off information that comes from these places.
The internet is regulated by companies based in the United States, everyone knows that. In
fact, this situation has long made the overwhelming majority of countries want to do something
about it, considering the global nature of the internet and social media, to make sure that the
management processes are approved at a global level, become transparent and understandable. The
International Telecommunication Union, a specialised UN agency, has been out there for years.
Russia and a group of other co-sponsoring countries are promoting the need to regulate the
internet in such a way that everyone understands how it works and what principles govern it, in
this International Union. Now we can see how Mark Zuckerberg and other heads of large IT
companies are invited to the Congress and lectured there and asked to explain what they are
going to do. We can see this. But a situation where it will be understandable for everyone else
and, most importantly, where everyone is happy with it, still seems far away.
For many years, we have been promoting at the UN General Assembly an initiative to agree on
the rules of responsible behaviour of states in the sphere of international information
security. This initiative has already led to set up several working groups, which have
completed their mandate with reports. The last such report was reviewed last year and another
resolution was adopted. This time, it was not a narrow group of government experts, but a group
that includes all UN member states. It was planning to meet, but things slowed down due to the
coronavirus. The rules for responsible conduct in cyberspace are pending review by this group.
These rules were approved by the SCO, meaning they already reflect a fairly large part of the
world's population.
Our other initiative is not about the use of cyberspace for undermining someone's security;
it is about fighting crimes (pedophilia, pornography, theft) in cyberspace. This topic is being
considered by another UNGA committee. We are preparing a draft convention that will oblige all
states to suppress criminal activities in cyberspace.
Question: Do you think that the Foreign Ministry is active on this front? Would you like to
be more proactive in the digital dialogue? After all, we are still bound by ethics, and have
yet to understand whether we can cross the line or not. Elon Musk feels free to make any
statements no matter how ironic and makes headlines around the world, even though anything he
says has a direct bearing on his market cap. This is a shift in the ethics of behaviour. Do you
think that this is normal? Is this how it should be? Or maybe people still need to behave
professionally?
Sergey Lavrov: A diplomat can always use irony and a healthy dose of cynicism. In this
sense, there is no contradiction here. However, this does not mean that while making ironic
remarks on the surrounding developments or comments every once in a while (witty or not so
witty), you do not have to work on resolving legal matters related to internet governance. This
is what we are doing.
The Foreign Ministry has been at the source of these processes. We have been closely
coordinating our efforts on this front with the Security Council Office, and the Ministry of
Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media and other organisations. Russian delegations
taking part in talks include representatives from various agencies. Apart from multilateral
platforms such as the International Telecommunication Union, the UN General Assembly and the
OSCE, we are working on this subject in bilateral relations with our key partners.
We are most interested in working with our Western partners, since we have an understanding
on these issues with countries that share similar views. The Americans and Europeans evade
these talks under various pretexts. There seemed to be an opening in 2012 and 2013, but after
the government coup in Ukraine, they used it as a pretext to freeze this process. Today, there
are some signs that the United States and France are beginning to revive these contacts, but
our partners have been insufficiently active. What we want is professional dialogue so that
they can raise all their concerns and accusations and back them with specific facts. We stand
ready to answer all the concerns our partners may have, and will not fail to voice the concerns
we have. We have many of them.
During the recent visit by German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas to Russia, I handed him a list
containing dozens of incidents we have identified: attacks against our resources, with 70
percent of them targeting state resources of the Russian Federation, and originating on German
territory. He promised to provide an answer, but more than a month after our meeting we have
not seen it so far.
Question: Let me ask you about another important initiative by the Foreign Ministry. You
decided to amend regulations enabling people to be repatriated from abroad for free, and you
proposed subjecting the repatriation guarantee to the reimbursement of its cost to the budget.
Could you tell us, please, is this so expensive for the state to foot this bill?
Sergey Lavrov: Of course, these a substantial expenses. The resolution that provided for
offering free assistance was adopted back in 2010, and was intended for citizens who find
themselves in situations when their life is at risk. Imagine a Russian ambassador. Most of the
people ask for help because they have lost money, their passport and so on. There are very few
cases when an ambassador can actually say that a person is in a life-threatening situation and
his or her life is in danger. How can an ambassador take a decision of this kind? As long as I
remember, these cases can be counted on the fingers of my two hands since 2010, when an
ambassador had to take responsibility and there were grounds for offering this assistance. We
wanted to ensure that people can get help not only when facing an imminent danger (a dozen
cases in ten years do not cost all that much). There were many more cases when our nationals
found themselves in a difficult situation after losing money or passports. We decided to follow
the practices used abroad. Specifically, this means that we provide fee-based assistance. In
most cases, people travelling abroad can afford to reimburse the cost of a return ticket.
This practice is designed to prevent fraud, which remains an issue. We had cases when people
bought one-way tickets knowing that they will have to be repatriated.
Question: And with no return ticket, they go to the embassy?
Sergey Lavrov: Yes, after that they come to the embassy. For this reason, I believe that the
system we developed is much more convenient and comprehensive for dealing with the situations
Russians get into when travelling abroad, and when we have to step in to help them through our
foreign missions.
Question: Mr Lavrov, thank you for your time. As a Georgian, I really have to ask this.
Isn't it time to simplify the visa regime with Georgia? A second generation of Georgians has
now grown up that has never seen Russia. What do you think?
Sergey Lavrov: Georgians can travel to Russia – they just need to apply for a visa.
The list of grounds for obtaining a visa has been expanded. There are practically no
restrictions on visiting Russia, after obtaining a visa in the Interests Section for the
Russian Federation in Tbilisi or another Russian overseas agency.
As for visa-free travel, as you know, we were ready for this a year ago. We were actually a
few steps away from being ready to announce it when that incident happened with the Russian
Federal Assembly delegation to the International Interparliamentary Assembly on Orthodoxy,
where they were invited in the first place, seated in their chairs, and then violence was
almost used against them.
I am confident that our relations with Georgia will recover and improve. We can see new
Georgian politicians who are interested in this. For now, there are just small parties in the
ruling elites. But I believe our traditional historical closeness, and the mutual affinity
between our peoples will ultimately triumph. Provocateurs who are trying to prevent Georgia
from resuming normal relations with Russia will be put to shame.
They are trying to use Georgia the same way as Ukraine. In Ukraine, the IMF plays a huge
role. And the IMF recently decided that each tranche allocated to Ukraine would be
short-term.
Question: Microcredits.
Sergey Lavrov: Microcredits and a short leash that can always be pulled a little.
They are trying to use Georgia the same way. We have no interest in seeing this situation
continue. We did not start it and have never acted against the Georgian people. Everyone
remembers the 2008 events, how American instructors arrived there and trained the Georgian
army. The Americans were well aware of Mikheil Saakashvili's lack of restraint. He trampled on
all agreements and issued a criminal order.
We are talking about taking their word for it. There were many cases when we took their word
for it, but then it all boiled down to zilch. In 2003, Colin Powell, a test tube – that
was an academic version. An attack on Iraq followed. Many years later, Tony Blair admitted that
there had been no nuclear weapons in Iraq. There were many such stories. In 1999, the
aggression against Yugoslavia was triggered by the OSCE representative in the Balkans, US
diplomat William Walker, who visited the village of Racak, where they found thirty corpses, and
declared it genocide of the Albanian population. A special investigation by the International
Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia found they were military dressed in civilian clothes. But Mr
Walker loudly declared it was genocide. Washington immediately seized on the idea, and so did
London and other capitals. NATO launched an aggression against Yugoslavia.
After the end of the five-day military operation to enforce peace, the European Union
ordered a special report from a group of invited experts, including Swiss diplomat Heidi
Tagliavini. She was later involved in the Minsk process, and then she was asked to lead a group
of experts who investigated the outbreak of the military conflict in August 2008. The
conclusion was unambiguous. All this happened on the orders of Mikheil Saakashvili, and as for
his excuses that someone had provoked him, or someone had been waiting for him on the other
side of the tunnel, this was just raving.
Georgians are a wise nation. They love life, perhaps the same way and the same facets that
the peoples in the Russian Federation do. We will overcome the current abnormal situation and
restore normal relations between our states and people.
In addition, if you follow the Minister, follow up on this interview with Sputnik
Exclusive: Sergei Lavrov Talks About West's Historical Revisionism, US Election and Navalny
Case
That's according to Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov who pointed out that US broadcaster
RFE/RL, which is openly state-run, and British outlet BBC are also financed from public
funds.
Two of Russia's broadcasters are facing open discrimination across their countries of
accreditation, Lavrov told Sputnik.
RT has been forced to register with the US Justice Department under the 1938 Foreign Agents
Registration Act (FARA). Its correspondents have also been barred from attending events hosted
by the French president; likewise, RT and Sputnik have faced enormous difficulties while
reporting from Baltic nations.
"We are being presented with the argument that there is state funding [for RT and
Sputnik]," Lavrov commented. Nevertheless, there are is media in the West – the BBC
and Radio Liberty being prime examples – that also receive government donations and
"are considered beacons of democracy."
They also rely on state funding, but for some reason no restrictive measures are being
taken against them, including through the internet, where censorship is now openly
introduced.
This comes as audiences of both broadcasters are growing and their popularity is on the
rise. "I saw the statistics; I can only assume that this is another sign of the fear of
competition on the side of those who dominated the global information market until
recently," the foreign minister said.
The pressure Western nations pile on Russian media is one reason to wonder if they actually
practice what they preach. Lavrov recalled that the West demanded Russia "open up to the
world" during the period of perestroika – including by allowing full access "to
any kind of information, whether it was based on domestic sources or came from abroad."
Thirty years later, the West is "already even embarrassed" to stick to the same
principles when Russia asks "that access to information be respected, including in France
with respect to Sputnik and RT," Lavrov stated. France has its own state-funded outlets,
such as AFP, Radio France International and France 24.
Double standards, hypocrisy – unfortunately, these are the words to describe
their position.
Russia will take these matters to the upcoming ministerial summit of the Organization for
Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) this December. "These questions will not
disappear anywhere from the agenda, our Western colleagues will have a lot to answer,"
Lavrov vowed.
Speaking about the pressure put on Russia in general – and often initiated by the
media and not among political circles – Lavrov described the current times as "the age
of social media, disinformation and fake news." It is fairly easy "to throw any
invention into the media domain" and get away with it, he said, adding, "and then no one
will read the rebuttal."
The USA political establishment is seeking confirmation of its insanity using lies, more lies
then more lies. Democracy is dead in the USA and is replaced with perjury, violence,
nationwide corruption and full blown insanity. All politicians need the rope.
WakeUpGoyim 4 hours ago 17 Sep, 2020 05:03 PM
During Obamas 2nd run for president (see YouTube) he openly said Russia was not hostile &
Mitt Romney said Russia was an enemy - Romney got hammed for saying this. Today if Trump says
Russia is Americas friend, the media then say he is an agent. People have short memories, or
so the media thinks so, actually most people do, most cant even remember why countries went
on lock-down.
NoJustice WakeUpGoyim 4 hours ago 17 Sep, 2020 05:17 PM
No. He said Russia wasn't the number one threat.
apothqowejh 4 hours ago 17 Sep, 2020 04:31 PM
The CIA was founded by the same fascists who tried to enlist Smedley Butler to overthrow FDR.
During the post-war period, they smuggled their ideological brethren out of Germany with
operation Paperclip. Their founding fathers included Prescott Bush, a Nazi, whose son and
grandson went on to become US Presidents. They have never stopped hating Russia, nor have
they ever stopped lying to the American Public.
FFII 2 hours ago 17 Sep, 2020 06:45 PM
OMG.... Biden is a perfect candidate for Russia. Old, dumb and predictable. With a cart load
of corruption evidence from Ukraine sources, regarding his dealing with Poroshenko personaly
and his son with Ukrainian gas company, earning millions
___RICHLAND__ 2 hours ago 17 Sep, 2020 07:00 PM
As an Australian i've seen Biden's handywork in Ukraine, trust me, the guy's an Expert in
Over-throwing an Elected Government"
frankfalseflag 49 minutes ago 17 Sep, 2020 08:52 PM
Did you know that the FBI takes its orders from the CIA?
mumbojumbo272 2 hours ago 17 Sep, 2020 07:41 PM
Oh, Wray forced out of comfort zone following is ''gang'' being sub-poena by senate to divert
attention on Russia. Interesting !
Those clever and evil Russians are at the top of their game
again. For less then 20 millions dollars they dispose Hillary in 2016
and now intend to dispose Creepy Joe. Wait, is that this a valuable service to the
nation?
The collapse of neoliberalism forces the US neoliberal elite to deploy desperate measures to preserve the unity of the nation
and the US-controlled world neoliberal empire. Neo-McCarthyism in one of those dirty tricks. The pioneer in this dirty game was
Hillary, but now it is shared by both parties.
According to FBI director Christopher Wray you need to be Russian to
understand that Biden as a Presidential Candidate is DOA. And that decision of DNC to prop him
instead of Sanders or Warren was pretty idiotic, and was based on the power the neoliberal wing
(aka Clinton mafia) still holds within the Party. You have to be pretty delusional to believe
Biden has all his marbles.
And by "interference" he means reporting in the news and expressing
own opinion. Like in 2016 looks like FBI again crossed the line and had become the third
political party, which intends to be the kingmaker of the Presidential elections. So here's a
suggestion: call in UN observers to the elections.
Russian media influence is actually very easy to prove -- just ask yourself, do you trust
RT more than CNN? But if a person laugh every time Joe Biden talks and it has nothing to do
with Russia.
And if this nonsense again comes from the FBI Director, the legitimate question is "What
next?" The claim that Putin ordered the assassination of Abraham Lincoln?
Look at all those hapless intelligence agencies, helplessly watching Russian hackers
stealing election. But, wait a minute, we are talking about arguably the largest, best
equipped, best financed and most devious intelligence agencies on the Earth. So it is natural
to assume that people who want to steal the election are those who cry most loudly about the
Russian influence.
Actually If Russia really wanted to "sink" Biden all that it would need to do is noisily
support him openly. The rabid Russophobia would do the rest: Unfortunately most of of Americans
are spoon fed neoliberal propaganda and don't care much about if it's real or not. That reminds
me the USSR where the life of people was difficult enough not to pay attention to Communist
Party slogans and propaganda.
Notable quotes:
"... According to the FBI director, the Russians' primary goal seems to be not only to " sow divisiveness and discord ," but to trash Democratic nominee Joe Biden – along with " what the Russians see as a kind of anti-Russian establishment " – through social media, " use of proxies ," state-run media, and " online journals ." ..."
"... Former Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats even suggested Congress create another election integrity body to supervise the vote in November, apparently concerned the existing authorities – all 54 of them, one for each state plus four federal entities tasked with keeping meddlers, foreign and domestic, shut out – weren't enough. ..."
"... "Crowd pleasing claims" is spot on the money. Sounds like the FBI has been tasked to lay some groundwork for the "after party". He knows what he is doing. ..."
"... Nothing new from the man who was Comey's assistant AG when Comey was Deputy Attorney General. ..."
Russia is reprising its still-unproven 2016 election meddling efforts, this time targeting
Democratic challenger Joe Biden, according to FBI Director Christopher Wray, who gave no
evidence to support his crowd-pleasing claims.
Wray told the House of Representatives that Russia is taking a " very active " role
in the 2020 US election, claiming Moscow " continues to try to influence our elections,
primarily through what we call malign foreign influence " during a Thursday hearing on
national security threats.
According to the FBI director, the Russians' primary goal seems to be not only to " sow
divisiveness and discord ," but to trash Democratic nominee Joe Biden – along with
" what the Russians see as a kind of anti-Russian establishment " – through
social media, " use of proxies ," state-run media, and " online journals ."
Wray contrasted 2020's alleged meddling with that of 2016, which he claimed involved "
an effort to target election infrastructure ," presenting no evidence to back up
either current or past claims – other than that the FBI or other intelligence agencies
had made the same claims in the past. There is no actual evidence that Russia interfered with
election infrastructure in 2016.
While four years of similarly flavored conspiracy theories blaming Russia for Donald
Trump's 2016 win have come up empty-handed, the paucity of real-world evidence for 'Russian
meddling' has not stopped Wray and other US intel officials from hyping it up as a major
threat to the integrity of the democratic process.
The National Counterintelligence and Security Center suggested last month that, while
Russia would interfere in the election in favor of Trump, China and Iran would meddle on
behalf of Biden – implying Americans couldn't vote at all without doing the bidding of
a foreign nation.
Former Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats even suggested Congress create another
election integrity body to supervise the vote in November, apparently concerned the existing
authorities – all 54 of them, one for each state plus four federal entities tasked with
keeping meddlers, foreign and domestic, shut out – weren't enough.
TWOhand 5 hours ago 17 Sep, 2020 03:49 PM
"Crowd pleasing claims" is spot on the money. Sounds like the FBI has been tasked to lay
some groundwork for the "after party". He knows what he is doing.
danko79 4 hours ago 17 Sep, 2020 04:22 PM
Can't feel anything but sympathy for those that are so easily influenced. If/when Biden
loses, perhaps blaming his lack of ability to string a few words together might be more
relevant than any kind of imaginary foreign interference.
Terry Ross 4 hours ago 17 Sep, 2020 04:43 PM
Nothing new from the man who was Comey's assistant AG when Comey was Deputy Attorney General. Wray made it clear
when sworn in for position of FBI head that he believed Russia had interfered to help Trump win 2016 election. The only
question that remains is why Trump picked him for the job.
"... The CIA was founded by the same fascists who tried to enlist Smedley Butler to overthrow FDR. During the post-war period, they smuggled their ideological brethren out of Germany with operation Paperclip. Their founding fathers included Prescott Bush, a Nazi, whose son and grandson went on to become US Presidents. ..."
The CIA was founded by the same fascists who tried to enlist Smedley Butler to overthrow FDR.
During the post-war period, they smuggled their ideological brethren out of Germany with
operation Paperclip. Their founding fathers included Prescott Bush, a Nazi, whose son and
grandson went on to become US Presidents.
They have never stopped hating Russia, nor have
they ever stopped lying to the American Public.
"... But CNN has and will continue to repeat the allegations as fact, so it's mission accomplished for the deep state. As another poster said on this board about manufacturing consent: "It is important to discuss the story, not its credibility, the more the discussion, the more the reaction and the more it reinforces the narrative." ..."
"... In the 1920s (or 30s), far-rightist Karl Popper coined the concept of systematic manipulation of "public opinion". This would become a hallmark of Western Civilization in the post-war. The public opinion theory states that the masses don't have an opinion for themselves or, if they have, it is sculpting/flexible. The dominant classes can, therefore, guide the masses like a shepherd, to its will. ..."
"... It is an insult to the noble profession, to call what the mainstream media in the west, especially in the USA do, journalism. In my opinion what they do is propaganda and stenography on behalf of those who are in power. I am not sure who coined the term but "presstitution" is not a bad attempt at describing their profession. ..."
"... While the western corporate media lie on a continuous basis - and that has the predictable effect - what is more insidious is not these acts of commissions ( meaning lies), but their acts of omission (meaning excluding or deemphasizing important contextual information) leading people to make the wrong conclusions. NPR in the US is an excellent example of such presstitution. ..."
"... Why are the US promoting conflict with China, with Russia? Why are they beating Europe, maybe with the intention to destroy it? Why is a new civil war in the US promoted? ..."
"... Normal (geopolitically interested) people would think: against China it is better to come together and unite, at least US & Europe, but eventually Russia included. For instance take the population of these three together: far less than China's. ..."
"... Journalism in the US is so superficial, it is a drop above the uppermost wavy comb. Not worth to pay attention to it. ..."
"... Other than few independent blog site such as this, every media outlet is in the service of its home government or foreign sponsors. Only born-suckers take the corporate media at face value. Modern journalism is nothing but an aggressive propaganda racket. ..."
"... Using lies (bearing false witness) to cause murder and theft are not exactly a new phenomenon. These 'groups of individuals', which are employing these fabricated deceptions, are doing nothing less than trying to commit murder and theft. ..."
"... Everything that was accomplished (albeit incompletely or moderately) through the New Deal and then the abortive Great Society absolutely spooked the oligarchy. Lifting much of the working class out of absolute wage slavery to the point where the next rung on Maslow's ladder was at least visible. And when it all culminated in the late 60's and early 70's with the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, the Surface Mining act, and various labor protection measures, the wealthy owner class decided the proles had gained too much power to influence "their" captive government. ..."
"... What differs, however, is the presentation. Trump is criticized (not praised) for being allegedly soft on Russia and Biden criticized for being allegedly soft on China. This clever trick ensures that just about everybody is onboard the bash-China-and-Russia train. ..."
"... In a violently polarized society, with red-blue antagonism reaching ridiculous heights, people tend to act exclusively in contradiction to the cult figure they hate so much. ..."
"... I've been saying for years here to watch the documentary - Century of the Self. If you want to learn about and understand America, its all here. Government, Corporations, Consumerism, Militarism, Deep State, Psychology, Individual selfishness and mental illness. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s ..."
Every few days U.S. 'intelligence' and 'officials' produce fake claims about this or that
'hostile' country. U.S. media continue to reproduce those claims even if they bare any logic
and do not make any sense.
On June 27 the New York Times and the Washington Post published fake news
about
alleged Russian payments to the Taliban for killing U.S. troops.
[T]hat the story was obviously bullshit did not prevent Democrats in Congress, including
'Russiagate' swindler Adam Schiff, to bluster about it and to call for immediate briefings
and new
sanctions on Russia .
Just a day after it was published the main accusation, that Trump was briefed on the
'intelligence' died. The Director of National Intelligence, the National Security Advisor and
the CIA publicly rejected the claim. Then the rest of the story started to crumble. On June
2, just one week after it was launched, the story was
declared dead .
...
The NYT buried the above quoted dead corpse of the original story page A-19.
Despite that the Democrats
continued to use the fake story for attacks on Donald Trump.
Yesterday the commander of the U.S. forces in the Middle East
drove a stake though the heart of the dead corpse of the original story:
Two months after top Pentagon officials vowed to get to the bottom of whether the Russian
government
bribed the Taliban to kill American service members , the commander of troops in the
region says a detailed review of all available intelligence has not been able to corroborate
the existence of such a program.
"It just has not been proved to a level of certainty that satisfies me," Gen. Frank
McKenzie, commander of the U.S. Central Command, told NBC News. McKenzie oversees U.S. troops
in Afghanistan.
But as one fake news zombie finally dies others get resurrected. Politico's
'intelligence' stenographer Natasha Bertrand produced
this nonsensical claim :
The Iranian government is weighing an assassination attempt against the American ambassador
to South Africa, U.S. intelligence reports say, according to a U.S. government official
familiar with the issue and another official who has seen the intelligence.
News of the plot comes as Iran continues to seek ways to retaliate for President Donald
Trump's decision to kill a powerful Iranian general earlier this year, the officials said. If
carried out, it could dramatically ratchet up already serious tensions between the U.S. and
Iran and create enormous pressure on Trump to strike back -- possibly in the middle of a
tense election season.
U.S. officials have been aware of a general threat against the ambassador, Lana Marks,
since the spring, the officials said. But the intelligence about the threat to the ambassador
has become more specific in recent weeks. The Iranian Embassy in Pretoria is involved in the
plot, the U.S. government official said.
Ambassador Lana Marks is known for selling overpriced handbags and for her donations to Trump's campaign.
To Iran she has zero political or symbolic value. There is no way Iran would ever think about
an attack on such a target. Accordingly the South African intelligence services
do not believe that there is such a threat:
South African Minister of State Security Ayanda Dlodlo said the matter was "receiving the
necessary attention" and that the State Security Agency (SSA) was "interacting with all
relevant partners both in the country and abroad, to ensure that no harm will be suffered by
the US Ambassador, including any other Diplomatic Officials inside the borders of our
country."
However, an informed intelligence source told Daily Maverick that although the
"matter has been taken seriously as we approach all such threats, specifically, there appears
to be, from our perspective, no discernible threat. Least of all from the source that it
purports to emanate from.
There was "no evidence or indicator", the source said, so the plot was "not likely to be
real". The "associations made are not sustainable on any level but all precautions will be
put in place".
The source suggested this was an instance of the "tail wagging the dog", of the Trump
administration wielding a "weapon of mass distraction" to divert attention from its failures
in the election campaign running up to President Donald Trump's re-election bid on November
3.
The spokesperson for the Iranian ministry of foreign affairs, Saeed Khatibzadeh, strongly
denied the allegation in the Politico report which he called "hackneyed and worn-out
anti-Iran propaganda".
In January the U.S. assassinated the Iranian General Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad. Soleimani
led the external campaigns of the Iranian Quds Forces. He was the one who orchestrated the
campaign that defeated the Islamic State. His mythic-symbolic position for Iran and the
resistance in the Middle East is beyond that of any U.S. figure.
There is simply no one in the U.S. military or political hierarchy who could be seen as his
equal. Iran has therefore announced that it will take other ways to revenge the assassination
of Soleimani.
As an immediate response to the assassination of Soleimani Iran
had launched a precise missile attack against two U.S. bases in Iraq. It has also announced
that it will make sure that the U.S. military will have to leave the Middle East. That program
is in full swing now as U.S. bases in Iraq are again coming under
daily missile attacks :
More than eight months after a barrage of rockets killed an American contractor and wounded
four American service members in Kirkuk, Iraq, militia groups continue to target U.S.
military bases in that country, and the frequency of those attacks has increased.
"We have had more indirect fire attacks around and against our bases the first half of
this year than we did the first half of last year," Gen. Frank McKenzie, the commander of the
U.S. Central Command, said. "Those attacks have been higher."
...
McKenzie's comments came just hours after he announced the United States would be cutting its
footprint in Iraq by almost half by the end of September, with about
2,200 troops leaving the country .
Just hours agon two Katyusha rockets were fired against the U.S.
embassy in Baghdad's Green Zone. Two British/U.S.convoys also came under attack . U.S. air
defense took the missiles down but its anti-missile fire is only further disgruntling the Iraqi
population.
These attacks are still limited and designed to not cause any significant casualties. But
they will continue to increase over time until the last U.S. soldier is withdrawn from
Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and other Middle East countries. That, and only that, is the
punishment Iran promised as revenge for Soleimani's death.
The alleged Iranian thread against the U.S. ambassador to South Africa is just another fake
news propaganda story. It is useful only for lame blustering:
According to press reports, Iran may be planning an assassination, or other attack,
against the United States in retaliation for the killing of terrorist leader Soleimani, which
was carried out for his planning a future attack, murdering U.S. Troops, and the death &
suffering...
...caused over so many years. Any attack by Iran, in any form, against the United States will
be met with an attack on Iran that will be 1,000 times greater in magnitude!
The danger of such fake stories about Russia or Iran is that they might be used to justify a
response in the case of a false flag attack on the alleged targets.
Should something inconvenient happen to Ambassador Lana Marks the Trump administration could
use the fake story as an excuse to respond with a limited attack on Iran.
It is well known by now that U.S. President Donald Trump is lying about every time he opens
his mouth. Why do U.S. journalists presume that the agencies and anonymous officials who work
under him are more truthful in their utterings than the man himself is hard to understand. Why
do they swallow their bullshit?
Posted by b on September 15, 2020 at 11:50 UTC |
Permalink
US and European journalists are also lying constantly, that's why. Even when they make
embarrassing attempts at "being unbiased" or "factual". Do they understand it? Many might
not, but some do, perhaps fewer than anyone would think reasonable.
Btw a lot of these "journalists" in Europe in particular openly self-identify to "the
left" or even as socialists and communists or "greens". So much for ideology as some kind of
solution: entirely worthless and superficial.
But CNN has and will continue to repeat the allegations as fact, so it's mission
accomplished for the deep state. As another poster said on this board about manufacturing
consent:
"It is important to discuss the story, not its credibility, the more the discussion, the
more the reaction and the more it reinforces the narrative."
Just for laughs, I looked at the reviews of Gordon Chang's book, 'The Coming Economic
Collapse of China' to see if I could figure out the reasoning and one of the reviewers said
that China weakens because they lack a free press to hold their govt accountable. I had a
good laugh at that one.
In the 1920s (or 30s), far-rightist Karl Popper coined the concept of systematic manipulation of "public opinion".
This would become a hallmark of Western Civilization in the post-war. The public opinion theory states that the masses don't have an opinion for themselves or,
if they have, it is sculpting/flexible. The dominant classes can, therefore, guide the masses
like a shepherd, to its will.
Friedrich von Hayek - a colleague of Popper and father of British neoliberalism (the man
behind Thatcher) - then developed on the issue, by proposing the institutionalization of
public opinion. He proposed a system of three or four tiers of intellectuals which a
capitalist society should have. The first tier is the capitalist class itself, who would
govern the entire world anonymously, through secret meetings. These meetings would produce
secret reports, whose ideas would be spread to the second tier. The second tier is the
academia and the more prominent politicians and other political leaderships. The third tier
is the basic education teachers, who would indoctrinate the children. The fourth tier is the
MSM, whose job is to transform the ideas and opinions of the first tier into "common sense"
("public opinion").
Therefore, it's not a case where the Western journalists are being fooled. Their job was
never to inform the public. When they publish a lie about, say, Iran trying to kill an
American ambassador in South Africa, they are not telling a lie in their eyes: they are
telling an underlying truth through one thousand lies. The objective here is to convince
("teach") the American masses it is good for the USA if Iran was invaded and destroyed (which
is a truth). They are like the modern Christian God, who teach its subjects the Truth through
"mysterious ways".
It is an insult to the noble profession, to call what the mainstream media in the west,
especially in the USA do, journalism. In my opinion what they do is propaganda and
stenography on behalf of those who are in power. I am not sure who coined the term but
"presstitution" is not a bad attempt at describing their profession.
Unfortunately they have been amazingly successful in brainwashing people. One current
example, from numerous ones that could be cited, is the public's opinion on Julian Assange.
.
While the western corporate media lie on a continuous basis - and that has the predictable
effect - what is more insidious is not these acts of commissions ( meaning lies), but their
acts of omission (meaning excluding or deemphasizing important contextual information)
leading people to make the wrong conclusions. NPR in the US is an excellent example of such
presstitution.
What I am saying is nothing new to the bar flies here. But I am extremely distressed when
I see how poorly informed (propagandized, brainwashed) the vast majority of the people I know
are. Let's say a decade ago, ideological polarization was the main reason why it was so
difficult to have an open discussion on important issues the US. Today it has become even
more difficult because, thanks to the success of the presstitutes, people also have different
sets of "facts". And most alarmingly, after successfully creating a readership who believe in
alternative "facts", the mainstream presstitutes are moving on to creating a logic-free
narrative. Examples include Assad supposedly gassing his people when he was winning (even
though that was guaranteed to produce western intervention against him). A more recent
example is the Navalny affair. Sadly, very sadly, way too many people are affected.
Hi, thanks, and sorry, but: why does nobody look behind the curtain?
Why are the US promoting conflict with China, with Russia?
Why are they beating Europe, maybe with the intention to destroy it?
Why is a new civil war in the US promoted?
Are these random developments of history? Are laws of history behind that?
NO!! Surely not!
Normal (geopolitically interested) people would think: against China it is better to come
together and unite,
at least US & Europe, but eventually Russia included.
For instance take the population of these three together: far less than China's.
If something is going against the common sense, then there should be a reason behind.
This reason I recommend You, with due respect, to find - and to uncover the plan.
Journalism in the US is so superficial, it is a drop above the uppermost wavy comb.
Not worth to pay attention to it.
The actual demand is to understand and to show the forces playing deep underwater.
And to preview where these forces are determined to strike against.
A new report showing that US state-level voter databases were publicly available calls into
question the narrative that Russian intelligence "targeted" US state election-related
websites in 2016.
The problem with these sorts of accusations about "state-sponsored" hacking is they assume
that because a target has some connection to a state or some political activity that it means
the hackers are "nation-state". In reality, personal identification information (PII) is a
commodity on the black market, along with intellectual property - and *any* hacker will
target *any* such source of PII. So the mere fact that it is an election year, and that
voting organizations are loaded with PII, makes them an obvious target for any and every
hacker.
"Oregon's chief information security officer, Lisa Vasa, told the Washington Post in
September 2017 that her team blocks 'upwards of 14 million attempts to access our network
every day."'
This is the usual ridiculous claim from almost every organization. They treat every
Internet packet that hits their firewall as being an "attempt to access" the network (or
worse, a "breach" - which it is not.) Which is technically true, but would only be relevant
if they had *no* firewall - a setup which no organization runs these days. By definition,
99.99999% of those attempts are random mass scans of a block of IP addresses by either a
hacker or some malware on someone else's machine - or even a computer security researcher
attempting to find out how many sites are vulnerable.
"It just has not been proved to a level of certainty that satisfies me," Gen. Frank
McKenzie, commander of the U.S. Central Command, told NBC News. McKenzie oversees U.S. troops
in Afghanistan.
Barflies should write Gen Frank McKenzie inside the back cover of their diaries, and count
the days until we hear of/from him again. I've a feeling he's crossed a line and knows
precisely what he's doing and why. Imo, the Swamp has just been put on notice.
Posted by: vk | Sep 15 2020 12:54 utc | 4
In the 1920s (or 30s), far-rightist Karl Popper coined the concept of "public opinion".
vk, I can't find anything regarding this coinage. Could you please provide a link.
Wiki is specially devoid of it and it goes back to 16 century.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_opinion
The term public opinion was derived from the French opinion publique which was first used in
1588 by Michel de Montaigne in the second edition of his Essays
Thank you, b. In this world of illusion that mainstream press provides it is forgivable that
we cannot even convince members of our own families that are dear to us of the underlying
truths behind what these masters of deception continue to print. Surely they only do so
because livelihoods are threatened, and the public perceptions are reaching a critical point
where belief in what they write, read by the diminishing numbers of faithful few, reaches a
pinnacle of perception and spills chaotically down into a watershed of realization.
I remember when we were told what happens on the top floor of the New York Times. It
opened my eyes. And perhaps here also, b is providing a chink through which we may glimpse
what is happening in military circles in fields of operation where facts collide with
fiction:
"We have had more indirect fire attacks around and against our bases the first half of
this year than we did the first half of last year," Gen. Frank McKenzie, the commander
of the U.S. Central Command, said. "Those attacks have been higher."
...
McKenzie's comments came just hours after he announced the United States would be
cutting its footprint in Iraq by almost half by the end of September, with about 2,200
troops leaving the country.
On Hayek's "tiering", google "IHS model" ("pyramid of social change") and his book "The
Intellectuals and Socialism".
On Popper's conception of "public opinion", see "The Open Society and Its Enemies" (1945).
Yes, the term itself is not Popper's invention - he never claimed to have done so. But he
gave it a "twist", and we can say nowadays every Western journalist's conception of "public
opinion" is essentially Popper's.
because on matters related to Iran, China and Russia, they are not independent, there is
no real difference between the two camps in US, Biden' foreign policy which is endorsed and
supported by NYT and WP is not that different than Trump's, if not more radical. There is no
free press in US, as matter of fact, as long as this United Oligarchy of America exist there
will be no free press.
As well, this fake news propaganda barrage continues in the context of determined censorship
of alternative media and social media - a campaign which has been largely promoted by the
liberal intelligentsia in the US, in the name of reducing "fake news."
Having to live within an ever-widening swamp of utter BS is wearying and mind-numbing - also
to the point, one may assume.
Yes, I agree, IMO/observation, the US Government, the political parties and their supportive
media are rapidly ideologically polarizing their constituencies to two hard entrenched
ideological camps (which as you say has become hard shelled impenetrable). Except on one
common ideological point, which almost all the population has been and is being brain washed
as young as first grade, this common used term, which shield you from needing to investigate
or form any other opinion is: US has always been, is and will be a "force for good" by its
constitution, no matter what she has done or will do. This sentence when fully believed and
carved in one' mind from childhood is very difficult to erase and crack. These two
ideologically opposing camps about 70% of the population will not want to hear any fact or
not, other than what they are told and believed all their life.
"Unlike utopian engineering, piecemeal social engineering must be "small scale," Popper
said, meaning that social reform should focus on changing one institution at a time. Also,
whereas utopian engineering aims for lofty and abstract goals (for example, perfect justice,
true equality, a higher kind of happiness), piecemeal social engineering seeks to address
concrete social problems (for example, poverty, violence, unemployment, environmental
degradation, income inequality). It does so through the creation of new social institutions
or the redesign of existing ones. These new or reconfigured institutions are then tested
through implementation and altered accordingly and continually in light of their effects.
Institutions thus may undergo gradual improvement overtime and social ills gradually reduced.
Popper compared piecemeal social engineering to physical engineering. Just as physical
engineers refine machines through a series of small adjustments to existing models, social
engineers gradually improve social institutions through "piecemeal tinkering." In this way,
"[t]he piecemeal method permits repeated experiments and continuous readjustments" (Open
Society Vol 1., 163).
Only such social experiments, Popper said, can yield reliable feedback for social
planners. In contrast, as discussed above, social reform that is wide ranging, highly complex
and involves multiple institutions will produce social experiments in which it is too
difficult to untangle causes..."
So Top-Down with a vengeance, but softly, softly, hunting for 'good results', for what and
how these are defined is left out entirely, and who exactly runs the process...? (Btw China
sorta follows this approach with 'social experiments' gathering data that is analysed etc. to
improve governance.)
Don't forget that the only time the Amerikastani Empire's warmongering imperialist media
called Trump "presidential" was when he launched missiles at Syria on false pretences in
support of al Qaeda.
The statement by praetor McKenzie probably won't do much to remove the "Russian bounties"
tale from the received Beltway belief structure, where it lodged immediately upon
publication, any more than earlier refutations, or its inherent implausibility, did. I see
the bounties regularly referred to by Dems and Dem-adjacent media as established fact.
In the same light, it's worthwhile to read the Politico article on the alleged Iranian
designs on the purse princess and try to spot other fictions included as supposedly factual
background, some qualified as being American assertions, but others presented as undisputed
fact, such as:
Trump's version of the almost-happened retaliation after Iran downed a U.S. drone
that the attack that killed a U.S. "contractor" in Iraq that started last winter's
U.S./Iran tit-for-tat was "by an Iranian-allied militia"
Soleimani was responsible for the death of numerous U.S. troops
Soleimani plotted to hire a Mexican drug cartel to kill the Saudi ambassador in
Washington (remember that one? a blast from the past)
This new one about the plot to get the ambassador in Pretoria may be too trivial to get
sustained attention, but it will show up as background in some future Politico article or the
like, joining the rest in the Beltway's version of reality, which at this point is made
almost entirely of these falsehoods encrusting on each other, decade after decade, creating
the phony geopolitical mindscape these people live in.
Mere factual refutation – even from otherwise establishment-approved sources –
won't remove these barnacles. For instance, in February the NY Times itself published a
debunking of the initial account that it was an Iran-backed Shia militia, as opposed to
Salafist I.S.-affiliated forces, that killed that U.S. contractor last December. But the good
(if delayed) reporting is forgotten; the lie persists. The same fate awaits McKenzie's
dismissal of the Russian bounties nonsense.
The thoughtful reader would at this point stop and ponder. "Fake News About Iran, Russia,
China Is U.S. Journalism's Daily Bread". I agree with this statement. But not just U.S. Journalism. Minimally U.K. Journalism is
on-board, if not tutoring the Yanks in the art of Journalism. And then there is Europe
herself, she too has armies of Journalists and many Journals. They too mostly fake around in
general.
Now then, that leave Journalism in "Iran, Russia, China". It is fine trait to root for
underdogs but Journalism in these states is also subject to a highly controlled and managed
environment. It is disingenuous to ignore these facts.
Given this congregation of "fakers", worldwide, it is very reasonable to question the very
"fight" that these "fakers" keep telling us is on between the "adversaries".
Good to see so many being able to name the operation of the official narrative. It serves
also another purpose, witnessed by one of the most consequential actions of all, the wanton
abandonment of international law and accountability - the GWOT and the launching of same in
Afghanistan and Iraq. That other purpose is to create cover for those, elected in our name,
to avoid responsibility.
"Who knew?" asked the soulless Rumsfeld. And the refrain returned from the hollowed out
halls of the Greatest Democracy On Earth (tm) - "We were misled!", "Look it says so right
there in the official narrative, REMEMBER?" But the misleaders are never rounded up and never
face any consequences, cause truth be told all that voted for the AUMF belong in the pokey.
And the congressional class of '02-'03 would do the same thing all over again, 'cause the
narrative's got their back.
Despite the future grimness predicted by 1984 , the ability and effectiveness of Media
Structures to openly lie and thus herd the public to embrace the preferred Narrative hasn't
turned out quite the way Orwell thought it might. Former authoritarian blocs learned the hard
way that it's better to tell their citizens the truth and actively engage them in governance,
while the Anglo-Imperial powers have gone in the opposite direction, thus the question why?
IMO, the longstanding Narrative related to the mythical Dream has greatly eroded in the face
of Reality, while at the same time the Rentier Class and the Duopoly it controls needs
to try and obfuscate what it's doing. And thus we've seen the rise of BigLie Media to be used
for the purpose of Divide and Rule. There're numerous works detailing how and why; two of the
more important are Manufacturing of Consent and J is for Junk Economics . Part
of the overall process of dumbing-down populations is the deliberate destruction of the
educational process, particularly in the areas of philosophy and political-economy/history,
which are essentially connected as one when considering the History of Ideas or a sub-area
like the Philosophy of Science.
Such a dumbing-down of a nation's populous can be measured, the USSR and its Warsaw Bloc
being the most evident, but also The Inquisition and its affect on the advancement of science
within the regions it ruled, and the inward turning of China during the Ming Dynasty which
allowed for its subjugation by Western forces beginning in the 16th Century. Most recently,
this is evident in China's passing the Outlaw US Empire in terms of geoeconomics and thus
overall geopolitical power. An explanation for India's inability to match China's development
can be found in its refusal to do away with its semi-feudal caste system and not educate its
masses so they can become a similar collective dynamo as in China. At the beginning of his
brief tenure, JFK noted the Knowledge Gap that existed between a USSR that was nearing its
intellectual heights (although that wasn't known then) and the USA whose educational system
effectively excluded @60% of students from having the opportunity to advance. There would
never have been a Dot.Com economy without JFK's initiative to improve educational outcomes.
There seems to be a notion within the Outlaw US Empire's elite that an well educated populace
presents a danger to their rule and they can get by using AI and Robotics to further their
future plans. Here I'd refer such thinkers to the lessons provided by the failure of Asimov's
Galactic Empire in his Foundation series of books--particular their reliance on AI, robotics,
dumbing-down the populace to the point where no one recalls how atomics functioned. The sort
of balance sheet being constructed by the Fed cannot repair or replace crumbling
infrastructure or train the engineers needed to perform the work.
So, what continual BigLie Media lies tell us is the continued downward spiral of the
West's intellectual abilities will continue while an East that values the Truth and Discovery
moves on to eclipse it, mainly because the West has stopped trying, thinking it's found a
better way based on the continual amassing of Debt, which is seen as wealth on their balance
sheets. Ultimately, the West thinks the one person holding all the assets as the winner of
its Zero-sum Monopoly Game is a better outcome than having millions of people sharing the
winnings of a Win-Win system that promotes the wellbeing of all. I can tell you now which
philosophy will triumph, but you all ought to be capable of reasoning that outcome.
After a sound and an in-depth analysis, b sometimes confounds me with his credulity. Take
this sentence for example: "Why do U.S. journalist presume that the agencies and anonymous
officials who work under him are more truthful in their uttering than the man himself is hard
to understand. Why do swallow their bullshit?" Of course there is no daylight between the US,
and indeed the whole Western governments, and its Press. Other than few independent blog site
such as this, every media outlet is in the service of its home government or foreign
sponsors. Only born-suckers take the corporate media at face value. Modern journalism is
nothing but an aggressive propaganda racket.
You only have to look at who owns the media and who their close friends are,
to understand why the media says what it says or lies what it lies !
It's an industry promoting the elites self-interest, creating fictioous enemy countries to
feed the arms industry and create US domestic mass paranoia.
The Israeli lobby groups are at the wheel of the whole dam clown car.
Using lies (bearing false witness) to cause murder and theft are not exactly a new
phenomenon.
These 'groups of individuals', which are employing these fabricated deceptions, are doing
nothing less than trying to commit murder and theft.
No doubt the two propaganda streams will merge until we will be told that the CIA now
believes that Iran will attempt plausible deniability by funnelling the money through Putin,
who will offer it to the Taliban by way of a bounty on the Ambassador's head.
The CIA's wet dream: the Taliban does it, Putin arranged it, but it was all Iran's fault,
leading to:
A) infinite occupation of the poppy fie.... sorry, Afghanistan
B) even more sanctions on Russia
C) war with Iran
'"Public opinion", according to Bernays, is an amorphous group of judgments which are not
well elaborated even in the head of a single average individual. He extracts a quotation from
Wilfred Trotter, which states that this average man has many strong convictions whose origin
he can't explain (Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War, p. 36). People's minds have
"logic-proof compartments" which must be approached by means beyond the rational. (pp.
61–68).'
Yes, I forgot to mention this very important book. If I'm not mistaken (and I may be),
Popper got the term from Bernays.
Popper, von Hayek... these guys are the fathers of neoliberalism. I'm not mentioning
backyard intellectuals here. They shaped the West as we know it today and, if you're a
Westerner and wants to understand the civilization you live in, you have to know what they
formulated.
Just to clear that off: I don't agree with Popper's (or Bernays, for that matter)
conception on "public opinion". The Marxist conception of ideology is much more complete and
precise scientifically.
Speaking of education (although of science/tach, rather than critical thinking)...
Add in the migration of top-level educated individuals. In the US, an underdeveloped
primary/secondary school system creates room at the university/grad level to absorb talent
from the rest of the world. For many years, this was a source of competitive advantage --
imported human capital is better than home grown, because if you import, you take it away
from someone else. Clever!
It was not that big a deal for the US if social mobility of native born lower and middle
classes was stifled somewhat. (and I would say it still would not be a big deal if the
resources of the country were not so grossly mismanaged/wasted/stolen).
But in the current century, or certainly the decade now ending, China alone can fill every
US grad school science/tech program and still have people to spare for itself. Other parts of
the world are right up there as well.
And then you have computers. Sometime between 2000 and 2010, computers became pretty much
cheap enough that you could give one to a every kid, even in families of limited means.
Provided the primary/secondary education system is there to support it, a country could
develop as much tech talent as they had population. The first generation of kids whose
childhood took place under this condition is now coming out of university - I would think
vastly greater in numbers than any amount the US (or Euro) higher educational system can
absorb. Should be a pretty serious shifting of gears in how human capital is distributed
worldwide.
But none of this is about critical thinking. Few systems of organizing society actually
promote that ... it tends to happen in spite of the organizing principles, rather than
because of them. Nor are the most educated (regardless of country of origin) any less
susceptible to the propaganda - if anything they are more so, due to the design of the
message, because it is more important that they receive it. You want a book recommendation
that talks about that, check out 'Disciplined Minds' by Jeff Schmidt (though perhaps with an
overly pessimistic outlook -- people can recognize the reality he describes and deal with
it... it is only the more naive/idealistic types who fall extra hard for the mythology and
then find themselves in a conflict they can't handle). There are lots of other avenues to
take too... about the psychology of self-discovery, discovery of self-vs-social-organism
etc....
Exactly that and yet we are constantly fed a diet from the bottom of the barrel. NYT?
WAPO? They are rags. Gutter press peddling drivel. Surely there are more erudite and critical
publications in this world than these USA drivel sheets. I am aware of good journalism in
Switzerland and elsewhere but currently separted from a device adequate to translate and
quote.
Thank you Conspiracy-theorist it I way past time we escaped the neverending story of BS +
HATE.
A propos fake news, John Helmer reports on the Navalny saga and was lately on the
Gorilla radio podcast with Chris Cook to discuss the newest events. It's a one-hour-talk
but very enjoyable listening to Helmer. You can also follow his reports on his blog
Dances With Bears .
Try this on for size. This is a conclusion I arrived at several decades ago, wrote about
several times, but not recently.
Everything that was accomplished (albeit incompletely or moderately) through the New Deal
and then the abortive Great Society absolutely spooked the oligarchy. Lifting much of the
working class out of absolute wage slavery to the point where the next rung on Maslow's
ladder was at least visible. And when it all culminated in the late 60's and early 70's with
the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, the Surface Mining act, and various labor protection
measures, the wealthy owner class decided the proles had gained too much power to influence
"their" captive government.
The princes and barons of industry and finance were very open about their complaints. The
advance of regulation on their ability to pollute and to exploit must stop or they would take
their bundles of riches and go elsewhere. It is what Saint Ronny was ALL about. And so all
that got fat and filthy rich during the real American Century took their wealth where
regulation and labor fairness and justice didn't exist to continue their exorbitant profit
taking.
And then they imported those cheap products here to wreak what was left of our industrial
base and to impress on all of us that they remain the boss, the real power. Drive down wages,
destroy pensions and safety nets and put US proles back into wage slavery. Remember the 80's
and 90's when Wal-Mart basically told established and storied US manufacturers "either you
produce the goods we want for what our Asian suppliers can make them for, or you're
finished." And that is exactly what happened. Wal-Mart was just the vanguard, it is now
ubiquitous. Another aspect of this assault was forcing us proles into the stock market
through our pensions and retirement funds so as to make us all sympathetic to de-regulation -
so as not to hurt OUR bottom line. Many labor unions became just a sick symbiosis with the
industries they "served."
Incomplete and observational, I am not erudite or lettered, but I think it is an accurate
narrative.
There is a curious schizophrenia where the U.S. press will treat presidential claims about
foreign affairs as a sacred truth but treat claims denying adultery, such as in the Lewinski
affair, as dismissible.
Living in the USA (Steve Miller classic) has always seemed to me about dealing with falsehood
and deception. US highschool seemed like he time for me when the formidable pressure to
conform became completely nonsensical, perhaps because it was so utterly cruel, but also
because it seemed untruthful. You basically were required to accept modes if behavior and
thought that seemed alien to human behavior, but were presented as the sine quo non of how to
be. How to succeed, how to live. It seems to me that if you were attempting to retain
truthfulness, this conformity was rife with logical fallacies of every sort which if you
tried to deal with them, or confront them, you were ostracized or at worst outcast.
In the many years since, it seems like everything else, once a person adopts untruthful
behavior, it is next to impossible to change course, so you deal with all kinds of people who
have doubled down on their personal deceptions. Marriages based on financial success come to
mind, and are like any deception, the cause of incredible dis ease and misey.
There is a philosophical concept I came upon called parrhesia that Foucault gives a
fantastic series of lectures on which can be found by searching the web, that investigates
the perils implicit in telling truth to falsehood, and the many disasters and tragedies that
have befallen human kind in the attempts to do so.
I've come to think that humans by nature are basically incapable of avoiding whatever it
is that is "truth." Because over and over life seems to present situations that are the
unswervingly the same to everyone. Youth and aging, for example, and the end result never
varies, like illness, death, and dying. And everyone has their own similar story navigating
the human predicaments and facing an inalterable "truth," which might be in this example,
death.
My wonder as I observe life as I age, is what is the damage done to those not only who try
their honest best to remain truthful, but what is the damage done to those who cannot escape
an adopted untruth and refuse to let go of it. I suppose in this moment of history, you need
only look at pandemic, wildfires, and conflicts to see how far human beings have digressed
from an Eden. But there must be a purpose to it all? Like, trying to cling to any kind of
integrity.
You think international fake news is just a Trump thing? Just off the top of my head we have
thins like Tonkin Bay, Kuwait babies being massacred by Iraqi troops, my personal favorite
Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, and a multiple of mean Assads killing their people with
poison. That is just a bipartisan few. We have one political party, who serves the deep
state. The deep state serves the interests of Wall Street and more importantly the Rothschild
world banking system. Give the spooks a lot of credit they let us have two "choices" while
controlling both. Think of it as a neo fascism kinda thing that ironically finances the anti
fascists. The press is just a means to an end. Assume everything is an agenda, and read the
independents for some actual thought. I may not agree with you all the time, but I do love
you MoA. Thank you for all your work.
'spooked oligarchy...reforms..culminated in ..70s'
Yep. When committed Dem's go off on Trump, it's deeply felt but kindof a ritual rant.
Bring Ralph Nader into the conversation, just mention him in passing, and the response
becomes live! Betrayal, danger of being shown up again!
Old and Grumpy @67 has a good point. Anyone suggesting that fake news is in any way related
to Trump being President are big parts of the problem for why fake news persists in the first
place. Suggesting that it is because of Trump, and thus implying that the fake news will go
away when Trump does, is either profoundly ignorant, or profoundly deceitful, though probably
both. Trump ranting about fake news exposed the problem and forced it into the public
discourse. Those rants did not create the problem.
"You basically were required to accept modes if behavior and thought that seemed alien to
human behavior ... ... forced to double down"
I had short but deeply influential conversation right out of college with a recruiter/HR
manager from Raytheon, of all places. He talked about exactly what you said. He spoke, in a
hypothetical third person, about a mid-career guy with a mortgage and family who finds
themselves questioning the defense industry. How that isn't the best place to be in,
mentally. I changed my career plans that day, forever thankful for the encounter.
However, regarding people being able to avoid unpleasant realities, he was of the opinion
that for most people, it is possible to do so. Even beneficial. (Except of course for the
recipients of his company's products. I didn't say that but I think he figured out that I was
thinking it). The issue, from the point of view of running an effective organization, is what
happens if the doubters and believers start to mix? Part of his assigned task was to simply
keep out people curious enough to ask too many questions. That's one of the "benefits" of
really polarizing politics too.
"My wonder as I observe life as I age, is what is the damage done to those not
only who try their honest best to remain truthful, but what is the damage done to those who
cannot escape an adopted untruth and refuse to let go of it."
That's what modern pharmaceuticals are for, and why one in six Americans (officially) are
prescribed them. If we include the numbers of Americans who self-medicate with alcohol and/or
grey/black market pharmaceuticals, then the proportion would be a bit (quite a bit) larger.
People who succeed at being truthful (mostly to themselves) are not confronted with cognitive
dissonance mind-quakes; however, such individuals are confronted with experiencing the retch
reflex when consuming mass media.
Is being truthful vs embracing the lies then half-dozen of one and six of the other? I
find satisfactory peace of mind from being truthful and simply avoiding the primary vector of
deception; the mass media. Noble individuals like our host and some of the posters here will
slog through that vile cesspool of lies and fish out the little nuggets of truth that leak
out. It is selfish of me to leave such dirty work to others, but at least I am not
hermetically isolated on a mountain somewhere.
An interesting thought. I have long had the feeling that a large part of the obviously
orchestrated drive to almost define both of the two US parties with really incredibly
unimportant issues like bathroom preferences were designed to split the voters as equally as
possible, so that to swing elections one had only to control the votes of a very small number
of tie breakers. I still think this is likely true, but I do think you make an important
point that a lot can be learned about what is truly important to the PTB by reflecting on the
topics that aren't being argued over.
Compare the "two" US political parties, and you will note that while they seem to be getting
ever more extreme and irreconcilable and quasi-religious in their differences, these
differences are always on the periphery. Both parties are being indoctrinated with certain
common beliefs they will take for granted because they are never talked about -- because
these points are not allowed to be in contention. So while even something like climate change
can be a big divider (no worries, there's money to be made on both sides of that issue, and
means of control); but you will never hear debate about
1. America is the greatest ever!
2.
America is always and unquestionably a force for good, and even it's proven bad things
(kidnapping, rendition, and torture programs) are done "for the greater good."
3. Unbridled
capitalism is the only way, and the privatization and unwinding of any vestiges of social
programs, like education, social security, and even utilities and infrastructure, is always a
good thing deserving of priority.
4. Individualism is the best, if not only, way. To be a
hero you must strike alone against the bad guys/the system/the government; someone who
rallies others, causes forces to be gathered and united, unionized, whatever are discouraged
or ignored.
5. "Leadership" in the affairs of others around the world is American right,
responsibility, and destiny. Having the largest, almost entirely offensively oriented
military on earth is essential; and having it, we must use it to get our money's worth.
6.
Omnipresent "intelligence" services equal safety and are absolutely required for life to be
normal. I'm sure there are other examples of "universally agreed" doctrines in the US, but
these are some that leap out.
These crazy MSM lies Anecdote. Last Sat (Geneva, Switz.) I spoke to 20 ppl whom I know
somewhat, all know I like to discuss news etc. I said, weird news this week, making no
mention of Navalny. 18/20 believed Putin poisoned Navalny and brought it up spontaneously!
There is something so appealing and narratively 'seductive' about spies and 'opponents'
(Skripal ) and mysterious poisons used by evil doers etc. that fiction just flows smoothly
into fact or whatever is 'real.'
I had to mention Assange myself to most, but there the reaction was very mixed, most
thought Assange was being persecuted, or it was 'not right', and took this story seriously in
one way or another - 4 ppl claimed not to know the latest news. Here, NGOs, Leftists and
Others have made demands for him to be offered asylum in Switz, so he has been front
page.
Besides that (I'm always interested in from-the-ground view-points, experiences, so post
some myself) what is going on is monopoly consolidation:
Mega MSM in cahoots with the MIC, Big Pharma, Big Agri, Finance, and so on. Corporations
joining up their positions bit by bit while also competing in some ways, bribing and owning
the Pols. who are front-men and women tasked with providing a lot of drama, manufactured
agitation, etc., which in turn is fodder for the MSM, etc.
Overall, the most important sector to watch is the GAFAM, 1, the reign of the middle men
is close at hand (control information, both the channels and the content, and commerce up to
a point.) All this leaves out energy considerations, another vital topic left aside.
Thanks for your reply! I've touched on the topic of human capital and its development
occasionally here, positing it's the #1 asset of all nations. Those nations who neglect to
develop their own human capital are bound to become deficient when it comes to basic
comparative advantages with other nations, particularly as political-economy shifts from
being materialistic to knowledge-based; thus Pepe Escobar agreeing wholeheartedly with my
comment about India. (He added this article to his FB timeline and I posted my comment
there.)
From 1999-2003, I was involved in developing distance learning platforms for the rapidly
advancing ability to learn outside of a school's four walls. The other educators I worked
with and myself had great hopes for the virtual classroom and what it might do to aide both
teachers and students. At the time we thought this development would provide a great
opportunity for the third member of the educational team--parents--to play a greater role in
the process since active parental involvement was proven to generate better student outcomes.
But for that to be properly implemented, equitable funding for all school districts became an
even greater issue than it was already. This issue highlighted the huge problems related to
financing education at a moment when BushCo Privatizers began to seriously threaten what was
already in place. And that problem has only worsened, the vast disparities being very evident
thanks to COVID-forced distance learning. The primary reason good teachers can't be retained
is the entire system's a massive Clusterfuck. And computers aren't substitutes for even poor
teachers. And parents are even more aloof from becoming involved in the process than ever
before.
The dumbing-down I mention is now entering its third generation. The educational structure
needs to be completely refitted nationally, but I wouldn't give that task to any of the
fuckwits employed by the past three administrations--Yes, I'm arguing education needs to be a
completely federal program instead of the 53 different school systems in states and
territories; and yes, I'm aware of the pitfalls and potential corruption that poses, which is
a microcosm of all the problems at the federal level of government. This problem is yet
another very basic reason why the Duopoly and its backers need to be ousted from government
and kept as far away as possible as the structure is torn down and rebuilt--The USA will
never be great again until that is done.
I suggest that the reason that the media focus on the ridiculous is to convince the public
that there is nothing important happening - except where the MSM wants the participation of
the public as in with anti-Russia, anti_China, anti-Socialism, etc. Good to get the public
participation directed at harmless targets.
They've got to fill the papers with something. The public must be kept warm, comfortable,
semi-comatose, watching cat videos...
Last thing anybody wants is the involvement of the public, they will only screw
everything-up or try anyway.
Thanks for your reply! Your explanation sadly is correct, but it was put into motion prior
to Reagan becoming POTUS. The tools used to undo the New Deal were put into place before FDR
became POTUS. And FDR's unwillingness to prosecute those who attempted to overthrow his
government provided that faction to infiltrate government and eventually attempt to undo the
good that was done prior to WW2. When looked at closely, American society was generally quite
Liberal in the positive aspects of that term and during the Depression was becoming ever more
Collectivist with the war advancing that even further. At the war's end, it was paramount for
the forces taking control of the nation to push the public to the right and away from its
collectivist proclivities. Where we find ourselves today thus is not an accident of history
but an engineered outcome. You may recall voices on the Right accusing Liberals and their
organizations of engaging in Social Engineering. Those accusations were projections since it
was actually forces on the Right that were maneuvering society to the Right while assiduously
applying the principle of Divide and Rule to create a condition where they would be immune
from political challenge, which is where we are now.
A few understand this ugly truth and how we arrived here. What's missing is scholarship
that links the changes that began in the 1870s with today's situation. Yes, there're good
examinations of various pieces of the overall puzzle. But it appears that only Hudson and
those in his small circle have figured it out; yet, they haven't produced a complete history
that encapsulates it all. And for us to have a realistic chance to undo what's been done, we
need to know how it all transpired.
Antonym @ 60
"There are big differences between Trump and Biden regarding their foreign policies:
Trump is hard on Xi-China and soft on Putin Russia, while Biden is the reverse."
I don't share your view. The current administration's foreign policy is very much aligned
with that of past administrations and the diplomatic circus surrounding the Skripal affair
alone is evidence that nobody is soft on Russia.
What differs, however, is the presentation. Trump is criticized (not praised) for being
allegedly soft on Russia and Biden criticized for being allegedly soft on China. This clever
trick ensures that just about everybody is onboard the bash-China-and-Russia train.
In a violently polarized society, with red-blue antagonism reaching ridiculous heights,
people tend to act exclusively in contradiction to the cult figure they hate so much.
If a Trump hater hears the criticism that the president is too soft on Russia, he will
readily grab the bash-Russia stick hoping to score a few hits on Trump. The same person's
reaction to a criticism on Biden will be either indifference or angry denial. In either case,
he will not be opposed to the bash-Russia nor the bash-China movement.
The dem hater's reaction is similar. Indifference to the soft-on-Russia claim (ie. no
opposition to the bash-Russia movement) and active support for the China-bashing.
The article and subsequent discussion brings to mind Dawkins discussion of Memes and
Memetics. Not those pesky internet memes. The propaganda war is fierce, and almost without
exception the people here are poking and prodding perhaps without being able to put the
finger on the "EZ button". This is war, baby, so one thinks the following link may be useful:
Wherein: " Ideally the virus of the mind being targeted will be overwritten with a higher
fidelity, fecundity, and longevity memeplex in order to assure long term sustainability. When
this is not practical, it is still possible to displace a dangerous memeplex, by creating a
more contagious benign meme utilizing certain packaging, replication, and propagation
tricks."
The lie is irrelevant, whether true or false, it must be believable, and it must
successfully replicate.
You are right, the early FDR days were, in hindsight, one of the most important in setting
the course of the US for the next century, and unfortunately Big Business won, taking us on a
long, ugly road to the right. I agree this would be a most fascinating history book if some
of those respected, genuinely knowledgeable people you often cite could collaborate on an
opus.
Yes, most people do not know that the wide ranging labor laws implemented at that time
were actually not meant to empower organized labor, but to limit it. Perhaps FDR thought it
was the best he could do for the working class, but I tend to think it was more a case of him
thinking that by outlawing general strikes, wildcat strikes, strikes in support of other
unions, and setting up an NLRB with a lot of political control by business, the powers who
had so recently let it be known they were ready to actively try to overthrow the government
might be mollified. I think he feared the US was at the cusp of a revolution, and perhaps it
was. Whether or not if would have been better had that been allowed to proceed is the big
question.
Anti-China activists funded by NED & Co make up all sorts of horrid stories online, which
are then picked up by MSM and political NGOs to spoon feed world audiences/viewers. Viola,
you have "fact-based" anti-China news!
This is literally what these overseas Uyghur activists do all day. Putting a random
caption on a video they ripped down from a medical worker's tiktok in China. And people
believe it. They'd even believe if the follow up rebuttal is that this is a forced labour
doctor.
Glad to see his name mentioned here. I've been saying for years here to watch the
documentary - Century of the Self. If you want to learn about and understand America, its all here. Government, Corporations,
Consumerism, Militarism, Deep State, Psychology, Individual selfishness and mental
illness.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s
Thanks for your reply! JK Galbraith in his American Capitalism: The Concept of
Countervailing Power lamented what you recap in your 2nd paragraph and that there was
thus no power capable of offsetting Big Business although one was sorely needed. As I wrote,
some very sharp minds have written about small segments of the overall movement toward
totalitarianism since the 1870s, Galbraith's 1952 book being one that's still worth
reading.
Karl Marx said that " Philosophers have hitherto only
interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it ." I doubt very much that
you will know which changes you need to make if you don't have a very good idea about your
starting point. In his book Factfulness and in his many excellent online presentations, the
late Swedish Professor of International Health Hans Rosling identifies a lot of the ways things
have gotten better , especially for the world's poorest.
Suppose, for example, that you encounter the name " Milton Friedman ,"
perhaps in connection with lamented "neoliberalism" and maybe in connection with human rights
abuses perpetrated by the brutal Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. Friedman has been denounced
as the "father of global misery," and his reputation has taken another beating in the wake of
the fiftieth anniversary of his 1970 New York Times Magazine essay " The Social Responsibility of Business is to
Increase its Profits ," which I suspect most people haven't read past its title. But what
happened during "The Age of Milton Friedman," as the economist Andrei Shleifer asked in
a 2009
article ? Shleifer points out that "Between 1980 and 2005, as the world embraced free
market policies, living standards rose sharply, while life expectancy, educational attainment,
and democracy improved and absolute poverty declined."
Things have never been so good, and they are getting better , especially for the world's
poor.
In 2008, there was a bit of controversy over the establishment of the Milton Friedman
Institute at the University of Chicago, which operates today as the Becker Friedman Institute (it is also named for Friedman's
fellow Chicago economist Gary Becker ). In a
blistering
reply to a protest letter signed by a
group of faculty members at the University of Chicago, the economist John Cochrane wrote, "If
you start with the premise that the last 40 or so years, including the fall of communism, and
the opening of China and India are 'negative for much of the world's population,' you just
don't have any business being a social scientist. You don't stand a chance of contributing
something serious to the problems that we actually do face." Nor, might I add, do you stand
much of a chance of concocting a revolutionary program that will actually help the people
you're trying to lead.
2. What makes me so sure I won't replace the existing regime with
something far worse?
I might hesitate to push the aforementioned button because while the world we actually
inhabit is far from perfect, it's not at all clear that deleting the state overnight wouldn't
mean civilization's wholesale and maybe even perpetual collapse. At the very least, I would
want to think long and hard about it. The explicit mention of Frantz Fanon and Che Guevara in
the course description suggest that students will be approaching revolutionary ideas from the
left. They should look at the results of populist revolutions in 20th century Latin America,
Africa, and Asia. The blood of many millions starved and slaughtered in efforts to "forge a
better society" cries out against socialism and communism, and
macroeconomic populism in Latin America has been disastrous . As people have pointed out
when told that "democratic socialists" aren't trying to turn their countries into Venezuela,
Venezuelans weren't trying to turn their country into Venezuela when they embraced Hugo Chavez.
I wonder why we should expect WLU's aspiring revolutionaries to succeed where so many others
have failed.
3. Is my revolutionary program just a bunch of platitudes with which no
decent person would disagree?
In 2019, Kristian Niemietz of London's Institute of Economic Affairs published a useful
volume titled Socialism: The Failed Idea That Never Dies , which you can
download for $0 from IEA . He notes a tendency for socialists and neo-socialists to pitch
their programs almost exclusively in terms of their hoped-for results rather than in terms of
the operation of concrete social processes they hope to set in motion (on this I paraphrase
my intellectual hero Thomas Sowell ).
Apply a test proposed a long time ago by the economist William Easterly: can you imagine
anyone seriously objecting to what you're saying? If not, then you probably aren't saying
anything substantive. Can you imagine someone saying "I hate the idea of the world's poor
having better food, clothing, shelter, and medical care" or "It would be a very bad thing if
more people were literate?" If not, then it's likely that your revolutionary program is a
tissue of platitudes and empty promises. That's not to say it won't work politically–God
knows, nothing sells better on election day than platitudes and empty promises–but you
shouldn't think you're saying anything profound if all you're saying is something obvious like
"It would be nice if more people had access to clean, drinkable water."
... ... ...
7. How has it worked the other times it has been tried?
Years before the Russian Revolution, Eugene Richter predicted with eerie prescience what
would happen in a socialist society in his short book Pictures of the Socialistic Future (
which you can
download for $0 here ). Bryan Caplan, who wrote the foreword for that edition of Pictures
and who put together the online " Museum of Communism ," points out
the distressing regularity with which communists go from "bleeding heart" to "mailed fist." It
doesn't take long for communist regimes to go from establishing a workers' paradise to shooting
people who try to leave. Consider whether or not the brutality and mass murder of communist
regimes is a feature of the system rather than a bug. Hugo Chavez and Che
Guevara both expressed bleeding hearts with their words but used a mailed fist in practice
(I've written before that "irony" is denouncing Milton Friedman for the crimes of Augusto
Pinochet while wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt. Pinochet was a murderous thug. Guevara was, too).
Caplan points to
pages 105 and 106 of Four Men: Living the Revolution: An Oral History of Contemporary Cuba
. On page 105, Lazaro Benedi Rodriguez's heart is bleeding for the illiterate. On page 106,
he's "advis(ing) Fidel to have an incinerator dug about 40 or 50 meters deep, and every time
one of these obstinate cases came up, to drop the culprit in the incinerator, douse him with
gasoline, and set him on fire."
... ... ...
9. What will I do with people who aren't willing to go along with my
revolution?
Walter Williams once said that he doesn't mind if communists want to be communists. He minds
that they want him to be a communist, too. Would you allow people to try capitalist experiments
in your socialist paradise? Or socialist experiments in your capitalist paradise (Families,
incidentally, are socialist enterprises that run by the principle "from each according to his
ability, to each according to his needs.")? Am I willing to allow dissenters to advocate my
overthrow, or do I need to crush dissent and control the minds of the masses in order for my
revolution to work? Am I willing to allow people to leave, or will I need to build a wall to
keep people in?
10. Am I letting myself off the hook for questions 1-9 and giving myself
too much credit for passion and sincerity?
The philosopher David Schmidtz has said that if your best argument is that your heart is in
the right place, then your heart is most definitely not in the right place. Consider this quote
from Edmund Burke and ask whether or not it leads you to revise your revolutionary plans:
"A conscientious man would be cautious how he dealt in blood. He would feel some
apprehension at being called to a tremendous account for engaging in so deep a play, without
any sort of knowledge of the game. It is no excuse for presumptuous ignorance, that it is
directed by insolent passion. The poorest being that crawls on earth, contending to save
itself from injustice and oppression is an object respectable in the eyes of God and man. But
I cannot conceive any existence under heaven (which, in the depths of its wisdom, tolerates
all sorts of things) that is more truly odious and disgusting, than an impotent helpless
creature, without civil wisdom or military skill, without a consciousness of any other
qualification for power but his servility to it, bloated with pride and arrogance, calling
for battles which he is not to fight, contending for a violent dominion which he can never
exercise, and satisfied to be himself mean and miserable, in order to render others
contemptible and wretched." (Emphasis added).
The scorching desert sun streams through narrow slats in the tiny window. A mouse scurries
across the cracked concrete floor, the scuttling of its tiny feet drowned out by the sound of
distant voices speaking in Arabic. Their chatter is in a western Libyan dialect distinctive
from the eastern dialect favored in Benghazi. Somewhere off in the distance, beyond the
shimmering desert horizon, is Tripoli, the jewel of Africa now reduced to perpetual war.
But here, in this cell in a dank old warehouse in Bani Walid, there are no smugglers, no
rapists, no thieves or murderers. There are simply Africans captured by traffickers as they
made their way from Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad, Eritrea, or other disparate parts of the continent
seeking a life free of war and poverty, the rotten fruit of Anglo-American and European
colonialism. The cattle brands on their faces tell a story more tragic than anything produced
by Hollywood.
These are slaves: human beings bought and sold for their labor. Some are bound for
construction sites while others for the fields. All face the certainty of forced servitude, a
waking nightmare that has become their daily reality.
This is Libya, the real Libya. The Libya that has been constructed from the ashes of the
US-NATO war that deposed Muammar Gaddafi and the government of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya. The
Libya now fractured into warring factions, each backed by a variety of international actors
whose interest in the country is anything but humanitarian.
But this Libya was built not by Donald Trump and his gang of degenerate fascist ghouls. No,
it was the great humanitarian Barack Obama, along with Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Susan Rice,
Samantha Power and their harmonious peace circle of liberal interventionists who wrought this
devastation. With bright-eyed speeches about freedom and self-determination, the First Black
President, along with his NATO comrades in France and Britain, unleashed the dogs of war on an
African nation seen by much of the world as a paragon of economic and social development.
But this is no mere journalistic exercise to document just one of the innumerable crimes
carried out in the name of the American people. No, this is us, the antiwar left in the United
States, peering through the cracks in the imperial artifice – crumbling as it is from
internal rot and political decay – to shine a light through the gloom named Trump and
directly into the heart of darkness.
There are truths that must be made plain lest they be buried like so many bodies in the
desert sand.
To understand the depth of criminality involved in the US-NATO war on Libya, we must unravel
a complex story involving actors from both the US and Europe who quite literally conspired to
bring about this war, while simultaneously exposing the unconstitutional, imperial presidency
as embodied by Mr. Hope and Change himself.
In doing so, a picture emerges that is strikingly at odds with the dominant narrative about
good intentions and bad dictators. For although Gaddafi was presented as the villain par
excellence in this story told by the Empire's scribes in corporate media, it is in fact Barack
Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, former French President Nicholas Sarkozy, French
philosopher-cum-neocolonial adventurist Bernard Henri-Levy, and former UK Prime Minister David
Cameron, who are the real malevolent forces. It was they, not Gaddafi, who waged a blatantly
illegal war on false pretenses and for their own aggrandizement. It was they, not Gaddafi, who
conspired to plunge Libya into chaos and civil war from which it is yet to emerge. It was they
who beat the war drums while proclaiming peace on earth and good will to men.
The US-NATO war on Libya represents perhaps one of the most egregious examples of US
military aggression and lawlessness in recent memory. Of course, the US didn't act alone as a
wide cast of characters played a role as the French and British were keen to involve themselves
in the reassertion of control over a once lucrative African asset torn from European control by
the evil Gaddafi. And this, only a few years after former UK Prime Minister and Iraq war
criminal Tony Blair met with Gaddafi to usher in
a new era of openness and partnership.
The story begins with Bernard Henri-Lévy, the French philosopher, journalist, and
amateur foreign service officer who fancied himself an international spy. Having failed to
arrive in Egypt in time to buttress his ego by capitalizing on the uprising against former
dictator Hosni Mubarak, he quickly shifted his attention to Libya, where an uprising in the
anti-Gaddafi hotbed of Benghazi was underway. As Le Figaro
chronicled , Henri-Levy managed to talk his way into a meeting with then head of the
National Transition Council (TNC) Mustapha Abdeljalil, a former Gaddafi official who became
head of the anti-Gaddafi TNC. But Henri-Levy wasn't there just for an interview to be published
in his French paper, he was there to help overthrow Gaddafi and, in so doing, make himself into
an international star.
Henri-Levy quickly pressed his contacts and got on the phone with French President Nicholas
Sarkozy to ask him, rather bluntly, if he'd agree to meet with Abdeljalil and the leadership of
the TNC. Just a few days later, Henri-Levy and his colleagues arrived at the
Élysée Palace with TNC leadership at their side. To the utter shock of the
Libyans present, Sarkozy tells them that he plans to recognize the TNC as the legitimate
government of Libya. Henri-Levy and Sarkozy have now, at least in theory, deposed the Gaddafi
government.
But the little problem of Gaddafi's military victories and the very real possibility that he
might emerge victorious from the conflict complicated matters as the French public had become
aware of the scheme and was rightly lambasting Sarkozy. Henri-Levy, ever the opportunist,
stoked the patriotic fervor by announcing that without French intervention, the tricolor flag
flying over five-star hotels in Benghazi would be stained with blood. The PR campaign worked as
Sarkozy quickly came around to the idea of military intervention.
However, Henri-Levy had a still more critical role to play: bringing the US military
juggernaut into the plot. Henri-Levy organized the first of what would be several high-level
talks between US officials from the Obama Administration and the Libyans of the TNC. Most
importantly, Henri-Levy set up the meeting between Abdeljalil and Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton. While Clinton was skeptical at the time of the meeting, it would be a matter of months
before she and Joe Biden, along with the likes of Susan Rice, Samantha Power, and others would
be planning the political, diplomatic, and military route to regime change in Libya.
The
Americans Enter the Fray
There would have been no war in Libya were it not for the US political, diplomatic, and
military machine. In this sense, despite the relatively meager US military involvement, the war
in Libya was an American war. That is to say, it was a war that could not have happened were it
not for the active collaboration of the Obama Administration with its French and British
counterparts.
As Jo Becker of the NY Times explained
in 2016, Hillary Clinton met with Mahmoud Jibril, a prominent Libyan politician who would go on
to become the new Prime Minister of post-Gaddafi Libya, and his associates, in order to assess
the faction now garnering US support . Clinton's job, according to Becker, was "to take measure
of the rebels we supported" – a fancy way of saying that Clinton attended the meeting to
determine whether this group of politicians speaking on behalf of a diverse group of
anti-Gaddafi voices (ranging from pro-democracy activists to outright terrorists affiliated
with global terror networks) should be supported with US money and covert arms.
The answer, ultimately, was a resounding yes.
But of course, as with all America's warmongering misadventures, there was no consensus on
military intervention. As Becker reported, some in the Obama Administration were skeptical of
the easy victory and post-conflict political calculus. One prominent voice of dissent, at least
according to Becker, was former Defense Secretary Robert Gates. Himself no dove, Gates was
concerned that Clinton and Biden's hawkish attitude toward Libya would ultimately lead to an
Iraq-style political nightmare that would undoubtedly end with the US having created and then
abandoned a failed state – exactly what happened.
It is important to note that Clinton and Biden were two of the principal voices for
aggression and war. Both were supportive of the No-Fly Zone from early on, and both advocated
for military intervention. Indeed, the two have been simpatico in nearly every war crime
committed by the US in the last 30 years, including perhaps most egregiously in support of
Bush's crime against humanity that we call the second Iraq War.
As former Clinton lackey (Deputy Director of Secretary of State Clinton's Policy Planning
staff) Derek Chollet explained, "[Libya] seemed like an easy case." Chollet, a principal
participant in the American conspiracy to make war on Libya who later went on to serve directly
under Obama and at the National Security Council, inadvertently illustrates in stark relief the
imperial arrogance of the Obama-Clinton-Biden liberal interventionist camp. In calling Libya an
"easy case" he of course means that Libya was a perfect candidate for a regime change operation
whose primary benefit would be to boost politically those who supported it.
Chollet, like many strategic planners at the time, saw Libya as a slam dunk opportunity to
turn the demonstrations and uprisings of 2010-2011, which quickly became known as the Arab
Spring, into political capital from the Democratic camp of the US ruling class. This rapidly
became Clinton's position. And soon, the consensus of the entire Obama
Administration.
Obama's War Off the Books
One of the more pernicious myths of the US war on Libya was the notion – propagated
dutifully by the defense lobbyists-cum-journalists at major corporate media outlets –
that the war was a cheap little war that cost the US almost nothing. There were no American
lives lost in the war itself (Benghazi is another mythology to be unraveled later), and very
little cost in terms of "treasure", to use that despicable imperialist phrase.
But while the total cost of the war paled in comparison to the monumental-scale crimes in
Iraq and Afghanistan, the means by which it was funded has cost the US far more than dollars;
the war on Libya was a criminal and unconstitutional endeavor that has further laid the
groundwork for the imperial presidency and unconstrained executive power. As the Washington
Post
reported at the time:
Noting that Obama had said the mission could be paid for with money already appropriated to
the Pentagon, [former House Speaker] Boehner pressed the president on whether supplemental
funding would be requested from Congress.
Unforeseen military operations that require expenditures such as those being made for the
Libyan effort normally require supplemental appropriations since they are outside the core
Pentagon budget. That is why funds for Afghanistan and Iraq are separate from the regular
Defense Department budget. The added costs for some of the operations in Libya are minimal But
the expenditures for weapons, fuel and lost equipment are something else.
Because the Obama Administration did not seek congressional appropriations to fund the war,
there is very little in the way of paper trail to do a proper accounting of the costs of the
war. As the cost of each bomb, fighter jet, and logistical support vehicle disappeared into the
abyss of Pentagon accounting oblivion, so too did any semblance of constitutional legality. In
essence, Obama helped establish a lawless presidency that not only has little respect for
constitutionally mandated checks and balances, but completely ignores the rule of law. Indeed,
some of the crimes that Trump and Attorney General Bill Barr are guilty of have their direct
corollary in the Obama Administration's prosecution of the Libya war.
So where did the money come from and where did it go? It's anybody's guess really, unless
you're one of those rubes who likes taking the Pentagon's word for it. As a Pentagon
spokesperson told CNN in 2011,
"The price tag for U.S. Defense Department operations in Libya as of September 30 [was] $1.1
billion. This included daily military operations, munitions, the drawdown of supplies and
humanitarian assistance." However, to illustrate the downright Orwellian impossibility of
discerning the truth, Vice President Joe Biden doubled that number when speaking on CNN,
suggesting that "NATO alliance worked like it was designed to do, burden-sharing. In total, it
cost us $2 billion, no American lives lost."
As is painfully evident, there is no clear way to know how much was spent other than to take
the word of those who prosecuted the war. With no congressional oversight, and no clear
documentary record, the war on Libya disappears down the memory hole, and with it the idea that
there is a separation of powers, Congressional authority to make war, or a functioning
Constitution.
America's Dirty War in Libya
While the enduring memory of Libya for most Americans is the political theater that resulted
from the attack on the US facility in Benghazi that killed several Americans, including US
Ambassador Stevens, it is not nearly the most consequential. Rather, America's use of terrorist
groups (and the insurgents who emerged from them) as military proxies may perhaps be the real
legacy from a strategic perspective. For while the corporate media presented the narrative of
spontaneous protests and uprisings to overthrow Gaddafi, it was in fact a loose network of
terror groups that did the dirty work.
While much of this recent history has been buried by bad reporting, establishment
mythmaking, and conspiracist muddying of the truth, it was surprisingly well reported at the
time. For example, as the New York Times wrote of one of the
primary US-backed forces on the ground during the war in 2011:
"The Libyan Islamic Fighting Group was formed in 1995 with the goal of ousting Colonel
Qaddafi. Driven into the mountains or exile by Libyan security forces, the group's members
were among the first to join the fight against Qaddafi security forces Officially the
fighting group does not exist any longer, but the former members are fighting largely under
the leadership of Abu Abdullah Sadik [aka Abdelhakim Belhadj]."
Even at the time, there was considerable unease among Washington's strategic planners that
the Obama Adminstration's embrace of a terror group with known links to al-Qaeda could prove to
be a major blunder. "American, European and Arab intelligence services acknowledge that they
are worried about the influence that the former group's members might exert over Libya after
Colonel Qaddafi is gone, and they are trying to assess their influence and any lingering links
to Al Qaeda," the Times noted.
Of course, those in the know at the various US intelligence agencies already had a pretty
good sense of who they were backing, or at least the elements likely to be involved in any US
operation. Specifically, the US knew that the areas from which it was drawing anti-Gaddafi
opposition forces was a hotbed of criminal and terrorist activity.
"Almost 19 percent of the fighters in the Sinjar Records came from Libya alone.
Furthermore, Libya contributed far more fighters per capita than any other nationality in the
Sinjar Records, including Saudi Arabia The apparent surge in Libyan recruits traveling to
Iraq may be linked with the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group's (LIFG) increasingly cooperative
relationship with al-Qa'ida which culminated in the LIFG officially joining al-Qa'ida on
November 3, 2007 The most common cities that the fighters called home were Darnah [Derna],
Libya and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, with 52 and 51 fighters respectively. Darnah [Derna] with a
population just over 80,000 compared to Riyadh's 4.3 million, has far and away the largest
per capita number of fighters in the Sinjar records."
It was known at the time that the majority of the anti-Gaddafi forces hailed from the region
including Derna, Benghazi, and Tobruk – the "Eastern Libya" so often referred to as
anti-Gaddafi – and that the likelihood that al-Qaeda and other terror groups were among
the ranks of the US recruits was very high. Nevertheless, they persisted.
Take the case of the February 17 Martyrs Brigade, charged by the US with guarding the CIA
facility in Benghazi at which Ambassador Stevens was murdered. As the Los Angeles Times
reported in 2012:
"Over the last year, while assigned by their militia to help protect the U.S. mission in
Benghazi, the pair had been drilled by American security personnel in using their weapons,
securing entrances, climbing walls and waging hand-to-hand combat The militiamen flatly deny
supporting the assailants but acknowledge that their large, government-allied force, known as
the Feb. 17 Martyrs Brigade, could include anti-American elements The Feb. 17 brigade is
regarded as one of the more capable militias in eastern Libya."
But it wasn't just LIFG and al-Qaeda affiliated criminal groups entering the fray thanks to
Washington rolling out the blood-stained red carpet.
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A longtime asset of the US, General Khalifa Hifter and his so-called Libyan National Army
have been on the ground in Libya since 2011, and have emerged as one of the primary forces
vying for power in post-war Libya. Hifter has a long and sordid history working for the CIA in
its attempts to overthrow Gaddafi in the 1980s before being resettled conveniently near
Langley, Virginia. As the
New York Times reported in 1991:
The secret paramilitary operation, set in motion in the final months of the Reagan
Administration, provided military aid and training to about 600 Libyan soldiers who were
among those captured during border fighting between Libya and Chad in 1988 They were trained
by American intelligence officials in sabotage and other guerrilla skills, officials said, at
a base near Ndjamena, the Chadian capital. The plan to use the exiles fit neatly into the
Reagan Administration's eagerness to topple Colonel Qaddafi.
Hifter, leader of these failed efforts, became known as the CIA's "Libya point man,"
having taken part in numerous regime change efforts, including the aborted attempt to
overthrow Gaddafi in 1996. So, his arrival in 2011 at the height of the uprising signaled an
escalation of the conflict from an armed uprising to an international operation. Whether
Hifter was directly working with US intelligence or simply complimenting US efforts by
continuing his decades-long personal war against Gaddafi is somewhat irrelevant. What matters
is that Hifter and the Libyan National Army, like LIFG and other groups, became part of the
broader destabilization effort which successfully toppled Gaddafi and created the chaotic
hellscape that is modern Libya.
Such is the legacy of the US dirty war on Libya.
The Past is Prologue
It is September 2020. Americans are focused on an election between an Orange Fascist
criminal and an old-school right-wing Democrat war criminal. Where Donald Trump projects chaos
and disorder, Biden projects stability, order, and a return to normalcy. If Trump is the virus,
then surely Biden is the cure.
It is September 2020. Libya prepares to enter its eighth year of civil war. Slave markets
like the one in Bani Walid are as common as youth literacy centers were in Gaddafi's Libya.
Armed gangs and militias wield power even in areas nominally under government control. A
warlord regroups in the East as he looks to Russia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the United Arab
Emirates for support.
It is September 2020 and the US-NATO war on Libya has faded to a distant memory as other
issues like Black Lives Matter and police murder of Black youth have captured the public
imagination and discourse.
But these issues are, in fact, united by the bond of white supremacy and anti-Blackness. The
Libya once known as the "Jewel of Africa," a country that provided refuge for many sub-Saharan
African migrant workers while maintaining independence from the US and the former colonial
powers of Europe, is no more. In its place is a failed state that now reflects the kind of
vicious anti-Black racism forcefully suppressed by the Gaddafi government.
Libya as the global exemplar of the exploitation and disposability of the black body.
Squint a little and you can see President Joe Biden getting the old band back together.
Hillary Clinton welcomed into the Oval Office as an influential voice, someone to give words to
the demented thoughts of the living corpse serving as Commander-in-Chief. Derek Chollet and Ben
Rhodes laughing together as they buy another round at their favorite DC hangout, toasting to
the re-establishment of order in Washington. Barack Obama as the éminence grise behind
the political resurgence of the liberal-conservative dominant structure.
But in Libya, there is no going back, no fixing the past to escape the present.
Perhaps the same might be true of the United States.
AVmaster , 13 hours ago
Number of wars the boy king and his minions started: 6, that we know of: Ukraine, Syria,
Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan.
(Not withstanding the proxy wars during the "muslim spring" like in egypt)
Number of wars Trump has started: 0
This is NOT including the ongoing wars that trump inherited but has dialed back
somewhat, like reduced troop presence in iraq/afghan.
fucking truth , 12 hours ago
Trump hasn't started any but he still feeds the beast, hopefully his next four will see
a correction to this behaviour,one can only hope.
ay_arrow 2
GreatUncle , 3 hours ago
Has no choice.
The economic reality is the MIC is a big part of the US domestic economy.
Shut that down and you would go into a full blown depression.
If you build bullets, missile, bombs, F35's etc. they have to be used or you have to
start scrapping them.
The issue though is not the MIC as such but the lack of any moral integrity and
disregard for human life by those mentioned in the article. Once the country was put into
this position by them it is much more difficult to extract.
Now I think those in the article should be prosecuted for not going to Congress to
declare a war and fund it correctly as this is supposed to be the check and balance of a
rogue president.
play_arrow
Bollixed , 2 hours ago
Regarding the MIC, many of those companies consist of manufacturing entities comprised
of engineers, factory infrastructure and logistics infrastructure funded by government
spending that could realistically be 'retooled' to produce things that could benefit
society instead of piss money away on the tools of destruction. America is in need of a
massive infrastructure overhaul from our electric grid to our transportation modes to name
just two. Nothing is preventing those MIC giants from refocusing their efforts toward a
better America versus the current focus they are paid to undertake. It's a matter of
priorities and right now I find their priorities misplaced and vulgar.
The money is available at their current funding rates, the manpower and brain power is
there, what is lacking is the will to turn the ship around and start putting humans before
profits. There is no need to go into a full blown depression as with the shut down of that
capacity if those entities are given a mandate to redirect their output for the good of
society and create things of lasting value. In other words, take the retooling mindset that
turned refrigerator factories into weapons factories like they did in WW2 and take the
weapons factories and turn them into entities for the betterment of society. And then wean
them off of the government teat.
DeepStateThrombosis , 3 hours ago
Unused funds from the Pentagon can be redirected to the Wall and other Defense
protections not known to the public at this time.
ay_arrow
DaiRR , 1 hour ago
DemoRats and NeoCons will try every way possible to keep the wars going.
The USA is incredibly blessed to have Donald J. Trump in the White House.
play_arrow
1
muggeridge , 11 hours ago
To think Americans demonstrated in the millions to stop the Vietnam war exposed as a
fraud by Daniel Ellsberg in the PENTAGON PAPERS. Obama did admit that the removal of
Ghadaffy was his biggest foreign policy mistake. Clinton also in trouble over Tunisia while
Secretary of State with US ambassador killed in 2012. She took responsibility but was found
not to have acted improperly by US Congress. However her part in this tragedy remains an
open question. Today the only Middle Eastern country still standing IRAN supported by
China. Syria supported by Russia. Cold Wars never go away?
play_arrow 2
GreatUncle , 3 hours ago
Cold war is an inevitable consequence of a MIC that must continually produce and expend
munitions to keep its part of the economy going.
2 play_arrow
scaleindependent , 10 hours ago
Final Jeopardy, genius!
What is Syria and Iran?
HIS acts against those countries ARE acts of war.
lay_arrow
muggeridge , 10 hours ago
Regime Change as our modus operandi to serve the cause of military superiority as if
pre-set by computer.
How everything became war and the military became everything by Rosa Brooks Tales of the
Pentagon.
Something funny happened on the way to the forum; Broadway musical. Hail
Caesar?
play_arrow
CheapBastard , 7 hours ago
Hey, military contractors have to put food on the table also, even if it means murdering
millions of innocent people in Yugoslavia (like Clinton did) or in the middle east (like
Bush and Obama did).
play_arrow
GreatUncle , 3 hours ago
Yep some people don't get it.
With all the military contractors now moved into peaceful protests maybe we actually
need more war to keep them gainfully employed.
Get the picture?
2 play_arrow
SoilMyselfRotten , 3 hours ago
HIS acts against those countries ARE acts of war
Don't forget also blockading Venezuela
No1uNo , 9 hours ago
No Libya story is complete without mentioning David Shayler- the MI6 agent turned
whistleblower who was tasked with blowing up Gaddafi in his car - but refused to do so when
he was accompanied by his wife and children. (under the Tony Blair govt). -yep.
Shayler later went into a bizarre series of personas -which is understood by many as self
preservation tactic - (testimony of mentally unstable is not recognised in court - so no
threat).
Then there's the covert ratlines of gathering the ex-Libyan army weapons & shipping
them to ISIS Syria via Turkey and White Helmets (see James Corbett) organised by HRC via
Benghazi -so no rescue for US Ambassador & team (RIP) HRC prefer'd keep op covert.
Carrier 50 miles off coast -HRC killed US Diplomats & support team. -Biden knew.
Also check out the courageous Dilyana Gaytandzhieva who runs armswatch .com and some SM
in her name. for laypersons overview of extent of games-within-games &
wheels-within-wheels in arms trade/ chem weapons "research". She's currently researching
the Beirut bombings - which will be another revelation when it hits.
sauldaddy , 11 hours ago
That awkward moment when you find out the first Black President brought slavery BACK to
Africa .....Q- That awkward moment when you find out the first Black President brought
slavery BACK to Africa
_arrow
. . . _ _ _ . . . , 13 hours ago
Qaddafi kept African migrants out of the Mediterranean and away from Europe's
shores.
Sarkozy couldn't allow that knowing what was in store for Europe.
He predicted what would happen to Europe were he to be deposed. He was right. Macron's (and
Merkel's) policies are proof.
That and the gold dinar was his undoing.
.
P.S. Don't tell the leftists, but Libya was the only case of a successful socialist state.
On second thought, it might be funny to see them publicly defending Qaddafi.
Ms No , 13 hours ago
That may work for a while when you pull black gold out of the ground, for a while. Oil
declines and free **** armies breed faster. Then you are Saudi Arabia and we are about to
see how that ends up.
play_arrow
not dead yet , 12 hours ago
Libyan youth unemployment was over 30% because these spoiled kids with their families
getting oil checks in the mail every month refused to do menial jobs. Qaddafi kept the
black Africans out of the boats by letting them do the work the kids and other Libyans
thought was beneath them. A lot of the money the Africans made they sent home which was
spent in the local economies which increased jobs there. Libya also invested heavily in
Africa which created lots of jobs. These actions kept the number of Africans headed to
Europe a trickle. Once Qaddafi was gone so were all the jobs in Libya and the money that
flowed into Africa dried up and jobs were lost. A lot of businesses the Libyans created in
Africa were confiscated by the local governments and no doubt given to cronies who ran them
into the ground.
No1uNo , 9 hours ago
Gaddafi thought wrongly that job description would save him. Also suggested trading oil
for €uro's over dollar$, which blew the lid on powder keg. In the end they say it was
the oil, though my thinking was DC think tanks didn't want a monied "Mexico" on south coast
of Euroland - could make Europe too financially powerful & too difficult to
control.
play_arrow
. . . _ _ _ . . . , 6 hours ago
I had heard about selling oil for Euros in relation to Saddam, but not to Qaddafi.
Qaddafi was about the gold Dinar.
??
No1uNo , 6 hours ago
Yep, it's what can happen if I'm not careful when I post and try to watch a documentary
at the same time.
Thanks for your vigilance.
Find the Libyan gold that dissapeard.... and one likely finds the source of the
overthrow....
quanttech , 13 hours ago
try the french treasury...
Bill300 , 12 hours ago
Look no further than Hillary's brother. General Gage, a former Special Forces Colonel,
had been hired by Hillary, et al, to assemble a merc army to secure Qaddafi's gold amidst
the fog of war and transport it to Haiti to be laundered thru Hugh Rodham's little gold
mine. Does anyone really think Obama sold enough books to buy a $12M seaside mansion in
Massachusetts and the Washington DC home?
These people are so evil.
Justapleb , 12 hours ago
That's certainly titillating. Do you have a source that puts these things together?
I tried some Google searches, but I already know those searches are censored so it is
not an easy thing to find
dark pools of soros , 4 hours ago
you gotta get your hands dirty if you want to know whats in the soil
DaCrustyDad , 13 hours ago
Imagine if some country invaded us and slaughtered about 23.5 million (apples for apples
based on the 500k civilians killed out of 7,000,000)? Obama and the Clinton's should be
playing basketball at Pelican Bay the rest of their lives at best.
quanttech , 12 hours ago
It's mind boggling.
Trump dropped 7400 bombs on Afghanistan in 2019. That would be like 60,000 bombs
dropping on the US one year.
Arch_Stanton , 9 hours ago
Libya was a modern, secular Arab state. A model for the rest of Islam. Who the f@@k
decided it was appropriate to reduce Libya to a 19th century sh1thole?
Shifter_X , 9 hours ago
Hillary ******* Clinton
Constitution101 , 6 hours ago
on instruction from the cabalist banksters who never permit a rival currency system.
Qaddafi's gold-backed dinar throughout Nth Africa would have exposed and displace their
petrodollar scam in which they infinitely print their cronies untold trillion$.
end the fed, and all central banks.
Best Satan in Town , 6 hours ago
That's the story in a nutsh-ell
desertboy , 10 hours ago
The petrodollar centrality gets monotonously overplayed. For anyone who cares to look,
the geopolitics of the West/NATO are the geopolitics of all its central bank owners as an
interlinked group, who are keeping all their options open.
Destroying Libya went beyond the petrodollar to the fight for influence in Africa's
future, where France's history in Africa has made it the designated hitter. Note the new
CFR-type buzz on a "resurgent France" due to this role.
No1uNo , 8 hours ago
I maintained elsewhere on this thread, was advice of DC think tanks he was taken out.
Because a well funded, well educated, low cost, labor factory resource state on south coast
of eurozone makes europe too competitive to DC tank's interests. (and open Africa's growing
economy to cheap - outside eurozone - euro profiting business interests).
Gaddafi was never a threat to Europe, but europe buying his oil and building his
economy......different story.
No1uNo , 9 hours ago
B-I-N-G-O !
get your case of beer for that one!
not dead yet , 11 hours ago
Qaddafi would have not met with death if he only wanted to sell oil in the Gold Dinar.
Instead he wanted the Gold Dinar as the currency for all of Africa. The system was being
set up along with 4 central banks to manage African economic and monetary affairs when
Libya was attacked. Libya also invested heavily in Africa creating lots of jobs and
enhancing communications. Unlike the IMF and World Bank with their draconian edicts
attached to their loans, like no loans for fossil fueled power plants and other eco
garbage, almost guaranteeing default the Libyan Development Fund attached no such garbage
to their loans making success possible. Europe was charging Africa $500 million a year for
use of their satellites. Qaddafi ponied up $300 million of the $400 million needed to put
up Africa's first satellite screwing Europe out of $500 million a year. Qaddafi was also
the driving force for Africa for Africans and which kept US African command and it's troops
out of Africa. Now the US has troops all over Africa. Qaddafi really was bad. Bad for
Western exploitation of Africa.
At the time of Qaddafi's demise the Libyan Development Fund had $32 billion in banks
around the world. Western governments and media tried to claim it was money stolen by
Qaddafi. Last I knew the Libyan's, the rightful owners of that money, haven't seen a
penny.
Constitution101 , 6 hours ago
great info.
got a good concise source?
dark pools of soros , 4 hours ago
you have to dig deep to get little nuggets of truth about Libya since so many sides want
to tarnish and twist to push their agenda and greed on its riches
SmokeyBlonde , 12 hours ago
America, as a country, deserves whatever happens just for electing and re-electing
Obama.
Far too many grifters, Bolsheviks, pedocrats, and sub-moron IQ feral ghetto rats
oh-so-pleased with themselves for being so enlightened and bringing chaos to the whole F'n
world.
ReflectoMatic , 11 hours ago
The Democrats are working with the globalist at the United Nations & World Economic
Forum. The program being run is the destruction of the United States and elimination of
humans, per instructions from "The Cult of Rasur", which is located in the jungle at Mount
Rasur in Costa Rica but now renamed as the United Nations University For Peace. The
university teaches occult and meditation and only graduates 20 students per year, those
students then take positions of influence within the UN. The cult was founded by Maurice
Strong & Dr Muller, Strong also created the Agenda 21 & World Economic Forum, plus
in 1982, the more exclusive secret group of 300 called just "World Forum" which met in Vail
Colorado near his hippie commune at the Baca Grande in the San Luis Valley.
The GAIA Theory which was converted into GAIA Religion at the Maurice Strong Hippie
Commune in Colorado. David Perkins was there, apparently one of the first hippies to arrive
at the commune around 1978. In this podcast we get a rare look into the mindset of the
globalist and the creation of Agenda 21.
It's not clear if David Perkins & his partner, Chris O'Brian, are aware of Maurice
Strong & Klaus Schwab conducting the special and secret World Forum of 300 at Vail in
1982. At that 1982 event the concepts David Perkins describes, combined with concepts
gotten by paranormal activities at Mount Rasur in Costa Rica, were passed down to the 300
and thus began the creation that has brought the world to a standstill.
Chris O'Brian has an interesting podcast also, describing the Maurice Strong hippie
commune, in this he describes meeting Lawrence Rockefeller at the commune.
And finally, who the heck is this guy, the one in the middle? MJ-12 captured this photo
of him in Hollywood in 1972, he was then usually seen in company of Curtis LeMay, grandson
of the General who founded JPL NASA MJ-12, then in 1982 he was at that World Forum in Vail
and in charge of covertly poisoning them all with LSD. He was born in Berkley or Alameda in
1951 while his mother was at theater watching "Day The Earth Stood Still". Seems there is a
message which needs to be understood.
David Champaign, night manager at the Christie Lodge in Avon Colorado, can give further
description and verification that the ultra-secret World Forum did occur.
If you listened to that podcast, there was mention of the "group of psychics" at the
Baca hippie commune. The guy in the photo, the link just above, the photo was taken in the
presence of Allen J Funk MJ-12, Funk's only friend took the photo, Bob Custer. Bob shared
hotel rooms with the Stones & Monkeys while on concert tour as official photographer.
The guy in the photo and Bob were taken one night, in Allen's white Cadillac convertible,
to a house in the hills east of JPL Pasadena. There he met Bob's ex, Val, and Val's work
associates, the work Val and associates did was some secret psychic project in Central
America and perhaps in Colorado, usually Val just came over to Bob's house to visit when
Val was not off at those remote locations. Secret about it they were.
Shifter_X , 8 hours ago
These are self-loathing humans. Imagine wanting to destroy the human race.
SMH
bobroonie , 13 hours ago
Obama bombed Libya in defense of Islamic terrorists he sold weapons to. 600 requests for
more security from Ambassador Stevens unanswered.. But when defense contractor Osprey
Global's Sidney Blumenthal called Clinton gave him special treatment. Lots of money to be
made for a defense contractor and the Secretary of State that starts the war.
not dead yet , 12 hours ago
At the time Stevens died, he was not murdered he died of smoke inhalation as the
invaders set the place on fire and the safe room wasn't air tight, Benghazi was the most
dangerous place on earth for diplomats. Attempted murders and kidnappings of diplomats were
so rife that most governments closed their missions and evacuated their people. Stevens was
well aware of this and he went to Benghazi, the US Embassy is in Tripoli, anyway with his
last meeting running guns with the Turks. By doing so he signed his death warrant.
According to many at the time Stevens was begging for more security shortly before he left
for Benghazi he was offered a military security detachment that was already in Tripoli and
Stevens refused. Seems Stevens and Hillary didn't want the military to know what they were
up to.
quanttech , 12 hours ago
the ambassador got what was coming to him. he was a terrorist, plain and simple.
the rest of the Americans were rescued ... by Qadaffi loyalists. the Americans are shy
to admit this.
David2923 , 5 hours ago
Facts you probably do not know about Libya under Muammar Gaddafi:
• There are no electricity bills in Libya; electricity is free for all its
citizens.
• There is no interest on loans, banks in Libya are state-owned and loans given to
all its citizens at 0% interest by law.
• If a Libyan is unable to find employment after graduation, the state pays the
average salary of the profession as if he or she is employed until employment is found.
• Should Libyans want to take up a farming career, they receive farm land, a house,
equipment, seed and livestock to kick start their farms – all for free.
• Gaddafi carried out the world's largest irrigation project, known as the Great
Man-Made River project, to make water readily available throughout the desert country.
• A home considered a human right in Libya. (In Qaddafi's Green Book it states:
"The house is a basic need of both the individual and the family, therefore it should not
be owned by others.")
• All newlyweds in Libya receive 60,000 Dinar (US$ 50,000 ) by the government to
buy their first apartment so to help start a family.
• A portion of Libyan oil sales is credited directly to the bank accounts of all
Libyan citizens.
• A mother who gives birth to a child receives US $5,000.
• When a Libyan buys a car, the government subsidizes 50% of the price.
• The price of petrol in Libya is $0.14 per liter.
• For $ 0.15, a Libyan local can purchase 40 loaves of bread.
• Education and medical treatments are free in Libya. Libya can boast one of the
finest health care systems in the Arab and African World. All people have access to
doctors, hospitals, clinics and medicines, completely free of charge.
• If Libyans cannot find the education or medical facilities they need in Libya,
the government funds them to go abroad for it – not only free but they get US
$2,300/month accommodation and car allowance.
• 25% of Libyans have a university degree. Before Gaddafi only 25% of Libyans were
literate. Today the figure is 87%.
• Libya has no external debt and its reserves amount to $150 billion – though
much of this is now frozen globally.
You have explained why Libya was perfectly ripe for looting by the US Evil Empire and
its slave states.
dark pools of soros , 5 hours ago
Yes I've been shining a light on this for years. The true history of Libya should red
pill EVERYONE that can still think for themselves.
We are destroying George Washington statues while worshiping a black african american
president who destroyed the one rare prosperous socialist African nation.. which now has
slave trading!!!! all because it didn't share it's water to french/italian bottlers. And of
course the Gold Dinar becoming the African currency.
Lokiban , 11 hours ago
Gadhaffi's two mistakes leading to this war.
Threaten to sell his sweet oil in gold dinars
Threaten French president Sarkozy to pull out all of his money out of France and reveal
to the public the donations he made to the French presidential campaign of Sarkozy, which
we know is illegal because foreigners can't donate money.
That sealed his fate. America needed to stop this gold for oil scheme just like it did
in Iraq and French president Sarkozy's presidency was ont he line.
NuYawkFrankie , 12 hours ago
Slick Willy --> War Criminal
Chimp --> War Criminal
Obongo --> War Criminal
Hillarity --> War Criminal
Groper Joe --> War Criminal
Etc... etc... etc...
Are you at least BEGINNING to see a pattern here???
If not, you soon will do as 'the chickens come home to roost' and ZOG focusses it's
attention on YOUR a$$!
Apeon , 11 hours ago
Apparently you are not old enough to remember Johnson
NuYawkFrankie , 8 hours ago
I'm holding "Johnson" as we speak... and the most I can accuse him of is being a naughty
- sometimes a VERY naughty- boy. Looks like he's due for another spanking!
NAV , 2 hours ago
But in Libya, there is no going back, no fixing the past to escape the present.
Perhaps the same might be true of the United States.
Obama left this country and Libya in rags, what else is there to say.
Yet Obama lives, while Gaddafi is dead, a man who had the good of his people in mind and
already was using primary water from which eventually all of Africa could be watered and
developed into a paradise for his people, a people who live on a continent rich with more
natural resources than any other.
But this could not be allowed by the Devil's Globalists who want to own all the world's
resources in order to make beggars of all mankind. Obama was their man. He not only
betrayed Africa but all men for a $40,000,000 pot of silver proffered by the world enemy of
liberty - the DEEPSTATE.
NAV , 2 hours ago
But in Libya, there is no going back, no fixing the past to escape the present.
Perhaps the same might be true of the United States.
Obama left this country and Libya in rags, what else is there to say.
Yet Obama lives, while Gaddafi is dead, a man who had the good of his people in mind and
already was using primary water from which eventually all of Africa could be watered and
developed into a paradise for his people, a people who live on a continent rich with more
natural resources than any other.
But this could not be allowed by the Devil's Globalists who want to own all the world's
resources in order to make beggars of all mankind. Obama was their man. He not only
betrayed Africa but all men for a $40,000,000 pot of silver proffered by the world enemy of
liberty - the DEEPSTATE.
you know it makes sense , 5 hours ago
Who writes this crap and who believes a word of it ?.
No mention that Gaddafi planned to set up a new gold backed African money to sell his
oil rather than the euro or the dollar. 143+ tons of gold and 140 tons of silver went
missing.
It was because of this lie and NATO's involvement in the destruction of Libya that both
Russia and China vowed never again to allow this to happen to another country
taglady , 7 hours ago
Trump: "lock her up" became "she's been through enough." What has she been through
exactly? "Make America great again" became we need to bail out Boeing and the rest because
of an "invisible enemy." It's invisible alright, because it doesn't exist. The only
invisible enemy are the parasites shoveling our money into their own very deep pockets in
every conceivable way. Like Biden and his entire family and the Clintons and the Obamas and
many others have been doing for many years. Like Bush and Cheney made out so well after
911. That's how Gates and the pharmaceutical industry became so bloated while real
Americans have struggled to make ends meet.
taglady , 7 hours ago
Interesting coalition between finance, government and media. Like when Bush announced
the necessary, unconstitutional war and changes to our society after 911. We didn't get to
vote on these changes. No referendum ever happened. Just an announcement in the media and
media spin on public opinion, then preplanned actions by corrupt officials. This alliance
was never more obvious than during the cv response. We are censored and silenced while
liars and thieves are given the bully pulpit to beat us over the head with their idiocracy
to enrich very few parasites, again. Then the public is blamed for the rogue actions of
government/ business/media. America is bad. We just keep voting for these dummies. Except
our voting system is run by the same corrupt dummies who keep getting re-elected. Hmmm.
Just like they did to Kadafi and many others. Suddenly Libya is poor. What happened to all
of Kadafi's gold? Probably the same thing that happened to the Pentagon trillions and SS
"surplus" and public pensions across America. Taxation without representation leaves us
broke, without a voice and broken. What are we going to do about it?
Iconoclast27 , 1 hour ago
The problem is you believe imperialism and colonialism has ended in the African
continent when that clearly isn't the case, this Libyan regime change op being the latest
example of interference you are claiming no longer exists.
John C Durham , 1 hour ago
Actually the end of colonialism that FDR ("Winston, Colonialism is the Cause of this
War. This war is going to end all Colonialism".) wished for is hardly over. We got
Democratic Party's Truman, not the great Henry Wallace, remember?
Libya only proves this true.
LEEPERMAX , 5 hours ago
America's "BOTCHED CIA OPERATION OF THE CENTURY" as they funneled GADDAFI WEAPONS from
the PORT OF BENGHAZI into SYRIA as OBAMA & CO. completed their agenda to DESTABILIZE
THE MIDDLE EAST and eventually ALL OF EUROPE.
NO MORE . . . NO LESS
QABubba , 5 hours ago
This is the very reason I sat out the 2016 election. They say citizens don't vote
foreign policy but I did. The "We came, we saw, he died" statement illustrated that our
leaders didn't have a clue as to the geopolitical damage we had done. The US supported a
"no fly zone" in the UN Security Council. Russia supported it. Gaddafi declared his own,
stating that none of his air force would fly. The US and their allies quickly "redefined"
it to mean they could destroy his air force on the ground, and once destroyed, any of his
antiaircraft guns, and once destroyed, any of his tanks and artillery (which don't fly),
and his troop convoys.
Gaddafi's, Russia's, perhaps North Korea's big mistake was believing the US would stand
by their agreement in the UN Security Council. This and the Eastward creep of Nato may very
well be the deciding factor's in Putin's view that he has no responsible actors in the West
to deal with. North Korea was watching. Any dream of getting a denuclearized North Korea
just receded by about 50 years.
And of course, our presstitute media had a starring role as always. The average American
thinks this was a just war, and knows nothing of the slave markets, and nothing about the
flood of African immigrants, who are majority muslim, and have no plans whatsoever to
assimilate, into Europe. The leaders of France and supposedly Great Britain have stabbed
their citizens in the back, as they will now have to watch European culture destroyed.
Vivekwhu , 6 hours ago
Many thanks are due to Draitser for this excellent report on the vile activities of the
US Evil Empire in Libya. The power motives have been laid bare, but the massive greed of
the US/EU imperial elites have not been detailed. The greed for Libyan oil by France and
Italy is well known but the US also looted Libyan gold, just as they looted Ukrainian gold
after the 2014 Maidan coup.
By removing Gaddaffi (and who can forget Clinton's evil words "We came, we saw, he
died") and looting the gold they scuppered the plans to create a gold-backed dinar for all
of Africa, that would have challenged the use of USD, French-controlled "Franc" and other
fiat currencies.
That would have been shocking for the US/EU imperial elite that regards Africa as their
private fiefdom to loot at will.
Combined with a lust for power, the US/EU imperial elites have an insatiable greed.
After all, what use is an empire if the elites can't gorge themselves at will?
lastugro , 10 hours ago
... and Medvedev led Russia abstained (did not veto the vote) at the UNSC session where
the intervention was approved. Russia bears a tacit responsibility.
Michael Norton , 11 hours ago
Obama supplied ISIS with leftover weapons from the Libya operation to take out Bashar
Assad in Syria. That didn't work out for him too well, did it? Got an ambassador and some
CIA spooks killed in Benghazi.
dogfish , 9 hours ago
And Trump steals the oil, the oil that is desperately needed by the suffering Syrians.
Trump is a real humanitarian.
Maghreb2 , 5 hours ago
Obama believed every word he was fed about the R2P Right to Protect fantasy concocted at
the U.N. At the same time if you knew how dangerous the man was with his Green Revolution
and Desert sorcery you would have had him killed.
The first step of his plan was the Libyan African Gold Dinar which would have been a
commodity backed gold cuerrency. This would have broken Rothschild and most of the colonial
banking systems. On its own it was a just move but not even the Chinese could have an
African Bloc form that fast with that much growth. Imploding the CFA system would have
destroyed France as we know it and made it poorer than Poland.
Second factor was his ruthless plans to deal with his Islamic Nationalist and Monarchist
"Brothers". Gaddafis Green revolution could have spread across the desert wastes and easily
overthrown the Al Sauds and trapped Arab natioanlists in their citites. Not a powerful
fighter but understood desert warfare. It was the cost of Soviet equipment and the French
adapted technicals that made him weaker. The Wars of the Sahara desert like those of
Polisario Front and Libyan Chad War were decided by mobility.
Finally there were reports amongst the occultists that the man was obsessed with the
Occult and the Djinn. Giving a warlord his own banking system and access to African black
Magic was enough even for the Jesuits to view the man as a threat to global peace. Rumours
the djinns warned him of advance of air strikes and gave strength to his soldiers in the
deserts made him a force to be reckoned with in his borders. The association with Abu Nidal
is rumoured to have revealed things about the nature of these desert beings. If he had the
innate gift for it his tribe probably would have joined us at some point. Reports he had
fallen out with the real Green a man a sage and advisor to the Islamic leaders point to a
major rupture with the Islamic creed.
Only God can really judge whether his plan to emancipate Africa was his own power grab
to free the continent or another mad man trying to join the global elite by enslaving
them.
It would appear, at this point in time, that regardless of motive of his plan, the
US-backed alternative has turned out far worse. The only positive result is more money in
the pockets of the MIC and the opportunity to play war games in the desert.
Maghreb2 , 2 hours ago
Like I said he was a dangerous man. It takes one to rock the boat like he did. End of
the day the system could have been put in place for the African Gold Standard to start to
expand into areas that were tired of the Central African Franc system but it would have
destroyed Rothschild and led to hundreds of million of Black Muslims having resources to
throw at Israel.
Making Chad, Senegal and Mali into something like Yugoslavia with Chinese and Russian
Weaponry was beyond the imaginings of Africom. Would have lowered the birth rates with the
development and solved the migration and economic crisis. Having these countries like
Sweden would have also created living space for white liberals who were highly educated.
Instead all the money vanished with the Kleptokrats. Its only insane Facists who want dead
Africans on their doorsteps in Berlin and on the television that agree with this
madness.
Euafrica, Eurabia could be avoided by making sure the Africans slow their birth rates
through development and saving wealth rather than following it to Europe when the big men
run with gold and dollars.
At the same time he was known as a devil to the Arabs and the dissidents. Sort of like
Rockefeller with the company towns and corporate face. You ask the bastards to resign and
why all these people has vanished and gives you statistics on how many electrical
appliances have been handed out and says he was never in charge and you don't know how the
system works.
Hard to say but he played the game. Robbed Bunker Hunt which was enough for us. Bunker
C%nt as we called him when he tried to bring down the Morgue in Texas. Stuff like that is
why the Illuminati are feared. Its hard for anyone to gauge what is going on and what the
domino effects are. He was trained by the Americans and British and supplied with Socialist
apparatus. Gianni Agnelli the suavest yid since Joseph kept NATO off his back. He had ties
to the U.S deep State as well but that goes back to Wheelus.
Like we said about the Occult everyone has a backer but that man had demons watching
over him. According to some. Thin line between a Djinn and Shaytan when politics and murder
get involved.
Failed nation states make a perfect platform for a profitable global criminal
enterprise.
voting machine , 6 hours ago
Allen Dulles couldn't have scripted this operation any better.
This is right out of the CIA hand book. Regime change 101
Jackprong , 7 hours ago
As is painfully evident, there is no clear way to know how much was spent other than to
take the word of those who prosecuted the war. With no congressional oversight, and no
clear documentary record, the war on Libya disappears down the memory hole, and with it the
idea that there is a separation of powers, Congressional authority to make war, or a
functioning Constitution.
Got an answer for this: CUTBACKS!
bshirley1968 , 3 hours ago
" The story begins with Bernard Henri-Lévy, the French philosopher, journalist,
and amateur foreign service officer who fancied himself an international spy. "
The real reason is the threat against the `dollar`.
JeanTrejean , 6 hours ago
It's the Frenchmen Sarkozy and B.H. Levy who are responsible for this agression.
The USA and NATO (outside Europe) were just "dumb followers".
Vivekwhu , 6 hours ago
Nothing dumb about Obomber: why did he loot and murder in Libya (or Yemen, Ukraine,
Syria etc)? Because he CAN!!!
Joiningupthedots , 21 minutes ago
Everything The West touches turns to rat ****.
Mercifully Russia recognised its mistake with Libya and stepped in to save Syria from
the same fate.
Every country, its military bandits politicians involved in the unprovoked attack and
subsequent destruction of Libya can be considered........WAR CRIMINALS.
Hopefully one day they will be stupid enough to attack Russia or China and be completely
destroyed for their stupidity.
OTBorder@CA , 1 hour ago
First of all, Gadhafi gave an unconditional surrender that was brokered by international
diplomatic channels over a month before our invasion. Obama & his minions ignored it.
We knew many pilots that flew "missions" over Libya during this war & were involved in
a massive bombing campaign. Don't forget the Wikileaks where France signed onto the war on
the condition they got a % of Libya's gold. My wish is that someday history will tell the
truth about the bastard Obama. Read the Lost Arab Spring by, Walid Phares to see all of the
other Countries Obama tried to overthrow & have radical Islamic Terrorists replace the
peaceful governments.
csc61 , 1 hour ago
The author gives these idiots far too much credit. People must come to the understanding
that presidents and politicians (on all sides) simply do as they're told. It is the hidden
hand, the international financiers, who are ruining the world. Politicians are mere pawns
... minions willing to sell their souls for a few short years of presumed power, only to
scurry off afterward to play the role of elder statesmen. Politicians are nothing more than
privileged degenerates who proved early in their political lives they could be easily
corrupted and compromised. It is not them who do the damage directly - these things would
happen no matter who's in charge. No, they're simply the ones pushed out front to sign
documents and take blame for the world's ruination ... a small price they are willing to
pay to feed their narcissistic appetites.
Mentaliusanything , 7 hours ago
I would caption that image as "Who is going first to the platform and rope... Biden
thinks he has won a Prize and is excited , The Kenyan says you first Bro (loser) and the
white Privileged woman is laughing as she says , You have nothing on Me... Bitches, I bury
mine deep and dead, I do not swing
Scipio Africanuz , 8 hours ago
Fair enough..
Now that we've completed stage 1 of the harvest, perhaps we ought boost the Republic of
Liberty, and hopefully, temper the anxious wrath of folks..
Libya was a catastrophic mistake, borne of hubris, vanity, intellectual rigidity,
vainglory, and confusion. Hubris on the part of some, Sarkozy comes to mind, vanity on the
part of some, Hillary Clinton comes to mind, confusion on the part of some, Obama comes to
mind, and Ideological rigidity on the part of some, Biden comes to mind, and vainglorious
pride on the part of some, the security establishment and their directors come to
mind..
Having cleared that, it's no use crying over spilt milk, what's necessary, if the
humility to acknowledge errors is available, is contributing rationally, and pernitently,
to fixing the errors, and not by the same thinking that led to the errors, but fresh
thinking that ought now understand that..
What's sown, is what's reaped, but MERCY it is, mitigates the harvests of depravity, via
the provision of energy to restitute, and make amends..
The caveat however, is that mercy is NEVER deployed without REPENTANCE and
RECALIBRATION,
which are the foundational pillars that make MERCY provide the energy to effect
RESTITUTION..
Having clarified that, it's pertinent to inform, that Providence is NOT interested, in
any way, shape, or form, in the damnation of anyone and why?
Well, which loving father is interested in the damnation of his children, no matter how
depraved?
Still, patience ought not be mistaken for coddling and why?
With one, patience, the intent is to provide time for change..
With the other, coddling, the gambit is the turning of blind eyes to depravity..
But seeing as God, the Almighty Father is CONSISTENTLY Just, we can conclude then, that
patience is the prerequisite for either Mercy or Damnation and how so?
Because if patience is deployed, and the depraved utilize it to change, then their
salvation is self directed..
And if not, utilized that is, then their damnation as well, is self obtained..
And thus is the Justice and Honor of Divine Providence satisfied..
It's that simple..
And on that note VP Biden, we'll no longer refer to you as that, but as Joseph..
That ought awaken in you the grave responsibility on your shoulders, like that of the
Biblical Joseph, whose father made for him, a "Coat of MANY colors.."
And if you be perceptive Joseph, you're now about to wear E Pluribus Unum (Coat of many
colors..), created as a singular garment (ONE NATION..), for a reason (the glorification of
Provident Divinity..
)
And the glorification?
That E Pluribus Unum (coat of many colors created as a singular garment..), ought
demonstrate to all who see it worn, the goodness, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, and
LOVE of the Provider of the Coat..
And considering Joseph, that in service of the Republic, you've not withheld the fruit
of your loins, it's appropriate then, that you ought now demonstrate that love for the
Republic, by putting it first, just as you'd put the fruits of your loins first, except
above Divine Providence, known to you, as God Almighty..
So then Joseph, as we begin the next stage of the harvest, remember your oath that "you
keep your promises..", you'll be judged by that oath..
And Joseph, "a promise is a debt..", it MUST be paid..
And to boost you energetically, here's Parton the Sweet Voiced Nightingale..
In the days, weeks, and months immediately following the 9/11 attacks, Arab-Americans,
South Asian-Americans, Muslim-Americans, and Sikh-Americans were the targets of widespread
hate violence. Many of the perpetrators of these acts of hate violence claimed they were
acting patriotically by retaliating against those responsible for 9/11.
...
Just after September 11, numerous Arabs, Muslims, and individuals perceived to be Arab or
Muslim were assaulted, and some killed, by individuals who believed they were responsible
for or connected to the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. The first backlash
killing occurred four days after September 11.
Balbir Singh Sodhi was shot to death on September 15 as he was planting flowers outside
his Chevron gas station. The man who shot Sodhi, Frank Roque, had told an employee of an
Applebee's restaurant that he was "going to go out and shoot some towel heads." Roque
mistakenly thought Sodhi was Arab because Sodhi, an immigrant from India, had a beard and
wore a turban as part of his Sikh faith. After shooting Sodhi, Roque drove to a Mobil gas
station a few miles away and shot at a Lebanese-American clerk. He then drove to a home he
once owned and shot and almost hit an Afghani man who was coming out the front door. When
he was arrested two hours later, Roque shouted, "I stand for America all the way."
The next two killings were committed by a man named Mark Stroman. On September 15, 2001,
Stroman shot and killed Waquar Hassan, an immigrant from Pakistan, at Hassan's grocery
store in Dallas, Texas. On October 4, 2001, Stroman shot and killed Vasudev Patel, an
immigrant from India and a naturalized U.S. citizen, while Patel was working at his Shell
station convenience store. A store video camera recorded the killing, helping police to
identify Stroman as the killer. Stroman later told a Dallas television station that he shot
Hassan and Patel because, "We're at war. I did what I had to do. I did it to retaliate
against those who retaliated against us."
Beyond these killings, there were more than a thousand other anti-Muslim or anti-Arab
acts of hate which took the form of physical assaults, verbal harassment and intimidation,
arson, attacks on mosques, vandalism, and other property damage.
Instead of "calming prejudice" the GB Bush administration institutionalized hate
crimes:
First, in the weeks immediately following the September 11 attacks, the government began
secretly arresting and detaining Arab, Muslim, and South Asian men. Within the first two
months after the attacks, the government had detained at least 1,200 men.
...
Second, in November 2001, the Department of Justice began efforts to "interview"
approximately 5,000 men between the ages of 18 and 33 from Middle Eastern or Muslim nations
who had arrived in the United States within the previous two years on a temporary student,
tourist, or business visa and were lawful residents of the United States. Four months
later, the government announced it would seek to interview an additional 3,000 men from
countries with an Al Qaeda presence.
...
Third, in September 2002, the government implemented a "Special Registration" program also
known as NSEERS (National Security Entry-Exit Registration System), requiring immigrant men
from 26 mostly Muslim countries to register their name, address, telephone number, place of
birth, date of arrival in the United States, height, weight, hair and eye color, financial
information and the addresses, birth dates and phone numbers of parents and any foreign
friends with the government.
Besides all that a rather useless security theater was installed at U.S. airports which
has costs many billions in lost time and productivity ever since. The Patriot Act was
introduced which allowed for unlimited spying on private citizens. Wars were launched that
were claimed to be justified by 9/11. These were "mass outbreaks of anti-Muslim sentiment and
violence. Many were killed and maimed in them. People were tortured and vanished. All of this
happened largely to applause of a majority of the U.S. people which were glued to 24 and dreamed of being "terrorist
hunters".
Anyone with a functional memory knows that the U.S. reaction to 9/11 was anything but
"pretty calm". It is ridiculous that Krugman is claiming that.
I find it a bit humorous b that you are critical of Krugman for his 911 dementia when for
years many of us finance types have railed about how morally corrupt the logic and thinking
of Paul Krugman is.
Paul Krugman is to economics what Bernie Sanders has become for the purported "left" side
of the "right wing" uni-party....a sheep dog for the easily led.
Paul Krugman is an acolyte for the God of Mammon/global private finance elite.
While spreading anger and hate toward Arab people, The Bush Administration rescued the
many members of the Kingdom's family from all around the US and escorted their flights out of
the US to safety in Saudi Arabia.
Distracting the public big time was Dick Cheney, VP, who insisted from the very next day
that the plot to hit the Twin Towers was Saddam's plot.
So, the historical record and US response was skewed from the getgo. AQ and Bin Laden
didn't concern the neocons. They wanted the US to go to Iraq again, and this time start a
wide war that would spread to Syria and Lebanon and Iran.
It was easy times to spread fear and hate, and Cheney and the war mongers of CENTCOM were
riding high. Americans were scared of all Arabs, all Sunnis, all Shiites, from anywhere. They
were all the same in the public's mind. Enemies.
It was perfect and has led to 19 years of endless wars. Add ISIS and al Nusra and the
Taliban and you have an endless soup of enemies.
krugman is a terrible shill for the neo-cons and liberal-interventionists of the 21st
century
at my age, I shouldn't really be surprised any more by what american "intellectuals" and
"nobel prize winners" say about anything..... but I am.
He's neo-liberal interventionist moron of the first rank, and saying what he did actually
normalizes the war mania and war-mongering which has become so staple in mainstream thought
and the "think tanks" and is now practically part of the american DNA and "culture".
shame on krugman
...
It appears the Deep State has attacked the USA's people twice in two decades--on 911 and with
the decision to let as many die as possible by deliberately not doing anything to mitigate
the impact of COVID-19 and allowing the real economy to atrophy so even more will die in the
long run.
Posted by: karlof1 | Sep 11 2020 19:40 utc | 34
Talking about tilting at windmills - I'll never forget Robert Fisk angrily pointing out
that the Yankees knew where to find Al CIA-duh because they extended the cave complex at Tora
Bora to help Al CIA-duh, equipped with 10,000 US Stinger Missiles, kick the Russians out of
Afghanistan in the 1980s!!!
(The Yankees had to wait for 10+ years to invade Afghanistan because it takes that long
for Stingers to pass their Use By date)
@michaelj72. "krugman is a terrible shill for the neo-cons and liberal-interventionists of
the 21st century"
Actually, Paul Krugman was a strong and outspoken opponent of the Iraq War since early
2003 and possibly earlier. He was amongst the few mainstream liberal commentators to take
that stand.
If MoA readers and commenters were to read the entire series of Krugman's tweets, six in
all, they will see mention of how the Bush govt began exploiting the events of 11 September
2001 almost immediately. Though the example Krugman actually uses would make most people
cringe at what it suggests about the bubble he lives in and how far removed it is from most
people's lives and experiences, and his reference to a "horrible war" does not mention either
Afghanistan or Iraq.
It has to be said that Twitter is not designed very well for the kind of informal
conversational commentary that people often use it for. But then you would think Krugman
would use something other than Twitter to discuss and compare 9/11 with the impact of
COVID-19.
The real issue I have with Krugman's Tweet is that he is revising history and bending over
backwards to apologise for Dubya in a way to criticise Donald Trump's performance as
President.
b " Anyone with a functional memory knows that the U.S. reaction to 9/11 was anything but
"pretty calm". It is ridiculous that Krugman is claiming that. "
Careful with that axe b, you are talking about Biden's chief economic adviser and likely
appointee as Chair of the Fed. How does this look?
Volker
Greenspan
Bernanke
Yellen
Powell
Krugman
Reading Krugman's columns in 2016, I had a strong to overwhelming sense that this was a
person revving up for a spot in Hillary's White House or cabinet. For some reason it isn't
hitting me as strongly this time around – he may not have as close connections in
Biden's circle – but it certainly would not be a surprise to see him take a turn
through the media/government revolving door if Trump loses (though, fwiw, I don't think it
will be a job at the Fed).
Yep. Pretty staggering how a few disgruntled ex-CIA contractors managed to, deliberately
or not, help the US Gov't launch the biggest world war operation right under the noses of the
brainwashed masses.
99% of Westerners still are clueless as to explaining the last 20 years in a broader
geopolitical context.
#28: "The antiwar protests in the US were small and insignificant."
No they were not. Millions of people demonstrated against the planned war, in the US,
in the UK, and around the world...
We mustn't forget how the vast majority of those who allegedly were anti-war suddenly went
totally pro-war silent upon Obama coming in.
But that pales compared to the vile spectacle of all the self-alleged
"anti-authoritarians", "anti-propagandists" "dissidents", who suddenly regard the government
media as the literal voice of God, where their alleged God speaks of Covid.
His book, End this Depression Now, is pretty weak. He has no theory of why the crash
occurred. He critiques the austerity agenda but doesn't understand that government spending
CAN create tax liabilities for capital down the road and eat into profits, thus blocking
expanded investments and growth. Moronic libertarians hate Krugman just because they are
right wing assholes who think, like fairies, that a free market without the state will work
fine and self correct. Marx debunked this fairy tale thoroughly in Capital Volume 1, showing
that, even if we start with the mythical free market of libertarian morons, capitalism will
still operate according to the general law by which concentration and centralization lead to
class polarization. In any case, in volume 3 of Capital, Marx develops his laws of crisis,
showing that the cycles of expansion and depression under capitalism follow the movements of
the rate of profit, which itself is determined by the ratio of the value of sunk capital in
production technologies to the rate of exploitation (profits/wages). If the former rises more
than the latter, the rate of profit sinks, along with investment, output and employment.
Financial crises then set in.
The empirical evidence in the data bears out Marx's theory, not Krugman's dumb notion of
aggregate demand, or the stupid libertarian focus on interest rates.
We could discuss here all day about the sociological subject of the American people's true
positioning in the aftermath of 9/11. It would be, sincerely, a waste of time.
The important thing to grasp over this episode - from the point of view of History - is
this: it was a strategic victory for al-Qaeda . The USA took the bait (all scripted?)
and went into a quagmire in Iraq and Afghanistan. In a few years, the surplus the USA had
accumulated with the sacking and absorption of the Soviet space during Bill Clinton
evaporated and became a huge deficit in the Empire's accounts. Not long after, the 2008
financial meltdown happened, burying Bushism in a spectacular way.
There's a debate about the size of the hole the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan cost the
American Empire. Some put it into the dozens of billions of USDs; others put it into the
trillions of USDs range. We will never know. What we know is that the hole was big enough to
both erase the American surplus and to not avoid the financial meltdown of 2008.
Either the expansion through the Middle East wasn't fast and provided riches enough to
keep up with the Empire's voracious appetite or the invasion itself already represented a
last, desperate attempt by the Empire to avoid its imminent collapse. We know, however, that
POTUS Bush had a list of countries he wanted to invade beyond Iraq (the "Axis of Evil") which
contained a secret country (Venezuela). He was conscious Iraq and Afghanistan wouldn't be
enough. Whatever the case, he didn't have the time, and the financial meltdown happened in
his last year in the White House.
They knew who the perps of 9/11 were: their "own" Saudi irregulars in the CIA's US main
land training camps, who started practicing on the "wrong"- domestic American- targets. These
guys were officially entered without any background checks.
The Bush and Bin Laden families go way back in money making. That is why George had to ponder
so long in that Florida kindergarten after hearing about the attacks: he had a suspicion. The
Saudi only fly out after 9/11 confirms that.
Paul Krugman Is a pro. Completely owned by Deep State. His purpose is to deflect
discussion and prevent questioning the official version of 9/11 , and get people chasing
something completely irrelevant. Well done Paul, most have taken the bait.
Dannehy's email contained no information about the investigation, her work for Durham, or
political pressure, according to the Courant.
Durham, the US attorney for the district of Connecticut since 2017, was tasked in May 2019
to investigate the way the FBI and the DOJ handled the so-called Russiagate probe of Trump's
campaign and administration, from mid-2016 to the appointment of Robert Mueller as special
counsel in May 2017.
Though copious evidence that the investigation wasn't on the level has since emerged –
from the text messages between FBI employees Peter Strzok and Lisa Page to memos about
"entrapment" of General Michael Flynn and a damning inspector-general report, Durham's
probe has resulted in only one prosecution so far.
Last month, FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith pleaded guilty to making a false statement,
admitting that he altered evidence in the case of Carter Page. By claiming Page was a 'Russian
agent,' the FBI was able to obtain a warrant to spy on the Trump campaign, both before and
after the 2016 presidential election.
Evidence has emerged that the principal basis of the FISA warrants was the discredited
'Trump-Russia dossier,' compiled by British spy Christopher Steele and funded by Hillary
Clinton's campaign through the Democratic Party.
bjd050 11 Sep, 2020 07:14 PM
"Improper political influence". That's rich, coming from a coup plotters' apologist.
By
Tony
Cox
, a US journalist who has written or edited for Bloomberg and several major daily newspapers.
The New York Times and CNN are desperate to paint Donald Trump as an enemy of the military, due to his desire not to get
involved in pointless wars. But this is simply not true, and Trump has the backing of many soldiers.
Someone should tell the
New York Times, CNN and other mainstream media outlets that soldiers don't actually like getting killed or maimed for no good
reason. Nor do they like generals and presidents who spill their blood in vain.
Alas, ignorance of these
obvious truths probably isn't the issue. This is likely just another case of the biggest names in news pretending to not get
the point so they can take the rest of us along for a ride in their confidence game of alternative reality.
The latest example is the
New York Times spinning President Donald Trump's critique this week of Pentagon leadership and the military industrial complex
as disrespect for the military at large.
"Trump has lost the right and authority to be
commander in chief,"
the
Times quoted
retired US Marines General Anthony Zinni as saying. Zinni cited Trump's alleged
"despicable
comments"
about the nation's war dead – reported last week by
The
Atlantic
, citing anonymous sources – as one of the reasons Trump "must go."
Never mind that Trump and all on-the-record administration sources denied The Atlantic's report. The Times couldn't resist
when the pieces seemed to fit so well together for the military's latest propaganda campaign against Trump. First the
president disses the troops, calling them "losers" and "suckers," then he has the
temerity
to say
Pentagon leaders want to fight wars to keep defense contractors happy.
Except the pieces don't
fit. The many people who occupy so-called boots on the ground don't have the same interests as the few people who send them to
war. In fact, combat troops are given reason to hate the generals who send them to die when there's not a legitimate national
security reason for the war they're fighting. And the US has fought a long line of wars that didn't serve the nation's
national security interests. Even when a war is justified, the interests of top brass and front-line soldiers often clash.
Remember that great 1967
war movie, '
The
Dirty Dozen'
? A group of 12 soldiers who were condemned to long prison sentences or execution in military prison for their
crimes were sent on a 1944 suicide mission to kill high-ranking German officers at a heavily defended chateau far behind enemy
lines. After succeeding in the mission and escaping the Germans, the lone surviving convict, played by tough-guy actor Charles
Bronson, told the mission leader,
"Killing generals could get to be a habit with me."
So no, New York Times, speaking out against ill-advised wars does not equal bashing the military. And sorry, General Zinni,
but generals, defense contractors and their media mouthpieces don't get to decide who has the
"right
and authority"
to be commander in chief. The voters decided that already, and they expressed clearly that they don't want
senseless and endless wars and foreign interventions.
The Times cited General
James McConville, the Army's chief of staff, as saying Pentagon leaders would only recommend sending troops to combat
"when
it's required for national security and a last resort."
And no, it wasn't a comedy skit. What's the last US war or combat
intervention that measured up to that standard? Let's just say the late Bronson, who died in 2003 at the age of 81, was a
young man the last time that happened.
CNN tried a similar ploy
on Sunday, while trying to sell the "losers" and "suckers" story in an interview with US Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert
Wilkie. Host Dana Bash said the allegations fit a
"pattern of public statements
" by
the president because Trump called US Senator John McCain a "loser" in 2015 and said McCain shouldn't be considered a hero for
being captured in the Vietnam War. She repeatedly suggested to Wilkie, who didn't take the bait, that Trump's attacks on
McCain, who died in 2018, showed disrespect for the troops.
Apparently, this follows
the same line of propagandist thought which told us that saying there are rapists among the illegal aliens entering the US
from Mexico – which is undeniably true –
equals
saying
all Mexicans are rapists. In CNN land, a bad word about McCain is a bad word about all soldiers.
McCain was
a
warmonger
who didn't mind getting US troops killed or backing terrorist groups in Syria. If
he
had his way
, many more GIs would be dead or disabled, because the intervention in Syria would have been escalated and the
US might be at war with Iran. Soldiers wouldn't want their lives wasted in such conflicts.
All wars are hard on the
people who have to fight them, but senseless wars are spirit-crushing. An average of about 17 veterans commit suicide each day
in the US, according to Veterans Administration
data
.
Veterans account for 11 percent of the US adult population but more than 18 percent of suicides.
The media's deceiving
technique of trying to pretend that ruling-class chieftains and front-line grunts are in the same boat reflects a broader
campaign of top-down revolution against populism. The
military
is
just one of several pro-Trump segments of the population that must be turned against the president. Other pro-Trump segments,
such as
police
,
are demonized and attacked.
Trump has managed to keep
the US out of new wars and has drawn down deployments to Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan – despite Pentagon opposition. His rival,
Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden, can be expected to rev up the war machine if he takes charge. His foreign policy
adviser, Antony Blinken, lamented in a May
interview
with CBS News
that Trump had given up US "leverage" in Syria.
Trump also has turned
around the VA hospital system, ending
decades
of neglect
that left many veterans to die on waiting lists.
Like past campaigns to
oust Trump, the notion that he's not sufficiently devoted to the troops might be a tough sell. No matter how good their words
may sound, the people who promote endless wars without clear objectives aren't true supporters of the rank and file.
More than 1,000 Chinese students have had their visas revoked by the United States since
June, after being accused of espionage for the Chinese military. azn_okay 1 hour ago There
really hasn't been a time when the US wasn't sinophobic to some degree. It's one of those
things that is normalised because China is supposedly the enemy and because of this, the
Chinese are dehumanised. The fact that Trump has seen little backlash speaks volumes of the
anti-China sentiment in the US. Enriquecost 8 minutes ago Every year more than 200,000 Chinese
students go to the US. That is too much
Beijing has introduced reciprocal restrictions on American diplomats and other staff at the
US embassy and consulates in China, including Hong Kong, the Chinese Foreign Ministry
announced.
A diplomatic note announcing tit-for-tat restrictions had been recently sent to Washington,
the ministry said on its website.
These measures are China's legitimate and necessary response to the erroneous US
moves.
The limitations on the actions of "senior diplomats and all other personnel" were
introduced to persuade Washington to lift restrictions it earlier placed on Chinese diplomats
in America which "disrupted China-US relations," it added.
Last week, the Trump administration said that Chinese diplomats would from now on have to
get approval from the US State Department before visiting American university campuses or
staging cultural events with more than 50 people attending outside embassy
grounds.
The announcement followed the closure of the Chinese consulate in Houston in July, which the
US has accused of spying. Earlier, Chinese diplomats were also ordered to inform US authorities
of any meetings with state and local officials as well as communications with educational and
research institutions.
Washington and Beijing have been trading jabs for months now as tensions keep mounting
between the two countries over a whole range of issues.
They include a US crackdown on Chinese telecom giant Huawei and popular video sharing app
TikTok over spying claims, as well as the backing of independence movements in Hong Kong and
Taiwan by the White House.
By Dr. Karin Kneissl , who works as an energy analyst and book author. She served as the Austrian minister of foreign affairs
from 2017-2019. In June, she published her book on diplomacy 'Diplomatie Macht Geschichte' in Germany through Olms, and in early
September her book 'Die Mobilitätswende', or 'Mobility in Transition', was released in Vienna by Braumüller. The cacophony of
noise generated in the wake of the attack on the Russian opposition figure is drowning out the reality. As Angela Merkel has always
maintained, the German-Russian gas deal is purely a commercial project.
Nord Stream has always had the ingredients to drive sober-minded Germans emotional. I remember energy conferences in Germany back
in 2006 when already the idea of such a gas pipeline as a direct connection from Russia to Germany provoked deep political rows,
not just in Berlin but across the EU.
Conservatives disliked it for the simple reason that it was a "Schröder thing," the legacy of social democrat Chancellor Gerhard
Schröder, who lost the election of September 2005 to Angela Merkel. Schröder had negotiated the project with his good friend, President
Vladimir Putin, and then chaired the company in charge of implementing it.
Around that time, I was invited to an energy conference in Munich by the conservative think tank, the Hanns Seidel Foundation,
managed by the Bavarian party CSU, the traditional junior partner of the ruling CDU in the government. The bottom-line of the debate
on Nord Stream was negative, with the consensus being that the German-Russian pipeline would lead to the implosion of a European
common foreign policy and damage the EU's energy ambitions.
I attended many other such events across Germany, from parliament to universities, and listened carefully to all the arguments.
The feelings towards Nord Stream were much more benign at meetings held under the auspices of the SPD.
But over the years, the rift between different political parties evaporated, and a consensus emerged which supported enhanced
energy cooperation between Berlin and Moscow. Politicians of all shades defended the first pipeline, Nord Stream 1, after it went
operational in 2011, bringing Russian gas directly to Germany under the Baltic Sea.
They also enthusiastically supported the creation of the second, Nord Stream 2, better known by its acronym NS2. This $11bn (Ł8.4bn)
1,200km pipeline is almost finished and was due to go online next year.
But now, in the very final stage of construction, everything has been thrown in limbo thanks to the alleged poisoning of Russian
opposition figure Alexey Navalny.
NS2 has always been controversial. Critics, such as the US and Poland, have argued that it makes Germany too reliant on energy
from a politically unreliable partner. President Trump last year signed a law imposing sanctions on any firm that helps Russia's
state-owned gas company, Gazprom, finish it. The White House fears NS2 will tighten Russia's grip over Europe's energy supply and
reduce its own share of the lucrative European market for American liquefied natural gas.
These sanctions have caused delays to the project. A special ship owned by a Swiss company menaced with sanctions had to be replaced.
And prior to that, various legal provisions were brought up by the European Commission that had to be fulfilled by the companies
in retrospect.
Now the case of Navalny, currently being treated at a Berlin clinic after being awoken from a medically induced coma, has thrown
everything up in the air again. It has triggered a political cacophony that threatens relations between Germany, the EU, Russia,
and Washington. And at the center is the pipeline.
Various German sources, among them laboratories of the armed forces, have alleged that Navalny had been poisoned with the nerve
agent Novichok. Foreign Minister Heiko Maas (SPD)
stated in an interview published on Sunday by Bild: " I hope the Russians don't force us to change our stance on Nord Stream
2 – we have high expectations of the Russian government that it will solve this serious crime ." He claimed to have seen "
a lot of evidence " that the Russian state was behind the attack. " The deadly chemical weapon with which Navalny was poisoned
was in the past in the possession of Russian authorities ," he insisted.
He conceded that stopping the almost-completed pipeline would harm German and broader European business interests, pointing out
that the gas pipeline's construction involves "over 100 companies from 12 European countries, and about half of them come from Germany."
Maas also threatened the Kremlin with broader EU sanctions if it did not help clarify what happened "in the coming days." Russian
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov responded by labeling the accusations "groundless" and Moscow has staunchly denied any involvement
in the affair.
The whole matter is complicated by domestic political considerations in Germany. CDU politician Norbert Röttgen, who heads up
foreign affairs within the ruling party and has demanded that the pipeline should be stopped, is among those conservatives vying
to lead the CDU in the run-up to Chancellor Angela Merkel's retirement next year. Meanwhile, Merkel is still trying to strike a balance
between the country's legal commitments, her well-known mantra that NS2 is a " purely commercial project, " and what is now
a major foreign policy crisis.
The chancellor had always focused on the business dimension. But most large energy projects also have a geopolitical dimension,
and that certainly holds true with Nord Stream.
When I was Austria's foreign minister, I saw first-hand the recurring and very harsh criticism of the project by US politicians
and officials. I remember the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, in a speech at the margins of the UN General Assembly in September
2018 that focused solely on NS2. I replied by pointing out to him that pipelines are not built to annoy others, but because there
is demand. One thing was certain – the US opposition to Nord Stream would not wane and now the Navalny case has given it new impetus.
What we are witnessing is a tremendous politicization of the pipeline with a wide range of people all shouting very loudly.
So here we are, in a very poisoned atmosphere where it might be difficult to revise positions without losing face. The social
democrat Maas, just like the conservative Röttgen and many others, have taken to the media for different reasons. In my observation,
it might have to do with their respective desires to take a strong position in order to also mark their upcoming emancipation from
the political giant Merkel (she is due to step down next year).
Due to her professional and empathetic handling of the pandemic, she is today much more popular than before the crisis. That makes
it difficult for a junior partner, represented by Foreign Minister Maas, and for all those who wish to challenge her inside the party.
What is needed is to get the topic out of the media and out of the to-and-fro of daily petty politics. Noisy statements might
serve some, but not the overall interests involved. And there are many at stake. It is not only about energy security in times of
transition, namely moving away from nuclear, but much wider matters.
As a legal scholar, I deem the loss of trust in contracts. Vertragstreue, as we call it in German – loyalty to the contract –
will be the biggest collateral damage if the pipeline is abandoned for political reasons. This fundamental principle of every civilization
was coined as pacta sunt servanda by the Romans – agreements must be kept. Our legal system is based on this. Who would still conclude
contracts of such volumes with German companies if politics can change the terms of trade overnight?
In June 2014, construction sites on the coasts of the Black sea, both in Russia and Bulgaria, were ready for starting the gas
pipeline South Stream. After pressure from the European Commission, the work never started. The political reason was the dispute
on Ukraine – in particular, the annexation of the Crimea. However, the legal argument was that the tenders for the contracts were
in contradiction with EU regulations on competition. Tens of thousands of work permits, which had been issued from Bulgaria to Serbia
etc., were withdrawn. The economic consequence was the rise of China's influence in the region. South Stream was redirected to Turkey.
So here we are in the midst of a diplomatic standoff. It is a genuine dilemma, but it could also turn into a watershed. Will contracts
be respected or will we move into a further cycle of uncertainty on all levels? Germany is built on contracts, norms (probably much
too many) and not on arbitrariness.
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The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those
of RT.
silvermoon 5 hours ago
All these weeks have passed and Germany has still not shown shared actual evidence of their Navalny tests
with Russia though. That is the same as saying we found the gun with your finger prints on it but never showing it.
Count_Cash
silvermoon 3 hours ago
Correct, Germany has only since 10th September (if confirmed) shared any 'evidence'. That is sufficient intervening
time to concoct any test result and associated materials that they want - another Diesel scandal. Indeed people will ask why when
you had the patient on 22nd of august, it took you so long to send samples to the OPCW, despite almost immediately yelling Poison!
gainwmn silvermoon 5 hours ago
U stupid sheep: Germany did show it to the OPCW, i.e. the organization RF is the member of,
and therefore the latter gets the full access to all the data provided by Germany, as well as any other of 192 members. Kremlin lies
and demands in this regard is more than ridiculous, they completely destroy any shred of trust left to all RF governmental structures
and regime itself.
Teodor Nitu gainwmn 3 hours ago
Riiight!...Those Russians...not only their chemical
weapons are no longer working, but they are no longer capable to choose the proper time to use them, or so the story goes. Think
about it; they 'used' novichok to kill the Skripals and they are still alive and well (supposedly), now they (Russians) 'used' novichok
again to kill Navalny and he is alive and getting better.
Besides, they chose the absolutely wrong time to do it. With Skripals it
was just before the opening of the World Cup in Russia and now, just before the finishing of the North Stream 2 pipeline.
It sounds
that they are sabotaging their own interests, aren't they? Are they (Russians) that stup!d? Some 'smart' posters here seem to believe
it. But lets get real, one has to be able to see beyond the length of his nose, in order to understand what is really going on.
silvermoon Teodor Nitu 2 hours ago
Russia had all their chemical weapons legally destroyed. Along with hundreds of countries. The
US, UK and Israel never did. Navalny the innocent anti Putin. Can't win one way try another.
Pro_RussiaPole gainwmn 2 hours ago
So why is Russia still asking for it? Clearly, something is being withheld. As for
the OPCW, their credibility has been shot for years with all their fake Syrian chem weapon attack reports.
seawolf 6 hours ago
Even if there was not Navalny's story, they could invent another to stop the project.
Abraxas79 seawolf 4 hours ago
Exactly.
I hope Russia is the one that abandons it. Let Germany be the one that decides to cancel it and go along with it. Concentrate on
supplying China and other Asian nations and internal consumption. Forget about Europe. You don't have to turn off the current supply,
just charge more for it when the market allows. Looks like the next German leader according to this article is quite the Russophobe,
which means relations will only get worse.
Pro_RussiaPole Abraxas79 2 hours ago
If this navalny farce does end up cancelling the NS2 project, Russia should stop all gas transit to western Europe through
Poland and Ukraine by spring of next year. Tell those countries that will be cut off that Russia can either sell them LNG, or
that they will have to connect to other sources of gas. Because if certain countries are so against Russian gas, then why are
they not doing anything against Russian gas going through Poland and Ukraine, and why isn't Trump threatening sanctions on
these countries for doing so?
Blue8ball713 RTjackanory 3 hours ago
Its a far longer list
and it have the fingerprints of GB secret services all over it.
Reply Gabriel Delpino seawolf 46 seconds ago It is not in the interest
of Germany to stop de project. Reply
magicmirror 6 hours ago
Europe should have nothing to do with the USA ....... proved time and
time again they cannot be trusted. All they want is markets, resources and consumers. They lie, they cheat, they steal...... (quoting mr Pompeo, I think). A big opportunity to win Europe's independence.
SmellLaRata
5 hours ago
All due respect for Mr. Navalny but since when does an individual fate of one person dictates the fate for millions ?
And c' mon Germany. Your hypocrisy is so utterly laughable. You ignore the Assange and Snowden cases, the slaughter of Kashoggi,
the brutal beating of yellow vests, the brutal actions against the Catalans ... but Navalni. Not even a hint of a proof of government
involvemen. But it fits the agenda, does it? The agenda which is dictated by the deep state agitators who so much flourished under
Obama.
gainwmn SmellLaRata
4 hours ago
Even being not a fan (to say the least) of the US foreign and some of the domestic policy, I have to point out that tried
by U analogy is largely out of balance: first, the issue in Navalny (as well as in Scripals' and others cases acted on with poisons)
case is not so much the assassination attempt on a person's life, as the banned use of chemical weapons, the ban RF's signature has
been under since 1993. And that conclusion (Russia's guilt) has not been made by the UK or Germany or any other country alone, but
the OPCW - the organization not only RF is the member of, but also 191(!) other countries, out of which not a single country (except
RF) rejected that conclusion!; second, the US did not made attempt on either Snowden's or Assange's life, with any kind of weapon,
not already mentioning the weapons banned by the international agreements American government(s) signed. This is a large - I would
say - decisive difference! As far as Kashoggi's case or other cases sited by U, RF did not react with sanctions against the respective
perpetrators either, thus demonstrating the same disregard for the law and order as the US did... therefore making all lies about
innocent RF and evil US, foolish, at the least.
Pro_RussiaPole gainwmn 2 hours ago
The US and its lackeys are killing Assange. They are doing it slowly. And many voices going along with a lie does not make
the lie true. Because these poisoning allegations are lies. The accused were never allowed to see the evidence or challenge
it. And there is the whole issue of politicized reports coming out of the OPCW that contradicted evidence and reality.
Nathi Sibbs 4 hours ago
After completing the pipe and
it start running Russia must turn off all Ukraine pipes. No more gas for free from Russia, Ukraine must start importing LNG from thier reliable partner USA. I think imports from USA will be good for Ukrainian Nazi people
Abraxas79 Nathi Sibbs 4 hours
ago
How are they going to pay for it? Ukraine's only exports these days are its women to various brothels across Europe and North
America.
Hilarous 5 hours ago
The German leaders know very well that the case of Navalny will never be resolved and exists
for no other reason than to seize a pretext to demonize Russia and to end Nord Stream 2 in exchange for US freedom gas
magicmirror
Hilarous 4 hours ago
freedom gas and handsome presents .....
SandythePole 3 hours ago
This is an excellent account by Dr Karin Kneissl. It is a genuine dilemma for 'occupied'
Europe. Its occupying master does NOT want NS2 and will do anything to stop it. Russia suffers sanctions upon sanctions, but still
gallantly tries to maintain friendly and honourable business relations with its implacable neighbours. For how much longer is this
to continue? Surely there must be some limit to the endless provocations of occupied Europe and its Western master. Perhaps it is
time to shut off the oil and gas and leave Germany to sail under its own wind.
dunkie56 3 hours ago
Perhaps Russia should disengage
with Germany/EU totally and forge ahead in partnership with China and India and whoever wants to do business. let the EU tie it's
ship to the sinking US ship and drown along with it's protection racket partner! Then Russia should build a new iron curtain between
itself and all countries who want to align with the EU..in the long run Russia has tried to forge a partnership with the West but
it just has not born any fruit and even as pragmatic as Russia is they must be coming to the conclusion they are flogging a dead
horse!
Blue8ball713 dunkie56 2 hours ago With 146 million citizen Russia is too small to be a real partner to anyone like
China or India. Best fit is the EU, but the EU is controlled or better said occupied by the USA. Its part of their hegemonial system.
So Russia is left out in the rain..
micktaketo 5 hours ago
I am not sure if it is the right thing to do but I think Russia
should sue the German authorities if this deal is withdrawn and if it is have nothing to do with Germany again along with other corrupt
countries that cannot prove or at the least bring forth their evidence to be seen, to be transparent to all even Russia the first,
because Russia is the one being accused. These countries must think we the people are all completely stupid and Russia more so. This
corruption stinks to high heaven and is obvious to all sane people who love fairness. You cannot trust an entity that believes in
getting what they want by hook or by crook. Russia learn your lesson ! So you countries that love whats good for you and your people
do not cheat them for they voted for you to help them. Germany do not kick yourself, it will hurt your people. Saying, There is more
than one way to skin a cat, they say.
Mutlu Ozer 3 hours ago
There is a simple concept to investigate a crime to find the criminals: Just look at whose benefit the crime is? EU
politicians are certainly smart people to know this basic concept of criminal investigation. However, now they are playing a
new strategy about how to domesticate(!) not only Russia China as well... Germans are the main actors in the stage of the WW-I
and WW-II. I surely claim that Germans would be the main architect of the last war, WW-III.
9/11 was the foundation stone of the new millennium – ever as much indecipherable as
the Mysteries of Eleusis. A year ago, on Asia Times, once again I raised a number of questions that
still find no answer.
A lightning speed breakdown of the slings and arrows of outrageous (mis)fortune trespassing
these two decades will certainly include the following. The end of history. The short unipolar
moment. The Pentagon's Long War. Homeland Security. The Patriot Act. Shock and Awe. The
tragedy/debacle in Iraq. The 2008 financial crisis. The Arab Spring. Color revolutions.
"Leading from behind". Humanitarian imperialism. Syria as the ultimate proxy war. The
ISIS/Daesh farce. The JCPOA. Maidan. The Age of Psyops. The Age of the Algorithm. The Age of
the 0.0001%.
Once again, we're deep in Yeats territory: "the best lack all conviction/ while the worst
are full of passionate intensity."
All along, the "War on Terror" – the actual decantation of the Long War –
proceeded unabated, killing Muslim multitudes and
displacing at least 37 million people.
WWII-derived geopolitics is over. Cold War 2.0 is in effect. It started as US against
Russia, morphed into US against China and now, fully spelled out in the US National Security
Strategy, and with bipartisan support, it's the US against both. The ultimate
Mackinder-Brzezinski nightmare is at hand: the much dread "peer competitor" in Eurasia slouched
towards the Beltway to be born in the form of the Russia-China strategic partnership.
Something's gotta give. And then, out of the blue, it did.
A drive by design towards ironclad concentration of power and geoconomic diktats was first
conceptualized – under the deceptive cover of "sustainable development" – already
in 2015 at the UN (
here it is , in detail).
Now, this new operating system – or technocratic digital dystopia – is finally
being codified, packaged and "sold" since mid summer via a lavish, concerted propaganda
campaign.
Watch your mindspace
The whole Planet Lockdown hysteria that elevated Covid-19 to post-modern Black Plague
proportions has been consistently debunked, for instance here and here
, drawing from the highly respected, original
Cambridge source.
The de facto controlled demolition of large swathes of the global economy allowed corporate
and vulture capitalism, world wide, to rake untold profits out of the destruction of collapsed
businesses.
And all that proceeded with widespread public acceptance – an astonishing process of
voluntary servitude.
None of it is accidental. As an example, over then years ago, even before setting up a
– privatized – Behavioral Insights Team, the British government was very much
interested in "influencing" behavior, in collaboration with the London School of Economics and
Imperial College.
The end result was the MINDSPACE report. That was all about
behavioral science influencing policymaking and most of all, imposing neo-Orwellian population
control.
MINDSPACE, crucially, featured close collaboration between Imperial College and the Santa
Monica-based RAND corporation. Translation: the authors of the absurdly flawed computer models
that fed the Planet Lockdown paranoia working in conjunction with the top Pentagon-linked think
tank.
In MINDSPACE, we find that, "behavioral approaches embody a line of thinking that moves from
the idea of an autonomous individual, making rational decisions, to a 'situated'
decision-maker, much of whose behavior is automatic and influenced by their 'choice
environment'".
So the key question is who decides what is the "choice environment'. As it stands, our whole
environment is conditioned by Covid-19. Let's call it "the disease". And that is more than
enough to beautifully set up "the cure": The Great Reset .
The beating heart
The Great Reset was officially launched in early June by the World Economic Forum (WEF)
– the natural habitat of Davos Man. Its conceptual base is something the WEF describes as
Strategic Intelligence Platform
: "a dynamic system of contextual intelligence that enables users to trace relationships and
interdependencies between issues, supporting more informed decision-making".
It's this platform that promotes the complex crossover and interpenetration of Covid-19 and
the Fourth
Industrial Revolution – conceptualized back in December 2015 and the WEF's choice
futuristic scenario. One cannot exist without the other. That is meant to imprint in the
collective unconscious – at least in the West – that only the WEF-sanctioned
"stakeholder" approach is capable of solving the Covid-19 challenge.
The Great Reset is
immensely ambitious , spanning over 50 fields of knowledge and practice. It interconnects
everything from economy recovery recommendations to "sustainable business models", from
restoration of the environment to the redesign of social contracts.
The beating heart of this matrix is – what else – the Strategic Intelligence
Platform, encompassing, literally, everything: "sustainable development", "global governance",
capital markets, climate change, biodiversity, human rights, gender parity, LGBTI, systemic
racism, international trade and investment, the – wobbly – future of the travel and
tourism industries, food, air pollution, digital identity, blockchain, 5G, robotics, artificial
intelligence (AI).
In the end, only an all-in-one Plan A applies for making these systems interact seamlessly:
the Great Reset – shorthand for a New World Order that has always been glowingly evoked,
but never implemented. There is no Plan B.
The Covid-19 "legacy"
The two main actors behind the Great Reset are Klaus Schwab, the WEF's founder and executive
chairman, and IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva. Georgieva is adamant that "the
digital economy is the big winner of this crisis". She believes the Great Reset must
imperatively start in 2021.
The House of Windsor and the UN are prime executive co-producers. Top sponsors include BP,
Mastercard and Microsoft. It goes without saying that everyone who knows how complex
geopolitical and geoeconomic decisions are taken is aware that these two main actors are just
reciting a script. Call the authors "the globalist elite". Or, in praise of Tom Wolfe, the
Masters of the Universe.
Schwab, predictably, wrote the Great Reset's mini-manifesto.
Over a month later, he expanded on the absolutely key connection: the "legacy"
of Covid-19.
All this has been fully fleshed in a book , co-written with Thierry Malleret, who directs
the WEF's Global Risk Network. Covid-19 is described as having "created a great disruptive
reset of our global, social, economic and political systems". Schwab spins Covid-19 not only as
a fabulous "opportunity", but actually as the creator (italics mine) of the – now
inevitable – Reset.
All that happens to dovetail beautifully with Schwab's own baby: Covid-19 "accelerated our
transition into the age of the Fourth Industrial Revolution". The revolution has been
extensively discussed at Davos since 2016.
The book's central thesis is that our most pressing challenges concern the environment
– considered only in terms of climate change – and technological developments,
which will allow the expansion of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
In a nutshell, the WEF is stating that corporate globalization, the hegemonic modus operandi
since the 1990s, is dead. Now it's time for "sustainable development" – with
"sustainable" defined by a select group of "stakeholders", ideally integrated into a "community
of common interest, purpose and action."
Sharp Global South observers will not fail to compare the WEF's rhetoric of "community of
common interest" with the Chinese "community of shared interests" as applied to the Belt and
Road Initiative (BRI), which is a de facto continental trade/development project.
The Great Reset presupposes that all stakeholders – as in the whole planet –
must toe the line. Otherwise, as Schwab stresses, we will have "more polarization, nationalism,
racism, increased social unrest and conflicts".
So this is – once again – a "you're with us or against us" ultimatum, eerily
reminiscent of our old 9/11 world. Either the Great Reset is peacefully established, with whole
nations dutifully obeying the new guidelines designed by a bunch of self-appointed neo-Platonic
Republic sages, or it's chaos.
Whether Covid-19's ultimate "window of opportunity" presented itself as a mere coincidence
or by design, will always remain a very juicy question.
Digital Neo-Feudalism
The actual, face-to-face Davos meeting next year has been postponed to the summer of 2021.
But virtual Davos will proceed in January, focused on the Great Reset.
Already three months ago, Schwab's book hinted that the more everyone is mired in the global
paralysis, the more it's clear that things will never be allowed (italics mine) to
return to what we considered normal.
Five years ago, the UN's Agenda 2030 – the Godfather of the Great Reset – was
already insisting on vaccines for all, under the patronage of the WHO and CEPI – co-founded in 2016 by India, Norway and the Bill and
Belinda Gates foundation.
Timing could not be more convenient for the notorious Event 201 "pandemic exercise" in
October last year in New York, with the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security partnering
with – who else – the WEF and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. No in-depth
criticism of Gates's
motives is allowed by media gatekeepers because, after all, he finances them.
What has been imposed as an ironclad consensus is that without a Covid-19 vaccine there's no
possibility of anything resembling normality.
And yet a recent, astonishing paper published in Virology Journal – which also
publishes Dr. Fauci's musings – unmistakably
demonstrates that "chloroquine is a potent inhibitor of SARS coronavirus infection and
spread". This is a "relatively safe, effective and cheap drug" whose "significant inhibitory
antiviral effect when the susceptible cells were treated either prior to or after infection
suggests a possible prophylactic and therapeutic use."
Even Schwab's book admits that Covid-19 is "one of the least deadly pandemics in the last
2000 years" and its consequences "will be mild compared to previous pandemics".
It doesn't matter. What matters above all is the "window of opportunity" offered by
Covid-19, boosting, among other issues, the expansion of what I previously described as
Digital Neo-Feudalism –
or Algorithm gobbling up Politics. No wonder politico-economic institutions from the WTO to
the EU as well as the Trilateral Commission are already investing in "rejuvenation" processes,
code for even more concentration of power.
Survey the imponderables
Very few thinkers, such as German philosopher Hartmut Rosa, see our current plight as a rare
opportunity to
"decelerate" life under turbo-capitalism.
As it stands, the point is not that we're facing an "attack of the
civilization-state" . The point is assertive civilization-states – such as China,
Russia, Iran – not submitted to the Hegemon, are bent on charting a quite different
course.
The Great Reset, for all its universalist ambitions, remains an insular, Western-centric
model benefitting the proverbial 1%. Ancient Greece did not see itself as "Western". The Great
Reset is essentially an Enlightenment-derived
project.
Surveying the road ahead, it will certainly be crammed with imponderables. From the Fed
wiring digital money directly into smartphone financial apps in the US to China advancing
an Eurasia-wide trade/economic system side-by side with the implementation of the digital
yuan.
The Global South will be paying a lot of attention to the sharp contrast between the
proposed wholesale deconstruction of the industrial economic order and the BRI project –
which focuses on a new financing system outside of Western monopoly and emphasizes
agro-industrial growth and long-term sustainable development.
The Great Reset would point to losers, in terms of nations, aggregating all the ones that
benefit from production and processing of energy and agriculture, from Russia, China and Canada
to Brazil, Indonesia and large swathes of Africa.
As it stands, there's only one thing we do know: the establishment at the core of the
Hegemon and the drooling orcs of Empire will only adopt a Great Reset if that helps to postpone
a decline accelerated on a fateful morning 19 years ago.
Over two dozen phones belonging to members of Robert Mueller's special counsel team were
wiped clean before they were handed over to the Inspector General, according to information
contained in
87 pages of DOJ records released on Thursday.
Some of the phones were wiped using the Apple operating system's 'wrong-password' failsafe,
where the wrong password must be entered ten times - after which the system wipes the
drive.
Those who couldn't seem to remember their password 10 times in a row include 'attack dog'
lawyer Andrew Weissman , who urged DOJ attorneys to go rogue and 'not' help US Attorney John
Durham investigate FBI and DOJ conduct during the Trump investigation.
A phone belong to assistant special counsel James Quarles "wiped itself without
intervention from him," the DOJ's records state.
Andrew Weismann, a top prosecutor on Mueller's team, "accidentally wiped" his cell phone,
causing the data to be lost. Other members of the team also accidentally wiped their phones,
the DOJ said.
Phones issued to at least three other Mueller prosecutors, Kyle Freeny, Rush Atkinson, and
senior prosecutor Greg Andres were also wiped of data.
Additionally, t he cell phone of FBI lawyer Lisa Page was misplaced by the special
counsel's office . While it was eventually obtained by the DOJ inspector general, by that
point the phone had been restored to its factory settings, wiping it of all dat a. The phone
of FBI agent Peter Strzok was also obtained by the inspector general's office, which found
"no substantive texts, notes or reminders" on it.
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"Crazy" was the term the FBI agent used to describe the behavior of Christopher Steele,
author of the now-debunked Trump-Russia dossier. "I've seen crazy source-related stuff in 20
years in New York and this was one of the craziest," the veteran agent testified to the Senate
Select Committee on Intelligence.
Christopher Steele: "I'm very upset about – we're very upset – about the actions
of your agency," Steele said, according to Gaeta. Using the first person plural, Steele likely
meant himself and his client, Fusion GPS head Glenn Simpson. Victoria Jones/PA via AP
Nevertheless, the FBI continued to rely on Steele's allegations – that Donald Trump
and his team were conspiring with Russians who possessed compromising information – to
justify its surveillance of the Trump campaign. Without evidence to verify Steele's claims, the
FBI fell back on its assertion that the former British intelligence agent was reliable.
The previously unreported testimony of FBI agent Michael Gaeta is found on page 900 of the
fifth and final volume of the Senate committee's probe of Russian interference in the 2016
election. It raises new questions about the basis of the FBI's investigation of the Trump
campaign, Crossfire Hurricane, and the declarations it made to the FISA court in four separate
applications submitted to spy on American citizens.
Gaeta had a long history with the London-based Steele, who had started his own firm, Orbis
Business Intelligence, after leaving the British spy service MI6 in 2009. Between 2013 and
2016, the bureau had paid Steele $95,000 to pass along tidbits on Eurasian organized crime;
Gaeta was his contact at the bureau . It was Gaeta whom Steele approached in July 2016 with
wild and depraved stories of collusion and kompromat. Gaeta became the "handling agent" for
Steele's participation in Crossfire Hurricane. Among his tasks was to get Steele paid (a
process that came along slowly) and to see to it that Steele didn't violate the FBI's rules on
confidentiality.
This requirement for discretion created a conflict of interest for Steele, who was also
being paid for the same information by the Washington-based firm Fusion GPS. Fusion, in turn
was being paid by the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign for
opposition research on Trump. The Democrats wanted Steele's information spread far and wide.
They also wanted to be able to claim that the FBI was investigating the allegations. Paid FBI
informants, however, are not allowed to tell anyone of their work for the FBI or of the
bureau's investigations.
Gaeta was astonished, then, when shortly before the 2016 election an article appeared in
Mother Jones titled
"A Veteran Spy Has Given the FBI Information Alleging a Russian Operation to Cultivate Donald
Trump." The sub-headline asked, "Has the bureau investigated this material?" Gaeta was
convinced Steele was the source for the article and confronted him about it. Steele readily
admitted he was behind the Mother Jones story.
The conversation that followed and its aftermath have been described before, but in
bloodless ways that fail to capture the importance of that confrontation in determining
Steele's reliability and credibility. For example, a Justice Department inspector general
report says "Handling Agent 1 advised Steele that he must cease collecting information for the
FBI, and it was unlikely that the FBI would continue a relationship with him."
https://lockerdome.com/lad/13084989113709670?pubid=ld-dfp-ad-13084989113709670-0&pubo=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com&rid=www.zerohedge.com&width=890
"Listen, Is It About the Money?"
Here's how Gaeta recounted that conversation to the Senate: "Listen, is it about the money?"
Gaeta asked Steele. "Because we have the money now. Is it about the money?" The FBI had
promised, but had yet to deliver to Steele, $15,000 for one meeting with Crossfire Hurricane
agents. The bureau had further promised Steele he would be paid "significantly" for his
Trump-Russia research.
Gaeta assumed at first a delay in payment had made Steele go rogue.
"Yes, I'm owed the money, but that's secondary," Steele told Gaeta. "I'm very upset about
– we're very upset – about the actions of your agency." By the "we" in "we're
very upset" one can reasonably infer that Steele was speaking about himself and his client,
Fusion GPS head Glenn Simpson (whose client, not counting cutouts, was Hillary Clinton's
campaign).
The handling agent was shocked: "I had no idea what he was talking about." Before Gaeta
could inquire further, Steele started railing about ''your Director" and his "reopening of the
investigation." This was an apparent reference to former FBI Director James Comey's decision to
reopen the probe into Hillary Clinton's private email server after 340,000 copies of State
Department emails between Clinton and her close personal aide, Huma Abedin, were discovered on
a laptop used by Abedin and her husband, Anthony Weiner. He was a disgraced congressman under
investigation by the bureau's New York office for sending sexually explicit messages and photos
to an underage girl.
At which point it all became clear to the handling agent:
"I'm now understanding that he did this because he was upset that the Director's reopening
of the investigation was going to negatively affect the election for Hillary Clinton."
The handling agent described his reaction to Steele's behavior as "surprise and disbelief."
Gaeta told the Senate that Steele's actions and attitude weren't just "crazy source-related
stuff," but "one of the craziest" the veteran agent had seen in two decades of handling
sources. The words are significant: Steele's behavior with the FBI has been characterized as a
sort of professional disagreement, uncomfortable perhaps but not unreasonable. Gaeta's blunt
assessment casts things in a much harsher light and undercuts subsequent efforts by the FBI's
top officials to rehabilitate Steele in order to justify using his "reporting."
Although it has been downplayed until now, Steele's acting out – and his overtly
declared partisan motivations -- constituted a crisis for the bureau, so much so that the
handling agent describes it in violent terms:
"After that point – after everybody digests what happened," Gaeta told the Senate
committee, "[p]hones were ringing at that point; people's ears were bleeding."
Bill Priestap, left, with Michael Horowitz, DoJ inspector general. Priestap vouched for
Steele's reliability, and that misrepresentation is important because it was Priestap who was
responsible for the official launch of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation in the first
place. AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin
Whose ears would those have been? Gaeta's first call likely would have gone to Bill
Priestap, assistant director of the FBI's Counterintelligence Division.
He had just been made Gaeta's point of contact at FBI headquarters.
"Management said we were going to close him," Gaeta told the Senate.
"At that point it's just obvious. That's all you could do." The "management" was Priestap,
according to Inspector General Michael Horowitz. "Priestap decided that Steele had to be
closed immediately." Gaeta drew up the paperwork and Steele was removed from the list of
official bureau sources on Nov. 17, 2016.
In the wake of Donald Trump's election, President Obama ordered a multi-agency "Intelligence
Community Assessment" of Russian interference in the presidential campaign. James Comey, the
director whose actions had prompted Steele to go outside the bureau in the first place, now
pushed for Steele's "reporting" to be included in the document, even though none of it had been
corroborated. Comey called Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.
"I informed the DNI that we would be contributing the [Steele] reporting (although I
didn't use that name) to the IC [Intelligence Community] effort," Comey reported in an email
to his top deputies the next day.
"I told him the source of the material, which included salacious material about the
President-Elect, was a former [REDACTED] who appears to be a credible person."
First in the list of recipients of Comey's email was Priestap.
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Priestap would have known from Gaeta that Steele's behavior was among the "craziest" the
handling agent had run into in two decades of source work. He would have known also that, by
his own admission, Steele's motivations were to promote Hillary Clinton's campaign apparently
by sabotaging Trump's. Yet Priestap went along with Comey's presentation of Steele as a
credible source. More than that, Priestap promoted the idea of including Steele's allegations
in the intelligence assessment, himself writing to the CIA and describing the former British
spy as "reliable."
Finally, Priestap vouched for Steele's reliability even though he later admitted to the
Justice Department inspector general that he "understood that the information [from Steele]
could have been provided by the Russians as part of a disinformation campaign."
Steele
Cast as 'Person of Integrity'
But that's not how Steele's materials were presented to the secret FISA court. Shortly after
the election, Priestap went with FBI agent Peter Strzok to London to see if they could
rehabilitate Steele's credibility by gathering the opinions of "persons who previously had
professional contacts with Steele." They found some who described Steele as "smart" and a
"person of integrity" But several lamented Steele's "poor judgment" or "lack of judgment" and
his habit of "pursuing people [with] political risk but no intel value." But because Priestap
and Strzok did not find any former colleagues to say Steele made things up out of whole cloth,
the Crossfire Hurricane team declared him to be credible for the purpose of justifying
surveillance warrants.
The willingness of the assistant director for counterintelligence to misrepresent essential
information is important because it was Priestap who was responsible for the official launch of
the Crossfire Hurricane investigation in the first place.
Gaeta explained to senators just how serious and irrevocable a break it was to "close" a
source: ''Once he's closed, nobody is allowed – we can't talk to him."
In this case, that practice was not followed. Priestap's apparent rationale was that the
decision to close Steele as a source was not made because he offered unfounded claims but
because he had violated confidentiality agreements by sharing them with the press. And so, the
FBI continued to gather new "reporting" by Steele. One of channels was David Corn, the Mother
Jones reporter who had written the article about Steele's accusations. Corn was a longtime
friend of then-FBI General Counsel James Baker. Their children had gone to the same school
years before and carpooled. Corn gave Steele memos to Baker and then Baker passed them on to
Priestap. Thus the strange situation in which an assistant director of the FBI forbade agents
from talking to Steele because of the source's indiscretion with Mother Jones and then
proceeded to gather Steele materials through a back-channel relationship with Mother Jones.
Strange, yes, perhaps even crazy.
fxrxexexdxoxmx2 , 1 hour ago
They will never give up reshaping this story.
Here is the truth
Barack Hussein Obama used the DOJ,FBI, CIA, State Department to spy on his campaign
rival.
Those loyal to him then used the same agencies in an COUP attempt to remove a duly
elected President.
End of story, no spin.
JimmyJones , 1 hour ago
Oh I love President Trump for completely exposing the Deep State and their partners in
Crime at the MSM...
BaNNeD oN THe RuN , 58 minutes ago
"completely exposing the Deep State"??
This is but a small corner of a huge termite infestation.
Blondefire , 1 hour ago
The only thing crazier than the Steele dossier are the deaths of Seth Rich and Epstein,
or HRC maintaining a private email server which was literally a superhighway for highly
classified information to be funneled directly to China for which no one ever suffered even
trivial consequences, or HRC and WJC supporting the Uranium One deal along with Sleepy Joe
and selling materials vital to our national defense to our sworn enemies, or Obummer being
elected to any office higher than dog catcher, or the entire set of circumstances
surrounding the death of Justice Scalia and the complete lack of curiosity on the part of
the "impartial press", or the deaths of innocent patriots in Benghazi during an arms deal
gone wrong, or the complete lack of curiosity on the part of the "impartial press" on the
Las Vegas massacre and resultant civilian deaths during an arms deal gone wrong, or the
current situation across the nation with civilian police forces being slandered and
defunded, with officers being arrested or encouraged to resign en masse, presumably to
create a vacuum which can only be filled by a national police force of some sort and
probably overseen by the DHS, or almost any of the other headlines from the past 10
years.
MitchRyderAndTheDetroitWheels , 59 minutes ago
I am only 70 and I wouldn't piss on any of the members of the FBI/CIA/Congress if they
were on fire. They are all useless to the common good of this country. The entire
government workforce in DC needs to be fired starting this afternoon. The most useless
MFers on the planet work in city/count/state/federal government. It takes 7 of them to do
the job of one good associate.
Bay of Pigs , 1 hour ago
Huma Abedin. Oh yeah, I remember her.
Anyone know what happened to her husband's laptop?
MitchRyderAndTheDetroitWheels , 1 hour ago
Lindsey Graham isn't going to do **** about anything going forward because he like his
useless butt boy John McCain are knee deep in this coup.
MrBoompi , 1 hour ago
Steele is a criminal along with a long list of others, starting off with Obama and
Brennan.
MitchRyderAndTheDetroitWheels , 56 minutes ago
Barr has 2 more weeks before The Donald has to stand and use the Pulpit....it's ugly now
with the dems coming everyday with a new scheme for Trump to have to counter. The good news
is the MSM is Chicken Little at this point. Only a F fool believe anything they say since
95% of everything they say about Trump is already negative.
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I love your wife , 1 hour ago
How come the fact that Steele is a foreigner never comes in to play?
mikka , 1 hour ago
He is an "allied" foreigner.
BetterOffDead , 27 minutes ago
Are we sure he is retired from MI-6? Sounds like foreign interference in our election,
sponsored by a candidate for president. Good thing she didn't win, she would have been
impeached for this! /sarc
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Ditch , 1 hour ago
There are no good actors in any of these stories. And don't tell me to just wait for
Sessions, Horrorwitz,Dumbham ...
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Joebloinvestor , 51 minutes ago
The FBI acts with impunity and no integrity.
Slammofandango , 15 minutes ago
Just to be clear, Steele was paid by the FBI, with our tax dollars, to meet with the FBI
so as to lend legitimacy to fiction created by a company paid to smear Hillary Clinton's
political opposition, with itself being paid with other funds that came by way of a law
firm hired by Hillary Clinton.
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Freespeaker , 26 minutes ago
Rod Rosenstein is complicit. He should lose his pension and other gov benefits. He
should be seriously considered for prosecution.
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RickyLaFleur , 14 minutes ago
Shadowgate explains why these outsourced contractors are the root of the problem. We
have been advised.
Freespeaker , 9 minutes ago
They are part of the problem. But really it is just another way to cover things up.
sborovay07 , 21 minutes ago
The treasonists behind the coup, other than 1, still remain free. Strzok, instead of
making license plates, has his 2nd book coming out. Meanwhile, the individual who could
have exposed the hoax, Julian Assange, is withering away in prison. It has been so obvious
for a number of years that the Deep State operatives on both sides of the political
spectrum still control the system. Most Americans are not aware of this as the
MSM/Socialist/Marxist/Globalist/DeepState cabal will never admit their crimes. Assange, as
in my book,
Dad, Why Are You Still Talking About Saul Alinsky, He's Been Dead Since 1972? Socialism and
the Deep States War on Our Constitution, tells a tale to Congress that the Deep State
and Obama treasonists never want you to hear. They need to pay!!!
play_arrow
LOL123 , 22 minutes ago
Priestap may have been the first on list from comey but that's not the first source of
dossier.
"
Rahm Emmanuel, who became President Obama's chief of staff, wouldn't allow him (sidney
blumenthal) near the Obama White House. Hillary kept him, however, at a $10,000 a month
sinecure at the Clinton Foundation where he went on to be instrumental in creating the
bengaziscandal from his "Libyan sources."
Trey Gowdy said that the FBI used information from Hillary Clinton hatchet man Sidney
Blumenthal to corroborate the Steele dossier.
"I have seen each factual assertion listed in that dossier, and then I've seen the FBI's
justification. And when you're citing newspaper articles as corroboration for a factual
assertion that you have made, you don't need an FBI agent to go do a Google search," said
Gowdy, a former South Carolina congressman and member of the House Intelligence Committee,
in a Fox News interview.
"And when the name Sidney Blumenthal is included as part of your corroboration, and
you're the world's leading law enforcement agency, you have a problem," Gowdy said.In 2018,
Gowdy hinted that Blumenthal was responsible for the creation of the dossier.
"When you hear who the source or one of the sources of that information is, you're going
to think, 'Oh my gosh, I've heard that name somewhere before. Where could it possibly have
been?'" Gowdy
said in February 2018
Blumenthal, you recall , was an assistant senior
advisor to President Clinton from 1997 to 2001, the prime Clinton scandal years, following
a career as a writer for the New Yorker. He was a prime witness in the grand jury
testimonies over the Monica Lewinsky scandal and famous for leaking creepy stories about
the Ken Starr special prosecutor investigation to the press, and came to be known as a man
who would do anything for the Clintons. He got a reputation so slimey that even Rahm
Emmanuel, who became President Obama's chief of staff, wouldn't allow him near the Obama
White House. Hillary kept him, however, at a $10,000 a month sinecure at the Clinton
Foundation where he went on to be instrumental in creating the Benghazi scandal from his
"Libyan sources." These days, he's affiliated with David Brock's Media Matters, the slime
machine featured by Sharyl Attkisson in her bestseller,
The Smear: How Shady Politcal Operatives Control What You See, What You Think and How You
Vote .
Since then, he's got Clinton in this Steele dossier mess. You'd think Hillary would not
want to have anything to do with him after Benghazi, but they're birds of a feather.
Blumenthal is to Clinton as Ben Rhodes is to Obama.
Blumenthal was on Hillarys retainer and he is really good at making **** up and getting
FBI/CIA involved so much so that he was NOT ALLOWED IN OBAMAS WHITE HOUSE.
To try and pin this on Priestap is a joke.
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Freespeaker , 1 hour ago
Halper, Steele and Mifsud should testify publicly.
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Shifter_X , 23 minutes ago
No one talks about the true origins of the "pee" story anymore
"... The idea, therefore, that Paul Manafort was an agent of influence for the Russian government flies against everything we know about what he actually did. As for Kilimnik, maybe he is a Russian intelligence agent – I'm not in a position to say. But if he is, he's a very weird one, who spent years actively pushing the Ukrainian government to pursue a policy which directly contradicted Russian interests. ..."
"... None of this, needless to say, appears in the US Senate report. Instead, the report chooses to focus on the apparently shocking revelation that Manafort shared Trump campaign polling data with Kilimnik, as if this sharing of private information was in some ways a massive threat to national security and proof that Manafort was working for the Russians. The fact that both Manafort and Kilimnik spent years doing their damnedest to undermine Russia is simply ignored. Go figure! ..."
Despite the secondary roles played some bit part actors in the Russiagate drama, the central
figure in allegations that Donald Trump colluded with the Russian government to be elected as
president of the United States has always been Trumps' onetime campaign manager Paul Manafort.
The recent US Senate report on Russian 'interference' in the 2016 presidential election thus
started off its analysis with a long exposé of Manafort's comings and goings.
Simply put, the thesis is as follows: while working in Ukraine as an advisor to
'pro-Russian' Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovich, Manafort was in effect working on behalf
of the Russian state via 'pro-Russian' Ukrainian oligarchs as well as Russian billionaire Oleg
Deripaska (a man with 'close ties' to the Kremlin). Also suspicious was Manafort's close
relationship with one Konstantin Kilimnik, whom the US Senate claims is a Russia intelligence
agent. All these connections meant that while in Ukraine, Manafort was helping the Russian
Federation spread its malign influence. On returning to the USA and joining the Trump campaign,
he then continued to fulfill the same role.
The fundamental flaw in this thesis has always been the well-known fact that while advising
Yanukovich, Manafort took anything but a 'pro-Russian' position, but instead pressed him to
sign an association agreement with the European Union (EU). Since gaining independence, Ukraine
had avoided being sucked either into the Western or the Russian camp. But the rise of two
competing geopolitical projects – the EU and the Russia-backed Eurasian Union – was
making this stance increasingly impossible, and Ukraine was being put in a position where it
would be forced to choose. This was because the two Unions are incompatible – one can't
be in two customs unions simultaneously, when they levy different tariffs and have different
rules. Association with the EU meant an end to the prospect of Ukraine joining the Eurasian
Union. It was therefore a goal which was entirely incompatible with Russian interests, which
required that Ukraine turn instead towards Eurasia.
Manafort's position on this matter therefore worked against Russia. Even The
Guardian journalist Luke Harding had to concede this in his book Collusion ,
citing a former Ukrainian official Oleg Voloshin that, 'Manafort was an advocate for US
interests. So much so that the joke inside [Yanunkovich's] Party of Regions was that he
actually worked for the USA.'
If anyone had any doubts about this, they can now put them aside. On Monday, the news agency
BNE Intellinews
announced that it had received a leak of hundreds of Kilimnik's emails detailing his
relationship with Manafort and Yanukovich. The story they tell is not at all what the US Senate
and other proponents of the Trump-Russia collusion fantasy would have you believe. As
BNE reports:
Today the Yanukovych narrative is that he was a stool pigeon for Russian President
Vladimir Putin from the start, but after winning the presidency he actually worked very hard
to take Ukraine into the European family. As bne IntelliNews has already reported,
Manafort's flight records also show how he crisscrossed Europe in an effort to build support
in Brussels for Yanukovych in the run up to the EU Vilnius summit.
On March 1, his first foreign trip as newly minted president was to the EU capital of
Brussels. The leaked emails show that Manafort influenced Yanukovych's decision to visit
Brussels as first stop, working in concert with his assistant Konstantin Kilimnik In a
memorandum entitled 'Purpose of President Yanukovych Trip to Brussels,' Manafort argued that
the decision to visit Brussels first would underscore Yanukovych's mission to "bring European
values to Ukraine," and kick start negotiations on the Association Agreement.
The memorandum on the Brussels visit was the first of many from Manafort and Kilimnik to
Yanukovych, in which they pushed Yanukovych to signal a clear pro-EU line and to carry out
reforms to back this up.
To handle Yanukovych's off-message antics, Manafort and Kilimnik created a back channel to
Yanukovych for Western politicians – in particular those known to appreciate Ukraine's
geopolitical significance vis-à-vis Russia. In Europe, these were Sweden's then
foreign minister Carl Bildt, Poland's then foreign minister Radosław Sikorski and
European Commissioner for Enlargement Stefan Fule, and in the US, Vice President Joe
Biden.
"We need to launch a 'Friends of Ukraine' programme to help us use informal channels in
talks on the free trade zone and modernisation of the gas transport system," Manafort and
Kilimnik wrote to Yanukovych in September 2010. "Carl Bildt is the foundation of this
informal group and has sufficient weight with his colleagues in questions connected to
Ukraine and the Eastern Partnership. ( ) but he needs to be able to say that he has a direct
channel to the President, and he knows that President Yanukovych remains committed to
European integration."
Beyond this, the emails show that Manafort and Kilimnik also tried hard to arrange a meeting
between Yanukovich and US President Barack Obama, and urged Yanukovich to show leniency to
former Prime Minister Yuliia Timoshenko (who was imprisoned for fraud).
It is noticeable that the members of the 'back channel' Manafort and Kilimnik created to
lobby on behalf of Ukraine in the EU included some of the most notably Russophobic European
politicians of the time, such as Carl Bildt and Radek Sikorski. Moreover, nowhere in any of
what they did can you find anything that could remotely be described as 'pro-Russian'. Indeed,
the opposite is true. As previously noted, Ukraine's bid for an EU agreement directly
challenged a key Russian interest – the expansion of the Eurasian Union to include
Ukraine. Manafort and Kilimnik were therefore very much working against Russia, not
for it.
The idea, therefore, that Paul Manafort was an agent of influence for the Russian
government flies against everything we know about what he actually did. As for Kilimnik, maybe
he is a Russian intelligence agent – I'm not in a position to say. But if he is, he's a
very weird one, who spent years actively pushing the Ukrainian government to pursue a policy
which directly contradicted Russian interests.
None of this, needless to say, appears in the US Senate report. Instead, the report
chooses to focus on the apparently shocking revelation that Manafort shared Trump campaign
polling data with Kilimnik, as if this sharing of private information was in some ways a
massive threat to national security and proof that Manafort was working for the Russians. The
fact that both Manafort and Kilimnik spent years doing their damnedest to undermine Russia is
simply ignored. Go figure!
Oh, look, no masks! And you thought that got covered up by the investigation done by the
Mueller team? Let's go over this one more time:
The document declassified by DNI Grenell shows that there were 14 unique days when the NSA
received requests to "unmask"--the first was on 30 November 2016 by UN Ambassador Samantha
Power and the last came on 12 January from Joe Biden. There were two separate requests on the
14th of December by Samantha Power, which indicates two separate NSA reports. Samantha Power
would not have to submit two requests for the same document.
"so basically, any legitimate grievance or concern of citizens is a Russian plot ."
Other commenters tweeted that they didn't need any help from Moscow to clearly see that Biden's
mind
is failing .
Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper went on CNN to accuse Russia of
interfering in US affairs including the Covid-19 pandemic, Portland and Kenosha protests, and
election meddling while giving no real evidence.
Clapper, who has previously said Russians are "typically, almost genetically driven to
co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever," was more than happy to push more xenophobic Russia
conspiracy theories during a Monday CNN interview when prompted by anchor Alisyn
Camerota.
The US Department of Homeland Security reportedly blocked the distribution of a July intelligence bulletin warning of a
Russian plot to promote "misinformation" that the Democratic presidential candidate is in poor mental health.
The
report
by
ABC News on Wednesday cited internal emails, and the media outlet said a DHS spokesperson confirmed that distribution of the
bulletin to federal, state and local law enforcement agencies had been delayed. The spokesperson said the bulletin didn't meet
quality standards, including having sufficient evidence and context, for dissemination, ABC said.
Democrats will likely pounce on the report to allege that the DHS blocked the warning to help President Donald Trump win the
November election and that the Trump campaign's criticism of Biden's mental state is part of the Russian misinformation
effort. Twitter users are already promoting the new collusion theory, asking
"
which
'homeland'
does DHS serve?"
and saying,
"
Trump
and Putin
are one."
The ABC report downplayed
portions of the intelligence bulletin unrelated to Russia, including warnings that Iranian and Chinese state media outlets are
promoting suggestions that Trump
"suffers from psychosis"
and may be in poor
physical health. It also sets up the argument that any future criticism of the Democrat's mental soundness is Russian
misinformation.
One Twitter user said the
report is
"laying the groundwork for 'anyone commenting on Joe's decline is in league
with Russia' takes,"
while another inferred,
"so basically, any legitimate
grievance or concern of citizens is a
Russian
plot
."
Other commenters tweeted that they didn't need any help from Moscow to clearly see that Biden's
mind
is failing
.
Online speculation has
grown over Biden's expanding series of infamous gaffes, such as welcoming his audience to the
wrong
place
and then trying to pass it off as a joke when he gave a July speech in his home state of Delaware.
The Democrat has also
stumbled in unscripted moments to know
where
he is
, such as praising the beauty of Vermont when he was actually campaigning last year in New Hampshire, and whom he's
with, such as mistaking his
wife
for his sister
in a primary victory speech in March. He bragged in February that he negotiated the 2016 Paris Climate
Agreement with Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping. Deng died in 1997.
Democrats have tried to
revive the Trump-Russia collusion narrative despite the failure of special prosecutor Robert Mueller to prove that the Trump
campaign worked with Moscow to win the 2016 presidential election.
When the Office of the
Director of National Intelligence informed congressional committees last week that intelligence briefings on election security
issues would no longer be done in person, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff
issued a statement saying,
"The American people have both the right and the need to know
that another nation, Russia, is trying to help decide who their next president should be."
The statement ignored the
fact that Russia isn't the only country that has been accused of using disinformation and other means to influence the 2020 US
elections. A US intelligence report last month warned that Russia, China and Iran, among others, have sought to influence
voters and that mass use of voting by mail will make it easier for foreign countries to interfere.
China
and Iran
also allegedly sought to discredit Trump, according to the intelligence warnings.
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Sullivan will sustain the motion after some kind of hearing is what I would expect
now.
Likbez , September 2, 2020 10:41 am
He should suffer a little bit first.
I agree. I am not fan of Flynn and I will be the first to observe that for the former
chief of DIA he proved to be amazingly inept. Add to this his lunatic views on Iran. Flynn
has long been obsessed with finding a causus belli to justify an attack on Tehran. In this
sense keeping him in check was essential and firing him from the position of national
security advisor weakened Iran hawks in Trump administration. Aalthough Mattis was even
worse) . As Mark Perry observed:
"Mattis' 33-Year Grudge Against Iran is so intense" that it led President Obama to
dismiss him as Centcom commander. "Mattis' Iran antagonism also concerns many of the
Pentagon's most senior officers, who disagree with his assessment and openly worry
whether his Iran views are based on a sober analysis or whether he's simply reflecting a
30-plus-year-old hatred of the Islamic Republic that is unique to his service"
If such weaklings like Strzok can deceive and entrap him, what about real hard core
professionals? How such a person could raise to the the top in DIA? Do we need such a
gullible person as a national security advisor?
But, at the same time, the key event here is different, and in this sense his talks with
the Russian ambassador does not matter much (both sides understood that they are
recorded)
What FBI did to him is abhorrable, and puts a long dark shadow on Obama administration:
this is really not about Flynn but about the politicization of FBI in the manner that
remind me NKVD practices (which was famous for eliminating Stalin political opponents by
declaring them to be British spies and torturing out the confessions), no matter what is
our position on the political spectrum.
Doug Valentine's new book, The CIA as Organized Crime: How Illegal
Operations Corrupt America and the World , is a compilation of newly updated articles
and recent interviews. The book, which discusses a part of history that is rarely mentioned
nowadays but is vital to understand as we enter the Trump era, is divided into four sections.
The first covers the CIA's Phoenix program in Vietnam; the second looks at how the agency
manages the War on Drugs; the third reviews how the Phoenix program became the model for
Homeland Security and the War on Terror; and the fourth takes a look at the the CIA's influence
on the media.
The CIA created the Phoenix program in South Vietnam in 1967 as a means of identifying,
capturing, detaining, interrogating and assassinating the civilian leaders of the insurgency.
As detailed in the book, the program has become the template for Homeland Security, as well as
for waging the War on Terror and the War on Drugs.
The following edited excerpt, which focuses on the CIA's illegal domestic spying program,
Chaos, was omitted from the book. It is taken from an interview Valentine did with Guillermo
Jimenez in November 2014, originally titled "The CIA Has Become the Phoenix."
Cloaked in secrecy, the CIA is rarely written about and poorly understood. But while
researching the infamous Phoenix program, Valentine managed to penetrate the agency and
interview dozens of agency officers. His
Phoenix research materials are available to the public at the National Security Archive.
His interviews with several CIA officers are available online here and here
.
GUILLERMO JIMENEZ: The Phoenix Program has recently been republished by Open Road
Media as part of their Forbidden Bookshelves series. Would you mind sharing with us how your
book was chosen for the series? What do you make of this new-found interest in Phoenix; what
the CIA was up to in Vietnam; and what the CIA is up to generally?
VALENTINE: When the book came out in 1990, it got a terrible review in The New York
Times . Morley Safer, who'd been a reporter in Vietnam, wrote the review. Safer and the
Times killed the book because in it I said Phoenix never would have succeeded if the
reporters in Vietnam hadn't covered for the CIA.
Several senior CIA officers said the same thing, that "So and so was always in my office.
He'd bring a bottle of scotch and I'd tell him what was going on." The celebrity reporters knew
what was going on, but they didn't report about it in exchange for having access. I said that
in the book specifically about The New York Times . So I not only got the CIA angry at
me, I also got the Vietnam press corps angry at me too.
Between those two things, the book did not get off to an auspicious start. The Times
gave Safer half a page to write his review, which was bizarre. The usual response is just to
ignore a book like The Phoenix Program . But The New York Times Book Review
serves a larger function; it teaches the media elite and "intelligentsia" what to think and how
to say it. So Safer said my book was incoherent, because it unraveled the bureaucratic networks
that conceal the contradictions between policy and operational reality. It exposed Bill Colby
[who ran Phoenix for the agency and later became CIA director] as a liar. Safer was upset that
I didn't portray his friend and patron as a symbol of the elite, as a modern day Odysseus.
Luckily, with the Internet revolution, people aren't bound by the Times and network
news anymore. They can listen to Russia Today and get another side of the story. So Mark
Crispin Miller and Philip Rappaport at Open Road chose The Phoenix Program to be the
first book they published. And it's been reborn. Thanks to the advent of the e-book, we've
reached an audience of concerned and knowledgeable people in a way that wasn't possible 25
years ago.
It's also because of these Internet developments that John Brennan, the director of CIA,
thought of reorganizing the the agency. All these things are connected. It's a vastly different
world than it was in 1947 when the CIA was created. The nature of the American empire has
changed, and what the empire needs from the CIA has changed. The CIA is allocated about $30
billion a year, so the organizational changes are massive undertakings. If you want to
understand the CIA, you have to understand how it's organized.
JIMENEZ: I want to talk to you about that but first I'd like to touch upon the CIA's
infiltration of the US media. I find it curious, because the way that you describe it, it's not
so much a deliberate attempt to censor the media. There's a lot of self-censorship as a result
of that already existing relationship. Is that how you see this?
VALENTINE: Yes. The media organizes itself the way the CIA does. The CIA has case
officers running around the world, engaged in murder and mayhem, and the media has reporters
covering them. The reporter and the case officer both have bosses, and the higher you get in
each organization, the closer the bosses become.
The ideological guidelines get more restrictive the higher up you go. To join the CIA,
you have to pass a psychological assessment test. They're not going to hire anybody who is
sympathetic towards poor people. These are ruthless people who serve capitalist bosses .
They're very rightwing, and t he media's job is to protect them. Editors only hire reporters
who are ideologically pure, just like you can't get into the CIA if you're a Communist or think
the CIA should obey the law.
It's the same thing in the media. You can't get a job at CNN if you sympathize with the
Palestinians or report how Israel has been stealing their land for 67 years. The minute you say
something that is anathema or upsets the Israelis, you're out. The people who enforce these
ideological restraints are the editors and the publishers. For example, while covering the
merciless Israeli bombardment of civilians in Gaza in 2014, Diana Magnay was harassed and
threatened by a group of bloodthirsty Israelis who were cheering the slaughter. Disgusted,
Magnay later referred to them as "scum" in a tweet. She was forced to apologize, transferred to
Moscow, and banished forever from Israel.
In a similar case, NBC correspondent Ayman Mohyeldin was playing soccer with four young boys
in Gaza when Israel shelled the playing field. Mohyeldin witnessed their murders, which he
reported in a series of tweets. Without ever providing a reason, NBC pulled Mohyeldin from Gaza
and prevented him from ever returning. NBC replaced Mohyeldin with Israeli sympathizer Richard
Engel.
Any dictator would be happy with the way American media is organized. The minute you step
out of the box, they fire you or send you off to Siberia . It's a homogenous system. Not
just the media and CIA, but politicians too. As the 2016 primaries proved, you can't be a
candidate for either party unless you pass the ideological test. You must be a freewheeling
capitalist. You must support Israel with billions of tax payer dollars. You must give the
military whatever weapons it wants. That's the nature of the American state. These things
naturally work together because that is the way it has been structured for 240 years.
JIMENEZ: We've seen pseudo alternatives emerge in the Internet posing as adversarial or
anti-establishment when they're anything but. We've seen this growing trend, and it's something
to be mindful of as we look for these sources on the Internet.
VALENTINE: The Internet is a free for all, so you have to approach it the way any
enlightened person approaches every part of America, which is buyer beware. Capitalism is not
designed to protect poor people or make sure people lead healthy, fulfilling lives. It's
designed to make sure the super-rich can steal from the poor. There's only so much wealth and
the rich want it.
The rich want to monopolize information too. Is a particular piece of information on the
Internet coming from a reliable source? Who knows? Just because some of it is true doesn't mean
that all of it is true. To be able to discern whether the information is accurate or complete,
you must be grounded in the reality that the capitalist system are organized to oppress you,
keep you in the dark and off balance as much as possible. It's a game of wits and you've got to
be smart about it. Buyer beware.
JIMENEZ: Now I'd like to talk about the recent organizational changes in the CIA. It stems
from an article in The Washington Post by Greg Miller. The headline is "CIA Director
John Brennan Considering Sweeping Organizational Changes." What the article is saying is that
Brennan wants to restructure the CIA using the model of their Counterterrorism Center; merging
different units and divisions, combining analysts with operatives into hybrid teams that will
focus on specific regions of the world. This sounds to me like the organizational changes that
were born out of Phoenix and that were exported to other parts of the world over the years. The
CIA appears to be applying the same structure to all of its operations. Is that how you read
this?
VALENTINE: Yes, and it's something that, from my perspective, was predictable, which is why
The Phoenix Program was re-released now, because what I predicted 25 years ago has
happened. And you can only predict accurately if you know the history.
The CIA initially, and for decades, had four directorates under an executive management
staff: Administration, Intelligence, Operations, and Science and Technology. Executive
management had staff for congressional liaison, legal issues, security, public relations,
inspections, etc. Administration is just that: staff for finance, personnel, and support
services like interrogators, translators and construction companies. Science and Technology is
self-explanatory too, but with a typical CIA twist – science for the CIA means better
ways to kill and control people, like the MKULTRA program. And now there's a fifth directorate,
Digital, that keystrokes and hacks foreign governments and corporations.
The Operations people overthrew foreign governments the old fashioned way, through sabotage
and subversion. The Operations Directorate is now the National Clandestine Service. The
Intelligence Directorate, which is now called Analysis, studied political, economic and social
trends around the world so that executive management could mount better operations to control
them.
The Operations Directorate was divided into several branches. The Counterintelligence (CI)
branch detected foreign spies. Foreign Intelligence (FI) staff "liaison" officers worked with
secret policemen and other officials in foreign nations. They collected "positive intelligence"
by eavesdropping or by recruiting agents. The Covert Action branch engaged in deniable
political action. The Special Operations Division (now the Special Activities Division)
supplied paramilitary officers. There was also a Political and Psychological branch that
specialized in all forms of propaganda.
These branches and directorates were career paths for operations officers (operators)
assigned to geographical divisions. An FI staff officer might spend his or her entire career in
the Far East Asia Division. The managers could move people around, but those things, generally
speaking, were in place when the CIA began. The events that led to the formation of the
current Counterterrorism Center began in 1967, when US security services began to suspect that
the Cubans and the Soviets were infiltrating the anti-war movement. Lyndon Johnson wanted to
know the details, so his attorney general, Ramsay Clark, formed the Interdepartmental
Intelligence Unit (IDIU) within the Department of Justice. The IDIU's job was to coordinate the
elements of the CIA, FBI and military that were investigating dissenters. The White House
wanted to control and provide political direction to these investigations.
The Phoenix program was created simultaneously in 1967 and did the same thing in Vietnam.
It brought together 25 agencies and aimed them at civilians in the insurgency. It's political
warfare. It's secret. It's against the rules of war. It violated the Geneva Conventions. It's
what Homeland Security does in the US: bringing agencies together and focusing them on
civilians who they think look like terrorists.
The goal of this kind of bureaucratic centralization is to improve intelligence collection
and analysis so reaction forces can leap into the breach more quickly and effectively. In 1967,
the CIA already had computer experts who were traveling around by jet. The world was getting
smaller and the CIA, which had all the cutting edge technology, was way out in front. It hired
Ivy Leaguers like Nelson Brickham to make the machine run smoothly.
Brickham, as I've explained elsewhere, was the Foreign Intelligence staff officer who
organized the Phoenix program based on principles Rensis Likert articulated in his book New
Patterns of Management . Brickham believed he could use reporting formats as a tool to
shape the behavior of CIA officers in the field. In particular, he hoped to correct "the grave
problem of distortion and cover-up which a reporting system must address."
Likert organized industries to be adaptable, and the CIA organized itself the same way. It
was always reorganizing itself to adapt to new threats. And in 1967, while Brickham was forming
Phoenix to neutralize the leaders of the insurgency in South Vietnam, James Angleton and the
CIA's Counterintelligence staff were creating the MHCHAOS program in Langley, Virginia, to spy
on members of the anti-war movement, and turn as many of them as possible into double
agents.
Chaos was the codename for the Special Operations Group within Angleton's
Counterintelligence staff. The CIA's current Counterterrorism Center, which was established in
1986, is a direct descendent of Chaos.
The CIA's CT Center evolved from the Chaos domestic spying mechanism into the nerve center
of the CIA's clandestine staff. Same thing happened with the CIA's Counter-Narcotics Center at
the same time. Both are modeled on Phoenix, and both are wonderful tools for White House cadres
to exercise political control over the bureaucracies they coordinate. These "centers" are the
perfect means for policing and expanding the empire; they make it easier than ever for the CIA
to track people and events in every corner of the world. The need for the old-fashioned
directorates is fading away. You don't need an entire directorate to understand the political,
social and economic movements around the world anymore, because the United States is
controlling them all.
The US has color revolutions going everywhere. It's got the World Bank and the IMF
strangling countries with debt, like the banks are strangling college students and home owners
here. The War on Terror is the best thing that ever happened to US capitalists and their secret
police force, the CIA. Terrorism is the pretext that allows the CIA to coordinate and transcend
every government agency and civic institution, including the media, to the extent that we don't
even see its wars anymore. Its control is so pervasive, so ubiquitous; the CIA has actually
become the Phoenix.
JIMENEZ: Right.
VALENTINE: It's the eye of god in the sky; it's able to determine what's going to happen
next because it's controlling all of these political, social and economic movements. It pits
the Sunnis against the Shiites. It doesn't need slow and outdated directorates. These Phoenix
centers enable it to determine events instantaneously anywhere. There are now Counterterror
Intelligence Centers all over the world. In Phoenix they were called Intelligence Operations
Coordinating Centers. So it's basically exactly the same thing. It's been evolving that way and
everybody on the inside was gearing themselves for this glorious moment for 30 years. They even
have a new staff position called Targeting Officers. You can Google this.
JIMENEZ: Right, right, exactly.
VALENTINE: The centers represent the unification of military, intelligence and media
operations under political control. White House political appointees oversee them, but the
determinant force is the CIA careerists who slither into private industry when their careers
are over. They form the consulting firms that direct the corporations that drive the empire.
Through their informal "old boy" network, the CIA guys and gals keep America at war so they can
make a million dollars when their civil service career is over.
JIMENEZ: The Washington Post and subsequent articles frame it as if these changes are
drastic. But to hear you, it's a natural progression. So what does this announcement mean? Is
the CIA putting out its own press release through the Washington Post just to give
everyone the heads up?
VALENTINE: Well, everybody in the CIA was worried that if the directorates were reorganized,
it would negatively affect their careers. But executive management usually does what its
political bosses tell them to do, and Brennan reorganized in 2015. He created a fifth
directorate, the Directorate for Digital Innovation (DDI) ostensibly as the CIA's
"mantelpiece". But, as the Washington Times reported, "it is the formation of the new
'mission' centers – including ones for counterintelligence, weapons and
counter-proliferation, and counterterrorism – that is most likely to shake up the
agency's personnel around the world."
The CIA's "ten new Mission Centers" are designed to "serve as locations to integrate
capabilities and bring the full range of CIA's operational, analytic, support, technical and
digital skill sets to bear against the nation's most pressing national security problems."
This modernization means the CIA is better able to control people politically, starting with
its own officers, then everyone else. That's the ultimate goal. Politicians, speaking in a
unified voice, create the illusion of a crime-fighting CIA and an America with a responsibility
to protect benighted foreigners from themselves. But they can't tell you what the CIA does,
because it's all illegal. It's all a lie. In order for the politicians to hold office, they
have to cover for the CIA. Their concern is how to explain the reorganization and exploit it.
They squabble among themselves and cut the best deals possible.
"... There has been a long string of U.S. provocations toward Russia. The first one came in the late 1990s and the initial years of the twenty-first century when Washington violated tacit promises given to Mikhail Gorbachev and other Soviet leaders that if Moscow accepted a united Germany within NATO, the Alliance would not seek to move farther east. Instead of abiding by that bargain, the Clinton and Bush administrations successfully pushed NATO to admit multiple new members from Central and Eastern Europe, bringing that powerful military association directly to Russia's western border. In addition, the United States initiated "rotational" deployments of its forces to the new members so that the U.S. military presence in those countries became permanent in all but name. Even Robert M. Gates, who served as secretary of defense under both George W. Bush and Barack Obama, was uneasy about those deployments and conceded that he should have warned Bush in 2007 that they might be unnecessarily provocative. ..."
"... Such provocative political steps, though, are now overshadowed by worrisome U.S. and NATO military moves. Weeks before the formal announcement on July 29, the Trump administration touted its plan to relocate some U.S. forces stationed in Germany. When Secretary of Defense Mike Esper finally made the announcement, the media's focus was largely on the point that 11,900 troops would leave that country. ..."
"... Among other developments, there already has been a surge of alarming incidents between U.S. and Russian military aircraft in that region. Most of the cases involve U.S. spy planes flying near the Russian coast -- supposedly in international airspace. On July 30, a Russian Su-27 jet fighter intercepted two American surveillance aircraft; according to Russian officials, it was the fourth time in the final week of July that they caught U.S. planes in that sector approaching the Russian coast. Yet another interception occurred on August 5, again involving two U.S. spy planes. Still others have taken place throughout mid-August. It is a reckless practice that easily could escalate into a broader, very dangerous confrontation. ..."
"... The growing number of such incidents is a manifestation of the surging U.S. military presence along Russia's border, especially in the Black Sea . They are taking place on Russia's doorstep, thousands of miles away from the American homeland. Americans should consider how the United States would react if Russia decided to establish a major naval and air presence in the Gulf of Mexico, operating out of bases in such allied countries as Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. ..."
"... I think this has been bipartisan policy since at least 1947. Unlikely to change anytime soon, even with realists gaining ground. Perhaps expanding NATO east, sending support to Ukraine, and intervening in Syria (despite attempts to leave, the best we can get at this point are small troop reductions that most likely are redeployed to neighboring countries) aren't the best idea after all? ..."
"... they think Russia is a weak state and can do nothing therefore they are free to do as they please. ..."
"... the US leadership wants ether country to take a shot at some thing US. Then then can scream and stomp their feet that no one on earth is allowed to trade with ether country and the US can block all trade with ether country. ..."
"... The other thing at play is Americans love it when their leaders act like gangsters. That's why leaders do it. Nothing will get you votes faster in the US than saying your going to kill people. I see US citizens try that non-sense about it's all Washington we don't want that. But you keep voting for people that are going to give you the next war fix. When you stop they will stop. ..."
"... if people are convinced that Russia is a weak state -- then it is easier to approve adventures abroad -- including ringing Russia. ..."
"... Please explain to me, a Russian person, what kind of anti-American policy Russia is spreading in countries? If we exclude acts of counteraction against American expansion and aggression against Russia? ..."
"... The only people that are destroying Americans are within our borders, wielding power to fulfill their mission -- enrich themselves, keep the borders open, and our military all over the globe. ..."
"... I think there is a third option besides escalation and deescalation - exhaustion. Projecting power across the globe is expensive, it is a slow but steady drain on US resources, which are needed elsewhere (for example to quell the riots in major US cities). ..."
"... I see it as exhaustion by corruption. The US military is increasingly bureaucratic, political and ineffectual. Our weapons are gold-plated, hyper-tech focused and require highly-skilled people to maintain them, which means we can't quickly train new people up. The weapons themselves are so complex and expensive that there is no way to manufacture them at scale quickly. ..."
"... Read Jean Lartegy's "The Centurions." That is the direction where the tactically brilliant, but strategically incompetent US military leadership is headed. ..."
"... Stop focusing on what Trump says and look at what his administration does. Troops in Poland and Eastern Europe, Nord Stream 2, intrusive US reconnaissance flights along Russia's borders, support of Ukraine, interference with Russian patrols in Syria, the continuing attempt to destabilize Assad in Syria, the destruction of JCPOA, global sanctions campaign on Russia among others, withdrawal from arms control treaties, accusation that Russia was cheating on INF treaty, hiring dozens of anti-Russia hardliners, etc, etc. ..."
"... I don't think US-Russian cooperation is doable at this point--or any time soon. Given how erratic US policy is--yawing violently from one direction to another--Russia has no reason to accept the damage to its relationship with China that shifting to a strategic arrangement with the US would entail. The risk is too high and the potential rewards too uncertain. ..."
"... We have pretty much alienated the Russian state under Putin, and now we're trying to wait him out, with the expectation that there is no one of his capabilities to maintain the strategic autonomy of the Russian state in the longer term and that once he exits the scene, some Yeltsin-like stooge will present himself. ..."
"... Everyone is focusing on Russia because of the Russia hoax. Dems started a new cold war based on an irrational fear that Russia was threatening our democracy. ..."
"... The foreign policy elite dislikes Russia, always has, and will do anything to keep this "adversary" front and center because their prospects for prestige, power and position depend upon the presence of an enemy. As an example see Strobe Talbot and Michael McFaul. ..."
Tensions are becoming dangerous in Syria and on Russia's back doorstep. US soldiers stand
near US and Russian military vehicles in the northeastern Syrian town of al-Malikiyah (Derik)
at the border with Turkey, on June 3, 2020. (Photo by DELIL SOULEIMAN/AFP via Getty Images)
A dangerous vehicle collision between U.S and Russian soldiers in Northeastern Syria on Aug.
24 highlights the fragility of the relationship and the broader test of wills between the two
major powers.
According to White House
reports and a Russian video that went viral this week, it appeared that as the two sides
were racing down a highway in armored vehicles, the Russians sideswiped the Americans, leaving
four U.S. soldiers injured. It is but the latest clash as both sides continue their patrols in
the volatile area. But it speaks of bigger problems with U.S. provocations on Russia's backdoor
in Eastern Europe.
A sober examination of U.S. policy toward Russia since the disintegration of the Soviet
Union leads to two possible conclusions. One is that U.S. leaders, in both Republican and
Democratic administrations, have been utterly tone-deaf to how Washington's actions are
perceived in Moscow. The other possibility is that those leaders adopted a policy of maximum
jingoistic swagger intended to intimidate Russia, even if it meant obliterating a constructive
bilateral relationship and eventually risking a dangerous showdown. Washington's latest
military moves, especially in Eastern Europe and the Black Sea, are stoking alarming
tensions.
There has been a
long string of U.S. provocations toward Russia. The first one came in the late 1990s and
the initial years of the twenty-first century when Washington violated tacit promises given to
Mikhail Gorbachev and other Soviet leaders that if Moscow accepted a united Germany within
NATO, the Alliance would not seek to move farther east. Instead of abiding by that bargain, the
Clinton and Bush administrations successfully pushed NATO to admit multiple new members from
Central and Eastern Europe, bringing that powerful military association directly to Russia's
western border. In addition, the United States initiated "rotational" deployments of its forces
to the new members so that the U.S. military presence in those countries became permanent in
all but name. Even Robert M. Gates, who served as secretary of defense under both George W.
Bush and Barack Obama, was uneasy
about those deployments and conceded that he should have warned Bush in 2007 that they might be
unnecessarily provocative.
As if such steps were not antagonistic enough, both Bush and Obama sought to bring Georgia
and Ukraine into NATO. The latter country is not only within what Russia regards as its
legitimate sphere of influence, but within its core security zone. Even key European members of
NATO, especially France and Germany, believed that such a move was unwise and blocked
Washington's ambitions. That resistance, however, did not inhibit a Western effort to meddle in Ukraine's
internal affairs to help
demonstrators unseat Ukraine's elected, pro-Russia president and install a new, pro-NATO
government in 2014.
Such provocative political steps, though, are now overshadowed by worrisome U.S. and
NATO military moves. Weeks before the formal announcement on July 29, the Trump administration
touted its plan to relocate some U.S. forces stationed in Germany. When Secretary of Defense
Mike Esper finally made the announcement, the media's focus was largely on the point that
11,900 troops would leave that country.
However, Esper
made it clear that only 6,400 would return to the United States; the other nearly 5,600
would be redeployed to other NATO members in Europe. Indeed, of the 6,400 coming back to the
United States, "many of these or similar units will begin conducting rotational deployments
back to Europe." Worse, of the 5,600 staying in Europe, it turns out that at least 1,000 are going
to Poland's eastern border with Russia.
Another result of the redeployment will be to boost U.S. military power in the Black Sea.
Esper confirmed that various units would "begin continuous rotations farther east in the Black
Sea region, giving us a more enduring presence to enhance deterrence and reassure allies along
NATO's southeastern flank." Moscow is certain to regard that measure as another on a growing
list of Black Sea provocations by the United States.
Among other developments, there already has been a surge of alarming incidents between
U.S. and Russian military aircraft in that region. Most of the cases involve U.S. spy planes
flying near the Russian coast -- supposedly in international airspace. On July 30, a Russian
Su-27 jet fighter
intercepted two American surveillance aircraft; according to Russian officials, it was the
fourth time in the final week of July that they caught U.S. planes in that sector approaching
the Russian coast. Yet
another interception occurred on August 5, again involving two U.S. spy planes. Still
others have
taken place throughout mid-August. It is a reckless
practice that easily could escalate into a broader, very dangerous confrontation.
The growing number of such incidents is a manifestation of the surging U.S. military
presence along Russia's border,
especially in the Black Sea . They are taking place on Russia's doorstep, thousands of
miles away from the American homeland. Americans should consider how the United States would
react if Russia decided to establish a major naval and air presence in the Gulf of Mexico,
operating out of bases in such allied countries as Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua.
The undeniable reality is that the United States and its NATO allies are crowding Russia;
Russia is not crowding the United States. Washington's bumptious policies already have wrecked
a once-promising bilateral relationship and created a needless new cold war with Moscow. If
more prudent U.S. policies are not adopted soon, that cold war might well turn hot.
Ted Galen Carpenter, a senior fellow in security studies at the Cato Institute and a
contributing editor at The American Conservative, is the author of 12 books and more
than 850 articles on international affairs. His latest book is NATO: The Dangerous Dinosaur
(2019).
I mean, I think this has been bipartisan policy since at least 1947. Unlikely to change
anytime soon, even with realists gaining ground. Perhaps expanding NATO east, sending
support to Ukraine, and intervening in Syria (despite attempts to leave, the best we can
get at this point are small troop reductions that most likely are redeployed to neighboring
countries) aren't the best idea after all?
This is a very anti American article! Patriots know that where the U.S. gives political
or economic ground Russia and other adversaries will fill the vacum with policies intended
to destroy American peoeple. So no, it is not a bad idea to be involved in Syria and
Ukraine in fact it is a very good idea.
The entire framing of Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the Muslim Brotherhood as "pro American"
and those who oppose them as "anti American" is delusional.
Russia is a weak state trying to maintain its natural spheres of influence along the Curzon
line. Why has the State Department/ Pentagon decided to try and roll this back? How the F
to they expect Russia to react. How would America react if a foreign power tried to turn
Mexico into a strategic asset. So why is it ok to make Ukraine into a Nato member? It's
reckless and ultimately it is pointless. Weakening Russia further serves little strategic
purpose and potentially threatens to destabilize the Balkans and mid east with Turkish
adventurism. What will America do if the Turks seize Rhodes under some pretext?
Syria is another case of State Department midwits not understanding the results of their
regime change. What purpose does it serve to put a Sunni extremist government in Damascus.
How hateful do you have to be to subject Syria's minorities to genocide at the hands of an
ISIS sympathetic government? How do you delude yourself that such a regime will serve
America's interests in the long run? So you can own Iran before the election? You are
trading victory today for permanent loss tomorrow. It's insane.
Just like you, they think Russia is a weak state and can do nothing therefore they are free to do as they please.
Also, since Turkey is a NATO member and as such an ally to the U.S. shouldn't you be cheering in good faith for Turkey
and against Russia?
You got that one. Because Turkey is a thorn in NATO side. It has massive economic
interests in Russia, China and the rest of Asia. The "adventure" in Syria is coordinated
with Russia to the last detail, while playacting tensions. US problem in Syria is not
Russia or Turkey, but Russia AND Turkey.
As US is frowning at Egypt Al-Sisi , or Saudi MBS -- it is because they frown at Egypt
AND Russia, as well as Saudi Arabia AND Russia.
Basically, countries nominally counted in OUR camp are frowned upon when collaborating with
the ENEMY countries.
Our foreign policy is stuck in Middle East -- and cannot get unstuck. Cannot be better
illustrated then Pompeo addressing Republican convention from Jerusalem.
The only way Russia can challenge encirclement is by challenging US in its home away
from home -- Middle East. And creating new realities in the ground by collaborating with
the countries in the region -- undermining monopoly.
And as the entire world is hurting from epidemic related economic setbacks, Russia and
China are economies that are moving forward. And nobody in the Middle East can afford to
ignore it.
I agree with you with the exception of Russia being weak. One day the US which has never
seen any thing in advance will push Russia one time to many and find the Russian Army in
Poland and Romania. That is if China doesn't take out some thing precious to the US in the
mean time like a U2, aircraft carrier etc.
There are two things at play here. The first is the US leadership wants ether country to
take a shot at some thing US. Then then can scream and stomp their feet that no one on
earth is allowed to trade with ether country and the US can block all trade with ether
country.
The other thing at play is Americans love it when their leaders act like gangsters. That's why leaders do it. Nothing will get you votes faster in the US than saying your going
to kill people. I see US citizens try that non-sense about it's all Washington we don't
want that. But you keep voting for people that are going to give you the next war fix. When
you stop they will stop.
I agree with your assessment except Russia will not put troops into any country without
the express request from the legitimate government.
They are not going into Poland and especially not Romania (Transnistria maybe) why would
they? The countries do not have any resources that Russia wants.
The only reason to put troops into Belarus is to maintain a distance between Poland and the
borders.
Russia needs nothing from the rest of the world except trade. Un-coerced, free trade. This
drives the US corporations crazy as no one will trade with the US anymore without
coercion.
PS the same goes for China with the proviso that Taiwan is part of China and needs to be
reabsorbed into the mainstream. It will take +20 years but China just keeps the pressure on
until there will be no viable alternative.
It has never meant to serve American interests. Ever. Once you put it in perspective, it
makes sense.
But if people are convinced that Russia is a weak state -- then it is easier to approve
adventures abroad -- including ringing Russia.
The problem for never satiated Zealots is the following -- regional powers in the Middle
East are hitching their wagons to Eurasian economic engine. That is definitely true of
Turkey, Egypt and even Saudi Arabia.
The tales of Moslem Brotherhood are here to interpret something today from the iconography
from the past. And to explain today what an entirely different set of leaders did -- be
that few years ago or one hundred years ago. Same goes for iconography of Al-Qaeda, ISIS,
Communism, Socialism, authoritarianism, and other ISMS.
Those icons serve the same purpose as icons in religion or in cyber-space. You look at
them, or you click -- and the story and explanation is ready made for your consumption. Time to watch actions -- not media iconography to tell us what is going on.
If we're being purely ideological here those with an overtly internationalist
disposition (barring leftists) are those who want to be involved overseas, hardly ones to
go on about national interest or pride. Its been a common stance associated with American
Nationalism and Paleoconservatives to be anti-intervention, these people (of which I
consider myself a part) can hardly be bashed for holding unpatriotic views.)
Russia has a declining population, and an economy smaller than that of Spain. Its hardly
a threat and our involvement in Eastern Europe was relatively limited pre-2014 and even so
the overall international balance of power hasn't shifted after Russian annexation of
Crimea, and the Ukrainians proved quite capable of defending their nation (though not so
capable as to end retake separatist strongholds.
Please explain to me, a Russian person, what kind of anti-American policy Russia is
spreading in countries? If we exclude acts of counteraction against American expansion and
aggression against Russia? What ideological foundations does Russia have after 1991? Isn't
Russia's actions a guerrilla war on the communications of the self-proclaimed "Empire of
Good", which is pursuing a tough offensive policy? And is it not because the Russians
support a significant part of Putin's initiatives (despite a number of Putin's obvious
shortcomings) precisely because they have experience of cooperation with the "Empire of
Good" in the 90s: give loans, corrupt officials and deputies, put Russian firms under
control big American companies, and then just give orders from the White House.
PS. I beg your pardon my google english
Another Zealot in Patriot garb. The only people that are destroying Americans are within our borders, wielding power to
fulfill their mission -- enrich themselves, keep the borders open, and our military all
over the globe.
It would be interesting to read the minds of the US pilots engaged in these activities.
My guess is that the cognitive dissonance energy in those heads is equivalent to the
biggest nuclear bomb ever exploded...
Hmmm... I think there is a third option besides escalation and deescalation -
exhaustion. Projecting power across the globe is expensive, it is a slow but steady drain on US
resources, which are needed elsewhere (for example to quell the riots in major US cities).
In a major crisis this could lead to a breaking point. What if some US adversary decides to
double down and attack (directly or by proxy) US troops and the US will not be able to
respond? A humiliating defeat combined with an exhausted public decidedly set against
military adventures abroad could cause a rapid retrenchment and global withdrawal.
I see it as exhaustion by corruption. The US military is increasingly bureaucratic,
political and ineffectual. Our weapons are gold-plated, hyper-tech focused and require
highly-skilled people to maintain them, which means we can't quickly train new people up.
The weapons themselves are so complex and expensive that there is no way to manufacture
them at scale quickly.
The DOD today is only about personal political position, and grubbing tax-payer dollars
for self-aggrandizement. In any real war with a real adversary, we wouldn't stand a
chance.
I wouldn't be so pessimistic regarding US military capabilities and I'm neither a US
citizen or a fan of US global hegemony.
The US armed forces are made up of professionals. There are some universal advantages
and disadvantages of such forces. A professional army is good at fighting wars but bad at
controlling territory because of its limited size and higher costs-per-soldier. In order to
control territory you need "boots on the ground" in great numbers, standing at checkpoints
and patrolling the countryside. They didn't have to be trained to the level of Navy SEALS,
for them it is enough if they can shoot straight and won't be scared from some fireworks
and the US lacks such forces.
So how is one going to get the millions of manpower to fulfill these tasks? Pauperize
the masses so that joining the army becomes the only viable solution? Introduce the Draft?
Provide a pathway for US citizenship for any foreigner that joins, establishing a US
Foreign Legion?
And then, how you'll have enough boots on the ground to pacify Russia or China. It took
more than a month to establish and secure the beach heads in Bretagne in France in 1944.
How do you think you can even get those boots to land in Russia or China, when you know
that the ICBMs are going to start flying towards the continental US if something like this
will ever happen?
So how is one going to get the millions of manpower to fulfill these tasks? Pauperize
the masses so that joining the army becomes the only viable solution? Introduce the
Draft?
It is no longer possible to introduce the draft in the US - even mentioning it would
lead to social unrests.
Read Jean Lartegy's "The Centurions." That is the direction where the tactically
brilliant, but strategically incompetent US military leadership is headed.
In addition, those gold-plated weapon systems often do not work as advertised. Look how
the multi-billion IADS of the Saudis couldn't protect their refinery complex from a cruise
missile attack from Yemen. Look at the embarrassing failures of the LCS and Zumwalt ship
classes, and the endless problems with the Ford CVN. The F35 is proving a ginormous
boondoggle that will massively enrich LM shareholders but will do squat for US military
capabilities.
He already did and the Military ignored him.
He backtracked with endless excuses and conditionals.
https://www.nbcnews.com/new...
**
Bill Clinton once reportedly told senior White House reporter Sarah McClendon, "Sarah,
there's a government inside the government, and I don't control it."
**
Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men's views confided to me privately. Some of
the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid
of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organised, so subtle, so
watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they better not speak above their
breath when they speak in condemnation of it.
– Woodrow Wilson, 28th President of the United States (1856-1924)
**
Do you really think that the adults with so much to lose would allow an idiot like Trump
(or Clinton or Obama or Bush) to actually run things?
Stop focusing on what Trump says and look at what his administration does. Troops in Poland and Eastern Europe, Nord Stream 2, intrusive US reconnaissance flights
along Russia's borders, support of Ukraine, interference with Russian patrols in Syria, the
continuing attempt to destabilize Assad in Syria, the destruction of JCPOA, global
sanctions campaign on Russia among others, withdrawal from arms control treaties,
accusation that Russia was cheating on INF treaty, hiring dozens of anti-Russia hardliners,
etc, etc.
I'll repeat: Focus on what Trump does, not what he says, and then total up the
pro-Russia and anti-Russia actions of this administration and see what that reveals.
A danger with this "new Cold War" is the assumption it will end like the first one
– peacefully. If this is the thinking among policy-makers we are in a very perilous
situation. History shows that fatal miscalculations contributed to the First World War, and
as a consequence the second. Today there is no room for miscalculation, which will set off
unstoppable escalation into a third.
https://www.ghostsofhistory...
Russians deliberately repeatedly ram an American vehicle, but I'm sure it's all our fault. Shouldn't have worn that skirt
I guess.
Before y'all armchair Putin experts say all your loving things: you have nothing to contribute unless you speak fluent
Russian. I watched the video taken and published by the Russians and it was pretty clear what they were doing.
Something critical is being missed entirely. The United States has invaded Syria without
a mandate from the UN. Its' president has explicitly stated that it is the intention of the
US to take Syria's oil. Both are violations of international law. Any hostile action taken
against the illegal US presence in Syria is justifiable as self defense. While the US
presence in Syria is illegal, Russia's presence is not. Russia was invited into Syria by
the UN recognized Syrian government to assist it in defending against the US regime change
by Al Qaeda proxy operation..
establish a major naval and air presence in the Gulf of Mexico, operating out of
bases in such allied countries as Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua.
What would happen if China or Russia established bases in the Caribbean and Latin
America? Trump joked about selling Puerto Rico, what if the Chinese bought it?
If the Israeli's have a problem with Russia being in Syria then Israel should deal with
it. Its not our problem and Russia is not our enemy. Infact India is bringing closer
relations between Russia and Japan. Which do you want? Russian antagonism because Israel
doesn't want Russians in Syria or Russian partnership with India, Japan, Australia and the
US dealing with China? Remember....you could spend 1000 years in the middle east and not
make a dent in the animosities between peoples there...so one is a futile endeaver...while
the other has great benefit.
Note that Russian soldiers are in Syria at the request of its government to help fend
off foreign invaders. The American troops are there illegally, with no UN or even
Congressional authorization.
Also note the USA risks another Cuban missile crisis by withdrawing from the INF treaty
after illegally building missile launch complexes in Romania and Poland that can hit Russia
with nuclear cruise missiles.
The USA did much more than "meddle" in Ukraine. The Obama/Biden team openly organized a
coup to overthrow its elected President because he didn't want to join NATO and the EU.
Is that guy in the middle of the left seated Vlad Klitschko? I great boxer no doubt, but
also known for his stunning stupidity. Is he part of the new Ukrainian political elite?
Poor Ukraine.
A Russian vehicle sideswipes an American vehicle, injuring two US soldiers, and that's
an American provocation? An American spy plane claims to be in international waters, and
you tack in a "supposedly" in that sentence? "Violating" a tacit promise, really?
Russia aggression against Georgia and Crimea is OK because Sphere of Influence? This
article is loaded with Blame America First crap usually associated with the Left
(much to this liberal's disgust). Never expected to find it here.
Yes, the expansion of NATO east must have looked to Russia like something coming at
their borders entirely too fast. I thought it was a terrible idea at the time, and wrote it
off to the wheels of a fifty-year-old bureaucracy not knowing how to slow down. Your
eye-straining gaze at the tea-leaves for Deeper State motives is unpersuasive, even without
your odious prejudices.
Maybe some play of Rashomon would be in order here. That is your perspective.
Now your honor, what I have seen is that Georgia attacked first and hoped to occupy a
certain area that Russian Federation was protecting, As a side comment, I have to point to
an Orwellian use of the word "aggressive" and "attack". It seems that anything that the US
cannot wantonly control or bomb is inherently aggressive and attacking either directly or
indirectly the "rules based order".
Crimea had Russian assets that became endangered. Crimea was part of Russia until 1954,
when was donated in an unsanctioned manner to Ukraine. The majority Russian population in
Crimea has been persecuted by the Ukrainian state since at least 1994. The Euromaidan would
have exacerbated that. A referendum was carried on and just considering ethnic lines,
Russians won in their desire to re-unite with the Russian Federation. There aren't many
legal arguments against that referendum and that process, if one looks for them...
So the above perspectives have nothing to do with just "sphere of influence" but with
direct core interests of the Russian state and its core security...
The deep state is a tool that is trying to fulfill one objective: integration of Russian
economy under the control of US and its Oligarchy. Otherwise it will always be a threat. A
Nationalist, democratic (but not oligarchic) and sovereign Russia will always be considered
an enemy of the world hegemon...
And the provocation is the actual presence in Syria of US troops. Ramming the US
military vehicle is not a provocation from Russians, it is a simple eviction notification.
End of story!
Isn't it just amazing how this writer gets to turn an incident of provocation by Russian
soldiers into a story of persistent provocation by America. That is remarkable dexterity
even for this paper. I am used to them suggesting that we should leave the people of
Eastern Europe to the tender mercies of the whims and wishes of a dictator in Moscow -
because they are in his backyard. But to be able to switch from that incident to their
regular theme is an achievement one can recognize, though not respect. The people of those
countries should have a choice about who they associate, and they certainly have a right
not to align with people they fear. Calling us for not respecting he rights of other people
to decide their fates is right and proper. I enthusiastically support this paper when they
do. But when they turn right around and castigate us for not respecting Russia's right to
do it - I am flabbergasted.
This piece spends too much time re-hashing everything Russia-US since 1990 and fails to
focus on the key current issues.
The vehicle incidents in Syria are distinct from the European issue -- see below in this
post -- that is generating some of the other tensions the author lists. Syria is really part
of the larger Middle East issue.
His brief summary of the latest Syria mishap is inadequate to convey what actually
happened.
If you actually look at the video, it does NOT appear to be the case that a Russian
vehicle simply "sideswiped" a US vehicle. It appears that the US was maintaining a
checkpoint on a road that in effect blocked Russian passage. Given the terrain, the
Russians could of course bypass such a checkpoint, which is what they appear to have done.
Then, however, other US vehicles left the checkpoint and attempted to block and turn back
the Russian bypass movement, and this led to the collision. So the incident is part of a
larger US policy to impede Russian operations in NE Syria.
Almost two years ago, Trump ordered US forces out of Syria, and Russia, in agreement
with that plan, sent patrols to the NE to ensure that provisions of an stability agreement
with Turkey and the Kurds were maintained. But then Trump was almost immediately
convinced--by whom is not clear, but ultimately Israel in all probability--to do a 180 and
keep US forces in NE Syria, the superficial rationale being to take control of oil, the
kind of pirate operation that Trump likes. In fact, the goal of those who influence Trump
is to keep Syria weak and unable to rebuild with the expectation that Assad can still be
overthrown at some future point. This is the desire of Israel and its operatives in the
US.
Trump's zag after the zig of planned withdrawal left the US-Russian understanding in
chaos. Now both the US AND the Russians were operating in NE Syria. And over time the US
has become more and more aggressive about impeding Russian operations. The Russians
claim--credibly--that we are demanding that they, in moving their patrols up to the area of
the Syria-Turkey border area not use the M4 highway, the main and direct route and instead
follow a secondary route that circuitously follows the border. The Russians don't accept
that demand. And the vehicle incidents that we are seeing are the outcome of that
disagreement. The Russians are driving up Highway 4 and when they get to the US checkpoint
are bypassing and then continuing up the highway. We are aggressively trying to deter them
from that route choice.
Not sure why this article does not go into detail on this issue in order to clarify
it.
Much of the other stuff the author is talking about here--intrusive air ops in the Black
Sea, etc--is really a separate, European issue. The US is highly concerned about the
economic interactions between Russia and Europe--especially the big economies of Western
Europe and most especially Germany. We are worried that over time Russian-European economic
integration will erode our strategic control and dominance over Europe in general.
Hence, we are making common cause with the anti-Russian elements in "the New Europe,"
i.e., Eastern Europe to try, in essence, to place a barrier between Russia and Western
Europe, playing off Poland, the Baltics and Romania, among others, against Russia, Germany,
France et al. Moving more US forces into Poland and the so-called "Black Sea Region";
impeding Nord Stream 2 and other Russian pipeline initiatives; indulging in recurrent
anti-German propaganda for not maintaining a more robust anti-Russian military posture;
fomenting (behind the scenes) the recent disturbances in Belarus; and promotion of the
so-called "Three Seas Initiative" intended to weld Eastern and Central Europe together into
a reliable tool of US policy are all part of this plan to retain US strategic control of
Europe over the long term.
That's what the heightened tensions in Europe are about.
As I said, the Syria issue, part of the larger Middle East struggle, is separate from
the parallel struggle for mastery in Europe.
It's all an important topic, but this article doesn't really capture the salient
points.
And you're playing word games. Syria's oil is effectively under US control. Yes, we are
deriving strategic benefit from it in that we are denying it to the Syrian government in
order to further destabilize it. It's not a good policy, but the policy does benefit from
denying Syria its oil.
The problem is that most of the oil is on Arab land, not Kurdish land, and the Arabs of
the Northeast are now realigning themselves with Assad, so holding on to the oil is likely
to get more difficult in the future.
I have no idea what you mean by "slander." Guess that means truths you find
inconvenient. Sorry--not in the business of coddling the faint of heart. Trump likes the
idea of taking resources which he imagines to be payment for services we have
rendered--like leaving the country in a state of ruin. He talked about Iraqi oil that way
too, but taking that would be much harder.
Time for you to stop dismissing every reality you don't like as unpatriotic.
The "Assad regime" is the UN recognized government of Syria. That is the only entity
entitled to the country's resources. How is it "the property of the Syrian nation" if the
Syrian government and its people no longer have access to it? To whom is the oil being
sold? Who is receiving the proceeds of the oil sales?
Here are some of Trump's own words with respect to Syria's oil. "I like oil. We are
keeping the oil." 4/11/2019. "The US is in Syria solely for the oil." "We are keeping the
oil. We have the oil. The oil is secure. We left troops behind only for oil." "The US
military is in Syria only for oil." What part of Trump's public assertion that "We are
keeping the oil" are you having difficulty in understanding? How can you say the US "did
not take possession of the oil" when Trump could not have been more explicit in saying
precisely the opposite? Do you not comprehend that the US presence in Syria has no mandate
either from the UN or from the US Congress. Do you not understand that the US presence in
Syria is illegal under international law? Do you not understand that "Keeping the oil" is a
violation of international law? Your post is one of the most ridiculous I have even
read.
1. It's quite clear from the video that the US had set up a checkpoint on the road at
left in the video. (Indeed, we are open about the fact that we are doing so in general in
NE Syria.) And it's equally clear that Russian vehicles are seen bypassing those
checkpoints. The encounter between US and Russian vehicles takes place off the road. There
is only one logical interpretation of what happened. What is your alternative
explanation?
2. "No one reading this can believe that Eastern Europeans have genuine cause to fear
Russia, or that these countries continually request more military and political involvement
than we are willing to provide or that we are not inducing them to do anything or
manipulating them."
First of all, there are no current indications of any Russian intent to do anything in
regard to Eastern Europe. Yes, one can understand the history, which is why there is
anti-Russian sentiment in Eastern Europe, but aside perhaps from the Baltic states in their
unique geographic position, there is no country that has any basis in reality to worry
about Russian aggression in the present.
Of course, this does not stop the Poles from doing exactly that. And perhaps the
Romanians to a much lesser extent. So yes, there is fear in a few key countries based on
past history, Poland being the keystone of the whole thing, and yes, we are indeed
manipulating that fear in an attempt to block/undermine any economic integration between
Germany and Russia. We are also trying to use the "Three Seas Initiative" to block Chinese
commercial and tech penetration of Eastern Europe--5G and their plan to rebuild the port of
Trieste to service Central and NE Europe.
Do you actually believe Russia, which has lately been cutting its defense budget, is
actually going to invade Europe? That really is a fantasy. The only military operations
they will take are to prevent further expansion of NATO into Ukraine and Belarus. The real
game today is commercial and tech competition. Putin knows it would be disastrous for
Russia to start a war with NATO. Not sure why that's hard for you to see.
Your notion of the Russian threat--as it exists today--is wildly exaggerated.
Once President Putin remarked that there are forces in the United States trying to use
Russia for internal political struggle. He added that we will nevertheless try not to be
drawn into these confrontations.
A scene from a Hollywood action movie rises before my eyes, when two heroes of the film are
fighting and a circular saw is spinning nearby, and each of the heroes is trying to shove a
part of the enemy's body under this saw.
The relationship between Russian and American servicemen, I would compare with two hockey
teams, when the tough behavior of the players on the ice does not mean that the players of
one team would be happy with the death of the entire opposing team, say in some kind of
plane crash, since the presence of a strong opponent is a necessary condition for getting a
good salary.
Still, I would not completely deny the possibility of a "hot war".
Since the times of the Roman Empire, the West of Europe has been trying to take control of
the territory of Europe, Eurasia, and Eurasia, in turn, dreams of mastering the
technologies of the West.
The defeat of the 3rd Reich provided the Soviet Union with a breakthrough in the nuclear
industry and space...
It's hard to imagine that Russia is capable of defeating NATO, but I can imagine that in
the current situation, President Putin can offer China to build military bases in western
Russia for a million Chinese servicemen, for 100 thousand on the Chukchi Peninsula, for 500
thousand on Sakhalin...
The extra money for renting military bases in a coronavirus crisis will not hurt
anyone.
Of all the things about Hillary Clinton to despise, her selfish attempt to explain her
loss, and to attack the President (to whom she never conceded the election!) by blaming
Russia, is at the top of the list. To generate a completely unnecessary conflict with a
nuclear super-power that could burn this country to ashes in minutes, out of personal
vindictiveness, ... is lower than it can get.
I don't think US-Russian cooperation is doable at this point--or any time soon. Given
how erratic US policy is--yawing violently from one direction to another--Russia has no
reason to accept the damage to its relationship with China that shifting to a strategic
arrangement with the US would entail. The risk is too high and the potential rewards too
uncertain.
We have pretty much alienated the Russian state under Putin, and now we're trying to
wait him out, with the expectation that there is no one of his capabilities to maintain the
strategic autonomy of the Russian state in the longer term and that once he exits the
scene, some Yeltsin-like stooge will present himself.
We thought we were dealing with the main threats to our global hegemony
sequentially--Russia "defeated" in the Cold War, and then on to a defeat of "militant
Islam" in the Greater Middle East and finally to a showdown with China. But now, the
sequencing has fallen apart, and we're trying to prosecute all three simultaneously.
You have inverted the facts. The video evidence shows the Americans side-swiped the
Russian vehicle and claimed "American soldiers had 'concussions'". A concussion requires
loss of consciousness or significant changes in mental function. In football, you have your
"Bell rung". You can't add 2+2 correctly. There is no evidence to support that.
Everyone is focusing on Russia because of the Russia hoax. Dems started a new cold war
based on an irrational fear that Russia was threatening our democracy.
Along with Dems, I also blame Putin; he bribed Hillary millions for uranium -- that
doesn't lend to good relations.
The foreign policy elite dislikes Russia, always has, and will do anything to keep
this "adversary" front and center because their prospects for prestige, power and position
depend upon the presence of an enemy. As an example see Strobe Talbot and Michael
McFaul.
The foreign policy elite dislikes Russia, always has, and will do anything to keep
this "adversary" front and center because their prospects for prestige, power and position
depend upon the presence of an enemy. As an example see Strobe Talbot and Michael
McFaul.
Notable quotes:
"... Ben Cardin agreed to be the cosponsor of a Magnitsky Act in the Senate. He sought a Republican cosponsor, John McCain, a Russophobic senator who never met a war he didn't like. ..."
"... It wasn't the first time McCain helped a fraudster. McCain was one of the corrupt "Keating Five" senators who improperly intervened in 1987 on behalf of Charles H. Keating, Jr., corrupt chairman of the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association, which collapsed in 1989 at a cost of $3.4 billion to the federal government (and thus taxpayers). Many investors lost their life savings. ..."
"... To get to McCain and others, Browder hired lobbyist Juleanna Glover, who had been Vice President Dick Cheney's press secretary and then Attorney General John Ashcroft's senior policy adviser. She went with Ashcroft when he left government to run the Washington office of his law firm, the Ashcroft Group. ..."
"... She got Browder a meeting with McCain who agreed to sponsor the Magnitsky Act. It fit with his Russophobia and friendship with fraudsters. ..."
"... On September 29, 2010, Senators Ben Cardin, John McCain, Roger Wicker (Republican of Mississippi) and Joe Lieberman (Democrat of Connecticut) introduced the bill in the Senate. Anyone involved in the false arrest, torture or death of Sergei Magnitsky, or the crimes he uncovered, would be publicly named, banned from entering the United States, and have their U.S. assets frozen. ..."
"... Remember again that a few months later Browder would tell the San Diego law school he didn't know how Magnitsky died. ..."
"... How the Browder-Magnitsky hoax law got passed in a trade deal ..."
"... Browder got Senator Joe Lieberman, conservative Democrat from Connecticut, to agree to block Jackson-Vanik repeal unless the administration stopped blocking his Magnitsky Act. ..."
"... Lieberman and the other cosponsors of the Magnitsky Act sent a letter to Montana Democratic Senator Max Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. The letter said, "In the absence of the passage of the Magnitsky legislation, we will strongly oppose the lifting of Jackson-Vanik." ..."
"... The final count December 6, 2012 was 92-4. Levin and three other Democrats – Bernie Sanders as well as Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse, both of Rhode Island – were the only Senators to vote against it. Elizabeth Warren was not yet in the Senate. ..."
"... It was signed by Obama a week later. Read Title IV of the law to see how it is based on the fake claims the chief sponsors would not, could not prove. Including "he was beaten by 8 guards with rubber batons on the last day of his life" based on zero evidence, just Browder's lies. (I also wrote to Cardin's office and got no reply.) ..."
As the Democratic Convention is in progress, it is fitting to look at how Democrats in Congress and the White House, with Republican
collaboration, were responsible for the
Magnitsky Act , the law that protects tax fraudster William Browder and his henchman Mikhail Khodorkovsky by erecting a wall
against their having to face justice for their financial crimes. And ramps up hostility against Russia.
The fraudster William Browder .
This is a half-hour interview about this I did today on this subject
for Fault Lines . And a 15-minute
interview for The Critical
Hour . Here is an expanded version of what I said.
William Browder in the mid-1990s became manager of the Hermitage Fund, set up with $25 million from Lebanese-Brazilian banker
Edmond Safra and Israeli mining investor Beny Steinmez to buy shares in Russian companies.
He says he started the fund, but that is a lie. He was brought in to manage other people's money. But after some years, when the
two investors either died or confronted major financial problems, Browder gained control.
Browder doesn't like paying taxes.
Browder was an American who traded his citizenship for a UK passport in 1998 so he could avoid paying U.S. taxes on his stock
profits. ( CBS called
him a tax expatriate.)
He didn't like paying Russian taxes either. In an early rip-off, he and his partners billionaire Kenneth Dart of Dart cups and
New York investor Francis Baker bought a majority of Avisma, a titanium company, that produces material used in airplanes.
They cheated
minority investors and the Russian tax collector of profits by using transfer pricing.
You sell your production to a fake company at a low price, then your fake company sells it at the world price. You book lower
dividends to cheat minority shareholders, report lower taxes to cheat the Russian people.
Browder and partners bought Avisma from infamous oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky on the basis of continuing his transfer
pricing scam. It was revealed by documents in a lawsuit when Browder and partners sued another infamous guy, Peter Bond, the Isle
of man crook handling the rake-offs for not passing on the full amount of the skim. (No honor among thieves!) The legal documents
where Browder admits to the scam are linked in this
story
.
Browder cheats bigtime on Russia taxes
Browder's next corruption was to
cheat the Russians of taxes from his stock buys in Russia, to the tune of about $100million. That included claiming as deductions
disabled workers who didn't work for him, local investments he never made, profits from stock buys of Gazprom the Russian energy
conglomerate that non-Russians were not allowed to buy in Russia.
Investigations started in the early 2000s for $40 mil in evaded takes and led to legal judgments in 2004. When he refused to pay,
in November 2005 he was denied a Russian visa and in 2006 he moved all his assets out of Russia. But the Russian tax evasion investigations
continued.
Browder's accountant Sergei Magnitsky was arrested for investigation of the tax evasion in 2008, and the European Commission on
Human Rights
ruled last year that was correct because of the evidence and because he was a flight risk. Browder's fake narrative was that
Magnitsky, who he lied was his lawyer , had been arrested because he blew the whistle on a scheme by Russian officials to
embezzle money from the Russian Treasury. In his own U.S. federal
court deposition
, Browder admits Magnitsky didn't go to law school or have a law license. See his brief
video on
that.
Browder gives speeches that he didn't know how Magnitsky died
Then Magnitsky died of heart failure exacerbated by stomach disease which forensic reports say was not properly treated. Browder
first said (in talks at the British foreign policy association
Chatham House , London, a month after he died, and San Diego Law School
-- video at minute 6:20 -- a year later) he didn't know how Magnitsky died, but after a few years he invented a story that he
had been beaten to death.
Jonathan Winer, who helped Browder with his scam.
That story was developed by Jonathan Winer, a former assistant to Senator John Kerry and then a State Department official. Winer
was working for APCO, an international public relations company one of whose major clients was the same Mikhail Khodorkovsky. They
correctly assumed the western media would do no research. Or at least would not be allowed to report it. And the mainstream media
never did, except much later
Der Spiegel in Germany, which the rest of the western press ignored.
The plan was to get a U.S. law that would in effect block the Russians from going after certain Americans who had cheated on taxes.
They would be Browder and Khodorkovsky, who is actually named in the law.
Khodorkovsky would spend several hundred thousand dollars to buy Congressional support for the Magnitsky Act, clearly money
well spent. He duly reported it as lobbying expenses.
Here is how the Democrats and Republicans colluded in the Browder Magnitsky hoax. Much of this comes from Browder's own writings
in his mostly fake book "Red Notice." Note the corruption of both parties.
Magnitsky died in November 2009. Only four months later in March 2010, Browder was plotting his Magnitsky hoax, attacking Russians
he would claim were responsible for Magnitsky's death. But the bizarre part of the story is that he continued throughout 2010 to
say he didn't know how Magnitsky died, including in a videoed Dec 2010
San Diego law school talk. He obviously assumed U.S. media and politicians would not notice or care about the contradictions.
Ben Cardin, senator who signed on to Browder hoax.
Browder got Maryland Democratic Senator Ben Cardin to send a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in March 2010 urging
her to ban visas for 60 people Browder had listed (without evidence) as complicit in Magnitsky's death. (Remember 9 months later
in a videoed talk at San Diego Law School Browder says he didn't know how Magnitsky died.)
The letter to Hillary Clinton, written (Browder says in his book) by Browder acolyte Kyle Parker, a staffer at the House Foreign
Affairs Committee, said, I "urge you to immediately cancel and permanently withdraw the U.S. visa privileges of all those involved
in this crime, along with their dependents and family members." Immediately? No due process, not even for children and grandparents?
Cousins?
Attached to the letter was the list of the sixty officials Browder accused, without evidence, of involvement in Magnitsky's death
and a tax fraud against the Treasury.
Browder's fake tax refund fraud
The tax refund fraud was a scheme in which shell companies were set up to sue Browder's Hermitage companies claiming contract
violations and damages of $1billion. The Hermitage companies immediately agreed to pay (no evidence of actual bank transfers), then
demanded the Treasury pay a tax refund of $230million because they now had zero profits.
Viktor Markelov, tried and jailed for the scam,
said he worked with a Sergei Leonidovich, which is Magnitsky's name and patronymic. Other evidence, including an inexplicable
delay of months between Browder learning about the his companies being re-registered in other names and him reporting that as
"theft," indicates he was part of the scam too.
Note this: Hermitage trustee HSBC filed a financial document in July 2007 saying it was putting aside $7 million for legal
costs that might be required to get back the companies. This was five months before the tax refund fraud occurred. Albert
Dabbah, chief financial controller for HSBC, confirmed the
document's authenticity in U.S.
federal court. But Browder and Magnitsky (in his
testimony
) said they didn't learn about the "theft" till October 2007.
Theft of his companies? The best defense is a good offense. Accuse others of the crime you committed.
Senator Cardin was requesting that all sixty of Browder's accused have their U.S. travel privileges permanently revoked.
But Hillary didn't buy it. Then House staffer Parker arranged for Browder to
testify about the Magnitsky case May 6 th at the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, not an official House body but
a pressure group set up in the name of a Russophobic former congressman from Hungary.
Congressman Jim McGovern would not send the evidence he promised, because he couldn't. There wasn't any.
The commission chairman was Massachusetts Democratic congressman Jim McGovern, who runs liberal but is a Russophobe who pretends
to be a human rights advocate.
Now what is really interesting is that seven months after this May 6 testimony, on December 6, 2010, Browder was telling the
San Diego law school (video 6:20 in) that "they put him in a straight
jacket, put him in an isolation room and waited outside the door until he died." Nothing about torture or killing. Had Browder forgotten
his dramatic beating story?
McGovern at the Lantos Commission hearing asked for no evidence. He said he would introduce legislation, put the 60 names Browder
cited in it, move it to the committee and make a formal recommendation from Congress, then pass it on the floor.
McGovern lies about sending evidence
Kimberly Stanton, who runs a propaganda operation and refused to provide evidence.
In July 2019, almost a decade later, I saw McGovern when he spoke at the Council on Foreign Relations. I asked if he would send
me evidence backing the claim that Magnitsky was tortured and killed. He agreed and introduced me to an aide. The aide referred me
to Kimberly Stanton, director of the Lantos Commission, who refused in an
email
to provide any information. And said evidence against targeted people is not required!
I also wrote McGovern's press secretary Matt Bonaccorsi and legislative director Cindy Buhl. They ignored repeated requests, never
sent me anything. I conclude that Jim McGovern, who pretends to be a liberal civil rights promoter, is a fake and a fraud.
McGovern introduces a Magnitsky bill in the House.
John McCain, he loved fraudsters and wars.
Ben Cardin agreed to be the cosponsor of a Magnitsky Act in the Senate. He sought a Republican cosponsor, John McCain, a Russophobic
senator who never met a war he didn't like.
It wasn't the first time McCain helped a fraudster. McCain was one of the corrupt "Keating Five" senators who improperly intervened
in 1987 on behalf of Charles H. Keating, Jr., corrupt chairman of the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association, which collapsed in 1989
at a cost of $3.4 billion to the federal government (and thus taxpayers). Many investors lost their life savings.
Keating was the target of a regulatory investigation. With powerful senators like McCain advocating his cause, the regulator
backed off taking action against Lincoln. Though Keating went to jail. McCain was cited only for exercising "poor judgment." Helping
a crook doesn't get you thrown out of the Senate.
To get to McCain and others, Browder hired lobbyist Juleanna Glover, who had been Vice President Dick Cheney's press secretary
and then Attorney General John Ashcroft's senior policy adviser. She went with Ashcroft when he left government to run the Washington
office of his law firm, the Ashcroft Group.
Juleanna Glover, former aide to Dick Cheney. She can buy you a bill .
She got Browder a meeting with McCain who agreed to sponsor the Magnitsky Act. It fit with his Russophobia and friendship
with fraudsters.
On September 29, 2010, Senators Ben Cardin, John McCain, Roger Wicker (Republican of Mississippi) and Joe Lieberman (Democrat
of Connecticut) introduced the bill in the Senate. Anyone involved in the false arrest, torture or death of Sergei Magnitsky, or
the crimes he uncovered, would be publicly named, banned from entering the United States, and have their U.S. assets frozen.
Remember again that a few months later Browder would tell the San Diego
law school he didn't know how Magnitsky died.
Now here is how the law got passed. The Jackson-Vanick amendment put in place in the mid-1970s imposed trade sanctions on the
Soviet Union to punish it for not allowing Soviet Jews to emigrate. Well, nobody could emigrate. Eventually 1.5 million Jews were
allowed to leave the country.
How the Browder-Magnitsky hoax law got passed in a trade deal
Thirty-seven years later the Soviet Union no longer existed, and everybody could emigrate, but Jackson-Vanik was still on the
books. It blocked American corporations from enjoying the same trade benefits with Russia as the world's other WTO members.
So, the U.S. business community said Jackson-Vanik had to go, and the Obama administration agreed. So did John Kerry, chairman
of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. They needed an act of Congress.
Meanwhile, Kerry opposed the Magnitsky Act which he considered untoward interference in Russia (is that like saying meddling?)
and had been delaying bringing it to vote in committee.
Browder got Senator Joe Lieberman, conservative Democrat from Connecticut, to agree to block Jackson-Vanik repeal unless the
administration stopped blocking his Magnitsky Act.
Lieberman and the other cosponsors of the Magnitsky Act sent a letter to Montana Democratic Senator Max Baucus, chairman of
the Senate Finance Committee. The letter said, "In the absence of the passage of the Magnitsky legislation, we will strongly oppose
the lifting of Jackson-Vanik."
John Kerry had good instincts, forced to make bad compromise.
So, Kerry stopped his opposition to the Magnitsky Act.
The two bills were combined. First the bill would be brought up at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to pass Magnitsky, then
it would go before the Finance Committee to repeal Jackson-Vanik, and then, it would go before the full Senate for a vote.
Kerry called for a meeting of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in June 2012, with the purpose of approving the Magnitsky
Act.
At the hearing, Kerry said that America was not a perfect country, and that the people in that room should be "very mindful of
the need for the United States not to always be pointing fingers and lecturing and to be somewhat introspective as we think about
these things." (Such nuance would obviously not be allowed today.)
He was "worried about the unintended consequences of requiring that kind of detailed reporting that implicates a broader range
of intelligence." He didn't have to worry. Reporting? Intelligence? Actual evidence would never be required! The U.S. was
setting up a kangaroo court and calling it a human rights tribunal!
The bill passed the House 365 to 43 on November 16, 2012. Voting "No" were 37 Democrats and 6 Republicans. Among them Maxine
Waters and Ron Paul. And surprisingly New York Democrat Jerrold Nadler who since then became a Russophobe. Tulsi Gabbard had not
yet been elected.
Kyle Parker told Browder, "There are a number of senators who are insisting on keeping Magnitsky global instead of Russia-only."
One was Cardin, but also Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan – a political giant who spent many years fighting, holding hearings, about
offshore tax evasion and must have known very well how Browder was a poster child for offshore tax-evading crooks. Also Jon Kyl,
Republican from Arizona. Of course, Browder wanted "Russia only," because the purpose of the law was to attack Russia, not to promote
global human rights. Cardin withdrew his objection, and the bill was "Russia only."
The Senate vote
The final count December 6, 2012 was 92-4. Levin and three other Democrats – Bernie Sanders as well as Jack Reed and Sheldon
Whitehouse, both of Rhode Island – were the only Senators to vote against it. Elizabeth Warren was not yet in the Senate.
It was signed by Obama a week later. Read Title IV of
the law to see how it is based on the
fake claims the chief sponsors would not, could not prove. Including "he was beaten by 8 guards with rubber batons on the last
day of his life" based on zero evidence, just Browder's lies. (I also wrote to Cardin's office and got no reply.)
It was the first pillar of Russiagate, where Cold Warrior Democrats joined forces with Cold Warrior Republicans. The result would
be to build a wall against Russia bringing Browder to justice, including getting Interpol to refuse to issue a red notice that would
require other countries to arrest him. He would name his book Red Notice as a jab at the Russians.
And the crooks Browder and Khodorkovsky, protected from the rule of law, laughed all the way to their offshore banks. Here's the
link to Browder's Mossack Fonseca (on Panama Papers fame) bank.
(Speaking of the rule of law, it doesn't apply to offshore banks, with secret owners of companies and accounts. They are largely
run by western banks that make big profits from laundering the money of the world's crooks. Note on any SEC filing where banks have
their subsidiaries: Caymans, Isle of Man, Guernsey, BVI, etc. No local clients, just financial fakery: letterbox companies, tax evasion.
It's okay. When there's corruption, only the little people go to jail. In the offshore system, the corrupt financial oligarchy rules.)
A full-bench US federal appeals court has reversed an earlier decision to dismiss the
'Russiagate' case against former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, returning it to the
judge who refused to let the charges be dropped.
In a 8-2 ruling on Monday, the DC Circuit Court of Appeals sided with Judge Emmet Sullivan,
and sent the case back to him for review. Sullivan had been ordered by a three-judge panel in
June to drop the case against Flynn immediately, but hired an attorney and asked for an en
banc hearing instead.
Flynn's attorney Sidney Powell said the split was "as expected" based on the tone of
the oral arguments, pointing to a partisan divide on the bench, and added it was a
"disturbing blow to the rule of law."
The former top lawyer for the Barack Obama administration, Neal Katyal, hailed the decision as
"an important step in defending the rule of law" and argued the case should not be
dismissed because Flynn had pleaded guilty.
Flynn had indeed pleaded guilty to one charge of lying to the FBI, but Powell moved to
dismiss the charges due to the failure of his previous attorneys – a law firm with ties
to the Democrats – and the government to disclose evidence that could set him free. After
producing documents revealing that the FBI set out to entrap Flynn, had no valid cause to
interview him in the first place, and the prosecutors improperly extorted him into a plea by
threatening to charge his son, the Justice Department moved to drop all charges.
Sullivan had other ideas, however. In a highly unusual move, he appointed a retired judge
– who had just written a diatribe about the case in the Washington Post – to be
amicus curiae and argue the case should not be dropped. It was at this point that Powell took
the case to the appeals court, citing Fokker, a recent Supreme Court precedent that Sullivan
was violating.
Ignoring the fact that Sullivan had appointed the amicus and sought to prolong the case
after the DOJ and the appeals court both told him to drop it, the en banc panel argued the
proper procedure means he needs to make the decision before it can be appealed.
One of the judges, Thomas Griffith, actually argued in a concurring opinion that it would be
"highly unusual" for Sullivan not to dismiss the charges, given the executive branch's
constitutional prerogatives and his "limited discretion" when it came to the relevant
federal procedure, but said that an order to drop the case is not "appropriate in this case
at this time" because it's up to Sullivan to make the call first.
The court likewise rejected Powell's motion to reassign a case to a different judge.
Conservatives frustrated by the neverending legal saga have blasted the appeals court's
decision as disgraceful. "The Mike Flynn case is an embarrassing stain on this country and
its 'judges',"tweeted TV commentator Dan
Bongino. "We don't have judges anymore, only corrupted politicians in black robes."
While Flynn was not the first Trump adviser to be charged by special counsel Robert
Mueller's 'Russiagate' probe, he was the first White House official pressured to resign over
it, less than two weeks into the job.
With Mueller failing to find any evidence of "collusion" between President Donald
Trump's campaign and Russia, Democrats have latched onto Flynn's case as proof of their
'Russiagate' conspiracy theory. The latest argument is that the effort to drop the charges
against Flynn is politically motivated and proof of Attorney General Bill Barr's
"corruption."
Barr is currently overseeing a probe by US attorney John Durham into the FBI's handling of
the investigation against Trump during and after the 2016 election, with the evidence disclosed
during the Flynn proceedings strongly implicating not just the senior FBI leadership but senior
Obama administration figures as well.
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
Just letting all you contributors know how much I appreciate the links and key points to
the various hot topics in, particularly involving Belarus/President Lukashenko (and
what's-er-name) and the antics of Navalny et al. I have followed the Skripal case and it is
an absolute face palmer that the 'victims' remain in solitary confinement unable to tell
their 'story' while the 'perpetrators' (allegedly Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov) still
have not run out of toothpaste, cereal and toilet paper and continue to elude Britain's
finest
Since I had a hand in triggering this thread I Just wanted to get back to the intrepid Eva
K Bartlett for a moment.
At 40:16 of her talk in the video below Eva says (first part tongue in cheek)
**"Being a Russian propagandist, a Kremlin agent, a DPRK stooge doesn't actually pay but
speaking truth in the face of mountains of lies is a moral thing to do – human lives
are at stake."**
I shared this elsewhere in the context of the events in Victoria, Australia and posed:
"You might ask "What has Eva K Bartlett got to do with Andrews, Morrison, Hurley et al?"
Elsewhere I saw a meme featuring Andrews with a Kim Jong Un haircut. I commented that such
a meme should more appropriately feature Lenin or Trotsky – or in (Daniel) Andrews'
case, lower ranked henchmen such as Kaganovich or Beria.
Consider for example the narrative they [Andrews, Morrison, Hurley] have been spewing in
recent years with regard to Syria and the DPRK (etc)
It comes as no surprise to me then that these supporters of terrorism, advocators of
genocide and protectors of child trafficking and paedophilia would inevitably turn on 'their
own people'.
• Eva Bartlett speaks on North Korea & Syria (FULL)
3 Awan brothers are named by Webb : Imran, Jamal and Abid. (A 4th brother and wife of one
of the Awan's are also believed to be involved).
Originally installed in congressional positions by Greg Meeks who is widely regarded as
the most corrupt member of congress.
I will preface this discussion by stating you will find some variation in the numbers cited.
I believe that is because I quoted from stories as the case was developing. The Daily Caller
was the primary source for most of the news on the net. I tried to be as accurate as possible
with the facts quoting the sources I found. I am posting this because I want answers, it is not
a definitive work. I do, however, believe the breach is every bit as consequential as the
hillary email server and the CIA Wikileak.
I know a bunch of shills will tear me up screaming, "ya got no proof," but indulge me in a
conspiracy theory. I think the greatest disservice the MSM had managed to perpetuate is the
fallacy that other than the obvious connection of all these people there is otherwise no
connection between these events.
Let's assume for the moment that the items described here are patterns of political belief
and criminal activity. They aren't individual acts, but on going criminal conspiracies. Let's
not look at this as an isolated event. While I'm detailing the actions of the Awan brothers. I
believe, but can not prove, those action may have been perpetuated in concert with other
individuals at work in the under belly of the government. It's almost as if disparate groups
come in contact occasionally when their objectives overlap. As I stated, I have no proof of
this, but it stands to reason the flood of cyber attacks and leaks may have overlapped through
the individuals linked in the different events. For example, Debbie Wasserman Schultz was an
integral player in the DNC Hacks and also introduced the Awan brothers to Congress. Is there a
connection? Maybe, maybe not. It is not that far fetched, this has happened before, see the
Silverman
group . Silverman associated with the CPUSA and knew
Jarrett's father, Dr. James Bowman and through
three degrees of separation used by the NSA is directly connected to Valerie
Jerrett . If it is good enough for the IC to open an inquiry why can't we indulge in some
similar speculation.
• The First anomalous fact is the Media. Why have they largely ignored the issue.
Before you cyber trolls jump on me, I would like you to consider two facts. Congress deals with
very sensitive and classified material all the time. The Awan brothers could never have had a
secret clearance for any other group than Congress. There is no news story there?
• The Second error is the "smoking gun." The evidence is always covered up with a
coincidence, a cover story if you will. While I believe the politicos in D.C. are pampered
rubes, they do have a good support staff, and some have been trained to support clandestine
operations. The rest have been hammered with political optics for the entirety of their career
in D.C.. They are all trained to control optics and the dissemination of the truth.
• The Third fallacy is the "bad guy." Why does everyone think an on going criminal
conspiracy can be distilled down to a single criminal committing a crime rather than a pattern
of criminal behavior with one or more groups profiting off the criminal activities. It is best
to think of their actions like organized crime and should be prosecuted like a RICO case. An
on going criminal enterprise by an organized group or groups of conspirators.
The Media
Why hasn't the media made this the top news story to at least go along with the Russian
hack. Let's face it, the media doesn't care about the damage to the country, they only care
about their partisan agenda. If they didn't they would cover stories damaging to the DNC.
With a
$600,000,000 CIA contract you would think the Washington Post could afford an
investigative journalist or two. Perhaps CNN will take up an interest as this rabbit hole
runs deep and wide. Don't hold your breath.
Snowflakes and "journalists" can call Trump a fascist, but there is nothing connecting an
enormous breach of the United States Security Apparatus by as many as 80 Democrat members of
Congress (past and present). We rail on about the Russians and Trump without specific
allegations backed up with evidence, but the media avoids providing nightly updates about these
5 spies that have compromised congress. The answer is simple, the Awan Brothers are Muslim and
the "victims"/dupes are Dems. Dupes who in fact abused their position of responsibility to end
up being compromised by their own "trusted" staff. Several of the Congressmen involved in the
breach have gone so far as to blame the allegations on
Islamophobia .
Meeks said he was hesitant to believe the accusations against Alvi, Imran Awan and the
three other staffers, saying their background as Muslim Americans, some with ties to
Pakistan, could make them easy targets for false charges.
This story damages the narrative that Muslims are benevolent members of the government and
Dems care about the country. It really shows the depth of the progressive aims to " fundamentally transforming
the United States of America .
This is where the conspiracy theory comes in. Give me a little latitude to connect the dots,
and let's see where this trail goes...
The mainstream media seemed far more interested in obfuscating the details regarding the
Tillerson terminations than they were in covering what could be one of the most dangerous
intelligence leaks in years, of which there has been but a peep out of any major news outlet.
Captain Joseph R. John (Navy-Ret.) has stated that he believes the Muslim Brotherhood "
fifth column" has "infiltrated U.S. Government ," and if he is correct, the Awan brothers
could very well be a part of this infiltration.
The media is
90% Democrat and I would argue that in recent years the mainline Dems have gone hard left,
almost Marxist. They have an almost suicidal pact with Islamists. Where does this scandal
connect with Middle Eastern Islamists?
One might well look at the set of circumstances laid out above and see in it a scandal
that would make Watergate look like a petty break-in. One might then scratch his or her head
and wonder -- why on earth would the New York Times or the Washington Post, which
incidentally just hired John Podesta (speaking of horrendous cybersecurity!) as a columnist,
have virtually no interest in the Awans at all?
Do Carlos Slim and Jeff Bezos, one might ask, really believe they can't sell papers with
such a story to tell?
Fox News is told the employees made "unauthorized access" to the House computer
system.
Further, there were instances where House information was discovered in an external
"cloud" server. The contractors in question reportedly were sending and storing House-related
information in that off-site server.
"That violates House rules and it puts the House at risk," a source familiar with the
investigation said.
It is unclear whether the access issues exposed the House's networks to potential hackers
or spying efforts by unfriendly nations or terrorist groups, at a time when Washington is on
high alert for such cyber-activity.
Actually the last statement has been refuted. It has been alleged that Imran Awan had
achieved a privilege escalation through
Social Engineering . Essentially Imran through the political clout of the Congressional
leaders he worked for managed to convinced the Capitol Hill IT staff to escalate the Awans to
super user privileges to work on the "Congressional Machines" in violation of accepted
practices on the network. One device in particular was the Wasserman iPad compromised in the
DNC Leak. It has been also alleged they may have had Podesta's password. Since the Dems
approved the privilege escalation it is now forensically difficult to determine if the Russians
leaked the emails or the "enormously trustworthy and drunken" Awan brothers sold access to the
DNC servers.
Imran Awan bullied central IT to bend the rules for him so there wouldn't be a paper trail
about the unusually high permissions he was requesting. And their actions were not logged, so
members have no way of knowing what information they may have taken, the central IT employee
said.
After obtaining access to the Capitol server system, the Awan brothers could control all
aspects of a congressman system. They sold and configured the hardware setting permissions and
remote access to maintain the devices remotely. Essentially the keys to the kingdom. Through
congressional requests they managed to completely compromise the network. They could read
email, transfer files, install applications (i.e. key loggers). The latter reports that the
systems and network were completely compromised. Beyond that, Imran had bypassed IT key loggers
and reporting systems by gaining remote access directly to congressional computers.
The central IT staffer said any suggestion that the brothers' access didn't span the full
gamut of congressional intrigue was silly because they were the ones giving out
permissions.
The problem is that once they bypassed internal security there was no
logging of their actions . House authorities set their sights on the possibility that a
remote server had been used to transfer files off of Congressional members computers. The
investigation revealed that Imran had been
stealing money, equipment, and over charging for services . In total for almost 10 years
and almost 80 Democrat members of Congress were compromised.
This is where things go hinkey. Rather than turning the case over to the FBI the case is
turned over to U.S.C. Police. They are investigating the theft, not the data breach.
Let's state that again...
The USCP are investigation the theft of Equipment not the Loss
Of Congressional Data.
"At the request of Members of Congress, the United States Capitol Police are investigating
the actions of House IT support staff," Malecki said in a statement. "No Members are being
investigated. No arrests have been made. It should be noted that, administratively, House
staff were asked to update their security settings as a best practice. We have no further
comment on the ongoing investigation at this time."
The Bad Guy Two of the brothers, Imran and Jamal, have been linked to an emerging
security breach
The Awan brothers managed to get access to the Dems committee computers by just asking for
the passwords. In addition the Awan brothers sold the congress outrageously priced equipment
and broke into members of Congress' offices to steal equipment and or data.
Five House employees are under criminal investigation amid allegations that they stole
equipment from more than 20 member offices and accessed House IT systems without lawmakers'
knowledge.
More than 20 members were victimized by the alleged procurement scam and chiefs of staff
for the lawmakers were briefed on the matter Thursday.
The former staffer said "Jamal was always there," but Imran would only work "odd
hours."
And who is investigating this fiasco?
Where is the FBI and why have they left it to the DC police? Is it a "limited hangout"
they hope to bury by the promoting the administration's ties to Boris and Natasha?
D.C. Metro police have been brought into the investigation rather than the F.B.I at the
request of the Congressional
members involved with the Awan Brothers.
A source in the briefing said the Sergeant-at-Arms confirmed the U.S. Capitol Police is
conducting an active criminal investigation but said no arrests have been made. The source
said the FBI is not involved in the investigation.
"At the request of members of Congress, the United States Capitol Police are investigating
the actions of House IT support staff. No members are being investigated. No arrests have
been made.
Why aren't the FBI involved? I can only speculate, but it would mean that a FBI forensic
team would have to comb through all of those congressional computers to determine the extent of
the security compromise and data lost. The Dems just didn't seem up for the inconvenience of
allowing the FBI investigation to go forward.
The Awan Brothers had the keys to the kingdom. Physical security is paramount to cyber
security. If a hacker has Physical access to a machine they own it. It is the simplest hack to
conduct. The Anwar Bros had Debbie Wasserman Schultz's machine, along with Schultz, at least 80
other Dems also hired the
Awan Brothers to provide IT support at significantly higher rates than normal IT
support.
Jamal, who public records suggest is only 22 years old and first began working in the
House when he was 20, was paid nearly $160,000 a year, or three times the average House IT
staff salary, according to InsideGov, which tracks congressional salaries. Abid was paid
$161,000 and Imran $165,000.
Despite the fact that these individuals, reportedly heavily in debt, would have failed
security clearances they were able to receive top salary from Dems including members of the
intelligence panel and members of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs were among the dozens
of members who employed the suspects on a shared basis. The two committees deal with many of
the nation's most sensitive issues, information and documents, including those related to the
war on terrorism.
Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, who was shamed for the Democratic National Committee conspiracy
against Bernie Sanders, recommended the Awan Brothers for their positions and Representative
Jackie Speier asked for their TOP SECRET CLEARANCE .
frontpagemag | Last year, eight members of the House Permanent Select Committee on
Intelligence issued a demand that their staffers be granted access to top secret classified
information.
The signatories to the letter were Andre
Carson, Luis Guiterez, Jim Himes, Terri Sewell, Jackie Speier, Mike Quigley, Eric Swalwell
and Patrick Murphy. All the signatories were Democrats. Some had a history of attempting to
undermine national security.
Beyond the debt, the brothers seemed to have, they had convictions for felony traffic
offenses including
DUI . Any one of these issues are enough to prevent or revoke a security clearance for
normal folks. I guess things just work differently on Capitol Hill. The American military or
college grads are denied clearances due similar issues in their record, but not these Pakistani
brothers. Any one of these offenses would have caused me to fail my FBI background check at
work, but congress can admit anybody. Do you see a problem here? Valerie Jarrett and
Huma Abedin are
perfect examples of the double standard in the government / Congress. Staffers of any
background history can get clearances, but Dems seem to be able to prevent Trump's staff from
getting clearance. What is going on here?
Multiple small businesses and individuals went unpaid as a result of the 2012 bankruptcy.
Abid also had an unpaid line of credit of $10,000 with the congressional credit union at the
time of bankruptcy.
Abid's record includes numerous driving- and alcohol-related legal problems, including
driving with a suspended or revoked license, court records show. He was found guilty of drunk
driving a month before he started at the House, and was arrested for public intoxication a
month after his first day.
with possibly opposing goals. A felon normally commits the felony tens of times, maybe
hundreds of times before they get caught. How many times does a Coke head commit a felony
buying coke before they get caught? If they ever get caught, how many years do they get away
with the crimes before they draw the attention of the authorities. The FBI, Congress, whatever
never find the full scope of criminal activity. They may just get enough evidence to convict of
a crime, but they never convict for all the crimes committed.
What is really becoming obvious is the Democrats have irresponsibly opened our congressional
security oversight to Middle Eastern Factions. These 5 are just one group that were exposed.
Hillary had Huma, Obama had Vallery. A sharia practicing terrorist that believes in female
circumcision leading a woman's March to equality in the 21st century. There are so many
examples that one has to be purposefully obtuse to ignore the contradictions.
While the nay sayers claim you can not connect the dots it is obvious that the dots were
there for all to see and could have been connected. I would say that the deviation from
standard security practices was intentional, but Podesta's password was password123 or some
such nonsense. Who knows, our leaders may really be that incompetent. They haven't even made it
to the minimum expectations to be employed in corporate America.
I really don't know what to make of two very different groups with nothing but vaguely
similar beliefs in Marxist ideals working together. Many of the thoughts I have on the subject
are almost too extreme to believe, but the evidence is almost unavoidable. None of it makes
sense unless someone is lying about their objectives.
Two House Democrats this week fired technology staffers linked to an ongoing
criminal investigation , more than a month after the couple in question was barred from
House computer networks.
Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.) confirmed to Politico that Hina Alvi's last day as an IT
support staffer in his office was Tuesday. Her husband, Imran Awan, was working for Rep.
Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio) as of Tuesday evening, but a spokeswoman for Fudge said midday
Wednesday that Awan was no longer an employee.
This post has been updated and corrected with new information from US Capitol Police, which
said no arrests have been made but there is an active investigation ongoing into IT staff who
were involved in an alleged procurement scam. A lawmaker briefed on the situation had told
BuzzFeed News that arrests were made.
I believe Debbie Wasserman-Schultz was getting "schtupped" by at least one of the Awan
brothers.
Consider that even under heavy scrutiny, Debbie Wasserman Schultz fought like a mama grizzly
to keep these men on the job within the government. Why would she do this for a regular IT guy
on the payroll.
As The Daily Caller continues,
Awan was banned Feb. 2, 2017, from the congressional computer network because he is a
suspect in a cybersecurity investigation, but he still had access to House facilities because
Wasserman Schultz continued to employ him.
Outside of a couple of Congressional Black Caucus holdouts, every other Congressman fired
Awan when they found out he was under investigation. The CBC fired the later. Then the day
after the crap really hit the fan, Wasserman Schultz finally fired Awan.
... Why was the laptop found in the Rayburn building, when Wasserman Schultz's office and
every other Congressman for whom Awan worked office in the Longworth building?
Remember when Wasserman Schultz used a televised May 18, 2017 congressional hearing on the
Capitol Police budget to threaten "consequences" if Chief Matthew Verderosa did not give her
the laptop.
"If a member loses equipment," it should be given back, she said.
...
She tried the "executive immunity" argument that "If I'm not under investigation,
then you can't take away my SIDE PIECE!".
A couple month's later, Wasserman Schultz tried a different approach. Now she claimed to
protect the rights of Awan and the taxpayers.
If these political criminals were in the real world, this case would be over. But they work
in the world of politics where things are murky. Who knows what Wasserman Schultz has on
somebody else, who knows something about two other people. Thus, America gets the
run-around.
Politicians fight to protect each other. Because they know if America knew how dirty most of
the were, we'd disband government entirely.
As for Wasserman Schultz, hopefully the return of the mack, Awan sheds light on her dealings
with him. Moreover, let's hope this investigation uncovers what most Americans suspect of the
Democrats. We know in our hearts they are corrupt beyond belief. So let's prove it. Again.
Judicial Watch announced today that a federal court yesterday ordered a snap
hearing after the Justice Department submitted information under seal on Friday following the
court's demand for an explanation of why no records have been produced in the ongoing legal
battle for documents about the Congressional Democrat IT (information technology) scandal
involving the Awan brothers. The hearing is set for tomorrow, January 15, at 10 am.
In November 2018, Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)
lawsuit against the FBI over two FOIA requests for records related to the Awan brothers (
Judicial Watch
v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:18-cv-02563)).
In August 2019, the Justice Department told the court that it would begin producing records
by November 5, 2019. After producing no records, on November 13, 2019, the agency told Judicial
Watch that it was having "technical difficulties," and in a recent email claimed that
"difficulties with the production remain."
In a joint status report
filed on December 5, 2019, Judicial Watch reported to the court that the DOJ claimed in a phone
call that it was now unable to produce any records to either of the FOIA requests "because the
agency was waiting for some unspecified action by Judge [Tanya S.] Chutkan in some other matter
so as to avoid having to produce records in this case." In that same report the DOJ told the
court that Judge Chutkan is "presiding over a related sealed criminal matter" that prohibits
the government from releasing the requested FOIA information.
In a hearing last month, U.S. District Court Judge Amit P. Mehta expressed frustration and
ordered the Justice Department to explain its failure to produce records by January 10 and to
provide Judicial Watch some details about the delay. Instead, the Justice Department made its
filing under seal and has yet to provide Judicial Watch with any details about its failure to
produce records as promised to the court.
"The cover-up of the Awan Brothers Democratic IT scandal shows the FBI and DOJ's penchant
for dishonesty isn't just limited to FISA abuse," stated Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.
"The DOJ's handling of the Awan Brothers case has long been an issue of concern and now we are
expected believe some secret investigation prevents the public from knowing the full truth
about this scandal. We are skeptical."
Imran Awan and his family were banned from the House computer network in February 2017 after
the House's top law enforcement officer wrote that Imran was "an ongoing and serious risk to
the House of Representatives, possibly threatening the integrity of our information systems,"
and that a server containing evidence had gone "missing." The inspector general said server
logs showed "unauthorized access" and procurement records were falsified.
Imran Awan was Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz's (D-FL) top information technology aide. Most
lawmakers fired Awan in February, but Wasserman Schultz kept him on until he was
arrested in July 2017 , trying to board a flight for Pakistan.
In July 2018, Imran Awan was given a plea deal,
and pled guilty to federal bank fraud but prosecutors found no evidence that Awan "violated
federal law with respect to the House computer systems."
The Awan brothers reportedly "were not given
background checks before being given access to highly sensitive government information and no
explanations have been given as to why." Additionally, "If they would have run this background
check it would have found out not only multiple criminal convictions, but $1 million
bankruptcy, a dozen lawsuits it would have found a whole host of major red flags and the
Democrats didn't do any of those checks."
The Awan Brothers aided former DNC chief Debbie Wasserman Schultz in making threatening voice modulated phone calls to
attorneys suing the DNC for election fraud.
Lt. Colonel Tony Schaffer told
Fox
News
that Schultz ordered the Awan Brothers to scare off the lawyers due to the threat they pose in exposing widespread
election fraud committed by the Democratic Party in 2016.
Disobedientmedia.com
reports: If substantiated, the claims may have significance for the DNC fraud lawsuit proceedings,
and add to the growing controversy surrounding the recent arrest of Imran Awan on bank fraud charges.
Jared Beck, and attorney litigating the DNC Fraud Lawsuit noted
on Twitter
:
"We take an oath to protect and defend the Constitution from all enemies, foreign and
domestic. And sadly, the domestic enemies to our voting system and our honoring of the
Constitution are right at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue with their allies in the Congress of the
United States".
Amazing that Pelosi is suddenly aware of her duty.
Thank you karlof1 - LMFAO - coffee all over the keyboard.
Perhaps Pelosi should take her own advice and discuss this belief of hers with Debbie
Wasserman Schultz. After all Schultz promoted the Awan family spy and blackmail ring to other
members of the Democrat caucus in Congress.
Another swamp pond yet to drain, take note Barr, there is still a lot of work ahead ha ha
ha.
The way Merkel and other politicians immediately jumped on the poisoning thesis is
reminiscent of May's reaction in the Skripal case. It is difficult not to become suspicious.
Looks like they like to reuse the same propaganda memes over and over. Russian bounties to the
Taliban become Iranian bounties to the Taliban, Novichok becomes cholinesterase inhibitor, rinse
and repeat.
Russia did it. Evil Putin ordered it. Horrible China sponsored it. Iran backed it.
Hezbollah played a hand as well.
Thank Glorious God for the Indispensable Nation of American Exceptionalism. Rescuing the
world from evil dictators and conspiring theorists plots. Evil doers who hate OUR way of
life stand no chance against the Glorious Christians and their Honorable Zionist
gatekeepers.
Thanks and Glory to American Gods that Juan Guaido is now the President of Venezuela.
Soon the Zionist will offer their Chosen Ones to replace Evil Dictators.
Thanks and praise to MOA for shining Gods Light and dancing on Western narratives giving
them validity against the Evil doers of Poison and injustice.
Trump and Pence are "Men of the Bible" seeking out injustice and filling the world with
Christian values of Bro Love and world Peace. May all you Christians take a knee and pray
for these Mens souls and the Soul of America for leading the way to righteousness. Oh yeah-
and pray for whatever the fuck his name is Nirvany Nalvinny poisoned guy.
If the Russians are really trying to assassinate, why do it in so theatrical a manner?
Just shoot him twice in the back of the head and call it suicide like the Americans do.
"... Navalny fell ill on August 20 during a flight from Tomsk in Siberia to Moscow. The plane made an emergency landing in Omsk where he was transferred to a hospital. Navalny fell into a coma. The doctors diagnosed a sharp drop in his blood sugar. Navalny has diabetes and his symptoms as described were consistent with a diabetic shock. We therefore (somewhat prematurely) concluded that Navalny was not poisoned . ..."
"... The wording of the Charité statement seems to imply that the laboratory results point to the potential effects of a cholinesterase inhibitors, not to a specific substance itself. This is consistent with a statement by the clinic in Omsk which insists that no cholinesterase inhibitors, i.e a 'poison', were found: ..."
"... We can be quite sure that a trained toxicologist would recognize a Cholinergic crisis . There is however a documented case from India in which an organophosphate poisoning was falsely interpreted as diabetic ketoacidosis (hat tip Bernd Neuner ): ..."
"... If Navalny was poisoned - which is not established - the next question must be how Navalny came into contact with a cholinesterase inhibitor. Was the contact caused by himself or by someone else? Was it intentionally or unintentionally? ..."
"... Navalny's spokeswomen has insisted that the only substance Navalny ingested that morning was a tea from an airport bar. A CCTV video from the airport shows that the tea was brought from the bar by a person that then sits down with Navalny. They presumably traveled together. How would the airport barkeeper, if he supposedly poisoned Navalny, knew for whom the tea was? ..."
"... next page " the poison theory constructors are creating a colorful james bond style movie script. It captures the imagination. If the exciting, easily visualised, movie script is solidly imprinted in the imagination, then dull, tedious, evidence based reality doesn't get a look-in. ..."
"... Besides, this doesn't explain the almost immediate poisoning accusation by Merkel and then, the next day (today), by top EU ideologue Josep Borrell. The German State (at least the BND) must be involved - the fact that the Charité is owned by the State itself only strengthens this hypothesis. ..."
"... Someone on the web (might even be here) mentioned that cholinesterase inhibitors can be used against Cocaine dependence. Is this true or not? I do not have any other information and I am not a Medecin/doctor or user. But these days I am naturally cynical about any "official" statements, whoever makes them. ..."
"... The way Merkel and other politicians immediately jumped on the poisoning thesis is reminiscent of May's reaction in the Skripal case. It is difficult not to become suspicious. ..."
"... Due to Navalny's dealings in Tomsk, this smells more of a bid to leave the country. Orchestrations set in place by Germany suggests an asset that has run his course, but they can't leave him in country to deal with any complications of him being taken by someone else. ..."
The case of the alleged 'poisoning' of the Russian rabble rouser Alexey Navalny is becoming
more curious.
Navalny fell ill on August 20 during a flight from Tomsk in Siberia to Moscow. The plane
made an emergency landing in Omsk where he was transferred to a hospital. Navalny fell into a
coma. The doctors diagnosed a sharp drop in his blood sugar. Navalny has diabetes and his
symptoms as described were consistent with a diabetic shock. We therefore (somewhat
prematurely) concluded that
Navalny was not poisoned .
After a day and a half in the Omsk hospital the patient stabilized. On request of his family
he was flown to Berlin and admitted to the Charité hospital. The Charité is a
very large (14,000 employees) state run university clinic that is leading in many medical
fields. Its laboratories
found effects consistent with the ingestion of, or contact with, a cholinesterase
inhibitor:
Following his admission, Mr. Navalny underwent extensive examination by a team of
Charité physicians. Clinical findings indicate poisoning with a substance from the
group of cholinesterase inhibitors. The specific substance involved remains unknown, and a
further series of comprehensive testing has been initiated. The effect of the poison –
namely, the inhibition of cholinesterase in the body – was confirmed by multiple tests
in independent laboratories.
As a result of this diagnosis, the patient is now being treated with the antidote
atropine.
Cholinesterase is needed in the human nerve system to break down acetylcholine which is a
signaling substance between synapses. Inhibitors of cholinesterase are used in the
therapy of Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, anxiety disorder and other illnesses.
Cholinesterase inhibitors can be found in certain plant extracts or synthesized. There
are two types of cholinesterase inhibitors, carbamates and organophosphates. Both types are
also widely used as pesticides. During World War II organophosphates were developed as chemical
weapons (tabun, sarin, soman) but not widely used.
The wording of the Charité statement seems to imply that the laboratory results point
to the potential effects of a cholinesterase inhibitors, not to a specific substance itself.
This is consistent with a statement by the clinic in Omsk which insists that no
cholinesterase inhibitors, i.e a 'poison', were found:
"When Alexey Navalny was admitted to the in-patient clinic, he was examined for a wide range
of narcotics, synthetic substances, psychedelic drugs and medical substances, including
cholinesterase inhibitors. The result was negative," said Sabayev, chief of the acute
poisoning unit at the Omsk emergency care hospital where Navalny was treated before being
airlifted to Germany.
"Besides, he did not have a clinical picture, specific for poisoning with substances from
the group of cholinesterase inhibitors," Sabayev, who is also the top toxicologist in the
Omsk Region and the Siberian Federal District, added.
We can be quite sure that a trained toxicologist would recognize a Cholinergic crisis . There is however
a documented case from India in which an organophosphate poisoning was falsely interpreted as diabetic
ketoacidosis (hat tip Bernd Neuner ):
We present a 15-year-old girl who was initially treated for "diabetic ketoacidosis" with
further worsening of her general condition. This delayed recovery, coupled with focused
investigations, finally led us to a diagnosis and the appropriate management of an
intentional overdose with organophosphorous (OP) pesticide, presenting as diabetic
ketoacidosis.
The statement by German doctors on the diagnosis of FBK founder Alexei Navalny is nothing new
for Russian specialists, Dmitry Peskov, press secretary of the Russian President, told
reporters.
"We have not yet learned anything new from this statement. We specifically contacted our
doctors and asked how, from a professional point of view, we can relate to what was written.
The fact is that the fact of this lowered cholinesterase was established in the first hours
by our doctors in a hospital in Omsk. And the atropine, which the Germans are talking about
and which is now being given to the patient, began to be administered during the first hour
of the patient's stay in intensive care, " said Peskov.
The presidential spokesman stressed that the level of cholinesterase may decrease for a
variety of reasons, including from taking a number of medications. At the same time, German
doctors did not identify a toxic substance in Navalny's analyzes.
"Therefore, it is very important here to find out what caused the decrease in
cholinesterase levels. And neither our doctors, nor the Germans have yet been able to
establish the cause . At least, this follows from the statement of our German doctors'
colleagues. There is no substance, unfortunately, it cannot be established, analyzes do not
show it," Peskov explained.
He stressed that the analytical data of Russian and German doctors are the same, but the
conclusions are different.
"We do not understand why our German colleagues are in such a hurry, using the word
"poisoning". You know, this version was among the first that our doctors considered, but I
repeat once again: the substance has not yet been established. Maybe the Germans have some
data," said Peskov, noting that Russian doctors are ready to provide samples of the first
tests.
If Navalny was poisoned - which is not established - the next question must be how Navalny
came into contact with a cholinesterase inhibitor. Was the contact caused by himself or by
someone else? Was it intentionally or unintentionally?
Navalny's spokeswomen has insisted that the only substance Navalny ingested that morning was
a tea from an airport bar. A CCTV video from the airport shows that the tea was
brought from the bar by a person that then sits down with Navalny. They presumably traveled
together. How would the airport barkeeper, if he supposedly poisoned Navalny, knew for whom the
tea was?
As 'western' media continue with their "Putin poisoned Navalny" nonsense it is important to
again point out that
other people have more reason to harm Navalny than the Kremlin does:
During the last years Navalny has made some enemies by uncovering corruption cases. His
latest one was about the local governor of Tomsk. It was also the reason why he had flown
there. Should Navaly become the victim of a crime the suspects should be sought there.
Posted by b on August 25, 2020 at 11:57 UTC | Permalink
next page " the poison theory constructors are creating a colorful james bond style
movie script.
It captures the imagination. If the exciting, easily visualised, movie script is solidly
imprinted in the imagination, then dull, tedious, evidence based reality doesn't get a
look-in.
The India girl case is an interesting case if you're a doctor, but it is too over the top to
claim they are common. The important thing to consider here is that the Russian doctor who
treated him (and saved his life) discarded that possibility.
It is only the doctor that can diagnose his/her patient. Hunting for exotic cases around
the world is not diagnosis.
Besides, this doesn't explain the almost immediate poisoning accusation by Merkel and
then, the next day (today), by top EU ideologue Josep Borrell. The German State (at least the
BND) must be involved - the fact that the Charité is owned by the State itself only
strengthens this hypothesis.
The numbers consolidate last month's preview. It's bad, and Germany is officially in an
economic depression (2009-2020).
Uniting this data with my previous speculation on the "Prussian" and the "double-header"
hypotheses, I'm inclined to think the Belarus-Navalny operations are a gambit by the EU to
expand further to the East (Russia) and, ultimately, to dispute with China over the control
of Eurasia in the 21st/22nd Centuries.
I am a great fan of MOA, a refugee from ZH which is now an almost unreadable and tainted by
its anti-China drumbeat.
However, with all due respect I find that our host tends to come to conclusions a bit too
quickly... Navalny could well have been poisoned, but by whom? Guaido and her female clone
Tikhanovskaya better watch out - their handlers in the CIA may see them more useful as
martyrs than as "legitimate opposition".
As for other topics, I also find b to have way, way too quickly dismissed the Beirut blast
as anything other than AM.
As in, too quickly because the ramifications were too terrible to contemplate, as in the
ascendence of unspeakable evil on the part of the shitty little state. As to whether the
blast was nuclear or conventional, that is a minor point.
"If the substance is established and if it is established that this is poisoning, then, of
course, this will be a cause for investigation," he [Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov] said.
Someone on the web (might even be here) mentioned that cholinesterase inhibitors can be used
against Cocaine dependence. Is this true or not? I do not have any other information and I am
not a Medecin/doctor or user. But these days I am naturally cynical about any "official"
statements, whoever makes them.
This (anti-cocaine use) might equally be "disinformation", but with its' widespread use in
"elite" circles, it is not inconcievable. Navalny being in the toilets rather than having an
immediate reaction to the tea at the airport, could be an indication that something happened
in there.
The Russians caused the hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico in a plot to meddle with the U.S.
elections by causing disruptions in Texas which may vote Democrat in November. Considering
this it is plausible to think Putin poisoned Nav' in an attempt to take over the world.
3/3 Though a doctor from another region of Russia, who did not treat Navalny, wrote that
in his practice, cholinesterase inhibitors Proserin &Ubretid are allegedly widely used to
prevent disorders developing in patients placed on mechanical ventilation.
Josep Borrell as the top ideologue of the EU is overestimating a gray functionary
belonging to the Felipe González group, a group that somehow preceded the false center
left of Blair in the UK or Clinton in the USA.
From that same group of politicians that first
campaigned against Spain joining NATO back in the '80s with the slogan "De entrada no",
something like to start with NO, well one of those socialists later became NATO's secretary
general and lead the organization during its sinister days of the Yugoslavia bombings,
handsomely rewarded monetarily later became Mister Pesc, a strange definition for the sort of
foreign minister of the EU, the place than Borrell has been rewarded with nowadays, which
means he has rendered the required services to the empire. Those guys true ideology is
personal advancement and nothing else, so it kind of sounds funny to think he is the top
ideologue of the EU, but then again, he could be, which is a true mesure of what the EU is
worth politically, a pitiful colony.
Note that this is an off-label use of cholinesterase inhibitors, so an American doctor
would not likely prescribe it. Someone who has a supply of cocaine sufficient enough to
become an addict, on the other hand, probably would not have difficulty obtaining a
cholinesterase inhibitor like Galantamine, though. Navalny's CIA/State Department handlers
who keep him on coke could probably get him anything he asked for, though if I were in his
shoes I wouldn't put anything from them up my nose.
Unlikely. Europe hardly survived WW2. Russia plus China are a lot of people to make
angry.
It's more likely some projects continuing because someone has forgotten to stop them or
because they still have got money left. You would have to carry Europe to fight and even then
they would not fight.
As is, Europe's south has been bought up by Chinese investment. They invest strategically
not for short term returns.
Noone will climb a tree before knowing the results of US elections.
There is however a documented case from India in which an organophosphate poisoning was
falsely interpreted as diabetic ketoacidosis
So what? Doctors make false diagnoses all the time. It is called medical error. A
significant proportion of deaths in hospitals worldwide are due to medical error. India? Now,
if somebody is going to suggest that medical error never happens in India I am going to say
either they are a liar or an idiot. Medical errors also happen in German hospitals, by the
way, including Charité - plenty of them! Including both with and without intent.
This whole Navalny "poisoning" fantasy stinks to high heaven. It differs very little in
essential essence from the Skripal fantasy so far, and I am quite sure it is headed on the
same path.
But have we missed a point here? Is this not just trying to round the anti-Russia circle
started by the Skripal poisoning? Will not everyone now assume that Navalny was poisoned with
Novichok and that this proves beyond doubt that this is the preferred way for getting rid of
Kremlin enemies? You don't really have to prove anything more, it is now all out there, like
Russia gate, the dog whistle has been blown.
Re: "This whole Navalny "poisoning" fantasy stinks to high heaven. It differs very little
in essential essence from the Skripal fantasy so far, and I am quite sure it is headed on the
same path."
I agree completely. The whole script is so old and tired one would have to have spent the
last few decades living under a rock not to see through it, throw enough shit and hope some
of it sticks. It is probably just another ploy to put pressure on the German government to
cancel Nordstream 2.
This is the source a few other articles on the net also quote from, but where did it come
from. I spent some time searching for other earlier references to Navalny having diabetes but
could not find any.
@vk #3
Why do you believe that the EU and/or Germany wish to expand eastward when their economy is
in deep recession and they already have 45 million Ukrainians for cheap labor?
I would note that even East Germany is lagging West Germany in terms of economic progress
since reunification, which itself was incredibly expensive.
Ukraine isn't a great example either of neither economic progress nor contributing
integration into the EU.
From southfront:
The air travel between Russia and Germany is mostly suspended due to coronavirus limitations.
The flight to Germany was organized by the Berlin-based Cinema for Peace Foundation. The
flight was paid by businessman Boris Zimin. Boris Zimin is the son of Dmitry Zimin –
the founder of VimpelCom (Beeline telecommunications brand).
PJSC VimpelCom is the third-largest wireless and second-largest telecom operator in
Russia. It is wholly owned by VEON Ltd. through which it is linked to Mikhail Fridman,
Russian Western-linked business magnate. Fridman's Alfa Group Consortium is among the main
shareholders of VEON Ltd.
These persons and entities represent the Russian influence group linked to the global
finance. The very same group has links and support work of think tanks affiliated with the
Higher School of Economics, the center of the Alma Mater of the liberal economic block of the
Russian government. Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobanin and Chairwoman of the Bank of Russia Elvira
Nabiullina also could be considered a part of the global finance in Russia.
In Russian media, this network of Western-linked persons, organizations, influence groups
and top officials is often described as the 'liberal tower' of the Kremlin. Thus, despite the
image of the opposition figure, Navalny receives support from the highest levels of the
Russian governance and business systems.
1) the plan was never to make the DDR prosperous. On the contrary: too much people living
prosperously is damaging to capitalist expansion;
2) that's the pattern of recent EU expansion, with the latest great batch of new members
coming from ex-Yugoslavia and the Iron Curtain (why not, for example, insisting on the
accession of Norway and Switzerland, which are much richer and culturally alike
countries?);
3) besides the huge pool of cheap and relatively well-educated labor power (which can be
imported to Germany proper, thus rising unemployment rates, thus eroding the power of the
mighty German unions), there's the pot of gold of the old communist infrastructure (water,
electricity, communications, education, healthcare), which is already centralized and thus
would result in monopolistic rent for the German capitalists who will inevitably buy them in
a privatization process (as happened with Slovakia);
4) Belarus is the natural springboard to invade Russia, thus increasing Germany's leverage
within NATO.
Thanks for the reply. - Even if Navalny was suffering from a "manque" of his favourite
substance, the Germans and others would not mention it. He would not have had (much ?) trace
in his blood either.
Esteemed B, I am still waiting for a source reference for Navalnys diabetes. It is still
important to get the information confirmed. His environment says that he did not consume
anything except the tea. That would be a very risky behavior for a diabetic in itself.
Whether a diabetic shock can be ruled out due to the cholinesterase problem, which can
probably be considered certain after it has been confirmed by two hospitals, I cannot judge.
You seem to assume that.
The way Merkel and other politicians immediately jumped on the poisoning thesis is
reminiscent of May's reaction in the Skripal case. It is difficult not to become suspicious.
I dwell on the words Navalny spoke in Tomsk to his crew, about him becoming a martyr and it
not helping Putin, then his trauma on the following day. Yes, the observation about the tea
at the airport is of great importance. The time between its ingestion and boarding the plane
is similarly important IF he was administered a toxic agent via that tea. And if he's
diabetic or even pre-diabetic, there's a suite of meds he'd need to take daily if not
requiring insulin, and those meds must be ingested with food--I know.
I imagine all security camera footage of his time at Tomsk airport has been scrutinized,
the result being the Kremlin's ruling no investigation's warranted. That decision's good
enough for me.
navalny's words the day before about being a hero if Putin killed him is I think key.
Russia seems to produce a few Rasputin types - like the clown that nailed his balls to the
pavement.
Seen some photos of Navalny when he was younger and his eyes looked normal. Those wide open
staring eyes in selfies and so forth in recent years give more than a hint of madness.
I agree with Karlof1. If Navalny is diabetic, he seems a bit careless to me to just drink a
tea all morning. He should eat something according to his diet and probably take some meds as
well (if the disease isn't at a very early stage).
To compare Pavlensky to Rasputin is not proportional. The monk was the victim of the
British services and has been thoroughly discredited and demonized, by the same guys that
killed him. Check out the movie about Rasputin's life with no other than Gerard Depardieu.
Rasputin had the Tsarina's ear and he was against Russia going to war, the first world war,
and that was the main motive to eliminate him.
Pavlensky on the other hand is a freak useful to the empire propaganda on a condom basis, use
and throw away, just like the Pussy Riots, always referred to as the punk group, a group that
never issued a first album, save for a couple of clips on youtube after leaving Russia.
Freaks of that caliber are a dime a dozen everywhere, but since they are useful to discredit
Russia, well then they are endowed with media attention, and even Hillary receiving one of
the Riots member, Tolokonnikova, the one that being pregnant engaged in a public orgy,
another one of the group hits was introducing a frozen chicken into a members vagina.
Pavlensky was hailed as a hero for burning the FSB building entrance door, the feared
Lyubianka. He tried the same trick with the gates of the Bank of France, and he was sent to a
psychiatric ward, with no media noise at all. If that would have occurred back in Moscow we
would be still hearing and reading about psychiatric torture back to the good old days of the
Soviet Union.
Russia did it. Evil Putin ordered it. Horrible China sponsored it. Iran backed it. Hezbollah
played a hand as well.
Thank Glorious God for the Indispensable Nation of American Exceptionalism. Rescuing the
world from evil dictators and conspiring theorists plots. Evil doers who hate OUR way of life
stand no chance against the Glorious Christians and their Honorable Zionist gatekeepers.
Thanks and Glory to American Gods that Juan Guaido is now the President of Venezuela. Soon
the Zionist will offer their Chosen Ones to replace Evil Dictators.
Thanks and praise to MOA for shining Gods Light and dancing on Western narratives giving
them validity against the Evil doers of Poison and injustice.
Trump and Pence are "Men of the Bible" seeking out injustice and filling the world with
Christian values of Bro Love and world Peace. May all you Christians take a knee and pray for
these Mens souls and the Soul of America for leading the way to righteousness. Oh yeah- and
pray for whatever the fuck his name is Nirvany Nalvinny poisoned guy.
they like to reuse the same propaganda memes over and over. Russian bounties to the Taliban
become Iranian bounties to the Taliban, Novichok becomes cholinesterase inhibitor, rinse and
repeat.
As the collective west, including Germany, proceed to fabricate another "highly likely" Putin
play, may I ask what they have been doing while the collective west has buried Julian Assange
alive? Hypocricy is a much too weak word for it.
@ Posted by: Clueless Joe | Aug 25 2020 17:37 utc | 42
There's an extreme treatment for diabetics type 2, where you live in a near state of
starvation for months. In some mild cases, it is stated to cure diabetes.
Navalny could be going through this treatment, hence just a cup of tea (there are many
teas famous for cutting the appetite) in the morning.
If the Russians are really trying to assassinate, why do it in so theatrical a manner?
Just shoot him twice in the back of the head and call it suicide like the Americans do.
I've seen this site before - they post statements from various medical people on matters
of public medical interest, such as the pandemic. Useful for people who want some background
on the chemicals involved.
Posted by: Circe | Aug 25 2020 16:14 utc | 29
Yup. Just ran across that piece while searching for anything on Navalny having diabetes.
Found nothing so far beyond that. b's source appears to be the only one mentioning any
diabetes in Navalny's medical history. Apparently his personal doctor has denied this, saying
that the "diabetes" issue appears to have more a "description" of his medical condition
rather than an actual diagnosis.
Posted by: karlof1 | Aug 25 2020 17:26 utc | 40 And if he's diabetic or even pre-diabetic,
there's a suite of meds he'd need to take daily if not requiring insulin, and those meds must
be ingested with food--I know.
Yes, Metformin is the preferred drug. I started on twice a day, then once I lost 45
pounds, the doctor dropped me to one a day. In fact, now I could stop taking it, but I
continue to do so because it has alleged anti-aging properties. The only real negative is
that it leeches vitamin B-12 from the body - but I take tons of B-12 anyway, so doesn't
concern me. Metformin usually needs to be taken with food because otherwise it tends to give
you "the runs".
Russian news agency Interfax later quoted officials in Omsk as saying tests had identified
the presence of an industrial chemical in his body.
Russia's Ministry of Internal Affairs told the agency that since the substance they
claim was present is commonly used to increase plasticity in products, "it is possible that
it could appear in surface washings through the contact of Alexei Navalny with similar
objects, for example, through a plastic cup".
Studies have previously shown that the chemical officials were referring to -
2-ethylhexyl diphenyl phosphate - does not have a strong toxic effect on humans.
So it appears from the articles so far that initially the police detected that specific
chemical, but medical experts ruled it out as a cause, merely a by-product of having drunk
from a plastic cup.
This article discusses the term "metabolic disease", clarifying that it doesn't
necessarily mean diabetes.
Bottom line: There is no evidence Navalny had diabetes, although he might well have had
either Type 2 or Type 1 diabetes but never diagnosed. However, if he was in a diabetic coma,
that should have been detected almost immediately, even by first responders in the ambulance.
Beyond that, it appears that whatever chemical was the cause of his condition, it's likely
undetectable now.
So another "nothing-burger" which will be seized on to drum up hysteria against Russia.
And I've spent *way* too much time on this irrelevant crap.
At your age, you should take an interest in dissecting and studying insects.
Re coma from undiagnosed diabetes. From what I can find, that would be due to high blood
sugar, whereas a diagnosed patient taking meds can be hit with low blood sugar if
carbohydrates and insulin are not matched.
We need a timeline showing when tea drunk; when airplane boarded; when Navalny went to loo on
plane. Video showing his demeanor as he boarded would be great. It's been said his stomach
was empty except for the tea, so anything in that tea presumably would have acted quickly,
prior to his boarding. Or there was nothing in the tea and Navalny injured himself -- or was
injured by someone during the walk in the jet-way from the terminal to the plane. Security
Video?
"Mr Navalny drank a cup of tea at a cafe inside Tomsk airport, which his supporters
suspect had been poisoned because it was all he ate or drank that morning."
"The saleswoman, who did not want to be identified, said one of Mr Navalny's entourage
bought the tea at the counter and took it to him at the table."
The long delay between administration of the poison and the onset of effects AND the apparent
nonlethatity are clear evidence of novichok. Case closed.
Precisely four hours between contact with novichok and onset of symptoms, regardless of
victim age, weight, health, and quantity of novichok contacted. It is a truly amazing
chemical weapon, though not very practical for battlefield use.
testing for circulating cholinesterase activity is very simple-- a chromogenic assay with
acetyl thiocholine and DTNB. So its the first thing you would do in a case like this. In the
case of a nerve agent there should be no circulating activity. The Russians must have known
this.
So the question is now -- is there anything stuck to the active site serine of the enzyme--
an adduct. This one for Porton Down -- they will find it probably by immunoprecipitation and
mass spectrometry and they ought to get the mass and some structural data on the toxin.
Clinically, he should have had a bradycardia and excess secretions and pupils constricted.
Doesn't sound like that. The question is can we trust the West to be truthful here. After
various OPCW fiascos I doubt it.
CJ
Whenever Navalny does end up dying the Russian government will be blamed anyway, so if
they wanted him dead then why not just blow him up with some missiles like the US did with
General Soleimani? Why not just arrest him, claim he resisted arrest, then shoot him like
happens with so many people in the US?
This talk about him being targeted by the Russian government using obscure toxins that
don't work is beyond silly.
Due to Navalny's dealings in Tomsk, this smells more of a bid to leave the country.
Orchestrations set in place by Germany suggests an asset that has run his course, but they
can't leave him in country to deal with any complications of him being taken by someone else.
This doesn't feel like state acting....or at least not the Russian state. Gruff is right,
this isn't targeting by the Russians. Navalny hasn't been relevant in Russian circles since
at least 2012-13 if he was even then.
I don't understand why people commenting here still insist on playing CSI Miami. The Russian
doctors have already publicly stated their own lab results showed absolutely no signs of
Cholinesterase Inhibitors. As in evidence of zero CI - not zero evidence of CI:
"Upon his admission to the [Omsk] hospital, Alexey Navalny was tested on a wide range of
narcotics, synthetic substances, psychodiletics and medicinal substances, including
cholinesterase inhibitors -- all tests came back negative ," Sabayev said in a
press statement, as quoted by the Omsk Ministry of Health.
No cholinesterase inhibitors were used, according to the Russian lab results. It's not
that they didn't test Navalny for the substances - they did and they came out negative.
Sabayev even called the Germans' bluff:
"Additionally, Navalny lacked symptoms specific of the poisoning with cholinesterase
inhibitors substances . As we said earlier, we are ready to share Alexey Navalny's
samples with our German colleagues for examination ," the health official [Sabayev]
added.
MoA's own German source state the lab tests in Germany were carried out by "independent
laboratories". They most likely are in BND's control, in one way or the other. Many Western
European nations have constitutional clauses that allow their respective governments
(usually, at the discretion of the executive) to intervene directly on the private sector in
specific occasions, normally under "national security" reasons. The executive of the British
government, for example, has a legal device that allows it to outright censor (without the
need for legislative approval) any specific information from all the British media outlets.
I'm sure modern Germany also has many constitutional clauses that allow its government and
intelligence agencies to intervene anywhere, anytime in the German economy instantly and
covertly, under the umbrella of national security.
As I predicted, the Russians aren't that stupid. They stored some blood samples from
Navalny, and they know, for sure, that he wasn't poisoned with CIs. That's why Peskov was so
direct, so sudden and so confident when he declared the Kremlin was in no hurry - because they
saw no reason - to initiate an investigation on Navalny's sudden health problems. And he also
called the German bluff ("If the substance is established and if it is established that this
is poisoning, then, of course, this will be a cause for investigation", i.e. there won't be
an investigation because there's no poison).
It is known that activation of acetylcholine receptors (specifically M3 muscarinic receptors)
in the pancreas promotes insulin release into the bloodstream, which consequently would tend
to decrease blood glucose.
It's therefore possible that hypoglycemia could be triggered by increased acetylcholine
levels (drug-induced or otherwise). This would be less likely to occur in diabetics, as such
individuals would be deficient in either the ability to produce (type 1 diabetes) or respond
(type 2 diabetes) to insulin.
Dmitri Petrovsky, a doctor of medical sciences, a surgeon and deputy of the
municipality of Yaroslavl, questioned the competence of German doctors who said that blogger
Alexei Navalny had been poisoned.
Doctors [treating] Navalny [at] the German clinic "Charité" reported on Monday,
August 24, about the presence in the body of the blogger substance, part of the group of
inhibitors cholinesterase. According to them, this indicates the poisoning of the head of the
Anti-Corruption Foundation (recognized as a foreign agent).
Dmitri Petrovsky, M.D., surgeon and deputy of the municipality of Yaroslavl, commented
on the statement of German medics.
"What they found in Navalny cholinesterase inhibitors after being in intensive care is
normal. They should be in the man who was in intensive care and was on ventilator. And if
the doctor finds them in the analysis of the person after a stay in the operating room and
concludes that he was poisoned, then the conclusion is: either it is a political order,
or an illiterate doctor," the expert said.
According to public figure Ernest Makarenko, the hospitalization of Navalny in
["Charité"] is nothing but a political matter. Omsk doctors coped perfectly with the
blogger's treatment, but to make Navalny a "victim", he had to be defiantly taken to the
West, the expert added.
Readers will need to use Google Translate.
In other words, if Navalny had not been found to have cholinesterase inhibitors in his
body after being treated in an ICU with intubation, then the doctors at the Omsk hospital who
initially treated him hadn't been doing their job properly.
Aha - found MPN's comment @ 12, clicked on the link to Elena Evdokimova's tweets and then
clicked on a link she provides and here is another article (from Zhurnalistskaya Pravda)
on Dmitri Petrovsky's comments about Navalny's treatment in Germany.
What they found in Navalny cholinesterase inhibitors after being in intensive care
is normal. They should be in the man who was in intensive care and was on ventilator. If they
weren't there, it would be strange, I'd be surprised.
Tonight, doctors of the German clinic "Charite" found in the blood of blogger Alexei
Navalny substance, which, in their opinion, could provoke his illness, and hastened to
announce the poisoning. However, in Russian practice, this substance is widely used to
prevent disorders that developing in patients on ventilator.
German doctors found in Navalny substance - cholinesterase inhibitor.
"The effect of the toxin, i.e. the inhibition of cholinesterase in the body, has been
proven several times in independent laboratories. According to the diagnosis, the patient is
treated with an antidote to atropine. The outcome of the disease remains unsafe and the
subsequent effects, especially in the nervous system, cannot be ruled out at this time," the
statement obtained by Izvestia reads.
Deputy of the municipality of Yaroslavl, M.D., surgeon Dmitry Petrovsky commented on
this "find" of German colleagues.
"Cholinesterase inhibitors are widely used medicines in medicine. Basically, they are
used in the postoperative management of patients, when transferring to independent
breathing. That's what Navalny had. He was first on ventilator and when trying to translate
it, could use the drug Proserin. It is a cholinesterase inhibitor that is officially
administered to all patients when transferred to independent breathing. It must be used. I
think it was used. But I also understand that, most likely, he had to shine as Proserin's
German colleagues. Perhaps used not Proserin in its pure form, but another drug, more rare
- Ubretide, which is also an absolutely official drug, which is used in intensive care, in
postoperative practice to prevent bladder atony, to prevent bowel atony and, accordingly,
widely used. But, I admit, it can be used little in Germany, and it was not in the
toxicology kit, so they could be surprised, and because of this all the cheese-bor.
What they found in Navalny cholinesterase inhibitors after being in intensive care is
normal. They should be in the man who was in intensive care and was on ventilator. If they
weren't there, it would be strange, I'd be surprised.
When a person breathes with the help of the ventilator, various disorders develop,
including respiratory, cardiovascular, with the intestines, with the bladder. Various drugs
are used to prevent these disorders, including cholinesterase inhibitors. And if the doctor
finds them in the analysis of the person after a stay in the operating room and concludes
that he was poisoned, then the conclusion is: either it is a political order, or an
illiterate doctor."
Perhaps next time Navalny is in Russia and has a seizure or a collapse requiring IC
treatment and intubation, hospital staff should just arrange to send him to the closest
international airport and phone Charité to collect him as he is.
Thanks for providing those! IMO, sometime after the Skripal kidnapping a memo was sent to
all Russian medical personnel about the handling of known dissidents -- to use kid gloves and a
fine tooth comb whilst saving all fluids taken for testing and using an impeccable evidence
chain, for that's what's related by the doctor. I'd like to think such attention to detail is
usual practice in Russia.
i recommend a new ''military grade chemical agent" Novichok in honour of Alexey Navalny...
maybe alexeychok is better... it has a nice malevolent russian ring to it!
US Senator demonizes Russia 'as supporting thugs' and 'undermining democracy' in bid to
lure India closer to US and its Quad alliance
The Nikkei Asian Review, well known for its anti-China reportage, featured an article
0n the weekend titled "India should ignore Putin's offer to broker accord with
China."
The author is none other than Marco Rubio, the high-flying Republican senator from
Florida and the acting chairman of the US Senate Intelligence Committee, co-chairman of the
Congressional-Executive Commission on China and a ranking member of the Senate Committee on
Foreign Relations. ..
####
Rubio, Rubio, you're the big boob-io!
Is Modhi too polite to tell the US to f/o and the US takes this as encouragement to keep
making 'suggestions'? I wonder at which point the penny will drop and Washington will stop
this stupid behavior?
Rubio is high, I'll give him that; I don't know about high-flying. It has become political
gold in America to say something insulting about Russia or its leader, or both, and much of
the drooling electorate responds positively. America being the nation of the shortsighted and
the instant-gratification fans, it is hard to see down the road to here such behavior might
cost it, and for right now it sure is fun.
Washington obviously thinks it is irreplaceable as a trade partner, because it keeps
dangling the "If you want to do business with us, you'll do as we say" ultimatum, which it
evidently believes is persuasive. It remains to be seen if other countries are going to abase
themselves for money. They might; it is a powerful incentive. But the USA is defining
'loyalty' in a whole new context, suspiciously like the collecting of 'vassals' as described
by Putin. Saying you will do as you are told by Washington now implies that you will stay
bought, no matter how wiggy American policies become.
I think most traditional US allies will stay on the fence for as long as they can, hoping
for some idea of the direction the USA intends to take. But its debt is dragging it down and
down, and its squalling that it must do every deal so that it is to America's advantage makes
it less and less a desirable commercial partner.
Russian government-supported organisations are playing a small but increasing role
amplifying conspiracy theories promoted by QAnon, raising concerns of interference in the
November US election.
####
Yes, yet again new data/analytics shitpad Graphika (where Ben 'Russia is Evil' Nimmo an
expert at the Atlantic Council* shakes his butt) is being used as a source.
I haven't bothered to look at the timing of the cycles when the western propaganda efforts
decide to bring on stream a new bs site to peddle their rubbish, but I suppose that now
Bell-End Cat is more widely known to be NATO affiliated/whatever, an opening for another
'honest' data/fact driven organization that the PPNN can quote laundered fake intel is
required. One thing in common is that they are all new but have some old hands on deck.
counts among its ranks such luminaries as Ben Nimmo, perhaps best known for baselessly
accusing British and Finnish citizens of being Russian bots. Nimmo, who remains a senior
non-resident fellow at pro-war NATO-backed think tank Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic
Research Lab and has also worked with the UK government's secretive Integrity Initiative, was
hired by Graphika last year as its Head of Investigations, suggesting the company values a
vivid imagination over factual accuracy
Commenting on the spotlight that U.S. intelligence officials have placed on both countries'
interference efforts (along with Iran's), Pelosi and Schiff declared that the analysis
"provided a false sense of equivalence to the actions of foreign adversaries by listing three
countries of unequal operational intent, actions, and capabilities together."
In particular, they charged, the actions of Kremlin-linked actors seeking to undermine Vice
President Biden, and seeking to help President Trump" were glossed over.
Pelosi stated subsequently, "The Chinese, they said, prefer (presumptive Democratic nominee
Joe) Biden -- we don't know that, but that's what they're saying, but they're not really
getting involved in the presidential election."
... ... ...
Also alleging that Chinese agents are increasingly active on major social media platforms --
a study from research institute Freedom House,
which reported that :
"[C]hinese state-affiliated trolls are apparently operating on [Twitter] in large numbers.
In the hours and days after Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey tweeted in support of
Hong Kong protesters in October 2019, the Wall Street Journal reported, nearly 170,000
tweets were directed at Morey by users who seemed to be based in China as part of a
coordinated intimidation campaign. Meanwhile, there have been multiple suspected efforts by
pro-Beijing trolls to manipulate the ranking of content on popular sources of information
outside China, including Google's search engine Reddit,and YouTube."
Last year, a major
Hoover Institution report issued especially disturbing findings about Beijing's efforts to
influence the views (and therefore the votes) of Chinese Americans, including exploiting the
potential hostage status of their relatives in China. According to the Hoover researchers:
"Among the Chinese American community, China has long sought to influence -- even silence
-- voices critical of the PRC or supportive of Taiwan by dispatching personnel to the United
States to pressure these individuals and while also pressuring their relatives in China.
Beijing also views Chinese Americans as members of a worldwide Chinese diaspora that presumes
them to retain not only an interest in the welfare of China but also a loosely defined
cultural, and even political, allegiance to the so-called Motherland."
In addition: "In the American media, China has all but eliminated the plethora of
independent Chinese-language media outlets that once served Chinese American communities. It
has co-opted existing Chinese language outlets and established its own new outlets."
Operations aimed at Chinese Americans are anything but trivial politically. As of 2018, they
represented nearly 2.6 million eligible U.S. voters, and they belonged to an Asian-American
super-category that reflects the fastest growing racial and ethnic population of eligible
voters in the country.
Most live in heavily Democratic states, like California, New York, and Massachusetts, but
significant concentrations are also found in the battleground states where many of the 2016
presidential election margins were razor thin, and many of which look up for grabs this year,
like Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Texas, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.
More broadly, according to the Hoover study:
"In American federal and state politics, China seeks to identify and cultivate rising
politicians. Like many other countries, Chinese entities employ prominent lobbying and public
relations firms and cooperate with influential civil society groups. These activities
complement China's long-standing support of visits to China by members of Congress and their
staffs. In some rare instances Beijing has used private citizens and companies to exploit
loopholes in US regulations that prohibit direct foreign contributions to elections."
But even more thoroughly overlooked than these narrower forms of Chinese political
interference is a broader, much more dangerous type of Chinese meddling that leaves Moscow's
efforts in the dust. For example, U.S.-owned multinational companies, which have long profited
at the expense of the domestic economy by offshoring production and jobs to China, have just as
long carried Beijing's water in American politics through their massive contributions to U.S.
political campaigns. The same goes for Wall Street, which hasn't sent many U.S. operations
overseas, but which has long hungered for permission to do more business in the Chinese
market.
These same big businesses continually and surreptitiously inject their views into American
political debates by heavily financing leading think tanks -- which garb their special interest
agendas in the raiment of objective scholarship.
Hollywood and the rest of the U.S. entertainment industry has become so determined to brown
nose China in search of profits that it's made nearly routine rewriting and censoring material
deemed offensive to China.
... ... ...
Alan Tonelson is the founder of RealityChek, a public policy blog focusing on
economics and national security, and the author of The Race to the Bottom.
RussiaGate is about MIC, Intelligence agencies and Dem leadership need to have an enemy to
milt taxpayers and retain power and military budget. Nothing personal, strictly business.
I met Strobe Talbott in 1968 when he and I were graduate students at Magdalen College,
Oxford. I liked him and respected him, and after we lost touch as friends, I followed his
career at Time , the State Department, and the Brookings Institution with admiration.
In recent years, however, I've become disillusioned with the foreign policy he advocated with
regard to Russia and was disturbed to learn of his involvement in the genesis of the
Russiagate narrative.
August 3, 2020
Dear Strobe,
It has been a long time – a very long time – since we've been in touch, but I
assume you remember me from 1968, when we met at Magdalen College, Oxford. Having just
graduated from Yale, you were there on a Rhodes Scholarship; I was on a Reynold Scholarship
granted by my alma mater, Dartmouth. Despite your three-barreled WASP name (Nelson Strobridge
Talbott) and your distinguished pedigree (son of a Yale football captain, Hotchkiss alum,
etc.) you were unpretentious, and we made friends quickly.
Despite assurances from my draft board that I would not be drafted that year, I got an
induction notice on Nixon's inauguration day. You were the first person I consulted. Safe
from the draft, like most Rhodes Scholars, you listened sympathetically. We were together in
our opposition to the War if not in our vulnerability to the draft.
You and I played the occasional game of squash. And when my Dartmouth fraternity brother
and Rhodes Scholar John Isaacson injured your eye with his racket, I visited you in the
Radcliffe Infirmary during your convalescence. I was reading Tristram Shandy as part
of my program, and one day I read some bits to you. You seemed to share my amusement; I can
still see you smiling in your hospital bed with a big patch on one eye. When your father came
from Ohio to visit you, he invited me, along with your Yale classmate Rob Johnson out to
dinner at the Bear.
You had majored in Russian at Yale and were writing a thesis on some topic in Russian
literature, Mayakovsky, perhaps? At any rate, you seemed committed to Russian studies.
(Little did I know.) When I chose to take a student tour behind the Iron Curtain during the
spring vac, you gave me some reading suggestions and advised me to dress warmly. Having
packed for England's relatively mild climate, I lacked a warm enough coat; you generously
loaned me your insulated car coat, which served me well in Russia's raw spring cold.
You likely debriefed me after my travels; I must have passed on to you my sense of the
Soviet Union as a very drab place with a demoralized, often drunk, population, and a general
sense of repression. Which is not to say that I didn't enjoy my trip – just that I was
struck by the stark differences at the time between the West and the East. How lucky I was to
have been born in the "free world."
The tour returned from Moscow and St. Petersburg via Ukraine and Czechoslovakia. In
Prague, just after the brutal suppression of Prague Spring, we were acutely aware of how
hated the Russians were. This just reinforced my distaste for what Ronald Reagan later termed
the Evil empire – perhaps the only thing he said I ever agreed with. So, like you, I
was staunchly anti-Communist at the time.
The next year, you got a gig polishing the text of Nikita Krushchev's memoirs, which had
been smuggled out of Russia. The publisher put you up in an "undisclosed location," which you
let on was the Commodore Hotel in Cambridge, Massachusetts; we met for coffee in Harvard
Square with friends of yours, possibly including Brooke Shearer whom you later married, and
one of her brothers, Cody or Derek. It may have been then that I drove you to the school
where I was teaching on a deferment, Kimball Union Academy in central New Hampshire; you
stayed overnight before returning to civilization.
Your second year, you moved into a house with Bill Clinton and two other Rhodes
Scholars.
During the next few years – the early 70s – you and I exchanged occasional
letters. After that, the rest is history: your illustrious career – as a journalist at
Time , then as a Russia hand and Deputy Secretary of State Department in the Clinton
administration, and then as president of the Brookings Institution – was easy to follow
in the media.
Eventually our paths diverged, I lost touch with you, with one exception.
In the mid-1990s, while you were serving at State, a close friend asked me to ask you to
do her a favor. I hate asking for favors, even for myself, and resent those who use
connections to advance themselves. But all my friend needed was for a senior State official
to sign off on a job application of some sort. I phoned your office from mine. I got a frosty
reception from your administrative assistant, who was justifiably protective of your time,
but she put me through. You recognized my voice, sounded glad to be in touch, and granted the
favor. It never came to anything, but I remember how pleased I was even to have such a brief
task-oriented phone encounter with you after a lapse of two decades.
In any case, over the next several decades I followed your career with interest and was
pleased with your success.
As I was by that of another member of the Oxford cohort, Bob Reich, another fraternity
brother of mine. We were not close, and I saw him less often in Oxford than I saw you. But
you and he both wound up in the Clinton administration – the Oxford troika, I like to
call you. You and Bob were doing what Rhodes Scholars were supposed to do: go into
professions, network, and perform public service. The Rhodes to success. Never a whiff of
scandal about either of you. You, Strobe, were very much what we Dartmouth men referred to as
a straight arrow.
So why am I writing you now, after all these years? And why a public letter?
In part, because I have become progressively more critical of the foreign policy that you
have advocated. Early on you were advocating disarmament. Good. And closer relations with the
Soviet Union. Also good. Indeed, you were regarded as something of a Russophile (never a
compliment). But while you initially resisted the expansion of NATO, you eventually went
along with it. Like George Kennan, I consider that decision to be a serious mistake (and a
breach of a promise not to expand NATO "one inch" to the east after Germany was
reunited).
When the Cold War ended, the Warsaw Pact dissolved. NATO did not; instead, it expanded
eastward to include former Warsaw Pact members and SSRs until today it borders Russia. Russia
resistance to this is inevitably denounced in the West as "Russian aggression." Hence the
tension in Ukraine today. You're not personally responsible for all of this of course. But
you are deeply implicated in what seems to me a gratuitously provocative, indeed
imperialistic, foreign policy.
Two old friends could amicably agree disagree on that, as I disagree with virtually all my
liberal friends.
But your loyalty to the Clintons has apparently extended to involvement in generating the
Russiagate narrative, which has exacerbated tensions between Russia and the USA and spread
paranoia in the Democratic establishment and mainstream media. I am always disturbed by the
hypocrisy of Americans who complain about foreign meddling in our elections, when the USA is
the undisputed champ in that event. Indeed, we go beyond meddling (Yeltsin's reelection in
1996) to actual coups, not to mention regime-change wars.
My concern about this has come to a head with the
recent revelation of your complicity in the dissemination of the Steele dossier, whose
subsource, Igor Danchenko, was a Russian national employed by Brookings.
I don't know which is worse: that you and your colleagues at Brookings believed the
dossier's unfounded claims, or that you didn't but found it politically useful in the attempt
to subvert the Trump campaign and delegitimize his election. I suspect the latter. But
doesn't this implicate you in the creation of a powerful Russophobic narrative in
contemporary American politics that has demonized Putin and needlessly ramped up tension
between two nuclear powers?
A lifelong Democrat who voted for Bill twice and Hillary once, I am no fan of Trump or of
Putin. But Russiagate has served as a distraction from Hillary's responsibility for her
catastrophic defeat and from the real weaknesses of the neoliberal Democratic Party, with its
welfare "reform," crime bill, and abandonment of its traditional working-class base.
Moreover, in and of itself, the Russiagate story represents what Matt Taibbi has called
this generation's WMD media scandal. The narrative, challenged from the beginning by a few
intrepid independent journalists like Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, and Aaron Maté,
and the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, is now being further undermined by the
declassification of documents by the Senate. If, as I have recently read, you were active in
disseminating the Steele dossier, you have contributed to
the mainstream media's gas-lighting of the American public – liberals, at least
(like most of my friends). Ironically, then, you have given credence to Trump's often, but
not always, false charge: "Fake News." Once described as a Russophile, you now seem complicit
in the creation of a nation-wide paranoid and hysterical Russophobia and neo-McCarthyism.
"... It therefore appears that elements of the Defense Intelligence Agency were aware of the deadly viral outbreak in Wuhan more than a month before any officials in the Chinese government itself. ..."
For forty years I carefully read the New York Times in hard copy each and every
morning, eager to discover what had transpired since the previous day. But just in the last few
months, my commitment has begun to flag, and my eyes often only lightly glance at half or more
of the articles and their columnar headlines.
I'd never thought much of Donald Trump, but can't seem to work up the enthusiasm to read yet
another article headlining the "lies" of our Great Satan or his coterie of lesser Satans. The
endless villainies of his Luciferian ally Vladimir Putin have grown dull to my mental tongue.
The diabolical wickedness of China, whom Trump had supposedly so recently courted, elicits
little interest. Closer to home, my eyes skip over another "social distancing" advice column
about Covid-19, or further explanations of how "peaceful protesters" had recently set a
government building on fire in Portland, Oregon, or destroyed Chicago's wealthiest downtown
shopping district.
The Business Section reports that the worst disease outbreak in a century, the worst
unemployment since the Great Depression, and the worst national rioting in two generations has
produced unprecedented gains in share prices on Wall Street, but the staff writers have
apparently forgotten the word "bubble." Many days the Arts Section seems to have become almost
monochromatically black. So my daily regular morning ritual now takes much less time than it
did in the past.
I can't exactly plot the trajectory of this sharp drop in my recent interest. But I
certainly noticed the change not longer after
a Twitter-mob forced the Times to summarily purge for insufficient "wokeness" its
highly-regarded Editorial Page Editor, widely considered a leading contender to run the paper,
perhaps suggesting that the journalists changed their coverage and writing style to avoid a
similar fate. I had always read my morning newspapers at a local coffee-shop, but the
Coronavirus outbreak ended that possibility, thereby disrupting my routine. And my years of
denouncing the dishonesty of "Our American Pravda" in my own articles
may have finally begun to register in my own mind.
There are occasional exceptions to this pattern. Earlier this month the Times
carefully tabulated our national mortality figures and determined that our "excess deaths"
from early March to the end of July had already exceeded 200,000 , indicating that the
American body-count from our Covid-19 epidemic was considerably larger than generally assumed,
and might even reach the half million mark by the end of the year. But examples of such solid
reporting seem few and far between these days.
The obvious decline of the Times is especially apparent to me each morning when I
compare it with the rival Wall Street Journal , which I read immediately afterward.
After Rupert Murdoch acquired the Journal in 2007, most observers predicted a sad fate
at the hands of the proprietor whose early Fleet Street media empire had been built upon on the
frontal nudity of the Page Three Girls of his tabloid Sun . But Murdoch totally
confounded those skeptics, providing his new flagship broadsheet with huge financial backing
and a hands-off editorial policy, thereby elevating it from a business-focused publication to a
near-peer rival to the Gray Lady at a time when so many other papers were about to begin
shriveling from massive loss of advertising. Within a couple of years, even such inveterate
Murdoch-haters as The Nationacknowledged this
surprising reality .
Superb journalist resources unshackled by extreme "political correctness" allow an
outstanding product, and this has certainly been demonstrated by the Journal 's
regular front-page investigative reports. A few days ago, our continuing Covid-19 disaster
prompted yet another of these, which I think lacked only a few crucial elements to be worthy of
a Pulitzer Prize.
Numerous publications have documented America's severe mistakes in combating the disease,
but
this 4,500 word WSJ report focused upon the serious mishandling of the original
outbreak by Chinese authorities.
The article revealed that top public health officials at China's Center for Disease Control
only became aware of the situation on December 30th, when they learned that at least 25
suspected cases of a mysterious illness had already occurred in Wuhan during that month. But as
the writers noted, the outbreak had certainly begun somewhat earlier:
Even a fully empowered China CDC would likely have missed the very first cases of the
coronavirus, which probably began spreading around Wuhan in October or November, most likely
in people who never showed symptoms, or did but never saw a doctor, researchers say.
All of this new information seems quite consistent with what had previously been discovered
by America's leading media outlets. But the Journal writers seem to have missed one
additional fact that could have elevated this important story from a mundane investigation to a
sensational expose. Although they documented that the Chinese government only learned of the
Wuhan outbreak at the end of December, they seemed unaware that more than a month earlier
American intelligence officials had distributed a secret report to our military allies
describing the "cataclysmic" disease outbreak then underway in Wuhan.
A few months ago, I
had noted the clear implications of this bizarre discrepancy in timing:
For obvious reasons, the Trump Administration has become very eager to emphasize the early
missteps and delays in the Chinese reaction to the viral outbreak in Wuhan, and has
presumably encouraged our media outlets to direct their focus in that direction.
As an example of this, the Associated Press Investigative Unit recently published a rather
detailed analysis of those early events purportedly based upon confidential Chinese
documents. Provocatively entitled "China Didn't Warn Public of Likely
Pandemic for 6 Key Days" , the piece was widely distributed, running
in abridged form in the NYT and elsewhere. According to this reconstruction, the
Chinese government first became aware of the seriousness of this public health crisis on Jan.
14th, but delayed taking any major action until Jan. 20th, a period of time during which the
number of infections greatly multiplied.
Last month, a team of five WSJ reporters produced a very detailed and thorough
4,400 word analysis of the same period, and the NYT has published a helpful
timeline of those early events as well. Although there may be some differences of
emphasis or minor disagreements, all these American media sources agree that Chinese
officials first became aware of the serious viral outbreak in Wuhan in early to mid-January,
with the first known death occurring on Jan. 11th, and finally implemented major new public
health measures later that same month. No one has apparently disputed these basic facts.
But with the horrific consequences of our own later governmental inaction being obvious,
elements within our intelligence agencies have sought to demonstrate that they were not the
ones asleep at the switch. Earlier this month,
an ABC News story cited four separate government sources to reveal that as far
back as late November, a special medical intelligence unit within our Defense Intelligence
Agency had produced a report warning that an out-of-control disease epidemic was occurring in
the Wuhan area of China, and widely distributed that document throughout the top ranks of our
government, warning that steps should be taken to protect US forces based in Asia. After the
story aired, a Pentagon spokesman officially denied the existence of that November report,
while various other top level government and intelligence officials refused to comment. But a
few days later,
Israeli television mentioned that in November American intelligence had indeed shared
such a report on the Wuhan disease outbreak with its NATO and Israeli allies, thus seeming to
independently confirm the complete accuracy of the original ABC News story and its several
government sources.
It therefore appears that elements of the Defense Intelligence Agency were aware of
the deadly viral outbreak in Wuhan more than a month before any officials in the Chinese
government itself. Unless our intelligence agencies have pioneered the technology of
precognition, I think this may have happened for the same reason that arsonists have the
earliest knowledge of future fires.
An entirely new disease that spreads in silent, asymptomatic fashion can easily escape
initial detection, and we should not be surprised that no one in China noticed the Wuhan
outbreak when it first began in October or November. But America's intelligence operatives were
entirely aware of what was happening from the very beginning, and began informing all our
allies. This seems about as close to a "smoking gun" as we can ever likely to encounter in the
annals of the murky world of intelligence operations.
Moreover, I
have also noted the very unusual international pattern the deadly disease immediately began
to follow:
As the coronavirus gradually began to spread beyond China's own borders, another
development occurred that greatly multiplied my suspicions. Most of these early cases had
occurred exactly where one might expect, among the East Asian countries bordering China. But
by late February Iran had become the second epicenter of the global outbreak. Even more
surprisingly, its political elites had been especially hard-hit, with
a full 10% of the entire Iranian parliament soon infected and at least
a dozen of its officials and politicians dying of the disease, including some who were
quite
senior . Indeed, Neocon activists on Twitter began gleefully noting that their hatred
Iranian enemies were now dropping like flies.
Let us consider the implications of these facts. Across the entire world the only
political elites that have yet suffered any significant human losses have been those of Iran,
and they died at a very early stage, before significant outbreaks had even occurred almost
anywhere else in the world outside China. Thus, we have America assassinating Iran's top
military commander on Jan. 2nd and then just a few weeks later large portions of the Iranian
ruling elites became infected by a mysterious and deadly new virus, with many of them soon
dying as a consequence. Could any rational individual possibly regard this as a mere
coincidence?
So if the journalists at the WSJ had merely taken note of what had previously been
reported by ABC News and confirmed by Israeli television, they would surely have
earned themselves a Pulitzer Prize. But earning and receiving are two separate matters, and
they might easily have instead been purged for treading upon such touchy national security
matters. After all, our own webzine was banned by both
Facebook and Google just days after we raised these same matters.
Such retaliation helps explain why our American mainstream media has long since concluded
that discretion is the better part of valor.
"... The fresh orgy of anti-Russian invective in the lickspittle media (LSM) has the feel of fin de siècle . The last four reality-impaired years do seem as though they add up to a century. And no definitive fin is in sight, as long as most people don't know what's going on. ..."
"... The LSM should be confronted: "At long last have you left no sense of decency?" But who would hear the question -- much less any answer? ..."
"... Thus the reckless abandon with which The New York Times is leading the current full-court press to improve on what it regards as Special Counsel Robert Mueller's weak-kneed effort to blame the Russians for giving us Donald Trump. The press is on, and there are no referees to call the fouls. ..."
"... Incidentally, Mueller's report apparently was insufficient, only two years in the making, and just 448 pages. The Senate committee's magnum opus took three years, is almost 1,000 pages -- and fortified. So there. ..."
"... is a good offense, and the Senate Intelligence Committee's release of its study -- call it "Mueller (Enhanced)" -- and the propaganda fanfare -- come at a key point in the Russiagate/Spygate imbroglio. It also came, curiously, as the Democratic Convention was beginning, as if the Republican-controlled Senate was sending Trump a message. ..."
"... The cognoscenti and the big fish themselves may be guessing that Trump/Barr/Durham will not throw out heavier lines for former FBI Director James Comey, his deputy Andrew McCabe, CIA Director John Brennan, and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, for example. But how can they be sure? What has become clear is that the certainty they all shared that Hillary Clinton would be the next president prompted them not only to take serious liberties with the Constitution and the law, but also to do so without taking rudimentary steps to hide their tracks. ..."
"... The incriminating evidence is there. And as Trump becomes more and more vulnerable and defensive about his ineptness -- particularly with regard to Covid-19 -- he may summon the courage to order Barr and Durham to hook the big fish, not just minnows like Clinesmith. The neuralgic reality is that no one knows at this point how far Trump will go. To say that this kind of uncertainty is unsettling to all concerned is to say the obvious. ..."
"... None of that takes us much beyond the Mueller report and other things generally well known -- even in the LSM. Nor does the drivel about people like Paul Manafort "sharing polling data with Russians" who might be intelligence officers. That data was "mostly public" the Times itself reported , and the paper had to correct a story that the data was intended for Russian oligarchs, when it was meant for Ukrainian oligarchs instead. That Manafort was working to turn Ukraine towards the West and not Russia is rarely mentioned. ..."
"... On the Steele Dossier, the committee also missed a ruling by a British judge against Christopher Steele, labeling his dossier an attempt to help Hillary Clinton get elected. Consortium News explained back in October 2017 that both CrowdStrike and Steele were paid for by the Democratic Party and Clinton campaign to push Russiagate. ..."
"... the description of #WikiLeaks ' publishing activities by this #SenateIntelligenceCommittee 's Report appears a true #EdgarHoover 's disinformation campaign to make a legitimate media org completely radioactive ..."
"... And that's not the half of it. In September 2018, Mazzetti and his NYT colleague Scott Shane wrote a 10,000-word feature, "The Plot to Subvert an Election," trying to convince readers that the Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA) had successfully swayed U.S. opinion during the 2016 election with 80,000 Facebook posts that they said had reached 126 million Americans. ..."
"... That turned out to be a grotesquely deceptive claim. Mazzetti and Shane failed to mention the fact that those 80,000 IRA posts (from early 2015 through 2017, meaning about half came after the election), had been engulfed in a vast ocean of more than 33 trillion Facebook posts in people's news feeds – 413 million times more than the IRA posts. Not to mention the lack of evidence that the IRA was the Russian government, as Mueller claimed. ..."
"... "Liberals are embracing every negative claim about Russia just because elements of the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency produced a report last Jan. 6 that blamed Russia for 'hacking' Democratic emails and releasing them to WikiLeaks ." ..."
The New York Times is leading the full-court press to improve on what it regards as Special Counsel Robert Mueller's weak-kneed
effort to blame the Russians for giving us Donald Trump...
The fresh orgy of anti-Russian invective in the lickspittle media (LSM) has the feel of fin de siècle . The last four reality-impaired
years do seem as though they add up to a century. And no definitive fin is in sight, as long as most people don't know what's going
on.
The LSM should be confronted: "At long last have you left no sense of decency?" But who would hear the question -- much less any
answer? The corporate media have a lock on what Americans are permitted or not permitted to hear. Checking the truth, once routine
in journalism, is a thing of the past.
Thus the reckless abandon with which The New York Times is leading the current full-court press to improve on what it regards
as Special Counsel Robert Mueller's weak-kneed effort to blame the Russians for giving us Donald Trump. The press is on, and there
are no referees to call the fouls.
The recent release of a 1,000-page, sans bombshells and already out-of-date report by the Senate Intelligence Committee has provided
the occasion to "catapult the propaganda," as President George W. Bush once put it.
As the the Times 's Mark Mazzetti put it in his
article Wednesday:
"Releasing the report less than 100 days before Election Day, Republican-majority senators hoped it would refocus attention
on the interference by Russia and other hostile foreign powers in the American political process, which has continued unabated."
Mazzetti is telling his readers, soto voce : regarding that interference four years ago, and the "continued-unabated" part, you
just have to trust us and our intelligence community sources who would never lie to you. And if, nevertheless, you persist in asking
for actual evidence, you are clearly in Putin's pocket.
Incidentally, Mueller's report apparently was insufficient, only two years in the making, and just 448 pages. The Senate committee's
magnum opus took three years, is almost 1,000 pages -- and fortified. So there.
Iron Pills
Recall how disappointed the LSM and the rest of the Establishment were with Mueller's anemic findings in spring 2019. His report
claimed that the Russian government "interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion" via a social
media campaign run by the Internet Research Agency (IRA) and by "hacking" Democratic emails. But the evidence behind those charges
could not bear close scrutiny.
You would hardly know it from the LSM, but the accusation against the IRA was thrown out of court when the U.S. government admitted
it could not prove that the IRA was working for the Russian government. Mueller's ipse dixit did not suffice, as we
explained a year ago
in "Sic Transit Gloria Mueller."
The Best Defense
is a good offense, and the Senate Intelligence Committee's release of its study -- call it "Mueller (Enhanced)" -- and the propaganda
fanfare -- come at a key point in the Russiagate/Spygate imbroglio. It also came, curiously, as the Democratic Convention was beginning,
as if the Republican-controlled Senate was sending Trump a message.
Durham
One chief worry, of course, derives from the uncertainty as to whether John Durham, the US Attorney investigating those FBI and
other officials who launched the Trump-Russia investigation will let some heavy shoes drop before the election. Barr has said he
expects "developments in Durham's investigation hopefully before the end of the summer."
FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith already has decided to plead guilty to the felony of falsifying evidence used to support a warrant
from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to surveillance to spy on Trump associate Carter Page. It is abundantly clear that
Clinesmith was just a small cog in the deep-state machine in action against candidate and then President Trump. And those running
the machine are well known. The president has named names, and Barr has made no bones about his disdain for what he calls spying
on the president.
The cognoscenti and the big fish themselves may be guessing that Trump/Barr/Durham will not throw out heavier lines for former
FBI Director James Comey, his deputy Andrew McCabe, CIA Director John Brennan, and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper,
for example. But how can they be sure? What has become clear is that the certainty they all shared that Hillary Clinton would be
the next president prompted them not only to take serious liberties with the Constitution and the law, but also to do so without
taking rudimentary steps to hide their tracks.
The incriminating evidence is there. And as Trump becomes more and more vulnerable and defensive about his ineptness -- particularly
with regard to Covid-19 -- he may summon the courage to order Barr and Durham to hook the big fish, not just minnows like Clinesmith.
The neuralgic reality is that no one knows at this point how far Trump will go. To say that this kind of uncertainty is unsettling
to all concerned is to say the obvious.
So, the stakes are high -- for the Democrats, as well -- and, not least, the LSM. In these circumstances it would seem imperative
not just to circle the wagons but to mount the best offense/defense possible, despite the fact that virtually all the ammunition
(as in the Senate report) is familiar and stale ("enhanced" or not).
Black eyes might well be in store for the very top former law enforcement and intelligence officials, the Democrats, and the LSM
-- and in the key pre-election period. So, the calculation: launch "Mueller Report (Enhanced)" and catapult the truth now with propaganda,
before it is too late.
No Evidence of Hacking
The "hacking of the DNC" charge suffered a fatal blow three months ago when it became known that Shawn Henry, president of the
DNC-hired cyber-security firm CrowdStrike,
admitted under oath that his firm had no evidence that the DNC emails were hacked -- by Russia or anyone else.
(YouTube)
Henry gave his testimony on Dec. 5, 2017,
but House Intelligence Committee chair Adam Schiff was able to keep it hidden until May 7, 2020.
Here's a brief taste of how Henry's testimony went: Asked by Schiff for "the date on which the Russians exfiltrated the data",
Henry replied, "We just don't have the evidence that says it actually left."
You did not know that? You may be forgiven -- up until now -- if your information diet is limited to the LSM and you believe The
New York Times still publishes "all the news that's fit to print." I am taking bets on how much longer the NYT will be able to keep
Henry's testimony hidden; Schiff's record of 29 months will be hard to beat.
Putting Lipstick on the Pig of Russian 'Tampering'
Worse still for the LSM and other Russiagate diehards, Mueller's findings last year enabled Trump to shout "No Collusion" with
Russia. What seems clear at this point is that a key objective of the current catapulting of the truth is to apply lipstick to Mueller's
findings.
After all, he was supposed to find treacherous plotting between the Trump campaign and the Russians and failed miserably. Most
LSM-suffused Americans remain blissfully unaware of this, and the likes of Pulitzer Prize winner Mazzetti have been commissioned
to keep it that way.
In Wednesday's
article , for example, Mazzetti puts it somewhat plaintively:
"Like the special counsel the Senate report did not conclude that the Trump campaign engaged in a coordinated conspiracy with
the Russian government -- a fact that the Republicans seized on to argue that there was 'no collusion'."
How could they!
Mazzetti is playing with words. "Collusion," however one defines it, is not a crime; conspiracy is.
'Breathtaking' Contacts: Mueller (Enhanced)
Mark Mazzetti (YouTube)
Mazzetti emphasizes that the Senate report "showed extensive evidence of contacts between Trump campaign advisers and people tied
to the Kremlin," and Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), the intelligence committee's vice chairman,
said the committee report details "a breathtaking level of contacts between Trump officials and Russian government operatives
that is a very real counterintelligence threat to our elections."
None of that takes us much beyond the Mueller report and other things generally well known -- even in the LSM. Nor does the drivel
about people like Paul Manafort "sharing polling data with Russians" who might be intelligence officers. That data was "mostly public"
the Times itself
reported
, and the paper had to correct
a story that the data was intended for Russian oligarchs, when it was meant for Ukrainian oligarchs instead. That Manafort was working
to turn Ukraine towards the West and not Russia is rarely mentioned.
Recent revelations regarding the false data given the FISA court by an FBI lawyer to "justify" eavesdropping on Trump associate
Carter Page show the Senate report to be not up to date and misguided in endorsing the FBI's decision to investigate Page. The committee
may wish to revisit that endorsement -- at least.
On the Steele Dossier, the committee also missed a ruling by a British judge against Christopher Steele,
labeling his dossier an attempt to help Hillary Clinton get elected. Consortium News
explained back in October 2017 that both CrowdStrike and Steele were paid for by the Democratic Party and Clinton campaign to
push Russiagate.
Also missed by the intelligence committee was a document released by the Senate Judiciary Committee last month that
revealed that Steele's "Primary Subsource and his friends peddled warmed-over rumors and laughable gossip that Steele dressed
up as formal intelligence memos."
Smearing WikiLeaks
The Intelligence Committee report also repeats thoroughly
debunked
myths about WikiLeaks and, like Mueller, the committee made no effort to interview Julian Assange before launching its smears.
Italian journalist Stefania Maurizi, who partnered with WikiLeaks in the publication of the Podesta emails, described the report's
treatment of WikiLeaks in this Twitter thread
:
2. the description of #WikiLeaks ' publishing activities
by this #SenateIntelligenceCommittee
's Report appears a true #EdgarHoover 's disinformation
campaign to make a legitimate media org completely radioactive
3. Clearly, to describe #WikiLeaks and its publishing activities the #SenateIntelligenceCommittee's Report completely rely
on #US intelligence community+ #MikePompeo's characterisation of #WikiLeaks. There is not even any pretense of an independent
approach
4. there are also unsubstantiated claims like:
– "[WikiLeaks'] disclosures have jeopardized the safety of individual Americans and foreign allies" (p.200)
– "WikiLeaks has passed information to U.S. adversaries" (p.201)
5. it's completely false that "#WikiLeaks does not seem to weigh whether its disclosures add any public interest value" (p.200)
and any longtime media partner like me could provide you dozens of examples on how wrong this characterisation [is].
Titillating
Mazzetti did add some spice to the version of his article that dominated the two top right columns of Wednesday's Times with the
blaring headline: "Senate Panel Ties Russian Officials to Trump's Aides: G.O.P.-Led Committee Echoes Mueller's Findings on Election
Tampering."
Those who make it to the end of Mazzetti's piece will learn that the Senate committee report "did not establish" that the Russian
government obtained any compromising material on Mr. Trump or that they tried to use such materials [that they didn't have] as leverage
against him." However, Mazzetti adds,
"According to the report, Mr. Trump met a former Miss Moscow at a party during one trip in 1996. After the party, a Trump associate
told others he had seen Mr. Trump with the woman on multiple occasions and that they 'might have had a brief romantic relationship.'
"The report also raised the possibility that, during that trip, Mr. Trump spent the night with two young women who joined him
the next morning at a business meeting with the mayor of Moscow."
This is journalism?
Another Pulitzer in Store?
The Times appends a note reminding us that Mazzetti was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for reporting on Donald
Trump's advisers and their connections to Russia.
And that's not the half of it. In September 2018, Mazzetti and his NYT colleague Scott Shane wrote a 10,000-word
feature, "The Plot to Subvert an Election," trying to convince readers that the Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA) had successfully
swayed U.S. opinion during the 2016 election with 80,000 Facebook posts that they said had reached 126 million Americans.
That turned out to be a grotesquely deceptive claim. Mazzetti and Shane failed to mention the
fact that those 80,000 IRA posts (from early 2015 through 2017, meaning about half came after the election), had been engulfed
in a vast ocean of more than 33 trillion Facebook posts in people's news feeds – 413 million times more than the IRA posts. Not to
mention the lack of evidence that the IRA was the Russian government, as Mueller claimed.
In exposing that chicanery, prize-winning investigative reporter Gareth Porter
commented :
"The descent of The New York Times into this unprecedented level of propagandizing for the narrative of Russia's threat to
U.S. democracy is dramatic evidence of a broader problem of abuses by corporate media Greater awareness of the dishonesty at the
heart of the Times' coverage of that issue is a key to leveraging media reform and political change."
Nothingburgers With Russian Dressing: the Backstory
The late Robert Parry.
"It's too much; it's just too much, too much", a sedated, semi-conscious Robert Parry kept telling me from his hospital bed in
late January 2018 a couple of days before he died. Bob was founder of Consortium News .
It was already clear what Bob meant; he had taken care to see to that. On Dec. 31, 2017 the reason for saying that came in what
he titled "An Apology
& Explanation" for "spotty production in recent days." A stroke on Christmas Eve had left Bob with impaired vision, but he was able
to summon enough strength to write an Apologia -- his vision for honest journalism and his dismay at what had happened to his profession
before he died on Jan. 27, 2018. The dichotomy was "just too much".
Parry rued the role that journalism was playing in the "unrelenting ugliness that has become Official Washington. Facts and logic
no longer mattered. It was a case of using whatever you had to diminish and destroy your opponent this loss of objective standards
reached deeply into the most prestigious halls of American media."
What bothered Bob most was the needless, dishonest tweaking of the Russian bear. "The U.S. media's approach to Russia," he wrote,
"is now virtually 100 percent propaganda. Does any sentient human being read The New York Times ' or The Washington Post 's coverage
of Russia and think that he or she is getting a neutral or unbiased treatment of the facts? Western journalists now apparently see
it as their patriotic duty to hide facts that otherwise would undermine the demonizing of Putin and Russia."
Parry, who was no conservative, continued:
"Liberals are embracing every negative claim about Russia just because elements of the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency
produced a report last Jan. 6 that blamed Russia for 'hacking' Democratic emails and releasing them to WikiLeaks ."
Bob noted that the 'hand-picked' authors "evinced no evidence and even admitted that they weren't asserting any of this as fact."
It was just too much.
Robert Parry's Last Article
Peter Strzok during congressional hearing in July 2018. (Wikimedia Commons)
Bob posted his last substantive article on Dec. 13, 2017, the day after text exchanges between senior FBI officials Peter Strzok
and Lisa Page were made public. (Typically, readers of The New York Times the following day would altogether
miss the
importance of the text-exchanges.)
Bob Parry rarely felt any need for a "sanity check." Dec. 12, 2017 was an exception. He called me about the Strzok-Page texts;
we agreed they were explosive. FBI Agent Peter Strzok was on Special Counsel Robert Mueller's staff investigating alleged Russian
interference, until Mueller removed him.
Strzok reportedly was a "hand-picked" FBI agent taking part in the Jan 2017 evidence-impoverished, rump, misnomered "intelligence
community" assessment that blamed Russia for hacking and other election meddling. And he had helped lead the investigation into Hillary
Clinton's misuse of her computer servers. Page was Deputy Director Andrew McCabe's right-hand lawyer.
His Dec. 13, 2017 piece
would be his fourth related article in less than two weeks; it turned out to be his last substantive article. All three of the earlier
ones are worth a re-read as examples of fearless, unbiased, perceptive journalism. Here
are the links .
Bob began his article
on the Strzok-Page bombshell:
"The disclosure of fiercely anti-Trump text messages between two romantically involved senior FBI officials who played key
roles in the early Russia-gate inquiry has turned the supposed Russian-election-meddling "scandal" into its own scandal, by providing
evidence that some government investigators saw it as their duty to block or destroy Donald Trump's presidency.?
"As much as the U.S. mainstream media has mocked the idea that an American 'deep state' exists and that it has maneuvered to
remove Trump from office, the text messages between senior FBI counterintelligence official Peter Strzok and senior FBI lawyer
Lisa Page reveal how two high-ranking members of the government's intelligence/legal bureaucracy saw their role as protecting
the United States from an election that might elevate to the presidency someone as unfit as Trump."
Not a fragment of Bob's or other Consortium News analysis made any impact on what Bob used to call the Establishment media. As
a matter of fact, eight months later during a talk in Seattle that I titled "Russia-gate: Can You Handle the Truth?", only three
out of a very progressive audience of some 150 had ever heard of Strzok and Page.
Lest I am accused of being "in Putin's pocket," let me add the explanatory note that we Veteran Intelligence Professionals for
Sanity included in our
most explosive Memorandum for President Trump, on "Russian hacking."
Full Disclosure: Over recent decades the ethos of our intelligence profession has eroded in the public mind to the point that
agenda-free analysis is deemed well nigh impossible. Thus, we add this disclaimer, which applies to everything we in VIPS say
and do: We have no political agenda; our sole purpose is to spread truth around and, when necessary, hold to account our former
intelligence colleagues.
We speak and write without fear or favor. Consequently, any resemblance between what we say and what presidents, politicians
and pundits say is purely coincidental. The fact we find it is necessary to include that reminder speaks volumes about these highly
politicized times.
somecallmetimmah , 1 hour ago
Only brain-washed losers read the new york times. Garbage propaganda for garbage people.
AtATrESICI , 43 minutes ago
"developments in Durham's investigation hopefully before the end of the summer." What summer? The summer of 2099.
Mouldy , 1 hour ago
So in a nutshell.. They just called half the USA too stupid to make an informed decision for themselves.
ominous , 1 hour ago
the disagreement is over which half is the stupid half
homeskillet , 25 minutes ago
The MIC's bogey man. What a crock of **** this whole country has become. Pravda puts out more truth than our MSM. I trust
Putin more than the Dem leaders at this point.
Demeter55 , 1 hour ago
The Globalist/New World Order/Deep State/Elitists (or whatever other arrogant subsection of the psychopaths among us you
wish to consider) have one great failing which will defeat them utterly in the end:
They do not know when to cut their losses.
As a result of that irrational stubbornness, born of a "Manifest Destiny" assumption of an eternal lock on the situation,
they will go too far.
Having more wealth than anyone is temporary.
Having more power than anyone is temporary.
Life is temporary.
And we outnumber them by several billion.
Even if they systematically try to destroy us, they will not have the ability unless we are complicit in our own destruction.
While there are many who have "taken the knee" to these tyrants in training, there are more who have no intention of doing
so.
Most nations are not so buffaloed as to fall for this propaganda, but the United States especially was created with the
notion that all men are created equal, and this is ingrained in the national character. We don't buy it.
And our numbers are growing daily, as people wake up and realize they have to take a side for themselves, their families,
their communities.
The global covid-panic was a masterful attack, but it will fail. Indeed, it has failed already. The building counter-attack
will take out those who chose to declare war on humanity. There really is no alternative for us, the humans. Live Free or Die,
as they say in New Hampshire.
And despite the full support of the MSM and the DNC, the Would-Be Masters of the Universe will not succeed.
sborovay07 , 1 hour ago
Sad Assange wasn't granted immunity to testify and was silenced just prior to the release of the Mueller report. Little
has been heard since except his health is horrific. Now, all the Deep State figures on both sides are just throwing as much
mud against Trump as possible to hide the truth. If Durnham does not indict the Deep State figures who participated in the
Obama led coup, all is for not. Only the foot soldiers marching in lock step will be charged.
wn , 1 hour ago
To sum it up.
Conclusion of the Democrats.
Americans need Russian brains to decide their leader in order to move forward.
nokilli , 25 minutes ago
Once the MO for "Russian hacking" is published to the international intelligence community, any (((party))) can pose as
a "Russian hacker."
This is the way computers work. Sybil is eponymous.
KuriousKat , 35 minutes ago
Mazzeti looks like the typical Gopher boy for the CIA Station Chiefs around the world..they retire or become contributors
to NewsWeek Wapo or NYT. ..not Any major network w/o one...Doing **** like this is mandatory..not elective.
I hope I live to see the day when the "New York Times" is deemed the same caliber of
"journalism" as the "National Inquirer". Of course, those with two brain cells to rub
together already know that this is the case. However, by "deemed", I mean by the
one-brain-celled masses.
homeskillet , 23 minutes ago
The National Enquirer actually has many more believable articles.
Pernicious Gold Phallusy , 20 minutes ago
The National Enquirer broke the story of Presidential candidate John Edwards cheating on
his wife, who was undergoing breast cancer treatment at the time. Other media organizations,
including the NYT, knew about it and refused to cover it.
Stu Pedassle , 1 hour ago
Glad to see Operation Mockingbird is still going strong after 60 years
"... "Corbyn was thoroughly delegitimised as a political actor from the moment he became a prominent candidate and even more so after he was elected as party leader, with a strong mandate." ..."
"... "chose not to" ..."
"... Think your friends would be interested? Share this story! ..."
George Orwell's novel
'1984' depicts life within Oceania, a totalitarian society strictly controlled by an omnipresent Party whose three simple yet
contradictory slogans are: war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength. Citizens of Oceania were forced to accept
that two plus two may equal five if the Party deemed it so.
Akin to the Snake
game
found
on old Nokia mobile phones, woke movements become increasingly illogical and harder to control before eventually tying
themselves in knots or crashing into the walls of logic, sowing the seeds of their own destruction. Modern feminist movements
are having the wind taken out of their sails by other woke factions who argue that children should be taught boys can have
periods
,
so as not to distress transgender students, or that
terms
like
mother and father should be replaced with parent 1 and parent 2. Even the main UK doctors' union sent an internal memo
advising its staff to use the term 'pregnant people' rather than 'expectant
mothers'
to
avoid causing offense.
One could argue that
campaigns designed to remove the concept of male and female is a threat to women and their historical struggles. By
eliminating the 'existence' of women, it not only airbrushes out women's vast contribution to history but also removes the
whole notion of feminism – if womanhood does not exist, then the whole idea of misogyny becomes irrelevant. Perhaps one day
someone will decide that race is simply a construct and can be changed at will, thus making all debates about racism and
oppression irrelevant. Thus future woke cultists might argue themselves into a corner in which racism and thus 'white
privilege' does not exist.
In the West you are free
to choose any gender or sexuality, transition between these at whim, or perhaps create your own, but you are not supposed to
question the foundations of capitalism or liberalism. Likewise, the much lauded concept of human rights and democracy – one of
the key pillars on which Western 'cultural superiority' rests and from which it sneers at 'undemocratic' and 'uncivilised'
countries – is used to justify the destruction, occupation and economic enslavement of other peoples.
Whether it is Libya, Iraq,
Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen or Palestine we see that non-white lives do not matter when there are no political points to score.
Indeed, condemning the slaughter of Palestinians could be enough to get you labeled an anti-Semite by those who remain
suspiciously silent when real anti-Semitism rears its ugly head.
For example, far right and
neo-nazi militias in Ukraine,
some
of
whom take their symbols and ideology from the 1930-1940s
,
have
operated with relative impunity and perpetuated human rights abuses upon the people of the Donbass region. These groups were
part of the Maidan movement, visited by Western politicians and praised by liberals, that violently overthrew elected
Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. Some of the leaders of this movement included far right elements who had no qualms
being amidst white power logos and neo-nazi flags, or had in the past claimed that a
"Moscow-Jewish
mafia"
controls
Ukraine.
Neither
Western nor Israeli politicians seemed too interested in such developments, despite Israeli newspaper
Haaretz
reporting
that weapons sent by Israel to Ukraine were ending up in the hands of far right militias, such as the Azov battalion.
Paradoxically, copious effort and resources were allocated to make people believe that the UK Labour Party, led by left wing
leader Jeremy Corbyn, had a serious problem with anti-Semitism.
As soon as a party leader
like Jeremy Corbyn began to offer something outside the narrowly defined political bandwidth and stood up for the rights of
Palestinians, he was demonized by politicians as well as their media allies and big business handlers. A study conducted by
the London School of Economics and Political Science examined UK newspaper coverage of Corbyn in the months following his
election as Labour Party leader and found evidence of media
bias
such
that
"Corbyn was thoroughly delegitimised as a political actor from the moment he became
a prominent candidate and even more so after he was elected as party leader, with a strong mandate."
It is welcome that recent
events in the US have highlighted racism faced by African Americans. Yet frequent murders of African Americans by a
militarized police force did not suddenly appear when Trump came to power. Many Democratic Party politicians who nowadays make
sure everyone knows they unquestioningly support the Black Lives Matter movement had few issues with the status quo before the
killing of George Floyd, and will probably regain their apathy if Biden wins the election.
Furthermore, little is
said about the role the Obama administration played only a few years ago in the destruction of Libya, formerly one of Africa's
richest and most stable nations, and its relinquishment to warlords and Al-Qaeda affiliated groups. Some of these groups were
quick to imprison and murder
citizens
from
sub-Saharan Africa who had migrated to Libya in search of a better life.
Slave
markets
selling sub-Saharan Africans now exist in the new post-Gaddafi Libya.
The UK Conservative Party, traditionally not fans of refugees or migrants, were responsible for the
Windrush
scandal
which saw Caribbean immigrants who had arrived in the UK decades earlier being threatened with deportation despite
having lived, worked, and paid taxes in this country for many years. The same party is now thinking of allowing nearly three
million Hong Kong citizens the opportunity to reside in the UK and later apply for
citizenship
.
When it comes to sticking two fingers up to China, we hear no talk about how the NHS and welfare system cannot afford to
absorb refugees and migrants.
These days many people,
especially celebrities, politicians and media figures, are falling over themselves to condemn racism and make sure everyone is
aware of their anti-racist credentials. The only remaining forms of racism deemed acceptable in the West include Russophobia
and Sinophobia. The media devotes endless hours hyping up the threat from Russia and China and in doing so surreptitiously
promotes animosity toward these nations and their peoples. The shadowy hand of the Russian government is deemed to be behind
every calamity or undesired election result. We are frequently reminded that a vague and poorly defined threat from Russia and
China looms large, though hard evidence is often sketchy, open to interpretation or questionable. At the same time NATO troops
encroach upon Russia's borders, yet the latter is deemed the aggressor, whilst the US sails warships through contested seas
near China's
borders
.
Whereas the UK seeks to provoke Russia for no logical reason, the US is determined to pick a fight with China and claims it
"chose
not to"
stop coronavirus from spreading beyond its borders.
The waning US empire and
its allies within the disintegrating EU prefer to attack their rivals Russia and China to deflect their own populations'
attention away from domestic problems with some good old-fashioned xenophobia. The UK, in particular, would do well to try and
improve its relationships with Russia and China as it is on track to have a lonely time post Brexit.
Think your friends would be
interested? Share this story!
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those
of RT.
"... To understand the risk that Julian Assange represented to CIA interests, it is important to understand just how extensive the operations of the CIA were in 2016. It is within this network of foreign and domestic operations where FBI Agent Peter Strzok is clearly working as a bridge between the CIA and FBI operations. ..."
"... By now people are familiar with the construct of CIA operations involving Joseph Mifsud, the Maltese professor now generally admitted/identified as a western intelligence operative who was tasked by the CIA (John Brennan) to run an operation against Trump campaign official George Papadopoulos in both Italy (Rome) and London. { Go Deep } ..."
"... In a similar fashion the CIA tasked U.S. intelligence asset Stefan Halper to target another Trump campaign official, Carter Page. Under the auspices of being a Cambridge Professor Stefan Halper also targeted General Michael Flynn. Additionally, using assistance from a female FBI agent under the false name Azra Turk, Halper also targeted Papadopoulos . ..."
"... The initial operations to target Flynn, Papadopoulos and Page were all based overseas. This seemingly makes the CIA exploitation of the assets and the targets much easier. ..."
"... In short, Peter Strzok appears to be the very eager, profoundly overzealous James Bond wannabe, who acted as a bridge between the CIA and the FBI. The perfect type of FBI career agent for CIA Director John Brennan to utilize. ..."
"... It was also Fusion-GPS founder Glenn Simpson who was domestically tasked with a Russian lobbyist named Natalia Veselnitskya. A little reported Russian Deputy Attorney General named Saak Albertovich Karapetyan was working double-agents for the CIA and Kremlin. Karapetyan was directing the foreign operations of Natalia Veselnitskaya, and Glenn Simpson was organizing her inside the U.S. ..."
"... All of this context outlines the extent to which the CIA was openly involved in constructing a political operation that settled upon anyone in candidate Donald Trump's orbit. ..."
"... Additionally, Christopher Steele was a British intelligence officer, hired by Fusion-GPS to assemble and launder fraudulent intelligence information within his dossier. And we cannot forget Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch, who was recruited by Asst. FBI Director Andrew McCabe to participate in running an operation against the Trump campaign and create the impression of Russian involvement. Deripaska refused to participate . ..."
"... The key point of all that background is to see how committed the CIA and FBI were to the constructed narrative of Russia interfering with the 2016 election. The CIA, FBI, and by extension the DOJ, put a hell of a lot of work into it. Intelligence community work that Durham is now unraveling. ..."
"... Rohrabacher recounted his conversation with Assange to The Hill. "Our three-hour meeting covered a wide array of issues, including the WikiLeaks exposure of the DNC [Democratic National Committee] emails during last year's presidential election," Rohrabacher said, "Julian emphatically stated that the Russians were not involved in the hacking or disclosure of those emails." ..."
"... Knowing how much effort the CIA and FBI put into the Russia collusion-conspiracy narrative, it would make sense for the FBI to take keen interest after this August 2017 meeting between Rohrabacher and Assange; and why the FBI would quickly gather specific evidence (related to Wikileaks and Bradley Manning) for a grand jury by December 2017. ..."
"... The Weissmann/Mueller report contains claims that Russia hacked the DNC servers as the central element to the Russia interference narrative in the U.S. election. This claim is directly disputed by WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, as outlined during the Dana Rohrabacher interview, and by Julian Assange on-the-record statements. ..."
"... The predicate for Robert Mueller's investigation was specifically due to Russian interference in the 2016 election. The fulcrum for this Russia interference claim is the intelligence community assessment; and the only factual evidence claimed within the ICA is that Russia hacked the DNC servers; a claim only made possible by relying on forensic computer analysis from Crowdstrike, a DNC contractor. ..."
"... The CIA holds a massive conflict of self-interest in upholding the Russian hacking claim. The FBI holds a massive interest in maintaining that claim. All of those foreign countries whose intelligence apparatus participated with Brennan and Strzok also have a vested self-interest in maintaining that Russia hacking and interference narrative. ..."
"... This Russian "hacking" claim is ultimately so important to the CIA, FBI, DOJ, ODNI and U.K intelligence apparatus ..."
According to reports in November of 2019, U.S Attorney John Durham and U.S. Attorney General
Bill Barr were spending time on a narrowed focus looking carefully at CIA activity in the 2016
presidential election. One recent quote from a
media-voice increasingly sympathetic to a political deep-state notes:
"One British official with knowledge of Barr's wish list presented to London commented
that "it is like nothing we have come across before, they are basically asking, in quite
robust terms, for help in doing a hatchet job on their own intelligence services"". (
Link )
It is interesting that quote came from a British intelligence official, as there appears to
be evidence of an extensive CIA operation that likely involved U.K. intelligence services. In
addition, and as a direct outcome, there is an aspect to the CIA operation that overlaps with
both a U.S. and U.K. need to keep Wikileaks founder Julian Assange under tight control. In this
outline we will explain where corrupt U.S. and U.K. interests merge.
To understand the risk that Julian Assange represented to CIA interests, it is important to
understand just how extensive the operations of the CIA were in 2016. It is within this network
of foreign and domestic operations where FBI Agent Peter Strzok is clearly working as a bridge
between the CIA and FBI operations.
By now people are familiar with the construct of
CIA operations involving Joseph Mifsud, the Maltese professor now generally
admitted/identified as a western intelligence operative who was tasked by the CIA (John
Brennan) to run an operation against Trump campaign official George Papadopoulos in both Italy
(Rome) and London. {
Go Deep }
In a similar fashion the CIA tasked
U.S. intelligence asset Stefan Halper to target another Trump campaign official, Carter
Page. Under the auspices of being a Cambridge Professor Stefan Halper also targeted General
Michael Flynn. Additionally, using assistance from a female FBI agent under the false name Azra
Turk, Halper also targeted Papadopoulos
.
The initial operations to target Flynn, Papadopoulos and Page were all based overseas. This
seemingly makes the CIA exploitation of the assets and the targets much easier.
One of the more interesting aspects to the Durham probe is a possibility of a paper-trail
created as a result of the tasking operations. We should watch closely for more evidence of a
paper trail as some congressional reps have hinted toward documented evidence (transcripts,
recordings, reports) that are exculpatory to the targets (Page & Papadop). HPSCI Ranking
Member Devin Nunes has strongly hinted that
very specific exculpatory evidence was known to the FBI and yet withheld from the FISA
application used against Carter Page that also mentions George Papadopoulos. I digress
However, there is an aspect to the domestic U.S. operation that also bears the fingerprints
of the CIA; only this time due to the restrictive laws on targets inside the U.S. the CIA
aspect is less prominent. This is where FBI Agent Peter Strzok working for both agencies starts
to become important.
Remember, it's clear in the text messages Strzok has a working relationship with what he
called their "sister agency", the CIA. Additionally, Brennan
has admitted Strzok helped write the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA)
which outlines the Russia narrative; and it is almost guaranteed the July 31st, 2016,
"Electronic Communication" from the CIA to the FBI that originated FBI operation "Crossfire
Hurricane" was co-authored from the CIA by Strzok . and Strzok immediately used that EC to
travel to London to debrief intelligence officials around Australian Ambassador to the U.K.
Alexander Downer.
In short, Peter Strzok appears to be the very eager, profoundly overzealous James Bond
wannabe, who acted as a bridge between the CIA and the FBI. The perfect type of FBI career
agent for CIA Director John Brennan to utilize.
Fusion-GPS founder Glenn Simpson hired CIA Open Source analyst Nellie Ohr toward the
end of 2015 ; at appropriately the same time as "
FBI Contractors " were identified exploiting the NSA database and extracting information on
a specific set of U.S. persons.
It was also Fusion-GPS founder Glenn Simpson who was domestically tasked with a Russian
lobbyist named Natalia Veselnitskya. A little reported Russian Deputy Attorney General named
Saak Albertovich Karapetyan was working double-agents for the CIA and Kremlin. Karapetyan was
directing the foreign operations of Natalia Veselnitskaya, and Glenn Simpson was organizing
her inside the U.S.
Glenn Simpson managed Veselnitskaya through the 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Donald Trump
Jr. However, once the CIA/Fusion-GPS operation using Veselnitskaya started to unravel with
public reporting back in Russia Deputy AG Karapetyan
fell out of a helicopter to his death (just before it crashed).
Simultaneously timed in late 2015 through mid 2016, there was a domestic FBI operation using
a young Russian named Maria Butina
tasked to run up against republican presidential candidates . According to Patrick Byrne,
Butina's handler, it was FBI agent Peter Strzok who was giving Byrne the instructions on where
to send her. {
Go Deep }
All of this context outlines the extent to which the CIA was openly involved in constructing
a political operation that settled upon anyone in candidate Donald Trump's orbit.
International operations directed by the CIA, and domestic operations seemingly directed by
Peter Strzok operating with a foot in both agencies. [ Strzok gets CIA service
coin ]
Recap :
Mifsud tasked against Papadopoulos (CIA).
Halper tasked against
Flynn (CIA), Page (CIA), and Papadopoulos (CIA).
Azra Turk , pretending to be Halper
asst, tasked against Papadopoulos (FBI).
Veselnitskaya tasked against Donald Trump Jr
(CIA, Fusion-GPS).
Butina tasked against Trump, and Donald Trump Jr (FBI).
Additionally, Christopher Steele was a British intelligence officer, hired by Fusion-GPS to
assemble and launder fraudulent intelligence information within his dossier. And we cannot
forget Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch, who was
recruited by Asst. FBI Director Andrew McCabe to participate in running an operation
against the Trump campaign and create the impression of Russian involvement. Deripaska
refused to participate .
All of this engagement directly controlled by U.S. intelligence; and all of this intended to
give a specific Russia impression. This predicate is presumably what John Durham is currently
reviewing.
The key point of all that background is to see how committed the CIA and FBI were to the
constructed narrative of Russia interfering with the 2016 election. The CIA, FBI, and by
extension the DOJ, put a hell of a lot of work into it. Intelligence community work that Durham
is now unraveling.
We also know specifically that John Durham is looking at the construct of the Intelligence
Community Assessment (ICA); and
talking to CIA analysts who participated in the construct of the January 2017 report that
bolstered the false appearance of Russian interference in the 2016 election. This is important
because it ties in to the next part that involves Julian Assange and Wikileaks.
On April 11th, 2019, the Julian Assange
indictment was unsealed in the EDVA. From the indictment we discover it was under seal
since March 6th, 2018 : (Link to pdf)
On Tuesday April 15th more
investigative material was released . Again, note the dates: Grand Jury, * December of 2017
* This means FBI investigation prior to .
The FBI investigation took place prior to December 2017, it was coordinated through the
Eastern District of Virginia (EDVA) where Dana Boente was U.S. Attorney at the time. The grand
jury indictment was sealed from March of 2018 until after Mueller completed his investigation,
April 2019 .
Why the delay?
What was the DOJ waiting for?
Here's where it gets interesting .
The FBI submission to the Grand Jury in December of 2017 was four months after congressman
Dana Rohrabacher talked to Julian Assange in August of 2017: "Assange told a U.S. congressman
he can prove the leaked Democratic Party documents did not come from Russia."
(
August 2017, The Hill Via John Solomon ) Julian Assange told a U.S. congressman on
Tuesday he can prove the leaked Democratic Party documents he published during last year's
election did not come from Russia and promised additional helpful information about the leaks
in the near future.
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, a California Republican who is friendly to Russia and chairs an
important House subcommittee on Eurasia policy, became the first American congressman to meet
with Assange during a three-hour private gathering at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where
the WikiLeaks founder has been holed up for years.
Rohrabacher recounted his conversation with Assange to The Hill. "Our three-hour meeting covered a wide array of issues, including the WikiLeaks exposure
of the DNC [Democratic National Committee] emails during last year's presidential election,"
Rohrabacher said, "Julian emphatically stated that the Russians were not involved in the
hacking or disclosure of those emails."
Pressed for more detail on the source of the documents, Rohrabacher said he had
information to share privately with President Trump. (
read more )
Knowing how much effort the CIA and FBI put into the Russia collusion-conspiracy narrative,
it would make sense for the FBI to take keen interest after this August 2017 meeting between
Rohrabacher and Assange; and why the FBI would quickly gather specific evidence (related to
Wikileaks and Bradley Manning) for a grand jury by December 2017.
Within three months of the grand jury the DOJ generated an indictment and sealed it in March
2018. The EDVA sat on the indictment while the Mueller probe was ongoing.
As soon as the Mueller probe ended, on April 11th, 2019, a planned and coordinated effort
between the U.K. and U.S. was executed; Julian Assange was forcibly arrested and removed from
the Ecuadorian embassy in London, and the EDVA indictment was unsealed (
link ).
As a person who has researched this three year fiasco; including the ridiculously false 2016
Russian hacking/interference narrative: "17 intelligence agencies", Joint Analysis Report
(JAR) needed for Obama's anti-Russia narrative in December '16; and then a month later the
ridiculously political Intelligence Community
Assessment (ICA) in January '17; this timing against Assange is too coincidental.
It doesn't take a deep researcher to see the aligned Deep State motive to control Julian
Assange because the Mueller report was dependent on Russia cybercrimes, and that narrative is
contingent on the Russia DNC hack story which Julian Assange disputes.
This is critical. The Weissmann/Mueller
report contains claims that Russia hacked the DNC servers as the central element to the
Russia interference narrative in the U.S. election. This claim is directly disputed by
WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, as outlined during the Dana Rohrabacher interview, and by Julian
Assange on-the-record statements.
The predicate for Robert Mueller's investigation was specifically due to Russian
interference in the 2016 election. The fulcrum for this Russia interference claim is the
intelligence community assessment; and the only factual evidence claimed within the ICA is that
Russia hacked the DNC servers; a claim only made possible by relying on forensic computer
analysis from Crowdstrike, a DNC contractor.
The CIA holds a massive conflict of self-interest in upholding the Russian hacking claim.
The FBI holds a massive interest in maintaining that claim. All of those foreign countries
whose intelligence apparatus participated with Brennan and Strzok also have a vested
self-interest in maintaining that Russia hacking and interference narrative.
Julian Assange is the only person with direct knowledge of how Wikileaks gained custody of
the DNC emails; and Assange has claimed he has evidence it was not from a hack.
This Russian "hacking" claim is ultimately so important to the CIA, FBI, DOJ, ODNI and U.K
intelligence apparatus . Well, right there is the obvious motive to shut Assange down as soon
intelligence officials knew the Mueller report was going to be public.
Now, if we know this, and you know this; and everything is cited and factual well, then
certainly AG Bill Barr knows this.
The $64,000 dollar question is: will they say so publicly?
Non-Corporate Entity , 7 minutes ago
Former NSA chief Bill Binney has forensic evidence that it was a download not a hack!!!
Hello?!?!
exige42 , 22 seconds ago
I believe this all holds true. My only hesitation is why Assange hasn't retaliated. He
was holed up in an Embassy for how many years because of these bastards? He had to have
known they were going to make a move on him sooner or later. Where is his dead plan? I hate
how these corrupt evil bastards have gotten their way forever. There has got to be a turn
on these SOBs. Where is the fight from these people who they are destroying
ffs???!!!
play_arrow
Dolar in a vortex , 1 minute ago
Jabba Barr and Bulldog Durham are a complete joke until they prove otherwise with
significant indictments. And no, Steve Bannon doesn't count.
In January 2017, former State Department official Jonathan Winer destroyed several years
worth of reports from former UK spy Christopher Steele , at Steele's request, according to the
Daily Caller , citing a report released Tuesday.
Winer, a former legislative assistant to former Sen. John Kerry who became the State
Department's Special Envoy for Libya when Kerry was Secretary of State - was Steele's contact
at the State Department, and received the now-debunked reports claiming that President Trump
had been compromised by the Russians.
According to the
Senate report , Winer disclosed that he destroyed reports that Steele had sent him over
the years. The Senate report also says that Winer failed to reveal when asked in his first
interview with the committee that he had arranged the meeting for Steele at the State
Department months earlier. -
Daily Caller
"After Steele's memos were published in the press in January 2017, Steele asked Winer to
make note of having them, then either destroy all the earlier reports Steele had sent the
Department of State or return them to Steele , out of concern that someone would be able to
reconstruct his source network," reads the Senate report, which quote sWiner as saying " So I
destroyed them, and I basically destroyed all the correspondence I had with him. "
In total, Winer had received over 100 intelligence reports from Steel between 2014 and
2016.
Emails that The Daily Caller News Foundation obtained
through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit show that Winer shared Steele's reports with a
small group of State Department officials. The Senate report says that the State Department
was able to provide the committee with Steele's reports from 2015 and 2016, though most from
2014 are missing. -
Daily Caller
In March, Steele told a UK court that he had "wiped" all of his dossier-linked
correspondence in December, 2016 and January, 2017, and had no records of communications with
his primary dossier source, Igor Danchenko.
In addition to receiving reports from Steele, Winer gave Steele various anti-Trump memos
from Clinton operative Sidney Blumenthal , which originated with Clinton "hatchet man" Cody
Shearer. Winer claims he didn't think Steele would share the Clinton-sourced information with
anyone else in the government.
"But I learned later that Steele did share them -- with the FBI, after the FBI asked him to
provide everything he had on allegations relating to Trump, his campaign and Russian
interference in U.S. elections," Winer wrote in a
2018 Op-Ed .
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Steele was paid $168,000 by opposition research firm Fusion GPS to produce his anti-Trump
dossier, which was funded in part by Hillary Clinton and the DNC, who used law firm Perkins
Coie as an intermediary.
Very telling that ZH editors don't consider this newsworthy: key findings of the
Republican led Senate Select Committee on Intelligence regarding Russia's 2016 election
interference.
Manafort and Kilimnik talked almost daily during the campaign. They communicated through
encrypted technologies set to automatically erase their correspondence; they spoke using code
words and shared access to an email account. It's worth pausing on these facts: The chairman
of the Trump campaign was in daily contact with a Russian agent, constantly sharing
confidential information with him.
It did not find evidence that the Ukrainian government meddled in the 2016 election, as
Trump alleged. "The Committee's efforts focused on investigating Russian interference in
the 2016 election. However, during the course of the investigation, the Committee
identified no reliable evidence that the Ukrainian government interfered in the 2016 U.S.
election."
"Taken as a whole, Manafort's high-level access and willingness to share information with
individuals closely affiliated with the Russian intelligence services, particularly
[Konstantin] Kilimnik and associates of Oleg Deripaska, represented a grave
counterintelligence threat," the report said.
Kilimnik "almost certainly helped arrange some of the first public messaging that
Ukraine had interfered in the U.S. election."
Roger Stone was in communications with both WikiLeaks and the Russian hacker Guccifer 2.0
during the election; according to the Mueller report, Guccifer 2.0 was a conduit set up by
Russian military intelligence to anonymously funnel stolen information to WikiLeaks.
The Senate Intelligence Committee's investigation found "significant evidence to suggest
that, in the summer of 2016, WikiLeaks was knowingly collaborating with Russian government
officials," the report said.
The FBI gave "unjustified credence" to the so-called Steele dossier, an explosive
collections of uncorroborated memos alleging collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian
government officials, the report said. The FBI did not take the "necessary steps to validate
assumptions about Steele's credibility" before relying on the dossier to seek renewals of a
surveillance warrant targeting the former Trump campaign aide, the report said.
Demeter55 , 47 minutes ago
It's the latest in 5 years of "Get Trump!", a sitcom featuring the Roadrunner (Trump) and
the Wiley Coyote (Deep State/Never Trumpers / etc, etc.)
This classic scenario never fails to please those who realize that the roadrunner rules,
and the coyote invariably ends up destroyed.
rpi staff
wednesday august 19, 2020
RPI Director Daniel McAdams was interviewed on RT about the release of the fifth and final
volume of the Senate Intelligence Committee's investigation into the "Russiagate" claims that
President Trump colluded with the Russians to get elected or at least had election help from
Russian President Vladimir Putin. As McAdams points out in the interview, this is yet another
"nothingburger" even as the die-hard Russiagaters poke and prod looking for any sign of life.
McAdams makes the point that a Russian influence operation to "undermine America's faith in
democracy" would be ultra high-risk and what would be the rewards? How would Russia benefit?
Watch the interview here:
One of the comments made following Trump's decision to relocate some 12,000 troops from
Germany was made by retired Admiral James ('Zorba') Stavridis, who in 2009-2013 was US Supreme
Allied Commander Europe (the military commander of Nato). He declared
that the action, among other things, "hurts NATO solidarity and is a gift to Putin." This was a
most serious pronouncement, which was echoed
by Republican Senator Mitt Romney, a
rich Republican and
Mormon cleric, who
said the redeployment was a "gift to Russia." These sentiments were well-reported and
endorsed by US media outlets which continue to be relentlessly anti-Russia.
Stavridis is the man who wrote that
the seven-month bombing and rocketing of Libya by the US-Nato military grouping in 2011 "has
rightly been hailed as a model intervention. The alliance responded rapidly to a deteriorating
situation that threatened hundreds of thousands of civilians rebelling against an oppressive
regime. It succeeded in protecting those civilians and, ultimately, in providing the time and
space necessary for local forces to overthrow Muammar al-Gaddafi."
On June 22 Human Rights Watch noted that
"over the past years" in Libya their investigators have "documented systematic and gross human
rights and humanitarian law violations
by armed groups on all sides, including torture and ill-treatment, rape and other acts of
sexual violence, arbitrary arrests and detention, forced displacement, unlawful killings and
enforced disappearances
." Amnesty International's current Report also
details the chaos in the shattered country where Nato conducted its "model intervention."
The Libya catastrophe illustrates the desperation of Nato in its continuing search for
international situations in which it might be able to intervene, to try to provide some sort of
justification for its existence. And the calibre of its leadership can be judged from the
pronouncements of such as Stavridis, who was unsurprisingly
considered a possibility for the post of Secretary of State by Donald Trump.
It is not explained how relocation of US troops from Germany could hurt Nato's "solidarity"
but Defence Secretary Esper was more revealing about the situation as he sees it, when
interviewed by balanced and
objective Fox News on August 9. He
declared "we basically are moving troops further east, closer to Russia's border to deter
them. Most of the allies I've either spoken to, heard from or my staff has spoken to, see this
as a good move. It will accomplish all of those objectives that have been laid out. And
frankly, look, we still have 24,000 plus troops in Germany, so it will still be the largest
recipient of US troops. The bottom line is the border has shifted as the alliance has grown."
(It is intriguing that this important policy statement was not covered by US mainstream media
and cannot be found on the Pentagon's Newsroom website -- the "one-stop shop for Defense
Department news and information.")
No matter the spin from the Pentagon and what is now appearing in the US media, Trump's July
29 decision to move troops from Germany had no basis in strategy. It was not the result of a
reappraisal of the regional or wider international situation. And it was not discussed with any
of Washington's allies, causing Nato Secretary General Stoltenberg
to say plaintively that it was "not yet decided how and when this decision will be
implemented."
The BBC reported that "President Donald Trump
said the move was a response to Germany failing to meet Nato targets on defence spending."
Trump was quoted as telling reporters that "We don't want to be the suckers anymore. We're
reducing the force because they're not paying their bills; it's very simple." It could not have
been made clearer than that. The whole charade is the result of Trumpian petulance and has
nothing to do with military strategy, no matter what is belatedly claimed by the Pentagon's
Esper.
The German government was not consulted before Trump's contemptuous announcement, and
defence minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer
criticised Washington, saying "Nato is not a trade organisation, and security is not a
commodity." But so far as Trump is concerned, security is indeed a commodity that can be traded
as he sees fit, irrespective of relevance to national policy or anything other than his
ego.
In trying to pick up the pieces following Trump's candid explanation of his orders to
"reduce the force" in Germany, the Pentagon has conjured up a jumbled but confrontational plan
intended to convince those who are interested (who do not
include the German public), that it is all part of a grand scheme to extend the power of
the US-Nato alliance. To this end, Esper
announced he is "confident that the alliance will be all the better and stronger for it,"
because the redeployment involves reinforcement of the US military in Poland. He is moving 200
staff of the army's 5 corps to Krakow where, as reported by
Military.com on August 5, "In a ceremony Army Chief of Staff General James McConville
promoted John Kolasheski, the Army's V Corps commander, to the rank of lieutenant general and
officially unfurled the headquarters' flag for the first time on Polish soil."
In addition to Washington's move of the advance HQ of V Corps to Krakow, there is a
agreement that Poland will engage in what the Military Times
reports as "a host of construction projects designed to support more US troops in that
country" and Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Tom Campbell said that the Warsaw government "has
agreed to fund infrastructure and logistical support to US forces," which should please the
White House.
These initiatives are part of the US-Poland Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement
completed on August 3, which Esper
stated "will enhance deterrence against Russia, strengthen NATO, reassure our Allies, and
our forward presence in Poland on NATO's eastern flank will improve our strategic and
operational flexibility." Then on August 15 Secretary of State Pompeo visited Poland to
formally
ink the accord which was warmly welcomed by Polish President Duda who recently visited
Trump in Washington.
Duda's declaration
that "our soldiers are going to stand arm-in-arm" is consistent with the existing situation in
Poland, where the Pentagon has other elements already deployed,
including in Redzikowo, where a base is being built for
Aegis Ballistic Missile Defence systems, and the Air Force's 52nd Fighter Wing
detachments at Polish Air Force bases at Lask and Miroslawiec, where there is a unit
operating MQ-9
attack drones.
Defence Secretary Esper has emphasised that "the border has shifted as the alliance has
grown" -- and the border to which he refers is that of US-Nato as it moves more menacingly
eastwards. That's the gift that Trump has given Russia.
CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times and the Washington Post are now following the same script
with the Trump panics. The pattern is consistent. Day one involves spectacular claims of
corruption. By day two, placard-bearing protesters are hitting the streets ("
You can't fire the truth !" a protester in Times Square proclaimed in the Sessions affair),
celebrities are taping video
appeals , and experts are quoted suggesting Trump is already guilty of crime:
OPEN TREASON in Helsinki, "
bribery " in Ukraine, or in this case, election interference (some are already speculating
that Trump
could get a year for the mail slowdown).
Almost always, by day three or four, key claims are walked back: maybe there was no direct "
promise " to a foreign leader, or the CIA doesn't have "
direct evidence " of Russian bounties, or viral photos of children in cages at the border
were
from 2014 , not 2017. By then it doesn't matter. A panic is a panic, and there are only two
reportable angles in today's America, total guilt and total innocence. Even when the balance of
the information would still look bad or very bad for Trump, news outlets commit to leaving out
important background, so as not to complicate the audience response.
That's the situation with this story, where the postal slowdown is probably more serious
than other Trump scandals, but people pushing it are also not anxious to remind readers of
their own histories on the issue.
Take the New York Times, currently cranking out about a feature an hour about the U.S.P.S.
Paul Krugman is now
telling us "The Postal Service facilitates citizen inclusion. That's why Trump hates it."
Apparently, until recently, all decent Americans had bottomless affection for the communal
spirit of the Postal Service and supported it without hesitation. Yet in April, 2012, in the
middle of the Obama presidency, the Times ran a very different
house editorial .
The paper argued mounting losses necessitated swift action to reduce costs. The Times
worried that "lawmakers in both houses" would "procrastinate as usual," and blasted the Senate
for devising a bill that "timorously aims at part-time 'downsizing,' not closing, lightly used
post offices." The paper added that decreased revenue thanks to email could mean losses of
"more than $20 billion a year by 2016," and hoped that, so long as "courage trumps
procrastination," the U.S.P.S. could be granted the "flexibility of a modern business."
If you look back, you'll find the overwhelming consensus in both the Bush and Obama years
was that a fully-staffed post office was a money pit, and "
flexibility " was needed to allow the service to budget-slash its way back to relevance in
the Internet age.
For a significant period – between the mid-2000s and the Trump years – it was
hard to find a big-name politician who would talk about the post office at all. An exception
was Bernie Sanders, whose office labored to get major news media organizations interested (
I got some of those calls ) in an alternative narrative about the post office.
But when an analysis by the Office of Personnel Management was released in November, 2002,
it turned out the U.S.P.S. had a "more positive picture" than was believed. The U.S.P.S. was
massively over- paying into its retirement fund, headed for a $70 billion surplus. Then in 2003
the
Postal Pension Funding Reform Act was passed, which among other things forced the U.S.P.S.
to pay the pension obligations of employees who had prior military service.
A few years after that, in 2006, the "
Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act " passed with overwhelming support in both
houses, forcing a series of incredible changes, the biggest being a requirement that the
U.S.P.S. fully fund 75 years worth of benefits for its employees. The provision cost $5.5
billion per year and was unique among government agencies. "No one prefunds at more than 30%,"
said Anthony Vegliante, the service's executive vice president, at the time.
The bill also prevented the post office from offering "nonpostal services" as a way to
compete financially. This barred it from establishing a postal banking service, but also nixed
creative ideas like Internet cafes, copy services, notaries, even allowing postal workers to
offer to wrap Christmas presents. Coupled with the pre-funding benefit mandate and other
pension changes, this paralyzed the post office financially, making it look ripe for
reform.
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By 2012, those took the form of calls for the U.S.P.S. to eliminate 3,700 post offices (a
first step toward eventually closing as many as 15,000) and 250 mail processing centers.
Sanders, along with other Senators with large rural constituencies like Jon Tester and Claire
McCaskill, managed to change the bill and save a lot of the mail processing centers. The Senate
that year also cut the amount of required pre-funding for benefits and
began refunding the U.S.P.S. for about $11 billion in overpayment for retirement costs.
A few years after that, in 2015, the Post Office Inspector General issued a
blistering report about CBRE , the company that had served as sole real estate broker to
the U.S.P.S. from 2011 on. The report found that CBRE had been selling and/or leasing post
office properties at below-market prices, often to clients of CBRE – a company
chaired by Richard Blum , the husband of California Senator Dianne Feinstein. This chronic
problem had a financial impact on the Postal Service, and would have become a much bigger
problem had the U.S.P.S. been forced earlier on to sell off a massive quantity of
infrastructure through that broker, as originally hoped.
The thread running through all of these stories was that panic over the financial condition
of the U.S.P.S. was often a significantly artificial narrative, caused by a bipartisan mix of
stupidity, greed, and corruption. This high-functioning civil service organization, which
provided tremendous value to the public through everything from
subsidized news deliveries in the Pony Express years to the well-maintained public meeting
places built in remote rural locations, has not had real backers in either party for most of
the last thirty or forty years.
None of this means the Trump-DeJoy story isn't serious. It just means that Trump is not the
first person to try to gut the U.S. Postal Service. Going back decades, it's been stuck with
impossible funding mandates, used as a piggy bank by both parties in congress (which refused to
let it stop making massive retirement overpayments for fear of the "
adverse" impact on the federal budget), artificially prevented from expanding or innovating
by lobbyists, and ripped off by connected contractors.
Combine that with the maddening sloppiness of these panic stories – one wild report
after another of mailboxes ripped from the streets "
right before our eyes " in a "plan to steal the election" turns out later to be another old
photo or a shot of a
routine maintenance operation – and it becomes increasingly difficult for nonpartisan
news audiences to know what they're dealing with.
Is this unprecedented corruption, something a little worse than normal, or just the usual
undisguised? If press outlets never dial back excesses, we may miss it when we're actually
supposed to panic.
All Comments 76
2banana , 3 hours ago
Conspiracy after Conspiracy...
You would think after a while, it would get old. And, it does.
Here is real life.
America had an in person voting process that worked and got results in a few hours.
Democrats want to change that to an untested fraud ridden system that may get results in
a few weeks.
And that ain't a conspiracy - that is fact.
Hal n back , 2 hours ago
not only did it work, it emphasized the importance of getting out and voting.
As I walk into my voting place, I say hello to neighbors working there , flip out my
drivers license and sign the proper form. If my signature does not look the same (which
happens after a period of time) the folks behind the table ask me to sign again even if
they know me because its protocol and it is important to get it right. And then I get my
ballot and fill it in and I get to place it in the electronic machine inside a card so my
neighbors do not know which way I am voting.
Which they already know since the neighborhood while aging, is vibrant and has constant
debates on politics especially now as we gather on driveways socially distanced shooting
the bull over the whole thing.
we will not know how many ballots will be filled in by somebody other than the right
person.
why not just save money and give proxies to the Democrats.
slightlyskeptical , 2 hours ago
Electronic machines is the first step in bungled elections.
Four chan , 21 minutes ago
we all know the dems plan to fucckup the election using mail in
votes, what are these democrat gollum going to try next covid 20?
Unknown User , 2 hours ago
There is so much to steal and privatize in America, a Neoliberal paradise.
stacking12321 , 54 minutes ago
"America had an in person voting process that worked"
oh, it worked, did it?
is that why there's endless wars, a ballooning out of control deficit, a pay for play
political system, unconstitutional laws passed constantly, a system of wealth extraction
where the little wealth that people have is squeezed out of the, and given to the
elites?
face the facts, the American political system is an abject failure, the very concept of
government is an abject failure. A violent gang of thugs being enabled to take power over
everyone should be recognized as a crime - all government is a crime against the people it
claims to rule over.
Things will continue getting worse, not better, thanks to your "working" system of
government.
government is not here to help, they are servants of your enemy, the elites.
Tenshin Headache , 3 hours ago
Easy rule of thumb: If you learned it from the fake news, it's fake news.
seryanhoj , 1 hour ago
The basic thing about government and media today is, truth and facts have nothing to do
with their job.
Words are there to mould people's minds to their purpose so they don't make a nuisance
of themselves by having diverse opinions Facts are never allowed to get in the way. What
about when Bush 2 and Blair outright fabricated evidence of Baghdad .WMD...the dodgy
dossier? Oh says they, I saw intelligence reports . Yes .intelligence reports they
pressured them to write. Result. A million dead and Iraq in chaos.
And what happened to Bush 2. Re elected! At that point it was over.
The official Twitter
accounts for RT, Xinhua, and other media outlets owned by certain governments the US doesn't like are being pushed into the
shadows, confirming that Twitter is getting serious about its role as one of the chief enforcers of US informational
supremacy. But deploying the memory-hole against Washington's rivals is tacitly admitting that the same informational
supremacy would be doomed without such heavy-handed censorship.
Not only will Twitter refuse to auto-complete searches for the official accounts of RT, Sputnik, Xinhua, Global Times, and a
handful of other outlets owned by Russia and China – typing in their handles with the @ symbol yields no results for users who
don't already follow these accounts. The platform has essentially made it impossible for the average Twitter user to
accidentally stumble across their posts.
Turning off the "
hide
sensitive content
" function in search settings allows state media accounts to surface under "
people
"
– if their handle is searched exactly, with the @ symbol – tagged with the "
state-affiliated
media
" warning Twitter has casually referred to as an "
election label
." But
posts from these outlets remain missing everywhere but in their own feeds. Running the accounts through Shadowban.eu confirms
they're subject to a "
search suggestion ban.
"
While Twitter announced
earlier this month that it would remove state-run media accounts from any 'recommended' screens, including the home screen,
notifications, and search, the new policy's wording left room for interpretation. Even employees at some of these
organizations thought – perhaps naively – that Twitter wouldn't go so far as to block searches for RT from turning up, well,
RT.
"... How fitting therefore that this time around the discord and distrust on display is patently US-style homegrown – without an iota of Russian input. Recent US intelligence claims of Russian interference seem more threadbare than usual. ..."
"... It is what it always has been: a crisis in legitimacy of American democracy owing to a fractured, self-alienated nation encumbered by endemic social problems. ..."
"... US-style internal discord has become even more magnified and glaring to the point where invoking "foreign malign influence" just looks absurd in its irrelevance. ..."
It's the most important election ever, according to Republicans and Democrats alike. With such vital billing it is all the more
ominous that even before ballots are cast the very legitimacy of the presidential result is in doubt.
This week, a sprawling US
Senate intelligence report again casts aspersions on the Trump election in 2016, alleging
"extensive
sabotage"
by the Kremlin to get him elected. The
report
seems
more a redux of previous unsubstantiated claims of Russian meddling, which Moscow has always categorically rejected as false.
Then there are looming doubts
stemming from the mechanics of mail-in or absentee voting which is set to take an outsized role in the election amid social
distancing over coronavirus public health fears. Like the concerns about the disease itself there is sharp partisan divide over
the merits of mail-in voting. For some it is a necessary precaution, for others it is a ruse built upon an exaggerated health
scare.
On top of that division you
have the extreme partisan stakes being piled up.
Republican President Donald
Trump says if
"radical left"
rival Joe Biden and running mate Kamala Harris win in
November then the US will be plunged into Venezuela-like
"socialist"
disaster (as if
Washington's regime-change machinations have had nothing to do with the latter).
For the Democrats, four more
years of Trump will be akin to living under a dictatorship.
One could say it's all
electioneering hyperbole. But still the divisive passions are running like a fever. There is a lot at stake for the participants
in this election from the torrid way they have depicted the choice. The partisan discord could hardly be more acrimonious from
the extremely polarized way each side views the other.
Throw into the political
maelstrom accusations and counter-accusations of
"cheating"
over the election and then
we have a cauldron of contention which ruptures the public trust in voting. The very legitimacy of US democracy is being split
asunder.
Trump has set the pace for
undermining the presidential election by saying it could be the most rigged ever in history. He has repeatedly claimed that
mail-in voting is rife with fraud and has suggested that the Democrats are using the coronavirus pandemic and absentee voting as
a cover for stealing the White House.
Several studies have
shown
that
fraud from mail-in voting in the US is negligible. Many other countries seem to manage a system of absentee voting without much
concern for voter misconduct. Nevertheless, Trump has succeeded in planting the notion among his supporters that mail-in voting
is the death knell for democracy. He has already hinted that he may not accept the result in November if it goes against him. For
millions of diehard Trump supporters that is tantamount to a call to arms in an echo of the anti-lockdown rebellion that the
president advocated earlier this year.
For Democrats and
anti-Trumpers, they see this president as deliberately sabotaging the US Postal Service from his
appointment
of
a political donor as postmaster general in May. The subsequent cost-cutting and cutbacks in services under Louis DeJoy has put in
doubt the adequate delivery of voting ballots in time for the election for many states. Trump has even brazenly
admitted
that
he held back emergency funding for the postal service in order to curb mail-in voting.
So if Trump manages to pull off victory despite failing poll numbers, millions of voters will view his re-election as the product
of his rhetorical maneuvers and maligning of mail-in voting. In the 2016 election, nearly a
quarter
of
all ballots were cast by absentee voting. This time around, it is
estimated
that
nearly half of 200 million registered voters in the US will use the mail-in system due to health concerns of going to polling
stations in person at a time of pandemic risk.
There you have it. Whatever
way this election turns out, there will be a gulf of divisiveness and doubt among US citizens about the legitimacy of the next
administration. The bitter partisan wrangling that has gone on – seemingly interminably – for the past four years is set to
continue with even more corrosive consequences for American democracy.
"Sowing discord and distrust"
has been a stock phrase used in US media in regard to
allegations that Russia has somehow been sponsoring malign influence among Americans. Those claims have always been overblown and
unfounded, bordering on paranoia. Ironically, the anti-Russia allegations were a product of deep inherent discord among Americans
over the controversial election of maverick Donald Trump.
How fitting therefore that
this time around the discord and distrust on display is patently US-style homegrown – without an iota of Russian input. Recent US
intelligence claims of Russian interference seem more threadbare than usual.
It is what it always has
been: a crisis in legitimacy of American democracy owing to a fractured, self-alienated nation encumbered by endemic social
problems.
US-style internal discord has
become even more magnified and glaring to the point where invoking
"foreign malign
influence"
just looks absurd in its irrelevance.
If 'liberal' dogs can't bark at Jews and Deep State, they bark at Russia.
The Origins of Mass Manipulation of the Public Mind
Many years ago, the American political commentator Walter Lippmann realised that
political ideology could be completely fabricated, using the media to control both presentation
and conceptualisation, not only to create deeply-ingrained false beliefs in a population, but
also to entirely erase undesirable political ideas from the public mind. This was the beginning
of not only the American hysteria for freedom, democracy and patriotism, but of all
manufactured political opinion, a process that has been operative ever since. Lippmann created
these theories of mass persuasion of the public, using totally fabricated "facts" deeply
insinuated into the minds of a gullible public, but there is much more to this story. An
Austrian Jew named Edward Louis Bernays who was the nephew of Sigmund Freud, was one of
Lippmann's most precocious students and it was he who put Lippmann's theories into practice.
Bernays is widely known in America as the father of Public Relations, but he would be much more
accurately described as the father of American war marketing as well as the father of mass
manipulation of the public mind.
Bernays claimed "If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind" it will be
possible "to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing
about it". He called this scientific technique of opinion-molding the 'engineering of
consent', and to accomplish it he merged theories of crowd psychology with the psychoanalytical
ideas of his uncle Sigmund Freud. [10] [11]
Bernays regarded society as irrational and dangerous, with a "herd instinct", and that if the
multi-party electoral system (which evidence indicates was created by a group of European
elites as a population control mechanism) were to survive and continue to serve those elites,
massive manipulation of the public mind was necessary. These elites, "invisible people", would
have, through their influence on government and their control of the media, a monopoly on the
power to shape thoughts, values, and responses of the citizenry. His conviction was that this
group should flood the public with misinformation and emotionally-loaded propaganda to
"engineer" the acquiescence of the masses and thereby rule over them. According to Bernays,
this manufactured consent of the masses, creating conformity of opinion molded by the tool of
false propaganda, would be vital for the survival of "democracy". Bernays wrote:
"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the
masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen
mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our
country. People are governed, their minds molded, their tastes formed, their ideas suggested,
largely by men they have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our
democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner
. In almost every act of our daily lives we are dominated by the relatively small number
of persons who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they
who pull the wires which control the public mind."[12]
In his main work titled 'Propaganda', [13] which he
wrote in 1928, Bernays argued that the manipulation of public opinion was a necessary part of
democracy because individuals were inherently dangerous (to the control and looting of the
elites) but could be harnessed and channeled by these same elites for their economic benefit.
He clearly believed that virtually total control of a population was possible, and perhaps easy
to accomplish. He wrote further that:
"No serious sociologist any longer believes that the voice of the people expresses any
wise idea. The voice of the people expresses the mind of the people, and that mind is made up
for it by those persons who understand the manipulation of public opinion. It is composed of
inherited prejudices and symbols and clichés and verbal formulas supplied to them by
the leaders. Fortunately, the politician is able, by the instrument of propaganda, to mold
and form the will of the people. So vast are the numbers of minds which can be regimented,
and so tenacious are they when regimented, that [they produce] an irresistible pressure
before which legislators, editors, and teachers are helpless. "
And it wasn't only the public masses that were 'inherently dangerous', but a nation's
leaders fit this description as well, therefore also requiring manipulation and control.
Bernays realised that if you can influence the leaders of a nation, either with or without
their conscious cooperation, you can control the government and the country, and that is
precisely where he set his sights. Bernays again:
"In some departments of our daily life, in which we imagine ourselves free agents, we are
ruled by dictators exercising great power. There are invisible rulers who control the
destinies of millions. It is not generally realized to what extent the words and actions
of our most influential public men are dictated by shrewd persons operating behind the
scenes. Nor, what is still more important, the extent to which our thoughts and habits
are modified by authorities. The invisible government tends to be concentrated in the
hands of the few because of the expense of manipulating the social machinery which
controls the opinions and habits of the masses."
And in this case, the "few" are the wealthy industrial elites, their even wealthier banker
friends, and their brethren who control the media, publishing and entertainment industries.
Until the First World War, these theories of creating an entirely false public opinion based
on misinformation, then manipulating this for population control, were still only theories, but
the astounding success of propaganda by Bernays and his group during the war laid bare the
possibilities of perpetually controlling the public mind on all matters. The "shrewd" designers
of Bernays' "invisible government" developed a standard technique for what was essentially
propaganda and mind control, or at least opinion control, and infiltrated it throughout the US
government, its departments and agencies, and its leaders and politicians. Coincident with
this, they practiced infecting the leaders of every identifiable group – fraternal,
religious, commercial, patriotic, social – and encouraging these men to likewise infect
their supporters.
Many have noted the black and white mentality that pervades America. Much of the blame must
be laid on Bernays' propaganda methods. Bernays himself asserted that propaganda could produce
rapid and strong emotional responses in the public, but that the range of these responses was
limited because the emotional loading inherent in his propaganda would create a kind of binary
mentality, eventually forcing the population into a programmed black and white world –
which is precisely what we see in the US today. This isn't difficult to understand. When
Bernays flooded the public with fabricated tales of Germans shiskababbing babies, the range of
potential responses was entirely emotional and would be limited to either abhorrence or perhaps
a blocking of the information. In a sense, our emotional switch will be forced into either
an 'on' or 'off' position , with no other reasonable choices.
The elite few, as Bernays called them, realised early on the potential for control of
governments, and in every subsequent US administration the president and his White House staff,
the politicians, the leaders of the military and intelligence agencies, all fell prey to this
same disease of shrewd manipulation. Roosevelt's "intense desire for war" in 1939 [14] [15]
[16] was the result of this same infection process and, once infected, he of course
approved of the infection of the entire American population. Walter Lippmann and Edward Bernays
succeeded beyond their wildest expectations.
Bernays – Marketing War
In the discovery of propaganda as a tool of public mind control and in its use for war
marketing, it is worthwhile to take a quick look at the historical background of Bernays' war
effort. At the time, the European Zionists had made an agreement with England to bring the US
into the war against Germany, on the side of England, a favor for which England would grant
them the possession of Palestine as a location for a new homeland. [19]
Palestine did not 'belong' to England, it was not England's to give, and England had no legal
or moral right to make such an agreement, but it was made nevertheless.
US President Wilson was desperate to fulfill his obligations to his handlers by putting the
US into the First World War as they wished, but the American population had no interest in the
European war and public sentiment was entirely against participating. To facilitate the desired
result, Wilson created the Committee on Public Information (The Creel Commission), [20] to
propagandise the war by the mass brainwashing of America, but Creel was merely the 'front' of a
group that consisted of specially hand-picked men from the media, advertising, the movie
industry, and academia, as well as specialists in psychology. The two most important members
were Walter Lippman, whom Wilson described as "the most brilliant man of his age", and Bernays
who was the group's top mind-control expert, both Jews and both aware of the stakes in this
game. Bernays planned to combine his uncle Freud's psychiatric insights with mass psychology
blended with modern advertising techniques, and apply them to the task of mass mind control. It
was Bernays' vast propaganda schemes and his influence in promoting the patently false idea
that US entry to the war was primarily aimed at "bringing democracy to all of Europe", that
proved so successful in altering public opinion about the war. Thanks to Edward Bernays,
American war marketing was born and would never die.
Note to Readers: Some portion of the immediately following content which details the
specifics of the propaganda of Lippman and Bernays for World War I is not my own work. It was
extracted some years ago from a longer document for which I cannot now locate the original
source. If a reader is able to identify this source, I would be grateful to receive that
information so I can properly credit the author for his extensive research.
"Wilson's creation of the CPI was a turning point in world history, the first truly
scientific attempt to form, manipulate and control the perceptions and beliefs of an entire
population." With Wilson's authority, these men were given almost unlimited scope to work
their magic, and in order to ensure the success of their program and guarantee the eventual
possession of Palestine, these men and their committee carried out "a program of
psychological warfare against the American people on a scale unprecedented in human history and
with a degree of success that most propagandists could only dream about".
Having received permission and broad authority from the US President and the White House to
"lead the public mind into war"[21] and,
with their success threatened by widespread anti-war sentiment among the public, these men
determined to engineer what Lippman called "the manufacture of consent" . The committee
assumed the task to "examine the different ways that information flowed to the population and
to flood these channels with pro-war material". Their effort was unparalleled in its scale and
sophistication, since the Committee had the power not only to officially censor news and
withhold information from the public, but to manufacture false news and distribute it
nationally through all channels. In a very short time, Lippman and Bernays were well enough
organised to begin flooding the US with anti-German propaganda consisting of hate literature,
movies, songs, media articles and much more.
... ... ...
Everything we have read above about the marketing of war during preparation for the two
World Wars, is from a template created by Lippman and Bernays exclusively to support the
creation of a Jewish state in Palestine and to promote the agenda of Zionism. That template
has been in constant use by the US government (as the Bankers' Private Army) since the Second
World War, 'engineering consent and ignorance' in the American and Western populations to mask
almost seven decades of atrocities, demonising innocent countries and peoples in preparation
for 60 or 70 politically-inspired color revolutions or 'wars of liberation' fought exclusively
for the financial and political benefit of a handful of European bankers using the US military
as a private army for this purpose, resulting in the deaths and miseries of hundreds of
millions of innocent civilians.
... ... ...
We can easily think of George W. Bush's demonisation of Iraq, the sordid tales of mass
slaughters, the gassing of hundreds of thousands and burial in mass graves, the nuclear weapons
ready to launch within 15 minutes, the responsibility for 9-11, the babies tossed out of
incubators, Saddam using wood shredders to eliminate political opponents and dissidents. We can
think of the tales of Libyan Viagra, all proven to have been groundless fabrications –
typical atrocity propaganda. Vietnam, Afghanistan, Syria, Iran and dozens of other wars and
invasions followed this same template to get the public mind onside for an unjustified war
launched only for political and commercial objectives.
Fast Forward to 2020
We are at the same place today, with the same people conducting the same "anger campaign"
against China in preparation for World War III. John Pilger agrees with me , evidenced in
his recent article "Another Hiroshima is coming – unless we stop it now." [43] And so
does Gordon Duff . [44] The
signs now are everywhere, and the campaign is successful. It is necessary to point out the need
for an 'anger campaign' as opposed to a 'hate campaign'. We are not moved to action from hate,
but from anger. I may thoroughly despise you, but that in itself will do nothing. It is only if
I am moved to anger that I want to punch your lights out. And this, as Lippman and Bernays so
clearly noted, requires emotionally-charged atrocity propaganda of the kind used so well
against Germany and being so well used against China today. Since we need atrocity propaganda
to start a war, there seems to be no shortage.
... ... ...
Then, Mr. Pompeo tells us, "The truth is that our policies . . . resurrected China's
failing economy, only to see Beijing bite the international hands that were feeding it."[55] Further,
that (due to COVID-19) China "caused an enormous amount of pain, loss of life," and the
"Chinese Communist Party will pay a price". [56] Of
course, we all know that "China" stole the COVID-19 virus from a lab in Winnipeg, Canada, then
released it onto the world – and Pompeo has proof [57] , and
even "A Chinese virologist has proof" that "China" engaged in a massive cover-up while
contaminating the world [58] and then
"fleeing Hong Kong" because "I know how they treat whistle-blowers." [59] And of
course, "China needs to be held accountable for Covid-19's destruction"[60] which is
why everyone in the US wants to sue "China". "Australia" demands an international criminal
investigation of China's role in COVID-19. [61] What a
surprise.
And of course we have an almost unlimited number of serious provocations , from Hong
Kong, Tibet, Xinjiang, Taiwan, the South China Seas, to Chinese consulates, media reporters,
students, researchers, visa restrictions, spying, Huawei, the trade war, all done in the hope
of making the Chinese leaders panic and over-react, the easiest way to justify a new war.
The list could continue for several hundred pages. Never in my life have I seen such a
continuous, unabating flood of hate propaganda against one nation, surely equivalent to what
was done against Germany as described above to prepare for US entry into the First World War.
And it's working, doing what it is intended to do. Canada, Australia, the UK, Germany, India,
Brazil, are buying into the war-mongering and turning against China. More will follow. The
Global Times reported "Mutual trust between Australia and China at all-time low". [62]
"Boycott China" T-shirts and caps are flooding India, Huawei is being increasingly banned
from Western nations, Chinese social media APPs like Tik-Tok are being banned, and Bryan
Adams recently slammed all Chinese as "Bat-eating, wet-market-animal-selling, virus-making,
greedy bastards".[63] [64] In
a recent poll (taken because we need to measure the success of our handiwork in the same way
Bernays and the Tavistock Institute did as noted earlier), half of all ethnic Chinese in
Canada have been threatened and harassed over COVID-19.
About 45% of Chinese in Canada said they had been " threatened or intimidated in some
way", fully 50% said they had recently been insulted in public, 30% said they had experienced
. . . "some kind of physical altercation", and 60% said the abuse was so bad "they had to
reorganise their daily routine to avoid it". One woman in her 60s said a man told her and her
daughter "Every day I pray that you people die".[65]
... ... ...
Several years ago, CNN was sued by one of their news anchors for being ordered to lie in the
newscasts. CNN won the case. They did not deny ordering the news anchor to lie. Their defense
was based simply on the position that American news media have "no obligation to tell the
truth". And RT recently reported that nearly 9 out of 10 Americans see a "medium or
high" bias in all media coverage,[65] yet, as
we can see, most of those same people, and a very large portion of the population of many
nations still succumb to the same hate propaganda.
Actually, after only a quick review of some of the news reports, it appears that the
Senate Committee placed great importance on the "fact" that Russia was involved in the
"hacking" of emails from the DNC. This suggests that the Committee relied on the same
intelligence sources that fabricated the Russiagate scenario in the first place. I guess that
the Republicans on the Committee have not kept up with revelations that there is no evidence
of any such hacking. Hence, the Committee's conclusions are likely based on the same old
disinformation and can be readily dismissed.
Mass media throughout the western world are uncritically passing along a press release from
the US intelligence community, because that's what passes for journalism in a world where God
is dead and everything is stupid.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has voiced his opposition to a proposed Russian rule that
would require labeling of propaganda content, saying it would burden "independent" information
work by outlets such as Voice of America.
"This decree will impose new burdensome requirements that will further inhibit RFE/RL's
and VOA's ability to operate within Russia," Pompeo said
Monday, commenting on the draft rule published by the media regulator Roskomnadzor.
Pompeo called VOA and its sister outlet Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty "vital sources
of independent news and information for the people of Russia" for "more than 70
years."
Far from independent, however, they were both established as US propaganda outlets at the
dawn of the Cold War. They are fully funded by the government, and the charter of their parent
organization – now known as US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) – mandates that they
"be consistent with the broad foreign policy objectives of the United States" and
"provide a surge capacity to support United States foreign policy objectives during crises
abroad."
The 1948 law that established these outlets outright prohibited their content from being
broadcast in the US itself, until the Obama administration amended it in 2013.
The proposed rule would require all content produced by designated "foreign agents"
in the Russian Federation to be clearly labeled. When the draft of it was made public last
month, acting RFE/RL president Daisy Sindelar protested that its purpose was to
"intimidate" her audience and make them "feel like criminals, or believe that they
are in danger when they watch or read our materials."
Yet the Russian regulation is the mirror image of the requirement imposed under the US
Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) on RT, Sputnik and China Global Television Network
(CTGN) since 2017, which only a handful of groups such as the Committee to Protect Journalists
(CPJ) condemned as
an attack on free speech. The USAGM remained conspicuously silent even as the designated
outlets were denied credentials to access government press conferences.
US-based social media companies have also bowed to political pressure and labeled Russian-
and Chinese-based outlets as "state-affiliated," while refraining from using that
descriptor for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), German outlet Deutsche Welle, the
French AFP, Turkish TRT, or any of the USAGM outlets, once again showcasing the double
standard.
jangosimba 10 August, 2020
He cheats, he lies, he murders, he steals.
Zogg jangosimba 11 August, 2020
That's a small part of CIA job description.
Harbin
William Johnson 1 hour ago
Mike reminds me that character from "Godfather" series, the old , dumb henchman ready to
follow any order...
"... IMO NATO should have ended with the fall of the USSR. It now "confronts" a largely imaginary threat, concocted for the purpose of maintaining the status quo in US government expenditures for defense and supporting the imperial dreams of the neocons. ..."
"... Does anyone really think Russia is going to invade the Baltics? Really? ..."
"... The kind of symmetrical disinterest described in Timothy's article will encourage the end of Atlanticism ..."
"There are, then, two ways in which a Biden presidency will remove the Europeans' veil of
smug superiority. First, he will follow some Trump-era objectives, because that is what
American interests demand, thus showing that Trump was no extremist on China . And second,
where he does change approach, he will expose European indifference to the Western Alliance as
driven, not by distaste for Trump's policies, but by Europe's own cynicism, short-termism and
willingness to freeload off US military budgets.
In both respects, Biden's election will reveal Europe's dirty secret. It was never Donald
Trump who stopped the Europeans being their better selves, taking responsibility for the
security of their own citizens, and protecting long-term Western interests. It was always
Europe itself." Nick Timothy in The Telegraph.
------------
I was struck earlier today by English Outsider's admonition (on SST) directed to
ConfusedPonderer (archetype of the Teutons) in which EO said that it was vainglorious and
vacuous to bitterly claim that the US "occupies" Germany as it did in 1945 while at the same
time relying on US funding of Germany's defense through the USA's enormous military
expenditures.
IMO NATO should have ended with the fall of the USSR. It now "confronts" a largely imaginary
threat, concocted for the purpose of maintaining the status quo in US government expenditures
for defense and supporting the imperial dreams of the neocons.
Does anyone really think Russia is going to invade the Baltics? Really?
The US faces a rapidly escalating political crisis. The losing party in November will
undoubtedly go to the federal courts to claim that their opponents cheated in the process.
These charges will eventually reach SCOTUS. In this environment US interest in European affairs
will decline radically.
The kind of symmetrical disinterest described in Timothy's article will encourage the end of
Atlanticism. pl
Is not Q-anon a disinformation operation run by intelligence againces?
From comments: "Being a true believer in "Q" is literally no different than being a true believer in the
Democrat-Republican kosher sandwich." and "After almost four years of Trump's presidency, QAnon is an attempt to explain the
President's failure to "Make America Great Again.""
Notable quotes:
"... This doesn't mean there's a Satanic cabal running the government. It does mean some bureaucrats opposed or even sabotaged President Trump's agenda. They investigated his subordinates or leaked information to the press. If we substitute "the permanent bureaucracy" for the more ominous sounding term "Deep State," this "conspiracy theory" becomes plausible. ..."
"... What is truly implausible about QAnon is the idea that President Trump knows about everything and will destroy this vast conspiracy. ..."
"... If you desperately want to believe something, you'll find evidence for it . This is confirmation bias at best, schizophrenia at worst. If President Trump truly is about to reveal a vast Satanic conspiracy, he's taking his time. ..."
"... What is especially dangerous about QAnon is not that it promotes dangerous extremism, but that it urges complacency. Its core message is that Donald Trump knows all about the secret conspiracy running the world and has the power to crush it; after all, he's President. ..."
"... After almost four years of Trump's presidency, QAnon is an attempt to explain the President's failure to "Make America Great Again." ..."
"... QAnon isn't dangerous. Conspiracy theories are as old as the Anti-Masonic Party , maybe older. Some unstable people may latch on to them, but they are not notably violent. If anything, if they really believe a Satanic cabal runs the world, they are showing remarkable restraint. ..."
"... I suspect the real reason journalists don't like QAnon is because at its core, it tells people the media are lying. It encourages independent investigation and citizen journalism. ..."
"... Journalists promote a conspiracy far more dangerous and deadly than QAnon. That is the "white privilege" conspiracy theory . ..."
"... Liberals are right to think QAnon is dangerous, but not in the way they think. QAnon is dangerous to whites. It tells them that everything is under control, that an evil conspiracy will be exposed, and that we just need to trust President Trump. We can't be under any illusions that President Trump will save us . "The Storm" is not coming, the cavalry won't ride over the hill, and there isn't a secret military force ready to scoop up our foes and liberate America. It's up to us. ..."
"... The Qanon phenomenon exploits the most fundamental psychological need which is hope, that hope dies last. The hope in order not to die will accept and forgive anything including the greatest nonsense. The hopeful ones can be strung along for ever because hope wants to last as it is the last to die. You just have to keep giving them a dose and keep stringing them alone. ..."
"... Sadly, the author is pretty much on-the-money. If Trump is for real, that is, if he believes what he says, he has been completely incompetent at accomplishing anything. ..."
"... I came late to the QAnon crap and saw it was the same soup as Black Lives Matter. Why, in fact, wouldn't the same crooks behind the one not foment the other? One says "blacks gonna make you kneel and take away all your stuff" while the other says, "don't worry, the least effective president in history has got us covered." ..."
"... They're all in show biz and Americans just happen to be an unusually gullible audience. ' ..."
"... I believe Trump is just another minion of the Deep State and is acting in accordance with their wishes. He is helping play out a charade a good cop (Trump) against a bad cop (Deep State). At any rate, he is not fulfilling his promises to those that elected him whether through incompetence or scheme. ..."
"... The logic of Hood's article is hard to beat either way. Trump/QAnon are just there for show, dangling hope in front of people that there's some person or entity that cares about them. It's the same as the infamous Pentagon Papers fifty years ago: Even after Americans knew the fix was in, the Vietnam War didn't stop until the plutocrats were good and ready to end it. ..."
"... The first sign of trouble was back when they adopted that ridiculous slogan, 'Trust the plan.' Sorry: this is politics. And in politics, I trust no one. The Q ought to be putting pressure on Trump (and the Republican Party generally), not sitting around waiting for them to grow a pair and save the country. ..."
"... The school system is promoting liberal indoctrination, and a whole bunch of kids are dropping out. Why? Because they like weed and don't like math. I see QAnon the same way. Sure, the media can't be trusted. But the enemy of my enemy is not my friend. ..."
"... I'm not prepared to defend the Qanon thing but, clearly, it is more than a pysop. It has revealed enormous amounts of sordid detail about what really goes on this country/ world and who many of the crooks are. The vast majority of the readers would not have learned that info any other way. Period. ..."
"... Great article. It covers the good and the bad and the hopelessly implausible very well. In times of a pandemic of lying generated by the USA Media Leviathan, the vulture capitalism of Wall Street, the exponentiating hate-Whitey rhetoric, the economy-killing Covid Scamdemic,the dwindling Euro-demographic numbers, along with a vurulent virus called Cultural Marxism, "extremism is no vice" ..."
"... A very insightful analysis and I think I now understand Q Anon. This seems to be an evolution from the people who early on were claiming that Trump was playing 4 (or 5 or 6) dimensional chess. I never supported him and don't now. He couldn't play one dimensional checkers if he wanted to and he probably doesn't. ..."
"... It has taken on a life of its own, constantly adapting to changes in situation. I kind of follow it as an unintentional experiment in human psychology. It's also interesting that it has absorbed a great deal of Christian mythology without actually being a Christian religion. ..."
What is QAnon? This question is harder to answer than you might think. There are several
books about QAnon, including QAnon and The Great Awakening by Michael Knight, QAnon: An Invitation to The Great Awakening by "WWG1WGA," and Revolution Q by "Neon Revolt." After reading these and other books and websites, I'd
identify three main points.
"Q," an anonymous, highly placed government official, knows that President Trump is planning
a series of dramatic events that will expose crimes and even treason implicating many
Democrats and government bureaucrats. Q communicates what's coming by posting on various
forums, including 4chan and 8kun (formerly 8chan). He says there's a fierce battle over this
at the highest levels of the government.
President Trump himself communicates with followers
of the movement through code phrases, gestures, and imagery. He and his family also
occasionally retweet accounts linked to QAnon.
"The Storm," the righteous day of justice that
President Trump is bringing, is opposed by a cabal of financial and media elites who want to
keep people from learning the truth. Thus, people must do their own research and not trust
what the mainstream media tell them.
The initial post that spawned "Q" could have been made by anyone. Further "drops" by "Q" or
people in the movement could also be made by anyone. There is no way to verify any of their
claims, except through vague references to key phrases that will supposedly be uttered in the
days following the posts. For example, before President's rally in Tulsa, Eric Trump posted an
American-flag QAnon meme with the #WWG1WGA (this is supposed to stand for "Where We Go One, We
Go All") at the bottom to Instagram. Does this mean anything, or was Eric Trump simply passing
along an image he liked?
QAnon is so popular it has spawned its own "watchdog" groups. NPR's Michael Martin
interviewed
Travis View, the co-host of the QAnon Anonymous podcast. Mr. Martin prepped the
audience by calling QAnon "a group of people who adhere to some far-right conspiracies and
believe a number of absurd things." Mr. View obliged by saying that according to QAnon, "The
world is controlled by a Satanic cabal of pedophiles that they believe control everything like
the media, politics and entertainment." He adds that QAnon also thinks President Trump knows
all about this and will "defeat this global cabal once and for all and free all of us." "QAnon
Anonymous" host Travis View added that it is a "domestic extremist movement" and said President
Trump had "tweeted or retweeted QAnon accounts over 160 times." However, he also admitted "no
one in the current administration has ever done anything to endorse QAnon."
Nevertheless, it seems that at least some of President Trump's advisors know about the
movement and are playing to it. President Trump has directly retweeted
memes from accounts linked to QAnon. Republican congressional candidate Angela Stanton-King
tweeted , " THE STORM IS HERE ."
Tess Owen, Vice's reporter on the "far right" beat,
wrote , "Welp, the GOP Now Has 15 QAnon-Linked Candidates on the November Ballot."
"There is no evidence to these claims" about a "cabal of criminals run by
politicians like Hillary Clinton and the Hollywood elite."
However, after Jeffrey Epstein's
alleged "suicide" and news that powerful figures such as former President Bill Clinton and
Prince Andrew were part of Epstein's strange network, it's hardly absurd to claim there could
be sick stuff going on among the political and cultural elite.
Jimmy Saville was a well-known British media personality, knighted, and honored by many
institutions including the Vatican and the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. After his death,
it emerged that he had sexually abused children
; some suggested hundreds of them. Most honors were rescinded posthumously.
A jury recently convicted Harvey
Weinstein, once the most powerful producer in Hollywood, of sexual crimes. Several actresses
including Allison Mack were alleged to be part of a bizarre sexual
cult called NXIVM, and she pleaded guilty to racketeering . During the 2016 election, Wikileaks
released email tying John Podesta's
brother to "artist" Marina Abramovic and her bizarre, occult performance piece "Spirit
Cooking."
If a crazy man approached you in the street raving about these plots, you'd run, but these
things happened. Non-whites sexually abused
thousands of young women in Rotherham, England. Police and local government officials did
nothing because they didn't want to be called racists. This is a sick world, and evildoers
often get away with evil. It's not absurd to think powerful men and women are no better than
middling Labour politicians who looked the other way instead of stopping rape and sex
slavery.
Is there a "Deep State" opposing President Trump? In 2019, the New York Times ran an
editorial called " The
'Deep State' Exists to Battle People Like Trump. " In 2018, an anonymous official wrote, "
I Am
Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration ." Recent evidence suggests that the
FBI bullied General Michael Flynn, President Trump's former national security advisor, and made
him confess he had lied to agents after they threatened his son. The Department of Justice
recently
concluded that the interview of General Flynn was not "conducted with a legitimate
investigative basis."
This doesn't mean there's a Satanic cabal running the government. It does mean some
bureaucrats opposed or even sabotaged President Trump's agenda. They investigated his
subordinates or leaked information to the press. If we substitute "the permanent bureaucracy"
for the more ominous sounding term "Deep State," this "conspiracy theory" becomes plausible.
Incidentally, General Flynn recently posted a
video that uses QAnon slogans.
What is truly implausible about QAnon is the idea that President Trump knows about
everything and will destroy this vast conspiracy. The proof for such assertions lies in
gestures, vague statements, or even the background of where he is speaking. For example, in
QAnon and the Great Awakening, the author says that President Trump's phrases "this is
the calm before the storm" and "tippy top," his supposed circular motions with his hands, and
occasional pointing towards supposed Q supporters are proof that he is on to it. "Q offers
hundreds of data points that demonstrate Q is indeed linked to the Trump Administration," the
book says.
If you desperately want to believe something, you'll find evidence for it .
This is confirmation bias at best, schizophrenia at worst. If President Trump truly is about to
reveal a vast Satanic conspiracy, he's taking his time.
What is especially dangerous about QAnon is not that it promotes dangerous extremism, but
that it urges complacency. Its core message is that Donald Trump knows all about the secret
conspiracy running the world and has the power to crush it; after all, he's President. All we
have to do is wait. "Nothing can stop what is coming," says one popular slogan. If this were
true, President Trump and his followers have already won, and there's no reason to do anything
but scour the internet for clues about what's coming next.
After almost four years of Trump's presidency, QAnon is an attempt to explain the
President's failure to "Make America Great Again." It's true that he's hobbled by powerful
elites. However, President Trump's biggest personnel problems, from John Bolton to Anthony Scaramucci, were people he appointed himself. No one forced him to make Reince Priebus his
chief of staff, expel Steve Bannon, or pick a fight with Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
Indeed, according to QAnon, Attorney General Sessions was the one who was supposed to
rout the evildoers .
QAnon assures Trump supporters that he has everything well in hand and that justice is
coming. It's far more terrifying to realize that he doesn't. He is politically isolated,
surrounded by foes, and losing the presidential campaign to a confused and
combative man who occasionally forgets what office he's running for or where he is . President Trump's
not mustering his legions. Instead, his own defense secretary publicly
opposed his plans to use soldiers to suppress riots. The brass
overruled his wishes to leave bases named after Confederate heroes alone. Unless President
Trump has a Praetorian Guard we don't know about (perhaps the Space Force?), there's nothing he
can use against domestic opponents.
The real question is why reporters fear QAnon. Some of its supporters have allegedly
committed crimes. One alleged QAnon believer killed
a Gambino mob boss. In February, another
blocked a bridge with an armored vehicle. Two
others had family troubles, which may or may not be related to their QAnon beliefs. If
these people did those things, they are criminals, but this is hardly a wave of violence. All
together, this would be a
peaceful weekend in Chicago .
QAnon isn't dangerous. Conspiracy theories are as old as the Anti-Masonic Party , maybe older. Some
unstable people may latch on to them, but they are not notably violent. If anything, if they
really believe a Satanic cabal runs the world, they are showing remarkable restraint.
I suspect the real reason journalists don't like QAnon is because at its core, it tells
people the media are lying. It encourages independent investigation and citizen journalism.
This occasionally leads to absurdities, such as building a worldview around 4chan posts.
However, it's healthy to distrust elites. Sometimes, journalists lie ,
stretch
the
truth , or hide
it entirely . Sometimes, they
demand citizens be silenced .
Ordinary Americans looking for truth are a threat. I believe mainstream journalists truly
regard themselves as a Fourth Estate, an independent political power . They
think they have the right to determine what Americans should and should not be allowed to hear
or say. Their efforts to censor and suppress QAnon only fuel the movement.
Journalists promote a conspiracy far more dangerous and deadly than QAnon. That is the
"white
privilege" conspiracy theory . Many journalists and academics tell non-whites that racist
whites hold them down. This implicitly justifies protests,
shakedowns, and even anti-white violence. When George Floyd died, Americans
weren't allowed to see the bodycam videos . Instead, many journalists told a fable about a
white policeman murdering an innocent black man. This was the spark, but journalists had soaked
the country in gasoline years before with endless
sensationalist coverage of race and "racism." Now, riots are destroying cities, ruining
businesses, probably spreading disease, and creating a huge crime wave
. I blame journalists for inciting this violence. It's not QAnon spreading a violent conspiracy
theory, but journalists at CNN
, the New York Times , the Washington Post, and others who manufactured
a fake crisis .
Liberals are right to think QAnon is dangerous, but not in the way they think. QAnon
is dangerous to whites. It tells them that everything is under control, that an evil conspiracy
will be exposed, and that we just need to trust President Trump. We can't be under any
illusions that President Trump will save us .
"The Storm" is not coming, the cavalry won't ride over the hill, and there isn't a secret
military force ready to scoop up our foes and liberate America. It's up to us.
Liberals should be thankful for a conspiracy theory that urges complacency. Our message is
more urgent: Our people, country, and civilization are at stake. You don't need to pore through
websites to see what's happening; just walk down any city street. Time is running out.
You have a duty to
resist . Don't look for a savior. Instead, join us, and be worthy of our ancestors .
"What is especially dangerous about QAnon is not that it promotes dangerous extremism,
but that it urges complacency . "
"We can't be under any illusions that President Trump will save us. "The Storm"
is not coming, the cavalry won't ride over the hill, and there isn't a secret military
force ready to scoop up our foes and liberate America."
The Qanon phenomenon exploits the most fundamental psychological need which is hope, that
hope dies last. The hope in order not to die will accept and forgive anything including the
greatest nonsense. The hopeful ones can be strung along for ever because hope wants to last
as it is the last to die. You just have to keep giving them a dose and keep stringing them
alone.
There is is a blogger Benjamin Fulford that precedes Qanon and uses exactly the same
technique and very similar narratives of hidden forces of Good and Evil fighting for the
dominance and the forces of Good always being very close to the final victory to give you
enough hope to keep you interested till the next installment.. There is a mixture of Free
Masons, Rockefellers, Rothschild, Zionists, Trump, Pope Sabbatean mafia, Khazarian mafia and
Asian Secret Societies. The latter are on the side of Good in Fulford's universe. Fulford, I
think, is located somewhere in Asia, most likely Japan. Fulford missed his calling of being a
script writer of the never ending TV series and dramas like TWD and so on. But I suspect he
makes some money from his series about the world in battle between forces of Good and Evil
and the victory being just around the corner.
From August 10, 2020. Benjamin Fulford installment:
"The Khazarian mafia is preparing the public for some form of alien disclosure or invasion
scenario as they struggle to stay in power, Pentagon and other sources claim. The most likely
scenario for this autumn is the cancellation of the U.S. Presidential election followed by a
UFO distraction, the sources say. U.S. President Donald Trump himself is saying the election
needs to be called off even as he continues to promote a "Space force.""
Or from August 3 installment:
"The P3 Freemasons are saying the Covid-19 campaign is only going to intensify until an
agreement is reached to set up a "World Republic." Certainly, the P3 lodge involvement is
easier to spot in Japan and Korea where all positive test results are being traced to either
Christian (P3) sects or Khazarian Mafia hedge funds."
"The other big theme being pushed by the Zionists is an escalating conflict between the
U.S. and China. The U.S. State Department propaganda machine is pushing a doctored document
known as "The Secret Speech of General Chi Haotian," which claims to contain secret Chinese
plans to invade the U.S., kill women and children and use biological warfare."
"Of course, the opposite is true, since everybody who read the Project for a New American
Century knows the Zionist regime has been touting race-specific or ethnic-specific biological
warfare as a "useful political tool." "
Or from July 27:
"The rest of the world, especially the main creditors Japan and China, are willing to
write off the debt but they want a change in management first. In other words, they want the
Americans to free themselves from the Babylonian debt slavery of the Khazarian mafia.
That process has started with arrests and extra-judicial killings of top Khazarian,
Satan-worshipping elites. The Bush family is gone, the Rockefellers lost the presidency when
Hillary Rockefeller was defeated, and many politicians and so-called celebrities have
vanished.
However, the situation is still like a lizard shaking off its tail in order to escape. The
real control of the United States is still in the hands of "
Sadly, the author is pretty much on-the-money. If Trump is for real, that is, if he
believes what he says, he has been completely incompetent at accomplishing anything. As for
the media, I'd disagree that they sometimes lie; they lie pretty much ALL the time.
What is especially dangerous about QAnon is not that it promotes dangerous extremism,
but that it urges complacency.
So does Trump and the GOP in general. The GOP, MAGA and NeverTrump alike, exists only to sap our will, acclimate us to defeat
and put us to sleep with the comforting illusion that some authority or institution is
fighting for us.
Until the American Right realizes this, it will never gain back one inch of ground. And no
one worth marching with or behind will join their ranks or rise from them.
I came late to the QAnon crap and saw it was the same soup as Black Lives Matter. Why, in
fact, wouldn't the same crooks behind the one not foment the other? One says "blacks gonna
make you kneel and take away all your stuff" while the other says, "don't worry, the least
effective president in history has got us covered."
There's no war in heaven. They're all in show biz and Americans just happen to be an
unusually gullible audience.
'
If Trump is for real, that is, if he believes what he says, he has been completely
incompetent at accomplishing anything.
That is the dilemma. I believe Trump is just another minion of the Deep State and is
acting in accordance with their wishes. He is helping play out a charade a good cop (Trump)
against a bad cop (Deep State). At any rate, he is not fulfilling his promises to those that
elected him whether through incompetence or scheme.
Uhhh, Donald Trump as well as Slickster Billy Bob was part of the Epstein network. This
piece jumps the shark and the rails right there at the start and goes further into PR
turd-polishing land after that.
The logic of Hood's article is hard to beat either way. Trump/QAnon are just there for
show, dangling hope in front of people that there's some person or entity that cares about
them. It's the same as the infamous Pentagon Papers fifty years ago: Even after Americans
knew the fix was in, the Vietnam War didn't stop until the plutocrats were good and ready to
end it.
The truth sets nobody free. Power is a vehicle to find truth and do something about it.
Truth without power just equals more frustration. And the world's full to bursting with
frustration already.
What is especially dangerous about QAnon is not that it promotes dangerous extremism,
but that it urges complacency. Its core message is that Donald Trump knows all about the
secret conspiracy running the world and has the power to crush it; after all, he's
President. All we have to do is wait.
Yup. The first sign of trouble was back when they adopted that ridiculous slogan, 'Trust
the plan.' Sorry: this is politics. And in politics, I trust no one. The Q ought to be
putting pressure on Trump (and the Republican Party generally), not sitting around waiting
for them to grow a pair and save the country.
The school system is promoting liberal indoctrination, and a whole bunch of kids are
dropping out. Why? Because they like weed and don't like math. I see QAnon the same way. Sure, the media can't be trusted. But the enemy of my enemy is
not my friend.
These guys are mostly mentally unstable white knights and while I'm not
much concerned that they will actually harm Justin Beiber by baselessly accusing him of rape,
their behavior contributes to the culture of white knighting and social media witch hunts I
mean citizen journalism which only strengthens the feminist movement.
"You have a duty to resist." The QAnon people, intellectual and moral descendants of the
Scofield Reference Bible, don't want to hear this. They just want to eat and watch TV. After
all, Ben Franklin and George Washington will save us just in time!
QAnon is just another Zionist-pro Israeli psyop. Q never talks about the Israel conspiracy
or how AIPAC controls America. Trump is always, about ready, to bring the hammer down on the
deep state, but never does as he appoints Neocon after Neocon, the latest is Elliott Abrams,
as bad or worse than John Bolton.
Remember back when Hillary was in chains, or Obama went to Gitmo and got executed? QAnon
is false hope being served up to Trump's conservative base who want the criminal government
exposed and prosecuted. But that never happens under Trump.
According to many researchers, including me, Beirut got nuked, and that story is already
gone, swept under the Jewmedia rug, written off as a fertilizer accident. Where's Q on that
one? No where to be found because Q is Jew protecting Israel at every turn.
You all listen to Q at your own peril. And oh yeah, have you noticed the world going to
hell? Where's Trump's secret plan you all? It's fake, Q Anon led you all into a blind alley,
it pacified you as your nation was stolen right in front of your eyes. Q is a pied piper for
adults who think like children. Q Anon was the latest hopium injected into the body politic,
Trump is the swamp, he is working for Israel, he is selling you out, he is the snake who
betrays you. But the q followers can't see that or even hear it because they need hope, and
the opposition is worse than Trump.
I'm not prepared to defend the Qanon thing but, clearly, it is more than a pysop. It has revealed enormous amounts of sordid detail about what really goes on this
country/ world and who many of the crooks are. The vast majority of the readers would
not have learned that info any other way. Period.
Now that a fair amount is exposed, it's up to Trump and Barr to indict and convict a slew
of high level people. If they don't then they are worthless and can go fvck themselves for
jerking the public around and not sealing the deal.
The Christians in the Repub Party are so easy to play. They are taught to 'follow the
leader' from Day 1 of their lives and Trump has provided himself as their golden savior to
worship and trust. God sent him to us, you know. (lol)
That segment of the Repub Party doesn't have a pair to grow. So, it won't happen. Marxism
is in our future, it's only a matter of time.
Very good.
A close friend of mine who I didn't consider too interested in these matters mentioned QAnon
to me while I was telling him how Trump is being sabotaged by some of his own people. I was
surprised he knew, probably more than me.
PS. I would wear a Q tee shirt except that I'm old school and 'Q' connotes queer. So maybe
an Anon one might do. (Big grin)
Great article. It covers the good and the bad and the hopelessly implausible very well. In
times of a pandemic of lying generated by the USA Media Leviathan, the vulture capitalism of
Wall Street, the exponentiating hate-Whitey rhetoric, the economy-killing Covid Scamdemic,the
dwindling Euro-demographic numbers, along with a vurulent virus called Cultural Marxism,
"extremism is no vice"
After laughing themselves silly over the gullible idiots who ran with their 911
'no-planes' psychological operation, the CIA bugmen cooked up a new one. They're laughing
themselves silly all over again.
"Journalists promote a conspiracy far more dangerous and deadly than QAnon. That is the
"white privilege" conspiracy theory. Many journalists and academics tell non-whites that
racist whites hold them down."
A very insightful analysis and I think I now understand Q Anon. This seems to be an
evolution from the people who early on were claiming that Trump was playing 4 (or 5 or 6)
dimensional chess. I never supported him and don't now. He couldn't play one dimensional
checkers if he wanted to and he probably doesn't.
...it
has awakened something of a frustration in a lot of people.
It has taken on a life of its
own, constantly adapting to changes in situation. I kind of follow it as an unintentional
experiment in human psychology. It's also interesting that it has absorbed a great deal of
Christian mythology without actually being a Christian religion. In the end though it is
people trying to feel they have some control (and indeed, considering the fear in the media)
that might be true.
[For fun, dig up and read Asimov's "I Spell My Name with an S" from 1958.]
There is no indication that anyone forced Trump into making any of the bad decisions
mentioned. Your first point is asking Hood to weave some fanciful alternative to what is
outright obvious. No serious author does that. If he were to have used "most likely" before
giving his sensible opinion, would that have satisfied you? The Easter Bunny holding a gun to
Trump's head and telling him to disavow Session is also a possibility, you know, but not a
likely one.
Frankly, I think you are the one who's intellectually deficient.
People who
actually have good instincts but just cannot bring themselves to face the harsh reality in
front of them.
The deplatforming of QAnon crap is not due to "Q" itself, but where "Q" supporters might
find themselves next, once this psyop has run its course. They wanna kill it now to keep the
delusion itself alive, lest all these "Q" true believer stumble into some anti-semitism and
other truths that actually challenge the status quo.
Being a true believer in "Q" is literally no different than being a true believer in the
Democrat-Republican kosher sandwich.
Correct. And when we're talking about the "Deep state," organized pedophilia, human
trafficking, etc, many of these "Q" people will inevitably find their way to the Rabbi behind
the curtain. It is the natural destination if one does not self-censor or cling to their
priors. There is no other destination, in fact.
William Binney is the former technical director of the U.S. National Security Agency who
worked at the agency for 30 years. He is a respected independent critic of how American
intelligence services abuse their powers to illegally spy on private communications of U.S.
citizens and around the globe.
Given his expert inside knowledge, it is worth paying attention to what Binney says.
In a media
interview this week, he dismissed the so-called Russiagate scandal as a "fabrication"
orchestrated by the American Central Intelligence Agency. Many other observers have come to
the same conclusion about allegations that Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. elections with
the objective of helping Donald Trump get elected.
But what is particularly valuable about Binney's judgment is that he cites technical
analysis disproving the Russiagate narrative. That narrative remains dominant among U.S.
intelligence officials, politicians and pundits, especially those affiliated with the
Democrat party, as well as large sections of Western media. The premise of the narrative is
the allegation that a Russian state-backed cyber operation hacked into the database and
emails of the Democrat party back in 2016. The information perceived as damaging to
presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was subsequently disseminated to the Wikileaks
whistleblower site and other U.S. media outlets.
A mysterious cyber persona known as "Guccifer 2.0" claimed to be the alleged hacker. U.S.
intelligence and news media have attributed Guccifer as a front for Russian cyber
operations.
Notably, however, the Russian government has always categorically denied any involvement
in alleged hacking or other interference in the 2016 U.S. election, or elections
thereafter.
William Binney and other independent former U.S. intelligence experts say they can prove
the Russiagate narrative is bogus. The proof relies on their forensic analysis of the data
released by Guccifer. The analysis of timestamps demonstrates that the download of voluminous
data could not have been physically possible based on known standard internet speeds. These
independent experts conclude that the data from the Democrat party could not have been
hacked, as Guccifer and Russiagaters claim. It could only have been obtained by a leak from
inside the party, perhaps by a disgruntled staffer who downloaded the information on to a
disc. That is the only feasible way such a huge amount of data could have been released. That
means the "Russian hacker" claims are baseless.
Wikileaks, whose founder Julian Assange is currently imprisoned in Britain pending an
extradition trial to the U.S. to face espionage charges, has consistently maintained
that their source of files was not a hacker, nor did they collude with Russian intelligence.
As a matter of principle, Wikileaks does not disclose the identity of its sources, but the
organization has indicated it was an insider leak which provided the information on senior
Democrat party corruption.
William Binney says forensic analysis of the files released by Guccifer shows that the
mystery hacker deliberately inserted digital "fingerprints" in order to give the impression
that the files came from Russian sources. It is known from information later disclosed by
former NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden that the CIA has a secretive program – Vault 7
– which is dedicated to false incrimination of cyber attacks to other actors. It seems
that the purpose of Guccifer was to create the perception of a connection between Wikileaks
and Russian intelligence in order to beef up the Russiagate narrative.
"So that suggested [to] us all the evidence was pointing back to CIA as the originator
[of] Guccifer 2.0. And that Guccifer 2.0 was inside CIA I'm pointing to that group as the
group that was probably the originator of Guccifer 2.0 and also this fabrication of the
entire story of Russiagate," concludes Binney in his interview with Sputnik news
outlet.
This is not the first time that the Russiagate yarn has been debunked . But it is crucially important to make Binney's expert
views more widely appreciated especially as the U.S. presidential election looms on November
3. As that date approaches, U.S. intelligence and media seem to be intensifying claims about
Russian interference and cyber operations. Such wild and unsubstantiated "reports" always
refer to the alleged 2016 "hack" of the Democrat party by "Guccifer 2.0" as if it were
indisputable evidence of Russian interference and the "original sin" of supposed Kremlin
malign activity. The unsubstantiated 2016 "hack" is continually cited as the "precedent" and
"provenance" of more recent "reports" that purport to claim Russian interference.
Given the torrent of Russiagate derivatives expected in this U.S. election cycle, which is
damaging U.S.-Russia bilateral relations and recklessly winding up geopolitical tensions, it
is thus of paramount importance to listen to the conclusions of honorable experts like
William Binney.
The American public are being played by their own intelligence agencies and corporate
media with covert agendas that are deeply anti-democratic.
Well - who set up them up, converted from the OSS? The banksters.
"Wild Bill" Donovan worked for JP Morgan immediately after WWII.
"our" US intelligence agencies were set up by, and serve, the masters of high finance.
Is this in dispute?
meditate_vigorously , 11 hours ago
They have seeded enough misinformation that apparently it is. But, you are correct. It
is the Banksters.
Isisraelquaeda , 2 hours ago
Israel. The CIA was infiltrated by the Mossad long ago.
SurfingUSA , 15 hours ago
JFK was on to that truth, and would have been wise to mini-nuke Langley before his
ill-fated journey to Dallas.
Andrew G , 11 hours ago
Except when there's something exceptionally evil (like pedo/blackmail rings such as
Epstein), in which case it's Mossad / Aman
vova.2018 , 7 hours ago
Except when there's something exceptionally evil (like pedo/blackmail rings such as
Epstein), in which case it's Mossad / Aman
The CIA & MOSSAD work hand in hand in all their clandestine operations. There is not
doubt the CIA/MOSSAD are behind the creation, evolution, training, supplying weapons,
logistic-planning & financing of the terrorists & the destruction of the Middle
East. Anybody that believes the contrary has brain problems & need to have his head
examined.
CIA/MOSAD has been running illegal activities in Colombia: drug, arms, organs &
human (child-sex) trafficking. CIA/MOSAD is also giving training, logistic & arms to
Colombia paramilitary for clandestine operation against Venezuela. After Bolsonaro became
president, MOSSAD started running similar operation in Brazil. Israel & Brazil also
recognizes Guaido as the legit president of Venezuela.
CIA/MOSSAD have a long time policy of
assassinating & taking out pep who are a problem to the revisionist-zionist agenda, not
just in the M-East but in the world. The CIA/MOSSAD organizations have many connections in
other countries like the M-East, Saudi Arabia, UAE, et al but also to the UK-MI5.
The Israelis infiltrated the US to the highest levels a long time ago - Proof
Israel has & collects information (a database) of US citizens in coordination
with the CIA & the 5 eyes.
Israel works with the NSA in the liaison-loophole operations
Mossad undercover operations in WDC & all over the world
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee – AIPAC
People with 2 citizenships (US/Israel) in WDC/NYC (the real Power)
From Steve Bannon a christian-zionist: Collusion between the Trump administration and
Israel .
Funny how a number of the right wing conspiracy stories according to the MSM from a
couple years back were true from the get go. 1 indictment over 4 years in the greatest
attempted coup in this country's history. So sad that Binney and Assange were never
listened to. They can try to silence us who know of the truth, but as Winston Churchill
once said, 'Truth is incontrovertible. Panic may resent it. Ignorance may deride it. Malice
may distort it. But there it is.' KDP still censors my book on their advertising platform
as it
promotes conspiratorial theories (about the Obama led coup) and calls out BLM and Antifa
for what they are (marxists) . Yet the same platform still recommends BLM books stating
there is a pandemic of cops killing innocent blacks. F them!!!! #RIPSeth #FreeJulian
#FreeMillie
smacker , 11 hours ago
Yes, and we all know the name of the DNC leaker who downloaded and provided
WikiLeaks
with evidence of CIA and DNC corruption.
He was assassinated to prevent him from naming who Guccifer 2.0 was and where he is
located.
The Russia-gate farce itself provides solid evidence that the CIA and others are in bed
with DNC
and went to extraordinary lengths to prevent Trump being elected. When that failed, they
instigated
a program of x-gates to get him out of office any way they could. This continues to this
day.
This is treason at the highest level.
ACMeCorporations , 12 hours ago
Hacking? What Russian hacking?
In recently released testimony, the CEO of CrowdStrike admitted in congressional
testimony, under oath, that it actually has no direct evidence Russia stole the DNC
emails.
Nelbev , 9 hours ago
"The proof relies on their forensic analysis of the data released by Guccifer. The
analysis of timestamps demonstrates that the download of voluminous data could not have
been physically possible based on known standard internet speeds. ... a disgruntled
staffer who downloaded the information on to a disc. That is the only feasible way such a
huge amount of data could have been released. ... William Binney says forensic analysis
of the files released by Guccifer shows that the mystery hacker deliberately inserted
digital "fingerprints" in order to give the impression that the files came from Russian
sources. ... "
Any computer file is a bunch of 1s and 0s. Anyone can change anything with a hex editor.
E.g. I had wrong dates on some photographs once, downloaded as opposed to when taken, just
edited the time stamp. You cannot claim any time stamp is original. If true time stamps,
then the DNC files were downloaded to a thumb drive at a computer on location and not to
the internet via a phone line. However anyone can change the time stamps. Stating a
"mystery hacker deliberately inserted digital [Russian] 'fingerprints' " is a joke if
denying the file time stamps were not tampered with. The real thing is where the narrative
came from, political spin doctors, Perkins Coie law firm hired by DNC and Hillary campaign
who hired Crowdstrike [and also hired Fusion GPS before for pissgate dossier propaganda and
FISC warrants to spy on political opponents] and Perkins Coie edited Crowdstrike report
with Russian narrative. FBI never looked at DNC servers. This is like your house was broken
into. You deny police the ability to enter and look at evidence like DNC computers. You
hire a private investigator to say your neighbor you do not like did it and publicise
accusations. Take word of political consultants hired, spin doctor propaganda, Crowdstrike
narrative , no police investigation. Atlantic Council?
Vivekwhu , 8 hours ago
The Atlantic Council is another NATO fart. Nuff said!
The_American , 15 hours ago
God Damn traitor Obama!
Yen Cross , 14 hours ago
TOTUS
For the youngsters.
Teleprompter Of The United States.
Leguran , 6 hours ago
The CIA has gotten away with so much criminal behavior and crimes against the American
public that this is totally believable. Congress just lets this stuff happen and does
nothing. Which is worse - Congress or the CIA?
Congress set up the system. It is mandated to perform oversight. And it just sits on its
thumbs and wallows in it privileges.
This time Congress went further than ever before. It was behind and engaged in an
attempted coup d'état.
Know thy enemy , 10 hours ago
Link to ShadowGate (ShadowNet) documentary - which answers the question, what is the
keystone,,,,,
It's time for Assange and Wikileaks to name the person who they rec'd the info from. By
hiding behind the "we don't name names" Mantra they are helping destroy America by
polarizing its citizens. Name the damn person, get it all out there so the left can see
that they've been played by their leaders. Let's cut this crap.
freedommusic , 7 hours ago
...all the evidence was pointing back to CIA as the originator [of] Guccifer 2.0.
Yep, I knew since day one. I remember seeing Hillary Clinton talking about Guccifer . As
soon as uttered the name, I KNEW she with the CIA were the brainchild of this bogus
decoy.
They copy. They mimic. These are NOT creative individuals.
Perhaps hell is too good a place for them.
on target , 4 hours ago
This is old news but worth bringing up again. The CIA never wanted Trump in, and of
course, they want him out. Their fingerprints were all over Russiagate, The Kavanaugh
hearings, Ukrainegate, and on and on. They are just trying to cover their asses for a
string of illegal "irregularities" in their operations for years. Trump should never have
tried to be a get along type of guy. He should have purged the entire leadership of the CIA
on day one and the FBI on day 2. They can not be trusted with an "America First" agenda.
They are all New World Order types who know whats best for everyone.
fersur , 7 hours ago
Boom, Boom, Boom !
Three Reseachable Tweets thru Facebook, I cut all at once, Unedited !
"#SusanRice has as much trouble with her memory as #HillaryClinton. Rice testified in
writing that she 'does not recall' who gave her key #Benghazi talking points she used on
TV, 'does not recall' being in any meetings regarding Benghazi in five days following the
attack, and 'does not recall' communicating with anyone in Clinton's office about
Benghazi," Tom Fitton in Breitbart.
"Adam Schiff secretly subpoenaed, without court authorization, the phone records of Rudy
Giuliani and then published the phone records of innocent Americans, including
@realDonaldTrump 's lawyers, a member of Congress, and a journalist," @TomFitton .
BREAKING: Judicial Watch announced today that former #Obama National Security Advisor
and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, admitted in written responses given
under oath that she emailed with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Clinton's
non-government email account and that she received emails related to government business on
her own personal email account.
STONEHILLADY , 7 hours ago
It's not just the Democrats, the warmongering neocons of the Republican party are also
in on it, the Bush/Romney McCain/McConnell/Cheney and many more. It's called "Kick Backs"
Ever notice these so called retired Generals all end up working for all these spying
companies that span the 5eyes to Israel. It seems our POTUS has got his hands full swimming
up stream to get this stopped and actually get rid of the CIA. It's the number 1 reason he
doesn't trust these people, they all try to tell him stuff that is mis-directed.
Liars, leakers, and thieves are running not only our nation but the world, as George
Carlin said, "It's a Big Club, and we ain't in it." If you fall for this false narrative of
mail in voting and not actually go and vote on election day, you better start learning
Chinese for surely Peelosi and Schumer will have their way and mess up this election so
they can drag Trump out of office and possible do him and his family some serious harm, all
because so many of you listen to the MSM and don't research their phony claims.
Max21c , 7 hours ago
It's called "Kick Backs" Ever notice these so called retired Generals all end up
working for all these spying companies that span the 5eyes to Israel.
American Generals & Admirals are a lot more corrupt today than they were a few
generations back. Many of them are outright evil people in today's times. Many of these
people are just criminals that will steal anything they can get their banana republic
klepto-paws on. They're nothing but common criminals and thieves. No different than the
Waffen SS or any other group of brigands, bandits, and criminal gangsters.
Max21c , 7 hours ago
The CIA, FBI, NSA, Military Intelligence, Pentagon Gestapo, defense contractors are
mixed up in a lot of crimes and criminal activities on American soil against American
citizens and American civilians. They do not recognize borders or laws or rights of liberty
or property rights or ownership or intellectual property. They're all thieves and criminals
in the military secret police and secret police gangsters cabal.
BandGap , 7 hours ago
I have seen Binney's input. He is correct in my view because he
scientifically/mathematically proves his point.
The blinded masses do not care about this approach, just like wearing masks.
The truth is too difficult for many to fit into their understanding of the world.
So they repeat what they have been told, never stopping to consider the facts or how
circumstances have been manipulated.
It is frustrating to watch, difficult to navigate at times for me. Good people who will
not stop and think of what the facts show them.
otschelnik , 8 hours ago
It could have been the CIA or it could have been one of the cut-outs for plausible
deniability, and of all the usual suspects it was probably CrowdStrike.
- CGI / Global Strategy Group / Analysis Corp. - John Brennan (former CEO)
- Dynology, Wikistrat - General James L. Jones (former chairman of Atlantic Council, NSA
under Obama)
- CrowdStrike - Dmitri Alperovich and Shawn Henry (former chief of cyber forensics
FBI)
- Clearforce - Michael Hayden (former dir. NSA under Clinton, CIA under Bush) and Jim
Jones Jr. (son Gnrl James Jones)
- McChrystal Group - Stanley McChrystal (former chief of special operations DOD)
fersur , 8 hours ago
Unedited !
The Brookings Institute – a Deep State Hub Connected to the Fake Russia Collusion
and Ukraine Scandals Is Now Also Connected to China Spying In the US
The Brookings
Institute was heavily involved in the Democrat and Deep State Russia collusion hoax and
Ukraine impeachment fraud. These actions against President Trump were criminal.
This institute is influenced from foreign donations from entities who don't have an
America first agenda. New reports connect the Institute to Chinese spying.
As we reported previously, Julie Kelly at American Greatness
released a report where she addresses the connections between the Brookings Institute,
Democrats and foreign entities. She summarized her report as follows: Accepting millions
from a state sponsor of terrorism, foisting one of the biggest frauds in history on the
American people, and acting as a laundering agent of sorts for Democratic political
contributions disguised as policy grants isn't a good look for such an esteemed
institution. One would be hard-pressed to name a more influential think tank than the
Brookings Institution. The Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit routinely ranks at the top of
the list
of the best think tanks in the world; Brookings scholars produce a steady flow of reports,
symposiums, and news releases that sway the conversation on any number of issues ranging
from domestic and economic policy to foreign affairs.
Brookings is home to lots of Beltway power players: Ben
Bernanke and Janet Yellen, former chairmen of the Federal Reserve, are Brookings fellows.
Top officials from both Republican and Democrat presidential administrations lend political
heft to the organization. From 2002 until 2017, the organization's president was Strobe
Talbott. He's a longtime BFF of Bill Clinton; they met in the 1970s at Oxford University
and have been tight ever since. Talbott was a top aide to both President Bill Clinton and
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Kelly continued:
Brookings-based fellows working at Lawfare were the media's go-to legal "experts" to
legitimize the concocted crime; the outlet manipulated much of the news coverage on
collusion by pumping out primers and guidance on how to report collusion events from
Special Counsel Robert Mueller's appointment to his final report.
Now, testimony related to a defamation lawsuit against Christopher Steele, the author of
the infamous "dossier" on Donald Trump, has exposed his direct ties to Talbott in 2016 when
he was still head of Brookings. Talbott and Steele were in communication before and after
the presidential election; Steele wanted Talbott to circulate the dossier to his pals in
John Kerry's State Department, which reportedly is what Talbott
did . Steele also briefed top state department officials in October 2016 about his
work.
But this isn't the only connection between the Brookings Institute and the Russia
collusion and Ukrainian scandals. We were the first to report that the Primary Sub-Source
(PSS) in the Steele report, the main individual who supplied Steele with bogus information
in his report was Igor Danchenko.
In November 2019, the star witness for the Democrat Representative Adam Schiff's
impeachment show trial was announced. Her name was Fiona Hill.
Today we've uncovered that Hill is a close associate of the Primary Sub-Source (PSS) for
the Steele dossier – Igor Danchenko – the individual behind most all the lies
in the Steele dossier. No wonder Hill saw the Steele dossier before it was released. Her
associate created it.
Both Fiona Hill and Igor Danchenko are connected to the Brookings Institute.
They gave a presentation together as Brookings Institute representatives:
Kelly writes about the foreign funding the Brookings Institute partakes:
So who and what have been funding the anti-Trump political operation at Brookings over
the past few years? The think tank's top benefactors are a predictable mix of family
foundations, Fortune 100 corporations, and Big Tech billionaires. But one of the biggest
contributors to Brookings' $100 million-plus annual budget is the Embassy of Qatar.
According to financial reports, Qatar has donated more than $22 million to the think tank
since 2004. In fact, Brookings operates a satellite center in Doha, the
capital of Qatar. The wealthy Middle Eastern oil producer
spends billions on American institutions such as universities and other think
tanks.
Qatar also is a top state sponsor of terrorism, pouring billions into Hamas, al-Qaeda,
and the Muslim Brotherhood, to name a few. "The nation of Qatar, unfortunately, has
historically been a funder of terrorism at a very high level," President Trump said in 2017. "We
have to stop the funding of terrorism."
An email from a Qatari official, obtained by WikiLeaks, said the Brookings
Institution was as important to the country as "an aircraft carrier."
The Brookings Institution, a prominent Washington, D.C., think tank, partnered with a
Shanghai policy center that the FBI has described as a front for China's intelligence and
spy recruitment operations, according to public records and federal court documents.
The Brookings Doha Center, the think tank's hub in Qatar, signed a memorandum of
understanding with the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences in January 2018, the
institution said . The academy is a policy center funded by the Shanghai municipal
government that has raised flags within the FBI.
The partnership raises questions about potential Chinese espionage activities at the
think tank, which employs numerous former government officials and nearly two dozen
current foreign policy advisers to Joe Biden's presidential campaign.
It is really frightening that one of two major political parties in the US is tied so
closely with the Brookings Institute. It is even more frightening that foreign enemies of
the United States are connected to this entity as well.
Let it Go , 8 hours ago
One thing for sure is these guys have far to much of our money to spend promoting their
own good.
fersur , 7 hours ago
Unedited !
Mueller Indictments Tied To "ShadowNet," Former Obama National Security Advisor and
Obama's CIA Director – Not Trump
According to a report in the Daily Beast, which cited the Wall Street Journal's
reporting of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into two companies, Wikistrat
and Psy Group, "The firm's advisory council lists former CIA and National Security Agency
director Michael Hayden, former national security adviser James L. Jones."
According to numerous reporting from major news outlets like the Wall Street Journal and
Daily Beast, both Wikistrat and Psy Group represent themselves as being social media
analysts and black PSYOP organizations. Both Wikistrat and Psy Group have foreign ownership
mixed between Israeli, Saudi (Middle East) and Russian. Here is what the Wall Street
Journal, The Daily Beast and pretty much everyone else out there doesn't know (or won't
tell you).
The fact Obama's former National Security Advisor, General James Jones, and former Obama
CIA director, Gen. Michael Hayden, are both on Wikistrat's advisory board may not seem
suspicious, but both of these general's have another thing in common, and that is the
ShadowNet. The ShadowNet, and its optional companion relational database, iPsy, were both
originally developed by the small, family owned defense contracting company, Dynology. The
family that owns Dynology; Gen. James Jones. I would add Paul Manafort and Rick Davis was
Dynology's partner at the time we were making the ShadowNet and iPsy commercially
available.
After obtaining the contract in Iraq to develop social media psychological warfare
capabilities, known in military nomenclature as Interactive Internet Activities, or IIA,
Gen. Jones kept the taxpayer funded application we developed in Iraq for the 4th
Psychological Operation Group, and made it commercially available under the trademark of
the "ShadowNet" and the optional black PSYOP component, "iPsy." If you think it is
interesting that one of the companies under Mueller's indictment is named, "Psy" Group, I
did as well. In fact, literally everything both publicly described in news reports, and
even their websites, are exactly the same as the ShadowNet and iPsy I helped build, and
literally named.
The only thing different I saw as far as services offered by Wikistrat, and that of
Dynology and the ShadowNet, was described by The Daily Beast as, "It also engaged in
intelligence collection." Although iPsy was a relational database that allowed for the
dissemination of whatever the required narrative was, "intelligence collection" struck
another bell with me, and that's a company named ClearForce.
ClearForce was developed as a solution to stopping classified leaks following the Edward
Snowden debacle in 2013. Changes in NISPOM compliance requirements forced companies and
government agencies that had employees with government clearances to take preventive
measure to mitigate the potential of leaking. Although the NISPOM compliance requirement
almost certainly would have been influenced by either Hayden, Jones or both, they once
again sought to profit from it.
Using components of the ShadowNet and iPsy, the ClearForce application (which the
company, ClearForce, was named after,) was developed to provide compliance to a regulation
I strongly suspect you will find Jones and Hayden had a hand in creating. In fact, I
strongly suspect you will find General Jones had some influence in the original requirement
for our Iraq contract Dynology won to build the ShadowNet – at taxpayer expense!
Dynology worked for several years incorporating other collection sources, such as
financial, law enforcement and foreign travel, and ties them all into your social media
activity. Their relationship with Facebook and other social media giants would have been
nice questions for congress to have asked them when they testified.
Part 1 of 2 !
fersur , 7 hours ago
Part 2 of 2 !
The ClearForce application combines all of these sources together in real-time and uses
artificial intelligence to predictively determine if you are likely to steal or leak based
on the behavioral profile ClearForce creates of you. It can be used to determine if you get
a job, and even if you lose a job because a computer read your social media, credit and
other sources to determine you were likely to commit a crime. It's important for you to
stop for a moment and think about the fact it is privately controlled by the former CIA
director and Obama's National Security Advisor/NATO Supreme Allied Commander, should scare
the heck out of you.
When the ClearForce application was complete, Dynology handed it off to ClearForce, the
new company, and Michael Hayden joined the board of directors along with Gen. Jones and his
son, Jim, as the president of ClearForce. Doesn't that kind of sound like "intelligence
collection" described by the Daily Beast in Wikistrat's services?
To wrap this all up, Paul Manafort, Rick Davis, George Nader, Wikistrat and Psy Group
are all directly connected to Mueller's social media influence and election interreference
in the 2016 presidential election. In fact, I believe all are under indictment, computers
seized, some already sentenced. All of these people under indictment by Mueller have one
key thing in common, General James Jones's and Michael Hayden's social media black PSYOP
tools; the ShadowNet, iPsy and ClearForce.
A recent meeting I had with Congressman Gus Bilirakis' chief of staff, Elizabeth Hittos,
is confirmation that they are reviewing my DoD memorandum stating the work I did on the IIA
information operation in Iraq, the Dynology marketing slicks for the ShadowNet and iPsy,
along with a screenshot of Goggle's Way-Back Machine showing Paul Manafort's partnership
with Dynology in 2007 and later. After presenting to her these facts and making clear I
have much more information that requires the highest classification SCIF to discuss and
requires being read-on to the program, Elizabeth contacted the office of Congressman Devin
Nunez to request that I brief the intelligence committee on this critical information
pertaining directly to the 2010 Ukrainian elections, Michael Brown riots, 2016 election
interference and the "Russia collusion" hoax. All of that is on top of numerous
questionable ethical and potentially illegal profits from DoD contracts while servings as
NATO Commander and Obama's National Security Advisor.
We also need to know if the ShadowNet and iPsy were allowed to fall into foreign hands,
including Russia, Saudi Arabia and Israel. I'm pretty sure South America is going to have a
few questions for Jones and Obama as well? Stay tuned!
Balance-Sheet , 4 hours ago
Intelligence Agencies of all countries endlessly wage war at all times especially
'Information Warfare' (propaganda/disinformation) and the primary target has always and
will always be the domestic population of the Intelligence Agency's country.
Yes, of course the CIA does target ALL other countries but the primary target will
always be the Americans themselves.
Balance-Sheet , 4 hours ago
Intelligence Agencies of all countries endlessly wage war at all times especially
'Information Warfare' (propaganda/disinformation) and the primary target has always and
will always be the domestic population of the Intelligence Agency's country.
Yes, of course the CIA does target ALL other countries but the primary target will
always be the Americans themselves.
The neoliberals own the media, courts, academia, and BUREAUCRACY (including CIA) and
they will do anything to make sure they retain power over everyone. These control freaks
work hard to create all sorts of enemies to justify their existence.
LaugherNYC , 15 hours ago
It is sad that this information has to be repeatedly published, over and over and over,
by SCI and other Russian. outlets.
Because no legit AMERICAN news outlet will give Binney or Assange the time of day or any
credence, this all becomes Kremlin-sponsored disinformation and denials. People roll their
eyes and say "Oh God, not the whole 'Seth Rich was murdered by the CIA' crap again!! You
know, his FAMILY has asked that people stop spreading these conspiracy theories and
lies."
SCI is a garbage bin, nothing more than a dizinformatz machine for Putin, but in this
case, they are likely right. It seems preposterous that the "best hackers in the world"
would forget to use a VPN or leave a signature behind, and it makes far more sense that the
emails were leaked by someone irate at the abuses of the DNC - the squashing of Bernie, the
cheating for Hillary in the debates - behavior we saw repeated in 2020 with Bernie shoved
aside again for the pathetic Biden.
Would that SOMEONE in the US who is not on the Kremlin payroll would pick up this
thread. But all the "investigative journalists" now work indirectly for the DNC, and those
that don't are cancelled by the left.
Stone_d_agehurler , 15 hours ago
I am Guccifer and I approve this message.
Sarc/
But i do share your opinion. They are likely right this time and most of the pundits and
media in the U. S. know it. That's what makes this a sad story about how rotten the U. S.
system has become.
Democrats will sacrifice the Union for getting Trump out of office.
If elections in Nov won't go their way, Civil War II might become a real thing in
2021.
PeterLong , 4 hours ago
If " digital "fingerprints" in order to give the impression that the files came from
Russian sources" were inserted in the leak by "Guccifer", and if the leak to wikileaks came
from Seth Rich, via whatever avenue, then the "Guccifer" release came after the wikileaks
release, or after wikileaks had the files, and was a reaction to same attempting to
diminish their importance/accuracy and cast doubt on Trump. Could CIA and/or DNC have known
the files were obtained by wikileaks before wikileaks actually released them? In any case
collusion of CIA with DNC seems to be a given.
RightlyIndignent , 4 hours ago
Because Seth had already given it to Wikileaks. There is no 'Fancy Bear'. There is no
'Cozy Bear'. Those were made up by CrowdStrike, and they tried the same crap on Ukraine,
and Ukraine told them to pound sand. When push came to shove, and CrowdStrike was forced to
say what they really had under oath, they said: "We have nothing."
novictim , 4 hours ago
You are leaving out Crowd Strike. Seth Rich was tasked by people at the DNC to copy data
off the servers. He made a backup copy and gave a copy to people who then got it to Wiki
leaks. He used highspeed file transfers to local drives to do his task.
Meanwhile, it was the Ukrainian company Crowd Strike that claimed the data was stolen
over the internet and that the thieves were in Russia. That 'proof" was never verified by
US Intelligence but was taken on its word as being true despite crowd strike falsifying
Russian hacks and being caught for it in the past.
Joebloinvestor , 5 hours ago
The "five eyes" are convinced they run the world and try to.
That is what Brennan counted on for these agencies to help get President Trump.
As I said, it is time for the UK and the US to have a serious conversation about their
current and ex-spies being involved in US elections.
Southern_Boy , 5 hours ago
It wasn't the CIA. It was John Brennan and Clapper. The CIA, NSA FBI, DOJ and the
Ukrainian Intelligence Service just went along working together and followed orders from
Brennan who got them from Hillary and Obama.
Oh, and don't forget the GOP Globalist RINOs who also participated in the coup attempt:
McCain, Romney, Kasich, Boehner, Lee and Richard Burr.
With Kasich now performing as a puppy dog for Biden at the Democrat Convention as a
Democrat DNC executive, the re-alignment is almost complete: Globalist Nationalist
Socialist Bolshevism versus American Populism, i.e. Elites versus Deplorables or Academics
versus Smelly Wal-Mart people.
on target , 5 hours ago
No way. CIA up to their eyeballs in this as well as the State Department. Impossible for
Russiagate or Ukrainegate without direct CIA and State involvement.
RightlyIndignent , 4 hours ago
Following Orders? How did that argument go at Nuremberg? (hint: not very well)
LeadPipeDreams , 6 hours ago
LOL - the CIA's main mission - despite their "official" charter, has always been to
destabilize the US and its citizens via psyops, false flags, etc.
Covid-1984 is their latest and it appears most successful project yet.
Iconoclast27 , 5 hours ago
The CIA received a $200 million initial investment from the Rockefeller and Carnegie
foundations when it was first established, that should tell you everything you need to know
how who they truly work for.
A_Huxley , 6 hours ago
CIA, MI6, 5 eye nations.
All wanted to sway the USA their own way.
Let it Go , 8 hours ago
Almost as frightening as the concentrated power held by companies such as Facebook and
Google is the fact Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon and the world's richest man, is the person who
owns and controls the Washington Post. It is silly to think Jeff Bezos purchased the
Washington Post in 2013 because he expected newspapers to make a lucrative resurgence.
It is more likely he purchased the long-trusted U.S. newspaper for the power it would
ensure him in Washington when wielded as a propaganda mouthpiece to extend his ability to
both shape and control public opinion. More on this subject in the article below.
How it is the Democrats, the Deep State, and the legacy media are still able to cling to
the remnants of these long discredited narratives is a mystery.
avoiceofliberty , 6 hours ago
At the official level, you have a point.
However, even before Mueller was appointed, a review of the materials in the extant
public record of both the DNC "hack" and the history of Crowdstrike showed the narrative
simply did not make sense. A detailed investigation of materials not made public was not
necessary to shoot down the entire narrative.
Indeed, one of the great scandals of the Mueller probe is the way it did not bring
prudential skepticism to the question of the DNC "hack". When building a case, either for
public debate or for public trial, a dose of skepticism is healthy; it leads to a careful
vetting of facts and reasoning.
Alice-the-dog , 6 hours ago
The CIA has been an agency wholly independent of the US government almost since its
inception. It is not under any significant control by the government, and has its own
agenda which may occasionally coincide with that of the government, but only
coincidentally. It has its own view of how the world should look, and will not balk at any
means necessary to achieve such. Including the murder of dis-favorable members of
government.
snodgrass , 6 hours ago
It's the CIA and the FBI, Obama and people in his administration who cooked up
Russiagate.
Floki_Ragnarsson , 7 hours ago
The CIA whacked JFK because he was going to slow the roll to Vietnam AND disband the CIA
and reform it.
It is broken and needs to be disbanded and reformed along lines that actually WORK! The
CIA missed the fall of the USSR, 9/11, etc. HTF does THAT happen?
DeportThemAll , 6 hours ago
The CIA didn't "miss" 9/11... they participated in it.
Let it Go , 8 hours ago
The CIA is a tool that when improperly used can do great damage.
Anyone who doesn't believe that countries use psychological warfare and propaganda to
sway the opinions of people both in and outside of their country should be considered
naive. Too many people America is more than a little hypocritical when they criticize other
countries for trying to gain influence considering our history of meddling in the affairs
of other countries.
Americans have every reason to be concerned and worried considering revelations of just
how big the government intelligence agencies have grown since 9-11 and how unlimited their
spying and surveillance operations have become. The article below explores this growth and
questions whether we have lost control.
The idea of Binney and Jason Sullivan privately working to 'secure the vote' is
something that I actually consider to be very eyebrow raising and alarming.
Son of Captain Nemo , 8 hours ago
Bill Binney under "B" in the only "yellow pages" that show a conscience and a
soul!...
This is the dumbest article ever. Russiagate is a total fabrication of the FBI as per
Clinesmith, CIA provided information that would have nipped it at the bud. Read the real
news.
bringonthebigone , 9 hours ago
Wrong. this article is one small piece of the puzzle. Clinesmith is one small piece of
the puzzle. The Flynn entrapment is one small piece of the puzzle. The Halper entrapment
was one small piece of the puzzle.
Because Clinesmith at the FBI covered up the information saying Page was a CIA source
does not mean it was a total FBI fabrication and does not mean the CIA was not involved and
does not mean the DNC server hack is irrelevant.
Sundance does a better job pulling it all together.
PKKA , 14 hours ago
Relations have already soured between Russia and the United States, and sanctions have
been announced. Tensions have grown on the NATO-Russia border. The meat has already been
rolled into the minced meat and it will not be possible to roll the minced meat back into
the meat. The CIA got it. But the Russian people now absolutely understand that the United
States will always be the enemy of Russia, no matter whether socialist or capitalist. But I
like it even more than the feigned hypocritical "friendship". Russia has never reached such
heights as during the good old Cold War. All Russians have a huge incentive, long live the
new Cold War!
smacker , 12 hours ago
More and more people have worked out that the fabricated tensions between the US and
Russia
and US and China have little to do with those two countries posing any sort of threat to
world peace.
It is all about the US trying to remain in No.1 position as uni-polar top dog via the
Anglo American Empire.
We see examples of this every day in the M/E, South China Sea, Taiwan, Libya all over
Eastern Europe,
Ukraine, Iran and now Belaruse. HK was added along the way.
Both Russia and China openly want a multi-polar world order. But the US will never
accept that.
Hence the prospect of war. The only unknown today is what and where the trigger will
be.
smacker , 12 hours ago
More and more people have worked out that the fabricated tensions between the US and
Russia
and US and China have little to do with those two countries posing any sort of threat to
world peace.
It is all about the US trying to remain in No.1 position as uni-polar top dog via the
Anglo American Empire.
We see examples of this every day in the M/E, South China Sea, Taiwan, Libya all over
Eastern Europe,
Ukraine, Iran and now Belaruse. HK was added along the way.
Both Russia and China openly want a multi-polar world order. But the US will never
accept that.
Hence the prospect of war. The only unknown today is what and where the trigger will
be.
hang_the_banksters , 31 minutes ago
the best proof thAt Guccifer 2 was CIA hacking themselves to frame Wikileaks is
this:
Guccifer has not yet been identified, indicted and arrested.
you'd think CIAFBINSA would be turning over every stone to the ends of the earth to bust
Guccifer. we just had to endure 4 years of hysterical propaganda that Russia had hacked our
election and that Trump was their secret agent. so Guccifer should be the Most Wanted Man
on the planet. meanwhile, it's crickets from FBI. they arent even looking for him. because
Guccifer is over at Langley. maybe someone outta ask Brennan where G2 is now.
remember when DOJ indicted all those GRU cybersoldiers? the evidence listed in the
indictment was so stunning that i dont believe it. NSA so thoroughly hacked back into GRU
that NSA was watching GRU through their own webcams and recording them doing Google
searches to translate words which were written in Guccifer's blog posts about the DNC email
leaks. NSA and DOJ must think we are all stupid, that we will believe NSA is so powerful to
do that, yet they cant identify Guccifer.
i say i dont believe that for a second because no way Russian GRU are so stupid to even
have webcams on the computers they use to hack, and it is absurd to think GRU soldiers on a
Russian military base would be using Google instead of Yandex to translate words into
English.
lay_arrow
ConanTheContrarian1 , 1 hour ago
As a confirmed conspiracy theorist since I came back from 'Nam, here's mine: The
European nobility recognized with the American and French revolutions that they needed a
better approach. They borrowed from the Tudors (who had to deal with Parliament) and began
to rule by controlling the facade of representative government. This was enhanced by
funding banks to control through currency, as well as blackmail and murder, and morphed
into a complete propaganda machine like no other in history. The CIA, MI6 and Mossad, the
mainstream media, deep plants in bureaucracy and "democratic" bodies all obey their
dictates to create narratives that control our minds. Trump seems to offer hope, but
remember, he could be their latest narrative.
greatdisconformity , 1 hour ago
A Democracy cannot function on a higher level than the general electorate.
The intelligence and education of the general electorate has been sliding for
generations, because both political parties can play this to their advantage.
It is no accident that most of the messages coming from politicians are targeted to
imbeciles.
The Mueller 'gang' as I'll call them has been caught with their pants down. The
official FBI lawyer team-member of the Mueller gang is now under criminal
indictment. A criminal indictment has been filed against former FBI Attorney Kevin Clinsesmith.
H is criminal action occurred while he was a part of the Mueller Investigative Team . This
crime is detailed in the Information Charging Document filed by the United States Department of
Justice with the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, wherein it
documents that "on or about June 19, 2017" Kevin Clinesmith "did willfully and knowingly make
and use a false writing and document, knowing the same to contain materially false, fictitious,
and fraudulent statement and entry in a matter before the jurisdiction of the executive branch
and judicial branch of the Government of the United States".
Kevin Clinesmith while he was part of the Mueller Team did this while President Trump was in
office.
-- "Count One" violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1001 (a) (3), that specifically says Clinesmith
"shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 5 years or, if the offense involves
international or domestic terrorism (as defined in section 2331), imprisoned not more than 8
years, or both" -- the critical meaning of which is that Clinesmith is not only facing 5-years
in prison, but could see his sentence having another 8-years added on if the crime he committed
was domestic terrorism as defined by 18 U.S. C. § 2331.Definitions -- a definition
that makes it a domestic terrorism crime "to influence the policy of a government by
intimidation or coercion" -- and is a domestic terrorism crime.
Clinesmith effectively admitted to committing this crime when he sent a text saying "I Have
Initiated the Destruction of the Republic" -- that explains why Clinesmith has agreed to a plea
deal with US Attorney Durham that will see him pleading guilty and giving evidence against
other coup plotters.
Clinesmith is proving to be a linchpin of the Operation Crossfire Hurricane investigation
that the FBI used to illegally target the Trump campaign in which Clinesmith took part in the
decision to send an FBI special agent into a counterintelligence briefing with Donald Trump and
General Michael Flynn. Clinesmith being one of the FBI lawyers who took part in interviews with
George Papadopoulos -- as well as Clinesmith was one of the plotters behind the FISA warrant
having been illegally obtained to spy on President Trump after he was in office. Clinesmith did
with joy as evidenced by his 22 November 2016 text disdaining Trump's election victory saying
Viva le
Resistance , of which caught Clinesmith by his short-hairs and he now fearing dread knowing
he stuck his foot in his mouth so-to-speak.
It is now Trump's turn to take down all of the membership of the attempted Coup d'Etat. Pop
your popcorn, get out your beer and sodas, and settle in. The show is just getting started.
Even though we assume (the case is not clear yet) this is all about Clinsesmith reversing
the meaning of a document submitted to the FISA court, about as bad act a senior FBI lawyer
can get up to, they are nowhere near as confident as yourself about the potential outcome of
this case over at the CTH.
Much more along the lines of this being another James Wolfe situation. Like Wolfe,
Clinsesmith knows too much and if he spills it all hell lets loose. However, to show there is
justice for all he, again like Wolfe, will spend a short amount of time in a white collar
jail and that's it.
By pleading guilty he has saved himself a small fortune in lawyers fees. Nice one.
I agree that he has made a deal with Durham but if Durham presses him he must tell all
about all or loose the deal and become the cutest fellow in the cell block.
Someone asked that I paint a bird's eye, 20,000 mile high view of the why's and
wherefore's for this whole fiasco, and I'd like feedback.
I draw a direct line from Russiagate to the West's NATO/EU expansion it's collusion with
fascist forces to Regime Change(TM) Ukraine in '14
• where Manafort was working to promote Ukraine's EU accession (AGAINST Russia's
interests)
• backed by the Clinton, Obama, McCain, Kerry, Nuland State Department, and the
establishment media
• leading Crimeans to vote 95% for annexation with Russia, to escape the Ukraine
civil war
prompting punishing sanctions to damage the recovery of Russia
• which was looted by the oligarchs under Clinton/Yeltsin/Summers "shock therapy" in
the '90s.
• including by oligarch tax cheat Bill Browder who lied to promote the extra-judicial
and bogus Magnitsky Act (REAL reason for Trump Tower meeting)
• all hiding behind a massive psy-op campaign of McCarthyite anti-Russia, anti-Putin
hysteria
• brought to you by the (corrupt) FBI, CIA, NSA, MI-6, Five Eyes, all led by the nose
by John Brennan, and
• and the disinfo industry and a spy network which laid out the breadcrumbs of
distraction, while trying to entrap bozos George Papadopolous, Carter Page, Roger Stone,
etc.
• ALL because Trump (via Manafort) would know the truth, and not see Russia as THE
ENEMY - which would totally blowing their cover.
So, the incompetent Dems handed Trump his re-election victory and sparked a dangerous new
Cold War (World War?) and nuclear M.A.D.
No one benefits from this other than the military/national security/information industry
complex.
"I draw a direct line from Russiagate to the West's NATO/EU expansion it's collusion with
fascist forces to Regime Change(TM) Ukraine in '14" Do you think the Russians were guilty or
not?
Plead guilty to a crime and you lose your bar license. I guess Clinesmith was not ready to
fall back being only a bar-tender after all, so he is now wiggling out of his "plea
agreement". The gulf between pleading guilty and pleading nolo contendre now appears
insurmountable.
Reality bites, along with the drawn-out difficulty getting justice in any of this Spygate
takedown. Humbles one about the amount of time it takes to actually build a beyond a
reasonable doubt case against any of these now exposed players, when the defendant can
successfully argue - I didn't intend to commit a crime, and/or I can't recall or I don't
remember anything about this incident.
Carry on Barr-Durham You have my very best wishes and even prayers. Just like Benghazi,
something happened, but you just can't prove something happened. Is that justice served or a
miscarriage of justice?
An alternate theory that I find very plausible is that FBI contractors were using the NSA
database for political opposition research. When the NSA found out and closed that avenue
there was a movement to hide that activity. Russia Collusion provided that opportunity as the
Clinton campaign funded Steele Dossier got laundered by Fusion GPS, DOJ official Bruce Ohr
and with the support of Obama White House became the basis to launch a counter-intelligence
investigation. After Trump got elected this operation moved to hide and obfuscate. Getting
Flynn out became priority one and Trump obliged by firing him. Mueller was the additional
option to prevent exposure and Trump once gain acceded by not declassifying.
As documents get declassified now the public, at least those following this story, get to
see how law enforcement and intelligence were used to interfere in a presidential election
and frame an opposition political candidate and duly elected president as a Manchurian
Candidate. Even more importantly we see how the entire justice system got weaponized using
false evidence and secret courts as well as a campaign of disinformation using the media who
were in cahoots to destroy the Trump presidency.
Clinesmith's plea deal is an important cornerstone in uncovering both the malfeasance and
the violation of law. He knowingly submitted false evidence to FISC to obtain a FISA warrant.
The only open question is how far and deep does Bill Barr want to go?
Begging your indulgence for my 'stream-of-consciousness' argument. Just trying to connect
so many points and history into a concise post.
My view of Russia under Putin has been of a country initially leaning West but unwilling
to give up its sovereignty to US diktat, given the history of NATO aggression.
It was the logical course of events which convinced me Putin was not the aggressor in
Ukraine. First, the Sochi Olympics with all of the media potshots at Russia/Putin, concurrent
and immediately followed by the Maidan coupe and ultra-right attacks on eastern Ukrainians,
especially the fiery massacre in the Odessa Trade Union building killing nearly nearly 50,
with 200 injured.
In the public record at the time was NATO's position that Ukraine must cancel a lease
given the Russians to keep its centuries old naval fleet (it's only warm water base) on the
Crimean peninsula. So, the accession of Crimea to the Russian federation by democratic vote
seemed only too logical, considering it had historically been considered part of Russia.
Otherwise, Russia foreign policy appears to be a model for the world, when compared
side-by-side with that of the U.S., IMHO.
As if viewing gambling at Rick's Café Americain in
Casablanca, Washington policymakers are shocked, shocked to discover that China, too, can
apply economic pressure. Complained the Heritage Foundation's James Carafano: "the Chinese
Communist government slapped sanctions on members of Congress as well as a U.S. ambassador.
This action is intended to send the world a message: Fear us."
Of course, the penalties Carafano complained of were retaliation for Washington's
imposition of similar sanctions on Chinese officials over the crackdown in Hong Kong. The
bilateral pissing match will have no impact on Beijing's policies.
Carafano is not the first person to complain about China's economic sanctions. Mathew Ha
of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies was upset by South Korea's refusal to follow
Washington's criticism of the People's Republic of China, which he blamed on fear of PRC
economic retaliation. Washington Examiner columnist Tom Rogan voiced similar
irritation with Beijing's threatened economic retaliation after Canberra moved to counteract
increased Chinese repression in Hong Kong.
Imagine. China is acting like the US!
It's almost charming to see such anger over Beijing's behavior when America continues to
be the global leader in using its economic power to penalize governments which refuse to heed
its commands. In January the president said he would punish Iraq if it acted like a sovereign
state and insisted on the withdrawal of American troops.
In June the Trump administration threatened to impose sanctions on everyone, including
family members , associated with the International Criminal Court if it proceeded with
plans to investigate US military personnel. Washington would treat a United Nations body
created by a multilateral treaty like Iran. And borrow enforcement tactics from North Korea,
which punishes multiple generations for offenses against the regime.
Last month the Trump administration added new sanctions in an attempt to block
construction of the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline between Germany, a supposed ally, and
Russia, essentially demanding that Berlin submit its energy policy to America for approval.
(It is widely suspected in Europe that Washington's ultimate objective is to force US natural
gas exports into the German market.)
However, what continues to most set America apart from ever other country, including
China, is the former's insistence on conscripting the rest of the world to follow US policy.
Originally American officials punished American companies and individuals
trading with disfavored states. However, in the 1980s the US began expanding penalties for
commerce with the Soviet Union and later Cuba to foreign, especially European, subsidiaries
of American firms.
The next step, applied to Sudan in 1997, was financial sanctions, punishing any company or
individual doing business with anyone in Sudan if they had the slightest connection to any US
banking institution. Which prevented normal commerce, irrespective of where a firm was
located. As a result, even Khartoum's embassies had to operate on a cash basis. After the
9/11 attacks Washington extended this form of penalty. Today the US uses America's dominant
economic role to insist that every resident of earth follow Washington's directives.
The Trump administration sanctions everyone everywhere for everything even if there is no
likelihood that doing so will have any practical impact. That is most evident in the
administration's high-profile "maximum pressure" campaigns against Iran, North Korea, and
Venezuela. So far none of America's targets have yielded.
Washington nevertheless has attempted to spin these failures as victories, since sanctions
obviously hurt the countries involved. However, the original objective in every case was to
change the target regime's policies. President Donald Trump promised a new regime in power in
Caracas, a nuclear agreement with Pyongyang, and an improved nuclear deal with Tehran. In
every case he failed to deliver. Indeed, his conduct toward Iran, which refused to even talk
with him after he tossed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, degenerated into shameless
begging when he promised the reigning clerics a better deal if they settled before the
election. The administration's ongoing economic campaigns against Cuba, Russia, and Syria
have been no more successful.
Now the president is using economic war against the PRC for domestic political purposes.
Hoping to win reelection with a "tough on China" campaign, he likely does not care about
sanctions' actual impact. His primary objective is to appear strong and determined to protect
America. No matter how ineffective, most any economic penalty will fulfill that role.
History demonstrates that sanctions most often work when they receive wide international
backing and are tied to something short of regime change or its policy equivalent. Moreover,
commercial pressure needs to be part of a larger diplomatic process. And the conditions to
end sanctions must be clear. When unrealistic terms are set, the policy is guaranteed to
fail. Even impoverished regimes steadfastly resist demands to surrender political control and
other vital interests. Hence the failure of the administration's promiscuous use of "maximum
pressure." The result in every case has been maximum resistance. Cuba's communists have been
defiant for six decades.
Unfortunately, economic sanctions usually hurt the wrong people. When I visited Cuba in
2018 the strongest critics of the Trump administration's reinvigorated sanctions were private
businesspeople. Trump effectively wiped out investments made by multiple entrepreneurs hoping
to welcome more American visitors. The private sector's growing success had undermined the
communist regime by providing some 40 percent of jobs in Cuba, draining power and revenue
away from the state. Trump reversed the process.
The impact of economic warfare often falls hardest on the most vulnerable members of
societies already ravaged by authoritarian politics and socialist economics. In the worst
case the impact of sanctions is akin to that of military conflict. And many US policymakers
don't care. When UN Ambassador Madeleine Albright was asked about the death of a half million
Iraqi babies as a result of US sanctions, she famously replied: "I think this is a very hard
choice, but the price – we think the price is worth it." No doubt she did, since the
high human cost did not affect her. Today economists Mark Weisbrot and Jeffrey Sachs warn
that U.S. sanctions on Iran, North Korea, and Venezuela also are killing civilians, perhaps
resulting in tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths.
In contrast, ruling elites are much better positioned to work commercial restrictions to
their advantage. For instance, authoritarian regimes can use foreign threats to rally public
support. The Trump administration's policies showed Iran's relative moderates, most
importantly President Hassan Rouhani, to be fools to trust the U.S. Hardline factions
strengthened their hold over the parliament in February's election and are expected to retake
the presidency in next year's contest. Dissidents with whom I met on an earlier trip to Cuba
complained that Washington's painful economic assault supported Fidel Castro's criticism of
"Yanqui imperialism." The regime blamed its self-inflicted economic failures on the American
embargo.
Almost 30 years ago I visited Belgrade and interviewed opposition leader Zoran Djindzic
– who after Slobodan Milosevic's defeat became prime minister (and was later
assassinated). Djindzic criticized US sanctions which, he complained, left his supporters
without enough money even for gasoline to travel to his rallies while Milosevic's allies
profited from illicit smuggling.
In part in reaction to such perverse impacts, the US enthusiastically added "smart" or
individual sanctions to its repertoire. So Washington punishes specific individuals –
often foreign officials in highly politicized cases. For instance, the US recently targeted
the hardline party boss for Xinjiang, Chen Quanguo, and the local puppet chief executive for
Hong Kong, Carrie Lam. Both are accomplices to great crimes who ultimately will find
themselves looking for their proper level of hell. However, neither is likely to barge into
Chinese President Xi Jinping's office to demand that he end the central government's
oppression in territories that they oversee. If they did so they probably would end up in one
of the prisons their opponents are assigned to.
The number of individual sanctions imposed is extraordinary. The Treasury Department's
"Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List" runs 1421 pages and covers people,
companies, organizations, ships, airplanes, and more. Most individual penalties, though they
might make US policymakers feel good, do little more than inconvenience regime elites, who
are denied the pleasure of purchasing a second home or hiding ill-gotten assets in America.
In January the law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher published its annual report on US
sanctions, explaining:
" Between claims of 'financial carpet bombing' and dire warnings regarding the
'weaponization' of the US dollar, it was difficult to avoid hyperbole when describing the use
of economic sanctions in 2019. Sanctions promulgated by the US Department of the Treasury's
Office of Foreign Assets Control ('OFAC') have become an increasingly prominent part of US
foreign policy under the Trump administration. For the third year in a row, OFAC blacklisted
more entities than it had under any previous administration, adding an average of 1,000 names
to the Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons ('SDN') List each year – more
than twice the annual average increase seen under either President Barack Obama or President
George W. Bush. Targets included major state-owned oil companies such as Petróleos de
Venezuela, S.A. ('PdVSA'), ostensible US allies such as Turkey (and – almost –
Iraq), major shipping lines, foreign officials implicated in allegations of corruption and
abuse, drug traffickers, sanctions evaders, and more. As if one blacklisting was not enough,
some entities had the misfortune of being designated multiple times under different
regulatory authorities – each new announcement resulting in widespread media coverage
if little practical impact. At last count, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps ('IRGC')
has been sanctioned under seven separate sanctions authorities. Eager to exert its own
authorities in what has traditionally been a solely presidential prerogative, in 2019 the US
Congress proposed dozens of bills to increase the use of sanctions. Compounding the impact of
expansive new sanctions, OFAC's enforcement penalties hit a record of more than US $1.2
billion."
Other than collecting some cash – last year a bit more than a tenth of a percent of
the deficit – Washington's economic warfare usually achieves little of note. Instead,
the administration's sanctions have been the occasion for endless hypocrisy, which seems
inevitable for American foreign policy, and sanctimony, which Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
supplies in abundance. He is notable for shamelessly lauding brutal, dangerous, and vile
regimes, such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt, while sanctioning awful but actually lesser
oppressors like Iran and Cuba. The more closely one studies administration policy, the more
political and less serious it is revealed to be.
The Trump administration's ever-increasing use of the dollar to coerce its friends as well
as adversaries also is creating resentment even among those who share many of America's
interests. So far Europe, which helped negotiate the nuclear pact with Iran, has repeatedly
chosen Tehran's Islamist regime over Washington's Trump administration. Most recently
European governments rejected the latter's preposterous claim that it remained a participant
in the JCPOA which it ostentatiously abandoned and thus could trigger reimposition of UN
sanctions.
There also is growing incentive for China, Russia, Europe, and other nations to cooperate
in looking for alternative mediums of exchange and payment systems. Commerce involving barter
trade, gold, crypto/digital currencies, local currency/non-dollar transactions, and special
facilities, such as Europe's INSTEX, which shuffles payments both ways without transfer
through a US connected bank, is expanding. Nascent Chinese and Russian payment systems have
begun to operate, though an alternative to the US dominated SWIFT system remains far off.
Predictably, Washington reacted to such developments by threatening to sanction anyone
attempting to work around US sanctions, most notably the creators of INSTEX. The danger to
American financial dominance is real. Even Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin acknowledged the
long-term risk to the US dollar's status as the world's reserve currency. Peter Harrell of
the Center for a New American Security observed: "US financial dominance is not immutable in
a world where the United States constitutes a slowly but steadily shrinking share of global
GDP. The Trump administration needs to weigh the near-term benefits of its aggressive use of
sanctions against the potential longer-term risks of a global backlash." Obama administration
Treasury Secretary Jack Lew warned that "While there is no immediate alternative to the
centrality of the US economy and dollar, there are troubling signs that the current approach
may accelerate efforts to create new options."
Long-time advocates of US economic aggression are horrified to find that Beijing now views
commercial coercion as a legitimate tactic. After all, in their view the only country that
has the mandate of heaven to rule the globe is America. Do as we say, not as we do, long has
been Uncle Sam's mantra.
The good news is that the PRC's economic clout remains limited. Despite its malign
intentions, it is far less able than the US to compel others to comply with its dictates.
Financial penalties can be a useful international tool, but not as America's "go-to" response
to every foreign challenge, especially given the human cost that so often results. Washington
needs to relearn the concepts of humility, restraint, and proportionality before it sparks a
global revolt that harms more innocent parties and further undermines America's economic
clout.
Doug Bandow is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute. A former Special Assistant to
President Ronald Reagan, he is author of Foreign Follies: America's New Global Empire
.
America's actions have already caused Beijing and Moscow to put aside historic enmity and
increase its partnership on economic issues and increasingly frequent joint
military drills . China and Iran recently completed the basics of an energy and military
cooperation agreement. Moreover, President Xi Jinping has become increasingly effective at
deepening ties with European, African, and Latin American states.
Today, Washington is saturated with China hawks. Unfortunately, andy voices that champion
keeping America strong by avoiding conflict with China are reflexively smeared as
"appeasement." I fear America may one day find out to its harm that rejecting sober diplomatic
engagement, which could have extended its security and prosperity well into the future, was
dismissed in favor of an unnecessary military-first tactic of coercing China.
Daniel L. Davis is a Senior Fellow for Defense Priorities and a former lieutenant
colonel in the U.S. Army who retired in 2015 after twenty-one years, including four combat
deployments. Follow him @DanielLDavis1.
Were you aware that the Steele dossier had a significant other?
"Rep Devin Nunes:
"You may remember that the State Department was involved and there were additional
dossiers that weren't the Steele dossier- except that they mirrored the Steele dossier.
And we think there is a connection between the [former] president of Brookings
and those dossiers that were given to the State Department."
"
...
Also from article:
"
The "additional dossiers that weren't the Steele dossier" addressed by Nunes
is a reference to a lesser known dodgy dossier produced by Brookings-affiliated
journalist Cody Shearer (brother-in-law of Strobe Talbott) which was crafted
explicitly to validate the wildly unsupported claims found in Steele's dossier.
"
Posted by: William Gruff | Aug 11 2020 16:57 utc | 92
Almost certainly, at least at one time, the scholarship was meant to come first.
The Rhodes Scholars provide a talent pool for the single organisation that oversees the CIA,
Mossad and British Intelligence:
A clumsy grab from James Corbett's excellent documentary `The WW1 Conspiracy` https://www.corbettreport.com/wwi/
provides the entrance to a rabbit hole ...
Gerry Docherty, WWI scholar and co-author of Hidden History: The Secret Origins of the
First World War.
DOCHERTY: Rhodes had the money and he had the contacts. He was a great Rothschild man
and his mining wealth was literally uncountable. He wanted to associate himself with Oxford
because Oxford gave him the kudos of the university of knowledge, of that kind of
power.
And in fact that was centered in a very secretive place called "All Souls College."
Still you'll find many references to All Souls College and "people behind the curtain" and
such phrases [as] "power behind thrones." Rhodes was centrally important in actually
putting money up in order to begin to gather together like-minded people of great
influence.
Rhodes was not shy about his ambitions, and his intentions to form such a group were
known to many. Throughout his short life, Rhodes discussed his intentions openly with many
of his associates, who, unsurprisingly, happened to be among the most influential figures
in British society at that time.
More remarkably, this secret society -- which was to wield its power behind the throne
-- was not a secret at all. The New York Times even published an article discussing the
founding of the group in the April 9, 1902, edition of the paper, shortly after Rhodes'
death.
The article, headlined "Mr. Rhodes's Ideal of Anglo-Saxon Greatness" and carrying the
remarkable sub-head "He Believed a Wealthy Secret Society Should Work to Secure the World's
Peace and a British-American Federation," summarized this sensational plan by noting that
Rhodes' "idea for the development of the English-speaking race was the foundation of 'a
society copied, as to organization, from the Jesuits.'" Noting that his vision involved
uniting "the United States Assembly and our House of Commons to achieve 'the peace of the
world,'" the article quotes Rhodes as saying: "The only thing feasible to carry out this
idea is a secret society gradually absorbing the wealth of the world."
Seems the Brookings Institute is deeply involved in lots of dodgy doings if
the info in this article is credible as it links to the discussion of Rhodes Scholars,
such as it is:
"It would here be the height of folly to presume, as some commentators have done, that
Talbott's role in this operation indicates an American guiding hand between the plot to undo
the 2016 elections. The fact is that Talbott's entire life and world outlook have been shaped
not by wholly anti-American ideas but rather by British Imperial principles that are
programed into the minds of all Rhodes Scholars during his time in Oxford from
1966-1968."
When was Bill Clinton there? 1968-1970, it seems, and Talbott was in Clinton's cabinet. Am
just midway through article, but thought I'd post the link so others might read.
From MoA
: "Russiagate, the deep state campaign to disenfranchise President Donald Trump, is further
unraveling. The Spies Who Hijacked America
is a first-person account that convincingly documents an MI6-linked conspiracy by former director
Richard Dearlove, former agent Christopher Steele and FBI informant Stefan Halper to frame Carter
Page that led to the FBI launching of "Crossfire Hurricane". The long read is very interesting
but it still does not account for who or what instigated the British spies into launching their
campaign against Trump. My hunch is that then CIA director John Brennan was the central person
behind it."
"A top Republican defended his committee releasing the declassified FBI interview with a
top source for British ex-spy Christopher Steele and said a forthcoming document would show
the bureau misled Congress about the reliability of his anti-Trump dossier.
South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee,
criticized the former MI6 agent, said Steele's dossier was compromised by Russian
disinformation, and argued
newly public FBI notes from a January 2017 discussion with Steele's "primary subsource"
demonstrated the FBI knew the dossier was unreliable but continued to use it anyway. During his
interview
with Maria Bartiromo on Sunday Morning Futures on Fox News, he also previewed new
bureau records to be released in the upcoming week he said would show the FBI misled not just
the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court about the Steele dossier, but also lawmakers.
"We also now have found, and this will come out next week, that Congress got suspicious
about the Russian subsource and reliability of the Steele Dossier, and that members of Congress
asked to be briefed about it," Graham said. "Here is what I think I'm going to be able to show
to the public: not only did the FBI lie to the court about the reliability about the Steele
dossier, they also lied to the Congress. And that is a separate crime. "" Washington
Examiner
-------------
The first thing to do is fire Christopher Wray, the present Director of the FBI, for
malfeasance and neglect of duty in this whole matter.
The second thing to do is to seriously consider dissolution of the FBI and its replacement
with a new federal police force severely limited to criminal investigations of violations of
federal law.
There should also be a separate domestic internal security investigative body modeled on the
UK's MI-5 (the Security Service). Whether or not such a service should have the power of arrest
is an open question. If arrests become necessary after their investigations the agents of some
other federal police force could be used to make them after examination of the security
service's case.
The rest of the USIC should be examined with an eye to re-organization in light of the
partisan role they played in the 2016 election.
How can any of the law enforcement and IC be re-organized when everyone in DC from the
politicians in both parties to the media and the top honchos in government are all part of
the same social and professional circle? They just keep rotating around.
Elliott Abrams epitomizes this. He's a convicted felon in the Iran-Contra affair in the
Reagan administration. Get's pardoned by Bush pere. Pushed hard for the disastrous Iraq
invasion in the George W. Bush administration. Then in charge of the Venezuela coup attempt
in the Trump administration. Fails at that. And then now gets appointed to head the Iran desk
to create more trouble.
DC is incestuous and corrupt beyond redemption.
As far is Wray is concerned why hasn't he been fired sometime back? Why did Trump hire him
and Rosenstein in the first place?
@LindseyGrahamSC saying today the 2018 SSCI had doubts about Steele's primary sub source,
and pointing fingers at the 2018 FBI for misinformation, carries an identical motive to
Sally Yates testimony last week.
It's all CYA in DC Central. Graham protecting SSCI.
It appears the Republicans in the Senate were in on the Russia Collusion hoax and now
throwing the FBI under the bus. DC is a cesspool of corruption. Only voters can reform this
club by voting both parties out.
Writing on Substack, Steven Schrage for the first time tells the story of how he worked
alongside "FBI Informant" Stefan Halper at Cambridge during the "Russiagate" period:
We are nearly at the end of Trump's term yet his administration hasn't provided a full
accounting of the election interference and framing of Trump and some of his team by the
previous Obama administration and his own administration.
Sen. Graham thinks [or at least says] Russia hacked the Democrats; and thinks [or at least
says] Igor Dancheko represent "Russian disinformation."
"The sub-source [Danchenko] was a senior Russian researcher at the Brookings Institution
and an employee of Christopher Steele living in the United States. He calls up a bunch of
people in Russia. Who do you think this information came from? It came from the Russian
intelligence service. They played this guy like a fiddle," Graham has recently said.
Unctuous Graham himself continues maliciously to spread lies.
The first words out of his mouth at last week's hearing with the unctuous Sally Yates was
Russia hacked the Democrats.
In other words, he was pretending -- and in his thus lying, creating a "predicate" for all
of the Russia Hoax nonsense that continues and which he helps to continue, by lying.
So is this liar going to get to the bottom of it, or instead create and continue to create
alternate reality from which more propaganda be disseminated and spun onto American
public?
He, and those pushing these lies, our congressional leaders -- and think we are not aware
of their vile and moral turpitude.
Not only did the FBI and Sally Yates and Rosenstein lie to the court about the reliability
about the Steele dossier.
And not only does Graham continue to lie to the American people.
Who is assisting Graham to run his ongoing and continuing cover up?
The FBI? The DOJ? The CIA? Senator Warner? etc. . . .
Why does the Senate list Mark Warner, a Democrat, as "Vice Chair of the Senate
Intelligence Committee"?
When the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence was formed in 1976, via Senate Resolution
400 of the 94th Congress, this is what they decided:
[[[(b) At the beginning of each Congress, the Majority Leader of the Senate shall select a
chairman of the select Committee and the Minority Leader shall select a vice chairman for the
select Committee. The vice chairman shall act in the place and stead of the chairman in the
absence of the chairman. Neither the chairman nor the vice chairman of the select committee
shall at the same time serve as chairman or ranking minority member of any other
committee]]]
PS
Fire Wray, dissolve FBI, excellent suggestions.
In its place, a new federal police force severely limited to criminal investigations of
violations of federal law, also a step in the right direction.
Should the nation's federal police chief report to the AG directly, or directly to the
president?
Should this job be subject to advise and consent of senate, or, as is case with National
Security Advisor, not subject to advise and consent of senate?
And feel free to criticize, but someone like . . . Attorney Michael Bernard Mukasey,
former federal judge and 81st Attorney General of the United States --- he, be named acting
FBI, right now, forthwith?
-30-
It appears that SSCI with Burr and Warner are in on the coup attempt. They likely had
Wolfe leak the Carter Page FISA application which was marked by a FBI special agent to his
squeeze who took it with her to the NY Times. Mueller then takes over that investigation and
buries it including lying to FISC. Wolfe gets away with a slap on the wrist. They are all
implicated in the coup attempt - Republicans & Democrats in Congress, the FBI, DOJ, DNI,
CIA, Obama, Biden, the media!
In a functioning constitutional republic this would be considered outrageous no matter
one's opinion of Trump. The fact that the Trump administration itself is playing a huge role
in obfuscating this subversion of the constitution by those entrusted to protect and defend
it is telling. I'm old and my creator beckons. It pains me to no end what legacy we are
leaving behind to our grandchildren and their children. My grandpa would be so dismayed!
Who compromised this trio of senior senate leadership? Feinstein had a Chinese spy on her
staff for a decade, apparently oblivious to that the whole time. Of course Russia is all we
hear about, then and now.
Jack,
Just to clarify, the link you posted above is about Steven Schrage, not by him. It was
written by Matt Taibbi at his personal internet perch. I agree it's definitely worth the time
to read.
The FBI is indeed fighting for its survival, as I suspect are elements of the DOJ and
other elements of the I C . If Trump is re elected, he will have a mandate for reform, that
is why they will stop at nothing to prevent it.
I think, as someone else here at SST has suggested, the swamp is going to use the 20th
Amendment to install Pelosi or similar. The chosen vehicle will be corruption of a mail in
ballot process. As my first boss told me as we watche ounance manager being marched away by
the police: "when someone is going to steal from you, the first thing they do is mess up the
paperwork". That maxim proved true a number of times in my career.
DC District of Corruption is beyond redemption.
The 17 "intelligence" agencies are rotten to the core as well.
I love my country but have a growing dislike of my federal government.
More like feral government.
Doubt the newly found corona super powers are going away anytime soon.
Grandparents were Irish immigrants.Learned early to keep a well stocked cellar and as much
savings as possible.
Hard times are coming.
It seems that Steven Schrage coming forward NOW with a recording of Halper stating that
Flynn's gonna be f*ked 2 days before the leak to David Ignatius is a new shiny object to
distract. Similar to Ms. Lindsey's faux outrage NOW that the FBI lied to SSCI. Of course he
knew and so did Burr & Warner back in 2018. They kept quiet all this time. The big
question is what did Senators Burr & Warner know and when and what role did they play in
the coverup? And of course the same goes for Ms. Lindsey and the rest of the coterie in
Congress?
Col. Lang,
What do your expert senses detect when both Rosenstein & Sally Yates have the best
Captain Renault impersonation? They knew nuttin!! They just sign FISA applications and keep
seats warm.
For years,the Feebs have been flat-footed keystone cops in the counterintelligence
area.
Want more evidence?
Peter Strzok - a mediocrity with no sense of op security rose to number 2 in the FBI CI
division.
Look at the bumbling mess these dolts made out of their attempted "coup."
Spy catching is not police work;it's "intelligence" work.
I think that what other posters may be seeing and commenting upon is trenchently conveyed
in this quote from Carroll Quigley's Tragedy and Hope:
"The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one,
perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to
doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so
that the American people can 'throw the rascals out' at any election without leading to any
profound or extensive shifts in policy."
This understanding adequately accounts for the behavior of The Borg toward President Trump's
stated aims, and the defenestration of General Flynn. They don't want anything to change, and
will go to any lengths to prevent it from happening. I guess we'll have to see if this will,
indeed, be how it plays out. In my heart of hearts I certainly hope not.
Wolfe was only indicted for lying to the FBI. He was never indicted for the big stuff of
leaking the classified Carter Page FISA application provided by the FBI to SSCI to his
"mistress" Ali Watkins. She moved to the NY Times and then began writing exposes that sold a
certain now proven false narrative.
Was Wolfe ordered to leak it by Burr & Warner? Why was the leak investigation taken
over by Mueller? What role did SSCI have in the coverup? What was Warner doing as some of his
text messages to Steele's attorney Adam Waldman was released by Mueller?
Was SSCI a co-conspirator in the framing of a duly elected President?
"Just to clarify, the link you posted above is about Steven Schrage, not by him"
Hi Ex-PFC Chuck - the piece was definitely written by Schrage. Its a first-person account
of his work under Halper, with a ton of observations about his character and past.
For what its worth I sensed a little bit of CYA in the piece, like Schrage is trying to
cleave himself from the rest of the group. His account of how and why Carter Page got to his
symposium doesn't really add up - did he make a similar effort to get a member of the Clinton
campaign? Appears not.
title - The Spies Who Hijacked America
As a doctoral candidate at Cambridge working under "FBI Informant" Stefan Halper, I had a
front-row seat for Russiagate
"Was SSCI a co-conspirator in the framing of a duly elected President?"
Good questions. I would go back a couple decades and see how much money in donations those
members got from people who could have corrupted them, such as Jeffery Epstein and those
connected to him, and see if they have any other foreign financial entanglements.
Have to wonder at the re-emergence of Russiagate. Seems a major reason for its emergence
is to shame voters into voting for Biden. If you do not vote for Biden, you are Putin's
useful idiot. In particular aimed at African Americans. Recently a NYT reporter claimed that
it was Russian mean tweets, etc that caused a very dramatic drop in African American turn out
in 2016. See screen shot by Aron Mate as the NYT reporter deleted the tweets.
Looks like the DNC may be very nervous about Black turnout after Biden's many racial
gaffes. Imagine Black turnout if he chooses Susan Rice as his VP. The DNC may have to go to
Putin to ask for his help.
Were you aware that the Steele dossier had a significant other?
"Rep Devin Nunes:
"You may remember that the State Department was involved and there were additional
dossiers that weren't the Steele dossier- except that they mirrored the Steele dossier.
And we think there is a connection between the [former] president of Brookings
and those dossiers that were given to the State Department."
"
...
Also from article:
"
The "additional dossiers that weren't the Steele dossier" addressed by Nunes
is a reference to a lesser known dodgy dossier produced by Brookings-affiliated
journalist Cody Shearer (brother-in-law of Strobe Talbott) which was crafted
explicitly to validate the wildly unsupported claims found in Steele's dossier.
"
I know it sounds wacky to those of you who still put some store in MSM nonsense,
but I still believe that what we know as "Russiagate" was a carefully planned operation
to:
initiate a new anti-Russia McCarthyism -
after Trump's election, MSM repeated Russigate accusations about Russian meddling
every night for months;
elect MAGA Nationalist (Trump, not Hillary!) -
as Kissinger had called for in his Aug 2014 WSJ Op-Ed;
discredit Wikileaks/Assange;
lead to a vindictive settling of scores with Assange, Flynn, Manafort.
Also: It's likely that Skripal was the true "primary sub-source" and that he was drugged
because he planned to flee back to Russia because he realised that he knew too much. He knew
that the "dirty dossier" was meant to be untrue and easily debunked. It would never actually
tarnish Trump - only Russia. Not surprisingly, Trump's MAGA Nationalism has been
strengthened by Russiagate allegations while the anti-Russia sentiment remains.
From the document: "Binney is quoted as being convinced by Campbell's analysis and now
believes the DNC data was hacked."
This person gets it wrong. What Binney concluded was that the data was *manipulated" and
therefore can not be used to establish much of anything. However, the point that the data
could not be transmitted at the speed estimated in 2016 is still basically valid and that the
data was loaded onto removable storage is also still likely. *However*, that fact has always
been mostly irrelevant, since no one knows how many times it was moved and by what means.
Almost certainly it was moved by an external storage device at some point before ending up in
Wikileaks. Craig Murray pretty much said as much.
How I would have done it is sit outside the DNC server location with a decent high-speed
WiFi connection to their wireless network (I presume they have one, everyone does these
days), and after doing whatever was necessary, either as an employee or a spy, to connect to
the network, I would have downloaded the data to my wireless device (laptop, presumably). The
NSA would be oblivious to this transfer, although depending on my anti-forensics skill, it
might still have been detected internally by a computer forensics expert. CrowdStrike never
found the actual leaker or the exfiltration method AFAIK; all they found was some malware -
which means whoever took it was either authorized to do so (or used the credentials of
someone else authorized to do so - standard operating procedure for either external or
internal spies) or was very good at anti-forensics. Or CrowdStrike was simply incompetent. Or
all three.
What the data analysis *does* do is disprove the US allegation that Russians extracted the
data *over the Internet* *directly* to Wikileaks. Nothing in the Mueller report suggests the
data was moved by external storage media. Binney's statement that if it was moved over the
Internet, the NSA would know it and could prove it remains true. That they never have is one
huge red flag about the Mueller claims.
The rest of the conspiracy analysis in the linked document is only minimally interesting.
The 5G stuff just shows the writer to be a non-scientist, as they fully admit, while still
suggesting that 5G is some sort of health threat. I wouldn't be surprised if it is to some
degree. The problem is that no one outside the non-ionizing radiation scientific community
has any real clue to *what* degree. If the international organizations have concluded it is
not, it takes, as they say, "extraordinary evidence" to prove them wrong. None of that has
been forthcoming, in particular nothing by Snake here. So it's a waste of time to take it
seriously. I've asked Snake for *one* single experiment done by *anyone* with real
credentials that uses the actual level of radiation from either a 5G phone or a tower to
cause subjects to get the virus. AFAIK there is no such experiment done anywhere by anyone.
So there is no evidence it happens - or for that matter, no evidence it doesn't except
current recognized science. Which, as I say, has been dismissed by the real experts.
Everything else is speculation - and conspiracy theory.
In general, I like conspiracy theories. They provide a fertile field for investigation -
if someone has the means to do so. Most conspiracy theorists don't have the means. They just
regurgitate the available reports - which, by definition, are unreliable - and engage in
"analysis", which really means speculation. Only on the ground investigation can begin to get
at the truth.
Back in 1968 or 1969, I forget which, I actually went to Point Pleasant, West Virginia, to
talk to people about the legendary "Mothman" that journalist John Keel had written about. I
talked to the cops involved, a stringer reporter who had accompanied Keel in his
investigations, and some of the UFO witnesses in the area. I couldn't establish what actually
happened from this, but it *did* confirm what Keel had written was what he was told.
Keel was an "old-school" journalist who believed in "ground truth". The problem with most
conspiracy theorists is that most of them don't have either the technical expertise or the
resources to get "ground truth". Keel himself told me once that he would go to a location, do
some investigation, deliver a talk of some sort, and write off his expenses as tax
write-offs, which he said the IRS was not happy about. And he was by no means rich, his books
never sold that much. Without a significant income, it's next to impossible to determine the
truth of 99% of the events in any given conspiracy theory.
Or for that matter, the truth in 99% of the main stream news. But it's not 100%. The other
problem conspiracy theorists have - and we see it here daily - is that just because a report
comes from the MSM, it *has* to be false in its *entirety*. Which is ridiculous. Most of the
MSM news is valid reporting. It's just how much is left out and how the spin is applied from
the wording or who the source was that is the problem. A few things might be completely made
up, but most things aren't. But if the reporter hasn't himself done the leg-work to verify
the statements of the sources, then it has to be considered unreliable or at least
incomplete.
Even before Rep. Tulsi Gabbard threatened to
boycott the October 15th Dem debate as the DNC usurps the role of voters in the Democratic primacy 2020 election and with an
impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump on the table, the Swamp was stirred and its slimy muck may be about to come to
the surface as never before.
If so, those revelations are long overdue.
It is no secret to the observant that since the 2016 election, the Democratic Party has been in a state of near-collapse, the
victim of its own hubris, having lost their moral compass with unsubstantiated Russisgate allegations; those accusations continue
as a futile exercise of domestic regime change.
Today's Dems are less than a bona fide opposition party offering zero policy solutions, unrecognizable from past glories and
not the same political party many of us signed up for many years ago. Instead, the American public is witnessing a frenzied, unscrupulous
strategy.
Desperate in the denial of its demise, confronting its own shadow of corruption as the Dems have morphed into a branch of the
CIA – not unlike origins of the East German Stasi government.
It should not be necessary to say but in today's hyper volatile political climate it is: No American should be labelled as anything
other than a loyal American to be deeply disturbed by the Democrat/CIA collusion that is currently operating an unprecedented
Kangaroo Court in secret, behind closed doors; thus posing an ominous provocation to what remains of our Constitutional Republic.
As any politically savvy, independent thinking American might grasp, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Minority Leader Chuck
Schumer and their entire coterie of sycophants always knew that Russiagate was a crock of lies.
They lied to their willing Democratic rank n file, they lied to American public and they continue to lie about their bogus Impeachment
campaign.
It may be that whistleblower
Ed Snowden's revelations about the NSA surveillance state was the first inkling for many Americans that there is a Big Problem
with an out-of-control intelligence community until Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer warned that
Trump was being 'really dumb " in daring to question Intel's faulty conclusion that Russia hacked the 2016 election.
"Let me tell you. You take on the intelligence community = they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you."
Inescapably, Schumer was suggesting that the Congress has no oversight, that there is no accountability and that the US has lost
its democratic roots when a newly elected President does not have the authority to question or publicly disagree with any of the
Intel agencies.
Since the 2016 election, there has been a steady drumbeat of the US Intel's unabashed efforts to undermine and otherwise prevent
a newly elected President from governing – which sounds like a clear case of insubordination or some might call it treasonous.
The Intel antipathy does not appear to be rooted in cuts to a favorite social services program but rather protecting a power,
financial and influence agenda that
goes
far deeper and more profound than most Americans care to contemplate.
Among a plethora of egregious corporate media reactions, no doubt stirred by their Intel masters, was to a
July, 2018 summit meeting between Russian President Putin and Trump in Helsinki emblematic of illegitimate censures from Intel
veterans and its cronies:
Not one praised Trump for pursuing peace with Russia.
And yet, fellow Americans, it is curious to consider that there was no outrage after the 911 attacks in 2001 from any member of
Congress, President Bush or the Corporate Media that the US intelligence community had utterly failed in its mission to keep the
American public safe.
There was no reckoning, not one person in authority was held accountable, not one person who had the responsibility to 'know'
was fired from any of the Intel agencies. Why is that?
As a result of the corrupt foundation of the Russiagate allegations, Attorney General Bob Barr and Special Investigator John Durham
appear
hot on the trail with law enforcement in Italy as they have apparently scared the bejesus out of what little common sense remains
among the Democratic hierarchy as if Barr/Durham might be headed for Obama's Oval Office.
Barr's earlier comment before the Senate that " spying did occur' and that '
it's a big deal' when
an incumbent administration (ie the Obama Administration) authorizes a counter-Intelligence operation on an opposing candidate (ie
Donald Trump) has the Dems in panic-stricken overdrive – and that is what is driving the current Impeachment Inquiry.
With the stark realization that none of the DNC's favored top tier candidates has the mojo to go the distance, the Democrats have
now focused on a July 25th
phone call between Trump and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in which Trump allegedly ' pressured ' Zelenskyy to investigate
Joe Biden's relationship with Burisma, the country's largest natural gas provider.
Zelenskyy, who defeated the US-endorsed incumbent President Petro Poroshenko in a landslide victory, speaks Russian, was elected
to clean up corruption and end the conflict in eastern Ukraine. The war in the Donbass began as a result of the US State Department's
role in the
overthrow of democratically elected Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014.
Trump's first priority on July 25th was
Crowd Strike , a cybersecurity firm with links to the HRC campaign which was hired by the DNC to investigate Russian hacking
of its server.
The Dems have reason to be concerned since it is worth contemplating why the FBI did not legally mandate that the DNC turn its
server over to them for an official Federal forensic inspection.
One can only speculate those chickens may be coming home to roost.
Days after an anonymous whistleblower (not to be confused with a real whistleblower like Edward Snowden) later identified as a
CIA analyst with a professional history linked to Joe Biden,
publicly released a
Complaint against
Trump.
House Speaker Nancy
Pelosi announced
the initiation of an ambiguous Impeachment Inquiry campaign with little specificity about the process. The Complaint is suspect since
it reads more like a professionally prepared Affidavit and the Dems consider Pelosi's statement as sufficient to initiate a formal
process that fails to follow the time-honored path of a full House vote predicating a legitimate impeachment inquiry on to the Judiciary
Committee.
Of special interest is how the process to date is playing out with the House Intelligence Committee in a key role conducting what
amounts to
clandestine meetings , taking depositions and witness statements behind closed doors with a still secret unidentified whistleblower's
identity and voice obscured from Republican members of the Intel Committee and a witness testifying without being formally sworn
in – all too eerily similar to East Germany.
The pretense of shielding the thinly veiled CIA operative as a whistleblower from public exposure can only be seen as an overly-dramatic
transparent performance as the Dems have never exhibited any concern about protecting real whistleblowers like Snowden, Chelsea Manning,
Bill Binney, Thomas Drake, John Kiriakou, Julian Assange, Jeffrey Sterling and others who were left to fend for themselves as the
Obama Administration prosecuted more true, authentic whistleblowers than any other administration since the
Espionage Act of 1917 .
As the paradigm shift takes its toll on the prevailing framework of reality and our decayed political institutions, (the FBI and
DOJ come to mind as the Inspector General's report is due at week's end), how much longer does the Democratic Party, which no longer
serves a useful public purpose, deserve to exist?
Russia is backing Donald Trump, China is supporting Joe Biden and Iran is seeking to sow
chaos in the US presidential election, a top intelligence official has warned in a sobering
assessment of foreign meddling.
The
statement on Friday by William Evanina, director of the National Counterintelligence and
Security Center, raises fears of a repeat of the 2016 election, when Russia manipulated social
media to help Trump and hurt his opponent Hillary Clinton.
"Russia is using a range of measures to primarily denigrate former Vice President Biden and
what it sees as an anti-Russia 'establishment'," Evanina said. "This is consistent with
Moscow's public criticism of him when he was Vice President for his role in the Obama
Administration's policies on Ukraine and its support for the anti-Putin opposition inside
Russia."
Evanina identified Andriy Derkach, a pro-Russia Ukrainian politician, as "spreading claims
about corruption – including through publicized leaked phone calls" to attack Biden's
campaign.
The Washington Post reported that Derkach has met repeatedly with Trump's personal lawyer,
Rudy Giuliani, who has pushed conspiracy theories about the former
vice-president.
Evanina also warned that some "Kremlin-linked actors" were spreading false claims about
corruption to undermine Biden, while others were trying to "boost President Trump's candidacy
via social media and Russian television".
Evanina, the top intelligence official monitoring threats to the election, is a Trump
appointee. His statement lists China before Russia but presents less specific evidence of
direct interference by Beijing.
"We assess that China prefers that President Trump – whom Beijing sees as
unpredictable – does not win re-election," Evanina said. "China has been expanding its
influence efforts ahead of November 2020 to shape the policy environment in the United States,
pressure political figures it views as opposed to China's interests, and deflect and counter
criticism of China."
He added: "Beijing recognizes that all of these efforts might affect the presidential
race."
Evanina highlighted China's criticism of Trump's handling of the coronavirus pandemic, the
closure of China's consulate in Houston and the White House responses to Chinese actions in
Hong Kong and the South China Sea.
On Friday, the US imposed sanctions on Hong Kong's chief executive, Carrie Lam, and 10
other senior officials. Trump has also ordered crackdowns on the
Chinese owners of the popular apps TikTok and WeChat.
Iran, meanwhile, was seeking to undermine US democratic institutions and Trump, and to
divide the country ahead of the 2020 elections, Evanina's statement said.
"Iran's efforts along these lines probably will focus on on-line influence, such as
spreading disinformation on social media and recirculating anti-US content. Tehran's motivation
to conduct such activities is, in part, driven by a perception that President Trump's
reelection would result in a continuation of US pressure on Iran in an effort to foment regime
change."
Trump pulled the US out of a nuclear deal agreed by Barack Obama and imposed various
sanctions on Tehran.
The anti-Trump pressure group National Security Action denied that China's public actions
rose to the level of Russia's covert election interference. "Jarringly, the statement attempted
to minimize what Russia is doing – again attacking our democracy in a bid to secure
Trump's reelection – by comparing it to China's public criticism of the administration's
recent punitive measures against Beijing," a spokesperson, Ned Price, said. "Any interference
in our democracy is unacceptable, but there is no equivalence between the two efforts."
In a press conference at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, on Friday evening, Trump
reacted to the assessment by insisting: "I think that the last person Russia wants to see in
office is Donald Trump because nobody's been tougher on Russia than I have, ever.
"China would love us to have an election where Donald Trump lost to 'Sleepy' Joe Biden. They
would own our country. If Joe Biden was president, China would own our country ... Iran would
love to see me not be president."
The president added: "I'll make this statement. If and when we win, we will make deals with
Iran very quickly. We'll make deals with North Korea very quickly. Whatever happened to the war
in North Korea? You haven't seen that, have you?"
A hacking and social media campaign by Russia in 2016 is credited by US intelligence with
helping Trump to victory. It triggered the special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation,
which described Russian meddling
but did not conclude that there had been direct collusion by Trump or his campaign.
The November election is already under siege from the coronavirus pandemic, concerns over
whether the system can handle a surge in mail-in voting and constant attacks by Trump on the
integrity of the process.
Evanina warned that foreign adversaries may try to interfere with election systems by trying
to sabotage the voting process, stealing election data or questioning the validity of results:
"Foreign efforts to influence or interfere with our elections are a direct threat to the fabric
of our democracy."
The report raised concern on Capitol Hill. Marco Rubio and Mark Warner, the top Republican
and Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, said they "encourage political leaders on
all sides to refrain from weaponizing intelligence matters for political gain".
Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate majority leader, said: "It is no surprise our
adversaries have preferences in our elections. Foreign nations have tried to influence our
politics throughout American history. As Director Evanina's statement makes clear, Russian
malign influence efforts remain a significant threat. But it would be a serious mistake to
ignore the growing threats posed by China and Iran."
What MoA is focusing on here – that the body of the NY Times article lacks any
specific allegations to back up the scare headline – closely parallels the "Russian
bounties" story from a few weeks ago.
In that case as well, someone who actually read the initial, supposedly blockbuster
piece, found nothing to support the headline or provide details beyond the lead sentence or
two of the piece. And I'm speaking in objective terms: leaving aside whether a reader might
or might not find any specific alleged findings credible, they simply weren't there.
The follow-up "Russian bounties" articles added a very few specific allegations. These
were unconvincing, but more to the point, nobody paid attention to them or seemed to feel
they were needed, and they ceased within a few days. This was because the initial article had
served its purpose simply by putting this one sentence out there: "Russia is paying bounties
to the Taliban to kill U.S. soldiers."
That one bare assertion is now established as a meme (in more like the original sense
of the word than the funny pictures everyone sends around) that impersonates as an
established fact, and now regularly appears in establishment narratives, such as remarks by
members of Congress, and other corporate media pieces, e.g. this week's interview of Trump by
Jonathan Swan, which itself got a lot of coverage: ("Trump didn't bring up the bounties in
his phone conversation with Putin!").
The Times article MoA tries to examine today, only to find it doesn't actually exist in
substance beyond the headline, serves the same purpose, but for this sentence: "Russian
meddling in U.S. elections continues in 2020." This is necessary for the narrative managers
so that they aren't limited to referring to "meddling" as a mere historic event from 2016,
and can treat it as a live – and established as true – threat now. (Of course,
the meddling in 2016 was itself a phony story, and this shows how these manufactured memes
can be stacked one on top of the other to create the false edifice that the Beltway consensus
successfully purveys as the real world to most people in the U.S.)
There is little incentive for the Times and their intelligence-community "sources" to spin
more elaborate lies when the media-political-intellectual culture has degraded to the point
that no one thinks beyond the level of the naked meme. They thus avoid two problems
associated with staging more elaborate hoaxes: (1) it's more work; (2) specific falsehoods
can be disproven with facts. The sole major lesson the Beltway establishment took from the
2003 Iraq-WMD fiasco is to try to avoid lies specific enough that they can be disproven.
That's always been the purpose of intelligence agencies - in every nation throughout
history.
Government agencies work for their own benefit, without exception. And the leaders of
government always work the same way, regardless of the actual "national interests" or
"public interest".
The problem is that everyone believes the fantasy that somehow they can "elect" leaders
and government workers who don't do this. But all elections are manipulated by the
political elites themselves to insure that no one gets into power who might the remotest
notion of upsetting the profitable apply cart. And if any movement arose that sought to
prevent the manipulation of elections - say, a "third party" or some movement to de-fund
parties by elites - that movement itself would be deflected or undermined or taken
over.
It's a circus and you all are the circus animals. Get used to it.
I don't know where the idea that China wants Biden to win came from. The consensus I get
from reading actual PRC media in native Chinese is certainly the opposite: They are 100%
sure the Cold War 2.0 is going to escalate either way, so they will rather have Trump's
outward incompetence than another Obama-like knife-behind-the-smile schemer.
It is the rulers themselves and those who rule the rulers, who are fearful of losing
control of the levers of power. I recall the British in Egypt boasting: 'we don't rule
Egypt, we rule the rulers.'
It is not the accumulation of power for its own sake that is the intoxicating elixir of
the ruling elite. It is furthering their objectives, both open and hidden.
To understand their primary objectives one should ask: just what is the single most bi
partisan policy objective of US presidents, since Woodrow Wilson, with a few minor
differences of opinion and emphasis from Eisenhower and Kennedy? Just what was the first
priority item on the agenda at both the 1919 Paris 'Peace' Conference and the first United
Nations meetings at Lake Success?
It was amending the title deeds of Palestine and attempting to confer some kind of quasi
legitimacy on the new title deed holders.
The rulers are very afraid the future of the Zionist project is slipping away from their
control. So in their rabid and delusional minds anything goes from now on in the
furtherance of that self inflicted nightmare and the elimination of anyone or any country
that inhibits that objective. Watch out.
The first and the most important fact that there will no elections in November -- both candidates represent the same oligarchy,
just slightly different factions of it.
Look like NYT is controlled by Bolton faction of CIA. They really want to overturn the
results of 2020 elections and using Russia as a bogeyman is a perfect opportunity to achieve this
goal.
Neocons understand very well that it is MIC who better their bread, so amplifying rumors the simplify getting additional budget
money for intelligence agencies (which are a part of MIC) is always the most desirable goal.
Notable quotes:
"... But a new assessment says China would prefer to see the president defeated, though it is not clear Beijing is doing much to meddle in the 2020 campaign to help Joseph R. Biden Jr. ..."
"... The statement then claims: "Ahead of the 2020 U.S. elections, foreign states will continue to use covert and overt influence measures in their attempts to sway U.S. voters' preferences and perspectives, shift U.S. policies, increase discord in the United States, and undermine the American people's confidence in our democratic process." ..."
"... But how do the 'intelligence' agencies know that foreign states want to "sway preferences", "increase discord" or "undermine confidence" in elections? ..."
"... But ascribing motive and intent is a tricky business, because perceived impact is often mistaken for true intent. [...] Where is the evidence that Russia actually wants to bring down the liberal world order and watch the United States burn? ..."
"... Well there is none. And that is why the 'intelligence' agencies do not present any evidence. ..."
"... Is there a secret policy paper by the Russian government that says it should "increase discord" in the United States? Is there some Chinese think tank report which says that undermining U.S. people's confidence in their democratic process would be good for China? ..."
"... If the 'intelligence' people have copies of those papers why not publish them? ..."
"... Let me guess. The 'intelligence' agencies have nothing, zero, nada. They are just making wild-ass guesses about 'intentions' of perceived enemies to impress the people who sign off their budget. ..."
"... Nowadays that seems to be their main purpose. ..."
But when one reads the piece itself one finds no fact that would support the 'Russia
Continues Interfering' statement:
Russia is using a range of techniques to denigrate Joseph R. Biden Jr., American intelligence
officials said Friday in their first public assessment that Moscow continues to try to
interfere in the 2020 campaign to help President Trump.
At the same time, the officials said China preferred that Mr. Trump be defeated in
November and was weighing whether to take more aggressive action in the election.
But officials briefed on the intelligence said that Russia was the far graver, and more
immediate, threat. While China seeks to gain influence in American politics, its leaders have
not yet decided to wade directly into the presidential contest, however much they may dislike
Mr. Trump, the officials said.
The assessment, included in a
statement released by William R. Evanina, the director of the National
Counterintelligence and Security Center, suggested the intelligence community was treading
carefully, reflecting the political heat generated by previous findings.
The authors emphasize the scaremongering hearsay from "officials briefed on the
intelligence" - i.e. Democratic congress members - about Russia but have nothing to back it
up.
When one reads the
statement by Evanina one finds nothing in it about Russian attempts to interfere in the
U.S. elections. Here is the only 'evidence' that is noted:
For example, pro-Russia Ukrainian parliamentarian Andriy Derkach is spreading claims about
corruption – including through publicizing leaked phone calls – to undermine
former Vice President Biden's candidacy and the Democratic Party. Some Kremlin-linked actors
are also seeking to boost President Trump's candidacy on social media and Russian television.
After a request from Rudy Giuliani, President Trump's personal attorney, a Ukrainian
parliamentarian published Ukrainian
evidence of Biden's very real interference in the Ukraine. Also: Some guest of a Russian TV
show had an opinion. How is either of those two items 'evidence' of Russian interference in
U.S. elections?
The statement then claims: "Ahead of the 2020 U.S. elections, foreign states will continue to use covert and overt
influence measures in their attempts to sway U.S. voters' preferences and perspectives, shift
U.S. policies, increase discord in the United States, and undermine the American people's
confidence in our democratic process."
But how do the 'intelligence' agencies know that foreign states want to "sway preferences",
"increase discord" or "undermine confidence" in elections?
The mainstream view in the U.S. media and government holds that the Kremlin is waging a
long-haul campaign to undermine and destabilize American democracy. Putin wants to see the
United States burn, and contentious elections offer a ready-made opportunity to fan the
flames.
But ascribing motive and intent is a tricky business, because perceived impact is often
mistaken for true intent. [...] Where is the evidence that Russia actually wants to bring
down the liberal world order and watch the United States burn?
Well there is none. And that is why the 'intelligence' agencies do not present any
evidence.
Even the NYT writers have to
admit that there is nothing there:
The release on Friday was short on specifics, ...
and
Intelligence agencies focus their work on the intentions of foreign governments, and steer
clear of assessing if those efforts have had an effect on American voters.
How do 'intelligence' agencies know Russian, Chinese or Iranian 'intentions'. Is there a
secret policy paper by the Russian government that says it should "increase discord" in the
United States? Is there some Chinese think tank report which says that undermining U.S.
people's confidence in their democratic process would be good for China?
If the 'intelligence' people have copies of those papers why not publish them?
Let me guess. The 'intelligence' agencies have nothing, zero, nada. They are just making
wild-ass guesses about 'intentions' of perceived enemies to impress the people who sign off
their budget.
Nowadays that seems to be their main purpose.
Posted by b on August 8, 2020 at 18:08 UTC |
Permalink
Many people have asked me why I haven't written a book since the start of my reporting on
the FBI's debunked investigation into whether President Donald Trump's campaign conspired with
Russia.
I haven't done so because I don't believe the most important part of the story has been
told: indictments and accountability. I also don't believe we actually know what really
happened on a fundamental level and how dangerous it is to our democratic republic. That will
require a deeper investigation that answers the fundamental questions of the role played by
former senior Obama officials, including the former President and his aides.
We're getting closer but we're still not there.
Still, the extent of what happened during the last presidential election is much clearer now
than it was years ago when trickles of evidence led to years of what Fox News host Sean Hannity and I
would say was peeling back the layers of an onion. We now know that the U.S. intelligence and
federal law enforcement was weaponized against President
Donald Trump's 2016 campaign and administration by a political opponent. We now know how
many officials involved in the false investigation into the president trampled the
Constitution.
I never realized how terrible the deterioration inside the system had become until four
years ago when I stumbled onto what was happening inside the FBI. Those concerns were brought
to my attention by former and current FBI agents, as well as numerous U.S. intelligence
officials aware of the failures inside their own agencies. But it never occurred to me when I
first started looking into fired FBI Director
James Comey and his former side kick Deputy Director A ndrew
McCabe that the cultural corruption of these once trusted American institutions was so
vast.
I've watched as Washington D.C. elites make promises to get to the bottom of it and bring
people to justice. They appear to make promises to the American people they never intended to
keep. Who will be held accountable for one of the most egregious abuses of power by bureaucrats
in modern American political history? Now I fear those who perpetuated this culture of
corruption won't ever really be held accountable.
These elite bureaucrats will, however, throw the American people a bone. It's how they
operate.
One example is the most recent decision by the Justice Department to ask that charges be
dropped on former national security advisor Michael Flynn. It's just a bone because we know now
these charges should have never been brought against the three-star general but will anyone on
former Special Counsel
Robert Mueller's team have to answer for ruining a man's life. No, they won't. In fact,
Flynn is still fighting for his freedom.
Think about what has already happened? From former Attorney General Jeff Session's
appointment of Utah Prosecutor John Huber to the current decision by Attorney General William
Barr to appoint Connecticut prosecutor John Durham to investigate the malfeasance what has been
done? Really, nothing at all. No one has been indicted.
The investigation by the FBI against Trump was never predicated on any real evidence but
instead, it was a set-up to usurp the American voters will. It doesn't matter that the
establishment didn't like Trump, in 2016 the Americans did. Isn't that a big enough reason to
bring charges against those involved?
His election was an anomaly for the Washington elite. They were stunned when Trump won and
went into full gear to save their own asses from discovery and target anyone who supported him.
The truth is they couldn't stand the Trump and American disruptors who elected him to
office.
Now they will work hand in fist to ensure that this November election is not a repeat win of
2016. We're already seeing that play out everyday on the news.
But Barr and Durham are now up against a behemoth political machine that seems to be
operating more like a steam roller the closer we get to the November presidential
elections.
Barr told Fox News in June that he expects Durham's report to come before the end of summer
but like always, it's August and we're still waiting.
Little is known about the progress of Durham's investigation but it's curious as to why
nothing has been done as of yet and the Democrats are sure to raise significant questions or
concerns if action is taken before the election. They will charge that Durham's investigation
is politically motivated. That is, unless the charges are just brought against subordinates and
not senior officials from the former administration.
I sound cynical because I am right now. It doesn't mean I won't trying to get to the truth
or fighting for justice.
But how can you explain the failure of
Durham and Barr to actually interview key players such as Comey, or former Director of
National Intelligence James Clapper, or former CIA Director John Brennan. That is what we're
hearing from them.
If I am going to believe my sources, Durham has interviewed former FBI special agent Peter
Strzok, along with FBI Special agent
Joe Pientka, among some others. Still, nothing has really been done or maybe once again
they will throw us bone.
If there are charges to be brought they will come in the form of taking down the
subordinates, like Strzok, Pientka and the former FBI lawyer
Kevin Clinesmith , who altered the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act application
against short term 2016 campaign advisor Carter Page.
Remember DOJ Inspector General
Michael Horowitz's report in December, 2019: It showed that a critical piece of evidence
used to obtain a warrant to spy on Page in 2016 was falsified by Clinesmith.
But Clinesmith didn't act alone. He would have had to have been ordered to do such a
egregious act and that could only come from the top. Let's see if Durham ever hold those Obama
government officials accountable.
I don't believe he will.
Why? Mainly because of how those senior former Obama officials have behaved since the troves
of information have been discovered. They have written books, like Comey, McCabe, Brennan and
others, who have published Opinion Editorials and have taken lucrative jobs at cable news
channels as experts.
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It's frankly disgusting and should anger every American. We would never get away with what
these former Obama officials have done. More disturbing is that the power they wield through
their contacts in the media and their political connections allows these political 'oligarchs'
unchallenged power like never before.
Here's one of the latest examples.
Former Special Counsel Robert Mueller's top prosecutor Andrew Weissmann just went after Barr
in a New York Times editorial on Wednesday. He went so far as to ask the Justice Department
employees to ignore any direction by Barr or Durham in the Russia investigations. From
Weissmann's New York Times Opinion Editorial:
Today, Wednesday, marks 90 days before the presidential election, a date in the calendar
that is supposed to be of special note to the Justice Department. That's because of two
department guidelines, one a written policy
that no action be influenced in any way by politics. Another, unwritten norm urges officials to defer
publicly charging or taking any other overt investigative steps or disclosures that could
affect a coming election.
Attorney General William Barr appears poised to trample on both. At least two developing
investigations could be fodder for pre-election political machinations. The first is an
apparently
sprawling investigation by John Durham, the U.S. attorney in Connecticut, that began as
an examination of the origins of the F.B.I. investigation into Russia's interference in the
2016 election. The other , led
by John Bash, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Texas, is about the so-called
unmasking of Trump associates by Obama administration officials. Mr. Barr personally
unleashed both investigations and handpicked the attorneys to run them.
But Justice Department employees, in meeting their
ethical and legal obligations , should be well advised not to participate in any such
effort.
I think Barr and Durham need to move fast if they are ever going to do anything and if they
are going to prove me wrong. We know now that laws were broken and our Constitution was torched
by these rogue government officials.
We shouldn't give the swamp the time-of-day to accuse the Trump administration of playing
politics or interfering with this election. If the DOJ has evidence and is ready to indict they
need to do it now.
If our Justice Department officials haven't done their job to expose the corruption, clean
out our institutions and hold people accountable then it will be a tragedy for our nation and
the American people. I'm frankly tired of the back and forth. I'm tired of being toyed with and
lied to. I believe they should either put up or shut up.
Oh Please, JFK, MLK,RFK and MX were all just a few.
50 Years after JFK, still cannot release info?
Just who the hell are we kidding?
lay_arrow
Westcoaster , 4 hours ago
You're absolutely right. And don't get me started on 9/11. The country needs an old
fashion PURGE.
play_arrow
ebworthen , 4 hours ago
This is how empires collapse.
Cognitive Dissonance , 4 hours ago
There are two things a sociopath acquires on the way up the socioeconomic ladder.
1) Power
2) Knowledge of where all the dead bodies are.....especially the ones he or she
personally buried.
lay_arrow 1
NeitherStirredNorShaken , 4 hours ago
Sara must have missed my detailed facts and evidence over the last five years or so
proving the entire government guilty of sedition, treason, complete failure of fiduciary
duty and seemingly endless more crimes. Waiting for the hierarchy to prosecute itself is
a waste of time.
Instead of a book start putting together something like Citizens Arrest teams.
Gold Banit , 4 hours ago
Nobody has been charged and nobody has gone to jail and nobody will be charged or go
to jail cause DemoRats and Republicans are best of friends....Fact
I have a question for all of the American posters here!
How did you all get so dumb naive brainwashed and FN Stupid?
Is Hillary in jail ?V
play_arrow
LEEPERMAX , 3 hours ago
It's called " Running out the Clock " by almost every criminal on the planet.
WE'VE ALL BEEN PLAYED FROM THE GET GO .
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yerfej , 3 hours ago
Its interesting that there are people out there who actually think this progressive
push can be stopped, it is now impossible. Sixty or seventy years ago there might have
been enough people with morals to fight but not anymore, the majority of people in the
media, courts, academia, and bureaucracy are immoral thieves who are only interested in
lining their pockets. They are HAPPY to see as many people as necessary sacrificed so
they can get theirs, everyone else be damned. Not sure what the exact turning point was
but its long ago.
ay_arrow
sborovay07 , 3 hours ago
Love Sarah and John. She's 100% right as unless the top treasonists pay for their
crimes it was nothing more of a shame investigation by Durnham. The victory laps taken by
Hannity and others is nothing more than hot air. Easy to bring down the little guys, but
the Comey's, Brennan's and Clapper's have to pay. Trump's trust in Barr is waning as we
get closer to the election. Most who have followed all of this the past 4 years know the
criminals are still within the bureaucracies that attempted to overthrow a sitting
President. Only if Assange would have been granted immunity to testify. Now we are
dependent on career government officials to bring justice. #RIPSeth.
Farmer Tink , 2 hours ago
Weissmann's oped in the NYT strikes me as a threat against any DOJ attorney who dares
work on any of Durham's cases. The Obama people would not have any compunctions against
trying to ruin the lives of any attorney there who doesn't defy Barr. I wouldn't expect
to be hired by any private firm ever again, I'd look for an attorney to represent me
before the disciplinary committee off my bar association and I would assume that I'd be
harassed and forced out by the next Dem AG if I did stay at DOJ.
Rather than see this as a symptom of strength, I see this as panic. If Durham has
nothing or will do nothing, then why threaten junior lawyers? Weissmann's an unethical
snake, but I think that he's rather nervous.
play_arrow
geo_w , 17 minutes ago
My respect for the FBI is gone.
Soloamber , 20 minutes ago
I would like to see what Weissmann's $haul was from the "Mueller " investigation .
Sessions was a joke and the Mueller financed fraud should never have taken place .
Trump has been blind sided over and over by intel at the FBI and DOJ .
They take care of themselves .
play_arrow
InTheLandOfTheBlind , 4 hours ago
Justice dept doesnt hold people accountable. They have to prove the opposite and let a
jury or judicial, not administrative, employee impose judgements.
It would be interesting to see how many of inhabitants of CHAZ zone, who experinced the "summer of love" will vote for Trump in
Novemebr.
Notable quotes:
"... The land of soy milk and honey was disbanded on July 1 and was duly eulogised by the usual suspects as basically an extended block party. A month on, the NY Times finally got around to sending a reporter to speak to the people who lived and worked in the area before the protestors moved in and produced an admittedly excellent piece of reportage on the situation. ..."
"... The piece, as journalist Michael Tracey observed on Twitter, would have been dismissed as right-wing propaganda just a month ago and shows that this little experiment in anarcho-communism was a million miles away from paradise. ..."
"... The picture painted by the residents is one of gangs of armed thugs running protection rackets and widespread vandalism. The first person mentioned in the piece, a gay man of Middle Eastern extraction named Faizel Khan, reveals that to get to the coffee shop he runs he had to get permission from "gun wielding white men" who at one point barricaded him and all his customers in the store. ..."
"... In his pre-CHOP days, Mr Hearns was a security guard for many years, but after the police vacated the area (their precinct was taken over by protesters and then promptly set on fire) he became part of the "Black Lives Matter Community Patrol". This patrol had locals "pay for their protection." ..."
"... It doesn't sound like they were particularly good at ensuring community cohesion either, considering six people were shot under their jurisdiction and two of them died. ..."
"... Observers also noted that rather than being a multi-racial melting pot of equality, the CHOP turned into a "white occupation" as the numbers of Antifa activists began to outnumber the BLM protesters. They also established "black only segregated areas" within the CHOP, making it frightening similar to the Confederacy, which also, coincidentally, seceded from the union. ..."
"... The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT. ..."
Following
an investigative report the paper of record has revealed that business owners who were stuck in the Capitol Hill Organised Protest
'aren't so sure about abolishing the police'. No sh*t Sherlock.
The New York Times has done something distinctly out of character and actually produced some decent journalism. Taking a break
from getting editors sacked for allowing Republican senators to write op-eds and forcing out the few remaining sane people on their
staff for not quaffing the identity politics Cool-Aid enthusiastically enough, they dispatched a reporter to
Seattle to pick through the remnants
of the CHOP , a month after it closed.
The Capital Hill Organised Protest, formally CHAZ (Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone), was the area of the city that, for 23 glorious
days, declared independence from the United States. A bunch of Black Lives Matter and Antifa radicals hoofed out the police and decided
to try and run the area as some sort of Marxist utopia. What they actually established was a gang run hellhole that made the Wild
West look like Switzerland.
It wasn't described as such at the time of course. Seattle's mayor said the city was in for a "summer of love"
and most
of the left-wing press would have had you believe that it was pretty much a hippy commune full of free vegan food and urban collective
farms.
The land of soy milk and honey was disbanded on July 1 and was duly eulogised by the usual suspects as basically an extended block
party. A month on, the NY Times finally got around to sending a reporter to speak to the people who lived and worked in the area
before the protestors moved in and produced an admittedly excellent piece of reportage on the situation. It was headlined,
"Abolish
the Police? Those Who Survived the Chaos in Seattle Aren't So Sure." The piece, as journalist Michael Tracey observed on Twitter,
would have been dismissed as right-wing propaganda just a month ago and shows that this little experiment in anarcho-communism was
a million miles away from paradise.
To say they "aren't sure" has to be the understatement of the year. The picture painted by the residents is one of gangs
of armed thugs running protection rackets and widespread vandalism. The first person mentioned in the piece, a gay man of Middle
Eastern extraction named Faizel Khan, reveals that to get to the coffee shop he runs he had to get permission from "gun wielding
white men" who at one point barricaded him and all his customers in the store.
Mr Khan's experiences during these three and a bit weeks of lawlessness were so horrendous that he and a host of other small business
owners, described as "lonely voices in progressive areas," are suing Seattle after the local police force refused to respond
to their calls for the duration of the CHOP. And as the litany of horrors they were subjected to is laid bare in the NY Times article,
it is not hard to see why.
Another character we meet in this saga is Rick Hearns. In his pre-CHOP days, Mr Hearns was a security guard for many years, but
after the police vacated the area (their precinct was taken over by protesters and then promptly set on fire) he became part of the
"Black Lives Matter Community Patrol". This patrol had locals "pay for their protection." Now what other organisation does
that remind you of? If you can't think of it, may I suggest you watch virtually any Martin Scorsese movie and I think you'll get
the picture.
It doesn't sound like they were particularly good at ensuring community cohesion either, considering
six people were shot
under their jurisdiction and two of them died. Interestingly, since they were replacing the "institutionally racist"
police force, (run by a black woman incidentally but why let facts spoil it) one of the victims was a black teenager.
Observers also noted that rather than being a multi-racial melting pot of equality, the CHOP turned into a "white occupation"
as the numbers of Antifa activists began to outnumber the BLM protesters. They also established "black only segregated areas"
within the CHOP, making it frightening similar to the Confederacy, which also, coincidentally, seceded from the union. Oh, and
they had a Warlord, Raz from CHAZ, too, just as an icing on the cake.
Quite why these so-called activists felt the need to see how anarchy turns out in a world where Somaila exists is beyond me, and
frankly any sane person who is even vaguely aware of history. I'm sure if they'd managed to get hold of the port it wouldn't have
been long before they decided to give piracy on the high seas a try, but alas they didn't have the time.
This just makes the tone of the NY Times piece all the more baffling. While it does chart the horrors of the zone well, framing
the notion of "abolishing the police" as anything other than irredeemably stupid is frankly ridiculous. I suppose they do
deserve praise for finally telling the story, but in no way does it make up for the way they have fomented and given succour to the
absurd and dangerous ideas that gave rise to the CHOP for so long.
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those
of RT.
Guy Birchall, British journalist covering current affairs, politics and free speech issues. Recently published in The Sun and
Spiked Online. Follow him on Twitter @guybirchall 7 Aug, 2020 22:11
Get short URL
CHAZ/CHOP protesters remove man for bothering them, June 13, 2020
I recently wrote about an old
1984 interview with former communist Yuri Bezmenov, who described the "ideological
subversion" that could eventually take down America.
It sounds like the stuff of conspiracy theories - until one realizes that his predictions of
"demoralization," "destabilization," and "crisis" are all unfolding before our eyes .
Pondering his prophetic words, I hunted up an old book a friend mentioned to me years ago: "
The Naked Communist ." The title, I admit, is chuckle-worthy, but the words inside are no
laughing matter, particularly when one reads the section titled, "Importance of the
Psychological War."
Written in 1958, some of the "current strategy goals which the Communists and their fellow
travelers are seeking to achieve" seem dated and read like a history book from the past. But
then one comes to item number 17:
"Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current
Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the
party line in textbooks." (Emphasis added.)
That part in bold especially caught my attention. Haven't Americans been suspicious for
years that public school curriculum has been dumbed down? Prominent
public figures have certainly made this claim , while a comparison of middle
school reading lists from today's schools and those of 100 years ago provides further
evidence.
Things take a step closer to home by encouraging the use of "student riots to foment public
protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack." We've had not a
little experience with riots and protests lately, many of which have been heavily attended by
young people. Are they mere tools in the hands of an ideology we don't realize is pulling the
strings?
Even more terrifying, the list progresses from student riots to the cancel culture and
statue bashing we are also currently experiencing.
"Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression,"
item number 22 commands, while number 31 calls for Communists to "[b]elittle all forms of
American culture and discourage the teaching of American history ."
The document also suggests discrediting both the Constitution and the Founding Fathers.
Of the latter, it says,
"[p]resent them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the 'common man.'"
Sounds similar to the "slave-holding racists" that the Founders are now portrayed as, does
it not?
The list is extensive and many of the items listed as eventual goals are now accepted parts
of our culture. There is one more, though, that deserves a closer look:
"Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American
tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use 'united force' to
solve economic, political or social problems."
Since the death of George Floyd, protests and violence have become commonplace. The large
gatherings banned by our governments during the COVID-19 pandemic suddenly
became necessary for fighting racism .
Indeed, systemic racism is increasingly labeled as a "
public health crisis " that Black Lives Matter must wage war against. Furthermore, complete
unity is demanded from the public. Those who refuse to go along -- or fail to
say anything at all -- are immediately ostracized.
Where does this leave us?
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Should we start running around screaming, "The Communists are coming! The Communists are
coming!"?
No. Now isn't the time to lose our heads. Rather, we should look at this historical list,
recognize the parallels it has with our current culture, and ask ourselves whether there's an
ideology working to undermine the values, history, and ideas upon which America was
founded.
If we conclude that there is, we have a decision to make.
Do we accept that ideology and allow it to take over America?
If so, it's time to join the throngs of corporations, politicians, and average citizens in
agitating for change.
But if we decide that ideology isn't in line with what we believe , nor with the direction
we want to see America go, then we must be ready to choose the road less traveled.
This road is one of standing up for truth and justice. It also involves warning others of
the consequences that come from giving way to an ideology completely opposed to what America
has sought to protect and advance over the years.
As "The Naked Communist" implies, the alarm bell has been sounding for many years. Now, we
just need the ears to hear and respond to it.
You mean to tell me that a presidential candidate for the USA was through a proxy working
with the Russians to create a crazy report that would influence the outcome of the elections
in the USA..... Hillary who you say ? Blame who ?
... hmmm, at this point if Durham and Barr send no one to jail I don't know what to say.
And for pete's sake can someone with balls help General Flynn finally pleaaazee. (Looking at
you Sen. Cruz, Graham, Paul)
Exclusive from Gen. Flynn: This Is My Letter to America
By Michael Flynn
Published August 5, 2020 at 11:17am
We are witnessing a vicious assault by enemies of all that is good, and our president is
having to act in ways unprecedented in decades, maybe centuries.
The biblical nature of good versus evil cannot be discounted as we examine what is
happening on the streets of America.
It's Marxism in the form of antifa and the Black Lives Matter movement versus our very
capable and very underappreciated law enforcement professionals, the vast majority of whom
are fighting to provide us safe and secure homes, streets and communities.
When the destiny of the United States is at stake, and it is, the very future of the
entire world is threatened.
As Christians, shouldn't we act? We recognize that divine Providence is the ultimate judge
of our destiny. Achieving our destiny as a freedom-loving nation, Providence compels us to do
our part in our communities.
It encourages us in this battle against the forces of evil to face our fears head-on. No
enemy on earth is stronger than the united forces of God-fearing, freedom-loving people.
We can no longer pretend that these dark forces are going to go away by mere prayer alone.
Prayers matter, but action is required.
This action is needed at the local, state and federal levels. Action is also required in
the economic, media, clerical and ecclesiastical realms.
Decide how you can act within your abilities. Stand up and state your beliefs. Be proud of
who you are and what you stand for. And face, head-on, those community "leaders" who are
willing to allow dark forces to go beyond peaceful protests and destroy and violate your
safety and security.
Churches and houses of worship must return to normal. We invite everyone of goodwill to
not shirk their responsibilities and instead act in a fraternal fashion. If for no other
reason or with no other ability, act in a spirit of charity.
We cannot disrespect or disregard natural law along with our own religious liberties and
freedoms.
I am witnessing elderly people lose their connection to all that is good in their lives:
connections to their faith, their families and their individual freedoms, especially the
simple act of attending church, something they've been doing for decades.
Let us not be intimidated or fear those who cry out that we are in the minority; we are
not.
Good is always more powerful and will prevail over evil.
However, evil will succeed for a time when good people are divided from each other and
their personal lives -- children away from their teachers, preachers from their
congregations, customers from their local businesses.
America will never give in to evil. Americans work together to solve problems.
We do not and should not ever allow anarchy and the evil forces behind it to operate on
any street in our nation.
No one should have to fear for their very life because some dark, disturbed force is
challenged by the very essence of what America stands for.
We are "one nation under God" and it is our individual liberties that make us strong, not
liberties given to our government. Our government has no liberty unless and until "we the
people" say so.
God bless America and let's stand by everything that was and is good in our lives, in our
communities and in our country.
Otherwise, America as the true North Star for humanity will cease to exist as we know
it.
If Flynn were really worried about God's opinion of the US he'd be calling out the
administration's endless warmongering.
The idea that Jesus would be more worried about regular churchgoing than blowing children
apart is an obscene joke,and if there is a hell, I don't fancy Flynn's chances of not going
there.
WASHINGTON -- Russia is using a range of techniques to denigrate Joseph R. Biden Jr.,
American intelligence officials said Friday in their first public assessment that Moscow
continues to try to interfere in the 2020 campaign to help President Trump.
At the same time, the officials said China preferred that Mr. Trump be defeated in November
and was weighing whether to take more aggressive action in the election.
But officials briefed on the intelligence said that Russia was the far graver, and more
immediate, threat. While China seeks to gain influence in American politics, its leaders have
not yet decided to wade directly into the presidential contest, however much they may dislike
Mr. Trump, the officials said.
The assessment, included in a
statement released by William R. Evanina, the director of the National Counterintelligence
and Security Center, suggested the intelligence community was treading carefully, reflecting
the political heat generated by previous findings.
The White House has
objected in the past to conclusions that Moscow is working to help Mr. Trump, and Democrats
on Capitol Hill have expressed growing concern that the intelligence agencies are not being
forthright enough about Russia's preference for him and that the agencies are introducing
China's anti-Trump stance to balance the scales.
The assessment appeared to draw a distinction between what it called the "range of measures"
being deployed by Moscow to influence the election and its conclusion that China prefers that
Mr. Trump be defeated.
It cited efforts coming out of pro-Russia forces in Ukraine to damage Mr. Biden and
Kremlin-linked figures who "are also seeking to boost President Trump's candidacy on social
media and Russian television."
China, it said, has so far signaled its position mostly through increased public criticism
of the administration's tough line on China on a variety of fronts.
An American official briefed on the intelligence said it was wrong to equate the two
countries. Russia, the official said, is a tornado, capable of inflicting damage on American
democracy now. China is more like climate change, the official said: The threat is real and
grave, but more long term.
Democratic lawmakers made the same point about the report, which also found that Iran was
seeking "to undermine U.S. democratic institutions, President Trump, and to divide the country"
ahead of the general election.
"Unfortunately, today's statement still treats three actors of differing intent and
capability as equal threats to our democratic elections," Speaker Nancy Pelosi and
Representative Adam B. Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said in a
joint statement.
Asked about the report during a news conference on Friday night at his golf club in New
Jersey, Mr. Trump said, "The last person Russia wants to see in office is Donald Trump because
nobody's been tougher on Russia than I have." He said that if Mr. Biden won the presidency,
"China would own our country."
Aides and allies of Mr. Biden assailed Mr. Trump, saying that he had repeatedly sided with
President Vladimir V. Putin on whether Russia had intervened to help him in 2016 and that he
had been impeached by the House for trying to pressure Ukraine into helping him undercut Mr.
Biden.
"Donald Trump has publicly and repeatedly invited, emboldened and even tried to coerce
foreign interference in American elections," said Tony Blinken, a senior adviser to the former
vice president.
It is not clear how much China is doing to interfere directly in the presidential election.
Intelligence officials have briefed Congress in recent days that much of Beijing's focus is on
state and local races. But Mr. Evanina's statement on Friday suggested China was on weighing an
increased effort.
"Although China will continue to weigh the risks and benefits of aggressive action, its
public rhetoric over the past few months has grown increasingly critical of the current
administration's Covid-19 response, closure of China's Houston Consulate and actions on other
issues," Mr. Evanina said.
Mr. Evanina pointed to growing tensions over territorial claims in the South China Sea, Hong
Kong autonomy, the TikTok app and other issues. China, officials have said, has also tried to
collect information on the presidential campaigns, as it has in previous contests.
The release on Friday was short on specifics, but that was largely because the intelligence
community is intent on trying to protect its sources of information, said Senator Angus King,
the Maine independent who caucuses with the Democrats.
"The director has basically put the American people on notice that Russia in particular,
also China and Iran, are going to be trying to meddle in this election and undermine our
democratic system," said Mr. King, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Intelligence officials said there was no way to avoid political criticism when releasing
information about the election. An official with the Office of the Director of National
Intelligence said that the goal was not to rank order threats and that Russia, China and Iran
all pose a danger to the election.
Fighting over the intelligence reports, the official said, only benefits adversaries trying
to sow divisions.
While both Beijing and Moscow have a preference, the Chinese and Russian influence campaigns
are very different, officials said.
Outside of a few scattered examples, it is hard to find much evidence of intensifying
Chinese influence efforts that could have a national effect.
Much of what China is doing currently amounts to using its economic might to influence local
politics, officials said. But that is hardly new. Beijing is also using a variety of means to
push back on various Trump administration policies, including tariffs and bans on Chinese tech
companies, but those efforts are not covert and it is unclear if they would have an effect on
presidential politics.
Russia, but not China, is trying to "actively influence" the outcome of the 2020 election,
said the American official briefed on the underlying intelligence.
"The fact that adversaries like China or Iran don't like an American president's policies is
normal fare," said Jeremy Bash, a former Obama administration official. "What's abnormal,
disturbing and dangerous is that an adversary like Russia is actively trying to get Trump
re-elected."
Russia tried to use influence campaigns during 2018 midterm voting to try to sway public
opinion, but it did not successfully tamper with voting infrastructure.
Mr. Evanina said it would be difficult for adversarial countries to try to manipulate voting
results on a large scale. But nevertheless, the countries could try to interfere in the voting
process or take steps aimed at "calling into question the validity of the election
results."
The new release comes on the heels of congressional briefings that have alarmed lawmakers,
particularly Democrats. Those briefings have described a stepped-up Chinese pressure campaign,
as well as efforts by Moscow to paint Mr. Biden as corrupt.
"Ahead of the 2020 U.S. elections, foreign states will continue to use covert and overt
influence measures in their attempts to sway U.S. voters' preferences and perspectives, shift
U.S. policies, increase discord in the United States, and undermine the American people's
confidence in our democratic process," Mr. Evanina said in a statement.
The statement called out Andriy Derkach, a pro-Russia member of Ukraine's Parliament who has
been involved in releasing information about Mr. Biden. Intelligence officials said he had ties
to Russian intelligence.
Intelligence officials have briefed Congress in recent weeks on details of the Russian
efforts to tarnish Mr. Biden as corrupt, prompting
senior Democrats to request more information.
A Senate committee led by Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, has been leading an
investigation of Mr. Biden's son Hunter Biden and his work for Burisma, a Ukrainian energy
firm. Some intelligence officials have said that a witness the committee was seeking to call
was a witting or unwitting agent of Russian disinformation.
Democrats had pushed intelligence officials to release more information to the public,
arguing that only a broad declassification of the foreign interference attempts can inoculate
voters against attempts by Russia, China or other countries to try to influence voting.
In
meetings on Capitol Hill , Mr. Evanina and other intelligence officials have expanded their
warnings beyond Russia and have included China and Iran, as well. This year, the Office of the
Director of National Intelligence put Mr. Evanina in charge of election security briefings to
Congress and the campaigns.
Intelligence and other officials in recent days have been stepping up their releases
of information about foreign interference efforts, and the State
Department has sent texts to cellphones around the world advertising a $10 million reward
for information on would-be election hackers.
How effective China's campaign or Russia's efforts to smear Mr. Biden as corrupt have been
is not clear. Intelligence agencies focus their work on the intentions of foreign governments,
and steer clear of assessing if those efforts have had an effect on American voters.
The first reactions from Capitol Hill to the release of the assessment were positive. A
joint statement by the Republican and Democratic leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee
praised it, and asked colleagues to refrain from politicizing Mr. Evanina's statement.
Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, the acting Republican chairman of the committee, and Senator
Mark Warner of Virginia, the Democratic vice chairman, said they hoped Mr. Evanina continued to
make more information available to the public. But they praised him for responding to calls for
more information.
"Evanina's statement highlights some of the serious and ongoing threats to our election from
China, Russia, and Iran," the two men's joint statement said. "Everyone -- from the voting
public, local officials, and members of Congress -- needs to be aware of these threats."
Maggie Haberman contributed reporting from New York.
Behind every narrative
unfriendly to US geopolitical aims is a Russian proxy typing madly away, according to the Global Engagement Center (GEC), the
State Department's "counter-propaganda" vehicle, which released a report to that effect on Wednesday titled
"Pillars
of Russia's Disinformation and Propaganda Ecosystem."
More than half of the
76-page paper consists of
"proxy site profiles"
– writeups of websites deemed to be
secretly (or not-so-secretly) operated by the Kremlin. While some are openly connected to the Russian government (New Eastern
Outlook, an official publication of the Russian Academy of Sciences), others – like Montreal-based Global Research – are not.
In the eyes of the GEC,
however, all
"serve no other purpose but to push pro-Kremlin content"
(which might
be news to the websites' operators). Most have previously appeared on lists of "Russian propaganda websites" such as the
sprawling blacklist published by PropOrNot – a
shady
outfit
linked to pro-war think tank, the Atlantic Council – in November 2016.
While the report is
supposedly dedicated to
"exposing Russia's tactics so that partner and allied
governments, civil society organizations, academia, the press, and the international public"
can arm themselves against
evil Kremlin propaganda, its focus on specific websites, their social media follower counts, and the amount of traffic they
get seems tailor-made for legitimizing government censorship. Any ideas which resemble the content of these particular
websites are to be squashed, sidelined, and suppressed, as are any other sites who publish writers associated with the "proxy
sites."
The
"ecosystem"
metaphor
is deployed to explain why some alleged Russian proxies occasionally come out with material opposing the Russian government
line – they're just
"muddying the waters of the information environment in order to
confuse those trying to discern the truth."
As for
"truth,"
the
report has an interesting interpretation of the concept. The claims that it deems to constitute
"disinformation"
include
the assertion that
"financial circles and governments are using the coronavirus to
achieve [their] own financial and political goals"
(are there
any
that
aren't?).
They also include claims
that
"EU bureaucrats and affiliated propaganda bodies are blaming Russia for the crisis
over the outbreak of coronavirus"
(who knew the
Financial
Times
was a Kremlin disinfo outlet too?)
Also included are claims
that
"George Soros' tentacles entangle politics and generate chaos around the world"
(if
the shoe
fits
).
The GEC report wouldn't be
a Russia scare-sheet if it didn't include a heavy dose of projection, and this one does not disappoint. The Kremlin's
"weaponization
of social media"
and
"cyber-enabled disinformation"
are deemed
"part
of its approach to using information as a weapon,"
while Moscow is accused of
"invest[ing]
massively in its propaganda channels, its intelligence services and its proxies to conduct malicious cyber activity to support
their disinformation efforts."
But the CIA and US
military intelligence have been engaging in pre-emptive cyber-warfare for two years with the full knowledge and consent of the
executive branch – a legitimization of
covert
activities
that previously ran on a don't-ask-don't-tell basis dating at least back to the development of the Stuxnet
virus that devastated Iran's nuclear sites over a decade ago.
US weaponization of social
media is so pervasive the US Army was recently
booted
off
streaming platform Twitch for relentlessly propagandizing teenage users. The Pentagon has been
spreading
pro-US
propaganda using hordes of "sock puppets" – fake social media accounts purporting to be real people – for upwards of a decade.
Indeed, the report hints at these very operations, praising the "thriving counter-disinformation community" that is "pushing
back" against those naughty Russians.
With social media
platforms jittery over the looming US election in November, the report appears designed to serve as a handy cheat-sheet as to
which opinions to censor to avoid a repeat of President Donald Trump's upset victory in 2016 – even though none of the listed
"proxies" could be considered pro-Trump by any stretch of the imagination. It also provides a portable reference for Americans
worried about committing thought-crime, though the complete lack of fanfare accompanying its publication – Secretary of State
Mike Pompeo mentioned it in passing during a press conference on Wednesday – would seem to suggest it is not meant for the hoi
polloi.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those
of RT.
Russia-China "Dedollarization" Reaches "Breakthrough Moment" As Countries Ditch Greenback
For Bilateral Trade by Tyler Durden Thu, 08/06/2020 - 21:55
Twitter Facebook Reddit EmailPrint
Late last year, data released by the PBOC and the Russian Central Bank shone a light on a
disturbing - at least, for the US - trend: As the Trump Administration ratcheted up sanctions
pressure on Russia and China, both countries and their central banks have substantially
"diversified" their foreign-currency reserves, dumping dollars and buying up gold and each
other's currencies.
Back in September, we wrote about the PBOC and RCB building their reserves of gold bullion
to levels not seen in years. The Russian Central Bank became one of the world's largest buyers
of bullion last year (at least among the world's central banks). At the time, we also
introduced this chart.
We've been writing about the impending demise of the greenback for years now, and of course
we're not alone. Some well-regarded economists have theorized that the fall of the greenback
could be a good thing for humanity - it could open the door to a multi-currency basket, or
better yet, a global current (bitcoin perhaps?) - by allowing us to transition to a global
monetary system with with less endemic instability.
Though, to be sure, the greenback is hardly the first "global currency".
Falling confidence in the greenback has been masked by the Fed's aggressive buying, as
central bankers in the Eccles Building now fear that the asset bubbles they've blown are big
enough to harm the real economy, so we must wait for exactly the right time to let the air out
of these bubbles so they don't ruin people's lives and upset the global economic apple cart. As
the coronavirus outbreak has taught us, that time may never come.
But all the while, Russia and China have been quietly weening off of the dollar, and instead
using rubles and yuan to settle transnational trade.
Since we live in a world where commerce is directed by the whims of the free market (at
least, in theory), the Kremlin can just make Russian and Chinese companies substitute yuan and
rubles for dollars with the flip of a switch:
as Russian President Vladimir Putin once exclaimed , the US's aggressive sanctions policy
risks destroying the dollar's reserve status by forcing more companies from Russia and China to
search for alternatives to transacting in dollars, if for no other reason than to keep costs
down (international economic sanctions can make moving money abroad difficult).
In 2019, Putin gleefully revealed that Russia had reduced the dollar holdings of its central
bank by $101 billion, cutting the total in half.
And according to new data from the Russian Central Bank and Federal Customs Service, the
dollar's share of bilateral trade between Russia and China fell below 50% for the first time in
modern history.
Businesses only used the greenback for roughly 46% of settlements between the two countries.
Over the same period, the euro constituted an all-time high of 30%. While other national
currencies accounted for 24%, also a new high.
As one 'expert' told the Nikkei Asian Review, it's just the latest sign that Russia and
China are forming a "de-dollarization alliance" to diminish the economic heft of Washington's
sanctions powers, and its de facto control of SWIFT, the primary inter-bank messaging service
via which banks move money from country to country.
The shift is happening much more quickly than the US probably expected. As recently as 2015,
more than 90% of bilateral trade between China and Russia was conducted in dollars.
Alexey Maslov, director of the Institute of Far Eastern Studies at the Russian Academy of
Sciences, told the Nikkei Asian Review that the Russia-China "dedollarization" was
approaching a "breakthrough moment" that could elevate their relationship to a de facto
alliance.
"The collaboration between Russia and China in the financial sphere tells us that they are
finally finding the parameters for a new alliance with each other," he said. "Many expected
that this would be a military alliance or a trading alliance, but now the alliance is moving
more in the banking and financial direction, and that is what can guarantee independence for
both countries."
Dedollarization has been a priority for Russia and China since 2014, when they began
expanding economic cooperation following Moscow's estrangement from the West over its
annexation of Crimea. Replacing the dollar in trade settlements became a necessity to
sidestep U.S. sanctions against Russia.
"Any wire transaction that takes place in the world involving U.S. dollars is at some
point cleared through a U.S. bank," explained Dmitry Dolgin, ING Bank's chief economist for
Russia. "That means that the U.S. government can tell that bank to freeze certain
transactions."
The process gained further momentum after the Donald Trump administration imposed tariffs on
hundreds of billions of dollars worth of Chinese goods. Whereas previously Moscow had taken
the initiative on dedollarization, Beijing came to view it as critical, too.
"Only very recently did the Chinese state and major economic entities begin to feel that
they might end up in a similar situation as our Russian counterparts: being the target of the
sanctions and potentially even getting shut out of the SWIFT system," said Zhang Xin, a
research fellow at the Center for Russian Studies at Shanghai's East China Normal
University.
. The decision involved various persons with differing motives. Some of those people,
especially in the military, were against using
the bomb. Japan was ready to surrender even before the nuclear bombs were dropped. It did not
surrender because the bombs destroyed two of its cities.
A major reason to use the new bombs was to demonstrate to the Soviet Union - already
selected as the next enemy - that the U.S. had superior weapons. But it did not take long for
the scientist in the Soviet Union to catch up and to test their own nuclear device.
It then daunted to some in Washington that a world with nuclear weapons is less secure than
one without them. For 75 years they tried to stop the race for more nuclear weapons and to
create a path to their total abolishment. But the hawks were more numerous - they still are -
and they won out each and every time.
A history of that process is well caught in Scott Ritter's opus "Scorpion King - America's
suicidal embrace of nuclear weapons from FDR to Trump".
Scott Ritter has studied the Soviet Union, worked in military intelligence and as a United
Nations weapon inspector in Iraq. He is extraordinary qualified to write about nuclear weapon
policies.
The book is an updated version of the 2010 edition. It is comprehensive and covers the
decision processes of every U.S. administration with regards to nuclear weapons, nuclear arms
control, non proliferation and nuclear disarmament.
Over the first decades many new nuclear arms and delivery systems were introduced. There was
always a demand for even more. The nuclear capabilities of the Soviet Union were widely
exaggerated. The U.S. assessments of Soviet power were often fake. One commission after the
other was setup to make nuclear war plans, to decide which cities should be obliterated, how
many million people should be killed and to calculate how many additional weapons were needed
to achieve that.
Over time the insanity of the nuclear arms race became more obvious. But when presidents
tried to negotiate arms control agreements, and to lower the number of nuclear weapons, there
were always people who worked to hinder them. Some successes were made. Nuclear tests were
banned. A number of strategic weapons were restricted. Anti-ballistic missiles, introduced to
prevent an enemy's response to an offensive first strike, were limited. Certain categories of
intermediate nuclear weapons were abolished.
But then came the breakup of the Soviet Union. The U.S. felt no longer a need to restrict
itself. Its 'unilateral moment' had begun. Since the 1990s it is again trying to gain an
absolute nuclear supremacy. It encroached on Russia's borders and it reintroduced
anti-ballistic missile capabilities to make a nuclear first strike against Russia possible.
The attempt failed when Russia in 2018, a decade after warning the U.S. to back off,
introduced new weapons which can evade any attempt to counter them. The Obama
administrations had failed to draw the right consequences from Russia's warning. Under Trump
more nuclear treaties were abolished and soon there will be none left. The world is today more
in danger of a nuclear war than it ever was.
As Ritter diagnoses:
The United States is a nation addicted to nuclear weapons and the power and prestige, both
real and illusory, that these weapons bring. Breaking this addiction will prove extremely
difficult. This is especially true given the lack of having any real nuclear disarmament
policy in place since the dawn of the nuclear age. The failure of the United States to
formulate or to implement effective nuclear disarmament policy has placed America and the
world on very dangerous ground. The longer America and the world continue to possess nuclear
weapons, the greater the likelihood of nuclear weapons being used. The only way to prevent
such a dire outcome is through abolition, and not the reduction of control, of all nuclear
weapons.
The book gives a detailed history of the nuclear decision processes of every U.S.
administration since the dawn of the nuclear age. It digs into the motives of many of the
involved persons. It documents how - throughout many administrations - the general nuclear
policies were kept unchanged. The differences were only gradual.
With 501 pages, including end notes, the Scorpion King takes more than one evening to fully
comprehend.
But I for one am grateful to have had the chance to read it page for page. Scott Ritter's
opus will now be THE work of reference to consult when I write about nuclear policies.
The book
is available as paperback for $29.95 or electronically for $19.00.
Posted by b on August 6, 2020 at 18:38 UTC |
Permalink
Comments Thx b.
Matter of proliferation and hypocrisy in foreign policy ...
Permitting Pakistan to develop the Islamic nuclear weapon !
Posted by: Oui | Aug 6 2020 19:14 utc |
1 "The president has made clear that we have a tried and true practice here. We know how to
win these races and we know how to spend the adversary into oblivion. If we have to, we will,
but we sure would like to avoid it," Special Presidential Envoy Marshall Billingslea said in an
online presentation to a Washington think tank. [Reuters, May 21, 2020]
One problem with this thinking is that Putin is a maniacal tightwad, believer in balanced
budget and rainy day funds, and he seems to have some control over military costs. Russian
experts and most of all, their bosses, take home many times less that their "American
partners", projects are selected more carefully, old technologies are maximally reused.
American MIC is a horde of hungry pigs that are world's top expert at inflating costs, plying
fanciful technologies that sometimes work, but often do not (after spending many billions) etc.
Repeating the past glories of "spending into oblivion" will not work again.
Second problem is horribly illustrated in Beirut (and in few places before, Tianjin comes to
mind). We have a huge pile of highly explosive substances, but they are stored and handled
properly, so nothing will happen, right? Or we have best possible software to automatically
launch nuclear missiles when an attack is detected, but it is 110% reliable, and the
international tensions will always be handled with care to prevent "hair trigger" status,
right?
Posted by: Piotr Berman | Aug 6 2020 19:25 utc |
2 Nukes are a self-licking ice-cream cone for the protection racket.
USA power-elite are not addicted to nukes, they're addicted to power.
This is easily seen via the supremacist ideologies that they subscribe to:
neoliberalism: a form of fascism;
neoconservativism: a form of aristocracy;
zionism: a form of colonialism.
Together, these distill the worst impulses of Western civilization and form a mindset of
might makes right that is better known today as the "rules-based order".
!!
Posted by: Jackrabbit | Aug 6 2020
19:32 utc |
3 @Jackrabbit
You're in fine form today. Succinct and to the point.
Posted by: Red Ryder | Aug 6 2020 19:39 utc |
4 @ Jackrabbit # 3
I would only offer a point of clarification to your comment. That clarification would be
that its the global power-elite, not USA, and they are addicted to owning the tools of Western
private finance which is the source of their power.
Posted by: psychohistorian |
Aug 6 2020 19:46 utc |
5 It's fear. Many Americans (not just the power elite) see themselves living in a hostile
world. Probably goes back to the Mayflower. And Hollywood. If it's not natives and Russians
it's sharks and spiders. They think having lots of nukes will protect them.
Posted by: dh | Aug 6 2020 19:49 utc |
6 Thank you for supporting Scott Ritter. I saw him speak at a small book store in
Schenectady NY before the Bush II genocide on Iraq and Afghanistan. Myself and my wife will
never forget his words and strengthened our resolve to try and stop the war by protesting in
NYC,Boston and our small town of Saratoga NY. I hope that Mr Ritter continues his work to
awaken others to the truth of what a sad pathetic country the USA is. I wish him well.
Posted by: So | Aug 6 2020 20:08 utc |
7 Just had to get 'Trump's' name on that headline. He probably wouldn't have used that line
of it was Hilary in the Whitehouse.
Posted by: Arne S | Aug 6 2020 20:22 utc |
8 @ Posted by: Arne S | Aug 6 2020 20:22 utc | 8
He had to put Trump's name because, otherwise, he would overshadow the important year of
2018 (when Putin announced Russia's new weapons).
Posted by: vk | Aug
6 2020 20:33 utc |
9 Another reason things don't change is because of the media. The media keeps the people
placated, or at least tries, and in fact succeeds to a great extent. See this new article
Palace Eunuchs or: Why Mainstream Media Fears the Truth to see how this has happened. It
wasn't always like today. But over time the media has been bought out. And they work with and
for the MIC.
Posted by: Kali | Aug 6 2020 21:22 utc |
10 thanks b... i agree with jackrabbit - it is all about being addicted to power and trying
to hold onto it ( as it slips away )..
this hate on for russia is mystifying.. i think - is this a bunch of war on commies relics
from the past driving usa foreign policy? or is it a bunch of sore losers like browder and
friends from the 90's? or is it just a case of your usual garden variety insanity on display
pretty frequently, from the usa establishment?? i still don't get this hate on for russia... it
makes no sense, other then the money it generates for the military complex..
Posted by: james | Aug 6 2020 21:39 utc |
11 Good Evening! A discussion about nuclear weapons should take into consideration the
scientific and technical progress since 1945 - though the latter may be hidden from broader
public. Yesterday @Schmatz referred to arcticles of Meyssan regarding the explosion in Beirut.
Today some more information was published on https://www.voltairenet.org/article210672.html.
The German tests of 1944 and 1945 were of the same type (hybrid, lithium, fusion). Israel is
not the only gang to have this type of mini-nukes. Big nuclear bombs are out of date. War today
has another face. BE AWARE! Nations and states are out of date, too. The war now is against
mankind itself. The only remedy against this destruction is mentioned in my preceding comment.
Kind Regards, Gerhard
Posted by: Gerhard | Aug 6 2020 21:42 utc |
12 Nuclear War and the Ultimate Game of Hardball
The assassination was a continuation of the Cuban Missle Crisis.
US planes were launched towards Cuba immediately after the assassination, but recalled in
time.
It wasn't until 1995 that people had the book "The Spy That Saved The World" - Oleg
Penkovsky.
The voluminous technical missile details this spy revealed allowed the US to determine the
state of readiness,
or rather unreadiness, of the missiles being deployed in Cuba. Thus, Kennedy knew he had a
window of time to
take the path of diplomacy, and without this key information his decision making process would
have been quite different.
But there was another critical window that the spy Penkovsky revealed.
Khrushchev famously threatened that his factories were producing like "sausages" ICBM capable
of reaching the US;
Khrushchev could make it rain ICBM. The spy Penkovsky revealed that this was simply a
bluff.
Khrushchev might be able to launch ONE experimental ICBM towards the US but that was it.
The window however, Penkovsky revealed, was only reliable for three years. Penkovsky believed
that within as
little as three years the Soviets could be producing ICBM in large numbers.
The Joint Chiefs Of Staff, as history records, contained men with the right stuff, right
enough to inspire "Doctor Strangelove".
They wanted to take out the Soviet Union while we could. Kennedy, however, did not want to go
down in history
as the greatest mass murderer of all time.
It was a game of Super Hardball Poker. The ICBM Window was closing down like a
guillotine,
Kennedy had his bellicose generals and Khrushchev had his own hardline generals to contend
with.
What move in this game could Kennedy make?
The US generals had WANTED the Soviets to run the blockade of Cuba and "cross the line" to
war
and Khrushchev didn't know that his ICBM bluff cards were exposed.
Kennedy's move: he could let Khrushchev know of his slim poker hand.
Kennedy was also proving to the Soviet generals that here was a US President that wanted to
deal,
which would be useful later when seeking treaties. Did Kennedy also blunt the US general's urge
for war
by closing a key vulnerability in the Soviet defenses? Penkovsky had also revealed to us key
Soviet
defense vulnerabilities.
Did Kennedy, in this game of Super Hardball Poker give up the spy, codenamed HERO, to the
Soviets?
Did Kennedy reveal the depth of knowledge HERO had given us about the Soviets?
Oleg Penkovsky was arrested by the Soviets on the seventh day of the Cuban Missle
Crisis.
One year later the assassination created a different stalemate.
The plotter's plan was to blame Cuba for the assassination of our President thus bringing a
retaliatory strike
against Cuba. This would escalate to full out war with the USSR. Robert Kennedy immediately
wanted to thwart
the plans of his brother's killers. Before that bloody day was done, instead of blaming Cuba
Robert Kennedy supported
a safer alternate theory, the lone gunman theory.
Vice President Johnson was heading for a fall before the assassination, his criminal past
was going to catch up with him.
The Kennedys were going to drop Johnson from the ticket during the second presidential
term.
The Joint Chiefs Of Staff brought Johnson into the plot late in the game; but, he
double-crossed them after
the assassination and didn't give them the war against the Soviets (by first attacking Cuba)
they had wanted.
As an insider Johnson had the goods on the Joint Chiefs of Staff and they in turn had the
goods on him. Stalemate.
Robert Kennedy had knowledge of Johnson's criminal past, but the Kennedys acting as tipsters to
the Soviets
in the Oleg Penkovsky affair put a sword over Robert's head. Just as importantly Robert Kennedy
would make
an already dangerous world more dangerous if he made it known publicly that the Joint Chiefs of
Staff had tried
to launch a war that day and were willing to assassinate presidents in order to carry this
out.
Robert Kennedy supported the hoax that was the Warren Commission to protect his brother's
reputation and his own,
but more importantly to deter nuclear war. Johnson was high in the saddle as President and thus
supported the Commission,
and he retired key members of The Joint Chiefs of Staff. With his reputation intact Robert
Kennedy planned to
later become President and once he had power he would bring justice against his brother's
killers.
Posted by: librul | Aug 6 2020 21:55 utc |
13 @ Kali | Aug 6 2020 21:22 utc | 10
"It wasn't always like today. But over time the media has been bought out."
Sorry, but that is incorrect. The "news" media in the US has always been the knowing tool of
the oligarchy. Should anyone doubt that, just read Jack London's 1908 novel "The Iron Heel." In
addition to describing to a "T" the devices the oligarchy uses to keep down and punish the
proletariat, he describes the use of the press to silence, punish and do away with
troublemakers such as socialists.
The fictional revelations in the novel will be immediately recognizable to MOA members as
present-day techniques of repressing the proletariat and corrupting the media.
Posted by: AntiSpin | Aug 6 2020 22:14 utc |
14 p.s.
"The Iron Heel" is available online.
Posted by: AntiSpin | Aug 6 2020 22:15 utc |
15 The historian b links at the beginning of his piece makes the point that the building of
the bombs was taking place well before Truman came to office and basically had no knowledge of
what had been going on. The timeline for that circumstance is horribly short, and here is how
Peter Kuznick describes it in the interview I linked to at 25 on the open thread:
"...65% of potential voters [in a Gallup poll] said they wanted Wallace back as vice
president, 2% said they wanted Harry Truman. But Truman gets in there, is vice president for
82 days, Roosevelt dies, Truman becomes president on April 12th, 1945, the day that shall
live in infamy. And so Truman on April 13th, his first day in office, Secretary of the Navy,
Forrestal sends his private plane down to Spartanburg, South Carolina, to bring James Byrnes
back to Washington. Truman was desperate. He sits down with Byrnes and he says, I don't know
anything, Roosevelt didn't talk to me about what was going on, or the agreements at Yalta, I
don't know anything, fill me in on everything and Byrnes then starts to lay it out. That the
Soviets can't be trusted, that you know, that they're breaking their agreements. So that's a
Truman who was inclined to think that way anyway, starts hearing it from Byrnes.
And even though that was the opposite of what Roosevelt believed and Roosevelt said right
up to his dying day, Roosevelt was sure that the US and the Soviets would get along after the
war..."
I wouldn't want to make any other observation than that as b's historian suggests, there
were many influences behind the scenes of the fateful decision. Just to point out the
similarity in the apparent railroading out of Wallace at such a critical time. It does remind
one of politics today.
Posted by: juliania | Aug 6 2020 22:20 utc |
16 I distinctly remember reading somewhere that at the height of the insanity the USA had
so many nuclear warheads that it had difficulty finding worthwhile targets for them. So much so
that the ended up designating one nuke to destroy a post office in Siberia. A Freaking Post
Office.
For all I know they pointed two some poor postmistress. You know: one to obliterate the
mailboxes, and the other to make the rubble bounce around a bit....
Mad as Hatters, the lot of 'em.
Posted by: Yeah, Right | Aug 6 2020 22:32 utc |
17 Fascinating book review and important commentary. Thanks b.
(PS on English usage. In paragraph 4 I think you meant "It then dawned on some in
Washington...". If I am 'daunted' by something I am hesitating out of fear or scale [e.g. I was
daunted by the huge task that lay ahead...]). Sorry if that sounds pedantic, but I like your
posts a lot and am impressed by your grasp of idiom in a second language.
Posted by: Patroklos | Aug 6 2020 22:40 utc |
18 sounds like an excellent book, i'll order as soon as i finish "the deficit myth".
Posted by: pretzelattack | Aug 6 2020 22:58 utc |
19 james @ 11,in the Paul Jay interview, Peter Kuznick makes the point that early on, when
the weapons were first used on Japan, there wasn't a formidable military industrial complex, so
Truman seems to have made the decision solely on the advice that the Russians were not to be
trusted. Still, behind the scenes, that complex had to be in its infancy, as Eisenhower warned
before he left office.
And psychohistorian is correct, it morphed into the entity that now is the main driver of
world finance, not just in the US. So it is not the people of the US who are addicted to
horrible weapons; it is that huge military/industrial/banking complex feeding off hapless
Americans as it also feeds off the rest of the world, under the umbrella of neoliberalism:
'austerity for you but not for me.'
Grim stuff, and hopefully its days are numbered.
Posted by: juliania | Aug 6 2020 23:03 utc |
20 kennedy was a long time warmonger prior to the cuban missle crisis. he ran to the right
of nixon, claiming nixon and eisenhower had left american vulnerable to a mythical "missle gap"
which was not close to being true. both sides had ample weapons to destroy each other; what
difference did the u.s.s.r. having a few more in cuba to match the u.s. placing some missles in
turkey. this is often portrayed as j.f.k.'s shining moment, instead of a astoundingly reckless
course of action that took the world close to a nuclear war. the russia missles in cuba would
not have given them any sort of nuclear advantage, it would have taken them to the parity of
being able to destroy american cities as many times as the americans could destroy russian
cities, a meaningless equality. indeed the us withdrew the turkish missles, from what i
remember, after the crisis.
it was the worst single example of american military overreach since needlessly blowing up
hiroshima and nagasaki, an incredibly ill judged attempt to maintain u.s. superiority at all
potential costs, and this time it was against an adversary that could destroy the united
states. sound familiar? it should, it's been the strategy of the u.s. empire at least since
1945.
Posted by: pretzelattack | Aug 6 2020 23:09 utc |
21 Nukes exist to be paid for. Corporate welfare. The Russians and everyone else got them
because the US had them. Peiod. End of story. 'Nuff said.
Posted by: Richard Steven Hack | Aug 6 2020 23:36 utc |
22 It is very costly trying to live up to your ego. Many within the US government have big
big egos, but who will pay the cost?
Posted by: Dick | Aug 6 2020 23:44 utc |
23 Lots of good discussion and links to excellent essays on the subject. Here are four,
John Pilger's
essay , "Another Hiroshima is Coming Unless We Stop It Now;"
Dave Lindorff's essay , "Unsung Heroes of Los Alamos: Rethinking Manhattan Project Spies
and the Cold War;" H. Bruce
Frankiln's essay , "How the Fascists Won World War II;" and
Robert Jacobs and Ran Zwigenberg's essay , "The American Narrative of Hiroshima is a Statue
that Must be Toppled." Of course, there are dozens more written over the years at each
anniversary of Hiroshima Day. As a former teacher, I found the last essay to be perhaps the
most important as it details the great effort expended to keep that Narrative as THE ONLY
OFFICIAL NARRATIVE to be allowed. But also as AntiSpin said, the fixing of the facts around
the policy has gone on for 100+ years.
We humans face an EVIL GANG that's worse in its goals than Hitler was. Most are situated
within the Outlaw US Empire, with the remainder sprinkled within its satrapies. They are mostly
members of the Rentier Class psychohistorian rails about constantly for good reason, but
others are traditional imperialists and fascists. All constitute what is known as the Donor
Class--the controllers of the Duopoly within the Outlaw US Empire and of the satrapies abroad.
But in a great many ways that do matter, they are outed now as more people globally become
aware of their existence and designs. Much discussion here revolves around the issue of how to
deprive them of the power they wield. Other discussions are subsets, such as the attempt to
launch a new Cold War aimed at China. IMO, the key involves dragging ALL the skeletons from the
closet and having them dance for all the world to see. Part of that is condemning the Outlaw US
Empire for its genocide of the Japanese people in the nuclear fires and those that preceded
them.
Posted by: karlof1 | Aug 6 2020 23:48 utc |
24 juliania shared a link in the open thread which fits here as well.. thanks
juliania...
Posted by: james | Aug 7 2020 1:21 utc |
25 @ 20 juliania.. thanks.. i agree with pyschohistorians view @5 - global power elite are
behind this.. however, they need the assistance and help of the american military and political
leaders too... do you think pompeo would act any different here?? he has proven beyond doubt
that the usa on most levels, is not to be trusted.. let me quote from your link from the other
thread, which i have linked to above @ 25..
"In fact, Major General Haywood Hansell, the head of the 21st bomber command that was doing
the bombing in Japan, resisted orders to abandon precision bombing at the end of'44. He didn't
want to bomb urban areas. So Hap Arnold sacked him and installed General Curtis LeMay as
commander of the 21st Bomber Command and LeMay had no such compunction. The large-scale bombing
on the night of March 9th through 10th when 324 aircraft attacked Tokyo and killed probably one
hundred thousand people, destroyed 16 square miles, injured a million, at least 41,000
seriously injured, more than a million homeless. The air reached eighteen hundred degrees
Fahrenheit. LeMay says that the victims were scorched and boiled and baked to death. He
referred to this as his masterpiece."
it takes more then the global power elite to enact these types of horrific acts as i see
it.. if ordinary people like general haywood hansell can say no to this, so can others... but
as we see general curtis lemay had no compunction murdering 100,000 innocent people.. someone
might be pulling the levers, but it has to be followed thru by more ordinary people who need to
resist it..
Posted by: james | Aug 7 2020 1:30 utc |
26 I did not know that today it was the anniversary of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima,
after all I was not even born then...
But, knowing now, it makes even more sense that the governor of Beirut compared ( I imagine
that as ignorant of the date as i am...) the port blast with a destruction equaling that of
Hiroshima...Who I fear that do not ignore this are other people...
I do not go to the heights of other people looking for signals everywhere, but after some
years of reading info I do not think any more some events are coincidences...
Look at this other oddity...
In the afternoon of this Thursday a fire was reported in the World Trade Center tower located
in the city of Brussels, in Belgium
The fire occurred at 4:00 p.m. (local time) and would not have left victims so far
What I find odd enough is not only that the building is named World Trade Center....but,
also that it has a banner in its fachade which reads "The future is here"...
What kind of future?
Then just saw this front page of The Economist at Daniel Estulin Twitter
account...
Posted by: H.Schmatz | Aug 7 2020 1:31 utc |
27 Truman's statement following the destruction of Hiroshima is interesting to read. He
starts off by describing Hiroshima as "an important Japanese Army base" rather than a city
filled with civilians.
He later says "We are now prepared to obliterate more rapidly and completely every
productive enterprise the Japanese have above ground in any city. We shall destroy their docks,
their factories, and their communications. Let there be no mistake; we shall completely destroy
Japan's power to make war".
Nothing there about wholesale slaughter of the population or destroying their food supply or
drinking water, just attacks on military-related targets.
I do NOT believe this was a nuclear attack on Beirut but it does look like a missile
strike.
Yes, the Lebanese govt is corrupt, negligent, and awful but that doesn't exclude the
possibility that a foreign actor took advantage of the situation. I am wondering if Israel just
had to use their new toy, that cargo ship, container missile and I still think it's possible
that if they did attack Lebanon that they only meant to hit the fireworks warehouse. In any
case, I think this vid is worth looking at.
Posted by: Christian J. Chuba | Aug 7 2020 2:02 utc |
29 @28 Yes very interesting. You may find the Potsdam Declaration interesting too. The
Japanese were given an opportunity to surrender. They turned it down.
Posted by: librul | Aug 7 2020 2:28 utc |
31 @31 Wars are heavy. They are fought to some kind of conclusion. Not sure why Hiroshima
was the target. I imagine other targets were considered but the basic idea was to create a
major impression.
Posted by: dh | Aug 7 2020 2:41 utc |
32 @31 Sorry librul. I guess you weren't talking about Hiroshima.
Posted by: dh | Aug 7 2020 2:53 utc |
33 I have become comfortably numb. This happened some time ago coinciding with the release
of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. 80,000 people died immediately in Hiroshima on this day
in 1945. With Nagasaki, the total was over 220,000 in two single incidents. Do shape-shifting
lizards from another dimension control our world behind the scenes? Most likely. Global
policies lack humanity. They also lack intelligence, being born of a lizard brain. This is the
end game. This is the Kaliyuga. Billions will die while we remain comfortably numb, armchair
pundits. March on Scott Ritter, stalwart Marine!
Posted by: dh | Aug 7 2020 3:41 utc |
37 Peter AU1
Surrounded by hills
dh
psychological effect
My understanding is that they chose it because it was had experienced very little previous
bombing. And they had deliberately withheld bombing there for some months before dropping the
bomb.
They were as interested in learning about the effects of a nuke on a city as they were in
sending a 'message' to the Japanese Govt.
!!
Posted by: Jackrabbit | Aug 7 2020
3:55 utc |
38 @38 "They were as interested in learning about the effects of a nuke on a city as they
were in sending a 'message' to the Japanese Govt."
I'm sure that was a factor. They probably wanted to send a message to the rest of the world
as well.
Posted by: dh | Aug 7 2020 4:12 utc |
39 DH and others,
One reason the US dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was to send a message
to the Soviets that it had nuclear weapons - and was prepared to use them.
Japan had petitioned the US to surrender on the condition that it be allowed to retain its
monarchy. The US insisted on unconditional surrender.
"... [A dilemma] Truman faced was the so-called unconditional-surrender demand. Under
Roosevelt, the United States had been demanding unconditional surrender by Japan, and Truman
followed this policy faithfully. This was because Japan had engaged in military aggression
causing the war (unjust war) and had committed all kinds of atrocities against American and
Allied soldiers (violations on justice in warfare). In order to defeat Japanese militarism so
that Japan could never rise up again as a military power, the United States and its allies
should impose on Japan unconditional surrender.
But, as the war developed, there were certain people, very influential people within the
government – such as Secretary of War Henry Stimson, Secretary of the Navy James
Forrestal, and Deputy Secretary of State and former Ambassador to Japan Joseph Grew –
who thought it necessary to define what "unconditional surrender" exactly meant. Particularly
important was the status of the emperor. If the United States were to insist on unconditional
surrender, particularly if it were to insist on, for instance, trying or punishing the
emperor, as some within the administration insisted, the Japanese would fight on to the very
last man. Therefore, in order to terminate the war, the US government would have to define
the terms in such a way that it could allow the Japanese to preserve the monarchical system,
even under the current dynasty.
In fact, before the Potsdam Conference began, Stimson presented the president with the
draft proposal for the Potsdam on July 2. This draft included two important items. First, it
anticipated the Soviet entry into the war. In fact, the Operation Division of the Army
General Staff, which had worked on the proclamation draft, thought the most effective means
of forcing Japan's surrender was to time the issuance of the ultimatum to Japan so that it
coincided with the initiation of Soviet entry into the war. The second provision was that the
Allied powers would allow Japan to preserve the monarchical system under the current
dynasty.
What happened with these provisions? When the actual Potsdam proclamation was issued, it
stated nothing about the Soviet Union and nothing about unconditional surrender. Those two
conditions were rejected because of political considerations.
So the first assumption – that the atomic bomb was the only alternative for the
United States to end the war – turned out to be false, a myth. The fact is not only
that Truman did not choose those alternatives, but also that he just rejected them out of
political consideration ..."
In the end, Japan surrendered once the Soviets declared war on that country, and eventually
the US allowed Japan to retain its monarchy and to keep Hirohito on the throne.
Incidentally Nagasaki was selected for bombing because it was on a list of potential targets
on which
Kokura was first , but on the morning of 9 August 1945, the weather over the town was
cloudy and the crew of the B-29 bomber could not see the target city clearly. Nagasaki was
second on the list. The bomb hit a Roman Catholic cathedral during a celebration of Sunday
Mass.
"... "When I analyze the current situation, I understand that this is a rehearsal for biological warfare," ..."
"... "I am not saying that this virus was created by humans... but this is a test of the health system's strength, including the country's biological defense." ..."
"... More sinophobic drivel and propaganda. Is it coming from Bannon, Navarro,Fox News, and the other similar warmongering outfits ? This type of propaganda is irrational but certainly purposeful to whip declining exceptionals into war frenzy. They are correct in one aspect - China is outpacing the US and will eventually in 10-20 years surpass it as #1 in Economic power (already the case) and Technology ..."
"... China is a missile-based military deploying hypersonics. This means the US Navy has to standoff 1000 km from the Chinese naval forces or missiles from mainland will decimate the carrier task forces within that range. ..."
"... More sinophobic drivel and propaganda. Is it coming from Bannon, Navarro,Fox News, and the other similar warmongering outfits ? This type of propaganda is irrational but certainly purposeful to whip declining exceptionals into war frenzy. They are correct in one aspect - China is outpacing the US and will eventually in 10-20 years surpass it as #1 in Economic power (already the case) and Technology ..."
"... China is a missile-based military deploying hypersonics. This means the US Navy has to standoff 1000 km from the Chinese naval forces or missiles from mainland will decimate the carrier task forces within that range. ..."
"... Of course having moved much of our manufacturing base into China and then allowing their students to take up most of the hard engineering class space and lab assistantships while diverting our students to 'studies' programs has been a resounding success. ..."
"... "There are few viable military options for warmongering chickenhawks advising..." Bush, Obama, Biden, a Triumverate of peacemakers. Remind me who is ordering troops out of Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria. ..."
"... Of course having moved much of our manufacturing base into China and then allowing their students to take up most of the hard engineering class space and lab assistantships while diverting our students to 'studies' programs has been a resounding success. ..."
"... "There are few viable military options for warmongering chickenhawks advising..." Bush, Obama, Biden, a Triumverate of peacemakers. Remind me who is ordering troops out of Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria. ..."
The rattling of sabres between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the U.S. is becoming
louder, and causing many to ponder if World War III is not far off. There are those in the
international community increasingly alarmed given the COVID situation, the South China Sea
imbroglio, and China's growing threat that they intend to invade and absorb Taiwan into
Communist China within a year. These items have led to the belief that World War III is on the
horizon.
Just recently, Dr.Leonid Roshal, a noted Moscow physician, hostage negotiator, and advisor
to the WHO remarked that the COVID pandemic is a dry run for World War III, and that COVID-19
is practice for future biological warfare. Covid-19 pandemic has functioned as a "rehearsal for
biological warfare," Dr. Roshal also believes that the rapidly-spreading virus was a test for
the world's healthcare systems.
In an interview with Forbes, Professor Roshal, President of the Research Institute of
Emergency Pediatric Surgery and Traumatology, explained that not all nations were ready for a
mass influx of patients, and their lack of preparation has been exposed by the pandemic.
"When I analyze the current situation, I understand that this is a rehearsal for
biological warfare," he explained. "I am not saying that this virus was created by
humans... but this is a test of the health system's strength, including the country's
biological defense."
In addition, Hong Kong-based virologist Yan Li-Meng, currently in hiding at an undisclosed
location, claims that the COVID-19 coronavirus came from a People's Liberation Army lab, and
not from a Wuhan wet market as Beijing has claimed. Speaking on a live stream interview on
Taiwan's News Agency Lude Press, she said, "At that time, I clearly assessed that the virus
came from a Chinese Communist Party military lab. The Wuhan wet market was just used as a
decoy." Yan has been in hiding in the U.S. after fleeing Hong Kong in April.
Chinese PLA Senior Colonel Ren Guoqiang stated recently that TAIWAN WILL be reunified with
the rest of China - and any attempt by the United States to interfere is futile and dangerous.
Senior Colonel Guoqiang is Deputy Director of the Ministry of Defense's Information Office, and
Chinese Defense Ministry Spokesman. J
entrybody comment-odd comment-has-avatar">
Well, this is certainly a depressing and frightening post. I can't say, however, that I
have been thinking along the same lines. However, since I am basically a nobody, I have tried
to assure myself that I am being paranoid. So, it's not helping that some people who are much
more knowledgeable have expressed in print some of the fears I have been feeling over these
months dealing with the pandemic.
All I can do is pray and hold fast to my faith in God. Perhaps He will lift up the people
who can deter us from the predictions of this post. (But are we worthy of being saved?)
Well, this is certainly a depressing and frightening post. I can't say, however, that I
have been thinking along the same lines. However, since I am basically a nobody, I have tried
to assure myself that I am being paranoid. So, it's not helping that some people who are much
more knowledgeable have expressed in print some of the fears I have been feeling over these
months dealing with the pandemic.
All I can do is pray and hold fast to my faith in God. Perhaps He will lift up the people
who can deter us from the predictions of this post. (But are we worthy of being saved?)
I don't believe there will be any direct military conflict. However, we can expect some
saber rattling from both sides.
Sec.Azhar is leading a US delegation to Taiwan. On another note Taiwan ain't HK. They
have an independent government. While they will eventually be overwhelmed in any military
conflict with China if no other country intervenes on Taiwan's side, they definitely have the
capability to inflict a black eye.
The CCP has been emboldened precisely because the US government has actively abetted
their rapaciousness for many decades under both parties. From Clinton's MFN designation to Bush
& Obama administrations actively supporting the shuttering of US manufacturing.
Trump is making the first course correction albeit in a limited manner with tariffs. He
has however changed the tone in an important manner by no longer just kowtowing to whatever the
CCP wants.
This story of ARM China exemplifies CCP long-term policy of requiring JVs to access the
Chinese market and once technology and know-how have been successfully transferred, then
expropriating it. The west in general and the US in particular have turned a blind eye. Huawei
got going by stealing cisco source code and design. https://www.businessinsider.com/arm-conflict-china-complicates-acquisition-prospects-2020-8
It is high time for the US to make the totalitarian Chinese communists pay a price and
directly take the fight to them economically and financially. The CCP must be doing their best
to insure a Biden win to return to the status quo or wait another Trump term and hope an
establishment Democrat or Republican wins after. They have bought and paid the establishment
politicians, entire think-tanks, many in academia and the media.
I don't believe there will be any direct military conflict. However, we can expect some
saber rattling from both sides.
Sec.Azhar is leading a US delegation to Taiwan. On another note Taiwan ain't HK. They have
an independent government. While they will eventually be overwhelmed in any military conflict
with China if no other country intervenes on Taiwan's side, they definitely have the
capability to inflict a black eye.
The CCP has been emboldened precisely because the US government has actively abetted their
rapaciousness for many decades under both parties. From Clinton's MFN designation to Bush
& Obama administrations actively supporting the shuttering of US manufacturing.
Trump is making the first course correction albeit in a limited manner with tariffs. He
has however changed the tone in an important manner by no longer just kowtowing to whatever
the CCP wants.
This story of ARM China exemplifies CCP long-term policy of requiring JVs to access the
Chinese market and once technology and know-how have been successfully transferred, then
expropriating it. The west in general and the US in particular have turned a blind eye.
Huawei got going by stealing cisco source code and design.
https://www.businessinsider.com/arm-conflict-china-complicates-acquisition-prospects-2020-8
It is high time for the US to make the totalitarian Chinese communists pay a price and
directly take the fight to them economically and financially. The CCP must be doing their
best to insure a Biden win to return to the status quo or wait another Trump term and hope an
establishment Democrat or Republican wins after. They have bought and paid the establishment
politicians, entire think-tanks, many in academia and the media.
More sinophobic drivel and propaganda. Is it coming from Bannon, Navarro,Fox News,
and the other similar warmongering outfits ? This type of propaganda is irrational but
certainly purposeful to whip declining exceptionals into war frenzy. They are correct in one
aspect - China is outpacing the US and will eventually in 10-20 years surpass it as #1 in
Economic power (already the case) and Technology .
There are few viable military options for warmongering chickenhawks advising Trump.
Certainly, US Naval Intel and PACCOM (now INDOPACCOM) brass who would love a grand Coral Sea
2.0 battle to destroy PLAN vessel on the seas. However, no one, except few Marine 4 stars want
any land war. The Marines think they can defeat the PLA on some islands. That kind of warfare
is for hollywood movies. China is a missile-based military deploying hypersonics. This
means the US Navy has to standoff 1000 km from the Chinese naval forces or missiles from
mainland will decimate the carrier task forces within that range.
There won't be any war in SE Asia or East Asia. This area now has a circuit breaker,
Russia. Russia is building a naval presence, expanding it's aerospace arm, has basing rights in
the zone in Vietnam and has long range radars that cover a lot of the zones, and submarines the
US is having issues tracking.
The signals from China and Russia to the US military is very clear. You can walk and talk
like the Hegemon but the days of regional hegemony are over. ASEAN nations will not accepting
accept a return to gunboat diplomacy and colonization. All these nations want prosperity and
progress, not western hegemony and military destruction.
This is why the hybrid war of sanctions, trade war, Infowars, cyberwar, proxies in
Central Asia (ISIS and AQ), color revolution attempts in Hong Kong, hysterics about Tibet and
Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia (Bannon front) are on the front burner. Military action is a losing
proposition for the US. They simply cannot win anything anywhere in the Asia Pacific, western
Asia or even against near peer powers proxies like Venezuela.
China simply has to do what Russia does and tell the US to pound sand.
More sinophobic drivel and propaganda. Is it coming from Bannon, Navarro,Fox News, and
the other similar warmongering outfits ? This type of propaganda is irrational but certainly
purposeful to whip declining exceptionals into war frenzy. They are correct in one aspect -
China is outpacing the US and will eventually in 10-20 years surpass it as #1 in Economic
power (already the case) and Technology .
There are few viable military options for warmongering chickenhawks advising Trump.
Certainly, US Naval Intel and PACCOM (now INDOPACCOM) brass who would love a grand Coral Sea
2.0 battle to destroy PLAN vessel on the seas. However, no one, except few Marine 4 stars
want any land war. The Marines think they can defeat the PLA on some islands. That kind of
warfare is for hollywood movies. China is a missile-based military deploying hypersonics.
This means the US Navy has to standoff 1000 km from the Chinese naval forces or missiles from
mainland will decimate the carrier task forces within that range.
There won't be any war in SE Asia or East Asia. This area now has a circuit breaker,
Russia. Russia is building a naval presence, expanding it's aerospace arm, has basing rights
in the zone in Vietnam and has long range radars that cover a lot of the zones, and
submarines the US is having issues tracking.
The signals from China and Russia to the US military is very clear. You can walk and talk
like the Hegemon but the days of regional hegemony are over. ASEAN nations will not accepting
accept a return to gunboat diplomacy and colonization. All these nations want prosperity and
progress, not western hegemony and military destruction.
This is why the hybrid war of sanctions, trade war, Infowars, cyberwar, proxies in Central
Asia (ISIS and AQ), color revolution attempts in Hong Kong, hysterics about Tibet and
Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia (Bannon front) are on the front burner. Military action is a
losing proposition for the US. They simply cannot win anything anywhere in the Asia Pacific,
western Asia or even against near peer powers proxies like Venezuela.
China simply has to do what Russia does and tell the US to pound sand.
We've been in a war with China for a few decades now, and losing. Of course having
moved much of our manufacturing base into China and then allowing their students to take up
most of the hard engineering class space and lab assistantships while diverting our students to
'studies' programs has been a resounding success.
Horatio,
"There are few viable military options for warmongering chickenhawks advising..."
Bush, Obama, Biden, a Triumverate of peacemakers. Remind me who is ordering troops out of Iraq,
Afghanistan and Syria.
We've been in a war with China for a few decades now, and losing. Of course having
moved much of our manufacturing base into China and then allowing their students to take up
most of the hard engineering class space and lab assistantships while diverting our students
to 'studies' programs has been a resounding success.
Horatio,
"There are few viable military options for warmongering chickenhawks advising..."
Bush, Obama, Biden, a Triumverate of peacemakers. Remind me who is ordering troops out of
Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria.
The rattling. of sabres between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the
U.S.
That line as introduction gives away the article as plain and unsofisticated propaganda.
Nobody refers to the USA as the Republican Party, the red scare is a momified bogey..
The rattling. of sabres between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the U.S.
That line as introduction gives away the article as plain and unsofisticated propaganda.
Nobody refers to the USA as the Republican Party, the red scare is a momified bogey..
"... Furthermore, it is pretty obvious to the Russians that while Crimea and MH17 were the pretexts for western sanctions against Russia, they were not the real cause. The real cause of the West's hatred for Russia is as simple as it is old: Russia cannot be conquered, subdued, subverted or destroyed. They've been at it for close to 1,000 years and they still are at it. In fact, each time they fail to crush Russia, their russophobia increases to even higher levels (phobia both in the sense of "fear" and in the sense of "hatred"). ..."
"... I would argue that since at least Russia and the AngloZionist Empire have been at war since at least 2013, when Russia foiled the US plan to attack Syria under the pretext that it was "highly likely" that the Syrian government had used chemical weapons against civilians (in reality, a textbook case of a false flag organized by the Brits), This means that Russia and the Empire have been at [Cold] war since at least 2013, for no less than seven years (something which Russian 6th columnists and Neo-Marxists try very hard to ignore). ..."
"... True, at least until now, this was has been 80% informational, 15% economic and only 5% kinetic, but this is a real existential war of survival for both sides: only one side will walk away from this struggle. The other one will simply disappear (not as a nation or a people, but as a polity; a regime). The Kremlin fully understood that and it embarked on a huge reform and modernization of the Russian armed forces in three distinct ways: ..."
"... While some US politicians understood what was going on (I think of Ron Paul, see here ), most did not. They were so brainwashed by the US propaganda that they were sure that no matter what, "USA! USA! USA!". Alas for them, the reality was quite different. ..."
Truth be told, most Russian politicians (with the notable exception of the official Kremlin
court jester, Zhirinovskii) and analysts never saw Trump as a potential ally or friend. The
Kremlin was especially cautious, which leads me to believe that the Russian intelligence
analysts did a very good job evaluating Trump's psyche and they quickly figured out that he was
no better than any other US politician.
Right now, I know of no Russian analyst who would predict that relations between the US and
Russia will improve in the foreseeable future. If anything, most are clearly saying that "guys,
we better get used to this" (accusations, sanctions, accusations, sanctions, etc. etc.
etc.).
Furthermore, it is pretty obvious to the Russians that while Crimea and MH17 were the
pretexts for western sanctions against Russia, they were not the real cause. The real cause of
the West's hatred for Russia is as simple as it is old: Russia cannot be conquered, subdued,
subverted or destroyed. They've been at it for close to 1,000 years and they still are at it.
In fact, each time they fail to crush Russia, their russophobia increases to even higher levels
(phobia both in the sense of "fear" and in the sense of "hatred").
Simply put -- there is nothing which Russia can expect from the upcoming election. Nothing
at all. Still, that does not mean that things are not better than 4 or 8 years ago. Let's look
at what changed.
I would argue that since at least Russia and the AngloZionist Empire have been at war
since at least 2013, when Russia foiled the US plan to attack Syria under the pretext that it
was "highly likely" that the Syrian government had used chemical weapons against civilians (in
reality, a textbook case of a false flag organized by the Brits), This means that Russia and
the Empire have been at [Cold] war since at least 2013, for no less than seven years (something
which Russian 6th columnists and Neo-Marxists try very hard to ignore).
True, at least until now, this was has been 80% informational, 15% economic and only 5%
kinetic, but this is a real existential war of survival for both sides: only one side will walk
away from this struggle. The other one will simply disappear (not as a nation or a people, but
as a polity; a regime). The Kremlin fully understood that and it embarked on a huge reform and
modernization of the Russian armed forces in three distinct ways:
A "general" reform of
the Russian armed forces which had to be modernized by about 80%. This part of the reform is
now practically complete. A specific reform to prepare the western and southern military
districts for a major conventional war against the united West (as always in Russian history)
which would involve the First Guards Tank Army and the Russian Airborne Forces. The development
of bleeding-edge weapons systems with no equivalent in the West and which cannot be countered
or defeated; these weapons have had an especially dramatic impact upon First Strike Stability
and upon naval operations.
While some US politicians understood what was going on (I think of Ron Paul, see
here ), most did
not. They were so brainwashed by the US propaganda that they were sure that no matter what,
"USA! USA! USA!". Alas for them, the reality was quite different.
Russian officials, by the way,
have confirmed that Russia was preparing for war . Heck, the reforms were so profound
and far reaching, that it would have been impossible for the Russians to hide what they were
doing (see here for details; also
please see Andrei Martyanov's excellent primer on the new Russian Navy here ).
While no country is ever truly prepared for war, I would argue that by 2020 the Russians had
reached their goals and that now Russia is fully prepared to handle any conflict the West might
throw at her, ranging from a small border incident somewhere in Central Asia to a full-scaled
war against the US/NATO in Europe .
Folks in the West are now slowly waking up to this new reality (I mentioned some of that
here
), but it is too late. In purely military terms, Russia has now created such a qualitative gap
with the West that the still existing quantitative gap is not sufficient to guarantee a US/NATO
victory. Now some western politicians are starting to seriously freak out (see this lady ,
for example), but most Europeans are coming to terms with two truly horrible
realities:
Russia is much stronger than Europe and, even much worse, Russia will never
attack first (which is a major cause of frustration for western russophobes)
As for the obvious solution to this problem, having friendly relations with Russia is simply
unthinkable for those who made their entire careers peddling the Soviet (and now Russian)
threat to the world.
But Russia is changing, albeit maybe too slowly (at least for my taste). As I mentioned last
week, a number of Polish, Ukrainian and Baltic politicians have declared that the Zapad2020
military maneuvers which are supposed to take place in southern Russia and the Caucasus could
be used to prepare an attack on the West (see here
for a rather typical example of this nonsense). In the past, the Kremlin would only have made a
public statement ridiculing this nonsense, but this time around Putin did something different.
Right after he saw the reaction of these politicians, Putin ordered a major and UNSCHEDULED
military readiness exercise which involved no less than 150,000 troops, 400 aircraft
& 100 ships ! The message here was clear:
Yes, we are much more powerful than
you are and No, we are not apologizing for our strength anymore
And, just to make sure that the message is clear, the Russians also tested the readiness of
the Russian Airborne Forces units near the city of Riazan, see for yourself:
This response is, I think, the correct one. Frankly, nobody in the West is listening to what
the Kremlin has to say, so what is the point of making more statements which in the future will
be ignored equally as they have been in the past.
If anything, the slow realization that Russia is more powerful than NATO would be most
helpful in gently prodding EU politicians to change their tune and return back to reality.
Check out this recent video of Sarah Wagenknecht, a leading politician of the German Left and
see for yourself:
https://www.dailymotion.com/embed/video/x7uu5fk
The example of Sahra Wagenknecht is interesting, because she is from Germany, one of the
countries of northern Europe; traditionally, northern European powers have been much more
anti-Russian than southern Europeans, so it is encouraging to see that the anti-Putin and
anti-Russia hysteria is not always being endorsed by everybody.
But if things are very slowly getting better in the EU, in the bad old US of A things are
only getting worse. Even the Republicans are now fully on board the Russia-hating float (right
behind a "gay pride" one I suppose) and they are now contributing their own insanity to the
cause, as this article entitled "
Congressional Republicans: Russia should be designated state sponsor of terror " shows
(designating Russia as a terrorist state is an old idea of the Dems, by the way).
Russian options for the Fall
In truth, Russia does not have any particularly good options towards the US. Both parties
are now fully united in their rabid hatred of Russia (and China too, of course). Furthermore,
while there are many well-funded and virulently anti-Russian organizations in the US (Neo-cons,
Papists, Poles, Masons, Ukrainians, Balts, Ashkenazi Jews, etc.), Russian organizations in the
US like this one , have
very little influence or even relevance.
Banderites marching in the US
However, as the chaos continues to worsen inside the US and as US politicians continue to
alienate pretty much the entire planet, Russia does have a perfect opportunity to weaken the US
grip on Europe. The beauty in the current dynamic is that Russia does not have to do anything
at all (nevermind anything covert or illegal) to help the anti-EU and anti-US forces in Europe:
All she needs to do is to continuously hammer in the following simple message: "the US is
sinking -- do you really want to go down with it?".
There are many opportunities to deliver that message. The current US/Polish efforts to
prevent the EU from enjoying cheap Russian gas might well be the best example of what we could
call "European suicide politics", but there are many, many more.
Truth be told, neither the US nor the EU are a top priority for Russia, at least not in
economic terms. The moral credibility of the West in general can certainly be described as dead
and long gone. As for the West military might, it is only a concern to the degree that western
politicians might be tempted to believe their own propaganda about their military forces being
the best in the history of the galaxy. This is why Russia regularly engages in large surprise
exercises: to prove to the West that the Russian military is fully ready for anything the West
might try. As for the constant move of more and more US/NATO forces closer to the borders of
Russia, they are offensive in political terms, but in military terms, getting closer to Russia
only means that Russia will have more options to destroy you. "Forward deployment" is really a
thing of the past, at least against Russia.
With time, however, and as the US federal center loses even more of its control of the
country, the Kremlin might be well-advised to try to open some venues for "popular diplomacy",
especially with less hostile US states. The weakening of the Executive Branch has already
resulted in US governors playing an increasingly important international role and while this is
not, strictly speaking, legal (only the federal government has the right to engage in foreign
policy), the fact is that this has been going on for years already. Another possible partner
inside the US for Russian firms would be US corporations (especially now that they are hurting
badly). Finally, I think that the Kremlin ought to try to open channels of communication with
the various small political forces in the US which are clearly not buying into the official
propaganda: libertarians, (true) liberals and progressives, paleo-conservatives.
What we are witnessing before our eyes is the collapse of the US federal center. This is a
dangerous and highly unstable moment in our history. But from this crisis opportunities will
arise. The best thing Russia can do now is to simply remain very careful and vigilant and wait
for new forces to appear on the US political scene.
I really agree with you that the “blame Russia” and “blame China”
thing has gotten out of hand in US politics. Whether it will turn into a shooting war seems
doubtful to me, as the government is still full of people who are looking out for their own
interests and know that a full-sized war with Russia, China, Iran or whoever will not advance
their interests.
But who would have guessed, a few years ago, that “Russian asset” would become
the all-purpose insult for Democrats to use, not just against Republicans, but against other
Democrats?
With Republicans I think that “blame China” is stronger. China makes a good
scapegoat for the economic situation in the United States. But convincing the working class
that China is the source of their problems (and that Mr. MAGA is going to solve those
problems by standing up to China) requires ignorance of the crucial facts about the trade
relationship between those two countries.
Namely, that the trade deficit exists only because the Federal Reserve chooses to
create huge amounts of new dollars each year for export to other countries, and it’s
only possible for US exports to fall behind imports so badly (and thus put so many American
laborers out of work) because the Fed is making up the difference by exporting dollars.
Granted, it isn’t a policy that the US can change without harming the interests of its
own upper classes; at the same time, it isn’t a policy that China could force on the US
without the people in charge of the United States wanting it.
This is a topic I’ve dealt with a few times on my own blog.
Natalie Wynn also refers to Jo Freeman's 1976 piece on "Trashing," in which she describes
her experience of being ostracized by fellow feminists for alleged ideological deviation. The
dynamic of cancellation predates the internet.
(I don't know where a young you-tuber probably not born before the millennium encountered
Shulamith Firestone's old partner in crime, but I am delighted that she did! I know it shows my
age, but I think that young activists today could benefit a lot from reading what my
generation's activists wrote. Also, from getting off my lawn.)
This is a shadow of USSR over the USA. Dead are biting from the grave.
Notable quotes:
"... Over the course of the period from the heyday of McCarthyism to the present, the percentage of the American people not feeling free to express their views has tripled. In 2019, fully four in ten Americans engaged in self-censorship. Our analyses of both over-time and cross-sectional variability provide several insights into why people keep their mouths shut. We find that: ..."
"... those possessing more resources (e.g., higher levels of education) report engaging in more self-censorship ..."
"... fully 40% of the American people today reported being less free to speak their minds than they used to. That so many Americans withhold their political views is remarkable -- and portentous. ..."
"... Self-censorship is defined as intentionally and voluntarily withholding information from others in [the] absence of formal obstacles ..."
Over the course of the period from the heyday of McCarthyism to the present, the
percentage of the American people not feeling free to express their views has tripled. In 2019,
fully four in ten Americans engaged in self-censorship. Our analyses of both over-time and
cross-sectional variability provide several insights into why people keep their mouths shut. We
find that:
(1) Levels of self-censorship are related to affective polarization among the mass public,
but not via an "echo chamber" effect because greater polarization is associated with more
self-censorship.
(2) Levels of mass political intolerance bear no relationship to self-censorship, either at
the macro- or micro-levels.
(3) Those who perceive a more repressive government are only slightly more likely to engage
in self-censorship. And
(4) those possessing more resources (e.g., higher levels of education) report engaging
in more self-censorship .
Together, these findings suggest the conclusion that one's larger macro-environment has
little to do with self-censorship. Instead, micro-environment sentiments -- such as worrying
that expressing unpopular views will isolate and alienate people from their friends, family,
and neighbors -- seem to drive self-censorship.
We conclude with a brief discussion of the significance of our findings for larger democracy
theory and practice. Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3647099
There can be little doubt that Americans today are deeply divided on their values, many
issue preferences, and their ideological and partisan attachments (e.g., Druckman and
Levendusky 2019). Indeed, these divisions even extend to the question of whom -- or what kind
of person -- their children should marry (Iyengar et al. 2019)!
A concomitant of these divisions is that political discourse has become coarse, abrasive,
divisive, and intense. When it comes to politics today, it is increasingly likely that even an
innocent but misspoken opinion will cause a kerfuffle to break out.
It therefore should not be surprising to find that a large segment of the American people
engages in self-censorship when it comes of expressing their views.1 In a nationally
representative survey we conducted in 2019 (see Appendix A), we asked a question about
self-censorship that Samuel Stouffer (1955) first asked in 1954, with startling results:
fully 40% of the American people today reported being less free to speak their minds than
they used to. That so many Americans withhold their political views is remarkable -- and
portentous.
... ... ...
===
1 Sharvit et al. put forth a useful definition of self-censorship (2018, 331): "
Self-censorship is defined as intentionally and voluntarily withholding information from
others in [the] absence of formal obstacles ." Studies of self-censorship have taken many
forms, ranging from philosophical inquiries (e.g., Festenstein 2018) to studies of those
withholding crucial evidence of human rights abuses (e.g., Bar-Tal 2017) to studies of
self-censorship among racial minorities (e.g., Gibson 2012).
Trump DID commit obstruction of justice... he refused to force HIS Dept of Justice to indict Hillary, Comey, Brennan and Clapper
for their obvious major felonies.
The Guardian is running a more sophisticated version of the story. It claims the Russians
hacked the papers and gave them to Jeremy Corbyn so he could win the General Elections of
December 2019:
The stolen documents – a 451-page dossier of emails – ultimately ended up in
the hands of Jeremy Corbyn during last winter's election campaign after Russian actors
tried to disseminate the material online.
They had been posted on the social media platform Reddit and brought to the attention of
the then Labour leader's team. Corbyn said the documents revealed the NHS "was on the
table" in trade talks with the US.
Details of Russia's targeting of Fox's emails were first revealed on Monday by Reuters,
which said his account was accessed several times between 12 July and 21 October last year.
It was unclear if the documents were obtained when the staunch leave supporter was still
trade secretary; he was dropped by Boris Johnson on 24 July.
However, it still is keeping the earliest date as July 12th, thus reproducing the entire
Reuters' version.
My guess is that The Guardian adapted the story to its center-left (i.e. Blairite)
audience, in a way both Corbyn and the Conservative and Unionist Party could be melded
together as a single evil force. If that's the case, then it is circumstantial evidence for a
highly and centrally coordinated propaganda machine in the UK, possibly ran directly from the
MI5/6, which directly involves all the important British newspapers, TV channels and
more.
It's interesting to see how The Guardian sophisticated the clearly fake story. In the
excerpt I quoted above, it is clear the source of the leak could've only been secretary Fox
(or Fox served as the sacrificial lamb, it doesn't matter for the sake of the argument
here).
Then, it connected Fox's leak with Raab's public accusation of Russia (that story where he
accused Russia in the name of the British government, but didn't reveal the evidence).
To end with a high note, the Guardian then revived a story of hacked e-mails from 2012 and
2017.
You can then see how the British are capable of recycling old, failed propaganda
attacks/fake news to transform then into a new "truth". Very curious and sophisticated
methodology of building a long-term, sustained, false narrative. It almost mirrors the
Christian method of typology, where a previous event is brought up from oblivion to serve as
a prelude for the new event (i.e. the newest fake news).
"The attack bore the hallmarks of a state-backed operation."
There is no such thing.
Look at the Twitter hack last week. Everyone said "must be some sophisticated actor,
possibly state-sponsored". Turns out it was a 17-year-old in Florida. That has happened
repeatedly in the last ten years or more: hacks that looked "sophisticated" turned out to be
done by a single individual. People forget that some organized crime hacker groups earn
millions of dollars from their hacks and can afford to put quite an effort into the
development of sophisticated hacking tools that are the equal of anything a state
intelligence agency can produce.
People in infosec know the truth: it's not that hard to compromise any corporation or
individual. And "attribution by target" - that is, the notion that because a particular
person or organization is government or media, therefore it has to be a state-related hacker
- is completely false. *Any* hacker will hit *any* target that provides 1) a challenge,
and/or 2) personal identification information, and/or intellectual property that can be sold
on the Dark Web.
Only situations where specialized knowledge that is not commonly available to individuals
or civilian groups was used in the hack can clearly indicate a state actor. Stuxnet is the
classic example, requiring access to and the ability to test the malware with specific pieces
of hardware that aren't commonly available to persons outside of industrial or nuclear
engineering.
Stealing some papers from a government individual off his phone or home or office desktop
is almost trivial in comparison.
"his account was accessed several times between 12 July and 21 October"
So for three months they did nothing to fix his security? Good work, guys...you're fired.
This is typical - hackers sitting in a corporation's network for months or even years without
being detected. It's likely they didn't even notice the unauthorized access until they
decided to look back. Not to mention that a government worker isn't supposed to be using
"personal email" to host classified information. So the idiot involved should be fired.
Typical infosec clusterfuck. That's assuming it happened at all, of course, which is
doubtful.
Well, lost two post due to the VPN being on...sigh...
OK, to quote the old British comedy radio show, "I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again"...
"...the attack bore the hallmarks of a state-backed operation."
There is no such thing. *Any* hacker will hack *any* target provided it provides 1) a
challenge, and/or 2) personal identification information, and/or 3) intellectual property,
the latter two being sold on the Dark Web. Trying to attribute the hacker based on his target
is a fool's game - not that there is any lack of fools in the infosec space who use such
attribution as marketing, such as CrowdStrike.
Then there's the fact that this guy's account was accessed several times over a
three-month period - meaning no one was monitoring his email security, least of all him. Not
to mention that he was passing classified papers over a personal email account - which should
get him fired. Email is *insecure*, period, unless encrypted between the parties involved.
And even then, you just compromise one party's desktop, laptop or phone, and bingo,
encryption bypassed. And compromising an individual's or organization's email system is not
particularly hard, as any penetration tester knows. One phishing email targeted to the right
person usually does it.
This is the purpose of the Russia-is-responsible-for-all-malign-events disinformation
campaigns as stated by a junior deep-stater:
"An analysis of the UK experience offers some indicators as to what deters Russia .Taken
together, this swift, coordinated national response backed by the weight of the international
community and imposition of punitive measures exposed Russian malign influence activities and
incompetence, embarrassing Russia in the eyes of its citizens. Over time, such reputational
damage could cause more serious problems for the Russian government vis-à-vis the
Russian people."
As 5-Eyes nations fall further behind Russia & China, the outright lies and
disinformation will increase as they'll no longer be capable of honest competition--and
that's just the business sphere. In the social sphere, as living standards continue to fall
for 5-Eyes residents relative to Russia and China, the shrillness and mendacity of the lying
will escalate to cover for the vast political failure that's responsible for the decline. As
some have noted, there's been a reversal of positions with the Outlaw US Empire becoming ever
more degraded like the USSR previously. Both UK and USA continually behave as spoilt brats,
taking their ball home when no longer allowed to win. Self-examination is Taboo. Those
watching rightly question how it was that such people rose to dominant positions--completely
accidental is the answer.
By
Caitlin
Johnstone
, an independent journalist based in Melbourne, Australia. Her website is
here
and
you can follow her on Twitter
@caitoz
In the American corporatist system, where wealthy elites control the elected government through lobbyists, corporate media is
state media, promoting narratives that help maintain the corporate-approved status quo.
The New York Times
published an astonishingly horrible
article
the
other day titled
"Latin America Is Facing a 'Decline of Democracy' Under the Pandemic"
accusing
governments like Venezuela and Nicaragua of exploiting Covid-19 to quash opposition and oppress democracy.
The article sources its jarringly propagandistic claims in multiple US government-funded narrative management operations like
the
Wilson Center
and the National Endowment for
Democracy
-sponsored
Freedom
House
, the
extensively
plutocrat-funded Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace, and the United States Naval Academy.
The crown jewel of this piece of State Department stenography reads as follows:
"Adding to these challenges, democracy in Latin America has also lost a champion in the
United States, which had played an important role in promoting democracy after the end of the Cold War by financing good
governance programs and calling out authoritarian abuses."
The fact that America's most widely regarded newspaper feels perfectly comfortable making such a spectacularly in-your-face
lie on behalf of the US government tells you everything you need to know about what the mass media in America really are and
what they do.
The United States has never at any time been a champion of democracy in Latin America, before or since the Cold War. It has
intervened hundreds of
times
in
the continent's affairs throughout history, with everything from murderous corporate
colonialism
to deadly
CIA regime-change
operations
to overt
military
invasions
.
It is currently trying to orchestrate a
coup
in
Venezuela after
failing
to
stage one during the Bush administration, it's pushing regime
change
in
Nicaragua, and
The New York Times
itself
admitted
this
year that it was wrong to promote the false US government
narrative
of
electoral shenanigans in Bolivia's presidential race last year, a narrative which
facilitated
a bloody
fascist
coup
.
This is propaganda. There is no other word for it. And yet the only time Western politicians and news reporters use that word
is to talk about nations like Russia and China.
Why is propaganda used in an ostensibly free democracy with an ostensibly free media? Why are its news media outlets so
consistently in alignment with every foreign policy objective of US government agencies, no matter how destructive and
inexcusable? If the media and the government are two separate institutions, why do they so consistently function as though
they are not separate?
Well, that's easy. It's because they aren't separate. The only thing keeping this from being seen is the fact that America's
real government isn't located where people think it is.
In a corporatist system of government, where no hard lines are drawn between corporate/financial power and state power,
corporate media is state media. Since bribery is legal in the US political
system
in
the form of corporate lobbying and campaign donations, America's elected government is controlled by wealthy elites who have
money to burn and who benefit from maintaining a specific status quo arrangement.
The fact that this same plutocratic class
also
owns
America's media, which is now so consolidated that it's almost entirely run by just six
corporations
,
means that the people who run the government also run the media. This allows America's true rulers to set up a system which
promotes
narratives
that
are favorable to their desired status quo.
Which means that the US has state propaganda. They just don't call it that themselves.
Strip away the phony two-handed sock puppet show of US electoral politics and look at how power actually moves in that
country, and you just see one more tyrannical regime which propagandizes its citizens, brutally cracks down on
protesters
, deliberately
keeps its populace
impoverished
so
they don't get powerful enough to change things, and attacks any nation which dares to
disobey
its
dictates.
Beneath the thin layer of narrative overlay about freedom and democracy, the US is just one more despotic, bloodthirsty
empire. It's no better than any of the other despotic, bloodthirsty empires throughout history. It just has good PR.
Plutocrats not only exert control over America's media and politics, they also form alliances with the secretive government
agencies whose operators remain amid the comings and goings of the official elected government. We see examples of this in the
way new-money tech plutocrats like
Jeff
Bezos
,
Peter
Thiel
and
Pierre
Omidyar
have direct relationships with the CIA and its proxies.
We also see it in the sexual blackmail
operation
which
was facilitated by the late Jeffrey Epstein in connection with billionaire Leslie Wexner and Israeli
intelligence
,
along with potentially the
FBI
and/or other
US intelligence
agencies
.
Today the internet is
abuzz
as newly
unsealed court
documents
relating
to Epstein and
his
co-conspirator Ghislaine
Maxwell reveal witness testimony regarding underage sex trafficking, with such high-profile names appearing in the documents
as
Alan
Dershowitz
,
Bill
Clinton
and
Prince
Andrew
.
The Overton window of acceptable political discourse has been
shrunk
into
such a narrow spectrum of debate that talking about even well-known and extensively documented facts involving the real nature
of America's government and media will get you laughingly dismissed as a conspiracy theorist, which is itself a symptom of
tight narrative control by a ruling class which much prefers Americans thinking they live in a free democracy whose government
they control with their votes.
In the old days you used to be able to tell who your rulers were because they'd sit on thrones and wear golden crowns and make
you bow before them. Human consciousness eventually evolved beyond the acceptability of such brazen indignities, so it became
necessary for rulers to take on more of a background role while the citizenry clap and cheer for the illusory puppet show of
electoral politics.
But the kings are still among us, just as cruel and tyrannical as ever. They've just figured out how to mask their tyranny
behind the facade of freedom.
But 2020 has been a year of
revelations
,
a trend which seems likely to continue
accelerating
.
Truth cannot stay hidden forever.
Think your friends would be
interested? Share this story!
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those
of RT.
"... The U.S. has spent a century or more trying to install a U.S.-friendly government in Moscow. Following the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, the U.S. sent neoliberal economists to loot the country as the Clinton administration, and later the Obama administration, placed NATO troops and armaments on the Russian border after a negotiated agreement not to do so . Subsequent claims of realpolitik are cover for a reckless disregard for geopolitical consequences. ..."
"... The paradox of American liberalism, articulated when feminist icon and CIA asset Gloria Steinem described the CIA as ' liberal, nonviolent and honorable ,' is that educated, well-dressed, bourgeois functionaries have used the (largely manufactured) threat of foreign subversion to install right-wing nationalists subservient to American business interests at every opportunity. ..."
"... To the point made by Christopher Simpson , the CIA could have achieved better results had it not employed former Nazi officers, begging the question of why it chose to do so? ..."
"... Russiagate is the nationalist party line in the American fight against communism, without the communism. Charges of treason have been lodged every time that military budgets have come under attack since 1945. In 1958 the senior leadership of the Air Force was charging the other branches of the military with treason for doubting its utterly fantastical (and later disproven) estimate of Soviet ICBMs. Treason is good for business. ..."
"... Shortly after WWII ended, the CIA employed hundreds of former Nazi military officers, including former Gestapo and SS officers responsible for murdering tens and hundreds of thousands of human beings , to run a spy operation known as the Gehlen Organization from Berlin, Germany. Given its central role in assessing the military intentions and capabilities of the Soviet Union, the Gehlen Organization was more likely than not responsible for the CIA's overstatement of Soviet nuclear capabilities in the 1950s used to support the U.S. nuclear weapons program. Former Nazis were also integrated into CIA efforts to install right wing governments around the world. ..."
"... Under the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act passed by Congress in 1998, the CIA was made to partially disclose its affiliation with, and employment of, former Nazis. In contrast to the ' Operation Paperclip ' thesis that it was Nazi scientists who were brought to the U.S. to labor as scientists, the Gehlen Organization and CIC employed known war criminals in political roles. Klaus Barbie, the 'Butcher of Lyon,' was employed by the CIC, and claims to have played a role in the murder of Che Guevara . Wernher von Braun, one of the Operation Paperclip 'scientists,' worked in a Nazi concentration camp as tens of thousands of human beings were murdered. ..."
"... To understand the political space that military production came to occupy, from 1948 onward the U.S. military became a well-funded bureaucracy where charges of treason were regularly traded between the branches. Internecine battles for funding and strategic dominance were (and are) regularly fought. The tactic that this bureaucracy -- the 'military industrial complex,' adopted was to exaggerate foreign threats in a contest for bureaucratic dominance. The nuclear arms race was made a self-fulfilling prophecy. As the U.S. produced world-ending weapons non-stop for decades on end, the Soviets responded in kind. ..."
"... Long story short, the CIA employed hundreds of former Nazi officers who had the ideological predisposition and economic incentive to mis-perceive Soviet intentions and misstate Soviet capabilities to fuel the Cold War. ..."
"... the U.S. had indicated its intention to use nuclear weapons in a first strike -- and had demonstrated the intention by placing Jupiter missiles in Italy, nothing that the U.S. offered during the Missile Crisis could be taken in good faith. ..."
"... Following the election of Bill Clinton in 1992, the Cold War entered a new phase. Cold War logic was repurposed to support the oxymoronic 'humanitarian wars' -- liberating people by bombing them. In 1995 'Russian meddling' meant the Clinton administration rigging the election of Boris Yeltsin in the Russian presidential election. Mr. Clinton then unilaterally reneged on the American agreement to keep NATO from Russia's border when former Baltic states were brought under NATO's control . ..."
"... The Obama administration's 2014 incitement in Ukraine , by way of fostering and supporting the Maidan uprising and the ousting of Ukraine's democratically elected President, Viktor Yanukovych, ties to the U.S. strategy of containing and overthrowing the Soviet (Russian) government that was first codified by the National Security Council (NSC) in 1945. The NSC's directives can be found here and here . The economic and military annexation of Ukraine by the U.S. (NATO didn't exist in 1945) comes under NSC10/2 . The alliance between the CIA and Ukrainian fascists ties to directive NSC20 , the plan to sponsor Ukrainian-affiliated former Nazis in order to install them in the Kremlin to replace the Soviet government. This was part of the CIA's rationale for putting Ukrainian-affiliated former Nazis on its payroll in 1948. ..."
"... That Russiagate is the continuation of a scheme launched in 1945 by the National Security Council, to be engineered by the CIA with help from former Nazi officers in its employ, speaks volumes about the Cold War frame from which it emerges ..."
"... Its near instantaneous adoption by bourgeois liberals demonstrates the class basis of the right-wing nationalism it supports. That liberals appear to perceive themselves as defenders 'democracy' within a trajectory laid out by unelected military leaders more than seven decades earlier is testament to the power of historical ignorance tied to nationalist fervor. Were the former Gestapo and SS officers employed by the CIA 'our Nazis?' ..."
"... Furthermore, are liberals really comfortable bringing fascists with direct historical ties to the Third Reich to power in Ukraine? And while there are no good choices in the upcoming U.S. election, the guy who liberals want to bring to power is lead architect of this move. ..."
The political success of Russiagate lies in the vanishing of American history in favor of a
façade of liberal virtue. Posed as a response to the election of Donald Trump, a
straight line can be drawn from efforts to undermine the decommissioning of the American war
economy in 1946 to the CIA's alliance with Ukrainian fascists in 2014. In 1945 the NSC
(National Security Council) issued a series of directives that gave logic and direction to the
CIA's actions during the Cold War. That these persist despite the 'fall of communism' suggests
that it was always just a placeholder in the pursuit of other objectives.
The first Cold War was an imperial business enterprise to keep the Generals, bureaucrats,
and war materiel suppliers in power and their bank accounts flush after WWII. Likewise, the
American side of the nuclear arms race left former
Gestapo and SS officers employed by the CIA to put their paranoid fantasies forward as
assessments of Russian military capabilities. Why, of all people, would former Nazi officers be
put in charge military intelligence if accurate assessments were the goal? The Nazis hated the
Soviets more than the Americans did.
The ideological binaries of Russiagate -- for or against Donald Trump, for or against
neoliberal, petrostate Russia, define the boundaries of acceptable discourse to the benefit of
deeply nefarious interests. The U.S. has spent a century or more
trying to install a U.S.-friendly government in Moscow. Following the dissolution of the USSR
in 1991, the U.S. sent neoliberal economists to
loot the country as the Clinton administration, and later the Obama administration, placed
NATO troops and armaments on the Russian border after a
negotiated agreement not to do so . Subsequent claims of realpolitik are cover for a
reckless disregard for geopolitical consequences.
The paradox of American liberalism, articulated when feminist icon and CIA asset Gloria
Steinem described the CIA as ' liberal,
nonviolent and honorable ,' is that educated, well-dressed, bourgeois functionaries have
used the (largely manufactured) threat of foreign subversion to install right-wing nationalists
subservient to American business interests at every opportunity. Furthermore, Steinem's
aggressive ignorance of the actual history of the CIA illustrates the liberal propensity to
conflate bourgeois dress and attitude with an imagined
gentility . To the
point made by Christopher Simpson , the CIA could have achieved better results had it not
employed former Nazi officers, begging the question of why it chose to do so?
On the American left, Russiagate is treated as a case of bad reporting, of official outlets
for government propaganda serially reporting facts and events that were subsequently disproved.
However, some fair portion of the American bourgeois, the PMC that acts in supporting roles for
capital, believes every word of it. Russiagate is the nationalist party line in the American
fight against communism, without the communism. Charges of treason have been lodged every time
that military budgets have come under attack since 1945. In 1958 the senior leadership of the
Air Force was charging the other branches of the military with treason for doubting its utterly
fantastical (and later disproven) estimate of Soviet ICBMs. Treason is good for business.
Shortly after WWII ended, the CIA employed hundreds of former Nazi military officers,
including former
Gestapo and SS officers responsible for murdering tens and hundreds of thousands of human
beings , to run a spy operation known as the Gehlen Organization from Berlin,
Germany. Given its central role in assessing the military intentions and capabilities of the
Soviet Union, the Gehlen Organization was more likely than not responsible for the CIA's
overstatement of Soviet nuclear capabilities in the 1950s used to support the U.S. nuclear
weapons program. Former Nazis were also integrated
into CIA efforts to install right wing governments around the world.
By the time that (Senator) John F. Kennedy claimed a U.S. 'missile gap' with the Soviets in
1958, the CIA was providing estimates of Soviet ICBMs (Inter-continental Ballistic Missiles),
that were
wildly inflated -- most likely provided to it by the Gehlen Organization. Once satellite
and U2 reconnaissance estimates became available, the CIA lowered its own to 120 Soviet ICBMs
when the actual number
was four . On the one hand, the Soviets really did have a nuclear weapons program. On the
other, it was a tiny fraction of what was being claimed. Bad reporting, unerringly on the side
of larger military budgets, appears to be the constant.
Under the
Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act passed by Congress in 1998, the CIA was made to partially
disclose its affiliation with, and employment of, former Nazis. In contrast to the '
Operation Paperclip ' thesis that it was Nazi scientists who were brought to the U.S. to
labor as scientists, the Gehlen Organization and CIC employed known war criminals in
political roles. Klaus Barbie, the 'Butcher of Lyon,' was employed by the CIC, and claims to
have played a role in the murder of Che
Guevara . Wernher von Braun, one of the Operation Paperclip 'scientists,' worked in a Nazi
concentration camp as tens of thousands of human beings were murdered.
The historical sequence in the U.S. was WWI, the Great Depression, WWII, to an economy that
was heavily dependent on war production. The threatened decommissioning of the war economy in
1946 was first met with an
honest assessment of Soviet intentions -- the Soviets were moving infrastructure back into
Soviet territory as quickly as was practicable, then to the military budget-friendly claim that
they were putting resources in place to invade Europe. The result of the shift was that the
American Generals kept their power and the war industry kept producing materiel and weapons. By
1948 these weapons had come to include atomic bombs.
To understand the political space that military production came to occupy, from 1948 onward
the U.S. military became a well-funded bureaucracy where charges of treason were regularly
traded between the branches. Internecine battles for funding and strategic dominance were (and
are) regularly fought. The tactic that this bureaucracy -- the 'military industrial complex,'
adopted was to exaggerate foreign threats in a contest for bureaucratic dominance. The nuclear
arms race was made a self-fulfilling prophecy. As the U.S. produced world-ending weapons
non-stop for decades on end, the Soviets responded in kind.
What ties the Gehlen Organization to CIA estimates of Soviet nuclear weapons from 1948
– 1958 is 1) the Gehlen Organization was central to the CIA's intelligence operations
vis-à-vis the Soviets, 2) the CIA had limited alternatives to gather information on the
Soviets outside of the Gehlen Organization and 3) the senior leadership of the U.S. military
had
long demonstrated that it approved of exaggerating foreign threats when doing so enhanced
their power and added to their budgets. Long story short, the CIA employed hundreds of former
Nazi officers who had the ideological predisposition and economic incentive to mis-perceive
Soviet intentions and misstate Soviet capabilities to fuel the Cold War.
Where this gets interesting is that American whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg was working for the Rand
Corporation in the late 1950s and early 1960s when estimates of Soviet ICBMs were being put
forward. JFK had run (in 1960) on a platform that included closing the Soviet – U.S. '
missile
gap .' The USAF (U.S. Air Force), charged with delivering nuclear missiles to their
targets, was estimating that the Soviets had 1,000 ICBMs. Mr. Ellsberg, who had limited
security clearance through his employment at Rand, was leaked the known number of Soviet ICBMs.
The Air Force was saying 1,000 Soviet ICBMs when the number confirmed by reconnaissance
satellites was four.
By 1962, the year of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the CIA had shifted nominal control of the
Gehlen Organization to the BND, for whom Gehlen continued to work. Based on ongoing satellite
reconnaissance data, the CIA was busy lowering its estimates of Soviet nuclear capabilities.
Benjamin Schwarz, writing
for The Atlantic in 2013, provided an account, apparently informed by the CIA's lowered
estimates, where he placed the whole of the Soviet nuclear weapons program (in 1962) at roughly
one-ninth the size of the U.S. effort. However, given Ellsberg's known count of four Soviet
ICBMs at the time of the missile crisis, even Schwarz's ratio of 1:9 seems to overstate Soviet
capabilities.
Further per Schwarz's reporting, the Jupiter nuclear missiles that the U.S. had placed in
Italy prior to the Cuban Missile Crisis only made sense as first-strike weapons. This
interpretation is corroborated by Daniel Ellsberg , who argues
that the American plan was always to initiate the use of nuclear weapons (first strike). This
made JFK's posture of equally matched contestants in a geopolitical game of nuclear chicken
utterly unhinged. Should this be less than clear, because the U.S. had indicated its intention
to use nuclear weapons in a first strike -- and had demonstrated the intention by placing
Jupiter missiles in Italy, nothing that the U.S. offered during the Missile Crisis could be
taken in good faith.
The dissolution of the USSR in 1991 was met with a promised reduction in U.S. military
spending and an end to the Cold War, neither of which ultimately materialized. Following the
election of Bill Clinton in 1992, the Cold War entered a new phase. Cold War logic was
repurposed to support the oxymoronic 'humanitarian wars' -- liberating people by bombing them.
In 1995 'Russian meddling' meant the Clinton administration rigging
the election of Boris Yeltsin in the Russian presidential election. Mr. Clinton then
unilaterally reneged on the American agreement to keep NATO from Russia's border when former
Baltic
states were brought under NATO's control .
The Obama administration's 2014 incitement in Ukraine , by way of
fostering and supporting the Maidan uprising and the ousting of Ukraine's democratically
elected President, Viktor Yanukovych, ties to the U.S. strategy of containing and overthrowing
the Soviet (Russian) government that was first codified by the National Security Council (NSC)
in 1945. The NSC's directives can be found here and here .
The economic and military
annexation of Ukraine by the U.S. (NATO didn't exist in 1945) comes under NSC10/2
. The alliance between the CIA and Ukrainian fascists ties to directive NSC20 , the plan
to sponsor Ukrainian-affiliated former Nazis in order to install them in the Kremlin to replace
the Soviet government. This was part of the CIA's rationale for putting Ukrainian-affiliated
former Nazis on its payroll in 1948.
That Russiagate is the continuation of a scheme launched in 1945 by the National Security
Council, to be engineered by the CIA with help from former Nazi officers in its employ, speaks
volumes about the Cold War frame from which it emerges.
Its near instantaneous adoption by
bourgeois liberals demonstrates the class basis of the right-wing nationalism it supports. That
liberals appear to perceive themselves as defenders 'democracy' within a trajectory laid out by
unelected military leaders more than seven decades earlier is testament to the power of
historical ignorance tied to nationalist fervor. Were the former Gestapo and SS officers
employed by the CIA 'our Nazis?'
The Nazi War
Crimes Disclosure Act came about in part because Nazi hunters kept coming across Nazi war
criminals living in the U.S. who told them they had been brought here and given employment by
the CIA, CIC, or some other division of the Federal government. If the people in these agencies
thought that doing so was justified, why the secrecy? And if it wasn't justified, why was it
done? Furthermore, are liberals really comfortable bringing fascists with direct historical
ties to the Third Reich to power in Ukraine? And while there are no good choices in the
upcoming U.S. election, the guy who liberals want to bring to power is lead architect of this
move.Cue the Sex
Pistols .
Austria officially confirmed this week that the British Government's allegation that
Novichok, a Russian chemical warfare agent, was used in England by GRU, the Russian military
intelligence service, in March 2018, was a British invention.
Investigations in Vienna by four Austrian government ministries, the BVT intelligence
agency, and by Austrian prosecutors have revealed that secret OPCW reports on the blood testing
of Sergei and Yulia Skripal, copies of which were transferred to the Austrian government, did
not reveal a Russian-made nerve agent.
Two reports, published in Vienna this week by the OE media group and reporter Isabelle
Daniel, reveal that the Financial Times publication of the cover-page of one of the OPCW
reports exposed a barcode identifying the source of the leaked documents was the Austrian
government. The Austrian Foreign Ministry and the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz und
Terrorismusbekämpfung (BVT), the domestic intelligence agency equivalent to MI5 or FBI,
have corroborated the authenticity of the documents.
The Austrian disclosures also reveal that in London the Financial Times editor, Roula
Khalaf, four of the newspaper's reporters, and the management of the Japanese-owned company
have fabricated a false and misleading version of the OPCW evidence and have covered up British
government lying on the Skripal blood testing and the Novichok evidence.
On Wednesday afternoon this week, OE24, a news portal of the OE media group in Vienna, broke
the first story (lead image, right) that the barcode found on the OPCW document photograph
published in London had been traced to several Austrian state
ministries . The next day, OE political editor Isabelle Daniel reported the Austrian
Foreign, Defence and Economics Ministries had received copies of the barcoded OPCW dossier, and
that the Justice Ministry and prosecutors were investigating "potential moles".
Daniel also
quoted a Foreign Ministry source as saying its copy of the documents had been securely
stored in its disarmament department safe, and that there were "no tips" the leak had come from
there. Daniel also quoted a BVT spokesman as confirming the authenticity of the OPCW file had
been verified. "We have checked it recently. Officially it has not come to us."
Left: Isabelle Daniel of OE, Vienna. Right, Roula Khalaf Razzouk, editor of the
Financial Times since her recent appointment by the Nikkei group, the newspaper's owner. Her
full name and concealment of her Lebanese political and business interests can be followed
here . The names of
the four Financial Times reporters who have participated in the misrepresentation and cover-up
are Paul Murphy, investigations editor; Dan McCrum, a reporter; Helen Warrell, NATO
correspondent; and Max Seddon of the Moscow bureau.
The leak had been an "explosive secret betrayal" and a criminal investigation was under way,
OE24 reported. OE is a privately owned Austrian media group, based in Vienna. It
publishes a newspaper, the news portal OE.at, radio and television.
The Financial Times report first exposing the
OPCW documents appeared on July 9. Details of how the newspaper fabricated the interpretation
the OPCW had corroborated Russian involvement in the Novichok attack can be read
here . For the full Skripal story, read the
book .
At an OPCW Executive Council meeting on April 14, 2018, five weeks after the Skripal attack,
the British Government confirmed that a few days earlier "all States parties" had received
copies of the OPCW dossier. This included Austria, as the Viennese sources now acknowledge.
"The OPCW responded promptly to our request to send their experts to the United Kingdom,"
declared Peter Wilson, the British representative to the OPCW on April 14, 2018.
"They conducted a highly professional mission. The OPCW's designated laboratories have
also responded professionally and promptly. What the Director-General said was really
important on this, and the Technical Secretariat's presentation shows how professional that
work was. The report the Technical Secretariat presented to us on 11 April was thorough and
methodical. The Technical Secretariat responded quickly to our request to share that report
with all States Parties. All have had the chance to see the quality of that work."
Wilson went on to say:
"As you know, on 4 March Yulia and Sergei Skripal were poisoned in Salisbury, the United
Kingdom, with a chemical weapon, which United Kingdom experts established to be a Novichok.
OPCW has now clearly verified those findings."
The Austrian copy of the OPCW file now confirms this was a misrepresentation of the chemical
formula and other evidence the OPCW had gathered.
Wilson went on to conclude:
"the identification of the nerve agent used is an essential piece of technical evidence in
our investigation, neither DSTL's [Defence Science and Technology Laboratory at Porton Down]
analysis, nor the OPCW's report, identifies the country or laboratory of origin of the agent
used in this attack. So let me also set out the wider picture, which leads the United Kingdom
to assess that there is no plausible alternative explanation for what happened in Salisbury
than Russian State responsibility. We believe that only the Russian Federation had the
technical means, operational experience, and the motive to target the Skripals."
The first qualifying sentence was the British truth; the conclusion was the British lie. The
Austrian evidence now verifies there was no evidence of a Russian source in the blood and other
test samples; no evidence of Novichok; and no evidence to corroborate the British allegations
of a Russian chemical warfare attack.
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In its report, the Financial Times displayed a partial photograph of the cover-page of one
of the OPCW documents in its possession (lead image, left). A classification stamp appears to
be showing through the title page, but no barcode is visible. The London newspaper appears to
have cropped the published picture so as to hide the barcode . That concealment -- proof of the
Austrian source – allowed the newspaper reporters to claim the source of the document was
unknown, probably Russian, as the headline implied: "Wirecard executive Jan Marsalek touted
Russian nerve gas documents."
A British military source was reported as claiming "the documents were 'unlikely' to have
come from OPCW member states in western Europe or the US." Khalaf and her reporters added: "The
OPCW, which is based in The Hague, said this week that it was investigating the matter, but
declined further comment. The Kremlin did not immediately respond to a request for comment."
With the barcode in their possession but hidden, they knew they were publishing a combination
of disinformation and lies.
The disclosure of the barcode to the Austrians appears to have followed after they had
requested it from Khalaf. She checked with her superiors in the newspaper management before
handing it over. They believed they were doing so in secret.
It is not known if Motohiro Matsumoto , the
Nikkei executive responsible for the London publishing company, was alerted and gave his
authorization; he refuses to answer questions. Matsumoto, one of the five directors of
Financial Times Ltd., is the general manager of Nikkei's global business division. He takes his
running orders from Nikkei's chairman and a long-time media executive, Tsuneo Kita. Matsumoto
replaced Hirotomo Nomura at the head of the Financial Times on March 25, 2020. When Nikkei
bought the newspaper from Pearson Plc in 2015, Nikkei became its sole proprietor.
The Austrian press has yet to report how the barcode was obtained from the newspaper.
Because the BVT and state prosecutors in Vienna are involved in their search for the "moles",
it is likely they contacted their counterparts at MI5 and the Home Office, and that the
newspaper agreed to hand over its copy of the OPCW file to the latter. The collaboration of the
journalists with the secret services to falsify evidence against Moscow in the Novichok story
remains a sensitive secret.
Khalaf has refused repeated requests for comment. Max Seddon, the newspaper's Moscow
reporter, was also asked for additional information about the photograph of the cover-page. He
will not answer.
The Dems. are absolute champions of hypocrisy and hysterical obfuscations. They are also
rather primitive and short-sighted, which all added up means they perpetually accuse others
of their own sins, in narcissistic manipulatory fashion. (Like the abusive husband - prove
you wasn't unfaithful - the teen vicious girl bully - you are a slut - etc.)
"Trump won't accept the election results" is a meme that has been going around for ages.
Now he hinted he might not accept, everyone is all agog. All it signals is that the Dems. are
preparing the ground to contest the results and create serious mayhem. (See the prelude
BLM.)
In 2016 they were taken up short, thru lack of attention, stupidity and hubris - typical
of a small cadre or consigliere group imagining they control everything. They haven't exited
that bubble because they can't - reform is impossible. Their choice of Biden as a possible
placeholder (he might be 'retired' and replaced, or a VP slot might be the P pick, etc.)
probably seems like a good strategy to them, canny and all. Well over 70, brain damaged,
senile and with a reputation of sniffing up little girls, the very idea of 'a leader' is dead
at the door.
All it evidences is that the whole 'primary process' and what one might generously dub
'will of the ppl' as the Dems institute it is a total sham (see Sanders), a transparent
masquerade. Plus that the Dems have no viable, interesting candidate - the last stab was
Obama, whom the Clintons loathed, and many in top spots opposed - but then the 'vote' still
counted (even if manipulations were going on - imho only for under 5% of the vote and this
was accepted by all parties) so Obama was a sure win. Then he was forced of course to
nominate Killary this was seen as a temp. aberration to be dealt with.
Ok, the repubs. So is Trump their candidate or what? :) The democratic 'process' in the US
was always an affair of convos in smoke-filled back rooms, and mucho corruption, dirty
dealing. What is happening now is that the system is cracking fast and nobody knows if they
want dikes to shore it up, to pretend this or that, or to profit from a or b, or to ally with
x or y, or to check out, etc. The masks are coming off (oh wait) one thing is for sure is the
US population will not move or do anything.
jack at 56 I agree, Skripals being 3-way spies is nonsense. Skripal senior was a
washed-out guy who did get some 'kudos' grudgingly from the 'spy' community - ex. he came
here (Switz.) and gave some weak talks etc. I reckon he did want to go back to Russia and may
have made some feelers or requests to do so, but he would have been ignored or at best shoved
to the back of the queue. The Brits never informed him of anything much (imho), etc. Plus,
all this going down when his daughter was there makes no sense for a savvy person, etc. No,
the unravelling of that story will turn out to be quite humdrum, with a lot of 'accidents'
and 'mistakes' etc. (if we ever find out..) with the usual Brit. *Russia Russia Russia* crowd
cashing in opportunistically.
Democrat politicians will keep their knee on the throat of small businesses for as long as
they possibly can for the sole purpose of crippling the economy to defeat Trump in November.
They don't care about the damage this causes. Keeping schools closed in the fall will result
in single parents staying home from work to care for their kids. At very least it stifles the
economy.
Send kids back to school, the majority wants this.
Vote in person November 3rd, make your vote count.
kaiserhoffredux , 3 hours ago
Exactly. There is no logic, reason, or precedent for quarantining healthy people.
To stop a virus, of all things? Ridiculous.
Ignatius , 2 hours ago
They've perverted the language as regards "cases."
A person could test positive and it might well be the most healthy situation: his body
encountered the virus, fought it off, and now though asymptomatic, retains antibodies from a
successful body response. The irony is that what I've described is the very response the vaxx
pushers expect from their vaccines.
Shameless political posturing.
coletrickle45 , 2 hours ago
So if you have 99 - 99.8% chance of surviving this faux virus
But a 100% chance of destroying lives through poverty, bankruptcy, small business
collapse, job losses, domestic abuse, depression, anxiety, fear.
What would you choose? Cost benefit analysis seems pretty obvious.
Gold Banit , 2 hours ago
Most people just regurgitate things they hear, they have lost the ability of creative and
free thought.They have been deliberately dumbed down. The entire system has created a mutant
society which is easy to control and manipulate.
"The media's the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent
guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that's power. Because they control the minds of
the masses." ― Malcolm X ay_arrow
sensibility , 2 hours ago
The COVID-19 Hoax has "Nothing" to do with "Real" Science, It's 100% about "Political"
Science.
Therefore, No Matter What, Politicians will Bend and Manipulate this for "Political"
Gain.
Who Stirred and Exposed the Swamp?
The Swamp Inhabitants Desperately Want & Intend to do Whatever it Takes to Return to
the Old Pre Trump Days of Operating Above the Law Without Exposure and Impunity.
Consequently, Those who Support the COVID-19 Hoax are Swamp Members & Supporters.
Know your Adversary!
monty42 , 2 hours ago
Trump didn't drain, stir, or expose the swamp, sorry that dog don't hunt. He has appointed
recycled establishment swamp creatures his entire term. He appointed Fauci to the Covidian
Taskforce. He says wearing masks is patriotic.
The promises he made his followers did not manifest. Another 4 years after being lied to
is just the same old routine, nothing new.
Until you people are honest about the reality of the situation, you'll never stop the
cycle of D/R destruction.
...Iran launching very clever non-silo dug down ballistic missiles. Anyone can copy the
idea in earth or sand, it looks relatively simple and perhaps genius. It should only require
minimal additions similar to when missiles are "containerized"/vertical on ships.
· "W93/MK7 Navy Warhead -- Developing Modern Capabilities to Address Current and
Future Threats" - Pentagon, Energy Department's National Nuclear Security Administration
(NNSA), unclassified 5-page white paper, May 2020 is still not "leaked". Seems a dud: reading
between the lines not written no one was convinced and instead complained about anyone saying
there's any problems (how "exceptional").
"Red, commanded by retired Marine Corps Lieutenant General Paul K. Van Riper, adopted an
asymmetric strategy, in particular, using old methods to evade Blue's sophisticated
electronic surveillance network. Van Riper used motorcycle messengers to transmit orders to
front-line troops and World-War-II-style light signals to launch airplanes without radio
communications.
Red received an ultimatum from Blue, essentially a surrender document, demanding a
response within 24 hours. Thus warned of Blue's approach, Red used a fleet of small boats to
determine the position of Blue's fleet by the second day of the exercise. In a preemptive
strike, Red launched a massive salvo of cruise missiles that overwhelmed the Blue forces'
electronic sensors and destroyed sixteen warships. The losses were as follows: one aircraft
carrier, ten cruisers and five of six amphibious ships. An equivalent success in a real
conflict would have resulted in the deaths of over 20,000 service personnel. Soon after the
cruise missile offensive, another significant portion of Blue's navy was "sunk" by an armada
of small Red boats, which carried out both conventional and suicide attacks that capitalized
on Blue's inability to detect them as well as expected."
Iranians are not part of the rules based order it seems - not that the bad guys in the war
game was played by Iranians.
In the 2002 war game, the US was defeated in 2 days - lost a massive part of its fleet or
some such. So they stopped the game and changed the rules. I think that's when Van Riper quit
the game in disgust, and of course ultimately went public. But even with the rules changed,
the US still lost.
The point about these exercises is that they are real endeavors to create a playbook that
will result in victory. Millennium cost about $200 million to stage, and even for the
Pentagon that was war-fighting money spent to try to get somewhere. The next point even more
crucial is that in EVERY exercise the Pentagon has undertaken since this game, the US is
ALWAYS beaten by Iran.
This is the point I frequently try to hammer home here - the Pentagon has no map
whatsoever that leads to victory in warfare against Iran. Any warfare will always result in
defeat for the US - and we know how unpalatable a public defeat would be for the whole MIC
stream of income. The fundamentals are stacked against the US. It's very similar to Israel's
position right now against Hezbollah. For both the US and Israel, neither one can move
forward along the path it wants to go because its foe simply cannot be beaten by any
stratagem it can devise.
Sharmine Narwani talked about this extensively in her interview with Ross Ashcroft last
year on Renegade, Inc. It's an excellent interview. She's expert on the geopolitics of the ME
and laid out many of the fundamentals that create and support Iran's unwavering position in
this theater and in the great game:
I keep this episode bookmarked largely to share it here from time to time. You will both
enjoy the interview. The takeaway is that the US can bluster all it wants, but it dare not
cross a red line with Iran - such as it already has, for example, with Soleimani's murder,
and for which it has not yet suffered its full punishment, which is complete banishment from
the ME (and which I am convinced Iran will ultimately achieve).
~~
When your generals tell you constantly, daily, that you can't go into battle in a certain
theater, you are free to bluster all you want. In fact, it's all you have left, and you pour
all your feeble energy into it. Thus, the US.
Peter AU1 50 & 55 Bemildred & Grieved 70
RE: Millenium Challenge 2002
And yet, I keep pointing out that, that was 18 long years ago, when Iran did NOT have the
following:
Terminal guidance for it's ballistics
Armed drone technology
Satellite to map out the battlefield
Proximity to Israel (two countries sat between Iran and Israel)
Electronic surveillance and response, like spoofing a drone to land in Iran.
S300 and home built variations
Cyber
Experience watching coalition forces fighting in ME
Etc, etc,
US could not attack Iran conventionally but with Trump's earlier fixation on nuclear
weapons I think he was going to give that a try. Putin must have thought so to as he very
publicly laid Russia's nuclear umbrella over Iran and maintained the status quo.
Posted by: Peter AU1 | Aug 1 2020 9:03 utc | 88 US could not attack Iran
conventionally
The US is perfectly capable of *attacking* Iran conventionally. The only thing to question
is whether the US can *defeat* Iran in the sense that Iran "surrenders" officially to the US.
*That* is in my view impossible short of the US actually killing thirty million Iranians by
nuking Iran.
Which in turn I believe even Trump would not do. He really would get Pentagon pushback on
that, as well as from every US ally and the UNSC, because no one wants to get the
geopolitical hear from being the first country to use nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear
country (this isn't WWII any more, before anyone brings up Hiroshima.)
As for Putin declaring Iran an ally, that does *not* mean that Putin would risk a nuclear
confrontation with the US over Iran. Not going to happen - even if the US nuked Tehran.
Putin's charge is to take care of Russian interests - and having Iran as an "ally and
partner" does qualify as an "interest". But it is *not* an *overriding* interest. Putin would
not be authorized by the Russian people to risk their country being nuked over a bunch of
Persians and if he did, they'd kick his butt out at the next election - and rightly so.
Current Russian military doctrine (discussed
here specifies the following:
The section on use begins by repeating the formulation in the last two Russian military
doctrines (translation from the Russian Embassy in the U.K.): "The Russian Federation shall
reserve the right to use nuclear weapons in response to the use of nuclear and other types
of weapons of mass destruction against it and/or its allies, as well as in the event of
aggression against the Russian Federation with the use of conventional weapons when the
very existence of the state is in jeopardy." Like the doctrines, Foundations underlines
that the president of the Russian Federation makes any decision to use nuclear weapons.
However, unlike the doctrines, it then, in paragraph 19, outlines four conditions that
could allow for (not require) nuclear use:
credible information that Russia is under ballistic missile attack (the missiles don't
have to be nuclear -- this isn't specified -- but in many cases, it's hard to tell before
they land);
the use of nuclear or other WMD by an adversary against Russian territory or that of its
allies;
adversary actions against Russian critical government or military infrastructure that could
undermine Russia's capacity for nuclear retaliation (so, for example, a cyber attack on
Russia's command and control -- or perhaps one that targets Russian leadership could also
qualify); and, finally,
conventional aggression against Russia that threatens the very existence of the state.
The primary requirement is the use of nukes or "WMDs" against Russia, or conventional
weapons where their use is an "existential threat", i.e., Russia is about to be defeated on a
conventional battlefield.
the phrase "and/or its allies" almost certainly does *not* include Iran. There are two
"alliances" to which Russia is a party, according to Wikipedia:
1) Collective Security Treaty Organization: Military alliance with 6 former Soviet republics:
Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan.
2) Union State: an alliance between Russia and Belarus (also already covered by 1).
Russia and Iran do not have any formal military or mutual-defense alliance agreements.
Russia and Iran are "allied" only with regard to Syria and Islamic terrorism in general.
Russia is willing to sell Iran arms, obviously. Equally obviously, that does not indicate a
willingness to risk nuclear war.
Putin made the following statement in June of 2019:
After talks Friday with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani at the sidelines of the Shanghai
Cooperation Organization summit in the Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek, Putin said that
"relations between Russia and Iran are multifaceted, multilateral" and that "this concerns
the economy, this concerns the issues of stability in the region, our joint efforts to
combat terrorism, including in Syria."
Nothing in that statement indicates a willingness to use Russia's nuclear arsenal to
threaten the US to prevent a US attack on Iran.
It is of course *possible* that some in the Pentagon, the Deep State, and/or Congress, may
interpret that to be the case. But I think the primary restraint on any President would be
the heat for a first use of nukes on a non-nuclear country - even if the alleged "reason" was
that Iran was developing nukes.
Even severe damage to US Navy assets in the region would not be sufficient to justify the use
of nukes against Iran, in particular because the only viable target for nukes would Tehran or
some other major Iranian city.
It is just possible that a tactical nuke would be used against a heavily buried facility
involved in nuclear weapons development (or more precisely, alleged to be so - because Iran
won't be developing nukes regardless of any US attack.) But even that would likely produce
more heat than the US would want - and if it was done, it would be done as covertly as
possible and then denied by the US. And even in that case, Russia would not threaten a
nuclear response over that.
Of course, if the US leadership were to become even more unhinged than Trump, or say, the
Russian leadership after Putin were to become more hawkish, then all bets are off. But under
current conditions, it's not going to happen.
http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/56957
"In this connection, I would like to note the following. We are greatly concerned by certain
provisions of the revised nuclear posture review, which expand the opportunities for reducing
and reduce the threshold for the use of nuclear arms. Behind closed doors, one may say
anything to calm down anyone, but we read what is written. And what is written is that this
strategy can be put into action in response to conventional arms attacks and even to a
cyber-threat.
I should note that our military doctrine says Russia reserves the right to use nuclear
weapons solely in response to a nuclear attack, or an attack with other weapons of mass
destruction against the country or its allies, or an act of aggression against us with the
use of conventional weapons that threaten the very existence of the state. This all is very
clear and specific.
As such, I see it is my duty to announce the following. Any use of nuclear weapons against
Russia or its allies, weapons of short, medium or any range at all, will be considered as a
nuclear attack on this country. Retaliation will be immediate, with all the attendant
consequences."
Patrushev from my link above.
"In the context of the statements made by our partners with regard to a major regional power,
namely Iran, I would like to say the following: Iran has always been and remains our ally and
partner, with which we are consistently developing relations both on bilateral basis and
within multilateral formats"
Patrushev went to the meeting as a presidential envoy. After Putin's 2018 speech, I wondered
who Russia considered an ally as I had not seen Russia name any. I tend to think Patrushev
had reason to publicly name Iran as an ally at that presser. My guess is Israel and US were
trying to get Russia to stand aside while they attacked Iran.
Posted by: Peter AU1 | Aug 1 2020 10:52 utc | 95 I tend to think Patrushev had reason to
publicly name Iran as an ally at that presser. My guess is Israel and US were trying to get
Russia to stand aside while they attacked Iran.
Nonetheless, the two statements do not constitute an official declaration that Iran is an
ally in the sense of being under the Russian nuclear umbrella, as the countries in the list I
quoted from Wikipedia are. The Collective Security Treaty Organization "charter reaffirmed
the desire of all participating states to abstain from the use or threat of force.
Signatories would not be able to join other military alliances or other groups of states,[3]
while aggression against one signatory would be perceived as an aggression against all."
That's a military alliance which specifically declares those countries as "allies" in the
military sense and specifically states that an attack on any of them is an attack on all of
them.
Putin nor anyone else in Russia has specifically stated that Iran is an ally in those same
terms. Putin's reference to Iran as an ally applied to economic matters and the security of
Syria.
There is an article at Stratfor which I cannot access, but the tagline says: "Nikolai
Bordyuzha, secretary-general of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), said Feb.
25 [2020] that Moscow's nuclear umbrella has been extended to other CSTO member countries..."
In other words, the nuclear umbrella didn't even cover the former Soviet Union countries
until this year, apparently. From another article I found, Russia extended the umbrella to
Belarus in 2000. Another article I found says this:
Finally, Russia has created its own military alliance through the Collective Security
Treaty (1992) or "Tashkent treaty". In 2002, the Collective Security Treaty Organization
(CSTO) was created, with a view to parallel NATO. As of June 2009, the organization
included Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kirghizia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, which are
implicitly covered by a Russian nuclear guarantee. Even though Russian officials refer
sometimes to all Commonwealth of
Independent States (CIS) countries being protected by Moscow's nuclear forces, it is
reasonable to assume that only CSTO countries are effectively under the Russian nuclear
umbrella.
So I simply don't see any reference anywhere to Russia explicitly extending its nuclear
umbrella outside of the former Soviet Bloc countries. Again, all of the references made by
Russians - Putin or otherwise - to Iran as an "ally" do not reference a military dimension.
Of course, it's always *possible* that Putin or some future Russian leader *would* extend
that umbrella to Iran, depending on future circumstances. But it seems highly unlikely.
I repeat: There is no chance that Russia will go to nuclear war over Iran. Or even
conventional war against US military assets engaged in an attack on Iran because that would
risk escalation to a nuclear level. The most Russia will do is supply arms and intelligence
to Iran.
USA's shift to the Western Pacific (Australia) is taking shape. This withdrawal of
American troops and personnel from Germany points to the direction of European long-term
decline in importance, as it seems the USA is opting for a more aggressive, less in-depth
model against the Russian Federation. Either it believes the Russian Federation will fall
soon (after Putin's death) or it is giving up Europe altogether. Both scenarios imply in
Germany's (the EU) decline.
Tucker Carlson described former President Obama as "one of the sleaziest and most dishonest
figures in the history of American politics" after his eulogy at the funeral of civil rights
icon Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) on Thursday.
Carlson, who also described the former president as "a greasy politician" for calling on
Congress to pass a new Voting Rights Act and to eliminate the filibuster, which Obama described
as a relic of the Jim Crow era that disenfranchised Black Americans, in order to do so.
"Barack Obama, one of the sleaziest and most dishonest figures in the history of American
politics, used George Floyd's death at a funeral to attack the police," Carlson said before
showing a segment of Obama's remarks.
Pelosi upbraids counterintel chief in private briefing over Russian meddling
Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other top House Democrats admonished the country's top
counterintelligence official during a classified election security briefing Friday, accusing
him of keeping Americans in the dark about the details of Russia's continued interference in
the 2020 campaign. Pelosi hinted at the conflict upon emerging from the briefing Friday
morning, saying she thought the administration was "withholding" evidence of foreign election
meddling.
30 JULY 2020Even the CIA Thought the Steele Dossier Was Crap by Larry C
Johnson
Well what do you know? John Brennan, the congenital liar and Obama's CIA Chief, actually
made the right call when it came to the Steele Dossier. More importantly, we discover that
Brennan inadvertently admitted that there was no substance to the Steele Dossier. If he had one
shred of supporting evidence, you can be assured he would have been fully on board with the FBI
request. But that is not what happened. According to a Senate Intelligence Committee report
declassified this week, Brennan pushed back against the FBI's Jimmy Comey and Andy McCabe on
the matter of whether to include the allegations reported in the Steele Dossier in the January
2017 Intelligence Community Assessment on Russian Interference in the U.S. Presidential
Election. Chuck Ross reports
that :
Documents declassified on Tuesday detail an intense debate between the CIA and FBI in late
2016 over the handling of information from Christopher Steele, with one CIA official telling
the Senate Intelligence Committee that the former British spy's allegations about Trump-Russia
collusion were "very unvetted."
Despite the CIA's concerns about Steele's allegations, the FBI successfully lobbied to
include his information in an Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) regarding Russian
interference in the 2016 election. The bureau also continued using information from Steele to
conduct surveillance against former Trump campaign aide Carter Page.
Investigators have since debunked several of Steele's allegations.
The newly declassified information is from a Senate Intelligence Committee report released
on April 21 that detailed the creation of an ICA released on Jan. 6, 2017. I disputed the
validity of Steele's work way back in January 2017, after BuzzFeed published the dossier. The
errors and outlandish claims were so flagrant that even renowned Helen Keller, were she still
alive, could see the problems. But I was wrong in believing that the media were capable of
honest analysis or following simple logic. As a result, Steele's claims went virtually
unchallenged by meme makers for more than two years and the American public was bombarded with
the gargantuan lie that Russia's meddling in the 2016 Presidential Election paved the road for
Donald Trump's victory. Democrats and media cretins insisted that Trump is nothing more than
Putin's prison bitch.
But cold, hard facts began to emerge that exposed the falsehoods of the Steele document. The
biggest blow came courtesy of DOJ Inspector General Horowitz's revelation that the FBI had
identified and interviewed Steele's Russian sub-source and learned that he could not
corroborate any of the wild, scurrilous claims made by Steele.
Now we have learned the identify to that source--Igor Danchenko. He is a Russian-born
analyst living in the United States and was the primary source for Christopher Steele. More
importantly, he is directly linked to prominent Democrats closely tied to Hillary Clinton. In
particular, Strobe Talbott
:
According to information he put online, Danchenko attended high schools in the United States
in the 1990s as part of a student exchange program. He graduated from Perm State University in
Russia and received a master's degree from the University of Louisville in 2005.
He worked for five years at the Brookings Institution as a Russia analyst. While there, he
wrote a paper with Fiona Hill, who joined the Trump White House in 2017 as its top Russia
expert.
Brookings has played a large role in the dossier saga. In 2016, it's then-president, Strobe
Talbott, contacted Steele seeking a copy of the dossier. Hill told Congress last year that
Talbott shared a copy of the dossier with her on Jan. 9, 2017, a day before BuzzFeed published
the document online.
Christopher Steele's veracity and judgment took another hit in early July when a
British Judge ruled he was guilty of libel in his claim that Russia's Alfa bank was part of
an elaborate money laundering scheme that enriched Donald Trump.
The latest revelation from the Senate Intelligence Committee makes it clear that l'affaire
Steele was an FBI creation. I assumed previously that the CIA also was involved in helping feed
and prop up the Steele Dossier. But the Senate Report makes it very clear that the CIA put no
stock whatsoever in Steele's claims. Shocking as it may be, the congenital miscreant, John
Brennan, actually did the right thing and resisted repeated efforts by the FBI leaders--Jim
Comey and Andy McCabe--to insert Steele's findings into the Intelligence Community Assessment
on Russia's meddling.
This really puts Jim Comey and Andy McCabe in the trick box. If the CIA had facilitated the
Steele Dossier and corroborated its claims, then Comey and McCabe could argue that they were
relying on intelligence community findings in their acceptance of the Steele Dossier. That
cannot go that route. They are fully exposed.
Comey and McCabe committed a fraud on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court by
repeatedly submitting an application to spy on Carter Page that affirmed the allegations in the
Steele Dossier as truthful. They knew by the end of January 2017 that Steele's claims were
unfounded and not corroborated. But instead of fessing up to the FISC Judge, they opted to
lie.
This is not to suggest that John Brennan and Jimmy Clapper, the former DNI Chief, are
exonerated of illegal conduct. Au contraire. They oversaw a massive intelligence collection
operation, which included covert actions designed to ensnare George Papadopoulos, Michael
Flynn, Roger Stone and others and to promote the meme that Trump was a creature of Moscow.
One of the most important takeaways from this week's revelations is the tacit admission that
the intelligence community did not have a damn piece of compromising information on Donald
Trump. Consider this--we know that John Brennan had access to parts of the Steele dossier in
August 2016 and he briefed Democrat Senator Harry Reid on its contents. And there is no doubt
that the members of Brennan's Trump Task Force at the CIA was tasked to scour all intelligence
for proof that would transform Steele's trash into pure gold. But that did not happen. Instead,
come December 2016, even John Brennan had to concede that Christopher Steele's wild claims
could nor be corroborated nor verified.
The mysterious "Primary Subsource" that Christopher Steele has long hidden behind to defend
his discredited Trump-Russia dossier is a former Brookings Institution analyst -- Igor "Iggy"
Danchenko, a Russian national whose past includes criminal convictions and other personal
baggage ignored by the FBI in vetting him and the information he fed to Steele, according to
congressional sources and records obtained by RealClearInvestigations. Agents continued to use
the dossier as grounds to investigate President Trump and put his advisers under
counter-espionage surveillance.
The 42-year-old Danchenko, who was hired by Steele in 2016 to deploy a network of sources to
dig up dirt on Trump and Russia for the Hillary Clinton campaign, was arrested, jailed and
convicted years earlier on multiple public drunkenness and disorderly conduct charges in the
Washington area and ordered to undergo substance-abuse and mental-health counseling, according
to criminal records.
Fiona Hill: She worked at the Brookings Institution with dossier
"Primary Subsource" Igor "Iggy" Danchenko (top photo), and testified against President Trump
last year during impeachment hearings. AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta
In an odd twist, a 2013 federal case against Danchenko was prosecuted by then-U.S Attorney
Rod Rosenstein, who ended up signing one of the FBI's dossier-based wiretap warrants as deputy
attorney general in 2017.
Danchenko first ran into trouble with the law as he began working for Brookings -- the
preeminent Democratic think tank in Washington -- where he struck up a friendship with Fiona
Hill, the White House adviser who testified against Trump during last year's impeachment
hearings. Danchenko has described Hill as a mentor, while Hill has sung his praises as a
"creative" researcher.
Hill is also close to his boss Steele, who she'd known since 2006. She met with the former
British intelligence officer during the 2016 campaign and later received a raw, unpublished
copy of the now-debunked dossier.
It does not appear the FBI asked Danchenko about his criminal past or state of sobriety when
agents interviewed him in January 2017 in a failed attempt to verify the accuracy of the
dossier, which the bureau did only after agents used it to obtain a warrant to surveil Trump
campaign adviser Carter Page. The opposition research was farmed out by Steele, working for
Clinton's campaign, to Danchenko, who was paid for the information he provided.
A newly declassified FBI summary of the FBI-Danchenko meeting reveals agents learned that
key allegations in the dossier, which claimed Trump engaged in a "well-developed conspiracy of
cooperation" with the Kremlin against Clinton, were largely inspired by gossip and bar talk
among Danchenko and his drinking buddies, most of whom were childhood friends from Russia.
The FBI memo is heavily redacted and blacks out the name of Steele's Primary Subsource. But
public records and congressional sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, confirm the
identity of the source as Danchenko.
In the memo, the FBI notes that Danchenko said that he and one of his dossier sources "drink
heavily together." But there is no apparent indication the FBI followed up by asking Danchenko
if he had an alcohol problem, which would cast further doubt on his reliability as a source for
one of the most important and sensitive investigations in FBI history.
The FBI declined comment. Attempts to reach Danchenko by both email and phone were
unsuccessful.
The Justice Department's watchdog recently debunked the dossier's most outrageous
accusations against Trump, and faulted the FBI for relying on it to obtain secret wiretaps. The
bureau's actions, which originated under the Obama administration, are now the subject of a
sprawling criminal investigation led by special prosecutor John Durham.
Rod Rosenstein:
In an odd twist, a 2013 drunkenness case against Danchenko was prosecuted by then-U.S Attorney
Rod Rosenstein, who ended up signing one of the FBI's dossier-based wiretap warrants as deputy
attorney general in 2017. (Greg Nash/Pool via AP)
One of the wiretap warrants was signed in 2017 by Rosenstein, who also that year appointed
Special Counsel Robert Mueller and signed a "scope" memo giving him wide latitude to
investigate Trump and his surrogates. Mueller relied on the dossier too. As it happens,
Rosenstein also signed motions filed in one of Danchenko's public intoxication cases, according
to the documents obtained by RCI.
In March 2013 -- three years before Danchenko began
working on the dossier -- federal authorities in Greenbelt, Md., arrested and charged him with
several misdemeanors, including "drunk in public, disorderly conduct, and failure to have his
[2-year-old] child in a safety seat," according to a court
filing . The U.S. prosecutor for Maryland at the time was Rosenstein, whose name
appears in the docket filings .
The Russian-born Danchenko, who was living in the U.S. on a work visa, was released from
jail on the condition he undergo drug testing and "participate in a program of substance abuse
therapy and counseling," as well as "mental health counseling," the records show. His lawyer
asked the court to postpone his trial and let him travel to Moscow "as a condition of his
employment." The Russian trips were granted without objection from Rosenstein. Danchenko ended
up several months later entering into a plea agreement and paying fines.
In 2006, Danchenko was arrested in Fairfax, Va., on similar offenses, including "public
swearing and intoxication," criminal records show. The case was disposed after he paid a
fine.
At the time, Danchenko worked as a research analyst for the Brookings Institution, where he
became a protégé of Hill. He collaborated with her on at least two Russian policy
papers during his five-year stint at the think tank and worked with another Brookings scholar
on a project to
uncover alleged plagiarism in Russian President Vladimir Putin's doctoral dissertation --
something Danchenko and his lawyer boasted about during their meeting with FBI agents. (Like
Hill, the other scholar, Clifford Gaddy, was a Russia hawk. He and Hill in 2015 authored "Mr.
Putin: Operative in the Kremlin," a book strongly endorsed by Vice President Joe Biden at the
time.)
"Igor is a highly accomplished analyst and researcher," Hill noted on his LinkedIn page in
2011. "He is very creative in pursuing the most relevant of information and detail to support
his research."
Strobe Talbott of Brookings with Hillary Clinton: He connected with
Christopher Steele and passed along a copy of his anti-Trump dossier to Fiona Hill. AP
Photo/Carolyn Kaster Hill also vouched for Steele, an old friend and British intelligence
counterpart. The two reunited in 2016, sitting down for at least one meeting. Her boss at the
time, Brookings President Strobe Talbott, also connected with Steele and
passed along a copy of his anti-Trump dossier to Hill. A tough Trump critic, Talbott
previously worked in the Clinton administration and rallied the think tank behind Hillary.
Talbott's brother-in-law is Cody Shearer, another old Clinton hand who disseminated his own
dossier in 2016 that echoed many of the same lurid and unsubstantiated claims against Trump.
Through a mutual friend at the State Department, Steele obtained a copy of Shearer's dossier
and reportedly submitted it to the FBI to help corroborate his own.
In August 2016, Talbott personally called Steele, based in London, to offer his own input on
the dossier he was compiling from Danchenko's feeds. Steele phoned Talbott just before the
November election, during which Talbott asked for the latest dossier memos to distribute to top
officials at the State Department. After Trump's surprise win, the mood at Brookings turned
funereal and Talbott and
Steele strategized about how they "should handle" the dossier going forward.
During the Trump transition, Talbott encouraged Hill to leave Brookings and take
a job in the White House so she could be "one of the adults in the room" when Russia and
Putin came up. She served as deputy assistant to the president and senior director for European
and Russian affairs on the National Security Council from 2017 to 2019.
She left the White House just before a National Security Council detailee who'd worked with
her, Eric Ciaramella, secretly huddled with Democrats in Congress and
alleged Trump pressured the president of Ukraine to launch an investigation of Biden and
his son in exchange for military aid. Democrats soon held hearings to impeach Trump, calling
Hill as one of their star witnesses.
Congressional investigators are taking a closer look at
tax-exempt Brookings, which has emerged as a nexus in the dossier scandal. As a 501(c)(3)
non-profit, the liberal think tank is prohibited from lobbying or engaging in political
campaigns. Gryffindor/Wikimedia
Under questioning by Republican staff, Hill disclosed that Steele reached out to her for
information about a mysterious individual, but she claimed she could not recall his name. She
also said she couldn't remember the month she and Steele met.
"He had contacted me because he wanted to see if I could give him a contact to some other
individual, who actually I don't even recall now, who he could approach about some business
issues," Hill told the House
last year in an Oct. 14 deposition taken behind closed doors.
Congressional investigators are reviewing her testimony, while taking a closer look at
tax-exempt Brookings, which has emerged as a nexus in the dossier scandal.
Registered with the IRS as a 501(c)(3) non-profit, the liberal think tank is prohibited from
lobbying or engaging in political campaigns. Specifically, investigators want to know if
Brookings played any role in the development of the dossier.
"Their 501(c)(3) status should be audited, because they are a major player in the dossier
deal," said a congressional staffer who has worked on the investigation into alleged Russian
influence.
Hill, who returned to Brookings as a senior fellow in January, could not be reached for
comment. Brookings did not respond to inquiries.
Ghost Employee
As a former member of Britain's secret intelligence service, Steele hadn't traveled to
Russia in decades and apparently had no useful sources there. So he relied entirely on
Danchenko and his supposed "network of subsources," which to its chagrin, the FBI discovered
was nothing more than a "social circle."
It soon became clear over their three days of debriefing him at the FBI's Washington field
office -- held just days after Trump was sworn into office -- that any Russian insights he may
have had were strictly academic.
Danchenko confessed he had no inside line to the Kremlin and was "clueless" when Steele
hired him in March 2016 to investigate ties between Russia and Trump and his campaign
manager.
Christopher Steele, former British spy, leaving a London court this week in a libel
case brought against him by a Russian businessman. Dossier source Danchenko's drinking pals fed
him a tissue of false "rumor and speculation" for pay -- which Steele, in turn, further
embellished with spy-crafty details and sold to his client as "intelligence." (Victoria
Jones/PA via AP)
Desperate for leads, he turned to a ragtag group of Russian and American journalists,
drinking buddies (including one who'd been arrested on pornography charges) and even an old
girlfriend to scare up information for his London paymaster, according to the FBI's January
2017 interview memo, which runs 57 pages. Like him, his friends made a living hustling gossip
for cash, and they fed him a tissue of false "rumor and speculation" -- which Steele, in turn,
further embellished with spy-crafty details and sold to his client as "intelligence."
Instead of closing its case against Trump, however, the FBI continued to rely on the
information Danchenko dictated to Steele for the dossier, even swearing to a secret court that
it was credible enough to renew wiretaps for another nine months.
One of Danchenko's sources was nothing more than an anonymous voice on the other end of a
phone call that lasted 10-15 minutes.
Danchenko told the FBI he figured out later that the call-in tipster, who he said did not
identify himself, was Sergei Millian, a Belarusian-born realtor in New York. In the dossier,
Steele labeled this source "an ethnic Russian close associate of Republican U.S. presidential
candidate Donald Trump," and attributed Trump-Russia conspiracy revelations to him that the FBI
relied on to support probable cause in all four FISA applications for warrants to spy on Trump
adviser Carter Page -- including the Mueller-debunked myth that he and the campaign were
involved in "the DNC email hacking operation."
Danchenko explained to agents the call came after he solicited Millian by email in late July
2016 for information for his assignment from Steele. Millian told RCI that though he did
receive an email from Danchenko on July 21, he ignored the message and never called him.
"There was not any verbal communications with him," he insisted. "I'm positive, 100%,
nothing what is claimed in whatever call they invented I could have said."
Millian provided RCI part of the email, which was written mostly in Russian. Contact
information at the bottom of the email reads:
Igor Danchenko
Business Analyst
Target Labs Inc.
8320 Old Courthouse Rd, Suite 200
Vienna, VA 22182
+1-202-679-5323
At the time, Danchenko listed Target Labs, an IT recruiter run by ethnic-Russians, as an
employer on his resumé. But technically, he was not a paid employee there. Thanks to a
highly unusual deal Steele arranged with the company, Danchenko was able to use Target Labs as
an employment front.
It turns out that in 2014, when Danchenko first started freelancing regularly for Steele
after losing his job at a Washington strategic advisory firm, he set out to get a security
clearance to start his own company. But drawing income from a foreign entity like Steele's
London-based company, Orbis Business Intelligence, would hurt his chances. He was desperate to
find a salaried position with a U.S.-based firm, he told the FBI.
So Steele agreed to help him broker a special "arrangement" with Target Labs, where a
Russian friend of Danchenko's worked as an executive, in which the company would bring
Danchenko on board as an employee but not put him officially on the payroll. Danchenko would
continue working for Steele and getting paid by Orbis with payments funneled through Target
Labs. In effect, Target Labs served as the "contract vehicle" through which Danchenko was paid
a monthly salary for his work for Orbis, the FBI memo reveals.
Though Danchenko had a desk available to use at Target Labs, he did most of his work for
Orbis from home and did not take direction from the firm. Steele continued to give him
assignments and direct his travel. Danchenko essentially worked as a ghost employee at Target
Labs.
Asked about it, a Target Labs spokesman would only say that Danchenko "does not work with us
anymore."
Brian Auten: He wrote the memo on the FBI's interview with the Primary Subsource,
which is silent about Danchenko's criminal record. Patrick Henry College
Some veteran FBI officials worry Moscow's foreign intelligence service may have planted
disinformation with Danchenko and his network of sources in Russia. At least one of them,
identified only as "Source 5" in the FBI memo, was described as having a Russian "kurator," or
handler.
"There are legions of 'connected' Russians purveying second- and third-hand -- and often
made-up -- due diligence reports and private intelligence," said former FBI assistant director
Chris Swecker. "Putin's intelligence minions use these people well to plant information."
Danchenko has scrubbed his social media account. He told the FBI he deleted all his
dossier-related electronic communications, including texts and emails, and threw out his
handwritten notes from conversations with his subsources.
In the end, Steele walked away from the dossier debacle with at least $168,000, and
Danchenko earned a large undisclosed sum.
The FBI interview memo, which is silent about Danchenko's criminal record, was written by
FBI Supervisory Intelligence Analyst Brian Auten, who was called out in the Justice inspector
general report for ignoring inconsistencies, contradictions, errors and outright falsehoods in
the dossier he was supposed to verify.
It was also Auten's duty to vet Steele and his sources. Auten sat in on the meetings with
Danchenko and also separate ones with Steele. He witnessed firsthand the countless red flags
that popped up from their testimony. Yet Auten continued to tout their reliability as sources,
and give his blessing to agents to use their dossier as probable cause to renew FISA
surveillance warrants to spy on Page.
As RCI first reported, Auten teaches a national security course at a Washington-area college
on the ethics of such spying .
U.S. Officials Disseminate Disinformation About 'Virus Disinformation'Getald
, Jul 29 2020 17:44 utc |
1
In another round of their anti-Russian disinformation campaign 'U.S. government officials'
claim that some websites loosely connected to Russia are spreading 'virus
disinformation'.
However, no 'virus disinformation' can be found on those sites.
The Associated Press as well as the New York Times were briefed by the
'officials' and provided write ups.
Two Russians who have held senior roles in Moscow's military intelligence service known as
the GRU have been identified as responsible for a disinformation effort meant to reach
American and Western audiences, U.S. government officials said. They spoke to The
Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak
publicly.
The information had previously been classified, but officials said it had been
downgraded so they could more freely discuss it. Officials said they were doing so now to
sound the alarm about the particular websites and to expose what they say is a clear link
between the sites and Russian intelligence.
Between late May and early July, one of the officials said, the websites singled out
Tuesday published about 150 articles about the pandemic response, including coverage aimed
either at propping up Russia or denigrating the U.S.
Among the headlines that caught the attention of U.S. officials were "Russia's Counter
COVID-19 Aid to America Advances Case for Détente," which suggested that Russia had
given urgent and substantial aid to the U.S. to fight the pandemic, and "Beijing Believes
COVID-19 is a Biological Weapon," which amplified statements by the Chinese.
There is zero 'virus disinformation' in the Korybko piece. The aid flight did happen and
was widely reported. In a response to the allegations the proprietors of O neWorldpoint out that
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in a recent Q&A also alluded to a new détente with
Russia. Was that also 'virus disinformation'?
The second piece the 'officials' pointed out, Beijing believes COVID-19 is a biological weapon , was
written In March by Lucas Leiroz, a "research fellow in international law at the Federal
University of Rio de Janeiro". It is an exaggerating analysis of the comments and questions a
spokesperson of the Chinese Foreign Ministry had made about the possible sources of the
Coronavirus.
The original spokesperson quote is in the piece. Referring to additional sources the
author's interpretation may go a bit beyond the quote's meaning. But it is certainly not
'virus disinformation' to raise the same speculative question about the potential sources of
the virus which at that time many others were also asking.
The piece was published by InfoBRICS.org, a "BRICS information portal" which
publishes in the languages of the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South
Africa). It is presumably financed by some or all of those countries.
Another website the 'U.S. officials' have pointed out is InfoRos.ru which publishes in Russian and English. The
AP notes of it:
A headline Tuesday on InfoRos.ru about the unrest roiling American cities read "Chaos in
the Blue Cities," accompanying a story that lamented how New Yorkers who grew up under the
tough-on-crime approach of former Mayors Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg "and have zero
street smarts" must now "adapt to life in high-crime urban areas."
Another story carried the headline of "Ukrainian Trap for Biden," and claimed that
"Ukrainegate" -- a reference to stories surrounding Biden's son Hunter's former ties to a
Ukraine gas company -- "keeps unfolding with renewed vigor."
U.S. officials have identified two of the people believed to be behind the sites'
operations. The men, Denis Valeryevich Tyurin and Aleksandr Gennadyevich Starunskiy, have
previously held leadership roles at InfoRos but have also served in a GRU unit specializing
in military psychological intelligence and maintain deep contacts there, the officials
said.
InfoRos calls itself a 'news agency' and has some rather boring general interest
stuff on its site. But how is its writing in FOX News style about unrest in U.S.
cities and about Biden's escapades in the Ukraine 'virus disinformation'? I fail to find any
on that site.
In 2018 some "western intelligence agency"
told the Washington Post , without providing any evidence, that InfoRos
is related to the Russian military intelligence service GU (formerly GRU):
Unit 54777 has several front organizations that are financed through government grants as
public diplomacy organizations but are covertly run by the GRU and aimed at Russian
expatriates, the intelligence officer said. Two of the most significant are InfoRos and the
Institute of the Russian Diaspora.
So InfoRos is getting some public grants and was allegedly previously run by two
people who before that worked for the GU. What does that say about the current state and the
content it provides? Nothing.
The NYTadds
that hardly anyone is reading the websites the 'U.S. officials' pointed out but that their
content is at times copied by more prominent aggregator sites:
"What we have seen from G.R.U. operations is oftentimes the social media component is a
flop, but the narrative content that they write is shared more broadly through the niche
media ecosystem," said Renee DiResta, a research manager at the Stanford Internet
Observatory, who has studied the G.R.U. and InfoRos ties and propaganda work.
There are plenty of sites who copy content from various outlets and reproduce it under
their name. But that does not turn whatever they publish into disinformation.
All the pieces mentioned by AP and NYT and attributed to the 'Russian'
sites are basically factual and carry no 'virus disinformation'. That makes the
'U.S.officials' claims that they do such the real disinformation campaign.
And the AP and NYT are willingly falling for it.
People being
prepared for Russia having the worlds first covid19 vaccine, the US will of course say it was
stolen from them. Infantile politicians create infantile press to feed infantile articles to
adult children. Critical thinking skills do not exist in the US population.
The development of propagation of information/disinformation through the internet eroded
the power of the old newspapers/news agencies. It's not that this or that particular website
is getting more views, but that the web of communications - the the imperialistic blunders +
decline of capitalism post-2008 -, as a whole, weakened what seemed to be an unshakeable
trust on the MSM (the very fact that this term exists already is historical evidence of their
loss of power).
And this process manifests itself not only in loss of power, but also loss of money: this
is particularly evident in the social media, where Facebook (Whatsapp + Facebook proper) and
Google are beginning to siphon advertisement money from both TV and the traditional
newspapers (printed press). When those traditional printed newspapers went digital, they
behaved badly, by using paywalls - this marketing blunder only accelerated their decline in
readership and thus further advertisement money, generating a vicious cycle for them.
The loss of influence of public opinion for the MSM also inaugurated another very
important societal shift: the middle class' loss of monopoly over opinion and formation of
opinion. Historically, it was the role of the middle class to be highly educated, to go to
academia (college) and, most importantly, to daily read the newspapers while eating the
breakfast. The middle class was the class of the intellectuals by definition, thus served as
the clerical class of the capitalist class, the priests of capitalism. With the
popularization of the internet, the smartphone and social media, this sanctity was broken or,
at least, begun to deteriorate. We can attest this class conflict phenomenon by studying the
rise of the term "expert" as a pejorative one. In the West's case, this shift begun through
the far-right side of the political spectrum, but the shift is there.
The popularization of what was once a privilege is nothing new in capitalism. The problem
here is that capitalism depends on infinite growth to merely exist (i.e. it can't survive on
zero growth, it is mathematically impossible), so it has to "monetize" what still isn't
monetize in order to find/create more vital space (Lebensraum - a term coined by the
hyper-capitalist Nazis) for its expansion and thus survival. Hence the popularization of
college education in the USA (then in Europe). Hence the popularization of daily news through
the internet/social media. This process, of course, has its positives and negatives (as is
the case with every dialectical process) - the fall of the MSM is one of the positives.
So, in fact, when the likes of AP, Reuters, NYT, WaPo, Guardian, Fox, CNN spread
disinformation against "alt-media", they are really just protecting their market share - the
fact that it implies in suppression of freedom of speech and to mass disinformation and,
ultimately, to war and destruction, is merely collateral damage of the business they operate
in. They are, after all, capitalist enterprises above all.
Excellent analysis, as always, by b. And vk's points are very pertinent too. One tiny
quibble: I doubt that the Nazis coined, though they certainly popularised, the term
lebensraum.
There is an air of desperation about these campaigns against "Russian" "disinformation"
massive changes are occurring, and, because they are so vast, they are moving relatively
slowly.
The old media model, now totally outdated, was the first thing to fall. Now capitalism itself
is collapsing as a result of the primary contradiction that, left to itself, the marketplace
will solve all problems.
As Washington, where magical thinking is sovereign, is demonstrating, left to itself the
hidden hand will bring only misery, famine, death and the Apocalypse. This was once very well
understood, as a brief look at the history of the founding of the UN will show, now it is the
subject of frantic denial by capitalism's priesthood who have grown to enjoy the glitter and
sensuality of life in a brothel. It is a sign of their mental decay that they can do no
better than to blame Russians.
One should presume the anonymous officials responsible for this ground-breaking report (sarc)
are close to the various "combatting Russian disinformation" NGOs. They are merely living up
to the mission statements of their benefactors. AP and NYTimes are being unprofessional and
spreading fake news by failing to reveal their sources. It's mind-numbing - the BS one must
wade through.
Good point however with one glaring contradiction in your thinking.
You make valid a very criticism of capitalism yet you tend to applaud Chinese capitalist
growth (although you tend to deny Chinese capitalist growth is capitalist, a feat of
breathtaking magical thinking).
The great Chinese wealth is fully 75% invested in bubblicious real estate valuations of
non-commercial real estate built on a mountain of construction debt. Sound familiar?
The irony is Chinese growth since 2008 has been goosed along entirely by the very same
financialized hyper capitalist traits as US: great gobs of debt creating supply-side
"growth", huge amounts of middle wealth tied to asset inflated bubbles, and of course the
resulting income and wealth inequality that rivals US inequality and continues to increase
over time.
I snorted coffee out my nose when Gruff tried to totally excuse Chinese income inequality
for being only slightly less than US level....how about the truth? Chinese inequality is
heinous, only slightly less than the also heinous US level.
The diseased working class in China only has an an arm and two legs hacked off while the
diseased US working class is fully quadriplegic. Much, much better to be a fucked over by
globalization Chinese citizen! Lmao
@ b who ended his posting with
"
And the AP and NYT are willingly falling for it.
"
Sorry b, but AP and NYT are active participants in the disinformation campaign of failing
empire and are not falling for anything
The folks that are falling for it are the American public that has lost its ability to
discriminate with the fire hose volume of lies told to them on a daily basis.
Empire is in the process of defeating itself which is the only safe way of ending the
tyranny of global private finance. I commend China and Russia for having the patience and
fortitude to hold the safe space for the dysfunctional social contract having private control
of the lifeblood of human commerce to self destruct.
This is SO hilarious! The propagandists are worried about Russian virus dis-information when
most dis-information has come from the US government in the person of Trump and from the CDC,
which spent months discrediting the effectiveness of face masks!!!
Theses propagandists need to get real jobs dealing with real world problems.
This is SO hilarious! The propagandists are worried about Russian virus dis-information when
most dis-information has come from the US government in the person of Trump and from the CDC,
which spent months discrediting the effectiveness of face masks!!!
Theses propagandists need to get real jobs dealing with real world problems.
there has been no national response to coronavirus but there must be a national acceptance
that this national non-response is China's fault. and any sources reporting truthfully about
the US or disseminating statements easily found elsewhere, as long as they are Russian,
Chinese, Venezuelan, Cuban, Iranian, etc., is pure disinformation. How brittle and weak the
US is. Where's the Pericles to say to the Spartans, "enter our city and inspect our
defenses"? The US is a nation of heavily-armed mice and sheep.
btw, the China love on display around here is pretty funny. in that the Chinese government
has mounted a national response to a very serious threat, China is a nation in a way that the
US is not. There is no US or we would not have 50 states doing different things in response
to the corona outbreak. the US is already dead. But China is a thoroughly authoritarian
capitalist state. they are who they are in a dialectic competition with the US and other
capitalist powers, not because of some Maoist-Confucian amalgam that inspires such wisdom in
their brilliant leaders, who are just as quick to destroy their environment for capitalist
gain as anyone on this planet is. The decline of the US will not make China or Russia or any
"emerging" power less authoritarian or violent. au quite the contraire. They are Shylocks who
will try to better instruction.
However, none of this is of concern to people in the US, whose only concern is the Nazi
spawn who've been running "the West" for much longer than the last 75 years. but it's time to
kill the bitch, not let it keep screwing us and breeding.
As others already said, this is a bit rich, considering that virus disinformation comes from
Trump himself, both live and on Twitter, quoting genuine hacks and megalomaniac doctors,
depending on the week.
Reality check: Russians will be able to travel across the world way before Americans, for
obvious healthcare reasons.
Bevin, I agree, I once had a short exchange on Mondoweiss about the term Lebensraum, it
had been used in some type of marketing by my favorite Swizz supermarket. Which then,
apparently caused an uproar. The term Lebensraum on its own is rather innocent. Leben (life)
Raum (space), a noun compound. Context matters. And I am sure I checked it, and Micros
definitively did not use it in any type of world conquering settler context. I haven't
stumbled yet across a Micros supermarket anywhere outside Switzerland, ;)
I'm under the impression that Info Ros is a Russian government-funded, supported, backed,
site, it certainly looks like it and its reportage is decidedly 'neutral'.
This is SO hilarious! The propagandists are worried about Russian virus dis-information
when most dis-information has come from the US government in the person of Trump and from the
CDC, which spent months discrediting ...
Posted by: JohnH | Jul 29 2020 19:21 utc | 8
This is close to my overall take on matters. But I wouldn't put so much emphasis on
face masks but on something along the lines of Covid is notthing but a flu. Face masks were
initially discussed quite controversially everywhere.
Were it gets interesting is here:
A report published last month by a second, nongovernmental organization, Brussels-based EU
DisinfoLab, examined links between InfoRos and One World to Russian military intelligence.
The researchers identified technical clues tying their websites to Russia and identified some
financial connections between InfoRos and the government.
They have a competitor which seems Bruxelles based too, Patrick Armstrong alerted me to
a while ago: https://euvsdisinfo.eu/
EUvsDisinfo is the flagship project of the European External Action Service's East StratCom
Task Force
************
But yes, on first sight InfoRos seems to be neatly aligned with US alt-Right-Media in
basic outlook. More than with the US MSM.
And now I first have to read what has been on Andrew Korybko's mind lately. ;)
Many Americans of all walks of life do not trust their own government, yet most people here
seem to have faith that their media outlets are telling the truth. How do you break through
to the public that has utter faith in whatever newspaper or television channel they prefer
and highlight the lies in a way which gains real traction?
I believe it takes leadership, which, for Americans, mean celebrities have to endorse the
idea or it likely won't be taken seriously. This cult of celebrity is mirrored on social
media platforms, where millions flock to be a part of some beautiful person's beautiful
photograph or some known personalities acceptable opinion du jour.
There is a great bond gripping the minds of American media consumers. They have trained
their entire lives to worship at the cult of celebrity and this is the key to breaking the
entire media landscape down for them.
This also is the key to unlocking the voices of those who know better with regards to
media lies, but keep silent out of fear.
Will a Joe Rogan or Tucker Carlson be able to break the spell? I think it will never
happen based on how Hollywood gatekeeps celebrity and based on how hopelessly apathetic most
are to Julian Assange.
Lol I write for One World. I'm an American who has never had a piece edited or been told what
to write. I was allowed to write a piece about Russia where I was critical of their policy of
backing the STC in Yemen (I thought it was bad to divide Yemen). No one makes anybody tow any
specific line. I decided not to publish my piece on Russia and the STC in Yemen because I
didn't find the topic interesting enough, but I was 100% allowed to be critical of Russia.
Lol I write for One World. I'm an American who has never had a piece edited or been told
what to write.
...
Posted by: Ben Barbour | Jul 29 2020 22:36 utc | 23
Is it possible that you're just the in-house joke at OW?
If they don't care that you'd write "tow" instead of "toe" or that you're too
lazy/thoughtless to reproduce the full name of the entity for which STC is an acronym, before
using the acronym, then it suggests that One World's Editorial Standards are as lax as your
own :-)
"... Two Russians who have held senior roles in Moscow's military intelligence service
known as the GRU have been identified as responsible for a disinformation effort meant to
reach American and Western audiences, U.S. government officials said. They spoke to The
Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak
publicly ..."
Of course GRU agents always work in pairs, guided only by the mysterious telepathic powers
of the Russian President and no-one or nothing else, as Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov
did in Salisbury in March 2018 when they supposedly tried to assassinate or send a warning to
Sergei Skripal, and as Dmitri Kovtun and Andrei Lugovoy did in London in November 2006 when
they apparently put polonium in a pot of tea served to Alexander Litvinenko in full view of
patrons and staff at a hotel restaurant. It's as if each agent carries only half a brain and
each half is connected to its complement by the corpus callosum that is Lord Vlademort
Putin's thoughts beaming oing-yoing-yoing-like through the atmosphere until they find their
targets.
And of course US government officials always speak on condition of anonymity.
As Agence Presse News puts it:
"... The information had previously been classified, but officials said it had been
downgraded so they could more freely discuss it. Officials said they were doing so now to
sound the alarm about the particular websites and to expose what they say is a clear link
between the sites and Russian intelligence ..."
So if US government officials can now freely discuss declassified news, why do they insist
on being anonymous? This would be the sort of news announced at a US national press club
meeting with Matt Lee in the front row asking awkward and discomfiting questions.
The malicious cultivation (including Gain of Function research) and implantation of this
biowarfare agent (and other ones such as Swine Fever) by the U.S. Intelligence services in
various places around the world (especially in China and Iran), the intentional faulty
responses and deceptive statistics administered by the monopoly-controlled medical
establishment, the feigned inability to provide adequate testing, care, and treatment, along
with planned economic destruction as a means of restoring investor losses and control of
populations through stifling of dissent, are at the heart of the deflection and projection of
blame. That broadly-based subject is barely discussed in alternative media and is totally
obfuscated in MSM, because the "denier-debunkers" dispute the possibility of such extreme
malice existing in our institutions, in spite of previous experience with events such as 9/11
and the '08 financial crisis.
...
So if US government officials can now freely discuss declassified news, why do they insist on
being anonymous?
...
Posted by: Jen | Jul 29 2020 23:29 utc | 25
Precisely.
My guess is that they don't know when to quit.
and/or
They embrace the Mythbusters motto...
"If a thing's worth doing, it's worth overdoing."
"Is it possible that you're just the in-house joke at OW?
If they don't care that you'd write "tow" instead of "toe" or that you're too
lazy/thoughtless to reproduce the full name of the entity for which STC is an acronym, before
using the acronym, then it suggests that One World's Editorial Standards are as lax as your
own :-)"
Fair point on tow vs toe. That's why editing exists when writing articles. As for the STC
part, that is common knowledge if you follow basic geopolitics. When making a post in a
comment thread, should I write out "Islamic State of Iraq and Syria" before using the acronym
ISIS? If I am posting in a comment thread about Iran, do I need to write out "Mujahedin-e
Khalq" instead of just using MEK?
It just displays a massive level of ignorance on your part. Nice try though.
Global media moguls are blaming the 1,000 American deaths per day from the Wuhan coronavirus
on Donald Trump to finally get him out of the way. But they are silent on their and the
Democrats complicity in the death toll due to the lack of a national public health system or
the funding to pay for it.
The USA is going to hell. A scapegoat is needed. For the media and Democrats, Russia is to
blame. Anybody else rather than themselves, the true culprits. Donald Trump blames China for
the pandemic if he acknowledges it at all but that is where all of Tim Cook's iPhones are
made. Blaming China is globalist heresy.
I think there's a reasonable case to be made that this is what has occurred.
And, if true, it is covered up by sly suggestions that nCov-19 was man-made with hints or
a smug attitude that convey the message that China created the virus. As well as a
virtual black-out in Western media of Chinese suggestions that the virus may have started in
USA or been planted in Wuhan.
But then, I already stand accused of attributing magical powers of self-interested
foresight and boldness to US Deep-State due to my belief that Trump was their choice to lead
USA in 2016. And so I expect you're theory will receive the same derision. Yet Empires have
not been shy about killing millions when it was in their interest to do so.
In any case, I've written many times that USA/West's unwillingness to fight the virus has
been dressed up as innocent mistakes. Even if the West wasn't the source of the virus they
have much to answer for. Yet very few have taken note of the way that USA/West have played
the pandemic to advance their interests - from lining the pockets of Big Pharma to blaming
China for their own "incompetence" (a misnomer: the power-elite are very competent at
advancing their interests!).
It seems disinformation has been redefined to mean information that counters someone else's
(yours) belief. We pretend to be in an Age of Reason but really, we have just replaced
religious beliefs with secular beliefs. Science has been taken over by pseudoscientists that
have replaced priests. The conflict of interest by the science/priests who profit from their
deceptions is beyond criminal.
To know what is the truth you just have to look at whats being censored. Nobody being
censored for supporting mask mandates, claiming vaccines are safe, and not questioning the
blatant data manipulation of COVID cases that anyone with an open mind and IQ of 100 , and
who reads the data, definitions and studies can see through.
It seems people on both sides of the fence have replaced their brains with their chosen
ideology. Its like watching a Christian, Jew and Muslim arguing which is the best or true
religion. No point in it.
so, lets say GRU agents are feeding russian propaganda sites... how does that compare to
all the CIA-FBI agents and has been hacks working for the western msm?? seems a bit rich for
the pot to be calling a kettle black, even if they are lying thru their teeth! i am sure if
someone did a story on how many CIA - m16 people are presently working with the western msm,
they would have a story with some legs... this shite from anonymous usa gov't officials is
just that - shite..
@ Ben, or Benson Barbour .. thanks for your comments!
Lol I write for One World. I'm an American who has never had a piece edited or been told
what to write. I was allowed to write a piece about Russia where I was critical of their
policy of backing the STC in Yemen (I thought it was bad to divide Yemen). No one makes
anybody tow any specific line. I decided not to publish my piece on Russia and the STC in
Yemen because I didn't find the topic interesting enough, but I was 100% allowed to be
critical of Russia.
There's such a thing as self-censorship. Mainstream US news has effectively brought up
folks to be this way: stay in line or become unemployed- doesn't need to be stated. Not aimed
at you, but it needs to be said (und understood).
@35 That's a very good point. I completely agree. Self-censorship and group think are two of
the biggest problems in modern journalism/analysis. One World consistently publishes
pro-Pakistan and pro-China articles. When I was first sending them submissions, I did a piece
on US vs China in Sudan and South Sudan. I considered omitting China's culpability in
escalating the conflicts, and instead focus on laying the blame squarely at the feet of the
US. In the end I told the truth about both countries' imperialist escalations (to the best of
my ability).
There is a lot of incentive to self-censor at just about any outlet. It's more comfortable
to fit in with a site's brand.
In the case of the Russia-STC article, I really just found the subject matter to be thin.
Russia's support of the STC is mostly just diplomatic. Not a lot to write about.
The Americans are increasingly unhinged in their spittle-flecked accusations against not only
Russia, but also China, Iran, Venezuela, etc.
It's so pathetic as to be humorous.
Underlying the USA's Two Minutes of Hate campaigns, however, is a deeper disease that
defines Americans as a nation and as a people.
Namely, Americans have an inbred fundamentalist belief in their own Moral Superiority as
the Beacon of Liberty, Land of the Free, blah, blah, blah--no matter how many nations they
have bombed back to the Stone Age, invaded, colonized, regime changed, sanctioned, or
economically raped in the name of Freedom and Democracy™.
Donald Trump is half correct.
The United States of America is truly a great nation alright--but great only in terms of
its deceit, great in terms of its delusions, and great in terms of the horrors that it has
inflicted on much of the world.
Comparing America to the Nazis would be a high insult ... to Nazi Germany, as the Third
Reich only lasted about 12 years, while the American Reich has unfortunately lasted well over
200 years and gotten away with its crimes against humanity by possessing what are likely the
greatest propaganda machine and political deception in human history: the American Free Press
and the world historic lie called "American Freedom."
Harold Pinter in his 2005 Nobel Literature Prize speech briefly but powerfully exposes
this heart of American darkness:
"The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless,
but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has
exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for
universal good. It's a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.
I put to you that the United States is without doubt the greatest show on the road.
Brutal, indifferent, scornful and ruthless it may be but it is also very clever. As a
salesman it is out on its own and its most saleable commodity is self love. It's a
winner."
"Top US immunologist Dr Anthony Fauci is now saying citizens are not "complete" in
protecting themselves from the Covid-19 pandemic unless they go beyond wearing a mask and add
in eye protection like goggles, too."
More provocation from the oligarchy. Now, that masks are becoming less controversial, time
to step up the provocation, division and control.
Fauci is also behind the anti-hydroxychloroquine propaganda, as well, that even b has
swallowed. This, despite it being used effectively in other countries. All of this simply
because Trump supports it (ergo, it must be bad) and Big Pharma (who control Fauci,
CDC abd WHO) can't profit significantly from its use.
"During the course of the debate, Kennedy also talked about the regular vaccines most
people take, from Hepatitis B to the flu shot, emphasizing that no proper testing had ever
been done, which is mandatory for any other medication. Vaccines "are the only medical
product that does not have to be safety-tested against a placebo," he explained."
Kennedy said
"it's not hypothetical that vaccines cause injury, and that injuries are not rare. The
vaccine courts have paid out four billion dollars" over the past three decades, "and the
threshold for getting back into a vaccine court and getting a judgment – [the
Department of Health and Human Services] admits that fewer than one percent of people who are
injured ever even get to court."
So, how well has the Russian vaccine been tested? Does anyone know?
It is interesting how USAians are being played by the oligarchy.
On foreign policy, the dems and reps are in basic agreement and the propaganda is to bring
the masses together to hate Russia, Chaina and anyone else who the Western (US) oligarchy has
targeted.
Domestically, unity is the enemy of the oligarchy. The masses must be controlled through
division and diversion, so the dems and reps play good cop, bad cop (bad and good being
relative to the supporter) to ensure the masses are diverted from important oligarch issues
to issues of irrelevance to the oligarchs, but easily manipulated emotionnally by the
oligarchs for the beast.
"[...]Donald Trump blames China for the pandemic if he acknowledges it at all but that is
where all of Tim Cook's iPhones are made. Blaming China is globalist heresy."
Then why do you phrase it the "Wuhan coronavius" yourself?
For those interested in corona virus truth,
I am interested in the question -- - was it spread by negligence or deliberately?
That question must be relivant to this debate on MOA.
I ask this now becouse -- --
Tonight on bbc 'panorama' there investigating the spread of the virus from Hospital to care
homes !! I'm told there is some pretty shocking information exposed.
Some may wish to catch that prog. Heads up.
I just add an obversation. -- western psychopathic disinformation and projection has led
to a confused public. A public deciding to disengage with politics. To the gain of the
psychopaths.
A new candidate to the demonization and disinfo operations has been added...Germany...which
has been labeled "delinquent" by the POTUS...in a clear exercise of projection...
Of course, to not be insulted or labeled delinquent, you must act as these other countries
enumerated by Southcom commander, to work for the US ( not your country...) and moreover pay
for it....Typical mafia extortion, isn´t it?
That broadly-based subject is barely discussed in alternative media and is totally
obfuscated in MSM, because the "denier-debunkers" dispute the possibility of such extreme
malice existing in our institutions, in spite of previous experience with events such as
9/11 and the '08 financial crisis.
YES to that and thank you for that post. That the institutions of state and private
sectors are the incubators and propagators of extreme malice is axiomatic in the UKUSAI and
its five eyed running dogs is beyond doubt. They attack and scorn any critic or unbeliever.
They assault and pillory truth speakers and those who might question 'their narrative'.
Then if all that fails the hunt them down and make preposterous claims about them being
anti semitic of anti religion or anti their nation.
Mendacity is the currency of the permanent state and its minions and they need to be outed
and shamed and challenged at every opportunity.
Fort Detrick coronavirus would be on the mark and as you most likely know, you cannot
trust the USA lying eyes once you have served them in their killing fields.
Even that right wing ex special forces advocate Steve Pieczenic testifies to the fact of a
deadly virus in USA in November/December plus his beloved bloggers say way earlier than that
around Maryland etc. Then there is the small problem of the 'vaping' illness that generated
lots of pneumonia like fatalities in June/July. And then the instant closure of Fort Detrick
due to its leaking all over the place through a totally inadequate waste water treatment
plant that couldn't scrub a turd let alone a virus.
The problem with presstitutes, possibly including Ben Barbour , (disclaimer: I've
never read any media products that particular individual generated) goes beyond the point
made by Seer @35 . To be sure, there is no chance that a presstitute would bite the
hand that feeds it, but there is more depth to the problem of why they all suck so
badly, at least the ones in the US. While journalism degrees are the university equivalent of
Special Education (nowadays referred to as "Exceptional Student Education" , which is
very fitting for students from such an "exceptional" nation), they still prepare the
future presstitute to understand that their capitalist employers have interests beyond their
immediately apparent ones. That is, more important to a capitalist employer than tomorrow's
sales and profits is the preservation of capitalism itself.
But the problem is deeper still. The presstitute that is successfully employed by a
capitalist enterprise will invariably be one that knows not to criticize the employer's
business, the capitalist system it depends upon, and the empire that improves that employer's
profitability. More importantly, that successful hireling will additionally have been
brainwashed from infancy that all of these things are good and necessary aspects of the
modern world that need to be ideologically defended. The prospective presstitute will be one
that not only voluntarily, but eagerly serves its capitalist masters varied interests. After
all, when there are plenty of whores to choose from, would you hire one that requires
explicit instructions on every last thing you expect from them and just follows those
instructions mechanically or the the one that puts effort into figuring out what would please
you and delivers that with enthusiasm? Keeping this dynamic in mind will allow one to better
understand the capitalist mass media's products.
The contempt at which the American ruling class hold their citizens is galling. The US
corporate media operates as if their targeted audience are all morons.
Mark2 @45: "...was it [ novel coronavirus] spread by negligence or
deliberately?"
Most likely both.
There is evidence to suggest that the virus was circulating in the US prior to it being
discovered in China. While it is possible this could have been the results of testing the
transmissibility of the virus, it seems more probable that it was an accidental release from
Fort Detrick. This would explain the facility being shut down last year. Military facilities
are never shut down simply for breaking a few rules but because those rule violations led to
something unpleasant.
An accidental release, coupled with the fact that the synthetic origin of the virus would
become apparent to scientists worldwide, resulted in a need to quickly establish an alternate
explanation for the virus. Since the US was losing its trade war with China, and use of a
bioweapon to turn the tide was already gamed out and on the table anyway, the virus (or
possibly a very similar strain that had been pre-selected for the attack) was deliberately
sprayed around a market in Wuhan.
The CDC and CIA probably thought that the virus was contained in the West and that since
it was a surprise to the Chinese it would run rampant there and result in their economy
shutting down and their borders being closed, decoupling China from the world. With the
Chinese treating the virus as a bio attack and defeating its spread, followed by the virus
rampaging through the West, the dynamic changed. Now in order for the virus to decouple China
it must become endemic in the West. The Chinese must be made to close their borders in fear
of becoming infected from the rest of the world. To make this backup plan a reality, and to
get the economies moving again as fast as possible, some western leaders have decided to
accelerate the spread in the hopes of quickly developing "herd immunity" . Taking out
some retirees whom the capitalists view as a burden on the economy is just some nice icing on
the cake.
@ 51 & @ 52
I'd say not ! I'm confided Vietnam Vet is doing 'balenced' Reporting ! The subject of this
post. Take another look at both this post and his comment. A lesson in how to be unbiased but
truthfull.
Soooo any one got a definition of fake news.
Mine would be Truth before personal agenda.
William Gruff @ 53
I think yours is just about the most clear and concise summary of this whole virus
catastrophe that I have seen so far. And that's a hell of a statement !
Unrelated I wonder what would have happened if the Chinese whistle blower had not blown the
whistle ? Now that's one to ponder ? As bad as this all is world wide, where would be right
now ? Dose not bare thinking about.
What are you trying to tell me? Anyone that does not acknowledge the virus originated in
China and that China didn't respond as fast as it could have? And more polemically: there is
some kind of African Marxist heading WHO who obfuscated China's late information to the
WHO?
There is a dot of truth in everything. There is also a dot of truth in the fact that Trump
or his relevant admin was informed early enough.
We've been acquainted with this virus about 7 months or so and it is difficult to separate
reliable information from disinformation. We know very little about it, eg, we don't know
whether those who recover can be reinfected. Is it like the common cold, against which there
is no immunity? We just have to assume that the Trump virus has infected every level of the
administration so that there is ignorance and unadulterated stupidity from the lowest level
in the ministry of propaganda to the secretary of state and, of course, the president himself
currently celebrating the wisdom of an animist/Christian hybrid doctor from Africa spewing
the foulest disinformation one can imagine.
Big @ 57 What ?
Posted by: Mark2 | Jul 30 2020 12:27 utc | 58
babbling: look if this is the good old VV from SST, I wouldn't want to nail him on the
usage of Wuhan virus. But on the larger content of his comment, I am wondering.
Full discovery: I entered the US conspiracy universe shortly after 9/11. I'll probably
never forget there was this one commenter that completely out of then current preoccupations
within the diverse theories, you recall?, suggested that the Chinese were approaching via the
Southern borders.
There surely should be a way how the US and Russia
There surely should be a way how the US and Russia
There surely should be a way how the US and Russia repartition their claims. After all
historically the Russian had some type of partly real Yellow threat too ... :)
Except the "whistle blower" was not a whistle blower since local, provincial, and nations
institutions were already advised or in the process of being advised. Dr Wenliang posted his
information in a private chatroom with other medical professionals on December 30th. Timeline
of events:
Dec 27 -- Dr. Zhang Jixian, director of the respiratory and critical care medicine
department of Hubei Provincial Hospital, files a report to the hospital stating that an
unknown pneumonia has developed in three patients and they are not responding to influenza
treatment.
Dec 29 -- Hubei Provincial Hospital convened a panel of 10 experts to discuss the now
seven cases. Their conclusion that the situation was extraordinary, plus information of two
similar cases in other hospitals, prompted the hospital to report directly to the municipal
and provincial health authorities.
Dec 30 -- The Wuhan Municipal Health Commission issued an urgent notification to medical
institutions under its jurisdiction, ordering efforts to appropriately treat patients with
pneumonia of unknown cause.
Dec 31 -- The National Health Commission (NHC) made arrangements in the wee hours, sending
a working group and an expert team to Wuhan to guide epidemic response and conduct on-site
investigations. The Wuhan Municipal Health Commission released a briefing on its website
about the pneumonia outbreak in the city, confirming 27 cases and telling the public not to
go to enclosed public places or gather. It suggested wearing face masks when going out. The
Wuhan Municipal Health Commission released briefings on the pneumonia outbreak in accordance
with the law. WHO's Country Office in the PRC relayed the information to the WHO Western
Pacific Regional Office, then to the international level headquarters.
Jan 1 -- The NHC set up a leading group to determine the emergency response to the
epidemic. The group convened meetings on a daily basis since then.
Jan 2 -- The Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC) and the Chinese
Academy of Medical Sciences (CAMS) received the first batch of samples of four patients from
Hubei Province and began pathogen identification. The NHC came up with a set of guidelines on
early discovery, early diagnosis and early quarantine for the prevention and control of the
viral pneumonia of unknown cause.
Jan 3 -- Dr. Wenliang signs a statement not to post unsubstantiated rumors.
There's no "whistle blowing" as the information of the cases were already going up the
chain of command. These are facts that can be sourced by multiple media outlets. I can't
believe this fallacy keeps floating and doesn't flush.
In retrospective analyses, SARS-COV-2 was found in routinely collected samples of European
sewage water dating back to at least december 2019. A french doctor reviewed archived medical
samples and imagery from patients who had fallen mysteriously ill in the latter half of 2019
and also found that some had been early cases of COVID-19.
The real coronavirus whistle-blower is a doctor in Washington state USA who tested for the
virus in Januari 2020 and was silenced by USA medical and federal authorities.
I am afraid that there will never be a sincere investigation into the real cause of the
"vaping disease" that caused many deaths from sudden respiratory failure in the USA in the
summer of 2019. Tell me again when Ft. Detrick labs was shut down exactly?
What are you trying to tell me? Anyone that does not acknowledge the virus originated in
China and that China didn't respond as fast as it could have? And more polemically: there is
some kind of African Marxist heading WHO who obfuscated China's late information to the WHO?
There is a dot of truth in everything. There is also a dot of truth in the fact that Trump
or his relevant admin was informed early enough.
Posted by: vig | Jul 30 2020 12:21 utc | 57
vig repeats widely spread arguments, basically, the "official propaganda" from offices
related to an orange-American (excessive time spend on golf courses changes skin color,
perhaps in combination with sunscreen, without sunscreen you would get a "redneck look").
1. Origin: somewhat debatable, but any virus has to originate somewhere. Every country was
on receiving end of pathogens from other countries.
2. China did not respond as fast as it could have. Now, how fast and effective was USA?
One has to note that clusters of fatal lung infections happen regularly, but this is because
of mutations that increase impact on health, while separate mutations increase (or decrease)
the transmission. Draconian measures are necessary if you get both, but you do not lock
cities, provinces, introduce massive quarantine programs until you know that they are
necessary. For the same reasons, the response in Western Europe and USA was not as fast as it
could have.
3. "African Marxist heading WHO mislead poor naive Americans". What is the budget of
American intelligence, and American disease control? Do they collect information, do they
have experts? In particular, American authorities knew pretty much what Chinese authorities
knew, and they had benefit of several weeks of extra time to devise wise strategy. Giving
this benefit to people with limited mental capacities has a limited value. Perhaps China is
at fault here too, Pompeo reported about pernicious impact of Chinese Communist Party on PPT
meeting in USA, that could have deleterious impact on education and thus on mental
capacities.
Pompeo himself may be a victim. He excelled as a West Point student, but if the content of
education was crappy, diligence impacted his brain deeper and not for the better. But nobody
attempts to blame CCP for that.
For starters, the "whistleblower" wasn't a whistleblower at all: he thought he had found a
resurgence of SARS, not a new pandemic. Secondly, the head of respiratory diseases at the
region already was investigating some cases of a "mysterious pneumonia" since end of November
or mid-December - so the investigation already was well under way.
Discovering a new disease is not magic: a doctor cannot simply go the market, see a random
person, and claim he/she discovered a new virus. Doctors are not gods: they can only diagnose
the patients under their care.
The point of discord that the Western MSM capitalized upon was the fact that some random
officer from the local police intercepted his private social media and made him sign a letter
of reprimand. No Law is ever perfect, and these episodes of false triggers do happen even in
Western Democracies.
Little known fact (one which the Western MSM censored) is that the so-called
"whistleblower" was a member of the CCP. After knowing the details of the situation
(including that the disease was already being investigated), he quickly realized the
state-of-the-art and went to the frontlines to fight the pandemic - as any member of the CCP
would've done. Revolutionary communist parties have this tradition that comes since the
Bolshevik Party, where the leadership always leads by example. The Bolsheviks themselves lost
the vast majority of their elite in the Civil War, as they always led in the front
(vanguard). Fidel Castro himself led his army in the front when the invasion of the Bay of
Pigs begun. So, it is not surprising this doctor, once having the facts on the field, quickly
shut up and went to the frontline as a vanguard soldier.
After the whole truth came to the forefront, the Western MSM quickly begun to meltdown
over the fake story they fantasized, and the Taiwanese MSM invented a story of some another
whistleblower who had discovered the virus "at the end of November". That one never truly
gained traction, and silently died out.
But all of this is moot point for the West, because Trump and the other European liberal
powers refused to believe either that the virus was real or that it could reach them until
February the next year.
I think it is OK that b nails the US makes yet another display of stupidity.... on the other
hand I presume that b also has other things to care about, I mean exposing the US as a "fake"
nation is a full time job!
Americans have at least the last 50 years been known for fails, even Churchill commented
something like "the Americans will fail numerous times, but eventually they will get it
right" well that was back then! Today it is fail upon fail. I know that there must be bright
people over there, but it is my sincere impression, that they are a very small minority.
Maybe their schooling system has all gone bonkers ?
"3% of all Americans believe the Earth is flat! WTF!!!
America is on a steep slope downward.
I am personally not worried much about Covid 19, although I am 63 and live in Sweden, the
"black Sheep" in Europe because of our rather lax restrictions, the Swedes themselves are
rather good at keeping distance and using common sense.
I am much more worried that the American culture of ignorance, brain farts, stupidity and low
IQ media will infest my country further and maybe completely ruin it.
Especially by the junk that comes out of Hollywood, pure Sh*t served nice and hot!
I am happy I know, I have not got to endure further 30 years of this.
A few months ago, b posted a link to a Canadian vlogger who lives in Nanning, China. The
vlogger took us on a tour of a so called Wet Market. Here, the vlogger takes us to another
Wet Market tour. He does a good job dispelling racist stereotypes and showing real life in
China.
One to many @ 64
Thanks ! So there was a group of whistle blowers then. It's down to definitions again.
Perhaps mine is a little more loose. But it's of no concern.
For the sake of this excellent thread, perhaps we could all be a little less pedantic. VK ?
Also relevant - Crimson Contagion - the pandemic simulation run by the US government from
January to August 2019 and was based on an infectious coronavirus coming from a food market
in China
Everywhere u go in this world you'll find some version or an "murican" in every country.
Even a country like modern first world Switzerland has its "mountain folk".
In my personal experience with Americans I'm most often pleasantly surprised at their levels
of sophistication and introspection over their American experiences. An enjoyable and as
pleasant a people as anywhere. This may be clouded by mostly meeting these people outside of
the US where unless tourists are well educated and travelled and by default more aware of a
negative view of their homeland that exists outside of the US. For some reason most of these
Americans I've met abroad are decidedly non republican in nature and are mostly
from California and North and North Eastern States. Fellow future Canadians I would call
them.
The other side of the coin is when I've travelled to the states. Texas, Florida, Arizona.
Whew! What a difference. I've learned that talking politics is impossible and the natives are
almost entirely ignorant of anything outside their bubble. Outside of talking points there is
no information behind their arguments. Their knowledge of the outside world is incredibly
lacking and the view of the US in it is overwhelmingly positive.
It isn't Americans its America and its leadership, its influences, systems and all the other
shit that make the US the salad it is. The people r redeemable.
Calling the professionals doing their jobs in China "whistleblowers" is inaccurate.
"Whistleblower" implies revealing information that others are trying to hide. In this
case the suggestion is that the Chinese government was trying to hide the outbreak. This is
nonsense as the Chinese government was unaware of an outbreak until after the relevant
professionals had determined that there was an outbreak. There is no way the Chinese
government could have known about an outbreak before the outbreak was identified by the
professionals tasked with identifying outbreaks. The only ones who knew about the outbreak
before the outbreak occurred were the US "intelligence community" .
Roberto is what folks in Latin America would deem is "un gusano sin vergüenza'. A
willing neo-colonial lapdog for the ghoulish intelligence agencies. You can disregard this
sad waste of matter. The governments of Brasil & Ecuador are willingly allowing their
countries to succumb to COVID-19. Bio-genocide, in other words. It's a nightmare.
"... Pompeo is a disgusting man. The US Oligarchic Regime is projecting a lot. It is this Regime that does not recognize any other order than its own, and always puts a messianic spin on its discourse. ..."
"... Mike Pompous can be counted upon to do everything possible to torpedo legitimate US interests below the waterline, and then nuke any survivors. ..."
Mike Pompeo declared the start of a new Cold War with China last week.
...Pompeo's speech was an expression of this unreasonable and unrealistic view, and it is likely to leave most U.S. allies in
East Asia and elsewhere cold. Our allies do not wish for deepening antagonism and strife between the U.S. and China, and if push
comes to shove Washington may find itself without much support in the region. Calling for a "new alliance" to oppose China when Trump
and Pompeo have done such an abysmal job of managing existing alliances in the region just drives home how divorced from reality
the speech was.
... ... ...
The Secretary also relied on a familiar mix of simplistic analysis and threat inflation that he has used so often when talking
about Iran: "It's this ideology, it's this ideology that informs his decades-long desire for global hegemony of Chinese communism."
Pompeo is falling back on two of the stalest talking points from the Cold War. He interprets the behavior of another state primarily
in terms of its official ideology rather than its concrete interests, and he attributes to them a goal of "global hegemony" that
they are not pursuing to make them seem more dangerous and powerful than they are. China does seek to be the leading state in its
own part of the world, but there is no evidence that they aspire to the global domination that Pompeo claims. A hard-line ideologue
and hegemonist himself, Pompeo wrongly assumes that the things that motivate him must also drive the actions of others.
... ... ...
Most of the people on the receiving end of this "engagement" and "empowerment" will likely resent the condescension and interference
from a foreign government in their country's affairs. Even if we assume that the vast majority of people in China might wish for
a radically different government, they are liable to reject U.S. meddling in what they naturally consider to be their business. But,
of course, Pompeo isn't serious about "empowering" the Chinese people, just as he isn't serious about supporting the people of Iran
or Venezuela or any of the other countries on Washington's list of official foes. We can see from the economic wars that the U.S.
has waged on Iran and Venezuela that the administration is only too happy to impoverish and strangle the people they claim to help.
Hard-liners feign concern for the people that they then set out to harm in order to make their aggressive and destructive policies
look better to a Western audience, but they aren't fooling anyone these days.
Pompeo's bombastic, caustic style and his personal lack of credibility make him an unusually poor messenger, and the Trump administration
is uniquely ill-suited to rally a group of states in common cause. But the main problem with the policy Pompeo promotes is that an
intensifying rivalry with China is not in the American interest. The U.S. has found that it is virtually impossible to change the
behavior of adversaries when that behavior concerns what they believe to be their core security interests. ...
I was reading the words that Nixon wrote about China that Pompeo quoted and it occurred to me that if you took out the word
"China" and replaced it with the "United States" then that statement would be completely accurate in describing how America acts
in the world. In OTW, it's "the Pot calling the Kettle black".
I wouldn't enjoin the American people with our out-of-touch, out-of-control and (In the cases of Hillary, Waters, Biden and
Pelosi..) out of their minds government.
We're so conditioned to global conflicts now, it's merely a matter of the U.S. population learning how to spell the names of
foreign leaders and their capitals marked for "Regime Changes", while crossing our fingers in hopes that our buildings will not
again be subjected to airliner collisions and collapses in the wake of this aggression.
It would behoove Americans to start pulling on the reins of our bellicose administrations to confine their authority and actions
to benefit our citizens.
Your comment that we have coexisted with China for 70 years is not quite accurate. There was this little dust-up called the
Korean Conflict as I recall...
The communist Chinese can control our movie, sports, news and entertainment industries by denying them access to China if they
don't show China in a positive light or if they show China in a negative life...
You define with accuracy the core tenets of Socialists. Once a government expands to the proportions needed to implement that
form of socioeconomic leadership, the character of those leaders becomes tyrannical, while they target segments of their populations
for reeducation or elimination. (Abortions would fit that scenario nicely..) Obama was just such a leader, and had he somehow
been able to ignore term limits, his administration would have resembled those of any Socialist State.
All of the policies you mention above would achieve absolutely nothing while inflaming conflict - thus increasingly the problems
you outline. These hawkish responses prove the point...the issue isn't that there are or aren't issues, but that the US has lost
the ability to have real discussions of these issues with world players and allies.
Much of that is because Trump patently hasn't the temperament, sophistication, or intelligence for discussion and diplomacy
- this was proven again and again in the zero sum ineptitude of his private ventures.
The rot of that malignant ineptitude flows down from the head and into every aspect of government, both domestic and foreign.
Thus we see his response to every domestic crisis is to inflame division. And the same in the foreign theater. He cannot be gotten
rid of soon enough.
I don't believe our government is so foolish as to contemplate a shooting war with the Chinese. They have nuclear warheads.
Their populations are fanatics when it comes to conflicts against them...
Men will not fight another war nor will women leave their jobs when the men return from war as they did with WWII. There will
be no war in Europe simply because Europe (including Russia) is depopulating at such a rapid rate they cant afford a losing more
of their population through conflict. I dont see a shooting war with China either. I think that is the purpose of the tariffs
and detachment of economies. US intelligence says that China does not want war with the US either. I don't think there is any
country that would jump to a pre-emptive nuclear attack in case of a hot war. They dont have the air force superiority or the
Navy or superiority in space yet.
Its not the Chinese way. The Chinese wait until they have superiority then they act otherwise they like to fly below the radar
and get away with as much espionage and intimidation as possible. The opium wars came about because of the Chinese culture of
trade exporting much but importing little thus creating a trade imbalance and indebting their trading partners.
Chinese culture has many forms of achieving superiority without restoring to conflict. The think tanks and experts are predicting
that Xi may be pushed out of power by his competitors in the politburo which could defuse the situation. I don't think it will
change detaching the economies. After COVID, countries are shifting focus from lowest cost possible to lowest cost and lowest
risk possible.
That's why medical instruments, pharmaceuticals, etc are either moving out of China or moving part of their production to the
US or they can win against a declining, an indebted power, an over stretched power, etc. Take a lesson with Russia and the US.
Russia did not confront the US directly. It used proxies elsewhere around the world. Russia did not want a war with NATO or with
the US. That balance kept the peace. If you want peace with China then there is going to have to be some sort of parity or superiority
of China's neighbors via an alliance and/or superiority in trade/technology/economy. If you want war then you pacify and try to
avoid war leaving a strategic space where your competitor thinks they can win. To avoid war, you need parity or superiority.
Pompeo is a disgusting man. The US Oligarchic Regime is projecting a lot. It is this Regime that does not recognize any
other order than its own, and always puts a messianic spin on its discourse.
The US itself is not a democracy, but as B. Franklin put it from the beginning, is a Republic, which from the birth was
design to promote and preserve the haves, the existing Oligarchy. While they looked for a balance of power in order to prevent
the rise of an autocrat (the other bugbear of Oligarchy), the main fear of the framers was democracy and the threat of the mob
voting for re-distribution...
The success of the socialist state of China is an indication of what might have happened if the socialist block in ensemble
wouldn't have suffered the containment enforced by the US. Given the ability to engage in normal economic intercourse with the
world, China developed and lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty. Vietnam is another example. But look what is happening
with Cuba or North Korea or Venezuela. It is not the socialist system per se, but the blockade of those countries and the crushing
economic war that ruins them.
Fortunately, Russia has learned from the mistakes of the past.
It is good that the cards are on the table to see that US Oligarchy wants to rule everything, because it is a corrupting way
of life and mind. Because of this, the march for more open societies, with more, no less democracy, and people representation
and input is halted.
And of course, in this new Cold War, a lot of civil liberties and freedom of speech will be curtailed. In my neck of the woods
we have already experienced individuals assaulting people of Chinese ethnicity. Way to go America!
Mike Pompous can be counted upon to do everything possible to torpedo legitimate US interests below the waterline, and
then nuke any survivors. He, along with Barr, Graham, and the rest of the Trump circus, are a cautionary tale for what happens
to governments that let ideologues deliberately divorced from reality run a country. They've turned what was once the United States
from a superpower to a failed state in an absurdly short period of time. History will be far less kind to these political Bernie
Madoffs than to the original financial exemplar.
Wars ain't nothing to bandy about among administration subordinates. Pompeo is not supposed to be declaring wars--hot or cold.
Wars cost big money, lives and property. Only the most grave threats against our country should prompt our leaders to even consider
conflicts, much less initiate them. The American people cannot just sit back and absorb such profound adjustments to our national
security posture and defense expenditures being unilaterally decided by Washington. It is also a condition of conflicts that our
civil rights will be under increased constraints. I chuckled a little when China was listed as our 'new' foe. We won't fight the
Chinese because we'll have another Vietnam War on our hands. Our troops aren't used to our enemies fighting back. They've been
deployed into banana wars against poorly trained and ill equipped armies of Middle East camel holes. The U.S. Armed Forces' new
culture, consisting of socially-engineered, politically-corrected soldiers-of-tolerance have yet to confront true fanatics. These
facts were known waaaaay back during our Korean War Adventure.
I've always said that if the Chinese are good at anything, it's making more Chinese.
New Cold War? Bring it on. Competition is good. A strong rival is desired. Instead of a struggle over Ideology, this will be
a Civilizational struggle, Western Civilization VS Central Civilization, liberal democracy VS Confucian/Legalist authoritarianism,
Euro-America VS the Han Chinese. But this time, is America up to the tast?
During the Cold War we were led by 'Greatest Generation' who lived through the Great Depression and fought in World War II,
is today's America of Facebook, Twitter, conspiracy theories, selfies, BLM, safe spaces, Diversity, mass immigration and Woke
political correctness run amok up to the task?
While China is a predator, homogeneous, nationalist, revanchist and bent on returning to the glory it thinks it deserves. All
I can say is, thank god for nuclear weapons and the Chinese Communist Party for keeping a short leash on the patriotic passions
of the Han Chinese.
We had "an alliance of democracies" in the TPP which was developed to counter China. Of course, it handed much of our domestic
sovereignty over to multinational corporations, but that's what you can expect from a corporatist like Obama. Still, might have
been better than this.
I wonder if the Nixon family knew in advance that Pompeo was going to trash Richard Nixon's greatest legacy?
A war between China and the U.S. would not simply be costly for the US - it could end in the destruction of the world as we
know it if it turns nuclear. Trump and Pompeo are sociopathic madman. I would not put it past Trump to use Nukes against China.
He is just that stupid and evil.
President Nixon's détente with China had an important geopolitical consideration, leverage on Russia. "We're using the China
thaw to get the Russians shook", he is quoted to have said. There is much talk among hawks these days of a "new Cold War", with
that the confidence it will end like the first one: victory for the west and no nuclear annihilation. But this is a danger illusion:
today America is in a hegemonic struggle with China for global dominance. It seems neither side can back down. The present crisis
is like the Cold War in one crucial sense – world war must be avoided at all costs. The powers are not heeding the warning of
history.
https://www.ghostsofhistory...
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Curtis also stuck close to the main theme of US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's
high-profile
China policy speech last week by arguing that the India border clash and sovereign debt
financing used for Belt and Road Initiative projects
"fits with a larger pattern of PRC aggression in other parts of the world". Pompeo called for
"a new grouping of like-minded nations" to counter China.
Accusing Beijing of "selling cheap armaments and building a base for the 1970s-era
submarines that it sold to the Bangladesh Navy in 2016", Curtis also committed to stronger
relations with Dhaka.
"We're committed to Bangladesh's long-term success because US interests in the Indo-Pacific
depends on a Bangladesh that is peaceful, secure, prosperous healthy and democratic," Curtis
said. "We continue to encourage the Bangladeshi government to renew its commitment to
democratic values as it prepares to celebrate its 50th anniversary of independence, next year."
Big Tech tangles with US lawmakers in antitrust showdown 30 Jul 2020
While the India-China border clash, pressing of maritime claims in the South China Sea, and
increasing military and economic pressure on Taiwan may have helped to push countries in the
region to cooperate more, Washington will not necessarily benefit, said Ali Wyne, a
non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and a non-resident fellow at the Modern War
Institute.
"China's actions in recent months have compelled many of its neighbours to try and bolster
their military capabilities on an accelerated timeline and to intensify their security
cooperation with one another," Wyne said.
"For at least two reasons, though, it is unclear that those neighbours would be full
participants in a US-led effort to counterbalance China.
"First, geographical proximity and economic dependence constrain the extent to which they
can push back against Beijing's assertiveness without undercutting their own national
interests," he said. "Second, many of them are reluctant to make common cause with the United
States in view of the transactional diplomacy that it has pursued in recent years."
China's foreign minister calls on other nations to resist US and stop a new cold war 29 Jul
2020
China's embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.
However, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Tuesday called Washington's increasingly hard
line against the Chinese government "naked power politics". In a phone
call with his French counterpart Jean-Yves Le Drian on Tuesday, Wang said the Trump
administration's strategy was to "constantly provoke China's core interests, attack the social
system chosen by the Chinese people and slander the ruling party that is closely connected with
the Chinese people," according to state news agency Xinhua.
"These actions have lost the most basic etiquette for state-to-state exchanges and have
broken through the most basic bottom line of international norms," he said, warning that "the
world will fall into a crisis of division, and the future and destiny of mankind will also be
in danger".
https://www.youtube.com/embed/c3uzkXgW4yY?rel=0&mute=1&playsinline=1&frameborder=0&autoplay=0&embed_config=%7B%22relatedChannels%22%3A%5B%22UC4SUWizzKc1tptprBkWjX2Q%22%5D%2C%22adsConfig%22%3A%7B%22adTagParameters%22%3A%7B%22iu%22%3A%22%2F8134%2Fscmp%2Fweb%2Fchina_policiespolitics%2Farticle%2Finstream1%22%2C%22cust_params%22%3A%7B%22paid%22%3A1%2C%22scnid%22%3A%223095250%22%2C%22sctid%22%3A%22326745%22%2C%22scsid%22%3A%5B%2291%22%2C%224%22%2C%22318198%22%5D%2C%22articletype%22%3A%22DEFAULT%22%7D%7D%2C%22nonPersonalizedAd%22%3Atrue%7D%7D&enablejsapi=1&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.scmp.com&widgetid=2
US House of Representatives sends Uygur Human Rights Policy Act to Trump's desk for
approval
US House of Representatives sends Uygur Human Rights Policy Act to Trump's desk for
approval
Curtis was less sanguine about how much Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and other Central Asian
republics were resisting China's influence, citing an emphasis by governments in the region on
the economic consequences of strained ties with Beijing by protesting the treatment of Muslim
minorities in China's far northwest.
China's internment of Muslim Uygurs in the Xinjiang region has drawn international
condemnation. The UN has estimated that more than a million Muslims have been detained in camps
there for political re-education, but Beijing claims they are vocational training centres aimed
at countering religious extremism.
"With regard to the Central Asian countries, I think they're concerned about China's
economic influence in their countries, and therefore they very much hedge their comments about
the repression of Muslims in Xinjiang province," Curtis said, but added that she expected
public condemnation of China in Pakistan and Bangladesh to mount over the issue.
"There has been reticence, which has been disheartening, but I think as these countries see
China trying to trying to increase disinformation campaigns you'll start to see pushback from
the South Central Asian countries and more speaking out about the treatment of Muslims in
Xinjiang," she said. Join the Singapore
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Quick. Somebody tell Mike Pompeo. The secretary of state is not supposed to play the role
of court jester – the laughing stock to the world. There was no sign that any of those
listening to his "major China policy statement" last Thursday at the Nixon Library turned to
their neighbor and said, "He's kidding, right? Richard Nixon meant well but failed miserably
to change China's behavior? And now Pompeo is going to put them in their place?"
Yes, that was Pompeo's message. The torch has now fallen to him and the free world. Here's
a sample of his rhetoric:
"Changing the behavior of the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] cannot be the mission of
the Chinese people alone. Free nations have to work to defend freedom.
"Beijing is more dependent on us than we are on them (sic). Look, I reject the notion
that CCP supremacy is the future the free world is still winning. It's time for free nations
to act Every nation must protect its ideals from the tentacles of the Chinese Communist
Party. If we bend the knee now, our children's children may be at the mercy of the Chinese
Communist Party, whose actions are the primary challenge today in the free world.
"We have the tools. I know we can do it. Now we need the will. To quote scripture, I
ask is 'our spirit willing but our flesh weak?' Securing our freedoms from the Chinese
Communist Party is the mission of our time, and America is perfectly positioned to lead it
because our nation was founded on the premise that all human beings possess certain rights
that are unalienable. And it's our government's job to secure those rights. It's a simple and
powerful truth. It's made us a beacon of freedom for people all around the world, including
people inside of China.
"Indeed, Richard Nixon was right when he wrote in 1967 that "the world cannot be safe
until China changes." Now it's up to us to heed his words. Today the free world must respond.
"
Trying to Make Sense of It
Over the weekend an informal colloquium-by-email took pace, spurred initially by an
op-ed article by Richard Haass critiquing Pompeo's speech. Haass has the dubious
distinction of having been director of policy planning for the State Department from 2001 to
2003, during the lead-up to the attack on Iraq. Four months after the invasion he became
president of the Council on Foreign Relations, a position he still holds. Despite that
pedigree, the points Haass makes in "What Mike Pompeo doesn't understand about China, Richard
Nixon and U.S. foreign policy" are, for the most part, well taken.
Haass's views served as a springboard over the weekend to an unusual discussion of
Sino-Soviet and Sino-Russian relations I had with Ambassador Chas Freeman, the main
interpreter for Nixon during his 1972 visit to China and who
then served as US ambassador to
Saudi Arabia from 1989 to 1992.
As a first-hand witness to much of this history, Freeman provided highly interesting and
not so well-known detail mostly from the Chinese side. I chipped in with observations from my
experience as CIA's principal analyst for Sino-Soviet and broader Soviet foreign policy
issues during the 1960s and early 1970s.
Ambassador Freeman:
As a participant in that venture: Nixon responded to an apparently serious threat to China
by the USSR that followed the Sino-Soviet split. He recognized the damage a Soviet attack or
humiliation of China would do to the geopolitical balance and determined to prevent the
instability this would produce. He offered China the status of ( what I call ) a
"protected state" -- a country whose independent existence is so important strategically that
it is something we would risk war over.
Mao was sufficiently concerned about the prospect of a Soviet attack that he held his nose
and welcomed this change in Sino-American relations, thereby accepting this American
abandonment of the sort of hostility we are again establishing as outlined in Pompeo's
psychotic rant of last Thursday. Nixon had absolutely zero interest in changing anything but
China's external orientation and consolidating its opposition to the USSR in return for the
US propping it up. He also wanted to get out of Vietnam, which he inherited from LBJ, in a
way that was minimally destabilizing and thought a relationship with China might help
accomplish that. It didn't.
Overall, the maneuver was brilliant. It bolstered the global balance and helped keep the
peace. Seven years later, when the Soviets invaded and occupied Afghanistan, the
Sino-American relationship immediately became an entente -- a limited partnership for
limited purposes.
In addition to its own assistance to the mujahideen , China supplied the United
States with the weapons we transferred to anti-Soviet forces ($630 million worth in 1987),
supplied us with hundreds or millions of dollars worth of made-to-order Chinese-produced
Soviet-designed equipment (e.g. MiG21s) and training on how to use this equipment so that we
could learn how best to defeat it, and established joint listening posts on its soil to more
than replace the intelligence on Soviet military R&D and deployments that we had just
lost to the Islamic revolution in Iran. Sino-American cooperation played a major role in
bringing the Soviet Union down.
Apparently, Americans who don't see this are so nostalgic for the Cold War that they want
to replicate it, this time with China, a very much more formidable adversary than the USSR
ever was.
Those who don't understand what that engagement achieved argue that it failed to change
the Chinese political system, something it was never intended to do. They insist that we
would be better off returning to 1950s-style enmity with China. Engagement was also not
intended to change China's economic system either but it did.
China is now an integral and irreplaceable part of global capitalism. We apparently find
this so unsatisfactory that, rather than addressing our own competitive weaknesses, we are
attempting to knock China back into government-managed trade and underdevelopment, imagining
that "decoupling" will somehow restore the economic strengths our own ill-conceived policies
have enfeebled.
A final note. Nixon finessed the unfinished Chinese civil war, taking advantage of
Beijing's inability to overwhelm Taipei militarily. Now that Beijing can do that, we are
unaccountably un-finessing the Taiwan issue and risking war with China -- a nuclear power --
over what remains a struggle among Chinese -- some delightfully democratic and most not. Go
figure.
Ray McGovern:
This seems a useful discussion – perhaps especially for folks with decades-less
experience in the day-to-day rough and tumble of Sino-Soviet relations. During the 1960s, I
was CIA's principal Soviet analyst on Sino-Soviet relations and in the early 1970s, as chief
of the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch and Presidential Daily Brief
writer for Nixon, I had a catbird seat watching the constant buildup of hostility between
Russia and China, and how, eventually, Nixon and Henry Kissinger saw it clearly and were able
to exploit it to Washington's advantage.
I am what we used to be called an "old Russian hand" (like over 50 years worth if you
include academe). So, my not being an "old China hand" except for the important Sino-Soviet
issue, it should come as no surprise that my vantage point will color my views –
especially given my responsibilities for intelligence support for the SALT delegation and
ultimately Kissinger and Nixon – during the early 1970s.
I had been searching for a word to apply to Pompeo's speech on China. Preposterous came to
mind, assuming it still means "contrary to reason or common sense; utterly absurd or
ridiculous." Chas's "psychotic rant" may be a better way to describe it. And it is
particularly good that Chas includes several not widely known facts about the very real
benefits that accrued to the US in the late 70's and 80's from the Sino-U.S. limited
partnership.
Having closely watched the Sino-Soviet hostility rise to the point where, in 1969, the two
started fighting along the border on the Ussuri River, we were able to convince top policy
makers that this struggle was very real – and, by implication, exploitable.
Moscow's unenthusiastic behavior on the Vietnam War showed that, while it felt obliged to
give rhetorical support, and an occasional surface-to-air missile battery, to a fraternal
communist country under attack, it had decided to give highest priority to not letting
Moscow's involvement put relations with the US into a state of complete disrepair. And,
specifically, not letting China, or North Vietnam, mousetrap or goad the Soviets into doing
lasting harm to the relationship with the US
At the same time, the bizarre notion prevailing in Averell Harriman's mind at the time as
head of the US delegation to the Paris peace talks, was that the Soviets could be persuaded
to "use their influence in Hanoi" to pull US chestnuts out of the fire. It was not only
risible but also mischievous.
Believe it or not, that notion prevailed among the very smart people in the Office of
National Estimates as well as other players downtown. Frustrated, I went public, publishing
an article , "Moscow and Hanoi,"
in Problems of Communism in May 1967.
After Kissinger went to Beijing (July 1971) – followed in February 1972 by Nixon
– we Soviet analysts began to see very tangible signs that Moscow's priority was to
prevent the Chinese from creating a closer relationship with Washington than the Soviets
could achieve.
In short, we saw new Soviet flexibility in the SALT negotiations (and, in the end, I was
privileged to be there in Moscow in May 1972 for the signing of the Antiballistic Missile
Treaty and the Interim Agreement on Offensive Arms). Even earlier, we saw some new
flexibility in Moscow's position on Berlin. To some of us who had almost given up that a
Quadripartite Agreement could ever be reached, well, we saw it happen in September 1971. I
believe the opening to China was a factor.
So, in sum, in my experience, Chas is quite right in saying, "Overall, the maneuver was
brilliant." Again, the Soviets were not about to let the Chinese steal a march in developing
better ties with the US And I was able to watch Soviet behavior very closely in the immediate
aftermath of the US opening to China.
As for the future of Sino-Soviet relations, we were pretty much convinced that, to
paraphrase that "great" student of Russian history, James Clapper, the Russians and Chinese
were "almost genetically driven" to hate each other forever. In the 1980s, though, we
detected signs of a thaw in ties between Moscow and Beijing.
To his credit, Secretary of State George Shultz was very interested in being kept up to
date on this, which I was able to do, even after my tour briefing him on the PDB ran out in
1985. (I was acting chief of the Analysis Group at the Foreign Broadcast Information Service
(FBIS) for two years (an outstanding outfit later banned by Robert Gates.)
Some Observations
1 – Unless Pompeo had someone else take the exams for him at West Point, he has to
be a pretty smart fellow. In other words, I don't think he can claim "Invincible ignorance",
(a frame of mind that can let us Catholics off the hook for serious transgressions or
ineptitude). The only thing that makes sense to me is that he is a MICIMATTer. MICIMATT for
the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-MEDIA-Academia-Think-Tank complex (MEDIA
is all caps because it is the sine quo non, the linchpin) For example: Item: "Officials cite
'keeping up with China' as they award a $22.2 billion contract to General Dynamics to build
Virginia-class submarines." December 4, 2019
2 – I sometimes wonder what China, or Russia, or anyone thinks of a would-be
statesman with the puerile attitude of a US secretary of state who brags: "I was the CIA
director. We lied, we cheated, we stole. We had entire training courses. It reminds you of
the glory of the American experiment."
3 – If memory serves, annual bilateral trade between China and Russia was between
$200 and 400 MILLION during the 1960's. It was $107 BILLION in 2018.
4 – The Chinese no longer wear Mao suits; and they no longer issue 178 "SERIOUS
WARNINGS" a year. I can visualize, though, just one authentically serious warning about US
naval operations in the South China Sea or the Taiwan Strait. Despite the fact that there is
no formal military alliance with Russia, I suspect the Russians might decide to do something
troublesome – perhaps even provocative -- in Syria, in Ukraine, or even in some faraway
place like the Caribbean – if only to show a modicum of solidarity with their Chinese
friends who at that point would be in direct confrontation with US ships far from home. That,
I think, is how far we have come in Pompeo's benighted attempt to throw his weight around at
both countries.
Three years ago, I published here an article
titled "Russia-China Tandem Shifts Global Power." Here are some excerpts:
"Gone are the days when Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger skillfully took advantage
of the Sino-Soviet rivalry and played the two countries off against each other, extracting
concessions from each. Slowly but surely, the strategic equation has markedly changed
– and the Sino-Russian rapprochement signals a tectonic shift to Washington's
distinct detriment, a change largely due to US actions that have pushed the two countries
closer together.
But there is little sign that today's US policymakers have enough experience and
intelligence to recognize this new reality and understand the important implications for US
freedom of action. Still less are they likely to appreciate how this new nexus may play out
on the ground, on the sea or in the air.
Instead, the Trump administration – following along the same lines as the
Bush-43 and Obama administrations – is behaving with arrogance and a sense of
entitlement, firing missiles into Syria and shooting down Syrian planes, blustering over
Ukraine, and dispatching naval forces to the waters near China.
But consider this: it may soon be possible to foresee a Chinese challenge to "US
interests" in the South China Sea or even the Taiwan Strait in tandem with a U.S.-Russian
clash in the skies over Syria or a showdown in Ukraine.
A lack of experience or intelligence, though, may be too generous an interpretation.
More likely, Washington's behavior stems from a mix of the customary, naïve
exceptionalism and the enduring power of the US arms lobby, the Pentagon, and the other
deep-state actors – all determined to thwart any lessening of tensions with either
Russia or China. After all, stirring up fear of Russia and China is a tried-and-true method
for ensuring that the next aircraft carrier or other pricey weapons system gets
built.
Like subterranean geological plates shifting slowly below the surface, changes with
immense political repercussions can occur so gradually as to be imperceptible until the
earthquake. As CIA's principal Soviet analyst on Sino-Soviet relations in the 1960s and
early 1970s, I had a catbird seat watching sign after sign of intense hostility between
Russia and China, and how, eventually, Nixon and Kissinger were able to exploit it to
Washington's advantage.
The grievances between the two Asian neighbors included irredentism: China claimed
1.5 million square kilometers of Siberia taken from China under what it called "unequal
treaties" [they were unequal] dating back to 1689. This had led to armed clashes during the
1960s and 1970s along the long riverine border where islands were claimed by both
sides.
In the late 1960s, Russia reinforced its ground forces near China from 13 to 21
divisions. By 1971, the number had grown to 44 divisions, and Chinese leaders began to see
Russia as a more immediate threat to them than the US
Enter Henry Kissinger, who visited Beijing in July 1971 to arrange the
precedent-breaking visit by President Richard Nixon the following February. What followed
was some highly imaginative diplomacy orchestrated by Kissinger and Nixon to exploit the
mutual fear China and the USSR held for each other and the imperative each saw to compete
for improved ties with Washington.
Triangular Diplomacy
Washington's adroit exploitation of its relatively strong position in the triangular
relationship helped facilitate major, verifiable arms control agreements between the US and
USSR and the Four Power Agreement on Berlin. The USSR even went so far as to blame China
for impeding a peaceful solution in Vietnam.
It was one of those felicitous junctures at which CIA analysts could jettison the
skunk-at-the-picnic attitude we were often forced to adopt. Rather, we could in good
conscience chronicle the effects of the US approach and conclude that it was having the
desired effect. Because it was.
Hostility between Beijing and Moscow was abundantly clear. In early 1972, between
President Nixon's first summits in Beijing and Moscow, our analytic reports underscored the
reality that Sino-Soviet rivalry was, to both sides, a highly debilitating
phenomenon.
Not only had the two countries forfeited the benefits of cooperation, but each felt
compelled to devote huge effort to negate the policies of the other. A significant
dimension had been added to this rivalry as the US moved to cultivate better relations
simultaneously with both. The two saw themselves in a crucial race to cultivate good
relations with the US
The Soviet and Chinese leaders could not fail to notice how all this had increased
the US bargaining position. But we CIA analysts saw them as cemented into an intractable
adversarial relationship by a deeply felt set of emotional beliefs, in which national,
ideological, and racial factors reinforced one another. Although the two countries
recognized the price they were paying, neither seemed able to see a way out. The only
prospect for improvement, we suggested, was the hope that more sensible leaders would
emerge in each country. But this seemed an illusory expectation at the time.
We were wrong about that. Mao Zedong's and Nikita Khrushchev's successors proved to
have cooler heads. The US, under President Jimmy Carter, finally recognized the communist
government of China in 1979 and the dynamics of the triangular relationships among the US,
China and the Soviet Union gradually shifted with tensions between Beijing and Moscow
lessening.
Yes, it took years to chip away at the heavily encrusted mistrust between the two
countries, but by the mid-1980s, we analysts were warning policymakers that "normalization"
of relations between Moscow and Beijing had already occurred slowly but surely, despite
continued Chinese protestations that such would be impossible unless the Russians
capitulated to all China's conditions. For their part, the Soviet leaders had become more
comfortable operating in the triangular environment and were no longer suffering the
debilitating effects of a headlong race with China to develop better relations with
Washington.
A New Reality
Still, little did we dream back then that as early as October 2004 Russian President
Putin would visit Beijing to finalize an agreement on border issues and brag that relations
had reached "unparalleled heights." He also signed an agreement to jointly develop Russian
energy reserves.
A revitalized Russia and a modernizing China began to represent a potential
counterweight to US hegemony as the world's unilateral superpower, a reaction that
Washington accelerated with its strategic maneuvers to surround both Russia and China with
military bases and adversarial alliances by pressing NATO up to Russia's borders and
President Obama's "pivot to Asia."
The U.S.-backed coup in Ukraine on Feb. 22, 2014, marked a historical breaking point
as Russia finally pushed back by approving Crimea's request for reunification and by giving
assistance to ethnic Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine who resisted the coup regime in
Kiev. [Surprisingly, China decided not to criticize the annexation of Crimea.]
On the global stage, Putin fleshed out the earlier energy deal with China, including
a massive 30-year natural gas contract valued at $400 billion. The move helped Putin
demonstrate that the West's post-Ukraine economic sanctions posed little threat to Russia's
financial survival.
As the Russia-China relationship grew closer, the two countries also adopted
remarkably congruent positions on international hot spots, including Ukraine and Syria.
Military cooperation also increased steadily. Yet, a hubris-tinged consensus in the US
government and academe continues to hold that, despite the marked improvement in ties
between China and Russia, each retains greater interest in developing good relations with
the US than with each other. "
Good luck with that Secretary Pompeo.
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of
the Saviour in inner-city Washington. His 27-year career as a CIA analyst includes serving as
Chief of the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch and preparer/briefer of the President's Daily
Brief. He is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). This
originally appeared at Consortium
News .
UK 'Russia report' fear-mongers about meddling yet finds no evidence
10,974 views•25 Jul 2020
The Grayzone
111K subscribers
Pushback with Aaron Maté
A long-awaited UK government report finds no evidence of Russian meddling in British
domestic politics, including the 2016 Brexit vote. But that hasn't stopped the
fear-mongering: the report claims the UK government didn't find evidence because it didn't
look for it, and backs increased powers for intelligence agencies and media censorship as a
result. Afshin Rattansi, a British journalist and host of RT's "Going Underground",
responds.
Guest: Afshin Rattansi, British journalist and host of RT's "Going Underground."
Go back and watch the sad spectacle for yourself on C-SPAN's website, if you'd like. I
wouldn't recommend it. As a preview of coming attractions, Chairman Nadler -- who recently
dismissed the
serious, documented violence in Portland as
a "myth" -- concluded his harried Q&A with this: "Shame on you, Mr. Barr."
... Like many of his colleagues, Nadler repeatedly interrupted Barr's attempts to even begin
to respond to the accusations being hurled at him, then concluded his scripted performance with
a dramatic "shame on you!" And so it has gone. Alternating parcels of Five Minutes' Hate,
interspersed with Republicans playing defense and scoring their own points. Occasional actual
questions have slipped through the theater, but the overall episode has been largely
useless.
From Berr opning statement:
Ever since I made it clear that I was going to do everything I could to get to the bottom
of the grave abuses involved in the bogus "Russiagate" scandal , many of the Democrats on
this Committee have attempted to discredit me by conjuring up a narrative that I am simply
the President's factotum who disposes of criminal cases according to his instructions.
Judging from the letter inviting me to this hearing, that appears to be your agenda
today.
So let me turn to that first. As I said in my confirmation hearing, the Attorney General
has a unique obligation. He holds in trust the fair and impartial administration of justice.
He must ensure that there is one standard of justice that applies to everyone equally and
that criminal cases are handled even-handedly, based on the law and the facts, and without
regard to political or personal considerations...
Indeed, it is precisely because I feel complete freedom to do what I think is right that
induced me serve once again as Attorney General. As you know, I served as Attorney General
under President George H. W. Bush.
After that, I spent many years in the corporate world. I was almost 70 years old, slipping
happily into retirement as I enjoyed my grandchildren. I had nothing to prove and had no
desire to return to government. I had no prior relationship with President Trump.
Watch the whole thing here , or read the full transcript
here . I'll leave you with this.
For much of the past year Trump has caused angst among allies by maintaining a consistent
position that Russia should be invited back into the Group of Seven (G7), making it as it was
prior to 2014, the G-8.
Russia had been essentially booted from the summit as relations with the Obama White House
broke down over the Ukraine crisis and the Crimea issue. Trump
said in August 2019 that Obama had been "outsmarted" by Putin.
But as recently as May when Germany followed by other countries rebuffed Trump's plans to
host the G7 at Camp David, Trump blasted the "very outdated group of countries"
and expressed that he planned to invite four additional non-member nations, mostly notably
Russia .
Germany has rejected a proposal by U.S. President Donald Trump to invite Russian President
Vladimir Putin back into the Group of Seven (G7) most advanced economies , German Foreign
Minister Heiko Maas said in a newspaper interview published on Monday.
Interestingly enough the Ukraine and Crimea issues were raised in the interview: "But Maas
told Rheinische Post that he did not see any chance for allowing Russia back into the G7 as
long as there was no meaningful progress in solving the conflict in Crimea as well as in
eastern Ukraine," according to the report.
People's old ways of understanding what's going on in the world just aren't holding together
anymore.
Trust in the mass media is at an all-time low, and it's only getting lower.
People are more aware than ever that anything they see can be propaganda or
disinformation.
Deepfake technology will soon be so advanced and so accessible that nobody will even trust
video anymore.
The leader of the most powerful country on earth speaks in a way that has no real
relationship with facts or reality in any way, and people have just learned to roll with
it.
Ordinary people are hurting financially but Wall Street is booming, a glaring plot hole in
the story of the economy that's only getting more pronounced.
The entire media class will now spend years leading the public on a wild goose chase for
Russian collusion and then act like it's no big deal when the whole thing turned out to be
completely baseless.
... ... ...
New Cold War escalations between the U.S.-centralized empire and the unabsorbed governments
of China and Russia are going to cause the media airwaves around the planet to become saturated
in ever-intensifying propaganda narratives which favor one side or the other and have no
interest in honestly telling people the truth about what's going on.
It's difficult to understand what's going on in the world because powerful people actively
manipulate public understanding of what's going on in the world.
Powerful people actively manipulate public understanding of what's going on in the world
because if the public understood what's going on in the world, they would rise up and use their
strength of numbers to overthrow the powerful.
The public would rise up and use their strength of numbers to overthrow the powerful if they
understood what's going on in their world because then they would understand that the powerful
have been exploiting, oppressing, robbing, cheating and deceiving them while destroying the
ecosystem, stockpiling weapons of Armageddon and waging endless wars, for no other reason than
so that they can maintain and expand their power.
The public do not rise up and use their strength of numbers to overthrow the powerful
because they have been successfully manipulated into not wanting to.
The Russian-born Danchenko, who was living in the U.S. on a work visa, was released from
jail on the condition he undergo drug testing and "participate in a program of substance abuse
therapy and counseling," as well as "mental health counseling," the records show. His lawyer
asked the court to postpone his trial and let him travel to Moscow "as a condition of his
employment." The Russian trips were granted without objection from Rosenstein. Danchenko ended
up several months later entering into a plea agreement and paying fines.
In 2006, Danchenko was arrested in Fairfax, Va., on similar offenses, including "public
swearing and intoxication," criminal records show. The case was disposed after he paid a
fine.
At the time, Danchenko worked as a research analyst for the Brookings Institution, where he
became a protégé of Hill. He collaborated with her on at least two Russian policy
papers during his five-year stint at the think tank and worked with another Brookings scholar
on a project to
uncover alleged plagiarism in Russian President Vladimir Putin's doctoral dissertation --
something Danchenko and his lawyer boasted about during their meeting with FBI agents. (Like
Hill, the other scholar, Clifford Gaddy, was a Russia hawk. He and Hill in 2015 authored "Mr.
Putin: Operative in the Kremlin," a book strongly endorsed by Vice President Joe Biden at the
time.)
"Igor is a highly accomplished analyst and researcher," Hill noted on his LinkedIn page in
2011.
"He is very creative in pursuing the most relevant of information and detail to support
his research."
Strobe Talbott of Brookings with Hillary Clinton: He connected with Christopher Steele and
passed along a copy of his anti-Trump dossier to Fiona Hill. AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster
Hill also vouched for Steele, an old friend and British intelligence counterpart. The two
reunited in 2016, sitting down for at least one meeting. Her boss at the time, Brookings
President Strobe Talbott, also connected with Steele and
passed along a copy of his anti-Trump dossier to Hill. A tough Trump critic, Talbott
previously worked in the Clinton administration and rallied the think tank behind Hillary.
If an asteroid runs into the earth, any surviving press will blame it on Russia...
The Guardian a few days ago carried a
very strange piece [which has since been removed] under the heading "Stamps celebrating
Ukrainian resistance in pictures." The first image displayed a stamp bearing the name of the
Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA).
https://imasdk.googleapis.com/js/core/bridge3.398.1_en.html#goog_29180504 NOW PLAYING
Russian envoy dismisses claims Moscow tried to steal virus vaccine research
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The UPA was, without any shadow of a doubt, responsible for the slaughter of at least
200,000 Polish civilians; they liquidated whole Polish communities in Volhynia and Galicia,
including the women and children. The current Polish government, which is as anti-Russian and
pro-NATO as they come, nevertheless has declared
this a genocide.
It certainly was an extremely brutal ethnic cleansing. There is no doubt either that at
times between 1942 and 1944 the UPA collaborated with the Nazis and collaborated in the
destruction of Jews and Gypsies. It is simplistic to describe the UPA as fascist or an
extension of the Nazi regime; at times they fought the Nazis, though they collaborated more
often.
There is a real sense in which they operated at the level of medieval peasants, simply
seizing local opportunities to exterminate rural populations and seize their land and assets,
be they Polish, Jew or Gypsy. But on balance any reasonable person would have to conclude that
the UPA was an utterly deplorable phenomenon. To publish a celebration of it, disguised as a
graphic art piece, without any of this context, is no more defensible than a display of Nazi
art with no context.
In fact, The Guardian's very brief text was still worse than no context.
"Ukrainian photographer Oleksandr Kosmach collects 20th-century stamps issued by Ukrainian
groups in exile during the Soviet era.
Artists and exiles around the world would use stamps to communicate the horrors of Soviet
oppression. "These stamps show us the ideas and values of these people, who they really were
and what they were fighting for," Kosmach says."
That is so misleadingly partial as a description of the art glorifying the UPA movement as
to be deeply reprehensible. It does however fit with the anything- goes stoking of Russophobia,
which is the mainstay of government and media discourse at the moment. Even at the height of
the Cold War, we never saw such a barrage of unprovable accusations leveled at Russia through
the media by "security service sources."
Attack on UK Vaccine Research
A whole slew of these were rehearsed by Andrew Marr on his flagship BBC1 morning show. The
latest is the accusation that Russia is responsible for a cyber attack on Covid-19 vaccination
research. This is another totally evidence-free accusation. But it misses the point anyway.
Andrew Marr, center, in 2014. (Financial Times, Flickr)
The alleged cyber attack, if it happened, was a hack not an attack -- the allegation is that
there was an effort to obtain the results of research, not to disrupt research. It is appalling
that the U.K. is trying to keep its research results secret rather than share them freely with
the world scientific community.
As I have reported
before , the U.K. and the USA have been preventing the WHO from implementing a common
research and common vaccine solution for Covid-19, insisting instead on a profit driven
approach to benefit the big pharmaceutical companies (and disadvantage the global poor).
What makes the accusation that Russia tried to hack the research even more dubious is the
fact that Russia had
just bought the very research specified. You don't steal things you already
own.
Evidence of CIA Hacks
If anybody had indeed hacked the research, we all know it is impossible to trace with
certainty the whereabouts of hackers. My VPNs [virtual private networks] are habitually set to
India, Australia or South Africa depending on where I am trying to watch the cricket, dodging
broadcasting restrictions.
More pertinently, WikiLeaks' Vault 7 release of CIA material showed the specific programs for the CIA in how to leave clues
to make a leak look like it came from Russia. This irrefutable evidence that the CIA do
computer hacks with apparent Russian "fingerprints" deliberately left, like little bits of
Cyrillic script, is an absolutely classic example of a fact that everybody working in the
mainstream media knows to be true, but which they all contrive never to mention.
Thus when last week's "Russian hacking" story was briefed by the security services -- that
former Labour Party Leader Jeremy Corbyn deployed secret documents on U.K./U.S. trade talks
which had been posted on Reddit, after being stolen by an evil Russian who left his name of
Grigor in his Reddit handle -- there was no questioning in the media of this narrative.
Instead, we had another round of McCarthyite witch-hunt aimed at the rather tired looking
Corbyn.
Personally, if the Russians had been responsible for revealing that the Tories are prepared
to open up the NHS "market" to big American companies, including ending or raising caps on
pharmaceutical prices, I should be very grateful to the Russians for telling us. Just as the
world would owe the Russians a favor if it were indeed them who leaked evidence of just how
systematically the DNC rigged the 2016 primaries against Bernie Sanders.
But as it happens, it was not the Russians. The latter case was a leak by a disgusted
insider, and I very much suspect the NHS U.S. trade deal link was also from a disgusted
insider.
When governments do appalling things, very often somebody manages to blow the
whistle.
Crowdstrike's Quiet Admission
If you can delay even the most startling truth for several years, it loses much of its
political bite. If you can announce it during a health crisis, it loses still more. The world
therefore did not shudder to a halt when the CEO of Crowdstrike admitted there had never been
any evidence of a Russian hack of the DNC servers.
Crowdstrike's Shawn Henry presenting at the International Security Forum in Vancouver,
2009.
(Hubert K, Flickr)
You will recall the near incredible fact that, even through the Mueller investigation, the
FBI never inspected the DNC servers themselves but simply relied on a technical report from
Crowdstrike, the Hillary Clinton-related IT security consultant for the DNC.
It is now known for sure that Crowdstrike had been peddling fake news for Hillary. In fact,
Crowdstrike had no record of any internet hack at all. There was no evidence of the email
material being exported over the internet. What they claimed did exist was evidence that the
files had been organized preparatory to export.
Remember the entire "Russian hacking" story was based ONLY on Crowdstrike's say so. There is
literally no other evidence of Russian involvement in the DNC emails, which is unsurprising as
I have been telling you for four years from my own direct sources that Russia was not involved.
Yet finally declassified congressional testimony revealed that Shawn Henry stated on oath that
"we did not have concrete evidence" and "There's circumstantial evidence , but no evidence they
were actually exfiltrated."
This testimony fits with what I was told by Bill Binney, a former technical director of the
National Security Agency (NSA), who told me that it was impossible that any large amount of
data should be moved across the internet from the USA, without the NSA both seeing it happen in
real time and recording it. If there really had been a Russian hack, the NSA would have been
able to give the time of it to a millisecond.
That the NSA did not have that information was proof the transfer had never happened,
according to Binney. What had happened, Binney deduced, was that the files had been downloaded
locally, probably to a thumb drive.
Bill Binney. (Miquel Taverna / CCCB via Flickr)
So arguably the biggest news story of the past four years -- the claim that Putin
effectively interfered to have Donald Trump elected U.S. president -- turns out indeed to be
utterly baseless. Has the mainstream media, acting on security service behest, done anything to
row back from the false impression it created? No it has doubled down.
Anti-Russia
Theme
The "Russian hacking" theme keeps being brought back related to whatever is the big story of
the day.
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Brexit? Russian hacking.
U.K. general election 2019? Russian hacking
Covid-19 vaccine? Russian hacking.
Then we have those continual security service briefings. Two weeks ago we had unnamed
security service sources telling The New York Times that Russia had offered the Taliban
a
bounty for killing American soldiers. This information had allegedly come from
interrogation of captured Taliban in Afghanistan, which would almost certainly mean it was
obtained under torture.
It is a wildly improbable tale. The Afghans have never needed that kind of incentivization
to kill foreign invaders on their soil. It is also a fascinating throwback of an accusation
– the British did indeed offer Afghans money for, quite literally, the heads of Afghan
resistance leaders during the first Afghan War in 1841, as I detail in my book "Sikunder
Burnes."
Taliban in Herat, Afghanistan, 2001. (Wikipedia)
You do not have to look back that far to realize the gross hypocrisy of the accusation. In
the 1980s the West was quite openly paying, arming and training the Taliban -- including Osama
bin Laden – to kill Russian and other Soviet conscripts in their thousands. That is just
one example of the hypocrisy.
The U.S. and U.K. security services both cultivate and bribe senior political and other
figures abroad in order to influence policy all of the time. We work to manipulate the result
of elections -- I have done it personally in my former role as a U.K. diplomat. A great deal of
the behavior over which Western governments and media are creating this new McCarthyite
anti-Russian witch hunt, is standard diplomatic practice.
My own view is that there are malign Russian forces attempting to act on government in the
U.K. and the USA, but they are not nearly as powerful as the malign British and American forces
acting on their own governments.
The truth is that the world is under the increasing control of a global elite of
billionaires, to whom nationality is irrelevant and national governments are tools to be
manipulated. Russia is not attempting to buy corrupt political influence on behalf of the
Russian people, who are decent folk every bit as exploited by the ultra-wealthy as you or I.
Russian billionaires are, just like billionaires everywhere, attempting to game global
political, commercial and social structures in their personal interest.
The other extreme point of hypocrisy lies in human rights. So many Western media
commentators are suddenly interested in China and the Uighurs or in restrictions on the LBGT
community in Russia, yet turn a completely blind eye to the abuse committed by Western "allies"
such as Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.
As somebody who was campaigning about the human rights of both the Uighurs and of gay people
in Russia a good decade before it became fashionable, I am disgusted by how the term "human
rights" has become weaponized for deployment only against those countries designated as enemy
by the Western elite.
Finally, do not forget that there is a massive armaments industry and a massive security
industry all dependent on having an "enemy." Powerful people make money from this Russophobia.
Expect much more of it. There is money in a Cold War. Sign in to comment Viewing Options
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All Comments 45
jmNZ , 2 hours ago
Most of this can be traced to a group of fanatical Dr Strangeloves in the UK, known as the
"The Integrity Initiative" (sic) , now continuing under a new name since its cover was blown
by ukcolumnnews.
This group is handsomely funded from the public purse by the Foreign Office and its
influence is spread by the BBC and a corps of "disinformation officers" known as the 77th
brigade and 13 Signals, all under the control of the British cabinet office.
They are the ones trying to destabilize America via the Democratic (sic) Party.
And their cover is weekly Russia-bashing stories.
bumboo , 6 hours ago
Craig Murray sounds a reasonable voice. He quit or was fired from his Ambassador job in
Uzbekistan on Iraq war issue. Compare him with our Gen. Collin Powell, Mr. Clean, who lied
about Iraqi WMD in UN, covered up My Lia massacre for a lousy promotion. Now writing books,
public speaking for money and appearing on TVs as a wiseman. Wow.
Thutmoses , 7 hours ago
I think it wont be Russia, it will be China.
If an asteroid runs into the earth, any surviving press will blame it on China
Scipio Africanuz , 8 hours ago
Thanks Craig..
Any renewed cold War will freeze the instigators, and should it get hot, then they burn as
well..
Unfortunately, in the hot version, mankind gets roasted as well and not just by bombs, but
by..
As for the cold version however, the script had flipped thus..
As Sólómọ́nì Wise averred wisely, the borrower is slave
to the lender, and it doesn't matter if the duplicitous borrower tries to stiff the
lender..
The debts will be paid one way or another..
As for those bamboozled into unsustainable liabilities, there's always the merciful
jubilee, but first things first, lessons must be learned, thinking rejuvenated, lifestyle
changed, recalibration engaged, and vigilance imbibed..
To ensure serfdom culs de sac are avoided once the deceived by delusions are
salvaged..
And thus Craig, the necessity of experience that's bitter, so folks may learn by
necessity, what they chose not to learn via humility..
Cheers...
Really_Brit , 8 hours ago
The fundamental problem with this kind of revisionist narrative - that the Russian
leadership has been wildly misinterpreted as hostile to the west - is actually the existence,
in full sight, of Russia's most obvious propaganda tool - RT. What was called Russia Today
until someone in Moscow twigged that almost nothing being broadcast was about Russia that was
at all likely to upset Putin and his oligarchy or hint at the countries inferiority complex
viz a viz the West. So not what would be seen as free press and free broadcasting.
Nothing remotely like the programs RT / Russia Today has put together (or bought) that
describe civil unrest in the developed world. Or civil unrest in the developing world but
caused by the machinations of the developed world.
The closure or restrictions on Western NGO's in Russia intentionally stops any attempt to
replicate RT / Russia Today. So we will never see the Russian equivalents of recognisable US
ex-TV anchors or ex-CIA sounding off, within Russia , about corruption and criminality in
their motherland. Even sounding off about Russia outside in the developed world carries a
heavy price - just remind ourselves of poisoned ex-spies and Salisbury door knobs!
Tarjan , 2 hours ago
"Salisbury door knobs!"
You're chitting me, right?
~
jmNZ , 51 minutes ago
Ha! Ha!
You're as unreal a Brit as can be imagined.
No one believes the Skripal pantomime. Nor the MH17 'narrative'. Nor the farce where a
supposedly democratic country like the UK supports one of the richest and most arbitrary
regimes, Sadist Barbaria, in the wanton destruction of one of the poorest, the Yemen. And how
many times have the US/UK been caught out cooperating with fanatical jihadis terrorizing
Syria, the only parliamentary, secular state in the ME?
We wouldn't know any of this from the BBC.
desertboy , 8 hours ago
" It is appalling that the U.K. is trying to keep its research results secret rather than
share them freely with the world scientific community."
Assumes the intent is to make people healthier.
capital101 , 9 hours ago
War is a racket , from Smedley Butler, should be mandatory reading in school.
I think there is a positive side to this western animosity against Russia and China too.
Because Russia and China now have no good reason to respect western imperialism in the rest
of the world.
During the last Cold War, Russia and China helped many countries in Africa and Asia throw
off their yoke of western imperialism and have some alternatives for their trade and
development. And now we are getting a similar situation.
Russia and China are developing financial tools for international trade independent of the
US dollar. Which in the future will limit US power to impose sanctions and interfere with
trade between other countries. And of course, both Russia and China have goods and
technologies that rival those of western countries. They can provide a complete alternative
for countries that the West is trying to isolate and subjugate.
Perhaps western animosity isn't good for world peace or for the people in Russia and
China. But there is some benefit in this for many less developed countries who need an
alternative to the West for their trade and development.
We have some real competition now, where the competitors aren't colluding with each other.
Which is good for developing countries that need some real alternatives for their trade and
development.
PT , 9 hours ago
"...First they were our enemies. Then they were our friends. Then they were our enemies
again. Then they were our friends again..." - Mad Magazine was pointing this out in the 1970s
... or was it the 1960s?
Judging by the wording and the artwork, probably the '60s.
Fun side note: Compare Mad Magazines from each decade. Which ones had the higher quality
writers? Which ones had the higher quality art work? The answer is clearly visible. The
older, the better.
The UK and US have accused Russia of launching a weapon-like projectile from a
satellite in space. In a statement, the head of the UK's space directorate said: "We are concerned by the
manner in which Russia tested one of its satellites by launching a projectile with the
characteristics of a weapon."
The statement said actions like this "threaten the peaceful use of space".
The USA and UK's constant, unremitting "Putin stole my baby's candy" stories that
nobody expects them to prove are merely making the pair of them look ridiculous. If you're
trying to get Code-Red support for war, step up to the mark and take your shot, instead of
constantly sniveling and making it sound like nobody can draw a peaceful breath until the
Russians have been eliminated from the planet. But I promise you if you do, you are
going to be so sorry. Russia is not Grenada. Time again to trot out my favourite maxim
– 'experience keeps a hard school, but fools will learn at no other'.
Or the US's recently stood up Space Force(skin) USSF – spaceforce.mil (.mil = as
in military). Maybe that is why the UK is whining about it, i.e. to put space between the
US? Oh, and the Brits don't have a capability, having given up launchers in the 1960s.
"Space is the world's newest war-fighting domain," President Trump said during the
signing ceremony. "Amid grave threats to our national security, American superiority in
space is absolutely vital. And we're leading, but we're not leading by enough. But very
shortly we'll be leading by a lot."
"This is not a farce. This is nationally critical," Gen. John Raymond, who will lead
the Space Force, told reporters on Friday. "We are elevating space commensurate with its
importance to our national security and the security of our allies and partners."
About 16,000 Air Force active duty and civilian personnel are being assigned to the
Space Force. There's still a lot to figure out, including the force's uniform, logo, and
even its official song.
The Space Force will fall within the Department of the Air Force, but after one year
it will have its own representation on the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
The new service branch essentially repackages and elevates existing military missions
in space from the Air Force, Army and Navy, said Todd Harrison, who directs the Aerospace
Security Project at the Center for Strategic & International Studies.
"It's about, you know, all the different types of missions our military already does
in space -- just making sure that we're doing them more effectively, more efficiently,"
said Harrison.
"It will create a centralized, unified chain of command that is responsible for
space, because ultimately when responsibility is fragmented, no one's responsible," he
added.
####
The most interesting bit about the article above is the ommission, i.e. it doesn't
mention offensive space capabilities, even though we know about the robotic Boing X57*
winged spaceplane that swans about for up to a year.
No. Everyone should wait for the US to deploy its weapon systems and then follow!
That would be fair and just because the US is a Democracy and it has earned the right and
more importantly, the benefit of the doubt ad infinitum. Or is the X-37 just there
to sprinkle calming holy water on America's adversaries? ODFO!
The good , a 5 minute segment where a guest picked winner / loser countries post
covid19 world.
Winners: Germany, Taiwan, and Russia, Loser: United States.
It was amusing to watch Zakaria's face contort at the mention of Russia being named a winner,
'wha-whaaaaaaat?' The guest had to reassure Zakaria that Russia is a crap country and only
benefits because of Putin's Fortress Russia campaign and low debt making it capable of
weathering storms. Zakaria's face still frozen in a mask of horror.
The bad a rather long segment on Russia, China, and Iran's meddling campaign for
our next election. This was more painful to me then when I had appendicitis and had to wait
several hours before anyone could drive me to the emergency room.
1. Two experts, a China hater and a Russia hater from different 'Institutes'
2. The gratuitous adding of Iran to the list without explanation. Pro-Iranian views are
invisible.
3. Russian hatefest was over the top. It was a classic case of accusing Russia of what we
do. Russia (aka United States) nihilistically creates trouble and by amplifying discord in
other countries in order to deflect from their own domestic problems and foreign adventurism
in places like Syria and Ukraine.
Nihilistic spoilers? We the U.S. lost in Syria but are now trying to create a quagmire for
Russia and are pulling out all of the stops to make Syrians brutally suffer with a full scale
trade embargo and partition of their country.
Steele's "Primary Subsource" Was Alcoholic Russian National Who Worked With Trump
Impeachment Witness At Brookings by Tyler Durden Sat, 07/25/2020 - 16:50
Twitter Facebook Reddit EmailPrint
The mysterious "Primary Subsource" that Christopher Steele has long hidden behind to defend
his discredited Trump-Russia dossier is a former Brookings Institution analyst -- Igor "Iggy"
Danchenko, a Russian national whose past includes criminal convictions and other personal
baggage ignored by the FBI in vetting him and the information he fed to Steele , according to
congressional sources and records obtained by RealClearInvestigations. Agents continued to use
the dossier as grounds to investigate President Trump and put his advisers under
counter-espionage surveillance.
The 42-year-old Danchenko, who was hired by Steele in 2016 to deploy a network of sources to
dig up dirt on Trump and Russia for the Hillary Clinton campaign, was arrested, jailed and
convicted years earlier on multiple public drunkenness and disorderly conduct charges in the
Washington area and ordered to undergo substance-abuse and mental-health counseling, according
to criminal records.
Fiona Hill: She worked at the Brookings Institution with dossier "Primary Subsource" Igor
"Iggy" Danchenko (top photo), and testified against President Trump last year during
impeachment hearings. AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta
In an odd twist, a 2013 federal case against Danchenko was prosecuted by then-U.S Attorney
Rod Rosenstein, who ended up signing one of the FBI's dossier-based wiretap warrants as deputy
attorney general in 2017.
Danchenko first ran into trouble with the law as he began working for Brookings - the
preeminent Democratic think tank in Washington - where he struck up a friendship with Fiona
Hill, the White House adviser who testified against Trump during last year's impeachment
hearings. Danchenko has described Hill as a mentor, while Hill has sung his praises as a
"creative" researcher.
Hill is also close to his boss Steele, who she'd known since 2006 . She met with the former
British intelligence officer during the 2016 campaign and later received a raw, unpublished
copy of the now-debunked dossier.
It does not appear the FBI asked Danchenko about his criminal past or state of sobriety when
agents interviewed him in January 2017 in a failed attempt to verify the accuracy of the
dossier, which the bureau did only after agents used it to obtain a warrant to surveil Trump
campaign adviser Carter Page. The opposition research was farmed out by Steele, working for
Clinton's campaign, to Danchenko, who was paid for the information he provided.
A newly declassified FBI summary of the FBI-Danchenko meeting reveals agents learned that
key allegations in the dossier, which claimed Trump engaged in a "well-developed conspiracy of
cooperation" with the Kremlin against Clinton, were largely inspired by gossip and bar talk
among Danchenko and his drinking buddies, most of whom were childhood friends from Russia.
The FBI memo is heavily redacted and blacks out the name of Steele's Primary Subsource. But
public records and congressional sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, confirm the
identity of the source as Danchenko.
In the memo, the FBI notes that Danchenko said that he and one of his dossier sources "drink
heavily together." But there is no apparent indication the FBI followed up by asking Danchenko
if he had an alcohol problem, which would cast further doubt on his reliability as a source for
one of the most important and sensitive investigations in FBI history.
The FBI declined comment. Attempts to reach Danchenko by both email and phone were
unsuccessful.
The Justice Department's watchdog recently debunked the dossier's most outrageous
accusations against Trump, and faulted the FBI for relying on it to obtain secret wiretaps. The
bureau's actions, which originated under the Obama administration, are now the subject of a
sprawling criminal investigation led by special prosecutor John Durham.
Rod Rosenstein: In an odd twist, a 2013 drunkenness case against Danchenko was prosecuted by
then-U.S Attorney Rod Rosenstein, who ended up signing one of the FBI's dossier-based wiretap
warrants as deputy attorney general in 2017. (Greg Nash/Pool via AP)
One of the wiretap warrants was signed in 2017 by Rosenstein, who also that year appointed
Special Counsel Robert Mueller and signed a "scope" memo giving him wide latitude to
investigate Trump and his surrogates. Mueller relied on the dossier too. As it happens,
Rosenstein also signed motions filed in one of Danchenko's public intoxication cases, according
to the documents obtained by RCI.
In March 2013 -- three years before Danchenko began working on the dossier -- federal
authorities in Greenbelt, Md., arrested and charged him with several misdemeanors, including
"drunk in public, disorderly conduct, and failure to have his [2-year-old] child in a safety
seat," according to a court
filing . The U.S. prosecutor for Maryland at the time was Rosenstein, whose name
appears in the docket filings .
The Russian-born Danchenko, who was living in the U.S. on a work visa, was released from
jail on the condition he undergo drug testing and "participate in a program of substance abuse
therapy and counseling," as well as "mental health counseling," the records show. His lawyer
asked the court to postpone his trial and let him travel to Moscow "as a condition of his
employment." The Russian trips were granted without objection from Rosenstein. Danchenko ended
up several months later entering into a plea agreement and paying fines.
In 2006, Danchenko was arrested in Fairfax, Va., on similar offenses, including "public
swearing and intoxication," criminal records show. The case was disposed after he paid a
fine.
At the time, Danchenko worked as a research analyst for the Brookings Institution, where he
became a protégé of Hill. He collaborated with her on at least two Russian policy
papers during his five-year stint at the think tank and worked with another Brookings scholar
on a project to
uncover alleged plagiarism in Russian President Vladimir Putin's doctoral dissertation --
something Danchenko and his lawyer boasted about during their meeting with FBI agents. (Like
Hill, the other scholar, Clifford Gaddy, was a Russia hawk. He and Hill in 2015 authored "Mr.
Putin: Operative in the Kremlin," a book strongly endorsed by Vice President Joe Biden at the
time.)
"Igor is a highly accomplished analyst and researcher," Hill noted on his LinkedIn page in
2011.
"He is very creative in pursuing the most relevant of information and detail to support
his research."
Strobe Talbott of Brookings with Hillary Clinton: He connected with Christopher Steele and
passed along a copy of his anti-Trump dossier to Fiona Hill. AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster
Hill also vouched for Steele, an old friend and British intelligence counterpart. The two
reunited in 2016, sitting down for at least one meeting. Her boss at the time, Brookings
President Strobe Talbott, also connected with Steele and
passed along a copy of his anti-Trump dossier to Hill. A tough Trump critic, Talbott
previously worked in the Clinton administration and rallied the think tank behind Hillary.
Talbott's brother-in-law is Cody Shearer, another old Clinton hand who disseminated his own
dossier in 2016 that echoed many of the same lurid and unsubstantiated claims against Trump.
Through a mutual friend at the State Department, Steele obtained a copy of Shearer's dossier
and reportedly submitted it to the FBI to help corroborate his own.
In August 2016, Talbott personally called Steele, based in London, to offer his own input on
the dossier he was compiling from Danchenko's feeds. Steele phoned Talbott just before the
November election, during which Talbott asked for the latest dossier memos to distribute to top
officials at the State Department. After Trump's surprise win, the mood at Brookings turned
funereal and Talbott and
Steele strategized about how they "should handle" the dossier going forward.
During the Trump transition, Talbott encouraged Hill to leave Brookings and take
a job in the White House so she could be "one of the adults in the room" when Russia and
Putin came up. She served as deputy assistant to the president and senior director for European
and Russian affairs on the National Security Council from 2017 to 2019.
She left the White House just before a National Security Council detailee who'd worked with
her, Eric Ciaramella, secretly huddled with Democrats in Congress and
alleged Trump pressured the president of Ukraine to launch an investigation of Biden and
his son in exchange for military aid. Democrats soon held hearings to impeach Trump, calling
Hill as one of their star witnesses.
Congressional investigators are taking a closer look at tax-exempt Brookings, which has
emerged as a nexus in the dossier scandal. As a 501(c)(3) non-profit, the liberal think tank is
prohibited from lobbying or engaging in political campaigns. Gryffindor/Wikimedia
Under questioning by Republican staff, Hill disclosed that Steele reached out to her for
information about a mysterious individual, but she claimed she could not recall his name. She
also said she couldn't remember the month she and Steele met.
"He had contacted me because he wanted to see if I could give him a contact to some other
individual, who actually I don't even recall now, who he could approach about some business
issues," Hill told the House
last year in an Oct. 14 deposition taken behind closed doors.
Congressional investigators are reviewing her testimony, while taking a closer look at
tax-exempt Brookings, which has emerged as a nexus in the dossier scandal.
Registered with the IRS as a 501(c)(3) non-profit, the liberal think tank is prohibited from
lobbying or engaging in political campaigns. Specifically, investigators want to know if
Brookings played any role in the development of the dossier.
"Their 501(c)(3) status should be audited, because they are a major player in the dossier
deal," said a congressional staffer who has worked on the investigation into alleged Russian
influence.
Hill, who returned to Brookings as a senior fellow in January, could not be reached for
comment. Brookings did not respond to inquiries.
Ghost Employee
As a former member of Britain's secret intelligence service, Steele hadn't traveled to
Russia in decades and apparently had no useful sources there . So he relied entirely on
Danchenko and his supposed "network of subsources," which to its chagrin, the FBI discovered
was nothing more than a "social circle."
It soon became clear over their three days of debriefing him at the FBI's Washington field
office - held just days after Trump was sworn into office - that any Russian insights he may
have had were strictly academic.
Danchenko confessed he had no inside line to the Kremlin and was "clueless" when Steele
hired him in March 2016 to investigate ties between Russia and Trump and his campaign
manager.
Christopher Steele, former British spy, leaving a London court this week in a libel case
brought against him by a Russian businessman. Dossier source Danchenko's drinking pals fed him
a tissue of false "rumor and speculation" for pay -- which Steele, in turn, further embellished
with spy-crafty details and sold to his client as "intelligence." (Victoria Jones/PA via
AP)
Desperate for leads, he turned to a ragtag group of Russian and American journalists,
drinking buddies (including one who'd been arrested on pornography charges) and even an old
girlfriend to scare up information for his London paymaster, according to the FBI's January
2017 interview memo, which runs 57 pages. Like him, his friends made a living hustling gossip
for cash, and they fed him a tissue of false "rumor and speculation" -- which Steele, in turn,
further embellished with spy-crafty details and sold to his client as "intelligence."
Instead of closing its case against Trump, however, the FBI continued to rely on the
information Danchenko dictated to Steele for the dossier, even swearing to a secret court that
it was credible enough to renew wiretaps for another nine months.
One of Danchenko's sources was nothing more than an anonymous voice on the other end of a
phone call that lasted 10-15 minutes.
Danchenko told the FBI he figured out later that the call-in tipster, who he said did not
identify himself, was Sergei Millian, a Belarusian-born realtor in New York. In the dossier,
Steele labeled this source "an ethnic Russian close associate of Republican U.S. presidential
candidate Donald Trump," and attributed Trump-Russia conspiracy revelations to him that the FBI
relied on to support probable cause in all four FISA applications for warrants to spy on Trump
adviser Carter Page -- including the Mueller-debunked myth that he and the campaign were
involved in "the DNC email hacking operation."
Danchenko explained to agents the call came after he solicited Millian by email in late July
2016 for information for his assignment from Steele. Millian told RCI that though he did
receive an email from Danchenko on July 21, he ignored the message and never called him.
"There was not any verbal communications with him," he insisted. "I'm positive, 100%,
nothing what is claimed in whatever call they invented I could have said."
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Millian provided RCI part of the email, which was written mostly in Russian. Contact
information at the bottom of the email reads:
Igor Danchenko
Business Analyst
Target Labs Inc.
8320 Old Courthouse Rd, Suite 200
Vienna, VA 22182
+1-202-679-5323
At the time, Danchenko listed Target Labs, an IT recruiter run by ethnic-Russians, as an
employer on his resumé. But technically, he was not a paid employee there. Thanks to a
highly unusual deal Steele arranged with the company, Danchenko was able to use Target Labs as
an employment front.
It turns out that in 2014, when Danchenko first started freelancing regularly for Steele
after losing his job at a Washington strategic advisory firm, he set out to get a security
clearance to start his own company. But drawing income from a foreign entity like Steele's
London-based company, Orbis Business Intelligence, would hurt his chances.
So Steele agreed to help him broker a special "arrangement" with Target Labs, where a
Russian friend of Danchenko's worked as an executive, in which the company would bring
Danchenko on board as an employee but not put him officially on the payroll. Danchenko would
continue working for Steele and getting paid by Orbis with payments funneled through Target
Labs. In effect, Target Labs served as the "contract vehicle" through which Danchenko was paid
a monthly salary for his work for Orbis, the FBI memo reveals.
Though Danchenko had a desk available to use at Target Labs, he did most of his work for
Orbis from home and did not take direction from the firm. Steele continued to give him
assignments and direct his travel. Danchenko essentially worked as a ghost employee at Target
Labs.
Asked about it, a Target Labs spokesman would only say that Danchenko "does not work with us
anymore."
Brian Auten: He wrote the memo on the FBI's interview with the Primary Subsource, which is
silent about Danchenko's criminal record. Patrick Henry College
Some veteran FBI officials worry Moscow's foreign intelligence service may have planted
disinformation with Danchenko and his network of sources in Russia. At least one of them,
identified only as "Source 5" in the FBI memo, was described as having a Russian "kurator," or
handler.
"There are legions of 'connected' Russians purveying second- and third-hand -- and often
made-up -- due diligence reports and private intelligence," said former FBI assistant
director Chris Swecker. "Putin's intelligence minions use these people well to plant
information."
Danchenko has scrubbed his social media account. He told the FBI he deleted all his
dossier-related electronic communications, including texts and emails, and threw out his
handwritten notes from conversations with his subsources.
In the end, Steele walked away from the dossier debacle with at least $168,000, and
Danchenko earned a large undisclosed sum.
The FBI interview memo, which is silent about Danchenko's criminal record, was written by
FBI Supervisory Intelligence Analyst Brian Auten, who was called out in the Justice inspector
general report for ignoring inconsistencies, contradictions, errors and outright falsehoods in
the dossier he was supposed to verify.
It was also Auten's duty to vet Steele and his sources. Auten sat in on the meetings with
Danchenko and also separate ones with Steele. He witnessed firsthand the countless red flags
that popped up from their testimony. Yet Auten continued to tout their reliability as sources,
and give his blessing to agents to use their dossier as probable cause to renew FISA
surveillance warrants to spy on Page.
As RCI first reported, Auten teaches a national security course at a Washington-area college
on the ethics of such spying .
When schools in Britain
eventually reopen in September, children filling into the classrooms won't just be learning their reading, writing and
arithmetic. On top of these fundamentals, their teachers will spoon-feed them blatant propaganda that would make Herr Goebbels
blush.
The propaganda source in
question is The Day, a news site founded by a team of established journalists and directed at teens. Designed for use in the
classroom, each of The Day's stories is presented alongside a range of thought-provoking questions and exercises to help young
people learn to
"think for themselves and engage with the world."
Though UK-focused, The Day
is used in classrooms around the world as a teaching aid.
A recent article
describes
Russian
President Vladimir Putin as
"the most dangerous man in the world"
and suggests
"nothing
can be done to bring this rogue state [Russia] to heel."
Moscow's entire foreign policy is
"shameless"
and
Putin is described as a man who delights in stoking unrest in the West. The widely-debunked accusations of Russian
interference into the 2016 US election are treated as fact, as are the rumors that Putin meddled in the UK's Brexit referendum
and in last year's general election.
The children are also
offered Bill Browder's opinion that Russia is a
"mafia state running a mafia operation."
Browder,
the site omits, is a magnate and fraudster who made billions of dollars in Russia during the privatization rush of the 1990s
and
reinvented
himself
as an anti-Putin activist once his revenue stream was cut off.
Below the article, kids
are asked to answer a number of questions, such as
"Should Russia be expelled from the
United Nations?"
and even to write a creative story about what it would be like to meet Putin during his KGB days. For
good measure, the New York Times' recent
evidence-free
and
widely criticized story claiming Russia paid bounties to the Taliban to kill US troops in Afghanistan is suggested as further
reading to help kids become an
"expert"
on all things Putin.
The Day does not bill itself as an anti-Russia think tank for kids. Quite the opposite. Ironically, its founder, Richard
Addis, wanted to set up the site to fight deceptive journalism, hoaxes,
"slanted
reporting"
and
"stories where the truth is contentious"
-- fake news in other
words.
He was supported in this
quest by the British government's Commission on Fake News and the Teaching of Critical Literacy Skills in Schools, which
partnered with The Day to compile a damning
report
in
2018, revealing that only two percent of British youngsters have the critical thinking skills to spot phony news.
"It is clear that our schools are absolutely vital in encouraging children to burrow
through the rubbish and rootle out the truth,"
Addis said at the time. Stories on the site with titles like 'Putin the
terrible' and 'Toxic Putin on mission to poison the West' are clearly what Addis considers balanced journalism.
Balance, however, is not a common trait among British Russia-watchers. Parliament's long-awaited 'Russia report'
relies
almost
wholesale on
"allegations"
to back up its claim that Moscow
"poses
a significant threat to the UK."
The report even relies on articles by BuzzFeed to substantiate its shaky claims.
As slanted as its coverage
is, The Day's message may fall on deaf ears. According to the same government report, only a quarter of older children
actually trust the news they read online. As such, The Day's propagandizing might all be in vain.
One by one the so-called Russiagate "evidence" have collapsed. The fake Steele Dossier,
"Russian spy" Joseph Mifsud who is actually a self-admitted member of the Clinton Foundation,
Roger Stone's non-existant Wikileaks contacts, Russian Afgan bounties, etc. But the neoliberal
mainstream media still presents these as "facts" with no retractions.
This is not journalism, its disinformation designed to distract the American public from the
failures of capitalism.
There some interesting parts of this analysis. But as soon as a Professor shows that he believes that The Internet
Research Agency (IRA) troll factory influence 2016 elections his credibility falls to zero. The same is true about believing that
Gussifer 2.0 was not a false play operation by some US actors.
The key problem in the USA foreign policy toward Russia is the concept of "Full Spectrum Dominance" cherished by Washington
Neocons and foreign policy establishment (which are of ten the same people). Add to this a crown of greedy and unprincipled
chickenhawks (the Blob) who play the anti-Russian for their own advancement, obtaining lucrative positions and
enrichment (Fiona Hill, Victoria Nuland and company) and you see the problem. \
Destruction of the UN attempted by the USA after the dissolution of the USSR is a really tragic event, which probably will
backfire for the USA sooner of later
Notable quotes:
"... The Putin elite had earlier welcomed Trump's election, but in practice relations deteriorated further. The foreign policy establishment is deeply sceptical that the EU will be able to act with 'strategic autonomy'. Above all, Russo-Western relations have entered into a statecraft 'security dilemma': ..."
"... Currently, we are again faced with a situation in which mutual intentions are assessed by Washington and Moscow as subversive, while each side considers the statecraft employed by the other side as effective enough to achieve its malign goals. At the same time, each side is more sceptical about its own statecraft and appears (or pretends) to be scrambling to catch up (Troitskiy 2019 ). ..."
Russia today is presented as out to subvert the West. The chosen means are meddling in elections and sowing discord
in Western societies. Russia in this imaginary looms over an unsuspecting West, undermining democracy and supporting
disruptive forces. No longer couched in terms of the Cold War struggle between capitalism and communism, this is a
reversion to great power politics of the rawest sort. However, is this analysis correct? Is Vladimir Putin out to
undermine the West to achieve his alleged goal of re-establishing some sort of post-Soviet 'greater Russia' imperial
union in Russia's neighbourhood, to weaken the Atlantic power system and to undermine the liberal international
order? The paper challenges the view that Russia is trying to reconstitute a Soviet-type challenge to the West, and
provides an analytical framework to examine the dynamics of Russian foreign policy and on that basis assesses
Russia's real rather than imaginary aspirations.
It has become orthodoxy that Russia under an embittered and alienated Vladimir Putin is out to subvert the West. The
chosen means are taken to be meddling in elections and sowing discord in Western societies. The various special
operations include propelling Donald J. Trump to the White House and fixing the Brexit vote in 2016 (Snyder
2018
).
Putin's Russia in this imaginary looms over an unsuspecting West, undermining democracy and supporting disruptive forces
(Shekhovtsov
2017
;
Umland
2017
).
From this perspective, post-communist Russia is up to its old tricks, with the image of the Russian bear threatening the
honour of a defenceless Europe dusted off from the Crimean War and the era of the great game in the late nineteenth
century. No longer couched in terms of the Cold War struggle between capitalism and communism, this is a reversion to
great power politics of the imperial sort. It also represents the application of the weapons of the weak, since Russia
by any definition is but a shadow of the former Soviet Union, with less than half the population and an economy at most
one-tenth the size of that of the USA. Is this analysis correct? Is Putin out to undermine the West to achieve his
alleged goal of re-establishing some sort of post-Soviet union in Russia's neighbourhood and to weaken the Atlantic
power system so that the liberal international order is eroded from within? In other words, is Russia today a
revisionist power out to create a greater Russia?
Before attempting an answer we need to define our terms. What does it mean to be a revisionist power today, and how can
a strategy designed to 'subvert' be analysed and measured? Some fundamental methodological problems render study of the
question inherently difficult. How can revisionism and subversion be measured? How can the specific actors involved in
such actions be identified and disaggregated? At what point do normal policy differences between states become an
existential challenge to an existing order? The answer will take four forms, each of which further defines the question.
First, an assessment of the charge of Russian subversion and the various approaches that can be used to examine the
simple but endlessly complex question: is there a new quality to Russia actions that build on Soviet era 'active
measures' to denigrate and ultimately to destroy an opponent. This requires an examination of the logic of Russian
motives and policy-making, including examination of the structure of the international system and the dynamics of
Russian international politics, which will be presented in the second section. Third, an assessment of some of the
Kremlin's subversive behaviour in recent years, examined in the light of the earlier sections. Fourth, analysis of the
character of Russia's challenge assesses whether Russia today really is an insurgent and revisionist power.
Active measures and the subversion of American democracy
Is Russia really out to subvert the West? Much of the American political establishment believe that this is the case.
A comprehensive list of Russian sins is presented by Biden and Carpenter (
2018
),
including tyranny at home, the violation of the sovereignty of neighbours, meddling in the affairs of countries on
the road to NATO membership, 'soft subversion' through electoral interference in the USA and France, the manipulation
of energy markets and the 'weaponisation' of corruption. In his warning not to overreact to the Chinese challenge,
Zakaria (
2020
,
p. 64) notes that its actions, such as stealing military secrets and cyber-warfare, 'are attempts to preserve what
China views as its sovereignty'. However, these actions are 'nothing like Moscow's systematic efforts to disrupt and
delegitimize Western democracy in Canada, the United States and Europe'. Why do Russia's actions in his view fall
into an entirely different category?
One answer is that it is a question of political culture. The study of
Moscow Rules
by
Giles (
2019a
,
p. 23) argues that Russia's 'instinctive rejection of cooperative solutions is reinforced by the belief that all
great nations achieve security through the creation and assertion of raw power', and this in turn means that Russia
believes 'that the insecurity of others makes Russia itself more secure', predicated 'on the dubious principle that
there is only a finite amount of security in the world'. Elsewhere (Giles
2019b
)
sums up the policy implications in ten key points, which together do not leave much room for diplomatic manoeuvre or
even engagement with such a wily adversary who 'takes a very expansive view of what constitutes Russian territory'.
Treating it as an equal by normalising relations, as during Barack Obama's reset, 'delivered entirely the wrong
messages to Moscow' (Giles
2019a
,
p. 25). There can be no common ground with such an existential foe, and any substantive engagement smacks of
appeasement.
A second perspective focuses on Russophobia, which builds on the political culture notion of some inalienable and
ineradicable essence to Russian behaviour. The concept of Russophobia is often used to discount what may well be
legitimate criticism of Kremlin policies, but it nevertheless accurately conveys an approach that denigrates not only
Russia's leaders but the people as a whole (Mettan
2017
;
Tsygankov
2009
).
In an interview in May 2017 former Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper argued that Russians 'are almost
genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favour, whatever, which is a typical Russian technique' (Koenig
2017
).
The work of Smith (
2019
)
complements that of Foglesong (
2007
)
on long-standing American anxieties about Russia. Smith argues that recurrent bouts of Russophobia are prompted by
what he calls the 'Russia anxiety', a long-term pattern of thinking and sentiments about Russia that alternate
between fear, contempt and disregard for the country. The cycle began in the sixteenth century when Russia joined the
nascent European international society. Anxiety that Russia threatens Western civilisation was accompanied by various
versions of 'fake history', as in the publication in nineteenth-century France of Russia's 14-point plan for world
domination -- the Testament of Peter the Great. This forgery is just one example of what Smith calls the 'black legend'
of Russian history: the idea that aggression, expansionism and authoritarianism are inherent features of Russia's
national character. Smith aims to demonstrate that Russia is far from exceptional, and instead its behaviour is
predictable and in conformity with traditional patterns of a country defending its national interests, or as Zakaria
argues with reference to China, its sovereignty. The major exception was the Soviet period, but this in many ways ran
against Russia's national identity and represented an imposition based on chance and contingency. In his view, Russia
today is doing no more than any other state, and its external actions are no more egregiously malevolent than any
other.
A third approach looks at Soviet legacies and systemic characteristics. From this perspective, Russia has undergone
an 'unfinished revolution' (McFaul
2001
),
allowing the Soviet era anti-Western and anti-democratic forces to regroup after the fall of communism. This
particularly concerns the so-called
siloviki
(the security apparatus and its
acolytes), as well as the transformed Soviet
apparatchiks
who became the core of
Putin's model of statist oligarchic capitalism. This 'crony capitalism' spreads its subversion by abusing Western
legal and financial institutions for their own malign purposes (Belton
2020
;
Dawisha
2014
).
Despite the change of regime and the end of old-style ideological confrontation, the Soviet system in certain
fundamental respects has reproduced itself. This is why the repertoire of tactics is sometimes described as a
continuation of Soviet era 'active measures' (
aktivnye meropriyatiya
) (Rid
2020
).
These are designed to undermine 'support in the United States and overseas for policies viewed as threatening to
Moscow, discrediting US intelligence and law enforcement agencies, weakening US alliances and US relations with
partners, and increasing Soviet power and influence across the globe' (Jones
2019
,
p. 2). The term is now used indiscriminately to encompass disinformation and cyber activities as elements of a
sustained strategy undertaken by the Soviet and now the Russian security services to undermine an enemy by exploiting
divisions and the vulnerabilities of competitive and open democratic societies.
The Communist International (Comintern) was established in March 1919 to spread the revolution globally and prompted
the Palmer raids in November of that year in the USA as part of the first Red Scare. During the Cold War there were
plenty of times when Moscow tried to influence US politics (Haslam
2012
).
In 1948 the Soviet Union backed the Progressive Party's Henry Wallace, who had been Franklin D. Roosevelt's vice
president but split with the Democratic Party over President Harry Truman's hawkish Cold War stance. In 1964 Soviet
and Czechoslovak agencies smeared the Republican candidate, Barry Goldwater, as a racist and Ku Klux Klan supporter.
In 1968 the Soviet Union offered an unprecedented level of support for the Democratic candidate, Hubert Humphrey,
including financial aid (which naturally was refused). In 1976 the KGB adopted 'active measures' against Democratic
Senator Henry 'Scoop' Jackson, a virulent anti-Soviet hawk. In 1980 and again in 1984 it appears that Senator Edward
Kennedy sought Soviet support for his presidential campaign (Kengor
2018
).
In 1983 KGB agents were instructed to help defeat Reagan in his bid for re-election. The Soviet goals outlined above
hold to this day in conditions of renewed Cold War, and this is why the term has regained currency (Abrams
2016
).
This is understandable, given the long history of Cold War conflict and renewed confrontation.
What is striking, however, is that most Soviet actions were inept and remarkably ineffective (Robinson
2019
).
We can also add that today such actions are also intensely counterproductive, arousing the hostility of the
authorities against which they are directed and discrediting what may be legitimate policy differences with these
countries. Political opponents are tarred with the brush of 'collusion' with an external enemy, as was the case
during the second Red Scare in the post-war years overseen by Senator Joseph McCarthy. This is also the case, as we
shall discuss below, in the 'Russiagate' collusion allegations, asserting that Trump worked with Moscow in 2016 to
get himself elected (Sakwa
2021
).
The question then becomes: why does Russia do it? Is it part of a single and coordinated strategy of subversion using
covert means, reflecting an overarching doctrine?
This is where the fourth approach, the ideational, comes in. From this perspective, the struggle between communism
and capitalism has given way to the conflict between democracies and autocracies, with the latter developing a
repertoire of techniques to keep democracy at bay (Hall and Ambrosio
2017
).
Each tries to subvert the other using a range of instruments, while advancing soft power agendas (Sherr
2013
).
Since at least 2004 Russia has been concerned with preventing what it calls 'colour revolutions', in which civil
society is mobilised by Western agencies to achieve regime change (Horvath
2011
,
2013
).
This was the issue addressed by Valerii Gerasimov (
2013
),
the Chief of the Russian General Staff, in his landmark article. The lesson of the Arab spring, he argued, was that
the rules of war had changed. Viable states could quickly descend into armed conflict and become victims of foreign
intervention and sink into an abyss of state collapse, civil conflict and humanitarian catastrophe. The article was a
response to what was perceived to be new forms of Western 'hybrid warfare'. He noted that 'Frontal engagements of
large formations of forces at the strategic and operational level are gradually becoming a thing of the past.
Long-distance, contactless actions against the enemy are becoming the main means of achieving combat and operational
goals'. He identified eight features of modern hybrid warfare that were applied to subvert states and to gain control
of territory without resorting to conventional arms. Regime change could be achieved by the use of civil methods such
as propaganda, funding and training of protest groups, and information campaigns aimed at discrediting the opponent.
He stressed that the 'very rules of war have changed', arguing that non-military means such as the 'use of political,
economic and informational, humanitarian, and other non-military measures -- applied in coordination with the protest
potential of the population', can exceed 'the power of force of weapons in their effectiveness, and 'that the open
use of forces -- often under the guise of peace-keeping and crisis regulation -- is resorted to only at a certain stage,
primarily for the achievement of final success in the conflict'.
Gerasimov discounted the element of popular protest against corrupt and authoritarian systems in the Middle East,
North Africa and post-Soviet Eurasia and instead framed these events as part of the radicalised West's regime change
strategies. Following the Russian actions in Crimea and the Donbas in 2014, the term 'hybrid warfare' was applied to
Russia's use of mixed methods (propaganda, disinformation, information warfare and special forces) to achieve what
came to be known as a 'nonlinear' military operations (Fridman
2018
).
What Gerasimov had identified as the Western strategy against Russia was now interpreted as the blueprint for the
Kremlin's attempts to destabilise its neighbours and Western democracies.
As for motivation, this is where a fifth approach comes in, focusing on questions of identity and Russia's search for
status in a competitive international environment. From this perspective, the idealism of Mikhail Gorbachev's 'new
political thinking' in international relations in the late 1980s 'offered a global mission that would enhance Soviet
international status while preserving a distinctive national identity'. In this way, the Soviet Union could forge a
'shortcut to greatness' by winning great power status not through economic might and military power but through
normative innovation and the transformation of international politics (Larson and Shevchenko
2003
).
This instrumental view of ideational innovation is challenged by English (
2000
),
who stresses the long-term maturation of an intellectual revolution in Soviet thinking, which then carried over into
Russian debates. As we shall see, there are many layers to Russia's foreign policy identity, although there is a
clear evolution away from an initial enthusiasm for all things European and alignment with the West towards the
stronger articulation of a great power version of Russian national interests. These great power aspirations have been
interpreted as a type of aspirational constructivism directed towards the identity needs of domestic audiences rather
than the expression of an aggressive policy towards the historic West (Clunan
2009
).
Status issues are important (Krickovic and Weber
2018
),
but they have to be understood as part of a larger ensemble of motivations within the structure of international
relations.
The final approach focuses on the structural characteristics of international politics, whose specific post-Cold War
manifestation will be examined below. Briefly put, defensive neorealism argues that in an anarchic international
environment states typically seek to preserve the status quo to maintain their security by preserving the balance of
power (Waltz
1979
,
p. 121). Offensive realists focus on the maintenance of hegemony in the international system and the struggle to
prevent usurpation (Mearsheimer
2001
,
p. 21). Revisionism assumes that the balance of power does not adequately guarantee a state's security, hence it
seeks to change the balance of power; or that is assumes that the balance of power has changed enough to mount a
challenge to the status quo. In Russia's case, classical neorealism of either type would accept regional hegemony,
with offshore balancing an adequate mechanism to ensure that it did not mount a global challenge. However, the
liberal internationalism that predominated after 1989 makes no provision for regional hegemony of any sort, hence
Russia was unable to exert the sort of influence to which it felt entitled, and hence its revisionist challenge was
manifested in attacks on Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014. This, at least, is the liberal structural perspective,
and even the defensive realist position has guarded against any reassertion of Russia's great power ambitions, hence
the concern to ensure that Ukraine was distanced as far as possible from any putative Russian 'sphere of influence'
(Brzezinski
1994
,
1997
).
How are we to adjudicate between these six different presentations of Russian interests and concerns? What is the
standard against which we can measure the dynamics of Russian identity formation and foreign policy? Is Putin really
trying to create a 'greater Russia' by not only challenging the established powers but also by waging a covert war to
shape electoral outcomes while destroying the foundations of democracy itself? Undoubtedly, certain Cold War
practices of propaganda and covert influence campaigns have been revived, while some (such as deep espionage
operations) never stopped, accompanied now by 'black cash' flows (untraceable and illicit payments) to sympathetic
movements, cyber-enhanced intelligence operations and outright cyber-warfare. Some of this predates the Cold War and
is part of traditional statecraft, some is part of revived Cold War confrontation, while some is new and takes
advantage of developing social media and communication technologies. Together they reflect the logic of conflict
stopping short of kinetic military action.
Post-Cold War reconstruction of the West and the international system
What is the character of the conflict? We argue here that this is a structural feature of post-Cold War international
politics. Two very different and incommensurate models of post-Cold War order were advanced after 1989 (Sakwa
2017a
,
pp. 12–19). The logic of
expansion
made perfect sense from the perspective of what
came to be seen as the 'victors' at the end of the Cold War. The long-term adversary had not only renounced the
ideology in whose name the struggle against capitalist democracy had been waged, but the country itself
disintegrated. This really did look like 'the end of history', with no sustained ideological alternative to
capitalist modernity on offer. From the first, the logic of expansion was opposed by Russia, the continuer state to
the Soviet Union. From Moscow's perspective, the end of the Cold War was a mutual victory -- the triumph of the new
political thinking that had matured in various academic institutes and think tanks (Bisley
2004
;
English
2000
).
This is why the logic of expansion was countered by the logic of
transformation
,
the view that the end of the Cold War offered a unique opportunity to move beyond ideological confrontation between
and within states. The idea of revolutionary socialism and class war would give way to a politics of reconciliation
and all-class development. This is more than a 'shortcut to greatness' or a strategy for status advancement (although
it is both of these), but a proposal for a structural transformation of the conduct of international politics. This
demand lies at the base of normative developments in international law over the last century as well as in various
peace and environmental movements today. There are plenty of credible realist arguments to dismiss such
transformative approaches as hopelessly idealistic, but repeated financial and pathogenic shocks and the enduring
threats of environmental catastrophe and nuclear annihilation provide the continuing impulse for transformative
thinking (Lieven
2020
).
This relates to a key point at the heart of Russian post-communist self-identity -- the ambition to join not the West as
it exists within the accustomed binaries but a transformed West where Cold War antagonisms are structurally
transcended. After 1989 the stated Russian ambition was to join the political West as it existed at the time, defined
as the embodiment of the democratic ideal, the rule of law, defensible property rights, and above all the realm of
freedom and independent associational life. However, because of the way that the political West evolved during the
Cold War, when the larger political civilisation, termed after the Cold War the liberal international order, melded
with the Atlantic power system, for a large part (but not all) of the Russia elite this became impossible. The power
system at the heart of the liberal normative order endows US power with a unique character. The hegemonic aspect
provided a range of international public goods, including the framework for economic globalisation. However, this was
accompanied by the practices of primacy, which we can credibly describe as dominion, an ascendancy that has spawned a
vast literature describing the USA as an empire (indicatively, Bacevich
2003
;
Johnson
2002
;
Mann
2005
).
Russian leaders from Gorbachev to Putin insisted that the Cold War West -- what in Russian parlance became known as the
'historic West' -- would have to change with the end of the Cold War to become a 'greater West'. This was effectively
the condition for Russia to join the expanded community, but in the end it turned out impossible for both sides to
make the necessary adjustments. The greater West would not have to repudiate hegemony -- that was too much even for a
demandeur
state
such as Russia to ask -- but Moscow's leaders did seek a change in the terms of dominion through the creation of what it
insisted should be a mutually inclusive security order. Hegemony was to a degree acceptable as long as it was
constrained by the system of international law grounded in the post-1945 international system, represented above all
by the United Nations. Russian neo-revisionism challenges dominance in its various manifestations (empire, primacy,
exceptionalism or greatness), but can live with constrained hegemony.
In sum, the fundamental post-Cold War process in the Russian view was to be mutual
transformation
,
whereas the Western view envisaged a straightforward process of
enlargement
. In
the context in which the main antagonist had itself repudiated the ideology on which it had based its opposition to
the historical West since 1917, and which in 1991 disintegrated as a state, the Atlanticist pursuit of expansion and
its accompanying logic of dominion was understandable (Wohlforth and Zubok
2017
).
Victory in the Cold War and the disintegration of the historic enemy (the Soviet Union) not only inhibited
transformative processes in the historic West but in the absence of a counter-ideology or an opposing power system,
encouraged the radicalisation of its key features (Sakwa
2018a
).
The original liberal world order after 1945 developed as one of the major pillars (the Soviet Union was the other)
within a bipolar system and was initially a relatively modest affair, based on the UN Charter defending the
territorial integrity of states (although also committed to anti-colonial national self-determination), multilateral
institutions, open markets that was later formulated as the 'four freedoms' of labour, capital, goods and services,
accompanied by a prohibition on the use of force except in self-defence. After 1989 the liberal world order, as the
only surviving system with genuinely universal aspirations, assumed more ambitious characteristics, including a
radical version of globalisation, democracy promotion and regime change.
The framing of the 'historic West' against a putative 'greater West' repeats the recurring Russian cultural trope of
contrasting 'good' and 'bad' Europes or Wests, 'with which Russians can seek to make common cause in domestic power
struggles' (Hahn
2020
;
see also Neumann
2016
).
As the historic West radicalised, it also enlarged. On the global scale its normative system, the liberal
international order, made universalist claims, while its power system (dominion) in Europe brought NATO to Russia's
western borders and drove the European Union deep into what had traditionally been Russia's economic and cultural
sphere. This would be disruptive in the best of circumstances, but when it became part of the expansion of an
Atlantic power system accompanied by the universalising practices of the liberal international order, it provoked a
confrontation over Ukraine and the onset of a renewed period of confrontation that some call a New Cold War (Legvold
2016
;
Mastanduno
2019
;
Monaghan
2015
).
In the absence of ideational or institutional modification, let alone innovation, after 1989, there was 'no place for
Russia' (Hill
2018
,
p. 8 and
passim
) in this new order.
Does this mean that Russia has become a revisionist power, out to destroy the historic West? Russia's ambition has in
fact been rather different, but in the end no less challenging: to change the practices of the power system at the
core of the historic West. Once mutual transformation was no longer an option and the idea of a greater West receded
(although it remains a residual feature of Russian thinking), Russia turned to neo-revisionism, a rather more modest
ambition to change practices rather than systems (Sakwa
2019
).
This was the culmination of an extended thirty-year period of experimentation. Contrary to the view of the Russian
power system as some immutable and unchangeable malign force (Lucas
2008
,
2013
),
the first and second models outlined above, foreign policy and more broadly Russia's engagement with the historic
West since the end of the Cold War has evolved through four distinct periods. Periodisation is an important heuristic
device and in methodological terms repudiates the view that there is some enduring essence to Russian foreign policy
behaviour, with 'active measures' seamlessly transferred from the Soviet Union to post-communist Russia. It is
important to note that the periodisation outlined here is
layered
. In other words,
each phase does not simply give way to the next, but builds on and incorporates the earlier one, while changing the
emphasis and introducing new elements.
The first period in the early 1990s was characterised by an enthusiastic Westernism and embrace of liberal
Atlanticism (Kozyrev
2019
).
In conditions of catastrophic social and economic conditions at home and assertions of US hegemony and dominion
abroad (although exercised rather reluctantly in Bosnia and elsewhere at this time), this gave way to a more
assertive neo-Soviet era of competitive coexistence, masterminded by the foreign minister from January 1996, Yevgeny
Primakov, who between September 1998 and May 1999 was prime minister. His assertion of multipolarity, alignment with
India and China (the beginning of the RIC's grouping) and foreign policy activism received a harsh rebuff in the NATO
bombing of Serbia from March 1999. Putin came to power in 2000 in the belief that the two earlier strategies were
excessive in different directions, and through his policy of 'new realism' tried to find a middle way between
acquiescence and assertion. Gorbachev-era ideas of 'normality' were revived, and Putin insisted that Russia would be
a 'normal' great power, seeking neither favours from the West nor a privileged position for itself (Sakwa
2008
).
This strategy of positive engagement was thrown off course by the expansive dynamic of the Atlantic power system,
including the war in Iraq in 2003, NATO enlargement and the Libyan crisis of 2011. As for Russia, the commodities
boom of the 2000s fuelled an unprecedented period of economic growth, accompanied by remarkably successful reforms
that transformed the Russian armed forces (Renz
2018
).
These fed ideas of Russian resurgence and appeared to provide the material base for a more assertive politics of
resistance.
When Putin returned to the Kremlin in May 2012 the new realism gave way to the fourth phase of post-communist Russian
foreign policy, the strategy of neo-revisionism. Already in his infamous Munich speech in February 2007, Putin (
2007
)
objected to the behaviour of the US-led Atlantic power system, but in substance the fundamentals of the new realist
strategy continued. Now, however, neo-revisionism challenged the universal claims of the US-led liberal international
order and resisted the advance of the Atlantic power system by intensifying alternative integration projects in
Eurasia and accelerating the long-term 'pivot to Asia'. By now Moscow was convinced that the normative hegemonic
claims of the liberal international order were only the velvet manifestation of the iron fist of American dominion at
its core. Russia, and its increasingly close Chinese partner, stressed the autonomy of international governance
institutions, insisting that they were not synonymous with the universal claims of the liberal international order.
This, in essence, is the fundamental principle of neo-revisionism: a defence of sovereign internationalism and the
autonomy of the international system bequeathed by the Yalta and Potsdam conferences of 1945. This is accompanied by
a rejection of the disciplinary practices of the US-led hegemonic constellation, including democracy promotion,
regime change, humanitarian intervention and nation building (what Gerasimov identified as Western hybrid warfare)
(Cunliffe
2020
).
In effect, this means a rejection of the practices of US-led international order, but not of the system in which it
operates.
Putin defends a model of conservative (or sovereign) internationalism that maps on to a ternary understanding of the
international system. On the top floor are the multilateral institutions of global governance, above all the UN (in
which Russia has a privileged position as permanent member (P5) of the Security Council); on the middle floor states
compete and global orders (like the US-led liberal international order) seek to impose their hegemony; while on the
ground floor civil society groups and civil associations try to shape the cultural landscape of politics (such as
groups trying to push responses to the climate catastrophe and nuclear threats up the global agenda). Putin and his
foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, condemn the liberal order for not living up to its own standards. As Lavrov (
2019
)
argued, 'How do you reconcile the imperative of defending human rights with the bombardment of sovereign states, and
the deliberate effort to destroy their statehood, which leads to the death of hundreds of thousands of people?'.
This is the neo-revisionist framework, which exposes the gulf between hegemonic principles and practices of dominion.
It is revisionist to the degree that it repudiates the application of US dominion to itself, but is willing to work
with that hegemony on major international issues as long as Russia's status as an autonomous diplomatic interlocutor
is recognised (Lo
2015
).
Neo-revisionism is the natural culmination of a policy stance torn by two contradictory positions. The revisionist
impulse seeks to reassert Russia into an international system in which great power diplomacy after the end of the
Cold War in 1989 had given way to a hegemonic universalism that by definition repudiated the traditional instruments
of great power diplomacy, such as spheres of influence, great power summitry and grand bargains. On the other side,
Russia remains a conservative status quo power intent on maintaining the post-1945 international system, which grants
it the supreme privilege of P5 membership as well as providing a benign framework to advance its model of sovereign
internationalism. This is a model of world order favoured by China, India and many other states, wary not so much of
the hegemonic implications of the liberal international order but of the power hierarchy associated with the
practices of dominion. This is the framework in which Russia (and China) can engage in globalisation but repudiate
the universalist ambitions of the power system with which it is associated.
With the USA under Trump withdrawing from multilateral commitments to focus on bolstering its ascendancy in the world
of states (the second level), Russia (and China) inevitably stood up in defence of multilateralism, in which they
have such a major stake. This is far from a revisionist position, and instead neo-revisionism defends the present
international system but critiques the historical claim of the liberal international order to be identical with the
multilateral order itself (Sakwa
2017a
).
Of course, the US-led liberal order has indelibly marked international society, but this does not entail a
proprietary relationship to that society (Dunne and Reut-Smith (
2017
).
Russia emerges as the defender of the international system as it is presently constituted, but at the same time
advances an alternative (non-hierarchical) idea of how it should operate. On occasion this may entail revisionist
acts, such as the annexation of Crimea, which from Moscow's perspective was a defensive reaction to a
Western-supported putsch against the legitimate authorities in Kiev (Treisman
2016
),
but they are not part of a consistent revisionist strategy. Both at home and abroad Russia is a status quo power.
Putin railed against the West's perceived revisionism in both aspects, but the main point of resistance is the
element of dominion at the heart of the Atlantic power system. In both respects there is no evidence that Russia
seeks to destroy the international system as presently constituted.
This structural interpretation, in which incompatible models of international politics contest, is overwhelmingly
rejected by the partisans of what can be called post-Cold War monism. From this perspective, there is only one viable
order, the one generated by the USA and its allies. There can be pluralism within that order, but not between orders.
This monist perspective is challenged by some recent international relations literature (Acharya
2017
;
Flockhart
2016
)
and of course by states defending a more pluralist understanding of the international system (for example, English
School approaches, Buzan
2014
).
In practical terms the monist imperative, when couched in liberal order terms but rather less so when applied in the
language of Trumpian 'greatness', renders Russia the structural equivalent of the Soviet Union, or even the dreaded
image of Tsarist Russia.
This leads to a fundamental category error. Russia is not a 'revolutionary power' in the sense defined by Henry
Kissinger (
2013
,
p 2), a country that can never be reassured of its security and consequently seeks absolute security at the expense
of others. Napoleonic France or Hitlerite Germany were determined to overthrow the international systems of their
times to create one more suited to their needs.
Russia today is a conservative power, alarmed by the way that the
international system that it had helped create at the end of the Second World War became radicalised after the end of
the Cold War. Critics argue that this radicalised version of liberal hegemony was 'bound to fail', since its
ambitions were so expansive as to classify as delusional, and which in the end provoked domestic and external
resistance (Mearsheimer
2018
,
2019
).
Russia's neo-revisionism after 2012 sought to defend the autonomy of the multilateralism inaugurated by the
victorious powers after 1945 and was ready to embrace the 'hegemonic' goals of the liberal order as presented in the
Cold War years, but came to fear the revisionism implicit in the 'exceptionalist' ideology of the post-Cold War
version of the liberal order, especially when it was accompanied by what was perceived as the aggressive expansion of
the dominion of the unipolar Atlantic power system.
The Kremlin and subversion
In the context of the distinction between the hegemony of the liberal international order and the dominion of the
Atlantic power system, both Russia and China reaffirm their commitment to the normative principles underlying the
international system as it developed after the Second World War. These include the primacy of state sovereignty,
territorial integrity, the significance of international law and the centrality of the United Nations (Wilson
2019
).
However, both are challenger powers in two respects: first, in questioning the assertive universalism that was
radicalised at the end of the Cold War, including various practices of humanitarian intervention and democracy
promotion, accompanied by regime change strategies; and second, dissatisfaction with the existing distribution of
power in the international system, hence challenge American primacy and hegemonic practices. This combination of
commitment to the international system but challenges to the pre-eminence of a particular order in that system is
what renders the two states neo-revisionist rather than outright revisionist powers. To label them as such is a
category error, with grave and dangerous policy consequences.
This error has now become enshrined doctrinally. The US
National Security Strategy
(
2015
)
already warned that Washington 'will continue to impose significant costs on Russia through sanctions' and would
'deter Russian aggression'. Trump's proclaimed intention of improving relations with Russia provoked a storm of
hostility in which Republican neo-conservatives and Democrat liberal internationalists united to stymie moves in that
direction. This is why the US
National Security Strategy
(
2017
,
p. 25), at the end of Trump's first year in power, warned against the 'revisionist powers of China and Russia',
ranked alongside the 'rogue powers of Iran and North Korea' and the 'transnational threat organisations, particularly
jihadist groups'. The National Defense Strategy (
2018
,
p. 2) also identified Russia and China as revisionist states, seeking 'to shape a world consistent with their
authoritarian model -- gaining veto authority over other nation's economic, diplomatic and security decisions'. The
emergence of challengers undoubtedly came as a shock for a power and normative system that had enjoyed largely
unquestioned pre-eminence. Responses to that shock range from intensified neo-conservative militarism, democratic
internationalist intensification of ideological struggle to delegitimise Russia's aspirations, as well as an
increasingly vocal 'realist' call for a return to the diplomatic practices of pre-Cold War sovereign
internationalism.
The first two responses make common cause against Russia's perceived revisionist challenge and have mobilised a
network of think tanks and strategies against Russia's instruments of subversion. The far from exhaustive list
presented here indicates the scope of Moscow's armoury of subversion, as well as the methodological and practical
problems in assessing their scale, motivation and effect. The first is support for insurgent populist movements in
the West. Russia rides the wave of populist and nationalist insurgency, but it does not mean either that Russia is
the main instigator or beneficiary. The Russian leadership has long complained about the 'hermetic' character of the
Atlantic power system and thus welcomes the breach in the impregnable walls of rectitude created from within by the
various national populisms of left and right. In other words, Moscow perceives national populist insurgency as a
struggle for ideational pluralism within the liberal international order, but above all as allies in the struggle for
geostrategic pluralism against the monism of the Atlantic power system. Russia supports some of these movements, but
not to the extent of jeopardising the existing structures of the international system. Once again, the tempered
challenge of neo-revisionism predominates over the insurrectionary behaviour that would characterise a genuinely
revisionist power.
The Alliance for Securing Democracy identified at least 60 instances of Russia funding political campaigns beyond its
borders, although many of the cases are circumstantial (Foer
2020
).
In his notorious interview with the
Financial Times
on the eve of the Osaka G20
summit in June 2019, Putin asserted that 'the liberal idea' has 'outlived its purpose' as publics turned against
immigration, open borders and multiculturalism, but he immediately brought in the structural context: '[Liberals]
cannot simply dictate anything to anyone just like they have been attempting to do over recent decades' (Barber and
Foy
2019
,
p. 1). The Kremlin has gone out of its way to identify with right wing (and occasionally left wing) 'populists' who
argue for a revision of the EU's relations with Russia, including a dismantling of the sanctions regime. Thus, in the
2017 French presidential election Putin welcomed the head of National Rally (formerly the Front National) Marine Le
Pen to Moscow, a move that still attracts widespread condemnation in France. Earlier, a Russian bank had made a €9.4
million loan to her party. Even this needs to be seen in context. Putin's favoured candidate in the 2017 French
presidential election was not Le Pen but the more conventional social conservative François Fillon. When the latter's
campaign as the nominee of the traditional Gaullist party imploded, Moscow was left bereft of a mainstream candidate
calling for a revision of the post-Cold War dominion strategy. As for the funding for Le Pen, the loan was called in
prematurely, and the bank was closed down as part of the Central Bank of Russia's attempt to clean up the financial
sector.
As for Italy, the leader of the Lega (formerly Lega Nord) party, Matteo Salvini, was one of the strongest advocates
of resetting relations with Russia as he entered government following the March 2018 elections as part of the
coalition with the Five Star Movement. The relationship was no more than a 'marriage of convenience', with Moscow
only engaged to the extent that it could advance the goal of weakening the EU's sanctions regime (Makarychev and
Terry
2020
).
In a subsequent scandal, one of Salvini's closest associates and the president of Lombardy Russia, Gianluca Savoini,
was taped talking in the Metropol Hotel in Moscow about an illicit scheme to funnel funds through oil sales to
support the League's electoral campaigns (Nardelli
2019
).
On his visit to the Vatican in July 2019 Putin met with the national populists, or otherwise put, the geopolitical
revisionists. This was his third meeting with Pope Francis, and Putin sounded more Catholic than the Pope: 'Sometimes
I get the feeling that these liberal circles are beginning to use certain elements and problems of the Catholic
Church as a tool for destroying the Church itself' (Horowitz
2019
).
The substantive issue remains. National populists in the West repudiate much of the social liberalism that has now
become mainstream, but most also reject the geopolitical orthodoxy that in their view has provoked the Second Cold
War with Russia. On that basis there is clearly common cause between the populist insurgency in Europe and the
Kremlin. For defenders of the liberal order, this commonality turns the populists into a Moscow-inspired fifth
column. The old division between capitalist democracy and communism after the Cold War has given way to a new binary,
between liberal democracy and authoritarianism. The fundamental divide shifts on to new ground, which can variously
be seen as one between patriotism and cosmopolitanism, which is a variant of the tension between revived nationalist
movements opposed to the erosion of state efficacy by neoliberalism within the framework of globalisation. Many share
concerns about the influx of refugees and fear even greater flows of migrants in the future, which in their view will
erode the civic and cultural bonds of Western societies. National populists challenge cosmopolitan liberalism
(Eatwell and Goodwin
2018
)
and thus align with the cultural conservatism that characterises the neo-revisionist period in Russian foreign policy
(Robinson
2017
).
In this new political spectrum, Russia emerges as an ally of the patriots and the anti-globalisers and is condemned
for funding and variously supporting the anti-liberal insurgency in the West. Whole institutes (such as the Political
Capital Institute in Hungary headed by Péter Krekó and the Henry Jackson Society in London) are devoted to exposing
these links and the various alleged illicit cash flows and networks. There are certainly plenty of lurid tales and
examples of European politicians who have been supported by factions in Russia without being transparent about these
links.
However, the common anti-liberal platform with Moscow is only part of the story. The geopolitical factor is no less
important, with both left and right populists rejecting elements of US dominion in the Atlantic security system, and
question the wisdom of the inexorable drive to the East that inevitably alienates Russia. Here they make common cause
with international relations realists as well as pragmatists like George Kennan, who in 1998 warned of the
deleterious effects on European security of Moscow's inevitable response to NATO enlargement (Friedman
1998
).
Today these groups are in the vanguard in calling for an end to the sanctions regime, which in their view misses the
point -- that Russia's actions in Ukraine and elsewhere after 2014 was a response to the provocative actions of the
Atlantic power system in the first place. In other words, anti-liberalism is only one dimension of the putative
alliance between national populism in Europe and Moscow. Geopolitical revisionism is perhaps the most important one,
and thus national populist movements incur the wrath of the national security establishments. In the UK this led to
the creation of the Integrity Initiative and its various European and American affiliates, sponsored by the shadowy
so-called Institute of Statecraft, funded by the British state.
There is a third dimension -- in addition to geopolitical revisionism and anti-cosmopolitanism -- in the putative alignment
of national populism with Moscow, and that is the question of pluralism. Post-Cold War liberalism entered a
paradoxical turn that in the end forswore the fundamental principles on which it is based -- tolerance and pluralism
(Horsfield
2017
).
In a situation where the liberal idea faced no serious domestic or geopolitical opposition, it became radicalised and
thus eroded its own values. The US-led liberal international order, as suggested above, posed as synonymous with
order itself. There could be no legitimate outside to its own expansive ambitions. The counterpart to universalism is
monism, which eroded the coherence of liberalism in domestic and foreign policy (Sakwa
2017b
,
2018b
).
This helps explain why relations with the EU deteriorated so drastically after 2004.
The influx of East European
countries accentuated monism by embracing the security guarantees offered by American dominion. Extreme partisans of
this view have little time for the hegemonic normative agenda and view the EU as just part of the Atlantic alliance
system, and not necessarily the most important one. They radically repudiate Gorbachevian ideas about a common
European home or a greater Europe from Lisbon to Vladivostok and condemn those who suggest rapprochement with Moscow
as 'Trojan horses' (Orenstein and Keleman
2017
),
the name of a series of Atlantic Council reports exposing Russian contacts in the West. For them, security guarantees
from Washington are the priority. Thus, pan-continental ideas gave way to an intensified Atlanticism, and dominion
prevailed over hegemony. One manifestation of this was the Polish-inspired Eastern Partnership, which in the end
became an instrument for the expansion of the EU's geopolitical influence in its neighbourhood, provoking the Ukraine
crisis in 2014 (Mearsheimer
2014
).
The European Neighbourhood Policy thereafter became more differentiated and thus accepted the pluralism that it had
earlier been in danger of repudiating.
In short, geopolitical revisionist forces are at play in Europe and the USA, and Russian neo-revisionism makes common
cause with them to the degree that they offer more pluralist perspectives on international politics and challenge the
monist dominion of the Atlantic power system, but the degree to which Moscow supports let alone sponsors this
challenge to the post-Cold War order is questionable. This links to a second form of Russian subversion, namely
collusion with anti-establishment figures. The most spectacular case of this is the charge that Moscow colluded with
Trump to steal the 2016 presidential election.
After nearly two years of work, in March 2019 the Robert Mueller
Special Counsel Report into Russiagate boldly asserted that 'The Russian government interfered in the 2016 election
in sweeping and systematic fashion' (Mueller
2019
,
Vol. 1, p. 1). However, it then rather lamely conceded that 'the investigation did not establish that members of the
Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities'
(Mueller
2019
,
Vol. 1, pp. 5 and 173). Once again reinforcing the geopolitical concerns underlying charges of Russian subversion,
the instigators of Russiagate became the heart of the 'resistance' to the president. Alongside credible concerns
about his impact on American democratic institutions, they also opposed the rapprochement with Russia that Trump had
proclaimed as one of his campaign goals.
In his major foreign policy speech delivered at the Mayflower Hotel in
Washington on 27 April 2016, Trump argued that 'I believe an easing of tensions and improved relations with
Russia -- from a position of strength -- is possible. Common sense says this cycle of hostility must end. Some say the
Russians won't be reasonable. I intend to find out'. Trump promised that America would get 'out of the
nation-building business and instead [focus] on creating stability in the world' (Transcript
2016
).
This represented a radical rethinking of foreign policy priorities, and although some of the themes had sounded
before, together they challenged the foundations of the post-Cold War international order. They also suited Russia,
since the expansive Atlantic system had increasingly become a matter of concern in the Kremlin. This geopolitical
coincidence of interests intersected with domestic US political conflicts to create Russiagate, which stymied
putative moves towards a new détente.
The third subversive strategy imputed to Russia is cyber-warfare in various forms. There are plenty of cases of
Russian hacking, including the attack on the German parliament in 2015, which the German chancellor Angela Merkel
condemned as 'outrageous', noting that it impeded her attempts 'to have a better relationship with Russia' (Bennhold
2020
).
She had been equally outraged when she discovered that her office had been bugged by the NSA. In France, 2 days
before the second-round presidential vote on 7 May 2017 20,000 campaign emails from the Emmanuel Macron campaign were
uploaded to Pastebin, a file-sharing site, and then posted on 4chan, an anonymous message board. The Macron team
denounced Russia for a 'high level attack', but even the Atlantic Council reported that the relevant French security
agency 'declared that no conclusive evidence pointed to Russian groups', and 'that the simplicity of the attacks
pointed toward an actor with lower capabilities' (Galante and Ee
2018
,
p. 12). The regulation of hostile cyber activity is crucial, especially when accurate attribution is so difficult and
'false flag' attacks so easy.
This applies to the key Russiagate charge that Russian military intelligence (the GRU) 'hacked' into the server of
the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Democratic Campaign Congressional Committee (DCCC) and released
embarrassing materials to WikiLeaks, the web-based investigative site founded by Julian Assange in 2006. The
publication of the emails was allegedly coordinated in some way with the Trump team. The material revealed that the
DNC opposed the campaign of the independent left-leaning senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders, to ensure Clinton's
nomination. The hackers also gained access to the emails of Clinton's campaign director, John Podesta, following a
successful spearphishing email sent on 19 March 2016. The 50,000 Podesta emails exposed Clinton's ties with Wall
Street bankers, high speaking fees and apparent hypocrisy in condemning privilege while enjoying its benefits. The
Russian hackers undoubtedly sought to mine political intelligence, but whether they intended specifically to help
Trump is more questionable. The Mueller report detailed the specific GRU cyber-warfare units which hacked the Clinton
campaign and the DNC and then released the emails through Russian-sponsored cut-outs, Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks, as
well as WikiLeaks. These were 'designed and timed to interfere with the 2016 US presidential election and undermine
the Clinton Campaign' (Mueller
2019
,
Vol. 1, p. 36).
Strikingly, the FBI or Mueller never conducted forensic examinations of their own and instead relied on CrowdStrike,
a private contractor hired by the Democrats to examine their servers. The material was then published, according to
the report, through DCLeaks and Guccifer 2.0, 'fictitious online personas' created by the GRU, and later through
WikiLeaks. Mueller argues that Guccifer 2.0 was the source of the emails and that he was a persona managed by Russian
operators (Mueller
2019
,
Vol. 1, p. 47). Mueller alleges that Assange worked for or conspired with Russian agencies, but Assange states
unequivocally that the Russian government was not the source of the emails, and (surprisingly), he was never
questioned by Mueller. The Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) group argues that the DNC emails were
physically downloaded and then transferred (by unknown persons) to WikiLeaks rather than being extruded via an
electronic download (Binney and McGovern
2017
).
In Congressional testimony in December 2017 CrowdStrike president Shawn Henry (
2017
)
admitted that he could not confirm that material had actually been exfiltrated from the DNC servers.
The fourth major subversive strategy is disinformation as well as media manipulation. The Internet Research Agency
(IRA) based in St Petersburg deployed sock puppet accounts (trolls) and their automated versions (bots) to influence
public debate by sharing accounts and voicing divisive opinions. These allegedly shaped voter preferences and
depressed turnout among some key constituencies, above all people of colour, in the 2016 US election. The US
Intelligence Community Assessment (
2017
,
p. 1) on 6 January 2017 accused Russia of trying to undermine American democracy and charged with 'high confidence'
that Putin personally ordered 'an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election, the consistent
goals of which were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her
electability and potential presidency'. The ICA was issued in the name of 17 intelligence agencies, although later it
became clear that it had been prepared by a 'hand-picked' group selected by Office of the DNI head, James Clapper
(Full Transcript
2017
).
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (
2020
,
Vol. 4, p. 6) in April 2020 issued its fourth report in its Russia investigation arguing that 'the ICA presents a
coherent and well-constructed basis for the case of unprecedented Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential
election', a view that is at odds with most commentary on what is usually considered a slipshod and poorly sourced
document (for a summary of critiques, see McCarthy
2019
,
2020; Gessen
2017
).
The coronavirus pandemic in 2020 prompted a new wave of criticism of Russia's disinformation efforts. The Strategic
Communications and Analysis division of the European External Action Service, colloquially known as EUvsDisinfo,
identified a 'trilateral convergence of disinformation narratives' being promoted by China, Iran and Russia (Jozwiak
2020
).
The work of EUvsDisinfo work was examined by the Reframing Russia group at the University of Manchester (Hutchings
and Tolz
2020
).
They examined the specific stories that had been identified as disinformation, and took a broader look at reportage
of the pandemic on Russian television, in particular on Channel 1. They found that 'there was little sign here of the
coordinated pro-Kremlin "conspiracy theory propaganda" flagged by EUvsDisinfo'. They went further to note that its
misrepresentation of Russian Covid-19 coverage was 'troubling' in two respects. First, through 'omission', with
sentences taken out of context and 'rephrased in the form of summaries and headlines which make them sound
particularly outrageous'. The second way is through 'blatant distortion'. For example, EUvsDisinfo claimed that
Sputnik Latvia stated that 'Covid-19 had been designed specifically to kill elderly people', whereas in fact the
article had ridiculed such conspiracy theories and highlighted 'their idiocy'. Reframing Russia questioned
EUvsDisinfo's methodology, assuming that 'random websites without any traceable links to Russian state structures'
were analogous to state-funded media agencies, and that all were part of a coordinated Kremlin-run campaign. It even
included 'conspirological, far-right websites which are actually critical of Putin'. They conclude that
'EUvsDisinfo's headlines and summaries border on disinformation'. Examination of the source material 'cited by
EUvsDisinfo demonstrates that the Russian state is, in fact, not targeting Western countries with an organised
campaign around the current public health crisis'. They ask how a situation was created in which 'an EU-funded body
set up to fight disinformation ends up producing it'. Reframing Russia advances two hypotheses to explain how things
could be got so wrong. The first is 'a profound misunderstanding of how the media in neo-authoritarian systems such
as Russia's work', with not everything managed by the Kremlin. Second, 'The outsourcing of services by state
institutions to third parties without a proper assessment of their qualifications to do the required work', In the
case of EUvsDisinfo, research is outsourced to some 400 volunteers, who are 'operating in a post-Soviet space
saturated by anti-Russian attitudes'.
It is in this context that a burgeoning literature examines possible responses. An article in
Foreign
Policy
in July 2019 argued that 'Moscow now acts regularly against US interests with impunity'. The question, in
the view of the author, was how to rebuild deterrence -- 'how to get Putin to start fearing the United States again'.
The problem was defined in broad terms: 'how to convince Putin that he can't afford to keep trying to disrupt the
global order and undermine the United States, the West, and democracy itself'. The charge list was a long one:
Over the
last decade, Putin has provoked Washington again and again: by invading Georgia, annexing Crimea, attacking
Ukraine, assassinating opponents at home and abroad, and interfering in elections throughout the West. In each
case the underwhelming US response helped convince Putin that he could get away with more such behaviour.
To 'get Putin to start respecting the United States again' such measures as toughening sanctions, strengthening
military alliances, and conducting more assertive diplomacy were recommended (Geltser
2019
).
Simpson and Fritsch (
2019
),
former
Wall Street Journal
writers who founded Fusion GPS, the agency that in 2016
hired Christopher Steele to prepare the infamous dossier on Trump's links with Russia, insisted that Britain needed
its own Mueller report to investigate Russia's role in the Brexit vote. They argued that such an enquiry was
'essential to halt Russia's attack on Britain's democracy' (Simpson and Fritsch
2019
).
The Kremlin Watch Program (
2019
)
of the Prague-based European Values Center for Security Policy suggested 20 measures to counter 'hostile Russian
interference'.
A Pentagon assessment in June 2019 argued that the USA was ill-equipped to counter 'the increasingly brazen political
warfare Russia is waging to undermine democracies' (Bender
2019
).
A 150-page study prepared for the Pentagon's Joint Chiefs of Staff argued that the USA was still underestimating the
scope of Russia's aggression, including the use of propaganda and disinformation to sway public opinion in Europe and
across the globe. The study also warned against the growing alignment of Russia and China, which were opposed to
America's system of international alliances and shared a proclivity for 'authoritarian stability'. The authors argued
that domestic disarray impeded the USA's ability to respond (Department of Defense
2019
).
Natalia Arno, the head of the Free Russia Foundation, agreed with the report's finding and argued that 'Russia is
attacking Western institutions in ways more shrewd and strategically discreet than many realize' (Bender
2019
).
The Pentagon report recommended that the State Department should take the lead in devising more aggressive 'influence
operations', including sowing division between Russia and China. The study analysed what it called 'gray zone'
activities, the attempt by Putin's regime to undermine democratic nations, in particular those on Russia's periphery,
through 'hybrid' measures, falling short of direct military action. However, although warning of Moscow's alignment
with Beijing, the report recommended cooperation with Russia in key areas such as strategic nuclear weapons. One of
the authors, John Arquilla of the Naval Postgraduate School, argued that Ronald Reagan's offer in the 1980s to share
research on ballistic missile defence (BMD) should be revisited. The report suggested that while elites and the
people broadly supported Putin's foreign policy and the striving for great power status, this was liable to weaken
when faced by socio-economic problems.
Inevitably, forces seeking to break the liberal hegemony at home will make common cause with an external power that
is also interested in breaking that expansive hegemony. Russia looks for friends wherever it can find them, and seeks
a way out of the impasse of the post-Cold War security order. However, it is important to stress the limits to that
alignment. If Russia were a genuinely revisionist power, then it would make sense to ally with any force destructive
of the old order; but as argued above, Russia is a neo-revisionist power -- concerned with changing the monist practices
of post-Cold War liberalism, but not with changing the international system in its entirety. This means that Russia
is quite happy to work within existing structures as long as monism can be kept in check. The struggle against 'fake
news' and 'Russian disinformation' threatens the pluralism at the heart of traditional liberalism. That is why the
investigation into the alleged collusion between the Trump camp and Russia in the 2016 presidential election was more
damaging than the putative original offence. When policy differences and divergences in value preferences are
delegitimated and couched in binary Cold War terms, then the Atlantic power system is in danger of becoming
dangerously hermetic. Immunity to new ideas, even if they come from a traditional adversary, weakens resistance to
domestic degradation.
Russia: challenger or insurrectionary?
We are now in a position to assess whether Putin really is out to subvert the West, as suggested by the US
intelligence community, much recent commentary and numerous strategic and doctrinal statements. The 'black legend'
charge underlies the Russiagate allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 US and other elections. Such
accusations are based on the view that a fundamental gulf has opened between the worldviews of the Russian leadership
and the Western community. There are some grounds to argue that this is the case, although this needs to be placed
into the broader framework of the evolution of Russian foreign policy since the end of the communist era and into the
theoretical context of how Russia sees the international system, as described earlier. Above all, as the historic
West moved into an era of expansive 'hegemonism', Russia (and China) were inevitably categorised as hostile nations.
They had the motive and heft to fight back. Lavrov (
2019
)
condemned the way that the 'rules-based order' substituted for international law, while the expanded institutions of
dominion encircled both countries. Challengers to the radicalised liberal world order become subversive by
definition.
Russia is a challenger power but it is not insurrectionary. In other words, it is far from the Soviet position of
seeking to advance the ideology of revolutionary socialism, of which 'active measures' were one of the most specific
manifestations. Further, Russia is not a revisionist power out to destroy the foundations of the international system
as it has taken shape since 1945, but it is neo-revisionist, challenging the practices of the US-led Atlantic order
within that system. As a conservative status quo Russia finds itself challenged by the radicalisation of the historic
West that it had hoped to transform at the end of the Cold War. Concurrently, Russia's identity as a great power
means that it resists the dominion element. It could live with the more modest liberal hegemony of the Cold War years
(and in fact, one of the layers of Russia's foreign policy identity still wants to join it), but the combination of
radicalised hegemonic universalism and the expansive logic of the power system rendered dominion unacceptable. Russia
condemns the Atlantic system for its revolutionary radicalism, manifested in what is perceives to be Western
revisionism. Russia thus finds itself divided from the historic West on a range of policy issues, but not ultimately
by commitment to the post-1945 international system. This is why Moscow welcomed Trump's post-Atlanticist
declarations, since he offered an alternative to the neo-conservative militarism and democratic interventionism of
the post-Cold War era. Shackled by Russiagate, Trump was not able to deliver much and in fact the sanctions regime
and other forms of neo-containment were intensified. In this context, six observations can help us examine the
problem of greater Russia and subversion.
First, it is misleading to see direct continuity between the USSR and Russia. Russia no longer embodies an
alternative ideology and is in fact a status quo power in both ideational and territorial terms. Russia is also
comparatively far less powerful. If at its peak in the early 1970s Soviet GDP reached 58 per cent that of the USA,
today Russia's at most is ten per cent of America's. Russia's defence spending in 2019 was the fourth largest in the
world, but at $65 billion this is less than a tenth of the USA at $732 billion (38 per cent of total global military
spending) and less than a quarter of China's $261 billion (SIPRI
2020
).
Cold War patterns have been restored, but the dynamics of this confrontation are very different even though some of
the procedural rituals of mutual excoriation have returned (Monaghan
2015
).
However, Russia does claim to represent an alternative to the historical West in three ways: as the defender of
conservative sovereign internationalism, where states interact on the basis of interests, although norms are far from
repudiated; as a socially conservative civilisation state with societal dynamics of its own (Coker
2019
;
Tsygankov
2016
);
and as a European power with a stake in creating some pan-continental framework, while at the same time advocating
the establishment of some sort of greater Eurasian unity.
All three open up lines of fracture that Russia seeks to exploit as a challenger but not as an insurrectionary power.
In particular, at the civilisational level the identification of the West with the Atlantic system is challenged.
This is a process that is advancing in any case within the Atlantic system, with the EU Global Strategy (
2016
)
talking of 'strategic autonomy'. The election of Trump later that year prompted Merkel (
2018
),
to argue that Europe could no longer rely on the USA to protect it. The French president Emmanuel Macron (
2019
)
argued that the corollary of the growing Atlantic divide was rapprochement with Russia. Critics argue that Russia
exploits this division and seeks to widen it, and in structural terms they are right. Any breach in the monist wall
will be welcomed by any leader in Moscow. It is along this line that charges of Russian subversion lie.
Second, unlike the former Soviet Union where policy was coordinated by the Central Committee and Politburo, today
Russia is far from monolithic. The layered phases mean that elements of at least four types of Russian engagement
with the West coexist and operate at the same time, although with different intensity. As noted, these range from
Atlanticist engagement, competitive coexistence, new realism to neo-revisionism. Commentary on contemporary Russia
assumes that it behaves like a unitary actor, with Putin serving as the unique demi-urge with nothing better to do
than ceaselessly monitor and manipulate global malign activities. This is indeed a manifestation of Western
'narcissism', and as Paul Robinson (
2020
)
asks 'where does all this nonsense about Putin wanting to destroy democracy come from? It certainly doesn't come from
anything he's ever said'. Russia is a vast and complex country with a vigorous public sphere with plenty of
relatively autonomous interests and actors. Institutionalised political pluralism is constrained, but not all roads
lead to the Kremlin (Sakwa
2020
).
For example, the national populist Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the head of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, has
hosted six conferences of far-right politicians since 1992, many attracted by the anti-Western language deployed by
much of the Russian elite. They provide an alternative narrative that often coincides with the Kremlin's positions,
but this does mean that there is an unbreakable alliance between the two (Moldovanov
2019
).
As the Reframing Russia team argue, not every outlandish comment in Russia's public sphere can be attributed to the
Kremlin's propaganda and disinformation department. Equally, we may add, not every oligarch is 'Putin's crony', bent
on advancing the Kremlin's malign agenda. This attribution and alignment fallacy is why, among other reasons,
sanctions against alleged regime-associated individuals will not achieve the desired effect of changing Russian
policy, since they are based on a flawed understanding of how Russia works, as well as the category error noted above
about the structural sources of Russian foreign policy.
Third, Russian behaviour is located in the matrix of the changing dynamics of the Atlantic power system, the liberal
international order and global power shifts (Karaganov (ed.)
2020
).
Russia is certainly alienated from a particular system that claims to be universal, as well as concerned about the
advance of a power system to its borders. The liberal international order may well have been 'doomed to fail' because
the key policies on which it is based are deeply flawed (Mearsheimer
2019
).
Spreading liberal democracy around the globe was benign in intent but disastrous in consequence (Walt
2019
).
The illusions generated by exaggerated claims of exceptionalism meant that the US 'squandered' Cold War victory
(Bacevich
2020
).
Russia's reaction is just one to an order whose response to the end of the Cold War was to exaggerate the dominion
factor and thus undermined its normative hegemony.
Fourth, Russia has returned as a power critical not only of the Atlantic hegemony but also of the values on which it
is based. At the St Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) in June 2019 Putin talked of the failure of the
'Euro-Atlantic' economic model and argued that 'the existing model of economic relations is still in crisis and this
crisis is of a comprehensive nature' (Putin
2019b
).
Here and on other occasions he condemned the Atlantic powers' use of sanctions as a form of economic warfare. On the
eve of SPIEF on 6 June, Putin and China's leader, Xi Jinping, announced the upgrade of their relationship to a
'Comprehensive Partnership of Coordination for a New Era', accompanied by a joint statement on global strategic
stability (Xinhua
2019
).
There is a tension between the expansive liberal hegemony and countries and social movements who question the
identification of liberalism with order itself. Liberalism ultimately generates antinomies, which are not mere
correctible aberrations but systemic flaws of the liberal paradigm itself. These above all concern the question of
taming the power of capital and dealing with inequality and citizen marginalisation. Moscow does not identify itself
with these radical critiques, and its criticisms ultimately have a superficial and reversible character. Russia does
not stand outside the contradictions of contemporary liberalism, having entered its own liberal era at the end of the
Cold War in 1989. That layer in its identity is far from nugatory. Russia's experience of liberalism is distinctive,
characterising the 1990s as a time of liberal excess, yet the Putin system is permeated with neoliberal ideas and
even liberal aspirations. His critics in Russia from the left and right condemn the antinomies of the system, whereas
Putin simply points out the power and cultural contradictions of post-Cold War liberalism.
Fifth, the struggle for geopolitical pluralism after the neo-revisionist turn in 2012 is accompanied by a programme
of cultural conservatism, opening the door to alignment with Europe's national populists. In condemning what he took
to be the rampant social liberalism, accompanied by Merkel's 'welcome culture' in 2015 vis-ŕ-vis the influx of
refugees, Putin (
2019a
)
sought to bolster support among social conservatives in Europe. As political and social liberals united against
Putinite Russia, it appeared that the impasse could only be broken by bolstering conservative (if not outright
reactionary) movements in Europe. A European change of heart would allow a rapprochement without Russia having to
change its domestic or foreign policies: 'It would be 1989 in reverse. This time it would not be Russia but Europe to
go through a traumatic conversion to foreign ideas' (Maçăes
2019
).
Russia would be rescued from isolation and policy-makers could once again turn to the creation of a 'greater Europe',
reducing Russia's dependence on China and strengthening its position vis-ŕ-vis the USA. This is the foundational
argument about Russia being out to subvert the West, and there is some truth in it -- but not in the linear way it is
usually interpreted. The alignment is situational and the geopolitics takes precedence over ideological alignment.
Sixth, as the Russiagate affair demonstrates, Russia acts as the scapegoat for problems generated by domestic
contradictions. In that case, Russian 'meddling' helped explain how the most improbable of candidates was able to win
against an experienced politician, Hillary Clinton, with a long record of public service, to pull off 'the greatest
political upset in American history' (Green
2017
,
p. 236). This impeded the Democratic Party from coming to terms with its own shortcomings, and the country from
addressing its ills. This perhaps is the greatest subversive effect achieved by Russia. As far as we know, this was
not achieved deliberately, although there is the view that Russia fed information 'to have the West believe what the
Kremlin wants the West to believe' (McCarthy
2019
,
p. 166). Even more cunningly, perhaps they were feeding misinformation to Steele to provoke a counter-intelligence
investigation that would incapacitate the Trump presidency and set the Democrats off on a wild goose chase that
prevented them from reforming and reconnecting with the real concerns of the American people. If the latter is the
case, then the operation was a brilliant success. The struggle against presumed Russian 'active measures' does more
damage to Western political institutions and the legitimacy of Western normative hegemony than the putative
subversive activity itself. The security services and spy agencies of course continue to battle it out behind the
scenes, but McCarthyism is as destructive today as it was in the 1950s.
Conclusion
Russia has returned as an international conservative power, but it is not a revisionist one, and even less is it out
to subvert the West. Russia certainly looks for allies where it can find them, especially if they advocate the
lifting of sanctions. When Macron (
2019
)
argued that it was time to bring Russia out of the cold, arguing that 'We cannot rebuild Europe without rebuilding a
connection with Russia', his comments were welcomed in Moscow, although tempered by a justifiable scepticism.
The
Putin elite had earlier welcomed Trump's election, but in practice relations deteriorated further. The foreign policy
establishment is deeply sceptical that the EU will be able to act with 'strategic autonomy'. Above all, Russo-Western
relations have entered into a statecraft 'security dilemma':
Currently, we are again faced with a situation in which mutual intentions are assessed by Washington and Moscow
as subversive, while each side considers the statecraft employed by the other side as effective enough to
achieve its malign goals. At the same time, each side is more sceptical about its own statecraft and appears
(or pretends) to be scrambling to catch up (Troitskiy
2019
).
In the nineteenth century, Russia became the 'gendarme' of Europe, and while Putin repudiates the country assuming
such a role again, Russia has undoubtedly returned as an international conservative power. Maintenance of a
specifically historically determined definition of the status quo is the essence of its neo-revisionism: a defence of
traditional ideas of state sovereignty and of an internationalism structured by commitment to the structures of the
international system as it took shape after 1945. Russia resents its perceived exclusion from the institutions of
Atlantic dominion (above all NATO); but is not out to destroy the international system in which this competition is
waged. Thus, Anton Shekhovtsov (
2017
)
is mistaken to argue that Russia's links to right-wing national populist movements are rooted in philosophical
anti-Westernism and an instinct to subvert the liberal democratic consensus in the West. In fact, the alignment is
situational and contingent on the impasse in Russo-Western relations and thus is susceptible to modification if the
situation changes. Moscow's readiness to embrace Trump in 2016 when he repeatedly argued that it made sense to 'get
on' with Russia indicates that Western overtures for improved relations would find the Kremlin ready to reciprocate.
In 2017 the Kremlin sent Washington various ideas on how to move out of the impasse in US-Russian relations, but
given the 'Russiagate' allegations, the White House was in no position to respond. The same applies when in 2019
Russia was invited to resume full voting rights in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), which
the Kremlin embraced even though powerful domestic neo-traditionalist and Eurasianist voices counselled against.
Russia is not out to subvert the West but seeks to change it. For the defenders of monist enlargement, this is just
as bad. Resistance at home and abroad to the post-Cold War Western order has exposed unexpected fragilities and
insecurities, hence the turn to the language of 'resilience' (for example, EU Global Strategy
2016
).
Given its strategy of resistance, Russia in turn becomes the object against which resilience is tested, becoming one
of Federica Mogherini's 'five principles' (
2016
),
creating yet another barrier to normal diplomatic relations. In fact, the structural model outlined in this paper
suggests that Russia does not seek to create a greater Russia through subversion let alone physical enlargement,
although all leaders since the end of the Cold have tried to make the country a great power. This raises the
fundamental and still unresolved question: is Russia still interested in joining a transformed West? Or has it
realised that the only way to retain great power status and sovereign decision-making is to remain outside the West?
Joining the transformed West meant the attempt to create a 'greater Europe', what Gorbachev had earlier termed the
common European home. For defenders of the existing West, this is perceived as threatening its existing values, norms
and freedoms, and perhaps more importantly, also the existing hierarchy of international power; but for Russia, it is
a way out of the perceived geopolitical impasse and offers a common developmental strategy.
The West is faced by a choice 'between containment and engagement on mutually agreed terms' (Trenin
2016
,
p. 110). Incompatible understanding of the political character of the historical epoch provokes an intense barrage of
propaganda from all sides, with mutual allegations of political subversion and interference. The interaction of
hegemony and dominion on the one side and multiple layers of identity on the other provides fertile ground for
incomprehension and the attribution of sinister motives, provoking the statecraft 'security dilemma' identified
above. Russia maintains a neo-revisionist critique, but this does not mean repudiating improved relations with a
post-dominion West. The country increasingly pivoted to the East and strengthened its alignment with China, but this
does not mean that Russia seeks an irrevocable break with the West (Monaghan
2019
).
This is why it seeks improved relations with the EU and the USA if a satisfactory formula for restored contact can be
found. Moscow's support for insurgent populist movements in Europe and disruptive forces in America will always be
tempered by larger strategic concerns and are certainly not unequivocal. The greater Russia envisaged by the Kremlin
elite is one whose sovereignty is defended and whose great power status is recognised, but it is not one that seeks
more territory or to subvert the West and sow discord. The West can be trusted to do that without Russia's help. The
West's response to Russia's neo-revisionism has been neo-containment and counter-subversion strategies, but if the
analysis proposed in this article has any validity, then new forms of engagement may be a more productive course.
References
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Clunan, A.L. 2009.
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Horvath, R. 2011. Putin's "Preventive Counter-Revolution": Post-Soviet Authoritarianism and the Spectre of
Velvet Revolution.
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School of Politics and International Relations, Rutherford College, University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent, CT2 7NX,
UK
Richard Sakwa
Corresponding author
Correspondence to
Richard
Sakwa
.
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NoisyBaboon dontdenythe 7 minutes ago Both China and Russia can even bulldoze the US
embassies in their countries. But they will not do this because doing so is actually
NONSENSICAL. Let the foools enjoy themselves.
Craig
Murray lambasts a Russophobic media that celebrates a supposed cyber attack on UK vaccine research, ignores collapse
of key evidence of a "hack" and dabbles in dubious memorabilia.
The Guardian's
headquarters
in London.
(Bryantbob,
CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons)
Andrew Marr, center, in 2014.
(
Financial
Times
, Flickr)
A whole slew of these were rehearsed by Andrew Marr on his flagship BBC1 morning show. The latest is the accusation
that Russia is responsible for a cyber attack on Covid-19 vaccination research. This is another totally evidence-free
accusation. But it misses the point anyway.
The alleged cyber attack, if it happened, was a hack not an attack -- the allegation is that there was an effort to
obtain the results of research, not to disrupt research. It is appalling that the U.K. is trying to keep its research
results secret rather than share them freely with the world scientific community.
As I have
reported
before
, the U.K. and the USA have been preventing the WHO from implementing a common research and common vaccine
solution for Covid-19, insisting instead on a profit driven approach to benefit the big pharmaceutical companies (and
disadvantage the global poor).
What makes the accusation that Russia tried to hack the research even more dubious is the fact that Russia had
just
bought
the very research specified. You don't steal things you already own.
Evidence of CIA Hacks
If anybody had indeed hacked the research, we all know it is impossible to trace with certainty the whereabouts of
hackers. My VPNs [virtual private networks] are habitually set to India, Australia or South Africa depending on where
I am trying to watch the cricket, dodging broadcasting restrictions.
More pertinently,
WikiLeaks'
Vault
7 release of CIA material showed the
specific
programs
for the CIA in how to leave clues to make a leak look like it came from Russia. This irrefutable
evidence that the CIA do computer hacks with apparent Russian "fingerprints" deliberately left, like little bits of
Cyrillic script, is an absolutely classic example of a fact that everybody working in the mainstream media knows to
be true, but which they all contrive never to mention.
Thus when last week's "Russian hacking" story was briefed by the security services -- that former Labour Party Leader
Jeremy Corbyn deployed secret documents on U.K./U.S. trade talks which had been posted on Reddit, after being stolen
by an evil Russian who left his name of Grigor in his Reddit handle -- there was no questioning in the media of this
narrative. Instead, we had another round of McCarthyite witch-hunt aimed at the rather tired looking Corbyn.
Personally, if the Russians had been responsible for revealing that the Tories are prepared to open up the NHS
"market" to big American companies, including ending or raising caps on pharmaceutical prices, I should be very
grateful to the Russians for telling us. Just as the world would owe the Russians a favor if it were indeed them who
leaked evidence of just how systematically the DNC rigged the 2016 primaries against Bernie Sanders.
But as it happens, it was not the Russians. The latter case was a leak by a disgusted insider, and I very much
suspect the NHS U.S. trade deal link was also from a disgusted insider.
When governments do appalling things, very often somebody manages to blow the whistle.
Crowdstrike's Quiet Admission
Crowdstrike's Shawn Henry presenting at the International Security Forum in Vancouver, 2009.
(Hubert K, Flickr)
If you can delay even the most startling truth for several years, it loses much of its political bite. If you can
announce it during a health crisis, it loses still more. The world therefore did not shudder to a halt when the CEO
of Crowdstrike admitted there had never been any evidence of a Russian hack of the DNC servers.
You will recall the near incredible fact that, even through the Mueller investigation, the FBI never inspected the
DNC servers themselves but simply relied on a technical report from Crowdstrike, the Hillary Clinton-related IT
security consultant for the DNC.
It is now known for sure that Crowdstrike had been peddling fake news for Hillary. In fact, Crowdstrike had no record
of any internet hack at all. There was no evidence of the email material being exported over the internet. What they
claimed did exist was evidence that the files had been organized preparatory to export.
Remember the entire "Russian hacking" story was based ONLY on Crowdstrike's say so. There is literally no other
evidence of Russian involvement in the DNC emails, which is unsurprising as I have been telling you for four years
from my own direct sources that Russia was not involved. Yet finally declassified congressional testimony revealed
that Shawn Henry stated on oath that "we did not have concrete evidence" and "There's circumstantial evidence , but
no evidence they were actually exfiltrated."
This testimony fits with what I was told by Bill Binney, a former technical director of the National Security Agency
(NSA), who told me that it was impossible that any large amount of data should be moved across the internet from the
USA, without the NSA both seeing it happen in real time and recording it. If there really had been a Russian hack,
the NSA would have been able to give the time of it to a millisecond.
That the NSA did not have that information was proof the transfer had never happened, according to Binney. What had
happened, Binney deduced, was that the files had been downloaded locally, probably to a thumb drive.
Bill Binney.
(Miquel
Taverna / CCCB via Flickr)
So arguably the biggest news story of the past four years -- the claim that Putin effectively interfered to have
Donald Trump elected U.S. president -- turns out indeed to be utterly baseless. Has the mainstream media, acting on
security service behest, done anything to row back from the false impression it created? No it has doubled down.
Anti-Russia Theme
The "Russian hacking" theme keeps being brought back related to whatever is the big story of the day.
Then we have those continual security service briefings. Two weeks ago we had unnamed security service sources
telling
The New York Times
that
Russia had offered the Taliban
a
bounty
for killing American soldiers. This information had allegedly come from interrogation of captured Taliban
in Afghanistan, which would almost certainly mean it was obtained under torture.
It is a wildly improbable tale. The Afghans have never needed that kind of incentivization to kill foreign invaders
on their soil. It is also a fascinating throwback of an accusation – the British did indeed offer Afghans money for,
quite literally, the heads of Afghan resistance leaders during the first Afghan War in 1841, as I detail in my
book "Sikunder Burnes."
Taliban in Herat, Afghanistan, 2001.
(Wikipedia)
You do not have to look back that far to realize the gross hypocrisy of the accusation. In the 1980s the West was
quite openly paying, arming and training the Taliban -- including Osama bin Laden – to kill Russian and other Soviet
conscripts in their thousands. That is just one example of the hypocrisy.
The U.S. and U.K. security services both cultivate and bribe senior political and other figures abroad in order to
influence policy all of the time. We work to manipulate the result of elections -- I have done it personally in my
former role as a U.K. diplomat. A great deal of the behavior over which Western governments and media are creating
this new McCarthyite anti-Russian witch hunt, is standard diplomatic practice.
My own view is that there are malign Russian forces attempting to act on government in the U.K. and the USA, but they
are not nearly as powerful as the malign British and American forces acting on their own governments.
The truth is that the world is under the increasing control of a global elite of billionaires, to whom nationality is
irrelevant and national governments are tools to be manipulated. Russia is not attempting to buy corrupt political
influence on behalf of the Russian people, who are decent folk every bit as exploited by the ultra-wealthy as you or
I. Russian billionaires are, just like billionaires everywhere, attempting to game global political, commercial and
social structures in their personal interest.
The other extreme point of hypocrisy lies in human rights. So many Western media commentators are suddenly interested
in China and the Uighurs or in restrictions on the LBGT community in Russia, yet turn a completely blind eye to the
abuse committed by Western "allies" such as Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.
As somebody who was campaigning about the human rights of both the Uighurs and of gay people in Russia a good decade
before it became fashionable, I am disgusted by how the term "human rights" has become weaponized for deployment only
against those countries designated as enemy by the Western elite.
Finally, do not forget that there is a massive armaments industry and a massive security industry all dependent on
having an "enemy." Powerful people make money from this Russophobia. Expect much more of it. There is money in a Cold
War.
Craig
Murray is an author, broadcaster and human rights activist. He was British ambassador to Uzbekistan from August 2002
to October 2004 and rector of the University of Dundee from 2007 to 2010.
On the core subject
here: By necessity, a pandemic requires a cooperative international response. Only one country has
refused to do so: The US. In their supreme arrogance, our ruling class lost track the fact that the US
needs the rest of the world, not the other way way around.
Zalamander
,
July 22, 2020 at 19:12
One by one the
so-called Russiagate "evidence" have collapsed. The fake Steele Dossier, "Russian spy" Joseph Mifsud who
is actually a self-admitted member of the Clinton Foundation, Roger Stone's non-existant Wikileaks
contacts, Russian Afgan bounties, etc. But the neoliberal mainstream media still presents these as
"facts" with no retractions. This is not journalism, its disinformation designed to distract the American
public from the failures of capitalism.
Peter Janney
July 22, 2020 at 06:55
Craig Murray succinctly (and very beautifully) gives us a REAL glimpse of what great journalism really
looks like.
-- --
Perhaps it is great writing, but is it journalism?
Some people in
National Union of Journalists (a trade union in UK) ponder that question for many months, unable to
decide if Craig should be allowed to join or not. If he is neither a flack nor a hack, who kind of
journalist is he? (More details at Craig Murray's web site).
Journalism is
printing what someone else does not want printed.
Everything else is public relations.
-- George Orwell
rosemerry
,
July 22, 2020 at 16:42
All of the Russophobia
and lies serve the rulers of the USA?UK and their poodles well. The whole year of Skripal mania started
by Theresa May and joined in by Trump, with the media such as the Guardian's scurrilous Luke Harding
providing fantasy "evidence" and the whole story conveniently disappearing, like the Skripals, when other
"news" arrived, has no benefit to seekers of even the minimum of truth.
DH Fabian
,
July 22, 2020 at 19:46
Certainly, and this
is key to understanding the current situation. What we're seeing now is the final stages of the
long-sinking West -- those once-mighty partners of empire, the UK/US. This descent appears to have
begun with the Reagan/Thatcher years, and is now in the final stages. We've seen a rather dramatic
growth of psychosis in the political-media-public discussion over the past 3-4 years, driven by an
irrational obsession with China/Russia. (Russia and China both quietly observe, prepared to respond if
attacked.) There really isn't anything we can do about it, beyond acknowledging it as what it is.
Very good, but needs
to be supplemented by reference to the interview with NIH Director Franaic Collins on last Sunday's Meet
the Press. When host Chuck Todd asked Collins about Russian hacking of US vaccine research Collins smiled
and answered by pointing out that the research wasn't intended to be secret and that it was all to be
published for "transparency." Todd looked disappointed, mumbled, "OK," and changed the subject. No media
have reported this exchange, which is retrievable on the internet.
JOHN CHUCKMAN
,
July 22, 2020 at 10:58
Brilliant, but that's
what one expects of Craig Murray.
Craig Murray
succinctly (and very beautifully) gives us a REAL glimpse of what great journalism really looks like. I
commend his courage for never bending in the face of all the bullshit we have had to tolerate from the
mainstream media. Thank you, thank you dear Craig . . .
geeyp
,
July 22, 2020 at 00:10
Regarding Craig's last
summing up paragraph, all one need do to confirm that is read the previous article of Michael T. Klare.
Roger Thornhill 2 hours ago If I recall correctly, Obama gave the Russians all of 48 hours
to leave their consulate in San Francisco, which had been occupied since the 19th Century. This
was around Christmas time in 2016. So I don't find this particularly surprising. Two days to
have the diplomats, staff, and families completely out of the country.
By a vote of 324-93 ,
the House of Representatives soundly defeated an
amendment to reduce Pentagon authorized spending levels by 10%. The amendment does not
specify what to cut, only that Congress make across-the-board reductions. The amendment to
the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) was offered by Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI). No
Republicans voted for the amendment. Libertarian Justin Amash supported the amendment.
Earlier, the House defeated an amendment to stop the Pentagon's submission of an unfunded
priorities list. Each year, after the Pentagon's budget request is submitted to Congress, the
military services send a separate "wish list," termed "unfunded priorities." This list
includes requests for programs that the military would like Congress to fund, in case they
decide to add more money to the Pentagon's proposed budget.
This article was written while observing the voting on CSPAN. The House Clerk has not
yet posted the roll-call vote. Additional information will be added to the article when
available.
O MG you guys Putin hacked our coronavirus vaccine secrets!
Today mainstream media is reporting what is arguably the single dumbest Russiavape story of
all time, against some very stiff competition.
"Russian hackers are targeting health care organizations in the West in an attempt to steal
coronavirus vaccine research, the U.S. and Britain said," reportsThe New York
Times .
"Hackers backed by the Russian state are trying to steal COVID-19 vaccine and treatment
research from academic and pharmaceutical institutions around the world, Britain's National
Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) said on Thursday,"
Reuters reports .
"Russian news agency RIA cited spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying the Kremlin rejected
London's allegations, which he said were not backed by proper evidence," adds Reuters.
First of all, how many more completely unsubstantiated government agency allegations about
Russian nefariousness are we the public going to accept from the corporate mass media? Since
2016 it's been wall-to-wall narrative about evil things Russia is doing to the empire-like
cluster of allies loosely centralized around the United States, and they all just happen to be
things for which nobody can actually provide hard verifiable evidence.
Ever since the shady
cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike
admitted that it never actually saw hard proof of Russia hacking the DNC servers, the
already shaky and always unsubstantiated narrative that Russian hackers interfered in the
U.S. presidential election in 2016 has been on thinner ice than ever. Yet because the mass
media converged on this narrative and
repeated it as fact over and over they've been able to get the mainstream headline-skimming
public to accept it as an established truth, priming them for an increasingly idiotic litany of
completely unsubstantiated Russia scandals, culminating most recently in the entirely
debunked claim that Russia paid Taliban-linked fighters to kill coalition forces in
Afghanistan.
Secondly, the news story doesn't even claim that these supposed Russian hackers even
succeeded in doing whatever they were supposed to have been doing in this supposed
cyberattack.
"Officials have not commented on whether the attacks were successful but also have not ruled
out that this is the case," Wired reports
.
Thirdly, this is a "vaccine" which does not even exist at this point in time, and the
research which was supposedly hacked may never lead to one. Meanwhile, Sechenov First Moscow
State Medical University
reports that it has "successfully completed tests on volunteers of the world's first
vaccine against coronavirus," in Russia.
Fourthly, and perhaps most importantly, how obnoxious and idiotic is it that coronavirus
vaccine "secrets" are even a thing?? This is a global pandemic which is hurting all of us;
scientists should be free to collaborate with other scientists anywhere in the world to find a
solution to this problem. Nobody has any business keeping "secrets" from the world about this
virus or any possible vaccine or treatment. If they do, anyone in the world is well within
their rights to pry those secrets away from them.
This intensely stupid story comes out at the same time British media are blaring stories about Russian
interference in the 2019 election, which if you actually listen carefully to the claims
being advanced amounts to literally nothing more than the assertion that Russians talked about
already leaked documents pertaining to the U.K.'s healthcare system on the internet.
"Russian actors 'sought to interfere' in last winter's general election by amplifying an
illicitly acquired NHS dossier that was seized upon by Labour during the campaign, the foreign
secretary has said,"
reports The Guardian .
"Amplifying." That's literally all there is to this story. As we learned with the ridiculous U.S. Russiagate narrative , with such
allegations, Russia "amplifying" something can mean anything from RT reporting on a
major news story to a Twitter account from St. Petersburg sharing an article from The
Washington Post . Even the
foreign secretary's claim itself explicitly admits that "there is no evidence of a broad
spectrum Russian campaign against the General Election."
"The statement is so foggy and contradictory that it is almost impossible to understand it,"
responded Russia's foreign
ministry to the allegations. "If it's inappropriate to say something then don't say it. If you
say it, produce the facts."
Instead of producing facts you've got the Murdoch press pestering Jeremy Corbyn, the
Labour Party candidate, on his doorstep over this ridiculous non-story, and popular
right-wing outlets like Guido Fawkes running the blatantly false
headline "Government Confirms Corbyn Used Russian-Hacked Documents in 2019 Election." The
completely bogus allegation that the NHS documents came to Jeremy Corbyn by way of Russian
hackers is not made anywhere in the article itself, but for the headline-skimming majority this
makes no difference. And headline skimmers get as many votes as people who read and think
critically.
All this new Cold War Russia hysteria is turning people's brains into guacamole. We've got
to find a way to snap out of the propaganda trance so we can start creating a world that is
based on truth and a desire for peace.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of
Consortium News.
Putin Apologist , July 19, 2020 at 17:50
"How many more completely unsubstantiated government agency allegations about Russian
nefariousness are we the public going to accept from the corporate mass media?"
The Answer is none. Nobody (well, nobody with a brain) believes anything the "corporate
mass media" says about Russia, or China, Iran or Venezuela or anything else for that
matter.
James Keye , July 19, 2020 at 10:26
Guy , July 18, 2020 at 15:32
But,but, but we never heard the words "highly likely" ,they must be slipping.LOL
DH Fabian , July 18, 2020 at 13:41
The Democrat right wing are robotically persistent, and count on the ignorance of their
base. By late last year, we saw them begin setting the stage to blame-away an expected 2020
defeat on Russia. Once again, proving that today's Democrats are just too dangerous to vote
for. Donald Trump owes a great deal to his "friends across the aisle."
There's no way the trillion in T-bills will be seized/defaulted/whatever. The damage to US
credibility will be unrecoverable.
It is certainly crazy time. AG Barr threatened major US corporations Disney & Apple
with having to register as "foreign agents" due to their Chinese investments. Earlier in the
year, the FBI and Congress decided to destroy the career of one of America's top scientists
over failure to submit relatively inconsequential paperwork. These are the types of things
which should result in a determined pushback against an intrusive national security state,
but the balance of power in USA may have flipped.
Neocon presstitutes like Appelbaum (actually a well paid MIC lobbyist in disguise) and MI6
connected criminals like like Browder are the feature of the US political landscape, not a bug. I
actually did laugh at Browder's piece on the BBC though, were a money launderer and tax evader
who left his book keeper to die in a Russian prison telling us we shouldn't trust the
Russians.
US economic problems are greatly enhanced by the tremendous amount of defense expenditures
(outspending the combined next seven leading countries in arms expenditures) and tax payer's
money being wasted on paranoid obsessions likes what's mentioned here: http://markcrispinmiller.com/2020/07/a-visit-from-the-fbi/
The article mentions Steele as a discredited participant but what about Applebaum, or are we
to forget how her Polish husband was demoted by his own government for concocting a story about
Putin offering to split Ukraine with Poland, at an alleged meeting that he was shown to have
never attended. Poland no doubt sanctioned him for fabricating such an easily disproved event,
certainly not out of any such notion as a search for truth.
That said, not having invited even a token moderate voice to this august 'panel of experts'
speaks volumes about either the ignorance, the incompetence, the perfidy or just plain 'We
don't really care what you think. We've done our duty' arrogance of the report's authors.
CAIRO (AP) -- Egypt's parliament on Monday authorized the deployment of troops outside the
country, a move that could escalate the spiraling war in Libya after the president threatened
military action against Turkish-backed forces in the oil-rich country.
A troop deployment in Libya could bring Egypt and Turkey, close U.S. allies that support
rival sides in the conflict, into direct confrontation.
About the Steele Dossier. From the beginning I was nagged by the question of whether anyone
had seriously dug into its provenance? I mean, the chain of custody is critical in evaluating
evidence, isn't it? But that didn't seem to matter to most conversations about it for the
longest time. The impression was left hanging that Christopher Steele, crackerjack agent, had
got the inside stuff straight from people in or near the Kremlin.
Now we learn that the FBI did interview Steele's main conduit for all those claims --
"Primary Sub-source" -- intensively, for three days, early in the Trump administration. They
just never bothered to release any of their findings to the public, even as the dossier's main
claim -- Trump is a Kremlin agent of long standing, beholden to Putin due to some pee tape
kompromat -- took hold in the American political mind and became an article of faith for some.
Still is.
The FBI notes of that interview were released just a few days ago. And they reveal the
"dossier" had zero original reporting. It was concocted entirely from rumors picked up
second-or-third hand, inventive guesses, drunken conversations with persons of no particular
expertise, pillow talk between the main sub-source and his dependent Russian lady friend, and
fragments of a garbled phone call with a "source" whose identity could not be even
approximately established.
In other words, it's way worse than even I thought. And regular readers of this page know
pretty well what I thought about the likely veracity of the Steele Dossier. That such a
pathetic tissue of speculation, delirium and outright falsehood could capture the American
political imagination and drive debate -- for years! -- is simply astounding.
"Much of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation into Donald Trump was built on the premise
that Christopher Steele and his dossier were to be believed. This even though, early on,
Steele's claims failed to bear scrutiny. Just how far off the claims were became clear when the
FBI interviewed Steele's "Primary Subsource" over three days beginning on Feb. 9, 2017. Notes
taken by FBI agents of those interviews were released by the Senate Judiciary Committee Friday
afternoon."
"... I seem to recall William "Bill" Browder, AKA "Putin's Number-One Enemy" was briefly detained in Spain on an Interpol warrant or something. ..."
"... And courtesy of today's Independent, the words of that most noble and trustworthy lying cnut Browder as regards "Russian Meddling" in the affairs of my pathetic Motherland: ..."
"... Spoken by a person who changed his citizenship so as to dodge paying tax. What a slimy toad Browder is! ..."
"... Of course, though, Browder is not an oligarch himself. He's an 'investment firm boss'. And naturally he does not himself engage 'basically in intelligence and influence work'. He only single-handedly managed to get the Magnitsky Act on the books, where it will stay forever although the German press is belatedly owning up that Magnitsky was not the pink-faced legal cherub Browder portrayed. If that's not influence, I don't know what is. ..."
"... The west is so fixed on 'getting' Russia that it must simply make things up when it cannot find real reasons for its hatred. You could say that the USA with its marble-this-and-that secret algorithms is making up online traffic and attributing it to Russia, but I'm pretty sure other western countries are not complete oafs themselves in the computer world, and if you know what you're looking for I'm sure that their analysts can separate fantasy-land gifts like 'Kremlin Assassination Plan for American Soldiers' from actual Russian plans. ..."
I think the only Spanish connection it is a convenient location for whatever they were
up to off-shore. We are expected to trust the intelligence services word that
Litvinenko/Skripal/whomever were investigating the 'Russian Mafia' in Spain, so in reality it
could be anything.
What we do know is that Spain signed an updated SOFA (Status Of Forces Agreement) with the
United States in 2012 (Second Amendment) and 2015 (Third Amendment). Why should this be
linked to UK Russian assets like Litvinenko & Skripal? Because we know that when the
United States wants to do something off the books , i.e. that is techincally illegal
for their citizens to do on their soil, the UK more than happy to oblige (sic. the choice of
Steele's Orbis company in the UK to peddle lies for the Democrats to say that they only lost
the US election because of someone else. Everybody else's fault but not theirs.
And courtesy of today's Independent, the words of that most noble and trustworthy lying
cnut Browder as regards "Russian Meddling" in the affairs of my pathetic Motherland:
Will the Russia report 'follow the money'?
Russia is operating in the UK through "oligarchs" who "spend their money on highly
placed people", according to British investment firm boss Bill Browder.
Browder, the CEO of Hermitage Capital, who gave evidence for the report, told the BBC
said these figures "would basically do intelligence and influence work".
How far will the report delve into the influence of Russian money in British politics?
Although this morning's Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) 50-page document is
expected to cover political donations from wealthy Russians, reports suggest it won't
actually name any names.
Spoken by a person who changed his citizenship so as to dodge paying tax. What a slimy toad Browder is!
I shouldn't have said that: toads are very useful creatures.
See -- or better: do not, see unless you have a vomit bag near at hand:
UK politics news live: Latest updates as long-awaited Russia report to be released
today | The Independent
Of course, though, Browder is not an oligarch himself. He's an 'investment firm boss'. And
naturally he does not himself engage 'basically in intelligence and influence work'. He only
single-handedly managed to get the Magnitsky Act on the books, where it will stay forever
although the German press is belatedly owning up that Magnitsky was not the pink-faced legal
cherub Browder portrayed. If that's not influence, I don't know what is.
The west is so fixed on 'getting' Russia that it must simply make things up when it cannot
find real reasons for its hatred. You could say that the USA with its marble-this-and-that
secret algorithms is making up online traffic and attributing it to Russia, but I'm pretty
sure other western countries are not complete oafs themselves in the computer world, and if
you know what you're looking for I'm sure that their analysts can separate fantasy-land gifts
like 'Kremlin Assassination Plan for American Soldiers' from actual Russian plans.
But they
pretend to be fooled. And the best they can come up with is that Russia is behind upsets like
the Black Lives Matter movement which are tearing the USA apart. If Russia always had such a
mysterious weapon, why did it wait so long to use it when the USA and UK spit in its face
every day?
There is something rotten in the state .. of England.
This Skripal thing smelled to high heaven from day 1. My opinion is that Sergei Skripal was
involved (to what degree is open to speculation) with the Steele dossier. He was getting
homesick (perhaps his mother getting older is part of this) for Russia and he thought that to
get back to Russia he needed something big to get back in Putin's good graces. He would have
needed something really big because Putin really has no use for traitors. Skripal put out some
feelers (perhaps through his daughter though that may be dicey). The two couriers were sent to
seal or move the deal forward. The Brits (and perhaps the CIA) found out about this and decided
to make an example of Sergei. Perhaps because they found out about this late, the deep
state/intelligence people had to move very quickly. The deep state story was was extremely
shaky (to put it mildly) as a result. Or they were just incompetent and full of hubris.
Then they were stuck with the story and bullshit coverup was layered on bullshit coverup. 7
Reply FlorianGeyer Reply to
Marcus April 20, 2019
@ Marcus.
To hope to get away with lies, one must have perfect memory and a superior intellect that
can create a lie with some semblance of reality in real life, as opposed to the digital
'reality' in a Video game. And a rather corny video game at that.
MI5/6 failed on all parts of Lie creation 2 Reply Mistaron April 21, 2019
If Trump was so furious about being conned by Haspel, how come he then went on to promote
her to becoming the head of the CIA? It's quite perplexing.
This is not simply projection on the part of UK MI5/MI6 duet, this is a real war on reality.
UK false flag operation with Skripla poisoning (which probably was designed to hide possible role
of Skripal in creating Steele dossier) now will forever be textbook example of evilness MI5/MI6
honchos.
If we think that GRU is the past was able to fight Abwehr to standstill, they really would now be worried
about the blowback from Skripal mess.
A highly-anticipated report by the U.K. Parliament into Russia n interference in the country was
released on Tuesday, claiming that Russian influence in the U.K. is the "new normal."
The Russia Report, published after months of delay, is the culmination of two years of fact
finding by the U.K. Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee (ICS), providing insights
on the
Salisbury Novichok poisonings , Russian financial influence and social media
disinformation. The report said the U.K. was a "top target" for Russian interference.
The publication of the report comes a week after security services in the U.S., U.K. and
Canada said that Russian hackers had been attempting to
hack into global coronavirus vaccine research . The Kremlin has denied the accusations.
However, the report will likely disappoint observers who expected the ICS to detail
how far Russia interfered in the bitterly contested Brexit Referendum of 2016 . Prime
Minister Boris Johnson's was accused of withholding the publication of the report until after
the election of December 2019, a claim they denied.
The praetorian guard has become indistinguishable from the yellow
journalists. Indict them all for treason.
russellremmert 1 day ago
is steel in prison yet Reply
12
DonEstif -> russellremmert 1 day ago
Almost, he's an expert pundit used by CNN
Ban-me Fagggot 1 day ago
If Russia stole the election when Obama was President, why
wouldn't they steal the election when Trump is President? Democrats should protest by not
voting. It wont make a difference.
TGrade1 1 day ago
Behind all of this, hidden behind the
curtain, is a pants suit...
Justis -> TGrade1 11 hours ago
And more importantly, the then leader
of the free world, Obama...
"... There was a deeply held assumption that, when the countries of Central and Eastern Europe joined NATO and the European Union in 2004, these countries would continue their positive democratic and economic transformation. Yet more than a decade later, the region has experienced a steady decline in democratic standards and governance practices at the same time that Russia's economic engagement with the region expanded significantly. ..."
"... Are these developments coincidental, or has the Kremlin sought deliberately to erode the region's democratic institutions through its influence to 'break the internal coherence of the enemy system'? ..."
"... a false flag operation" involving "an alliance of the far right organizations, specifically the Right Sector and Svoboda, and oligarchic parties, such as Fatherland". There is little in Sharp's book to suggest that non-violent resistance would have had much effect on a really brutal and determined government. He also has the naïve habit of using "democrat" and "dictator" as if these words were as precisely defined as coconuts and codfish. But any "dictatorship" – for example Stalin's is a very complex affair with many shades of opinion in it. So, in terms of what he was apparently trying to do, one can see it only succeeding against rather mild "dictators" presiding over extremely unpopular polities. With a great deal of outside effort and resources. ..."
"... His "playbook" is useful to outside powers that want to overthrow governments they don't like. Especially those run by "dictators" not brutal enough to shoot the protesters down. ..."
Once I'd seen this mention of The Russian Playbook (aka KGB, Kremlin or Putin's Playbook), I
saw the expression all over the place. Here's an early – perhaps the earliest – use
of the term. In October 2016, the Center for Strategic and International studies (" Ranked #1 ") informed us of the "
Kremlin Playbook "
with this ominous beginning
There was a deeply held assumption that, when the countries of Central and Eastern
Europe joined NATO and the European Union in 2004, these countries would continue their
positive democratic and economic transformation. Yet more than a decade later, the region has
experienced a steady decline in democratic standards and governance practices at the same
time that Russia's economic engagement with the region expanded significantly.
And asks
Are these developments coincidental, or has the Kremlin sought deliberately to erode
the region's democratic institutions through its influence to 'break the internal coherence
of the enemy system'?
Well, to these people, to ask the question is to answer it: can't possibly be disappointment
at the gap between 2004's expectations and 2020's reality, can't be that they don't like the
total Western values package that they have to accept, it must be those crafty Russians
deceiving them. This was the earliest reference to The Playbook that I found, but it certainly
wasn't the last.
Of course, all these people are convinced Moscow interfered in the 2016 presidential
election. Somehow. To some effect. Never really specified but the latest outburst of insanity
is this video from the
Lincoln Project . As Anatoly Karlin observes: "I think it's really
cool how we Russians took over America just by shitposting online. How does it feel to be
subhuman?" He has a point: the Lincoln Project, and the others shrieking about Russian
interference, take it for granted that American democracy is so flimsy and Americans so
gullible that a few Facebook ads can bring the whole facade down. A curious mental state
indeed.
What can we know about The Playbook? For a start it must be written in Russian, a language
that those crafty Russians insist on speaking among themselves. Secondly such an important
document would be protected the way that highly classified material is protected. There would
be a very restricted need to know; underlings participating in one of the many plays would not
know how their part fitted into The Playbook; few would ever see The Playbook itself. The
Playbook would be brought to the desk of the few authorised to see it by a courier, signed for,
the courier would watch the reader and take away the copy afterwards. The very few copies in
existence would be securely locked away; each numbered and differing subtly from the others so
that, should a leak occur, the authorities would know which copy read by whom had been leaked.
Printed on paper that could not be photographed or duplicated. As much protection as human
cunning could devise; right up there with
the nuclear codes .
And so on. It's all quite ridiculous: we're supposed to believe that Moscow easily controls
far-away countries but can't keep its neighbours under control.
There is no Russian Playbook, that's just projection. But there is a "playbook" and it's
written in English, it's freely available and it's inexpensive enough that every pundit can
have a personal copy: it's named "
From Dictatorship To Democracy: A Conceptual Framework for Liberation " and it's written by
Gene Sharp (1928-2018) .
Whatever Sharp may have thought he was doing, whatever good cause he thought he was assisting,
his book has been used as a guide to create regime changes around the world. Billed as
"democracy" and "freedom", their results are not so benign. Witness Ukraine today. Or Libya. Or
Kosovo whose long-time leader has just been indicted for numerous crimes .
Curiously enough, these efforts always take place in countries that resist Washington's line
but never in countries that don't. Here we do see training, financing, propaganda, discord
being sown, divisions exploited to effect regime change – all the things in the imaginary
"Russian Playbook". So, whatever he may have thought he was helping, Sharp's advice has been
used to produce what only the propagandists could call "
model interventions "; to the "liberated" themselves, the reality is poverty , destruction ,
war and
refugees .
Reading Sharp's book, however, makes one wonder if he was just fooling himself. Has there
ever been a "dictatorship" overthrown by "non-violent" resistance along the lines of what he is
suggesting? He mentions Norwegians who resisted Hitler; but Norway was liberated, along with
the rest of Occupied Europe, by extremely violent warfare. While some Jews escaped, most didn't
and it was the conquest of Berlin that saved the rest: the nazi state was killed . The
USSR went away, together with its satellite governments in Europe but that was a top-down
event. He likes Gandhi but Gandhi wouldn't have lasted a minute under Stalin. Otpor was greatly aided by NATO's war
on Serbia. And, they're only "non-violent" because the Western media doesn't talk much about
the violence ;
"non-violent" is not the first word that comes to mind in this video of Kiev 2014 . "Colour revolutions" are
manufactured from existing grievances, to be sure, but with a great deal of outside assistance,
direction and funding; upon inspection, there's much design behind their "spontaneity". And,
not infrequently, with mysterious sniping at a expedient moment – see Katchanovski's
research on the "Heavenly Hundred" of the Maidan showing pretty convincingly that the
shootings were " a false flag operation" involving "an alliance of the far right
organizations, specifically the Right Sector and Svoboda, and oligarchic parties, such as
Fatherland". There is little in Sharp's book to suggest that non-violent resistance would have
had much effect on a really brutal and determined government. He also has the naïve habit
of using "democrat" and "dictator" as if these words were as precisely defined as coconuts and
codfish. But any "dictatorship" – for example Stalin's is a very complex affair with many
shades of opinion in it. So, in terms of what he was apparently trying to do, one can see it
only succeeding against rather mild "dictators" presiding over extremely unpopular polities.
With a great deal of outside effort and resources.
The text of the OPCW document is "enhanced" in FT reports. "Sexed up" was the term used
about the UN Weapons Inspectors' report on Iraq's WMD programme way back when.
A Dr. David Kelly was involved. I wonder what became of him?
That term "sexed up" really made me cringe when it suddenly came in vogue amongst UK
commenters and "journalists" .
I was already in exile when the the shit hit the fan in the UK as regards criminal Blair's
warmongering and was at a loss to understand what "sexed up" meant in the British newspaper
articles that I read at the time -- no Internet then, so once a week I used to buy a copy of
the "Sunday Times" (Woden forgive me!) in the foyer of of the five-star Hotel National,
Moscow. Used to cost me an arm and a leg an' all! Robbing bastards!
Tutisicecream
Jul 17, 2020 8:44 AM Yikes! The Ruskies are hacking again! Let's not forget that the British Superb plan for
Brexit was born out of Vova's cunning mind.
From the people who brought you polonium in a teacup, Basha's bouncing Barrel Bombs,
Salisbury Plain Pizza and the Covid- Horrid. Now want you to know Vova is back!
Last weekend they launched their counter move with Luke Harding interviewing himself
about his new book
The decline of the Guardian is legend and one of their supposed ace gumshoes, Luke
Harding, who has been the chief protagonist of the "Stupid Russia/ Cunning Russia" Guardian
editorial line gets this time to interview himself. Displacement in psychology, as I'm sure
Luke must have learnt from his handlers, is where we see in others that which we can't or
fail to recognise in ourselves.
Those CIFers long in the tooth will recall how he moderated his own BTL comments on
Russia until it all got too much for him. At which point they were cancelled. Now it seems
it's all gone to a new level as Harding apparently interviews himself about his new book! In
the Guardian's new post apocalyptic normal, where self censorship plus self promotion is the
norm for their self congratulatory hacks and hackets Harding never fails to amaze at this
genre.
As expected the reader is taken into the usual spy vs spy world of allusion and
narrative plus fake intrigue and facts, so much the hallmark of Harding's work. None of which
stands up to serious analysis as we recall:
where we have Arron Maté, a real journalist doing a superb job of exposing Harding
as the crude propagandist he truly is.
This interview is about Harding's last book "Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and
How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win the 2016 US election".
Now we have a new cash cow where clearly with Harding's latest shtick the Guardian can't
be arsed having him interviewed for another piece of self promotion by one of their hacks. So
they go for the off the shelf fake interview where they allow Harding to talk to himself.
Clearly as they point out Harding is working for home, with more than one foot in the
grave it must be time to furlough him.
The above link exhaustively details how the fraud was perpetrated and how the White
Helmets were funded. The most disturbing facts were the murder of captive Syrian civilians
including children for use as props for Western media. There is little doubt in my mind that
these murders were viewed as standard business practice with the only concern being related
to complication from being caught. Of course, being "caught" was a minor inconvenience that
the MSM could easily manage into oblivion.
Mr. Le Mesurier may have been killed as the White Helmets no longer had value and dead men
rarely talk:
His wife was not very helpful in the investigation having changed her story several
times.
Winberg said she looked for her husband inside the house and saw his lifeless body when
she looked out of the window. Police are investigating now how she was able to wake up about
half an hour after she took a sleeping pill and why she stacked a large amount of money
inside the house into bags immediately after Le Mesurier's body was found.
Among questions that are needed to be addressed in the case is why Le Mesurier, who intended
to sleep, did not change his clothes, did not even loosen his belt or remove his watch. It is
also not known why he did not choose a definitive suicidal action to kill himself, instead of
jumping from a relatively low height and why he chose to walk along the roof, passing around
the air conditioning devices on the roof, instead of jumping to the street directly from the
section of the roof closer to his window.
US military spending is certainly much higher than it needs to be for US defense needs. But
the US military is not primarily defending the US. It is defending Asia from China, NATO from
Russia, and a number of countries from Iran, not to speak of Norkland.
IOW, the US military is defending US global hegemony, and is priced accordingly. What you
think of US military spending depends on what you think of the US as a hegemon.
I am not a fan of military spending – following an excellent post by John about
Eisenhower's famous speech (more tanks or more hospitals), I often use it as an example
opportunity cost when teaching. One can certainly claim that the budget should be lower but,
as a share of overall economic resources, the budget has been cut substantially in the last
30 years.
Not much different from the British public (media). UKgov was in trouble last week for
failing to have their own man as head of the toothless rubberstamping parliamentary
intelligence and security committee, shortly afterwards UKGov amped up 'Russia wot stole our
vaccine' and the whole UK media ran with it, save a couple of articles qustioning the
'timing'.
The thinking the US & UK have in common is that there is no cost to their
lying. They're only thinking of the short term obviously, but they depend on the other to
turn the cheek ignore it as 'domstic politiking.' Last saturday I saw the al-Beeb s'allah
preview of RusAmb interview to be broadcast on Sunday. The anchor had an 'expert' to help
her. Cue cherry brief picked quotes from the interview to make the Ambassador look weak and
the 'expert' saying 'that's what you would expect them to say.'
Today I see that Scotland is now the target, i.e. that Russia 'interfered' with the
independence referendum. It's not even anything goes August yet. This whole year has
been August reporting.
I just cannot see why the US public -- better said, some of the US public. -- fall for
that torrent of verbal diarrhoea that Maddow regularly gushes forth on TV about all things
Russian.
The shite that she so regularly spews out is patently untrue and clearly propagandistic.
Time and time again, the content of "The Rachel Maddow Show" (Why "show" FFS? Is it because
that is what it is -- a distraction, an entertainment vehicle for the uncritical masses?) has
repeatedly been shown to be untrue, but never an apology from Maddow.
Oh, what a surprise! Her paternal grandfather's family name was Medvedev, a Four-by-Two
who fled the Evil (Romanov) Empire and set up shop in the "Land of the Free".
Something that has often puzzled me is this: If the Russian Empire was such a "Prison of
Nations", all crushed by the autocratic state, how come Western Europe and the USA is
swarming with the descendants of the Tsar's former Jewish subjects?
To be fair to Maddow -- though I see no reason why I should be, for she is a lying cnut --
her family background is not really kosher: her mother hails from Newfoundland and is of
English/Irish descent, and one of her grandmother's forebears were from the Netherlands.
Furthermore, Maddow says that she had a conservative Catholic upbringing. I suppose that's
why she's now a liberal lesbian. And guess what: she's a Rhodes Scholar with an Oxford
PhD.
Did Skripal played any role in this mess. In this case his poisoning looks more logical as an attempt to hide him from
Russians, who might well suspect him in playing a role in creating Steele dossier by some myths that were present in it.
Notable quotes:
"... Even Beria would laugh at this kind of "evidence". ..."
Much of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation into Donald Trump was built on the premise
that Christopher Steele and his dossier were to be believed. This even though, early on,
Steele's claims failed to bear scrutiny. Just how far off the claims were became clear when the
FBI interviewed Steele's "Primary Subsource" over three days beginning on Feb. 9, 2017.
Notes taken by FBI agents of those interviews were released by the Senate Judiciary
Committee Friday afternoon.
The Primary Subsource was in reality Steele's sole source, a long-time Russian-speaking
contractor for the former British spy's company, Orbis Business Intelligence. In turn, the
Primary Subsource had a group of friends in Russia. All of their names remain redacted. From
the FBI interviews it becomes clear that the Primary Subsource and his friends peddled
warmed-over rumors and laughable gossip that Steele dressed up as formal intelligence
memos.
Paul Manafort: The Steele dossier's "Primary Subsource" admitted to the FBI "that he was
'clueless' about who Manafort was, and that this was a 'strange task' to have been given." AP
Photo/Seth Wenig, File
Steele's operation didn't rely on great expertise, to judge from the Primary Subsource's
account. He described to the FBI the instructions Steele had given him sometime in the spring
of 2016 regarding Paul Manafort: "Do you know [about] Manafort? Find out about Manafort's
dealings with Ukraine, his dealings with other countries, and any corrupt schemes." The Primary
Subsource admitted to the FBI "that he was 'clueless' about who Manafort was, and that this was
a 'strange task' to have been given."
The Primary Subsource said at first that maybe he had asked some of his friends in Russia
– he didn't have a network of sources, according to his lawyer, but instead just a
"social circle." And a boozy one at that: When the Primary Subsource would get together with
his old friend Source 4, the two would drink heavily. But his social circle was no help with
the Manafort question and so the Primary Subsource scrounged up a few old news clippings about
Manafort and fed them back to Steele.
Also in his "social circle" was Primary Subsource's friend "Source 2," a character who was
always on the make. "He often tries to monetize his relationship with [the Primary Subsource],
suggesting that the two of them should try and do projects together for money," the Primary
Subsource told the FBI (a caution that the Primary Subsource would repeat again and again.) It
was Source 2 who "told [the Primary Subsource] that there was compromising material on
Trump."
And then there was Source 3, a very special friend. Over a redacted number of years, the
Primary Subsource has "helped out [Source 3] financially." She stayed with him when visiting
the United States. The Primary Subsource told the FBI that in the midst of their conversations
about Trump, they would also talk about "a private subject." (The FBI agents, for all their
hardnosed reputation, were too delicate to intrude by asking what that "private subject"
was).
Michael Cohen: The bogus story of the Trump fixer's trip to Prague seems to have originated
with "Source 3," a woman friend of the Primary Subsource, who was "not sure if Source 3 was
brainstorming here." AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File
One day Steele told his lead contractor to get dirt on five individuals. By the time he got
around to it, the Primary Subsource had forgotten two of the names, but seemed to recall Carter
Page, Paul Manafort and Trump lawyer Michael Cohen. The Primary Subsource said he asked his
special friend Source 3 if she knew any of them. At first she didn't. But within minutes she
seemed to recall having heard of Cohen, according to the FBI notes. Indeed, before long it came
back to her that she had heard Cohen and three henchmen had gone to Prague to meet with
Russians.
Source 3 kept spinning yarns about Michael Cohen in Prague. For example, she claimed Cohen
was delivering "deniable cash payments" to hackers. But come to think of it, the Primary
Subsource was "not sure if Source 3 was brainstorming here," the FBI notes say.
The Steele Dossier would end up having authoritative-sounding reports of hackers who had
been "recruited under duress by the FSB" -- the Russian security service -- and how they "had
been using botnets and porn traffic to transmit viruses, plant bugs, steal data and conduct
'altering operations' against the the Democratic Party." What exactly, the FBI asked the
subject, were "altering operations?" The Primary Subsource wouldn't be much help there, as he
told the FBI "that his understanding of this topic (i.e. cyber) was 'zero.'" But what about his
girlfriend whom he had known since they were in eighth grade together? The Primary Subsource
admitted to the FBI that Source 3 "is not an IT specialist herself."
And then there was Source 6. Or at least the Primary Subsource thinks it was Source 6.
Ritz-Carlton Moscow: The Primary Subsource admitted to the FBI "he had not been able to
confirm the story" about Trump and prostitutes at the hotel. But he did check with someone who
supposedly asked a hotel manager, who said that with celebrities, "one never knows what they're
doing." Moscowjob.net/Wikimedia
While he was doing his research on Manafort, the Primary Subsource met a U.S. journalist "at
a Thai restaurant." The Primary Subsource didn't want to ask "revealing questions" but managed
to go so far as to ask, "Do you [redacted] know anyone who can talk about all of this
Trump/Manafort stuff, or Trump and Russia?" According to the FBI notes, the journalist told
Primary Subsource "that he was skeptical and nothing substantive had turned up." But the
journalist put the Primary Subsource in touch with a "colleague" who in turn gave him an email
of "this guy" journalist 2 had interviewed and "that he should talk to."
With the email address of "this guy" in hand, the Primary Subsource sent him a message "in
either June or July 2016." Some weeks later the Primary Subsource "received a telephone call
from an unidentified Russia guy." He "thought" but had no evidence that the mystery "Russian
guy" was " that guy." The mystery caller "never identified himself." The Primary Subsource
labeled the anonymous caller "Source 6." The Primary Subsource and Source 6 talked for a total
of "about 10 minutes." During that brief conversation they spoke about the Primary Subsource
traveling to meet the anonymous caller, but the hook-up never happened.
Nonetheless, the Primary Subsource labeled the unknown Russian voice "Source 6" and gave
Christopher Steele the rundown on their brief conversation – how they had "a general
discussion about Trump and the Kremlin" and "that it was an ongoing relationship." For use in
the dossier, Steele named the voice Source E.
When Steele was done putting this utterly unsourced claim into the style of the dossier,
here's how the mystery call from the unknown guy was presented: "Speaking in confidence to a
compatriot in late July 2016, Source E, an ethnic Russian close associate of Republican US
presidential candidate Donald TRUMP, admitted that there was a well-developed conspiracy of
co-operation between them and the Russian leadership." Steele writes "Inter alia," – yes,
he really does deploy the Latin formulation for "among other things" – "Source E
acknowledged that the Russian regime had been behind the recent leak of embarrassing e-mail
messages, emanating from the Democratic National Committee [DNC], to the WikiLeaks
platform."
All that and more is presented as the testimony of a "close associate" of Trump, when it was
just the disembodied voice of an unknown guy.
Perhaps even more perplexing is that the FBI interviewers, knowing that Source E was just an
anonymous caller, didn't compare that admission to the fantastical Steele bluster and declare
the dossier a fabrication on the spot.
But perhaps it might be argued that Christopher Steele was bringing crack investigative
skills of his own to bear. For something as rich in detail and powerful in effect as the
dossier, Steele must have been researching these questions himself as well, using his
hard-earned spy savvy to pry closely held secrets away from the Russians. Or at the very least
he must have relied on a team of intelligence operatives who could have gone far beyond the
obvious limitations the Primary Subsource and his group of drinking buddies.
But no. As we learned in December from Inspector General Michael Horowitz, Steele "was not
the originating source of any of the factual information in his reporting." Steele, the IG
reported "relied on a primary sub-source (Primary Sub-source) for information, and this Primary
Sub-source used a network of [further] sub-sources to gather the information that was relayed
to Steele." The inspector general's report noted that "neither Steele nor the Primary
Sub-source had direct access to the information being reported."
One might, by now, harbor some skepticism about the dossier. One might even be inclined to
doubt the story that Trump was "into water sports" as the Primary Subsource so delicately
described the tale of Trump and Moscow prostitutes. But, in this account, there was an effort,
however feeble, to nail down the "rumor and speculation" that Trump engaged in "unorthodox
sexual activity at the Ritz."
While the Primary Subsource admitted to the FBI "he had not been able to confirm the story,"
Source 2 (who will be remembered as the hustler always looking for a lucrative score)
supposedly asked a hotel manager about Trump and the manager said that with celebrities, "one
never knows what they're doing." One never knows – not exactly a robust proof of
something that smacks of urban myth. But the Primary Subsource makes the best of it, declaring
that at least "it wasn't a denial."
If there was any denial going on it was the FBI's, an agency in denial that its
extraordinary investigation was crumbling.
bh2, 23 minutes ago
Even Beria would laugh at this kind of "evidence".
The establishment's massive propaganda campaigns and psyops CANCEL the truth or make it
unrecognizable via coloring and half-truths. Russiagate, White Helmets, Skripals, MH-17,
Integrity Initiative, Assange, Russian Bounties & remaining in Afghanistan, "China
virus", hydroxyChloroquine, etc.
The Trump Administration has CANCELED entire countries via terminating peace treaties,
imposing sanctions, covert war, and conducting a propaganda war.
Where is the outrage from writers, artists, and academics about THAT?
John, what say you about US/global military spending, which if cut and reallocated in the
low double digits could transform society? Do you think it's just politically untouchable? If
the US cut its military budget by say 25% it would still be formidable, especially given its
nuclear deterrent. For the life of me I can never understand why military budgets are
sacrosanct. Is it just WW2 and Cold War hangover? Couldn't the obvious effects of climate
change and the fragility of the economy subject to natural threats like the pandemic change
attitudes about overfunding the military (like the debacle of the F-35 program)?
Alan White @13 Military spending is about 3.4 per cent of US GDP, compared to 2 per cent
or less most places. So that's a significant and unproductive use of resources that could be
redirected to better effect. But the income of the top 1 per cent is around 20 per cent of
total income. If that was cut in half, there would be little or no reduction in the
productive services supplied by this group. If you want big change, that's where you need to
look.
I think some of the reluctance to cut military spending in the US is the extent to which
it acts as a politically unassailable source of fiscal stimulus and "welfare" in a country
where such things are otherwise anathema. Well, that and all of the grift it represents for
the donor class.
A top government watchdog group obtained 136 pages of never before publicized emails between
former FBI lovers
Peter Strzok and
Lisa Page and one in particular appears to refer to a confidential informant inside the
White House in 2017, according to a press release from
Judicial Watch .
Those emails, some of which are heavily redacted, reveal that "Strzok, Page and top bureau
officials in the days prior to and following
President Donald Trump's inauguration discussing a White House counterintelligence briefing
that could "play into" the
FBI's "investigative strategy."
Majority Say They Want to See Trump's Taxes, Many Think Returns Would Hurt Reelection
Chances
White House Reportedly Moves to Make Coronavirus Cases Private by Cutting Out
CDC
Trump White House Reportedly Conducting 'Loyalty' Interviews of Officials,
Appointees
Majority Don't Trust Trump's Public Messages on COVID-19, Disapproval on Pandemic Response
Hits 60%
Trump's Niece Says She's Heard Him Use the N-Word, Anti-Semitic Slurs
Trump Administration is Reportedly Out to Smear Dr. Anthony Fauci for Early Comments on
Coronavirus
Trump Refuses To Unveil Obama's Portrait At The White House
White House Testing Staff For COVID-19, But Are Results Accurate?
Moreover, another email sent by Strzok to Bill
Priestap, the Former Assistant Director for the Counterintelligence Division, refers to
what appears to be a confidential informant in the White House. The email was sent the day
after Trump's inauguration.
"I heard from [redacted] about the WH CI briefing routed from [redacted]," wrote Strzok. "
I am angry that Jen did not at least cc: me, as my branch has pending investigative matters
there, this brief may play into our investigative strategy, and I would like the ability to
have visibility and provide thoughts/counsel to you in advance of the briefing. This is one
of the reasons why I raised the issue of lanes/responsibilities that I did when you asked her
to handle WH detailee interaction."
In April, 2019 this reporter first published information that there was an alleged
confidential informant for the FBI in the White House. In fact, then senior Republican Chairmen
of the Senate Appropriations Committee
Charles Grassley and Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Ron Johnson submitted a
letter to Department of Justice Attorney General William Barr revealing the new texts from
Strzok to Page showing the pair had discussed attempts to recruit sources within the White
House to allegedly spy on the Trump administration.
The Chairmen revealed the information in a three page letter. The texts had been already
been obtained by SaraACarter.com and information regarding the possible attempt to recruit
White House sources had been divulged by several sources to this news site last week.
At the time, texts obtained by this news site and sources stated that Strzok had one
significant contact within the White House – at the time that would have been Vice
President Mike Pence's Chief of Staff Joshua Pitcock,
as reported.
Over the past year, Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz, along with years
of numerous Congressional investigations, has uncovered a plethora of documentation revealing
the most intimate details of the FBI's now debunked investigation into Trump's campaign and its
alleged conspiracy with Russia.
For example, in a series of emails exchanged by top bureau officials – in the FBI
General Counsel's office, Counterintelligence Division and Washington Field office on Jan. 19,
2017 – reveal that senior leadership, including former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe were
coordinating with each other in their ongoing attempt to target the incoming administration.
Priestap was also included in the email exchanges. The recent discovery in April, of Priestap's
handwritten notes taken in January, 2017 before the Strzok and his FBI partner interviewed
Flynn were a bombshell. In Priestap's notes he states, "What's our goal? Truth/Admission or to
get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?"
In one recent email chain obtained by Judicial Watch, FBI assistant general counsel in the
FBI's National Security Law Branch stated in an email to Strzok [which was almost entirely
redacted]
"I'll give Trisha/Baker a heads up too," it stated. Strzok's reply to the assistant
general counsel, however, was redacted by DOJ. The response back to Strzok has also been
redacted.
Then later in the evening at 7:04 p.m., Strzok sends another emails stating, "I briefed
Bill (Priestap) this afternoon and he was trying without success to reach the DD [McCabe]. I
will forward below to him as his [sic] changes the timeline. What's your recommendation?"
The reply, like many of the documents obtained by Judicial Watch from the DOJ, is almost
entirely redacted. The email response to Strzok was from the Counterintelligence
Division.
Here's what was not redacted
"Approved by tomorrow afternoon is the request. [Redacted] – please advise if I am
missing something." An unidentified official replies, "[Redacted], Bill is aware and willing
to jump in when we need him."
Judicial Watch Timeline of Events On Emails Obtained Through FOIA
At 8 p.m., Strzok responds back (copying officials in the Counterintelligence Division,
Washington Field Office and General Counsel's office):
"Just talked with Bill. [Redacted]. Please relay above to WFO and [redacted] tonight, and
keep me updated with plan for meet and results of same. Good luck."
Strzok then forwards the whole email exchange to Lisa Page, saying, "Bill spoke with Andy.
[Redacted.] Here we go again "
The Day After Trump's Inauguration
The day after Trump's inauguration, on Jan. 21, 2017, Strzok forwarded Page and [a redacted
person] an
email he'd sent that day to Priestap. Strzok asked them to "not forward/share."
In the email to Priestap, Strzok said, "I heard from [redacted] about the WH CI briefing
routed from [redacted]. I am angry that Jen did not at least cc: me, as my branch has pending
investigative matters there, this brief may play into our investigative strategy , and I would
like the ability to have visibility and provide thoughts/counsel to you in advance of the
briefing. This is one of the reasons why I raised the issue of lanes/responsibilities that I
did when you asked her to handle WH detailee interaction."
" Also, on January 21, 2017, Strzok wrote largely the same message
he'd sent to Priestap directly to his counterintelligence colleague Jennifer Boone ," states
Judicial Watch.
The records were produced to Judicial Watch in a January 2018 Freedom of Information Act
(FOIA)
lawsuit filed after the DOJ failed to respond to a December 2017 request for all
communications between Strzok and Page ( Judicial
Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:18-cv-00154)).
The FBI has only processed emails at a rate of 500 pages per month and has yet to process
text messages. At this rate, the production of these communications, which still number around
8,000 pages, would not be completed until at least late 2021.
In other emails, Strzok comments on reporting on the anti-Trump dossier authored by Hillary
Clinton's paid operative Christopher Steele.
In a January 2017 email ,
Strzok takes issue with a UK Independent report which claimed Steele had suspected there was a
"cabal" within the FBI which put the Clinton email investigation above the Trump-Russia probe.
Strzok, a veteran counterintelligence agent, was at the heart of both the Clinton email and
Trump-Russia investigations.
In April and June of 2017, the FBI would use the dossier as key evidence in obtaining FISA
warrants to spy on Trump campaign associate Carter Page. In a declassified
summary of a Department of Justice assessment of the warrants that was released by the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) in January of this year, it was determined that
those two applications to secretly monitor Page lacked probable cause.
The newly released records include a January 11, 2017, email
from Strzok to Lisa Page, Priestap, and Deputy Assistant Director of Counterintelligence Jon
Moffa, a New York Times report
which refers to the dossier as containing "unsubstantiated accounts" and "unproven claims." In
the email, Strzok comments on the article, calling it "Pretty good reporting."
On January 14, 2017, FBI Assistant Director for Public Affairs Michael Kortan forwards
to Strzok, Page and Priestap a link to a UK
Independent article entitled "Former MI6 Agent Christopher Steele's Frustration as FBI Sat
On Donald Trump Russia File for Months".
The article, citing security sources, notes that "Steele became increasingly frustrated that
the FBI was failing to take action on the intelligence from others as well as him. He came to
believe there was a cover-up: that a cabal within the Bureau blocked a thorough inquiry into Mr
Trump, focusing instead on the investigation into Clinton's emails."
Strzok responds: "Thanks Mike. Of course not accurate [the cover-up/cabal nonsense]. Is that
question gaining traction anywhere else?"
The records also include a February 10, 2017, email
from Strzok to Page mentioning then-national security adviser Michael Flynn (five days before
Flynn resigned) and includes a photo of Flynn and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Strzok
also makes a joke about how McCabe had fat shamed Kislyak.
On February 8, 2017, Strzok, under the subject "RE: EO on Economic Espionage," emailed
Lisa Page, saying, "Please let [redacted] know I talked to [redacted]. Tonight, he approached
Flynn's office and got no information." Strzok was responding to a copy of an email Page had
sent him. The email, from a redacted FBI official to Deputy Director McCabe read: "OPS has not
received a draft EO on economic espionage. Instead, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce advised OPS
that they received a draft, but they did not send us the draft. I'll follow up with our
detailees about this EO." Flynn resigned
on February 13, 2017.
On January 26, 2017, Nancy McNamara of the FBI's Inspection Division emailed
Strzok and Priestap with the subject line "Leak," saying, "Tried calling you but the phones are
forwarded to SIOC. I got the tel call report, however [redacted]. Feel free to give me a call
if I have it wrong." Strzok forwarded the McNamara email to Lisa Page and an unidentified
person in the General Counsel's office, saying, "Need to talk to you about how to respond to
this."
On January 11, 2017, Yahoo News reporter Michael Isikoff emailed
Kortan, saying he'd learned that Steele had worked for the Bureau's Eurasian organized crime
section and had turned over the dossier on Trump-Russian "collusion" to the bureau in Rome.
Kortan forwards Isikoff's email to aide Richard Quinn, who forwards to Strzok "just for
visibility". Strzok forwards to his boss, Priestap and Moffa, saying, "FYI, [redacted], you or
I should probably inform [redacted]. How's your relationship with him? Bill unless you object,
I'll let Parmaan [presumably senior FBI official Bryan Paarmann] know." Strzok forwards the
whole exchange onto Lisa Page.
On January 18, 2017, reporter Peter Elkind of ProPublica reached
out to Kortan, asking to interview Strzok, Michael Steinbach, Jim Baker, Priestap, former
FBI Director James Comey and DEA administrator Chuck Rosenberg for a story Elkind was working
on. Kortan replied, "Okay, I will start organizing things." Further along in the thread, an FBI
Press Office official reached out to an FBI colleague for assistance with the interviews,
saying Steinbach had agreed to a "background discussion" with Elkind, who was "writing the
'definitive' account of what happened during the Clinton investigation, specifically, Comey's
handling of the investigation, seeking to reconstruct and explain in much greater detail what
he did and why he did it." In May 2017, Elkind wrote an
article titled "The Problems With the FBI's Email Investigation Went Well Beyond Comey,"
which in light of these documents, strongly suggests many FBI officials leaked to the
publication.
Strzok ended up being scheduled
to meet with Elkind at 9:30 a.m. on January 31, 2017, before an Elkind interview of Comey's
chief of staff Jim Rybicki. Elkind's reporting on the Clinton email investigation was discussed
at length in previous
emails obtained by Judicial Watch.
"These documents suggest that President Trump was targeted by the Comey FBI as soon as he
stepped foot in the Oval Office," said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. "And now we see how
the Comey FBI was desperate to spin, through high-level leaks, its mishandling of the Clinton
email investigation. And, in a continuing outrage, it should be noted that Wray's FBI and
Barr's DOJ continue slow-walk the release of thousands of Page-Strzok emails – which
means the remaining 8,000 pages of records won't be reviewed and released until 2021-2022!"
In February 2020, Judicial Watch
uncovered an August 2016 email in which Strzok says that Clinton, in her interview with the
FBI about her email controversy, apologized for "the work and effort" it caused the bureau and
she said she chose to use it "out of convenience" and that "it proved to be anything but."
Strzok said Clinton's apology and the "convenience" discussion were "not in" the FBI 302 report
that summarized the interview.
Also in February, Judicial Watch made public Strzok-Page emails showing their direct
involvement in the opening of Crossfire Hurricane, the bureau's investigation of alleged
collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. The records also show additional "confirmed
classified emails" were found on Clinton's unsecure non-state.gov email server "beyond the number presented" in
then-FBI Director James Comey's statements; Strzok and Page questioning the access the DOJ was
granting Clinton's lawyers; and Page revealing that the DOJ was making edits to FBI 302 reports
related to the Clinton Midyear Exam investigation. The emails detail a discussion about
"squashing" an issue related to the Seth Rich controversy.
In January 2020, Judicial Watch
uncovered Strzok-Page emails that detail special accommodations given to the lawyers of
Clinton and her aides during the FBI investigation of the Clinton email controversy.
In November 2019, Judicial Watch
revealed Strzok-Page emails that show the attorney representing three of Clinton's aides
were given meetings with senior FBI officials.
Also in November, Judicial Watch
uncovered emails revealing that after Clinton's statement denying the transmission of
classified information over her unsecure email system, Strzok sent an email to FBI officials
citing "three [Clinton email] chains" containing (C) [classified] portion marks in front of
paragraphs."
In a related case, in May 2020, Judicial Watch received the " electronic
communication " (EC) that officially launched the counterintelligence investigation, termed
"Crossfire Hurricane," of President Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. The document was
written by former FBI official Peter Strzok.
"... Not to be outdone, the censors are also taking aim at To Kill a Mockingbird , Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about Atticus Finch, a white lawyer in the Jim Crow South who defends a black man falsely accused of rape. Sixty years after its debut, the book remains a powerful testament to moral courage in the face of racial bigotry and systemic injustice , told from the point of view of a child growing up in the South, but that's not enough for the censors. They want to axe the book -- along with The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn -- from school reading curriculums because of the presence of racial slurs that could make students feel "humiliated or marginalized." ..."
"... What started with Joseph McCarthy's headline-grabbing scare tactics in the 1950s about Communist infiltrators of American society snowballed into a devastating witch hunt once corporations and the American people caught the fever. ..."
"... McCarthyism was a contagion, like the plague, spreading like wildfire among people too fearful or weak or gullible or paranoid or greedy or ambitious to denounce it for what it was: an opportunistic scare tactic engineered to make the government more powerful. ..."
"... Battlefield America: The War on the American People ..."
For those old enough to have lived through the McCarthy era, there is a whiff of something
in the air that reeks of the heightened paranoia, finger-pointing, fear-mongering, totalitarian
tactics that were hallmarks of the 1950s.
Back then, it was the government -- spearheaded by Senator Joseph McCarthy and the House
Un-American Activities Committee -- working in tandem with private corporations and individuals
to blacklist Americans suspected of being communist sympathizers.
By the time the witch hunts carried out by federal and state investigative agencies drew to
a close, thousands of individuals (
the vast majority of them innocent any crime whatsoever ) had been accused of communist
ties, investigated, subpoenaed and blacklisted. Regarded as bad risks, the accused were
blacklisted, and struggled to secure employment. The witch hunt ruined careers, resulting in
suicides, and tightened immigration to exclude alleged subversives.
Seventy years later, the vitriol, fear-mongering and knee-jerk intolerance associated with
McCarthy's tactics are once again being deployed in a free-for-all attack by those on both the
political Left and Right against anyone who, in daring to think for themselves, subscribes to
ideas or beliefs that run counter to the government's or mainstream thought
It doesn't even seem to matter what the issue is anymore (racism, Confederate monuments,
Donald Trump, COVID-19, etc.): modern-day activists are busily tearing down monuments,
demonizing historic figures, boycotting corporations for perceived political transgressions,
and using their bully pulpit to terrorize the rest of the country into kowtowing to their
demands
All the while, the American police state continues to march inexorably forward.
This is how fascism, which silences all dissenting views, prevails.
The silence is becoming deafening.
After years of fighting in and out of the courts to keep their 87-year-old name, the NFL's
Washington Redskins have bowed to public pressure and will
change their name and team logo to avoid causing offense . The new name, not yet announced,
aims to honor both the military and Native Americans.
Who needs a government censor when the American people are already doing such a great job at
censoring themselves and each other, right?
Now there's a push underway to
boycott Goya Foods after its CEO, Robert Unanue, praised President Trump during a press
conference to announce Goya's donation of a million cans of Goya chickpeas and a million other
food products to American food banks as part of the president's Hispanic Prosperity
Initiative.
Mind you, Unanue -- whose grandfather emigrated to the U.S. from Spain -- also praised the
Obamas when they were in office, but that kind of equanimity doesn't carry much weight in this
climate of intolerance.
This is also the overlooked part of how oppression becomes systemic: it comes about as a
result of a combined effort between the populace, the corporations and the government.
McCarthyism worked the same way.
What started with Joseph McCarthy's headline-grabbing scare tactics in the 1950s about
Communist infiltrators of American society snowballed into a devastating witch hunt once
corporations and the American people caught the fever.
McCarthyism was a contagion, like the plague, spreading like wildfire among people too
fearful or weak or gullible or paranoid or greedy or ambitious to denounce it for what it was:
an opportunistic scare tactic engineered to make the government more powerful.
The parallels to the present movement cannot be understated.
The contagion of fear that McCarthy helped spread with the help of government agencies,
corporations and the power elite is still poisoning the well, whitewashing our history, turning
citizen against citizen, and stripping us of our rights.
What we desperately need is the kind of resolve embodied by Edward R. Murrow, the
most-respected newsman of his day.
On March 9, 1954, Murrow dared to speak truth to power about the damage McCarthy was
inflicting on the American people. His message remains a timely warning for our age.
We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of
unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine; and remember that we are not
descended from fearful men. Not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to
defend causes that were for the moment unpopular.
America is approaching another reckoning right now, one that will pit our commitment to
freedom principles against a level of fear-mongering that is being used to wreak havoc on
everything in its path.
The outcome rests, as always, with "we the people." As Murrow said to his staff before the
historic March 9 broadcast: "No one can terrorize a whole nation, unless we are all his
accomplices."
Feature photo | Nehemiah Nuk Nuk Johnson, left, with JUICE (Justice Unites Individuals and
Communities Everywhere), confronts a counter protester who did not give his name in Martinez,
Calif., July 12, 2020, during a protest calling for an end to racial injustice and
accountability for police. Jeff Chiu | AP
"... Any NYT reporting on Epstein is meant as a distraction -- to cover up the facts. The NYT is the elites' protector, it punches down instead of up. The NYT 'revelations' about guards are a) punching down to protect elites and b) a distraction to protect elites. The NYT is one of the Augean Stables. ..."
Now, people who are doubting the USG are automatically labelled "conspiracy theorists".
Except that, in this case, it is perfectly sensible to doubt about his death. He could've put
down really powerful people. He wasn't your daily mafia-boy struggling against his mafia boss
over US$ 1 billion in cocaine; no: he could put down half the American royalty.
Ah yes, that self-admitted CIA linked, totally-not deep state propaganda puppet outlet
lecturing the rest of us about the virtues of fact-checking and journalistic integrity...
Any NYT reporting on Epstein is meant as a distraction -- to cover up the facts.
The NYT is the elites' protector, it punches down instead of up.
The NYT 'revelations' about guards are a) punching down to protect elites and b) a
distraction to protect elites.
The NYT is one of the Augean Stables.
"... Interestingly, June 2017 is when the FBI and DOJ signed off on the last extension of the FISA warrant to spy on the Trump campaign via adviser Carter Page. The warrant was signed by acting FBI director and Comey's former deputy Andrew McCabe and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein – who wrote both the memo used to fire Comey and the scope memo for the Mueller investigation. ..."
"... Evidence has shown that the initial FISA warrant against Page – in October 2016, shortly before the election – and the three renewals all relied heavily on the Steele Dossier, without making it clear to the court that it was unverified opposition research compiled at the behest of a rival political party. ..."
"... "miscarriage of justice" ..."
"... "collusion" ..."
"... Think your friends would be interested? Share this story! ..."
"... the infamous dossier used as a pretext to spy on President Donald Trump's campaign was unreliable ..."
New documents show the FBI was aware that the infamous dossier
used as a pretext to spy on President Donald Trump's campaign was unreliable, and that the New York Times published false information
about the 'Russiagate' probe.
The two documents were published on Friday by the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina),
as part of an ongoing probe of the FBI's investigation of Trump. One is a 59-page, heavily redacted
interview
of the "primary sub-source" for Christopher Steele, the British spy commissioned through a series of cut-outs by the
Hillary Clinton campaign to dig up dirt on Trump during the 2016 election campaign.
While the identity of the source is hidden, the document makes it clear it was not a current or former Russian official, but a
non-Russian employee of Steele's British company, Orbis. The source's testimony seriously questioned the claims made in the dossier
– which is best known for the salacious accusation that Trump was being blackmailed by Russia with tapes of an alleged sex romp in
a Moscow hotel.
The second, and more intriguing, document is a five-page
printout
of a February 14, 2017 article from the New York Times, along with 13 notes by Peter Strzok, one of the senior FBI agents handling
the Russiagate probe. The article was published five days after the FBI interview with the sub-source, and Strzok actually shows
awareness of it (in note 11, specifically).
In the very first note, Strzok labeled as "misleading and inaccurate" the claim by the New York Times that the Trump
campaign had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials before the 2016 election, noting there was "no evidence"
of this.
Likewise, Strzok denied the FBI was investigating Roger Stone (note 10) – a political operative eventually indicted by Special
Counsel Robert Mueller over allegedly lying about (nonexistent) ties to WikiLeaks, whose sentence Trump recently commuted to outrage
from 'Russiagate' proponents. Nor was Trump's campaign manager Paul Manafort on any calls involving Russian government officials,
contrary to claims by the Times (note 3).
Not only did the FBI know the story was false, in part based on the knowledge they had from Steele's source, but the recently
ousted FBI director Jim Comey had openly disputed it in June 2017. The paper stood by its reporting.
Interestingly, June 2017 is when the FBI and DOJ signed off on the last extension of the FISA warrant to spy on the Trump campaign
via adviser Carter Page. The warrant was signed by acting FBI director and Comey's former deputy Andrew McCabe and Deputy Attorney
General Rod Rosenstein – who wrote both the memo used to fire Comey and the scope memo for the Mueller investigation.
Evidence has shown that the initial FISA warrant against Page – in October 2016, shortly before the election – and the three renewals
all relied heavily on the Steele Dossier, without making it clear to the court that it was unverified opposition research compiled
at the behest of a rival political party.
The last two renewals, in April and June 2017, were requested after the sub-source interview. Commenting on the document release,
Sen. Graham called these two renewals a "miscarriage of justice" and argued that the FBI and the Department of Justice should
have stopped and re-evaluated their case.
Mueller eventually found no "collusion" between Trump and Russia as alleged by the Democrats, but not before a dozen
people – from Stone and Manafort to Trump's first national security adviser Michael Flynn and innocent Russian student Maria Butina
– became casualties of the investigation.
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story! 236 13
Austin Rock 22 hours ago Staggering is the monumental deceitful effort to hitch Trump to Russia. And yet for MSM and their poodles
in the press no barb thrown is too outragious, no smear is too false enough. With Google, Twitter and Facebook on board we Europeans
are being played. But we Europeans are not as stupid as your average US punter. These pathetic fairy tales are an embarressement
to journalism.
Looks like Guardian is another intelligence agencies controlled entity.
Notable quotes:
"... Nothing shows just how much the Guardian has become the voice of the Deep State more than its coverage of anything Russia-related. And nothing serves as a better exemplar of how modern propaganda works. ..."
"... As it was anti-Russian I expected it to be accompanied with a Luke Harding byline but this is from the Defence and Security Editor, Dan Sabbagh, Harding, as well as being a plagiarist, has written four anti-Russian books including "Collusion" about how Russia helped Donald Trump get into power (using the discredited Steele dossier as his main source). Here Aaron Mate interviews him leaving him totally uncomfortable by the end. ..."
The Guardian, and all the other predictable voices, are currently reporting that Russian
"state sponsored hackers" have been attempting to steal "medical secrets" from British
pharmaceutical researchers.
At this stage they offer no substantiation, but it does serve as good teaching exercise in
the techniques of modern propagandists.
First the lack of evidence. Observe the Guardian article, note the complete absence of
sources or references. There's not a link in sight. There's no content there beyond the
parroted words of UK government officials, whose honesty and/or competence is never
interrogated.
Second, the lies by omission. They don't mention, for example, the
Vault 7 revelations from Wikileaks that the CIA/Pentagon
have developed technology to make one of their own cyber-attacks appear to come from anywhere
in the world , Russia obviously included. This is clearly vital information.
Third, the multitasking. When you splash a huge red lie on your front pages, it's always
best to make it serve several agendas at once. In fact, an unsupported statement which serves
multiple state-backed narratives at the same time is one of the telltale signs of
propaganda.
With this one completely unverified claim, the Guardian – or rather the people who
tell the Guardian what to say – back up three narratives:
The further demonisation of
an "enemy". Russia is portrayed as pursuing "selfish interests with reckless
behaviour" , whilst we (and our allies) are "getting on with the hard work of finding
a vaccine and protecting global health." Promoting the vaccine. The vaccine is coming. It
will likely be mandatory, it will certainly have been insufficiently tested, if tested at all.
They need some pro-vaccine advertising, and nothing sells better than "our vaccine is so good,
people are trying to steal it". Most importantly – Enhancing the idea that Sars-Cov-2 is
a unique global threat which puts us all in danger. The unspoken assumption is that Russia
needs to steal our research because the virus is so dangerous we all need to be afraid of it
despite it being
harmless to the vast majority of people .
Nothing shows just how much the Guardian has become the voice of the Deep State more than
its coverage of anything Russia-related. And nothing serves as a better exemplar of how modern
propaganda works.
As it was anti-Russian I expected it to be accompanied with a Luke Harding byline but this
is from the Defence and Security Editor, Dan Sabbagh, Harding, as well as being a plagiarist,
has written four anti-Russian books including "Collusion" about how Russia helped Donald Trump
get into power (using the discredited Steele dossier as his main source). Here Aaron Mate
interviews him leaving him totally uncomfortable by the end.
It's all so dumb and fraudulent . Not worthy of anyone's attention who may possess a few
brain cells. Those who serve up this shit in the name of journalism should be sent back to
primary school for some basic education . Really, we have had enough of this crap from
American morons ever since the Cold War era and here we have the same corrupt media parroting
exactly the same dross about those evil Russians . This scum need a history lesson for had it
not been for Russia's sacrifice and bravery in WW2 these cretins would not be sitting on
their arses writing this dross. This ongoing malevolent campaign against Russia is extremely
disturbing and has all the hallmarks of a psychopathic mindset and all coming from a nation
whose main "industry" is the production of weaponry and who is responsible for the deaths of
between 20 to 30 million people, directly and indirectly since the end of WW2.
Eyes Open , Jul 16, 2020 10:35 PM
It's so obvious the media are pulling a 'dog in a manger' psyop on us. Ie. 'oh no! I never
wanted the vaccine in the first place, but the Russians want to steal ours, so all of a
sudden I want my vaccine' etc.
Most likely Gate's vaccines will cause harm to some, so take them all I say. (My
condolences to the Russians.)
This video – from the horse's mouth. Notice the duping delight:
"Russian vaccine hack"
So the CORPORATE FASCISTS are saying that the Russian Federation got its vaccine against the
CORPORATE FASCIST MASS HYSTERIA FEAR PANIC FRENZY PROPAGANDA CAMPAIGN by hacking? This is not
going to end well for the OLIGARCH MOBSTER PSYCHOPATHS.
John Ervin , Jul 16, 2020 11:35 PM Reply to
S Cooper
"For The Record" (spitfirelist.com) began reporting 4 or 5 years ago that all the
Russiagate baloney, hacks of Hillary et al., was a CIA inside job ~ and related matters like
it, long before that ~ referring listeners to much evidence that CIA cyber-technology had
long been working on black op devices that could hack while leaving "Russian" or "CCP"
digital fingerprints, etc., all the one-trick pony of ceaseless false-flaggery that our Intel
has been using for years, for nearly everything. And that stuff isn't really new.
Oliver Stone interviewed Putin for 4 hrs a couple years ago, carried by cable here, and
asked him point blank, "Did your agencies hack the DP?" Or words to that effect.
And he answered merely, "That was an internal affair of yours."
Of course, VP is a high spymaster himself, it would seem one of the best, ever, and no
stranger to purposeful misdirection certainly, but by the same token of his eminence in that
global realm, he is well supported by the evidence.
Especially, "If past is prologue " and all of its preponderance? Endless .
S Cooper , Jul 17, 2020 12:40 AM Reply to
John Ervin
The aspect which most concerns me is the no holds barred publicly funded sales and
marketing campaign that Psychopath Billy and BIG PHARMA are mounting to find dupes and Guinea
Pigs for their toxic patent medicine snake oil brew. It is going to hurt a lot of people.
"The hack" bull shit fairy tale store is just one of the means employed by those criminal
psychopaths.
John Ervin , Jul 17, 2020 2:16 AM Reply to
S Cooper
Yes indeed, there are many such signs, all of them bad. I don't know why I feel pleased
when I get confirmations of all the worst suspicions, if it only confirms my antennae are
still functioning, whilst being shamed by the brainwashed and the same old headlines . It
should take a lot more or better to please the sensibilities.
I guess it's the sense of vindication, that one can't help but thrill when that terrible
thirst for some reality is slaked.
Or that you have cause to be thankful. Faith tells you this won't last forever, and it's a
real gift that you weren't fooled.
But it can still feel like "cold comfort" when "almost" everyone you see or know, is.
Too many take the bit too nicely. What good does that do?
It shows up a pale country, too dead, as living only in the flesh, really, too numb in the
spirit, not vigilant.
About to be rolled!
voxpox , Jul 16, 2020 9:25 PM
I like this article, it says it all. I have also long harbored a theory that the US
intelligence are behind most of the worlds financial cyber-crime, systematically fleecing the
world to fund their many many operations around the world. They have the tech with Windows
back-doors, the motivation to hide 'off the book' operations and a proven lack of morals as
demonstrated during the Iran–Contra affair, many years ago. but what do I know. As Bill
Maher says, 'I can't prove it but I know it's true'.
John Ervin , Jul 16, 2020 11:59 PM Reply to
voxpox
The USA foreign policy shows a penchant for amoral deceptiveness of ALL other countries,
even best allies, chronically.
So that gives heft to Bill Maher's maxim.
Perennial treaty busters and oath breakers, why would anyone trust?
Fool me once etc.
That's at the core of my take on all USA has said about C-19(84). Been there, done that,
with 100 other false flags, always the same tune.
The boy who cried wolf: Uncle Scam.
Always proven false after all the marbles are stolen. Or at some point down the road. If
not, it shall be, like the JFK fiasco. Like the lone holdout among nations on the Napalm Ban,
or sole rogue to drop an A bomb (75th Anniversary of that cowardly Holocaust coming up in a
few weeks.)
Lone, lone, lone.
A sad little homeboy in the Land of the Lone Gunman. So many, though. Too many, for the
world's good .
~~~~~~~~~£4£&$4$
Don't take it from me, though, I'm a total patriot, really, compared to Mr. Gonzo, Hunter
S. Thompson:
"America just a nation of 200 million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy
guns and no qualms at all about using them on anybody else in the world who tries to make us
uncomfortable."
Hunter always said it like it is, at least at yhr time he saw it, he rode with the Hell's
Angels and wrote the 1st book about them, and wasn't much shy about calling a spade a
spade.
And. Like my own old man: another highly assisted apparent suicide.
A guard pushed me into a corridor with a small metal staircase and we started
descending. From there, I could hear the dreadful sounds of people pounding on metal,
shouting in anguish – all sorts of inhuman moaning and howling.
"Shut up, all of you!" barked the officer into the semi-darkness of that metal
hell.
We walked down the corridor surrounded by cells beyond count, men and women were
clinging to the metal netting of the doors. They were begging for water, toilet paper –
or at least for someone to tell them what time it was. Male prisoners were raising hell after
they noticed me, which put an amused grin on the face of my guard.
He threw me into a cell next to one with a man. The wall between us had no windows so I
couldn't see my 'neighbor', but he certainly liked to tune in to any sound I made. He got so
stimulated hearing me moving around next door and choking on my tears that he pleasured
himself loudly all night long – and I had to listen.
Eric Weinstein, managing director of Thiel Capital and hsot of The Portal podcast, has
gone scorched earth on the New York Times following the Tuesday resignation of journalist
Bari Weiss.
Weinstein describes how The Times has morphed into an activist rag - refusing to cover
"news" unpaletable to their narrative, while ignoring key questions such as whether Jeffrey
Epstein's sex-trafficking ring was "intelligence related."
Jump into Weinstein's Twitter thread by clicking on the below tweet, or scroll down for your
convenience.
At that moment Bari Weiss became all that was left of the "Paper of Record." Why? Because the
existence of Black Racists with the power to hunt professors with Baseball Bats and even
redefine the word 'racism' to make their story impossible to cover ran totally
counter-narrative.
At some point after 2011, the NYT gradually stopped covering the News and became the News
instead. And Bari has been fighting internally from the opinion section to re-establish
Journalism inside tbe the NYT. A total reversal of the Chinese Wall that separates news from
opinion.
This is the paper in 2016 that couldnt be interested in the story that millions of Americans
were likely lying to pollsters about Donald Trump.
The paper refusing to ask the CIA/FBI if Epstein was Intelligence related.
The paper that can't report that it seeks race rioting:
I have had the honor of trying to support both @bariweiss at the New York Times and
@BretWeinstein in their battles simply to stand alone against the internal mob mentality. It is
THE story all over the country. Our courageous individuals are being hunted at work for
dissenting.
Before Bari resigned, I did a podcast with her. It was chilling. I'd make an innocuous
statement of simple fact and ask her about it. She'd reply " That is obviously true but I'm
sorry we can't say that here. It will get me strung up ." That's when I stopped telling her to
hang on.
So what just happened? Let me put it bluntly: What was left of the New York Times just
resigned from the New York Times. The Times canceled itself. As a separate Hong Kong exists in
name only, the New New York Times and affiliated "news" is now the chief threat to our
democracy.
This is the moment when the passengers who have been becoming increasingly alarmed, start to
entertain a new idea: what if the people now in the cockpit are not airline pilots? Well the
Twitter Activists at the @nytimes and elsewhere are not journalists.
What if those calling for empathy have a specific deadness of empathy?
Those calling for justice *are* the unjust?
Those calling "Privilege" are the privileged?
Those calling for equality seek to oppress us?
Those anti-racists are open racists?
The progressives seek regress?
The journalists are covering up the news?
Try the following exercise: put a minus sign in front of nearly every banner claim made by
"the progressives".
Q: Doesn't that make more sense?
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Those aren't the pilots you imagine. And we are far closer to revolution than you think.
Bari and I agree on a lot but also disagree fiercely. And so I have learned that she is
tougher than tough. But these university and journalistic workplaces are now unworkable. They
are the antithesis off what they were built to stand for. It is astounding how long she held
out.
Read her letter. I have asked her to do a make-up podcast & she has agreed. Stay tuned
If you don't want to be surprised again by what's coming understand this: just as there has
been no functioning president, there's now no journalism. We're moving towards a 🌎 of
pure activism.
Prepare to lose your ability to call the police & for more autonomous zones where kids
die so that Govenors & Mayors can LARP as Kayfabe revolutionaries . Disagree with Ms Weiss
all you want as she isn't perfect. But Bari is a true patriot who tried to stand alone. Glad
she's out.
We are not finished by a long shot. What the Intellectual Dark Web tried to do MUST now be
given an institutional home.
Podcast with Bari on The Portal to come as soon as she is ready.
Stay tuned. And thanks for reading this. It is of the utmost importance.
Thank you all. 🙏
P.S. Please retweet the lead tweet from this thread if you understand where we are.
Appreciated.
Criticisms of "cancel culture" often is hypocrtical, as was the case with Weiss, and are connected with prioritizing speech that
shores up the status quo -- necon dominance in the US MSM.
An open letter published by Harper's magazine,
and signed by 150 prominent writers and public figures, has focused attention on the apparent dangers of what has been termed a new
"cancel culture".
The letter brings together an unlikely alliance of genuine leftists, such as Noam Chomsky and Matt Karp, centrists such as J K
Rowling and Ian Buruma, and neoconservatives such as David Frum and Bari Weiss, all speaking out in defence of free speech.
Although the letter doesn't explicitly use the term "cancel culture", it is clearly what is meant in the complaint about a "stifling"
cultural climate that is imposing "ideological conformity" and weakening "norms of open debate and toleration of differences".
It is easy to agree with the letter's generalized argument for tolerance and free and fair debate. But the reality is that many
of those who signed are utter hypocrites, who have shown precisely zero commitment to free speech, either in their words or in their
deeds.
Further, the intent of many them in signing the letter is the very reverse of their professed goal: they want to stifle free speech,
not protect it.
To understand what is really going on with this letter, we first need to scrutinize the motives , rather than the substance,
of the letter.
A new 'illiberalism'
"Cancel culture" started as the shaming, often on social media, of people who were seen to have said offensive things. But of
late, cancel culture has on occasion become more tangible, as the letter notes, with individuals fired or denied the chance to speak
at a public venue or to publish their work.
The letter denounces this supposedly new type of "illiberalism":
"We uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters. But it is now all too common to hear calls
for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought.
"Editors are fired for running controversial pieces; books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity; journalists are barred
from writing on certain topics; professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class; The result has been to steadily
narrow the boundaries of what can be said without the threat of reprisal. We are already paying the price in greater risk aversion
among writers, artists, and journalists who fear for their livelihoods if they depart from the consensus, or even lack sufficient
zeal in agreement."
Tricky identity politics
The array of signatories is actually more troubling than reassuring. If we lived in a more just world, some of those signing –
like Frum, a former speechwriter for President George W Bush, and Anne-Marie Slaughter, a former US State Department official – would
be facing a reckoning before a Hague war crimes tribunal for their roles in promoting "interventions" in Iraq and Libya respectively,
not being held up as champions of free speech.
That is one clue that these various individuals have signed the letter for very different reasons.
Chomsky signed because he has been a lifelong and consistent defender of the right to free speech, even for those with appalling
opinions such as Holocaust denial.
Frum, who coined the term "axis of evil" that rationalised the invasion of Iraq, and Weiss, a New York Times columnist, signed
because they have found their lives getting tougher. True, it is easy for them to dominate platforms in the corporate media while
advocating for criminal wars abroad, and they have paid no career price when their analyses and predictions have turned out to be
so much dangerous hokum. But they are now feeling the backlash on university campuses and social media.
Meanwhile, centrists like Buruma and Rowling have discovered that it is getting ever harder to navigate the tricky terrain of
identity politics without tripping up. The reputational damage can have serious consequences.
Buruma famously lost his job as editor of the New York Review of Books two years ago after after he published and defended an
article that
violated
the new spirit of the #MeToo movement. And Rowling made the
mistake of thinking her followers would be as
fascinated by her traditional views on transgender issues as they are by her Harry Potter books.
'Fake news, Russian trolls'
But the fact that all of these writers and intellectuals agree that there is a price to be paid in the new, more culturally sensitive
climate does not mean that they are all equally interested in protecting the right to be controversial or outspoken.
Chomsky, importantly, is defending free speech for all , because he correctly understands that the powerful are only too
keen to find justifications to silence those who challenge their power. Elites protect free speech only in so far as it serves their
interests in dominating the public space.
If those on the progressive left do not defend the speech rights of everyone, even their political opponents, then any restrictions
will soon be turned against them. The establishment will always tolerate the hate speech of a Trump or a Bolsonaro over the justice
speech of a Sanders or a Corbyn.
By contrast, most of the rest of those who signed – the rightwingers and the centrists – are interested in free speech for
themselves and those like them . They care about protecting free speech only in so far as it allows them to continue dominating
the public space with their views – something they were only too used to until a few years ago, before social media started to level
the playing field a little.
The center and the right have been fighting back ever since with claims that anyone who seriously challenges the neoliberal status
quo at home and the neoconservative one abroad is promoting "fake news" or is a "Russian troll". This updating of the charge of being
"un-American" embodies cancel culture at its very worst.
Social media accountability
In other words, apart from in the case of a few progressives, the letter is simply special pleading – for a return to the status
quo. And for that reason, as we shall see, Chomsky might have been better advised not to have added his name, however much he agrees
with the letter's vague, ostensibly pro-free speech sentiments.
What is striking about a significant proportion of those who signed is their self-identification as ardent supporters of Israel.
And as Israel's critics know only too well, advocates for Israel have been at the forefront of the cancel culture – from long before
the term was even coined.
For decades, pro-Israel activists have sought to silence anyone seen to be seriously critiquing this small, highly militarized
state, sponsored by the colonial powers, that was implanted in a region rich with a natural resource, oil, needed to lubricate the
global economy, and at a terrible cost to its native, Palestinian population.
Nothing should encourage us to believe that zealous defenders of Israel among those signing the letter have now seen the error
of their ways. Their newfound concern for free speech is simply evidence that they have begun to suffer from the very same cancel
culture they have always promoted in relation to Israel.
They have lost control of the "cancel culture" because of two recent developments: a rapid growth in identity politics among liberals
and leftists, and a new popular demand for "accountability" spawned by the rise of social media.
Cancelling Israel's critics
In fact, despite their professions of concern, the evidence suggests that some of those signing the letter have been intensifying
their own contribution to cancel culture in relation to Israel, rather than contesting it.
That is hardly surprising. The need to counter criticism of Israel has grown more pressing as Israel has more obviously become
a pariah state. Israel has refused to countenance peace talks with the Palestinians and it has intensified its efforts to realize
long-harbored plans to annex swaths of the West Bank in violation of international law.
Rather than allow "robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters" on Israel, Israel's supporters have preferred the
tactics of those identified in the letter as enemies of free speech: "swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions
of speech and thought".
Just ask Jeremy Corbyn, the former leader of the Labour party who was reviled, along with his supporters, as an antisemite – one
of the worst smears imaginable – by several people on the Harper's list, including
Rowling and
Weiss . Such claims
were promoted even though his critics could produce no actual evidence of an antisemitism problem in the Labour party.
Similarly, think of the treatment of Palestinian solidarity activists who support a boycott of Israel (BDS), modeled on the one
that helped push South Africa's leaders into renouncing apartheid. BDS activists too have been smeared as antisemites – and Weiss
again has been a prime
offender .
The incidents highlighted in the Harper's letter in which individuals have supposedly been cancelled is trivial compared to the
cancelling of a major political party and of a movement that stands in solidarity with a people who have been oppressed for decades.
And yet how many of these free speech warriors have come forward to denounce the fact that leftists – including many Jewish anti-Zionists
– have been pilloried as antisemites to prevent them from engaging in debates about Israel's behavior and its abuses of Palestinian
rights?
How many of them have decried the imposition of a new definition of antisemitism, by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance,
that has been rapidly gaining ground in western countries?
That definition is designed to silence a large section of the left by prioritizing the safety of Israel from being criticized
before the safety of Jews from being vilified and attacked – something that even the lawyer who authored the definition has come
to
regret .
Why has none of this "cancel culture" provoked an open letter to Harper's from these champions of free speech?
Double-edge sword
The truth is that many of those who signed the letter are defending not free speech but their right to continue dominating the
public square – and their right to do so without being held accountable.
Bari Weiss, before she landed a job at the Wall Street Journal and then the New York Times, spent her student years trying to
get Muslim professors
fired from her university – cancelling them – because of their criticism of Israel. And she explicitly did so under the banner
of "academic freedom", claiming pro-Israel students felt intimidated in the classroom.
The New York Civil Liberties Union concluded that it was Weiss, not the professors, who was the real threat to academic freedom.
This was not some youthful indiscretion. In a book last year Weiss cited her efforts to rid Columbia university of these professors
as a formative experience on which she still draws.
Weiss and many of the others listed under the letter are angry that the rhetorical tools they used for so long to stifle the free
speech of others have now been turned against them. Those who lived for so long by the sword of identity politics – on Israel, for
example – are worried that their reputations may die by that very same sword – on issues of race, sex and gender.
Narcissistic concern
To understand how the cancel culture is central to the worldview of many of these writers and intellectuals, and how blind they
are to their own complicity in that culture, consider the case of Jonathan Freedland, a columnist with the supposedly liberal-left
British newspaper the Guardian. Although Freedland is not among those signing the letter, he is very much aligned with the centrists
among them and, of course, supported the letter in an article
published in the Guardian.
Freedland, we should note, led the "cancel culture" campaign against the Labour party referenced above. He was one of the key
figures in Britain's Jewish community who breathed life into the
antisemitism smears
against Corbyn and his supporters.
But note the brief clip below. In it, Freedland's voice can be heard cracking as he explains how he has been a victim of the cancel
culture himself: he confesses that he has suffered verbal and emotional abuse at the hands of Israel's most extreme apologists –
those who are even more unapologetically pro-Israel than he is.
He reports that he has been called a "kapo", the term for Jewish collaborators in the Nazi concentration camps, and a "sonderkommando",
the Jews who disposed of the bodies of fellow Jews killed in the gas chambers. He admits such abuse "burrows under your skin" and
"hurts tremendously".
And yet, despite the personal pain he has experienced of being unfairly accused, of being cancelled by a section of his own community,
Freedland has been at the forefront of the campaign to tar critics of Israel, including anti-Zionist Jews, as antisemites on the
flimsiest of evidence.
He is entirely oblivious to the ugly nature of the cancel culture – unless it applies to himself . His concern is purely
narcissistic. And so it is with the majority of those who signed the letter.
Conducting a monologue
The letter's main conceit is the pretence that "illiberalism" is a new phenomenon, that free speech is under threat, and that
the cancel culture only arrived at the moment it was given a name.
That is simply nonsense. Anyone over the age of 35 can easily remember a time when newspapers and websites did not have a talkback
section, when blogs were few in number and rarely read, and when there was no social media on which to challenge or hold to account
"the great and the good".
Writers and columnists like those who signed the letter were then able to conduct a monologue in which they revealed their opinions
to the rest of us as if they were Moses bringing down the tablets from the mountaintop.
In those days, no one noticed the cancel culture – or was allowed to remark on it. And that was because only those who held approved
opinions were ever given a media platform from which to present those opinions.
Before the digital revolution, if you dissented from the narrow consensus imposed by the billionaire owners of the corporate media,
all you could do was print your own primitive newsletter and send it by post to the handful of people who had heard of you.
That was the real cancel culture. And the proof is in the fact that many of those formerly obscure writers quickly found they
could amass tens of thousands of followers – with no help from the traditional corporate media – when they had access to blogs and
social media.
Silencing the left
Which brings us to the most troubling aspect of the open letter in Harper's. Under cover of calls for tolerance, given credibility
by Chomsky's name, a proportion of those signing actually want to restrict the free speech of one section of the population – the
part influenced by Chomsky.
They are not against the big cancel culture from which they have benefited for so long. They are against the small cancel culture
– the new more chaotic, and more democratic, media environment we currently enjoy – in which they are for the first time being held
to account for their views, on a range of issues including Israel.
Just as Weiss tried to get professors fired under the claim of academic freedom, many of these writers and public figures are
using the banner of free speech to discredit speech they don't like, speech that exposes the hollowness of their own positions.
Their criticisms of "cancel culture" are really about prioritizing "responsible" speech, defined as speech shared by centrists
and the right that shores up the status quo. They want a return to a time when the progressive left – those who seek to disrupt a
manufactured consensus, who challenge the presumed verities of neoliberal and neoconservative orthodoxy – had no real voice.
The new attacks on "cancel culture" echo the attacks on Bernie Sanders' supporters, who were framed as "Bernie Bros" – the evidence-free
allegation that he attracted a rabble of aggressive, women-hating men who tried to bully others into silence on social media.
Just as this claim was used to discredit Sanders' policies, so the center and the right now want to discredit the left more generally
by implying that, without curbs, they too will bully everyone else into silence and submission through their "cancel culture".
If this conclusion sounds unconvincing, consider that President Donald Trump could easily have added his name to the letter alongside
Chomsky's. Trump used his recent Independence Day
speech at Mount Rushmore to make similar points to the Harper's letter. He at least was explicit in equating "cancel culture"
with what he called "far-left fascism":
"One of [the left's] political weapons is 'Cancel Culture' – driving people from their jobs, shaming dissenters, and demanding
total submission from anyone who disagrees. This is the very definition of totalitarianism This attack on our liberty, our magnificent
liberty, must be stopped, and it will be stopped very quickly."
Trump, in all his vulgarity, makes plain what the Harper's letter, in all its cultural finery, obscures. That attacks on the new
"cancel culture" are simply another front – alongside supposed concerns about "fake news" and "Russian trolls" – in the establishment's
efforts to limit speech by the left.
Attention redirected
This is not to deny that there is fake news on social media or that there are trolls, some of them even Russian. Rather, it is
to point out that our attention is being redirected, and our concerns manipulated by a political agenda.
Despite the way it has been presented in the corporate media, fake news on social media has been mostly a problem of the right.
And the worst examples of fake news – and the most influential – are found not on social media at all, but on the front pages of
the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.
What genuinely fake news on Facebook has ever rivaled the lies justifying the invasion of Iraq in 2003 that were knowingly peddled
by a political elite and their stenographers in the corporate media. Those lies led directly to more than a million Iraqi deaths,
turned millions more into refugees, destroyed an entire country, and fuelled a new type of nihilistic Islamic extremism whose effects
we are still feeling.
Most of the worst lies from the current period – those that have obscured or justified US interference in Syria and Venezuela,
or rationalized war crimes against Iran, or approved the continuing imprisonment of Julian Assange for exposing war crimes – can
only be understood by turning our backs on the corporate media and looking to experts who can rarely find a platform outside of social
media.
I say this as someone who has concerns about the fashionable focus on identity politics rather than class politics. I say it also
as someone who rejects all forms of cancel culture – whether it is the old-style, "liberal" cancel culture that imposes on us a narrow
"consensus" politics (the Overton window), or the new "leftwing" cancel culture that too often prefers to focus on easy cultural
targets like Rowling than the structural corruption of western political systems.
But those who are impressed by the letter simply because Chomsky's name is attached should beware. Just as "fake news" has provided
the pretext for Google and social media platforms to change their algorithms to vanish left-wingers from searches and threads, just
as "antisemitism" has been redefined to demonize the left, so too the supposed threat of "cancel culture" will be exploited to silence
the left.
Protecting Bari Weiss and J K Rowling from a baying left-wing "mob" – a mob that that claims a right to challenge their views
on Israel or trans issues – will become the new rallying cry from the establishment for action against "irresponsible" or
"intimidating" speech.
Progressive leftists who join these calls out of irritation with the current focus on identity politics, or because they fear
being labelled an antisemite, or because they mistakenly assume that the issue really is about free speech, will quickly find that
they are the main targets.
In defending free speech, they will end up being the very ones who are silenced.
UPDATE:
You don't criticise Chomsky however tangentially and respectfully – at least not from a left perspective – without expecting a
whirlwind of opposition. But one issue that keeps being raised on my social media feeds in his defence is just plain wrong-headed,
so I want to quickly address it. Here's one my followers expressing the point succinctly:
"The sentiments in the letter stand or fall on their own merits, not on the characters or histories of some of the signatories,
nor their future plans."
The problem, as I'm sure Chomsky would explain in any other context, is that this letter fails not just because of the other people
who signed it but on its merit too . And that's because, as I explain above, it ignores the most oppressive and most established
forms of cancel culture, as Chomsky should have been the first to notice.
Highlighting the small cancel culture, while ignoring the much larger, establishment-backed cancel culture, distorts our understanding
of what is at stake and who wields power.
Chomsky unwittingly just helped a group of mostly establishment stooges skew our perceptions of free speech problems so that we
side with them against ourselves. There is no way that can be a good thing.
UPDATE 2:
There are still people holding out against the idea that it harmed the left to have Chomsky sign this letter. And rather than
address their points individually, let me try another way of explaining my argument:
Why has Chomsky not signed a letter backing the furore over "fake news", even though there is some fake news on social media?
Why has he not endorsed the "Bernie Bros" narrative, even though doubtless there are some bullying Sanders supporters on social media?
Why has he not supported the campaign claiming the Labour party has an antisemitism problem, even though there are some antisemites
in the Labour party (as there are everywhere)?
He hasn't joined any of those campaigns for a very obvious reason – because he understands how power works, and that on the left
you hit up, not down. You certainly don't cheerlead those who are up as they hit down.
Chomsky understands this principle only too well because here he is
setting it out in relation to Iran:
"Suppose I criticise Iran. What impact does that have? The only impact it has is in fortifying those who want to carry out policies
I don't agree with, like bombing."
For exactly the same reason he has not joined those pillorying Iran – because his support would be used for nefarious ends – he
shouldn't have joined this campaign. He made a mistake. He's fallible.
Also, this isn't about the left eating itself. Really, Chomsky shouldn't be the issue. The issue should be that a bunch
of centrists and right-wingers used this letter to try to reinforce a narrative designed to harm the left, and lay the groundwork
for further curbs on its access to social media. But because Chomsky signed the letter, many more leftists are now buying into that
narrative – a narrative intended to harm them. That's why Chomsky's role cannot be ignored, nor his mistake glossed over.
UPDATE 3:
I had not anticipated how many ways people on the left might find to justify this letter.
Here's the latest reasoning. Apparently, the letter sets an important benchmark that can in future be used to protect free speech
by the left when we are threatened with being "cancelled" – as, for example, with the antisemitism smears that were used against
anti-Zionist Jews and other critics of Israel in the British Labour party.
I should hardly need to point out how naive this argument is. It completely ignores how power works in our societies: who gets
to decide what words mean and how principles are applied. This letter won't help the left because "cancel culture" is being framed
– by this letter, by Trump, by the media – as a "loony left" problem. It is a new iteration of the "politically correct gone mad"
discourse, and it will be used in exactly the same way.
It won't help Steven Salaita, sacked from a university job because he criticised Israel's killing of civilians in Gaza, or Chris
Williamson, the Labour MP expelled because he defended the party's record on being anti-racist.
The "cancel culture" furore isn't interested in the fact that they were "cancelled". Worse still, this moral panic turns the whole
idea of cancelling on its head: it is Salaita and Williamson who are accused – and found guilty – of doing the cancelling, of cancelling
Israel and Jews.
Israel's supporters will continue to win this battle by claiming that criticism of Israel "cancels" that country ("wipes it off
the map"), "cancels" Israel's Jewish population ("drives them into the sea"), and "cancels" Jews more generally ("denies a central
component of modern Jewish identity").
Greater awareness of "cancel culture" would not have saved Corbyn from the antisemitism smears because the kind of cancel culture
that smeared Corbyn is never going to be defined as "cancelling".
For anyone who wishes to see how this works in practice, watch Guardian columnist Owen Jones cave in – as he has done so often
– to the power dynamics of the "cancel culture" discourse in this interview with Sky News. I actually agree with almost everything
Jones says in this clip, apart from his joining yet again in the witch-hunt against Labour's anti-Zionists. He doesn't see that witch-hunt
as "cancel culture", and neither will anyone else with a large platform like his to protect:
The UK will later impose sanctions independently for the first time on dozens of
individuals accused of human rights abuses around the world.
Dominic Raab will name the first violators to have their assets frozen as part of a new
post-Brexit regime.
These are expected to include Russian officials thought to be implicated in the death
of Sergei Magnitsky in 2009.
The whistleblower's maltreatment while in custody has been condemned by the European
Court of Human Rights.
In the past, the UK has almost always imposed sanctions collectively as a member of the
United Nations or European Union but, after its departure from the EU in January, a new
framework is being put in place in UK law .
####
The UK is sanctimonious to a fault. The UK says Magnitsky was a crackerjack tax lawyer and
whistleblower who exposed a gigantic tax fraud by the Russian government. The Russian
government says Magnitsky was a crooked accountant who masterminded a tax-cheat scheme to
help a western crook set up tax shelters and buy Gazprom stock at the price accorded to
nationals only. The UK has been caught in lie after lie after lie, and the scenarios it has
constructed for wrongdoing by Russia on its own soil will barely withstand critical thinking
by alcoholics and farmyard animals. Who's got form here?
That scientific debate soon turned into a geopolitical one, however. EU farmers are
overwhelmingly dependent on North and West Africa for phosphate where, because of the natural
conditions, there is usually a cadmium level far higher than 20mg/kg. At the same time,
phosphate coming from Russia has far lower natural levels of the metal.
Southern European countries feared that switching phosphate supplies away from Africa
to Russia could severely undermine volatile North African economies and trigger social
problems
One of the countries that has strongly opposed the new labeling rules is Poland -- a
country that historically wants to avoid commercial dependence on Russia but also has its own
national fertilizer business and has invested in a Senegalese phosphate mine
####
Plenty more at the link.
We support the environment as long as it benefits our trade partners and is poitically
balanced in our favor.
This looks like the european industry is waving the 'Russia Bad' flag because it cannot
counter the technical aspects and more environmental policies coming out of the EU.
They are also arguing in favor of less transparency and less information for farmers which
is suspect because their fear is that low cadmium fertilizer (from Russia/wherever) may get
tax-breaks to promote its use.
Rather than figure out a way to adapt and help their partners, their first reaction is to
throw poo at the walls.
By John Ryan, Ph.D . – Retired Professor of Geography and Senior Scholar, University of Winnipeg, Canada
If anyone has proven the adage that "a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on it shoes,"
it's Bill Browder. The mega-rich vulture capitalist has been spinning a yarn for years.
Intriguingly, after Germany's leading news magazine kiboshed his fake narrative, Anglo-American media ignored the revelations.
Browder's narrative suits the US/UK establishment as it provides a convenient excuse to sanction Russia, but the story has more
holes than Swiss cheese.
The billionaire vulture capitalist has been a figure of some prominence on the world scene for the past decade. A few months back,
Der Spiegel
published a major exposé on him and the case of Sergei Magnitsky, but the US/UK mainstream media failed to follow it up and so,
aside from Germany, few people are aware of Browder's background.
Browder had gone to Moscow in 1996 to take advantage of the privatization of state companies by then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin.
Browder founded Hermitage Capital Management, a Moscow investment firm registered in offshore Guernsey in the Channel Islands. For
a time, it was the largest foreign investor in Russian securities. Hermitage Capital Management
was rated as extremely successful after
earning almost 3,000 percent in its operations between 1996 and December 2007.
During the corrupt Boris Yeltsin years, with his business partner's US$25 million, Browder
amassed a
fortune. Profiting from the large-scale privatizations in Russia from 1996 to 2006, his Hermitage firm eventually
grew to $4.5 billion.
When Browder encountered financial difficulties with Russian authorities, he portrayed himself as an anti-corruption activist
and became the driving force behind the Magnitsky Act, which resulted in economic sanctions aimed at Russian officials. However,
an examination of Browder's record in Russia and his testimony in court cases reveal contradictions with his statements to the public
and Congress, and raises questions about his motives in attacking corruption in Russia.
Although he has claimed that he was an 'activist shareholder' and campaigned for Russian companies to adopt Western-style governance,
it has been reported that he cleverly destabilized companies he was targeting for takeover. Canadian blogger Mark Chapman has
revealed that after Browder would buy a minority share in a company, he would resort to lawsuits against this company through
shell companies he controlled. This would destabilize the company with charges of corruption and insolvency. To prevent its collapse,
the Russian government would intervene by injecting capital into it, causing its stock to rise -- with the result that Browder's
profits would rise exponentially.
Later, through Browder's Russian-registered subsidiaries, his accountant Magnitsky
acquired extra shares in Russian gas companies such as Surgutneftegaz, Rosneft and Gazprom. This procedure enabled Browder's
companies to pay the residential tax rate of 5.5 percent instead of the 35 percent that foreigners would have to pay.
However, the procedure to bypass the Russian presidential decree that banned foreign companies and citizens from purchasing equities
in Gazprom was an illegal act. Because of this and other suspected transgressions, Magnitsky was interrogated in 2006 and later in
2008. Initially he was interviewed as a suspect and then as an accused. He was then arrested and charged by Russian prosecutors with
two counts of aggravated tax evasion committed in conspiracy with Bill Browder in respect of Dalnyaya Step and Saturn, two of Browder's
shell companies to hold shares that he bought. Unfortunately, in 2009, Magnitsky died in pre-trial detention because of a
failure by
prison officials to provide prompt medical assistance.
Browder has challenged this account and for years he has maintained that Magnitsky's arrest and death were a targeted act of revenge
by Russian authorities against a heroic anti-corruption activist.
It's only recently that Browder's position was challenged by the European Court of Human Rights, which in its ruling on August
27, 2019 concluded that Magnitsky's "arrest was not arbitrary, and that it was based on reasonable suspicion of his having committed
a criminal offence." And as such, "The Russians had good reason to arrest Sergei Magnitsky for Hermitage tax evasion."
"The Court observes that the inquiry into alleged tax evasion, resulting in the criminal proceedings against Mr Magnitskiy,
started in 2004, long before he complained that prosecuting officials had been involved in fraudulent acts."
Prior to Magnitsky's arrest, because of what Russia considered to be questionable activities, Browder had been refused entry to
Russia in 2005. However, he did not take lightly his rebuff by the post-Yeltsin Russian government under Vladimir Putin. As succinctly
expressed
by Professor Halyna Mokrushyna at the University of Ottawa:
[Browder] began to engage in a worldwide campaign against the Russian authorities, accusing them of corruption and violation
of human rights. The death of his accountant and auditor Sergei Magnitsky while in prison became the occasion for Browder to launch
an international campaign presenting the death as a ruthless silencing of an anti-corruption whistleblower. But the case of Magnitsky
is anything but.
Despite Browder's claims that Magnitsky died as a result of torture and beatings, authentic documents and testimonies show that
Magnitsky died because of medical neglect – he was not provided adequate treatment for a gallstone condition. It was negligence typical
at that time of prison bureaucracy, not a premeditated killing. Because of the resulting investigation, many high-level functionaries
in the prison system were fired or demoted.
For the past 10 years, Browder has maintained that Magnitsky was tortured and murdered by prison guards. Without any verifiable
evidence he has asserted that Magnitsky was beaten to death by eight riot guards over 1 hour and 18 minutes. This was never corroborated
by anybody, including by autopsy reports. It was even denied by Magnitsky's mother in a video interview.
Nevertheless, on the basis of his questionable beliefs, he has carried on a campaign to discredit and vilify Russia and its government
and leaders.
In addition to the ruling of the European Court of Human Rights, Browder's basic underlying beliefs and assumptions are being
seriously challenged. Very recently, on May 5, 2020, an American investigative journalist, Lucy Komisar, published an article with
the heading
Forensic photos of Magnitsky show no marks on torso :
On Fault Lines today I revealed that I have obtained never published forensic photos of the body of Sergei Magnitsky, William
Browder's accountant, that show not a mark on his torso. Browder claims he was beaten to death by prison guards. Magnitsky died
at 9:30pm Nov 16, 2009, and the photos were taken the next day.
I noted on the broadcast that though the photos and documents are solid, several dozen U.S. media – both allegedly progressive
and mainstream -- have refused to publish this information. And if that McCarthyite censorship continues, the result of rampant
fear-inducing Russophobia, I will publish it and the evidence on this website.
Despite evidence such as this, till this day Browder maintains that Sergei Magnitsky was beaten to death with rubber batons. It's
this narrative that has attracted the attention of the US Congress, members of parliament, diplomats and human rights activists.
To further refute his account, a 2011
analysis by the Physicians for Human Rights International Forensics Program of documents provided by Browder found no evidence
he was beaten to death.
In his writings, as supposed evidence, Browder provides links to two untranslated Russian documents. They were compiled immediately
after Magnitsky died on November 16, 2009. Recent investigative research has
revealed that one of these appears to be a forgery. The first document, D309, states that shortly before Magnitsky's death:
"Handcuffs were used in connection with the threat of committing an act of self-mutilation and suicide, and that the handcuffs
were removed after thirty minutes." To further support this, a forensic review states that while in the prison hospital, "Magnitsky
exhibited behavior diagnosed as 'acute psychosis' by Dr. A. V. Gaus at which point the doctor ordered Mr. Magnitsky to be restrained
with handcuffs."
The second document, D310, is identically worded to D309 except for a change in part of the preceding sentence. The sentence in
D309 has the phrase "special means were" is changed in D310 to "a rubber baton was."
As such, while D309 is perfectly coherent, in D310 the reference to a rubber baton makes no sense whatsoever, given the title
and text it shares with D309. This and other inconsistencies, including signatures on these documents, make it apparent that D310
was copied from D309 and that D310 is a forgery. Furthermore, there is no logical reason for two almost identical reports to have
been created, with only a slight difference in one sentence. There is no way of knowing who forged it and when, but this forged document
forms a major basis for Browder's claim that Magnitsky was clubbed to death.
The fact that there is no credible evidence to indicate that Magnitsky was subjected to a baton attack, combined with forensic
photos of Magnitsky's body shortly after death that show no marks on it, provides evidence that appears to repudiate Browder's decade-long
assertions that Magnitsky was viciously murdered while in jail.
With evidence such as this, it repeatedly becomes clear that Browder's narrative contains mistakes and inconsistencies that distort
the overall view of the events leading to Magnitsky's death.
Despite Magnitsky's death, the case against him continued in Russia and he was found guilty of corruption in a posthumous trial.
Actually, the trial's main purpose was to investigate alleged fraud by Bill Browder, but to proceed with this they had to include
the accountant Magnitsky as well. The Russian court found both of them guilty of fraud. Afterwards, the case against Magnitsky was
closed because of his death.
After Browder was refused entry to Russia in November of 2005, he launched a campaign insisting that his departure from Russia
resulted from his anti-corruption activities. However, the real reason for the cancellation of his visa that he never mentions is
that in 2003, a Russian provincial court had convicted Browder of evading $40 million in taxes. In addition, his illegal
purchases of shares in Gazprom through the use of offshore shell companies
were reportedly valued at another $30 million, bringing the total figure of tax evasion to $70 million.
It's after this that the Russian federal government next took up the case and initially went after Magnitsky, the accountant who
carried out Browder's schemes.
But back in the US, Browder portrayed himself as the ultimate truth-teller, and embellished his tale by asserting that Sergei
Magnitsky was a whistleblowing "tax lawyer," rather than one of Browder's accountants implicated in tax fraud. As his case
got more involved, he presented a convoluted explanation that he was not responsible for bogus claims made by his companies. This
is indeed an extremely complicated matter and as such only a summary of some of this will be presented.
The essence of the case is that in 2007, three shell companies that had once been owned by Browder were used to claim a $232 million
tax refund based on trumped-up financial loses. Browder has stated that the companies were stolen from him, and that in a murky operation
organized by a convicted fraudster, they were re-registered in the names of others. There is evidence, however, that Magnitsky and
Browder may have been part of this convoluted scheme.
Browder's main company in Russia was Hermitage Capital Management, and associated with this firm were a large number of shell
companies, some in the Russian republic of Kalmykia and some in the British Virgin Islands. A law firm in Moscow, Firestone Duncan,
owned by Americans, did the legal work for Browder's Hermitage. Sergei Magnitsky was one of the accountants for Firestone Duncan
and was assigned to work for Hermitage.
An accountant colleague of Magnitsky's at Firestone Duncan, Konstantin Ponomarev, was interviewed in 2017 by Komisar, who said:
According to Ponomarev, the firm – and Magnitsky -- set up an offshore structure that Russian investigators would later
say was used for tax evasion and illegal share purchases by Hermitage the structure helped Browder execute tax-evasion and illegal
share purchase schemes.
He said the holdings were layered to conceal ownership: The companies were 'owned' by Cyprus shells Glendora and Kone, which,
in turn, were 'owned' by an HSBC Private Bank Guernsey Ltd trust. Ponomarev said the real owner was Browder's Hermitage Fund.
He said the structure allowed money to move through Cyprus to Guernsey with little or no taxes paid along the way. Profits could
get cashed out in Guernsey by investors of the Hermitage Fund and HSBC.
Ponomarev said that in 1996, the firm developed for Browder 'a strategy of how to buy Gazprom shares in the local market,
which was restricted for foreign investors.'
In the course of their investigation, on June 2, 2007, Russian tax investigators raided the offices of Hermitage and Firestone
Duncan. They seized Hermitage company documents, computers and corporate stamps and seals. They were looking for evidence to support
Russian charges of tax evasion and illegal purchase of shares of Gazprom.
In a statement to US senators on July 27, 2017, Browder
stated that Russian Interior Ministry officials "seized all the corporate documents connected to the investment holding companies
of the funds that I advised. I didn't know the purpose of these raids so I hired the smartest Russian lawyer I knew, a 35-year-old
named Sergei Magnitsky. I asked Sergei to investigate the purpose of the raids and try to stop whatever illegal plans these officials
had."
Contrary to what Browder claims, Magnitsky had been his accountant for a decade. He had never acted as a lawyer, nor did he have
the qualifications to do so. In fact, in 2006, when questioned by Russian investigators, Magnitsky
said he was an
auditor on contract with Firestone Duncan. In Browder's testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2017, he claimed Magnitsky
was his lawyer, but in 2015, in his testimony under oath in the US government's Prevezon case, Browder told a different story, as
will now be related.
On Browder's initiative, in December 2012, he presented documents to the New York District Attorney alleging that a Russian company,
Prevezon, had "benefitted from part of the $230 million dollar theft uncovered by Magnitsky and used those funds to buy a number
of luxury apartments in Manhattan." In September 2013, the New York District Attorney's office filed money-laundering charges
against Prevezon. The company hired high-profile New York-based lawyers to defend themselves against the accusations.
As reported by Der Spiegel, Browder would not voluntarily agree to testify in court, so Prevezon's lawyers sent process servers
to present him with a subpoena, which he refused to accept and was caught on video literally running away. In March 2015, the judge
in the Prevezon case ruled that Browder would have to give testimony as part of pre-trial discovery. Later, while in court and under
oath and confronted with numerous documents, Browder was totally evasive. Lawyer Mark Cymrot spent six hours examining him, beginning
with the following exchange:
Cymrot asked: Was Magnitsky a lawyer or a tax expert?
He was "acting in court representing me," Browder replied.
And he had a law degree in Russia?
"I'm not aware he did."
Did he go to law school?
"No."
How many times have you said Mr. Magnitsky is a lawyer? Fifty? A hundred? Two hundred?
"I don't know."
Have you ever told anybody that he didn't go to law school and didn't have a law degree?
"No."
Critically important, during the court case, the responsible US investigator admitted during questioning that his findings were
based exclusively on statements and documents from Browder and his team. Under oath, Browder was unable to explain how he and his
people managed to track the flow of money and make the accusation against Prevezon. In his 2012 letter that launched the court case,
Browder referred to "corrupt schemes" used by Prevezon, but when questioned under oath, he admitted he didn't know of any. In fact,
to almost every question put forth by Mark Cymrot, Browder replied that he didn't know or didn't remember.
(Read the next part of The Real Bill Browder story on Thursday, here on RT)
Good article, yes I remember 2016 and the power grid that was taken out by the Ukies. A
lot of generators were sold that summer /year. lol I see Putin and Russia – just
sitting /waiting it out – patiently as usual. Time is on their side and bad things are
happening fast in the domestic west.
Of course Russia is part of the NWO because they have to be. They sell oil, gaz and
natural resources internationally and have Corporations that have a big sayso in the
Government. I think Putin, a long time ago , decided to spare his people from the same fate
of the Western populace or at least , make it as comfortable, as can be expected – in
these times. It helps by not having the Ghettos, Gangs, Dysfunctional Melting Pot, POlice
state, and a slew of Wars to deal with -- for starters. Like the Saker said – Russian
problems are – all the BS directed at them from ther West .
A British court decision unmasks new evidence of FBI abuses in the Russia collusion
probe.
Warby's lengthy ruling unearthed a gem of new evidence to answer the question: Steele
kept his own notes of what he told FBI agents the first time he met them on July 5, 2016 in
London to discuss his anti-Trump Russia research.
And, Warby revealed, the notes make clear that Steele told his FBI handlers from the
get-go that the dossier's "ultimate client were (sic) the leadership of the Clinton
presidential campaign."
And after Trump won the election, the judge added, Steele disclosed he gave copies of
his dossier to longtime Clinton friend Strobe Talbot in hopes it would get to the top of the
State Department
####
Plenty more at the link.
BiDumb has to win in November to make all this go away.
Who knew that part of Ray Dalio's "radical transparency" fetish was accusing potential
competitors of stealing trade secrets, and when there is no theft, to radically fabricate
"evidence" to shut them down?
While it has long been known that in the annals of active management lore, not one hedge
fund comes even close to pursuing non-compete clauses and trade secrets lawsuits against its
former employees with the same ferocity, tenacity and unbridled glee as the world's biggest
hedge fund Bridgewater (despite valiant attempts by RenTec and Citadel they are at best runners
up), what nobody knew until now, is that when Bridgewater was lacking enough legal facts on its
side, it would resort to simply fabricating them.
That's what the world's biggest hedge fund did on at least one occasion according to a panel
of three arbitrators, who according to the FT ,
found that Bridgewater "manufactured false evidence" in its attempt to prove that former
employees had stolen its trade secrets.
According to humiliating - to Ray Dalio - court documents which were made public on Monday,
and which quote findings from a panel of three arbitrators, Bridgewater - which manages $138BN
in assets, and whose billionaire founder prides in the way "radical transparency" is shoved
down all employees' throats - was found to have "filed its claims in reckless disregard of its
own internal records, and in order to support its allegations of access to trade secrets,
manufactured false evidence".
https://imasdk.googleapis.com/js/core/bridge3.394.0_en.html#goog_122824125
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The dramatic discovery emerged as a result of a dispute launched by Bridgewater against
former employees, Lawrence Minicone and Zachary Squire, in November 2017, in which the fund
claimed the duo had misappropriated trade secrets and breached their contracts. However,
Bridgewater's attempt to bully not only its former employees from launching a new fund, but
also the legal system, promptly suffered a spectacular breakdown, when a panel of three
arbitrators found that Bridgewater had "failed to identify the alleged trade secrets with
specificity", knowing Minicone and Squire would have to fight an expensive case in order to
defend against the allegations, the court filing states.
In other words, even though its former employees - who quit years prior in mid-2013 - did
nothing wrong, Bridgewater knew that simply by throwing armies of lawyers after them, it could
bankrupt them into submission. And while this strategy has worked over and over, this time it
failed.
"The trade secrets as described constituted publicly available information or information
generally known to professionals in the industry, and . . . Claimant [Bridgewater], a highly
sophisticated entity, knew that the trade secrets as described did not constitute trade
secrets," the tribunal ruled, according to material quoted in the court filing.
There was more. Just to cover its bases, in addition to the trade secrets claim, Bridgewater
also accused its two former employees of unfair competition after they co-founded Tekmerion
Capital Management, a systematic macro hedge fund with about $60MM in assets under management,
which received backing from billionaire Alan Howard and Michael Novogratz.
But here too, Bridgewater hit a brick wall, when the arbitrators found that Bridgewater's
claims had been brought in "bad faith".
"Claimant's actions in continuing to press its claims constitute further evidence that its
intentions were not to prove misappropriation, but rather, were to adversely affect
respondents' ability to conduct a competitive business," the arbitrators ruling stated,
according to the new court filing.
So how did all of this leak? Simple: Bridgewater was too stingy to pay the falsely accused
duo $2 million in lawyer fees, forcing Minicone and Squire to file a court petition against
Bridgewater on July 1 to confirm the $2 million in lawyers fees awarded by the arbitration
panel in January and, in a move that is set to terminally humiliate and expose Dalio as a
consummate hypocrite, to have the full decision by the arbitrators made public.
And while it is hardly news to those in the industry just how despicable Bridgewater's
tactics have been in the past when faced with a potential competition emerging from its own
ranks who may - gasp - steal the fund's "trading secrets" such as momentum and inverse
variance, which incidentally are perfectly public "strategies", or at least expose to the world
just how Bridgewater ended up being a $160BN $138BN hedge fund, what we are far more
interested in is whether Bridgewater's former general counsel was instrumental in creating the
strategy used by the fund against its former employees.
We are, of course, talking about one James Comey.
Here are the specifics: Squire joined Bridgewater in 2010 as an investment associate and
spent three years at the group working with its research and trading teams before quitting in
mid-2013. Minicone, also an investment associate at Bridgewater, joined in 2008 and remained
there for almost five years. He too quit in 2013.
What does that have to do with James Comes? Well, before joining the FBI, readers may or may
not know that the man who singlehandedly tried to take down the standing US president on what
he knew well were false charges, was general counsel of Bridgewater from 2010 to 2013 - the
very years that overlapped with Squire and Minicone's tenure at Bridgewater too. y_arrow
Blankenstein , 52 minutes ago
This isn't the first time Dalio has used fear and intimidation.
"Ray Dalio, the billionaire founder of the world's largest hedge fund, Bridgewater
Associates, likes to say that one of his firm's core operating principles is "radical
transparency" when it comes to airing employee grievances and concerns.
But one employee said in a complaint earlier this year that the hedge fund was like
a"cauldron of fear and intimidation."
The employee's complaint with the Connecticut Commission on Human Rights and
Opportunities, which has not been previously reported, describesan atmosphere of
constant surveillance by video and recordings of all meetings -- and the presence of
patrolling security guards-- that silence employees who do not fit the
Bridgewater mold.""
This isn't the first time Dalio has used fear and intimidation.
"Ray Dalio, the billionaire founder of the world's largest hedge fund, Bridgewater
Associates, likes to say that one of his firm's core operating principles is "radical
transparency" when it comes to airing employee grievances and concerns.
But one employee said in a complaint earlier this year that the hedge fund was like
a"cauldron of fear and intimidation."
The employee's complaint with the Connecticut Commission on Human Rights and
Opportunities, which has not been previously reported, describesan atmosphere of
constant surveillance by video and recordings of all meetings -- and the presence of
patrolling security guards-- that silence employees who do not fit the
Bridgewater mold.""
its ingrained into American culture to accuse then find evidence. Just like WMD in Iraq it
happens in corporate America as well.
slightlyskeptical , 1 hour ago
Who writes this rubbish? The author is actually using Bridgewater tactics to try to smear
Comey with something that happened 4 years after he left.
The dramatic discovery emerged as a result of a dispute launched by Bridgewater against
former employees, Lawrence Minicone and Zachary Squire, in November 2017, in which the fund
claimed the duo had misappropriated trade secrets and breached their contracts.
and then
Comey was general counsel of Bridgewater from 2010 to 2013.
Blankenstein , 56 minutes ago
Maybe read the article next time. The suggestion was that Comey developed the strategy for
Bridgewater while employed there, as he was involved when the same tactics were used against
Trump.
Entertaining1 , 2 hours ago
Even before the Comey angle, a brilliant article.
More of this author, please.
On a hot summer day like this, please remember Google sucks cocksicles by the dozen.
The_American , 2 hours ago
Every FBI "law" ENFORCEMENT act of the last 20 years needs to undergo FULL REVIEW.
Plenty of decent people have headed to five eyes thinking they would find a better life,
but we also take in the scum of the world that can be used against their own countries. These
generally rise to high places.
Imperial France seems of the same mindset and Chechen freedom fighters are now fighting for
their freedom in France. Yankistans freedom fighter Osama Bin Larden was just fighting for
freedom apparently. Like the AQ media wing 'White Helmets' that UK and Canada took in, not to
mention the nazi's that participated in the genocides in their own countries in WWII.
When peasants living conditions are constantly improving, there will be no revolt and no
civil war. Yankistan propaganda can't even come up with an opposition in China.
Angloshere propaganda mostly projects onto target countries what they themselves are
doing.
"It is unusual for countries to publicly talk about cyberwarfare tactics" Is not the USA
position itself to consider such an attack to be a declaration fo war?
President Trump confirmed in an interview with the Washington Post that the US launched a
cyberattack against infamous Russian troll farm the Internet Research Agency (IRA) during the
2018 midterms.
The Post reported the attack in February 2019, but this is the first time Trump has
confirmed it took place. It is unusual for countries to publicly talk about cyberwarfare
tactics.
The IRA was indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller in 2018 for conspiracy to interfere
with the 2016 presidential election. Russian influence campaigns were also
detected during the 2018 midterms .
President Trump has confirmed that the US launched a cyberattack on the Internet Research
Agency (IRA), an infamous Russian troll farm, during the 2018 midterm elections.
The Washington Post first reported on the attack, which blocked the IRA's internet access,
in February 2019. The administration did not comment on the report at the time, but Trump
confirmed the attack in an
interview with Post columnist Marc Thiessen published Friday.
Thiessen asked whether Trump had launched the attack, to which the president replied
"correct." This is the first time Trump or the White House has confirmed the attack, and it is
unusual for countries to publicly talk about cyberwarfare tactics.
According to The Post's 2019 report, US Cyber Command's attack started on the first day of
voting for the November 2018 midterm elections, and continued for a few days while votes were
tallied. "They basically took the IRA offline," one source familiar with the matter told The
Post.
"Look, we stopped it," Trump told Thiessen. The Internet Research Agency was indicted by
special counsel Robert Mueller in 2018 for conspiracy to interfere with the 2016 presidential
election. Russian influence campaigns were also
detected during the 2018 midterms .
Trump also claimed that Obama had remained silent on the issue of Russian disinformation
campaigns ahead of the 2016 election.
"[Obama] knew before the election that Russia was playing around. Or, he was told. Whether
or not it was so or not, who knows? And he said nothing. And the reason he said nothing was
that he didn't want to touch it because he thought [Hillary Clinton] was winning because he
read phony polls. So, he thought she was going to win. And we had the silent majority that
said, 'No, we like Trump,'" Trump said.
"... If Skripal is involved with all the Clinton stuff, then he would want an insurance policy for example on an USB drive that he could leave for someone to pick up, and leak if something foreshortened his life ..."
"The judge also concluded that Steele's notes of his first interaction with the FBI
about the dossier on July 5, 2016 made clear that his ultimate client for his research
project was Hillary Clinton's campaign as directed by her campaign law firm Perkins Coie. The
FBI did not disclose that information to the court."
Finally we are getting down to where the cheese binds. Hillary Clinton's campaign, with
Mrs. Clinton's knowledge, commissioned the Steele dossier to try to torpedo Trump's election
prospects. She never thought he could win, but the Dems wanted to make sure.
I'd bet a dollar to a doughnut Skripal was the source of the Russian 'intelligence', and
that he was bumped off afterward to make sure he stayed quiet.
The whole Russiagate scandal was just Democrat bullshit, and they kept up with it long
after they all knew they were lying. And Biden thinks he's going to get elected, after that
revelation? The Democrats deserve to be expelled from politics en masse. Leading with that
wretched prick Schiff.
It would seem likely that had the Klintonator won the 2016 Presidential election, Sergei
Skripal might have been left alone mouldering with his guinea pigs and cats in his Salsibury
home. Perhaps he had to take the fall for HRC's loss in the election, for whatever reason
(not shovelling enough shit into the dossier to bring down Trump perhaps); someone had to
take the blame and of course HRC will never admit responsibility for her own failure.
Well, you never know – Russians are kind of an endangered species in the UK. They
turn up dead whenever a public accusation of another Putin 'state hit' would be a useful
feature in the papers.
What I want to know is if the paths of the Skripals passed with those of the supposed
Russian assassins (which I assume to be possible decoys) or anyone else in space, but not
necessarily time. If Skripal is involved with all the Clinton stuff, then he would want
an insurance policy for example on an USB drive that he could leave for someone to pick up,
and leak if something foreshortened his life
It could well have been a simple dead-drop and when alerted by their phones being turned
off and batteries removed, the priority was to immobilize/incapacitate them. A bit tricky in
public, but not at all impossible by a near/passer by to their bench with an aerosol, say a
cyclist walking with his bike After all, they did also have the Chief nurse of the BA on hand
just in case it went wrong as things sometimes do. Which leads to the question, was it just
the Brits alone, together with the Americans, or watching the Americans and then cleaning up
their mess? 2 or more likely 3 seem most likely if we look at sheer brazeness.
That concludes my speculation for the day! Maybe I should be a journalist. I could be paid
for this!
Yes, you never know, but it's certainly hard to believe Occam was English. It seems pretty
clear the simplest explanation is "MI6 bumped him off and blamed it on Russia". When you are
trying to arrange a death which is bound to be suspicious, you want to do it in a way that
when it becomes public knowledge, the first people the public thinks of is not you. means,
motive and opportunity all strongly favour the English side. It seems to be be fairly common
knowledge that Skripal wanted to return to Russia; we have no way of knowing if he planned to
live there or just visit, more likely the latter. But Putin decides to send an assassination
team to England to rub him out. Instead of welcoming him home to Russia, where he could
prevent the British from investigating, and then killing him. Presumably in a much more
prosaic fashion – say, running him down with a car – rather than employing some
exotic poison or isotope which will scream 'Russia!!' How long would the British have been
investigating the Skripals' deaths (if they had died) had they been run down with a 7.5 ton
lorry which was subsequently found burned to a shell several counties away? Would the British
papers have been shrieking "Putin's Truck!!!" next morning? But no – Russian assassins
always have to 'send a message', which must inspire Britain to 'send a message' of its own by
punishing the entire country. Maybe it's just me, but flash-cooking Skripal in the High
Street with a flamethrower in broad daylight would send a message. And then say to the
police, "Keep your hands where I can see 'em, unless you want a couple of shashliks,
comrade", before speeding away in an Aurus Senat limousine. That would send a message,
too.
Remember, Sir John Sawers is the former chief of MI6 and is in no way linked to the
UK government. He is a private individual. This is not Hybrid Warfare.
Which is good, because it allows Ed to earnestly parrot his talking points and add plenty
of filler in that well known balanced, independent and journalistically shining star of an
outlet, the Daily Fail.
The lesson I think we can take from this is that UK gov has finally been caught in its own
bitch 'n' slap China trap and also a victim of t-Rump's bash China campaign. Time has run out
on this strategy. It was more than happy to sign on to loud anti-China slogans, as long as it
didn't cost UK plc serious cash or future investme nt. The problem is that China has had
enough of mostly ignoring those slings and arrows for years.
The new so-called 'Wolf-warrior' China response that the west is publicly bemoaning as
'threatening' comes after so much sinophobia. Thus, UK gov has got the message much more
forcefully in the last few days and the opposition like 'ex' directors of British
intelligence and others are all hands to the wheel because they do not hold official power
and have no other way of influencing the government. 2020 really is a momentous year.
I didn't really have time to read it because I have to leave for work, but the headline
alone is enough to showcase classic Lucas behavior – enthusiastically cheer the
government 'taking a stand', and leaving the accountants to sort out the damage and try to
salvage something from the rubble. You know, it is a miracle Britain has survived as long as
it has with the eejits who are let to run it.
Again, probably not an urgent problem unless some existing Chinese aircraft in service are
on their last legs and urgently must be replaced. In which case they could go with Airbus if
the situation could not wait. China has options. Boeing does not.
The west loves to portray the Chinese as totally without ethics, and if you have a product
they can't make for themselves, they will buy it from you only until they have figured out
how to make it themselves, and then fuck you, Jack. I don't see any reason to believe the
Chinese value alliances less than the west does, or are any more incapable of grasping the
value of a give-and-take trade policy. The west – especially the United States –
favours establishing a monopoly on markets and then using your inability to get the product
anywhere else as leverage to force concessions you don't want to make; is that ethical? China
must surely see the advantages of a mutually-respectful relationship with Russia, considering
that country not only safeguards a significant length of its border from western probing, but
supplies most of its energy. There remain many unexplored avenues for technical, engineering
and technological cooperation. At the same time, Russia is not in a subordinate position
where it has to endure being taken advantage of.
Trade is hard work, and any partner will maneuver for advantage, because everyone in
commerce likes market share and money. But Washington has essentially forgotten how to
negotiate on mutually-respectful terms, and favours maneuvering its 'partners' into
relationships in which the USA has an overwhelmingly dominant position, and then announcing
it is 'leveling the playing field'. Which means putting its thumb on the scale.
20 Saudi nationals involved in the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi;
25 Russian nationals involved in the mistreatment and death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky,
who uncovered widespread corruption;
two high-ranking Myanmar generals involved in violence against Rohingya people and
other ethnic minorities
Two organisations involved in forced labour, torture and murder in North Korea's gulags
have also been listed
The new autonomous regime will allow the UK to work independently with allies such as
the US, Canada, Australia and the EU
####
But not Mohammed Bin Salman, obvs. Those weapons aren't going to sell themselves!
Can the UK government put itself on the list for arbitary detention and expulsion of Brits
born in Jamaica but resident in the UK for decades and asked to come to the UK due to
the shortage of national labor, aka the Windrush scandal? The latest news on that is there is
no automatic redress for those screwed over by Theresa May+. They have to prove they that
they had been unfairly targeted!
'Suspected' killers. That's good enough for sanctions these days. Hopefully the rest of
the EU will take Brexit as an opportunity to break with the Russophobic policies of the loony
UK and its crackpot big brother, and re-orient its economy on a separate trajectory from
theirs. We're already going to end up with two distinct trading blocs who operate largely
outside one another, to the detriment of both but much more so to the United States. We don't
need three. I'm watching in appalled fascination to see what happens to the American airliner
market when it doesn't get any more Chinese orders. Once I would have said it was impossible
that Boeing would go under, but now I'm not so sure.
Speaking of Boeing, no more 747's will be built after the current order backlog is
completed, about 13 more planes. That'll be it for four-engine airliners – too
expensive to run. Twin-engine planes can achieve almost the same range for less outlay. And
economy is going to have to be the watchword of the aviation industry for awhile if it is to
survive: air travel in the USA is down about 80% in the past week. Of course Boeing stock
rose, though, because the investor class lives in a different reality.
I can't help noting that this will mean Boeing will rely even more heavily on the 737.
After neocons in Washinton adopted Magnitsky act all bets for US-Russia cooperation are off.
And that in a long run will hurt the USA too.
Notable quotes:
"... Every time you "impose costs" on another country, you make more enemies and inspire more end-around plays which take you as an economic player out of that loop. And by and by what you do is of no great consequence, and your ability – your LEGAL ability, I should interject – to 'impose costs' is gone. ..."
Every time you "impose costs" on another country, you make more enemies and inspire
more end-around plays which take you as an economic player out of that loop. And by and by
what you do is of no great consequence, and your ability – your LEGAL ability, I should
interject – to 'impose costs' is gone. Sooner or later America's allies are going
to refuse to recognize its extraterritorial sanctions, which it has no legal right to impose;
it gets away with it by threatening costs in trade with the USA, which is a huge economy and
is something under its control. But that practice causes other countries to gradually
insulate themselves against exposure, and one day the cost of obeying will be greater than
the cost of saying "Go fuck yourself".
The New York Times goes a little further, stressing that the agreement would entail an
economic and military partnership: "It calls for joint training and exercises, joint research
and weapons development and intelligence sharing -- all to fight "the lopsided battle with
terrorism, drug and human trafficking and cross-border crimes." This would give Iran access
to some fairly high-tech systems, perhaps fighter aircraft and training and tech support, but
of that part of the package, I would rate intelligence sharing the highest. It would
potentially give Iran a heads-up on what the USA is planning in the region before it even is
briefed to Congress – Washington leaks like a sieve, and while it is often intentional,
it happens when it is not desired as well.
Washington's policy now consists of little more than frantically papering over cracks as
they appear; its ability to direct the world is gone and its ability to influence it is
deteriorating by the day as it becomes more and more intensely disliked, and everyone's
enemy. Perversely, this brings war closer as a possibility, as threats of it are no longer an
effective deterrent to partnerships and exchanges the USA does not like. More and more of
those threatened are taking the attitude of "Put up or shut up". Trade deals outside
Washington's influence increase those countries' insulation against US sanctions, and perhaps
it is beginning to dawn on the western banking cartel that it is in imminent danger of being
isolated itself, like a fleck of grit that irritates an oyster and finds itself encased in
nacre.
Beijing follows through on its promised retaliation for Washington's move to hold
individuals to account
Senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio among those facing sanctions in latest tit-for-tat
move
####
More at the link.
What springs to mind is that Groucho Marx quote: "I refuse to join any club that would
have me as a member."
That the US sanctions China with an act named after a dodgy Russian book-keeper working
for a thief is all kinds of wrong, but as we all know, the ends justify the means. Hamsters
are happy.
Newt Gingrich has an informative article on FOX this weekend about the threat Trump has
posed to traditional Republican court hangers-on. He illustrates how this presidency has
destroyed the careers that many of these very wealthy and powerful members of the Deep State
saw as their dynastic inheritance. I point it out because Gingrich would know intimately how
those people feel.
Couple that with the clumsy approach Trump made to the china shop throughout his campaign,
is it any wonder that the FBI, a fundamentally stupid operation now and at all times in the
past, has been busting a gut? I came of age in the sixties and went to university at a center
of opposition to the Deep State that was then concerned with killing poor yellow peasants in
the rice fields of Southeast Asia. We all assumed they had us in dossiers they built and
studied carefully as they closed in on our coffee house discussions. Never happened.
Please keep in mind that these bureaucrats would never do anything that might krinkle the
crease in their trousers. Also bear in mind that the reports we read are written by English
Majors, probably affirmative action hires, in the lower bowels of unhealthy Washington office
buildings. The only people who read them are people who manage to pry them out of the sweaty
little fingers of desperately single women.
All of the Washington bureaucratic swamp is a manifestation of White Welfare, people hired
because they are related to somebody who wants to keep them from turning to prostitution.
"... The most interesting document of all is an intelligence assessment by DHS in the run up to the now famous Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, which starkly contradicts the mainstream media and FBI's narrative. ..."
"... In a document dated August 9th, 2017, DHS wrote "We assess that anarchist extremists' use of violence as a means to oppose racism and white supremacist extremists' preparations to counterattack anarchist extremists are the principal drivers of violence at recent white supremacist rallies." ..."
"... Ideological uniformity is important in the FBI's relationship with local law enforcement, a flyer sent to law enforcement personnel in Texas shows. ..."
"... As Douglas Valentine points out, these fusion centers are Phoenix centers, which CIA developed in Vietnam to eradicate independent civil society. You can see the CIA mannerisms they teach the Junior Spy Cadets at the fusion center: pretend classmarks: (U//LES), Roger, Wilco, Over and Out! Breathless dumbshit cops get to use U just like real spies, but they don't get get collateral access and they have to make up little codes to try and blow off public records law. ..."
The Boston Regional Intelligence Center (BRIC) reported
similar information in its investigation of the Boston Free Speech Rally on August 19th, 2017.
BRIC noted that the nationalist and free speech demonstrators, about 60 of them in total, had a
permit for the event, while the anarchist groups that showed up to heckle-veto them were there
illegally.
The leftist rioters began attacking the protesters, and later, began engaging in gratuitous
yet apparently coordinated violence against police officers attempting to intervene, causing
multiple injuries.
The most interesting document of all is an intelligence assessment by DHS in the run up to
the now famous Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, which starkly contradicts the
mainstream media and FBI's narrative.
In a document
dated August 9th, 2017, DHS wrote "We
assess that anarchist extremists' use of violence as a means to oppose racism and white
supremacist extremists' preparations to counterattack anarchist extremists are the principal
drivers of violence at recent white supremacist rallies."
... ... ...
The close working relationship between mainstream social media companies, the FBI and "NGOs"
(the ADL and SPLC) is clear and assumed, adding a new layer of understanding when it comes to
tech censorship and the power of privately run organizations that are not subject general
ethics or government accountability.
Ideological uniformity is important in the FBI's relationship with local law enforcement, a
flyer sent to
law enforcement personnel in Texas shows.
The event, hosted by the FBI for local cops, featured lectures on "hate" (which is not a
crime) from a former member of the Westboro Baptist Church and the ex-lead singer of a skinhead
rock band. The conference was hosted in December 2017, so one can only imagine this
indoctrination has gotten more intense since then.
Ultimately, we can gather from these documents a climate of incompetence, rejection of facts
for political reasons, and a culture of selective prosecution. Those who post memes making fun
of the election are treated as conspirators against the Constitutional rights of others, while
anarchists who actively conspire in the open to do the same are rarely prosecuted by the
FBI.
The most disturbing aspect of all this is how groups like the Anti-Defamation League appear
to have more sway over the FBI's investigative priorities than intelligence provided to them by
local fusion centers.
It appears that in defense of their power, our elites are willing to do away with all
liberal pretenses and take on "emergency orders" that ultimately punishes peaceful dissent
while allowing real criminals to go free.
Law enforcement is fully aware of who provokes the fighting and rioting at riots: the
left. The documents from fusion centers across the country (intelligence provided by local
police departments) repeatedly report this.
But
Both the FBI and to a lesser extent the Department of Homeland Security are far more
concerned with political ideology and creating propaganda than upholding the law.
As Douglas Valentine points out, these fusion centers are Phoenix centers, which CIA
developed in Vietnam to eradicate independent civil society. You can see the CIA mannerisms
they teach the Junior Spy Cadets at the fusion center: pretend classmarks: (U//LES), Roger,
Wilco, Over and Out! Breathless dumbshit cops get to use U just like real spies, but they don't
get get collateral access and they have to make up little codes to try and blow off public
records law.
This is why when asshole cops strangle you, you can't complain to the city. CIA controls the
cops, not the city. This is most obvious in NYPD, with actual CIA secret police like Sanchez
and Cohen, arresting you like cops to facilitate illegal CIA domestic spying. DHS and FBI are
in there too, of course, fishing for dissent to repress but they're controlled by CIA focal
points.
So next time a pig kneels on your head you can't just burn down the precinct, you have to
burn down the CIA fusion center, and Langley too.
Aside from siccing cops on the latest internal enemies, CIA also uses fusion centers to
propagate the party line to cops, who will credulously swallow it and pass it on to show off
their double-secret spy connections. For instance, they circulated alt media disinfo claiming
KGB killed JFK. This happened to coincide with Unz and other bravura JFK coup exposes, and with
CIA's Russiagate fiasco.
"We assess that anarchist extremists' use of violence as a means to oppose racism and
white supremacist extremists' preparations to counterattack anarchist extremists are the
principal drivers of violence at recent white supremacist rallies."
Is there a bigger political statement than this? The anarchist extremists aren't opposing
racism, they are opposing the government(s). "White supremacist" is a pejorative label used to
discredit people's right to free assembly. Clearly, the only investigating the FBI does is on
whom it decides are political opponents.
I find it incredibly frustrating that all of this scandalous information is out there
confirming what we already knew to be true and yet these organizations, the media, and
especially elected officials continue on as if this isn't the case. It's vexing. Frustrating.
Enraging.
If this was a dictatorship, at least we could rage against that, but because it has the
words "democracy" slapped onto it, we are supposedly able to change things. And yet,
representative democracy has proven that nothing changes if the elites do not will it. It's
just a vile scheme by plutocrats to keep us in chains of our own imagination: "well, we voted
for this so I have to live with the results," no we didn't, and do we truly?
I think Solzhenitsyn would respectfully disagree on behalf of the 66 million Russian
Christians who were tortured, raped and slaughtered during 1917-1989, not to mention the
fourteen years he spent locked up in the gulags run by Jewish Communists.
Might also be a few Ukrainians who disagree with your assessment given the 11-17 million
murdered by Jewish Bolsheviks in the 1932 Holodomor, which to my knowledge is still the single
biggest genocide in human history.
Then we'd have a position of strength from which to force the end to Jewish occupation of
America – which is necessary before the rest of the world's gentile populations,
particularly Europe, can take similar action.
America freeing herself will be good for America, but not necessary for other nations. For
instance, Putin freed Russia from her oligarchs, the overwhelming majority of them Jewish, well
before America had shown any progress on this matter. Actually, Russia freed herself in
spite of America!
White man's welfare, they call it. They hold pigs in contempt just like everybody else. But
this is how CIA finds the eager beaver cops who'll break the law to suck up and play James Bond
with them.
That beaner psycho Sanchez blabbed CIA's real intention while he was illegally spying
undercover as a NYPD pig: they don't just want to solve crimes, they want to keep you from
committing crimes in the first place. They think it's their job to to keep you under control.
These drug-dealing, gun-running, money-laundering, kiddy-pimping criminal scumbags rule your
country because they can kill you and torture you and get away with it. Even if you're the
president. Your government is CIA, and CIA is a totalitarian state. Until you storm Langley
like the Germans stormed the Stasi, all your reforms and revolutions are worth shit.
Antifa members routinely cross state lines to violate the civil rights of those they
perceive as "fascists" yet the FBI does nothing. Since it's obvious the FBI is dominated by
partisan leftists who are either sympathetic with antifa (and BLM) or actively colluding them
them against pro-white and right of center groups engaged in lawful but politically incorrect
activity.
The FBI is clearly taking their marching orders from the ADL who's lobbied them for years to
take a more active and hostile stance towards the pro-white and anti-semitic right. But given
the leftist ideological proclivities of the average special agent and their superiors this
wasn't that hard of a sell.
The FBI declared that it would begin investigating memes posted on Twitter intended to
satirize low civic education by telling people to vote for Hillary Clinton via text message
as a "Conspiracy Against Rights Provided by the Constitution and Laws of the United
States"
Yet the FBI did absolutely nothing about the black panthers intimidating voters at a Philly
precinct in 2008. Their illegal actions were witnessed by several poll watchers yet the
Obama/Holder DOJ promptly dropped the charges upon taking office.
The FBI is awash in naked partisanship and corruption and should have at least 25% of its
funding cut and be barred from surveilling or infiltrating groups engaged in politically
incorrect but lawful activity. It's become an appendage of the Democrat party and radical left
wing establishment and should be treated as such.
You are both right. Soviet Communism was far more murderous and brutal, BUT the West faces a
greater crisis. After all, communism didn't wipe Russia off the map, and indeed, Russians began
to regain control and power after Stalin's death. Also, Stalin had done much to check Jewish
Power, and there was a kind of cultural conservatism in many walks of life.
@Levtraro to HIM and had City of London-Israeli financing. So what actually happened is
that the Jews, who had been ousted from power by Krushchev and Brezhnev in the post-ww2 era,
got back into positions of economic power in Russia. A position that, as I noted, they had
lost. This idea that Putin is a nationalist is simply not true. He is a Jew-boy lapdog who
takes his orders from Tel Aviv and London..
The Soviet economy has significant State ownership. Part of what Putin did was to put the oil
industry back into the hands of the State so the State would have the Revenues. Most countries
do this with Oil and Gas revenue. It is very popular and provides employment and desperately
needed money to pay the paltry pensions many Russians subside on.
Russia hasn't been free since 1917 and is still not free. To believe otherwise is to be blinded
by Eastern Jewish smoke and mirrors.
Chabbad is not having the time of its life in Russia. Neither are Zion uber alles like in
our Congress. It quite different in Russia. Russia has a bit more freedom that we do from Zion
uber alles.
For the eighth time this past decade, Russian authorities told a foreign Chabad rabbi
living in Russia to leave the country.
Josef Marozof, a New York-born rabbi who began working 12 years ago for Chabad in the city
of Ulyanovsk 400 miles east of Moscow, was ordered earlier this week to leave because the FSB
security service said he had been involved in unspecified "extremist behavior."
"British court rules against Christopher Steele ..." just the news
"Justice Mark Warby of the High Court of England and Wales ordered Steele's firm, Orbis
Business Intelligence, to pay a modest 18,000 English pounds – about $22,596 in American
currency – each to Petr Aven and Mikhail Fridman as compensation for a violation of
Britain's Data Protection Act 1998 .
Warby ruled that while Steele had a national security interest to share his intelligence
with U.S. and British authorities, several of the allegations in Memo 112 of the Steele dossier
were "inaccurate or misleading as a matter of fact. "" just the news
*********
"The judge ruled that in Memo 112, one of several that made up Steele's dossier, there were
six factually inaccurate or unproven claims that Steele provided from his alleged intelligence
sources including that:
the businessmen did not do favors for or receive favors from Putin as the memo
claimed;
Fridman and Aven did not provide informal foreign policy advice to the Russian leader as
Steele alleged;
Fridman did not meet with Putin in September 2016 as claimed by Steele's source;
the businessman did not bribe Putin when he was Deputy Mayor of St Petersburg;And Fridman
and Aven did not do Putin's political bidding as the dossier alleged." just the news
**********
"The ruling further accentuates that much of the Steele dossier contained unproven Internet
rumor or false information , some possible from Russian intelligence, as the Justice Department
inspector general concluded last December. Nonetheless, the FBI used evidence from Steele's
dossier to support a warrant targeting Trump campaign figures in four occasions, claiming to
the court that agents had verified the information.' j ust the news
*****
"The judge also concluded that Steele's notes of his first interaction with the FBI about
the dossier on July 5, 2016 made clear that his ultimate client for his research project was
Hillary Clinton's campaign as directed by her campaign law firm Perkins Coie . The FBI did not
disclose that information to the court.
"The supposition that the Clinton campaign was the ultimate client "is in line with the FBI
Note of 5 July 2016, which records Mr. Steele telling the FBI that Orbis had been instructed by
Mr. [Glenn] Simpson of Fusion and 'Democratic Party Associates' but that 'the ultimate client
were (sic) the leadership of the Clinton presidential campaign.' The FBI Note also indicates
that Mr Steele had been told by that stage that Mrs Clinton herself was aware of what Orbis had
been commissioned to do," Warby concluded." just the news
---------------
Justice Sir Mark Warby is, I take it, something like a SCOTUS justice in the US. His
decision makes it clear that the "Steele Dossier" is a work of fiction constructed by Steele
for the express purpose of helping Clinton defeat Trump.
For this to have taken so much time to emerge indicates to me that the present FBI director
is neither loyal to President Trump nor to the truth. Who is the idiot or political enemy who
suggested him as FBI Director to Trump. Pence maybe? No, it was Chris Christie. pl
I noticed the story. Not that any of that is proof. But I think in this case the burden of
proof was on Mr. Steel and he failed to meet it.
In looking at the damages, I think Mr. Steele got off very lightly, which makes sense for
someone who was probably carrying water only after having been given explicit permission to
carry that water by the British intelligence elite.
I remember Chris Steele from college. His hair was always impeccable.
Wray acted as New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's personal attorney during the federal
investigation into lane closures leading to the George Washington Bridge that were put in
place by members of Christie's administration as political retribution for a mayor who did
not support Christie's reelection campaign.
...
Chris Christie said last week he thought Wray "would provide great leadership at the
FBI," though he declined to say whether he had recommended him to the president. The two
met when Christie was a U.S. attorney in New Jersey and Wray was at the Justice Department.
They collaborated on a criminal investigation into the accounting practices of
Bristol-Myers Squibb.
The Daily Mail (print edition) recently splashed all over its front page that Christopher
Steele has now produced another "dossier" claiming that a lot of Britain's top influential
people, including politicians, are being bribed by the Chinese company Huawei to support
Huawei's involvement in the construction of Britain's 5G.
The BBC reports on the Mail story:
"For its main story, the Daily Mail says the diplomatic war over Huawei's involvement in
Britain's 5G network has taken an extraordinary twist, after a dossier accused China of
trying to manipulate key establishment figures in the UK to back the telecoms giant.
It says the report, commissioned by a New York film producer, names several prominent
individuals, claiming the aim was to make them China's "useful idiots".
The paper says those identified in the report have issued statements strenuously denying
knowledge of or involvement in any such operation.
A Huawei spokesman is quoted as saying the company categorically rejects the unfounded
allegations, which it says are the latest in a long-running American campaign against
it."
Thanks, Jennifer; I didn't really have to do much – Moscow Exile was kind and
psychic enough to print out Straw's whole editorial, else I might have had to subscribe to
The Independent to even see it. *Shudder*. And Straw just opened his head and let the
bullshit flow – I only had to redirect the stream a little here and there.
I don't think Miller was the neighbour, I seem to remember a different name nope, that was
Ross Cassidy, who was cited by John Helmer as perhaps the only person Skripal trusted enough
to have left a key with him, but he didn't live next door. Pablo Miller does indeed also live
in Salisbury, but I have seen no mention of where,
Pablo Miller, Mark Urban and Hamish de Bretton-Gordon all served in the same tank regiment
in the British Army. I have seen one other source – can't remember where now –
that claimed Christopher Steele also served in the same regiment, but that's not true –
he was recruited straight out of Cambridge at graduation, by MI6, and worked for them for 22
years. That's not to say there were not connections, though – Steele was also Case
Officer for Litvinenko, and was allegedly the first to assess that Litvinenko's death was 'a
Russian state hit'.
"Over a career that spanned more than 20 years, Steele performed a series of roles, but
always appeared to be drawn back to Russia; he was, sources say, head of MI6's Russia desk.
When the agency was plunged into panic over the poisoning of its agent Alexander Litvinenko
in 2006, the then chief, Sir John Scarlett, needed a trusted senior officer to plot a way
through the minefield ahead – so he turned to Steele. It was Steele, sources say, who
correctly and quickly realised that Litvinenko's death was a Russian state "hit"."
You'll enjoy that piece by The Grauniad – it goes on and on about how first-rate
credible Steele was, and how the quality of his work is above reproach. His legendary
'dossier', obviously, has since fallen apart and been dismissed as fanciful
disinformation.
Has there been another mutiny in Trump's White House, as Obama's former ambassador to Russia
piles on the nonsense about Trump being in Putin's pocket?
Special to Consortium News
C orporate media are binging on leaked Kool Aid not unlike the WMD concoction they offered
18 years ago to "justify" the U.S.-UK war of aggression on Iraq.
Now Michael McFaul, ambassador to Russia under President Obama, has been enlisted by The
Washington Post 's editorial page honcho, Fred Hiatt, to draw on his expertise (read,
incurable Russophobia) to help stick President Donald Trump back into "Putin's pocket." (This
has become increasingly urgent as the canard of "Russiagate" -- including the linchpin claim
that Russia hacked the DNC -- lies gasping for air.)
In an
oped on Thursday McFaul presented a long list of Vladimir Putin's alleged crimes, offering
a more ostensibly sophisticated version of amateur Russian specialist, Rep. Jason Crow's (D-CO)
claim that: "Vladimir Putin wakes up every morning and goes to bed every night trying to figure
out how to destroy American democracy."
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry with McFaul meeting Vladimir Putin and Russian Foreign
Minister Sergey Lavrov in Moscow, Russia, on May 7, 2013. (State Department)
McFaul had -- well, let's call it an undistinguished career in Moscow. He arrived with a
huge chip on his shoulder and proceeded to alienate just about all his hosts, save for the
rabidly anti-Putin folks he openly and proudly cultivated. In a sense, McFaul became the
epitome of what Henry Wooton described as the role of ambassador -- "an honest man sent to lie
abroad for the good of his country." What should not be so readily accepted is an ambassador
who comes back home and just can't stop misleading.
Not to doubt McFaul's ulterior motives; one must assume him to be an "honest man" -- however
misguided, in my opinion. He seems to be a disciple of the James Clapper-Curtis LeMay-Joe
McCarthy School of Russian Analysis.
Clapper, a graduate summa cum laude , certainly had the Russians pegged! Clapper was
allowed to stay as Barack Obama's director of national intelligence for three and a half years
after perjuring himself in formal Senate testimony (on NSA's illegal eavesdropping). On May 28,
2017 Clapper told NBC's Chuck
Todd about "the historical practices of the Russians, who typically, are almost genetically
driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever, which is a typical Russian technique."
As a finale, in full knowledge of Clapper's proclivities regarding Russia, Obama appointed
him to prepare the evidence-impoverished, misnomered "Intelligence Community Assessment"
claiming that Putin did all he could, including hacking the DNC, to help Trump get elected --
the most embarrassing such "intelligence assessment" I have seen in half a century .
Obama and the National Security State
I have asked myself if Obama also had earned some kind of degree from the
Clapper/LeMay/McCarthy School, or whether he simply lacked the courage to challenge the
pitiably self-serving "analysis" of the National Security State. Then I re-read "Obama Misses the Afghan
Exit-Ramp" of June 24, 2010 and was reminded of how deferential Obama was to the generals and
the intelligence gurus, and how unconscionable the generals were -- like their predecessors in
Vietnam -- in lying about always seeing light at the end of the proverbial tunnel.
Thankfully, now ten years later, this is all
documented in Craig Whitlock's, "The Afghanistan Papers: At War With the Truth." Corporate
media, who played an essential role in that "war with the truth", have not given Whitlock's
damning story the attention it should command (surprise, surprise!). In any case, it strains
credulity to think that Obama was unaware he was being lied to on Afghanistan.
Some Questions
Clark Gable (l.) with Charles Laughton (r.) in Mutiny on the Bounty, 1935.
Does no one see the irony today in the Democrats' bashing Trump on Afghanistan, with the
full support of the Establishment media? The inevitable defeat there is one of the few
demonstrable disasters not attributable directly to Trump, but you would not know that from the
media. Are the uncorroborated reports of Russian bounties to kill U.S. troops aimed at making
it appear that Trump, unable to stand up to Putin, let the Russians drive the rest of U.S.
troops out of Afghanistan?
Does the current flap bespeak some kind of "Mutiny on the Bounties," so to speak, by a
leaker aping Eric Chiaramella? Recall that the Democrats lionized the CIA official seconded to
Trump's national security council as a "whistleblower" and proceeded to impeach Trump after
Chiaramella leaked information on Trump's telephone call with the president of Ukraine. Far
from being held to account, Chiaramella is probably expecting an influential job if his patron,
Joe Biden, is elected president. Has there been another mutiny in Trump's White House?
And what does one make of the
spectacle of Crow teaming up with Rep. Liz Cheney (R, WY) to restrict Trump's planned
pull-out of troops from Afghanistan, which The Los Angeles Timesreports
has now been blocked until after the election?
Hiatt & McFaul: Caveat Editor
And who published McFaul's oped? Fred Hiatt, Washington Post editorial page editor
for the past 20 years, who has a long record of listening to the whispers of anonymous
intelligence sources and submerging/drowning the subjunctive mood with flat fact. This was the
case with the (non-existent) weapons of mass destruction in Iraq before the U.S.-UK attack.
Readers of the Post were sure there were tons of WMD in Iraq. That Hiatt has invited
McFaul on stage should come as no surprise.
To be fair, Hiatt belatedly acknowledged that the Post should have been more
circumspect in its confident claims about the WMD. "If you look at the editorials we write
running up [to the war], we state as flat fact that he [Saddam Hussein] has weapons of mass
destruction," Hiatt said in an interview with the Columbia Journalism Review . "If
that's not true, it would have been better not to say it." [CJR, March/April 2004]
At this word of wisdom, Consortium News founder, the late Robert Parry,
offered this comment: "Yes, that is a common principle of journalism, that if something isn't
real, we're not supposed to confidently declare that it is." That Hiatt is still in that job
speaks volumes.
'Uncorroborated, Contradicted, or Even Non-Existent'
It is sad to have to remind folks 18 years later that the "intelligence" on WMD in Iraq was
not "mistaken;" it was fraudulent from the get-go. The culprits were finally exposed but never
held to account.
Announcing on June 5, 2008, the bipartisan conclusions from a five-year study by the Senate
Intelligence Committee, Sen. Jay Rockefeller ( D-WV)
said the attack on Iraq was launched "under false pretenses." He described the intelligence
conjured up to "justify" war on Iraq as "uncorroborated, contradicted, or even
non-existent."
Homework
Yogi Berra in 1956. (Wikipedia)
Here's an assignment due on Monday. Read McFaul's
oped carefully. It appears under the title: "Trump would do anything for Putin. No wonder
he's ignoring the Russian bounties: Russia's pattern of hostility matches Trump's pattern of
accommodation."
And to give you a further taste, here is the first paragraph:
"Russian President Vladimir Putin appears to have paid Taliban rebels in Afghanistan to
kill U.S. soldiers. Having resulted in at least one American death, and maybe more, these
Russian bounties reportedly produced the desired outcome. While deeply disturbing, this
effort by Putin is not surprising: It follows a clear pattern of ignoring international
norms, rules and laws -- and daring the United States to do anything about it."
Full assignment for Monday: Read carefully through each paragraph of McFaul's text and
select which of his claims you would put into one or more of the three categories adduced by
Sen. Rockefeller 12 years ago about WMD on Iraq. With particular attention to the evidence
behind McFaul's claims, determine which of the claims is (a) "uncorroborated"; which (b)
"contradicted"; and which (c) "non-existent;" or (d) all of the above. For extra credit, find
one that is supported by plausible evidence.
Yogi Berra might be surprised to hear us keep quoting him with "Deja vu, all over again."
Sorry, Yogi, that's what it is; you coined it.
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the
Saviour in inner-city Washington. During his 27-year career as a CIA analyst, he prepared and
briefed The President's Daily Brief for Presidents Nixon, Ford, and Reagan. He is
co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of
Consortium News.
PleaseContributeto Consortium News on its25th Anniversary
Gad, one wonders if it can ever get much lower in the press and the answer is yes, it can
and will go lower, i.e. the mcfaul/hiatt tag team. They are still plumbing for the lows.
The question becomes just how stupid these two are or how stupid do they believe the
readership is to read and believe this garbage.
Voice from Europe , July 6, 2020 at 11:58
By now the Russia did it ! is in effect a joke in Russia. Economically, politically, geo
strategically China and Asia and Africa have become more important and reliable partners of
Russia than the USA. And Europe is also dropping fast on the trustworthy partners
list…..
John , July 5, 2020 at 12:55
Michael McFaul and Fred Hiatt are both long-time members of the Council on Foreign
Relations (CFR), flagship of the globalist “liberal world order”. The CFR and its
many interlocking affiliates, along with their media assets and frontmen in government, have
dominated US policy since WW2. Most of the Fed chairmen and secretaries of State, Treasury,
Defense and CIA have been CFR members, including Jerome Powell and Mark Esper.
The major finance, energy, defense and media corporations are CFR sponsors, and several of
their execs are members. David Rubenstein, billionaire founder of the notorious Carlyle
Group, is the current CFR chairman. Laurence Fink, billionaire chairman of BlackRock, is a
CFR director. See lists at the CFR website.
Anna , July 6, 2020 at 09:38
Michael McFaul and Fred Hiatt are both very active promoters of hate crimes. Neither has
any decency hence decency is allergic to war profiteers and opportunistic liars.
The poor USA; to descend to such a deep moral hole that both Michael McFaul and Fred Hiatt
are still alive and prospering. Shamelessness and presstituting are paid well in the US.
Dems and Reps are already mad.You cannot destroy what does not exist;like Democracy in
these United States.Nor God or Putin could.This has always being a fallacy.This is not a
democracy;same thing with”comunist China or the USSR.Those two were never
socialist.There has never being a real Socialist or Communist country.
Guy , July 4, 2020 at 12:26
“It is sad to have to remind folks 18 years later that the
“intelligence” on WMD in Iraq was not “mistaken;” it was fraudulent
from the get-go. The culprits were finally exposed but never held to account.”
That statement goes to the crux of the matter .Why should journalists care about what is true
or a lie in their reports ,they know they will never be held to account .They should be held
to account through the court system . A lie by any journalist should be actionable by any
court of law . The fear of jail time would sort out the scam journalists we presently have to
endure . As it is they have perverted the profession of journalism and it is the law of the
jungle .No true democracy should put up with this. We are surrounded with lies that are
generated by the very establishment that should protect it’s citizens from same .
Skip Scott , July 4, 2020 at 15:36
They are spoon fed those lies by our “intelligence” agencies. As CNN’s
Jeff Zucker said, “We’re not investigators, we’re journalists”.
Replace “journalists” with “toadies” or “shills” for our
“intelligence” community and you’ve gotten to the truth of the matter.
Anna , July 6, 2020 at 09:50
The ‘journalists’ observe how things have been going on for Cheney the Traitor
and Bush the lesser — nothing happened to the mega criminals. The hate-bursting and
war-profiteering Cheney’s daughter has even squeezed into US Congress.
In a healthy society where human dignity is cherished, the Cheney family will be ostracized
and the family name became a synonym for the word ‘traitor.’ In the unhealthy
scoiety of Clintons, Obamas, Epstein, Mueller, Adelsons, Clapper, and Krystols, human dignity
is a sin.
Ricard Coleman , July 6, 2020 at 11:42
Our institutions including journalism are not merely corrupt, they are degenerate. That
is, the corruption is not occasional or the exception is is by design, desired and entirely
normal.
Stan W. , July 4, 2020 at 12:10
I’m still confident that Durham’s investigation will expose and successfully
prosecute the maggots that infest our government.
Skip Scott , July 4, 2020 at 15:29
What is the basis for this confidence?
John Puma , July 4, 2020 at 12:03
Re: whether Obumma “had earned some kind of degree from the Clapper/LeMay/McCarthy
School” of Russia Analytics.
It would be a worthy addition to his degree collection featuring that earned from the
Neville Chamberlain Night School of Critical Political Negotiation.
Jeff Harrison , July 4, 2020 at 11:16
Hmmm. Lessee. The US attacks Afghanistan with about the same legitimacy that we had when
we attacked Iraq and the Taliban are in charge. We oust the Taliban from power and put our
own puppets in place. What idiot thinks that the Taliban are going to need a bounty to kill
Americans?
Jeff Harrison, I like your logic. Plus, I understand that far fewer Americans are being
killed in Afghanistan than were under Obama’s administration.
AnneR , July 4, 2020 at 10:27
Frankly, I am sick to death of the unwarranted, indeed bestial Russophobia that is
megaphoned minute by minute on NPR and the BBC World Service (only radio here since my
husband died). If it isn’t this latest trumped up (ho ho) charge, there are repeated
mentions, in passing, of course, of the Russiagate, hacking, Kremlin control of the Strumpet
to back up the latest bunch of lies. Doesn’t matter at *all* that Russiagate was
debunked, that even Mueller couldn’t actually demonstrably pull the DNC/ruling elites
rabbit out of the hat, that the impeachment of the Strumpet went nowhere. And it clearly
– by its total absence on the above radio broadcasts – doesn’t matter one
iota that the Pentagonal hasn’t gone along, that gaping holes in the confabulation are
(and were) obvious to those who cared to think with half a mind awake and reflecting on past
US ruling elite lies, untruths, obfuscations. Nope. Just repeat, repeat, repeat. Orwell would
clap his hands (not because he agreed with the atrocious politics but the lesson is
learnt).
Added to the whipped up anti-Russia, decidedly anti-Putin crapola – is of course the
Russian peoples’ vote, decision making on their own country’s changes to the
Basic Law (a form of Constitution). When the radio broadcasts the usual sickening
anti-Russian/Putin propaganda regarding this vote immediately prior they would state that the
changes would install Putin for many more years: no mention that he would have to be elected,
i.e. voted by the populace into the presidency. (This was repeated ad infinitum without any
elaboration.) No other proposed changes were mentioned – certainly not that the Duma
would gain greater control over the governance of the country and over the president’s
cabinet. I.e. that the popularly elected (ain’t that what we call democracy??)
representatives in the Duma (parliament) would essentially have more power than the
president.
But most significantly, to my mind, no one has (well of course not – this is Russia)
raised the issue of the fact that it was the Russian people, the vox populi/hoi polloi, who
have had some say in how they are to be governed, how their government will work for them.
HOW much say have we had/do we have in how our government functions, works – let alone
for us, the hoi polloi? When did we the citizenry last have a voting say on ANY sentence in
the Constitution that governs us??? Ummm I do believe it was the creation of the wealthy
British descended slave holding, real estate ethnic-cleansing lot who wrote and ratified the
original document and the hardly dissimilar Congressional and state types who have over the
years written and voted on various amendments. And it is the members of the upper classes in
the Supreme Court who adjudicate on its application to various problems.
BUT We the hoi polloi have never, ever had a direct opportunity to individually vote for
or against any single part of the Constitution which is supposed to be the
“democratic” superstructure which governs us. Unlike the Russians a couple of
days ago.
Richard Coleman , July 6, 2020 at 15:48
“HOW much say have we had/do we have in how our government functions,
works…” See, that’s your mistake right there. WE don’t have a
government. We need one, but we ain’t got one. THEY have a government which they let us
go through the motions of electing. ‘Member back when Bernie was talking about a
Political Revolution?
Here’s a little fact for you. The five most populous states have a total of
123,000,000 people. That’s 10 Senators. The five least populated states have a total of
3.5 million. That’s also 10 Senators. Democracy anyone?
vinnieoh , July 4, 2020 at 09:37
There have been three coup d’état within the US within the lifetimes of most
that read these pages. The first was explained to us by Eisenhower only as he was exiting his
time from the national stage; the MIC had co-opted our government. The second happened in
2000, with the putsch in Florida and then the adoption by the neocon cabal of Bush /Chaney of
the PNAC blueprint “Strategies for Rebuilding America’s Defenses” (Defenses
– hahahaha – shit!). The third happened late last year and early this year when
the bottom-up grass-roots movement of progressivism was crushed by the DNC and the
cold-warrior hack Biden was inserted as the champion of “the opposition
party.”
And, make no mistake that Kamala Harris WILL be his running mate. It was always going to
be Harris. It was to be Harris at the TOP of the ticket as the primaries began, but she
wasn’t even placing in the top tier in any of the contests. However, the poohbahs and
strategists of the DNC are nothing if not determined and consistent. If Biden should win, we
should all start practicing now saying “President Harris” because that is what
the future holds. For the DNC, she looks the part, she sounds the part, but more importantly
she is the very definition of the status quo, corporate ass-kisser, MIC tool.
The professional political class have fully colluded to fatally cripple this democratic
republic. “Democracy” is just a word they say like, “Where’s my
kickback?” (excuse me – my “motivation”.) This bounty scam and the
rehabilitation of GW Bush are nothing but a full blitzkrieg flanking of Trump on the right.
And Trump of course is so far out of his depth that he actually believes that Israel is his
friend. (A hint Donny: Israel is NO-ONE’S friend.)
What is most infuriating? hope-crushing? plain f$%&*#g scary? is that the majority of
Americans from all quarters do not want any of what the professional political class keeps
dumping on us. The very attempt at performing this upcoming election will finally and forever
lay completely bare the collapse of a functioning government. It’s going to be very
ugly, and it may very well be the end. Dog help us all.
Richard Coleman , July 6, 2020 at 15:51
Don’t you think that the assassination of JFK counts as a coup d’etat?
Zhu , July 7, 2020 at 02:10
Apres moi, le Deluge.
John Drake , July 7, 2020 at 11:25
Oh gosh how can you forget the Kennedy Assassination. Most people don’t realize he
was had ordered the removal of a thousand advisors from Vietnam starting the process of
completely cutting bait there, as he had in Laos and Cambodia. All of which made the generals
apoplectic. The great secret about Vietnam-which Ellsberg discovered much latter, and
mentioned in his book Secrets, another good read- was that every president had been warned it
was likely futile. Kennedy was the only one who took that intelligence seriously-like it was
actually intelligent intelligence.
Enter stage right Allen Dulles(fired CIA chief), the anti Castro Cubans, the Mafia and
most important the MIC; exit Jack Kennedy.
Douglas, JFK why he died and why it matters is the best work on the subject. And no Oswald
did not do it; it was a sniper team from different angles, but read the book it gets
complicated.
Roger , July 4, 2020 at 09:11
from Counterpunch.org : “Around 15,000 Soviet troops perished in the Afghan War
between 1979 and 1989. The US funneled more than $20 billion to the Mujahideen and other
anti-Soviet fighters over that same period. This works out to a “bounty” of $1.33
million for each Soviet soldier killed.”
Skip Scott , July 4, 2020 at 08:35
I am wondering how Cheney and Crow can block Trump from withdrawing the troops from
Afghanistan. Is Trump Commander in Chief, or not? How can two senators stop the Commander in
Chief from commanding troop movements? I realize they control the budget, but aren’t
they crossing into illegality by restricting Trump’s ability to
“command”?
Toad Sprocket , July 4, 2020 at 16:49
Yeah, I imagine it’s illegal. Didn’t Lindsay Graham threaten the same thing
when Trump was thinking of pulling troops/”advisers” from Syria? And other
congress warmongers joined in though I don’t think any legislation was passed. They
can’t be bothered to authorize the starts of wars but want to step in when someone
tries to end them.
Oh, and Schumer on South Korea troops, I think that one did pass. Almost certainly illegal
if it came down to it, but our government is of course lawless. And our courts full of judges
who are bought off or moronic or both.
dean 1000 , July 4, 2020 at 06:52
The soft coup attempt continues Ray. More lies and bullshit. It may continue until
election day. Will the media fess-up to its lies after the fact again?
Francis Lee , July 4, 2020 at 04:49
“Vladimir Putin wakes up every morning and goes to bed every night trying to figure
out how to destroy American democracy.”
Yes, of course it is a well-known ‘fact’ that Putin has nothing better to do
than destory American democracy, and I bet he has dreams about it too! But I am minded to
think that if anybody has a penchant for destroying American democracy it is the powers that
be in the US deep state, intelligence agencies, and zionist cliques controlling the President
and Congress.
”Those whom the gods would destroy they first make mad.”
The American establishment seems to be suffering from a bad case of
‘projection’ as psychiatrists call it. That is to say accusing others of what
they are themselves actually doing.
The whole idiotic circus would be hilarious if it were not so serious.
Antonia Young , July 4, 2020 at 12:20
Putin’s (and by extension the Russian Federation’s) primary objective is
international stability. “Destroying America, dividing Americans is the last thing he
wants.) Putin learned many lessons during the break-up of the U.S.S.R. observing the carpet
baggers/oligarchs/vultures who descended on the weak nation, absconding with it’s
wealth and resources at mere fractions of their real value. The deep state’s worst fear
is the co-operation btwn Putin and President Trump to make the world more peaceful, stable,
co-operative and prosperous.
rosemerry , July 4, 2020 at 16:10
The whole conceited and arrogant “belief” that
1. the USA has any resemblance to a democracy and
2 Pres. Putin has nothing else to do but think how he could do a better job of showing the
destructive and irresponsible behavior of the USA than its own leaders” and media can
do with no help
has no basis in reality.
If anything, Putin is such a stickler for international law, negotiations, avoidance of
conflict that he is regarded by many as too Christian for this modern, individualistic,
LBGTQ,”nobody matters but me” worldview of the USA!
Steve Naidamast , July 5, 2020 at 19:54
“If the enemy is self destructing, let them continue to do so…”
Napoleon
Zhu , July 7, 2020 at 02:17
“zionist cliques”: Christian Zionist fighting Fundies, eager for the End of
the World, the Second Coming of Jesus.
delia ruhe , July 4, 2020 at 01:09
Yup, we got a Bountygate. Since my early morning visit to the Foreign Policy site, the
place has exploded with breathless articles on the dastardly Putin and the cowardly Trump,
who has so far failed to hold Putin to account. Reminded me of a similar explosion there when
Russiagate finally got the attention the Dems thought it deserved.
(Anyone think that the intel community pays a fee to each of the FP columnists whenever
one of their a propaganda narratives needs a push to get it off the ground?)
He wrote a sensational book about the practices he experienced of the CIA paying German
journalists to publish certain stories.
The book was a big best seller in Germany.
Its English translation was suppressed for years, but I believe is now available.
Susan Siens , July 5, 2020 at 16:30
Reply to John Chuckman: I’d love to read this book but it wasn’t available a
few years ago when I looked. I’ll look again!
Voice from Europe , July 6, 2020 at 11:52
Gekaufte journalisten.
Ulfkotte admitted he signed off on numerous articles that were prepared for him during his
career. The last year’s of his life he changed his mores and advocated “better
die in truth than live with lies”.
Richard A. , July 4, 2020 at 00:59
I remember the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour from decades ago. Real experts on Russia like
Dimitri Simes and Stephen Cohen were the ones to appear on that NewsHour. The NewsHour of
today rarely has experts on Russia, just experts on Russia bashing–like Michael McFaul.
Oh how the mighty have fallen.
Antonia Young , July 3, 2020 at 23:35
Thank you, Ray for your clarion voice in the midst of WMD-seventeen-point-oh. Will the
American people have the wisdom to notice how many times we’re being fooled? And
finally wake up and stop supporting these questionable news outlets? With appreciation for
your excellent analysis, as usual. ~Tonia Young (Formerly with the Topanga Peace
Alliance)
The majority of Americans have a lot more to worry about than the latest nonsense about
Russia. I think most people just tune it out.
The ones being fooled are the fools who have been lapping this crap up from the get go. The
supposed educated class who think themselves superior and well informed because they read and
listen to the propaganda of PBS, NPR, NYT etc.
They don’t seem to realize the ship is sinking while they’re playing these
ridiculous games.
Susan Siens , July 5, 2020 at 16:34
The supposedly educated class, yes! It can be stunning how people believe anything they
hear on PBS or NPR, and then they make fun of people who believe anything they hear on Fox
News. What’s the difference? Both are propaganda tools.
And, yes, watch us go down in flames while so-called progressives boo-hoo about Trump
thinking he’s above the law (like every other president before him). Our local
“peace and justice” group sent me an email asking me to sign a petition
supporting Robert Mueller. I was gobsmacked, and then I realized our local “peace and
justice” group had been taken over by Democratic Party “resisters.”
Jeezums, why is every word hijacked?
"... Auten, identified by congressional sources who spoke on condition of anonymity, never confirmed the most explosive allegations in the dossier compiled by ex-British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, cutting a number of corners in the verification process, Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz pointed out in his December report on FBI abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. ..."
The unnamed FBI "Supervisory Intelligence Analyst" cited by the Justice Department's watchdog for failing to properly vet the
so-called Steele dossier before it was used to justify spying on the Trump campaign teaches a class on the ethics of spying at a
small Washington-area college, records show.
The senior FBI analyst, Brian J. Auten, has taught the course
at Patrick Henry College since 2010, including the 11-month period in 2016 and 2017 when he and a counterintelligence team at FBI
headquarters electronically monitored an adviser to the Trump campaign based on false rumors from the dossier and forged evidence.
Auten, identified by congressional sources who spoke on condition of anonymity, never confirmed the most explosive allegations
in the dossier compiled by ex-British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, cutting a number of corners in the verification process,
Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz pointed out in his December report on FBI abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Act.
By January 2017, the lead analyst had ample evidence the dossier was bogus. Auten could not get sources who provided information
to Steele to support the dossier's allegations during interviews. And collections from the wiretaps of Trump aide Carter Page failed
to reveal any confirmation of the claims. Auten even came across exculpatory evidence indicating Page was not the Russian asset the
dossier alleged, but was in fact a CIA asset helping the U.S. spy on Moscow.
Nonetheless, he and the FBI continued to use the Steele material as a basis for renewing their FISA monitoring of Page, who was
never charged with a crime.
Auten did not respond to requests for comment, and the FBI declined to comment.
In his report, Horowitz wrote that the analyst told his team of inspectors that he did not have any "pains or heartburn" over
the accuracy of the Steele reports. As for Steele's reliability as an FBI informant, Horowitz said, the analyst merely "speculated"
that his prior reporting was sound and did not see a need to "dig into" his handler's case file, which showed that past tips from
Steele had gone uncorroborated and were never used in court.
According to the IG report, Auten also wasn't concerned about Steele's anti-Trump bias or that his work was commissioned by Trump's
political opponent, calling the fact he worked for Hillary Clinton's campaign "immaterial." Perhaps most disturbing, the analyst
withheld the fact that Steele's main source disavowed key dossier allegations from a memo Auten prepared summarizing a meeting he
had with that source.
Auten appears to have violated his own stated "golden rule" for spying. A 15-year supervisor at the bureau, Auten has written
that he teaches students in his national security class at the Purcellville, Va., college that the FBI applies "the least intrusive
standard" when it considers surveilling U.S. citizens under investigation to avoid harm to "a subject's reputation, dignity and privacy."
At least three Senate oversight committees are seeking to question Auten about fact-checking lapses, as well as
"grossly inaccurate statements" he allegedly made to Horowitz, as part of the committee's investigation of the FBI's handling
of wiretap warrants the bureau first obtained during the heat of the 2016 presidential race.
FBI veterans worry Auten's numerous missteps signal a deeper rot within the bureau beyond top brass who appeared to have an animus
toward Donald Trump, such as former FBI Director James Comey and his deputy Andrew McCabe, as well as subordinates Lisa Page and
Peter Strzok. They fear these main players in the scandal enlisted group-thinking career officials like Auten to ensure an investigative
result.
"Anyone in his position has tremendous access to information and is well-positioned to manipulate information if he wanted to
do so," said Chris Swecker, a 24-year veteran of the FBI who served as assistant director of its criminal investigative division,
where he oversaw public corruption cases.
"Question is, was it deliberate manipulation or just rank incompetence?" he added. "How much was he influenced by McCabe, Page,
Strzok and other people we know had a deep inherent bias?"
Auten is a central, if overlooked, figure in the Horowitz report and the overall FISA abuse scandal, though his identity is hidden
in the 478-page IG report, which refers to him throughout only as "Supervisory Intelligence Analyst" or "Supervisory Intel Analyst."
In fact, the 51-year-old analyst shows up at every major juncture in the FISA application process.
Auten was assigned to the Crossfire Hurricane investigation from its opening in July 2016 and supervised its analytical efforts
throughout 2017. He played a key supportive role for the agents preparing the FISA applications, including reviewing the probable-cause
section of the applications and providing the agents with information about Steele's sub-sources noted in the applications. He also
helped prepare and review the renewal drafts.
Auten assisted the case agents in providing information on the reliability of Steele and his sources and reviewing for accuracy
their information cited in the body of the applications, as well as all the footnotes. His job was also to fill gaps in the FISA
application or bolster weak areas.
In addition, Auten personally met with Steele and his "primary sub-source," reportedly a Russian émigré living in the West, as
well as former MI6 colleagues of Steele. He also met with Justice Department official Bruce Ohr and processed the dirt Ohr fed the
FBI from Glenn Simpson, the political opposition research contractor who hired Steele to compile the anti-Trump dossier on behalf
of the Clinton campaign.
Auten was involved in the January 2017 investigation of then-Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, according to internal
emails sent by then-FBI counterintelligence official Strzok.
What's more, the analyst helped draft a summary of the dossier attached to the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment
on Russian interference, which described Steele as "reliable." Other intelligence analysts argued against incorporating the dossier
allegations -- including rumors about potentially compromising sexual material -- in the body of the report because they viewed them
as "internet rumor."
According to the IG report, "The Supervisory Intel Analyst was one of the FBI's leading experts on Russia." Auten wrote a
book on the Russian
nuclear threat during the Cold War, and has taught graduate courses about U.S. and Russian nuclear strategy.
Still, he could not corroborate any of the allegations of Russian "collusion" in the dossier, which he nonetheless referred to
as "Crown material," as if it were intelligence from America's closest ally, Britain.
To the contrary, "According to the Supervisory Intel Analyst, the FBI ultimately determined that some of the allegations contained
in Steele's election reporting were inaccurate," the IG report revealed. Yet the analyst and the case agents he supported continued
to rely on his dossier to obtain the warrants to spy on Page -- and by extension, potentially the Trump campaign and presidency --
through incidental collections of emails, text messages and intercepted phone calls.
Steele Got the Benefit of the Doubt
According to the IG report , the supervisory
intelligence analyst not only failed to corroborate the Steele dossier, but gave Steele the benefit of the doubt every time sources
or developments called into question the reliability of his information or his own credibility. In many cases, he acted more as an
advocate than a fact-checker, while turning a blind eye to the dossier's red flags. Examples:
When a top Justice national security lawyer initially blocked the Crossfire team's attempts to obtain a FISA warrant, Auten
proactively turned to the dossier to try to push the case over the line. In an email to FBI lawyers, he forwarded an unsubstantiated
claim from Steele's Report 94 that Page secretly met with a Kremlin-tied official in July 2016, and asked, "Does this put us at
least *that* much closer to a full FISA on [Carter Page]?" (Emphasis in original).
Even though internal FBI emails reveal Auten knew Steele was working for the Clinton campaign by early January 2017, he did
not share this information with the Justice lawyer or the FISA court before helping agents reapply for warrants. He told the IG
he viewed the potential for political influences on the Steele reporting as "immaterial."
While most of Steele's past reporting as an informant for the FBI had not been corroborated and had never been used in a criminal
proceeding, including his work for an international soccer corruption investigation, Auten wrote that it had in fact been "corroborated
and used in criminal proceedings." His language made it into the FISA renewal applications to help convince the court Steele was
still reliable, despite his leaking the FBI's investigation to media outlet Mother Jones in late October 2016. Auten had merely
"speculated" that Steele's prior reporting was sound without reviewing an internal file documenting his track record.
Auten's notes from a meeting with Steele in early October 2016 reveal that Steele described one of his main dossier sources
-- identified in the IG report only as "Person 1," but believed to be Belarusian-American realtor Sergei Millian -- as a "boaster"
who "may engage in some embellishment." Yet the IG report noted the analyst "did not provide this description of Person 1 for
inclusion in the Carter Page FISA applications despite relying on Person 1's information to establish probable cause in the applications."
Auten failed to disclose to the FISA court negative feedback from British intelligence service colleagues of Steele. They
told Auten during a visit he made to London in December 2016 that Steele exercised "poor judgment" and pursued as sources "people
with political risk but no intel value," the IG report said.
In January 2017, Steele's primary sub-source told Auten that Steele "misstated or exaggerated" information he conveyed to
him in multiple sections of the dossier, according to a lengthy summary of the interview by the analyst. For instance, Steele
claimed that Kremlin-tied figures offered Page a bribe worth as much as $10 billion in return for lifting U.S. economic sanctions
on Russia. "We reviewed the texts [between Steele and the source] and did not find any discussion of a bribe," the IG report found.
Still, Auten let the rumor bleed into the FISA applications.
The primary sub-source also told the analyst he did not recall any discussion or mention of WikiLeaks conspiring with Moscow
to publish hacked Democratic National Committee emails, or that the Russian leadership and the Trump campaign had a "well-developed
conspiracy of cooperation," as described by Steele in his Report 95. The primary sub-source "did not describe a 'conspiracy' between
Russia and individuals associated with the Trump campaign or state that Carter Page served as an 'intermediary' between [the campaign]
and the Russian government," the IG found. Yet "all four Carter Page FISA applications relied on Report 95 to support probable
cause."
In addition, Auten's summary of the primary sub-source cast doubt on the dossier's allegation that the disclosure of DNC emails
to WikiLeaks was made in exchange for a GOP convention platform change regarding Ukraine. Yet this unsubstantiated rumor also
found its way into the applications. Confronted by Horowitz's investigators about all the discrepancies, the analyst offered excuses
for Steele. He said that while it was possible that Steele exaggerated or misrepresented information he received from the source,
it was also possible the source was lying to the FBI.
Even though the primary sub-source's account contradicted the allegations in Steele's reporting, the supervisory intel analyst
said he did not have any "pains or heartburn" about the accuracy of the Steele reporting.
Auten didn't try to get to the bottom of discrepancies between Steele and his sources until two months after the third and
final renewal application was filed. The analyst's September 2017 interview with Steele revealed clear bias against Trump. According
to the FBI's FD-302 summary of the interview, Steele and his London business partner, Christopher Burrows, who was also present,
described Trump as their "main opponent" and said that they were "fearful" about the negative impact of the Trump presidency on
the relationship between the United States and Britain.
The analyst also appeared to mislead, or at least misinform, the FBI's counterintelligence chief, Bill Priestap, by omitting
the primary sub-source's claim that Steele "exaggerated" much of the information in the dossier. In late February 2017, Auten
sent a two-page memo to Priestap briefing him about his meeting with the source, "but the memorandum did not describe the inconsistencies,"
the IG report noted.
Finally, recently declassified footnotes in the IG report directly contradict statements provided by Auten in the IG report
concerning the potential for Russian disinformation infiltrating Steele's reporting. The analyst told Horowitz's team that "he
had no information as of June 2017 that Steele's election reporting source network had been penetrated or compromised [by Russian
intelligence]." Yet, in January 2017, the FBI received a report that some of Steele's reporting "was part of a Russian disinformation
campaign" and in February 2017, the FBI received a second report that another part of Steele's reporting was "the product of [Russian
Intelligence Services] infiltrat[ing] a source into the network."
Senate Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Ron Johnson and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley
recently questioned the analyst's candor and integrity in a
letter to the FBI. "We are deeply troubled by the grossly inaccurate statements by the supervisory intelligence analyst," they
wrote.
The powerful senators have asked the FBI to provide additional records shedding light on what the analyst and other officials
knew about Russian disinformation as they were drafting the FISA applications.
Meanwhile, Auten's name appears on a
list of witnesses Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham recently gained authorization to subpoena to testify before
his own panel investigating the FISA abuse scandal. Graham intends to focus on the investigators, including the lead analyst, who
interviewed Steele's primary sub-source in January 2017 and discovered the Steele allegations were nothing more than "bar talk,"
as Graham put it in a recent interview, and should never have been used to get a warrant in the first place, to say nothing of renewing
the warrant.
In a Dec. 6 letter to Horowitz, FBI Director
Christopher Wray informed the inspector general he had put every employee involved in the 2016-2017 FISA application process through
"additional training in ethics." The mandatory training included "an emphasis on privacy and civil liberties."
Wray also assured Horowitz that he was conducting a review of all FBI personnel who had responsibility for the preparation of
the FISA warrant applications and would take any appropriate action to deal with them.
It's not immediately known if Auten has undergone such a review or has completed the required ethics training. The FBI declined
comment.
"That analyst needs to be investigated internally," Swecker said.
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Auten appears to have violated the ethics training he provides his students at Patrick Henry College.
"When I teach the topic of national security investigations to undergraduates, we cover micro-proportionality, discrimination,
and the 'least intrusive standard' via a tweaked version of the Golden Rule -- namely, if you were being investigated for a national
security issue but you knew yourself to be completely innocent, how would you want someone to investigate you?" Auten wrote in a
September 2016
article
in Providence magazine, headlined "Just Intelligence, Just Surveillance & the Least Intrusive Standard."
He wrote the six-page paper to answer the question: "Is an intelligence operation, national security investigation or act of surveillance
being initiated under the proper authorities for the right purposes? Will an intelligence operation, national security investigation
or act of surveillance achieve the good it is meant to? And, in the end, will the expected good be overwhelmed by the resulting harm
or damage arising out of the planned operation, investigation or surveillance act?"
"National security investigations are not ethics-free," he asserted, advising that a federal investigator should never forget
that "the intrusiveness or invasiveness of his tactics places a subject's reputation, dignity and privacy at risk and has the ability
to cause harm."
At the same time, Auten said more intrusive methods such as electronic eavesdropping may be justified -- "If it is judged that
the threat is severe or the targeted foreign intelligence is of key importance to U.S. interest or survival." National security "may
necessitate collection based on little more than suspicion." In these cases, he reasoned, the harm to the individual is outweighed
by the benefit to society.
"Surveillance is not life-threatening to the surveilled," he said.
However, Page, a U.S. citizen, told RealClearInvestigations that he received "numerous death threats" from people who believed
he was a "traitor," based on leaks to the media that the FBI suspected he was a Russian agent who conspired with the Kremlin to interfere
in the 2016 election.
Auten also rationalized the risk of "incidental" surveillance of non-targeted individuals, writing: "If the particular act of
surveillance is legitimately authorized, and the non-liable subject has not been intentionally targeted, any incidental surveillance
of the non-liable subject would be morally licit."
A member of the International Intelligence Ethics Association, Auten has lectured since 2010 on "intelligence and statecraft"
at Patrick Henry College, where he is an adjunct professor . He
also sits on the college's Strategic Intelligence Advisory Board.
FBI veterans say the analyst's lack of rigor raises alarms.
"I worked with intel analysts all the time working counterintelligence investigations," said former FBI Special Agent Michael
Biasello, a 25-year veteran of the FBI who spent 10 years in counterintelligence. "This analyst's work product was shoddy, and inasmuch
as these FISA affidavits concerned a presidential campaign, the information he provided [to agents] should have been pristine."
He suspects Auten was "hand-picked" by Comey or McCabe to work on the sensitive Trump case, which was tightly controlled within
FBI headquarters.
"The Supervisory Intel Analyst must be held accountable now, particularly where his actions were intentional, along with anyone
who touched those fraudulent [FISA] affidavits," Biasello said.
When Colin Powell of all people has to appear on MSNBC to slam
fake reporting you know mainstream media has lost the plot.
In a rare moment, the former Secretary of State under Bush slammed the wall-to-wall coverage
of the Russian bounties in Afghanistan story as "almost hysterical" . It's all the more awkard
for MSNBC, which had him on the network Thursday to talk about it, given he's one of those
'never Trump' Bush-era officials, who despite a legacy of having fed the world lie after lie to
invade Iraq, has since been given "resistance hero" status among liberals.
Describing that military commanders on the ground didn't give credence to The New York Times
claim that Russia's GRU was paying Taliban and other militants to kill American soldiers,
Powell said the media "got kind of out of control" in the first days after the initial report
weeks ago.
"I know that our military commanders on the ground did not think that it was as serious a
problem as the newspapers were reporting and television was reporting," Powell told MSNBC's
Andrea Mitchell. "It got kind of out of control before we really had an understanding of what
had happened. I'm not sure we fully understand now."
"It's our commanders who are going to go deal with this kind of a threat, using intelligence
given to them by the intelligence community," Powell continued. "But that has to be analyzed.
It has to be attested. And then you have to go find out who the enemy is. And I think we were
on top of that one, but it just got almost hysterical in the first few days."
He also deflated the ongoing manufactured atmosphere which seeks to maintain a perpetual
Washington hawkish position vis-a-vis Moscow, based on perceived "Russian aggression".
"I don't think we're in a position to go to war with the Russians," Powell said. "I know Mr.
Putin rather well. He's just figuring out a way to stay in power until 2036. The last thing
he's looking for is a war, and the last thing he's looking for is a war with the United States
of America."
"... Browder testimony to Senate Judiciary Committee ..."
"... claimed that Magnitsky was beaten to death by 8 riot guards ..."
"... Browder's Hermitage Fund in 2009 put out press release noting Starova's complaint to police. See last graph. Browder deleted it when his narrative changed, but the Wayback Machine preserved it. ..."
"... She says there has been a violation of Article 165 of the criminal code. ..."
"... Browder translates that into Starova accusing his companies of the theft of state funds. She talks about involvement of Viktor Markelov, who organized the fraud. In his testimony , Markelov said he got documents from a "Sergei Leonidovich." Magnitsky's full name was Sergei Leonidovich Magnitsky. ..."
"... Magnitsky's body on a cot in the hospital ward. ..."
"... Script: The position of the corpse of Mr. S. L. Magnitsky. ..."
"... Script: The situation in the [hospital] ward, viewed towards the door. ..."
"... Magnitsky face shoulders on hospital-bed ..."
"... Script: Chest image of Mr. S. L. Magnitsky. ..."
"... Browder doctored report claims a section illegible, third line. ..."
"... Russian document shows nothing is illegible. ..."
"... Dr. Robert Bux ..."
"... They do exist, but Browder did not give them to PHR. ..."
"... Forensic photos of bruises on Magnitsky's hands and knee ..."
"... Forensic schematic drawings showing marks of injuries show no injuries. ..."
"... closed craniocerebral injury ..."
"... No signs of a violent death detected." ..."
"... Magnitsky death certificate – no signs of a violent death detected ..."
Browder
testimony
to
Senate Judiciary Committee
claimed that Magnitsky was beaten to death by 8 riot guards
.
The U.S. and UK are intensifying their collaborative Cold War against Russia. In Washington, calls for sanctions are based on
the fake "bountygate," and the UK has sanctioned selected Russians based on William Browder's Magnitsky hoax.
The "bountygate" charge that Russia paid militants to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan is unproved by U.S. intelligence
agencies and even discounted by the international wire-tapping National Security Agency (NSA). The UK
sanctions
against
25 Russians, judges and court officials, tax investigators, and prison doctors, are based on disproved claims by billionaire
investor William Browder that they were responsible for the death of his accountant Sergei Magnitsky.
Browder's Magnitsky story is a pillar of America's Russiagate, which has five. Before bountygate, there was the 2019 Mueller
Report which found no evidence that President Trump had colluded with the Russians, the Jan 2017 intelligence agencies'
charge
of
Russian interference in the U.S. 2016 election which concludes with the admission that they had no proof; and the 2016
accusation that Russians had stolen Democratic National Committee emails, made by the private security group CrowdStrike,
later walked back by CrowdStrike's president
Shawn
Henry
at a secret House hearing in Dec 2017, but not revealed till this May.
With the UK, we return to the first pillar of the U.S. Russiagate story, the 2012 Magnitsky Act, which targeted many on the
U.S. list. The Magnitsky Act is recognized as the beginning of the deterioration of U.S.-Russian relations. It is based on a
hoax invented by Browder and easily disproved by documentary evidence, if governments cared about that.
The European Court of Human Rights on Magnitsky's arrest
First, a few of the obvious fake charges. Three judges are accused of detaining Magnitsky, which the UK says "facilitated" his
mistreatment and denial of medical care. However, the European Court of Human Rights
ruled
in
August 2019, "The Russians had good reason to arrest Sergei Magnitsky for Hermitage tax evasion." The Court said: "The
accusations were based on documentary evidence relating to the payment of taxes by those companies and statements by several
disabled persons who had confessed to sham work for the two companies."
The decision to arrest him was made after "investigating authorities noted that during a tax inquiry which had preceded the
criminal investigation, Mr Magnitskiy had influenced witnesses, and that he had been preparing to flee abroad. In particular,
he had applied for an entry visa to the United Kingdom and had booked a flight to Kyiv." He was a flight risk.
Several of the UK targets were said to have "facilitated" mistreatment of Magnitsky because they had been involved in a fraud
he exposed. The reference is to a $230-million tax refund scam against the Russian Treasury.
Back to the ECHR: "The Court observe[d] that the inquiry into alleged tax evasion, resulting in the criminal proceedings
against Mr Magnitskiy, started in 2004, long before he complained that prosecuting officials had been involved in fraudulent
acts." The taxes were the real story; the fraud narrative was a cover-up.
The fake fraud story
Magnitsky did not uncover a massive fraud. That was the tax refund fraud in which companies engaged in collusive lawsuits,
"lost" the suits, and "agreed" to pay damages equal to their entire year's profits. They then requested a full refund of taxes
paid on the now zero gains. The fake lawsuits and payouts were first revealed to police by Russian shell company director
Rimma Starova
April
9
and
July
10,
2008. (Russian originals
April
and
July
.)
With investigators on the trail, Browder's Hermitage Fund director Paul Wrench filed a complaint about the fraud, and Browder
gave the story to The
NYTimes
and
the Russian paper
Vedomosti
,
which published it July 24, 2008, long before Magnitsky mentioned it in October 2008. His
testimony
did
not accuse any officials.
Browder's
Hermitage Fund in 2009 put out press release noting Starova's complaint to police. See last graph. Browder deleted it when his
narrative changed, but the Wayback Machine preserved it.
She says there has been a
violation of
Article
165
of the criminal code.
Browder translates that into Starova accusing his
companies of the theft of state funds. She talks about involvement of Viktor Markelov, who organized the fraud. In his
testimony
,
Markelov said he got documents from a "Sergei Leonidovich." Magnitsky's full name was Sergei Leonidovich Magnitsky.
The main story at the center of the Magnitsky Acts in the U.S. and UK are not that he was mistreated or failed to get good
medical care, which is what is mostly alleged here. That would put dozens of U.S. prison officials in the crosshairs,
including recently those running state prison systems in
Alabama
and
Mississippi
.
It is that he was murdered. In the only reference to beating, the head of the Matrosskaya detention center is accused of
"ordering the handcuffing and beating" of Magnitsky before he died.
The U.S. Act, on which the British version is modeled, says that in detention Magnitsky "was beaten by 8 guards with rubber
batons on the last day of his life." But the alleged assailants' names are not on the list. A key argument made by sponsors
Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md) and Rep. James McGovern (D-Mass) was that the people targeted – tax investigators, court officials,
hospital workers -- played a role in this claimed murder of Magnitsky. (Cardin and McGovern haven't responded to my requests
to comment on contradictory evidence.)
UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab takes the same line, declaring, "You cannot set foot in this country, and we will seize your
blood-drenched ill-gotten gains if you try," as he announced the new sanctions. Blood-drenched? No evidence supplied for the
sanctioned Russians.
For Browder, the purpose of the Magnitsky Acts he promotes in the West is as a political tool to build a wall against Russia's
attempt to have him answer for documented financial frauds totaling at least $100 million, and with new evidence as much as
$400 million.
The death hoax: Forensic photos tell the truth
Here is the story of Magnitsky death hoax, with links to evidence, including how Browder forged and falsified documents.
Browder had the Russian forensic reports and photos that were made after Magnitsky's death but suppressed what did not support
his arguments. The photos in this forensic
report
show
that Magnitsky, allegedly beaten to death, didn't have a life-threatening mark on his body.
Magnitsky's
body on a cot in the hospital ward.
Script: The position of the corpse of Mr. S. L.
Magnitsky.
Script:
The situation in the [hospital] ward, viewed towards the door.
Magnitsky
face shoulders on hospital-bed
.
Script: Chest image of Mr. S. L. Magnitsky.
Browder doctored part of another forensic
report
provided
in translation to the Physicians for Human Rights, Cambridge, Mass., for its
analysis
of
Magnitsky's death. It notes as "illegible" words that show there were no beating marks on Magnitsky's body and that there was
no scalp damage. The deleted parts of the true translation are underlined.
"The cadaverous spots are abundant, bluish-violet, diffuse, located on the back surface of the neck, trunk, upper and lower
extremities,
with pressure on them
with a finger disappear and restore their original color after 8 minutes. Damage
not found on the scalp."
The doctored line reads, "The cadaverous spots are abundant, bluish-violet, diffuse, located on the back surface of the neck,
trunk, upper and lower extremities, (illegible) not found on the scalp."
Here in the report that Browder gave PHR:
Browder
doctored report claims a section illegible, third line.
The paragraph in the Russian
document
shows
nothing is illegible.
Russian
document shows nothing is illegible.
The Russian words omitted in the doctored English document are "при надавливании на них пальцем исчезают и восстанавливают
свою первоначальную окраску через 8 минут. Повреждений на волосистой части головы не обнаружено."
The full Russian text can be translated online: Трупные пятна обильные, синюшно-фиолетовые, разлитые, располагающиеся на
задней поверхности шеи, туловища, верхних и нижних конечностей, при надавливании на них пальцем исчезают и восстанавливают
свою первоначальную окраску через 8 минут. Повреждений на волосистой части головы не обнаружено. Кости лицевого скелета, хрящи
носа на ощупь целы. Глаза закрыты.
What the American pathologist who analyzed Browder's documents said
Dr.
Robert Bux
Dr. Robert C. Bux, then coroner/chief medical examiner for the El Paso County Coroner's Office in Colorado Springs, was the
forensic expert on the team that wrote the PHR
report
.
Bux told me, "I do not think that these spots are contusions. Contusions will not go away and can be demonstrated by incising
or cutting into the tissues under the skin. These are reportedly all on the posterior aspect of the neck, body and limbs and
may represent postmortem
lividity
when
the body was viewed by the prosecutor of the autopsy."
Dr. Bux said, "If this is lividity (red purple coloration of the skin) it is not yet fixed and will blanch to a pale skin
color and red purple coloration will disappear. If the body is then placed face up i.e. supine then after a few minutes then
it will appear again. This is simply due to blood settling in the small blood vessels and a function of gravity."
It's not what a layman reading Browder's forged "illegible" might think.
Dr. Bux added, "Having said all of this, I have never seen any
autopsy photographs demonstrating this, and while photographs should have been taken to document all skin abnormalities as
well as all surfaces of the body to document the presence or absence of trauma, I do not know if photographs were taken and
withheld or never taken
."
PHR said, "A full and independent review of the cause of death of S.L. Magnitsky is not possible given the documentation
presented and available to PHR." The document list is at its report pages
2-3
.
The PHR autopsy protocol claims that there are "photo tables on 2 sheets" and "schematic representation of injuries on 1
sheet. However, if they exist, they were not available for the present review."
They do exist, but Browder did not
give them to PHR.
Browder posted and widely distributed this composite of
photos
of
bruises on Magnitsky's hand and knee taken November 17
th
,
2009, the day after the accountant's death.
Forensic
photos of bruises on Magnitsky's hands and knee
He got them from Russian forensic
Report
2052.
Katie
Fisher
,
doing public relations for Hermitage,
posted
them,
but not the text, to Google Cloud.
The report cited "circular abrasions in the wrist area," a "bluish-violet bruise" and "multiple strip-like horizontally
located abrasions."
It said, "A bruise located on the inner surface of the right lower limb in the projection of the ankle joint appeared 3-6 days
before the time death."
It concluded, "[T]hese injuries in living persons do not entail a temporary disability or a significant permanent loss of
general disability and are not regarded as harm to health, they are not in a cause and effect relationship with death."
The forensic reports attribute bruises to Magnitsky wearing handcuffs and kicking and hitting against cell doors. Magnitsky's
lawyer Dmitri Kharitonov
told
filmmaker
Andrei Nekrasov, "I think he was simply banging on the door with all his force trying to make them let him out and none paid
attention."
No other injuries found
The same
report
includes
schematic drawings of Magnitsky's body on which to note other relevant marks or injuries.
The report said,
"There were no marks or injuries noted on his head
or torso No other injuries were found on the corpse
" Browder didn't send PHR these drawings or make them public.
Forensic
schematic drawings showing marks of injuries show no injuries.
Asked if there was evidence that Magnitsky was "beaten to death by
riot guards," Dr. Bux told me, "I have no evidence to suggest that this occurred."
For the record,
PHR
said
Magnitsky's
death was from untreated serious illness. Even without the body photos, its experts didn't claim a beating. Forensic analysts
never have.
Manipulating the death certificate
To promote his fabrication, Browder posted a deceptive PowerPoint of the death certificate that indicated a
"
closed
craniocerebral injury
?"
circled in red, with the other text too small to
read.
Magnitsky
death certificate – no signs of a violent death detected
"Closed" meant "past." Several forensic documents include an interview with Magnitsky's mother Natalya Magnitskaya. She
told
investigators,
"In 1993 – I can't say a more accurate date, S.L Magnitsky had a craniocerebral injury. He slipped on the street and as a
result hit his head, after which he had headaches for some time."
Investigators obtained full medical records including this on page 29 of
Report
555-10
in English, which Browder gave PHR: "
On February 4, 1993, at about
08:40 a.m.., in his house entrance he slipped and fell down hitting his head, lost consciousness for a short time, vomited,
attended for emergency help by an ambulance which took him to the City Clinic Hospital (GKB).
Was examined by the
neurosurgeon in the reception ward, craniogram without pathema. Diagnosis: brain concussion, recommended treatment to be taken
on an out-patient clinic basis."
Browder's assertion that the "closed craniocerebral injury" came from a beating was a lie.
Browder's changing stories on the death of Magnitsky
Browder did not initially claim Magnitsky had been murdered. He said Magnitsky, left alone uncared for in a room, had simply
died. After a few years, pushing the Magnitsky Act, he declared Magnitsky had been tied up and beaten by rubber baton-wielding
thugs until dead.
Graphic by Michael Thau.
Browder December 2009 tells
Chatham
House
, London, "I don't know what they were thinking. I don't know whether they killed him deliberately on the night of
the 16th, or if he died of neglect."
"They put him in a straight-jacket, put him in an isolation room and waited 1 hour and 18 minutes until he died." December
2010,
San
Diego Law School
.
Then, promoting the Magnitsky Act, "They put him in an isolation cell, tied him to a bed, then allowed eight guards guards
beat him with rubber batons for 118 min until he was dead." December 2011,
University
of Cambridge
Judge Business School.
" .they put him in an isolation cell, chained him to a bed, and eight riot guards came in and beat him with rubber batons.
That night he was found dead on the cell floor." July 2017, U.S.
Senate
Judiciary Committee
.
What the Moscow Public Oversight Commission says really happened
The
Public
Oversight Commission
, an independent Russian NGO, reports Magnitsky's final day differently. November 16, 2009:
7:00pm. The patient behaves inadequately. Talks to a "voice," looks disorientated, and shouts that someone wants to kill him.
His condition is diagnosed as psychosis. The emergency doctor was called. There are no body damages apart from traces of
handcuffs on the wrists.
7:30pm. He was left unattended without medical support.
8:48pm. Emergency team arrived. When emergency doctors entered the special cell, Sergei was sitting on the cot, with his eyes
unfocused.
9:15pm. The patient was surveyed again as his condition deteriorated. He lost consciousness. The reanimation procedure was
started (indirect heart massage and ventilation of lungs using the Ambu pillow). The patient was transferred to the special
room where he received an artificial ventilation of lungs and a hormones injection.
9:50pm. The patient died."
The commission reported no evidence of beating. The Russian forensic and medical experts' conclusion was that Magnitsky had
heart disease (arteriosclerosis), diabetes, hepatitis, and pancreatitis, some illnesses predating arrest. They wrote detailed
criticism of the doctors' treatment, saying that it wasn't timely or adequate and that "the shortcomings in the provision of
the medical assistance to S.L. Magnitsky" caused his death.
But it's not the riot squad beating Browder, with no evidence, sold to the U.S. Congress, the State Department, the UK
Parliament, the Foreign Office and the media. Or that U.S. or UK authorities or media ever attempted to prove. Because like
the Tonkin Gulf "incident" and Iraq's WMD, the weaponized Russiagate stories have a foreign/military policy goal. Truth is
quite irrelevant.
"... The judge ruled Steele violated the law by failing to aggressively check the accuracy of one claim accusing Aven and Fridman of making illicit payments to Russia President Vladimir Putin before distributing it to various U.S. and British figures, including the FBI. ..."
"... The ruling involves a long-discredited claim in Steele's dossier – repeatedly used by U.S. news media – that Russia's Alfa Bank, connected to Aven and Fridman, was transmitting secret messages between Moscow and the Trump campaign during the 2016 election. ..."
A British judge ruled Wednesday that Christopher Steele violated a data privacy law by
failing to check the accuracy of information in his infamous dossier, ordering the former spy's
firm to pay damages to two businessmen he wrongly accused of making illicit payments in
Russia.
Justice Mark Warby of the High Court of England and Wales ordered Steele's firm, Orbis
Business Intelligence, to pay a modest 18,000 English pounds – about $22,596 in American
currency – each to Petr Aven and Mikhail Fridman as compensation for a violation of
Britain's Data Protection Act 1998 .
Warby ruled that while Steele had a national security interest to share his intelligence
with U.S. and British authorities, several of the allegations in Memo 112 of the Steele dossier
were "inaccurate or misleading as a matter of fact."
The judge ruled Steele violated the law by failing to aggressively check the accuracy of one
claim accusing Aven and Fridman of making illicit payments to Russia President Vladimir Putin
before distributing it to various U.S. and British figures, including the FBI.
"That is an allegation of serial criminal wrongdoing, over a prolonged period. Even in the
limited and specific context of reporting intelligence for the purposes I have mentioned, and
despite all the other factors I have listed, the steps taken to verify that proposition fell
short of what would have been reasonable ," Warby ruled.
"The allegation clearly called for closer attention, a more enquiring approach, and more
energetic checking," the judge added.
The ruling involves a long-discredited claim in Steele's dossier – repeatedly used by
U.S. news media – that Russia's Alfa Bank, connected to Aven and Fridman, was
transmitting secret messages between Moscow and the Trump campaign during the 2016
election.
The FBI concluded the computer pings were not nefarious messages but rather routine behavior
most likely connected to email spam. Special Counsel Robert Mueller told Congress last year he
did not believe the allegations.
Fridman hailed the ruling in a statement.
" We are delighted with the outcome of this case and that Mr Justice Warby has determined
what we have always known to be the case – that the contents of Memorandum 112 are
inaccurate and misleading ," he said. "Ever since these odious allegations were first made
public in January 2017, my partners and I have been resolute and unwavering in our
determination to prove that they are untrue, and through this case, we have finally succeeded
in doing so."
So they dusted of McFaul to provide the support for bounty provocation. I wonder whether
McFaul one one of Epstein guests, or what ?
So who was the clone of Ciaramella this time? People want to know the hero
Notable quotes:
"... Not to doubt McFaul's ulterior motives; one must assume him to be an "honest man" -- however misguided, in my opinion. He seems to be a disciple of the James Clapper-Curtis LeMay-Joe McCarthy School of Russian Analysis. ..."
"... Clapper, a graduate summa cum laude , certainly had the Russians pegged! Clapper was allowed to stay as Barack Obama's director of national intelligence for three and a half years after perjuring himself in formal Senate testimony (on NSA's illegal eavesdropping). On May 28, 2017 Clapper told NBC's Chuck Todd about "the historical practices of the Russians, who typically, are almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever, which is a typical Russian technique." ..."
"... As a finale, in full knowledge of Clapper's proclivities regarding Russia, Obama appointed him to prepare the evidence-impoverished, misnomered "Intelligence Community Assessment" claiming that Putin did all he could, including hacking the DNC, to help Trump get elected -- the most embarrassing such "intelligence assessment" I have seen in half a century . ..."
"... Does no one see the irony today in the Democrats' bashing Trump on Afghanistan, with the full support of the Establishment media? The inevitable defeat there is one of the few demonstrable disasters not attributable directly to Trump, but you would not know that from the media. Are the uncorroborated reports of Russian bounties to kill U.S. troops aimed at making it appear that Trump, unable to stand up to Putin, let the Russians drive the rest of U.S. troops out of Afghanistan? ..."
"... Does the current flap bespeak some kind of "Mutiny on the Bounties," so to speak, by a leaker aping Eric Chiaramella? Recall that the Democrats lionized the CIA official seconded to Trump's national security council as a "whistleblower" and proceeded to impeach Trump after Chiaramella leaked information on Trump's telephone call with the president of Ukraine. Far from being held to account, Chiaramella is probably expecting an influential job if his patron, Joe Biden, is elected president. Has there been another mutiny in Trump's White House? ..."
"... It is sad to have to remind folks 18 years later that the "intelligence" on WMD in Iraq was not "mistaken;" it was fraudulent from the get-go. The culprits were finally exposed but never held to account. ..."
"... Here's an assignment due on Monday. Read McFaul's oped carefully. It appears under the title: "Trump would do anything for Putin. No wonder he's ignoring the Russian bounties: Russia's pattern of hostility matches Trump's pattern of accommodation." ..."
"... Full assignment for Monday: Read carefully through each paragraph of McFaul's text and select which of his claims you would put into one or more of the three categories adduced by Sen. Rockefeller 12 years ago about WMD on Iraq. With particular attention to the evidence behind McFaul's claims, determine which of the claims is (a) "uncorroborated"; which (b) "contradicted"; and which (c) "non-existent;" or (d) all of the above. For extra credit, find one that is supported by plausible evidence. ..."
"... Michael McFaul and Fred Hiatt are both long-time members of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), flagship of the globalist “liberal world order”. The CFR and its many interlocking affiliates, along with their media assets and frontmen in government, have dominated US policy since WW2. Most of the Fed chairmen and secretaries of State, Treasury, Defense and CIA have been CFR members, including Jerome Powell and Mark Esper. ..."
"... The major finance, energy, defense and media corporations are CFR sponsors, and several of their execs are members. David Rubenstein, billionaire founder of the notorious Carlyle Group, is the current CFR chairman. Laurence Fink, billionaire chairman of BlackRock, is a CFR director. See lists at the CFR website. ..."
"... “It is sad to have to remind folks 18 years later that the “intelligence” on WMD in Iraq was not “mistaken;” it was fraudulent from the get-go. The culprits were finally exposed but never held to account.” ..."
"... They are spoon fed those lies by our “intelligence” agencies. As CNN’s Jeff Zucker said, “We’re not investigators, we’re journalists”. Replace “journalists” with “toadies” or “shills” for our “intelligence” community and you’ve gotten to the truth of the matter. ..."
"... In the unhealthy society of Clintons, Obamas, Epstein, Mueller, Adelsons, Clapper, and Krystols, human dignity is a sin. ..."
"... Our institutions including journalism are not merely corrupt, they are degenerate. That is, the corruption is not occasional or the exception is is by design, desired and entirely normal. ..."
"... from Counterpunch.org : “Around 15,000 Soviet troops perished in the Afghan War between 1979 and 1989. The US funneled more than $20 billion to the Mujahideen and other anti-Soviet fighters over that same period. This works out to a “bounty” of $1.33 million for each Soviet soldier killed.” ..."
"... Yes, of course it is a well-known ‘fact’ that Putin has nothing better to do than destory American democracy, and I bet he has dreams about it too! But I am minded to think that if anybody has a penchant for destroying American democracy it is the powers that be in the US deep state, intelligence agencies, and zionist cliques controlling the President and Congress. ..."
"... Udo Ulfkotte was a German journalist. He wrote a sensational book about the practices he experienced of the CIA paying German journalists to publish certain stories. The book was a big best seller in Germany. Its English translation was suppressed for years, but I believe is now available. ..."
"... Gekaufte journalisten. Ulfkotte admitted he signed off on numerous articles that were prepared for him during his career. The last year’s of his life he changed his mores and advocated “better die in truth than live with lies”. ..."
Has there been another mutiny in Trump's White House, as Obama's former ambassador to Russia
piles on the nonsense about Trump being in Putin's pocket?
C orporate media are binging on leaked Kool Aid not unlike the WMD concoction they offered
18 years ago to "justify" the U.S.-UK war of aggression on Iraq.
Now Michael McFaul, ambassador to Russia under President Obama, has been enlisted by The
Washington Post 's editorial page honcho, Fred Hiatt, to draw on his expertise (read,
incurable Russophobia) to help stick President Donald Trump back into "Putin's pocket." (This
has become increasingly urgent as the canard of "Russiagate" -- including the linchpin claim
that Russia hacked the DNC -- lies gasping for air.)
In an
oped on Thursday McFaul presented a long list of Vladimir Putin's alleged crimes, offering
a more ostensibly sophisticated version of amateur Russian specialist, Rep. Jason Crow's (D-CO)
claim that: "Vladimir Putin wakes up every morning and goes to bed every night trying to figure
out how to destroy American democracy."
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry with McFaul meeting Vladimir Putin and Russian Foreign
Minister Sergey Lavrov in Moscow, Russia, on May 7, 2013. (State Department)
McFaul had -- well, let's call it an undistinguished career in Moscow. He arrived with a
huge chip on his shoulder and proceeded to alienate just about all his hosts, save for the
rabidly anti-Putin folks he openly and proudly cultivated. In a sense, McFaul became the
epitome of what Henry Wooton described as the role of ambassador -- "an honest man sent to lie
abroad for the good of his country." What should not be so readily accepted is an ambassador
who comes back home and just can't stop misleading.
Not to doubt McFaul's ulterior motives; one must assume him to be an "honest man" --
however misguided, in my opinion. He seems to be a disciple of the James Clapper-Curtis
LeMay-Joe McCarthy School of Russian Analysis.
Clapper, a graduate summa cum laude , certainly had the Russians pegged! Clapper
was allowed to stay as Barack Obama's director of national intelligence for three and a half
years after perjuring himself in formal Senate testimony (on NSA's illegal eavesdropping). On
May 28, 2017 Clapper told NBC's Chuck
Todd about "the historical practices of the Russians, who typically, are almost genetically
driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever, which is a typical Russian
technique."
As a finale, in full knowledge of Clapper's proclivities regarding Russia, Obama
appointed him to prepare the evidence-impoverished, misnomered "Intelligence Community
Assessment" claiming that Putin did all he could, including hacking the DNC, to help Trump get
elected -- the most embarrassing such "intelligence assessment" I have seen in half a century
.
Obama and the National Security State
I have asked myself if Obama also had earned some kind of degree from the
Clapper/LeMay/McCarthy School, or whether he simply lacked the courage to challenge the
pitiably self-serving "analysis" of the National Security State. Then I re-read "Obama Misses the Afghan
Exit-Ramp" of June 24, 2010 and was reminded of how deferential Obama was to the generals and
the intelligence gurus, and how unconscionable the generals were -- like their predecessors in
Vietnam -- in lying about always seeing light at the end of the proverbial tunnel.
Thankfully, now ten years later, this is all
documented in Craig Whitlock's, "The Afghanistan Papers: At War With the Truth." Corporate
media, who played an essential role in that "war with the truth", have not given Whitlock's
damning story the attention it should command (surprise, surprise!). In any case, it strains
credulity to think that Obama was unaware he was being lied to on Afghanistan.
Some Questions
Clark Gable (l.) with Charles Laughton (r.) in Mutiny on the Bounty, 1935.
Does no one see the irony today in the Democrats' bashing Trump on Afghanistan, with the
full support of the Establishment media? The inevitable defeat there is one of the few
demonstrable disasters not attributable directly to Trump, but you would not know that from the
media. Are the uncorroborated reports of Russian bounties to kill U.S. troops aimed at making
it appear that Trump, unable to stand up to Putin, let the Russians drive the rest of U.S.
troops out of Afghanistan?
Does the current flap bespeak some kind of "Mutiny on the Bounties," so to speak, by a
leaker aping Eric Chiaramella? Recall that the Democrats lionized the CIA official seconded to
Trump's national security council as a "whistleblower" and proceeded to impeach Trump after
Chiaramella leaked information on Trump's telephone call with the president of Ukraine. Far
from being held to account, Chiaramella is probably expecting an influential job if his patron,
Joe Biden, is elected president. Has there been another mutiny in Trump's White House?
And what does one make of the
spectacle of Crow teaming up with Rep. Liz Cheney (R, WY) to restrict Trump's planned
pull-out of troops from Afghanistan, which The Los Angeles Timesreports
has now been blocked until after the election?
Hiatt & McFaul: Caveat Editor
And who published McFaul's oped? Fred Hiatt, Washington Post editorial page editor
for the past 20 years, who has a long record of listening to the whispers of anonymous
intelligence sources and submerging/drowning the subjunctive mood with flat fact. This was the
case with the (non-existent) weapons of mass destruction in Iraq before the U.S.-UK attack.
Readers of the Post were sure there were tons of WMD in Iraq. That Hiatt has invited
McFaul on stage should come as no surprise.
To be fair, Hiatt belatedly acknowledged that the Post should have been more
circumspect in its confident claims about the WMD. "If you look at the editorials we write
running up [to the war], we state as flat fact that he [Saddam Hussein] has weapons of mass
destruction," Hiatt said in an interview with the Columbia Journalism Review . "If
that's not true, it would have been better not to say it." [CJR, March/April 2004]
At this word of wisdom, Consortium News founder, the late Robert Parry,
offered this comment: "Yes, that is a common principle of journalism, that if something isn't
real, we're not supposed to confidently declare that it is." That Hiatt is still in that job
speaks volumes.
'Uncorroborated, Contradicted, or Even Non-Existent'
It is sad to have to remind folks 18 years later that the "intelligence" on WMD in Iraq was
not "mistaken;" it was fraudulent from the get-go. The culprits were finally exposed but never
held to account.
Announcing on June 5, 2008, the bipartisan conclusions from a five-year study by the Senate
Intelligence Committee, Sen. Jay Rockefeller ( D-WV)
said the attack on Iraq was launched "under false pretenses." He described the intelligence
conjured up to "justify" war on Iraq as "uncorroborated, contradicted, or even
non-existent."
Homework
Yogi Berra in 1956. (Wikipedia)
Here's an assignment due on Monday. Read McFaul's
oped carefully. It appears under the title: "Trump would do anything for Putin. No wonder
he's ignoring the Russian bounties: Russia's pattern of hostility matches Trump's pattern of
accommodation."
And to give you a further taste, here is the first paragraph:
"Russian President Vladimir Putin appears to have paid Taliban rebels in Afghanistan to
kill U.S. soldiers. Having resulted in at least one American death, and maybe more, these
Russian bounties reportedly produced the desired outcome. While deeply disturbing, this
effort by Putin is not surprising: It follows a clear pattern of ignoring international
norms, rules and laws -- and daring the United States to do anything about it."
Full assignment for Monday: Read carefully through each paragraph of McFaul's text and
select which of his claims you would put into one or more of the three categories adduced by
Sen. Rockefeller 12 years ago about WMD on Iraq. With particular attention to the evidence
behind McFaul's claims, determine which of the claims is (a) "uncorroborated"; which (b)
"contradicted"; and which (c) "non-existent;" or (d) all of the above. For extra credit, find
one that is supported by plausible evidence.
Yogi Berra might be surprised to hear us keep quoting him with "Deja vu, all over again."
Sorry, Yogi, that's what it is; you coined it.
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the
Saviour in inner-city Washington. During his 27-year career as a CIA analyst, he prepared and
briefed The President's Daily Brief for Presidents Nixon, Ford, and Reagan. He is
co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of
Consortium News.
Tarus77 , July 6, 2020 at 14:25
Gad, one wonders if it can ever get much lower in the press and the answer is yes, it can
and will go lower, i.e. the mcfaul/hiatt tag team. They are still plumbing for the lows.
The question becomes just how stupid these two are or how stupid do they believe the
readership is to read and believe this garbage.
Voice from Europe , July 6, 2020 at 11:58
By now the Russia did it ! is in effect a joke in Russia. Economically, politically, geo
strategically China and Asia and Africa have become more important and reliable partners of
Russia than the USA. And Europe is also dropping fast on the trustworthy partners
list…..
John , July 5, 2020 at 12:55
Michael McFaul and Fred Hiatt are both long-time members of the Council on Foreign
Relations (CFR), flagship of the globalist “liberal world order”. The CFR and its
many interlocking affiliates, along with their media assets and frontmen in government, have
dominated US policy since WW2. Most of the Fed chairmen and secretaries of State, Treasury,
Defense and CIA have been CFR members, including Jerome Powell and Mark Esper.
The major finance, energy, defense and media corporations are CFR sponsors, and several of
their execs are members. David Rubenstein, billionaire founder of the notorious Carlyle
Group, is the current CFR chairman. Laurence Fink, billionaire chairman of BlackRock, is a
CFR director. See lists at the CFR website.
Anna , July 6, 2020 at 09:38
Michael McFaul and Fred Hiatt are both very active promoters of hate crimes. Neither has
any decency hence decency is allergic to war profiteers and opportunistic liars.
The poor USA; to descend to such a deep moral hole that both Michael McFaul and Fred Hiatt
are still alive and prospering. Shamelessness and presstituting are paid well in the US.
Dems and Reps are already mad. You cannot destroy what does not exist; like Democracy in
these United States. Nor God or Putin could. This has always being a fallacy. This is not a
democracy; same thing with ”communist" China or the USSR .Those two were never
socialist. There has never being a real Socialist or Communist country.
Guy , July 4, 2020 at 12:26
“It is sad to have to remind folks 18 years later that the
“intelligence” on WMD in Iraq was not “mistaken;” it was fraudulent
from the get-go. The culprits were finally exposed but never held to account.”
That statement goes to the crux of the matter.Why should journalists care about what is true
or a lie in their reports ,they know they will never be held to account .They should be held
to account through the court system . A lie by any journalist should be actionable by any
court of law . The fear of jail time would sort out the scam journalists we presently have to
endure .
As it is they have perverted the profession of journalism and it is the law of the
jungle .No true democracy should put up with this. We are surrounded with lies that are
generated by the very establishment that should protect it’s citizens from same .
Skip Scott , July 4, 2020 at 15:36
They are spoon fed those lies by our “intelligence” agencies. As CNN’s
Jeff Zucker said, “We’re not investigators, we’re journalists”.
Replace “journalists” with “toadies” or “shills” for our
“intelligence” community and you’ve gotten to the truth of the matter.
Anna , July 6, 2020 at 09:50
The ‘journalists’ observe how things have been going on for Cheney the Traitor
and Bush the lesser — nothing happened to the mega criminals. The hate-bursting and
war-profiteering Cheney’s daughter has even squeezed into US Congress.
In a healthy society where human dignity is cherished, the Cheney family will be ostracized
and the family name became a synonym for the word ‘traitor.’ In the unhealthy society of Clintons, Obamas, Epstein, Mueller, Adelsons, Clapper, and Krystols, human dignity
is a sin.
Ricard Coleman , July 6, 2020 at 11:42
Our institutions including journalism are not merely corrupt, they are degenerate. That
is, the corruption is not occasional or the exception is is by design, desired and entirely
normal.
Stan W. , July 4, 2020 at 12:10
I’m still confident that Durham’s investigation will expose and successfully
prosecute the maggots that infest our government.
Skip Scott , July 4, 2020 at 15:29
What is the basis for this confidence?
John Puma , July 4, 2020 at 12:03
Re: whether Obumma “had earned some kind of degree from the Clapper/LeMay/McCarthy
School” of Russia Analytics.
It would be a worthy addition to his degree collection featuring that earned from the
Neville Chamberlain Night School of Critical Political Negotiation.
Jeff Harrison , July 4, 2020 at 11:16
Hmmm. Lessee. The US attacks Afghanistan with about the same legitimacy that we had when
we attacked Iraq and the Taliban are in charge. We oust the Taliban from power and put our
own puppets in place. What idiot thinks that the Taliban are going to need a bounty to kill
Americans?
Jeff Harrison, I like your logic. Plus, I understand that far fewer Americans are being
killed in Afghanistan than were under Obama’s administration.
AnneR , July 4, 2020 at 10:27
Frankly, I am sick to death of the unwarranted, indeed bestial Russophobia that is
megaphoned minute by minute on NPR and the BBC World Service (only radio here since my
husband died). If it isn’t this latest trumped up (ho ho) charge, there are repeated
mentions, in passing, of course, of the Russiagate, hacking, Kremlin control of the Strumpet
to back up the latest bunch of lies.
Doesn’t matter at *all* that Russiagate was
debunked, that even Mueller couldn’t actually demonstrably pull the DNC/ruling elites
rabbit out of the hat, that the impeachment of the Strumpet went nowhere. And it clearly
– by its total absence on the above radio broadcasts – doesn’t matter one
iota that the Pentagonal hasn’t gone along, that gaping holes in the confabulation are
(and were) obvious to those who cared to think with half a mind awake and reflecting on past
US ruling elite lies, untruths, obfuscations. Nope. Just repeat, repeat, repeat. Orwell would
clap his hands (not because he agreed with the atrocious politics but the lesson is
learnt).
Added to the whipped up anti-Russia, decidedly anti-Putin crapola – is of course the
Russian peoples’ vote, decision making on their own country’s changes to the
Basic Law (a form of Constitution). When the radio broadcasts the usual sickening
anti-Russian/Putin propaganda regarding this vote immediately prior they would state that the
changes would install Putin for many more years: no mention that he would have to be elected,
i.e. voted by the populace into the presidency. (This was repeated ad infinitum without any
elaboration.) No other proposed changes were mentioned – certainly not that the Duma
would gain greater control over the governance of the country and over the president’s
cabinet. I.e. that the popularly elected (ain’t that what we call democracy??)
representatives in the Duma (parliament) would essentially have more power than the
president.
But most significantly, to my mind, no one has (well of course not – this is Russia)
raised the issue of the fact that it was the Russian people, the vox populi/hoi polloi, who
have had some say in how they are to be governed, how their government will work for them.
HOW much say have we had/do we have in how our government functions, works – let alone
for us, the hoi polloi? When did we the citizenry last have a voting say on ANY sentence in
the Constitution that governs us??? Ummm I do believe it was the creation of the wealthy
British descended slave holding, real estate ethnic-cleansing lot who wrote and ratified the
original document and the hardly dissimilar Congressional and state types who have over the
years written and voted on various amendments. And it is the members of the upper classes in
the Supreme Court who adjudicate on its application to various problems.
BUT We the hoi polloi have never, ever had a direct opportunity to individually vote for
or against any single part of the Constitution which is supposed to be the
“democratic” superstructure which governs us. Unlike the Russians a couple of
days ago.
Richard Coleman , July 6, 2020 at 15:48
“HOW much say have we had/do we have in how our government functions,
works…” See, that’s your mistake right there. WE don’t have a
government. We need one, but we ain’t got one. THEY have a government which they let us
go through the motions of electing. ‘Member back when Bernie was talking about a
Political Revolution?
Here’s a little fact for you. The five most populous states have a total of
123,000,000 people. That’s 10 Senators. The five least populated states have a total of
3.5 million. That’s also 10 Senators. Democracy anyone?
vinnieoh , July 4, 2020 at 09:37
There have been three coup d’état within the US within the lifetimes of most
that read these pages. The first was explained to us by Eisenhower only as he was exiting his
time from the national stage; the MIC had co-opted our government. The second happened in
2000, with the putsch in Florida and then the adoption by the neocon cabal of Bush /Chaney of
the PNAC blueprint “Strategies for Rebuilding America’s Defenses” (Defenses
– hahahaha – shit!). The third happened late last year and early this year when
the bottom-up grass-roots movement of progressivism was crushed by the DNC and the
cold-warrior hack Biden was inserted as the champion of “the opposition
party.”
And, make no mistake that Kamala Harris WILL be his running mate. It was always going to
be Harris. It was to be Harris at the TOP of the ticket as the primaries began, but she
wasn’t even placing in the top tier in any of the contests. However, the poohbahs and
strategists of the DNC are nothing if not determined and consistent. If Biden should win, we
should all start practicing now saying “President Harris” because that is what
the future holds. For the DNC, she looks the part, she sounds the part, but more importantly
she is the very definition of the status quo, corporate ass-kisser, MIC tool.
The professional political class have fully colluded to fatally cripple this democratic
republic. “Democracy” is just a word they say like, “Where’s my
kickback?” (excuse me – my “motivation”.) This bounty scam and the
rehabilitation of GW Bush are nothing but a full blitzkrieg flanking of Trump on the right.
And Trump of course is so far out of his depth that he actually believes that Israel is his
friend. (A hint Donny: Israel is NO-ONE’S friend.)
What is most infuriating? hope-crushing? plain f$%&*#g scary? is that the majority of
Americans from all quarters do not want any of what the professional political class keeps
dumping on us. The very attempt at performing this upcoming election will finally and forever
lay completely bare the collapse of a functioning government. It’s going to be very
ugly, and it may very well be the end. Dog help us all.
Richard Coleman , July 6, 2020 at 15:51
Don’t you think that the assassination of JFK counts as a coup d’etat?
Zhu , July 7, 2020 at 02:10
Apres moi, le Deluge.
John Drake , July 7, 2020 at 11:25
Oh gosh how can you forget the Kennedy Assassination. Most people don’t realize he
was had ordered the removal of a thousand advisors from Vietnam starting the process of
completely cutting bait there, as he had in Laos and Cambodia. All of which made the generals
apoplectic. The great secret about Vietnam-which Ellsberg discovered much latter, and
mentioned in his book Secrets, another good read- was that every president had been warned it
was likely futile. Kennedy was the only one who took that intelligence seriously-like it was
actually intelligent intelligence.
Enter stage right Allen Dulles (fired CIA chief), the anti Castro Cubans, the Mafia and
most important the MIC; exit Jack Kennedy.
Douglas, JFK why he died and why it matters is the best work on the subject. And no Oswald
did not do it; it was a sniper team from different angles, but read the book it gets
complicated.
Roger , July 4, 2020 at 09:11
from Counterpunch.org : “Around 15,000 Soviet troops perished in the Afghan War
between 1979 and 1989. The US funneled more than $20 billion to the Mujahideen and other
anti-Soviet fighters over that same period. This works out to a “bounty” of $1.33
million for each Soviet soldier killed.”
Skip Scott , July 4, 2020 at 08:35
I am wondering how Cheney and Crow can block Trump from withdrawing the troops from
Afghanistan. Is Trump Commander in Chief, or not? How can two senators stop the Commander in
Chief from commanding troop movements? I realize they control the budget, but aren’t
they crossing into illegality by restricting Trump’s ability to
“command”?
Toad Sprocket , July 4, 2020 at 16:49
Yeah, I imagine it’s illegal. Didn’t Lindsay Graham threaten the same thing
when Trump was thinking of pulling troops/”advisers” from Syria? And other
congress warmongers joined in though I don’t think any legislation was passed. They
can’t be bothered to authorize the starts of wars but want to step in when someone
tries to end them.
Oh, and Schumer on South Korea troops, I think that one did pass. Almost certainly illegal
if it came down to it, but our government is of course lawless. And our courts full of judges
who are bought off or moronic or both.
dean 1000 , July 4, 2020 at 06:52
The soft coup attempt continues Ray. More lies and bullshit. It may continue until
election day. Will the media fess-up to its lies after the fact again?
Francis Lee , July 4, 2020 at 04:49
“Vladimir Putin wakes up every morning and goes to bed every night trying to figure
out how to destroy American democracy.”
Yes, of course it is a well-known ‘fact’ that Putin has nothing better to do
than destory American democracy, and I bet he has dreams about it too! But I am minded to
think that if anybody has a penchant for destroying American democracy it is the powers that
be in the US deep state, intelligence agencies, and zionist cliques controlling the President
and Congress.
”Those whom the gods would destroy they first make mad.”
The American establishment seems to be suffering from a bad case of
‘projection’ as psychiatrists call it. That is to say accusing others of what
they are themselves actually doing.
The whole idiotic circus would be hilarious if it were not so serious.
Antonia Young , July 4, 2020 at 12:20
Putin’s (and by extension the Russian Federation’s) primary objective is
international stability. “Destroying America, dividing Americans is the last thing he
wants.) Putin learned many lessons during the break-up of the U.S.S.R. observing the carpet
baggers/oligarchs/vultures who descended on the weak nation, absconding with it’s
wealth and resources at mere fractions of their real value. The deep state’s worst fear
is the co-operation btwn Putin and President Trump to make the world more peaceful, stable,
co-operative and prosperous.
rosemerry , July 4, 2020 at 16:10
The whole conceited and arrogant “belief” that
The USA has any resemblance to a democracy and
Pres. Putin has nothing else to do but think how he could do a better job of showing the
destructive and irresponsible behavior of the USA than its own leaders” and media can
do with no help
has no basis in reality.
If anything, Putin is such a stickler for international law, negotiations, avoidance of
conflict that he is regarded by many as too Christian for this modern, individualistic,
LBGTQ, ”nobody matters but me” worldview of the USA!
Steve Naidamast , July 5, 2020 at 19:54
“If the enemy is self destructing, let them continue to do so…”
Napoleon
Zhu , July 7, 2020 at 02:17
“zionist cliques”: Christian Zionist fighting Fundies, eager for the End of
the World, the Second Coming of Jesus.
delia ruhe , July 4, 2020 at 01:09
Yup, we got a Bountygate. Since my early morning visit to the Foreign Policy site, the
place has exploded with breathless articles on the dastardly Putin and the cowardly Trump,
who has so far failed to hold Putin to account. Reminded me of a similar explosion there when
Russiagate finally got the attention the Dems thought it deserved.
(Anyone think that the intel community pays a fee to each of the FP columnists whenever
one of their a propaganda narratives needs a push to get it off the ground?)
Udo Ulfkotte was a German journalist. He wrote a sensational book about the practices he experienced of the CIA paying German
journalists to publish certain stories. The book was a big best seller in Germany. Its English translation was suppressed for years, but I believe is now available.
Susan Siens , July 5, 2020 at 16:30
Reply to John Chuckman: I’d love to read this book but it wasn’t available a
few years ago when I looked. I’ll look again!
Voice from Europe , July 6, 2020 at 11:52
Gekaufte journalisten.
Ulfkotte admitted he signed off on numerous articles that were prepared for him during his
career. The last year’s of his life he changed his mores and advocated “better
die in truth than live with lies”.
Richard A. , July 4, 2020 at 00:59
I remember the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour from decades ago. Real experts on Russia like
Dimitri Simes and Stephen Cohen were the ones to appear on that NewsHour. The NewsHour of
today rarely has experts on Russia, just experts on Russia bashing–like Michael McFaul.
Oh how the mighty have fallen.
Antonia Young , July 3, 2020 at 23:35
Thank you, Ray for your clarion voice in the midst of WMD-seventeen-point-oh. Will the
American people have the wisdom to notice how many times we’re being fooled? And
finally wake up and stop supporting these questionable news outlets? With appreciation for
your excellent analysis, as usual. ~Tonia Young (Formerly with the Topanga Peace
Alliance)
The majority of Americans have a lot more to worry about than the latest nonsense about
Russia. I think most people just tune it out.
The ones being fooled are the fools who have been lapping this crap up from the get go. The
supposed educated class who think themselves superior and well informed because they read and
listen to the propaganda of PBS, NPR, NYT etc.
They don’t seem to realize the ship is sinking while they’re playing these
ridiculous games.
Susan Siens , July 5, 2020 at 16:34
The supposedly educated class, yes! It can be stunning how people believe anything they
hear on PBS or NPR, and then they make fun of people who believe anything they hear on Fox
News. What’s the difference? Both are propaganda tools.
And, yes, watch us go down in flames while so-called progressives boo-hoo about Trump
thinking he’s above the law (like every other president before him). Our local
“peace and justice” group sent me an email asking me to sign a petition
supporting Robert Mueller. I was gobsmacked, and then I realized our local “peace and
justice” group had been taken over by Democratic Party “resisters.”
Jeezums, why is every word hijacked?
In an
oped on Thursday McFaul presented a long list of Vladimir Putin's alleged crimes, offering
a more ostensibly sophisticated version of amateur Russian specialist, Rep. Jason Crow's (D-CO)
claim that: "Vladimir Putin wakes up every morning and goes to bed every night trying to figure
out how to destroy American democracy."
Francis Lee , July 4, 2020 at 04:49
“Vladimir Putin wakes up every morning and goes to bed every night trying to
figure out how to destroy American democracy.”
Yes, of course it is a well-known ‘fact’ that Putin has nothing better to do
than destory American democracy, and I bet he has dreams about it too! But I am minded to
think that if anybody has a penchant for destroying American democracy it is the powers that
be in the US deep state, intelligence agencies, and zionist cliques controlling the President
and Congress.
”Those whom the gods would destroy they first make mad.”
The American establishment seems to be suffering from a bad case of
‘projection’ as psychiatrists call it. That is to say accusing others of what
they are themselves actually doing.
The whole idiotic circus would be hilarious if it were not so serious.
@Robert White how self-important, arrogant, and entitled these jerks are, they would
understand the volcanic rage directed at Trump. But there is more. Many of these people
really are utterly corrupt in the sense that they have made huge amounts of money through
illegal deals, influence-peddling, etc. They felt secure in the knowledge that Hillary
Clinton was surely not going to go after them, though she might have insisted on a piece of
the pie,, like the greasy, small-town lawyer she is. Now things are not nearly so sure and
they know it.
Trump is far from perfect, in any way you can imagine. Come November, after he has used Joe
Biden as a dishrag, Mr. White and friends will suffer a real case of the sadz.
Russia since Putin does not offer much global profit; Xi Jinping on the other hand does,
for (manufacturing) stock market darlings like Apple, Amazon or Walmart etc. The five Eyes
need an enemy to keep budgets up, anyone will do, and Russia is Wall street's favorite bogey,
keeping China out of the limelight.
Western left keeps on supporting Xi, bedazzled by his orchestrated propaganda of being a
benign ruler. They barely care about Russia, the main activity is denigrating their own West:
"we" are bad = some European colonialists and fascists of two or more generations
ago .
"... the essential backdrop for the timing of this story. It really reveals how completely decayed mainstream media is as an institution, that none of these reporters protested the story, didn't see fit to do any independent investigation into it. At best they would print a Russian denial which counts for nothing in the US, or a Taliban denial which counts for nothing in the US. And then and this gets into the domestic political angle because so much of Russiagate, while it's been crafted by former or current intelligence officials, depends on the Democratic Party and it punditocracy, MSNBC and mainstream media as a projection megaphone, as its Mighty Wurlitzer. ..."
"... That took place in this case because, according to this story, Donald Trump had been briefed on Putin paying bounties to the Taliban and he chose to do nothing. Which, of course Trump denies, but that counts for nothing as well. But, again, there's been no independent confirmation of any of this. And now we get into the domestic part, which is that this new Republican anti-Trump operation, The Lincoln Project, had a flashy ad ready to go almost minutes after the story dropped. ..."
"... They're just, like, on meth at Steve Schmidt's political Batcave, just churning this material out. But I feel like they had an inkling, like this story was coming. It just the coordination and timing was impeccable. ..."
"... And The Lincoln Project is something that James Carville, the veteran Democratic consultant, has said is doing more than any Democrat or any Democratic consultant to elect Joe Biden. ..."
"... the Carter Administration, at the urging of national security chief Zbigniew Brzezinski, had enacted what would become Operation Cyclone under Reagan, an arm-and-equip program to arm the Afghan mujahideen. The Saudis put up a matching fund which helped bring the so-called Services Bureau into the field where Osama bin Laden became a recruiter for international jihadists to join the battlefield. And, you know, the goal was, in the words of Brzezinski, as he later admitted to a French publication, was to force the Red Army, the Soviet Red Army, to intervene to protect the pro-Soviet government in Kabul, which they proceeded to do. ..."
"... What he means is by basically paying bounties, which the US was literally doing along with its Gulf allies, to exact the toll on the allies of Assad, Russia. So, let's just say it's true, according to your question, let's just say this is all true. It would be a retaliation for what the United States has done to Russia in areas where it was actually legally invited in by the governments in charge, either in Kabul or Damascus. And that's, I think, the kind of ironic subtext that can hardly be understated when you see someone like Dan Rather wag his finger at Putin for paying the Taliban as proxies. But, I mean, it's such a ridiculous story that it's just hard to even fathom that it's real. ..."
"... just kind of neocon resistance mind-explosion, where first John Bolton was hailed as this hero and truthteller about Trump. ..."
"... And then you have this and it, you know, today as you pointed out, Chuck Todd, "Chuck Toddler", welcomes on Meet the Press John Bolton as this wise voice to comment on Donald Trump's slavish devotion to Vladimir Putin and how we need to escalate. ..."
"... This is what Russiagate has done. It's taken one of the most Strangelovian, psychotic, dangerous, bloodthirsty, sadistic monsters in US foreign policy circles and turned him into a sober-minded, even heroic, truthteller. ..."
Max Blumenthal breaks down the "Russian bounty" story's flaws and how it aims to prolong the
war in Afghanistan -- and uses Russiagate tactics to continue pushing the Democratic Party to
the right
Multiple US media outlets, citing anonymous intelligence officials, are claiming that Russia
offered bounties to kill US soldiers in Afghanistan, and that President Trump has taken no
action.
Others are contesting that claim. "Officials said there was disagreement among
intelligence officials about the strength of the evidence about the suspected Russian
plot," the New York Times reports. "Notably, the National Security Agency, which specializes in
hacking and electronic surveillance, has been more skeptical."
"The constant flow of Russiagate disinformation into the bloodstream of the Democratic Party
and its base is moving that party constantly to the right, while pushing the US deeper into
this Cold War," Blumenthal says.
Guest: Max Blumenthal, editor of The Grayzone and author of several books, including his
latest "The Management of Savagery."
TRANSCRIPT
AARON MATÉ: Welcome to Pushback, I'm Aaron Maté. There is a new supposed
Trump-Russia bombshell. The New York Times and other outlets reporting that Russia has
been paying bounties to Afghan militants to kill US soldiers in Afghanistan. Trump and the
White House were allegedly briefed on this information but have taken no action.
Now, the story has obvious holes, like many other Russiagate bombshells. It is sourced to
anonymous intelligence officials. The New York Times says that the claim comes from
Afghan detainees. And it also has some logical holes. The Taliban have been fighting the US and
Afghanistan for nearly two decades and never needed Russian payments before to kill the
Americans that they were fighting; [this] amongst other questions are raised about this story.
But that has not stopped the usual chorus from whipping up a frenzy.
RACHEL MADDOW, MSNBC: Vladimir Putin is offering bounties for the scalps of American
soldiers in Afghanistan. Not only offering, offering money [to] the people who kill Americans,
but some of the bounties that Putin has offered have been collected, meaning the Russians at
least believe that their offering cash to kill Americans has actually worked to get some
Americans killed.
FORMER VICE PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: Donald Trump has continued his embarrassing campaign
of deference and debasing himself before Vladimir Putin. He had has [sic] this information
according to The Times, and yet he offered to host Putin in the United States and sought
to invite Russia to rejoin the G7. He's in his entire presidency has been a gift to Putin, but
this is beyond the pale.
CHUCK TODD, NBC: Let me ask you this. Do you think that part of the that the
president is afraid to make Putin mad because maybe Putin did help him win the election and he
doesn't want to make him mad for 2020?
SENATE MINORITY LEADER CHUCK SCHUMER: I was not briefed on the Russian military
intelligence, but it shows that we need in this coming defense bill, which we're debating this
week, tough sanctions against Russia, which thus far Mitch McConnell has resisted.
Joining me now is Max Blumenthal, editor of The Grayzone, author of The Management of
Savagery . Max, welcome to Pushback. What is your reaction to this story?
MAX BLUMENTHAL: I mean, it just feels like so many other episodes that we've
witnessed over the past three or four years, where American intelligence officials basically
plant a story in one outlet, The New York Times , which functions as the media wing of
the Central Intelligence Agency. Then no reporting takes place whatsoever, but six reporters,
or three to six reporters are assigned to the piece to make it look like it was some
last-minute scramble to confirm this bombshell story. And then the story is confirmed again by
The Washington Post because their reporters, their three to six reporters in, you know,
capitals around the world with different beats spoke to the same intelligence officials, or
they were furnished different officials who fed them the same story. And, of course, the story
advances a narrative that the United States is under siege by Russia and that we have to
escalate against Russia just ahead of another peace summit or some kind of international
dialogue.
This has sort of been the general framework for these Russiagate bombshells, and of course
they can there's always an anti-Trump angle. And because, you know, liberal pundits and the,
you know, Democratic Party operatives see this as a means to undermine Trump as the election
heats up. They don't care if it's true or not. They don't care what the consequences are.
They're just gonna completely roll with it. And it's really changed, I think, not just US
foreign policy, but it's changed the Democratic Party in an almost irreversible way, to have
these constant "quote-unquote" bombshells that are really generated by the Central Intelligence
Agency and by other US intelligence operations in order to turn up the heat to crank up the
Cold War, to use these different media organs which no longer believe in reporting, which see
Operation Mockingbird as a kind of blueprint for how to do journalism, to turn them into keys
on the CIA's Mighty Wurlitzer. That's what happened here.
AARON MATÉ: What do you make of the logic of this story? This idea that the
Taliban would need Russian money to kill Americans when the Taliban's been fighting the US for
nearly two decades now. And the sourcing for the story, the same old playbook: anonymous
intelligence officials who are citing vague claims about apparently what was said by Afghan
detainees.
MAX BLUMENTHAL: This story has, as I said, it relies on zero reporting. The only
source is anonymous American intelligence officials. And I tweeted out a clip of a former CIA
operations officer who managed the CIA's operation in Angola, when the US was actually fighting
on the side of apartheid South Africa against a Marxist government that was backed up by Cuban
troops. His name was John Stockwell. And Stockwell talked about how one-third of his covert
operations staff were propagandists, and that they would feed imaginary stories about Cuban
barbarism that were completely false to reporters who were either CIA assets directly or who
were just unwitting dupes who would hang on a line waiting for American intelligence officials
to feed them stories. And one out of every five stories was completely false, as Stockwell
said. We could play some of that clip now; it's pretty remarkable to watch it in light of this
latest fake bombshell.
JOHN STOCKWELL: Another thing is to disseminate propaganda to influence people's
minds, and this is a major function of the CIA. And unfortunately, of course, it overlaps into
the gathering of information. You, you have contact with a journalist, you will give him true
stories, you'll get information from him, you'll also give him false stories.
OFF-CAMERA REPORTER: Can you do this with responsible reporters?
JOHN STOCKWELL: Yes, the Church Committee brought it out in 1975. And then Woodward
and Bernstein put an article in Rolling Stone a couple of years later. Four hundred
journalists cooperating with the CIA, including some of the biggest names in the business.
MAX BLUMENTHAL: So, basically, I mean, you get the flavor of what someone who was in
the CIA at the height of the Cold War I mean, he did the same thing in Vietnam. And the
playbook is absolutely the same today. These this story was dumped on Friday in The New York
Times by "quote-unquote" American intelligence officials, as a breakthrough had been made
in Afghan peace talks and a conference was finally set for Doha, Qatar, that would involve the
Taliban, which had been seizing massive amounts of territory.
Now, it's my understanding, and correct me if I'm wrong, that the Taliban had been fighting
one of the most epic examples of an occupying army in modern history, just absolutely chewing
away at one of the most powerful militaries in human history in their country for the last 19
years, without bounties from Vladimir Putin or
private-hotdog-salesman-and-Saint-Petersburg-troll-farm-owner Yevgeny Prigozhin , who always comes up
in these stories. It's always the hotdog guy who's doing everything bad from, like, you know,
fake Facebook ads to poisoning Sergei Skripal or whatever.
But I just don't see where the Taliban needs encouragement from Putin to do that. It's their
country. They want the US out and they have succeeded in seizing large amounts of territory.
Donald Trump has come into office with a pledge to remove US troops from Afghanistan and ink
this deal. And along comes this story as the peace process begins to advance.
And what is the end-result? We haven't gotten into the domestic politics yet, but the
end-result is you have supposedly progressive senators like Chris Murphy of Connecticut
attacking Trump for not fighting Russia in Afghanistan. I mean, they want a straight-up proxy
war for not escalating. You have Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign
Relations, someone who's aligned with the Democratic Party, who supported the war in Iraq and,
you know, supports just endless war, demanding that the US turn up the heat not just in
Afghanistan but in Syria. So, you know, the escalatory rhetoric is at a fever pitch right now,
and it's obviously going to impact that peace conference.
Let's remember that three days before Trump's summit with Putin was when Mueller chose to
release the indictment of the GRU agents for supposedly hacking the DNC servers. Let's remember
that a day before the UN the United Nations Geneva peace talks opened on Syria in 2014 was when
US intelligence chose to feed these shady Caesar photos, supposedly showing industrial
slaughter of Syrian prisoners, to The New York Times in an investigation that had been
funded by Qatar. Like, so many shady intelligence dumps have taken place ahead of peace summits
to disrupt them, because the US doesn't feel like it has enough skin in the game or it just
simply doesn't want peace in these areas.
So, that's what happened here. That's really, I think, the essential backdrop for the timing
of this story. It really reveals how completely decayed mainstream media is as an institution,
that none of these reporters protested the story, didn't see fit to do any independent
investigation into it. At best they would print a Russian denial which counts for nothing in
the US, or a Taliban denial which counts for nothing in the US. And then and this gets into the
domestic political angle because so much of Russiagate, while it's been crafted by former or
current intelligence officials, depends on the Democratic Party and it punditocracy, MSNBC and
mainstream media as a projection megaphone, as its Mighty Wurlitzer.
That took place in this
case because, according to this story, Donald Trump had been briefed on Putin paying bounties
to the Taliban and he chose to do nothing. Which, of course Trump denies, but that counts for
nothing as well. But, again, there's been no independent confirmation of any of this. And now
we get into the domestic part, which is that this new Republican anti-Trump operation, The
Lincoln Project, had a flashy ad ready to go almost minutes after the story dropped.
THE LINCOLN PROJECT AD: Now we know Vladimir Putin pays a bounty for the murder of
American soldiers. Donald Trump knows, too, and does nothing. Putin pays the Taliban cash to
slaughter our men and women in uniform and Trump is silent, weak, controlled. Instead of
condemnation he insists Russia be treated as our equal.
MAX BLUMENTHAL: I mean, maybe they're just really good editors and brilliant
politicians who work overtime. They're just, like, on meth at Steve Schmidt's political Batcave, just churning this material out. But I feel like they had an inkling, like this story
was coming. It just the coordination and timing was impeccable.
And The Lincoln Project is something that James Carville, the veteran Democratic consultant,
has said is doing more than any Democrat or any Democratic consultant to elect Joe Biden.
They're always out there doing the hard work. Who are they? Well, Steve Schmidt is a former
campaign manager for John McCain 2008. And you look at the various personnel affiliated with
it, they're all McCain former McCain aides or people who worked on the Jeb and George W. Bush
campaigns, going back to Texas and Florida. This is sort of the corporate wing of the
Republican Party, the white-glove-country-club-patrician Republicans who are very pro-war, who
hate Donald Trump.
And by doing this, by them really taking the lead on this attack, as you pointed out, Aaron,
number one, they are sucking the oxygen out of the more progressive anti-Trump initiatives that
are taking place, including in the streets of American cities. They're taking the wind out of
anti-Trump more progressive anti-Trump critiques. For example, I think it's actually more
powerful to attack Trump over the fact that he used, basically, chemical weapons on American
peaceful protesters to do a fascistic photo-op. I don't know why there wasn't some call for
congressional investigations on that. And they are getting skin in the game on the Biden
campaign. It really feels to me like this Lincoln campaign operation, this moderate Republican
operation which is also sort of a venue for neocons, will have more influence after events like
this than the Bernie Sanders campaign, which has an enormous amount of delegates.
So, that's what I think the domestic repercussion is. It's just this constant it's the
constant flow of Russiagate disinformation into the bloodstream of the Democratic Party and its
base that's moving that party constantly to the right, while pushing the US deeper into this
Cold War that only serves, you know, people who are associated with the national security state
who need to justify their paycheck and the budget of the institutions that employ them.
AARON MATÉ: Let's assume for a second that the allegation is true, although, you
know, you've laid out some of the reasons why it's not. Can you talk about the history here,
starting with Afghanistan, something you cover a lot in your book, The Management of
Savagery, where the US aim was to kill Russians, going right on through to Syria, where
just recently the US envoy for the coalition against ISIS, James Jeffery, who handles Syria,
said that his job now is to basically put the Russians in a quagmire in Syria.
JAMES JEFFREY: This isn't Afghanistan. This isn't Vietnam. This isn't a quagmire. My
job is to make it a quagmire for the Russians.
MAX BLUMENTHAL: Yeah, I mean, it feels like a giant act of psychological and
political projection to accuse Russia of using an Islamist militia in Afghanistan as a proxy
against the US to bleed the US into leaving, because that's been the US playbook in Central
Asia and the Middle East since at least 1979. I just tweeted a photo of Dan Rather in
Afghanistan, just crossing the Pakistani border and going to meet with some of the Mujahideen
in 1980. Dan Rather was panned in The New York in The Washington Post by Tom
Toles [Tom Shales], who was the media critic at the time, as "Gunga Dan," because he was so
gung-ho for the Afghan mujahideen. In his reports he would complain about how weak their
weaponry was, you know, how they needed more how they needed more funding. I mean, you could
call it bounties, but it was really just CIA funding.
DAN RATHER: These are the best weapons you have, huh? They only have about twenty
rounds for this?
TRANSLATOR: That's all. They have twenty rounds. Yes, and they know that these are
all old weapons and they really aren't up to doing anything to the Russian weaponry that's
around. But that's all they have, and this is why they want help. And he is saying that America
seems to be asleep. It doesn't seem to realize that if Afghanistan goes and the Russians go
over to the Gulf, that in a very short time it's going to be the turn of the United States as
well.
DAN RATHER: But I'm sure he knows that in Vietnam we got our fingers burned. Indeed,
we got our whole hands burned when we tried to help in this kind of situation.
TRANSLATOR [translating to the Afghan man and then his reply]: Your hands were burned
in Vietnam, but if you don't agree to help us, if you don't ally yourself with us, then all of
you, your whole body will be burnt eventually, because there is no one in the world who can
really fight and resist as well as the as much and as well as the Afghans are.
DAN RATHER: But no American mother wants to send her son to Afghanistan.
TRANSLATOR [translating to the Afghan man and then his reply]: We don't need
anybody's soldiers here to help us, but we are being constantly accused that the Americans are
helping us with weapons. What we need, actually, are the American weapons. We don't need or
want American soldiers. We can do the fighting ourselves.
MAX BLUMENTHAL: And a year or several months before, the Carter Administration, at
the urging of national security chief Zbigniew Brzezinski, had enacted what would become
Operation Cyclone under Reagan, an arm-and-equip program to arm the Afghan mujahideen. The
Saudis put up a matching fund which helped bring the so-called Services Bureau into the field
where Osama bin Laden became a recruiter for international jihadists to join the battlefield.
And, you know, the goal was, in the words of Brzezinski, as he later admitted to a French
publication, was to force the Red Army, the Soviet Red Army, to intervene to protect the
pro-Soviet government in Kabul, which they proceeded to do.
And then with the introduction of
the Stinger missile, the Afghan mujahideen, hailed as freedom fighters in Washington, were able
to destroy Russian supply lines, exact a heavy toll, and forced the Red Army to leave in
retreat. They helped create what's considered the Soviet Union's Vietnam.
So that was really but the blueprint for what Russian for what Russia is being accused of
now, and that same model was transferred over to Syria. It was also actually proposed for Iraq
in the Iraq Liberation Act in 1998. Then Senate Foreign Relations chair Jesse Helms actually
said that the Afghan mujahideen should be our model for supporting the Iraqi resistance. So,
this kind of proxy war was always on the table. Then the US did it in Syria, when one out of
every $13 in the CIA budget went to arm the so-called "moderate rebels" in Syria, who we later
found out were 31 flavors of jihadi, who were aligned with al-Qaeda's local affiliate Jabhat
al-Nusra and helped give rise to ISIS. Michael Morell, I tweeted some video of him on Charlie
Rose back in, I think, 2016. He's the former acting director for the CIA, longtime deputy
director. He said, you know, the reason that we're in Syria, what we should be doing is causing
Iran and Russia, the two allies of Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, to pay a heavy
price.
MICHAEL MORELL: We need to make the Iranians pay a price in Syria. We need to make
the Russians pay a price. The other thing
CHARLIE ROSE: We make them pay the price by killing killing Russians?
MICHAEL MORELL: Yes.
CHARLIE ROSE: And killing Iranians.
MICHAEL MORELL: Yes, covertly. You don't tell the world about it, right? You don't
stand up at the Pentagon and say we did this, right? But you make sure they know it in Moscow
and Tehran.
MAX BLUMENTHAL:What he means is by basically paying bounties, which the US was
literally doing along with its Gulf allies, to exact the toll on the allies of Assad, Russia.
So, let's just say it's true, according to your question, let's just say this is all true. It
would be a retaliation for what the United States has done to Russia in areas where it was
actually legally invited in by the governments in charge, either in Kabul or Damascus. And
that's, I think, the kind of ironic subtext that can hardly be understated when you see someone
like Dan Rather wag his finger at Putin for paying the Taliban as proxies. But, I mean, it's
such a ridiculous story that it's just hard to even fathom that it's real.
AARON MATÉ: Let me read Dan Rather's tweet, because it's so it speaks to just
how pervasive Russiagate culture is now. People have learned absolutely nothing from it.
Rather says, "Reporters are trained to look for patterns that are suspicious, and time and
again one stands out with Donald Trump. Why is he so slavishly devoted to Putin? There is a
spectrum of possible answers ranging from craven to treasonous. One day I hope and suspect we
will find out."
It's like he forgot, perhaps, that Robert Mueller and his team spent three years
investigating this very issue and came up with absolutely nothing. But the narrative has taken
hold, and it's, as you talked about before, it's been the narrative we've been presented as the
vehicle for understanding and opposing Donald Trump, so it cannot be questioned. And now it's
like it's a matter of, what else is there to find out about Trump and Russia after Robert
Mueller and the US intelligence agencies looked for everything they could and found nothing?
They're still presented as if it's some kind of mystery that has to be unraveled.
MAX BLUMENTHAL: And it was after, like, a week of just kind of neocon resistance
mind-explosion, where first John Bolton was hailed as this hero and truthteller about Trump.
Then Dick Cheney was welcomed into the resistance, you know, because he said, "Wear a mask." I
mean, you know, his mask was strangely not spattered with the blood of Iraqi children. But, you
know, it was just amazing like that. Of course, it was the Lincoln project who hijacked the
minds of the resistance, but basically people who used to work on Cheney's campaign said, "Dick
Cheney, welcome to the resistance." I mean, that was remarkable. And then you have this and it,
you know, today as you pointed out, Chuck Todd, "Chuck Toddler", welcomes on Meet the
Press John Bolton as this wise voice to comment on Donald Trump's slavish devotion to
Vladimir Putin and how we need to escalate.
CHUCK TODD, NBC: Let me ask you this. Do you think that part of the that the
president is afraid to make Putin mad because maybe Putin did help him win the election and he
doesn't want to make him mad for 2020?
MAX BLUMENTHAL: I mean, just a few years ago, maybe it was two years ago, before
Bolton was brought into the Trump NSC, he was considered just an absolute marginal crank who
was a contributor to Fox News. He'd been forgotten. He was widely hated by Democrats. Now here
he is as a sage voice to tell us how dangerous this moment is. And, you know, he's not being
even brought on just to promote his book; he's being brought on as just a sober-minded foreign
policy expert on Meet the Press . That's where we're at right now.
AARON MATÉ: Yeah, and when his critique of Trump is basically that Trump was not
hawkish enough. Bolton's most the biggest critique Bolton has of Trump is, as he writes about
in his book, is when Trump declined to bomb Iran after Iran shot down a drone over its
territory. And Bolton said that to him was the most irrational thing he's ever seen a president
do.
MAX BLUMENTHAL: Well, Bolton was mad that Trump confused body bags with missiles,
because he said Trump thought that there would be 150 dead Iranians, and I said, "No, Donald,
you're confused. It will be 150 missiles that we're firing into Iran." Like that's better!
Like, "Oh, okay, that makes everything all right," that we fire a hundred missiles for one
drone and maybe that wouldn't that kill possibly more than 150 people?
Well, in Bolton's world this was just another stupid move by Trump. If Bolton were, I mean,
just, just watch all the interviews with Bolton. Watch him on The View where the only
pushback he received was from Meghan McCain complaining that he ripped off a Hamilton
song for his book The Room Where It Happened , and she asked, "Don't you have any
apology to offer to Hamilton fans?" That was the pushback that Bolton received. Just
watch all of these interviews with Bolton and try to find the pushback. It's not there. This is
what Russiagate has done. It's taken one of the most Strangelovian, psychotic, dangerous,
bloodthirsty, sadistic monsters in US foreign policy circles and turned him into a
sober-minded, even heroic, truthteller.
AARON MATÉ: And inevitably the only long-term consequence that I can see here is
ultimately helping Trump, because, if history is a pattern, these Russiagate supposed
bombshells always either go nowhere or they get debunked. So, if this one gets forcefully
debunked, because I think it's quite possible, because Trump has said that he was never briefed
on this and they'll have to prove that he's lying, you know. It should be easy to do. Someone
could come out and say that. If they can't prove that he's lying, then this one, I think, will
blow up in their face. And all they will have done is, at a time when Trump is vulnerable over
the pandemic with over a hundred thousand people dead on his watch, all these people did was
ultimately try to bring the focus back to the same thing that failed for basically the entirety
of Trump's presidency, which is Russiagate and Trump's supposed―and non-existent in
reality―subservience to Vladimir Putin.
MAX BLUMENTHAL: But have you ever really confronted one of your liberal friends who
maybe doesn't follow these stories as closely as you do? You know, well-intentioned liberal
friend who just has this sense that Russia controls Trump, and asked them to really defend that
and provide the receipts and really explain where the Trump administration has just handed the
store to Russia? Because what we've seen is unprecedented since the height of the Cold War, an
unprecedented deterioration of US-Russia relations with new sanctions on Russia every few
months. You ask them to do that. They can't do it. It's just a sense they get, it's a feeling
they get. And that's because these bombshells drop, they get reported on the front pages under
banners of papers that declare that "democracy dies in darkness," whose brand is something that
everybody trusts, The New York Times , The Washington Post , Woodward and
Bernstein, and everybody repeats the story again and again and again. And then, if and when it
gets debunked, discredited or just sort of disappears, a few days later everybody forgets about
it. And those people who are not just, like, 24/7 media consumers but critical-minded media
consumers, they're left with that sense that Russia actually controls us and that we must do
something to escalate with Russia. So, that's the point of these: by the time the
disinformation is discredited, the damage has already been done. And that same tactic was
employed against Jeremy Corbyn in the UK, to the point where so many people were left with the
sense that he must be an antisemite, although not one allegation was ever proven.
AARON MATÉ: Yeah, and now to the point where, in the Labour Party―we
should touch on this for a second―where you had a Labour Party member retweet an article
recently that mentioned some criticism of Israel and for that she was expelled from her
position in the shadow cabinet.
MAX BLUMENTHAL: Yeah, well, you know, as a Jew I was really threatened by that
retweet [laughter]. I don't know about you.
I mean, this is Rebecca Long Bailey. She's one of the few Corbynites left in a high position
in Labour who hasn't been effectively burned at the stake for being a, you know, Jew hater who
wants to throw us all in gas chambers because she retweets an interview with some celebrity I'd
never heard of before, who didn't even say anything that extreme. But it really shows how the
Thought Police have taken control of the Labour Party through Sir Keir Starmer, who is someone
who has deep links to the national security state through the Crown Prosecution Service, which
he used to head, where he was involved in the prosecution of Julian Assange. And he has worked
with The Times of London, which is a, you know, favorite paper of the national security
state and the MI5 in the UK, for planting stories against Jeremy Corbyn. He was intimately
involved in that campaign, and now he's at the head of the Labour Party for a very good reason.
I really would recommend everyone watching this, if you're interested more in who Keir Starmer
really is, read "Five Questions for [New Labour Leader] Sir Keir Starmer" by Matt Kennard at
The Grayzone. It really lays it out and shows you what's happening.
We're just in this kind of hyper-managed atmosphere, where everything feels so much more
controlled than it's ever been. And even though every sane rational person that I know seems to
understand what's happening, they feel like they're not allowed to say it, at least not in any
official capacity.
AARON MATÉ: From the US to Britain, everything is being co-opted. In the US
it's, you know, genuine resistance to Trump, in opposition to Trump, it gets co-opted by the
right. Same thing in Britain. People get manipulated into believing that Jeremy Corbyn, this
lifelong anti-racist is somehow an antisemite. It's all in the service of the same agenda, and
I have to say we're one of the few outlets that are pushing back on it. Everyone else is
getting swept up on it and it's a scary time.
We're gonna wrap. Max, your final comment.
MAX BLUMENTHAL: Well, yeah, we're pushing back. And I saw today Mint Press
[News], which is another outlet that has pushed back, their Twitter account was just
briefly removed for no reason, without explanation. Ollie Vargas, who's an independent
journalist who's doing some of the most important work in the English language from Bolivia,
reporting on the post-coup landscape and the repressive environment that's been created by the
junta installed with US help under Jeanine Áñez, his account has been taken away on
Twitter. The social media platforms are basically under the control of the national security
state. There's been a merger between the national security state and Silicon Valley, and the
space for these kinds of discussions is rapidly shrinking. So, I think, you know, it's more
important than ever to support alternative media and also to really have a clear understanding
of what's taking place. I'm really worried there just won't be any space for us to have these
conversations in the near future.
AARON MATÉ: Max Blumenthal, editor of The Grayzone, author of The Management
of Savagery , thanks a lot.
Trump as wolf in sheep's clothing in his policy toward Russia. Any person who can appoint
Bolton as his national security advisor should be criminally prosecuted for criminal
incompetence. To say nothing about Pompeo, Haley and many others. Such a peacenik, my ***
The USA foreign policy is not controlled by the President. It is controlled by the "Deep state"
Notable quotes:
"... The dizzying, often contradictory, paths followed by Trump on the one hand and his hawkish but constantly changing cast of national security aides on the other have created confusion in Congress and among allies and enemies alike. To an observer, Russia is at once a mortal enemy and a misunderstood friend in U.S. eyes. ..."
"... But Trump has defended his perspective on Russia, viewing it as a misunderstood potential friend, a valued World War II ally led by a wily, benevolent authoritarian who actually may share American values, like the importance of patriotism, family and religion. ..."
"... despite Trump's rhetoric, his administration has plowed ahead with some of the most significant actions against Russia by any recent administration. ..."
"... Dozens of Russian diplomats have been expelled, diplomatic missions closed, arms control treaties the Russians sought to preserve have been abandoned, weapons have been sold to Ukraine despite the impeachment allegations and the administration is engaged in a furious battle to prevent Russia from constructing a new gas pipeline that U.S. lawmakers from both parties believe will increase Europe's already unhealthy dependence on Russian energy. ..."
When it comes to Russia, the Trump administration just can't seem to make
up its mind.
For the past three years, the administration has careered between President Donald Trump's
attempts to curry favor and friendship with Vladimir Putin and longstanding deep-seated
concerns about Putin's intentions. As Trump has repeatedly and openly cozied up to Putin, his
administration has imposed harsh and meaningful sanctions and penalties on Russia.
The dizzying, often contradictory, paths followed by Trump on the one hand and his hawkish
but constantly changing cast of national security aides on the other have created confusion in
Congress and among allies and enemies alike. To an observer, Russia is at once a mortal enemy
and a misunderstood friend in U.S. eyes.
Even before Trump took office questions about Russia abounded. Now, nearing the end of his
first term with a difficult
reelection ahead , those questions have resurfaced with a vengeance. Intelligence
suggesting Russia
was encouraging attacks on U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan by putting bounties on
their heads has thrust the matter into the heart of the 2020 campaign.
The White House says the intelligence wasn't confirmed or brought to Trump's attention, but
his vast chorus of critics are skeptical and maintain the president should have been
aware.
The reports have alarmed even pro-Trump Republicans who see Russia as a hostile global foe
meddling with nefarious intent in Afghanistan, the Middle East, Ukraine and Georgia, a waning
former superpower trying to regain its Soviet-era influence by subverting democracy in Europe
and the United States with disinformation and election interference .
Trump's overtures to Putin have unsettled longstanding U.S. allies in Europe, including
Britain, France and Germany, which have expressed concern about the U.S. commitment to the NATO
alliance, which was forged to counter the Soviet threat, and robust democracy on the
continent.
But Trump has defended his perspective on Russia, viewing it as a misunderstood potential
friend, a valued World War II ally led by a wily, benevolent authoritarian who actually may
share American values, like the importance of patriotism, family and religion.
Within the Trump administration, the national security establishment appears torn between
pursuing an arguably tough approach to Russia and pleasing the president. Insiders who have
raised concern about Trump's approach to Russia -- including at least one of his national
security advisers, defense secretaries and secretaries of state, but especially lower-level
officials who spoke out during impeachment -- have nearly all been ousted from their
positions.
Suspicions about Trump and Russia go back to his 2016 campaign. His appeal to Moscow to dig up his
opponent's emails , his plaintive suggestions that Russia and the United States should be
friends and a series of contacts between his advisers and Russians raised questions of
impropriety that led to special counsel Robert Mueller's
investigation . The investigation ultimately did not allege that anyone associated with the
campaign illegally conspired with Russia.
Mueller, along with the U.S. intelligence community, did find that Russia interfered with
the election, to sow chaos and also help Trump's campaign. But Trump has cast doubt on those
findings, most memorably in a 2018 appearance on stage with Putin in
Helsinki .
Yet despite Trump's rhetoric, his administration has plowed ahead with some of the most
significant actions against Russia by any recent administration.
Dozens of Russian diplomats have been expelled, diplomatic missions closed, arms control
treaties the Russians sought to preserve have been abandoned, weapons have been sold to Ukraine
despite the impeachment allegations and the administration is engaged in a furious battle to
prevent Russia from constructing a new gas pipeline that U.S. lawmakers from both parties
believe will increase Europe's already unhealthy dependence on Russian energy.
At the same time, Trump has compounded the uncertainty by calling for the withdrawal or
redeployment of U.S. troops from Germany, angrily deriding NATO allies for not meeting alliance
defense spending commitments, and now apparently ignoring dire intelligence warnings that
Russia was paying or wanted to pay elements of the Taliban to kill American forces in
Afghanistan.
On top of that, even after the intelligence reports on the Afghanistan bounties circulated,
he's expressed interest in inviting Putin back into the G-7 group of nations over the
objections of the other members.
White House officials and die-hard Trump supporters have shrugged off the obvious
inconsistencies, but they have been unable to staunch the swell of criticism and pointed
demands for explanations as Russia, which has vexed American leaders for decades, delights in
its ability to create chaos.
My take on Tucker and Maddow: both serve those who write their paychecks, but one of the
two bosses is a better businessman.
Tucker does not duplicate Hannity which lets them serve different (if overlapping)
segments of the audience. Showing Paralimpil and Gabbard to the viewers did not lead to any
major perturbation in American politics, but it lets his viewer feel that they are better
informed than the fools who watch Maddow. And it helps that to a degree they are.
I get that Tucker invites good a reasonable people on his show and gives voice space where
they would not otherwise get it. That is deliberate.
I bet you that the stats show that the demented monotone oozing out of MSNBC and CNN etc
has been a serious turn off for a sector of audience that is well informed and exercise
critical faculties. That is exactly what Tucker needs to pay for his program as I would be
fairly sure these people are Consumers of a desirable degree and advertisers like Tucker's
formula and Fox Bosses like Tuckers income generator.
I don't think it is more complex than that and his bosses will entertain most heresies as
long as the program generates advertiser demand for that time slot.
So Tucker is OK and he is reasonable and he will interview a broad spectrum. Good for him.
But he smooths the pillow and caresses the establishment arse.
The organisers projected an image of the cover of the Russian Constitution against the
background of Bill Clinton, Boris Yeltsin, and the inscription "1993. It was yours " Then
there is an image of the Russian people and the message "2020. It will be ours!", followed by
a call to come to vote, was projected on the building of the US Embassy. The light projection
was organised by the art group "Re:Venge".
https://www.stalkerzone.org/the-russian-constitution-was-projected-onto-the-us-embassy-building-in-moscow/
Ha, I really like this one ! Would have loved to watch 'das dumme Gesicht' (something like
>>stupid face<< but stronger. like the Germans say) of the latest Trump's edition
of silly ambassadors, lol !!!
"... Some countries like Italy (maybe Germany) are warming to Russia a little bit but Russia has a long way to go just to get back to their pre-2014 status with Europe. That is 'tightening their grip?'. I know, this is how propagandists speak. ..."
VK, re: Russia's grip on Europe is gradually tightening from the U.K.'s
INDEPENDENT
It's behind a paywall but I read just enough to be curious as to how someone could
possibly justify a clickbait title like that.
I suspect that the rest of the article is just
going to recap Russia's alleged sins in order to fan hatred but how can someone objectively
say that Russia is tightening its grip on Europe?
FUCKUS banned Russia from the Olympics on a bogus state sponsored steroid scam, no
reinstatement on horizon.
FUCKUS kicked Russia out of the now G7 and imposed a trade embargo that destroyed a large
commercial relationship w/Germany.
What is the 'overwhelming' evidence that the Russians poisoned the Skripal's, Novichok can be
made by just about anyone.
Some countries like Italy (maybe Germany) are warming to Russia a little bit but Russia
has a long way to go just to get back to their pre-2014 status with Europe. That is
'tightening their grip?'. I know, this is how propagandists speak.
It is not just senility. Looks like Ukrainegate is not enough for her and she wants to throw kitchen sink at Trump. Charging for "alleged"
action is directly from Stalin's NKVD practice
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday called for US sanctions against Russia's intelligence
service over bounties that it reportedly offered Taliban militants to kill American soldiers in
Afghanistan.
Interesting history Browder has. I suspect he has a history with Putin before Putin became
President , but its hard to find anything on a connection. Anyways lots of interesting
connections, meaningful or not, I cant say.
[Hide MORE]
1985 - bugged version of PROMIS was sold for Soviet government use, with the media mogul
Robert Maxwell as a conduit.
1990 - just after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Browder found himself on assignment in
Poland for Boston Consulting Group. The government had begun privatizing state-owned
companies and selling their shares at ridiculously low valuations.
1991 - Anatoly Sobchak, a former law professor of Putin's at Leningrad State, became mayor
of Leningrad.* Sobchak hired Vladimir Putin, whom he had known when Putin worked at Leningrad
State. Putin was still on active reserve with the KGB.
Putin's tenure in Sobchak's office was so rife with scandal that it led to a host of
investigations into illegal assignment of licenses and contracts . Putin was head of the
Committee for Foreign Liaison; collaborated with criminal gangs in regulating gambling; a
money-laundering operation by the St. Petersburg Real Estate Holding Company, where Kumarin
was involved and Putin served on the advisory board; Putin's role in providing a monopoly for
the Petersburg Fuel Company, then controlled by the Tambov criminal organization; and much,
much more -- virtually all of which was whitewashed. While he was in St. Petersburg in the
nineties, Putin signed many hundreds of contracts doling out funds to his cronies.
1991 - November 5, Robert Maxwell, allegedly drowned after falling off his yacht in the
Canary Islands near the northwest coast of Africa. Billions were missing from his pension
funds
Maxwell's investment bankers included Salomon Brothers. Eventually, the pension funds were
replenished with monies from investment banks Shearson Lehman and Goldman Sachs, as well as
the British government.
It was March 1991 when William Browder went to work for British billionaire Robert Maxwell
as his "investment manager". Just how deep into the investment decisions of Maxwell did
Browder participate as an investment manager?
1991 November 10, Maxwell's funeral took place on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, the
resting place for the nation's most revered heroes. Prime Minister Shamir eulogized: "He has
done more Israel than can today be said."
1992 - Interestingly, after Maxwell died, Bill Browder went to work for the Salomon
Brothers in the middle of their own scandal. Browder was put in charge of the Russian
proprietary investments desk at Salomon Brothers. He was given 25 million to invest and used
it by paying cash for vouchers in Russian companies the government had issued to citizens ,
and used them to buy shared at public auction. In a short period he turned that into 125
million
The scandal at Salomon Brothers was the manipulation of the US Treasury auctions back
then.After that scandal where the government was threatening to shut down Salomon Brothers
who was the biggest bond dealer in the USA for manipulating markets, all of a sudden, people
from Goldman Sachs started taking posts in government.
1996-Browder left Salomon Brothers and with Edmond Safra founded Hermitage Capital
Management for the purpose of investing initial seed capital of $25 million in Russia during
the period of the mass privatization after the fall of the Soviet Union. Beny Steinmetz was
another of the original investors in Hermitage, the Israeli diamond billionaire.
Cyprus is a favorite place for Russian to launder money. Thats probably why Browder and
his accounting advisor Jamison Firestone chose it to launder Browder's Russian profits.
Browder from about 1997 to the mid-2000s used Cyprus shell companies to move money out of
Russia to cheat the country of multi-millions of dollars in taxes. He used the Russian shells
to invest in shares, including Gazprom shares that were illegal for foreigners to buy in
Russia, then moved the shares to Cyprus shells
1996 article entitled, "The Money Plane," published by New York Magazine detailed how the
"Russian mob gets a shipment of up to a billion dollars in fresh $100 bills," Edmond Safra's
bank, Republic National, was directly implicated.
Guess we know where Browder got the cash money to pay for the vouchers
1998 - If Salomon had not been merged with Travelers Group in 1997 (which owned retail
brokerage, Smith Barney), no doubt Salomon Brothers would have collapsed in the 1998
Long-Term Capital Management debacle created by one of their own – Salomons John
Meriwether.
Safra lost $1 billion in Russia during the 1998 Long-Term Capital Management crisis over
Russian bonds and investments which was why he put his bank, Republic National Bank, up for
sale to HSBC in 1999.
1999 - Following the Russian financial crisis of 1998, despite significant outflows from
the fund, Hermitage became a prominent shareholder in the Russian oil and gas. It was in 1999
when VSMPO-AVISMA Corporation (Russian:
ВСМПО-АВИСМА) – the
world's largest titanium producer - filed a RICO lawsuit against Browder and other Avisma
investors including Kenneth Dart, alleging they illegally siphoned company assets into
offshore accounts and then transferred the funds to U.S. accounts at Barclays.
Browder and his co-defendants settled with Avisma in 2000; they sold their Avisma shares
as part of the confidential settlement agreement.
1999 - Republican National Bank was owned by Safra . On May 11, HSBC, announced a $10.3
billion deal to purchase Edmond Safra's holdings including the Republic National Bank of New
York and Safra's shares in Bill Browder's firm, Hermitage Capital. The announcement came only
nine months after Russia's economy collapsed and Browder's clients, lost over $900 million.
It was also nine months after $4.8 billion in IMF funds was deposited in an undisclosed
account at Safra's bank and well before the public became aware that that same money was
dispersed and stolen through the Bank of New York, off-shore companies, and foreign financial
institutions.
HSBC then became Browders partner of the Heritage Fund . Browder's shell companies were
registered in Cyprus but owned by HSBC (Guernsey) as the trustee for his Hermitage Capital
Management.
Cypriot shells Glendora and Kone were part of his offshore network "owned" by an HSBC
Private Bank Guernsey Ltd trust. The real owner was Browder's Hermitage Fund. Assets (stocks
and money) went from Russia to Cyprus and then to parts unknown.
Republic International Trust, registered by Mossack Fonseca of Panama Papers fame and
listed on the Glendora document, was in the offshore network of Republic National Bank owner
Edmond Safra, an early investor who then held 51% of Hermitage Fund shares.
1999 December 3 - Safra was killed in suspicious fire that broke out in his Monte Carlo
home. Although some believe that Safra was killed by the Russian mafia, Lurie reported that a
Swiss prosecutor investigating the missing IMF money believed that Safra was killed "because
of his revelations to the FBI and the Swiss Prosecutor's Office investigating the
disappearance and laundering of $4.8 billion of the IMF stablilization loan." One of the more
interesting things to note here is that the prosecutor implied that Safra not only spoke with
the FBI about the missing IMF funds but with Swiss authorities as well.
Funny how Browders bosses/partners get killed
1999 - the bombings that killed nearly three hundred innocent Russians were likely the
product of a "false flag" operation that enabled Putin to consolidate power.
Putin promised to stop the plundering of the Russian state by rich oligarchs. But very few
Russians knew that Putin had been a primary actor in the same kind of activity in St.
Petersburg. And as for cleaning up corruption, one of Putin's first acts as president was to
pardon Boris Yeltsin, thereby guaranteeing immunity from prosecution to the outgoing
president.-
Putin recruited two oligarchs who were among his closest confidants, Roman Abramovich and
Lev Leviev, to undertake the highly unlikely mission of creating a new religious organization
called the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia under the leadership of Rabbi Berel
Lazar, a leader in the Hasidic movement called Chabad-Lubavitch.
Founded in the late eighteenth century, the tiny, Brooklyn-based Chabad-Lubavitcher
movement is a fundamentalist Hasidic sect centered on the teaching of the late Rabbi Menachem
Schneerson, who is sometimes referred to as a messiah -- moshiach -- a savior and liberator
of the Jewish people. It is antiabortion, views homosexuality as a perversion, and often
aligns itself politically with other fundamentalist groups on the right.
Its biggest donors included Leviev, an Israeli billionaire who was an Uzbek native and was
known as the "King of Diamonds" thanks to his success in the diamond trade, and Charles
Kushner, an American real estate developer who was later jailed for illegal campaign
contributions, tax evasion, and witness tampering. Kushner is also the father of Jared
Kushner, who married Donald Trump's daughter, Ivanka, and later became a senior adviser to
President Trump. Leviev's friendship with Lazar dates back to 1992 and, according to Haaretz,
made Leviev "the most influential, most active and most connected person in the Jewish
community of Russia and made Lazar the country's chief rabbi."
Roman Abramovich, controlled the trading arm of one of Russia's largest oil companies
through an Isle of Man company that had figured in the Bank of New York affair. Mr.
Abramovich ran the Siberian oil giant Sibneft, which sold its oil through a company called
Runicom.
His name emerged after speculation that Swiss investigators were looking into the role of
Runicom as part of the widening investigation into the laundering of up to $15 billion of
Russian money through American banks. Runicom is owned by at least two offshore companies set
up by the Valmet Group, a financial services concern partly owned by Menatep, a failed
Russian bank that used the Bank of New York."
2001- Salomon Brothers Building (WTC 7) collapses. Tenants include the Department of
Defense, the Secret Service, the IRS, and the Securities and Exchange Commission
2005 - Steinmetz of Browders Heritage Fund teamed up with another diamond magnate, Putins
buddy Lev Leviev, to purchase the top ten floors of Israel's Diamond Tower which also houses
the Israeli Diamond Exchange. Haaretz.com reported that "the buyers intend to build a
connector from the 10 floors – the top 10 floors of the building – to the diamond
exchange itself in order to benefit from the security regime of the other offices within the
exchange." And benefit they did.
According to one website reporting on a Channel 10 (Israel) news story, from 2005 –
2011, an "underground" bank was set up to provide "loans to firms using money taken from
other companies while pretending it was legally buying and selling diamonds." The bank
apparently washed over $100 million in illicit funds over the course of six years and both
Steinmetz and Leviev were directly implicated as "customers" of the bank but Neither of them
were charged in the case.
Then there's HSBC's involvement in the diamond industry and Leviev's ties not only to arms
dealer Arcadi Gaydamak via Africa-Israeli Investments but Roman Abramovich and Kushner
2007 - Browders Hermitage Capital Management, was raided by Russian interior ministry
officers, who confiscated stamps and documents. These were then used to file bogus tax
returns to the Russian Treasury, which were paid out to bank accounts controlled by Klyuev
and his associates, according to the U.S. government.
Browder claimed Organized crime carried out the tax refund fraud against the Russian
Treasury under which criminals used collusive lawsuits to fake damages and get refunds of
company taxes. The tax refund fraud using Browder's companies netted $230 million.
2008 - HSBC (Guersey) director Paul Wrench filed a complaint about the tax refund fraud in
July on behalf of Hermitage (after Starova's complaints) .
Maginitsky was arrested for being the accountant (not a lawyer) of Browder's tax evasion
schemes.
2008 - A lawsuit alleged Bayrock's projected profits were "to be laundered, untaxed
through a sham Delaware entity" to the FL Group, Iceland's largest private investment fund,
the first major firm to collapse in 2008 when Iceland's financial bubble burst, and a favored
financial instrument for loans to Russia-connected oligarchs who were, court papers claim, in
favor with Vladimir Putin. According to Bloomberg, Eva Joly, who assisted Iceland's special
prosecutor in the investigation of the financial collapse, said, "There was a huge amount of
money that came into these banks that wasn't entirely explained by central bank lending. Only
Mafia-like groups fill a gap like that."
Another significant Bayrock partner, the Sapir Organization, had, through its principal,
Tamir Sapir, a long business relationship with Semyon Kislin, the commodities trader who was
tied to the Chernoy brothers and, according to the FBI, to Vyacheslav Ivankov's gang in
Brighton Beach.
In addition to being wired into the Kremlin, Sapir's son-in-law, Rotem Rosen, was a
supporter of Chabad along with Sater, Sapir, and others at Bayrock, and, as a result, was
part of an extraordinarily powerful channel between Trump and Putin. After all, the ascent of
Chabad in Russia had been part of Putin's plan to replace older Jewish institutions in Russia
with corresponding organizations that were loyal to him.
The biggest contributor to Chabad in the world was Leviev, the billionaire "King of
Diamonds" who had a direct line to Rabbi Berel Lazar, aka "Putin's rabbi," to Donald Trump,
and to Putin himself dating back to the Russian leader's early days in St. Petersburg.
Indeed, one of the biggest contributors to Chabad of Port Washington, Long Island, was
Bayrock founder Tevfik Arif, a Kazakh-born Turk with a Muslim name who was not Jewish, but
nonetheless won entry into its Chai Circle as a top donor.
2013-The Hermitage Fund, an HSBC-backed vehicle that invested in Russia and became
embroiled in a diplomatic war with the Kremlin over the death of one of its accountants,
closes down..
2014, Vekselberg's Renova Group became a partner with Wilbur Ross in the takeover of the
Bank of Cyprus, which had held billions in deposits from wealthy Russians.
Back in early 90's Trump found himself in financial trouble when his three casinos in
Atlantic City were under foreclosure threat from lenders. He was bailed-out by senior
managing director of N.M. Rothschild & Sons, Wilbur Ross, who Trump would later appoint
as Secretary of Commerce. Ross, who is known as the "King of Bankruptcy," specializes in
leveraged buyouts of distressed businesses.
Along with Blackstones Carl Icahn, Ross convinced bondholders to strike a deal with Trump
that allowed Trump to keep control of the casinos.
By the mid-1990s, Ross was a prominent figure in New York Democratic Party politics and
had caught the attention President Bill Clinton who appointed him to lead the U.S.-Russia
Investment Fund.
2015 - Donald Trump, after emerging from a decade of litigation, multiple bankruptcies,
and $ 4 billion in debt, had risen from the near-dead with the help of Bayrock and its
alleged ties to Russian intelligence and the Russian Mafia. "They saved his bacon," said
Kenneth McCallion, a former federal prosecutor
2015 - Kushner paid $295 million for some of the floors in the old New York Times
building, purchased in 2015 from the US branch of Israeli-Russian oligarch Leviev's company,
Africa Israel Investments (AFI), and partner, Five Mile Capital.
Kushner later borrowed $285 million from the German financial company Deutsche Bank, which
has also been linked to Russian money laundering,
Jared and Ivanka were also close to another of Putins oligarchs, Roman Abramovich and his
wife, Dasha Zhukova.
2015-While Wilbur Ross served as vice-chairman of the Bank of Cyprus, the bank's
Russia-based businesses were sold to a Russian banker and consultant, Artem Avetisyan, who
had ties to both the Russian president and Russia's largest bank, Sberbank. At the time,
Sberbank was under US and EU sanctions following Russia's annexation of Crimea.
Avetisyan had earlier been selected by Putin to head a new business branch of the Russian
president's strategic initiative agency, which was tasked with improving business and
government ties.
Avetisyan's business partner, Oleg Gref, is the son of Herman Gref, Sberbank's chief
executive officer, and their consultancy has served as a "partner" to Sberbank, according to
their website. Ross had described the Russian businesses – including 120 bank branches
in Russia – as being worth "hundreds of millions of euros" in 2014 but they were sold
with other assets to Avetisyan for €7m (£6m).
Ross resigned from the Bank of Cyprus board after he was confirmed as commerce secretary
in 2017
2018 - Cyprus suspended cooperation with Russia, which had been seeking assistance from
the government in Moscow's alleged case of tax evasion against Hermitage Capital Founder Bill
Browder.
William "Bill" Browder has been a figure of some prominence on the world scene for the past
decade. A few months back, Der Spiegel published a major exposé on him and the case of Sergei Magnitsky
but the mainstream media completely ignored this report and so aside from Germany few people
are aware of Browder's background and the Magnitsky issue which resulted in sanctions on
Russia.
Browder had gone to Moscow in 1996 to take advantage of the privatization of state companies
by Russian President Boris Yeltsin. Browder founded Hermitage Capital Management, a Moscow
investment firm registered in offshore Guernsey in the Channel Islands. For a time, it was the
largest foreign investor in Russian securities. Hermitage Capital Management was rated as extremely
successful after earning almost 3,000 percent in its operations between 1996 and December
2007.
During the corrupt Yeltsin years, with his business partner's US $25 million, Browder
amassed a fortune . Profiting from the large-scale privatizations in Russia from 1996 to
2006 his Hermitage firm eventually grew to $4.5 billion .
When Browder encountered financial difficulties with Russian authorities he portrayed
himself as an anti-corruption activist and became the driving force behind the Magnitsky Act,
which resulted in economic sanctions aimed at Russian officials. However, an examination of
Browder's record in Russia and his testimony in court cases reveals contradictions with his
statements to the public and Congress, and raises questions about his motives in attacking
corruption in Russia.
Although he has claimed that he was an 'activist shareholder' and campaigned for Russian
companies to adopt Western-style governance, it has been reported that he cleverly destabilized
companies he was targeting for takeover.
Canadian blogger Mark Chapman has revealed that after Browder would buy a minority share in
a company he would resort to lawsuits against this company through shell companies he
controlled. This would destabilize the company with charges of corruption and insolvency. To
prevent its collapse the Russian government would intervene by injecting capital into it,
causing its stock market to rise -- with the result that Browder's profits would rise
exponentially.
Later, through Browder's Russian-registered subsidiaries, his accountant
Magnitsky acquired extra shares in Russian gas companies such as Surgutneftegaz, Rosneft
and Gazprom. This procedure enabled Browder's companies to pay the residential tax rate of 5.5%
instead of the 35% that foreigners would have to pay.
However, the procedure to bypass the Russian presidential decree that banned foreign
companies and citizens from purchasing equities in Gazprom was an illegal act. Because of this
and other suspected transgressions, Magnitsky was interrogated in 2006 and later in 2008.
Initially he was interviewed as a suspect and then as an accused. He was then arrested and
charged by Russian prosecutors with two counts of aggravated tax evasion committed in
conspiracy with Bill Browder in respect of Dalnyaya Step and Saturn, two of Browder's shell
companies to hold shares that he bought. Unfortunately, in 2009 Magnitsky died in pre-trial
detention because
of a failure by prison officials to provide prompt medical assistance.
Browder has challenged this account and for years he has maintained that Magnitsky's arrest
and death were a targeted act of revenge by Russian authorities against a heroic
anti-corruption activist.
It's only recently that Browder's position was
challenged by the European Court of Human Rights who in its ruling on August 27, 2019
concluded that Magnitsky's "arrest was not arbitrary, and that it was based on reasonable
suspicion of his having committed a criminal offence." And as such "The Russians had good
reason to arrest Sergei Magnitsky for Hermitage tax evasion."
"The Court observes that the inquiry into alleged tax evasion, resulting in the criminal
proceedings against Mr Magnitskiy, started in 2004, long before he complained that
prosecuting officials had been involved in fraudulent acts."
Prior to Magnitsky's arrest, because of what Russia considered to be questionable
activities, Browder had been refused entry to Russia in 2005. However, he did not take lightly
his rebuff by the post-Yeltsin Russian government under Vladimir Putin. As succinctly
expressed by Professor Halyna Mokrushyna at the University of Ottawa:
[Browder] began to engage in a worldwide campaign against the Russian authorities,
accusing them of corruption and violation of human rights. The death of his accountant and
auditor Sergei Magnitsky while in prison became the occasion for Browder to launch an
international campaign presenting the death as a ruthless silencing of an anti-corruption
whistleblower. But the case of Magnitsky is anything but.
Despite Brower's claims that Magnitsky died as a result of torture and beatings, authentic
documents
and testimonies show that Magnitsky
died because of medical neglect – he was not provided adequate treatment for a
gallstone condition. It was negligence typical at that time of prison bureaucracy, not a
premeditated killing. Because of the resulting investigation, many high level functionaries in
the prison system were fired or demoted.
For the past ten years Browder has maintained that Magnitsky was tortured and murdered by
prison guards. Without any verifiable evidence
he has asserted that Magnitsky was beaten to death by eight riot guards over 1 hour and 18
minutes. This was never corroborated by anybody, including by autopsy reports. It was even
denied by Magnitsky's mother in a video interview.
Nevertheless, on the basis of his questionable beliefs, he has carried on a campaign to
discredit and vilify Russia and its government and leaders.
In addition to the ruling of the European Court of Human Rights, Browder's basic underlying
beliefs and assumptions are being seriously challenged. Very recently, on May 5, 2020, an
American investigative journalist, Lucy Komisar, published an article with the heading
Forensic photos of Magnitsky show no marks on torso :
On Fault Lines today I
revealed that I have obtained never published forensic photos of the body of Sergei
Magnitsky, William Browder's accountant, that show not a mark on his torso. Browder claims he
was beaten to death by prison guards. Magnitsky died at 9:30pm Nov 16, 2009, and the photos
were taken the next day.
Later in her report she states:
I noted on the broadcast that though the photos and documents are solid, several dozen
U.S. media – both allegedly progressive and mainstream -- have refused to publish this
information. And if that McCarthyite censorship continues, the result of rampant
fear-inducing Russophobia, I will publish it and the evidence on this website.
Despite evidence such as this, till this day Browder maintains that Sergei Magnitsky was
beaten to death with rubber batons. It's this narrative that has attracted the attention of the
US Congress, members of parliament, diplomats and human rights activists. To further refute his
account, a 2011 analysis by the
Physicians for Human Rights International Forensics Program of documents provided by Browder
found no evidence he was beaten to death.
In his writings, as supposed evidence, Browder provides links to two untranslated Russian
documents. They were compiled immediately after Magnitsky died on November 16, 2009.
Recent investigative research has revealed that one of these appears to be a forgery. The
first document D309 states that shortly before Magnitsky's death: "Handcuffs were used in
connection with the threat of committing an act of self-mutilation and suicide, and that the
handcuffs were removed after thirty minutes." To further support this, a
forensic review states that while in the prison hospital "Magnitsky exhibited behavior
diagnosed as "acute psychosis" by Dr. A. V. Gaus at which point the doctor ordered Mr.
Magnitsky to be restrained with handcuffs."
The second document D310 is identically worded to D309 except for a change in part of the
preceding sentence. The sentence in D309 has the phrase "special means were" is
changed in D310 to " a rubber baton was."
As such, while D309 is perfectly coherent, in D310 the reference to a rubber baton makes no
sense whatsoever, given the title and text it shares with D309. This and other inconsistences,
including signatures on these documents, make it apparent that D310 was copied from D309 and
that D310 is a forgery. Furthermore, there is no logical reason for two almost identical
reports to have been created, with only a slight difference in one sentence. There is no way of
knowing who forged it and when, but this forged document forms a major basis for Browder's
claim that Magnitsky was clubbed to death.
The fact that there is no credible evidence to indicate that Magnitsky was subjected to a
baton attack, combined with forensic photos of Magnitsky's body shortly after death that show
no marks on it, provides evidence that appears to repudiate Browder's decade-long assertions
that Magnitsky was viciously murdered while in jail.
With evidence such as this, it repeatedly becomes clear that Browder's narrative contains
mistakes and inconsistencies that distort the overall view of the events leading to Magnitsky's
death.
Despite Magnitsky's death the case against him continued in Russia and he was found guilty
of corruption in a posthumous trial. Actually, the trial's main purpose was to investigate
alleged fraud by Bill Browder, but to proceed with this they had to include the accountant
Magnitsky as well. The Russian court found both of them guilty of fraud. Afterwards, the case
against Magnitsky was closed because of his death.
After Browder was refused entry to Russia in November of 2005, he launched a campaign
insisting that his departure from Russia resulted from his anti-corruption activities. However,
the real reason for the cancellation of his visa that he never mentions is that in 2003 a
Russian provincial court had convicted Browder of evading $40 million in taxes. In addition,
his illegal purchases of shares in
Gazprom through the use of offshore shell companies were reportedly valued at another $30
million, bringing the total figure of tax evasion to $70 million.
It's after this that the Russian federal government next took up the case and initially went
after Magnitsky, the accountant who carried out Browder's schemes.
But back in the USA Browder portrayed himself as the ultimate truth-teller, and embellished
his tale by asserting that Sergei Magnitsky was a whistleblowing "tax lawyer," rather than one
of Browder's accountants implicated in tax fraud. As his case got more involved, he presented a
convoluted explanation that he was not responsible for bogus claims made by his companies. This
is indeed an extremely complicated matter and as such only a summary of some of this will be
presented.
The essence of the case is that in 2007 three shell companies that had once been owned by
Browder were used to claim a $232 million tax refund based on trumped-up financial loses.
Browder has stated that the
companies were stolen from him, and that in a murky operation organized by a convicted
fraudster, they were re-registered in the names of others. There is evidence however that
Magnitsky and Browder may have been part of this convoluted scheme.
Browder's main company in Russia was Hermitage Capital Management, and associated with this
firm were a large number of shell companies, some in the Russian republic of Kalmykia and some
in the British Virgin Islands. A law firm in Moscow, Firestone Duncan, owned by Americans, did
the legal work for Browder's Hermitage. Sergei Magnitsky was one of the accountants for
Firestone Duncan and was assigned to work for Hermitage.
An accountant colleague of Magnitsky's at Firestone Duncan, Konstantin Ponomarev, was
interviewed in 2017 by Lucy Komisar, an investigative journalist, who was doing research on
Browder's operations in Russia. In the ensuing report on this , Komisar states:
"According to Ponomarev, the firm – and Magnitsky -- set up an offshore structure
that Russian investigators would later say was used for tax evasion and illegal share
purchases by Hermitage. . .
the structure helped Browder execute tax-evasion and illegal share purchase schemes.
"He said the holdings were layered to conceal ownership: The companies were "owned" by
Cyprus shells Glendora and Kone, which, in turn, were "owned" by an HSBC Private Bank
Guernsey Ltd trust. Ponomarev said the real owner was Browder's Hermitage Fund. He said the
structure allowed money to move through Cyprus to Guernsey with little or no taxes paid along
the way. Profits could get cashed out in Guernsey by investors of the Hermitage Fund and
HSBC.
"Ponomarev said that in 1996, the firm developed for Browder 'a strategy of how to buy
Gazprom shares in the local market, which was restricted for foreign investors.'"
In the course of their investigation, on June 2, 2007, Russian tax investigators raided the
offices of Hermitage and Firestone Duncan. They seized Hermitage company documents, computers
and corporate stamps and seals. They were looking for evidence to support Russian charges of
tax evasion and illegal purchase of shares of Gazprom.
In a
statement to US senators on July 27, 2017, Browder stated that Russian interior ministry
officials "seized all the corporate documents connected to the investment holding companies of
the funds that I advised. I didn't know the purpose of these raids so I hired the smartest
Russian lawyer I knew, a 35-year-old named Sergei Magnitsky. I asked Sergei to investigate the
purpose of the raids and try to stop whatever illegal plans these officials had."
Contrary to what Browder claims, Magnitsky had been his accountant for a decade. He
had never acted as a lawyer, nor did he have the qualifications to do so. In fact in 2006 when
questioned by Russian investigators, Magnitsky
said he was an auditor on contract with Firestone Duncan. In Browder's testimony before the
Senate Judiciary Committee in 2017 he claimed Magnitsky was his lawyer, but in 2015 in his
testimony under oath in the US government's Prevezon case, Browder told a different story, as
will now be related.
On Browder's initiative , in December 2012 he presented documents to the New York District
Attorney alleging that a Russian company Prevezon had "benefitted from part of the $230 million
dollar theft uncovered by Magnitsky and used those funds to buy a number of luxury apartments
in Manhattan." In September 2013, the New York District Attorney's office filed
money-laundering charges against Prevezon. The company hired high-profile New York-based
lawyers to defend themselves against the accusations.
As reported by Der Spiegel , Browder would not voluntarily agree to testify in court
so Prevezon's lawyers sent process servers to present him with a subpoena, which he refused to
accept and was caught on video literally running away. In March 2015, the judge in the Prevezon
case ruled that Browder would have to give testimony as part of pre-trial discovery. Later
while in court and under oath and confronted with numerous documents, Browder was totally
evasive. Lawyer Mark Cymrot spent six hours examining him, beginning with the following
exchange:
Cymrot asked: Was Magnitsky a lawyer or a tax expert?
He was "acting in court representing me," Browder replied.
And he had a law degree in Russia?
"I'm not aware he did."
Did he go to law school?
"No."
How many times have you said Mr. Magnitsky is a lawyer? Fifty? A hundred? Two hundred?
"I don't know."
Have you ever told anybody that he didn't go to law school and didn't have a law
degree?
"No."
Critically important, during the court case, the responsible U.S. investigator admitted
during questioning that his findings were based exclusively on statements and documents from
Browder and his team. Under oath, Browder was unable to explain how he and his people managed
to track the flow of money and make the accusation against Prevezon. In his 2012 letter that
launched the court case, Browder referred to "corrupt schemes" used by Prevezon, but when
questioned under oath he admitted he didn't know of any. In fact, to almost every question put
forth by Mark Cymrot, Browder replied that he didn't know or didn't remember.
The case finally ended in May 2017 when the two sides reached a settlement. Denis Katsyv,
the company's sole shareholder, on a related matter agreed to pay nearly six million dollars to
the US government, but would not have to admit any wrongdoing. Also the settlement contained an
explicit mention that neither Katsyv nor his company Prevezon had anything to do with the
Magnitsky case. Afterwards, one of Katsyv's, lawyers, Natalia Veselnitskaya, exclaimed: "For
the first time, the U.S. recognized that the Russians were in the right!"
A major exposé of the Browder-Russia story is presented in a film that came out in
June 2016 The Magnitsky Act: Behind the Scenes by the well-known independent filmmaker
Andrei Nekrasov .
Reference to this film will be made later but to provide a summary of the Browder tax evasion
case some critical information can be obtained from
a report by Eric Zuesse , an investigative historian, who managed to get a private viewing
of the film by the film's Production Manager.
In the film Nekrasov proceeds to unravel Browder's story, which was designed to conceal his
own corporate responsibility for the criminal theft of the money. As Browder's widely accepted
story collapses, Magnitsky is revealed not to be a whistleblower but a likely abettor to the
fraud who died in prison not from an official assassination but from banal neglect of his
medical condition. The film cleverly allows William Browder to self-destruct under the weight
of his own lies and the contradictions in his story-telling at various times.
Following the raid by tax officials on the Moscow Hermitage office on June 2, 2007, nothing
further on these matters was reported until April 9, 2008 when Ms Rimma Starlova, the
figurehead director of the three supposedly stolen Browder shell companies, filed a criminal
complaint with the Russian Interior Ministry in Kazan accusing representatives of Browder
companies of the theft of state funds, i.e., $232 million in a tax-rebate fraud. Although
Hermitage was aware of this report they kept quiet about it because they claimed it as a false
accusation against themselves.
On September 23, 2008, there was a news report about a theft of USD 232 million from the
Russian state treasury, and the police probe into it. On October 7, 2008, Magnitsky was
questioned by tax investigators about the $232 million fraud because he was the accountant for
Browder's companies.
The central issue was that during September of 2007 three of Browder's shell companies had
changed owners and that afterwards fraud against Russian treasury had been conducted by the new
owners of these companies.
According to Magnitsky the way that ownership changed was through powers of attorney. This
is a matter that Browder never mentioned. The Nekrasov film shows a document: "Purchase
agreement based on this power of attorney, Gasanov represents Glendora Holdings Ltd."
Glendora Holdings is another shell company owned by Browder. This shows that Gasanov, the
middleman, had the power of attorney connecting the new nominees to the real beneficiaries.
However, Gasanov could not be questioned on whose orders he was doing this because shortly
afterwards, he mysteriously died. No one proved that it was murder, but if that death was a
coincidence, it wasn't the only one.
During September 2007 the three Hermitage shell companies, Rilend, Parfenion and Mahaon,
were re-registered by Gasanov to a company called Pluton that was registered in Kazan, and
owned by Viktor Markelov, a Russian citizen with a criminal record. Markelov through a series
of sham arbitration judgments conducted fake lawsuits that demanded damages for alleged
contract violations. Once the damages were paid, in December 2007 the companies filed for tax
refunds that came to $232 million. These were taxes that had been paid by these companies in
2006.
On February 5, 2008 the Investigative Committee of the Russian General Prosecutor's Office
opened a criminal case to investigate the fraud committed by Markelov and other
individuals.
Markelov had hired a Moscow lawyer, Andrey Pavlov, to conduct these complex operations.
Afterwards Pavlov was questioned by Russian authorities and revealed what had happened.
Markelov was convicted and
sentenced to five years for the scam . At his trial Markelov testified that he was not in
possession of the $232 million tax refund and that he did not know the identity of the client
who would benefit from the refund scheme. And till this day no one knows! However, Russian tax
authorities suspect it is William Browder.
At his trial, Markelov testified that one of the people he worked with to secure the
fraudulent tax refund was Sergei Leonidovich. Magnitsky's full name was Sergei Leonidovich
Magnitsky. Also when questioned by the police, Markelov named Browder's associates Khairetdinov
and Kleiner as people involved in the company's re-registration.
So this provides evidence that Magnitsky and Browder's other officials were involved in the
re-registration scheme – which Browder later called theft. In his film Nekrasov states
that Browder's team had set things up to look as if outsiders -- not Browder's team -- had
transferred the assets.
According to Nekrasov's film documentation, Russian courts have established that it was the
representatives of the Hermitage investment fund who had themselves voluntarily re-registered
the Makhaon, Parfenion and Rilend companies in the name of other individuals, a fact that Mr
Browder is seeking to conceal by shifting the blame, without any foundation, onto the law
enforcement agencies of the Russian Federation.
Indeed there is cause to be skeptical of the Browder narrative, and that the fraud was in
fact concocted by Browder and his accountant Magnitsky. A Russian court has
supported that alternative narrative, ruling in late December 2013 that Browder had
deliberately bankrupted his company and engaged in tax evasion. On the basis of this he was
sentenced to nine years prison in absentia.
In the meantime, over all these years, Browder has maintained and convinced the public at
large that the $232 million fraud against the Russian treasury had been perpetrated by
Magnitsky's interrogators and Russian police. With respect to the "theft" of his three
companies (or "vehicles as he refers to them) on September 16, 2008
he stated on his Hermitage website : "The theft of the vehicles was only possible using
the vehicles' original corporate documents seized by the Moscow Interior Ministry in its raid
on Hermitage's law firm in Moscow on 4 June 2007."
As such, Browder is accusing Russian tax authorities and police for conducting this entire
fraudulent operation.
In his film Nekrasov says that the Browder version is: "Yes, the crime took place [$232
million fraud against the public treasury but, according to Browder, actually against Browder's
firm], but somebody else did it -- the police did it."
In this convoluted tale, it should be recalled that the fraud against the Russian treasury
had first been reported to the police by Rimma Starlova on April 9, 2008. This had been
recorded on the Hermitage website. In preparing the material for his film, Nekrasov noted
that
"In March 2009, Starlova's report disappeared from Hermitage's website. . . . This is the
same time that Magnitsky started to be treated as an analyst . . . who discovered the $232
million fraud. Thus the Magnitsky-the-whistleblower story was born, almost a year after the
matter had been reported to the police."
Nekrasov's film also undermines the basis of Browder's case that Magnitsky had been killed
by the police because he had accused two police officials, Karpov and Kuznetsov, but this is
questionable since documents show Magnitsky had not accused anyone. As Nekrasov states in the
film: "The problem is, he [Magnitsky] made no accusations. In that testimony, its record
contains no accusations. Mr. Magnitsky did not actually testify against the two officers
[Karpov and Kuznetsov]." So this factual evidence should destroy Browder's accusations.
It should be noted Magnitsky's original interview with authorities was as a suspect, not a
whistleblower. Also contradicting Browder's claims, Nekrasov notes that Magnitsky does not even
mention the names of the police officers in a key statement to authorities.
In his film Nekrasov includes an interview that he had with Browder regarding the issues
about Magnitsky. Nekrasov confronts Browder with the core contradictions of his story.
Incensed, Browder rises up and threatens the filmmaker:
" Anybody who says that Sergei Magnitsky didn't expose the crime before he was arrested
is just trying to whitewash the Russian Government. Are you trying to say that Pavel Karpov is
innocent? I'd really be careful about your going out and saying that Magnitsky wasn't a
whistleblower. That's not going to do well for your credibility." Browder then walks off in
a huff.
Nekrasov claims to be especially struck that the basis of Browder's case -- that Magnitsky
had been killed by the police because he had accused two police officials, Karpov and Kuznetsov
-- is a lie because there is documentary evidence that Magnitsky had not accused anyone.
Because of Browder's accusations, Nekrasov interviewed Pavel Karpov, the police officer who
Browder accused of being involved in Magnitsky's alleged murder, despite the fact that Karpov
was not on duty the day Magnitsky died.
Karpov presents Nekrasov with documents that Browder's case was built on. These original
documents are actually fundamentally different from the way Browder had described them. This
documentary evidence further exposes Browder's story for what it is.
Nekrasov asks Karpov why Browder wants to demonize him. Karpov explains that he had pursued
Browder in 2004 for tax evasion, so that seems to be the reason why Browder smears him. And
then Karpov says, "Having made billions here, Browder forgot to tell how he did it. So it
suits him to pose as a victim. He is wanted here, but Interpol is not looking for him."
Afterwards in 2013, Karpov had tried to sue Browder for libel in a London court, but was not
able to on the basis of procedural grounds since he was a resident of Russia and not the UK.
However at the conclusion of the case, set out in his Judgment the presiding judge,
Justice Simon, made some interesting comments.
"The causal link which one would expect from such a serious charge is wholly lacking; and
nothing is said about torture or murder. In my view these are inadequate particulars to
justify the charge that the Claimant was a primary or secondary party to Sergei Magnitsky's
torture and murder, and that he would continue to commit or 'cause' murder, as pleaded in
§60 of the Defence.
The Defendants have not come close to pleading facts which, if proved, would justify the
sting of the libel."
In other words – in plain English – in the judge's view, Karpov was not in any
sense party to Magnitsky's death, and Browder's claim that he was is not valid.
On the basis of the evidence that has been presented, it is undeniable that Browder's case
appears to be a total misrepresentation, not only of Magnitsky's statements, but of just about
everything else that's important in the case .
On a separate matter, on April 15, 2015 in a New York court
case involving the US government and a Russian company, Previzon Holdings, Bill Browder had
been ordered by a judge to give a deposition to Prevezon's lawyers.
Throughout this deposition, Browder (now under oath) contradicted virtually every aspect of
his Magnitsky narrative and stated "I don't recall" when pressed about key portions of his
narrative that he had previously repeated unabashedly in his testimonies to Congress and
interviews with Western media. Browder "remembered nothing" and could not even deny asking
Magnitsky to take responsibility for his (Browder's) crimes.
As a further example of Browder's dishonesty, in one of his publications, he shows a photo
of an alleged employee of Browder's law firm, Firestone Duncan, named "Victor Poryugin" with
vicious facial wounds from allegedly being tortured and beaten by police. However, the person
shown was never with Browder's firm. Instead, this is a photo of "an American human rights
campaigner beaten up during a street protest in 1961." It was Jim Zwerg, civil-rights
demonstrator, during the 1960s, in the American South. Nekrasov was appalled and found it
almost unimaginable that Browder would switch photos like that to demonize Russia and its
police.
Browder
was arrested by the Spanish policein June 2018. Even though Russia has on six occasions
requested Browder's arrest through Interpol for tax fraud, the Spanish national police
determined that Browder had been detained in error because the international warrant was no
longer valid and released him.
A further matter that reflects on his character, William Browder, the American-born
co-founder of Hermitage Capital Management is now a British citizen. The US taxes offshore
earnings, but the UK does not. Highly likely because of this, in 1998 he gave up his American
citizenship and became a British citizen and thereby has avoided paying US taxes on foreign
investments. Nevertheless, he still has his family home in Princeton, NJ and also
owns a $11 million dollar vacation home in Aspen, Colorado.
To put this in political context, Browder's narrative served a strong geopolitical purpose
to demonize Russia at the dawn of the New Cold War. As such, Browder played a major role in
this. In fact, the late celebrated American journalist Robert
Parry thought that Browder single-handedly
deserves much of the credit for the new Cold War.
Browder's campaign was so effective that in December 2012 he exploited Congressional
willingness to demonize Russia, and as a result the US Congress passed a bipartisan bill, the
Magnitsky Act, which was then signed by President Obama. U.S. Senators Ben Cardin and John
McCain were instrumental in pushing through the Magnitsky Act, based on Browder's
presentations.
However, key parts of the argument that passed into law in this act have been shown to be
based on fraud and fabrication of 'evidence.' This bill
blacklisted Russian officials who were accused of being involved in human-rights
abuses.
"A problem with the Magnitsky Act is that there is no due process. The targets are not
told the evidence against them, they cannot challenge accusations or evidence in a court of
law in order to get off the list. This "human rights law" violates the rule of law. There is
an International Court with judges and lawyers to deal with human rights violators, but the
US has not ratified its jurisdiction. Because it does not want to be subject to the rules it
applies to others."
In 2017, Congress passed the Global Magnitsky Act, which enables the U.S. to impose
sanctions against Russia for human rights violations worldwide.
In a move that history will show to be ill-advised, on October 18, 2017 Canada's Parliament
and Senate
unanimously approved Bill 226, a 'Magnitsky Act.' It mimics the US counterpart and targets
Russia for further economic sanctions. Russia
immediately denounced Canada's actions as being counter-productive, pointless and
reprehensible. Actually an act of this type had been opposed by Stéphane Dion while he
was Canada's minister of foreign affairs because he viewed it as a needless provocation against
Russia.
Dion also stated that adoption of a 'Magnitsky Act' would hurt the interests of Canadian
businesses dealing with Russia and would thwart Canada's attempt's to normalize relations with
Russia. However, Dion was replaced by Chrystia Freeland who immediately pushed this through.
This is not surprising considering her well-documented Nazi family
background and who is persona non grata in Russia.
A version of the Magnitsky Act was enacted in the UK and the Baltic republics in 1917.
In early 2020 a proposal to enact a version of the Magnitsky Act was presented to the
Australian parliament and it is still under consideration. There has been considerable
opposition to it including a
detailed report by their Citizens Party, which exposes the full extent of Browder's fraud
and chicanery.
The investigation into Browder's business activities in Russia is still an ongoing
endeavour. On October 24, 2017 the
Russian Prosecutor
General , Yuri Chaika, requested the US Attorney General Jeff Sessions to launch a probe
into alleged tax evasion by Bill Browder, who in 2013 had already been sentenced in absentia to
9 years in prison in Russia for a similar crime.
Browder at that time was still being tried in Russia for suspected large-scale money
laundering, also in absentia. Chaika added that Russian law enforcement possesses information
that over $1 billion was illegally transferred from the country into structures
connected with Bill Browder.
The Prosecutor General also asked Sessions to reconsider the Magnitsky Act. As he put
it,
" from our standpoint, the act was adopted for no actual reason, while it was lobbied by
people who had committed crimes in Russia. In our view, there are grounds to claim that this
law lacks real foundation and that its passing was prompted by criminals' actions."
It's not known if Sessions ever responded to the Russian Prosecutor General. In any event,
President Trump fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions on November 7, 2018. As such it's evident
that Russia's concerns about Browder's dishonest activities are stymied.
Extensive reference has already been made to the film that came out in June 2016 The
Magnitsky Act: Behind the Scenes by the independent filmmaker Andrei Nekrasov . When Nekrasov started the film
he had fully believed Browder's story but as he delved into what really happened, to his
surprise, he discovered that the case documents and other incontrovertible facts revealed
Browder to be a fraud and a liar. The ensuing film presents a powerful deconstruction of the
Magnitsky myth, but because of Browder's political connections and threats of lawsuits, the
film has been
blacklisted in the entire "free world." So much for the "free world's" freedom of the press
and media. This film is not available on YouTube.
https://www.bitchute.com/embed/oJsWUlkjN6Gf/
The documentary was set for a premiere at the European Parliament in Brussels in April 2016,
but at the last moment – faced with Browder's legal threats – the parliamentarians
cancelled the showing.
There were hopes to show the documentary to members of Congress but the offer was rebuffed.
Despite the frantic attempts by Browder's lawyers to block this documentary film from being
shown anywhere, Washington's Newseum, to its credit, had a one-time showing on June 13, 2016,
including a question-and-answer session with Andrei Nekrasov, moderated by journalist Seymour
Hersh. Except for that audience, the public of the United States and Europe has been
essentially shielded from the documentary's discoveries, all the better for the Magnitsky myth
to retain its power as a seminal propaganda moment of the New Cold War.
Nekrasov's powerful deconstruction of the Magnitsky myth – and the film's subsequent
blacklisting throughout the "free world" – recall other instances in which the West's
propaganda lines don't stand up to scrutiny, so censorship and ad hominem attacks become the
weapons of choice to defend " perception
management ."
Other than the New
York Times that had a lukewarm review , the mainstream media condemned the film and its
showing. As such, with the exception of that one audience, the public in the USA, Canada and
Europe has been shielded from the documentary's discoveries. The censorship of this film has
made it a good example of how political and legal pressure can effectively black out what we
used to call "the other side of the story."
Andrei Nekrasov is still prepared to go to court to defend the findings of his film, but
Bill Browder has refused to do this and simply keeps maligning the film and Mr. Nekrasov.
Recent Developments
Although for almost the past ten years Browder's self-serving story had been accepted almost
worldwide and served to help vilify Russia, in the past few months there has been an awakening
to the true state of affairs about Browder.
The first such article"The Case of Sergei Magnitsky: Questions Cloud Story Behind U.S.
Sanctions" written by Benjamin Bidder, a German journalist, appeared on November 26, 2019
in Der Spiegel. At the outset Bidder states:
"Ten years after his death, inconsistencies in Magnitsky's story suggest he may not have
been the hero many people -- and Western governments -- believed him to be. Did the
perfidious conspiracy to murder Magnitsky ever really take place? Or is Browder a charlatan
whose story the West was too eager to believe? The certainty surrounding the Magnitsky affair
becomes muddled in the documents, particularly the clear division between good and evil. The
Russian authorities' take is questionable, but so is everyone else's -- including Bill
Browder's.
But with the Magnitsky sanctions, it could be that the activist Browder used a noble cause
to manipulate Western governments."
In summation, the article raises serious questions about many aspects of Browder's account.
It concluded that his narrative was riddled with lies and said Western nations have fallen for
a "convenient" story made up by a "fraudster. "
The report provoked Browder's fury, and he swiftly filed a complaint against Der
Spiegel with the German Press Council as well as a complaint to the editor of Der
Spiegel .
On December 17, 2019 Der Spiegel responded : " Why DER SPIEGEL Stands Behind Its Magnitsky
Reporting." In a lengthy detailed response the journal rejects all aspects of Browder's
complaint. They point out the inconsistencies in Browder's version of events and demonstrate
that he is unable to present sufficient proof for his claims. They state: We believe his
complaint has no basis and would like to review why we have considerable doubts about Browder's
story and why we felt it necessary to present those doubts publicly."
Their report is highly enlightening and will have long-term consequences. It is one of the
best refutations of Browder's falsified accounts that led to the Magnitsky Act. It exposes
Browder as a fraud and his Magnitsky story as a fake. Despite all this, this exposé was
ignored in the mainstream media so most people are unaware of these revelations.
A good review of it is presented by Lucy Komisar in her article The Der Spiegel
exposé of Bill Browder, December 6, 2019.
The German Press Council rejected Browder's complaint against Der Spiegel in January
2020 but Browder did not disclose this so it became known only in early May.
Lucy Komisar reported this on May 12 and the main points of the Council's rejection are
presented in her account. Browder had complained that the article had serious factual errors.
The Press Council stated that Browder's position lacks proof and there could be no objection to
Der Spiegel's examination of events leading to Magnitsky's death. All other Browder
objections were rejected as well. In summation the Council stated: "Overall, we could not find
a violation of journalistic principles."
But the action of the press council has not been reported in the Canadian, U.S. or UK media.
Nor was the November Der Spiegel report.
The German Press Council ruling follows a December 2019 Danish Press Board ruling against
another Browder complaint over an article by a Danish financial news outlet, Finans.dk, on
his tax evasion and invented Magnitsky story. Significantly, both the Danish and German cases
involve mainstream media, which usually toe the US-UK-NATO strategic line against Russia, which
Browder's story serves. And these press complaint rulings follow a September 2019
European Court of Human Rights ruling that there was credible evidence that Magnitsky and
Browder were engaged in a conspiracy to commit tax fraud and that Magnitsky was rightfully
charged.
In summation, for ten years or more, no one in the West ever seriously challenged Bill
Browder's account of what happened to his "lawyer" Sergei Magnitsky and his stories of
corruption and malfeasance in Russia. This is what allowed him to get such influence that the
Magnitsky Act was passed, despite Russia's attempts to clarify matters.
But when pressure was exerted on Germany to install a Magnitsky Act, one of their most
influential journals Der Spiegel published an investigative bombshell picking apart
Browder's story about his auditor Sergei Magnitsky's death. Browder immediately lashed out at
Der Spiegel , accusing it of "misrepresenting the facts." However, his outraged
objections backfired and resulted in a further even more damaging Der Spiegel article
and a rebuke from the German Press Council.
At long last, thanks to Der Spiegel , its investigative reports have effectively
rejected and discredited Browder's claim that Magnitsky was a courageous whistleblower who
exposed corruption in Russia and was mercilessly killed by authorities out of revenge.
Despite this important and significant course of events, because of its imbedded
Russophobia, the mainstream media have completely ignored the Der Spiegel exposé
and almost nowhere has this been reported. To some extent this is because Browder has used his
fortune to threaten lawsuits for anyone who challenges his version of events, effectively
silencing many critics. Hence aside from people in Germany, this has been a non-event and the
Browder hoax still prevails. Given this, it is important for us to publicize this revelation as
best we can.
John, great article but we know that what you call "large-scale privatizations in Russia "
was a large scale robbery. Even Magnitsky's mother stated that Browder is a fraud. Mr.
Nekrasov whose film has been banned in many countries due to Browder's legal challenges has a
reputation as a Putin critic -- After interviewing Mr. Browder in 2010 Nekrasov says he set
out to make a "Magnitsky the hero" film. But as filming proceeded he "began to have doubts".
More accurate would be that he smelled a rat. John, I have read many of your articles you
never disappoint with your research and evidence.
Outstanding article sir. I remember when Browder popped up in the news a couple of years ago
and made TV appearances on all three big networks in the same day. I was astonished that this
lowlife wielded such influence in America.
Indeed – and very likely more than one! It should be obvious that the ease with
which Browder (a complete nonentity) was able to get away with what he got away with in
Russia and remain a virtually untouchable, protected free man to this day, in spite of the
very significant evidence against him, would very much seem to indicate that he, much like
Paul Bremer later in Iraq, was a tool of higher powers.
Excellent article. There is a misperception that these pathological liars are believed, since
their critics are silenced. It has been my experience that that is not the case. The
pathological liars are not believed. They just keep lying, sabotaging, fining, legal system
stalking, shouting down their oppenents, black listing those who doubt or know that they are
lying as conspiracy theorists. I've been witnessing this for far to long. It is obviously not
limited to the Magnitsky Act. This country is really nothing more than a sick joke at this
point. These individuals do not behave like people. They behave like mercury poisoned
monsters. Maybe they are. There is no logical excuse for this insanity. However, if they were
mercury poisoned monsters, they would not all always have the same insane delusions. They are
extremely corrupt sadistic terrorist criminal psychopaths that have destroyed America and the
rest of the world too.
They are not The Resistance, they are The Persistence! Something has to be done about
them. Freedom of the press does not give people the freedom to deliberately lie. You may
doubt that, however, slander, libel, and defamation of charcter suits will prove you to be
wrong, in addition to providing false information that endangers human life and national
security, in the case of a non person like covid that is being used to deprive people of
every liberty and rights that exists, including life. They are terrorists. They cannot claim
to be news journalists or investigative reporters if they simply say whatever their
advertisers or the government tells them to say. If they are unable to get to the bottom of
the story, when so many in the alternative media are, then they are either unqualified to do
their jobs, or are simply full of shit.
I really believe that the primary intention of covid and the response to it is to get
people to voluntarily give up cell phones, particularly since 5-G is so hazardous. That way,
the industries will never have to admit any wrong doing about the health hazards related to
cell phones and Wi-Fi.That
is what I believe. Also, you can be damn sure that the government and corporations do not
like the fact that they can be embarrassed by people that they cannot prevent from
embarrassing them without being accused of human rights abuses like vault7 technology.
"Did they expect us to treat them with any respect?!" – Pink Floyd Fletcher Memorial
Home For Incurable Tyants
@Vuki I had at one time a copy of a book titled "The murder of Bill Browder" by an
Eastern European journalist which I have, unfortunately, misplaced. As well as being an
exposè of the nefarious Mr Browder it also exposes far more serious wrongdoing against
him. This book has vanished from the Google search engine (I wonder why?) so if anyone can
tell me where to get a copy i would really value it
While most American's were distracted by the emerging World Wide Web, our elite were
raping Russia. I'll say it again, America's "elite" raped Russia. In internet time twenty
five years past puts you in prehistoric times. This is critical history that most of us
missed, or more accurately wasn't available -- to the majority of us.
This was the Clinton era -- with just that you know this story can't be good. With Slick
Willie's taste for skanks in a period where there is a story of beautiful impoverished young
Russian women (teens likely) forming a line for one of our "elite" who was peeling off
Benjamins for blowjobs in a club frequented by their foreign "advisors." Yep, I'm sure this
was of no interest to William Jefferson Blythe III.
Harvard University was given a significant role in this "helping" of Russia (pardon the
pun), due to the prestige of this institution, long-gone and unbeknownst to Russian elite,
but hey they weren't "connected" yet. Geez, sorry about your luck. The Harvard you got was
the Harvard we've been getting also, a race privileged hot bed for educating global "rapists"
(or was that Brandeis University I'm thinking of?). Six of one
William Browder is a highly educated Jew (not certain about either) who's grandfather was
Earl Browder, the former General Secretary of the CPUSA (that's the "Communist Party of the
United States of America" for those of you who didn't know we had one). Bill Browder crowed
about the irony in his grandfather being an activist for communism here in the U.S., while HE
was an activist for capitalism in Russia! No, he was doing to Russia what Jews did to Russia
when they hijacked the real Russian's revolution -- fucking them.
Billy Browder's book, "Red Notice," seems at first heartfelt story from a genuine American
do-gooder. Oops! I missed the "A true story " tip-off. It's a self engrandizing fairy tale of
a rapist's plea of innocence because "she didn't say NO."
There is MUCH more to this most interesting, world impacting historical event, that I
believe is the most understated and least understood of the twentieth century, but that said,
who fucked up? Certainly Yeltsin with his alcohol addled brain (likely rooted for by Russian
Jews, who are the MOST notorious criminals world-wide) in trusting and believing America
would help Russia! More significantly I feel America did, big-time, for acting so damn
un-American. Unfortunately the America I'm dreaming of is as long-gone as Harvard and now,
like Harvard has a Zionist occupied governance (if you didn't know what "ZOG" stood for).
Come to think of it, we're acting much like Israel. God save America!
I can tell you one person who did not, Vladimir Ilyich Putin. Yeltsin threw Russia's doors
open to the west and Putin slammed them shut. You can quibble about how he got and keeps his
office, or how he enriched himself through the process, but he had a job to do and he did it
well -- he saved Russia from what the west was going to continue doing to it. You may not
agree with his ideology, but he is the most formidable leader the world has. I pray he leaves
Russia and Russians in a better place than we're headed.
So, here we are today, where Trump is currently in the position to decide whether Russia
should be invited to the next G-whatever summit:
I say we're damn lucky it isn't Putin deciding whether to include Trump and the U.S., as
some day it very well may be.
P.S. This is a rant of mine burning a long time for a window. Thank you John Ryan. Thank
you Billy Browder. Most of all, Thank YOU Mr. Unz!
UNZ has provided a platform for authors, journalists and "knowers" from all over the
world. All converging on the same theme -- there is a "they" and there is a plan. This
seeming runaway train has awakened plain folks with uncommon sense and giants of intellect
alike. Kudos, Ron Unz.
" The western Governments are easily moved or manipulated" and have been Gang Banged –
time and time again by the corrupt mafia corporations, Zionists inc., and a dozen other
international gangs that are in charge of things – today. Not to mention the corrupt,
treasonist nationals that work for the Western Governments. Browder's Hermitage scam just
shows how easily the US Gov and others are bought and paid for – that's why the true
Magnitsky lie , has to be covered up , from the public. PS – notice all the tax money
Browder skimmed off the US – very visible to anyone that can smell a Rat.
I became aware of the Browder case when known controlled asset, Brandon Martinez, used his
claims as a refutation of Putin which he seemed unbelievably obsessed about.
As I perused you-tube for videos on Browder, I saw that he was welcomed into all approved
western media to make his case with the questioners rarely going into the material to dispute
his claims. I determined at that time that Browder was part of a deep state campaign to
demonize Russia under Putin leadership.
It surprises me not to hear no MSM News organization will print these latest findings since
in 2012 I realized the free world and press are anything but free and lie as much or more
than the most demonized communist outlets.
Not mentioned in the article that I recall is the fact that Browder's dad was the head of the
Communist party in the USA before and during WWII which should be enough by itself for a
legitimate news outlet to scrutinize with great vigor any claims made by the man but then we
know WWII was really a war against any country willing to exercise goyim rule independent of
Jewish advisors and that the US was on the side of Jewish power in that war as much as all
the other wars it has engaged in.
(Its interesting that my spell check keeps telling me that there is no such word as "goyem")
"But when pressure was exerted on Germany to install a Magnitsky Act, one of their most
influential journals "
Der Spiegel is known as a craven Atlanticist rag. Somebody high up – possibly as a
snub to the Trump admin – must have provided ass cover for it to be upheld.
Useful summary of browder's scam. The man managered to wield a great amount of influence in
american/uk media and government, yet is only a minor player by western oligarch standards.
For that he must have substantial backing. By whom?
Well he definitely is closely defended by these sources:
British Jewish businessman who challenged Putin is put on Interpol wanted list
Bill Browder is a thief, a typical representative of a flock of Western vultures that landed
in 1990s Russia to steal state assets. When his thievery was curbed by Putin, he got angry
and vengeful, like a scorned lover. He manufactured and spread lies to whip up an anti-Putin
campaign in the West. His "narrative" was eagerly supported by the neocons and other scum, as
it was in line with their "narrative". Naturally, the first things about Browder any honest
investigator or journalist would unearth were lies and fraud. Just as naturally, the scum and
scum-controlled Western MSM keep spreading lies supporting their "narrative", and ignoring
numerous facts that contradict it.
There is an interesting connection between Bill Bowder, Robert Maxwell, Bill Clinton, Jeffrey
Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell and others. They are all members of "CLUB"
There are many more revealing articles on Martin Armstrong's blog. Browder is one of the
biggest scumbags to ever walk on this earth. He is trying to start a war against Russia
– because they took away some of the things he had stolen. An absolute arsehole.
Ben Cardin must feel like a schmuck given Ben Bidder's exposé in the Der Spiegel but
having suborned the late drama queen Johnny McCain in supporting him in his efforts to
protect a fellow tribesman, the noodge won't make any effort to rescind the illicit bill now
that's the power of corruption!
There is an interesting connection between Bill Bowder, Robert Maxwell, Bill Clinton, Jeffrey
Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell and others. They are all members of "CLUB"
There are many more revealing articles on Martin Armstrong's blog. Browder is one of the
biggest scumbags to ever walk on this earth. He is trying to start a war against Russia
– because they took away some of the things he had stolen. An absolute arsehole.
Ben Cardin must feel like a schmuck given Ben Bidder's exposé in the Der Spiegel but
having suborned the late drama queen Johnny McCain in supporting him in his efforts to
protect a fellow tribesman, the noodge won't make any effort to rescind the illicit bill now
that's the power of corruption!
@Saggy Many thanks for posting this. Halfway through the film I began to suspect that
Browder had Magnitsky killed: "Dead Men Tell No Tales", and an accountant can tell very
important tales for the procecution. I had no idea that several guys connected with Browder
shell companies convienently turned up dead. Looks like the "cleanup" scenes in Scorcese's
"Casino".
Putin has to stay within neoliberal framework because this is a the dominant social framework in existence. But he is determine
to "tame the markets" when necessary which is definitely anathema to neoliberals. So he is kind of mixture of neoliberal and traditional
New Deal style statist. At the same time he definitely deviates from neoliberalism in some major areas, such as labor market and monopolies.
In fact, much of his economic and social policies have a decidedly neoliberal bent. As Tony Wood argues, Putin has reformed
and consolidated the Yeltsin system. There is not as much of a break with Yeltsin as liberals -- or apparently leftists looking
for any hope -- want to believe.
You have no clue. This is a typical left-wing "Infantile Disorder" point of view based on zero understanding of Russia and neoliberalism
as a social system. Not that I am a big specialist, but your level of ignorance and arrogance is really stunning.
Neoliberalism as a social system means internal colonization of population by financial oligarchy and resulting decline of
the standard of living for lower 80% due to the redistribution of wealth up. It also means subservience to international financial
capital and debt slavery for vassal countries (the group to which Russia in views of Washington belongs) .
The classic example is Ukraine where 80% of population are now live on the edge of abject poverty. Russia, although with great
difficulties, follows a different path. This is indisputable.
The neoliberal resolution which happened under alcoholic Yeltsin was stopped or at least drastically slowed down by Putin.
Some issues were even reversed. For example, the USA interference via NGO ended. Direct interference of the USA into internal
affairs of Russia ( Russia was a USA colony under Yeltsin ) also diminished, although was not completely eliminated (and this
is impossible in view of the USA position in the the hegemon of the neoliberal "International" and owner of the world reserve
currency.)
Those attempts to restore the sovereignty of Russia were clearly anti-neoliberal acts of Putin. After all the slogan of neoliberalism
is "financial oligarchy of all countries unite" -- kind of perversion of Trotskyism (or. more correctly, "Trotskyism for the rich.")
In general, Yeltsin's model of neoliberalism in Russia (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semibankirschina )
experienced serious setbacks under Putin's rule, although some of his measures were distinctly neoliberal.
Recent "Medvedev's" pension reform is one (which was partially a necessity due to the state of Russian finances at the time;
although the form that was chosen -- in your face, without some type of carrot -- was really mediocre, like almost anything coming
from Medvedev ); some botched attempt in privatization of electrical networks with Chubais at the helm is another -- later stopped,
etc.
But in reality, considerable if not dominant political power now belongs to corporations, whether you want it or not. And that
creates strong neoliberal fifth column within the country. That's a huge problem for Putin. The alternative is dictatorship which
usually does not end well. So there is not much space for maneuvering anyway. You need to play the anti-neoliberal game very skillfully
as you always have weak cards in hands, the point which people like VK never understand.
BTW, unlike classic neoliberals, Putin is a consistent proponent of indexation of income of lower strata of the population
to inflation, which he even put in the constitution. Unlike Putin, classic neoliberals preach false narrative that "the rising
tide lifts all boats."
All-in-all whenever possible, Putin often behaves more like a New Deal Capitalism adherent, than like a neoliberal. He sincerely
is trying to provide a decent standard of living for lower 80% of the population. He preserves a large share of state capital
in strategically important companies. Some of them are still state-owned (anathema for any neoliberal.)
But he operates in conditions where neoliberalism is the dominant system and when Russia is under constant, unrelenting pressure,
and he needs to play by the rules.
Like any talented politician, he found some issues were he can safely deviate from neoliberal consensus without too hard sanctions.
In other matters, he needs to give up to survive.
"... One can read this most recent flurry of Russia, Russia, Russia paid the Taliban to kill GIs as an attempt to pre-empt the findings into Russiagate's origins. ..."
"... But Moscow recognized from the start that Washington was embarked on a fool's errand in Vietnam. There would be no percentage in getting directly involved. And so, the Soviets sat back and watched smugly as the Vietnamese Communists drove U.S. forces out on their "own resources." As was the case with the Viet Cong, the Taliban needs no bounty inducements from abroad. ..."
"... Former CIA Director William Casey said: "We'll know when our disinformation program is complete, when everything the American public believes is false." ..."
"... If Durham finds it fraudulent (not a difficult task), the heads of senior intelligence and law enforcement officials may roll. That would also mean a still deeper dent in the credibility of Establishment media that are only too eager to drink the Kool Aid and to leave plenty to drink for the rest of us. ..."
"... I am not a regular Maddow-watcher, but to me she seemed unhinged -- actually, well over the top. ..."
One can read this most recent flurry of Russia, Russia, Russia paid the Taliban to kill GIs
as an attempt to pre-empt the findings into Russiagate's origins.
O n Friday The New York Times featured a report based on anonymous intelligence
officials that the Russians were paying bounties to have U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan with
President Donald Trump refusing to do anything about it. The flurry of Establishment media
reporting that ensued provides further proof, if such were needed, that the erstwhile "paper of
record" has earned a new moniker -- Gray Lady of easy virtue.
Over the weekend, the Times ' dubious allegations grabbed headlines across all media
that are likely to remain indelible in the minds of credulous Americans -- which seems to have
been the main objective. To keep the pot boiling this morning, The New York Times' David
Leonhardt's daily web piece
, "The Morning" calls prominent attention to a banal
article by a Heather Cox Richardson, described as a historian at Boston College, adding
specific charges to the general indictment of Trump by showing "how the Trump administration
has continued to treat Russia favorably." The following is from Richardson's newsletter on
Friday:
"On April 1 a Russian plane brought ventilators and other medical supplies to the
United States a propaganda coup for Russia;
"On April 25 Trump raised eyebrows by issuing a joint statement with Russian President
Vladimir Putin commemorating the 75th anniversary of the historic meeting between American
and Soviet troops on the bridge of the Elbe River in Germany that signaled the final defeat
of the Nazis;
"On May 3, Trump called Putin and talked for an hour and a half, a discussion Trump
called 'very positive';
"On May 21, the U.S. sent a humanitarian aid package worth $5.6 million to Moscow to
help fight coronavirus there. The shipment included 50 ventilators, with another 150 promised
for the next week;
"On June 15, news broke that Trump has ordered the removal of 9,500 troops from
Germany, where they support NATO against Russian aggression. "
Historian Richardson added:
"All of these friendly overtures to Russia were alarming enough when all we knew was that
Russia attacked the 2016 U.S. election and is doing so again in 2020. But it is far worse
that those overtures took place when the administration knew that Russia had actively
targeted American soldiers. this bad news apparently prompted worried intelligence officials
to give up their hope that the administration would respond to the crisis, and instead to
leak the story to two major newspapers."
Hear the siren? Children, get under your desks!
The Tall Tale About Russia Paying for Dead U.S. Troops
Times print edition readers had to wait until this morning to learn of Trump's
statement last night that he was not briefed on the cockamamie tale about bounties for killing,
since it was, well, cockamamie.
Late last night the president tweeted: "Intel just reported to me that they did not find
this info credible, and therefore did not report it to me or the VP. "
For those of us distrustful of the Times -- with good reason -- on such neuralgic
issues, the bounty story had already fallen of its own weight. As Scott Ritter pointed out
yesterday:
"Perhaps the biggest clue concerning the fragility of the New York Times ' report
is contained in the one sentence it provides about sourcing -- "The intelligence
assessment is said to be based at least in part on interrogations of captured Afghan
militants and criminals." That sentence contains almost everything one needs to know
about the intelligence in question, including the fact that the source of the information is
most likely the Afghan government as reported through CIA channels. "
And who can forget how "successful" interrogators can be in getting desired answers.
Russia & Taliban React
The Kremlin called the Times reporting "nonsense an unsophisticated plant," and from
Russia's perspective the allegations make little sense; Moscow will see them for what they are
-- attempts to show that Trump is too "accommodating" to Russia.
A Taliban spokesman called the story "baseless," adding with apparent pride that "we" have
done "target killings" for years "on our own resources."
Russia is no friend of the Taliban. At the same time, it has been clear for several years
that the U.S. would have to pull its troops out of Afghanistan. Think back five decades and
recall how circumspect the Soviets were in Vietnam. Giving rhetorical support to a fraternal
Communist nation was de rigueur and some surface-to-air missiles gave some substance to
that support.
But Moscow recognized from the start that Washington was embarked on a fool's errand in
Vietnam. There would be no percentage in getting directly involved. And so, the Soviets sat
back and watched smugly as the Vietnamese Communists drove U.S. forces out on their "own
resources." As was the case with the Viet Cong, the Taliban needs no bounty inducements from
abroad.
Besides, the Russians knew painfully well -- from their own bitter experience in
Afghanistan, what the outcome of the most recent fool's errand would be for the U.S. What point
would they see in doing what The New York Times and other Establishment media are
breathlessly accusing them of?
CIA Disinformation; Casey at Bat
Former CIA Director William Casey said: "We'll know when our disinformation program is
complete, when everything the American public believes is false."
Casey made that remark at the first cabinet meeting in the White House under President
Ronald Reagan in early 1981, according to Barbara Honegger, who was assistant to the chief
domestic policy adviser. Honegger was there, took notes, and told then Senior White House
correspondent Sarah McClendon, who in turn made it public.
If Casey's spirit is somehow observing the success of the disinformation program called
Russiagate, one can imagine how proud he must be. But sustained propaganda success can be a
serious challenge. The Russiagate canard has lasted three and a half years. This last gasp
effort, spearheaded by the Times , to breathe more life into it is likely to last little
more than a weekend -- the redoubled efforts of Casey-dictum followers notwithstanding.
Russiagate itself has been unraveling, although one would hardly know it from the
Establishment media. No collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. Even the sacrosanct
tenet that the Russians hacked the DNC emails published by WikiLeaks has been disproven
, with the head of the DNC-hired cyber security firm CrowdStrike
admitting that there is
no evidence that the DNC emails were hacked -- by Russia or
anyone else .
U.S. Attorney John Durham. (Wikipedia)
How long will it take the Times to catch up with the CrowdStrike story, available
since May 7?
The media is left with one sacred cow: the misnomered "Intelligence Community" Assessment of
Jan. 6, 2017, claiming that President Putin himself ordered the hacking of the DNC. That
"assessment" done by "hand-picked analysts" from only CIA, FBI and NSA (not all 17 intelligence
agencies of the "intelligence community") reportedly is being given close scrutiny by U. S.
Attorney John Durham, appointed by the attorney general to investigate Russiagate's
origins.
If Durham finds it fraudulent (not a difficult task), the heads of senior intelligence and
law enforcement officials may roll. That would also mean a still deeper dent in the credibility
of Establishment media that are only too eager to drink the Kool Aid and to leave plenty to
drink for the rest of us.
Do not expect the media to cease and desist, simply because Trump had a good squelch for
them last night -- namely, the "intelligence" on the "bounties" was not deemed good enough to
present to the president.
(As a preparer and briefer of The President's Daily Brief to Presidents Reagan and HW
Bush, I can attest to the fact that -- based on what has been revealed so far -- the Russian
bounty story falls far short of the PDB threshold.)
Rejecting Intelligence Assessments
Nevertheless, the corporate media is likely to play up the Trump administration's rejection
of what the media is calling the "intelligence assessment" about Russia offering -- as Rachel
Maddow indecorously put it on Friday -- "bounty for the scalps of American soldiers in
Afghanistan."
I am not a regular Maddow-watcher, but to me she seemed
unhinged -- actually, well over the top.
The media asks, "Why does Trump continue to disrespect the assessments of the intelligence
community?" There he goes again -- not believing our "intelligence community; siding, rather,
with Putin."
In other words, we can expect no let up from the media and the national security miscreant
leakers who have served as their life's blood. As for the anchors and pundits, their level of
sophistication was reflected yesterday in the sage surmise of Face the Nation's Chuck Todd, who
Aaron Mate reminds us, is a "grown adult and professional media person." Todd asked guest John
Bolton: "Do you think that the president is afraid to make Putin mad because maybe Putin did
help him win the election, and he doesn't want to make him mad for 2020?"
"This is as bad as it gets," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi yesterday, adding the aphorism
she memorized several months ago: "All roads lead to Putin." The unconscionably deceitful
performance of Establishment media is as bad as it gets, though that, of course, was not
what Pelosi meant. She apparently lifted a line right out of the Times about how Trump
is too "accommodating" toward Russia.
One can read this most recent flurry of Russia, Russia, Russia as a reflection of the need
to pre-empt the findings likely to issue from Durham and Attorney General William Barr in the
coming months -- on the theory that the best defense is a pre-emptive offense. Meanwhile, we
can expect the corporate media to continue to disgrace itself.
Vile
Caitlin Johnstone, typically,
pulls no punches regarding the Russian bounty travesty:
"All parties involved in spreading this malignant psyop are absolutely vile, but a special
disdain should be reserved for the media class who have been entrusted by the public with the
essential task of creating an informed populace and holding power to account. How much of an
unprincipled whore do you have to be to call yourself a journalist and uncritically parrot
the completely unsubstantiated assertions of spooks while protecting their anonymity? How
much work did these empire fluffers put into killing off every last shred of their dignity?
It boggles the mind.
It really is funny how the most influential news outlets in the Western world will
uncritically parrot whatever they're told to say by the most powerful and depraved
intelligence agencies on the planet, and then turn around and tell you without a hint of
self-awareness that Russia and China are bad because they have state media.
Sometimes all you can do is laugh."
Ray McGovern works for Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the
Saviour in inner-city Washington. During his 27-years as a CIA analyst he led the Soviet
Foreign Policy Branch and prepared The President's Daily Brief for Presidents Nixon,
Ford, and Reagan. In retirement, he co-created Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
(VIPS).
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of
Consortium News.
Aaron , June 30, 2020 at 12:33
If anything, all roads lead to Israel. You have to consider the sources, the writers,
journalists, editors, owners, and rich people from which these stories come. This latest
ridiculous story will certainly help Trump, so the sources of these Russia stories are
actually fans of Trump, they love his tax cuts, he helps their revenue streams, and he's the
greatest friend and Zionist to Israel so far and also Wall Street. I think most Americans can
understand that Putin doesn't possess all of the supernatural all-encompassing powers and
mind-controlling omnipotence that Pelosi and her ilk attribute to him. That's why at his
rallies, when Trump points to where the journalists are and sneers at them calling them
bloodsuckers and parasites and all that, the people love it, because of stuff like this. It's
like saying "look at those assholes, those liberal journalists over at CNN say that you voted
for me because of Vladimir Putin?!" It just pisses off people to keep hearing that mantra
over and over. So it's a gift to Trump, it helps him so much. And seeing that super expensive
helicopter flying around the barren rocky slopes of the middle east, seems like it's out of
some Rambo movie. And like Rambo, the tens of thousands of American servicemen that were
sacrificed over there, and still commit suicides at a horrific rate, have always been treated
by the architects of these wars that only helped the state of Israel, as the expendables.
Whether it's a black life, a soldier fighting in Iraq, a foreclosed on homeowner by Mnuchin's
work, or a brainwashed New York Times subscriber, we don't seem to matter, we seem to feel
the truth that to these people were are indeed expendable. The question to answer I think is,
not who is a Russian asset, but who is an Israeli asset?
Andrew Thomas , June 30, 2020 at 12:04
Great reporting as usual, Ray. But special kudos for the NYT moniker 'Gray lady of easy
virtue.' I almost laughed out loud. A rare occurrence these days.
Michael P Goldenberg , June 30, 2020 at 10:45
Thanks for another cogent assessment of our mainstream media's utter depravity and
reckless irresponsibility. They truly have become nothing more than presstitutes and enemies
of the people.
Bob Van Noy , June 30, 2020 at 10:42
"It's all over but the shouting" goes the idiom and I think that is true of Russiagate,
especially, thank all goodness, here at Robert Parry's Journalistic site!
I have a theory that propaganda has a lifetime but when it reaches a truly absurd level,
it's all over. Clearly, we've reached that level Thanks to all at CN
evelync , June 30, 2020 at 10:33
You call Rachel Madcow "unhinged", Ray ..well, yes, I'm shocked at myself that there was a
time that I tuned in to her show .
Sorry Ms Madcow you've turned yourself into a character from Dr Strangelove
The key threats – climate change, pandemics, nuclear war – and why we continue
to fail to address these real things while filling the airwaves instead with the tiresome
russia,russia,russia mantra – per Accam's razer suggests that it serves very short term
interests of money and power whoever whatever the MICIMATT answers to.
"Former CIA Director William Casey said: "We'll know when our disinformation program is
complete, when everything the American public believes is false." "
Who exactly was the "we" Casey was answering to each day?
I know it wasn't me or the planet or humanity or anyone I know.
Bill Rice , June 30, 2020 at 10:20
If only articles like this were read by the masses. Maybe people would get a clue. Blind
patriotism is not patriotic at all. Skepticism is healthy.
torture this , June 30, 2020 at 09:54
It's a shame that VIPS reporting is top secret. It's the only information coming from
people familiar with the ins and outs of spy agencies that can be trusted.
GeorgeG , June 30, 2020 at 09:45
Ray,
You missed the juicy stuff. See: tass.com/russia/1172369 Russia Foreign Ministry: NYT article
on Russia in Afghanistan fake from US intelligence. Here is the kicker:
The Russian Foreign Ministry pointed to US intelligence agencies' involvement in Afghan
drug trafficking.
"Should we speak about facts – moreover, well-known [facts], it has not long been a
secret in Afghanistan that members of the US intelligence community are involved in drug
trafficking, cash payments to militants for letting transport convoys pass through, kickbacks
from contracts implementing various projects paid by American taxpayers. The list of their
actions can be continued if you want," the ministry said.
The Russian Foreign Ministry suggested that those actions might stem from the fact that
the US intelligence agencies "do not like that our and their diplomats have teamed up to
facilitate the start of peace talks between Kabul and the Taliban (outlawed in Russia –
TASS)."
"We can understand their feelings as they do not want to be deprived of the above
mentioned sources of the off-the-books income," the ministry stressed.
Thomas Fortin , June 30, 2020 at 12:08
Affirmative Ray, two of my old comrades who were SF both did security on CIA drug flights
back in the day, and later on both while under VA care decided to die off God I miss them,
great guys and honest souls.
DH Fabian , June 30, 2020 at 09:41
One point remains a mystery. Why would anyone think that when the US invades a country,
someone would need to pay the people of that country a bounty to fight back?
Mark Clarke , June 30, 2020 at 09:27
If Biden wins the presidency and the Democrats take back the Senate, Russiagate will
strengthen and live on for many years.
Al , June 30, 2020 at 12:11
All to deflect from Clinton's private server while SOS, 30,000 deleted emails, and the
sale of US interests via the Clinton Foundation.
Zedster , June 30, 2020 at 12:56
That, or we learn Chinese.
Skip Scott , June 30, 2020 at 09:08
Another interesting aside is that Tulsi Gabbard's "Stop funding Terrorists" bill went
nowhere in Congress. So it's Ok for us and our Arab allies to fund them, but not the
Russians? Maybe we should go back to calling them the Mujahideen?
Thomas Scherrer , June 30, 2020 at 12:10
Preach, my child.
And aloha to the last decent woman in those halls.
Do you not think that the timing of all this (months after the report was allegedly
presented to Trump) is an attempt to stop Trump from signing an agreement with the Taliban
that will allow him to withdraw American troops from that country?
Skip Scott , June 30, 2020 at 08:58
Great article Ray, but I have to question whether Durham will fulfill his role and get to
the bottom of the origins of RussiaGate. If he actually does name names and prosecute, how
will the MSM cover it? What will Ms. Madcow have to say? Ever since the fizzling failure of
the Epstein investigation, I have had my doubts about Barr and his minion Durham. I hope I'm
wrong. Time will tell.
Thomas Fortin , June 30, 2020 at 12:24
I think on here I can talk about this issue you brought up Scott, on other places when I
tried to have a rational discussion on the matter, I got shouted down, well they tried
anyway.
I highly suggest to any readers of this here on Consortium to get Gore Vidal's old book,
Imperial America, and also watch his old documentary, THE UNITED STATES OF AMNESIA.
Here is the point of it,
"Officially we have two parties which are in fact wings of a common party of property with
two right wings. Corporate wealth finances each. Since the property party controls every
aspect of media they have had decades to create a false reality for a citizenry largely
uneducated by public schools that teach conformity with an occasional advanced degree in
consumerism."
-GORE VIDAL, The United States of Amnesia
Also,
"There is only one party in the United States, the Property Party and it has two right wings:
Republican and Democrat. Republicans are a bit stupider, more rigid, more doctrinaire in
their laissez-faire capitalism than the Democrats, who are cuter, prettier, a bit more
corrupt -- until recently and more willing than the Republicans to make small adjustments
when the poor, the black, the anti-imperialists get out of hand. But, essentially, there is
no difference between the two parties."
? Gore Vidal
Others have pointed out the same like this,
"Nobody should have any illusions. The United States has essentially a one-party system and
the ruling party is the business party."
? Noam Chomsky
"In the United States [ ] the two main business-dominated parties, with the support of the
corporate community, have refused to reform laws that make it virtually impossible to create
new political parties (that might appeal to non-business interests) and let them be
effective. Although there is marked and frequently observed dissatisfaction with the
Republicans and Democrats, electoral politics is one area where notions of competitions and
free choice have little meaning. In some respects the caliber of debate and choice in
neoliberal elections tends to be closer to that of the one-party communist state than that of
a genuine democracy."
? Robert W. McChesney, Profit Over People: Neoliberalism and Global Order
"The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies is a foolish
idea. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can
throw the rascals out at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in
policy. Then it should be possible to replace it, every four years if necessary, by the other
party which will be none of these things but will still pursue, with new vigor, approximately
the same basic policies."
? Carroll Quigley [1910 – 1977 was an American historian and theorist of the evolution
of civilizations. He is remembered for his teaching work as a professor at Georgetown
University, for his academic publications.]
Teddy Roosevelt, whose statue is under attack in NYC, had this to say,
"The bosses of the Democratic party and the bosses of the Republican party alike have a
closer grip than ever before on the party machines in the States and in the Nation. This
crooked control of both the old parties by the beneficiaries of political and business
privilege renders it hopeless to expect any far-reaching and fundamental service from
either."
-THEODORE ROOSEVELT, The Outlook, July 27, 1912
I suggest also that you look up on line this article, Heads They Win, Tails We Lose: Our Fake
Two-Party System
by Prof. Stephen H. Unger at Columbia, here is his concluding thought,
"The drift toward loss of liberty, unending wars, environmental degradation, growing economic
inequality can't be stopped easily, but it will never be halted as long as we allow corporate
interests to rule our country by means of a pseudo-democracy based on the two-party
swindle."
With this all in mind, and if your my age, you might recall about how over the past more then
50 years, no matter which party gets in power, nothing of any significance changes, the wars
continue, the transfer of wealth to the few, and the erosion of basic civil liberties
continues pretty well unabated.
Trump is surrounded by neo-cons and I expect nothing will happen to change anything. I would
get into how most called liberals are hardly that, but in reality neo-cons, but I've said
enough for now, when you consider the statements I shared, then the Matrix begins to come
unraveled.
Grady , June 30, 2020 at 08:01
Not to mention the potential peace initiative with Afghanistan and Taliban that is
looming. Peace is not profitable, so who has the dual interests in maintaining protracted war
in a strategic location while ensuring the poppy crop stays the most productive in the world?
It seems said poppy production under the pre war Taliban government was minimal as they
eliminated most of it. Attacking the Taliban and thwarting its rule allowed for greater
production, to the extent it is the global leader in helping to fulfill the opiate demand.
Gary Webb established long ago that the intelligence community, specifically the CIA, has
somewhat of a tradition in such covert operations and logic would dictate they're vested
interest lies in maintaining a high yield crop while feeding the profit center that is the
MIC war machine. While certainly a bit digressive, the dots are there to connect.
Paul , June 30, 2020 at 07:54
My friend, I love your columns. Thank you, you have been one of the few sane voices on
Russiagate from the beginning.
Sadly most Americans and most people in the world will not receive these simple truths you
are telling. (not their fault)
We will continue our fight against the system.
Peace, Paul from South Africa
Voice from Europe , June 30, 2020 at 07:38
Don't think this will be the last Russiagate gasp whoever becomes the next president.
The 'liberal democrats' believe their own delusions and as long as they control the MSM, they
won't stop. Lol.
Thomas Fortin , June 30, 2020 at 12:29
You should read my reply to Scott, most of these Democrats are not liberals, but neo-cons
who just liberal virtue signal while in reality supporting the neo-con agenda. I hate it how
the so called alternative or independent media abuse terms and words, which obscures
realities. Anyway, take a look at my reply and the quotes I shared.
"Definition of liberal, one who is open-minded or not strict in the observance of orthodox,
traditional, or established forms or ways, progressive, broad-minded, . willing to respect or
accept behavior or opinions different from one's own; open to new ideas, denoting a political
and social philosophy that promotes individual rights, civil liberties, democracy, and free
enterprise."
? Derived from Webster's and the Oxford Dictionaries
"Liberal' comes from the Latin liberalis, which means pertaining to a free man. In
politics, to be liberal is to want to extend democracy through change and reform. One can see
why that word had to be erased from our political lexicon."
? Gore Vidal, "The Great Unmentionable: Monotheism and its Discontents," The Lowell Lecture,
Harvard University, April 20, 1992.
Once again I would like to compliment Mr McGovern on his magnificently Biblical
appearance. That full set would do credit to any Old Testament prophet.
I see him as the USA's own Jeremiah.
Tom Welsh , June 30, 2020 at 06:12
Seeing that picture of Johnson's sad, wicked bloodhound features really, really makes me
wish I had had a chance to be outside his tent pissing in. I'd have been careful to drink as
many gallons of beer as possible beforehand.
Although it would have been better, from a humanitarian pont of view, just to set fire to
the tent.
Tom Welsh , June 30, 2020 at 06:10
"Historian Richardson "
Clearly a serious exaggeration.
Tom Welsh , June 30, 2020 at 06:09
Ah, the Chinook! The 60-year-old helicopter that epitomises everything Afghan patriots
love about the USA. It's big, fat, slow, clumsy, unmanoeuvrable, and may carry enough US
troops to make shooting it down a damaging political blow against Washington.
Vivek , June 30, 2020 at 05:43
Ray,
What do you make of Barbara Honeggar's second career as a alternative story peddler?
see hXXps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jB21BVFOIjw
CNfan , June 30, 2020 at 03:43
A brilliant piece, with a deft touch depicting the timeless human follies running our
foreign policy circus. Real-world experience, perspective, and courage like Ray's were the
dream of the drafters of our 1st Amendment. And ending with Caitlin's hammer was effective.
As to who benefits? I suspect the neocons – our resident war-addicts and Israeli
assets. Paraphrasing Nancy, "All roads lead to Netanyahu."
So,Russia what will do in next Upcoming Years during these covid-19.
Realist , June 30, 2020 at 02:54
Ray, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has embraced these allegations against
Russia as the gospel truth and has threatened to seek revenge against Putin once he occupies
the White House.
He said Americans who serve in the military put their life on the line. "But they should
never, never, never ever face a threat like this with their commander in chief turning a
blind eye to a foreign power putting a bounty on their heads."
"I'm quite frankly outraged by the report," Biden said. He promised that if he is elected,
"Putin will be confronted and we'll impose serious costs on Russia."
This is the kind of warmongering talk that derailed the expected landslide victory for the
Queen of Warmongers in 2016. This time round though, Trump has seemingly already swung and
badly missed three times in his responses to the Covid outbreak, the public antics attributed
to BLM, and the Fed's creation of six trillion dollars in funny money as a gift to the most
privileged tycoons on the planet. In baseball, which will not have a season in spite of the
farcical theatrics between ownership and players, that's called a "whiff" and gets you sent
back to the bench.
According to all the pollsters, Donnie's base of white working class "deplorables" are
already abandoning his campaign–bigly, prompting the none-too-keen Biden to assume that
over-the-top Russia bashing is back in season, especially since trash-talking Nobel Laureate
Obama is now delivering most of the mute sock puppet Biden's lines. It was almost comical to
watch Joe do nothing but grin in the framed picture to the left of his old boss during their
most recent joint interview with the press. This dangerous re-set of the Cold War is NOT what
the people want, nor is it good for them or any living things.
DH Fabian , June 30, 2020 at 10:18
Biden already lost 2020 -- in spite of the widely-disliked Trump. This is why Democrats
began working to breath life back into Russia-gate by late last year, setting the stage to
blame Russia for their 2020 defeat. We spent the past 25 years detailing the demise of the
Democratic Party (replaced by the "New Democrat Party"), and it turned out that the party
loyalists didn't hear a word of it.
John A , June 30, 2020 at 02:15
As a viewer from afar, in Europe, I find it mindboggling how the American public seem to
believe all this nonsense about Russia. Have the people there really been that dumbed down by
chewing gum for the eyes television and disgusting chemical and growth h0rmone laced food?
Sad, sad, sad.
Tom Welsh , June 30, 2020 at 06:17
John, I think there is something to what you say about dumbing down. I recall Albert Jay
Nock lamenting, in about 1910, how dreadfully US education had already been dumbed down
– and things have been going steadily downhill ever since.
But I don't think we can quite release the citizenry from responsibility on account of
their ignorance. (Isn't it a legal maxim that ignorance is not an excuse?)
There is surely deep down in most people a sly lust for dominance, a desire to control and
forbid and compel; and also a quiet satisfaction at hearing of inferior foreigners being
harmed or killed by one's own "world class" armed forces.
TS , June 30, 2020 at 11:14
> As a viewer from afar, in Europe, I find it mindboggling how the American public seem
to believe all this nonsense about Russia.
May I remind you that most of the mass media in Europe parrot all this nonsense, and a
large segment of the public swallows it?
Charles Familant , June 30, 2020 at 00:50
Mr. McGovern has not made his case. To his question as to why Taliban militants need any
additional incentive to target U.S. troops in Afghanistan, it is not far-fetched to believe
these militants would welcome additional funds to continue their belligerency. Waging war is
not cheap and is especially onerous for relatively small organizations as compared to major
powers. What reason would Putin have to pay such bounty? The increase in U.S. troop
casualties would provide Trump an additional rationale to bring the troops home, as he had
promised during his campaign speeches in 2015 and 2016. This action would be a boon to his
re-election prospects. Putin is well aware that if Biden wins in November, there is little
likelihood of the hostility in Afghanistan or anywhere else being brought to an end. But,
more to the point, the likelihood of U.S. sanctions against Russia being curtailed under a
Biden presidency is remote. To what he deemed rhetorical, Mr. McGovern asks how successful
were U.S. interrogators of such captured Taliban in the past, I remind him that there were
opposing views regarding which techniques were most effective. Might not these interrogators
have, in the present case, employed more effective means? Finally, it should not even be a
question as to why any news agency does not reveal its sources. But in this case, the New
York Times specifically mentions that the National Security Council discussed the
intelligence finding in late March. Further, if it is true that Trump, Pence et al ignored
the said briefs of which the administration was well aware, this should be no surprise to any
of us. Case in point: how long did it take Trump to respond to the present pandemic? One
telling observation: Mr. McGovern says that Heather Cox Richardson is "described as a
historian at Boston College.' She is not just "described as a historian" Mr. McGovern, she IS
a historian at Boston College; in fact, she is a professor at that college and has authored
six scholarly works that have been published as books, the most recent of which in March of
this year by the Oxford University Press. Mr. McGovern states that the points Richardson made
her most most recent newsletter as "banal." I see nothing banal in that newsletter, but
rather a list of relevant factual occurrences. Finally (this time it really is final), Mr.
McGovern employs the use of sarcasm to discount what Richardson and others have contended
regarding this most recent expose. And seems to give more credibility to the comments made by
Trump and his cohorts, as though this administration is remarkable for its integrity.
Sam F , June 30, 2020 at 11:05
Plausible interest does not make unsupported accusations a reality. What bounties did the
US offer?
Have you forgotten that the US set up Al Qaeda in Afghanistan with weapons to attack the USSR
there?
Zhu , June 30, 2020 at 00:34
Come December this year, which losing party will blame which scapegoat? Russia? China? The
Man in the Moon? It must be a hard decision!
Zhu , June 30, 2020 at 00:31
Unfortunately, bad ideas and conspiracy fictions rarely disappear completely. But that
Afghans need to be paid to kill invaders is the dumbest conspiracy fiction yet.
Thomas Fortin , June 29, 2020 at 21:31
Excellent report Ray, as usual.
Interesting note here, I watched The Hill's Rising program, and listened to young
conservative Saagar say, although he does not believe that Russia-gate is credible, he made
the statement that Russia is supplying the Taliban weapons and wants us to get out of
Afghanistan, and that is considered a fact by all journalists!
Saagar is a bit conflicted, he does not, but does believe the gods of intelligence, like so
many did with the Gulf of Tonkin so long ago, I remember that all too well.
As I look out upon the ignorant masses and useful idiots who strain at those Confederate and
other monuments, while continuing to elect the same old people back into office who continue
the status quo, its a bit discouraging. We were told so long ago about our current situation,
that,
"It is only when the people become ignorant and corrupt, when they degenerate into a
populace, that they are incapable of exercising the sovereignty. Usurpation is then an easy
attainment, and an usurper soon found. The people themselves become the willing instruments
of their own debasement and ruin." [James Monroe, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1817]
As a historian of some sort and educational film maker, I do my best to educate people,
though its a bit overwhelming at times how ignorant and fascist brain-washed most are.
Monroe, like the other founders knew the secret of maintaining a free and prosperous
republic, from the same piece, "Let us, then, look to the great cause, and endeavor to
preserve it in full force. Let us by all wise and constitutional measures promote
intelligence among the people as the best means of preserving our liberties."
George Carlin got it right about why education "sucks", it was by design, so our work is cut
out for us.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what
never was and never will be."
~Thomas Jefferson
GMCasey , June 29, 2020 at 21:25
Why would Putin even bother? America and its endless wars is doing itself in. Afghanistan
is said to be," the graveyard of empires." It was for Alexander the Great -- –it was
for Russia and I suppose that it will be for America too -- -
DW Bartoo , June 29, 2020 at 20:50
Ray, I certainly hope that Durham and Barr will not wait too long a time to make public
the truth about Russiagate.
Indeed, certain heads should, figuratively, roll, and as well, the whole story about who
was behind the setting up of Flynn needs to, somehow, make it through the media flack.
Judge Sullivan's antics having been rather thoroughly shot down, though the media is
desperately trying to either spin or ignore the reality that it was not merely Flynn that
Sullivan was hoping to harm, but also the power of the executive branch relative to the
judicial branch.
The role of Obama and of Biden who, apparently, suggested the use of the Logan Act as the
means to go after Flynn, who we now know was intentionally entrapped by the intrepid FBI,
need to be made clear as well.
Just as with the initial claims that torture was the work of "a few bad apples", when
anyone with any insight into such "policy" actions had to have known that it WAS official
policy (crafted by Addington, Bybee, and Yoo, as it turned out, directed to do so by the Bush
White House), so too, must it be realized that it was not some rogue agents and loose
cannons, but actual instructions "from above", explicit or implicit, that "encouraged" the
behavior of those who spoke of "Insurance" policies designed to hamper, hinder, and harm the
incoming administration.
Clearly, I am no fan of Trump, and while I honestly regard the Rule of Law as essentially
a fairytale for the gullible (as the behavior of the "justice" system from the " qualified
immunity" of the police, to the "absolute immunity" of prosecutors, judges, and the political
class must make clear,to even the most giddy of childish believers in U$ purity, innocence,
and exceptionalism, that the "law" serves to protect wealth and power and NOT the public), I
should really like to consider that even in a pretend democracy, some things are simply not
to be tolerated.
Things, like torture, like fully politicized law enforcement or "intelligence" agencies,
like secret court proceedings, where judges may be lied to with total impunity and actual
evidence is not required. As well as things like a media thoroughly willing to requrgitate
blatant propaganda as "fact" (while having, again, no apparent need of genuine evidenc), or
other things like total surveillance, and the destruction of habeas corpus.
One should like to imagine that such things might concern the majority.
Yet, a society that buys into forever wars, lesser-evil voting, and created Hitler like
boogeymen, that countenances being lied into wars and consistently lied to about virtually
everything, is hardly likely to discern the truth of things until the "Dream" collapses into
personal pain, despair, and Depression.
Unless there is an awakening quite beyond that already tearing down statues, but yet still
, apparently, unwilling to grasp the totality of the corruption throughout the entire edifice
of "authority", of the total failure of a system that has no real legitimacy, except that
given it by voters choosing between two sides of the same tyranny, it may be readily
imagined, should Biden be "victorious", that Russiagate, Chinagate, Irangate, Venezuelagate,
and countless other "Gates" will become Official History.
In which case, this is not a last gasp, of Russiagate, but a new and full head of steam
for more of the same.
How easy it has been for the lies to prevail, to become "truth" and to simply disappear
the voices of those who ask for evidence, who dare question, who doubt.
How easy to co-opt and destroy efforts to educate or bring about critically necessary
change.
There are but a few months for real evidence to be revealed.
If Durham and Barr decide not to "criminalize policy differences", as Obama, the
"constitutional scholar", did regarding torture, then what might we imagine will be the
future of those who have an understanding of even those lies long being used, and with recent
additions, for example, to torture Julian Assange?
All of the deceit has common purpose, it is to maintain absolute control.
If Russiagate is not completely exposed, for all that it is and was intended to be, then
quaint little discussions about elite misbehavior will be banished from general awareness,
and those who persist in questioning will be rather severely dealt with.
Antonia , June 30, 2020 at 11:43
ABSOLUTELY. Well said. NOW where to make the changes absolutely necessary?
Zalamander , June 29, 2020 at 18:47
Thanks Ray. There are multiple reasons for the continued existance of Russiagate as the
Democratic party has no real answers for the economic depression affecting millions of
Americans. Neoliberal Joe Biden is also an exceptionally weak presidential candidate, who
does not even support universal healthcare for all Americans like every other advanced
industrialized country has. That said, the Dems are indeed desperate to deflect attention
away from the Durham investigation, as it is bound to expose the total fraud of Crossfire
Hurricane.
Sam F , June 29, 2020 at 18:16
Thanks, Ray, a very good summary, with reminders often needed by many in dealing with
complex issues.
Control freaks that cannot even control their own criminal impulses!
...They suffer from god-complexes, since they do not believe in God, they feel an obligation to act as God, and decide the fates
of over 7 billion people, who would obviously be better off if the PICs were sent to the Fletcher Memorial Home for Incurable Tyrants!
As we noted earlier Tuesday, several pundits took the DNI and CIA statements as a clear
denial that there was anything significant or worthy of briefing the president on regarding
alleged "Russian bounties" -- meaning it was likely deemed "chatter" or unsubstantiated rumor
picked up either by US or British intelligence -- and subsequently leaked to the press to
revive the pretty much dead Russiagate narrative of some level of "Trump-Putin collusion".
In short, when your 'unsubstantiated chatter' hit-piece loses steam, prop it up with a slain
Marine .
Looks like the same people who used to push records up the pop charts are now manipulating
the Amazon best sellers charts, though I wouldn't put this past Amazon themselves.
No one buys this garbage other than uni libraries.
scott157 , 2 minutes ago
Matt Taibbi hits ANOTHER grand slam!!!!! regarding robin diangelo, she should cease
scissoring and try a penis........it would spread sunshine all over her
place.......................
Michael Norton , 4 minutes ago
Someone should write a book called White Strength.
novictim , 4 minutes ago
And let us never forget the crackpot theory that only Blacks cannot be racist 'cuz P + P +
R -> (Prejudice + Power) = Racism.
This social theory defines blacks as being definitionally incapable of possessing power
over whites. Ya, that's not racist at all!
johnnyg , 5 minutes ago
Teaming up with Ruth Frankenberg to help attack "fellow whites"? Oy vey!
I wonder if it's "fragility" to need every university, multinational corp, media monopoly,
and celebrity constantly patting you on the *** and silencing any criticism of your constant
terrible behavior?
Petty scoundrels from NYT are not that inventive. They just want to whitewash Russiagate fiasco. This whole "story" stinks to high heaven. Judy Miller redux
- regime-change info ops, coordinated across multiple media organizations.
Notable quotes:
"... After Iraq WMD and Russia Collusion, we should ask for real evidence instead of the "top intelligence sources". And we should not buy we can't provide any evidence because of sources & methods. ..."
"... On a practical note, how was a Taliban soldier militant meant to verify his claim to a bounty? I assume that scalping was not a feasible option, but if you are going to offer a bounty then you are going to want proof that the person claiming that bounty did, indeed, do the job. ..."
After Iraq WMD and Russia Collusion, we should ask for real evidence instead of the "top
intelligence sources". And we should not buy we can't provide any evidence because of
sources & methods.
Be skeptical of anything published by Pravda on the Hudson and Pravda on the Potomac
when it comes to intelligence matters. Especially months before a general election.
On to Moscow! Where's Bomb'n Bolton when we need him?
"a European intelligence official told CNN."..... "The official did not specify as to the
date of the casualties, their number or nationality, or whether these were fatalities or
injuries."
So, unknown official, unknown date, unknown if there were any actual casualties.
"The US concluded that the GRU was behind the interference in the 2016 US election and
cyberattacks against the Democratic National Committee and top Democratic officials."
Quick, someone tell the House Impeachment Inquiry Committee! Oh, wait, that was Ukraine.
What did Mueller collude, I mean conclude, about that Russian interference?
Let me quote the former acting DNI:
"You clearly don't understand how raw intel gets verified. Leaks of partial information to
reporters from anonymous sources is dangerous because people like you manipulate it for
political gain."
I believe he was tweeting that to the press, but then they are doing this for political
reasons. Lockdowns and socialist revolutionary riots must not be working in the left's
favor. I wonder why?
On a practical note, how was a Taliban soldier militant meant to verify his claim to a
bounty? I assume that scalping was not a feasible option, but if you are going to offer a bounty
then you are going to want proof that the person claiming that bounty did, indeed, do the
job.
So if a coalition soldier died on *this* day how was a Talibani supposed to confirm to
the GRU that "Yep, I did that. Where's my money?"
TTG, I think you are being led away from the truth by your significant bias against Russia.
Those with a blinkered vision see only what they want to see. No mystery there.
Now you want to portray NYT as the paragon of truth telling!! Haven't we seen enough
examples of the lying by Jewish owned neocon media, especially the Times? Now that the
Russia-gate fire is nearly put out, these guys are pumping this story. You really need to understand the depth of hatred the Jews have for Russia and Russians
that makes them like this. That's the only country /civilisation that got away from their
grasp just when they thought have got it. Not once, but twice in the last century.
But then isn't your ancestry from Lithuania. Your hatred is strong. I get that - I see
that all time with people from the ex-Soviet republics formerly ruled by Russia. Hope
others see that too.
Regardless of its veracity, this story will definitely hit Trump where it hurts -
chapeau to the individual(s) who conceived this work of fiction, if indeed it is so.
Again, whether or not performance bonuses* were actually offered by the GRU, has anyone
considered that this may still be a Russian Intelligence op?
Perhaps we should first ask whether the Kremlin wants to deal with a US under
another 4 years of Trump. From their FP POV, the huge uncertainty and instability they see
in the US now will surely be ramped up to a whole new level, in the event that he is
re-elected. And of course all hope that Trump may be able to improve the relationship with
Russia was dashed long ago, by Russiagate and the ongoing Russophobia among the Borg.
Jeffrey's mission in Syria is a case in point. At least the US Deep State is the devil they
know.
If the answer to the above question is "no" it must surely be a trivial matter for the
GRU to feed such a damaging story to Trump's enemies in the USIC.
* "bounties" is an emotive word, useful to Trump's enemies, evoking individual pay for an
individual death - real personal stuff. As others have pointed out the practicality of such
a scheme seems improbable. Surely it is more likely that any such incentive pay would be
for the group, upon coalition casualties confirmed in the aftermath of an attack. The
distinction may not seem important, but the Resistance media can be relied upon to use
language designed to inflict the most harm.
'Intel' without evidence is "bunk". Have we learned nothing from Chrissy Steele and the
Russiagate fiasco - I know a guy who knows a guy who said... the Russians are bad and
Donald Trump is an a......e. Bob Mueller and 18 pissed off democrats have concluded that
the Russians are systemically bad and Donald Trump is an a......e. 4 months before a
Presidential election intel sources have revealed to the NYT that the Russians are very
very bad and Donald Trump is an a......e. Ah yes, the New York Ridiculously Self Degraded
Times has broken another important story. I wonder why? Enough already...and yes, we have
made a systemic laughing stock of ourselves.
Oh, and remind me again of why we've been staying around Kabul - something about improving
the lot of women, or gays, or someone?
I'm personally not ready to "duck and cover" after reading this.
I have accepted the fact that Russia is no longer the Soviet Union. I am watching
television news at night but no longer see the clock ticking as I turn it off and go to
sleep. So far, no one I know has taken to building a fallout shelter in his back yard.
I want an answer to this question: Whatever happened to the pillow and blanket I had to
bring to school and store in the school's basement in case we all had to retreat there and
be locked down in it during the bombing? Who do I go to to get reparations for the cost of
those items? (I was never given the opportunity to retrieve them when I graduated.) Did
Khrushchev have to take his shoe to a cobbler after using it to pound on the table while
threatening to bury us?
There's a rich history of stories about USI involvement in the drug trade. CIA was
involved in the heroin trade during the Viet Nam War. The Iran-Contra mess involved selling
Columbian cocaine to help finance Nicaraguan anti-Communist rebels. US involvement in the
Afghanistan drug trade has been talked about for years. As I said, there are no glitter
fartin' unicorns here.
The Iranian statistics do not lie. Transhipment of drugs across Iran from Afghanistan
has been increasing since the American invasion and occupation of Afghanistan.
The US Office of Foreign Asset Control, the US DIA, the CIA etc. are powerless to do
anything about that but are, evidently, all powerfull against USD transactions of the
Iranian government.
Projection, yet another time. An old and very effective dirty propaganda trick. Fake news outlet are intelligence services
controlled outlets.
Notable quotes:
"... Reporters from the New York Times and the Washington Post were called up by unnamed 'officials' and told to write that Russia pays some Afghans to kill U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. There is zero evidence that the claim is true. The Taliban spokesman denies it. The numbers of U.S. soldiers killed in Afghanistan is minimal. The alleged sources of the claims are criminals the U.S. has taken as prisoners in Afghanistan. ..."
"... The journalistic standards at the New York Times and Washington Post must be below zero to publish such nonsense without requesting real evidence. The press release like stories below from anti-Trump/anti-Russian sources have nothing to do with ' great reporting ' but are pure stenography. ..."
"... If the Russians were truly inclined in a direction leading them to "pay bounties" for American scalps in Afghanistan, they would instead be doing what we once did: providing state-of-the-art Manpads to Afghan jihadis. Any sort of bar room or shit house rumor these days is attributed to "intelligence officials" or "intelligence sources", always unnamed of course. ..."
"... The paragraph about "reasons to believe" is vacuous in the extreme: ..."
"... "The intelligence assessment is said to be based at least in part on interrogations of captured Afghan militants and criminals. The officials did not describe the mechanics of the Russian operation, such as how targets were picked or how money changed hands. It is also not clear whether Russian operatives had deployed inside Afghanistan or met with their Taliban counterparts elsewhere." ..."
"... We know from the past that US forces were torturing TOTALLY RANDOM INDIVIDUALS, occasionally to death. Needless to say, "officials did not describe the mechanics" of the interrogation, neither did not describe any corroborative details. The most benign scenario is that "captured Afghan militants and criminals" are pure fiction rather than actual people subjected to "anal inspections", "peroneal strikes", left overnight hanging from the ceiling etc. to spit out random incoherent tidbits about the Russians, like "it is also not clear".... A long list of "not clear"'s. ..."
"... Together, it is very crude "manufacturing of consent", and unfortunately, this is a workable technique of manipulation. Crudity is the tool, not a defect in this case. I will explain later what I mean, this post is probably too long already. ..."
Evidence Free Press Release Claims 'Russia Did Bad, Trump Did
Not Respond' - NYT , WaPo Publish ItA. Pols , Jun 27 2020 14:34 utc |
1
There were allegations about emails that someone exfiltrated from the DNC and provided to
Wikileaks . Russia must have done it. The FBI and other intelligence services were
all over it. In the end no evidence was provided to support the claims.
There were allegations that Trump did not really win the elections. Russia must have done
it. The various U.S. intelligence service, together with their British friends, provided all
kinds of sinister leaks about the alleged case. In the end no evidence was provided to
support the claims.
A British double agent, Sergej Skirpal, was allegedly injured in a Russian attack on him.
The intelligence services told all kind of contradicting nonsense about the case. In the end
no evidence was provided to support the claims.
All three cases had two points in common. The were based on sources near to the U.S. and
British intelligence community. They were designed to increase hostility against Russia. The
last point was then used to sabotage Donald Trump's original plans for better relations with
Russia.
Now the intelligence services make another claim that fits right into the above
scheme.
Reporters from the New York Times and the Washington Post were called up
by unnamed 'officials' and told to write that Russia pays some Afghans to kill U.S. soldiers
in Afghanistan. There is zero evidence that the claim is true. The Taliban spokesman denies
it. The numbers of U.S. soldiers killed in Afghanistan is minimal. The alleged sources of the
claims are criminals the U.S. has taken as prisoners in Afghanistan.
All that nonsense is again used to press against Trump's wish for better relations with
Russia. Imagine - Trump was told about these nonsensical claims and he did nothing about
it!
The same intelligence services and 'officials' previously paid bounties to bring innocent
prisoners to Guantanamo Bay, tortured them until they made false confessions and lied about
it. The same intelligence services and 'officials' lied about WMD in Iraq. The same
'intelligence officials' paid and pay Jihadis disguised as 'Syrian rebels' to kill Russian
and Syrian troops which defend their countries.
The journalistic standards at the New York Times and Washington Post
must be below zero to publish such nonsense without requesting real evidence. The press
release like stories below from anti-Trump/anti-Russian sources have nothing to do with '
great
reporting ' but are pure stenography.
Posted by b at
13:43 UTC |
Comments (3)If the Russians were truly inclined in a direction leading them to "pay
bounties" for American scalps in Afghanistan, they would instead be doing what we once did:
providing state-of-the-art Manpads to Afghan jihadis. Any sort of bar room or shit house
rumor these days is attributed to "intelligence officials" or "intelligence sources", always
unnamed of course.
Biden is the intelligence services' ideal candidate -- an easily manipulated empty suit.
There's a reason why charges of Biden wrongdoing are as easily dismissed as nonsensical
charges against Trump and Russia get fabricated. And that reason is that the media is as
happy to be manipulated as Biden.
The paragraph about "reasons to believe" is vacuous in the extreme:
"The intelligence assessment is said to be based at least in part on interrogations
of captured Afghan militants and criminals. The officials did not describe the mechanics of
the Russian operation, such as how targets were picked or how money changed hands. It is
also not clear whether Russian operatives had deployed inside Afghanistan or met with their
Taliban counterparts elsewhere."
We know from the past that US forces were torturing TOTALLY RANDOM INDIVIDUALS,
occasionally to death. Needless to say, "officials did not describe the mechanics" of the
interrogation, neither did not describe any corroborative details. The most benign scenario
is that "captured Afghan militants and criminals" are pure fiction rather than actual people
subjected to "anal inspections", "peroneal strikes", left overnight hanging from the ceiling
etc. to spit out random incoherent tidbits about the Russians, like "it is also not
clear".... A long list of "not clear"'s.
This is disturbing, although this is precisely the quality of "intelligence" that gets
released to the public. The second disturbing aspect is that the article was opened to
comments, and as usually in such cases, the comments are full of fury at Russians and Trump,
and with the numbers of "recommend"'s reaching thousands. On non-Russian topics, if comments
are allowed, one can see a much wider spectrum of opinion, sometimes with huge numbers of
"recommend"'s to people who criticize and doubt the official positions. Here I lost patience
looking for any skeptical comment.
Together, it is very crude "manufacturing of consent", and unfortunately, this is a
workable technique of manipulation. Crudity is the tool, not a defect in this case. I will
explain later what I mean, this post is probably too long already.
"... On Saturday, the Russian Foreign Ministry dismissed the NYT story as "fake information." ..."
"... This unsophisticated plant clearly illustrates the low intellectual abilities of the propagandists from US intelligence, who, instead of inventing something more plausible, resort to conjuring up such nonsense. ..."
"... "Then again, what else can one expect from intelligence services that have bungled the 20-year war in Afghanistan," the ministry said. ..."
"... Moscow has suggested that this misinformation was "planted" because the US may be against Russia "assisting" in peace talks between the Taliban and the internationally-recognised government in Kabul. ..."
The Russian Foreign Ministry has rejected a US media report
claiming Moscow offered to pay jihadi militants to attack US soldiers in Afghanistan. It said such 'fake news' merely betrays the
low skill levels of US spy agencies. Citing US intelligence officials – unnamed, of course – the New York Times reported that, last
year, Moscow had "covertly offered rewards" to Taliban-linked militants to attack American troops and their NATO allies
in Afghanistan.
On Saturday, the Russian Foreign Ministry dismissed the NYT story as "fake information."
This unsophisticated plant clearly illustrates the low intellectual abilities of the propagandists from US intelligence,
who, instead of inventing something more plausible, resort to conjuring up such nonsense.
"Then again, what else can one expect from intelligence services that have bungled the 20-year war in Afghanistan," the
ministry said.
Moscow has suggested that this misinformation was "planted" because the US may be against Russia "assisting"
in peace talks between the Taliban and the internationally-recognised government in Kabul.
US-led NATO troops have been fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan since 2001. The campaign, launched in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist
attacks, has cost Washington billions of dollars and resulted in the loss of thousands of American soldiers' lives. Despite maintaining
a military presence for almost two decades, the US has failed to defeat the Taliban, which is still in control of vast swaths of
the country.
Moreover, the office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction has compiled several reports detailing how
tens of millions of US taxpayers' funds have been spent on dubious regeneration projects.
This whole "story" stinks to high heaven. Judy Miller redux - regime-change info ops, coordinated across multiple media
organizations.
Notable quotes:
"... To be clear, this is journalistic malpractice. Mainstream media outlets which publish anonymous intelligence claims with no proof are just publishing CIA press releases disguised as news. They're just telling you to believe what sociopathic intelligence agencies want you to believe under the false guise of impartial and responsible reporting. This practice has become ubiquitous throughout mainstream news publications, but that doesn't make it any less immoral. ..."
"... "Same old story: alleged intelligence ops IMPOSSIBLE to verify, leaked to the press which reports them quoting ANONYMOUS officials," tweeted journalist Stefania Maurizi. ..."
"... "So we are to simply believe the same intelligence orgs that paid bounties to bring innocent prisoners to Guantanamo, lied about torture in Afghanistan, and lied about premises for war from WMD in Iraq to the Gulf of Tonkin 'attack'? All this and no proof?" ..."
"... "It's totally outrageous for Russia to support the Taliban against Americans in Afghanistan. Of course, it's totally fine for the US to support jihadi rebels against Russians in Syria, jihadi rebels who openly said the Taliban is their hero," ..."
"... On the flip side, all the McResistance pundits have been speaking of this baseless allegation as a horrific event that is known to have happened, with Rachel Maddow going so far as to describe it as Putin offering bounties for the "scalps" of American soldiers in Afghanistan. This is an interesting choice of words, considering that offering bounties for scalps is, in fact, one of the many horrific things the US government did in furthering its colonialist ambitions , which, unlike the New York Times allegation, is known to have actually happened. ..."
By Caitlin Johnstone , an independent journalist based
in Melbourne, Australia. Her website is here and you can follow her on
Twitter @caitoz
Whenever one sees a news headline ending in
"US Intelligence Says", one should always mentally replace everything that comes before it with "Blah blah blah we're probably lying."
"Russia Secretly Offered Afghan Militants Bounties to Kill Troops, US Intelligence Says", blares the
latest viral headline from the New York Times . NYT's unnamed sources
allege that the GRU "secretly offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants for killing coalition forces in Afghanistan -- including
targeting American troops", and that the Trump administration has known this for months.
To be clear, this is journalistic malpractice. Mainstream media outlets which publish anonymous intelligence claims with no proof
are just publishing CIA press releases disguised as news. They're just telling you to believe what sociopathic intelligence agencies
want you to believe under the false guise of impartial and responsible reporting. This practice has become ubiquitous throughout
mainstream news publications, but that doesn't make it any less immoral.
In a post-Iraq-invasion world, the only correct response to unproven anonymous claims about a rival government by intelligence
agencies from the US or its allies is to assume that they are lying until you are provided with a mountain of independently verifiable
evidence to the contrary. The US has far too extensive a record of lying
about these things for any other response to ever be justified as rational, and its intelligence agencies consistently play a foundational
role in those lies.
Voices outside the mainstream-narrative control matrix have been calling these accusations what they are: baseless, lacking in
credibility, and not reflective of anything other than fair play, even if true.
"Same old story: alleged intelligence ops IMPOSSIBLE to verify, leaked to the press which reports them quoting ANONYMOUS officials,"
tweeted journalist Stefania Maurizi.
"So we are to simply believe the same intelligence orgs that paid bounties to bring innocent prisoners to Guantanamo, lied
about torture in Afghanistan, and lied about premises for war from WMD in Iraq to the Gulf of Tonkin 'attack'? All this and no proof?"
tweeted author and analyst Jeffrey Kaye.
"It's totally outrageous for Russia to support the Taliban against Americans in Afghanistan. Of course, it's totally fine
for the US to support jihadi rebels against Russians in Syria, jihadi rebels who openly said the Taliban is their hero," tweeted author and analyst Max Abrams.
On the flip side, all the McResistance pundits have been
speaking of this baseless allegation as a horrific event that is known to have happened, with Rachel Maddow
going so far as to describe it as Putin offering
bounties for the "scalps" of American soldiers in Afghanistan. This is an interesting choice of words, considering that
offering bounties for scalps is, in fact, one of the many horrific things
the US government did in furthering its colonialist ambitions , which, unlike the New York Times allegation, is known to have
actually happened.
It is true, as many have been pointing out, that it would be fair play for Russia to fund violent opposition the the US in Afghanistan,
seeing as that's exactly what the US and its allies have been doing to Russia and its allies in Syria, and did to the Soviets in
Afghanistan via Operation Cyclone . It is also true
that the US military has no business in Afghanistan anyway, and any violence inflicted on US troops abroad is the fault of the military
expansionists who put them there. The US military has no place outside its own easily defended borders, and the assumption that it
is normal for a government to circle the planet with military bases is a faulty premise.
But before even getting into such arguments, the other side of the debate must meet its burden of proof that this has even happened.
That burden is far from met. It is literally the US intelligence community's job to lie to you. The New York Times has an extensive
history of pushing for new wars at every opportunity,
including the unforgivable
Iraq invasion , which killed a million people, based on lies. A mountain of proof is required before such claims should be seriously
considered, and we are very, very far from that.
I will repeat myself: it is the US intelligence community's job to lie to you. I will repeat myself again: it is the US intelligence
community's job to lie to you. Don't treat these CIA press releases with anything but contempt.
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those
of RT.
Trump himself has rubbished the NYT's Russia/Taliban story on Twitter today:
"Nobody briefed or told me, @VP Pence, or Chief of Staff @MarkMeadows about the so-called
attacks on our troops in Afghanistan by Russians, as reported through an "anonymous source"
by the Fake News @nytimes. Everybody is denying it & there have not been many attacks on
us..... " https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1277202159109537793
NYT exclusive: breaking, bombshell report, bombshell report, Russia pays Taliban to kill
U.S. Troops
The puppets dance for their puppet masters yet again. I was struck that in all of the MSM
responses on CNN and FOX every single host accepted it as an absolute fact that this was
true. If an unnamed source said something to a reporter at the NYT then it must have happened
in that way and the facts are irrefutable. Wow our 'journalists' are pathetic.
1. The guy who leaked this could be twisting a half or even quarter truth to embarrass
Trump, derail our withdrawal from Germany or Afghanistan ... nahh impossible. Our CIA guys
never have an agenda.
2. This could be disinformation against Russia ... nahh we are the good guys, that's not
how we roll.
The guy on CNN could not believe the WH statement that they were not briefed, 'it strains
credibility'. Maybe one POW made an outlandish claim to get better treatment and lower level
staff did not think the claim itself had enough credibility. Nope, it was leaked by an
Intelligence guy, therefore it must be true.
journalism is dead. buried, dug up, cremated and then scattered over a trash dump in
the U.S.
"... You can fool someone for a long time, you can fool a lot of people for a short time - but you can't fool a lot of people for a long time. That is, unless those people are willing to live the lie. ..."
"... I think the reason the MSM's propaganda is so effective nowadays (and I'm thinking specifically about the world since the Iraq invasion in 2003) is that, deep down, maybe in the collective inconsciousness level, the working classes from the First World countries know their superior living standards depend on imperial brutality over the rest of the world. ..."
"... The current increased smear campaigns against the so called Russian Bots, Assad Apologists etc., is surely just the first part of of a an attempt to implement very serious censorship and control over the internet to attempt to completely block out any alternative voices. ..."
"... Obivously western intelligence servies, NATO leak stuff to western msm to intimidate and censor political oppostion in every western country. ..."
"... Orwell's great fear was totalitarianism. Either from the left or the right. What we have now is much more subtle. The MSM retains the illusion of freedom and most people go along with it. We may even realize we are being manipulated but the only alternative is posting on sites like MOA. ..."
"... The Skirpal charade was a front for several things but mainly, I think, to turn the focus away from Brexit and to opening the Cold War front again. ..."
"... George Orwell has been a presence throughout this thread. It was unfortunate he was hurried by MI6 to finish the last pages of 'Animal Farm' so it could be translated into Arabic and be used to discredit Communist parties in Western Asia. This always raised the ire of Communist organisations through following decades .This being said he wrote some great text especially for me the revealing 1939 novel - Coming up for A ..."
"... I don't know if wars are really an extension of diplomacy by other means, but they certainly seem to be... an extension of ideology and propaganda. Ideas are very important in preparing and fighting wars; especially today, though, in reality the way we think about our western imperial war-fighting, goes back well over a century, back to the Whiteman's Burden and other imperialist myths. ..."
"... For the last thirty years we've essentially been fighting 'liberal crusades for freedom and democracy.' That, at least, was the 'cover story' the pretext presented to the people. There's an irony here. Just like Islamic State, we've been engaging in 'holy warfare' too! ..."
Early in life I have noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper, but in
Spain, for the first time, I saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the
facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an ordinary lie. I saw great battles
reported where there had been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men had been
killed. I saw troops who had fought bravely denounced as cowards and traitors, and others who
had never seen a shot fired hailed as the heroes of imaginary victories; and I saw newspapers
in London retailing these lies and eager intellectuals building emotional superstructures over
events that had never happened. I saw, in fact, history being written not in terms of what
happened but of what ought to have happened according to various 'party lines'.
George Orwell, Looking back on the Spanish War
, Chapter 4
Last week saw an extreme intensifying of the warmongers' campaign against individuals who
publicly hold and defend a different view than the powers-that-be want to promote. The campaign
has a longer history but recently turned personal. It now endangers the life and livelihood of
real people.
In fall 2016 a
smear campaign was launched against 200 websites which did not confirm to NATO propaganda.
Prominent sites like Naked
Capitalism were among them as well as this site:
While the ProPornOT campaign was against websites the next and larger attack was a
general defaming of specific content.
The neoconservative Alliance For
Securing Democracy declared that any doubt of the veracity of U.S. propaganda stories
discussed on Twitter was part of a "Russian influence campaign". Their ' dashboard ' shows the most prominent hashtags and
themes tweeted and retweeted by some 600 hand-selected but undisclosed accounts. (I have reason
to believe that @MoonofA is among them.) The dashboard gave rise to an endless line of
main-stream stories faking concern over alleged "Russian influence". The New York
Times published several such stories including this
recent one :
Russia did not respond militarily to the Friday strike, but American officials noted a sharp
spike in Russian online activity around the time it was launched.
A snapshot on Friday night recorded a 2,000 percent increase in Russian troll activity
overall, according to Tyler Q. Houlton, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security.
One known Russian bot, #SyriaStrikes, had a 4,443 percent increase in activity while another,
#Damsucs, saw a 2,800 percent jump, Mr. Houlton said.
A person on Twitter, or a bot, is tagged by a chosen name led with an @-sign. Anything led
with a #-sign is a 'hashtag', a categorizing attribute of a place, text or tweet. Hashtags have
nothing to do with any "troll activity". The use of the attribute or hashtag #syriastrike
increased dramatically when a U.S. strike on Syria happened. Duh. A lot of people remarked on the
strikes and used the hashtag #syriastrike to categorize their remarks. It made it easier for
others to find information about the incident.
The hashtag #Damsucs does not exit. How could it have a 2,800% increase? It is obviously a
mistyping of #Damascus or someone may have used as a joke. In June 2013 an Associated
Press story famously
carried the dateline "Damsucs". The city was then under artillery attack from various Takfiri
groups. The author likely felt that the situation sucked.
The spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security Tyler Q. Holton, to which the
Times attributes the "bot" nonsense, has a Twitter account under his name and also tweets as
@SpoxDHS. Peter Baker, the NYT author, has some 150,000 followers on Twitter and tweets several
times per day. Holton and Tyler surely know what @accounts and #hashtags are.
One suspects that Holton used the bizzare
statistic of the infamous ' Dashboard '
created by the neoconservative, anti-Russian lobby . The dashboard creators asserted that the
use of certain hashtags is a sign of 'Russian bots'. On December 25 the dashboard showed that
Russian trolls and bots made extensive use of the hashtag #MerryChristmas to undermine America's
moral.
One of the creators of the dashboard, Clint Watts, has since confessed that it is mere
bullshit :
"I'm not convinced on this bot thing," said Watts, the cofounder of a project that is widely
cited as the main, if not only, source of information on Russian bots. He also called the
narrative "overdone."
As government spokesperson Holton is supposed to spout propaganda that supports the
government's policies. But propaganda is ineffective when it does not adhere to basic realities.
Holton is bad at his job. Baker, the NYT author, did even worse. He repeated the
government's propaganda bullshit without pointing out and explaining that it obviously did not
make any sense. He used it to further his own opinionated, false narrative. It took a day for the
Times to issue a paritial correction of the fact free tale.
With the situation in Syria developing in favor of the Syrian people, with dubious government
claims around the Skripal affair in Salisbury and the recent faked 'chemical attack' in Douma the
campaign against dissenting reports and opinions became more and more personal.
Last December the Guardian commissioned a hatchet
job against Vanessa Beeley
and Eva Bartlett . Beeley and
Bartlett extensively reported
(vid) from the ground in Syria on the British propaganda racket "White Helmets". The
Guardian piece defended the 'heros' of the White Helmets and insinuated that both
journalists were Russian paid stooges.
In March the self proclaimed whistle-blower and blowhard Sibel Edmonds of Newsbud
launched a lunatic broadside smear attack
(vid) against Vanessa Beeley and Eva Bartlett. The Corbett Report debunked (vid) the nonsense. (The debunking
received 59,000 views. Edmonds public wanking was seen by less than 23,000 people.)
Some time ago the CIA propaganda outlets Voice of America and Radio Free Europe
started a 'fact-checking' website and named it Polygraph.info . (Some satirist or a clueless intern
must have come up with that name. No country but the U.S. believes that the unscientific results
of polygraph tests have any relation to truthfulness. To any educated non-U.S. citizen the first
association with the term 'polygraph' is the term 'fake'.)
Ben Nimmo, the Senior Fellow for Information Defense at the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic
Research Lab, studies the exploits of "Ian56" and similar accounts on Twitter. His recent
article in the online publication Medium profiles such fake pro-Kremlin accounts and
demonstrates how they operate.
...
Nimmo, and several other dimwits quoted in the piece, came to the conclusion that Ian56 is a
Kremlin paid troll, not a real person. Next to Ian56 Nimmo 'identified' other 'Russian troll'
accounts:
One particularly influential retweeter (judging by the number of accounts which then
retweeted it) was @ValLisitsa, which posts in English and Russian. Last year, this account
joined the troll-factory #StopMorganLie campaign.
Had Nimmo, a former NATO spokesperson, had some decent education he would have know that
@ValLisitsa, aka Valentina Lisitsa , is a famous
American-Ukrainian pianist. Yes, she sometimes tweets in Russian language to her many fans in
Russia and the Ukraine. Is that now a crime? The videos of her world wide performances
on Youtube have more than 170 million views. It is absurd to claim that she is a 'Russian troll'
and to insinuate that she is taking Kremlin money to push 'Russian troll' opinions.
Earlier this month Newsweek also
targeted the journalists Beeley and Bartlett and smeared a group of people who had traveled
to Syria as 'Assad's pawns'.
On April 14 Murdoch's London Times took personal aim at the members of a group of
British academics who assembled to scientificly investigate dubious claims against Syria. Their
first investigation report though, was
about the Skripal incident in Salisbury. The London Times also targeted Bartlett and
Beeley. The piece was leading on page one with the
headline: "Apologists for Assad working in universities". A page two splash and an editorial
complemented the full fledged attack on the livelihood of the scientists.
Tim Hayward, who initiated the academic group, published
a (too) mild response.
On April 18 the NPR station Wabenews
smeared the black activists Anoa Changa and Eugene Puryear for appearing on a Russian TV
station. It was the begin of an ongoing, well concerted campaign launched with at least seven
prominent smear pieces issued on a single day against the opposition to a wider war on Syria.
On April 19 the BBCtook aim at Sarah Abdallah , a Twitter account with over 130,000
followers that takes a generally pro Syrian government stand. The piece also attacked Vanessa
Beeley and defended the 'White Helmets':
In addition to pictures of herself, Sarah Abdallah tweets constant pro-Russia and pro-Assad
messages, with a dollop of retweeting mostly aimed at attacking Barack Obama, other US
Democrats and Saudi Arabia.
...
The Sarah Abdallah account is, according to a recent study by the online research firm
Graphika, one of the most influential social media accounts in the online conversation about
Syria, and specifically in pushing misinformation about a 2017 chemical weapons attack and the
Syria Civil Defence, whose rescue workers are widely known as the "White Helmets".
...
Graphika was commissioned to prepare a report on online chatter by The Syria Campaign , a
UK-based advocacy group organisation which campaigns for a democratic future for Syria and
supports the White Helmets.
The Syria Campaign Ltd. is a
for profit 'regime change' lobby which, like the White Helmets it promotes, is sponsored with
millions of British and U.S. taxpayer money.
Brian Whitaker, a former Middle East editor for the Guardian ,
alleged that Sarah Abdullah has a 'Hizbullah connection'. He assumes that from two terms she
used which point to a southern Lebanese heritage. But south Lebanon is by far not solely
Hizbullah and Sarah Abdallah certainly does not dress herself like a pious Shia. She is
more likely a Maronite or secular whatever. Exposing here as 'Hizbullah' can easily endanger her
life. Replying to Whitaker the British politician George Galloway asked:
George Galloway @georgegalloway - 14:50 UTC - Replying to
@Brian_Whit
Will you be content when she's dead Brian?
...
Will you be content Brian when ISIS cut off her head and eat her heart? You are beneath
contempt. Even for a former Guardian man
Whitaker's smear piece was not even researched by himself. He plagiarized it, without naming
his source,
from Joumana Gebara, a CentCom approved Social Media
Advisor to parts of the Syrian 'opposition'. Whitaker is prone to fall for scams like the 'White
Helmets'. Back in mid 2011 he promoted the "Gay Girl in
Damascus", a scam by a 40 year old U.S. man with dubious financial
sources who pretended to be a progressive Syrian woman.
Also on April 19 the Guardian
stenographed a British government smear against two other prominent Twitter accounts:
Russia used trolls and bots to unleash disinformation on to social media in the wake of the
Salisbury poisoning, according to fresh Whitehall analysis. Government sources said experts had
uncovered an increase of up to 4,000% in the spread of propaganda from Russia-based accounts
since the attack, – many of which were identifiable as automated bots.
Notice that this idiotic % increase claim, without giving a base number, is similar to the one
made in the New York Times piece quoted above. It is likely also based on the lunatic
'dashboard'.
[C]ivil servants identified a sharp increase in the flow of fake news after the Salisbury
poisoning, which continued in the runup to the airstrikes on Syria.
One bot, @Ian56789, was sending 100 posts a day during a 12-day period from 7 April, and
reached 23 million users, before the account was suspended. It focused on claims that the
chemical weapons attack on Douma had been falsified, using the hashtag #falseflag. Another,
@Partisangirl, reached 61 million users with 2,300 posts over the same 12-day period.
The prime minister discussed the matter at a security briefing with fellow Commonwealth
leaders Malcolm Turnbull, Jacinda Ardern and Justin Trudeau earlier this week. They were
briefed by experts from GCHQ and the National Cyber Security Centre about the security
situation in the aftermath of the Syrian airstrikes.
The political editor of the Guardian , Heather Steward, admitted that her 'reporting'
was a mere copy of government claims:
A day earlier Ian56/@Ian56789 account with 35,000 followers had suddenly been blocked by
Twitter. Ben Nimmo was extremely happy about this success.
But after many users protested to the Twitter censors the account was revived.
Neither Ian, nor Partisangirl, are 'bots' or have anything to do with Russia. Partisangirl,
aka Syria Girl, is the twitter moniker of Maram Susli, a Syrian-Australian scientist specialized
in quantum chemistry. She was already interviewed on Australian TV (vid) four years
ago and has been back since. She has published videos of herself talking about Syria on Youtube and on Twitter and held
presentations on Syria at several international conferences. Her account is marked as 'verified'
by Twitter. Any cursory search would have shown that she is a real person.
The claim of bots and the numbers of their tweets the government gave to the Guardian
and Sky News are evidently false . With just a few clicks
the Guardian and Sky News 'journalists' could have debunked the British government
claims. But these stenograhers do not even try and just run with whatever nonsense the government
claims. Sky News even manipulated the picture of Partisangirl's Twitter homepage in the
video and screenshot above. The original shows Maram Susli speaking about Syrian refugees at a
conference in Germany. The picture provides that she is evidently a living person and not a
'bot'. But Sky News did not dare to show that. It would have debunked the government's
claim.
After some negative feed back on social media Sky News contacted the 'Russian bot' Ian
and invited him to a live interview
(vid). Ian Shilling, a wakeful British pensioner, managed to deliver a few zingers against the
government and Sky News . He also published a
written response:
I have been campaigning against the Neocons and the Neocon Wars since January 2002, when I
first realised Dick Cheney and the PNAC crowd were going to use 9/11 as the pretext to launch a
disastrous invasion of Iraq. This has nothing to do with Russia. It has EVERYTHING to do with
the massive lies constantly told by the UK & US governments about their illegal Wars of
Aggression.
...
Brian Whitaker could not hold back. Within the 156,000 tweets Ian wrote over seven years
Whitaker found one(!)
with a murky theory (not a denial) about the Holocaust. He alleged that Ian believes in
'conspiracy theories'. Whitaker then linked to and discussed one Conspirador Norteño who
peddles 'Russian bots' conspiracy theories. Presumably Whitaker did not get the consp-irony of
doing such.
On the same day as the other reports the British version of the Huffington Post
joined the Times in its earlier smear against British academics, accusing Professor
Hayward and Professor Piers Robinson of "whitewashing war crimes". They have done no such thing.
Vanessa Beeley was additionally attacked.
Also on the 19th the London Times aimed at another target. Citizen Halo , a well known Finnish grandma, was declared to be a
'Russian troll' based on Ben Nimmo's pseudo-scientific trash, for not believing in the Skripal
tale and the faked 'chemical attack' in Syria. The Times doubted her nationality and
existence by using quotes around her as a "Finnish activist".
Meanwhile the defense editor of the Times , Deborah Haynes, is stalking Valentina Lisitsa on
Twitter. A fresh smear-piece against the pianist is surely in the works.
The obviously organized campaign against critical thinking in Britain extended beyond the
Atlantic. While the BBC , Guardian, HuffPo, Times and Sky News published
smear pieces depicting dissenting people as 'Russian bots', the Intercept pushed a piece
by Mehdi Hasan bashing an amorphous 'left' for rejecting a U.S. war on Syria:
Dear Bashar al-Assad Apologists: Your Hero Is a War Criminal Even If He Didn't Gas Syrians
.
Mehdi Hasan is of course eminently qualified to write such a piece. Until recently he worked
for Al Jazeerah , the media outlet of the Wahhabi dictatorship of Qatar which supports the
Qatari sponsored al-Qaeda in its war against Syria. The Mehdi Hasan's piece repeats every false
and debunked claim that has been raised against the Syrian government as evidence for the Syrian
president's viciousness. Naturally many of the links he provides point back to Al
Jazeerah's propaganda. A few years ago Mehdi Hasan tried to get a job with the conservative
British tabloid Daily Mail . The Mail did not want him. During a later TV discussion Hasan
slammed the Daily Mail for its reporting and conservative editorial position. The paper
responded by
publishing his old job application. In it Mehdi Hasan emphasized his own conservative
believes:
I am also attracted by the Mail's social conservatism on issues like marriage, the family,
abortion and teenage pregnancies.
A conservative war-on-Syria promoter is bashing an anonymous 'left' which he falsely accuses
of supporting Assad when it takes a stand against imperial wars. Is that a 'progressive' Muslim
Brotherhood position? (Added: Stephen Gowans and Kurt Nimmo
respond to Hasan's screed.)
On the same day Sonali Kolhatkar at Truthdig , as pseudo-progressive as the
Intercept , published a quite similar piece: Why
Are Some on the Left Falling for Fake News on Syria? . She bashes the 'left' - without citing
any example - for not falling for the recent scam of the 'chemical attack' in Douma and for
distrusting the U.S./UK government paid White Helmets. The comments against the piece are
lively.
Those working in the media are up in arms over alleged fake news and they lament the loss of
paying readership. But they have only themselves to blame. They are the biggest creators of fake
news and provider of government falsehood. Their attacks on critical readers and commentators are
despicable.
Until two years ago Hala Jabar was foreign correspondent in the Middle East for the Sunday
Times . After fourteen years with the paper and winning six awards for her work she was 'made
redundant' for her objective reporting on Syria. She remarks on the recent media push against
truth about Syria and the very personal attacks against non-conformist opinions:
In my entire career, spanning more than three decades of professional journalism, I have
never seen MSM resolve to such ugly smear campaigns & hit pieces against those questioning
mainstream narratives, with a different view point, as I have seen on Syria, recently.
.2/ This is a dangerous manoeuvre , a witch hunt in fact, aimed not only at character
assassination, but at attempting to silence those who think differently or even sway from
mainstream & state narrative.
.3/ It would have been more productive, to actually question the reason why more & more
people are indeed turning to alternative voices for information & news, than to dish out ad
hominem smears aimed at intimidating by labelling alternative voices as conspirators or
apologists.
.4/ The journalists, activists, professors & citizens under attack are presenting an
alternative view point. Surely, people are entitled to hear those and are intelligent enough to
make their own judgments.
.5/ Or is there an assumption, (patronizing, if so), that the tens of thousands of people
collectively following these alternative voices are too dumb & unintelligent to reach their
own conclusions by sifting through the mass information being dished at them daily from all
sides?
.6/ Like it or hate it, agree or disagree with them, the bottom line is that the people
under attack do present an alternative view point. Least we forget, no one has a monopoly on
truth. Are all those currently launching this witch hunt suggesting they do?
The governments and media would like to handle the war on Syria like they handled the war in
Spain. They want reports without "any relation to the facts". The media want to "retail the lies"
and eager propagandists want to "build emotional superstructures over events that never
happened."
The new communication networks allow everyone to follow the war on Syria as diligently as
George Orwell followed the war in Spain in which he took part. We no longer have to travel to see
the differences of what really happens and what gets reported in the main stream press. We can
debunk false government claims with freely available knowledge.
The governments, media and their stenographers would love to go back to the old times when
they were not plagued by reports and tweets from Eva, Vanessa, Ian, Maram and Sarah or by
blogposts like this one. The vicious campaign against any dissenting report or opinion is a sorry
attempt to go back in time and to again gain the monopoly on 'truth'.
It is on us to not let them succeed.
Posted by b on April 21, 2018 at 23:02 UTC |
Permalink
next page " Excellent.
The good news about both The Intercept and Truthdig pieces is that the comments quickly showed
that readers knew what the publishers were up to.
The Intercept seemed to have removed Hasan's obscene act of prostitution within a day.
The reality is that we simply have to expect the imperialists, now reduced to propaganda and
domestic repression, to act in this way: there is no point in attempting to shame them and they
never did believe in journalistic principles or standards or ethics. They are the scum who
serve a cannibalistic system for good wages and a comfortable life style- that is what the
'middle class' always did do and always will.
No longer is it possible to control TV, Radio and printed newspapers and use them to set the
message. There are now an almost infinite set of channels including youtube, twitter, blogs,
podcasts,streamed radio... It's like there is a public bitcoin/bitnewsledger where new
information only gets written into the ledger if it is authenicated by sufficient
endorsements.
In the past, a lie could travel around the world before the truth got its shoes on (Mark Twain
I believe) but the truth is catching up. We are in the midst of the great changeover where
older people still rely on traditional information channels yet younger internet enabled
peoplecan leverage the new channels more effectively to educate themselves.
Western propagandists are freaking out because nobody believes their lies anymore. The more
they freak out, the more we know they have lost the narrative.
I just fear for the safety of these independent journalists. It is not beneath the deep
state to assassinate their enemies. These people need to be very careful.
For deeply sourced, relentlessly reported coverage in the public interest that
dramatically furthered the nation's understanding of Russian interference in the 2016
presidential election and its connections to the Trump campaign, the President-elect's
transition team and his eventual administration. (The New York Times entry, submitted in this
category, was moved into contention by the Board and then jointly awarded the Prize.)
The hysterical, side-splitting laughter over this chicken-choking, circle-jerking drivel
will echo in eternity. Galactic stupidity simply doesn't get any more cosmic, except perhaps
awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Henry Kissinger and Barack Obama.
This is a fight between Deep States of the Rothschild-UK 'Octopus,' US-centric
Rockefeller-Kochs, Russian (itself split between competing and intertwined Anglo-American
clans/Eurasianists vs Altanticists) and China (also divided between sovereignty oriented
Shanghai and Rothschild affiliated Hong Kong which was founded upon the opium trade in
cooperation with the UK-Octopus).
The main point of contention is whether we have a hard or soft landing as the New World
Order is born, with the UK-Octopus needing to instigate an epic crisis so as to bury countless
trillions of worthless derivatives it sits upon, specifically seeking to collapse the USD as a
global fiat and use the ensiung chaos to assist the Chinese as they establish an unasailable
Yuan fiat. A war with Russia will bring the US-centric Deep State to it's knees and so this
forms the basis of the not-so secret alliance between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, while
China attempts to remain neutral since Xi prefers a smooth transition since the US-centric
group may well launch a nuclear false flag attack on the Korean peninsula, thus irradiating the
region and dooming the potential for a Chinese dominated century, should the interests of yhis
group be ignored.
All gloves are off and the dispostions of various players are suddenly crystal clear after
the firing of Octopus agent Tillerson by Trump via twitter led immediately to the launching of
operation 'Novichok,' and was followed up with an attempted series of false flags in East
Ghouta which were planned so as to bring the US and Russia to war.
Other important players include the US military (itself divided between Octopus NATO and
US-centric Pentagon), the CIA, which is always on all sides of any conflict but was until
recently headed by Koch protege Mike Pompeo, as well as smaller Arab, Persian and Turkish Deep
States all jockeying for advantage and position. Even the Vatican is included and said to be
divided between Polish Cardinals on one side, with German, Italian and many Spanish speaking
Cardinals as opponents. There are other Deep States as well and in every instance they are
divided between one of the two main parties and themselves to one or another degree.
Media and social control is mainly the preserve of the UK Octopus, so as all of us have
understood for some time, anything included within it, from the NYTimes to most of Hollywood,
is completely worthless. Alternative media was created as an alternative to Octopus media,
while Trump takes to twitter so as to bypass their control.
I feel like a US voter forced to choose between Republicans and Democrats, but with the
promised 'Blue Wave' coming in November when Congressional elections are due, certain to be
impeached Donald Trump and his US-centric backers have a very short time frame in which to
change the score.
Ads also appeared on The Jimmy Dore Show channel, a far-left YouTube channel that peddles
conspiracy theories, such as the idea that Syrian chemical weapons attacks are hoaxes.
Syria is really the unifying theme in all these attacks.
I congratulate Bernhard on yet another excellent piece of investigative journalism. My comment
is not intended to criticise or take away from it, but only to point out that Orwell's quote
was taken out of context, in the sense that although he remarks on partisan propaganda, he says
that it is unimportant, since "the broad picture of the war which the Spanish Government
presented to the world was not untruthful. The main issues were what it said they were." On the
other hand, the lies of the pro-NATO press are important because unlike the partisan lies told
by leftist parties during the Spanish Civil War, today's NATO lies are the equivalent of the
official fascist propaganda of that time: they distort and hide the main issues. Here is the
full quote from the link that B has diligently provided:
I remember saying once to Arthur Koestler, 'History stopped in 1936', at which he nodded in
immediate understanding. We were both thinking of totalitarianism in general, but more
particularly of the Spanish civil war. Early in life I have noticed that no event is ever
correctly reported in a newspaper, but in Spain, for the first time, I saw newspaper reports
which did not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an
ordinary lie. I saw great battles reported where there had been no fighting, and complete
silence where hundreds of men had been killed. I saw troops who had fought bravely denounced as
cowards and traitors, and others who had never seen a shot fired hailed as the heroes of
imaginary victories; and I saw newspapers in London retailing these lies and eager
intellectuals building emotional superstructures over events that had never happened. I saw, in
fact, history being written not in terms of what happened but of what ought to have happened
according to various 'party lines'. Yet in a way, horrible as all this was, it was unimportant.
It concerned secondary issues -- namely, the struggle for power between the Comintern and the
Spanish left-wing parties, and the efforts of the Russian Government to prevent revolution in
Spain. But the broad picture of the war which the Spanish Government presented to the world was
not untruthful. The main issues were what it said they were. But as for the Fascists and their
backers, how could they come even as near to the truth as that? How could they possibly mention
their real aims? Their version of the war was pure fantasy, and in the circumstances it could
not have been otherwise.
As a given group loses its grip on power, it tends to employ ever more extreme tactics. This
explains the recent behavior of players like the US government, the UK government, the American
mainstream media and various think tanks. What other extreme behavior should we expect from
such a cabal? After all, they've already shown contempt for conditionally protected freedoms-
all of them- and a willingness to manufacture any narrative they want in order to further their
aims of conquest and profiteering. This whole mess could spiral out of control in countless
ways with terrifying consequences.
@15 Yes but I'm not sure how relevant Orwell's quote is to today. Do we even have a 'left-wing'
anymore? Or a Comintern for that matter? Even fascism wears a smiley face. Seems to me that
what we have is a tightly controlled MSM. That control may be slipping but we have yet to see a
replacement.
Those of us at MoA who are regulars may feel a certain level of complacency based on the level
of discourse here but I assure you that most Americans are still very much zombie followers of
whatever the TV and other media tell them. I believe that there is a strong possibility that MoA and like sites will become the focus
of paid narrative pushers and if that is not successful there are other ways to make b and our
lives difficult.
If b is ever knocked offline for some reason and needs help I encourage him to email his
readers with potential strategies to show/provide support. Thanks again and again for your web site b.
The first casualty of war is the truth.
Many Westerners would recognize this phrase but many of them don't understand that there
-IS- a war (the new Cold War). The longstanding law that prevented government propaganda in the US was revoked several
years ago.
U.S Repeals Propaganda Ban, Spreads Government-Made News to Americans
This type of tyranny has been going on forever in the US. Take A. Lincoln.
More than 14,000 civilians were arrested under martial law during the war throughout the
Union. Abraham Lincoln did so because they expressed views critical of Lincoln or his war. It's the same-o. Different faces same crap.
b- I am sorry to see their attacks on you, if things do go sideways please contact me if I can
be of help in any way.
Do you know what has happened to Tucker Carlson, he has been such a strong voice for truth that
I am concerned for him.
Stay strong and thank you for all you do in support of the truth.
Sure, there are more people that see the lies and bullshit for what they are. Still, seeing it
is not enough. What really matters now is to fully wipe out the mainstream media, to make it
completely extinct, and therefore seeing they're full of shit is only the prerequisite to
pondering how to actually bankrupt and destroy them. That's what everyone who's not fully on
board with the Western regimes' and bankers' propaganda should be thinking about. How to
convince people not only to stop buying their lies, but to stop buying them at all, how to cut
down the vast majority of their readership/viewers to the point they don't matter anymore.
Thank you b. This a very important subject. It wouldn't surprise me if a false flag happened
that would be aimed at censuring all alternative news. This might be centered around a
decoupling of east from west, perhaps when the current financial crisis explodes. Oh, has
anyone heard from Tucker Carlson lately?
You can fool someone for a long time, you can fool a lot of people for a short time - but you
can't fool a lot of people for a long time.
That is, unless those people are willing to live the lie.
I think the reason the MSM's propaganda is so effective nowadays (and I'm thinking
specifically about the world since the Iraq invasion in 2003) is that, deep down, maybe in the
collective inconsciousness level, the working classes from the First World countries know their
superior living standards depend on imperial brutality over the rest of the world. That's why,
for example, the USG and Downing Street haven't lost significant credibility domestically after
Iraq and after Libya. This is a dark social pact: people live the lies only to sleep well at
night and claim plausible deniability after; they only wish it to be over quickly and at the
least human cost from their side (every coffin that comes back to their community from the
Middle East is a crack in the illusion). They believe in Russiagate because, deep down, they
don't want to believe they were capable of electing someone like Trump and, mainly, because
they know their economies are failing, and the only solution is to invade other countries/prop
up the war industry.
Smearing people for appearing on RT! Americans who prattle on about freedom and democracy are
pressuring other not to do this or that which is to inhibit their freedom.
Don't they know it makes them look like dictators without portfolio?
Great article, b. I am a relative newcomer to MoA, having found it through Caitlin Johnstone
(Rogue Journalist), but in a short time, I have come to rely heavily on it for "hidden" news
and incisive analysis. Yes, independent news outlets are vital sources of truth, but their
reach is still tiny compared to that of the Empire and its toads in the media. The well
organized smear campaign against those who refuse to bow down is a frightening development
indeed.
Thanks b for your outstanding dissecting! The Information War is complex yet still remains
simple--all that's required is a critically thinking approach for any personally unconfirmed
sources and the data presented followed by the willingness to ask questions, no matter how
uncomfortable. Such a disciplined mind was once the paramount goal for those seeking wisdom,
but such pursuits are deemed passé, unrequired in the Digital Age. But Big Lie Media's
been working its evil for decades despite many calling out the lies. Funny how the two big
former communist nations are now more credible than the West and expressly seek honest and
open--Win-Win--relationships based on trust and equality. The Moral Table at play during Cold
War 1 is flipped with the Outlaw US Empire being the Evil Empire. And the Evil Empire can't
stand its own nakedness and its oozing social sores.
The liar is often agitated and nervous whereas one with the facts rests easy and remains
calm. In the run up to their summit, note how Trump is already agitated and nervous, already
prefacing his lies to come, whereas Kim is easy and calm, setting the table. Shrillness and
hysteria are the similar signs provided by media liars and is almost always fact-free, supposed
"sources" anonymous.
A magisterial piece of journalism, b. Congratulations, and thank you.
~~
Spain. Orwell. Fascism.
I was born decades after the Spanish Civil War, and to be very honest I never knew much
about it, nor have ever learned since. But Guernica I knew about, even
as a young teenager in school. The culture was shocked into remembering forever that there was
a lie involved with Guernica. That's all I ever really knew, was that Spain was a lie,
underneath which a massacre lay.
They say it was the humanitarian and artistic type of people who kept the truth of Spain
alive against the propaganda of the fascists. I don't know. I believe as I said the other day
that propaganda only works to crowd out the truth, so that people are not exposed to the truth.
But propaganda doesn't work in a battle against the truth, when people are exposed to both
sides of the story.
If you were running a scam based on fake news, and one day you had to make allegations using
this very term, and play your "fake news" card on the table in a round of betting that was
merely one round in a long game - if you did this, you'd be a bad card player, or one driven to
the corner and getting extremely close to leaving the table.
If your playing partner suddenly had to show the "false flag" card on the surface of the
table for the whole game to see - yet another secret hole card exposed and now worthless
forever - you could well think your game was finished. And it is - barring a few nasty
tricks...which will be recorded and placed into the game as IOU's.
Don't anybody be part of that collateral damage - be well. And instead, let's collect on
those IOU's. The game is almost over. Many people will appear to say that the players cannot be
beat. But they are with the losers. We are the players.
I wholeheartedly second your suggestion. I think the battle against the truth by the deep
States everywhere has only begun. They will not stop at smearing individual posters or
sites.
I do think we all need to start becoming more aware of alternatives, to YouTube (how's
DTube?), Twitter (gab?), Facebook, Google (several alternatives) etc. But that will not be
enough because I fear that in time the IP providers will come under pressure too - in all the
western countries, especially. And the domain providers 9we all know them), followed by blog
platforms such as WorldPress. I am not saying it's easy to curtail all of those, but they will
try, as sure as the sun sets in the West.
Of course, the biggest attacks will be mounted against anonymous commenters and posters.
That's already in the works at several outlets. The idea is of course that by stripping off
anonimity people will self-censor for fear of repercussions to their real life selves.
There are people working on alternative platforms of all sorts. I am somewhat hopeful about
user owned sites though these efforts are nascent. I hope commenters here will share what they
know of alternatives, even knowing this won't be an easy battle. After all, Twitter owes its
popularity to well, its popularity. Same with Facebook or Instagram or youTube. Therein lies
the rub - it won't be easy to wean users from these platforms as many start-ups found out. That
however should not mean that we shouldn't try. More and more Twitter users for example are
cross-posting on gab, and several youTubers started uploading also to Dtube. neither site is
ideal, I know. But neither was Twitter when it started.
The real aim of propaganda is to persuade the politicians and not the public. One man in their
middle wants to start a war and the media make sure that his or her fellow politicians will
hear no other story and make support the only possibility. That's why people like us have to be
vilified, so that all these politicians can invent an excuse for themselves and turn their head
away. What we think really doesn't matter because we are not the ones in control. They only
have to convince the Colin Powells and Frank Timmermans's.
The current increased smear campaigns against the so called Russian Bots, Assad Apologists
etc., is surely just the first part of of a an attempt to implement very serious censorship and
control over the internet to attempt to completely block out any alternative voices.
Amber Rudd
the UK Home Secretary has been banging on about Russian cyber attcks for the past couple of
months. Whilst based on the history of UK Government IT projects I couldn't expect the UK alone
to be capable of implementing any meaningful censorship scheme (they have a track record of
producing so many multi-billion pound national IT project disasters) but with the coordinated
help of the US and others they might just be able to put up enough censorship barriers to be
able to get back to their original plans (removing Assad and whatever else they have in mind).
False-flag chemical attacks haven't quite worked out to plan, but add in a false-flag cyber
attack that apparently disables some of the UK (and/or US/EU) vital services and that should be
enough for them to convince the plebs and sufficient MP's that it has become absolutely
necessary to block Russain and other media and internet sites and force the owners of many
social media channels to disable long lists of people with alternative views.
Prop or Not is NOT a 'friendly neighbourhood' anything. It was exposed a while ago as being a
joint state propaganda project between the CIA and West Ukraine, with the goal of spreading
anti-Russia disinformation, and employing the collusion of some no-integrity US propaganda rags
like The Daily Beast.
My question is their motivation and timing. Why does the rhetoric seem to increase after
the latest attack? Why care if 10% of the population doesn't follow their narrative now? Are
they preparing for a new round of kinetic action? Or do they simply believe their management of
the narrative needs more investment?
If people are going to rely on social media feeds for anything other than information on what
their friends and family are up to, then they are opening themselves up to being manipulated
easily and with a minimum of actual effort.
You no longer need to own a newspaper or a broadcast network to do so.
Ultimately people with a concience and some integrity will realize that something is awry. I'm
no spring chicken and have been on the net for nearly 20 years. There are more ' old ' people
surfing the net than initially may be apparent. As life passes by people become much more
attuned to bullsh*t. T. May's husband is on the board of a large British Armaments company. No
doubt her ministers are all in on many scams. She is a very mediocre character, a fool as her
time as home secretary demonstrated and was only voted in place so as to do the bidding of
others. And in my opinion, when I say others I mean she is the western harlot who jumps when
anyone pulls her string. They say that if you tell a lie often enough people believe it to be
the truth. Not necessarily. There are so many holes in the Skripal and Syrian stories that only
someone who doesn't want to have their view challenged will believe them. The stories are
falling apart and as they do, so does the credibility and trust of the western MSM and Politik.
The reason the Germans and others refused to join in, is I suspect, they realize that in part,
because once that is lost, it takes a great deal more to recover it. The Skripal case and the
latest Syrian faked gas attack is the start of the end for T. May and her govt.
Good comments, especially psychohistorian about being prepared to jump to alternative platforms
... Perhaps Russian ones?
What I was referencing in comment 5 is this relatively new desire by the 'powers that be'
for purity, for absolutely no one from 'our side' dissenting against the mainstream (and
completely bonkers in its anti-Russian extremism) narrative. This is not like the pre-digital
age, when small-circulation real leftist publications were not subject to mainstream and
official government extermination campaigns. And I don't think this is simply because of
digital age reach, because the readership for the real alternative media's left/anti-imperial
perspective doesn't engage enough people to be meaningful in terms of power and elections. At
least in the US; less certain about elsewhere.
There's something angry, extreme, and extremely insecure about the psychology of the Western
ruling class right now. My bet is that because of that insecurity they won't be so dangerous to
Russia/China in the years to come, but instead the anger will be directed at internal
left/anti-militarist dissenters. For some reason our reality bugs the sh!t out of them despite
our small numbers.
Until recently I used to read articles at both The Intercept and at Truthdig, but have since
realized both of these 'news' outlets actively censor posts that are too accurate, too
insightful of what the US government and MSM are doing in Syria and how they are manipulating
public opinion with the White Helmets, staged false gas attacks, etc. I don't trust Pierre
Omidyar, the philanthropist behind The Intercept, he has questionable political alliances. I
have had many of my posts at both Truthdig and The Intercept censored even though they were
entirely within comment rules. The Intercept has a lot of really BAD journalists posting crap
there, like this ass clown Mehdi Hasan. Even Glenn Greenwald, a multi millionaire, is suspect.
Both of these websites are psuedo-left and should not be trusted!
From the resistance trench with love , Apr 22 2018 11:40 utc |
52
....attacks on critical readers and commentators are despicable..
Indeed, but "the one free of sin to throw the first stone" ....
From my experience at several supposed "alternative media", most of them somehow pro-Russian
in the sense that they do not promote the sick warmongerism coming from the US and UK
stablishments against Russia and its allies in Syria and against Syria herself, every site has
its biases and slandering attacks by the owners of the blogs or by the "community" os
sycophants residing there are everyday bread for any newcomer who could express a bit of
dissent against the general editorial view.
I mayself have been obliged to change my nickname several times already to avoid attacks or
banning/censorship, when my position about Syrai and Russia does not differ almost in the least
with that of the people mentioned above who are being object of smearing campaign by the
MSM....and this has happened to me in the supposed pro-Russian "alt-media"....
Thus, I would recommend to apply a bit of self-criticism and reflect about how anyone of us
are probably contributing to the same effort of the bullies mentioned above against mainly
common citizens who only try to commit themselves to spread some of the truth they are finding
online through research and intensive reading, and try to offer an alternative point of view or
simply debunk the usual nonsense especially against certain ideologies, mostly spreaded by US
commenters.....
I noticed the part about Ian Shillilng being accused of denying the Holocaust or implying it
was a govt conspiracy.
I find that interesting, because a co-worker asked me out to the blue "Do you even believe
the Holocaust happened?" It's a strange question with no relation to Russiagate, yet pops up a
lot so it clearly has an agenda. The question made no sense but I did recognized it as a
familiar attack by the warmongers. My response was to to respond to such a ridiculous,
dishonest question and I ignored it.
He went to ask if I was "stupid" for not seeing that Mueller's indictments over lying to the
FBI and tax evasion/money laundering in Ukraine are NOT are not same thing as proving Russia
meddled to deny Hillary her Presidency.
Thanks for the article b.
As painful as it is to watch the increasing attempts at censoring non-msm voices, we can take
solace in the fact that, like a cornered rat, the establishment has no other option left but an
all-out, full-retard attack on anyone not toeing the line. While the damage they are doing is
real, this should be balanced with the fact that this attack comes out of weakness and not
strength: they are the ones "losing", and knowledge of that reality makes them increasingly
unhinged.
At first I thought this is some kind of joke. Than I watched few times, I still believe CNN
guy is in some kind of mission here, let's say to distract its viewers from existential matters
that grips ordinary people in the US. His insistence on the "Russians" is illogical at
first...this woman appear to be serious but when it comes to CNN everything is set-up, not just
everyone can come to CNN, period. No facts involved the conversation is about NOTHING, that is
the US national narrative being imposed by the ruling class trough various media. Just like
"attack" on Syria and Syria's gas attack. There were none, there were no cruise missile fired,
there were no downed ones! CNN's role is also to entertain its audience as well, everything but
not talk about social and economic issues. In other words to indoctrinate - shift attention,
not to ask unpleasant questions.
The NYT and NPR are warmonger institutions. It is sad that ppl who consider themselves to be
liberals, democrats, blue team (anti-war?- that's a stretch!) embrace these institutions as
purveyors of truth or even real news.
I don't feel that the quote is out of context. Yes, you show that Orwell clearly didn't
consider it a big deal at that time, but what is happening now is that what he describes is
omnipresent, the main stream of information we get, there is nothing else if you don't search
for alternatives. It is beyond doubt that Orwell, in the present context, would never have
added what he added in that book.
So in that light I feel the quote is extremely relevant and a good start of the article.
I want to express my thanks for this site and am really glad I was pointed towards MoA by
other sources of real information.
Meanwhile, the same western media give free pass to liberal warcriminals like Macron's France
that just today call for permanent illegal occupation of Syria - after illegally bombing it.
But no, it is people like us who call out this BS that gets silenced and harassed by the
same ignorant western media/"journalists" along with the western deep state spy networks!
What an excellent source of information the MoA site offers those of us who are seeking the
truth and living in an Empire full of lies.Over the past few months, I have perused this site
regularly and always find it very helpful in gaining a better and more concise understanding
of
what is really going on in our world.
I am also astounded at how helpful it is for me to read the comments of so many who are
regulars here.
The courtesy and level of intellectual dialog that goes on here in the comments section is a
rare thing indeed! We all must fight for truth for the sake of our families and loved ones.
"Fake" and "Genuine" are used to describe the video with the water being poured over people.
Fisk calls them genuine because the video was taped in the place where it pretends to be, not
in a film set or a location where nothing was going on. It was filmed in the real hospital with
real doctors, nurses and victims.
The video therefore is real (not staged), but the claim that people are suffering from gas
wounds is false.
You can thus also say that the video is fake: it is said to show victims of a gas attack, while
the doctor says they were suffering from suffocation, and only when someone shouted "gas", did
people start hosing each other down (which as someone posted in another article, would have
only made things worse if they had chlorine on them). As evidence of a gas attack, the video is
fake.
As long as a person is not claiming that the video shows victims of a real gas attack
aftermath, we're all on the same side I guess.
The response is of course to more eagerly call out the neocons propangada, western media
propaganda and so forth,
get a twitter account, get a blog, lets multiply this movement, because these people will of
course not stop at destroying peoples lives in the newspapers, they will call for censorship,
registrations and sooner or later jail for these views.
Orwell's great fear was totalitarianism. Either from the left or the right. What we have now is
much more subtle. The MSM retains the illusion of freedom and most people go along with it. We
may even realize we are being manipulated but the only alternative is posting on sites like
MOA.
The UK has no credibility left now. May's farcical handling of the Brexit negs has exposed
her as little more than a Tory mouthpiece, parroting party bon mots whilst having no clue where
she is heading. And I suspect her civil servants haven't, either!
The Skirpal charade was a front for several things but mainly, I think, to turn the focus
away from Brexit and to opening the Cold War front again. But what is alarming was her open
support for attacks on Syria. It's been known for some time that the UK has special forces
operating in Syria covertly; May's tub-thumping pretty much clarified that the Uk is as
determined as Washington and that Rothschild puppet Macron to force a regime change in
Syria.
You said she must go. I said the same thing last September after the fall-out from the June
election and other foot-in-mouth incidents: she'd be gone before year end. How wrong I was. She
has figures in the background protecting her.
Crushing dissent goes completely against 'liberal values' which is about the only high ground
left for the humanitarian regime changers a.k.a the Franquistas. So that is not going to
happen. On the other hand, social media is the easiest place to use covert operatives, even MSM
has other sponsors and actors, social media can be directly controlled by governments , and the
'intelligence community'. So they are just using the net for what they set it up for.
Propaganda for domestic consumption in the USA, isn't really meant to convince as much as to
scare people into submission. People don't obey Big Brother because they like him or believe
him, but because they cannot talk back to him and are scared of him. Media Scare tactics work
less if people can talk back, hear their own voice, not just Big Brother from every
loudspeaker.
Martin Luther (not King) said that "A lie is like a snowball: the further you roll it the
bigger it becomes." The snowball is melting because there is shift in the narrative given what
is happening on the ground in Syria. I find it fascinating that as it melts down layer by
layer, the first trojan horse outfits to implode are left humanitarian ones like the Intercept,
Newsbud, Democracy Now. The right wing ones like Fox, Young Turks, just concentrate on dumbing
down the conversation to reduce reality to bombastic and misleading 'political' points. This is
a another way to control the conversation, to scare people into thinking that facts or not
facts but partisan political 'opinions'. Look at how Jimmy Dore's in the interview mentioned by
B with Carla Ortiz, is trying to dumb down the conversation and keeps feigning ignorance.
Thankfully she blows him out of the water. Good job Carla!
The snowball is big and melting slowly. Who's next?
Vesti has a great 10-minute clip dated yesterday from a Russian talk show with Margarita
Simonyan of RT doing much of the talking. What she says is really encouraging about how she's
trying to talk, not to power (which already knows the real truth that it's obscuring) but to
common people, because there are those among the common people who do speak up and who really
do shape public opinion - not governments.
She cited Roger Waters as an example, who was speaking at a concert and telling the truth
about the White Helmets. She said, someone has to read in order to speak. And someone has to
write so someone can read. And that's what RT is doing, and that's how it works. And it is
working.
George Orwell has been a presence throughout this thread.
It was unfortunate he was hurried by MI6 to finish the last pages of 'Animal Farm' so it
could be translated into Arabic and be used to discredit Communist parties in Western Asia.
This always raised the ire of Communist organisations through following decades .This being said he wrote some great text especially for me the revealing 1939 novel - Coming up
for A
What many people don't realize is that fascism is a greedy habit, it expands to finally swallow
up those who think they are protected by silence or looking the other way. The individuals and
organizations villified today are the real heroes, and even if they suffer today, they will be
vindicated in the end. But unfortunately the gullible masses would by then be in the open
prison of fascism.
I don't know if wars are really an extension of diplomacy by other means, but they certainly
seem to be... an extension of ideology and propaganda. Ideas are very important in preparing
and fighting wars; especially today, though, in reality the way we think about our western
imperial war-fighting, goes back well over a century, back to the Whiteman's Burden and other
imperialist myths.
For the last thirty years we've essentially been fighting 'liberal crusades for freedom and
democracy.' That, at least, was the 'cover story' the pretext presented to the people. There's
an irony here. Just like Islamic State, we've been engaging in 'holy warfare' too!
The reason our media is so full of lies and distortions and propaganda is because the harsh
realities of our New Imperialism wars are so out of synch with the reality of what's happening
and crucially the attitudes of the general public who don't want to fight more overseas wars,
and especially if they are 'crusades' for democracy and freedom. But what's happened recently
is that dissent is being targeted as tantamount to treason. This is rather new and
disturbing.
It's because the ruling elite are... losing it and way too many people are questioning their
ideas about the wars we are fighting and their legitimacy and 'right to rule.'
In many ways the Internet is bringing about a kind of revolution in relation to the people's
access to 'texts' and images that reminds one of the great intellectual upheavals that the
translation of the Bible had on European thought four hundred years ago. Suddenly Bibles were
being printed all over the place and people could read the sacred texts without having to ask
the educated priests to 'filter' and translate and explain what it all meant. In a way
Wikileaks was doing the same thing... allowing people access to secret material, masses of it,
bypassing the traditional newsmedia and the journalistic 'preists.'
"... Once the FBI's malfeasance was uncovered, the Justice Department moved to dismiss the case after Attorney General William Barr tapped an outside prosecutor to examine the FBI's conduct. Judge Sullivan rejected the DOJ's request - instead calling on an outside lawyer to make arguments against the DOJ's move to drop the case. ..."
"... Shortly before the DOJ move to dismiss, former Mueller prosecutor Brandon Van Grack suddenly withdrew from the case (and others). Flynn's new attorney, Sidney Powell, said that government documents revealed "further evidence of misconduct by Mr. Van Grack specifically." ..."
by Tyler Durden
Thu, 06/25/2020 - 04:12 Update (2135ET): Missouri appellate attorney John Reeves has weighed in
on today's decision by the US Court of Appeals for DC ordering Judge Emmett Sullivan to grant a
DOJ request to drop the case against Michael Flynn.
The opinion, authored by one of the three judges on the panel, Neomi J. Rao, " thoroughly
demolishes " a dissenting opinion by Judge Robert Wilkins - who Reeves thinks was so off-base
that he " shot himself in the foot " when it comes to any chance of an 'en-banc review' in
which the Flynn decision would be kicked back for a full review by the DC appellate court.
Reeves, who has written filings for US Supreme Court cases, unpacks Rao's "outstanding
opinion" in the below Twitter thread, conveniently adding which page you can find what he's
referring to ( condensed below after the first tweet, emphasis ours ):
THREAD re: Flynn mandamus opinion
1) Judge Rao's opinion--joined by Judge Henderson--granting Flynn mandamus is outstanding not
only for its legal reasoning, but also for how it COMPLETELY EVISCERATES Judge Wilkins'
dissenting opinion. https://t.co/LBqGihkrMH
In all my years of appellate practice, I don't think I've ever seen a non-US Supreme Court
appellate opinion that so thoroughly demolishes a dissenting opinion as this one. Judge Rao
could not have done better in writing the opinion , and it should be required law school
rdg.
In addition, Judge Wilkins' dissenting opinion is so off-the-mark that I believe he has shot
himself in the foot for purposes of en banc review --in other words, he has ensured that
otherwise-sympathetic judges on the DC Circuit will vote against en banc review.
Judge Rao comes out swinging by holding that its earlier opinion in Fokker "foreclose[s] the
district court's proposed scrutiny of the government's motion to dismiss the Flynn
prosecution." p. 7.
In relying on Fokker, Judge Rao explicitly rejects Judge Wilkinson's argument that Fokker's
holding is dicta (that is, non-binding) . She holds Fokker "is directly controlling here." p.
14.
Keep in mind that Fokker was written by Chief Judge Srinivasan, an OBAMA appointee. Judge
Srinivasan does NOT want Fokker's legitimacy undermined , no matter his politics.
Judge Wilkins' dissent implies that Fokker was wrongly decided , and that it conflicts with
other federal appellate courts. See p. 23 of 28. Judge Srinivasan will NOT be impressed by this
argument in deciding whether to grant en banc rehearing . Fokker does not create a split.
Judge Rao goes on to emphasize that while judicial inquiry MAY be justified in some
circumstances, Flynn's situation "is plainly not the rare case where further judicial inquiry
is warranted." p. 6.
Rao notes that Flynn agrees with the Govt.'s dismissal motion, so there's no risk of his
rights being violated. In addition, the Government has stated insufficient evidence exists to
convict Flynn . p. 6.
Rao also holds that " a hearing cannot be used as an occasion to superintend the
prosecution's charging decisions. " p. 7.
But by appointing amicus and attempting to hold a hearing on these matters, the district
court is inflicting irreparable harm on the Govt. because it is subjecting its prosecutorial
decisions to outside inquiry. p. 8
Thus, Judge Rao holds, it is NOT true that the district court has "yet to act" in this
matter, contrary to Judge Wilkins' assertions. p. 16.
" [T]he district court HAS acted here....[by appointing] one private citizen to argue that
another citizen should be deprived of his liberty regardless of whether the Executive Branch is
willing to pursue the charges. " p. 16. This justified mandamus being issued NOW.
Judge Rao also makes short work of Judge Wilkins' argument that the court may not consider
the harm to the Government in deciding whether to grant mandamus bc the Government never filed
a petition for mandamus. p. 17.
Judge Rao notes " [o]ur court has squarely rejected this argument, " and follows with a
plethora of supporting citations. p. 17.
Judge Rao also notes--contrary to what many legal commentators have misled the public to
believe--that it is "black letter law" that the Govt. can seek dismissal even after a guilty
plea is made . This does not justify greater scrutiny by the district court. p. 6, footnote
1.
As to Judge Wilkins' argument that a district court may conduct greater scrutiny where, as
here, the Govt. reverses its position in prosecuting a case, Judge Rao points out that " the
government NECESSARILY reverses its position whenever it moves to dismiss charges.... " p.
13
"Given the absence of any legitimate basis to question the presumption of regularity, there
is no justification to appoint a private citizen to oppose the government's motion to dismiss
Flynn's prosecution. " p. 13.
But Judge Rao saves her most stinging and brutal takedown of Judge Wilkins' dissent for the
end.....(cont)
Judge Rao writes that " the dissent swings for the fences--and misses--by analogizing a Rule
48(a) motion to dismiss with a selective prosecution claim. " p. 17. (cont)
While it is true that the Executive cannot selectively prosecute certain individuals "based
on impermissible considerations," p. 18, " the equal protection remedy is to dismiss the
prosecution, NOT to compel the Executive to bring another prosecution ." p. 18 (emph.
added).
And Judge Rao is just getting warmed up here....She then notes that " unwarranted judicial
scrutiny of a prosecutor's motion to dismiss puts the court in an entirely different position
[than selective prosecution caselaw assigns the court] ." p. 18 (cont)
"Rather than allow the Executive Branch to dismiss a problematic prosecution, the court [as
Judge Wilkins and Judge Sullivan would have it] assumes the role of inquisitor, prolonging a
prosecution deemed illegitimate by the Executive. " p. 18 (cont).
And now for Judge Rao's KO to Judge Wilkins and Judge Sullivan: " Judges assume that role in
some countries, but Article III gives no prosecutorial or inquisitional power to federal judges
." p. 18. (cont)
In other words, Judge Rao is likening Judge Wilkins' arguments, and Judge Sullivan's
actions, to what is done in non-democratic, third world countries . p. 18. Outstanding opinion.
No mercy . END
Like a liquid-metal terminator with half its head blown apart, the case against Michael
Flynn just won't die.
Hours after the US Court of Appeals for DC ordered Judge Emmett Sullivan to grant the DOJ's
request to drop the case, the retired 'resistance' judge hired to defend Sullivan's actions has
filed a motion requesting an extension to file his findings against Flynn .
The D.C. Appeals Court today vacated the lawless appointment of a left-wing shadow
prosecutor to go after Flynn.
Gleeson, the Resistance dead-ender hired by Sullivan, is ignoring the order and plowing
ahead with his illegal inquisition against Flynn. https://t.co/bOeG7pRJxv
In a major victory for Michael Flynn, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of
Columbia Circuit has ordered Judge Emmet Sullivan to grant the Justice Department's request to
dismiss the case against the former Trump National Security Adviser.
"Upon consideration of the emergency petition for a writ of mandamus, the responses thereto,
and the reply, the briefs of amici curiae in support of the parties, and the argument by
counsel, it is ORDERED that Flynn's petition for a writ of mandamus be granted in part; the
District Court is directed to grant the government's Rule 48(a) motion to dismiss; nd the
District Court's order appointing an amicus is hereby vacated as moot , in accordance with the
opinion of the court filed herein this date," reads the order.
In their decision, the appeals court wrote: " Decisions to dismiss pending criminal charges
- no less than decisions to initiate charges and to identify which charges to bring - lie
squarely within the ken of prosecutorial discretion . "
"The Judiciary's role under Rule 48 is thus confined to "extremely limited circumstances in
extraordinary cases.""
Hence, no dice for Judge Sullivan.
Great! Appeals Court Upholds Justice Departments Request To Drop Criminal Case Against
General Michael Flynn!
Flynn pleaded guilty in December 2017 to lying to the FBI about his conversations with
former Russian Ambassador to the US, Sergey Kislyak, during the presidential transition
following the 2016 US election. He later withdrew his plea after securing new legal counsel,
while evidence emerged which revealed the FBI had laid a '
perjury trap ' - despite the fact that the agents who interviewed him in January, 2017 said
they thought he was telling the truth . Agents persisted hunting Flynn despite the FBI's
recommendation to
close the case.
Once the FBI's malfeasance was uncovered, the Justice Department moved to dismiss the case
after Attorney General William Barr tapped an outside prosecutor to examine the FBI's conduct.
Judge Sullivan rejected the DOJ's request - instead calling on an outside lawyer to make
arguments against the DOJ's move to drop the case.
In their Wednesday decision , the Appeals court noted that "the government's motion includes
an extensive discussion of newly discovered evidence casting Flynn's guilt into doubt."
Specifically, the government points to evidence that the FBI interview at which Flynn
allegedly made false statements was "untethered to, and unjustified by, the FBI's
counterintelligence investigation into Mr. Flynn." -US Court of Appeals
Shortly before the DOJ move to dismiss, former Mueller prosecutor Brandon Van Grack suddenly
withdrew from the case (and others). Flynn's new attorney, Sidney Powell, said that government
documents revealed "further evidence of misconduct by Mr. Van Grack specifically."
Sullivan urged the federal appeals court to also reject Flynn's bid to bring an end to the
case, which has now ruled against the judge .
An appeals court in Washington, DC, ruled that the case against President Trump's one-time
national security adviser, Michael Flynn, must end. The Justice Department had dropped charges
against Flynn, but his case remained open. In a ruling issued on Wednesday, the Washington DC
Circuit Court of Appeals effectively ended the case against Flynn, ordering federal judge Emmet
Sullivan to heed the Justice Department's advice and close the case. Sullivan had attempted to
keep the case active, even though the Justice Department dropped its charges against Flynn last
month.
The appeals battle was a last-ditch showdown between Flynn and the Justice Department on one
side, and Sullivan on the other. Though reporters as recently as last week reckoned the appeals
court would side with Sullivan, they were proven wrong on Wednesday morning.
divideand conquer 1. To gain or maintain power by generating tension among others, especially those less powerful,
so that they cannot unite in opposition.
Notable quotes:
"... In its most general form, identity politics involves (i) a claim that a particular group is not being treated fairly and (ii) a claim that members of that group should place political priority on the demand for fairer treatment. But "fairer" can mean lots of different things. I'm trying to think about this using contrasts between the set of terms in the post title. A lot of this is unoriginal, but I'm hoping I can say something new. ..."
"... The second problem is that neoliberals on right and left sometimes use identity as a shield to protect neoliberal policies. As one commentator has argued, "Without the bedrock of class politics, identity politics has become an agenda of inclusionary neoliberalism in which individuals can be accommodated but addressing structural inequalities cannot." What this means is that some neoliberals hold high the banner of inclusiveness on gender and race and thus claim to be progressive reformers, but they then turn a blind eye to systemic changes in politics and the economy. ..."
"... Critics argue that this is "neoliberal identity politics," and it gives its proponents the space to perpetuate the policies of deregulation, privatization, liberalization, and austerity. ..."
"... If we assume that identity politics is, first and foremost, a dirty and shrewd political strategy developed by the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party ("soft neoliberals") many things became much more clear. Along with Neo-McCarthyism it represents a mechanism to compensate for the loss of their primary voting block: trade union members, who in 2016 "en mass" defected to Trump. ..."
I've been thinking about the various versions of and critiques of identity politics that are around at the moment.
In its most
general form, identity politics involves (i) a claim that a particular group is not being treated fairly and (ii) a claim that
members of that group should place political priority on the demand for fairer treatment. But "fairer" can mean lots of different
things. I'm trying to think about this using contrasts between the set of terms in the post title. A lot of this is unoriginal,
but I'm hoping I can say something new.
You missed one important line of critique -- identity politics as a dirty political strategy of soft neoliberals.
To be sure, race, gender, culture, and other aspects of social life have always been important to politics. But neoliberalism's
radical individualism has increasingly raised two interlocking problems. First, when taken to an extreme, social fracturing into
identity groups can be used to divide people and prevent the creation of a shared civic identity. Self-government requires uniting
through our commonalities and aspiring to achieve a shared future.
When individuals fall back onto clans, tribes, and us-versus-them identities, the political community gets fragmented. It becomes
harder for people to see each other as part of that same shared future.
Demagogues [more correctly neoliberals -- likbez] rely on this fracturing to inflame racial, nationalist, and religious antagonism,
which only further fuels the divisions within society. Neoliberalism's war on "society," by pushing toward the privatization and
marketization of everything, thus indirectly facilitates a retreat into tribalism that further undermines the preconditions for
a free and democratic society.
The second problem is that neoliberals on right and left sometimes use identity as a shield to protect neoliberal policies.
As one commentator has argued, "Without the bedrock of class politics, identity politics has become an agenda of inclusionary
neoliberalism in which individuals can be accommodated but addressing structural inequalities cannot." What this means is that
some neoliberals hold high the banner of inclusiveness on gender and race and thus claim to be progressive reformers, but they
then turn a blind eye to systemic changes in politics and the economy.
Critics argue that this is "neoliberal identity politics," and it gives its proponents the space to perpetuate the policies
of deregulation, privatization, liberalization, and austerity.
Of course, the result is to leave in place political and economic structures that harm the very groups that inclusionary neoliberals
claim to support. The foreign policy adventures of the neoconservatives and liberal internationalists haven't fared much better
than economic policy or cultural politics. The U.S. and its coalition partners have been bogged down in the war in Afghanistan
for 18 years and counting. Neither Afghanistan nor Iraq is a liberal democracy, nor did the attempt to establish democracy in
Iraq lead to a domino effect that swept the Middle East and reformed its governments for the better. Instead, power in Iraq has
shifted from American occupiers to sectarian militias, to the Iraqi government, to Islamic State terrorists, and back to the Iraqi
government -- and more than 100,000 Iraqis are dead.
Or take the liberal internationalist 2011 intervention in Libya. The result was not a peaceful transition to stable democracy
but instead civil war and instability, with thousands dead as the country splintered and portions were overrun by terrorist groups.
On the grounds of democracy promotion, it is hard to say these interventions were a success. And for those motivated to expand
human rights around the world, it is hard to justify these wars as humanitarian victories -- on the civilian death count alone.
Indeed, the central anchoring assumptions of the American foreign policy establishment have been proven wrong. Foreign policymakers
largely assumed that all good things would go together -- democracy, markets, and human rights -- and so they thought opening
China to trade would inexorably lead to it becoming a liberal democracy. They were wrong. They thought Russia would become liberal
through swift democratization and privatization. They were wrong.
They thought globalization was inevitable and that ever-expanding trade liberalization was desirable even if the political
system never corrected for trade's winners and losers. They were wrong. These aren't minor mistakes. And to be clear, Donald Trump
had nothing to do with them. All of these failures were evident prior to the 2016 election.
If we assume that identity politics is, first and foremost, a dirty and shrewd political strategy developed by the Clinton wing
of the Democratic Party ("soft neoliberals") many things became much more clear. Along with Neo-McCarthyism it represents a mechanism to compensate for the loss of their primary voting block: trade union members,
who in 2016 "en mass" defected to Trump.
Initially Clinton calculation was that trade union voters has nowhere to go anyways, and it was correct for first decade or so
of his betrayal. But gradually trade union members and lower middle class started to leave Dems in droves (Demexit, compare with
Brexit) and that where identity politics was invented to compensate for this loss.
So in addition to issues that you mention we also need to view the role of identity politics as the political strategy of the
"soft neoliberals " directed at discrediting and the suppression of nationalism.
The resurgence of nationalism is the inevitable byproduct of the dominance of neoliberalism, resurgence which I think is capable
to bury neoliberalism as it lost popular support (which now is limited to financial oligarchy and high income professional groups,
such as we can find in corporate and military brass, (shrinking) IT sector, upper strata of academy, upper strata of medical professionals,
etc)
That means that the structure of the current system isn't just flawed which imply that most problems are relatively minor and
can be fixed by making some tweaks. It is unfixable, because the "Identity wars" reflect a deep moral contradictions within neoliberal
ideology. And they can't be solved within this framework.
"... Of course ultimately you reach a point where no one truly understands what is real and what isn't any more. ..."
"... Boris Johnson PM of the UK? Surely not, Theresa May? I can barely wipe the smirk from my face. 4th and 5th rate politicians relying on SPADs to run the country. ..."
"... Reading his recent essay on the truths of WWII ( http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/63527 ) yet again sees him posting uncomfortable realities to a West knee deep in vassalage to a crumbling US. ..."
"... Change is coming whether we like it or not, with or without Putin, we'd best tend our own garden and stop worrying about an opposition that simply doesn't exist. ..."
Gerald says:
June 20, 2020 at 5:34 pm surely 'legitimacy' goes to the victor. Once you've won
you can build a sort of legitimacy that the majority will agree with (whether its real
or not) of course if you are a kind of despotic dictatorship (as appears to be
happening in terms of western neoliberal capitalism) then you will merely do as you
wish regardless until confronted with overwhelming opposition at which point you will
infiltrate and co-opt said opposition, pay lip service to their vague claim for
'rights' and continue on your merry way.
I always thought that the greatest thing that the capitalists did in the 20th
century was to get the slaves to love their slavery, its all advertising, hollywood, TV
that's all that politics has become, certainly in the West. Edward Bernays has a lot to
answer for.
Of course ultimately you reach a point where no one truly understands what is
real and what isn't any more.
Boris Johnson PM of the UK? Surely not, Theresa May? I can barely wipe the smirk
from my face. 4th and 5th rate politicians relying on SPADs to run the
country.
There is no wonder that Putin looks like the greatest 21st century leader, the last
of a dying breed. Reading his recent essay on the truths of WWII ( http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/63527
) yet again sees him posting uncomfortable realities to a West knee deep in vassalage
to a crumbling US.
Change is coming whether we like it or not, with or without Putin, we'd best
tend our own garden and stop worrying about an opposition that simply doesn't
exist.
"Why
does life almost come to a halt on June 22? And why does one feel a lump in the throat?"
This how Russian President Vladimir Putin chose to address the fateful day in 1941, when
Germany invaded Russia, with an extraordinarily detailed article on June 19: "75th
Anniversary of the Great Victory: Shared Responsibility to History and our Future."
Citing archival data, Putin homes in on both world wars, adding important information not
widely known, and taking no liberties with facts well known to serious historians. As for the
"lump in the throat", the Russian president steps somewhat out of character by weaving in
some seemingly formative personal experiences of family loss during that deadly time and
postwar years. First, the history:
"On June 22, 1941, the Soviet Union faced the strongest, most mobilized and skilled army
in the world with the industrial, economic, and military potential of almost all Europe
working for it. Not only the Wehrmacht, but also Germany's satellites, military contingents
of many other states of the European continent, took part in this deadly invasion.
"The most serious military defeats in 1941 brought the country to the brink of
catastrophe. By 1943 the manufacture of weapons and munitions behind the lines exceeded the
rates of military production of Germany and its allies. The Soviet people did something that
seemed impossible. the Red Army. no matter what anyone is trying to prove today ,
made the main and crucial contribution to the defeat of Nazism Almost 27 million Soviet
citizens lost their lives, one in seven of the population the USA lost one in 320." [
Emphasis added .]
Somber factual recollections. Significant, too, is Putin's explicit criticism of "crimes
committed by the [Stalin] regime against its own people and the horror of mass repressions."
Nor does he spare criticism of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, denouncing its "secret protocols
as "an act of personal power" which in no way reflected "the will of the Soviet people."
Putin notes that he asked for "the whole body of materials pertaining to contacts between
the USSR and Germany in the dramatic days of August and September 1939," and found facts
"known to very few these days" regarding Moscow's reaction to German demands on carving up
Poland (yet again). On this key issue, he cites, "paragraph 2 of the Secret Protocol to the
German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact of August 23, 1939", indicating that it throws new light on
Moscow's initial foot-dragging and its eventual decision to join in a more limited (for
Russia) partition.
Look it up. And while you're at it, GOOGLE Khalkhin Gol River and refresh your memory
about what Putin describes as "intense fighting" with Japan at the time.
The Russian president points out, correctly, that "the Red Army supported the Allied
landing in Normandy by carrying out the large-scale Operation Bagration in Belorussia", which
is actually an understatement. ( See: " Who Defeated the
Nazis: a Colloquy and " Once
We Were Allies; Then Came MICIMATT ."
"No matter what anyone is trying to prove today," writes Putin, who may have had in mind
the latest indignity from Washington; namely, the White House tweet on V-E day this year,
saying "On May 8, 1945,
America and Great Britain had victory over the Nazis."
Lump in Throat
And why does one feel a lump rise in the throat? Putin asks rhetorically.
"The war has left a deep imprint on every family's history. Behind these words, there are
the fates of millions of people Behind these words, there is also the pride, the truth and
the memory.
"For my parents, the war meant the terrible ordeals of the Siege of Leningrad where my
two-year old brother Vitya died. It was the place where my mother miraculously managed to
survive. My father, despite being exempt from active duty, volunteered to defend his
hometown. He fought at the Nevsky Pyatachok bridgehead and was severely wounded. And the more
years pass, the more I treasure in my heart the conversations I had with my father and mother
on this subject, as well as the little emotion they showed.
"People of my age and I believe it is important that our children, grandchildren and
great-grandchildren understand the torment and hardships their ancestors had to endure how
their ancestors managed to persevere and win. We have a responsibility to our past and our
future to do our utmost to prevent those horrible tragedies from happening ever again. Hence,
I was compelled to come out with an article about World War II and the Great Patriotic
War."
Putin was born in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) eight years after the vicious siege by
the German army ended. Michael Walzer, in his War Against Civilians , notes, "More
people died in the 900-day siege of Leningrad than in the infernos of Hamburg, Dresden,
Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki taken together."
Putin notes that the "human truth" of war, "which is bitter and merciless, has been handed
down to us by writers and poets who walked through hell at the front. For my generation, as
well as for many others, their piercing trench prose and poems have left their mark on the
soul forever." He calls particular attention to a poem
by Alexander Tvardovsky , "I was killed near Rzhev," dedicated to those who fought the
formidable German Army Group Center.
Putin explains, "In the battles for Rzhev from October 1941 to March 1943, the Red Army
lost 1,342,888 people, including wounded and missing in action. For the first time, I call
out these terrible, tragic and far from complete figures collected from archive sources. I do
it to honor the memory of the feat of known and nameless heroes", who were largely ignored in
the postwar years.
The Germans were hardly the first to invade Russia. It was occupied for more than two
centuries beginning in 1240 by Mongols from the east, after which its western neighbor was
Europe, the most powerful and expansionist region in world history into the 20th century.
After the Mongols were finally driven out, in came invaders from Lithuania, Sweden, the
Hanseatic League, Napoleon and, 79 years ago today, Hitler.
"The Poet of Russian Grief"
Out of this history (and before the Nazi attack on June 22, 1941) came the deeply
compassionate 19th century poet Nikolay Nekrasov, who, after Pushkin, became my favorite
Russian poet. His poem, "Giving Attention to the Horrors of War") moved me deeply; I have
carried it with me from my college days when I committed it to memory.
I visited Moscow in April 2015 to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the meeting of
American and Russian troops on the Elbe at the end of WWII. It was a heartwarming observance
of the victory of our wartime Grand Alliance and a reminder of what might be possible seven
decades later. I was asked to speak at the ceremony celebrating the meeting on the Elbe, and
was happy to be able to feature Nekrasov's poem to compensate for my out-of-practice
Russian.
On June 22, 2016, the 75th anniversary of the Nazi attack on Russia, I was in Yalta,
Crimea, with an American citizens' delegation and was again asked to speak. It was an even
more appropriate occasion to recite Nekrasov's "Giving Attention to the Horrors of War," and
I shall never forget the poignant experience of personally witnessing, and feeling, just why
Nekrasov is called "the poet of Russian grief." There were several people in the audience old
enough to remember.
Finally, I recited Nekrasov again, in Brussels, at the annual EU Parliament Members' Forum
on Russia in early December 2015. My talk came on the second day of the Forum; until then,
almost all of the talks were pretty much head-speeches. So I tried a little heart therapy and
called my presentation "Stay Human." The late Giulietto Chiesa, one of the Forum moderators
recorded my speech and posted it on his website.
The poem can be heard from
minute 11:00 to 17:00 . There is some voice-over in Italian, but I spoke mostly in
English and some of that is intelligible – audible, I mean. There is no voice-over for
the Nekrasov poem. I shall provide a translation into English below:
Heeding the horrors of war,
At every new victim of battle
I feel sorry not for his friend, nor for his wife,
I feel sorry not even for the hero himself.
Alas, the wife will be comforted,
And best friends forget their friend;
But somewhere there is one soul –
Who will remember unto the grave!
Amidst the hypocrisy of our affairs
And all the banality and triviality
Unique among what I have observed in the world
Sacred, sincere tears –
The tears of poor mothers!
They do not forget their own children,
Who have perished on the bloody battlefield,
Just as the weeping willow never lifts
Its dangling branches
Suffice it to add that I confess to being what the Germans call a "Putin Versteher"
– literally, one who understands Putin. (Sadly, most Germans mean no compliment with
this appellation; quite the contrary.) As one who has studied Russia for half a century,
though, I believe I have some sense for where Russian leaders "are coming from."
That said, like almost all Americans, I cannot begin to know, in any adequate sense, what
it is actually like to be part of a society with a history of being repeatedly invaded and/or
occupied – whether from East or West. In my view, U.S. policy makers need to make some
effort to become, in some degree, Putin Verstehers, or the risk of completely unnecessary
armed confrontation will increase still more.
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the
Saviour in inner-city Washington. His 27-year career as a CIA analyst includes serving as
Chief of the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch and preparer/briefer of the President's Daily
Brief. He is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). This
originally appeared at Consortium
News .
The Russian president offers a comprehensive assessment of the legacy of World War II,
arguing that "Today, European politicians, and Polish leaders in particular, wish to sweep the
Munich Betrayal under the carpet. The Munich Betrayal showed to the Soviet Union that the
Western countries would deal with security issues without taking its interests into
account."
Re: the Nuremberg trials , I became fascinated by the writings of Paul R. Pillar who
pointed out that U.S. sanctions are frequently peddled as a peaceful alternative to
war fit the definition of 'crimes against peace' . This is when one country sets up an
environment for war against another country. I'll grant you that this is vague but if this is
applicable at all how is this not an accurate description of what we are doing against Iran
and Venezuela?
In both cases, we are imposing a full trade embargo (not sanctions) on basic civilian
necessities and infrastructures and threatening the use of military force. As for Iran, the
sustained and unfair demonization of Iranians is preparing the U.S. public to accept a
ruthless bombing campaign against them as long overdue. We are already attacking the civilian
population of their allies in Syria, Yemen, and Lebanon.
How Ironic that the country that boasts that it won WW2 is now guilty of the very crimes
that it condemned publicly in court.
"... It is disturbing that no Western leaders are attending the 75th anniversary celebrations of the end of WWII in Moscow. ..."
"... The US began arming Afghan warlords and mujaheddin as early as August 1979, as part of the then US State Secretary Zbigniew Brzezinski's plan to push the USSR into an Afghan version of the Vietnam War. The plan passed muster with the Carter government. The funding and arming of the mujaheddin by the CIA was what led Kabul to request help from Moscow. The Soviets arrived in December 1979. ..."
"... The Russians suffered and endured horrific sacrifices during WWII while simultaneously turning the tide against the Third Reich. An heroic tale much unappreciated by many in the West. The Russians did participate in the Lend-Lease program although the benefits are debated especially for the early and decisive years. ..."
For the events of the 1930s, I recommend reading Micheal Jabara Carley's The Alliance
that Never Was and the Coming of World War II.
This book is essential to understand the intricate politics that ultimately triggered
WWII because it focus on the people that really had the power to stop it: the Nation-States
themselves (through their diplomats).
The politics of the 1930s were very complex, but can be based on one main
contradiction: during the 1930s, there was the widespread belief in France and the UK that
a new world war would result in a worldwide communist revolution. The equation was
war=communism in Europe, according to the conservative governments of those two
nations.
Another important reason WWII happened the way it happened was very simple, but is
denied by the Western nations until modern times: fascism was very popular in Western
Europe and the USA during the 1930s. In France in particular, the local MSM was waging a
vicious propaganda war against the USSR, and we could guess the country was essentially
polarized. The British MSM was also waging it in their home country.
Poland was 100% against the USSR. Their preference would be to preserve their
alliance with the UK-France, but they (i.e. their chief of staff of the Armed Forces) also
explicitly stated to Litvinov that, if it came to choose between Germany and the USSR, they
would choose Germany. It was because of Poland that the USSR wasn't able to fly around
Germany in order to form an alliance with the West (Romania, however, agreed to
extraofficially allow Soviet planes to cross their airspace).
Chamberlain used Poland to officially legitimize his non-alliance with the USSR, but
we now know from his personal letters (many of them to his sister) that the real reason he
didn't do it was his fear of the equation war=communism (in Western Europe). He was
literally "taking one for the team" of capitalism and was very aware of that. His position
was unsustainable, because we now know that it never crossed Hitler's mind to not wage war
against France and the UK, even though his main goal was the USSR. The thing is the Nazis
rose to power with the promise of revenging the Army for WWI.
Churchill was a capitalist and a staunch anti-communist, and, in another universe, he
certainly would do an alliance with the Nazis to crush the USSR. The problem is that the
UK's military doctrine already was completely directed towards Germany, and the British
people already was brainwashed for decades that Germany was the UK's main enemy. You can't
call a total war against an enemy your own people doesn't want to fight against. Changing a
military doctrine of a country takes decades - it simply wasn't possible for Churchill to
shift the British people's minds from an anti-German mode to an anti-Soviet mode in such a
short time. It would only be during the Cold War that it was made possible (as they had the
time to do so), and, nowadays, we can comfortably say most of the British people is
germanophile (at least, the British left) and russophobe. Plus, Churchill could see Hitler
right into his soul, and knew he would wage war from the beginning.
The Americans were completely out of the picture in the 1930s. They were divided
among the isolationists and the interventionists. Exception to the rule were the American
industrialists, who helped mainly Nazi Germany, but also the USSR, in rebuilding
themselves. They did so not because of ideology, but because they were desperate for new
markets after the collapse of 1929. American loyalty was on the cheap in the 1930s.
The humanity owes a big debt to USSR for defeating Nazi Germany and saving the earth from
their unholy empire. While Angela Merkel, instead of Putin, makes the rounds and poses in
photos in the 75th anniversary D-Day in London, the history is being rewritten in front of
our eyes and we have ended up with a majority that fails to question why it took more than
two years to plan and execute the Normandy invasion. As for capitalists funding the build-up
of the Wehrmacht, the saying goes "The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will
hang them."
I believe Stalin and the Central Committees decision to occupy those countries on its
periphery and absolutely crush the likely fascist resurgence was the correct decision. I
gather they recognized the oligarchic forces who financed and supported Hitler. Those same
forces are at it again today.
The foresight and analysis of those Russian thinkers was correct then and remains relevant
now.
I guess I need to again remind people that all history is revisioned --it is seen or
read about, then processed through the historian's mind-- revisioned --then written.
Even an event that's 100% written about as it genuinely occurred is revisioned in the
above manner because that's how the human mind works. Before it was discovered how to
doctor them, photographs and film were deemed to be superior recorders of events than
descriptive words because there was no revisioning to alter the content, but that
ceased to be the case 100+ years ago. In today's world, the live broadcast is the closest
thing that avoids the revisioning dilemma--that's why live streams sent via cell
phones and webcams are powerful and hated by those seeking control--they're deprived of the
opportunity to shape the narrative or manipulate the evidence.
In his essay, I expected Putin to write more about International Law and why adherence to
it is so important in the maintenance of peace. Instead, he sent a backhanded message to
those managing the Outlaw US Empire about the fate they'll face if they continue on their
path and exit the UN.
That so many people in the West believe that the US did the most to defeat Nazi Germany is
understandable due to decades of repeated Hollywood propaganda starring the likes of John
Wayne (who never actually went near anything resembling a tank or a nav asl ship) and others.
But what explains the 50% of British people who believe the British did the most to beat the
Nazis?
Is it all that constant blagging about the Battle of Britain (which incidentally was won
for Britain by pilots representing something like 25 different nationalities with the most
significant hits being made by Polish pilots) or the ceaseless propaganda about what a great
warmonger and mass murderer ... er, "hero" Winston Churchill was, in crap media like The
Daily Mail and the BBC?
It is disturbing that no Western leaders are attending the 75th anniversary
celebrations of the end of WWII in Moscow.
@Posted by: Ike | Jun 20 2020 20:17 utc | 20
Indeed, it is disturbing... May be the Russians should turn to the Western people and
invite them to represent their countries?
I am currently available for traveling...I would feel most grateful of having the
opportunity, still have not visited Lenin Mausoleum.... although for being in Moscow for June
24th, I should be carried by a "Moscow Express" flight...
"At the end of his essay Putin defends the veto power of the five permanent members
of the United Nations Security Council. In his view it has prevented that another clash on
a global scale has happened since World War II ended. Putin rejects attempts to abolish
that system."
b, what is your opinion about Germany becoming a permanent member of the UNSC since it is
now, arguably, the most powerful nation in Europe?
Do you think it threatens security/stability by excluding it from the UNSC, while the UK and
France are included? (I think it does, but I'm Canadian, what do I know? :-)
If you are referring to the massacre of Polish POWs and Polish intellectuals, musicians
and artists whose bodies were found in the forests of Katyn by Nazi German soldiers, bear in
mind that Nazi Germany stood to benefit from blaming the massacre directly on the Soviets.
While Russia under President Yeltsin did accept responsibility for the Katyn massacre - after
all, the Soviets did hold the victims as prisoners and should have evacuated them - one still
has to be wary of a narrative shaped and dictated by an enemy nation who milked the
propaganda value of the massacre against the Soviets. That in itself might tell you who the
real murderers were.
The US began arming Afghan warlords and mujaheddin as early as August 1979, as part of
the then US State Secretary Zbigniew Brzezinski's plan to push the USSR into an Afghan
version of the Vietnam War. The plan passed muster with the Carter government. The funding
and arming of the mujaheddin by the CIA was what led Kabul to request help from Moscow. The
Soviets arrived in December 1979.
I'm almost done reading "Life And Fate" by Vasily Grossman, translated by Robert Chandler.
The defense of Stalingrad and the eventual defeat of Field Marshal Paulus, commander of the
6th army, is instructive.
The Russians suffered and endured horrific sacrifices during WWII while simultaneously
turning the tide against the Third Reich. An heroic tale much unappreciated by many in the
West. The Russians did participate in the Lend-Lease program although the benefits are
debated especially for the early and decisive years.
Nah, sorry mate, doesn't even have that. The Soviet Union scared the Japanese
high command into surrendering after the US dropped its demand for unconditional surrender
because it was scared that the Soviet Union would invade the main islands of Japan before it
could.
I have been following the latest shit show between POTUS, DOJ & SDNY. Are Americans
really sure they are ready to go to war with China because I have to be honest. I'm not
entirely convinced you guys have your act together.
Stalin foresaw attempts to belittle the USSR's role in WWII. For example, during the Battle
of Stalingrad there was a team of cinephotographers that filmed different aspects of the
battle, from the siege to the envelopment of the beseigers.
When the battle ended a documentary was compiled, many copies were made, some of which
were shown to enthusiastic audiences in North America. I saw that film in, I believe, March
1943 when I was a 12 year old living in Toronto.
You have to know that 1942 had been a terribly demoralizing year for the Allied side.
Japan was unstoppable running over SE Asia; U-boats were sinking lots of supply ships headed
to the UK in the North Atlantic; there was the fiasco of Dieppe which hit Canadian pride
hard; Rommel and assorted British generals were playing tag back & forth across North
Africa; but the biggest disaster was unfolding across the USSR from Leningrad down to the
lower Volga. So when that documentary opened with a shot of Reichsmarschall von Paulus
trudging through knee-deep snow leading a seemingly endless column of bedraggled German
soldiers to an imprisonment camp, it was a most uplifting moment, unmatched until May
1945.
The ferocity of the Soviet counterattack was awesome: Katyusha rockets; great swarms of
troops under air cover, including women, in white camouflage on skis, heading to the
front.
I and hundreds of thousands of others who saw that film in 1943 know damn well who really
won the war and how. Putin has had enough of insults directed against Russia's record during
WWII from UKUS, but especially from Poland, and has responded forcefully.
I found most interesting his reference to still-locked archives outside of Russia dealing
with the shenanigans that led to WWI. We can only hope that historians will get to them
before the mice!
Why is it there is no mentions that Churchill tasked his Chiefs of Staff to come up with a
plan to attack the Soviet Union and start WW Three in April 1945, a month before the end of
World War Two.
The plan his Chiefs developed was called Operation Unthinkable. It called for the Great
Britain and the allies to attack the Soviet Union on July 1, 1945. This plan went
nowhere.
Then Truman came up with a plan in August 1945 called Operation Totality which called for
dropping atomic bombs on Moscow and 20 of the most important cities in the USSR. This plan
too didn't go anywhere but this marked the end of the Great Britain, America alliance with
Stalin and from this point on, in a 180 degree turn, Stalin and the Communists became the
West's mortal enemies and the Cold War was born.
Why does this development and the reasons for this 180 degree about turn not get any
mention and analysis? Why did the allies turn on a dime and go from being best of buddies
with the Marxist Communists to being worst of enemies with the West desiring to annihilate
the Soviet Union? Why?
May be Mr. Putin aimed at trying a last intend on appeasement, his own Ribbentrop-Molotov
Pact ....May be, even knowing this time it will not work either...
"The great criminal who has ordered the murder, transforms his joy for the crime committed
into currency, giving a reward worthy of a prince. Now that he has ordered the looting and
murder of the two thousand richest men in Italy, Antonio can finally be generous. For the
bloody sack containing Cicero's hands and head, pay the centurion a brilliant million
sesterces. But with it his revenge has not yet cooled, so that the stupid hatred of this
bloodthirsty man still creates a special ignominy for the dead, without realizing that with
himself he will be debased for all time. Antonio orders that the head and the hands are
nailed in the tribune from where Cicero incited the city against him to defend the freedom
of Rome.
The next day a disgraceful spectacle awaits the Roman people. In the speakers' gallery,
the same from which Cicero delivered his immortal speeches, the severed head of the last
defender of liberty hangs discolored. An imposing rusty nail pierces the forehead, the
thousands of thoughts. Livid and with a rictus of bitterness, the lips that formulated the
metallic words of the Latin language more beautifully than those of any other. Closed, the
blue eyelids cover the eyes that for sixty years watched over the republic. Powerless, they
open his hands that wrote the most splendid letters of the time.
But all in all, no accusation made by the great orator from that rostrum against
brutality, against the delirium of power, against illegality, speaks as eloquently against
the eternal injustice of violence as that silent head of a murdered man .
Suspicious the people gather around the desecrated rostra . Dejected, ashamed, it
turns away again. No one dares - it is a dictatorship! - to express a single reply, but a
spasm oppresses their hearts. And dismayed, they lower their heads at this allegory of the
crucified republic...."
Thanks, „b" for this article and the links - I read Putin´s essay and am
impressed with the depth , insight, humanity in his words. I would like to share my views,
gained from living for many years under soviets and their Jewish helpers (like Jakub Berman,
Zambrowski, Fejgin, to name a few). Here my amplifications and few other important details,
omitted by Putin:
1). regarding his description of decisions by different governments - he does not mention
that the Polish government had good reasons not to trust Stalin - because Soviet Union
cooperated with Germany for many years before - in form of having Germans (disguised as some
kind of para military, in order to circumvent the prohibitions following Versailles treaty)
training in the Soviet Union.
2). Another detail is that the British, French and Americans were trying to gain time
before confrontation with Nazis, just the same reasoning Putin allows to Soviet Union.
3).It also can be interpreted that Stalin decided to join the partition of Poland only
after Germany was victorious, similar tactic Stalin used in starting war against Japan after
USA won the war in Pacific and occupied the Kurile Islands.
4). Putin is disguising the aggressive action of USSR vis-a-vis Baltic states by saying
„In autumn 1939, the Soviet Union pursuing its strategic military and defensive goals,
started the process of incorporation of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia." If Hitler would have
stopped at that and not march on Moscow like Napoleon - this action would have mutate into
pure aggression. „incorporation" - my foot!
5). Putin does not mention any Polish names along Petain, Quisling, Vlasov and Bandera --
because there were none, and this is significant, showing that not a single Pole was found to
work - in a quasi government - with Nazis.
6). The spirit of independence he claims for Russian people (earlier in the essay), he is
not giving the People of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania or Poland.
7). Putin mentions „burnt Khatyn" in one breath with Babi Yar - I wonder, is there a
different Kathyn from „the" Katyn, where over 22 Tsd. Polish officers and officials
were butchered on orders of Stalin, Beria, Kaganovich (and one or two more whose names escape
me now).
8). Putin is knowingly or otherwise pushing the antisemitic mantra on Polish nation -
mentioning the ´splendid monument´ for Hitler to be erected in Warsaw, quoting
ambassador Lipski in 1938 this is a blow below the waist line and I did not expect it to be
repeated in this essay, as he used it already on a previous occasion. It is in jarring
contrast with the otherwise solid and even-handed exposition.
In my humble opinion Putin´s essay is a big wink to Poland to stay away from Ukraine
and Belarus and not be a stooge of others (oligarchs, as uncle tungsten says in #27) to try
undermine Russia!
The insinuations about polish antisemitism (as if Poles had monopoly in this subject!!!)
is in line with the possible use of Jewish „forces" in dealing with Polish nationalism,
and unpredictability of events in Eastern Europe, if the color revolutions continue, say in
Belarus..
The possible role of Israeli political calculus should also be kept in mind, as their
´plan B´, when Islam will get too dangerous for many Jews and who will suddenly
discover love to the land of their polish antisemites That is why Poland is mentioned that
many times.
Putin and the Russian Duma have previously accepted that the Katyn massacre occurred under
orders of Stalin and Beria. It's not Western of Polish propaganda.
While I understand that a lot has changed in the last 10 years with regards to the level
of anti-Russia hysteria, and I also understand that this essay is meant to bring forward the
Russian point of view on WW2 as opposed to the propaganda of the West, I stand by my earlier
statement that glossing over the bad things that happened under the orders of Stalin and
simply giving a generic "Stalin was a bad man" statement only leaves an otherwise excellent
historical essay open to be dismissed as propaganda.
There was a deal between US and Stalin that the Red Army would attack Japan 3 months after
the end of the war in Europe, which actually happened on time - the Manchurian campaign which
utterly destroyed the Japanese army in N. China/Manchukuo/Korea began on the 9th of August.
Japan wasn't prepared for this and still assumed the non-aggression agreement with USSR that
had been made in 1939 was still valid.
This wasn't Stalin trying to take advantage, the US were so far from invading the Main
Islands that everyone assumed the war would last another year. This was Stalin doing exactly
what Roosevelt had begged him to do at Yalta. And opening a 2nd front against Japan worked
far better than expected - and far better than when the Western Allies opened a 2nd front in
Europe against the Reich.
Historians, political scientists, Western "experts" and anti-communist "liberals" in Russia
have always attributed the Katyn massacre to the NKVD, the secret police of the Soviet
Union, providing alleged evidence and documents that would prove such authorship. However,
all indications suggest that the Katyn massacre is another historical falsification similar
to the Ukrainian Holodomor or to the figures given on the "millions of deaths" of Soviet
communism. The responsibility for what happened in Katyn, in light of the evidence and
testimonies provided, was the work of the Nazis.
80 years after the events of Katyn (supposedly happened in April 1940) near the city of
Smolensk (border with Belarus), where more than 20 thousand Polish soldiers were executed
in a nearby forest, the propaganda of the cold war returns with force, and the renewed
counterfeits of the West against Russia and the former USSR.
Definitely, there is not a single consistent proof of Soviet authorship in the Katyn
massacre.
Interestingly, on June 18, 2012, the European Communities Court of Justice for Human
Rights, following a claim by Polish relatives of the soldiers executed in Katyn, made a
surprising decision: the "documents" provided by Gorbachev and Yeltsin, after the fall of
the USSR (which we will talk about in the second part of this entry), indicating that
Stalin and the Soviets were guilty of the execution of tens of thousands of Polish officers
near Katyn, were false. A historical slap to the propagandists of the "Russian Katyn".
The alleged documents on the mass execution of Katyn, which appeared in the late 1980s,
were gutted by one of the members of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee, Alexander
Yakovlev (a more than likely US agent who trained in North American Columbia University in
the late 1950s), turned out to be false. The European court did not even accept them for
consideration.
The European Court was also unable to clearly decide who was responsible for the
massacre since the judges did not have enough documentary evidence, although they spent
more than a year studying all kinds of historical documents and archival evidence. Until
around 1990, everyone was convinced that the Poles had been killed by the Germans. This
decision of the EECC Court of Justice has been completely ignored by the propagandists of
the Katyn myth.(...)
In the early 19th century, fueling the illusory hope of restoring Greater Poland, the
Poles sided with Napoleon in the war of 1812. The Polish army, created with the help of the
French, became part of the "Great Army "Of Bonaparte as the most reliable foreign
contingent. This was the third Polish invasion of Russia.
The Polish uprising of 1830 began with the widespread extermination of the Russians. In
all the churches they called for the indiscriminate murder of the Russians. In Warsaw, on
Easter night, an entire battalion of the Russian army was taken by surprise in a church.
2,265 Russian soldiers and officers died.
The Polish state, born in November 1918, immediately showed its hostility towards Soviet
Russia. With the help of the Entente, Poland begins preparations for a war against Russia.
Polish politicians had the possibility that a forceful blow from the Polish army would be
dealt to the Russian army.
Poland accompanied its aggressive intentions with a set of propaganda stereotypes about
the aggressiveness of the Bolsheviks. Numerous proposals from the young Soviet state to
conclude a peace treaty and establish diplomatic relations were rejected. Polish military
operations against Russia in the spring of 1920 were undertaken by Poland, not Soviet
Russia.
After tripling numerical superiority, Polish troops, along with the army of the
Ukrainian nationalist military man Simon Petliura, launched a full-scale offensive along
the entire Western Front from Pripyat to Dniester. This was the fourth Polish invasion of
Russian lands. In early May 1920, Polish and Petliura fighters captured Kiev. The invasion
of the allied forces of Poland and Petlyura was accompanied by brutal and inhuman
retaliation against the civilian civilian population.
In the occupied regions of Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania, Polish invaders established
bloody local governments, insulted and robbed civilians, or burned innocent people.
Orthodox churches became Polish Christian churches, national schools closed.(...)
The total number of prisoners of war who died in those concentration camps is not known
with certainty. However, there are various estimates based on the number of Soviet
prisoners of war who returned from Polish captivity - there were 75,699 people. Russian
historian Mikhail Meltiukhov estimates the number of prisoners killed at 60,000 people.
Mortality among prisoners of war reached 50 people per day and as of mid-November 1920 it
was 70 people per day. In the Tukholsky concentration camp alone, during the entire time of
its existence, 22 thousand Red Army prisoners of war died.
In other words, the Poles established in their concentration camps a systematic policy
of extermination with the Russians that reached the character of genocide, something that
has been systematically silenced or hidden by the West in favor of Polish propaganda. For
these crimes, the Poles today neither feel guilty nor have any remorse and disparagingly
call it "Russian propaganda".
In the period between the two world wars, Poland repeatedly threatened to destroy
Bolshevism and Russia as a state. Instead, as General Vladyslaw Anders, an active
participant in Pan-Poland's intervention against Soviet Russia in 1919-1920, admitted,
"There was never a real threat from the USSR to Poland."
Poland was never reluctant to attack Russia to hold, alongside Nazi Germany and Japan, a
parade of victorious Polish-German troops on Moscow's Red Square. Marshal and national hero
of Poland, the dictator Jozéf Pilsudsky, responsible for the mass extermination of
Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians and Jews, dreamed of coming to Moscow and writing "It is
forbidden to speak Russian on the Kremlin wall!"
In January 1934, Poland was the first, five years before the USSR, to conclude a
non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany. In late 1936, the Anti-Komintern Pact was concluded
with the signing of Germany and Japan, which were later joined by Italy, Spain, Romania,
Hungary, Denmark, Finland, Croatia, Slovakia, Bulgaria, and the Republic of China (a state
puppet formed by the Japanese empire in occupied territory).
The Poles, at that time, flatly refused to sign any agreement with the USSR, a country
that despite having been throughout the history of countless Polish aggressions reached out
to Poland. As early as mid-August 1939, the Polish Foreign Minister Józef Beck, in
whose office there was a portrait of Hitler, declared that "we have no military agreement
with the USSR, nor do we want to have one."
In developing the plan of attack against Poland in early 1939, Hitler did not take into
account the overtly anti-Soviet policies of the Polish government before the war. He and
his entire circle despised and hated the Poles as a nation (even though they had been his
allies in the 1930s), which was natural since his supremacist ideology did not take into
account other nations than the German one.
In August 1939, before the attack on Poland, Hitler ordered that all Polish women, men,
and children be ruthlessly exterminated. During the years of occupation, the Nazis murdered
more than 6 million Poles, representing 22 percent of the Polish population. 95% of
genetically defective Poles were planned to be evicted from their homeland.
Soviet troops, by contrast, did not allow the Nazis to wipe Poland off the face of the
earth. No other force in the world could do this. "Poles must be very stupid, Winston
Churchill wrote in January 1944, if they don't understand who saved them and who for the
second time in the first half of the 20th century gives them the possibility of true
freedom and independence." These surprising statements by Churchill, a confessed
anti-communist, had nothing to do with the Cold War preparations that the British premier
against the USSR and the socialist countries subsequently devised and that was reflected in
his famous speech by Fulton (USA).
More than 600,000 Soviet soldiers gave their lives, saving the cities and towns of
Poland in battles with the Nazis. On the contrary, during the three weeks of the
Polish-German war of 1939, there were attacks by Polish troops against units of the Red
Army. As a consequence of these attacks, the Soviet army lost more than a thousand of its
men.
The Polish troops, who were in the midst of the Second World War in the territory of the
Soviet Union, refused to fight together with the Red Army against which it should be a
common Nazi enemy and left for Iran in the summer of 1942 While in the USSR, Polish troops
engaged in robbery in cities and towns and committed atrocities in them.
During World War II, up to half a million Polish volunteers fought on the eastern front
against the USSR, as part of the Nazi Wehrmacht (the regular army). In fact, the Germans
did not carry out a forced mobilization of Polish fighters to fight alongside Nazi Germany.
In the SS, the Poles acted voluntarily and in the Wehrmacht, they posed as "Germans" or
"semi-Germans".
During the four years of the war, the Red Army captured 4 million Wehrmacht soldiers and
volunteers from 24 European nationalities. The Poles on that list were in seventh place
(over 60,000 mercenaries), ahead of the Italians (about 49,000).
It should be noted that the mortality of German refugees in Polish camps in 1945-1946.
reached 50%. In the Potulice camp in 1947-1949 half of the prisoners died of starvation,
cold and harassment by the Polish guards. At the end of the war, four million Germans lived
in Poland. According to estimates by the Union of German Exiles, the loss of the German
population during the expulsion from Poland amounted to some 3 million people.
After the unmitigated defeat of the Wehrmacht in Stalingrad, it became clear that if
nothing extraordinary happened in favor of the Hitler regime, nothing would change the
course of events and the Third Reich would eventually implode in the very near future.
So the Nazis "discovered" in 1943, in the Katyn forest near Smolensk, a mass grave with
Polish officers. The Germans immediately declared that, as a result of the opening of the
graves, all those buried there had been executed by members of the Soviet Union's secret
police, the NKVD (People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs), in the spring of 1940. .
The official statement on the Katyn massacre was made by the Nazi government and
released by its Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, on April 13, 1943, in a statement
speaking about the "terrible discovery of the crimes of the Jewish commissioners of the
NKVD "in the Katyn Forest. With this propaganda device, Nazi Germany sought to divide the
anti-Hitler coalition and win the war.
The significance of such a declaration by the Goebbels Department had a cunning
undercurrent: the Polish government-in-exile would strongly oppose Moscow and thereby
pressure the British who sheltered them in London to stop supporting the Kremlin. According
to Berlin's calculations, the Poles would push the British and Americans to fight Stalin,
which could imply a completely different development from the events in World War II.
But Goebbels' calculation was not justified: Britain at the time did not consider it
profitable to believe in the "crime of the Bolsheviks". At the same time, the head of
London's "Polish government", General Wladyslaw Sikorski, took a relentless position and
began to truly become an obstacle to the great international policy of alliances between
the United States, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union.
The Vladislav Sikorsky government in London supported Goebbels's version and began to
distribute it diligently, hoping that this would help regain power in Warsaw and spark a
war between the USSR and its anti-Hitler coalition allies. Sikorsky supported the Germans'
proposal to send to the Katyn region an "International Medical Commission" created by them
under the auspices of the International Red Cross (IRC) with doctors selected by Germany,
as well as experts from 13 allied countries and the German-occupied countries.
When his CRI commission reached Katyn, Goebbels demanded that his subordinates prepare
everything, including a medical report tailored to the Nazis. Under pressure from the Nazis
and so that events such as the terrible fate of Polish officers would not be repeated in
the future, the agreement was signed by the majority of the members of the international
commission.
Members of the commission, such as the doctor from the Department of Forensic Medicine
at Sofia University, Marko Markov, and the Czech professor of forensic medicine, Frantisek
Gajek, did not support Goebbels's version. The representatives of Vichy, France, Professor
Castedo, and Spain, Professor Antonio Piga and Pascual, did not put their signature on the
final document. After the war, all members of the international commission of forensic
experts abandoned their conclusions in the spring of 1943.
The Polish Red Cross Technical Commission, which worked in Katyn in specially "prepared"
places and under the control of the Germans, was unable to reach unequivocal conclusions
about the causes of death of the Polish officers, although they discovered German
cartridges used in the shooting of victims in the Katyn forest. Joseph Goebbels demanded to
keep this a secret so that the Katyn case would not collapse.
A few weeks later, on July 4, 1943, General Sikorsky, his daughter Zofya, and the head
of his cabinet, Brigadier General Tadeusz Klimecki, were killed in a plane crash near
Gibraltar. Only the Czech pilot, Eduard Prchal, survived, who was unable to clearly explain
why he put on a life jacket during this flight, when he generally did not.
The position of the "Western Allies" of the USSR in World War II on the Katyn issue
began to change along with the deterioration of relations between Washington-London and
Moscow, once the "cold war" began by the United States and its allies. The accusations
against the USSR were continued by the American Madden commission in 1951-1952.
Again, Victor@43, you make your point well, but perhaps we need to pay attention to what
karlof1 is saying at the end of his post at 29:
"Instead, he sent a backhanded message to those managing the Outlaw US Empire about
the fate they'll face if they continue on their path and exit the UN."
I'm not sure I understand the meaning of this (perhaps Karlof will elucidate when he has
time) but I do note that the essay has a slightly different focus than b's first link as its
title begins "The Real Lessons..."
So, what, we may ask, are those real lessons? Apparently the instances of Stalin's bad
behavior are not such, or are not what we need to learn.
And further, what is the importance of the final paragraphs of the essay, which call for
the Security Council leaders,(having agreed to do so) representing the nations which were
allied successfully during WWII, to meet as soon as possible? Putin has given in his essay
the example of the League of Nations, the failure of that body to prevent the second great
war. I saw his final statement more as an urgent call for unity in present crisis than as a
threat, but then I'm always a polyanna.
Putin glosses over Stalins aggressions against Finland and his annexations of Estonia,
Latvia, Lithuania, and parts of Romania (Bessarabia, northern Bukovina and the Hertza
region), the latter in violation of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact , are overlooked
He justifies Russia taking back land in Poland because he claimed that was theirs was but
Hitler doing the same was not , and justified as a defensive measure against Germany while
ignoring Poland was a threat to Germany , as they sought alliance with UK/US
Stalin had a very large and well equipped military and was resource rich unlike
Germany.
Stalin began his buildup long before the war, perhaps anticipating Germanys military
expansion, or perhaps he had designs on Europe himself. Remember one of FDR's first moves as
President was recognizing Stalin and providing loans for trade in 1933
From Icebreaker (Suvorov)
In the early 1930s, American engineers traveled to the Soviet Union and built the
Uralvagonzavod (the Ural Railroad Car Factory). Uralvagonzavod was built in such a manner
that it could at any moment switch from producing railroad cars to producing tanks.
The most powerful aviation factory in the world was built in the Russian Far East. The
city Komsomolsk-na-Amure was built in order to service this factory. Both the factory and the
city were built according to American designs and furnished with the most modern American
equipment.
Western technology was the main key to success. The Soviet Union became the world's
biggest importer of machinery and equipment in the early 1930s, at a time when millions were
starving due to his bloody war against peasants, which was called collectivization. The
Soviet collectivization of 1932-1933 is estimated to have resulted in 3.5 to 5 million deaths
from starvation, and another three to 4 million deaths as a result of intolerable conditions
at the places of exile.
Cargo warplanes are used to deliver assault forces with parachutists to the enemy's rear.
Soviet war-transport aviation used the American Douglas DC-3, which was considered to be the
best cargo plane in the world at the start of World War II, as its primary cargo plane. In
1938, the U.S. government sold to Stalin the production license and the necessary amount of
the most complex equipment for the DC-3's production. The Soviet Union also bought 20 DC-3s
from the United States before the war.
In 1939, the Soviet Union produced six identical DC-3 aircraft; in 1940, it produced 51
DC-3 aircraft; and in 1941, it produced 237 DC-3 aircraft. During the entire war 2,419 DC-3s
or equivalent planes were produced in Soviet factories.
In the years 1937-1941, the Soviet Army grew five-fold, from 1.1 million to 5.5 million.
An additional 5.3 million people joined the ranks of the Red Army within one week of the
beginning of the war. A minimum of 34.5 million people were used by the Red Army during the
war. This huge increase in the size of the Soviet Army was accomplished primarily by
ratification of the universal military draft in the Soviet Union on Sept. 1, 1939.
According to the new law, the draft age was reduced from 21 to 19, and in some categories
to 18. This new law also allowed for the preparation of 18 million reservists, so that the
Soviet Union continued to fill the ranks of the Red Army with many millions of soldiers as
the war progressed.
The 9th Army appeared on the Romanian border on June 14, 1941, in the exact place where a
year ago it had "liberated" Bessarabia. If the Soviet 9th Army had been allowed to attack
Romania, Germany's main source of oil would have been lost and Germany would have been
defeated. Hitler's attack of the Soviet Union prevented this from happening. The
concentration of Soviet troops on Romanian borders presented a clear danger to Germany, and
was a major reason for the German invasion of the Soviet Union.
Looking for blame one must not forget to look home. US finance and industrialists built up
the Stalin and Hitler both with money, tech transfers, cartel agreements.
FDR pushed both the British and Poland into decisions which would lead to War.
When Germany tried to negotiate for Free Danzig , which was mostly German , Poland
succumbed to US and British pressure/promises of aid, so they took a hardline and took
measures to assume control over Free Danzig from the League of Nations. As a result Poles
began to persecute ethnic Germans of which there were many , forcing some to flee Poland into
Germany while those who wanted to protect their property stayed and faced the violence.
Everyone in the West knows about the D-Day landings in Normandy on 6 June 1944.
150,000 men on the first day, building up to 2 million men during the peak of Operation
Overlord.
Nobody in the West knows about Operation Bagration in the Eastern front, launched two
weeks after the D-Day landings.
Vastly bigger in every way, and it ended in the complete annihilation of Army Group Centre
and the severe mauling of Army Group North and Army Group South.
Operation Bagration was much more important to the defeat of Germany than Operation
Overlord.
Indeed, the Red Army would have succeeded even if the Normandy landings had not taken
place, whereas it is very, very unlikely that Operation Overlord would have succeeded if it
were not for the Germans being hamstrung by the carnage that was taking place in the
East.
Putin's own words in the center article of B: Stalin and his entourage, indeed, deserve
many legitimate accusations. We remember the crimes committed by the regime against its own
people and the horror of mass repressions. Lets keep that in mind and praise the USSR for
defeating the Nazi regime, never Stalin.
As for Churchill; he was a typical upper class imperialist most of his life but did
save GB in the critical early years of the Battle for Britain with his moral boosters.
Hitler showed how powerful a force nationalism can be to unite a people but simultaneously
demonstrated that by focusing on a country's Ego and not its Soul how wrong it can end up.
His "National Sozialismus" fouled both notions in the West and lead many to embrace globalism
and uncontrolled capitalism, of which we see the results today. He had Germany under his
black magic speeches for just one decade, but these after effects had Europe twisted for
many.
Putin holds on to the existing choice of the 5 permanent UNSC veto holders, probably not to
complicate matters now. The PRC was added in 1972 and the ROC (Taiwan) removed.
There is a lot of cherry picking of history going on when it comes to who did what to whom
in the lead up to WW2. All countries are a lot less innocent than they claim to be.
But I'm not sure why you are posting revisionist history about Katyn since the Russians
already admitted that the Soviets were responsible for the crime.
@ victor... a lot of posters here are suspect of wikipedia, and any number of media outlets
offering up their take on russia...
unfortunately if i was to believe the independent.co.uk - i would believe all the lies and
bulshit around skripal and for the record - i don't... a better source to back up your
viewpoint is needed.. thanks..
Schmatz@45 - as Victor at 52 says, there is no need to suspect anyone else for massacre in
Katyn (and other places btw), Russians admitted it. If you wish to see the signatures, a book
by Pavel Sudoplatov "Special Tasks" (available on Amazon) has a facsimile copy of the order
signed by Beria, Stalin and 2 or 3 more - to liquidate the Polish POW´s...
"No real errors in Putin's excellent essay, but some glossing over of certain major
incidents, including the arrests, deportations and executions of thousands of Poles committed
by the Soviets when they invaded Poland, the absorption of the Baltic countries, and the war
with Finland. Unfortunately, omitting important details just gives ammunition to the many
Putin haters to claim that this is just more Russian historical revisionism and
propaganda."
I agree on the Baltic states. I think it's the one part of Putin's essay I'd take issue
with.
He should have made the strategic case for why the USSR felt compelled to take control of
Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. The Baltic coastline and approach to Leningrad were both very
significant. Of course it's true that Russia lost control of all three for most of the war,
but that doesn't change the strategic validity of Soviet policy in 1940.
The same thing goes for Soviet demands to control some coastal area and islands in Finland
which led to the Soviet-Finnish War of 1939-40.
Instead of making a strategic case, Putin tries to whitewash the Russian takeover by
claiming "consent." That is a weak argument and the only real point of weakness I see in his
essay.
"... Twitter Robespierres who move from discipline to discipline torching reputations and jobs with breathtaking casualness. ..."
"... The leaders of this new movement are replacing traditional liberal beliefs about tolerance, free inquiry, and even racial harmony with ideas so toxic and unattractive that they eschew debate, moving straight to shaming, threats, and intimidation. They are counting on the guilt-ridden, self-flagellating nature of traditional American progressives, who will not stand up for themselves, and will walk to the Razor voluntarily. ..."
"... Now, this madness is coming for journalism. Beginning on Friday, June 5th, a series of controversies rocked the media. By my count, at least eight news organizations dealt with internal uprisings (it was likely more). Most involved groups of reporters and staffers demanding the firing or reprimand of colleagues who'd made politically "problematic" editorial or social media decisions. ..."
"... The New York Times, the Intercept , Vox, the Philadelphia Inquirier, Variety , and others saw challenges to management. ..."
"... I always question, why does a Black life matter only when a white man takes it?... Like, if a white man takes my life tonight, it's going to be national news, but if a Black man takes my life, it might not even be spoken of It's stuff just like that that I just want in the mix. ..."
"... The traditional view of the press was never based on some contrived, mathematical notion of "balance," i.e. five paragraphs of Republicans for every five paragraphs of Democrats. The ideal instead was that we showed you everything we could see, good and bad, ugly and not, trusting that a better-informed public would make better decisions. This vision of media stressed accuracy, truth, and trust in the reader's judgment as the routes to positive social change. ..."
Sometimes it seems life can't get any worse in this country. Already in terror of a
pandemic, Americans have lately been bombarded with images of grotesque state-sponsored
violence, from the murder of George Floyd to countless scenes of police clubbing and
brutalizing protesters.
Our president, Donald Trump, is a clown who makes a great reality-show villain but is
uniquely toolless as the leader of a superpower nation. Watching him try to think through two
society-imperiling crises is like waiting for a gerbil to solve Fermat's theorem.
Calls to "dominate" marchers and ad-libbed speculations about Floyd's "great day" looking
down from heaven at Trump's crisis management and new unemployment numbers ("
only" 21 million out of work!) were pure gasoline at a tinderbox moment. The man seems
determined to talk us into civil war.
But police violence, and Trump's daily assaults on the presidential competence standard, are
only part of the disaster. On the other side of the political aisle, among self-described
liberals, we're watching an intellectual revolution. It feels liberating to say after years of
tiptoeing around the fact, but the American left has lost its mind. It's become a cowardly mob
of upper-class social media addicts, Twitter Robespierres who move from discipline to
discipline torching reputations and jobs with breathtaking casualness.
The leaders of this new movement are replacing traditional liberal beliefs about tolerance,
free inquiry, and even racial harmony with ideas so toxic and unattractive that they eschew
debate, moving straight to shaming, threats, and intimidation. They are counting on the
guilt-ridden, self-flagellating nature of traditional American progressives, who will not stand
up for themselves, and will walk to the Razor voluntarily.
Now, this madness is coming for journalism. Beginning on Friday, June 5th, a series of
controversies rocked the media. By my count, at least eight news organizations dealt with
internal uprisings (it was likely more). Most involved groups of reporters and staffers
demanding the firing or reprimand of colleagues who'd made politically "problematic" editorial
or social media decisions.
The New York Times, the Intercept , Vox, the Philadelphia
Inquirier, Variety , and others saw challenges to management.
Probably the most disturbing story involved Intercept writer Lee Fang, one of a
fast-shrinking number of young reporters actually skilled in investigative journalism. Fang's
work in the area of campaign finance especially has led to concrete impact, including a
record fine to a conservative Super PAC : few young reporters have done more to combat
corruption.
Yet Fang found himself denounced online as a racist, then hauled before H.R. His crime?
During protests, he tweeted this interview with an African-American
man named Maximum Fr, who described having two cousins murdered in the East Oakland
neighborhood where he grew up. Saying his aunt is still not over those killings, Max asked:
I always question, why does a Black life matter only when a white man takes it?...
Like, if a white man takes my life tonight, it's going to be national news, but if a Black
man takes my life, it might not even be spoken of It's stuff just like that that I just want
in the mix.
Shortly after, a co-worker of Fang's, Akela Lacy, wrote, "Tired of being made to deal
continually with my co-worker @lhfang continuing to push black on black crime narratives after
being repeatedly asked not to. This isn't about me and him, it's about institutional racism and
using free speech to couch anti-blackness. I am so fucking tired." She followed with, "Stop
being racist Lee."
Like many reporters, Fang has always viewed it as part of his job to ask questions in all
directions. He's written critically of political figures on the center-left, the left, and
"obviously on the right," and his reporting has inspired serious threats in the past. None of
those past experiences were as terrifying as this blitz by would-be colleagues, which he
described as "jarring," "deeply isolating," and "unique in my professional experience."
To save his career, Fang had to craft a public apology for
"insensitivity to the lived experience of others." According to one friend of his, it's been
communicated to Fang that his continued employment at The Intercept is contingent upon
avoiding comments that may upset colleagues. Lacy to her credit publicly thanked Fang for his
statement and expressed willingness to have a conversation; unfortunately, the throng of
Intercept co-workers who piled on her initial accusation did not join her in this.
I first met Lee Fang in 2014 and have never known him to be anything but kind, gracious, and
easygoing. He also appears earnestly committed to making the world a better place through his
work. It's stunning that so many colleagues are comfortable using a word as extreme and
villainous as racist to describe him.
Though he describes his upbringing as "solidly middle-class," Fang grew up in up in a
diverse community in Prince George's County, Maryland, and attended public schools where he was
frequently among the few non-African Americans in his class. As a teenager, he was witness to
the murder of a young man outside his home by police who were never prosecuted, and also
volunteered at a shelter for trafficked women, two of whom were murdered. If there's an edge to
Fang at all, it seems geared toward people in our business who grew up in affluent
circumstances and might intellectualize topics that have personal meaning for him.
In the tweets that got him in trouble with Lacy and other co-workers, he questioned the
logic of protesters attacking immigrant-owned businesses " with no connection to police brutality
at all ." He also offered his opinion on Martin Luther King's attitude toward
violent protest (Fang's take was that King did not support it; Lacy responded, "you know
they killed him too right"). These are issues around which there is still considerable
disagreement among self-described liberals, even among self-described leftists. Fang also
commented, presciently as it turns out, that many reporters were "terrified of openly
challenging the lefty conventional wisdom around riots."
Lacy says she never intended for Fang to be "fired, 'canceled,' or deplatformed," but
appeared irritated by questions on the subject, which she says suggest, "there is more concern
about naming racism than letting it persist."
Max himself was stunned to find out that his comments on all this had created a Twitter
firestorm. "I couldn't believe they were coming for the man's job over something I said," he
recounts. "It was not Lee's opinion. It was my opinion."
By phone, Max spoke of a responsibility he feels Black people have to speak out against all
forms of violence, "precisely because we experience it the most." He described being affected
by the Floyd story, but also by the story of retired African-American police captain David
Dorn, shot to death in recent
protests in St. Louis. He also mentioned Tony Timpa, a white man whose 2016 asphyxiation by
police was only uncovered last year. In body-camera footage, police are heard joking after
Timpa passed out and stopped moving, "
I don't want to go to school! Five more minutes, Mom !"
"If it happens to anyone, it has to be called out," Max says.
Max described discussions in which it was argued to him that bringing up these other
incidents now is not helpful to the causes being articulated at the protests. He understands
that point of view. He just disagrees.
"They say, there has to be the right time and a place to talk about that," he says. "But my
point is, when? I want to speak out now." He pauses. "We've taken the narrative, and instead of
being inclusive with it, we've become exclusive with it. Why?"
There were other incidents. The editors of Bon
Apetit and Refinery29 both resigned amid accusations
of toxic workplace culture. The editor of Variety, Claudia Eller, was
placed on leave after calling a South Asian freelance writer "bitter" in a Twitter exchange
about minority hiring at her company. The self-abasing apology ("I have tried to diversify our
newsroom over the past seven years, but I HAVE NOT DONE ENOUGH") was insufficient. Meanwhile,
the Philadelphia Inquirer's editor, Stan Wischowski, was forced out after approving a
headline, "Buildings matter, too."
In the most discussed incident, Times editorial page editor James Bennet was ousted
for green-lighting an anti-protest editorial by Arkansas Republican Senator Tom Cotton
entitled, " Send in the
troops ."
I'm no fan of Cotton, but as was the case with Michael Moore's documentary and many other
controversial speech episodes, it's not clear that many of the people angriest about the piece
in question even read it. In classic Times fashion, the paper has already scrubbed a
mistake they made misreporting what their own editorial said, in an article about Bennet's
ouster. Here's how the piece by Marc Tracy
read originally (emphasis mine):
James Bennet, the editorial page editor of The New York Times, has resigned after a
controversy over an Op-Ed by a senator calling for military force against protesters in
American cities.
James Bennet resigned on Sunday from his job as the editorial page editor of The New York
Times, days after the newspaper's opinion section, which he oversaw, published a
much-criticized Op-Ed by a United States senator calling for a military response to civic
unrest in American cities.
Cotton did not call for "military force against protesters in American cities." He spoke of
a "show of force," to rectify a situation a significant portion of the country saw as spiraling
out of control. It's an important distinction. Cotton was presenting one side of the most
important question on the most important issue of a critically important day in American
history.
As Cotton points out in the piece, he was advancing a view arguably held by a majority of
the country. A Morning Consult poll showed
58% of Americans either strongly or somewhat supported the idea of "calling in the U.S.
military to supplement city police forces." That survey included 40% of self-described
"liberals" and 37% of African-Americans. To declare a point of view held by that many people
not only not worthy of discussion, but so toxic that publication of it without even necessarily
agreeing requires dismissal, is a dramatic reversal for a newspaper that long cast itself as
the national paper of record.
Incidentally, that
same poll cited by Cotton showed that 73% of Americans described protecting property as
"very important," while an additional 16% considered it "somewhat important." This means the
Philadelphia Inquirer editor was fired for running a headline – "Buildings
matter, too" – that the poll said expressed a view held by 89% of the population,
including 64% of African-Americans.
(Would I have run the Inquirer headline? No. In the context of the moment, the use
of the word "matter" especially sounds like the paper is equating "Black lives" and
"buildings," an odious and indefensible comparison. But why not just make this case in a
rebuttal editorial? Make it a teaching moment? How can any editor operate knowing that airing
opinions shared by a majority of readers might cost his or her job?)
The main thing accomplished by removing those types of editorials from newspapers -- apart
from scaring the hell out of editors -- is to shield readers from knowledge of what a major
segment of American society is thinking.
It also guarantees that opinion writers and editors alike will shape views to avoid
upsetting colleagues, which means that instead of hearing what our differences are and how we
might address those issues, newspaper readers will instead be presented with page after page of
people professing to agree with one another. That's not agitation, that's misinformation.
The instinct to shield audiences from views or facts deemed politically uncomfortable has
been in evidence since Trump became a national phenomenon. We saw it when reporters told
audiences Hillary Clinton's small crowds were a "
wholly intentional " campaign decision. I listened to colleagues that summer of 2016 talk
about ignoring poll results, or anecdotes about Hillary's troubled campaign, on the grounds
that doing otherwise might "help Trump" (or, worse, be perceived that way).
Even if you embrace a wholly politically utilitarian vision of the news media – I
don't, but let's say – non-reporting of that "enthusiasm" story, or ignoring adverse poll
results, didn't help Hillary's campaign. I'd argue it more likely accomplished the opposite,
contributing to voter apathy by conveying the false impression that her victory was secure.
After the 2016 election, we began to see staff uprisings. In one case, publishers at the
Nation faced a revolt – from the Editor on down – after
articles by Aaron Mate
and Patrick Lawrence questioning the evidentiary basis for Russiagate claims was run.
Subsequent events, including the recent
declassification of congressional testimony , revealed that Mate especially was right to
point out that officials had no evidence for a Trump-Russia collusion case. It's precisely
because such unpopular views often turn out to be valid that we stress publishing and debating
them in the press.
In a related incident, the New Yorker ran an article about Glenn Greenwald's
Russiagate skepticism that quoted that same Nation editor, Joan Walsh, who had edited
Greenwald at Salon. She suggested to the New Yorker that Greenwald's
reservations were rooted in "disdain" for the Democratic Party, in part because of its
closeness to Wall Street, but also because of the " ascendance
of women and people of color ." The message was clear: even if you win a Pulitzer Prize,
you can be accused of racism for deviating from approved narratives, even on questions that
have nothing to do with race (the New Yorker piece also implied Greenwald's
intransigence on Russia was pathological and grounded in trauma from childhood).
In the case of Cotton, Times staffers protested on the grounds that " Running
this puts Black @NYTimes staff in danger ." Bennet's editorial decision was not merely
ill-considered, but literally life-threatening (note pundits in the space of a few weeks have
told us that
protesting during lockdowns and notprotesting during
lockdowns are both literally lethal). The Times first attempted to rectify the
situation by apologizing, adding a long
Editor's note to Cotton's piece that read, as so many recent "apologies" have, like a note
written by a hostage.
Editors begged forgiveness for not being more involved, for not thinking to urge Cotton to
sound less like Cotton ("Editors should have offered suggestions"), and for allowing rhetoric
that was "needlessly harsh and falls short of the thoughtful approach that advances useful
debate." That last line is sadly funny, in the context of an episode in which reporters were
seeking to pre-empt a debate rather than have one at all; of course, no one got the joke, since
a primary characteristic of the current political climate is a total absence of a sense of
humor in any direction.
As many guessed, the "apology" was not enough, and Bennet was whacked a day later
in a terse announcement.
His replacement, Kathleen Kingsbury, issued a staff directive essentially telling employees
they now had a veto over
anything that made them uncomfortable : "Anyone who sees any piece of Opinion journalism,
headlines, social posts, photos -- you name it -- that gives you the slightest pause, please
call or text me immediately."
All these episodes sent a signal to everyone in a business already shedding jobs at an
extraordinary rate that failure to toe certain editorial lines can and will result in the loss
of your job. Perhaps additionally, you could face a public shaming campaign in which you will
be denounced as a racist and rendered unemployable.
These tensions led to amazing contradictions in coverage. For all the
extraordinary/inexplicable scenes of police viciousness in recent weeks -- and there was a ton
of it, ranging from police slashing tires in Minneapolis,
to Buffalo officers knocking over an elderly man,
to Philadelphia
police attacking protesters -- there were also
12 deaths in the first nine days of protests, only one at the hands of a police officer
(involving a man who may or may not have been aiming a gun at police).
Looting in some communities has been so bad that people have been left without banks to cash
checks, or pharmacies to fill prescriptions; business owners have been wiped out ("
My life is gone ," commented one Philly store owner); a car dealership in San Leandro,
California saw
74 cars stolen in a single night. It isn't the whole story, but it's demonstrably true that
violence, arson, and rioting are occurring.
Even people who try to keep up with protest goals find themselves denounced the moment they
fail to submit to some new tenet of ever-evolving doctrine, via a surprisingly consistent
stream of retorts: fuck you, shut up, send money, do better, check yourself, I'm tired
and racist .
Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey, who argued for police reform and attempted to show solidarity
with protesters in his city, was shouted down after he refused to
commit to defunding the police. Protesters shouted "Get the fuck out!" at him, then chanted "
Shame !" and threw refuse, Game of Thrones-style , as he skulked out of the gathering.
Frey's "shame" was refusing to endorse a position polls show 65% of
Americans oppose , including 62% of Democrats, with just 15% of all people, and only 33% of
African-Americans, in support.
Each passing day sees more scenes that recall something closer to cult religion than
politics. White protesters in Floyd's Houston hometown
kneeling and praying to black residents for "forgiveness for years and years of racism" are
one thing, but what are we to make of white police in Cary, North Carolina, kneeling and
washing the feet of Black pastors? What about Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer kneeling
while dressed in "
African kente cloth scarves "?
There is symbolism here that goes beyond frustration with police or even with racism: these
are orgiastic, quasi-religious, and most of all, deeply weird scenes, and the press is too
paralyzed to wonder at it. In a business where the first job requirement was once the
willingness to ask tough questions, we've become afraid to ask obvious ones.
On CNN, Minneapolis City Council President Lisa Bender was asked a hypothetical question
about a future without police: "What if in the middle of the night, my home is broken into? Who
do I call?" When Bender, who is white, answered , "I know that comes from
a place of privilege," questions popped to mind. Does privilege mean one should let someone
break into one's home, or that one shouldn't ask that hypothetical question? (I was genuinely
confused). In any other situation, a media person pounces on a provocative response to dig out
its meaning, but an increasingly long list of words and topics are deemed too dangerous to
discuss.
The media in the last four years has devolved into a succession of moral manias. We are told
the Most Important Thing Ever is happening for days or weeks at a time, until subjects are
abruptly dropped and forgotten, but the tone of warlike emergency remains: from James Comey's
firing, to the deification of Robert Mueller, to the Brett Kavanaugh nomination, to the
democracy-imperiling threat to intelligence "whistleblowers," all those interminable months of
Ukrainegate hearings (while Covid-19 advanced), to fury at the death wish of lockdown
violators, to the sudden reversal on that same issue, etc.
It's been learned in these episodes we may freely misreport reality, so long as the
political goal is righteous. It was okay to publish the now-discredited Steele dossier, because
Trump is scum. MSNBC could put Michael Avenatti on live TV to air a gang rape allegation
without vetting, because who cared about Brett Kavanaugh – except press airing of that
wild story ended up being a crucial factor in convincing key swing voter Maine Senator Susan
Collins the anti-Kavanaugh campaign was a political hit job (the allegation illustrated, "why
the presumption of innocence is so important,"
she said ). Reporters who were anxious to prevent Kavanaugh's appointment, in other words,
ended up helping it happen through overzealousness.
There were no press calls for self-audits after those episodes, just as there won't be a few
weeks from now if Covid-19 cases spike, or a few months from now if Donald Trump wins
re-election successfully painting the Democrats as supporters of violent protest who want to
abolish police. No: press activism is limited to denouncing and shaming colleagues for
insufficient fealty to the cheap knockoff of bullying campus Marxism that passes for leftist
thought these days.
The traditional view of the press was never based on some contrived, mathematical notion of
"balance," i.e. five paragraphs of Republicans for every five paragraphs of Democrats. The
ideal instead was that we showed you everything we could see, good and bad, ugly and not,
trusting that a better-informed public would make better decisions. This vision of media
stressed accuracy, truth, and trust in the reader's judgment as the routes to positive social
change.
For all our infamous failings, journalists once had some toughness to them. We were supposed
to be willing to go to jail for sources we might not even like, and fly off to war zones or
disaster areas without question when editors asked. It was also once considered a virtue to
flout the disapproval of colleagues to fight for stories we believed in (Watergate, for
instance).
Today no one with a salary will stand up for colleagues like Lee Fang. Our brave
truth-tellers make great shows of shaking fists at our parody president , but not one of them
will talk honestly about the fear running through their own newsrooms. People depend on us to
tell them what we see, not what we think. What good are we if we're afraid to do it?
This is such an IMPORTANT story.
But it's not just happening in newsrooms, it's happening everywhere: college campuses,
corporations and the workplace, social media platforms, politics, you name it. These
ideologues are the Red Guard of a new Cultural Revolution. Their goal is power and their
method is leveraging progressive guilt. I think they are far, far more dangerous than
Donald Trump or anything going on with the right. Thank you Matt for writing about this!
163
Dazed and Confused Jun 13
Bravo for writing this Matt.
You could, of course, have written it without first establishing your bona fides as a trump
detractor. The problem you address has nothing to do with trump and would exist regardless
of who was in the white house. This doesn't mean there are no problems with trump, or that
he hasn't made a bad situation worse. But that is where we are today. Before anyone can
criticize the obviously insane ideological absurdities within the liberal/left wing press
they must first take a swing at trump in case anyone thinks criticism of the press is the
same thing as supporting trump. How sad.
People who post of Twitter are stupid by definition, but people who fire employees for
posting on Twitter are trying to replicate excesses of Stalinism (and, in way, McCarthysm) on a
farce level. As in Marx "history repeats: first as tragedy, the second as farce"
By classifying the (somewhat incorrect; Obama was elected not only because he was half black,
but also because he was half--CIA ;-) Twit below as the cry "fire" in crowded theater, we really
try to replay the atmosphere of Stalinist Russia on a new level.
Notable quotes:
"... Austin Symphony Trombonist Fired Over Racist Comments , The Violin Channel, June 1, 2020 ..."
Have you checked out the 1/2 black president swine flu H1N1, and EBOLA?
What has your 1/2 black president done for you??
The ONLY REASON he was elected was because he is 1/2 black.
People voted on racist principles, not on the real issues . The BLACKS are looting and
destroying their environment. They deserve what
they get. Playing the RACE CARD IS RACIST.
Symphony orchestra spokes-critter Anthony Corroa [ Email him
]announced the firing of Ms. Salas in the dreary schoolmarmish jargon of corporate wokeness:
This language is not reflective of who we are as an organization." And "there is no
place for hate within our organization."
"If none of us ever read a book that was "dangerous," had a friend who was "different," or
joined an organization that advocated "change," we would all be the kind of people Joe
McCarthy wants."
The President of Russia Vladimir Putin has taken the opportunity of the 75th anniversary
of the end of World War II to describe the build-up to the war, the diplomatic and military
considerations Russia took into account during that time, and the results of the allies'
victory.
His essay was published in multiple languages on the Website of the Kremlin:
The part with the Russian view of the behavior of various nation in the late 1930s is most
interesting. But this passage, related to the graphic above, is also very relevant:
The Soviet Union and the Red Army, no matter what anyone is trying to prove today, made the
main and crucial contribution to the defeat of Nazism.
...
This is a report of February 1945 on reparation from Germany by the Allied Commission on
Reparations headed by Ivan Maisky. The Commission's task was to define a formula according
to which defeated Germany would have to pay for the damages sustained by the victor powers.
The Commission concluded that "the number of soldier-days spent by Germany on the Soviet
front is at least 10 times higher than on all other allied fronts. The Soviet front also
had to handle four-fifths of German tanks and about two-thirds of German aircraft." On the
whole, the USSR accounted for about 75 percent of all military efforts undertaken by the
Anti-Hitler Coalition. During the war period, the Red Army "ground up" 626 divisions of the
Axis states, of which 508 were German.
On April 28, 1942, Franklin D. Roosevelt said in his address to the American nation:
"These Russian forces have destroyed and are destroying more armed power of our enemies
– troops, planes, tanks, and guns – than all the other United Nations put
together." Winston Churchill in his message to Joseph Stalin of September 27, 1944, wrote
that "it is the Russian army that tore the guts out of the German military machine "
Such an assessment has resonated throughout the world. Because these words are the great
truth, which no one doubted then. Almost 27 million Soviet citizens lost their lives on the
fronts, in German prisons, starved to death and were bombed, died in ghettos and furnaces
of the Nazi death camps. The USSR lost one in seven of its citizens, the UK lost one in
127, and the USA lost one in 320.
As a German and former officer who has read quite a bit about the war I agree with the
Russian view. It was the little acknowledged industrial power of the Soviet Union and the
remarkable dedication of the Red Army soldiers that defeated the German Wehrmacht.
At the end of his essay Putin defends the veto power of the five permanent members of the
United Nations Security Council. In his view it has prevented that another clash on a global
scale has happened since World War II ended. Putin rejects attempts to abolish that
system.
I have found no major flaw with the historic facts in the essay and recommend to read it
in full.
Posted by b at 17:07 UTC | Comments (22)
thanks for highlighting this b.... the graph at the top is very telling of how many people
remain fairly ignorant of the reality on the ground.. putins speech and text are well worth
the read... s and karlof1 posted a link on the open thread and some of us were talking about
it their.... i found putins comments on the UN especially interesting...
I wonder if the brainwashing going on in the usa about how bad the UN is, is another
example of americans being dumbed right down into believing the UN is useless? that is what
it looks like to me... some of us aren't buying that and i am glad to see putin make some
comments on that as well... thanks for highlighting this.. revisionist history seems to be a
speciality of some..
When I read here and in the article the quotes from Churchill and the "west" praising
Russia's conduct of the war against fascism I can't help but translate them into praise for
Hitler should he have won. British and US oligarchs were funding and supporting Hitler all
along, which is well documented. For the oligarchy it made little difference who won.
The strategy of the imperial oligarchy was to let all its potential competitors deplete
their resources then move in with its full power when the outcome had already been determined
and pray on their weakness. It worked as we see in the global imperial power of the Western
oligarchy as engineered by Roosevelt after the war which has ruled now for 75 years.
What Putin wrote already was common sense among historians, but it is good to see it becoming
more mainstream.
My theory about the USA trying to get the credit for defeating the Third Reich - even
though it has the victory against Japan (an empire that made the Third Reich look like Human
Rights lovers) - comes from the fact that the European Peninsula became the major theater of
the Cold War. The USA had then to create a narrative that could justify its supremacy over
Western Europe, and its attempts to "liberate" Eastern Europe.
Yes, the Korean War happened in the early 1950s, but Japan was secured, Soviet access to
warm water port in Asia was thus blocked and, after the Mao-Nixon pact of 1972, China (and
thus North Korea) was out of the Soviet sphere. That made the European Peninsula even more
important. Indeed, the threat of invading and occupying West Berlin was one of the greatest
leverages the Soviets had and used against the USA during the whole Cold War. This leverage
became even more pronounced after the Soviets successfully crushed the Hungarian
counter-revolution of 1956, which sobered up the CIA and the hampered the USG's ambitions on
absorbing Eastern Europe by propaganda and subversion warfare.
The most baffling news to me recently was when I found out that Poland invaded the CSSR
together with Hitler and occupied a part of the Czech Republic in March 1939 - and I went
through several decades of WW2 "education" just as everyone. Not even Wikipedia mentions the
Polish contribution to the invasion and occupation of the CSSR, which is very telling.
It sheds an entirely new light on the entire development right before WW2, in which Hitler
went all-in to give Poland something for the future return of Danzig. Poland took it, but
didn't realize that it was part of a deal, so Hitler activated Plan B. The process was
certainly aggressive and kicked the Czechs interests as a people/nation, but the overall plan
(I guess developed by Ribbentrop) makes a lot of sense. It is by far not irrational as it is
usually portrayed.
I read the article when it was posted (in full) on Southfront.
It is excellent. Detailed, accurate, insightful, as well as well composed and written.
I recommend that everyone who is able to do so read this article in its entirety.
I also fully agree with the position of Mr. Putin, as stated in his writing.
You are quite correct. All historians know that the role of the Soviet Union in the war was
decisive. When I was a child, growing up in British military circles, nobody troubled to deny
it, while the role of the United States was generally regarded as very minor.
I recall, passing through the Suez Canal on a troopship bound for Malaya, the immense
enthusiasm and loud cheering of the British troops for the crew of a Soviet destroyer,
parading on deck while at anchor in the sweetwater lake. It drove the senior officers mad but
the troops, mostly young working class conscripts, understood that the Red Army had saved
millions of British lives.
As b says, however, by far the most interesting part of Putin's summary is that outlining the
facts of the gyrating foreign policies of the United Kingdom in the 1930s.
Again most of what Putin relates is well known to honest historians. It used to be well
known-thanks largely to the work of the Left- that the well understood strategy of the
Tories, and most of the US business class, was to support a German invasion of the Soviet
Union. Which is why the Nazi economy rested so heavily on US capital- it was expected to pay
political as well as financial dividends by erasing the Communist threat (and, by implication
that of socialism too).
I saw not a single error in Putin's history. It coincides precisely with the analysis I
learned, as a young socialist, from German emigres. One of them, Hans Hess, who was a long
time director of an Art Gallery in the north of England, told us that he, at the time in
Paris, had greeted the news of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with relief. He understood that it
meant that the policy of appeasement had failed, and that the Soviet Union would survive and
prevail.
It needs to be understood that, before the US Cold War, based on the support it got from the
isolationist, ultra right wing Republicans who had never really warmed to the World War, the
view that Putin gives was widely shared by all 'patriotic' (anti collaborationist) political
currents in western Europe. The contempt with which Baldwin, Chamberlain and their ilk were
regarded in the UK used to be enormous- they were held to be little short of traitors.
Seventy years later they and their US equivalents, the Vichy supporters in France and Nazi
collaborators from all over Europe (including Mussolini's political heirs) dominate European
politics.
It is a badge of honour for Russians to be hated by these scum.
The Soviet Union put together a 20 part documentary, The Unknown War, with the assistance of
the U.S in 1978 to tell their part of the story. Mandatory watching for any history buffs, or
those who want to expand their horizons. An incredible 30 hours of footage from the Soviet
perspective. Narrated by Burt Lancaster.
When I was a history student, undergrad and grad, at University of Illinois in 1970s,
students of European history were taught exactly Putin's view. Students of American history
were taught the Hollywood view. The American side of the History department viewed the entire
faculty and student body on the European side as a pack of disloyal Communists. The European
side saw the American side as exactly what they were - schoolteachers and future
schoolteachers. Most of my old profs were glad to get out. Any profs known since retired
early as precisely this issue made the job impossible. Of course at U of I there was and
remains a large contingent of Eastern European descendants of Nazi collaborators who are very
vocal and completely immune to criticism. A protected class. Open display of Nazi regalia,
memorabilia, salutes, songs were always 100% approved because these are after all the victims
of Soviet oppression.
While it is true that numerous folks among the Anglo-American elites would be okay with a
German victory (particularly if it didn't involve the trashing of their own imperial
regimes), Churchill wasn't one of them. For all his odious aspects, this was a defining
characteristic of his as a British nationalist: he wouldn't countenance any compromise with
the Axis. In fact, it is safe to say that he played a very important role in keeping Britain
in the war and not making any sort of peace with Germany after the fall of France.
On the other hand, it is an absolute truth that Hitler and Mussolini were highly respected
among western capitalists who supported the military reinvigoration of the Third Reich.
Mussolini was treated with more favour, but Hitler was also seen positively, not least for
his racialist and racist views which coincided with those of the official Anglo-sphere.
It is interesting to see in Putin's essay confirmation that the roots of WW11 were the greedy
and inhumane attitudes of France and The UK to German reparations for WWI. Today we have The
UK France and the USA losing the war in Syria and now imposing sanctions on the Syrian
people. In Libya they have created chaos and the same bunch of war criminals do f--- all to
assist the country. I have read elsewhere that Churchill could have stopped WWII much earlier
and saved many lives' including the thousands killed in the Dresden firebombing, but wanted a
complete surrender from Germany rather than a conditional one and that the Japanese were
ready to surrender before the atomic bombs were dropped as the Soviet Army was poised to
invade Japan after cleaning up China. The USA needed a quick resolution and an extravagant
display of power to establish its global supremacy however so dropped the bombs anyway
killing hundreds of thousands of civilians.
All facts that are glossed over by most western publications.
It is disturbing that no Western leaders are attending the 75th anniversary celebrations of
the end of WWII in Moscow.
I am very grateful that at least one of the current super-powers is led by the humane,
diplomatic, non-empire building Vladimir Putin.
Victor@17, you cannot be blamed for wanting to add to the essay important details, but I
don't think the charge of revisionism is warranted. In the essay, Putin says this:
"...Stalin and his entourage, indeed, deserve many legitimate accusations. We remember the
crimes committed by the regime against its own people and the horror of mass repressions.
In other words, there are many things the Soviet leaders can be reproached for, but poor
understanding of the nature of external threats is not one of them..."
That's a pretty strong statement. Putin is making clear his essay focuses on
misrepresented aspects of Russia's involvement in the war. This is not a blanket endorsement
of all that took place, but a template for careful study of events and increased
understanding as documents pertaining to them become available.
As an American student with a class in "Soviet History" in the 1960's during the Cold War,
what President Putin said about the War is what I was taught at the time.
I don't know when things changed. Probably just Americans lack of knowledge of history and
belief in their exceptionalism.
We know Stzrok is all over it but I fear they are looking at taking him down and sparing the other traitors. Time will tell.
In my opinion everyone involved was equally complicit. WWG1WGA UK
Trey you didn't do ANYTHING about it!!!! ALL TALK!!!! You were just on these committees as a gate keeper to ask the questions
that would produce the pre-written responses. YOU ARE COMPROMISED! Everybody watching.... Trey Gowdy KNEW this was a hoax and
DID NOTHING!
Four years ago on June 15, 2016, a shadowy Internet persona calling itself "Guccifer 2.0"
appeared out of nowhere to claim credit for hacking emails from the Democratic National
Committee on behalf of WikiLeaks and implicate Russia by dropping "telltale" but synthetically
produced Russian "breadcrumbs" in his metadata.
Thanks largely to the corporate media, the highly damaging story actually found in those DNC
emails – namely, that the DNC had stacked the cards against Bernie Sanders in the party's
2016 primary – was successfully obscured .
The media was the message; and the message was that Russia had used G-2.0 to hack into the
DNC, interfering in the November 2016 election to help Donald Trump win.
Almost everybody still "knows" that – from the man or woman in the street to the
forlorn super sleuth, Special Counsel Robert Swan Mueller III, who actually based indictments
of Russian intelligence officers on Guccifer 2.0.
Blaming Russia was a magnificent distraction from the start and quickly became the
vogue.
The soil had already been cultivated for "Russiagate" by Democratic PR gems like Donald
Trump "kissing up" to former KGB officer Vladimir Putin and their "bromance" (bromides that
former President Barack Obama is still using). Four years ago today, "Russian meddling" was off
and running – on steroids – acquiring far more faux-reality than the evanescent
Guccifer 2.0 persona is likely to get.
Here's how it went down :
June 12: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange announced he had "emails related to Hillary
Clinton which are pending publication."
June 14: DNC contractor CrowdStrike tells the media that malware has been found on the
DNC server and claims there is evidence it was injected by Russians.
June 15: Guccifer 2.0 arises from nowhere; affirms the DNC/CrowdStrike allegations of the
day before; claims responsibility for hacking the DNC; claims to be a WikiLeaks source; and
posts a document that forensic examination shows was deliberately tainted with "Russian
fingerprints." This to "corroborate" claims made by CrowdStrike executives the day
before.
Adding to other signs of fakery, there is hard evidence that G-2.0 was operating mostly in
U.S. time zones and with local settings peculiar to a device configured for use within the US ,
as Tim Leonard reports here and here .)
Leonard is a software developer who started to catalog and archive evidence related to
Guccifer 2.0 in 2017 and has issued detailed reports on digital forensic discoveries made by
various independent researchers – as well as his own – over the past three years.
Leonard points out that WikiLeaks said it did not use any of the emails G2.0 sent it, though it
later published similar emails, opening the possibility that whoever created G2.0 knew what
WikiLeaks had and sent it duplicates with the Russian fingerprints .
As Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) told President Trump in a memorandum
of July 24, 2017, titled "Was the 'Russian Hack' an Inside Job?":
"We do not think that the June 12, 14, & 15 timing was pure coincidence. Rather, it
suggests the start of a pre-emptive move to associate Russia with anything WikiLeaks might
have been ready to publish and to 'show' that it came from a Russian hack."
We added this about Guccifer 2.0 at the time:
"The recent forensic studies fill in a critical gap. Why the FBI neglected to perform any
independent forensics on the original 'Guccifer 2.0' material remains a mystery – as
does the lack of any sign that the 'hand-picked analysts' from the FBI, CIA, and NSA, who
wrote the misnomered 'Intelligence Community' Assessment dated January 6, 2017, gave any
attention to forensics."
Guccifer 2.0 Seen As a Fraud
In our July 24, 2017 memorandum we also told President Trump that independent cyber
investigators and VIPs had determined "that the purported 'hack' of the DNC by Guccifer 2.0 was
not a hack, by Russia or anyone else. Rather it originated with a copy (onto an external
storage device – a thumb drive, for example) by an insider. Information was leaked to
implicate Russia. We do not know who or what the murky Guccifer 2.0 is. You may wish to ask the
FBI. " [Emphasis added.].
Right. Ask the FBI. At this stage, President Trump might have better luck asking Attorney
General William Barr, to whom the FBI is accountable – at least in theory. As for Barr,
VIPs informed him in a June 5, 2020
memorandum that the head of CrowdStrike had admitted under oath on Dec. 5, 2017 that
CrowdStrike has no concrete evidence that the DNC emails published by WikiLeaks on July 22,
2016 were hacked – by Russia or by anyone else. [Emphasis added.] This important
revelation has so far escaped attention in the Russia-Russia-Russia "mainstream" media
(surprise, surprise, surprise!).
Back to the Birth of G-2
It boggles the mind that so few Americans could see Russiagate for the farce it was. Most of
the blame, I suppose, rests on a thoroughly complicit Establishment media. Recall: Assange's
announcement on June 12, 2016 that he had Hillary Clinton-related emails came just six weeks
before the Democratic convention. I could almost hear the cry go up from the DNC: Houston, We
Have a Problem!
Here's how bad the problem for the Democrats was. The DNC emails eventually published by
WikiLeaks on July 22, 2016, just three days before the Democratic convention, had been stolen
on May 23 and 25. This would have given the DNC time to learn that the stolen material included
documents showing how the DNC and Clinton campaign had manipulated the primaries and created a
host of other indignities, such that Sanders' chances of winning the nomination amounted to
those of a snowball's chance in the netherworld.
To say this was an embarrassment would be the understatement of 2016. Worse still, given the
documentary nature of the emails and WikiLeaks' enviable track record for accuracy, there would
be no way to challenge their authenticity. Nevertheless, with the media in full support of the
DNC and Clinton, however, it turned out to be a piece of cake to divert attention from the
content of the emails to the "act of war" (per John McCain) that the Russian "cyber attack" was
said to represent .
The outcome speaks as much to the lack of sophistication on the part of American TV
watchers, as it does to the sophistication of the Democrats-media complicity and cover-up. How
come so few could figure out what was going down?
It was not hard for some experienced observers to sniff a rat. Among the first to speak out
was fellow Consortium News columnist Patrick Lawrence, who immediately saw through the
Magnificent Diversion. I do not know if he fancies duck hunting, but he shot the Russiagate
canard quite dead – well before the Democratic convention was over.
Magnificent Diversion
In late July 2016, Lawrence was sickened, as he watched what he immediately recognized as a
well planned, highly significant deflection. The Clinton-friendly media was excoriating Russia
for "hacking" DNC emails and was glossing over what the emails showed ; namely, that the
Clinton Dems had pretty much stolen the nomination from Sanders.
It was already clear even then that the Democrats, with invaluable help from intelligence
leaks and other prepping to the media, had made good use of those six weeks between Assange's
announcement that he had emails "related to Hillary Clinton" and the opening of the
convention.
The media was primed to castigate the Russians for "hacking," while taking a prime role in
the deflection. It was a liminal event of historic significance, as we now know. The
"Magnificent Diversion" worked like a charm – and then it grew like Topsy.
Lawrence said he had "fire in the belly" on the morning of July 25 as the Democratic
convention began and wrote what follows pretty much "in one long, furious exhale" within 12
hours of when the media started really pushing the "the Russians-did-it"
narrative.
Below is a slightly shortened text of his
article :
"Now wait a minute, all you upper-case "D" Democrats. A flood light suddenly shines on your
party apparatus, revealing its grossly corrupt machinations to fix the primary process and sink
the Sanders campaign, and within a day you are on about the evil Russians having hacked into
your computers to sabotage our elections
Is this a joke? Are you kidding? Is nothing beneath your dignity? Is this how lowly you rate
the intelligence of American voters?
Clowns. Subversives. Do you know who you remind me of? I will tell you: Nixon, in his
famously red-baiting campaign – a disgusting episode – during his first run for the
Senate, in 1950. Your political tricks are as transparent and anti-democratic as his, it is
perfectly fair to say.
I confess to a heated reaction to events since last Friday [July 22] among the Democrats,
specifically in the Democratic National Committee. I should briefly explain
The Sanders people have long charged that the DNC has had its fingers on the scale, as one
of them put it the other day, in favor of Hillary Clinton's nomination. The prints were
everywhere – many those of Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who has repeatedly been accused of
anti-Sanders bias. Schultz, do not forget, co-chaired Clinton's 2008 campaign against Barack
Obama. That would be enough to disqualify her as the DNC's chair in any society that takes
ethics seriously, but it is not enough in our great country. Chairwoman she has been for the
past five years.
Last Friday WikiLeaks published nearly 20,000 DNC email messages providing abundant proof
that Sanders and his staff were right all along. The worst of these, involving senior DNC
officers, proposed Nixon-esque smears having to do with everything from ineptitude within the
Sanders campaign to Sanders as a Jew in name only and an atheist by conviction.
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Wasserman fell from grace on Monday. Other than this, Democrats from President Obama to
Clinton and numerous others atop the party's power structure have had nothing to say, as in
nothing, about this unforgivable breach. They have, rather, been full of praise for Wasserman
Schultz. Brad Marshall, the D.N.C.'s chief financial officer, now tries to deny that his
Jew-baiting remark referred to Sanders. Good luck, Brad: Bernie is the only Jew in the
room.
The caker came on Sunday, when Robby Mook, Clinton's campaign manager, appeared on ABC's
"This Week" and CNN's "State of the Union" to assert that the D.N.C.'s mail was hacked "by the
Russians for the purpose of helping Donald Trump." He knows this – knows it in a matter
of 24 hours – because "experts" – experts he will never name – have told him
so.
What's disturbing to us is that experts are telling us that Russian state actors broke into
the DNC, stole these emails, and other experts are now saying that Russians are releasing these
emails for the purpose of helping Donald Trump.
Is that what disturbs you, Robby? Interesting. Unsubstantiated hocus-pocus, not the
implications of these events for the integrity of Democratic nominations and the American
political process? The latter is the more pressing topic, Robby. You are far too long on
anonymous experts for my taste, Robby. And what kind of expert, now that I think of it, is able
to report to you as to the intentions of Russian hackers – assuming for a sec that this
concocted narrative has substance?
Making lemonade out of a lemon, the Clinton campaign now goes for a twofer. Watch as it
advances the Russians-did-it thesis on the basis of nothing, then shoots the messenger, then
associates Trump with its own mess – and, finally, gets to ignore the nature of its
transgression (which any paying-attention person must consider grave).
Preposterous, readers. Join me, please, in having absolutely none of it. There is no
"Russian actor" at the bottom of this swamp, to put my position bluntly. You will never, ever
be offered persuasive evidence otherwise.
Reluctantly, I credit the Clinton campaign and the DNC with reading American paranoia well
enough such that they may make this junk stick. In a clear sign the entire crowd-control
machine is up and running, The New York Times had a long, unprofessional piece about Russian
culprits in its Monday editions. It followed Mook's lead faithfully: not one properly supported
fact, not one identified "expert," and more conditional verbs than you've had hot dinners
– everything cast as "could," "might," "appears," "would," "seems," "may." Nothing, once
again, as to the very serious implications of this affair for the American political
process.
Now comes the law. The FBI just announced that it will investigate – no, not the DNC's
fraudulent practices (which surely breach statutes), but "those who pose a threat in
cyberspace." it is the invocation of the Russians that sends me over the edge. My bones grow
weary
We must take the last few days' events as a signal of what Clinton's policy toward Russia
will look like should she prevail in November. Turning her party's latest disgrace into an
occasion for another round of Russophobia is mere preface, but in it you can read her
commitment to the new crusade.
Trump, to make this work, must be blamed for his willingness to negotiate with Moscow. This
is now among his sins. Got that? Anyone who says he will talk to the Russians has transgressed
the American code. Does this not make Hillary Clinton more than a touch Nixonian?
I am developing nitrogen bends from watching the American political spectacle. One can
hardly tell up from down. Which way for a breath of air?"
A year later Lawrence interviewed several of us VIPs, including our two former NSA technical
directors and on Aug. 9, 2017 published an
article for The Nation titled, "A New Report Raises Big Questions About Last Year's DNC
Hack."
Lawrence wrote, "Former NSA experts, now members of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for
Sanity (VIPs), say it wasn't a hack at all, but a leak – an inside job by someone with
access to the DNC's system."
And so it was. But, sadly, that cut across the grain of the acceptable Russia-gate narrative
at The Nation at the time. Its staff, seriously struck by the HWHW (Hillary Would Have Won)
virus, rose up in rebellion. A short time later, there was no more room at The Nation for his
independent-minded writing.
Drop-Hammer , 2 hours ago
His name was (((Seth Rich))).
zoomie92 , 1 hour ago
Direct USB download to chip or portable HD was the only way to get those download speed
shown on the file metadata. This has been proven in multiple independent ways. But the press
is filled with ******* retards - and so is the country.
Franko , 1 hour ago
Rest in Peace Mr Seth.
I believe many US officials have enough and want to tell the others about this.
Question:were they should be go to spread the news?To which country before been
assasinated?
To end like Julian Assange or like Snowden?
belogical , 2 hours ago
...Gucifer had much less to do with this than the Obama admin. They were using the
intelligence community for no good and as their crimes became visible they had to commit
bigger and bigger crimes to cover them up. In the end a large part of the DOJ, FBI and Obama
admin should be held accountable for this, but when you get this high they likely won't. You
can already see Lindsey Graham of the deep state finally holding hearing to spin the
narrative before the Durham probe becomes public. Unfortunate but only a few will get their
hands slapped and the true person, Obama who deserve to be prosecuted will likely skate.
PedroS , 2 hours ago
Crowdstrike. The owners should be in jail for their role.
Slaytheist , 2 hours ago
Crowdstrike IS Guccifer.
They were ordered by the criminal DNC org to cover the fact that the data was downloaded
internally, in order to hide the connection to the Podesta/Clinton ordered hit on person who
did it - Seth Rich.
Weedlord Bonerhitler , 3 hours ago
The computer of a DNC operative named Warren Flood was used to disseminate the Guccifer
2.0 disinfo tranche. Adam Carter had the analysis IIRC.
Giant Meteor , 3 hours ago
Always good to hear from Ray!
philipat , 39 minutes ago
Tick tock, still no indictments and soon the campaign will be in full swing so that
everything will be attacked as "political". Is Durham done?
They gaslighted the whole nation. Amazing achievement. In other words, they are a real criminal gang, a mafia. No questions about it.
This is Nixon impeachment level staff. This are people that brought us Lybia, Syria: this senile Creepy Joe.
Saagar Enjeti blasts former President Obama after it was revealed in transcripts he was the
person who told then-deputy attorney general Sally Yates about Mike Flynn's intercepted phone
call with the Russian ambassador, Joe Biden responds to Flynn claims on Good Morning
America.
"I know nothing about those moves to investigate Flynn." "These documents clearly outline that you were in a meeting at a specific
time specifically about that." "OH! I'm sorry! I thought you asked if I was INVOLVED IN IT!"
The word is "entrapment" - Years ago, one of the officers in the investigations squad said to me, "How can you claim to be
better than them, if you break the law to catch 'em?" - Now I understand what he was saying.
It brings this very curious information that I wasn't aware of:
On May 15, the US Department of the Treasury released Treasury International Capital (TIC)
data for March 2020. It showed that total foreign ownership of Treasuries dropped by $256.6
billion to $6.81 trillion.
I already knew there was a race to the Renminbi since China recovered from the first wave
of the pandemic (it is mentioned in at least two op-pieces in the Asia Times), but I didn't
know there was a correspondent race from the USD. Let's remember: in 2008, there was a race
to the USD; the USD became stronger than ever with that crisis, and America's dominance in
the financial sector strengthened, not weakened.
Now it may be different. The USD is getting weaker, not stronger. Faith in the USA is
weaning.
Also there's this nice little piece, very poetic, whose only value is in the fact that it
was written by an American who loves his country and served in the Army:
@ Posted by: juliania | Jun 15 2020 22:55 utc | 61
What will become of "Putin's Russia" is a very interesting topic.
Pepe Escobar's interview with Karaganov made it look like Russia's plan is to serve as
some kind of leader of the "non-aligned" countries in a future China-USA bipolar world order.
I found it too vague, could mean anything.
However, there's another, much more interesting, phenomenon: the rise of some right-wing
intellectuals from Russia and the USA who are trying to revive what we call nowadays as
"paleoconservatism". They are the Martyanovs, Dugins, Korybkos the guys who write for Unz and
The Saker, the Russia Insider team around there.
Those "new paleoconservatives" differentiate themselves in the sense that they really try
very hard to be intellectuals -- that is, they do not adopt the irrational methodology of the
typical far-right/neofacism, they abhor the neocons/neoliberals, they abhor the so-called
"woke left/cultural marxists/pluralists/SJWs" (which they frequently associate, if not
equate, to the neoliberals), they believe in some kind of a concept of race or racially
determined culture based on geography and climate, they certainly abhor scientific socialism
(some of them even, under absurd and extremely dumbed down arguments, directly stating Marx's
theory was wrong) but they also abhor Nazism - albeit for reasons that are not, let's say,
"orthodox". They are also against imperialism as the USA is practicing right now, but not
against "self-defense" imperialism, that is, the line is blurry.
But the most important factor that unites this group is their blind faith in Christianism.
They somehow believe that if you fuse capitalism (which, for many of them is not even a
system, but human nature itself) with Christian values (it doesn't need to be Christian
religion per se, you don't need to be a practicing Christian), you somehow get the perfect
mix between man's animal side (capitalism) and spiritual side (Christianism). It's like your
traditional post-war social-democracy, with the difference that they put Christianism in
socialism's place. As a result, you go back to the good ol' times, more or less in the 1950s,
where everything was, allegedly, "in their place".
This obsession with Christianism makes me, jokingly, to call this coterie as the
"Neobyzantines" - a bizarre postmodern chimera born from the degeneration of late stage
capitalism.
But this is the boring part. The cool part about the Neobyzantines is the fact that they
have a geopolitical policy. What's this policy? You guessed it right: they want a Christian
confederation composed of the entire Northern Atlantic (NATO countries)... plus Russia. This,
the Neobyzantines say, will save Christianism (and the correspondent white race) from
subjugation and hegemony of the socialist Yellows (some of them also have a racial-based
theory about why socialism/communism naturally occurs in East Asia; for some of them, South
Korea and Japan are even communist themselves already).
We know Putin was raised as a Neobyzantine. He's an Ocidentalist that believed in the
concept of an European civilization. That's why, in my opinion, he plays such a good sport
with the Orthodox Church, as it is a living fossil of the times of Peter the Great etc. etc.
However, as time passed, he became increasingly disillusioned with the USA and the EU, and
the ties were definitely broken with the invasion and partition of the Ukraine in 2014. His
policies, therefore, clearly became more Eurasianist, but that certainly was the result of
necessity, not free will.
Is Putin may be converting himself to "Neobyzantism"? Will Neobyzantism really become a
thing, or will it just be thrown to the dustbin of History, as was many other ideologies of
the past of which only a Historian knows nowadays?
re: neo-Byzanyines. Clever. And there may be something to that idea. Certainly the general
flavor of Christian conservatism you describe holds some real currency among the national
security types. However, despite ideological commonality across borders, I think it is
clearly nationalist and not internationalist.
The more theatrical "paleo" versions stand out, if only for being one of the few cohesive
alternatives to neoliberalism (socialism and socdem being sadly moribund). But if you dial
down the drama and take away the contrarian personalities, then pan-nationalist Christian
conservatism (and for that matter, the Islamic or Hindu analogs) can be integrated into
neoliberalism too. I don't see why not.
Considering the post-millennial generations may well end up in a Byzantium of some kind in
some decades, this is worth following up on.
Posted by: vk | Jun 15 2020 23:35 utc | 66 Will Neobyzantism really become a thing, or will
it just be thrown to the dustbin of History, as was many other ideologies of the past of
which only a Historian knows nowadays?
I've noticed that trend as well - the rise of the Russian Orthodox Church and the rise of
conservatism in Russia. I see it reflected in the attitudes on the Crosstalk show that I used
to watch regularly.
I agree that trying to resurrect Christianity is a major error. It will just lead to even
greater anti-intellectualism and irrational belief systems, and possibly even eventually into
a "theocracy" - hardly conducive to freedom. As a rabid atheist myself, I despise all of
this.
I think that, if we take it from your approach, the problem with the neobyzantines is more
related to the fact that they can't accept being juniors to the "yellows" (i.e. a non-white,
non-Christian people) than with Chinese-style socialism. They are like the reverse Chicoms in
this sense (and, if that's indeed the case, they are very different than the American
Bannonist far-right).
The Bannonists (I think Bannon himself coin his ideology as "Neopopulism" or something
like that) believe in the reverse case: it is good that the Chinese are to hegemonize the
world in the 21st Century - as long as they do so in a capitalist form, not in a socialist
one, that is, without the CCP at the helm.
Indeed, neoliberalism is very malleable, and for one very simple reason: it is not an
ideology per se, but a doctrine. Doctrines are not as much incisive as ideologies, but they
have the advantage of being very adaptable and quickly digestible. For example: who, at the
beginning of the 1970s, would think that - of all places - neoliberalism would find its most
fertile ground in Latin America? Theoretically, Latin America should be the
anti-neoliberalism area of the world par excellence, as it was the subcontinent that suffered
the most (except, maybe, Africa - but Africa was razed to the ground, there's no material
there to any doctrine or ideology to sprout) under the hands of American neocolonialism. But
here we are: the lack of a strong revolutionary movement in Latin America gave birth to a
strong inferiority complex, which created a political vacuum in which neoliberalism fitted
perfectly (Mexico, then Ménem's "Peripheral Realism", then FHC's "we must be the last
of the top" in Brazil).
Neoliberalism's success story in Latin America is a warning example for historians to
never stick to a sociological formula either for trying to explain History or to try to
predict History. There's always the human factor, that "x" factor that only good old method
of studying History can decipher.
--//--
@ Posted by: Richard Steven Hack | Jun 16 2020 1:53 utc | 80
I use the term "Neobyzantine" as some kind of pejorative joke (my humor is very dark). I
don't think those who I would classify as "neobyzantine" feed any illusions about the real
Byzantine Empire - which, as a Christian Empire, was an absolute farce: it was plagued with
schisms after schism inside Christianism that castigated them with endless drama, exiles,
executions, dead emperors and civil wars. No Byzantine citizen ever believed Christianity
would rise someday to become a world religion: it was under the hands of the Western European
medieval lords and their descendants that it became so (conquests of America, Africa, Oceania
and SE Asia).
It is a myth Christianism ever brought unity to the Roman Empire, but it may be true that
the early Christian emperors (from Constantine the Great onward) thought it would. If
Constantine and his successors really thought that, then they were to be proven completely
wrong - as today's schism between Catholics, Protestants and Orthodox are to serve as living
evidence.
I think that, if we take it from your approach, the problem with the neobyzantines is
more related to the fact that they can't accept being juniors to the "yellows"
Well, not sure how that fits into the byzantine analogy, but I do think it is a central
unifying theme of conservatives in the west who are taking an anti-neoliberal position.
I think the position toward capitalism is something between nuanced and contradictory, or
at least very heterogenous. There is plenty of awareness of its ills of a state captive to
private $ and corps. Yet the ideal of free enterprise is celebrated without reservation, with
a real hope for markets that could in theory become non dysfunctional. So no, IMO
anti-neoliberal conservatives in the US are not socialist in the slightest (except the
military has universal health and education). Basically very sympathetic to the "libertarian"
side of it. But that may be unique to the US vs the rest of the "west". I mean this is all
stereotyping very much, everyone has their own emphasis. Also the economic idea are maybe not
so important to the byzantium / historical analogy, we might happen to prioritize them higher
ourselves.
Where does the Chinese socialism fit in? That is contradictory too. One has to make a
judgment of capitalism with Chinese characteristics, and also Socialism with Chinese
characteristics. Neither of those is a direct translation of the European versions of them.
You also have a strong and intimate state power, which the nationalists might actually be
jealous of but I find off-putting. I do think the commonality there, for the would-be
neobyzantines is, again, simple national power.
Kindof like Bannonites, except he represents just one version of this. Specifically, his
version of a conservative anti-neoliberal position is especially uninteresting IMO. And I
dont take most of what he says at face value anyhow. Just a particularly unattractive
nationalist IMO... Finally, I don't think he would make a good byzantine, but maybe I am
romanticizing the idea in my head a little.
Yes, I agree: the Bannonites are certainly not Neobyzantines. They are more like the
traditional fascists: radical in form, conservative in essence. They are like agents of chaos
- a domesticated chaos, of course.
The unifying factor of the Neobyzantines, in my opinion, is the fact that they believe a
universalized (forced upon the masses) Christian moral code can save capitalism. In their
opinion, it is greed by the rich and the depravity of the leftists that is the problem.
They believe that the end of the USSR and the slow rise of China (plus, I guess, the
failure of the West in Christianizing the Middle East and Asia) put an end or proved wrong
the existence of economic systems. In this sense, they lowkey agree with Fukuyama in essence,
albeit kot in form. This would also make the Neobyzantines part of the Postmodern
constellation of ideologies, which preach absolute relativism.
--//--
@ Posted by: A User | Jun 16 2020 3:36 utc | 87
Yes, if you think about it, the American Revolution was a petite-bourgoeis revolution: it
was just a bunch of small planters not wanting to pay taxes.
Thomas Jefferson certainly didn't imagine he was building the world's future sole
superpower. None of the founding fathers imagined that.
However, the American Revolution was important in the sense it was the first European
colony to achieve independency without consent of it metropolis. It showed the other colonies
it was possible. We know the American case would never be replicated, but it inspired the
colonised a world without metropoleis was possible, and opened way for the end of the old
colonial system in 1945.
Vk #66
I don't understand your ridiculous concern that their will be some grand alliance of the
"White Christian" world (the U$, Russia, and the NATO/EU puppets) along with some assorted
Non-White, Non-Christian, countries (India, Japan, South Korea, etc.), against "Yellow
Socialist China". In reality the only "Prominent" person who has entertained this
anachronistic lunacy is the wannabe fascist Drunkard known as Steve Bannon, who has no real
impact on anything beyond grifting illiterate Trump supporters (The last I heard of him, he
was drunkenly proclaiming the creation of a "New Federal State of China's" with some former
Chinese "Communist" billionaire on a dingy boat in New York Harbor, LMAO". In reality most of
the "Neobyzantine" fools you mentioned in both the U$ and Russia, are big advocates of the
phony idea that China is a "rising", "Socialist", superpower that is an alternative to the
Unipolar, U$-led, world order, as evidenced that the "Unz Review" and "The Saker" are filled
with articles by Pro-China hacks such as Pepe Escobar. Personally, I view the "Neobyzantines"
as a bunch of hacks and grifters who in Russia seek to brainwash the population into
believing that the USSR was an evil "Judeo-Bolshevik" abomination while Putin's Russia is an
"Orthodox Christian" paradise and rising Superpower, that is In alliance with the "good
Socialist" China, in a "New Cold War" with the U$, all while covering up the fact that
Putin's Russia is a utter joke compared to the USSR, due to its population wallowing in
poverty and degeneracy (so much for those Orthodox values,
LOL), and it losing half its territory and all its Geopolitical alliances and ideological
support (due to its rejection of Marxism-Leninism). In the U$, these quacks appeal to a very
narrow group of disenfranchised U$ right-wingers who seem to believe that Russia and China
represent some Conservative utopia, LOL. In conclusion, these people are much less
significant then you make them out to be and just serve as mere propagandists for the phony
New Cold War" of the U$ vs. Russia and China which like I said in my previous post is Fake
wrestling to confuse and distract the populations of all three countries as they are
oppressed by the same Neoliberal policies that all three governments implement.
"... Firstly your definition of 'deep state' is too limited, it includes the bureaucracy, much of the judiciary, banks and other financial institutions, and the major political parties. It is not restricted only to the intelligence agencies. It is not a US-specific issue, but a global one. For the deep state exists everywhere, and is often more powerful in commonwealth countries, such as here in apathetic Australia. ..."
"... When the CIA kills Kennedy you know you've got problems... And whilst agents in the CIA probably did not pull the trigger - their "assets" did... If you don't believe me spare me your tiresome ignorant replies and go and do some research... ..."
"... " We were warned about the Military Industrial Complex, Sadly the Government Media Complex, has done way more damage, and will be much harder to overcome" ~ Dr. Mike Savage 2008 ..."
Sky News Australia In this Special Investigation Sky News speaks to former spies, politicians and investigative journalists to
uncover whether US President Donald Trump is really at war with "unelected Deep State operatives who defy the voters".
George Soros, The clintons, The royal family, The Rothschild's, the Federal reserve as a whole, The modern Democrat, cia, fbi,
nsa, Facebook, Google, not to mention all the faceless unelected bureaucrats who create and push policies that impact our every
day lives. This, my lads, is the deep state. They run our world and get away with whatever they want until someone in their circle
loses their use (Epstein)
The Cabal owns the US intelligence agencies, the media, and Hollywood. That's how all these big name corrupted figure heads
aren't in prison for their crimes. The Clinton email scandal is a prime example. This is much bigger than the USA... it's effects
are world wide.
The Four Stages of Ideological Subversion: 1 - Demoralization 2 - Destabilization 3 - Crisis 4 - Normalization Are you not
entertained? The above is "their" roadmap. Learn what it means and spread this far & wide, as that will be the means by which
to end this.
President JFK on April 17, 1961: "Today no war has been declared--and however fierce the struggle may be, it may never be declared
in the traditional fashion. Our way of life is under attack. Yet no war has been declared, no borders have been crossed by marching
troops, no missiles have been fired. If the press is awaiting a declaration of war before it imposes the self-discipline of combat
conditions, then I can only say that no war ever posed a greater threat to our security. If you are awaiting a finding of 'clear
and present danger,' then I can only say that the danger has never been more clear and its presence has never been more imminent.
It requires a change in outlook, a change in tactics, a change in missions--by the government, by the people, by every businessman
or labor leader, and by every newspaper. For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies
primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence--on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of
elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted
vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic,
intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations. Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried,
not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed.
It conducts the Cold War, in short, with a war-time discipline no democracy would ever hope or wish to match." thoughts: by saying,
'conducts the Cold War' did he directly call out the CIA???
Most troubling now it is known about the deep state: is Trump a double agent just another puppet just giving the appearance
of working against the deep state?
Thank you Australians for having rhe courage to speak out for us Patriots!!! We know the Deep State Cabal retaliated with the
fires. We love you guys from 💖💗
Well done Skynews. THE DEEP STATE IS REAL. I woke up 10+ years ago. Turn off the TV for 1-2 years to study and awaken. Make
a start on learning with David ickes Videos and books. WWG1 WGA
Before I go and pass this on to as many as I can get to follow it I just wanted to commend those that produced this and I hope
that it gets fuller dissemination because it is such a rare truth in such a time of utter deceit by most all of the MSM (Main
Stream Media) that this country I reside in uses to supposedly inform the American people ...what a crock! Thank You, Australia
for making this available (but beware, the Five Eyes are always very active in related matters to this) ... This has been welcome
confirmation of what many of us have known and attempted to tell others for about 5 years now. Sadly, I doubt that has or will
help very much, The System is so corrupted from top to bottom ... IMnsHO and E.
Firstly your definition of 'deep state' is too limited, it includes the bureaucracy, much of the judiciary, banks and other
financial institutions, and the major political parties. It is not restricted only to the intelligence agencies. It is not a US-specific
issue, but a global one. For the deep state exists everywhere, and is often more powerful in commonwealth countries, such as here
in apathetic Australia.
When the CIA kills Kennedy you know you've got problems... And whilst agents in the CIA probably did not pull the trigger -
their "assets" did... If you don't believe me spare me your tiresome ignorant replies and go and do some research...
" We were warned about the Military Industrial Complex, Sadly the Government Media Complex, has done way more damage, and will
be much harder to overcome" ~ Dr. Mike Savage 2008
14:20 I met a guy from Canada in the early
2000s, a telephone technician, told me about when he worked at the time for the government telephone company in the early 80s.
He was given a really strange job one day, to go do some work in the USA. Some kind of repair work that required someone with
experience and know-how, but apparently someone from out-of-country, he guesses, because there certainly must have been many people
in the USA who could have done it, he figured. He flew down to oregon, then was driven for hours out into the middle of nowhere
in navada, he said. They came to a small building that was surrounded by fencing etc. Nothing interesting. Nothing else around,
he said, as far as he could see. They went in, and pretty much all that was there was an elevator. They went in, and he said,
he didn't know how many floors down it went, or how fast it was moving, but seemed to take quite sometime, he figured about 8
stories down, was his guess, but he didn't know. He was astounded to see that there was telephone recording stuff in there about
the size of two football-fields. He said they were recording everything. He said, even at that time, it was all digital, but they
didn't have the capacity to record everything, so it was set up to monitor phone calls, and if any key words were spoken, it would
start recording, and of course it would record all phone calls at certain numbers. "So, who knows what they've got in there today,
he said" back in the early 2000s. So, imagine what they've got there today, in the 2020s. I didn't know whether or not to believe
this story, until I saw a doc about all of the telephone recording tapes they have in storage, rotting away, which were used to
record everyone's phone calls onto magnetic tape. Literally tonnes and tonnes of tapes, just sitting there in storage now, from
the 1970s, the pre-digital days. They've always been doing it. They're just much better at it today than ever. Now they can tell
who you are by your voice, your cadence, your intonation, etc. and record not just a call here and there, but everything.
"The greatest trick the devil ever pulled is convincing the world he didnt exist" Credit the --- Usual Suspects ---- That's
the playbook of the "Deep State"
The last guy (denying the deep state's existence) was lying. When someone shakes their head when talking in the affirmative
you can be 100% sure it is a lie (micro expressions 101).
Bitcoin Blockchain
1 day ago
1950–1953: Korean War United States (as part of the United Nations) and South Korea vs. North Korea and Communist China
1960–1975: Vietnam War United States and South Vietnam vs. North Vietnam
1961: Bay of Pigs Invasion United States vs. Cuba
1983: Grenada United States intervention
1989: U.S.Invasion of Panama United States vs. Panama
1990–1991: Persian Gulf War United States and Coalition Forces vs. Iraq
1995–1996: Intervention in Bosnia and Herzegovina United States as part of NATO acted as peacekeepers in former Yugoslavia
2001–present: Invasion of Afghanistan United States and Coalition Forces vs. the Taliban regime in Afghanistan to fight terrorism
2003–2011: Invasion of Iraq The United States and Coalition Forces vs. Iraq
2004–present: War in Northwest Pakistan United States vs. Pakistan, mainly drone attacks
2007–present: Somalia and Northeastern Kenya United States and Coalition forces vs. al-Shabaab militants
2009–2016: Operation Ocean Shield (Indian Ocean) NATO allies vs. Somali pirates
2011: Intervention in Libya U.S. and NATO allies vs. Libya
2011–2017: Lord's Resistance Army U.S. and allies against the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda
2014–2017: U.S.-led Intervention in Iraq U.S. and coalition forces against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria
2014–present: U.S.-led intervention in Syria U.S. and coalition forces against al-Qaeda, ISIS, and Syria
2015–present: Yemeni Civil War Saudi-led coalition and the U.S., France, and Kingdom against the Houthi rebels, Supreme Political Council in Yemen, and allies
2015–present: U.S. intervention in Libya
Deep State is the "Wealthy Oligarchy", an "International Mafia" who controls the Central Bank (a privacy owned banking system
which controls the worlds currencies). The Wealthy Oligarchy "aka Deep State" controls most all Democratic countries, and controls
the International Media. In the United States, both the Republican and Democrat parties are controlled by the Wealthy Oligarchy
aka Deep State.
A beautifully crafted and delivered discourse, impressive! As a Londoner I have become increasingly interested in Sky News
Australia, you are a breath of fresh air and common sense in this world of ever growing liberal media hysteria!
I have to laugh at the people, including our supposedly unbiased and intelligent media, who said the Russia thing was the truth
when it was nothing but a conspiracy theory. Everything else was a conspiacy theory according to the dems ans the mainstream media..
Wall Street and the banksters control the CIA. One can imagine the ramifications of control of the world via the moneyed interests
backed by James Bond and the Green Berets, the latter, under control of the CIA.
Deep State Powers have been messing with your USA long before your War of Independence . Your Founding Fathers knew , why do
you think they wrote your Constitution that way. Now everyone is always crying about something but fail to realize you gave your
freedoms away over time . The Deep State never left it just disguised itself and continued to regain control under a new face
or ideaology. Follow the money . "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."― Edmund Burke
After the John F. Kennedy assassination the took full power,those who are in power now are the descendants of the criminals
who did it,some of their sons just have a different last name but they are the same family,like George Bush and John Kerry are
cousins but different last name and the list goes and goes.
Council on Foreign Relation is more Deep State than CIA and FBI . The two worked for CFR. CFR tel president whom to appoint
to what positions. Nixon got a list of 22 deep state candidates for top US position and all were hired. Obama appointed 11 from
the list. Kissinger is behind the scenes strings puller also.
Thanks Sky and Peter for bringing this to the mainstream attention, it really is time! Wished you had aired John Kiriakou,s
other claims off child sex trafficking to the elites which has been corroborated by so many other sources now and is the grossest
deformity of this deep state which you can see footage of trump talking about. I am amazed and greatful to see Trump has done
more about this than all other presidents in the last 20 years. Lets end this group. All we need to do is shine the light on them
The CIA are only an intelligence and operations functioning part of the deep state its much more complex and larger than just
the CIA. The British empire controls the deep state they always have it is just a modern version of the old East India Company
controlled by the same families with the same ideology.
https://theduran.com/the-origins-of-the-deep-state-in-north-america/
It's funny how for decades "the people" were crying on their knees about how bad every president was n how corrupt n controlled
they were. Now you've got a president with no special interest groups publicly calling out the deep state n ur still bitching.
U know you've got someone representing the people when the cia n fbi r out to get him. In 50 years trump will be looked back at
with the likes of Washington, Lincoln n jfk. Once the msm smear campaign is out of everyone's brain.
When they start spying on people within the United States and when they used in National Defense authorization act that gave
them a lot of power since after 911 to give them more power now they have Homeland Security which is the next biggest threat to
the United States it can be abused and some of these people have a higher security clearance than the president.... they're not
under control the NSA is one of them you don't mention in here either one is about the more that you don't even know about that
they don't have names are acronyms that we knew about that's why the American people have been blindsided by this overtime they've
been giving all this money to do things... allocation of money they gathered to do this and now Congress itself doesn't know temperature
of Schumer when you caught him saying to see I can get back at you three ways to Sunday I mean he's got some words in this saying
to the president of usa donald trump... basically threatening the President right there.. you can see it's alive and well when
Congress is immune from prosecution from anything or anyone....
"I think in light of all of the things going on, and you know what I mean by that: the fake news, the Comeys of the world,
all of the bad things that went on, it's called the swamp you know what I did," he asked. "A big favor. I caught the swamp. I
caught them all. Let's see what happens. Nobody else could have done that but me. I caught all of this corruption that was going
on and nobody else could have done it."
there is no big secret that CIA is deeply involved in drug smuggling operations...i remember interview with ex marine colonel
who said that he was indirectly involved in such operations in panama...
Attempting to infiltrate News rooms😆😅😂 all those faces you see in the MSM are all working for Cia. In 1967 one of the 3
letter agencys bragged about having a reporter working in 1 of the 3 letter news channel!
Wow this was really good. It's funny you showed a clip from abc of kouriakow and it reminded me how much the news in america
has been propagandized and just fake. I'm 38 and it's sad that these days the news is unpatriotic. Well most . Ty sky news Australia
Why no mention of what facilitates the surveilance? Telecom infrastructure is a nations nerve system and the powergrid its
bloodsystem. Who controls them? That is where you find the head of the deep state!
What people aren't aware of is that Facebook YouTube Twitter Instagram Google maps and Google search are all NSA CIA and DIA
creations and CEO's are only highly paid operatives who are not the creators but the face of a product and what better way to
collect all of your information is by you giving it to them
More please? A subject for another installment regarding the Deep State could be Banking, Federal Reserves and Fiat currencies.
Later, another video could be Russia's success at expelling the Deep State in 2000 after it took them over (for a 2nd time) in
1991. Be cognizant, the Deep State initially had for a short time from 1917 via 'it's' 'Bolshivics,' orchestrated the creation
of the Soviet Union through the Bolshivic take over of Russia from it's independence minded and Soveriegn Czarist led Eastern
Orthodox State. Now, President Trump is preventing a similar Deep State take-over by Intelligence agencies, Corporations and elected
political thugs as bad as Leon Trotsky and V I Lennin were to the Russian Czar. The Soviets soon after their (1917) take-over
went Rogue on the Deep State and therefore the Soviet Union was independent until The Deep State orchestrated it's downfall and
anexation of it's substantial wealth and some territory (1991). More, more, more please Sky News, this video was great!
Amazing, Sky News is the ONLY TV News Service in Australia Trying to deliver true news. Australia's ABC news are CIA Deep State
Shills and propagandists - Sarah Ferguson Especially - see her totally CIA scripted Four Corners Report on the Russia Hoax. John
Gantz IS a Deep State Operative Liar.
Isnt it time to see TERM LIMITS in Co gress and to realign our school education to teach the real history of these unites states?
End the control of Congress and watch the agencies fall in step with OUR Conatitution. No one should ever be allowed in Congress
or any other elected position of trust if they are not a devout Constitutionalist. Anyone who takes the oath to see w the people
and fails to so so should be charged with TREASON and removed immediately. Is there a DEEP STATE? Damn right there is and has
been for many decades. Where is our sovereignty? Where is the wealth of a capitalist nation? Why so much poverty and welfare and
why do communists and socialist get away with damaging our country, state or communities. Yes, there has been a deep state filled
with criminals who all need to be charged, tried and executed for TREASON.
The CIA and Australias Federal police have One main Job/activity to feed their Populations with Propaganda & Lies to give them
their Thoughts & Opinions on Everything using their psyOps through MSM News & Programming...you prolly beLIEve this informative
News Story as well. : (
These people denying a deep state with such straight faces are psychopaths. Unwittingly, or maybe not, Schumer made liars of
them with his comment to Maddow
President Trump is correct. He knows exactly what's going on. The 3 letter agencies are up to no good and work against the
fabric of our nation's founding fathers. It's despicable behavior. Just one example is John Brennan (CIA Director) and Barack
Hussein Obama's Terror Tuesdays. Read all about it on the internet now before it's permanently removed. Thank you for creating
this video.
When was the last time we ever witnessed an American President openly abused continually attacked over manufactured news treated
with absolutely no respect for him or the office his family unfairly attacked and misrepresented etc, etc, that's right never,
which proves he threatens the existence of the deep state as discussed. He should declare Martial Law Hang the consequences and
remove every single deep state player everywhere. Foreign influence? read Israel.
People are so fixated on trumps outspoken Sometimes outrageous demeanor which in my opinion it's just being really honest and
yes he can Be rude at times but when you look at the facts He's the only one that has gone against the deep state! those are the
real devils dressed up in sheep's clothing! Wake up!
You are missing the point. It goes further then intelligence agency working against the people. It's the ultra rich literally
trillionaires like the rothchilds that control the cia etc. That is who trump is fighting. The globalists line gates soros etc.
The national security establishment does represent the actual government of dual "double
government". And it is not unaccountable to, and unsupervised by, the elected branches of
government. Instead it controls them and is able to stage palace coups to remove "unacceptable"
Presidents like was the case with JFK, Nixon and Trump.
For them is are occupied country and then behave like real occuplers.
Notable quotes:
"... In Trumpian fashion, Kirkpatrick then goes on to warn Americans about the danger of an unaccountable "deep state" in foreign policy that is immune to popular pressures. ..."
"... She says that, no, "it has become more important than ever that the experts who conduct foreign policy on our behalf be subject to the direction of and control of the people." ..."
"... She points out that because America had for much of the twentieth century assumed global responsibilities, our foreign policy elites had developed "distinctive views" that are different from those of the electorate. ..."
"... foreign policy elites "grew accustomed to thinking of the United States as having boundless resources and purposes . . . which transcended the preferences of voters and apparent American interests . . . and eventually developed a globalist attitude." ..."
"... In support of Kirkpatrick's concern, Tufts professor Michael Glennon has more recently argued that the national security establishment has now become so "distinctive" in their separation from our constitutional processes that they represent one wing of a now "double government" that is not unaccountable to, and unsupervised by, the popular branches of government. The Russiagate investigations and the attempt to disable the Trump presidency, aided by many in the establishment, would appear to confirm Kirkpatrick's warning that foreign policy elites want no part of the electoral preferences of voting Americans. ..."
"... Kirkpatrick died in 2006 and had, like many neoconservatives, evolved from a Humphrey Democrat into a member of the GOP establishment. With William Bennett and Jack Kemp, in 1993 she cofounded a neoconservative group, Empower America, which took a very aggressive stance against militant Islam after the 9/11 attacks. However, she was quite ambivalent about the invasion of Iraq and was quoted in The Economist ..."
Kirkpatrick's essay begins by insisting that, because of world events since 1939, America
has given to foreign affairs "an unnatural focus." Now in 1990, she says, the nation can turn
its attention to domestic concerns that are more important because "a good society is defined
not by its foreign policy but its internal qualities . . . by the relations among its citizens,
the kind of character nurtured, and the quality of life lived." She says unabashedly that
"there is no mystical American 'mission' or purposes to be 'found' independently of the U.S.
Constitution and government."
One cannot fail to notice that this perspective is precisely the opposite of George W.
Bush's in his second inauguration. According to Bush, America's post –Cold War purpose
was to follow our "deepest beliefs" by acting to "support the growth of democratic movements
and institutions in every nation and culture." For three decades neoconservative foreign policy
has revolved around "mystical" beliefs about America's mission in the world that are unmoored
from the actual Constitution.
In Trumpian fashion, Kirkpatrick then goes on to warn Americans about the danger of an
unaccountable "deep state" in foreign policy that is immune to popular pressures. She
rejects emphatically the views of some elitists who argue that foreign policy is a uniquely
esoteric and specialized discipline and must be cushioned from populism. She says that, no,
"it has become more important than ever that the experts who conduct foreign policy on our
behalf be subject to the direction of and control of the people."
She points out that because America had for much of the twentieth century assumed global
responsibilities, our foreign policy elites had developed "distinctive views" that are
different from those of the electorate. Again, in Trumpian fashion, she argued that
foreign policy elites "grew accustomed to thinking of the United States as having boundless
resources and purposes . . . which transcended the preferences of voters and apparent American
interests . . . and eventually developed a globalist attitude."
In support of Kirkpatrick's concern, Tufts professor Michael Glennon has more recently
argued
that the national security establishment has now become so "distinctive" in their separation
from our constitutional processes that they represent one wing of a now "double government"
that is not unaccountable to, and unsupervised by, the popular branches of government. The
Russiagate investigations and the attempt to disable the Trump presidency, aided by many in the
establishment, would appear to confirm Kirkpatrick's warning that foreign policy elites want no
part of the electoral preferences of voting Americans.
Kirkpatrick concludes her essay with thoughts on "What should we do?" and "What we should
not do." Remarkably, her first recommendation is to negotiate better trade deals. These deals
should give the U.S. "fair access" to foreign markets while offering "foreign businesses no
better than fair access to U.S. markets." Next, she considered the promotion of democracy
around the world and, on this subject, she took the John Quincy Adams
position : that "Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be
unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be." However, she insisted:
"it is not within the United States' power to democratize the world."
When Kirkpatrick goes on to discuss America's post –Cold War alliances, she makes
clear that she is advocating, quite simply, an America First foreign policy. Regarding the
future of the NATO alliance, a sacrosanct pillar of the American foreign policy establishment,
she argued that "the United States should not try to manage the balance of power in Europe."
Likewise, we should be humble about what we can accomplish in Eastern Europe and the former
Soviet Union: "Any notion that the United States can manage the changes in that huge,
multinational, developing society is grandiose." Finally, with regard to Asia: "Our concern
with Japan should above all be with its trading practices vis-à-vis the United States.
We should not spend money protecting an affluent Japan, though a continuing alliance is
entirely appropriate."
She famously concludes her essay by making the plea for the United States to become "a
normal country in a normal time" and "to give up the dubious benefits of superpower status and
become again an unusually successful, open American republic."
Kirkpatrick became Ronald Reagan's United Nations ambassador because her 1979
article in Commentary , "Dictatorships and Double Standards," caught the eye of
the future president. In that article, she sensibly points out that authoritarian governments
that are allies of the United States should not be kicked to the curb because they are not free
and open democracies. The path to democracy is a long and perilous one, and nations without
republican traditions cannot be expected to make the transition overnight. Regarding the
world's oldest democracy, she remarked: "In Britain, the road from the Magna Carta to the Act
of Settlement, to the great Reform Bills of 1832, 1867, and 1885, took seven centuries to
traverse."
While at the time neoconservatives opportunistically embraced her for this position as a
tactic to fight the Cold War, the current foreign policy establishment would consider
Kirkpatrick's argument to be beyond the bounds of decent conversation, as it would lend itself
to an accommodation with authoritarian Russia as a counterweight to totalitarian China.
Kirkpatrick died in 2006 and had, like many neoconservatives, evolved from a Humphrey
Democrat into a member of the GOP establishment. With William Bennett and Jack Kemp, in 1993
she cofounded a neoconservative group, Empower America, which took a very aggressive stance
against militant Islam after the 9/11 attacks. However, she was quite ambivalent about the
invasion of Iraq and was quoted in The Economist as saying that George W.
Bush was "a bit too interventionist for my taste" and that Bush's brand of moral imperialism is
not "taken seriously anywhere outside a few places in Washington, DC."
The fact that Kirkpatrick's recommendations in her 1990 essay coincide with some of Donald
Trump's positions in the 2016 campaign (if not with many of his actual actions as president)
make her views, ipso facto, not serious. The foreign policy establishment gives something like
pariah status to arguments that we should negotiate better trade deals, reconsider our Cold War
alliances and, most especially, subject American foreign policy to popular preferences. If she
were alive today and were making the arguments she made in 1990, then she would be an outcast.
That a formidable intellectual like Kirkpatrick would be dismissed in such a fashion is a sign
of how obtuse our foreign policy debate has become.
William S. Smith is Senior Research Fellow and Managing Director of the Center for the
Study of Statesmanship at The Catholic University of America. His recent book, Democracy
and Imperialism , is from the University of Michigan Press. He studied political philosophy
under Professor Jeane Kirkpatrick as an undergraduate at Georgetown University.
The author is neoliberal apologists, who use idiotic cliché about democratization to
cover neoliberal wolfs teens and appetite. Neoliberalism means impoverishment of countries like
Russia. so Putin actions are logical: he defends interests of Russian people against
international financial oligarchy. Experience of countries like Ukraine and Libya are vivid
examples of what financial oligarchy can do to the countries which do not resists conversion into
debt slaves.
McFaul of course was a color revolution specialist, who tried to unleash White color
revolution in 2011-2012. But he was actually a gift to Russians, as he proved to be a complete
and utter idiot, not a skillful diplomat. After EuroMaydan in 2014 neoliberal fifth column in
Russia was decimated and seized to exist as a political force.
"Russians," says Stent, "have at best been reluctant Europeans" (45). They need and admire
Western technology but managed to miss the Reformation, the Renaissance, and the Enlightenment,
and never developed a middle class and a democracy. Putin himself is a "wary European," who
fails "to understand that Europe's successful modernization was a product of both a free market
economy and a democratic political system based on the rule of law." More appealing to him is
China's model of "authoritarian modernization" (52).
Moreover, he is suspicious of the expansion of the European Union, its Eastern Partnership
Initiative (EPI, 2009), and its overtures for former Soviet states to join the EPI or EU.
Disputes over the signing of such an Association Agreement with Ukraine in 2013 exploded into
the Maidan movement, the annexation of Crimea by Russia, the war in eastern Ukraine, and
economic sanctions against Russia. China soon replaced Europe as Russia's largest trading
partner. Instead of President Mikhail Gorbachev's dream of a 'common European home,' Russia has
become the major opponent of European unity, a promoter of Brexit, and an ally of the
anti-liberal axis of 'take-our-country-back' right-wing populist and neo-authoritarian European
parties and governments. Putin is indiscriminate about cultivating allies and has established
friendly relations with a rogues' gallery of strongmen and authoritarian politicians that
includes among others Marine Le Pen, Victor Orban, Silvio Berlusconi, Recep Tayyip
Erdoğan, Bashar al-Assad, Benjamin Netanyahu, Mohammad bin Salman, Narendra Modi, and
Donald J. Trump. But at the same time he has worked to establish ties with moderate and
centrist leaders like Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel.
As scholar and practitioner, Angela Stent is at her best when elaborating the specificities
of Russian dealings with friends and foes. Her chapter on NATO expansion -- "The 'Main
Opponent'" (Putin's words) -- is a judicious and critical review of policies that redivided
Europe and propelled Russia through the logic of a security dilemma to re-engage in offensive
strategies from rearmament to hybrid warfare. Yet while acknowledging that Russia has genuine
security concerns about NATO's moves eastward, she reverts to the notion that Russian
ideological constants are key to the conflict between East and West.
Russia has not, over the past quarter century, been willing to accept the rules of the
international order that the West hoped it would. Those included acknowledging the sovereignty
and territorial integrity of the post-Soviet states and supporting a liberal world order that
respects the right to self-determination. Russia continues to view the drivers of international
politics largely through a nineteenth-century prism. Spheres of influence are more important
than the individual rights and sovereignty of smaller countries. It is virtually impossible to
reconcile the Western and Russian understanding of sovereignty. For Putin, what counts is power
and scale, not rules (137-138).
Stent does not share the default view of some of her fellow Putinologists, among them Masha
Gessen and Michael McFaul, who see almost every malevolent deed of Russian policy as stemming
from one grim personality. She argues instead that Putin and more generally Kremlin policies
are the effusion of something deeply Russian. Like the work of many other analysts of Soviet
and Russian foreign policy behavior, however, the book often neglects or underplays the
intersubjective effects on Kremlin actions, the ways in which initiatives by the more powerful
West precipitate reactions by the East -- NATO expansion and European and American recognition
of Kosovo independence being among the clearest examples.
Losing the West, much of East Central Europe, the Baltic countries, Georgia, and Ukraine,
Russia turned eastward toward Eurasia, to the former South of the USSR, a region that Stent
argues "has been an essential component of [Putin's] main goal restoring Russia as a great
power" (142). He wants, as did Yeltsin, the West to recognize Russia's "sphere of privileged
interests" in the so-called "Near Abroad," where it has "civilizational commonalities" with
former Soviet states (144-145). To the Kremlin the Near Abroad is contested with the West, and
losing it would severely jeopardize Russia's security. Military arrangements, like the
Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), and economic collaboration in the Eurasian
Economic Union (EEU) have bound several republics, notably Belarus, Armenia, and Kazakhstan, to
Russia. In recent years several states, notably Moldova, have gravitated closer to Moscow,
while others, like Turkestan, maintain a guarded distance.
Substantive chapters review Russian relations with Ukraine, China, Japan, the Middle East,
and the United States. Putin's greatest success came in Syria, where he took advantage of the
Obama and Trump administrations' ambivalence about their role in the civil war. Putin sided
with Assad and, along with Iran and its proxies, propelled the brutal dictator to victory over
myriad rebels. For a time he solidified relations with Erdoğan's Turkey, but by 2019 the
two potential allies were at loggerheads both in Syria and Libya. Playing a relatively weak
hand vis-à-vis Europe, China, and the United States, Putin managed to deploy limited
resources to become the principal extra-regional player in the conflict-riven Near East. Given
Trump's reluctance to go to war or remain on the front line, Putin deftly filled the vacuum
left by American confusion and incompetence.
Reading Putin's World , one can see how Putin, successful in some places, bogged down
in others, and threatened in still others, has both increased Russian prestige and extended his
influence while deepening Russia's economic and diplomatic isolation and elevating global
suspicions as to its nefarious actions, from poisonings to election interference. Benefiting
from the gullibility and ignorance of the occupant of the White House, he can sit back and
observe the chaos launched by the Trump administration. But unpredictability should not calm a
realist's mind, and Putin is forced to deal with the contradictory cascade of attitudes and
activities emanating from Washington: friendly personal relations between the two leaders, the
series of sanctions placed on the Russians, the bizarre actions of Trump and his cronies in
Ukraine, unilateral abrogation of arms controls, withdrawal from the Paris Accords on climate
control and the Iranian nuclear agreement, the precipitate withdrawal from Syria, and the
impulsive assassination of high Iranian and Iraqi officials.
Stent ends the book with an assessment of how Russia's strongman has reasserted his
country's role on the world stage while at the same time worsening relations with the West and
facing a renewed arms race and the resurrection of harsh Cold War-like representations of his
country. "Putin has achieved his major objectives . The world can no longer ignore [Russia]. It
is respected -- and feared" (346). In much of the world he is a more attractive figure than his
"partner" Trump. Stent is confident that the West can work with Putin, but "the West has to
recognize what Russia is -- and not what it would like Russia to be" (356). Russia's views of
the world and of its interests have to be taken seriously, even when the West is unwilling to
accede to or compromise with them; "Engagement must be realistic and flexible" (361). Expect
the unexpected. After all, you are dealing with a wiry, wily judo master.
Putin Says US Social Unrest Show "Deep-Seated Internal Crises" by Tyler Durden Sun, 06/14/2020 - 11:51
The Rubin Report's Pavel Zarubin interviewed Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday, where
he said social unrest across the US reveals the deep internal crisis in the country, reported
TASS News .
"What has happened [in the US] is the manifestation of some deep domestic crises," Putin
said, noting that this crisis was festering well before President Trump took office. "When he
won, and his victory was absolutely obvious and democratic, the defeated party invented
all sorts of bogus stories just to call into question his legitimacy," he added.
Putin pointed out the biggest problem of the US political system is the parties and their
special interest of people behind the scenes.
"It seems to me that the problem is that group party interests, in this case, are placed
above the interests of the entire society and the interests of people," Putin said.
While commenting on domestic issues, Putin said his government has been combating the virus
with minimal losses. He said that was not the case in the US, adding the failures of the US'
"management system" led to poor response and widespread destruction. He said the best strategy
has been Moscow's top-down approach as all parts of government operated as a single team.
Putin further expanded on the US social unrest by linking it to the pandemic: "It shows
there are problems. Things connected to the fight with the
coronavirus have shone a spotlight on general problems."
He criticized the lack of strong leadership of virus response efforts, saying that "the
president says we need to do such-and-such, but the governor somewhere tells him where to
go."
In Russia, "I doubt anyone in the government or the regions would say 'we're not going to do
what the government says, what the president says, we think it's wrong,'" Putin said.
Putin believes American democracy will work to end the twin crisis: public health and social
unrest, which have engulfed the country lately.
"I expect that the fundamental basis of US democracy will still allow and help this
country to end this crisis period where it certainly finds itself," he said.
Heck US aircraft carriers used to visit HK quite often until recently, even after the hand
over. They anchored in the harbor while thousands of sailors headed to the Wanchai bars,
although after the hand over they anchored in a less visible part of the harbor. China didn't
have a problem.
I doubt China sweats a couple of aircraft carriers when we have large bases in Japan and
South Korea, not to mention Guam.
False conflicts with China, North Korea, Russia and Iran are needed to keep support for
MIC and Security State which cost 1.2 trillion a year.
If the US were serious about confronting China there would be sanctions and not tariffs.
China and US are partners. We sell them chips that they put in our electronics and sell to
us, so we can spy on our people, and they test out our social control technology on their own
people. They clothe us, sell cheap API's for drugs and they invest in treasuries and other US
assets and we educate their young talent and give them access to our research and technology
and fund some of their own research and share numerous patents
The case of Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn is inevitably heading toward
its conclusion. While the presiding district judge, Emmet Sullivan , is trying to keep it
going, there's only so much he can do, chiefly because there's nobody left to prosecute the
case after the Department of Justice (DOJ) dropped it
last month .
In the latest developments, the District of Columbia appeals court set a hearing in the case
for tomorrow (June 12), while the DOJ's solicitor general himself, as well as five of his
deputies, urged the court to order the lower-court judge to accept the case dismissal.
"I cannot overstate how big of a deal this is," commented appellate attorney John Reeves,
former assistant Missouri attorney general, in a series of tweets on June
1 .
Personal involvement of the solicitor general "is highly unusual and rare," he said .
" Unusual " seems a fitting euphemism for the Flynn case, which has been filled with
contradictions, falsehoods, apparent blunders, extraordinary moves, and strange
coincidences.
The Epoch Times has so far counted 85 such instances.
Flynn, former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency during the Obama administration and
former national security adviser to President Donald Trump, pleaded guilty on Dec. 1, 2017, to
one count of lying to FBI agents during a Jan. 24, 2017, interview.
The FBI officially opened an investigation on Flynn on Aug. 16, 2016, based on a suspicion
that he "may wittingly or unwittingly be involved in activity on behalf of the Russian
Federation which may constitute a federal crime or threat to the national security."
What activity? The case was opened under a broader investigation into whether the Trump 2016
presidential campaign conspired with Russia to steal emails from the Democratic National
Committee and release them through Wikileaks.
The bureau learned from the Australian government that its then-ambassador to the UK,
Alexander Downer, spoke with Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos, who "suggested" that the
campaign received "some kind of suggestion" that Russia could help it by anonymously releasing
some information damaging to Trump's opponent, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
The FBI didn't know what Papadopoulos actually said or what he was talking about.
Officially, this information was used by the FBI to comb through its databases for
information on people associated with the Trump campaign and open investigations on four
individuals supposedly linked to Russia.
Because Flynn's paid speaking engagements in years past included some for Russian companies
-- one for Kaspersky Lab and one for RT television in Moscow -- the FBI decided to open a
counterintelligence investigation on the retired three-star general.
But the FBI seemed to have trouble getting its story straight.
1. Comey
Contradiction
The FBI officially opened the four individual cases in mid-August 2016.
But former FBI Director James Comey testified to Congress that he was
briefed already "at the end of July that the FBI had opened counterintelligence investigations
of four individuals to see if there was a connection between any of those four and the Russian
effort."
2. Unlikely Target
Suspecting a man with patriotic bona fides of Flynn's caliber of having colluded with Russia
based on two speaking engagements seemed particularly unusual.
Flynn's command of military intelligence to aid American troops in combat has earned him
great praise.
"Mike Flynn's impact on the nation's War on Terror probably trumps any other single person,"
wrote then-Brig. Gen. John Mulholland in Flynn's
2007 performance review .
Mulholland went as far as calling Flynn "easily the best intelligence professional of any
service serving today."
Flynn was driven out of his post in 2014 after he repeatedly embarrassed President Barack
Obama by insisting, contrary to the administration's official stance, that a resurgence of
Islamic terrorism in the Middle East was imminent.
Two months after his resignation, the rise of ISIS proved him right.
3. A Name for the
Spotlight
The Russia probe was titled "Crossfire Hurricane" (CH), and Flynn was given the code name
"Crossfire Razor."
This was unusual, according to Marc Ruskin, a 27-year veteran of the FBI and an Epoch Times
contributor.
Rank-and-file agents would never pick a name like this, he told The Epoch Times in a
previous interview.
"They would mock it as being overly dramatic," he said.
4. Snooping During
Briefing
The day after opening the Flynn case, the FBI participated in a strategic intelligence
briefing given to Donald Trump and two of his advisers by the Office of the Director of
National Intelligence.
Because Flynn was to be present, the FBI took the extraordinary step of sending in
supervisory special agent Joe Pientka to collect intel on Flynn for the investigation. Pientka
was to assess Flynn's "overall mannerisms" and listen for "any kind of admission" that could be
used by the bureau, the DOJ's inspector general (IG) said in a Dec. 9 report on the CH
investigation ( pdf ).
The IG raised the question of whether snooping on officials the FBI is supposed to brief
could have a "chilling effect" on any such intelligence briefings in the future.
5.
Dossier Coincidence
The FBI directly targeted four Trump campaign aides, opening cases on three of them --
Papadopoulos, Carter Page, and Paul Manafort -- on Aug. 10, 2016. The IG never received an
explanation for why the Flynn case was opened later. Incidentally, Page and Manafort had
already been mentioned in the infamous Steele dossier since July 28, 2016. Flynn's name,
however, was only mentioned in the dossier report dated Aug. 10, 2016.
The dossier, which drummed up unsubstantiated allegations of a Trump–Russia
conspiracy, was being spread to the media, the FBI, the State Department, the DOJ, and Congress
by operatives funded by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
One of the CH case agents, Stephen Somma, happened to have a longstanding relationship with
Stephan Halper, a Cambridge professor who was also a longtime political operative and FBI
informant.
Somma and another agent met with Halper on Aug. 11, 2016, and learned that, in a stunning
coincidence, Halper was already in contact with Page, had known Manafort for years, and "had
been previously acquainted with Michael Flynn," the IG report said
The CH team "couldn't believe [their] luck," Somma told the IG.
7. Halper's Story
Halper was accused of spreading rumors, starting in late 2016, that Flynn had an affair with
a Russian woman while visiting the UK in 2014 for a dinner hosted by the Cambridge Intelligence
Seminar co-convened at the time by Halper.
An "established" FBI informant told the CH team that the woman jumped in a cab with Flynn
after the dinner and joined him for a train ride to London (
pdf ).
She said Halper was the one spreading the rumor to the media and the FBI, even though he
didn't actually attend the event. She unsuccessfully
sued Halper for defamation in May 2019.
Somehow, Steele also became privy to the rumor and
shared it with Adam Kramer , an aide to the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). Kramer
testified to Congress that he was in regular contact with Steele between Nov. 28, 2016, and
early March 2017.
8. Unmasking
The names of Americans are normally masked -- that is, replaced with generic names -- in
foreign intelligence reports. Many senior government officials have the authority to ask for
names to be unmasked for various reasons, such as to understand the intelligence. There were
dozens of unmasking requests for reports related to Flynn, between Nov. 8, 2016, and Jan. 31,
2017 (
pdf ). The number of unmasking requests has been described as alarming by some
commentators, while others described it as routine.
9. Non-masking
There are also indications that Flynn's name was never masked in summaries or
transcripts of his calls with then-Russian Ambassador to the United States Sergey Kislyak
on Dec. 29, 2016, and in the following days. FBI leaders were distributing the documents to top
Obama officials. Even President Barack Obama himself was briefed on them on or before Jan. 5,
2017.
10. Who Briefed Obama?
Comey testified to Congress that it was then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper
who briefed Obama on the Flynn–Kislyak calls (
pdf ). Clapper, however, denied this to Congress.
11. 'Unusual'
Obama's national security adviser, Susan Rice, memorialized a Jan. 5, 2017, meeting with
Obama, Comey, and then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates . Rice wrote in an email to
herself that Obama asked Comey whether he should withhold any Russia-related information from
the incoming administration and from Flynn in particular.
"Potentially," Comey replied, adding that "the level of communication" between Flynn and
Kislyak was "unusual,"
she wrote . There's no indication Flynn was talking to Kislyak unusually often. He was at
the time responsible for laying the groundwork for Trump's foreign relations as president and
was frequently on the phone with foreign dignitaries.
12. Late Memo
Rice's memo itself is unusual. She emailed it to herself more than two weeks after the
meeting took place, on the day of Trump's inauguration.
13. Strzok Intervention
On Jan. 4, the FBI was already in the process of closing Flynn's case. But the bureau's
counterintelligence operations head at the time, Peter Strzok,
scrambled to keep it open , noting that the "7th floor," meaning the FBI's top leadership,
was involved.
14. McCabe–Comey Contradiction
Comey testified that he authorized the Flynn case "to be closed at the end of December,
beginning of January."
"I don't think a closure would have been soon," he said.
15. Shaky Theory
FBI documents and Comey's testimony indicate that the
bureau kept the Flynn case open solely based on a legal theory that he may have violated
the Logan Act, even though the DOJ made clear that such charges wouldn't pass muster in court
-- nobody has ever been successfully prosecuted for a Logan Act violation and the government
last tried in 1852.
The law prohibits private citizens from engaging in diplomacy on their own with countries
the United States is in dispute with. Not only have questions been raised as to whether the law
would pass today's constitutional scrutiny, which places greater emphasis on First Amendment
protections, but also there's no indication the law was conceived to apply to a
president-elect's incoming top adviser.
16. Call Leaks
In early January, information about Flynn's calls with Kislyak was leaked to then-Washington
Post reporter Adam Entous. He said there was a discussion at the paper about what to do with
the information, as it would have been expected of Flynn, given his position, to talk to
Kislyak (
pdf ). In the end, the paper
ran a column on Jan. 12 by David Ignatius speculating that Flynn may have violated the
Logan Act if he discussed fresh sanctions imposed on Russia during the calls.
Obama imposed the sanctions on Russian entities, including its intelligence services, on
Dec. 29, 2016. At the same time, he also expelled 35 Russian intelligence officers.
17.
Denial
The calls "had nothing whatsoever to do with the sanctions," incoming Vice President Mike
Pence told CBS News on Jan. 15, 2017, in an interview the network almost wholly dedicated to
questions about Russia.
This wasn't completely true.
Kislyak did bring up the issue of sanctions during the call, though Flynn didn't engage him
in a conversation on the topic.
Flynn raised the issue of the expulsions, which is technically a separate issue from
sanctions, though both were announced at the same time. He asked for "cool heads to prevail"
and for Russia to only respond reciprocally, as further escalation into a "tit for tat" could
lead to the countries shutting down each other's embassies, complicating future
diplomacy.
18. 'Blackmailable'
Yates said she wanted to inform Trump's White House about the Kislyak calls as Russia would
know that what Pence said wasn't true and could thus blackmail Flynn with the information,
according to an Aug. 15, 2017, FBI report from her interview
with the Mueller team.
According to Ruskin, this was hardly a blackmail situation, which ordinarily involves
serious compromising information, such as evidence of bribery or sexual misconduct.
Comey acknowledged to Congress in March 2017 that the idea that Flynn was compromised struck
him "as a bit of a reach."
19. Comey Blocked Information
Despite issues with Yates's argument, informing the White House may have indeed cleared up
the situation. However, Comey blocked it, saying it could have interfered with the
investigation of Flynn -- despite that it appears there was nothing for the bureau to
investigate. At that point, the DOJ already had disapproved of the Logan Act idea. In any case,
the probe was supposed to be about Russian collusion. The bureau could have closed it and
opened a new one on the Logan Act, if it indeed had had sufficient predication. But it never
opened such an investigation, the DOJ noted in its motion to dismiss Flynn's case.
20.
Another Comey–McCabe Contradiction
In the days before Jan. 24, 2017, top FBI officials were discussing plans to interview
Flynn. Comey said the point of the interview was to find out why Flynn didn't tell Pence that
sanctions were discussed during the call (even though Flynn wasn't actually the one talking
about sanctions).
"My judgment was we could not close the investigation of Mr. Flynn without asking him what
is the deal here. That was the purpose," Comey testified.
McCabe, however, told a different story when then-Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) asked him, "Was
[Flynn] interviewed because the Vice President relied upon information from him in a national
interview?"
"No. I don't remember that being a motivating factor behind the interview," McCabe
said.
21. No Mention of Pence
During the interview, the agents didn't ask Flynn about what he did or didn't tell Pence --
an unusual approach if the point, as Comey said, was to find out why Flynn hadn't "been candid"
with Pence. The FBI, in fact, had no idea what Flynn did or didn't tell Pence.
22.
Slipped-In Warning
Agents regularly warn interviewees that lying to federal officers is a crime. Before the
Flynn interview, however, McCabe's special counsel Lisa Page emailed another FBI lawyer asking
how the warning should be given and whether there was a way "to just casually slip that
in."
23. No Warning
In the end, the agents never gave Flynn any such warning.
24. 'Get Him to Lie Get Him
Fired?'
The FBI officials agreed that the agents wouldn't show Flynn the transcripts of the calls.
If he said something that diverged from them, they would ask again, slipping in some words from
the transcript. If that didn't jog his memory, they were not to confront him about it.
On the day of the interview, then-FBI head of counterintelligence
Bill Priestap wrote a note saying he told other officials to "rethink" the approach.
"What's our goal? Truth/Admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him
fired?" he wrote, noting, "We regularly show subjects evidence."
Apparently, his concerns were ignored.
25. Discouraging Having a Lawyer Present
On the day of the interview, McCabe spoke with Flynn on the phone to ask him for the
interview. McCabe said he told Flynn he wanted the interview done "as quickly, quietly, and
discreetly as possible." If Flynn wanted anybody to sit in, such as one of the White House
lawyers, the DOJ would have to be involved, McCabe told him.
According to Ruskin, that was "egregious" behavior akin to discouraging a subject of an
investigation from having a lawyer present for an interview.
26. No White House
Notice
An FBI interview of a president's national security adviser is a big deal. Normally, it
would warrant a back-and-forth between the White House and the bureau on the scope, content,
purpose, and other parameters. Most likely, multiple White House lawyers would sit in.
Comey, however, said in a public forum
that he just sent the agents in, taking advantage of the fact that it was "early enough" --
only four days after the inauguration.
27. No Notice Given to DOJ
According to Yates, Comey didn't consult the DOJ about his intention to interview Flynn,
even though the department would usually be involved in such decisions.
28. Not Quite a
Denial From Flynn
After the interview, in which Strzok and supervisory special agent Pientka extensively
questioned Flynn about his conversations with Kislyak, Comey said that Flynn denied talking to
the ambassador about the sanctions. But the agents' notes indicate that though Flynn denied it
at first, he seemed unsure when the agents asked again.
"Not really. I don't remember. It wasn't, 'Don't do anything,'" he said, according to the
notes.
"I told the agents that 'tit-for-tat' is a phrase I use, which suggests that the topic of
sanctions could have been raised," he
said .
29. UN Vote Denial
Based on the agent's notes, Flynn did deny asking for Russia to delay a U.N. vote in Israeli
settlements. One of the call transcripts indicates he in fact made such a request.
Flynn told the agents he was calling multiple countries regarding the vote, but it was more
an exercise of how quickly he could get foreign officials on the phone since there was no way
the transition team could convince enough countries to actually change the outcome. Indeed, the
vote passed with only the United States abstaining.
30. No Indication of Deception
The agents came back with the impression "that Flynn was not lying or did not think he was
lying," according to Strzok.
Comey seemed on the fence.
"I don't know. I think there is an argument to be made that he lied. It is a close one," he
testified.
31. Flynn Knew They Knew
According to McCabe, Flynn expressed awareness before the interview that the FBI knew
exactly what he said during the Kislyak calls.
"You listen to everything they [Russian representatives] say," Flynn told him, according to
McCabe's notes from that day.
32. Belated Report
The FBI interview summary, form FD-302, is required to be completed within five days of the
interview. Flynn's, however, took more than two weeks.
33. Rewritten 302
Strzok texted Page on Feb. 10, 2017, he was "trying to not completely rewrite" the 302 "so
as to save [redacted] voice." The redacted name was most likely Pientka's.
34. Missing
Original
Flynn was ultimately provided two draft versions of the 302 -- one from Feb. 10, 2016, and
one from the day after. But based on Strzok's texts, there should have been at least two draft
versions produced on Feb. 10, 2016, or before.
In fact, Judge Sullivan said in a Dec. 17, 2018, minute order that the 302 "was drafted
immediately after Mr. Flynn's FBI interview." It's not clear what the judge was basing this
assertion on or what happened to the early draft.
Flynn's current attorney, former federal prosecutor Sidney Powell , later said she'd found a
witness who saw an earlier draft and that it said "that Flynn was honest with the agents
and did not lie."
35. No Reinterview
It is common that when the FBI has questions after an interview about the candor of the
subject, it would question the person again. But in this case, the FBI showed no interest in
doing so.
36. Still Investigating What?
After the interview, Comey promptly agreed to Yates informing the White House about the call
transcripts. Flynn was fired two weeks later. But, somehow, the investigation was still not
over.
Comey said in his March 2, 2017, testimony that the bureau wasn't investigating any possible
Logan Act violation by Flynn and wouldn't do so unless the DOJ directed it.
But he said the investigation was "obviously" still ongoing and "criminal in nature."
McCabe said that "even following the interview on the 24th, we had a lot of work left to do
in that investigation."
By mid-February, the status of the probe wouldn't have "changed materially" in his belief,
he said.
"Like we were pursuing phone records and toll records at that time," he said. "There were
all kinds of really very basic foundational investigative activity that had to take place and
we were committed to getting that done."
It's unclear what the point of the investigation was.
37. FARA Papers
Around Christmas 2016, Flynn found in the office of his defunct consultancy, Flynn Intel
Group (FIG), a letter from the DOJ telling him he may need to file foreign lobbying disclosures
under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).
The DOJ's National Security Division (NSD) wanted to know about a job FIG did earlier that
year for Turkish businessman Kamil Ekim Alptekin.
It should have been a routine procedure. Washington lobbyists commonly flunk FARA rules and
the NSD usually just asks them to register retrospectively because FARA cases are difficult to
prosecute. Flynn hired a team from Covington and Burling led by Robert Kelner, a
"never-Trumper" and an expert on FARA, to prepare the paperwork.
This time, the NSD was unusually eager. Heather Hunt, then-FARA unit chief herself, was
repeatedly prompting the lawyers to expeditiously file the papers.
Comey's leaking the content of this and other memos to the media served as a catalyst for
then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointing former FBI head Robert Mueller as a
special counsel to take over the CH probe.
39. Rosenstein's Scope Memo Still Alludes to
Logan Act
Even though Comey said in March 2017 that the FBI wasn't investigating Flynn for a Logan Act
violation, Mueller received in August 2017 a mandate from Rosenstein ( pdf
) to probe whether Flynn "committed a crime or crimes by engaging in conversations with Russian
government officials during the period of the Trump transition." That appears to be an allusion
to the Logan Act.
Rosenstein testified
to Congress that he simply put in the scope of Mueller's mandate whatever the CH team was
investigating at the time.
The scope memo also tasked Mueller with probing whether Flynn lied to the FBI during the
interview, whether he failed to report foreign contacts or income on his national security
disclosure forms, and whether the Turkey job by his firm meant that he "committed a crime or
crimes by acting as an unregistered agent for the government of Turkey."
40. Lawyers
Delay Informing Flynn?
By mid-August 2017, Covington learned that prosecutors were looking at Flynn's FARA filings.
But the lawyers didn't inform Flynn until weeks later, according to his current lawyer,
Powell.
41. Conflict of Interest
Convington faced a conflict of interest in Flynn's case, because it was in their interest to
say any problems with the FARA papers were Flynn's fault, while it was in Flynn's interest to
say the lawyers were responsible.
Covington and the Mueller team agreed the firm can continue to represent Flynn if they tell
him about the conflict and he consents to it. Powell said the conflict was so serious bar rules
required the lawyers to withdraw.
42. Lawyers Don't Take Responsibility
In Flynn's situation, it would have been the ethical thing to do for the lawyers to take
responsibility for any problems with the FARA papers, according to Powell. But they didn't do
that.
43. Lawyers Express Apprehension About Being Targeted Themselves
The Covington lawyers on several occasions expressed concern that Mueller may target them
with a crime-fraud order, a measure that allows prosecutors to break through the
attorney-client privilege if they get a judge to agree that the client was conferring with
lawyers to further a crime or some misconduct. The lawyers were aware Mueller's team had
already used the order against Manafort.
Facing a crime-fraud order would cause bad publicity for Covington, Powell noted. Leading
Flynn into the plea allowed the firm to avoid it.
44. Perilous Interviews
In early November 2016, Mueller prosecutors, led by Brandon Van Grack, told Covington that
Flynn was facing charges for lying to the FBI and lying on the FARA papers. They asked for
Flynn's cooperation with the broader Russia probe, particularly regarding any communications he
or other Trump people had with foreign officials.
Van Grack wanted Flynn to sit down for a series of interviews. He offered Flynn limited
immunity, but acknowledged that Flynn could still be charged for lying during the
interviews.
The lawyers noted that this could have been dangerous for Flynn, even if he was completely
honest.
"To ask someone about meetings and calls during an incredibly busy period of his life as an
evaluation of candor is not a particularly attractive option," Kelner told the prosecutors
during a conference call (
pdf ).
Yet ultimately the Covington lawyers agreed to make Flynn available for the
questioning.
45. Belated Consent
Covington only asked Flynn for consent with their conflict of interest in writing on Nov.
19, 2017, after Flynn had already been through two days of interviews with the
prosecutors.
46. Wrong Standard
The consent request, sent via email, cited the wrong bar rule for handling of conflicts. The
correct rule "creates a much lower threshold at which a lawyer must bow out," Powell said in a
court filing.
47. Innocent but Guilty
The Covington lawyers repeatedly told the prosecutors that they didn't think Flynn was
guilty of a felony. They were also told that Strzok and Pientka "saw no indication of
deception" on Flynn's part and had the impression after the interview that he wasn't lying or
didn't think he was lying. But the lawyers still convinced Flynn that he should plead guilty to
the felony charge.
48. Threat to Son
According to Flynn's declaration, the Covington lawyers told him that if he didn't plead,
the prosecutors would charge his son (who had a four-month-old baby at the time) with a FARA
violation, because the son worked for Flynn's firm and was involved in the Turkey project. If
he did plead, however, his son "would be left in peace," Flynn said.
The pressure campaign, it seems, was also reflected in media leaks.
"If the elder Flynn is willing to cooperate with investigators in order to help his son it
could also change his own fate, potentially limiting any legal consequences,"
NBC News reported on Nov. 5, 2017, referring to "sources familiar with the
investigation."
"To twist the father's arm with regard to his child is a pretty low thing to do," Ruskin
commented.
49. 302 Not Shared
The prosecutors refused to share with Flynn the 302 from his January interview until shortly
before he agreed to plead. Also, they only shared the final version of the report, which was
significantly different from its previous drafts, Flynn later learned.
50. Strzok Texts
Understatement
Shortly before Flynn signed his plea, the prosecutors disclosed to his lawyers that one of
the agents who interviewed Flynn (Strzok) was being investigated by the IG for potential
misconduct. They also disclosed that the agent expressed in electronic communications "a
preference for one of the candidates for President."
This was far from covering the bombshell the Strzok texts actually were, Powell noted.
Strzok not only voiced preference for Clinton, but cursed at and repeatedly derided Trump.
In one 2016 text, he argued that the FBI needed to take action akin to an "insurance policy" in
case Trump won. Strzok later said he was referring to proceeding in the CH probe more
aggressively out of a worry that Trump may interfere with it if elected.
51. Lawyers
Never Told Flynn?
Flynn said the Convington lawyers never told him that the FBI agents didn't think he lied.
Even after he specifically asked about the agents' impression, the lawyers didn't disclose the
information and instead told him that "the agents stood by their statement."
"I then understood them to be telling me that the FBI agents believed that I had lied,"
Flynn said, explaining that had he known, he wouldn't have signed the plea.
52. Statement
of Offense Inaccurate
As part of his statement of offense, Flynn affirmed that FIG's FARA papers contained three
false statements and one omission. Yet, on all four points the statement of offense was
inaccurate, Powell demonstrated (
pdf ).
"The prosecutors concocted the alleged 'false statements' by their own misrepresentations,
deceit, and omissions," she said in a court filing (
pdf ).
The FARA papers were "substantially correct" and any deficiencies were the fault of
Covington, she said.
53. Lawyers Knew
In an internal email three days before Flynn signed his plea, one of the Covington lawyers
pointed out that some of the "false statements" attributed to Flynn in the statement of offense
regarding the FARA filings were "contradicted by the caveats or qualifications in the
filing."
It seems the lawyers failed to correct the issue, since the statement of offense remained
inaccurate. They also never informed Flynn of the issue, according to Powell.
54. Judge
Recusal
Flynn entered his plea on Dec. 1, 2017. Shortly after, the judge who accepted the plea,
Rudolph Contreras, recused himself from the case. The apparent but undisclosed reason was
likely his personal relationship with Strzok.
55. Strzok Texts Media Coincidence
While the IG had found Strzok's texts already in June 2017, their first disclosure in the
media came from The Washington Post the day after Flynn entered his guilty plea. Powell noted
how convenient the timing was for the prosecutors.
56. Side Deal
The prosecutors conveyed to Covington an "unofficial understanding" that they were
"unlikely" to charge Flynn's son in light of Flynn's agreement to continue to cooperate with
the Mueller probe, one of the lawyers said in an internal email.
Such an under-the-table deal is "unethical," Ruskin said.
57. Avoiding Giglio
Disclosure
Another internal Covington email suggests the prosecutors intentionally kept the deal
regarding Flynn's son unofficial to make future prosecutions easier.
"The government took pains not to give a promise to MTF [Michael T. Flynn] regarding Michael
[Flynn] Jr., so as to limit how much of a 'benefit' it would have to disclose as part of its
Giglio disclosures to any defendant against whom MTF may one day testify," the email reads.
"Giglio" refers to a 1972 Supreme Court opinion that requires prosecutors to disclose to the
defense that a witness used by the prosecutors has been promised an escape from prosecution in
exchange for cooperation.
58. Questionable Disclosures
After the case was assigned to Judge Sullivan, he entered an order for the DOJ to give Flynn
all exculpatory information it had, as the judge does in all cases.
The prosecutors, however, weren't prompt in revealing the information. The Strzok texts, for
instance, were only provided to Flynn after they were released publicly.
59. Business
Partner Coincidence
One day before Flynn's sentencing hearing, his former business partner, Bijan Rafiekian, was
charged with a failure to register as a foreign agent in relation to FIG's Turkey job.
Powell called it a "shot across the bow" which the Mueller team wanted to "leverage" against
Flynn.
"Mr. Van Grack used the possibility of indicting Flynn in the Rafiekian case at the
sentencing hearing to raise the specter of all the threats he had made to secure the plea a
year earlier -- including the indictment of Mr. Flynn's son," she said in a court filing (
pdf ).
60. Judge Makes False Accusations, Backtracks
During a Dec. 18, 2018, sentencing hearing, Sullivan questioned the prosecutors about
whether they considered charging Flynn with treason.
"Arguably, you sold your country out," he told Flynn, saying that he acted as an agent of
Turkey while in the White House.
That was wrong on multiple levels. Not only does treason not apply to unregistered lobbying,
but the Turkey job had virtually no impact on American interests. It prepared a plan to lobby
for the extradition of an Islamic cleric, Fethullah Gülen, who lives in exile in the
United States, and whom Ankara blamed for instigating a coup attempt in 2016. Almost none of
the plan materialized. Most importantly, Flynn shuttered his firm shortly after the election to
comply with Trump's promise of no lobbyists in his administration.
Sullivan corrected himself later in the hearing, but many media outlets still put his
original remarks in headlines.
61. MSNBC Coincidence
While Sullivan's question about treason and his gaffe about the Turkey job seemed to come
out of left field, they mirrored MSNBC talking points from days prior.
The day before Flynn's sentencing hearing, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow claimed Flynn and Rafiekian "disguised" the
origins of payments for the Turkey job so they could "secretly work in the interest of a
foreign country without anybody knowing it while they were also working high-level jobs in
intelligence inside the U.S. government."
"Flynn really thought he could be a national security adviser, the national security adviser
in the White House, and a secret foreign agent at the same time," Maddow said .
Three days before Flynn's sentencing hearing, Malcolm Nance, a counterterrorism commentator,
said on MSNBC that Flynn "may have been one step away from treason" and "pulled back by
cooperating" with Mueller.
62. Judge Fails to Satisfy Plea Rules
Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure state in Rule 11 that "before entering judgment on a
guilty plea, the court must determine that there is a factual basis for the plea."
As such, Sullivan was required to check that Flynn's alleged lies to the FBI were
"material," meaning relevant enough to potentially affect an FBI investigation.
But the judge acknowledged during the sentencing hearing that he hadn't done so.
"It probably won't surprise you that I had many, many, many more questions. such as, you
know, how the government's investigation was impeded? What was the material impact of the
criminality? Things like that," he said at the conclusion of the hearing.
There's no indication Sullivan has asked those questions since.
63. Unacceptable
Plea
Not only could Sullivan not have accepted Flynn's plea before determining materiality,
there's evidence he was in fact required to refuse it.
Rule 11 requires the court to "determine that the plea is voluntary and did not result from
force, threats, or promises (other than promises in a plea agreement)."
In Flynn's case, there actually was a threat and a promise left out of the deal -- the
"unofficial understanding" that his son was "unlikely" to be charged if Flynn
cooperated.
64. Lawyers Insisted Flynn 'Stay on the Path'
Before the sentencing hearing, the Covington lawyers told Flynn to "stay on the path" and to
refuse if Sullivan offered him to take his plea back, Flynn said in his court declaration.
"If the judge offers you a chance to withdraw your plea, he is giving you the rope to hang
yourself. Don't do it," the lawyers said, according to Powell.
65. Unprepared
Flynn said the lawyers only prepared him for a "simple hearing" and not for the extended
questioning Sullivan engaged in.
"I was not prepared for this court's plea colloquy, much less to decide, on the spot,
whether I should withdraw my plea, consult with independent counsel, or continue to follow my
existing lawyers' advice," he said.
In the end, he affirmed his plea during the hearing.
66. Prosecutors Asked for False
Testimony?
Flynn was expected to testify against Rafiekian in 2019, but when the moment was to come,
prosecutors asked him to say that he signed FIG's FARA papers knowing there were lies in them.
Flynn, who had already fired Convington and hired Powell by that point, refused. He said he
only acknowledged in hindsight that the FARA papers were inaccurate, but didn't know it at the
time.
67. Prosecutors Knew?
Powell has argued that the prosecutors knew they were asking for a false testimony. She
filed with the court a draft of Flynn's statement of offense, which shows that the words "FLYNN
then and there knew" (pertaining to the FARA registration) were cut from the final version.
Moreover, Powell submitted emails that indicate the words were cut by the prosecutors
themselves after the Covington lawyers raised some objections to the draft.
68.
Retaliation?
Flynn's refusal to say what prosecutors wanted angered Van Grack, contemporaneous notes show
(
pdf ). Shortly after, prosecutors tried to label Flynn as a co-conspirator in the Rafiekian
case and put Flynn's son on the list of witnesses for the prosecution. According to Powell,
this was retaliation for Flynn's refusal to lie.
69. Rafiekian Case Collapses
Prosecutors in the Rafiekian case tried to argue that anybody who does something political
at the request of a foreign official and fails to disclose it to the DOJ is an "agent of a
foreign government" and can be put in prison for up to 10 years.
The presiding judge, Anthony Trenga, rejected the theory, ruling that an "agent" -- as used
in that context -- needs to have a tighter relationship with the foreign government, a
relationship that includes "the power of the principal to give directions and the duty of the
agent to obey those directions."
Starting in August, Powell started to bombard the prosecutors with demands for exculpatory
evidence she was convinced the DOJ possessed. But the prosecutors repeatedly claimed the
government already provided all it had and had no more.
The main issue was, Powell noted, that the DOJ had a very narrow view of what is
exculpatory.
"If something appears on its face to be favorable to the defense the government will claim
it was said 'with a wink and a nod,' and therefore it showed the defendant's guilt after all,"
she complained in an Aug. 30, 2019, filing (
pdf ).
As it later turned out, the FBI was sitting on a number of documents favorable to the
defense.
71. Contradicting Notes
When Flynn finally obtained the hand-written notes Strzok and Pientka took during the
interview, it turned out they didn't quite match the final 302.
The 302, for instance, says that Flynn remembered making four to five phone calls to Kislyak
on Dec. 29, 2016. Both sets of notes indicate that Flynn didn't remember that.
Also, the 302 says that Flynn denied that Kislyak got back to him with the Russian response
a few days later. There's no mention of a Russian response in the notes.
72. Notes
Mixup
It took the prosecutors until November 2019 to find out and tell Flynn that the notes they
said belonged to Strzok were actually Pientka's and vice versa.
73. No Date, Name
The notes mixup wasn't that easy to spot because neither set of notes was signed or dated,
even though they should have been, according to Powell.
74. Harsher Sentence
Since his sentencing hearing, Flynn was expected to receive a light sentence, possibly
probation. In January 2020, however, the prosecutors indicated that Flynn should be treated
more harshly because he reneged on his promise to cooperate on the Rafiekian case.
This was part of the retaliation for Flynn's refusal to lie for the prosecutors, according
to Powell.
Shortly after that, Flynn asked the court to let him withdraw his plea.
Any limitation the court puts on how the attorney-client information can be used shouldn't
"preclude the government from prosecuting the defendant for perjury if any information that he
provided to counsel were proof of perjury in this proceeding," they said.
It's not clear what specifically they were referring to.
76. Thousands More
Documents
In April, Covington told Flynn they
found thousands more documents related to his case that they failed to give to Powell due
to "an unintentional miscommunication involving the firm's information technology
personnel."
77. Van Grack Out
On May 7, 2020, Van Grack withdrew from Flynn's case as well as others. The reason is not
clear.
The same day, the DOJ moved to withdraw the Flynn case.
78. Judge Delays
A government motion to withdraw a case usually marks the end of the case. The court still
needs to accept the motion, but there's not much it can do, since there's nobody left to
prosecute the case.
Sullivan, however, didn't accept it.
79. Appointing Amicus
On May 13, 2020, Sullivan appointed former federal Judge John Gleeson as an amicus curiae
(friend of court) "to present arguments in opposition to the government's Motion to Dismiss" as
well as to "address" whether the court should make the defense explain why "Flynn should not be
held in criminal contempt for perjury."
This was an unusual move. Amici are normally only appointed in civil or higher court cases.
Powell has said Sullivan doesn't have authority to do so.
80. Another Washington Post
Coincidence
Just two days earlier, Gleeson co-authored an op-ed in The Washington Post where he accused
the DOJ of "impropriety," "corruption," and "improper political influence" for dropping the
Flynn case.
81. More Delays
On May 19, 2020, Sullivan issued a scheduling order that set an oral argument for July 16,
when third parties invited by the judge would get a chance to voice their opinions. As such,
the judge
set to prolong the case for about two more months and possibly beyond.
In a rare move , the appeals court
ordered Sullivan to respond to Flynn's petition within 10 days. Usually, the court would
appoint an amicus curiae to argue the case on behalf of the judge. Sometimes, the court would
invite the judge to respond. Ordering a response is "very rare," Reeves commented.
Wilkinson has in the past represented major corporations such as Pfizer, Microsoft, and
Phillip Morris, as well as Hillary Clinton aides during the FBI's investigation of Clinton's
use of a private email server. She also assisted then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh in
preparing his 2018 defense against a sexual assault allegation.
Wilkinson is married to CNN analyst David Gregory, the former host of the NBC News' "Meet
the Press."
84. DOJ Brings Big Guns
In another unusual move, the DOJ's Solicitor General and five of his deputies responded to
the appeals court in support of Flynn's petition. The Solicitor General usually argues cases on
behalf of the DOJ before the Supreme Court. His personal involvement in an appeals court
petition "is highly unusual and rare," Reeves said.
"For non-lawyers, a ten day notice for oral argument may seem like a long time, but it
isn't. It's an increidibly [sic] short amount of time," he said, noting that a call for a
hearing "shows that the DC Circuit is gravely concerned about this matter."
This guy does not understand the term "neoliberalism" and process of rejection of neoliberal ideology and the collapse of
neoliberal globalization. As such his analysis is by-and-large junk. Still some quotes are interesting enough to the
readers. Undeniably Russia and China are poses both features of the nationa-states and distinct civilizations, but that
changes nothing in their fight against American Imperialism and global neoliberalism.
The weakness of both Russia and China is that they are neoliberal states themselves, so while fighting American neoliberal
imperialism (to a certain extent) externally, they promote neoliberalism internally. China implements something like NEP (New
economic Policy) installed in Russia after revolution. It leads to tremendous level of corruption. Putin promotes something like a
New Deal Capitalism, but that contradicts the logic of neoliberalism and the fact of existince of Russian oligarchs. Political
balance relies just of the power of Putin personality. That might lead to the collapse of state when current leaders are gone, as
this is a very fine balance which requires exceptional political agility. Putin does possessed it, but that does not mean that
Russia can find another Putin. Then what? A new Yeltsin?
Notable quotes:
"... today we are witnessing the end of the liberal world order and the rise of the civilisational state, which claims to represent not merely a nation or territory but an exceptional civilisation ..."
"... Western civilisation is much less able to confront both internal problems such as economic injustice, social dislocation and resurgent nationalism, ..."
Such states define
themselves not as nations but civilisations – in opposition to the liberalism and global
market ideology of the West. By Adrian Pabst The 20th century marked the
downfall of empire and the triumph of the nation state. National self-determination became the
prime test of state legitimacy, rather than dynastic inheritance or imperial rule.
After the
Cold War, the dominant elites in the West assumed that the nation-state model had defeated all
rival forms of political organisation. The worldwide spread of liberal values would create an
era of Western hegemony. It would be a new global order based on sovereign states enforced by
Western-dominated international organisations such as the International Monetary Fund, the
World Bank and the World Trade Organisation.
But today we are witnessing the end of the liberal world order and the rise of the civilisational state, which claims to represent not merely a nation or territory but an
exceptional civilisation. In China and Russia the ruling classes reject Western liberalism and
the expansion of a global market society. They define their countries as distinctive
civilisations with their own unique cultural values and political institutions. The ascent of
civilisational states is not just changing the global balance of power. It is also transforming
post-Cold War geopolitics away from liberal universalism towards cultural exceptionalism.
****
Thirty years after the collapse of totalitarian state communism, liberal market democracy is
in question. Both the West and "the rest" are sliding into forms of soft totalitarianism as
market fundamentalism or state capitalism creates oligarchic concentrations of power and
wealth. Oligarchies occur in both democratic and authoritarian systems, which are led by
demagogic leaders who can either be more liberal, as with France's president Emmanuel Macron,
or more populist, such as Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán. In both the older
democracies of western Europe and in the post-1989 democracies of the former Soviet Union,
fundamental freedoms are in retreat and the separation of powers is under threat.
The resurgence of great power rivalry, especially with the rise of Russia and China, is
weakening Western attempts to impose a unified set of standards and rules in international
relations. The leaders of these powers, including the US under Donald Trump, reject universal
human rights, the rule of law, respect for facts and a free press in the name of cultural
difference. The days of spreading universal values of Western enlightenment have long since
passed.
Globalisation is partly in reverse. Free trade is curtailed by protectionist tariff wars
between the US and China. The promotion of Western democracy has been replaced by an
accommodation with autocrats such as North Korea's Kim Jong-un. But more fundamentally,
geopolitics is no longer simply about the economy or security – Christopher Coker
describes it in The Rise of the Civilizational State (2019) as largely sociocultural and
civilisational. The non-Western world, led by Beijing and Moscow, is pushing back against the
Western claim to embody universal values.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping champions a model of "socialism with Chinese characteristics"
fusing a Leninist state with neo-Confucian culture. Vladimir Putin defines Russia as a
"civilisational state", which is neither Western nor Asian but uniquely Eurasian. Trump rails
against the European multicultural dilution of Western civilisation – which he equates
with a white supremacist creed. Common to these leaders is a hybrid doctrine of nationalism at
home and the defence of civilisation abroad.
It reconciles their promotion of great-power
status with their ideological aversion to liberal universalism. States based on civilisational
identities are bound to collide with the institutions of the liberal world order, and so it is
happening.
Civilisations themselves might not clash, but contemporary geopolitics has turned into a
contest between alternative versions of civilised norms. Within the West, there is a growing
gap between a cosmopolitan EU and a nativist US. And a global "culture war" is pitting the
West's liberal establishment against the illiberal powers of Russia and China. Cultural
exceptionalism is once again challenging, and arguably replacing, liberalism's claim to
universal validity. The powers redefining themselves as state civilisations are gaining
strength.
****
A new narrative has taken hold among the ruling classes in the West: that the aggressive
axis of Russia and China is the main threat to the Western-dominated international system. But
the liberal world order is also under unprecedented strain from within. The Iraq invasion of
2003, the 2008 global financial crash, austerity and the refugee crisis in Europe, which began
in earnest in 2015 and was partly the result of Western destabilisation in Libya and Syria,
have all eroded public confidence in the liberal establishment and the institutions it
controls. Brexit, Donald Trump and the populist insurgency sweeping continental Europe mark a
revolt against the economic and social liberalism that has dominated domestic politics and
neoliberal globalisation. The ascent of authoritarian "strongmen" such as Putin, Xi Jinping,
India's prime minister Narendra Modi, Turkey's President Erdogan and Brazil's new leader Jair
Bolsonaro are a major menace to liberal dominance over international affairs. But the principal
danger to the West is internal – namely the erosion of Western civilisation by
ultra-liberalism.
The dominant idea of the last four decades is the belief that the West is a political
civilisation that represents the forward march of history towards a single normative order. But
experience has shown that this force, with its tendency towards cartel capitalism, bureaucratic
overreach, and rampant individualism, is devastating the West's cultural civilisation. Part of
the legacy of this civilisation is the postwar model of socially embedded markets,
decentralised states, a balance of open economies with protection of domestic industry and a
commitment to the dignity of the person, enshrined in human rights.
It is a legacy that rests on a common cultural heritage of Greco-Roman philosophy and law,
as well as Judeo-Christian religion and ethics. Each, in different ways, stress the unique
value of the person and free human association independent of the state. Western countries
share traditions of music, architecture, philosophy, literature, poetry and religious belief
that make them members of a common civilisation rather than a collection of separate
cultures.
This civilisational heritage and its principles are under threat from the forces of
liberalism. In the name of supposedly universal liberal values, the Clinton administration
adopted as its civilising mission the worldwide spread of market states and humanitarian
intervention. After the 9/11 attacks, left-liberal governments such as Tony Blair's New Labour
waged foreign wars and curtailed civil rights in the name of security.
Emmanuel Macron, the latest cheerleader for Western progressives, has led a crackdown of the
gilets jaunes protesters in France that threatens fundamental freedoms of speech,
association and public demonstration. As Patrick Deneen, the Catholic legal scholar and author
of Why Liberalism Failed (2018), and others have shown, liberalism is undermining the
principles of liberality on which Western civilisation depends, such as free inquiry, free
speech, tolerance for dissent and respect for political opponents.
At the heart of the West is a paradox. It is the only community of nations founded upon the
political values of self-determination of the people, democracy and free trade. These
principles were codified in the 1941 Atlantic Charter signed by Winston Churchill and Franklin
D Roosevelt, and enshrined in the post-1945 international system. Yet liberalism is eroding
these cultural foundations, and we are now living with the consequences. Western civilisation
is much less able to confront both internal problems such as economic injustice, social
dislocation and resurgent nationalism, and the external threats of ecological devastation,
Islamist terrorism and hostile foreign powers.
After the fall of communism, the liberal West sought to recast reality in its progressive
self-image. As Tony Blair put it, only liberal culture is on the "right side of history". The
US and western Europe viewed themselves as carriers of universal values for the rest of
humanity. Liberal leaders mutated into what Robespierre called "armed missionaries". They
exported Western cultural norms of personal self-expression and individual emancipation from
family, religion and nationality. Nations were seen by Western liberals as egos writ large that
desire nothing but to adapt to the imperatives of globalisation and a world without borders or
national identities.
The shallow culture of contemporary liberalism weakens civilisation in the West and
elsewhere. Liberal capitalism promotes cultural standards that glorify greed, sex and violence.
Too many liberals in politics, the media and the academy are characterised by a "closing of the
mind" that ignores the intellectual, literary and artistic achievements that make the West a
recognisable civilisation.
Some cosmopolitan liberals even repudiate the very existence of the West as a civilisation.
In one of his BBC Reith Lectures in 2016, the British-born Ghanaian-American academic Kwame
Anthony Appiah, the grandson of the former Labour chancellor Stafford Cripps, maintained that
we should give up on the idea of Western civilisation. "I believe," Appiah said, "that Western
civilisation is not at all a good idea, and Western culture is no improvement."
****
The rejection of Western universalism by the elites in Russia and China challenges the idea
of the nation state as the international norm for political organisation. The Chinese and the
Russian ruling classes view themselves as bearers of unique cultural norms, and define
themselves as civilisational states rather than nation states because the latter are associated
with Western imperialism – and in the case of China a century of humiliation following
the 19th-century Opium Wars. Martin Jacques, author of When China Rules the World
(2009), argues that, "The most fundamental defining features of China today, and which give the
Chinese their sense of identity, emanate not from the last century when China has called itself
a nation state but from the previous two millennia when it can be best described as a
civilisation state."
... ... ...
Adrian Pabst is a New Statesman contributing writer and the author of "Liberal World
Order and Its Critics" and "The Demons of Liberal Democracy"
If one ventures into the vast wasteland of American television it is possible to miss the
truly ridiculous content that is promoted as news by the major networks. One particular feature
of media-speak in the United States is the tendency of the professional reporting punditry to
go seeking for someone to blame every time some development rattles the National Security plus
Wall Street bubble that we all unfortunately live in. The talking heads have to such an extent
sold the conclusion that China deliberately released a lethal virus to destroy western
democracies that no one objects when Beijing is elevated from being a commercial competitor and
political adversary to an enemy of the United States. One sometimes even sees that it is all a
communist plot. Likewise, the riots taking place all across the U.S. are being milked for what
it's worth by the predominantly liberal media, both to influence this year's election and to
demonstrate how much the news oligarchs really love black people.
As is often the case, there are a number of inconsistencies in the narrative. If one looks
at the numerous photos of the protests in many parts of the country, it is clear that most of
the demonstrators are white, not black, which might suggest that even if there are significant
pockets of racism in the United States there is also a strong condemnation of that fact by many
white people. And this in a country that elected a black man president not once, but twice, and
that black president had a cabinet that included a large number of African-Americans.
Also, to further obfuscate any understanding of what might be taking place, the media and
chattering class is obsessed with finding white supremacists as
instigators of at least some of the actual violence. It would be a convenient explanation
for the Social Justice Warriors that proliferate in the media, though it is supported currently
by little actual evidence that anyone is exploiting right-wing groups.
Simultaneously, some on the right, to include the president, are blaming legitimately dubbed
domestic
terrorist group Antifa , which is perhaps more plausible, though again evidence of
organized instigation appears to be on the thin side. Still another source of the mayhem
apparently consists of some folks getting all excited by the turmoil and breaking windows and
tossing Molotov cocktails, as did
two upper middle class attorneys in Brooklyn last week.
Nevertheless, the search goes on for a guilty party. Explaining the demonstrations and riots
as the result of the horrible killing of a black man by police which has revulsed both black
and white Americans would be too simple to satisfy the convoluted yearnings of the likes of
Wolf Blitzer and Rachel Maddow.
Which brings us to Russia. How convenient is it to fall back on Russia which, together with
the Chinese, is reputedly already reported to be working hard to subvert the November U.S.
election. And what better way to do just that than to call on one of the empty-heads of the
Barack Obama administration, whose foreign policy achievements included the destruction of a
prosperous Libya and the killing of four American diplomats in Benghazi, the initiation of
kinetic hostilities with Syria, the failure to achieve a reset with Russia and the
assassinations of American citizens overseas without any due process. But Obama sure did talk
nice and seem pleasant unlike the current occupant of the White House.
The predictable Wolf Blitzer had a recent interview with perhaps the emptiest head of all
the empowered women who virtually ran the Obama White House. Susan Rice was U.N. Ambassador and
later National Security Advisor under Barack Obama. Before that she was a Clinton appointee who
served as Undersecretary of State for African Affairs. She is reportedly currently being
considered as a possible running mate for Joe Biden as she has all the necessary qualifications
being a woman and black.
While Ambassador and National Security Advisor, Rice had the reputation of being
extremely abrasive . She ran into trouble when she failed to be convincing in support of
the Obama administration exculpatory narrative regarding what went wrong in Benghazi when the
four Americans, to include the U.S. Ambassador, were killed.
"We have peaceful protesters focused on the very real pain and disparities that we're all
wrestling with that have to be addressed, and then we have extremists who've come to try to
hijack those protests and turn them into something very different. And they're probably also,
I would bet based on my experience, I'm not reading the intelligence these days, but based on
my experience this is right out of the Russian playbook as well. I would not be surprised to
learn that they have fomented some of these extremists on both sides using social media. I
wouldn't be surprised to learn that they are funding it in some way, shape, or form."
It should be noted that Rice, a devout Democrat apparatchik, produced no evidence whatsoever
that the Russians were or have been involved in "fomenting" the reactions to the George Floyd
demonstrations and riots beyond the fact that Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden all
believe that Moscow is responsible for everything. Clinton in particular hopes that some day
someone will actually believe her when she claims that she lost to Trump in 2016 due to Russia.
Even Robert Mueller, he of the Russiagate Inquiry, could not come up with any real evidence
suggesting that the relatively low intensity meddling in the election by the Kremlin had any
real impact. Nor was there any suggestion that Moscow was actually colluding with the Trump
campaign, nor with its appointees, to include National Security Advisor designate Michael
Flynn.
Fortunately, no one took much notice of Rice based on her "experience," or her judgement
insofar as she possesses that quality. Glenn Greenwald
responded :
"This is fuxxing lunacy -- conspiratorial madness of the worst kind -- but it's delivered
by a Serious Obama Official and a Respected Mainstream Newscaster so it's all fine This is
Infowars-level junk. Should Twitter put a 'False' label on this? Or maybe a hammer and sickle
emoji?"
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Maria Zakharova accurately described the
Rice performance as a "perfect example of barefaced propaganda." She wrote on her Facebook
page "Are you trying to play the Russia card again? You've been playing too long – come
back to reality" instead of using "dirty methods of information manipulation" despite "having
absolutely no facts to prove [the] allegations go out and face your people, look them in the
eye and try telling them that they are being controlled by the Russians through YouTube and
Facebook. And I will sit back and watch 'American exceptionalism' in action."
It should be assumed that the Republicans will be coming up with their own candidate for
"fomenting" the riots and demonstrations. It already includes Antifa, of course, but is likely
to somehow also involve the Chinese, who will undoubtedly be seen as destroying American
democracy through the double whammy of a plague and race riots. Speaking at the White House,
National Security Adviser Robert O'Brien
warned about foreign incitement , including not only the Chinese, but also Iran and even
Zimbabwe. And, oh yes, Russia.
One thing is for sure, no matter who is ultimately held accountable, no one in the Congress
or White House will be taking the blame for anything.
The media's Russiagate failures were just a trial-run for the last four months.
June 10, 2020
|
12:01 am
Arthur
Bloom The most effective kind of propaganda is by omission. Walter Duranty didn't cook up
accounts from smiling Ukrainian farmers, he simply said there was no evidence for a famine,
much like the media tells us today that there is no evidence antifa has a role in the current
protests. It is much harder to do this today than it was back then -- there are photographs and
video that show they have been -- which is the proximate cause for greater media concern about
conspiracy theories and disinformation.
For all the hyperventilating over the admittedly creepy 2008 article about "cognitive
infiltration," by Cass Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule, it was a serious attempt to deal with the
problem of an informational center being lost in American public life, at a time when the
problem was not nearly as bad as it is today. It proposed a number of strategies to reduce the
credibility of conspiracy theorists, including seeding them with false information. Whether
such strategies have been employed, perhaps with QAnon, which has a remarkable ability to
absorb all other conspiracy theories that came before it, I leave to the reader's
speculation.
Books will one day be written about the many failures of the media during the Trump
presidency, but much of the Russiagate narrative-shaping was related to the broader problem of
decentralization and declining authority of establishment media. One of the more egregious
examples is the Washington Post's
report that relied upon a blacklist created by an anonymous group, PropOrNot, that found
more than 200 sites carried water for the Russians in some way, and not all on the right
either. In fact, if the Bush administration had commissioned a list of news sources that were
carrying water for Saddam Hussein in 2006, it would have looked almost the same as the
PropOrNot list, except here it was, recast as an effort to defend democratic integrity. On the
list was Naked Capitalism, Antiwar.com, and Truthdig.
This should have been a bigger scandal, very good evidence that the war on disinformation
was not that but a campaign against officially unapproved information. But virtually nobody
except Glenn Greenwald objected. There is some evidence that this style of blacklisting went
even further, into the architecture of search engines.
My reporting on Google search last year found that one of the "fringe domain" blacklists
included Robert Parry's Consortium News. In other words, if Google had been around in the
1980s, Parry's exposes on Iran-Contra would have been excluded from Google News results.
The criteria for inclusion on any of these lists are much more amorphous than a more
traditional one: taking money from a foreign power. As of this week, we now have
a figure for how much the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal
have taken from China Daily, a state-run newspaper, since 2016. It's $4.6 million, and $6
million, respectively. This is more than an order of magnitude greater than Russia is thought
to have spent on Facebook advertising prior to the 2016 election.
There are other specific Russiagate disgraces one would be remiss to overlook, like star
reporter Natasha Bertrand, who was hired at MSNBC after several appearances in which she
repeatedly defended the accuracy of the Steele Dossier, which itself was
likely tainted by Russian disinformation. The newspaper that published the Pentagon Papers
defended the outing of a source to the FBI. How David Ignatius, considered America's top
reporter on the intelligence community, can show his face in public after he was allegedly told
by James Clapper to "take the kill shot on Flynn," and then two days later doing just that, is
disturbing (Clapper's spokesman disputes this account, but Ignatius has not). The scoop, that
Flynn, the incoming national security advisor had spoken to the Russian ambassador, is in no
way suspicious, but for weeks was treated as if Flynn was making contact with his handler.
What Russiagate amounts to, as Matt Taibbi among others have written, is the use of federal
investigative resources to criminalize or persecute dissenters from the foreign policy line of
what we here at TAC call the Blob, in the same way that the PropOrNot list amounts to
an attempt to suppress unapproved sources of news.
Many of the same figures involved in prolonging the Russiagate hysteria were also big
cheerleaders for the Bush and Obama wars. Before Russiagate, there was the Pentagon military
analysts scandal, in which it was revealed that dozens of media commentators on military
affairs were doing so without disclosing their connections to the Pentagon or defense
contractors. It implicated Barry McCaffrey, Bill Clinton's drug war czar, who is now an MSNBC
contributor who helped to provide color for the narrative of General Flynn's decline,
suggesting
he was mentally ill after he had initially been supportive of him getting the job.
In a certain sense, Trump provides journalists who have disturbingly cozy relationships with
powerful people a way of looking like they are holding the powerful accountable, without
alienating any of their previous friends. Trump is in fact one of the weakest executives in
presidential history, partly because of the massive resistance to him in the federal workforce,
but also because his White House seems powerless to actually do anything about that. That
people actually think the dark cloud of fascism has descended upon the land when Trump can't
even figure out how to work those levers of power just shows how obsessed with symbolic matters
-- "representation," they call it -- our politics has become.
The subsequent failures of the American information landscape have only served to reinforce
this dynamic. Both the self-inflicted economic catastrophe of the coronavirus shutdowns, and
the recent civil unrest, will serve to concentrate wealth away from the hated red-state
bourgeoise and into the hands of the oligarchs in blue states, including Jeff Bezos, the owner
of the Washington Post . This bears repeating: COVID and the protests will lead to a
large transfer of wealth from a reliably Republican demographic -- small business owners -- to
one that is at best split, which is why you saw Jamie Dimon kneeling in front of a bank vault
this week.
Untangling the question of intent is difficult in the best of circumstances, and the same is
true here. The contrast between news networks ominously reporting on Florida beachgoers a month
ago now cheering on mass gatherings in large cities may not in fact be due to the fact that the
large consortiums that own the networks stand to benefit financially from the continued
shutdown of the country. They may sincerely believe, along with public health
officials , that balancing the risks of institutional racism and getting COVID-19 is worth
discussing in relation to protests, but balancing the same risks when it comes to going to
church or burying a family member is not. Or it may just be studied naivety, like the kind
exhibited a few weeks ago when the whole New York media scene rushed to the defense of the
New Yorker 's Jia Tolentino, who played the victim after people on social media
revealed that her family was involved in what certainly appears to be an exploitative
immigration scam.
The rise of the first-person essay and subjectivity in journalism may turn out to be a
perfectly congenial development for the powerful people in America; Tolentino is great at
writing about herself. For one thing, this is a lot cheaper than reporting; it probably isn't a
coincidence that this development has coincided with a huge decline in newsroom budgets. But at
the same time blaming this on economics feels like it misses the point, because there are many
people who are convinced this trend is good.
But the way it intersects with official corruption has me rather nervous. To give one
example, it seems clear that #MeToo degenerated after the Kavanaugh hearings and Biden's
nomination. And given the apparent loyalties of someone like David Ignatius, he isn't going to
be the one to unravel the intelligence connections involved in the great sexual violence story
of our generation, the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. So we are left with the Netflix version,
slotted right into the typical narrative, in which the Epstein story looks fundamentally the
same as most other stories of sexual coercion, involving a powerful man and less powerful
woman, only with an exceptionally powerful man. And yet there are so many indications it was
not typical.
So it is today with George Floyd as well. It seems like there are perfectly reasonable
questions to be asked about the acquaintance between him and Derek Chauvin, and the fact that
the rather shady bar they both worked at conveniently burned down. But by now most of the media
is now highly invested in not seeing anything other than a statistic, another incident
in a long history of police brutality, and the search for facts has been replaced by
narratives. This is a shame, because it is perfectly possible to think that police have a
history of poor treatment toward black people and there might be corruption involved
in the George Floyd case, which is something Ben Crump, the lawyer for Floyd's family,
seems
to suggest in his interview on Face the Nation this weekend.
Two incidents in the last week, the freakout among young New York Times staffers
over their publication of an op-ed by Senator Tom Cotton that has now led to the resignation of
the editorial page editor, and the report by Cockburn that Andrew Sullivan has been barred from
writing about the protests by New York magazine, are a good indication that all of
this is going to get worse. As for the class of people who actually own these media properties,
they will probably find that building a padded room for woke staffers, in the form of whatever
HR and "safety"-related demands they're making, will suit their interests just fine. about
the author Arthur Bloom is managing editor of The American Conservative. He was previously
deputy editor of the Daily Caller and a columnist for the Catholic Herald. He holds masters
degrees in urban planning and American studies from the University of Kansas. His work has
appeared in The Washington Post, The Washington Times, The Spectator (UK), The Guardian,
Quillette, The American Spectator , Modern Age, and Tiny Mix Tapes.
Now "Horrible Lisa" re-surfaced in MSNBC. Not surprising one bit. This is a deep state retirement package...
Notable quotes:
"... Barack Obama wanted to 'know everything' the FBI was 'doing' according to newly released text messages between FBI lovers Peter Strzok and Lisa Page ..."
Barack Obama wanted to 'know everything' the FBI was 'doing' according to newly released text messages between FBI lovers
Peter Strzok and Lisa Page ; reaction and analysis on 'The Five.'
Slime, slime and more slime. Obama headed up the whole thing. Zero integrity there.
The leaders of the Democratic Party, Barrak
Obama, Hillary Clinton, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Donna Brazile, Chuck Schummer, Nancy Pelosi, Adam Shiff and his sisters father-in-law
George Soros.
Here is what this all boils down to. Hillary Clinton email to Donna Brazile, Oct., 17, 2016. "If that f*cking ba*tard
wins, we're all going to hang from nooses! You better fix this sh*t!"
Don't laugh derisively, as people do these days, but I've always admired the New York Times
. First draft of history. Talent everywhere. Best production values. Even with its ideological
spin, it can be scrupulous about facts. You can usually extract the truth with a decoder ring.
Its outsized influence over the rest of the press makes it essential. I've relied on it for
years. Even given everything, and I mean everything.
Until now. It's just too much. Too much unreality, manipulation, propaganda, and flat out
untruths that are immediately recognizable to anyone. I can't believe they think they can get
away with this with credibility intact. I'm not speaking of the many great reporters,
technicians, editors, production specialists, and the tens of thousands who make it all
possible. I'm speaking of a very small coterie of people who stand guard over the paper's
editorial mission of the moment and enforce it on the whole company, with no dissent
allowed.
Let's get right to the offending passage. It's not from the news or opinion section but the
official editorial section and hence the official voice of the paper. The paragraph from June
2, 2020, reads
as follows.
Healing the wounds ripped open in recent days and months will not be easy. The pandemic
has made Americans fearful of their neighbors, cut them off from their communities of faith,
shut their outlets for exercise and recreation and culture and learning. Worst of all, it has
separated Americans from their own livelihoods.
Can you imagine? The pandemic is the cause!
I would otherwise feel silly to have to point this out but for the utter absurdity of the
claim. The pandemic didn't do this. It caused a temporary and mostly media-fueled panic that
distracted officials from doing what they should have done, which is protect the vulnerable and
otherwise let society function and medical workers deal with disease.
Instead, the CDC and governors around the country, at the urging of bad computer-science
models uninformed by any experience in viruses, shut down schools, churches, events,
restaurants, gyms, theaters, sports, and further instructed people to stay in their homes,
enforced sometimes even by SWAT teams. Jewish funerals were broken up by the police.
It was brutal and egregious and it threw 40 million people out of work and bankrupted
countless businesses. Nothing this terrible was attempted even during the Black Death.
Maximum
economic damage; minimum health advantages . It's not even possible to find evidence that
the lockdowns saved lives at all .
But to hear the New York Times tell the story, it was not the lockdown but the pandemic that
did this. That's a level of ideological subterfuge that is almost impossible for a sane person
to conjure up, simply because it is so obviously unbelievable.
It's lockdown denialism.
Why? From February 2020 and following, the New York Times had a story and they are
continuing to stick to it. The story is that we are all going to die from this pandemic unless
government shuts down society. It was a drum this paper beat every day.
Consider what the top virus reporter Donald J. McNeil (B.A. Rhetoric, University of
California, Berkeley) wrote on
February 28, 2020, weeks before there was any talk of shutdowns in the U.S.:
There are two ways to fight epidemics: the medieval and the modern.
The modern way is to surrender to the power of the pathogens: Acknowledge that they are
unstoppable and to try to soften the blow with 20th-century inventions, including new
vaccines, antibiotics, hospital ventilators and thermal cameras searching for people with
fevers.
The medieval way, inherited from the era of the Black Death, is brutal: Close the borders,
quarantine the ships, pen terrified citizens up inside their poisoned cities.
For the first time in more than a century, the world has chosen to confront a new and
terrifying virus with the iron fist instead of the latex glove.
And yes, he recommends the medieval way. The article continues on to praise China's response
and Cuba's to AIDS and says that this approach is natural to Trump and should be done in the
United States. ( AIER
called him out on this alarming column on March 4, 20202.)
McNeil then went on to greater fame with a series of shocking podcasts for the NYT that put
a voice and even more panic to the failed modeling of Neil Ferguson of the Imperial College
London.
This first
appeared the day before his op-ed calling for global lockdown. The transcript
includes this:
I spend a lot of time thinking about whether I'm being too alarmist or whether I'm being
not alarmist enough. And this is alarmist, but I think right now, it's justified. This one
reminds me of what I have read about the 1918 Spanish influenza.
Reminder: 675,000 Americans died in that pandemic. There were only 103 million people living
in the U.S. at the time.
He continues:
I'm trying to bring a sense that if things don't change, a lot of us might die. If you
have 300 relatively close friends and acquaintances, six of them would die in a 2.5 percent
mortality situation.
That's an astonishing claim that seems to forecast 8.25 million Americans will die. So far
as I know, that is the most extreme claim made by anyone, four times as high as the Imperial
College model.
What should we do to prevent this?
You can't leave. You can't see your families. All the flights are canceled. All the trains
are canceled. All the highways are closed. You're going to stay in there. And you're locked
in with a deadly disease. We can do it.
So because this coronavirus "reminds" him of one he read about, he can say on the air that
four million people could soon die, and therefore life itself should be cancelled. Because a
reporter is "reminded" of something.
This is the same newspaper that in 1957 urged people to stay calm during the Asian flu and
trust medical providers – running all of one editorial on the topic. What a change! This
was an amazing podcast -- amazingly irresponsible.
McNeil was not finished yet. He was
at it again on March 12, 2020, demanding that we not just close big events and schools but
shut down everything and everyone "for months." He went back on the podcast twice more, then
started riding the media circuit, including
NPR . It was also the same. China did it right. We need to lock down or people you know, if
you are one of the lucky survivors, will die.
To say that the New York Times was invested in the scenario of "lock down or we die" is an
understatement. It was as invested in this narrative as it was in the Russia-collaboration
story or the Ukrainian-phone call impeachment, tales to which they dedicated hundreds of
stories and many dozens of reporters. The virus was the third pitch to achieve their
objective.
Once in, there was no turning back, even after it became obvious that for the vast numbers
of people this was hardly a disease at all, and that most of the deaths came from one city and
mostly from nursing homes that were forced by law to take in COVID-19 patients.
That the newspaper, a once venerable institution, has something to answer for is apparent.
But instead of accepting moral culpability for having created a panic to fuel the overthrow of
the American way of life, they turn on a dime to celebrate people who are not socially
distancing in the streets to protest police brutality.
To me, the protests on the streets were a welcome relief from the vicious lockdowns. To the
New York Times , it seems like the lockdowns never happened. Down the Orwellian memory
hole.
In this paper's consistent editorializing, nothing is the fault of the lockdowns.
Everything instead is the fault of Trump, who "tends to see only political opportunity in
public fear and anger, as in his customary manner of contributing heat rather than light to the
confrontations between protesters and authority."
True about Trump but let us remember that the McNeil's first pro-lockdown article praised
Trump as perfectly suited to bring about the lockdown, and the paper urged him to do just that,
while only three months later washing their hands of the whole thing, as if had nothing to do
with current sufferings much less the rage on the streets.
And the rapid turnaround of this paper on street protests was stunning to behold. A month
ago, people protesting lockdowns were written about as vicious disease spreaders who were
denying good science. In the blink of an eye, the protesters against police brutality (the same
police who enforced the lockdown) were transmogrified into bold embracers of First Amendment
rights who posed no threat to public health.
Not even the scary warnings about the coming "second wave" were enough to stop the paper
from throwing out all its concern over "targeted layered containment" and "social distancing"
in order to celebrate protests in the streets that they like.
And they ask themselves why people are incredulous toward mainstream media today.
The lockdowns wrecked the fundamentals of life in America. The New York Times today wants to
pretend they either didn't happen, happened only in a limited way, or were just minor public
health measures that worked beautifully to mitigate disease. And instead of having an editorial
meltdown over these absurdities, preposterous forecasts, and extreme panic mongering that
contributed to vast carnage, we seen an internal
revolt over the publishing of a Tom Cotton editorial, a dispute over politics not
facts.
The record is there: this paper went all in back in February to demand the most
authoritarian possible response to a virus about which we already knew enough back then to
observe that this was nothing like the Spanish flu of 1918. They pretended otherwise, probably
for ideological reasons, most likely.
It was not the pandemic that blew up our lives, commercial networks, and health systems. It
was the response to the virus that did that. The Times needs to learn that it cannot construct
a fake version of reality just to avoid responsibility for what they've done. Are we really
supposed to believe what they write now and in the future? This time, I hope, people will be
smart and learn to consider the source.
So another rabid neocon is hired by neocon MSM and instantly was interviewed by neocon Madcow, blaming Russia for the coup
d'état against Trump that Obama administration with her help launched. Nothing new, nothing interesting.
Notable quotes:
"... Page testified that even by May 2017, they did not find such evidence that "it still existed in the scope of possibility that there would be literally nothing" to connect Trump and Russia. ..."
"... There was little reason to believe in this "insurance policy" given the absence of evidence. Yet, Page still viewed the effort led by Strzok as an indemnity in case of election. ..."
"... The Inspector General found that, soon after the first surveillance was ordered, FBI agents began to cast doubts on the veracity of the Steele document ..."
"... it was quickly established that no credible evidence existed to support the continuance of the investigation -- which Page called their "insurance policy." ..."
"... Page also left out her other emails including calling Trump foul names while praising Hillary Clinton and other opponents. Even if she were not involved in the ongoing controversy, her emails show her to be fervently opposed to both Trump and the Republicans. ..."
Lisa Page, the former FBI lawyer who resigned in the midst of the Russian investigation
scandal, has been hired a NBC and MSNBC as a legal analyst. The move continues a trend started
by CNN in hiring Trump critics, including officials terminated for misconduct, to offer legal
analysis on the Trump Administration.
We have previously discussed the use by CNN of figures like Andrew McCabe to give legal
analysis despite his being referred for possible criminal charges by the Inspector General for
repeatedly lying to federal investigators. The media appears intent on fulfilling the narrative
of President Trump that it is overly biased and hostile in its analysis. Indeed, it now appears
a marketing plan that has subsumed the journalistic mission.
Page appeared with Rachel Maddow and began her work as the new legal analyst by discussing
her own controversial work at the FBI. Page is still part of investigation by various
committees and the investigation being conducted by U.S Attorney John Durham.
I have
denounced President Trump for his repeated and often vicious references to Page's affair with
fired FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok . There is no excuse for such personal abuse. I also
do not view her emails as proof of her involvement in a deep-state conspiracy as opposed to
clearly inappropriate and partisan communications for someone involved in the investigation.
Indeed, Page did not appear a particularly significant figure in the investigation or even the
FBI as a whole. She was primarily dragged into the controversy due to her relationship with
Strzok.
However, Trump has legitimate reason to object (as he has) to this hiring as do those who
expect analysis from experts without a personal stake in the ongoing investigations. It has
long been an ethical rule in American journalism not to pay for interviews. Either NBC is
paying for exclusive rights to Page in interviews like the one on Maddow's show or it is hiring
an expert with a personal stake in these controversies to give legal analysis. Neither is a
good option for a network that represented the gold standard in journalism with figures like
John Chancellor, Edwin Newman, and Roger Mudd.
It is not that Page disagrees with the Administration on legal matters or these cases. It is
the fact that she is personally involved in the ongoing stories and has shown intense and at
times unhinged bias against Trump in communications with Strzok and others. She is the news
story, or at least a significant part of it.
Andrew A. Weissmann has also been retained as a legal analyst by NBC and MSNBC. While
Weissmann has been raised by Republicans as a lightening rod for his perceived partisan bias as
a member of the Mueller team, he does not have the type of personal conflict or interest in
these investigations. Weissmann is likely to be raised in the hearing over the next weeks into
the Flynn case in terms of prosecutorial decisions. (It is worth noting that Fox hired Trey
Gowdy at an analyst even though he would be commenting on matters that came before his
committee in these investigations.) In terms of balance, however, the appearance of both Page
and Weissmann giving analysis on the Administration's response to the protests is a bit
jarring for some .
Page was an unknown attorney in the FBI before she was forced into the public eye due to her
emails with Strzok. Her emails fueled the controversy over bias in the FBI. They were
undeniably biased and strident including the now famous reference to the FBI investigation as
"insurance" in case Trump was elected. In the email in August 2016, here's what Strzok
wrote:
I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy's office [Andrew McCabe
is the FBI deputy director and married to a Democratic Virginia State Senate candidate] for
that there's no way he gets elected -- but I'm afraid we can't take that risk. It's like an
insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you're 40
What particularly concerns me is that Page has come up recently in new disclosures in the Flynn
case . In newly released document is an email from former FBI lawyer Lisa Page to former
FBI special agent Peter Strzok, who played the leadership role in targeting Flynn. In the
email, Page suggests that Flynn could be set up by making a passing reference to a federal law
that criminalizes lies to federal investigators. She suggested to Strzok that "it would be an
easy way to just casually slip that in." So this effort was not about protecting national
security or learning critical intelligence. As I have noted, the email reinforces other
evidence that it was about bagging Flynn for the case in the legal version of a canned trophy
hunt.
It appears that, on January 4, 2017, the FBI's Washington Field Office issued a "Closing
Communication" indicating that the bureau was terminating "CROSSFIRE RAZOR" -- the newly
disclosed codename for the investigation of Flynn. That is when Strzok intervened. The FBI had
investigated Flynn and various databases and determined that "no derogatory information was
identified in FBI holdings." Due to this conclusion, the Washington Field Office concluded that
Flynn "was no longer a viable candidate as part of the larger CROSSFIRE HURRICANE umbrella
case." On that same day, however, fired FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok instructed the FBI case
manager handling CROSSFIRE RAZOR to keep the investigation open, telling him "Hey don't close
RAZOR." The FBI official replied, "Okay." Strzok then confirmed again, "Still open right? And
you're the case agent? Going to send you [REDACTED] for the file." The FBI official confirmed:
"I have not closed it Still open." Strzok responded "Rgr. I couldn't raise [REDACTED] earlier.
Pls keep it open for now."
Strzok also texted Page:
"Razor still open. :@ but serendipitously good, I guess. You want those chips and Oreos?"
Page replied "Phew. But yeah that's amazing that he is still open. Good, I guess."
Strzok replied "Yeah, our utter incompetence actually helps us. 20% of the time, I'm
guessing :)"
Page will be the focus of much of the upcoming inquiries both in Congress and the Justice
Department as will CNN's legal analyst Andrew McCabe.
In her Maddow segment, Page attempts to defuse the "insurance policy" email as all part of
her commitment to protecting the nation, not her repeatedly stated hatred for Trump. In what is
now a signature for MSNBC, Maddow did not ask a single probative question but actually helped
her frame the response. Even in echo journalistic circles, the echo between the two was
deafening.
Page explained"
"It's an analogy. First of all, it's not my text, so I'm sort of interpreting what I
believed he meant back three years ago, but we're using an analogy. We're talking about
whether or not we should take certain investigative steps or not based on the likelihood that
he's going to be president or not."
You have to keep in mind if President Trump doesn't become president, the
national-security risk, if there is somebody in his campaign associated with Russia,
plummets. You're not so worried about what Russia's doing vis-à-vis a member of his
campaign if he's not president because you're not going to have access to classified
information, you're not going to have access to sources and methods in our national-security
apparatus. So, the 'insurance policy' was an analogy. It's like an insurance policy when
you're 40. You don't expect to die when you're 40, yet you still have an insurance
policy."
Maddow then decided to better frame the spin:
"So, don't just hope that he's not going to be elected and therefore not press forward
with the investigation hoping, but rather press forward with the investigation just in case
he does get in there."
Page simply responds " Exactly ."
Well, not exactly.
Page is leaving out that, as new documents show, there never was credible evidence of any
Russian collusion. Recently, the Congress unsealed testimony from a long line of Obama
officials who denied ever seeing such evidence,
including some who publicly suggested that they had .
Indeed, Page testified that even by
May 2017, they did not find such evidence that "it still existed in the scope of possibility
that there would be literally nothing" to connect Trump and Russia.
There was little reason to
believe in this "insurance policy" given the absence of evidence. Yet, Page still viewed the
effort led by Strzok as an indemnity in case of election.
The Inspector General found that, soon after the first surveillance was ordered, FBI agents
began to cast doubts on the veracity of the Steele document and suggested it might be
disinformation from Russian intelligence. The IG said that, due to the relatively low standard
required for a FISA application, he could not say that the original application was invalid but
that it was quickly established that no credible evidence existed to support the continuance of
the investigation -- which Page called their "insurance policy."
Page also left out her other emails
including calling Trump foul names while praising Hillary Clinton and other opponents. Even if
she were not involved in the ongoing controversy, her emails show her to be fervently opposed
to both Trump and the Republicans.
Bias however has become the coin of the realm for some networks. Why have echo journalism
when you can have an analyst simply repeat her position directly? For viewers who become irate
at the appearance of opposing views (
as vividly demonstrated in the recent apology of the New York Times for publishing a
conservative opinion column ), having a vehemently biased and personally invested analyst
is reassuring. It is not like Page will suddenly blurt out a defense of Flynn or Trump or
others in the Administration.
With Page, NBC has crossed the Rubicon and left its objectivity scattered on the far
bank.
we_the_people, 11 minutes ago (Edited)
Nothing says professional journalism like hiring a dirty whore who was an active
participant in a coup to overthrow a duly elected President!
The level of insanity is truly amazing!
Heroism, 14 minutes ago
The MSM gets more Orwellian by the day, and today is like tomorrow.
More proof that corruption and deceit pay, big time. Surely, at some point viewers and voters
will say, "Enough!" and hit these purveyors of lies where it hurts--in the ratings and pocketbooks. Meanwhile,
the people will just willingly suffer..............
MSNBC announced on Friday that it has hired former FBI lawyer Lisa Page as an NBC News and
MSNBC national security and legal analyst.
On Friday night, President Trump blasted MSNBC's latest hiring decision.
"You must be kidding??? This is a total disgrace!" Trump tweeted.
Page made her debut as an MSNBC analyst during "Deadline: White House" alongside former
Mueller probe prosecutor Andrew Weissmann, who appears to have been rehired by the network
after they severed ties after it was announced he was hosting a Biden fundraiser, which was
ultimately canceled.
Both Page and Weissmann offered legal analysis on the ongoing feud between President Trump
and Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser over the presence of outside troops.
Page is best known for her publicized text exchanges with her lover, ex-FBI agent Peter
Strzok, which revealed extreme animosity towards Trump during the 2016 election and created the
perception that their political views fueled the Russia investigation.
The texts that sounded the alarm for GOP lawmakers was Strzok's reference to an "insurance
policy" that was discussed at Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe's office. Page denied that
meant the FBI had plotted to remove Trump if he won the election.
Last December, Page broke her silence and made her television debut on MSNBC's "The Rachel
Maddow Show," where she was asked about the "insurance policy" text.
"It's an analogy," Page explained. "First of all, it's not my text, so I'm sort of
interpreting what I believed he meant back three years ago, but we're using an analogy. We're
talking about whether or not we should take certain investigative steps or not based on the
likelihood that he's going to be president or not."
She continued, "You have to keep in mind ... if President Trump doesn't become president,
the national-security risk, if there is somebody in his campaign associated with Russia,
plummets. You're not so worried about what Russia's doing vis-à-vis a member of his
campaign if he's not president because you're not going to have access to classified
information, you're not going to have access to sources and methods in our national-security
apparatus. So, the 'insurance policy' was an anology. It's like an insurance policy when you're
40. You don't expect to die when you're 40, yet you still have an insurance policy."
MSNBC host Rachel Maddow chimed in, "So, don't just hope that he's not going to be elected
and therefore not press forward with the investigation hoping, but rather press forward with
the investigation just in case he does get in there."
Looks like the third stage of the Purple revolution against Trump, with Russiagate and
Ukrainegate and two initial stages.
Notable quotes:
"... Things couldn't be going better for the Resistance if they had scripted it themselves. Actually, they did kind of script it themselves. Not the murder of poor George Floyd, of course. Racist police have been murdering Black people for as long as there have been racist police. No, the Resistance didn't manufacture racism. They just spent the majority of the last four years creating and promoting an official narrative which casts most Americans as "white supremacists" who literally elected Hitler president, and who want to turn the country into a racist dictatorship. ..."
"... According to this official narrative, which has been relentlessly disseminated by the corporate media, the neoliberal intelligentsia, the culture industry, and countless hysterical, Trump-hating loonies, the Russians put Donald Trump in office with those DNC emails they never hacked and some division-sowing Facebook ads that supposedly hypnotized Black Americans into refusing to come out and vote for Clinton. Putin purportedly ordered this personally, as part of his plot to "destroy democracy." ..."
"... The protesting and rioting that typically follows the murder of an unarmed Black person by the cops has mushroomed into " an international uprising " cheered on by the corporate media, corporations, and the liberal establishment, who don't normally tend to support such uprisings, but they've all had a sudden change of heart, or spiritual or political awakening, and are down for some serious property damage, and looting, and preventative self-defense, if that's what it takes to bring about justice, and to restore America to the peaceful, prosperous, non-white-supremacist paradise it was until the Russians put Donald Trump in office. ..."
"... America is still a racist country, but America is no more racist today than it was when Barack Obama was president. A lot of American police are brutal, but no more brutal than when Obama was president. America didn't radically change the day Donald Trump was sworn into office. All that has changed is the official narrative. And it will change back as soon as Trump is gone and the ruling classes have no further use for it. ..."
underground
bunker ." Opportunist social media pundits on both sides of the political spectrum are
whipping people up into white-eyed frenzies. Americans are at each other's throats, divided by
identity politics, consumed by rage, hatred, and fear.
Things couldn't be going better for the Resistance if they had scripted it themselves.
Actually, they did kind of script it themselves. Not the murder of poor George Floyd, of
course. Racist police have been murdering Black people for as long as there have been racist
police. No, the Resistance didn't manufacture racism. They just spent the majority of the last
four years creating and promoting an official narrative which casts most Americans as "white
supremacists" who literally elected Hitler president, and who want to turn the country into a
racist dictatorship.
According to this official narrative, which has been relentlessly disseminated by the
corporate media, the neoliberal intelligentsia, the culture industry, and countless hysterical,
Trump-hating loonies, the Russians put Donald Trump in office with those DNC emails they never
hacked and some division-sowing Facebook ads that supposedly hypnotized Black Americans into
refusing to come out and vote for Clinton. Putin purportedly ordered this personally, as part
of his plot to "destroy democracy." The plan was always for President Hitler to embolden
his white-supremacist followers into launching the "RaHoWa," or the "Boogaloo," after which
Trump would declare martial law, dissolve the legislature, and pronounce himself Führer.
Then they would start rounding up and murdering the Jews, and the Blacks, and Mexicans, and
other minorities, according to this twisted liberal fantasy.
I've been covering the roll-out and dissemination of this official narrative since 2016, and
have documented much of it in my essays
, so I won't reiterate all that here. Let's just say, I'm not exaggerating, much. After four
years of more or less constant conditioning, millions of Americans believe this fairy tale,
despite the fact that there is absolutely zero evidence whatsoever to support it. Which is not
exactly a mystery or anything. It would be rather surprising if they didn't believe it. We're
talking about the most formidable official propaganda machine in the history of official
propaganda machines.
And now the propaganda is paying off. The protesting and rioting that typically follows
the murder of an unarmed Black person by the cops has mushroomed into "
an international uprising " cheered on by the corporate media, corporations, and the
liberal establishment, who don't normally tend to support such uprisings, but they've all had a
sudden change of heart, or spiritual or political awakening, and are down for some serious
property damage, and looting, and preventative self-defense, if that's what it takes to bring
about justice, and to restore America to the peaceful, prosperous, non-white-supremacist
paradise it was until the Russians put Donald Trump in office.
In any event, the Resistance media have now dropped their breathless coverage of the
non-existent Corona-Holocaust to breathlessly cover the "revolution." The American police, who
just last week were national heroes for risking their lives to beat up, arrest, and generally
intimidate mask-less "lockdown violators" are now the fascist foot soldiers of the Trumpian
Reich. The Nike corporation produced
a commercial urging people to smash the windows of their Nike stores and steal their
sneakers. Liberal journalists took to Twitter, calling on rioters to "
burn that shit down! " until the rioters reached their gated community and started burning
down their local Starbucks. Hollywood celebrities are masking up and going full-black bloc, and
doing legal support . Chelsea Clinton is teaching children about David and the Racist
Goliath . John Cusack's bicycle was
attacked by the pigs . I haven't checked on Rob Reiner yet, but I assume he is assembling
Molotov cocktails in the basement of a Resistance safe house somewhere in Hollywood Hills.
Look, I'm not saying the neoliberal Resistance orchestrated or staged these riots, or
"denying the agency" of the folks in the streets. Whatever else is happening out there, a lot
of very angry Black people are taking their frustration out on the cops, and on anyone and
anything else that represents racism and injustice to them.
This happens in America from time to time. America is still a racist society. Most
African-Americans are descended from slaves. Legal racial discrimination was not abolished
until the 1960s, which isn't that long ago in historical terms. I was born in the segregated
American South, with the segregated schools, and all the rest of it. I don't remember it -- I
was born in 1961 -- but I do remember the years right after it. The South didn't magically
change overnight in July of 1964. Nor did the North's variety of racism, which, yes, is
subtler, but no less racist.
So I have no illusions about racism in America. But I'm not really talking about racism in
America. I'm talking about how racism in America has been cynically instrumentalized, not by
the Russians, but by the so-called Resistance, in order to delegitimize Trump and, more
importantly, everyone who voted for him, as a bunch of white supremacists and racists.
Fomenting racial division has been the Resistance's strategy from the beginning. A quote
attributed to Joseph Goebbels, "accuse the other side of that which you are guilty," is
particularly apropos in this case. From the moment Trump won the Republican nomination, the
corporate media and the rest of the Resistance have been telling us the man is literally
Hitler, and that his plan is to foment racial hatred among his "white supremacist base," and
eventually stage some "Reichstag" event, declare martial law and pronounce himself dictator.
They've been telling us this story over and over, on television, in the liberal press, on
social media, in books, movies, and everywhere else they could possibly tell it.
So, before you go out and join the "uprising," take a look at the headlines today, turn on
CNN or MSNBC, and think about that for just a minute. I don't mean to spoil the party, but
they've preparing you for this for the last four years.
Not you Black folks. I'm not talking to you. I wouldn't presume to tell you what to do. I'm
talking to white folks like myself, who are cheering on the rioting and looting, and are coming
out to "help" you with it, but who will be back home in their gated communities when the ashes
have cooled, and the corporate media are gone, and the cops return to "police" your
neighborhoods.
OK, and this is where I have to restate (for the benefit of my partisan readers) that I'm
not a fan of Donald Trump, and that I think he's a narcissistic ass clown, and a glorified con
man, and blah blah blah, because so many people have been so polarized by insane propaganda and
mass hysteria that they can't even read or think anymore, and so just scan whatever articles
they encounter to see whose "side" the author is on and then mindlessly celebrate or excoriate
it.
If you're doing that, let me help you out whichever side you're on, I'm not on it.
I realize that's extremely difficult for a lot of folks to comprehend these days, which is
part of the point I've been trying to make. I'll try again, as plainly as I can.
America is still a racist country, but America is no more racist today than it was when
Barack Obama was president. A lot of American police are brutal, but no more brutal than when
Obama was president. America didn't radically change the day Donald Trump was sworn into
office. All that has changed is the official narrative. And it will change back as soon as
Trump is gone and the ruling classes have no further use for it.
And that will be the end of the War on Populism , and we will
switch back to the War on Terror, or maybe the Brave New Pathologized Normal or
whatever Orwellian official narrative the folks at GloboCap have in store for us.
#
CJ Hopkins
June 1, 2020
Photo: Nike (George Floyd commercial)
In any event, the publication of the Mueller report has cleared things up for me. I get it now. The investigation was never about
Trump colluding with Russia. It was always about Trump obstructing the investigation of the collusion with Russia that the investigation
was not about. Mueller was never looking for collusion. It was not his job to look for collusion.
His job was to look for obstruction of his investigation of alleged obstruction of his investigation of non-collusion, which he
found, and detailed at length in his report, and which qualifies as an impeachable offense.
... ... ...
In other words, his investigation was launched in order to investigate the obstruction of his investigation. And, on those terms,
it was a huge success. The fact that it didn't prove "collusion" means nothing -- that's just a straw man argument that Trump and
his Russian handlers make. The goal all along was to prove that Trump obstructed an investigation of his obstruction of that investigation,
not that he was "colluding" with Putin, or any of the other paranoid nonsense that the corporate media were forced to report on,
once an investigation into his obstruction of the investigation was launched.
"... The Democrats are fielding as candidates a roster of middle-school clowns and unflavored tapioca. Are they secretly in Trump's pay? Like Clinton with her "Deplorables" suicide line? ..."
They're going to do it, I tell you: The whole touchy-feely do-gooding ratpack of Microaggression worriers, reparations freaks,
weird sexual curiosities, race hustlers, bat.-Antifa psychos, and egalitarian enstupidators of universities. They are going to elect
Trump. Again.
Washington, where I shortly will be for a bit, is crazy. It has not the slightest, wan, etiolated idea of what is going on in
America. The Democrats are fielding as candidates a roster of middle-school clowns and unflavored tapioca. Are they secretly in Trump's
pay? Like Clinton with her "Deplorables" suicide line?
2016 a Russia-Trump campaign collusion conspiracy was afoot and unfolding right before our eyes, we were told, as during his roll-out
foreign
policy speech at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C., then candidate Trump said [ gasp! ]:
" Common sense says this cycle, this horrible cycle of hostility must end and ideally will end soon. Good for both countries.
Some say the Russians won't be reasonable. I intend to find out."
NPR and others had breathlessly
reported at the time, "Sergey Kislyak, then the Russian ambassador to the U.S., was sitting in the front row" [ more gasps! ].
This 'suspicious'
"coincidence or something more?" event and of course the infamous
Steele 'Dodgy Dossier' were
followed by over two more years of the following connect-the-dots mere tiny sampling of unrestrained theorizing and avalanche of
accusations...
2019, Wired: Trump Must Be
A Russian Agent... (where we were told...ahem: " It would be rather embarrassing ... if Robert Mueller were to declare that
the president isn't an agent of Russian intelligence." )
It's especially worth noting that a
July 2018 New York Times
op-ed argued that President Trump -- dubbed a "treasonous traitor" for meeting with Putin in Helsinki -- should "be directing
all resources at his disposal to punish Russia."
Fast-forward to a July 2019 NY Times Editorial Board piece entitled
"What's America's Winning Hand if Russia
Plays the China Card?" How dizzying fast all of the above has been wiped from America's collective memory! Or at least the Times
is engaged in hastily pushing it all down the memory hole Orwell-style in order to cover its own dastardly tracks which contributed
in no small measure to non-stop national Russiagate hype and hysteria, with this astounding line:
That's right, The Times' pundits have already pivoted to the new bogeyman while stating they agree with Trump
on Russian relations :
"Given its economic, military and technological trajectory, together with its authoritarian model, China, not Russia , represents
by far the greater challenge to American objectives over the long term . That means President Trump is correct to try to establish
a sounder relationship with Russia and peel it away from China ."
It's 2019, and we've now come full circle . This is The New York Times editorial board continuing their call for Trump to establish
"sounder" ties and "cooperation" with
Russia :
"Even during the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union often made progress in one facet of their relationship while
they remained in conflict over other aspects. The United States and Russia could expand their cooperation in space . They could
also continue to work closely in the Arctic And they could revive cooperation on arms control."
Could we imagine if a mere six months ago Trump himself had uttered these same words? Now the mainstream media apparently agrees
that peace is better than war with Russia.
With 'Russiagate' now effectively dead, the NY Times' new criticism appears to be that Trump-Kremlin relations are not close enough
, as Trump's "approach has been ham-handed " - the 'paper of record' now tells us.
Or imagine if Trump had called for peaceful existence with Russia almost four years ago? Oh wait...
" Common sense says this cycle, this horrible cycle of hostility must end and ideally will end soon. Good for both countries."
-- Then candidate Trump on
April 27, 2016
DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Agent Smith, you testified that the Russians hacked the DNC computers, is that correct?
FBI AGENT JOHN SMITH: That is correct.
DEF ATT: Upon what information did you base your testimony?
AGENT: Information found in reports analyzing the breach of the computers.
DEF ATT: So, the FBI prepared these reports?
AGENT: (cough) . (shift in seat) No, a cyber security contractor with the FBI.
DEF ATT: Pardon me, why would a contractor be preparing these reports? Do these contractors run the FBI laboratories where
the server was examined?
AGENT: No.
DEF ATT: No? No what? These contractors don't run the FBI Laboratories?
AGENT: No. The laboratories are staffed by FBI personnel.
DEF ATT: Well I don't understand. Why would contractors be writing reports about computers that are forensically examined in
FBI laboratories?
AGENT: Well, the servers were not examined in the FBI laboratory.
(silence)
DEF ATT: Oh, so the FBI examined the servers on site to determine who had hacked them and what was taken?
AGENT: Uh .. no.
DEF ATT: They didn't examine them on site?
AGENT: No.
DEF ATT: Well, where did they examine them?
AGENT: Well, uh .. the FBI did not examine them.
DEF ATT: What?
AGENT: The FBI did not directly examine the servers.
DEF ATT: Agent Smith, the FBI has presented to the Grand Jury and to this court and SWORN AS FACT that the Russians hacked
the DNC computers. You are basing your SWORN testimony on a report given to you by a contractor, while the FBI has NEVER actually
examined the computer hardware?
AGENT: That is correct.
DEF ATT: Agent Smith, who prepared the analysis reports that the FBI relied on to give this sworn testimony?
AGENT: Crowdstrike, Inc.
DEF ATT: So, which Crowdstrike employee gave you the report?
AGENT: We didn't receive the report directly from Crowdstrike.
DEF ATT: What?
AGENT: We did not receive the report directly from Crowdstrike.
DEF ATT: Well, where did you find this report?
AGENT: It was given to us by the people who hired Crowdstrike to examine and secure their computer network and hardware.
DEF ATT: Oh, so the report was given to you by the technical employees for the company that hired Crowdstrike to examine their
servers?
AGENT: No.
DEF ATT: Well, who gave you the report?
AGENT: Legal counsel for the company that hired Crowdstrike.
DEF ATT: Why would legal counsel be the ones giving you the report?
AGENT: I don't know.
DEF ATT: Well, what company hired Crowdstrike?
AGENT: The Democratic National Committee.
DEF ATT: Wait a minute. Let me get this straight. You are giving SWORN testimony to this court that Russia hacked the servers
of the Democratic National Committee. And you are basing that testimony on a report given to you by the LAWYERS for the Democratic
National Committee. And you, the FBI, never actually saw or examined the computer servers?
AGENT: That is correct.
DEF ATT: Well, can you provide a copy of the technical report produced by Crowdstrike for the Democratic National Committee?
AGENT: No, I cannot.
DEF ATT: Well, can you go back to your office and get a copy of the report?
AGENT: No.
DEF ATT: Why? Are you locked out of your office?
AGENT: No.
DEF ATT: I don't understand. Why can you not provide a copy of this report?
AGENT: Because I do not have a copy of the report.
DEF ATT: Did you lose it?
AGENT: No.
DEF ATT: Why do you not have a copy of the report?
AGENT: Because we were never given a final copy of the report.
DEF ATT: Agent Smith, if you didn't get a copy of the report, upon what information are you basing your testimony?
AGENT: On a draft copy of the report.
DEF ATT: A draft copy?
AGENT: Yes.
DEF ATT: Was a final report ever delivered to the FBI?
AGENT: No.
DEF ATT: Agent Smith, did you get to read the entire report?
AGENT: No.
DEF ATT: Why not?
AGENT: Because large portions were redacted.
DEF ATT: Agent Smith, let me get this straight. The FBI is claiming that the Russians hacked the DNC servers. But the FBI never
actually saw the computer hardware, nor examined it? Is that correct?
AGENT: That is correct.
DEF ATT: And the FBI never actually examined the log files or computer email or any aspect of the data from the servers? Is
that correct?
AGENT: That is correct.
DEF ATT: And you are basing your testimony on the word of Counsel for the Democratic National Committee, the people who provided
you with a REDACTED copy of a DRAFT report, not on the actual technical personnel who supposedly examined the servers?
AGENT: That is correct.
DEF ATT: Your honor, I have a few motions I would like to make at this time.
PRESIDING JUDGE: I'm sure you do, Counselor. (as he turns toward the prosecutors) And I feel like I am in a mood to grant them.
Brilliant! that sums it up nicely. of course, if the servers were not hacked and were instead "thumbnailed" that leads to a
whole pile of other questions (including asking wiileaks for their source and about the murder of seth rich).
Neoliberal MSM just “got it wrong,” again … exactly like was the case
with those Iraqi WMDs ;-).
So many neocons and neolibs seem so disappointed to find out that the President is not a
Russian asset that it looks they’d secretly wish be ruled by Putin :-).
But in reality there well might be a credible "Trump copllition with the foreign power". Only
with a different foreign power. Looks like Trump traded American foreign policy for Zionist
money, not Russian money. That means that "the best-Congress-that-AIPAC-money-can-buy" will never
impeach him for that.
And BTW as long as Schiff remains the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee the witch
hunt is not over. So the leash remains strong.
Notable quotes:
"... it appears that hundreds of millions of Americans have, once again, been woefully bamboozled . Weird, how this just keeps on happening. At this point, Americans have to be the most frequently woefully bamboozled people in the entire history of woeful bamboozlement. ..."
"... That's right, as I'm sure you're aware by now, it turns out President Donald Trump, a pompous former reality TV star who can barely string three sentences together without totally losing his train of thought and barking like an elephant seal, is not, in fact, a secret agent conspiring with the Russian intelligence services to destroy the fabric of Western democracy. ..."
"... Paranoid collusion-obsessives will continue to obsess about redactions and cover-ups , but the long and short of the matter is, there will be no perp walks for any of the Trumps. No treason tribunals. No televised hangings. No detachment of Secret Service agents marching Hillary into the White House. ..."
So the Mueller report is finally in, and it appears that hundreds of millions of
Americans have, once again, been woefully bamboozled . Weird, how this just keeps on happening.
At this point, Americans have to be the most frequently woefully bamboozled people in the
entire history of woeful bamboozlement.
If you didn't know better, you'd think we were all a bunch of hopelessly credulous imbeciles
that you could con into believing almost anything, or that our brains had been bombarded with
so much propaganda from the time we were born that we couldn't really even think anymore.
That's right, as I'm sure you're aware by now, it turns out President Donald Trump, a
pompous former reality TV star who can barely string three sentences together without totally
losing his train of thought and barking like an elephant seal, is not, in fact, a secret agent
conspiring with the Russian intelligence services to destroy the fabric of Western
democracy.
After two long years of bug-eyed hysteria, Inspector Mueller came up with squat. Zip. Zero.
Nichts. Nada. Or, all right, he indicted a bunch of Russians that will never see the inside of
a courtroom, and a few of Trump's professional sleazebags for lying and assorted other
sleazebag activities (so I guess that was worth the $25 million of taxpayers' money that was
spent on this circus).
Notwithstanding those historic accomplishments, the entire Mueller investigation now appears
to have been another wild goose chase (like the "search" for those non-existent WMDs that we
invaded and destabilized the Middle East and murdered hundreds of thousands of people
pretending to conduct in 2003). Paranoid collusion-obsessives will continue to obsess about
redactions and
cover-ups , but the long and short of the matter is, there will be no perp walks for any of
the Trumps. No treason tribunals. No televised hangings. No detachment of Secret Service agents
marching Hillary into the White House.
The jig, as they say, is up.
But let's try to look on the bright side, shall we?
"... Russiagate became a convenient replacement explanation absolving an incompetent political establishment for its complicity in what happened in 2016, and not just the failure to see it coming. ..."
"... Because of the immediate arrival of the collusion theory, neither Wolf Blitzer nor any politician ever had to look into the camera and say, "I guess people hated us so much they were even willing to vote for Donald Trump ..."
" Russiagate became a convenient replacement explanation absolving an incompetent political establishment for its complicity
in what happened in 2016, and not just the failure to see it coming.
Because of the immediate arrival of the collusion theory, neither Wolf Blitzer nor any politician ever had to look into
the camera and say, "I guess people hated us so much they were even willing to vote for Donald Trump ."
As a peedupon all I can see is that the elite seem to be fighting amongst themselves or (IMO) providing cover for ongoing elite
power/control efforts. It might not be about private/public finance in a bigger picture but I can't see anything else that makes
sense
It would hardly surprise me if the regime change obsession has come home and now the US is
"enjoying" all of the democracy building color revolutions they love so much. No matter how
this end it will not end well for 99% of Americans
So one of key players of Russiagate gaslighting and Flynn entrapment trying the same dirty trick again. Nice...
Notable quotes:
"... "We have peaceful protesters focused on the very real pain and disparities that we're all wrestling with that have to be addressed, and then we have extremists who've come to try to hijack those protests and turn them into something very different. And they're probably also, I would bet based on my experience, I'm not reading the intelligence these days, but based on my experience this is right out of the Russian playbook as well." ..."
"... "I would not be surprised to learn that they have fomented some of these extremists on both sides using social media. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that they are funding it in some way, shape, or form." ..."
President Barack Obama's former national security adviser Susan Rice suggested without evidence that the Russians could be behind
the violent demonstrations that have taken place across the U.S. following the death of George Floyd.
Speaking to CNN's Wolf Blitzer Sunday, Rice said:
"We have peaceful protesters focused on the very real pain and disparities that we're all wrestling with that have to be
addressed, and then we have extremists who've come to try to hijack those protests and turn them into something very different.
And they're probably also, I would bet based on my experience, I'm not reading the intelligence these days, but based on my experience
this is right out of the Russian playbook as well."
"I would not be surprised to learn that they have fomented some of these extremists on both sides using social media. I
wouldn't be surprised to learn that they are funding it in some way, shape, or form."
Rice admits she's not reading the intelligence anymore, so what makes her think the Russians are behind this?
She doesn't offer much more in the way of evidence for her assertion, other than that the Russians are the Democrats' always-present
bogeyman, ever ready from behind
their poorly translated social media posts to unleash mayhem upon the U.S.
Ever since the election of President Donald Trump, Democrats have blamed Russians for the outcome of the 2016 election.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller found evidence that Russian-linked accounts spent
a small amount of money placing social media ads for the purpose of influencing the 2016 election, but there's nothing to suggest
their efforts were successful. The Department of Justice abruptly dropped its prosecution of a Russian-based troll farm, days before
trial. Mueller also did not find evidence that the Trump campaign conspired with Russia during the 2016 election.
Although the claims of Russian "collusion" in the 2016 election were eventually found to be nearly totally baseless, Rice's new
narrative, that Russians support 2020's post-Floyd rioting, appears to be even more fact-threadbare.
Rice's claim drew criticism from across the political spectrum.
Eoin Higgens, a senior editor at Common Dreams, tweeted "you cannot make
this sh– up. F -- - deranged" while former U.S. attorney Andrew McCarthy
tweeted "there she goes again."
There's a reason Rice's claim was not taken seriously -- besides the lack of evidence for the Russian meddling narrative that has
dominated the nation's political life since 2016, there's also the sheer ineptitude of the actual Russian trolling and ads themselves.
Just look at this ad the Russians funded from the 2016 election cycle for a taste of how convincing those Russians and their social
media campaigns can be:
I haven't seen condemnation across the political spectrum. There are a few hard-left progressives like Aaron Mate, Matt Taibbi,
and Glenn Greenwald of course, but they have always hated the RussiaGate conspiracy. I won't be holding my breath for any of the
#Resistance puppets castigate Rice. They can't, because #RussiaGate is foundational to their existence.
Y'all are really confusing me! During the civil rights marches, conservatives warned people that the "agitators" were Russian
tools. Now, you say that's crazy talk!.
Rice asserts that civic agitation is ". . .right out of the Russian playbook. . ." Let's presume she's had a peek into the
Russia playbook. Her statement can be falsified by the good fact checkers at this website!
Speaking for myself, I wouldn't be more surprised than Rice to learn that Russia is still in the outside agitator business.
Just a suggestion, of course. Someone as patriotic as Rice really should check it out.
The saddest thing is that she's been too lazy to come up even with the most jury-rigged conspiracy theory as to why Russians
would need it, despite the fact that emotional reaction-oriented rhetorical turds to... sculpture such a theory (albeit a very
debunkable one) are floating on the surface. A most deplorable intellectual sloth. What to expect from neolibs/neocons, though?
They're always like that. Say some folderol - and then go hiding in the kind Grandpa Bolton's venerable moustɑche.
I don't know which idea is more laughable - Black Americans are so lacking in agency that they aren't even responsible for their
own protests, or, the Russians are so diabolical that they can turn anyone and everyone into the Manchurian Candidate.
More likely, Susan Rice can't admit that her woke ideology has limitations. She needs a scapegoat so badly that she'll babble
any nonsense to accuse one. Hard to believe she was once the National Security Adviser.
I read on a libertarian oriented forum that the current protests are actually being done by the Chinese. Apparently, the Soviets
(Russians) instigated the riots in the late 60s.
Where are all the stars you ask" afterwards they will come out with concerts on TV, speeches big speeches that they real do care
you hear me, PC BS they will look tragic this time, all the makeup in the world won;t hide their deception, arrogance, utter idiocy
in White Towers.
Transcripts of under oath statements before the House Intelligence committee revealed neither Susan Rice nor other Obama administration
officials had any evidence of Russian meddling in 2016. Of course all proceeded with spreading baseless inuendo for years before
and afterwards.
So if not under oath anything Susan Rice alleges is simply not worth listening to.
Seems like so many presidents have been led into terrible foreign policy decisions by their Blob advisors...Obama by Susan Rice,
Samantha Power, and Hillary; Dubya by Cheney and Rumsfield; Carter by Zbiggy, Ford and Nixon (both who should have known better)
by Kissinger.
Susan Rice is more ignorant and has far lower intelligence than I ever suspected or she is playing politics and lying. The Russians
have no motive. The Russians have no hand to play. The Chinese who have bribed a long list of democratic politicians have a very
significant motive and a major hand to play in fomenting riots and race animosity...as a means to influence the November election
away from Trump to Biden.
Looks like regular consultation between Russians and incoming administration to me. Also it was lame duck President who unilaterally
decided to up his ante against Russians (criminally gaslighting the US public), expelled Russian diplomats to make the gaslighting
more plausible, and seized Russian diplomatic property in violation of international norms. It was Obama who unleashed
FBI dogs like Strzok and McCabe on Trump.
Russia later retaliated in a very modest way without seizing any US property, they just cut the level of the USA diplomatic
personnel in Russia to the level of Russian personnel in the USA.
Notable quotes:
"... To summarize--a total of eight different calls between Kislyak and Flynn were recorded between December 22, 2016 and January 19, 2017. Five of the eight calls were initiated by Ambassador Kislyak -- Mike Flynn only called Kislyak three times and two of those were in response to calls from Kislyak, who requested a call back or left a message. ..."
More Evidence of the Fraud Against General Michael Flynn by Larry C Johnson
I never ceased to be amazed at the dishonesty and laziness of the media when it comes to
reporting anything about Michael Flynn and the astonishing miscarriage of justice in bringing
charges against him. The documents declassified and released by the DNI last Friday exonerate
General Flynn and expose the FBI and the Mueller team as gargantuan liars. Even though Friday's
release of the declassified summaries and transcripts was overshadowed quickly by rioting in
Minnesota (you know, if it bleeds and burns it is the lede), the documents reveal General Flynn
as the consummate professional keen on serving his country and the Russian Ambassador as
disgusted by the petulance and arrogance of the Obama administration.
The declassified material released by newly installed Director for National Intelligence
actually consists of two different sets of documents--First, there are five summaries of
conversations for 22, 23, 29 (two on the 29th) December 2016 and 5 January. Second, there are
the full transcripts of the conversations for December 23, December 29, December 31 in 2016 and
January 12 and January 19, 2017.
To summarize--a total of eight different calls between Kislyak and Flynn were recorded
between December 22, 2016 and January 19, 2017. Five of the eight calls were initiated by
Ambassador Kislyak -- Mike Flynn only called Kislyak three times and two of those were in
response to calls from Kislyak, who requested a call back or left a message.
Here are the specifics of those calls.
December 22, 2016--This call apparently was made by Michael Flynn to the Russians,
responding to a request from President-elect Trump to ask Russia not to support the Egyptian UN
Security Council resolution condemning Israel. (Note--Flynn make calls to most members of the
UN Security Council).
December 23, 2016--Ambassador Kislyak calls Michael Flynn to report on his conversation with
President Putin regarding the previous day's request. Michael Flynn emphasizes to Kislyak that
the mutual goal is/should be stability in the Middle East. Flynn tells Kislyak, "We will not
achieve stability in the Middle East without working with each other against this radical
Islamist crowd." Kislyak remarks, "responding to your telephone call, and our conversations we
will try to help to postpone the vote and to allow for consultations."
December 29, 2016--Kislyak calls Flynn and leaves a simple message, "need to talk."
December 29, 2016--Michael Flynn returns Kislyak's phone call. First, Kislyak wants to
discuss the Middle East policy. The Russians want to convey to the President-elect that the
Russians will not be supporting the American colleagues at the Security Council. Flynn says it
is good. Second, the Russians are very interested with working with the President-elect's team
to help the peace process in Syria. Thirdly, the Kremlin would like to . . . have a first
conversation on January 21 rst between the presidents. Putin's idea is to congratulate Trump
and discuss issues. . . . Flynn tells Kislyak: Do not allow this administration to box us in
right now! . . . . depending on what actions the Obama Administrations takes over this current
issue of the cyber stuff, . . . they're gonna dismiss some number of Russians out of the
country, I understand all that . . . I know you have to have some sort of action, but to only
make it reciprocal; don't go any further than you have to because I don't want us to get into
something that have to escalate to tit-for-tat. . . . I really do not want us to get into the
situation where we everybody goes back and forth and everybody had to be a tough guy here. We
don't need that right now. We need cool heads to prevail. And we need to be very steady about
what we are going to do because we have absolutely a common threat in the Middle East.
December 31, 2016--Russian Ambassador Kislyak calls General Flynn. Kislyak tells Flynn, "And
I just wanted to tell you that we found that these actions [were] targeted not only against
Russia, but also against the president elect. . . . and with all our rights to respond we have
decided not to act now because, its because people are dissatisfied with the lost . . .
elections and, and its very deplorable. . . . Flynn responds, "we are not going to agree on
everything, you know that, but, but I think that we have a lot of things in common. A lot. And
we have to figure out how, how to achieve those things, . . .and be smart about it and keep the
temperature down globally, as well as not just here in the United States and also over in
Russia.
January 5, 2017--Lt. General Mike FLYNN phones Ambassador Sergey KISLYAK to express his
condolences on the death of GRU Director Igor SERGUN, who died unexpectedly today from unknown
causes.
January 12, 2017--Mike Flynn returns Kislyak's phone call and discusses possible conference
on Syria in Astana.
January 19, 2017--Kislyak leaves voicemail for Flynn, inquiring about scheduling of a phone
call between Putin and Trump after the inauguration.
"Before General Flynn's voce message turns on, there is an open line, barely audible
chat.
Someone asks Chernyshev, "Which agency are we talking about?" Chernyshev asks as to
confirm if he understands the question and responds in the same time: "Which Agency
hackers
did the hacking? Believe me, Americans did hacked this all."
The full exchange between General Flynn and Ambassador Kislyak throws much light on the
subsequent Sunday morning mis-speaking by the Vice-President Pence.
From the first telephone call, Flynn tells Kislyak that President-elect Trump will only be
inaugurated 3-weeks hence. Therefore Trump in late-December cannot formally make foreign
policy decisions immediately.
In a later exchange about Russia's proposed Astana Peace Conference to de-escalate ISIS
activity In Syria, Flynn responds that Russia has Trump's backing to begin preparations with
the Syrians, Turks et al. On his part, Flynn will begin pencilling-in who would be on a
future US delegation.
It goes without saying that Vice President-elect Pence, during this period had a full-time
job marshaling the Transition and may not have been in the loop on these tentative Russian
peace initiatives. When asked on a Sunday morning talk show, Pence could correctly say
President Trump had no "official communications" with the Kremlin. But to later trash &
demand Flynn's dismissal for "lying to him" about the informal phone calls was
inappropriate.
Pence could easily have told Americans that President-elect Trump was establishing
informal relations, through multiple phone calls, with world leaders and he, Pence, was not
party to all of them. No one in the fledgling Trump Administration was lying to him.
Hi Larry.why not tackle this knot from the Russian end.Russia has been fighting in Syria
since jisr al shugour massacre in the groves.There naval base on the med was threatened and
Gazprom stood to lose control of energy resources flowing out of the me too Europe.That has
now been achieved.Not only that but Wagner group are in Libyan with Russian air support.From
that point of view what was Flynn's role in this
I wonder sometimes whether the new administration, from Trump downwards, realised just
what they were up against after that unexpected election victory.
Yes, I think that evidence thus far revealed suggests that the sedition was far along, and
this even before Trump's victory - an insurance policy, if you will, and way beyond any
opposition research, as much of the "information", if not at root fabricated, was otherwise
illegally gathered.
And immediate that election victory, things went into overdrive as the seditionists'
panicked, doubling and tripling down on their illegal actions to frame a projected
impeachment narrative as their next tactic. I hesitate to call it their next strategy, as it
was too knee jerk to be characterized in that fashion.
So, no, I think that the new Trump administration had little idea of just how this
transition of administration was, counter to most prior precedents, planned to be
undermined with the full intent to invalidate the election of President Trump, and if
possible, to overturn it .
This was sedition on multiple levels, crimes deliberately embarked upon to destroy the
Constitution and the Republic by any means that these traitors deemed efficacious.
I believe Trump knew he was being spied on as Adm. Rogers informed him and thereafter he
moved his transition organization away from Trump Tower.
In any case why did Trump throw Flynn under the bus? In hindsight that was a huge mistake.
Another huge mistake in hindsight was not cleaning house at the DOJ, FBI and the intel
agencies early. That allowed Rosenstein and Wray to get Mueller going and created the pretext
of the investigation to bury all the incriminating evidence. Trump never declassified
anything himself which he could have and broke open the plot. He then gave Barr all
classification authority who sat on it for a year. Look how fast Ric Grenell declassified
stuff. There was no "sources & methods" the usual false justification.
It is unconscionable how severely Flynn was screwed over. Why is Wray still there? How
many of the plotter cohort still remain?
Looks like regular consultation between Russians and incoming administration to me. Also it was lame duck President who unilaterally
decided to up his ante against Russians (criminally gaslighting the US public), expelled Russian diplomats to make the gaslighting
more plausible, and seized Russian diplomatic property in violation of international norms. It was Obama who unleashed
FBI dogs like Strzok and McCabe on Trump.
Russia later retaliated in a very modest way without seizing any US property, they just cut the level of the USA diplomatic
personnel in Russia to the level of Russian personnel in the USA.
More Evidence of the Fraud Against General Michael Flynn by Larry C Johnson
I never ceased to be amazed at the dishonesty and laziness of the media when it comes to
reporting anything about Michael Flynn and the astonishing miscarriage of justice in bringing
charges against him. The documents declassified and released by the DNI last Friday exonerate
General Flynn and expose the FBI and the Mueller team as gargantuan liars. Even though Friday's
release of the declassified summaries and transcripts was overshadowed quickly by rioting in
Minnesota (you know, if it bleeds and burns it is the lede), the documents reveal General Flynn
as the consummate professional keen on serving his country and the Russian Ambassador as
disgusted by the petulance and arrogance of the Obama administration.
The declassified material released by newly installed Director for National Intelligence
actually consists of two different sets of documents--First, there are five summaries of
conversations for 22, 23, 29 (two on the 29th) December 2016 and 5 January. Second, there are
the full transcripts of the conversations for December 23, December 29, December 31 in 2016 and
January 12 and January 19, 2017.
To summarize--a total of eight different calls between Kislyak and Flynn were recorded
between December 22, 2016 and January 19, 2017. Five of the eight calls were initiated by
Ambassador Kislyak -- Mike Flynn only called Kislyak three times and two of those were in
response to calls from Kislyak, who requested a call back or left a message.
Here are the specifics of those calls.
December 22, 2016--This call apparently was made by Michael Flynn to the Russians,
responding to a request from President-elect Trump to ask Russia not to support the Egyptian UN
Security Council resolution condemning Israel. (Note--Flynn make calls to most members of the
UN Security Council).
December 23, 2016--Ambassador Kislyak calls Michael Flynn to report on his conversation with
President Putin regarding the previous day's request. Michael Flynn emphasizes to Kislyak that
the mutual goal is/should be stability in the Middle East. Flynn tells Kislyak, "We will not
achieve stability in the Middle East without working with each other against this radical
Islamist crowd." Kislyak remarks, "responding to your telephone call, and our conversations we
will try to help to postpone the vote and to allow for consultations."
December 29, 2016--Kislyak calls Flynn and leaves a simple message, "need to talk."
December 29, 2016--Michael Flynn returns Kislyak's phone call. First, Kislyak wants to
discuss the Middle East policy. The Russians want to convey to the President-elect that the
Russians will not be supporting the American colleagues at the Security Council. Flynn says it
is good. Second, the Russians are very interested with working with the President-elect's team
to help the peace process in Syria. Thirdly, the Kremlin would like to . . . have a first
conversation on January 21 rst between the presidents. Putin's idea is to congratulate Trump
and discuss issues. . . . Flynn tells Kislyak: Do not allow this administration to box us in
right now! . . . . depending on what actions the Obama Administrations takes over this current
issue of the cyber stuff, . . . they're gonna dismiss some number of Russians out of the
country, I understand all that . . . I know you have to have some sort of action, but to only
make it reciprocal; don't go any further than you have to because I don't want us to get into
something that have to escalate to tit-for-tat. . . . I really do not want us to get into the
situation where we everybody goes back and forth and everybody had to be a tough guy here. We
don't need that right now. We need cool heads to prevail. And we need to be very steady about
what we are going to do because we have absolutely a common threat in the Middle East.
December 31, 2016--Russian Ambassador Kislyak calls General Flynn. Kislyak tells Flynn, "And
I just wanted to tell you that we found that these actions [were] targeted not only against
Russia, but also against the president elect. . . . and with all our rights to respond we have
decided not to act now because, its because people are dissatisfied with the lost . . .
elections and, and its very deplorable. . . . Flynn responds, "we are not going to agree on
everything, you know that, but, but I think that we have a lot of things in common. A lot. And
we have to figure out how, how to achieve those things, . . .and be smart about it and keep the
temperature down globally, as well as not just here in the United States and also over in
Russia.
January 5, 2017--Lt. General Mike FLYNN phones Ambassador Sergey KISLYAK to express his
condolences on the death of GRU Director Igor SERGUN, who died unexpectedly today from unknown
causes.
January 12, 2017--Mike Flynn returns Kislyak's phone call and discusses possible conference
on Syria in Astana.
January 19, 2017--Kislyak leaves voicemail for Flynn, inquiring about scheduling of a phone
call between Putin and Trump after the inauguration.
"Before General Flynn's voce message turns on, there is an open line, barely audible
chat.
Someone asks Chernyshev, "Which agency are we talking about?" Chernyshev asks as to
confirm if he understands the question and responds in the same time: "Which Agency
hackers
did the hacking? Believe me, Americans did hacked this all."
The full exchange between General Flynn and Ambassador Kislyak throws much light on the
subsequent Sunday morning mis-speaking by the Vice-President Pence.
From the first telephone call, Flynn tells Kislyak that President-elect Trump will only be
inaugurated 3-weeks hence. Therefore Trump in late-December cannot formally make foreign
policy decisions immediately.
In a later exchange about Russia's proposed Astana Peace Conference to de-escalate ISIS
activity In Syria, Flynn responds that Russia has Trump's backing to begin preparations with
the Syrians, Turks et al. On his part, Flynn will begin pencilling-in who would be on a
future US delegation.
It goes without saying that Vice President-elect Pence, during this period had a full-time
job marshaling the Transition and may not have been in the loop on these tentative Russian
peace initiatives. When asked on a Sunday morning talk show, Pence could correctly say
President Trump had no "official communications" with the Kremlin. But to later trash &
demand Flynn's dismissal for "lying to him" about the informal phone calls was
inappropriate.
Pence could easily have told Americans that President-elect Trump was establishing
informal relations, through multiple phone calls, with world leaders and he, Pence, was not
party to all of them. No one in the fledgling Trump Administration was lying to him.
Hi Larry.why not tackle this knot from the Russian end.Russia has been fighting in Syria
since jisr al shugour massacre in the groves.There naval base on the med was threatened and
Gazprom stood to lose control of energy resources flowing out of the me too Europe.That has
now been achieved.Not only that but Wagner group are in Libyan with Russian air support.From
that point of view what was Flynn's role in this
I wonder sometimes whether the new administration, from Trump downwards, realised just
what they were up against after that unexpected election victory.
Yes, I think that evidence thus far revealed suggests that the sedition was far along, and
this even before Trump's victory - an insurance policy, if you will, and way beyond any
opposition research, as much of the "information", if not at root fabricated, was otherwise
illegally gathered.
And immediate that election victory, things went into overdrive as the seditionists'
panicked, doubling and tripling down on their illegal actions to frame a projected
impeachment narrative as their next tactic. I hesitate to call it their next strategy, as it
was too knee jerk to be characterized in that fashion.
So, no, I think that the new Trump administration had little idea of just how this
transition of administration was, counter to most prior precedents, planned to be
undermined with the full intent to invalidate the election of President Trump, and if
possible, to overturn it .
This was sedition on multiple levels, crimes deliberately embarked upon to destroy the
Constitution and the Republic by any means that these traitors deemed efficacious.
I believe Trump knew he was being spied on as Adm. Rogers informed him and thereafter he
moved his transition organization away from Trump Tower.
In any case why did Trump throw Flynn under the bus? In hindsight that was a huge mistake.
Another huge mistake in hindsight was not cleaning house at the DOJ, FBI and the intel
agencies early. That allowed Rosenstein and Wray to get Mueller going and created the pretext
of the investigation to bury all the incriminating evidence. Trump never declassified
anything himself which he could have and broke open the plot. He then gave Barr all
classification authority who sat on it for a year. Look how fast Ric Grenell declassified
stuff. There was no "sources & methods" the usual false justification.
It is unconscionable how severely Flynn was screwed over. Why is Wray still there? How
many of the plotter cohort still remain?
"... The United States today functions in a never-never land of fiction and fantasy when it comes to allegations of Russian meddling in its internal affairs. Logically speaking, most Americans should be insulted by the notion that their democratic institutions are so weak that a half-baked social media campaign could sway a national election (never minding the reality that former presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg spent more than $500 million on advertising , run by the most sophisticated media support team in the history of American politics, and couldn't get the electoral needle to move an inch). ..."
As American political leaders are confronted with the scope and scale of the unrest engendered by decades of failed policy, they're
turning to a time-tested scapegoat to deflect responsibility away from their shoulders – Russia. While American cities burn, its
politicians are desperately looking to assign responsibility for the chaos and anarchy that is unfolding. Among those casting an
accusatory finger is Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican from the State of Florida and the acting Chairman of the Senate Select Intelligence
Committee.
"Seeing VERY heavy social media activity of #protest & counter reactions from social media accounts linked to at least three
foreign adversaries," Rubio tweeted .
"They didn't create these divisions," Rubio noted, "but they are actively stoking & promoting violence & confrontation
from multiple angles."
Evelyn Farkas, a former Obama-era defense official and current candidate for Congress,
tweeted "I hope the @FBI is investigating
potential direct or indirect foreign interference in looting. Definitely not out of the question." While neither Rubio nor Farkas
named Russia in their tweets, they are both well-known for their Russia-baiting postings on social media, and there could be little
doubt as to whom they were pointing an accusatory finger at.
President Obama's former National Security Advisor, Susan Rice, however, left no doubt about where the source of this "foreign
influence" came from. In an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer, Rice, discussing the violent protests sweeping America today,
declared "I would bet, based on my experience, I'm not reading the intelligence these days, but based on my experience this is
right out of the Russian playbook as well."
Rice, Rubio and Farkas are not alone. Typical of the anti-Russian hyperventilation taking place in US media regarding Russia's
alleged hidden hand in the ongoing riots is
an article published by CNN
, written by Donie O'Sullivan , a reporter who works
closely with CNN's investigative unit "tracking and identifying online disinformation campaigns targeting the American electorate."
While concluding that "the protests are real, and so are the protesters' concerns," and cautioning the reader to step
back and take a breath "before getting too caught up" in any discussion about Russian involvement, O'Sullivan asserts that
starting with the 2016 Presidential election "Russia backed (and is likely still backing) an elaborate, years-long covert misinformation
campaign" involving "a network of Facebook and Twitter pages designed to look like they were run by real American activists
and that were used to stoke tensions in American society."
But the pičce de résistance comes in the middle of the article. "Arguably Russia's biggest achievement," O'Sullivan states,
"was the paranoia it instilled in American society. We now regularly see Americans accuse people and groups on social media that
they do not agree with of being Russian trolls or bots. These accusations are often made with no evidence and can distract from and
undermine real Americans who are engaging in political speech."
Thanks to Russia, O'Sullivan asserts, Americans now have Russia on their mind even if Russia is not involved–which is, of course,
Russia's fault. But don't fret -- "It is possible that we will learn in the coming days, weeks, and months that some covert activity
has been going on–that some Facebook pages and Twitter accounts encouraging violent protests are indeed linked to Russia."
The United States today functions in a never-never land of fiction and fantasy when it comes to allegations of Russian meddling
in its internal affairs. Logically speaking, most Americans should be insulted by the notion that their democratic institutions are
so weak that a half-baked social media campaign could sway a national election (never minding the reality that former presidential
candidate
Michael Bloomberg spent more than $500 million on advertising , run by the most sophisticated media support team in the history
of American politics, and couldn't get the electoral needle to move an inch).
There is a truism that you cannot solve a problem without first properly defining it. In their effort to shift blame away from
their own failings by alleging "outside" (i.e., Russia) sources of interference in the ongoing social unrest ravaging American
cities, the politicians and leaders Americans look to for solutions are setting themselves up for failure, if for no other reason
that any solution which is predicated on unproven allegations of Russian meddling isn't solving the real problems facing American
society today.
Russia did not direct the murder of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis Police. Nor did Russia direct and implement decades
of policing culture in the United States underpinned by racism, backed by a system of justice that sustained and magnified the same.
The social and legal inequities of American law enforcement have been a problem hiding in plain sight for decades, only to be ignored
by generations of American leaders who exploited the fear-based culture that fed on this system for their own political gain; Russia
had nothing whatsoever to do with this cancer that has metastasized throughout the width and breadth of the American body public.
It is the height of intellectual hypocrisy and moral cowardice for those whom America needs the most in this time of trouble to
stand up and take a hard, honest look at the diseased nature of the American law enforcement establishment today, and make the kind
of difficult but necessary decisions needed to reform it, to instead cast blame on the Russian bogeyman. The Russian blame game may
play well on media outlets that long ago surrendered to a political establishment desperate to retain power and influence regardless
of the cost. But, for the legion of Americans whose frustration with the inherent racism of American policing policies today, this
kind of simplistic deflection will not succeed. America's cities are on fire; manufacturing false narratives that place the blame
for this conflagration of Russia will not put them out.
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The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those
of RT. Scott Ritter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer. He served in the Soviet Union as an inspector implementing
the INF Treaty, in General Schwarzkopf's staff during the Gulf War, and from 1991-1998 as a UN weapons inspector. Follow him on Twitter
@RealScottRitter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer.
He served in the Soviet Union as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, in General Schwarzkopf's staff during the Gulf War, and
from 1991-1998 as a UN weapons inspector. Follow him on Twitter @RealScottRitter
Boy these Russians are geniuses of the highest order ...
First they put Donald Trump in power and now they're trying to tear the country apart under
him by supporting both black lives matter, and white supremacists at the same time.
I don't know how these stupid Journos can even imagine this stuff up out of their arses.
The sad irony is that these journalists will be the ones when future generations look back
who most contributed to the downfall of America ....
Anybody who uses the term "Russiagate" seriously and not to recognize the actual and
serious Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election in support of Trump is
not to be taken remotely seriously.
Russiagate is a valid and IMHO very useful political discourse term which has two
intersecting meanings:
1. Obamagate : Attempt of a certain political forces around Clintons and Obama
with the support of intelligence agencies to stage a "color revolution" against Trump,
using there full control of MSM as air superiority factor. With the main goal is the return
to "classic neoliberalism" (neoliberal globalization uber alles) mode
Which Trump rejected during his election campaign painting him as a threat to certain
powerful neoliberal forces which include but not limited to Silicon Valley moguls (note bad
relations of Trump and Bezos), some part of Wall street financial oligarchy, and most MSMs
honchos.
2. Neo-McCarthyism campaign unleashed by Obama administration with the goal to
whitewash Hillary fiasco and to preserve the current leadership of the Democratic
Party.
That led to complete deterioration of relations between the USA and Russia and increase
of chances of military conflict between two. Add to this consistent attempts of Trump to
make China an enemy and politicize the process of economic disengagement between the two
countries and you understand the level of danger. .
When a senior Russian official implicitly calls the USA a rogue state and Trump
administration -- gangsters on international arena, that a very bad sign. See
But then again, it may well be so that the current Republican administration will in
effect become a line in history in which a considerable number of useful international
instruments were abrogated and that America exited them in the anticipation that this
approach would serve U.S. interests better. Having said that, I will never say or never
suggest that it was for us -- at least in the mid-2010s -- better with the previous
administration.
It was under the previous Obama administration that endless rounds of sanctions were
imposed upon Russia. That was continued under Trump. The pretext for that policy is
totally rejected by Russia as an invalid and illegal one. The previous administration,
weeks before it departed, stole Russian property that was protected by diplomatic
immunity, and we are still deprived of this property by the Trump administration. We have
sent 350 diplomatic notes to both the Obama and the Trump administrations demanding the
return of this property, only to see an endless series of rejections. It is one of the
most vivid and obvious examples of where we are in our relationship.
There is no such thing as "which administration is better for Russia in the U.S.?"
Both are bad, and this is our conclusion after more than a decade of talking to
Washington on different topics.
Heilbrunn: Given the dire situation you portray, do you believe that America has
become a rogue state?
Ryabkov: I wouldn't say so, that's not our conclusion. But the U.S. is clearly an
entity that stands for itself, one that creates uncertainty for the world. America is a
source of trouble for many international actors. They are trying to find ways to protect
and defend themselves from this malign and malicious policy of America that many of the
people around the world believe should come to an end, hopefully in the near future.
What I can't understand is this stupid jingoism, kind of "cult of death" among the US
neocons, who personally are utter chickenhawks, but still from their comfortable offices
write dangerous warmongering nonsense. Without understanding possible longer term
consequences.
Of course, MIC money does not smell, but some enthusiasts in blogs do it even without
proper remuneration
"... In any case it looks like Flynn helped to avoid "boxing in" the new administration after the expulsion of Russian diplomats by the lame duck President? . That does not help Trump one bit, because first of all he is incompetent, and secondly he was instantly cooped by neocons, but still ..."
"... The key question here is whether Obama administration has motives to set a trap for Flynn now can be answered positively. If this was an entrapment then this is clearly a criminal offense and Strzok, Comey and possibly Brennan and Clapper, are clearly in hot water. ..."
One plausible hypothesis is that Obama administration decided to revenge Flynn
maneuver to foil Obama last move -- the expulsion of Russian diplomats, which stated
neo-McCarthyism campaign in the USA. He explicitly asked Russians not to retaliate and I
would understand why Obama did not like this move.
In any case it looks like Flynn helped to avoid "boxing in" the new administration
after the expulsion of Russian diplomats by the lame duck President? . That does not help
Trump one bit, because first of all he is incompetent, and secondly he was instantly
cooped by neocons, but still
The key question here is whether Obama administration has motives to set a trap for
Flynn now can be answered positively. If this was an entrapment then this is clearly a
criminal offense and Strzok, Comey and possibly Brennan and Clapper, are clearly in hot
water.
Replying to @ProfMJCleveland 3/ That out-take tells
you everything you need to know about why Obama had January 5 meeting to discuss
withholding information with the Trump transition team and administration. Can't you just
picture petty little Barack Obama "how dare General Flynn say I cannot "box" them in.
Replying to @ProfMJCleveland 3/ That out-take tells
you everything you need to know about why Obama had January 5 meeting to discuss
withholding information with the Trump transition team and administration. Can't you just
picture petty little Barack Obama "how dare General Flynn say I cannot "box" them in.
Replying to @ProfMJCleveland 4/ And for all those who
scream about diplomacy, my God, read the damn transcript. We want men like General Flynn
leading diplomacy. pic.twitter.com/ksPQoePrUO
Replying to @ProfMJCleveland 4/ And for all those who
scream about diplomacy, my God, read the damn transcript. We want men like General Flynn
leading diplomacy. pic.twitter.com/ksPQoePrUO
Replying to @ProfMJCleveland 6/ Read the --- damn
transcript! General Flynn did not interfere with the Obama administration. The Obama
administration interfered with the Trump administration. pic.twitter.com/XVT4D1f1Ay
Replying to @ProfMJCleveland 6/ Read the --- damn
transcript! General Flynn did not interfere with the Obama administration. The Obama
administration interfered with the Trump administration. pic.twitter.com/XVT4D1f1Ay
Replying to @JoeBiden 9/9 This entire 3-year nightmare for
General Flynn all arose because a petty little man named Barack Obama demanded revenge. And
@JoeBiden was right by
his side. END
Replying to @JoeBiden 9/9 This entire 3-year nightmare for
General Flynn all arose because a petty little man named Barack Obama demanded revenge. And
@JoeBiden was right by
his side. END
Replying to @ProfMJCleveland @Cernovich @GenFlynn I'm
shocked at how much the fake news is lying about the transcripts by "summarizing" them when
what they're saying directly contradicts what the transcripts say. This is how these fake
news people work. They tell you what the document says and hope you don't read it.
Replying to @ProfMJCleveland @Cernovich @GenFlynn I'm
shocked at how much the fake news is lying about the transcripts by "summarizing" them when
what they're saying directly contradicts what the transcripts say. This is how these fake
news people work. They tell you what the document says and hope you don't read it.
Replying to @Harmless_Patsy @ProfMJCleveland and
2 others That's
why I don't watch them. I follow real journalists, lawyers and investigators who tweet the
real documents and substantiate what they say.
Replying to @Harmless_Patsy @ProfMJCleveland and
2 others That's
why I don't watch them. I follow real journalists, lawyers and investigators who tweet the
real documents and substantiate what they say.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) released the transcripts between
then-incoming National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and Russian Ambassador Sergei Kisliak,
which revealed that Flynn asked Russia to take "reciprocal" against sanctions levied by the
Obama administration over interference in the 2016 US election.
" I ask Russia to do is to not, if anything, I know you have to have some sort of action, to
only make it reciprocal; don't go any further than you have to because I don't want us to get
into something that have to escalate tit-for-tat," Flynn told Kisyak.
12/23/16 - Flynn relays his goals about the Russia/US relationship.
Flynn: "We will not achieve stability in the Middle East without working with each other
against this radical Islamist crowd."
Despite clear evidence to the contrary, Former FBI agent Peter Strzok used that conversation
as a basis to continue his investigation into whether Flynn was a potential Russian agent,
according to recently unsealed court documents. The agency used the call as leverage to try to
get the retired general to admit to a violation of the Logan Act - an obscure old law nearly a
quarter-century old which prohibits private citizens from interfering in diplomacy (which, as
it turns out, is standard practice among members of transitioning administrations).
FBI agent Joe Pientka, who interviewed Flynn with agent Strzok, wrote in his interview notes
that he did not believe Flynn was lying to them during the interview - while other recently
unsealed notes revealed that the FBI considered a perjury trap against Flynn to "
get him fired ."
If there was a preexisting improper relationship between the Trump campaign and Russia,
@GenFlynn
would never have needed an official call with Kislyak to prevent the disaster the Obama admin
was creating.
It's common sense if you're an honest broker.
-- John 'Murder Hornet' Cardillo
(@johncardillo) May 29,
2020
After the FBI's malfeasance came to light, the DOJ moved to drop the case against Flynn -
which US District Judge Emmet Sullivan has refused to do - instead asking a retired federal
judge, John Gleeson, to provide legal arguments as to whether Sullivan should hold Flynn in
criminal contempt for pleading guilty to FBI agents - which he now says he did not do.
Following the release of the transcripts , Sen. Grassley said in a statement: "Lt. General
Flynn, his legal team, the judge and the American people can now see with their own eyes
– for the first time – that all of the innuendo about Lt. General Flynn this whole
time was totally bunk. There was nothing improper about his call, and the FBI knew it. "
The transcripts show that Flynn was acting in his country's best interests, and his only
crime was bruising the fragile ego of the Obama team and their pathetic foreign policy
https://t.co/P3nuifreUI
The Biden campaign has quietly canceled a fundraiser headlined by
Andrew Weissman - former special counsel Robert Mueller's 'attack dog' lawyer who
hand-picked the so-called '13 angry Democrats.'
Weissman, who attended Hillary Clinton's election night party in 2016, donated to Obama and
the DNC, yet somehow conducted an unbiased investigation that turned up snake-eyes, was set to
do a June 2 "fireside chat" with Biden , according to the
WSJ , which notes that the fundraiser was pulled right after it was posted late last week -
shortly after the Trump campaign began to latch onto it.
Yes, there's more value in keeping the lie going that the mueller special counsel hasn't
already been established beyond any doubt as a fraudulent and deeply unethical partisan
takedown scheme against Trump https://t.co/5wuFYpgggr https://t.co/mxaHomTaQO
Weissman - known as the "architect" of the case against former Trump campaign chairman Paul
Manafort - notably reached out to a
Ukrainian oligarch for dirt on Trump and his team days after FBI agent Peter Strzok texted
"There's no big there there" regarding the Trump investigation in exchange for 'resolving the
Firtash case' in Chicago, in which he was charged in 2014 with corruption and bribery linked to
a US aerospace deal.
According to investigative journalist John Solomon, Firtash turned down Weissman's offer
because he didn't have credible information or evidence against Trump , Manafort, or anyone
else.
The administration also took off the gloves with China over U.S. listings by mainland
companies that fail to follow U.S. securities laws. This came after the Commerce Department
finally moved to limit access by Huawei Technologies to high-end silicon chips made with U.S.
lithography machines. The trade war with China is heating up, but a conflict was inevitable and
particularly when it comes to technology.
At the bleeding edge of 7 and 5 nanometer feature size, American tech still rules the world
of semiconductors. In 2018, Qualcomm confirmed its next-generation Snapdragon SoC would be
built at 7 nm. Huawei has already officially announced its first 7nm chip -- the Kirin 980. But
now Huawei is effectively shut out of the best in class of custom-made chips, giving Samsung
and Apple a built-in advantage in handsets and network equipment.
It was no secret that Washington allowed Huawei to use loopholes in last year's blacklist
rules to continue to buy U.S. sourced chips. Now the door is closed, however, as the major
Taiwan foundries led by TSMC will be forced to stop custom production for Huawei, which is
basically out of business in about 90 days when its inventory of chips runs out. But even as
Huawei spirals down, the White House is declaring financial war on dozens of other listed
Chinese firms.
President Donald Trump said
in an interview with Fox Business News that forcing Chinese companies to follow U.S.
accounting norms would likely push them to list in non-U.S. exchanges. Chinese companies that
list their shares in the U.S. have long refused to allow American regulators to inspect their
accounting audits, citing direction from their government -- a practice that market authorities
here have been unwilling or unable to stop.
The attack by the Trump Administration on shoddy financial disclosure at Chinese firms is
long overdue, but comes at a time when the political evolution in China is turning decidedly
authoritarian in nature and against any pretense of market-oriented development. The rising
power of state companies in China parallels the accumulation of power in the hands of Xi
Jinping, who is increasingly seen as a threat to western-oriented business leaders. The trade
tensions with Washington provide a perfect foil to crack down on popular unrest in Hong Kong
and discipline wayward oligarchs.
The latest moves by Beijing to take full control in Hong Kong are part of the more general
retrenchment visible in China. "[P]rivate entrepreneurs are increasingly nervous about their
future," writes Henny Sender in the Financial Times . "In many cases, these
entrepreneurs have U.S. passports or green cards and both children and property in America. To
be paid in U.S. dollars outside China for their companies must look more tempting by the day."
A torrent of western oriented Chinese business leaders is exiting before the door is shut
completely.
The fact is that China's position in U.S. trade has retreated as nations like Mexico and
Vietnam have gained. Mexico is now America's largest trading partner and Vietnam has risen to
11th, reports Qian Wang of Bloomberg News . Meanwhile, China has dropped from 21 percent
of U.S. trade in 2018 to just 18 percent last year. A big part of the shift is due to the
U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade pact, which is expected to accelerate a return of production to North
America. Sourcing for everything from autos to semiconductors is expected to rotate away from
China in coming years.
China abandoned its decades-old practice of
setting a target for annual economic growth , claiming that it was prioritizing goals such
as stabilizing employment, alleviating poverty and preventing risks in 2020. Many observers
accept the official communist party line that the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic made it
almost impossible to fix an expansion rate this year, but in fact the lasting effects of the
2008 financial crisis and the aggressive policies of President Trump have rocked China back on
its heels.
As China becomes increasingly focused inward and with an eye on public security, the
economic situation is likely to deteriorate further. While many observers viewed China's "Belt
& Road" initiative as a sign of confidence and strength, in fact it was Beijing's attempt
to deal with an economic realignment that followed the 2008 crisis. The arrival of President
Trump on the scene further weakened China's already unstable mercantilist economic model, where
non-existent internal demand was supposed to make up for falling global trade flows. Or at
least this was the plan until COVID-19.
"Before the Covid-19 outbreak, many economists were expecting China to set a GDP growth
target of 6% to 6.5% to reflect the gradual slowdown in the pace of expansion over the past few
years," reports Caixin Global . "Growth slid to 6.1% in 2019 from 6.7% in 2018. But the
devastation caused by the coronavirus epidemic -- which saw the economy contract 6.8%
year-on-year in the first quarter -- has thrown those forecasts out of the window."
Out of the window indeed. Instead of presiding over a glorious expansion of the Chinese
sphere of influence in Asia, Xi Jinping is instead left to fight a defensive action
economically and financially. The prospective end of the special status of Hong Kong is
unlikely to have any economic benefits and may actually cause China's problems with massive
internal debt and economic malaise to intensify. Beijing's proposed security law would reduce
Hong Kong's separate legal status and likely bring an end to the separate currency and business
environment.
I honestly don't know if this article is or is not correct... But I wonder...
AmConMag publishes a major anti-China article on most days now. What is happening? What is
the mechanics of this... "phenomenon"?
A place where where Americans opposed to U.S. hegemony because it's harm on everyone
without being overwhelmed by the Neocon acolytes where can we go, anyone ever try to get a
word in on foxnews ?
If you try to reach out to twitter on Tom Cotton or Mike Waltz dismisses you as a
'Chinese govt / Iranian / Russian bot'
You know what, God will judge us and we will all be equal in he eyes of Him
Why should I be afraid. Why should I be silent. And thank you TAC for the opportunity to
post.
I too came here for interesting commentary, - and even better comments... five years ago or
so?
I found the original articles mostly okay, often too verbose, meandering for my taste but
the different point of view made them worthwhile. The readers' comments, now that is
priceless. That brings the real value. That's where we learn. That's where I learn, anyway.
:)
It never occurred to me to message to any politician, I think my voice would be lost in the
cacophony.
The target of my curiosity is that when all these articles start to point in one direction
(like belligerence toward China) how does it happen? Is there a chain of command? It seems
coordinated.
It's possible to be anti-neocon, for their being too ideological, and not pacifist. That is
basically my position.
I agree with most here on Russia and Iran. They are not threats, and in specific cases
should be partners instead. Agree on American imperialism being foolish and often evil. I
believe in a multipolar world as a practical matter. I don't take a soft view of China
however. I believe they do intend to replace nefarious American hegemony with their own
relevant, but equally nefarious, flavor of hegemony. There are few countries in the world
with such a pathological distrust of their own people. I truly believe that country is a
threat that needs to be checked at least for a couple of decades by the rest of the
world.
As to the editorial direction, I think it is merely capitalism. China's perception in
the world is extremely bad lately. I would fully expect the always somewhat Russophile
environment here to seize the moment to say 'see! Russia is not a true threat! It's China!'
RT itself soon after Trump's election I recall posted an article complaining about total
disregard for Chinese election meddling.
You can see when the people holding the leash give a tug on the collar. And it's clear that
the GOP is feeling the need for a warlike political environment.
The most blatant presstitution example, of course, was the National Review, going from
'Never Trump' to full time servicing.
I haven't written anything about Putin in awhile, and his teleconference about Russia's "labour
market situation" provides an excellent opportunity. What you'll read illustrates the
acutely dramatic difference in policy between Russia and the Outlaw US Empire when it comes
to supporting its populous:
"Once again, preserving the jobs and incomes of Russian families has been one of our top
priorities since day one of our efforts to counter the epidemic. This, of course, is a fair
approach and a fair principle, because people should always be our priority ." [My
Emphasis]
To be fair, Trump and Congress do favor some of the people--those at and associated with
Wall Street--and what we've seen is those people are certainly Trump and Congress's priority,
but not so much anyone else. Contrast that with Russia's policy:
"We have established a key, basic criterion for supporting businesses. From the outset, we
have organised our work exactly this way: preserving the workforce and salaries is a
priority . We offered incentives whereby companies and entrepreneurs who take care of
their employees and strive to retain them, can count on greater support from the state. By
that, I also mean direct subsidies to pay salaries at small- and medium-sized businesses in
the affected industries in an amount equivalent to one minimum wage per employee in April and
May, as well as easy-term loans with a 2 percent interest rate. These loans will be repaid by
the state, as agreed, if staffing at a given company remains at the current level." [My
Emphasis]
The above isn't the total policy, of course. Also note the tone of Putin's remarks, which
have actually remained very consistent over his tenure as Russia's leader:
"We need to analyse and look deep into the problems of every person that asks for
help , especially elderly people and pre-pensioners. This also applies to graduates of
universities, colleges and academies that are finishing their studies and starting to
work.
"It is necessary to look for suitable jobs in cooperation with companies, organisations
and employers. These things must not be left to luck. It is necessary to offer snap courses,
as well as education and retraining programmes for those who have lost their jobs." [My
Emphasis]
By comparison, what do we see from UK, EU and Outlaw US Empire? Pretty much the
opposite--unless you're in the top 10% who won't risk losing one cent--it's a Free Market
where you're free to sink to your doom. Putin in contrast agreed to extend unemployment to
October 1 and prior to that time will reexamine the state of the labour market to determine
if that deadline needs to be extended again--policy that's the polar opposite of that within
the Outlaw US Empire. What's somewhat astonishing is the Outlaw US Empire has about 130
million of its people unemployed while Russia's entire population is about 145 million but
doesn't have a parasite that demands being continually fed massive amounts of money--about $8
Trillion for the first third of 2020.
Funding
The Center for Public Integrity has received contributions from a number of left-leaning
foundation funders including the Ford Foundation, Omidyar Network Fund, Foundation to Promote
Open Society, Knight Foundation, and MacArthur Foundation.[3] The foundation has stated that
it no longer accepts corporate gifts, but it takes money from the private foundations of many
of the richest Americans including actor Leonardo DiCaprio.
Seems to be the parent of the UK government's Integrity Initiative boondoggle
Looks like Strzok and Page played larger role in Obamagate/Russiagate then it was assumed
initially
Notable quotes:
"... Just 17 days before President Trump took office in January 2017, then-FBI counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok texted bureau lawyer Lisa Page, his mistress, to express concern about sharing sensitive Russia probe evidence with the departing Obama White House. ..."
"... Strzok related Priestap's concerns about the potential the evidence would be politically weaponized if outgoing Director of National Intelligence James Clapper shared the intercept cuts with the White House and President Obama, a well-known Flynn critic. ..."
"... "He, like us, is concerned with over sharing," Strzok texted Page on Jan. 3, 2017, relating his conversation with Priestap. ..."
"... The investigators are trying to determine whether Obama's well-known disdain for Flynn, a career military intelligence officer, influenced the decision by the FBI leadership to reject its own agent's recommendation to shut down a probe of Flynn in January 2017 and instead pursue an interview where agents might catch him in a lie. ..."
"... "The evidence connecting President Obama to the Flynn operation is getting stronger," one investigator with direct knowledge told me. ..."
"... Former Whitewater Independent Counsel Robert Ray said Friday that the Flynn matter was at the very least a "political scandal of the highest order" and could involve criminal charges if evidence emerges that officials lied or withheld documents to cover up what happened. ..."
"... "I imagine there are people who are in the know who may well have knowingly withheld information from the court and from defense counsel in connection with the Michael Flynn prosecution," Ray told Fox News . ..."
"... April 2014: Flynn is forced out as the chief of DIA by Obama after clashing with the administration over the Syrian civil war, the rise of ISIS, and other policies. The Obama administration blames his management style for the departure. ..."
"... Jan. 3, 2017: Strzok and Page engage in the text messages about Obama's daily briefing and the concerns about giving the Flynn intercept cuts to the White House. ..."
"... Jan. 4, 2017: Lead agent in Flynn Crossfire Razor probe prepares closing memo recommending the case be shut down for lack of derogatory evidence. Strzok texts agent asking him to stop the closing memo because the "7th floor" leadership of the FBI is now involved. ..."
"... Jan. 5, 2017: Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates attends Russia briefing with Obama at the White House and is stunned to learn Obama already knows about the Flynn-Kislyak intercept . Then-FBI Director James Comey claims Clapper told the president, but Clapper has denied telling Obama. ..."
"... Investigators are trying to determine whether Obama asked for the Flynn intercept or it was offered to him and by whom. They also want to know how many times Comey and Obama talked about Flynn in December 2016 and January 2017. ..."
"... "We need to determine what motivated the FBI on Jan. 4, 2017 to overrule its own agent who believed Flynn was innocent and the probe should be closed," one investigator said. ..."
"... Obama weaponized everything he could, ..."
"... The idea that Obama was the center of anything is misdirection. The 'deep state,' as much as I loathe the term, is nothing but State clerks bent by their sense of self importance, venality in the adherence to 'rules,' and motivated by either their greed or their indignation that their status position is merely relative. ..."
"... The Flynn persecution is just the tip of the iceberg of corruption, illegal surveillance, perjury, money laundering, skimming and sedition. ..."
"... One can only imagine all the times Obama weaponized the intelligence agencies against his political opponents that will never be exposed ..."
"... John and Sarah Carter have knocked it out of the park since the Obama attempted coup started. ..."
"... In Watergate, the underlying crime was "Nixon spied on the Democrats". Everything else was just a question of who did what, and how much. ..."
"... How come there's never any mention of "London Collusion", as if UK interference in U.S. politics and society is quite alright -- even when it's highly detrimental? ..."
"... Brennan went over and met with MI-6 right about the time that Trump announced his candidacy. I think the whole Russia-Collusion thing was their idea and they put Brennan on to it. Set it all up for him, complete with a diagram so he wouldn't **** it up. That's what MI-6 does. ..."
"... MI-6, like Christopher Steele, hated Trump because they BADLY want World Government. Have been sabotaging Brexit for years. ..."
"... It's easier for me to imagine Obama as puppet than a ringleader. He always seemed to be a fake, manufactured sort of person. As if he was focus-group-tested and approved. ..."
Agents fretted sharing Flynn intel with departing Obama White House would become fodder for
'partisan axes to grind.'
Just 17 days before President Trump took office in January 2017, then-FBI
counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok texted bureau lawyer Lisa Page, his mistress, to express
concern about sharing sensitive Russia probe evidence with the departing Obama White House.
Strzok had just engaged in a conversation with his boss, then-FBI Assistant Director William
Priestap, about evidence from the investigation of incoming National Security Adviser Michael
Flynn, codenamed Crossfire Razor, or "CR" for short.
The evidence in question were so-called "tech cuts" from intercepted conversations between
Flynn and Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak, according to the texts and interviews with
officials familiar with the conversations.
Strzok related Priestap's concerns about the potential the evidence would be politically
weaponized if outgoing Director of National Intelligence James Clapper shared the intercept
cuts with the White House and President Obama, a well-known Flynn critic.
"He, like us, is concerned with over sharing," Strzok texted Page on Jan. 3, 2017,
relating his conversation with Priestap.
"Doesn't want Clapper giving CR cuts to WH. All political, just shows our hand and
potentially makes enemies."
Page seemed less concerned, knowing that the FBI was set in three days to release its
initial assessment of Russian interference in the U.S. election.
"Yeah, but keep in mind we were going to put that in the doc on Friday, with potentially
larger distribution than just the DNI," Page texted back.
Strzok responded, "The question is should we, particularly to the entirety of the lame
duck usic [U.S Intelligence Community] with partisan axes to grind."
That same day Strzok and Page also discussed in text messages a drama involving one of the
Presidential Daily Briefings for Obama.
"Did you follow the drama of the PDB last week?" Strzok asked.
"Yup. Don't know how it ended though," Page responded.
"They didn't include any of it, and Bill [Priestap] didn't want to dissent," Strzok
added.
"Wow, Bill should make sure [Deputy Director] Andy [McCabe] knows about that since he was
consulted numerous times about whether to include the reporting," Page suggested.
You can see the text messages recovered from Strzok's phone here.
The text messages, which were never released to the public by the FBI but were provided to
this reporter in September 2018, have taken on much more significance to both federal and
congressional investigators in recent weeks as the Justice Department has requested that
Flynn's conviction be thrown out and his charges of lying to the FBI about Kislyak
dismissed.
U.S. Attorney Jeff Jensen of Missouri (special prosecutor for DOJ), the FBI inspection
division, three Senate committees and House Republicans are all investigating the handling of
Flynn's case and whether any crimes were committed or political influence exerted.
The investigators are trying to determine whether Obama's well-known disdain for Flynn, a
career military intelligence officer, influenced the decision by the FBI leadership to reject
its own agent's recommendation to shut down a probe of Flynn in January 2017 and instead pursue
an interview where agents might catch him in a lie.
They also want to know whether the conversation about the PDB involved Flynn and "reporting"
the FBI had gathered by early January 2017 showing the incoming national security adviser was
neither a counterintelligence nor a criminal threat.
"The evidence connecting President Obama to the Flynn operation is getting stronger," one
investigator with direct knowledge told me.
"The bureau knew it did not have evidence to justify that Flynn was either a criminal or
counterintelligence threat and should have shut the case down. But the perception that Obama
and his team would not be happy with that outcome may have driven the FBI to keep the probe
open without justification and to pivot to an interview that left some agents worried
involved entrapment or a perjury trap."
The investigator said more interviews will need to be done to determine exactly what role
Obama's perception of Flynn played in the FBI's decision making.
Recently declassified evidence show a total of 39 outgoing Obama administration officials
sought to unmask Flynn's name in intelligence interviews between Election Day 2016 and
Inauguration Day 2017, signaling a keen interest in Flynn's overseas calls.
Former Whitewater Independent Counsel Robert Ray said Friday that the Flynn matter was at
the very least a "political scandal of the highest order" and could involve criminal charges if
evidence emerges that officials lied or withheld documents to cover up what happened.
"I imagine there are people who are in the know who may well have knowingly withheld
information from the court and from defense counsel in connection with the Michael Flynn
prosecution,"
Ray told Fox News .
"If it turns out that that can be proved, then there are going to be referrals and
potential false statements, and/or perjury prosecutions to hold those, particularly those in
positions of authority, accountable," he added.
Investigators have created the following timeline of key events through documents produced
piecemeal by the FBI over two years:
April 2014: Flynn is forced out as the chief of DIA by Obama after clashing with the
administration over the Syrian civil war, the rise of ISIS, and other policies. The Obama
administration blames his management style for the departure.
July 31, 2016:
FBI opens Crossfire Hurricane probe into possible ties between Trump campaign and Russia,
focused on Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos. Flynn is not an initial target of that
probe.
Aug. 15, 2016: Strzok and Page engage in their infamous text exchange about having an
insurance policy just in case Trump should be elected. "I want to believe the path you threw
out for consideration in Andy's office -- that there's no way he gets elected -- but I'm
afraid we can't take that risk. It's like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die
before you're 40," one text reads.
Aug. 16, 2016: FBI opens a sub-case under the Crossfire Hurricane umbrella codenamed
Crossfire Razor focused on whether Flynn was wittingly or unwittingly engaged in
inappropriate Russian contact.
Aug. 17, 2016: FBI and DNI provide Trump and Flynn first briefing after winning the
nomination, including on Russia. FBI slips in an agent posing as an assistant for the
briefing to secretly get a read on Flynn for the new investigation, according to the
Justice
Department inspector general report on Russia case. "SSA 1 told us that the briefing
provided him 'the opportunity to gain assessment and possibly some level of familiarity with
[Flynn]. So, should we get to the point where we need to do a subject interview ... would
have that to fall back on,'" the IG report said.
Sept, 2, 2016: While preparing a talking points memo for Obama ahead of a conversation
with Russian leader Vladimir Putin involving Russian election interference, Page texts
Strzok that Obama wants to be read-in on everything the FBI is doing on the Russia
collusion case. "POTUS wants to know everything we're doing," Page texted.
Nov. 10, 2016: Two days after Trump won the election, the president-elect meets with
Obama at the White House and the outgoing president encourages the
incoming president not to hire Flynn as an adviser.
Jan. 3, 2017: Strzok and Page engage in the text messages about Obama's daily briefing
and the concerns about giving the Flynn intercept cuts to the White House.
Jan. 4, 2017:
Lead agent in Flynn Crossfire Razor probe prepares closing memo recommending the case be
shut down for lack of derogatory evidence. Strzok texts agent asking him to stop the closing
memo because the "7th floor" leadership of the FBI is now involved.
Jan. 5–23, 2017: FBI prepares to conduct an interview of Flynn. The discussions
lead Priestap, the assistant director, to openly question in his
handwritten notes whether the bureau was "playing games" and trying to get Flynn to lie
so "we can prosecute him or get him fired."
Jan. 24, 2017: FBI conducts interview with Flynn.
Investigators are trying to determine whether Obama asked for the Flynn intercept or it was
offered to him and by whom. They also want to know how many times Comey and Obama talked about
Flynn in December 2016 and January 2017.
"We need to determine what motivated the FBI on Jan. 4, 2017 to overrule its own agent who
believed Flynn was innocent and the probe should be closed," one investigator said.
arrowrod , 26 minutes ago
Grenell comes in for a month, releases a **** load of "secret poop", then is replaced.
President Trump should fire the head of the FBI and replace with Grenell. I know, too
easy.
"Expletive deleted", (I'm looking for new cuss words) the FBI and DOJ appear to be a bunch
of stumble bum hacks, yet continue to get away with murder.
Schiff, lied and lied, but had immunity, because anything said on the house floor is safe
from prosecution. Yet, GOP congress critters didn't go on the house floor and read the
transcript from the testimony of the various liars.
"Rebellion to tyranny is obedience to God."-ThomasJefferson , 3 hours ago
Obama weaponized everything he could, including race, gender, religion, truth, law
enforcement, judiciary, news industry, intelligence community, international allies and
foes.
The most corrupt administration in the history of the republic. The abuse of power is mind
numbing.
Only one way to rectify the damage the Obama administration has done to the USA is to
systematically undo every single thing they touched.
Decimus Lunius Luvenalis , 3 hours ago
The idea that Obama was the center of anything is misdirection. The 'deep state,' as much
as I loathe the term, is nothing but State clerks bent by their sense of self importance,
venality in the adherence to 'rules,' and motivated by either their greed or their
indignation that their status position is merely relative.
Soloamber , 3 hours ago
The motive was to get Flynn fired and lay the ground work to impeach Trump . The problem is Flynn actually did nothing wrong but he was targeted , framed , and
blackmailed into claiming he lied over nothing illegal .
They destroyed his reputation , they financially ruined him and once they did that the sleazy prosecutors ran like rabbits . The judge is so in the bag , he bullied Flynn with implied threats about treason . The Judge is going to get absolutely fragged . Delay delay delay but the jig is up .
DOJ says case dropped and the Judge wants to play prosecutor . The Judge should be investigated along with the other criminals who framed Flynn . Who is the judge tied to ? Gee I wonder .
Nature_Boy_Wooooo , 4 hours ago
"As long as I'm alive the Republican party won't let anything happen to you."
"Thanks John McCain!......now let's set the trap."
"Let's do it Barry."
THORAX , 4 hours ago
The Flynn persecution is just the tip of the iceberg of corruption, illegal surveillance,
perjury, money laundering, skimming and sedition.
subgen , 4 hours ago
One can only imagine all the times Obama weaponized the intelligence agencies against his
political opponents that will never be exposed
sborovay07 , 5 hours ago
John and Sarah Carter have knocked it out of the park since the Obama attempted coup
started. CNN should give their fake Pulitzers too the two reporters who told the truth. It
been like the tree that falls in the forest. However, once the arrests start more people will
see the tree that fell. These treasonists
need to pay for their crimes Bigly.
Omni Consumer Product , 4 hours ago
There's too much spookology here for a jury - much less the public - to decipher.
You need a smoking gun, like a tape of Obama saying "I want General Flynn assassinated
because Orange Man Bad".
In Watergate, the underlying crime was "Nixon spied on the Democrats". Everything else was
just a question of who did what, and how much.
That's what is need here to swell the mass of public opinion. Of course, leftwing true
believers of "the Resistance" will never accept it, but that is what is needed to convince
the significant minority of more centrist Americans who haven't made a final decision
yet.
Lux , 5 hours ago
How come there's never any mention of "London Collusion", as if UK interference in U.S.
politics and society is quite alright -- even when it's highly detrimental?
fackbankz , 5 hours ago
The Crown took us over in 1913. We're just the muscle.
Lord Raglan , 5 hours ago
Brennan went over and met with MI-6 right about the time that Trump announced his
candidacy. I think the whole Russia-Collusion thing was their idea and they put Brennan on to
it. Set it all up for him, complete with a diagram so he wouldn't **** it up. That's what
MI-6 does.
MI-6, like Christopher Steele, hated Trump because they BADLY want World Government. Have
been sabotaging Brexit for years.
Brennan's just not smart or creative enough to have figured out the Hoax on his own. He's
certainly corrupt enough.
flashmansbroker , 4 hours ago
More likely, the Brits were asked to do a favor.
Steele Hammorhands , 5 hours ago
It's easier for me to imagine Obama as puppet than a ringleader. He always seemed to be a
fake, manufactured sort of person. As if he was focus-group-tested and approved.
Side Note: Does anyone remember when Obama referred to himself as "the first US president
from Kenya" and then laughed about it?
I'm afraid it won't matter how thorough the alternative media debunking of Russiagate
becomes – as long as mainstream media sticks to the story, the neoliberal majority will
too, because it is like catnip to them, absolving responsibility for the defeat, casting
Clinton as the victim of an evil foreign despot, and delegitimizing Trump. Truth is tossed to
the wind by this freight train of powerful interests.
I have little hope Barr and Durham will indict anyone high level.
Ray twice mentioned something about Sanders getting hosed again in the 2020 primary. I
thought it seemed weird how suddenly the primary was declared "over." If there is evidence of
DNC shenanigans in 2020, that would be a very interesting and timely topic.
On June 12, Assange announces Wikileaks will soon be releasing "emails pertinent to
Hillary". On June 14th, Crowdstrike announces: someone, probably the Russians, has hacked the
DNC and taken a Trump opposition research document; the very next day, G2.0 makes his first
public appearance and posts the DNC's Trump oppo research document, with "Russian
fingerprints" intentionally implanted in its metadata. (We now know that he had actually
acquired this from PODESTA's emails, where it appears as an attachment – oops!)
Moreover, G2.0 announces that he was the source of the "emails pertinent to Hillary" –
DNC emails – that Assange was planning to release.
This strongly suggests that the G2.0 persona was working in collusion with Crowdstrike to
perpetrate the hoax that the GRU had hacked the DNC to provide their emails to Wikileaks.
Consistent with this, multiple cyberanalyses point to G2.0 working at various points In the
Eastern, Central, and Western US time zones. (A mere coincidence that the DNC is in the
eastern zone, and that Crowdstrike has offices in the central and western zones?)
If Crowdstrike honestly believed that the DNC had been hacked by the GRU, would there have
been any need for them to perpetrate this fraud?
It is therefore reasonable to suspect, as Ray McGovern has long postulated, that
Crowdstrike may have FAKED a GRU hack, to slander Russia and Assange, while distracting
attention from the content of the released emails.
As far as we know, the only "evidence" that Crowdstrike has for GRU being the perpetrator
of the alleged hack is the presence of "Fancy Bear" malware on the DNC server. But as
cyberanalysts Jeffrey Carr and George Eliason have pointed out, this software is also
possessed by Ukrainian hackers working in concert with Russian traitors and the Atlantic
Council – with which the founders of Crowdstrike are allied.
Here's a key question: When Assange announced the impending release of "emails pertinent
to Hillary" on June 12, how did Crowdstrike and G2.0 immediately know he was referring to DNC
emails? Many people – I, for example – suspected he was referring to her deleted
Secretary of State emails.
Here's a reasonable hypothesis – Our intelligence agencies were monitoring all
communications with Wikileaks. If so, they could have picked up the communications between SR
and Wikileaks that Sy Hersh's FBI source described. They then alerted the DNC that their
emails were about to leaked to Wikileaks. The DNC then contacted Crowdstrike, which arranged
for a "Fancy Bear hack" of the DNC servers. Notably, cyberanalysts have determined that about
2/3 of the Fancy Bear malware found on the DNC servers had been compiled AFTER the date that
Crowdstrike was brought in to "roust the hackers".
Of course, this elaborate hoax would have come to grief if the actual leaker had come
forward. Which might have had something to do with the subsequent "botched robbery" in which
SR was slain.
DNC staffer Seth Rich was murdered on July 10, 2016, amid contoversy over who provided DNC
emails to Wikileaks and over a pending lawsuit concerning voter suppression during the 2016
primaries. Wikileaks offered a $20,000 reward for information about his murder, leading some
to believe he was their source for the DNC emails. He was reported to have been a potential
witness in the voter suppression lawsuit filed the day after his death.
"... In reality, the part left out of the story is that the phone call to Kislyak on December 22, 2016, was made by Flynn at the direction of Jared Kushner, who in turn had been approached by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu had learned that the Obama Administrating was going to abstain on a United Nations vote condemning the Israeli settlements policy, meaning that for the first time in years a U.N. resolution critical of Israel would pass without drawing a U.S. veto. Kushner, acting for Netanyahu, asked Flynn to contact each delegate from the various countries on the Security Council to delay or kill the resolution. Flynn agreed to do so, which included a call to the Russians. Kislyak took the call but did not agree to veto Security Council Resolution 2334, which passed unanimously on December 23 rd . ..."
"... The phone call made at the request of Israel was neither benign nor ethical as the Barack Administration was still in power and managing the nation's foreign policy. At the time, son-in-law Jared Kushner was Trump's point man on the Middle East. He and his family have extensive ties both to Israel and to Netanyahu personally, to include Netanyahu's staying at the Kushner family home in New York. The Kushner Family Foundation has funded some of Israel's illegal settlements and also a number of conservative political groups in that country. Jared has served as a director of that foundation and it is reported that he failed to disclose the relationship when he filled out his background investigation sheet for a security clearance. All of which suggests that if you are looking for possible foreign government collusion with the incoming Trumpsters, look no further. ..."
"... And it should be observed that the Israelis were not exactly shy about their disapproval of Obama and their willingness to express their views to the incoming Trump. Kushner went far beyond merely disagreeing over an aspect of foreign policy as he was actively trying to clandestinely subvert and reverse a decision made by his own legally constituted government. His closeness to Netanyahu made him, in intelligence terms, a quite likely Israeli government agent of influence, even if he didn't quite see himself that way. ..."
"... Kushner's actions, as well as those of Flynn, would most certainly have been covered by the Logan Act of 1799, which bars private citizens from negotiating with foreign governments on behalf of the United States and also could be construed as a "conspiracy against the United States." But in spite of all that the investigation went after Flynn instead of Kushner. As Kushner is Jewish and certainly could be accused of dual loyalty in extremis , that part of the story obviously makes many in the U.S. Establishment and media uncomfortable, so it was and continues to be both ignored and expunged from the record as quickly as possible. ..."
There are two stories that seem to have been under-reported in the past couple of weeks. The
first involves Michael Flynn's dealings with the Russian United Nations Ambassador Sergey
Kislyak. And the second describes yet another bit of espionage conducted by a foreign country
directed against the United States. Both stories involve the State of Israel.
The bigger story is, of course, the dismissal by Attorney General William Barr of the
criminal charges against former National Security Advisor General Michael Flynn based on
malfeasance by the FBI investigators. The curious aspect of the story as it is being related by
the mainstream media is that it repeatedly refers to Flynn as having unauthorized contacts with
the Russian Ambassador and then having lied about it. The implication is that there was
something decidedly shady about Flynn talking to the Russians and that the Russians were up to
something.
In reality, the part left out of the story is that the phone call to Kislyak on December 22,
2016, was made by Flynn at the direction of Jared Kushner, who in turn had been approached by
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu had learned that the Obama Administrating
was going to abstain on a United Nations vote condemning the Israeli settlements policy,
meaning that for the first time in years a U.N. resolution critical of Israel would pass
without drawing a U.S. veto. Kushner, acting for Netanyahu, asked Flynn to contact each
delegate from the various countries on the Security Council to delay or kill the resolution.
Flynn agreed to do so, which included a call to the Russians. Kislyak took the call but did not
agree to veto Security Council Resolution 2334, which passed unanimously on December 23
rd .
In taking the phone calls from a soon-to-be senior American official who would within weeks
be part of a new administration in Washington, the Russians did nothing wrong, but the media is
acting like there was some kind of Kremlin conspiracy seeking to undermine U.S. democracy. It
would not be inappropriate to have some conversations with an incoming government team and
Kislyak also did nothing that might be regarded as particularly responsive to Team Trump
overtures since he voted contrary to Flynn's request.
The phone call made at the request of Israel was neither benign nor ethical as the Barack
Administration was still in power and managing the nation's foreign policy. At the time,
son-in-law Jared Kushner was Trump's point man on the Middle East. He and his family have
extensive
ties both to Israel and to Netanyahu personally, to include Netanyahu's staying at the
Kushner family home in New York. The Kushner Family Foundation has funded some of Israel's
illegal settlements and also a number of conservative political groups in that country. Jared
has served as a director of that foundation and it is reported that he failed to disclose the
relationship when he filled out his background investigation sheet for a security clearance.
All of which suggests that if you are looking for possible foreign government collusion with
the incoming Trumpsters, look no further.
And it should be observed that the Israelis
were not exactly shy about their disapproval of Obama and their willingness to express
their views to the incoming Trump. Kushner went far beyond merely disagreeing over an aspect of
foreign policy as he was actively trying to clandestinely subvert and reverse a decision made
by his own legally constituted government. His closeness to Netanyahu made him, in intelligence
terms, a quite likely Israeli government agent of influence, even if he didn't quite see
himself that way.
Kushner's actions, as well as those of Flynn, would most certainly have been covered by the
Logan Act of 1799, which bars private citizens from negotiating with foreign governments on
behalf of the United States and also could be construed as a "conspiracy against the United
States." But in spite of all that the investigation went after Flynn instead of Kushner. As
Kushner is Jewish and certainly could be accused of dual loyalty in extremis , that part
of the story obviously makes many in the U.S. Establishment and media uncomfortable, so it was
and continues to be both ignored and expunged from the record as quickly as possible.
The
second story , which has basically been made to disappear, relates to spying by Israel
against critics in the United States. The revelation that Israel was again using its
telecommunications skills to spy on foreigners came from an Oakland California federal court
lawsuit initiated by Facebook (FB) against the Israeli surveillance technology company NSO
Group. FB claimed that NSO has been using servers located in the United States to infect with
spyware hundreds of smartphones being used by attorneys, journalists, human rights activists,
critics of Israel and even of government officials. NSO allegedly used WhatsApp, a messaging
app owned by FB, to hack into the phones and install malware that would enable the company to
monitor what was going on with the devices. It did so by employing networks of remote servers
located in California to enter the accounts.
NSO has inevitably claimed that they do indeed provide spyware, but that it is sold to
clients who themselves operate it with the "advice and technical support to assist customers in
setting up" but it also promotes its products as being "used to stop terrorism, curb violent
crime, and save lives." It also asserts that its software cannot be used against U.S. phone
numbers.
Facebook, which did its own extensive research into NSO activity, alleges that NSO rented a
Los Angeles-based server from a U.S. company called QuadraNet that it then used to launch 720
hacks on smartphones and other devices. It further claims in the court filing that the company
reverse-engineering WhatsApp, using an program that it developed to access WhatsApp's servers
and deploy "its spyware against approximately 1,400 targets" before " covertly transmit[ting]
malicious code through WhatsApp servers and inject[ing]" spyware into telephones without the
knowledge of the owners."
The filing goes on to assert that the "Defendants had no authority to access WhatsApp's
servers with an imposter program, manipulate network settings, and commandeer the servers to
attack WhatsApp users. That invasion of WhatsApp's servers and users' devices constitutes
unlawful computer hacking."
NSO, which is largely staffed by former (sic) Israeli intelligence officers, had previously
been in the news for its proprietary spyware known as Pegasus, which "can gather information
about a mobile phone's location, access its camera, microphone and internal hard drive, and
covertly record emails, phone calls and text messages." Pegasus was reportedly used in the
killing of Saudi dissident journalist Adnan Kashoggi in Istanbul last year and it has more
recently been suggested as a resource for tracking coronavirus distance violators. Outside
experts have accused the company of selling its technology and expertise to countries that have
used it to spy on dissidents, journalists and other critics.
Israel routinely exploits the access provided by its telecommunications industry to spy on
the host countries where those companies operate. The companies themselves report regularly
back to Mossad contacts and the technology they provide routinely has a "backdoor" for secretly
accessing the information accessible through the software. In fact, Israel conducts espionage
and influence operations both directly and through proxies against the United States more
aggressively than any other "friendly" country, which once upon a time included being able to
tap into the "secure" White House phones used by Bill Clinton to speak with Monica
Lewinsky.
Last September, it was revealed that the placement of technical surveillance devices by
Israel in Washington D.C. was clearly intended to target cellphone communications to and from
the Trump White House. As the president frequently chats with top aides and friends on
non-secure phones, the operation sought to pick up conversations involving Trump with the
expectation that the security-averse president would say things off the record that might be
considered top secret.
A Politicoreport
detailed how "miniature surveillance devices" referred to as "Stingrays" were used to imitate
regular cell phone towers to fool phones being used nearby into providing information on their
locations and identities. According to the article, the devices are referred to by technicians
as "international mobile subscriber identity-catchers or IMSI-catchers, they also can capture
the contents of calls and data use."
Over one year ago, government security agencies discovered the electronic footprints that
indicated the presence of the surveillance devices near the White House. Forensic analysis
involved dismantling the devices to let them "tell you a little about their history, where the
parts and pieces come from, how old are they, who had access to them, and that will help get
you to what the origins are." One source observed afterwards that "It was pretty clear that the
Israelis were responsible."
So two significant stories currently making the rounds have been bowdlerized and disappeared
to make the Israeli role in manipulating and spying against the United States go away. They are
only two of many stories framed by a Zionist dominated media to control the narrative in a way
favorable to the Jewish state. One would think that having a president of the United States who
is the most pro-Israel ever, which is saying a great deal in and of itself, would be enough,
but unfortunately when dealing with folks like Benjamin Netanyahu there can never be any
restraint when dealing with the "useful idiots" in Washington.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest,
a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a
more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is https://councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected] .
As I pointed out in my 29 above about the front page noting the names and occupations of
1,000 of the 100,000 that have needlessly died due to Trump's Treasonous Do Nothing COVID-19
Policy, today
RT reports about a Memorial Day op/ed that disses the Military: "Why Does the U.S.
Military Celebrate White Supremacy?"
That made the Pentagon's Spin Master angry, puff out his chest to fume and moan.
There's not much to the RT report, but I can't recall any similar display done
before by the NY Times . IMO, something's happened within the Top Office and it seems
to be aimed at Trump.
Of course, I'd never have known about any such happening if it hadn't been for the
reporting by RT & Global Times .
div
Was Flynn a complete idiot or already ont he hook and in a position not to deny McCabe
reuaest not to use lawer? @Jim
So you can only conceive of three reasons for a person to "lawyer up"?
How about this: A badged employee of the government wish to ask you a few question. Just to
help in their investigation of something or another. So you go in to be interrogated. Your
interrogator has 20 years of employment and has done several interrogations a week for those
20 years. It is your first time being interrogated.
A smart person asks for a lawyer immediately. You are the pine rider for the little sisters
of the poor and the interrogator is Nolan Ryan. You are Rudy the waterboy and the
interrogator is Dick Butkus. You are a mook a skell, just another low life.
As a general rule, you get yourself a lawyer first before you answer anything. This is
something General Flynn knew and ignored. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE
But, But, BUT I am innocent, I have nothing to hide, it is a citizens duty to "help"
legitimate authority, I dindunuffin innocence is irrelevant. All of us have our secrets and
our private things and you can become a liar to legal authority quicker than you can imagine
just by one wrong word, or one nervous twitch, or a simple hesitation, even an ambiguity in
your wording of some innocuous answer to some "unimportant" question.
You can ask the Colonel how interrogation works he spent many years honing his art.
For how an innocent person can be caught in a perjury trap, read Chapters 18 and 19, "The FBI
Comes Calling" and "Investigated By Mueller, Harassed By Congress" of K.T. McFarland's book
"Revolution".
It only costs $9.99 at Google Play Store and IMO, is well worth it for those two chapters
alone. (Hope that endorsement for the book is okay in context.)
"In 2019, a federal jury convicted Flynn's business associate, Bijan Kian, on two
felonies: conspiracy to violate lobbying laws and failure to register as a foreign agent for
Turkey. Flynn was scheduled to testify against Kian but changed his story at the last minute,
causing problems for the prosecution. The judge later tossed the verdict, saying the
prosecution didn't prove its case.
As part of an overall deal with federal prosecutors, Flynn was never charged in connection
with his lobbying for Turkey. It seems unlikely that he ever will"
I don't know much about this aspect of the Flynn Saga
The DC Circuit court wants Sullivan to explain himself. That will be instructive as to why
he wants Gleeson to provide a third party opinion of why Flynn should be charged with
perjury.
Terence
This is one aspect of Flynn that seems a bit shady but very much in line with how DC
trades in influence peddling. Apparently he was paid by Turkey to use his influence and put
together a media campaign to get Gulen extradited to Turkey.
But now let's take a look at Schiff's sins and see how they compare. Back in 2017, he was
the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee and therefore the man Democrats
counted on to lead the charge that Trump had colluded with the Kremlin in order to steal the
election. He did so with gusto. Quoting from a dossier prepared by ex-British MI6 agent
Christopher Steele, he regaled a March
2017 committee hearing with tales of how Russia bribed Trump adviser Carter Page by offering
him a hefty slice of a Russian natural-gas company known as Rosneft and of how Russian agents
boosted Trump's political fortunes by hacking Hillary Clinton's emails and passing them on to
WikiLeaks . Conceivably, such acts could have been purely coincidental, Schiff
acknowledged.
"But it is also possible," he went on, "maybe more than possible, that they are not
coincidental, not disconnected, and not unrelated, and that the Russians used the same
techniques to corrupt U.S. persons that they have employed in Europe and elsewhere. We simply
don't know, not yet, and we owe it to the country to find out."
Hours later, he
assured MSNBC that the evidence of collusion was "more than circumstantial." Nine months
after that, he informed CNN's Jake Tapper that the case was
no longer in doubt: "The Russians offered help, the campaign accepted help, the Russians gave
help, and the president made full use of that help." In February 2018, he
told reporters: "There is certainly an abundance of non-public information that we've
gathered in the investigation. And I think some of that non-public evidence is evidence on the
issue of collusion and some on the issue of obstruction."
The press lapped it up .
But now, thanks to the May 7 release of 57 transcripts of secret testimony
– transcripts, by the way, that Schiff bottled up for months – we have a better
idea of what such "non-public information" amounts to.
The answer: nothing.
A parade of high-level witnesses told the intelligence committee that either they didn't
know about collusion or lacked evidence even to venture an opinion. Not one offered the
contrary view that collusion was true.
"I never saw any direct empirical evidence that the Trump campaign or someone in it was
plotting [or] conspiring with the Russians to meddle with the election," testified
ex-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. Obama Attorney General Loretta Lynch told
the committee that no one in the FBI or CIA had informed her that collusion had taken place.
Sally Yates, acting attorney general during the Obama-Trump transition, was similarly
noncommittal. So were Obama speechwriter Ben Rhodes and former acting FBI Director Andrew
McCabe. David Kramer, a prominent neocon who helped spread word of the Steele dossier in top
intelligence circles, was downright apologetic: "I'm not in a position to really say one way
or the other, sir. I'm sorry."
But rather than admit that the investigation had turned up nothing, Schiff lied that it had
– not once but repeatedly.
Let that sink in for a moment. Collusion dominated the headlines from the moment Buzzfeed
published the Steele dossier on Jan. 10, 2017, to the release of the Muller report on Apr. 18,
2019. That's more than two years, a period in which newspapers and TV were filled with Russia,
Russia, Russia and little else. Thanks to the uproar, acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe and
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein secretly discussed using the Twenty-fifth Amendment to
force Trump out of office, while an endless parade of newscasters and commentators assured
viewers that the president's days were numbered because " the walls are closing in ."
Schiff's only response was to egg it on to greater and greater heights. Even when Special
Prosecutor Robert Mueller issued his no-collusion verdict – "the investigation did not
establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian
government in its election interference activities," his report said – Schiff insisted
that there was still "ample evidence of collusion in plain sight."
"I use that word very carefully," he said, "because I also distinguish time and time again
between collusion, that is acts of corruption that may or may not be criminal, and proof of a
criminal conspiracy. And that is a distinction that Bob Mueller made within the first few
pages of his report. In fact, every act that I've pointed to as evidence of collusion has now
been borne out by the report. "
So Trump colluded with the Kremlin, but in a non-criminal way? Even if Mueller got Schiff in
a headlock and screamed in his ear, "No collusion, no collusion," the committee chairman would
presumably reply: "See? He said it – collusion."
The man is an unscrupulous liar, in other words, someone who will say anything to gain
attention and fatten his war chest, which is why contributions
flowing to his re-election campaign have risen from under $1 million a year to $10.5 million
since the Russia furor began. The man talks endlessly about the Constitution, patriotism, his
father's heroic service in the military, and so on. But the only thing Adam Schiff really cares
about is himself.
Trump's sins are manifold. But with unerring accuracy, Schiff managed to zero in on the one
sin that didn't take place. Considering that the $391 million was destined for ultra-right
military units whose members sport
neo-Nazi regalia and SS symbols as they battle pro-Russian separatists in the eastern
Ukraine, Schiff's crimes are just as bad, if not worse. Ladies and gentlemen, we give you the
next candidate for impeachment, the congressman from Hollywood – Adam Schiff!
False flag operation by CIA or CrowdStrike as CIA constructor: CIA ears protrude above Gussifer 2.0 hat.
Notable quotes:
"... Guccifer 2.0 fabricated evidence to claim credit for hacking the DNC (using files that were really Podesta attachments) . ..."
"... Guccifer 2.0’s Russian breadcrumbs mostly came from deliberate processes & needless editing of documents . ..."
"... Guccifer 2.0’s Russian communications signals came from the persona choosing to use a proxy server in Moscow and choosing to use a Russian VPN service as end-points (and they used an email service that forwards the sender’s IP address, which made identifying that signal a relatively trivial task.) ..."
"... A considerable volume of evidence pointed at Guccifer 2.0’s activities being in American timezones (twice as many types of indicators were found pointing at Guccifer 2.0’s activities being in American timezones than anywhere else). ..."
"... The American timezones were incidental to other activities (eg. blogging , social media , emailing a journalist , archiving files , etc) and some of these were recorded independently by service providers. ..."
"... A couple of pieces of evidence with Russian indicators present had accompanying locale indicators that contradicted this which suggested the devices used hadn’t been properly set up for use in Russia (or Romania) but may have been suitable for other countries (including America) . ..."
"... On the same day that Guccifer 2.0 was plastering Russian breadcrumbs on documents through a deliberate process, choosing to use Russian-themed end-points and fabricating evidence to claim credit for hacking the DNC, the operation attributed itself to WikiLeaks. ..."
"... Guccifer 2.0 chose to use insecure communications to ask WikiLeaks to confirm receipt of “DNC emails” on July 6, 2016. Confirmation of this was not provided at that time but WikiLeaks did confirm receipt of a “1gb or so” archive on July 18, 2016. ..."
"... The alleged GRU officer we are told was part of an operation to deflect from Russian culpability suggested that Assange “may be connected with Russians”. ..."
"... Guccifer 2.0 fabricated evidence to claim credit for hacking the DNC, covered itself (and its files) in what were essentially a collection of “Made In Russia” labels through deliberate processes and decisions made by the persona, and, then, it attributed itself to WikiLeaks with a claim that was contradicted by subsequent communications between both parties. ..."
"... While we are expected to accept that Guccifer 2.0’s efforts between July 6 and July 18 were a sincere effort to get leaks to WikiLeaks, considering everything we now know about the persona, it seems fair to question whether Guccifer 2.0’s intentions towards WikiLeaks may have instead been malicious. ..."
"... Guccifer 2.0 was always John Brennan 1.0 ..."
"... Was Guccifer II part of the Stefan Halper organization that lured Papadopoulos and maliciously maligned others? ..."
"... I believe Guccifer 2.0 was created by the CIA to falsely pin blame on the Russians for info that Seth Rich gave to WikiLeaks. Read for yourself: http://g-2.space/ ..."
Why would an alleged GRU officer - supposedly part of an operation to deflect Russian culpability - suggest that
Assange “may be connected with Russians?”
In December, I reported on digital forensics evidence
relating to Guccifer 2.0 and highlighted several key points about the mysterious persona that Special Counsel Robert Mueller
claims was a front for Russian intelligence to leak Democratic Party emails to WikiLeaks:
A considerable volume of evidence pointed at
Guccifer 2.0’s activities being in American timezones (twice as many types of indicators were found pointing at Guccifer
2.0’s activities being in American timezones than anywhere else).
A couple of pieces of evidence with Russian indicators present had accompanying
locale indicators that contradicted this which suggested the devices used hadn’t been properly set up for use in Russia (or
Romania) but may have been suitable for other countries (including America).
On the same day that Guccifer 2.0 was plastering Russian breadcrumbs on documents through a deliberate process, choosing to
use Russian-themed end-points and fabricating evidence to claim credit for hacking the DNC, the operation attributed itself to WikiLeaks.
This article questions what Guccifer 2.0’s intentions were in relation to WikiLeaks in the context of what has been
discovered by independent researchers during the past three years.
Timing
On June 12, 2016, in an interview
with ITV’s Robert Peston, Julian Assange confirmed that WikiLeaks had emails relating to Hillary Clinton that the
organization intended to publish. This announcement was prior to any reported contact with Guccifer 2.0 (or with DCLeaks).
On June 14, 2016, an article was published
in The Washington Post citing statements from two CrowdStrike executives alleging that Russian intelligence hacked
the DNC and stole opposition research on Trump. It was apparent that the statements had been made in the 48 hours prior to
publication as they referenced claims of kicking hackers off the DNC network on the weekend just passed (June 11-12, 2016).
On that same date, June 14, DCLeaks contacted WikiLeaks via Twitter DM and for some reason suggested that both parties
coordinate their releases of leaks. (It doesn’t appear that WikiLeaks responded until September 2016).
[CrowdStrike President Shawn Henry testified under
oath behind closed doors on Dec. 5, 2017 to the U.S. House intelligence committee that his company had no evidence that Russian
actors removed anything from the DNC servers. This testimony was only released earlier
this month.]
By stating that WikiLeaks would “publish them soon” the Guccifer 2.0 operation implied that it had received
confirmation of intent to publish.
However, the earliest recorded communication between Guccifer 2.0 and WikiLeaks didn’t occur until a week later (June
22, 2016) when WikiLeaks reached out to Guccifer 2.0 and suggested that the persona send any new material to them
rather than doing what it was doing:
[Excerpt from Special Counsel Mueller’s report. Note: “stolen from the DNC” is an editorial insert by the special
counsel.]
If WikiLeaks had already received material and confirmed intent to publish prior to this direct message, why would
they then suggest what they did when they did? WikiLeaks says it had no prior contact with Guccifer 2.0 despite what
Guccifer 2.0 had claimed.
Here is the full conversation on that date (according to the application):
@WikiLeaks: Do you have secure communications?
@WikiLeaks: Send any new material here for us to review and it will have a much higher impact than what
you are doing. No other media will release the full material.
@GUCCIFER_2: what can u suggest for a secure connection? Soft, keys, etc? I’m ready to cooperate with
you, but I need to know what’s in your archive 80gb? Are there only HRC emails? Or some other docs? Are there any DNC docs?
If it’s not secret when you are going to release it?
@WikiLeaks: You can send us a message in a .txt file here [link redacted]
@GUCCIFER_2: do you have GPG?
Why would Guccifer 2.0 need to know what material WikiLeaks already had? Certainly, if it were anything Guccifer 2.0
had sent (or the GRU had sent) he wouldn’t have had reason to inquire.
The more complete DM details provided here also suggest that both parties had not yet established secure communications.
Further communications were reported to have taken place on June 24, 2016:
@GUCCIFER_2: How can we chat? Do u have jabber or something like that?
@WikiLeaks: Yes, we have everything. We’ve been busy celebrating Brexit. You can also email an encrypted
message to [email protected]. They key is here.
and June 27, 2016:
@GUCCIFER_2: Hi, i’ve just sent you an email with a text message encrypted and an open key.
@WikiLeaks: Thanks.
@GUCCIFER_2: waiting for ur response. I send u some interesting piece.
Guccifer 2.0 said he needed to know what was in the 88GB ‘insurance’ archive that WikiLeaks had posted on June 16,
2016 and it’s clear that, at this stage, secure communications had not been established between both parties (which would
seem to rule out the possibility of encrypted communications prior to June 15, 2016, making Guccifer 2.0’s initial claims about WikiLeaks even
more doubtful).
There was no evidence of WikiLeaks mentioning this to Guccifer 2.0 nor any reason for why WikiLeaks couldn’t
just send a DM to DCLeaks themselves if they had wanted to.
(It should also be noted that this Twitter DM activity between DCLeaks and Guccifer 2.0 is alleged by Mueller to be
communications between officers within the same unit of the GRU, who, for some unknown reason, decided to use Twitter DMs to
relay such information rather than just communicate face to face or securely via their own local network.)
Guccifer 2.0 lied about DCLeaks being a sub-project of WikiLeaks and then, over two months later, was seen trying to
encourage DCLeaks to communicate with WikiLeaks by relaying an alleged request from WikiLeaks that there is no
record of WikiLeaks ever making (and which WikiLeaks could have done themselves, directly, if they had wanted
to).
@GUCCIFER_2: hi there, check up r email, waiting for reply.
This was followed up on July 6, 2016 with the following conversation:
@GUCCIFER_2: have you received my parcel?
@WikiLeaks: Not unless it was very recent. [we haven’ t checked in 24h].
@GUCCIFER_2: I sent it yesterday, an archive of about 1 gb. via [website link]. and check your email.
@WikiLeaks: Wil[l] check, thanks.
@GUCCIFER_2: let me know the results.
@WikiLeaks: Please don’t make anything you send to us public. It’s a lot of work to go through it and the
impact is severely reduced if we are not the first to publish.
@GUCCIFER_2: agreed. How much time will it take?
@WikiLeaks: likely sometime today.
@GUCCIFER_2: will u announce a publication? and what about 3 docs sent u earlier?
@WikiLeaks: I don’t believe we received them. Nothing on ‘Brexit’ for example.
@GUCCIFER_2: wow. have you checked ur mail?
@WikiLeaks: At least not as of 4 days ago . . . . For security reasons mail cannot be checked for some
hours.
@GUCCIFER_2: fuck, sent 4 docs on brexit on jun 29, an archive in gpg ur submission form is too fucking
slow, spent the whole day uploading 1 gb.
@WikiLeaks: We can arrange servers 100x as fast. The speed restrictions are to anonymise the path. Just
ask for custom fast upload point in an email.
@GUCCIFER_2: will u be able to check ur email?
@WikiLeaks: We’re best with very large data sets. e.g. 200gb. these prove themselves since they’re too
big to fake.
@GUCCIFER_2: or shall I send brexit docs via submission once again?
@WikiLeaks: to be safe, send via [web link]
@GUCCIFER_2: can u confirm u received dnc emails?
@WikiLeaks: for security reasons we can’ t confirm what we’ve received here. e.g., in case your account
has been taken over by us intelligence and is probing to see what we have.
@GUCCIFER_2: then send me an encrypted email.
@WikiLeaks: we can do that. but the security people are in another time zone so it will need to wait some
hours.
@WikiLeaks: what do you think about the FBl’ s failure to charge? To our mind the clinton foundation
investigation has always been the more serious. we would be very interested in all the emails/docs from there. She set up
quite a lot of front companies. e.g in sweden.
@GUCCIFER_2: ok, i’ll be waiting for confirmation. as for investigation, they have everything settled, or
else I don’t know how to explain that they found a hundred classified docs but fail to charge her.
@WikiLeaks: She’s too powerful to charge at least without something stronger. s far as we know, the
investigation into the clinton foundation remains open e hear the FBI are unhappy with Loretta Lynch over meeting Bill,
because he’s a target in that investigation.
@GUCCIFER_2: do you have any info about marcel lazar? There’ve been a lot of rumors of late.
@WikiLeaks: the death? [A] fake story.
@WikiLeaks: His 2013 screen shots of Max Blumenthal’s inbox prove that Hillary secretly deleted at least
one email about Libya that was meant to be handed over to Congress. So we were very interested in his co-operation with the
FBI.
@GUCCIFER_2: some dirty games behind the scenes believe Can you send me an email now?
@WikiLeaks: No; we have not been able to activate the people who handle it. Still trying.
@GUCCIFER_2: what about tor submission? [W]ill u receive a doc now?
@WikiLeaks: We will get everything sent on [weblink].” [A]s long as you see \”upload succseful\” at the
end. [I]f you have anything hillary related we want it in the next tweo [sic] days prefable [sic] because the DNC is
approaching and she will solidify bernie supporters behind her after.
@GUCCIFER_2: ok. I see.
@WikiLeaks: [W]e think the public interest is greatest now and in early october.
@GUCCIFER_2: do u think a lot of people will attend bernie fans rally in philly? Will it affect the dnc
anyhow?
@WikiLeaks: bernie is trying to make his own faction leading up to the DNC. [S]o he can push for
concessions (positions/policies) or, at the outside, if hillary has a stroke, is arrested etc, he can take over the
nomination. [T]he question is this: can bemies supporters+staff keep their coherency until then (and after). [O]r will they
dis[s]olve into hillary’ s camp? [P]resently many of them are looking to damage hilary [sic] inorder [sic] to increase their
unity and bargaining power at the DNC. Doubt one rally is going to be that significant in the bigger scheme. [I]t seems many
of them will vote for hillary just to prevent trump from winning.
@GUCCIFER_2: sent brexit docs successfully.
@WikiLeaks: :))).
@WikiLeaks: we think trump has only about a 25% chance of winning against hillary so conflict between
bernie and hillary is interesting.
@GUCCIFER_2: so it is.
@WikiLeaks: also, it’ s important to consider what type of president hillary might be. If bernie and
trump retain their groups past 2016 in significant number, then they are a restraining force on hillary.
[Note: This was over a week after the Brexit referendum had taken place, so this will not have had any impact on the
results of that. It also doesn’t appear that WikiLeaks released any Brexit content around this time.]
On July 14, 2016, Guccifer 2.0 sent an email to WikiLeaks, this was covered in the Mueller report:
It should be noted that while the attachment sent was encrypted, the email wasn’t and both the email contents and name of the
file were readable.
The persona then opted, once again, for insecure communications via Twitter DMs:
@GUCCIFER_2: ping. Check ur email. sent u a link to a big archive and a pass.
@WikiLeaks: great, thanks; can’t check until tomorrow though.
On July 17, 2016, the persona contacted WikiLeaks again:
@GUCCIFER_2: what bout now?
On July 18, 2016, WikiLeaks responded and more was discussed:
@WikiLeaks: have the 1 Gb or so archive.
@GUCCIFER_2: have u managed to extract the files?
@WikiLeaks: yes. turkey coup has delayed us a couple of days. [O]therwise all ready[.]
@GUCCIFER_2: so when r u about to make a release?
@WikiLeaks: this week. [D]o you have any bigger datasets? [D]id you get our fast transfer details?
@GUCCIFER_2: i’ll check it. did u send it via email?
@WikiLeaks: yes.
@GUCCIFER_2: to [web link]. [I] got nothing.
@WikiLeaks: check your other mail? this was over a week ago.
@GUCCIFER_2:oh, that one, yeah, [I] got it.
@WikiLeaks: great. [D]id it work?
@GUCCIFER_2:[I] haven’ t tried yet.
@WikiLeaks: Oh. We arranged that server just for that purpose. Nothing bigger?
@GUCCIFER_2: let’s move step by step, u have released nothing of what [I] sent u yet.
@WikiLeaks: How about you transfer it all to us encrypted. [T]hen when you are happy, you give us the
decrypt key. [T]his way we can move much faster. (A]lso it is protective for you if we already have everything because then
there is no point in trying to shut you up.
@GUCCIFER_2: ok, i’ll ponder it
Again, we see a reference to the file being approximately one gigabyte in size.
Guccifer 2.0’s “so when r u about to make a release?” seems to be a question about his files. However, it could have been
inferred as generally relating to what WikiLeaks had or even material relating to the “Turkey Coup” that WikiLeaks had
mentioned in the previous sentence and that were published by the following day (July 19, 2016).
The way this is reported in the Mueller report, though, prevented this potential ambiguity being known (by not citing the
exact question that Guccifer 2.0 had asked and the context immediately preceding it.
Four days later, WikiLeaks published the DNC emails.
Later that same day, Guccifer 2.0 tweeted: “@wikileaks published #DNCHack docs I’d
given them!!!”.
Guccifer 2.0 chose to use insecure communications to ask WikiLeaks to confirm receipt of “DNC emails” on July 6, 2016.
Confirmation of this was not provided at that time but WikiLeaks did confirm receipt of a “1gb or so” archive on July 18,
2016.
Guccifer 2.0’s emails to WikiLeaks were also sent insecurely.
We cannot be certain that WikiLeaks statement about making a release was in relation to Guccifer 2.0’s material and
there is even a possibility that this could have been in reference to the Erdogan leaks published by WikiLeaks on July
19, 2016.
Ulterior Motives?
While the above seems troubling there are a few points worth considering:
Guccifer 2.0’s initial claim about sending WikiLeaks material(and
that they would publish it soon) appears to have been made without justification and seems to be contradicted by
subsequent communications from WikiLeaks.
If the archive was “about 1GB” (as Guccifer 2.0 describes it) then it would be too small to have been all of the
DNC’s emails (as these, compressed, came to 1.8GB-2GB depending on compression method used, which, regardless, would be
“about 2GB” not “about 1GB”). If we assume that these were DNC emails, where did the rest of them come from?
Assange has maintained
that WikiLeaks didn’t publish the material that Guccifer 2.0 had sent to them. Of course, Assange could just be
lying about that but there are some other possibilities to consider. If true, there is always a possibility that Guccifer 2.0
could have sent them material they had already received from another source or other emails from the DNC that they didn’t
release (Guccifer 2.0 had access to a lot of content relating to the DNC and Democratic party and the persona also offered
emails of Democratic staffers to Emma Best, a self-described journalist, activist and ex-hacker, the month after WikiLeaks published
the DNC emails, which, logically, must have been different emails to still have any value at that point in time).
On July 6, 2016, the same day that Guccifer 2.0 was trying to get WikiLeaks to confirm receipt of DNC emails (and
on which Guccifer 2.0 agreed not to publish material he had sent them), the persona posted a series of files to his blog
that were exclusively DNC email attachments.
It doesn’t appear any further communications were reported between the parties following the July 18, 2016 communications
despite Guccifer 2.0 tweeting on August 12, 2016: “I’ll send the major trove of the
#DCCC materials and emails to #wikileaks keep following…” and, apparently, stating
this to The Hill too.
As there are no further communications reported beyond this point it’s fair to question whether getting confirmation of
receipt of the archive was the primary objective for Guccifer 2.0 here.
Even though WikiLeaks offered Guccifer 2.0 a fast server for large uploads, the persona later suggested he needed
to find a resource for publishing a large amount of data.
Despite later claiming he would send (or had sent) DCCC content to WikiLeaks,WikiLeaks never
published such content and there doesn’t appear to be any record of any attempt to send this material to WikiLeaks.
Considering all of this and the fact Guccifer 2.0 effectively covered itself in “Made In Russia” labels (by plastering
files in Russian metadata and choosing to use a
Russian VPN service and a proxy in Moscow for
it’s activities) on the same day it first attributed itself to WikiLeaks, it’s fair to suspect that Guccifer 2.0 had
malicious intent towards WikiLeaks from the outset.
If this was the case, Guccifer 2.0 may have known about the DNC emails by June 30, 2016 as this is when the persona first
started publishing attachments from those emails.
Seth Rich Mentioned By Both Parties
WikiLeaks Offers Reward
On August 9, 2016, WikiLeaks tweeted:
ANNOUNCE: WikiLeaks has decided to issue a US$20k reward for information
leading to conviction for the murder of DNC staffer Seth Rich.
In an interview with Nieuwsuur that was posted the same day, Julian
Assange explained that the reward was for a DNC staffer who he said had been “shot in the back, murdered”. When the interviewer
suggested it was a robbery Assange disputed it and stated that there were no findings.
When the interviewer asked if Seth Rich was a source, Assange stated, “We don’t comment on who our sources are”.
When pressed to explain WikiLeaks actions, Assange stated that the reward was being offered because WikiLeaks‘
sources were concerned by the incident. He also stated that WikiLeaks were investigating.
Speculation and theories about Seth Rich being a source for WikiLeaks soon propagated to several sites and across
social media.
On that same day, in a DM conversation with the actress Robbin Young, Guccifer 2.0 claimed that Seth was his source (despite
previously claiming he obtained his material by hacking the DNC).
Why did Guccifer 2.0 feel the need to attribute itself to Seth at this time?
[Note: I am not advocating for any theory and am simply reporting on Guccifer 2.0’s effort to attribute itself to Seth
Rich following the propagation of Rich-WikiLeaks association theories online.]
Special Counsel Claims
In Spring, 2019, Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who was named to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. general
election, delivered his final report.
It claimed:
Guccifer 2.0 contradicted his own hacking claims to allege that Seth Rich was his source and did so on the same day that
Julian Assange was due to be interviewed by Fox News (in relation to Seth Rich).
No communications between Guccifer 2.0 and Seth Rich have ever been reported.
Suggesting Assange Connected To Russians
In the same conversation Guccifer 2.0 had with Robbin Young where Rich’s name is mentioned (on August 25, 2016), the
persona also provided a very interesting response to Young mentioning “Julian” (in reference to Julian Assange):
The alleged GRU officer we are told was part of an operation to deflect from Russian culpability suggested that
Assange “may be connected with Russians”.
Guccifer 2.0’s Mentions of WikiLeaks and Assange
Guccifer 2.0 mentioned WikiLeaks or associated himself with their output on several occasions:
July 22nd, 2016: claimed credit when WikiLeaks published the DNC leaks.
August 12, 2016: It was reported in The Hill that Guccifer 2.0 had released material to the publication. They
reported: “The documents released to The Hill are only the first section of a much larger cache. The bulk, the hacker
said, will be released on WikiLeaks.”
August 12, 2016: Tweeted that he would “send the major trove of the #DCCC materials
and emails to #wikileaks“.
September 15, 2016: telling DCLeaks that WikiLeaks wanted to get in contact with them.
October 4, 2016: Congratulating WikiLeaks on their 10th anniversary via
its blog. Also states: “Julian, you are really cool! Stay safe and sound!”. (This was the same day on which Guccifer
2.0 published his “Clinton Foundation” files that were clearly
not from the Clinton Foundation.)
October 17, 2016: via Twitter, stating “i’m here and ready for new releases.
already changed my location thanks @wikileaks for a good job!”
Guccifer 2.0 also made some statements in response to WikiLeaks or Assange being mentioned:
June 17, 2016: in response to The Smoking Gun asking if Assange would publish the same material it was
publishing, Guccifer 2.0 stated: “I gave WikiLeaks the
greater part of the files, but saved some for myself,”
August 22, 2016: in response to Raphael Satter suggesting that Guccifer 2.0 send leaks to WikiLeaks,the
persona stated: “I gave wikileaks a greater part of docs”.
August 25, 2016: in response to Julian Assange’s name being mentioned in a conversation with Robbin Young, Guccifer
2.0 stated: “he may be connected with Russians”.
October 18, 2016: a BBC reported asked Guccifer 2.0 if he was upset that WikiLeaks had “stole his thunder” and “do
you still support Assange?”. Guccifer 2.0 responded: “i’m
glad, together we’ll make America great again.”.
Guccifer 2.0 fabricated evidence to claim credit for hacking the DNC, covered itself (and its files) in what were essentially
a collection of “Made In Russia” labels through deliberate processes and decisions made by the persona, and, then, it attributed
itself to WikiLeaks with a claim that was contradicted by subsequent communications between both parties.
Guccifer 2.0 then went on to lie about WikiLeaks, contradicted its own hacking claims to attribute itself to Seth Rich
and even alleged that Julian Assange “may be connected with Russians”.
While we are expected to accept that Guccifer 2.0’s efforts between July 6 and July 18 were a sincere effort to get
leaks to WikiLeaks, considering everything we now know about the persona, it seems fair to question whether Guccifer
2.0’s intentions towards WikiLeaks may have instead been malicious.
xxx 2 minutes ago (Edited)
Everything involving the Russian hoax was set up by the Deep States around the world.
Implicate, discredit and destroy all those like Rich, Assange, Flynn and those who knew the
truth. Kill the messenger....literally.
xxx 10 minutes ago
here's what really happened:
an American hacker breached Podesta's gmail on March 13 2016 and then uploaded it to
Wikileaks via Tor sometime between April and May.
the NSA and CIA have hacked into Wikileaks' Tor file server to watch for new leaks to stay
ahead of them to prepare. they saw Podesta's emails leaked and launched a counter infowar
operation.
Brennan's CIA created the Guccifer 2.0 persona, with phony Russian metadata artifacts,
using digital forgery techniques seen in Vault7. Crowdstrike was already on the premises of
DNC since 2015, with their overly expensive security scanner watching the DNC network.
Crowdstrike had access to any DNC files they wanted. CIA, FBI and Crowdstrike colluded to
create a fake leak of DNC docs through their Guccifer 2.0 cutout. they didn't leak any docs
of high importance, which is why we never saw any smoking guns from DNC leaks or DCLeaks.
you have to remember, the whole point of this CIAFBINSA operation has nothing to do with
Hillary or Trump or influencing the election. the point was to fabricate criminal evidence to
use against Assange to finally arrest him and extradite him as well as smear Wikileaks ahead
of the looming leak of Podesta's emails.
if CIAFBINSA can frame Assange and Wikileaks as being criminal hackers and/or Russian
assets ahead of the Podesta leaks, then they can craft a narrative for the MSM to ignore or
distrust most of the Podesta emails. and that is exactly what happened, such as when Chris
Cuomo said on CNN that it was illegal for you to read Wikileaks, but not CNN, so you should
let CNN tell you what to think about Wikileaks instead of looking at evidence yourself.
this explains why Guccifer 2.0 was so sloppy leaving a trail of Twitter DMs to incriminate
himself and Assange along with him.
if this CIAFBINSA entrapment/frame operation ever leaks, it will guarantee the freedom of
Assange.
xxx 11 minutes ago
According to Wikipedia, "Guccifer" is Marcel Lazar Lehel, a Rumanian born in 1972, but
"Guccifer 2.0" is someone else entirely.
Is that so?
xxx 20 minutes ago (Edited)
The guy from Cyrptome always asserted Assange was some type of deep state puppet, that he
was connected somehow. This wouldn't be news to me and its probably why he was scared as
hell. The guy is as good as dead, like S. Hussein. Seth Rich was just a puppet that got
caught in the wrong game. He was expendable obviously too because well he had a big mouth, he
was expendable from the beginning. Somebody mapped this whole **** out, thats for sure.
xxx 28 minutes ago
I am sick and tired of these Deep State and CIA-linked operations trying to put a wrench
in the prosecution of people who were engaged in a coup d'etat.
xxx 29 minutes ago
********
xxx 33 minutes ago
At this point what difference does it make? We are all convinced since 2016. It is not
going to convince the TDS cases roaming the wilderness.
No arrests, no subpoenas, no warrants, no barging in at 3 am, no perp walks, no tv
glare...
Pres. Trump is playing a very risky game. Arrest now, or regret later. And you won't have
much time to regret.
The swamp is dark, smelly and deep,
And it has grudges to keep.
xxx 37 minutes ago
Meanwhile- Guccifer 1.0 is still?
- In prison?
- Released?
- 48 month sentence in 2016. Obv no good behavior.
Nice article. Brennan is the dolt he appears.
xxx 41 minutes ago
+1,000 on the investigative work and analyzing it.
Sadly, none of the guilty are in jail. Instead. Assange sits there rotting away.
xxx 44 minutes ago
Why would an alleged GRU officer - supposedly part of an operation to deflect Russian
culpability - suggest that Assange "may be connected with Russians?"
Because the AXIS powers of the CIA, Brit secret police and Israeli secret police pay for
the campaign to tie Assange to the Russians...
A lot of interest in this story about Psycho Joe Scarborough. So a young marathon runner
just happened to faint in his office, hit her head on his desk, & die? I would think
there is a lot more to this story than that? An affair? What about the so-called
investigator? Read story!
xxx 45 minutes ago
Why make it harder than it is? Guccifer II = Crowdstrike
xxx 51 minutes ago
Guccifer 2.0 was always John Brennan 1.0
xxx 58 minutes ago (Edited)
Was Guccifer II part of the Stefan Halper organization that lured Papadopoulos and
maliciously maligned others?
xxx 1 hour ago
"His name was Seth Rich." The unofficial motto of ZeroHedge...
xxx 1 hour ago
James Guccifer Clapper.
xxx 1 hour ago
Mossad. And their subsidiary CIA.
xxx 1 hour ago
Crowd Strike CEO'S admission under oath that they had no evidence the DNC was hacked by
the Russians should make the Russian Hoax predicate abundantly clear.
Justice for Seth Rich!
xxx 1 hour ago
Any influence Assange had on the election was so small that it wouldn't move the needle
either way. The real influence and election tampering in the US has always come from the
scores of lobbyists and their massive donations that fund the candidates election runs
coupled with the wildly inaccurate and agenda driven collusive effort by the MSM. Anyone
pointing fingers at the Russians is beyond blind to the unparalleled influence and power
these entities have on swaying American minds.
xxx 1 hour ago
ObamaGate.
xxx 1 hour ago (Edited)
Uugh ONCE AGAIN... 4chan already proved guccifer 2.0 was a larp, and the files were not
"hacked", they were leaked by Seth Rich. The metadata from the guccifer files is different
from the metadata that came from the seth rich files. The dumb fuckers thought they were
smart by modifying the author name of the files to make it look like it came from a russian
source. They were so ******* inept, they must have forgot (or not have known) to modify the
unique 16 digit hex key assigned to the author of the files when they were created..... The
ones that seth rich copied had the system administrators name (Warren Flood) as the author
and the 16 digit hex key from both file sources were the same - the one assigned to warren
flood.
Really sloppy larp!!!
xxx 1 hour ago
This link has all the detail to show Guccifer 2.0 was not Russia. I believe Guccifer 2.0
was created by the CIA to falsely pin blame on the Russians for info that Seth Rich gave to
WikiLeaks. Read for yourself: http://g-2.space/
xxx 1 hour ago
This is what people are. Now the species has more power than it can control and that it
knows what to do with.
What do you think the result will be?
As for these games of Secret - it's more game than anything truly significant. The
significant exists in the bunkers, with the mobile units, in the submarines. Et. al.
But this is a game in which some of the players die - or wish they were dead.
xxx 1 hour ago
And.....?
Public figures and political parties warrant public scrutiny. And didn't his expose in
their own words expose the democrats, the mass media, the bureaucracy to the corrupt frauds
that they are?
xxx 1 hour ago
Other than the fact that they didn't steal the emails (unless you believe whistleblowers
are thief's, one mans source is another mans thief, it's all about who's ox is being gored
and you love "leaks" don't you? As long as they work in your favor. Stop with the piety.
xxx 15 minutes ago
That's not the story at all. Did you just read this article?
The democrats were super duper corrupt (before all of this).
They fucked around to ice Bernie out of the primary.
A young staffer Seth Rich knew it and didn't like it. He made the decision to leak the
info to the most reputable org for leaks in the world Wikileaks.
IF the DNC had been playing fair, Seth Rich wouldn't have felt the need to leak.
So, the democrats did it to themselves.
And then they created Russiagate to cover it all up.
And murdered a young brave man ... as we know.
xxx 1 hour ago
Assange, another problem Trump failed to fix.
xxx 1 hour ago
Sounds like it came from the same source as the Trump dossier ... MI5.
While Flynn is a questionable figure with his Iran warmongering and the former tenure as a
Turkey lobbyist, it is important to understand that in Kislyak call he mainly played the role
of Israel lobbyist. This important fact was carefully swiped under the carpet by FBI
honchos.
Only the second and less important part of the call (the request to Russia to postpone the
reaction after the Obama expulsion of diplomats) was related to Russia. Not sure it was
necessary: Russia probably understood that this was a provocation and would wait for the dust
to settle in any case. Revenge is a dish that is better served cold. Later Russia used this
as a pretext to equalize the number of US diplomats in Russia with the number of Russian
diplomat in the USA which was a knockdown for any color revolution plans in this country:
people with the knowledge of the country and connections to its neoliberal fifth column were
sent packing.
But Russian neoliberal compradors were decimated earlier after EuroMaydan in Kiev, so this
was actually a service to the USA allowing to save the USA same money (as Trump
acknowledged)
Also strange how former chief of DIA fell victim of such a crude trap administered by a
second, if nor third rate person -- Strzok. Looks like he was already on the hook and, as
such, defenseless for his Turkey lobbing efforts. Which makes Comey-McCabe attempt to entrap
him look like a shooing fish in the tank.
Note to managerial class neoliberals (PMC). Your Russiagate stance is to be expected and
has nothing to do with virtue.
it was the urban and suburban PMC that gets its news from the establishment press --
the New York Times, Washington Post and NPR, that believed and supported the story.
"... With the entirety of Russigate finally collapsing under the enormous weight and stench of its own BS, the picture that is beginning
to emerge for me is one of an insider deep-state psy-op designed to cover for the crimes committed by the DNC, the Clinton Foundation
and the 2016 Hillary campaign; kill for the foreseeable future any progressive threat to the neo-liberal world order; and take down
a president that the bipartisan DC and corporate media elite fear and loathe. And why do they fear him? Because he is free to call them
out on certain aspects of their criminality and corruption, and has. ..."
"... Hubris, cynicism and a basic belief in the stupidity of the US public all seem to have played a part in all this, enabled by
a corporate media with a profit motive and a business model that depends on duping the masses. ..."
"... Anyone who still believes in democracy in the USA has his head in the sand (or someplace a lot smellier). ..."
"... The corruption in the USA is wide and deep and trump is NOT draining the swamp. ..."
"... A further point: the Mueller report insinuates that G2.0 had transferred the DNC emails to Wikileaks as of July 18th, and Wikileaks
then published them on July 22nd. This is absurd for two reasons: There is no way in hell that Wikileaks could have processed the entire
volume of those emails and attachments to insure their complete authenticity in 4 days. ..."
"... Indeed, when Crowdstrike's Shawn Henry had been chief of counterintelligence under Robert Mueller, he had tried to set Assange
up by sending Wikileaks fraudulent material; fortunately, Wikileaks was too careful to take the bait. ..."
Fascinating, important and ultimately deeply disturbing. This is why I come to Consortium News.
With the entirety of Russigate finally collapsing under the enormous weight and stench of its own BS, the picture that
is beginning to emerge for me is one of an insider deep-state psy-op designed to cover for the crimes committed by the DNC, the
Clinton Foundation and the 2016 Hillary campaign; kill for the foreseeable future any progressive threat to the neo-liberal world
order; and take down a president that the bipartisan DC and corporate media elite fear and loathe. And why do they fear him? Because
he is free to call them out on certain aspects of their criminality and corruption, and has.
Hubris, cynicism and a basic belief in the stupidity of the US public all seem to have played a part in all this, enabled
by a corporate media with a profit motive and a business model that depends on duping the masses.
Anonymous , May 22, 2020 at 12:01
These convos alone look like a script kiddie on IRC doing their low functioning version of sock puppetry. Didn't know anyone
at all fell for that
Ash , May 22, 2020 at 17:21
Because smooth liars in expensive suits told them it was true in their authoritative TV voices? Sadly they don't even really
need to try hard anymore, as people will evidently believe anything they're told.
Bob Herrschaft , May 22, 2020 at 12:00
The article goes a long way toward congealing evidence that Guccifer 2.0 was a shill meant to implicate Wikileaks in a Russian
hack. The insinuation about Assange's Russian connection was over the top if Guccifer 2.0 was supposed to be a GRU agent and the
mention of Seth Rich only contradicts his claims.
OlyaPola , May 22, 2020 at 10:40
Spectacles are popular.Although less popular, the framing and derivations of plausible belief are of more significance; hence
the cloak of plausible denial over under-garments of plausible belief, in facilitation of revolutions of immersion in spectacles
facilitating spectacles' popularity.
Some promoters of spectacles believe that the benefits of spectacles accrue solely to themselves, and when expectations appear
to vary from outcomes, they resort to one-trick-ponyness illuminated by peering in the mirror.
Skip Scott , May 22, 2020 at 08:35
This is a great article. I think the most obvious conclusion is that Guccifer 2.0 was a creation to smear wikileaks and distract
from the CONTENT of the DNC emails. The MSM spent the next 3 years obsessed by RussiaGate, and spent virtually no effort on the
DNC and Hillary's collusion in subverting the Sander's campaign, among other crimes.
I think back to how many of my friends were obsessed with Rachel Madcow during this period, and how she and the rest of the
MSM served the Empire with their propaganda campaign. Meanwhile, Julian is still in Belmarsh as the head of a "non-state hostile
intelligence service," the Hillary camp still runs the DNC and successfully sabotaged Bernie yet again (along with Tulsi), and
the public gets to choose between corporate sponsored warmonger from column A or B in 2020.
Anyone who still believes in democracy in the USA has his head in the sand (or someplace a lot smellier).
Guy , May 22, 2020 at 12:19
Totally agree .The corruption in the USA is wide and deep and trump is NOT draining the swamp.
I take it the mentioned time zones are consistent with Langley.
treeinanotherlife , May 22, 2020 at 00:34
"Are there only HRC emails? Or some other docs? Are there any DNC docs?"
G2 is fishing to see if Wiki has DNC docs. Does not say "any DNC docs I sent you". And like most at time thought Assange's
"related to hillary" phrase likely (hopefully for some) meant Hillary's missing private server emails. For certain G2 is not an
FBI agent>s/he knows difference between HRC and DNC emails.
A further point: the Mueller report insinuates that G2.0 had transferred the DNC emails to Wikileaks as of July 18th, and Wikileaks
then published them on July 22nd. This is absurd for two reasons: There is no way in hell that Wikileaks could have processed
the entire volume of those emails and attachments to insure their complete authenticity in 4 days.
Indeed, it is reasonable to expect that Wikileaks had been processing those emails since at least June 12, when Assange announced
their impending publication. (I recall waiting expectantly for a number of weeks as Wikileaks processed the Podesta emails.) Wikileaks
was well aware that, if a single one of the DNC emails they released had been proved to have been fraudulent, their reputation
would have been toast. Indeed, when Crowdstrike's Shawn Henry had been chief of counterintelligence under Robert Mueller,
he had tried to set Assange up by sending Wikileaks fraudulent material; fortunately, Wikileaks was too careful to take the bait.
Secondly, it is inconceivable that a journalist as careful as Julian would, on June 12th, have announced the impending publication
of documents he hadn't even seen yet. And of course there is no record of G2.0 having had any contact with Wikileaks prior to
that date.
It is a great pleasure to see "Adam Carter"'s work at long last appear in such a distinguished venue as Consortium News. It
does credit to them both.
Skip Edwards , May 22, 2020 at 12:33
How can we expect justice when there is no justification for what is being done by the US and British governments to Julian
Assange!
Have they nothing better to do than peddle their Russophobia?
Wouldn't it be more useful to allocate $ 250,000 to save someone's lives, @StateDept ? Instead
of "Exposing Russian Health Disinformation"
➡️ https://t.co/Hv3CydUgBX
The concept of managerial class liberals (PMC - abbrevation which probably means "project management class" ??? ) as the
core of Clinton wing of the Democrtic Party is an interesting one.
Notable quotes:
"... At the height of the Russiagate hysteria, as charges were flying that the 'attack' was worse than Pearl Harbor and 9/11 rolled into one, the class that had filled military recruiting stations following these earlier events was notably quiet. The faction that believed the charges, managerial class liberals (PMC), still substantially believes them despite none of the evidence put forward to support them holding up under examination. ..."
"... The Iraq War and the Great Recession created political divisions that are unlikely to be resolved without a redistribution of political and economic power downward. ..."
"... By the time the Great Recession struck in 2007, the U.S. war against Iraq was widely understood to be a strategic and military blunder, murderous almost beyond comprehension, and based on lies from American officials. ..."
"... Prior to this -- in the early 1990s, the New Democrats had made a strategic decision to tie their lot to the 'new economy' of Wall Street. Recruiting suburban Republicans into the Democratic Party was old news by Bill Clinton's second term. The PMC was made the ideological core of the Party. This helps explain the substantial overlap between the 'liberal hawks' who would some years later support George W. Bush's war against Iraq and the Russiagate truthers who were tied through class interests to its orthodoxies. ..."
"... While Democrat versus Republican or left versus right are most often used to distinguish Russiagate proponents and believers from skeptics, it was the urban and suburban PMC that gets its news from the establishment press -- the New York Times, Washington Post and NPR, that believed and supported the story. As it happens, the PMC and rich are the demographic that these news sources serve . Class connotes substantively different lived experience. The Russiagate true believers have benefitted from official connections and the skeptics and large majority of those disinterested in Russiagate haven't. ..."
"... As one who spent years using scientific methods to conduct empirical research, 1) it is as easy to lie with evidence as without it and 2) every source for the Russiagate charges that I followed tied back to the DNC, the CIA or its NGO affiliates like the Atlantic Council. These are political actors, not disinterested parties. The method of reporting is to state charges in the headline, and then to correctly state that official sources claim that the headline charges are true in the body of the article. This leaves the impression that evidence supports the headline charges with no actual evidence having been presented. Deference to authority isn't evidence. ..."
"... As I laid out in 2018 here , the role of the CIA in oil and gas geopolitics ties the motives for demonizing Russia to U.S. machinations in Ukraine and to weapons production and distribution as the business of U.S. based corporations. Further back, while the George W. Bush administration's war against Iraq was a strategic, military, moral and humanitarian disaster, oligarchs and corporate executives made personal fortunes from it. This 'model' of the modern state acting on behalf of business interests ties all the way back to the alleged pre-capitalism of mercantilism. ..."
"... The PMC is the service class of this state-capitalism, with corporate lawyers, tech workers, Wall Street traders and middle managers whose livelihoods and identities are tied to their class position through these jobs. ..."
"... This difference in lived experience explains why the PMC saw the Wall Street bailouts as both necessary and effective, while much of the rest of the country didn't. Wall Street is the functional core of the PMC economy through the process of financialization. ..."
"... The tendency to vote rises with family income. The well to do elected Donald Trump, as they do every president. As the machinations to make Joe Biden the Democrat's candidate in 2020 suggest, the poor can vote for their choice to represent the interests of the rich, but not their own ..."
"... Russiagate was and is defense of a class realm, of the power of the rich and the PMC to do as they please without the political chatter of the 'little people' or the populist pretensions of Donald Trump. ..."
"... While it seems evident now that Trump was never more than a minor inconvenience in the CIA's plans for murder, mayhem, and world domination, this wasn't evident at the outset of his tenure in the White House. John Brennan and James Clapper have demonstrated over long careers that the well-behaved fascism of corporate political control, for profit militarism, targeted and occasionally brutal repression of the 'little people' and democracy in name only, are fine with them. ..."
"... That none of the Russiagate charges turned out to have merit has had no determinable political impact to date. Its central protagonists knew they were telling lies (links above) all along. Not considered by the Russiagate acolytes is that those telling lies weren't lying to the marginally literate 'fascists' who should in elite theory have been the easiest to fool. Those people don't spend their days reading the New York Times and listening to NPR. They were lying to the educated elite. And lest this elite imagine that it was in on the lies -- they quite conspicuously believed every word of them. ..."
A thought experiment with a purpose is to ask: if a group of former Directors of the CIA, NSA and FBI put forward a story about
a malevolent foreign power acting against the U.S. without providing evidence that their story is true, who would believe them? While
this wasn't precisely the setup for Russiagate, all of the former Directors came forward as former Directors of intelligence agencies,
not as private citizens. And the information they presented was compiled as opposition research for a political campaign. It might
have (did) provided a basis for further inquiry, but it wasn't evidence as it was presented.
Oddly, ironically even, the part of the population that in earlier history would have taken former government officials at their
word and been ready to fight, kill, or die to right this alleged wrong, was
circumspect
in the case of Russiagate. At the height of the Russiagate hysteria, as charges were flying that the 'attack' was worse than Pearl
Harbor and 9/11 rolled into one, the class that had filled military recruiting stations following these earlier events was notably
quiet. The faction that believed the charges, managerial class liberals (PMC), still substantially believes them despite none of
the evidence put forward to support them holding up under examination.
This seeming role reversal of managerial class liberals being whipped into a nationalistic fervor while the rest of the country
looked away was a long time coming. Trump loathing explains why liberals want Donald Trump gone from office, but not the nationalistic
fervor or the studied disinterest of the rest of the country in the 'attack' by a foreign power. The receptivity, or lack thereof,
of these political factions (classes) to official proclamations is the result of lived history. The Iraq War and the Great Recession
created political divisions that are unlikely to be resolved without a redistribution of political and economic power downward.
Graph: As was much reported at the time, the Great Recession was orders of magnitude more economically destructive than prior
post-WWII recessions. Both the severity and persistence of unemployment were far outside of the post-War experience. At the time
of the 2016 election, long-term unemployment had still not returned to pre-recession levels. Its levels and impact were differentiated
by class, with employment amongst the PMC, composed largely of liberal Democrats, quickly returning to pre-recession levels. while
working class employment permanently disappeared or was turned into gig jobs. Source: St. Louis Federal Reserve.
Up through the U.S. war against Iraq, working class men joined the military and fought American wars while the rich and professional
classes got educational deferments or a doctor's note claiming one or another exemption-worthy malady to do the hard work of 'changing
the system from within.' Even with the class-blind farce of a 'volunteer' military, there came a time around 2006 when the intersection
of official lies and body bags accumulated to the point where a righteous rebellion against official power took hold amongst the
'lesser' classes. Barack Obama won election in 2008 based in part on his carefully worded rejection of wars of choice.
By the time the Great Recession struck in 2007, the U.S. war against Iraq was widely understood to be a strategic and military
blunder, murderous almost beyond comprehension, and based on lies from American officials. And it was far from being resolved. For
structural reasons including three-plus decades of planned deindustrialization, the systematic weakening of labor's power and the
social safety net, and the partitioning of the economy into financialized and not financialized sectors, the bailouts of Wall Street
produced different outcomes by class, with the PMC seeing its fortunes quickly restored while the working class was left to languish.
Prior to this -- in the early 1990s, the New Democrats had made a strategic decision to tie their lot to the 'new economy' of
Wall Street. Recruiting suburban Republicans into the Democratic Party was old news by Bill Clinton's second term. The PMC was made
the ideological core of the Party. This helps explain the substantial overlap between the 'liberal hawks' who would some years later
support George W. Bush's war against Iraq and the Russiagate truthers who were tied through class interests to its orthodoxies.
To tie this together, the Americans who died, were permanently disabled or who lost family members and friends in the U.S. war
against Iraq, also found themselves on the wrong side of the class war that began in the 1980s with deindustrialization. By the time
of the Great Recession, working class labor was forced to contend with long-term unemployment (graph above) or with the perpetual
insecurity of the gig economy. Contrariwise, those whose class position meant that they had 'better things to do' than to volunteer
to serve in Iraq had their fortunes quickly restored in the Great Recession through government bailouts.
While Democrat versus Republican or left versus right are most often used to distinguish Russiagate proponents and believers from
skeptics, it was the urban and suburban PMC that gets its news from the establishment press -- the New York Times, Washington Post
and NPR, that believed and supported the story. As it happens, the PMC and rich are the demographic that
these news
sources serve . Class connotes substantively different lived experience. The Russiagate true believers have benefitted from official
connections and the skeptics and large majority of those disinterested in Russiagate haven't.
Referred to, but not yet addressed, is the complete failure of the Russiagate evidence to match the DNC / establishment press
/ national security state storylines. From
collusion between the Russian government and Donald Trump to
emails leaked to, and then published by, Wikileaks to the Russian
troll farm and its ties to the GRU (Russian intelligence), none of these theories have been supported by the evidence offered.
And most of the political actors who spent years promoting them knew
they weren't true before Donald Trump even took office.
As one who spent years using scientific methods to conduct empirical research, 1) it is as easy to lie with evidence as without
it and 2) every source for the Russiagate charges that I followed tied back to the DNC, the CIA or its NGO affiliates like the Atlantic
Council. These are political actors, not disinterested parties. The method of reporting is to state charges in the headline, and
then to correctly state that official sources claim that the headline charges are true in the body of the article. This leaves the
impression that evidence supports the headline charges with no actual evidence having been presented. Deference to authority isn't
evidence.
This kind of journalism isn't just poor reporting. It is either naively trusting of official sources or it is intended to deceive.
Given how little follow-up has been done on the serial failures of the evidence, the most probable answer is that it is straight-up
propaganda. But the conception of propaganda that the facts support requires something like a unified state interest, as well as
an explanation of how and why the establishment press serves as a permanent conduit for official disinformation. Given that an elected
President was the target of the Russiagate campaign, the unified state interest theory doesn't work.
More broadly, the neoliberal project seems to have been modeled on the Marxist / Leninist conception of the state as existing
to promote the interests of prominent capitalists. Beginning around the time of Bill Clinton's election to the presidency, the privatization
of government services led to the creation of a
public-private amalgam
composed of PMC workers who perform state functions like domestic spying for the CIA and the NSA. Russiagate certainly appears from
its motives, sources, 'facts' and constituency, to have been carried out by functionaries in this public-private amalgam who saw
it as their right to reverse the outcome of the 2016 election.
As I laid out in 2018 here , the
role of the CIA in oil and gas geopolitics ties the motives for demonizing Russia to U.S. machinations in Ukraine and to weapons
production and distribution as the business of U.S. based corporations. Further back, while the George W. Bush administration's war
against Iraq was a strategic, military, moral and humanitarian disaster, oligarchs and corporate executives
made personal fortunes from it. This 'model'
of the modern state acting on behalf of business interests ties all the way back to the alleged
pre-capitalism of
mercantilism.
The PMC is the service class of this state-capitalism, with corporate lawyers, tech workers, Wall Street traders and middle managers
whose livelihoods and identities are tied to their class position through these jobs. Through the social partitions of class, they
are free to have self-flattering politics that have no bearing on how their lives are lived. Identity politics like 'ending racism'
have no bearing on who their co-workers are, who their neighbors are or who their children attend school with. Class determines these.
This largely explains why beliefs, rather than acts, are the currency of this politics. Class is invisible for those who never encounter,
or more precisely see, the economic and social consequences of capitalism on different classes.
This difference in lived experience explains why the PMC saw the Wall Street bailouts as both necessary and effective, while much
of the rest of the country didn't. Wall Street is the functional core of the PMC economy through the process of financialization.
That the vast majority of the country works and lives far from this functional core makes it the center of the PMC economy, not of
the broader economy. And the bailouts 'worked' in the sense that they quickly restored PMC jobs and bonuses. That they topped off
four decades of declining fortunes for working class workers (graph above) was hidden behind economic aggregates.
The endless reading of the political tea leaves over Donald Trump's electoral victory, over whether it was a dispossessed working
class or Republican plutocrats that brought him to victory, is the analytical equivalent of the debate over the economic impact of
the bailouts. Rich people vote, poor people don't (graph below). Electoral politics is a struggle that takes place amongst the rich
and the PMC. The visceral disdain the PMC has shown for the 'little people' throughout Russiagate is the product of four decades
of class warfare launched from above, not the start of it.
Graph: The tendency to vote rises with family income. The well to do elected Donald Trump, as they do every president. As the
machinations to make Joe Biden the Democrat's candidate in 2020 suggest, the poor can vote for their choice to represent the interests
of the rich, but not their own. This gives credence to Thomas Ferguson's 'investment theory' of politics. The rich vote to protect
their investment in political outcomes. Source: econofact.org.
Russiagate was and is defense of a class realm, of the power of the rich and the PMC to do as they please without the political
chatter of the 'little people' or the populist pretensions of Donald Trump.
While it seems evident now that Trump was never more
than a minor inconvenience in the CIA's plans for murder, mayhem, and world domination, this wasn't evident at the outset of his
tenure in the White House. John Brennan and James Clapper have demonstrated over long careers that the well-behaved fascism of corporate
political control, for profit militarism, targeted and occasionally brutal repression of the 'little people' and democracy in name
only, are fine with them.
What they and the PMC do object to is any notion of democracy that doesn't leave them in control of everything that it allegedly
exists to determine. If elected leaders believe they have a legitimate reason for taking military action, why do they resort to using
political and psychological coercion (like Russiagate) rather than taking their case to the people? If other, much poorer, countries
can run free and fair elections, why can't the U.S.? And why are corporate representatives allowed to craft public policies when
their interests diverge from the public's?
That none of the Russiagate charges turned out to have merit has had no determinable political impact to date. Its central protagonists
knew they were telling lies (links above) all along. Not considered by the Russiagate acolytes is that those telling lies weren't
lying to the marginally literate 'fascists' who should in elite theory have been the easiest to fool. Those people don't spend their
days reading the New York Times and listening to NPR. They were lying to the educated elite. And lest this elite imagine that it
was in on the lies -- they quite conspicuously believed every word of them.
That Brennan, Clapper and company are everything that liberals claim to hate about Donald Trump -- tacky talk show hosts who spout
whatever bullshit comes to mind if they think it will close the deal, suggests that Trump himself would be a #Resistance hero if
he had run as a Democrat. Otherwise, bright lights on the left can't seem to get past the notion that the establishment press
always reports bullshit when doing so is politically convenient. Reporting what power says rather than what it does is to be
a mouthpiece for power. That is what the establishment press does, and that is why it is considered the 'legitimate' source.
As befits this moment in history, there are no generally applicable lessons to be drawn from Russiagate. Its central protagonists
have already moved on to the 'restoring integrity to the White House' grift. By making the election a choice between getting ass
cancer or shingles, Biden or Trump -- you decide which is which, the nation has reached a zenith of sorts.
This type of moment produced
punk rock in an earlier age. Again, as befits the age, we now have the moment without the punk rock. As the existential philosophers
had it, despair is our friend. At least that's what Putin tells me.
"... Enter the Buk system, with the 9K37 SA-11 missile. It's got the range, it's got the altitude, the Russians have it in active service. Oooo problem. It's got the range, but only if it was fired from inside Ukraine. ..."
"... Anyway, back to the Buk system. And not a moment before time, either – I just re-read that sanctimonious stab above, again; " having armed the militants without due thought as to the consequences " What, exactly, is the ridiculous nature of the accusation being presented here? That the Russians gave an anti-aircraft system to the 'militants' without considering they might use it to shoot down an aircraft? How did they not see that coming? The Ukrainian Army shot down a civilian airliner in October of 2001 , and lied about it for as long as it could – interestingly, it took place during joint Ukrainian-Russian air defense exercises on the Crimean peninsula, and Russia tried hard to avoid assigning blame to Ukraine, while at least one Israeli television station claimed the Russians had shot down their own aircraft. This disaster and subsequent lying did not prevent the USA from giving the Javelin missile to Ukraine – did it not occur to them that they might use it to shoot tanks? No due thought to the consequences, obviously. ..."
"... The Buk air-defense system normally consists of at least 4 TELAR launchers , each with 4 missiles on the launch rails, a self-propelled acquisition radar designated by NATO nomenclature as Snow Drift (the radar on the nose of the TELAR unit itself is designated Fire Dome), and a self-propelled command post, for a minimum of 6 vehicles. Also usually part of the system is a mobile crane, to reload the launchers. If you were going to supply an air-defense system to militant rebels, why wouldn't you give them the whole system? In a pinch, you might be able to get away without the command post vehicle, although it is the station that collates all the input from the sensors and makes the decision to assign targets for acquisition, tracking and engagement. If you didn't give them the crane vehicle, and perhaps a logistics truck with some reloads, they would be limited to the missiles that came already mounted – once those were fired, they'd have to abandon the system, because they couldn't reload it. Seems a little wasteful, don't you think? ..."
"... I'm going a little further with my inexpert opinion, to say that the Buk system was selected as the 'murder weapon', because it provides a limited autonomous capability. To be clear, the Fire Dome radar on the nose of the TELAR does have a limited search capability, and once the radar is locked on to a target, the TELAR vehicle is completely autonomous. The purpose of the surveillance radar is to detect the target from far beyond the Fire Dome's range, assign it to a TELAR and thereby direct it to the elevation and bearing of the target so that the TELAR's radar knows exactly where to look, and continue to update its position until the TELAR to which it was assigned has locked on to the target. ..."
"... The Fire Dome radar mounted on the TELAR can search a 120-degree sector in 4 seconds, at an elevation of 6 to 7 degrees. Its search function is maximized for defense against ground attack aircraft, and a single launcher is not looking at 240 degrees of potential air threat axis during each sweep. It is not looking high enough to see an airliner at 30,000 ft+. More importantly for a system which was not designed to shoot down helpless airliners, it leaves two-thirds of a circle unobserved all the time it is searching for a target. And the Russians provided this to the 'militants' for air defense? They should be shot. ..."
"... There is no telling what kind of ordnance might be found in the wreckage itself, as the Ukrainian Army continued to shell the site for days after the crash; doubtless various artillery shells could be found at the crash site, as well, but it would be quite a leap of faith to suggest a Boeing 777 was shot down by artillery. What you would not find is pieces of the SAM that shot it down. ..."
"... Nor is that by any means all. The Dutch investigation which concluded with the preliminary report implied that nothing of any investigative value was found on the Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) or the Flight Data Recorder (FDR). Nothing to indicate what might have happened to the aircraft – just that it was flying along, and suddenly it wasn't. How likely is that? No transcript was provided, and I guess that would be expected if there was no information at all. Funny how often that happens with Malaysian airliners; they really need to look at their quality control. Oh; except they don't build the aircraft. Boeing does. I could see there not being any information after the plane began to break up, because both the CVR and the FDR are in the tail , and that broke off before the fuselage hit. But the microphones are in the ceiling of the cockpit and in the microphone and earpiece of the pilots' headsets, which they wear at all times while in flight. The last audio claimed to have been recorded was a course alteration sent by Ukrainian ATC. ..."
"... According to the Malaysian government, there was an early plan by NATO for a military operation involving some 9000 troops to 'secure the crash site', which was forestalled by a covert Malaysian operation which recovered the 'black boxes' and blocked the plan. I have to say that given the many, many other unorthodox and bizarre happenings in the conduct of what was supposed to be a transparent and impartial international investigation, it's getting so nothing much is unbelievable. The Malaysian Prime Minister went on record as believing that the western powers had already concluded that Russia was responsible, and were mostly just going through the motions of investigating. ..."
"... The telephone recordings presented by the SBU as demonstrating Russian culpability were analyzed by OG IT Forensic Services, a Malaysian firm specializing in forensic analysis of audio, video and digital materials for court proceedings, which concluded the recordings were cut, edited and fabricated . Yet they are relied upon as important evidence of guilt by the Dutch and the JIT. ..."
>Uncle Volodya says, "We become slaves the moment we hand the keys to the definition of reality entirely over to someone else,
whether it is a business, an economic theory, a political party, the White House, Newsworld or CNN."
"The receptivity of the masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous.
In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans
until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan."
– Adolf Hitler
We're going to do something just a bit different today; the event I want to talk about is current – in the future, actually –
but the reference which is the subject of the discussion is almost a year old. and the event it discusses is coming up to its sixth
anniversary. The past event was the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH-17 over Ukraine, the future event is the trial in
absentia of persons accused by the west of having perpetrated that disaster, and the reference is this piece, by Mark Galeotti,
for the Moscow Times:
"Russia's Roadmap
Out of the MH17 Crisis" .
You all know Mr. Galeotti, I'm sure. Here's his bio, for Amazon:
"Professor Mark Galeotti is a senior researcher at UMV, the Institute of International Relations Prague, and coordinator of
its Centre for European Security. Formerly, he was Professor of Global Affairs at New York University and head of History at Keele
University. Educated at Cambridge University and the LSE, he is a specialist in modern Russian politics and security and transnational
organized crime. And he writes other things for fun, too "
Yes, yes, he certainly does, as you will see. But this bio is extremely modest, albeit he most likely wrote it himself. Mr. Galeotti
also authored an excellent blog, In Moscow's Shadows , which was once a go-to reference for crime and legal issues in Russia,
a subject in which he seems very well-informed. The blog is still active, although he seems mostly to use it now to advertise podcasts
and sell books. That's understandable – it's evident from the blur of titles appended to his name that he's a very busy man. Always
has been, really; either as a student or an educator. He also speaks with confidence on the details of military affairs and equipment
despite never having been in the military or studied engineering; his education has pretty much all been in history, law or political
science.
I know what you will say – many of the greatest reference works on pivotal battles, overall military campaigns and affairs were
written by those who had no personal military experience themselves. Mr. Galeotti studied under Dominic Lieven, whose
"Russia Against Napoleon"
was perhaps the greatest work of military history, rich with detail and insight, that I have ever read. It won him the Wolfson
prize for History for 2010, a well-deserved honour. Yet so far as I could make out, Mr. Lieven never served a day in uniform, and
if you handed him an AK-47 and said "Here; field-strip this", your likely response would be a blank look. He most certainly was not
a witness to the subject military campaign. No; his epic work on Napoleon's invasion of Russia was informed by research, reading
the accounts of others who were there at the time, poring over reams of old documents and matching references to get the best picture
we have been afforded to date of Napoleon's ignominious defeat through a combination of imperial overreach, a poor grasp of logistics
and, most of all, resistance by an adversary who refused to be drawn into playing to Napoleon's strength – the decisive, crushing
battle in which the enemy could not retreat, and in which Napoleon would commit all the reserves and crush his enemy to dust.
So it is perfectly possible for an inquisitive mind with no military experience to put together an excellent reference on military
happenings which already took place, even if the owner of that mind was not present for the actual event. Given human nature and
the capabilities afforded by modern military equipment, it is even possible to forecast future military events with a fair degree
of accuracy, going merely by political ambitions and enabling factors, without any personal military experience. After all, the decision-makers
who give the orders that send their military forces into battle are often not military men themselves.
Returning for a moment to Mr. Galeotti, it is quite believable that an author with no military background could compose such works
as "Armies of the Russian-Ukrainian War" , although there is no serious evidence that Russia is a part of such a conflict
in any real military strength. You could write such a book entirely from media references and documentation, which in this case would
come almost entirely from the side which claims it is under constant attack by the other – Ukraine. Likewise "Kulikovo 1380;
the Battle that Made Russia" . None of us were around in 1380, so we all have to go by historical references, and whoever collects
them all into a book first is likely to be regarded as an expert.
No, it's more when we get into how stuff works that I have an issue with it. Like " Spetsnaz: Russia's Special Forces
". Or " The Modern Russian Army ". I'm kind of skeptical about how someone could claim to know the actual internal workings
of either organization simply from reading about them in popular references, considering that more than half the material on Russia
written in English in western references is rubbish heavily influenced by politics and policy. We would not have to look very far
to find examples in which ridiculous overconfidence by one side that it had the other side's number resulted in a horrible surprise.
In fact, we would not have to look very far to find an example of this particular author confidently averring to know something inside-out,
only to find that version
of reality could not be sustained . And I would no more turn to a Senior Non-Resident Fellow at the Institute of International
Relations Prague for expert analysis of the "Combat Vehicles of Russia's Special Forces" than I would ask a house painter
to cut my hair. Unless I see some recollections of a college-age Galeotti tinkering with drivetrains and differentials until the
sun went down from a pure love of mechanics, I am going to go ahead and assume that he knows what the vast majority of us knows about
military vehicles – he could pick one out of a lineup which included a melon, a goat and an Armored Personnel Carrier, and if it
had a flat tire he could probably fix it given time and the essential equipment.
Just before we move on, the future event: the MH-17 'trial' has been
postponed
until June 8th , to give defense attorneys more time to prepare after the amazingly fortuitous capture of a 'key witness' in
Eastern Ukraine. I'm not going to elaborate here on what a kicking-the-can-down-the-road crock this is; we'll pick that up later.
The whole MH-17 'investigation' has been such a ridiculous exercise in funneling the pursuit to a single inescapable conclusion –
that Russia shot it down – irrespective of how many points have to be bent to fit the curve that no matter how it comes out, it will
stand as perhaps the greatest example of absurd western self-justification ever recorded.
There are a couple of ways of solving a mystery crime. One is to collect evidence, and follow where it takes you. Another is to
decide who you want to have been responsible, and then construct a sequence of events in which they might have done it. To do that,
especially in this case, we will have to throw out a few assumptions, such as all that stuff about means, motive and opportunity.
In the absence of a believable scenario, that is. Let's look at what we have, and what we need, and see how we get from there to
here.
First, we need for Ukraine not to have been responsible. That's going to be awkward, because it looks as if the aircraft was shot
down by a missile, but the missile had to have come from inside Ukraine, because the aircraft was too far from the nearest point
in Russia at the moment it was stricken for the missile to have come from there. But we need Russia to have been responsible, and
not Ukraine. Therefore we need a sequence of events in which a Russian missile launcher capable of shooting down an airliner at cruising
altitude was inside Ukraine, in a position from which it could have taken the shot.
You know what? We are going to have to look at means, motive and opportunity, just for a second. My purpose in doing
so is to illustrate just how improbable the western narrative is, starting from square one. The coup in Ukraine – and anyone who
believes it was a 'grass-roots revolution' might as well stop reading right here, because we are going to just get further apart
in our impressions of events – followed by the triumphant promise from the revolutionaries to repeal Yanukovych's language laws and
make Ukrainian the law of the land touched off the return of Crimea to its ancestral home in the Russian Federation. Crimea was about
65% ethnic Russian by population at the time, and only about 15% Ukrainian, and Crimea had made several attempts to break free of
Ukraine before that yet for some reason the west refused steadfastly to accept the results of a referendum which voted in favour
of Crimea becoming a part of the Russian Federation, as if it were more believable that a huge ethnic-Russian majority preferred
to learn Ukrainian and be governed by Kiev.
Be that as it may, Washington reacted very angrily; much more so than Europe, considering the distance between the United States
and Ukraine versus its proximity to Europe. Perhaps that is owed simply to Washington's assumption that every corner of the world
looks to it for leadership, and that it must have a position ready on any given situation, regardless how distant. So Washington
insisted there must be sanctions against Russia, for stealing Crimea from its rightful owner, Ukraine. We're not really going to
get into struggles for freedom and the right to self-determination right now, except to state that the USA considers nothing more
important in some cases, while in others it is completely irrelevant. Washington demanded sanctions but
much of Europe was reluctant .
"It is notoriously difficult to secure EU agreement on sanctions anywhere because they require unanimity from the 28 member
states. There were wide differences over the numbers of Russians and Crimeans to be punished, with countries such as Greece, Cyprus,
Bulgaria and Spain reluctant to penalise Moscow for fear of closing down channels of dialogue. The 21 named were on an original list
that ran to about 120 people Expanding the numbers on the sanctions list is almost certain to be discussed at the EU summit on Thursday
and Friday. Some EU states are torn about taking punitive measures against Russia for fear of undoing years of patient attempts to
establish closer ties with Moscow as well as increase trade. The EU has already suspended talks with Russia on an economic pact and
a visa agreement The German foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, said any measure must leave "ways and possibilities open to
prevent a further escalation that could lead to the division of Europe" .
The original list of those to be sanctioned was 120 people. The haggling reduced that to 21. Only 7 of those were Russians. Putin
was not included. That was pretty plainly not the United Front That Speaks With One Voice that Washington had envisioned, and the
notion that Europe would buy into sanctions that might really do some damage to Russia, albeit there would be economic costs to Europe
as well, was a dim prospect.
Gosh – you know what we need? An atrocity which can be quickly tied to Russia, and which will so appall the EU member states that
resistance to far-reaching sanctions will collapse. That's called 'motive'. It's just not a motive for Russia. Having just gone far
out on a limb and taken back Crimea, to the obvious and vocal fury of the United States, it is a bit of a stretch that Russia was
looking for what else it could do that would stir up the world against it.
Means, now. That presents its own dilemma. Because Russia could have shot down an airliner from its own territory. Just not with
the weapon chosen. The S-400 could have done it; it has the range, easily. But if you were setting up a scenario in which something
happened that you wanted to blame on Russia, but they didn't really do it, you must have the weapon to do it yourself, or access
to it. By any reasonable construct, Ukraine must be a suspect as well – there was a hot war going on in Ukraine, Ukraine controlled
both the airspace and the aircraft that was lost, and the aircraft was lost over Ukrainian territory. But Ukraine doesn't have the
S-400. You could use a variety of western systems, but it would quickly be established that the plane was shot down with a weapon
that Russia does not have. In order for the narrative to be believable, Russia must have the weapon – but if it wasn't Russia, then
whoever did it must have the weapon, too.
Enter the Buk system, with the 9K37 SA-11 missile. It's got the range, it's got the altitude, the Russians have it in active service.
Oooo problem. It's got the range, but only if it was fired from inside Ukraine.
Which brings us back to Mr. Galeotti, an expert in Russian combat systems; enough of an expert to write books on them, anyway.
And he plainly believes it was an SA-11 missile fired from a single Buk TELAR (Transporter/Erector/Launcher and Radar) which brought
down the Boeing; he says that's what the evidence demonstrates, although by this time (2019) most of the world has backed away from
saying Putin showed up with no shirt on to close the firing switch personally (cue the instant British-press screaming headlines
before the dust had even settled, "PUTIN'S MISSILE!!!" "PUTIN KILLED MY SON!!!"). Now the story is that the disgraceful deed was
done by 'Ukrainian anti-government militants', using a weapon supplied by Russia.
"In this context, a full reversal of policy seems near-enough impossible. The evidence suggests that while the fateful missile
was fired by Ukrainian anti-government militants, it was supplied by the Russian 53rd Air Defense Brigade under orders from Moscow
and in a process managed by Russian military intelligence.
To admit this would not only be to acknowledge a share in the unlawful killing of 298 innocents, but also an unpicking of
the whole Kremlin narrative over the Donbass. It would mean admitting to having been an active participant in this bloody compound
of civil war and foreign intervention, to having armed the militants without due thought as to the consequences, and to having lied
to the world and the Russian people for half a decade."
We don't really have the scope in this piece to broaden the discussion to Russia's probable actual involvement. Suffice it to
say that despite non-stop allegations by Poroshenko throughout his presidency of entire battalions of active-service Russian Army
soldiers inside Ukraine, zero evidence has ever been provided of any such presence, although there have been
some clumsy attempts to fabricate
it . To argue that the Russian Army has been trying to overrun Ukraine for six years now, but has been unable to do so because
of the combat prowess of the Ukrainian Army is to imply a belief in leprechauns. This is only my own inexpert opinion, but it seems
likely to me the complete extent of Russia's involvement, militarily, is the minimum which prevents Eastern Ukraine from being overrun
by the Ukrainian military, and including the rebel areas' own far-from-inconsequential military forces. I'm always ready to entertain
competing theories, though; be sure to bring your evidence. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian Constitution prohibits using the country's military
forces against its own citizens. The logic of 'Have cake, and eat it" cannot apply here – either the Ukrainian state is in direct
and obvious violation of its own constitution or the people of the breakaway regions are not Ukrainian citizens.
Anyway, back to the Buk system. And not a moment before time, either – I just re-read that
sanctimonious stab above, again; " having armed the militants without due thought as to the consequences " What, exactly,
is the ridiculous nature of the accusation being presented here? That the Russians gave an anti-aircraft system to the 'militants'
without considering they might use it to shoot down an aircraft? How did they not see that coming? The Ukrainian Army
shot down a civilian airliner in October of 2001
, and lied about it for as long as it could – interestingly, it took place during joint Ukrainian-Russian air defense exercises
on the Crimean peninsula, and Russia tried hard to avoid assigning blame to Ukraine, while at least one Israeli television station
claimed the Russians had shot down their own aircraft. This disaster and subsequent lying did not prevent the USA from giving the
Javelin missile to Ukraine – did it not occur to them that they might use it to shoot tanks? No due thought to the consequences,
obviously.
The Buk air-defense system normally consists of at least
4 TELAR launchers , each with 4 missiles on the launch rails, a self-propelled acquisition radar designated by NATO nomenclature
as Snow Drift (the radar on the nose of the TELAR unit itself is designated Fire Dome), and a self-propelled command post, for a
minimum of 6 vehicles. Also usually part of the system is a mobile crane, to reload the launchers. If you were going to supply an
air-defense system to militant rebels, why wouldn't you give them the whole system? In a pinch, you might be able to get away without
the command post vehicle, although it is the station that collates all the input from the sensors and makes the decision to assign
targets for acquisition, tracking and engagement. If you didn't give them the crane vehicle, and perhaps a logistics truck with some
reloads, they would be limited to the missiles that came already mounted – once those were fired, they'd have to abandon the system,
because they couldn't reload it. Seems a little wasteful, don't you think?
What about the acquisition radar? Because acquiring targets is all about scanning capability and situational awareness. We're
going to assume for a moment that you don't use an air defense system exclusively to hunt for airliners, but that you want to defend
yourself against ground-attack aircraft like the Sukhoi SU-25. Because, when you think about it, who is more likely to be trying
to kill you ? A Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777, or an SU-25? The latter is not quite as fast as an airliner at its cruising
height of 30,000 ft+, but it is very agile and will be nearly down in the treetops if it is attacking you. You need to be able to
search all around, all the time.
That's where the acquisition radar comes in. A centimetric waveband search radar, the
Snow Drift (called the 9S18M1 by
its designer) has 360-degree coverage and from 0 to 40 degrees of height in a 6-second sweep in anti-aircraft mode, with a 160 km
detection range, obviously dependent on target altitude. An airliner, being a large target not attempting to evade detection, and
at a high altitude, would quite possibly be detected at the maximum range of which the system is capable. But then the operators
would certainly know it was an airliner. And the narrative says whoever shot it down probably did so by accident.
Maybe if it was his first day on the job. Let's talk for a minute about air-defense deconfliction. It would be nice if your Command
parked you somewhere that there was nothing around you but enemies. Well, not as nice as parking you across the street from a pulled-pork
barbecue joint with strippers and cold beer, but from a defense standpoint, it'd be nice to know that anything you detected, you
could shoot. Know something? It's never like that. Your own aircraft are flying around as if they didn't even know you are dangerous,
and as everyone now knows, civilian airliners continue their transport enterprises irrespective of war except in rare instances in
which high-flying aircraft have been shot down by long-range missiles. That rarely happens. Why? Because an aircraft flying a steady
course, at 30,000 ft+ and not descending, is no threat to you on the ground. From that altitude it can't even see you in the ground
clutter, and it'd be quite a bombardier that could hit a target the size of a two-car garage with a bomb dropped from 30,000 ft while
flying at 400 knots.
And unless you are an idiot, you know it is an airliner. When you are deployed into the field in an air-defense role, you know
where the commercial airlanes are that are going to be active. You know what a commercial-aviation profile looks like – aircraft
at 30,000 ft+ altitude, flying at ≥400 knots on a steady course, squawking Mode 3 and Charlie = airliner. Might as well take a moment
here to talk about
IFF ; Identification
Friend or Foe. This is a coded pulse signal transmitted by all commercial aircraft whenever they are in flight unless their equipment
is non-functional, and you are not allowed to take off with it in that state. Mode C provides the aircraft's altitude, taken automatically
from its barometric altimeter. All modern air search radars have IFF capability, and a dashed line just below the raw video of the
air track can be interrogated with a light-pen to provide the readout. You already know how high the plane is if you have a solid
radar track, but Mode C provides a confirmation.
Military aircraft have IFF transponders, too; in fact, most of the modes are reserved for military use. But military aircraft
often turn off their IFF equipment, because it provides a giveaway who and where they are. In Ukraine, which uses mostly Soviet military
aircraft, both sides are capable of reading each other's IFF, so all the more reason not to transmit. Foreign nations typically cannot
read each other's IFF except for the modes which are for both military and civilian use, other than those nations who are allies.
Anyway, the point I wanted to make is that the Snow Drift acquisition radar has IFF, and if it detected an airliner-like target at
160 km., the operator would have that much more time to interrogate it and determine it was an airliner. Just to reiterate, the western
narrative holds that the destruction of the airliner was a mistake.
I'm going a little further with my inexpert opinion, to say that the Buk system was selected as the 'murder weapon', because it
provides a limited autonomous capability. To be clear, the Fire Dome radar on the nose of the TELAR does have a limited search capability,
and once the radar is locked on to a target, the TELAR vehicle is completely autonomous. The purpose of the surveillance radar is
to detect the target from far beyond the Fire Dome's range, assign it to a TELAR and thereby direct it to the elevation and bearing
of the target so that the TELAR's radar knows exactly where to look, and continue to update its position until the TELAR to which
it was assigned has locked on to the target.
That autonomous capability is probably what made it attractive to those building the scenario; consider. A complete Buk system
of 6, maybe 7 vehicles could hardly get all the way inside Ukraine to the firing position without being noticed and perhaps recorded.
But perhaps a single TELAR could do it. The aircraft could be shot down by an SA-11 missile and blamed on Russia – Ukraine has access
to plenty of SA-11's. But it is a weapon in the Russian active-service inventory. Further, Galeotti's commitment to the allegation
that the single TELAR was provided by Russia's 53rd Air Defense Brigade tells us he supports the crackpot narrative offered by Bellingcat,
the loopy citizen-journalist website headed by failed financial clerk Eliot Higgins. Bellingcat claims the Buk TELAR was trucked
into Ukraine on the back of a flatbed, took the shot that slew MH-17, and was immediately withdrawn back to Russia.
Ummm .how was that an accident? The Russians gave the Ukrainian militants a single launcher with no crane or reload missiles,
so it was limited to a maximum of four shots. Its ability to defend itself from ground attack was almost nil, since the design purpose
of mounting a Fire Dome radar
on each TELAR is not to make the launcher units autonomous; it is to permit concurrent engagements by several launchers, all
coordinated by the acquisition radar and command post. Without a radar of its own on the launcher, the firing unit would have to
wait until each engagement was completed before it could switch to a new target, but with a fire-control guidance radar on each TELAR,
multiple targets can be assigned to multiple launchers, while the search radar limits itself to acquisition and target assignment.
The Fire Dome radar mounted on the TELAR can search a 120-degree sector in 4 seconds, at an elevation of 6 to 7 degrees. Its search
function is maximized for defense against ground attack aircraft, and a single launcher is not looking at 240 degrees of potential
air threat axis during each sweep. It is not looking high enough to see an airliner at 30,000 ft+. More importantly for a system
which was not designed to shoot down helpless airliners, it leaves two-thirds of a circle unobserved all the time it is searching
for a target. And the Russians provided this to the 'militants' for air defense? They should be shot.
A single TELAR with no reloads and no acquisition radar would have to be looking directly at the target when it was activated
in order to even see it; it takes 15 seconds for the launcher to swing into line and elevation even when that information is transmitted
to it from the acquisition radar. It takes 4 seconds for a scan to be completed when there is a whole two-thirds of a circle that
it is not even looking at, and you have to manually force it to search above 7 degrees because it is not designed to shoot down airliners.
All this time, the target is crossing the acquisition scope at 400 knots+. Fire Dome has integrated IFF, so if it did by some miracle
pick up an airliner in its search, the operator would know from transmitted IFF that he was looking at an airliner. A single TELAR
with no reload capability sent on an air-defense mission would have its ass ripped in half by ground-attack aircraft that it never
saw – if the autonomous capability is so good, why don't the Ukrainians use them as a single unit? Think of how much air-defense
coverage they could provide! Do you see the Ukrainian air-defense units employing the Buk that way? Never. Not once. Four TELARS,
acquisition radar vehicle, command vehicle, just the way the system was designed to operate.
Just because it has a limited capability to function in a given capacity should not suggest you would employ it that way. You
can use a hockey stick to turn off the bedroom light, and you won't even have to get out of bed. Would you do that? I hope not.
A one-third effective capacity in the air defense role together with the covert delivery and immediate withdrawal suggests that
the Russians provided the 'militants' with a single TELAR for the express purpose of shooting down a defenseless airliner. Except
nobody is saying that. It was a mistake. Well, except for Head of the Security Service of Ukraine Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, who claimed
"Terrorists and militants have planned a cynical terrorist attack on a civilian aircraft Aeroflot AFL-2074 Moscow-Larnaka that was
flying at that time above the territory of Ukraine." He further claimed that this was motivated by a desire to 'justify an invasion'.
I'm pretty sure if any western authority could prove anything even close to that, we would not have had to wait 6 years for a trial.
Which brings us to the covert delivery and extraction. As part of his personal investigation, Max van der Werff drove the route
Bellingcat claimed was the extraction route by which the single TELAR, on its flatbed, was returned to Russia. He verified that there
is a highway overpass on the route which is too low for a load that tall to pass underneath. When he pointed this out to Higgins,
he was told there is a bypass spur which goes around it, which would allow the flatbed to regain the road beyond without having gone
through the overpass. Max drew his attention to the concrete barriers which blocked that road at the top of the hill, and which locals
claimed had been in place long before the destruction of MH-17. And that was the end of that conversation. I cannot say enough about
the quality of Max's work and his diligent, patient dissection
of the evidence . His diagrams of the entry and egress routes as provided by Bellingcat illustrate how little sense they make.
It was imperative the guilty Russians get the fuck out of Dodge with the greatest possible dispatch so they drove 100 kilometers
out of their way? Don't even terrorist murderers have GPS now?
Similarly, the simpleminded flailing of the Ukrainian investigators suggests they do not even have much of a grasp of how Surface-To-Air
missiles work. In excited posts like this one , the
BBC discloses that an exhaust vent from the tail section of a 'Buk missile' (the missile is actually the SA-11, while Buk is the
entire system) was found in the wreckage of the crashed plane, while
this one
even shows terminally-stunned head prosecutor Fred Westerbeke standing next to what is allegedly part of the rocket body of an
SA-11, including legible inventory markings, also 'found at the crash scene'.
Do tell.
Let me review for you how an SA-11 missile shoots down an aircraft. Does it pierce it like a harpoon, blow up in a thunderous
explosion, and ride the doomed aircraft down to the crash site? It certainly does not. The missile blasts out of the launcher and
flies to the target via semiactive homing, which means it has an onboard seeker that updates the missile trajectory, while the radar
on the launcher also communicates with it and the missile and the target are brought together in intercept. When the proximity fuse
of the missile – this is the important part – senses that the missile's warhead is close to the target, the internal explosive detonates,
and a shower of prefragmented shrapnel pierces the area of the plane near where the missile detonated, usually the front, because
the missile is constantly adjusting to make sure it stays with the target until intercept.
MH-17 traveled on, mostly intact, for miles before it crashed into the ground; the crash site was some 13 miles from where the
plane was hit. The missile self-destructed miles away from the crash site, and the only parts of it which accompanied the plane to
its impact point were the shrapnel bits of the exploded warhead. The body of the missile, together with the exhaust vent, fell back
to the ground somewhere quite close to where the plane was hit, not where it fell. Once the missile's fuel is exhausted, either because
it ran out or because it was consumed in the explosion triggered by the proximity fuse, the missile parts do not fly around in formation,
seeking out the wreckage and coming gently to rest in it where they can later be found by investigators. I don't know how many times
I have to say this, because this is certainly not the first, but there would not be any missile parts in the wreckage of MH-17
because the missile would have blown up in front of the plane without ever touching it. The missile does not hit the plane.
The pieces of the warhead do. But reality has to take a back seat to making out an airtight case.
There is no telling what kind of ordnance might be found in the wreckage itself, as the Ukrainian Army
continued to shell the site
for days after the crash; doubtless various artillery shells could be found at the crash site, as well, but it would be quite
a leap of faith to suggest a Boeing 777 was shot down by artillery. What you would not find is pieces of the SAM that shot it down.
Several witnesses claimed to have seen an SU-25 near the plane before it exploded. They quite possibly did – the Ukrainian Air
Force was observed to be using civilian airliners as cover to allow them to get close to Eastern-Ukrainian villages which might be
protected by hand-held launchers known as MANPADS (for Man-Portable Air Defense System), reasoning the defenders would not shoot
if they were afraid they might hit a civil aircraft. Once they were close enough to the village or other target to make an attack
run, they would then return to the vicinity of the airliner for protection while withdrawing; the rebel side complained about this
illegal and immoral practice a month before the destruction of MH-17. But there is no evidence I am aware of linking the destruction
of MH-17 to an attack by aircraft.
It may no longer be possible to look at the shooting-down of the Malaysian Boeing objectively; the event has become a partisan
rush to judgment which was rendered immediately, after which an investigation began which plainly had as its goal proving the accusations
already made. Means and motive clearly favour the accusers rather than the accused, and opportunity is mostly irrelevant as a consideration.
Ukraine obviously had to be a suspect – the destruction of the aircraft occurred over Ukraine while Ukraine was in control of it
and the airspace in which it traveled. Yet Ukraine was allowed to lead the investigation, and to gather and safeguard evidence, while
the owner of the aircraft – Malaysia – was excluded until the investigation had been in progress for four months. Russia was not
allowed any part in it save to yield whatever evidence the investigators demanded, while all its theories were widely mocked. Demonstrations
set up by Almaz-Antey, the designers and builders of the SA-11, were unattended by any investigating nation – small wonder they do
not have Clue One how the missile works, and believe they are going to find big chunks of it in the wreckage, perhaps with Putin's
passport stuck to one of them. If any of these conditions prevailed in an investigation which favoured Russia, NATO would scream
as if it were being run over with spiked wheels – if the Boeing had been shot down over Russia, who thinks Russia would have been
heading the investigation, and custodian of the evidence?
Nor is that by any means all. The Dutch investigation which concluded with the preliminary report
implied that nothing of any investigative value was found on the Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) or the Flight Data Recorder (FDR).
Nothing to indicate what might have happened to the aircraft – just that it was flying along, and suddenly it wasn't. How likely
is that? No transcript was provided, and I guess that would be expected if there was no information at all. Funny how often that
happens with Malaysian airliners; they really need to look at their quality control. Oh; except they don't build the aircraft. Boeing
does. I could see there not being any information after the plane began to break up, because
both the CVR and the FDR are in the
tail , and that broke off before the fuselage hit. But the microphones are in the ceiling of the cockpit and in the microphone
and earpiece of the pilots' headsets, which they wear at all times while in flight. The last audio claimed to have been recorded
was a course alteration sent by Ukrainian ATC.
According to the Malaysian government, there was an early plan by NATO for a military operation involving some 9000 troops to
'secure the crash site', which was
forestalled by a covert Malaysian operation which recovered the 'black boxes' and blocked the plan. I have to say that given
the many, many other unorthodox and bizarre happenings in the conduct of what was supposed to be a transparent and impartial international
investigation, it's getting so nothing much is unbelievable. The Malaysian Prime Minister went on record as believing that the western
powers had already concluded that Russia was responsible, and were mostly just going through the motions of investigating.
The telephone recordings presented by the SBU as demonstrating Russian culpability were analyzed by OG IT Forensic Services, a
Malaysian firm specializing in forensic analysis of audio, video and digital materials for court proceedings, which
concluded the recordings were cut, edited and fabricated . Yet they are relied upon as important evidence of guilt by the Dutch
and the JIT.
The conduct of the investigation has been all the way across town from transparent, and in fact seems to represent a clique of
cronies getting their heads together to attempt nailing down a consistent narrative, which is in the judgment of forensic professionals
based upon clumsy fabrications. The investigators plainly have no understanding of how the weapons systems involved perform, or they
would not claim confidently to have discovered pieces of the very missile that destroyed the plane in the wreckage of it. But rather
than take an objective look at how this flailing is perceived, they continue to rely on momentum and the appearance of getting things
done while being scrupulously impartial, all the while that more mountains of evidence are collected, which they cannot disclose
to the public, although it is all right to let the prime suspect keep it safe under wraps.
Make of that what you will.
" Bullshit is unavoidable whenever circumstances require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about. Thus the
production of bullshit is stimulated whenever a person's obligations or opportunities to speak about some topic exceed his knowledge
of the facts that are relevant to that topic. "
China diplomacy is trying to thread very carefully to avoid the fallout. The answer of RIA
Novosti is good example here. Counterattacks are few (see the answer to CC question with the
following money quote: "I respect your right to ask the question, but I'm afraid you're not
framing the question in the right way. One has to have a sense of right and wrong. Without it, a
person cannot be trusted, and a country cannot hold its own in the family of nations. " This is
implicit slap in the face for the USA.
RIA Novosti: How do you assess China-Russia relations in the context of COVID-19? Do you
agree with some people's characterization that China and Russia may join force to challenge US
predominance?
Wang Yi: While closely following the COVID-19 response in Russia, we have done and will
continue to do everything we can to support it. I believe under the leadership of President
Vladimir Putin, the indomitable Russian people will defeat the virus and the great Russian
nation will emerge from the challenge with renewed vigor and vitality.
Since the start of COVID-19, President Xi Jinping and President Putin have had several phone
calls and kept the closest contact between two world leaders. Russia is the first country to
have sent medical experts to China, and China has provided the most anti-epidemic assistance to
Russia. Two-way trade has gone up despite COVID-19. Chinese imports from Russia have grown
faster than imports from China's other major trading partners. The two countries have supported
and defended each other against slanders and attacks coming from certain countries. Together,
China and Russia have forged an impregnable fortress against the "political virus" and
demonstrated the strength of China-Russia strategic coordination.
I have no doubt that the two countries' joint response to the virus will give a strong boost
to China-Russia relations after COVID-19. China is working with Russia to turn the crisis into
an opportunity. We will do so by maintaining stable cooperation in energy and other traditional
fields, holding a China-Russia year of scientific and technological innovation, and
accelerating collaboration in e-commerce, bio-medicine and the cloud economy to make them new
engines of growth in our post-COVID-19 economic recovery. China and Russia will also enhance
strategic coordination. By marking the 75th anniversary of the UN, we stand ready to firmly
protect our victory in WWII, uphold the UN Charter and basic norms of international relations,
and oppose any form of unilateralism and bullying. We will enhance cooperation and coordination
in the UN, SCO, BRICS and G20 to prepare ourselves for a new round of the once-in-a-century
change shaping today's world.
I believe that with China and Russia standing shoulder-to-shoulder and working back-to-back,
the world will be a safer and more stable place where justice and fairness are truly
upheld.
Cable News Network: We've seen an increasingly heated "war of words" between China and the
US. Is "wolf warrior" diplomacy the new norm of China's diplomacy?
Wang Yi: I respect your right to ask the question, but I'm afraid you're not framing the
question in the right way. One has to have a sense of right and wrong. Without it, a person
cannot be trusted, and a country cannot hold its own in the family of nations.
There may be all kinds of interpretations and commentary about Chinese diplomacy. As
China's Foreign Minister, let me state for the record that China always follows an
independent foreign policy of peace. No matter how the international situation may change, we
will always stand for peace, development and mutually beneficial cooperation, stay committed
to upholding world peace and promoting common development, and seek friendship and
cooperation with all countries. We see it as our mission to make new and greater
contributions to humanity.
China's foreign policy tradition is rooted in its 5,000-year civilization. Since ancient
times, China has been widely recognized as a nation of moderation. We Chinese value peace,
harmony, sincerity and integrity. We never pick a fight or bully others, but we have
principles and guts. We will push back against any deliberate insult to resolutely defend our
national honor and dignity. And we will refute all groundless slander with facts to
resolutely uphold fairness, justice and human conscience.
The future of China's diplomacy is premised on our commitment to working with all
countries to build a community with a shared future for mankind. Since we live in the same
global village, countries should get along peacefully and treat each other as equals.
Decisions on global affairs should be made through consultation, not because one or two
countries say so. That's why China advocates for a multi-polar world and greater democracy in
international relations. This position is fully aligned with the direction of human progress
and the shared aspiration of most countries. No matter what stage of development it reaches,
China will never seek hegemony. We will always stand with the common interests of all
countries. And we will always stand on the right side of history. Those who go out of their
way to label China as a hegemon are precisely the ones who refuse to let go of their
hegemonic status.
The world is undergoing changes of a kind unseen in a century and full of instability and
turbulence. Confronted by a growing set of global challenges, we hope all countries will
realize that humanity is a community with a shared future. We must render each other more
support and cooperation, and there should be less finger-pointing and confrontation. We call
on all nations to come together and build a better world for all.
"... The recently published Pentagon budget request for 2021 makes clear that the United States is retooling for a potential intercontinental war with China and/or Russia. It asks for $705 billion to "shift focus from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and a greater emphasis on the types of weapons that could be used to confront nuclear giants like Russia and China," noting that it requires "more advanced high-end weapon systems, which provide increased standoff, enhanced lethality and autonomous targeting for employment against near-peer threats in a more contested environment." The military has recently received the first batch of low-yield nuclear warheads that experts agree blurs the line between conventional and nuclear conflict, making an all out example of the latter far more likely. ..."
"... "Our governments spend over 1.75 trillion dollars every year on wars, on weapons, on conflict If we could deploy that sort of resource to address the coronavirus crisis that we're currently living through, imagine what else we could be doing. Imagine how we could be fighting the climate crisis, how we could be addressing global poverty, inequality. Our priority should never be war; our priorities need to be public health, the environment, and human well being." ..."
Just three years ago, Americans had a neutral view of China (and nine years ago it was
strongly favorable). Today, the same polls show that 66 percent of Americans dislike the
country. As the U.S. military turns its attention from the Middle East to conflict with Russia
and China, American war planners are advising that the United States greatly expand its own
online "psychological operations" against Beijing.
A new report from the Financial Times details
how top brass in Washington are strategizing a new Cold War with China, describing it less as
World War III and more as "kicking each other under the table." Last week, General Richard
Clarke, head of Special Operations Command, said that the "kill-capture missions" the military
conducted in Afghanistan were inappropriate for this new conflict, and Special Operations must
move towards cyber influence campaigns instead.
Military analyst David Maxwell, a former Special Ops soldier himself, advocated for a
widespread culture war, which would include the Pentagon commissioning what he called
"Taiwanese Tom Clancy" novels, intended to demonize China and demoralize its citizens, arguing
that Washington should "weaponize" China's one-child policy by bombarding Chinese people with
stories of the wartime deaths of their only children, and therefore, their bloodline.
A not dissimilar tactic was used during the first Cold War against the Soviet Union, where
the CIA sponsored
a huge network of artists, writers and thinkers to promote liberal and social-democratic
critiques of the U.S.S.R., unbeknownst to the public, and, sometimes, even the artists
themselves.
Manufacturing consent
In the space of only a few months, the Trump administration has gone from praising China's
response to the COVID-19 pandemic to blaming them for the outbreak, even suggesting they pay
reparations for their alleged negligence. Just three years ago, Americans had a neutral view of
China (and nine years ago it was strongly favorable). Today, the
same polls show that 66 percent of Americans dislike China, with only 26 percent holding a
positive opinion of the country. Over
four-in-five people essentially support a full-scale economic war with Beijing, something
the president threatened
to enact last week.
The corporate press is certainly doing their part as well, constantly
framing China as an authoritarian threat to the United States, rather than a neutral force
or even a potential ally, leading to a surge in
anti-Chinese racist attacks at home.
Retooling for an intercontinental war
Although analysts have long
warned that the United States gets its "ass handed to it" in hot war simulations with China
or even Russia, it is not clear whether this is a sober assessment or a self-serving attempt to
increase military spending. In 2002, the U.S. conducted a war game trial invasion of Iraq,
where it was catastrophically defeated by Lt. Gen. Paul Van Riper, commanding Iraqi forces,
leading to the whole experiment being nixed halfway through. Yet the subsequent invasion was
carried out without massive loss of American lives.
The recently published Pentagon budget
request for 2021 makes clear that the United States is retooling for a potential
intercontinental war with China and/or Russia. It asks for $705 billion to "shift focus from
the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and a greater emphasis on the types of weapons that could be
used to confront nuclear giants like Russia and China," noting that it requires "more advanced
high-end weapon systems, which provide increased standoff, enhanced lethality and autonomous
targeting for employment against near-peer threats in a more contested environment." The
military has recently received the first batch of low-yield nuclear warheads that
experts agree blurs the line between conventional and nuclear conflict, making an all out
example of the latter far more likely.
There has been no meaningful pushback from the Democrats. Indeed, Joe Biden's team has
suggested
that the United States' entire industrial policy should revolve around "competing with China"
and that their "top priority" is dealing with the supposed threat Beijing poses. The former
vice-president has also attacked Trump from the right on China, trying to present him as a tool
of Beijing, bringing to mind how Clinton portrayed him in 2016 as a Kremlin asset. (Green Party
presidential frontrunner Howie Hawkins has promised to cut the military budget by 75 percent and
to unilaterally disarm).
Nevertheless, voices raising concern about a new arms race are few and far between. Veteran
deproliferation activist Andrew Feinstein is one exception, saying :
"Our governments spend over 1.75 trillion dollars every year on wars, on weapons, on
conflict If we could deploy that sort of resource to address the coronavirus crisis that
we're currently living through, imagine what else we could be doing. Imagine how we could be
fighting the climate crisis, how we could be addressing global poverty, inequality. Our
priority should never be war; our priorities need to be public health, the environment, and
human well being."
However, if the government is going to launch a new psychological war against China, it is
unlikely antiwar voices like Feinstein's will feature much in the mainstream press.
After the Soviet collapse thirty years ago, that order expanded its jurisdiction. Proponents sought to subsume the old Eastern
Bloc, including perhaps Russia itself, into the American sphere. And they wanted to do so firmly on Washington's terms. Even as the
country began to deindustrialize and growth slowed, American leadership developed a taste for fresh crusades in the Middle East;
exotic savagery, went the subtext, had to be brought finally to heel. China was a rising force, but its regime would inevitably crater
or democratize. Besides, Beijing was a peaceful trading partner of the United States.
2008, 2016 and 2020 -- the financial crisis, Trump's election and now the Coronavirus and its reaction -- have been successive
gut punches to this project, a hat trick which may seal its demise. Ask anyone attempting to board an international flight, or open
a new factory in China, or get anything done at the United Nations: the world is de-globalizing at a speed almost as astonishing
as it integrated. Post-Covid, U.S.-China confrontation is not a choice. It's a reality. The liberal international order is not lamentable.
It's already dead.
This was the argument made by Bannon. It had other backers, of course, within both the academy and an emerging foreign policy
counter-establishment loathe to repeat the mistakes of the past thirty years. But coming from the former top political advisor to
the sitting president of the United States, it was provocative stuff. Bannon articulated a perspective which seemed to be on the
tip of the foreign policy world's tongue. And it riled people up. The most fulsome rebuttal to the zeitgeist was perhaps The Jungle
Grows Back , tellingly written by Robert Kagan, an Iraq War architect. The peripheral world was dangerous brush; the United States
was the machete.
Trumpian nationalism has chugged along for nearly three years since -- stripped, some might say, of its Bannonite flair and intelligence.
The most hysterical prophecies of what the president might do -- that he might withdraw from the geriatric North Atlantic Treaty
Organization, for instance -- have not come to pass. Trump has howled and roared, true: but so far, his most disruptive foreign policy
maneuver has been escalation against Iran.
It's very good to hear the right getting a little humility in them now and talking less empire, more multilateralism. Trump has
been way too concerned with his MAGA personality cult to understand the value of humility.
The world's a big place. The reality is, America first will more and more mean working together with other nations for mutual
benefit, and often their gain will indirectly be to our own also.
Working more and more, yes. This is why US is undercutting Germany's competitiveness, by blocking a cheap source of energy via
NS2...
As Bush said, you are either with us or against us. Nothing has changed and nothing will change, but it will become uglier.
If it were to desire multi-polarity, the US would tolerate not only states, like KSA, where the Royals own everything, but also
states, like Iran, or Cuba, where the people (through the government/state) owns assets (land and productive facilities). But
the US does not tolerate such type of multi-polarity, not open to US "investment" and ownership (bought with fiat money).
Cold War II started in 2007, with Putin. Popcorn & beer lads!
It does seem like there's a creeping idea, not just on dissident internet sites now like before, that the Russian rivalry is a
luxury of the past. Even the liberals are going to have to reconcile with liberal hegemony not being workable and settle for something
less. Owing to distance and mutual interest (common rivals Britain and Germany) Russia and America had a long history of friendship
before the Cold war.
I sadly agree about the predatory nature of much of America does. I think it really is a reflection of partially, imperial
arrogance, but even moreso a matter of who runs the country. Oligarchy is poorly checked in modern America. Maybe we can hope
for a humbled oligarchy, at least.
Trump is indeed an empty suit and a demagogue, but he ran on a decent nationalist platform (probably thanks to Bannon, who is
almost certainly a closeted gay. No joke... a deep-in-the-closet, self-hating gay. The navy can change a man, and he's a fraud
in other ways: see Eric Striker's article "International Finance's Anti-China Crusade"). Trump does have an absurd ego, and he
probably figured becoming president would impress Ivanka too.
Also, the Uyghurs are not totally innocent victims... Some of them are US-financed revolutionaries and some of them have committed
terrorism: see Godfree Roberts at Unz Review: "China and the Uyghurs" (January 10, 2019) and Ajit Singh at The Grayzone: "Inside
the World Uyghur Congress: The US-backed right-wing regime change network seeking the 'fall of China'" (March 5, 2020). Some of
our pathetic propagandists make it seem like they're in concentration camps, but there is objective reporting that suggests it's
more like job training programs and anti-jihad classes. Absurd lies have certainly been told about North Korea and many other
countries, so be skeptical.
Yeah, let's get that hate on for China - why they're as bad as Russia, Iran and Venezuela put together and there are so many more
of them. Especially a lot are available right here in the US and have lots of restaurants that can be boycotted. Not that many
Venezuelan restaurants around. Seriously, can Americans get over this childishness? When the US closes down its 800+ overseas
bases and withdraws its fleet to its own shores instead of Iran's and China's, then maybe Americans will be entitled to complain
about someone else's imperialism.
Most of anti-China stuff Hawley, much like Trump, claims always feels empty populism for WWC voters.
1) It is reasonable to be against our Middle East endeavors and not be so anti-China.
2) I still don't understand how it is China fault for stealing manufacturing jobs when it is the US private sector that does it.
(And Vietnam exist, etc.) So without Charles Koch and Tim Cook behind this trade stuff, it feels like empty populism.
3) The most obvious point on China to me is how little they do use military measures for their 'imperialism.'
One problem with all this populism emptiness, is there is a lot issues with China to work on:
1) This virus could have impact economies in Africa and South America a lot where the nations have to renegotiate their loans
to China. I have no idea how this goes but there will be tensions here. Imperialism is tough in the long run.
2) There are nations banding together on China's reaction to the virus and it seems reasonable that US joining them would be more
effective than Trump's taunting.
3) To prove Trump administration incompetence, I have no idea how he is not turning this crisis into more medical equipment and
drugs manufacturing. (My guess is this both takes a lot of work and frankly a lot of manufacturing plants have risks of spreads
so noone wants to invest.)
Hawley is a "fake populist" according to Eric Striker's article "International Finance's Anti-China Crusade" and I just saw fake-patriot
airhead Pete Hegseth claim China wants to destroy our civilization, on fake populist Tucker Carlson's show. It's well-established
that Fox News and the GOP are still neocons and fake patriots... after all, the Trump administration is run by Jared Kushner,
a protégé of Rupert Murdoch and Bibi Netanyahu.
Hawley's speech on the Senate floor yesterday deserves much more criticism than it gets here. This article from Reason
does a good job breaking down the speech and pointing out what's right AND wrong about it:
What if there is reduced wars and civil wars n the world today than ever. (So say anytime before 1991?) I get all the Middle East
& African Wars but look at the rest of the world. When in history have the major West Europe powers not had a major war in 75
years. After issues of post Cold War East Europe is probably more peaceful than ever. Look at South America. In the 1970s the
Civil Wars raged in all those nations. Or the Pacific Rim? Japan, China, and other nations are fighting with Military right now.
This is certainly less than perfect but the number of people (per million) dieing in wars and civil wars are at historic lows.
The fall of Soviet Union and weakening of Russia allowed US and Western Europe to attack Serbia in 1990s. A stronger Russia wouldn't
have allowed that to happen (who's trying to get Crimea from Russia's control now?). But with US aggressiveness and bellicosity
(including nuclear posture) at Russia's borders do not bode well.
But it is true, less important people are dying now...
Chinese imperialism? Uh ... other than shaking trees and drumming up fear can I get like one example of that.
Taiwan, part of China since the 1500's and they are have not issued any new threats since 1949.
Hong Kong - stolen from China and now reluctantly given back with lots of conditions. If they deserve the right of independence
through referendum I'm all for it as long as we apply this standard uniformly including parts of Texas, San Diego, New Mexico,
Arizona, any place that has a large foreign population will do.
Yeah, "Chinese imperialism" is complete nonsense, just like the claim that they definitely originated the coronavirus, caused
Americans to be under house arrest, and caused a depression. In fact, the origin of the virus is far from clear, and it wasn't
China who hyped up and exaggerated the danger and wrecked the economy. It was our superficial corporate media and government that
did that (perhaps deliberately)... the same people who are desperately trying to deflect blame onto the CCP. The same people who
have been mismanaging and ruining America for decades in order to enrich themselves.
"Neoliberal democracy. Instead of citizens, it produces consumers. Instead of communities, it produces shopping malls. The
net result is an atomized society of disengaged individuals who feel demoralized and socially powerless."
Most people would be well served to read Chomsky a first time.
However, it should be noted, Chomsky's critiques of neoliberalism aren't grounded in nationalism, xenophobia, and racism. So a
lot of TAC readers (and especially writers) may be disappointed.
Hawley seems like the natural choice for the potential future of the GOP, that is a post-fusionist or post-liberal GOP. However
the one thing that worries me is his foreign policy. He talks the talk, but I'm having trouble to see if he walks the walk. As
Mills noted he didn't vote to end support for the genocidal war in Yemen, a war that serves purely the interests of Saudi Arabia
and not our own. He has criticized David Petraeus before, but its important not to be fooled by just rhetoric. While accepting
he'll be better than any Tom Cotton or (god forbid) Nikki Haley in 2024, his foreign policy needs to be examined more until then.
Our response to the epidemic was 100% 'made in China'. The entire 'Western World' decided to copy Beijing. If that doesn't establish
a new level of leadership for China, I don't know what would. I'm surprised this is not more widely recognized. You can run down
the many parallels, including the pathetic photo-op attempt by the West to build those emergency hospitals (Nightingale in the
UK, Javits Center, etc. all across the US), which were just to show 'hey we can build hospitals in a few weeks also' ... never
mind they could never, and were never used for anything at all.
At this point, Hawley is all talk. Further, much of his talking amounts to little more than expressing resentment. I agree that
the US needs to follow a more nationalist pathway, which involved making itself less dependent on its chief geopolitical rival.
But accomplishing this is going to require more than bashing China and asserting that cosmopolitan Americans are traitors. At
this point, Hawley has no positive program to offer. Giving paid speeches that vilify coastal elites and China is not a political
plan.
Further, I agree that we're probably moving away from the universalist order that's guided much of our thinking since the 1990s.
But isolationism is not the answer. We need to begin building a multilateral order that takes full account of China's rise as
a worthy rival. This means that we need to develop a series of smaller-scale agreements with strategic partners. The TPP is a
good example of such an agreement. But where is the call to revive it?
Lastly, I find the article's reference to China's treatment of gays and lesbians to be curious. I'd first note that using the
term "homosexual" in reference to people is generally viewed as an offensive slur. Further, China's treatment of gay people isn't
so bad, and tends to be better than what Hawley's evangelical supporters would afford. Moreover, China is a multi-ethnic country.
It's program in Xinjiang has more to do with maintaining political order than a desire to repress non-Han people.
The general chest puffing nature of the American right makes it hard for them to understand that America might need to work with
other countries at a deep level, and not as vassals either.
". We need to begin building a multilateral order that takes full account
of China's rise as a worthy rival. This means that we need to develop a
series of smaller-scale agreements with strategic partners. The TPP is a
good example of such an agreement. But where is the call to revive it?"
The thing is that the post-WWII liberal international order was good for things like that.
Trump and the GOP quite deliberately destroyed it. Before that, the US would have the trust of many other governments; now they
don't trust the US - even if Biden is elected, the next Trump is on the way.
"We benefit if countries that share our opposition to Chinese imperialism -- countries like India and Japan, Vietnam, Australia
and Taiwan -- are economically independent of China, and standing shoulder to shoulder with us,"
OK....then can someone explain why Hawley opposed the TPP, which was designed to accomplish just this. The TPP was supposed
to create trading relationships between these countries and the United States in the context of an agreement that excluded China.
In this instance people like Hawley were advancing China's position and interests (I suspect simply because it was a treaty negotiated
under Obama, which apparently was enough to make it bad).
Probably because Hawley seems more interested in demagoguery than accomplishing anything productive. Never mind that 95% of the
people who voted for him probably couldn't find Japan or Vietnam on a map.
TPP was not geared against China as a blanket thing, as an entire exclusion of China. The perfidy of TPP was that it was against
any economic interactions with State Owned Enterprises (didn't mention the origin, didn't have to). The ultimate goal wasn't to
isolate China but to force privatization of said SOEs, preferably run from Wall Street.
Private property good and = Democracy; State property bad = Authoritarianism, dictatorship, etc. It is a fallacy here somewhere,
cannot really put my finger on it...
Except this is all lies. On each chance to actually do something Hawley has sided with international corporations, as a good conservative
will always do. Fixing globalism will never come form the right, this is all smoke and mirrors for the religious right, aka the
rubes. And they are perpetual suckers and will keep buying into this crap as our nation is hollowed out and raided by the rich.
And that, is TRUE conservatism.
"Now we must recognize that the economic system designed by Western policy makers at the end of the Cold War does not serve
our purposes in this new era," proclaimed Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri. "And it does not meet our needs for this new day." He
continued, perhaps too politely: "And we should admit that multiple of its founding premises were in error."
The "error" in the founding premises of the post-WWII economic system was that it assumed that the US would act in a responsible
manner. Instead we have run huge budget deficits and borrowed the difference from foreigners, randomly invading other countries,
undermined the institutions we set up, bullied smaller countries rather than working with them, and abused our control of the
financial system.
No, that old economic system served our interests very well, as long as we respected the institutions we set up and kept our
own house in order. We haven't been doing any of that for at least 20 years.
Let's bear in mind that the Republican leader of the Senate married into a wealthy Chinese family that makes its money from hauling
Chinese exports to our shores and the shores of other developed nations.
This is all just hollow bravado meant to appeal to the right's nativist base.
I am not into the thinking that everyone whose politics I don't support is acting in bad faith. We are talking about the actions
of literally millions of people. Accusing this or that person of acting in bad faith because of personal interest is just dirty
politics dressed up as perceptiveness. I am not accusing any specific person of acting in bad faith, although some of the people
who pushed opening up to China because more business in China would create a class of people who would eventually push for Democracy
there, were indeed acting in bad faith. They wanted access to cheap labor with no rights.
Yet, no doubt many of them actually believed the propaganda, because it supposedly happened in South Korea, Taiwan and other
places. And especially the ones who switched the line to "globalism" when it was clear that the supposed indigenous pressures
for Democracy did not materialize also acted in bad faith. I only assume that some of were because once I understood the rationale
of the CCCP it was clear to me that China was radically different, and there is no way that so many of those guys who are smarter
and more knowledgeable about political systems than me, did not figure it out. But I am not going to behave as if it the Republicans
alone who were pushing either of these two false messages.
Criticizing China for "imperialism" is the height of hypocrisy on multiple levels. First, the United States has engaged in economic
imperialism, sometimes enforced with military intervention, for a hundred years. Read Smedley Butler's "War is a Racket" if you
doubt that. Second, this is the same guy who voted against our proxy war in Yemen. Third, one could very reasonably argue that
China is simply applying the lessons it learned at the hands of Western imperialists since 1800s..
It's good that SOME Republicans are at least giving lip service to the idea of bringing back manufacturing in this country.
But you have to thank Trump for that, not the GOP establishment. The offshoring of American manufacturing as part of "free trade"
was strongly supported (if not led) by the GOP going back to the 1980s.
And check out John Perkins's books ("Confessions of an Economic Hit Man", etc.) for up-to-date information. It's obviously true
that criticizing China for "imperialism" is ridiculously hypocritical but people like Senator Hawley know they can get away with
it because they understand how propaganda works on the dumbed-down masses.
They understand doublethink, repetition, appeal to patriotism, appeal to racism, appeal to fear, etc. People like Rupert Murdoch
do this every day... poorly, but well enough to be effective on a lot of people.
Incidentally, the Republicans may talk about bringing manufacturing back to the US but they're actually planning on shifting
it to India (see Eric Striker's article "International Finance's Anti-China Crusade").
If Washington lured the Soviet Union into it's demise in Afghanistan, which left that minor
empire in shambles - socially, militarily, economically - it was the nuclear conflagration at
Chernobyl that put the corpse in the ground.....
(Watch the GREAT HBO five-part tragedy on it and you will see that the brutally heroic
response of the Soviets, that saved the Western World at least temporarily, but is the
portrait of self-sacrifice)
What was lost in the Soviets fumbling immediate post-explosion cover-up was the trust of
their Eastern European satellite countries. That doomed that empire. So much military might
was given up in Afghanistan, then on Chernobyl, it was not clear if the Soviets had the
wherewithal to put down the rebellions that spread from Czechoslovakia to East Germany and
beyond.
Covid-19 will do the same to the American Empire.
As its own infrastructure has been laid waste by the COLLASSAL MONEY PIT that is the
Pentagon, its flagrant use of the most valuable energy commodity, oil, to maintain some 4000
bases worldwide, this rickety over-extended upside down version of old Anglo-Dutch trading
empires, will finally collapse.
Loss of trust by the many craven satellites, in America's fractured response, to Covid-19
will put the final nail in its coffin.
A hot-shooting War may come next, but the empire cannot win it.
It would be nice if that were so, but it is very unlikely.
"So tired of reading propaganda."
Is that why you regurgitate it onto forums? Kinda like purging the system, eh?
If you are going to be judging China's economic health by their pollution levels then in
the future you will find yourself convinced that they have never recovered, even when it
becomes inescapably obvious that they have. The fact is that China's pollution levels are
never going back to 2019 levels, but that has nothing to do with their economic
health.
It really never ceases to amaze me how deeply rooted and pervasive the delusions and sense
of exceptionality is in America. It is woven into the thinking, from the lowest levels to the
very top of their thoughts, of even the very most intelligent Americans. It is apparently a
phenomenon that operates at an even deeper level than mass media brainwashing, as it seems it
was just as much a problem in every empire in history. That is, I am sure citizens of the
Roman Empire had the same blinding biases embedded deep below their consciousness. I guess
Marx was entirely correct to say that consciousness arises from material conditions, and
being citizen of an empire must be one of those material conditions that gives rise to this
all-pervasive and unconscious sense of exceptionality.
Go over to EOSDIS Worldview and take a look at satellite photos of China. Simple toggle in
lower left hand corner will take you to photos of same day, earlier years. Or any day in
satellite record.
The skies over China are clear. Chinese industry is not back at work. It may be that China
at 50% or even at 20% is a manufacturing powerhouse compared to a crumbling US. But until
China is back at work the thread so far is about the historical situation six months ago.
Xi used to do elaborately staged state appearances with well planned camera angles,
fabulous lighting, pomp and circumstance. He enjoyed the trappings of power and knew how to
use the trappings of power. Hasn't done that kind of state appearance since January.
China and the US are so different. The citizens of China cannot vote. The population's
movements are micromanaged by the government. This is not the case here (yet). And I hope it
is never the case. I agree with the premise that there are those in our government who are
living in a dream of the past and that is over, unless we want to destroy the world. But
China's government is so repressive. The rules must be obeyed. We seem to be compliant so far
of some of our government officials stepping over the bounds allowed by our Constitution, due
to the fear of C-19 engendered by the deep state (aka the bsmsm). But we will not do that
forever and our government cannot just start shooting big crowds of us as they can and have
done in China. Theirs is all top down rule, which is not the case here. Also, although it is
probably heretical to say this I am glad that the US has many cases of C-19. We will
eventually get herd immunity. IMO, China can lock down as many millions of citizens as they
wish; they cannot stop this virus and as time goes by they will have as many deaths and as
many cases as everybody else. Well, that is off the topic of the article. In the end I agree
that we are fighting weird battles we can never win and we citizens need to keep informing
our government employees that we just want to trade and make money, not threaten companies
and countries and lose money.
It is still greatly dependent on the West to development and still is a developing
country.
So, yes, the West still has a realistic chance of destroying China and inaugurating a new
cycle of capitalist prosperity.
What happens with the "decoupling"/"Pivot to Asia" is that, in the West, there's
a scatological theory [go to 10th paragraph] - of Keynesian origin - that socialism can
only play "catch up" with capitalism, but never surpass it when a "toyotist phase" of
technological innovation comes (this is obviously based on the USSR's case). This theory
states that, if there's innovation in socialism, it is residual and by accident, and that
only in capitalism is significant technological advancement possible. From this, they posit
that, if China is blocked out of Western IP, it will soon "go back to its place" - which is
probably to Brazil or India level.
If China will be able to get out of the "Toyotist Trap" that destroyed the USSR, only time
will tell. Regardless, decoupling is clearly not working, and China is not showing any signs
so far of slowing down. Hence Trump is now embracing a more direct approach.
As for the USA, I've put my big picture opinion about it some days ago, so I won't repeat
myself. Here, it suffices to say that, yes, I believe the USA can continue to survive as an
empire - even if, worst case scenario, in a "byzantine" form. To its favor, it has: 1) the
third largest world population 2) huge territory, with excellent proportion of high-quality
arable land (35%), that basically guarantees food security indefinitely (for comparison, the
USSR only had 10% of arable land, and of worse quality) 3) two coasts, to the two main Oceans
(Pacific and Atlantic), plus a direct exit to the Arctic (Alaska and, de facto, Greenland and
Canada) 4) excellent, very defensive territory, protected by both oceans (sea-to-sea),
bordered only by two very feeble neighbors (Mexico and Canada) that can be easily absorbed if
the situation asks to 4) still the financial superpower 5) still a robust "real" economy -
specially if compared to the micro-nations of Western Europe and East-Asia 6) a big fucking
Navy, which gives it thalassocratic power.
I don't see the USA losing its territorial integrity anytime soon. There are separatist
movements in places like Texas and, more recently, the Western Coast. Most of them exist only
for fiscal reasons and are not taken seriously by anyone else. The Star-and-Stripes is still
a very strong ideal to the average American, and nobody takes the idea of territory loss for
real. If that happens, though, it would change my equation on the survival of the American
Empire completely.
As for Hong Kong. I watched a video by the chief of the PLA last year (unfortunately, I
watched it on Twitter and don't have the link with me anymore). He was very clear: Hong Kong
does not present an existential threat to China. The greatest existential threat to China
are, by far, Xinjiang and Tibet, followed by Taiwan and the South China Sea. Hong Kong is a
distant fourth place.
A US judge
dismissed a defamation lawsuit by One America News Network against MSNBC over Rachel Maddow's
claims that OAN was "literally" Russian propaganda, ruling that her segment was merely "an
opinion" and "exaggeration." OAN sued the liberal talk show host and MSNBC for defamation,
demanding over $10 million in damages, back in September 2019. The lawsuit was based on the
July 22 episode of The Rachel Maddow Show, where Maddow launched a scathing broadside against
the conservative television network, labeling it "the most obsequiously pro-Trump right
wing news outlet in America" and "really literally paid Russian propaganda."
In the segment, Maddow cited a story by The Daily Beast's Kevin Poulsen about OAN's Kristian
Rouz, who has previously contributed to Sputnik as a freelance author. Toeing the general US
mainstream line on the Russian media, be it Sputnik or RT, Poulsen branded the Russian news
agency "the Kremlin's official propaganda outlet" and said Rouz was once on its
"payroll." Shortly after MSNBC's star talent peddled the claim, OAN rejected the
allegations as "utterly and completely false. " The outlet, which is owned by the
Herring Networks, a small California-based family company, said that it "has never been
paid or received a penny from Russia or the Russian government," with its only funding
coming from the Herring family.
In their bid to win the case, Maddow herself, MSNBC, Comcast Corporation and NBCUniversal
Media did not address the accusation itself - namely, that her claim about OAN was false - but
opted to invoke the First Amendment, insisting that the rant should be protected as free
speech.
Siding
with Maddow, the California district court defined Maddow's show as a mix of "news and
opinions," concluding that the manner in which the progressive host blurted out the
accusations "makes it more likely that a reasonable viewer would not conclude that the
contested statement implies an assertion of objective fact." h
The court said that while Maddow "truthfully" related the story by the Daily Beast,
the statement about OAN being funded by the Kremlin was her "opinion" and
"exaggeration" of the said article.
While the legal trick helped Maddow to get off the hook without ever trying to defend her
initial statement, conservative commentators on social media wasted no time in pointing out
that dodging a payout to OAN literally meant admitting that Maddow was not, in fact, news.
Maddow won a lawsuit brought against her because the Judge found her show was "opinion," that is, her show isn't one that
shares actual facts with viewers.https://t.co/T1bgdSfc0P — Essential Cernovich (@Cernovich) May 22, 2020Q
Just like Alex Jones’ defense in his divorce and custody proceedings: “I’m an entertainer”
Biden’s binder full of women (@Wallflowerface) May 22, 2020Q
So if she makes any statement(s) on air about being factual, then don’t we have an excellent appeal? — Mortimer Cinder
Block (@LeonardPGoldst1) May 22, 2020Q
I've long since concluded, there is no president who can withdraw the US from the Forever
Wars. Obama couldn't. Trump can't. Biden/Harris/Oprah/Gabbard/Pence won't.
There are a half-dozen permanent US policies that Americans don't get to vote on, and the
Permawar is one of them.
My God, Buchanan, I am staggered by the arrogance of this column. Where in the name of all
that's holy did you ever get the idea that America has the right to impose on anyone, from
Afghans through to Venezuelans, your (perceived) systems of thought, values and democracy?
How many American soldiers in Iraq or Afghanistan can even speak the local language?
Understand the local customs? None!!! They swan around in their sunglasses and battle gear
thinking that they are they return of the Terminator and wander why the locals absolutely
hate their collective guts! It's time that you collectively learned that America is NOT the
world's sheriff and that, as Benjamin Franklin said "A man convinced against his will, is of
the same opinion still".
Pat is not entirely wrong -- he hints at the explanation for failure:
"As imperialists, we Americans are conspicuous failures.
Moreover, with us, the national interest inevitably asserts itself."
As Imperialists there has never been anything but the (Elite) "national interest".
In short, these so called "losing" wars have been wars of aggression -- ie "bad" wars.
All Pat's talk of conversion, democracy etc is just so much nonsense.
"While we can defeat our enemies in the air and on the seas and in cyberspace, we cannot
persuade them to embrace secular democracy and its values any more than we can convert them
to Christianity" although they might be better persuaded to convert to Christianity –
traditional Christianity – than to embrace secular democracy and its "values".
Why would anyone want to embrace homosexuality, transgenderism, rad-feminism, opioids,
prozac, inequality, broken homes, mass shootings, mountainous debt, corrupt media, puppet
politicians & the rest of the filth & perversion that passes for "values" in secular
democracies like America or Western Europe?
Indeed, why would anyone in these decadent countries even want to defend these venal
"values", let alone try to spread them around the world like the Chinese plague?
No, "they are not trying to change us" but maybe they should.
As the British and French ultimately found out it costs more to run an empire than to loot
it. So the long retreat ensues. One would have thought that the Americans might have learned
this from history, but no! After all they were "the exceptional people, they stood taller
than the others and saw further." Errrm, no they didn't. Like their forbears they got bogged
down as well getting into debt which was only bailed out by their insistence that they would
not convert the dollar into gold.
Human nature and stupidity has got a long track-record and it isn't going to end anytime
soon.
The writer, and most commenters' are still under the erroneous belief that AMerica goes to
war in places then AMerica wins or loses or wastes lives or kill children. This is the
saddest part of the Yankee war machine: Americans joining the Army because they think theya
re joining the fight to defend the American Dream.
You-all are corporate gunmonkeys, fighting and killing and burning and bombing, not in the
name of freedom or apple pie, but in the name of Gulf Oil, Goldman Sachs, Citicorp, JPMorgan,
Monsanto, PHBBillington, whatever Devil Rumsfeld calls his sack of shit these days .
America has not won any war anywhere, even their civil war was mostly just clearing the
land for the banks. That is because it is not America at war, she just supplies the cannon
fodder. And cannons. And radiactive scrapmetal to make bullets to mow down women and children
in the name of Investor Confidence.
But then, that is what your Zionist bible tells you to do, isn't it?
I just don't think the US has the immoral fortitude to engage in genocide, so it's
hopeless trying to "win."
If by the US you mean most of the people you may be right. But the people in the US
have no say in the actions of the US government which is controlled by psychopaths.
Afghanistan is hardly even a country as the average American might define one. There's really
nothing to "win"; we only occupy. The infrastructure is primitive so it's not cost effective
to try to take whatever natural resources they may have, if any, so there's nothing they have
that we want. The Taliban were not "ousted". In the face of massive firepower they split up
and scattered; they're still there. After all, the US has been negotiating with them for a
peace deal of some sort hasn't it? "Democracy crusades" is just a propaganda fig leaf to
bamboozle stupid Americans. It's amazing that there's people who actually believe stuff like
that but PT Barnum had it right. "Eventually, we give up and go home". That's because they
live there and we don't. "They apparently have an inexhaustible supply of volunteers" willing
to fight and die. They don't want foreign robo-soldiers pointing guns at them in their own
country. We have our own version, it's called "Remember the Alamo", men who stood their
ground against the odds.
If a country is not willing to do that, and I would hope the United States is not
willing to do that, then they (we) should go home and leave the Afghans to murder each
other without our assistance. If they return to supporting terrorism or go whole hog in
producing opium, perhaps the US should decapitate their entire government and let the next
batch of losers give governing a try. I just don't think the US has the immoral fortitude
to engage in genocide, so it's hopeless trying to "win."
The growth in opium cultivation correlates with CIA activities in the area and the $3
billion from American taxpayers which financed Mujahideen 'terrorism' against the Russians
and their local proxies just to avenge the fall of Saigon.
In 1980 Afghanistan accounted for about only 5% of total world heroin production. This was
mainly for the local market and neighbor Iran.
They refuse to surrender and submit because it is their beliefs, their values, their
faith, their traditions, their tribe, their God, their culture, their civilization, their
honor that they believe they are fighting for in what is, after all, their land, not
ours.
If I may..
another way of looking at this, and I feel a profound respect for the Afghans, and only
wish we were made of the same mettle. If only ((they)) could say of us..
They refuse to surrender and submit because it is their beliefs, their values, their
faith, their traditions, their tribe, their God, their culture, their civilization, their
honor that they believe they are fighting for in what is, after all, their land, not
(((ours)))).
They are not trying to change ((((us. We))) are trying to change them. And they wish to
remain who they are.
IOW, we white Westerners, have proved willing to surrender and submit to all of it.
Without nary a peep of protest. Even as ((they)) send us around the globe to kill people like
these Afghans, for being slightly inconvenient to their agenda. [And so the CIA can
reconstitute its global heroin trafficking operation$.]
If only history would look back on this epic moment, at the last Death throes of the West,
and say of whitey, that he refused to surrender his values and faith and traditions and tribe
and God, and culture and civilization and honor.. to ((those)) who would pervert his values,
and mock his faith, and trash his traditions, and exterminate his tribe, while mocking his
God, and poisoning his culture, and destroying his civilization and all because at the end of
the day, he had no honor.
These men may be backwater, illiterate villagers,
but at least they have enough mettle and honor, to tell the Beast that they would rather
die killing as many of the Beast's stupid goons as they're able, than ever sacrifice their
sacred honor- or lands or sovereignty, or the destinies of their children – over to the
fiend, which is more than I can say for Western "man".
They are not trying to change us. We are trying to change them. And they wish to remain
who they are.
Would that the Swedish people had a Nano-shred of the blood-honor of an Afghan, Barbara
Spectre would be pounding sand.
Historically, the Afghans are fundamentalist, tribal and impervious to foreign
intervention.
Obviously, there is a great deal we need to learn from them.
What will the Taliban do when we leave?
They will not give up their dream of again ruling the Afghan nation and people. And they
will fight until they have achieved that goal and their idea of victory: dominance.
Um.. Pat. Whose land is it anyways? Is it such a horror that Afghans should be
dominant in Afghanistan ?
The Taliban was welcomed into most of the regions it governed, because they drove out
local war lords who often treated the villager's children as their sex toys, and the foreign
(CIA) opioid growers and traffickers. And it was the Taliban that put an end to all of that.
They're harsh, but they're effective, and that is their land, not ours.
Also, the Taliban offered to turn over Osama Bin Laden, if the West could provide a shred
of proof that he had anything whatsoever to do with 9/11. (he didn't ; ) But the West had
zero proof, (as the FBI admits to this day), that they have zero proof that ties Bin Laden to
9/11.
And n0w that we all know 9/11 was an Israeli false flag, intended to use the American
military as their bitch, to burn down 'seven nations in five years' .. that the Jewish
supremacists wanted destroyed, our whole pretext for being over there has been a sham from
day one. Duh.
.
.
.
.
I remember long ago when I had a subscription to National Geographic and this photo came out,
I cut the picture out, and stuck it somewhere to look at- it was so visceral and
haunting.
Leave them alone. I don't care how many Jews at the WSJ demand whitey has to stay and die
for Israel. (Afghanistan is on Iran's border, and that's why we have to stay, to menace all
those anti-Semites over there, trying to gas all the Jews and make soap).
@paranoid
goy I very much doubt if many are joining the military to "defend the American Dream."
Most are more practical and are joining to escape poverty, even if it might cost them their
lives. Recruiters will now be inundated with volunteers since there are no jobs in the covid
depression.
If the neo-con clown car Trump has permitted to run foreign policy since his election gets us
into a war with Iran and/or Venezuela before November, will Pat still be stumping for him, or
will we see the return of non-election-year Pat?
Excellent question Pat! Unfortunately there is no answer, we've been at "forever war"
seemingly forever, and the whole point as Eisenhower so preciently warned us is THE
objective.
The thing is that the Afghan government wasn't supporting terrorism. Rather, it had no
on-going control anywhere except the cities, which made the tribal areas useful hideouts /
bases for a raft of groups.
I well remember the prelude to the invasion where the US was demanding that its government
(which merely happened to be Taliban that year) hand over OBL in 72hrs. The truth was that
the US knew Afghanistan didn't have the capability to do that and it merely wanted to use OBL
as an excuse to invade and continue the encirclement of the old soviet states.
"... One could write a long history of FBI abuses and failures, from Latin America to Martin Luther King to Japanese internment. But just consider a handful of their more recent cases. ..."
"... But it was 9/11 that really sealed the FBI's ignominious track record. The lavishly funded agency charged with preventing terrorism somehow missed the attacks, despite their awareness of numerous Saudi nationals taking flying lessons around the country. Immediately after 9/11, the nation was gripped by the anthrax scare, and once again the FBI's inability to solve the case caused them to try to railroad an innocent man, Stephen Hatfill . ..."
"... With 9/11, the FBI also began targeting troubled Americans by handing them bomb materials, arresting them, and then holding a press conference to tell the country that they had prevented a major terrorist attack -- a fake attack that they themselves had planned. ..."
"... 9/11 also opened the floodgates to domestic surveillance and all the FISA abuses that most recently led to the prosecution of Michael Flynn. I am no fan of Flynn and his hawkish anti-Islamic views, but the way he was framed and then prosecuted really does shock the conscience. ..."
"... For the FBI, merely catching bad guys is too mundane. As one can tell from the sanctimonious James Comey, the culture at the Bureau holds grander aspirations. Comey's book is titled A Higher Loyalty , as if the FBI reports only to the Almighty. ..."
"... While the nation's elite colleges and tech companies are crawling with Chinese spies who are literally stealing our best ideas, the chief of the FBI's Counterintelligence Section, Peter Strzok, spent his days trying to frame junior aides in the Trump campaign. ..."
"... Some conservatives have called for FBI Director Christopher Wray to be fired. This would accomplish nothing, as the problem is not one man but an entire culture. ..."
"... One of the most amusing yet disturbing tends of the Trump era has been the increasingly strong embrace of the "intelligence community" (how I hate that term) by left liberals. ..."
"... It's tempting to wonder how many of them have even heard of COINTELPRO, but I suspect that most of them would be just fine if the FBI intervened to disrupt and destabilize the Marxist left in the unlikely event that it seemed to be gaining a significant political foothold. Can't have any nasty class politics disrupting their bourgeois identitarian parlor game! ..."
"... J. Edgar Hoover wrecked a lot of the good the FBI could have been right from the beginning, there needs to be a major cultural change over there and they need to be put back on track so that they serve us instead of themselves. ..."
"... Making sure crooks like Hoover and showboats like Comey never get put in charge would be a good start. ..."
"... Remember in "Three Days of the Condor," when Robert Redford reacts scornfully to Cliff Robertson's use of the term "community"? ..."
"... Collaboratus: Basically, working together. BULL, the individual IC Agencies can't work together internally, much less across agency boundaries. ..."
"... Virtus: a specific virtue in Ancient Rome. It carried connotations of valor, manliness, excellence, courage, character, and worth, perceived as masculine strengths. Again, BULL. The Feminazis and lgbtqxyz crowd have, pretty much snipped any balls and put them in a jar. Yes, gay pride is big in the IC. ..."
"... Fides: was the goddess of trust and bona fides in Roman paganism. She was one of the original virtues to be considered an actual religious divinity. Fides is everything that is required for "honour and credibility, from fidelity in marriage, to contractual arrangements, and the obligation soldiers owed to Rome". With respect to the IC, that last bears repeating" "Obligations Soldiers Owed To Rome." In the IC (Rome), Leadership and Management (LM) have no obligations to the 'soldiers'; so, of course, the soldiers respond in kind. ..."
"... Real underline issue is FBI has been politicized. Rather than be neutral and independent, top FBI leaders have aligned with politicians. While nominate FBI officials, presidents also select their own than someone is independent. ..."
"... Absolutely nothing new or rare was done to Flynn. The FBI used perfectly standard dirty tricks on him. ..."
"... It isn't just the FBI that uses dirty tactics. most police departments also use dirty tactics. ..."
"... As I see it the agency that needs to be broken up is the CIA. What they do is shameful and not American. They are and have always been heavily involved in other countries internal affairs. They are an evil organization. ..."
"... Absolutely phenomenal that an entire essay abusing the FBI could be written without once mentioning the man who actually made the Federal Bureau of Investigation into what it is (whatever that might be). But J Edgar Hoover is still sufficiently iconic a figure to many Conservatives that it would be counterproductive to assault him. Better someone like Comey. ..."
"... I did not know the FBI had the power to go back in time, otherwise how did they get Flynn to lie to VP Pence on Jan 14 when they didn't interview him until 1/24? Amazing how powerful they are! ..."
Its constant abuses, of which Michael Flynn is only the latest, show what a failed
Progressive Era institution it really is. Fittingly, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was founded by a grandnephew of
Napoleon Bonaparte, Attorney General Charles J. Bonaparte, during the Progressive Era.
Bonaparte was a Harvard-educated crusader. As the FBI's official history states, "Many
progressives, including (Teddy) Roosevelt, believed that the federal government's guiding hand
was necessary to foster justice in an industrial society."
Progressives viewed the Constitution as a malleable document, a take-it-or-leave-it kind of
thing. The FBI inherited that mindset of civil liberties being optional. In their early years,
with the passage of the Espionage and Sedition Acts during World War I, the FBI came into its
own by launching a massive domestic surveillance campaign and prosecuting war dissenters.
Thousands of Americans were arrested, prosecuted, and jailed simply for voicing opposition.
One could write a long history of FBI abuses and failures, from Latin America to Martin
Luther King to Japanese internment. But just consider a handful of their more recent cases. The
FBI needlessly killed women and children at Waco and Ruby Ridge. Anyone who has lived anywhere
near Boston knows of the Bureau's staggering corruption during gangster Whitey Bulger's reign
of terror. The abuses in Boston were so terrific that radio host Howie Carr declared that the
FBI initials really stood for "Famous But Incompetent." And then there's Richard Jewell, the
hero security guard who was almost railroaded by zealous FBI agents looking for a scalp after
they failed to solve the Atlanta terrorist bombing.
But it was 9/11 that really sealed the FBI's ignominious track record. The lavishly funded
agency charged with preventing terrorism somehow missed the attacks, despite their
awareness of numerous Saudi nationals taking flying lessons around the country. Immediately
after 9/11, the nation was gripped by the anthrax scare, and once again the FBI's inability to
solve the case caused them to try to railroad an innocent man, Stephen Hatfill .
With 9/11, the FBI also began targeting
troubled Americans by handing them bomb materials, arresting them, and then holding a press
conference to tell the country that they had prevented a major terrorist attack -- a fake
attack that they themselves had planned.
9/11 also opened the floodgates to domestic surveillance and all the FISA abuses that most
recently led to the prosecution of Michael Flynn. I am no fan of Flynn and his hawkish
anti-Islamic views, but the way he was framed and then prosecuted really does shock the
conscience. After Jewell, Hatfill, Flynn, and so many others, it's time to ask whether the
culture of the FBI has become similar to that of Stalin's secret police, i.e. "show me the man
and I'll show you the crime."
I am no anti-law enforcement libertarian. In a previous career, I had the privilege to work
with agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and they were some of the bravest
people I have ever met. And while the DEA can be overly aggressive (just ask anyone who has
been subjected to federal asset forfeiture), it is inconceivable that its agents would plot a
coup d'état against the president of the United States. The DEA sees their job as
catching drug criminals; they stay in their lane.
For the FBI, merely catching bad guys is too mundane. As one can tell from the sanctimonious
James Comey, the culture at the Bureau holds grander aspirations. Comey's book is titled A
Higher Loyalty , as if the FBI reports only to the Almighty.
They see themselves as
progressive guardians of the American Way, intervening whenever and wherever they see democracy
in danger. No healthy republic should have a national police force with this kind of culture.
There are no doubt many brave and patriotic FBI agents, but there is also no doubt they have
been very badly led.
This savior complex led them to aggressively pursue the Russiagate hoax. Their chasing of
ghosts should make it clear that the FBI does not stay in their lane. While the nation's elite
colleges and tech companies are crawling with Chinese spies who are literally stealing our best
ideas, the chief of the FBI's Counterintelligence Section, Peter Strzok, spent his days trying
to frame junior aides in the Trump campaign.
Some conservatives have
called for FBI Director Christopher Wray to be fired. This would accomplish nothing, as the
problem is not one man but an entire culture. One possible solution is to break up the FBI into
four or five agencies, with one responsible for counterintelligence, one for counterterrorism,
one for complex white-collar crime, one for cybercrimes, and so on. Smaller agencies with more
distinctive missions would not see themselves as national saviors and could be held accountable
for their effectiveness at very specific jobs. It would also allow federal agents to develop
genuine expertise rather than, as the FBI regularly does, shifting agents constantly from
terrorism cases to the war on drugs to cybercrime to whatever the political class's latest
crime du jour might be.
Such a reform would not end every abuse of federal law enforcement, and all these agencies
would need to be kept on a short leash for the sake of civil liberties. It would, however,
diminish the ostentatious pretension of the current FBI that they are the existential guardians
of the republic. In a republic, the people and their elected leaders are the protectors of
their liberties. No one else.
One of the most amusing yet disturbing tends of the Trump era has been the increasingly
strong embrace of the "intelligence community" (how I hate that term) by left liberals.
It's hard to believe it was only a decade ago when they were (correctly) deriding these
exact same people for their manifold failures relating to the War on Terror, but then again
left liberals at that time had not yet abandoned the pretense that they were something
other than a PMC social club.
It's tempting to wonder how many of them have even heard of COINTELPRO, but I suspect that most of them would be just fine if the FBI intervened to
disrupt and destabilize the Marxist left in the unlikely event that it seemed to be gaining
a significant political foothold. Can't have any nasty class politics disrupting their
bourgeois identitarian parlor game!
It's not the left liberals, it's the centrists and the neocons fleeing the Republican Party
like rats. The left never liked the FBI, never trusted them, with good reason.
J. Edgar
Hoover wrecked a lot of the good the FBI could have been right from the beginning, there
needs to be a major cultural change over there and they need to be put back on track so
that they serve us instead of themselves.
Making sure crooks like Hoover and showboats like
Comey never get put in charge would be a good start.
Or put another way... One of the most amusing yet disturbing tends of the Trump era has
been the increasingly strong disdain of the "intelligence community" (how I hate that term)
by far right conservatives.
Let's just be honest with ourselves - we really don't want intelligence, or science, or
oversight, unless it supports our team.
1. Collaboratus: Basically, working together. BULL, the individual IC Agencies can't
work together internally, much less across agency boundaries. This goes to guys like Mike
Flynn (former director of DIA), his predecessors and successors, and their peers across the
Intel(?) Community (that one kills me, too); the IC. Not to 'slight' anyone, but middle
management is no better, and probably, worse; everyone has to protect their own 'little
rice bowl' ya know.
2. Virtus: a specific virtue in Ancient Rome. It carried connotations of valor,
manliness, excellence, courage, character, and worth, perceived as masculine strengths.
Again, BULL. The Feminazis and lgbtqxyz crowd have, pretty much snipped any balls and put
them in a jar. Yes, gay pride is big in the IC.
3. Fides: was the goddess of trust and bona fides in Roman paganism. She was one of the
original virtues to be considered an actual religious divinity. Fides is everything that is
required for "honour and credibility, from fidelity in marriage, to contractual
arrangements, and the obligation soldiers owed to Rome". With respect to the IC, that last
bears repeating" "Obligations Soldiers Owed To Rome." In the IC (Rome), Leadership and
Management (LM) have no obligations to the 'soldiers'; so, of course, the soldiers respond
in kind.
The ICs are dog eat dog; LM are looking out for themselves...Period. Actually doing 'the
job' is pretty far down the TODO List. The vast majority of people in the 'trenches' are
just trying to get through the day; like LM, doing the 'right thing' is no longer the first
thought.
To make matters worse (if possible), MANY of those people in the trenches have
almost no clue WTF they are doing. This is because management involuntarily reassigns
people (SURPRISE!) to jobs for which they were not hired, have no qualifications, and,
often, no interest in becoming qualified. Of course, they hang on hoping that 'black swan'
will land and make everything right again.
We've had two major incidents (at least), in the last 20 years (9/11 and the Kung Flu)
that are specific failures of the IC (IMO). The IC failed (fails?) because Collaboratus,
Virtus, and Fides are just some words on a plaque; not goals for which to strive; lip
service is a poor substitute.
Yeah, these yahoos are overdue for a good house cleaning as well.
Real underline issue is FBI has been politicized.
Rather than be neutral and independent, top FBI leaders have aligned with politicians.
While nominate FBI officials, presidents also select their own than someone is
independent.
In order their men can do their "works", they also increased their authorities. Supposedly, FBI directors, once confirmed, will not change with president. In reality,
we saw presidents to replace old ones with their own.
It is not break up or whatever "reform". As long as presidents (regardless whom) can
choose their own, how can you expect FBI does its jobs stated by laws?
It is amazing how far people will let their political hatreds take them. The
FBI is actually more important for the services it provides police forces around America
than it is for solving federal crimes.
The FBI have been using dirty practices on people
for decades. Literally hundreds of people who are not criminals have written about this -
several of them are former agents who left in good standing.
They practice some of them
right out in the open, like leaking information about arrests to the press so that the
press get to film their arrests - sometimes timing arrests to hit local primetime new. It
even has a name - the prime time perp walk. Whether these people are convicted or not,
those images follow them for the rest of their lives. Or announcing that a person is "a
person of interest" to force cooperation, because they know that people hear "suspect" when
they hear such announcements. They will then offer to announce that the person is no longer
a person of interest in exchange for cooperation. It didn't deserve to be disbanded them.
Absolutely nothing new or rare was done to Flynn. The FBI used perfectly standard
dirty tricks on him. But since he was a minion of Donald Trump, the FBI should have
known that he was untouchable. That is their real wrongdoing here. But they didn't realize
it, so they should be disbanded. It is just like some progressives call for the disbandment
of ICE because it arrests illegal aliens.
This ignoramus reminds me of others of his kind who call for the disbandbandment of the
UN because they don't like the behavior of its General Council, its human rights or the
peace keeping agencies, completely oblivious of the critical services the dozens of
non-political UN agencies provide to all countries, especially to very small or under
developed ones. They call for the destruction of WHO because it kowtows to China no matter
that a number of countries in the world would have access to zero advanced health services
without it, and others who are less dependent, but find its services critical in
maintaining healthy populations. They find it politically objectionable so get rid of it! I
really hate how progressives throw around the words "entitled" and "privilege", but some
people do behave that way.
You can't go without the police though and a lot of what goes there can be reformed. Stop
treating them like an movie version of the military. Teach them to calm a situation instead
of shooting first, and realize you can treat them like an important part of society without
making them above the law.
As I see it the agency that needs to be broken up is the CIA. What they do is shameful and
not American. They are and have always been heavily involved in other countries internal
affairs. They are an evil organization.
If conservatives are coming around to the idea that police corruption is a real thing, that
would be great. Somehow, I tend to doubt that it extends much beyond a way to protect white
collar and political corruption. I hope this is a turning point. The investigations into
Clinton emails didn't seem to warrant a mention here. Oh well.
That whole email situation was worthless. Not to say whether there was or was not an issue
but the investigation was nothing worthwhile and only resulted in complicating an already
messy election. Whether you believe there was a crime or not there there was nothing good
handled by that investigation.
Personally I'm more content with the Mueller investigation. Not the way everyone
panicked over it on both sides but what Mueller actually did himself: came in, researched
the situation, found out that while a good few people acted messy Trump himself wasn't
doing more than Twitter talk (yes it's technically "not enough evidence to prosecute", but
that is how we phrase "not guilty" technically: you prove guilt not innocence), stated that
Trump keeps messing himself up (aka "why did you ask your staff to claim one reason for a
firing then tell a different story on national TV idiot")..
Then ran for the hills as everyone screamed "impeach/witchhunt".
Though don't get me wrong: I'm not going to get on the way of any attempt to dismantle
the FBI or any of those other systems. It's something I really wish "small government"
actually meant.
And lets not forget that Russia warned the FBI about the Tsarnaev brothers. The FBI did a
perfunctory investigation and dismissed the threat. They probably thought they were a
couple of poor Chechen boys persecuted by those evil Russians.
Absolutely phenomenal that an entire essay abusing the FBI could be written without once
mentioning the man who actually made the Federal Bureau of Investigation into what
it is (whatever that might be). But J Edgar Hoover is still sufficiently iconic a
figure to many Conservatives that it would be counterproductive to assault him. Better
someone like Comey.
But, this is part of a pattern of Trump and his loyal followers (no Conservatives they)
assault on the Institutions. The FBI is insufficiently tamed by Billy Barr, so it must go.
(Part of the deep state swamp. /s).
Actually, there are very sound reasons for keeping the FBI, and even more for reforming
it. But since it was engaged in checking out Trump's minion, Flynn, it is bad, very bad,
incredibly bad, and must go. OTOH, if Comey had bent the knee to Trump, the FBI would be
the most tremendous force for good the country has ever seen.
But this essay must be seen as part of the background of attempted legitimization for
whatever Trump tweetstormed today. Perhaps the critics are right, and "conservatism is
dead". If so, it would be the proper thing to give it a decent burial and go on.
Because there is nothing about Donald John Trump which is the least Conservative, and it
is sickening to see people I once presumed to be "principled" line up at the altar of
Trumpism. You know he will not be satisfied until the country is renamed The United States
of Trump.
Now, all you Trumpublicans and Trumpservatives go downvote because I decline to abandon
Conservatism for Trumpworship,
I did not know the FBI had the power to go back in time, otherwise how did they get Flynn
to lie to VP Pence on Jan 14 when they didn't interview him until 1/24? Amazing how
powerful they are!
Before Russiagate, the former national security advisor was an operative for Turkey,
tilting foreign policy against the Kurds.
by Reese Erlich Posted on
May 22, 2020 May 21, 2020 Former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn is best known
for his connection to the Russiagate investigation. Lost in that hubbub, however, was Flynn's
slimy role as a lobbyist for Turkey. A Turkish businessman paid Flynn
$530,000 in 2016 to push pro-Turkey, anti-Kurd policies in hopes of influencing the Trump
Administration.
The American public has mostly forgotten about Flynn's Turkey connections, says Steven A.
Cook, senior fellow for Middle East and Africa Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in
Washington, D.C.
"There's more going on with Turkey than people may realize," Cook tells me.
Flynn's money-driven opportunism is just one example of the operations of Washington's
foreign policy lobbyists. As a candidate, Donald Trump correctly criticized the Washington
swamp, but as President, instead of draining it, he has shoveled in more muck.
I've dipped my toe into the swamp on occasion by attending conferences and press events
populated by Washington's elite. I've rubbed elbows with the likes of former Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby.
Believe me, these folks are just as evil in person as they appear on TV.
Washington swamp creatures are easily identified by their black pinstriped suits, wingtip
oxfords, and red power ties. Two kinds of people attend these events: those in power and
those hoping to seize it.
Washington is crawling with former diplomats, intelligence officers, and business
executives eager to influence policy and make a buck. And so enters former army Lieutenant
General Michael Thomas Flynn, poster boy for the military-industrial complex.
Flynn's checkered past
Flynn, who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, came to Washington during the Obama
Administration as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. He was
forced to resign for insubordination in 2014, whereupon he joined the Washington swamp by
forming the Flynn Intel Group.
In 2016, Flynn hitched his wagon to candidate Donald Trump, giving a fiery speech at the
Republican National Convention in which he echoed
the call to "lock up" Hillary Clinton for her handling of State Department emails.
Behind the scenes, however, Flynn was engaged in offenses for which he could be locked up.
The Flynn Intel Group signed
a contract totaling $600,000 with a Turkish businessman who had close ties to authoritarian
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Erdoğan wanted Washington to extradite Fethullah Gulen, a political opponent living
in Pennsylvania since 1999. Gulen is a rival political Islamist who had a falling out with
Erdogan. The Turkish president
accuses Gulen of organizing the unsuccessful July 2016 coup. At the time Flynn
spoke favorably about the military trying to overthrow Erdogan. He also
criticized Turkey for allowing terrorists to cross the border into Syria.
But after receiving the contract to help Turkey, he did a 180-degree turn and supported
Erdogan's policies.
"Flynn believes whatever is good for Flynn is good for America," Kani Xulam, director of
the American Kurdish Information Network, tells me. "The minute they put money in his bank
account, he became pro-Turkey. That was the shocking part."
Kidnapping
In September 2016, Flynn arranged
a meeting between former US officials and Turkish leaders, including the country's foreign
minister, energy minister, and Erdogan's son-in-law.
Participants at the meeting talked about kidnapping Gulen and bringing him to Turkey.
Former Central Intelligence Agency Director James Woolsey, who attended the meeting, said
they
discussed "a covert step in the dead of night to whisk this guy away."
In December, Flynn
wrote an op-ed for the influential Washington publication The Hill in which he
compared Gulen to both Osama bin Laden and Ayatollah Khomeini. According to analyst Cook, the
op-ed could have been written in Ankara: "It was all Turkey's talking points."
Flynn didn't bother to tell The Hill editors that he was a paid lobbyist for
Turkey.
Flynn became part of Trump's transition team after November 2016, and he used the position
to push anti-Kurdish policies. At that time, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces were on
the verge of taking control of the ISIS-controlled city of Raqqa, Syria. He told
the Obama Administration not to provide arms to the SDF and implemented that policy when
Trump came to power in 2017.
But Flynn's stint as National Security Advisor lasted for only three weeks. He was forced
to
resign after revelations of his phone call to the Russian ambassador. In March, Flynn
registered as a foreign agent
for Turkey.
In 2019, a federal jury convicted
Flynn's business associate, Bijan Kian, on two felonies: conspiracy to violate lobbying laws
and failure to register as a foreign agent for Turkey. Flynn was scheduled to testify
against Kian but changed his story at the last minute, causing problems for the
prosecution. The judge later tossed the
verdict, saying the prosecution didn't prove its case.
As part of an overall deal with federal prosecutors, Flynn was never charged in connection
with his lobbying for Turkey. It seems unlikely that he ever will.
Corrupt world
Flynn's activities are just one example of the corrupt world of foreign lobbying.
Recently, The New York Timesexposed how
defense contractor Raytheon pressured the Trump Administration to sell sophisticated weapons
to Saudi Arabia, which were then used to slaughter civilians in Yemen.
The Yemen war, which began in 2015, has
killed an estimated 100,000 people and displaced 80 percent of the population. Saudi air
bombardment of hospitals, schools, and other civilian targets helped create one of the
world's worst humanitarian crises. US arms manufacturers such as Lockheed Martin and Raytheon
have profited handsomely from the slaughter.
Until recently, Raytheon's vice president for government relations was a former career
army officer named Mark Esper. Today Esper is Secretary of Defense.
Crawling into bed with lobbyists is bipartisan activity. The Obama Administration
sold $10
billion in arms to Saudi Arabia and its allies. Trump has openly boasted that US arms sales
provide corporate profits and jobs at home.
"Trump has been more forthcoming praising US relations with Saudis because they want to
buy more weapons," Kurdish activist Xulam tells me. "He doesn't care what Saudis do with the
weapons."
Analyst Cook says the entire system of foreign lobbying needs major reform. "It's a
scandal that needs to be cleaned up," he says. "It's legalized foreign influence
peddling."
Reese Erlich's nationally distributed column, Foreign Correspondent, appears every two
weeks. Follow him on Twitter ,
@ReeseErlich; friend him on Facebook ;
and visit his webpage .
FBI Director Christopher Wray announced Friday that he has ordered the bureau to conduct an
internal review of its handling of the probe into former national security adviser
Michael Flynn , which has led to his years long battle in federal court.
It's like the fox guarding the hen house.
Wray's decision to investigate also comes late. The bureau's probe only comes after numerous
revelations that former senior FBI officials and agents involved in Flynn's case allegedly
engaged in misconduct to target the three star general, who became
President Donald Trump's most trusted campaign advisor.
Despite all these revelations, Wray has promised that the bureau will examine whether any
employees engaged in misconduct during the court of the investigation and "evaluate whether any
improvements in FBI policies and procedures need to be made." Based on what we know, how can we
trust an unbiased investigation from the very bureau that targeted Flynn.
Let me put it to you this way, over the past year Wray has failed to cooperate with
congressional investigations. In fact, many Republican lawmakers have called him out publicly
on the lack of cooperation saying, he cares more about protecting the bureaucracy than exposing
and resolving the culture of corruption within the bureau.
Wray's Friday announcement, is in my opinion, a ruse to get lawmakers off his back.
How can we trust that Wray's internal investigation will expose what actually happened in
the case of Flynn, or any of the other Trump campaign officials that were targeted by the
former Obama administration's intelligence and law enforcement apparatus.
It's Wray's FBI that continues to battle all the Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act
requests regarding the investigation into Flynn, along with any requests that would expose
information on the Russia hoax investigation. One in particular, is the request to obtain all
the text messages and emails sent and received by former Deputy Director
Andrew McCabe.
The FBI defended itself in its Friday announcement saying that in addition to its own
internal review, it has already cooperated with other inquiries assigned by Attorney General
William Barr. But still Wray has not approved subpoena's for employees and others that
lawmakers want to interview behind closed doors in Congress.
The recent documented discoveries by the Department of Justice make it all the more
imperative that an outside review of the FBI's handling of Flynn's case is required. Those
documents, which shed light on the actions by the bureau against Flynn, led to the DOJ's
decision to drop all charges against him. It was, after all, DOJ Attorney Jeffery Jensen who
discovered the FBI documents regarding Flynn that have aided his defense attorney Sidney Powell
in getting the truth out to they American people.
Powell, like me, doesn't believe an internal review is appropriate.
"Wow? And how is he going to investigate himself," she questioned in a Tweet. "And how could
anyone trust it? FBI Director Wray opens internal review into how bureau handled Michael Flynn
case."
--
Sidney Powell 🇺🇸⭐⭐⭐ (@SidneyPowell1) May
22, 2020
Last week, this reporter published the growing divide between Congressional Republicans on
the House Judiciary Committee and Wray. The lawmakers have accused Wray of failing to respond
to numerous requests to speak with FBI Special Agent Joe Pientka, who along with former FBI
Special Agent Peter Strzok, conducted the now infamous White House interview with Flynn on Jan.
24, 2017.
Further, the lawmakers have also requested to speak with the FBI's former head of the
Counterintelligence Division ,
Bill Priestap, whose unsealed handwritten notes revealed the possible 'nefarious'
motivations behind the FBI's investigation of Flynn.
"Michael Flynn was wronged by the FBI," said a senior Republican official last week, with
direct knowledge of the Flynn investigation.
"Sadly
Director Wray has shown little interest in getting to the bottom of what actually
happened with the Flynn case. Wray's lackadaisical attitude is an embarrassment to the rank
and file agents at the bureau, whose names have been dragged through the mud time and time
again throughout the Russia-gate investigation. Wray needs to wake up and work with Congress.
If he doesn't maybe it's time for him to go. "
Powell argued that Flynn had pleaded guilty because his former Special Counsel Robert
Mueller, along with his prosecutors, threatened to target his son. Those prosecutors also
coerced Flynn, whose finances were depleted by his previous defense team. Mueller's team got
Flynn to plead guilty to lying to the FBI about a phone conversation he had with the former
Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the presidential transition period. However, the
agents who interviewed him did not believe he was lying.
Currently the DOJ's request to dismiss the case is now pending before federal Judge Emmet
Sullivan. Sullivan has failed to grant the DOJ's request to dismiss the case and because of
that Powell has filed a writ of mandamus to the U.S. D.C. Court of Appeals seeking the
immediate removal of Sullivan, or to dismiss the prosecution as requested by the DOJ.
In the weeks before the 2016
presidential election, the most powerful former leaders of the Central Intelligence Agency did everything they could to elect
Hillary Clinton and defeat Donald Trump. President Obama’s former acting CIA chief Michael Morrell published a
full-throated endorsement of Clinton in the New York Times and claimed “Putin ha[s] recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting
agent of the Russian Federation,” while George W. Bush’s post-9/11 CIA and NSA Chief, Gen. Michael Hayden, writing in
the Washington Post, refrained from endorsing Clinton outright but echoed Morrell by accusing Trump of being a “useful fool,
some naif, manipulated by Moscow” and sounding “a little bit the conspiratorial Marxist.” Meanwhile, the intelligence community
under James Clapper and John Brennan fed
morsels to both the Obama DOJ and the US media to suggest a Trump/Russia conspiracy and fuel what became the Russiagate
investigation.
In his extraordinary election-advocating Op-Ed, Gen. Hayden, Bush/Cheney’s CIA Chief, candidly explained the reasons for the
CIA’s antipathy for Trump: namely, the GOP candidate’s stated opposition to allowing CIA regime change efforts in Syria to
expand as well as his opposition to arming Ukrainians with lethal weapons to fight Russia (supposedly “pro-Putin” positions
which, we are now all supposed
to forget, Obamalargely
shared).
As has been true since President Harry Truman’s creation of the CIA after World War II, interfering in other countries and
dictating or changing their governments — through campaigns of mass murder, military coups, arming guerrilla groups, the
abolition of democracy, systemic disinformation, and the imposition of savage despots — is regarded as a divine right, inherent
to American exceptionalism. Anyone who questions that or, worse, opposes it and seeks to impede it (as the CIA perceived Trump
was) is of suspect loyalties at best.
The CIA’s antipathy toward Trump continued after his election victory. The agency became the primary
vector for anonymous, illegal leaks designed to depict Trump as a Kremlin agent and/or blackmail victim. It worked to ensure
the leak of the Steele dossier that clouded at least the first two years of Trump’s presidency. It drove the scam Russiagate
conspiracy theories. And before Trump was even inaugurated, open warfare erupted between the president-elect and the agency to
the point where Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer explicitly warned Trump on the Rachel Maddow Show that he was
risking full-on subversion of his presidency by the agency:
Democrats, early in Trump’s presidency, saw clearly that the CIA had become one of Trump’s most devoted enemies, and thus began
viewing them as a valuable ally. Leading out-of-power Democratic foreign policy elites from the Obama administration and Clinton
campaign joined forces not only with Bush/Cheney neocons but also former CIA officials to create new foreign
policy advocacy groups designed to malign and undermine Trump and promote hawkish confrontation with nuclear-armed Russia.
Meanwhile, other ex-CIA and Homeland Security officials, such as John Brennan and James Clapper, became beloved liberal
celebrities by being hired
by MSNBC and CNN to deliver liberal-pleasing anti-Trump messaging that, on a virtually daily basis, masqueraded
as news.
Oliver Stone's "The Untold History of the US" opened up my eyes to how shameful our
history really is. The American Empire is no better then Great Britain, the very power this
country was supposed to rise above.
When a system is fully controlled by the big corporation/money every action and move must
serve it's master. Some are directly related to their immediate interest and some to prevent
any future challenge to it.
"...At CBS, we had been contacted by the CIA, as a matter of fact, by the time I became
the head of the news and public affairs division in 1954 shifts had been established ... I
was told about them and asked if I'd carry on with them...." -- Sid Mickelson, CBS News
President 1954-61, describing Operation Mockingbird
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, by John Perkins, was a NYTimes best-seller about the
methods CIA use to dominate countries in Latin America and in Asia. John Perkins never was
interviewed by Us Media.
"... Democrats, early in Trump's presidency, saw clearly that the CIA had become one of Trump's most devoted enemies, and thus began viewing them as a valuable ally. Leading out-of-power Democratic foreign policy elites from the Obama administration and Clinton campaign joined forces not only with Bush/Cheney neocons but also former CIA officials to create new foreign policy advocacy groups designed to malign and undermine Trump and promote hawkish confrontation with nuclear-armed Russia. Meanwhile, other ex-CIA and Homeland Security officials, such as John Brennan and James Clapper, became beloved liberal celebrities by being hired by MSNBC and CNN to deliver liberal-pleasing anti-Trump messaging that, on a virtually daily basis, masqueraded as news . ..."
In his extraordinary election-advocating op-ed, Hayden, Bush/Cheney's CIA chief, candidly
explained the reasons for the CIA's antipathy for Trump: namely, the GOP candidate's stated
opposition to allowing CIA regime change efforts in Syria to expand as well as his opposition
to arming Ukrainians with lethal weapons to fight Russia (supposedly "pro-Putin" positions
which, we are now all
supposed to forget,
Obama largely
shared ). As has been true since President Harry Truman's creation of the CIA after World
War II, interfering in other countries and dictating or changing their governments -- through
campaigns of mass murder, military coups, arming guerrilla groups, the abolition of democracy,
systemic disinformation, and the imposition of savage despots -- is regarded as a divine right,
inherent to American exceptionalism. Anyone who questions that or, worse, opposes it and seeks
to impede it (as the CIA perceived Trump was) is of suspect loyalties at best.
The CIA's antipathy toward Trump continued after his election victory. The agency became the
primary vector for anonymous illegal leaks designed to depict Trump as a Kremlin agent
and/or blackmail victim. It worked to ensure the leak of the Steele dossier that clouded at
least the first two years of Trump's presidency. It drove the scam Russiagate conspiracy
theories. And before Trump was even inaugurated, open warfare erupted between the
president-elect and the agency to the point where Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck
Schumer explicitly warned Trump on the Rachel Maddow Show that he was risking full-on
subversion of his presidency by the agency:
This turned out to be one of the most prescient and important (and creepy) statements of
the Trump presidency: from Chuck Schumer to Rachel Maddow - in early January, 2017, before
Trump was even inaugurated: pic.twitter.com/TUaYkksILG
Democrats, early in Trump's presidency, saw clearly that the CIA had become one of
Trump's most devoted enemies, and thus began viewing them as a valuable ally. Leading
out-of-power Democratic foreign policy elites from the Obama administration and Clinton
campaign joined forces not only with Bush/Cheney neocons but also former CIA officials to
create new
foreign policy advocacy groups designed to malign and undermine Trump and promote hawkish
confrontation with nuclear-armed Russia. Meanwhile, other ex-CIA and Homeland Security
officials, such as John Brennan and James Clapper, became beloved liberal celebrities by being
hired by MSNBC and CNN to deliver liberal-pleasing anti-Trump messaging that, on a
virtually daily basis, masqueraded as news .
The all-consuming Russiagate narrative that dominated the first three years of Trump's
presidency further served to elevate the CIA as a noble and admirable institution while
whitewashing its grotesque history. Liberal conventional wisdom held that Russian Facebook ads,
Twitter bots and the hacking and release of authentic, incriminating
DNC emails was some sort of unprecedented, off-the-charts, out-of-the-ordinary
crime-of-the-century attack, with several leading Democrats (including Hillary Clinton)
actually
comparing it to 9/11 and Pearl Harbor . The level of historical ignorance and/or jingostic
American exceptionalism necessary to believe this is impossible to describe. Compared to what
the CIA has done to dozens of other countries since the end of World War II, and what it
continues to do , watching Americans cast Russian interference in the 2016 election through
online bots and email hacking (even if one believes every claim made about it) as some sort of
unique and unprecedented crime against democracy is staggering. Set against what the CIA has
done and continues to do to "interfere" in the domestic affairs of other countries --
including Russia -- the 2016
election was, at most, par for the course for international affairs and, more accurately, a
trivial and ordinary act in the context of CIA interference. This propaganda was sustainable
because the recent history and the current function of the CIA has largely been
suppressed. Thankfully, a just-released book by journalist Vincent Bevins -- who
spent years as a foreign correspondent covering two countries still marred by brutal
CIA interference: Brazil for the Los Angeles Times and Indonesia for the Washington Post --
provides one of the best, most informative and most illuminating histories yet of this agency
and the way it has shaped the actual, rather than the propagandistic, U.S. role in the
world.
Entitled "The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program
that Shaped Our World," the book primarily documents the indescribably horrific campaigns of
mass murder and genocide the CIA sponsored in Indonesia as an instrument for destroying a
nonaligned movement of nations who would be loyal to neither Washington nor Moscow. Critically,
Bevins documents how the chilling success of that morally grotesque campaign led to its being
barely discussed in U.S. discourse, but then also serving as the foundation and model for
clandestine CIA interference campaigns in multiple other countries from Guatemala, Chile, and
Brazil to the Philippines, Vietnam, and Central America: the Jakarta Method.
Our newest episode of SYSTEM UPDATE, which debuts today at 2:00 p.m. on The Intercept's YouTube channel , is
devoted to a discussion of why this history is so vital: not just for understanding the current
international political order but also for distinguishing between fact and fiction in our
contemporary political discourse. In addition to my own observations on this topic, I speak to
Bevins about his book, about what the CIA really is and how it has shaped the world we still
inhabit, and why a genuine understanding of both international and domestic politics is
impossible without a clear grasp on this story.
In the weeks leading up to the 2016 election, the FBI offered to pay former British spy
Christopher Steele "significantly" for collecting intelligence on Michael Flynn, according to
the
Daily Caller 's Chuck Ross.
The FBI's proposal - made during an October 3, 2016 meeting in an unidentified European
city, and virtually ignored by the press - has taken on new significance in light of recent
documents exposing how the Obama administration targeted Flynn before and after president
Trump's upset victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016.
The inspector general's report, released on Dec. 9, 2019, said that FBI agents offered to
pay Steele "significantly" to collect intelligence from three separate "buckets" that the
bureau was pursuing as part of Crossfire Hurricane , its counterintelligence probe of four
Trump campaign associates.
One bucket was "Additional intelligence/reporting on specific, named individuals (such as
[Carter Page] or [Flynn]) involved in facilitating the Trump campaign-Russian relationship,"
the IG report stated.
FBI agents also sought contact with "any individuals or sub sources" who Steele could
provide to "serve as cooperating witnesses to assist in identifying persons involved in the
Trump campaign-Russian relationship."
Steele at the time had provided the FBI with reports he compiled alleging that members of
the Trump campaign had conspired with the Kremlin to influence the 2016 election. -
Daily Caller
Of note, Steele was promoting a discredited rumor that Flynn had an extramarital affair with
Svetlana Lokhova, a Russian-British academic who studied at the University of Cambridge. This
rumor was amplified by the Wall Street Journal and The Guardian in March, 2017.
According to the Inspector General's report, the FBI gave Steele a "general overview" of
their Crossfire Hurricane probe - including their efforts to surveil Trump campaign aides
George Papadopoulos and Carter Page, along with Paul Manafort and Flynn. In fact - some FBI
agents questioned whether the lead agent told Steel too much about the operation , according to
the IG report.
In recent weeks, the release of two documents raise questions about potential links between
the FBI's request of Steele and the Lokhova rumor .
One of the documents is a transcript of longtime John McCain associate David Kramer's
interview with the House Intelligence Committee. Kramer testified on Dec. 17, 2017,
that Steele
told him in December 2016 that he suspected that Flynn had an extramarital affair with a
Russian woman .
"There was one thing he mentioned to me that is not included here, and that is he believed
that Mr. Flynn had an extramarital affair with a Russian woman in the U.K .," Kramer told
lawmakers.
Kramer said that Steele conveyed that Flynn's alleged mistress was a "Russian woman" who
"may have been a dual citizen."
An FBI
memo dated Jan. 4, 2017, contained another allegation regarding Flynn and a mysterious
Russian woman.
The memo, which was provided to Flynn's lawyers on April 30, said that an FBI confidential
human source (CHS) told the bureau that they were present at an event that Flynn attended
while he was still working in the U.S. intelligence community . -
Daily Caller
Lokhova and Flynn have denied the rumors - with Lokhova's husband telling the Daily Caller
News Foundation that he picked his wife up after the Cambridge dinner where an FBI informant
said they 'left together in a cab.'
Meanwhile, a DIA official who was at the Cambridge event with Flynn also told the WSJ in
March 2017 that there was nothing inappropriate going on between Flynn and Lokhova.
"History," they say, "is written by the winners." But if you want to get at the fundamental
flaw, remove the last three words and you have it: "History is written."
Events cannot be
written, they can only be lived.
Just as a sun in a picture cannot give heat or light. The
problem is that those who live history seldom speak of it, it's much too traumatic for them.
And those who speak voluminously of it most likely did not live it.
kenny gordon ,
Nice comment, Howard.
When my Father [Royal Artillery] was told to stop fighting against my
Father-in-Law [Waffen SS], he was sent off to fight against MOSSAD in Palestine he witnessed
the brutal treatment handed out to the "indigenous people" and was very reluctant to talk
about his experience.. "By way of deception thou shalt do war"..!
During the US presidential election campaign, American media developed yet another
perception of Russia as reflected in the narrative of Trump's collusion with the Kremlin.
1 Having originated in liberal media and building on the previous perceptions of
neo-Soviet autocracy and foreign threat, the new perception of Russia was that of the enemy
that won the war against the United States. By electing the Kremlin's favored candidate,
America was defeated by Russia. As a CNN columnist wrote, "The Russians really are here,
infiltrating every corner of the country, with the single goal of disrupting the American way
of life." 2 The two assumptions behind the new media narrative were that Putin was an
enemy and that Trump was compromised by Putin. The inevitable conclusion was that Trump could
not be a patriot and potentially was a traitor prepared to act against US interests.
The new narrative was assisted by the fact that Trump presented a radically different
perspective on Russia than Clinton and the US establishment. The American political class had
been in agreement that Russia displayed an aggressive foreign policy seeking to destroy the
US-centered international order. Influential politicians, both Republicans and Democrats,
commonly referred to Russian president Putin as an extremely dangerous KGB spy with no soul.
Instead, Trump saw Russia's international interests as not fundamentally different from
America's. He advocated that the United States to find a way to align its policies and
priorities in defeating terrorism in the Middle East -- a goal that Russia shared -- with the
Kremlin's. Trump promised to form new alliances to "unite the civilized world against Radical
Islamic Terrorism" and to eradicate it "completely from the face of the Earth." 3 He hinted that he was prepared to revisit the thorny issues of Western
sanctions against (p.83) the Russian economy and the recognition of Crimea as a part of Russia.
Trump never commented on Russia's political system but expressed his admiration for Putin's
leadership and high level of domestic support. 4
Capitalizing on the difference between Trump's views and those of the Democratic Party
nominee, Hillary Clinton, the liberal media referred to Trump as the Kremlin-compromised
candidate. Commentators and columnists with the New York Times , such as Paul Krugman,
referred to Trump as the "Siberian" candidate. 5 Commentators and pundits, including those with academic and political
credentials, developed the theory that the United States was under attack. The former
ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, wrote in the Washington Post that Russia had
attacked "our sovereignty" and continued to "watch us do nothing" because of the partisan
divide. He compared the Kremlin's actions with Pearl Harbor or 9/11 and warned that Russia was
likely to perform repeat assaults in 2018 and 2020. 6 The historian Timothy Snyder went further, comparing the election of Trump to
a loss of war, which Snyder said was the basic aim of the enemy. Writing in the New York
Daily News , he asserted, "We no longer need to wonder what it would be like to lose a war
on our own territory. We just lost one to Russia, and the consequence was the election of
Donald Trump." 7
The election of Trump prompted the liberal media to discuss Russia-related fears. The
leading theory was that Trump would now compromise America's interests and rule the country on
behalf of Putin. Thomas Friedman of the New York Times called for actions against Russia
and praised "patriotic" Republican senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham for being tough on
Trump. 8 MSNBC host Rachel Maddow asked whether Trump was actually under Putin's
control. Citing Trump's views and his associates' travel to Moscow, she told viewers, "We are
also starting to see (p.84) what may be signs of continuing [Russian] influence in our country,
not just during the campaign but during the administration -- basically, signs of what could be
a continuing operation." 9 Another New York Times columnist, Nicholas Kristof, published a column
titled "There's a Smell of Treason in the Air," arguing that the FBI's investigation of the
Trump presidential campaign's collusion "with a foreign power so as to win an election" was an
investigation of whether such collusion "would amount to treason." 10 Responding to Trump's statement that his phone was tapped during the election
campaign, the Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum tweeted that "Trump's insane
'GCHQ tapped my phone' theory came from . . . Moscow." McFaul and many others then endorsed and
retweeted the message. 11
To many within the US media, Trump's lack of interest in promoting global institutions and
his publicly expressed doubts that the Kremlin was behind cyberattacks on the Democratic
National Committee (DNC) served to exacerbate the problem. Several intelligence leaks to the
press and investigations by Congress and the FBI contributed to the image of a president who
was not motivated by US interests. The US intelligence report on Russia's alleged hacking of
the US electoral system released on January 8, 2017, served to consolidate the image of Russia
as an enemy. Leaks to the press have continued throughout Trump's presidency. Someone in the
administration informed the press that Trump called Putin to congratulate him on his victory in
elections on March 18, 2018, despite Trump's advisers' warning against making such a call.
12
In the meantime, investigations of Trump's alleged "collusion" with Russia were failing to
produce substantive evidence. Facts that some associates of Trump sought to meet or met with
members of Russia's government did not lead to evidence of sustained contacts or collaboration.
It was not proven that the Kremlin's "black dossier" on Trump compiled by British intelligence
officer (p.85) Christopher Steele and leaked to CNN was truthful. Russian activity on American
social networks such as Facebook and Twitter was not found to be conclusive in determining
outcomes of the elections. 13 In February 2018, a year after launching investigation, Special Counsel
Robert Mueller indicted thirteen Russian nationals for allegedly interfering in the US 2016
presidential elections, yet their connection to Putin or Trump was not established. On March
12, 2018, Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Richard Burr stated that he had not yet seen
any evidence of collusion. 14 Representative Mike Conaway, the Republican leading the Russia investigation,
announced the end of the committee's probe of Russian meddling in the election. 15
Trump was also not acting toward Russia in the way the US media expected. His views largely
reflected those of the military and national security establishment and disappointed some of
his supporters. 16 The US National Security Strategy and new Defense Strategy presented Russia
as a leading security threat, alongside China, Iran, and North Korea. The president made it
clear that he wanted to engage in tough bargaining with Russia by insisting on American terms.
17 Instead of improving ties with Russia, let alone acting on behalf of the
Kremlin, Trump contributed to new crises in bilateral relations that had to do with the two
sides' principally different perceptions. While the Kremlin expected Washington to normalize
relations, the United States assumed Russia's weakness and expected it to comply with
Washington's priorities regarding the Middle East, Ukraine, and Afghanistan and nuclear and
cyber issues. 18 Trump also authorized the largest expulsion of Russian diplomats in US
history and ordered several missile strikes against Assad's Russia-supported positions in
Syria, each time provoking a crisis in relations with Moscow. Even Secretary of State Rex
Tillerson, whom Rachel Maddow suspected of being appointed on Putin's advice to "weaken" the
State Department and "bleed out" (p.86) the FBI, 19 was replaced by John Bolton. The latter's foreign policy reputation was that
of a hawk, including on Russia. 20
Responding to these developments, the media focused on fears of being attacked by the
Kremlin and on Trump not doing enough to protect the country. These fears went beyond the
alleged cyber interference in the US presidential elections and included infiltration of
American media and social networks and attacks on congressional elections and the country's
most sensitive infrastructure, such as electric grids, water-processing plants, banking
networks, and transportation facilities. In order to prevent such developments, media
commentators and editorial writers recommended additional pressures on the Kremlin and
counteroffensive operations. 21 One commentator recommended, as the best defense from Russia's plans to
interfere with another election in the United States, launching a cyberattack on Russia's own
presidential elections in March 2018, to "disrupt the stability of Vladimir Putin's regime."
22 A New York Times editorial summarized the mood by challenging
President Trump to confront Russia further: "If Mr. Trump isn't Mr. Putin's lackey, it's past
time for him to prove it." 23 The burden of proof was now on Trump's shoulders. Opposition to the
"Collusion" Narrative
In contrast to highly critical views of Russia in the dominant media, conservative,
libertarian, and progressive sources offered different assessments. Initially, opposition to
the collusion narrative came from the alternative media, yet gradually -- in response to scant
evidence of Trump's collusion -- it incorporated voices within the mainstream.
The conservative media did not support the view that Russia "stole" elections and presented
Trump as a patriot who wanted to make America great rather than develop "cozy" relationships
with (p.87) the Kremlin. Writing in the American Interest , Walter Russell Mead argued
that Trump aimed to demonstrate the United States' superiority by capitalizing on its military
and technological advantages. He did not sound like a Russian mole. Challenging the liberal
media, the author called for "an intellectually solvent and emotionally stable press" and wrote
that "if President Trump really is a Putin pawn, his foreign policy will start looking much
more like Barack Obama's." 24 Instead of viewing Trump as compromised by the Kremlin, sources such
Breitbart and Fox News attributed the blame to the deep state, "the complex of
bureaucrats, technocrats, and plutocrats," including the intelligence agencies, that seeks to
"derail, or at least to de-legitimize, the Trump presidency" by engaging in accusations and
smear campaigns. 25
Echoing Trump's own views, some conservatives expressed their admiration for Putin as a
dynamic leader superior to Obama. In particular, they praised Putin for his ability to defend
Russia's "traditional values" and great-power status. 26 Neoconservative and paleoconservative publications like the National
Review , the Weekly Standard, Human Events Online , and others critiqued Obama's
"feckless foreign policy," characterized by "fruitless accommodationism," contrasting it with
Putin's skilled and calculative geopolitical "game of chess." 27 A Washington Post / ABC News poll revealed that among Republicans, 75%
approved of Trump's approach on Russia relative; 40% of all respondents approved. 28 This did not mean that conservatives and Republicans were "infiltrated" by
the Kremlin. Mutual Russian and American conservative influences were limited and
nonstructured. 29 The approval of Putin as a leader by American conservatives meant that they
shared a certain commonality of ideas and were equally critical of liberal media and
globalization. 30
Progressive and libertarian media also did not support the narrative of collusion. Gary
Leupp at CounterPunch found the (p.88) narrative to be serving the purpose of reviving
and even intensifying "Cold War-era Russophobia," with Russia being an "adversary" "only in
that it opposes the expansion of NATO, especially to include Ukraine and Georgia." 31 Justin Raimondo at Antiwar.com questioned the narrative by pointing to
Russia's bellicose rhetoric in response to Trump's actions. 32 Glenn Greenwald and Zaid Jilani at Intercept reminded readers that,
overall, Trump proved to be far more confrontational toward Russia than Obama, thereby
endangering America. 33 In particular Trump severed diplomatic ties with Russia, armed Ukraine,
appointed anti-Russia hawks, such as ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, National
Security Advisor John Bolton, and Secretary of State Michal Pompeo to key foreign policy
positions, antagonized Russia's Iranian allies, and imposed tough sanctions against Russian
business with ties to the Kremlin. 34
The dominant liberal media ignored opposing perspectives or presented them as compromised by
Russia. For instance, in amplifying the view that Putin "stole" the elections, the
Washington Post sought to discredit alternative sources of news and commentaries as
infiltrated by the Kremlin's propaganda. On November 24, 2016, the newspaper published an
interview with the executive director of a new website, PropOrNot, who preferred to remain
anonymous, and claimed that the Russian government circulated pro-Trump articles before the
election. Without providing evidence on explaining its methodology, the group identified more
than two hundred websites that published or echoed Russian propaganda, including WikiLeaks and
the Drudge Report , left-wing websites such as CounterPunch, Truthout, Black Agenda
Report, Truthdig , and Naked Capitalism , as well as libertarian venues such as
Antiwar.com and the Ron Paul Institute. 35 Another mainstream liberal outlet, CNN, warned the American people to be
vigilant against the Kremlin's alleged efforts to spread propaganda: "Enormous numbers of
(p.89) Americans are not only failing to fight back, they are also unwitting collaborators --
reading, retweeting, sharing and reacting to Russian propaganda and provocations every day."
36
However, voices of dissent were now heard even in the mainstream media. Masha Gessen of the
New Yorker said that Trump's tweet about Robert Mueller's indictments and Moscow's
"laughing its ass off" was "unusually (perhaps accidentally) accurate." 37 She pointed out that Russians of all ideological convictions "are remarkably
united in finding the American obsession with Russian meddling to be ridiculous." 38 The editor of the influential Politico , Blake Hounshell, confessed
that he was a Russiagate skeptic because even though "Trump was all too happy to collude with
Putin," Mueller's team never found a "smoking gun." 39 In reviewing the book on Russia's role in the 2016 election Russian
Roulette , veteran New York Times reporter Steven Lee Myers noted that the Kremlin's
meddling "simply exploited the vulgarity already plaguing American political campaigns" and
that the veracity of many accusations remained unclear. 40Explaining Russophobia
The high-intensity Russophobia within the American media, overblown even by the standards of
previous threat narratives, could no longer be explained by differences in national values or
by bilateral tensions. The new fear of Russia also reflected domestic political polarization
and growing national unease over America's identity and future direction.
The narrative of collusion in the media was symptomatic of America's declining confidence in
its own values. Until the intervention in Iraq in 2004, optimism and a sense of confidence
prevailed in American social attitudes, having survived even the terrorist attack on the United
States on September 11, 2001. The (p.90) country's economy was growing and its position in the
world was not challenged. However, the disastrous war in Iraq, the global financial crisis of
2008, and Russia's intervention in Georgia in August 2008 changed that. US leadership could no
longer inspire the same respect, and a growing number of countries viewed it as a threat to
world peace. 41 Internally, the United States was increasingly divided. Following
presidential elections in November 2016, 77% of Americans perceived their country as "greatly
divided on the most important values." 42 The value divide had been expressed in partisanship and political
polarization long before the 2016 presidential elections. 43 The Russia issue deepened this divide. According to a poll taken in October
2017, 63% of Democrats, but just 38% of Republicans, viewed "Russia's power and influence" as a
major threat to the well-being of the United States. 44
During the US 2016 presidential elections, Russia emerged as a convenient way to accentuate
differences between Democratic and Republican candidates, which in previous elections were
never as pronounced or defining. The new elections deepened the partisan divide because of
extreme differences between the two main candidates, particularly on Russia. Donald Trump
positioned himself as a radical populist promising to transform US foreign policy and "drain
the swamp" in Washington. His position on Russia seemed unusual because, by election time, the
Kremlin had challenged the United States' position in the world by annexing Crimea, supporting
Ukrainian separatism, and possibly hacking the DNC site.
The Russian issue assisted Clinton in stressing her differences from Trump. Soon after it
became known that DNC servers were hacked, she embraced the view that Russia was behind the
cyberattacks. She accused Russia of "trying to wreak havoc" in the United States and threatened
retaliation. 45 In his turn, Trump used Russia to challenge Clinton's commitment to national
security (p.91) and ability to serve as commander in chief. In particular, he drew public
attention to the FBI investigation into Clinton's use of a private server for professional
correspondence, and even noted sarcastically that the Russians should find thirty thousand
missing emails belonging to her. The latter was interpreted by many in liberal media and
political circles as a sign of Trump's being unpatriotic. 46 Clinton capitalized on this interpretation. She referred to the issue of
hacking as the most important one throughout the campaign and challenged Trump to agree with
assessments of intelligence agencies that cyberattacks were ordered by the Kremlin. She
questioned Trump's commitments to US national security and accused him of being a "puppet" for
President Putin. 47 Following Trump's victory, Clinton told donors that her loss should be partly
attributed to Putin and the election hacks directed by him. 48
Clinton's arguments fitted with the overall narrative embraced by the mainstream media since
roughly 2005 characterizing Russia as abusive and aggressive. Clinton viewed Russia as an
oppressive autocratic power that was aggressive abroad to compensate for domestic weaknesses.
Previously, in her book Hard Choices , then-secretary of state Clinton described Putin
as "thin-skinned and autocratic, resenting criticism and eventually cracking down on dissent
and debate." 49 This view was shared by President Obama, who publicly referred to Russia as a
"regional power that is threatening some of its immediate neighbors not out of strength but out
of weakness." 50 During the election's campaign, Clinton argued that the United States should
challenge Russia by imposing a no-fly zone in Syria with the objective of removing Assad from
power, strengthening sanctions against the Russian economy, and providing lethal weapons to
Ukraine in order to contain the potential threat of Russia's military invasion.
Following the elections, the partisan divide deepened, with liberal establishment attacking
the "unpatriotic" Trump. Having (p.92) lost the election, Clinton partly attributed Trump's
victory to the role of Russia and advocated an investigation into Trump's ties to Russia. In
February 2017 the Clinton-influenced Center for American Progress brought on a former State
Department official to run a new Moscow Project. 51 As acknowledged by the New Yorker , members of the Clinton inner
circle believed that the Obama administration deliberately downplayed DNC hacking by the
Kremlin. "We understand the bind they were in," one of Clinton's senior advisers said. "But
what if Barack Obama had gone to the Oval Office, or the East Room of the White House, and
said, 'I'm speaking to you tonight to inform you that the United States is under attack . . .'
A large majority of Americans would have sat up and taken notice . . . it is bewildering -- it
is baffling -- it is hard to make sense of why this was not a five-alarm fire in the White
House." 52
In addition to Clinton, many other members of the Washington establishment, including some
Republicans, spread the narrative of Russia "attacking" America. Republican politicians who
viewed Clinton's defeat and the hacking attacks in military terms included those of chairman of
the Senate Armed Services Committee John McCain, who stated, "When you attack a country, it's
an act of war," 53 and former vice president Dick Cheney, who called Russia's alleged
interference in the US election "a very serious effort made by Mr. Putin" that "in some
quarters that would be considered an act of war." 54 A number of Democrats also engaged in the rhetoric of war, likening the
Russian "attack," as Senator Ben Cardin did, to a "political Pearl Harbor." 55
Rumors and leaks, possibly by members of US intelligence agencies, 56 and activities of liberal groups that sought to discredit Trump contributed
to the Russophobia. In addition to the DNC hacking accusations, many fears of Russia in the
media were based on the assumption that contacts, let alone cooperation with the (p.93)
Kremlin, was unpatriotic and implied potentially "compromising" behavior: praise of Putin as a
leader, possible business dealings with Russian "oligarchs," and meetings with Russian
officials such Ambassador Sergei Kislyak. 57
There were therefore two sides to the Russia story in the US liberal media -- rational and
emotional. The rational side had to do with calculations by Clinton-affiliated circles and
anti-Russian groups pooling their resources to undermine Trump and his plans to improve
relations with Russia. Among others, these resources included dominance within the liberal
media and leaks by the intelligence community. The emotional side was revealed by the liberal
elites' values and ability to promote fears of Russia within the US political class and the
general public. Popular emotions of fear and frustration with Russia already existed in the
public space due to the old Cold War memories, as well as disturbing post–Cold War
developments that included wars in Chechnya, Georgia, and Ukraine. In part because of these
memories, factions such as those associated with Clinton were successful in evoking in the
public liberal mind what historian Richard Hofstadter called the "paranoid style" or "the sense
of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy." 58 Mobilized by liberal media to pressure Trump, these emotions became an
independent factor in the political struggle inside Washington. The public display of fear and
frustration with Russia and Trump could only be sustained by a constant supply of new
"suspicious" developments and intense discussion by the media.
Yet another bombshell development emerged Thursday in the case of former National Security
Adviser Gen. Michael Flynn: the release of additional exculpatory evidence FBI officials had
withheld from the courts and the defense for three years.
Crucially, this includes evidence that the Bureau's official "302 report" filed by the lead
agent who interviewed Flynn was edited multiple times, including by an official who never
participated in the interview.
Thursday's revelations come on top of yesterday's disclosures indicating an apparent attempt
by FBI officials to trap Flynn into committing a criminal offense during an interview.
The new revelation could prove even more significant: In addition to the apparently
calculated effort to get Flynn to commit perjury or obstruction, top FBI figures, including FBI
Deputy Assistant Director Peter Strzok and FBI lawyer Lisa Page, repeatedly altered the "302
report" that was filed after the Flynn interview.
That interview was conducted under highly unusual circumstances. Ordinarily, an FBI
interview of a top West Wing official would be requested through the White House Counsel's
office, and would be conducted in the presence of legal counsel representing the official being
interviewed.
That did not occur in the case of the FBI's interview with Flynn, and Comey later stated
that under "a more organized administration" he "probably wouldn't have gotten away with
it."
Initially, when the lead FBI agent handling the case was asked whether Flynn lied during the
interview, he stated that he did not believe so.
But over the coming days Strzok and Page would edit and revise the agent's 302 report
repeatedly, according to a document providing text messages between FBI officials that the
defense counsel finally received this week.
Prosecutors and investigators are required to turn over information that might tend to
indicate a suspect's innocence to the defense counsel prior to trial and sentencing. Most legal
analysts would consider the information withheld from Flynn's legal team potentially
exculpatory.
An inside source familiar with efforts to defend Gen. Flynn tells Newsmax an unadulterated,
original 302 document exists that was created by the lead agent from his notes of the interview
with Flynn.
Jonathan Turley, the George Washington University law professor who testified before the
House during President Trump's impeachment, wrote Thursday the decision to keep the case open
occurred when "Special counsel Robert Mueller decided to bring the dubious charge."
In a column posted on TheHill.com on Thursday, Turley said the case against Flynn should be
dismissed. "Justice demands a dismissal of his prosecution," he wrote.
At the time Flynn was being prosecuted, Mueller was seeking evidence the Trump campaign
colluded with Russia in the 2016 campaign.
Critics say he was prosecuting Flynn to get him to turn state's witness against Trump, but
the general never implicated him.
Mueller eventually determined there was no evidence of a Russian-collusion conspiracy. But
by then Flynn, under intense financial pressure from the prosecution and buckling under the
threat that his son could be drawn into a legal quagmire, had pled guilty to one count of lying
to the FBI.
He has since requested to withdraw that plea, and he is awaiting sentencing.
President Trump weighed in on the controversial case Thursday morning tweeting, "What
happened to General Michael Flynn, a war hero, should never be allowed to happen to a citizen
of the United States again!"
Later the president told reporters he believes Flynn is "in the process of being
exonerated."
Former New York City Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik reacted strongly on Thursday to the
news FBI officials to altered a 302 report and reopened the case when the initial analysis
indicated no crime had been committed.
Kerik told Newsmax Thursday that if evidence or records had been unduly altered under his
watch as police commissioner, he would have referred the matter to the district attorney for
possible prosecution.
"They intentionally went back and doctored the original 302," he said. "That's because they
were not looking for the truth.
"They were looking for a mechanism to trap Gen. Flynn, to prosecute him, to get him fired in
order to go after the president. That was their motive, that was their agenda. It's absolutely
clear at this point they were not looking for the truth."
Kerik added, "This was done at the highest levels of the FBI. At the most senior level of
the FBI, they falsified records, they suppressed evidence.
"This is irresponsible, it's outrageous They used and abused their authority to deprive Gen.
Flynn of his constitutional right to freedom," he said.
According to the source, as supported by text messages also obtained by Newsmax, Stzrok, who
also participated in the Flynn interview, rewrote the 302 extensively -- although a text
message from him stated he tried not to "completely re-write it so as to save [redacted]
voice," presumably a reference to the lead agent who originally wrote it.
Stzrok then shared the document with a "pissed off" Page, who had not participated in the
interview, and who revised it significantly again, according to the Newsmax source.
The objective of the interview was to probe whether Flynn had violated the Logan Act, an
18th-century statute that has never been used in any criminal conviction. The Act makes it a
crime for a U.S. citizens to interfere with the conduct of U.S. foreign policy. Many legal
scholars find the law to be unconstitutional.
The documents received by Newsmax indicate the case had virtually been closed –
suggesting the lead agent was satisfied no crime had been committed -- prior to it being
reopened by the direct intervention of Strzok and Page.
The documents, for example, show the probe of Flynn was about to be put to bed when the lead
agent received a text from Strzok stating, "Hey, if you haven't closed [the case], don't do so
yet."
Apparently, Page was pleasantly surprised to find the matter had not yet been closed.
On Feb. 10, 2017, Page texted Strzok, "This document pisses me off. You didn't even attempt
to make this cogent and readable? This is lazy work on your part."
Strzok replied, "Lisa you didn't see it before my edits that went into what I sent you. I
was 1) trying to completely re-write the thing so as to save [the lead agent's] voice and 2)
get it out to you for general review and comment in anticipation of needing it soon."
Wednesday's revelation included notes of a meeting conducted a short time after the 2016
election between FBI Director James Comey and Deputy Director Andrew McCabe. The notes stated,
"What is our goal? Truth and admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him
fired?"
The notes were written by then-FBI head of counterintelligence Bill Priestap.
It is not. Forces behind Russiagate are intact and still have the same agenda. CrowdStrike
was just a tool. As long as Full Spectrum Dominance dourine is alive, Russiagate will flourish in
one form or another
Notable quotes:
"... The need for a scapegoat to blame for Hillary Clinton's snatching defeat out of the jaws victory also played a role; as did the need for the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think-Tank complex (MICIMATT) to keep front and center in the minds of Americans the alleged multifaceted threat coming from an "aggressive" Russia. (Recall that John McCain called the, now disproven , "Russian hacking" of the DNC emails an "act of war.") ..."
"... Though the corporate media is trying to bury it, the Russiagate narrative has in the past few weeks finally collapsed with the revelation that CrowdStrike had no evidence Russia took anything from the DNC servers and that the FBI set a perjury trap for Gen. Michael Flynn. There was already the previous government finding that there was no collusion between Trump and Russia and the indictment of a Russian troll farm that supposedly was destroying American democracy with $100,000 in Facebook ads was dropped after the St. Petersburg defendants sought discovery. ..."
"... Given the diffident attitude the Security State plotters adopted regarding hiding their tracks, Durham's challenge, with subpoena power, is not as formidable as were he, for example, investigating a Mafia family. ..."
"... Meanwhile, the corporate media have all been singing from the same sheet since Trump had the audacity a week ago to coin yet another "-gate" -- this time "Obamagate." Leading the apoplectic reaction in corporate media, Saturday's Washington Post offered a pot-calling-the-kettle-black pronouncement by its editorial board entitled "The absurd cynicism of 'Obamagate"? ..."
"... So if we dug in and found large payments from George Soros or Mrs Clinton to these 'journalists', what crime could they be accused of? No crimes, I don't think. ..."
"... There never was anything to Russiagate. It was always just politics. I knew that from the beginning. There was, however, a lot of something to the torture scandal. Obama said "We are not going to look back." And now Gina Haspel, one of the chief torturers, partly responsible for destroying the torture tapes, despite a court order to preserve them, is now head of the CIA. ..."
"... Drain the Swamp my ***. He's started by firing all the IG's? Trump "looking back," not forward. He could start by investigating Gina Haspel. ..."
"... For example, Foglesong argued that "a vital factor in the revival of the crusade in the 1970s was the need to expunge doubts about American virtue instilled by the Vietnam War, revelations about CIA covert actions, and the Watergate scandal." ..."
"... By tracing American representations of Russia over the last 130 years, Foglesong illuminated three of the strongest notions that have informed American attitudes toward Russia: (1) a messianic faith that America could inspire sweeping overnight transformation from autocracy to democracy; (2) a notion that despite historic differences, Russia and America are very much akin, so that Russia, more than any other country, is America's "dark double;" (3) an extreme antipathy to "evil" leaders who Americans blame for thwarting what they believe to be the natural triumph of the American mission. These expectations and emotions continue to effect how American journalists and politicians write and talk about Russia. "My hope," Foglesong concluded, "is that by seeing how these attitudes have distorted American views of Russia for more than a century, we may begin to be able to escape their grip." ..."
Seldom mentioned among the motives behind the persistent drumming on alleged Russian
interference was an over-arching need to help the Security State hide their tracks.
The need for a scapegoat to blame for Hillary Clinton's snatching defeat out of the jaws
victory also played a role; as did the need for the
Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think-Tank complex (MICIMATT) to
keep front and center in the minds of Americans the alleged multifaceted threat coming from an
"aggressive" Russia. (Recall that John McCain called the, now
disproven , "Russian hacking" of the DNC emails an "act of war.")
But that was then. This is now.
Though the corporate media is trying to bury it, the Russiagate narrative has in the past
few weeks finally
collapsed with the revelation that CrowdStrike had no
evidence Russia took anything from the DNC servers and that the FBI set
a perjury trap for Gen. Michael Flynn. There was already the previous government finding that
there was no collusion between Trump and Russia and the indictment of a Russian troll farm that
supposedly was destroying American democracy with $100,000 in Facebook ads was dropped after
the St. Petersburg defendants sought discovery.
All that's left is to discover how this all happened.
Attorney General William Barr, and U.S. Attorney John Durham, whom Barr commissioned to
investigate this whole sordid mess seem intent on getting to the bottom of it. The possibility
that Trump will not chicken out this time, and rather will challenge the Security State looms
large since he felt personally under attack.
Writing on the Wall
Given the diffident attitude the Security State plotters adopted regarding hiding their
tracks, Durham's challenge, with subpoena power, is not as formidable as were he, for example,
investigating a Mafia family.
Plus, former NSA Director Adm. Michael S. Rogers reportedly is cooperating. The
handwriting is on the wall. It remains to be seen what kind of role in the scandal Barack
Obama may have played.
But former directors James Comey, James Clapper, and John Brennan, captains of Obama's
Security State, can take little solace from Barr's remarks Monday to a reporter who asked about
Trump's recent claims that top officials of the Obama administration, including the former
president had committed crimes. Barr replied:
"As to President Obama and Vice President Biden, whatever their level of involvement,
based on the information I have today, I don't expect Mr. Durham's work will lead to a
criminal investigation of either man. Our concerns over potential criminality is focused on
others."
In a more ominous vein, Barr gratuitously added that law enforcement and intelligence
officials were involved in "a false and utterly baseless Russian collusion narrative against
the president. It was a grave injustice, and it was unprecedented in American history."
Meanwhile, the corporate media have all been singing from the same sheet since Trump had the
audacity a week ago to coin yet another "-gate" -- this time "Obamagate." Leading the
apoplectic reaction in corporate media, Saturday's Washington Post
offered a pot-calling-the-kettle-black pronouncement by its editorial board entitled "The
absurd cynicism of 'Obamagate"?
The outrage voiced by the Post called to mind disgraced FBI agent Peter Strzok's indignant
response to criticism of the FBI by candidate Trump, in a Oct. 20, 2016 text exchange with FBI
attorney Lisa Page:
Strzok: I am riled up. Trump is a f***ing idiot, is unable to provide a coherent
answer.
Strzok -- I CAN'T PULL AWAY, WHAT THE F**K HAPPENED TO OUR COUNTRY
Page -- I don't know. But we'll get it back. We're America. We rock.
Strzok -- Donald just said "bad hombres"
Strzok -- Trump just said what the FBI did is disgraceful.
Less vitriolic, but incisive commentary came from widely respected author and lawyer Glenn
Greenwald on May 14, four days after Trump coined "Obamagate": ( See "System Update with Glenn
Greenwald -- The Sham Prosecution of Michael Flynn").
For a shorter, equally instructive video of Greenwald on the broader issue of Russia-gate,
see this clip from a March 2019 Democracy Now! -sponsored debate he had with David Cay Johnston
titled, "As Mueller Finds No Collusion, Did Press Overhype Russiagate? Glenn Greenwald vs.
David Cay Johnston":
(The entire
debate is worth listening to). I found one of the comments below the Democracy Now! video
as big as a bummer as the commentator did:
"I think this is one of the most depressing parts about the whole situation. In their
dogmatic pushing for this false narrative, the Russiagaters might have guaranteed Trump a
second term. They have done more damage to our democracy than Russia ever has done and will
do ." (From "Clamity2007")
In any case, Johnston, undaunted by his embarrassment at the hands of Greenwald, is still at
it, and so is the avuncular Frank Rich -- both of them some 20 years older than Greenwald and
set in their evidence-impoverished, media-indoctrinated ways.
... ... ...
Uncle Frank, 40 seconds ago
So if we dug in and found large payments from George Soros or Mrs Clinton to these
'journalists', what crime could they be accused of? No crimes, I don't think.
But when journalists are revealed to be issuing paid-for propaganda/lies mixed with their
own internal opinions, and their publisher allows it to be presented as if it were reporting
rather than opinion, said writers, editors, and publishers are relegated to obscurity and
derision.
Their work will never be taken seriously again by anyone who wasn't already
brain-washed.
They don't get that, I guess.
QABubba, 47 minutes ago (Edited)
There never was anything to Russiagate. It was always just politics. I knew that from the
beginning. There was, however, a lot of something to the torture scandal. Obama said "We are not
going to look back." And now Gina Haspel, one of the chief torturers, partly responsible for
destroying the torture tapes, despite a court order to preserve them, is now head of the
CIA.
General Flynn was so involved with Turkey he should have been registered as a foreign
agent.
And as I have said before, the real crime was laundering Russian Mafia/Heroin money
through Deutsche Bank into New York real estate. It is curious that Turkey is also a huge
transport spot for heroin into the
EU. And France and other EU nations have a migrant population that lives off the drug
trade.
Drain the Swamp my ***. He's started by firing all the IG's? Trump "looking back," not forward. He could start by investigating Gina Haspel.
The MSM disinformation campaign with consistent common talking points is not difficult to
see with a little discernment. The bigger question is has this happened organically or is there a larger agency
manipulating the public discourse?
"By 1905," Foglesong stated, "this fundamental reorientation of American views of Russia
had set up a historical pattern in which missionary zeal and messianic euphoria would be
followed by disenchantment and embittered denunciation of Russia's evil and oppressive
rulers." The first cycle, according to Foglesong, culminated in 1905, when the October
Manifesto, perceived initially by Americans as a transformation to democracy, gave way to a
violent socialist revolt. Foglesong observed similar cycles of euphoria to despair during the
collapse of the tsarist government in 1917, during the partial religious revival of World War
II, and during the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s
Crucial to Foglesong's analysis was how these cycles coincided with a contemporaneous need
to deflect attention away from America's own blemishes and enhance America's claim to its
global mission.
For example, Foglesong argued that "a vital factor in the revival of the crusade in the
1970s was the need to expunge doubts about American virtue instilled by the Vietnam War,
revelations about CIA covert actions, and the Watergate scandal."
By tracing American representations of Russia over the last 130 years, Foglesong
illuminated three of the strongest notions that have informed American attitudes toward
Russia: (1) a messianic faith that America could inspire sweeping overnight transformation
from autocracy to democracy; (2) a notion that despite historic differences, Russia and
America are very much akin, so that Russia, more than any other country, is America's "dark
double;" (3) an extreme antipathy to "evil" leaders who Americans blame for thwarting what
they believe to be the natural triumph of the American mission. These expectations and
emotions continue to effect how American journalists and politicians write and talk about
Russia. "My hope," Foglesong concluded, "is that by seeing how these attitudes have distorted
American views of Russia for more than a century, we may begin to be able to escape their
grip."
Moribundus, 3 hours ago
America's imperialism rules: Never to admit a fault or wrong; never to accept blame;
concentrate on one enemy at a time; blame that enemy for everything that goes wrong; take
advantage of every opportunity to raise a political whirlwind.
Kidbuck, 5 hours ago
Trump hasn't engaged in a fight in his life. He's a sissy at heart wants to negotiate. He
can't even do that right. He's caved on nearly every campaign promise he made. The only thing
his administration fights for is their salary and their retirement. Hillary still waddles
free and farts in his general direction.
ChaoKrungThep, 4 hours ago
Trump the Mafia punk, like his dad, and draft dodger like his German grand dad. Barr, old
CIA asset from the Clinton-Mena coke smuggling op. This crappy crew is running their masters'
game in front of the redneck rabble who are dumber than their mutts.
Save_America1st, 9 hours ago
Geez...how far behind can most of these assholes be after all these years????
For one...there was no "Russia-gate". It was all a hoax from the beginning, and anyone
with a few functioning brain cells knew that from the start.
And as of about 3 years ago we have all known this as "Obamagate" for the most part...we
all knew the corruption of the hoax totally led up to O-Scumbag.
And now as of the recent disclosures it is a total fact.
Haven't most of you been watching Dan Bongino for over 2 years now and haven't you read
his books? Haven't you been reading Sarah Carter and John Soloman among others for nearly 3
years now???
Surely, you haven't been just sitting around sucking leftist media **** for over 3 years,
right???????? I'm sure you haven't.
So why is this article even necessary on ZeroHedge?????
We already knew and have known the truth since before even the 2016 election. Drop it.
Posa, 9 hours ago
So funny. The 85 Year old "American century' is palpably disintegrating before our very
eyes. In particular the Deep State permanent bureaucracy is completely untethered and facing
what seems to be a Great Reckoning in the form of Barr- Durham. Cognitve Derangement prevails
in the press and spills overto the body politic. The country teeters a slo-mo Civil War.
Meanwhile, The dollar is disintegrating and we seem to face an economic abyss, the Terminal
Depression. Real "last Days of Rome" stuff.
BaNNeD oN THe RuN, 5 hours ago (Edited)
The Israeli dual citizens like Adelson and Mercer bought the Presidency.
Mossad was the organization handling the mole Seth Rich.
Blaming Russia also worked for those 2 groups because it deflected attention away from
(((them))).
Ray McGovern, being ex-intel, must know this to be true.
LetThemEatRand, 11 hours ago
Russiagate. The supposed target of said coup d'etat just Presided over the largest bailout
of banks ever by a factor of five or more. Trump supporters are asleep for the bailout, Trump
haters are asleep for the bailout. Let's fight about transgender bathrooms and Russiagate,
shall we?
Was it Crowdstrike that had shown her the forensics data? This McCarthyist dog just keeps lying and keeps digging. The Obama administration
was as shameless as they were crooked.
"They all sound like kids that got caught raiding the cookie jar making up wild tales of innocence with cookie crumbs all over their
faces."
Notable quotes:
"... Opening your eyes wider while speaking doesn't make you look more intense, credible, and believable... ..."
"... (((They))) are taught from birth to "lie to, cheat, rob, enslave, and kill, with impunity" all Americans they call "Goyim, a mindless herd of cattle, sub-human animals." ..."
"... Ah Evelyn, Evelyn! You're just an exposed resistance tool HRC campaign hack doubling downer unemployed TDS afflicted congress woman wannabe who has no shame no principals and no alibi. Lots of love and kisses to Bezos/WaPo for letting them share your pain with us. Here at the disinfo clearinghouse you couldn't get elected dog catcher. ..."
...Meanwhile, Poor Evelyn's campaign staff has become " emotionally exhausted " after her Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts
have been "overwhelmed with a stream of vile, vulgar and sometimes violent messages" in response to the plethora of conservative
outlets which have called her out for Russia malarkey.
There is evidence that Russian actors are contributing to these attacks. The same day that right-wing pundits began pumping
accusations, newly created Russian Twitter accounts picked them up.
Within a day, Russian "
disinformation clearinghouses " posted versions of the story . Many of the Twitter accounts boosting attacks have posted in
unison, a sign of inauthentic social media behavior.
She closes by defiantly claiming "I wasn't silenced in 2017, and I won't be silenced now."
No Evelyn, nobody is silencing you. You're being called out for your role in the perhaps the largest, most divisive hoax in US
history - which was based on faulty intelligence that includes CrowdStrike admitting they had
no proof of that Russia exfiltrated DNC emails, and Christopher Steele's absurd dossier based on his 'Russian sources.'
MrAToZ, 1 minute ago
What's with the bug eyes on these crooks?
Kurpak, 27 seconds ago
Opening your eyes wider while speaking doesn't make you look more intense, credible, and believable...
It makes you look ******* insane.
iAmerican10, 8 minutes ago (Edited)
(((They))) are taught from birth to "lie to, cheat, rob, enslave, and kill, with impunity" all Americans they call "Goyim, a mindless
herd of cattle, sub-human animals."
... ... ...
otschelnik, 35 minutes ago
Ah Evelyn, Evelyn! You're just an exposed resistance tool HRC campaign hack doubling downer unemployed TDS afflicted congress woman wannabe who
has no shame no principals and no alibi. Lots of love and kisses to Bezos/WaPo for letting them share your pain with us.
Here at the disinfo clearinghouse you couldn't get elected dog catcher.
But if the Russians were coming, really, wouldn't most Americans rush to Putin's
assistance? And wouldn't that make America a vastly better place?
Not unique either! The Russians did that in the X Century when, as tradition and legend
has it, they invited the Varangians (Vikings) to come to rule over them because the
squabbling parties (presumably the local variety of Reps and Dems) made the place (Kiev-Rus)
ungovernable. About time they (the Russians) return the favour!
incoming
NSA Flynn is speaking frequently with Russian Ambassador Kislyak " in a meeting documented
in the January 2017 memo by National Security Advisor Susan Rice, the unredacted first page of
which was obtained by CBS on Tuesday.
The FBI director admits he " has no indication thus far that Flynn has passed classified
information to Kislyak ," and no real basis for his insistence that the probe must go
on.
-- Catherine Herridge (@CBS_Herridge) May
19, 2020
The only thing backing his hunch that the meetings between the general and the Russian
diplomat " could be an issue "?
" The level of communication is unusual ," Comey tells Obama, according to Rice,
hinting that the National Security Council should " potentially " avoid passing "
sensitive information related to Russia " to Flynn.
The FBI director did not elaborate on what is supposed to be " unusual " about an
incoming foreign policy official speaking with a Russian counterpart, especially in the midst
of what was then a rapidly-unraveling diplomatic relationship between the two countries with
Obama expelling 35 Russian diplomats and imposing sanctions over
alleged-but-never-substantiated " election interference. " Given the circumstances, an
absence of communication might have been more unusual. But the timing is certainly
auspicious.
Rice, Flynn's predecessor who authored the memo, relates that the January 5 meeting followed
" a briefing by [Intelligence Committee] leadership on Russian hacking during the 2016
Presidential election ."
The previous day, the FBI field office assigned with investigating Flynn attempted to close
the case against him, called CROSSFIRE RAZOR, after having found " no derogatory
information " to justify continued inclusion in the overarching CROSSFIRE HURRICANE probe
(the " Russian collusion " investigation). They were blocked from doing so by Agent
Peter Strzok, who added that the orders to keep the investigation going came from the " 7th
floor " - i.e. agency leadership. The Flynn investigation had been underway since August,
beginning the day after Strzok discussed an 'insurance policy' that was supposed to keep
then-candidate Donald Trump out of office with Comey's deputy, Andrew McCabe. While Comey
describes his probe of Flynn as " proceeding 'by the book' " after Obama repeatedly
stresses he wants only a " by the book " investigation - both parties presumably
hoping to avoid exactly the sequence of revelatory events that are currently unfolding -
recently-unsealed documents from the case against Flynn indicate the general was entrapped,
with the FBI's goal being to " prosecute him or get him fired " with an ambush-style
interview.
They got both their wishes - after agents tricked him into sitting for questioning without a
lawyer present, Flynn was accused of lying about his contacts with Kislyak, fired from his post
in the White House, and subsequently pled guilty to lying to a federal agent.
The Department of Justice has dropped its charges against Flynn, citing gross misconduct and
abuse of power at the FBI, which it claims had no basis for launching its investigation.
However, US District Judge Emmet Sullivan has attempted to block the dismissal, appointing a
retired judge as independent prosecutor to both argue against the Justice Department's move and
pursue perjury charges against Flynn - essentially charging him with lying about lying.
On Tuesday, Flynn's attorney filed a writ of mandamus with the US Court of Appeals for the
DC Circuit, urging them to force Sullivan to step aside and allow the dismissal of the
charges.
Russiaphobia as a pathological reaction on the deep crisis of neoliberalism
Notable quotes:
"... The described lack of confidence was reflected in the exaggerated fear that Russia was capable of destroying the West's values. However, Russia and Putin were neither omnipresent nor threatening to destroy the United States' political system. ..."
"... Russia's basic motives remain defensive even when the Kremlin relies on assertive tactics. Russia's assertiveness, even in cyberspace, is of a reactive nature and is a response to US policies. ..."
"... Rather than fighting a full-scale information war with the West, Russia seeks to increase its status and strengthen its bargaining position in relations with the United States. 68 The Kremlin has been proposing to negotiate rules of cooperation in the cyber area since early in the twenty-first century. Motivated by an insistence on "cyber-sovereignty," Russia regularly proposes resolutions at the United Nations to prohibit "information aggression," In a 2011 letter to the United Nations General Assembly, Russia proposed an "International Code of Conduct for Information Security," stipulating that states subscribing to the code would pledge to "not use information and communications technologies and other information and communications networks to interfere with the internal affairs of other states or with the aim of undermining their political, economic and social stability." 69 ..."
"... Overall, what the Kremlin challenges is the United States' post–Cold War behavior that undermines Russia's status as a great power. Although Russia is not in a position to directly challenge the United States and the US-centered international order, the Kremlin hopes to gain external recognition as a great power by relying on low-cost methods and revealing the vulnerability of Western nations. Russia's capabilities and presence in global cyber and media space are limited, and the Kremlin is motivated by asymmetric deployment of its media, information, and cyber power. ..."
The chapter extends the argument about media and value conflict between Russia and the
United States to the age of Donald Trump. The new value conflict is assessed as especially
acute and exacerbated by the US partisan divide. The Russia issue became central because it
reflected both political partisanship and the growing value division between Trump voters and
the liberal establishment. In addition to explaining the new wave of American Russophobia, the
chapter analyzes Russia's own role and motives. The media are likely to continue the
ideological and largely negative coverage of Russia, especially if Washington and Moscow fail
to develop a pragmatic form of cooperation.
Keywords: Russia, Trump, US elections, narrative of collusion, partisan divide
This chapter addresses the new development in the US media perception of the Russian threat
following the election of Donald Trump as the United States' president. The election revealed
that US national values could no longer be viewed as predominantly liberal and favoring the
global promotion of democracy, as supported by Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and
Barack Obama. During and after the election, the liberal media sought to present Moscow as not
only favoring Trump but being responsible for his election and even ruling on behalf of the
Kremlin. Those committed to a liberal worldview led the way in criticizing Russia and Putin for
assaulting liberal democratic values globally and inside the United States. This chapter argues
that the Russia issue became so central in the new internal divide because it reflects both
political partisanship and the growing division between the values of Trump voters and those of
the liberal establishment. The domestic political struggle has exacerbated the divide. Russia's
otherness, again, has highlighted values of "freedom," seeking to preserve the confidence of
the liberal self. (p.82)
The Narrative of Trump's "Collusion" with Russia
During the US presidential election campaign, American media developed yet another
perception of Russia as reflected in the narrative of Trump's collusion with the Kremlin.
1 Having originated in liberal media and building on the previous perceptions of
neo-Soviet autocracy and foreign threat, the new perception of Russia was that of the enemy
that won the war against the United States. By electing the Kremlin's favored candidate,
America was defeated by Russia. As a CNN columnist wrote, "The Russians really are here,
infiltrating every corner of the country, with the single goal of disrupting the American way
of life." 2 The two assumptions behind the new media narrative were that Putin was an
enemy and that Trump was compromised by Putin. The inevitable conclusion was that Trump could
not be a patriot and potentially was a traitor prepared to act against US interests.
The new narrative was assisted by the fact that Trump presented a radically different
perspective on Russia than Clinton and the US establishment. The American political class had
been in agreement that Russia displayed an aggressive foreign policy seeking to destroy the
US-centered international order. Influential politicians, both Republicans and Democrats,
commonly referred to Russian president Putin as an extremely dangerous KGB spy with no soul.
Instead, Trump saw Russia's international interests as not fundamentally different from
America's. He advocated that the United States to find a way to align its policies and
priorities in defeating terrorism in the Middle East -- a goal that Russia shared -- with the
Kremlin's. Trump promised to form new alliances to "unite the civilized world against Radical
Islamic Terrorism" and to eradicate it "completely from the face of the Earth." 3 He hinted that he was prepared to revisit the thorny issues of Western
sanctions against (p.83) the Russian economy and the recognition of Crimea as a part of Russia.
Trump never commented on Russia's political system but expressed his admiration for Putin's
leadership and high level of domestic support. 4
Capitalizing on the difference between Trump's views and those of the Democratic Party
nominee, Hillary Clinton, the liberal media referred to Trump as the Kremlin-compromised
candidate. Commentators and columnists with the New York Times , such as Paul Krugman,
referred to Trump as the "Siberian" candidate. 5 Commentators and pundits, including those with academic and political
credentials, developed the theory that the United States was under attack. The former
ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, wrote in the Washington Post that Russia had
attacked "our sovereignty" and continued to "watch us do nothing" because of the partisan
divide. He compared the Kremlin's actions with Pearl Harbor or 9/11 and warned that Russia was
likely to perform repeat assaults in 2018 and 2020. 6 The historian Timothy Snyder went further, comparing the election of Trump to
a loss of war, which Snyder said was the basic aim of the enemy. Writing in the New York
Daily News , he asserted, "We no longer need to wonder what it would be like to lose a war
on our own territory. We just lost one to Russia, and the consequence was the election of
Donald Trump." 7
The election of Trump prompted the liberal media to discuss Russia-related fears. The
leading theory was that Trump would now compromise America's interests and rule the country on
behalf of Putin. Thomas Friedman of the New York Times called for actions against Russia
and praised "patriotic" Republican senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham for being tough on
Trump. 8 MSNBC host Rachel Maddow asked whether Trump was actually under Putin's
control. Citing Trump's views and his associates' travel to Moscow, she told viewers, "We are
also starting to see (p.84) what may be signs of continuing [Russian] influence in our country,
not just during the campaign but during the administration -- basically, signs of what could be
a continuing operation." 9 Another New York Times columnist, Nicholas Kristof, published a column
titled "There's a Smell of Treason in the Air," arguing that the FBI's investigation of the
Trump presidential campaign's collusion "with a foreign power so as to win an election" was an
investigation of whether such collusion "would amount to treason." 10 Responding to Trump's statement that his phone was tapped during the election
campaign, the Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum tweeted that "Trump's insane
'GCHQ tapped my phone' theory came from . . . Moscow." McFaul and many others then endorsed and
retweeted the message. 11
To many within the US media, Trump's lack of interest in promoting global institutions and
his publicly expressed doubts that the Kremlin was behind cyberattacks on the Democratic
National Committee (DNC) served to exacerbate the problem. Several intelligence leaks to the
press and investigations by Congress and the FBI contributed to the image of a president who
was not motivated by US interests. The US intelligence report on Russia's alleged hacking of
the US electoral system released on January 8, 2017, served to consolidate the image of Russia
as an enemy. Leaks to the press have continued throughout Trump's presidency. Someone in the
administration informed the press that Trump called Putin to congratulate him on his victory in
elections on March 18, 2018, despite Trump's advisers' warning against making such a call.
12
In the meantime, investigations of Trump's alleged "collusion" with Russia were failing to
produce substantive evidence. Facts that some associates of Trump sought to meet or met with
members of Russia's government did not lead to evidence of sustained contacts or collaboration.
It was not proven that the Kremlin's "black dossier" on Trump compiled by British intelligence
officer (p.85) Christopher Steele and leaked to CNN was truthful. Russian activity on American
social networks such as Facebook and Twitter was not found to be conclusive in determining
outcomes of the elections. 13 In February 2018, a year after launching investigation, Special Counsel
Robert Mueller indicted thirteen Russian nationals for allegedly interfering in the US 2016
presidential elections, yet their connection to Putin or Trump was not established. On March
12, 2018, Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Richard Burr stated that he had not yet seen
any evidence of collusion. 14 Representative Mike Conaway, the Republican leading the Russia investigation,
announced the end of the committee's probe of Russian meddling in the election. 15
Trump was also not acting toward Russia in the way the US media expected. His views largely
reflected those of the military and national security establishment and disappointed some of
his supporters. 16 The US National Security Strategy and new Defense Strategy presented Russia
as a leading security threat, alongside China, Iran, and North Korea. The president made it
clear that he wanted to engage in tough bargaining with Russia by insisting on American terms.
17 Instead of improving ties with Russia, let alone acting on behalf of the
Kremlin, Trump contributed to new crises in bilateral relations that had to do with the two
sides' principally different perceptions. While the Kremlin expected Washington to normalize
relations, the United States assumed Russia's weakness and expected it to comply with
Washington's priorities regarding the Middle East, Ukraine, and Afghanistan and nuclear and
cyber issues. 18 Trump also authorized the largest expulsion of Russian diplomats in US
history and ordered several missile strikes against Assad's Russia-supported positions in
Syria, each time provoking a crisis in relations with Moscow. Even Secretary of State Rex
Tillerson, whom Rachel Maddow suspected of being appointed on Putin's advice to "weaken" the
State Department and "bleed out" (p.86) the FBI, 19 was replaced by John Bolton. The latter's foreign policy reputation was that
of a hawk, including on Russia. 20
Responding to these developments, the media focused on fears of being attacked by the
Kremlin and on Trump not doing enough to protect the country. These fears went beyond the
alleged cyber interference in the US presidential elections and included infiltration of
American media and social networks and attacks on congressional elections and the country's
most sensitive infrastructure, such as electric grids, water-processing plants, banking
networks, and transportation facilities. In order to prevent such developments, media
commentators and editorial writers recommended additional pressures on the Kremlin and
counteroffensive operations. 21 One commentator recommended, as the best defense from Russia's plans to
interfere with another election in the United States, launching a cyberattack on Russia's own
presidential elections in March 2018, to "disrupt the stability of Vladimir Putin's regime."
22 A New York Times editorial summarized the mood by challenging
President Trump to confront Russia further: "If Mr. Trump isn't Mr. Putin's lackey, it's past
time for him to prove it." 23 The burden of proof was now on Trump's shoulders.
Opposition to the
"Collusion" Narrative
In contrast to highly critical views of Russia in the dominant media, conservative,
libertarian, and progressive sources offered different assessments. Initially, opposition to
the collusion narrative came from the alternative media, yet gradually -- in response to scant
evidence of Trump's collusion -- it incorporated voices within the mainstream.
The conservative media did not support the view that Russia "stole" elections and presented
Trump as a patriot who wanted to make America great rather than develop "cozy" relationships
with (p.87) the Kremlin. Writing in the American Interest , Walter Russell Mead argued
that Trump aimed to demonstrate the United States' superiority by capitalizing on its military
and technological advantages. He did not sound like a Russian mole. Challenging the liberal
media, the author called for "an intellectually solvent and emotionally stable press" and wrote
that "if President Trump really is a Putin pawn, his foreign policy will start looking much
more like Barack Obama's." 24 Instead of viewing Trump as compromised by the Kremlin, sources such
Breitbart and Fox News attributed the blame to the deep state, "the complex of
bureaucrats, technocrats, and plutocrats," including the intelligence agencies, that seeks to
"derail, or at least to de-legitimize, the Trump presidency" by engaging in accusations and
smear campaigns. 25
Echoing Trump's own views, some conservatives expressed their admiration for Putin as a
dynamic leader superior to Obama. In particular, they praised Putin for his ability to defend
Russia's "traditional values" and great-power status. 26 Neoconservative and paleoconservative publications like the National
Review , the Weekly Standard, Human Events Online , and others critiqued Obama's
"feckless foreign policy," characterized by "fruitless accommodationism," contrasting it with
Putin's skilled and calculative geopolitical "game of chess." 27 A Washington Post / ABC News poll revealed that among Republicans, 75%
approved of Trump's approach on Russia relative; 40% of all respondents approved. 28 This did not mean that conservatives and Republicans were "infiltrated" by
the Kremlin. Mutual Russian and American conservative influences were limited and
nonstructured. 29 The approval of Putin as a leader by American conservatives meant that they
shared a certain commonality of ideas and were equally critical of liberal media and
globalization. 30
Progressive and libertarian media also did not support the narrative of collusion. Gary
Leupp at CounterPunch found the (p.88) narrative to be serving the purpose of reviving
and even intensifying "Cold War-era Russophobia," with Russia being an "adversary" "only in
that it opposes the expansion of NATO, especially to include Ukraine and Georgia." 31 Justin Raimondo at Antiwar.com questioned the narrative by pointing to
Russia's bellicose rhetoric in response to Trump's actions. 32 Glenn Greenwald and Zaid Jilani at Intercept reminded readers that,
overall, Trump proved to be far more confrontational toward Russia than Obama, thereby
endangering America. 33 In particular Trump severed diplomatic ties with Russia, armed Ukraine,
appointed anti-Russia hawks, such as ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, National
Security Advisor John Bolton, and Secretary of State Michal Pompeo to key foreign policy
positions, antagonized Russia's Iranian allies, and imposed tough sanctions against Russian
business with ties to the Kremlin. 34
The dominant liberal media ignored opposing perspectives or presented them as compromised by
Russia. For instance, in amplifying the view that Putin "stole" the elections, the
Washington Post sought to discredit alternative sources of news and commentaries as
infiltrated by the Kremlin's propaganda. On November 24, 2016, the newspaper published an
interview with the executive director of a new website, PropOrNot, who preferred to remain
anonymous, and claimed that the Russian government circulated pro-Trump articles before the
election. Without providing evidence on explaining its methodology, the group identified more
than two hundred websites that published or echoed Russian propaganda, including WikiLeaks and
the Drudge Report , left-wing websites such as CounterPunch, Truthout, Black Agenda
Report, Truthdig , and Naked Capitalism , as well as libertarian venues such as
Antiwar.com and the Ron Paul Institute. 35 Another mainstream liberal outlet, CNN, warned the American people to be
vigilant against the Kremlin's alleged efforts to spread propaganda: "Enormous numbers of
(p.89) Americans are not only failing to fight back, they are also unwitting collaborators --
reading, retweeting, sharing and reacting to Russian propaganda and provocations every day."
36
However, voices of dissent were now heard even in the mainstream media. Masha Gessen of the
New Yorker said that Trump's tweet about Robert Mueller's indictments and Moscow's
"laughing its ass off" was "unusually (perhaps accidentally) accurate." 37 She pointed out that Russians of all ideological convictions "are remarkably
united in finding the American obsession with Russian meddling to be ridiculous." 38 The editor of the influential Politico , Blake Hounshell, confessed
that he was a Russiagate skeptic because even though "Trump was all too happy to collude with
Putin," Mueller's team never found a "smoking gun." 39 In reviewing the book on Russia's role in the 2016 election Russian
Roulette , veteran New York Times reporter Steven Lee Myers noted that the Kremlin's
meddling "simply exploited the vulgarity already plaguing American political campaigns" and
that the veracity of many accusations remained unclear. 40
Explaining Russophobia
The high-intensity Russophobia within the American media, overblown even by the standards of
previous threat narratives, could no longer be explained by differences in national values or
by bilateral tensions. The new fear of Russia also reflected domestic political polarization
and growing national unease over America's identity and future direction.
The narrative of collusion in the media was symptomatic of America's declining confidence in
its own values. Until the intervention in Iraq in 2004, optimism and a sense of confidence
prevailed in American social attitudes, having survived even the terrorist attack on the United
States on September 11, 2001. The (p.90) country's economy was growing and its position in the
world was not challenged. However, the disastrous war in Iraq, the global financial crisis of
2008, and Russia's intervention in Georgia in August 2008 changed that. US leadership could no
longer inspire the same respect, and a growing number of countries viewed it as a threat to
world peace. 41 Internally, the United States was increasingly divided. Following
presidential elections in November 2016, 77% of Americans perceived their country as "greatly
divided on the most important values." 42 The value divide had been expressed in partisanship and political
polarization long before the 2016 presidential elections. 43 The Russia issue deepened this divide. According to a poll taken in October
2017, 63% of Democrats, but just 38% of Republicans, viewed "Russia's power and influence" as a
major threat to the well-being of the United States. 44
During the US 2016 presidential elections, Russia emerged as a convenient way to accentuate
differences between Democratic and Republican candidates, which in previous elections were
never as pronounced or defining. The new elections deepened the partisan divide because of
extreme differences between the two main candidates, particularly on Russia. Donald Trump
positioned himself as a radical populist promising to transform US foreign policy and "drain
the swamp" in Washington. His position on Russia seemed unusual because, by election time, the
Kremlin had challenged the United States' position in the world by annexing Crimea, supporting
Ukrainian separatism, and possibly hacking the DNC site.
The Russian issue assisted Clinton in stressing her differences from Trump. Soon after it
became known that DNC servers were hacked, she embraced the view that Russia was behind the
cyberattacks. She accused Russia of "trying to wreak havoc" in the United States and threatened
retaliation. 45 In his turn, Trump used Russia to challenge Clinton's commitment to national
security (p.91) and ability to serve as commander in chief. In particular, he drew public
attention to the FBI investigation into Clinton's use of a private server for professional
correspondence, and even noted sarcastically that the Russians should find thirty thousand
missing emails belonging to her. The latter was interpreted by many in liberal media and
political circles as a sign of Trump's being unpatriotic. 46 Clinton capitalized on this interpretation. She referred to the issue of
hacking as the most important one throughout the campaign and challenged Trump to agree with
assessments of intelligence agencies that cyberattacks were ordered by the Kremlin. She
questioned Trump's commitments to US national security and accused him of being a "puppet" for
President Putin. 47 Following Trump's victory, Clinton told donors that her loss should be partly
attributed to Putin and the election hacks directed by him. 48
Clinton's arguments fitted with the overall narrative embraced by the mainstream media since
roughly 2005 characterizing Russia as abusive and aggressive. Clinton viewed Russia as an
oppressive autocratic power that was aggressive abroad to compensate for domestic weaknesses.
Previously, in her book Hard Choices , then-secretary of state Clinton described Putin
as "thin-skinned and autocratic, resenting criticism and eventually cracking down on dissent
and debate." 49 This view was shared by President Obama, who publicly referred to Russia as a
"regional power that is threatening some of its immediate neighbors not out of strength but out
of weakness." 50 During the election's campaign, Clinton argued that the United States should
challenge Russia by imposing a no-fly zone in Syria with the objective of removing Assad from
power, strengthening sanctions against the Russian economy, and providing lethal weapons to
Ukraine in order to contain the potential threat of Russia's military invasion.
Following the elections, the partisan divide deepened, with liberal establishment attacking
the "unpatriotic" Trump. Having (p.92) lost the election, Clinton partly attributed Trump's
victory to the role of Russia and advocated an investigation into Trump's ties to Russia. In
February 2017 the Clinton-influenced Center for American Progress brought on a former State
Department official to run a new Moscow Project. 51 As acknowledged by the New Yorker , members of the Clinton inner
circle believed that the Obama administration deliberately downplayed DNC hacking by the
Kremlin. "We understand the bind they were in," one of Clinton's senior advisers said. "But
what if Barack Obama had gone to the Oval Office, or the East Room of the White House, and
said, 'I'm speaking to you tonight to inform you that the United States is under attack . . .'
A large majority of Americans would have sat up and taken notice . . . it is bewildering -- it
is baffling -- it is hard to make sense of why this was not a five-alarm fire in the White
House." 52
In addition to Clinton, many other members of the Washington establishment, including some
Republicans, spread the narrative of Russia "attacking" America. Republican politicians who
viewed Clinton's defeat and the hacking attacks in military terms included those of chairman of
the Senate Armed Services Committee John McCain, who stated, "When you attack a country, it's
an act of war," 53 and former vice president Dick Cheney, who called Russia's alleged
interference in the US election "a very serious effort made by Mr. Putin" that "in some
quarters that would be considered an act of war." 54 A number of Democrats also engaged in the rhetoric of war, likening the
Russian "attack," as Senator Ben Cardin did, to a "political Pearl Harbor." 55
Rumors and leaks, possibly by members of US intelligence agencies, 56 and activities of liberal groups that sought to discredit Trump contributed
to the Russophobia. In addition to the DNC hacking accusations, many fears of Russia in the
media were based on the assumption that contacts, let alone cooperation with the (p.93)
Kremlin, was unpatriotic and implied potentially "compromising" behavior: praise of Putin as a
leader, possible business dealings with Russian "oligarchs," and meetings with Russian
officials such Ambassador Sergei Kislyak. 57
There were therefore two sides to the Russia story in the US liberal media -- rational and
emotional. The rational side had to do with calculations by Clinton-affiliated circles and
anti-Russian groups pooling their resources to undermine Trump and his plans to improve
relations with Russia. Among others, these resources included dominance within the liberal
media and leaks by the intelligence community. The emotional side was revealed by the liberal
elites' values and ability to promote fears of Russia within the US political class and the
general public. Popular emotions of fear and frustration with Russia already existed in the
public space due to the old Cold War memories, as well as disturbing post–Cold War
developments that included wars in Chechnya, Georgia, and Ukraine. In part because of these
memories, factions such as those associated with Clinton were successful in evoking in the
public liberal mind what historian Richard Hofstadter called the "paranoid style" or "the sense
of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy." 58 Mobilized by liberal media to pressure Trump, these emotions became an
independent factor in the political struggle inside Washington. The public display of fear and
frustration with Russia and Trump could only be sustained by a constant supply of new
"suspicious" developments and intense discussion by the media.
Russia's Role and
Motives
Russia's "attacking" America and Trump's "colluding" with the Kremlin remained poorly
substantiated. Taken together, the DNC hacking, Trump's and Putin's mutual praise, and Trump
associates' (p.94) contacts with Russian officials implied Kremlin infiltration of the United
States' internal politics. Yet viewed separately, each was questionable and unproven. Some of
these points could have also been made about Hillary Clinton, who had ties to Russian -- not to
mention Saudi Arabian -- business circles and Ukrainian politicians. 59 Political views cannot be counted as evidence. Contacts with Russian
officials could have been legitimate exchanges of views about two countries' interests and
potential cooperation. Even the CIA- and the FBI-endorsed conclusion that Russia attacked the
DNC servers was questioned by some observers on the grounds that forensic evidence was lacking
and that it relied too much on findings by one cybersecurity company. 60 In general, discussion of Russia in the US media lacked nuances and a sense
of proportion. As Jesse Walker, an editor at Reason magazine and author of The United
States of Paranoia , pointed out,
There's a difference between thinking that Moscow may have hacked the Democratic National
Committee and thinking that Moscow actually hacked the election, between thinking the
president may have Russian conflicts of interest and thinking he's a Russian puppet . . .
when someone like the New York Times columnist Paul Krugman declares that Putin "installed"
Donald Trump as president, he's moving out of the realm of plausible plots and into the world
of fantasy. Similarly, Clinton's warning that Trump could be Putin's "puppet" leaped from an
imaginable idea, that Putin wanted to help her rival, to the much more dubious notion that
Putin thought he could control the impulsive Trump. (Trump barely seems capable of
controlling himself.) 61
The loose and politically tendentious nature of discussions, circulation of questionable
leaks and dossiers complied by unidentified (p.95) individuals, and lack of serious evidence
led a number of observers to conclude that the Russia story was more about stopping Trump than
about Russia. The Russian scandal was symptomatic of the poisonous state of bilateral relations
that Democrats exploited for the purpose of derailing Trump. US-Russia relations became a
hostage of partisan domestic politics. As one liberal and tough critic of Putin wrote,
Democratic lawmakers' rhetoric of war in connection with the 2016 elections "places Republicans
-- who often characterize themselves as more hawkish on Russia and defense -- in a bind as they
try to defend to the new administration's strategy towards Moscow." 62 Another observer noted that Russiagate performed "a critical function for
Trump's political foes," allowing "them to oppose Trump while obscuring key areas where they
either share his priorities or have no viable alternative." 63
The described lack of confidence was reflected in the exaggerated fear that Russia was
capable of destroying the West's values. However, Russia and Putin were neither omnipresent nor
threatening to destroy the United States' political system. A number of analysts, such as Mark Schrad, identified fears of Russia as "increasingly hysterical fantasies" and argued that
Russia was not a global menace. 64 If the Kremlin was indeed behind the cyberattacks, it was not for the reasons
commonly broached. Rather than trying to subvert the US system, it sought to defend its own
system against what it perceived as a US policy of changing regimes and meddling in Russia's
internal affairs. The United States has a long history of covert activities in foreign
countries. 65 Washington's establishment has never followed the advice given by prominent
American statesmen such as George Kennan to let Russians "be Russians" and "work out their
internal problems in their own manner." 66 Instead, the United States assumes that America defines the rules and
boundaries of proper behavior in international politics, while others must simply follow the
rules.
(p.96) Russia's basic motives remain defensive even when the Kremlin relies on assertive
tactics. Russia's assertiveness, even in cyberspace, is of a reactive nature and is a response
to US policies. Experts observe that Russia's conception of cyber and other informational power
serves the overall purpose of protecting national sovereignty from encroachments by the United
States. 67Rather than fighting a full-scale information war with the West, Russia seeks
to increase its status and strengthen its bargaining position in relations with the United
States. 68 The Kremlin has been proposing to negotiate rules of cooperation in the cyber
area since early in the twenty-first century. Motivated by an insistence on
"cyber-sovereignty," Russia regularly proposes resolutions at the United Nations to prohibit
"information aggression," In a 2011 letter to the United Nations General Assembly, Russia
proposed an "International Code of Conduct for Information Security," stipulating that states
subscribing to the code would pledge to "not use information and communications technologies
and other information and communications networks to interfere with the internal affairs of
other states or with the aim of undermining their political, economic and social stability."
69
Overall, what the Kremlin challenges is the United States' post–Cold War behavior that
undermines Russia's status as a great power. Although Russia is not in a position to directly
challenge the United States and the US-centered international order, the Kremlin hopes to gain
external recognition as a great power by relying on low-cost methods and revealing the
vulnerability of Western nations. Russia's capabilities and presence in global cyber and media
space are limited, and the Kremlin is motivated by asymmetric deployment of its media,
information, and cyber power.
This is about intelligence agencies becaming a powerful by shadow political force, much like
STASI. This not about corruption per se, but about perusing of political goals by dirty means. So
it is closer to sedition then to corruption.
Notable quotes:
"... there was no valid reason for the FBI to have interrogated Flynn about his conversations with Kislyak in the first place. There is nothing remotely untoward or unusual -- let alone criminal -- about an incoming senior national security official, three weeks away from taking over, reaching out to a counterpart in a foreign government to try to tamp down tensions. As the Washington Post put it , "it would not be uncommon for incoming administrations to interface with foreign governments with whom they will soon have to work." ..."
"... there was also massive corruption on the part of the investigators themselves, exploiting and abusing their vast and invasive investigative and prosecutorial powers for ideological goals, political subterfuge, election manipulation, and personal vendettas ..."
"... To begin with, cable and other news outlets that employed former Obama-era intelligence operatives, generals, and prosecutors to disseminate every Russiagate conspiracy theory they could find -- virtually always without any dissent or even questioning -- have barely acknowledged these explosive new documents. ..."
"... But the most critical reason to delve deeply into this case is that it reveals one the most dangerous abuses of power a democracy can suffer: The powers of the CIA, FBI, and NSA were blatantly and repeatedly abused to manipulate election outcomes and achieve political advantage. ..."
"... Flynn is a right-wing, hawkish general whose views on the so-called war on terror are ones utterly anathema to my own beliefs. That does not make his prosecution justified. One's views of Flynn personally or his politics (or those of the Trump administration generally) should have absolutely no bearing on one's assessment of the justifiability of what the U.S. government did to him here -- any more than one has to like the political views of the detainees at Guantanamo to find their treatment abusive and illegal , or any more than one has to agree with the views of people who are being censured in order to defend their right of free expression . ..."
"... As the journalist Aaron Maté demonstrated when he brilliantly challenged The Guardian's Luke Harding about his bestselling book claiming to prove collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia -- one of the few times a Russiagate conspiracy advocate was forced to confront a knowledgeable critic -- those claims often cannot survive even minimal critical scrutiny. That's why media outlets have insulated these conspiracy theory advocates, as well as their audiences, from any dissent or even critical questioning. ..."
Gen. Michael Flynn, President Obama's former director of the Defense
Intelligence Agency and President Donald Trump's former national security adviser,
pleaded guilty on December 1, 2017, to a single count of lying to the FBI about two
conversations he had with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak while Flynn served as a Trump
transition team official (Flynn was never
charged for any matters relating to his relationship with the Turkish government). As part
of the plea deal, special counsel Robert Mueller
recommended no jail time for Flynn , and the plea agreement also seemingly put an end to
threats from the Mueller team to prosecute Flynn's son.
Last Thursday, the Justice Department
filed a motion seeking to dismiss the prosecution of Flynn based, in part, on newly
discovered documents revealing that the conduct of the FBI, under the leadership of
Director James Comey and his now-disgraced Deputy Andrew McCabe (who himself was forced to
leave the Bureau after
being caught lying to agents ), was improper and motivated by corrupt objectives. That
motion prompted histrionic howls of outrage from
the same political officials and their media allies who have spent the last three years pushing
maximalist Russiagate conspiracy theories.
But the prosecution of Flynn -- for allegedly lying to the FBI when he denied in a January
24 interrogation that he had discussed with Kislyak on December 29 the new
sanctions and expulsions imposed on Russia by the Obama administration -- was always odd
for a number of reasons. To begin with, the FBI agents who questioned Flynn said afterward that
they did not believe he was lying (as
CNN reported in February 2017: "the FBI interviewers believed Flynn was cooperative and
provided truthful answers. Although Flynn didn't remember all of what he talked about, they
don't believe he was intentionally misleading them, the officials say"). For that reason, CNN
said, "the FBI is not expected to pursue any charges against" him.
More importantly, there was no valid reason for the FBI to have interrogated Flynn about
his conversations with Kislyak in the first place. There is nothing remotely untoward or
unusual -- let alone criminal -- about an incoming senior national security official, three
weeks away from taking over, reaching out to a counterpart in a foreign government to try to
tamp down tensions. As the Washington Post
put it , "it would not be uncommon for incoming administrations to interface with foreign
governments with whom they will soon have to work." What newly released documents over the
last month reveal is what has been generally evident for the last three years: The powers of
the security state agencies -- particularly the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, and the DOJ -- were
systematically abused as part of the 2016 election and then afterward for political rather than
legal ends.
While there was obviously deceit and corruption on the part of some Trump
officials in lying to Russiagate investigators and otherwise engaging in depressingly
common D.C. lobbyist corruption , there was also massive corruption on the part of the
investigators themselves, exploiting and abusing their vast and invasive investigative and
prosecutorial powers for ideological goals, political subterfuge, election manipulation, and
personal vendettas . The former category (corruption by Trump officials) has received a
tidal wave of endless media attention, while the latter (corruption and abuse of power by those
investigating them) has received almost none.
For numerous reasons, it is vital to fully examine with as much clarity as possible the
abuse of power that drove the prosecution of Flynn. To begin with, cable and other news
outlets that employed
former Obama-era intelligence operatives, generals, and prosecutors to disseminate every
Russiagate conspiracy theory they could find -- virtually always without any dissent or even
questioning -- have barely acknowledged these explosive new documents.
More disturbingly, liberals and Democrats -- as part of their movement toward venerating
these security state agencies -- have completely jettisoned long-standing, core principles
about the criminal justice system, including questioning whether
lying to the FBI should be a crime at all and recognizing that innocent people
are often forced to plead guilty -- in order to justify both the Flynn prosecution
and the broader Mueller probe.
But the most critical reason to delve deeply into this case is that it reveals one the
most dangerous abuses of power a democracy can suffer: The powers of the CIA, FBI, and NSA were
blatantly and repeatedly abused to manipulate election outcomes and achieve political
advantage. In other words, we know now that these agencies did exactly what Democratic
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer warned they would do to Trump when he appeared on Rachel
Maddow's MSNBC program shortly before Trump's inauguration:
This turned out to be one of the most prescient and important (and creepy) statements of
the Trump presidency: from Chuck Schumer to Rachel Maddow - in early January, 2017, before
Trump was even inaugurated: pic.twitter.com/TUaYkksILG
Because U.S. politics is now discussed far more as tests of tribal loyalty ("Whose
side are you on?") than actual ideological or even political beliefs ("Which policies do you
favor or oppose?"), it is very difficult to persuade people to separate their personal or
political views of Flynn ("Do you like him or not?") from the question of whether the U.S.
government abused its power in gravely dangerous ways to prosecute him.
Flynn is a right-wing, hawkish general whose views on the so-called war on terror are
ones utterly anathema to my own beliefs. That does not make his prosecution justified. One's
views of Flynn personally or his politics (or those of the Trump administration generally)
should have absolutely no bearing on one's assessment of the justifiability of what the U.S.
government did to him here -- any more than one has to like the political views of the
detainees at Guantanamo to find their
treatment abusive and illegal , or any more than one has to agree with the views of people
who are being censured in
order to defend their right of
free expression .
The ability to distinguish between ideological questions from evidentiary
questions is vital for rational discourse to be possible, yet has been all but eliminated at
the altar of tribal fealty. That is why evidentiary questions completely devoid of ideological
belief -- such as whether one found the Russiagate conspiracy theories supported by convincing
evidence -- have been treated not as evidentiary matters but as tribal ones: to be affiliated
with the left (an ideological characterization), one must affirm belief in those conspiracy
theories even if one does not find the evidence in support of them actually compelling. The
conflation of ideological and evidentiary questions, and the substitution of substantive
political debates with tests of tribal loyalty, are indescribably corrosive to our public
discourse.
As a result, whether one is now deemed on the right or left has almost nothing to do with
actual political beliefs about policy questions and everything to do with one's willingness to
serve the interests of one team or another. With the warped formula in place, U.S. politics has
been depoliticized , stripped of any meaningful ideological debates in lieu of mindless
team loyalty oaths on non-ideological questions.
Our newest SYSTEM UPDATE episode, debuting today, is devoted to enabling as clear and
objective an examination as possible of the abuses that drove the Flynn prosecution --
including these critical, newly declassified documents -- as well the broader Russiagate
investigations of which it was a part. These abuses have received far too little attention from
the vast majority of the U.S. media that simply excludes any questioning or dissent of their
prevailing narratives about all of these matters.
Notably, we invited several of the cable stars and security state agents who have been
pushing these conspiracy theories for years to appear on the program for a civil discussion,
but none were willing to do so -- because they are so accustomed to being able to spout these
theories on MSNBC, CNN, and in newspapers without ever being meaningfully challenged.
Regardless of one's views on these scandals, it is unhealthy in the extreme for any media to
insulate themselves from a diversity of views.
As the journalist Aaron Maté demonstrated when he brilliantly challenged The Guardian's Luke
Harding about his bestselling book claiming to prove collusion between the Trump campaign and
Russia -- one of the few times a Russiagate conspiracy advocate was forced to confront a
knowledgeable critic -- those claims often cannot survive even minimal critical scrutiny.
That's why media outlets have insulated these conspiracy theory advocates, as well as their
audiences, from any dissent or even critical questioning.
Today's SYSTEM UPDATE episode, which we believe provides the most comprehensive examination
to date of these new documents relating to the Flynn prosecution and how this case relates to
the broader Russiagate investigative abuses, can be viewed above or on The Intercept's YouTube channel .
This is about control of MSM by intelligence agencies, not so much about corruption of
individual journalists. Journalist became like in the USSR "Soldiers of the Party" -- well paid
propagandist of particular, supplied to them talking points.
What is particularly valuable about Smith's article is its perfect description of a media
sickness borne of the Trump era that is rapidly corroding journalistic integrity and
justifiably destroying trust in news outlets. Smith aptly dubs this pathology "resistance
journalism," by which he means that journalists are now not only free, but encouraged and
incentivized , to say or publish anything they want, no matter how reckless and fact-free,
provided their target is someone sufficiently disliked in mainstream liberal media venues
and/or on social media:
[Farrow's] work, though, reveals the weakness of a kind of resistance journalism that has
thrived in the age of Donald Trump: That if reporters swim ably along with the tides of
social media and produce damaging reporting about public figures most disliked by the loudest
voices, the old rules of fairness and open-mindedness can seem more like impediments than
essential journalistic imperatives.
That can be a dangerous approach, particularly in a moment when the idea of truth and a
shared set of facts is under assault.
In assailing Farrow for peddling unproven conspiracy theories, Smith argues that such
journalistic practices are particularly dangerous in an era where conspiracy theories are
increasingly commonplace. Yet unlike most journalists with a mainstream platform, Smith
emphasizes that conspiracy theories are commonly used not only by Trump and his movement
(conspiracy theories which are quickly debunked by most of the mainstream media), but are also
commonly deployed by Trump's enemies, whose reliance on conspiracy theories is virtually never
denounced by journalists because mainstream news outlets themselves play a key role in peddling
them:
We are living in an era of conspiracies and dangerous untruths -- many pushed by President
Trump, but others hyped by his enemies -- that have lured ordinary Americans into
passionately believing wild and unfounded theories and fiercely rejecting evidence to the
contrary. The best reporting tries to capture the most attainable version of the truth, with
clarity and humility about what we don't know. Instead, Mr. Farrow told us what we wanted to
believe about the way power works, and now, it seems, he and his publicity team are not even
pretending to know if it's true.
Ever since Donald Trump was elected , and one could argue even in the months leading up to
his election, journalistic standards have been consciously jettisoned when it comes to
reporting on public figures who, in Smith's words, are "most disliked by the loudest voices,"
particularly when such reporting "swim[s] ably along with the tides of social media." Put
another way: As long the targets of one's conspiracy theories and attacks are regarded as
villains by the guardians of mainstream liberal social media circles, journalists reap endless
career rewards for publishing unvetted and unproven -- even false -- attacks on such people,
while never suffering any negative consequences when their stories are exposed as shabby
frauds.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/OOhRRr6c1wA?autoplay=0&rel=0&enablejsapi=1&origin=https%3A%2F%2Ftheintercept.com&widgetid=1
infiltrated and taken over the U.S. government through sexual and financial blackmail
leverage over Trump and used it to dictate U.S. policy; Trump officials conspired with the
Kremlin to interfere in the 2016 election; Russia was attacking the U.S. by
hacking its electricity grid , recruiting
journalists to serve as clandestine Kremlin messengers , and plotting to cut off heat to
Americans in winter. Mainstream media debacles -- all in service of promoting the same set of
conspiracy theories against Trump -- are literally too numerous to count, requiring one to
select the worst offenses as illustrative .
In March of last year, Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi -- writing under the
headline "It's official: Russiagate is this generation's WMD" -- compared the prevailing
media climate since 2016 to that which prevailed in 2002 and 2003 regarding the invasion of
Iraq and the so-called war on terror: little to no dissent permitted, skeptics of
media-endorsed orthodoxies shunned and excluded, and worst of all, the very journalists who
were most wrong in peddling false conspiracy theories were exactly those who ended up most
rewarded on the ground that even though they spread falsehoods, they did so for the
right cause.
Under that warped rubric -- in which spreading falsehoods is commendable as long as
it was done to harm the evildoers -- the New Yorker's Jeffrey Goldberg, one of the most
damaging endorsers of
false
conspiracy theories about Iraq , rose to become editor-in-chief of The Atlantic,
while two of the most deceitful Bush-era neocons, Bush/Cheney speechwriter David Frum and
supreme propagandist Bill Kristol, have reprised their role as leading propagandists and
conspiracy theorists -- only this time aimed against the GOP president instead of on his behalf
-- and thus have become beloved liberal media icons. The communications director for both the
Bush/Cheney campaign and its White House, Nicole Wallace, is one of the most popular liberal
cable hosts from her MSNBC perch.
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Exactly the same journalism-destroying dynamic is driving the post-Russiagate media landscape.
There is literally no accountability for the journalists and news outlets that spread
falsehoods in their pages, on their airwaves, and through their viral social media postings.
The Washington Post's media columnist Erik Wemple has been one of the very few journalists
devoted to holding these myth-peddlers accountable -- recounting how one of the most reckless
Russigate conspiracy maximialists, Natasha Bertrand,
became an overnight social media and journalism star by peddling discredited conspiratorial
trash (she was notably hired by Jeffrey Goldberg to cover Russigate for The Atlantic); MSNBC's
Rachel Maddow
spent three years hyping conspiratorial junk with no need even to retract any of it; and
Mother Jones' David Corn played a
crucial, decisively un-journalistic role in mainstreaming the lies of the Steele dossier
all with zero effect on his journalistic status, other than to enrich him through a predictably
bestselling book that peddled those unhinged conspiracies further.
Wemple's post-Russiagate
series has established him as a commendable, often-lone voice trying -- with futility -- to
bring some accountability to U.S. journalism for the systemic media failures of the past three
years. The reason that's futile is exactly what Smith described in his column on Farrow: In
"resistance journalism," facts and truth are completely dispensable -- indeed, dispensing with
them is rewarded -- provided "reporters swim ably along with the tides of social media
and produce damaging reporting about public figures most disliked by the loudest voices."
That describes perfectly the journalists who were defined, and enriched, by years of
Russiagate deceit masquerading as reporting. By far the easiest path to career success over the
last three years -- booming ratings, lucrative book sales, exploding social media followings,
career rehabilitation even for the most discredited D.C. operatives -- was to feed
establishment liberals an endless diet of fearmongering and inflammatory conspiracies about
Drumpf and his White House. Whether it was true or supported by basic journalistic standards
was completely irrelevant. Responsible reporting was simply was not a metric used to assess its
worth.
It was one thing for activists, charlatans, and con artists to exploit fears of Trump for
material gain: that, by definition, is what such people do. But it was another thing entirely
for journalists to succumb to all the low-hanging career rewards available to them by
throwing all journalistic standards into the trash bin in exchange for a star turn as a
#Resistance icon. That , as Smith aptly describes, is what "Resistance Journalism" is,
and it's hard to identify anything more toxic to our public discourse.
Perhaps the single most shameful and journalism-destroying episode in all of this -- an
obviously difficult title to bestow -- was when a national security blogger, Marcy Wheeler,
violated long-standing norms and ethical standards of journalism by announcing in 2018 that she
had voluntarily turned in her own source to the FBI,
claiming she did so because her still-unnamed source "had played a significant role in the
Russian election attack on the US" and because her life was endangered by her brave decision to
stop being a blogger and become an armchair cop by pleading with the FBI and the Mueller team
to let her work with them. In her blog post announcing what she did, she claimed she was going
public with her treachery because her life was in danger, and this way everyone would know the
real reason if "someone releases stolen information about me or knocks me off tomorrow."
To say that Wheeler's actions are a grotesque violation of journalistic ethics is to
radically understate the case. Journalists are expected to protect their sources' identities
from the FBI even if they receive a subpoena and a court order compelling its disclosure; we're
expected to go to prison before we comply with FBI attempts to uncover our source's
identity. But here, the FBI did not try to compel Wheeler to tell them anything; they displayed
no interest in her as she desperately tried to chase them down.
By all appearances, Wheeler had to beg the FBI to pay attention to her because they treated
her like the sort of unstable, unhinged, unwell, delusional obsessive who, believing they have
uncovered some intricate conspiracy, relentlessly harass and bombard journalists with their
bizarre theories until they finally prattle to themselves for all of eternity in the spam
filter of our email inboxes. The claim that she was in possession of some sort of explosive and
damning information that would blow the Mueller investigation wide open was laughable. In her
post, she claimed she "always planned to disclose this when this person's role was publicly
revealed," but to date -- almost two years later -- she has never revealed "this person's"
identity because, from all appearances, the Mueller report never relied on Wheeler's intrepid
reporting or her supposedly red-hot secrets.
Like so many other Russiagate obsessives who turned into social media and MSNBC/CNN
#Resistance stars, Wheeler was living a wild, self-serving fantasy, a Cold War Tom Clancy
suspense film that she invented in her head and then cast herself as the heroine: a crusading
investigative dot-connecter uncovering dangerous, hidden conspiracies perpetrated by dangerous,
hidden Cold War-style villains (Putin) to the point where her own life was endangered by her
bravery. It was a sad joke, a depressing spectacle of psycho-drama, but one that could have had
grave consequences for the person she voluntarily ratted out to the FBI. Whatever else is true,
this episode inflicted grave damage on American journalism by having mainstream,
Russia-obsessed journalists not denounce her for her egregious violation of journalistic ethics
but celebrate her for turning journalism on its head.
Why? Because, as Smith said in his Farrow article, she was "swim[ing] ably along with the
tides of social media and produc[ing] damaging reporting about public figures most disliked by
the loudest voices" and thus "the old rules of fairness and open-mindedness [were] more like
impediments than essential journalistic imperatives." Margaret Sullivan, the former New York
Times public editor and now the Washington Post's otherwise reliably commendable media
reporter,
celebrated Wheeler's bizarre behavior under the headline: "A journalist's conscience leads
her to reveal her source to the FBI."
Despite acknowledging that "in their reporting, journalists talk to criminals all the time
and don't turn them in" and that "it's pretty much an inviolable rule of journalism: Protect
your sources," Sullivan heralded Wheeler's ethically repugnant and journalism-eroding
violation of those principles. "It's not hard to see that her decision was a careful and
principled one," Sullivan proclaimed.
She even endorsed Wheeler's cringe-inducing, self-glorifying claims about her life being
endangered by invoking long-standard Cold War clichés about the treachery of the
Russkies ("Overly dramatic? Not really. The Russians do have a penchant for disposing of people
they find threatening."). The English language is insufficient to convey the madness required
to believe that the Kremlin wanted to kill Marcy Wheeler because her blogging was getting Too
Close to The Truth, but in the fevered swamps of resistance journalism, literally no claim was
too unhinged to be embraced provided that it fed the social media #Resistance masses.
Sullivan's article quoted no critics of Wheeler's incredibly controversial behavior
-- no need to: She was on the right side of social media reaction. And Sullivan never bothered
to return to wonder why her prediction -- "Wheeler hasn't named the source publicly, though his
name may soon be known to all who are following the Mueller investigation" -- never
materialized. Both CNN
and, incredibly, the
Columbia Journalism Review published similarly sympathetic accounts of Wheeler's desperate
attempts to turn over her source to the FBI and then cosplay as though she were some sort of
insider in the Mueller investigation. The most menacing attribute of what Smith calls
"Resistance Journalism" is that it permits and tolerates no dissent and questioning: perhaps
the single most destructive path journalism can take. It has been well-documented that MSNBC
and CNN spent three years peddling all sorts of ultimately discredited Russiagate conspiracy
theories by excluding from their airwaves anyone who dissented from or even questioned those
conspiracies. Instead, they relied upon an
increasingly homogenized army of former security state agents from the CIA, FBI, and NSA to
propound, in unison, all sorts of claims about Trump and Russia that turned out to be false,
and peppered their panels of "analysts" with journalists whose career skyrocketed exclusively
by pushing maximalist Russiagate claims, often by relying on the same intelligence officials
these cable outlets sat them next to.
That NBC & MSNBC hired as a "news analyst" John Brennan - who ran the CIA when the
Trump/Russia investigation began & was a key player in the news he was shaping as a paid
colleague of their reporters - is a huge ethical breach. And it produced this: pic.twitter.com/nPlaq5YVxf
This trend -- whereby diversity of opinion and dissent from orthodoxies are
excluded from media discourse -- is worsening rapidly due to two major factors. The first is
that cable news programs are constructed to feed their audiences only self-affirming narratives
that vindicate partisan loyalties. One liberal cable host told me that they receive ratings not
for each show but for each segment , and they can see the ratings drop off -- the
remotes clicking away -- if they put on the air anyone who criticizes the party to which that
outlet is devoted (Democrats in the case of MSNBC and CNN, the GOP in the case of Fox).
But there's another more recent and probably more dissent-quashing development: the
disappearance of media jobs. Mass layoffs were already common in online journalism and local
newspapers
prior to the coronavirus pandemic , and have now turned into
an industrywide massacre . With young journalists watching jobs disappearing en masse, the
last thing they are going to want to do is question or challenge prevailing orthodoxies within
their news outlet or, using Smith's "Resistance Journalism" formulation, to "swim against the
tides of social media" or question the evidence amassed against those "most disliked by the
loudest voices."
Affirming those orthodoxies can be career-promoting, while questioning them can be
job-destroying. Consider the powerful incentives journalists face in an industry where jobs are
disappearing so rapidly one can barely keep count. During Russiagate, I often heard from young
journalists at large media outlets who expressed varying degrees of support for and agreement
with the skepticism which I and a handful of other journalists were expressing, but they felt
constrained to do so themselves, for good reason. They watched the reprisals and shunning doled
out even to journalists with a long record of journalistic accomplishments and job security for
the crime of Russiagate skepticism, such as Taibbi (similar to the way MSNBC fired Phil
Donahue in 2002 for opposing the invasion of Iraq), and they know journalists with less
stature and security than Taibbi could not risk incurring that collective wrath.
All professions and institutions suffer when a herd, groupthink mentality and the banning of
dissent prevail. But few activities are corroded from such a pathology more than journalism is,
which has as its core function skepticism and questioning of pieties. Journalism quickly
transforms into a sickly, limp version of itself when it itself wages war on the virtues of
dissent and airing a wide range of perspectives.
I do not know how valid are Smith's critiques of Farrow's journalism. But what I know for
certain is that Smith's broader diagnosis of "Resistance Journalism" is dead-on, and the harms
it is causing are deep and enduring. When journalists know they will thrive by affirming
pleasing falsehoods, and suffer when they insist on unpopular truths, journalism not only loses
its societal value but becomes just another instrument for societal manipulation, deceit, and
coercion.
Those are far from failures, those were successful disinformation/propaganda operations conducted with a certain goal --
remove Trump -- which demonstrate the level of intelligence agencies control of the MSM. In other words those are
parts of a bigger intelligence operation -- the color revolution against Trump led most probably by Obama and Brennan.
Now we know that Obama played an important role in Russiagate media hysteria and, most porbably, in planning and executing the
operation to entrap Flynn.
Notable quotes:
"... They are listed in reverse order, as measured by the magnitude of the embarrassment, the hysteria they generated on social media and cable news, the level of journalistic recklessness that produced them, and the amount of damage and danger they caused ..."
"... Note that all of these "errors" go only in one direction: namely, exaggerating the grave threat posed by Moscow and the Trump circle's connection to it. It's inevitable that media outlets will make mistakes on complex stories. If that's being done in good faith, one would expect the errors would be roughly 50/50 in terms of the agenda served by the false stories. That is most definitely not the case here. Just as was true in 2002 and 2003, when the media clearly wanted to exaggerate the threat posed by Saddam Hussein and thus all of its "errors" went in that direction, virtually all of its major "errors" in this story are devoted to the same agenda and script: ..."
"... Crowdstrike, the firm hired by the DNC, claimed they had evidence that Russia hacked Ukrainian artillery apps; they then retracted it . ..."
"... The U.S. media and Democrats spent six months claiming that all "17 intelligence agencies" agreed Russia was behind the hacks; the NYT finally retracted that in June, 2017: "The assessment was made by four intelligence agencies -- the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency. The assessment was not approved by all 17 organizations in the American intelligence community." ..."
"... Widespread government and media claims that accused Russian agent Maria Butina offered "sex for favors" were totally false (and scurrilous). ..."
BuzzFeed was once notorious for
traffic-generating "listicles," but has since become an impressive outlet for deep
investigative journalism under editor-in-chief Ben Smith. That outlet was prominently in the
news this week thanks to its "bombshell" story about President Trump and Michael Cohen: a story
that, like so many others of its kind,
blew up in its face , this time when the typically mute Robert Mueller's office took the
extremely rare step to
label its key claims "inaccurate."
But in homage to BuzzFeed's past viral glory, following are the top ten worst media failures
in two-plus-years of Trump/Russia reporting. They are listed in reverse order, as measured by
the magnitude of the embarrassment, the hysteria they generated on social media and cable news,
the level of journalistic recklessness that produced them, and the amount of damage and danger
they caused. This list was extremely difficult to compile in part because news outlets
(particularly CNN and MSNBC) often delete from the internet the video segments of their most
embarrassing moments. Even more challenging was the fact that the number of worthy nominees is
so large that highly meritorious entrees had to be excluded, but are acknowledged at the end
with (dis)honorable mention status.
Note that all of these "errors" go only in one direction: namely, exaggerating the grave
threat posed by Moscow and the Trump circle's connection to it. It's inevitable that media
outlets will make mistakes on complex stories. If that's being done in good faith, one would
expect the errors would be roughly 50/50 in terms of the agenda served by the false stories.
That is most definitely not the case here. Just as was true in 2002 and 2003, when the media
clearly wanted to exaggerate the threat posed by Saddam Hussein and thus all of its "errors"
went in that direction, virtually all of its major "errors" in this story are devoted to the
same agenda and script:
10. RT Hacked Into and Took Over C-SPAN (Fortune)
On June 12, 2017, Fortune claimed that RT had hacked into and taken over C-SPAN and that
C-SPAN "confirmed" it had been hacked. The whole story was false:
Holy shit. Russia state propaganda (RT) "hacked" into C-SPAN feed and took over for a good
40 seconds today? In middle of live broadcast. https://t.co/pwWYFoDGDU
9. Russian Hackers Invaded the U.S. Electricity Grid to Deny Vermonters Heat
During the Winter (WashPost)
On December 30, 2016, the Washington Post reported that "Russian hackers penetrated the U.S.
electricity grid through a utility in Vermont," causing predictable outrage and panic, along
with threats from U.S. political leaders. But then they kept diluting the story with editor's
notes – to admit that the malware was found on a laptop not connected to the U.S.
electric grid at all – until finally acknowledging, days later, that the whole story was
false, since the malware had nothing to do with Russia or with the U.S. electric grid:
Breaking: Russian hackers penetrated U.S. electricity grid through a utility in Vermont
https://t.co/LED11lL7ej
8. A New, Deranged, Anonymous Group Declares Mainstream Political Sites on the
Left and Right to be Russian Propaganda Outlets and WashPost Touts its Report to Claim Massive
Kremlin Infiltration of the Internet (WashPost)
On November 24, 2016, the Washington Post
published one of the most inflammatory, sensationalistic stories to date about Russian
infiltration into U.S. politics using social media, accusing "more than 200 websites" of being
"routine peddlers of Russian propaganda during the election season, with combined audiences of
at least 15 million Americans." It added: "stories planted or promoted by the disinformation
campaign [on Facebook] were viewed more than 213 million times."
Unfortunately for the paper, those statistics were provided by a new, anonymous group that
reached these conclusions by classifying long-time, well-known sites – from the Drudge
Report to Clinton-critical left-wing websites such as Truthout, Black Agenda Report, Truthdig,
and Naked Capitalism, as well as libertarian venues such as Antiwar.com and the Ron Paul
Institute. – as "Russian propaganda outlets," producing one of the longest Editor's Note
in memory appended to the top of the article (but
not until two weeks later , long after the story was mindlessly spread all throughout the
media ecosystem):
Russian propaganda effort helped spread fake news during election, say independent
researchers https://t.co/3ETVXWw16Q
Just want to note I hadn't heard of Propornot before the WP piece and never gave
permission to them to call Bellingcat "allies" https://t.co/jQKnWzjrBR
7. Trump Aide Anthony Scaramucci is Involved in a Russian Hedge Fund Under
Senate Investigation (CNN)
On June 22, 2017, CNN reported that Trump aide Anthony Scaramucci was involved with the
Russian Direct Investment Fund, under Senate investigation. He was not. CNN retracted the story
and forced the three reporters who published it to leave the network. 6. Russia Attacked
U.S. "Diplomats" (i.e. Spies) at the Cuban Embassy Using a Super-Sophisticated Sonic Microwave
Weapon (NBC/MSNBC/CIA)
On September 11, 2017, NBC News and MSNBC
spread all over its airwaves a claim from its notorious CIA puppet Ken Dilanian that Russia
was behind a series of dastardly attacks on U.S. personnel at the Embassy in Cuba using a sonic
or microwave weapon so sophisticated and cunning that Pentagon and CIA scientists had no idea
what to make of it.
But then teams of neurologists began calling into doubt that these personnel had suffered
any brain injuries at all – that instead they appear to have experienced collective
psychosomatic symptoms – and then biologists published findings that the "strange sounds"
the U.S. "diplomats" reported hearing were identical to those emitted by a common Caribbean
male cricket during mating season.
An @NBCNews
exclusive: After more than a year of mystery, Russia is the main suspect in the sonic attacks
that sickened 26 U.S. diplomats and intelligence officials in Cuba. @MitchellReports has the
latest. pic.twitter.com/NEI9PJ9CpD
4. Paul Manafort Visited Julian Assange Three Times in the Ecuadorian Embassy
and Nobody Noticed (Guardian/Luke Harding)
On November 27, 2018, the Guardian
published a major "bombshell" that Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort had somehow managed
to sneak inside one of the world's most surveilled buildings, the Ecuadorian Embassy in London,
and visit Julian Assange on three different occasions. Cable and online commentators
exploded.
Seven weeks later,
no other media outlet has confirmed this ; no video or photographic evidence has emerged;
the Guardian refuses to answer any questions; its leading editors have virtually gone into
hiding; other media outlets have expressed serious doubts about its veracity; and an Ecuadorian
official who worked at the embassy has called the story a complete fake:
Paul Manafort held secret talks with Julian Assange inside the Ecuadorian embassy in
London, and visited around the time he joined Trump's campaign, the Guardian has been told.
https://t.co/Fc2BVmXipk
The Guardian reports that Paul Manafort visited Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks,
the same month that Manafort joined Donald Trump's presidential campaign in 2016, a meeting
that could carry vast implications for the Russia investigation https://t.co/pYawnv4MHH
3. CNN Explicitly Lied About Lanny Davis Being Its Source – For a Story
Whose Substance Was Also False: Cohen Would Testify that Trump Knew in Advance About the Trump
Tower Meeting (CNN)
On July 27, 2018, CNN
published a blockbuster story : that Michael Cohen was prepared to tell Robert Mueller that
President Trump knew in advanced about the Trump Tower meeting. There were, however, two
problems with this story: first, CNN got caught blatantly lying when its reporters claimed that
"contacted by CNN, one of Cohen's attorneys, Lanny Davis, declined to comment" (in fact, Davis
was one of CNN's key sources, if not its only source, for this story), and second, numerous
other outlets retracted the story after the source, Davis, admitted it was a lie. CNN, however,
to this date has refused to do either: 2. Robert Mueller Possesses Internal Emails and Witness Interviews Proving Trump
Directed Cohen to Lie to Congress (BuzzFeed)
BREAKING: President Trump personally directed his longtime attorney Michael Cohen to lie
to Congress about negotiations to build a Trump Tower in Moscow in order to obscure his
involvement. https://t.co/BEoMKiDypn
The allegation that the President of the United States may have suborned perjury before
our committee in an effort to curtail the investigation and cover up his business dealings
with Russia is among the most serious to date. We will do what's necessary to find out if
it's true. https://t.co/GljBAFqOjh
Listen, if Mueller does have multiple sources confirming Trump directed Cohen to lie to
Congress, then we need to know this ASAP. Mueller shouldn't end his inquiry, but it's about
time for him to show Congress his cards before it's too late for us to act. https://t.co/ekG5VSBS8G
To those trying to parse the Mueller statement: it's a straight-up denial. Maybe Buzzfeed
can prove they are right, maybe Mueller can prove them wrong. But it's an emphatic denial
https://t.co/EI1J7XLCJe
. @Isikoff :
"There were red flags about the BuzzFeed story from the get-go." Notes it was inconsistent
with Cohen's guilty plea when he said he made false statements about Trump Tower to Congress
to be "consistent" with Trump, not at his direction. pic.twitter.com/tgDg6SNPpG
We at The Post also had riffs on the story our reporters hadn't confirmed. One noted Fox
downplayed it; another said it "if true, looks to be the most damning to date for Trump." The
industry needs to think deeply on how to cover others' reporting we can't confirm
independently. https://t.co/afzG5B8LAP
Washington Post says Mueller's denial of BuzzFeed News article is aimed at the full story:
"Mueller's denial, according to people familiar with the matter, aims to make clear that none
of those statements in the story are accurate." https://t.co/ene0yqe1mK
If you're one of the people tempted to believe the self-evidently laughable claim that
there's something "vague" or unclear about Mueller's statement, or that it just seeks to
quibble with a few semantic trivialities, read this @WashPost story about this https://t.co/0io99LyATS
pic.twitter.com/ca1TwPR3Og
You can spend hours parsing the Carr statement, but given how unusual it is for any DOJ
office to issue this sort of on the record denial, let alone this office, suspect it means
the story's core contention that they have evidence Trump told Cohen to lie is fundamentally
wrong.
New York Times throws a bit of cold water on BuzzFeed's explosive -- and now seriously
challenged -- report that Trump instructed Michael Cohen to lie to Congress: https://t.co/9N7MiHs7et
pic.twitter.com/7FJFT9D8fW
I can't speak to Buzzfeed's sourcing, but, for what it's worth, I declined to run with
parts of the narrative they conveyed based on a source central to the story repeatedly
disputing the idea that Trump directly issued orders of that kind.
1. Donald Trump Jr. Was Offered Advanced Access to the WikiLeaks Email Archive
(CNN/MSNBC)
The morning of December 9, 2017, launched
one of the most humiliating spectacles in the history of the U.S. media. With a tone so
grave and bombastic that it is impossible to overstate, CNN went on the air and announced a
major exclusive: Donald Trump, Jr. was offered by email advanced access to the trove of DNC and
Podesta emails published by WikiLeaks – meaning before those emails were made public.
Within an hour, MSNBC's Ken Dilanian, using a tone somehow even more unhinged, purported to
have "independently confirmed" this mammoth, blockbuster scoop, which, they said, would have
been the smoking gun showing collusion between the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks over the hacked
emails (while the YouTube clips have been removed, you can still watch one of the amazing MSNBC
videos
here ).
There was, alas, just one small problem with this massive, blockbuster story: it was totally
and completely false. The email which Trump, Jr. received that directed him to the WikiLeaks
archive was sent after WikiLeaks published it online for the whole world to see, not before.
Rather than some super secretive operative giving Trump, Jr. advanced access, as both CNN and
MSNBC told the public for hours they had confirmed, it was instead just some totally pedestrian
message from a random member of the public suggesting Trump, Jr. review documents the whole
world was already talking about. All of the anonymous sources CNN and MSNBC cited somehow all
got the date of the email wrong.
To date, when asked how they both could have gotten such a massive story so completely wrong
in the same way, both CNN and MSNBC have adopted the posture of the CIA by maintaining complete
silence and refusing to explain how it could possibly be that all of their "multiple,
independent sources" got the date wrong on the email in the same way, to be as incriminating
– and false – as possible. Nor, needless to say, will they identify their sources
who, in concert, fed them such inflammatory and utterly false information.
Sadly, CNN and MSNBC have deleted most traces of the most humiliating videos from the
internet, including demanding that YouTube remove copies. But enough survives to document just
what a monumental, horrifying, and utterly inexcusable debacle this was. Particularly amazing
is the clip of the CNN reporter (see below) having to admit the error for the first time, as he
awkwardly struggles to pretend that it's not the massive, horrific debacle that it so obviously
is:
Knowingly soliciting or receiving anything of value from a foreign national for campaign
purposes violates the Federal Election Campaign Act. If it's worth over $2,000 then penalties
include fines & IMPRISONMENT. @DonaldJTrumpJr may be in bigly
trouble. #FridayFeeling
https://t.co/dRz6Ph17Er
CNN is leading the way in bashing BuzzFeed but it's worth remembering CNN had a
humiliation at least as big & bad: when they yelled that Trump Jr. had advanced access to
the WL archive (!): all based on a wrong date. They removed all the segments from YouTube,
but this remains: pic.twitter.com/0jiA50aIku
ABC News' Brian Ross is fired for
reporting Trump told Flynn to make contact with Russians when he was still a candidate;
in fact, Trump did that after he won.
The New York Times claimed Manafort provided
polling data to Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, a person "close to the Kremlin"; in fact, he
provided them to Ukrainians, not Russians.
Crowdstrike, the firm hired by the DNC, claimed they had evidence that Russia hacked
Ukrainian artillery apps;
they then retracted it .
Bloomberg and the WSJ reported Mueller subpoenaed Deustche Bank for Trump's financial
records; the NYT said
that never happened .
Rachel Maddow devoted 20 minutes at the start of her show to very melodramatically
claiming a highly sophisticated party tried to trick her by sending her a fake Top Secret
document modeled after the one published by the Intercept, and said it could only have come
from the U.S. Government (or the Intercept) since the person obtained the document before it
was published by us and thus must have had special access to it; in fact,
Maddow and NBC completely misread the metadata on the document ; the fake sent to Maddow
was created after we published the document, and was sent to her by a random member of the
public who took the document from the Intercept's site and doctored it to see if she'd fall
for an obvious scam. Maddow's entire timeline, on which her whole melodramatic conspiracy
theory rested, was fictitious.
The U.S. media and Democrats spent six months claiming that all "17 intelligence
agencies" agreed Russia was behind the hacks; the NYT finally
retracted that in June, 2017: "The assessment was made by four intelligence agencies --
the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Central Intelligence Agency, the
Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency. The assessment was not
approved by all 17 organizations in the American intelligence community."
AP claimed on February 2, 2018, that the Free Beacon commissioned the Steele Dossier;
they thereafter acknowledged that was false and
noted, instead: "Though the former spy, Christopher Steele, was hired by a firm that was
initially funded by the Washington Free Beacon, he did not begin work on the project until
after Democratic groups had begun funding it."
Widespread government and media claims that accused Russian agent Maria Butina offered
"sex for favors" were
totally false (and scurrilous).
After a Russian regional jet crashed on February 11, 2018, shortly after it took off from
Moscow, killing all 71 people aboard, Harvard Law Professor and frequent MSNBC contributor
Laurence Tribe
strongly implied Putin purposely caused the plane to go down in order to murder Sergei
Millian, a person vaguely linked to George Papadopoulos and Jared Kushner; in fact, Millian
was not on the plane nor, to date, has anyone claimed they had any evidence that Putin
ordered his own country's civilian passenger jet brought down.
"... "Did [ FBI Director James B. Comey] seek permission from you to do the formal opening of the counterintelligence investigation?" Rep. Adam B. Schiff, California Democrat, asked the former attorney general. ..."
"... "No, and he ordinarily would not have had to do that," Ms. Lynch answered. "lt would not have come to the attorney general for that." ..."
"... Mr. Schiff, a fierce defender of the FBI in the Russia probe, seemed taken aback. "Even in the case where you're talking about a campaign for president?" he asked. ..."
"... "I can't recall if it was discussed or not," Ms. Lynch said. "I just don't have a recollection of that in the meetings that I had with him." ..."
"... "Yates was very frustrated in the call with Comey," said the FBI interview report, known as a 302. "She felt a decision to conduct an interview of Flynn should have been coordinated with [the Department of Justice ]." ..."
"... Ms. Yates told the FBI that the interview was "problematic" because the White House counsel should have been notified. ..."
"... During his book tour, Mr. Comey bragged that he sent the two agents without such notification by taking advantage of the White House's formative stage. He said he "wouldn't have gotten away with it" in a more seasoned White House. ..."
"... Other evidence of an FBI on autopilot: The Justice Department inspector general's report on how the bureau probed the Trump campaign revealed more than a dozen instances of FBI personnel submitting false information in wiretap applications and withholding exculpatory evidence. For example, agents evaded Justice Department scrutiny by not telling their warrant overseer that witnesses had cast doubt on the reliability of the Steele dossier. ..."
Newly released documents show FBI agents
operated on autopilot in 2016 and 2017 while targeting President Trump and his campaign with
little or no Justice Department guidance
for such a momentous investigation.
Loretta E. Lynch, President Obama's attorney general, said she never knew the FBI
was placing wiretaps on a Trump campaign volunteer or using the dossier claims of former
British intelligence officer Christopher Steele to put the
entire Trump world under suspicion. Mr. Steele was handled by Fusion
GPS and paid with funds from the Democratic Party and the Hillary Clinton campaign.
"I don't have a recollection of briefings on Fusion GPS or Mr. Steele ," Ms. Lynch told the
House Permanent
Select Committee on Intelligence in October 2017. "I don't have any information on that,
and I don't have a recollection being briefed on that."
Under pressure from acting Director of National Intelligence
Richard A. Grenell, the committee last week released transcripts of her testimony and that of
more than 50 other witnesses in 2017 and 2018, when Republicans controlled the Trump-
Russia
investigation.
Ms. Lynch also testified that she had no knowledge the FBI had taken the
profound step of opening an investigation, led by agent Peter Strzok, into the Trump campaign
on July 31, 2016.
"Did [ FBI Director
James B. Comey] seek permission from you to do the formal opening of the counterintelligence
investigation?" Rep. Adam B. Schiff, California Democrat, asked the former attorney
general.
"No, and he ordinarily would not have had to do that," Ms. Lynch answered. "lt would not
have come to the attorney general for that."
Mr. Schiff, a fierce defender of the FBI in the
Russia probe,
seemed taken aback. "Even in the case where you're talking about a campaign for president?" he
asked.
"I can't recall if it was discussed or not," Ms. Lynch said. "I just don't have a
recollection of that in the meetings that I had with him."
Attorney General William P. Barr has changed the rules. He announced that the attorney
general now must approve any FBI decision to
investigate a presidential campaign.
Ms. Lynch's testimony adds to the picture of an insular, and sometimes misbehaving,
FBI as its agents
searched for evidence that the Trump campaign conspired with the Kremlin to interfere in the
2016 election to damage Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton .
In documents filed by the Justice Department last
week, then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Q. Yates expressed dismay that Mr. Comey would
dispatch two agents, including Mr. Strzok, on Jan. 24, 2017, to interview incoming National
Security Adviser Michael Flynn at the White House.
Ms. Yates, interviewed by FBI agents
assigned to the Robert Mueller special counsel probe, said Mr. Comey notified her only after
the fact.
"Yates was very frustrated in the call with Comey," said the FBI interview
report, known as a 302. "She felt a decision to conduct an interview of Flynn should have been
coordinated with [the Department of Justice
]."
Ms. Yates told the FBI that the
interview was "problematic" because the White House counsel should have been notified.
During his book tour, Mr. Comey bragged that he sent the two agents without such
notification by taking advantage of the White House's formative stage. He said he "wouldn't
have gotten away with it" in a more seasoned White House.
Mr. Barr filed court papers asking U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan to dismiss the
Flynn case and his guilty plea to lying to Mr. Strzok about phone calls with Russian Ambassador
Sergey Kislyak. Mr. Strzok and other FBI personnel
planned the Flynn interview as a near ambush with a goal of prompting him to lie and getting
fired, according to new court filings.
Other evidence of an FBI on autopilot:
The Justice Department
inspector general's report on how the bureau probed the Trump campaign revealed more than a
dozen instances of FBI personnel
submitting false information in wiretap applications and withholding exculpatory evidence. For
example, agents evaded Justice Department scrutiny
by not telling their warrant overseer that witnesses had cast doubt on the reliability of the
Steele
dossier.
The far-fetched dossier was the one essential piece of evidence required to obtain four
surveillance warrants on campaign volunteer Carter Page, according to Justice Department
Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz. The Mueller and Horowitz reports have discredited the
dossier's dozen conspiracy claims against the president and his allies.
Mr. Schiff, now chairman of the House Permanent
Select Committee on Intelligence , had held on
to the declassified transcripts for more than a year. Under pressure from Republicans and Mr.
Grenell, he released the 6,000 pages on the hectic day Mr. Barr moved to end the Flynn
prosecution.
The closed-door testimony included witnesses such as Mr. Obama's national security adviser,
a United Nations ambassador, the nation's top spy and the FBI deputy
director. There were also Clinton campaign chieftains and
lawyers.
The transcripts' most often-produced headline: Obama investigators never saw evidence of
Trump conspiracy between the time the probe was opened until they left office in mid-January
2017.
"I never saw any direct empirical evidence that the Trump campaign or someone in it was
plotting/conspiring with the Russians to meddle with the election," former Director of
National Intelligence James
R. Clapper told the committee .
Mr. Clapper is a paid CNN analyst who has implied repeatedly and without evidence that Mr.
Trump is a Russian spy and a traitor. The Mueller report contained no evidence that Mr. Trump
is a Russian agent or election conspirator.
Mr. Schiff told the country repeatedly that he had seen evidence of Trump collusion that
went beyond circumstantial. Mr. Mueller did not.
Mr. Schiff was a big public supporter of Mr. Steele 's dossier, which
relied on a Moscow main source and was fed by deliberate Kremlin disinformation against Mr.
Trump, according to the Horowitz report.
Trump Tower
One of Mr. Schiff's pieces of evidence of a conspiracy "in plain sight" is the meeting
Donald Trump
Jr. took with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya on June 9, 2016.
The connections are complicated but, simply put, a Russian friend of the Trumps' said she
might have dirt on Mrs. Clinton . At the time, Ms.
Veselnitskaya was in New York representing a rich Russian accused by the Justice Department of
money laundering. To investigate, she hired Fusion GPS -- the same firm that retained Mr.
Steele
to damage the Trump campaign.
The meeting was brief and seemed to be a ruse to enable Ms. Veselnitskaya to pitch an end to
Obama-era economic sanctions that hurt her client. Attending were campaign adviser Paul
Manafort, Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner and Anatoli Samochornov. Mr. Samochornov is a dual
citizen of Russia
and the U.S. who serves as an interpreter to several clients, including Ms. Veselnitskaya and
the State Department.
Mr. Samochornov was the Russian lawyer's interpreter that day. His recitation of events
basically backs the versions given by the Trump associates, according to a transcript of his
November 2017 committee testimony.
The meeting lasted about 20 minutes. Ms. Veselnitskaya briefly talked about possible illegal
campaign contributions to Mrs. Clinton . Manafort, busy on his
cellphone, remarked that the contributions would not be illegal. Mr. Kushner left after a few
minutes.
Then, Rinat Akhmetshin, a lobbyist, made the case for ditching sanctions. He linked that to
a move by Russian President Vladimir Putin to end a ban on Americans adopting Russian
children.
Mr. Trump Jr. said that issue would be addressed if his father was elected. In the end, the
Trump administration put more sanctions on Moscow's political and business operators.
"I've never heard anything about the elections being mentioned at that meeting at all or in
any subsequent discussions with Ms. Veselnitskaya," Mr. Samochornov testified.
No mask
One of the first things Rep. Devin Nunes, California Republican, did to earn the animus of
Democrats and the liberal media was to visit the Trump White House to learn about "unmaskings"
by Obama appointees.
The National Security Agency, by practice, obscures the names of any Americans caught up in
the intercept of foreign communications. Flynn was unmasked in the top-secret transcript of his
Kislyak call so officials reading it would know who was on the line.
In reading intelligence reports, if government officials want the identity of an "American
person," they make a request to the intelligence community. The fear is that repeated requests
could indicate political purposes.
That suspicion is how Samantha Power ended up at the House intelligence committee witness
table. The former U.N. ambassador seemed to have broken records by requesting hundreds of
unmaskings, though the transcript did not contain the identities of the people she exposed.
She explained to the committee why
she needed to know.
"I am reading that intelligence with an eye to doing my job, right?" Ms. Power said.
"Whatever my job is, whatever I am focused on on a given day, I'm taking in the intelligence
to inform my judgment, to be able to advise the president on ISIL or on whatever, or to inform
how I'm going to try to optimize my ability to advance U.S. interests in New York."
She continued: "I can't understand the intelligence . Can you go
and ascertain who this is so I can figure out what it is I'm reading. You've made the
judgement, intelligence professionals, that I need to read this piece of intelligence, I'm
reading it, and it's just got this gap in it, and I didn't understand that. But I never
discussed any name that I received when I did make a request and something came back or when it
was annotated and came to me. I never discussed one of those names with any other
individual."
Rep. Trey Gowdy, South Carolina Republican, listened and then mentioned other officeholders,
such as the White House national security adviser and the secretary of state.
"There are lots of people who need to understand intelligence products, but the number of
requests they made, ambassador, don't approach yours," Mr. Gowdy said.
Ms. Power implied that members of her staff were requesting American identities and invoking
her name without her knowledge.
The dossier
By mid- to late 2017, the full story on the Democrats' dossier -- that it was riddled with
false claims of criminality that served, as Mr. Barr said, to sabotage the Trump White House --
was not known.
Mr. Steele claimed that there was
a far-reaching Trump- Russia conspiracy, that Mr. Trump was a
Russian spy, that Mr. Trump financed Kremlin computer hacking, that his attorney went to Prague
to pay hush money to Putin operatives, and that Manafort and Carter Page worked as a conspiracy
team.
Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn R. Simpson, a Clinton operative, spread the inaccuracies all
over Washington: to the FBI , the
Justice
Department , Congress and the news media.
None of it proved true.
But to Clinton loyalists in 2017, the
dossier was golden.
"I was mostly focused in that meeting on, you know, the guy standing behind this material is
Christopher Steele ," campaign
foreign policy adviser Jake Sullivan said about a Fusion meeting. "He is the one who's judging
its credibility and veracity. You know him. What do you think, based on your conversations with
him? That's what I was really there to try and figure out. And Glenn was incredibly positive
about Steele and felt he was really
on to something and also felt that there was more out there to go find."
Clinton campaign attorney Marc
Elias vouched for the dossier, and its information spread to reporters. He met briefly with Mr.
Steele
during the election campaign.
"I thought that the information that he or they wished to convey was accurate and
important," Mr. Elias testified.
"So the information that Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele wished to
portray to the media in the fall of 2016 at that time, you thought, was accurate and
important?" he was asked.
"As I understand it," he replied.
Mr. Elias rejected allegations that the Clinton campaign conspired with
Russia by having
its operatives spread the Moscow-sourced dirt.
"I don't have enough knowledge about when you say that Russians were involved in the
dossier," he said to a questioner. "I mean that genuinely. I'm not privy to what information
you all have.
"It sounds like the suggestion is that Russia somehow gave information to the
Clinton
campaign vis-a-vis one person to one person, to another person, to another person, to me, to
the campaign. That strikes me as fanciful and unlikely, but perhaps as I said, I don't have a
security clearance. You all have facts and information that is not available to me. But I
certainly never had any hint or whiff."
Essentially the second part of Flynn call was on behave of Israel
Notable quotes:
"... In those conversations, Flynn asked that the Russians not retaliate for the Obama administration sanctions on Moscow imposed for the now debunked Russiagate allegations. Russia eventually decided not to retaliate. Flynn also asked on behalf of Israel that the Russians veto a UN Security Council resolution condemning illegal Israeli West Bank settlements, which Obama was planning to abstain on. Russia refused this request. ..."
"... Contrary to popular belief, when you can't trust your own government, that's a very bad thing. ..."
"... This is a hugely important article explaining the process, the policies, and their historical context by one who was a top legal expert at the Bureau. This is what the American public should be reading to know what should happen, as well as to learn how the process and policies have been violated, what have been the consequences. Thank you Coleen Rowley, and thank you Consortium News. ..."
Atlantic Council senior fellow, Congressional candidate, and Russia conspiracy theorist
Evelyn Farkas is desperately trying to salvage her reputation after recently released
transcripts from her closed-door 2017 testimony to the House Intelligence Committee revealed
she totally lied on national TV .
In March of 2017, Farkas confidently told MSNBC 's Mika Brzezinski: " The Trump folks, if
they found out how we knew what we knew about the Trump staff dealing with Russians , that they
would try to compromise those sources and methods, meaning we would not longer have access to
that intelligence ."
Except, during testimony to the House, Farkas admitted she lied . When pressed by former
Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) on why she said 'we' - referring to the US government, Farkas said she
"didn't know anything."
In short, she was either illegally discussing US intelligence matters with her "former
colleagues," or she made the whole thing up.
Now, Farkas is in damage control mode - writing in the
Washington Post that her testimony demonstrated "that I had not leaked intelligence and
that my early intuition about Trump-Kremlin cooperation was valid.' She also claims that her
comments to MSNBC were based on "media reports and statements by Obama administration officials
and the intelligence community," which had "began unearthing connections between Trump's
campaign and Russia."
Farkas is now blaming a 'disconcerting nexus between Russia and the reactionary right,' for
making her look bad (apparently Trey Gowdy is part of the "reactionary right" for asking her
who she meant by "we").
Attacks against me came first on Twitter and other social media platforms, from far-right
sources. Forensics data I was shown suggested at least one entity had Russian ties . The
attacks increased in quantity and ferocity until Fox News and Trump-allied Republicans --
higher-profile, and more mainstream, sources -- also criticized me .
...
Trump surrogates, including former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski ,
Donald Trump Jr. and Fox
News hosts such as Tucker Carlson have essentially accused me
of treason for being one of the "fraudulent originators" of the "Russia hoax." -Evelyn
Farkas
She then parrots the Democratic talking point that the attacks she's received are part of
Trump's larger "Obamagate" allegations - " a narrative that distracts attention from his
administration's disastrous pandemic response and attempts to defect blame for Russian
interference onto the Obama administration" (Obama told Putin to ' cut it out ' after all).
Meanwhile, Poor Evelyn's campaign staff has become " emotionally exhausted " after her
Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts have been "overwhelmed with a stream of vile, vulgar
and sometimes violent messages" in response to the plethora of conservative outlets which have
called her out for Russia malarkey.
There is evidence that Russian actors are contributing to these attacks. The same day that
right-wing pundits began pumping accusations, newly created Russian Twitter accounts picked them up. Within a day,
Russian "
disinformation clearinghouses " posted versions of the story . Many of the Twitter
accounts boosting attacks have posted in unison, a sign of inauthentic social media
behavior.
She closes by defiantly claiming "I wasn't silenced in 2017, and I won't be silenced
now."
No Evelyn, nobody is silencing you. You're being called out for your role in the perhaps the
largest, most divisive hoax in US history - which was based on faulty intelligence that
includes crowdstrike admitting they had
no proof of that Russia exfiltrated DNC emails, and Christopher Steele's absurd dossier
based on his 'Russian sources.'
MrBoompi, 18 minutes ago
Lying is a common occurrence on MSNBC. Farkas was just showing her party she is qualified
for a more senior position.
chubbar, 23 minutes ago
My opinion, based on zero facts, is that the lie she told was to Gowdy. She had to say she
lied about having intelligence data or she'd be looking at a felony along with whomever she
was talking to in the US gov't. You just know these cocksuckers in the resistance don't give
a **** about laws or fairness, it's all about getting Trump. So they set up an informal
network to get classified intelligence from the Obama holdovers out into the wild where these
assholes could use it against Trump and the gov't operations. Treason. She needs to be
executed for her efforts!
LetThemEatRand, 59 minutes ago
This whole thing reminds me of a fan watching their team play a championship game. If the
ref makes a bad call and their team wins, they don't care. And if the ref makes a good call
and their team loses, they blame the ref. No one cares about the truth or the facts. That in
a nutshell is politics in the US. If you believe that anyone will "switch sides" or admit the
ref made a bad call or a good call, you're smoking the funny stuff.
mtumba, 50 minutes ago
It's a natural response to a corrupt system.
When the system is wholly corrupt so that truth doesn't matter, what else is there to care
about other than your side winning?
> He will go down as The most corrupt president in history! Spied on an opponents
campaign Authorised the intelligence agencies to spy Leaker Collided with Russia
Our Fakenews networks conspired with Obama, Obama's previous Cabinet, Hillary, the CIA,
FBI, NSA, DNC, and Democrats in Congress. They were all in on it together. #Sedition #Treason
ex-president Obummer biggest legacy to the democratic world is allowing China to claim all
of the South China Sea by turning a blind eye whilst China was dredging the sea beds and
creating artificial islands all over the South China sea!!
Obama was an America hater from day one, and committed many treasons public and private.
His "legacy" is and was a fabrication of the MSM, who tolerated no end of abuses, including
Obama suing a number of journalists.
But let's just look at one item, underplayed by the MSM: Obama did everything he could to
stop the 9/11 victims bill, including a presidential veto, which was then overridden by a
gigantic (97-1) senate vote.
McCain and Graham continued to fight the LAW, undoubtedly with Obama help, using Arab
funded lawyers to the tune of 1.2 million dollars per month.
"... According to these transcripts of congressional testimony by some of the participants, the FBI decided all by itself after Comey was fired to consider acting against Trump by pursuing him for suspicion of conspiracy with Russia to give the Russians the president of the US that they supposedly wanted. ..."
"... Following these seditious and IMO illegal discussions the FBI and Sessions/Rosenstein's Justice Department sought FISA Court warrants for surveillance against associates of Trump and members of his campaign for president. ..."
"... IMO this collection of actions when added to whatever Clapper, Brennan and "the lads" of the Deep State were doing with the British intelligence services amount to an attempted "soft coup" against the constitution and from the continued stonewalling of the FBI and DoJ the coup is ongoing ..."
The president of the US was made head of the Executive Branch (EC) of the federal government by Article 2 of the present constitution
of the US. He is also Commander in Chief of the armed forces of the federal government. As head of the EC, he is head of all the
parts of the government excepting the Congress and the Federal courts which are co-equal branches of the federal government. The
Department of Justice is just another Executive Branch Department subordinate in all things to the president. The FBI is a federal
police force and counter-intelligence agency subordinate to the Department of Justice and DNI and therefore to the president in
all things. The FBI actually IMO has no legal right whatever to investigate the president. He is the constitutionally elected
commander of the FBI. Does one investigate one's commander? No. The procedures for legally and constitutionally removing a president
from office for malfeasance are clear. He must be impeached by the House of Representatives for "High Crimes and Misdemeanors"
and then tried by the US Senate on the charges. Conviction results in removal from office.
According to these transcripts of congressional testimony by some of the participants, the FBI decided all by itself after
Comey was fired to consider acting against Trump by pursuing him for suspicion of conspiracy with Russia to give the Russians
the president of the US that they supposedly wanted. Part of the discussions among senior FBI people had to do with whether
or not the president had the legal authority to remove from office an FBI Director. Say what? Where have these dummies been all
their careers? Do they not teach anything about this at the FBI Academy? The US Army lectures its officers at every level of schooling
on the subject of the constitutional and legal basis and limits of their authority.
Following these seditious and IMO illegal discussions the FBI and Sessions/Rosenstein's Justice Department sought FISA
Court warrants for surveillance against associates of Trump and members of his campaign for president. Their application
for warrants were largely based on unsubstantiated "opposition research" funded by the Democratic Party and the Clinton campaign.
The judge who approved the warrants was not informed of the nature of the evidence. These warrants provided an authority for surveillance
of the Trump campaign.
IMO this collection of actions when added to whatever Clapper, Brennan and "the lads" of the Deep State were doing with
the British intelligence services amount to an attempted "soft coup" against the constitution and from the continued stonewalling
of the FBI and DoJ the coup is ongoing. pl
Trump say that Brennan was one of the architect. Obama knew everything and probably directed
the color revolution against Trump
Notable quotes:
"... Self-described, "scandal-free" administration Obama is a lie nonetheless, Obama will eventually have to testify in front of Congress there is no hiding from it. ..."
Self-described, "scandal-free" administration Obama is a lie nonetheless, Obama will
eventually have to testify in front of Congress there is no hiding from it.
Emmet G. Sullivan, the judge in the case of former Trump National Security Adviser Michael
Flynn, is refusing to let William Barr's Justice Department drop the charge. He's even thinking
of adding more, appointing a retired judge to ask "whether the Court
should issue an Order to Show Cause why Mr. Flynn should not be held in criminal contempt for
perjury."
Pundits are cheering. A trio of former law enforcement and judicial officials saluted
Sullivan in the Washington Post, chirping, "
The Flynn case isn't over until a judge says it's over ." Yuppie icon Jeffrey Toobin of CNN
and the New Yorker , one of the #Resistance crowd's favored legal authorities, described
Sullivan's appointment of Judge John Gleeson as " brilliant ." MSNBC legal
analyst Glenn Kirschner said Americans owe Sullivan a " debt of gratitude ."
One had to search far and wide to find a non-conservative legal analyst willing to say the
obvious, i.e. that Sullivan's decision was the kind of thing one would expect from a judge in
Belarus. George Washington University professor Jonathan Turley was one of the few willing to
say Sullivan's move could " could create a threat of a
judicial charge even when prosecutors agree with defendants ."
Sullivan's reaction was amplified by a group letter calling for Barr's resignation
signed by 2000 former Justice Department officials (the melodramatic group email somberly
reported as momentous news is one of many tired media tropes in the Trump era) and the
preposterous "leak" of news that the dropped case made Barack Obama sad. The former president
"privately" told "members of his administration" (who instantly told Yahoo!
News ) that there was no precedent for the dropping of perjury charges, and that the "rule
of law" itself was at stake.
Whatever one's opinion of Flynn, his relations with Turkey, his "
Lock her up!" chants , his haircut, or anything, this case was never about much. There's no
longer pretense that prosecution would lead to the unspooling of a massive Trump-Russia
conspiracy, as pundits once breathlessly expected. In fact, news that Flynn was cooperating
with special counsel Robert Mueller inspired many of the " Is this the beginning
of the end for Trump ?" stories that will someday fill whole chapters of Journalism Fucks
Up 101 textbooks.
The acts at issue are calls Flynn made to Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak on December
29th, 2016 in which he told the Russians not to overreact to sanctions. That's it. The
investigation was about to be dropped, but someone got the idea of using electronic
surveillance of the calls to leverage a case into existence.
"The record of his conversation with Ambassador Kislyak had become widely known in the
press," is how Deputy FBI chief Andrew McCabe put it, euphemistically. "We wanted to sit down
with General Flynn and understand, kind of, what his thoughts on that conversation were."
A Laurel-and-Hardy team of agents conducted the interview, then took three
weeks to write and re-write multiple versions of the interview notes used as evidence
(because why record it?). They were supervised by a counterintelligence chief who then
memorialized on paper his uncertainty over whether the FBI was trying to " get
him to lie" or "get him fired ," worrying that they'd be accused of "playing games." After
another leak to the Washington Post in early February, 2017, Flynn actually was fired, and
later pleaded guilty to lying about sanctions in the Kislyak call, the transcript of which was
of course never released to either the defense or the public.
Warrantless surveillance, multiple illegal leaks of classified information, a false
statements charge constructed on the razor's edge of Miranda, and the use of never-produced,
secret counterintelligence evidence in a domestic criminal proceeding – this is the "rule
of law" we're being asked to cheer.
Russiagate cases were often two-level offenses: factually bogus or exaggerated, but also
indicative of authoritarian practices. Democrats and Democrat-friendly pundits in the last four
years have been consistently unable to register objections on either front.
Flynn's case fit the pattern. We were told his plea was just the " tip
of the iceberg " that would "take the trail of Russian collusion" to the "center of the
plot," i.e. Trump. It turned out he had no deeper story to tell. In fact, none of the people
prosecutors tossed in jail to get at the Russian "plot" – some little more than
bystanders – had anything to share.
Remember George Papadopoulos, whose alleged conversation about "dirt" on Hillary Clinton
with an Australian diplomat created the pretext for the FBI's entire Trump-Russia
investigation? We just found out in newly-released testimony by McCabe that the FBI felt as
early as the summer of 2016 that the evidence " didn't
particularly indicate" that Papadopoulos was "interacting with the Russians ."
If you're in the media and keeping score, that's about six months before our industry lost
its mind and scrambled to make Watergate
comparisons over Jim Comey's March, 2017 "
bombshell " revelation of the existence of an FBI Trump-Russia investigation. Nobody
bothered to wonder if they actually had any evidence. Similarly Chelsea Manning insisted she'd
already answered all pertinent questions about Julian Assange, but prosecutors didn't find that
answer satisfactory, and threw her in jail for year anyway, only releasing her when she
tried to kill herself . She owed $256,000 in fines upon release, not that her many
supporters from the Bush days seemed to care much.
The Flynn case was built on surveillance gathered under the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, a
program that seems to have been abused on a massive scale by both Democratic and Republican
administrations.
After Edward Snowden's 2013 revelations about mass data collection, a series of internal
investigations
began showing officials were breaking rules against spying on specific Americans via this NSA
program. Searches were conducted too often and without proper justification, and the results
were shared with too many people, including private contractors. By October, 2016, the FISA
court was declaring that systematic overuse of so-called "702" searches were a "
very serious fourth Amendment issue ."
In later court documents it came out that the FBI conducted
3.1 million such searches in 2017 alone. As the Brennan Center put it, "almost certainly
the total number of U.S. person queries run by the FBI each year is well into the
millions."
Anyone who bothers to look back will find hints at how this program might have been misused.
In late 2015, Obama officials bragged to the
Wall Street Journal they'd made use of FISA surveillance involving "Jewish-American groups"
as well as "U.S. lawmakers" in congress, all because they wanted to more effectively "counter"
Israeli opposition to Obama's nuclear deal with Iran. This is a long way from using
surveillance to defuse terror plots or break up human trafficking rings.
I can understand not caring about the plight of Michael Flynn, but cases like this have
turned erstwhile liberals – people who just a decade ago were marching in the streets
over the civil liberties implications of Cheney's War on Terror apparatus – into
defenders of the spy state . Politicians and pundits across the last four years have rolled
their eyes at
attorney-client privilege , the presumption of innocence, the right to face one's accuser,
the right to counsel and a host of other issues, regularly denouncing civil rights worries as
red-herring excuses for Trumpism.
I've written a lot about the Democrats' record on civil liberties issues in the past.
Working on I Can't Breathe, a book about the Eric Garner case, I was stunned to learn the
central role
Mario Cuomo played in the mass incarceration problem, while Democrats also often
embraced hyper-intrusive "stop and frisk" or "broken windows" enforcement strategies,
usually by touting terms like "community policing" that sounded nice to white voters. Democrats
strongly supported
the PATRIOT Act in 2001, and Barack Obama continued or expanded Bush-Cheney programs like
drone assassination , rendition , and warrantless
surveillance , while also
using the Espionage Act to bully reporters and whistleblowers.
Republicans throughout this time were usually as bad or worse on these issues, but Democrats
have lately positioned themselves as more aggressive promoters of strong-arm policies, from
control of Internet speech to the embrace of domestic spying. In the last four years the
blue-friendly press has done a complete 180 on these issues, going from cheering Edward Snowden
to lionizing the CIA, NSA, and FBI and making on-air partners out of drone-and-surveillance
all-stars like John Brennan, James Clapper, and Michael Hayden. There are now too many
ex-spooks on CNN and MSNBC to count, while there isn't a single regular contributor on any
of the networks one could describe as antiwar.
Democrats clearly believe constituents will forgive them for abandoning constitutional
principles, so long as the targets of official inquiry are figures like Flynn or Paul Manafort
or Trump himself. In the process, they've raised a generation of followers whose contempt for
civil liberties is now genuine-to-permanent. Blue-staters have gone from dismissing
constitutional concerns as Trumpian ruse to sneering at them, in the manner of French
aristocrats, as evidence of proletarian mental defect.
Nowhere has this been more evident than in the response to the Covid-19 crisis, where the
almost mandatory take of pundits is that any protest of lockdown measures is troglodyte
death wish . The aftereffects of years of Russiagate/Trump coverage are seen everywhere:
press outlets reflexively associate complaints of government overreach with Trump, treason, and
racism, and conversely radiate a creepily gleeful tone when describing aggressive emergency
measures and the problems some "
dumb " Americans have had accepting them.
On the campaign trail in 2016, I watched Democrats hand Trump the economic populism argument
by dismissing all complaints about the failures of neoliberal economics. This mistake was later
compounded by years of propaganda arguing that "economic insecurity" was just a
Trojan Horse term for racism . These takes, along with the absurd kneecapping of the Bernie
Sanders movement, have allowed Trump to position himself as a working-class hero, the sole
voice of a squeezed underclass.
The same mistake is now being made with civil liberties. Millions have lost their jobs and
businesses by government fiat, there's a clamor for
censorship and contact tracing
programs that could have serious long-term consequences, yet voters only hear Trump making
occasional remarks about freedom; Democrats treat it like it's a word that should be banned by
Facebook (a recent Washington Post headline
put the term in quotation marks , as if one should be gloved to touch it). Has the Trump
era really damaged our thinking to this degree?
My family is in quarantine, I worry about a premature return to work, and sure, I laughed at
that Shaun of the Dead photo
of Ohio protesters protesting state lockdown laws. But I also recognize the crisis is also
raising serious civil liberties issues, from prisoners
trapped in deadly conditions to profound questions about speech and assembly, the limits to
surveillance and snitching, etc. If this disease is going to be in our lives for the
foreseeable future, that makes it more urgent that we talk about what these rules will be, not
less -- yet the party I grew up supporting seems to have lost the ability to do so, and I don't
understand why.
Matt Taibi says that "he doesn't understand why" the Democrats have suddenly given up on
Civil Liberties.
Of course her spent a lot of the '90s in Russia but he must have heard about the Clinton
administration and its many and varied assaults on the poor, mass incarceration and Welfare
'reform.' He can't have missed what the War Party was doing in Yugoslavia either. I guess it
just takes some people a long time to wake up.
The truth is that the Democrats-the old party of Jim Crow- have been laughing at civil
liberties and the rule of law for generations. There is nothing new about this. It goes back
to Truman and the Cold War- a deliberate choice that the party made then when Medicare for
All was the alternative on the table. A choice which involved Taft Hartley, which had so much
Democratic Party support that Congress over rode the veto, one of the most obvious assaults
on civil liberties and democratic rights in US History. And that is saying something.
As to this Taibi judgement
"..Democrats clearly believe constituents will forgive them for abandoning constitutional
principles, so long as the targets of official inquiry are figures like Flynn or Paul
Manafort or Trump himself. In the process, they've raised a generation of followers whose
contempt for civil liberties is now genuine-to-permanent..."
Compare it with the MeToo movement which positively delights in trashing every one of the
cherished civil liberties that protect people from improper conviction and false
imprisonment. That is a Democratic Party initiative (or at least it until recently and the
Tara Read accusations) and wholly consonant with the treatment meted out to Flynn.
"... Sydney Powell can only appeal the conduct of the Judge. This serves as a nice distraction from the unconstitutional conduct of the Obama administration in wiretapping political opponents; as well as multiple members of Congress ..."
"... We do know Rosenstein appointed Mueller as SC to investigate Flynn, among other things. ..."
"... And we now know there was no predicate for any of the Mueller SCO appointment; thus, Rosenstein, too: what was he doing? ..."
"... We do know that at some point after Bill Barr was confirmed as AG last year, that he began to investigate outing of Flynn and release of classified information, that is, actual crimes. ..."
"... And we know Obama is an enemy of Flynn. If the CIA never took any steps, prior to the Barr confirmation as AG -- and I have no way of knowing whether they did or did not, viz. the Flynn outing and leak of classified information, ---what, if any, might or should be, if any, the consequences of that? And, ditto the DOJ. ..."
"... It appear this judge want to protect the likes of Obama, and Yates, and the long list of villains whose mission remain: Destroy Flynn at all costs. ..."
"... General Flynn's original law team belonged to Covington & Burling. That's where Eric Holder made partner. Since his time as Attorney General, Holder has returned to that law firm. Like Fred said, they sandbagged the case. ..."
"... Flynn swore before two judges under penalty of perjury that he lied to the FBI. He then swore that he didn't lie to the FBI when he asked to withdraw his guilty plea. There's the conundrum. If we had the transcript of the Flynn-Kislyak conversations, we would know the answer to one of your questions. We could compare that to his guilty plea. We would then know if the prosecution's case was false. In that case both the prosecution and Flynn would be liable for perjuring themselves. It would also constitute prosecutorial misconduct IMO. Barr is doing Flynn a disservice by not releasing those transcripts. ..."
"... So all those mass incarcerated black men who pled guilty are really guilty because prosecutorial misconduct and defective legal advice neither happen to them nor are mitigating when a plea of guilty is made? "swore before two judges under penalty of perjury" The DOJ dropped the charges, it is up to the to prosecute for the new accusation that pleading guilty was actually perjury. Good luck at a jury trial with that. ..."
"... It seems to be a last minute desperation play by Sullivan to keep Obama out of the frying pan. ..."
"... Just today, the neocon-infested Washington Post ran an editorial, apparently by one of their DNC-affiliated writers, which attempted to jape the whole Obamagate narrative through a paroxysm of superlatives, mocking it as some gigantic and wholly imaginary conspiracy. This effort reminded me of their similar jocularity phase relative to Trump during the 2016 primary season. ..."
"... I suspect the reality is just the sleazy truth of Obama being just as much of a crooked bastard as Bush. The Obama gang, of course, is desperate to prevent the tarnishing of Saint Barry ..."
"... When Judge Sullivan said three days ago that he was going to make a schedule for outside persons and organizations to file written arguments, it was essentially an invitation for arguments against the government's request to dismiss the case. I started to put together an article about that brazen move. ..."
Firstly, Larry Johnson and Robert Willmann know more about this case than I do. It now
appears, if this report today is to be believed, that Emmett Sullivan is now inclined to
charge General Flynn with contempt of court and perjury. I have to ask; for what? This is
Kafkaesque.
For agreeing to a plea deal that Flynn knew was false? For failing to plead innocence? For
reversing his plea when it was demonstrated that the prosecution case against him was utterly
untrue and corrupt?
"Judge", I use the term loosely, Sullivan seems to be so ensnared in the coils of judicial
procedure that he has forgotten that truth and justice matter. That is the nicest construct I
can put on it. I think it's time for Sidney Powell to rip this judge to shreds. I await Larry
and Roberts comments.
Flynn was told by his lawyers from Covington & Burling that he was guilty. Covington
& Burling were not only wrong they made no effort to get the exculpatory evidence and
purposely withheld what evidence they did possess - repeatedly - from Flynn's new lawyer.
But then that has already been reported on publicly and discussed here. Perhaps your
memory is faulty.
Sydney Powell can only appeal the conduct of the Judge. This serves as a nice distraction
from the unconstitutional conduct of the Obama administration in wiretapping political
opponents; as well as multiple members of Congress, multiple governors and state health officials in response to China's
biological attack against the US and Western nations.
Yes, I agree with you. Sullivan trying to charge Flynn with perjury and contempt of court
is a deliberate distraction. I would have thought the people who should be charged are the
ones who constructed and prosecuted the bogus charge in the first place.
How many defendants automatically claim they are "not guilty, your honor" when asked to enter
their plea, even when there is still gunpowder on their hands?
Do they also get charged with perjury after their guilt is established, beyond a
reasonable doubt by a jury of their peers? You lied to the court - you said you were
innocent. Double time in the slammer for you.
Defendant statements of either their own guilt or innocence should be "privileged" and
therefore not actionable. Those statements are fundamental to our trust in our judicial
system, and should never later be claimed perjury or false statements if the defendant
changes their mind or a jury makes their ultimate finding.
Although different people at different times, and different circumstances: a
comparison.
Then CIA Agent Valerie Plame outing [she is currently a Democrat candidate for a New
Mexico congressional seat].
And, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn [NSA-designee] outing.
Outing, that is: leaking their identities, by government officials[s], to . . . .and
release of classified information.
How do the actions taken by government compare and contrast, at the time of outing/leaking
crimes.
1] Both leaks went to the Washington Post.
2] Substance of the Plame and Flynn leaks related to . . .
WAP published Plame's identity, July 14, 2003. George Bush the younger, then president.
Robert David Sanders "Bob" Novak put his name to this at WAP. [Her husband, Joseph C. Wilson
4th, "What I Didn't Find in Africa", in The New York Times, July 6, 2003, disputed
Bush/Cheney administration claims, their claims of WMD in Iraq.]
WAP published Flynn's identify, Jan. 12, 2017. Barack Obama, then president. David
Reynolds Ignatius put his name to it at WAP. Flynn disputed Obama administration "facts"
about their Syrian war in particular, and more generally, in west Asia/near East/middle
east.]
3] Investigation at the time or no investigation at the time.
Executive Order 12333 of Dec. 4, 1981 requires actions on such matters.
In the Plame matter, the CIA, on July 24, 2003 made a phone call to the DOJ about this,
according to the CIA. They followed this up with a July 30, 2003 letter.
Government records show "on 24 July 2003, a CIA attorney left a phone message for the
Chief of the Counterespionage Section of DoJ noting concerns with recent articles on this
subject and stating that the CIA would forward a written crimes report pending the outcome of
a review of the articles by subject matter experts. By letter dated 30 July 2003, the CIA
reported to the Criminal Division of DoJ a possible violation of criminal law concerning the
unauthorized disclosure of classified information. The letter also informed DoJ that the
CIA's Office of Security had opened an investigation into this matter. This letter was sent
again to DoJ by facsimile on 5 September 2003."
Sept. 30, 2003, Bush famously stated, viz. the identities of the leaker[s]: "I want to
know who it is ... and if the person has violated law, the person will be taken care of."
Dec. 30, 2003 a Special Counsel was also appointed to investigate the Plame matter, as
well.
Then AG John Ashcroft recused himself and thus declined to make this SC appointment.
Patrick Fitzgerald was named the Special Counsel by then Deputy AG James Comey. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
We know many more details now about the Plame matter, than about what, if any,
investigation may, or may not have, begun, at the time of the Flynn outing and release of
classified information.
What we do know, so far, about the Flynn matter is that, at the time, there was no attempt
-- or at least, we don't know if there was -- any attempt from the Flynn outing on Jan. 12,
2017, to Jan. 20 of that year, when Obama was still president: a] if the CIA asked for an investigation b] if then AG Lynch did c] if DAG at the time Yates did d] if Obama did
We also don't know if, beginning Jan. 20 a] if then acting AG Yates did b] if President Trump did c] if the CIA did
Once Jeff Sessions was confirmed as AG, we don't know if he did, nor do we know if DAG Rod
Rosenstein did.
Nor do we know if the CIA did.
We do know Rosenstein appointed Mueller as SC to investigate Flynn, among other
things.
And we now know there was no predicate for any of the Mueller SCO appointment; thus,
Rosenstein, too: what was he doing?
We do know that at some point after Bill Barr was confirmed as AG last year, that he began
to investigate outing of Flynn and release of classified information, that is, actual
crimes.
It is a fair question to ask when he actually began investigation on the Flynn outing, and
leaking of classified material related to that.
And to ask when, or if, the CIA, since Jan. 20, 2017, ever did.
We do know there were many public enemies of Flynn at highest levels of DOJ, FBI, CIA, and
the office Clapper was in charge of at the time, Director of National Intelligence.
And we know Obama is an enemy of Flynn. If the CIA never took any steps, prior to the Barr confirmation as AG -- and I have no way
of knowing whether they did or did not, viz. the Flynn outing and leak of classified
information, ---what, if any, might or should be, if any, the consequences of that? And, ditto the DOJ.
As an aside: Judge Emmett Sullivan's ongoing tomfoolery and slapdash in the Flynn criminal
case puts in relief, sharp relief, just how upside down this entire issue has become.
It appear this judge want to protect the likes of Obama, and Yates, and the long list of
villains whose mission remain: Destroy Flynn at all costs.
Flynn's guilty plea being sworn to under penalty of perjury is no small matter, and the
DOJs actions have been, in total, extremely odd.
It may be unwise to read too much into this at this point. The DOJ has wasted a couple of
years and no doubt millions of dollars worth of the court's time. Sullivan is providing a
platform wherein the DOJ will have to fully explain itself in this matter. Both past and
present DOJs, that is.
As a general observation, there has been a tidal wave of criticism in American media over
the DOJ dropping the charges against Flynn.
I have made an attempt to follow what the American MSM are saying about this, and the
hostility to both Flynn and Barr is just overwhelming. Surely that overwhelming media opinion had an effect on Judge Sullivan's bad
decision.
Perhaps I'm missing something. I know the FBI can listen in on phone calls made to foreign
nationals, but how can the FBI legally listen in on phone calls made by the NSC Director of
the President-Elect, regardless of who he is talking to?
General Flynn's original law team belonged to Covington & Burling. That's where Eric
Holder made partner. Since his time as Attorney General, Holder has returned to that law
firm. Like Fred said, they sandbagged the case.
My husband's default TV channel is MSNBC, programming which I often overhear. A fair-minded
observer can't help but notice that Obama apologists only mention that Flynn plead guilty
twice. They NEVER emphasize the beyond-mitigating aspects of the matter, e.g., that his
counsel at the time (which was a law firm also employing former Obama AG Eric Holder) was
either incompetent or purposefully negligent in advising him to do so. Nor do they mention
that Flynn was threatened with the prospect of his son being prosecuted using rarely-enforced
FARA laws. The apologists also fail to remind their audiences that the FBI investigation of
Flynn was about to be closed -- much less do they report that he was NEVER charged with
perjury in the first place!
The convenient and expedient failure to fully inform people has become typical among the
MSM/Democrats/NeverTrumpers, et al. Their efforts to misinform, to perpetuate ignorance,
continue to play out not only in the entire Obamagate scandal but it seems also when it comes
to COVID-19 policy. No wonder zombie-themed entertainment is so popular in recent years.
SMFH...
Flynn wasn't outed. He was a widely known public figure for years. Trump and Pence
announced Flynn lied to them and the FBI when he was fired. I'm not if this was mentioned in
the press before Trump's announcement.
Flynn swore before two judges under penalty of perjury that he lied to the FBI. He then
swore that he didn't lie to the FBI when he asked to withdraw his guilty plea. There's the
conundrum. If we had the transcript of the Flynn-Kislyak conversations, we would know the
answer to one of your questions. We could compare that to his guilty plea. We would then know
if the prosecution's case was false. In that case both the prosecution and Flynn would be
liable for perjuring themselves. It would also constitute prosecutorial misconduct IMO. Barr
is doing Flynn a disservice by not releasing those transcripts.
TTG, there is this legal thing called the litigation privilege that, I think, covers what an
accused can say in a trial. Plenty of people plead guilty to charges that they know to be
false without the slightest demur by anyone..
Furthermore, Flynn may have become convinced by his lawyers that he had, in effect lied to
the FBI. In addition, since he was not under oath or cautioned by the FBI at the time, even
if he deliberately did lie for perhaps political or strategic reasons how is that a crime?
People lie to people all the time.
To put that another way, is telling a female FBI agent "I'll still respect you in the
morning" going to get you 20 years?
So all those mass incarcerated black men who pled guilty are really guilty because
prosecutorial misconduct and defective legal advice neither happen to them nor are
mitigating when a plea of guilty is made? "swore before two judges under penalty of perjury"
The DOJ dropped the charges, it is up to the to prosecute for the new accusation that
pleading guilty was actually perjury. Good luck at a jury trial with that.
Mark,
"Sullivan is providing a platform wherein the DOJ will have to fully explain itself in
this matter."
So he is willfully refusing to dismiss the case so the DOJ can give him an explanation -
other than the one they already gave him in the motion to dismiss? Justice Sullivan, on
behalf of the Judiciary, is now taking it upon itself to determine what the executive branch
of government was thinking in this case? To get that explanation he has appointed a former
member of the judiciary, one who had previously worked side by side with Andrew Weissman. No
bias there. You don't need to be a lawyer to see how ludicrous the suggestion and the judges
actions appear.
Sullivan, like most of the Federal judiciary, is just another swamp creature. He apparently slept through the class in law school where they said that the state has to
prosecute the case, a judge can't - even as much as he may want to.
The issue is both: the criminal leak of classified information; and the criminal outing --
the identity of Flynn -- related to classified information leak. Those are indissolubly
linked.
The issue is also this, thanks to Judge Emmett Gilbert & Sullivan, who wrote May 13,
2020:
"ORDERED that amicus curiae shall address whether the Court should issue an Order to Show
Cause why Mr. Flynn should not be held in criminal contempt for perjury. . . and any other
applicable statutes, rules, or controlling law."
Who would be charging Flynn with "criminal contempt for perjury"? And/Or, "and any other
applicable statutes, rules, or controlling law"?
Perhaps Gilbert & Sullivan will keep the case open until after the November
presidential election, or the November 2024 election, or the next one, so that another DOJ --
not headed by Bill Barr -- can so charge Flynn.
Or perhaps Gilbert & Sullivan is inviting Congress to name a Special Prosecutor.
Who might that be? James Comey? Andrew Weissmann? Sally Yates?
After all, how dare anyone expose Barry as anything but "the scandal free" administration.
This is Gilbert & Sullivan's motive, as I see it, my opinion, based on what I have seen
so far: To protect Barry, among others. And do that via keeping alive a prosecution of Flynn,
based on DOJ/FBI/CIA skullduggery. [Another theory is the judge wants to throw the book at
Covington for misconduct; perhaps both or one or the other are at play, I don't have the
evidence at this time to clearly say.]
As for Trump and Pence, that is grist for another mill.
For all we know, Trump and Pence may have wanted Flynn gone and they did not care how it
was done. And they did not want their finger prints on it; and for all we know, Trump and
Pence were not opposed to the Mueller SC appointment.
These are also things we actually just don't have clear answers to, just yet.
But that sideshow is irrelevant to this legal proceeding/circus per the May 13 order.
However, it may [or may not] be relevant to whether or not Trump and Pence actually wanted
Flynn gone – using the "Flynn lied" as an excuse to be rid of him.
Pence, at the time, had no business speaking about what was essentially classified
information, at the time, by the way; he did, on national TV, and Flynn was the patsy.
Did Trump and Pence, and their administration, sit on their hands as well, and do nothing
about the criminal leak of classified information linked to the outing of Flynn?
Claiming he lied could suggest they also were not interested in the crime of leaking
classified information and his outing.
At least Bush said or claimed to wanted to get to the bottom of the Plame matter. Did
Trump and Pence, at the time?
And if they did want to get to the bottom of it, I would like to see evidence that they
did so, and/or evidence that they were thwarted in doing so.
Surely, Trump and Pence can argue this was why they were not opposed to Mueller
appointment.
We don't know all the contents of the scope memo Rosenstein wrote, as the boss of Mueller,
-- whether or not investigation of the criminal leak and outing of Flynn was or was not part
of Mueller's scope of work.
We don't know because chunks of scope memo are still redacted and not available to the
public.
Presumably, AG Barr is investigation this; he came back on the scene last year.
What happened before him, going back to Jan. 20, 2017? And, what happened from Jan. 12 to
Jan. 2020, with respect to the Obama administration, on this crime?
Did anyone, prior to Barr, do anything, or try to do anything?
If this was not part of Rosenstein's scope memo to Mueller, what can one conclude? -30-
In recent years we have seen numerous individuals released from jail due to their innocence
being found by DNA and other scientific processes. A good number of those individuals had
plead guilty. In the Sullivan courtroom Flynn plead quietly twice (once to Sullivan the other
to Contreras) but now pleads innocent and the government has decided to drop the case. But
Judge Sullivan now questions what to do with Flynn and is asking for help from the legal
community to determine what to do. It has become a circus or Sullivan wants his pound of
flesh. Time will tell but if it is not to the benefit of Flynn then it's off to the Appeals
Court where it will be justly determined. After insinuating that Flynn was a traitor this Judge should drop the case quickly but no he
wants make himself like a bigger Idiot.
Flynn's case never went to trial. It went straight to a guilty plea and was awaiting the
sentencing phase. If the DOJ dropped charges before this guilty plea or at any time during a
trial, I doubt we would be in this mess. What Flynn signed onto is straightforward. I don't
know if this litigation privilege would apply to this Defendant's Acceptance.
"The preceding statement is a summary, made for the purpose of providing the Court with a
factual basis for my guilty plea to the charge against me. It does not include all of the
facts known to me regarding this offense. I make this statement knowingly and voluntarily and
because I am, in fact, guilty o f the crime charged. No threats have been made to me nor am I
under the influence o f anything that could impede my ability to understand this Statement o
f the Offense fully." "I have read every word of this Statement of the Offense, or have had it read to me. Pursuant
to Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 11, after consulting with my attorneys, I agree and
stipulate to this Statement of the Offense, and declare under penalty of perjury that it is
true and correct."
Sullivan is addressing the guilty plea by Flynn and his subsequent withdrawal of that plea.
creating the charge of perjury to the court.
Barr is opening up the DOJ to prosecutorial misconduct if the reason for the withdrawal is
exculpatory information that was not provided defendant prior to his guilty plea.
Sullivan is exploiting this discrepancy. I am neither a legal expert nor lawyer so will
stand corrected.
It seems to be a last minute desperation play by Sullivan to keep Obama out of the frying
pan.
Just today, the neocon-infested Washington Post ran an editorial, apparently by one of
their DNC-affiliated writers, which attempted to jape the whole Obamagate narrative through a
paroxysm of superlatives, mocking it as some gigantic and wholly imaginary conspiracy. This
effort reminded me of their similar jocularity phase relative to Trump during the 2016
primary season.
I suspect the reality is just the sleazy truth of Obama being just as much of a crooked
bastard as Bush. The Obama gang, of course, is desperate to prevent the tarnishing of Saint
Barry.
If Flynn does get off in the end, might he sue Obama and at some point depose him? An
interesting thought experiment.
I find this hilarious. It is like POTUS is a helpless bystander. Does he not realize it is
his DOJ that has "stolen or destroyed" the 302? Does he not know that he can declassify all
of "Obamagate"?
Or is his intent to just troll everyone?
And what about him throwing Flynn to the hyenas by firing him?
When Judge Sullivan said three days ago that he was going to make a schedule for outside
persons and organizations to file written arguments, it was essentially an invitation for
arguments against the government's request to dismiss the case. I started to put together an
article about that brazen move.
Now Sullivan has abandoned that move and has exposed himself as an advocate singularly
against the defendant Flynn, which of course is not his role. His order of Wednesday, 13 May,
appointed John Gleeson, a former federal judge in the Eastern District of New York, to
present arguments against the motion to dismiss Flynn's case and whether Flynn should be the
subject of a proceeding for criminal contempt of court for perjury.
Judge Sullivan's new order indicates that he has improperly invested his ego in the case,
and that something is likely going on behind the curtain.
With all that is emerging from the recent releases of sworn testimony from various
actors surrounding the Flynn case, and the Russiagate hoohaw exposing the motivations of
these individuals, can it be doubted that given the depth of the duplicity on exhibit here
that it is entirely possible (indeed, likely) that something as incriminating as the
"missing" 302 was destroyed to cover the tracks?
Although some of the principals left of their own volition, and others were removed
through being fired, it is clear that others acted as "stay behind" forces of the Deep State
to continue the coup from inside the DOJ, FBI, and IC. Under these circumstances, it is not
at all clear that President Trump was (and is now) substantially in command of these
agencies. Incriminating documents and recordings may well have been preemptively destroyed on
the sayso of the "stay behind" plotters still in high positions, so calls for
declassification of already disappeared evidence would be futile.
No, it doesn't look good that Flynn was fired, but at the time, and with what was known
at that time , and given Flynn's plea, what could be expected? Now that things have
subsequently been revealed, it looks like a bad call; hindsight is, as the saying has it,
20/20.
So-called "experts" are too narrow in their focus and too often wrong in their
judgments to be able to decide the sorts of life-and-death issues a nation's political leaders
are asked to decide. If " War is too important to be left to the generals ," as
Georges Clemenceau, (France's prime minister during World War I) claimed, then foreign policy
is too important to be left to the intelligence agencies, and public policy is too important to
be left to the scientists.
From the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, politicians and media fell over themselves in their
rush to defer to the " experts. " Apparently, it was up to scientists to decide
whether a country should shut down its economy and keep its citizens locked up in their homes
in perpetuity. It was up to scientists to determine whether a country can, if ever, resume
normal life. As for the consequences -- economic depression, exploding national debt, lost
businesses and means of livelihood, growing alcoholism and drug abuse, rise in suicides,
spiraling untreated medical problems -- those are things the public would just have to live
with, because there could be no second-guessing of the scientists.
On the one side, figures allied to American President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's vision for
an anti-Imperial world order lined up behind FDR's champion Harry Dexter White while those
powerful forces committed to maintaining the structures of a bankers' dictatorship (Britain was
always primarily a banker's empire) lined up behind the figure of John Maynard Keynes[
1 ].
John Maynard Keynes was a leading Fabian Society controller and treasurer of the British
Eugenics Association (which served as a model for Hitler's Eugenics protocols before and during
the war). During the Bretton Woods Conference, Keynes pushed hard for the new system to be
premised upon a one world currency controlled entirely by the Bank of England known as the
Bancor. He proposed a global bank called the Clearing Union to be controlled by the Bank of
England which would use the Bancor (exchangeable with national currencies) and serve as unit of
account to measure trade surpluses or deficits under the mathematical mandate of maintaining
"equilibrium" of the system.
Harry Dexter White, on the other hand, fought relentlessly to keep the City of London out of
the drivers' seat of global finance and instead defended the institution of national
sovereignty and sovereign currencies based on long term scientific and technological
growth.
Although White and FDR demanded that US dollars become the reserve currency in the new world
system of fixed exchange rates, it was not done to create a "new American Empire" as most
modern analysts have assumed, but rather was designed to use America's status as the strongest
productive global power to ensure an anti-speculative stability among international currencies
which entirely lacked stability in the wake of WWII.
Their fight for fixed exchange rates and principles of "parity pricing" were designed by FDR
and White strictly around the need to abolish the forms of chaotic flux of the un-regulated
markets which made speculation rampant under British Free Trade and destroyed the capacity to
think and plan for the sort of long term development needed to modernize nation states. Theirs
was not a drive for "mathematical equilibrium" but rather a drive to "end poverty" through REAL
physical economic growth of colonies who would thereby win real economic independence.
As figures like Henry Wallace (FDR's loyal Vice President and 1948 3rd party candidate),
Representative Wendell Wilkie (FDR's republican lieutenant and New Dealer), and Dexter White
all advocated repeatedly, the mechanisms of the World Bank, IMF, and United Nations were meant
to become drivers of an internationalization of the New Deal which transformed America from a
backwater cesspool in 1932 to becoming a modern advanced manufacturing powerhouse 12 years
later. All of these Interntional New Dealers were loud advocates of US-Russia –China
leadership in the post war world which is a forgotten fact of paramount importance.
It is vital to the United States, it is vital to China and
it is vital to Russia that there be peaceful and friendly relations between China and Russia,
China and America and Russia and America. China and Russia Complement and supplement each other
on the continent of Asia and the two together complement and supplement America's position in
the Pacific.
Contradicting the mythos that FDR was a Keynesian, FDR's assistant Francis Perkins
recorded the 1934 interaction between the two men when Roosevelt told her:
"I saw your friend Keynes. He left a whole rigmarole of figures. He must be a
mathematician rather than a political economist."
In response Keynes, who was then trying to coopt the intellectual narrative of the New Deal
stated he had "supposed the President was more literate, economically speaking."
In his 1936 German edition of his General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money
, Keynes wrote:
For I confess that much of the following book is illustrated and expounded
mainly with reference to the conditions existing in the Anglo Saxon countries. Nevertheless,
the theory of output as a whole, which is what the following book purports to provide, is much
more easily adapted to the conditions of a totalitarian state.
While Keynes represented the "soft imperialism" for the "left" of Britain's intelligentsia,
Churchill represented the hard unapologetic imperialism of the Old, less sophisticated empire
that preferred the heavy fisted use of brute force to subdue the savages. Both however were
unapologetic racists and fascists (Churchill even wrote admiringly of Mussolini's black shirts)
and both represented the most vile practices of British Imperialism.
FDR's Forgotten
Anti-Colonial Vision Revited
FDR's battle with Churchill on the matter of empire is better known than his differences
with Keynes whom he only met on a few occasions. This well documented clash was best
illustrated in his son/assistant Elliot Roosevelt's book As He Saw It (1946) who quoted his
father:
I've tried to make it clear that while we're [Britain's] allies and in it to victory
by their side, they must never get the idea that we're in it just to help them hang on to their
archaic, medieval empire ideas I hope they realize they're not senior partner; that we are not
going to sit by and watch their system stultify the growth of every country in Asia and half
the countries in Europe to boot.
[ ]
The colonial system means war. Exploit the resources of an India, a Burma, a Java; take all
the wealth out of these countries, but never put anything back into them, things like
education, decent standards of living, minimum health requirements – all you're doing is
storing up the kind of trouble that leads to war. All you're doing is negating the value of any
kind of organizational structure for peace before it begins.
Writing from Washington in a hysteria to Churchill, Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden said that
Roosevelt "contemplates the dismantling of the British and Dutch empires."
Unfortunately for the world, FDR died on April 12, 1945. A coup within the Democratic
establishment, then replete with Fabians and Rhodes Scholars, had already ensured that Henry
Wallace would lose the 1944 Vice Presidency in favor of Anglophile Wall Street Stooge Harry
Truman.
Truman was quick to reverse all of FDR's intentions, cleansing American intelligence of all
remaining patriots with the shutdown of the OSS and creation of the CIA, the launching of
un-necessary nuclear bombs on Japan and establishment of the Anglo-American special
relationship.
Truman's embrace of Churchill's New World Order destroyed the positive relationship with
Russia and China which FDR, White and Wallace sought and soon America had become Britain's dumb
giant.
The Post 1945 Takeover of the Modern Deep State
FDR warned his son before his death of his understanding of the British takeover of American
foreign policy, but still could not reverse this agenda. His son recounted his father's ominous
insight:
You know, any number of times the men in the State Department have tried to conceal
messages to me, delay them, hold them up somehow, just because some of those career diplomats
over there aren't in accord with what they know I think. They should be working for Winston.
As a matter of fact, a lot of the time, they are [working for Churchill]. Stop to think of
'em: any number of 'em are convinced that the way for America to conduct its foreign policy is
to find out what the British are doing and then copy that!" I was told six years ago, to clean
out that State Department. It's like the British Foreign Office
Before being fired from Truman's cabinet for his advocacy of US-Russia friendship during the
Cold War, Wallace stated:
American fascism" which has come to be known in recent years as
the Deep State [ ] Fascism in the postwar inevitably will push steadily for Anglo-Saxon
imperialism and eventually for war with Russia. Already American fascists are talking and
writing about this conflict and using it as an excuse for their internal hatreds and
intolerances toward certain races, creeds and classes.
In his 1946 Soviet Asia Mission, Wallace said:
Before the blood of our boys is scarcely
dry on the field of battle, these enemies of peace try to lay the foundation for World War III.
These people must not succeed in their foul enterprise. We must offset their poison by
following the policies of Roosevelt in cultivating the friendship of Russia in peace as well as
in war.
Indeed this is exactly what occurred. Dexter White's three year run as head of the
International Monetary Fund was clouded by his constant attacks as being a Soviet stooge which
haunted him until the day he died in 1948 after a grueling inquisition session at the House of
Un-American Activities.
White had previously been supporting the election of his friend Wallace for the presidency
alongside fellow patriots Paul Robeson and Albert Einstein.
Today the world has captured a second chance to revive the FDR's
dream of an anti-colonial world . In the 21st century, this great dream has taken the form
of the New Silk Road, led by Russia and China (and joined by a growing chorus of nations
yearning to exit the invisible cage of colonialism).
If western nations wish to survive the oncoming collapse, then they would do well to heed
Putin's call for a New International system, join the BRI, and reject the Keynesian technocrats
advocating a false "New Bretton Woods" and "Green New
Deal" .
[1] You may be thinking "wait! Wasn't FDR and his New Deal premised on Keynes' theories??"
How could Keynes have represented an opposing force to FDR's system if this is the case? This
paradox only exists in the minds of many people today due to the success of the Fabian
Society's and Round Table Movement's armada of revisionist historians who have consistently
created a lying narrative of history to make it appear to future generations trying to learn
from past mistakes that those figures like FDR who opposed empire were themselves following
imperial principles.
Another example of this sleight of hand can be seen by the sheer number of people who
sincerely think themselves informed and yet believe that America's 1776 revolution was driven
by British Imperial philosophical thought stemming from Adam Smith, Bentham and John Locke.
"Wasn't completely honest"... mistress of understatements. She lied. The left's narrative
is imploding. Corrupt Ambassador, and the left whined when she was fired. Belongs in
prison... in Ukraine.
During the impeachment sham hearing, Yovanovitch said she had not recall anything about
the well known national scandal Burisma in Ukraine. Surprising, isn't it?
The entire Obama Administration was, for eight long years, a string of crimes and
cover-ups by the then President and all his partners in wrongdoings. When is Lady Justice
going to prevail?
On the other side, evidence has emerged that makes it clear there were organized efforts to
collude against candidate Donald Trump - and then President Trump. For example:
Anti-Russian Ukrainians allegedly helped coordinate and execute a campaign against Trump
in partnership with the Democratic National Committee and news reporters.
A Yemen-born ex-British spy reportedly delivered political opposition research against
Trump to reporters, Sen. John McCain, and the FBI; the latter of which used the material--in
part--to obtain wiretaps against one or more Trump-related associates.
There were orchestrated leaks of anti-Trump information and allegations to the press,
including by ex-FBI Director James Comey.
The U.S. intel community allegedly engaged in questionable surveillance practices and
politially-motivated "unmaskings" of U.S. citizens, including Trump officials.
Alleged conflicts of interests have surfaced regarding FBI officials who cleared Hillary
Clinton for mishandling classified information and who investigated Trump's alleged Russia
ties.
But it's not so easy to find a timeline pertinent to the investigations into these
events.
(Please note that nobody cited has been charged with wrongdoing or crimes, unless the charge
is specifically referenced. Temporal relationships are not necessarily evidence of a
correlation.)
"Collusion against Trump" Timeline2011
U.S. intel community vastly expands its surveillance authority, giving itself permission to
spy on Americans who do nothing more than "mention a foreign target in a single, discrete
communication." Intel officials also begin storing and entering into a searchable database
sensitive intelligence on U.S. citizens whose communications are accidentally or "incidentally"
captured during surveillance of foreign targets. Prior to this point, such intelligence was
supposed to be destroyed to protect the constitutional privacy rights the U.S. citizens.
However, it's required that names U.S. citizens be hidden or "masked" --even inside U.S. intel
agencies --to prevent abuse.
July 1, 2012: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton improperly uses unsecured, personal email
domain to email President Obama from Russia.
2013
June 2013: FBI interviews U.S. businessman Carter Page, who's lived and worked in Russia,
regarding his ongoing contacts with Russians. Page reportedly tells FBI agents their time would
be better spent investigating Boston Marathon bombing (which the FBI's Andrew McCabe helped
lead). Page later claims his remark prompts FBI retaliatory campaign against him. The FBI,
under McCabe, will later wiretap Page after Page becomes a Donald Trump campaign adviser.
FBI secretly records suspected Russian industrial spy Evgeny Buryakov . It's later
reported that Page helped FBI build the case.
Sept. 4, 2013: James Comey becomes FBI Director, succeeding Robert Mueller.
2014
Russia invades Ukraine. Ukraine steps up hiring of U.S. lobbyists to make its case against
Russia and obtain U.S. aid. Russia also continues its practice of using U.S. lobbyists.
Ukraine forms National Anti-Corruption Bureau as a condition to receive U.S. aid. The
National Anti-Corruption Bureau later signs evidence-sharing agreement with FBI related to
Trump-Russia probe.
Ukrainian-American Alexandra Chalupa, a paid consultant for the Democratic National
Committee (DNC), begins researching lobbyist Paul
Manafort's Russia ties.
FBI investigates, and then wiretaps, Paul Manafort for allegedly not properly disclosing
Russia-related work. FBI fails to make a case, according to CNN, and discontinues wiretap.
August 2014: State Dept. turns over 15,000 pages of documents to Congressional Benghazi
committee, revealing former secretary of state Hillary Clinton used private server for
government email. Her mishandling of classified info on this private system becomes subject of
FBI probe.
2015
FBI opens
investigation into Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe, including for donations from a
Chinese businessman and Clinton Foundation donor.
FBI official Andrew McCabe meets with Gov. McAuliffe, a close Clinton ally. Afterwards,
"McAuliffe-aligned political groups donated about $700,000 to Mr. McCabe's wife for her
campaign to become a Democrat state Senator in Virginia." The fact of the McAuliffe-related
donations to wife of FBI's McCabe, while FBI was investigating McAuliffe and Clinton later
becomes the subject of
conflict of interest inquiry by Inspector General.
Feb. 9, 2015: U.S. Senate forms Ukrainian caucus to further Ukrainian interests. Sen. John
McCain (R-Ariz.) is a member.
March 4, 2015: New York Times breaks news about Clinton's improper handling of classified
email as secretary of state.
In internal emails , Clinton campaign chairman (and
former Obama adviser) John Podesta suggests Obama withhold Clinton's emails from Congressional
Benghazi committee under executive privilege.
March 2015: Attorney General Loretta Lynch privately directs FBI Director James Comey to
call FBI Clinton probe a "matter" rather than an "investigation." Comey follows the
instruction, though he later testifies that it made him
"queasy."
March 7, 2015: President Obama says he first learned of Clinton's improper email practices
"through news reports." Clinton campaign staffers privately
contradict that claim emailing: "it looks like [President Obama] just said he found out
[Hillary Clinton] was using her personal email when he saw it on the news." Clinton aide Cheryl
Mills responds, "We need to clean this up, [President Obama] has emails from" Clinton's
personal account.
May 19, 2015: Justice Dept. Assistant Attorney General for Legislative Affairs Peter Kadzik
emails
Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta from a private Gmail account to give him a "heads ups"
involving Congressional questions about Clinton email.
Summer 2015: Democratic National Committee computers are hacked.
Sept. 2015: Glenn Simpson, co-founder of political opposition research firm Fusion GPS, is
hired by conservative website Washington Free Beacon to compile negative research on
presidential candidate Donald Trump and other Republicans.
Oct. 2015: President Obama uses a "confidentiality tradition" to keep his Benghazi emails
with Hillary Clinton secret.
Oct. 12, 2015: FBI Director Comey
replaces head of FBI Counterintelligence Division at New York Field Office with Louis
Bladel.
Oct. 22, 2015: Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.)
publicly states that Clinton is "not under criminal investigation."
Clinton testifies to House Benghazi committee.
Oct. 23, 2015: Clinton campaign chair John Podesta meets for dinner with small group of
friends including a top Justice Dept. official Peter Kadzik.
Late 2015: Democratic operative Chalupa expands her
political opposition research about Paul Manafort to include Trump's ties to Russia. She
"occasionally shares her findings with officials from the Democratic National Committee and the
Clinton campaign."
Dec. 4, 2015: Donald Trump is beating his nearest Republican presidential competitor by 20
points in latest CNN poll .
Dec. 9, 2015: FBI Director Comey
replaces head of FBI Counterintelligence Division at Washington Field Office with Charles
Kable.
Dec. 23, 2015: FBI Director Comey
names Bill Priestap as assistant director of Counterintelligence Division.
2016
Obama officials vastly expand their searches through NSA database for Americans and the
content of their communications. In 2013, there were 9,600 searches involving 195 Americans.
But in 2016, there are 30,355 searches of 5,288 Americans.
Justice Dept. associate deputy attorney general Bruce Ohr
meets with Fusion GPS' Christopher Steele, the Yemen-born ex-British spy leading anti-Trump
political opposition research project.
January 2016: Democratic operative Ukrainian-American Chalupa tells a
senior Democratic National Committee official that she feels there's a Russia connection with
Trump.
Jan. 29, 2016: FBI Director Comey promotes
Andrew McCabe to FBI Deputy Director.
McCabe takes lead on Clinton probe even though his wife received nearly $700,000 in campaign
donations through Clinton ally Terry McAuliffe, who's also under FBI investigation.
March 2016: Clinton campaign chair John Podesta's email gets hacked.
Carter Page is named
as one of the Trump campaign's foreign policy advisers.
March 2, 2016: FBI Director Comey
replaces head of Intelligence Division of Washington Field Office with Gerald Roberts,
Jr.
March 11, 2016: Russian Evgeny Buryakovwhich pleads guilty to spying in FBI case that Carter
Page reportedly assisted with.
March 25, 2016: Ukrainian-American operative for Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chalupa
meets with top Ukrainian officials at Ukrainian Embassy in Washington D.C. to "expose ties
between Trump, top campaign aide Paul Manafort and Russia," according to Politico. Chalupa
previously worked for the Clinton administration.
Ukrainian embassy proceeds to work "directly with reporters researching Trump, Manafort and
Russia to point them in the right directions," according
to an embassy official (though other officials later deny engaging in election-related
activities.)
March 29, 2016: Trump campaign hires Paul Manafort as manager of July Republican
convention.
March 30, 2016: Ukrainian-American Democratic operative Alexandra Chalupa briefs
Democratic National Committee (DNC) staff on Russia ties to Paul Manafort and Trump.
With "DNC's encouragement," Chalupa asks Ukrainian embassy to arrange meeting with Ukrainian
President Petro Poroshenko to discuss Manafort's lobbying for Ukraine's former president Viktor
Yanukovych. The embassy declines to arrange meeting but becomes "helpful" in trading info and
leads.
Ukrainian embassy officials and Democratic operative Chalupa "coordinat[e] an investigation
with the Hillary team" into Paul Manafort, according to a source in Politico. This effort
reportedly includes working with U.S. media.
April 2016: There's a second breach of Democratic National Committee computers.
Washington Free Beacon
breaks off deal with Glenn Simpson's Fusion GPS for political opposition research against
Trump.
Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee lawyer Mark Elias and his law firm,
Perkins Coie, hire Fusion GPS for anti-Trump political research project.
Ukrainian member of parliament Olga Bielkova reportedly seeks meetings with
five dozen members of U.S. Congress and reporters including former New York Times reporter Judy
Miller, David Sanger of New York Times, David Ignatius of Washington Post, and Washington Post
editorial page editor Fred Hiatt.
April 5, 2016: Convicted spy Buryakov is turned over to Russia.
Week of April 6, 2016: Ukrainian-American Democratic operative Chalupa and office of Rep.
Mary Kaptur (D-Ohio), co-chair of Congressional Ukrainian Caucus, discuss possible
congressional investigation or hearing on Paul Manafort-Russia "by September."
Chalupa begins working with investigative reporter Michael Isikoff, according to her later
account.
April 10, 2016: In national TV interview, President Obama states that Clinton did not intend
to harm national security when she mishandled classified emails. FBI Director James Comey later
concludes that Clinton should not face charges because she did not intend to harm national
security.
Around this time, the FBI begins drafting Comey's remarks closing Clinton email
investigation, though Clinton had not yet been interviewed.
April 12, 2016:" Ukrainian parliament member Olga Bielkova and a colleague meet"
with Sen. John McCain associate David Kramer with the McCain Institute. Bielkova also meets
with Liz Zentos of Obama's National Security Council, and State Department official Michael
Kimmage.
April 26, 2016: Investigative reporter Michael Isikoff publishes
story on Yahoo News about Paul Manafort's business dealings with a Russian oligarch.
April 27, 2016 : The BBC publishes
an article titled, "Why Russians Love Donald Trump."
April 28, 2016: Ukrainian-American Democratic operative Chalupa is invited to discuss her
research about Paul Manafort with 68 investigative journalists from Ukraine at Library of
Congress for Open World Leadership Center, a U.S. congressional agency. Chalupa invites
investigative reporter Michael Isikoff to "connect(s) him to the Ukrainians."
After the event, reporter Isikoff accompanies Chalupa to Ukrainian embassy reception.
May 3, 2016: Ukrainian-American Democratic operative Chalupa emails Democratic National Committee (DNC)
that she'll share
sensitive info about Paul Manafort "offline" including "a big Trump component that will hit in
next few weeks."
May 4, 2016: Trump locks up Republican nomination.
May 19, 2016: Paul Manafort is named Trump campaign chair.
May 23, 2016: FBI probe into Virginia governor and Clinton ally Terry McAuliffe
becomes public. (McAuliffe is ultimately not charged with a crime.)
Justice Department Inspector General confirms it's looking into FBI's Andrew McCabe for
alleged conflicts of interest in handling of Clinton and Gov. McAuliffe probes in light of
McAuliffe directing campaign donations to McCabe's wife.
FBI officials Lisa Page and Peter Strzok, who are reportedly having an illicit affair, text
each other that Trump's ascension in the campaign will bring "pressure to finish" Clinton
probe.
Nellie Ohr, wife of Justice Dept. associate deputy attorney general Bruce Ohr and former CIA
worker, goes on the payroll of Fusion GPS and assists with anti-Trump political opposition
research. Her husband, Bruce, reportedly fails to disclose her specific employer and work in
his Justice Dept. conflict of interest disclosures.
June 2016: Fusion GPS' Glenn Simpson "
hires Yemen-born ex-British spy Christopher
Steele for anti-Trump political opposition research project."Steele uses info from Russian
sources "close to Putin" to compile unverified "dossier" later provided to reporters and FBI,
which the FBI uses to obtain secret wiretap.
The
Guardian and Heat Street report that the FBI applied for a FISA warrant in June 2016 to
"monitor four members of the Trump team suspected of irregular contacts with Russian officials"
but that the "initial request was denied."
June 7, 2016: Hillary Clinton locks up the Democrat nomination.
June 9, 2016: Meeting in Trump Tower includes Donald Trump Jr., Trump campaign chair Paul
Manafort and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner with Russian lawyer who said he has political
opposition research on Clinton. (No research was ultimately provided.) According to
CNN , the FBI has not yet restarted a wiretap against Manafort but will soon do so.
June 10, 2016: Democratic National Committee (DNC) tells employees that its computer system
has been hacked. DNC blames Russia but refuses to let FBI examine its systems.
June 15, 2016: "Guccifer 2.0" publishes first hacked document from Clinton campaign chair
John Podesta.
June 17, 2016: Washington Post publishes front page story linking Trump to Russia: "Inside
Trump's Financial Ties to Russia and His Unusual Flattery of Vladimir Putin."
June 20, 2016: Christopher Steele
proposes taking some of Fusion GPS' research about Trump to FBI.
June 22, 2016: WikiLeaks begins publishing embarrassing, hacked emails from Clinton campaign
and Democratic National Committee.
June 27, 2016: Attorney General Loretta Lynch meets
privately with former President Bill Clinton on an airport tarmac in Phoenix, Arizona.
Late June 2016: DCLeaks website begins publishing Democratic National Committee emails.
The National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine signs evidence-sharing agreement with FBI and
will later publicly release a "ledger" implicating Paul Manafort in allegedly improper
payments.
June 30, 2016: FBI circulates internal draft of public remarks for FBI Director Comey to
announce closing of Clinton investigation. It refers to Mrs. Clinton's "extensive" use of her
personal email, including "from the territory of sophisticated adversaries," and a July 1, 2012
email to President Obama from Russia. The draft concludes it's possible that hostile actors
gained access to Clinton's email account.
Comey's remarks are revised to replace reference to "the President" with the phrase:
"another senior government official." (That reference, too, is removed from the final
draft.)
Attorney General Lynch tells FBI she plans to publicly announce that
she'll accept whatever recommendation FBI Director Comey makes regarding charges against
Clinton.
July 2016: Ukraine minister of internal affairs Arsen Avakov attacks Trump and Trump
campaign adviser Paul Manafort on Twitter and Facebook, calling Trump "an even bigger danger to
the US than terrorism."
Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk writes on Facebook that Trump has
"challenged the very values of the free world."
Carter Page travels to Russia to give
a university commencement address. (Fusion GPS political opposition research would later quote
Russian sources as saying Page met with Russian officials, which Page denies under oath and is
not proven.)
One-time CIA operative Stefan Halper reportedly begins meetings with Trump advisers Carter
Page and George Papadopoulos, secretly gathering information for the FBI. These contacts begin
"prior to the date FBI Director Comey later claimed the Russian investigation began."
July 1, 2016: Under fire for meeting with former President Clinton amid the probe into his
wife, Attorney General Lynch publicly states she'll " accept
whatever FBI Director Comey recommends" without interfering.
FBI official Lisa Page texts her boyfriend, FBI official Peter Strzok, sarcastically
commenting that Lynch's proclamation is "a real profile in courage, since she knows no charges
will be brought."
Ex-British spy Christopher Steele writes Justice Department official Bruce Ohr that he wants
to discuss "our favourite business tycoon!" (apparently referencing Trump.)
July 2, 2016: FBI official Peter Strzok and other agents interview Clinton. They don't
record the interview. Two potential subjects of the investigation, Cheryl Mills and Heather
Samuelson, are allowed to attend as Clinton's lawyers.
July 5, 2016: FBI Director Comey recommends no charges against Clinton, though he concludes
she's been extremely careless in mishandling of classified information. Comey claims he hasn't
coordinated or reviewed his statement in any way with Attorney General Lynch's Justice
Department or other government branches. "They do not know what I am about to say," says
Comey.
Fusion GPS' Steele, an ex-British spy,
approaches FBI at an office in Rome with allegations against Trump, according to
Congressional investigators. Justice Dept. official Bruce Ohr schedules a Skype conference call
with Steele.
Days after closing Clinton case, FBI official Peter Strzok signs document opening FBI probe
into Trump-Russia collusion.
July 10, 2016: Democratic National Committee (DNC) aide Seth Rich, reportedly a Bernie
Sanders supporter, is shot twice in the back and killed. Police suspect a bungled robbery
attempt, though nothing was apparently stolen. Conspiracy theorists speculate that Rich "not
the Russians" had stolen DNC emails after he learned the DNC was unfairly favoring Clinton. The
murder remains unsolved.
July 2016: Trump adviser Carter Page makes a business trip to Russia.
Obama national security adviser Susan Rice begins to show increased interest in National
Security Agency (NSA) intelligence material including "unmasked Americans" identities,
according to news reports referring to White House logs.
July 18-21, 2016: Republican National Convention
Late July 2016 : FBI agent Peter Strzok opens counterintelligence investigation based on
Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos.
Democratic operative and Ukrainian-American Chalupa leaves the Democratic National Committee
(DNC) to work full-time on her research into Manafort, Trump and Russia; and provides
off-the-record guidance to "a lot of journalists."
July 22, 2016: WikiLeaks begins publishing hacked Democratic National Committee emails.
WikiLeaks' Julian Assange denies the email source is Russian.
July 25-28, 2016 : Democratic National Convention
July 30, 2016 : Justice Dept. official Bruce Ohr meets with ex-British spy Christopher
Steele at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington. Ohr brings his wife, Nellie, who -- like Steele --
works at Fusion GPS on the Trump-Russia oppo research project. Ohr
calls FBI Deputy Director McCabe.
July 31, 2016 : FBI's Peter Strzok formally begins
counterintelligence investigation regarding Russia and Trump. It's dubbed "Crossfire
Hurricane."
Aug. 3, 2016: Ohr reportedly meets with
McCabe and FBI lawyer Lisa Page to discuss Russia-Trump collusion allegations relayed by
ex-British spy Steele. Ohr will later testify to Congress that he considered Steele's
information uncorroborated hearsay and that he told FBI agents Steele appeared motivated by a
"desperate" desire to keep Trump from becoming president.
Aug. 4, 2016: Ukrainian ambassador to U.S.
writes op-ed against Trump.
Aug. 8, 2016: FBI attorney Lisa Page texts her lover, FBI's head of Counterespionage Peter
Strzok,"[Trump is] not ever going to become president, right? Right?!" Strzok replies,"No. No
he won't. We'll stop it."
Aug. 14, 2016: New York Times breaks story about cash payments made a decade ago to Paul
Manafort by pro-Russia interests in Ukraine. The ledger was released and publicized by the
National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine.
Aug. 15, 2016: CNN reports the FBI is conducting an inquiry into Trump campaign chair Paul
Manafort's payments from pro-Russia interests in Ukraine in 2007 and 2009.
After a meeting discussing the election in FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe's office, FBI's
Counterespionage Chief Peter Strzok texts FBI attorney Lisa Page referring to the possibility
of Trump getting elected. "We can't take that risk," he writes. And they speak of needing an
"insurance policy."
Aug. 19, 2016: Paul Manafort resigns as Trump campaign chairman.
Ukrainian parliament member Sergii Leshchenko
holds news conference to draw attention to Paul Manafort and Trump's "pro-Russia" ties.
Aug. 22, 2016 : Justice Dept. official Bruce Ohr meets with Fusion GPS' Glenn Simpson who
identifies several "possible intermediaries" between the Trump campaign and Russia.
Late August 2016:
Reportedly working for the FBI, one-time CIA operative Professor Halper meets with Trump
campaign co-chair Sam Clovis offering his services as a foreign-policy adviser, according to
The Washington Post. Halper would later offer to hire Carter Page.
Approx. Aug. 2016: FBI initiates a new
wiretap against ex-Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort, according to CNN, which extends at
least through early 2017.
Sept. 2016: Fusion GPS's Steele becomes FBI source and uses associate deputy attorney
general Bruce Ohr as point of contact. Steele tells Ohr that he's "desperate that Donald Trump
not get elected."
President Obama
warns Russia not to interfere in the U.S. election
Sept. 2, 2016: FBI officials Lisa Page and Peter Strzok text that "[President Obama] wants
to know everything we're doing."
Sept. 13, 2016 : The nonprofit First Draft, funded by Google, whose parent company is run by
major Hillary Clinton supporter and donor Eric Schmidt, announces initiative to tackle "fake
news." It appears to be the first use of the phrase in its modern context.
Sept. 15, 2016: Clinton computer manager Paul Combetta appears before House Oversight
Committee but refuses to answer questions, invoking his Fifth Amendment rights.
Sept. 19, 2016: At UN General Assembly meeting, Ukrainian President Poroshenko meets with
Hillary Clinton.
Mid-to-late Sept. 2016: Fusion GPS's Christopher Steele's FBI contact tells him the agency
wants to see his opposition research "right away" and offers
to pay him $50,000, according to the New York Times, for solid corroboration of his salacious,
unverified claims. Steele
flies to Rome , Italy to meet with FBI and provide a "full briefing."
Sept. 22, 2016: Clinton computer aide Brian Pagliano is held in contempt of Congress for
refusing to comply with subpoena.
Sept. 23, 2016: It's revealed that Justice Department has granted five Clinton officials
immunity from prosecution: former chief of staff Cheryl Mills, State Department staffers John
Bentel and Heather Samuelson, and Clinton computer workers Paul Combetta and Brian
Pagliano.
Yahoo News publishes
report by Michael Isikoff about Carter Page's July 2016 trip to Moscow. (The article is
apparently based on leaked info from Fusion GPS Steele anti-Trump "dossier" political
opposition research.)
Sept. 25, 2016 : Trump associate Carter Page writes letter
to FBI Comey objecting to the so-called "witch hunt" involving him.
Sept. 26, 2016 : Obama administration asks secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court
(FISC) court to allow National Counter Terrorism Center to access sensitive, "unmasked" intel
on Americans acquired by FBI and NSA. (The Court later approves the request.)
FBI head of counterespionage Peter Strzok
emails his mistress FBI attorney Lisa Page that Carter Page's letter (dated the day before)
"...provides us a pretext to interview."
Sept. 27, 2016: Justice Department Assistant Attorney General of National Security Division
John Carlin announces he's stepping down. He was former chief of staff and senior counsel to
former FBI director Robert Mueller.
End of Sept. 2016: Fusion GPS' Glenn Simpson and Christopher Steele
meet with reporters, including New York Times, Washington Post, Yahoo News, the New Yorker
and CNN or ABC. One meeting is at office of Democratic National Committee general counsel.
Early October 2016: Fusion GPS' Christopher Steele, the Yemen-born author of anti-Trump
"dossier," meets in New
York with David Corn, Washington-bureau chief of Mother Jones.
According to
The Guardian, the FBI submits a more narrowly focused FISA wiretap request to replace one
turned down in June to monitor four Trump associates.
Oct. 3, 2016: FBI seizes computers belonging to Anthony Weiner, who is accused of sexually
texting an underage girl. Weiner is married to top Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin. FBI learns
there are Clinton emails on Weiner's laptop but waits several weeks before
notifying Congress and reopening investigation.
Oct. 4, 2016: FBI Director Comey
replaces head of Counterintelligence Division, New York Field Office with Charles
McGonigal.
Oct. 7, 2016: Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and Department of Homeland
Security issue statement saying Russian government is responsible for hacking Democrat emails
to disrupt 2016 election.
Oct. 13, 2016: President Obama gives a speech in support of the crackdown on "fake news" by
stating that somebody needs to step in and "curate" information in the "wild, wild West media
environment."
Oct. 14, 2016: FBI head of counterespionage Peter Strzok
emails his mistress FBI attorney Lisa Page discussing talking points to convince FBI Deputy
Director Andrew McCabe to persuade a high-ranking Dept. of Justice official to sign a warrant
to wiretap Trump associate Carter Page. The email subject line is "Crossfire FISA." "Crossfire
Hurricane" was one of the code names for four separate investigations the FBI conducted related
to Russia matters in the 2016 election.
"At a minimum, that keeps the hurry the F up pressure on him," Strzok emailed Lisa Page less
than four weeks before Election Day.
Mid-Oct. 2016: Fusion GPS' Steele again
briefs reporters about Trump political opposition research. The reporters are from the New
York Times, the Washington Post, and Yahoo News.
Oct. 16, 2016: Mary McCord is named Assistant Attorney General for Justice Department
National Security Division.
Oct. 18, 2016: President Obama
advises Trump to "stop whining" after Trump tweeted the election could be rigged. "There is
no serious person out there who would suggest somehow that you could even you could even rig
America's elections," said Obama. He also calls Trump's "flattery" of Russian president Putin
"unprecedented."
In FBI emails, head of counterespionage Peter Strzok and his mistress FBI lawyer Lisa Page
discuss rushing approval for a FISA warrant for a Russia-related investigation code-named
"Dragon."
Oct. 19, 2016: Ex-British spy Christopher Steele writes his last memo for anti-Trump
"dossier" political opposition research provided to FBI. The FBI reportedly authorizes payment
to Steele. Fusion GPS has reportedly paid him $160,000.
Approx. Oct. 21, 2016: For the second time in several months, Justice Department and FBI
apply to wiretap former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. FBI Director James Comey and Deputy
Attorney General Sally Yates sign the application. This time, the request is approved based on
new FBI "evidence" including parts of Fusion GPS' "Steele dossier" and Michael Isikoff Yahoo
article. The FBI
doesn't tell the court that Trump's political opponent, the Clinton campaign and the
Democratic National Committee, funded the "evidence."
Oct. 24, 2016: Benjamin Wittes, confidant of FBI Director James Comey and editor-in-chief of
the blog Lawfare, writes
of the need for an "insurance policy" in case Trump wins. It's the same phrase FBI officials
Lisa Page and Peter Strzok had used when discussing the possibility of a Trump win.
Obama intel officials orally inform Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of an earlier
Inspector General review uncovering their "significant noncompliance" in following proper "702"
procedures safeguarding the National Security Agency (NSA) intelligence database with sensitive
info on US citizens.
Late Oct. 2016: Fusion GPS' Steele again
briefs reporter from Mother Jones by Skype about Trump political opposition research.
Oct. 26, 2016: Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court holds hearing with Obama intel
officials over their "702" surveillance violations. The judge criticizes
NSA for "institutional lack of candor" and states "this is a very serious Fourth Amendment
issue."
Oct. 28, 2016: FBI Director Comey notifies Congress that he's reopening Clinton probe due to
Clinton emails found on Anthony Wiener laptop several weeks earlier.
Oct. 30, 2016: Mother Jones writer David Corn is first to report on the anti-Trump
"dossier," quoting unidentified former spy, presumed to be Christopher Steele. FBI general
counsel James Baker had reportedly been in touch with Corn but Corn later denies Baker was the
leaker.
FBI terminates its relationship with Steele because Steele had
leaked his FBI involvement in Mother Jones article.
Steele reportedly maintains backchannel contact with Justice Dept. through Deputy Associate
Attorney General Bruce Ohr.
Oct. 31, 2016: New York Times
reports FBI is investigating Trump and found no illicit connections to Russia.
Nov. 1, 2016: FBI concludes ex-British spy Christopher Steele, who compiled anti-Trump
"dossier" using Russian sources, leaked to press and is not suitable for use as a confidential
source. However, Steele continues to "help," according to Jan. 31, 2017 texts to Justice Dept.
official Bruce Ohr.
Nov. 3, 2016: FBI Attorney Lisa Page texts FBI's Peter Strzok about her concerns that
Clinton might lose and Trump would become president: "The [New York Times] probability numbers
are dropping every day. I'm scared for our organization."
Nov. 6, 2016: FBI Director Comey tells Congress that Clinton emails on Anthony Weiner
computer do not change earlier conclusion: she should not be charged.
Nov. 8, 2016: Trump is elected president.
Obama National Security Adviser Susan Rice's interest in NSA materials accelerates,
according to later news reports.
Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr
meets with Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson shortly after election.
The FBI interviews Ohr about his ongoing contacts with Fusion GPS.
Nov. 9, 2016: An unnamed FBI attorney (later quoted in Dept. of Justice Inspector General
probe) texts another FBI employee, "I'm just devastated...I just can't imagine the systematic
disassembly of the progress we made over the last 8 years. ACA is gone. Who knows if the
rhetoric about deporting people, walls, and crap is true. I honestly feel like there is going
to be a lot more gun issues, too, the crazies won finally. This is the tea party on steroids.
And the GOP is going to be lost, they have to deal with an incumbent in 4 years. We have to
fight this again. Also Pence is stupid....Plus, my god damned name is all over the legal
documents investigating [Trump's] staff."
Nov. 10, 2016 : Emails
imply top FBI officials, including Peter Strzok, Andrew McCabe and Bill Priestap engaged in
a new mission to "scrub" or research lists of associates of President-elect Trump, looking for
potential "derogatory" information.
President Obama
meets with President-elect Trump in the White House and reportedly advises Trump not to
hire Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn.
Nov. 2016: National Security Agency Mike Rogers
meets with president-elect Trump and is criticized for "not telling the Obama
administration."
Nov. 17, 2016: Trump
moves his Friday presidential team meetings out of Trump Tower.
Nov. 18, 2016: Trump names Flynn his national security adviser. Over the next few weeks,
Flynn communicates with numerous international leaders.
Nov. 18-20, 2016: Sen. John McCain and his longtime adviser, David Kramer--an ex-U.S. State
Dept. official--attend a security conference in Halifax, Nova Scotia where former UK ambassador
to Russia Sir Andrew Wood
tells them about the Fusion GPS anti-Trump dossier. (Kramer is affiliated with the anti-Russia "Ukraine
Today" media organization). They discuss confirming the info has reached top levels of FBI for
action.
Nov. 21, 2016 : Justice Dept. official Bruce Ohr, works for Deputy Attorney General Sally
Yates, meets with FBI officials including Peter Strzok, Strzok's girlfriend--FBI attorney Lisa
Page, and another agent. Ohr's notes indicate the FBI "may go back to [ex-British spy] Chris
Steele" of Fusion GPS just 20 days after dismissing him.
Nov. 28, 2016: Sen. McCain associate David Kramer flies to London to meet Christopher Steele
for a briefing on the anti-Trump research. Afterward, Fusion GPS' Glenn Simpson gives Sen.
McCain a copy of the "dossier." Steele also
passes anti-Trump info to top UK government official in charge of national security. Sen.
McCain soon arranges a meeting with FBI Director Comey.
Late Nov. 2016: Justice Dept. official Bruce Ohr officially tells
FBI about his contacts with Fusion GPS' Christopher Steele and about Ohr's wife's contract work
for Fusion GPS.
Nov. 30, 2016 : UN Ambassador Samantha Power makes request to unmask the name of Trump
National Security Adviser Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who was "incidentally" captured by intel
surveillance.
Dec. 2016: Text messages between FBI officials Strzok and Page are later said to be "lost"
due to a technical glitch beginning at this point.
Dec. 2, 2016: UN Ambassador Samantha Power and Director of National Intelligence James
Clapper request to unmask the name of Trump National Security Adviser Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn,
who was "incidentally" captured by intel surveillance.
Dec. 6, 2016: Two more Obama administration officials request to unmask the name of
Flynn.
Dec. 7, 2016 : Power makes another Flynn unmasking request.
Dec. 8 or 9, 2016: Sen. John McCain
meets with FBI Director Comey at FBI headquarters and
hands over Fusion GPS anti-Trump research, elevating the FBI's investigation into the
matter. The FBI compiles a classified two-page summary and attaches it to intel briefing note
on Russian cyber-interference in election for
President Obama .
Hillary Clinton makes a public appearance denouncing "fake news."
Hillary Clinton and Democratic operative David Brock of Media Matters announces he's leaving
board of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), one of his many
propaganda and liberal advocacy groups, to focus on "fake news" effort.
Brock later claims credit, privately to donors, for convincing Facebook to crack down on
conservative fake news.
Dec. 14, 2017 : There are
10 more requests to unmask Flynn's name in intelligence, including two by Power, CIA
Director Brennan, and six officials from the Treasury Dept.
Dec. 15, 2016: Obama intel officials "incidentally" spy on Trump officials meeting with the
United Arab Emirates crown prince in Trump Tower. This is taken to mean the government was
wiretapping the prince and "happened to capture" Trump officials communicating with him at
Trump Tower. Identities of Americans accidentally captured in such surveillance are strictly
protected or "masked" inside intel agencies for constitutional privacy reasons.
Obama National Security Adviser Susan Rice
secretly "unmasks" names of the Trump officials, officially revealing their identities.
They reportedly include: Steve Bannon, Jared Kushner and Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn.
Director of National Intelligence Clapper expands rules to allow the National Security
Agency (NSA) to widely disseminate classified surveillance material within the government. The
same day,
17 Obama officials request the unmasking of Lt. Gen. Flynn in intelligence.
Dec. 16, 2016 : Five more Obama officials request unmasking of intelligence materials
regarding Lt. Gen. Flynn.
Dec. 23, 2016 : Power request another Flynn unmasking.
Dec. 28, 2016 :
Lt. Gen. Flynn speaks with Russia ambassador.
Clapper and the U.S. Ambassador to Turkey request Flynn unmasking.
Dec. 29, 2016: President Obama imposes sanctions against Russia for its alleged election
interference.
President-elect Trump national security adviser Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn
speaks with Russian Ambassador to U.S. Sergey Kislyak. The calls are wiretapped by U.S.
intelligence and later leaked to the
press.
State Department
releases 2,800 work-related emails from Huma Abedin, a top aide to Hillary Clinton, found
by FBI on laptop computer of Abedin's husband, former Rep. Anthony Weiner.
2017
Jan. 2017: According to CNN: a
wiretap reportedly continues against former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort, including
times he speaks to Trump, meaning U.S. intel officials could have "accidentally" captured
Trump's communications.
Justice Dept. Inspector General confirms it's investigating several aspects of FBI and
Justice Department actions during Clinton probe.
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper testifies to Congress that Russia interfered
in U.S. elections by spreading fake news on social media.
Justice Dept. official Peter Kadzik, who "tipped off" Hillary Clinton campaign regarding
Congressional questions about Clinton's email, leaves government work for private practice.
The FBI interviews a main source of Christopher Steele's "dossier" and learns the
information was merely bar room gossip and rumor never meant to be taken as fact or submitted
to the FBI and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to wiretap Carter Page. (The FBI
does not notify the court and applies for, and receives, another wiretap against Page).
Early Jan. 2017: FBI renews
wiretap against Carter Page. FBI Director James Comey and Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates
again sign the application.
Jan. 3, 2017: Obama Attorney General Lynch signs rules Director of National Intelligence
Clapper expanded Dec. 15 allowing the National Security Agency (NSA) to widely disseminate
surveillance within the government.
Jan. 5, 2017: Intelligence Community leadership including FBI Director Comey, Yates, CIA
Director John Brennan and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, provides classified
briefing to President Obama, Vice President Biden and National Security Adviser Susan Rice on
alleged Russia hacking during 2016 campaign, according to notes later written by national
security adviser Susan Rice.
After briefing, according notes made later by Rice, President Obama convenes Oval Office
meeting with her, FBI Director Comey, Vice President Biden and Deputy Attorney General Sally
Yates. The "Steele dossier" is reportedly discussed. Also reportedly discussed: Trump National
Security Adviser Flynn's talks with Russia's ambassador.
Jan. 6, 2017: FBI Director Comey and other Intel leaders meet with President-Elect Trump and
his national security team at Trump Tower in New York to brief them on alleged Russian efforts
to interfere in the election.
Later, Obama national security adviser Susan Rice would write herself an email stating that
President Obama suggested they hold back on providing Trump officials with certain info for
national security reasons.
After Trump team briefing, FBI Director Comey meets alone with Trump to "brief him" on
Fusion GPS Steele allegations "to alert the incoming President to the existence of this
material," even though it was salacious and unverified. Comey later says Director of National
Intelligence Clapper asked him (Comey) to do the briefing personally.
Jan. 7, 2017 : Clapper and two other Obama administration officials request Flynn
unmasking.
Jan. 10, 2017: The 35-page Fusion GPS anti-Trump "dossier" is leaked to the media and
published. It reveals that sources of the unverified info are Russians close to President
Putin.
Email written by FBI head of counterespionage Peter Strzok
indicates the FBI has been given the anti-Trump "dossier" by at least 3 different
anti-Trump sources.
A CIA official makes a Flynn unmasking request.
Jan. 11, 2017 : Power makes another Flynn unmasking request.
Jan. 12, 2017: Obama administration finalizes new rules allowing NSA to spread "certain
intel to" other U.S. intel agencies without normal privacy protections.
Justice Dept. inspector general announces review of alleged misconduct by FBI Director Comey
and other matters related to FBI's Clinton probe as well as FBI leaks.
Vice President Joe Biden and the Treasury Secretary request the unmasking of Flynn in
intelligence communications.
Someone leaks to to David Ignatius of the Washington Post that Trump National Security
Adviser Flynn had called Russia's ambassador. "What did Flynn say, and did it undercut the US
sanctions?" asked Ignatius in the article.
Jan. 13, 2017: Senate Intelligence Committee
opens investigation into Russia and U.S. political campaign officials.
Jan. 15, 2017: After leaks about Flynn's call with Russia's ambassador, Vice President-elect
Mike Pence tells the press that Flynn did not discuss U.S. sanctions on the call.
Jan. 20, 2017: Trump becomes president.
Fifteen minutes after Trump becomes president, former National Security Adviser Susan Rice
emails memo to herself purporting to summarize the Jan. 5 Oval Office meeting with President
Obama and other top officials. She states that Obama instructed the group to investigate "by
the book" and asked them to be mindful whether there were certain things that "could not be
fully shared with the incoming administration."
Jan. 22, 2017: Intel info leaks to Wall Street Journal which reports
"US counterintelligence agents have investigated communications" between Trump aide Gen.
Michael Flynn and Russia ambassador to the U.S. Kislyak to determine if any laws were
violated.
Jan. 23, 2017: Leak to Washington Post falsely claims Trump National Security Adviser Flynn
is not the subject of an investigation.
Jan. 24, 2017: Acting Attorney General Sally Yates sends two FBI agents, including Peter
Strzok, to the White House to question Gen. Flynn. FBI Director Comey later takes credit for
"sending a couple of guys" to interview Flynn, circumventing normal processes.
Notes kept
hidden until May 2020 show FBI officials discussing whether the goal of the meeting with Flynn
was to "get him to lie" so that he would be fired or prosecuted.
Jan. 26, 2017: Acting Attorney General Sally Yates and a high-ranking colleague go to White
House to tell counsel Don McGahn that Flynn had lied to Pence about the content of his talks
with Russian ambassador and "the underlying conduct that Gen. Flynn had engaged in was
problematic in and of itself."
Jan. 27, 2017: Acting Attorney General Sally Yates again visits the White House.
Jan. 31, 2017: President Trump fires Acting Attorney General Sally Yates after she refuses
to enforce his temporary travel ban on Muslims coming into U.S. from certain countries.
Ex-British spy Christopher Steele texts Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr who worked for
Yates: "B, doubtless a sad and crazy day for you re- SY."
Dana Boente becomes Acting Attorney General. (It's later revealed that Boente signed at
least one wiretap application against former Trump adviser Carter Page.)
Feb. 2, 2017: It's reported
that five men employed by House of Representatives Democrats, including leader Debbie Wasserman
Schultz (D-Florida), are under criminal investigation for allegedly "accessing House IT systems
without lawmakers' knowledge." Suspects include three Awan brothers "who managed office
information technology for members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and
other lawmakers."
Feb. 3, 2017: A Russian tech mogul named in the Steele "dossier" files defamation lawsuits
against BuzzFeed in the U.S. and Christopher Steele in the U.K. over the dossier's claims he
interfered in U.S. elections.
Feb. 8, 2017: Jeff Sessions becomes Attorney General and Dana Boente moves to Deputy
Attorney General.
Feb. 9, 2017: News of FBI wiretaps capturing Trump national security adviser Lt. Gen.
Michael Flynn speaking with Russia's ambassador is leaked to the press. New York Times and
Washington Post report Flynn discussed U.S. sanctions, despite his earlier denials. The Post
also reports the FBI "found nothing illicit" in the talks. The Post headline in an article by
Greg Miller, Adam Entous and Ellen Nakashima reads, "National Security Adviser Flynn Discussed
Sanctions with Russian Ambassador, Despite Denials, Officials Say."
Feb. 13, 2017 : Washington Post
reports Justice Dept. has opened a "Logan Act" violation investigation against Trump
national security adviser Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn.
Feb. 14, 2017: New York Times reports
that FBI had told Obama officials there was no "quid pro quo" (promise of a deal in exchange
for some action) discussed between Gen. Flynn and Russian ambassador Kislyak.
Gen. Flynn resigns, allegedly acknowledging he misled vice president Mike Pence about the
content of his discussions with Russia.
Comey says that, in a meeting, Trump states, "I hope you can see your way clear to letting
this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go." Comey says he
replies "he is a good guy." Trump later takes issue with Comey's characterization of the
meeting.
Feb. 15, 2017 : NPR
reports on "official transcripts of Flynn's calls" (saying they show no wrongdoing but that
doesn't rule out illegal activity).
Feb. 17, 2017: Washington Post reports that "Flynn told FBI he did not discuss sanctions"
with Russia ambassador and that "Lying to the FBI is a felony offense."
Feb. 24, 2017 : FBI interviews Flynn, according to later testimony from Deputy Attorney
General Sally Yates.
March 1, 2017: Washington Post reports Attorney General Jeff Sessions has met with Russian
ambassador twice in the recent past (as did many Democrat and Republican officials). His
critics say that contradicts his earlier testimony to Congress. The article by Adam Entous,
Ellen Nakashima and Greg Miller raises the idea of a special counsel to investigate.
March 2017: FBI Director James Comey
gives private briefings to members of Congress and reportedly says he does not believe Gen.
Flynn lied to FBI.
House Intelligence Committee requests list of unmasking requests Obama officials made. The
intel agencies do not provide the information, prompting a June 1 subpoena.
March 2, 2017: Attorney General Jeff Sessions recuses himself from Russia-linked
investigations.
Rod Rosenstein, the Deputy Attorney General, becomes Acting Attorney General for Russia
Probe. It's later revealed that Rosenstein singed at least one wiretap application against
former Trump adviser Carter Page.
March 4, 2017: President Trump tweets: "Is it legal for a sitting President to be 'wire
tapping' a race for president prior to an election? Turned down by court earlier. A NEW LOW!"
and "How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election
process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!"
March 10, 2017: Former Congressman Dennis Kucinich, a Democrat, steps forward to support
Trump's wiretapping claim, revealing that the Obama administration intel officials recorded his
own communications with a Libyan official in Spring 2011.
March 14, 2017 : FBI Attorney Lisa Page texts FBI official Peter Strzok: "Finally two pages
away from finishing [All the President's Men]. Did you know the president resigns in the end?!"
Strzok replies, "What?!?! God, that we should be so lucky. [smiley face emoji]"
March 20, 2017 : FBI Director Comey tells House Intelligence Committee he has "no
information that supports" the President's tweets about alleged wiretapping directed at him by
the prior administration. "We have looked carefully inside the FBI," Comey says. "(T)he answer
is the same for the Department of Justice and all its components."
FBI Director Comey tells Congress there is "salacious and unverified" material in the Fusion
GPS dossier used by FBI, in part, to obtain Carter Page wiretap. (Under FBI "Woods Procedures,"
only facts carefully verified by the FBI are allowed to be presented to court to obtain
wiretaps.)
March 22, 2017: Chairman of House Intelligence Committee Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) publicly
announces he's seen evidence of Trump associates being "incidentally" surveilled by Obama intel
officials; and their names being "unmasked" and illegally leaked. Nunes briefs President Trump
and holds a news conference. He's criticized for doing so. An ethics investigation is opened
into his actions but later clears him of wrongdoing.
In an interview on PBS, former Obama National Security Adviser Susan Rice responds to Nunes
allegations by stating: "I know nothing about this, I really don't know to what Chairman Nunes
was referring." (She later acknowledges unmasking names of Trump associates.)
March 2017: Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) writes Justice Dept. accusing Fusion GPS of
acting as an agent for Russia "without properly registering" due to its pro-Russia effort to
kill a law allowing sanctions against foreign human rights violators. Fusion GPS denies the
allegations.
March 24, 2017: Fusion GPS declines to answer Sen. Grassley's questions or document
requests.
March 27, 2017: Former Deputy Asst. Secretary of Defense Evelyn Farkas admits she encouraged
Obama and Congressional officials to "get as much information as they can" about Russia and
Trump officials before inauguration. "That's why you have the leaking," she told MSNBC.
Early April, 2017: A third FBI wiretap on former Trump campaign aide Carter Page is
approved.
Again, FBI Director James Comey, and acting attorney general Dana Boente sign the application.
Trump officials including Mike Pompeo at the CIA are now leading the intel agencies during the
wiretap.
April 3, 2017: Multiple news reports state that Obama National Security Adviser Susan Rice
had requested and reviewed "unmasked" intelligence on Trump associates whose information was
"incidentally" collected by intel agencies.
April 4, 2017: Obama former National Security Adviser Rice admits, in an interview, that she
asked to reveal names of U.S. citizens previously masked in intel reports. She says her
motivations were not political. When asked if she leaked names, Rice states, "I leaked nothing
to nobody."
April 6, 2017: House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes recuses himself from Russia
part of his committee's investigation.
April 11, 2017: FBI Director Comey
appoints Stephen Laycock as special agent in charge of Counterintelligence Division for
Washington Field Office.
Washington Post reports FBI secretly obtained wiretap against Trump campaign associate
Carter Page last summer. (Later, it's revealed the summer wiretap had been turned down, but a
subsequent application was approved in October.)
April 20, 2017: Acting Assistant Attorney General Mary McCord resigns as acting head of
Justice Dept. National Security Division. She'd led probes of Russia interference in election
and Trump-Russia ties.
April 28, 2017: Dana Boente is appointed acting assistant attorney general for national
security division to replace Mary McCord. (Boente has signed one of the questioned wiretap
applications for Carter Page.)
National Security Agency (NSA) submits remedies for its egregious surveillance violations
(revealed last October) to Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court promising to "no longer
collect certain internet communications that merely mention a foreign intelligence target." The
NSA also begins deleting collected data on U.S. citizens it had been storing.
May 3, 2017: FBI Director Comey
testifies he's "mildly nauseous" at the idea he might have affected election with the 11th
hour Clinton email notifications to Congress.
Comey also testifies
he's "never" been an anonymous news source on "matters relating to" investigating the Trump
campaign.
Obama's former national security adviser Susan Rice declines Republican Congressional
request to testify at a hearing about unmaskings and surveillance.
May 8, 2017: Former acting Attorney General Sally Yates and former Director of National
Intelligence James Clapper testify to Congress. They
admit having reviewed "classified documents in which Mr. Trump, his associates or members
of Congress had been unmasked," and possibly discussing it with others under the Obama
administration.
May 9, 2017: President Trump fires FBI Director James Comey. Andrew McCabe becomes acting
FBI Director.
May 12, 2017: Benjamin Wittes, confidant of ex-FBI Director James Comey and editor in chief
of Lawfare, contacts New York Times reporter Mike Schmidt to
leak conversations he'd had with Comey as FBI Director that are critical of President
Trump.
May 16, 2017: New York Times
publishes leaked account of FBI memoranda recorded by former FBI Director James Comey.
Comey later acknowledges engineering the leak of the FBI material through his friend, Columbia
Law School professor Daniel Richman, to spur appointment of special counsel to investigate
President Trump.
Trump reportedly
interviews , but passes over, former FBI Director Robert Mueller for position of FBI
Director.
May 17, 2017: Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appoints Robert Mueller as Special
Counsel, Russia-Trump probe. Mueller and former FBI Director Comey are friends and worked
closely together in previous Justice Dept. and FBI positions.
The gap of missing text messages between FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page ends. The
couple is soon assigned to the Mueller team investigating Trump.
May 19, 2017: Anthony Wiener, former Congressman and husband of Hillary Clinton confidant
Huma Abedin, turns himself in to FBI in case of underage sexting ; his third major
kerfuffle over sexting in six years.
May 22, 2017 : FBI Counterespionage Chief Peter Strzok texts FBI Attorney Lisa Page about
whether Strzok should join Special Counsel Mueller's investigation of Trump-Russia collusion.
Strzok spoke of "unfinished business" that he "unleashed" with the Clinton classified email
probe and stated: "Now I need to fix it and finish it." He also referred to the Special Counsel
probe, which hadn't yet begun in earnest, as an "investigation leading to impeachment." But he
also stated he had a "gut sense and concern there's no big there there."
June 1, 2017: House Intelligence Committee issues 7 subpoenas, including for information
related to unmaskings requested by ex-Obama officials national security adviser Susan Rice,
former CIA Director John Brennan, and former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power.
June 8, 2017: Former FBI Director James Comey admits having engineered
leak of his own memo to New York Times to spur appointment of a special counsel to
investigate President Trump.
June 20, 2017: Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe names Philip Celestini as Special Agent in
Charge of the Intelligence Division, Washington Field Office.
Late June, 2017: FBI renews
wiretap against Carter Page for the fourth and final time that we know of. It lasts through
late Sept. 2017. (Page is never ultimately charged with a crime.) FBI Deputy Director Andrew
McCabe and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein sign the renewal application.
Late July, 2017: FBI reportedly searches Paul Manafort's Alexandria, Virginia home.
Summer 2017: FBI lawyer Lisa Page is reassigned from Mueller investigation. Her boyfriend,
FBI official Peter Strzok is removed from Mueller investigation after the Inspector General
discovers compromising texts between Strzok and Page. Congress is not notified of the
developments.
Aug. 2, 2017: Christopher Wray is named FBI Director.
August 2017: Ex-FBI Director Comey signs a book deal for a reported $2 million.
Sept. 13, 2017: Under questioning from Congress, Obama's former National Security Adviser
Susan Rice reportedly admits having requested to see the protected identities of Trump
transition officials "incidentally" captured by government surveillance.
Approx. Oct. 10, 2017: Former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos
pleads guilty to lying to FBI about his unsuccessful efforts during the campaign to
facilitate meetings between Trump officials and Russian officials.
Oct. 17, 2017: Obama's former U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power reportedly tells Congressional
investigators that many of the hundreds of "unmasking" requests in her name during the election
year were not made by her.
Oct. 24, 2017: Congressional Republicans announce new investigations into a 2010
acquisition that gave Russia control of 20% of U.S. uranium supply while Clinton was secretary
of state; and FBI decision not to charge Clinton in classified info probe.
Oct. 30, 2017: Special Counsel Mueller
charges ex-Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and business associate Rick Gates with tax
and money laundering crimes related to their foreign work. The charges do not appear related to
Trump.
Nov. 2, 2017: Carter Page
testifies to House Intelligence committee under oath without an attorney and asks to have
the testimony published. He denies ever meeting the Russian official that Fusion GPS claimed
he'd met with in July 2016.
Nov. 5, 2017: Special Counsel Robert Mueller
files charges against ex-Trump national security adviser Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn for
allegedly lying to FBI official Peter Strzok about contacts with Russian ambassador during
presidential transition.
Dec. 1, 2017: Former national security adviser Gen. Flynn pleads guilty of
lying to the FBI. Prosecutors recommend no prison time (but later reverse their
recommendation).
James Rybicki steps down as chief of staff to FBI Director.
Dec. 6, 2017: Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr is reportedly stripped of one of
his positions at Justice Dept. amid controversy over his and his wife's role in anti-Trump
political opposition research.
Dec. 7, 2017: FBI Director Wray incorrectly testifies that there have been no "702"
surveillance abuses by the government.
Dec. 19, 2017: FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe repeatedly testifies that the wiretap
against Trump campaign official Carter Page would not have been approved without the Fusion GPS
info. FBI general counsel James Baker, who is himself subject of an Inspector General probe
over his alleged leaks to the press, attends as McCabe's attorney. McCabe acknowledges that if
Baker had met with Mother Jones reporter David Corn, it would have been inappropriate.
FBI general counsel James Baker is
reassigned amid investigation into his alleged anti-Trump related contacts with
media.
2018
Jan. 4, 2018: Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.)
refer criminal
charges against Christopher Steele to the FBI for investigation. There's an apparent
conflict of interest with the FBI being asked to investigate Steele since the FBI has used
Steele's controversial political opposition research to obtain wiretaps.
Jan. 8, 2018: Justice Dept. official Bruce Ohr loses his second title at the agency.
Jan. 10, 2018: Donald Trump lawyer Michael Cohen files defamation
suits against Fusion GPS and BuzzFeed News for publishing the "Steele dossier," which he says
falsely
claimed he met Russian government officials in Prague, Czech Republic, in August of
2016.
Jan. 11, 2018: House of Representatives approves government's
controversial "702" wireless surveillance authority. The Senate follows suit.
Jan. 19, 2018: Justice Dept. produces to Congress some text messages between FBI officials
Lisa Page and Peter Strzok but states that FBI lost texts between December 14, 2016 and May 17,
2017 due to a technical glitch.
President Trump signs six-year extension of "702" wireless surveillance authority.
Jan. 23, 2018: Former FBI Director Comey friend who leaked on behalf of Comey to New York
Times to spur appointment of special counsel is now Comey's attorney.
Jan. 25, 2018: Justice Dept. Inspector General notifies Congress it has recovered missing
text messages between FBI officials Lisa Page and Peter Strzok.
Jan. 27, 2018: Edward O'Callaghan is
named Acting Assistant Attorney General, National Security Division.
Jan. 29, 2018: Andrew McCabe steps down as Deputy
FBI Director
ahead of his March retirement.
Jan. 30, 2018: News reports
allege that Justice Department Inspector General is looking into why FBI Deputy Director
Andrew McCabe appeared to wait three weeks before acting on new Clinton emails found right
before the election.
Feb. 2, 2018: House Intelligence Committee (Nunes) Republican memo is released. It
summarizes classified documents revealing for the first time that Fusion GPS political
opposition research was used, in part, to justify Carter Page wiretap; along with Michael
Isikoff Yahoo News article based on the same opposition research.
Memo also states that Fusion GPS set up back channel to FBI through Nellie Ohr, who
conducted opposition research on Trump and passed it to her husband, associate deputy attorney
general Bruce Ohr.
Feb. 7, 2018: Justice Department official David Laufman, who helped oversee the Clinton and
Russia probes, steps down as chief of National Security Division's Counterintelligence and
Export Control Section.
Feb. 9, 2018: Former FBI Director Comey assistant Josh Campbell leaves FBI for job at
CNN.
Justice Department Associate Attorney General, Office of Legal Policy, Rachel Brand,
resigns.
Feb. 16, 2018: Special counsel Mueller obtains guilty plea from a Dutch attorney for
lying to federal investigators about the last time he spoke to Rick Gates regarding a 2012
project related to Ukraine. The
plea does not appear to relate to 2016 campaign or Trump. The Dutch attorney is married to
the daughter of a Russian oligarch who's suing Buzzfeed and Christopher Steele for alleged
defamation in the "dossier."
Feb. 22, 2018: Former State Dept. official and Sen. John McCain associate David Kramer
invokes his Fifth Amendment right not to testify before House Intelligence Committee. Kramer
reportedly picked up the anti-Trump political opposition research in London and delivered it to
Sen. McCain who delivered it to the FBI.
Special counsel Mueller
files new charges against former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and former campaign
aide Rick Gates, accusing them of additional tax and bank fraud crimes. The allegations appear
to be unrelated to Trump.
Fri. Feb. 23, 2018: Former Trump campaign aide Rick Gates,
pleads guilty to conspiracy and lying to investigators (though he issues a statement saying
he's innocent of the indictment charges). The allegations and plea have no apparent link to
Trump-Russia campaign collusion.
Sat. Feb. 24, 2018: Democrats on House Intel Committee release
their rebuttal memo to the Republican version that summarized alleged FBI misconduct re: using
the GPS Fusion opposition research to get wiretap against Carter Page.
March 12, 2018 : House Intelligence Committee
closes Russia-Trump investigation with no evidence of collusion.
Fri. March 16, 2018 : Attorney General Jeff Sessions fires Deputy FBI
Director Andrew McCabe, based on recommendation from FBI ethics investigators.
Thurs. March 22, 2018 : President Trump announces plans to replace
National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster with former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John
Bolton.
House Judiciary Committee issues
subpoenas to Department of Justice after Department failed to produce documents.
May 4, 2018 : Amid allegations that he was responsible for improper leaks, FBI attorney
James Baker resigns and joins the Brookings Institution, writing for the anti-Trump blog
"Lawfare" that first discussed the need for an "insurance policy" in case Trump got
elected.
2019
March 2019 : Special Counsel Robert Mueller signs off on his final report stating
that there was no collusion or coordination between Trump -- or any American -- and Russia. He
leaves as an open question the issue of whether Trump took any actions that could be considered
obstruction. No new charges are recommended or filed with the issuance of the report.
June 2019 : Former Trump National Security Adviser Flynn fire his defense attorneys and
hires Sidney Powell.
Oct. 25, 2019 : Flynn files a motion to dismiss the case against him due to prosecutorial
misconduct. Among other claims, Flynn says prosecutors failed to turn over exculpatory material
tending to show his innocence. Prosecutors claim they were not required to turn over the
information.
Dec. 19, 2019 : An investigation by Inspector General
Michael Horowitz finds egregious abuses by FBI and Justice Department officials in obtaining
wiretaps of former Trump campaign volunteer Carter Page. The report also says an FBI attorney
doctored a document, providing false information to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Court, to get the wiretaps.
2020
Jan. 7, 2020 : Prosecutors reverse their earlier recommendation for no prison time, and ask
for up to six months in prison for Flynn.
Jan. 16, 2020 : Flynn files a motion to withdraw his guilty plea.
Jan. 23, 2020 : The Dept. of Justice
finds that two of its wiretaps against former Trump campaign volunteer Carter Page were
improperly obtained and are therefore invalid.
Feb. 10, 2020: The Dept. of Justice asks a judge to sentence Trump associate Roger Stone to
7 to 9 years in prison for lying about his communications with WikiLeaks.
Feb. 11, 2020 : The Dept. of Justice reduces its recommendation for prison time for Stone
after President Trump and others criticized the initial representation as excessive. Stone
receives three years and four months in prison.
Feb. 20, 2020: President Trump
appoints Richard Grenell as acting Director of National Intelligence. Grenell begins
facilitating the release of long withheld documents regarding FBI actions against Trump
campaign associates.
March 31, 2020 : A Justice Dept. Inspector General's
analysis of more than two dozen wiretap applications from eight FBI field offices over two
months finds "we do not have confidence" that the bureau followed standards to ensure the
accuracy of the wiretap requests.
April 3, 2020 : Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court asks FBI to review whether it
wiretaps are valid in light of information about problems and abuses.
April 29, 2020 : Newly-released documents show FBI officials, prior to
their original interview with Flynn, discussing whether the goal was to try to get him to lie
to get him fired or so that he could be prosecuted.
May 7, 2020 : The Department of Justice announces a decision to drop the case against
Flynn.
al-Beeb s'Allah live news feed on their website Summary: Russia now has the third-highest
number of confirmed cases in the world, overtaking UK and Italy .
Three pages further on the live feed you can read:* Russia has confirmed 2,009 deaths
in total. You have to go to page four for the actual story @13:07 that links to the
summary to actual story details (there are no links in the summary at all!) to read taking
the total death toll to 2,009, which is far lower than the numbers reported in many other
countries. (my emphasis) *** So well below the UK's own tally of 32,000 heroic
deaths. That's good to know.
As others have pointed out, Russia has carried out the highest number of tests in u-Rope,
now greater than 4.5 million, which is only behind the US globally
Thank God there is the BBC to put things in to proper perspective in such a professional
way / sarc.
Levada has done a survey of Russian youth and
that's pretty hard to find; in general they're not far off their parents: a bit more liberal
but also a bit more nationalist. Perhaps the most interesting result was that a solid majority
thought Russia was not European.
Robinson discusses. He wonders why so few show much support for "'classical' civil and
political liberties".
My guess is that 20 years of observation of Western practice of these
noble ideals has soured them.
CrowdStrike, the private cyber-security firm that first accused Russia of hacking Democratic
Party emails and served as a critical source for U.S. intelligence officials in the years-long
Trump-Russia probe, acknowledged to Congress more than two years ago that it had no concrete
evidence that Russian hackers stole emails from the Democratic National Committee's server.
Crowdstrike President Shawn Henry: "We just don't have the evidence..."
CrowdStrike President Shawn Henry's admission under oath, in a recently declassified
December 2017 interview before the House Intelligence Committee, raises new questions about
whether Special Counsel Robert Mueller, intelligence officials and Democrats misled the public.
The allegation that Russia stole Democratic Party emails from Hillary Clinton, John Podesta and
others and then passed them to WikiLeaks helped trigger the FBI's probe into now debunked
claims of a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia to steal the 2016 election. The
CrowdStrike admissions were released just two months after the Justice Department retreated
from its its other central claim that Russia meddled in the 2016 election when it dropped
charges against Russian troll farms it said had been trying to get Trump elected.
Henry personally led the remediation and forensics analysis of the DNC server after being
warned of a breach in late April 2016; his work was paid for by the DNC, which refused to turn
over its server to the FBI. Asked for the date when alleged Russian hackers stole data from the
DNC server, Henry testified that CrowdStrike did not in fact know if such a theft occurred at
all: "We did not have concrete evidence that the data was exfiltrated [moved electronically]
from the DNC, but we have indicators that it was exfiltrated," Henry said.
Henry reiterated his claim on multiple occasions:
"There are times when we can see data exfiltrated, and we can say conclusively. But in
this case it appears it was set up to be exfiltrated, but we just don't have the evidence
that says it actually left."
"There's not evidence that they were actually exfiltrated. There's circumstantial
evidence but no evidence that they were actually exfiltrated."
" There is circumstantial evidence that that data was exfiltrated off the network... We
didn't have a sensor in place that saw data leave. We said that the data left based on the
circumstantial evidence. That was the conclusion that we made."
"Sir, I was just trying to be factually accurate, that we didn't see the data leave, but
we believe it left, based on what we saw."
Asked directly if he could "unequivocally say" whether "it was or was not exfiltrated out
of DNC," Henry told the committee: "I can't say based on that."
Rep. Adam Schiff: Democrat held up interview transcripts, but finally relented after acting
intel director Richard Grenell suggested he would release them himself. (Senate Television via
AP)
In a later exchange with Republican Rep. Chris Stewart of Utah, Henry offered an explanation
of how Russian agents could have obtained the emails without any digital trace of them leaving
the server. The CrowdStrike president speculated that Russian agents might have taken
"screenshots" in real time. "[If] somebody was monitoring an email server, they could read all
the email," Henry said. "And there might not be evidence of it being exfiltrated, but they
would have knowledge of what was in the email. There would be ways to copy it. You could take
screenshots."
Henry's 2017 testimony that there was no "concrete evidence" that the emails were stolen
electronically suggests that Mueller was at best misleading in his 2019 final report, in which
he stated that Russian intelligence "appears to have compressed and exfiltrated over 70
gigabytes of data from the file server."
It is unlikely that Mueller had another source to make his more confident claim about
Russian hacking.
The stolen emails, which were published by Wikileaks – whose founder, Julian Assange
has long denied they came from Russia – were embarrassing to the party because, among
other things, they showed the DNC had favored Clinton during her 2016 primary battles against
Sen. Bernie Sanders for the presidential nomination. The DNC eventually issued an apology to
Sanders and his supporters "for the inexcusable remarks made over email." The DNC hack was
separate from the FBI's investigation of Clinton's use of a private server while serving as
President Obama's Secretary of State.
The disclosure that CrowdStrike found no evidence that alleged Russian hackers exfiltrated
any data from the DNC server raises a critical question: On what basis, then, did it accuse
them of stealing the emails? Further, on what basis did Obama administration officials make far
more forceful claims about Russian hacking?
Michael Sussmann: This lawyer at Perkins Coie hired CrowdStrike to investigate the DNC
breach. He was also involved with Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele in producing the
discredited Steele dossier.
The January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA), which formally accused Russia of a
sweeping influence campaign involving the theft of Democratic emails, claimed the Russian
intelligence service GRU "exfiltrated large volumes of data from the DNC." A July 2018
indictment claimed that GRU officers "stole thousands of emails from the work accounts of DNC
employees."
According to everyone concerned, the cyber-firm played a critical role in the FBI's
investigation of the DNC data theft. Henry told the panel that CrowdStrike "shared intelligence
with the FBI" on a regular basis, making "contact with them over a hundred times in the course
of many months." In congressional testimony that same year, former FBI Director James Comey
acknowledged that the FBI "never got direct access to the machines themselves," and instead
relied on CrowdStrike, which "shared with us their forensics from their review of the system."
According to Comey, the FBI would have preferred direct access to the server, and made
"multiple requests at different levels," to obtain it. But after being rebuffed, "ultimately it
was agreed to [CrowdStrike] would share with us what they saw."
Henry's testimony seems at variance with Comey's suggestion of complete information sharing.
He told Congress that CrowdStrike provided "a couple of actual digital images" of DNC hard
drives, out of a total number of "in excess of 10, I think." In other cases, Henry said,
CrowdStrike provided its own assessment of them. The firm, he said, provided "the results of
our analysis based on what our technology went out and collected." This disclosure follows
revelations from the case of Trump operative Roger Stone that CrowdStrike provided three
reports to the FBI in redacted and draft form. According to federal prosecutors, the government
never obtained CrowdStrike's unredacted reports.
CrowdStrike's newy disclosed admissions raise new questions about whether Special Counsel
Robert Mueller (above), intelligence officials and Democrats misled the public.
There are no indications that the Mueller team accessed any additional information beyond
what CrowdStrike provided. According to the Mueller report, "the FBI later received images of
DNC servers and copies of relevant traffic logs." But if the FBI obtained only "copies" of data
traffic – and not any new evidence -- those copies would have shown the same absence of
"concrete evidence" that Henry admitted to.
Adding to the tenuous evidence is CrowdStrike's own lack of certainty that the hackers it
identified inside the DNC server were indeed Russian government actors. Henry's explanation for
his firm's attribution of the DNC hack to Russia is replete with inferences and assumptions
that lead to "beliefs," not unequivocal conclusions. "There are other nation-states that
collect this type of intelligence for sure," Henry said, "but what we would call the tactics
and techniques were consistent with what we'd seen associated with the Russian state." In its
investigation, Henry said, CrowdStrike "saw activity that we believed was consistent with
activity we'd seen previously and had associated with the Russian Government. We said that we
had a high degree of confidence it was the Russian Government."
But CrowdStrike was forced to retract a similar accusation months after it accused Russia in
December 2016 of hacking the Ukrainian military, with the same software that the firm had
claimed to identify inside the DNC server.
The firm's work with the DNC and FBI is also colored by partisan affiliations. Before
joining CrowdStrike, Henry served as executive assistant director at the FBI under Mueller.
Co-founder Dmitri Alperovitch is a vocal critic of Vladimir Putin and a senior fellow at the
Atlantic Council, the pro-NATO think tank that has consistently promoted an aggressive policy
toward Russia. And the newly released testimony confirms that CrowdStrike was hired to
investigate the DNC breach by Michael Sussmann of Perkins Coie – the same Democratic-tied
law firm that hired Fusion GPS to produce the discredited Steele dossier, which was also
treated as central evidence in the investigation. Sussmann played a critical role in generating
the Trump-Russia collusion allegation. Ex-British spy and dossier compiler Christopher Steele
has
testified in British court that Sussmann shared with him the now-debunked Alfa Bank server
theory, alleging a clandestine communication channel between the bank and the Trump
Organization.
Henry's recently released testimony does not mean that Russia did not hack the DNC. What it
does make clear is that Obama administration officials, the DNC and others have misled the
public by presenting as fact information that they knew was uncertain. The fact that the
Democratic Party employed the two private firms that generated the core allegations at the
heart of Russiagate -- Russian email hacking and Trump-Russia collusion – suggests that
the federal investigation was compromised from the start.
The 2017 Henry transcript was one of dozens just released after a lengthy dispute. In
September 2018, the Republican-controlled House Intelligence Committee unanimously voted to
release witness interview transcripts and sent them to the U.S. intelligence community for
declassification review. In March 2019, months after Democrats won House control, Rep. Adam
Schiff ordered the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) to withhold the
transcripts from White House lawyers seeking to review them for executive privilege. Schiff
also refused to release vetted transcripts, but finally relented after acting ODNI Director
Richard Grenell suggested this month that he would release them himself.
Several transcripts, including the interviews of former CIA Director John Brennan and Comey,
remain unreleased. And in light of the newly disclosed Crowdstrike testimony, another secret
document from the House proceedings takes on urgency for public viewing. According to Henry,
Crowdstrike also provided the House Intelligence Committee with a copy of its report on the DNC
email theft.
"Do you remember that part, in the Wizard of Oz, when the witch is dead and the Munchkins
start singing? Think that kind of happiness."
Julie Mulhern, from "The Deep End"
The New York Times is unable to
contain its glee at Russia's having had to cancel its Victory Day celebrations. There was
no end of negative press directed at Putin for having not yet announced postponement or
cancellation, because it looked for a bit as if Russia was going to go for herd immunity rather
than bringing everything to a grinding halt, and sequestering its terrified citizens in their
homes as the west has done. But finally the number of Russian infections began to rocket
encouragingly upward, and something had to be done. So it was lockdown, Victory Day postponed
indefinitely, and the Times couldn't be happier.
The Times has been going downhill at quite a clip ever since the mendacious
aluminum-tubes nonsense in the runup to the American invasion of Iraq, and in fact the Times
was an enthusiastic promoter of that war in general, swaddling itself in righteousness when
serial liar Judith Miller went to jail rather than reveal her sources. It was a 'proud but awful
moment for The Times' , but heroine Miller 'surrendered her liberty in defense of a greater
liberty'. Give me a moment, will you? I want to put on some violins.
Ah, that's better. Inspiring, thank you, Judith. But in the end the Times' blubbering about
greater liberty looked a lot more like a heartstrings strumfest in defense of telling
outrageous lies that got thousands upon thousands of innocent people killed, brought out
the very worst in Americans in the
grimy corridors of Abu Ghraib , and left a country so battered, demoralized and divided
that it has never recovered to this day.
The foregoing is simply a measure of how far the Times has fallen, from standard-bearer for
journalistic excellence to liberal demagogue, not fit to wrap fish and chips in. And the
unseemly sneering and giggling of the authors of the subject piece should be regarded with the
same contempt which would surely be directed at Russians who cheered at Independence Day
celebrations having to be canceled in the United States – stick your tailgate parties up
your tailgate, Amerikanski!
But since we're here, let's take a look at what a journalist's salary at The New York
Times buys you these days, shall we?
First of all, what does Victory Day celebrate? Because the Nazi surrender was actually
tendered twice; it was signed May 7th, 1945 at Reims, by Alfred Jodl for Germany, Walter Bedell
Smith for the Allied Expeditionary Force, and Ivan Susloparov for the Soviet High Command. But
the latter was only a junior officer who did not have the authority to sign on behalf of the
state, and the Soviet High Command had not approved the text of the surrender agreement. Stalin
insisted on a second ceremony, said that the first ceremony constituted a preliminary agreement
only, and insisted on the surrender being signed in Berlin, 'center of Nazi aggression'.
"Today, in Reims, Germans signed the preliminary act on an unconditional surrender. The
main contribution, however, was done by Soviet people and not by the Allies, therefore the
capitulation must be signed in front of the Supreme Command of all countries of the anti-Hitler
coalition, and not only in front of the Supreme Command of Allied Forces. Moreover, I disagree
that the surrender was not signed in Berlin, which was the center of Nazi aggression. We agreed
with the Allies to consider the Reims protocol as preliminary."
Eisenhower immediately agreed, and the final Instrument of Surrender was signed May 9th,
1945, by Field-Marshal Wilhelm Keitel for Germany, Marshal Georgy Zhukov for the Soviet High
Command, and Air Chief Marshal Arthur Tedder for the Allied Expeditionary Force. This is the
date which has been celebrated every year since, by the Soviet Union and its inheritor, the
Russian Federation.
What does it commemorate? The loss, according to credible research , of 23.8
million Soviet citizens due to war and occupation, 7.2 million of them soldiers who died on the
front lines, 3.1 million more Soviet prisoners of war in German custody, .9 million dead
– many of them starved to death – in the siege of Leningrad, and 2.5 million in the
Jewish holocaust.
Victory Day is not about we-had-more-people-killed-than-you. But just to put the magnitude
of Soviet losses in perspective – total deaths in World War II, what the Soviets called
the Great Patriotic War, were around 60 million people. The Soviet Union accounted for nearly
half the dead of the global total.
And another thing; the war was fought mostly in Europe, and if you look down the rows of
national casualties, you will notice a pattern – once you add civilian casualties on to
the military deaths, the total takes a huge jump. Austria; 261,000 military dead – total
deaths, 384,700. Belgium, 12,100 military dead. Total deaths, 86,000. France; military deaths,
217,600. Total deaths, 567,600. You see what I mean, I'm sure.
United States of America; military deaths, 416,800. Total deaths, 418,500. 1,700 civilian
deaths of American citizens. For each American soldier killed in battle, the Soviet Union lost
17.
And even the most pessimistic would have to admit that the USA came out of World War II in a
pretty good position; my, yes. Incredibly, American managers of General Motors and Ford
went along with the
conversion of their German plants to military production at a time when U.S. government
documents show they were still resisting calls by the Roosevelt administration to step up
military production in their plants at home.
"When American GIs invaded Europe in June 1944, they did so in jeeps, trucks and tanks
manufactured by the Big Three motor companies in one of the largest crash militarization
programs ever undertaken. It came as an unpleasant surprise to discover that the enemy was also
driving trucks manufactured by Ford and Opel -- a 100 percent GM-owned subsidiary -- and flying
Opel-built warplanes."
America profited handsomely, both by doing business with the Nazis right up until it was
forced to stop, while at the same time America was churning out war materiel to support the
allies as fast as factory lines could be made to run. Nice work if you can get it. The
Bretton Woods
agreement , concluded in 1944, abandoned the gold standard as the global currency in favour
of the US greenback, putting America in the driver's seat as the dominant world power. The
Soviets were left with a country in smoking ruins, as apple-cheeked America went back to work
with a whistle on its lips. Right away, muttering started about the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact,
which has recently exploded into accusation by the US Ambassador to Poland
that Russia started the war. The Moscow Times, a militantly pro-western newspaper,
ponders why Russia will not 'confront its role in the war', and decides it must
be Putin's fault .
"Teaching history has never been easy in Russia, where archives are closed and
transparent discussions about the country's Soviet past are met with hostility. Even then,
teaching World War II is more difficult: with every year that Putin is in power, Russia fails
to confront its role in the war head on."
And now some fucking American chowderhead – in Moscow – openly snickers over the
cancellation of the Victory Day parade and celebration, in between boasting about how he
carries a shopping bag with him every time he decides to go out for a stroll, so police won't
challenge him on why he's not at home.
"I prefer going out during the day, walking with my wife, shielded by a big shopping bag
in the hope that the police will let us be."
And of course, the canard we have all become accustomed to, Russia is aflame with
coronavirus, with over 10.000 new cases per day for the last three days straight. As of the
middle of April, Russia reported that nearly half its new cases were asymptomatic , and that
proportion continues to increase – it seems reasonable to assume the high numbers result
from increased testing. Deaths from coronavirus in Russia remain extremely low. 1,723 COVID
victims have died, of a total 187,859 cases since the beginning of the outbreak, a mortality
rate so far of .91%, about the same as the seasonal flu.
"Travel brings wisdom only to the wise. It renders the ignorant more ignorant than
ever."
Oh, that is explained as well – "In a country with a long history of legal nihilism,
the mayor's stay-at-home pleas were not expected to gain much traction. Russia is, after all,
a land where, according to popular wisdom, "the severity of the law is compensated by the
laxity of its enforcement" and "when something is not allowed but is greatly desired it can
be done."
Again, the beauty of artistic license; on the one hand, the law in Russia is just words
– nobody really pays attention to it. The only people who don't do just as they please
are lazy fucking Russian puddings who can't be bothered to think big. On the other, whenever
Navalny and his hamsters want to march straight into Red Square or down major streets where
they can cause a traffic jam, the oppressive hand of the law is everywhere at once and
screaming children are dragged off to prison, or straight to the nearest recruiting office
where they are clapped into the army before they know what they're about. Depending on what
kind of story you are writing for the New York Times, the law in Russia can be either
wall-to-wall incompetence, Keystone Kops writ large, unenforceable and just going through the
motions. Or it can be oppression, everywhere at once, brave liberals sweating over their
keyboards at night in garrets, always waiting for that knock on the door, but so committed to
getting the truth out that they risk their very lives.
Russia can be anything you like, provided your objective is to shit on it.
The vignette the author details above suggests that he and his wife are just out for a
gratuitous stroll, to take the air – that little bit smarter than the native mugs who
stay crammed into their tiny apartments, you see. It never occurs to them that all they need
do is carry a shopping bag, and the cops will be either too lazy or too dumb to
investigate.
He's not really shopping and the dumb Orcs don't suspect that he is fooling them!
But I see Orcs walking around outside my Moscow house all the time, and they are not
carrying shopping bags and the cops do not stop them.
In fact, since this isolation regime has come into force, I have yet to see a cop in our
neighborhood.
At the very beginning of the "quarantine", 2 cops came to the basketball court outside our
house and told sone boys to bugger off. I am sure some old ratbag of an interfering babushka
had summoned them.
@Sgt.
Joe Friday "Actually, Maddow considers herself a Serious Journalist. She "speaks truth to
power," and she'd probably be the first to tell you that. Repeatedly.
Limbaugh on the other hand, if asked to pick a word to describe his profession would
likely say "entertainer.""
While in actuality, the roles are very nearly reversed. (Nearly only because I don't find
Maddow amusing)
Bill Browder's complaint against Der Spiegel for questioning the story he used to push
for anti-Russian sanctions has backfired, with Germany's Press Council concluding his own
position is far from being an "indisputable fact."
"We cannot agree with your analysis, in which you criticize the allegations made by the
author," the German Press Council – a monitoring organization formed by major German
publishers and journalistic associations – said in its response to Browder's team, as it
rejected the complaint against one of Germany's major news media outlets
What's the world come to when the world's most influential
ex-American-vulture-capitalist-turned-British-human-rights-crusader can't crush free speech
in every NATO country, only some NATO countries? A blow to all the London-DC human rights
apparatchiks on Browder's payroll. https://t.co/774OihXK8T
"The New York Times has been accused for a second time of stealing major scoops from Russian
journalists. One of those stories won the Times a Pulitzer Prize this May.
The journalists who have accused the Times of taking their work without credit also
happen to be the same liberal media crusaders against Vladimir Putin [my emphasis] that
Western correspondents at the Times and other mainstream outlets have cast as persecuted
heroes
As Yasha Levine further down the page says, the NYT takes whatever it wants from whomever has
got it, without giving anything back or acknowledging any help or assistance, if it thinks it can
get away with it because it believes that, like the Empire it serves, it is Exceptional.
Chancellor Angela Merkel that stupid? "Chancellor Angela Merkel used strong words on Wednesday condemning an "outrageous"
cyberattack by Russia's foreign intelligence service on the German Parliament, her personal
email account included. Russia, she said, was pursuing "a strategy of hybrid warfare."
Notable quotes:
"... That alleged attack happened in 2015. The attribution to Russia is as shoddy as all attributions of cyberattacks are. ..."
"... Intelligence officials had long suspected Russian operatives were behind the attack, but they took five years to collect the evidence, which was presented in a report given to Ms. Merkel's office just last week. ..."
"... This is really funny because we recently learned that the company which investigated the alleged DNC intrusion, CrowdStrike, had found no evidence , as in zero, that a Russian hacker group had targeted the DNC or that DNC emails were exfiltrated over the Internet: ..."
"... CrowdStrike, the private cyber-security firm that first accused Russia of hacking Democratic Party emails and served as a critical source for U.S. intelligence officials in the years-long Trump-Russia probe, acknowledged to Congress more than two years ago that it had no concrete evidence that Russian hackers stole emails from the Democratic National Committee's server. ..."
"... The DNC emails were most likely stolen by its local network administrator, Seth Rich , who provided them to Wikileaks before he was killed in a suspicious 'robbery' during which nothing was taken. ..."
"... The whole attribution of case of the stolen DNC emails to Russia is based on exactly nothing but intelligence rumors and CrowdStrike claims for which it had no evidence. As there is no evidence at all that the DNC was attacked by a Russian cybergroup what does that mean for the attribution of the attack on the German Bundestag to the very same group? ..."
The New York Times continues its anti-Russia campaign with a report about an old
cyberattack on German parliament which also targeted the parliament office of Chancellor Angela
Merkel.
Chancellor Angela Merkel used strong words on Wednesday condemning an "outrageous"
cyberattack by Russia's foreign intelligence service on the German Parliament, her personal
email account included. Russia, she said, was pursuing "a strategy of hybrid warfare."
But asked how Berlin intended to deal with recent revelations implicating the Russians,
Ms. Merkel was less forthcoming.
"We always reserve the right to take measures," she said in Parliament, then immediately
added, "Nevertheless, I will continue to strive for a good relationship with Russia, because
I believe that there is every reason to always continue these diplomatic efforts."
That alleged attack happened in 2015. The attribution to Russia is as shoddy as all
attributions of cyberattacks are.
Intelligence officials had long suspected Russian operatives were behind the attack, but they
took five years to collect the evidence, which was presented in a report given to Ms.
Merkel's office just last week.
Officials say the report traced the attack to the same Russian hacker group that targeted
the Democratic Party during the U.S. presidential election campaign in 2016.
This is really funny because we recently learned that the company which investigated the
alleged DNC intrusion, CrowdStrike,
had found no evidence , as in zero, that a Russian hacker group had targeted the DNC or
that DNC emails were exfiltrated over the Internet:
CrowdStrike, the private cyber-security firm that first accused Russia of hacking Democratic
Party emails and served as a critical source for U.S. intelligence officials in the
years-long Trump-Russia probe, acknowledged to Congress more than two years ago that it had
no concrete evidence that Russian hackers stole emails from the Democratic National
Committee's server.
...
[CrowdStrike President Shawn] Henry personally led the remediation and forensics analysis of
the DNC server after being warned of a breach in late April 2016; his work was paid for by
the DNC, which refused to turn over its server to the FBI. Asked for the date when alleged
Russian hackers stole data from the DNC server, Henry testified that CrowdStrike did not in
fact know if such a theft occurred at all : "We did not have concrete evidence that the data
was exfiltrated [moved electronically] from the DNC, but we have indicators that it was
exfiltrated," Henry said.
The DNC emails were most likely stolen by its local network administrator, Seth Rich , who provided
them to Wikileaks before he was killed in a suspicious 'robbery' during which nothing was
taken.
The whole attribution of case of the stolen DNC emails to Russia is based on exactly nothing
but intelligence rumors and CrowdStrike claims for which it had no evidence. As there is no
evidence at all that the DNC was attacked by a Russian cybergroup what does that mean for the
attribution of the attack on the German Bundestag to the very same group?
While the NYT also mentions that NSA actually snooped on Merkel's private phonecalls
it tries to keep the spotlight on Russia:
As such, Germany's democracy has been a target of very different kinds of Russian
intelligence operations, officials say. In December 2016, 900,000 Germans lost access to
internet and telephone services following a cyberattack traced to Russia.
That mass attack on internet home routers, which by the way happened in November 2016 not in
December, was done with the Mirai
worm :
More than 900,000 customers of German ISP Deutsche Telekom (DT) were knocked offline this
week after their Internet routers got infected by a new variant of a computer worm known as
Mirai. The malware wriggled inside the routers via a newly discovered vulnerability in a
feature that allows ISPs to remotely upgrade the firmware on the devices. But the new Mirai
malware turns that feature off once it infests a device, complicating DT's cleanup and
restoration efforts.
...
This new variant of Mirai builds on malware
source code released at the end of September . That leak came a little more a week after
a botnet based on Mirai was used in a record-sized
attack that caused KrebsOnSecurity to go offline for several
days . Since then, dozens of new Mirai botnets have emerged , all
competing for a finite pool of vulnerable IoT systems that can be infected.
The attack has not been attributed to Russia but to a British man who offered attacks as a
service.
He was arrested in February 2017:
A 29-year-old man has been arrested at Luton airport by the UK's National Crime Agency (NCA)
in connection with a massive internet attack that disrupted telephone, television and
internet services in Germany last November. As regular readers of We Live Security will
recall, over 900,000 Deutsche Telekom broadband customers were knocked offline last November
as an alleged attempt was made to hijack their routers into a destructive botnet.
...
The NCA arrested the British man under a European Arrest Warrant issued by Germany's Federal
Criminal Police Office (BKA) who have described the attack as a threat to Germany's national
communication infrastructure.
According to German prosecutors, the British man allegedly offered to sell access to the
botnet on the computer underground. Agencies are planning to extradite the man to Germany,
where – if convicted – he could face up to ten years imprisonment.
During the trial, Daniel admitted that he never intended for the routers to cease
functioning. He only wanted to silently control them so he can use them as part of a DDoS
botnet to increase his botnet firepower. As discussed earlier he also confessed being paid by
competitors to takedown Lonestar.
In Aug 2017 Daniel was
extradited back to the UK to face extortion charges after attempting to blackmail Lloyds
and Barclays banks. According to press reports, he asked the Lloyds to pay about
£75,000 in bitcoins for the attack to be called off.
The Mirai attack is widely known to have been attributed to Kaye. The case has been
discussed
at length . IT security journalist Brian Krebs, who's site was also attacked by a Mirai bot
net, has written several
stories about it. It was never 'traced to Russia' or attributed it to anyone else but Daniel
Kaye.
Besides that Kennhold writes of "Russia's foreign intelligence service, known as the
G.R.U.". The real Russian foreign intelligence services is the SVR. The military intelligence
agency of Russia was once called GRU but has been renamed to GU.
The New York Times just made up the claim about Russia hacking in Germany from
absolutely nothing. The whole piece was published without even the most basic research and fact
checking.
It seems that for the Times anything can be blamed on Russia completely independent
of what the actually facts say.
Posted by b on May 14, 2020 at 14:38 UTC |
Permalink
Along the same lines, it always bothered me that among all the (mostly contrived)
arguments about who might have been responsible for the alleged "hacking" of DNC as well as
Clinton's emails, we never heard mentioned one single time the one third party that we
absolutely KNOW had intercepted and collected all of those emails--the NSA! Never a peep
about how US intelligence services could be tempted to mischief when in possession of
everyone's sensitive, personal information.
The "Fancy Bear" group (also knowns as advanced persistent threat 28) that is claimed to be
behind the hacks is likely little more than the collection of hacking tools shared on the
open and hidden parts of RuNet or Russian-speaking Internet. Many of these Russian-speaking
hackers are
actually Ukrainians .
Some of the Russian hackers also worked for the FSB, like the members of Shaltai
Boltai group that were later arrested for treason. George Eliason claims Shaltai Boltai
actually worked for Ukrainians. For a short version of the story read this:
Cyberanalyst George Eliason has written some intriguing blogs recently claiming that the
"Fancy Bear" which hacked the DNC server in mid-2016 was in fact a branch of Ukrainian
intelligence linked to the Atlantic Council and Crowdstrike. I invite you to have a go at
one of his recent essays...
Patrick
Armstrong , May 14 2020 15:27 utc |
3 Wow! You've done it again. I was just writing my Sitrep and thinking what an amazing
coincidence it is that, just as the Russian pipelaying ship arrived to finish Nord Stream,
Merkel is told that them nasty Russkies are doing nasty things. I come here and you've
already solved it. Yet another scoop. Congratulations.
The NYT has removed that sentence about the attack on internet/phone access:
"Correction: May 14, 2020
An earlier version of this article incorrectly attributed responsibility for a 2016
cyberattack in which 900,000 Germans lost access to internet and telephone services. The
attack was carried out by a British citizen, not Russia. The article also misstated when the
attack took place. It was in November, not December. The sentence has been removed from the
article. "
From this we can learn that anything can be blamed by MSM, completely independent of what the
facts are. It is not limited to allegations related to Russia or China, but any and all
claims by MSM that have no direct reference to provable fact.
great coverage b... thank you... facts don't matter.. what matters is taking down any
positive image of russia, or better - putting up a constantly negative one... of this the
intel and usa msm are consistent... the sad reality is a lot of people will believe this
bullshit too...
i was just reading paul robinsons blog last night -
#DEMOCRACY RIP AND THE NARCISSISM OF RUSSIAGATE .. even paul is starting to getting
pissed off on the insanity of the media towards russia which is rare from what i have read
from him!
@ 3 patrick armstrong.. keep up the good work!! thanks for your work..
There is already a correction made to the DT attack - someone reads MofA! Shame they don't
get more of their new interpretation form here.
Whole piece reads here like it started as a Merkel gets close to Russia piece, shown
around to colleagues and politicians for feedback, and a ton of fake "why Merkel actually
hates the Russians" nonsense was added in.
After all pretty much everyone has tapped Merkel's phone by now.
Absolutely remarkable; in fact, 'stunning', as he uses it, is not too much of a stretch. The
'liberal elites' just go right on lying even though the sworn testimony of FBI interviewers
is available for anyone to read, as well as the chilling manipulations of Strozk and Page,
both of whom should be in prison and perhaps will be. And that fucker Schiff should swing. I
can't believe the transformation of Carlson from Bush shill to the reincarnation of Edward R.
Murrow. He makes this case so compellingly that nobody could watch that clip and not believe
that Flynn was railroaded from the outset. And what were they allegedly going to jail Flynn's
son for? Does anyone know? Were they just going to make something up? That is terrifying, and
almost argues for the disbanding of the FBI, although it demonstrably still contains honest
agents – as Carlson asks rhetorically, how many times have they done this already, and
gotten away with it?
It's hard to imagine anyone would vote Democrat now.
Couldn't have been too much of a crime, if they offered to let him go in exchange for Flynn
pleading guilty to lying. Actually, you'd kind of think their business was prosecuting crimes
whoever committed them, and that offering to excuse a crime in exchange for a guilty plea is
.kind of a crime.
Man, they have to clean house at the FBI. And there probably are several other
organizations that need it, too. Not the political culling based on ideology that was a
feature of the Bush White House, but the crowd that's in now just cannot be allowed to get
off with nothing.
Greetings Mark and all, I am a new arrival as Jen suggested the company is fine here for
barflies to ponder the world. Can I surmise that if Flynn and son were the FBI targets for
nefarious business dealings then surely Biden and son fall in to that same category. After
all Biden and son filched millions after arranging a USA loan of $1Billion to Ukraine and
then did it again after the IMF loaned a few million more. Carpetbagging and its modern day
practice is a crime in the USA last I looked.
If that conspicuous bias isn't enough cause to dismember the FBI then consider the Uranium
One deal that Hillary Clinton and family set up or perhaps the Debbie Wasserman Shultz
fostering the Awan family spy and blackmail ring.
Good day, Uncle, and welcome! For some reason I can't fathom, the Democrats seem to own or
control all the 'respectable' media in the USA. FOX News is an exception, and has been a
mouthpiece for the Republicans since its inception. But the Democrats control the New York
Times and the Washington Post, which together represent the bulk of American public feeling
to foreigners, and probably to the domestic audience as well. They are extremely active on
conflicts between the two parties, ensuring the Democratic perspective gets put forward in
calm, reasonable why-wouldn't-a-sensible-person-think-this-way manner. At the same time they
cast horrific aspersions at the Republicans. Not that either are much good; but the news
coverage is very one-sided – the position of the Democrats on the sexual-assault furor
over the Kavanaugh appointment compared with their wait-and-see attitude to very similar
accusations against Biden is a classic example.
I don't think its the Democrats that control the NYT &WP, so much as plutocrats.
They're also the ones who fund both the Democrats & the Republicans. The only significant
difference between the parties is largely in the arena of the social "culture war" issues.
But on the issues plutocrats care about, like economic policy & foreign policy, the
differences are shades of grey, rather than actual distinctions.
Just remember the coverage of both papers in the run up to George W Shrub's catastrophic
Iraq war. They're stenographers, not journalists.
That may well be true, but the NYT and WP historically champion the Democrats, endorse the
Democratic candidate for president, and pander to Democratic issues and projects. The Wall
Street Journal is the traditional Republican print outlet, and there might be others but I
don't know them. CNN is overwhelmingly and weepily Democratic in its content – Wolf
Blitzer's eyes nearly roll back in his head with ecstasy whenever he mentions Saint Hillary
– while FOX News is Repubican to the bone and openly contemptuous of liberals. It could
certainly be, on reflection probably is, that the same cabal of corporatists control them
all, and a fine joke they must think it. And I certainly and emphatically agree there is
almost no difference between the parties in execution of external policy.
"... Ideally, they should each be prosecuted with an attempt to discern their connections to the political establishment, and specifically to the Clintons. What does that woman have to do to get jailed – blow somebody away on the 6 o'clock news? ..."
After a prescient 2017 tip from inside the FBI, a slow drip of revelations exposed the
deep problems with the Flynn prosecution.
####
All at the link.
I should add that the author, seasoned investigative reporter John Soloman, wrote much of
this over at TheHill.com and was targeted for review over his clearly labelled 'opinion'
pieces reporting on the Bidens in the Ukraine. The Hill's conclusion is piss weak and accuses
him of what just about every other journalist in the US does and reads in particular of
holding him up to a much higher standard than others. As you will see from his twatter bio,
he's worked for AP, Washington Post, The Washington Times and The Hill. Some things you are
just not supposed to investigate, let alone report.
At an absolute minimum, the FBI officials involved – except those who did their jobs
properly and stated their judgments at the outset that there was no evidence Flynn was not
telling the truth, or believed he was – should be fired and their pensions, if
applicable, rescinded.
Ideally, they should each be prosecuted with an attempt to discern their connections
to the political establishment, and specifically to the Clintons. What does that woman have
to do to get jailed – blow somebody away on the 6 o'clock news?
Here we come to the Fourth Pillar of Sufficient Totalitarianism: Repetition, repetition,
repetition. In Mein Kampf (now removed from Amazon) Adolf said that propaganda should not
be entrusted to.intellectuals They are, he said, easily bored, like sophisticated ideas,
and constantly want to change the message.
Hitler indeed said it while criticizing German WWI propaganda and praising the British
one. Hitler was talking of what he learned form British propaganda and that it should be
emulated:
Particularly in the field of propaganda, placid aesthetes and blase intellectuals should
never be allowed to take the lead. The former would readily transform the impressive
character of real propaganda into something suitable only for literary tea parties. As to
the second class of people, one must always beware of this pest; for, in consequence of
their insensibility to normal impressions, they are constantly seeking new excitements.
Such people grow sick and tired of everything. They always long for change and will
always be incapable of putting themselves in the position of picturing the wants of their
less callous fellow-creatures in their immediate neighbourhood, let alone trying to
understand them. The blase intellectuals are always the first to criticize propaganda, or
rather its message, because this appears to them to be outmoded and trivial.
And he praised British propaganda for appealing to instincts not reason, staying on
message and never being objective:
In this respect also the propaganda organized by our enemies set us an excellent
example. It confined itself to a few themes, which were meant exclusively for mass
consumption, and it repeated these themes with untiring perseverance. Once these
fundamental themes and the manner of placing them before the world were recognized as
effective, they adhered to them without the slightest alteration for the whole duration of
the War. At first all of it appeared to be idiotic in its impudent assertiveness. Later on
it was looked upon as disturbing, but finally it was believed.
But in England they came to understand something further: namely, that the possibility
of success in the use of this spiritual weapon consists in the mass employment of it, and
that when employed in this way it brings full returns for the large expenses incurred.
In England propaganda was regarded as a weapon of the first order, whereas with us it
represented the last hope of a livelihood for our unemployed politicians and a snug job for
shirkers of the modest hero type.
Vilification of the enemy by British and American propaganda worked:
On the other hand, British and American war propaganda was psychologically efficient. By
picturing the Germans to their own people as Barbarians and Huns, they were preparing their
soldiers for the horrors of war and safeguarding them against illusions. The most terrific
weapons which those soldiers encountered in the field merely confirmed the information that
they had already received and their belief in the truth of the assertions made by their
respective governments was accordingly reinforced. Thus their rage and hatred against the
infamous foe was increased. The terrible havoc caused by the German weapons of war was only
another illustration of the Hunnish brutality of those barbarians; whereas on the side of
the Entente no time was left the soldiers to meditate on the similar havoc which their own
weapons were capable of. Thus the British soldier was never allowed to feel that the
information which he received at home was untrue.
While Germans did not have that strong animus to vilify. They rather ridiculed the enemy
and it was a mistake:
It was, for example, a fundamental mistake to ridicule the worth of the enemy as the
Austrian and German comic papers made a chief point of doing in their propaganda. The very
principle here is a mistaken one; for, when they came face to face with the enemy, our
soldiers had quite a different impression. Therefore, the mistake had disastrous results.
Once the German soldier realised what a tough enemy he had to fight he felt that he had
been deceived by the manufacturers of the information which had been given him. Therefore,
instead of strengthening and stimulating his fighting spirit, this information had quite
the contrary effect. Finally he lost heart.
And the greatest mistake of German propaganda was that sometimes it was trying to be
objective or even handed:
The aim of propaganda is not to try to pass judgment on conflicting rights, giving each
its due, but exclusively to emphasize the right which we are asserting. Propaganda must not
investigate the truth objectively and, in so far as it is favourable to the other side,
present it according to the theoretical rules of justice; yet it must present only that
aspect of the truth which is favourable to its own side.
It was a fundamental mistake to discuss the question of who was responsible for the
outbreak of the war and declare that the sole responsibility could not be attributed to
Germany. The sole responsibility should have been laid on the shoulders of the enemy,
without any discussion whatsoever.
And what was the consequence of these half-measures? The broad masses of the people are
not made up of diplomats or professors of public jurisprudence nor simply of persons who
are able to form reasoned judgment in given cases, but a vacillating crowd of human
children who are constantly wavering between one idea and another. As soon as our own
propaganda made the slightest suggestion that the enemy had a certain amount of justice on
his side, then we laid down the basis on which the justice of our own cause could be
questioned. The masses are not in a position to discern where the enemy's fault ends and
where our own begins
"... former CIA Deputy Director Mike Morell admitted in a TV interview he views that the US should be in the business of "killing Russians and Iranians covertly" ). ..."
"... Ironically, Jeffrey's official title has been Special Envoy for the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIL, but apparently the mission is now to essentially "give the Russians hell". His comments were made Tuesday during a video conference hosted by the neocon Hudson Institute : ..."
"... He also emphasized that the Syrian state would continue to be squeezed into submission as part of long-term US efforts (going back to at least 2011) to legitimize a Syria government in exile of sorts. This after the Trump administration recently piled new sanctions on Damascus. As University of Oklahoma professor and expert on the region Joshua Landis summarized of Jeffrey's remarks: "He pledged that the United States will continue to deny Syria - international funding, reconstruction, oil, banking, agriculture & recognition of government." ..."
Washington now says it's all about defeating the Russians . While it's not the first time
this has been thrown around in policy circles (recall that a year after Russia's 2015 entry
into Syria at Assad's invitation, former CIA Deputy Director Mike Morell
admitted in a TV interview he views that the US should be in the business of "killing
Russians and Iranians covertly" ).
"My job is to make it a quagmire for the Russians."
Ironically, Jeffrey's official title has been Special Envoy for the Global Coalition to
Defeat ISIL, but apparently the mission is now to essentially "give the Russians hell". His
comments were made Tuesday during a video conference hosted by the neocon Hudson Institute :
Asked why the American public should tolerate US involvement in Syria, Special Envoy James
Jeffrey points out the small US footprint in the fight against ISIS. "This isn't Afghanistan.
This isn't Vietnam. This isn't a quagmire. My job is to make it a quagmire for the
Russians."
He also emphasized that the Syrian state would continue to be squeezed into submission as
part of long-term US efforts (going back to at least 2011) to legitimize a Syria government in
exile of sorts. This after the Trump administration recently piled new sanctions on Damascus.
As University of Oklahoma professor and expert on the region Joshua Landis summarized of
Jeffrey's remarks: "He pledged that the United States will continue to deny Syria -
international funding, reconstruction, oil, banking, agriculture & recognition of
government."
"My job is to make it a quagmire for the Russians."
Special US envoy to Syria - James Jeffery
He pledged that the United States will continue to deny Syria - international funding,
reconstruction, oil, banking, agriculture & recognition of government. https://t.co/MSAkQqAmdh
But no doubt both Putin and Assad have understood Washington's real proxy war interests all
along, which is why last year Russia delivered it's lethal S-300 into the hands of Assad (and
amid constant Israeli attacks). But no doubt both Putin and Assad have understood Washington's
real proxy war interests all along, which is why last year Russia delivered it's lethal S-300
into the hands of Assad (and amid constant Israeli attacks).
As for oil, currently Damascus is well supplied by the Iranians, eager to dump their stock
in fuel-starved Syria amid the global glut. Trump has previously voiced that part of US troops
"securing the oil fields" is to keep them out of the hands of Russia and Iran.
* * *
Recall the CIA's 2016 admission of what's really going on in terms of US action in
Syria:
"... it's clear that Obama was always the vector through which the entire investigation into Donald Trump pointed. He's the only one with the power to have marshaled the forces arrayed against Trump for the past four years. ..."
"... What's clear now is the President Obama's administration was regularly engaged in illegally using NSA database access to spy on Americans and political opponents . This operation pre-dates Trump by a few years ..."
"... On April 18, 2016, following the preliminary audit results, Director Rogers shut down all FBI contractor access to the database after he learned FISA-702 "about"(17) and "to/from"(16) search queries were being done without authorization ..."
"... And that's when everything changed. Because at that point, having lost access Obama's spy team needed another way into the NSA database. Enter Fusion GPS, Christopher Steele and the ridiculous dossier used to issue FISA warrants on Carter Page and all the rest of it. ..."
"... Obama is guilty of the highest crimes a President can be guilty of, utilizing Federal law enforcement and intelligence services to spy on a political opponent during an election. This is after eight years of ruinous wars, coups both successful and not, drone-striking U.S. citizens and generally carrying on like the vandal he is. ..."
"... Obama's people have been covering for him for nearly four years now. They have been exposed as bald-faced liars by the transcripts of their impeachment testimonies to Adam Schiff and the House Intelligence Committee. ..."
"... Now that the heat is rising and the apparatus they used to control turns its attention to what they did, enough of them will roll over and give Attorney General William Barr what he wants. ..."
"... And here we are coming into the home stretch and the bitter end is staring these people in the face. They've lost all credibility, corrupted whole swaths of the Federal government beyond recognition and activated every resource they have in the media and the chattering classes to make manifest a bald-faced lie. And it didn't work. Now the desperation sets in. The exoneration of Gen. Michael Flynn, the release of the transcripts and conflicting stories told by John Brennan, James Clapper, James Comey and the rest all point to something beyond sinister. ..."
"... You can smell the fear now. From Bill Kristol to John Brennan they can see the end of their project, whether it was for a New American Neocon Century or just the cynical push for a transnational oligarchy based around the European Union, their Utopian dreams have run into the immovable object of a people refusing to believe their lies anymore. ..."
From the beginning of the story RussiaGate was always about Barack Obama . I didn't always see it that way, certainly. My seething
hatred for all things Hillary Clinton is a powerful blind spot I admit to freely.
But, it's clear that Obama was always the vector through which the entire investigation into Donald Trump pointed. He's the
only one with the power to have marshaled the forces arrayed against Trump for the past four years.
We've known this for a couple of years now but there were a seemingly endless series of distractions put in place to obfuscate
the truth...
Donald Trump was not a Russian agent.
What's clear now is the President Obama's administration was regularly engaged in illegally using NSA database access to spy
on Americans and political opponents . This operation pre-dates Trump by a few years.
It was de rigeur by the time the election cycle ramped up in 2016. The timing of events is during that time period paints a very
damning picture.
This article from Zerohedge by way of
Conservative Treehouse lays out the timing, the activities and the shifts in the narrative that implicate Obama beyond any doubt.
On April 18, 2016, following the preliminary audit results, Director Rogers shut down all FBI contractor access to the
database after he learned FISA-702 "about"(17) and "to/from"(16) search queries were being done without authorization. Thus
begins the first discovery of a much bigger background story.
And that's when everything changed. Because at that point, having lost access Obama's spy team needed another way into the
NSA database. Enter Fusion GPS, Christopher Steele and the ridiculous dossier used to issue FISA warrants on Carter Page and all
the rest of it.
The details are all there for anyone with eyes willing to see, the question is whether anyone deep in the throes of Trump Derangement
Syndrome will take their eyes off the shadow play in front of them long enough to look.
I'm not holding my breath.
Obama is guilty of the highest crimes a President can be guilty of, utilizing Federal law enforcement and intelligence services
to spy on a political opponent during an election. This is after eight years of ruinous wars, coups both successful and not, drone-striking
U.S. citizens and generally carrying on like the vandal he is.
-- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)
May 12, 2020
... ... ...
These people obviously missed the key point about Goebbels' Big Lie theory of propaganda. For it to work there has to be a nugget
of truth to wrap the lie in before you can repeat it endlessly to make it real. And that's why RussiaGate is dead. Long live ObamaGate.
Obama's people have been covering for him for nearly four years now. They have been exposed as bald-faced liars by the transcripts
of their impeachment testimonies to Adam Schiff and the House Intelligence Committee.
None of them were willing to testify under oath, and be guilty of perjury, to the effect that Trump was colluding with the Russians.
But, they'd say it on TV, Twitter and anywhere else they could to attack Trump with patent nonsense.
Now that the heat is rising and the apparatus they used to control turns its attention to what they did, enough of them will
roll over and give Attorney General William Barr what he wants. Some of them will fall on their sword for Obama.
But I don't think Trump will be satisfied with that. He has to know that Obama is the key to truly draining the Swamp if that
is, in fact, his goal. Because if he doesn't attack Obama now, Obama will be formidable in October. Both men are fighting for their
lives at this point.
Trump was supposed to roll over and play nice. But Pat Buchanan rightly had him pegged at the beginning of this back in January
of 2017, saying that Trump wasn't like Nixon, he wouldn't walk away to protect the office of the Presidency. He would fight to the
bitter end because that's who he is.
And here we are coming into the home stretch and the bitter end is staring these people in the face. They've lost all credibility,
corrupted whole swaths of the Federal government beyond recognition and activated every resource they have in the media and the chattering
classes to make manifest a bald-faced lie. And it didn't work. Now the desperation sets in. The exoneration of Gen. Michael Flynn,
the release of the transcripts and conflicting stories told by John Brennan, James Clapper, James Comey and the rest all point to
something beyond sinister.
You can smell the fear now. From Bill Kristol to John Brennan they can see the end of their project, whether it was for a
New American Neocon Century or just the cynical push for a transnational oligarchy based around the European Union, their Utopian
dreams have run into the immovable object of a people refusing to believe their lies anymore.
Although amica, or amicus briefs can be routine in civil cases, in a criminal case, it is
a prosecutor's duty to decide things as basic as whether to prosecute a case.
But in the Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn matter, Sullivan says he now needs outside help.
The need, the judge says, came following the DOJ decision to end prosecution of the
general, having determined there was no crime; the heretofore prosecution of him was a
phantom of the opera.
Sullivan now wants an encore.
What might that be?
Pirates of Penzance?
Sullivan Flies Over the Cuckoo's Nest?
In a recent order the judge said he will invite outside parties -- outside of the DOJ --
to provide this judge "unique information or perspective that can help the court."
The absurdity of Sullivan notwithstanding, it could be: he recognizes he is sitting on a
volcano, partly of his own making because of decisions he made; and those of Judge Rudy
Contreras, the man who was on the bench when Flynn plead to the false charges, circa Dec. 1,
2017.
Neither Contreras, nor Flynn's Covington lawyers, prior this plea, demanded the DOJ
produce original FBI 302s -- of the Jan. 24, 2017 FBI interview of Flynn -- to show the
concrete substance, that is, actual evidence, that would purportedly show the general
lied.
The DOJ never produced this. Ever.
Sullivan, he never asked nor demanded nor got to read those original 302s either, even
though he has been sitting on this case since Dec. 7, 2017.
After a year of sitting on the case, Flynn said he was ready to be sentenced: the
prosecutors had said they were fine with no jail time for him.
During this Dec. 18, 2018 hearing, Sullivan Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
[If you have not, read transcript of this hearing, it's at least a half-hour read.]
Sullivan told Flynn he could face 15 years in jail, implied he committed treason, was a
traitor to his country, blah blah blah.
The prosecutor at the time, Brandon Van Grack, told the Pirate of Penzance that more
assistance of Flynn was needed for the bogus Mueller investigation.
Sullivan [Gilbert was not in the courtroom] then allowed Flynn's sentencing hearing to be
continued, so long as Mueller submitted monthly progress reports to ascertain the general was
cooperating with the special counsel office's "investigation" of nonexistent "crimes" against
who knows what at that point.
To recap: Sullivan threatened Flynn with 15 years in prison; Flynn withdrew his
willingness to be sentenced at that time; Van Grack out of nowhere said the general needed to
cooperate some more with Mueller.
Had Sullivan not gone rouge at this hearing; had he demanded and gotten the original 302s,
I would give more credence to what I'll say next.
The only rational reason, I think, Sullivan said he needs "help" -- before consummating
the DOJ's request to end this matter – is simple.
Sullivan knows he is sitting on a volcano, and he can't take the heat.
Thus, he might be creating conditions for a last hurrah of nonsense from the enemies of
justice who are the enemies of Flynn, who want to file amica with the court.
Put another way, the judge is inviting the very circus he claim to want to avoid, in his
Minute Order.
Reason I'm not necessarily opposed to this circus is practical: more sunshine can be
brought to this prosecution, this malicious and political perecution of Flynn –
sunshine, via the DOJ release document after document that just piles onto the record
DOJ/FBI/CIA lawlessness that was directed against and targeted Flynn. And perhaps other
delicious nuggets, too.
When the smoke clears, the fat lady finally sings, Sullivan can say or claim he did
everything to give everyone their say, blah blah blah, and hope like hell everyone forgets
this Pirate's dereliction of duty, as a judge with a lifetime appointment.
Perhaps, should this show go on, we might discover why Contreras mysteriously recused
himself right after the Flynn pleas.
Perhaps we will read all of the Covington law firm Eric Holder and Michael Chertoff
emails, and what they were saying about Flynn, the good, the bad, the ugly.
And, since Barry decided to directly and publicly insert himself in this fiasco last week,
with his remark about Flynn and "perjury," who knows what other documents will be filed on
the docket. [Obama's pre meditated use of "perjury" when he knows it was not about that,
indicates just how sinister his public involvement now is.]
I would like to see all of Sullivan's communications, work related and private, involving
the Flynn case.
Please file all of them on the docket, Judge Sullivan, un-redacted, you who opened this
can of worms. [So we can see if you, by your own "standards" might be a "security threat" or
"sold out your country," etc.]
Sullivan didn't start this fire; he did pour gasoline on it.
". . . .Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. . . ."[Epistle
to the Galatians]
There several fuzzy, unexplainable moments in this whole story:
1. Why Flynn intentionally violated White House protocol for questioning of Trump
administration officials? He was fired by Obama-Brennan mafia for questioning Obama policies
and during this period he should obtain more or less complete understanding of the modus of
operation of this mafia and should not have any illusions about them, should he ?
2. How he did not sense the danger? Why no lawyer was present during the interview? It is
impossible that Flynn did not understand that both Strzok and his boss were essentially
plants from CIA in FBI and indirectly reported to Brennan ?
3. Why in this chess party between former paratrooper and former DIA chief (who has a
Master of Business Administration in Telecommunications from Golden Gate University) and such
a sleazy, feminine second, if not third rate individual as Strzok, the simplest defensive
move was to ask for transcripts of his talks with conversations with Kislyak was not used?
Why Flynn so easily fall a victim of a primitive, textbook entrapment? It is inconceivable
that he does not understand that such a full transcript exist. Why he behaved like a 17 year
old detailed by a police officer?
4. On Jan 23, 2017 Russiagate hysteria was in full bloom. So any normal individual would
understand where are the legs of questions that Strzok asked him during the interview just
based on this simple fact. Also it is unconceivable that neither he, not Trump has no
information about the actions of Comey and his henchmen from former Flynn colleagues in DIA.
Why no preemptive strikes against McCabe and Strzok plot were fired?
5. How important was the fact that Comey and his henchmen have Flynn by the balls due to
his lobbing efforts for Turkey in this whole story ?
"... It's not been a great week for proponents of Russiagate conspiracies. A release of transcripts of meetings of the American House of Representatives Intelligence Committee revealed that person after person interviewed by the Committee denied having any knowledge of collusion between Donald Trump and his campaign on the one hand and the Russian state on the other. This was despite the fact that many of those so interviewed had claimed in public that such collusion had taken place. The discrepancy between their public and private utterances has rightfully been interpreted as further evidence that the whole collusion story was a fabrication from start to finish. ..."
"... Collusion was only half of Russiagate. The other half was the allegation of Russian 'interference' in the US election, founded especially on claims that the Russian military intelligence service, the GRU, had hacked and leaked documents from the Democratic National Committee (DNC). This allegation was based on research undertaken by a private company Crowdstrike, but now the Intelligence Committee minutes reveal that Crowdstrike couldn't even confirm that how the DNC data had been leaked let alone that the Russians were responsible. All they had, according to the testimony, was 'circumstantial evidence' and 'indicators' – not exactly solid proof. ..."
Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn. [Gone with the Wind]
It's not been a great week for proponents of Russiagate conspiracies. A release of
transcripts of meetings of the American House of Representatives Intelligence Committee
revealed that person after person interviewed by the Committee denied having any knowledge of
collusion between Donald Trump and his campaign on the one hand and the Russian state on the
other. This was despite the fact that many of those so interviewed had claimed in public that
such collusion had taken place. The discrepancy between their public and private utterances has
rightfully been interpreted as further evidence that the whole collusion story was a
fabrication from start to finish.
Collusion was only half of Russiagate. The other half was the allegation of Russian
'interference' in the US election, founded especially on claims that the Russian military
intelligence service, the GRU, had hacked and leaked documents from the Democratic National
Committee (DNC). This allegation was based on research undertaken by a private company
Crowdstrike, but now the Intelligence Committee minutes reveal that Crowdstrike couldn't even
confirm that how the DNC data had been leaked let alone that the Russians were responsible. All
they had, according to the testimony, was 'circumstantial evidence' and 'indicators' –
not exactly solid proof.
Given this, you'd imagine that this would be a good time for Russiagaters to slink off into
a dark corner somewhere and hope that people forget all the nonsense they've been spouting for
the past four years. But not a bit of it, for what do we find in the latest edition of The
Atlantic magazine than an
article by Franklin Foer with the scary title 'Putin is well on the way to stealing the
next election'.
Foer is in some respects the original Russiagater. He was well ahead of the game, and in a
July 2016
article in Slate laid out the basic narrative many months before others latched
onto it. The article has it all: a scary title ('Putin's Puppet' – meaning Trump);
Vladimir Putin's evil plan to destroy Europe and the United States; a cast of characters with
allegedly dubious connections to the Kremlin (Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn, Carter Page, etc.
– you met them first in Foer's article); Trump's supposed desperation to break into the
Moscow real estate market; allegations of Trump's lack of creditworthiness leading him to seek
shady Russian sources of finance; and so on – in short, the whole shebang long before it
was on anyone else's radar.
Not wanting to let a good story go to waste, Foer has been on it ever since, and gained a
certain amount of notoriety when he broke the 'story' that US President Donald Trump was
secretly exchanging messages with the Russian government via the computer servers of Alfa Bank.
Unfortunately for Foer, it didn't take more than a minute or three for researchers to expose
his revelation as utter nonsense. This, however, didn't seem to shake him. In the world of
journalism there appears to be no such thing as accountability for those who publish fake news
about Russians producing fake news, and so it is that Foer is back on the Russiagate wagon with
his new piece in the Atlantic , warning us that it's bad enough that Putin elected
Trump once, but now he's going to do it all over again.
The basic theme of Foer's latest is pretty much the same as in his original article of July
2016. Back then Foer informed readers that, 'Vladimir Putin has a plan for destroying the West
– and that plan looks a lot like Donald Trump'. 'The destruction of Europe is a grandiose
objective; so is the weakening of the United States', Foer went on, keen to let us know that
Putin's aims were nothing if not extreme ('The destruction of Europe' no less!!). Now, nearly
four years later, he tell us breathlessly that 'Vladimir Putin dreams of discrediting the
American democratic system' (How does he know this? Does he have some special dream detection
equipment he's snuck into the Kremlin? Alas, Foer doesn't tell.) According to Foer:
It's possible, however, to mistake a plot point – the manipulation of the 2016
election – for the full sweep of the narrative. Events in the United States have
unfolded more favorably than any operative in Moscow could have dreamed: Not only did
Russia's preferred candidate win, but he has spent his first term fulfilling the potential it
saw in him, discrediting American institutions, rending the seams of American culture, and
isolating a nation that had styled itself as indispensable to the free world. But instead of
complacently enjoying its triumph, Russia almost immediately set about replicating it.
Boosting the Trump campaign was a tactic; #DemocracyRIP remains the larger objective.
#DemocracyRIP?? Seriously? Where does Foer get this? I'm willing to offer him a challenge.
I'll pay him $100 (Canadian not US) if he can find anywhere, anywhere, any statement by
Vladimir Putin or another top official in the Russian Federation in which they state any sort
of preference for what sort of political system the United States has, and in particular state
a preference that the USA ceases to be a democracy. If he can't, he'll have to pay me $100. I'm
confident I'll win. The truth, as far as I can see, is that like Rhett Butler, they don't give
a damn. America can be a democracy, or an autocracy, or any other thing as far as they're
concerned, as long as it just leaves them alone. Insofar as thinking Russians do discuss the
matter, I get a strong impression they generally regard the problem not as being that America
is a democracy so much as being that it isn't, not really, as actual power is seen as lying in
the hands of special interests and some sort of version of the 'deep state'. More democracy,
not less, would be the preferred solution.
So where does all the nonsense about Putin wanting to destroy democracy come from? It
certainly doesn't come from anything he's ever said. And it certainly doesn't come from a
serious examination of Russia's true potential. Russia can no more destroy American democracy
than it send a man to Alpha Centauri. And its leaders know that perfectly well. So why do
Americans think that Putin is lying in his bed, 'dreaming' about the 'destruction of Europe',
the 'weakening of America' and '#DemocracyRIP'? I'll hazard a guess – it's a serious case
of narcissism. America believes it is the centre of the universe, and it also imagines itself a
democracy, and so it thinks that American democracy must be what's at the centre of everybody
else's universe too. Well, sorry, Franky boy, it just ain't so. #DemocracyRIP?? In your dreams,
perhaps, but certainly not in Putin's.
"... House Intelligence Committee staff told me that after an exhaustive investigation reviewing intelligence and interviewing intelligence officers, they found that Brennan suppressed high-quality intelligence suggesting that Putin actually wanted the more predictable and malleable Clinton to win the 2016 election . ..."
"... Instead, the Brennan team included low-quality intelligence that failed to meet intelligence community standards to support the political claim that Russian officials wanted Trump to win, House Intelligence Committee staff revealed. They said that CIA analysts also objected to including that flawed, substandard information in the assessment. ..."
"... Fox 's Henry said that he has obtained independent confirmation of the pro-Clinton Russia claim made by Fleitz . ..."
"... Brennan's concealment of this key information was yet another link in the chain of the Obama administration's plot to smear Donald Trump as a Russian asset - a hoax supported by the Clinton-funded Steele dossier, which the FBI knew was Russian disinformation (or, more likely, Steele's Russophobic fantasies) before they used it as a predicate to spy on Trump aide Carter Page during the 2016 election. ..."
Former CIA director John Brennan suppressed intelligence which
indicated that Russia wanted Hillary Clinton to win because "she was a known quantity," vs. the
unpredictable Donald Trump, according to Fox News ' Ed Henry.
During a Tuesday night discussion with Tucker Carlson, Henry said that Brennan "also had
intel saying, actually, Russia wanted Hillary Clinton to win because she was a known quantity,
she had been secretary of state, and Vladimir Putin's team thought she was more malleable,
while candidate Donald Trump was unpredictable."
Perhaps Russian President Vladimir Putin has fond memories of the time Bill Clinton
hung out at his 'private homestead' during the same trip where he collected a $500,000
payday for a speech at a Moscow bank, right before the Uranium One deal was approved.
And as
Breitbart 's Joel Pollak notes, Henry's claim backs up a similar
allegation by former National Security Council chief of staff Fred Fleitz , who said on
April 22:
House Intelligence Committee staff told me that after an exhaustive investigation
reviewing intelligence and interviewing intelligence officers, they found that Brennan
suppressed high-quality intelligence suggesting that Putin actually wanted the more
predictable and malleable Clinton to win the 2016 election .
Instead, the Brennan team included low-quality intelligence that failed to meet
intelligence community standards to support the political claim that Russian officials wanted
Trump to win, House Intelligence Committee staff revealed. They said that CIA analysts also
objected to including that flawed, substandard information in the assessment.
Fox 's Henry said that he has obtained independent confirmation of the pro-Clinton Russia
claim made by Fleitz .
Brennan's concealment of this key information was yet another link in the chain of the Obama
administration's plot to smear Donald Trump as a Russian asset - a hoax supported by the
Clinton-funded Steele dossier, which the FBI
knew was Russian disinformation (or, more likely, Steele's Russophobic fantasies) before
they used it as a predicate to spy on Trump aide Carter Page during the 2016 election.
And now, Brennan is a contributor on MSNBC. How fitting.
Russian 'meddling' in the 2016 US presidential election has become an article of faith, not
just among Democrats but many Republicans as well, thanks to the endless repetition of vague
talking points, none of which hold water. It all began with the Democratic National Committee
(DNC) claiming in June 2016 that Russia hacked their computers, after documents were published
revealing the party's rigging of the primaries. This was followed by Hillary Clinton accusing
her rival for the presidency Donald Trump that he was "colluding" with Russia by
asking Moscow for her emails – the ones she deleted from a private server she used to
conduct State Department business, that is.
With a little help of the mainstream media, which overwhelmingly endorsed Clinton and
predicted her victory, her efforts to cover up her email scandal turned into Russia
"hacking our democracy," eventually spawning the 'Russiagate' investigation led by
Special Counsel Robert Mueller and a series of failed attempts to derail Trump's election and
oust him from the White House.
Lie #1: Russia hacked the DNC
The infamous US intelligence community assessment (ICA) of January 2017, and the Senate
Intelligence Committee report based on it – as well as 'analysis' by actual election
meddlers , among others – all claimed that the Russian government and President
Vladimir Putin personally were behind the "hack" and publication of DNC documents.
These have always been assertions, and no evidence was ever provided.
Last week's declassification
of 50+ interviews in the probe conducted by the House Intelligence Committee revealed that
the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, brought in by the DNC lawyers to fix the "hack,"
did not have evidence either.
CrowdStrike's president, ex-FBI official Shawn Henry, testified that they "saw
activity that we believed was consistent with activity we'd seen previously and had
associated with the Russian Government." [emphasis added]
In the same testimony, Henry also testified that CrowdStrike never had any evidence the
data was actually "exfiltrated," i.e. stolen from the DNC servers.
I want to stress what a pretty big revelation this is. Crowdstrike, the firm behind the
accusation that Russia hacked & stole DNC emails, admitted to Congress that it has no
direct evidence Russia actually stole/exfiltrated the emails. More from Crowdstrike
president Shaun Henry: pic.twitter.com/UCGSyO2rLt
CrowdStrike's feelings about the hack remain the only "evidence" so far, since the
FBI never asked them or the DNC for the actual server, as Henry also confirmed. Meanwhile,
former NSA official and whistleblower William Binney argued back in November 2017 that actual
evidence showed a leak from the inside, not a hack.
There is likewise zero proof that the Russian government had anything to do with the
private email account of John Podesta, Clinton's campaign chair, which a staffer admitted had
been compromised when someone fell for a phishing scam.
Instead, the key argument that WikiLeaks was somehow 'colluding' with Russia over the
publication of the emails rests on a conspiracy theory promoted by the Clinton campaign
staff, after RT reported on a fresh batch of emails before WikiLeaks got around to tweeting
about them – but after they were published on the website and available to anyone
willing to do actual journalism.
In fact, the existence of RT has been a major "argument" of Russiagaters; a third
of the ICA intended to show 'Russian meddling' consisted of a four-year-old appendix about
RT that was in no way relevant to the 2016 situation but lamented its coverage of
fracking and 'Occupy Wall Street' protests, for example.
Lie #3: The Steele 'pee tape'
dossier was irrelevant
As it later emerged, Clinton's claims about 'Russian collusion' were based on a dodgy
dossier her campaign
commissioned through the DNC and a firm called Fusion GPS from a British spy named
Christopher Steele. It said that the Kremlin was blackmailing Trump with a tape of depraved
sex acts in a Moscow hotel, with prostitutes supposedly paid to urinate on a bed President
Barack Obama had slept on.
It was clearly ridiculous and entirely evidence-free. Democrats claimed it played no role
in Russia investigations. Yet the FBI paid Steele for information from the dossier, and used
it to justify a FISA warrant for the surveillance of Trump campaign aide Carter Page –
and with him the campaign itself – starting right before the election, and renewed
three times.
By January 2020, the DOJ had formally disavowed the dossier and all four FISA warrants,
along with any information obtained from them, saying "there was insufficient predication
to establish probable cause."
Lie #4: General Michael Flynn treasonously colluded
with Russia and lied about it to the FBI
Trump's first national security adviser was hounded out of the White House after less than
two weeks on the job, after media leaks insinuated he had improperly discussed sanctions with
Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak, violating the Logan Act, and then lied to the FBI about
it.
After FBI Director James Comey was fired by Trump in May 2017, he told the media the
president had urged him to drop the investigation of Flynn, which was quickly construed as
"obstruction" and used as one of the pretexts to appoint Robert Mueller as special counsel
into 'Russiagate.'
When actual evidence was finally coaxed out of prosecutors, however, it showed that the
FBI sought to frame Flynn in a perjury trap, and that the people involved were Comey himself,
his deputy Andrew McCabe, disgraced lovers Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, and others. All
charges against Flynn were dropped.
Flynn didn't even lie to Strzok and the other agent interviewing him – and the memo
of that conversation had been first heavily edited, then destroyed. Basically, everything
about the Flynn case has been as false as ABC's December 2017 bombshell report about his
"collusion" with Russia that got Brian Ross fired.
When Mueller's final report came out, in the spring of 2019, it found zero evidence of
"collusion" but insisted there had been Russian "meddling" in the election. The
only trouble was that he had no proof of meddling ,
basing it entirely on the above-mentioned intelligence "assessments" and his own
indictments.
A Russian company named in one of the indictments actually contested it in US court and
won. First, a federal judge slapped down Mueller's prosecutors for violating rules by
presenting allegations as "established" and "confirmed" facts and ruling that
no link was actually established behind a catering company accused of "sowing discord"
on social media – a far cry from hacking the DNC! – and the Russian
government.
The DOJ quietly dropped that
particular case in March, just as coronavirus shutdowns were starting across the US, using
"recent events" and a change in classification of some of its evidence as a
face-saving excuse.
Lie #6: Paul Manafort was Trump's conduit to Russia
Paul Manafort, who ran Trump's campaign between March and August 2016, was convicted of
multiple counts of conspiracy against the US and sentenced to a lengthy prison term. However,
despite repeated attempts by the media to present him as some kind of liaison between Trump
and Russia, the entirety of things that got him in trouble with the law had to do with tax
evasion on money he made lobbying for and in Ukraine.
During the two trials against Manafort, it emerged that he and his business partner Rick
Gates had worked with Podesta's brother Tony to fleece Ukrainian oligarchs for years, and
stash the profits in tax havens.
The Ukrainian officials who leaked the so-called "black ledger" implicating
Manafort to the US media were even convicted of election
meddling by a court in Kiev, and the whole thing may have been solicited by a
Ukrainian-American DNC contractor The US media have been curiously uninterested in that
particular "collusion," needless to say.
Peel back all these layers of misinformation, like an onion, and what's left is an empty
talking point, endlessly repeated by Democrats like Adam Schiff (D-California), that
"Russia hacked our democracy."
The charge is vague enough that it can mean anything, and deliberately so. No evidence is
ever offered, because there isn't any – as the years of investigations and boxes full
of documents have clearly shown.
When Putin came to power 20 years ago, he was a pro-western leader who, in the aftermath of the 9/11
terrorist attacks on the US, sought to recreate a contemporary version of the wartime grand alliance.
Putin's vision of renewed great power collaboration has been undermined but not yet obliterated by a succession
of Russian-Western crises and disputes over Serbia, Iraq, Libya, Georgia, Ukraine and Syria, as well as NATO
expansionism, the Skripal poisoning affair and Donald Trump's election as American president.
Critics often accuse Putin of being opposed to a rules-based world order. Rather, it is that he rejects
the self-serving rules some western states are seeking to impose on Russia under the guise of improving global
security.
As recently as January this year, Putin called for a five-power summit of the UN Security Council's
permanent members - Russia, China, the US, France and Britain - to discuss common economic, security and
environmental issues.
Maybe we can hope the current emergency will re-energise efforts to achieve a multi-lateral approach to
global challenges without the necessity for war.
Geoffrey Roberts is Emeritus Professor of History at University College
Cork.
His latest book (with Martin Folly and Oleg Rzheshevsky) is Churchill and Stalin: Comrades-in-Arms during
the Second World War.
Flashback: Obama Ordered Comey To Conceal FBI Activities Right Before Trump Took
Office by Tyler
Durden Mon, 05/11/2020 - 14:05 With weeks to go before Donald Trump's inauguration, former
President Obama and VP Joe Biden were briefed by Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, FBI
Director James Comey, CIA Director John Brennan, and Director of National Intelligence James
Clapper on matters related to the Russia investigation.
The January 5, 2017 meeting - also attended by former National Security Adviser Susan Rice,
has taken on a new significance in light of revelations of blatant misconduct by the FBI - and
the fact that the agency decided not to brief then-candidate Trump that a "friendly foreign
government" (Australia) advised them that Russia had offered a member of his campaign 'dirt' on
Hillary Clinton.
The rumored 'dirt' was in fact told to Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos by Joseph
Mifsud - a shadowy Maltese professor and self-described member of the Clinton Foundation.
Papadopoulos then told Australian diplomat Alexander Downer, who told Aussie intelligence,
which tipped off the FBI, which then launched Operation Crossfire Hurricane. Papadopoulos was
then surveiled by FBI spy Stefan Halper and his honeypot 'assistant' who went by the name "Azra
Turk" - while in 2017, Papadopoulos claims a spy handed him $10,000 in what he says goes "all
the way back to the DOJ, under the previous FBI under Comey, and even the Mueller team."
Meanwhile, the Trump DOJ decided last week to drop the case against former Director of
National Security, Mike Flynn, after it was revealed that the FBI was trying to ensnare him in
a 'perjury trap,' and that Flynn was coerced into pleading guilty to lying about his very legal
communications with the Russian Ambassador.
And let's not forget that the FBI used the discredited Steele Dossier to spy on Trump
campaign associate Carter Page - and all of his contacts . Not only did the agency lie to the
FISA court to obtain the warrant, the DOJ knew the outlandish claims of Trump-Russia ties in
the Steele Dossier - funded by the Clinton Campaign - had no basis in reality.
And so, it's worth going back in time and reviewing that January 5, 2017 meeting which was
oddly documented by Susan Rice in an email to herself on January 20, 2017 - inauguration day,
which purports to summarize that meeting.
Rice later wrote an
email to herself on January 20, 2017 -- Trump's inauguration day and her last day in the
White House -- purporting to summarize that meeting. "On January 5, following a briefing by
IC leadership on Russian hacking during the 2016 Presidential election," Rice wrote,
"President Obama had a brief follow-on conversation with FBI Director Jim Comey and Deputy
Attorney General Sally Yates in the Oval Office. Vice President Biden and I were also
present."
According to Rice, "President Obama began the conversation by stressing his continued
commitment to ensuring that every aspect of this issue is handled by the Intelligence and law
enforcement communities 'by the book.'" But then she added a significant caveat to that
"commitment": "From a national security perspective, however, President Obama said he wants
to be sure that, as we engage with the incoming team, we are mindful to ascertain if there is
any reason that we cannot share information fully as it relates to Russia . "
The next portion of the email is classified, but Rice then noted that " the President
asked Comey to inform him if anything changes in the next few weeks that should affect how we
share classified information with the incoming team . Comey said he would."
At the time Obama suggested to Yates and Comey -- who were to keep their posts under the
Trump administration -- that the hold-overs consider withholding information from the
incoming administration, Obama knew that President Trump had named Flynn to serve as national
security advisor. Obama also knew there was an ongoing FBI investigation into Flynn premised
on Flynn being a Russian agent. -
The Federalist
And so, instead of briefing Trump on the Flynn investigation, Comey "privately briefed Trump
on the most salacious and absurd 'pee tape' allegation in the Christopher Steele dossier."
The fact that Comey did so leaked to the press, which used the briefing itself as
justification to report on, and publish the dossier .
What Comey didn't brief Trump on was the FBI's bullshit case against Michael Flynn -
accusing the incoming national security adviser of being a potential Russian agent. And
according to The Federalist , " Even after Obama had left office and Comey had a new
commander-in-chief to report to, Comey continued to follow Obama's prompt by withholding intel
from Trump. "
The Federalist also raises questions about former DNI James Clapper - specifically, whether
Clapper lied to Congress in July of 2017 when he said he never briefed Obama on the substance
of phone calls between Flynn and the Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak.
According to the report, accounts from Comey and McCabe directly contradict Clapper's
claim.
" Did you ever brief President Obama on the phone call, the Flynn-Kislyak phone calls? "
asked Rep. Francis Rooney (R0FL) during Congressional testimony, to which Clapper replied: "
No. "
Except, Comey told Congress that Clapper directly briefed Obama ahead of the January 5
meeting.
"[A]ll the Intelligence Community was trying to figure out, so what is going on here?" Comey
testified. "And so we were all tasked to find out, do you have anything [redacted] that might
reflect on this. That turned up these calls [between Flynn and Kislyak] at the end of December,
beginning of January," Comey testified. "And then I briefed it to the Director of National
Intelligence, and Director Clapper asked me for copies [redacted], which I shared with him ...
In the first week of January, he briefed the President and the Vice President and then
President Obama's senior team about what we found and what we had seen to help them understand
why the Russians were reacting the way they did. "
And now to see if anything comes of the ongoing Durham investigation, or if Attorney General
Bill Barr will simply tie a bow on the matter and call it a day.
R ep. Lee Zeldin demanded that Rep. Adam Schiff be stripped
of his post as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and resign because of his role in
the Russia investigation.
"Adam Schiff should not be the chair of the House Intelligence Committee. His gavel should
be removed. He should be censured. He should resign," Zeldin said Monday on Fox News. "There's
a lot that should happen, but Nancy Pelosi isn't going to punish Adam Schiff. In fact, that's
the reason why he has the gavel in the first place."
Republicans have been critical of Schiff in recent weeks after reports suggested that
Schiff was trying to block the release of some of the transcripts of the investigation's 53
witness interviews.
Some of the transcripts were eventually released and
undercut claims used by Democrats to push for impeachment.
"He's the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, which became the House Impeachment
Committee because of the way he writes these fairy-tale parodies," Zeldin said.
The Republican from New York suggested that Schiff and Democrats who impeached Trump and
tried to remove him from office were aided by friends in the media.
"It's actually one that the Democrats reward. It's one that the media rewards," Zeldin said.
"So, I'm not going to expect any repercussions even though he should resign today."
So the RussiaGate was giant gaslighting of the US electorate by Clinton gang and intelligence
agencies rogues.
Notable quotes:
"... For two and a half years the House Intelligence Committee knew CrowdStrike didn't have the goods on Russia. Now the public knows too. ..."
"... House Intelligence Committee documents released Thursday reveal that the committee was told two and half years ago that the FBI had no concrete evidence that Russia hacked Democratic National Committee computers to filch the DNC emails published by WikiLeaks ..."
"... Henry testifies that "it appears it [the theft of DNC emails] was set up to be exfiltrated, but we just don't have the evidence that says it actually left." ..."
"... This, in VIPS view, suggests that someone with access to DNC computers "set up" selected emails for transfer to an external storage device – a thumb drive, for example. The Internet is not needed for such a transfer. Use of the Internet would have been detected, enabling Henry to pinpoint any "exfiltration" over that network. ..."
"... Bill Binney, a former NSA technical director and a VIPs member, filed a sworn affidavit in the Roger Stone case. Binney said: "WikiLeaks did not receive stolen data from the Russian government. Intrinsic metadata in the publicly available files on WikiLeaks demonstrates that the files acquired by WikiLeaks were delivered in a medium such as a thumb drive." ..."
"... Both pillars of Russiagate–collusion and a Russian hack–have now fairly crumbled. ..."
"... Thursday's disclosure of testimony before the House Intelligence Committee shows Chairman Adam Schiff lied not only about Trump-Putin "collusion," [which the Mueller report failed to prove and whose allegations were based on DNC and Clinton-financed opposition research] but also about the even more basic issue of "Russian hacking" of the DNC. [See: "The Democratic Money Behind Russia-gate."] ..."
"... Fortunately, the cameras were still on when I approached Schiff during the Q&A: "You have every confidence but no evidence, is that right?" I asked him. His answer was a harbinger of things to come. This video clip may be worth the four minutes needed to watch it. ..."
"... Schiff and his partners in crime will be in for much tougher treatment if Trump allows Attorney General Barr and US Attorney John Durham to bring their investigation into the origins of Russia-gate to a timely conclusion. Barr's dismissal on Thursday of charges against Flynn, after released FBI documents revealed that a perjury trap was set for him to keep Russiagate going, may be a sign of things to come. ..."
For two and a half years the House Intelligence Committee knew CrowdStrike didn't have
the goods on Russia. Now the public knows too.
House Intelligence Committee
documents released Thursday reveal that the committee was told two and half years ago that
the FBI had no concrete evidence that Russia hacked Democratic National Committee computers
to filch the DNC emails published by WikiLeaks in July 2016.
The until-now-buried, closed-door testimony came on Dec. 5, 2017 from Shawn Henry, a
protégé of former FBI Director Robert Mueller (from 2001 to 2012), for whom
Henry served as head of the Bureau's cyber crime investigations unit.
Henry retired in 2012 and took a senior position at CrowdStrike, the cyber security firm
hired by the DNC and the Clinton campaign to investigate the cyber intrusions that occurred
before the 2016 presidential election.
The following excerpts from Henry's testimony
speak for themselves. The dialogue is not a paragon of clarity; but if read carefully, even
cyber neophytes can understand:
Ranking Member Mr. [Adam] Schiff: Do you know the date on which the Russians
exfiltrated the data from the DNC? when would that have been?
Mr. Henry: Counsel just reminded me that, as it relates to the DNC, we have
indicators that data was exfiltrated from the DNC, but we have no indicators that it was
exfiltrated (sic). There are times when we can see data exfiltrated, and we can say
conclusively. But in this case, it appears it was set up to be exfiltrated, but we just don't
have the evidence that says it actually left.
Mr. [Chris] Stewart of Utah: Okay. What about the emails that everyone is so, you
know, knowledgeable of? Were there also indicators that they were prepared but not evidence
that they actually were exfiltrated?
Mr. Henry: There's not evidence that they were actually exfiltrated. There's
circumstantial evidence but no evidence that they were actually exfiltrated.
Mr. Stewart: But you have a much lower degree of confidence that this data actually
left than you do, for example, that the Russians were the ones who breached the security?
Mr. Henry: There is circumstantial evidence that that data was exfiltrated off the
network.
Mr. Stewart: And circumstantial is less sure than the other evidence you've
indicated.
Mr. Henry: "We didn't have a sensor in place that saw data leave. We said that the data
left based on the circumstantial evidence. That was the conclusion that we made.
In answer to a follow-up query on this line of questioning, Henry delivered this classic:
"Sir, I was just trying to be factually accurate, that we didn't see the data leave, but we
believe it left, based on what we saw."
Inadvertently highlighting the tenuous underpinning for CrowdStrike's "belief" that Russia
hacked the DNC emails, Henry added: "There are other nation-states that collect this type of
intelligence for sure, but the – what we would call the tactics and techniques were
consistent with what we'd seen associated with the Russian state."
Interesting admission in Crowdstrike CEO Shaun Henry's testimony. Henry is asked when
"the Russians" exfiltrated the data from DNC.
Henry: "We did not have concrete evidence that the data was exfiltrated from the DNC,
but we have indicators that it was exfiltrated." ?? pic.twitter.com/TyePqd6b5P
Try as one may, some of the testimony remains opaque. Part of the problem is ambiguity in
the word "exfiltration."
The word can denote (1) transferring data from a computer via the Internet (hacking) or
(2) copying data physically to an external storage device with intent to leak it.
As the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity has been reporting for more than
three years, metadata and other hard forensic evidence indicate that the DNC emails were not
hacked – by Russia or anyone else.
Rather, they were copied onto an external storage device (probably a thumb drive) by
someone with access to DNC computers. Besides, any hack over the Internet would almost
certainly have been discovered by the dragnet coverage of the National Security Agency and
its cooperating foreign intelligence services.
Henry testifies that "it appears it [the theft of DNC emails] was set up to be
exfiltrated, but we just don't have the evidence that says it actually left."
This, in VIPS view, suggests that someone with access to DNC computers "set up"
selected emails for transfer to an external storage device – a thumb drive, for
example. The Internet is not needed for such a transfer. Use of the Internet would have been
detected, enabling Henry to pinpoint any "exfiltration" over that network.
Bill Binney, a former NSA technical director and a VIPs member, filed a sworn
affidavit in the Roger Stone case. Binney said: "WikiLeaks did not receive stolen data from
the Russian government. Intrinsic metadata in the publicly available files on WikiLeaks
demonstrates that the files acquired by WikiLeaks were delivered in a medium such as a thumb
drive."
The So-Called Intelligence Community Assessment
There is not much good to be said about the embarrassingly evidence-impoverished
Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) of Jan. 6, 2017 accusing Russia of hacking the
DNC.
But the ICA did include two passages that are highly relevant
and demonstrably true:
(1) In introductory remarks on "cyber incident attribution", the authors of the ICA made a
highly germane point: "The nature of cyberspace makes attribution of cyber operations
difficult but not impossible. Every kind of cyber operation – malicious or not –
leaves a trail."
(2) "When analysts use words such as 'we assess' or 'we judge,' [these] are not intended
to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact. Assessments are based on
collected information, which is often incomplete or fragmentary High confidence in a judgment
does not imply that the assessment is a fact or a certainty; such judgments might be wrong."
[And one might add that they commonly ARE wrong when analysts succumb to political pressure,
as was the case with the ICA.]
The intelligence-friendly corporate media, nonetheless, immediately awarded the status of
Holy Writ to the misnomered "Intelligence Community Assessment" (it was a rump effort
prepared by "handpicked analysts" from only CIA, FBI, and NSA), and chose to overlook the
banal, full-disclosure-type caveats embedded in the assessment itself.
Then National Intelligence Director James Clapper and the directors of the CIA, FBI, and
NSA briefed President Obama on the ICA on Jan. 5, 2017, the day before they gave it
personally to President-elect Donald Trump.
On Jan. 18, 2017, at his final press conference, Obama saw fit to use lawyerly language on
the key issue of how the DNC emails got to WikiLeaks , in an apparent effort to cover
his own derriere.
Obama: "The conclusions of the intelligence community with respect to the Russian hacking
were not conclusive as to whether WikiLeaks was witting or not in being the conduit through
which we heard about the DNC e-mails that were leaked."
So we ended up with "inconclusive conclusions" on that admittedly crucial point. What
Obama was saying is that U.S. intelligence did not know -- or professed not to know --
exactly how the alleged Russian transfer to WikiLeaks was supposedly made, whether
through a third party, or cutout, and he muddied the waters by first saying it was a hack,
and then a leak.
From the very outset, in the absence of any hard evidence, from NSA or from its foreign
partners, of an Internet hack of the DNC emails, the claim that "the Russians gave the DNC
emails to WikiLeaks " rested on thin gruel.
In November 2018 at a public forum, I asked Clapper to explain why President Obama still
had serious doubts in late Jan. 2017, less than two weeks after Clapper and the other
intelligence chiefs had thoroughly briefed the outgoing president about their
"high-confidence" findings.
Clapper
replied : "I cannot explain what he [Obama] said or why. But I can tell you we're, we're
pretty sure we know, or knew at the time, how WikiLeaks got those emails." Pretty
sure?
Preferring CrowdStrike; 'Splaining to Congress
CrowdStrike already had a tarnished reputation for credibility when the DNC and Clinton
campaign chose it to do work the FBI should have been doing to investigate how the DNC emails
got to WikiLeaks . It had asserted that Russians hacked into a Ukrainian artillery
app, resulting in heavy losses of howitzers in Ukraine's struggle with separatists supported
by Russia. A Voice of America
report explained why CrowdStrike was forced to retract that claim.
Why did FBI Director James Comey not simply insist on access to the DNC computers? Surely
he could have gotten the appropriate authorization. In early January 2017, reacting to media
reports that the FBI never asked for access, Comey told the Senate Intelligence Committee
there were "multiple requests at different levels" for access to the DNC servers.
"Ultimately what was agreed to is the private company would share with us what they saw,"
he said. Comey described
CrowdStrike as a "highly respected" cybersecurity company.
Asked by committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-NC) whether direct access to the servers and
devices would have helped the FBI in their investigation, Comey said it would have. "Our
forensics folks would always prefer to get access to the original device or server that's
involved, so it's the best evidence," he said.
Five months later, after Comey had been fired, Burr gave him a Mulligan in the form of a
few kid-gloves, clearly well-rehearsed, questions:
BURR: And the FBI, in this case, unlike other cases that you might investigate
– did you ever have access to the actual hardware that was hacked? Or did you have to
rely on a third party to provide you the data that they had collected?
COMEY: In the case of the DNC, we did not have access to the devices themselves. We
got relevant forensic information from a private party, a high-class entity, that had done
the work. But we didn't get direct access.
BURR: But no content?
COMEY: Correct.
BURR: Isn't content an important part of the forensics from a counterintelligence
standpoint?
COMEY: It is, although what was briefed to me by my folks – the people who
were my folks at the time is that they had gotten the information from the private party that
they needed to understand the intrusion by the spring of 2016.
In June last year it was
revealed that CrowdStrike never produced an un-redacted or final forensic report for the
government because the FBI never required it to, according to the Justice Department.
By any normal standard, former FBI Director Comey would now be in serious legal trouble,
as should Clapper, former CIA Director John Brennan, et al. Additional evidence of FBI
misconduct under Comey seems to surface every week – whether the abuses of FISA,
misconduct in the case against Gen. Michael Flynn, or misleading everyone about Russian
hacking of the DNC. If I were attorney general, I would declare Comey a flight risk and take
his passport. And I would do the same with Clapper and Brennan.
Schiff: Every Confidence, But No Evidence
Both pillars of Russiagate–collusion and a Russian hack–have now fairly
crumbled.
Thursday's disclosure of testimony before the House Intelligence Committee shows
Chairman Adam Schiff lied not only about Trump-Putin "collusion," [which the Mueller report
failed to prove and whose allegations were based on DNC and Clinton-financed opposition
research] but also about the even more basic issue of "Russian hacking" of the DNC. [See:
"The Democratic Money Behind Russia-gate."]
Five days after Trump took office, I had an opportunity to confront Schiff personally
about evidence that Russia "hacked" the DNC emails. He had repeatedly given that canard the
patina of flat fact during an address at the old Hillary Clinton/John Podesta "think tank,"
The Center for American Progress Action Fund.
Fortunately, the cameras were still on when I approached Schiff during the Q&A:
"You have every confidence but no evidence, is that right?" I asked him. His answer was a
harbinger of things to come. This video
clip may be worth the four minutes needed to watch it.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/SdOy-l13FEg
Schiff and his partners in crime will be in for much tougher treatment if Trump allows
Attorney General Barr and US Attorney John Durham to bring their investigation into the
origins of Russia-gate to a timely conclusion. Barr's dismissal on Thursday of charges
against Flynn, after released FBI documents revealed that a perjury trap was set for him to
keep Russiagate going, may be a sign of things to come.
Given the timid way Trump has typically bowed to intelligence and law enforcement
officials, including those who supposedly report to him, however, one might rather expect
that, after a lot of bluster, he will let the too-big-to-imprison ones off the hook. The
issues are now drawn; the evidence is copious; will the Deep State, nevertheless, be able to
prevail this time?
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of
the Saviour in inner-city Washington. His 27-year career as a CIA analyst includes serving as
Chief of the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch and preparer/briefer of the President's Daily
Brief. He is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). This
originally appeared at Consortium
News .
Under the subtitle The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare, Thomas Rid helps remind us how we reached this
morass, one with antecedents reaching back to Czarist Russia and the Bolshevik revolution. To be sure, the US can use all the help
it can get as it navigates the current election cycle and the lies, rumours and
uncertainty that
shroud the origins of the coronavirus pandemic.
Rid was born in West Germany amid the cold war. The Berlin Wall fell when he was a teenager. He is now a professor at Johns Hopkins.
So what are “active measures”? Previously, Rid
testified they were “semi-covert or covert intelligence operations to shape an adversary’s political decisions”.
“Almost always,” he explained, “active measures conceal or falsify the source.”
The special counsel’s report framed them more narrowly as “operations conducted by Russian security services aimed at influencing
the course of international affairs”. Add in technology and hacking, and an image of modern asymmetric warfare emerges.
Rid travels back to the early years of communist
Russia, recounting the efforts of the government to discredit the remnants of the ancien régime and squash attempts to restore
the monarchy. The Cheka, the secret police, hatched a plot that involved forged correspondence, a fictitious organization, a fake
counter-revolutionary council and a government-approved travelogue.
Words and narratives morphed into readily transportable munitions. The émigré community was declawed and the multi-pronged combination
deemed “wildly successful”. The project also “served as an inspiration for future active measures”. A template had been set.
Fast forward to the cold war and the aftermath of the US supreme court’s landmark school desegregation case. The tension between
reality and the text and aspirations of the Declaration of Independence was in the open again. Lunch-counter sit-ins and demands
for the vote filled newspapers and TV screens. The fault lines were plainly visible – and the Soviet Union pounced.
In 1960, the KGB embarked on a “series of race-baiting disinformation operations” that included mailing Ku Klux Klan leaflets
to African and Asian delegations to the United Nations on the eve of a debate on colonialism. At the same time, Russian “operators
posed as an African American organization agitating against the KKK”.
More than a half-century later, Russia ran an updated version of the play. Twitter came to host
the fake accounts of both “John Davis”, ostensibly a gun-toting Texas Christian and family man, and @BlacktoLive”, along with
hundreds of others.
The Internet Research Agency (IRA), a Russian troll factory, organized pro-Confederate flag rallies.
As detailed by Robert Mueller, the IRA also claimed that the civil war was not “about slavery” and instead was “all about money”,
a false trope that continues to gain resonance among Trump supporters and proponents of the “liberate the states” movement. According
to Brian
Westrate, treasurer of the Wisconsin Republican party, “the Confederacy was more about states’ rights than slavery.”
Depicting West Germany as Hitler’s heir was another aim. At the time, “some aging former Nazis still held positions of influence”,
Rid writes. In the late 1960s, “encouraging ‘anti-German tendencies in the West’ was very much a priority”.
In 1964, with Russian assistance, Czech intelligence mounted
Operation Neptun, sinking
Nazi wartime
documents to the bottom of the ominous sounding Black Lake, near the German border. The cache was then “discovered” – media pandemonium
ensued. Four years later the mastermind of the scheme, Ladislav Bittman, defected to the US.
Prior to 2016, Russia’s most notable active measure using the US as a foil was the lie that Aids was “made in the USA”. In retaliation
for US reports of Soviet use of chemical weapons in Afghanistan, the KGB unfurled Operation Denver, a multi-platformed campaign that
falsely claimed “Aids
was an American biological weapon developed at Fort Detrick, Maryland”. Central to the effort was the earlier publication of
an anonymous letter with a New York byline by an Indian newspaper. The forged missive claimed “Aids may invade India: mystery disease
caused by US lab experiments.”
To achieve their goals, the pro-NATO propagandists often exploit the so-called
'Russian threat' concept; however, this merely provides a cover for their aggressive
actions to silence and discredit opposing opinions and sources of information they deem to
be counter to their own interests.
The reason behind their activity is simple – they must justify their existence
in reports to their sponsors. They are constantly and fiercely working to engineer
'successful actions' regardless of their validity. In order to continue securing funding to
expose and defeat an imaginary enemy, they must create imaginary victories, irrespective of
reality.
Uh, the author obviously knows better so why promote this narrative? These operatives
are not going after "wrong", or "invalid" targets to justify their funding. They're
specifically hired to do what they're doing now.
This is nationwide gaslighting by Clinton gang of neoliberals who attempted coup d'état, and Adam Schiff was just one of the
key figures in this coupe d'état, king of modern Joe McCarthy able and willing to destroy a person using false evidence
What is interesting is that Tucker attacked Republicans for aiding and abetting the coup
d'état against Trump
"... "This is one particular episode, but we view it as part of a number of related acts ... and we're looking at the whole pattern of conduct," Barr added, saying that they're investigating actions taken before "and after ... the election." ..."
"... And according to Fox' s source, Durham is investigating a "pattern of conduct" which includes lying to the FISA court to obtain warrants to spy on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page . ..."
"... "Barr talks to Durham every day," a source recently told Fox News . " The president has been briefed that the case is being pursued, and it's serious. " ..."
"... " It was a very dangerous situation what they did ," Trump said during an interview with "Fox & Friends" Friday. " These are dirty politicians and dirty cops and some horrible people and hopefully they're going to pay a big price in the not too distant future. ..."
"... Durham's probe is expected to wrap up by the end of the summer. Right as Trump is expected to face off against Joe Biden - who was VP while most of this was going on . ..."
John Durham has supercharged his review into the origins of the
Russiagate hoax orchestrated by the Obama administration during and after the 2016 US election
- adding additional top prosecutors to explore different components of the original probe,
according to
Fox News .
Durham, the U.S. Attorney for Connecticut tasked with by Attorney General Bill Barr with
investigating the actions taken against the Trump team, has tapped Jeff Jensen - U.S. attorney
for the Eastern District of Missouri who had been investigating the Michael Flynn case. Also
added to the team is interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, Timothy Shea,
according to Fox 's sources.
" They farmed the investigation out because it is too much for Durham and he didn't want to
be distracted ," said one source, adding "He's going full throttle, and they're looking at
everything. "
Word of Durham's beefed-up team comes amid worsening tensions between the Trump
administration and congressional Democrats, who have been making the case that the Justice
Department's reviews have become politicized given the decision last week to drop the Flynn
case - a move which House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) called
"outrageous."
" The evidence against General Flynn is overwhelming ," said Nadler - who probably wasn't
referring to handwritten notes by one of the FBI agents who interviewed Flynn which
exposed their perjury trap . Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his perfectly
legal communications with a Russian ambassador - a plea he made while under severe financial
strain due to legal expenses, and to save his son from the FBI 'witch hunt.' Flynn would later
withdraw his plea as evidence mounted that he was set up.
The DOJ determined that the bureau's 2017 Flynn interview -- which formed the basis for
his guilty plea of lying to investigators -- was "conducted without any legitimate
investigative basis."
Breadcrumbs were being dropped in the days preceding the decision that his case could be
reconsidered. Documents unsealed the prior week by the Justice Department revealed agents
discussed their motivations for interviewing him in the Russia probe – questioning
whether they wanted to "get him to lie" so he'd be fired or prosecuted, or get him to admit
wrongdoing. Flynn allies howled over the revelations, arguing that he essentially had been
set up in a perjury trap. In that interview, Flynn did not admit wrongdoing and instead was
accused of lying about his contacts with the then-Russian ambassador – to which he
pleaded guilty. -
Fox News
Jensen, the U.S. attorney now working with Durham, was reportedly the one who recommended
dropping the Flynn case to Barr.
Barr speaks
When asked whether he thought the FBI conspired against Flynn, Barr told CBS News on
Thursday "I think, you know, that's a question that really has to wait [for] an analysis of all
the different episodes that occurred through the summer of 2016 and the first several months of
President Trump's administration," adding that Durham is "still looking at all of this."
"This is one particular episode, but we view it as part of a number of related acts ... and
we're looking at the whole pattern of conduct," Barr added, saying that they're investigating
actions taken before "and after ... the election."
And according to Fox' s source, Durham is investigating a "pattern of conduct" which
includes lying to the FISA court to obtain warrants to spy on Trump campaign adviser Carter
Page .
President Trump has long-referred to the investigation as a "witch hunt" - which Barr and
Durham are now untangling.
"Barr talks to Durham every day," a source recently told Fox News . " The president has been
briefed that the case is being pursued, and it's serious. "
President Trump on Friday offered a vague, but ominous, warning as the Durham probe
proceeds.
" It was a very dangerous situation what they did ," Trump said during an interview with
"Fox & Friends" Friday. " These are dirty politicians and dirty cops and some horrible
people and hopefully they're going to pay a big price in the not too distant future. "
Trump
was specifically reacting to newly released transcripts of interviews from the House
Intelligence Committee's Russia investigation
that revealed top Obama officials acknowledged they knew of no "empirical evidence" of a
conspiracy despite their concerns and suspicions. -
Fox News
Durham's probe is expected to wrap up by the end of the summer. Right as Trump is expected
to face off against Joe Biden - who was VP while most of this was going on .
"These agents specifically schemed and planned with each other how to not tip him off, that
he was even the person being investigated," Powell told Fox News' "Sunday Morning Futures,"
adding "So they kept him relaxed and unguarded deliberately as part of their effort to set him
up and frame him."
According to recently released testimony, President Obama revealed during an Oval Office
meeting weeks before the interview that he knew about Flynn's phone call with Russian
Ambassador Sergey Kislyak , apparently surprising then-Deputy Attorney General
Sally Yates .
After the meeting, Obama asked Yates and then-FBI Director James Comey to "stay behind."
Obama "specified that he did not want any additional information on the matter, but was
seeking information on whether the White House should be treating Flynn any differently,
given the information." -
Fox News
Despite the FBI's Washington DC field office recommending closing the case against Flynn -
finding "no derogatory information" against him - fired agent Peter Strzok
pushed to continue investigating, while former FBI Director
James Comey admitted in December 2019 that he "sent" Strzok and agent Joe Pientka to
interview Flynn without notifying the White House first .
... ... ...
After Strzok and Pientka interviewed Flynn,
handwritten notes unsealed last month reveal that at least one agent thought the goal was
to entrap Flynn .
"What is our goal? Truth/Admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him
fired?" reads one note.
... ... ...
"The whole thing was orchestrated and set up within the FBI, [former Director of National
Intelligence James] Clapper, [Former CIA Director John] Brennan, and in the Oval Office meeting
that day with President Obama," said Powell. When asked if she thinks Flynn was the victim of a
plot that extended to Obama, she said "Absolutely."
FDR warned his son before his death of his understanding of the British takeover of American
foreign policy, but still could not reverse this agenda. His son recounted his father's ominous
insight:
"You know, any number of times the men in the State Department have tried to conceal
messages to me, delay them, hold them up somehow, just because some of those career diplomats
over there aren't in accord with what they know I think. They should be working for Winston.
As a matter of fact, a lot of the time, they are [working for Churchill]. Stop to think of
'em: any number of 'em are convinced that the way for America to conduct its foreign policy
is to find out what the British are doing and then copy that!" I was told six years ago, to
clean out that State Department. It's like the British Foreign Office ."
Before being fired from Truman's cabinet for his advocacy of US-Russia friendship during the
Cold War, Wallace stated:
"American fascism" which has come to be known in recent years as the Deep State. "Fascism
in the postwar inevitably will push steadily for Anglo-Saxon imperialism and eventually for
war with Russia. Already American fascists are talking and writing about this conflict and
using it as an excuse for their internal hatreds and intolerances toward certain races,
creeds and classes."
In his 1946 Soviet Asia Mission , Wallace said " Before the blood of our boys is scarcely
dry on the field of battle, these enemies of peace try to lay the foundation for World War
III. These people must not succeed in their foul enterprise. We must offset their poison by
following the policies of Roosevelt in cultivating the friendship of Russia in peace as well
as in war."
This was a coup d'état and it has little to do with the protection of Oabama policies,
but a lot with protection of Clinton clan to which Obama belongs.
FBI investigators were corrupt and acted as a political police
Notable quotes:
"... Heavily redacted FBI documents that have been released indicate Flynn was one of several Trump campaign members who merited their own subfile investigation under the larger, now infamous " Crossfire Hurricane " debacle. Flynn even got his own cool codename -- "Crossfire Razor." (No, the FBI isn't usually that absurd. But absurdity colored that entire period of time.) ..."
"... FBI documents show that a Foreign Agent Registration Act ( FARA ) case was opened against Flynn. The stated reasons, in rank order, for initiating the investigation were that he was a member of the Trump campaign; he had "ties" to various Russian state-affiliated entities; he traveled to Russia; and he had a high-level top-secret clearance -- for which, by the way, he was polygraphed regularly to determine if he was a spy. ..."
"... None of the listed reasons is unusual activity for the kind of positions he held. Overall it is pretty thin justification for investigating an American citizen. Yet, most chillingly, the Crossfire Hurricane team stated it was investigating Flynn "specifically" because he was "an adviser to then Republican presidential candidate Donald J. Trump for foreign policy issues." ..."
"... Kevin R. Brock, former assistant director of intelligence for the FBI, was an FBI special agent for 24 years and principal deputy director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC). He is a founder and principal of NewStreet Global Solutions , which consults with private companies and public safety agencies on strategic mission technologies. ..."
investigation
of Michael Flynn , the
more it appears he was targeted precisely because, as the national security adviser to the
incoming Trump administration, he signaled that the new administration might undo Obama
administration policies -- which is kind of what the American people voted for in 2016.
Some will say that Gen. Flynn was investigated for legitimate criminal or national security
reasons. Yet, the FBI's ultimate interview of Flynn addressed none of the grounds that the FBI
used to open the original case against him. For those of us who have run FBI investigations,
that is more than odd.
Heavily redacted
FBI documents that have been released indicate Flynn was one of several Trump campaign
members who merited their own subfile investigation under the larger, now infamous "
Crossfire Hurricane " debacle. Flynn even got his own cool codename -- "Crossfire Razor."
(No, the FBI isn't usually that absurd. But absurdity colored that entire period of time.)
For the record, Flynn clearly exercised poor judgment as a result of being interviewed by
the FBI. The larger question is whether the team under then-Director James Comey had a legitimate basis to conduct the
interview at all.
FBI documents show that a Foreign Agent Registration Act ( FARA ) case was opened against Flynn. The stated
reasons, in rank order, for initiating the investigation were that he was a member of the Trump
campaign; he had "ties" to various Russian state-affiliated entities; he traveled to Russia;
and he had a high-level top-secret clearance -- for which, by the way, he was polygraphed
regularly to determine if he was a spy.
None of the listed reasons is unusual activity for the kind of positions he held. Overall it
is pretty thin justification for investigating an American citizen. Yet, most chillingly, the
Crossfire Hurricane team stated it was investigating Flynn "specifically" because he was "an
adviser to then Republican presidential candidate Donald J. Trump for foreign policy
issues."
Let me be clear: That is not a legitimate justification to investigate an American
citizen.
There is a theme that runs through the entire Crossfire Hurricane disaster, which has been
publicly articulated by Comey and his deputy director, Andrew McCabe : They saw themselves as stalwarts
in the breach defending America from a presidential candidate who they believed was an
agent
of Russia .
... ... ...
Kevin R. Brock, former assistant director of intelligence for the FBI, was an FBI
special agent for 24 years and principal deputy director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC). He is a
founder and principal of NewStreet Global
Solutions , which consults with private companies and public safety agencies on strategic
mission technologies.
All-in-all Obama was a CIA sponsored fraud: In 2008 I posted at another blog this: "Obama is a fraud and my view does not hang on
the controversial birther movement. " From whence he came? He made a speech at the Democratic
National Convention; 3 years in the Senate, then runs to occupy the White House. The media
puff pieces. "Hope and Change, Yes, We Can" Watch for the broken promises."
Notable quotes:
"... Now why is Obama against General Flynn? Hmmm. Good question. Did the FBI target Michael Flynn to protect Obama's policies, not national security? LINK ..."
"... Gen. Flynn: Obama Administration made a "wilful decision" to support Sunni extremists (a Jihadi proxy army) against Assad . This directly contradicts the phony narrative of Obama as peace-loving black man (as certified by his Nobel Prize!). ..."
"... In 2008 I posted at another blog this: "Obama is a fraud and my view does not hang on the controversial birther movement. " From whence he came? He made a speech at the Democratic National Convention; 3 years in the Senate, then runs to occupy the White House. The media puff pieces. "Hope and Change, Yes, We Can" Watch for the broken promises." ..."
Whether or not General Flynn is loathed or liked, there is Supreme Court decisions setting
precedence for dropping a case when found to be wrapped in prosecutorial misdeeds:
As for the first 'black' president out from the shadows;
Thanks for that additional link. And that's why Obama could not standby with Flynn in the
NSA role. Recall Hillary's on Trump- "if he is elected we'll hang" (paraphrased)
In 2008 I posted at another blog this: "Obama is a fraud and my view does not hang on
the controversial birther movement. " From whence he came? He made a speech at the Democratic
National Convention; 3 years in the Senate, then runs to occupy the White House. The media
puff pieces. "Hope and Change, Yes, We Can" Watch for the broken promises."
Fast Forward to 2011 he signs NDAA. "How Obama disappointed the world." Der Spiegel had
such an article 9 Aug.2011. But he was re-(S)-elected.
And you have to ask yourself one question. They all stuck with the same exact propaganda,
the same exact his information, that the Trump administration, that the Trump campaign
conspired with Russia, even though they had no evidence whatsoever, and they manufactured that
evidence against the president."
"And this is why all of them need to be investigated" explained Carter.
May 8, 2020 The latest outrage from the Trump White House is that the Justice
Department dropped its case against former national security adviser Mike Flynn for lying to
the FBI, even though Flynn pleaded guilty to the charges in 2017.
In its coverage of the exoneration, the New York Timesnotes that
Flynn had pleaded guilty to lying about a discussion with the Russian ambassador in December
2016 during the transition between the Obama and Trump administrations. Flynn asked Russia not
to overreact to sanctions
the Obama administration had placed on Russia for interfering in the election; Trump would
be in the White House in another three weeks.
Hmmm. The Times does not mention the other alleged lie– which involves
Israel. A week before the sanctions call, Flynn called the Russian ambassador, and
a "litany" of other countries , to try to get them to counter the U.S. decision to allow a
resolution highly critical of Israeli settlements to pass in the U.N. Security Council. That
resolution went through 14-0 with the U.S. abstaining– Obama's parting shot at
Netanyahu.
The FBI interviewed Flynn in January 2017, a month later, as part of the Russia probe. And
at that time, Flynn lied about his attempt to block the anti-settlements resolution (according
to his own guilty plea).
And former FBI director James Comey speculated that Flynn might have violated the Logan
Act– which criminalizes discussions by unauthorized American citizens with foreign
governments that are having a dispute with the United States.
The whole affair revealed Israel's unseemly influence over U.S. politics. Trump's transition
team "colluded
with Israel," as the Intercept put it– even as everyone was so obsessed with
Trump's alleged collusion with Russia.
The possible involvement or knowledge of Israel in the case will be one of many questions
that congressional investigators will pursue.
Well, I guess no one wanted that to happen. Certainly the Times doesn't seem to
want it. Two articles today about the Justice Department's collapse mention Russia repeatedly.
Says one, "The [FBI] questioning focused on his [Flynn's] conversations during the transition
after the 2016 election with the Russian ambassador about the Obama administration's imposition
of sanctions on Russia for its interference in the American election." That's just
half-true.
The Israel angle was also buried in the coverage on MSNBC today by Andrea Mitchell. Her
segment on the decision expressed a lot of outrage over Vladimir Putin and Russian influence;
but no mention of what else Flynn was up to.
Here's the original
Justice Department charge sheet to which Flynn pleaded guilty in December 2017. It tells
the story of the settlements resolution.
On or about December 21, 2016, Egypt submitted a resolution to the United Nations Security
Council on the issue of Israeli settlements ("resolution"). The United Nations Security
Council was scheduled to vote on the resolution the following day.
On or about December 22, 2016, a very senior member of the Presidential Transition Team
directed FLYNN to contact officials from foreign governments, including Russia, to learn
where each government stood on the resolution and to influence those governments to delay the
vote or defeat the resolution
On or about December 22, 2016, FLYNN contacted the Russian Ambassador about the pending
vote. FLYNN informed the Russian Ambassador about the incoming administration's opposition to
the resolution, and requested that Russia vote against or delay the resolution.
That senior member of the team was apparently Jared Kushner, a friend of Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and btw the president's son in law. Buzzfeed in
December 2017 :
In the run-up to the vote, both Flynn and [Jared] Kushner
called several officials of Security Council member states in order to block or delay the
resolution. Flynn personally called foreign ambassadors on the Security Council, including
representatives of Uruguay and Malaysia, according to a February
report by Foreign Policy.
Trump himself intervened in the matter, getting the Egyptian government to withrdraw its
anti-settlements resolution. The resolution was ultimately
proposed by New Zealand, Malaysia, Venezuela and Senegal.
Trump's biggest donor, Sheldon Adelson, is an ardent supporter of Israel and a friend to
Netanyahu. Adelson and other donors' influence over Middle East policy has been a running
theme of the Trump administration.
In dropping the case, even having obtained a guilty plea, the Justice Department now says
that the FBI had no business questioning Flynn in January 2017. The issues he was asked about
were not "material" to the ongoing investigation.
The Justice Department
filing of yesterday takes Flynn at his word in his original interview by the FBI: that the
many calls he made to foreign governments were just a "battle drill" by the Trump campaign
office in Washington to see how quickly it could get foreign leaders on the phone–Israel,
Senegal, Britain, France, Egypt, Russia -- and Flynn was just trying to suss out the Russians,
not pressure them to block the resolution. "Flynn stated he conducted these calls to attempt to
get a sense of where countries
stood on the UN vote "
But three years ago Comey and some congresspeople were concerned that the lobbying in
Israel's interests against the U.S. would violate the Logan Act. From a
hearing by the House Select Committee on Intelligence in March 2017:
Rep. Jackie Speier (of California):
"The fact that he actively was asking the Russians, through the Ambassador, to vote
against the United States at the U[N] . . with regard to Israeli settlements, have you
looked further into that issue? Because that clearly involves a private citizen conducting
foreign policy.
James Comey said it might be a Logan Act violation, but he wasn't sure.
That is one of the questions for the Department of Justice, is do you want further
investigation. That would be the Logan Act angle, not the false statements to
Federal agents angle I am not an expert, but I don't think it is something prosecutors have
used. But it is possible. That is one of the reasons we sent it over to them, saying look ,
here is this old statute. Do you want us to do further investigation?
Thursday brought other
bits of good news for the Trump administration. The House Intelligence Committee released its
Russiagate interviews, in which the former director of national intelligence, James Clapper,
admitted
he
"never saw any direct empirical evidence that the Trump campaign was
plotting/conspiring with the Russians to meddle with the election."
No wonder Intel chief Adam Schiff demanded absolute secrecy during his closed-door inquisition.
DOJ now says 2017 interview of Flynn was 'unjustified' DOJ now says it
had NO probable cause to spy on Carter Page in '17 Transcripts now show exculpatory evidence on
Papadopoulos/Page w/held frm FISAcourt Someone remind me y we needed $30M+ Mueller collusion
investigation?
Among Trump's close circle of colleagues brought down in the Democrats' big-game hunting
expedition, such as former campaign adviser Roger Stone and businessman Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn
was by far the most prized trophy. In hindsight, Trump may have believed that, by firing Flynn just
days into his job, the Russia-collusion story would just magically disappear as the Democrats gave up
the hunt. If that was the plan, it backfired in spectacular fashion: the Democrats sensed blood and
doubled down on their impeachment efforts.
What came next was a three-year political witch hunt against Trump that was never seriously
challenged by the predominantly left-leaning mainstream media – even after the US$30 million Mueller
probe finally put the conspiracy theory to bed. Today, although the media headlines conceal it, the
narrative is slowly beginning to swing in Trump's favor, as Flynn's release strongly suggests.
My Campaign for President was conclusively spied on. Nothing like this
has ever happened in American Politics. A really bad situation. TREASON means long jail
sentences, and this was TREASON!
As I
discussed
in a recent column, many Americans are blissfully ignorant of the fact that, back in May
2019, Trump
launched
an investigation into the origins of Russiagate. Tracking the scandal leads one into a
labyrinthine rabbit hole of intrigue, where it is believed that the Obama-led FBI misled the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act court to spy on the Trump campaign.
The potential list of
individuals who may eventually be forced to testify for their actions extends to the highest echelons
of the Democratic Party. And that would include even 'untouchables,' such as former president Barack
Obama and his secretary of state, Hillary Clinton. In fact, it is not beyond the realms of possibility
that has-been politicians like Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton are still being considered as
presidential material simply to escape prosecution.
For anyone who doubts the severity of the possible charges would do well to consider recent
comments by Attorney General William Barr. In an interview last month with Fox News, Barr said the FBI
counterintelligence against Trump served to
"sabotage the presidency without any basis."
That
is about as close to the legal definition of sedition as one can get, and I am sure there are many
powerful people who have arrived at the same conclusion.
Is a former president involved in treason of a sitting president? 🤯
It should be remembered that Donald Trump was voted into office largely because of his pledge
to
"drain the swamp."
In other words, the Manhattan real-estate developer turned
rabble-rousing populist had a very negative attitude about the career politicians who make up
Washington, DC long before he entered the Oval Office.
Now, after being hounded and harassed for
the entirety of his first term, while watching colleagues such as Michael Flynn, Roger Stone and Paul
Manafort have their lives and careers senselessly upended, Trump may be expected to take full
advantage of Flynn's exoneration to make those responsible pay a hefty legal penalty. If ever there
were a time for such a move, now would certainly be it.
Exactly what the charges against the architects of Russiagate will be, if there are any, will
probably be revealed in the next days and weeks, when William Barr and his assistant, John Durham, are
expected to make the findings of their year-long investigation public.
I am guessing we have not heard the end of the Russiagate drama yet with the freeing of Michael
Flynn, but, instead, are heading into Part II. Fasten your seatbelts – things could get interesting.
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
MSM now run under control of intelligence agencies and use State Department of Foreign Office talking points, much like in the USSR, where this role was played by communist Party
Notable quotes:
"... Part of the problem is that newspapers have morphed into viewspapers. The distinction between reporting and comment has been blurred. Back in the 70s, leading publications only had one comment piece and an editorial. Their pages were packed with news items, with stories reported factually and without a 'bent'. ..."
"... Today, comment has taken over, but while there's no shortage of 'opinion', most of it is saying very much the same thing. I think we first saw this phenomenon in the lead up to the Iraq War. I was one of the very few mainstream commentators who ridiculed the claim that Iraq had WMDs. It was obvious to me that if the leaders of the UK and US genuinely believed Saddam possessed these terrible weapons, they wouldn't be planning to do the one thing which would provoke the Iraqi leader into using them, i.e. invade his country. Yet the Great WMDs Hoax, which a child of five could see through, was promoted by nearly all 'serious' journalists. The most vociferous media cheerleaders for the invasion faced no professional blowback, on the contrary, their careers have flourished. ..."
Trust in the written press in Britain is the lowest in 33 European countries. That's hardly surprising seeing how so many journalists
have become mere stenographers for, or lackeys of, the Establishment power elites. Just when you think the reputation of the UK media
couldn't sink any lower, it just did. An annual survey undertaken by EurobarometerEU, across 33 countries, puts the UK at the bottom,
with a net trust of -60. Yes that's right, minus 60 . It's a fall of 24 points since last year. Just 15 percent of Brits trust
their print media. But it's not the only survey showing a similar trend.
The attached graphic about trust in the written press, published last week, has not been widely reported in Britain. This is
a huge annual survey by @EurobarometerEU
across 33 countries. It's the ninth year out of the past ten that the UK has been last. We have a problem.
pic.twitter.com/8eYoQR7XZw
Newspapers came in rock bottom (with a rating of -50) in a YouGov poll on Sky where the question was asked, "How much do you
trust the following on Coronavirus?" And in case you think it's only the Sun we're talking about here, another poll showed that
distrust of so-called 'upmarket' papers was running at 52 percent.
How did we get here? I've got a collection of old newspapers and magazines dating back several decades. Part of the problem
is that newspapers have morphed into viewspapers. The distinction between reporting and comment has been blurred. Back in the 70s,
leading publications only had one comment piece and an editorial. Their pages were packed with news items, with stories reported
factually and without a 'bent'.
Today, comment has taken over, but while there's no shortage of 'opinion', most of it is saying very much the same thing.
I think we first saw this phenomenon in the lead up to the Iraq War. I was one of the very few mainstream commentators who ridiculed
the claim that Iraq had WMDs. It was obvious to me that if the leaders of the UK and US genuinely believed Saddam possessed these
terrible weapons, they wouldn't be planning to do the one thing which would provoke the Iraqi leader into using them, i.e. invade
his country. Yet the Great WMDs Hoax, which a child of five could see through, was promoted by nearly all 'serious' journalists.
The most vociferous media cheerleaders for the invasion faced no professional blowback, on the contrary, their careers have flourished.
As bad as the Iraq War propaganda was, things have got even worse since then. Obnoxious gatekeepers have ensured that the parameters
of what can and can't be said in print have narrowed still further.
In the mid-Noughties, I was writing regularly in the UK mainstream print media. So too was John Pilger. Our articles were popular
with readers, but not with the gatekeepers. When I
wrote a balanced, alternative
view on Belarus for the New Statesman in 2011, I came under fierce gatekeeper attack.
I forgot that on Belarus and many other issues, only one point of view was allowed. Silly me.
Only one thing can save UK print press
Today, the lack of diversity of opinion is one of the reasons why newspaper sales have crashed – (sales have
slumped by two-thirds in the past 20 years), and conversely why 'alternative' sites, and media outlets where a wide range of
opinions ARE heard have done so well. Who wants to pay money for a paper when the political views published in it range from pro-war
centrist-left, to pro-war centrist-right?
If there was a single newspaper or magazine column which examined forensically whether Labour really did have an anti-Semitism
'crisis' under Jeremy Corbyn, I must have missed it.
And apart from Mary Dejevsky in the i paper, where was the journalism examining the many inconsistencies in the official narrative
of the Skripal case? Why has 'Private Eye', which bills itself as 'anti-Establishment', not covered the ongoing Philip Cross Wikipedia
editing scandal ?
I'm sure the old 'Eye' of Richard Ingrams and Bron Waugh would have if Wikipedia had been around then.
And what about the Covid-19 coverage? Has any journalist asked the very simple question: if the virus is as bad as the government
says it is, and a domestic lockdown is necessary to stop its spread, why have flights continued to come into the country (including
from virus hotspots) unchecked?
Don't get me wrong, there are still some good columnists out there, but sadly you can count them on one hand.
The only thing that can save UK print media from total collapse is if there is a large-scale clear-out of the faux-left/neocon-dominated
commentariat and their replacement by writers who actually address the issues that readers are interested in. Newspapers used to
be published for their readers, now it seems most are published for people who write for other newspapers – and to enable 'Inside
the Tenters' to congratulate each other for their 'brilliant' articles on Twitter.
The smug, mutual back-slapping nonsense, seen at its worst at journalist 'award' ceremonies, has gone on for too long. We need
more old-style chain-smoking journos, not frightened of telling truth to power – and less smoke and mirrors.
Trust in British print media can be restored, but only if we go back to the future.
If you like this story, share it with a friend!
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those
of RT.
Neil Clark is a journalist, writer, broadcaster and blogger. His award winning blog can be found at www.neilclark66.blogspot.com.
He tweets on politics and world affairs @NeilClark66 is a journalist,
writer, broadcaster and blogger. His award winning blog can be found at www.neilclark66.blogspot.com. He tweets on politics and world
affairs @NeilClark66 6 May, 2020 17:39
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FBI under Obama acted as Gestapo -- the political police. Obama looks now especially bad and probably should be
prosecuted for the attempt to stage coup d'état against legitimately elected president. His CIA connections need to investigated
and prosecuted too, and first of all Brennan.
Notable quotes:
"... Yates, who was briefly the acting attorney general during the early days of the Trump administration before getting fired, also laid out how in the ensuing days, Comey kept the FBI's actions cloaked in secrecy and repeatedly rebuffed her suggestions that the incoming Trump team be made aware of the Flynn recordings. ..."
"... "One thing people will see when they look at the documents is how Director Comey purposely went around the Justice Department and ignored Deputy Attorney General Yate s," Attorney General William Barr said during a Thursday interview with CBS News. "Deputy Attorney General Yates, I've disagreed with her about a couple of things, but, you know, here she upheld the fine tradition of the Department of Justice. She said that the new administration has to be treated just like the Obama administration, and they should go and tell the White House about their findings And, you know, Director Comey ran around that." ..."
"... Obama asked Yates and Comey to stay behind when the meeting concluded. ..."
"... Obama "started by saying that he had 'learned of the information about Flynn' and his conversation with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak," Yates said, according to the notes. "Obama specified he did not want any additional information on the matter but was seeking information on whether the White House should be treating Flynn any differently." washington examiner ..."
"... Obama did not want any additional information on the matter? Careful CYA. From the account of this meeting it is clear that Obama and Biden knew that Comey was intent on pursuing Flynn. If that is so, then subsequent events indicate that Obama did not act to stop Comey, and since Comey was hiding his effort against Flynn from main Justice, it must be that someone on high was encouraging him. Now, who would that be? pl ..."
"... All this was known in DC for the past few years. Everyone on the HSPCI knew what the closed door testimony was. Clapper was categorical that there was "no empirical evidence of collusion". The Crowdstrike CEO was categorical that he had no definitive evidence that the Russians exfiltrated data from the DNC servers. Yet Schiff, Clapper, Brennan and all the media hacks were on TV every night screaming Russia! Russia! and Collusion! Collusion! ..."
"... I'm revealing my age by using this expression from the Watergate era, but "what did Obama, Biden and Comey know, and when did they know it?" ..."
"... So Obama used Yates to go after Flynn. They have really worked a number on Flynn to discredit him, and it almost worked. Now it would appear their scheme is starting to unravel a bit. ..."
"... Is Obama being thrown under the bus here? Are Comey and Yates (or others) trying to cover their asses now that Flynn is free? Did Trump and his allies always know this and waited for the right moment to reveal it for better effect? The game is at hand. ..."
"... Brennan was encouraging Comey. I just learned something recently. Brennan spent time in Indonesia around the same time that Obama's mother lived there. It has been reported that Obama and Brennan had a fairly close relationship. I wonder how long they have known each other. ..."
"... I did see a clip of Matt Gaetz calling out Ryan and Trey Gowdy from preventing them from issuing subpoenas. Why do you think the Republican leadership in the House and Senate did not want to investigate? ..."
"
Former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates told special counsel Robert Mueller's team that
she first learned the FBI possessed and was investigating recordings of Flynn's late 2016
conversations with a Russian envoy following a Jan. 5, 2017, national security meeting at the
White House. It wasn't Comey who told her, but former President Barack Obama.
Yates, who was briefly the acting attorney general during the early days of the Trump
administration before getting fired, also laid out how in the ensuing days, Comey kept the
FBI's actions cloaked in secrecy and repeatedly rebuffed her suggestions that the incoming
Trump team be made aware of the Flynn recordings.
These revelations appear in declassified FBI interview notes of the Mueller team's
conversation with Yates in August 2017, highlighted by the Justice Department on Thursday as
U.S. Attorney for D.C. Timothy Shea moved to drop its
criminal charges against Flynn.
"One thing people will see when they look at the documents is how Director Comey purposely
went around the Justice Department and ignored Deputy Attorney General Yate s," Attorney
General William Barr
said during a Thursday
interview with CBS News. "Deputy Attorney General Yates, I've disagreed with her about a
couple of things, but, you know, here she upheld the fine tradition of the Department of
Justice. She said that the new administration has to be treated just like the Obama
administration, and they should go and tell the White House about their findings And, you know,
Director Comey ran around that."
Yates told Mueller's team she first learned of the Flynn recordings following a White House
meeting about the Intelligence Community Assessment attended by Yates, Comey, Vice
President Joe Biden , then-CIA Director John Brennan, then-Director of National
Intelligence James Clapper, then-national security adviser Susan Rice, and others. Obama asked
Yates and Comey to stay behind when the meeting concluded.
Obama "started by saying that he had 'learned of the information about Flynn' and his
conversation with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak," Yates said, according to the notes.
"Obama specified he did not want any additional information on the matter but was seeking
information on whether the White House should be treating Flynn any differently." washington
examiner
-------------
Obama did not want any additional information on the matter? Careful CYA. From the account
of this meeting it is clear that Obama and Biden knew that Comey was intent on pursuing Flynn.
If that is so, then subsequent events indicate that Obama did not act to stop Comey, and since
Comey was hiding his effort against Flynn from main Justice, it must be that someone on high
was encouraging him. Now, who would that be? pl
All this was known in DC for the past few years. Everyone on the HSPCI knew what the
closed door testimony was. Clapper was categorical that there was "no empirical evidence of
collusion". The Crowdstrike CEO was categorical that he had no definitive evidence that the
Russians exfiltrated data from the DNC servers. Yet Schiff, Clapper, Brennan and all the
media hacks were on TV every night screaming Russia! Russia! and Collusion! Collusion!
Devin Nunes was spot on and correct that there was an attempted coup. All the media and
even many Republicans called him a conspiracy theorist.
SST maintaining its glorious tradition was spot on in its analysis with the limited data
available that there was a coup and the traitors were not those in the Trump campaign but the
leadership in law enforcement and intelligence. A big shoutout to you, Larry and David
Habakkuk.
Trump himself was like deer caught in the headlights. Furiously tweeting but not doing
much of anything else while his own nominees at the DOJ and FBI were plotting and acting to
destroy his presidency. Devin Nunes imploring him to declassify and expose all the evidence
from the FISA applications, the 302s, the internal communications among the plotters
including the prolific FBI lovers. He still hasn't.
What happens next? Will the whole coup be exposed in its entirety? Will anyone be held to
account?
If Trump doesn't care enough even when his ass was being fried to disclose all the
evidence with the stroke of his pen and if all he cares is to tweet "witch-hunt" and "Drain
the Swamp", how realistic is it that any of the coup plotters will be tried for treason?
So Obama used Yates to go after Flynn. They have really worked a number on Flynn to discredit
him, and it almost worked. Now it would appear their scheme is starting to unravel a bit.
Is Obama being thrown under the bus here? Are Comey and Yates (or others) trying to cover
their asses now that Flynn is free? Did Trump and his allies always know this and waited for
the right moment to reveal it for better effect? The game is at hand.
Yahoo released a leaked call today of Obama criticizing Trump's response over coronavirus.
Here's the big headline Yahoo is running:
Exclusive: Obama says in private call that 'rule of law is at risk' in Michael Flynn
case
The Flynn case was invoked by Obama as a principal reason that his former administration
officials needed to make sure former Vice President Joe Biden wins the November election
against President Trump. "So I am hoping that all of you feel the same sense of urgency
that I do," he said. "Whenever I campaign, I've always said, 'Ah, this is the most
important election.' Especially obviously when I was on the ballot, that always feels like
it's the most important election. This one -- I'm not on the ballot -- but I am pretty darn
invested. We got to make this happen."
Obama misstated the charge to which Flynn had previously pleaded guilty. He was charged
with false statements to the FBI, not perjury.
Misstated seems like a stretch. The call sounds scripted and I suspect the leak was
deliberate.
Brennan was encouraging Comey.
I just learned something recently. Brennan spent time in Indonesia around the same time
that Obama's mother lived there. It has been reported that Obama and Brennan had a fairly close relationship. I wonder how
long they have known each other.
O'Biden's Dad just wheeled around the corner in a wood paneled station wagon and dressed
down the neighborhood kids who took O'Biden's ball. A humiliating experience for O'Biden who
sits in the passenger seat as a mere spectator.
The open question is: Just who were those contractors?
Surely that is known to some, and is significant to current politically-charged
inquiries.
Just why that information has not become public is a good question.
Can anyone provide a reliable source for that information?
It is unsurprising @realDonaldTrump enjoys wallowing in his fetid self-indulgence, but I
find it surreal that so many other government officials encourage his ignorance,
incompetence, & destructive behavior.
BTW, history will be written by the righteous, not by his lickspittle.
She served as Acting AG, accepting the post when Trump was inaugurated. What did she tell him
about his whole affair? Was the opposition to the EO 13769 just an excuse to have herself
fired so she would not have to either perjure herself or reveal the truth to Trump?
Jack,
"All this was known in DC for the past few years."
You left out that Paul Ryan was Speaker of the House because the Republicans were in the
majority then and the HPSCI under his term as speaker did not subpoena a very large group of
people, didn't ask relevant questions, didn't release information to the public and thus
ensuring the left took over the House after the 2016 elections.
I, too, coincidentally just concluded a close reading of the Conservative Tree House post
that Mr. Harbaugh just recommended. It is, indeed, well worth such a close reading. There
have been various puzzling things along the way these last few years for which this post
provides explanations. Of particular utility, is its inclusion of a timeline of the arc of
the episodes of illegal government surveillance that began (?) with the IRS spying of 2012,
and how - and why - it evolved from that episode into the massive abuses of the FISA process
of which we are becoming increasingly aware as revelations are forthcoming.
CTH's work is superb, but I do want to say that I am also supremely grateful for all of
the good work and analysis from Larry Johnson, and other contributors, as well as for the
trenchant comments of Col. Lang. Multivalent sources of information, analysis, and comment
provide one with the parallax requisite to understanding this web of perfidy. My gratitude
also is owing to all of you Members of the Committee of Correspondence, each of whom brings
personal observations and insights to bear, always much to my benefit.
I did see a clip of Matt Gaetz calling out Ryan and Trey Gowdy from preventing them from
issuing subpoenas. Why do you think the Republican leadership in the House and Senate did not
want to investigate?
["One thing people will see when they look at the documents is how Director Comey purposely
went around the Justice Department and ignored Deputy Attorney General Yates," Attorney
General William Barr said during a Thursday interview with CBS News. "Deputy Attorney General
Yates, I've disagreed with her about a couple of things, but, you know, here she upheld the
fine tradition of the Department of Justice. She said that the new administration has to be
treated just like the Obama administration, and they should go and tell the White House about
their findings And, you know, Director Comey ran around that."]
++++++++++++
This is fascinating because: this, what Barr is discussing, on national TV, . . . this
particular dimension, this Yates/Comey playing hide the bacon has nothing at all to do with
actual Brady material in the Lt. Gen. Flynn case.
Barr is referring to the Special Counsel Mueller Office's interview with Yates on Aug. 15,
2017, entered into the system three weeks later. Her interview occurred more than two months
prior to Flynn's coerced guilty plea.
This SCO document was released to the court May 7 as exhibit 4 attached to the DOJ motion
to end the prosecution of Flynn. It was produced in line with request by defense for Brady
material.
What Barr forgets to say is: This SCO interview of Yates shows that Comey and Yates talked
on the phone -- prior to -- the notorious Jan. 24, 2017 FBI interview of Flynn.
"Comey . . . informed her that two agents were on their way to interview Flynn at the
White House," the SCO said, according to the new court filing.
Yates took no action, -- she did nothing to order Comey to abort this soon-to-happen FBI
interview of Flynn, this SCO interview of her shows.
She was Comey's boss, the Acting Attorney General, at the time.
It shows that she was upset precisely because she wanted the FBI to coordinate with the
DOJ -- on getting Flynn screwed -- even suggesting, she told the SCO, that consideration that
Flynn be recorded, instead of memorialized using standard 302 form –
in-writing-only.
Yates wanted Flynn fired, she told the SCO.
Yates apparently was unable on her own to figure out, as the AG, the FBI and DOJ -- none
of them had any predicate, no "materiality," nothing "tethered" to any crime, as there was no
crime. And if she did not know these basic facts, had no awareness of them, then: why was she
the AG in the first place?
And what did Yates glean, right after this Jan. 24 interview of Flynn?
"Yates received a brief readout of the interview the night it happened, and a longer
readout the following day," which begs the question of why the original 302 of this was never
produced by the DOJ, to the defense; and also, why Covington law firm never asked to see this
before allowing Flynn to make his plea.
"Yates did not speak to the interviewing agents herself, but understood from others that
their assessment was that Flynn showed no 'tells' of lying," the SCO report says.
Based on her personal preference, rather than DOJ norms, she went to the White House, and
her expectation was they would fire Flynn. I fail to see how this nonsense by Yates seem to
escape Barr's notice. Or, is something else also going on?
She personally went to the White House, and her smear campaign against Flynn began, went
on and on and on, even after she was fired after being Acting AG for just ten days.
In her brief stint as Acting AG: Yates refused to tell the White House Counsel if Flynn
was being investigated, when the WHC asked her, directly, about this, according to what she
told the SCO. Can't blame this fact on the unctuous Comey.
She did tell the SCO that she wanted the WHC to know Flynn had been interviewed by the FBI
– and that she had concerns about Flynn, and she said those concerns related to the
Logan Act. Yates told SCO her concerns were because of the Logan Act, and that she expressed
this to the White House.
The Washington Examiner reporting that "It wasn't Comey who told her, but former President
Barack Obama" -- about the Flynn-Kislyak phone call --- this is interesting, very
interesting, if true, assuming Yates was telling the SCO the truth. This is what she claims
in her August 2017 interview with SCO.
But this bit of information is hardly Brady material [how is whether Obama or Comey told
her materially germane to the Flynn case, viz. Brady material?].
The question the SCO should have been concerned about is: who actually leaked the
transcript of the Flynn-Kislyak telephone call to the media?
Is this a serious crime? Or is this OK?
We still do not know this answer, and AG Barr has not told us. Nor has his boss,
Trump.
It is interesting that Barr chose to highlight that Comey went around Yates' back in Comey
ordering FBI to interview Flynn, but not that Yates knew of the Flynn interview before it
went down, and sat on her arse about it.
In fairness to Comey, they were, as the FB of Investigations, conducting the
investigation, which is their job, however rogue this FBI's I actually was, targeting
Flynn.
The Flynn-Kislyak telephone call, occurring late December of 2016, was reported by the
Washington Post on Jan. 12, 2017, eight days before Trump was sworn in.
And who leaked this, has anyone been prosecuted, will anyone be?
Obama still president, Loretta Lynch still AG, Yates still Deputy AG, Comey FBI director,
McCabe Deputy FBI director, etc.
Starting Jan. 20 and for ten days, Yates was the AG. She appeared bent on destroying
Flynn, and did nothing that I know of to prosecute who leaked the Flynn-Kislyak telephone
call to WAPO. Did someone on high perhaps ask her not to?
Nor was Comey and McCabe investigating this as best I can tell. Yet this was an actual,
clear cut crime we all saw, plain as day. Or maybe this is OK? Was someone on high asking
them not to?
I watched Barr say, during his interview with CBS news, [following the May 7 release of
documents to the court]: "One thing people will see when they look at the documents is how
Director Comey purposely went around the Justice Department and ignored Deputy Attorney
General Yates," Barr told Catherine Herridge.
And my first thought was: why is Barr doing an apparent CYA for Yates?
What office might she want to be running for in the future; is she a cooperating witness
in the wider Durham probe, why is Yates being portrayed as someone other than what she was: A
leader in the effort to destroy Michael Flynn.
She was the AG, and she failed to hold Comey accountable at the time; this is a fact,
apparently, that reflects poorly on her.
She told the White House -- as best she could -- that Flynn was a piece of dung, and told
the SCO, in their interview of her, that she expected the White House to fire Flynn. This
reflects poorly on her.
And threatened Logan Act prosecution of Flynn to the White house. This reflects poorly on
her.
She smeared Flynn in a CNN interview on May 16, the day before Mueller was appointed. This
reflects poorly on her.
Well, who leaked the Flynn-Kislyak telephone call, and did Yates act on that?
Folks that "should have known better" -- far and wide, smeared Flynn, justified the
lawlessness against him; one of many examples, titled: "Leaking Flynn's name to the press was
illegal, but utterly justified" published by TheHill.com.
She wasn't the only one, but Yates was smack dab in the middle of enabling and
perpetuating a long-running smear campaign against Flynn, to destroy him by any means
necessary. This reflects poorly on her.
Why is Barr carrying water for her.
As for Obama, he did nothing to stop Comey in 2016 when Comey announced he was exonerating
Clinton. Nor did AG Lynch, even though that is not the function of the FBI -- an act of
insubordination, by the way, for which Rosenstein officially fired him in May 2017, which
set, somehow, in motion the Mueller SC appointment by Rosenstein.
If Comey is such a rogue, and Barr is now claiming Yates tried to do the right thing, in
spite of Comey, then why didn't Yates fire Comey Jan. 24 right on the spot? And end the
fiasco right then and there?
In her May 16, 2017 CNN interview she only has kind words to say about him.
AS for who on high was encouraging Comey's extra legal free-lancing in the Clinton and
Flynn matters is a pertinent question.
Who were the enablers, in other words?
Barr appears to imply Comey did it all on his own, which is not entirely accurate. Perhaps
this also implies that Durham will prosecute Comey? I don't know if anyone will be prosecuted
at all. Time will tell.
It is clear Comey's enablers would, by rank, have been, viz. the Clinton matter: Obama and
Lynch.
In the Flynn matter: Trump and Yates.
Simple logic dictates that: if Main Justice was "not in the loop" then, for Clinton
matter, this means Obama was enabling Comey to exonerate her; and also dictate that, for
Flynn, that Trump was the one "on high" enabling Comey.
If there are others on high, they were not in the chain of command as I understand the
current US Government structure.
-30-
You seem to think Trump was informed of all the relevant information about the FBI's
conduct during his first ten days in office. Because Barr, being appointed AG two years after
these events, has yet to indict anyone in the case, Trump was actually enabling Yates in
destroying Flynn? Neither appear to be logical conclusions to me.
So on a December 29, 2016 The Obama administration placed sanctions on Russia that evolved to
Flynn, at the instruction of the incoming Trump administration, contacting the Russian
ambassador requesting that they not retaliate or heighten the situation.
On January 5th Ms. Yates learned from Obama of the Flynn intervention.
Rather than contact Trump directly Obama went along with the Comey Logan Act thoughts.
The decision to enact sanctions obviously involved State, CIA, DNI and FBI but why not
Justice or did it. But why was the incoming Trump administration not consulted.
There was only one Machiavellian thinker in that group and it wasn't the idiot who got his
panties all twisted up.
Russiagate has been an obvious coup attempt from the beginning, and several attempts have
followed...
__________________________________________________
That is not at all obvious.
Russiagate was obviously designed to look like a coup attempt, but you have to be extremely
gullible to believe any of it is real.
The recent Flynn bruhaha is a perfect example of the phoniness surrounding Russiagate.
The FBI investigators that interviewed Flynn believed he had not been deceptive and any
fool who was paying attention at the time believed he was not guilty because 2 weeks before
that FBI interview the news media had reported that the phone call with Kislyak had been
recorded by the FBI and that there was nothing improper or illegal that would motivate Flynn
to lie about his talk with Kislyak. The story that Flynn lied to the FBI is unbelievable on
its face.
Don't blame the FBI for creating this fake story. Trump is the one and only one that
created the fake Flynn-lied-to-the-FBI story, Before Trump created the phony story that Flynn
had lied to the FBI nobody else had at that time believed Flynn lied to the FBI.
But once Trump had created the phony story that Flynn lied to the FBI then all the gullible
morons started to believe the phony story. And even Flynn himself goes along with Trump's
phony story because he is a good soldier that follows command.
Before Comey's testimony to Congress that suggested that Trump was twisting Comey's arm to
let Flynn go for lying to the FBI no one had ever said that Flynn lied to the FBI. That story
was created by Trump and reported by Comey.
And then Mueller and Flynn and Comey all helped Trump foist that phony story that Flynn lied
to the FBI onto the public.
The implication of Comey's testimony to Congress was that in order to get Flynn off a
charge of Lying to the FBI Trump first tried to cajole Comey to go easy on Flynn and when
that did not work Trump fired Comey.
The problem with that whole BS story is that the crux of it (that Flynn lied to the FBI)
never happened. It was entirely invented by Trump to make it look like Trump was engaged in
mortal combat with the deep state. But it was all staged and fake (i.e. Kayfabe)
_______________________________________________
Well duh....
Russiagate was designed to fall apart.
It was obvious all along that all the stories that came out in the Mueller Report were
badly written sit-com material - the script for a comic soap opera. And they were all
scripted to fall apart when examined closely.
What I could never figure out was what this guy Mueller was going to say when he was
dragged in front of Congress and required to answer tough questions about all the garbage he
had produced. I thought for sure that for Mueller the jig would be up there was no way the
farce would not be revealed for all to see.
And then it happened. Mueller testified and it turned out Mueller could not remember any
of it.
Senator: Did you say XYZ?
Mueller: Is that in the report??
Senator: yes it is.
Mueller: Then it is true.
Making Mueller Senile and unable to remember anything was brilliant - pure genius. The
rest of the Russiagate script was mediocre at best.
It was a transparently false narrative designed, by the most incompetent election
campaign team in history ...
Occam's razor says Hillary threw the election. No seasoned politician would make the
mistakes that she made - especially when they yearn to make history (as the first
woman president) and the entire establishment (left and right) is counting on them to
win.
Believing what is evidently incredible has long been a test of loyalty
...
And you prove your loyalty with the belief that Hillary lost because of an
"incompetent election campaign".
"... While this elite Pulitzer jury praised the New York Times for "at great risk, exposing the predations of Vladimir Putin's regime," it is not exactly clear what that "risk" is supposed to entail – because the major US newspaper appears to have stolen at least part of its reporting from Russian journalists . ..."
"... On May 4, journalist Roman Badanin published a Facebook post accusing the Times of ripping off a story he had released months before without credit. Badanin is the founder and editor-in-chief of the liberal anti-Putin news website Proekt , known as The Project in English. ..."
"... This report is eerily similar to a report published by the New York Times eight months later, in November , titled " How Russia Meddles Abroad for Profit : Cash, Trolls and a Cult Leader." This story, which was filed in Madagascar, does not once link to or credit Proekt's original reporting . ..."
"... Another anti-Putin Russian news website, Meduza, published an article on May 7 drawing attention to these allegations, titled " 'Fuck the Pulitzer -- I just want a hyperlink' : Russian journalists say 'The New York Times' should have acknowledged their investigative work in the newspaper's award-winning reports about the Putin regime's 'predations.'" ..."
"... Meduza interviewed Badanin, who said the New York Times "report about Madagascar from November 2019 repeats all the main and even secondary conclusions from our reporting about Madagascar and Africa generally between March and April last year." ..."
"... Badanin was also given a Stanford John S. Knight international fellowship in journalism. Stanford University has established itself as an outpost for Russian pro-Western liberals, and its journalist fellowship program provides institutional support for dissidents in countries targeted by Washington for regime change. ..."
"... The Times even featured Badanin prominently in the header image of the story -- just two years before the same newspaper would go on to rip off his reporting. ..."
The New York Times has been accused for a second time of stealing major scoops from Russian
journalists . One of those stories won the Times a Pulitzer Prize this May.
The journalists who have accused the Times of taking their work without credit also happen
to be the same liberal media crusaders against Vladimir Putin that Western correspondents at
the Times and other mainstream outlets have cast as persecuted heroes. The Pulitzer Prize Board is comprised of a who's who
of media aristocrats and Ivy League bigwigs. Given the elite backgrounds of the judges, it is
hardly a surprise that they rewarded reporting reinforcing the narrative of the new US Cold War
against official enemies like Russia and China .
Stephen Kinzer, a former New York Times correspondent who has since become a critic of US
foreign policy, noted that the three finalists in the Pulitzer Prize in international reporting
"were one story about how evil Russia is and two about how evil China is. These choices
encourage reporters to write stories that reinforce rather than question Washington's
foreign-policy narrative."
The finalists nominated in this category were Reuters and the New York Times for two
separate sets of stories.
The US newspaper of record ended up winning the 2020 award in international
reporting , for what the Pulitzer jury described as "a set of enthralling stories, reported
at great risk, exposing the predations of Vladimir Putin's regime."
The 3 finalists in the #PulitzerPrize2020
"international reporting" category were one story about how evil #Russia is and two
about how evil #China is. These
choices encourage reporters to write stories that reinforce rather than question Washington's
foreign-policy narative.
The Times was nominated again as a finalist for what the jury called its "gripping accounts
that disclosed China's top-secret efforts to repress millions of Muslims through a system of
labor camps, brutality and surveillance."
The staff of Reuters was selected as the third finalist for its reporting in support of
anti-China
protesters in Hong
Kong . (The photography staff of Reuters ended up winning the Pulitzer Prize in breaking
news photography for the same coverage.)
Among the five members of the Pulitzer jury
who selected these finalists was Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of the neoliberal
magazine The Atlantic and a former volunteer in the Israeli army who worked as a guard at a prison camp
where Palestinians who rose up in the First Intifada were interned.
Joining Goldberg on the jury was Susan Chira, a former New York Times editor.
While this elite Pulitzer jury praised the New York Times for "at great risk, exposing the
predations of Vladimir Putin's regime," it is not exactly clear what that "risk" is supposed to
entail – because the major US newspaper appears to have stolen at least part of its
reporting from Russian journalists .
On May 4, journalist Roman Badanin published a Facebook
post accusing the Times of ripping off a story he had released months before without
credit. Badanin is the founder and editor-in-chief of the liberal anti-Putin news website
Proekt , known as The Project in
English.
"I have no illusions about the real role of Russian journalism in the world, but I have to
note: the two The New York Times's investigations, for which this honored newspaper won the
Pulitzer prize yesterday, repeat the findings of The Project's articles published a few months
before," Badanin wrote on Facebook.
"I would also like to note that the winners did not put a single link to the English version
of our article, even when, for example, 8 months after The Project, they told about the
activities of Eugene Prigozhin's emissaries in Madagascar," he added.
Badanin linked to an article he published, both in Russian and English, back in March 2019
titled " Master and Chef : How
Evgeny Prigozhin led the Russian offensive in Africa." The story details how the businessman
Evgenу Prigozhin, who is sanctioned by the US government, has been promoting business
opportunities in Africa. The piece focuses specifically on Madagascar, where Russia also has a
military agreement.
This report is eerily similar to a report published by the New York Times eight months
later, in November , titled " How Russia
Meddles Abroad for Profit : Cash, Trolls and a Cult Leader." This story, which was filed in
Madagascar, does not once link to or credit Proekt's original reporting .
Another anti-Putin Russian news website, Meduza, published an article on May 7 drawing
attention to these allegations, titled " 'Fuck the
Pulitzer -- I just want a hyperlink' : Russian journalists say 'The New York Times' should
have acknowledged their investigative work in the newspaper's award-winning reports about the
Putin regime's 'predations.'"
Meduza interviewed Badanin, who said the New York Times "report about Madagascar from
November 2019 repeats all the main and even secondary conclusions from our reporting about
Madagascar and Africa generally between March and April last year."
While Badanin did not outright accuse the Times of plagiarism, he was frustrated that
"nowhere in the story did they acknowledge that we'd already reported on this topic," and said
it was either a "professional issue" or an "ethical problem."
A New York Times spokesperson denied that Proekt's reporting was used in any way. And the
Times reporter who authored this report from Madagascar, Michael Schwirtz , responded
dismissively to the accusations in a Twitter thread full of sarcastic quips.
Another
anti-Putin Russian activist accuses the New York Times of lifting his reporting
Michael Schwirtz authored another New York Times article in December that was cited by the
Pulitzer jury for the 2020 prize. This piece, "How a Poisoning
in Bulgaria Exposed Russian Assassins in Europe," is also suspiciously similar to reporting
published before by yet another anti-Putin website, called The Insider .
The Insider is edited by the Western-backed, diehard anti-Putin activist Roman Dobrokhotov.
In response to Schwirtz's Twitter thread, Dobrohotov angrily asked why The Insider's reports
were not credited as well. Schwirtz denied having used information from the previous
stories.
Schwirtz's Twitter thread tagged four Russian accounts: Proekt, The Insider, Dobrokhotov,
and Yasha Levine, the last of whom is an occasional contributor to The Grayzone and the author of " Surveillance Valley ."
Time to learn the hard truth: The New York Times -- like the Empire it represents --
doesn't give a fuck about you. It'll take whatever it wants, give nothing in return, and
suffer no consequences. And who'll believe you Russians anyway? https://t.co/V1YtZ7K6OB
"Time to learn the hard truth: The New York Times -- like the Empire it represents --
doesn't give a fuck about you. It'll take whatever it wants, give nothing in return, and
suffer no consequences. And who'll believe you Russians anyway?"
"The reverence with which liberal Russian journalists have treated the New York Times has
always been baffling to me," Levine continued. "But that's what you get when you're a colonial
subject like Russia. You fetishize the master. That reverence is starting to wear off, but it's
still there."
New York Times was also accused of stealing Russian journalists' reporting
back in 2017
This is not even the first time that the US newspaper of record has been accused of stealing
reporting from Russian journalists.
Back in 2017, the New York Times won the Pulitzer Prize in international reporting for its
reports on "Vladimir Putin's efforts to project Russia's power abroad."
At the time, journalists from the anti-Putin website Meduza accused the Times of ripping off
their reporting. The website Global Voices highlighted the controversy, in an article titled
"Russian Journalists Say One of
NYT's Pulitzer-Winning Stories Was Stolen ."
Meduza reported Daniil Turovsky accused New York Times Moscow correspondent Andrew E. Kramer
of lifting his reporting. Kramer actually took the time to respond in a Facebook comment,
acknowledging that his report was based on the Russian journalist's.
"Daniil, I spoke with you while preparing this article and explained that I intended to
follow in the footsteps of your fine work, that I would credit Meduza, as I did, and thanked
you for your help," Kramer said.
This did not satisfy Meduza, which also reminded readers in its latest 2020 article that the
Times had ripped off its 2017 reporting.
The NYT times has been honored with a Pulitzer Prize for "exposing the predations of
Vladimir Putin's regime" in 2019, but several top investigative journalists in Russia say the
U.S. newspaper ignored their groundbreaking work in this area -- again. https://t.co/R4WZdqHDp4
The Grayzone has also experienced this kind of shameless journalistic theft. In March 2019,
the New York Times released a report acknowledging that the so-called "humanitarian aid" convoy
that the US government tried to ram across the Venezuelan border in a February coup attempt had
been set on
fire not by government forces, but rather Washington-backed right-wing opposition
hooligans.
At the time of this February 23 putsch attempt, the Times had initially joined US
politicians like Senator Marco Rubio and the majority of the corporate media in blaming
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. But The Grayzone editor Max Blumenthal, who was
reporting in Venezuela, published a report
showing that all of the available evidence pointed to the opposition being responsible.
When the Times finally admitted this fact weeks later, it made no mention whatsoever of
Blumenthal's reporting.
Glenn Greenwald was the only high-profile journalist to credit Blumenthal and The
Grayzone.
New York Times had ironically heroized these Russian journalists before
stealing their reporting
Further compounding this staggering hypocrisy is the fact that the New York Times has in
fact published numerous articles lionizing these anti-Putin Russian journalists, while
simultaneously ripping off their work.
Proekt founder and editor Roman Badanin is not some kind of crypto pro-Kremlin activist
– far from it. He has spent years working within mainstream outlets, and was previously
the editor-in-chief of the decidedly anti-Putin Russian edition of Forbes magazine.
Badanin does friendly interviews with US-based neoconservative think tanks like the
Free Russia Foundation , a
right-wing anti-Putin lobbying group that appointed regime-changer Michael Weiss as its
director for special investigations.
In an
interview conducted by Valeria Jegisman , a neoconservative
anti-Russian activist who worked as a spokesperson for the government of Estonia and now works
at the US government's propaganda arm Voice of America, group accused the Kremlin of spreading
false information, claiming "Russia will continue its disinformation tactics."
Badanin also called for "the West" to "support independent media projects with non-profit
funding," stating clearly: "I think that what the West can do is to continue to support
independent media in the most transparent and clear way, and to stop being afraid of the
million tricks that the Russian authorities come up with to force the West to abandon these
investments."
The Russian journalist's pro-Western perspective has been rewarded. Badanin was honored by
the European Press Prize , a
program backed by Western governments and the top corporate media outlets in Europe,
particularly The Guardian and Reuters.
Badanin was also given a Stanford John S. Knight international fellowship in journalism.
Stanford University has established itself as an outpost for Russian pro-Western liberals, and
its journalist fellowship program provides institutional support for dissidents in countries
targeted by Washington for regime change.
Badanin's extensive links to Western regime-change institutions should not come as a
surprise to the New York Times; it has in fact honored him in numerous articles.
In 2017, the Times published an entire article framed around Badanin. Reporter Jim Rutenberg
explained, "I wanted to better understand President Trump's America So I
went to Russia ."
In Moscow, Rutenberg met with Badanin at the headquarters of the anti-Putin station TV Rain,
which he described as a "warehouse complex here, populated by young people with beards,
tattoos, piercings and colored hair. (Brooklyn hipster imperialism knows no bounds.)"
While praising Badanin and TV Rain, the Times also noted that the channel published a poll
suggesting that the Soviet Union "should have abandoned Leningrad to the Nazis to save
lives."
The Times even featured Badanin prominently in the header image of the story -- just two
years before the same newspaper would go on to rip off his reporting.
The New York Times also reported on Roman Badanin in
2016 and
2011 . It is abundantly clear the newspaper knew who he was.
The Gray Lady's willingness to snatch Badanin's reporting shows how little respect
newspapers like the New York Times actually have for the anti-Putin journalists they claim to
lionize . For the jet-setting correspondents of Western corporate media outlets, liberal
Russian reporters are just tools to advance their own ambitions.
@schnellandine OK, guys. To draw an analogy to a card game:
The Flynn affair has ended. Both sides (Trump & Establishment) have laid down their
cards. Trump wins. The only remaining question is whether he goes for the throat.
Remember, he pretty much has to. The Establishment has made it clear that Trump will be
attacked after he leaves office, and the Flynn affair shows that the attack would have
nothing to do with law or Trump's actions.
Still, has to isn't "did".
So Trump's remarks on "scum" and "treason" are important -- he's going for the throat.
Moreover, the Establishment has been weakened enough by inept COVID-19 preparation and
reaction, and the general public so afraid that the Establishment (what Feifer called the
"Anonymous Authority") will eat them next that a chance to rid themselves of it will receive
considerable backing, and the Establishment's urban power base become so -- well, Hellish,
that Trump actually has a fair chance. If he pulls the string the right way, prosecutes
serially and follows up on facts uncovered by the trials, follows up Epstein's trainl he
could discredit/imprison a good fraction of the Establishment's leaders and personnel. They
can see that as clearly as I can, and some of them, at least, will try to fight rather than
simply lose. They've always succeeded by all-out offensive, know little else.
Awhile back I mentioned that US political stability would drop considerably by early July
(by 2020-07-07, as I recall). Looks like that's really going to happen.
So -- Please do your best to stay safe. Remember, this won't do the food supply chain any
good, and that home invasions won't stop just because things are a bit chaotic.
Anti-Trump Government Officials Conflicted Over Not Being Able To Lie
The treasonous Mueller non-investigation now stands exposed. Those who lied to overthrow
the election are now in serious trouble.
All charges against Flynn are being dropped now that declassified documents show what
actually hapoened. Details including the transcripts can be found at these links.
So Flynn was framed but the plot eventually failed. will Strzok get a jail sencetnce for his role in this FBI operation?
Charlie Savage being a NYT correspondent belongs to Clinton gang and defend their point of view. But h revels some
interesting tidbits about the nature of framing and possible consequences for the key members of Clinton gang.
WASHINGTON -- The Justice Department's
decision to drop the criminal case against Michael T. Flynn
, President Trump's former national security
adviser, even though he had twice pleaded guilty to lying to investigators, was extraordinary and had no
obvious precedent, a range of criminal law specialists said on Thursday.
"I've been practicing for more time than I care to admit and I've never seen
anything like this," said Julie O'Sullivan, a former federal prosecutor who now teaches criminal law at
Georgetown University.
The move is the latest in a series that the department, under Attorney
General William P. Barr, has taken to undermine and dismantle the work of the investigators and prosecutors
who scrutinized Russia's 2016 election interference operation and its links to people associated with the
Trump campaign.
The case against Mr. Flynn for lying to the F.B.I. about his conversations
with the Russian ambassador was brought by the office of the former special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III.
It had become a political cause for Mr. Trump and his supporters, and the president had signaled that he was
considering a pardon once Mr. Flynn was sentenced. But Mr. Barr instead abruptly short-circuited the case.
On Thursday, Timothy Shea, the interim U.S. attorney in the District of
Columbia, told the judge overseeing the case, Emmet G. Sullivan, that prosecutors were withdrawing the case.
They were doing so, he said, because the department could not prove to a jury that Mr. Flynn's admitted lies
to the F.B.I. about his conversations with the ambassador were "material" ones.
The move essentially erases Mr. Flynn's guilty pleas. Because he was never
sentenced and the government is unwilling to pursue the matter further, the prosecution is virtually certain
to end, although the judge must still decide whether to grant the department's request to dismiss it "with
prejudice," meaning it could not be refiled in the future.
A range of former prosecutors struggled to point to any previous instance in
which the Justice Department had abandoned its own case after obtaining a guilty plea. They portrayed the
justification Mr. Shea pointed to -- that it would be difficult to prove to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt
that the lies were material -- as dubious.
"A pardon would have been a lot more honest," said Samuel Buell, a former
federal prosecutor who now teaches criminal law at Duke University.
The law regarding what counts as "material" is extremely forgiving to the
government, Mr. Buell added. The idea is that law enforcement is permitted to pursue possible theories of
criminality and to interview people without having firmly established that there was a crime first.
James G. McGovern
, a defense lawyer at Hogan Lovells and a former federal prosecutor, said juries rarely
bought a defendant's argument that a lie did not involve a material fact.
"If you are arguing 'materiality,' you usually lose, because there is a tacit
admission that what you said was untrue, so you lose the jury," he said.
No career prosecutors signed the motion. Mr. Shea is a former close aide to
Mr. Barr. In January, Mr. Barr
installed him as the top prosecutor
in the district that encompasses the nation's capital after
maneuvering out the Senate-confirmed former top prosecutor in that office, Jessie K. Liu.
Soon after, in an extraordinary move, four prosecutors in the office abruptly
quit the case against Mr. Trump's longtime friend
Roger
J. Stone Jr.
They did so after senior Justice Department officials intervened to recommend a more
lenient prison term than standard sentencing guidelines called for in the crimes Mr. Stone was convicted of
committing -- including witness intimidation and perjury -- to conceal Trump campaign interactions with
WikiLeaks.
It
soon emerged
that Mr. Barr had also appointed an outside prosecutor, Jeff Jensen, the U.S. attorney in
St. Louis, to review the Flynn case files. The department then began turning over F.B.I. documents showing
internal deliberations about questioning Mr. Flynn, like what warnings to give -- even though such files are
usually not provided to the defense.
Mr. Flynn's defense team has mined such files for ammunition to portray the
F.B.I. as running amok in its decision to question Mr. Flynn in the first place. The questioning focused on
his conversations during the transition after the 2016 election with the Russian ambassador about the Obama
administration's imposition of sanctions on Russia for its interference in the American election.
The F.B.I. had already concluded that there was no evidence that Mr. Flynn, a
former Trump campaign adviser, had personally conspired with Russia about the election, and it had decided
to close out the counterintelligence investigation into him. Then questions arose about whether and why Mr.
Flynn had lied to administration colleagues like Vice President Mike Pence about his conversations with the
ambassador.
Because the counterintelligence investigation was still open, the bureau used
it as a basis to question Mr. Flynn about the conversations and decided not to warn him at its onset that it
would be a crime to lie.
Notes from Bill Priestap
, then the head of the F.B.I.'s counterintelligence division, show that he wrote
at one point about the planned interview: "What's our goal? Truth/admission or to get him to lie, so we can
prosecute him or get him fired?"
Mr. Barr
has let it be known
that he does not think the F.B.I. ever had an adequate legal basis to open its
Russia investigation in the first place, contrary to the judgment of the Justice Department's inspector
general.
In
an interview on CBS News
on Thursday, Mr. Barr defended the dropping of the charges against Mr. Flynn on
the grounds that the F.B.I. "did not have a basis for a counterintelligence investigation against Flynn at
that stage."
Anne Milgram
, a former federal prosecutor and former New Jersey attorney general who teaches criminal
law at New York University, defended the F.B.I.'s decision to question Mr. Flynn in January 2017. She said
that much was still a mystery about the Russian election interference operation at the time and that Mr.
Flynn's lying to the vice president about his postelection interactions with a high-ranking Russian raised
new questions.
But, she argued, the more important frame for assessing the dropping of the
case was to recognize how it fit into the larger pattern of the Barr-era department "undercutting the law
enforcement officials and prosecutors who investigated the 2016 election and its aftermath," which she
likened to "eating the Justice Department from the inside out."
"... The foundational accusation of Russiagate was, and remains, charges that Russian President Putin ordered the hacking of DNC e-mails and their public dissemination through WikiLeaks in order to benefit Donald Trump and undermine Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, and that Trump and/or his associates colluded with the Kremlin in this "attack on American democracy." As no actual evidence for these allegations has been produced after nearly a year and a half of media and government investigations, we are left with Russiagate without Russia. ..."
"... This is unprecedented, preposterous, and dangerous, potentially more so than even McCarthy's search for "Communist" connections. It would suggest, for example, that scores of American corporations doing business in Russia today are engaged in criminal enterprise. ..."
"... Russiagate began sometime prior to June 2016, not after the presidential election in November, as is often said, as an anti-Trump political project. ..."
"... Leaving aside possible financial improprieties on the part of General Flynn, his persecution and subsequent prosecution is highly indicative. Flynn pled guilty to having lied to the FBI about his communications with the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, on behalf of the incoming Trump administration, discussions that unavoidably included some references, however vague, to sanctions imposed on Russia by President Obama in December 2016, just before leaving office. ..."
"... Those sanctions were highly unusual-last-minute, unprecedented in their seizure of Russian property in the United States, and including a reckless veiled threat of unspecified cyber attacks on Russia. ..."
"... Finally, and similarly, Cohen points out, there is the ongoing effort by the political-media establishment to drive Secretary of State Tillerson from office and replace him with a fully neocon, anti-Russian, anti-détente head of the State Department. ..."
Cohen offers the following general observations, which form the basis of the discussion:
The foundational accusation of Russiagate was, and remains, charges that Russian President Putin ordered the hacking of DNC
e-mails and their public dissemination through WikiLeaks in order to benefit Donald Trump and undermine Hillary Clinton in the 2016
presidential election, and that Trump and/or his associates colluded with the Kremlin in this "attack on American democracy." As
no actual evidence for these allegations has been produced after nearly a year and a half of media and government investigations,
we are left with Russiagate without Russia. (An apt formulation perhaps first coined in an e-mail exchange by Nation writer
James Carden.) Special counsel Mueller has produced four indictments: against Gen. Michael Flynn, Trump's short-lived national-security
adviser, and George Papadopolous, a lowly and inconsequential Trump "adviser," for lying to the FBI; and against Paul Manafort and
his partner Rick Gates for financial improprieties. None of these charges has anything to do with improper collusion with Russia,
except for the wrongful insinuations against Flynn. Instead, the several investigations, desperate to find actual evidence of collusion,
have spread to "contacts with Russia"-political, financial, social, etc.-on the part of a growing number of people, often going back
many years before anyone imagined Trump as a presidential candidate. The resulting implication is that these "contacts" were criminal
or potentially so.
This is unprecedented, preposterous, and dangerous, potentially more so than even McCarthy's search for "Communist" connections.
It would suggest, for example, that scores of American corporations doing business in Russia today are engaged in criminal enterprise.
More to the point, advisers to US policy-makers and even media commentators on Russia must have many and various contacts with Russia
if they are to understand anything about the dynamics of Kremlin policy-making. Cohen himself, to take an individual example, was
an adviser to two (unsuccessful) presidential campaigns, which considered his wide-ranging and longstanding "contacts" with Russia
to be an important credential, as did the one sitting president he advised. To suggest that such contacts are in any way criminal
is to slur hundreds of reputations and to leave US policy-makers with advisers laden with ideology and no actual expertise. It is
also to suggest that any quest for better relations with Russia, or détente, is somehow suspicious, illegitimate, or impossible,
as expressed recently by Andrew Weiss in The Wall Street Journal and by The Washington Post, in an editorial. This is one reason
Cohen, in a previous Batchelor broadcast and commentary, argued that Russiagate and its promoters have become the gravest threat
to American national security.
Russiagate began sometime prior to June 2016, not after the presidential election in November, as is often said, as an anti-Trump
political project. (Exactly why, how, and by whom remain unclear, and herein lies the real significance of the largely bogus
"Dossier" and the still murky role of top US intel officials in the creation of that document.) That said, Cohen continues, the mainstream
American media have been largely responsible for inflating, perpetuating, and sustaining the sham Russiagate as the real political
crisis it has become, arguably the greatest in modern American presidential and thus institutional political history. The media have
done this by increasingly betraying their own professed standards of verified news reporting and balanced coverage, even resorting
to tacit forms of censorship by systematically excluding dissenting reporting and opinions. (For inventories of recent examples,
see Glenn Greenwald at The Intercept and Joe Lauria at Consortium News. Anyone interested in exposures of such truly "fake news"
should visit these two sites regularly, the latter the product of the inestimable veteran journalist Robert Parry.) Still worse,
this mainstream malpractice has spread to some alternative-media publications once prized for their journalistic standards, where
expressed disdain for "evidence" and "proof" in favor of allegations without any actual facts can sometimes be found. Nor are these
practices merely the ordinary occasional mishaps of professional journalism. As Greenwald points out, all of the now retracted stories,
whether by print media or cable television, were zealous promotions of Russiagate and virulently anti-Trump. They, too, are examples
of Russiagate without Russia.
Leaving aside possible financial improprieties on the part of General Flynn, his persecution and subsequent prosecution is
highly indicative. Flynn pled guilty to having lied to the FBI about his communications with the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak,
on behalf of the incoming Trump administration, discussions that unavoidably included some references, however vague, to sanctions
imposed on Russia by President Obama in December 2016, just before leaving office.
Those sanctions were highly unusual-last-minute, unprecedented in their seizure of Russian property in the United States,
and including a reckless veiled threat of unspecified cyber attacks on Russia. They gave the impression that Obama wanted to
make even more difficult Trump's professed goal of improving relations with Moscow.
Still more, Obama's specified reason was not Russian behavior in Ukraine or Syria, as is commonly thought, but Russiagate-that
is, Putin's "attack on American democracy," which Obama's intel chiefs had evidently persuaded him was an entirely authentic allegation.
(Or which Obama, who regarded Trump's victory over his designated successor, Hillary Clinton, as a personal rebuff, was eager to
believe.) But Flynn's discussions with the Russian ambassador-as well as other Trump representatives' efforts to open "back-channel"
communications with Moscow–were anything but a crime. As Cohen pointed out in another previous commentary, there were so many precedents
of such overtures on behalf of presidents-elect, it was considered a normal, even necessary practice, if only to ask Moscow not to
make relations worse before the new president had a chance to review the relationship. When Henry Kissinger did this on behalf of
President-elect Nixon, his boss instructed him to keep the communication entirely confidential, not to inform any other members of
the incoming administration. Presumably Flynn was similarly secretive, thereby misinforming Vice President Pence and finding himself
trapped-or possibly entrapped-between loyalty to his president and an FBI agent. Flynn no doubt would have been especially guarded
with a representative of the FBI, knowing as he did the role of Obama's Intel bosses in Russiagate prior to the election and which
had escalated after Trump's surprise victory. In any event, to the extent that Flynn encouraged Moscow not to reply in kind immediately
to Obama's highly provocative sanctions, he performed a service to US national security, not a crime. And, assuming that Flynn was
acting on the instructions of his president-elect, so did Trump. Still more, if Flynn "colluded" in any way, it was with Israel,
not Russia, having been asked by that government to dissuade countries from voting for an impending anti-Israel UN resolution.
Finally, and similarly, Cohen points out, there is the ongoing effort by the political-media establishment to drive Secretary
of State Tillerson from office and replace him with a fully neocon, anti-Russian, anti-détente head of the State Department.
Tillerson was an admirable appointee by Trump-widely experienced in world affairs, a tested negotiator, a mature and practical-minded
man. Originally, his role as the CEO of Exxon Mobil who had negotiated and enacted an immensely profitable and strategically important
energy-extraction deal with the Kremlin earned him the slur of being "Putin's pal." This preposterous allegation has since given
way to charges that he is slowly restructuring, and trimming, the long bloated and mostly inept State Department, as indeed he should
do. Numerous former diplomats closely associated with Hillary Clinton have raced to influential op-ed pages to denounce Tillerson's
undermining of this purportedly glorious frontline institution of American national security. Many news reports, commentaries, and
editorials have been in the same vein. But who can recall, Cohen asks, a major diplomatic triumph by the State Department or a secretary
of state in recent years? The answer might be the Obama administration's multinational agreement with Iran to curb its nuclear-weapons
potential, but that was due no less to Russia's president and Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which provided essential guarantees to
the sides involved. Forgotten, meanwhile, are the more than 50 career State Department officials who publicly protested-in the spirit
of DOD-Obama's rare attempt to cooperate with Moscow in Syria. Call it by what it was: the sabotaging of a president by his own State
Department. In this spirit, there are a flurry of leaked stories that Tillerson will soon resign or be ousted. Meanwhile, however,
he carries on. The ever-looming menace of Russiagate compels him to issue wildly exaggerated indictments of Russian behavior while,
at the same time, calling for a "productive new relationship" with Moscow, in which he clearly believes. (And which, if left unencumbered,
he might achieve.) Evidently, he has established a "productive" working relationship with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov,
the two of them having just announced North Korea's readiness to engage in negotiations with the United States and other governments
involved in the current crisis.
Tillerson's fate, Cohen concludes, will tell us much about the number-one foreign-policy question confronting America: cooperation
or escalating conflict with the other nuclear superpower, a détente-like diminishing of the new Cold War or the growing risks that
it will become hot war. Politics and policy should never be over-personalized; larger factors are always involved. But in these unprecedented
times, Tillerson may be the last man standing who represents the possibility of some kind of détente. Apart, that is, from President
Trump himself, loathe him or not. Or to put the issue differently: Will Russiagate continue to gravely endanger American national
security?
Stephen F. Cohen is a professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at New York University and Princeton University.
A Nation contributing editor, his most recent book, War With Russia? From Putin & Ukraine to Trump & Russiagate, is available in
paperback and in an ebook edition. His weekly conversations with the host of The John Batchelor Show, now in their seventh year,
are available at www.thenation.com.
Former Trump attorney John Dowd says it's "staggering" that former
Special Counsel Robert Mueller's "so-called Dream Team would put on such a fraud," after the
Wednesday release of the investigation's "scope memo" revealed that Mueller was tasked with
investigating accusations from Clinton-funded operative Christopher Steele which the DOJ
already knew were debunked . "In the last few days, I have been going back through my files
and we were badly misled by Mueller and his senior people , particularly in the meetings that
we had," Dowd told Fox News Radio host Brian Kilmeade on Thursday.
The scope memo also revealed that Mueller's authority went significantly beyond what was
previously known - including "allegations that Carter Page committed a crime or crimes by
colluding with Russian government officials with respect to the Russian government's efforts to
interfere with the 2016 election for President of the United States, in violation of United
States law," yet as John Solomon of
Just The News noted on Wednesday - the FBI had already:
fired Steele as an informant for leaking;
interviewed Steele's sub-source, who disputed information attributed to him;
ascertained that allegations Steele had given the FBI specifically about Page were
inaccurate and likely came from Russian intelligence sources as disinformation;
been informed repeatedly by the CIA that Page was not a Russian stooge but, rather, a
cooperating intelligence asset for the United States government.
" There's no question it's a fraud I think the whole report is just nonsense and it's
staggering that the so-called 'Dream Team' would put on such a fraud ," Dowd said, according to
Fox News .
"Durham has really got a load on his hands tracking all this down," Dowd said.
Durham was appointed last year by Attorney General Bill Barr to review the events
leading up to Trump's inauguration. However, Durham has since expanded his investigation to
cover a post-election timeline spanning the spring of 2017, when Mueller was appointed as
special counsel. - Fox News
"Nancy's Liar"
Dowd also circled back to a claim by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff that
there was "direct evidence" that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia during the 2016
election, despite the fact that transcripts of House Intelligence Committee interviews proving
otherwise .
"Schiff doesn't release these interviews because they're going to make him a liar," said
Dowd, adding "They're going to expose him and he'll be run out of town."
"He lied for months in the impeachment inquiry. He's essentially Nancy [Pelosi]'s liar and
he's now going to be exposed."
Shortly after Brandon Van Grack, chief of the Justice Department's Foreign Agents
Registration Act division, filed a notice of his withdrawal in federal court in Washington, The
Justice Department has this morning filed a motion to drop the criminal case against President
Donald Trump's first national security adviser, Michael Flynn , abandoning the critical leg of
many leftists' belief in the Russia collusion bullshit.
And all it took was one line...
As Byron York notes, the Justice Department finally concedes it had no basis to interview
Michael Flynn on January 24, 2017 , with the move coming less than a week after unsealed
documents in the case fueled renewed claims by Flynn that FBI agents had cooked up a bogus case
against him, and as AP reports, is a stunning reversal
for one of the signature cases brought by special counsel Robert Mueller.
In court documents being filed Thursday, the Justice Department said it is dropping the
case "after a considered review of all the facts and circumstances of this case, including
newly discovered and disclosed information."
The Justice Department said it had concluded that Flynn's interview by the FBI was
"untethered to, and unjustified by, the FBI's counterintelligence investigation into Mr.
Flynn" and that the interview on January 24, 2017 was "conducted without any legitimate
investigative basis."
It comes even though prosecutors for the last three years had maintained that Flynn had lied
to the FBI about his conversations with the Russian ambassador in a January 2017 interview.
Flynn himself admitted as much, and became a key cooperator for Mueller as he investigated ties
between Russia and the 2016 Trump campaign.
We are sure it will not take long before Trump tweet-celebrates, as has relentlessly tweeted
about the case, and just last week pronounced Flynn "exonerated."
As Sara Carter detailed
last week, U.S. District Court Judge
Emmet G. Sullivan unsealed four pages of stunning FBI emails and handwritten notes which
allegedly revealed that the retired three star general was targeted by senior FBI officials for
prosecution . Those notes and emails revealed that the retired three-star general appeared to
be set up for a perjury trap by the senior members of the bureau and agents charged with
investigating the now-debunked allegations that President Donald Trump's campaign colluded with
Russia, said Sidney Powell, the defense lawyer representing Flynn.
Last week, after the FBI documents were unsealed, the president
tweeted :
"What happened to General Michael Flynn, a war hero, should never be allowed to happen to
a citizen of the United States again!"
It didn't take long, as Trump spoke to reporters saying "he is happy for Flynn," and adding
that Flynn "is an innocent man."
Your Logan Act investigation is over. The bums lost.
Schiff Folds: Publishes Russiagate Transcripts After Showdown With DNI by Tyler Durden Thu, 05/07/2020 -
18:25 Following the standoff between Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Acting DNI Richard Grenell,
the House Intelligence Committee published all of the Russia investigation transcripts Thursday
evening.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman
Rep. Adam Schiff is planning to selectively release information from some of the 53
declassified transcripts of witnesses that testified before Congress regarding the FBI's
Russia probe into the Trump campaign. This move, comes after a long battle against
Republican colleagues, who are fighting to make all the transcripts available to the American
public, said a U.S. official, with knowledge of Schiff's plans.
Schiff has been fighting the release of the transcripts.
The decision for Schiff to publish a selective portion of the 6,000 pages of transcripts
comes after a recent public showdown with Director of National Intelligence
Richard Grenell, who is also fighting to make all the transcripts public. In fact, Grenell
reiterated in a letter Wednesday that if Schiff doesn't make the transcripts public then he
will release them himself.
Interestingly, the committee voted unanimously in the fall of 2018, to make all the
transcripts public after declassification, which has already been done.
"Schiff's planning to selectively leak to the liberal media what he wants, while keeping
the truth from the American people," said one source, familiar with Schiff's plans.
Schiff's office did not immediately respond to an email for comment.
A congressional source familiar with the issue said "the committee voted in the last
Congress to publish all the transcripts together, precisely to avoid any staged release
calculated for political effect."
"Schiff has had possession of most of the redacted transcripts for a long time, but he
used the fact that he didn't have all of them as an excuse not to publish any," said the
congressional source.
"If he selectively publishes just some of them now, it'll be rank hypocrisy."
Allegedly Schiff is also having his senior subcommittee staff director and counsel with the
intelligence committee contact the various heads of the intelligence community asking them to
challenge plans by Grenell to release the transcripts, which were declassified prior to his
arrival at DNI.
Several sources, familiar with Schiff's actions, have stated that his refusal to release the
transcripts is based on information contained in the testimony that will destroy his Russia
hoax propaganda.
"Schiff has been sitting on a lot of these transcripts for a long time," said a Republican
congressional source.
"They were using this as an excuse to ensure that the White House wouldn't have access to
the transcripts, now he wants to selectively leak and that's the game he plays – he's
definitely shifty. "
"... In 2010, Flynn co-authored an important analysis, Fixing Intel: A Blueprint for Making Intelligence Relevant in Afghanistan . Flynn's key conclusion warned that the U.S. intelligence effort in Afghanistan was failing: ..."
"... The paper argues that because the United States has focused the overwhelming majority of collection efforts and analytical brainpower on insurgent groups, our intelligence apparatus still finds itself unable to answer fundamental questions about the environment in which we operate and the people we are trying to protect and persuade. ..."
"... lambasted American intelligence performance in Afghanistan. . . [It] pulled no punches, using words like "marginally relevant," "ignorant," "hazy," and "incurious" to describe U.S. intelligence work in Afghanistan in a scathing fashion. ..."
"... During 2012-2013, DIA provided honest, objective analysis about the success of the Syrian Army in fighting against ISIS and Al Qaeda. If you go back and look at the media reporting at the time, there were dire reports claiming that the rebels were on the verge of ousting Syrian leader Assad and sweeping to power. Members of Congress, such as Senators McCain and Graham, were busy cheerleading the Syrian rebels progress. ..."
"... Few knew at the time that the CIA was running a massive arms and training program to support some of the Syrian rebels. ..."
"... This earned Michael Flynn the lasting enmity of DNI Director Jim Clapper and CIA Director John Brennan. Flynn would not play ball in down playing the jihadist threat in Syria. If you recall, President Obama referred to ISIS as the "junior varsity" during a January 2014 interview with the New Yorker: ..."
"... "The analogy we use around here sometimes, and I think is accurate, is if a jayvee team puts on Lakers uniforms that doesn't make them Kobe Bryant," Obama said, resorting to an uncharacteristically flip analogy. "I think there is a distinction between the capacity and reach of a bin Laden and a network that is actively planning major terrorist plots against the homeland versus jihadists who are engaged in various local power struggles and disputes, often sectarian. ..."
"... His refusal to downplay the ISIS threat was on of the contributing factors that led Obama to fire Flynn, who left the DIA position in August 2014. ..."
"... Michael Flynn did not go quietly into retirement. He became a vocal critic of Obama's failed policies in the Middle East ..."
"... This made him a target of both Clapper and Brennan. When Brennan put together a CIA Task Force in the late summer of 2015, I believe that one of the targets of the intelligence collection from that effort was Michael Flynn. By March of 2016, Flynn was squarely in the crosshairs of the Obama political/intelligence hit squad : ..."
"... Flynn, who was forced out of his post as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency in August 2014 after clashing with other senior officials, has said that "political correctness" has prevented the U.S. from confronting violent extremism, which he sees as a "cancerous idea that exists inside of the Islamic religion." Flynn has authored a forthcoming book that argues the U.S. government "has concealed the actions of terrorists like [Osama] bin Laden and groups like ISIS, and the role of Iran in the rise of radical Islam " ..."
"... But that did not stop Jim Comey and his cronies from stepping up their efforts to find something they could use to charge and prosecute Flynn. Text messages from Peter Strzok to the author of the memo recommending the case be closed show that Strzok begged to keep the investigation open and cited "7th Floor" interest as justification. The 7th Floor of the FBI is where Jim Comey and Andy McCabe were located. ..."
"... Who authorized that collection of those conversations? Flynn was the acting National Security Advisor to President elect Donald Trump. Listening in on such a phone call was a pure act of domestic espionage against a political opponent of Obama. There was no justification to UNMASK General Flynn. But that is exactly what the FBI did. ..."
"... If and that's a big IF, somehow these scumbags (Comey, Brennan, Clapper, Strzok, et. al) ever got to a courtroom, they'd be facing - in DC - a jury of 12 Trump-haters and an Obama judge;see Roger Stone's trial. ..."
"... Excellent summary. Yes, Flynn was scapegoated and dragged through the mud for embarrassing his "betters" with the truth. He made mistakes and was naive himself, but he did the right thing exposing their plan to arm and support a jihadi takeover of Syria and Iraq. The plan was to let them takeover and then take the "JV team" out. ..."
"... They didn't want to send too many more troops to war. Americans had grown weary due to Bush's madness, so they used jihadis to carry out their plan in the Middle East and North Africa, to fill in the void ..."
"... It was very naive policy making and in the end Obama grew paranoid he was being screwed like Carter, that Benghazi was going to be turned into another Iranian hostage-like situation. It's a curious thing that Obama warned Trump of Flynn. In Obama's mind, Flynn was part of a conspiracy to screw him for choosing to back "Syrian and Libyan farmers" over American troops. That this was the US military brass showing him who's really boss and that they were trying to embarrass him. In reality, he made a bad policy decision based on failure to understand the region. His failures to under these people, exactly as Flynn warned, precipitated these failures. ..."
"... Trump showed a lot of promise that these circumstances would change for the better. Sadly, he has performed no better. Netanyahu and Pompeo are so far up his ass that they are now his ventriloquists. Obama should have warned him of those two instead. ..."
"... ...We see the same thing has evolved in the American Empire. If you take time to read up on the Flynn case or the much larger plot around it, you see a large cast of people with one thing in common. They all live together as a social class. Some were having sex with one another. Others had been friends since college. Others developed their relationships when they came to Washington. All of these social relationships transcend the formal positions and titles of the people... ..."
"... At that time of the Syria events, it appeared one of the biggest names in the background pushing for more support for Syrian "rebels", was the shadowy activist group AVAAZ. ..."
"... Now comes the present day kicker, the mistress Antonia Staats of the recently fired UK "expert" Neil Ferguson that caused our global shut down with his wildly inaccurate corona death count numbers, works for US based AVAAZ. Did she have any influence over his draconian pronouncements based up on her known AVAAZ activism? ..."
"... Is AVAAZ just one more name for Bernnan's CIA, not like unlike CNN? Should these dots be connected or just discarded as one more right-wing wacko conspiracy theory. ..."
"... Thanks for the excellent summary of how Flynn became "persona non grata" to various powers in the IC. But there is another powerful group in Washington whose fervent enmity he drew: the Democratic establishment. See: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/10/how-mike-flynn-became-americas-angriest-general-214362 ..."
"... Adding to my comment just above, my personal feeling on why there was such a push to find something to prosecute Flynn over was as a direct response to Flynn's leading of chants to "lock her up." "What goes around comes around" seems to be an operative policy for some in Washington. I can't help but believe that is what drove DOJ's otherwise inexplicable drive to find something to prosecute Flynn over. ..."
Two and one-half years ago, Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller unveiled charges against
Michael Flynn for "lying to Federal agents." At the time I gave Mueller the benefit of the
doubt and assumed, incorrectly, that the investigation was fair and honest. We now know without
any doubt that the so-called investigation of Michael Flynn was frame-up. It was a punishment
in search of a crime and ultimately led the FBI to manufacture a crime in order to take out
Michael Flynn and damage the fledgling Presidency of Donald Trump.
It is important to understand the lack of proper foundation to investigate Michael Flynn as
a collaborator with Russia as part of some bizarre plot to steal the 2016 Presidential election
for Donald Trump.
Flynn was perceived as a threat to the CIA and refused to cook the intelligence for the
Obama Administration while he was Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.
The paper argues that because the United States has focused the overwhelming majority of
collection efforts and analytical brainpower on insurgent groups, our intelligence apparatus
still finds itself unable to answer fundamental questions about the environment in which we
operate and the people we are trying to protect and persuade.
Flynn's work did not sit well with Jim Clapper and John Brennan. John Schindler, a rabid
anti-Trumper, wrote a hit piece on Flynn in December 2017, that highlights the Deep State anger
at Flynn. Schindler characterizes Flynn's work in unflattering terms and
claims that Flynn :
lambasted American intelligence performance in Afghanistan. . . [It] pulled no punches,
using words like "marginally relevant," "ignorant," "hazy," and "incurious" to describe U.S.
intelligence work in Afghanistan in a scathing fashion.
Flynn's honesty in that assessment did
not derail his next promotion -- he was sworn in as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency in
July 2012. Once in that position he refused to cook the intelligence. I saw this firsthand (at
the time I had access to the classified intelligence analysis by DIA with respect to the war in
Syria). During 2012-2013, DIA provided honest, objective analysis about the success of the
Syrian Army in fighting against ISIS and Al Qaeda. If you go back and look at the media
reporting at the time, there were dire reports claiming that the rebels were on the verge of
ousting Syrian leader Assad and sweeping to power. Members of Congress, such as Senators McCain
and Graham, were busy cheerleading the Syrian rebels progress.
Few knew at the time that the CIA was running a massive arms and training program to support
some of the Syrian rebels. The program was a failure and the attack on the CIA base in
Benghazi, Libya came close to exposing the covert effort. What the media was not reporting is
that the rebels the U.S. backed were inept. The only rebels achieving some success were the
radical jihadists aligned with ISIS and elements of Al Qaeda (e.g. Al Nusra).
This earned Michael Flynn the lasting enmity of DNI Director Jim Clapper and CIA Director
John Brennan. Flynn would not play ball in down playing the jihadist threat in Syria. If you
recall, President Obama referred to ISIS as the "junior varsity" during a January 2014
interview with the New Yorker:
"The analogy we use around here sometimes, and I think is accurate, is if a jayvee team puts
on Lakers uniforms that doesn't make them Kobe Bryant," Obama said, resorting to an
uncharacteristically flip analogy. "I think there is a distinction between the capacity and
reach of a bin Laden and a network that is actively planning major terrorist plots against the
homeland versus jihadists who are engaged in various local power struggles and disputes, often
sectarian.
But that was not the story that Flynn's DIA was telling. His refusal to downplay the ISIS
threat was on of the contributing factors that led Obama to fire Flynn, who left the DIA
position in August 2014.
Michael Flynn did not go quietly into retirement. He became a vocal critic of Obama's failed
policies in the
Middle East :
Since taking off his uniform last August, Flynn, 56, has been in the vanguard of those
criticizing the president's policies in the Middle East, speaking out at venues ranging from
congressional hearings and trade association banquets to appearances on Fox News, CNN, Sky News
Arabia, and Japanese television, targeting the Iranian nuclear deal, the weakness of the U.S.
response to the Islamic State, and the Obama administration's refusal to call America's enemies
in the Middle East "Islamic militants."
This made him a target of both Clapper and Brennan. When Brennan put together a CIA Task
Force in the late summer of 2015, I believe that one of the targets of the intelligence
collection from that effort was Michael Flynn. By March of 2016, Flynn was squarely in the crosshairs of the Obama
political/intelligence hit squad :
They question why the retired general, who has earned criticism for his leadership style but
has generally been regarded as a well-intentioned professional, would assist a candidate who
has called for military actions that would constitute war crimes.
"I think Flynn and Trump are two peas in a pod," one former senior U.S. intelligence
official who knows Flynn told The Daily Beast. "They have this naïve notion that yelling
at people will just solve problems."
Flynn, who was forced out of his post as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency in
August 2014 after clashing with other senior officials, has said that "political correctness"
has prevented the U.S. from confronting violent extremism, which he sees as a "cancerous idea
that exists inside of the Islamic religion." Flynn has authored a forthcoming book that argues
the U.S. government "has concealed the actions of terrorists like [Osama] bin Laden and groups
like ISIS, and the role of Iran in the rise of radical Islam "
His co-author, Michael Ledeen,
is a neoconservative author and policy analyst who was involved in the Iran-Contra Affair.
Thanks to the document release on 30 April, 2020, we know that the FBI opened an
unsuccessful investigation of Flynn. Here are the key points from the memo recommending the
investigation be closed:
The FBI opened captioned case based on an particularly false factual basis that CROSSFIRE RAZOR (CR)
may wittingly or unwittingly be involved in activity on behalf of the Russian Federation which
may constitute a federal crime· or threat to the national security.
The FBI predicated the investigation on predetermined criteria set forth by the CROSSFIRE
HURRICANE (CH) investigative team based on an assessment of reliable lead information received
during the course of the investigation.
The FBI queried the FBI databases and at least two other intelligence community databases
for incriminating information but found NO DEROGATORY INFORMATION .
The FBI used a Confidential Human Source (aka CHS probably Stefan Halper) to try to collect
incriminating information. The CHS claimed that Flynn was in contact with Svetlana Lokhova, a
British academic born in Russia, but a subsequent FBI search of their databases turned up NO
DEROGATORY INFORMATION .
The FBI memo concludes:
the absence of any derogatory information or lead information from these logical sources
reduced the number of investigative avenues and techniques to pursue. . . . The FBI is closing
this investigation.
But that did not stop Jim Comey and his cronies from stepping up their efforts to find
something they could use to charge and prosecute Flynn. Text messages from Peter Strzok to the
author of the memo recommending the case be closed show that Strzok begged to keep the
investigation open and cited "7th Floor" interest as justification. The 7th Floor of the FBI is
where Jim Comey and Andy McCabe were located.
They decided to pursue two lines of attack. First, to go after Flynn for allegedly failing
to register as a "Foreign Agent" because of a report his consulting firm prepared on a Turk
living in the United States that Turkey named as a "terrorist." Second, the FBI had in hand the
transcript of Flynn's conversations with Russia's Ambassador and wanted to entrap him into
lying about those conversations.
Who authorized that collection of those conversations? Flynn was the acting National
Security Advisor to President elect Donald Trump. Listening in on such a phone call was a pure
act of domestic espionage against a political opponent of Obama. There was no justification to
UNMASK General Flynn. But that is exactly what the FBI did.
The news of Mike Flynn's plea agreement in late 2017 with special prosecutor Robert Mueller
was trumpeted on the media as if Flynn admitted to killing Kennedy or having unprotected sex
with Vladimir Putin. But read the actual indictment and the accompanying agreement.
Here is the chronology of Michael Flynn's entirely appropriate actions as the National
Security Advisor to President-elect Donald Trump. This is not what an agent of Russia would do.
This is what the National Security Advisor to an incoming President would do.
December 21, 2016 --Egypt submitted a resolution to the United Nations Security Council on
the issue of Israeli settlements ("resolution").
December 22, 2016-- a very senior member of the Presidential Transition Team (reportedly
Jared Kushner) directed FLYNN to contact officials from foreign governments, including Russia,
to learn where each government stood on the resolution and to influence those governments to
delay the vote or defeat the resolution.
December 23, 2016-- FLYNN again spoke with the Russian Ambassador, who informed FLYNN that
if it came to a vote Russia would not vote against the resolution.
On this same day, President-elect Trump spoke with Egyptian leader Sisi, who agreed to
withdraw the resolution (
link ).
[I would note that there is nothing illegal or wrong about any of this. Quite an appropriate
action, in fact, for an incoming President. Moreover, if Trump and the Russians had been
conspiring before the November election, why would Trump and team even need to persuade the
Russian Ambassador to do the biding of Trump on this issue?]
December 28, 2016-- President Barack Obama signed Executive Order 13757, which was to take
effect the following day, imposing sanctions on Russia. Russian Ambassador Kislyak called
General Flynn (who was vacationing in the Caribbean).
December 29, 2016 , FLYNN called a senior official of the Presidential Transition Team ("PTT
official"), who was with other senior members of the Presidential Transition Team at the
Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, to discuss what, if anything, to communicate to the
Russian Ambassador about the U.S. Sanctions. On that call, FLYNN and the PTT official discussed
the U.S. Sanctions, including the potential impact of those sanctions on the incoming
administration's foreign policy goals. The PTT official and FLYNN also discussed that the
members of the Presidential Transition Team at Mar-a-Lago did not want Russia to escalate the
situation.
FLYNN called the Russian Ambassador and requested that Russia not escalate the
situation and only respond to the U.S. Sanctions in a reciprocal manner.
Shortly after his phone call with the Russian Ambassador, FLYNN spoke with the PTT
official to report on the substance of his call with the Russian Ambassador, including
their discussion of the U.S. Sanctions.
December 31, 2016-- the Russian Ambassador called FLYNN and informed him that Russia had
chosen not to retaliate in response to FLYNN's request.
After his phone call with the Russian Ambassador, FLYNN spoke with senior members of the
Presidential Transition Team about FLYNN's conversations with the Russian Ambassador regarding
the U.S. Sanctions and Russia's decision not to escalate the situation.
Michael Flynn's contact with the Russian Government and other members of the UN Security
Council in the month preceding Trump's inauguration was appropriate and normal. He did nothing
wrong. But President Obama's henchmen, including James Comey, John Brennan, Jim Clapper and
Susan Rice were out for blood and relied on the FBI to stick the shiv into General Flynn's
belly.
That travesty of justice is being methodically and systematically revealed in the documents
delivered to the Flynn defense team thanks to the efforts of Attorney General William Barr.
Barr is relying on the US Attorney in the Eastern District of Missouri (EDMO) to review the
case and provide Brady material to the Flynn defense team. This is by the book. Doing it this
way provides the legal foundation for future prosecution of the FBI and prosecutors who abused
the General Flynn's rights and violated the Constitution. Stay tuned.
All true in my book but it would be very hard to prosecute and get convictions as the defense
would be "We were working in the best interests of the US against the dastardly Russkies"
At least half the country believes it goes the Russians interfered materially in the 2016
election. 2018 poll
Great analysis, your article added a lot of context on why Flynn was targeted. What a
horrible thing to do to a person.
http://meaninginhistory.blogspot.com/ that has
been doing A+ work on the Flynn set up, linked to you.
If and that's a big IF, somehow these scumbags (Comey, Brennan, Clapper, Strzok, et. al) ever
got to a courtroom, they'd be facing -
in DC - a jury of 12 Trump-haters and an Obama judge;see Roger Stone's trial.
Bottom line: Until the swamp is drained and then burned (meaning all SES and over a certain GS level
bureaucrats gone), we will continue to live under the thumbs of this corrupt "ruling
class." And getting rid of all these people wouldn't make much of a difference to most
Americans; witness the notorious "shutdowns" in recent years.
Excellent summary. Yes, Flynn was scapegoated and dragged through the mud for embarrassing
his "betters" with the truth. He made mistakes and was naive himself, but he did the right
thing exposing their plan to arm and support a jihadi takeover of Syria and Iraq. The plan
was to let them takeover and then take the "JV team" out.
They didn't want to send too many more troops to war. Americans had grown weary due to
Bush's madness, so they used jihadis to carry out their plan in the Middle East and North
Africa, to fill in the void while they could before Russia remained weak and China yet to
fully emerge, to checkmate the grand chessboard Zbigniew wrote of while the US held
unchallenged supremacy.
Obama was very naive about what Muslims are really like in some of those parts. It's best
to liken them to Comanches. He bought into the Zbigniew/Neocon belief that they'll just be
another Taliban, but ask any Afghan who managed to escape the country at the time and they'll
tell you these guys are all devils, djinns.
It was very naive policy making and in the end Obama grew paranoid he was being screwed
like Carter, that Benghazi was going to be turned into another Iranian hostage-like
situation. It's a curious thing that Obama warned Trump of Flynn. In Obama's mind, Flynn was
part of a conspiracy to screw him for choosing to back "Syrian and Libyan farmers" over
American troops. That this was the US military brass showing him who's really boss and that
they were trying to embarrass him. In reality, he made a bad policy decision based on failure
to understand the region. His failures to under these people, exactly as Flynn warned,
precipitated these failures.
Obama made a lot of mistakes, but thankfully he didn't make it worse by invading in spite
of his red line. I have to credit him that much, but his failures in Libya and Syria are on
par with Bush's failures in Afghanistan and Iraq. Disastrous doesn't even begin to describe
these failures.
Trump showed a lot of promise that these circumstances would change for the better. Sadly,
he has performed no better. Netanyahu and Pompeo are so far up his ass that they are now his
ventriloquists. Obama should have warned him of those two instead.
"... internal investigation unit". If I run the IG and change the definition of "whistle
blower" to allow hearsay evidence that is not admissible as evidence in any court in the
Western world that still makes it okay to use hearsay, right? Of course it does. You forgot
about Horowitz and his IG report already, you guys must really be getting desperate. Thanks
for the laugh.
As much as I would love to see this "ruling class" brought low, by which I mean burnt to the
ground, we face the problem of The Ruling System, outlined in this post on the Z-Man blog:
http://thezman.com/wordpress/?p=20405 A little snippet from the post:
...We see the same thing has evolved in the American Empire. If you take time to read up
on the Flynn case or the much larger plot around it, you see a large cast of people with one
thing in common. They all live together as a social class. Some were having sex with one
another. Others had been friends since college. Others developed their relationships when
they came to Washington. All of these social relationships transcend the formal positions and
titles of the people...
Z-Man examines this in various historical settings, Versailles, Communist Russia, before
arriving at The Swamp. Interesting angle.
Small world, speaking of Seymour Hersh's lengthy CIA gun-running to Syria expose in "The Red
Line and Rat Line", that all his prior media connections refused to publish at the time
(Benghazi-Obama days), until it finally appeared in the London Review of Books- or something
like that.
At that time of the Syria events, it appeared one of the biggest names in the background
pushing for more support for Syrian "rebels", was the shadowy activist group AVAAZ.
Now comes the present day kicker, the mistress Antonia Staats of the recently fired UK
"expert" Neil Ferguson that caused our global shut down with his wildly inaccurate corona
death count numbers, works for US based AVAAZ. Did she have any influence over his draconian
pronouncements based up on her known AVAAZ activism?
Who was it that says there are no coincidences? Long time since I saw any media attention
given to AVAAZ, nor any final answers why the CIA was running such a big operation in
Benghazi in 2012. However, all the same names and players still swirling around gives one
pause.
Is AVAAZ just one more name for Bernnan's CIA, not like unlike CNN? Should these dots be
connected or just discarded as one more right-wing wacko conspiracy theory.
Adding to my comment just above, my personal feeling
on why there was such a push
to find something to prosecute Flynn over
was as a direct response to Flynn's leading of chants to "lock her up."
"What goes around comes around" seems to be an operative policy for some in Washington.
I can't help but believe that is what drove DOJ's otherwise inexplicable drive to find
something to prosecute Flynn over.
AVAAZ pushed FaceBook and Zuckerberg to ban about half of FB content on novel coronavirus,
starting last month, Politico gleefully reported. [Two medical doctors in California 'out of
step' with the diktats of some medical cartel's message, among those FB canceled, for
example.]
AVAAZ, which pushed regime change in Syria, no fly zone in Libya, spews hatred of Russia,
etc. is alive and well, working hard at increasing online censorship.
Their clicktivism business model and lock downs go hand in hand.
[[Avaaz discovered that over 40 percent of the coronavirus-related misinformation it found
on Facebook. . .]]
[[Avaaz said that these fake social media posts -- everything from advice about bogus
medical remedies for the virus to claims that minority groups were less susceptible to
infection -- had been shared, collectively, 1.7 million times on Facebook in six
languages]]
[[Avaaz tracked 104 claims debunked by fact-checkers to see how quickly they were removed
from the platform]]
" If I run the IG and change the definition of "whistle blower" to allow hearsay evidence
that is not admissible as evidence in any court in the Western world that still makes it okay
to use hearsay, right? Of course it does. You forgot about Horowitz and his IG report
already, you guys must really be getting desperate. Thanks for the laugh."
No laughing matter. The IG position is obviously politicized. It may be a surprise to you,
but many police forces have an internal investigation unit that has extremely wide powers
that. go far beyond those available in ordinary investigation. The staff of such units are a
rare and disliked breed and the units are managed by the natural enemies of the police -
criminal lawyers.
Given that I've seen what these units do here, I am surprised that Strzok, Page and others
were not apprehended and charged very quickly.
Jim, thank you for the further AVAAZ info. Call me gob-smacked. Hope the investigative media picks up this thread. Seymour Hersh, are
you listening? AVAAZ felt sinister during the Benghazi days - also reacll some connections
with Samantha Power and Susan Rice - Barry's Girls.
Maybe mistress Antonia Staats was on a mission; and not just being a scofflaw mistress? In
fact is she trying out to be the new S.P.E.C.T.R.E Bond Girl?
IG's are no surprise to me nor the politicalization, such as Baltimore and Chicago, cities
run by the same political party for decades. Or the "intelligence community" IG, who changed
to rules to allow the scam of Schiff's supersecret whistleblower fraud to go forward. But
then you probably forgot that guy like you did Horowitz.
"I am surprised that Strzok, Page and others were not apprehended and charged ...." Larry insists that will happen. I'm not holding my breath.
Looks like Mueller barked to the wrong tree... And that was not accidental
Notable quotes:
"... The back story that's really significant here is that Mueller redacted evidence of Israeli interference in the U.S. election, and the Russiagate! scandal was a cover for that and other third-country meddling. Most of us here knew that a couple years ago ..."
Previously sealed FBI documents indicate close contacts between Israel and the Trump
campaign and that the Mueller investigation found evidence of Israeli involvement, but
largely redacted it.
Menifee, CA (IAK) -- Newly released FBI documents suggest that Israeli government
officials were in contact with the 2016 Trump presidential campaign and offered "critical
intel."
In one of the extensively redacted documents, an official who appears to be an Israeli
minister warns that Trump was "going to be defeated unless we intervene." He goes on to tell
a Trump campaign official: "The key is in your hands."
The previously classified documents were released in response to a lawsuit brought by the
Associated Press, CNN, the New York Times, Politico, and the Washington Post. The unsealed
documents suggest that rather than Russia, it was Israel that covertly interfered in the
election.
While all these media companies except one seem to have ignored the apparent Israeli
connection revealed in the FBI documents, Israeli media have been quick to jump on it.
Israel's i24 News reports:
Newly released documents from the FBI suggest that Roger Stone, a senior aide in the 2016
Trump campaign, had one or more high-ranking contacts in the Israeli government willing to
help the then-Republican Party nominee win the presidential election."
Israel's Ha'aretz newspaper reports:
Tantalizing hints" of "alleged clandestine contacts came to light in recent publication of
redacted FBI documents."
The Times of Israel (TOI) the first to report on this, states:
The FBI material, which is heavily redacted, includes one explicit reference to Israel and
one to Jerusalem, and a series of references to a minister, a cabinet minister, a minister
without portfolio in the cabinet dealing with issues concerning defense and foreign affairs,'
the PM, and the Prime Minister."
TOI points out: "Benjamin Netanyahu was Israel's prime minister in 2016," and reports
circumstantial evidence that the "PM" mentioned in the document refers to Netanyahu:
One reference to the unnamed PM in the material reads as follows: 'On or about June 28,
2016, [NAME REDACTED] messaged STONE, "RETURNING TO DC AFTER URGENT CONSULTATIONS WITH PM IN
ROME.MUST MEET WITH YOU WED. EVE AND WITH DJ TRUMP THURSDAY IN NYC.' Netanyahu made a state
visit to Italy at the end of June 2016."
TOI also notes that "the Israeli government included a minister without portfolio, Tzachi
Hanegbi, appointed in May with responsibility for defense and foreign affairs."
Ha'aretz also names Hanebi as the likely contact, and confirms that he "was in the United
States on the dates mentioned, attending, among other things, a roll out of the first Israeli
F-35 jet at a Lockheed Martin plant in Fort Worth, Texas."
The previously classified FBI affidavit says: "On or about August 12, 2016, [name
redacted] messaged STONE, "Roger, hello from Jerusalem. Any progress? He is going to be
defeated unless we intervene. We have critical intell. The key is in your hands! Back in the
US next week."
Another section of the affidavit states: "On August 20, 2016, CORSI told STONE that they
needed to meet with [name redacted] to determine "what if anything Israel plans to do in
Oct." (Corsi refers to Jerome Corsi, a pro-Israel commentator and author known for extremist
statements.)
Roger Stone, a longtime confidant of President Trump who worked on the 2016 campaign, was
convicted last year in the Robert Mueller investigation into alleged collusion between Russia
and the Trump campaign.
Stone has denied wrongdoing, consistently criticizing the accusations against him as
politically motivated. Numerous analysts have found the "Russiagate" theory unconvincing, and
the American Bar Association reported that Mueller's investigation "did not find sufficient
evidence that President Donald Trump's campaign coordinated with Russia to influence the
United States' 2016 election."
There have been previous suggestions that it was Israel that had most worked to influence
the election.
[MORE]
The back story that's really significant here is that Mueller redacted evidence of
Israeli interference in the U.S. election, and the Russiagate! scandal was a cover for that and
other third-country meddling. Most of us here knew that a couple years ago .
Mint Press has also reported on Israeli intelligence involvement/infiltration into critical
US defense networks as well as their strong presence in social media.
I'd be surprised if there was an election in recent decades that they weren't involved
in.
If Trump campaign people were actually soliciting Israeli help, that would be newsworthy and
probably criminal. But Mueller throwing the book at Stone and Corsi over BS and covering what
could actually be serious? That's twisted.
Laura Rozen
@lrozen
Profile picture https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1255347751153434624.html
Apr 29th 2020, 5 tweets, 2 min read
Stone arranged for meeting, but said in later email that a "fiasco" ensued after the
associate brought a foreign military officer along
Unroll available on Thread Reader
On Aug.20, 2016, CORSI told STONE they
needed to meet w/[ ] to determine "what if anything Israel plans to do in
Oct"courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco
huh courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco
courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco
(One PM in Rome on June 27 2016 was Netanyahu) mfa.gov.il/MFA/PressRoom/
Mint Press has also reported on Israeli intelligence involvement/infiltration into
critical US defense networks as well as their strong presence in social media.
I'd be surprised if there was an election in recent decades that they weren't involved
in.
If Trump campaign people were actually soliciting Israeli help, that would be newsworthy
and probably criminal. But Mueller throwing the book at Stone and Corsi over BS and
covering what could actually be serious? That's twisted.
@leveymg is reposted below, for those who want to read for themselves:
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
for the
District of Columbia
In the Matter of the Search of
(Briefly describe the property to be searched
or identify the person by name and address)
INFORMATION ASSOCIATED WITH THE GOOGLE
ACCOUNT ,
)
Case: 1:18-sc-01518
Assigned To : Howell, Beryl A.
Assign. Date: 5/4/2018
Description: Search & Seizure Warrant
SEARCH AND SEIZURE WARRANT
To: Any authorized law enforcement officer
An application by a federal law enforcement officer or an attorney for the government requests
the search
of the following person or property located in the Northern District of California
(identify the person or describe the property to be searched and give its location):
See Attachment A.
I find that the affidavit(s), or any recorded testimony, establish probable cause to search and
seize the person or property
described above, and that such search will reveal (identify the person or describe the property
to be seized):
See Attachment B.
YOU ARE COMMANDED to execute this warrant on or before May 18, 2018 (not to exceed 14 days)
';$ in the daytime 6:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. 0 at any time in the day or night because good cause
has been established.
Unless delayed notice is authorized below, you must give a copy of the warrant and a receipt
for the property taken to the
person from whom, or from whose premises, the property was taken, or leave the copy and receipt
at the place where the
property was taken.
The officer executing this warrant, or an officer present during the execution of the warrant,
must prepare an inventory
as required by law and promptly return this warrant and inventory to Hon. Beryl A. Howell
(United States Magistrate Judge)
0 Pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 3103a(b), I find that immediate notification may have an adverse
result listed in 18 U.S.C.
§ 2705 ( except for delay of trial), and authorize the officer executing this warrant to
delay notice to the person who, or whose
property, will be searched or seized (check the awropriate box)
0 for __ days (not to exceed 30) 0 until, the facts justifying, the later specific date of
Date and time issued:
Judge 's signature
City and state: Washington, DC Hon. Beryl A. Howell, Chief U.S. District Judge
Printed name and title
Case 1:19-mc-00029-CRC Document 29-7 Filed 04/28/20 Page 1 of 35
AO 93 (Rev 11/13) Search and Seizure Warrant (Page 2)
Return
Case No.: Date and time warrant executed: Copy of warrant and inventory left with:
Inventory made in the presence of :
Inventory of the property taken and name of any person(s) seized:
Certification
I declare under penalty of pe1jury that this inventory is correct and was returned along with
the original warrant to the
designated judge.
Date:
Executing officer's signature
Printed name and title
Case 1:19-mc-00029-CRC Document 29-7 Filed 04/28/20 Page 2 of 35
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA Cf erk, U.S. District & Bankrupicy
Gourts for tirn District of Columbl&
IN THE MATTER OF THE SEARCH OF
INFORMATION ASSOCIATED WITH
THE GOOGLE ACCOUNT
ORDER
Case: 1: 18-sc-01518
Assigned To : Howell, Beryl A.
Assign. Date: 5/4/2018
Description: Search & Seizure Warrant
The United States has filed a motion to seal the above-captioned warrant and related
documents, including the application and affidavit in support thereof ( collectively the
"Warrant"),
and to require Google LLC, an electronic communication and/or remote computing services
with
headquarters in Mountain View, California, not to disclose the existence or contents of the
Warrant
pursuant to !8 U.S.C. § 2705(b).
The Court finds that the United States has established that a compelling governmental
interest exists to justify the requested sealing, and that there is reason to believe that
notification
of the existence of the Warrant will seriously jeopardize the investigation, including by
giving the
targets an opportunity to flee from prosecution, destroy or tamper with evidence, and
intimidate
witnesses. See 18 U.S.C. § 2705(b)(2)-(5).
IT IS THEREFORE ORDERED that the motion is hereby GRANTED, and that the
warrant, the application and affidavit in support thereof, all attachments thereto and other
related
materials, the instant motion to seal, and this Order be SEALED until further order of the
Court;
and
Page 1 of2
Case 1:19-mc-00029-CRC Document 29-7 Filed 04/28/20 Page 3 of 35
IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that, pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 2705(b), Google and its
employees shall not disclose the existence or content of the Warrant to any other person (
except
attorneys for Google for the purpose of receiving legal advice) for a period of one year
unless
otherwise ordered by the Court.
Date 41/Y>lf
THE HONORABLE BERYL A. HOWELL
CHIEF UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE
Page 2 of2
Case 1:19-mc-00029-CRC Document 29-7 Filed 04/28/20 Page 4 of 35
AO 106 (Rev. 04/10) Application for a Search Warrant
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
In the Matter of the Search of
(Briefly describe the property to be searched
or identify the person by name and address)
for the
District of Columbia
MA\t !,
•'II·\! • ·r 2018
,,t,c,rk, U.S. District & Bankruptcy
C . ,,gurt~ lar 1hli-•D1strlctof Gollf/nh]•
ase.1:18-sc-01518 ·'
Ass!gned To: Howell, Beryl A
INFORMATION ASSOCIATED WITH THE GOOGLE
ACCOUNT
)
)
)
)
)
)
Assign. Date: 5;412018 ·
Description: Search & Seizure Warrant
APPLICATION FOR A SEARCH WARRANT
I, a federal law enforcement officer or an attorney for the government, request a search
warrant and state under
penalty of perjury that I have reason to believe that on the following person or property
(identify the person or describe the
property to be searched and give ifs location):
See Attachment A.
located in the Northern District of _____ C,-_a-,.l"'if.=o,..rn~ia.._ __ , there is now
concealed (identijj, the
person or describe the property to be seized):
See Attachment B.
The basis for the search under Fed. R. Crim. P. 4 l(c) is (check one or more):
~ evidence of a crime;
ief contraband, fruits of crime, or other items illegally possessed;
r'lf property designed for use, intended for use, or used in committing a crime;
D a person to be arrested or a person who is unlawfully restrained.
The search is related to a violation of:
Code Section
18 U.S.C. § 2
· et al.
The application is based on these facts:
See attached Affidavit.
r;/ Continued on the attached sheet.
Offense Description
aiding and abetting
see attached affidavit
D Delayed notice of __ days (give exact ending date if more than 30 days: ______ ) is
requested
under 18 U.S.C. § 3103a, the basis of which is set forth on the attached sheet.
~44 Reviewed by AUSA/SAUSA: Appbcant's signature
•Aaron Zelinsky (Special Counsel's Office) Andrew Mitchell, Supervisory Special Agent,
FBI
Printed name and title
Sworn to before me and signed in my presence.
Date:
City and state: Washington, D.C. Hon. Beryl A. Howell, Chief U.S. District Judge
Printed name and title
Case 1:19-mc-00029-CRC Document 29-7 Filed 04/28/20 Page 5 of 35
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
MAY ·· ti 1018
Clerk, LLS. District & Bar1i
Laura Rozen
@lrozen
Profile picture https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1255347751153434624.html
Apr 29th 2020, 5 tweets, 2 min read
Stone arranged for meeting, but said in later email that a "fiasco" ensued after the
associate brought a foreign military officer along
Unroll available on Thread Reader
On Aug.20, 2016, CORSI told STONE they
needed to meet w/[ ] to determine "what if anything Israel plans to do in
Oct"courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco
huh courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco
courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco
(One PM in Rome on June 27 2016 was Netanyahu) mfa.gov.il/MFA/PressRoom/
@leveymg request for sealing of the record -- Case 1:19-mc-00029-CRC Document 29-7
Filed 04/28/20 Pages 3 to 35 for those who want to read for themselves:
Judge's signature
Hon. Bery[ A. Howell, Chief U.S. District Judge
Printed name and title
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA Glcrk, LL$. District & Bar1kruptcy
Gourts tor tirn District of ColumtHa
IN THE MATTER OF THE SEARCH OF INFORMATION ASSOCIATED WITH THE GOOGLE ACCOUNT
Case: 1:18-sc-01518
Ass!gned To : Howell, BerylA Assign. Date : S/4/20 18
Description: Search & S izure Warrant
AFFIDAVIT IN SUPPORT OF AN APPLICATION FOR A SEARCH WARRANT
I, Andrew Mitchell, having been first duly sworn, hereby depose and state as follows:
1. I make this affidavit in support of an application for a search warrant for
information associated with the following Google Account: (hereafter
the "Target Account 1"), that is stored at premises owned, maintained, controlled or
operated by Google, Inc., a social networking company headquartered in Mountain View,
California ("Google"). The information to be searched is described in the following paragraphs
and in Attachments A and B. This affidavit is made in support of an application for a search
warrant under 18 U.S.C. §§ 2703(a), 2703(b)(l)(A) and 2703(c)(l)(A)to require Google
to disclose to the government copies of the information (including the content of
communications) further described in Attachment A. Upon receipt of the information described.
in Attachment A, government"authorized persons will review that information to locate the items
described in Attachment B.
2. I am a Special Agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and have been since
2011. As a Special Agent of the FBI, I have received training and experience in investigating
criminal and national security matters.
3. The facts in this affidavit come from my personal observations, my training and experience,
and information obtained from other agents and witnesses. This affidavit is intended
to show merely that there is sufficient probable cause for the requested warrant and does
not set fotth all of my knowledge about this matter.
4. Based on my training and experience and the facts as set forth in this affidavit, there is
probable cause to believe that the Target Accounts contain communications relevant to
violations of 18 U.S.C. § 2 (aiding and abetting), 18 U.S.C. § 3 (accessory after the
fact), 18
U.S.C. § 4 (misprision of a felony), 18 U.S.C. § 371 (conspiracy), 18 U.S.C. §
1001 (making a
false statement); 18 U.S.C. §1651 (pe1jury); 18 U.S.C. § 1030 (unauthodzed access
of a protected computer); 18 U.S.C. § 1343 (wire fraud), 18 U.S.C. § 1349 (attempt
and conspiracy to commit wire fraud), , and 52 U.S.C. § 30121 (foreign contribution ban)
(the "Subject
Offenses"). 1
5. As set forth below, in May 2016, Jerome CORSI provided contact information for
that there was an "OCTOBER SURPRISE COMING" and that Trump, ''[i]s going to be defeated unless
we intervene. We have critical intel." In that same time period, STONE communicated directly
via Twitter with WikiLeaks, Julian ASSANGE, and Guccifer 2.0. On July 25, 2016, STONE emailed
instructions to Jerome CORSI to "Get to Assange" in person at the Ecuadorian Embassy and "get
pending WikiLeaks emails[.]" On August 2, 2016, CORSI emailed STONE back that,"Word is friend
in embassy plans 2 more dumps. One shortly after I1m back. 2nd in Oct. Impact planned to be
very damaging." On August 20, 2016, CORSI told STONE that they
needed to meet o determine "what if anything Israel plans to do in Oct."
1 Federal law prohibits a foreign national from making, directly or indirectly, an
expenditure or independent expenditure in connection with federal elections. 52 U.S.C. §
3012l(a)(l)(C); see also id. § 30101(9) & (17) (defining the terms "expenditure" and
"independent expenditure").
(the Target Account) is le Account, which
sed to communicate with STONE and CORSI.
JURISDICTION
6. This Court has jurisdiction to issue the requested warrant because it is "a court of
competent jurisdiction" as defined by 18 U.S.C. § 2711. Id. §§ 2703(a),
(b)(l)(A), & (c)(l)(A). Specifically, the Court is "a district court of the United State
(including a magistrate judge of such a court) ... that has jurisqiction over the offense being
investigated." 18 U.S.C.
§ 2711(3)(A)(i). The offense conduct included activities in Washington, D.C., as detailed
below, including in paragraph 8.
PROBABLE CAUSE
A. U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) Assessment of Russian Government Backed Hacking
Activity during the 2016 Presidential Election
7. On October 7, 2016, the U.S. Depa1tment of Homeland Security and the Office of the
Director of National Intelligence released a joint statement of an intelligence assessment of
Russian activities and intentions during the 2016 presidential election. In the report, the
USIC assessed the following, with emphasis added:
8. The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian Government directed the
recent compromises of e mails frorri US persons and institutions, including from US political
organizations. The recent disclosures of alleged hacked e mails on sites like DCLeaks.com and
WikiLeaks and by the Guccifer 2.0 online persona are consistent with the methods and
motivations of Russian-directed efforts. These thefts and disclosures
Laura Rozen
@lrozen
Profile picture https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1255347751153434624.html
Apr 29th 2020, 5 tweets, 2 min read
Stone arranged for meeting, but said in later email that a "fiasco" ensued after the
associate brought a foreign military officer along
Unroll available on Thread Reader
On Aug.20, 2016, CORSI told STONE they
needed to meet w/[ ] to determine "what if anything Israel plans to do in
Oct"courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco
huh courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco
courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco
(One PM in Rome on June 27 2016 was Netanyahu) mfa.gov.il/MFA/PressRoom/
"... What is often forgotten is that at the same time, the Soviet society was oppressive, the corrupt and geriatric CPSU ran everything and was mostly hated, the Russian people were afraid of the KGB and could not enjoy the freedoms folks in the US or Europe had. In truth, it was a mixed bag, but it is easy to remember only the good stuff. ..."
"... The core of this opposition is formed of Communists and Communist sympathizers who absolutely hate Putin for his (quite outspoken) anti-Communism. Let's call them "new Communists" or "Neo-Communists". And here is what makes them much more dangerous than the "liberal" opposition: the Neo-Communists are often absolutely right. ..."
"... Under Putin the Russian foreign policy has been such a success that even the Russian liberals, very reluctantly, admit that he did a pretty good job. However, the internal, many financial, policies of Russia have been a disaster. Just one example, the fact that the major Russian banks are bloated with their immense revenues, did not prevent millions of Russians from living in poverty and many hundreds of thousands of Russian small/family businesses of going under due to the very high interest rates. ..."
"... First, Russia has been in a state of war against the US+EU+NATO since at least 2015. Yes, this war is 80% informational, 15% economic and only 5% kinetic. But it is a very real war nonetheless. ..."
"... The Neo-Communist Russian opposition steadfastly pretends like there is no war, like all the losses (economic and human) are only the result of corruption and incompetence. They forget that during the last war between Russia and the "United West" German tanks were at the outskirts of Moscow. ..."
"... if Putin decided to follow the advice of, say, Glaziev and his supporters, the Russian bankers would react with a "total war" against Putin. ..."
"... If you study Russian history, you will soon realize that Russia did superbly with military enemies, did very averagely with diplomatic efforts (which often negated military victories) and did terribly with what we could call the "internal opposition". ..."
"... I have always, and still do, consider that the real danger for Putin and those who share his views is the internal, often "insider", opposition in Russia. They were always the ones to present the biggest threat to any Russian ruler, from the Czars to Stalin. ..."
"... This new Neo-Communist 6th column is, however, a much more dangerous threat to the future of Russia than the pro-western 5th columnists. Some of their tactics are extremely devious. For example, one of the things you hear most often from these folks is this: "unless Putin does X, Y or Z, there is a risk of a bloody revolution". ..."
"... "Too often in our history we have seen that instead of an opposition to the government we are confronted with an opposition to Russia herself. And we know how this ends: with the destruction of the state as such". ..."
"... Now, if you think as a true patriot of Russia, you have to realize that Russia suffered from not one, but two, truly horrible revolutions: in 1917 and 1991. In each case the consequences of these revolutions (irrespective of how justified they might have appeared at the time) were absolutely horrible: both in 1917 and in 1991 Russia almost completely vanished as a country, and millions suffered terribly. I now hold is as axiomatic that nothing would be worse for Russia than *any* revolution, no matter what ideology feeds it or how bad the "regime in power" might appear to be. ..."
"... These Neo-Communists would very much disagree with me. They "warn" about a revolution, while in reality trying to create the conditions for one. ..."
"... There is a very vocal internal opposition to Putin in Russia which is most unlikely to ever get real popular support, but which could possibly unite enough of the nostalgics of the Soviet era to create a real crisis. This internal opposition clearly and objectively weakens the authority/reputation of Putin, which has been main goal of the western "alphabet soup" ever since Putin came to power. ..."
"... This internal opposition, being mostly nostalgics of the Soviet era, will get no official support from the West, but it will enjoy a maximal covert support from the western "alphabet soup". ..."
"... Finally, this Neo-Communist opposition will never seize power, but it might create a very real internal political crisis which will very much weaken Putin and the Eurasian Sovereignists. ..."
"... The bottom line is this: Putin represents something very unique and very precious: he is a true Russian patriot, but he is not one nostalgic for the days of the Soviet Union. Right now, he is the only (or one of very few) Russian politician which can claim this quality. He needs to preempt the crisis which the Neo-Communists could trigger not by silencing them, but by realizing that on some issues the Russian people do, in fact, agree with them (even if they are not willing to call for a revolution). ..."
"... That poll showing Putin on top of everybody else, tells me that he is the Single-Point-Failure. If he croaks, so does Russia. Very much like Jesus, or Nicholas the II, or Gorbachov, before him -- all obrazovanshchiki, educated past the point of their intelligence level ..."
For those of us who followed the Russian Internet there is a highly visible phenomenon
taking place which is quite startling: there are a lot of anti-Putin videos posted on YouTube
or its Russian equivalents. Not only that, but a flurry of channels has recently appeared which
seem to have made bashing Putin or Mishustin their full-time job. Of course, there have always
been anti-Putin and anti-Medvedev videos in the past, but what makes this new wave so different
from the old one is that they attack Putin and Mishustin not from pro-Western positions, but
from putatively Russian patriotic positions. Even the supposed (not true) "personal advisor" to
Putin and national-Bolshevik (true), Alexander Dugin has joined that movement (see
here if you understand
Russian).
This is a new, interesting and complex phenomenon, and I will try to unpack it here.
First, we have to remember that Putin was extremely successful at destroying the pro-Western
opposition which, while shown on a daily basis on Russian TV, represents something in the 3-5%
of the people at most. You might ask why they are so frequent on TV, and the reason is simple:
the more they talk, the more they are hated.
So far from silencing the opposition, the Kremlin not only gives it air time, it even pays
opposition figures top dollars to participate in the most popular talk shows. See here and
here for
more details
Truly, the reputation of the pro-Western "liberal" (in the Russian sense) opposition is now
roadkill in Russia. Yes, there is a core of Russophobic Russians who hate Russia with a passion
(they refer to it as "Rashka") and their hatred for everything Russian is so obvious that they
are universally despised all over the country (the one big exception being Moscow where there
is a much stronger "liberal" opposition which gets the support of all those who had a great
time pillaging Russia in the 1990s and who now hate Putin for putting an end to their
malfeasance).
As for the Duma opposition, it is an opposition only in name. They make noises, they bitch
here and there, they condemn this or that, but at the end of the day, they will not represent a
credible opposition at all.
The chart is in Russian, but it is also extremely simple to understand. On the Y axis, you
see the percentage of people who "totally trust" and "mostly trust" the six politicians, in
order: Putin, Mishustin, Zhirinovskii, Ziuganov, Mironov and Medvedev. The the X axis you see
the time frame going from July 2019 to April 2020.
The only thing which really matters is this: in spite all the objective and subjective
problems of Russia, in spite of a widely unpopular pension reform, in spite of all the western
sanctions and in spite of the pandemic, Putin still sits alone in a rock-solid position: he has
the overwhelming support of the Russian people. This single cause pretty much explains
everything else I will be talking about today.
As most of you probably remember, there were already several waves of anti-Putin PSYOPS in
the past, but they all failed for very simple reasons:
Most Russians remember the horrors of
the 1990s when the pro-Western "liberals" were in power. Second, the Russian people could
observe how the West put bona fide rabidly russophobic Nazis in power in Kiev.
The liberals expressed a great deal of sympathy for the Ukronazi regime. Few Russians doubt
that if the pro-western "liberals" got to power, they would turn Russia into something very
similar to today's Ukraine. Next, the Russians could follow, day after day, how the Ukraine
imploded, went through a bloody civil war, underwent a almost total de-industrialization and
ended up with a real buffoon as President (Zelenskii just appointed, I kid you not, Saakashvili
as Vice Prime Minister of the Ukraine, that is all you need to know to get the full measure of
what kind of clueless imbecile Zelenskii is!). Not only do the liberals blame Russia for what
happened to this poor country, they openly support Zelenskii. Most (all?) of the pro-western
"NGO" (I put that in quotation marks, because these putatively non-governmental organization
were entirely financed by western governments, mostly US and UK) were legally forced to reveal
their sources of financing and most of them got listed as "foreign agents". Others were simply
kicked out of Russia. Thus, it became impossible for the AngloZionists to trigger what appeared
to be "mass protests" under these condition. There is a solid "anti-Maidan" movement in Russia
(including in Moscow!) which is ready to "pounce" (politically) in case of any Maidan-like
movement in Russia. I strongly suspect that the FSB has a warm if unofficial collaboration with
them. The Russian internal security services (FSB, FSO, National Guard, etc.) saw a major
revival under Putin and they are now not only more powerful than in the past, but also much
better organized to deal with subversion. As for the armed forces are solidly behind Putin and
Shoigu. While in the 1990s Russia was basically defenseless, Russia today is a very tough nut
to crack for western subversion/PSYOP operations. Last, but not least, the Russian liberals are
so obviously from the class Alexander Solzhenitsyn referred to as " obrazovanshchina ", a word hard to
translate but which roughly means "pretend [to be] educated": these folks have always
considered themselves very superior to the vast majority of the Russian people and they simply
cannot hide their contempt for the "common man" (very similar to Hillary's "deporables"). The
common man fully realizes that and, quite logically, profoundly distrusts and even hates
"liberals".
There came a moment when the western curators of the Russian 5th column realized that
calling Putin names in the western press, or publicly accusing him of being a "bloody despot"
and a "KGB killer" might work with the gullible and brainwashed western audience, but it got
absolutely no traction whatsoever in Russia.
And then, somebody, somewhere (I don't know who, or where) came up with an truly brilliant
idea: accusing Putin of not being a patriot and declare that he is a puppet in the hands of the
AngloZionist Empire. This was nothing short of brilliant, I have to admit that.
First, they tried to sell the idea that Putin was about to "sell out" (or "trade")
Novorussia. One theory was that Russia would stand by and let the Ukronazis invade Novorussia.
Another one was that the US and Russia would make a secret deal and "give" Syria to Putin, if
he "gave" Novorussia to the Empire. Alternatively, there was the version that Russia would
"give" Syria to Trump and he would "give" Novorussia to Putin. The actual narrative does not
matter. What matters, A LOT, is that Putin was not presented as the "new Hitler" who would
invade Poland and the Baltics, who would poison the Skripals, who would hack DNC servers and
"put Trump into power". These plain stupid fairy tales had not credibility in Russia. But Putin
"selling out" Novorussia was much more credible, especially after it was clear that Russia did
not allow the DNR/LNR forces to seize Mariupol.
I remain convinced that this was the correct decision. Why? Because had the DNR/LNR forces
entered Mariupol their critical supply lines would have been cut off by an envelopment maneuver
by the Ukrainian forces. Yes, the DNR/LNR forces did have the power needed to take Mariupol,
but then they would end up surrounded by Ukronazi forces in a "cauldron/siege" kind of
situation which would then have forced Russia to openly intervene to either support these
forces. That was a no brainer in military terms, but in political terms this would have been a
disaster for Russia and a dream come true to the AngloZionists who could (finally!) "prove"
that Russia was involved all along. The folks in the Russian General Staff are clearly much
smarter than the couch-generals which were accusing Russia of treason for now letting Mariupol
be liberated.
Eventually, both the "sellout Syria" and the "sellout Novorussia" narratives lost their
traction and the PSYOPS specialists in the West tried another good one: Putin became the
obedient servant of Israel and, personally, Netanyahu. The arguments were very similar: Putin
did not allow Syrians (or Russians) to shoot down Israeli aircraft over the Mediterranean or
Lebanon, Putin did not use the famous S-400 to protect Syrian targets from Israeli strikes, and
Putin did not land an airborne division in Syria to deal with the Takfiris. And nevermind here
the fact that the officially declared Russian objectives in Syria were only to " stabilize the
legitimate authority and create conditions for a political compromise " (see here for
details). The simple truth is that Putin never said that he would liberate each square meter of
Syrian land from the Takfiris nor did he promise to defend Syria against Israel!
Still, for a while the Internet was inundated with articles claiming that Putin and
Netanyahu were closely coordinating their every step and that Putin was Israel's chum.
Eventually, this canard also lost a lot of credibility. After all, most folks are smart
enough to realize that if Putin wanted to help Israel, all he had to do is well exactly
*nothing*: the Takfiris would take Damascus and it would be "game over" for a civilized Syria
and the Israelis would have a perfect pretext to intervene.
As I have already mentioned in
a past article , these were the original Israeli goals for Syria:
Bring down a
strong secular Arab state along with its political structure, armed forces and security
services. Create total chaos and horror in Syria justifying the creation of a "security zone"
by Israel not only in the Golan, but further north. Trigger a civil war in Lebanon by
unleashing the Takfiri crazies against Hezbollah. Let the Takfiris and Hezbollah bleed each
other to death, then create a "security zone", but this time in Lebanon. Prevent the creation
of a Shia axis Iran-Iraq-Syria-Lebanon. Breakup Syria along ethnic and religious lines. Create
a Kurdistan which could then be used against Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran. Make it possible for
Israel to become the uncontested power broker in the Middle-East and forces the KSA, Qatar,
Oman, Kuwait and all others to have to go to Israel for any gas or oil pipeline project.
Gradually isolate, threaten, subvert and eventually attack Iran with a wide regional coalition
of forces. Eliminate all center of Shia power in the Middle-East.
It is quite easy nowadays to prove the two following theses: 1) Israel dismally failed to
achieve ANY of the above set goals and 2) the Russian intervention is the one single most
important factor which prevented Israel from achieving these goals (the 2nd most important one
was the heroic support given by Iran and Hezbollah who, quite literally, "saved the day",
especially during the early phases of the Russian intervention. Only an ignorant or dishonest
person could seriously claim that Russia and Israel are working together when Russia, in
reality, completely defeated Israel in Syria.
Still, while the first PSYOP (Putin the new Hitler) failed, and while the second PSYOP
(Putin the sellout) also failed, the PSYOP specialists in the West came up with a much more
potentially dangerous and effective PSYOP operation.
But first, they did something truly brilliant: they realized that their best allies in
Russia would not be the (frankly, clueless) "liberals" but that they would find a much more
powerful "ally" in those nostalgic of the Soviet Union. This I have to explain in some
detail.
First, there is one thing human psychology which I have observed all my life: we tend to
remember the good and forget the bad. Today, most of what I remember from boot-camp (and even
"survival week") sounds like fun times. The truth is that while in boot camp I hated almost
every day. In a similar way, a lot of Russian have developed a kind of nostalgia for the Soviet
era. I can understand that. After all, during the 50s the USSR achieved a truly miraculous
rebirth, then in the 60s and 70s there were a lot of true triumphs. Finally, even in the hated
80s the USSR did achieve absolutely spectacular things (in science, technology, etc.). This is
all true. What is often forgotten is that at the same time, the Soviet society was
oppressive, the corrupt and geriatric CPSU ran everything and was mostly hated, the Russian
people were afraid of the KGB and could not enjoy the freedoms folks in the US or Europe had.
In truth, it was a mixed bag, but it is easy to remember only the good stuff.
Furthermore, a lot of folks who had high positions during the Soviet era did lose it all.
And now that Russia is objectively undergoing various difficult trials, these folks have
"smelled blood" and they clearly hope that by some miracle Putin will be overthrown. He won't,
if only for the following very basic reasons:
The kind of state apparatus which protects
Putin today can easily deal with this new, pseudo (I will explain below why I say "pseudo")
patriotic opposition. In the ranks of this opposition there is absolutely no credible leader
(remember the chart above!) This opposition mostly complains, but offers no real solutions.
The core of this opposition is formed of Communists and Communist sympathizers who
absolutely hate Putin for his (quite outspoken) anti-Communism. Let's call them "new
Communists" or "Neo-Communists". And here is what makes them much more dangerous than the
"liberal" opposition: the Neo-Communists are often absolutely right.
The (in my opinion) sad reality is that, for all his immense qualities, Putin is indeed a
liberal, at least an economic sense. This manifests itself in two very different ways:
Putin
has still not removed all of the 5th columnists (aka "Atlantic Integrationists" aka "Washington
consensus" types) from power. Yes, he did ditch Medvedev, but others (Nabiulina, Siluanov,
etc.) are still there. Putin inherited a very bad system where almost all they key actors were
5th columnists. Not just a few (in)famous individuals, but an entire CLASS (in a Marxist sense
of the term) of people who hate anything "social" and who support "liberal" ideas just so they
can fill their pockets.
Here is the paradox: the USSR died in 1991-1993, Putin is an anti-Communist, but there STILL
is a (Soviet-style) Nomenklatura in Russia, except for now
they are often referred to as "oligarchs" (which is incorrect because, say, the Ukrainian
oligarch truly decide the fate of the nation whereas this new Russian Nomenklatura
does not decide the fate of Russia as a whole, but they have a major influence in the financial
sector, which is what they care mostly about).
So we have something of a, maybe not quite "perfect", but still very dangerous storm looming
over Russia. How? Consider this:
Under Putin the Russian foreign policy has been such a success that even the Russian
liberals, very reluctantly, admit that he did a pretty good job. However, the internal, many
financial, policies of Russia have been a disaster. Just one example, the fact that the major
Russian banks are bloated with their immense revenues, did not prevent millions of Russians
from living in poverty and many hundreds of thousands of Russian small/family businesses of
going under due to the very high interest rates.
One key problem in Russia is that both the Central Bank and the major commercial banks only
care about their profits. What Russia truly needs is a state-owed DEVELOPMENT bank whose goal
would not be millions and billions for the few, but making it possible for the creativity of
the Russian people to truly blossom. Today, we see the exact opposite in Russia.
So what is my beef with this social ( if not quite "Socialist") opposition?
They are so focused on their narrow complaints that they completely miss the big picture.
Let me explain.
First, Russia has been in a state of war against the US+EU+NATO since at least 2015.
Yes, this war is 80% informational, 15% economic and only 5% kinetic. But it is a very real war
nonetheless. The key characteristic of a real war is that victory is only achieved by one
side, the other is fully defeated. Which means that the war between the AngloZionist Empire is
an existential one: one party will win and survive, the other one will disappear and will be
replaced with a qualitatively new polity/society. The Neo-Communist Russian opposition
steadfastly pretends like there is no war, like all the losses (economic and human) are only
the result of corruption and incompetence. They forget that during the last war between Russia
and the "United West" German tanks were at the outskirts of Moscow.
Well, of course they know that. But they pretend not to. And this is why I think of them as
the 6th column (as opposed to the 5th, openly "liberal" and pro-Western one).
Second, while this opposition is, in my opinion, absolutely correct in deploring Putin's
apparent belief that following the advice of what I would call "IMF types" is safer than
following recommendations of what could be loosely called "opposition economists" (here I think
of Glaziev, whose views I personally fully support), they fail to realize the risks involved in
crushing the "IMF types". The sad truth is that Russian banks are very powerful and that in
many ways, the state cannot afford totally alienating them. Right now the banks support Putin
only because he supports them. But if Putin decided to follow the advice of, say, Glaziev
and his supporters, the Russian bankers would react with a "total war" against Putin.
If you study Russian history, you will soon realize that Russia did superbly with
military enemies, did very averagely with diplomatic efforts (which often negated military
victories) and did terribly with what we could call the "internal opposition".
So let me repeat it here: I do not consider NATO or the US as credible military threats to
Russia, unless they decide to use nuclear weapons, at which point both Russia and the West
would suffer terribly. But even in this scenario, Russia would prevail (Russia has a 10-15 year
advantage against the US in both civilian and military nuclear technologies and the Russian
society is far more survivable one -- if this topic is of interest to you, just read Dmitry
Orlov's books who explains it all better than I ever could). I have always, and still do,
consider that the real danger for Putin and those who share his views is the internal, often
"insider", opposition in Russia. They were always the ones to present the biggest threat to any
Russian ruler, from the Czars to Stalin.
This new Neo-Communist 6th column is, however, a much more dangerous threat to the
future of Russia than the pro-western 5th columnists. Some of their tactics are extremely
devious. For example, one of the things you hear most often from these folks is this: "unless
Putin does X, Y or Z, there is a risk of a bloody revolution". Having listened to many
tens of their videos, I can tell you with total security that far from fearing a bloody
revolution, these folks in reality dream of such a revolution.
"Too often in our history
we have seen that instead of an opposition to the government we are confronted with an
opposition to Russia herself. And we know how this ends: with the destruction of the state as
such".
Now, if you think as a true patriot of Russia, you have to realize that Russia suffered
from not one, but two, truly horrible revolutions: in 1917 and 1991. In each case the
consequences of these revolutions (irrespective of how justified they might have appeared at
the time) were absolutely horrible: both in 1917 and in 1991 Russia almost completely vanished
as a country, and millions suffered terribly. I now hold is as axiomatic that nothing would be
worse for Russia than *any* revolution, no matter what ideology feeds it or how bad the "regime
in power" might appear to be.
Putin is acutely aware of that (see image).
These Neo-Communists would very much disagree with me. They "warn" about a revolution,
while in reality trying to create the conditions for one.
Now let me be clear: I am absolutely convinced that NO revolution (Neo-Communist or other)
is possible in Russia. More accurately, while I do believe that an attempt for a revolution
could happen, I believe that any coup/revolution against Putin is bound to fail. Why? The
graphic above.
Even if by some (horrible) miracle, it was possible to defeat/neutralize the combined power
of the FSB+FSO+National Guard+Armed forces (which I find impossible), this "success" would be
limited to Moscow or, at most, the Moscow Oblast. Beyond that it is all "Putin territory". In
terms of firepower, the Moscow Oblast has a lot of first-rate units, but it does not even come
close to what the "rest of Russia" could engage (just the 58th Army in the south would be
unstoppable). But even that is not truly crucial. The truly crucial thing following any
coup/revolution would be the 70%+ of Russian people who, for the first time in centuries, truly
believe that Putin stands for their interest and that he is "their man". These people will
never accept any illegal attempt to remove Putin from power. That is the key reason why no
successful revolution is currently possible in Russia.
But while any revolution/coup would be bound to fail, it could very much result in a
bloodbath way bigger than what happened in 1993 (where the military was mostly not engaged in
the events).
Now lets add it all up.
There is a very vocal internal opposition to Putin in Russia which is most unlikely to
ever get real popular support, but which could possibly unite enough of the nostalgics of the
Soviet era to create a real crisis. This internal opposition clearly and objectively weakens
the authority/reputation of Putin, which has been main goal of the western "alphabet soup" ever
since Putin came to power.
This internal opposition, being mostly nostalgics of the Soviet era, will get no
official support from the West, but it will enjoy a maximal covert support from the western
"alphabet soup".
Finally, this Neo-Communist opposition will never seize power, but it might create a
very real internal political crisis which will very much weaken Putin and the Eurasian
Sovereignists.
So what is the solution?
Putin needs to preempt any civil unrest. Removing Medvedev and replacing him by Mishustin
was the correct move, but it was also too little too late. Frankly, I believe that it is high
time for Putin to finally openly break with the "Washington consensus types" and listen to
Glaziev who, at least, is no Communist.
Russia has always been a collectivistic society, and she needs to stop apologizing (even
just mentally) for this. Instead, she should openly and fully embrace her collectivistic
culture and traditions and show the "Washington consensus" types to the door.
Yes, the Moscow elites will be furious, but it is also high time to tell these folks that
they don't own Russia, and that while they could make a killing prostituting themselves to the
Empire, most Russian don't want to do that.
The bottom line is this: Putin represents something very unique and very precious: he is
a true Russian patriot, but he is not one nostalgic for the days of the Soviet Union. Right
now, he is the only (or one of very few) Russian politician which can claim this quality. He
needs to preempt the crisis which the Neo-Communists could trigger not by silencing them, but
by realizing that on some issues the Russian people do, in fact, agree with them (even if they
are not willing to call for a revolution).
Does that sound complicated or even convoluted? If it does, it is because it is. But for all
the nuances we can discern a bottom line: it is not worth prevailing (or even failing) if that
weakens/threatens Russia. Right now, the Neo-Communist opposition is, objectively, a threat to
the stability and prosperity of Russia. That does NOT, however, mean that these folks are
always wrong. They often are spot on, 100% correct.
Putin needs to prove them wrong by listening to them and do the right thing.
Difficult? Yes. Doable? Yes. Therefore he has to do it.
Russia needs to be strong for the sake of global civilization, human decency, religious
freedom, etc, not only for her own good. going back to communism and Godlessness should be
unthinkable. nor should we sell our souls for 30 kopeks of silver to become the dumping
ground for western filth and surplus.
Russia has the unique position, the space and resources, an intelligent population, Orthodox
tradition to show mankind that a decent, safe, compassionate, sound existence is
possible.
although great leaders are a gift from Above, the state also should make every effort to
identify and prepare Putin's successor while strengthening the institutions so that the
people will perceive them as their own and will not be tempted to support revolutionary
radicals again.
First of all, Russian electorate have much better sources and the grasp of the international
political scene than the American media's self-centered pseudo-trues.
Putin's obvious pros:
-Reclaimed Russian crucial energy industry from the pillaging by
Yeltsin oligarchs. Now babysat by the UK and Israel. -Russian voters' motto: "We vote for a
leader that is most criticized and slandered by our enemies and adversaries. Vote almost
never for their selected puppet a la Kasparov." -Putin's brilliant move to reclaimed Crimea
-- administratively attached to Ukraine in 1954 by a communist dictate after being centuries
part of Russia -- by a democratic mean. -Western sanctions are viewed by the Russian
electorate as a declaration of the "enemy status". Furthermore, they are also viewed as a
sinister attempt to slow down the Russian economic progress. -NATO backstabbing expansion to
Russian border. Continuation of Western military encircling Russia -- US military in Poland.
-Opposing Western clumsy interference in Ukraine or in Georgia. Liberating S. Ossetia from
the Georgia's lunatic who is now Ukraine deputy prime minister.
I have always seen Putin as a late, reluctant, and often only partially effective reacter to
a crisis, never someone who proactively acts to defuse one before it gets bad. I will repeat
what I've said many, many times: in 2014 Putin could have sent two battalions of Spetsnaz
into Kiev, routed the Ukranazi coup regime, reinstated Yanukovych, and withdrawn with the
warning that if there was ever again any attempt to stage another Maidan Russian troops would
be back and this time to stay. Instead he got Russia blamed for an invasion he should have
but did not carry out, and consequently sanctions that are still in effect to this day, not
to speak of a NATO proxy thrust against the Russian heartland. (That Russia needed the
sanctions and that they were good for Russia is another thing entirely; it isn't as though
Putin planned them to turn out like that.)
In Syria in 2015 Putin waited until the government was in desperate straits -- similar to
the final stages of the Libyan government forces' collapse in 2011 as Obama's terrorists
advanced on Tripoli -- before sending in small commando detachments and the air force. And
even then the failure to defend Syria, an ally of Russia, which has given Russia bases,
against zionazi bombing is inexcusable. For one thing it cost Russia a valuable
reconnaissance plane with priceless trained crew, after which Putin first rushed to absolve
Nazinyahu of blame before even calling the crew's families. For another the refusal to use
the S 400 merely gives the Amerikastanis an excuse to portray the S 400s as hyped,
ineffective weapons Russia does not dare to actually use. How is showing Putin's obvious
affinity to the zionazi pseudostate "anti Russian" in any way? It's the absolute and obvious
truth, from Putin's own record.
This is also why Putin will do nothing about the capitalist leeches still sucking Russia
dry (many of whom are zionazi citizens); he will have to be forced into it and then will try
to get away with cosmetic measures, leaving as much undone as he possibly can. That he has
not already eliminated the oligarchy is proof enough of that. No amount of Saker excuses is
enough to hide the fact; what could the banks do to harm Putin, given the popularity the
Saker keeps touting? You'll see that the Saker is very careful not to say anything about what
they could, he just says that they could. You'd almost think he just made it up.
I agree about the Moscow "liberals"; I met a few of them and they're always smartly
dressed, fluent in English -- with an inevitable American accent -- and they hate Russia more
than anything. I recall meeting a couple in this town in late 2014 or early 2015. I remember
saying that I support Russia's help to the Donbass freedom fighters. The woman's eyes went
round. "But why? This is a great burden for Russia, none of our business, we should never
have got involved " There is an excellent argument for shifting the capital from Moscow back
to St Petersburg, or, if that's too strategically vulnerable, to Volgograd or some other city
in the Russian interior.
By the way, as one of the "neo communists", as the Saker dismissively calls us -- in an
obvious effort to conflate us with the neo-nazis -- let me ask a question: let's suppose
everything the Saker says is correct. Well, then, is Putin immortal? No? So what happens when
he dies or retires? Who will take over? Will the "pro-Putin population" switch its loyalty to
a replacement from Putin's party, given that most of them are so despised that United Russia
keeps losing local elections from Moscow to Vladivostok? If not, what happens but either a
total change of course or .a bloody revolution?
I can certainly say that there are people in United Russia who quite openly work for the West
and push for western liberal projects in Russia, as well as attack patriotic forces.
What kind of joke is that to have people like this in the so called ruling party and in
various Duma comitees? Why is this even allowed? Why are they still there?
Russia needs a depositor credit union type local banking system. Only the local depositors
would own the bank. The bank's functioning management would be controlled by the
owners/depositors. One depositor -- one vote.
These banks would make loans only to local businesses and homeowners. They would have
nothing to do with Moscow. They would build honesty and stability.
That poll showing Putin on top of everybody else, tells me that he is the
Single-Point-Failure. If he croaks, so does Russia. Very much like Jesus, or Nicholas the II,
or Gorbachov, before him -- all obrazovanshchiki, educated past the point of their
intelligence level . The jerk already swallowed the virus-thing, hook and sinker. He's
gonna be reeled-in in no time.
As a citizen of one of the top ten nations on our Earth (US) -- I believe that Putin is the
savviest, most stable conscientious foreign policy leader of the lot.
He handled both the Ukraine and Syria without getting into all out wars. Both a
considerable achievement, considering Jews played major antagonistic roles in both
confrontations.
@Fiendly
Neighbourhood Terrorist He should have annexed East Ukraine with 12 mil Russians and its
historical Russian cities. When McCain and Biden's puppets were installed in Kiev they banned
the Russian language -- that was the right time to act and killings would have been avoided.
Russia and China deeply underestimate the extent and determination of the US and toadies to
have in place well funded campaigns to blacken those countries names, reputations and
standing. It's awful listening to Chinese or Russian officials making ritual formal protests.
And then doing nothing. Letting their country be undermined and infiltrated, allowing the
minds of the public elsewhere be poisoned. This is how the Colour Revolutions get their
traction.
It's the continual, weak, feeble and inept lack of action by Russia and China against the
western engines of smear. And this state of affairs seriously disheartens their allies and
supporters. Please stop being too reasonable, find your backbone and righteousness and FIGHT!
For Pete's sake.
@Passer
by Sad to say that Putin should have done more internally.
Saker 's point about a national bank is telling. Russia's Central Bank should have it's
neoliberals attrited. Russia's Anglo-zionists should have also been quietly & invisibly
defanged & sent into "outer-space". More actions against NGO's need to also be taken.
A nation in Russia's precarious position re: the West, can afford only so much internal
treachery .
This is not to suggest any of this would be easy. However, Putin has had & still has
considerable popular support -- political Capital capable of being used to take risky but
"right" reforms.
I'm an American living in Moscow for the last 5 years. I've also had the special privilege to
earn a masters degree in politics and economics at the Ministry of Foreign Affair's
university, MGIMO. I can say, as someone who has viewed this situation here from virtually
every angle possible as a foreigner; "Putin" has done nothing good for Russia domestically
that has not been an unplanned side effect of sanctions. And don't get me wrong, the
sanctions were the best thing that could have happened here. But all the official pro-Russia
grandstanding on the international stage aside, there are endless news stories of Russia
lobbying for readmission to the club, pleading with the US to cooperate and a return to the
status-quo. The people who make the policy here and run the institutions are all holdovers
from the 90's. Their overarching concern is that Russia -- ie the elites themselves -- are
"treated with respect" by the Western plutocracy.
But what has changed here since 2014? An explosion in traffic cameras and fines, more
restrictions (prescriptions and bans) on medicines, inflation, reforms (attacks) in pensions
and healthcare, skyrocketing housing costs and an simmering education crisis from preschool
to university where money increasingly buys limited space over need or merit. Now like a
rotten cherry on top, there is this quarantine which seems arbitrary except when you realize
the whole police force has been turned against the citizens to check QR code passes. Who is
deemed essential is also arbitrary and favors the government while bankrupting everyone else.
Gasterbyters, the backbone of the economy, are literally destitute. Russians also dislike
seeing the government luxuriously spend resources in the form of political-point scoring
coronavirus aid to the US and Italy, and then abruptly flip-flopping on the severity of the
pandemic at home. On tv its is Corona Vision 24/7 here, while families with small children
are forced out of work and cramped into tiny apartments in ugly neighborhoods, forbidden to
walk more than 10 meters from their door, their money and sanity running out. Russians who
are able, flout the quarantine at every opportunity, more concerned about being harassed by
police than getting sick.
There is a lot more I could say, but I will leave it at on this note; This new wave of
disillusionment is not coming from the West. The West has virtually no direct influence here
anymore. This is all homegrown.
Although I have admired President Putin for many years now, I have never agreed with his
economic policies. It was sad to read that he fired S. Glazyev as an adviser. When will
President Putin see that following western style economic policies is a tragedy waiting to
happen for Russia. As is happening now to most of the western countries, especially the US
and EU.
@Fiendly
Neighbourhood Terrorist Its a great mystery to me why Putin released Mikhail
Khodorkovsky. Maybe there was a good reason. No clue, it just seems odd especially when you
realize this freed oligarch was the power behind Browder's Magnitzky Act.
'Remembering only the good and forgetting the bad' is what every bad ruler, every bad
culture, demands of those it misleads.
The Anglo-Zionist Empire has been the master of that con game for its entire existence,
back to the start of English Reformation. Bolsheviks were clumsy brutes compared to
Anglo-Zionists even in their early days when they lacked sophistication and finesse.
Apr 19, 2020 US corporate takeover -- Biden 2020 Today, the U.S is living through a power
grab by lobbyists and moneyed interests in government -- the way Russia did after the Soviet
collapse of the 1990s.
Apr 2, 2020 Putin reveals KEY to political success: the poor man
Which is the bigger political influence on President Putin? Multinational corporations,
filthy rich oligarchs or financial institutions? He asserts -- it is the sentiment of 'the
common man' that is responsible for his popularity and long-standing political career.
Mar 12, 2020 Putin: The US Made A Colony Out Of Ukraine But They Want It Sustained By
Russian Money!
The 20 Questions with Vladimir Putin project is an interview with the President of Russia
on the most topical subjects of social and political life in Russia and the world.
I am afraid I'm going to have to disagree with you Saker on this issue. I just can't see how
a communist can be a traitor to their country. Some of the biggest patriots ever produced in
history have been communists. Not just in Russia, but in other countries like North Korea,
Vietnam, Cuba, China. They are willing to do anything for their country. Same thing with
modern communists, I don't see them betraying their country for personal gain.
My theory is like this: Patriotism is different in Capitalist countries (or as they like
to call themselves democracies) than in Communist countries. First of all, Capitalism has 2
types of elites -- real ones and political elites -- who are nothing more than domestic
servants, in other words nobodies. Communism usually has only one type of elites --
political. They are the only game in town.
I know that they ascribed terms such as cult of personalities to Communist leaders, but
the real megalomaniacs and narcissists can really be found among the 2 types of capitalist
elites. Those are the one that are really in love with themselves.
So how does patriotism work in communism vs. capitalism? Well, for one thing, patriotism
means love for one's country. As we all know, a country is a collection of dead rocks,
(hopefully) some arable land, few mountains and so on. Basically a country usually needs a
spokesperson. That's where the elites come in. They are the spokespersons for the needs of
the country.
I believe that communist elites are more honest spokespersons than capitalist ones. Why?
Well for one thing all communist elites were usually 1st generation elites, meaning they were
new on the job and they didn't have the span of few generations time to degenerate like the
capitalist elites. Communist elites for the most could still remember the time when they were
not elites but very ordinary people -- except maybe now the Kim dynasty in North Korea which
is in its 3rd generation of dynastic cycle.
But still, the flow of patriotism is very similar in both "communist" and capitalist
countries. Patriotism flows from the poor dumbos to the rich and powerful elites -- whether
they are political or economic elites. Patriotism whose intended recipient is the fatherland
always gets intercepted by the elites and then processed.
Basically, what that means is that when an ordinary person expresses love and affection
for their country -- it's usually ends up being manifested as love and affection for their
elites.
Remember, a country is just a pile of rocks and some other geological features, -- doesn't
know how to process affection from patriots. But the elites do, and they are the usual
beneficiaries of patriotism.
If love for your country is always a love for the elites, why do the stupid always fall
for the same trick? Well, I guess there are not too many options left, one of them being a
traitor. Still, I believe that communist elites were more honest brokers and managers of
patriotic love, because the managed to pass more of the patriotism to its intended target --
the homeland, than it was ever case with capitalist elites.
Sure, Stalin had few dachas and property that he would have been hard-pressed to explain
how he earned, but it was nothing compared to the spoils from patriotism that elites in
capitalism receive as a payout for being spokespersons for the needs of their countries.
I just don't see a communist doing something with personal benefit in mind first, and
putting the well-being of their country as a second consideration. It usually doesn't happen,
and hopefully the new generation of communists in Russia will keep up with that
tradition.
@Cyrano
Because he is one of those chronic complainers. We dont want him here because he will change
the words "Russia" and "Moscow" in his comment to "USA and Washington" and just reprint the
comment again. That comrade is all puffed up, no pun intended, with his dialogue.
@jbwilson24
I know what you mean, but you are splitting hairs -- a supremacist is a supremacist is a
supremacist. German supremacist, Anglo-Saxon supremacist, Jewish supremacist -- it all leads
to the same result.
Ukraine is dominated by supremacists. That all of Jewish supremacy, Nationalist Socialist
supremacy (the rank parts of the ideology mind you), ISIS, find themselves working and
cooperating in a historically alien land, shows that supremacists really don't mind working
with each other, before whatever the greater enemy they attack is destroyed.. Kinda like the
prelude to Highlander!
25.12. 2015 NATO: Seeking Russia's Destruction Since 1949
Baker told Gorbachev: "Look, if you remove your [300,000] troops [from east Germany] and
allow unification of Germany in NATO, NATO will not expand one inch to the east."
Saker's blind love for all things Putin, a faith in the man against all facts and logic, has
continually amazed me for years.
Putin is using Syria for Russia's advantage: 1.) a Mediterranean port at Tartus and
airfield at Kheimem; 2.) as a 'live fire' weapons testing and demonstration area, much as
Israel uses Gaza for same. Sales of Russian armaments have soared since entering Syria.
As I recall, Putin has allowed at least two Dunkirk moments, when he had ISIS on the ropes
and then agreed to a cease fire when his generals were furious at not being permitted to
finish the Takfiris off, once and for all. I, too, was furious at the time, predicting they
would simply re-trench, re-arm and continue to terrorize the hapless Syrians, which they did
for years, and may even make a comeback from Iraq (with America and Israel's help, of
course).
Same idiocy was applied, and is still being applied regarding Turkey's open and obvious
arming and supporting the terrorist scum of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in Idlib, as innocent
Syrians continue to suffer therefrom, and we daily read of the brave Syrian fighters' being
killed and maimed by these Al-Qaeda butchers .
He has let Syria's eastern oil fields fall into the hands of the US, and allowed the
Turds, excuse me, the Kurds far too much leeway in the north.
He even allows Israel to bomb Syrian territory with absolute impunity, killing countless
Syrian, Hezbollah and Iranian soldiers in the process, when a few freely operated S-300
batteries would allow the Syrians to smoke the Israeli's missiles with ease, and protect
their homeland from hundreds of brazen attacks by the Jews. Yet he denies the Syrians such
freedom, allowing the Israelis to continue their onslaught unabated.
Why? Why does he ignore the advice of his top generals to wipe out ISIS when the
opportunities arose years ago, and allow Israel to continually attack with high-precision
missiles Syrian/Hezbollah/Iranian fighters, just short of allowing the Jews to directly bomb
Assad and Damascus into the stone age, again, with complete impunity? Certainly, the existing
partition of Syria could have been easily avoided long ago, if he simply followed his
general's advice.
And why did he come out and endorse Netanyahu for PM last year, despite continually saying
Russia does not stick its nose into other countries' political affairs?
But to my mind, any world 'leader' who simply cannot control himself publicly and feels
compelled to forcibly lift a small child's t-shirt and slather the tot's bare stomach with
kisses, right in front of countless on-lookers and the international press, in Russia's most
famous public square, and then declare to the BBC thereafter that, "I wanted to cuddle him
like a kitten ", possibly reveals a great deal about why Putin seems to so frequently kiss
another offensive body part publicly, that being Israel's obnoxious, murderous butt ..
Well despite all the "well wishers" here and against saker's expert advice about what she
should be doing, Russia is still somehow alive and kicking and generally getting to be a
better place to live. Imagine that. While the countries the "well wishers" hail from are not
becoming better places to live and rather than alive and kicking are much better described as
zombiefied and twitching.
"Russia today is a very tough nut to crack for western subversion/PSYOP operations."
Correction, democratic Russia is still a tough nut to crack. But Putin cannot rule
forever, and so long as Russia is a democracy, and when there is no longer a strong and
charismatic leader, it is in considerable danger of subversion by the 'AngloZionists'. You
bet that they are waiting for this, the current situation being a preparation, to keep the
fire burning, but when and if Putin is gone, the Western trojan horses already inside will
unleash their puppets of disruption, and the AngloZionists and their Western puppets outside
will attack it vehemently, like a pack of wolves.
As one Russian joke puts it, lets' have cutlets separately and flies separately.
One thing is Youtube, FB, Wiki, and the rest of globohomo-controlled media. They would
host anything anti-Putin, because Putin is continuously stepping on the most sensitive part
of their anatomy: the wallet. If globohomo hates you, you must have done at least something
good.
The other thing is the feelings of Russians who actually live in the country. They
rightfully feel that oligarchs and the state that often acts as their cover are robbing them.
They clearly see that education is going down from Soviet levels (although it still has a
long way to go to become as dismal as the US education). They see that the best part of
healthcare is the holdover from Soviet times, whereas "progressive" paid medicine is fraud
and extortion. But that's exactly what "healthcare" is in the US, as current epidemic
demonstrated in no uncertain terms. They also see that recent pension "reform" was designed
to rob them yet again. What's more, they are at least 90% right.
So, maybe it's not the "6th column", after all? Maybe Russia is actually acquiring an
opposition worth the name? Patriotic opposition, in contrast to "liberal opposition"
consisting exclusively of traitors? If so, it's good, not bad, for the country. Nobody is
infallible, Putin included.
@Quartermaster
The US invaded Ukraine with Nuland's thugs during the Sochi Olympics
Crimea went back home. It did not want be part of Nulandistan.
Donbass does not want to be a US/Israel colony. This is the reason it revolted.
Notice the recent Ukrainegate nonsense. Why would USIsrael care so much about Ukraine if
Ukraine was really an independent nation? It is not, it is a USIsrael colony --
Nulandistan.
@ComradePuff
First I see you just parachuted into this website with this, your very first post
We usually have a welcoming ceremony for new trolls
We look at the cartoonish drivel they post and quickly point out glaring giveaways
Like 'Gasterbyters' which is not actually a word in any language
Your instructions from your troll room supervisor may have referred to the German word
'gastarbeiter' which means 'guest worker'
This expression is not a proper noun and does not get capitalized
And you're trying to tell us you have earned a master's degree from one of Moscow's most
prestigious universities..?
Yeah no, I don't think so cheeseball
Guest workers are 'crucial' to Russia..?
Again total bunk the only countries where guest workers might be 'essential' is in the
Gulf oil monarchies, where they often outnumber the natives
The US is not going to collapse if the Mexican workers take a beating neither will Germany
nor any industrial country with foreign workers why should Russia..?
And then your main whopper NOBODY in the Putin administration is 'begging' the west for
anything much less to be accepted back in some 'club'
Russia has moved on a long time ago they never cared about being in some sort of 'club' to
begin with international relations isn't junior high, which one would expect a 'graduate' of
international relations to know
All Russia ever cared about was having normal relations friendly if possible, but on equal
footing the entire tone of your fantasy is straight out of the '90s only deluded Washington
hacks still dream that we are living in the '90s
In case you haven't noticed Russia has much bigger fish to fry than to obsess over a
tottering empire
The partnership with China for instance the country with the most money, plus the country
with the most advanced military technology
I'd say it's not actually looking good for Exceptionalistan
@DererGeorgia's lunatic who is now Ukraine deputy prime minister
I think Saakashvili has not made it yet. He is being opposed by a lot of the Jews who
control this "country". Last week, the guy investigating "corruption" was sacked. His
replacement was a Jew. It is just so funny. Like a theater.
Almost all the oligarchs are Jewish -- courtesy of the World Bank and (((Western))) banks.
It is amazing that in a country of allegedly 42 million they cannot find an ethnic Slav to
get the job. I do not use the term Ukrainian as it is not really one country.
Forget the bluster. I suspect they want to bring in Saakashvili because he can bring in
more loans from the IMF. His backers are in the USA.
BTW, the new American ambassador to Ukraine is a retired US Army general. That should give
you some idea as to their line of thinking. However, I suspect that he is too knowledgeable
to want to start a war with Russia.
The departing ambassador is a female from the Ukrainian diaspora in Canada. A Ukrainian
"Nationalist" by descent. Incapable of thinking of the interests of this unfortunate
country.
In the UK, looks like Tom Tugendhat, chair of the foreign affairs committee, is spreading the
China-did-it propaganda, after his comments on the BBC last week. He can file it alongside
his promotion of the White Helmets and the Skripal affair.
Russian diplomats have slammed The New York Times' Pulitzer Prize-winning series articles
about Russia's covert activities abroad as examples of "Russophobia."
The New York Times won the Pulitzer for international
reporting Monday for six investigative articles and two videos that "expos[ed] the predations
of Vladimir Putin's regime" across Africa, the Middle East and Europe. news The Global
Footprints of 'Putin's Chef' Read more Russia's Embassy in the United States accused
the Pulitzer Prize Board of "highlighting anti-Russian materials with statements that have been
repeatedly refuted not only by Russian officials, but also by life itself."
"We consider this series of New York Times articles about Russia a wonderful collection of
undiluted Russophobic fabrications that can be studied as a guide to creating false facts," the
embassy said in a Facebook post.
Meanwhile, in a separate accusation, the editor of independent Russian investigative outlet
Proekt said at least two of The New York Times' Pulitzer-winning investigations repeated its
own previous reporting without citing it.
Congrats to @nytimes on the @PulitzerPrizes for article
series that echoes our „Master and Chef" series, which was written months before NYT.
It's a pity that there's no even a link to The Project's piece in the awarded publication.
https://t.co/MsgwqaMOn0
"[T]he winners did not put a single link to the English version of our article,"
Roman Badanin wrote on Facebook,
singling out its March 14, 2019,
deep dive into Putin-linked businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin's activities in Madagascar. The
New York Times' investigation on the subject was published six months later in November.
"I still don't know what is my attitude to this situation... It's probably nice, but a bit
weird," Badanin wrote in an English-language post. Sign up for our free weekly newsletters
covering News and Business.
The best of The Moscow Times, delivered to your inbox.
This anti-Chinese effort may be destined for internal US (anti-civil war) needs. To make the
US population look in one direction. Obviously the why part is another question - oil, dollar
collapse, lack of food etc? But I want to point out that there has been an uptick in
aggression in other sensitive areas as well.
Todays examples are; An attack east of Aleppo on a Syrian military research centre by
Israeli aircraft. Overflying Jordan and then Iraq.
A second band of mercenary bounty hunters were captured trying to infiltrate venezuela to
kill Maduro (A revolt made by 8 at a time hunters could take several years at that rate.
The presence of four Nato Aegis ships in the Baltic which coincides with the arrival of the
Russian pipelaying ship in Kalingrad.
One thing I was horrified with, during a "quick look at" the FT Story about Putin, was the
level of "Putin did it" hate in the comments section. I had thought that the "Putin did it"
tripe was a thing of the past. I could not have been more wrong.
It is interesting that the rubbish Pompeo says is getting some resistance from the
"intelligence" agencies themselves. It appears that not everyone wants to be forced into
supporting his accusations.
"... When the people who made fake claims about Iraq's WMD, about Russiagate, about Iran's danger, are claiming that the thing isn't manmade, then either it's not manmade or it's US-made and the claim is a lie (what we expect from US intelligence agencies) and a cover-up. ..."
In many Ways, Trump reminds me of a Hitler/Stalin admirer. He demands certain results; if you
don't supply them, at least Trump will just fire you instead of having you shot or sent to
the Gulag -- Evidence of the many IG firings as
this article notes .
The daily lies and bald-faced propaganda is at the point where many are aware but still
all too many remain oblivious or are Brown Shirts in all but outward appearance. Pompeo would
be a perfect example of a clone if Hitler had a PR spokesperson spewing lies daily for the
press & public to digest without any thinking. Imagine Hitler with Twitter.
None of the above is meant to denigrate; rather, it's to put them into proper perspective.
I invite barflies to click here
and just look at the headlines of the posted news items--that site's biggest failing was to
omit similar criticism of Obama, Clinton, and D-Party pukes in general, although that doesn't
render today's headlines false.
Will the coming Great Depression 2.0 be global or confined to NATO nations? As with the
first Great Depression, it will be restricted to being Trans-Atlantic for that's where the
dollar zone and Neoliberalism overlap. The emerging dollar-free Eurasian trade zone
Many of Goering's quotes are very accurate as to human nature. US took in Nazi and
Japanese scientists. It wouldn't have left the propaganda behind. Goering's quote about
taking people to war - nazi's were obviously very good at it as the Germans fought until the
very end. US peasants will likely do the same.
The anti China crap filling the MSM is anglosphere in origin. Five eyes, the anglosphere
intel and propaganda warriors will be in it up to their eyeballs.
When the people who made fake claims about Iraq's WMD, about Russiagate, about Iran's
danger, are claiming that the thing isn't manmade, then either it's not manmade or it's
US-made and the claim is a lie (what we expect from US intelligence agencies) and a
cover-up. That said, odds are on the former, as far as I'm concerned. The absolutely
sure thing is that it's not the Chinese who crafted it.
For any intelligence professional, especially for a person who was the head of DIA, Flynn
behaviour is unexplainably naive. The idea that he did not understand that he is dealing with
Clinton mafia, as well as that Clinton mafia will try to implicate him is just absurd. So his
behaviour is mystery. As well as the fact that he allowed them to come bypassing regular channels
in President administration.
As we do not have the whole picture we can only speculate. Probably he was already on the
hook for his Turkish lobbing and that was exploited.
"New Documents Show Strzok Countermanded Closure Of Flynn Case For Lack Of Crime" [
Jonathan Turley ]. "It was previously known that the investigators who interviewed Flynn
did not believe that he intentionally lied. That made sense. Flynn did not deny the
conversations with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
Moreover, Flynn told the investigators that he knew that the call was inevitably monitored
and that a transcript existed. However, he did not recall discussing sanctions with Kislyak.
There was no reason to hide such a discussion.
Trump had publicly stated an intent to reframe Russian relations and seek to develop a more
positive posture with them. It now appears that, on January 4, 2017, the FBI's Washington Field
Office issued a 'Closing Communication' indicating that the bureau was terminating "CROSSFIRE
RAZOR" -- the newly disclosed codename for the investigation of Flynn. That is when Strzok
intervened." • Read on for detail, which is ugly.
This is essentially variant of Russiagate with Trump and Pompeo playing the role of Muller
Notable quotes:
"... Any fool in the C19th could have told Trump and his fellow members of the political class what to do: make concessions!underwrite all wages! introduce immediately, free healthcare (abandon the powerful but in the scheme of things tiny Health Insurance industry)! ..."
"... Instead, as everything around them crumbles, they are trying to rally the people (divided into ethnic, social, racial, linguistic and pigmentary factions) into forgetting everything and blaming China. ..."
The script that Trump is following-confident that the Democrats can be counted upon to copy
it- is the one that, his mentor in politics and much else, Roy Cohn developed for the
unlamented Senator McCarthy.
But, and this will be news in Washington, it is not 1950 anymore. The conditions that made
it possible to push the red scare underlying the first Cold War, including rising living
standards and full employment for most of the working class, the rise of the suburbs, the GI
Bill allowing unprecedented social mobility and unchallenged (in reality if not in the
fevered brains on the right) hegemony of the United States, economically, financially,
militarily and culturally- all that has crumbled away.
Trump is trying the 'blame China, fear the reds' strategy because it is all that he can
think of and nobody else within miles of the White House has a clue what to do. Why should
they? None of them has the least interest in public policy, let alone the common welfare, the
political culture in the US is so corrupted by careerism, bribery, revolving doors,
oligarchical diktats and, above all, greed, greed and greed that nobody with any brains
spares a moment's thought on thinking matters through.
The US ruling class is in the position that the French Aristocracy had reached by 1789- it
has no conception that it will not rule forever, only a tiny minority thinks ahead in terms
of dealing with fundamental changes. And there is no understanding of the fragility of their
positions.
Any fool in the C19th could have told Trump and his fellow members of the political class
what to do: make concessions!underwrite all wages! introduce immediately, free healthcare
(abandon the powerful but in the scheme of things tiny Health Insurance industry)!
Instead, as everything around them crumbles, they are trying to rally the people (divided
into ethnic, social, racial, linguistic and pigmentary factions) into forgetting everything
and blaming China.
The first time it was a tragedy, leading to the deaths of millions, most of them in south
east Asia, this time it promises to be something much more amusing.
Yesterday was a rent day and a pay day- fear, frustration, anger and a justified sense of
being tricked again are mounting everywhere. Unless the US government takes a U turn it will
be a very long hot summer.
this was the main goal from the very beginning. I said that was the aim of USA the minute its
fake corporate owned media began to scream about the virus. I said that in The Faker's
site(The Saker). This virus was a God sent, exactly when USA needed to get the world to hate
China, because that was THE ONLY WAY to stop China's rise against the West. Make the world
hate China. This very fact alone proves to me the virus isnt natural but is a bio engineered
bio weapon. The mere coincidence is a proof.
Ah, the FBI. The FBI no matter how much you look a their propaganda shows on the TV, the FBI
has always been crooked, ergo the need for TV shows saying how great they are. Anyway,
regarding Flynn, this was nothing new about setting him up. The FBI has a long sorted history
with setting people up, but usually the poor, mentally deranged, or simply not intelligent.
If you review the number of of anti terror cases where someone was going to blow up a
hospital, a church or some other structure, the suspect always gets caught because of an FBI
informant, who made up the plot, gave the person a fake bomb, money or materials to make the
plot come true.
I would venture a guess that 90% of arrests for terror are along those lines. So, the FBI
as great crime fighters is a myth. I worked with them before and they were a joke.
I hope Comey, Strzok, and et.al goes to jail. But two sets of laws exist for the powerful.
Cheers!!
>Anyway, regarding Flynn, this was nothing new about setting him up.
There are only about three phrases to say to FBI:
No Comment.
Am I under arrest?
I want a lawyer.
The problem with people like Flynn is they think they are the smartest ones in the room
and can outsmart the FBI. They forget that FBI doesn't record interrogations and the agents
are free to write up the summaries however they like. In this case, they actually re-wrote
the original interview months later.
And as the case against Flynn continues to unravel, perhaps the most important dots have
been connected by investigative researcher @JohnWHuber , better known as "Undercover Huber" on
Twitter, who makes a cogent argument that Stefan Halper - the portly spy who the FBI used to
conduct espionage on the Trump campaign during the 2016 US election - may have sparked the
Flynn investigation after lying to the FBI .
What's more, IG Michael Horowitz's report makes no mention of the lie, or the
recently-learned fact that the FBI tried to close the Flynn case, dubbed 'Crossfire Razor', in
Jan. 2017, only for agent Peter Strzok to go '
off the rails ' and demand it not be closed.
Why did the IG Report completely ignore Stefan Halper's lies to the FBI about @GenFlynn , and leave
open the possibility that Halper may even have triggered the opening of the CI case against
him?
According to the IG, Stefan Halper (referred to as "Source 2") met with the Crossfire
Hurricane team twice (in Aug 11 and 12, 2016) and told them "he had been previously
acquainted with @GenFlynn". *This was immediately before the FBI opened a case on Flynn on
Aug 15, 2016*
The IG report is silent on anything Source 2 might have said specifically about Flynn.
It's also silent on the fact the Washington Field Office of the FBI tried to close the Flynn
case on 01/04/2017. Both are going to be important in a second.
We now know from the FBI's draft "Electronic Communication" dated 01/04/2017 (trying to
close the Flynn CI case, stopped by Strzok at the direction of Comey, McCabe or both)
confirms the "CH" team "contacted an established FBI CHS to query about" Gen Flynn & held
a "debriefing"
This "event" very likely refers to when Flynn spoke at the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar
in Feb 2014, and the suspicious Russian-linked person supposedly in the cab was @RealSLokhova (who
also attended, and briefly spoke to Flynn)
Except that story is a *lie*. Halper wasn't at that event . He witnessed nothin g,
because he wasn't there. And the cab ride almost certainly didn't happen either, because
@RealSLokhova says she was picked up from the event by her Husband . And she's willing to say
that under oath.
There are multiple pictures of that Cambridge Seminar event (attended by about 20
people). Flynn was there, as was Richard Dearlove (former head of MI6), and Christopher
Andrew (then mentor of @RealSLokhova and "unofficial" historian of MI5). But Halper wasn't.
Not in any photos.
"No one remembers Halper attending the event because, in truth, Halper was not there"
Halper's lawyers never challenged that statement . Even when the federal Judge dismissed
@RealSLokhova's case (for other reasons), he did not challenge that claim, only saying that
"even assuming it was false" that Halper "attended" the dinner, it wasn't defamatory to claim
he did
Halper's lawyers even noted @RealSLokhova 's claim it was a
"falsehood" to say Halper attended the Feb, 2014 Cambridge event, and then NEVER defended it
as *true*, just that it wasn't *defamatory*, and non-actionable.
And the FBI trying to close the case on Flynn is great evidence Halper's "attendance" at
this event so he could see this suspicious cab ride is false . The FBI never tried to
interview @RealSLokhova, or anyone at the dinner. Why? Because it would have proven their own
source lied.
FYI, WaPo, WSJ and NYT have all published stories claiming that Halper attended that Feb
2014 event . None have any evidence that's true. All the stories are anonymously sourced to
Halper or Halper's buddies. There never will be any evidence Halper was there, because he
wasn't.
So when Halper told the FBI that he was "previously acquainted" with Flynn, and
"witnessed" this suspicious cab ride, HE WAS LYING TO THE FBI . And at the time, he was a
paid Confidential Human Source - the only one cited in the @carterwpage
FISA, other than Steele.
That's big.
But what's arguably bigger is WHEN Halper told this lie about Flynn. When else could
Halper claimed to have been "acquainted" with Flynn if not this Feb 2014 dinner (the only
time Flynn attended the Cambridge seminar Halper helped organize)?
Now, maybe Halper told the FBI about the dinner after the CI case was opened. But that's
NOT in the IG report, despite Halper's other meetings with the FBI being in there. In fact
the IG report says nothing about Halper and Flynn, other than what I quoted
In addition, FBI's Jan 4, 2017 draft Closing EC doesn't say when this "debriefing" with
Halper happened either. The wording sort of implies it was after the case was opened, but
never says it
So it is possible that a lie from Halper actually triggered opening the case on
Flynn?
What else did the FBI have? Their own laughable "predicate" appears to be that Flynn
worked for Trump, attended an RT dinner (at the time, @RepAdamSchiff
had previously appeared on RT!), and was "linked" to Russians (Er, he was the former head of
DIA under "Russian reset" Obama)
Ah, but all of those things were already true between Aug 1 and Aug 10, 2016, which is
when the FBI opened cases on Page, Papadopoulos and Manafort - BUT NOT FLYNN. That didn't
happen until Aug 15. He's the odd one out.
Flynn obviously already worked for Trump. He already had these "links", and he'd already
attended the RT dinner long ago. The thin gruel of Russian "links" and working for Trump was
enough to open cases on all the others, but NOT Flynn.
But what did the FBI have extra before they opened the case? Stefan Halper telling them
about being "previously acquainted" with Flynn - which almost certainly refers to that Feb
2014 Cambridge dinner, where he was never "acquainted" with Flynn at all.
Oh, & even if Halper told this lie *after* the case was opened on Flynn, the FBI
mustn't have found it credible because they never tried to properly investigate it , and then
even tried to close the case anyway. So that means at best the lie came between Aug 15, 2016
& Jan 4, 2017
What else was happening between Aug 16 & Jan 17? Oh yeah, the FBI was using a person
they should have suspected of lying to dirty people up - Halper - as a CHS wearing a wire on
@carterwpage, @GeorgePapa19 and others, AND relying on Halper as "Source #2" in the FISA
warrant apps
Then, incredibly after their own source lies to them about Flynn to dirty him up, the FBI
have the audacity to charge Flynn with lying to them! Corrupt dirty cops isn't an adequate
description. And for all we know, Halper is STILL on Wray's FBI books as a paid confidential
source
Finally, IG Horowitz blew this line of inquiry, and didn't mention anything about the FBI
trying to close the case on Flynn in Jan 2017 . Horowitz also admitted hasn't seen any
evidence that any of Halper's information was ever corroborated during his entire time as an
FBI source
Durham can do what the IG didn't, and solve this mystery quite easily with a few
interviews and record checks.
Or, the DOJ/USG can keep Halper on his retainer and ignore this. Either way, we'll know
what's up
/ENDS
UPDATE: It gets worse @SidneyPowell1 says that "SSA 1"
(Joe Pientka) wrote that Jan 4, 2017 EC closing the Flynn case
AND according to the IG report, Pientka personally approved those Aug 2016 meetings with
Halper & his handler & was briefed on both meetings
Yes. Intrigue and infighing among the deep state conspirators.
Why would the government keep delaying Flynn's sentencing after he agreed to the
deal?
But I think another explanation is simply excellent legal representation by Sidney
Powell.
In order to make the whole corrupt charade go down, a lot of "looking the other way" on
the part of the courts, the DOJ, and the media had to occur.
Sidney Powell, I assume, was relentless and committed in pulling on every loose thread and
questioning every alleged "fact" which led to the unravelling of the whole corrupt
enterprise.
At the end of the day, she will be one of the heroes in the movie about how the Republic
was saved, along with NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers and Congressman Devin Nunes.
xxx 2 hours ago
I believe she has some eyes on the inside as well......She is good and she is making
Sullivan have to walk a fine line.
The case of General Flynn, which has dragged on for years now, may finally be reaching a
denouement. He was charged with and pleaded guilty to making false statements to the FBI
during the Russian collusion hoax. For reasons that have not been clear, he was never
sentenced. Now it appears he may never see jail and will instead see his case dropped and his
guilty plea vacated. New evidence shows he was framed by members of the FBI and Department of
Justice.
As is standard procedure in this age, state media has been silent on the matter, but
alternative media sources are
reporting on the release of classified documents hidden by the government from Flynn's
defense team in violation of the law.
Thousands of documents held by his former defense team and hidden from Flynn and his new
attorney's until now have also been released in what appears to be a damage control operation
by the law firm Covington & Burling.
What these new FBI documents reveal is the FBI and Department of Justice carefully planned
to entrap General Flynn by tricking him into making inaccurate statements about his
activities during the campaign. They did this because they wanted to remove him from his post
in the White House and hoped he could be manipulated into making accusations against other
administrative officials. Then they systematically lied about what Flynn said to them in his
interview with the FBI.
Compounding this is the fact that the FBI and Departmental of Justice systematically
withheld all documents that could be used by Flynn in his defense. One way they did this was
to hide them in the special counsel operation. This prevented anyone, not just Flynn's
defense team, from discovering the plot. The sudden release of long withheld documents by
Covington & Burling suggest they may have been part of the plot to entrap Flynn and get
him to plead guilty to a crime.
At this stage, only a partisan fanatic thinks the principals in this whole Russian
collusion caper were operating in good faith. You could make the argument that their behavior
was unethical, but not necessarily illegal. Even if their actions violated the law, you could
argue they did so in the belief they were within the bounds of the law. With these new
revelations, it is clear they knew they were breaking the law in an effort to frame General
Flynn as part of a much larger conspiracy.
One thing that is now confirmed with these new revelations is that the Special Counsel was
always just part of a larger effort to cover-up this conspiracy. In fact, that was the whole
point of it. The FBI and DOJ officials involved in the conspiracy would hide all of the
evidence inside the counsel's operation. This would make it impossible for the defense
lawyers to access and very difficult for Congress to access. It would also prevent the
administration from looking into it.
Another outrageous aspect to this case is that it appears that Flynn's original defense
team, Covington & Burling, may have been in on the plot to frame him. It's not all that
clear at this point, but the best that can be said of their actions on behalf of their client
is they are the worst law firm in the country. They exist because they have resources and
know how things work in Washington. Despite this, they made the sorts of errors TV writers
would find too ridiculous for a legal drama.
There's also the fact that this sort of behavior by the FBI and DOJ is business as usual,
which underscores the corruption. This is not a couple of renegades. This is just how things
are done by the government. They frame people for crimes then work to prevent them from
getting a proper defense. The FBI has a long history of framing the innocent, but it was
always confined to the field offices. Now it is clear that the institution is rotten from the
head to the tail. It is hopelessly corrupt.
It is also increasingly clear that the weaselly Rod Rosenstein was the man tasked with
orchestrating the cover-up after the election. He manipulated Sessions and Trump into firing
Comey and then agreeing to the Mueller charade. The only purpose to that operation was to
cover up the illegal spying. Then there is Comey, who claimed under oath to be the guy who
ordered the Flynn investigation. He may have arrogantly admitted to initiating multiple
Federal crimes.
Of course, the big question in all of this is whether Washington is so hopelessly corrupt
that none of this amounts to anything. In banana republics, the judge in the case would be
assassinated or intimidated into ignoring the facts and sentencing Flynn to jail. We may not
be there yet, but the lack of any substantive investigation into the FBI corruption suggests
no one will be charged with anything. The principals in this scandal are now in high six
figure positions in Washington, living the good life.
Now, it is possible that Bill Barr was not prepared for the scale of corruption that has
been revealed in this case . He may have truly thought it was a few bad apples that went off
on their own. Once the scale of the corruption was known, he had to change course and bring
in outside help. It's just as possible that he is part of the problem. He is friends will
most of these people. His role in this could simply be part of the how Washington is
neutralizing Trump and preparing him for expulsion.
There is one puzzle that gets no attention. Why would the government keep delaying Flynn's
sentencing after he agreed to the deal? They said he was cooperating, but he had nothing to
offer them and they knew it. Perhaps he was just a prop to maintain the greater narrative of
the Russian hoax. By dragging out his process they could feed fake news to state media,
claiming it was from Flynn. That's seems to be a too cute by half, given the reality in
Washington, but it is possible.
Ineptitude is always a possibility. There's also the fact that highly corrupt institutions
tend to have lots of internal intrigue and conflict. The old line about thieves sticking
together is a myth. The corrupt man has no honor. As a result, the last stage for the corrupt
institution is when the people inside beginning to scheme against one another to the point
where they undermined their mutual efforts. Maybe that's where things are in Washington now.
It's just one big game of liar's poker.
xxx Radiant. 3 minutes ago
What did Flynn plead guilty to?
"Now, it is possible that Bill Barr was not prepared for the scale of corruption that
has been revealed in this case."
Really? Anyone who has been in Washington awhile must realize how things are there.
Anyway, remove those people from their posts, allow them their benefits and pensions and
let them keep their security clearance. That will teach them a lesson.
I suppose that once in a while vital documentation (Apollo Moon missions, anyone?) goes
astray, slipping down the back of the couch or misfiled on the wrong shelf in the library
annexe. And occasionally the dog really did eat the homework.
Cretins like Steele openly flout the law, and are let away with it. There must be a law that
directs government personnel – and he was government – to take such steps as are
reasonable to preserve records they know or should know would constitute evidence, whether
condemnatory or exculpatory. Steele had to be well aware there was intense interest in this
material, and it is not difficult to imagine what the western reaction would be if some
pivotal Russian figure deleted all his records and then did the smiling palms-up thing in
court, so sorry, all gone.
It is likewise easy to imagine the information in the records was damning, because nobody
willfully wipes evidence they know will put them in the clear. And he will be allowed to get
away with it without any punishment because the people who would have to punish him are
likely the same people who told him to get rid of it.
Just like Hillary, and her self-appointed deletion of tens of thousands of emails she
deemed 'personal', although they were government property. No ordinary mook would be allowed
to get away with that. And they wonder – or pretend to – why the people are sick
to death of western corruption.
Marc Elias . Steele disclosed the previously unreported meetings with Sussmann and Elias
during testimony in a defamation lawsuit filed against him by the Alfa Bank founders, according
to a court transcript obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
FBI memos show case was to be closed with a defensive briefing before a second interview
with Flynn was sought.
Evidence withheld for years from Michael Flynn's defense team shows the FBI found "no
derogatory" Russia evidence against the former Trump National Security Adviser and that
counterintelligence agents had recommended closing down the case with a defensive briefing
before the bureau's leadership intervened in January 2017
In the text messages to his team, Strzok specifically cited "the 7th floor" of FBI
headquarters, where then-Director James Comey and then-Deputy Director Andrew McCane worked,
as the reason he intervened.
"Hey if you haven't closed RAZOR, don't do so yet," Strzok texted on Jan. 4,
2017
####
JFC.
Remember kids, the United States is a well oiled machine that dispenses justice equitably
along with free orange juce to the tune of 'One Nation Under a Groove.'
So, I think Mark asked about 'legal action', but as you can see Barr and others are going
through this stuff with a fine tooth comb so it is as solid when it goes public. More
importantly, it can be used as evidenec to reform such corruption and put some proper
controls in place to stop it happening again at least for a few years
And meanwhile everybody who thinks they might be in the line of fire at some future moment is
destroying evidence as fast as they can make it unfindable.
"... Comey later publicly took credit when he had told an audience that he decided he could "get away" with sending "a couple guys over" to the White House to set up Flynn and make the case. ..."
"... In his role as the national security adviser to the president elect, there was nothing illegal in Flynn meeting with Kislyak. To use this abusive law here was utterly absurd, although other figures such as former acting Attorney General Sally Yates also raised it. Nevertheless, the FBI had latched onto this abusive law to target the retired Army lieutenant general ..."
"... Another newly released document is an email from former FBI lawyer Lisa Page to former FBI special agent Peter Strzok, who played the leadership role in targeting Flynn. In the email, Page suggests that Flynn could be set up by making a passing reference to a federal law that criminalizes lies to federal investigators. She suggested to Strzok that "it would be an easy way to just casually slip that in." So this effort was not about protecting national security or learning critical intelligence. It was about bagging Flynn for the case in the legal version of a canned trophy hunt. ..."
Previously undisclosed documents in the case of former national security adviser Michael Flynn offer us a chilling
blueprint on how top FBI officials not only sought to entrap the former White House aide but
sought to do so on such blatantly unconstitutional and manufactured grounds.
These new documents further undermine the view of both the legitimacy and motivations of
those investigations under former FBI director James Comey. For all of those who have long seen
a concerted effort within the Justice Department to target the Trump administration, the
fragments will read like a Dead Sea Scrolls version of a "deep state" conspiracy.
One note reflects discussions within the FBI shortly after the 2016 election on how to
entrap Flynn in an interview concerning his conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey
Kislyak. According to Fox News, the note was written by the former FBI head of
counterintelligence, Bill Priestap, after a meeting with Comey and his deputy director, Andrew
McCabe.
The note states, "What is our goal? Truth and admission or to get him to lie, so we can
prosecute him or get him fired?" This may have expressed an honest question over the motivation
behind this targeting of Flynn, a decision for which Comey later publicly took credit when
he had told an audience that he decided he could "get away" with sending "a couple guys over"
to the White House to set up Flynn and make the case.
The new documents also explore how the Justice Department could get Flynn to admit breaking
the Logan Act, a law that dates back to from 1799 which makes it a crime for a citizen to
intervene in disputes between the United States and foreign governments. It has never been used
to convict a citizen and is widely viewed as flagrantly unconstitutional.
In his role as the national security adviser to the president elect, there was nothing
illegal in Flynn meeting with Kislyak. To use this abusive law here was utterly absurd,
although other figures such as former acting Attorney General Sally Yates also raised it.
Nevertheless, the FBI had latched onto this abusive law to target the retired Army lieutenant
general .
Another newly released document is an email from former FBI lawyer Lisa Page to former
FBI special agent Peter Strzok, who played the leadership role in targeting Flynn. In the
email, Page suggests that Flynn could be set up by making a passing reference to a federal law
that criminalizes lies to federal investigators. She suggested to Strzok that "it would be an
easy way to just casually slip that in." So this effort was not about protecting national
security or learning critical intelligence. It was about bagging Flynn for the case in the
legal version of a canned trophy hunt.
It is also disturbing that this evidence was only recently disclosed by the Justice
Department. When Flynn was pressured to plead guilty to a single count of lying to
investigators, he was unaware such evidence existed and that the federal investigators who had
interviewed him told their superiors they did not think that Flynn intentionally lied when he
denied discussing sanctions against Russia with Kislyak. Special counsel Robert Mueller and his
team changed all that and decided to bring the dubious charge. They drained Flynn financially
then threatened to charge his son.
Flynn never denied the conversation and knew the FBI had a transcript of it. Indeed,
President Trump publicly
discussed a desire to reframe Russian relations and renegotiate such areas of tensions. But
Flynn still ultimately pleaded guilty to the single false statement to federal investigators.
This additional information magnifies the doubts over the case.
Various FBI officials also lied and acted in arguably criminal or unethical ways, but all
escaped without charges. McCabe had a supervisory role in the Flynn prosecution. He was then
later found by the Justice Department inspector general to have repeatedly lied to
investigators. While his case was referred for criminal charges, McCabe was fired but never
charged. Strzok was also fired for his misconduct in the investigation.
Comey intentionally leaked FBI material, including potentially classified information but
was never charged. Another FBI agent responsible for the secret warrants used for the Russia
investigation had falsified evidence to maintain the investigation. He is still not indicted.
The disconnect of these cases with the treatment of Flynn is galling and grotesque.
Even the judge in the case has added to this disturbing record. As Flynn appeared before
District Judge Emmet Sullivan for sentencing, Sullivan launched into him and said he could be
charged with treason and with working as an unregistered agent on behalf of Turkey. Pointing to
a flag behind him, Sullivan declared to Flynn, "You were an unregistered agent of a foreign
country while serving as the national security adviser to the president of the United States.
That undermines everything this flag over here stands for. Arguably, you sold your country
out."
Flynn was never charged with treason or with being a foreign agent. But when Sullivan
menacingly asked if he wanted a sentence then and there, Flynn wisely passed. It is a record
that truly shocks the conscience. While rare, it is still possible for the district court to
right this wrong since Flynn has not been sentenced. The Justice Department can invite the
court to use its inherent supervisory authority to right a wrong of its own making. As the
Supreme Court made clear in 1932, "universal sense of justice" is a stake in such cases. It is
the "duty of the court to stop the prosecution in the interest of the government itself to
protect it from the illegal conduct of its officers and to preserve the purity of its
courts."
Flynn was a useful tool for everyone and everything but justice. Mueller had ignored the
view of the investigators and coerced Flynn to plead to a crime he did not commit to gain
damaging testimony against Trump and his associates that Flynn did not have. The media covered
Flynn to report the flawed theory of Russia collusion and to foster the view that some sort of
criminal conspiracy was being uncovered by Mueller. Even the federal judge used Flynn to rail
against what he saw as a treasonous plot. What is left in the wake of the prosecution is an
utter travesty of justice.
Justice demands a dismissal of his prosecution. But whatever the "goal" may have been in
setting up Flynn, justice was not one of them.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington
University. You can find his updates online @JonathanTurley . - "
Source "
In a dramatic new turn of events, the legal team for Flynn, President
Trump's former national security advisor, says the Department of Justice has turned over exculpatory
evidence in his case. Flynn is defending against charges he lied to FBI agents in the course of their
investigation into allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election.
At a minimum, this information, which includes evidence that US government prosecutors illegally
coerced a guilty plea by threatening Flynn's son with prosecution, warrants the withdrawal of that
guilty plea. Whether or not the judge in the case, US District Court Judge Emmet G Sullivan, will
dismiss the entire case against Flynn on the grounds of prosecutorial misconduct is yet to be seen.
One fact, however, emerges from this sordid affair: the FBI, lauded by its supporters as the world's
"premier law enforcement agency,"
is anything but.
Evidence of FBI misconduct during its investigation into alleged collusion between members of the
Trump campaign team and the Russian government in the months leading up to the presidential election
has been mounting for some time. From mischaracterizing information provided by former British MI6
officer Christopher Steele in order to manufacture a case against then-candidate Trump, to committing
fraud against the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to authorize wiretaps on former low-level
Trump advisor Carter Page, the FBI has a record of corruption that would make a third-world dictator
envious.
The crimes committed under the aegis of the FBI are not the actions of rogue agents, but rather
part and parcel of a systemic effort managed from the very top – both former Director James Comey and
current Director Christopher Wray are implicated in facilitating this criminal conduct. Moreover, it
was carried out in collaboration with elements within the Department of Justice, and with the
assistance of national security officials working for the Obama administration, making for a
conspiracy that would rival any investigation conducted by the FBI under the Racketeer Influenced and
Corrupt Organizations Act.
The heart of the case against Michael Flynn – a flamboyant, decorated combat veteran, with 33 years
of honorable service in the US Army – revolves around a phone call he made to the Russian ambassador
to the United States, Sergey Kislyak, on December 29, 2016. That was the same day then-President Obama
ordered the expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats from the US on charges of espionage. The conversation
was intercepted by the National Security Agency as part of its routine monitoring of Russian
communications. Normally, the identities of US citizens caught up in such surveillance are
"masked,"
or hidden, so as to preserve their constitutional rights. However, in certain instances
deemed critical to national security, the identity can be
"unmasked"
to help further an
investigation, using
"minimization"
standards designed to protect the identities and privacy
of US citizens.
In Flynn's case, these
"minimization"
standards were thrown out the window: on January 12,
2017, and again on February 9, the Washington Post published articles that detailed Flynn's phone call
with Kislyak. US Attorney John Durham, tasked by Attorney General William P Barr to lead a review of
the actions taken by law enforcement and intelligence officials as part of the Russian collusion
scandal, is currently investigating the potential leaking of classified information by Obama-era
officials in relation to these articles.
Flynn's phone call with Kislyak was the central topic of interest when a pair of FBI agents, led by
Peter Strzok, met with Flynn in his White House office on January 24, 2017. This meeting later served
as the source of the charge levied against him for lying to a federal agent. It also provided grist
for then acting-Attorney General Sally Yates to travel to the White House on January 26 to warn
then-White House Counsel Michael McGahn that Flynn had lied to Vice President Mike Pence about his
conversations with Kislyak, and, as such, was in danger of being compromised by the Russians.
That Flynn lied, or otherwise misrepresented, his conversation with Kislyak to Pence is not in
dispute; indeed, it was this act that prompted President Trump to fire Flynn in the first place. But
lying to the Vice President, while wrong, is not a crime. Lying to FBI agents, however, is. And yet
the available evidence suggests that not only did Flynn not lie to Strzok and his partner when
interviewed on January 24, but that the FBI later doctored its report of the interview, known in FBI
parlance as a
"302 report,"
to show that Flynn had. Internal FBI documents and official
testimony clearly show that a 302 report on Strzok's conversation with Flynn was prepared
contemporaneously, and that he had shown no indication of deception. However, in the criminal case
prepared against him by the Department of Justice, a 302 report dated August 22, 2017 – over seven
months after the interview – was cited as the evidence underpinning the charge of lying to a federal
agent.
The evidence of a doctored 302 report, when combined with the evidence that the US prosecutor
conspired with Flynn's former legal counsel to
"keep secret"
the details of his plea
agreement, in violation of so-called Giglio requirements (named after the legal precedent set in
Giglio v. United States which holds that the failure to disclose immunity deals to co-conspirators
constitutes a violation of due-process rights), constitutes a clear-cut case of FBI malfeasance and
prosecutorial misconduct. Under normal circumstances, that should warrant the dismissal of the
government's case against Flynn.
Whether Judge Emmet G Sullivan will agree to a dismissal, or, if not, whether the Department of
Justice would seek to retry Flynn, are not known at this time. What is known, however, is the level of
corruption that exists within the FBI and elements of the Department of Justice, regarding their
prosecution of a US citizen for purely political motive. Notions of integrity and fealty to the rule
of law that underpin the opinions of many Americans when it comes to these two institutions have been
shredded in the face of overwhelming evidence that the law is meaningless when the FBI targets you. If
this could happen to a man with Michael Flynn's stature and reputation, it can happen to anyone.
Uncle Volodya says, "Ignorance is always correctable.
But what shall we do if we take ignorance to be knowledge?"
"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of
anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by
the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."
―
Issac Asimov
There's a prejudice against making fun of the mad that spans all cultures, all ethnicities; mock the mentally ill
at your peril, for some fair-minded citizen will surely intervene. Possibly many, enough to make you take to your
heels, because those who were born without the ability to reason, or had it and lost it, are perhaps God's most
innocent children. There are few compensations for being born half-a-bubble off plumb, but one of them is
anti-mockery armor. Having a laugh at the expense of the lunatic is bad form; something only dicks do, because it's
cheap and easy.
That's what must be preventing Dmitry Rogozin from roaring with laughter; from falling helplessly to his knees and
collapsing, wheezing, onto his side. If someone smart says something stupid, they are fair game. But laughing when
someone whose openly-stated beliefs suggest they are suffering from dementia is inappropriate. His dilemma is both
obvious, and acute – what to do?
First, some background; who is Dmitry Rogozin? A former Deputy Prime Minister in charge of the Russian
Federation's defense industries, he also served as his country's Ambassador to NATO. He has degrees in philosophy and
technology, and currently serves as the Russian Federation's Special Representative on Missile Defense. He is also
the Director of Roscosmos, the Russian state's Space Industry. Some have talked him up as a possible replacement for
Vladimir Putin, as President of the Russian Federation, but it is in his latter capacity, head of Roscosmos, that we
are most interested today. He knows more about rockets than that they are pointy at one end and have fire at the
other, if you get my drift.
A bit more background, and then I promise we can begin to tie things together; I think I can also promise you are
going to laugh. Not because you're a dick. But I think you will find you do have to kind of snicker. Just be careful
who hears you, okay? It's not as much of an insult if people don't know.
Most who have any understanding of space or rockets or satellites have heard of the
RD-180
.
But in case there are some readers who have never heard of it, it is the Russian Federation's workhorse rocket
engine. Its first flight was 20 years ago, but it was built on the shoulders of the
RD-170
, which has been in service since 1985, making it a Soviet
project. The RD-180 is essentially a two-combustion-chamber RD-170, which has four and remains the most powerful
rocket engine in the world. The RD-180 is used by the United States in its Atlas space vehicles.
For some time, that was a fairly comfortable arrangement. The USA made fun of Russia whenever it wanted to feel
superior, just as it's always done, and made the occasional ideological stab at 'establishing freedom and democracy'
by changing out its leader, but the Russian people were not particularly cooperative, and there were some problems
getting a credible 'liberal opposition' started; even now, the best candidate still seems to be Alexey Navalny, who
is kind of the granite canoe of opposition figures – not particularly well-known, nasty rather than compelling,
spiteful as a balked four-year-old.
But then American ideologues in the US Department of State decided the time was ripe for a coup in Ukraine, and
almost overnight, the United States and Russia were overt enemies. The United States, under Barack Obama,
imposed
sanctions designed to wreck the Russian economy
, in the hope that despairing Russians would throw Putin out of
office. America's European allies went along for the ride, and trade between Russia and its former trade partners and
associates in Europe and the USA mostly dried up.
Not rocket engines, though. America made an exception for those, and continued to buy and stockpile RD-180's. The
very suggestion that RD-180 engines might go on the sanctions list – US Federal Claims Court Judge Susan Braden
postulated that funds used to purchase rocket engines
might end up in Rogozin's pocket
(he being head of the Space Program, and all), and he was under US sanctions – moved the Commander of the United
States Air Force's Space and Missile Systems Center to note that without RD-180 engines, the Atlas program
would have to be grounded
.
All this is by way of highlighting a certain vulnerability. Of course, observers remarked, the United States is a
major technological power – it could easily produce such engines itself. So, why didn't it, inquiring minds wanted to
know.
Enter United Launch Alliance (ULA) CEO Tony Bruno, with what reporters described as a 'novel explanation'. Thanks
much for the link, Patient Observer. The United States buys
Russian
rocket engines
to subsidize the Russian space industry
, so that fired rocket scientists will not pack up the wife and kiddies
and their few pitiful belongings, and depart for Iran or North Korea. You know; countries that
really
hate
the United States. I swear I am not making that up. Look:
"The United States is buying Russian rocket engines not because of any problems with its domestic engine
engineering programmes, but to subsidize Russian rocket scientists and to prevent them from seeking employment in
Iran or North Korea, United Launch Alliance CEO Tory Bruno has intimated.
"The [US government] asked us to buy [Russian engines] at the end of the Cold War in order to keep the Russian
Rocket Scientists from ending up in North Korea and Iran," Bruno tweeted, responding to a question about what
motivates ULA to continue buying the Russian-made RD-180s."
Sadly, I had no Rogozin-like qualms about being thought a dick. I snorted what I was drinking (chocolate milk, I
think) all over my hand, and gurgled with mirth for a good 20 seconds. Holy Moley – what a retarded explanation! How
long did he grope for that, spluttering like Joe Biden trying to remember what office he is currently running for?
Jeebus Cripes, the United States has
no control at all
over what rocket scientists are paid in the Russian
Federation – what do they imagine prevents Putin The Diktator from just pocketing all the money himself, or spending
it on sticky buns to feed to Rogozin, and throwing a few fish heads to the rocket scientists? Do they really believe
some sort of symbiotic relationship exists between Russia's rocket scientists and the US Treasury Department?
Really
? Have things actually gotten that far down the road to Simple? I tell you, I kind of felt a little sorry
for Tony 'Lightning Rod' Bruno. But more sorry for his family, who has to go out and find him when he's wandering in
the park with no pants on again, you know. Humanitarian concerns.
"Under RD AMROSS, Pratt & Whitney is licensed to produce the RD-180 in the United States. Originally,
production of the RD-180 in the US was scheduled to begin in 2008, but this did not happen. According to a 2005 GAO
Assessment of Selected Major Weapon Programs, Pratt & Whitney planned to start building the engine in the United
States with a first military launch by 2012. This, too, did not happen. In 2014, the Defense Department estimated
that it would require approximately $1 billion and five years to begin US domestic manufacture of the RD-180 engine."
Well, no wonder! It's a lot cheaper to slip some bucks to starving Russian rocket scientists than spend a Billion
simoleons on a Pratt & Whitney program that will take
five years
(!!!) minimum to set up before it even
starts producing an engine the Russians have been making for 20 years, and gave Pratt & Whitney the plans for. Seen
in that light, it makes a weird kind of sense, dunnit? Minus the altruism and violins, of course.
Right about then, I made a second discovery that shook the fuzz off my fundament.
Tony Bruno did not make that
shit up
. No, indeedy. It would have been simpler, and I have to say a bit more comforting, to assume Tony Bruno
is the locus of American retardation. But he isn't; the poor bastard was just repeating an American doctrinal
political talking-point.
Behold
!
"When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989, the US government worried about the possible consequences of lots of
Russian rocket designers getting fired. What if they ended up working for regimes like Iran or North Korea?"
Pretty much word-for-word what poor Tony Bruno said. And that was posted 5 years ago.
But who cares, right? Just some wiggy space-nerd site.
Oh, but wait.
Look at his reference
. It's from NASA.
And it does indeed include the paragraph he quoted.
"Moreover, several on the Space Council, as well as others in the Bush Administration, saw another reason to
engage the post-Soviets in a cooperative space venture: as a way to help hold the Russian nation together at a time
when the Russian economy was faltering and its society was reeling. In the words of Brian Dailey, Albrecht's
sucessor, "If we did not do something in this time of social chaos in Russia, then there would be potentially a
hemorrhaging of technology 'away from Russia' to countries who may not have a more peaceful intention behind the
use of those technologies."
I'm not sure how reliable that is – the Americans still insist, in it, that they landed on the moon, and it points
out that
Dan Quayle
was head of the National Space Council, dear Lord, have mercy. But it's NASA! There was
apparently a school of thought, prevalent in American politics, that America
had to support the Russian economy
,
for fear of its technological proteges high-siding it for Dangerville. Neither North Korea or Iran are mentioned by
name, but they would certainly be easy to infer from the description.
So we could draw one of two conclusions; either (1) Obama was a witless tool who did not read that historical
imperative (probably had his nose in a healthy-greens cookbook, some shit like that) and blundered ahead with a plan
to wreck the Russian economy, loosing a torrent of Russian rocket scientists into a cynical Murka-hatin' world, or
(2) Obama was a genius who applied sanctions with a surgeon's delicacy, avoiding sanctions on the Russian space
program. Although he did apply sanctions directly on its..umm director. Okay, let's go with (1).
Anyway, it's kind of odd, I guess you'd say, to hear that same Brian Dailey, he who blubbered sympathetically (or
so history records) "We have to do something in this time of social chaos in Russia"
say
this:
"The meeting was actually more or less a signing
ceremony, a large event, so to speak, but it was one that was obviously going to be reaching into some very hard
winds that would prevent us from really moving forward. That's a rather obtuse way of saying that we were having
serious problems with the Russians. They wanted a lot of money for doing these things. They wanted to charge us a lot
of money to hook up, and we didn't believe that since this was a government-to-government activity, that money should
be appropriately involved, and it was the intention of the two Presidents to put something together that would be
funded by their respective governments rather than us trying to fund something for Russia."
Say what? You had to do something for the Russian economy without money? Tell me more.
"
At that point, Dan had got very upset with the
Russians and proceeded to tell them that we were not going to do business with Semenov directly, but our opposite
number was Yuri Koptev, and that he ought to start learning how to work with U.S. industry, and that we were not
going to pay for this particular activity and we were not going to be blackmailed into paying them, so to speak, and
insisted that this be taken off the table and we proceed to find ways of making this happen, not ways to slow it down
or charge us for any kind of cooperative activities like this.
"
This all had to do with cooperation on some sort of docking system for the Mir Space Station, nothing to do with
the RD-180, but I think you can see why I would be a bit skeptical regarding Project Payola for the Russian rocket
scientists.
You might be getting a tingly feeling – call it a suspicion – that the USA is kind of pulling our leg on the idea
that it can make a superior multi-chamber rocket engine any time it feels like it, and is just buying the RD-180 on
long-ago government orders to cut the Russians a break. You might suspect the RD-180 is actually a pretty good
engine, but the United States can't make it for that kind of money, and perhaps can't make it at all. I know! Let's
ask
United Launch Alliance
, that company that Tony Bruno is the CEO of.
"The Atlas launch vehicle's main booster engine, the RD-180, has demonstrated consistent performance with
predictable environments over the past decade. The RD-180 has substantially contributed to the established a record
of high reliability on Atlas launch vehicles since its debut on the Atlas III in May of 2000."
You don't say. Tell me more.
"In the early 1990s the closed cycle, LOx rich, staged combustion technology rumored to exist in Russia was
originally sought out by General Dynamics because engines of this kind would be able to provide a dramatic
performance increase over available U.S. rocket technology. Unlike its rocket building counterparts in the United
States, Europe, China, and Japan, Russia was able to master a unique LOx rich closed cycle combustion technology
which delivered a 25% performance increase."
But but I read the George H.W. Bush administration urged America to buy Russian rocket engines because they heard
a rumor there was a suitcase sale on at the Energomash company store. And that, you know, the scientists might be
planning a little trip.
"NPO Energomash, the leading designer of engines in Russia, had gone through hundreds of designs, each an
improvement on the last, to harness the power of LOx rich combustion. This required a very careful approach to how
the fuel is burned in the preburner so that the temperature field is uniform. It also required improvements in
materials and production techniques. They found a way to take the chamber pressures to new limits while protecting
the internal components from fire risks. This required a new class of high temperature resistant stainless steel
invented to cope with the risks of the LOx rich environment."
Oh, seriously, c'mon – is it as good as all that?
"The demonstrated performance established during this process was beyond anything achieved in the United
States. The RD-180 reaches chamber pressures up to 3,722psia which was more than double the chamber pressures
achieved by comparable U.S. engines. Exposure to Russian design philosophy and the success of a high performance
engine made U.S. engine designers question their own methods. This dual sided cross-cultural engineering approach
which has persisted through the life of the RD-180 program adds depth to the understanding of engine capability and
operational characteristics."
Okay, thanks, company that Tony Bruno is the CEO of. Good to know it wasn't just charity.
The EU should reconsider its 'all or nothing' approach on sanctions imposed on Russia for
its role in the ongoing conflict in eastern Ukraine, as well as its annexation of Crimea, a
new report from the International Crisis Group suggests. The Brussels-based think tank calls
for the easing of certain sanctions in exchange for Russian progress towards peace in
Ukraine.
"Inflexible sanctions are less likely to change behaviour," said Olga Oliker, Europe
and Central Asia programme director. "Because of that, we urge considering an approach that
would allow for the lifting of some sanctions in exchange for some progress, with a clear
intent to reverse that rollback of sanctions if the progress itself is reversed."
.A major roadblock in the implementation of the Minsk deal has been the sequence of
events supposed to bring an end to the conflict that has so far claimed more than 13,000
lives.
Kyiv wants to first regain control over its border with Russia before local elections
in the war-torn region can be held, while Moscow believes that elections must come
first
####
Door. Horse. Barn. Bolted.
The Intentional Critics Grope is yet again a $/€ short in the reality department.
You would think the Editor Gotev (the last two paras by him) would mention that the Minsk
agreement clearly states elections come first and that Kiev has singularly refuse the other
conditions of the agreement, but that really would be asking too much. From a professional
journalist.
It's the same shit we got with the US-North Korea 4 point nuclear agreement where
de-nuclearization of the region is the final stage yet it didn't take Washington and
ball-licking corporate media to parrot 'denuclearization' as the first point as suddently
decided by the Ovum Orifice.*
They try it on again about every six months, just to see if the Russian negotiators have
changed and if the new ones are dimwitted. I'm sure it is crystal clear to the Kremlin that
if it gave Ukraine back exclusive control of the border, it would (a) call up troops and set
up a cordon to make it impossible for eastern Ukraine to be reinforced, and (b) launch an
all-out military push to re-take the breakaway regions. The west would then shout "Safe!!!",
and the game would be over – Ukraine is (almost) whole again, praise Jeebus. There
would be a propaganda storm that Russia was 'trying to meddle in the peace process' while
Kuh-yiv rooted out and either imprisoned or executed all the 'rebel' leaders, and the west
– probably the USA – would provide 'peacekeepers' to give Ukraine time to restore
its complete control over the DNR and LPR. Then, presto! no elections required, we are all
happy Ukrainians!
They knew 'inflexible sanctions were less likely to change behaviors' when they first
agreed to impose them – but they were showing their belly to Washington, and don't know
how to stop now. Serves them right if they are losing revenue and market share.
I don't think Russia is very interested, beyond polite diplomatic raising of the eyebrows, in
relaxing of sanctions under conditions the EU is careful to highlight could be reapplied in a
trice, as soon as anyone was upset with Russia's performance. Because that moment would be
literally only a moment away. The UK can be counted on to register blistering outrage at the
drop of a hat, and while its influence on the EU will soon be limited, dogs-in-the-manger
like Poland can always be relied upon to throw themselves about in an ecstasy of victimhood.
It would be impossible to set up any sort of dependable supply chain, as the interval between
orders would never be known with any degree of certainty. Fuck the EU. Russia is better off
to press on as it has been doing. The EU has to buy oil and gas from Russia because the
logistics and price of American supplies make them economically non-competitive, and best to
just leave it there. The EU will bitch, but it will continue to buy, whereas any other
commerce would be subject to theatrical hissy fits.
Devastating flashback clip of Comey just aired on @marthamaccallum show.
When asked who went around the protocol of going through the WH Counsel's office and instead decided to send the FBI agents
into White House for the Flynn perjury trap ...
...Comey smugly responds "I sent them."
Here is the clip:
@comey is preparing for prison and hoping to avoid
the death penalty. Will Obama be brought down too?
Imagine having your life and reputation ruined by rogue US govt. officials. Then years later when the plot finally comes to
light the first thing you do is post an American flag. This is the guy they wanted you to believe was a Russian asset. 🙄
https://t.co/TI768Vijn2
U.S. District Court Judge
Emmet
G. Sullivan unsealed four pages of stunning FBI emails and handwritten notes Wednesday, regarding former Trump National Security
Advisor Michael Flynn, which allegedly reveal the retired three star general was targeted by senior FBI officials for prosecution,
stated Flynn's defense attorney Sidney Powell. Those notes and emails revealed that the retired three-star general appeared to be
set up for a perjury trap by the senior members of the bureau and agents charged with investigating the now-debunked allegations
that President Donald Trump's campaign colluded with Russia, said Sidney Powell, the defense lawyer representing Flynn.
Moreover, the
Department of Justice release 11 more pages of documents Wednesday afternoon, according to Powell.
While we await Judge Sullivan's order to unseal the exhibits from Friday, the government has just provided 11 more pages even
more appalling that the Friday production. We have requested the redaction process begin immediately.
@GenFlynn @BarbaraRedgate pic.twitter.com/YPEjZWbdvo
"What is especially terrifying is that without the integrity of Attorney General Bill Barr and
U.S. Attorney Jensen , we still would not have this clear exculpatory information as Mr. Van Grack and the prosecutors have opposed
every request we have made," said Powell.
It appears, based on the notes and emails that the Department of Justice was determined at the time to prosecute Flynn, regardless
of what they found, Powell said.
"The FBI pre-planned a deliberate attack on Gen. Flynn and willfully chose to ignore mention of Section 1001 in the interview
despite full knowledge of that practice," Powell said in a statement.
"The FBI planned it as a perjury trap at best and in so doing put it in writing stating 'what is our goal? Truth/ Admission
or to get him to lie so we can prosecute him or get him fired."
The documents, reviewed and obtained by SaraACarter.com , reveal that
senior FBI officials discussed strategies for targeting and setting up Flynn, prior to interviewing him at the White House on Jan.
24, 2017. It was that interview at the White House with former FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok and FBI Special Agent Joe Pientka that
led Flynn, now 61, to plead guilty after months of pressure by prosecutors, financial strain and threats to prosecute his son.
Powell filed a motion earlier this year to withdraw Flynn's guilty plea and to dismiss his case for egregious government misconduct.
Flynn pleaded guilty in December 2017, under duress by government prosecutors, to lying to investigators about his conversations
with Russian diplomat
Sergey Kislyak about sanctions on Russia. This January, however, he withdrew his guilty plea in the U.S. District Court in Washington,
D.C. He stated that he was "innocent of this crime" and was coerced by the FBI and prosecutors under threats that would charge his
son with a crime. He filed to withdraw his guilty plea after DOJ prosecutors went back on their word and asked the judge to sentence
Flynn to up to six months in prison, accusing him of not cooperating in another case against his former partner. Then prosecutors
backtracked and said probation would be fine but by then Powell, his attorney, had already filed to withdraw his guilty plea.
The documents reveal that prior to the interview with Flynn in January, 2017 the FBI had already come to the conclusion that Flynn
was guilty and beyond that the officials were working together to see how best to corner the 33-year military veteran and former
head of the Defense Intelligence Agency. The bureau deliberately chose not to show him the evidence of his phone conversation to
help him in his recollection of events, which is standard procedure. Even stranger, the agents that interviewed Flynn later admitted
that they didn't believe he lied during the interview with them.
Powell told this reporter last week that the documents produced by the government are "stunning Brady evidence' proving Flynn
was deliberately set up and framed by corrupt agents at the top of the FBI to target President Trump.
She noted earlier this week in her motion that the evidence "also defeats any argument that the interview of Mr. Flynn on January
24 was material to any 'investigation.' The government has deliberately suppressed this evidence from the inception of this prosecution
-- knowing there was no crime by Mr. Flynn."
Powell told this reporter Wednesday that the order by Sullivan to unseal the documents in Exhibit 3 in the supplement to Flynn's
motion to dismiss for egregious government conduct is exposing the truth to the public. She said it's "easy to see that he was set
up and that Mr. Flynn was the insurance policy for the FBI." Powell's reference to the 'insurance policy,' is based on one of the
thousands of texts exchanged by former FBI lawyer Lisa Page and her then-lover former FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok.
In an Aug. 15, 2016, text from Strzok to Page he states, "I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy's
(former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe) office -- that there's no way he gets elected -- but I'm afraid we can't take that risk. It's
like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before 40."
The new documents were turned over to Powell, by U.S. Attorney Timothy Shea. They were discovered after an extensive review by
the attorneys appointed by U.S. Attorney General William Barr to review Flynn's case, which includes U.S. Attorney of St. Louis,
Jeff Jensen.
In one of the emails dated Jan. 23, 2017, FBI lawyer Lisa Page, who at the time was having an affair with Strzok and who worked
closely with him on the case discussed the charges the bureau would bring on Flynn before the actual interview at the White House
took place. Those email exchanges were prepared for former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who was fired by the DOJ for lying
multiple times to investigators with DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz's office.
Former FBI Director James Comey, who was fired by President Trump for his conduct, revealed during an interview with Nicolle Wallace
last year that he sent the FBI agents to interview Flynn at the White House under circumstances he would have never done to another
administration.
"I probably wouldn't have done or maybe gotten away with in a more organized investigation, a more organized administration,"
Comey said. "In the George W. Bush administration or the Obama administration, two men that all of us, perhaps, have increased appreciation
for over the last two years."
In the Jan 23, email Page asks Strzok the day before he interviews Flynn at the White House:
"I have a question for you. Could the admonition re 1001 be given at the beginning at the interview? Or does it have
to come following a statement which agents believe to be false? Does the policy speak to that? (I feel bad that I don't know this
but I don't remember ever having to do this! Plus I've only charged it once in the context of lying to a federal probation officer).
It seems to be if the former, then it would be an easy way to just casually slip that in.
"Of course as you know sir, federal law makes it a crime to "
Strzok's response:
I haven't read the policy lately, but if I recall correctly, you can say it at any time. I'm 90 percent sure about that, but
I can check in the am.
In the motion filed earlier this week, Powell stated "since August 2016 at the latest, partisan FBI and DOJ leaders conspired
to destroy Mr. Flynn. These documents show in their own handwriting and emails that they intended either to create an offense they
could prosecute or at least get him fired. Then came the incredible malfeasance of Mr. Van Grack's and the SCO's prosecution despite
their knowledge there was no crime by Mr. Flynn."
Attached to the email is handwritten notes regarding Flynn that are stunning on their face. It is lists of how the agents will
guide him in an effort to get him to trip up on his answers during their questioning and what charges they could bring against him.
"If we get him to admit to breaking the Logan Act, give facts to DOJ & have them decide," state the handwritten notes.
"Or if he initially lies, then we present him (not legible) & he admits it, document for DOJ, & let them decide how to address
it."
The next two points reveal that the agents were concerned about how their interview with Flynn would be perceived saying "if we're
seen as playing games, WH (White House) will be furious."
"Protect our institution by not playing games," t he last point on the first half of the hand written notes state.
From the handwritten note:
Afterwards:
interview
I agreed yesterday that we shouldn't show Flynn (redacted) if he didn't admit
I thought @ it last night, I believe we should rethink this
What is (not legible) ? Truth/admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?
we regularly show subjects evidence, with the goal of getting them to admit their wrongdoing
I don't see how getting someone to admit their wrongdoing is going easy on him
If we get him to admit to breaking the Logan Act, give facts to DOJ & have them decide
Or if he initially lies, then we present him (not legible) & he admits it, document for DOJ, & let them decide how to address
it
If we're seen as playing games, WH will be furious
Protect our institution by not playing games
(Left column)
we have case on Flynn & Russians
Our goal is to (not legible)
Our goal is to determine if Mike Flynn is going to tell the truth or if he lies @ relationship w/ Russians
can quote (redacted)
Shouldn't (redacted
Review (not legible) stand alone
It appears evident from an email from former FBI agent Strzok, who interviewed Flynn at the White House to then FBI General Counsel
James Baker, who is no longer with the FBI and was himself under investigation for leaking alleged national security information
to the media.
The email was a series of questions to prepare McCabe for his phone conversation with Flynn on the day the agents went to interview
him at the White House. These questions would be questions that Flynn may ask McCabe before sending the agents over to interview
him.
Email from Peter Strzok, cc'd to FBI General Counsel James Baker: (January 24, 2017)
I'm sure he's thought through these, but for DD's (referencing Deputy Director Andrew McCabe) consideration about how to answer
in advance of his call with Flynn:
Am I in trouble?
Am I the subject of an investigation?
Is it a criminal investigation?
Is it an espionage investigation? Do I need an attorney? Do I need to tell Priebus? The President?
Will you tell Priebus? The President? Will you tell the WH what I tell you?
What happens to the information/who will you tell what I tell you? Will you need to interview other people?
Will our interview be released publically? Will the substance of our interview be released?
How long will this take (depends on his cooperation – I'd plan 45 minutes)? Can we do this over the phone?
I can explain all this right now, I did this, this, this [do you shut him down? Hear him out? Conduct the interview if he starts
talking? Do you want another agent/witness standing by in case he starts doing this?]
President Donald Trump has bashed former FBI Director James Comey, after unsealed documents
revealed an agency plot to entrap Gen. Michael Flynn in a bid to take down the Trump
presidency. "DIRTY COP JAMES COMEY GOT CAUGHT!" Trump tweeted on Thursday morning, in
one of a series of tweets lambasting the FBI's prosecution of retired army general Michael
Flynn, which he called a "scam."
Flynn served as Trump's national security adviser in the first days of the Trump presidency,
before he was fired for allegedly lying about his contact with Russian Ambassador Sergey
Kislyak.
An FBI investigation followed, and several months later, Flynn pleaded guilty to Special
Counsel Robert Mueller about lying during interviews with agents. He has since tried to
withdraw the plea, citing poor legal defense and accusing the FBI and Obama administration of
setting him up from the outset.
Documents unsealed by a federal judge on Wednesday seem to support that argument. In one
handwritten note, dated the same day as Flynn's FBI interview in January 2017, the unidentified
note-taker jots down some potential strategies to use against the former general.
"We have a case on Flynn + Russians," the note reads. "What's our goal?
Truth/Admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?"
#FLYNN docs just
unsealed, including handwritten notes 1/24/2017 day of Flynn FBI interview. Transcript: "What
is our goal? Truth/Admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?"
Read transcript notes, copy original just filed. @CBSNews
pic.twitter.com/8oqUok8i7m
The unsealed documents also include an email exchange between former agent Peter Strzok and
former FBI lawyer Lisa Page, in which the pair pondered whether to remind Flynn that lying to
federal agents is a crime. Page and Strzok were later fired from the agency, after a slew of
text messages emerged showing the pair's mutual disdain for Trump, and discussing the
formulation of an "insurance policy" against his election.
Flynn's discussions with Kislyak were deemed truthful by former FBI Deputy Director Andrew
McCabe. Additionally, a Washington Post
article published the day before Flynn's January 2017 interview revealed that the FBI had
tapped his calls with the Russian ambassador and found "nothing illicit."
Still, Section 1001 of the US Criminal Code, which makes it illegal to lie to a federal
agent, is broad in its scope. Defense Attorney Solomon Wisenberg
wrote that "even a decent person who tries to stay out of trouble can face criminal
exposure under Section 1001 through a fleeting conversation with government agents."
Early January 2017 Recommendation To Close Case on General Flynn Rebuffed by FBI Leaders
by Larry C Johnson
The document dump from the Department of Justice on the Michael Flynn case continues and the
information is shocking and damning. It is now clear why previous leaders of the Department of
Justice (Sessions and Rosenstein) and current FBI Director Wray tried to keep this material
hidden. There is now no doubt that Jim Comey and Andy McCabe help lead and direct a conspiracy
to frame Michael Flynn for a "crime" regardless of the actual facts surrounding General Flynn's
conduct.
The most stunning revelation from today's document release is that the FBI agents who
investigated Michael Flynn aka "Crossfire Razor" RECOMMENDED on the 4th of January 2017 that
the investigation of Flynn be closed. Let that sink in. The FBI agents investigating Flynn
found nothing to justify either a criminal or counter-intelligence investigation more than two
weeks before Donald Trump was inaugurated as President. Yet, FBI Director Jim Comey and Deputy
Director McCabe, with the help of General Counsel Jim Baker, Assistant Director for Counter
Intelligence Bill Priestap, Lisa Page and Peter Strzok decided to try to manufacture a crime
against Flynn.
The documents released on Wednesday made clear that as of January 21st, the FBI Conspirators
were scrambling to find pretext for entrapping and charging General Flynn. Here is the
transcription of Bill Priestap's handwritten notes:
Apologists for these criminal acts by FBI officials insist this was all routine. "Nothing to
see here." "Move along." Red State's Nick Arama did a good job of reporting on the absurdity of
this idiocy (
see here ). Former US Attorney Andy McCarthy cuts to the heart of the matter:
"They did not have a legitimate investigative reason for doing this and there was no
criminal predicate or reason to treat him [Flynn] like a criminal suspect," McCarthy
explained.
"They did the interview outside of the established protocols of how the FBI is supposed to
interview someone on the White House staff. They are supposed to go through the Justice
Department and the White House counsel's office. They obviously purposely did not do that and
they were clearly trying to make a case on this."
"For years, a number of us have been arguing that this looked like a perjury trap," McCarthy
said.
Today's (Thursday) document dump reinforces the validity of McCarthy's conclusion that this
was a concocted perjury trap. The key document is the "Closing Communication" PDF dated 4
January 2017. It is a summary of the FBI's investigation of Crossfire Razor (i.e., Mike Flynn).
The document begins with this summary:
The FBI opened captioned case based on an articulable factual basis that Crossfire Razor
(CR) may wittingly or unwittingly be involved in activity on behalf of the Russian Federation
which may constitute a federal crime or threat to the national security. . . . Specifically, .
. . CR had ties to various state-affiliated entities of the Russian Federation, as reported by
open source information; and CR traveled to Russia in December 2015, as reported by open source
information.
The Agent conveniently fails to mention that Flynn's contacts with Russia in December 2015
were not at his initiative but came as an invitation from his Speaker's Bureau. Moreover,
General Flynn, because he still held TS/SCI clearances, informed the Defense Intelligence
Agency (DIA) of the trip, received permission to make the trip and, upon returning to the
United States from Russia, was fully debriefed by DIA. How is that an indicator of posing a
threat to the national security of the United States?
The goal of the investigation is stated very clearly on page two of the document:
. . . to determine whether the captioned subject, associated with the Trump campaign, was
directed and controlled by and/or coordinated activities with the Russian federation in a
manner which is a threat to the national security and/or possibly a violation of the Foreign
Agents Registration Act, 18 U.S.C. section 951 et seq, or other related statutes.
And what did the FBI find? NOTHING. NADA. ZIPPO. The Agent who wrote this report played it
straight and the investigation in the right way. He or she concluded:
The Crossfire Hurricane team determined that CROSSFIRE RAZOR was no longer a viable
candidate as part of the larger CROSSFIRE HURRICANE umbrella case. . . . The FBI is closing
this investigation. If new information is identified or reported to the FBI regarding the
activities of CROSSFIRE RAZOR, the FBI will consider reopening the investigation if
warranted.
This document is dated 4 January 2017. But Peter Strzok sent a storm of text messages to the
Agent who drafted the report asking him to NOT close the case.
This is not how a normal criminal or counter-intelligence case would be conducted. Normally
you would have actual evidence or "indicia" of criminal or espionage activity. But don't take
me word for it. Jim Comey bragged about this outrageous
conduct:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/NxNhjFrjXqI
Comey is a corrupt, sanctimonious prick. I suspect he may not think what he did was so funny
in the coming months. He may have forgotten saying this stupidity, but the video remains
intact.
The documents being released over the last week provide great insight into Attorney General
William Barr's strategy. He is not going to entertain media debates and back-and-forth with the
apologists for treason. He is letting the documents speak for themselves and ensuring that US
Attorneys--who are not part of the fetid, Washington, DC sewer--review the documents and
procedures used to prosecute political figures linked to President Trump. Then those documents
are legally and appropriately released. Barr is playing by the rules.
We are not talking about the inadvertent discovery of an isolated mistake or an act of
carelessness. The coup against Trump was deliberate and the senior leadership of the FBI
actively and knowingly participated in this plot. Exposing and punishing them remains a top
priority for Attorney General Barr, who understands that a failure to act could spell the doom
of this Republic.
No indictments.
Not for this bunch of swamp rats.
One set of laws for the swamp, another for America.
And now the same swamp - the bureaucrat pinhead version - are destroying the economy and
shutting down the country?.
Why?
Terrible decisions based on worse "data" AND tank the economy and Trump's re-election
chances.
Flynn has been bankrupted. He has fought valiantly to restore his honor ALONE. His fate is in
many ways in the hands of Judge Sullivan.
Trump other than tweet has done what for someone that brought military and national
security cred to his campaign? Let's not forget that Flynn was fired ostensibly for lying to
VP Pence. Exactly what the putschists wanted to accomplish.
blue peacock
Flynn is a nice Irish Catholic boy from Rhode Island whose father a retired MP staff sergeant
and branch manager of a local bank successfully cultivated the ROTC staff at U of RI so that
his two sons were given army ROTC scholarships in management, something their father could
understand. Michael and his brother, both generals are NOT members of the WP club and
therefore available for sacrifice. Michael Flynn occupied a narrow niche in Military
Intelligence. He was a targeting guy in the counter-terrorism bidness and rode that train to
the top without much knowledge or experience of anything else. He and his boss Stan
McChrystal, soul mates. He was singularly unqualified to be head of one of the major agencies
of the IC. IMO Martin Dempsey, CJCS (a member of the WP club) used Flynn to stand up to
Brennan's CIA and the NSC nuts at the WH while standing back in the shade himself. That is
why Obama cautioned Trump to be wary of North Korea and Michael Flynn. And this "innocent"
was then mousetrapped by people he thought were patriots.
True then, but what was not expected was Trump neither resigning nor being impeached nor
getting a new AG who would launch the Durham investigation. I wonder what FISA warrants are
out related to the Chinese virus and associated communications with US and Chinese nationals.
At least we don't have Obama's cast of characters involved in that, unless we have his "j.v."
team.
Someone that doesn't show up much in The NY Times or the Washington Post now but was the
central character in numerous scurrilous stories. Svetlana Lokhova was falsely slandered for
having an affair with Gen.Flynn and accused as a Russian agent by CIA/FBI agent Stefan
Halper.
What we learned today from the STUNNING document release in the case of @GenFlynn 1. FBI
opened a full-blown counterintelligence investigation in 2016 on the ex head of the Defense
Intelligence Agency while he was working for a political campaign based on one piece of
false intel
Its mind blowing the vast tentacles of this conspiracy at the highest levels of our law
enforcement and intelligence agencies. It is even more mind blowing that the miscreants have
profited so handsomely with book deals, media sinecures, GoFundMe campaigns. None have been
prosecuted.
Now rogue academics, rogue journalists, rogue former officials – anyone, in fact
– can go online and discover a myriad of things that until recently no one outside a
small establishment circle was ever supposed to understand. If you know where to look, you can
even find some of this stuff on Wikipedia (see, for example, Operation Timber Sycamore ).
The effect of this information overload has been to disorientate the great majority of us
who lack the time, the knowledge and the analytical skills to sift through it all and make
sense of the world around us. It is hard to discriminate when there is so much information
– good and bad alike – to digest.
Nonetheless, we have got a sense from these online debates, reinforced by events in the
non-virtual world, that our politicians do not always tell the truth, that money – rather
than the public interest – sometimes wins out in decision-making processes, and that our
elites may be little better equipped than us – aside from their expensive educations
– to run our societies.
Two decades of lies
There has been a handful of staging posts over the past two decades to our current era of
the Great Disillusionment. They include:
lack of transparency in the US government's
investigation into the events surrounding 9/11 (obscured by a parallel online controversy
about what took place that day); the
documented lies told about the reasons for launching a disastrous and illegal war of
aggression against Iraq in 2003 that unleashed regional chaos, waves of destabilising
migration into Europe and new, exceptionally brutal forms of political Islam; the
astronomical bailouts after the 2008 crash of bankers whose criminal activities nearly
bankrupted the global economy (but who were never held to account) and instituted more
than a decade of austerity measures that had to be paid for by the public; the refusal by
western governments and global institutions to take any
leadership on tackling climate change , as not only the science but the weather itself
has made the urgency of that emergency clear, because it would mean taking on their corporate
sponsors; and now the criminal failures of our governments to
prepare for, and respond properly to, the Covid-19 pandemic, despite many years of warnings.
Anyone who still takes what our governments say at face value well, I have several bridges
to sell you.
Experts failed us
But it is not just governments to blame. The failings of experts, administrators and the
professional class have been all too visible to the public as well. Those officials who have
enjoyed easy access to prominent platforms in the state-corporate media have obediently
repeated what state and corporate interests wanted us to hear, often only for that information
to be exposed later as incomplete, misleading or downright fabricated.
In the run-up to the 2003 attack on Iraq, too many political scientists, journalists and
weapons experts kept their heads down, keen to preserve their careers and status, rather than
speak up in support of those rare experts like Scott Ritter and
the late David Kelly who
dared to sound the alarm that we were not being told the whole truth.
In 2008, only a handful of economists was prepared to break with corporate orthodoxy and
question whether throwing money at bankers exposed as financial criminals was wise, or to
demand that these bankers be prosecuted. The economists did not argue the case that there must
be a price for the banks to pay, such as a public stake in the banks that were bailed out, in
return for forcing taxpayers to massively invest in these discredited businesses. And the
economists did not propose overhauling our financial systems to make sure there was no
repetition of the economic crash. Instead, they kept their heads down as well, in the hope that
their large salaries continued and that they would not lose their esteemed positions in
think-tanks and universities.
... ... ...
And recently we have learnt, for example, that a series of Conservative governments in the
UK recklessly ran down the
supplies of hospital protective gear , even though they had more than a decade of warnings
of a coming pandemic. The question is why did no scientific advisers or health officials blow
the whistle earlier. Now it is too late to save the lives of many thousands, including dozens
of medical staff, who have fallen victim so far to the virus in the UK.
Lesser of two evils
Worse still, in the Anglosphere of the US and the UK, we have ended up with political
systems that offer a choice between one party that supports a brutal, unrestrained version of
neoliberalism and another party that supports a marginally less brutal, slightly mitigated
version of neoliberalism. (And we have recently discovered in the UK that, after the grassroots
membership of one of those twinned parties managed to choose a leader in Jeremy Corbyn who
rejected this orthodoxy, his own party machine conspired
to throw the election rather than let him near power.) As we are warned at each election, in
case we decide that elections are in fact futile, we enjoy a choice – between the lesser
of two evils.
Those who ignore or instinctively defend these glaring failings of the modern corporate
system are really in no position to sit smugly in judgment on those who wish to question the
safety of 5G, or vaccines, or the truth of 9/11, or the reality of a climate catastrophe, or
even of the presence of lizard overlords.
Because through their reflexive dismissal of doubt, of all critical thinking on anything
that has not been pre-approved by our governments and by the state-corporate media, they have
helped to disfigure the only yardsticks we have for measuring truth or falsehood. They have
forced on us a terrible choice: to blindly follow those who have repeatedly demonstrated they
are not worthy of being followed, or to trust nothing at all, to doubt everything. Neither
position is one a healthy, balanced individual would want to adopt. But that is where we are
today.
Big Brother regimes
It is therefore hardly surprising that those who have been so discredited by the current
explosion of information – the politicians, the corporations and the professional class
– are wondering how to fix things in the way most likely to maintain their power and
authority.
They face two, possibly complementary options.
ORDER IT NOW
One is to allow the information overload to continue, or even escalate. There is an argument
to be made that the more possible truths we are presented with, the more powerless
we feel and the more willing we are to defer to those most vocal in claiming authority.
Confused and hopeless, we will look to father figures, to the strongmen of old, to those who
have cultivated an aura of decisiveness and fearlessness, to those who look like down-to-earth
mavericks and rebels.
This approach will throw up more Donald Trumps, Boris Johnsons and Jair Bolsonaros. And
these men, while charming us with their supposed lack of orthodoxy, will still, of course, be
exceptionally accommodating to the most powerful corporate interests – the military-industrial complex
– that really run the show.
The other option, which has already been road-tested under the rubric of "fake news", will
be to treat us, the public, like irresponsible children, who need a firm, guiding hand. The
technocrats and professionals will try to re-establish their authority as though the last two
decades never occurred, as though we never saw through their hypocrisy and lies.
They will cite "conspiracy theories" – even the true ones – as proof that it is
time to
impose new curbs on internet freedoms, on the right to speak and to think. They will argue
that the social media experiment has run its course and proved itself a menace – because
we, the public, are a menace. They are already flying trial balloons for this new Big Brother
world, under cover of tackling the health threats posed by the Covid-19 epidemic.
Surveillance a price worth paying to beat coronavirus, says Blair thinktank https://t.co/AAb1nnv4pG
We should not be surprised that the "thought-leaders" for shutting down the cacophony of the
internet are those whose failures have been most exposed by our new freedoms to explore the
dark recesses of the recent past. They have included Tony Blair, the British prime minister who
lied western publics into the disastrous and illegal war on Iraq in 2003, and Jack Goldsmith,
rewarded as a Harvard law professor for his role – since whitewashed – in helping
the Bush administration legalise torture and step up warrantless surveillance programmes.
Fmr. Bush admin lawyer/current Harvard Law prof Jack Goldsmith goes full-Thomas Friedman,
credits China's enlightened authoritarian approach to information as "largely right" and
laments the US' provincial fealty to the First Amendment as "largely wrong." https://t.co/1WyQtgE8bK
pic.twitter.com/1M03ybxh0I
The only alternative to a future in which we are ruled by Big Brother technocrats like Tony
Blair, or by chummy authoritarians who brook no dissent, or a mix of the two, will require a
complete overhaul of our societies' approach to information. We will need fewer curbs on free
speech, not more.
The real test of our societies – and the only hope of surviving the coming
emergencies, economic and environmental – will be finding a way to hold our leaders truly
to account. Not based on whether they are secretly lizards, but on what they are doing to save
our planet from our all-too-human, self-destructive instinct for acquisition and our craving
for guarantees of security in an uncertain world.
That, in turn, will require a transformation of our relationship to information and debate.
We will need a new model of independent, pluralistic, responsive, questioning media that is
accountable to the public, not to billionaires and corporations. Precisely the kind of media we
do not have now. We will need media we can trust to represent the full range of credible,
intelligent, informed debate, not the narrow Overton window through which we get a highly
partisan, distorted view of the world that serves the 1 per cent – an elite so richly
rewarded by the current system that they are prepared to ignore the fact that they and we are
hurtling towards the abyss.
With that kind of media in place – one that truly holds politicians to account and
celebrates scientists for their contributions to collective knowledge, not their usefulness to
corporate enrichment – we would not need to worry about the safety of our communications
systems or medicines, we would not need to doubt the truth of events in the news or wonder
whether we have lizards for rulers, because in that kind of world no one would rule over us.
They would serve the public for the common good.
Sounds like a fantastical, improbable system of government? It has a name: democracy. Maybe
it is time for us finally to give it a go.
Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His books include
"Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East"
(Pluto Press) and "Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair" (Zed Books).
His website is www.jonathan-cook.net .
Newly unsealed documents indicate that the FBI targeted former National Security Advisor
Michael Flynn for prosecution, showing senior officials at the bureau discussing ways to
ensnare him in a "perjury trap" before an interview.
The four pages of documents were
unsealed by US District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan on Wednesday, revealing in handwritten notes
and emails that the FBI's goal in investigating Flynn may have been "to get him to lie so we
can prosecute him or get him fired."
"The FBI planned it as a perjury trap at best and in so doing put it in writing,"
Flynn's defense attorney Sidney Powell said in a statement.
Sullivan also ordered another 11 pages of documents unsealed, which, according to Powell ,
may soon be redacted and published.
How they planned to get Flynn removed:1) Get Flynn "to admit to breaking the Logan Act";
or2) Catch Flynn in a lie.Their end goal was a referral to the DOJ - not to investigate
Flynn's contacts with the Russians. pic.twitter.com/Vty3FYaSt9
The potentially exculpatory documents were inexplicably denied to Flynn's defense team for
years, despite numerous requests to the government.
"What is especially terrifying is that without the integrity of Attorney General Bill
Barr and US Attorney Jensen, we still would not have this clear exculpatory information as ...
the prosecutors have opposed every request we have made," Powell said.
The role of the FBI in instigating the prosecution of Michael Flynn, the criminality of its conduct, and
the encouragement it received in doing so from senior Obama officials should offend everyone.
In a dramatic new turn of events, the legal team for Flynn, President Trump's former national security
advisor, says the Department of Justice has turned over exculpatory evidence in his case.Flynn is
defending against charges he lied to FBI agents in the course of their investigation into allegations of
Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election.
At a minimum, this information, which
includes evidence that US government prosecutors illegally coerced a guilty plea by threatening Flynn's
son with prosecution, warrants the withdrawal of that guilty plea. Whether or not the judge in the case,
US District Court Judge Emmet G Sullivan, will dismiss the entire case against Flynn on the grounds of
prosecutorial misconduct is yet to be seen. One fact, however, emerges from this sordid affair: the FBI,
lauded by its supporters as the world's
"premier law enforcement agency,"
is anything but.
Evidence of FBI misconduct during its investigation into alleged collusion between members of the
Trump campaign team and the Russian government in the months leading up to the presidential election has
been mounting for some time. From mischaracterizing information provided by former British MI6 officer
Christopher Steele in order to manufacture a case against then-candidate Trump, to committing fraud
against the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to authorize wiretaps on former low-level Trump
advisor Carter Page, the FBI has a record of corruption that would make a third-world dictator envious.
The crimes committed under the aegis of the FBI are not the actions of rogue agents, but rather part
and parcel of a systemic effort managed from the very top – both former Director James Comey and current
Director Christopher Wray are implicated in facilitating this criminal conduct. Moreover, it was carried
out in collaboration with elements within the Department of Justice, and with the assistance of national
security officials working for the Obama administration, making for a conspiracy that would rival any
investigation conducted by the FBI under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.
The heart of the case against Michael Flynn – a flamboyant, decorated combat veteran, with 33 years of
honorable service in the US Army – revolves around a phone call he made to the Russian ambassador to the
United States, Sergey Kislyak, on December 29, 2016. That was the same day then-President Obama ordered
the expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats from the US on charges of espionage. The conversation was
intercepted by the National Security Agency as part of its routine monitoring of Russian communications.
Normally, the identities of US citizens caught up in such surveillance are
"masked,"
or hidden,
so as to preserve their constitutional rights. However, in certain instances deemed critical to national
security, the identity can be
"unmasked"
to help further an investigation, using
"minimization"
standards designed to protect the identities and privacy of US citizens.
In Flynn's case, these
"minimization"
standards were thrown out the window: on January 12,
2017, and again on February 9, the Washington Post published articles that detailed Flynn's phone call
with Kislyak. US Attorney John Durham, tasked by Attorney General William P Barr to lead a review of the
actions taken by law enforcement and intelligence officials as part of the Russian collusion scandal, is
currently investigating the potential leaking of classified information by Obama-era officials in
relation to these articles.
Flynn's phone call with Kislyak was the central topic of interest when a pair of FBI agents, led by
Peter Strzok, met with Flynn in his White House office on January 24, 2017. This meeting later served as
the source of the charge levied against him for lying to a federal agent. It also provided grist for then
acting-Attorney General Sally Yates to travel to the White House on January 26 to warn then-White House
Counsel Michael McGahn that Flynn had lied to Vice President Mike Pence about his conversations with
Kislyak, and, as such, was in danger of being compromised by the Russians.
That Flynn lied, or otherwise misrepresented, his conversation with Kislyak to Pence is not in
dispute; indeed, it was this act that prompted President Trump to fire Flynn in the first place. But
lying to the Vice President, while wrong, is not a crime. Lying to FBI agents, however, is. And yet the
available evidence suggests that not only did Flynn not lie to Strzok and his partner when interviewed on
January 24, but that the FBI later doctored its report of the interview, known in FBI parlance as a
"302 report,"
to show that Flynn had. Internal FBI documents and official testimony clearly show
that a 302 report on Strzok's conversation with Flynn was prepared contemporaneously, and that he had
shown no indication of deception. However, in the criminal case prepared against him by the Department of
Justice, a 302 report dated August 22, 2017 – over seven months after the interview – was cited as the
evidence underpinning the charge of lying to a federal agent.
The evidence of a doctored 302 report, when combined with the evidence that the US prosecutor
conspired with Flynn's former legal counsel to
"keep secret"
the details of his plea agreement,
in violation of so-called Giglio requirements (named after the legal precedent set in Giglio v. United
States which holds that the failure to disclose immunity deals to co-conspirators constitutes a violation
of due-process rights), constitutes a clear-cut case of FBI malfeasance and prosecutorial misconduct.
Under normal circumstances, that should warrant the dismissal of the government's case against Flynn.
Whether Judge Emmet G Sullivan will agree to a dismissal, or, if not, whether the Department of
Justice would seek to retry Flynn, are not known at this time. What is known, however, is the level of
corruption that exists within the FBI and elements of the Department of Justice, regarding their
prosecution of a US citizen for purely political motive. Notions of integrity and fealty to the rule of
law that underpin the opinions of many Americans when it comes to these two institutions have been
shredded in the face of overwhelming evidence that the law is meaningless when the FBI targets you. If
this could happen to a man with Michael Flynn's stature and reputation, it can happen to anyone.
Scott Ritter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer. He served in the Soviet Union as an inspector implementing
the INF Treaty, in General Schwarzkopf's staff during the Gulf War, and from 1991-1998 as a UN weapons inspector. Follow him on
Twitter @RealScottRitter
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely
those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
"... These seeming paradoxes illustrate that the idea of totalitarianism is a useless tool in assessing the decency of governance in any twenty-first-century state. If we are to survive in this brave new world, in which technology makes it ever easier for governments to manipulate individual decisions, but in which we also demand that the state take an ever-larger role in ensuring our safety from ourselves, we must acknowledge that the Manichean worldview implied in the term totalitarianism is an outdated relic of the Cold War. ..."
Last Thursday, Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman issued a
warning in the New
York Times . "The pandemic will eventually end," he wrote, "but democracy, once lost, may never come back. And we're much closer
to losing our democracy than many people realize." Citing the Wisconsin election debacle -- the Supreme Court ruled that voters would
have to vote in person, risking their health -- Krugman argued that Donald Trump and the Republican Party are using the crisis for
their own, authoritarian ends.
This is the perennial critique of Trump: that he is a totalitarian at heart and, if given the chance, 'would want to establish
total control over society.'
Krugman is not alone. As early as last month, when cases of COVID-19 first began to surge in the United States, Masha Gessen
wrote in the New Yorker that the virus was fueling "Trump's autocratic instincts." They argued, "We have long known
that Trump has totalitarian instincts . . . the coronavirus has brought us a step closer." This is indeed the once and future critique
of the Trump presidency: that Trump is a totalitarian at heart and, if given the chance, "would want to establish total control over
a mobilized society." A few days ago, Salon
published an article arguing that the president is using the virus to prepare "the ground for a totalitarian dictatorship." Even
Meghan McCain, as unlikely a person as any to agree with Gessen,
indicated recently that Trump has "always been a sort of totalitarian president" and that he might use the virus to "play on
the American public's fears in a draconian way and possibly do something akin to the Patriot Act."
These critiques make ample use of the term totalitarianism -- "that most horrible of inventions of the twentieth century," in
Gessen's summation . They and other commentators also use it to describe Fidel Castro's Cuba to Vladimir Putin's Russia, which
Gessen left in 2013. As right-wing populism has surged around the world in recent years, the term has had something of a renaissance.
Hannah Arendt's 1951 classic The Origins of Totalitarianism became a best seller again after
Donald Trump's election in November 2016.
This uptick in the term's use runs counter to the trend among historians, for whom the idea of totalitarianism carries increasingly
little weight. Many of us see the term primarily as polemical, used more to discredit governments than to offer meaningful analyses
of them. Scholars often prefer the much broader term authoritarianism, which denotes any form of government that concentrates political
power in the hands of an unaccountable elite. But the fact that historians who study such governments eschew the term totalitarianism,
even as it enjoys wide public currency, points not only to a disconnect between the academy and the general public, but also to a
problem that Americans have in thinking about dictatorship. And it underscores our collective uncertainty about the proper role of
government in crises such as these.
Historians increasingly see the term totalitarian as polemical, used more to discredit governments than to offer meaningful
analyses of them.
The terms totalitarian and totalitarianism have a winding history. In 1922 King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy appointed Benito
Mussolini, leader of the Italian fascist party, as prime minister. In subsequent years, Mussolini established an authoritarian government
that provided a roadmap for other twentieth century dictators, including Adolf Hitler, and made the term fascist an enduring descriptor
of right-wing authoritarianism. A year after Mussolini's appointment, Giovanni Amendola, a journalist and politician opposed to fascism,
used the term totalitario , or totalitarian, to describe how the fascists presented two largely identical party lists at
a local election, thereby preserving the form of competitive democracy (i.e., offering voters a choice), while, in reality, gutting
it. Other writers soon took up the idea and it became a more generic descriptor of the fascist state's dictatorial powers. Mussolini
himself eventually adopted the term to characterize his government, writing that it described a regime of "all within the state,
none outside the state, none against the state." In the next two decades, the terms began to circulate internationally. Amendola
used them in 1925 to compare Mussolini's government and the young Soviet regime in Moscow. Academics in the English-speaking world
began to employ them in the 1920s and '30s in similar comparative contexts.
In a sign of how much the meaning of the words drifted, however, those who later adopted them into political philosophy did not
necessarily consider fascist Italy to have been totalitarian. Hannah Arendt, for instance, dismissed Mussolini's movement: "The true
goal of Fascism was only to seize power and establish the Fascist 'elite' as uncontested ruler over the country." Even now, scholars
point to the survival of pre-fascist government and bureaucratic structures, as well as lower levels of terror and violence directed
against the populace, as evidence that Mussolini's Italy was not genuinely totalitarian.
Instead, Arendt considered totalitarianism to be a way of understanding fundamental similarities between Stalinism and Hitlerism,
despite their diametrical opposition on the political spectrum. This archetypal comparison remains the bedrock of studies of totalitarian
dictatorship. In Origins of Totalitarianism , Arendt laid out what she saw as its internal dynamic:
Totalitarianism is never content to rule by external means, namely, through the state and a machinery of violence; thanks to
its peculiar ideology and the role assigned to it in this apparatus of coercion, totalitarianism has discovered a means of dominating
and terrorizing human beings from within.
This state of affairs, which Arendt diagnosed as the result of an increasingly atomized society, bears a striking resemblance
to the state described in George Orwell's 1984 (another bestseller in the Trump era). Airstrip One, as Orwell renamed Great
Britain, is dominated by an omniscient Big Brother who sees, hears, and knows all. Through a reform of language, Airstrip One even
tries to make it impossible to think illegal thoughts. Newspeak, it is hoped, "shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because
there will be no words in which to express it." Orwell and Arendt considered the obliteration of the private and internal life of
individuals to be the ne plus ultra of totalitarian rule.
Of course, what Arendt and Orwell described are systems of government that have never actually existed. Neither Nazism nor Stalinism
succeeded in controlling or dominating its citizens from within. Moreover, while later scholarship has partially borne out Arendt's
analysis of National Socialism, her understanding of Stalinist rule has proved less insightful.
The other classic account of totalitarianism is Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy , published in 1956 by Carl Friedrich
and Zbigniew Brzezinski. In it, the political scientists developed a six-point list of criteria by which to recognize totalitarianism:
it has an "elaborate ideology," relies on a mass party, uses terror, claims a monopoly on communication as well as on violence, and
controls the economy. Like Arendt, Friedrich and Brzezinski believed totalitarianism to be a new phenomenon -- to take Gessen's words,
an invention of the twentieth century. Their goal was to understand structural similarities between different modern dictatorships.
Even Nazi Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union -- the two archetypal examples -- were so different that historians wonder if their
comparison as totalitarian really yields interesting insights.
While scholars critiqued Friedrich and Brzezinski's model -- for example, its one-size-fits-all list fails to appreciate these
regimes' dynamism -- the debate over the usefulness of the term totalitarianism continued. In the decades since, historians and political
scientists have gone back and forth, defining the concept in new ways and showing how those definitions fail in one way or another.
But, at base, these definitions have typically assumed, in the words of historian Ian Kershaw, a "total claim" made on the part
of the totalitarian state over those it rules. That is, Arendt's basic characterization -- that totalitarian regimes aspire to total
control over the public, private, and internal lives of their citizens -- continues to inform scholarly debate.
Arendt's, I would venture, is also the term's folk definition: that is, in people's minds, totalitarianism distinguishes a subset
of authoritarian regimes that seek to (and perhaps even sometimes succeed at) dominating the individual in every conceivable way.
China's new social credit score, which curtails the rights of people who engage in so-called antisocial behaviors, is a current example
of this sort of thing. It is also a clear illustration of the role technology plays in totalitarian fantasies. But China's government
also has many other characteristics, such as a market economy, that traditional understandings of totalitarianism explicitly reject.
This pared-down definition of totalitarianism is still only of dubious utility. Even Nazi Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union --
the two archetypal examples -- were so different that historians wonder if their comparison as "totalitarian" really yields interesting
insights. Studies of everyday life in both countries have underscored the limits of the totalitarian model. These revisionist histories,
in the words of Soviet historian Sheila Fitzpatrick, "introduced into Soviet history the notions of bureaucratic and professional
interest groups and institutional and center-periphery conflict, and they were particularly successful at demonstrating inputs from
middle levels of the administrative hierarchy and professional groups. They were alert to what would now be called questions of agency."
Similarly nuanced approaches to Nazism have uncovered ways power worked within the regime that throw the totalitarian hypothesis
into doubt.
In my own area of research, Germany after World War II, totalitarianism plays a fraught role. During the Cold War and its immediate
aftermath, politicians, journalists, and scholars all painted East Germany as a totalitarian government on par with the Nazi state.
But that characterization is simply wrong. For instance, the East German and Nazi secret police forces, the Stasi and the Gestapo,
functioned in fundamentally different ways. The Gestapo was a relatively small organization that relied on thousands of spontaneous
denunciations. It practiced brutal torture and was embedded in a system of extralegal justice that was responsible for the murder
of hundreds of thousands of German citizens (not to mention the millions more killed in the Holocaust). The Stasi was quite different.
It employed a vast bureaucracy -- three times larger than the Gestapo in a population four times smaller -- and cultivated an even
larger network of collaborators. Around 5 percent of East Germans are estimated to have worked for the Stasi at some point, blurring
the lines between persecutors and persecuted. Against those unlucky enough to wind up in a Stasi prison, the secret police employed
methods of psychological torture. But it never induced the same level of terror as did the Gestapo. Nor was it responsible for anywhere
near the same number of deaths. For most East Germans, the Stasi's presence was more of a nuisance -- a "scratchy undershirt," historian
Paul Betts argues.
Of course, the Stasi's ubiquity and its vast surveillance apparatus have equally been taken as proof that the totalitarian hypothesis
does indeed apply to East Germany. But there is ample evidence that East Germans enjoyed robust private lives, along with a sense
of individual self. East Germans wrote millions of petitions to their government, for instance, complaining about everything from
vacations to apartments. They showed up to quiz members of parliament about government policy. When the regime tried to outlaw public
nudity in the 1950s, as historian Josie McLellan has described, East Germans disobeyed, protested, and eventually forced the government
to relent. Kristen Ghodsee, among others, has
contended
that in many ways life was better for women in Eastern Bloc countries than in the West. And the dictatorship never tried to bring
the Protestant Church, to which millions of East Germans belonged, under its full control. My
own research
reveals that gay liberation activists were able to pressure the dictatorship to make significant policy changes.
In short, whatever criteria one uses to define totalitarianism, East Germany does not fit. It was a dictatorship, but certainly
not a totalitarian one. In fact, the classification of East Germany has proved such a nettlesome problem, it has spawned a veritable
cottage industry of neologisms. Scholars describe it, variously, as a welfare dictatorship, a participatory dictatorship, a thoroughly
dominated society, a modern dictatorship, a tutelary state, and a late totalitarian patriarchal and surveillance state.
If the obliteration of the wall between public and private is the defining characteristic of totalitarianism, can any contemporary
society be described as other than totalitarian?
This brings us back to current usage. The problem is that the term totalitarian fulfills two quite different purposes. The first,
as just discussed, is taxonomic: for scholars, it has helped frame an effort to understand the nature of various twentieth-century
regimes. And in this function, it finally seems to be reaching the end of its useful life.
But the term's other purpose is ideological and pejorative, the outgrowth of a Cold War desire to classify fascist and communist
dictatorships as essentially the same phenomenon. To catalog a state as totalitarian it to say it is radically other, sealed off
from the liberal, capitalist, democratic order that we take to be normal. When we call a state totalitarian, we are saying that its
goals are of a categorically different sort than those of our own government -- that it seeks, as Gessen suggests, to destroy human
dignity.
The ideological work that the term totalitarian performs is significant, providing a sleight-of-hand by which to both condemn
foreign regimes and deflect criticism of the regime at home. By claiming that dictatorship and democracy are not simply opposed but
categorically different, it disables us from recognizing the democratic parts of dictatorial rule and the authoritarian aspects of
democratic rule, and thus renders us less capable of effectively diagnosing problems in our own society.
We love to denounce foreign dictatorships. George W. Bush invented the "
Axis of Evil ," for example, to provide a ready
supply of villains. These "totalitarian" regimes -- Iran, Iraq, and North Korea -- we were told, all threatened our freedoms. But
the grouping was always nonsensical, as the regimes bore few similarities to one another. While Iran, in particular, is authoritarian,
it also bears hallmarks of pluralistic democracy. Pointing out the latter does not diminish the former -- rather it helps us understand
how and why the Islamic Republic has shown such tenacity and staying power. To simply call such regimes totalitarian not only misses
the point, but also whitewashes American complicity in creating and propping up authoritarian regimes -- Iran not least of all. Indeed,
the United States supported a number of the past century's most brutal right-wing dictatorships.
Moreover, by thinking of totalitarianism as something that happens elsewhere, in illiberal, undemocratic places, we ignore the
ways in which our government can and has behaved in authoritarian ways within our own country. Black Americans experienced conditions
of dictatorial rule in the Jim Crow South and under slavery, to name but the most prominent examples.
The language of totalitarianism thus obscures how dictatorship and democracy exist on the same spectrum. It is imperative that
we come to a clearer understanding of the fact that hybrid forms of government exist which combine elements of both. These managed
democracies, to take political theorist Sheldon Wolin's term -- from Putin's Russia, to Viktor Orbán's Hungary, to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's
Turkey -- have hallmarks of democratic republics and use a combination of new and old methods to enforce something akin
to one-party rule. These states are certainly not totalitarian, but neither are they democracies.
Likewise, the Republican Party's efforts to manage U.S. democracy through gerrymandering and voter suppression is similar to Putin's,
Orbán's, and Erdoğan's tactics of securing political power. Its strategies push the republic further toward the authoritarian end
of the political spectrum. And, indeed, the sophisticated data-mining techniques of
Cambridge Analytica , which assisted
the 2016 Trump campaign to manipulate voter choices, would have made the Stasi, the Gestapo, or the NKVD green with envy.
In fact, if the obliteration of the wall between public and private is the defining characteristic of totalitarianism, can any
contemporary society be described as anything other than totalitarian? What, after all, does agency mean in a world in which Facebook
aspires to know what we want before we know it ourselves or in a country in which the NSA collects vast troves of data on our own
citizens? To my mind, totalitarianism's usefulness as a distinctive category of government simply evaporates when we begin to look
at all the ways in which technology has compromised individual privacy and agency in the twenty-first century.
Fear of totalitarianism gives the right cover to denounce measures to control the virus: if freedom means freedom from government,
then the worst government is one that makes a total claim on its citizens, even in the interest of saving them from a plague.
Use of the term also prevents us from thinking productively about COVID-19 and how governments ought to respond to it. For a state
of quarantine necessarily forces everyone to give up -- whether voluntarily or no -- their rights of movement, assembly, and, to
some extent, expression. It requires the private choices individuals make -- whether to have friends over for dinner, go on a morning
jog, or buy groceries -- to become public in painful and sometimes even embarrassing ways. Technology companies are
starting to employ their products' tracking features to trace the virus's spread, an application that many
worry
poses an unacceptable breach of privacy.
Yet, the destruction of the private sphere in the interest of the public good is precisely what theorists tell us lies at the
heart of totalitarianism. Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben made precisely this point,
arguing recently that the extraordinary
response to COVID-19 is totalitarian: "The disproportionate reaction . . . is quite blatant. It is almost as if with terrorism exhausted
as a cause for exceptional measures, the invention of an epidemic offered the ideal pretext for scaling them up beyond any limitation."
Of course, we now know the measures the Italian government introduced went neither far nor fast enough. Now there are over 160,000
confirmed cases in Italy and over 20,000 confirmed deaths from the virus.
The confusion the idea of totalitarianism sows over responses in the United States has also been evident since last month. On
March 22, right-wing commentator Andrew Napolitano
asserted
that measures to combat COVID-19 were motivated by "totalitarian impulses." Meanwhile, state officials have been busy
postponing primary
elections, a measure that under normal circumstances would undoubtedly be denounced as totalitarian in nature.
If we are going to arrive at a more sophisticated answer to the question of how to govern democratically in the twenty-first century,
we must begin by acknowledging that all modern governments attempt to control and influence the lives of their citizens, and all
governments make use of exceptional powers to combat crises. The problem with the idea of totalitarianism is that it makes no accommodation
for the reasons behind such exercise of coercive power.
It is, of course, quite right to worry about Donald Trump's response to the virus. His dilly-dallying, his narcissism, and his
inability to take responsibility for anything may
cost
one hundred thousand or more lives. Commentators like Krugman are correct, insofar as Trump and his cronies are indeed trying to
use the crisis to cement their authority. But the ways they are going about it are not totalitarian in any sense of the word. In
fact, the idea of totalitarianism, as commentators such as Napolitano reveal, gives the radical right cover to denounce measures
to control the virus. It is the last stage in the late-twentieth-century neoliberal critique of government: if freedom is only ever
freedom from government interference, then the worst form of government is that which makes a total claim on its citizens, even in
the interest of saving them from a plague. Thinking in terms of totalitarianism -- instead of the broader and more flexible term
authoritarianism -- leads one into such frustrating mental thickets, in which democratic policies can plausibly be denounced as totalitarian.
These seeming paradoxes illustrate that the idea of totalitarianism is a useless tool in assessing the decency of governance
in any twenty-first-century state. If we are to survive in this brave new world, in which technology makes it ever easier for governments
to manipulate individual decisions, but in which we also demand that the state take an ever-larger role in ensuring our safety from
ourselves, we must acknowledge that the Manichean worldview implied in the term totalitarianism is an outdated relic of the Cold
War.
I've become convinced the next major event that'll be used to further centralize power and
escalate domestic authoritarianism will center around U.S.-China tensions. We haven't
witnessed this "event" yet, but there's a good chance it'll occur within the next year or
two. Currently, the front runner appears to be a major aggressive move by China into Hong
Kong, but it could be anything really. Taiwan, the South China Sea, currency, economic or
cyber warfare; the flash points are numerous and growing by the day. Something is going to
snap and when it does we better be prepared to not act like mindless imbeciles for the fourth
time this century.
When that day arrives, and it's likely not too far off, certain factions will try to sell
you on the monstrous idea that we must become more like China to defeat China. We'll be told
we need more centralization, more authoritarianism, and less freedom and civil liberties or
China will win. Such talk is nonsense and the wise way to respond is to reject the worst
aspects of the Chinese system and head the other way.
As the clownish farce that is Russiagate slinks back into the psyop dumpster from which it
emerged, an even more destructive narrative has metastasized following the U.S. government's
incompetent response to covid-19.
It was clear to me from the start that Russiagate was a nonsensical narrative wildly
embraced by a variety of powerful people in the wake of Trump's election merely to serve their
own ends. For establishment Democrats, it was a way to pretend Hillary Clinton didn't actually
lose because she was a wretched status quo candidate with a destructive track record, but she
lost due to "foreign meddling." This allowed those involved in her campaign to deflect blame,
but it also short-circuited any discussion of the merits of populism and widespread voter
dissatisfaction (within both parties) percolating throughout the land. It was a fairytale
invented by people intentionally putting their heads in the sand in order to avoid
confrontation with political reality and to keep their cushy gravy-train of entrenched
corruption going.
Russiagate was likewise embraced by the national security state (imperial apparatus) for
similar reasons. Like establishment Democrats, the national security state also wanted to
prevent the narrative that the status quo was rejected in the 2016 election from spreading. It
was incentivized to pretend Hillary's loss was the result of gullible Americans being duped by
crafty Russians in order to manufacture the idea that U.S. society was healthy and normal if
not for some external enemy.
Another primary driver for the national security state was to punish Russia for acting like
a sovereign state as opposed to a colony of U.S. empire in recent years. Russia has been an
increasingly serious thorn in the side of unipolarism advocates over the past decade by
performing acts such as buying gold, providing safe harbor for Edward Snowden, and thwarting
the dreams of regime change in Syria. Such acts could not go unpunished.
So Russiagate served its purpose. It wasted our time for much of Trump's first term and it
helped prevent Bernie Sanders from winning the Democratic nomination. Now we get Chinagate.
When the premier empire on the planet starts blaming external enemies for its internal
problems, you know it's almost always an excuse to let your own elites off the hook and further
erode civil liberties. While it appears the novel coronavirus covid-19 did in fact come from
China, and China tried to discourage other countries from taking decisive action in the early
days, our internal political actors blaming China for their own lack of preparation and timely
reaction is patently ridiculous.
The entire world saw China shutdown the entire city of Wuhan shuttering factories and the
economy. Anyone with two eyes and half a brain could see they were ACTING as if this were
very serious. I bought masks, hand sanitizer, lysol wipes at the end of January. Why didn't
State? https://t.co/oECvvxbV0K
If Stacy and myself were able to see the situation clearly and respond early, why couldn't
our government? This isn't rocket science. The Chinese were acting as if the world had ended in
cities across the country and we're supposed to believe U.S. leaders simply listened to what
the CCP was saying as opposed to what they were doing? How does that make any sense?
It makes even less sense considering the Trump administration has been in an explicit cold
war with China for almost two years. This concept that the American national security state
just took China's word for what was going on in the early days is preposterous. So what's going
on here? Similar to Russiagate, the increased focus on directing our ten minutes of hate at the
Chinese provides cover for the elites, but Chinagate is far more dangerous because the
narrative will prove far more convincing for many Americans.
Although Russiagate was rapidly embraced by people with severe Trump Derangement Syndrome,
most people just didn't buy into it or care. Only the most dimwitted amongst us actually
believed the Russians were responsible for our major problems at home, but when it comes to
China the argument can be far more persuasive because many aspects of the economic relationship
between the U.S. and China are in fact problematic. Specifically, the U.S. transformed itself
from a nation of producers and builders into a nation of debt-driven consumption slaves over
the past five decades. While China played a key role in this process, it wasn't the driver.
Did China force the U.S. to abandon gold convertibility in 1971, thus beginning the
transition from an industrial empire into a financial one? Did China convince us to repeal
Glass-Steagall, or lie about WMD in Iraq? Did China put a gun to our manufacturing executives'
heads and force them to offshore manufacturing, or did the executives do that with greed filled
eyes while earning billions upon billions from labor arbitrage? China may have directly
benefited from five decades of avarice-driven policy crimes committed by American "elites," but
they didn't cause them. They are entirely homegrown.
Yep, the only people who benefit from the external enemy obsession are the people who
actually wrecked this country.
Chinagate is far more dangerous than Russiagate because very serious fundamental problems
within the U.S.-China economic relationship do exist. I don't deny this, and I'm in favor of
actual policies that would incentivize the American people to become producers and builders as
opposed to castrated debt zombies. The problem is many of the people ratcheting up the volume
on the evils of China (I don't deny the abundance of evil) aren't interested in bringing
liberty and production back to America. Rather, they're trying to take away more of your
freedoms, economically and politically.
Wall Street and the national security state (empire) ransacked and hollowed out this
country. It wasn't your neighbor, it wasn't immigrants and it wasn't an external enemy.
The same people who've been in charge of the country for the entire 21st century remain in
charge. Presidential politics is pure theater in an empire. Think about it, the same people who
brought you endless war, the surveillance panopticon and perpetual Wall Street crime and
bailouts are supposed to take on China? The same China that made so many of them fabulously
wealthy? Give me a fucking break.
The elitist agenda isn't to use anger at China to bring freedom and production to our
shores, but to use heightened emotional fear to tighten their domestic power grip. The idea is
to use Chinese authoritarianism as a model for the U.S.
The post covid-19 elitist wet dream here is pretty transparent. Convince everyone to be a
compliant farm animal on an imperial plantation.
Unsurprisingly, the usual suspects are already coming out of their snake holes to advocate
for exactly that. We saw this a few days ago when Harvard Law Professor and former George W.
Bush administration lawyer, Jack Goldsmith, explicitly
called for Chinese-like censorship of speech on the internet.
In the great debate of the past two decades about freedom versus control of the network,
China was largely right and the United States was largely wrong. Significant monitoring and
speech control are inevitable components of a mature and flourishing internet, and
governments must play a large role in these practices to ensure that the internet is
compatible with a society's norms and values.
By all means advocate for a reshuffling of the relationship between the U.S. and China that
will lead to more freedom, resilience and economic vitality at home and I'll support it, but
don't tell me we need to become China in order to defeat China. If we're dumb enough to fall
for that, we'll get exactly what we deserve. Good and hard.
* * *
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Based on my reading of popular news outlets and essays, speeches, the current term "liberal
international order" was born out of anti-Russian propaganda. The Russians were not only out
to get a few enemy countries (and Hillary personally), but was a civilizational threat. The
term basically means the US and its European lackey allies. It is self promoting PR against
the anti-Western imperialist Slavic and now Asiatic East.
I believe that much of the anti-Russian propaganda has its echoes if not origins in German
Nazi propaganda. The Nazis (and indeed their current brethren spread across Europe and North
America) believed that the Jews were not only trying to destroy Germany (America), but also
trying destroy the entirety of European civilization (EU). Which in current terms is the
liberal international order. This term helps justify the hysterical anti-Russian rants in the
mass media of North America and the EU. This is an old anti-Semitic narrative updated.
THE SENATE Intelligence Committee has
released a bipartisan
report with a stark bottom line: What President Trump calls the " Russia hoax " isn't a hoax at all.
The fourth and latest installment in lawmakers' review of Moscow's meddling examines a
January 2017 assessment by the nation's spy agencies that Mr. Trump has repeatedly attempted to
discredit -- and confirms it, unanimously. Russia sought to subvert Americans' belief in our
democracy, bring down Hillary Clinton and bolster her rival. That these legislators from both
sides of the aisle are willing to say as much after three years of thorough investigation is an
encouraging sign of some independent thinking still left in government. It's also a reminder of
the peril this independence is in today. The Russia hoax was never a hoax. An encouraging
bipartisan report confirms it. - The Washington Post
The committee members conclude that the intelligence community produced a "coherent and
well-constructed . . . basis for the case of unprecedented Russian interference
in the 2016 U.S. presidential election" despite a tight time frame. The report also examines
two matters of particular contention: first, whether the salacious dossier compiled by former
British intelligence officer Christopher Steele played an inappropriate role in the finding of
interference; the senators say it did not. And second, whether former CIA director John O.
Brennan pressured colleagues into arriving at a stronger conclusion than the evidence
warranted.
This latter concern is also at the center of the broad probe Attorney General William P.
Barr has ordered into the origins of the Russia investigation. "There are a lot of things that
are unexplained," Mr. Barr has said
. "And we'll be able to sort out exactly what happened." Yet the senators have pursued the same
avenues of inquiry and come up with a clear answer: The differing levels of confidence among
agencies were "justified and properly represented," and the ultimate wording was reached
"openly and with sufficient exchanges of views."
"... I spotted Yahoo News carrying this NYT hit piece today and was tempted to respond. Then I saw the general run of comments that read like the target audience it was meant for, and figured I'd be wasting my time. It might have been worth squandering five minutes, though. ..."
"... It is a scary situation. A lot of people actually believe the New York Times. ..."
"... Did you see this one in today's NYTimes? The pot didn't just call the kettle black: With Selective Coronavirus Coverage, China Builds a Culture of Hate: The state propaganda machine highlights other countries' mistakes while suppressing China's, fueling anger toward foreigners and domestic critics alike. see: http://nytimes.com/2020/04/22/business/china-coronavirus-propaganda.html ..."
UPDATED: The paper of record is again laundering, without skepticism, U.S. intelligence
meant to ratchet up tensions with China, just as it did with Russia, writes Joe Lauria.
D uring the saga of Russiagate The New York Times was the main vehicle for unnamed
U.S. intelligence officials to filter uncorroborated allegations about Russia, presenting them
as proven fact.
Just as the Democratic Party attempted to shift the blame from its disastrous 2016 loss to
Donald Trump onto Russia, the Trump administration is now trying to shift the blame from
Trump's disastrous handling of the Coronavirus crisis onto China.
Robert Emmett , April 23, 2020 at 12:06
Yeah, wouldn't expect anything less than well-deserved acrimony for the Grey Hag on this
site. Some of us still remember how the so-called paper of record withheld the "smoking gun"
of King Geo the Younger's use of mass surveillance until after the 2004 election. Who do you
suppose is their target audience for this latest fake scoop? Could it be the newly woke crowd
who now raise the NYrag as their gold standard in all things considered Russia bashing? Talk
about fuddy-duddy.
Today's mass media is full of rope-a-dope tricks such as placing a tiny nugget of "truth"
within a massive hairball of innuendo, exaggeration, disinformation and lies to be extracted
at the exact right moment to gainsay those who would question the narrative du jour. Another
well-worn deception is to let the lowest common denominator source set the dodgy agenda and
then use that cue to follow the "news" as fits to serve their own agendas. Over the years,
that often involves skewing reactionary and "forgetting" how to connect dots.
You can see a prime example of this (also part of the current surge of anti-China
propaganda) at that other bastion of unnamed sources, the WaPo. Blumenthal lays out how it's
done at The Grayzone Project re: allegations that the Wuhan Biotech lab released the virus.
Funny though how there's a yawning gap in the story about the hows & whys &
wherefores of an actual shutdown of a similar Level 4 lab right in WaPo's own backyard at
Fort Detrick.
"Dodgy scoop" made me smile. Are those served on self-licking ice cream cones?
China and Russia had better be keeping their powder dry. No telling how far this lunacy is
going to go. With Pirro´s rant it looks like the crazies have been let out of the pen
and is just the thing to get the mentally challenged in an up roar and demanding military
action against China. I have no doubt that China can handle the American military in a
conventional confrontation but if it goes nuclear all bets are going to be off. The Better
Dead Than Reders seem to be riding high right now. Who knows they may just get their wish.
The Pirros et all do sound like the woman in a bar just itching to get a fight going, and
then screaming blue murder when her favorite gets the snot beat out of him. You just can
never get them to shut up before the fight gets going. but the Pirros of the world never can
quite get a grip around the fact that is proven over and over again, wars and fights are easy
to start, but hard to finish and no one knows how they aill turn out. And given the lack of
success of the American military in wars of choice since the Second World War I would be very
careful if I was her of what I was wishing for.
As I understand it, we (our intelligence people) were aware of the "potential" threat of
the virus before the Chinese leadership announced it to the world. China did announce it to
the world and people can argue they should have done it sooner. But the failure, if we decide
there is one, belongs to us in not acting on the intelligence. Why we didn't is a matter
worth investigating although what will be learned to prevent such future errors is
unclear.
Certainly, those who want to use this as a further wedge between us and China do not serve
anyone's interests other than the cui bono horde who benefits from such divisions.
As others have stated our most serious virus is the one that causes who to seek
confrontation with other governments whenever opportunity arises. It is a very destructive
virus.
DW Bartoo , April 23, 2020 at 10:38
It may be counted upon that ALL institutions in the U$ military empire will deliver the
worst possible outcomes.
The evidence for this assertion is voluminous and growing by the hour (quite as obscenely
as the "wealth" of Jeff Bezos grows at the rate of $11 thousand every second).
Frankly, one could hardly expect anything less from The NY Times.
Be it war-mongering, hysteria-building, or sycophantic "official" propagandizing [now
fully legal thanks to the sainted Obama, who also, it is alkedged, played a highly
significant role in destroying the (now obviously) pathetic campaign of Bernie Sander, that
Joe Biden, clearly suffering from dementia, and poster boy of the very neoliberal policies
which elevated Trump to power, will be the Dem "standard bearer seeking the same power while
promising to do nothing at all – about anything, which really IS the Standard Dem
policy, U$ politics being about nothing but controlling the spoils and keeping the
revolving-door/lobbying graving train rolling merrily along].
Yet the real Powers That Be, cannot only count upon all the vaunted institutions from a
pretend democracy and rigged political system, to a complacent, complicit, and criminally
compromised MSM to parrot absolute idiocy, they may also count on a thoroughly infantile
majority of the public to rally behind any war, of words, of weapons, even of nuclear
weapons, simply because the U$ is exceptional, beyond compare, and constitutionally unwilling
to learn anything from any other nation, society, or people.
It is not merely the MSM which inculcate these myths of superiority, it is the entire
educational system as well.
It is not, necessarily, a conspiracy, it is simply conveniently and comfortably profitable
to buy into the idiocy and pass it happily along.
Evidence?
Actual facts?
Not necessary.
And most inconvenient.
It might affect circulation.
U$ian Idiocy is quite as communicable as the "novel" coronavirus.
As my youngest daughter put it, "It's a long story."
Just to test my wits, she then asked me if I got the joke.
Yes, my dear, I got it.
At some point, it is possible that most of us will
Voice from Europe , April 23, 2020 at 08:37
The Chinese reports to the WHO are clear and transparent and date from the end of January.
Western MSM has no journalist worth that name !
Just like the new anti Hydrochloroquine study that was reported is full of potholes just
waiting for someone to be read.
People please check the published reprints of IHU mediterranee.
Hippocrates said: There are in fact two things, Science and Opinion. The former begets
Knowledge, the latter Ignorance.
Please people distinguish fact from opinion.
Mike from Jersey , April 22, 2020 at 18:39
The article states:
"Any reputable journalism school will teach its students that you hold off publishing
until you see the evidence underlying an assertion. "
But this was not a reputable newspaper.
So, what did you expect?
... ... ...
AnneR , April 23, 2020 at 14:04
Yastreb – Indeed worse, though less for the reality that propaganda, slanted
"reportage" is the common currency of the "news" organs of both the USA and Russia (not to
mention pretty much the rest of the world's MSM), than for the fact that while Russians, from
USSR days, knows to take everything in the media with some salt, to question the veracity of
unsupported, dubiously supported claims, here in the US of A unsubstantiated, or porously
backed, weakly supported "facts" usually expressed in Newspeak, slippery ways are very often
accepted by the target audience, hook, line and bloody sinker.
I mean – it's the NYT, or WaPo, or The Atlantic, CNN, MSDNC, PBS, NPR; they would
never try to mislead us. Would they? Gorblimey. One despairs, one really does.
And *not* as if the gullible readers, audiences (largely composed of the supporters of the
Dem face of the single-Janus party) have let Russiagate go, if what I hear on NPR (including
its BBC World Service broadcasts) is anything to go by.
China-gate – neither side of the single party can possibly let this opportunity to
prevent the rise of China, stop this ancient culture's challenging the "rightful,"
exceptional(ly barbaric) world hegemon, USA, from maintaining its proper position at the top
of the firmament however it is achieved.
Tobin Sterritt , April 22, 2020 at 17:03
I spotted Yahoo News carrying this NYT hit piece today and was tempted to respond. Then I
saw the general run of comments that read like the target audience it was meant for, and
figured I'd be wasting my time. It might have been worth squandering five minutes,
though.
Mike from Jersey , April 23, 2020 at 08:44
Tobin,
It is a scary situation. A lot of people actually believe the New York Times.
Did you see this one in today's NYTimes? The pot didn't just call the kettle black: With Selective Coronavirus Coverage, China Builds a Culture of Hate: The state propaganda
machine highlights other countries' mistakes while suppressing China's, fueling anger toward
foreigners and domestic critics alike. see:
http://nytimes.com/2020/04/22/business/china-coronavirus-propaganda.html
AnneR , April 23, 2020 at 14:08
O Society – well, bien sur. I mean we can blacken every people, culture, society,
government (except those we install – that we never do, unless they stray from their
[American] defined path) as much as we want, as often as we please and no one has the right
to call us out on that, complain. Heaven forfend – we'll bomb 'em, subject them to
siege warfare (via ever tightening economic sanctions no matter how many children we kill
doing this – "price is worth it" in'it?
Donald Duck , April 22, 2020 at 15:29
"Any reputable journalism school will teach its students that you hold off publishing
until you see the evidence underlying an assertion. This is especially true when quoting
anonymous sources. And it is doubly true when these sources are intelligence agents, who have
a long history of deception. It is part of their job description."
True enough, but we are not talking about 'reputable journalism' – such a
fuddy-duddy notion. We are talking about crude propaganda and a ruthless realpolitik.
Assertion, anonymous sources, smears, lies, calumny and dancing to the tune of whatever the
deep, state and national security play to us. We have entered a post-democratic age and we
would be well advised to bear this in mind. The ruling elites are blatantly bereft of any
type of moral scruples; Pompeo put it well, 'lie, cheat' an he might have added 'whack'
anyone who gets in the way of the grand project. 'Whack' being mafia terminology for murder
of ones opponents. Pompeo even looks like a mafia Godfather. Mafia ideology and methodology
have permeated the structure and institutions of American society.
bjd , April 22, 2020 at 17:00
Exactly.
And thus articles like these –premised on the idea that the NYT is reputable–
belong to the literary genre 'fiction'.
AnneR , April 23, 2020 at 14:17
Donnie – Pompeo claims (proudly? loudly?) to be a christian but somehow he missed
all of that stuff about helping your neighbor, turning the other cheek, taking care of the
stranger (Samaritan-wise). Or avoided it like the plague.
And given the really existing history of the USA – "mafia ideology and methodology"
deriving, backed by profound supremacist racism has permeated this country since the Brits
first landed and started grabbing the lands and killing the indigenous, then going to Africa
and buying the Africans in order to profit from their sale and their labor While overt
slavery has ended (the US Fed and State prisons continue to gain from such prisoner slave
labor) and theft of the remainder of Indigenous lands and resources is largely in the
shadows, the attitudes, beliefs and behaviors pretty much remain alive and ill-meaning.
JOHN CHUCKMAN , April 22, 2020 at 15:17
The New York Times: the house organ of America's establishment.
Sam F , April 22, 2020 at 14:35
The NYT story is also shaky because broadcasts to the US about a nationwide lockdown would
have been implausible, discredited by simple denial, and might well reduce virus panic. The
sources of such messages are easily counterfeited and therefore speculative, like the fake
"Russian" messages from Ukraine, and far more likely to originate from beneficiaries than the
MSM target du jour.
Bob Van Noy , April 23, 2020 at 12:10
Exactly Sam F and thank you Joe Lauria. We keep hearing the same scenario over and over
with different characters. I recently read "The Poisoner In Chief" by Stephen Kinzer and I
was stunned by the secret drug and mind control experiments of the 1950s and 1960s.
Certainly
it's not too much of a stretch to imagine that they continue. Also see the gray zone article
"How a Trump media dump mainstreamed Chinese lab corona virus conspiracy theory" by Max
Blumenthal and Ajit Singh.
Sam F , April 23, 2020 at 19:19
Good to see you back, Bob. The referenced article is indeed worthwhile.
jaycee , April 22, 2020 at 14:15
Provable links from lockdown protests to domestic right-wing astroturf organizations.
The fact-free claims of foreign interference seeking to exploit divisions or "sow chaos"
is itself a domestic program to exploit divisions and and direct projections onto "the
other". It is directed by the federal intelligence agencies in collaboration with the major
mainstream media outlets. The central "proof" of foreign perfidy is the Senate Select
Committee on Intelligence's Report on alleged Russian measures to interfere with America
(released Nov 2018), which is one of the most vapid and factually barren "products" ever
produced. The New York Times has asserted the Report represents established fact. It's all,
ironically, very Soviet.
DavidH , April 22, 2020 at 20:19
I get your point, jaycee, I think. The stuff in the Times is all "very soviet"
(ironically) by the old Soviets' standards. That's if their old system had had, in
addition to domestic propaganda, an effective propaganda campaign abroad. Did they? I mean
all this projecting on Russia and China (meant to be digested by the homeland) is accompanied
by a considerable outlay for transmitted-outward propaganda. Did the old Soviet system really
have an outlay as big as ours is now? For sure they had spies, but so did we.
I'll have to listen again to Tuesday's Loud & Clear to know if Richard Wolff really
was as down on Putin as I seem to remember. Geopolitically Putin seems to me to have been
pretty much more fair than we have in the past, say, six or seven years. But, in terms of
oil, all energy hegemons it seems follow sort of the same patterns of behavior. They
want energy dominance for their group [they've got it], and in smaller theaters
individual members will attempt to attain it for themselves. But, yes, concomitant is that
they must agree some amongst each other just as crime syndicates must. This is a dimension of
hegemony it is sad to contemplate but real. One would like to think Russia is more fair, but
when it comes to oil Russia doesn't really seem to pay much lip service to any shade at all
of some global Green New Deal. And one would like to think China in general less
hypocritical, but then you have McKinsey and Prince and that whole mess [we see they had
things figured out better than us on SARS-CoV-2 but while as an American maybe I have no room
to talk Snowden probably had a point that civilization could have done even better
preparation than China's "pretty good" preparation]. So, in thinking about all this you have
to try I guess to name the overarching global paradigm and blame it. For sure the US
is in it up to its neck. Maybe even we invented it, or invented the things that morphed into
it. Everything Lauria wrote above makes sense, and once again we owe Consortium.
Glad to see this written (not just me that believes it) "The early view is that hardly
any government responded with the urgency required."
"Evidence" means testimony, writings, material objects, or other things presented to the
senses that are offered to prove the existence or nonexistence of a fact. -- California
Evidence Code sec 140
Even the NYT acknowledged (before it erased the text in its story on Reade that noted
there were no other sexual misconduct charges pending against him other than that long
history of assaults and sniffing and hands-on, text removed by the Times at the instance of
the Biden campaign staff?
Here's the original text: " The Times found no pattern of sexual misconduct by Mr. Biden,
beyond the hugs, kisses and touching that women previously said made them uncomfortable."
Waiting for the apologists to tell us why the edit to remove the last clause starting "beyond
" is just "Good journalism."
He and Trump are bad examples of the male part of the species. Nothing to choose that I
can see, other than who among the people that revise those bribes to them will be the first
in line at the MMT watering hole
i had a lengthy discussion about this with my brother and sil, it came down to her saying
I DON'T CARE ABOUT THAT re bidens history of being a ttl letch plus possible rapist and my
brother questioning what is obvious discomfort in multiple video evidence.
They said defeating trump was paramount to anything against biden. i simply give up at
this point.
Lots of partisan hackery and TDS going around in the last few years in once respectable
lefty publications. Mother Jones has gone completely to hell rather than raising any, as was
once their mission statement. I haven't read the Nation as much in recent years – I let
my subscription lapse a while ago as I found I just couldn't keep up with reading it.
Coincidentally I think that was about the time I started reading NC. The Nation has a history
of sheepdogging lefties to rally behind bad Dem candidates, which was another reason I didn't
feel bad letting my subscription go.
I do still have my subscription to Harper's but they were getting on my nerves quite a bit
to the point I considered cancelling them too. Rebecca Solnit wrote some truly cringe-worthy
editorials for them after Trump's election. They seem to have removed her from writing the
main editorial so maybe I wasn't the only one who felt she left a little to be desired. I'm
quite fond of the newer woman they have doing editorials, Lionel Shriver. She seems like
she'd fit in quite well here!
I left (pun intended) the Nation pub in the dust way back in the 1990's and buried it post
9/11. Used to be a real good alternative press pub 30-40 years ago. Somewhere along the line
it lost it's way and joined the wishy-washy "gatekeeper' society of "approved news."
RIP
The Nation was a sanity saviour back in late 70s and through 1980s; then something
happened. Not clear when or what, but I know I let my subscription lapse. Tried again later,
but it was never the same. It's mostly unbearable now, except for Stephen Cohen. Walsh has
been in the unbearable category for many years now.
Leonard Pitts just had an editorial in my local paper where he opined that even if Biden
had sexually assaulted Reade, it didn't really matter because we had to vote against
Trump.
I wrote this in reply:
So Leonard Pitts thinks that Biden's alleged sexual attack on Tara Reade isn't disqualifying,
even if true. Strange, he didn't think that way about Brett Kavanagh. I didn't want to attack
the columnist as a hypocrite without being sure, so I looked it up. Here is what he
wrote:
"It's a confluence of facts that speak painfully and pointedly to just how unseriously
America takes men's predations against women. You might disagree, noting that the Senate
Judiciary Committee has asked Ford to testify. But if history is any guide, that will prove
to be a mere formality – a sop to appearances – before the committee recommends
confirmation."
Looks very much like "Well, It's excusable when our guys do it."
Always had a crush on K v d Heuvel. (How's that for an opening to a post about misogyny
and sexual misconduct)?
But can't we disqualify Joe! as the craven proponent of the worst neo-lib policies that
got us exactly where we are today? Or, in polite company, ask politely whether he is even in
a mental state to hand over the keys to the to the family car, let alone the nuclear
football?
Let's take the Id out of IdPol, I don't care if the candidate has green skin and three
eyes if the policies they would enact come within smelling distance of benefiting the 99% (or
more precisely in Joe's case within hair smelling distance).
We can use his personal conduct as a component in our judgement but pleeease can we focus
on the stuff that would actually affect our lives. In his case, for the absolute worse.
(Note: I sincerely doubt whether Joe is currently allowed to drive a car, please oh please
Mr.God-Yahweh-Mohammed-Buddha-Obama can we not let him drive a nation).
Joe Biden's louche son Hunter -- known for his hearty indulgence in drugs and his sexual
adventures with strippers -- is a perfect specimen of humanity under this system. If he gets
more stimulation than others, everyone else should get enough. And if they don't, they mustn't
complain, they should ask for a program.
He is though [candidate of fear]. The absolute driving impulse behind Joe Biden is fear of
Trump. Who is electing Biden because of his ideas and policies? There are articles that
literally say - "Joe, just have a pulse by the time of the election, that's enough for us."
I think that one was in Atlantic.
I mean what is Russiagate, that's pure scaremongering - those Red Russkies are back with
vengeance. The idea of return to safe, secure "normalcy", the good old days of calm and
peace, if only Trump can be removed.
The coronavirus pandemic has upended the global economic system, and just as importantly,
cast out 40 years of neoliberal orthodoxy that dominated the industrialized world.
Forget about the " new
world order ." Offshoring and global supply chains are out; regional and local production
is in. Market fundamentalism is passé; regulation is the norm. Public health is now more
valuable than just-in-time supply systems. Stockpiling and industrial capacity suddenly make
more sense, which may have future implications in the recently revived
antitrust debate in the U.S.
Biodata will drive the next phase of social management and surveillance, with near-term
consequences for the way countries handle immigration and customs. Health care and education
will become digitally integrated the way newspapers and television were 10 years ago. Health
care itself will increasingly be seen as a necessary public good, rather than a private right,
until now in the U.S. predicated on age, employment or income levels. Each of these will
produce political tensions within their constituencies and in the society generally as they
adapt to the new normal.
This political sea change doesn't represent a sudden conversion to full-on socialism, but
simply a case of minimizing our future risks of infection by providing full-on universal
coverage. Beyond that, as Professor Michael Sandel
has argued , one has to query the "moral logic" of providing "coronavirus treatment for the
uninsured," while leaving "health coverage in ordinary times to the market" (especially when
our concept of what constitutes "ordinary times" has been upended).
Internationally, there will be many positive and substantial international shifts to address
overdue global public health needs and accords on mitigating climate change. And it is finally
dawning on Western-allied economic planners that the military price tag that made so-called
cheap oil and cheap labor possible is vastly higher than investment in advanced research and
next-generation manufacturing.
This also means that the old North (developed world) versus South (emerging world) division
that long preoccupied scholars and
policymakers in the post–World War II period will become increasingly stark again,
particularly for those emerging economies that have hitherto attracted investment largely on
the grounds of being repositories of low-cost labor. They will now find themselves picking
sides as they seek assistance in an increasingly divided and multipolar world.
The fault lines of the next economic era have already begun to surface, creating friction
with the previous international structure of banking and finance, trade and industry. There is
a force beyond elites and critical industries driving this: The proletariat has literally
become the "precariat."
In the U.S. and Europe, the staggering number of service economy workers are going to be
quickly politicized by the shortfalls: People have seen a collapse in income, and big failures
in education, and health care. Union-busting, pension fleecing, and austerity budgets and new
technologies that concentrate wealth away from labor have created a circumstance where
ownership and profit models must be revisited to sustain stability. The needs are too acute to
be distracted by the lies of Trump, or the inadequate responses in other parts of the
industrialized world. The current crisis will likely prompt geopolitical and economic shifts
and dislocations we haven't seen since World War II.
Death of Chimerica, the Rise of New Production Blocs
One of the biggest casualties of the current order is the breakdown of " Chimerica ,"
the decades-old nexus between the U.S. and Chinese economies, along with other leading
countries' partnerships with Chinese manufacturing. While the geopolitics of blame for the
origins of coronavirus continue to shake out, the process that saw a decrease in exports from
China to the U.S. from
$816 billion in 2018 to $757 billion in 2019 will accelerate and intensify over the next
decade.
While a decoupling is unlikely to lead to armed conflict, a Cold War style of competition
could emerge as a new global fault line. Much as the Cold War did not preclude some degree of
collaboration between the U.S. and the former Soviet Union, so too today there may still be
areas of cooperation between Washington and Beijing from climate to public health, advanced
research to weapons proliferation.
Nor does this shift necessarily spell the sudden collapse of Chinese power or influence --
it has a colossal and still-growing domestic market and is on the international leaderboard for
a wide range of advanced indicators. But its status as the world's most desirable offshore
manufacturing hub is a thing of the past, along with the economic stability that steady inflows
of foreign capital brought with it. It does show a susceptibility to domestic stress, with the
Hong Kong protests last year providing a hint of what is in store as the party leadership can't
pivot to new realities that include slower economic growth and declining foreign
investment.
As investment flows turn inward back to industrialized countries, there will likely be
corresponding diminution of the global labor arbitrage emanating from the emerging world. In
general, that's a negative for the global South, but potentially a positive factor for workers
elsewhere, whose wages and living standards have stagnated for decades as they lost jobs to
competing overseas low-cost manufacturing centers (the increase in inequality is
principally a product of 40 years of sustained attacks on unions). The jobs won't be the
same, but to be sure, manufacturing incomes exceed those of the service industry.
As each country adopts a " sauve-qui-peut " mentality, businesses and
investors are drawing the necessary conclusions. Coronavirus has been a wake-up call, as
countries trying to import medical goods from existing global supply chains face a
shortage of air and ocean freight options to ship goods back to home markets. Already, the
Japanese government has announced its plans "to spend over $2 billion to help its country's
firms move production out of China," according to the Spectator
Index . The EU leadership is publicly
indicating a policy of subsidy and state investment in companies to prevent Chinese buyouts or
undercutting prices.
Two billion dollars is small potatoes compared to what is likely to be spent by the U.S. and
other countries going forward. And it can't simply be done via research and development tax
credits. The state can and must drive this redomiciling process in other ways: via local content
requirements (LCRs) , tariffs, quotas and/or government procurement local sourcing
requirements. And with a $750-billion-plus budget, the U.S. military will likely play a role
here, as it
ponders disruptions from overseas supply sources .
Of course, if the U.S. does this, other parts of the world -- China, the EU, Japan -- will
likely do the same, which will accelerate the regionalization trends in trade. This may mean
that some U.S. firms will have to operate in foreign markets through local subsidiaries with
local content preferences and local workforces (that is how it worked in the 1920s -- Ford UK
was a mostly local British company, different from the U.S. Ford Motor Company, but with shared
profits).
An examination of U.S. planning for the post-1945 world reveals the emphasis was on free
trade in raw materials mostly, not finished goods. (The U.S. only adopted one-way "free trade"
with its Asian and European allies later as a Cold War measure to accelerate their development
and keep them in the American orbit.)
Domestically within the U.S., as
Dalia Marin writes , the coming declines in interest rates will accelerate "robot adoption"
by 75.7 percent, with concentration "in the sectors that are most exposed to global value
chains. In Germany, that means autos and transport equipment, electronics, and textiles --
industries that import around 12 percent of their inputs from low-wage countries. Globally, the
industries where the most reshoring activity is taking place are chemicals, metal products, and
electrical products and electronics."
As the coronavirus pandemic is illustrating, a viable industrial ecosystem cannot work
effectively if it is dispersed to too many geographic extremities or there are insufficient
redundancies built into the transportation of goods back into the home market (rail, highway,
etc.). Proximity has become a significant competitive advantage for manufacturers, and a
strategic advantage for governments. But the U.S. government must play an expanded role in the
planning process. The U.S. is still a leader in many high-tech areas, but is suffering the
consequences of a generation-long effort to undermine the government's natural role as an
economic planner.
In the form of the regionalized blocs that are being sketched, in the Americas, Mexico is
likely to be one of the leading recipients of American foreign direct investment (FDI). It
already has a
$17 billion medical device industry and is sure to absorb much more capacity from China.
This has
already started to happen as a result of the U.S.–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA,
or new NAFTA) . Furthermore, the
Washington Post reports that "[a]s demand soars for medical devices and personal protective
equipment in the fight against the coronavirus, the United States has turned to the phalanx of
factories south of the border that are now the outfitters of many U.S. hospitals." This is in
addition to the
thousands of assembly plants already in place in Mexico since the establishment of NAFTA.
Indeed, if the jobs that had moved to China move to Mexico, Central America, and South America,
this likely addresses many long-standing social tensions in regard to immigration management,
currency imbalances and corresponding black market industries (ironically, it also likely means
the end of Trump's wall, as the industrial ecosystem of the Americas becomes more cohesive and
widespread).
Big Business Is Good Business
But this will also have significant impacts closer to home: Much as Franklin Delano
Roosevelt ultimately prioritized domestic
ramp-ups in wartime production over trust-busting , so too national champions are likely to
feature more prominently today, as domestic scale and balance sheet strength are given
precedence to accommodate the drive to revive employment quickly,
and work collaboratively to halt the spread of the coronavirus . The scale of companies
will not be regarded as a political problem if they can both deliver for consumers and show the
capacity of following political direction for what the public's needs are. Tech companies like
Apple and Google are stepping up to fill the void left by
massive federal government dysfunction . The " break up Big
Tech " voices are nowhere to be heard at the moment.
We still need a more robust form of regulation for these corporate behemoths, but via a
system of regulation that is "function-centric," rather than size-centric. As co-author
Marshall Auerback has written
before , this kind of regulation "restricts the range of corporate activities (e.g.,
structural separation so as to prevent companies like Amazon and Google from owning both the
platform as well as participating as a seller on that platform), or the prices such companies
can charge (as regulators often do for utilities or railways). These considerations would be
'size neutral': they would apply independently of corporate size per se."
Capitalism has always had its plutocrats, but scaling back America's overly financialized
model (by preventing stock buybacks, to cite one example) would represent a useful reform and
prevent a lot of economic waste. Instead of going to enrich executives and shareholders beyond
the dreams of Croesus ,
that measure might help to ensure that the profits of these companies will be directed to the
workers' wages (which also means supporting increased unionization), or plowed back into
investment (e.g., increased robotics).
Biodata, Privacy, and an End to Pandemic Profiteering
And there are fault lines in the business world. The pharmaceutical and medical research
industries face immense pressure from other businesses to end the pandemic so they can get back
to profitability. That means temporarily setting aside profits and pooling intellectual
property to encourage collaborative efforts on the part of biotech and pharmaceutical companies
to find proper treatments for COVID-19, and make them freely available, especially if
governments were to waive antitrust scrutiny in exchange for all of the data Big Pharma
companies collectively hold. As the
Guardian reports , "[t]here is a precedent. Last June, 10 of the world's largest
pharmaceutical companies -- including Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca and GlaxoSmithKline --
announced they would pool data for an AI-based search for new antibiotics, which are
urgently needed as antibiotic-resistant bacteria have proliferated across the world,
threatening the growth of untreatable disease."
Privacy
advocates are already expressing concerns about a growing and overweening medical
surveillance state. These surveillance concerns lack historical context: From the 19th century
on, serious health problems were met by hardline government policies to reduce them. Policies
ranging from quarantine to vaccine were not always mandatory, but there was an understanding
that personal concessions had to be made to manage a huge population and an advanced society;
the Constitution was not a suicide pact. We can further alleviate those concerns today by
ensuring that the information uncovered does not become a precondition or additional cost of
receiving insurance coverage. In light of coronavirus, cost savings of incorporating biodata
into immigration and customs are a no-brainer for governments, and are certain to cause
friction with individuals who may not want to give blood or saliva to get a visa or work
permit, and agribusiness leaders who know that safety measures cut into profitability. But the
scales have tipped in the other direction.
North Versus South
What about the other countries in the developing world that don't have close geographic
proximity to a home market, or abundant supplies of key commodities required for 21st-century
manufacturing needs, or even a well-developed manufacturing base (in other words, the countries
that have hitherto been large recipients of investment solely on the grounds of cheap labor)?
Many of them have faced immediate pressure with the collapse in global trade, unprecedented
capital flight that is sure to grow as the coronavirus spreads, all the while coping with
COVID-19 with highly inadequate health systems.
In the meantime, the
multi-trillion-dollar market for emerging market debt , both sovereign bonds and commercial
paper, has collapsed. Many of these countries, via their state pension funds and sovereign
wealth funds, have become the ultimate endpoint for many of the newer asset-backed securities
that finally revived years after the 2008 financial crisis. This has become the potential new
stress point in the $52 trillion "
shadow banking " market. The U.S. Federal Reserve has sought to ease the funding stresses
of much of the developing economies by offering central bank swap lines. It has also broadened
prime dealer collateral acceptance rules, and set up commercial paper swap facilities, all of
which have eased short-term funding pressures in these economies that have incurred substantial
dollar liabilities.
As the emerging world central banks then start to lend on those lines to their own banks, it
should start to alleviate the shortage of dollars in the offshore dollar funding markets. We
are starting to see some easing of stresses, notably in
Indonesia -- because it's an exporter of resources more than a cheap labor price
economy.
But whereas in previous emerging markets crises, China was able to buttress these economies
via initiatives such as the " Belt and Road Initiative ,"
Beijing itself is likely to be buffeted by the twin shocks of declining global trade and a
reversal of foreign direct investment, which declined 8.6 percent in the first
two months of this year .
Longer-term, many other countries face comparable challenges to China: Capital controls,
collapsing domestic currencies, and widespread debt defaults are likely to become the norm.
That's already
happened to serial defaulter Argentina again . South Africa has been
downgraded to junk status . Turkey remains vulnerable. The so-called "BRICS" economies --
Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa -- are all sinking like bricks. The problem is
exacerbated by the fact that coronavirus and likely future pandemics will create additional
stresses on developing economies that depend on their labor price advantage in the
international marketplace to survive.
By contrast, countries like South Korea and Taiwan have had a "good crisis." Both have
vibrant manufacturing sectors and created successful multiparty democracies. Foreign investment in South Korea continued to grow in
the first quarter of this year, as it rapidly moved to contain the spread of COVID-19 through
an extensive testing regime (while keeping its economy open). Similarly in Taiwan, by
activating a national emergency response system launched in 2004 (following the SARS virus),
that country has mounted a thoroughly competent coronavirus
intervention of unprecedented effectiveness . The results speak for themselves: as of April
15, in South Korea, a mere 225
deaths , while in Taiwan, an astonishingly low total
of six deaths in a country of 24 million people -- this despite far more exposure to
infected Chinese visitors than Italy, Spain or the U.S.
Of course, the very success of Taiwan's response revives another potential fault line,
namely the tension underlying the "One China" policy. Before COVID-19, it is
noteworthy that the WHO "even refused to publicly report Taiwan's cases of SARS until public
pressure prompted numbers to be published under the label of 'Taiwan, province of China,'"
according to Dr. Anish Koka . At the very least, Taiwan's divergent approach and success at
fighting the pandemic will bolster its pro-independence factions.
The question of foreign nations upholding Taiwan's sovereignty with regard to China is
increasingly thorny, given Beijing's growing military capacities. This will present an ongoing
diplomatic challenge to Western parties who seek to increase engagement with Taipei without
heightening tensions in the region.
A Recalculation of 'Economic Value'
We have outlined many fault lines likely to be exposed or exacerbated as a consequence of
COVID-19. Happily, there is one fault line likely to be slammed shut: namely, the false
dichotomy that has long existed between economic growth and environmentalism. The Global Assessment from
the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services
reports that "land degradation has reduced the productivity of 23 percent of the global land
surface, up to US$577 billion in annual global crops are at risk from pollinator loss and
100-300 million people are at increased risk of floods and hurricanes because of loss of
coastal habitats and protection." Likewise, the study cites the fact that as of 2015, 33
percent of marine fish stocks "were being harvested at unsustainable levels," and notes the
rise of plastic pollution (which "has increased tenfold since 1980 "),
both of which play a key role in degrading ecosystems in a manner that ultimately destroys
economic growth.
Finally, repeated pandemics over the past few decades have shown these are not blips, but
recurrent features of today's world. Hence, there is an increasing public appetite for
regulation to deal with this ongoing problem. Some industries, such as agribusinesses, won't
like this, but the concerns are well-founded. According to
expert Josh Balk , 75 percent of new diseases start in domestic and wild-caught animals,
and 2.2 million people die each year from illnesses transferred from animals. The majority of
these are transferred from poorly regulated factory farm chickens, cows and pigs; still, the "
wet markets" of Asia and Africa, and the trade in potential " transfer species ," such as
pangolins, a major driver of the $19
billion-a-year global trade in illegal wildlife, must also be addressed. Beijing has
suggested it will
ban trade in illegal wildlife and seek tighter regulation of the wet markets . The latter
in particular may be easier said than done, according to Dr. Zhenzhong
Si , a research associate at Canada's University of Waterloo who specializes in Chinese
food security, sustainability, and rural development. Dr. Si
argued that "[b]anning wet markets is not only going to be impossible, but will also be
destructive for urban food security in China as they play such a pivotal role in ensuring urban
residents' access to affordable and healthy food."
To be fair, this isn't the first time that the sacred tenets of the global economic
framework have dealt with a crisis that seemed to usher in a new era. The same thing happened
in the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008. But that was largely seen as a financial
crisis, a product of faulty global financial plumbing that nobody truly understood, as opposed
to a widespread social collapse closely approximating the conditions of the Great Depression as
we have today.
Not only has the current lockdown put the entire global economy into deep freeze, but it
also came amidst a backdrop of widespread political and social upheaval, and a faux recovery
whose fruits were largely restricted to the top tier. A collateralized debt obligation is not
intuitively easy to grasp. By contrast, being forced to stay at home, deprived of vital income
and isolated from loved ones, while health care workers perish from overwork and lack of
protective gear, is a different order of magnitude.
Even as we re-integrate, it is hard to envisage a return to the "old normal." Trade patterns
will change. Self-sufficiency and geographic proximity will be prioritized over global
integration. There will be new winners and losers, but it is worth noting that the model of
capitalism we are describing -- one that does not feature obscenely overcompensated CEO pay
co-existing with serf labor and the widespread offshoring of manufacturing -- has existed in
different forms in the U.S. from 1945 into the 1980s, and still exists in parts of Europe
(Germany) and East Asia (Japan, South Korea, Taiwan) to this day.
Our everyday lives will be impacted as selective quarantines and some forms of social
distancing become the new normal (much as they were when we dealt with tuberculosis epidemics).
All of this has implications for a multitude of industries: restaurants, leisure, travel,
tourism, sporting events, entertainment, and media, as well as our evolving definition of
"essential" industries. Even our concept of personal privacy will likely have to be amended,
especially in regard to medical matters. Concerns about medical surveillance -- stigma (STDs,
alcoholism, mental illness) and denial of insurance -- can be alleviated if everyone is
guaranteed treatment regardless of ability to pay, which will mean greater government intrusion
into the lives of citizens and activities of businesses as the public sector seeks to socialize
costs.
Taken in aggregate, we are about to experience the most profound social, economic and
political changes since World War II.
This article was produced byEconomy for All, a
project of the Independent Media Institute.
The Times long ago abandoned journalism the way it's supposed to be. All the news it claims
fit to print isn't fit to read.
Its daily editions feature state-approved managed news misinformation and disinformation --
notably against sovereign independent nations on the US target list for regime change.
Russia notably has been a prime target since its 1917 revolution, ending its czarist
dictatorship.
Except during WW II and Boris Yeltsin's 1990s rule, Times anti-Russia propaganda was and
remains relentless, notably throughout the Vladimir Putin era, the nation's most distinguished
ever political leader.
When Yeltsin died in April 2007, the Times shamefully called him "a Soviet-era reformer the
country's democratic father and later a towering figure of his time as the first freely elected
leader of Russia, presiding over the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the demise of the
Communist Party (sic)."
He presided over Russia's lost decade. Under him, over half the population became
impoverished.
His adoption of US shock therapy produced economic genocide. GDP plunged 50%. Life
expectancy fell sharply.
Democratic freedoms died. An oligarch class accumulated enormous wealth.
Western interests profited at the expense of millions of exploited Russians.
Yeltsin let corruption and criminality flourish. One scandal followed others. Grand theft
became sport. So did money laundering.
Billions in stolen wealth were secreted in Western banks and offshore tax havens.
A critic reviled him, saying throughout much of his tenure, he "slept, drank, was ill,
relaxed, didn't show his face before the people and simply did nothing," adding:
"Despised by the majority of (Russians, he'll) go down in history as the first president of
Russia, having corrupted (the country) to the breaking point, not by his virtues and or by his
defects, but rather by his dullness, primitiveness, and unbridled power lust of a
hooligan."
He was a Western/establishment media favorite, notably by the Times, mindless of the human
misery and economic wreckage he caused.
Putin is a preeminent world leader, towering over his inferior Western counterparts,
especially in the US, why the Times reviles him.
On Monday, its propaganda machine falsely accused him of waging a long war on US science,
claiming he's promoting disinformation to "encourage the spread of deadly illnesses (sic)."
Not a shred of evidence was presented because none exists. The Times' disinformation report
was slammed in a preceding article.
On Wednesday, the self-styled newspaper of record was at it again -- reactivating the Big
Lie that won't die, saying with no corroborating evidence that "Russia may have sown
disinformation in a dossier used to investigate a former Trump campaign aide (sic),"
adding:
"Carter Page, a former Trump campaign aide with numerous links to Russia was probably a
Russian agent (sic)."
Disinformation the Times cited came from former UK intelligence agent Christopher Steele's
dodgy dossier, financed by the DNC and Hillary campaign.
Its spurious accusations were exposed as fake news, notably phony accusations of Russian US
election interference that didn't happened.
Probes by Robert Mueller, House and Senate committees found no credible evidence of an
illegal or improper Trump campaign connection to Russia or election interference by the Kremlin
-- because there was none of either.
According to the Times, Steele's dodgy dossier "was potentially influenced by a 'Russian
disinformation campaign to denigrate US foreign relations,' " citing FBI Big Lies as its
source.
Another article on Russia this week claimed "many people who don't work for the government
or in deep-pocketed state enterprises face economic devastation," adding:
Domestic violence increased because of social distancing and sheltering in place.
Not mentioned in the article is that mass unemployment and other COVID-19 fallout affect
Western and other countries adversely.
Putin was slammed for sending COVID-19 aid to the US, calling it "a propaganda coup for the
Kremlin -- tempered by an intensifying epidemic at home."
Outbreaks in Russia are a small fraction of US numbers, around 21,000 through Wednesday --
compared to nearly 650,000 in the US and over 28,000 deaths.
Spain, Italy, France, Germany and Britain have five-to-eightfold more outbreaks than
Russia.
NYC has over 110,000 cases. In the NY, NJ, CT tristate area, around 300,000 cases were
reported, almost as many COVID-19 deaths as outbreaks in Russia -- through Wednesday.
Putin is dealing with what's going on responsibly, stressing "we certainly must not relax,
as long as outbreaks occur.
A paid holiday is in effect through end of April for Russian workers, likely to be extended
if needed.
Essential workers continue on the job -- at home if able, otherwise operating as before.
National efforts continue to control outbreaks, aid ordinary Russians at a time of duress,
and work to restore more normal conditions.
While dealing with outbreaks at home, Russia supplied Italy, Serbia, and the US with aid to
combat the virus.
Yet Pompeo falsely accused Russia, China, and Iran with spreading disinformation about
COVID-19.
Gratitude and good will aren't US attributes, just the opposite.
During a conference call with reporters, Lavrov dismissed Western claims that the Kremlin
provided the assistance hoping it would help persuade the European Union to lift sanctions
against Russia.
The U.S. and EU sanctions, imposed in response to Russia's 2014 annexation of Ukraine's
Crimea and support for a separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine, have limited Russia's access
to global financial markets and blocked transfers of Western technologies. Russia responded by
banning imports of most Western agricultural products.
Asked if Moscow would push the EU to lift the restrictions, Lavrov said that Russia wouldn't
ask for it. "If the EU realizes that this method has exhausted itself and renounces the
decisions that were made in 2014, we will be ready to respond in kind," he added.
Lavrov also criticized those in the West who suggested that China should pay compensation
for allegedly failing to provide early enough warnings about the country's virus cases, which
were reported in December.
"The claims that China must pay everyone for the outbreak and the alleged failure to give
timely information about it cross all limits and go beyond any norms of decency," Lavrov said,
emphasizing that China has offered assistance to many nations. "My hair stands on end when I
hear that."
Without mentioning the United States by name, Russia's top diplomat also countered
Washington's criticism of the World Health Organization.
"... Authored by Sara Carter via SaraACarter.com, ..."
"... "Having reviewed the matter, and having consulted the heads of the relevant Intelligence Community elements, I have declassified the enclosed footnotes." ..."
"... , and that they were the product of RIS (Russian Intelligence Services) ..."
Systemic FBI Effort To Legitimize Steele and Use His Information To Target POTUS
Newly declassified footnotes from Department of Justice Inspector General
Michael Horowitz's December FBI report reveals that senior Obama officials, including
members of the FBI's Crossfire Hurricane team knew the dossier compiled by a former British spy
during the 2016 election was Russian disinformation to target President Donald Trump.
Further, the partially declassified footnotes reveal that those senior intelligence
officials were aware of the disinformation when they included the dossier in the Obama
administration's Intelligence Communities Assessment (ICA).
As important, the footnotes reveal that there had been a request to validate information
collected by British spy Christopher
Steele as far back as 2015, and that there was concern among members of the FBI and
intelligence community about his reliability. Those concerns were brushed aside by members of
the Crossfire Hurricane team in their pursuit against the Trump campaign officials, according
to sources who spoke to this reporter and the footnotes.
The explosive footnotes were partially declassified and made public Wednesday, after a
lengthy review by the Director of National Intelligence Richard
Grenell's office. Grenell sent the letter Wednesday releasing the documents to Sen. Chuck
Grassley, R-Iowa and Sen. Ron Johnson, R- Wisconsin, both who requested the
declassification.
"Having reviewed the matter, and having consulted the heads of the relevant
Intelligence Community elements, I have declassified the enclosed footnotes." Grenell
consulted with DOJ Attorney General William Barr on the declassification of the
documents.
Grassley and Johnson released a statement late Wednesday stating "as we can see from these
now-declassified footnotes in the IG's report, Russian intelligence was aware of the dossier
before the FBI even began its investigation and the FBI had reports in hand that their central
piece of evidence was most likely tainted with Russian disinformation."
"Thanks to Attorney General Barr's and Acting Director Grenell's declassification of the
footnotes, we know the FBI's justification to target an American Citizen was riddled with
significant flaws," the Senator stated. "Inspector General Michael Horowitz and his team did
what neither the FBI nor Special Counsel Mueller cared to do: examine and investigate
corruption at the FBI, the sources of the Steele dossier, how it was disseminated, and
reporting that it contained Russian disinformation."
The Footnotes
A U.S. Official familiar with the investigation into the FBI told this reporter that the
footnotes "clearly show that the FBI team was or should have had been aware that the Russian
Intelligence Services was trying to influence Steele's reporting in the summer of 2016, and
that there were some preferences for Hillary; and that this RIS [Russian Intelligence Services]
sourced information being fed to Steele was designed to hurt Trump."
The official noted these new revelations also "undermines the ICA on Russian Interference
and the intent to help Trump. It undermines the FISA warrants and there should not have been a
Mueller investigation."
The footnotes also reveal a startling fact that go against Brennan's assessment that Russia
was vying for Trump, when in fact, the Russians appeared to be hopeful of a Clinton
presidency.
"The FBI received information in June, 2017 which revealed that, among other things, there
were personal and business ties between the sub-source and Steele's Primary Sub-source,
contacts between the sub-source and an individual in the Russian Presidential Administration
in June/July 2016 [redacted] and the sub source voicing strong support for candidate Clinton
in the 2016 U.S. election. The Supervisory Intel Analyst told us that the FBI did not have a
Section 702 vicarage on any other Steele sub-source."
Steele's Lies
The complete four pages of the partially redacted footnotes paint a clear picture of the
alleged malfeasance committed by former FBI Director James Comey, former DNI James Clapper and
former CIA Director John Brennan, who were all aware of the concerns regarding the information
supplied by former British spy Christopher Steele in the dossier. Steele, who was hired by the
private embattled research firm Fusion GPS, was paid for his work through the Hillary Clinton
campaign and Democratic National Committee. The FBI also paid for Steele's work before ending
its confidential source relationship with him but then used Obama DOJ Official Bruce Ohr as a
go between to continue obtaining information from the former spy.
In footnote 205, for instance, payment documents show that Steele lied about not being a
Confidential Human Source.
"During his time as an FBI CHS, Steele received a total of $95,000 from the FBI," the
footnote states. "We reviewed the FBI paperwork for those payments, each of which required
Steele's Signed acknowledgement. On each document, of which there were eight, was the caption
'CHS payment' and 'CHS Payment Name.' A signature page was missing for one of the
payments."
Footnote 350
In footnote 350, Horowitz describes the questionable Russian disinformation and the FBI's
reliance on the information to target the Trump campaign as an attempt to build a narrative
that campaign officials colluded with Russia. Further, the timeline reveals that Comey, Brennan
and Clapper were aware of the disinformation by Russian intelligence when they briefed then
President-elect Trump in January, 2017 on the Steele dossier.
"[redacted] In addition to the information in Steele's Delta file documenting Steele's
frequent contacts with representatives for multiple Russian oligarchs, we identified
reporting the Crossfire Hurricane team received from [redacted] indicating the potential for
Russian disinformation influencing Steele' election reporting," stated the partially
declassified footnote 350. "A January 12, 2017 report relayed information from [redacted]
outlining an inaccuracy in a limited subset of Steele's reporting about the activities of
Michael Cohen. The [redacted] stated that it did not have high confidence in this subset of
Steele's reporting and assessed that the referenced subset was part of a Russian
disinformation campaign to denigrate U.S. foreign relations.
A second report from the same [redacted] five days later stated that a person named in the
limited subset of Steele's reporting had denied representations in the reporting and the
[redacted] assessed that the person's denials were truthful. A USIC report dated February 27,
2017, contained information about an individual with reported connections to Trump and Russia
who claimed that the public reporting about the details of Trump's sexual activities in Moscow
during a trip in 2013 were false , and that they were the product of RIS (Russian
Intelligence Services) 'infiltrate[ing] a source into the network' of a [redacted] who
compiled a dossier of that individual on Trump's activities. The [redacted] noted that it had
no information indicating that the individual had special access to RIS activities or
information," according to the partially declassified footnote.
Looming Questions
Another concern regarding Steele's unusual activity is found in footnote 210, which states
"as we discuss in Chapter Six, members of the Crossfire Hurricane Team were unaware of Steele's
connections to Russian Oligarch 1."
The question remains that "Steele's unusual activity with 10 oligarch's led the FBI to seek
a validation review in 2015 but one was not started until 2017," said the U.S. Official to this
reporter. "Why not? Was Crossfire Hurricane aware of these concerns? Was the court made aware
of these concerns? Didn't the numerous notes about sub sources and sources having links or
close ties to Russian intelligence so why didn't this set off alarm bells?"
More alarming, it's clear, Supervisory Intelligence Agent Jonathan Moffa says in June 17,
that he was not aware of reports that Russian Intelligence Services was aware of Steele's
election reporting and influence efforts.
"However, he should have been given the reporting by UCIS" which the U.S. Official says,
goes back to summer 2016.
Footnote 342 makes it clear that "in late January, 2017, a member of the Crossfire Hurricane
team received information [redacted] that RIS [Russian Intelligence Services] may have targeted
Orbis."
AMERICA-HYSTERICA. US Attorney General
Barr just said the Russia collusion probe was a travesty, had no basis and was intended to
sabotage Trump . All true of course. May we take this as a sign that at last (at last!)
Durham is ready to go with indictments? Or will it prove to be another false alarm? There's
certainly a lot to reveal: A recent
investigation showed that every FISA application (warrant to spy on US citizens) examined
had egregious deficiencies. It's not just Trump.
MEANINGLESSNESS. Remember the Steele dossier? Now it's being spun as Russian
disinformation . So we're now supposed to believe that Putin smeared Trump because he
really wanted Clinton to win? Gosh, that Putin guy is so clever that it's impossible to figure
out what he's doing!
The recovery will NOT be, but Trump will distract all Americans by screaming against China
and how China is responsible for everything. Expect Americans to fall in line and the anti
Russia hysteria to now turn into super anti China hysteria. Expect attacks against Asians in
USA
And all because the Chinese were greedy bastards eager to make money and they quickly forgot
history and how the Ango Saxon treated them just merely 150 years ago.
As somebody who grew up in Communist Eastern Europe it the 70s, I vividly remember how we
were warned how the Americans will try to hurt us by spreading bio weapons. This was grilled
into us over and over. The Communists knew. China better gt prepared, the West will try to
rip them a brand new assholes. And they got nobody to blame but themselves!
"Sergey Lavrov: Of course, the pandemic has created very serious problems, the most
important of which is saving people's lives, ensuring their security, biomedical safety and
the preservation of the human environment, which should be comfortable and pose no threats to
life and health."
Thanks for the link. Russia has the best leadership in the world right now. I have read
transcripts from lavrov and putin on many occasions, I seem to recall listening to putin
speak a few times in english; these guys are always level headed, competent, rational; and
first and foremost, taking care of their people.
As an american, I am jealous. Just compare them to any of our leaders in my lifetime
(50yrs), and for that matter, I haven't even read about too many of our leaders being real
statesmen, absolutely no comparison.
Lavrov is an artist cloaked in diplomatic disguise. I find him very pleasurable to read.
Yes, he said a great many things in answer to a wide variety of questions. Aside from the
quote cited @38, for me there were two important points. The first was the Outlaw US Empire's
offer to resume discussions on arms control and outer space, although I suspect the upcoming
election is tied to the offer. Second relates to my thesis that nations can be seen as
Nurturing or Parasitic based on their behavior during this crisis. One of the attributes of
Nurturing nations is the collective aspect of their socio-cultural composition:
Question: "However, there is a lack of global unity and joint efforts to fight the
pandemic. In addition, the existing alliances have proven ineffective in these conditions. In
your opinion, how will all this affect the future world order? What will it look like after
the pandemic?
"Sergey Lavrov: In my response to one of the first questions I said that apart from
fighting the pandemic and resolving economic problems at the national and global levels the
third greatest challenge is to understand what lies ahead for multilateral institutions, what
role they will play in the future and whether they will remain relevant. The outcome of the
fight against the coronavirus will show which countries and multilateral structures have
withstood the test of this horrible threat, this crisis. I understand your concern that
the egoistic aspirations we are currently witnessing in the behaviour of some countries could
prevail, leading to future attempts to self-insulate from the outside world . We are
already witnessing anxious debates about Schengen Area countries on their shared future and
neighbourly relations. In the end, I think that a collective approach will prevail. It may
take some time though. It will require meetings and persuasion. However, this is the only
possible way forward ." [My Emphasis]
The unilateral, Rugged Individual, Herd Immunity, Neoliberal approach has failed bigtime
despite frantic efforts to keep them afloat--note that such approaches were opposed by the
publics of those nations whose "leaders" trod that path. I recall the aim of The Man in
the Wilderness was to return to his collective--his family--and the fear that gripped the
collective that abandoned him. (There's a very big lesson there if people think upon it while
watching the film.) The attempt to glorify the Rugged Individual is unique, began in the
1820s with the popular writings of James Fenimore Cooper, and solely belongs to the Outlaw US
Empire and its attempt to cultivate the myth of Manifest Destiny and American
Exceptionalism.
It appears the only collectivism to be allowed within the Outlaw US Empire is that of the
Money Power; all others are to be atomized, restricted in their ability to act together
except when laboring to feed the Money Power. Something like Orwell's description of the
Proles in 1984 --joyfully ignorant and powerless. The only way to thwart the Money
Power's plan for ongoing dominance and pauperization of the Outlaw US Empire's masses is for
those masses to discover how to act collectively. Yes, it's been done before but the effort
was abandoned prior to the final goal being attained in 1900. There was another attempt to
establish a mass collective during the early 1930s, but that too was thwarted and its memory
washed away by War and the pseudo war that followed--do note the concerted attack on
collective effort made from 1946-1964. The one major collective organization that remained in
1972--the draft-based civilian military--was then disbanded, and nothing has arisen to
replace it. Even the mass politicking that had grown during the 1960s withered to where only
a ghost remains.
An ongoing discourse here at MoA deals with the question of how to get people to
again come together as a collective to create the change that's so badly needed to preserve
our own wellbeing, which is in the collective interest of 330+ million people, as well as
that of the planet's populous. IMO, the answer lies in seizing advantage of the obvious
failure of the unilateral go-it-alone, damn the torpedoes, approach to COVID-19 that
deliberately omitted the needs of 330+ million people and directly threatened their
wellbeing.
If there was ever a teachable moment to educate an entire nation, that time is upon us.
Fortunately, part of the message is already there and just needs to be spread further along
with its associated rationale: Not Me, US! The formula for success isn't Top->Down it's
Bottom->Up since it's decentralized and very hard to defuse.
"The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed
is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of the darkness.
For he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children.
And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my
brothers.
And you will know I am the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you."
Over the last week, there have, to my knowledge, been three big claims of 'Russian
disinformation' and 'Russian trolls/bots' on social media.
1. Last week, Russian equipment and support sent to Italy to help fight Covid-19. Nato
stenographers claim and spread the disinformation that '80% of the equipment was useless',
citing one anonymous source. Total lies.
2. Swedish minister claims social media campaign against a 5G network in Sweden is run by
russian trolls. Turns out it is a 64 year old grandmother living in Stockholm who is behind
the campaign.
3. Yesterday afternoon, russia media report, according to a National Health Service
source, Boris Johnson is on a ventilator in hospital. Utter nonsense say MSM, Russian
disinformation. Overnight headlines in British media – Boris in intensive care.
The western media are so totally venally corrupt in serving the 1% yet get found out in
their lies time after time and yet carry on. I try to read as many different media as
possible, but have no doubt, which are more credible, and it aint NATO stenographers
AnneR , April 7, 2020 at 14:33
Yes, John A. Truly there is something warped about the western ruling elites' mindset. But
I guess they have to have a bugaboo and Russia (then China, sometimes Iran and others) is the
primary, western created, go-to one. Even among those who did not grow up, or were only
young, during the cold war.
I am only thankful that, despite my father's Tory politics (all but regarding the land,
which he believed should be nationalized and 50 acres given to every male [well, he was
sexist]; an curious, decidedly not Tory viewpoint) the USSR as was then never was on either
his or my mother's agenda. Indeed, we used to watch with much pleasure the Red Army choir,
once we got a television (not till 1958, when I was 10), which toured the UK, I *think*
No ducking under school desks. Nor any other weird thing
Permanent/long term expats are usually not your best source of information about a
country. Being informed of something concerning China by a Chinese-American friend isn't
necessarily authoritative. Consider someone in China asking an expat from New England about
eating habits in Mississippi: "It's disgusting! They eat opossums! Road kill raccoons that
they find on the side of the highway! Raccoon balloons! People from America's South are
filthy!"
Perhaps people in America's South do not always eat road kill, but people from other parts
of the US believe they do. You have the same kinds of beliefs in China about peoples in
different regions.
Anyway,
here is what the insufferably jingoistic and national chauvinistic
Washington Bezos Post has to say about China's wet markets reopening:
"The prevalence of food-borne microbial illness in developing East Asia suggests that far
from being cesspits of disease, wet markets do a good job of providing households with clean,
fresh produce."
Sending top shelf ventilators made by a Russian firm under U.S. sanctions? I wonder if
this is some sort of ironic Russian humor, besides being a bridge-building gesture, of
course. If it's a troll, we richly deserve it, IMHO.
Remind me again why we are not working collegially with this talented nation of
Russia.
I will give you 100% TrueUkrainian (the new plucky "democratic" friends of the Great West,
remember?) answer - of course not!
As everybody knows (tm), Russian help is not just useless, but promotes this dreadful,
aggressive "Russki Mir", that stands for everything wrong, compared to the bright* genderless
globalist and eco-friendly progressive future.
Western countries and their populations, that have become the subject of the brutal and
aggressive Russian humanitarian help (that's Italy and US of A) in order to maintain
ideological integrity and robust correct-think, have to adopt a few simple measures, already
tried and tested by the great patriots of the Ukraine:
1) Ask any Russian doctor and member of the medical personnel, that might try to treat
you, about their attitude towards Putin, war in Syria and to whom really belongs the Crimea
(optional for the Westerners – also ask about gays and representation quotas). If the
answer is not 156% ideologically pure, refuse to be treated by such violent satrap of the
Regime!
2) Stage a raid on a warehouse with the medical masks from Russia, and expropriate every
single one of them! In order to prevent innocent bystanders from ever using such vile tools
of Russian propaganda in their daily life, find a new and creative way to dispose of them.
One such use is beloved by all truly patriotic members of the Ukrainian civil society (like
C14 and "UPA-UNSO") – use them to make torches for your next rally!
3) Be proactive citizen – refuse to use Russian lung ventilators! Die a free
person!
_______
*) But not too bright as not to offend epileptics.
US sidestepped OWN SANCTIONS against Russia to save American lives from Covid-19... If only it cared as much about Iranian
lives
Scott Ritter
is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer. He served in the Soviet Union as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, in General
Schwarzkopf's staff during the Gulf War, and from 1991-1998 as a UN weapons inspector. Follow him on Twitter
@RealScottRitter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer.
He served in the Soviet Union as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, in General Schwarzkopf's staff during the Gulf War, and
from 1991-1998 as a UN weapons inspector.
When it comes to saving American lives, sanctions are not an
obstacle to the provision of life-saving medical equipment. Ramping up sanctions on struggling Iran is okay however – which goes
to show the US price tag on human life. It was a sight that warmed the heart of even the most cynical American opponent of Vladimir
Putin's Russia -- a giant An-124 aircraft, loaded with boxes of desperately needed medical supplies, being offloaded at JFK Airport.
When President Trump spoke on the phone with his Russian counterpart on March 31, he mentioned America's need for life-saving medical
supplies, including ventilators and personal protective equipment. Two days later the AN-124 arrived in New York.
As the aircraft was being unloaded, however, it became clear that at least some of the equipment being offloaded had been delivered
in violation of existing US sanctions. Boxes clearly marked as containing Aventa-M ventilators, produced by the Ural Instrument Engineering
Plant (UPZ), could be seen. For weeks now President Trump has made an issue about the need for ventilators in the US to provide life-saving
care for stricken Americans.
There was just one problem -- the manufacturer of the Aventa-M, UPZ, is a subsidiary of Concern Radio-Electronic Technologies
(KRET) which, along with its parent holding company ROSTEC, has been under US sanctions since 2014. Complicating matters further
is the fact that the shipment of medical supplies was paid in part by the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), a Russian sovereign
wealth fund which, like ROSTEC, was placed on the US lending blacklist in 2014 following Russia's intervention in Crimea. Half of
the Russian aid shipment was paid for by the US State Department, and the other half by RDIF.
According to a State Department spokesperson, the sanctions against RDIF do not apply to purchases of medical equipment. KRET,
however, is in the strictest SDN (Specially Designated Persons) sanctions
list , which means US citizens and permanent residents
are prohibited from doing business with it. So while the letter of the sanctions may not have been violated, the spirit certainly
has been.
One only need talk to the embattled Governor of New York State, Andrew Cuomo, to understand the difficulty in trying to purchase
much-needed medical equipment during a global pandemic where everyone else is trying to do the same. New York has been competing
with several other states to purchase much-needed ventilators from China. "It's like being on eBay" , Cuomo recently told
the press, with 50 states bidding against one another, driving the price up. The issue became even more complicated when the Federal
Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, entered the bidding war. "They big-footed us" , Cuomo said, driving the price per ventilator
up to $25,000. "We're going broke."
Cuomo estimates that New York will need upwards of 40,000 ventilators to be able to handle the influx of stricken patients when
the outbreak hits its peak. At the moment, New York has 17,000 ventilators available -- including 2,500 on order from China -- and
Cuomo doesn't expect any more. "We're on our own." Plans are in place to begin imposing a triage system to prioritize ventilator
availability if and when the current stockpile is exhausted. These plans include the issuance of an emergency waiver that permits
health care providers to take a patient off a ventilator to make it available for another patient deemed to be more "viable"
-- that is, who has a greater expectation of surviving the disease.
Cuomo's predicament is being played out around the world, in places like Italy, Spain -- and Iran, where the outbreak of coronavirus
has hit particularly hard. The difference, however, is that while the US, Italy and Spain are able to scour the global market in
search of life-saving medical supplies, Iran is not. US sanctions targeting the Iranian financial system, ostensibly imposed to prevent
"money laundering" by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Command, which has been heavily sanctioned by the US over the years,
have made it virtually impossible for Iran to pay for humanitarian supplies needed to fight the coronavirus outbreak.
As bad as it is for Governor Cuomo, at least he can enter a bidding war for medical supplies. Iran can't even get its foot in
the door, and it is costing lives. Making matters worse, at a time when the international community is pleading for the US to ease
sanctions so Iran can better cope with an outbreak that is taking a life every ten minutes, the US instead doubled down, further
tightening its death grip on the Iranian economy.
The global coronavirus pandemic will eventually end, and when it does there will be an accounting for how nations behaved. Nations
like Russia and China have been repeatedly vilified in the US media for any number of reasons -- even the Russian aid shipment containing
the sanctioned ventilators has been dismissed as a "propaganda ploy." What, then, do you call the US' blatant disregard
for select human lives?
The callous indifference displayed by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and other officials to the suffering of the Iranian people
by increasing sanctions at a time when the situation cries out for them to be lifted in order to save lives, when contrasted to the
ease in which US sanctions on Russia are ignored when life-saving medical equipment is needed, drives home the point that, as far
as the US is concerned, human life only matters when it is an American one. That might play well among American voters (it shouldn't),
but for the rest of the world it is a clear sign that hypocrisy, not humanitarianism, is the word that will define the US going forward.
EDITOR'S NOTE: A previous version of this article erroneously stated that entering a financial relationship with RDIF is prosecutable
under the US sanctions regime. In reality, RDIF is under sectoral sanctions that only apply to certain interactions, which, according
to a State Department spokesperson, do not include purchases of medical equipment. The article has been changed accordingly.
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
I realise few will since amerikans are 100% exceptionalist right up to their last breath but
please read the best article by far on masks & respirators cleaning issues esp such ones
as 'steam' cleaning are on this link I posted earlier.
It is written by Dr John Campbell who has been writing on this virus for several months.
My brother the retired journo recommended him to me in early February, so naturally I have
been assiduous in ignoring the bloke for that reason, combined with the fact Campbell is an
englander, but he has put together an excellent piece on masks & respirators, one which
uses y'know those pesky fact things to support his statements about assorted items efficacy,
longevity and ability to be cleaned. With respirators 95% & above he recommends having
several and rotating them so that they cop 4-5 days down time which should be enough time for
the virus to kark it of its own accord.
I don't believe for a moment that will stop the continual spouting of uninformed claptrap,
but I tried.
There is no conspiracy, they didn't make up false documents to start a Russian investigation,
oh wait they did.. I just read that Bloomberg spent north of $500,000,000.00 to become
president and you want me to believe the Russians spent 1% of that and got better results..
You have to be a special kind of stupid.
US Politicians never forget that for the past seventy years russophobia and sinophobic
racism- both of which have deep roots in the culture- formed the bases of the ideology of
anti-communism.
The Democrats, totally discredited by the 2016 Election campaign and decades of
Clinton/Obama swings towards the right and away from the old New Deal constituencies, began
by accusing Trump of colluding with the Russians- who most of the DNC deliberately suggested,
and probably genuinely thought, were Communists.
Trump's response is now to revive the anti-Peoples Republic witch-hunts of the past to use
against the Democrats.
We have two discredited old parties, incapable of dealing with the crises facing them,
attempting to revive the only ideas that have ever galvanised the US public in their
lifetimes: opposition to communism and the racism which underlay just about every US military
adventure since 1945 - the all purpose anti-gook racism that saw them through the wars
against Japan, Korea, IndoChina and the People's Republic.
It is going to make the spectacle of two monkeys throwing shit at each other seem
positively restrained - the Democrats howling about Russia and the Republicans, reverting to
type, starting up lynch mobs against China.
, Trump
gave his speech on 11 March . It should come as no surprise that Putin's speech framing and
proposals were far superior to Trump's, who employed the Big Lie at the top of his speech:
"Because of the economic policies that we have put into place over the last three years, we
have the greatest economy anywhere in the world, by far.
"Our banks and financial institutions are fully capitalized and incredibly strong. Our
unemployment is at a historic low. This vast economic prosperity gives us flexibility,
reserves, and resources to handle any threat that comes our way.
"This is not a financial crisis, this is just a temporary moment of time that we will
overcome together as a nation and as a world."
Absolutely nothing he said above is true and in many cases he was immediately proved wrong.
In stark contrast, Putin chose the following to begin his speech:
"By taking precautionary measures, we have been largely able to prevent the infection from
rapidly spreading and limit the incidence rate. However, we have to understand that Russia
cannot insulate itself from this threat, simply considering its geography. There are countries
along our borders that have already been seriously affected by the epidemic, which means that
in all objectivity it is impossible to stop it from spilling over into Russia.
"That said, being professional, well organised and proactive is what we can do and are
already doing. The lives and health of our citizens is our top priority .
"We have mobilised all the capabilities and resources for deploying a system of timely
prevention and treatment. I would like to specially address doctors, paramedics, nurses, staff
at hospitals, outpatient clinics, rural paramedic centres, ambulance services, and researchers:
you are at the forefront of dealing with this situation. My heartfelt gratitude to you for your
dedicated efforts." [My Emphasis]
We must also consider the numerous gaffs Trump committed prior to his speech, his earlier
gleeful gloating over China's troubles in January, and his politicizing of the crisis along
with that of Pompeo. Then there's his escalation of the illegal attacks on Iran and Venezuela
specifically, which are crimes against humanity. Yes, I readily admit my anti-Trump bias, but
I'm not blinded like those who applaud him. Putin had immediate proposals for aid to his people
that they can count on, while Trump did next to nothing by comparison. But do please read them
both and make your own determination as to which nation and leader you'd rather have during
this sort of crisis.
As a Russian I don't approve of this aid that Putin sent to Italy. That's Soviet-slyle
showmanship, when our country objectively cannot afford it. Stalin was sending grain to East
Germany, when Russia was starving. Now Putin is doing something similar.
At the very least he should have extracted some payment for it – Italy is a rich
country, has bigger GDP than Russia, and can totally pay.
@Felix Keverich I would have to disagree with you on this, my friend. Italy is famous for
being one of the most communist friendly countries in the western world. During "communism"
Italy's Fiat gave the license to build their cars to many Eastern block countries: Poland,
Yugoslavia, and yes USSR.
The original Lada was nothing else but Fiat 124 model. As a sign of gratitude the Russians
even renamed the city where the Lada was being made into Togliatti – after an Italian
communist. I think the friendship and respect between Italy and Russia goes way back, and now
the Russians are just trying to continue that tradition by helping as much as they can Italy
in these difficult times.
@Felix Keverich Soft power is much. much cheaper than hard power. Russia has been
constantly demonised in the West and a show of compassion of this magnitude reveals the lies
for what they are. It will be much more difficult to garner support for harsh measures
against Russians when people everywhere see them as being "just like us". This is especially
true of Europe whose support is very much needed by the US and it's minions like the UK,
Poland and the usual flunkies.
Why did you label Cyrano's response to you to be trolling? It was polite and sincere, I
thought.
@Felix Keverich If a Russian military gaining experience against an unknown enemy ,
isn't
that a form of payment ?
I am not a Russian , but I am sure your president knows what he is doing.
@Cyrano As a Russian I do support this action, despite it obviously will have no positive
changes in Italy's policy.
Not all Russians are like Felix (if he's really Russian, which I'm not sure).
By a clever move of the US intelligence agencies they are left without a choice as to support Trump in 2020 election is as idiotic
as to support Biden.
U.S. intelligence community, through its preferred propaganda sheet the New York Times, is
now reporting that
Russia is taking advantage of the coronavirus crisis to spread disinformation through Europe and also in the U.S.
In particular, Putin has escalated a campaign-by-innuendo to reduce confidence in the outcome of the upcoming 2020 presidential
election.
In any event, the Russians are too late as the Democratic and Republican parties' behavior has already convinced many Americans
that voting in November will be a waste of time.
As RT UK launches, attacks on the channel in the British media have stepped up
The latest is a piece by Mr. Cyril Waugh-Monger, a very important newspaper columnist for the NeoCon Daily, a patron of the Senator
Joe McCarthy Appreciation Society and author of 'Why the Iraq War was a Brilliant Idea' and 'The Humanitarian Case for Bombing Syria.'
Dear socially inferior person reading this article. My name is Cyril Waugh-Monger (I'm called 'Mr Terribly Pompous Neo-Con' by
my friends) and I'm here to tell you why on no account should you watch RT and why you should be making complaints to Ofcom (a British
bureacracy which regulates TV) about this dreadful channel so that in the interests of 'free speech' and 'democracy' we can get it
off air.
1. RT doesn't peddle Russophobia
Outrageously, RT doesn't compare Vladimir Putin to Adolf Hitler. It doesn't join in with the demonization of Russia and its leader.
How can we have a channel which is watched by people in Britain, which doesn't do that? We neocons say that demonization of Russia
and its leader is compulsory. How dare RT not do as we say!
RT is more vocally in support of Russia than western media
2. RT is sometimes rude to bankers
There's a man on RT called Max Keiser and he is often very rude to bankers. Why, he has even called for them to face the death
penalty. Such disrespect to our financial elites is shocking and should not be allowed in a free society.
3. Its coverage of the MH17 crash
Shockingly, RT commentators didn't rush to blame Vladimir Putin for the air disaster within seconds of the news breaking. Some
even said that we should wait for the forensic evidence before any statements apportioning guilt were made. Others said that we couldn't
rule out that the plane was downed by an another aircraft. This failure to come and say loud and clear "Putin personally shot down
the plane with a missile he made and fired with his own hands" within minutes of the crash is clear evidence of RT's bias and why
it must be taken off the air.
4. RT's 'pundits' include people who aren't neocons and 'liberal interventionists'
This is truly scandalous: RT gives airtime to people who don't support the West's policy of endless war and who opposed airstrikes
on Syria last year. Why, it's even broadcast interviews with the convener of the Stop the War coalition – and has a regular weekly
show fronted by George Galloway! This is unconscionable. Only people who support Western foreign policy should be allowed to express
their views on international affairs on television, not 'cranks' and 'fanatics' who oppose attacking a sovereign state in the Middle
East on deceitful grounds every couple of years. Why, if RT had been around in 2003, it would no doubt have given airtime to anti-war
'conspiracy theorists' who would have told viewers that Iraq had no WMDs – and claimed, fantastically – that Bush and Blair were
making it all up.
5. RT provides airtime to genuine socialists and genuine conservatives
This is really terrible: RT interviews people who oppose neo-liberalism and globalization, from both the left and the right. It's
given the microphone to socialists, communists, greens, and 'extremists' on the right, like Ron Paul. These people should not be
allowed to express their views on television; they are 'cranks' and should be totally marginalized. Only those who support the hegemonic
consensus should be allowed on TV. It's very important that in order to protect free speech and democracy, alternative opinions are
not heard.
6. RT pundits have 'extremist' links
I monitor the people who appear on RT very, very closely and I can tell you that there was once a case of an RT interviewee who
had a link on his website to another website which had a link to another website which had a link to another website – which denied
the Holocaust and said that little green men from Mars were ruling the US.
After considerable research, I also found that another RT pundit once attended a conference where a fellow invitee had once sat
at a restaurant table, a few days after another person who had actually praised Adolf Hitler, Chairman Mao, and Josef Stalin in a
magazine article published in North Korea in 1962.
7. RT is anti-semitic
Ok, I've got no evidence of this, but I'll bung it in anyway as it sounds good.
8. RT has broadcast documentaries on the wars in Yugoslavia which don't blame the Serbs for everything
This is totally unacceptable.
9. RT has had 'experts' on its programs who have made some very strong criticisms of Israel
This too is totally unacceptable. Anyone with a theory or definition that differs from Western minded politicians is demonized
for voicing their opinion.
10. RT pundits have often ridiculed leading American policymakers
For instance, when the US Secretary of State John Kerry said that "you just don't in the 21st century" invade another country
on "completely trumped up pretext," some people on RT had the audacity to say "What about Iraq?" This lack of respect towards a leading
American politician is appalling, and in a free society ought not to be allowed. The correct procedure whenever a leading US political
figure speaks is to tug one's forelock.
11. RT's coverage of the conflict in Syria
In 2011-13, we had so-called 'experts' on Syria telling us on RT that some of the freedom-fighting pro-democracy rebels were actually
fanatical terrorists who were guilty of committing atrocities. This was obviously a clear lie. Islamist terrorists like ISIS have
only been active in Syria since 2014 and of course, it's all the fault of President Assad and Russia.
12. RT interviews lots of people whose views I do not share
It ought not to be allowed! Aren't we supposed to live in a democracy?
13. The most important reason: RT is a threat
More and more people are watching it – which is why me and my little group of neocons and 'liberal interventionists' are so worried
and stepping up our attacks on the station and denigrating those people who appear on it.
The next big war is going to be much harder for us to 'sell' to the plebs, because we are no longer in control of the narrative
as we were in 2003, before the Iraq war. Oh, what happy days those were!
Don't watch RT because we really don't want you to 'question more.' We want you to question less. It's much easier for us that
way.
@niteranger
"For example, New York Times Columnist Nicholas Kristof on Sunday reported the disheartening analysis of Dr. Neil Ferguson of
Britain, one of the world's leading epidemiologists."
Nicholas Kristoff has the bad habit of falling for falling for frauds and making them famous. "Three cups of tea" for starters.
He's got a long track record of peddling fake stuff.
As RT UK launches, attacks on the channel in the British media have stepped up
The latest is a piece by Mr. Cyril Waugh-Monger, a very important newspaper columnist for the NeoCon Daily, a
patron of the Senator Joe McCarthy Appreciation Society and author of 'Why the Iraq War was a Brilliant Idea' and
'The Humanitarian Case for Bombing Syria.'
Dear socially inferior person reading this article. My name is Cyril Waugh-Monger (I'm called 'Mr Terribly
Pompous Neo-Con' by my friends) and I'm here to tell you why on no account should you watch RT and why you should
be making complaints to Ofcom (a British bureacracy which regulates TV) about this dreadful channel so that in the
interests of 'free speech' and 'democracy' we can get it off air.
1. RT doesn't peddle Russophobia
Outrageously, RT doesn't compare Vladimir Putin to Adolf Hitler. It doesn't join in with the demonization of
Russia and its leader. How can we have a channel which is watched by people in Britain, which doesn't do that? We
neocons say that demonization of Russia and its leader is compulsory. How dare RT not do as we say!
RT is more vocally in support of Russia than western media
2. RT is sometimes rude to bankers
There's a man on RT called Max Keiser and he is often very rude to bankers. Why, he has even called for them to
face the death penalty. Such disrespect to our financial elites is shocking and should not be allowed in a free
society.
Former CEO of HSX Holdings/Hollywood Stock Exchange and host of RT''s 'Keiser Report' Max Keiser
3. Its coverage of the MH17 crash
Shockingly, RT commentators didn't rush to blame Vladimir Putin for the air disaster within seconds of the news
breaking. Some even said that we should wait for the forensic evidence before any statements apportioning guilt
were made. Others said that we couldn't rule out that the plane was downed by an another aircraft. This failure to
come and say loud and clear "Putin personally shot down the plane with a missile he made and fired with his own
hands" within minutes of the crash is clear evidence of RT's bias and why it must be taken off the air.
Segment of the shot down plane
4. RT's 'pundits' include people who aren't neocons and 'liberal interventionists'
This is truly scandalous: RT gives airtime to people who don't support the West's policy of endless war and who
opposed airstrikes on Syria last year. Why, it's even broadcast interviews with the convener of the Stop the War
coalition – and has a regular weekly show fronted by George Galloway! This is unconscionable. Only people who
support Western foreign policy should be allowed to express their views on international affairs on television,
not 'cranks' and 'fanatics' who oppose attacking a sovereign state in the Middle East on deceitful grounds every
couple of years. Why, if RT had been around in 2003, it would no doubt have given airtime to anti-war 'conspiracy
theorists' who would have told viewers that Iraq had no WMDs – and claimed, fantastically – that Bush and Blair
were making it all up.
British politician, broadcaster, and writer George Galloway often speaks out against western foreign policy
5. RT provides airtime to genuine socialists and genuine conservatives
This is really terrible: RT interviews people who oppose neo-liberalism and globalization, from both the
left and the right. It's given the microphone to socialists, communists, greens, and 'extremists' on the right,
like Ron Paul. These people should not be allowed to express their views on television; they are 'cranks' and
should be totally marginalized. Only those who support the hegemonic consensus should be allowed on TV. It's
very important that in order to protect free speech and democracy, alternative opinions are not heard.
Former Republican presidential candidate, Representative Ron Paul
6. RT pundits have 'extremist' links
I monitor the people who appear on RT very, very closely and I can tell you that there was once a case of an
RT interviewee who had a link on his website to another website which had a link to another website which had a
link to another website – which denied the Holocaust and said that little green men from Mars were ruling the
US.
After considerable research, I also found that another RT pundit once attended a conference where a fellow
invitee had once sat at a restaurant table, a few days after another person who had actually praised Adolf
Hitler, Chairman Mao, and Josef Stalin in a magazine article published in North Korea in 1962.
7. RT is anti-semitic
Ok, I've got no evidence of this, but I'll bung it in anyway as it sounds good.
8. RT has broadcast documentaries on the wars in Yugoslavia which don't blame the Serbs for everything
This is totally unacceptable.
An elderly woman carries her belongings November 22 in Sarajevo's war shattered airport settlement.
(Reuters)
9. RT has had 'experts' on its programs who have made some very strong criticisms of Israel
This too is totally unacceptable. Anyone with a theory or definition that differs from Western minded
politicians is demonized for voicing their opinion.
Israel's annexed Golan Heights is hosting pop up hospitals to tend to ISIS fighters
10. RT pundits have often ridiculed leading American policymakers
For instance, when the US Secretary of State John Kerry said that "you just don't in the 21st century"
invade another country on "completely trumped up pretext," some people on RT had the audacity to say "What
about Iraq?" This lack of respect towards a leading American politician is appalling, and in a free society
ought not to be allowed. The correct procedure whenever a leading US political figure speaks is to tug one's
forelock.
11. RT's coverage of the conflict in Syria
In 2011-13, we had so-called 'experts' on Syria telling us on RT that some of the freedom-fighting
pro-democracy rebels were actually fanatical terrorists who were guilty of committing atrocities. This was
obviously a clear lie. Islamist terrorists like ISIS have only been active in Syria since 2014 and of course,
it's all the fault of President Assad and Russia.
Intense shelling destroys buildings in the Damascus suburb of Jobar October 28
12. RT interviews lots of people whose views I do not share
It ought not to be allowed! Aren't we supposed to live in a democracy?
13. The most important reason: RT is a threat
More and more people are watching it – which is why me and my little group of neocons and 'liberal
interventionists' are so worried and stepping up our attacks on the station and denigrating those people who
appear on it.
The next big war is going to be much harder for us to 'sell' to the plebs, because we are no longer in
control of the narrative as we were in 2003, before the Iraq war. Oh, what happy days those were!
Don't watch RT because we really don't want you to 'question more.' We want you to question less. It's much
easier for us that way.
This weaponizing of random indignation is a classic tool of the Western propaganda. In
Romania, we heard for a decade how the national-populists masquerading as socialists are to
blame for the lack of highways. It's been a few years since idiot Romanians gather in random
cities to complain that their city is not yet hooked to the Austro-Hungarian highway system,
despite the lack of traffic between their city and Austro-Hungary.
It is my understanding that, once highway construction will start, there will be protests
about natural or archeological treasures presumably endangered by the construction. It has
been decently working in Russia, with that Khimki forest.
Anything that can be thrown at a government threatening to leave the NWO will be used.
It's even worse for governments that are already one foot out, like Russia / China, or
completely out, like Iran / North Korea. Putin will be blamed for epidemics, earthquakes,
tsunamis, and even eclipses. If an earthquake would kill only a few, we will hear about
"failure to respond". If the earthquake doesn't kill anybody. we will be told that Putin
exploited it for propaganda.
One of the ways that CIA and Soros use, in order to weaponize Romania's presumed lack of
highways, is to pay some useful idiots, who call themselves "The Association for the
Betterment of Highways", "The Pro-Infrastructura Brigade", and so on. Most of these NGOs
consist of a single person, who posts videos of them ranting next to a construction site.
Using the model that BoJo used for the upcoming marriage (three men and one dog), the more
Soros/CIA-resistant types call them "The One-Incel-And-His-Drone Association".
By that same standard, I suspect we call this Doctors' Alliance
"Vasilievna-and-her-thermometer Association". Whatever she says about Moscow hospitals is
probably informed by her thermometer anyway. I doubt you can tell how things are in a
10-million city, especially if you are a marginal clown.
Is she an ophthalmologist, like The Part-Time Virologist Martyr of Wuhan? Dentist,
perhaps?
the scenario that China and Russia become extremely hostile with each other in the near
future (possibly even distant future) is extremely unlikely
I don't believe this is as unlikely as some might think, although not in a way most would
expect. And changing demographics in the United States could be a key catalyst in such a turn
of events. To clarify, I don't think there will be an overtly anti-Russian sentiment running
through mainland China in the near future, but I could see ethnic Asian -- particularly
Chinese -- demographics in the United States turning that country against Russia, and later
the whole of Europe, as a means of deflecting away from the CCP globally and ethnic Chinese
domestically.
Much of the current anti-Russian sentiment promoted by the left is just thinly veiled
anti-white animus. A key element of coalition building is having a common enemy. The common
enemy of POC is the white American demographic. Russia is the ruling class's whipping boy, a
stand in for their white Christian domestic rivals. That's why you see racist identitarians
like the South African Trevor Noah obsessing about Russia and Putin even though neither has
anything to do with any American's living standard (and never mind the hypocrisy of having so
many autocratic non-white allies -- a fact which is strangely omitted from their rhetoric
about Russian strongmen).
When considering past conflicts, most people falsely assume there wasn't a more base
motive -- ethnic antipathy. Children in the United States, for instance, are taught that
their country entered the Second World War because Hitler was bad and the imperial Japanese
were bad. Perhaps, but that isn't really the true reason. The United States government and
significant portions of the population lobbied for entry into both world wars due mostly to
ethnic allegiances; Britain spoke English and so did an American white population descended
largely from that same group. It's not a coincidence that the most anti-war sections of the
country were also the most German. Charles Lindbergh, a noted anti-war celebrity, was German,
IIRC; Jewish activists have spent decades trying to destroy his image.
It's also probably not a coincidence that many Americans who opposed entry into these wars
were fairly recent descendants of ethnic groups with a history of anti-Anglo sentiment. FDR's
Irish ambassador, for example, to the Court of St. James's made it clear to the British Royal
Family that the American public opposed entry into the war (true, but the government was
working hard behind the scenes to make it happen). An enraged WASP FDR eventually sacked him.
In that light, it's not inconceivable to think that had the U.S. accepted 2 or 3 times the
number of German and Irish immigrants the country might have remained neutral or even joined
the Axis. In contrast, the strongest supporters of these wars were WASP celebrities,
politicians, and voting demographics.
In the present, the U.S. supports Israel mainly because it has a powerful Jewish lobby
that influences it to do so, even against its wider interests. The same is true of Cuba where
the country sacrifices its national image in order to appeal to a small demographic of Cuban
expats in southern Florida. Over in Europe, the UK -- flooded with Indian immigrants -- is
now unnaturally friendly to India, even reorienting its recent domestic culture to include
far more Indian history, subjects, and characters in shows like Dr. Who (a show that now no
longer has a traditional Christmas episode as it went POC woke). Demography is destiny, it
would seem. Immigration without assimilation is equivalent to conquest.
Polls in the United States show Asians have the most positive opinion of the Chinese
government by a fairly wide margin, and there have been numerous stories lately of Chinese
ethnics protesting in favor of the interests of that country -- against the Hong Kong
protests (Disney's Mulan actress, a nationalized American), against college events and
monuments they deem against China, and against any description of corona as a "China virus",
not that I endorse the description myself. Other demographics show a more mixed opinion.
Regardless, I expect there will continue to be a steady flow of Asian immigrants to the
United States with predictable consequences.
I think it is possible that the American system could be co-opted with a concerted effort
and repurposed to serve the interests of China, an effective coup similar to Israel's
domination of the current establishment by means of diaspora activists. A few diversity
programs, a set of prominent politicians, some money thrown around, the founding and
infiltration of a few lobby groups, and a few unscrupulous people put in charge of the
entertainment and news industries could see a situation where sympathetic Chinese ethnics
seize control. We've already seen this several times before in United States history --
protestant then catholic then Jewish. And with few common bonds or any sense of patriotism
left to deter such a thing*, this will be all the easier. Consider the recent mass arrests of
American academics found to be working for the Chinese government. It was stunning,
really.
In such an event, you'll likely see coalition building against the white demographic by
domestic Asian-led minority groups. This will also apply to alliances involving other
countries and demographics -- all in an effort to deflect from China and Asians domestically
while enhancing their power. This will involve the promotion of various propaganda and even
extend to rewriting history. The media will demonize Russia and then Europe. They'll employ
rhetoric involving colonialism and various events from European history, such as the
Inquisition, to attack Europeans and ally rival racial groups against them for personal
gain.
Jews did something similar previously; they were at the forefront of "civil rights" in the
United States and immigration reforms aimed at weakening the electoral strength of their WASP
rivals. They've also rewritten history to paint themselves and their allies as the victims of
their ethnic rival's hateful machinations -- continually digging up and exaggerating past
events. For instance (one among many), you're told as an American that anti-Semitic
Southerners murdered an innocent Jewish Leo Frank because they hated Jews for no reason. What
you won't be told (because Jewish groups have banned the book that told the tale from Amazon)
is that Jews in the South were generally well integrated and not persecuted to any real
extent. The same book I'm referencing has tables of prominent Jewish politicians in the South
and corrected much of the propaganda surrounding Frank's trial. Why would the history books
lie about such a thing? Easy, because the people who wrote them saw the trial as an
opportunity to build an inroad with the black demographic against the common enemy, white
Christians. **
Unz has an article on the Leo Frank trial if you're interested. It's worth a read. If
anything, it understates the evidence presented in the book as it is quite compelling. No
wonder Amazon banned it. BTW, the book does not promote violence, so there was no legitimate
reason to ban it other than the fact that it damaged domestic Jewish ethnic interests.
You've already seen some of this deflection in the democratic presidential primary debates
with candidate Andrew Yang, an ethnic Chinese. He claimed in the second debate that Russia
was the nation's greatest threat. That's nonsense. China in the near future will easily be
10x the strategic, economic and cultural competitor that Russia will ever be. It was an
obvious and uncomfortable deflection away from his ethnic group to another. Expect that trend
to potentially accelerate after the democrats seize permanent control of the government and
ruling class sometime after 2020. What mechanism is there to stop them?
I know Anatoly has speculated that the current China / USA rivalry is likely now
permanent, but I don't see it that way. The democrats have repeatedly signaled a willingness
to go back to business as usual. In the second democratic debate last year, nearly all the
candidates opposed trade tariffs on China and deflected away to Russia on foreign policy.
These people have one loyalty -- to their bank accounts. I expect the Democrats, spurred on
by a donor class that shares practically no loyalty to the working class, to largely reverse
the tensions Trump has ratcheted up. That means more economic policies that enrich the
corrupt ruling class to the nation's geopolitical detriment -- more outsourcing, and
particularly in critical industries that relate to national defense and the economy *** .
The Chinese could easily exploit this vulnerability to affect a coup against their main
rival. Perhaps there will be a counter-coup before 2040 or so by the American military to
prevent this, but I think that is unlikely considering just how corrupt, inept, and
politically correct it is.
*Unlike other countries quarantined under Corona, the US has seen no similar patriotic
singing or the like. A few celebrities tried creating a viral moment by posting themselves
singing a classic John Lennon song, but it was widely mocked. The media has used every
opportunity to undermine their implied ethnic enemies, the white republicans. The democrats
are busy stuffing the aid bill with giveaways to their ethnic coalition like "diversity"
requirements from companies in exchange for aid. The United States is a fragile domestic
empire filled with various groups having practically no loyalty to each other and who take
every opportunity to screw the other side over. Even in a time of relative crisis, they
couldn't come together. It will only get worse.
** For a glimpse of the future, consider the extraordinary number of holocaust movies and
books, along with media, depicting whites and their history as bad. I couldn't even begin to
list it all here. It's extraordinary, and it disproportionately comes from the usual
demographics.
*** The United States is currently beholden to China for much of its pharmaceuticals,
almost all the rare earth elements used in its tech industry, and many of the chemicals used
in its military machine -- 100% in some cases. If a war starts in the near future, the U.S.
will find that it has so many shortages that it cannot be sustained. They will lose or give
up. What will the democrats do about this? Probably nothing. Only under Trump has the U.S.
funded domestic rare earth mining efforts to create an alternate supply chain, but that
effort could easily be shelved in the next Biden administration. The man has already proved
himself corrupt over the years by receiving large amounts of corporate campaign contributions
and being connected to shady Ukraine deals.
@Divine
Right American conflicts with Russia are based partly on self-serving fictions of the
military industrial complex that need an enemy for their continued existence, as well as some
more realistic conflicts involving Eastern Europe and rival interests over oil prices. The US
need for hegemony, which is highly tied to the value of the dollar as a reserve currency,
further thrusts this forward and center(and indeed, into conflict with China as well). This
all is interminged with a generalized rejection of "authoritarian" governments.
China, on the other hand, has no real current conflicts with Russia – most conflicts
involve sales of weaponry and political influence over central Asian states, nothing of vast
importance at least compared to being their the target of an enormous world-spanning
sanctions order or a dedicated trade war.
Your argument has the weird self-contradiction that the CCP both is supposedly the
mind-controlling alien brain of all Asians, while at the same time, not actually benefiting
from any specific conflict with Russia. This also ignores the fact that Asians tend to
assimilate the highest by any population(at nearly 40% intermarriage
in some segments, that Chinese students in particularly no longer tend to stay in the US(
only
20% by 2017 ), and that a overwhelming part of the demographic increase by
immigration is
Indian with long historical and cultural rivalries with China. And far more than Chinese
Americans, who often engage in racial masochism(witness Gordan Chang ), Indian Americans are vastly
more active and influential in American
politics both due to cultural reasons as well as higher verbal IQ. This isn't even
hypothetical: Indian American political writers dominate National Interest articles stressing
for more hawkish Chinese attitudes and were directly contributory to renaming the South China
Seas conflict to the "Indo-Pacific region."
I do agree that the US has long since crippled its resource base. But there's no evidence
that Trump, or anyone else, is demonstrating the barest inkling of trying to resolve it(or
that it is even possible, given the bueaucratic overload and red tape of regulations). Gould
once described evolution as a "drunkard's walk" between complexity, where organisms sometimes
fall trapped inside rail tracks, unable to stumble out.
Indian American political writers dominate National Interest articles stressing for more
hawkish Chinese attitudes and were directly contributory to renaming the South China Seas
conflict to the "Indo-Pacific region."
@Divine
Right American conflicts with Russia are based partly on self-serving fictions of the
military industrial complex that need an enemy for their continued existence, as well as some
more realistic conflicts involving Eastern Europe and rival interests over oil prices. The US
need for hegemony, which is highly tied to the value of the dollar as a reserve currency,
further thrusts this forward and center(and indeed, into conflict with China as well). This
all is intermingled with a [fake and hypocritical] generalized rejection of "authoritarian"
governments.
China, on the other hand, has no real current conflicts with Russia – most conflicts
involve sales of weaponry and political influence over central Asian states, nothing of vast
importance at least compared to being their the target of an enormous world-spanning
sanctions order or a dedicated trade war.
Your argument has the weird self-contradiction that the CCP both is supposedly the
mind-controlling alien brain of all Asians, while at the same time, not actually benefiting
from any specific conflict with Russia. This also ignores the fact that Asians tend to
assimilate the highest by any population(at nearly 40% intermarriage
in some segments, that Chinese students in particularly no longer tend to stay in the US(
only
20% by 2017 ), and that a overwhelming part of the demographic increase by
immigration is
Indian with long historical and cultural rivalries with China. And far more than Chinese
Americans, who often engage in racial masochism(witness Gordan Chang ), Indian Americans are vastly
more active and influential in American
politics both due to cultural reasons as well as higher verbal IQ. This isn't even
hypothetical: Indian American political writers dominate National Interest articles stressing
for more hawkish Chinese attitudes and were directly contributory to renaming the South China
Seas conflict to the "Indo-Pacific region."
I do agree that the US has long since crippled its resource base. But there's no evidence
that Trump, or anyone else, is demonstrating the barest inkling of trying to resolve it(or
that it is even possible, given the bueaucratic overload and red tape of regulations). Gould
once described evolution as a "drunkard's walk" between complexity, where organisms sometimes
fall trapped inside rail tracks, unable to stumble out.
Indian American political writers dominate National Interest articles stressing for more
hawkish Chinese attitudes and were directly contributory to renaming the South China Seas
conflict to the "Indo-Pacific region."
Let's take a look at that last article ,
written by FT's Henry Foy today, and one of the more balanced (read: less PDS-afflicted)
journalists doing the Russia beat (not to mention the most prominent in the above sample,
having scored an exclusive interview
with Putin in 2019).
"The present number of patients with coronavirus will be hidden from us," said Anastasia
Vasilieva, chairman of Doctors' Alliance, a Russian lobby group affiliated with opposition
politician Alexei Navalny.
Now Foy, to his credit, at least has the journalistic integrity to acknowledge that this
doctors' group (which I have never heard of before now) is affiliated with Navalny, whose
entire shtick is to oppose everything and anything the Kremlin does.
A political tilt that its chairwoman helpfully confirms:
"The value of human life for our president is nil . . . We
don't want to admit to any pandemic," said Ms Vasilieva. "We know of hospitals that are
completely full and nurses who are asked to sew face masks from gauze."
***
But otherwise it follows the usual template on Russia COVID-19 coverage.
She claimed Moscow was instead classifying cases of the virus as pneumonia, the incidence
of which increased by almost 40 per cent in January compared with a year previously,
government data showed.
The aim here is to insinuate that there was a raging coronavirus epidemic camouflaged as the
flu from as early as January 2020.
Oh Corona, where to start.
1. Flu mortality fluctuates wildly season to season by a factor of as high as 4x . So this is a
perfectly meaningless fact from the outset.
2. Even China's epidemic only broke 1,000 cases in January 25. Where were Russians getting
infected??
3. If this was true, it is Russia, not Italy, that would be the center of the COVID-19
epidemic now -- something that would certainly be noticed, e.g. in overflowing hospitals (no
sign of that to date) or in exported cases (but that was all
China in February, and predominantly Italy, Iran, and other EU nations now). It is Britons that
Vietnam has started
barring ten days ago, not Russians.
Here's what I guess happened. People got agitated by reports from China, and were more
likely to consult doctors, producing more flu diagnoses. Even though the actual chance of
Russians having COVID-19 in January if they hadn't been to Wuhan was on the order of a
meteorite hitting them on the head.
While other foreign leaders have steeled their citizens for a long crisis and have spoken
of a "war" against the pandemic, Mr Putin has played down the threat and urged citizens to
remain calm in an effort to minimise panic -- and ensure the nationwide ballot on April 22
takes place.
"The virus is a challenge and comes at a very bad moment for him," said Tatiana Stanovaya,
founder of R. Politik, a political analyst. "Putin doesn't want to postpone and is insisting
that the referendum takes place as soon as possible . . . The
longer they wait, the more risks will appear."
The US epidemic (22k cases) is about two orders of magnitude more advanced than Russia's
(306 cases), but most states have continued to hold primaries for the Dem nomination.
And in any case Putin has allowed the possibility
that the April 22 Constitutional Referendum may be postponed. There's no indication it's a
hard, immovable date.
At the same time, Mr Putin has sought to project an image of control, continuing with his
diary of local visits and meetings with senior officials, shaking hands and never wearing a
face mask.
Although it would be nice for Putin to set a better example, this is the rule,
internationally -- not the exception. Stressing this is so petty, LOL.
"No matter what happens in the next 35 days, they have to lie, hush up, and deny. It
doesn't matter at all what really will happen to coronavirus in Russia, whether there will be
a moderate outbreak or tens of thousands are killed," said Igor Pitsyn, a doctor in
Yaroslavl, a city 250km north-east of Moscow.
"By Putin's decree all information about this is declared a state secret until April
22 . . . This 'nationwide vote' will be held at all costs."
First time I hear of this. Searching "путин
коронавирус
гостайна" doesn't produce any relevant results.
This doctor must have some very high placed sources.
Or perhaps Foy had to travel all the way to Yaroslavl to get a sufficiently juicy quote.
While officials have cited the low number as proof of the success of swiftly closing its
border with China in January and steadily cutting flights to affected countries, experts have
questioned how the country has proved far more immune than almost any other. Neighbouring
Belarus has five times more infections per capita than Russia, and France, which has roughly
half Russia's population, has more than 50 times the number of cases.
Russia doesn't have large numbers of Gastarbeiters in the EU, unlike Belarus. Our
Belorussian commenters also tell us
that there are next to no control measures in place.
But Ukraine has perhaps 20x more Gastarbeiters in the EU than Belarus, and yet 2 days ago
reported only 1/3 as many Corona cases (16 vs. 51). Which suggests where Western journalists
covering Eastern Europe should really focus their
attention .
If they, you know, cared about the Corona situation in Eastern Europe. As opposed to
promoting the US line that Russia bad and China bad.
***
Incidentally, an update on Ukraine, two days after my alarm-raising article , in
which I suggested that it's likely there's a big cluster developing undetected in Ukraine.
Even though testing in Ukraine remains extremely patchy -- even in per capita terms, its
~500 tests are two orders of magnitude lower than Russia's ~150k, or for that matter Belarus'
~16k -- the past two days have seen a surge of new cases from 16 to 41. The majority of those
cases, some 25 of them, are concentrated in Chernivtsi oblast, which also saw the death of a 33
year old woman from existing problems magnified by the coronavirus.
The unlikelihood of such a mortality profile, coupled with the flood of new cases despite
continued low testing rates, strongly suggests that this is just the tip of the iceberg, and
that a cluster is developing in Chernivtsi oblast.
There's a reason Chernivtsi has so many cases -- large # of people go to Italy for
work.
An acquaintance of mine from there confirmed his business partner just tested positive for
the virus.
But just in case you think I am piling on to Ukraine because of my own political obsessions
you would be mistaken.
I will say that after Ukraine, probably the second biggest undetected Corona timebomb in
Europe may be Serbia. Unfortunately, the Wikipedia page on COVID-19 testing doesn't have
information for Serbia. However, one of my Serbian friends on Thursday wrote me that:
We are still testing around 50 per day, with 1/5 being positive
So both the intensity of testing and the rate of positives is similar to Ukraine.
This Friday, he continued:
We still have competent health care workers (the decision not to test the wider population
is purely political, as was the decision no to close schools until 5 days ago), relatively
functioning health care system, about 1500 respirators on a population that is 7+
million.
On the other hand, we have the second lowest reported total test volume anywhere in the
world, after Malorossiya :), at 545 total as of this morning, one of the highest positive
rates per 1000 tests (after Italy, Spain, Ecuador and the Philippines). We have seen an
influx of over 250 000 gastarbeiters from Western Europe in the past 10 days Many people are
breaking the 14 day mandatory self isolation. When I say many, I'm talking about thousands
every day
We have 3 things potentially on our side. God, warmth, and Sun. Or it's all just God?
And to think that Serbia was one of the first countries in the world to eradicate smallpox
in the 1830s Under the lifelong illiterate knyaz Miloš
The large number of Gastarbeiters in Western Europe, most of whom are now going to be let
go, is another similarity that Serbia shares with Ukraine. And is something that will be a very
problematic issue going forwards.
Fortunately, it appears that China (and Russia ) are going to bail Serbia
out with test kits.
Extraordinary address the president of Serbia, the largest #EU membership
candidate now banned from importing medical kit. "European solidarity does not exist. It was
a fairy-tale the only country who can help us out of this difficult situation is China."
#coronavirus
https://t.co/JTbtPCS6NK
Despite their rather different geopolitical viewpoints, European attitudes to both Serbia
and the Ukraine are quite similar. They are to be exploited to the extent they are useful;
otherwise discarded as needed. It's a lesson they should mull over.
Why are you sensitive about what some article said in an American newspaper about Russia? Who
cares? Half of articles in Russian websites are often ten times more stupid than even
articles in American websites (which are already stupid), and people in America don't care
about that.
Also, I read only CNN's article on the topic, and I notice it follows the pattern that CNN
report more accurately outside America, than they do in America. I.e. They are more objective
(like most people) writing about things which are far away from them https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/21/europe/putin-coronavirus-russia-intl/index.html
Business Insider: Doctors in Russia are accusing the government of covering up its
coronavirus outbreak and denying them protective equipment
I have to say that on reddit this kind of conspiratorial crap gets a LOT of interest and
upvotes, an order of magnitude more upvotes than the factual Russian news. It seems that a
large chunk of Western public feels better about themselves and their situation, "knowing"
that there is terrible epidemic going on in Russia.
So these articles are actually having therapeutic effect on Western societies: ordinary
people in West take comfort in [imaginary] Russian suffering.
Serbia and Ukraine should have less developed epidemic of coronavirus, compared to most
European countries, as they are one of the minority of European countries which is not in the
EU.
As a result, they should have less per capita connectivity to Northern Italy, that is the
"staging point" for the coronavirus epidemic's invasion into Europe.
Well, perhaps I am wrong about Serbia, as it is a neighbouring country to Italy. But the
EU has a very intense labour mobility and incredibly amount of flights between themselves, if
we would look at flightradar on a normal week.
But EU is still covered by flights. While planes are generally avoiding Serbia and
Ukraine. Russia is almost disconnected from Europe now by planes (except for cargo planes).
However, even in normal, pre-Coronavirus times, Russia (as well as Ukraine) is far more
disconnected than any EU country, and is never blanketed by flights on flightradar in the
same way as Europe.
Perhaps Serbia still receives a lot of entry by people in buses and cars.
Wishing the virus to hit hard Russia is a way Westerners try to cover their incompetence.
There is an explosion of new cases in the USA but the American MSM keeps its Russophobe
obsession.
Today new cases in USA reached the numbers of Italy
https://www.rt.com/russia/483744-russia-doctor-coronavirus-holiday/
" A leading infectious diseases specialist in Russia's southern Stavropol region
endangered the lives of dozens of her colleagues and students by failing to self-quarantine
after a holiday in Spain, where she contracted coronavirus."
Just read the headline and thought, "Western journalists really want there to be a huge
corona epidemic in America ."
We all remember Bill Maher, to his credit, admitting to wanting what so many Progressives
pray for -- a brutal recession that would sink Tump's chances of reelection -- but I am
continually astounded by the fact that the MSM's hysterical, cult-like fervor for destroying
Trump, even to the tragic detriment of the American people, simply will not exhaust itself.
It is, if you will, a virus that keeps mutating into more and more virulent strains.
I think American-journalist-as-suicide-bomber is the number one potential threat to the
United States, and preventing this should be the FBI's number one priority. Thx.
@yakushimaru The Chinese
economy has at least one good thing going for it. They are the world's manufacturing floor.
Ultimately they can still make things unlike the US which has hollowed itself out. Refilling
the world supply chain gives them an advantage in recovering faster than the US will.
@Dmitry Don't be silly,
there are entire organizations in the West dedicated to fact checking Russian news agencies
and publishing their mistakes. So Anatoly's counterparts in the West do seem to care, they
seem to care very much. Furthermore, there is the asymmetry between the geopolitical power of
the two countries which makes what Americans write about Russia much more important than the
inverse.
AK has been covering this topic for years, so it may not be interesting to you, but it is
to him. And we come here, partly, because he writes about what he wants to, not what others
want him to. You, yourself, pointed this out.
Western media openly wishing that a plague strikes Russia is very low class. It has a minor
therapeutic role for the West to show that the evil ones are also suffering. But it is
basically a continuing descent into hysteria. Next we will hear that Putin was spotted
poisoning wells in Italy. (Sneaky bastard, probably used a face-mask, he is after all a
trained KGB spy.)
Regarding facts: it is a truism that all numbers are understated. There must be at this
point millions of people around the world who have been exposed and most will never know
about it. Corona hurts the old and the sick, most other people probably wouldn't know it was
happening without the media. In a preventive way it might actually benefit young, healthy
people to be exposed when their bodies can develop immunity -- you don't in general get the
same virus twice.
But a decision was made to protect our elders and it is a humane thing to do. And the
usual suspects can't avoid their low class ideological manias, attacking China, Russia and/or
Trump. These days they mostly work in the Western media. One wonders how that happened.
@utu
This was actually going to be the subject of my next post. She is the chief infectious
disease doctor for Stavropol!
She went to Madrid , from March 6th- March 9th- the exact period when cases in Spain
started ballooning up (420 went to 1200)
She has infected 11 other people, at least, in Stavropol and also taken part in a
conference there where about 1000 people attended.
I don't know if it was definitely a holiday -- sure, those are weekend dates and Madrid is
a wonderful place but infections there then still exceeded
the number in Russia now.
This weaponizing of random indignation is a classic tool of the Western propaganda. In
Romania, we heard for a decade how the national-populists masquerading as socialists are to
blame for the lack of highways. It's been a few years since idiot Romanians gather in random
cities to complain that their city is not yet hooked to the Austro-Hungarian highway system,
despite the lack of traffic between their city and Austro-Hungary.
It is my understanding that, once highway construction will start, there will be protests
about natural or archeological treasures presumably endangered by the construction. It has
been decently working in Russia, with that Khimki forest.
Anything that can be thrown at a government threatening to leave the NWO will be used.
It's even worse for governments that are already one foot out, like Russia / China, or
completely out, like Iran / North Korea. Putin will be blamed for epidemics, earthquakes,
tsunamis, and even eclipses. If an earthquake would kill only a few, we will hear about
"failure to respond". If the earthquake doesn't kill anybody. we will be told that Putin
exploited it for propaganda.
One of the ways that CIA and Soros use, in order to weaponize Romania's presumed lack of
highways, is to pay some useful idiots, who call themselves "The Association for the
Betterment of Highways", "The Pro-Infrastructura Brigade", and so on. Most of these NGOs
consist of a single person, who posts videos of them ranting next to a construction site.
Using the model that BoJo used for the upcoming marriage (three men and one dog), the more
Soros/CIA-resistant types call them "The One-Incel-And-His-Drone Association".
By that same standard, I suspect we call this Doctors' Alliance
"Vasilievna-and-her-thermometer Association". Whatever she says about Moscow hospitals is
probably informed by her thermometer anyway. I doubt you can tell how things are in a
10-million city, especially if you are a marginal clown.
Is she an ophthalmologist, like The Part-Time Virologist Martyr of Wuhan? Dentist,
perhaps?
@Dmitry Can you show me even
ONE article or report from Izvestiya, life, kp. Vz, RBK, vesti, Channel 1 etc that is stupid
about the west? I can't because most of them are extremely well written.
The inverse situation? . I have just read 3 cretinous western lie reports about
Russia/coronavirus in the last half an hour! Each one born out of jealousy or CIA psyops
There is no comparison to make at all. You are doing false equivalence.
Gayropa DOES exist. It is a thing, an ideology
Your premise is absurd-50 % because Russian journalists are a lot more intellectual than
their western counterparts . and the other 50 % is quite naturally because millions of
Russians have closely admired or studied or been influenced by western practises and popular
culture in the last 30 years .. than vice versa.
Kiselyov has had an American wife, speaks English, family in Germany and has done many
excellent reports on western countries.
Brilyev speaks perfect English and is a British citizen.
Solovyov knows Italy and the US very well and on his talk shows he has done many
objective, constructive/positive comments about American business climate and bureaucracy,
for instance.
Can you compare any of those guys to their dumb as f ** k western counterparts trying to
do a report on Russia?
Different matter if you are talking about RT – that is lowest of the low,
anti-russian, garbage.
who cares? Half of Russian articles are 10 times more stupid than US ones
Who cares ? Because the culmination of these deceitful idiot scumbag stories is what
creates the momentum to ban Russia from the Olympics based on "collective" not individual
punishment , pull Ukraine away from Russia, make a friend of mine be too scared to come to
Russia on holiday because "the police will arrest you there for no reason" BS.,dissuade
investors from billions in investment because of PR, not practical reasons. create the
conditions so that self-discrediting freaks like Browder and Rodchenkov can say any BS as a
pretext to sanction russia with zero chance of getting refuted because of the "they will get
killed" by Russian agents if they go into the public (whilst going to the public) theory- a
hypothesis based on other lie reporting.
Russian media will make clear that its a disgrace the number of people the US police shoot
dead each year- but they won't say or imply that Russian tourists will get shot by US police
or dissuade them from going on holiday there.
But she sees this China-bashing as mostly a political reaction:
In reality these people are rallying behind the campaign to blame China for the health
crisis they're now facing because they understand that otherwise the blame will land
squarely on the shoulders of their president, who's running for re-election this year.
instead of a deliberate Deep-State strategy (which is my view).
We can argue who created the virus (I'm still looking for any rebuttal to the Chinese
claim that USA must be the source because it has all five strains of the virus), but the
Empire's gaming of the virus outbreak seems very clear to me.
When reading any article concerning current events (ie. Ukraine, Syria, Iran, Venezuela, or Coronavirus) consider how the The
Seven Principles of Propaganda may apply. (repost):
Avoid abstract ideas - appeal to the emotions. When we think emotionally, we are more prone to be irrational and
less critical in our thinking. I can remember several instances where this has been employed by the US to prepare the public
with a justification of their actions. Here are four examples:
The Invasion of Grenada during the Reagan administration was said to be necessary to rescue American students being held
hostage by Grenadian coup authorities after a coup that overthrew the government. I had a friend in the 82nd airborne division
that participated in the rescue. He told me the students said they were hiding in the school to avoid the fighting by the US
military, and had never been threatened by any Grenadian authority and were only hiding in the school to avoid all the fighting.
Film of the actual rescue broadcast on the mainstream media was taken out of context; the students were never in danger.
The invasion of Panama in the late 80's was supposedly to capture the dictator Manual Noriega for international crimes related
to drugs and weapons. I remember a headline covered by all the media where a Navy lieutenant and his wife were detained by
the police. His wife was sexually assaulted while in custody, according to the story. Unfortunately, it never happened. It
was intended to get the public emotionally involved to support the action.
The invasion of Iraq in the early 90's was preceded by a speech by a girl describing the Iraqi army throwing babies out
of incubators so the equipment could be transferred to Iraq. It turns out the girl was the daughter of one of the Kuwait's
ruling sheiks and the event never occurred. However, it served its purpose by getting the American public involved emotionally
supporting the war.
During the build up to the bombing campaign by NATO against Libya, a woman entered a hotel where reporters were staying
claiming she was raped by several police officers of the Gaddafi security services. The report was carried by most media outlets
as representative of the brutality of the Gaddafi regime. I was not able to verify if this story was true or not, but it fits
the usual method employed to gain public support through propaganda for military interventions.
The greatest emotion in us is fear and fear is used extensively to make us think irrationally. I remember growing up during
the cold war having the fear of nuclear war or 'The Russians are coming!' After the cold war without an obvious enemy, it was
Al Qaeda even before 911, so we had 'Al Qaeda is coming!' Now we have 'ISIS is coming!' with media blasting us with terrorist
fears. Whenever I hear a government promoting an emotional issue or fear mongering, I ignore them knowing there is a hidden
Truth behind the issue.
Constantly repeat just a few ideas. Use stereotyped phrases. This could be stated more plainly as 'Keep it simple,
stupid!' The most notorious use of this technique recently was the Bush administration. Everyone can remember 'We must fight
them over there rather than over here' or my favourite 'They hate us for our freedoms'. Neither of these phrases made any rational
sense despite 911. The last thing Muslims in the Middle East care about is American's freedoms, maybe it was all the bombs
the US was dropping on them.
Give only one side of the argument and obscure history. Watching mainstream media in the US,
you can see all the news is biased to the American view as an example. This is prevalent within Australian commercial media
and newspapers giving only a western view, but fortunately, we have the SBS and the ABC that are very good, certainly not perfect,
at providing both sides of a story. In addition, any historical perspective is ignored keeping the citizenry focused on the
here and now. Can any of you remember any news organisation giving an in depth history of Ukraine or Palestine? I cannot.
Demonize the enemy or pick out one special "enemy" for special vilification. This is obvious in politics where politicians
continuously criticise their opponents. Of course, demonization is more productively applied to international figures or nations
such as Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, Gaddafi in Libya, Assad in Syria, the Taliban and just recently Vladimir Putin over
the Ukraine, Crimea and Syria. It establishes a negative emotional view of either a nation (i.e. Iran) or a known figure (i.e.
Putin) making us again think emotionally, rather than rationally, making it easier to promote evil acts upon a nation or a
known figure. Certainly some of these groups or individuals were less than benign, but not necessarily demons as depicted in
the west.
Appear humanitarian in work and motivations. The US has used this technique often to validate foreign interventions
or ongoing conflicts where the term 'Right to Protect' is used for justification. Everyone should remember the many stories
about the abuse of women in Afghanistan or Saddam Hussein's supposed brutality toward his people. The recent attack on Syria
by the US, UK, and France was depicted as an Humanitarian intervention by the UK Government, which was far from the truth.
One thing that always amazes me is when the US sends humanitarian aid to a country it is accompanied by the US military. In
Haiti some years back, the US sent troops with no other country doing so. The recent Ebola outbreak in Africa saw US troops
sent to the area. How are troops going to fight a medical outbreak? No doubt, they are there for other reasons.
Obscure one's economic interests. Who believes the invasion of Iraq was for weapons of mass destruction? Or the
constant threats against Iran are for their nuclear program? Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction and no one has presented
firm evidence Iran intends to produce nuclear weapons. The West has been interfering in the Middle East since the British in
the late 19th century. It is all about oil and the control over the resources. In fact, if one researches the cause of wars
over the last hundred years, you will always find economics was a major component driving the rush to war for most of them.
Monopolize the flow of information. This is the most important principle and mainly entails setting the narrative
by which all subsequent events can be based upon or interpreted in such a way as to reinforce the narrative. The narrative
does not need to be true; in fact, it can be anything that suits the monopoliser as long as it is based loosely on some event.
It is critical to have at least majority control of media and the ability to control the message so the flow of information
is consistent with the narrative. This has been played out on mainstream media concerning the Ukrainian conflict, Syrian conflict,
and the Skirpal affair. Just over the last couple of years, we have all been subjected to propaganda in one form or another.
Remember the US wanting to bomb Syria because of the sarin gas attack, it was later determined to be false (see Seymour Hersh
'Whose Sarin'). The shoot down of MH17 was immediately blamed on Russia by the west without any convincing proof (setting the
narrative). It amazes me just how fast the story died after the initial saturation in the media. When I awoke that morning
in July, I heard on the news PM Tony Abbot blaming Russia for the incident only hours afterward. How could he know Russia shot
down the plane? The investigation into the incident had not even begun, so I suspect he was singing from the West's hymnbook
in a standard setting the narrative scenario.
Richard Burr, chair of the US Senate Intelligence Committee, has been accused of deceiving
the public about the coronavirus outbreak and seeking to profit from it by dumping stocks that
are crashing due to the pandemic. Burr (R-North Carolina) found himself under attack from two
directions on Thursday. Early in the day, National Public Radio ran a story based on "secret
recordings" from a speech he gave in North Carolina in late February, when he gave oddly
specific warnings about Covid-19 to an elite group of donors, while keeping the rest of the
American public in the dark.
SCOOP: Secret recording obtained by NPR shows that Senate Intel Chairman Richard Burr
raised alarms about Coronavirus weeks ago in private meeting with well-connected constituents
-- concerns he never shared with the public https://t.co/afyvzaMyXK
The North Carolina Republican struck back later in the day,
accusing NPR on Twitter of "journalistic malpractice" for "knowingly and
irresponsibly" misrepresenting the speech, calling the article a "tabloid-style hit
piece."
By then, however, he was taking flanking fire from a different position. Open Secrets, a
"nonpartisan, independent and nonprofit" research group tracking money in politics
– with George Soros' Open Society Foundation as one of their biggest donors , mind you – published
his financial disclosures, showing that Burr and his wife sold over $1 million worth of stocks
in corporations that took it on the chin as the Covid-19 pandemic tanked the US stock
markets.
SCOOP: NC's GOP Senator Richard Burr told the public he was confident the govt can fight
off COVID-19 the same time he & his wife sold up to ~$1.5 million stock in major
corporations that ended up losing most of their value during the coronavirus pandemic
https://t.co/JsXkaxb2Pw
pic.twitter.com/lMnnbBfoNZ
Much of the outraged responses to both the NPR and Open Secrets, praising their revelations
and demanding Burr be imprisoned – along with the rest of the Republican Party, President
Donald Trump, and who knows who else – have been the usual suspects promoting the
'Russiagate' conspiracy theory over the past four years.
NPR's article was authored by Tim Mak, a Daily Beast alum who famously co-authored a
fake
Russiagate bombshell in December 2018, accusing the president's son Donald Trump Jr of
lying to Congress based on misquoting the publicly available transcript.
To make the irony even greater, Burr has been extremely helpful to the 'Russiagate' gang
while chairing the Senate Intelligence Committee. For example, he endorsed the infamous
"intelligence community assessment" based on wishful thinking . He
has also treated the ranking minority member, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Virginia) as
"co-chair," covering for him even when it emerged that Warner was trying to secretly
communicate with the British spy who wrote the debunked anti-Trump "Steele
dossier."
None of it availed Burr one bit when they came for his head, of course – the
"R" next to his name automatically made him a Trump supporter in the minds of the woke
mob. If it turns out to be true that he knew far more about the dangers of the pandemic but
chose to keep silent and profit from it, that would indeed be a colossal dereliction of duty.
But as his prior record in overseeing the US spy community indicates, it wouldn't have been the
first time.
"... "promotes neither the interests of justice nor the nation's security," ..."
"... "recent events and a change in the balance of the government's proof due to a classification determination, ..."
"... "information warfare against the United States of America ..."
"... The DOJ rationalizes the motion to dismiss by arguing that Concord is "a Russian company with no presence in the United States and no exposure to meaningful punishment in the event of a conviction." That has always been the case, however. What really changed since the indictment was filed is the complete implosion of Mueller's case, helped in part by Concord fighting the case in court. ..."
"... The motion inadvertently reveals that Mueller's prosecutors never intended the case against Concord, two other entities and 13 individuals to actually go to trial, otherwise they would have anticipated what ended up happening: Concord's lawyers demanding discovery documents from the DOJ, which the US authorities say risks "exposure of law enforcement's tools and techniques." ..."
"... Mueller's team tried to fight the discovery proceedings by arguing in January 2019 that Concord was leaking them to "discredit " the investigation. Within two months, however, the investigation discredited itself, by having to admit there was no "collusion " between US President Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential election. ..."
The US is dropping the much-hyped indictment for 'election
meddling' against a company supposedly behind the so-called Russian troll farm, closing the opening chapter of special counsel Robert
Mueller's Russiagate investigation. Further pursuing the case against Concord Management & Consulting LLC, "promotes neither
the interests of justice nor the nation's security," the Department of Justice wrote to the federal judge overseeing the case
on Monday, in a
motion to drop the charges.
DOJ lawyers cited "recent events and a change in the balance of the government's proof due to a classification determination,
" saying only that they submitted further details in a classified addendum.
Wow.The DOJ moves to dismiss the charges against the Russian Company (Concord) who conducted the alleged "information warfare
against the US"The troll case will be dismissed w/ prejudice.How embarrassing for Team Mueller.
pic.twitter.com/wfZ78EWgKc
Concord was one of the three companies – the Internet Research Agency is another – and 13 individuals charged in February 2018
with waging "information warfare against the United States of America " using social media.
The DOJ rationalizes the motion to dismiss by arguing that Concord is "a Russian company with no presence in the United States
and no exposure to meaningful punishment in the event of a conviction." That has always been the case, however. What really
changed since the indictment was filed is the complete implosion of Mueller's case, helped in part by Concord fighting the case in
court.
The motion inadvertently reveals that Mueller's prosecutors never intended the case against Concord, two other entities and 13
individuals to actually go to trial, otherwise they would have anticipated what ended up happening: Concord's lawyers demanding discovery
documents from the DOJ, which the US authorities say risks "exposure of law enforcement's tools and techniques."
But the Russians *did* show up, got to claim they were innocent until proven guilty, availed themselves of discovery, tied
up the court in time, cost hundreds of thousands of $ in legal bills for DOJ, and gave Mueller a few black eyes in the process,
and ended up victorious
Mueller's team tried to fight the discovery proceedings by arguing
in January 2019 that Concord was leaking
them to "discredit " the investigation. Within two months, however, the investigation discredited itself, by having to admit
there was no "collusion " between US President Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential election.
They still insisted that Russia had "meddled " in the election, but there too the case proved a problem. Concord successfully
petitioned Judge Dabney L. Friedrich in May last year to rebuke the prosecutors for presenting their allegations as facts.
This is not to say that the DOJ is ready to disavow 'Russiagate' as a debunked conspiracy theory, however. Though the Concord
case was dropped, the charges against the Internet Research Agency and the 13 Russian individuals were not. Given that none of them
have a presence in the US, and have not dignified the indictment with a response, it is unclear how – if at all – the DOJ intends
to proceed with the case.
Keeping it on the books may keep the flames of 'Russiagate' alive, though, which is very convenient for the media and others heavily
invested in the narrative of Moscow somehow menacing US elections, despite not a shred of actual evidence being presented to back
it up.
For a snapshot in time, this was the NYT homepage after the Russian troll farm indictment back in February 2018. Russia, we
were told, "is engaged in a virtual war against the United States." pic.twitter.com/Z0xXCZoT9P
R ussia and Saudi Arabia are engaged in an oil price war that has sent shockwaves around
the world, causing the price of oil to tumble and threatening the financial stability, and even
viability, of major international oil companies.
On the surface, this conflict appears to be a fight between two of the world's largest
producers of oil over market share. This may, in fact, be the motive driving Saudi Arabia,
which reacted to Russia's refusal to reduce its level of oil production by slashing the price
it charged per barrel of oil and threatening to increase its oil production, thereby flooding
the global market with cheap oil in an effort to attract customers away from competitors.
Russia's motives appear to be far different -- its target isn't Saudi Arabia, but rather
American shale oil. After absorbing American sanctions that targeted the Russian energy sector,
and working with global partners (including Saudi Arabia) to keep oil prices stable by reducing
oil production even as the United States increased the amount of shale oil it sold on the world
market, Russia had had enough. The advent of the Coronavirus global pandemic had significantly
reduced the demand for oil around the world, stressing the American shale producers.
Russia had been preparing for the eventuality of oil-based economic warfare with the United
States. With U.S. shale producers knocked back on their heels, Russia viewed the time as being
ripe to strike back. Russia's goal is simple: to make American shale oil producers "
share the pain ".
The United States has been slapping sanctions on Russia for more
than six years, ever since Russia took control (and later annexed) the Crimean Peninsula and
threw its weight behind Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine. The first sanctions were issued
on March 6, 2014, through Executive
Order 13660 , targeting "persons who have asserted governmental authority in the Crimean
region without the authorization of the Government of Ukraine that undermine democratic
processes and institutions in Ukraine; threaten its peace, security, stability, sovereignty,
and territorial integrity; and contribute to the misappropriation of its assets."
The most
recent round of sanctions was announced by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on February 18,
2020, by sanctioning Rosneft Trading S.A., a Swiss-incorporated, Russian-owned oil brokerage
firm, for operating in Venezuela's oil sector. The U.S. also recently targeted the Russian
Nord Stream 2
and
Turk Stream gas pipeline projects.
Russia had been signaling its displeasure over U.S. sanctions from the very beginning. In
July 2014, Russian President Vladimir
Putin warned that U.S. sanctions were "driving into a corner" relations between the two
countries, threatening the "the long-term national interests of the U.S. government and
people." Russia opted to ride out U.S. sanctions, in hopes that there might be a change of
administrations following the 2016 U.S. Presidential elections. Russian President Vladimir
Putin made it clear that he hoped the U.S. might elect someone whose policies would be more
friendly toward Russia, and that once the field of candidates narrowed down to a choice between
Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, Putin favored
Trump .
"Yes, I did," Putin remarked after the election, during a joint press conference with
President Trump following a summit in Helsinki in July 2018. "Yes, I did. Because he talked
about bringing the U.S.-Russia relationship back to normal."
Putin's comments only reinforced the opinions of those who embraced allegations of Russian
interference in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election as fact and concluded that Putin had some
sort of hold over Trump. Trump's continuous praise of Putin's leadership style only reinforced
these concerns.
Even before he was inaugurated, Trump singled out Putin's refusal to respond in kind to
President Obama's levying of sanctions based upon the assessment of the U.S. intelligence
community that Russia had interfered in the election. "Great move on delay (by V. Putin)
– I always knew he was very smart!"
Trump Tweeted . Trump viewed the Obama sanctions as an effort
to sabotage any chance of a Trump administration repairing relations with Russia, and
interpreted Putin's refusal to engage, despite being pressured to do so by the Russian
Parliament and Foreign Ministry, as a recognition of the same.
This sense of providing political space in the face of domestic pressure worked both ways.
In January 2018, Putin tried to shield his relationship with President Trump by calling the
release of a list containing some 200 names of persons close to the Russian government by the
U.S. Treasury Department as a hostile and "stupid"
move .
"Ordinary Russian citizens, employees and entire industries are behind each of those people
and companies," Putin remarked. "So all 146 million people have essentially been put on this
list. What is the point of this? I don't understand."
From the Russian perspective, the list highlighted the reality that the U.S. viewed the
entire Russian government as an enemy and is a byproduct of the "political paranoia" on the
part of U.S. lawmakers. The consequences of this, senior Russian officials warned, "will be
toxic and undermine prospects for cooperation for years ahead."
While President Trump entered office fully intending to "
get along with Russia ," including the possibility of
relaxing the Obama-era sanctions , the reality of U.S.-Russian relations, especially as
viewed from Congress, has been the strengthening of the Obama sanctions regime. These
sanctions, strengthened over time by new measures signed off by Trump, have had a negative
impact on the Russian economy,
slowing growth and
driving away foreign investment .
While Putin continued to show constraint in the face of these mounting sanctions, the recent
targeting of Russia's energy sector represented a bridge too far. When Saudi pressure to cut
oil production rates coincided with a global reduction in the demand for oil brought on by the
Coronavirus crisis, Russia struck.
The timing of the Russian action is curious, especially given the amount of speculation that
there was some sort of personal relationship between Trump and Putin that the Russian leader
sought to preserve and carry over into a potential second term. But Putin had, for some
time now, been signaling that his patience with Trump had run its course. When speaking to
the press in June 2019 about the state of U.S.-Russian relations, Putin noted that "They
(our relations) are going downhill, they are getting worse and worse," adding that "The current
[i.e., Trump] administration has approved, in my opinion, several dozen decisions on sanctions
against Russia in recent years."
By launching an oil price war on the eve of the American Presidential campaign season, Putin
has sent as strong a signal as possible that he no longer views Trump as an asset, if in fact
he ever did. Putin had hoped Trump could usher in positive change in the trajectory of
relations between the two nations; this clearly had not happened. Instead, in the words of
close Putin ally Igor Sechin , the chief executive of Russian oil giant Rosneft, the U.S.
was using its considerable energy resources as a political weapon, ushering in an era of "power
colonialism" that sought to expand U.S. oil production and market share at the expense of other
nations.
From Russia's perspective, the growth in U.S. oil production -- which doubled in output from
2011 until 2019 -- and the emergence of the U.S. as a net exporter of oil, was directly linked
to the suppression of oil export capability in nations such as Venezuela and Iran through the
imposition of sanctions. While this could be tolerated when the target was a third party, once
the U.S. set its sanctioning practices on Russian energy, the die was cast.
If the goal of the Russian-driven price war is to make U.S. shale companies "share the
pain," they have already succeeded. A similar price war, initiated by Saudi Arabia in 2014 for
the express purpose of suppressing U.S. shale oil production, failed, but only because
investors were willing to prop up the stricken shale producers with massive loans and infusion
of capital. For shale oil producers, who use an expensive methodology of extraction known as
"fracking," to be economically viable, the breakeven price of oil
per barrel needs to be between $40 and $60 dollars. This was the price range the Saudi's
were hoping to sustain when they proposed the cuts in oil production that Russia rejected.
The U.S. shale oil producers, saddled by massive debt and high operational expenses, will
suffer greatly in any sustained oil price war. Already, with the price of oil down to below $35
per barrel,
there is talk of bankruptcy and massive job layoffs -- none of which bode well for Trump in
the coming election.
It's clear that Russia has no intention of backing off anytime soon. According to
the Russian Finance Ministry , said on Russia could weather oil prices of $25-30 per barrel
for between six and ten years. One thing is for certain -- U.S. shale oil companies cannot.
In a sign that the Trump administration might be waking up to the reality of the predicament
it faces, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin quietly met with Russia's Ambassador to the U.S.,
Anatoly Antonov. According to a read out from the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
the two discussed economic sanctions, the Venezuelan economy, and the potential for "trade
and investment." Mnuchin, the Russians noted, emphasized the "importance of orderly energy
markets."
Russia is unlikely to fold anytime soon. As Admiral Josh Painter, a character in Tom
Clancy's "The Hunt for Red October," famously said , "Russians don't take a dump without
a plan."
Russia didn't enter its current course of action on a whim. Its goals are clearly stated --
to defeat U.S. shale oil -- and the costs of this effort, both economically and politically (up
to and including having Trump lose the 2020 Presidential election) have all been calculated and
considered in advance. The Russian Bear can only be toyed with for so long without generating a
response. We now know what that response is; when the Empire strikes back, it hits hard.
Scott Ritter is a former Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former
Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert
Storm, and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD. He is the author of several books,
including his forthcoming, Scorpion King:
America's Embrace of Nuclear Weapons From FDR to Trump (2020).
"... The computer used to create the original Warren Document (dated 2008) was a US Government computer issued to the Obama Presidential
Transition Team by the General Services Administration. ..."
"... The Warren Document and the 1.DOC were created in the United States using Microsoft Word software (2007) that is registered
to the GSA. ..."
"... The author of both 1.doc and the PDF version is identified as "WARREN FLOOD." ..."
"... "Russian" fingerprints were deliberately inserted into the text and the meta data of "1.doc." ..."
"... This begs a very important question. Did Warren Flood actually create these documents or was someone masquerading as Warren
Flood? Unfortunately, neither the Intelligence Community nor the Mueller Special Counsel investigators provided any evidence to show
they examined this forensic data. More troubling is the fact that the Microsoft Word processing software being used is listed as a GSA
product. ..."
"... If this was truly a Russian GRU operation (as claimed by Mueller), why was the cyber spy tradecraft so sloppy? ..."
"... The name of Warren Flood, an Obama Democrat activist and Joe Biden's former Director of Information Technology, appears in
at least three iterations of these documents. Did he actually masquerade as Guccifer 2.0? If so, did he do it on his own or was he hired
by someone else? These remain open questions that deserve to be investigated by John Durham, the prosecutor investigating the attempted
coup against Donald Trump, and/or relevant committees of the Congress. ..."
"... There are other critical unanswered questions. Obama's Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, sent a letter to James come on July
26, 2016 about the the DNC hack. Lynch wrote concerning press reports that Russia attacked the DNC: ..."
"... A genuine investigation of the DNC hack/leak should have included interviews with all DNC staff, John Podesta, Warren Flood
and Ellen Nakashima, The Washington Post reporter who broke the story of the DNC hack. Based on what is now in the public record, the
FBI failed to do a proper investigation. ..."
"... Resolving who was behind Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks seems to me to be a rather simple investigative exercise. That is, somebody
registered and bought the names of G2 and DCL. One can't have a Wordpress blog without purchasing a url. So, there is a record of this
registration, right? Simply subpoena the company who sold/rented the url. ..."
"... It's now obvious that we don't have a functioning intel/justice apparatus in the U.S. This is the message sent and received
by the intel/justice shops over and again. They no longer work for Americans rather they work against us. ..."
Why does the name of Joe Biden's former Internet Technology guru, Warren Flood, appear in the meta data of documents posted on
the internet by Guccifer 2.0? In case you do not recall, Guccifer 2.0 was identified as someone tied to Russian intelligence who
played a direct role in stealing emails from John Podesta. The meta data in question indicates the name of the person who actually
copied the original document. We have this irrefutable fact in the documents unveiled by Guccifer 2.0--Warren Flood's name appears
prominently in the meta data of several documents attributed to "Guccifer 2.0." When this transpired, Flood was working as the CEO
of his own company, BRIGHT BLUE DATA. (brightbluedata.com). Was Flood tasked to masquerade as a Russian operative?
Give Flood some props if that is true--he fooled our Intelligence Community and the entire team of Mueller prosecutors into believing
that Guccifer was part of a Russian military intelligence cyber attack. But a careful examination of the documents shows that it
is highly unlikely that this was an official Russian cyber operation. Here's what the U.S. Intelligence Community wrote about Guccifer
2.0 in their very flawed January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment:
We assess with high confidence that the GRU used the Guccifer 2.0 persona, DCLeaks.com, and WikiLeaks to release US victim data
obtained in cyber operations publicly and in exclusives to media outlets.
Guccifer 2.0, who claimed to be an independent Romanian hacker, made multiple contradictory statements and false claims about
his likely Russian identity throughout the election. Press reporting suggests more than one person claiming to be Guccifer 2.0
interacted with journalists.
Content that we assess was taken from e-mail accounts targeted by the GRU in March 2016 appeared on DCLeaks.com starting in
June.
The laxity of the Intelligence Community in dealing with empirical evidence was matched by a disturbing lack of curiosity on the
part of the Mueller investigators and prosecutors. Here's the tall tale they spun about Guccifer 2.0:
On June 14, 2016, the DNC and its cyber-response team announced the breach of the DNC network and suspected theft of DNC documents.
In the statements, the cyber-response team alleged that Russian state-sponsored actors (which they referred to as "Fancy Bear") were
responsible for the breach. Apparently in response to that announcement, on June 15, 2016, GRU officers using the persona Guccifer
2.0 created a WordPress blog. In the hours leading up to the launch of that WordPress blog, GRU officers logged into a Moscow-based
server used and managed by Unit 74455 and searched for a number of specific words and phrases in English, including "some hundred
sheets," "illuminati," and "worldwide known." Approximately two hours after the last of those searches, Guccifer 2.0 published its
first post, attributing the DNC server hack to a lone Romanian hacker and using several of the unique English words and phrases that
the GRU officers had searched for that day.
[Apelbaum note--According to Crowdstrike and Special Counsel Mueller, both were present, APT28 AKA "Fancy Bear" and APT29 AKA
"Cozy Bear".]
The claims by both the Intelligence Community and the Mueller team about Guccifer 2.0 are an astounding, incredible denial of
critical evidence pointing to a U.S. actor, not a Russian or Romanian. No one in this "august" group took the time to examine the
metadata on the documents posted by "Guccifer 2.0" to his website on June 15, 2016.
I wish I could claim credit for the following forensic analysis, but the honors are due to Yaacov Apelbaum. While there are many
documents in the Podesta haul that match the following pattern, this analysis focuses only on a document originally created by the
DNC's Director of Research, Lauren Dillon. This document is the Trump Opposition Report document.
According to Apelbaum , the Trump Opposition
Report document, which was "published" by Guccifer 2.0, shows clear evidence of digital manipulation:
A US based user (hereafter referred to as G2 ) operating initially from the West coast and then, subsequently, from the East
coast, changes the MS Word 2007 and Operating System language settings to Russian.
G2 opens and saves a document with the file name, "12192015 Trump Report - for dist-4.docx". The document bears the title,
"Donald Trump Report" (which was originally composed by Lauren Dillon aka DILLON REPORT) as an RTF file and opens it again.
G2 opens a second document that was attached to an email sent on December 21, 2008 to John Podesta from [email protected].
This WORD document lists prospective nominees for posts in the Department of Agriculture for the upcoming Obama Administration.
It was generated by User--Warren Flood--on a computer registered to the General Services Administration (aka GSA) named "Slate_-_Domestic_-_USDA_-_2008-12-20-3.doc",
which was kept by Podesta on his private Gmail account. (I refer to this as the "WARREN DOCUMENT" in this analysis.)
G2 deletes the content of the 2008 Warren Document and saves the empty file as a RTF, and opens it again.
G2 copies the content of the 'Dillon Report' (which is an RTF document) and pastes it into the 2008 Warren Document template,
i.e. the empty RTF document.
G2 user makes several modifications to the content of this document. For example, the Warren Document contained the watermark--"CONFIDENTIAL
DRAFT". G2 deleted the word "DRAFT" but kept the "CONFIDENTIAL" watermark.
G2 saves this document into a file called "1.doc". This document now contains the text of the original Lauren Dillon "Donald
Trump Report" document, but also contains Russian language URL links that generate error messages.
G2's 1.DOC (the Word version of the document) shows the following meta data authors:
Created at 6/15/2016 at 1:38pm by "WARREN FLOOD"
Last Modified at 6/15/2016 at 1:45pm by "Феликс Эдмундович" (Felix Edmundovich, the first and middle name of Dzerzhinsky,
the creator of the predecessor of the KGB. It is assumed the Felix Edmundovich refers to Dzerzhinsky.)
G2 also produces a pdf version of this document almost four hours later. It is created at 6/15/201`6 at 5:54:15pm by "WARREN
FLOOD."
G2 first publishes "1.doc" to various media outlets and then uploads a copy to the Guccifer 2.0 WordPress website (which is
hosted in the United States).
There are several critical facts from the metadata that destroy the claim that Guccifer 2.0 was a Romanian or a Russian.
The computer used to create the original Warren Document (dated 2008) was a US Government computer issued to the Obama
Presidential Transition Team by the General Services Administration.
The Warren Document and the 1.DOC were created in the United States using Microsoft Word software (2007) that is registered
to the GSA.
The author of both 1.doc and the PDF version is identified as "WARREN FLOOD."
The copy of "1.doc" was uploaded to a server hosted in the United States.
"Russian" fingerprints were deliberately inserted into the text and the meta data of "1.doc."
This begs a very important question. Did Warren Flood actually create these documents or was someone masquerading as Warren
Flood? Unfortunately, neither the Intelligence Community nor the Mueller Special Counsel investigators provided any evidence to show
they examined this forensic data. More troubling is the fact that the Microsoft Word processing software being used is listed as
a GSA product.
If this was truly a Russian GRU operation (as claimed by Mueller), why was the cyber spy tradecraft so sloppy? A covert
cyber operation is no different from a conventional human covert operation, which means the first and guiding principle is to not
leave any fingerprints that would point to the origin of the operation. In other words, you do not mistakenly leave flagrant Russian
fingerprints in the document text or metadata. A good cyber spy also will not use computers and servers based in the United States
and then claim it is the work of a hacker ostensibly in Romania.
None of the Russians indicted by Mueller in his case stand accused of doing the Russian hacking while physically in the United
States. No intelligence or evidence has been cited to indicate that the Russians stole a U.S. Government computer or used a GSA supplied
copy of Microsoft Word to produce the G2 documents.
The name of Warren Flood, an Obama Democrat activist and Joe Biden's former Director of Information Technology, appears in
at least three iterations of these documents. Did he actually masquerade as Guccifer 2.0? If so, did he do it on his own or was he
hired by someone else? These remain open questions that deserve to be investigated by John Durham, the prosecutor investigating the
attempted coup against Donald Trump, and/or relevant committees of the Congress.
If foreign intelligence agencies are attempting to undermine that process, the U.S. government should treat such efforts even
more seriously than standard espionage. These types ofcyberattacks are significant and pernicious crimes. Our government must do
all that it can to stop such attacks and to seek justice for the attacks that have already occurred.
We are writing to request more information on this cyberattack in particular and more information in general on how the Justice
Department, FBI, and NCIJTF attempt to prevent and punish these types ofcyberattacks. Accordingly, please respond to the following
by August 9, 2016:
When did the Department of Justice, FBI, and NCIJTF first learn of the DNC hack? Was the government aware ofthe intrusion
prior to the media reporting it?
Has the FBI deployed its Cyber Action Team to determine who hacked the DNC?
Has the FBI determined whether the Russian government, or any other foreign
government, was involved in the hack?
In general, what actions, if any, do the Justice Department, FBI, and NCIJTF take to prevent cyberattacks on non-governmental
political organizations in the U.S., such as campaigns and political parties? Does the government consult or otherwise communicate
with the organizations to inform them ofpotential threats, relay best practices, or inform them ofdetected cyber intrusions.
Does the Justice Department believe that existing statutes provide an adequate basis for addressing hacking crimes of this
nature, in which foreign governments hack seemingly in order to affect our electoral processes?
So far no document from Comey to Lynch has been made available to the public detailing the FBI's response to Lynch's questions.
Why was the Cyber Action Team not deployed to determine who hacked the DNC? A genuine investigation of the DNC hack/leak should
have included interviews with all DNC staff, John Podesta, Warren Flood and Ellen Nakashima, The Washington Post reporter who broke
the story of the DNC hack. Based on what is now in the public record, the FBI failed to do a proper investigation.
Of course sleepy Joe was in on the overall RussiaGate operation. And now another reasonable question by sleuth extraordinaire
will fall into the memory hole b/c no one who has the authority and the power in DC is ever going to address, let alone, clean
up and hold accountable any who created this awful mess.
Resolving who was behind Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks seems to me to be a rather simple investigative exercise. That is, somebody
registered and bought the names of G2 and DCL. One can't have a Wordpress blog without purchasing a url. So, there is a record
of this registration, right? Simply subpoena the company who sold/rented the url.
What's troubling to me is that even the most simplest investigative acts to find answers never seems to happen. Instead, more
than three years later we're playing 'Whodunit.'
It's been over 3 years now and if we had a truly functioning intel/justice apparatus this simple act would have been done long
ago and then made public. Yet, here we are more than three years later trying to unravel, figure out or resolve the trail of clues
via metadata the pranksters left behind.
It's now obvious that we don't have a functioning intel/justice apparatus in the U.S. This is the message sent and received
by the intel/justice shops over and again. They no longer work for Americans rather they work against us.
In an op-ed in the Financial Times on March 4th, he [Soros] urged that "Europe must
stand with Turkey over Putin's war crimes in Syria," an astonishing misreading of the
situation in the region as Turkey is the aggressor while Russia is fighting to eliminate
the last major terrorist enclave in Idlibt.
" Defender 2020" is a "maneuvre of shame"
by Willy Wimmer
former State Secretary at the German Ministry of Defence
"The German Chancellor, Dr Angela Merkel, is breaking a taboo by allowing German soldiers to
participate in the biggest NATO manoeuvre since the end of the Cold War against Russia
.
It is therefore no wonder that the German Federal Government in May 2019 did not
commemorate the "Versailles" of one hundred years ago, nor did the German President do so in
a commemoration ceremony for which he can be held accountable. Versailles does not only mean
"the demon of revenge", but also a deliberate inability to strive for peace.
This way of thinking is expressed once again in the NATO major manoeuvre, deliberately
planned for the 9 May, the day the war ended in 1945. As if the fact had needed further
proof that the "NATO West" cannot make peace, it can only make war, be that war cold or
hot.
The American conference in Bratislava in the Slovak Republic in April 2000 made the
American goal for Europe clear: An Iron Curtain between the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea,
Russia can stay anywhichwhere, and be divided or broken up into smaller states. The NATO
manoeuvre called "Defender 2020" is a "manoeuvre of shame" that only serves the
warmongers . "
"... Creating Russophobia: From the Great Religious Schism to Anti-Putin Hysteria ..."
"... Mettan defines Russophobia as the promotion of negative stereotypes about Russia that associate the country with despotism, treachery, expansion, oppression and other negative character traits. In his view, it is "not linked to specific historical events" but "exists first in the head of the one who looks, not in the victim's alleged behavior or characteristics." ..."
"... The New York Times ..."
"... Russophobia in the United States has been advanced most insidiously by the nation's foreign policy elite who have envisioned themselves as grand chess-masters seeking to checkmate their Russian adversary in order to control the Eurasian heartland. ..."
"... This view is little different than European colonial strategists who had learned of the importance of molding public opinion through disinformation campaigns that depicted the Russian bear as a menace to Western civilization. ..."
For
the last five years, the American media has been filled with scurrilous articles demonizing
Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Putin has been accused of every crime imaginable, from shooting down airplanes, to
assassinating opponents, to invading neighboring countries, to stealing money to manipulating
the U.S. president and helping to rig the 2016 election.
Few of the accusations directed against Putin have ever been substantiated and the quality
of journalism has been at the level of "yellow journalism."
In a desperate attempt to sustain their political careers, centrist Democrats like Joe Biden
and Hillary Clinton accused their adversaries of being Russian agents – again without
proof.
And even the progressive hero Bernie Sanders – himself a victim of red-baiting –
has engaged in Russia bashing and unsubstantiated accusations for which he offers no proof.
Mettan is a Swiss journalist and member of parliament who learned about the corruption of
the media business when his reporting on the world anticommunist league rankled his newspapers'
shareholders, and when he realized that he was serving as a paid stenographer for the Bosnian
Islamist leader Alija Izetbegovic in the early 1990s.
Mettan defines Russophobia as the promotion of negative stereotypes about Russia that
associate the country with despotism, treachery, expansion, oppression and other negative
character traits. In his view, it is "not linked to specific historical events" but "exists
first in the head of the one who looks, not in the victim's alleged behavior or
characteristics."
Like anti-semitism, Mettan writes, "Russophobia is a way of turning specific pseudo-facts
into essential one-dimensional values, barbarity, despotism, and expansionism in the Russian
case in order to justify stigmatization and ostracism."
The origins of Russophobic discourse date back to a schism in the Church during the Middle
Ages when Charlemagne was crowned emperor of the Roman empire and modified the Christian
liturgy to introduce reforms execrated by the Eastern Orthodox Churches of the Byzantine
empire.
Mettan writes that "the Europe of Charlemagne and of the year 1000 was in need of a foil in
the East to rebuild herself, just as the Europe of the 2000s needs Russia to consolidate her
union."
Before the schism, European rulers had no negative opinions of Russia. When Capetian King
Henri I found himself a widower, he turned towards the prestigious Kiev kingdom two thousand
miles away and married Vladimir's granddaughter, Princess Ann.
A main goal of the new liturgy adopted by Charlemagne was to undermine any Byzantine
influence in Italy and Western Europe.
Over the next century, the schism evolved from a religious into a political one.
The Pope and the top Roman administration made documents disappear and truncated others in
order to blame the Easterners.
Byzantium and Russia were in turn rebuked for their "caesaropapism," or "Oriental style
despotism," which could be contrasted which the supposedly enlightened, democratic governing
system in the West.
Russia was particularly hated because it had defied efforts of Western European countries to
submit to their authority and impose Catholicism.
In the 1760s, French diplomats working with a variety of Ukrainian, Hungarian and Polish
political figures produced a forged testament of Peter 1 ["The Great"] purporting to reveal
Russia's 'grand design' to conquer most of Europe.
This document was still taken seriously by governments during the Napoleanic wars; and as
late as the Cold War, President Harry Truman found it helpful in explaining Stalin.
In Britain, the Whigs, who represented the liberal bourgeois opposition to the Tory
government and its program of free-trade imperialism, were the most virulent Russophobes, much
like today's Democrats in the United States.
The British media also enflamed public opinion by taking hysterical positions against Russia
– often on the eve of major military expeditions.
The London Times during the 1820s Greek Independence war editorialized that no
"sane person" could "look with satisfaction at the immense and rapid overgrowth of Russian
power." The same thing was being written in The New York Times in the 2010s.
A great example of the Orientalist stereotype was Bram Stoker's novel Dracula ,
whose main character was modeled after Russian ruler, Ivan the Terrible. As if no English ruler
in history was cruel either.
The Nazis took Russo-phobic discourse to new heights during the 1930s and 1940s, combining
it with a virulent anti-bolshevism and anti-semitism.
A survey of German high school texts in the 1960s found little change in the image of
Russia. The Russians were still depicted as "primitive, simple, very violent, cruel, mean,
inhuman, cupid and very stubborn."
The same stereotypes were displayed in many Hollywood films during the Cold War, where KGB
figures were particularly maligned. No wonder that when a former KGB agent, Vladimir Putin,
took power, people went insane. Russophobia in the United States has been advanced most
insidiously by the nation's foreign policy elite who have envisioned themselves as grand
chess-masters seeking to checkmate their Russian adversary in order to control the Eurasian
heartland.
This view is little different than European colonial strategists who had learned of the
importance of molding public opinion through disinformation campaigns that depicted the Russian
bear as a menace to Western civilization.
Guy Mettan has written a thought-provoking book that provides badly needed historical
context for the anti-Russian delirium gripping our society.
Breaking the taboo on Russophobia is of vital importance in laying the groundwork for a more
peaceful world order and genuinely progressive movement in the United States. Unfortunately,
recent developments don't inspire much confidence that history will be transcended. Join the debate
on Facebook More articles by: Jeremy KuzmarovJeremy
Kuzmarov is the author of The Russians are Coming,
Again: The First Cold War as Tragedy, the Second as Farce (Monthly Review Press, 2018) and
Obama's Unending Wars: Fronting for the Foreign Policy of the Permanent Warfare State (Atlanta:
Clarity Press, 2019).
by Ellen Taylor At this very moment
thousands of US soldiers are disembarking from troop transports in six European countries and
rushing toward prepositioned munitions around Europe, to deploy weapons as swiftly as possible.
This excitement marks the beginning of "Defender Europe 2020", the largest military
exercises to be staged in Europe in over 25 years. Strategists will record how swiftly our
forces can reach the Russian border, and test our NATO allies.
There has already been a massive US build-up in the countries bordering Russia.
In the words of Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy, "The last 18 years of conflict built muscle
memory in counterinsurgency, but with this came atrophy in other areas. We are now engaging
these other muscle groups."
General Tod Wolters, Commander of US forces in Europe and of NATO, has stated, "I'm in favor
of a flexible first-use (nuclear weapon) policy."
The US has withdrawn from the INF treaty.
Most diabolical and chilling of all: the exercises will come to a climax in June, which is
the 75 th anniversary of Operation Barbarossa, Germany's invasion of the Soviet
Union in 1941, which killed 27 million people. Russians born in 1930 turn 90 this year. They
remember. The heart and soul of Russia remembers as well.
Russian Chief General Gerasimov is convinced the US is preparing for war. All it would take
for an attack is one false-flag operation.
The people of the world lie in helpless ignorance. And the Doomsday clock moves 20 seconds
closer to midnight.
@Bill If you view China as a Han ethnic construct, antipathy to it (in the West) is very
low compared to most other ethnic constructs: such as core-Americans, European nationalists,
or worse still, Russia.
I've heard people evoke Russia in conspiracies, in real life. Not just on the
internet.
The only large, noteworthy, homogeneous country with lessor antipathy in the West is
Japan. But it is something of a double-edged sword, as Japan is nowhere near as praised as
China because it doesn't have the same power and has been stagnating.
"... Under Trump, NATO has strengthened and held its largest war games since the cold war. The Trump administration withdrew from the Reagan-era nuclear arms treaty, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), an arms control agreement that prohibited Russia and the US from developing medium-range nuclear and ballistic missiles. Shortly after tearing up the treaty, the Pentagon began developing and testing missiles that were banned under the INF. ..."
"... Despite all the drama over military aid to Ukraine, Trump never actually delayed it, and the new National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) includes $300 million in lethal aid to Ukraine , $50 million more than the previous year. The NDAA also calls for mandatory sanctions against any companies working on completing the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, a natural gas pipeline that connects Russia and Germany. Of all Trump's hawkish policies, his effort to kill the Nord Stream 2 and the pressure he puts on Germany not to buy gas from Russia can do the most damage to Russia's economy. ..."
"... The policies listed above are just a few examples of Trump's hostility towards Russia. Others include attempting to overthrow Russia's ally in Venezuela, maintaining a troop presence in Syria to "secure the oil," sanctioning Russian officials and businessman, and much more . ..."
"... Despite all these provocations towards Russia, Trump is still accused of being a "puppet" of Vladimir Putin. No matter how much the president moves the US closer to direct confrontation with Russia, the talking heads and pundits of the mainstream media take superficial examples – like the 2018 Helsinki conference – as proof of Trump's loyalty to Putin. Trump's words are put under a microscope, while his policies that make nuclear war more possible are largely ignored. ..."
Another presidential election year is upon us, and the
intelligence agencies are hard at work stoking fears of Russian meddling. This time it looks
like the Russians do not only like the incumbent president but also favor who appears to be
the Democratic front-runner, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.
On Thursday, The New York Timesran
a story titled , "Lawmakers Are Warned That Russia Is Meddling to Re-elect Trump." The
story says that on February 13 th US lawmakers from the House were briefed by
intelligence officials who warned them, "Russia was interfering in the 2020 campaign to try
to get President Trump re-elected."
The story provides little detail into the briefing and gives no evidence to back up the
intelligence officials' claims. It mostly rehashes old claims from the 2016 election, such as
Russians are trying to "stir controversy" and "stoke division." The intelligence officials
also said the Russians are looking to interfere with the 2020 Democratic primaries.
It looks like other intelligence officials are already undermining the leaked briefing.
CNN ran a story on Sunday titled "US intelligence briefer appears to have overstated
assessment of 2020 Russian interference." The CNN article reads, "The US intelligence
community has assessed that Russia is interfering in the 2020 election and has separately
assessed that Russia views Trump as a leader they can work with. But the US does not have
evidence that Russia's interference this cycle is aimed at re-electing Trump, the officials
said."
According to The Times, President Trump was upset with acting Director of National
Intelligence Joseph Maguire for letting the briefing happen, and Republican lawmakers did not
agree with the conclusion since Trump has been "tough" on Russia. In his three years in
office, Trump certainly has been tough on Russia, and it is hard to believe that Putin would
work to reelect such a Russia hawk.
Under Trump, NATO has strengthened and held its
largest war games since the cold war. The Trump administration withdrew from the
Reagan-era nuclear arms treaty, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), an arms
control agreement that prohibited Russia and the US from developing medium-range nuclear and
ballistic missiles. Shortly after tearing up the treaty, the Pentagon began
developing and testing missiles that were banned under the INF.
The Trump Administration might let another nuclear arms treaty lapse. The New Strategic
Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) limits the number of nuclear warheads that Russia and the
US can have deployed. The US does not want to re-sign the treaty and is using the excuse that
it wants to include China in the deal. China's nuclear arsenal is
estimated to be around 300 warheads , which is just one-fifth of the amount that Russia
and the US are allowed to have deployed under the New START. It makes no sense for China to
limit its deployment of nuclear warheads when its arsenal is nothing compared to the other
two superpowers. China appears to be a scapegoat for the US to blame if the treaty does not
get renewed. Without the New START, there will be nothing limiting the number of nukes the US
and Russia can deploy, making the world a much more dangerous place.
Despite all the drama over military aid to Ukraine, Trump never actually delayed it,
and the new National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) includes $300
million in lethal aid to Ukraine , $50 million more than the previous year. The NDAA also
calls for mandatory sanctions against any companies working on completing the Nord Stream 2
pipeline, a natural gas pipeline that connects Russia and Germany. Of all Trump's hawkish
policies, his effort to kill the Nord Stream 2 and the pressure he puts on Germany not to buy
gas from Russia can do the most damage to Russia's economy.
The policies listed above are just a few examples of Trump's hostility towards Russia.
Others include attempting to overthrow Russia's ally in Venezuela, maintaining a troop
presence in Syria to "secure the oil," sanctioning Russian officials and businessman, and
much more .
Despite all these provocations towards Russia, Trump is still accused of being a
"puppet" of Vladimir Putin. No matter how much the president moves the US closer to direct
confrontation with Russia, the talking heads and pundits of the mainstream media take
superficial examples – like the 2018 Helsinki conference – as proof of Trump's
loyalty to Putin. Trump's words are put under a microscope, while his policies that make
nuclear war more possible are largely ignored.
The leaked briefing harkens back to an intelligence assessment that came out in January
2017 during the last days of the Obama administration. The assessment concluded that Vladimir
Putin himself ordered the election interference to help Trump get elected. At first,
a falsehood
spread through the media that all 17 US intelligence agencies agreed with the conclusion.
But later testimony from Obama-era intelligence officials revealed the assessment was
prepared by hand-picked analysts from the CIA, FBI, and NSA. The assessment offered no
evidence for the claim and mostly focused on media coverage of the presidential candidates on
Russian state-funded media.
On Friday, The Washington Post piled on to the Russia hysteria and ran a story titled "Bernie Sanders briefed by
US officials that Russia is trying to help his campaign." The story says Sanders received a
briefing on Russian efforts to boost his campaign. The details are again scant and The
Post admits that "It is not clear what form that Russian assistance has taken."
The few progressive journalists that have been right on Russiagate all along had the
foresight to see how accusations of Russian meddling would ultimately be used to hurt
Sanders' campaign. Unfortunately, Sanders did not have that same foresight and frequently
played into the Russiagate narrative.
Last week, during a Democratic primary debate in Las Vegas, when criticized for his
supporters' behavior on social media, Sanders pointed the finger at Russia . "All of us remember
2016, and what we remember is efforts by Russians and others to try to interfere in our
elections and divide us up. I'm not saying that's happening, but it would not shock me,"
Sanders said.
In
comments after The Post story was published, Sanders said he was briefed on
Russian interference "about a month ago." Sanders raised the issue with the timing of the
story, having been published on the eve of the Nevada caucus. But the story did not slow down
Sanders' momentum in the polls, and he came out the clear victor of the Nevada caucus.
Sanders' victory seemed to rattle the Democratic establishment, and some wild accusations
were thrown around during coverage of the caucus.
Political analyst James Carville
appeared on MSNBC as Sanders took an early and substantial lead in Nevada. Carville said,
"Right now, it's about 1:15 Moscow time. This thing is going very well for Vladimir Putin. I
promise you. He's probably staying up watching this right now." What could be played off as a
joke was followed up with some serious accusations from Carville, "I don't think the Sanders
campaign in any way is collusion or collaboration. I think they don't like this story, but
the story is a fact, and the reason that the story is a fact is Putin is doing everything
that he can to help Trump, including trying to get Sanders the Democratic nomination."
This delusional attitude about the Russians rigging the Democratic primary is underpinned
by claims of meddling from the 2016 election. Central to
Robert Mueller's claim that Russia engaged in "multiple, systematic efforts to interfere
in our election" is the St. Petersburg based company, the Internet Research Agency (IRA).
The IRA is accused of running a troll farm that sought to interfere in the 2016 election
in favor of Trump over Hillary Clinton. Mueller failed to tie the IRA directly to the
Kremlin, and further research into their social media campaign shows most of the posts had
nothing to do with the election. A study on the
IRA by the firm New Knowledge found just "11 percent" of the IRA's content "was related
to the election."
Many believe the Russian government is responsible for hacking the DNC email server and
providing the emails to WikiLeaks. But there are many holes in Mueller's story to support
this claim. And WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange – who Mueller did not interview
–
has said the Russian government was not the source of the emails.
Regardless of who leaked the DNC emails to WikiLeaks, they show that DNC leadership had a
clear bias against Bernie Sanders back in 2016. The emails' contents were never disputed, and
Democratic voters had every right to see the corruption within the DNC. With the release of
the DNC emails, and later the Podesta emails, the American people were able to make a more
informed choice in the presidential election. This type of transparency provided by WikiLeaks
would be celebrated in a healthy democracy, not portrayed as the work of a foreign power.
Sanders would be wise to keep a watchful eye on how the DNC operates over the next few
months. The debacle that was the Iowa caucus shows the Democrats can "stoke division" and
"stir controversy" just fine on their own.
These claims of Russian meddling will continue throughout the election season. President
Trump's defense that he is "tough" on Russia is nothing to be proud of, but that is
inevitably where these accusations lead. Trump is encouraged to be more hawkish towards
Russia in an effort to quiet the claims of Putin's preference for him. And if Bernie Sanders
plays into this narrative now, can we believe that he will make any real foreign policy
change towards Russia if he gets the nomination and beats Trump?
Dave DeCamp is assistant editor at Antiwar.com and a freelance journalist based in
Brooklyn NY, focusing on US foreign policy and wars. He is on Twitter at @decampdave .
Without any proof, The New York Times and Washington Post run "Russia
helping Sanders" stories, and Sanders responds by bashing Russia, writes Joe Lauria.
W ith Democratic frontrunner Bernie Sanders spooking the Democratic establishment, The
Washington Post Friday reported damaging information from intelligence sources against
Sanders by saying that Russia is trying to help his campaign.
If the story is true and if intelligence agencies are truly committed to protecting U.S.
citizens, the Sanders campaign would have been quietly informed and shown evidence to back up
the claims.
Instead the story wound up on the front page of the Post , "according to people
familiar with the matter." Zero evidence was produced to back up the intelligence agencies'
assertion.
"It is not clear what form that Russian assistance has taken," the Post reported.
That would tell any traditional news editor that there was no story until it is known.
Instead major U.S. media are again playing the role of laundering totally unverified
"information" just because it comes from an intelligence source. Reporting such assertions
without proof amounts to an abdication of journalistic responsibility. It shows total trust in
U.S. intelligence despite decades of deception and skullduggery from these agencies.
Centrist Democratic Party leaders have expressed extreme unease with Sanders leading the
Democratic pack. Politicoreported
Friday that former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg's entry into the race is explicitly to stop
Sanders from winning on the first ballot at the party convention.
A day after The New York Times
reported , also without evidence, that Russia is again trying to help Donald Trump win in
November, the Post reports Moscow is trying to help Sanders too, again without
substance. Both candidates whom the establishment loathes were smeared on successive days.
In a Tough Spot
The Times followed the Post report Friday by making it appear that Sanders
himself had chosen to make public the intelligence assessment about "Russian interference" in
his campaign.
But Sanders had known for a month about this assessment and only issued a statement after
the Post asked him for comment before publishing its uncorroborated story based on
anonymous sources.
Sanders was put in a difficult spot. If he said, "Show me the proof that Russia is trying to
help me," he ran the risk of being attacked for disbelieving (even disloyalty to) U.S.
intelligence, and, by default, defending the Kremlin.
So politician that he is, and one who is trying to win the White House, Sanders told the
Post :
"I don't care, frankly, who Putin wants to be president. My message to Putin is clear:
Stay out of American elections, and as president I will make sure that you do. In 2016,
Russia used Internet propaganda to sow division in our country, and my understanding is that
they are doing it again in 2020."
The Times quoted Sanders as calling Russian President Vladimir Putin an "autocratic
thug." The paper reported Sanders saying in a statement: "Let's be clear, the Russians want to
undermine American democracy by dividing us up and, unlike the current president, I stand
firmly against their efforts and any other foreign power that wants to interfere in our
election."
Responding to a cacophony of criticism that Sanders' supporters are especially vicious
online, as opposed to the millions of other vicious people online, Sanders attempted to use
Russia as a scapegoat, the way the Clinton campaign did in 2016. He said: "Some of the ugly
stuff on the Internet attributed to our campaign may well not be coming from real
supporters."
But no matter how strong Sander's denunciations of Russia, his opponents will now target him
as being a tool of the Kremlin.
Mission accomplished.
Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former correspondent
forThe Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe,Sunday Timesof London and numerous other newspapers. He can be reached at[email protected]and
followed on Twitter @unjoe .
Let`s face it,even though Bernie is a moderate Social Democrat,at best.He`s the only one
capable of beating "the Orange"version of Hitler.But he sounds as if the DNC,big wigs,decide
to deny him the nomination;he`d go along with it.Just like before;when he even campaigned for
the"Crooked One(Hillary).I guess we`ll see.
Kim Dixon , February 24, 2020 at 04:31
The most-important element missed in this piece is this: Sanders is helping the DNC and
the MIC gin up fear of, and hatred for, the only other nuclear superpower on earth.
If you were around during the McCarthy years, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the '73
Arab/Israeli war, and all the other almost-Armageddon crises of Cold War One, you know that
nothing could be stupider and more-dangerous than that. The missiles still sit in their
silos, waiting for the next early-warning misunderstanding or proxy-war miscalculation to
send them flying.
Sanders lived through it all. He's supposed to be the furthest-Left pol in Congress. So
how can he possibly advocate for anything but detente and disarmament?
SteveK9 , February 24, 2020 at 20:18
I would really like to support Bernie, but statements like this make me shake my head.
It's more a reflection of America today I guess. Politicians believe to a man (or woman) that
they must put the hate on Putin and Russia or they have no chance. It doesn't matter that the
Russia garbage is 100% false. And, I don't mean they 'interfered' only a little there was
nothing, nothing at all. Even Trump has to go along with this propaganda. I don't know how
anyone can believe this idiotic (and incredibly dangerous, as you point out) rubbish at this
point. But you can't call your friends blanking morons.
J Gray , February 25, 2020 at 02:55
I think he successfully dodged a bullet but set himself up to offer comprehensive election
reform if he pulls out a victory .
or it is an early sign that he, the DNC & MIC are coming to terms. It doesn't have
that ring to it to me, like when Trump called for regime-change war in Venezuela &
defunding schools to build a space army. That was a clear on-the-record sell-out & got
him off the Impeachment hook the next day. Similar to when the Clinton signed the Telecom Act
to get off his.
They are still coming after Sanders too hard w/their McCarthiast attacks to feel like he
is siding with them. I think he has to do this because they are bundling his movement,
Venezuela and Russia into the new Red Scare.
"#JoeLauria's piece in #ConsortiumNews is excellent. He calmly sets out #Sanders'
political dilemma. The latest line from US intelligence agency stenographer media like
#NYTimes is that #Russians are helping both #Trump and Sanders because they simply want to
sow discord and cynicism about US democracy , they do not care who wins. #CaitlinJohnstone
neatly satirises this by writing a spoof article claiming that US intelligence agencies have
discovered #Bloomberg is being helped by Russians because he has two Russian
grandfathers.
It has reached the point , as Lauria shows, where any criticism of such US MSM nonsense
leaves the speaker open to the allegation that he is soft on/ naive about/complicit in
Russian election meddling. Without being a Trump supporter, one can understand Trump's rage
and contempt for what is going on .
Justin Glyn. Consortium News. Joe Lauria. Tony Kevin"
Tony Kevin , February 23, 2020 at 21:32
Sanders and Trump will survive this Deep State manipulation and attempted blackmail . They
will see off the Clintonistas and Deep State moles, and will go on to fight a tough but fair
election. Americans are sick of Russophobia.
jack , February 24, 2020 at 15:25
agreed – the Russiagate psyop is past its shelf life – BUT Deep State will
carry on – it's a global entity and they're into literally everything – no idea
how any known, normal governing structure can deal with it
Enough with the "Russia" BS already! It is clear to me the wealthy corporate Dems and the
MSM are behind all of the smear tactics against Bernie and anyone else who serves the
people
Enough with the "Russia" BS already! It is clear to me the wealthy corporate Dems and the
MSM are behind all of the smear tactics against Bernie and anyone else who serves the
people
Dfnslblty , February 23, 2020 at 09:07
Front page drama plus zero evidence began long ago with 'anonymous sources said "!
Complete lack of accountability on the part of the sources and on the part of the
reporters.
Thus we receive a "reality teevee " potus , and we are pleased to be hypnotised and
titillated.
A true revolution would demand CN-quality reportage and reject msm pablum.
JohnDoe , February 23, 2020 at 03:43
It's enough to look at the news on mainstream media to understand who's, as usual,
meddling in the elections. In the latest period for the first time I saw a lot of
enthusiastic comments and articles about Bernie Sanders. It's clear they are pushing him. But
why those who isolated him in during the primaries against Clinton are now supporting him?
It's obvious, that they want to get rid of Elizabeth Warren, first push ahead the weaker
candidates, then they'll switch their support towards another candidate, probably
Bloomberg.
delia ruhe , February 23, 2020 at 00:14
Well, thank you Joe Lauria! I am in trouble in several comment threads for suggesting that
the intel community is at it again, trying to ruin two campaigns by identifying the
candidates with Putin and the Kremlin. Now I can quote you. Excellent piece, as usual.
Deniz , February 22, 2020 at 22:44
Imagine Sanders and Trump, putting their differences aside and declaring war on the deep
state during a debate. They have the same enemies.
The same people who planted Steele's dirty dosier are going to try to steal Sanders
election from him. It wont be Trump and the Republicans who rigs the election against
Sanders.
SteveK9 , February 24, 2020 at 20:21
Trump actually seemed to want to help Bernie a bit (well, he keeps calling him 'Crazy
Bernie as well). He put out some tweet calling this latest rubbish, Hoax #7. But Bernie would
rather say something stupid, like 'I'm not a friend of Putin he is' talk about 5-year
olds.
Deniz , February 25, 2020 at 00:49
Its disappointing. Sanders heart seems to be in the right place, but when it comes time to
face the sinister forces that run the country for their own benefit, he will be absolutely
crushed.
This will never end.
No president will ever change anything.
The deep state tentacles will eventually kill us all.
I am going to go and enjoy what's left.
Marko , February 22, 2020 at 20:24
" But Sanders had known for a month about this assessment and only issued a statement
after the Post asked him for comment before publishing its uncorroborated story based on
anonymous sources Sanders was put in a difficult spot. If he said, "Show me the proof that
Russia is trying to help me," he ran the risk of being attacked for disbelieving (even
disloyalty to) U.S. intelligence, and, by default, defending the Kremlin. "
I suspect that Sanders was given a classified briefing a month ago , which he couldn't
disclose to the public. If so , and given that he didn't make this clear immediately after
being accused of withholding this information , he has only himself to blame for the
resulting "bad look".
JWalters , February 22, 2020 at 19:06
The corporate media has revealed itself to be a monopoly behind the scenes, working in
unison to trash Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard. Even though Gabbard is only at a few
percent in the polls, her message is potentially devastating to the war profiteers who own
America's Vichy MSM.
"Congressman Oscar Callaway lost his Congressional election for opposing US entry into WW
1. Before he left office, he demanded investigation into JP Morgan & Co for purchasing
control over America's leading 25 newspapers in order to propagandize US public opinion in
favor of his corporate and banking interests, including profits from US participation in the
war."
war * profiteerstory. * blogspot. * com/p/war-profiteers-and-israels-bank.html
Thankfully, there is still a free American press, of which Consortium News is a stellar
example.
elmerfudzie , February 22, 2020 at 13:25
The CIA and DIA (it has about a dozen agencies under it and is much larger than any other
Intel agency) are supposed to monitor threats to our national security, that originate
abroad. Aside from a few closed door sessions with a select group of congresspersons, our
Intel agencies have practically no real democratic oversight and remain, for all intents and
purposes, a parallel government(s) well hidden from public view. In particular how they are
financed and what their actual annual budgets really are. How these agencies every managed to
seep into any electioneering process what so ever, is beyond me, since they are all
intentionally very surreptitious- by design. We ask questions and these Intel agencies are
quick to tout the usual phrase; that subject area is secret and needs to be addressed in
closed session, blah, blah, blah. Of course "secrecy" translates into, we do what we want
when we want and use information any way we want because our parallel governments represent
the best example(s) of a perpetual motion machine that does not require outside monitoring.
The origins of these "parallel entities" can be traced to the Rockefeller brothers and their
associated international corporations. There's the rub folks. Our citizens at large will
never overtake for the purposes of real monitoring, this empire and elephant in the room,
directly. However we do have one avenue left and it requires a rank and file demand from the
people to their state representatives demanding two long standing issues, they remain
unresolved and until a solution is found, will permit dark powers to side step every level of
democratic governments-anywhere.
The first is true campaign finance reform and the second is assigning, or rather, removing
the status of person-hood to corporate entities. The Rockefeller's used their corporate power
and wealth to influence legislative, judicial and executive bodies. They cannot help but do
as the puppet master commands! Be it some form of, corporatism, fascism, feudalism, monarchy,
oligarchy, even bankster-ism or any other "ism We as citizens at large must make every effort
to again, obtain true campaign finance reform and remove the lobbying presence inside the
beltway. Today, the corporate entity has risen to a level that completely overtakes and
smothers any authentic democratic representation, of and by the people. Originally (circa the
early1800's) American corporations were permitted to exist and papers were drawn based on the
specific duties they were about to perform, this for the benefit of the local community for
example, building a bridge. Once the job was completed, the incorporation was either
liquidated or remanded over to the relevant governing body for the purposes of reevaluating
the necessity of re-certifying the original incorporation papers. Old man Rockefeller changed
the governance and oversight privilege by forcing and promulgating legislation(s) such as
limited liability clauses, strategies to oppose competition, tax evasion schemes and
(eventually) assigning person-hood to corporate entities, thus creating a parallel government
within the government. It all began in Delaware and until we clear our heads and assign names
to the actual problems, as I've itemized here, our citizenry will never experience the
freedom to fashion our destiny. Please visit TUC radio's two part expose' by Richard
Grossman. It will help CONSORTIUMNEWS readers to understand just what a monumental task is
ahead for all of us. Work for a fair and equitable future in America, demand campaign finance
reform and kick the hustling lobbyists out of our government. Voters being choked to death
with senseless debates and useless candidates.
Jeff Harrison , February 22, 2020 at 12:36
The real threats to our democracy are our unaccountable surveillance state and the craven
politicians in Washington, DC. And, no, Ben, we can't keep our republic because we don't have
a sufficient mass of critical thinkers to run it. If we did, this kind of BS, having been
shot full of holes once, wouldn't get any air.
Alan Ross , February 22, 2020 at 10:37
Sanders may win the nomination and the election but he cannot get a break from some
purists on the left. His reaction may have been quite astute. When Sanders says that we
should station troops on the borders of Russia or arm the Ukrainians, then you can say he
really is anti-Russian. I have not heard all that he has said, but what I have heard sounds
so much like hot air put out by a left politician trying to deal with the ages-old
establishment and right wing smear that he is a pawn of the commies, a fellow traveler, a
pinko, and now an agent of a foreign power, a Russian asset and so on. There is real
criticism of Sanders, but his statements about Putin and Russia do not add up to much.
Skip Scott , February 22, 2020 at 09:51
Anyone who is still under the influence of the MSM hypnosis of RussiaGate, led by Rachel
Madcow, needs to think long and hard about this latest propaganda campaign. The real message
here is unless you support corporate sponsored warmonger from column A or B, you are a tool
of the "evil Rooskies". And the funny thing is, Sanders is "weak tea" when it comes to issues
of war and peace, and the feeding of the war machine at the government trough with no
limits.
The purpose of this BIG LIE of the "Intelligence" agencies is to make it impossible for
someone to be against the Forever War without being tarred as a "Foreign Agent", or at least
a "useful idiot", of the "EVIL ROOSKIES". To simply want peaceful coexistence on its own
merits is impossible.
Imagine if Sanders dared to mention that Putin enjoys substantial majority support inside
Russia, and seeks peaceful coexistence in a multi-polar world, instead of calling him an
"autocratic thug". Often for politicians, speaking the truth is a "bridge too far". I wonder
if Sanders (like Hillary) finds it necessary to hold "private" positions that differ from his
"public" positions? Or does he really believe his own BS?
I had not seen Mr Joe Lauria's article when I commented on Mr Ben Norton's story, but my
reply could fit here as well.
The idiot American public dismays me. To them, the "MSM news" and "celebrity gossip reports"
are equal and both to be wholeheartedly believed.
There is no point in trying to educate a resistant public in the differences between data and
gossip -- public doesn't care.
I weep for what we have lost -- a Constitution, a nation of free thinkers. My heart breaks
for the world's people, and what my country tries to do to them, with only a few resistant
other countries confronting and challenging America.
It is so difficult to know the truth of a situation and yet to know that almost no one
(statistically speaking) believes you.
Jim Hartz , February 23, 2020 at 12:04
A better distinction might be, concerning the intelligence of the American public, the one
Chomsky has used, rooted in Ancient Greek culture, that between KNOWLEDGE and OPINION.
Americans, of course, have OPINIONS about everything, but little KNOWLEDGE about much of
anything. And it seems their idea of FREEDOM is related to, bound up with, their having
OPINIONS about virtually EVERYTHING.
So much for our being a HIGHER life form.
We're in the process of destroying EVERYTHING, not just HIGHER LIFE FORMS [us], but all
flora and fauna, water and air on the planet–as I said, EVERYTHING. To paraphrase from
memory a citation by Perry Anderson from the work of heterodox Italian Marxist, Sebastiano
Timpanaro, "What we are witnessing is not the triumph of man over history, but the victory of
nature over man."
Tony , February 22, 2020 at 07:40
The Trump administration has pulled out of the INF missile treaty citing totally unproven
claims of Russian violations.
It also looks like allowing the START treaty on strategic nuclear missiles to lapse if we do
not stop it.
And so, in what sense would Putin want Trump to get re-elected?
Van Jones of CNN once described the original allegations of Russian meddling in US
elections as a 'great big nothing burger'.
Sounds right to me.
Sam F , February 22, 2020 at 07:24
When the secret agencies and mass media stop manipulating public opinion, despite their
oligarchy masters' ability to control election results anyway, we will know that they no
longer need deception to control the People. Simple force will do the job, with a few
marketing claims to assist in hiring goons to suppress any popular movement. Democracy is
completely lost, and the pretense of democracy will soon follow.
michael , February 22, 2020 at 07:03
Another foray into domestic politics by the CIA, with anonymous sources and no evidence
shown (as no evidence exists). Perhaps the CIA (which probably works for Putin, or Bloomberg,
or anyone who pays them best, but they are loyal to the US dollar only; and maybe heroin?) is
even now making up another Chris Steele/ Fusion GPS/ CrowdStrike dossier, getting that
Russian caterer to the Kremlin to pump out clickbait and sink both Trump and Sanders. Because
RUSSIANS!!! are "genetically driven" to interfere in American democracy. Next we'll have the
DNC (CIA) pushing Superpredator tropes such as "this enormous cohort of black and Latino
males" who "don't know how to behave in the workplace" and "don't have any prospects." With
this Clintonian (and Biden and Bloomberg) mindset, America will be increasing incarceration
once again. That $500,000 bribe the Clintons took from Putin in 2010 when Hillary was
Secretary of State probably plays a role.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon and Defense Secretary Mark Esper have surprisingly noted that China,
not Russia, is America's #1 concern: "America's concerns about Beijing's commercial and
military expansion should be your concerns as well." Since Bill Clinton's Chinagate fiasco in
1996, Communist China, for a measly $million or so in illegal campaign donations, gained
permanent trade status, took millions of American jobs, and suddenly were allowed access to
advanced, even military technologies. This was the impetus for China's rise to be the
strongest nation in the world. There are no doubt statues of the Clintons all over China, and
soon to Hunter Biden, if his Chinese backed hedge funds do well. There are some rumors that
Bloomberg has transacted business with China, although doubtful he tried to build a hotel in
Beijing or Moscow, or the CIA would be all over it (for a cut)!
Realist , February 24, 2020 at 00:22
Esper is a dangerously deranged man who seems, at least to me, to be telegraphing his
intent, and certainly his desire, to get into a kinetic war with both Russia and China
(Washington already has most of the hybrid war tactics already fully operational), unless
English usage has changed so drastically that insults, overt threats and unrestrained bombast
are now part of calm, rational cordial diplomacy. I would not be surprised if neocon
mouthpieces like Esper are not secretly honing their rhetorical style to emulate the
exaggerated volume and enunciation of der ursprüngliche Führer.
Ma Laoshi , February 22, 2020 at 06:04
"So politician that he is" -- isn't this already on the slippery slope towards double
standards, that is, would say Hillary get a similar pass for making McCarthyite statements
like this? Isn't a dispassionate reading of the situation that Bernie is an inveterate
liar , and moreover specializing in the particular brand of lies that could get us all
into nuclear war? Whether it's character or merely age, haven't we seen enough to conclude
that Mr. Sanders would be much weaker still vis-a-vis the Deep State than Donald Trump turned
out to be?
For those without a dog in this fight, shouldn't it cause great merriment if the various
RussiaGaters devour each other? Mr. Sanders has seen for years that the "muh Putin" hoax will
be turned against him whenever needed. If he nonetheless persists, doesn't that show his
resignation that his role in this election circus is a very temporary one, like in '16? How
was that definition of insanity again?
If you want to fix America, then the Empire and Zionism are your enemies; so is the Dem
party that is inextricably wedded to these forces. Play along with them and–well what
can you expect.
aNanyMouse , February 22, 2020 at 13:29
Yeah, and Bernie sucked up to the Dem brass on the impeachment crap, even tho Tulsi had
the stones to at least abstain. How sad.
GMCasey , February 21, 2020 at 22:33
Dear DNC:
KNOCK IT OFF! The only person I am voting for President is the only one who is capable -- and
that is Bernie Sanders.
And really, with NATO breaking the agreement where they agreed to NOT go up to Russia's
border : it is getting very sad and embarrassing to be an American because the elected ones
make agreements and yet break so many. What with Turkey and Israel and Saudi Arabia trying to
disrupt the area, I am sure that Russia is too busy to bother disrupting America . Lately
America seems to disrupt itself for many ridiculous reasons. I am sorry that the gossip rags,
which used to be important newspapers have failed in supporting their First Amendment right
of Free speech . I just finished reading "ALL the Presidents Men. " What has happened to you,
Washington Post, because as a newspaper, you really used to be somebody. Please review your
past and become what you once were, a real genuine news source.
Sam F , February 23, 2020 at 09:18
Wikipedia: "In October 2013, the paper's longtime controlling family, the Graham family,
sold the newspaper to Nash Holdings, a holding company established by Jeff Bezos, for $250
million in cash."
Jim Hartz , February 23, 2020 at 12:37
One of the craziest ongoing media phenomena, prevalent in the Impeachment Hearings, is the
repeated claim that RUSSIA IS AT WAR WITH UKRAINE.
What kind of "Higher Life Form" enthusiastically EATS IT'S OWN SHIT?
Sam F , February 21, 2020 at 22:10
Mass media denouncing politicians based upon "information" from secret agencies are
propaganda operations, and should be sued for proof of their claims. But of course the
judiciary are tools of oligarchy as much as the mass media. No one has constitutional rights
in the US under our utterly corrupt judiciary, only paid party privileges.
Eddie S , February 21, 2020 at 21:55
Hmmm.. so those oh-so-clever Russkies (I mean they MUST-BE if they were able to outwit ALL
the US politicos -- who are immersed in the US political culture 24/7 as well as having
grown-up in this country and having billions of $ to spend -- in 2016 with a mere $100k of
Facebook ads) messed-up this time! They're supporting OPPOSING candidates, effectively
canceling-out their efforts ? Kinda strange, unless that whole 'Russia meddling' thing was a
vastly exaggerated distraction by a losing hawkish candidate and her party, further inflated
by a sensationalistic media and a predictably antagonistic military & intelligence
community??
There is NO "intel"; plenty of un-intel, shameless mendacity from these info=dictators
zionazi NYT and Wapoop drivel; hopefully the insouciant public is starting to see what a sham
these rats are. Hearst outdistanced.
Daniel , February 22, 2020 at 10:45
"Kinda strange, unless that whole 'Russia meddling' thing was a vastly exaggerated
distraction by a losing hawkish candidate and her party, further inflated by a
sensationalistic media and a predictably antagonistic military & intelligence
community??"
Exactly. Shame on Hillary Clinton and all who view the electorate with such disdain as to
have pushed this propaganda on us for the last three years, and continue to do so, obviously.
If either Hillary Clinton or the "sensationalistic media and a predictably antagonistic
military & intelligence community" had any integrity at all, they would have beaten Trump
handily in 2016, just as they condescendingly told us they would. They did not, though, and
have been outraged to have been exposed as the frauds they are ever since.
When your political party is nothing more than a marketing scheme designed to fool the
population, that population will turn on you. Imagine that. And no amount of Russia-gating
will save you. Shame on all who would continue this charade.
John Drake , February 21, 2020 at 21:33
Gosh I wish those so called intel people could make up their mind about whom the big bad
Ruskies are trying to help. One week its Trump, the next it is Sanders. Frankly on the face,
it sounds like bad intel to me.
But fortunately I am a regular reader of this site and Ray McGovern; and know it's all, to
put it politely , disinformation; or less politely a pile of diarrhea invented by Hillarybots
after a really really bad election day three years ago.
The only thing that disturbs me is the way Bernie buys into this Russiagate thing himself.
Maybe you all could send him a trove of articles debunking the whole mess, especially Ray and
Bill's forensics.
Fred Dean , February 23, 2020 at 03:52
When Durham starts indicting people and the story of the Deep State coup against the
President becomes common knowledge, Bernie's statements on Russiagate will be a liability.
Trump's people are digging up whatever videos they can of Bernie talking smack about
Trump/Russia. It is a crack in Bernie's armor and we can expect Trump to exploit. Bernie has
been such a toadie to the DNC. He cowers to the Democratic establishment because he fears
they will pull his credentials to run as a Democrat.
OlyaPola , February 23, 2020 at 08:08
"Gosh I wish those so called intel people could make up their mind about whom the big bad
Ruskies are trying to help."
Output is a function of framing and consequently the intelligence community/opponents are
helping others including the Russians who encourage such help by doing nothing.
KiwiAntz , February 21, 2020 at 21:26
What a shambolic mess of a Nation that America is! Nothing more than a Billionaire's
Banana Republic? A International laughingstock ruled by a Oligarchy, masquerading as a
Democracy? And if all else fails to get rid of Bernie Saunders by vote rigging or
gerrymandering or other nefarious acts of sabotage with Superdelegates stealing the
nominations then resurrect the bogus Russiagate Conspiracy, a ridiculous failed & faked
experiment to gaslight, spook & confuse the population again? Wouldn't it be delicious if
Russiagate was actually TRUE, it would be payback for the USA, a Nation that meddles in the
affairs & politics of every other Country on Earth, overthrowing & regime changing
everyone who doesn't "bend the knee" to America, the most corrupt & evil Nation on Earth
since Nazi Germany! I've never seen a more propagandised or mindf**ked People on Earth than
the American people! It must be soul destroying to live in this Country & have to put up
with this nonsense, day in, day out?
Ian , February 22, 2020 at 02:47
Yes, it is. Living with the infuriating unreality and militaristic worldview that is so
cultivated here takes a personal emotional and intellectual toll. No place is perfect, but
when I travel to Europe I feel a weight lifted.
Broompilot , February 22, 2020 at 03:50
Kiwi you may have a point.
ML , February 22, 2020 at 09:19
Yep. But for those of us with our critical thinking skills intact, we won't let it be soul
destroying, Kiwi. Still, the daily crapload of bs we are fed in the "legacy" press is
aggravating beyond the beyonds. Cheers, fellow Earthling.
Daniel , February 22, 2020 at 11:09
I hear you, KiwiAntz. It IS soul destroying to withstand this onslaught of disinformation
each and every day. There is a rhythm to it that is undeniable, too. One can almost predict
when the next propaganda hit will come, as here – after their latest would-be savior,
Mike Bloomberg, imploded on live TV, and with Bernie looking more and more inevitable.
Our reality in the US today is that we have to fight against our own media to approach
anything resembling a reasonable discussion about what is important to vast majorities (mean
tweets and fake memes aren't it) or to champion candidates who display even the slightest
integrity. But, of course, it is not 'our' media. It is 'theirs.' And they will continue to
abuse us with it until we reject it completely.
robert e williamson jr , February 23, 2020 at 20:31
I see things pretty clearly for what they are and the billionaire democrats are heading
for a train wreck and I hate to admit I cannot look away.
Trump is just another self serving U.S. president leaving a stain in America's underwear
adding to the humongous pile of America's dirty laundry.
When the demographics finally dictate it change will come and likely not before. On that
note I wold like to reach out here. Justin King, who goes as Beau on the net runs a site
called the Fifth Column News and does a ton of informative and educational videos on many
various topics. .
If you go to youtube, search and watch each of the videos I'm about to list here you stand
to learn quite a lot about how Americans got screwed by the two party system without really
realizing it. Plenty of blame to go around , no doubt though. You will also learn of the
changing demographics in American politics. Many of the poor, minorities and youth of the
country are coming into politics for they stand to lose everything if they don't change the
status quo.
Feb 11 2020 runs 6:21 minutes and seconds- Search terms, Beau Lets talk about the parties
switching and the party of trump
Feb 15 2020 runs 4:11 Search terms, Beau Lets talk about dancing left and dancing
right
Feb 20 2020 runs 10:44 Search terms, Beau Lets talk about misunderstanding Bernie's
supporters
This last video is a long video by Justin's standards. Most of his videos are under 7
minutes.
Much thanks to CN this site and the Fifth Column New site give me strength and bolster my
courage by allowing me to know that there are those of us who know what gong on and know
things must change.
NY Times is citing "people familiar with the situation." How the mighty have fallen. What
about Shadow, and the Iowa caucuses, and Buttigieg? That was real. This is absolute
horseshit.
> Apparent US Intel Meddling in US Election With 'Report' Russia is Aiding Sanders
It looks like the CIA is short of ideas on how to meddle in the elections. Trump had a
very similar briefing on January 6, 2017 -- with Brennan, Clapper, Rogers, and Comey -- on
Russia allegedly aiding his campaign. As well without any evidence.
Charlene Richards , February 22, 2020 at 14:47
Russia couldn't possibly do the damage to Sanders that the DNC and Democrat Establishment
elites are doing out in the open every day with the MSM as their prime propagandists.
As they say in wrestling, it's all "a work".
richard baker , February 22, 2020 at 10:55
Bart Hansen , February 22, 2020 at 18:27
Looking at the comments at the Post and Times, I'd say you are on target. Oh, for the Kool
Aid contract at those organs of misinformation and omission.
"... I tried to sorta warm people on other sites that while they were looking for Russians at the front door, the gop was coming in the bad door for some rather nasty election interference. ..."
"... Of course what we are seeing now is democrats cheating other democrats. But that reality will never be acknowledged because, hey, it never happened before. Just unintentional mistakes like in Iowa (farm folk cheating -- no way) or Brooklyn. ..."
What you describe is probably why Russiagate spread so easily to so many people. Nothing
happened in previous elections? Everything you describe never happened as you point out. The
American electoral system was and is pristine and virginal.
Until the Russians came and destroyed American democracy through social media themes,
memes, and retweets.
The American electoral system was never brutally corrupted by rigged votes, voter
suppression on the scale of hundreds of thousands, deliberately miscounted votes, voter
fraud, etc. Americans never did to each other anything as bad as what the Russians did to
Americans.
Of course, for me never worked as I worked in primaries of a democratic machine dominated
city. I tried to sorta warm people on other sites that while they were looking for
Russians at the front door, the gop was coming in the bad door for some rather nasty election
interference.
Of course what we are seeing now is democrats cheating other democrats. But that
reality will never be acknowledged because, hey, it never happened before. Just unintentional
mistakes like in Iowa (farm folk cheating -- no way) or Brooklyn.
This is simply pretty dirty and pretty effective propaganda trick. And it make intelligence agencies the third political party
participating in the USA elections. With the right of veto.
Based on the tone of Tuesday's Democratic debate, you would think the Kremlin has already
determined the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. Former Vice President Joe Biden said
Russians are "engaged now, as I speak, in interfering in our election." Billionaire Tom Steyer
said there is "an attack by a hostile foreign power on our democracy right now." Former New
York Mayor Mike Bloomberg charged that
Russia was backing Sen. Bernie Sanders , I-Vt., to ensure a Trump victory in November.
But the Russian interference narrative has become entrenched. When intelligence community
election expert Shelby Pierson speculated to the House Intelligence Committee in a closed-door
meeting that Russia was trying to help President Trump get reelected, it quickly leaked, became
a front-page story in The New York Times and precipitated the usual outrage. It took a few days
for the less dramatic truth to catch up -- that there was
no evidence for the "misleading" supposition that the Kremlin is pro-Trump; at best Russia
may have a "preference" for a "deal-maker."
An alternative view that has been circulating for several years suggests that it was not a
hack at all, that it was a deliberate whistleblower-style
leak of information carried out by an as yet unknown party, possibly Rich, that may have
been provided to WikiLeaks for possible political reasons, i.e. to express disgust with the DNC
manipulation of the nominating process to damage Bernie Sanders and favor Hillary Clinton.
There are, of course, still other equally non-mainstream explanations for how the bundle of
information got from point A to point B, including that the intrusion into the DNC server was
carried out by the CIA which then made it look like it had been the Russians as
perpetrators. And then there is the hybrid point of view, which is essentially that the
Russians or a surrogate did indeed intrude into the DNC computers but it was all part of normal
intelligence agency probing and did not lead to anything. Meanwhile and independently, someone
else who had access to the server was downloading the information, which in some fashion made
its way from there to WikiLeaks.
Both the hack vs. leak viewpoints have marshaled considerable technical analysis in the
media to bolster their arguments, but the analysis suffers from the decidedly strange fact that
the FBI never even examined the DNC servers that may have been involved. The hack school of
thought has stressed that Russia had both the ability and motive to interfere in the election
by exposing the stolen material while the leakers have recently asserted that the sheer volume of
material downloaded indicates that something like a higher speed thumb drive was used,
meaning that it had to be done by someone with actual physical direct access to the DNC system.
Someone like Seth Rich.
... ... ...
Given all of that back story, it would be odd to find Trump making an offer that focuses
only on one issue and does not actually refute the broader claims of Russian interference,
which are based on a number of pieces of admittedly often dubious evidence, not just the
Clinton and Podesta emails.
Which brings the tale back to Seth Rich. If Rich was indeed responsible for the theft of the
information and was possibly killed for his treachery, it most materially impacts on the
Democratic Party as it reminds everyone of what the Clintons and their allies are capable
of.
It will also serve as a warning of what might be coming at the Democratic National
Convention in Milwaukee in July as the party establishment uses fair means or foul to stop
Bernie Sanders. How this will all play out is anyone's guess, but many of those who pause to
observe the process will be thinking of Seth Rich.
I don't ascribe to the idea that the intel agencies kill American citizens without a great
deal of thought, but in Rich's case, they probably felt like they had no choice. Think about
it: The DNC had already rigged the primary against Bernie, the Podesta emails had already
been sent to Wikileaks, and if Rich's cover was blown, then he would publicly identify
himself as the culprit (which would undermine the Russiagate narrative) which would split the
Democratic party in two leaving Hillary with no chance to win the election.
I can imagine Hillary and her intel connections looking for an alternative to whacking
Rich but eventually realizing that there was no other way to deflect responsibility for the
emails while paving the way for an election victory.
If Seth Rich went public, then Hillary would certainly lose.
I imagine this is what they were thinking when they decided there was really only one
option.
"I have watched incredulous as the CIA's blatant lie has grown and grown as a media story
– blatant because the CIA has made no attempt whatsoever to substantiate it. There is
no Russian involvement in the leaks of emails showing Clinton's corruption." https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2016/12/cias-absence-conviction/
@plantman It's more than Hillary losing. It would have been easy to connect the dots of
the entire plot to get Trump. Furthermore, it would have linked Obama and his cohorts in ways
that the country might have exploded. This was the beginning of a Coup De'tat that would have
shown the American political process is a complete joke.
To understand why the DNC mobsters and the Deep State hate him, watch this great 2016
interview where Assange calmly explains the massive corruption that patriotic FBI agents
refer to as the "Clinton Crime Family." This gang is so powerful that it ordered federal
agents to spy on the Trump political campaign, and indicted and imprisoned some participants
in an attempt to pressure President Trump to step down. It seems Trump still fears this gang,
otherwise he would order his attorney general to drop this bogus charge against Assange, then
pardon him forever and invite him to speak at White House press conferences.
Well, here was my own take on the controversy a couple of years ago, and I really haven't
seen anything to change my mind:
Well, DC is still a pretty dangerous city, but how many middle-class whites were
randomly murdered there that year while innocently walking the streets? I wouldn't be
surprised if Seth Rich was just about the only one.
Julian Assange has strongly implied that Seth Rich was the source of the DNC emails that
cost Hillary Clinton the presidency. So if Seth Rich died in a totally random street
killing not long afterward, isn't that just the most astonishing coincidence in all of
American history?
Consider that the leaks effectively nullified the investment of the $2 billion or so
that her donors had provided, and foreclosed the flood of good jobs and appointments to her
camp-followers, not to mention the oceans of future graft. Seems to me that's a pretty good
motive for murder.
Here's my own plausible speculation from a couple of months ago:
Incidentally, I'd guess that DC is a very easy place to arrange a killing, given that
until the heavy gentrification of the last dozen years or so, it was one of America's
street-murder capitals. It seems perfectly plausible that some junior DNC staffer was at
dinner somewhere, endlessly cursing Seth Rich for having betrayed his party and
endangered Hillary's election, when one of his friends said he knew somebody who'd be
willing to "take care of the problem" for a thousand bucks
Let's say a couple of hundred thousand middle-class whites lived in DC around then, and
Seth Rich was about the only one that year who died in a random street-killing, occurring not
long after the leak.
Wouldn't that seem like a pretty unlikely coincidence?
"If Rich was indeed responsible for the theft of the information and was possibly killed for
his treachery ."
Heroism is the proper term for what Seth Rich did. He saw the real treachery, against
Bernie Sanders and the democratic faithful who expect at least a modicum of integrity from
their Party leaders (even if that expectation is utterly fanciful, wishful thinking), and he
decided to act. He paid for it with his life. A young, noble life.
In every picture I've seen of him, he looks like a nice guy, a guy who cared. And now he's
dead. And the assholes at the DNC simply gave him a small plaque over a bike rack, as I
understand it.
Seth Rich: American Hero. A Truth-Teller who paid the ultimate price.
Great reporting, Phil. Another home run.
(And thanks to Ron for chiming in. Couldn't agree more. As a Truth-Teller extraordinaire,
please watch your back, Bro. And Phil, too. You both know what these murderous scum are
capable of.)
Because the {real} killers of JFK, MLK and RFK were never detained and jailed/hanged, why
would one expect a lesser known, more ordinary individual's murder [Seth] to be solved?
Seymour Hersh, in a taped phone conversation, claimed to have access to an FBI report on the
murder. According to Hersh, the report indicated tha FBI Cyber Unit examined Rich's computer
and found he had contacted Wikileaks with the intention of selling the emails.
Another reason Assange may not want to reveal it, if Seth Rich was a source for Wikileaks,
could be that Seth Rich didn't act alone, and revealing Seth's involvement would compromise
the other(s).
Or it could simply be that Wikileaks has promised to never reveal a source, even after
that source's death, as a promise to future potential sources, who may never want their
identities revealed, to avoid the thought of embarrassment or repercussions to their
associates or families.
Incidentally, they only started really going after Assange after the Vault 7 leaks of the
CIA's active bag of software tricks. I think, for Assange's sake, they should instead have
held on to that, and made it the payload of a dead man's switch.
I'm not sure how credible the source is but Ellen Ratner, the sister of Assange's former
lawyer and a journalist, told Ed Butowsky that Assange told her that it was Seth Rich. She
asked Butowsky to contact Rich's parents. She confirms the Assange meeting in an interview,
link below. Butowsky does not seem to be a credible source but Ratner does. If it was Seth
Rich then I have no doubt that his brother knows the details and the family does not want to
lose another son.
"According to Assange's lawyers, Rohrabacher offered a pardon from President Trump if Assange
were to provide information that would attribute the theft or hack of the Democratic National
Committee emails to someone other than the Russians."
Not to quibble on semantics but Rohrabacher met with Assange to ask if he would be willing
to reveal the source of the emails then Rohrabacher would contact Trump and try to make deal
for Assange's freedom. Rohrabacher clarified that he never talked to Trump or that he was
authorized by Trump to make any offer.
The MSM has been using the "amnesty if you say it was not the Russians" narrative to hint
at a coverup by Russian agent Trump. Normal for the biased MSM.
Giraldi's link "Assange did not take the offer" has nothing to do with Rohrabacher's
contact. It's just a general piece on Assange acting as a journalist should act.
I'm of the opinion Ron Unz seems to share, that Rich was not a particularly "big hitter" in
the DNC hierarchy and that his murder was more likely the result of a very nasty inter-party
squabble. I seem to recall a LOT of very nasty talk between the Jewish neocons in the Bush
era and the decent, traditional "small-government" style Republicans who greatly resented the
neocons' hijacking of the GOP for their demonic zionist agenda.
Common sense would suggest that the zionist types who have (obviously) hijacked the DNC
are at least as nasty and ruthless as the neocons who destroyed any decency or fair-play
within the GOP. It's not exactly hard to believe that these Murder, Inc. types (also lefties
of their era) wouldn't hesitate to whack someone like Rich for merely uttering a criticism of
Israel, for example.
Hell, Meyer Lansky ordered the hit-job on Bugsy Seigel for forgetting to bring bagels to a
sit-down ! There was a great web-site by a mobster of that era, long since taken down, who
described the story in detail. I forget the names .. but I'll see if I can't find a copy of
some of the pieces posted at least a decade ago .
It's not exactly hard to imagine some very nasty words being exchanged between the Rahm
Emmanuel types and decent Chicago citizens, for example, who genuinely cared for their city
and weren't afraid of The Big Jew and his mobster cronies . to their detriment I'm sure.
We're talking about organized crime, here, folks. The zionists make the so-called (mostly
fictitious) Sicilian Mafia look like newborn puppies. They wouldn't hesitate to whack a guy
like Rich for taking their favorite space in the bicycle rack.
My only trouble with the Seth Rich thing is, it seems a bit extreme, they seem quite callous
in murdering foreigners but US citizens in the US who are their staffers? If they really were
prepared to go out and kill in this way, they're be a lot more suspicious deaths.
What makes the case most compelling is the very quick investigation by police that looks
like they were told by somebody concerned about how the whole thing looked to close up the
case nice and quickly. That and the fact that he was shot in the back, which doesn't make
sense for an attempted robbery turned murder.
However, it may also be that as in so many cities in the US, murder clearance rates for
street shootings (Little forensic evidence, can only go by witness accounts or through poor
alibis from usual suspects and their associates. In this case there is also no connection
between Rich and any possible shooter with no witnesses.) are just so very low that DC police
don't bother and Seth Rich's death just happened to be one such case that attracted some
scrutiny.
But then maybe for the reasons above a place like DC is perfect to just murder somebody on
the street and that's why they were so brazen about it.
Seth Rich's death just happened to be one such case that attracted some scrutiny.
Well, upthread someone posted a recording of a Seymour Hersh phone call that confirmed
Seth Rich was the fellow who leaked the DNC emails to Wikileaks, thereby possibly swinging
the presidential election to Trump and overcoming $2 billion of Democratic campaign
advertising.
Shortly afterwards, he probably became about the only middle-class white in DC who died in
a "random street killing" that year. If you doubt this, see if you can find any other such
cases that year.
I think it is *extraordinarily* unlikely that these two elements are unconnected and
merely happened together by chance.
In a remarkable statement that has gone virtually unreported in the American media,
Representative Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination,
publicly denounced US intelligence agencies for interfering in the presidential contest and
attempting to sabotage the campaign of Democratic frontrunner Bernie Sanders.
In an opinion column published February 27 by the Hill , Gabbard attacked the
article published by the Washington Post on February 21, the eve of the Nevada
caucuses, which claimed that Russia was intervening in the US election to support Sanders. She
also criticized the decision of billionaire Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York
City, to repeat the anti-Russia slander against Sanders during the February 25 Democratic
presidential debate in South Carolina.
Gabbard is a military officer in a National Guard medical unit who has been deployed to Iraq
and Kuwait and has continuing and close contact with the Pentagon. She is obviously familiar
with the machinations of the US military-intelligence apparatus and knows whereof she speaks.
Her harsh and uncompromising language is that much more significant.
She wrote:
Enough is enough. I am calling on all presidential candidates to stop playing these
dangerous political games and immediately condemn any interference in our elections by
out-of-control intelligence agencies. A "news article" published last week in the
Washington Post, which set off yet another manufactured media firestorm, alleges
that the goal of Russia is to trick people into criticizing establishment Democrats. This is
a laughably obvious ploy to stifle legitimate criticism and cast aspersions on Americans who
are rightly skeptical of the powerful forces exerting control over the primary election
process.
We are told the aim of Russia is to "sow division," but the aim of corporate media and
self-serving politicians pushing this narrative is clearly to sow division of their own -- by
generating baseless suspicion against the Sanders campaign. It's extremely disingenuous for
"journalists" and rival candidates to publicize a news article that merely asserts, without
presenting any evidence, that Russia is "helping" Bernie Sanders -- but provides no
information as to what that "help" allegedly consists of.
Gabbard continued:
If the CIA, FBI or any other intelligence agency is going to tell voters that "Russians"
are interfering in this election to help certain candidates -- or simply "sow discord" --
then it needs to immediately provide us with the details of what exactly it's alleging.
After pointing out that the Democratic Party establishment and the corporate media have had
little interest in measures to actually improve election security, such as requiring paper
ballots or some other form of permanent record of how people vote, Gabbard demanded:
The FBI, CIA or any other intelligence agency should immediately stop smearing
presidential candidates with innuendo and vague, evidence-free assertions. That is
antithetical to the role those agencies play in a free democracy. The American people cannot
have faith in our intelligence agencies if they are pushing an agenda to harm candidates they
dislike.
As socialists, we do not share Gabbard's belief that the intelligence agencies have a
positive role to play or that the American people need to have faith in them. As her military
career demonstrates, she is a supporter of American imperialism and of the capitalist state.
However, her opposition to the "dirty tricks" campaign against Sanders is entirely legitimate
and puts the spotlight on a deeply anti-democratic operation by the military-intelligence
apparatus.
Gabbard denounces this "new McCarthyism" and calls on her fellow candidate to rebuff the CIA
smears and "defend the freedoms enshrined in our Constitution." Not a single one of the
remaining candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination -- including Sanders himself --
has responded to her appeal.
Her statement concludes that the goal of the "mainstream corporate media and the
warmongering political establishment" was either to block Sanders from winning the nomination,
or, if he does become the nominee, to "force him to engage in inflammatory anti-Russia rhetoric
and perpetuate the new Cold War and nuclear arms race, which are existential threats to our
country and the world."
Despite Gabbard's appeal for the Democratic candidates not to be "manipulated and forced
into a corner by overreaching intelligence agencies," the Democratic Party establishment has
been working in lockstep with the intelligence agencies in the anti-Russia campaign against
Trump, which began even before election day in 2016, metastasized into the Mueller
investigation and then the effort to impeach Trump over his delay in the dispatch of military
aid to Ukraine for its war with Russian-backed separatist forces.
Her comments are a complete vindication of what the World Socialist Web Site has
written about the anti-Russia campaign and impeachment: these were efforts by the Democratic
Party, acting as the representative of the military-intelligence apparatus, to block the
emergence of genuine left-wing popular opposition to Trump, and to channel popular hostility to
this administration in a right-wing and pro-imperialist direction.
Gabbard herself was the only House Democrat to abstain on impeachment, although she did not
voice any principled grounds for her vote, such as opposition to the intelligence agencies. She
has based her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination largely on an appeal to
antiwar sentiment, particularly opposing US intervention in Syria. She has also said that if
elected, she would drop all charges against Julian Assange and pardon Edward Snowden.
These views led to a vicious attack by Hillary Clinton, the defeated Democratic presidential
candidate in 2016, who last October called Gabbard "a Russian asset," claiming that she was
being groomed by Russia to serve as a third-party candidate in 2020 who would take votes away
from the Democratic nominee and help re-elect President Trump. "She's the favorite of the
Russians," Clinton claimed.
Since Clinton's attack, the Democratic National Committee has excluded Gabbard from its
monthly debates, manipulating the eligibility requirements so that billionaire Michael
Bloomberg would qualify even for debates held in states where he was not on the ballot but
Gabbard was, such as Nevada and South Carolina.
Back in January, well before the Democratic primary race had taken on its current
composition, independent journalist
Ruth Ann Oskolkoff reported that a source had heard from high-level Democratic Party
insiders that they were planning to install Joe Biden as the party's nominee, and to smear
Bernie Sanders as a Russian asset.
"On January 20, 2020 at 8:20 p.m. PDT I received a communication from a reliable source,"
Oskolkoff wrote.
"This person had interactions earlier that evening with high level party members and
associates of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) who said that they have now selected
Biden as the Democratic Party nominee, with Warren as the VP. They also said the plan is to
smear Bernie as a Russian asset."
Now, immediately before Super Tuesday, we are seeing establishment candidates
Pete Buttigieg and
Amy Klobuchar drop out of the race, both of whom, along with
former candidate Beto O'Rourke , are now suddenly endorsing Biden. Elizabeth Warren, the
only top-level candidate besides Sanders who could be labeled vaguely "left" by any stretch of
the imagination, has meanwhile
outraged progressives by remaining in the race, to the Vermont senator's detriment.
Prior to the South Carolina primary, Russian state media were touting Bernie Sanders as
the most likely Democratic nominee, and it won't be surprising if they do the same after
Super Tuesday https://t.co/mH98PVmcjr
This latter development is becoming a conspicuously common line of attack against Sanders
and, while we're on the subject, also tracks with a prediction made by journalist Max Blumenthal back in
July of 2017. Blumenthal told Fox's Tucker Carlson that "this Russia hysteria will be
re-purposed by the political establishment to attack the left and anyone on the left -- a
Bernie Sanders-like politician who steps out of line on the issues of permanent war or
corporate free trade, things like that -- will be painted as Russia puppets. So this is very
dangerous, and people who are progressive who are falling into it need to know what the
long-term consequences of this cynical narrative are."
So we're seeing things unfold exactly as some have predicted. We're seeing the clear
frontrunner smeared as a tool of Vladimir Putin, accompanied by a deluge of op-eds and think
pieces from all the usual
warmongering mass media narrative managers calling on so-called "moderates" to rally around
the former Vice President on Super Tuesday.
"Whatever the case for either Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren...neither is going to be
the nominee. And...it's not going to be Mike Bloomberg either. So it's Bernie Sanders or Joe
Biden." Tomorrow, if you live in one of 14 states, you can choose Biden. https://t.co/btuPbGtWxG
And the prediction markets have seen a massive surge for Biden and plunge for Bernie...
With Biden now surging into the lead
The only problem? Biden's brain is turning into sauerkraut.
There are two new clips of video footage making the rounds today, one featuring Biden at a
rally telling his supporters that tomorrow is "Super Thursday" ,
and another featuring the former VP saying (and this is a direct quote ),
"We hold these truths to be self-evident. All men and women created -- by the -- you know, you
know the thing."
And yeah, it's unpleasant to have to keep pointing this out. I'm not loving it myself. I
resent Biden's handlers and the Democratic Party establishment for making it necessary to
continually point out an old man's obvious symptoms of cognitive decline. But it does need to
be pointed to, and it's creepy and weird that they're continuing to prop up this crumbling husk
of a man while pretending that everything's fine.
Not that Biden would be an acceptable leader of the most powerful government on earth even
with a working brain; he's a horrible war hawk
with an
inexcusable track record of advancing right-wing policies. But even rank-and-file Americans
who don't pay attention to that stuff would plainly see a man on the debate stage opposite
Trump who shouldn't be permitted near heavy machinery, much less the nuclear codes. And Trump
will happily point that out.
It's been obvious since 2016 that the Dems were going to once again sabotage the only
candidate with a chance of beating Trump in favor of a scandalously inappropriate candidate,
but wheeling out an actual, literal dementia patient for the role is something not even I would
have imagined.
"... The Democrats did not want Adam Schiff to have to answer questions about the whistleblower, and they don't want the whistleblower's identity to be officially revealed. Such things do not contribute to the greatest cause of our time, the destruction of Donald Trump. ..."
"... The whole point of having the House impeachment investigation proceed from the House Intelligence Committee, headed by Adam Schiff, was to send the signal that Trump is unacceptable to the nefarious powers that make up the Deep State, especially the intelligence agencies, especially the CIA. ..."
"... What a world, then, when OP Democrats are cheering on John Bolton, hoping again for a savior to their sacred resistance cause, and meanwhile they aren't too excited about Rand Paul's intervention. For sure, it is a sign that a "resistance" isn't real when it needs a savior; it's not as if the French Resistance sat back waiting for Gen. de Gaulle. In any case, in the procession of horrible reactionary figures that Democrats have embraced, Bolton is probably the worst, and that's saying quite a lot. ..."
"... People are even talking about "getting used to accepting the help of the CIA with the impeachment," and the like. (I realize I'm being repetitious here, but this stuff blows my mind, it is so disturbing.) At least they are recognizing the reality -- at least partially; that's something. But then what they do with this recognition is something that requires epic levels of TDS -- and, somehow, a great deal of the Left is going down this path. ..."
"... The USA Deep State is a Five Eyes partner and as such Trump must be given the proverbial boot for being an uneducated boor lacking political gravitas & business gravitas with his narcissistic Smoot-Hawley II 2019 trade wars. Screw the confidence man-in-chief. He is a liability for the USA and global business. Trump is not an asset. ..."
"... Almost as a by product of his 2016 victory, Trump showed up the MSM hacks for what they were, lying, partisan shills utterly lacking in any integrity and credibility. The same applies to the intrigues and corruption of the Dirty Cops and Spookocracy. They had to come out from behind the curtain and reveal themselves as the dirty, lying, seditious, treasonous, rabid criminal scum they are. The true nature of the State standing in the spotlight for all the world to see. This cannot be undone. ..."
First , the whistleblower was ruled out as a possible witness -- this was
essentially done behind the scenes, and in reality can be called a Deep State operation, though
one exposed to some extent by Rand Paul. This has nothing to do with protecting the
whistleblower or upholding the whistleblower statute, but instead with the fact that the
whistleblower was a CIA plant in the White House.
That the whistleblower works for the CIA is a matter of public record, not some conspiracy
theory. Furthermore, for some time before the impeachment proceedings began, the whistleblower
had been coordinating his efforts to undermine Trump with the head of the House Intelligence
Committee, who happens to be Adam Schiff. It is possible that the connections with Schiff go
even further or deeper. Obviously the Democrats do not want these things exposed.
... ... ...
In this regard, there was a very special moment on January 29, when Chief Justice John
Roberts refused to allow the reading of a question from Sen. Rand Paul that identified the
alleged whistleblower. Paul then held a press conference in which he read his question.
The question was directed at Adam Schiff, who claims not to have communicated with the
whistleblower, despite much evidence to the contrary. (Further details can be read at
here
.) A propos of what I was just saying, Paul is described in the Politico article as
"a longtime antagonist of Republican leaders." Excellent, good on you, Rand Paul.
Whether this was a case of unintended consequences or not, one could say that this episode
fed into the case against calling witnesses -- certainly the Democrats should not have been
allowed to call witnesses if the Republicans could not call the whistleblower. But clearly this
point is completely lost on those working in terms of the moving line of bullshit.
One would think that Democrats would be happy with a Republican Senator who antagonizes
leaders of his own party, but of course Rand Paul's effort only led to further "outrage" on the
part of Democratic leaders in the House and Senate.
The Democrats did not want Adam Schiff to have to answer questions about the whistleblower,
and they don't want the whistleblower's identity to be officially revealed. Such things do not
contribute to the greatest cause of our time, the destruction of Donald Trump.
However, you see, there is a complementary purpose at work here, too. The whole point of
having the House impeachment investigation proceed from the House Intelligence Committee,
headed by Adam Schiff, was to send the signal that Trump is unacceptable to the nefarious
powers that make up the Deep State, especially the intelligence agencies, especially the
CIA.
The only way these machinations can be combatted is to pull the curtain back further -- but
the Republicans do not want this any more than the Democrats do, with a few possible exceptions
such as Rand Paul. (As the Politico article states, Paul was chastised publicly by McConnell
for submitting his question in the first place, and for criticizing Roberts in the press
conference.)
What a world, then, when OP Democrats are cheering on John Bolton, hoping again for a
savior to their sacred resistance cause, and meanwhile they aren't too excited about Rand
Paul's intervention. For sure, it is a sign that a "resistance" isn't real when it needs a
savior; it's not as if the French Resistance sat back waiting for Gen. de Gaulle. In any case,
in the procession of horrible reactionary figures that Democrats have embraced, Bolton is
probably the worst, and that's saying quite a lot.
... ... ...
Now we are at a moment when "the Left" is recognizing the role that the CIA and the rest of
the "intelligence community" is played in the impeachment nonsense. This "Left" was already on
board for the "impeachment process" itself, perhaps at moments with caveats about "not leaving
everything up to the Democrats," "not just relying on the Democrats," but still accepting their
assigned role as cheerleaders and self-important internet commentators. (And, sure, maybe
that's all I am, too -- but the inability to distinguish form from content is one of the main
problems of the existing Left.)
Now, though, people on the Left are trying to get comfortable with, and trying to explain to
themselves how they can get comfortable with, the obvious role of the "intelligence community"
(with, in my view, the CIA in the leading role, but of course I'm not privy to the inner
workings of this scene) in the impeachment process and other efforts to take down Trump's
presidency.
People are even talking about "getting used to accepting the help of the CIA with the
impeachment," and the like. (I realize I'm being repetitious here, but this stuff blows my
mind, it is so disturbing.) At least they are recognizing the reality -- at least partially;
that's something. But then what they do with this recognition is something that requires epic
levels of TDS -- and, somehow, a great deal of the Left is going down this path.
They might think about the "help" that the CIA gave to the military in Bolivia to remove Evo
Morales from office. They might think about the picture of Donald Trump that they find
necessary to paint to justify what they are willing to swallow to remove him from office. They
might think about the fact that ordinary Democrats are fine with this role for the CIA, and
that Adam Schiff and others routinely offer the criticism/condemnation of Donald Trump that he
doesn't accept the findings of the CIA or the rest of the intelligence agencies at face
value.
The moment for the Left, what calls itself and thinks of itself as that, to break with this
lunacy has passed some time ago, but let us take this moment, of "accepting the help of the
CIA, because Trump," as truly marking a point of no return.
MASTER OF UNIVE ,
The USA Deep State is a Five Eyes partner and as such Trump must be given the proverbial boot
for being an uneducated boor lacking political gravitas & business gravitas with his
narcissistic Smoot-Hawley II 2019 trade wars. Screw the confidence man-in-chief. He is a liability for the USA and global business. Trump is not an asset.
paul ,
Trump, Sanders and Corbyn were all in their own way agents of creative destruction.
Trump tapped into the popular discontent of millions of Americans who realised that the
system no longer even pretended to work in their interests, and were not prepared to be
diverted down the Identity Politics Rabbit Hole.
The Deep State was outraged that he had disrupted their programme by stealing Clinton's seat
in the game of Musical Chairs. Being the most corrupt, dishonest and mendacious political
candidate in all US history (despite some pretty stiff opposition) was supposed to be
outweighed by her having a vagina. The Deplorables failed to sign up for the programme.
Almost as a by product of his 2016 victory, Trump showed up the MSM hacks for what they were,
lying, partisan shills utterly lacking in any integrity and credibility. The same applies to
the intrigues and corruption of the Dirty Cops and Spookocracy. They had to come out from
behind the curtain and reveal themselves as the dirty, lying, seditious, treasonous, rabid
criminal scum they are. The true nature of the State standing in the spotlight for all the
world to see. This cannot be undone.
For all his pandering to Adelson and the Zionist Mafia, for all his Gives to Netanyahu, Trump
has failed to deliver on the Big Ticket Items. Syria was supposed to have been invaded by
now, with Hillary cackling demonically over Assad's death as she did over Gaddafi, and
rapidly moving on to the main event with Iran. They will not forgive him for this.
They realise they are under severe time pressure. It took them a century to gain their
stranglehold over America, and this is a wasting asset. America is in terminal decline, and
may soon be unable to fulfil its ordained role as dumb goy muscle serving Zionist interests.
And the parasite will find it difficult to find a replacement host.
George Mc ,
Haven't you just agreed with him here?
He thinks the left died in the 1960s, over a half century ago. It's pretty simple to
identify a leftist: anti-imperialist/ anti-capitalist. The Democrats are imperialists.
People who vote for the Democrats and Republicans are imperialists. This article is a
confused mess, that's my whole point;)
If the Democrats and Republicans (and those who vote for them) are imperialists (which they are) then the left are indeed
dead – at least as far as political representation goes.
Koba ,
He's sent more troops to Iraq and Afghanistan he staged several coups in Latin America and
wanted to take out the dprk and thier nukes and wants to bomb Iran! Winding down?!
sharon marlowe ,
First, an attempted assassination-by-drone on President Maduro of Venezuela happened. Then
Trump dropped the largest conventional bomb on Afghanistan, with a mile-wide radius. Then
Trump named Juan Guido as the new President of Venezuela in an overt coup. Then he bombed
Syria over a fake chemical weapons claim. He bombed it before even an investigation was
launched. Then the Trump regime orchestrated a military coup in Bolivia. Then he claimed that
he was pulling out of Syria, but instead sent U.S. troops to take over Syrian oil fields.
trump then assassinated Gen. Solemeni. Then he claimed that he will leave Iraq at the request
of the Iraqi government, the Iraqi government asked the U.S. to leave, and Trump rejected the
request. The Trump regime has tried orchestrating a coup in Iran, and a coup in Hong Kong. He
expelled Russian diplomats en masse for the Skripal incident in England, before an
investigation. He has sanctioned Russia, Iran, North Korea, China, and Venezuela. He has
bombed Yemen, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Those are the things I'm
aware of, but what else Trump has done in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, and South America you
can research if you wish. And now, the claim of leaving Afghanistan is as ridiculous as when
he claimed to be leaving Syria and Iraq.
Dungroanin ,
Yeah yeah and 'he' gave Maduro 7 days to let their kid takeover in Venezuela! And built a
wall. And got rid of obamacare and started a nuke war with Rocketman and and and ...
sharon marlowe ,
There were at least nine people killed when Trump bombed Douma.
Only a psychopath would kill people because one of its spy drones was shot down. You don't
get points for considering killing people for it and then changing your mind.
People should get over Hillary and pay attention to what Trump has been doing. Why even
mention what Hillary would have done in Syria, then proceed to be an apologist for what Trump
has done around the world in just three years? Trump has been quite a prolific imperialist in
such a short time. A second term could well put him above Bush and Obama as the 21st
century's most horrible leaders on earth.
Dungroanin ,
...If you think that the potus is the omnipotent ruler of everything he certainly seems to be
having some problems with his minions in the CIA, NSA, FBI..State Dept etc.
Savorywill ,
Yes, what you say is right. However, he did warn both the Syrian and Russian military of the
attack in the first instance, so no casualties, and in the second attack, he announced that
the missiles had been launched before they hit the target, again resulting in no casualties.
When the US drone was shot down by an Iranian missile, he considered retaliation. But, when
advised of likely casualties, he called it off saying that human lives are more valuable than
the cost of the drone. Yes, he did authorize the assassination of the Iranian general, and
that was very bad. His claims that the general had organized the placement of roadside bombs
that had killed US soldiers rings rather hollow, considering those shouldn't have been in
Iraq in the first place.
I am definitely not stating that he is perfect and doesn't do objectionable things. And he
has authorized US forces to control the oil wells, which is against international law, but at
least US soldiers are not actively engaged in fighting the Syrian government, something
Hillary set in motion. However, the military does comprise a huge percentage of the US
economy and there have to be reasons, and enemies, to justify its existence, so his situation
as president must be very difficult, not a job I would want, that is for sure.
The potus is best described (by Assad actually) as a CEO of a board of directors appointed
by the shareholders who collectively determine their OWN interests.
Your gaslighting ain't succeeding round here – Regime! So desperate, so so sad
🤣
"... In fact, Kuzmarov and Marciano say, Russia’s foreign policy in the Middle East, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe today reflects its perception of a threat from the United States and the NATO countries. For example, President George Herbert Walker Bush promised Mikhail Gorbachev, that NATO would not establish new military installations in Eastern Europe. With new NATO forward bases in Poland and the United States’ support of a coup in Ukraine, the Russians see the United States as having aggressive intent. From Russia’s vantage point United States threats to Soviet/Russian security have been a feature of East/West relations from the Russian Revolution, through the Cold War, to hostile relations with the United States in the twenty-first century. ..."
The Russians Are Coming, Again: The First Cold War as Tragedy, the Second as Farce
240 pp, $19 pbk, ISBN 978-1-58367-694-3
By Jeremy Kuzmarov and John Marciano
Reviewed by Harry Targ for Socialism and Democracy, vol. 33 (2019), no. 2
The primary purpose of this book is to challenge the popular view that Russia, led by Vladimir Putin, represents a challenge to
U.S. democracy much as the former Soviet Union was alleged to have been during the Cold War. The authors, taking The New York Times
as their prime source, argue that what is called Russiagate, a story about the nefarious use of computer hacking, spying, and bribing
and threatening to expose public figures, including President Trump, is being promoted day-after-day as the root cause of the outcome
of the 2016 election. In addition, they suggest that those who vigorously embrace the Russiagate explanation of the 2016 election
are claiming that Russia’s interference might be part of a longer-term Russian threat to American democracy. This is so because alleged
hackers spread misinformation about candidates and issues, thus distorting dialogue and debate.
The Russians Are Coming, Again: The First Cold War as Tragedy, the Second as Farce
The authors review the charges of subversion of the elections that have been “proven”, or so The New York Times claims. The “proof”
includes statements released by spokespersons from the FBI, the CIA and other national security agencies that Russian operatives,
agencies, and private institutions have hacked social media with “fake news” about candidates running for office (especially, Hillary
Clinton). Advocates of this view presume that such misinformation influenced the voter choices of the American electorate. These
are the same institutions that figured so prominently in presenting distorted views of a Soviet “threat” during the Cold War that
justified the arms race and massive U.S. military expenditures.
To illustrate the seriousness of the charges of the impact of Russia’s interference in the election they quote Thomas Friedman
who claimed that the Russian hacking of the election was “…a 9/11 scale event. …that goes to the very core of our democracy.” Along
with similar opinion pieces by Charles Blow, Timothy Snyder, and other columnists, news stories, Kuzmarov and Marciano say, have
been replete with similar claims. The New York Times narrative concludes that the hacking and interference in the U.S. election is
designed to promote victories of candidates for public office who would be sympathetic, and subservient to Russia. The long-range
goal of Russia, their stories suggest, is to promote Russian expansionism and its restoration to great power status.
After developing their critique of the Russiagate narrative, Kuzmarov and Marciano, make the case that United States foreign policy
since 1917 has been motivated by the desire to crush the Russian Revolution and limit the influence and power of the Soviet Union
in world affairs. The Russiagate narrative, they suggest, is primarily a continuation of the story each U.S. administration told
the American people about a “Soviet threat” to justify the escalation of the arms race and military spending. They argue that proponents
of the Russiagate scenario promote the idea of a new “Russian threat.”
In fact, Kuzmarov and Marciano say, Russia’s foreign policy in the Middle East, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe today reflects
its perception of a threat from the United States and the NATO countries. For example, President George Herbert Walker Bush promised
Mikhail Gorbachev, that NATO would not establish new military installations in Eastern Europe. With new NATO forward bases in Poland
and the United States’ support of a coup in Ukraine, the Russians see the United States as having aggressive intent. From Russia’s
vantage point United States threats to Soviet/Russian security have been a feature of East/West relations from the Russian Revolution,
through the Cold War, to hostile relations with the United States in the twenty-first century.
All too briefly, Kuzmarov and Marciano review the history of the root causes of the United States’ Cold War policy, the lies perpetrated
about the Soviet threat, and the enormous damage Cold War policies did to the American people and the victims of war around the world.
For those who have not lived through the Cold War and students who are not taught about alternative narratives to “American exceptionalism”
this brief volume is very useful. It draws upon the best of historical revisionist scholarship, including the works of William Appleman
Williams, Joyce and Gabriel Kolko, Gar Alperowitz, and Ellen Schrecker. It has chapters on the onset of the Cold War and its causes;
the attack by Cold War advocates on democracy; Truman, McCarthy, and anti-communism; and the war against the Global South. In sum,
the story begins with the substantial U.S. military intervention during the Russian civil war after the Bolshevik victory and continues
to Russiagate today.
The authors effectively develop their two main themes. First, they challenge the argument that Russia, led by Vladimir Putin,
represents a threat to U.S. democracy much as the former Soviet Union was alleged to have done during the Cold War. They argue that
the Russiagate narrative is fraudulent. Second, they briefly revisit the history of United States/Soviet/Russian relations to argue
that the one-hundred-year conflict between the two sides was largely caused by United States’ imperial policies and that proponents
of the Russiagate thesis seek to rekindle a new Cold War with Russia.
"... It is especially galling to see how the Hollywood Community has embraced the era of red-baiting Joseph McCarthy as the new standard for what is acceptable. There was a time that a few brave souls in Hollywood (I am thinking Lucille Ball, Kirk Douglas and Gregory Peck), spoke out against the blacklisting of actors, writers and directors for their past political ties to the Soviet Union. ..."
"... This was an ugly, awful and evil time in America. It was a period of time fed by fear and ignorance. While it is true that there were Americans who identified as Communists and embraced the politics of the Soviet Union, we scared ourselves into believing that communist subversion was everywhere and that America was teetering on the brink of being submerged in a red tide. ..."
"... Hillary Clinton's crazy rant accusing U.S. Army Major and Member of Congress, Tulsi Gabbard, as a Kremlin puppet is not a deviation from the norm. Clinton exemplifies the terrifying norm of the political and cultural elite in this country. Accusing political opponents of being controlled by foreign enemies, real or imagined, is an old political tactic. Makes me wonder what Edward R. Murrow or Dalton Trumbo would say if we could bring them back from the dead. ..."
"... "Hillary Clinton's crazy rant accusing U.S. Army Major and Member of Congress, Tulsi Gabbard, as a Kremlin puppet is not a deviation from the norm." ..."
"... Ms. President is the closest facsimile to Lady Macbeth that American politics has been able to produce. She'd have murdered her own husband if she had thought succession would have fallen to her. As it was, the only thing that kept him alive was that she needed him for the run she had in mind for herself. The debris that this woman has left in her wake boggles the mind. That she came within a whisker of the job where she would perhaps have left the country in that debris field is a sobering thought to think about what American presidential politics has become in the 21st c. Alas, what passes for her failure and the Country's good fortune, her loved ones in the Arts are still not over. And so they are left commiserating and caterwauling over the Donald this, and the Donald that, while all this good material and their celebrity goes down the tube. Good riddance to them both. ..."
"... Trump campaigned on Drain the Swamp in 2016. The Swamp attempted to take him down with the Russia Collusion hoax that included Spygate and the Mueller special counsel investigation. ..."
In the wake of the latest Hollywood buffoonery displayed at the Oscars, I think it is time for the American public to denounce
in the strongest possible terms the rampant hypocrisy of sanctimonious cretins who make their living pretending to be someone other
than themselves. Brad Pitt, Joaquin Phoenix and Barbara Streisand pop to mind as representative examples. All three are eager to
lecture the American public on the need for equality and non-discrimination. Yet, not one of the recipients of the
Oscar
gift bags worth $225,000 spoke out against that extraordinary excess nor demanded that the money spent purchasing these "gifts"
be used to benefit the poor and the homeless. Nope, take the money and run.
It is especially galling to see how the Hollywood Community has embraced the era of red-baiting Joseph McCarthy as the new
standard for what is acceptable. There was a time that a few brave souls in Hollywood (I am thinking Lucille Ball, Kirk Douglas and
Gregory Peck), spoke out against the blacklisting of actors, writers and directors for their past political ties to the Soviet Union.
Now I have lived long enough to see the so-called liberals in Hollywood rail against Donald Trump and his supporters as "agents
of Russia." Many in Hollywood, who weep crocodile tears over the abuses of the Hollywood Blacklist, are now doing the same damn thing
without a hint of irony.
If you are a film buff (and I consider myself one) you should be familiar with these great movies that remind the viewer of the
horrors visited upon actors, writers and directors during the Hollywood Blacklist:
The Front -- a 1976 comedy-drama film set against the Hollywood blacklist in the 1950s. It was written by Walter Bernstein,
directed by Martin Ritt, and stars Woody Allen and Zero Mostel.
Good Night, and Good Luck -- a 2005 historical drama film directed by George Clooney, tells the story of Edward R.
Murrow fighting back against the hysterical red-baiting of Senator Joseph McCarthy.
Trumbo -- a 2015 American biographical drama film directed by Jay Roach that follows the life of Hollywood screenwriter
Dalton Trumbo, who was blacklisted but continued to write award winning movies in alias (e.g. Spartacus).
This was an ugly, awful and evil time in America. It was a period of time fed by fear and ignorance. While it is true that
there were Americans who identified as Communists and embraced the politics of the Soviet Union, we scared ourselves into believing
that communist subversion was everywhere and that America was teetering on the brink of being submerged in a red tide.
Thirty years ago I reflected on this era and wondered how such mass hysteria could happen. Now I know. We have lived with the
same kind of madness since Donald Trump was tagged as a Russian agent in the summer of 2016. And the irony is extraordinary. The
very same Hollywood elite that heaped opprobrium on Director Elia Kazan for naming names in Hollywood in front of the House UnAmerican
Activities Committee, are now leading the charge in labeling anyone who dares speak out against the failed coup as "stooges" of the
Kremlin or Putin.
Hillary Clinton's crazy rant accusing U.S. Army Major and Member of Congress, Tulsi Gabbard, as a Kremlin puppet is not a
deviation from the norm. Clinton exemplifies the terrifying norm of the political and cultural elite in this country. Accusing political
opponents of being controlled by foreign enemies, real or imagined, is an old political tactic. Makes me wonder what Edward R. Murrow
or Dalton Trumbo would say if we could bring them back from the dead.
Trump Derangement Syndrome is a vast understatement. You never could have convinced me 4 years ago that virtually all of my liberal
friends would have completely lost touch with reality due to their visceral hatred of one man.
It no longer matters if you agree with people on social policy, entitlements, student loans, homelessness, drug addiction or
even wealth distribution.
If you do not share their irrational hatred of Trump, you're going to be lambasted, shunned and treated like a pariah.
Hillary Clinton has become the poster child for the corruption that has captured and paralyzed our political parties and government
institutions. Why is she above prosecution? Is the corruption complete? Can we look to any individual or group to restore our
Republic? Wake me when the prosecutions begin.
"Hillary Clinton's crazy rant accusing U.S. Army Major and Member of Congress, Tulsi Gabbard, as a Kremlin puppet is not
a deviation from the norm."
Ms. President is the closest facsimile to Lady Macbeth that American politics has been able to produce. She'd have murdered
her own husband if she had thought succession would have fallen to her. As it was, the only thing that kept him alive was that
she needed him for the run she had in mind for herself. The debris that this woman has left in her wake boggles the mind. That
she came within a whisker of the job where she would perhaps have left the country in that debris field is a sobering thought
to think about what American presidential politics has become in the 21st c. Alas, what passes for her failure and the Country's
good fortune, her loved ones in the Arts are still not over. And so they are left commiserating and caterwauling over the Donald
this, and the Donald that, while all this good material and their celebrity goes down the tube. Good riddance to them both.
I agree that HUAC's conduct was excessive but you really ought to show the other side of the coin as well.
Communism was genuinely awful. To this day we don't know how many people died, murdered by their own governments, in Soviet
Russia and Communist China.
The U. S. government was infiltrated at the very pinnacle of government (as in presidential advisors) by Soviet agents.
We know this from Kremlin documents.
We now know (based on Kremlin documents) that the American Communist Party was run by knowing Soviet agents and was funded
by the Soviet Union.
The motion picture industry had been heavily infiltrated by Communists including some actual Soviet agents (while Reagan
was head of SAG he rooted them out).
We resolved those issues the wrong way but they desperately needed to be resolved.
This is self-righteous baby boomer nonsense. It was a brief and slightly uncomfortable time for a handful of people in Hollywood,
after which the subversion of American culture and institutions chugged along merrily along to the present day.
But this episode has been re-purposed and often reduced to caricature as part of a long ideological project aimed at convincing
generations of otherwise intelligent white people that their past is a shameful parade of villains.
Kirk Douglas bravely defied the blacklist by giving Dalton Trumbo credit on Spartacus under his real name, effectively breaking
the blacklist.
I saw part of the Academy Awards and all I heard over and over again were the words race and gender, no female directors nominated.
On a side note, this being Black History month, teevee is usually filled with the appropriate programing. But because it is
the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Aushwitz the Jews are stealing the Blacks thunder by hogging the programming. When the
oppressed collide.
Just how big is the carbon footprint on a $225,000 swag bag? So nice to see Hollywood integrity in action. I wonder what the Bernie
Tax will be on them in 2021?
Chills run down my spine that you start your list with 'The Front'.
Woody Allen's 'The Front', a 'film noir' about the beast and about courage in trying to slay it, is an absolute masterpiece,
its end is unmeasurably spectacular and encouraging, and... somehow the movie never got the acclaim it deserves, and lives as
one of those quiet orphans.
But it is highly actual, and that is why you must have come to place it first.
Trump campaigned on Drain the Swamp in 2016. The Swamp attempted to take him down with the Russia Collusion hoax that included
Spygate and the Mueller special counsel investigation.
Rep. Devin Nunes uncovered many of the shenanigans while he investigated the claims of Russian interference in the 2016 election.
He implored Trump to use his prerogative as POTUS to declassify many documents and communications. Trump instead took the advice
of Rod Rosenstein acting as AG who initiated the Mueller investigation and did not declassify. He then passed the buck to AG Barr,
who has yet to declassify.
The question that needs to be asked in light of this: Is Trump a conman who has duped the electorate with Drain the Swamp as
he has not used his exclusive powers of classification to present to the voter all the documents and communications about the
actions of law enforcement and intelligence agencies relating to claims about Russian influence operations during the 2016 election?
Blue Peacock, the question that needs to be asked is do you blow your wad all at once on one play. Or do you drip, drip, drip
it out strategically. I suggest the latter in this endless game of gotcha politics. Yes, Trump is a con man. That is how he made
his billions - selling sizzle. One quality that does translate well into the political arena. No one is surprised - his life has
been on the front pages for decades.
The only newly revealed quality that I find remarkable is his remarkable staying power - the most welcome quality of all. It
takes ego maniacs to play this game. Surprised anyone still thinks politics is an avocation for normal people. It isn't. And we
the people are the ones that demand this to be the case.
I left the american sh*thole a long time ago and my choice never felt better. I look forward to seeing 50% of americans trying
to slaughter the other 50% over socialism. Here we're doing just fine with socialist medecine, and social programs for just about
everyting. The Commons are still viable where common sense resides... Oligarchs love cartels, socialism and piratization: it's
all about privatizing the gains and socializing the losses to the hoi polloi.
I wonder if Hollywood knows how small some of the audiences in actual movie theaters are now. It's always surprising to me that
I am sitting in almost empty theaters now when I decide I want actual movie theater popcorn and so will pay to watch a movie that
I have read about and heard about from friends who have already seen the movie. I don't attend unless I've heard good things from
my friends about the movie.
I am constantly surprised that some people even consider watching the Oscars now. I feel the same about professional sports.
You would be surprised at how good high school plays are and how good high school bands, orchestras, choirs are. The tickets
are cheap, and a person actually gets to greet the performers.
I feel the same about my local university (my Alma Mater). It's Performing Arts departments are excellent. As a student long
ago, my student pass allowed me to attend wonderful performances.
The Glory Days of Hollywood are no more. The actors and directors need to be humbled by having to go to towns across the country
to see how sparse the audience in a movie theater is now. It's not at all as I remember as a child when there were long lines
at the ticket window.
"... the American-led takedown of the post-World War II international system has shattered long-standing rules and norms of behavior. ..."
"... The combination of disorder at home and abroad is spawning changes that are increasingly disadvantageous to the United States. With Congress having essentially walked off the job, there is a need for America's universities to provide the information and analysis of international best practices that the political system does not. ..."
I think this would be very informative for anybody seriously interested in the USA foreign
policy. Listening to him is so sad to realize that instead of person of his caliber we have
Pompous Pompeo, who forever is frozen on the level of a tank repair mechanical engineer, as
the Secretary of State.
Published on Feb 24, 2020
In the United States and other democracies, political and economic systems still work in
theory, but not in practice. Meanwhile, the American-led takedown of the post-World War II
international system has shattered long-standing rules and norms of behavior.
The combination of disorder at home and abroad is spawning changes that are increasingly
disadvantageous to the United States. With Congress having essentially walked off the job,
there is a need for America's universities to provide the information and analysis of
international best practices that the political system does not.
Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr. is a senior fellow at Brown University's Watson
Institute for International and Public Affairs, a former U.S. Assistant Secretary of
Defense, ambassador to Saudi Arabia (during operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm),
acting Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, and Chargé d'affaires at
both Bangkok and Beijing. He began his diplomatic career in India but specialized in
Chinese affairs. (He was the principal American interpreter during President Nixon's visit
to Beijing in 1972.)
Ambassador Freeman is a much sought-after public speaker (see http://chasfreeman.net ) and the author of several
well-received books on statecraft and diplomacy. His most recent book, America's Continuing
Misadventures in the Middle East was published in May 2016. Interesting Times: China,
America, and the Shifting Balance of Prestige, appeared in March 2013. America's
Misadventures in the Middle East came out in 2010, as did the most recent revision of The
Diplomat's Dictionary, the companion volume to Arts of Power: Statecraft and Diplomacy. He
was the editor of the Encyclopedia Britannica entry on "diplomacy."
Chas Freeman studied at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and in
Taiwan, and earned an AB magna cum laude from Yale University as well as a JD from the
Harvard Law School.
He chairs Projects International, Inc., a Washington-based firm that for more than three
decades has helped its American and foreign clients create ventures across borders,
facilitating their establishment of new businesses through the design, negotiation,
capitalization, and implementation of greenfield investments, mergers and acquisitions,
joint ventures, franchises, one-off transactions, sales and agencies in other
countries.
He is the author of several books including the most recent
Interesting times: China, America, and the shifting balance of prestige
(2013)
"... "Bolton is a longtime member of the failed Washington elite that Trump vowed to oppose, hell-bent on repeating virtually every foreign policy mistake the U.S. has made in the last 15 years - particularly those Trump promised to avoid as president," ..."
"... "It's important that someone who was an unrepentant advocate for the Iraq War, who didn't learn the lessons of the Iraq War, shouldn't be the secretary of state for a president who says Iraq was ..."
Senator Rand Paul said Tuesday in an
op-ed for Rare
that he would oppose President-elect Donald Trump's rumored selection of former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton as Secretary of State.
"Bolton is a longtime member of the failed Washington elite that Trump vowed to oppose, hell-bent on repeating virtually
every foreign policy mistake the U.S. has made in the last 15 years - particularly those Trump promised to avoid as president,"
Paul wrote citing U.S. interventions in Iraq and Libya that Trump has criticized but that Bolton strongly advocated.
Reports since have indicated that former New York City mayor and loyal Trump ally, Rudy Giuliani is being considered for the post.
The Washington Post's David Weigel
reports , "Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), a newly reelected member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said this morning that
he was inclined to oppose either former U.N. ambassador John Bolton or former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani if they were nominated
for secretary of state."
"It's important that someone who was an unrepentant advocate for the Iraq War, who didn't learn the lessons of the Iraq
War, shouldn't be the secretary of state for a president who says Iraq was a big lesson," Paul told the Post. "Trump
said that a thousand times. It would be a huge mistake for him to give over his foreign policy to someone who [supported the war].
I mean, you could not find more unrepentant advocates of regime change."
"... I would suggest amending this to: Official D policy: "no candidate who intends to govern in the interest of the entirety of the citizenry should seek the nomination of this Party" ..."
I would suggest amending this to: Official D policy: "no candidate who intends to govern
in the interest of the entirety of the citizenry should seek the nomination of this
Party"
"... Due to the non-stop action in Washington of late, few believe that the present state of affairs between the Democrats and Donald Trump are exclusively due to a telephone call between the US leader and the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. That is only scratching the surface of a story that is practically boundless. ..."
"... In March 2016, the DOJ found that "the FBI had been employing outside contractors who had access to raw Section 702 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) data, and retained that access after their work for the FBI was completed," as Jeff Carlson reported in The Epoch Times. ..."
"... That sort of foreign access to sensitive data is highly improper and was the result of "deliberate decision-making," according to the findings of an April 2017 FISA court ruling ( footnote 69 ). ..."
"... On April 18, 2016, then-National Security Agency (NSA) Director Adm. Mike Rogers directed the NSA's Office of Compliance to terminate all FBI outside-contractor access. Later, on Oct. 21, 2016, the FBI and the DOJ's National Security Division (NSD), and despite they were aware of Rogers's actions, moved ahead anyways with a request for a FISA warrant to conduct surveillance on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. The request was approved by the FISA court, which, apparently, was still in the dark about the violations. ..."
"... Now James Comey is back in the spotlight as one of the main characters in the Barr-Durham investigation, which is examining largely out of the spotlight the origins of the Trump-Russia conspiracy theory that dogged the White House for four long years. ..."
In the time-honored tradition of Machiavellian statecraft, all of the charges being leveled against Donald Trump to remove him
from office – namely, 'abuse of power' and 'obstruction of congress' –are essentially the same things the Democratic Party has been
guilty of for nearly half a decade : abusing their powers in a non-stop attack on the executive branch. Is the reason because they
desperately need a 'get out of jail free' card?
Due to the non-stop action in Washington of late, few believe that the present state of affairs between the Democrats and Donald
Trump are exclusively due to a telephone call between the US leader and the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. That is only
scratching the surface of a story that is practically boundless.
Back in April 2016, before Trump had become the Republican presidential nominee, talk of impeachment was already in the air.
"Donald Trump isn't even the Republican nominee yet,"
wrote Darren Samuelsohn in Politico. Yet impeachment, he noted, is "already on the lips of pundits, newspaper editorials, constitutional scholars, and even a few
members of Congress."
The timing of Samuelsohn's article is not a little astonishing given what the Department of Justice (DOJ) had discovered just
one month earlier.
In March 2016, the DOJ found that "the FBI had been employing outside contractors who had access to raw Section 702 Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act (FISA) data, and retained that access after their work for the FBI was completed," as Jeff Carlson
reported in The Epoch Times.
That sort of foreign access to sensitive data is highly improper and was the result of "deliberate decision-making," according
to the findings of an April 2017 FISA court ruling (
footnote
69 ).
On April 18, 2016, then-National Security Agency (NSA) Director Adm. Mike Rogers directed the NSA's Office of Compliance to terminate
all FBI outside-contractor access. Later, on Oct. 21, 2016, the FBI and the DOJ's National Security Division (NSD), and despite they
were aware of Rogers's actions, moved ahead anyways with a request for a FISA warrant to conduct surveillance on Trump campaign adviser
Carter Page. The request was approved by the FISA court, which, apparently, was still in the dark about the violations.
On Oct. 26, following approval of the warrant against Page, Rogers went to the FISA court to inform them of the FBI's non-compliance
with the rules. Was it just a coincidence that at exactly this time, the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and Defense
Secretary Ashton B. Carter were suddenly
calling for Roger's removal? The request was eventually rejected. The next month, in mid-November 2016 Rogers, without first
notifying his superiors, flew to New York where he had a private meeting with Trump at Trump Towers.
According to the New York Times,
the meeting – the details of which were never publicly divulged, but may be guessed at – "caused consternation at senior levels
of the administration."
Democratic obstruction of justice?
Then CIA Director John Brennan, dismayed about a few meetings Trump officials had with the Russians, helped to kick-start the
FBI investigation over 'Russian collusion.' Notably, these Trump-Russia meetings occurred in December 2016, as the incoming administration
was in the difficult transition period to enter the White House. The Democrats made sure they made that transition as ugly as possible.
Although it is perfectly normal for an incoming government to meet with foreign heads of state at this critical juncture, a meeting
at Trump Tower between Michael Flynn, Trump's incoming national security adviser and former Russian Ambassador to the US, Sergey
Kislyak, was portrayed as some kind of cloak and dagger scene borrowed from a John le Carré thriller.
Brennan questioning the motives behind high-level meetings between the Trump team and some Russians is strange given that the
lame duck Obama administration was in the process of redialing US-Russia relations back to the Cold War days, all based on the debunked
claim that Moscow handed Trump the White House on a silver platter.
In late December 2016, after Trump had already won the election, Obama slapped Russia with punitive sanctions,
expelled
35 Russian diplomats and closed down two Russian facilities. Since part of Trump's campaign platform was to mend relations with
Moscow, would it not seem logical that the incoming administration would be in damage-control, doing whatever necessary to prevent
relations between the world's premier nuclear powers from degrading even more?
So if it wasn't 'Russian collusion' that motivated the Democrats into action, what was it?
From Benghazi to Seth Rich
Here we must pause and remind ourselves about the unenviable situation regarding Hillary Clinton, the Secretary of State, who
was being grilled daily over her use of a private computer to
communicate
sensitive documents via email. In all likelihood, the incident would have dropped from the radar had it not been for the deadly
2012 Benghazi attacks on a US compound.
In the course of a House Select Committee investigation into the circumstances surrounding the attacks, which resulted in the
death of US Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other US personnel, Clinton handed over some 30,000 emails, while reportedly deleting
32,000 deemed to be of a "personal nature". Those emails remain unaccounted for to this day.
I want the public to see my email. I asked State to release them. They said they will review them for release as soon as possible.
By March 2015, even the traditionally tepid media was baring its baby fangs, relentlessly
pursuing Clinton over the email question. Since Clinton never made a secret of her presidential ambitions, even political allies
were piling on. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), for example,
said it's time for Clinton "to step up" and explain herself, adding that "silence is going to hurt her."
On July 24, 2015, The New York Times
published a front-page story with the headline "Criminal Inquiry Sought in Clinton's Use of Email." Later, Jennifer Rubin of
the Washington Post candidly
summed up Clinton's rapidly deteriorating status with elections fast approaching: "Democrats still show no sign they are willing
to abandon Clinton. Instead, they seem to be heading into the 2016 election with a deeply flawed candidate schlepping around plenty
of baggage -- the details of which are not yet known."
Moving into 2016, things began to look increasingly complicated for the Democratic front-runner. On March 16, 2016, WikiLeaks
launched a searchable archive for over 30 thousand emails and attachments sent to and from Hillary Clinton's private email server
while she was Secretary of State. The 50,547-page treasure trove spans the dates from June 30, 2010 to August 12, 2014.
In May, about one month after Clinton had officially announced her candidacy for the US presidency, the State Department's inspector
general released an 83-page report that was highly critical of Clinton's email practices, concluding that Clinton failed to seek
legal approval for her use of a private server.
"At a minimum," the report determined, "Secretary Clinton should have surrendered all emails dealing with Department business
before leaving government service and, because she did not do so, she did not comply with the Department's policies that were implemented
in accordance with the Federal Records Act."
The following month brought more bad news for Clinton and her presidential hopes after it was
reported that her husband, former President Bill Clinton, had a 30-minute tęte-ŕ-tęte with Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch,
whose department was leading the Clinton investigations, on the tarmac at Phoenix International Airport. Lynch said Clinton decided
to pay her an impromptu visit where the two discussed "his grandchildren and his travels and things like that." Republicans, however,
certainly weren't buying the story as the encounter came as the FBI was preparing to file its recommendation to the Justice Department.
The summer of 2016, however, was just heating up.
I take @LorettaLynch &
@billclinton at their word that their convo
in Phoenix didn't touch on probe. But foolish to create such optics.
On the early morning of July 10, Seth Rich, the director of voter expansion for the Democratic National Committee (DNC), was gunned
down on the street in the Bloomingdale neighborhood of Washington, DC. Rich's murder, said to be the result of a botched robbery,
bucked the homicide trend in the area for that particular period; murders rates
for the first six months of 2016 were down about 50 percent from the same period in the previous year.
In any case, the story gets much stranger. Just five days earlier, on July 5th, the computers at the DNC were compromised, purportedly
by an online persona with the moniker "Guccifer 2.0" at the behest of Russian intelligence. This is where the story of "Russian hacking"
first gained popularity. Not everyone, however, was buying the explanation.
In July 2017, a group of former U.S. intelligence officers, including NSA specialists, who call themselves Veteran Intelligence
Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) sent a memo to President Trump that challenged a January intelligence assessment that expressed "high
confidence" that the Russians had organized an "influence campaign" to harm Hillary Clinton's "electability," as if she wasn't capable
of that without Kremlin support.
"Forensic studies of 'Russian hacking' into Democratic National Committee computers last year reveal that on July 5, 2016, data
was leaked (not hacked) by a person with physical access to DNC computer," the memo states (The memo's conclusions were based on
analyses of metadata provided by the online persona Guccifer 2.0, who took credit for the alleged hack). "Key among the findings
of the independent forensic investigations is the conclusion that the DNC data was copied onto a storage device at a speed that far
exceeds an Internet capability for a remote hack."
In other words, according to VIPS, the compromise of the DNC computers was the result of an internal leak, not an external hack.
At this point, however, it needs mentioned that the VIPS memo has sparked dissenting views among its members. Several analysts
within the group have spoken out against its findings, and that internal debate can be read
here . Thus, it would
seem there is no 'smoking gun,' as of yet, to prove that the DNC was not hacked by an external entity. At the same time, the murder
of Seth Rich continues to remain an unsolved "botched robbery," according to investigators. Meanwhile, the one person who may hold
the key to the mystery, Julian Assange, is said to be withering away Belmarsh Prison, a high-security London jail, where he is awaiting
a February court hearing that will decide whether he will be extradited to the United States where he 18 charges.
Here is a question to ponder: If you were Julian Assange, and you knew you were going to be extradited to the United States, who
would you rather be the sitting president in charge of your fate, Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump? Think twice before answering.
"Because you'd be in jail"
On October 9, 2016, in the second televised presidential debates between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, Trump
accused his Democratic opponent of deleting 33,000 emails,
while adding that he would get a "special prosecutor and we're going to look into it " To this, Clinton said "it's just awfully good
that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law in our country," to which Trump deadpanned, without
missing a beat, "because you'd be in jail."
Now if that remark didn't get the attention of high-ranking Democratic officials, perhaps Trump's comments at a Virginia rally
days later, when he promised to "drain the swamp," made folks sit up and take notice.
At this point the leaks, hacks and everything in between were already coming fast and furious. On October 7, John Podesta, Clinton's
presidential campaign manager, had his personal Gmail account hacked, thereby releasing a torrent of inside secrets, including how
Donna Brazile, then a CNN commentator, had fed Clinton debate questions. But of course the crimes did not matter to the mendacious
media, only the identity of the alleged messenger, which of course was 'Russia.'
By now, the only thing more incredible than the dirt being produced on Clinton was the fact that she was still in the presidential
race, and even slated to win by a wide margin. But perhaps her biggest setback came when authorities, investigating
Anthony Weiner's abused laptop into illicit text messages he sent to a 15-year-old girl, stumbled upon thousands of email messages
from Hillary Clinton.
Now Comey had to backpedal on his conclusion in July that although Clinton was "extremely careless" in her use of her electronic
devices, no criminal charges would be forthcoming. He announced an 11th hour investigation, just days before the election. Although
Clinton was also cleared in this case, observers never forgave Comey for his actions,
arguing they cost Clinton the White House.
Now James Comey is back in the spotlight as one of the main characters in the Barr-Durham investigation, which is examining largely
out of the spotlight the origins of the Trump-Russia conspiracy theory that dogged the White House for four long years.
In early December, Justice Department's independent inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz,
released the 400-page IG report
that revealed a long list of omissions, mistakes and inconsistencies in the FBI's applications for FISA warrants to conduct surveillance
on Carter Page. Although the report was damning, both Barr and Durham noted it did not go far enough because Horowitz did not have
the access that Durham has to intelligence agency sources, as well as overseas contacts that Barr provided to him.
With AG report due for release in early spring, needless to say some Democrats are very nervous as to its finding. So nervous,
in fact, that they might just be willing to go to the extreme of removing a sitting president to avoid its conclusions.
Whatever the verdict, 2020 promises to be one very interesting year.
"... The Russiagate investigation, which had formerly focused against the current US President, has reversed direction and now targets the prior President. ..."
"... In order to appreciate the seriousness of that misconduct and its implications, it is useful to understand certain procedural and substantive requirements that apply to the government's conduct of electronic surveillance for foreign intelligence purposes. Title I of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA ), codified as amended at 50 USC. 1801-1813, governs such electronic surveillance. It requires the government to apply for and receive an order from the FISC approving a proposed electronic surveillance. When deciding whether to grant such an application, a FISC judge must determine among other things, whether it provides probable cause to believe that the proposed surveillance target is a "foreign power" or an agent a foreign power. ..."
"... The government has a heightened duty of candor to the FISC in ex parte proceedings, that is, ones in which the government does not face an adverse party, such as proceedings on electronic surveillance applications. The FISC expects the government to comply with its heightened duty of candor in ex parte proceedings at all times. Candor is fundamental to this Court's effective operation. ..."
"... On December 9, 2019, the government filed, with the FISC, public and classified versions of the OIG Report. It documents troubling instances in which FBI personnel provided information to NSD ..."
"... which was unsupported or contradicted by information in their possession. It also describes several instances in which FBI personnel withheld from NSD information in their possession which was detrimental to their case for believing that Mr. ..."
"... Page was acting as an agent of a foreign power. ..."
"... MACCALLUM: Were you surprised that he ..."
"... seemed to give himself such a distance from the entire operation? ..."
"... "JAMES COMEY: As the director sitting on top of an organization of 38,000 people you can't run an investigation that's seven layers below you. You have to leave it to the career professionals to do." ..."
"... MACCALLUM: Do you believe that? ..."
"... BARR: No, I think that the -- one of the problems with what happened was precisely that they pulled the investigation up to the executive floors, and it was run and bird dogged by a very small group of very high level officials. And the idea that this was seven layers below him is simply not true. ..."
"... Allegedly, George Papadopoulos said that "Halper insinuated to him that Russia was helping the Trump campaign" , and Papadopoulos was shocked at Halper's saying this. Probably because so much money at the Pentagon is untraceable, some of the crucial documentation on this investigation might never be found. For example, the Defense Department's Inspector General's 2 July 2019 report to the US Senate said "ONA personnel could not provide us any evidence that Professor Halper visited any of these locations, established an advisory group, or met with any of the specific people listed in the statement of work." ..."
"... very profitable business ..."
"... Schultz and other members of the DNC staff had exercised bias against Bernie Sanders and in favor of Hillary Clinton during the 2016 Democratic primaries -- which favoritism had been the reason why Obama had appointed Shultz to that post to begin with. She was just doing her job for the person who had chosen her to lead the DNC. Likewise for Comey. In other words: Comey was Obama's pick to protect Clinton, and to oppose Trump (who had attacked both Clinton and Obama). ..."
"... Nowadays, Obama is telling the Party's billionaires that Elizabeth Warren would be good for them , but not that Sanders would -- he never liked Sanders. ..."
"... and, so, Trump now will be gunning against Obama ..."
"... Whatever the outcome will be, it will be historic, and unprecedented. (If Sanders becomes the nominee, it will be even more so; and, if he then wins on November 3rd, it will be a second American Revolution; but, this time, a peaceful one -- if that's even possible, in today's hyper-partisan, deeply split, USA.) ..."
"... There is no way that the outcome from this will be status-quo. Either it will be greatly increased further schism in the United States, or it will be a fundamental political realignment, more comparable to 1860 than to anything since. ..."
"... Reform is no longer an available option, given America's realities. A far bigger leap than that will be required in order for this country to avoid falling into an utter abyss, which could be led by either Party, because both Parties have brought the nation to its present precipice, the dark and lightless chasm that it now faces, and which must now become leapt, in order to avoid a free-fall into oblivion. ..."
"... The problem in America isn't either Obama or Trump; it's neither merely the Democratic Party, nor merely the Republican Party; it is instead both; it is the Deep State . ..."
Former US President
Barack Obama is now in severe legal jeopardy, because the Russiagate investigation has turned
180 degrees; and he, instead of the current President, Donald Trump, is in its cross-hairs.
The biggest crime that a US President can commit is to try to defeat American democracy (the
Constitutional functioning of the US Government) itself, either by working with foreign powers
to take it over, or else by working internally within America to sabotage democracy for his or
her own personal reasons. Either way, it's treason (crime that is intended to, and does,
endanger the continued functioning of the Constitution itself*), and Mr. Obama is now being
actively investigated, as possibly having done this.
The Russiagate investigation, which had
formerly focused against the current US President, has reversed direction and now targets the
prior President. Although he, of course, cannot be removed from office (since he is no longer
in office), he is liable under criminal laws, the same as any other American would be, if he
committed any crime while he was in office.
A
December 17th order by the FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) Court severely
condemned the performance by the FBI under Obama, for having obtained, on 19 October 2016 (even prior to the US Presidential
election), from that Court, under false pretenses, an authorization for the FBI to commence
investigating Donald Trump's Presidential campaign, as being possibly in collusion with
Russia's Government. The Court's ruling said:
In order to appreciate the seriousness of that misconduct and its implications, it is
useful to understand certain procedural and substantive requirements that apply to the
government's conduct of electronic surveillance for foreign intelligence purposes. Title I of
the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA ), codified as amended at 50 USC. 1801-1813,
governs such electronic surveillance. It requires the government to apply for and receive an
order from the FISC approving a proposed electronic surveillance. When deciding whether to
grant such an application, a FISC judge must determine among other things, whether it
provides probable cause to believe that the proposed surveillance target is a "foreign power"
or an agent a foreign power.
The government has a heightened duty of candor to the FISC in ex parte proceedings, that
is, ones in which the government does not face an adverse party, such as proceedings on
electronic surveillance applications. The FISC expects the government to comply with its
heightened duty of candor in ex parte proceedings at all times. Candor is fundamental to this
Court's effective operation.
On December 9, 2019, the government filed, with the FISC, public and classified versions
of the OIG Report. It documents troubling instances in which FBI personnel provided information
to NSD [National Security Division of the Department of Justice] which was unsupported
or contradicted by information in their possession. It also describes several instances in
which FBI personnel withheld from NSD information in their possession which was detrimental to
their case for believing that Mr. [Carter] Page was acting as an agent of a foreign
power.
On December 18th, Martha McCallum, of Fox News,
interviewed US Attorney General Bill Barr , and asked him (at 7:00 in the video
) how high up in the FBI the blame for this (possible treason) goes:
MACCALLUM: Were you surprised that he [Obama's FBI Director James Comey]
seemed to give himself such a distance from the entire operation?
"JAMES COMEY: As the director sitting on top of an organization of 38,000 people you
can't run an investigation that's seven layers below you. You have to leave it to the career
professionals to do."
MACCALLUM: Do you believe that?
BARR: No, I think that the -- one of the problems with what happened was precisely
that they pulled the investigation up to the executive floors, and it was run and bird dogged
by a very small group of very high level officials. And the idea that this was seven layers
below him is simply not true.
The current (Trump) A.G. there called the former (Obama) FBI Director a liar on that.
If Comey gets heat for this possibly lie-based FBI investigation of the US Presidential
nominee from the opposite Party of the sitting US President (Comey's own boss, Obama), then
protecting himself could become Comey's top motivation; and, in that condition, protecting his
former boss might become only a secondary concern for him.
Though Halper actually did no such studies for the Pentagon,
he instead functioned as a paid FBI informant (and it's not yet clear whether that money came
from the Pentagon, which spends
trillions of dollars that are off-the-books and untraceable ), and at some point Trump's
campaign became a target of Halper's investigation. This investigation was nominally to examine
"The Russia-China Relationship: The impact on US Security interests."
It seems that the Pentagon-contracted work was a cover-story, like
pizza parlors have been for some Mafia operations. But, anyway, this is how America's
'democracy' actually functions .
And, of course, America's
Deep State works not only through governmental agencies but also through
underworld organizations . That's just reality, not at all speculative. It's been this way
for decades, at least since the time of Truman's Presidency (as is documented at that
link).
Furthermore, inasmuch as this operation certainly involved Obama's CIA Director John Brennan
and others, and not only top officials at the FBI, there is no chance that Comey would have
been the only high official who was involved in it. And if Comey was
involved, then he would have been acting in his own interest, and not only in his boss's -- and
here's why: Comey would be expected to have been highly motivated to oppose Mr. Trump,
because Trump publicly questioned whether NATO (the main international selling-arm for
America's 'defense'-contractors) should continue to exist, and also because Comey's entire
career had been in the service of America's Military-Industrial Complex, which is the reason
why Comey's main
lifetime income has been the tens of millions of dollars he has received via the revolving door
between his serving the federal Government and his serving firms such as Lockheed Martin .
For these people, restoring, and intensifying, and keeping up, the Cold War , is a very profitable business . It's called
by some "the Military-Industrial Complex," and by others "the Deep State," but by any name it
is simply agents of the billionaires who own and control US-based international corporations,
such as General Dynamics and Chevron. As a governmental official, making decisions that are in
the long-term interests of those investors is the likeliest way to become wealthy.
Consequently, Comey would have been benefitting himself, and other high officials of the
Obama Administration, by sabotaging Trump's campaign, and by weakening Trump's Presidency in
the event that he would become elected. Plus, of course, Comey would have been benefitting
Obama himself. Not only was Trump constantly condemning Obama, but Obama had appointed to lead
the Democratic National Committee during the 2016 Presidential primaries, Debbie Wasserman Schultz ,
who as early as
20 February 2007 had endorsed Hillary Clinton for President in the Democratic Party
primaries, so that Shultz was one of the earliest supporters of Clinton against even Obama
himself. In other words, Obama had appointed Shultz in order to
increase the odds that Clinton -- not Sanders -- would become the nominee in 2016 to
continue on and protect his own Presidential legacy. Furthermore, on 28 July 2016, Schultz
became forced to resign from her leadership of the DNC after WikiLeaks released emails
indicating that Schultz and other members of the DNC staff had exercised bias against Bernie
Sanders and in favor of Hillary Clinton during the 2016 Democratic primaries -- which
favoritism had been the reason why Obama had appointed Shultz to that post to begin with. She
was just doing her job for the person who had chosen her to lead the DNC. Likewise for Comey.
In other words: Comey was Obama's pick to protect Clinton, and to oppose
Trump (who had attacked both Clinton and Obama).
Nowadays, Obama is telling the Party's billionaires that Elizabeth Warren would be good for
them , but not that Sanders would -- he never liked Sanders. He wants Warren to get the
voters who otherwise would go for Sanders, and he wants the Party's billionaires to help her
achieve this (be the Party's allegedly 'progressive' option), so that Sanders won't be able to
become a ballot option in the general election to be held on 3 November 2020.
He is telling
them whom not to help win the Party's nomination. In fact, on November 26th,
Huffington Post headlined
"Obama Said He Would Speak Up To Stop Bernie Sanders Nomination: Report" and indicated that
though he won't actually say this in public (but only to the Party's billionaires), Obama is
determined to do all he can to prevent Sanders from becoming the nominee. In 2016, his
choice was Hillary Clinton; but, today, it's anyone other than Sanders; and, so, in a sense, it
remains what it was four years ago -- anyone but Sanders.
Comey's virtually exclusive concern, at the present stage, would be to protect himself, so
that he won't be imprisoned. This means that he might testify against Obama. At this stage,
he's free of any personal obligation to Obama -- Comey is now on his own, up against Trump, who
clearly is his enemy. Some type of back-room plea-bargain is therefore virtually inevitable --
and not only with Comey, but with other top Obama-appointees, ultimately. Obama is thus clearly
in the cross-hairs, from now on. Congressional Democrats have opted to gun against Trump (by
impeaching him); and, so, Trump now will be gunning against Obama -- and against the
entire Democratic Party (unless Sanders becomes its nominee, in which case, Sanders will
already have defeated that Democratic Party, and its adherents will then have to choose between
him versus Trump; and, so, too, will independent voters).
But, regardless of what happens, Obama now is in the cross-hairs. That's not just political
cross-hairs (such as an impeachment process); it is, above all, legal cross-hairs (an
actual criminal investigation). Whereas Trump is up against a doomed effort by the Democratic
Party to replace him by Vice President Mike Pence, Obama will be up against virtually
inevitable criminal charges, by the incumbent Trump Administration. Obama played hardball
against Trump, with "Russiagate," and then with "Ukrainegate"; Trump will now play hardball
against Obama, with whatever his Administration and the Republican Party manage to muster
against Obama; and the stakes this time will be considerably bigger than just whether to
replace Trump by Pence.
Whatever the outcome will be, it will be historic, and unprecedented. (If Sanders becomes
the nominee, it will be even more so; and, if he then wins on November 3rd, it will be a second
American Revolution; but, this time, a peaceful one -- if that's even possible, in today's
hyper-partisan, deeply split, USA.)
There is no way that the outcome from this will be status-quo. Either it will be greatly
increased further schism in the United States, or it will be a fundamental political
realignment, more comparable to 1860 than to anything since.
The US already has a
higher percentage of its people in prison than does any other nation on this planet.
Americans who choose a 'status-quo' option will produce less stability, more violence, not more
stability and a more peaceful nation in a less war-ravaged world. The 2020 election-outcome for
the United States will be a turning-point; there is no way that it will produce reform.
Americans who vote for reform will be only increasing the likelihood of hell-on-Earth. Reform
is no longer an available option, given America's realities. A far bigger leap than that will
be required in order for this country to avoid falling into an utter abyss, which could be led
by either Party, because both Parties have brought the nation to its present precipice, the
dark and lightless chasm that it now faces, and which must now become leapt, in order to avoid
a free-fall into oblivion.
The problem in America isn't either Obama or Trump; it's neither merely the Democratic
Party, nor merely the Republican Party; it is instead both; it is the
Deep State .
That's the reality; and the process that got us here started on 26 July 1945 and secretly continued on the American side even after
the Soviet Union ended and Russia promptly ended its side of the Cold War. The US regime's
ceaseless thrust, since 26 July 1945, to rule the entire world, will climax either in a Third
World War, or in a US revolution to overthrow and remove the Deep State and end its
dictatorship-grip over America. Both Parties have been controlled by that
Deep State , and the final stage or climax of this grip is now drawing near. America thus
has been having a string of the worst
Presidents -- and worst Congresses -- in US history. This is today's reality.
Unfortunately, a lot of American voters think that this extremely destabilizing reality, this
longstanding trend toward war, is okay, and ought to be continued, not ended now and replaced
by a new direction for this country -- the path toward world peace, which FDR had accurately
envisioned but which was aborted on 26 July 1945. No matter how many Americans might vote for
mere reform, they are wrong. Sometimes, only a minority are right. Being correct is not a
majority or minority matter; it is a true or false matter. A misinformed public can willingly
participate in its own -- or even the world's -- destruction. That could happen.
Democracy is a
prerequisite to peace, but it can't exist if the public are being systematically misinformed.
Lies and democracy don't mix together any more effectively than do oil and water.
Darn Russians made people pay $1750 to $3200 to attend the debates last night and clap for
Bloomberg. The Russians also aired a long Bloomberg informercial and an anti-Medicare for All
commercial during the ad breaks - to divide us. Putin will stop at nothing.
The latest act in the comedy began Friday, just before voting opened in the Nevada
Democratic caucus. The Washington Post
ran a story -- sourced, I'm not joking, to "people familiar with the matter" -- explaining
that Bernie
Sanders had been briefed that " Russia is attempting to help his presidential
campaign as part of an effort to interfere with the Democratic contest."
Sanders was quick to see through the gambit. "I'll let you guess about one day before the
Nevada caucus," he said. "Why do you think it came out?" He pointed to a Post reporter:
"It was The Washington Post ? Good friends." The Post, after all, has spent years
dumping on Sanders , a fervent critic of the paper's billionaire creep of an owner, Jeff
Bezos.
Intelligence officials and pundits have been screeching for years that patriotism demands
voters reject the foreign agent Donald Trump and the Russian asset Bernie Sanders, and support
a conventional establishment politician. Voters responded by moving toward Trump in national
approval surveys and speeding Sanders to the top of the Democratic Party ticket. A more
thorough disavowal of official propaganda would be difficult to imagine.
Russiagate will soon be four years old. For the first three years, it pushed parallel
themes: that Russia had "interfered" in the 2016 election, and Trump conspired in the
fraud.
After this story died a violent death when Mueller's probe ended with no new charges,
conventional wisdom shifted to a new gospel: Russiagate was about foreign interference.
Russiagate from the start
smelled funny , like bad food. Multiple developments worsened the odor. Stories kept
coming up wrong. There were too many unnamed sources, too frequently contradicting one
another and/or overstating facts. Every hoof print was a zebra's. Outlets stopped worrying
about relaying unconfirmed rumors, which is how terms like "
blackmail ," "
Trump ," "
Russia " and even " Golden
Showers " kept appearing in headlines, without proof there ever had been blackmail.
Moreover, while ordinary citizens like Reality Winner went straight to jail
for leaking, senior government officials in the past four years repeatedly and with impunity
leaked Russia-related tales. The leaks often pushed still more incorrect narratives, like for
instance that that Trump aide Carter Page was a foreign agent.
But the biggest red flag of all was the way in which "Russia" over the past few years
became shorthand to describe any brand of political deviance. I wrote this two
years ago :
"Since Trump's election, we've been told Putin was all or partly behind the lot of it: the
Catalan
independence movement, the Sanders campaign, Brexit , Jill Stein's
Green Party run ,
Black Lives Matter , the resignations of intraparty Trump critics Bob Corker and Jeff
Flake "
The extraordinary thing about this campaign to identify basically the entire universe of
political thought outside of establishment Democrats in the U.S. as Russian assets has been
the obvious projection involved.
The plot running through all of these stories has been the idea that Russia is trying to "
undermine our democracy " by "
sowing division ." But these charges are coming from the same people who spent the past
four years describing Republicans as deplorable fascists, and progressives on the other side
as racist, sexist, Nazis, and "
digital brownshirts ."
This has resulted in a four-year parade of official cranks muttering about Russian efforts
to "divide" us, when their own relentless message has been that America is besieged by a pair
of Hitlerian movements on the left and right that must be put down at all costs. The only
vision of "unity" they promote is one of obedience to the crackpot anti-utopia of
neoliberalism that populations around the world are currently rejecting at the ballot
box.
The core of the argument about Russian interference rested upon two major news stories:
the hack of the DNC in 2016, and a campaign by the "Internet Research Agency" to push
"divisive" social media content.
The former is a leak of true information about the correspondence of senior Democratic
Party officials (Jeremy Corbyn was similarly accused of abetting Russian disinformation
efforts when
damning-but-real materials about the British National Health Service were leaked). The
latter? A story about a group of silly memes, amplified a billionfold by the American
commercial news reports about these same efforts.
Did the Russians actually do these things? Maybe. It's not confirmed either way. The
sourcing even today remains tied to the same people who've lied about a thousand other
things, both in the course of this story and before, from WMDs to the missile gap. As we saw
this week, when officials quietly began admitting their ideas about "what Russia wants"
rested upon perhaps "
overstated " interpretations of intelligence, many of these narratives have been
elaborate exercises in reading tea leaves. And they won't let us see the tea leaves.
But if there is an official Russian agency behind, say, the Internet Research Agency,
those efforts pale in comparison to the enormous institutional effort in the United States to
use the narrative for other ends.
The United States, whose spending on intelligence and the military alone nearly equals
Russia's GDP, could crush Russia for breakfast and take the rest of the day off for beer and
volleyball. But officials have spent the past few years furiously constructing a popular
vision of the Russian enemy far bigger than the actual country, which the likes of Rachel
Maddow and Barack Obama not long ago were correctly calling a " gnat on the butt of an
elephant ."
Last week was a perfect example. Intelligence officials briefed Sanders about a belief on
their part that Russia wanted to "help" his campaign, although the nature of this assistance
was not specific enough to be disclosed.
The Post noted "U.S. prosecutors found a Russian effort in 2016 to use social media
to boost Sanders' campaign against Hillary Clinton," a typically deceptive construction.
Prosecutors
asserted a Russian effort to boost Sanders rather than finding it as true. Nobody has
seen the "proof" of this story, not even the Russians charged by Robert Mueller with the
conspiracy to help Sanders. In fact, that evidence was deemed so sensitive that Mueller
sought to prevent the Russian defendants from seeing it in discovery. The proof was
somehow so dangerous, we had to overturn centuries of legal tradition to keep it hidden.
No matter, the press had no problem repeating the story, because why not? The notion that
Russians want to help Sanders always fit nicely into establishment propaganda.
As a result, we get situations like last week, where there was an assertion about an
unknown level of Russian support -- presumably, social media boosting -- that could not
possibly equal the impact of a single news story leaked to the Post on the eve of the
Nevada primary. Every news consumer in America heard that story last week. Russians could
only dream of such saturation.
The logic of Russiagate is now beyond absurd. Vladimir Putin, somehow in perfect sync with
American voting trends, seeks to elevate both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, apparently to
compete against himself in the general election, in a desperate effort to suppress the
terrifying political might of, say, Joe Biden. I doubt even Neera Tanden in the depths of a
wine coma could believe this plot now.
That this is a dumb story is characteristic. The people pushing it don't have any smart
arguments left for remaining in power. Through decades of corporate giveaways, trickle-up
economics, pointless wars, and authoritarianism, they've failed the entire population. They
are the ones directly threatened by any hint that the population is awakening to its
decades-long disenfranchisement.
They are also the ones who benefit most from "disinformation." Who's trying to divide us?
Our own leaders, and as results like the Nevada primary show, the public now knows it.
"... CNN concluded that "America's Russia nightmare is back." Maddow was ecstatic, bleating "Here we go again," recycling her failed conspiracy theories whole. Everybody quoted Adam Schiff firing off that Trump was "again jeopardizing our efforts to stop foreign meddling." Tying it all to the failed impeachment efforts, another writer said , "'Let the Voters Decide' doesn't work if Trump fires his national security staff so Russia can help him again." The NYT fretted , "Trump is intensifying his efforts to undermine the nation's intelligence agencies." John Brennan (after leaking for a while, most boils dry up and go away) said , "we are now in a full-blown national security crisis." The undead Hillary Clinton tweeted , "Putin's Puppet is at it again." ..."
"... But it's still a miss on Bernie. He did well in Nevada despite the leaks, though Russiagate II has a long way to go. Bernie himself assured us of that. Instead of pooh-poohing the idea that the Russians might be working for him, he instead gave it cred, saying , "Some of the ugly stuff on the internet attributed to our campaign may well not be coming from real supporters." ..."
"... The world's greatest intelligence team can't seem to come up with anything more specific than "interfering" and "meddling," as if pesky Aunt Vladimir is gossiping at the general store again. CBS reports that House members pressed the ODNI for evidence, such as phone intercepts, to back up claims that Russia is trying to help Trump, but briefers had none to offer. Even Jake Tapper , a Deep State loyalty card holder, raised some doubts. WaPo , which hosted one of the leaks, had to admit "It is not clear what form that Russian assistance has taken." ..."
"... Yes, yes, they have to protect sources and methods, but of course the quickest way to stop Russian influence is to expose it. Instead the ODNI dropped the turd in the punchbowl and walked away. Why not tell the public what media is being bought, which outlets are working, willingly or not, with Putin? Did the Reds implant a radio chip in Biden's skull? Will we be left hanging with the info-free claim "something something social media" again? ..."
"... Because the intel community learned its lesson in Russiagate I. Details can be investigated. That's where the old story fell apart. The dossier wasn't true. Michael Cohen never met the Russians in Prague. The a-ha discovery was that voters don't read much anyway, so just make claims. You'll never really prosecute or impeach anyone, so why bother with evidence (see everything Ukraine)? Just throw out accusations and let the media fill it all in for you. ..."
"... The intel community crossed a line in 2016, albeit clumsily (what was all that with Comey and Hillary?), to play an overt role in the electoral process. When that didn't work out and Trump was elected, they pivoted and drove us to the brink of all hell breaking loose with Russiagate I. The media welcomed and supported them. The Dems welcomed and supported them. Far too many Americans welcomed and supported them in some elaborate version of the ends justifying the means. ..."
"... The good news from 2016 was that the Deep State turned out to be less competent than we originally feared. ..."
The Russians are back, alongside the American intelligence agencies playing deep inside our elections. Who should we fear more?
Hint: not the Russians.
On February 13, the election security czar in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI)
briefed the House Intelligence Committee that the Russians were meddling again and that they favored Donald Trump. A few weeks
earlier, the ODNI
briefed Bernie Sanders that the Russians were also meddling in the Democratic primaries, this time in his favor. Both briefings
remained secret until this past week, when the former was leaked to the New York Times in time to smear Trump for replacing
his DNI, and the latter leaked to the Washington Post ahead of the Nevada caucuses to try and damage Sanders.
Russiagate is back, baby. Everyone welcome Russiagate II.
You didn't think after 2016 the bad boys of the intel "community" (which makes it sound like they all live together down in Florida
somewhere) weren't going to play their games again, and that they wouldn't learn from their mistakes? Those errors were in retrospect
amateurish. A salacious
dossier
built around a pee tape? Nefarious academics
befriending minor Trump campaign staffers who would tell all to an Aussie ambassador trolling London's pubs looking for young, fit
Americans? Falsified FISA applications when it was all too obvious even Trumpkin greenhorns weren't dumb enough to sleep with FBI
honeypots? You'd think after influencing
85 elections across the globe since World War II, they'd be better at it. But you also knew that after failing to whomp a bumpkin
like Trump once, they would keep trying.
Like any good intel op, you start with a tickle, make it seem like the targets are figuring it out for themselves. Get it out
there that Trump offered
Wikileaks' Julian Assange a pardon if he would state publicly that Russia wasn't involved in the 2016 DNC leaks. The story was all
garbage, not the least of which because Assange has been clear for years that it wasn't the Russians. And there was no offer of a
pardon from the White House. And conveniently Assange is locked in a foreign prison and can't comment.
Whatever. Just make sure you time the Assange story to hit the day after Trump pardoned numerous high-profile, white-collar criminals,
so even the casual reader had Trump = bad, with a side of Russian conspiracy, on their minds. You could almost imagine an announcer's
voice: "Previously, on Russiagate I "
Then, only a day after the Assange story (why be subtle?), the sequel hit the theaters with timed leaks to the NYT and
WaPo . The mainstream media went Code Red (the CIA has a long
history of working with the media to influence elections).
CNN
concluded that "America's Russia nightmare is back." Maddow was ecstatic,
bleating "Here we go again," recycling her failed conspiracy theories whole. Everybody quoted Adam Schiff
firing off that Trump was "again jeopardizing our efforts to stop foreign meddling." Tying it all to the failed impeachment efforts,
another writer
said , "'Let the Voters Decide' doesn't work if Trump fires his national security staff so Russia can help him again." The
NYT
fretted , "Trump is intensifying his efforts to undermine the nation's intelligence agencies." John Brennan (after leaking for
a while, most boils dry up and go away)
said , "we are now in a
full-blown national security crisis." The undead Hillary Clinton
tweeted , "Putin's Puppet is at it again."
It is clear we'll be hearing breaking and developing reports about this from sources believed to be close to others through November.
Despite the sense of desperation in the recycled memes and the way the media rose on command to the bait, it's intel community 1,
Trump 0.
But it's still a miss on Bernie. He did well in Nevada despite the leaks, though Russiagate II has a long way to go. Bernie himself
assured us of that. Instead of pooh-poohing the idea that the Russians might be working for him, he instead gave it cred,
saying , "Some of the ugly stuff on the internet attributed to our campaign may well not be coming from real supporters."
Sanders handed Russiagate II legs, signaling that he'll use it as cover for the Bros' online shenanigans, which were called out
at the last debate. That's playing with fire: it'll be too easy later on to invoke all this with "Komrade Bernie" memes in the already
wary purple states. "Putin and Trump are picking their opponent,"
opined Rahm Emanuel to get that ball rolling.
Summary to date: everyone is certain the Russians are working to influence the election (adopts cartoon Russian accent) but who
is the cat and who is the mouse?
Is Putin helping Trump get re-elected to remain his asset in place? Or is Putin helping Bernie "I Honeymooned in the Soviet Union"
Sanders to make him look like an asset to help Trump? Or are the Russkies really all in because Bernie is a True Socialist
sleeper
agent, the Emma Goldman of his time (Bernie's old enough to have taken Emma to high school prom)? Or is it not the Russians but the
American intel community helping Bernie to make it look like Putin is helping Bernie to help Trump? Or is it the Deep State saying
the Reds are helping Bernie to hurt Bernie to help their man Bloomberg? Are Russian spies tripping over American spies in caucus
hallways trying to get to the front of the room? Who can tell what is really afoot?
See, the devil is in the details, which is why we don't have any.
The world's greatest intelligence team can't seem to come up with anything more specific than "interfering" and "meddling," as
if pesky Aunt Vladimir is gossiping at the general store again. CBS
reports that House members pressed the ODNI for evidence, such as phone intercepts, to back up claims that Russia is trying to
help Trump, but briefers had none to offer. Even
Jake Tapper , a Deep State loyalty card holder, raised some doubts. WaPo , which hosted one of the leaks, had to admit
"It is not clear what form that Russian assistance has taken."
Yes, yes, they have to protect sources and methods, but of course the quickest way to stop Russian influence is to expose it.
Instead the ODNI dropped the turd in the punchbowl and walked away. Why not tell the public what media is being bought, which outlets
are working, willingly or not, with Putin? Did the Reds implant a radio chip in Biden's skull? Will we be left hanging with the info-free
claim "something something social media" again?
If you're going to scream that communist zombies with MAGA hats are inside the house , you're obligated to provide a little
bit more information. Why is it when specifics are required, the
response is always something like "Well, the Russians are sowing distrust and turning Americans against themselves in a way that
weakens national unity" as if we're all not eating enough green vegetables? Why leave us exposed to Russian influence for even a
second when it could all be shut down in an instant?
Because the intel community learned its lesson in Russiagate I. Details can be investigated. That's where the old story fell
apart. The dossier wasn't true. Michael
Cohen never met the
Russians in Prague. The a-ha discovery was that voters don't read much anyway, so just make claims. You'll never really prosecute
or impeach anyone, so why bother with evidence (see everything Ukraine)? Just throw out accusations and let the media fill it all
in for you. After all, they managed to convince a large number of Americans Trump's primary purpose in running for president
was to fill vacant hotel rooms at his properties. Let the nature of the source -- the brave lads of the intelligence agencies --
legitimize the accusations this time, not facts.
It will take a while to figure out who is playing whom. Is the goal to help Trump, help Bernie, or defeat both of them to support
Bloomberg? But don't let the challenge of seeing the whole picture obscure the obvious: the American intelligence agencies are once
again inside our election.
The intel community crossed a line in 2016, albeit clumsily (what was all that with Comey and Hillary?), to play an overt
role in the electoral process. When that didn't work out and Trump was elected, they
pivoted and drove us to
the brink of all hell breaking loose with Russiagate I. The media welcomed and supported them. The Dems welcomed and supported them.
Far too many Americans welcomed and supported them in some elaborate version of the ends justifying the means.
The good news from 2016 was that the Deep State turned out to be less competent than we originally feared. But they have
learned much from those mistakes, particularly how deft a tool a compliant MSM is. This election will be a historian's marker for
how a decent nation, fully warned in 2016, fooled itself in 2020 into self-harm. Forget about foreigners influencing our elections
from the outside; the zombies are already inside the house.
I can't believe the media keeps accusing politicians they don't like of being Russian
assets. Trump, Tulsi, Bernie....seriously....how is CNN and MSNBC still on the air
relentlessly pushing crap like that....
Norwegian officials just came out in support of a Bernie Sanders presidency....they
democratically voted on it. So is Bernie a Norwegian asset? I actually would like that.
:p
🤨 Chris Matthews said Bernie supporters would hang him in Central Park and
compared his NV win to the Nazi conquest of France. He also suggested Dem leaders let Trump
win rather than Bernie take over the party. Chuck Todd called Bernie supporters "brwn shrts".
Bernie's Jewish and his family fled the Nazis to America. I can't even tell you the horrible
thing Jason Johnson said about women of color or YouTube will block the comment. This
👏🏾 Isn't 👏🏾 a 👏🏾News
👏🏾Channel.
My folks told me over and over about hiding under desks from the big one in the 50s.. This
tactic goes way back to freaking out the massive generation of children after WW2.
The CIA going back to their old routine now that it's becoming more and more clear that
they need to overhaul their first version of the cyborg candidate to make him more human
like.
0:42 Krystal reads Glenn's description of Rising: "The super-perky radical
trans-ideological 21st-century subversive sequel to the Katie Couric Matt Lauer Morning Today
Show in its heyday minus all that unpleasantness."
A little bit off-topic, or very much off-topic but related with Hudson's favourite
theme. This is about potential bankruptcies derived from quarantines almost certainly not
covered by insurance: wouldn't this be an excellent case for debt forgiving?
I dunno. My impression is too much of corporate malfeasance involves the use of
debt. Consolidation, stock buybacks, leveraged everything, hostile
take-everything.
This stacked system is currently confronting two crises it has no good solution to.
One is Covid19 and the other is insurrection. Obama forgave the one percent's debts once
already. No more of that. I'm hoping this is "the great leveling" event.
I can not find a link but a comment here yesterday said China has announced it will
pay all healthcare costs related to Covid for those without insurance. I honestly don't know
if that's true but it lead me to understand that China has a hybrid public/private system
health insurance system. Wikipedia says China provides "basic" healthcare for 95% of the
population which covers roughly 50% of treatment costs. Hmmm I wonder what the treatments
cost
Sadly, promises to cover the cost of treatment are ineffectual without enough
facilities, supplies and healthcare workers.
With regard to the question of "corporate debt", a better way than "forgiveness" IMO
would be "temporary nationalization" by means of some public entity bidding on operating
assets (with, hopefully, the entity still functioning) at a liquidation auction. The senior
creditors (first in line, I think are employees with unpaid back wages due) would get
something; the shareholders -- given the degree of leverage that is customary today -- often
would be wiped out (which they would be in any event under the conditions in
view).
The publicly owned and operated businesses would go private again through conversion
to worker-owned cooperatives. This would take time, which would permit the bugs to be worked
out. I can't imagine that the transition would be smooth.
This kind of conversion from shareholder-owned to worker-owned enterprise has been
proposed previously (don't have links) as something that could be done as ongoing policy
through money creation by the central government and new forms of "eminent domain"
legislation, or simply by purchase of shares in the open markets, New private enterprises
could be created by the former owners using the funds received and, at such time as these
became sufficiently powerful to be problematic, could likewise be converted to cooperatives.
It might be an engine of innovation. Significant regulation would probably be needed to curb
clearly unproductive uses of funds.
Perhaps it's another way that this crisis is creating opportunities that we don't
want to allow to be wasted.
It will be interesting to see what the government of China does, as it will be the
first to face this problem at large scale. Will they turn into a "workers' party"? Hard to
imagine, but the paths out of the current turmoil may contain possibilities that could not be
realistically contemplated just months ago.
How do you prevent this feed-me-seymour financialization-economy from imploding?
Keep feeding it. Biden and his cronies, including little George, knew it. And that has to be
the reason why they passed laws preventing the process of bankruptcy. Like they placed their
bets on winning the war for oil in the middle east at the same time. Why did they think these
bad decisions would keep our economy stable?
Yes, neo-McCarthyism is a sign of the collapse of neoliberal ideology and the crisis within
the neoliberal ruling elite, which is trying to patch the cracks int he neoliberal facade of the
US society and require the control over the population (which rejected neoliberalism at voting
booth in 2016) with Russophobia
There's always a bit of judgment and vengeance inherent to the factional shenanigans of
Australia's Liberal party, but its refreshed vocabulary warrants inclusion as the fifth sign.
Michael Sukkar, the member for Deakin, has been
recorded in a dazzling rant declaring war on a "socialist" incursion into a party whose
leader is a former merchant banker who pledged to rule for "freedom, the individual and the
market" the very day he was anointed.
The reds may not
be under the beds quite yet, but if Sukkar's convinced some commie pinkos are already
gatecrashing cocktail events with the blue-tie set, they're certainly on his mind.
"... Admiral Bill McRaven is proving himself to be an ignorant buffoon. Yes, I'm calling a so-called military hero a clown. He is out today with a despicable op-ed attacking President Trump for removing ACTING DNI Joe Maguire. Here is a sampling of McRaven's stupidity: ..."
"... Maguire's role as DNI was a temporary appointment. It was not permanent and was not submitted to the Senate as part of a confirmation process. He was a mere place holder. Yet McRaven and others in the anti-Trump crowd display their profound ignorance and insist, wrongly, that Trump fired Maguire. ..."
"... Guess what? Maguire's resignation coincides with the 210 day limit. ..."
"... Donald Trump is now on the offensive against a corrupt, dishonest intelligence and law enforcement community as well as their enablers in the festering establishment--the whole crowd is panicked. ..."
"... If there really was intelligence that Russia had embarked on a new, more expansive round of meddling then that intelligence should have been briefed to the President as part of Presidential Daily Briefing. But that has not taken place. Trump's National Security Advisor, Robert O'Brien says pointedly that he has seen no intelligence to substantiate The NY Times report. NONE : ..."
"... "I haven't seen any intelligence that Russia is doing anything to attempt to get President Trump reelected," Robert O'Brien, who was appointed by Trump to the post in September, said in an ABC News interview to be broadcast on Sunday. ..."
"... "Immediately after President Trump won election, opponents inaugurated what they called "The Resistance," and they rallied around an explicit strategy of using every tool and maneuver to sabotage the functioning of the Executive Branch and his Administration. Now, "resistance" is the language used to describe insurgency against rule imposed by an occupying military power. It obviously connotes -- It obviously connotes that the government is not legitimate. This is a very dangerous -- and indeed incendiary -- notion to import into the politics of a democratic republic. What it means is that, instead of viewing themselves as the "loyal opposition," as opposing parties have done in this country for over 200 years, they essentially see themselves as engaged in a war to cripple, by any means necessary, a duly elected government." ..."
"... Now don't go troubling yourself, Admiral, over finding a reason why people outside your beltway circle don't give a rat's ass about you and your pals getting disrespected. It's been a long time coming, a very long time, but ya'll have earned in spades the right to be ignored. Get used to it. Fool us for a year, for two years, three... but for eighteen years??? Sorry Admiral. Stop whining. ..."
"... Caity Johnstone has written a parody piece in which the intelligence community labels every candidate other than Buttigieg to be a Secret Russian Agent. ..."
The Russia Interference Hoax--Deja Vu All Over Again by Larry C Johnson
Admiral Bill McRaven is proving himself to be an ignorant buffoon. Yes, I'm calling a so-called military hero a clown. He
is out today with a despicable op-ed attacking President Trump for removing ACTING DNI Joe Maguire. Here is a sampling of McRaven's
stupidity:
Edmund Burke, the Irish statesman and philosopher,
once said
: "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." Over the course of the past three years, I have
watched good men and women, friends of mine, come and go in the Trump administration -- all trying to do something -- all trying
to do their best. Jim Mattis, John Kelly, H.R. McMaster, Sue Gordon, Dan Coats and, now, Joe Maguire, who until this week was the
acting director of national intelligence. . . .
But, of course, in this administration, good men and women don't last long. Joe was dismissed for doing his job: overseeing the
dissemination of intelligence to elected officials who needed that information to do their jobs. As Americans, we should be frightened
-- deeply afraid for the future of the nation. When good men and women can't speak the truth, when facts are inconvenient, when integrity
and character no longer matter, when presidential ego and self-preservation are more important than national security -- then there
is nothing left to stop the triumph of evil.
Bill, you are wrong as you can be. Are you too damn lazy to do some simple reading and research?
Maguire's role as DNI was a temporary appointment. It was not permanent and was not submitted to the Senate as part of a confirmation
process. He was a mere place holder. Yet McRaven and others in the anti-Trump crowd display their profound ignorance and insist,
wrongly, that Trump fired Maguire.
Here is the dishonest NY Times spin:
On Wednesday, the president announced that he was replacing Mr. Maguire with Richard Grenell, the ambassador to Germany and an
aggressively vocal Trump supporter. And though some current and former officials speculated that the briefing might have played a
role in that move, two administration officials said the timing was coincidental. Mr. Grenell had been in discussions with the administration
about taking on new roles, they said, and Mr. Trump had never felt a kinship with Mr. Maguire.
Once a vacancy occurs, the position is eligible to be filled by an acting officer for 210 days from the date of the vacancy, as
well as any time when a nomination is pending before the Senate.
Guess what? Maguire's resignation coincides with the 210 day limit.
Facts do not matter to the anti-Trumpers. Remember all of the hysteria surround Attorney General Barr's legitimate and proper
submission of a RECOMMENDATION for reduced sentencing in the case of Roger Stone. The media and punditry reacted as if Barr was calling
for the mass extermination of physically handicapped children. Hardly any took time to note that Barr's "RECOMMENDATION" was just
that--a recommendation. Nothing Barr said or wrote could compel or coerce Judge Berman to act according to Barr's wishes. And guess
what? Judge Berman decided that Barr was right. The key point being that, SHE DECIDED. Not Barr.
Donald Trump is now on the offensive against a corrupt, dishonest intelligence and law enforcement community as well as their
enablers in the festering establishment--the whole crowd is panicked.
The faux outrage over Trump replacing Maguire is just one indicator of this fear. Another is the fact that we are once again being
bombarded with the recycled propaganda that Russia meddled in our 2016 election and is poised to do the same in 2020. What next?
Resurrect Jussie Smollet and hire a group of pretend rednecks to stage another faux attack on him during the night on the wintry
streets of Chicago?
Intelligence officials warned House lawmakers last week that Russia was interfering in the 2020 campaign to try to get President
Trump re-elected, five people familiar with the matter said, a disclosure to Congress that angered Mr. Trump, who complained that
Democrats would use it against him.
The day after the Feb. 13 briefing to lawmakers, the president berated Joseph Maguire, the outgoing acting director of national
intelligence, for allowing it to take place, people familiar with the exchange said. Mr. Trump was particularly irritated that Representative
Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and the leader of the impeachment proceedings, was at the briefing.
During the briefing to the House Intelligence Committee, Mr. Trump's allies challenged the conclusions, arguing that he had been
tough on Russia and that he had strengthened European security.
Just another scurrilous lie. Pure propaganda being spun for the sole purpose of smearing Trump and tainting his election. The
real truth is that Russia, under Vladimir Putin, is doing less "meddling" in our elections than did his predecessors. We meddled
in their elections and domestic politics going back to the end of World War II. Meddling is a natural consequence of having professional
intelligence services like the CIA, the FSB, the GRU, the DIA, etc. Another uncomfortable fact is that social media makes it more
difficult for the traditional intelligence actors to interfere in politics. Michael Bloomberg's spending in the 2020 Democrat primary
dwarfs all efforts to control the social media message. Yet, there are limits to the effectiveness of such "meddling."
If there really was intelligence that Russia had embarked on a new, more expansive round of meddling then that intelligence
should have been briefed to the President as part of Presidential Daily Briefing. But that has not taken place. Trump's National
Security Advisor, Robert O'Brien says pointedly that he has seen no intelligence to substantiate The NY Times report.
NONE :
"I haven't seen any intelligence that Russia is doing anything to attempt to get President Trump reelected," Robert O'Brien,
who was appointed by Trump to the post in September, said in an ABC News interview to be broadcast on Sunday.
"I have not seen that, and I get pretty good access," he said, according to excerpts released on Saturday.
Another meme in the latest propaganda push by deranged Democrats and discredited media is to portray Maguire's temporary replacement,
Ambassador Richard Grenell, as some sort of ignorant, unqualified political hack.
"The President has selected an individual without any intelligence experience to serve as the leader of the nation's intelligence
community in an acting capacity. This is the second acting director the President has named to the role since the resignation of
Dan Coats, apparently in an effort to sidestep the Senate's constitutional authority to advise and consent on such critical national
security positions, and flouting the clear intent of Congress when it established the Office of the Director of National Intelligence
in 2004.
"The intelligence community deserves stability and an experienced individual to lead them in a time of massive national and global
security challenges. And at a time when the integrity and independence of the Department of Justice has been called into grave question,
now more than ever our country needs a Senate-confirmed intelligence director who will provide the best intelligence and analysis,
regardless of whether or not it's expedient for the President who has appointed him.
Warner conveniently forgets that Trump named Dan Coats as DNI and the Senate, along with Warner's vote, approved him. Coats had
trouble spelling CIA and DNI. He was completely unqualified for the position, yet the Senate rolled over for him with barely a whimper.
How about the first DNI? Ambassador John Negroponte was
not an intelligence professional. He was career Foreign Service.
Ambassador Grenell has experience comparable to Negroponte's. Grenell has dealt with all elements of the intelligence community
during his tenure working within the realm of the U.S. foreign service. The good news is that Grenell is now on the job as DNI and
is starting to clean house. This should have been done four years ago. The DNI, like many other parts of the bureaucracy, is infested
with anti-Trump haters doing their best to sabotage his Presidency.
Robert O'Brien has cleaned out the NSC. There are a lot of empty desks there now. And persons through out the National Security
bureacracy, including DOD and CIA, are being emptied. This is a prelude. When prosecutor John Durham starts dropping indictments
expect the screaming to intensify.
"When prosecutor John Durham starts dropping indictments....."
Larry, it looks like you have a lot of confidence in Durham. What gives you this confidence? The actions of the DOJ to date
should make people skeptical that they'll prosecute their own leadership.
If Barr and Durham were going to play ball with the Deep Staters and the anti-Trumpers they would not be attacked as is happening.
The hysterical over wrought accusations leveled at Barr last week are merely a symptom of the fear seizing these seditionists.
Americans still retain their keen sense of fair play. Nothing wrong with wanting to be surrounded by those loyal to the elected
President.
It is the President's duty to the office itself to demand those appointed also be competent and act with integrity. The President
pays the price if they do not.
- on an English blog in order to underline some parallels between the parliamentary crisis in England last year and the very
similar constitutional crisis in the US. But there's a lot more to the lecture than that -
"Immediately after President Trump won election, opponents inaugurated what they called "The Resistance," and they rallied
around an explicit strategy of using every tool and maneuver to sabotage the functioning of the Executive Branch and his Administration.
Now, "resistance" is the language used to describe insurgency against rule imposed by an occupying military power. It obviously
connotes -- It obviously connotes that the government is not legitimate. This is a very dangerous -- and indeed incendiary --
notion to import into the politics of a democratic republic. What it means is that, instead of viewing themselves as the "loyal
opposition," as opposing parties have done in this country for over 200 years, they essentially see themselves as engaged in a
war to cripple, by any means necessary, a duly elected government."
That, together with some penetrating remarks about the difference between Progressive and Conservative - and making it amply
clear how destructive Progressivism was - was perhaps more than William Barr merely setting out his stall. It was a declaration
of intent and if it's held to then we may expect some dramatic results.
So I'm not surprised the Democrats are attacking him. The wonder is that they're not tearing him limb from limb.
Chris Murphy - the dolt from CT - on TV whining about Grenell being unqualified and a Trump loyalist. This is the same stooge
who just met with the Iranian Foreign Minister (and a head of hair looking for a brain John Kerrey) in Munich.
Admiral McRaven and his gumba Pentagon bureaucrats should be doing a little belly button gazing to determine how after 2 decades
they've managed with considerable sturm und drang to win nothing but have succeeded magnificently in piloting the
country into Cold War II with a real adversary.
Well done, Admiral!
Now don't go troubling yourself, Admiral, over finding a reason why people outside your beltway circle don't give a rat's
ass about you and your pals getting disrespected. It's been a long time coming, a very long time, but ya'll have earned in spades
the right to be ignored. Get used to it. Fool us for a year, for two years, three... but for eighteen years??? Sorry Admiral.
Stop whining.
You mean all those VERY important people - dressed like doormen -who haven't won a war since WWII? BTW, Gulf Storm
doesn't count - you'd probably get more fight back from the NY State Troopers.
These politicians in uniform know all about "diversity", pissing away LOTS of money, transgenders, sucking up and especially
landing Beltway bandit contracts. Fighting, not so much.
Note, I'm referring to the General Officer ranks, not actual troops.
I assess with 100% certainty that this fake scandal was contrived to coincide with the end of this Maguire's "service". Indeed,
all of this time he has been acting as an agent of the Borg, only chucking this stinkbomb as his last, spiteful act. Contemptible.
Caity Johnstone has written a parody piece in which the intelligence community labels every candidate other than Buttigieg
to be a Secret Russian Agent.
Unless someone in the DNC or numerous affiliates can come up with an actual Russian, this kind of hoax will begin to be be seen
as dated.
However, with the Weinstein conviction, the MeToo movement will get new life and a wave of similar high profile pursuits
will begin.
Undoubtedly this will include one DJT, featuring accusers going back to the 1960's in a orchestrated 24/7 chorus of unproven
horror that they hope will succeed where Mueller and Schiff et al have failed.
Who knows, perhaps one accuser (two for corroboration) will even allege some vague Russian presence.
So a democratic megadoner is convicted of multiple accounts of sexual assault and surprise! Others in the moral cesspool that
is Hollywood won't be brought to "justice", social or otherwise but we'll see Stormy Daniels 2.0. Except her lawyer's already
in jail. The left better come up with something better than that.
How about Epstein and his pals? That would be a good start. However nothing will happen on that since too many powerful people
would likely be ensnared like Billy Clinton and a British prince.
The Russia Interference Hoax--Deja Vu All Over Again by Larry C Johnson
Admiral Bill McRaven is proving himself to be an ignorant buffoon. Yes, I'm calling a
so-called military hero a clown. He is out today with a despicable op-ed attacking President
Trump for removing ACTING DNI Joe Maguire. Here is a sampling of McRaven's stupidity:
Edmund Burke, the Irish statesman and philosopher, once
said : "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
Over the course of the past three years, I have watched good men and women, friends of mine,
come and go in the Trump administration -- all trying to do something -- all trying to do their
best. Jim Mattis, John Kelly, H.R. McMaster, Sue Gordon, Dan Coats and, now, Joe Maguire, who
until this week was the acting director of national intelligence. . . .
But, of course, in
this administration, good men and women don't last long. Joe was dismissed for doing his job:
overseeing the
dissemination of intelligence to elected officials who needed that information to do their
jobs. As Americans, we should be frightened -- deeply afraid for the future of the nation. When
good men and women can't speak the truth, when facts are inconvenient, when integrity and
character no longer matter, when presidential ego and self-preservation are more important than
national security -- then there is nothing left to stop the triumph of evil.
Bill, you are wrong as you can be. Are you too damn lazy to do some simple reading and
research?
Maguire's role as DNI was a temporary appointment. It was not permanent and was
not submitted to the Senate as part of a confirmation process. He was a mere place holder. Yet
McRaven and others in the anti-Trump crowd display their profound ignorance and insist,
wrongly, that Trump fired Maguire.
Here is the dishonest NY Times spin:
On Wednesday, the president announced that he was replacing Mr. Maguire with Richard
Grenell, the ambassador to Germany and an aggressively vocal Trump supporter. And though some
current and former officials speculated that the briefing might have played a role in that
move, two administration officials said the timing was coincidental. Mr. Grenell had been in
discussions with the administration about taking on new roles, they said, and Mr. Trump had
never felt a kinship with Mr. Maguire.
Once a vacancy occurs, the position is eligible to be filled by an acting officer for 210
days from the date of the vacancy, as well as any time when a nomination is pending before the
Senate.
Guess what? Maguire's resignation coincides with the 210 day limit.
Facts do not matter to the anti-Trumpers. Remember all of the hysteria surround Attorney
General Barr's legitimate and proper submission of a RECOMMENDATION for reduced sentencing in
the case of Roger Stone. The media and punditry reacted as if Barr was calling for the mass
extermination of physically handicapped children. Hardly any took time to note that Barr's
"RECOMMENDATION" was just that--a recommendation. Nothing Barr said or wrote could compel or
coerce Judge Berman to act according to Barr's wishes. And guess what? Judge Berman decided
that Barr was right. The key point being that, SHE DECIDED. Not Barr.
Donald Trump is now on the offensive against a corrupt, dishonest intelligence and law
enforcement community as well as their enablers in the festering establishment--the whole crowd
is panicked.
The faux outrage over Trump replacing Maguire is just one indicator of this fear. Another is
the fact that we are once again being bombarded with the recycled propaganda that Russia
meddled in our 2016 election and is poised to do the same in 2020. What next? Resurrect Jussie
Smollet and hire a group of pretend rednecks to stage another faux attack on him during the
night on the wintry streets of Chicago?
Intelligence officials warned House lawmakers last week that Russia was interfering in the
2020 campaign to try to get President Trump re-elected, five people familiar with the matter
said, a disclosure to Congress that angered Mr. Trump, who complained that Democrats would use
it against him.
The day after the Feb. 13 briefing to lawmakers, the president berated Joseph Maguire, the
outgoing acting director of national intelligence, for allowing it to take place, people
familiar with the exchange said. Mr. Trump was particularly irritated that Representative Adam
B. Schiff, Democrat of California and the leader of the impeachment proceedings, was at the
briefing.
During the briefing to the House Intelligence Committee, Mr. Trump's allies challenged the
conclusions, arguing that he had been tough on Russia and that he had strengthened European
security.
Just another scurrilous lie. Pure propaganda being spun for the sole purpose of smearing
Trump and tainting his election. The real truth is that Russia, under Vladimir Putin, is doing
less "meddling" in our elections than did his predecessors. We meddled in their elections and
domestic politics going back to the end of World War II. Meddling is a natural consequence of
having professional intelligence services like the CIA, the FSB, the GRU, the DIA, etc. Another
uncomfortable fact is that social media makes it more difficult for the traditional
intelligence actors to interfere in politics. Michael Bloomberg's spending in the 2020 Democrat
primary dwarfs all efforts to control the social media message. Yet, there are limits to the
effectiveness of such "meddling."
If there really was intelligence that Russia had embarked on a new, more expansive round of
meddling then that intelligence should have been briefed to the President as part of
Presidential Daily Briefing. But that has not taken place. Trump's National Security Advisor,
Robert O'Brien says pointedly that he has seen no intelligence to substantiate The NY Times
report.
NONE :
"I haven't seen any intelligence that Russia is doing anything to attempt to get President
Trump reelected," Robert O'Brien, who was appointed by Trump to the post in September, said in
an ABC News interview to be broadcast on Sunday.
"I have not seen that, and I get pretty
good access," he said, according to excerpts released on Saturday.
Another meme in the latest propaganda push by deranged Democrats and discredited media is to
portray Maguire's temporary replacement, Ambassador Richard Grenell, as some sort of ignorant,
unqualified political hack.
"The President has selected an individual without any intelligence experience to serve as
the leader of the nation's intelligence community in an acting capacity. This is the second
acting director the President has named to the role since the resignation of Dan Coats,
apparently in an effort to sidestep the Senate's constitutional authority to advise and consent
on such critical national security positions, and flouting the clear intent of Congress when it
established the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in 2004.
"The intelligence community deserves stability and an experienced individual to lead them in
a time of massive national and global security challenges. And at a time when the integrity and
independence of the Department of Justice has been called into grave question, now more than
ever our country needs a Senate-confirmed intelligence director who will provide the best
intelligence and analysis, regardless of whether or not it's expedient for the President who
has appointed him.
Warner conveniently forgets that Trump named Dan Coats as DNI and the Senate, along with
Warner's vote, approved him. Coats had trouble spelling CIA and DNI. He was completely
unqualified for the position, yet the Senate rolled over for him with barely a whimper. How
about the first DNI? Ambassador John Negroponte was not an intelligence
professional. He was career Foreign Service.
Ambassador Grenell has experience comparable to Negroponte's. Grenell has dealt with all
elements of the intelligence community during his tenure working within the realm of the U.S.
foreign service. The good news is that Grenell is now on the job as DNI and is starting to
clean house. This should have been done four years ago. The DNI, like many other parts of the
bureaucracy, is infested with anti-Trump haters doing their best to sabotage his
Presidency.
Robert O'Brien has cleaned out the NSC. There are a lot of empty desks there now. And
persons through out the National Security bureacracy, including DOD and CIA, are being emptied.
This is a prelude. When prosecutor John Durham starts dropping indictments expect the screaming
to intensify.
"When prosecutor John Durham starts dropping indictments....."
Larry, it looks like you have a lot of confidence in Durham. What gives you this
confidence? The actions of the DOJ to date should make people skeptical that they'll
prosecute their own leadership.
If Barr and Durham were going to play ball with the Deep Staters and the anti-Trumpers they
would not be attacked as is happening. The hysterical over wrought accusations leveled at
Barr last week are merely a symptom of the fear seizing these seditionists.
Americans still retain their keen sense of fair play. Nothing wrong with wanting to be
surrounded by those loyal to the elected President.
It is the President's duty to the office itself to demand those appointed also be
competent and act with integrity. The President pays the price if they do not.
- on an English blog in order to underline some parallels between the parliamentary crisis
in England last year and the very similar constitutional crisis in the US. But there's a lot
more to the lecture than that -
"Immediately after President Trump won election, opponents inaugurated what they called
"The Resistance," and they rallied around an explicit strategy of using every tool and
maneuver to sabotage the functioning of the Executive Branch and his Administration. Now,
"resistance" is the language used to describe insurgency against rule imposed by an occupying
military power. It obviously connotes -- It obviously connotes that the government is not
legitimate. This is a very dangerous -- and indeed incendiary -- notion to import into the
politics of a democratic republic. What it means is that, instead of viewing themselves as
the "loyal opposition," as opposing parties have done in this country for over 200 years,
they essentially see themselves as engaged in a war to cripple, by any means necessary, a
duly elected government."
That, together with some penetrating remarks about the difference between Progressive and
Conservative - and making it amply clear how destructive Progressivism was - was perhaps more
than William Barr merely setting out his stall. It was a declaration of intent and if it's
held to then we may expect some dramatic results.
So I'm not surprised the Democrats are attacking him. The wonder is that they're not
tearing him limb from limb.
Chris Murphy - the dolt from CT - on TV whining about Grenell being unqualified and a Trump
loyalist.
This is the same stooge who just met with the Iranian Foreign Minister (and a head of hair
looking for a brain John Kerrey) in Munich.
Admiral McRaven and his gumba Pentagon bureaucrats should be doing a little belly button
gazing to determine how after 2 decades they've managed with considerable sturm und drang to
win nothing but have succeeded magnificently in piloting the country into Cold War II with a
real adversary.
Well done, Admiral!
Now don't go troubling yourself, Admiral, over finding a reason why people outside your
beltway circle don't give a rat's ass about you and your pals getting disrespected. It's been
a long time coming, a very long time, but ya'll have earned in spades the right to be
ignored. Get used to it. Fool us for a year, for two years, three... but for eighteen
years??? Sorry Admiral. Stop whining.
You mean all those VERY important people - dressed like doormen -who haven't won a war since
WWII?
BTW, Gulf Storm doesn't count - you'd probably get more fight back from the NY State
Troopers.
These politicians in uniform know all about "diversity", pissing away LOTS of money,
transgenders, sucking up and especially landing Beltway bandit contracts.
Fighting, not so much.
Note, I'm referring to the General Officer ranks, not actual troops.
I assess with 100% certainty that this fake scandal was contrived to coincide with the end of
this Maguire's "service". Indeed, all of this time he has been acting as an agent of the
Borg, only chucking this stinkbomb as his last, spiteful act. Contemptible.
Caity Johnstone has written a parody piece in which the intelligence community labels every
candidate other than Buttigieg to be a Secret Russian Agent.
Unless someone in the DNC or numerous affiliates can come up with an actual Russian, this
kind of hoax will begin to be be seen as dated.
However, with the Weinstein conviction, the MeToo movement will get new life and a wave of
similar high profile pursuits will begin.
Undoubtedly this will include one DJT, featuring
accusers going back to the 1960's in a orchestrated 24/7 chorus of unproven horror that they
hope will succeed where Mueller and Schiff et al have failed.
Who knows, perhaps one accuser (two for corroboration) will even allege some vague Russian
presence.
So a democratic megadoner is convicted of multiple accounts of sexual assault and
surprise! Others in the moral cesspool that is Hollywood won't be brought to "justice",
social or otherwise but we'll see Stormy Daniels 2.0. Except her lawyer's already in jail.
The left better come up with something better than that.
How about Epstein and his pals? That would be a good start. However nothing will happen on
that since too many powerful people would likely be ensnared like Billy Clinton and a British
prince.
"... Adam Schiff physically resembles a typical prosperity theology preacher -- a classic modern American snake oil salesman. And with his baseless accusations and the fear to touch real issues , he is even worse than that -- he looks outright silly even for the most brainwashed part of the USA electorate ;-) ..."
"... Realistically Schiff should be viewed as yet another intelligence agency stooge, a neocon who is funded by military contractors such as Northrop Grumman, which sells missiles to Ukraine. ..."
"... The claim that the withdrawal of military aid from Ukraine somehow influences the balance of power in the region was a State department concocted scam from the very beginning. How sniper rifles and anti-tank missiles change the balance of power on the border with the major nuclear power, who has probably second or third military in the world.? They do not. ..."
"... No where does Schiff compare to the evils and long lasting impact by that of Trump, Nunes, and Mcconnell. Comment over. ..."
"... Does not matter. Schiff is just a marionette performing prescribed function. He is adamantly inept is this function, but that happens with marionettes. Nothing to talk about or to compare with the major "evildoers" of Trump administration (although he, like Pompeo, is a neocon, so he belongs to the same crime family ;-) ..."
"... Actually, as a side effect, they might well sink Warren (which is not such a good thing), as she was stupid enough to jump into impeachment bandwagon early on with great enthusiasm. Proving another time that she is an incompetent politician. ..."
"... Trump is a narcissistic megalomaniac. It matters that he is escaping impeachment. Of all the presidents impeached before him as #4, he is the most deserving. History will judge his actions and crimes. ..."
While I agree that the removal of Trump might be slightly beneficial (Pence-Pompeo duo initially will run scared), this Kabuki
theater with Schiff in a major role is outright silly.
Adam Schiff physically resembles a typical prosperity theology preacher -- a classic modern American snake oil salesman.
And with his baseless accusations and the fear to touch real issues , he is even worse than that -- he looks outright silly even
for the most brainwashed part of the USA electorate ;-)
As he supported the Iraq war, he has no right to occupy any elected office. He probably should be prosecuted as a war criminal.
Realistically Schiff should be viewed as yet another intelligence agency stooge, a neocon who is funded by military contractors
such as Northrop Grumman, which sells missiles to Ukraine.
The claim that Trump is influenced by Russia is a lie. His actions indicate that he is an agent of influence for Israel, not
so much for Russia. Several of his actions were more reckless and more hostile to Russia than the actions of the Obama administration.
Anyway, his policies toward Russia are not that different from Hillary's policies. Actually, Pompeo, in many ways, continues Hillary's
policies.
The claim that the withdrawal of military aid from Ukraine somehow influences the balance of power in the region was a
State department concocted scam from the very beginning. How sniper rifles and anti-tank missiles change the balance of power
on the border with the major nuclear power, who has probably second or third military in the world.? They do not.
They (especially sniper rifles) will definitely increase casualties of Ukrainian separatists (and will provoke Russian reaction
to compensate for this change of balance and thus increase casualties of the Ukrainian army provoking the escalation spiral ),
but that's about it. So more people will die in the conflict while Northrop Grumman rakes the profits.
They also increase the danger of the larger-scale conflict in the region, which is what the USA neocons badly wants to impose
really crushing sanctions on Russia. The danger of WWIII and the cost of support of the crumbling neoliberal empire with its outsize
military expenditures (which now is more difficult to compensate with loot) somehow escapes the US neocon calculations. But they
are completely detached from reality in any case.
I think Russia can cut Ukraine into Western and Eastern parts anytime with relative ease and not much resistance. Putin has
an opportunity to do this in 2014 (risking larger sanctions) as he could establish government in exile out of Yanukovich officials
and based on this restore the legitimate government in Eastern and southern region with the capital in Kharkiv, leaving Ukrainian
Taliban to rot in their own brand of far-right nationalism where the Ukraine identity is defined negatively via rabid Russophobia.
His calculation probably was that sanctions would slow down the Russia recovery from Western plunder during Yeltsin years and,
as such, it is not worth showing Western Ukrainian nationalists what level of support in Southern and Eastern regions that actually
enjoy.
My impression is that they are passionately hated by over 50% of the population of this region. And viewed as an occupying
force, which is trying to colonize the space (which is a completely true assessment). They are viewed as American stooges, who
they are (the country is controlled from the USA embassy in any case).
And Putin's assessment might be wrong, as sanctions were imposed anyways, and now Ukraine does represent a threat to Russia
and, as such, is a huge source of instability in the region, which was the key idea of "Nulandgate" as the main task was weakening
Russia. In this sense, Euromaidan coup d'état was the major success of the Obama administration, which was a neocon controlled
administration from top to bottom.
Also unclear what Dems are trying to achieve. If Pelosi gambit, cynically speaking, was about rehashing Mueller witch hunt
success in the 2018 election, that is typical wishful thinking. Mobilization of the base works both ways.
So what is the game plan for DemoRats (aka "neoliberal democrats" or "corporate democrats" -- the dominant Clinton faction
of the Democratic Party) is completely unclear.
I doubt that they will gain anything from impeachment Kabuki theater, where both sides are afraid to discuss the real issues
like Douma false flag and other real Trump crimes.
Most Democratic candidates such as Warren, Biden, and Klobuchar will lose from this impeachment theater. Candidates who can
gain, such as Major Pete and Bloomberg does not matter that much.
run75441 , January 25, 2020 4:48 pm
likbez:
Let me help you along with the rant . . . "so you are in trump's camp." That was not a question. Given anything the Dems may
have, the Repubs have done it bigger. No where does Schiff compare to the evils and long lasting impact by that of Trump,
Nunes, and Mcconnell. Comment over.
likbez , January 25, 2020 7:47 pm
> No where does Schiff compare to the evils and long lasting impact by abd of trump
Does not matter. Schiff is just a marionette performing prescribed function. He is adamantly inept is this function, but
that happens with marionettes. Nothing to talk about or to compare with the major "evildoers" of Trump administration (although
he, like Pompeo, is a neocon, so he belongs to the same crime family ;-)
Opening impeachment was worse then a crime, it was a blunder on the part of neoliberal Dems. Essentially they bet
that it can serve as the "Muller investigation II" helping the neoliberal Dems to win 2020 like it helped them to win 2018 without
reforming the Party. They forgot about their own crimes committed in the process (Ukraine, Stzrokgate, etc), which now come to
light
Pelosi somehow opted for this "Hail Mary pass" and allowed Schiff to destroy the last remnants of the credibility of neoliberal
Dems: none of House Republicans voted for impeachment, which dooms the idea converting it into the vote of non-confidence of the
majority party. Creating the situation in which Dems, paradoxically, can lose some House seats they gained in 2018. Which would
be a bad thing. Also due to backlash they now can well lose 2020 election while each of Dems candidates (with the possible exception
of semi-senile neoliberal Biden) is a better option for the country than Trump.
Actually, as a side effect, they might well sink Warren (which is not such a good thing), as she was stupid enough to jump
into impeachment bandwagon early on with great enthusiasm. Proving another time that she is an incompetent politician.
"Whom the gods would destroy..." (misattributed to Euripides)
run75441 , January 25, 2020 8:17 pm
likbez:
No it does not. He is inept at a function and does not follow the constitutional precepts put in place by the Founding Fathers.
Schiff and all of us are on unchartered territory where a president deems he can do as he pleases, is above the law, and can not
be reigned in by the law or the two legislative bodies of the nation. He is aided and abetted by illegal Congressional actions
with the support of renegade Senators. No where in history has anything of this magnitude occurred. He has to be ousted.
I told you once before, knock that neoliberal shit off. You are just using this as a filter to avoid what most people see,
Trump is a narcissistic megalomaniac. It matters that he is escaping impeachment. Of all the presidents impeached before him as
#4, he is the most deserving. History will judge his actions and crimes.
This is not "the reputation for hyperbole". This is attempt to defend the interests of MIC, including the
interests of intelligence agencies themselves in view of deteriorating financial position of the USA. And first of all the level
of the current funding. Like was the case in 2016 elections, the intelligence
agencies and first of all CIA should now be considered as the third party participating in the
2020 election which attempts to be the kingmaker. They are interested in continuing and intensifying the Cold War 2, as it secured
funding for them and MIC (of this they are essential part)
Notable quotes:
"... The official, Shelby Pierson, "appears to have overstated the intelligence community's formal assessment of Russian interference in the 2020 election, omitting important nuance during a briefing with lawmakers earlier this month," according to CNN . ..."
"... " The intelligence doesn't say that ," one senior national security official told CNN. "A more reasonable interpretation of the intelligence is not that they have a preference, it's a step short of that. It's more that they understand the President is someone they can work with, he's a dealmaker." - CNN ..."
"... To recap - Pierson told the House Intelligence Committee a lie , which was promptly leaked to the press - ostensibly by Democrats on the committee, and it's just now getting walked back with far less attention than the original 'bombshell' headline received. ..."
"... No biggie... the media just ran with hysteria for 3 years as gospel accusing people of treason ..."
"... Well guess what? It turns out the media and the DNC were the ones working for Russia, executing their long standing goal to create chaos better than Russia could have ever dreamed of. https://t.co/PhrJiES9ui ..."
The US intelligence community's top election security official who appears to have
overstated Russian interference in the 2020 election has a history of hyperbole - described
by the
Wall Street Journal as "a reputation for being injudicious with her words."
The official, Shelby Pierson, "appears to have overstated the intelligence community's
formal assessment of Russian interference in the 2020 election, omitting important nuance
during a briefing with lawmakers earlier this month," according to
CNN .
The official, Shelby Pierson, told lawmakers on the House Intelligence Committee that
Russia is interfering in the 2020 election with the goal of helping President Donald Trump
get reelected .
The US intelligence community has assessed that Russia is interfering in the 2020
election and has separately assessed that Russia views Trump as a leader they can work
with. But the US does not have evidence that Russia's interference this cycle is aimed at
reelecting Trump , the officials said.
" The intelligence doesn't say that ," one senior national security official told CNN.
"A more reasonable interpretation of the intelligence is not that they have a preference,
it's a step short of that. It's more that they understand the President is someone they can
work with, he's a dealmaker." -
CNN
Pierson was reportedly peppered with questions from the House Intelligence Committee,
which 'caused her to overstep and assert that Russia has a preference for Trump to be
reelected,' according to the report. CNN notes that one intelligence official said that her
characterization was "misleading," while a national security official said she failed to
provide the "nuance" required to put the US intelligence conclusions in proper context.
To recap - Pierson told the House Intelligence Committee a lie , which was promptly leaked
to the press - ostensibly by Democrats on the committee, and it's just now getting walked
back with far less attention than the original 'bombshell' headline received.
Sound familiar?
No biggie... the media just ran with hysteria for 3 years as gospel accusing people of
treason
Well guess what? It turns out the media and the DNC were the ones working for Russia,
executing their long standing goal to create chaos better than Russia could have ever
dreamed of. https://t.co/PhrJiES9ui
"... In 2017, a woman working with frontline families told me why she didn't want reintegration. 'These [the population of rebel-held
Donbass] are people with a minimum level of human development, people raised by their TVs. Okay, so we live together, then what? We're
trying to build a completely new society.' ..."
"... And there once again you have it – one of the primary causes of the war in Ukraine: the contempt with which the post-Maidan
government and its activist supporters regard a significant portion of their fellow citizens, the 'sick trash' of Donbass with their
'minimum level of human development'. ..."
I'd never heard of the Euro-Atlantic Security Leadership Group (EASLG) until today, even though it turns out that one of its members
has the office next door to mine. Its
website says that
it seeks to respond to the challenge of East-West tensions by convening 'former and current officials and experts from a group of
Euro-Atlantic states and the European union to test ideas and develop proposals for improving security in areas of existential common
interest'. It hopes thereby to 'generate trust through dialogue.'
It's hard to object to any of this, but its latest
statement , entitled 'Twelve Steps Toward Greater Security in Ukraine and the Euro-Atlantic Region', doesn't inspire a lot of
confidence. The 'twelve steps' the EASLG proposes to improve security in Eastern Ukraine are generally pretty uninspiring, being
largely of the 'set up a working group to explore' variety, or of such a vaguely aspirational nature as to be almost worthless (e.g.
'Advance reconstruction of Donbas An essential first step is to conduct a credible needs assessment for the Donbas region to inform
a strategy for its social-economic recovery.' Sounds nice, but in reality doesn't amount to a hill of beans).
For the most part, these proposals attempt to treat the symptoms of the war in Ukraine without addressing the root causes. In
a sense, that's fine, as symptoms need treating, but it's sticking plaster when the patient needs some invasive surgery. At the end
of its statement, though, the EASLG does go one step further with 'Step 12: Launch a new national dialogue about identity', saying:
A new, inclusive national dialogue across Ukraine is desirable and could be launched as soon as possible. Efforts should be
made to engage with perspectives from Ukraine's neighbors, especially Poland, Hungary, and Russia. This dialogue should address
themes of history and national memory, language, identity, and minority experience. It should include tolerance and respect for
ethnic and religious minorities in order to increase engagement, inclusiveness, and social cohesion.
This is admirably trendy and woke, but in the Ukrainian context somewhat explosive, as it implicitly challenges the identity politics
of the post-Maidan regime. Unsurprisingly, it's gone down like a lead balloon in Kiev. The notorious website Mirotvorets even
went so far as to add former
German ambassador Wolfgang Ischinger to its blacklist of enemies of Ukraine for having had the temerity to sign the EASLG statement
and thus 'taking part in Russia's propaganda events aimed against Ukraine.' Katherine Quinn-Judge of the International Crisis Group
commented on Twitter, 'As the idea of dialogue
becomes more mainstream, backlash to the concept grows fiercer.' 'In Ukraine, prominent pro-Western politicians, civic activists,
and media, have called Step 12 "a provocation" and "dangerous",' she added
Quinn-Judge comes across as generally sympathetic to the Ukrainian narrative about the war in Donbass, endorsing the idea that
it's largely a product of 'Russian aggression'. But she also recognizes that the war has an internal, social dimension which the
Ukrainian government and its elite-level supporters refuse to acknowledge. Consequently, they also reject any sort of dialogue, either
with Russia or with the rebels in Donbass. As Quinn-Judge notes in another Tweet:
An advisor to one of Ukraine's most powerful pol[itician]s told us recently of his concern about talk of dialogue in international
and domestic circles. 'We have all long ago agreed among ourselves. We need to return our territory, and then work with that sick
– sick – population.'
This isn't an isolated example. Quinn-Judge follows up with a couple more similar statements:
Social resentments underpin some opposition to disengagement, for example. An activist in [government-controlled] Shchastye
told me recently that she feared disengagement and the reopening of the bridge linking the isolated town to [rebel-held] Luhansk:
'I don't want all that trash coming over here.'
In 2017, a woman working with frontline families told me why she didn't want reintegration. 'These [the population of rebel-held
Donbass] are people with a minimum level of human development, people raised by their TVs. Okay, so we live together, then what?
We're trying to build a completely new society.'
And there once again you have it – one of the primary causes of the war in Ukraine: the contempt with which the post-Maidan
government and its activist supporters regard a significant portion of their fellow citizens, the 'sick trash' of Donbass with their
'minimum level of human development'. You can fiddle with treating Donbass' symptoms as much as you like, ŕ la EASLG,
but unless you tackle this fundamental problem, the disease will keep on ravaging the subject for a long time to come. In due course,
I suggest, the only realistic cure will be to remove the patient entirely from the cause of infection.
All that you have described above is very sad, but not very surprising – which is itself very sad. I think Patrick Armstrong is
right that a lot of the reason Ukraine is not and has never been a functional polity is because much if not most of the population
cannot accept that the right side won WWII.
Contempt and loathing towards the Donbass is a pretty popular feeling amongst Ukrainian svidomy. E.g., one of the two regular
pro-Ukrainian commenters on my blog.
To his credit, he supports severing the Donbass from Ukraine (as one would a gangrenous limb – his metaphor) as opposed to
trying to claw it back. Which is an internally consistent position.
Same guy who doesn't consider Yanukovych as having been overthrown under coup like circumstances, while downplaying Poland's
past subjugation of Rus territory.
In Part I and II we saw how much truth is there in Herr Karlin's claim of being a model of the rrrracially purrrre Rrrrrrrussian
plus some personal views.
Part III (this one) gives a peek into his cultural and upbringing limits, which "qualify" him as an expert of all things Russian,
who speaks on behalf of the People and the Country.
" I left when I was six, in 1994 , so I'm not really the best person to ask this question of – it should probably be directed
to my parents, or even better, the Russian government at the time which had for all intents and purposes ceased paying academics
their salaries.
I went to California for higher education and because its beaches and mountains made for a nice change from the bleakness of
Lancashire.
I returned to Russia because if I like Putler so much, why don't I go back there? Okay, less flippancy. I am Russian, I
do not feel like a foreigner here, I like living in Moscow, added bonus is that I get much higher quality of life for the buck
than in California ."
"I never went to school, don't have any experience with writing in Russian, and have been overexposed to Anglo culture ,
so yes, it's no surprise that my texts will sound strange."
The Russian branch of Carnegie Endowment did a piece on this issue. It mostly fits your ideas, but the author suggests it was
a compromise, short-term solution – what steps can be taken right now, without crossing red lines of either side – but compromise
is unwelcome among both parties. The official Russian reaction was quite cold too.
Upon a quick perusal of the website of the org at issue, Alexey Arbatov and Susan Eisenhower have some kind of affiliation
with it, thus maybe explaining the compromise approach you mention.
This matter brings to mind Trump saying one thing during his presidential bid – only to then bring in people in key positions
who don't agree with what he campaigned on.
In terms of credentials and name status, the likes of Rand Paul, Tulsi Gabbard, Stephen Cohen and Jim Jatras, are needed in
Trump's admin for the purpose of having a more balanced foreign policy approach that conforms with US interests (not to be necessarily
confused with what neocons and neolibs favor).
Instead, Trump has been top heavy with geopolitical thinking opposites. He possibly thought that having them in would take
some of the criticism away from him.
The arguably ideal admin has both sides of an issue well represented, with the president intelligently deciding what's best.
On the BBC and on other media there are films of Ukrainians attacking a bus with people evacuated from China. These people
even wanted to burn down the hospital where the peoplew were taken (along with other unrelated patients)
This is a sign of a degraded society – attacking people who may or may not be ill!!!
Ukraine will eventually break up
The nationalist agenda is just degrading the society.
-The economy is failing
-People who can, are leaving
-The elected government has no control over the violent people who take to the streets
It's clear Zelensky is a puppet no different to Poroshenko – this destroys the idea that democracy is a good thing.
It's very sad that the EU and the Americans under Obama – empowered these decisive elements and then blame Russia.
Crimea did the right thing leaving Ukraine – Donbass hopefully will follow.
"And there once again you have it – one of the primary causes of the war in Ukraine: the contempt with which the post-Maidan
government and its activist supporters regard a significant portion of their fellow citizens, the 'sick trash' of Donbass"
[ ]
Only them?
[ ]
Yesterday marks yet another milestone on the Ukrainian glorious шлях перемог and long and arduous return to the Family
of the European Nations. The Civil Society ™ of the Ukraine rose as one in the mighty CoronavirusMaidan, against the jackbooted
goons of the crypto-Napoleon (and agent of Putin) Zelensky. Best people from Poltava oblast' (whose ancestors without doubt, welcomed
Swedish Euro-integrators in 1709) and, most important of all, from the Best (Western) Ukrajina, who 6 years ago made the Revolution
of Dignity in Kiev the reality and whom pan Poroshenko called the best part of the Nation, said their firm "Геть вiд Москви!"
to their fellow Ukrainian citizens, evacuated from Wuhan province in China
The Net is choke full of vivid, memorable videos, showing that 6 years after Maidan, the Ukraine now constitute a unified,
эдiна та соборна country. You all, no doubt, already watched these clips, where a brave middle-aged gentleman from the
Western Ukraine, racially pure Ukr, proves his mental acuity by deducing, that crypto-tyrant (and "не лох") Zelensky wants to
settle evacuees in his pristine oblast out of vengeance, because the Best Ukrajina didn't vote for him during the election. Or
a clip about a brave woman from Poltava oblast, suggesting to relocate the Trojan-horse "fellow countrymen" to Chernobol's Zone.
Or even the witty comments and suggestions by the paragons of the Ukrainian Civil Society, " волонтэры ":
Shy and conscientious members of the Ukrainian (national!) intelligentsia had their instincts aligned rrrrrright. When they
learned about that their hospital will be the one receiving the evacuees from Wuhan, the entire medical personell of that Poltava
oblast medical facility rose to their feet and sang "Shenya vmerla". Democracy and localism proved once again the strongest suit
of the pro-European Ukraine, with Ternopol's oblast regional council voting to accept the official statement to the crypto-tyrant
Zelensky, which calls attempts to place evacuees on their Holy land "an act of Genocide of the Ukrainian People" (c)
That's absolutely "normal", predictable reaction of the "racially pure Ukrainians" to their own fellow citizens. Now, Professor,
are you insisting on seeking or even expecting "compromise" with them ? What to do, if after all these years, there is
no such thing as the united Ukrainian political nation?
"Ukraine's democracy is flourishing like never before due to the tireless efforts of grassroots, pro-democracy, civil-society
groups. Many Ukrainians say their country is now firmly set on an irreversible, pro-Western trajectory. Moreover, the country
has also undertaken a top-to-bottom cultural, economic, and political divorce from its former Soviet overlord.
Today, Ukraine is a democratic success story in the making, despite Russia's best efforts to the contrary."
– Nolan Peterson, a former special operations pilot and a combat veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, is The Daily Signal's foreign
correspondent based in Ukraine
She does not use the term neoliberalism but she provide interesting perspective about
connection of neoliberalism and Trotskyism. It is amazing fact that most of them seriously
studied communist ideology at universities.
Trotskyites are never constrained by morality and they are obsessed with raw power
(especially political power) and forceful transformation of the society. They are for global dominance so they were early
adherents of "Full spectrum Dominance" doctirne approporitated later be US neocons. Their Dream -- global run from Washington
neoliberal empire is a mirror of the dream of Trotskyites of global communist empire run from Moscow (Trotsky "Permanent war" till
the total victory of communism idea)
Inability to understand that neoliberal is undermines Diana West thinking, but still she is a good researcher and she managed
to reveal some interesting facts and tendencies. She intuitively understand that both are globalist ideologies, but that
about all she managed to understand. Bad for former DIA specialist on the USSR and former colleague of Colonel Lang (see
Sic Semper Tyrannis)
It is funny that Sanders is being accused of being a 'self-identified' socialist, while neoliberal elite is shoulder-deep in socialism for the 1%
and enjoy almost unlimited access to free Fed funds.
I received my copy just a few days before the Mueller investigation closed shop. There is
an old saying "You can't tell the players without a program." As the aftermath of the Mueller
investigation begins, you need this book. Some pundits and observers of the political scene
have observed that the Mueller investigation didn't come about because of any real concern
about "Trump Russia collusion," it was manufactured to protect the deep state from a
non-political interloper. That's the case Diana West makes and does it with her exceptional
knowledge of the Cold War and the current jihad wars. Not to mention her deadly aim with her
rhetorical darts.
The Red Thread by Diana West
Diana states, "the anti-Trump conspiracy is not about Democrats and Republicans. It is not
about the ebb and flow of political power, lawfully and peacefully transferred. It is about
globalists and nationalists, just as the president says. They are locked in the old and
continuous Communist/anti-Communist struggle, and fighting to the end, whether We, the
anti-Communists, recognize it or not."
Diana traces the Red Thread running through the swamp, she names names and relates the
history of the Red players. She asks the questions, Why? Why so many Soviet-style acts of
deception perpetrated from inside the federal government against the American electoral
process? Why so many uncorroborated dossiers of Russian provenance influencing our politics?
Why such a tangle of communist and socialist roots in the anti-Trump conspiracy?
In this book, these questions will be answered.
If you have read her book "American Betrayal," I'm sure you will have a good idea about
what is going on. I did. I just didn't know the major players and the red history behind each
of them.
The book is very interesting and short, only 104 pages, but it is not finished yet. Easy
to read but very disturbing to know the length and width of the swamp, the depth, we may not
know for a long time. I do feel better knowing that there are people like Diana uncovering
and shining a light into the darkness. Get the book, we all need to know why this is
happening and who the enemies are behind it. Our freedom depends on it.
"In America moral relativism is now so deeply embued that there is no ideology, including
communism, that can bar you from joining our most powerful intelligence agency (which was
essentially stood up to fight communism) and even rise to control it and all of its secrets."
–Diana West, The Red Thread
I think Diana West might want to consider the "just war" theory as something Niebuhr.would
have been talking about. I do not know the writings of either Niebuhr or Tillich well but it
is my understanding that both did much good in the world so I wouldn't write them off without
very careful consideration. Many deeply religious people I know consider some of the ideas
contained within socialism to be Christian friendly. Thank you for considering my
statements.
For 3 years i argued with my Left wing friend. One day he called out "I just want to
control people". Talk about 'the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks'. I finally worked
out what made my friend consider government programs as the solution to every problem: He is
a closet control freak! Every person on the Left is a control freak hiding in the closet!!
Beware of these dictators coming to control your life!!!
The PUTIN's aim is to sow distrust among the US population. The USA, a peaceful civilized
society with apparently no internal conflicts maintains a similar peaceful empire for the
benefit of all humanity.
The impersonate evil of the PUTIN has of course every intention to destroy the present state
of tranquility and therefore aims to destruct the undisputed peaceful leader of this empire
by sowing internal conflict.
This is why from Sanders to Warren to Gabbard to Bloomberg to Trump everyone is on the PUTIN
payroll or subconsciously exposed to some mind controlling rays he sends via satellite to the
USA.
The PUTIN is the invention by the Russian Federation after their successful evil attempt to
evade the good intentions of the EMPIRE to embrace Russia in its sphere of peaceful
tranquility.
I suppose when Jeff Bozo's Blog discovers that Putin is playing three-dimensional chess with
himself using Bernie Sanders as the White Side and Mike Bloomberg as the Black Side, it will
finally declare that to save the US from Russian meddling, the very notion and institution of
regular elections, and the massive organisation, funding systems and networks, and marketing
campaigns and promotions associated with the 4-year election cycle must finally be declared
harmful to American interests and done away with. WaPo will finally advocate for a one-man
police state. Democracy truly dies in the darkness of delirium and derangement. Thank you,
WaPo.
This is hilarious, 'nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American
people' H L Mencken. But seriously, Putin does now have the power to decide US elections, he
simply makes his preferred choice [now the obvious loser]one day before the election. You
could not make this up.
"The prospect of two rival campaigns both receiving help from Moscow appears to
reflect what intelligence officials have previously described as Russia's broader interest in
sowing division in the United States and uncertainty about the validity of American
elections" WaPo, 2/21/20.
This level if clinical delusion is reminiscent of the Führer's last days in the
bunker.
I know, I know, it's a waste of time trying to ridicule the media when they're already doing
that to themselves. Satire is definitely dead when the Washington Post reports about "two
rival campaigns both receiving help from Moscow". WaPo's attempts to explain that the purpose
of this bizarre behavior is "sowing division" makes it look even more incredible.
For years I have stressed the need for our leaders to make decisions based on
thoughtfulness and foresight -- not just emotion, or what may "feel good" in a given
moment. This is especially important in the area of foreign policy, as politicians' desire
to "do something" too often overrides careful consideration of the unintended consequences
of the actions they take. Time and time again, their poor judgment has led to worse
outcomes in the countries where we recklessly intervene, and for our own country's national
security.
An egregious lack of foresight also led to this counterproductive impeachment of
Trump.
Those who wish to lead our country should have had the foresight to know that this
result was inevitable. They need to understand that their decisions should not be dictated
by what makes them temporarily feel good or look good, but rather by what will be good for
the American people. Emotional gratification or political advantage should never determine
one's votes or actions.
Of course the 'sky is falling' Russia revelation/leak/false flag is part of the CIA's ongoing
(failed) coup against Trump. But most importantly these revelations are meant to destroy the
Bernie Sanders campaign as he gains an insurmountable lead and momentum. The desperate,
debauched CIA stooge Democratic Party launches another salvo in its ongoing coup against
Sanders. This is nothing to do with Russian interference of US elections, but the
interference by Intelligence, working for the Money Power, to preserve the status quo of
greed, and murder hope for change in its cradle.
IMO the "Russia meddling" trope is just cover for the real meddlers (ReMs) in our elections.
The ReMs don't bother with click bait ads, they use the most effective tool out there to
influence voters, candidates, and deep state operatives: the US$. The ReMs give cash to
candidates who prefer their policies, and if the candidate does toe the line on their
policies, they give the money to their opponent. This is the real meddling, but we don't hear
about it because any mention of it results in major shaming as "anti-*******" from the ReMs.
The ReMs (even though they are supporting a foreign country) do not have to register as
foreign agents in the US (very special treatment) due to specific legislation passed in
previous years. The ReMs have bragged about their "support of" (really, buying of) state and
federal level legislatures to the point of denying basic Constitutional rights and have been
vehemently protected by those bought off people.
This is the most effective fifth column, the principal criminal, not the Russkies.
Let's be honest with ourselves. We all know that American minds are extremely weak and
fragile and Americans cannot be exposed to any informations which they are far too helpless
to process correctly.
We absolutely need to be protected from any ideas that might derail our defenceless little
minds.
Thank heaven that the kindly US Government is defending us from wrongful ideas that we
cannot possibly handle ourselves.
I hate to break circe's bubble, but here's Saunders responding to a WaPoo trash article:
"I don't care, frankly, who Putin wants to be president. My message to Putin is clear:
Stay out of American elections, and as president I will make sure that you do. In 2016,
Russia used Internet propaganda to sow division in our country, and my understanding is that
they are doing it again in 2020."
Sorry dear. Russia did not use internet propaganda to sow division in 2016.... the Dims
did it all by themselves. So Saunders is a.) delusional or b.) just another lying politician
or c.) hoping the J. Bozo drops a check in the mail?
Question: the WaPoo seems to have become the new National Inquirer, yes? Does J. Bozo
really need the money?
The "social" is "social media" is in contrast to "professional" or "business" or
"commercial" media, i.e. the MSM and other commercial media.
I understand "social media" literally in the Orwellian sense, it is "social" media just like
war is peace. The true meaning is "asocial media" which prevents real interaction, and under
complete control by big brother, you can become a non-person at any moment.
The American "D"emocracy is a theater of the absurd - not sure if it is a tragedy or a comedy
or a tragicomedy. But one thing I am absolutely sure about is the high level of intelligence
of the Sheeple.
Yesterday, Pepe Escobar made a similar entry on his Facebook page to which I replied as
follows:
"Why would Russia do that when Trump's doing such a good job of further ruining the USA
and Bloomberg would do an even better job of it, whereas Sanders would actually improve the
nation and make it a stronger competitor. 100% illogical and spastic!"
One of his entries today deals with the Iranian election which saw the "Conservatives"
gain ground, which in the circumstances was a likely result. And if you haven't yet, check
out Pepe's
article at Strategic Culture .
"... Russia's broader interest in sowing division in the United States and uncertainty about
the validity of American elections..."
hell, I think there's been sizeable skepticism about the validity of US elections since
the Supreme Court pulled off a coup d'etat against Gore in 2000, and then went ahead again to
load the dice in Citizens United to give it all away to the oligarchs and Ruling Class with
their truck loads of money and dirty laundrying
no 'russian assets' need to add anything to that pathetic track record of American
'democracy'.... and that's just from the past short 20 years
I always thought the thing about 'sowing division in the US' was one of the Elites most
hilarious and laughable memes - what we need is a satirist as great as Moliere
To quote: "Russia's broader interest in sowing division in the United States and uncertainty
about the validity of American elections."
A democracy without division, really dissent, is not a democracy. "Hey hey we must not
have division over Wall Street or police abuse.....let's have harmony. No no no say no more
or you create division."
Want to get a prespective on American democracy? Ask African Americans and other minority
groups (such as Hispanics and the wrong sort of European immigrants) what has been done to
their right to vote and dissent both now (see Georgia) or in the past (see Jim Crow).
I said this back in 2016 when Russiagate started that it was a poisoned well that the
Democrats and the Deep State/National Security establishment would never stop returning to.
And here we are, within the space 72 hours the Democrats have accused Russia of "meddling" in
the 2020 election by supporting Trump AND Sanders, so I take it that from now on whenever any
candidate appears that might upset the establishment even a little bit, they will be accused
of being Russian puppets.
This gives the Democrat Party leadership yet another potential weapon to use against
Bernie Sanders in the event of a brokered convention, they'll just bleat out "we can't
nominate Bernie, the Russians tainted the process to support him". Trump at least can call
the Democrats out on their B.S. and call them liars right to their faces, but poor Bernie
wont have the courage to do that (at least from what I've seen so far). His own words about
Russian "meddling" in 2016 will haunt him, he'll say that the Russians shouldn't have meddled
but it won't have impacted his support, but they'll counter that the nomination process was
tainted and the DNC has no choice but to discuss how to proceed with the nomination process.
That's how they'll try to kill Bernie's candidacy, the "discussion" will just be a bunch of
declarations, ultimatums and public commitments they will extract from Bernie to try and
break Bernie from his base and either halt his movement's momentum or kill it outright.
I don't know if it will work but the DNC has a history of doubling down against the
people's favorite. If the DNC pursue this stratagem I imagine we'll see some talking heads
show up in March pushing for a discussion among the candidates on how to respond to Russian
meddling, maybe even some debate questions. Either way, Sander needs to come out swinging
against whatever the DNC suggests (ideally he should put forth his own suggestion and steer
the conversation down a path he choses). Rest assured whatever the DNC puts forth, the goal
won't be to protect the electoral process it will be to bog down the nomination process with
a dead horse debate in order to blunt Sander's momentum so that a brokered convention to pick
someone else won't be such an obvious democratic betrayal.
If the DNC succeeds in screwing Bernie (and more importantly Bernie's supporters) out of a
presidential nomination for an election they could have won, It will be a paradigm shift in
US internal politics, a second 9/11 that will radically alter how all elections within the US
are perceived by the public forever. in the same way 9/11 normalized the concept of the
Forever War within the US (also called "Generational War" for those who wish to obscure
truth), a "Milwaukee Screw job 2020" will normalize the concept of a moribund political
establishment within the DNC that will strangle even mild political reform movement conducted
within the system itself. While this will preserve the political establishment for a time,
the economic and political crises that created these movements will remain unresolved and
having de-facto declared maintaining these crises official party policy by blocking reform
efforts within the existing political system, these movements will become radicalized and
we'll see return of radical movements similar to those of the 1970s (or 1900s). Eventually
either the political system will be reformed or it will collapse, but this will take time (a
generation perhaps more). At the very least, this period time and all of the people who lived
during it will be robbed of their full political agency, a massive lose to US society and
political sophistication. In the worst case, it will result in a political collapse of the
US, which will entail a massive cost to the US's human, economic, political and international
capital comparable to Russian in 1917
The prospect of two rival campaigns both receiving help from Moscow appears to reflect what
intelligence officials have previously described as Russia's broader interest in sowing
division in the United States and uncertainty about the validity of American elections.
(In Rachel Maddow's voice.) Sounds crazy, but what if that's the whole point? What
if Russia is making all these nonsensical moves on purpose, knowing full well they'll be
detected by the U.S. intelligence and reported in the press, thus hurting the credibility of
the U.S. intelligence, as no sane individual will believe these allegations?
"... The NATO alliance was established to protect war-devastated Western European nations against a possible Soviet threat until they got on their feet economically again. Dwight Eisenhower even said that if American troops remained in Europe too long, NATO would have failed. Yet long after the European economic miracle -- amazing prosperity achieved during a robust recovery in the decade or so after the war -- and long after the Soviet Union collapsed, NATO, instead of going away, has expanded its territory and mission. The American military remains in Europe to guarantee the security of nations that have a combined GDP greater than that of the United States. Meanwhile, Russia, the successor "threat" to the Soviet Union, has a GDP equivalent to that of Spain. The overextended United States also has a staggering national debt of $23 trillion and eye-popping unfunded government mandates at all levels that amount to between $150 and $200 trillion. ..."
Bossing, bullying, and nickel-and-diming won't make for an easy divorce. Donald Trump at
NATO Summit, Brussels, in 2018
According to Politico , the American delegation to the
illustrious Munich Security Conference -- the security counterpart to the elite World Economic
Forum in Davos, Switzerland -- was apparently "dumbfounded" by the hostile reaction they
received from European speakers, including French President Emmanuel Macron and German
President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. Steinmeier even took aim at the Trump administration's
hallowed "Make America Great Again" slogan, accusing the United States of "rejecting the idea
of the international community." Steinmeier characterized Trump's position this way: "Every
country should fend for itself and put its own interests over all others 'great again' -- even
at the expense of neighbors and partners."
Ironically, Steinmeier's acerbic comments seem to conclude that if the United States becomes
uncomfortable with continuing to effectively subsidize the defense of wealthy European states,
which have long been capable of being at least the first line of defense for themselves, it is
inflicting suffering on its allies and doesn't even believe in the "international community."
Steinmeier's grumbling is akin to that of an entitled young adult still living at home after
being told by his parents to get a job.
The NATO alliance was established to protect war-devastated Western European nations
against a possible Soviet threat until they got on their feet economically again. Dwight
Eisenhower even said that if American troops remained in Europe too long, NATO would have
failed. Yet long after the European economic miracle -- amazing prosperity achieved during a
robust recovery in the decade or so after the war -- and long after the Soviet Union collapsed,
NATO, instead of going away, has expanded its territory and mission. The American military
remains in Europe to guarantee the security of nations that have a combined GDP greater than
that of the United States. Meanwhile, Russia, the successor "threat" to the Soviet Union, has a
GDP equivalent to that of Spain. The overextended United States also has a staggering national
debt of $23 trillion and eye-popping unfunded government mandates at all levels that amount to
between $150 and $200 trillion.
One might conclude from this that Trump's policy of angrily haranguing and belittling his
NATO allies into coughing up a few more dollars for their own defense is the right one. Trump
crudely understands the problem but has come up with the wrong solution. The many Eurocentric
analysts, who dominated the American foreign policy elite during the Cold War and are now
trying to hang on to relevance, keep hyping the general Russia threat by excessively demonizing
its president, Vladimir Putin, who is really just another tin-pot dictator.
A third way is still possible, one that avoids both placating the hand-wringing Eurocentric
establishment and the nickel-and-diming of NATO allies that Trump desires.
The worst fear of the Eurocentrics is that Trump will, before leaving office, withdraw from
the NATO alliance, much as he did with the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact, the
international agreement on climate change, and the Intermediate Nuclear Forces treaty. Yet this
is the proper, though radical, approach. It needs to be done immediately, so that it can't be
reversed by the next president. The problem is that Trump has been rude and obnoxious enough to
the Europeans that the divorce might very well make Britain's exit from the European Union look
like a walk in the park. The ideal would have been to have had a previously cordial
relationship with Europe, followed by a U.S. statement that the European economic miracle has
allowed them to withstand a stagnant Russia and they need to finally take primary
responsibility for their own defense.
This would have allowed the United States rebuild its dissipated power by reducing
government spending and debt and reallocating the remaining military forces to the Pacific to
hedge against a rising China. Such a change is critical, and it remains to be seen whether it
can be achieved.
Ivan Eland is a senior fellow at the Independent Institute and director of the
Independent Institute's Center on Peace & Liberty. His new book, War and the Rogue
Presidency: Restoring the Republic After Congressional Failure, was released in May
2019.
"Trump Should Get Out Of NATO Now, But Nicely" is spot on. The Obama Administration pivot to
the Pacific could have be continued in a cordial fashion but that is not the Donald way. The
US needs to make a treaty with Russia and leave Europe with the possible exception of
Ramstein AFB.
These goofy neocon statements won't buy you anything. Stop giving legitimacy to the
establishment's false narrative, it won't make the foreign policy elites accept you, you
can't oppose the elite and at the same time work within the confines of the paradigm they
created. Not only are such statements untrue, it's self defeating.
Is it really false to say that Russia is stagnant though? After all, Russia has a falling
population (population peaked in the early 1990s), a relatively low life-expectancy, an
economy that is smaller than that of Italy's in terms of nominal GDP, and a conventional
military capability that is a mere shadow of what it once was in Soviet times. Other
countries (China, the U.S. etc..) may have a low fertility rate as well, but China has a
massive population to start with, and the U.S. can attract immigrants fairly well. Note: I am
not saying that immigration is necessarily a good thing when it is used as a means of
demographic replacement to make up for a low fertility rate, but it is one way to cope with
the geopolitical and economic implications of a low birth rate, at least for a time.
Certainly, Russia is not doing too badly by Third World standards, and,to be fair, I do
think Putin has utilized a fundamentally weak geopolitical hand rather well. It's also pretty
clear that Putin played a significant role in bringing Russia back from the brink
economically and culturally following the degradation it suffered in the 1990s. For that
matter, I think his popularity is likely genuine among many people in Russia, even if he is a
dictator of sorts. Still, if you look at the fundamental, long-term economic, demographic,
and military trends, it's hard to escape the conclusion that Russia is a declining power.
Over a long enough time frame, it almost certainly is.
Given the fact that Russia has not had an above replacement fertility rate since the fall of
the USSR, and given that it's ability to attract immigrants is rather limited (how many third
world immigrants would choose Russia, over, say, Germany?), I don't see how a falling
population is not inevitable for Russia in the long term. This is especially a problem for
Russia given the vastness of its eastern regions, as well as how few people live in those
regions to begin with.
A consistent theme of Pat Buchanan's columns about Russia is that-- given the vast
population disparities involved--China is likely to start slowly colonizing Siberia at some
point, at least in an implicit, economic sort of way. I do wonder if this is a likely
outcome.
I said that it's doing well by Third World standards, not that it necessarily is itself a
Third World nation. Historically, Russia was considered a Second World country, which makes
sense.
Russia has an excellent education system, its medical services are good, it has a high
literacy rate, it is white and Christian, with conservative values, and it has few gun
massacres.
Leaving NATO is a no-brainer. The US and Russia have a common foe - the Chicoms.
The problem with disbanding NATO is that no one knows what will follow.
Would Europe go back to the intra power politics of the early 20th Century? In which case the
US will likely sucked into their next war.
Or would the EU integrate it's defense and foreign policy and create a Federal Europe? And if
they did, how long would it take Europe to be a peer competitor to the US?
How many European countries have territorial claims on each other? Few to none.
How many European countries are in competition for colonies? Few to none.
You don't need territorial issues for war, the US had no territorial issues with Iraq nor
Afghanistan in 2001, it didn't prevent the US from invading both countries.
I can easily see something like social dumping starting a cascade that takes Europe to
war. That is the main European fear about BREXIT.
I think Russia is more worried about its southern flank than its western one in the long term
especially once the US and its ambition is gone. Russia badly needs to get closer to Europe.
Germany will rule the E.U. just as they would have If Hitler had won the 2cd World war It
will be national socialist which the Muslims will like .. The remaining Jews will have to
leave or die
NATO should have been mothballed after the fall of the USSR and the Warsaw Pact. But the
vested interests of the military-industrial-financial complex have kept it expanding,
antagonizing Russia in its sphere of influence, seeking out new monsters (such as the unjust
and illegal war on Serbia), and it mainly exists now to enrich arms producers and to support
bureaucrats in Brussels with sinecures in their fancy headquarters building.
As an anti-war lefty, I just love this destruction of the intelligence community and hope
Trump really does abandon NATO... right before we drag him out of White House in shackles...
or some such thing.
It's curious the complaint about debt in this post... didn't everyone just agree to
increase the defense budget last year... again?
This would have allowed the United States rebuild its dissipated power by reducing
government spending and debt and reallocating the remaining military forces to the Pacific to
hedge against a rising China.
Why must the US hedge against a rising China in the Pacific ?
How is this a realistic plan of action?
China's rise has been through voluntary economic endeavors with other nations not through
force of arms. Asian issues must be solved via Asian nations engaging in dialectical dialogue
not US government gun-boat diplomacy.
The same logic that allows for a reduced US role in NATO (ie defending Europe) clearly
shows that America's allies in the Pacific (eg Japan, S.Korea, Indonesia, etc) have more than
recovered (eg Japan world's 3rd largest economy, S.Korea 12th largest, Indonesia 16th
largest) from the devastation of WWII and the Korea War and are quite capable of defending
themselves.
To paraphrase George Washington - trade with all entangling alliances with none.
The US has been running trillion dollar yearly deficits for over a decade with an
acknowledged 23 trillion dollar debt (as of 2020) along with hundreds of trillions of dollars
in unfunded future liabilities and deteriorating national infrastructure in need of over 3
trillion dollars in upgrades.
In order to meet these pressing issues the US government needs to stop garrisoning (ie
empire) the world under the tissue paper thin veneer of providing global stability and
security (of which it can not even provide in Baltimore Md 50 miles from DC) and return it's
myopic/megalomaniacal gaze to America.
I don't think Trump is really interested in leaving NATO. US has a stable & a dependable
market in Europe. US' presence in Europe prevents China & Russia spreading their wings
there. It will also assist US in containing these major powers along side its efforts in
South China Sea & the Info-Pacific. Internationally US gets the support of 27 Countries
in all international fora. To my mind, the very reason why US continually keeps projecting
Russia as an enemy is to ensure that the European countries remain tied to US.
Even if US is unwilling to let go Europe from the alliance, it is time EU abandons US
& takes responsibility for itself. Europe has the potential to become an important &
a powerful pole in a Multipolar world.
Russia presents more of a danger today than during the height of the Cold War: then the
Kremlin had a proper buffer zone, today it has not. There is the existential threat: the
reason nations to war.
https://www.ghostsofhistory...
While I agree that NATO is now irrelevant and a significant waste of US tax dollars, shifting
that expenditure to fight China might be an even bigger mistake. The US should withdraw its
military forces from the Western Pacific for the same reason we should leave NATO. Japan,
Korea, Taiwan, and the Philippines should be made responsible for making their own
accommodations with China.
"... Schiff insisted that Trump must be removed now to "assure the integrity" of the 2020 election. He elaborated somewhat ambiguously that "The president's misconduct cannot be decided at the ballot box, for we cannot be assured that the vote will be fairly won." Schiff also unleashed one of the most time honored but completely lame excuses for going to war, claiming that military assistance to Ukraine that had been delayed by Trump was essential for U.S. national security. He said "As one witness put it during our impeachment inquiry, the United States aids Ukraine and her people so that we can fight Russia over there, and we don't have to fight Russia here." ..."
"... Schiff, a lawyer who has never had to put his life on the line for anything and whose son sports a MOSSAD t-shirt, is one of those sunshine soldiers who finds it quite acceptable if someone else does the dying. Journalist Max Blumenthal observed that "Liberals used to mock Bush supporters when they used this jingoistic line during the war on Iraq. Now they deploy it to justify an imperialist proxy war against a nuclear power." Aaron Mate at The Nation added that "For all the talk about Russia undermining faith in U.S. elections, how about Russiagaters like Schiff fear-mongering w/ hysterics like this? Let's assume Ukraine did what Trump wanted: announce a probe of Burisma. Would that delegitimize a 2020 U.S. election? This is a joke." ..."
"... On Wednesday, Schiff maintained that "Russia is not a threat to Eastern Europe alone. Ukraine has become the de facto proving ground for just the types of hybrid warfare that the twenty-first century will become defined by: cyberattacks, disinformation campaigns, efforts to undermine the legitimacy of state institutions, whether that is voting systems or financial markets. The Kremlin showed boldly in 2016 that with the malign skills it honed in Ukraine, they would not stay in Ukraine. Instead, Russia employed them here to attack our institutions, and they will do so again." Not surprisingly, if one substitutes the "United States" for "Russia" and "Kremlin" and changes "Ukraine" to Iran or Venezuela, the Schiff comment actually becomes much more credible. ..."
"... Donald Trump's erratic rule has certainly dismayed many of his former supporters, but the Democratic Party is offering nothing but another helping of George W. Bush/Barack Obama establishment war against the world. We Americans have had enough of that for the past nineteen years. Trump may indeed deserve to be removed based on his actions, but the argument that it is essential to do so because of Russia lurking is complete nonsense. Pretty scary that the apparent chief promoter of that point of view is someone who actually has power in the government, one Adam Schiff, head of the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee. ..."
"... It is scary, but what else can Schiff say? They have no credible arguments against Trump, or for their own party. They are a bunch of lying scumbags that will kill, cheat, steal, mislead, carpet-bag and anything else unethical to achieve their sleazy goals. ..."
"... Since the US Sociopaths In Charge have totally Effed up the nation, and a significant portion of the world, they have to have SOMEBODY to blame. They certainly won't take the blame they deserve themselves. ..."
"... What the ZOG wants the ZOG gets ..."
"... It is appropriate to recall the words of Joseph Goebbels: "Give me the media, and I will make a herd of pigs from any nation," and pigs are easy to drive to the slaughterhouse. Only Russia can really resist such a situation in the world. Therefore, she is the enemy. ..."
"... The Centrist Democrats and Republicans want to paint the old school God and Country Conservatives Equality and Justice for the USA (Nationalist) into being Russian ..."
One of the more interesting aspects of the nauseating impeachment trial in the Senate was
the repeated vilification of Russia and its President Vladimir Putin.
To hate Russia has become dogma on both sides of the political aisle, in part because no
politician has really wanted to confront the lesson of the 2016 election, which was that most
Americans think that the federal government is basically incompetent and staffed by career
politicians like Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell who should return back home and get real jobs
.
Worse still, it is useless, and much like the one trick pony the only thing it can do is
steal money from the taxpayers and waste it on various types of self-gratification that only
politicians can appreciate. That means that the United States is engaged is fighting multiple
wars against make-believe enemies while the country's infrastructure rots and a host of
officially certified grievance groups control the public space.
It sure doesn't look like Kansas anymore.
The fact that opinion polls in Europe suggest that many Europeans would rather have Vladimir
Putin than their own hopelessly corrupt leaders is suggestive. One can buy a whole range of
favorable t-shirts featuring Vladimir Putin on Ebay , also suggesting that most Americans find
the official Russophobia narrative both mysterious and faintly amusing. They may not really be
into the expressed desire of the huddled masses in D.C. to go to war to bring true U.S. style
democracy to the un-enlightened.
One also must wonder if the Democrats are reading the tea leaves correctly. If they think
that a slogan like "Honest Joe Biden will keep us safe from Moscow" will be a winner in 2020
they might again be missing the bigger picture. Since the focus on Trump's decidedly erratic
behavior will inevitably die down after the impeachment trial is completed, the Democrats will
have to come up with something compelling if they really want to win the presidency and it sure
won't be the largely fictionalized Russian threat.
Nevertheless, someone should tell Congressman Adam Schiff, who chairs the House Intelligence
Committee, to shut up as he is becoming an international embarrassment. His "closing arguments"
speeches last week were respectively two-and-a-half hours and ninety minutes long and were
inevitably praised by the mainstream media as "magisterial," "powerful," and "impressive." The
Washington Post 's resident Zionist extremist Jennifer Rubin
labeled it "a grand slam" while legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin
called it "dazzling." Gail Collins of the New York Times dubbed it "a
great job" and added that Schiff is now "a rock star." Daily Beast enthused that
the remarks "will go down in history " and progressive activist Ryan Knight called it "a
closing statement for the ages." Hollywood was also on board with actress Debra Messing
tweeting "I am in tears. Thank you Chairman Schiff for fighting for our country."
Actually, a better adjective would have been "scary" and not merely due to its elaboration
of the alleged high crimes and misdemeanors committed by President Trump, much of which was
undeniably true even if not necessarily impeachable. It was scary because it was a warmongers speech, full of allusions to Russia, to Moscow's
"interference" in 2016, and to the
ridiculous proposition that if Trump were to be defeated in 2020 he might not concede and
Russia could even intervene militarily in the United States in support of its puppet.
Schiff insisted that Trump must be removed now to "assure the integrity" of the 2020
election. He elaborated somewhat ambiguously that "The president's misconduct cannot be decided
at the ballot box, for we cannot be assured that the vote will be fairly won." Schiff also unleashed one of the most time honored but completely lame excuses for
going to war, claiming that military assistance to Ukraine that had been delayed by Trump was
essential for U.S. national security. He said "As one witness put it during our impeachment
inquiry, the United States aids Ukraine and her people so that we can fight Russia over there,
and we don't have to fight Russia here."
Schiff, a lawyer who has never had to put his life on the line for anything and whose son
sports a MOSSAD t-shirt, is one of those sunshine soldiers who finds it quite acceptable if
someone else does the dying. Journalist Max Blumenthal observed that "Liberals used
to mock Bush supporters when they used this jingoistic line during the war on Iraq. Now they
deploy it to justify an imperialist proxy war against a nuclear power." Aaron Mate at The
Nation added that "For all the talk about
Russia undermining faith in U.S. elections, how about Russiagaters like Schiff fear-mongering
w/ hysterics like this? Let's assume Ukraine did what Trump wanted: announce a probe of
Burisma. Would that delegitimize a 2020 U.S. election? This is a joke."
Over
at Antiwar Daniel Lazare explains how the Wednesday speech was "a fear-mongering,
sword-rattling harangue that will not only raise tensions with Russia for no good reason, but
sends a chilling message to [Democratic Party] dissidents at home that if they deviate from
Russiagate orthodoxy by one iota, they'll be driven from the fold."
The orthodoxy that Lazare was writing about includes the established Nancy Pelosi/Chuck
Schumer narrative that Russia invaded "poor innocent Ukraine" in 2014, that it interfered in
the 2016 election to defeat Hillary Clinton, and that it is currently trying to smear Joe
Biden. One might add to that the growing consensus that Russia can and will interfere again in
2020 to help Trump. Absent from the narrative is the part how the U.S. intervened in Ukraine
first to remove its government and the fact that there is something very unsavory about Joe
Biden's son taking a high-paying sinecure board position from a notably corrupt Ukrainian
oligarch while his father was Vice President and allegedly directing U.S. assistance to a
Ukrainian anti-corruption effort.
On Wednesday,
Schiff maintained that "Russia is not a threat to Eastern Europe alone. Ukraine has become
the de facto proving ground for just the types of hybrid warfare that the twenty-first century
will become defined by: cyberattacks, disinformation campaigns, efforts to undermine the
legitimacy of state institutions, whether that is voting systems or financial markets. The
Kremlin showed boldly in 2016 that with the malign skills it honed in Ukraine, they would not
stay in Ukraine. Instead, Russia employed them here to attack our institutions, and they will
do so again." Not surprisingly, if one substitutes the "United States" for "Russia" and
"Kremlin" and changes "Ukraine" to Iran or Venezuela, the Schiff comment actually becomes much
more credible.
The compulsion on the part of the Democrats to bring down Trump to avoid having to deal with
their own failings has brought about a shift in their established foreign policy, placing the
neocons and their friends back in charge. For Schiff, who has enthusiastically supported every
failed American military effort since 9/11, today's Russia is the Soviet Union reborn, and
don't you forget it pardner! Newsweek is meanwhile reporting that the U.S. military is reading
the tea leaves and
is gearing up to fight the Russians. Per Schiff, Trump must be stopped as he is part of a
grand Russian conspiracy to overthrow everything the United States stands for. If the Kremlin
is not stopped now, it's first major step, per Schiff, will be to "remake the map of Europe by
dint of military force."
Donald Trump's erratic rule has certainly dismayed many of his former supporters, but the Democratic Party is offering
nothing but another helping of George W. Bush/Barack Obama establishment war against the world. We Americans have had enough of
that for the past nineteen years. Trump may indeed deserve to be removed based on his actions, but the argument that it is
essential to do so because of Russia lurking is complete nonsense. Pretty scary that the apparent chief promoter of that point
of view is someone who actually has power in the government, one Adam Schiff, head of the House of Representatives Intelligence
Committee.
If the USA doesn't have a bogey man to be afraid of, the USA might worry more and to
insist on fixing the problems within the Nation.
So many of our politicians are guilty of allowing un constitutional on going act like the
removal of Due Process of law for some people and the on going bailout of Global Markets with
the US Dollar. The Patriot act and FISA Courts should have been gone.
Agreed. He seems as about as close as a leader can get to genuinely liking his country and
people. It seems the ones here only give a **** about carbon, Central and South Americans,
and cutting off my kids genitalia.
It is scary, but what else can Schiff say? They have no credible arguments against Trump,
or for their own party. They are a bunch of lying scumbags that will kill, cheat, steal,
mislead, carpet-bag and anything else unethical to achieve their sleazy goals. When Trump
wins in a landslide in 2020, they will claim it's because the Russians 'fixed' the election,
and the Democratic party will break into pieces arguing about how they failed and what they
did wrong. See www.splittingpennies.com
Since the US Sociopaths In Charge have totally Effed up the nation, and a significant
portion of the world, they have to have SOMEBODY to blame. They certainly won't take the
blame they deserve themselves.
lots of words and no answer to the title question. Giraldi does not see the deep
ideological problems: Russia is not trying to diversify into a PoC country, they do not
worship gays and may be the only white people nation with sustaining birth rate. The US will
go to war there is no way to let this continue.
The smart ppl are doing a lousy job of informing the dumb ones about accepted policy like
"America Always Needs An Enemy". Smart ones understand that, and see the bigger game because
of it.
We fight the dumb ones who believe Russian boogeyman crap, instead of helping them
understand they are being misled on who the enemy really is. The dumb ones then fight back
and further entrench that brainwashing.
It is appropriate to recall the words of Joseph Goebbels: "Give me the media, and I will
make a herd of pigs from any nation," and pigs are easy to drive to the slaughterhouse. Only
Russia can really resist such a situation in the world. Therefore, she is the enemy.
The Centrist Democrats and Republicans want to paint the old school God and Country
Conservatives Equality and Justice for the USA (Nationalist) into being Russian. How dare we
expect enforcement of the Laws on the books against them. They want to be deemed Royalty with
all the Elitist Rights.
The old rally call about Russia was always Communist Russia but, they don't do that
anymore? Why ? They love their Communist China wage slaves. The Centrist love Communist labor
in the name of profits . Human rights be damned it's all about the Global Elitist to them
now.
This story claims that it had five (5!) people criminally leaking alleged content from a
classified briefing. And why not, since no one gets prosecuted for these crimes. Still, we
have a serious problem with our supposedly professional "intelligence" and "oversight"
communities. https://t.co/zuAdwXpU2L
Until heads roll and hoaxers are sent to prison, the seditious Russian collusion hoaxers
will never stop. They will lie and leak and fabricate evidence, whatever it takes, to
prevent the American people from taking charge of their own government. https://t.co/wijJ07QKOO
This was an outright declaration of "class war" against working-class voters by a
"university-credentialed overclass" -- "managerial elite" which changed sides and allied with
financial oligrchy. See "The New Class War: Saving Democracy from the Managerial Elite" by
Michael Lind
Notable quotes:
"... By canceling the class compromise that governed the capitalist societies after World War II, the neoliberal elite saws the seed of the current populist backlash. The "soft neoliberal" backbone of the Democratic Party (Clinton wing) were incapable of coming to terms with Hillary Clinton's defeat -- the rejection of the establishment candidate by the US population and first of all by the working class. The result has been the neo-McCarthyism campaign and the attempt to derail Trump via color revolution spearheaded by Brennan-Obama factions in CIA and FBI. ..."
It looks like Bloomberg is finished. He just committed political suicide with his comments
about farmers and metal workers.
BTW Bloomberg's plan is highly hypocritical -- like is Bloomberg himself.
During the stagflation crisis of the 1970s, a "neoliberal revolution from above" was
staged in the USA by "managerial elite" which like Soviet nomenklatura (which also staged a
neoliberal coup d'état) changed sides and betrayed the working class.
So those neoliberal scoundrels reversed the class compromise embodied in the New Deal.
The most powerful weapon in the arsenal of the neoliberal managerial class and financial
oligarchy who got to power via the "Quiet Coup" was the global labor arbitrage in which
production is outsourced to countries with lower wage levels and laxer regulations.
So all those "improving education" plans are, to a large extent, the smoke screen over the
fact that the US workers now need to compete against highly qualified and lower cost
immigrants and outsourced workforce.
The fact is that it is very difficult to find for US graduates in STEM disciplines a
decent job, and this is by design.
Also, after the "Reagan neoliberal revolution" ( actually a coup d'état ), profits
were maximized by putting downward pressure on domestic wages through the introduction of the
immigrant workforce (the collapse of the USSR helped greatly ). They push down wages and
compete for jobs with their domestic counterparts, including the recent graduates. So the
situation since 1991 was never too bright for STEM graduates.
By canceling the class compromise that governed the capitalist societies after World War
II, the neoliberal elite saws the seed of the current populist backlash. The "soft
neoliberal" backbone of the Democratic Party (Clinton wing) were incapable of coming to terms
with Hillary Clinton's defeat -- the rejection of the establishment candidate by the US
population and first of all by the working class. The result has been the neo-McCarthyism
campaign and the attempt to derail Trump via color revolution spearheaded by Brennan-Obama
factions in CIA and FBI.
See also recently published "The New Class War: Saving Democracy from the Managerial
Elite" by Michael Lind.
One of his quotes:
The American oligarchy spares no pains in promoting the belief that it does not exist,
but the success of its disappearing act depends on equally strenuous efforts on the part of
an American public anxious to believe in egalitarian fictions and unwilling to see what is
hidden in plain sight.
"... To writer Michael Lind, Trump's victory, along with Brexit and other populist stirrings in Europe, was an outright declaration of "class war" by alienated working-class voters against what he calls a "university-credentialed overclass" of managerial elites. ..."
"... Lind cautions against a turn to populism, which he believes to be too personality-centered and intellectually incoherent -- not to mention, too demagogic -- to help solve the terminal crisis of "technocratic neoliberalism" with its rule by self-righteous and democratically unaccountable "experts" with hyperactive Twitter handles. Only a return to what Lind calls "democratic pluralism" will help stem the tide of the populist revolt. ..."
"... Many on the left have been incapable of coming to terms with Hillary Clinton's defeat. The result has been the stifling climate of a neo-McCarthyism, in which the only explanation for Trump's success was an unholy alliance of "Putin stooges" and unrepentant "white supremacists." ..."
"... To Lind, the case is much more straightforward: while the vast majority of Americans supports Social Security spending and containing unskilled immigration, the elites of the bipartisan swamp favor libertarian free trade policies combined with the steady influx of unskilled migrants to help suppress wage levels in the United States. Trump had outflanked his opponents in the Republican primaries and Clinton in the general election by tacking left on the economy (he refused to lay hands on Social Security) and right on immigration. ..."
"... Then, in the 1930s, while the world was writhing from the consequences of the Great Depression, a series of fascist parties took the reigns in countries from Germany to Spain. To spare the United States a similar descent into barbarism, President Franklin D. Roosevelt implemented the New Deal, in which the working class would find a seat at the bargaining table under a government-supervised tripartite system where business and organized labor met seemingly as equals and in which collective bargaining would help the working class set sector-wide wages. ..."
"... This class compromise ruled unquestioned for the first decades of the postwar era. It was made possible thanks to the system of democratic pluralism, which allowed working-class and rural constituencies to actively partake in mass-membership organizations like unions as well as civic and religious institutions that would empower these communities to shape society from the ground up. ..."
"... But then, amid the stagflation crisis of the 1970s, a "neoliberal revolution from above" set in that sought to reverse the class compromise. The most powerful weapon in the arsenal of the newly emboldened managerial class was "global labor arbitrage" in which production is outsourced to countries with lower wage levels and laxer regulations; alternatively, profits can be maximized by putting downward pressure on domestic wages through the introduction of an unskilled, non-unionized immigrant workforce that competes for jobs with its unionized domestic counterparts. By one-sidedly canceling the class compromise that governed the capitalist societies after World War II, Lind concludes, the managerial elite had brought the recent populist backlash on itself. ..."
"... American parties are not organized parties built around active members and policy platforms; they are shifting coalitions of entrepreneurial candidate campaign organizations. Hence, the Democratic and Republican Parties are not only capitalist ideologically; they are capitalistically run enterprises. ..."
"... In the epigraph to the book, Lind cites approvingly the 1949 treatise The Vital Center by historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. who wrote that "class conflict, pursued to excess, may well destroy the underlying fabric of common principle which sustains free society." Schlesinger was just one among many voices who believed that Western societies after World War II were experiencing the "end of ideology." From now on, the reasoning went, the ideological battles of yesteryear were settled in favor of a more disinterested capitalist (albeit New Deal–inflected) governance. This, in turn, gave rise to the managerial forces in government, the military, and business whose unchecked hold on power Lind laments. The midcentury social-democratic thinker Michael Harrington had it right when he wrote that "[t]he end of ideology is a shorthand way of saying the end of socialism." ..."
"... A cursory glance at the recent impeachment hearings bears witness to this, as career bureaucrats complained that President Trump unjustifiably sought to change the course of an American foreign policy that had been nobly steered by them since the onset of the Cold War. In their eyes, Trump, like the Brexiteers or the French yellow vest protesters, are vulgar usurpers who threaten the stability of the vital center from polar extremes. ..."
A FEW DAYS AFTER Donald Trump's electoral upset in 2016, Club for Growth co-founder Stephen
Moore told an
audience of Republican House members that the GOP was "now officially a Trump working class
party." No longer the party of traditional Reaganite conservatism, the GOP had been converted
instead "into a populist America First party." As he uttered these words, Moore says, "the
shock was palpable" in the room.
The Club for Growth had long dominated Republican orthodoxy by promoting low tax rates and
limited government. Any conservative candidate for political office wanting to reap the
benefits of the Club's massive fundraising arm had to pay homage to this doctrine. For one of
its formerly leading voices to pronounce the transformation of this orthodoxy toward a more
populist nationalism showed just how much the ground had shifted on election night.
To writer Michael Lind, Trump's victory, along with Brexit and other populist stirrings
in Europe, was an outright declaration of "class war" by alienated working-class voters against
what he calls a "university-credentialed overclass" of managerial elites. The title of
Lind's new book, The New Class War: Saving Democracy from the Managerial Elite ,
leaves no doubt as to where his sympathies lie, though he's adamant that he's not some sort of
guru for a " smarter
Trumpism ," as some have labeled him.
Lind cautions against a turn to populism, which he believes to be too
personality-centered and intellectually incoherent -- not to mention, too demagogic -- to help
solve the terminal crisis of "technocratic neoliberalism" with its rule by self-righteous and
democratically unaccountable "experts" with hyperactive Twitter handles. Only a return to what
Lind calls "democratic pluralism" will help stem the tide of the populist revolt.
The New Class War is a breath of fresh air. Many on the left have been incapable of
coming to terms with Hillary Clinton's defeat. The result has been the stifling climate of a
neo-McCarthyism, in which the only explanation for Trump's success was an unholy alliance of
"Putin stooges" and unrepentant "white supremacists."
To Lind, the case is much more
straightforward: while the vast majority of Americans supports Social Security spending and
containing unskilled immigration, the elites of the bipartisan swamp favor libertarian free
trade policies combined with the steady influx of unskilled migrants to help suppress wage
levels in the United States. Trump had outflanked his opponents in the Republican primaries and
Clinton in the general election by tacking left on the economy (he refused to lay hands on
Social Security) and right on immigration.
The strategy has since been successfully repeated in the United Kingdom by Boris Johnson,
and it looks, for now, like a foolproof way for conservative parties in the West to capture or
defend their majorities against center-left parties that are too beholden to wealthy,
metropolitan interests to seriously attract working-class support. Berating the latter as
irredeemably racist certainly doesn't help either.
What happened in the preceding decades to produce this divide in Western democracies? Lind's
narrative begins with the New Deal, which had brought to an end what he calls "the first class
war" in favor of a class compromise between management and labor. This first class war is the
one we are the most familiar with: originating in the Industrial Revolution, which had produced
the wretchedly poor proletariat, it soon led to the rise of competing parties of organized
workers on the one hand and the liberal bourgeoisie on the other, a clash that came to a head
in the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Then, in the 1930s, while the world was writhing from the
consequences of the Great Depression, a series of fascist parties took the reigns in countries
from Germany to Spain. To spare the United States a similar descent into barbarism, President
Franklin D. Roosevelt implemented the New Deal, in which the working class would find a seat at
the bargaining table under a government-supervised tripartite system where business and
organized labor met seemingly as equals and in which collective bargaining would help the
working class set sector-wide wages.
This class compromise ruled unquestioned for the first decades of the postwar era. It was
made possible thanks to the system of democratic pluralism, which allowed working-class and
rural constituencies to actively partake in mass-membership organizations like unions as well
as civic and religious institutions that would empower these communities to shape society from
the ground up.
But then, amid the stagflation crisis of the 1970s, a "neoliberal revolution from above" set
in that sought to reverse the class compromise. The most powerful weapon in the arsenal of the
newly emboldened managerial class was "global labor arbitrage" in which production is
outsourced to countries with lower wage levels and laxer regulations; alternatively, profits
can be maximized by putting downward pressure on domestic wages through the introduction of an
unskilled, non-unionized immigrant workforce that competes for jobs with its unionized domestic
counterparts. By one-sidedly canceling the class compromise that governed the capitalist
societies after World War II, Lind concludes, the managerial elite had brought the recent
populist backlash on itself.
Likewise, only it can contain this backlash by returning to the bargaining table and
reestablishing the tripartite system it had walked away from. According to Lind, the new class
peace can only come about on the level of the individual nation-state because transnational
treaty organizations like the EU cannot allow the various national working classes to escape
the curse of labor arbitrage. This will mean that unskilled immigration will necessarily have
to be curbed to strengthen the bargaining power of domestic workers. The free-market orthodoxy
of the Club for Growth will also have to take a backseat, to be replaced by government-promoted
industrial strategies that invest in innovation to help modernize their national economies.
Under which circumstances would the managerial elites ever return to the bargaining table?
"The answer is fear," Lind suggests -- fear of working-class resentment of hyper-woke,
authoritarian elites. Ironically, this leaves all the agency with the ruling class, who first
acceded to the class compromise, then canceled it, and is now called on to forge a new one lest
its underlings revolt.
Lind rightly complains all throughout the book that the old mass-membership based
organizations of the 20th century have collapsed. He's coy, however, about who would
reconstitute them and how. At best, Lind argues for a return to the old system where party
bosses and ward captains served their local constituencies through patronage, but once more
this leaves the agency with entities like the Republicans and Democrats who have a combined
zero members. As the third-party activist Howie Hawkins remarked cunningly elsewhere ,
American parties are not organized parties built around active members and policy platforms;
they are shifting coalitions of entrepreneurial candidate campaign organizations. Hence, the
Democratic and Republican Parties are not only capitalist ideologically; they are
capitalistically run enterprises.
Thus, they would hardly be the first options one would think of to reinvigorate the forces
of civil society toward self-rule from the bottom up.
The key to Lind's fraught logic lies hidden in plain sight -- in the book's title. Lind does
not speak of "class struggle ," the heroic Marxist narrative in which an organized
proletariat strove for global power; no, "class war " smacks of a gloomy, Hobbesian
war of all against all in which no side truly stands to win.
In the epigraph to the book, Lind cites approvingly the 1949 treatise The Vital
Center by historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. who wrote that "class conflict, pursued to
excess, may well destroy the underlying fabric of common principle which sustains free
society." Schlesinger was just one among many voices who believed that Western societies after
World War II were experiencing the "end of ideology." From now on, the reasoning went, the
ideological battles of yesteryear were settled in favor of a more disinterested capitalist
(albeit New Deal–inflected) governance. This, in turn, gave rise to the managerial forces
in government, the military, and business whose unchecked hold on power Lind laments. The
midcentury social-democratic thinker Michael Harrington had it right when he wrote that "[t]he
end of ideology is a shorthand way of saying the end of socialism."
Looked at from this perspective, the break between the postwar Fordist regime and
technocratic neoliberalism isn't as massive as one would suppose. The overclass antagonists of The New Class War believe that they derive their power from the same "liberal order"
of the first-class peace that Lind upholds as a positive utopia. A cursory glance at the recent
impeachment hearings bears witness to this, as career bureaucrats complained that President
Trump unjustifiably sought to change the course of an American foreign policy that had been
nobly steered by them since the onset of the Cold War. In their eyes, Trump, like the Brexiteers or the French yellow vest protesters, are vulgar usurpers who threaten the stability
of the vital center from polar extremes.
A more honest account of capitalism would also acknowledge its natural tendencies to
persistently contract and to disrupt the social fabric. There is thus no reason to believe why
some future class compromise would once and for all quell these tendencies -- and why
nationalistically operating capitalist states would not be inclined to confront each other
again in war.
Reagan was a free-trader and a union buster. Lind's people jumped the Democratic ship
to vote for Reagan in (lemming-like) droves. As Republicans consolidated power over labor
with cheap goods from China and the meth of deficit spending Democrats struggled with
being necklaced as the party of civil rights.
The idea that people who are well-informed ought not to govern is a sad and sick cover
story that the culpable are forced to chant in their caves until their days are done, the
reckoning being too great.
BTW. McCabe IS NOT "off the hook." The particular charge DoJ is not going to try him for is
the least of his problems."
So true...and he knows it. You'll notice they haven't yet indicted the FBI lawyer who made a
material misrepresentation on the Page FISC affidavit either. Comey, McCabe, Clapper, Brennan
are being investigated for their roles in having blown up the Presidential electoral process
in the United States. The DoJ is not about to make itself up front look petty, vindictive,
and stupid by indicting McCabe for spitting on the sidewalk. The Democrats would love to take
advantage of that opportunity.
For those paying attention, this provides a welcome contrast to the way the political
jihadists under Mueller conducted themselves - Flynn, Manafort, Stone, Papanobody. Ditto the
Schiff impeachment debacle. Pure chickenshit made into red meat by an obliging institutional
media.
It's heartening to see some evidence of judgement has returned to the Department.
The optics of the non-prosecution of McCabe is not looking good when the DOJ have
prosecuted Stone and Flynn for the same thing. There's no doubt we have a 2-tier justice
system with a very corrupt prosecutorial system and a judiciary in lock step with them. The
FISA court exemplifies this.
As far as the Orangeman is concerned he seems not much different than all the others. At
the end of the day he hired Rosenstein, Wray, Sessions, Barr, Bolton, Kelly and Mattis. While
he's got the prerogative to declassify he shirked each time and passed the buck. His shtick
of being the representative of the Deplorables is just that. He only cares about his own
skin.
He's completely in thrall of the Saudi bonesaw and Bibi's maximalist visions.
The bottom line in my opinion is we have a broken political, media and governmental system
as the people the voters encourage to run it are as corrupt as in any tinpot banana
republic.
Personally I'd like to see Trump vs Bernie as it would implode the Democrats and show
clearly how polarized the electorate really is and how venal the media have become. What will
they do when they hate both candidates?
One bonfire that refuses to die and flamed up again today - Crowdstrike and the media's total
refusal to even mention its name, which was the really critical part of the Ukrainian phone
call. Not their phony quid pro quo.
All Democrat candidates need to questioned about Crowdstrike, since it led to two failed
major Democrat-led actions against President Trump - The Mueller investigation and the
Democrat impeachment.
Following article underscores what Larry Johnson has been reporting for years:
At
the Munich Security Conference the U.S. and its allies had no idea of how to handle China, a
problem of their greed and stupidity. The West is divided, confused. What to do about Huawei?
Really, what to do with China?
So when Mike Pompeo proclaimed "we are winning," the largely European audience was silent
and worried in what sense "we" existed longer.
In the meantime, Europe, including the U.K, finds itself in a mincer between the U.S. and
China
Unfortunately for us. China has followed the U.S. playbook and has outplayed the West,
especially the U.S.
Walter Rostow of the Johnson administration, an avid anti-communist, wrote the playbook: How
can an undeveloped nation take its place among the leaders of the world.
The answer : Industrialize as rapidly as possible. Do whatever it takes. China did just
that.
In its five year plans, China acknowledged its debt to Rostow and started to industrialize.
While I have described this process many years ago, I again outline it briefly here.
First : China entered the W.T.O. Bill Clinton and Congress were accommodating and
instrumental:
Last fall, as all of you know, the United States signed an agreement to bring China into the
W.T.O, on terms that will open its markets to American products and investments.
Bill Clinton speaking before Congress, March 9, 1998
Second : China offered dirt cheap labor, labor that had no effective right to bargain
Third : China did not require a company to obey any environmental regulations.
Fourth : China often offered a ten-year grace period without any taxation. If there were taxes
they were less than those on its own indigenous firms.
Fifth : China manipulated its currency, making products cheaper to make but getting higher
profits in the West.
The net resul t: Massive trade imbalance in favor of China. CEOs and their henchmen made
enormous profits. Devastated American workers were told to go to school, to work harder, to make
themselves invaluable to their companies. A cruel joke.
In droves, Western companies outsourced to China, emptying one factory after another. Anything
that could be outsourced was outsourced. China, of course, was not the sole beneficiary of U.S.
foolishness. India, Mexico, Vietnam wherever environmental standards were non-existent, wherever
workers had no effective rights these were the third world countries the U.S. used. The health
and safety of third world workers was of no concern. They were many–and they were
expendable.
U.S. companies were so profitable that special arrangements were made to repatriate those
profits back to the states: pennies on the dollar. Many billionaires should really be thanking
China.
Americans were considered only consumers/ The more they consumed, the richer the rich became.
Credit was made easy. George Bush's answer to 911 was: Go out and shop.+
Between The Financial Modernization Act of 1999 and Free trade insanity, the working class of
American faced the crash of 2008.
China became the factory of the world, not through automation, but through dirt cheap labor.
China poisoned its atmosphere and polluted its water. Face masks were everywhere. Nonetheless,
China had become undeniable economic power, challenging the U.S.
At the same time, China educated great numbers of engineers, inventors, and scientists. Huwaii
became the problem really, Huwaii is just an emblem of it.
The U.S. in its greed had became lazy. It poured money into weapons. The U.S. decided to build
a space force. U.S. bullied countries with foolish sanctions if those countries did not make
their billionaire class more profitable. Sanctions instead of competition became last gasp, the
last grasp at profit. Flabby and greedy, the U.S.is no longer competitive. It has become just a
bully, a threat to everyone.
Trump, of course, played both sides of the problem. He railed against the outsourcing, but has
done little to correct it, giving instead massive tax breaks to the wealthy, gutting
environmental regulations laying waste to everything he touches. Pelosi and Schumer pretend to
care, but they have nothing to offer. Like Trump, they worry about China. Like Trump, they have
no answer, except for more wars and more sanctions.
Hillary and Bill should take a bow. They began this debacle. Once things were made in the
U.S.A. Go to any Walmart store and read the label: Made in China.
Pelosi and the free trade Democrats should take a bow as should all the Republicans. All of
them should hold hands, give each other a quick hug and smile. They and their friends are
rich.
To China belongs the future.
Terry , February 16, 2020 8:27 pm
Economics 101 says trade benefits all participants. The problem is not China but the United
States. The oligarchs have sucked up all the benefits of trade and have bought the government
to keep the good times going. Obama played along unlike FDR with the result that the oligarchs
came out stronger than ever while everyone else had a second rate rather than a third rate
health care system which Trump and the GOP are struggling to return to a third rate system. You
can blame China or the "laziness " of Americans, but the real problem is the moneyed class who
do not give a crap about the country or its citizens but only how to hang onto their privileged
existence. I hate to even think it but I do not see this thing ending peacefully.
MARK LOHR , February 16, 2020 8:27 pm
And in turn funding China's considerable, unabated, and ongoing military expansion.
The screws are turning; the noose tightening.
That Western governments of all leanings have not counter-vailed for many decades now is a tale
of enormous short-sightedness and cultural hubris.
davebarnes , February 16, 2020 9:24 pm
Didn't I read the same thing about Japan 20+ years ago?
MARK LOHR , February 16, 2020 10:50 pm
Yes. And to be sure, China faces all the limits inherent to a totalitarian system. However,
unlike Japan, they have remilitarized and have demonstrated expansionist goals –
artificial island military outposts, Belt and Road, etc.
Besides stealing/extorting etc our IP.
Mark,
Where do you get your information? China has one military base outside its borders. The U.S.
has over 800. China does not pour its money into a military budge; the U.S. does.
Try the actual facts, for a change.
likbez , February 17, 2020 9:34 am
To China belongs the future.
I think it is too early to write down the USA. Historically the USA proved to be highly
adaptable society (look at the New Deal). And I think that still there is a chance that it
might be capable of jumping the sinking ship of neoliberalism. Although I have problems with
Sanders's economic program, Sanders's victory might be instrumental for that change.
China adopted neoliberalism, much like the USA. It was just lucky to be on the receiving end
of the outflow of the capital from the USA. It has a more competent leadership and avoided the
fate of the USSR for which the attempt to the adoption of neoliberalism ( aka Perestroika )
proved to be fatal.
I suspect that the main problem for China is that Neoliberalism, as a social system, is
incompatible with the rule of the Communist Party.
Fundamentally what China has now is a variation of the Soviet "New Economic Policy" (NEP)
invented by Bolsheviks after the Civil War in Russia, and while providing a rapid economic
development, China has all the problems that are known for this policy.
One is the endemic corruption of state officials due to the inability of capital to rise
above a certain level of political influence and systematic attempts to buy this influence.
That necessitates periodic campaigns against corruption and purges/jailing of officials,
which does not solve the fundamental problem which is systemic.
The other problem is that the Communist Party is such mode degrades into something like
amorphous "holding company" staff for the country (managing state tier in the two tie economy
-- state capitalism at the top; neoliberalism at the middle and the bottom)
Which necessitates the rule of a strong leader, the Father of the Nation, who is capable to
conduct purges and hold the Party together by suppressing the appetite of local Party
functionaries using brutal repressions. But the Party functionaries understand that they no
longer conduct Marxist policies, and that undermines morale. That they are essentially
renegades, and that creates a huge stimulus for "make money fast" behavior and illicit
self-enrichment.
Which paradoxically necessitate the hostility with the USA as the mean to cement the Party
and suppress the dissent. So not only the USA neocons and MIC are interested in China, China,
China (and/or Russia, Russia, Russia) bogeyman.
That also creates for Chinese senior Communist Party leadership an incentive at some point
to implement "Stalin-style solution" to the problems with New Economic Policy.
So it looks like Neo-McCarthyism in the USA has a long and prosperous future, as both sides
are interested in its continuation
BTW another example of NEP as a policy was Tito Yugoslavia, which no longer exists.
Yet another example was Gorbachov's "Perestroika," which logically led to the dissolution of
the USSR. With the subjective factor of the total incompetence of Gorbachov as a leader -- with
some analogies as for this level of incompetence with Trump.
As well as general "simplification," and degeneration of Politburo similar to what we
observe with the USA Congress now: the USSR in the 1980th has become a gerontocracy.
But the major factor was that the top KGB officials and several members of Politburo,
including Gorbachov, became turncoats and changed sides attempting to change the system to
neoliberalism, which was at the time on the assent; Russia always picks the worst possible time
for the social change
While neoliberalism is definitely in decline and its ideology is discredited, I still think
there are fundamental problems in tis interaction with the Communist Party rule, that might
eventually cause the social crisis for China.
But only time will tell
BTW Professor Stephen Cohen books contain very interesting information about NEP, Russia
adoption of neoliberalism (and related dissolution of the USSR) and Russia social development
in general
"... However, DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz confirmed in his report that the dossier was used in the Obama administration's 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA). As stated in the IG report, there were discussions by top intelligence officials as to whether the Steele dossier should be included in the ICA report. ..."
"... But upon careful inspection of Horowitz's report, on page 179, investigators ask former FBI Director James Comey if he discussed the dossier with Brennan and whether or not it should be given to President Obama. According to the report, Comey told investigators that Brennan said it was "important" enough to include in the ICA -- clearly part of the "corpus of intelligence information" they had. ..."
"... "Mr. Durham appears to be pursuing a theory that the C.I.A., under its former director John O. Brennan, had a preconceived notion about Russia or was trying to get to a particular result -- and was nefariously trying to keep other agencies from seeing the full picture lest they interfere with that goal, the people said." ..."
"... Brennan's assessment stated that Putin wanted to "undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, denigrate former Secretary of State [Hillary] Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency." It also stated that Putin "developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump." ..."
"... Durham's investigation appear to have many tentacles. For example, he has expanded his probe to the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment. According to sources who spoke to SaraACarter.com he is carefully scrutinizing money paid through the office to former FBI confidential informant Cambridge academic Stefan Halper. Halper, who worked in previous U.S. administrations and is an academic, is connected to three of President Donald Trump's campaign officials that were wrapped up into the FBI's probe, most notably Carter Page. ..."
"... Halper, along with others such as former MI6 Chief Sir Richard Dearlove, founded the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar, in England at Cambridge University. According to several sources, Durham has questioned officials at the Office of Net Assessment about Halper's contracts, how the money was utilized and what agency actually awarded the contract. ..."
"... Durham's criminal investigation into the FBI , CIA, as well as private entities is ongoing. Known by its acronym ONA, the secretive office is run by Director James Baker, who has been in the role since being appointed by the Obama Administration in 2015. In a January letter to Baker, Grassley asks a litany of questions as to Halper's role within ONA, his contracts, his foreign contacts and whether the FBI, or CIA, used the ONA office to pay Halper for spying on Trump campaign personnel. ..."
"... "Can ONA state for certain that Halper did not use taxpayer money provided by DoD to recruit, or attempt to recruit, sources for the FBI investigation into the now-debunked theory of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia," Grassley asks Baker. ..."
"... Ironically, documents obtained by SaraACarter.com suggest that during Halper's tenure with the seminar, he had also invited senior Russian intelligence officials to co-teach his course on several occasions. Further, according to news reports, he also accepted money to finance the course from a top Russian oligarch with ties to Putin. ..."
"... Several course syllabi from 2012 and 2015 obtained by this outlet reveal Hapler had invited and co-taught his course on intelligence with the former Director of Russian Intelligence Gen. I. Vyacheslav Trubnikov. ..."
"... However, there is evidence that Halper had similar sources to former MI6 spy Christopher Steele, who compiled the dossier. Based on hand written notes from an interview the State Department's Kathleen Kavalec states two of Steele's dossier sources; "Trubnikov" and "Surkov." ..."
U.S. Attorney John Durham – charged with the criminal probe into the FBI's Russia
investigation of the Trump campaign – has been questioning CIA officials closely involved
with John
Brennan's 2017 intelligence community assessment regarding direct Russian interference in
the 2016 election, according to U.S. officials.
In May 2017, Brennan denied during a hearing before the House Permanent Select Committee on
Intelligence that its agency relied on the now debunked Christopher Steele dossier for the
Intelligence Community Assessment report. He told then Congressman Trey Gowdy "we didn't"
use the Steele dossier.
"It wasn't part of the corpus of intelligence information that we had," Brennan
stated.
"It was not in any way used as a basis for the Intelligence Community assessment that was
done. It was -- it was not."
However, DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz confirmed in his report that the dossier was
used in the Obama administration's 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA). As stated in
the IG report, there were discussions by top intelligence officials as to whether the Steele
dossier should be included in the ICA report.
But upon careful inspection of Horowitz's report, on page 179, investigators ask former
FBI Director James Comey if he discussed the dossier with Brennan and whether or not it should
be given to President Obama. According to the report, Comey told investigators that Brennan
said it was "important" enough to include in the ICA -- clearly part of the "corpus of
intelligence information" they had.
According to a recent report by The New York Times, Durham's probe is specifically looking
at that January 2017 intelligence community assessment, which concluded with "high confidence" that
Russian President Vladimir Putin "ordered an influence campaign in 2016."
"Mr. Durham appears to be pursuing a theory that the C.I.A., under its former director
John O. Brennan, had a preconceived notion about Russia or was trying to get to a particular
result -- and was nefariously trying to keep other agencies from seeing the full picture lest
they interfere with that goal, the people said."
Sources with knowledge have said CIA officials questioned by Durham's investigative team
"are extremely concerned with the investigation and the direction it's heading."
Brennan's assessment stated that Putin wanted to "undermine public faith in the U.S.
democratic process, denigrate former Secretary of State [Hillary] Clinton, and harm her
electability and potential presidency." It also stated that Putin "developed a clear preference
for President-elect Trump."
But not everyone agreed with Brennan. The NSA then under retired Adm. Mike Rogers stated it
only had "moderate confidence" that Putin tried to help Trump's election. As stated in the
New York times Durham is investigating whether Brennan was keeping other intelligence
agencies out of the loop to keep his narrative that Putin was helping Trump's campaign
public.
"I wouldn't call it a discrepancy, I'd call it an honest difference of opinion between
three different organizations, and, in the end, I made that call," Rogers
told the Senate in May 2017.
"It didn't have the same level of sourcing and the same level of multiple sources."
According to The Times Durham is reviewing emails from the CIA, FBI, and National Security
Agency analysts who worked on the January, 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment on Russia's
interference in the election.
Durham's office could not be reached for comment. DOJ spokesperson Kerri Kupec also could
not be reached for comment.
However, Brennan told MSNBC's "Hardball" last week,
that Durham's questioning is dangerous.
"It's kind of silly," he said.
"Is there a criminal investigation now on analytic judgments and the activities of C.I.A.
in terms of trying to protect our national security? I'm certainly willing to talk to Mr.
Durham or anybody else who has any questions about what we did during this period of 2016
."
Durham And FBI Spy Stefan Halper
Durham's investigation appear to have many tentacles. For example, he has expanded his
probe to the Pentagon's
Office of Net Assessment. According to sources who spoke to SaraACarter.com he is carefully
scrutinizing money paid through the office to former FBI confidential informant Cambridge
academic Stefan Halper. Halper, who worked in previous U.S. administrations and is an academic,
is connected to three of President Donald Trump's campaign officials that were wrapped up into
the FBI's probe, most notably Carter
Page.
Halper, along with others such as former MI6 Chief Sir Richard Dearlove, founded the
Cambridge Intelligence Seminar, in England at Cambridge University. According to several
sources, Durham has questioned officials at the Office of Net Assessment about Halper's
contracts, how the money was utilized and what agency actually awarded the contract.
Further, Sen. Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, is also
investigating the over $1 million in contracts Halper received from the ONA, as
first reported at SaraACarter.com. It is, of course, a separate investigation from Durham's
but on the same issues.
The Office Of Net Assessment, according to sources with knowledge, is sometimes used as a
front to pay contractors, like Halper, who are conducting work for U.S. intelligence agencies.
It is for this reason, that Durham is investigating the flow of money that Halper received and
whether or not agencies other than the FBI were involved in the investigation into Trump's
campaign and whether or not, the contracts were accurately accounted for in the reports
received by Grassley.
Durham's criminal investigation
into the FBI , CIA, as well as private entities is ongoing. Known by its acronym ONA, the
secretive office is run by Director James Baker, who has been in the role since being appointed
by the Obama Administration in 2015. In a January letter to Baker, Grassley asks a litany of
questions as to Halper's role within ONA, his contracts, his foreign contacts and whether the
FBI, or CIA, used the ONA office to pay Halper for spying on Trump campaign personnel.
"Can ONA state for certain that Halper did not use taxpayer money provided by DoD to
recruit, or attempt to recruit, sources for the FBI investigation into the now-debunked
theory of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia," Grassley asks Baker.
But it is Halper's role overseas and concern that the CIA may have been involved that is
leading to more questions than answers. In 2016, in what appeared to be an unexpected move,
Halper left the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar. He
told papers in London – at the time – that it was due to "unacceptable Russian
influence."
Ironically, documents obtained by SaraACarter.com suggest that during Halper's tenure with the
seminar, he had also invited senior Russian intelligence officials to co-teach his course on
several occasions. Further, according to news reports, he also accepted money to finance the
course from a top Russian oligarch with ties to Putin.
Several course syllabi from 2012 and 2015 obtained by this outlet reveal Hapler had
invited and co-taught his course on intelligence with the former Director of Russian
Intelligence Gen. I. Vyacheslav Trubnikov.
Moreover, the New York Times recent report suggests that Durham's probe into Brennan is also
looking closely at an alleged secret source said to have direct ties to the Kremlin. It is not
certain if the same secret Kremlin source discussed by Brennan is the same source used by
Halper in his reports.
However, there is evidence that Halper had similar sources to former MI6 spy Christopher
Steele, who compiled the dossier. Based on hand written notes from an interview the State
Department's Kathleen Kavalec states two of Steele's dossier sources; "Trubnikov" and
"Surkov."
Interesting, isn't it.
Surkov is Vladislav Surkov, an aide of Vladimir Putin who is on the U.S.'s list of
sanctioned individuals, and Trubnikov is none other than Vyacheslav Trubnikov. Trubnikov was
the First Deputy of Foreign Minister of Russia and he formally served as the Director of
Foreign Intelligence Service. He is also a source of Halper.
Actions of Trump are dictated by his
handlers. He is just a marionette.
Notable quotes:
"... wealth on tap. ..."
"... There's more than an echo of McCartthism in this -- policies are championed to further the business and ideological interests of powerful individuals that don't necessarily reflect the priorities and interests of the country as a whole. People, often those who really should know better, then bandwaggon on those policies, not only to avoid being labeled unpatriotic but to also prove that they're just as or even more patriotic than the people originally promulgating them. We've seen this time and again, probably the most egregious recent example being the miasma of lies that were used to invade Iraq. Its a mindset that might appear to work but I believe that its ultimately a road to nowhere. ..."
During every presidential election cycle, pundits argue that foreign policy will play a decisive role. Every time -- at least
in my experience of 14 election cycles, nine in campaigns -- they have been proved wrong. This year will almost surely be no different.
On the hustings, presidential candidates rarely get questions from voters on foreign policy. However, during the
televised debates , journalist-questioners looking to make news quiz candidates on what they might do in thus-and-so circumstance,
although they can't possibly know until faced in the Oval Office with real-world choices.
Election Campaign Damage: Israel and Palestine
By contrast, presidential campaigns often have a serious impact on U.S. national security interests. This year, three foreign
policy issues tightly linked to U.S. domestic politics stand out. First, last week, Trump joined with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu at the White House to launch the "
deal of the century
" on Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking. The deal is so one-sided as to be risible and is " dead on arrival." It's good politics
for Trump with U.S. constituencies that are strongly pro-Israel, though with less impact with American Jews (most of whom are almost
certain to vote for the Democratic nominee) than with many American evangelicals.
But does it matter that, with Trump's proposal, the United States has abandoned any pretense of being an " honest broker" in the
Middle East? To be sure, keen observers rightly note that most Arab governments give no more than ritual support to the Palestinian
cause. Many have joined Israel in seeing Iran as their common enemy, and the Palestinians be damned.
But most Arab leaders still must look over their shoulders: can they be sure that their populations will forget about the Palestinians'
decades-long perception of humiliation by Israel, the United States, and most Arab leaders? Thus, to guard against giving a hostage
to fortune, both the
Arab League
and the
Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIG) have formally rejected the Trump plan.
Still, a third Palestinian Intifada (or "uprising") has so far not started. But these are early days. In any event, U.S. chances
of promoting stability in the region have been seriously damaged.
Damage: Iran
More consequential is the standoff between the Trump administration and Iran ' s clerical leadership, with the U.S. being egged
on by regional partners. Trump
probably does not want an open war with Iran. But heightened tensions raise doubts that either Trump or the Iranians can control
the pattern of escalation/de-escalation. Little would be needed to spark a major conflict, even by accident. After the United States
assassinated
Iranian Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani, Iran
responded only by launching pin-prick missile attacks against two Iraqi airbases used by the U.S. military, with advanced warning
to keep from killing Americans. Trump -- and the world -- might not be so lucky next time.
It takes strong nerves to bet that the Trump administration ' s " maximum pressure" strategy against Iran will remain
controlled , much less that Iran will accede to U.S. demands before negotiations even begin. Meanwhile, following Trump ' s amazing
folly two years ago of
withdrawing from the
Joint Comprehensive
Plan of Action (JCPOA), which effectively trammeled any chance that Iran could get nuclear weapons for at least a decade, Iran
is now ramping up its nuclear activities. Given that Trump has
pledged that " Iran will
never be allowed to have a nuclear weapon," at some point a " red line" can get crossed, not just in politics-driven perceptions
but in reality. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo still has on the table
12
demands that Iran must meet before any negotiations can begin. No country will accept unconditional surrender as the opening
bid for talking.
Several of the Democratic candidates for president, while deeply concerned about Iran's behavior,
oppose the Trump-Pompeo approach, with all of the risks of open conflict. Amid deep unease on Capitol Hill, the Democratic-controlled
House has voted to repeal the 2002 Authorization
for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), originally the legal basis for the invasion of Iraq, and to prevent funding of military action
against Iran without congressional authorization. (Yet neither House bill has much chance of passing the Republican-controlled Senate.)
But these concerns could be swept aside if an incident in the Persian Gulf region led to Americans getting killed, provoking a national
outcry. So long as Trump favors confrontation with Iran over any consideration of compromise or conciliation, the dangers will continue.
"Hair trigger" continues to be an apt metaphor.
Damage: The Democrats on Russia
It's not just the White House that is doing serious damage to U.S. interests abroad during this year's election campaign. Of even
greater consequence (absent a new Middle East war) is the U.S. relationship with Russia. It's currently unthinkable that Washington
will try to move beyond the status quo, even if Russian President Vladimir Putin were prepared to do so. Even before Trump was inaugurated,
many Democrats began calling for his
impeachment . Leading Democrats
laid
Hillary Clinton ' s defeat at the feet of Russian interference in the U.S. election -- a claim that stretched credulity past
the breaking point. Further, as Democrats looked for grounds to impeach Trump (or at least terminally to reduce his reelection chances),
the " Russia factor" was the best cudgel available. Charges included the
notion that " Putin has something on Trump," which
presumes he would sell out the nation ' s security for a mess of pottage.
All this domestic politicking ignores a geopolitical fact: while the Soviet Union lost the Cold War and, for some time thereafter,
Russia could be dismissed, it was always certain that it would again become a significant power, at least in Europe. Thus, even before
the Berlin Wall fell, President George H. W. Bush proposed
creating a " Europe whole and free" and at peace. Bill Clinton built on what Bush began. Both understood that a renascent Russia
could embrace revanchism, and for several years their efforts seemed to have a chance of succeeding.
Then the effort went off the rails. Putin took power in Russia, which made cooperation with the West difficult if not impossible.
He worked to consolidate his domestic position, in part by alleging that the West was " disrespecting" Russia and trying to encircle
it. For its part, the U.S. played into the Putin narrative by abandoning the Bush-Clinton vision of taking legitimate Russian interests
into account in fashioning European security arrangements. The breaking point came in 2014, when Russia
seized Crimea and sent
" little green men" to fight in some other parts of Ukraine. The West necessarily responded, with economic
sanctions and NATO's
buildup of " trip wire" forces in Central Europe.
But despite the ensuing standoff, the critical requirement remains: the United States has to acknowledge Russia's inevitable rise
as a major power while also impressing on Putin the need to trim his ambitions, if he is to avoid a new era of Russian isolation.
There is also serious business that the two countries need to pursue, including strategic arms control, the Middle East (especially
Iran), and climate change. Despite deep disagreements, including over Ukraine and parts of Central Europe, the U.S. needs to engage
in serious discussions with Russia, which means the renewal of diplomacy which has been in the deep freeze for years.
All of this has been put in pawn by the role that the "Russia factor" has been permitted to play in American presidential politics,
especially by Democrats. Longer-term U.S. interests are suffering, along with those of the European allies and Middle East partners.
The task has been made even more difficult by those U.S. politicians,
think tanks , and
journalists who
prefer to resurrect the term "cold war" rather than clearly examining the nation's strategic needs because of the blinkers imposed
by domestic politics. Open discussion about alternatives in dealing with Russia is thus stifled, at serious cost to the United States
and others.
In all three of these areas, the U.S. is paying a high price in terms of its national interests to the games political leaders,
both Republicans and Democrats, are playing. Great efforts will be needed to dig out of this mess, beginning with U.S. willingness
to do so. Leaders elsewhere must also be prepared to join in -- far from a sure thing! Unfortunately, there is currently little hope
that, at least in the three critical areas discussed above, pursuit of U.S. interests abroad will prevail over today's parochial
domestic politics. David G. Horsman
You apparently
do not appreciate these sociopaths live for this crap. It keeps their juices flowing. Cackling Killary may yet get on Stop and Frisk
your Bloomer's ticket and be VP. For a price of course.
This is a fantasy. Once fascism gets established it is nearly impossible to stop it if history teaches us anything.
Pseudo-religious talk about Karma is very reminiscent of the decent Christians comforting themselves that all those badies will be
punished in hell for an eternity. IE. Because they won't be in this life.
It's a way of coping with total defeat after 50 years of neoliberalcon supremacy and proto fascism. After a 100 year war on labour.
It's already over. What do think this is? France
?
I don't fight fascism because I believe we will win. It's because they are fascist. And we know who has all the guns.
Gezzah Potts
How many human
beings have now died as a result of the draconian sanctions unleashed on the Venezuelan people by this rogue terrorist state?
I also wonder how the people of Detroit are faring considering 33.4% live below the poverty line, or in Cleveland where 35% live
in poverty.
And yet Trump brags of defending 'American liberty' (oxymoron) by spending $2.2 trillion dollars in maintaining the hegemony of this
debauched Empire.
Yet, in the land of the free (another oxymoron) vast swathes of people live in poverty – or live in their cars, or in the burgeoning
tent cities.
How's the water in Flint? Is it still undrinkable?
As if any of the creatures in Washington care about any of this. Anything to maintain control over much of the Planet. Tim Jenkins
And with the
highest incarcerated prison population and highest record in private prison profits in California, most recent, it seems the solution
to corporate 'societal' wealth is to have 50,000 homeless on the streets in L.A. , just 'hanging' around, the corner . . .
wealth on tap.
(datsa' rap trap 😉 ) 5 0 Reply Feb 16, 2020 9:24 AM
Gezzah Potts
Just watched
John Pilger's searing documentary 'The Dirty War On The NHS' which included segments on the wondrously caring and compassionate US
'health system' in places like Chicago and such quaint notions as 'patient dumping' where, to further save costs, and make more billions
$$$$ – patients are evicted from hospitals early and dumped at homeless shelters.
My god, the barbarians are not just at the gate. They're already inside the building.
These completely dehumanised psychopathic neoliberal ideologues who only care about money and profits.
More and more for us and all you useless eaters can just fuck off and die.
That's the mentality. It's so sick.
No, that wasn't a pun. It is truly sick how warped society has become. Seamus Padraig
Despite the turmoil Trump has experienced since 2016, it has been his karmic responsibility to grow from those challenges,
to use each obstacle as a path to align with a higher vibration and become a more conscious person, fully aware of his global
responsibility to humanity – that has not appeared to have happened.
What appears to have happened is that Trump finally caved in to the Deep State, and that's why things are going better for him.
I am starting to suspect we may see a war against Iran in Term II.
Pelosi and the Dems have also created 'bad' karma with their own abuse of power; they too will reap the results of their own
behavior.
What they're gonna reap is more Trump after next November! Martin Usher
There's more
than an echo of McCartthism in this -- policies are championed to further the business and ideological interests of powerful individuals
that don't necessarily reflect the priorities and interests of the country as a whole. People, often those who really should know
better, then bandwaggon on those policies, not only to avoid being labeled unpatriotic but to also prove that they're just as or
even more patriotic than the people originally promulgating them. We've seen this time and again, probably the most egregious recent
example being the miasma of lies that were used to invade Iraq. Its a mindset that might appear to work but I believe that its ultimately
a road to nowhere.
I'm less concerned about the current emphasis on military spending than I would have been in the past because I sincerely doubt
the ability of the US to carry through on these plans. The writing's been on the wall for some time and they can certainly spend
the money but the chronic shortage of engineering talent, the systematic shortchanging of education and our steady erosion of manufacturing
knowhow will limit our ability to turn political wishful thinking into reality. Sure, we'll still be able to produce boutique products,
eye-wateringly expensive munitions that we can use to intimidate people who can't shoot back, but we're already in an era where serious
cost overruns and performance deficiencies are the rule rather than the exception. This problem has been brewing for a generation
or more and it will take a generation or more to fix it. Unfortunately our politicians are still living in the reflected glory of
past empires, they seem to be unable to recognize that WW2 was 75 years ago, so I expect we'll stumble along business as usual alienating
more and more people until all we have left are those we can buy with our increasingly useless dollars.
Looking at various indices like median household income and average wage, it seems as if living standards in Russia are substantially
below western European levels and even slightly below central Europe. (Estonia and Poland are consistently slightly higher, Hungary
often a bit lower.) Compared to China, going by the same sources and others, Russian wages are roughly twice as high as China's
That creates separatist movements within the country, including Islamist movements in Muslim-dominated regions.
So their posture is strictly defensive, and probably is not much more than a mild defensive reaction to "Full-spectrum Dominance"
doctrine and the aggressive foreign policy conducted by the USA neocons (which totally dominate NSC and the State Department, as
we saw from Ukrainegate testimonies)
The USA coup d'état in Ukraine actually have a blowback for the USA -- it neutralized influence and political status of Russia
neoliberal fifth column (neoliberal compradors), and if not Putin (who is paradoxically a pro-Western neoliberal; although of "national
neoliberalism" flavor similar to Trumpism ) some of them probably would be now hanging from the lamp posts. They are really hated
by population after hardships, comparable with WWII hardships, imposed on ordinary Russian during Western-enforced neoliberalization
under marionette Yeltsin government and attempt to grab Russian resources for pennies on a dollar. "Marshall plan" for Russia instead
of economic rape would be a much better policy.
I think Obama-Nuland plot to turn Ukraine into the USA vassal state was yet another very dangerous move, which hurts the USA national
security and greatly increased chances of military confrontation with Russia (aka mutual annihilation)
It was worse then a crime, it was a blunder. And now the USA needs to support this vassal with money we do not have.
The role of NSC in militarizing the USA foreign policy is such that it neutralizes any impulses of any US administration (if we
assume they exist) to improve relations with Russia.
Neoliberal Dems now is a second war party which bet on neo-McCarthyism to weaken Trump. They went into the complete status of
psychosis in this area. I view it as a psychotic reaction to the first signs of the collapse of the USA-centered global neoliberal
empire (which will happen anyway independently of Russian moves)
That's actually a very dangerous situation indeed, and I am really afraid that the person who will replace Putin will not have
Putin steel nerves, diplomatic talent, and the affinity with the West. Then what ? another Sarajevo and another war?
With warmongering "raptured" crazies like Mike, "we killed up to 200 Russians" Pompeo, the situation can really become explosive
like before WWI. Again, after Putin leaves the political scene, the Sarajevo incident is easy to stage, especially with such incompetent
marionette of the military-industrial complex like Trump at the helm.
I believe antagonizing Russia was a reckless, very damaging to the USA interest move, the move initiated by Clinton administration
and supported by all subsequent administration as weakening and possibly dismembering Russia is one of the key aspect of Full Spectrum
Dominance doctrine. . And we will pay a huge price for this policy.
See also Professor Stephen Cohen books on the subject.
Why do you pose this as antagonizing either Russsia or Iran? They are somewhat allied, so in fact antagonizing Iran as we are
doing also antagonizes Russia.
Likbez,
The relative economic position of Russia in terms of median income is no different today than it was 30 years ago before Yeltsin,
except for the rise of China. It was behind the European nations to its west, both those that were under its domination and those
that were not, and it still is. So no big deal.
And somehow you have this fantasy that if it were not for Obama-Nuland, Ukrainians would just loooove to be under Russian
domination.
f you think this, you ser both foolish and very ignorant.
likbez February 16, 2020 10:30 pm
And somehow you have this fantasy that if it were not for Obama-Nuland, Ukrainians would just loooove to be under Russian
domination. f you think this, you ser both foolish and very ignorant.
I might well be foolish and ignorant (I am far from being the specialist in the region), but I suspect Ukrainians do prefer
the exchange rate ~8.5 hrivnas to a dollar (before the coup) to the current 25 hrivnas to a dollar.
Especially taking into account stagnant salaries and actual parity of prices in dollars for many types of food (especially
meat), industrial products, and services between the USA and Ukraine.
I recently talked with one Ukrainian woman who told me that the "bribe" (unofficial payments due to low salaries for doctors
and nurses in state clinics) for the child delivery was $1000 in Kiev in 2014 and she gave birth exactly at the time when hrivna
jumped from 8.5 to over 20 per dollar. That was a tragedy for her and her family.
And please remember that the average SS pension in Ukraine is around 1500 hrivna a month (~ $60). So to me, it is completely
unclear how pensioners can survive at all while the government is buying super expensive American weapons "to defend the country
from Russian aggression."
"... Imperialism – the highest stage of capitalism ..."
"... Without the natives' consent and without the neighbouring countries approval, Moroccans, Somalis, and later Afghans and Syrians, found home in the EU thanks to madame Merkel. ..."
At the moment, the United States has great difficulty in retaining its hegemony in the
Middle East. Its troops have been declared unwanted in Iraq; and in Syria, the US and their
foreign legion of terrorists lose terrain and positions every month. The US has responded to
this with a significant escalation, by deploying more troops and by constant threats against
Iran. At the same time, we have seen strong protest movements in Lebanon, Iraq and
Iran.
When millions of Iraqi took to the streets recently, their main slogan was "THE UNITED
STATES OUT OF THE MIDDLE EAST!"
How should one analyze this?
Obviously, there are a lot of social tensions in the Middle East – class based,
ethnic, religious and cultural. The region is a patchwork of conflicts and tensions that not
only goes back hundreds of years, but even a few thousand.
There are always many reasons to rebel against a corrupt upper class, anywhere in the world.
But no rebellion can succeed if it is not based on a realistic and thorough analysis of the
specific conditions in the individual country and region.
Just as in Africa, the borders in the Middle East are arbitrarily drawn. They are the
product of the manipulations of imperialist powers, and only to a lesser extent products of
what the peoples themselves have wanted.
During the era of decolonization, there was a strong, secular pan-Arab movement that wanted to create
a unified Arab world. This movement was influenced by the nationalist and socialist ideas that
had strong popular support at the time.
King Abdallah I
of Jordan envisaged a kingdom that would consist of Jordan, Palestine and Syria. Egypt and
Syria briefly established a union called the United Arab Republic . Gaddafi wanted
to unite Libya, Syria and Egypt in a federation of Arab republics
.
In 1958, a quickly dissolved confederation was established between Jordan and Iraq, called
the Arab Federation
. All these efforts were transient. What remains is the Arab League, which is, after all, not a
state federation and not an alliance. And then of course we have the demand for a Kurdish
state, or something similar consisting of one or more Kurdish mini-states.
Still, the most divisive product of the First World War was the establishment of the state
of Israel on Palestinian soil. During the First World War, Britain's Foreign Minister Arthur
Balfour issued what became known as the Balfour Declaration
, which " view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish
people."
But what is the basis for all these attempts at creating states? What are the prerequisites
for success or failure?
The imperialist powers divide the world according to the power
relations between them
Lenin gave the best and most durable explanation for this, in his essay Imperialism
– the highest stage of capitalism . There, he explained five basic features of
the era of imperialism:
The concentration of production and capital has developed to such a
high stage that it has created monopolies which play a decisive role in economic life; The
merging of bank capital with industrial capital, and the creation, on the basis of this
"finance capital", of a financial oligarchy; The export of capital as distinguished from the
export of commodities acquires exceptional importance; The formation of international
monopolist capitalist associations which share the world among themselves; The territorial
division of the whole world among the biggest capitalist powers is completed.
But Lenin also pointed out that capitalist countries are developing unevenly, not least
because of the uneven development of productive forces in the various capitalist countries.
After a while, there arises a discrepancy between how the world is divided and the relative
strength of the imperialist powers. This disparity will eventually force through a
redistribution, a new division of the world based on the new relationship of strength. And, as
Lenin states :
The question is: what means other than war could there be under capitalism to overcome the
disparity between the development of productive forces and the accumulation of capital on the
one side, and the division of colonies and spheres of influence for finance capital on the
other?"
The two world wars were wars that arose because of unevenness in the power relationships
between the imperialist powers. The British Empire was past its heyday and British capitalism
lagged behind in the competition. The United States and Germany were the great powers that had
the largest industrial and technological growth, and eventually this misalignment exploded. Not
once, but twice.
Versailles and Yalta
The victors of the First World War divided the world between themselves at the expense of
the losers. The main losers were Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia (the Soviet Union) and the
Ottoman Empire. This division was drawn up in the Versailles treaty and the following minor
treaties.
Europe after the Versailles Treaties (Wikipedia)
This map shows how the Ottoman Empire was partitioned:
At the end of World War II, the victorious superpowers met in the city of Yalta on the
Crimean peninsula in the Soviet Union. Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin made an agreement on how
Europe should be divided following Germany's imminent defeat. This map shows how it was
envisaged and the two blocs that emerged and became the foundation for the Cold War.
Note that Yugoslavia, created after Versailles in 1919, was maintained and consolidated as
"a country between the blocs". So it is a country that carries in itself the heritage of both
the Versailles- and Yalta agreements.
The fateful change of era when the Soviet Union
fell
In the era of imperialism, there has always been a struggle between various great powers.
The battle has been about markets, access to cheap labor, raw materials, energy, transport
routes and military control. And the imperialist countries divide the world between themselves
according to their strength. But the imperialist powers are developing unevenly.
If a power collapses or loses control over some areas, rivals will compete to fill the void.
Imperialism follows the principle that Aristotle in his Physics called horror vacui – the
fear of empty space.
And that was what happened when the Soviet Union lost the Cold War. In 1991, the Soviet
Union ceased to exist, and soon the Eastern bloc was also history. And thus the balance was
broken, the one that had maintained the old order. And now a huge area was available for
re-division. The weakened Russia barely managed to preserve its own territory, and not at all
the area that just before was controlled by the Soviet Union.
Never has a so large area been open for redivision. It was the result of two horrible
world wars that anew was up for grabs. It could not but lead to war." Pål
Steigan, 1999
"Never has a so large area been open for re-division. It was the result of two horrible
world wars that anew was up for grabs. It could not but lead to war." Map: Countries either
part of the Soviet Union, Eastern Bloc or non-aligned (Yugoslavia)
When the Soviet Union disintegrated, both the Yalta and Versailles agreements in reality
collapsed, and opened up the way for a fierce race to control this geopolitical empty
space.
This laid the foundation for the American
Geostrategy for Eurasia , which concentrated on securing control over the vast Eurasian
continent. It is this struggle for redistribution in favor of the United States that has been
the basis for most wars since 1990: Somalia, the Iraq wars, the Balkan wars, Libya, Ukraine,
and Syria.
The United States has been aggressively spearheading this, and the process to expand NATO
eastward and create regime changes in the form of so-called "color revolutions" has been part
of this struggle. The coup in Kiev, the transformation of Ukraine into an American colony with
Nazi elements, and the war in Donbass are also part of this picture. This war will not stop
until Russia is conquered and dismembered, or Russia has put an end to the US offensive.
So, to recapitulate: Because the world is already divided between imperialist powers and
there are no new colonies to conquer, the great powers can only fight for redistribution. What
creates the basis and possibilities for a new division is the uneven development of capitalism.
The forces that are developing faster economically and technologically will demand bigger
markets, more raw materials, more strategic control.
The results of two terrible wars are
again up for grabs
World War I caused perhaps 20 million deaths , as well as at least as many
wounded. World War II caused around 72 million deaths . These are
approximate numbers, and there is still controversy around the exact figures, but we are
talking about this order of magnitude.
The two world wars that ended with the Versailles and Yalta treaties thus caused just below
100 million dead, as well as an incredible number of other suffering and losses.
Since 1991, a low-intensity "world war" has been fought, especially by the US, to conquer
"the void". Donald Trump
recently stated that the United States have waged wars based on lies, which have cost $ 8
trillion ($ 8,000 billion) and millions of people's lives. So the United States' new
distribution of the spoils has not happened peacefully.
"The Rebellion against
Sykes-Picot"
In the debate around the situation in the Middle East, certain people that would like to
appear leftist, radical and anti-imperialist say that it is time to rebel against the
artificial boundaries drawn by the Sykes-Picot and Versailles treaties. And certainly these
borders are artificial and imperialist. But how leftist and anti-imperialist is it to fight for
these boundaries to be revised now?
In reality, it is the United States and Israel that are fighting for a redistribution of the
Middle East. This is the basis underlying Donald Trump's "Deal of the Century", which aims to
bury Palestine forever, and it is stated outright in the new US strategy for partitioning
Iraq.
Again, this is just an updated version of the Zionist Yinon plan that aimed to cantonize the
entire Middle East, with the aim that Israel should have no real opponents and would be able to
dominate the entire region and possibly create a Greater Israel.
It is not the anti-imperialists that are leading the way to overhaul the imperialist borders
from 1919. It is the imperialists. To achieve this, they can often exploit movements that are
initially popular or national, but which then only become tools and proxies in a greater
game.
This has happened so many times in history that it can hardly be counted.
Hitler's Germany exploited Croatian nationalism by using the
Ustaša gangs as proxies. From 1929 to 1945, they killed hundreds of thousands of
Serbs, Jews and Roma people. And their ideological and political descendants carried out an
extremely brutal ethnic cleansing of the Krajina area and forced out more than 200,000 Serbs in
their so-called Operation Storm in 1995.
Hitler also used the extreme Ukrainian nationalists of Stepan Bandera's OUN, and after
Bandera's death, the CIA continued to use them as a fifth column against the Soviet Union.
The US low-intensity war against Iraq, from the Gulf War in 1991 to the Iraq War in 2003,
helped divide the country into enclaves. Iraqi Kurdistan achieved autonomy in the oil-rich
north with the help of a US "no-fly zone". The United States thus created a quasi-state that
was their tool in Iraq.
Undoubtedly, the Kurds in Iraq had been oppressed under Saddam Hussein. But also
undoubtedly, their Iraqi "Kurdistan" became a client state under the thumb of United States.
And there is also no doubt that the no-fly zones were illegal, as UN Secretary General Boutros
Boutros-Ghali
admitted in a conversation with John Pilger .
And now the United States is still using the Kurds in Northern Iraq in its plan to divide
Iraq into three parts. To that end, they are building the world's largest consulate in Erbil.
What they are planning to do, is simply "creating a country".
As is well known, the United States also uses the Kurds in Syria as a pretext to keep 27
percent of the country occupied. It does not help how much the Kurdish militias SDF and PYD
invoke democracy, feminism and communalism; they have ended up pleading for the United States
to maintain the occupation of Northeast Syria.
Preparations for a New World War
Israel and the US are preparing for war against Iran. In this fight, they will develop as
much "progressive" rhetoric as is required to fool people. Real dissatisfaction in the area,
which there is every reason to have, will be magnified and blown out of all proportion. "Social
movements" will be equipped with the latest news in the Israeli and US "riot kits" and receive
training and logistics support, in addition to plenty of cold hard cash.
There may be good reasons to revise the 1919 borders, but in today's situation, such a move
will quickly trigger a major war. Some say that the Kurds are entitled to their own state, and
maybe so. The question is ultimately decided by everyone else, except the Kurds themselves.
The problem is that in today's geopolitical situation, creating a unified Kurdistan will
require that "one" defeats Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran. It's hard to see how that can happen
without their allies, not least Russia and China, being drawn into the conflict.
And then we have a new world war on our hands. And in that case, we are not talking about
100 million killed, but maybe ten times as much, or the collapse of civilization as we know it.
The Kurdish question is not worth that much.
This does not mean that one should not fight against oppression and injustice, be it social
and national. One certainly should. But you have to realize that revising the map of the Middle
East is a very dangerous plan and that you run the risk of ending up in very dangerous company.
The alternative to this is to support a political struggle that undermines the hegemony of the
United States and Israel and thereby creates better conditions for future struggles.
It is nothing new that small nations rely on geopolitical situations to achieve some form of
national independence. This was the case, for example, for my home country Norway. It was
France's defeat in the Napoleonic War that caused Denmark to lose the province of Norway to
Sweden in 1814, but at the same time it created space for a separate Norwegian constitution and
internal self rule.
All honor to the Norwegian founding fathers of 1814, but this was decided on the
battlefields in Europe. And again, it was Russia's defeat in the Russo-Japanese War that laid
the geopolitical foundation for the dissolution of the forced union with Sweden almost a
hundred years later, in 1905. (This is very schematically presented and there are many more
details, but there is no doubt that Russia's loss of most of its fleet in the Far East had
created a power vacuum in the west, which was exploitable.)
Therefore, the best thing to do now is not to support the fragmentation of states, but to
support a united front to drive the United States out of the Middle East. The Million Man March
in Baghdad got the ball rolling. There is every reason to build up even more strength behind
it. Only when the United States is out, will the peoples and countries in the region be able to
arrive at peaceful agreements between themselves, which will enable a better future to be
developed.
And in this context, it is an advantage that China develops the "Silk Road" (aka Belt and
Road Initiative), not because China is any nobler than other major powers, but because this
project, at least in the current situation, is non-sectarian, non-exclusive and genuinely
multilateral. The alternative to a monopolistic rule by the United States, with a world police
under Washington's control, is a multipolar world. It grows as we speak.
The days of the Empire are numbered. What this will look like in 20 or 50 years, remains to
be seen.
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George Mc ,
Off topic – but there's nowhere else to put this at the moment:
The BBC was taken aback by leftwing attacks on its general election coverage
No idea what they are talking about. They patiently explained that Corbyn was Hitler. What
more could they do?
Dungroanin ,
Ok roll up the sleeves, time to concentrate. I've had enough of being baited as a judae-
phobe.
The 'Balfour Declaration' – he didn't write it and it was a contract published in
the newspapers within hours of it being inveigled.
Ready?
'Balfour and Lloyd George would have been happy with an unvarnished endorsement of
Zionism. The text that the foreign secretary agreed in August was largely written by Weizmann
and his colleagues:
"His Majesty's Government accept the principle that Palestine should be reconstituted as
the national home of the Jewish people and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the
achievement of this object and will be ready to consider any suggestions on the subject which
the Zionist Organisation may desire to lay before them."
Got that – AUGUST?
Dungroanin ,
The leading figure in that drama was a charismatic chemistry professor from Manchester, Chaim
Weizmann – with his domed head, goatee beard and fierce intellect. Weizmann had gained
an entrée into political circles thanks to CP Scott, the illustrious editor of the
Manchester Guardian, and had then sold his Zionist project to government leaders, including
David Lloyd George when he was chancellor of the exchequer.
Dungroanin ,
Author(s)
Walter Rothschild, Arthur Balfour, Leo Amery, Lord Milner
Signatories
Arthur James Balfour
Recipient
Walter Rothschild
Dungroanin ,
'In due course the blunt phrase about Palestine being "reconstituted as the national home of
the Jewish people" was toned down into "the establishment of a home for the Jewish people in
Palestine" – a more ambiguous formulation which sidestepped for the moment the idea of
a Jewish state. '
Dungroanin ,
'Edwin Montagu, newly appointed as secretary of state for India, was only the third
practising Jew to hold cabinet office. Whereas his cousin, Herbert Samuel (who in 1920 would
become the first high commissioner of Palestine) was a keen supporter of Zionism, Montagu was
an "assimilationist" – one who believed that being Jewish was a matter of religion not
ethnicity. His position was summed up in the cabinet minutes:
Mr Montagu urged strong objections to any declaration in which it was stated that
Palestine was the "national home" of the Jewish people. He regarded the Jews as a religious
community and himself as a Jewish Englishman '
Dungroanin ,
'Montagu considered the proposed Declaration a blatantly anti-Semitic document and claimed
that "most English-born Jews were opposed to Zionism", which he said was being pushed mainly
by "foreign-born Jews" such as Weizmann, who was born in what is now Belarus.'
Dungroanin ,
The other critic of the proposed Declaration was Lord Curzon, a former viceroy of India, who
therefore viewed Palestine within the geopolitics of Asia. A grandee who traced his lineage
back to the Norman Conquest, Curzon loftily informed colleagues that the Promised Land was
not exactly flowing with milk and honey, but nor was it an empty, uninhabited space.
According to the cabinet minutes, "Lord Curzon urged strong objections upon practical
grounds. He stated, from his recollection of Palestine, that the country was, for the most
part, barren and desolate a less propitious seat for the future Jewish race could not be
imagined."
And, he asked, "how was it proposed to get rid of the existing majority of Mussulman
[Muslim] inhabitants and to introduce the Jews in their place?"
Dungroanin ,
Sorry for the length of this bit – but it only makes sense in the whole:
'Between them, Curzon and Montagu had temporarily slowed the Zionist bandwagon. Lord
Milner, another member of the war cabinet, hastily added two conditions to the proposed
draft, in order to address the two men's respective concerns. The vague phrase about the
rights of the "existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine" hints at how little the
government knew or cared about those who constituted roughly 90 per cent of the population of
what they, too, regarded as their homeland.
After trying out the new version on a few eminent Jews, both of Zionist and
accommodationist persuasions, and also securing a firm endorsement from America's President
Woodrow Wilson, Lloyd George and Balfour took the issue back to the war cabinet on 31
October. By now the strident Montagu had left for India, and on this occasion Balfour, who
could often be moody and detached, led from the front, brushing aside the objections that had
been raised and reasserting the propaganda imperative. According to the cabinet minutes, he
stated firmly: "The vast majority of Jews in Russia and America, as, indeed, all over the
world, now appeared to be favourable to Zionism. If we could make a declaration favourable to
such an ideal, we should be able to carry on extremely useful propaganda both in Russia and
America."
This was standard cabinet tactics: a strong lead from a minister supported by the PM,
daring his colleagues to argue back. And this time Curzon did not, though he did make another
telling comment. He "attached great importance to the necessity of retaining the Christian
and Moslem Holy Places in Jerusalem and Bethlehem". If this were done, Curzon added, he "did
not see how the Jewish people could have a political capital in Palestine".'
Dungroanin ,
Dates again crucial and the smoking gun:
'securing a firm endorsement from America's President Woodrow Wilson, Lloyd George and
Balfour took the issue back to the war cabinet on 31 October.'
Dungroanin ,
The two conditions had bought off the two main critics. That was all that seemed to matter,
even though the reference to the "rights of the existing non-Jewish communities" stood in
potential conflict with the first two clauses about the British supporting and using their
"best endeavours" for the "establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish
people".
Dungroanin ,
There is MORE but I'll pause and see how many are really interested in FACTS, as opposed to
invented History, Economics and Capital instead of the only real human motivations of the
ages – Money and Power.
George Mc ,
the only real human motivations of the ages – Money and Power.
If this is true then we are all doomed.
Dungroanin ,
Not if we are aware of it George.
Dungroanin ,
Ok a summary fom Brittanica:
'Balfour Declaration Quick Facts
The Balfour Declaration, issued through the continued efforts of Chaim Weizmann and Nahum
Sokolow, Zionist leaders in London, fell short of the expectations of the Zionists, who had
asked for the reconstitution of Palestine as "the" Jewish national home. The declaration
specifically stipulated that "nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and
religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine." The document, however,
said nothing of the political or national rights of these communities and did not refer to
them by name. Nevertheless, the declaration aroused enthusiastic hopes among Zionists and
seemed the fulfillment of the aims of the World Zionist Organization (see Zionism).
The British government hoped that the declaration would rally Jewish opinion, especially
in the United States, to the side of the Allied powers against the Central Powers during
World War I (1914–18). They hoped also that the settlement in Palestine of a
pro-British Jewish population might help to protect the approaches to the Suez Canal in
neighbouring Egypt and thus ensure a vital communication route to British colonial
possessions in India.
The Balfour Declaration was endorsed by the principal Allied powers and was included in
the British mandate over Palestine, formally approved by the newly created League of Nations
on July 24, 1922.
In May 1939 the British government altered its policy in a White Paper recommending a
limit of 75,000 further immigrants and an end to immigration by 1944, unless the resident
Palestinian Arabs of the region consented to further immigration.
Zionists condemned the new policy, accusing Britain of favouring the Arabs. This point was
made moot by the outbreak of World War II (1939–45) and the founding of the State of
Israel in 1948.'
Dungroanin ,
But what about the timing?
Well there are twin tracks, here is the first.
'But talking about the return of the Jews to the land of Israel was only meaningful
because that land seemed up for grabs after the Ottoman Empire sided with Germany in 1914.
For Britain, France and Russia – though primarily focused on Europe – war against
a declining power long dubbed the "Sick Man of Europe" opened up the prospect of vast gains
in the Levant and the Middle East.
The Ottoman army, however, proved no walkover. In 1915 it threatened the Suez Canal,
Britain's imperial artery to India, and then repulsed landings by British empire and French
forces on the Dardanelles at Gallipoli. Although Baghdad fell in March 1917, two British
assaults on Gaza that spring were humiliatingly driven back, with heavy losses. Deadlock in
the desert added to Whitehall's list of woes.
In this prescribed narrative of remembrance for 1914-18, what happened outside the Western
Front has been almost entirely obscured. The British army's "Historical Lessons, Warfare
Branch" has published in-house a fascinating volume of essays about what it tellingly
entitles "The Forgotten Fronts of the First World War" – with superb maps and
illustrations. The collection covers not only Palestine and Mesopotamia (roughly modern-day
Iraq and Kuwait), but also Italy, Africa, Russia, Turkey and the Pacific – indeed much
of the world – but sadly it is not currently available to the public. '
Dungroanin ,
The second track is the 'money' track and what everything is about and why we live in such a
miasma of blatant lies.
IT can only make sense by asking questions such as :
Can we follow the money?
When was the Fed set up? Why? By whom?
How much money did it lend &
to whom?
When was the first world war started?
When did US declare war?
When did US troops arrive in numbers to enter that war?
What happened in Russia at the same time?
And in Mesopotamia?
How did it end?
How did it fail to end?
What happened to the contract?
Etc.
I have attempted to research and answer some of these already above.
Next I will attempt to walk the other track but be warned that opens more ancient
tracks.
Dungroanin ,
'On 2 November, Balfour sent his letter to Lord Rothschild.
7 November, Lenin and the Bolsheviks had seized power in Petrograd. ransacked the Tsarist
archives, they published juicy extracts from the "secret treaties" that the Allied powers had
made among themselves in 1915-16 to divide the spoils of victory.
The same day the Ottoman Seventh and Eighth Armies evacuated the town of Gaza
9 November Letter published in Times.
Mid November – The Bolsheviks did not discover that the British were also playing
footsie with the Turks. In the middle of November 1917, secret meetings took place with
Ottoman dissidents in Greece and Switzerland about trying to arrange an armistice in the Near
East. The war cabinet recognised that, as bait, it might have to let the Ottomans keep parts
of their empire in the region, or at least retain some appearance of control. When Curzon got
wind of this, he was incensed: "Almost in the same week that we have pledged ourselves, if
successful, to secure Palestine as a national home for the Jewish people, are we to
contemplate leaving the Turkish flag flying over Jerusalem?"
End November. The Manchester Guardian's correspondent in Petrograd, Morgan Philips Price,
was able to examine the key documents overnight, and his scoop was published by the paper at
the end of November. It revealed to the world, among other things, that the British also had
an understanding with the French – the Sykes-Picot agreement of January 1916 – to
carve up the Near East between them once the Ottoman empire had been defeated. In this,
Palestine was slated for some kind of international condominium – not the British
protectorate envisaged in the Balfour Declaration.
11 December Allenby formally entered Jerusalem. '
So just a few loose ends left to tie up anyone actually want to go there?
The paramount goal of the Fed's founders was to eliminate banking panics, but it was not
the only goal. The founders also sought to increase the amount of international trade
financed by US banks and to expand the use of the dollar internationally. By 1913 the United
States had the world's largest economy, but only a small fraction of US exports and imports
were financed by American banks. Instead, most exports and imports were financed by bankers'
acceptances drawn on European banks in foreign currencies. (Bankers' acceptances are a type
of financial contract used for making payments in the future, for example, upon delivery of
goods or services. Bankers' acceptances are drawn on and guaranteed, i.e., "accepted," by a
bank.) The Federal Reserve Act allowed national banks to issue bankers' acceptances and open
foreign branches, which greatly expanded their ability to finance international transactions
Further the Act authorized the Reserve Banks to purchase acceptances in the open market to
ensure a liquid market for them, thereby spurring growth of that market.
President Woodrow Wilson signed the Federal Reserve Act on December 23, 1913.
The task of determining the specific number of districts, district boundaries, and which
cities would have Reserve Banks was assigned to a Reserve Bank Organization Committee.
On April 2, 1914, the Committee announced that twelve Federal Reserve districts would be
formed, identified the boundaries of those districts, and named the cities that would have
Reserve Banks.1 The Banks were quickly organized, officers and staff were hired, and boards
of directors appointed. The Banks opened for business on November 16, 1914.
..
The Federal Reserve Act addressed perceived shortcomings by creating a new national
currency -- Federal Reserve notes -- and requiring members of the Federal Reserve System to
hold reserve balances with their local Federal Reserve Banks.
World War I began in Europe in August 1914, before the Federal Reserve Banks had opened
for business. The war had a profound impact on the US banking system and economy, as well as
on the Federal Reserve.
War disrupted European financial markets and reduced the supply of trade credit offered by
European banks, providing US banks with an opening. Low US interest rates, abundant reserves,
and new authority to issue trade acceptances enabled American banks to finance a growing
share of world trade.
Dungroanin ,
So the denouement :
It appears that the 'first world war' was designed to diminish European banks and boost
the US banks.
However the fuller history of the US bankers is worth knowing- the Jekyll Islanders story
is widely publicised.
Into this time track enters the Balfour Declaration addressed to Lord Rothschild, steered
by Milner (heir to Rhodes empire building and the old EIC), approved by the potus Wilson
(another hireling) that finally sent US troops to overwhelm the Germans, while the great
gamers took out the Romanovs and the Ottoman Empire.
-- --
When we try to understand such facts and timelines and are attacked as Judaeo-phobes,
because we identify Bankers and Robber Barons, it becomes even clearer how deep and wide they
have controlled history and it has NOTHING to do with RELIGION (except perhaps Ludism).
Nothing to do with Judaism (except perhaps Old Jewry in the City, but Lombard Street was most
powerful!) and EVERYTHING to do with POWER and it's representation MONEY. The obscuring of
that through various Economic theories including Marxism is the work of the same old bastards
who are responsible for all our current malaises.
Thankyou and good evening, if anyone made it this far!
😉
George Mc ,
Well OK Dunnie, let's say I go along with you and assume that all the shit we are facing has
nothing to do with religion or all that "Marxian porridge" (as Guido Giacomo Preparata called
it). The question is: What do we do about it?
Speaking of GGP , it seems to me that you and him have much in common. He also goes on
about "Power" but seems to be on the verge of referring this "Power" to mystical entities in
a disconcertingly Ickean manoeuvre. Not that I'm attibuting such a thing to yourself. (No
irony intended.)
Dungroanin ,
George – i don't want you or anyone to just go along with me.
I want everyone to make their minds up on FACTS. That is the only way humanity has
actually progressed by inventing the only self correcting philosophical system and method of
the ages that goes beyond 'personal responsibility teligions' – SCIENTIFIC METHOD
– that takes away arbitrary power to rule, from these that inhabit the top of the human
pyramid by virtue of being born there and having control over the money and so the power to
remain in these positions, which does not benefit the totality of humanity or all life on
Earth.
I am not a messiah, I am angry as fuck and I am not going to sit around enjoying whatever
soma has been handed to us to keep compliant and leave this Planet worse than I found it.
That is the scientific conclusion I have reached.
I suppose some proto buddhist / zoroastrianism / animalist / Shinto / Jain & Quakers
seek religious truth in inner experience, and place great reliance on conscience as the basis
of morality.
I suppose Ghandi's non-violence rebellion against Imperialists is a model as are various
peasants revolts – the Russian / Chinese / Korean / Vietnamese couldn't have survived
without the literal grassroots!
..
As for Guido Giacomo Preparata that you have introduced to me – i had nevet heard of
him before this morning – my first take on him is that he seems to have arrived at
similar conclusions by similar methodology. He seems to have a lot of formal education and a
enviable career so far – i'll have to look into him further but the interview that i
just read seems to indicate concurrence with what i said above. I see no Ickean references
– please give a link.
-- -
As a observation do you not find it funny that there is not a single objection to the
verity of the facts which I have presented above?
Good luck George if you are a real seeker of truth. If not insta-karma awaits.
George Mc ,
The Preparata statement I was referring to is in this interview:
Power is a purely human suggestion. Suggested by whom? That is the question. The NSDAP
thus appeared to have been a front for some kind of nebula of Austro-German magi, dark
initiates, and troubling literati (Dietrich Eckhart comes to mind), with very plausible
extra-Teutonic ramifications of which we know next to nothing. Hitler came to be inducted
in a lodge of this network, endowed as he seemed with a supernatural gift of inflaming
oratory.
This is a theme that I am still studying, but from what I gathered, the adepts of the
Thule Gesellschaft communed around the belief of being the blood heirs of a breed that
seeks redemption / salvation / metempsychosis in some kind of eighth realm away from this
earth, which is the shoddy creation of a lesser God -- the archangel of the Hebrews,
Jehovah. It all sounds positively insane to post-modern ears, but it should be taken very
seriously, I think.
Admittedly it isn't quite interdimensional reptiles but there is a distinct metaphysical
flavour there.
I wouldn't go along with everything Preparata says but he is a wonderful writer and I have
bought almost everything I can find by him. His "biggie" is "Conjuring Hitler". It was Nafeez
Mosaddeq Ahmed that brought GGP to my attention via that book.
milosevic ,
images on this website look terrible, with very little colour. the problem seems to be caused
by this rule, from the file "OffGstyle.css":
.content-wrap-spp img {
filter: sepia(20%) saturate(30%);
}
Open ,
This sepia effect usually works well with Off-Guardian articles, but with these maps in
today's article it is definitely terrible. Why have maps if they don't want to show them
clearly?
(any extra steps for the user to see the pictures clearly is not the answer)
Another area neglected on this website is crediting photos. The majority of images carry
no atribution/credit, despite it [crediting photos] is the best ethical practice even for
public domain pictures. I wish Admin gets expert advice on this.
Open ,
Look at the language used by the americans:
On feb. 12 [2020], Coalition forces, conducting a patrol near Qamishli, Syria ,
encountered a checkpoint occupied by pro-Syrian .. forces .
So, the supremacist unites states' army has found that Syrian forces are occupying Syrian
land .. wow wow wow .. according to this logic, Russian forces are occupying Russian land.
Iranian forces are occupying Iranian land (how dare they?!). But american forces are not
occupying any land, and Israel is not occupying Palestinian and Syrian lands.
This language needs to be known more widely.
Open ,
The americans always use the term 'Coalition forces' when they talk about their illegal
presence in Syria. I tried to search online for what countries are in this coalition. I
recall I was able to find that in the past, but now, it seems this information is being
pushed under wrap.
What are they afraid of? What are they hiding?
Joe ,
Just bring about the end of "Israel" and there'll be peace in the Middle East, and probably
in the wider world, too.
Open ,
Ending the Israeli project is certainly a step in the right direction to improve global
stability. However, alone, it will not bring about peace because the
British/Five-Eyes/Washington's doctrine of spreading disorder and chaos permeates (saturates)
the planet.
In fact, current disorders are the results of convergence of Israeli interests with those
of Western White Supremacy's* resolve to dominate, erh, eveything.
* Western White Supremacy can also be called Western White Idiocy and Bigotry.
Israel manipulates the West's political and military might. The West also uses Israel to
spread Chaos and Disorder.
Antonym ,
Right, back to the good old peace of the graveyard inspired by Mohamed's male sex riot
ideology and plunder legitimization before the Westerners showed up with their superior
(arms) tech legitimization for their plunder.
Before Israel's 1947 creation the world was a bed of roses .
Open ,
"srael's 1947 creation"
Without the natives' consent and without the neighbouring countries approval, Ukranians
and Germans, and later South Americans, found home in the Middle East.
How ligitimate is that?
Antonym ,
Without the natives' consent and without the neighbouring countries approval, Moroccans,
Somalis, and later Afghans and Syrians, found home in the EU thanks to madame Merkel.
How ligitimate is that?
Open ,
"Moroccans, Somalis, and later Afghans and Syrians .. etc.."
Do these comments reflect the Zionists' perspective? This is important because they prove
that the whole existence of Israel is based on total fabrication and lies.
Maggie ,
Did you have to practice at being THAT stupid! Or did they lobotomise you in Langley?
Somalis, Afghans, Syrians would not have had any cause to leave their homeland had it not
been for your employers the CIA/MOSSAD facilitating the raping and pillaging of their homes
by the Oil Magnates, leaving them starving and desolate. https://www.hiiraan.com/op2/2007/may/somalia_the_other_hidden_war_for_oil.aspx
and where does our Aid money go?
https://www.youtube.com/embed/5OInaYenHkU?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent
But of course Antonym, if you were in their situation, you would just stick it out?
Shame on you .
To those who care, read "The confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins" to
understand how this corrupt system is conducted.
Richard Le Sarc ,
Its 'creation' in blood, murder, rape and terror, in a great ethnic cleansing-the sign of
things to come, ceaselessly, for seventy years and ongoing.
paul ,
Ask the people in Gaza about the Zionist "peace of the graveyard."
Antonym ,
Gaza before 2005 was relatively peaceful + prosperous. After the Israeli withdrawal the
inhabitants messed up their own economy but kept on making lots of babies just like
before.
Quite the opposite of a graveyard or a Warsaw ghetto or a Dachau.
Despite the disengagement, the United Nations, international human rights organisations
and most legal scholars regard the Gaza Strip to still be under military occupation by
Israel, though this is disputed by Israel and other legal scholars. Following the
withdrawal, Israel has continued to maintain direct external control over Gaza and indirect
control over life within Gaza: it controls Gaza's air and maritime space, and six of Gaza's
seven land crossings, it maintains a no-go buffer zone within the territory, and controls
the Palestinian population registry, and Gaza remains dependent on Israel for its water,
electricity, telecommunications, and other utilities.
Interesting definition of "withdrawal". It's amazing those Gazans even managed to have
babies!
Richard Le Sarc ,
You would have made a grand Nazi, Antsie-cripes, you have!
paul ,
Gaza was, and is, a huge Zionist concentration camp hermetically sealed off from the outside
world and blockaded just like the Warsaw Ghetto. With Zionist thugs and kiddie killers
shooting hundreds of kids in the head for the fun of it with British sniper rifles and dum
dum bullets, and periodically dropping 20,000 tons of bombs at a time on it, a higher
explosive yield than Hiroshima. With parties of Jews going along to hold barbecues and
picnics to watch all the fun. Nice people, those chosen folk.
Richard Le Sarc ,
I rather think that Epstein, Weinstein, Moonves and all those orthodox and ultra-orthodox who
are such prolific patrons of the sex industry in Israel, know a bit about 'male sex riot
ideology', Antsie.
Dungroanin ,
Pathetic.
'Nandy won a major boost when members of the Labour affiliate Jewish Labour Movement gave her
their backing after a hustings, saying she understood the need to change the party's
culture.'
From the Groaniad
How many members? How many by denomination?
As for the Balfour Contract there were actual English Jewish establishment figures against
its premise. Actual imperial servants. The declaration was a stitch up by the new banking
powers in the US which then sent in the yanks to stop the Germans in 1917.
History is rewritten daily to memory hole such facts.
Capricornia Man ,
The 'Jewish Labour Movement' is so Jewish that most of its members are not Jewish. And it is
so Labour-affiliated that it did not support Labour in the December general election. But it
has no shortage of money. It exists solely to prosecute the interests of a foreign power.
Much the same could be said for any politician who accepts its endorsement.
Rhys Jaggar ,
Given that Jews are vastly outnumbered by non Jews, the simplest way to stop Jewish
manipulation of politics is to form a party from which Jews are specifically banned.
You will not propose any policies harming Jews in any way, you will just make it clear
that this is a party free from any Jewish influence in its constitution.
If Jews cannot accept that, then they are utterly racist and must be dealt with without
sensibility.
Maggie ,
A better solution Rhys would be to form a party that denies all and any dual citizens
That way all the Zionists would be barred.
Richard Le Sarc ,
Full public financing of political parties would end Zionist control.
paul ,
Thornberry has just thrown in the towel.
She will now have more time to "get down on her hands and knees" and "beg forgiveness" from
the Board of Deputies.
Those good little Shabbos are so easily trained.
Dungroanin ,
BoD's??? Another random organisation!
Who are they? Who do they represent? How many people? Which people? How did they get
elected? How can they be fired?
Richard Le Sarc ,
The next world war has already started, with the bio-warfare atttack on China aka Covid19.
lundiel ,
Why no comment on the government reshuffle? I don't agree with the Indian middle-class
uplifting but totally agree with neutering the ultra-conservative treasury.
Maggie ,
I think it's a case of who gives a fck. We now know that our elections are rigged, and so
there is no point in us being involved. My family and I all realised and voted for the last
time.
They are all bloody crap actors reading their scripts and playing their parts, whilst the
never changing suits in the background pull the strings.
I had to explain to my 10 year old Grandson how politics work, and he said "Why doesn't
anyone know the names of, or see the suits?"
What I want to know is why no-one ever asks this question or demands an answer?
tonyopmoc ,
Completely Brilliant Article, but it is Valentines Day, so as I am 66 years old, and in love
with my wife (nearly 40 years together = LOVE), I wrote this in response to Craig Murray, who
has banned me again.
It may be off topic for him, but it ain't off topic for me. I am still in Love.
"Churchill's mental deterioration from syphilis – which the Eton and Oxford ."
Never had it, and she didn't either. We were young and in love, but we didn't know, if
either of us had sex before, but I had a spotty dick, and went to the VD clinic. I had a
blood test, and they gave me some zinc cream.
She also had the same thing, and showed her Mum.
We were both completely innocent, and had a sexually transmitted disease called Thrush. It
is relatively harmless, but can also give you a sore throat.
We both laughed at each other, and nearly got married.
Natural Yoghurt, is completely brilliant at preventing it.
Far better than Canestan.
Happy Valentines Day, for Everyone still In Love.
Let us all look forwad to a Brighter Day for our Grandchildren.
Tony
Loverat ,
Hey Tony
Dont worry. Craig Murray might not like you but I do. Your stories, here and elsewhere
have entertained me for many years.
Mind you, if I were your other half I would have chucked you years ago.
paul ,
Tell him how much you like haggis and tossing your caber.
Dungroanin ,
Without Stalins say so Poland would not have had its borders at the end of ww2.
Also,
On these maps just off the right hand edges is missing Afghanistan.. which the imperialists
invaded in 2002 as the Taliban wiped out the opium crops. Back to full production immediately
after invasion and 18 years later secret negotiations to hand over to Taliban while leaving
8,000 CUA troops delivering the huge cash crop.
Seeking possession and control – in competition with those you see as seeking to
dispossess and control or deny you – is the identity or belief in 'kill or be
killed'.
This belief overrides and subordinates others – such as to subsume all else to such
private agenda that will seek alliance against common threat but only as a shifting strategy
of possession and control.
One of the things about this 'game' of power struggle, is that it loses any sense of WHY
– and so it is a driven mind or dictate of power or possession for it own sake that
cannot really ENJOY or HAVE and share what it Has. The image of the hungry ghost comes to
mind here. It will never have enough until you are dead – and even then will offer you
torment beyond the grave.
Until this mindset is recognised and released as an 'insanity' it operates as accepted
currency of exchange, and maps our a world of its own conflicting and conflicted
meanings.
The willingness to destroy or kill, deny or undermine and invalidate others in order to
GET for a private agenda set over the whole instead of finding balance within the whole
– is destructive to life, no matter how ingenious the thinking that frames it to seem
to be progressive, protective, or in fact powerful.
But in our collective alignment and allegiance with such a way of thinking and identifying
– we all give power to the destructive – as if to protect the life that it gives
us.
The hungry ghost is also in the mass population when separated from their land and lives
to seek connection or meaning in proffered 'products and services' instead of creating out of
our own lives. Products and services that operate a hidden agenda of possession and control
or market and mind capture under threat of fear of pain of loss in losing even the little
that we have.
Having – on a spiritual level is our being – and not a matter of stuffing a
hole.
Madness that can no longer mask as anything else is all about – and brings a choice to
conscious awareness as to whether to persist in it or decide to find another way of seeing
and being.
This is not to say there is no place to call upon or seek to limit people in positions of
trust from serving an unjust outcome by calling for transparency and accountability –
but not to wait on that or make that the be all and end all.
If there is another way and a better way than war masking in and misusing and thus
corrupting anything and everything, then it has to be lived one to another.
Everyone seeks a better experience – but many seek it in a negative framing.
Negative in the sense of self-lack seeking power in the terms of its current identity. Evils
work their own destruction, but find sustainability in selling destructive agenda or toxic
debt as ingeniously complex instruments of deceit – by which the targeted buyer
believes they have or shall save their 'self' or add to their 'self' rather than growing
hollow to a driven mindset of reactive fear-addiction.
I don't need to 'tell this to those who refuse to listen' – but I share it with any
moment of a willingness to listen. In the final analysis, we are the ones who live the result
of choices in our lives, whatever the times and conditions.
The 'repackaging' of reality to self-deceit, is not new but part of the human mind and
experience throughout history. The evil changes forms – as if the good has and shall
triumph. But truth undoes illusion by being accepted. It doesn't war on illusion and thus
make it real – and remain truth.
Judgement divides to rule.
Discernment arises from the unwillingness to division.
One is set apart from and over life as the invocation of an alien will, dealing death, and
the other as the will of true desire revealed.
The idea of independent autonomy is relative to a limited sphere of responsibilities in
the world.
The idea of living our own life is an alignment within the same for others and the freedom to
do so cannot take from others without becoming possessed by our denials, debts and
transgressions – no less so in the driven mind of ingeniously repackaged and wilfully
defended narrative identity.
In our own experience, this is not a matter of applied analysis, so much as awareness or
space in which to seek and find truth in some willingness of recognition and acceptance or
choice, while the triggering or baiting to madness is loud or compelling as the dictate of
fear seeking protection and grievance seeking retribution – as if these give freedom
and power rather than locking into a fear-framed limitation as substitution for life set in
defiance and refusal to look on or share in truth – and so to such a one, war is truth,
and love is weakness to exploit, use and weaponise for getting.
paul ,
If you look at the proposed new map of the Middle East, it mirrors Kushner's Deal Of The
Century for Palestine – because it has the same Zionist authorship.
The same old dirty Zionist games of divide and rule – break up countries in the region
into tiny defenceless little statelets setting different ethnic and religious groups at each
others' throats, so that they can rule the roost and steal whatever they wish.
You see this in the past and the recent past. The way Lebanon was torn away from Syria. Or
Kuwait from Iraq. Or the Ruritanian petty Gulf dictatorships like Bahrain, Qatar, Dubai.
Trump was being honest for the first time in his miserable life when he said none of these
satellites and satraps would last a fortnight if they were not propped up by the US.
paul ,
George Galloway described the whole region as a flock of sheep surrounded by ravenous wolves.
At the same time, there is more than a grain of truth in the Zionists' contention that the
people of the region are to some extent the authors of their own misfortune.
They always fall for the divide-and-rule games of outside powers, Britain, America,
Israel, who invade, bomb, slaughter, humiliate and exploit them. If they had been united,
Israel would not have been created. Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, would not have been destroyed
and bombed back to the Stone Age. These countries would be genuinely independent and at
peace.
When I speak to ordinary moslems, it is surprising and depressing to see how much visceral
hatred they express for Shia moslems. They seem blind to the way they are being manipulated
to serve outside interests.
So we see moslem Saudi Arabia trying to incite America and Israel to destroy Iran, and
offering to pay for the whole cost of the war. Or S. Arabia, Jordan, Qatar, UAE et al, in bed
with Israel, paying billions to bankroll the terrorist head choppers in Syria. Or Egypt,
which does not even protest, let alone lift a finger, when Israeli aircraft use its air space
to carpet bomb Gaza. Or going further back in history, when countries like Egypt and Syria
sent troops to join the 1991 US invasion of Iraq. Even though Iraq had sent its forces to the
Golan Heights in 1973 to fight and die to prevent Syria being overrun by Israel. How
contemptible is all that? Yet those are just a few of many examples of all the backstabbing
that has occurred over the years. If these people don't respect themselves, why should
anybody else?
paul ,
And this has been going on for hundreds of years.
1096 marked the beginning of The Crusades, a disaster for the region on a par with the
creation of Israel.
At that time, London was a little village of 25,000. Baghdad and Alexandria and Cordoba were
sophisticated modern cities with populations of hundreds of thousands. They dismissed the
Crusaders as mere bandits who would do some looting, steal some cattle, and go home. But 3
years later Jerusalem had been conquered and its inhabitants slaughtered, the start of a 200
year disaster for the region. How? Why?
Because the Arabs were so busy fighting a civil war at the time they barely noticed the
foreign invaders. The old, old story. Civil war between Sunnis and Shias.
One day, they will wake up and realise that they have to hang together, or hang
separately.
But I wouldn't hold your breath.
There seems to be an endless supply of quisling stooge dictators ready to do the bidding of
hostile outside powers. The Mubaraks, the Sisis, the King Abdullahs, the Sinioras, the MBS's,
to name but a few.
Conforming to all the worst stereotypes about Arabs and moslems.
You could argue that they deserve all they get, when they are ever ready to bend over and
drop their trousers.
Is it really any surprise that they have been invaded, slaughtered, bombed back to the Stone
Age, robbed, exploited and humiliated from time immemorial.
Maybe one day they will discover an ounce of dignity and self respect. Who knows?
Maggie ,
"1096 marked the beginning of The Crusades, a disaster for the region on a par with the
creation of Israel.
At that time, London was a little village of 25,000. Baghdad and Alexandria and Cordoba were
sophisticated modern cities with populations of hundreds of thousands. They dismissed the
Crusaders as mere bandits who would do some looting, steal some cattle, and go home. But 3
years later Jerusalem had been conquered and its inhabitants slaughtered, the start of a 200
year disaster for the region. How? Why?"
Because despite the mendacious lies that are told about Muslims, they are tolerant and
forgiving. They believe in one God, and live exemplary modest, generous lives in the belief
that they will enter in to the kingdom of heaven.
And these are the people we are being encouraged to hate and fear? To enable the neo cons
to invade and destroy everything in their path to get their oil.
Hundreds of millions of Muslims the world over 'live in democracies' of some shape or
form, from Indonesia to Malaysia to Pakistan to Lebanon to Tunisia to Turkey. Tens of
millions of Muslims' live in -- and participate in' -- Western democratic societies. The
country that is on course to have the biggest Muslim population in the world in the next
couple of decades is India, which also happens to be the world's biggest democracy. Yet a
persistent pernicious narrative exists, particularly in the West, that Islam and democracy
are incompatible. Islam is often associated with dictatorship, totalitarianism, and a lack of
freedom, and many "well paid" analysts and pundits claim that Muslims are philosophically
opposed to the idea of democracy .
Richard Le Sarc ,
'Democracy' as practised in the neo-liberal capitalist West, is a nullity, a fiction, a
smoke-screen behind which the one and only power, that of the rich owners of the economy,
acts alone.
I know. These Zionist morons droning on about how violent Islam is as religion yet ignoring
the fact that the Bible is based on the God of Abraham granting them Canaan (like Trump
giving the Israelis the Golan Heights, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank) and urging them to
commit complete and utter genocidal annihilation of the inhabitants by not leaving a single
living thing breathing.
No violence there folks. Nope. The book of love my ass!
paul ,
Their God was a demented estate agent, rather like Trump or Kushner.
Personally I believe that the chapters of the bible were written after their genocidal blood
lust simply to justify their despicable acts. Claiming that God made 'em do it.
Loverat ,
My experience of muslims in the UK is many express support for the Palestinians but don't
identify or understand those states which still speak up for their rights, Syria, Iran and a
few others.
Sadly like the general UK population they have been exposed to propaganda which excuses
evil and mass murder carried out by Saudi Arabia and their lackeys and Israel. This is
changing however. People are gradually waking up. Muslims and the general UK public if they
really knew the extent of this would be out demonstrating on the streets.
The realisation these policies have exposed all of us to nuclear wipe out in seconds
should be enough motivation for any normal person.
The wipe out or (preferably) demonstrations will happen. Just a question of when. You can see
why the establishment and people like Higgins, Lucas and York are so active recently. These
idiots, blinded by their pay checks can't see the harm they are causing through their
irresponsible lies even to their own families. Perhaps they all have nuclear shelters in
their back garden.
Richard Le Sarc ,
Saudi Arabia is NOT 'Moslem'. It is Wahhabist, a genocide cult created by doenmeh, ie
crypto-Jewish followers of the failed 17th century Messiah, Sabbatai Zevi, which is
homicidally opposed to all Moslems but fellow Wahhabists.
milosevic ,
I thought it was created by the British Empire, in order to provide reliable stooges and
puppet regimes.
Richard Le Sarc ,
What people must realise is that,for the Zionassty secular and Talmudic religious
leaderships, by far the dominant forces in Israel and among many of the Diaspora sayanim, the
drive to create 'Eretz Yisrael', '..from the Nile to the Euphrates' (and some include the
Arabian Peninsula as well), is a real, religious, ambition-indeed an obligation. With the
alliance with the 'Christian Zionist' lunatics in the USA, the fate of humanity is in the
hands of the Evil Brain Dead.
BigB ,
I despair. This is why there is 'No Deal For Nature' because the hegemonic cultural movement
is to extend cultural hegemony over nature. We cannot seem to help it or stop ourselves. Do
we suppose a glossy website will change that? Or empty sloganneering subvertisements? Or
waiving placards outside banks? Or some other futile conscience salving symbolic gesture?
No, we have to subvert the cultural hegemony over nature at every point at every chance.
Which is thankless because cultural normativity is ubiquitous. And it's killing us. And BRI
is the very antithesis of alternative an eternal return into the cultural consumerism and
commodification that is the global hegemony at least at an elite level. And we are among that
elite – in terms of consumption and pollution. We are the problem. If we seek to extend
or preserve our own Eurocentric priviliges and consumptions we can only do so by extracting
evermore global resources and maldeveloping the Rest. Which is also what Samir Amin said:
following Wallerstein's World Systems Theory.
The progressive packaging of all our sins and transferring them to something called
'American Imperialism' is nothing less than mass psychological transference to a Fetish. By
which we maintain autonomy from any blame in the ecological disaster we are co-creating.
Which is why it is a powerful cultural narrative constructivism. 'We' do not have to reform:
the scapegoated Otherised 'they' do. Whilst we all sit smugly in our inauthentic imaginary
autonomy: the ecological destruction caused entirely by our collectivist consumption carries
on. 'They' have to clean up 'their' act – not us. 'We' align with the
'counter-hegemonic alliance': the alternative BRI. 'We' are so bourgeois and progressive in
our invented independence and totally aligned with the destructive forces of capitalist
endocolonised culture because of our own internalised screening discourse. Which is why there
is #NoDealForNature. 'We' don't actually give a flying fuck not beyond some hollow totemic
gestures in transference of our own responsibility.
'We' are pushing for the financialisation of nature: as the teleology of our particular
complicit cultural narratives. It's not just 'them'. Supply and demand are dialectically
exponential. Who is demanding less, more fairly distributed North to South? Exponential
expansionism via BRI is no more alternative than colonising the Moon or Mars. For nature to
have a deal: we have to stop demanding growth. And in doing that: become self-responsible
right through to the narratives we produce. For which every person in the global consumer
bourgeoisie – that's us – will have to change their imperatives from culture to
nature. Which means a new naturalised culture: not just complicitly advocating the 'same old,
same old' exponential expansionism of the extractivist commodification of every last standing
resource. Under the guise of new narrative constructions like this. That's not progress: it's
capitalist propaganda and personal self-propaganda. We are among the consumer elite. Which is
driving the financialisation and commodification of everything. For us.
#NoDealForNature until we take full and honest self-responsibility to create one with our
every enaction including speech-enactivism.
"With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive
commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our
utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed,
and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save
the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has
preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox.
Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to
the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of
man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the
degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is
so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.
The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of
the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but
subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely
diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, if so urged by hard reason, without deterioration
in the noblest part of our nature. The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an
operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we were
intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit,
with a certain and great present evil. Hence we must bear without complaining the undoubtedly
bad effects of the weak surviving and propagating their kind; but there appears to be at
least one check in steady action, namely the weaker and inferior members of society not
marrying so freely as the sound; and this check might be indefinitely increased, though this
is more to be hoped for than expected, by the weak in body or mind refraining from
marriage."
― Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man
BigB ,
Every appraisal from a cultural POV extends the cultural hegemony over nature – with no
exceptions. If we do not address the false dichotomy of culture and nature – and invert
the privileged status of cultural domination over nature – this never changes. If
nothing changes its going to be a very short century the last in the history of culture.
I'm expressing my own private POV with the intention of at least highlighting the issue of
only ever expressing the distorted cultural-centric POV. It would be nice if we could all
agree to do something other than waste our privileged status and access to resources for
other than meaningless sarcasm. It's not like we'd all benefit from a change in POV and the
entailed potential in a change of course that can only happen if we think of nature first, is
it? 😉
The only thing I don't like about the environmentally "woke" is that many are easily
manipulated by the neoliberal elite. Greta is a perfect example.
That is they go after the little guy while the Military and big industry continue to
pollute unhampered.
George Mc ,
I despair.
Well that's what you do.
Dungroanin ,
The M5 highway is secured. Allepo access points too and Idlib is surrounded- where are the US
backed /Saudi paid / Tukish passport holding Uighars and various Turkmen proxy jihadist anti
Chinese / anti Russian, Central asian caliphate establishing mercenaries supposed to go now??
Pompeo is buzzing around Africa now like a blue bottomed cadaverous fly, non-stop buzzing
from piles of shot, trying to find them homes – no Libya doesn't want anymore of them,
nor the UAE and Saudis, or Turks maybe dump them in Canada with all these ex Ukrainian still
nazis? Its a big country nobody will know!
Or bring them to the US and give them a ticker tape parade?
Or let them surrender and have them testify as to how the fuck they let themselves be
bought for $$$$ maybe just fry them with the low yield nuke and blame Assad for it!
Dumbass yanks, fukus, 5+1 eyed gollum and Nutty- 'it's the Belgian airforce bombing
Russian weapons in Syria' -yahoo!
Up-Pompeos farce and buzzing is about to sizzle in the blue light of death for dumbfuck
poison spreading flies.
normal wisdom ,
so much disrespect here hare here.
these takfiri these giants these beards are hero
of the oded yinon plan
they raped murdered and stole
dustified atomised the syriana so
is rael can become real
the red heffers have been cloned the temple will grow
the semites must leave for norway,sweden wales scotland and detroit
already
the khazar ashkanazim need the land returned to it's true owners from the turkic russio
steppe
tonight back to back i watch reality
fiddler on the roof and exodus and schindlers lists.
i watch bbc simon scharmas new rabbi revised history of mighty israel.
every day it grows massive every day hezbollah become weak husk
shirley you can sea more that
my life already
Francis Lee ,
Very interesting and informative article. Lenin's 5 conditions of the imperialism of his time
have been matched by similar conditions in our own time, as listed by the Egyptian Marxist,
Samir Amin. These conditions being as follows.
1. Control of technology.
2. Access to natural resources.
3. Finance.
4. Global media.
5. The means of mass destruction.
Only by overturning these monopolies can real progress be made. Easily said. But a life
and death struggle for humanity.
The collapse of the Soviet Union opened up the space for increased penetration of Europe
to the East by the US and its West European allies in NATO. At that time the subaltern US
powers in Europe were the UK and West Germany, as it then was. There was a semblance of
sovereignty in France under De Gaulle, but this has since disappeared. Europe as a whole is
now occupied and controlled by the US which has used EU/NATO bloc to push right up to the
Russian border. Most, if not all, the non-sovereign quasi states, in Europe, particularly
Eastern Europe, are Quisling-Petainist puppet regimes regardless of whether they are inside
our outside of the EU. (I say 'states' but of course if a country is not sovereign it cannot
be a 'state' in the full meaning of the word).
A political, social and economic crisis in Europe seems to be taking taking shape. Perhaps
the key problem, particularly Eastern Europe, has been depopulation. There is not one
European state in which fertility (replacement) rates has reached 2.1 children. Western
European imperial states have to large degree been able to counter-act this tendency by
immigration from their former colonies, particularly the UK and France. But this has not been
possible in states such as Sweden and Germany where the migration of non-christian guest
workers from Turkey to Germany and Islamic refugees
from the middle-east hot-spots have had a free passage to Sweden. This has become a serious
social and economic problem; a problem resulting from a neoliberal open borders policy. The
fact of the matter is that radically different cultures will tend to clash. Thank you Mr
Soros.
British immigration policy was successful in so far as immigrants from the Caribbean were
English speakers, they were also protestant Christians, and the culture was not very
different from the UK. Later immigration from the Indian sub-continent and Indian settled
East Africa were generally professional and middle-class business people. Again English
speakers. Assimilation of these newcomers was not unduly difficult.
However it wouldn't be exaggerating to say that Eastern Europe is facing a demographic
disaster. This particular zone is literally bleeding people. Ukraine for example has lost 10
million people since 1990. Every month it is estimated that 100,000 Ukrainians leave the
country, usually for good. In terms of migration – no-one wants to go to Eastern
Europe, but everyone wants to leave, asap. This process is complemented by low birth rates,
and high death rates. These are un-developing states in an un-developing world. But now we
have new kids on the bloc. A counter-hegemonic alliance. No guesses who.
BigB ,
Rubbish. There is no 'counter-hegemonic alliance' to humanities rapacious demand for fossil
fuels and ecological resources. Where are the material consumption resources for BRI coming
from – the Moon, Mars? Passing asteroids? Or from the Earth?
When its gone: its gone. Russia and China provide absolutely no alternative to this.
China's consumption alone is driving us over the brink. To which the real alternative is a
complicit silence. As we all align with culture-centric capitalist views: there is no
naturalistic 'counter-hegemonic alliance'. Just some hunters in the Amazon we are having shot
right now so we can have the privilige of extending cultural hegemony over nature.
When it's gone: it's gone. And so will we be too. Probably as we are still praising the
wonders of the 'counter-hegemonic alliance' that killed us.
Actually there is a naturalistic alliance forming but it seems you haven't been paying
attention because you seem stuck in some Malthusian mind set. In order to defeat capitalism
you have to defeat Globalism so you first have to eliminate the Anglo-American Hegemony and
get back to a multipolar world.
Ranting on about like Gretchen doesn't do any good.
BigB ,
Resources are finite and thermodynamics exist. These are the ineliminable, indisputable, and
rock solid epistemology of the Earth System. Everything else is metaphysics – literally
'beyond nature; beyond physics'. Or, as it is more commonly known – economics. The
imaginary epistemology of political economics and political theory. 'Theory' is the
non-scientific sense of unfounded opinion and non-sense. A philosophical truth-theory that is
not and cannot ever be true. Hypothetical non-sense.
I get my information from a wide range of sources that realise these foundational
predicates. That is: a foundational set of beliefs that require no underpinning. I can only
paraphrase Eddington on thermodynamics: "if your theory is found to be against the second law
I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation."
Which is to say all modern political theory and economics – and by extension all
opinions based on its internalisation – is the product of vivid and unfounded
imagination. To which a naturalised epistemology is the only remedy.
There are lots of people working on the problem: but not in the political sphere. Which is
why we are stuck in a hallucinated metaphysical political-economic theatre of the absurd and
absolutised cultural non-sense. Which is not beyond anyone to rectify: if and when we accept
the limitations of the physical-material Earth System. And apply them to our thinking.
#NoDealForNature until we accept that the thermodynamics of depletion naturally limit
growth. Anything anyone says to the contrary should be treated with scepticism and cause a
collapse into deepest humiliation of any rational thinker.
Richard Le Sarc ,
'Depopulation' is only a problem if you believe in the capitalist cancer cult of infinite
growth on a finite planet, ie black magic. If you value Life on Earth, and its continuance,
human depopulation is necessary. Best done slowly and humanely, by redistributing the wealth
stolen by the capitalist parasites. The process seen in the Baltics and Ukraine is the
capitalist way, cruel and inhumane. Even worse is planned for the Africans, south Asians and
Chinese etc.
They don't for a minute believe in "infinite growth". They believe in the "bottom
line","instant gratification" and "primitive accumulation". "Infinite growth" is a sales
pitch that they use to sell the unwary on their rapaciousness. That is all. If they actually
believed in "infinite growth" they've be investing in renewable resources not fracking, strip
mining and other environmentally unfriendly practices.
The problem for Imperialists is that they only know how to plunder, rape and destroy thus all
their weaponry and tactics is used for aggression they know nothing about actual defense
which is their weak point. General George C Custer found this out some time back and so did
Trump just recently when the American were assaulted by a barrage of missiles they couldn't
stop.
Iran, Russia and China have one of the most advanced arsenal of defensive weapons ever
developed such as the S- series of air defense system that can turn a Tomahawk attack into a
turkey shoot. What was it? I think it was 100 Tomahawks fired on Syria after that false flag
chemical attack and only 15 or so got through and this was the earlier version of the S
missile defense S-300. They've already developed 500 which practically makes them impervious
and is a true iron dome compared the iron sieve that the Israelis got for free during GW1 and
then repackaged and sold back to the US Military for 15B with very few improvements except
maybe for a pretty blue bow.
Not only that but they can return fire with hypersonic weapons that are unstoppable and
can turn a base or Aircraft Carrier into a floating pinnate.
Actually the US proudly waving the banner of the East India Company is following in the
footsteps of the deceased British Empire into the boneyard of empires which is Afghanistan.
Iraq, Syria and Ukraine are just side shows. America can not escape history no matter what it
does now since its days of empire are now numbered. Just as they were for the late unlamented
Soviet Union.
The "New American Century" is ending preemptively early like Hitler's "Thousand Year
Reich" and we can all breath a sigh of relief when it does.
Frank ,
The only thing that will get the bastard yanks out of the middle east is dead Americans.
Lots and lots of dead Americans.
Enough dead Americans to make the braindead jingoistic American masses notice.
Enough dead Americans to touch every family that produces grunts that serve their criminal
state by raping and pillaging foreign countries.
Enough dead Americans to make dumbfuck Americans who say, 'Thank you for your service"
squirm in literal pain at the words.
Dungroanin ,
They got brain damage in their bunkers in the best US base in the ME from just a handful of
Kinetic energy missiles.
Their low yield nuke is their response.
The Israelis keep prodding the Bear – they even targeted a Russian Pantir system in
Syria!
I suppose only a downing or infact destroying on the ground of a squadron of useless F35's
with a threat to escalate into a full blown mobilisation is ever going to stop these
imperialist chancers. Or a fully coordinated assassination campaign of the leads and their
heirs as they frolic on their superyachts and space stations and secret Tracey islands.
And they can pay their taxes in full.
The Third world war is already fought – this really is a world war rather than some
Anglo Imperialist bankers playing king of the castle – and they have LOST – the
Empire is dead.
Long live the new Empire – the first not beholden to the bankers.
wardropper ,
Even with a new empire, our godless world would soon enough breed another generation of
bankers to which we would be beholden.
That's what the fundamentally dishonest people in any society do.
Something wrong? Oh, well, we'll form a committee to discuss it, and in future we will look
into creating a banking system which will enable us pay ourselves high wages for our
invaluable contribution to human evolution.
It's MORALITY which is lacking today, not more legislation or a new constitution.
All one has to do is move off the centralized banking system developed and controlled by the
Rothschilds that is totally based on creating finance out of thin air and return to a
commodity based currency (not gold!!) that represents actual value like scrip or wampum or
barter and the bankers will eventually starve.
Actually this system is starting to take hold in the US to a small extend to avoid the
depredations of the IRS since Tax is based mostly on currency.
Stop using fiat currency and the problem's solved.
After WW II the French didn't have a press to press Francs so their standard of exchange
became cigarettes and chocolate. It worked quite well until the presses started churning out
paper again.
wardropper ,
My fear is that without the Rothschilds, some other over-ambitious family would simply step
in and fill their shoes. It's the motivation to be greedy and wicked which needs addressing.
How that would be done, of course, I have no idea.
This is only if you embrace the concept of centralized banking and the "magic" of compound
interest. Current "banking" is all smoke and mirrors that favors the parasite who lives on
the production of others through what is called "unearned income".
Actually the Israelis are going a little slower now that isolated reports indicate that those
flying turkeys AKA F-35s are getting popped out of the skies of Syria by antiquated Soviet
SAMs. Of course there is no mention of this in the Mainstream Press. Just like there wasn't a
word of a IDF General and his staff taken out by a shoulder launched RPG fired by Hezbollah
in retaliation for attacking their media center in Beirut.
Antonym ,
Anybody who believes that the Israeli tail wags the US mil-ind. complex dog is contributing
to the Jewish superiority myth.
Ken ,
They're not superior, but they do wag the US MIC dog in and ebb-and-flow kind of way. That
9/11 thing was quite the wag. Read Christopher Bollyn and study other aspects of the event if
you're not sure of this.
Antonym ,
Langley and Riyadh love you; you fell for their ploy. See: Tel Aviv is much worse them.
The CIA/FBI failure explained.
The Mossad loves you too: for keeping mum on this Entebbe Mach 2.0 on their familiar New
York crap they got huge US support in the ME.
Makes them look invincible too as a bonus .
5 dancing guys was all the proof needed – cheapest op in history.
Ken ,
"5 dancing guys was all the proof needed – cheapest op in history"
Oh please, that was such a minor bit of evidence of any Zionist/Israeli involvement, which
spanned nearly every facet of the event and its aftermath.
The list of false flagging Zionist Jews in love with you is too long to list.
Oh please. What about the close to 200 Israelis who were arrested that day? Not to mention
the helpful warning by Odigo which was only given to citizens of Israel?
Also one has to act who benefitted? Definitely not the Saudis or the Americans leaving
Sharon who was trying to suppress a Palestinian uprising that he arrogantly started.
Speaking of your friendly five doing a fiddler on the roof on top of an Urban Moving Van
that just happened to owned by another Israeli who fled the country. Didn't they say
something stupid when arrested like "we are not your problem. It's the Palestinians who are
your problem!"?
A pathetic frame up attempt but a frame none the less. Speaking of frame ups wasn't Fat
Katz at SiteIntel (propaganda) who posted some stock footage of Palestinians celebrating
which has been proven to be false since the only people who seem to celebrating that day was
your friends the Dancing Israelis which doesn't prove their mental superiority at all but
their arrogant stupidity,
Richard Le Sarc ,
The three, the USA, Saudi Arabia and the USA, are allies in destruction-the Real Axis of
Evil. The dominant force, these days, given the control of the USA by Israel First Fifth
Columnists, in the MSM, political 'contributions', the financial Moloch etc, is most
certainly the Zionassties. Why don't you, like so many other Zionassties, glory in your
power, Antsie. Nobody believes your ritual denials.
They don't really wag the dog by themselves. They have a lot of help from the Stand with
Israel brain dead Christian Zionists who like Israelis consider themselves the chosen ones as
well.
Ken ,
@Gall Yep! I had a long time friend who went Pentecostal and we drifted apart but still kept
in touch. I lost him completely just after telling him that Israelis played a big part in
9/11.
Chuck Baldwin and a few other it seems have seen the light and are now questioning their
colleagues undying support of Israel. Maybe you could show this article to your friend who
seems enthralled by the terrorist snake er I mean state: https://www.veteranstoday.com/2020/02/13/emperor-trump/
Yes that pretty much sums up how 9/11 was carried on. Both Heinz Pommer and VT have done some
excellent research based on facts not fantasy.
As far as your friend and many Christian Zionists in general. They seem to live in some
alternative universe and dislike being confused by such irrelevant things as facts.
It is a story that can be told in some detail – but when you say myth do you actually
mean fallacy – ie – are you saying that Jewish power doesn't exercise
considerable influence – if not control over US social and political and corporate
development across of broad spectrum of leverages?
Richard Le Sarc ,
Yes-all those addresses of Congress, by Bibi, where the Congress critters compete to display
the most extreme groveling and adulation, are just the natural expression of reverence and
awe at his semi-Divine moral excellence. Denying the undeniable is SOP for Zionassties.
normal wisdom ,
what jews?
i do not see any jews
just a sea of khazar ashkanazim pirates
a kaballa talmudick race trick
a crime syndicate pretending to be semite
jew is just the cover
init
At the end of this essay, you may find a song which reasonably applies to Donald Trump
directed to Democrats.
How does one say Adam Schiff without laughing? It's hard to continue typing while
contemplating the Burbank Buffoon. Yet AS is making obscene flatus-like noises about
impeachment 2.0. He and Nervous Nancy will conspire with chief strategist Gerald Nadler about
extending the charges of 1.0 to 2.0.
Second verse
Same as the first
Obstructing leaking by firing leakers. That's one of the pending charges. Leutnant Oberst
Vindman will be help up as the innocent victim of political retaliation. As I understand the
military code of conduct, it says that the underling, Herr Oberst Vindman, went outside the
chain of command and released classified information. In the military this is called
insubordination, perhaps gross insubordination in view of the classified nature of the
information.
Another charge to be filed on behalf of former Ambassador Yovanovich, is that her God-given
Female rights were brutally violated as retaliation of advising Ukrainian officials to
disregard Commander Cheeto.
There is no telling what additional non-crimes may be thrown at the feet at El Trumpo. All
too horrible to contemplate--like someone throwing feces-contaminated dope needles onto Nervous
Nancy's front lawn in Pacific Heights.
If this Shampeachment 2.0 (S2) occurs before November's election, Democrats will become as
rare as dodo birds. If such proponents of S2 persist after the general election, they better
have secure transportation to an extradition-free country.
If it gets bad enough, considering the Clinton Mafia's body count, would it be unreasonable
to expect some untimely heart attacks and suicides with red scarves? On Clintonites? Soros et
al.?
When the first shot and you don't kill the king, flee. But the DNC is going to attempt shot
number 2. Trump WILL NEVER ALLOW A SECOND IMPEACHMENT TO OCCUR, no matter how patently
worthless? Will the most powerful narcissist in the world allow the DNC / coup perpetrators to
escaping Trumpian retribution?
Those doubting the Wrath of Q be prepared to be disabused of the impression that Q is pure
fantasy. Fantasy--like GPS targeting a single small sniper drone to shoot someone from 3000
feet.
Sorry folks. I live in a swamp. I've stepped in shit with my eyes open. Many of you have
too. Some of the excrement was of my own making.
Think about the singularly most effective and complex plot the world has ever seen, called
9/11. Think of the thousands of lives purposefully snuffed in then name of power and money.
Call yourselves serfs--that's a euphemism. You--including me-- are nothing but ants. Goddam
little ants that only Janes respect. There are no ascetic Janes in the penthouses of the
elites.
But I digressed to the mysterious existence of morality in politics as a whole. Today's
topic is more confined to the Democratic nomination.
Statement of Bias: Go Tulsi. Bravo Andy. The rest of you to the elsewhere--yeah, BS too.
The Dems are determined to grasp Defeat from the jaws of Defeat. Quite a trick. Like trying
to borrow money from the Judge during a Bankruptcy trial.
I talked today with a freshman college student majoring in political science about her
thought about the Shampeachment. She hadn't been paying attention. Not that I blame her. Her
college freshman friend watched C-Span; wasn't impressed. We political aficionados know all
about this political debauchery. If AS and NN attempt S2, expect many defections from the
supporting vote.
Democrat respect has dwindled in the Independent sector. This is not to say the Repugnants
are thereby more popular. They aren't. Trump is. Trump need that NH clown to challenge him in
the Repugnant primary to prove exactly how powerful he is. Anybody notice who were in the
audience, sitting nearby during Trump's post acquittal speech. Rand Paul and Lindsey Graham.
The lamb and the lion laying together. They are both on the Trump Train. Even Richard Burr
voted Trump in the impeachment. Mittens feared both his cojones would be excised if he voted
against Trump on both counts. What a chickenheart.
But where are the Dems? Why, they are Here. Yes. Yes. And they are There. Yes. Yes. And they
are Near. Yes. Yes. But....they are Far. Whither thou goest?
I refrain from pointed comments about AOC in further comments. The Squad is the iceberg
floating away from the glacier which spawned it. Unsuitable to warm weather produced by
political combat, the Squad faction will woke themselves up to dubious futures.
Establishment versus Bernie:
Not a contest. Spineless Bernie pretzelizes during first heated combat (which the Dem Debate
Debacles were not). Won't take a second punch--the first during night 3 of the '16 DNC
convention. Fist-shy now. Open Borders? WTF? Are you so nuts? If one offered a person the
choice personal safety in their own homes and streets and free medical care for all--including
the criminal aliens that A New Path Forward proposes--what do you think 85% of the public would
choose?
Pandering.
The Left is also pushing strenuous avoidance of discussing issues in a platitude-depleted
fashion. Yeah, Bernie's giving the same speech, with suitable modification, over 40 years.
Consistency is a good thing, yeh? How about persistently beating your head with a hammer (while
you still can)? Sounds like something Sun Tzu might not recommend.
Now, speaking of Las Vegas and the Nevada Primary. The culinary workers union will not
endorse Bernie due to well-deserved or ill-deserved claims that M4A will abolish hard won union
health benefits. And don't worry, the Shadow will be there, although Buttjiggle has now
disavowed any further connection, along with David Plouffe.
Keeping the Bern off the campaign trail is going to infuriate the Woke Generation / Antifa.
When--not if--the DNC cheats Bernie out of the nomination, if such proves necessary* will
literally result in blood on the streets along with broken windows and flaming tires. Associate
with that lot, eh? Given the choice of going into a biker bar, where brawls are always on the
menu, or a discreet wine bar, which would one rather choose? Sorry, those are your only
choices.
Nancy Pelosi, impressed by Arnold Schwarzenegger's former physical prowess, tears up her
copy of the state of the union address. How decorous. How courteous. How polite. Seen around
the world. Nigel Farage must be laughing his butt off, thinking about the shallow anti-Brexit
campaigns against his were compared to our Coup. Nigel won. Trump . is. winning. Getting tired
of winning yet?
I could go on for pages more of Dem stupidity, but why bother? Stupidity surrounds us.
Betting odds: DNC 1,999,999 to Bernie 1.
Place your bets.
For all the good it will do and I am sincere about this, I will vote Tulsi in the Dem
primary.
Here is the song Dems need to heed. This is Donald Trump telling' y'all I'M NOT YOUR MAN
NATO is marketed as providing each member nation with the benefit that the other member
nations are committed to coming to its aid militarily in the event of an attack by another
nation, especially Russia .
However, Pew Research Center poll results released Sunday indicate that the majority or
plurality of people in 11 of 16 NATO countries where individuals were questioned oppose their
respective governments meeting this commitment, at least if the military adversary were
Russia.
These poll results indicate that serious thought should be given to disbanding NATO , an
organization with a primary objective that appears to be at odds with public opinion in many
NATO countries.
When asked if their respective countries' governments should use military force to defend a
NATO ally country neighboring Russia with which "Russia got into a serious military conflict,"
people living in the 16 NATO countries tended to answer in the negative.
"No" was the answer for the majority of polled individuals in eight countries -- France,
Germany, Greece, Italy, Spain, Bulgaria, Slovakia, and Turkey.
In three more NATO countries -- the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland -- a plurality
rejected military intervention.
Only in five countries -- the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands,
and Lithuania -- did more people (a majority in each case) support such military intervention
than reject it.
It's not just the White House that is doing serious damage to U.S. interests abroad during
this year's election campaign. Of even greater consequence (absent a new Middle East war) is
the U.S. relationship with Russia. It's currently unthinkable that Washington will try to move
beyond the status quo, even if Russian President Vladimir Putin were prepared to do so. Even
before Trump was inaugurated, many Democrats began calling for his
impeachment . Leading Democrats
laid Hillary Clinton ' s defeat at the feet of Russian interference in the U.S. election --
a claim that stretched credulity past the breaking point. Further, as Democrats looked for
grounds to impeach Trump (or at least terminally to reduce his reelection chances), the "
Russia factor" was the best cudgel available. Charges included the notion that " Putin has something on
Trump," which presumes he would sell out the nation ' s security for a mess of pottage.
All this domestic politicking ignores a geopolitical fact: while the Soviet Union lost the
Cold War and, for some time thereafter, Russia could be dismissed, it was always certain that
it would again become a significant power, at least in Europe. Thus, even before the Berlin
Wall fell, President George H. W. Bush proposed creating a " Europe whole and
free" and at peace. Bill Clinton built on what Bush began. Both understood that a renascent
Russia could embrace revanchism, and for several years their efforts seemed to have a chance of
succeeding.
Then the effort went off the rails. Putin took power in Russia, which made cooperation with
the West difficult if not impossible. He worked to consolidate his domestic position, in part
by alleging that the West was " disrespecting" Russia and trying to encircle it. For its part,
the U.S. played into the Putin narrative by abandoning the Bush-Clinton vision of taking
legitimate Russian interests into account in fashioning European security arrangements. The
breaking point came in 2014, when Russia seized
Crimea and sent " little green men" to fight in some other parts of Ukraine. The West
necessarily responded, with economic sanctions
and NATO's
buildup of " trip wire" forces in Central Europe.
But despite the ensuing standoff, the critical requirement remains: the United States has to
acknowledge Russia's inevitable rise as a major power while also impressing on Putin the need
to trim his ambitions, if he is to avoid a new era of Russian isolation. There is also serious
business that the two countries need to pursue, including strategic arms control, the Middle
East (especially Iran), and climate change. Despite deep disagreements, including over Ukraine
and parts of Central Europe, the U.S. needs to engage in serious discussions with Russia, which
means the renewal of diplomacy which has been in the deep freeze for years.
All of this has been put in pawn by the role that the "Russia factor" has been permitted to
play in American presidential politics, especially by Democrats. Longer-term U.S. interests are
suffering, along with those of the European allies and Middle East partners. The task has been
made even more difficult by those U.S. politicians,
think tanks , and journalists
who prefer to resurrect the term "cold war" rather than clearly examining the nation's
strategic needs because of the blinkers imposed by domestic politics. Open discussion about
alternatives in dealing with Russia is thus stifled, at serious cost to the United States and
others.
In all three of these areas, the U.S. is paying a high price in terms of its national
interests to the games political leaders, both Republicans and Democrats, are playing. Great
efforts will be needed to dig out of this mess, beginning with U.S. willingness to do so.
Leaders elsewhere must also be prepared to join in -- far from a sure thing! Unfortunately,
there is currently little hope that, at least in the three critical areas discussed above,
pursuit of U.S. interests abroad will prevail over today's parochial domestic politics.
"... Of particular interest will be cases overseen by now-unemployed former US attorney for DC, Jessie Liu, which includes actions against Stone, Flynn, the Awan brothers, James Wolfe and others . Notably, Wolfe was only sentenced to leaking a classified FISA warrant application to journalist and side-piece Ali Watkins of the New York Times - while prosecutors out of Liu's office threw the book at former Trump adviser Roger Stone - recommending 7-9 years in prison for process crimes. ..."
"... What's next on the real-life House of Cards? ..."
A
week of two-tiered
legal shenanigans was capped off on Friday with a
New York
Times report that Attorney General William Barr has assigned an outside prosecutor to
scrutinize the government's case against former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn,
which the Times suggested was " highly unusual and could trigger more accusations of political
interference by top Justice Department officials into the work of career prosecutors."
Notably, the FBI excluded
crucial information from a '302' form documenting an interview with Flynn in January, 2017.
While Flynn eventually pleaded guilty to misleading agents over his contacts with the former
Russian ambassador regarding the Trump administration's efforts to oppose a UN resolution
related to Israel, the original draft of Flynn's 302 reveals that agents thought
he was being honest with them - evidence which Flynn's prior attorneys never pursued.
His new attorney, Sidney Powell, took over Flynn's defense in June 2019 - while Flynn
withdrew his guilty plea in January , accusing the government of "bad faith,
vindictiveness, and breach of the plea agreement."
In addition to a review of the Flynn case, Barr has hired a handful of outside prosecutors
to broadly review several other politically sensitive national-security cases in the US
attorney's office in Washington , according to the Times sources.
Of particular interest will be cases overseen by now-unemployed former US attorney for DC,
Jessie Liu, which includes actions against Stone, Flynn, the Awan brothers, James Wolfe and
others . Notably, Wolfe was only sentenced to leaking a classified FISA warrant application to
journalist and side-piece
Ali Watkins of the New York Times - while prosecutors out of Liu's office threw the book at
former Trump adviser Roger Stone - recommending 7-9 years in prison for process crimes.
Earlier this week, Barr overruled the DC prosecutors recommendation for Stone, resulting in
their resignations. The result was the predictable triggering of Democrats across the spectrum
.
According to the Times , "Over the past two weeks, the outside prosecutors have begun
grilling line prosecutors in the Washington office about various cases -- some public, some not
-- including investigative steps, prosecutorial actions and why they took them, according to
the people. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive internal
deliberations."
The moves amounted to imposing a secondary layer of monitoring and control over what
career prosecutors have been doing in the Washington office. They are part of a broader
turmoil in that office coinciding with Mr. Barr's recent
installation of a close aide, Timothy Shea , as interim United States attorney in the
District of Columbia, after Mr. Barr maneuvered out the Senate-confirmed former top
prosecutor in the office, Jessie K. Liu.
Mr.
Flynn's case was first brought by the special counsel's office, who agreed to a plea deal
on a charge of lying to investigators in exchange for his cooperation, before the Washington
office took over the case when the special counsel shut down after concluding its
investigation into Russia's election interference.
-New
York Times
"... By April 2018, Gates had reached a plea deal to testify against Manafort in a criminal case that ultimately resulted in Manafort's conviction on tax and illegal lobbying charges. As the day-to-day manager of Manafort's political consulting and lobbying efforts for former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, Gates handled Manafort's operations and was deeply familiar with when and how payments were made and from whom. ..."
"... Furthermore, Gates revealed that Manafort's team had confirmed with the party's former accountant that the black ledger could not be a contemporaneous document because the party's official accounting books burned in a 2014 fire during Ukraine's Maidan uprising. ..."
"... The Party of Regions accountant reached by Manafort's team told them that the black ledger was a "copy of a document that did not exist" and it "was not even [the accountant's own] handwriting," Gates told the prosecutors. ..."
One of Robert Mueller's pivotal trial witnesses told the special prosecutor's team in spring
2018 that a key piece of Russia collusion evidence found in Ukraine known as the "black ledger"
was fabricated, according to interviews and testimony.
The ledger document, which suddenly appeared in Kiev during the 2016 U.S. election, showed
alleged cash payments from Russian-backed politicians in Ukraine to ex-Trump campaign chairman
Paul Manafort.
"The ledger was completely made up," cooperating witness and Manafort business partner Rick
Gates told prosecutors and FBI agents, according to a written summary of an April 2018 special
counsel's interview.
In a brief interview with Just the News, Gates confirmed the information in the summary.
"The black ledger was a fabrication," Gates said.
"It was never real, and this fact has since been proven true."
Gates' account is backed by several Ukrainian officials who stated in interviews dating to
2018 that the ledger was of suspicious origins and could not be corroborated.
If true, Gates' account means the two key pieces of documentary evidence used by the media
and FBI to drive the now-debunked Russia collusion narrative -- the Steele dossier and the
black ledger -- were at best uncorroborated and at worst disinformation. His account also
raises the possibility that someone fabricated the document in Ukraine in an effort to restart
investigative efforts on Manafort's consulting work or to meddle in the U.S. presidential
election.
Much mystery has surrounded the black ledger, which was publicized by the New York Times and
other U.S. news outlets in the summer of 2016 and forced Manafort out as one of Trump's top
campaign officials.
After gaining wide attention as purported evidence of Russian ties to the Trump campaign,
the ledger was never introduced as evidence at Manafort's 2018 trial or significantly analyzed
in Mueller's final 2019 report, which concluded that Trump did not collude with Russia to
influence the 2016 election. No FBI 302 interview reports have been released either showing
what the FBI concluded about the ledger.
Gates' interview with the Mueller team now provides a potential clue as to why.
By April 2018, Gates had reached a plea deal to testify against Manafort in a criminal case
that ultimately resulted in Manafort's conviction on tax and illegal lobbying charges. As the
day-to-day manager of Manafort's political consulting and lobbying efforts for former Ukrainian
President Viktor Yanukovych, Gates handled Manafort's operations and was deeply familiar with
when and how payments were made and from whom.
During a debriefing with Mueller's team on April 10, 2018, Gates was asked about the August
2016 New York Times article that first alerted the public to the existence of the black ledger
and eventually led to Manafort's downfall.
"The article was completely false," Gates is quoted as telling Mueller's team in a written
summary of the interview created by some of the attendees.
"As you now know there were no cash payments. The payments were wired. The ledger was
completely made up."
When pressed as to why he was so certain, Gates explained the ledger did not match the way
Yanukovych's Party of Regions made payments to consultants like Manafort.
"It was not how the PoR [Party of Regions] did their record keeping," Gates told the
prosecution team, according to the written summary.
Furthermore, Gates revealed that Manafort's team had confirmed with the party's former
accountant that the black ledger could not be a contemporaneous document because the party's
official accounting books burned in a 2014 fire during Ukraine's Maidan uprising.
"All the real records were burned when the party headquarters was set on fire when
Yanukovych fled the country," Gates told the investigators, according to the interview
summary.
The Party of Regions accountant reached by Manafort's team told them that the black ledger
was a "copy of a document that did not exist" and it "was not even [the accountant's own]
handwriting," Gates told the prosecutors.
Gates' account to prosecutors closely matches what several Ukrainian officials have said for
more than a year.
Ukraine's Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor Nazar Kholodnytskyy told me last spring that he
believed the black ledger was not a contemporaneous document, and likely manufactured after the
fact.
"It was not to be considered a document of Manafort," Kholodnytskyy said in an
interview.
"It was not authenticated. And at that time it should not be used in any way to bring
accusations against anybody."
Likewise, one of Gates' and Manafort's Ukrainian business partners, Konstantin Kilimnik, who
is now indicted in the same case as Manafort but remain at large, wrote a senior U.S. State
Department official in summer 2016 that the black ledger did not match actual payments made to
Manafort's firm.
"I have some questions about this black cash stuff because those published records do not
make sense," Kilimnik wrote the State official in August 2016.
"The time frame doesn't match anything related to payments made to Manafort. It does not
match my records. All fees Manafort got were wires, not cash."
In December 2018, a Ukrainian court ruled that two of that country's government officials --
member of parliament Sergey Leschenko and Artem Sytnyk, the head of the National Anticorruption
Bureau of Ukraine -- illegally interfered in the 2016 U.S. election by publicizing the black
ledger evidence.
While that ruling has been overturned on a technicality, the role of Sytnyk and Leschenko in
pushing the black ledger story remains true.
In an interview last summer, Leschenko said he first received part of the black ledger when
it was sent to him anonymously in February 2016, but it made no mention of Manafort. Months
later, in August 2016, more of the ledger became public, including the alleged Manafort
payments.
Leschenko said he decided to publicize the information after confirming a few of the
transactions likely occurred or matched known payments.
But Leschenko told me he never believed the black ledger could be used as court evidence
because it couldn't be proved beyond a reasonable doubt that it was authentic, given its
mysterious appearance during the 2016 election.
"The black ledger is an unofficial document," Leschenko told me. "And the black ledger was
not used as official evidence in criminal investigations because you know in criminal
investigations all proof has to be beyond a reasonable doubt. And the black ledger is not a
sample of such proof because we don't know the nature of such document ."
In the end, the black ledger did prompt the discovery of real financial transactions and
real crimes by Manafort, which ultimately led to his conviction.
But its uncertain origins raise troubling questions about election meddling and what
constitutes real evidence worthy of starting an American investigation.
NSC Russia expert freshly appointed Andrew Peek, who was walked out like Vindman,
with him only freshly appointed after Fiona Hill and the Tim Morrioson resigned.
There is a big problems with "experts" in NSC -- often they represent interests of the
particular agency, or a think tank, not that of the country.
Look at former NSC staffer Fiona Hill. She can be called "threat inflation"
specialist.
NSC tries to usurp the role of the State Department and overly militarize the USA
foreign policy, while having much lower class specialists. It is a kind of CIA backdoor
into defining the USA foreign policy.
I would advocate creating "shadow NSC" by the party who is in opposition, so that it
can somehow provide countervailing opinions. But with both parties being now war parties,
this is no that effective.
Cutting NSC staff to the bones, so that such second rate personalities like Fiona Hill
and Vindman are automatically excluded might also help a little bit.
One common explanation is that the NSC mission creep results from the NSC staff
growing too large and the easy solution is to limit the size of the staff. I am
sympathetic to that feeling because we don't want it to
be too large and we don't want it to be usurping things that the State Department or
the Agency should do.
His "closing arguments" speeches last week were respectively two-and-a-half hours and ninety
minutes long and were inevitably praised by the mainstream media as "magisterial," "powerful,"
and "impressive."
caucus99percent
free-range politics, organic community
I want to float a theory about Bernie, Chris Mathews and Russiagate.
entrepreneur
on Sat, 02/08/2020 - 4:42pm
Chris Mathews' conflating democratic socialism with communism under a dictator demonstrates a rabid
hatred of policies that help average Americans. It also demonstrates that he is an idiot, but that
is beside the point. Let's assume for second that his radical pants pooping hysteria against a
strong public safety net, healthcare and higher education is a fear shared by many of the 1% and
their surrogates. Although most aren't as vocal about it as Chris Mathews, I am confident that his
blind abhorrence for any program or politician who helps the 99% is common in the DNC and their
billionaire donors.
Now let's go back to the 2016 primary. Remember, President Hillary was a sure thing in 2016 and
she would certainly be the nominee again in 2020. So Bernie wouldn't have a chance to implement any
of his policies for at least 8 years, if ever. But when Trump won that all changed. Even with
Hillary and her surrogates lying and cheating their asses off, and utilizing all of her media and
deep state connections, she still barely beat Bernie, and ultimately lost to Trump.
It was at that point, when she lost to Trump, that the establishment had to suspect that Bernie
would be back. Because they had thrown everything they had at him in 2016 and he damn near won
anyway, against all odds. Even though they botched 2016, they learned something important for 2020.
They learned that there was a public appetite for Bernie's policies, and that he could possibly win
without taking big donor money. They also learned that people weren't buying the policies that the
DNC is selling. Which is a huge problem since their big donors won't allow them to sell anything
else.
So immediately after their loss to Trump the neo-liberals assembled all of their brightest
rocket surgeons to concoct a way to shut down Bernie before he would become a problem in 2020. So
how do you smear a guy like Bernie? Regular smears like sex scandals or corruption allegations
would not stick to a guy like Bernie. They would have to go after his polices.
"Hey!
Why not smear his policies as communist?" They reasoned.
The problem with that
approach in 2016 is that the word communism doesn't really evoke fear like it once did. In order to
be successful they would need to incite anti-Russian hysteria. And so Russiagate was hatched. Once
they thought about it they realized that they could blame all kinds of shit on the Russians, and at
the same time avoid accountability for their own incompetence.
Russiagate :
* Demonizes Russia, lays groundwork for future smears of Bernie's policies as communist.
* Blames Russia for Hillary's loss so she doesn't have to admit that she is a failure.
* Removes need to re-examine neo-liberal policies, which makes billionaire donors happy.
* Fosters cold-war mentality which makes the MIC billionaire donors and deep state happy.
* Provides a scapegoat for election irregularities if DNC is investigated by Trump DOJ.
This is speculation, of course. But Russiagate was pulled out of someone's ass. And I am just
trying to cobble together a reasonable theory about whose ass and why. After watching Chris Mathews
blubber and pee his pants because he's afraid if Bernie becomes president that Fidel Castro's ghost
will take a shit in his mouth while he's sleeping, it makes sense to me that Russiagate may have
been inspired by a deep-seated fear of Bernie's policies, and an attempt to smear them before they
take root for 2020.
Russiagate was invented as soon as Herr Drumpf was elected as an effort to oust him for
colluding with Russia and cheating her heinous out of the election. When that didn't work,
the deep state went back to work and concocted the impeachment move. That failed, too.
They are 0-2. Will they try again? Maybe - if they want to ensure he gets a second term
and deny Bernie.
Russiagate was invented as soon as Herr Drumpf was elected as an effort to oust
him for colluding with Russia and cheating her heinous out of the election. When
that didn't work, the deep state went back to work and concocted the impeachment
move. That failed, too. They are 0-2. Will they try again? Maybe - if they want to
ensure he gets a second term and deny Bernie.
@brae-70
In light of the problems that have emerged in the implementation of
the delegate
selection
Chis Matthews' "Scare the Bejeezus Out of His Core Boomer
Audience'
plan and in order to assure public confidence in the results, I am
calling on
the Iowa Democratic Party
MSNBC
to immediately begin a
recanvass
of Chris Matthews' brain
.
of what Matthews is doing: "radical pants pooping hysteria". As opposed, say, to
moderate pants pooping hysteria.
Russia == Communism == Socialism only works for old folks. Communist Russia has been gone
for a generation. In the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union the propaganda machine
shifted to Moslem Terrorists. A whole generation has grown up not remotely fussed about
socialism. Young voters prefer "socialism" to "capitalism".
So for this to work at all it has to be directed at the 65+ voters. So far they've been
supporting Biden, but that may not last much longer. They won't sit out the election.
They'll maybe be undecided for a while, but will come home to New Dealer Bernie.
So for this to work at all it has to be directed at the 65+ voters. So far
they've been supporting Biden, but that may not last much longer. They won't sit out
the election. They'll maybe be undecided for a while, but will come home to New
Dealer Bernie.
Judging from my conversations with my 91 year-old mom, she and her friends have
transitioned from Biden to Bloomberg, and she refuses to consider Sanders. When I ask
her why she is so averse to Sanders she says, "I just don't like him, period, and I
can't explain why"! So I just shut up, knowing it would be a waste of breath.
Russia == Communism == Socialism only works for old folks. Communist Russia has
been gone for a generation. In the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union the
propaganda machine shifted to Moslem Terrorists. A whole generation has grown up not
remotely fussed about socialism. Young voters prefer "socialism" to "capitalism".
So for this to work at all it has to be directed at the 65+ voters. So far they've
been supporting Biden, but that may not last much longer. They won't sit out the
election. They'll maybe be undecided for a while, but will come home to New Dealer
Bernie.
@Pricknick
He had agreed to support Hillary, and he honored his commitment.
That was initially my reason for non-support. I might have been convinced to throw
money at his campaign, until he started on the Russia Cold War bs.
Russian interference was never proven, and I lived through the Cold War doing
nuclear bomb drills. Not only is it endangering the globe, it is a horrible fear to
instill in little kids who have to cope with the fear of their family being
vaporized.
We have enough global fear over climate change. Do we really need to foist another
existential threat on everyone?
#4
I have refused to support him monetarily this time.
@janis b
but no.
The russia bullshit was propagated by a loser he worked so hard to support.
He knows this but most americans don't. He's in a conundrum. How many tinfoils
will he lose if he calls it out? How many clear thinkers will he wins if he does?
Unless he stands up to those that wish him bad, he will never prevail.
I like Bernie.
He knows this but most americans don't. He's in a conundrum. How many
tinfoils will he lose if he calls it out? How many clear thinkers will he
wins if he does?
I think if the answers to those questions were more clear Sanders might be
more forthright. I support being sincere regardless of outcomes in most cases,
because I think ultimately it is the basis for genuine understanding. But for
Sanders it is critical to 'pick his fights', an approach that seems to apply
even more to politics (unfortunately) than relationships.
#4.2.2
but no.
The russia bullshit was propagated by a loser he worked so hard to support.
He knows this but most americans don't. He's in a conundrum. How many
tinfoils will he lose if he calls it out? How many clear thinkers will he
wins if he does?
Unless he stands up to those that wish him bad, he will never prevail.
I like Bernie.
He knows this but most americans don't. He's in a conundrum. How
many tinfoils will he lose if he calls it out? How many clear
thinkers will he wins if he does?
I think if the answers to those questions were more clear Sanders
might be more forthright. I support being sincere regardless of outcomes
in most cases, because I think ultimately it is the basis for genuine
understanding. But for Sanders it is critical to 'pick his fights', an
approach that seems to apply even more to politics (unfortunately) than
relationships.
bogus. There is no reason anyone should be parroting the new Cold
War propaganda. This only leads to one thing. We have already put
mini nukes on submarines. Russia responded by launching a new plane
that can carry nukes. This has no happy ending.
@Not Henry Kissinger
I'm pretty sure the leaked emails Wikileaks got have an
outline of the RUSSIA plan. Restarting the Cold War was always the goal (or rather oil
and pipelines were the actual goal.)
was pushing the anti Russia narrative all through the Fall of 2016, in one debate
explicitly calling Trump '
Putin's
puppet
'.
The narrative was initially weaponized against Trump. Only later did they try it
on Bernie.
but the thing to remember here is that Russiagate is a multi-headed beast that
can be used to further a lot of different agendas. So it's not JUST about Trump or
Bernie or McConnell or any other single person.
It's about weaponizing Russiagate against ALL Deep State opponents.
in the chance Trump lost but wouldn't accept the results. If he made a stink about losing
then Obama would've accused him of working with Russia. This was at the start of this 3
year long crap show so I don't know if I can find the article on it.
Joe posted a link in the EBs that talks about how both parties are in on on the scam
because the new Cold War is great business for defense companies and their profits will
make their way into congress hands. And is what the space force is about too. Containing
Russia and China and making lots of money that will of course have to come from social
programs. Yippee.
@snoopydawg
They have a stranglehold on our economy. The only thing we produce is weapons and about
half of our vehicles. In fact, CHINA produces ROM's for our weapons!
in the chance Trump lost but wouldn't accept the results. If he made a stink
about losing then Obama would've accused him of working with Russia. This was at the
start of this 3 year long crap show so I don't know if I can find the article on it.
Joe posted a link in the EBs that talks about how both parties are in on on the
scam because the new Cold War is great business for defense companies and their
profits will make their way into congress hands. And is what the space force is
about too. Containing Russia and China and making lots of money that will of course
have to come from social programs. Yippee.
#6
They have a stranglehold on our economy. The only thing we produce is weapons and
about half of our vehicles. In fact, CHINA produces ROM's for our weapons!
ITT: Empire fanbois trying to hype the impact of their "team's" latest weapon.
It is the same people and motivation behind the loud assertions that America killed
"thousands and thousands of Russians!" when bombing in Dier ez-Zor. Just masturbatory
wishcasting.
My favorite phrase - Americans are suckers and boobies. Pushing Russia out of the circle
of friends of the United States (and Russia has never been an enemy of the United States, who
knows the history of relations between the United States and Russia, knows what I'm talking
about) can only double suckers and boobies. In general, the ship "Russia" finally sailed from
the US coast. It's a pity.
Demrats gave Trump the best week of his presidency.
Sadly, this is an example of not letting go.
US Senate Panel Finds No Evidence of Alleged Russian Interference in 2016 Vote
LINK
The Senate Intelligence Committee said in a report released on Thursday that again it saw
no evidence of alleged Russian interference changing any votes or manipulating voting
machines in the 2016 US presidential election.
"The Committee has seen no evidence that any votes were changed or that any voting
machines were manipulated", the Intelligence Committee said in its report into allegations
of Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election.[.]
found no evidence but Russia, Russia, Russia the bogeyman. Will someone remind D.C. of
U.S. interference in, and overthrow of elected governments in countries around the world?
Then there're several items at Common Dreams , the first having an excellent vid
featuring Krystal Ball of The Hill reporting
how the election was rigged . It also links to an important Twitter thread by Naomi
Klein . I found this message perhaps the most important part:
"If we honestly believe we are building a movement, not just an electoral campaign, then
the relationships we forge, and the political education we do along the way, is never wasted.
It's all part of building power, which we badly need no matter what happens. Nothing is
wasted."
OK, baby steps. The FBI is the secret police force of the authoritarian (aching to be
totalitarian) govt hidden behind "Truth, Justice & the American Way". The "democratic"
facade of the US politics is, in fact, close to the Greek original: A cabal of oligarchs who
decide distribution of power without daggers, and naturally exclude slaves (workers),
landless peons (minorities), women (grudgingly later included, once indoctrinated) to
maintain the status quo.
The "vote" the oligarchs advertise as proof of their democratic credentials in allowing
the hoi polloi to have a say is insultingly quaint and blatantly futile. All elections are
rigged. Of course! The outcome is preordained. Would you let some naive do-gooder wreck your
decades of building an empire? Never!
If a "ringer" sneaks through the gauntlet of oligarchic vetting and slips the leash, he
(always HE) is put down and the Electoral College is invoked to re-establish the status quo
with an acceptable front man.
Foreign policy? Long ago decided and continued regardless of who inhabits the White House
this season. He follows the script, is handsomely paid and retires famous and breathing. Go
off-script and doom is certain, the funeral subdued.
In closing the class, we can conclude that the FBI is not rogue; it is functioning as
intended and professionally considering the gangly amateurs it has to herd along path.
I was obvious that Flynn was targeted for elimination by what ludicrously calls itself the
"resistance" right from the beginning using Hoover's G-boys and girls who have by the way
been heavily infiltrated by CIA to get him.
Many of the players involved in this act worked in CI which is closely connected to the
CIA's own counter intelligence. In fact the connections are so incestuous that many of the
FBI's "agents" are sheep dipped Agency officers.
One has to ask themselves why the FBI would be so interested in foreign policy? Hoover
despite his many failings stayed out of the area of Foreign Intel yet the Bureau currently
seems obsessed by it.
Why? Probably because they are working on the same team as CIA, NSA, DIA, DHS and the
other alphabet soup agencies who gain their power from what could be correctly called the War
of Terror. Flynn being a threat because he was in agreement with Trump's proposed
noninterventionist foreign policy.
The same one he promised his voters but has currently reneged on. Remember the
"resistance" as they call themselves but are really the same ol' shit faction want America
constantly embroiled in Foreign conflicts and the operation known as the "Purple
Revolution"by the same group who likes to color code their regime changes was not only to
take down Flynn but Trump as well. A soft coup in other words.
Now that Trump's playing ball they can go after his base and those on the left who oppose
the usual that the so called "resistance' offers.
Seamus Padraig ,
One has to ask themselves why the FBI would be so interested in foreign policy? Hoover
despite his many failings stayed out of the area of Foreign Intel yet the Bureau currently
seems obsessed by it.
The FBI does have a counter-intelligence function, so that would give them some legitimate
interest in the activities of foreign intelligence services, at least; but I suspect their
obsession with Trump and Flynn goes far, far beyond any legitimate legal mandate.
True they've always had a CI function but it was more like a total Keystone Kops' operation.
Still is probably when you consider that Hannssen worked in their CI for over two decades
without being detected.
Of there's CIA with James Jesus Angleton who was a good friend of Kim Philby who wrecked
any CI capability both FBI and CIA had by being suspicious of any Russiaphile.
In fact this whole Russiaphobia and hoax is probably the resurrection of the ghost of
Angleton.
True Hoover spent more time chasing Commie and creating the Red Scare than he did cross
dressing and hanging out a Mob hangouts which he assured us didn't exist.
Michael Robertson says: February 3, 2020 at 3:39 pm
Democrats concluded some time ago that the only viable strategy for removing Trump
requires demonization of Russia as our enemy. And Ukraine as our ally. No one questions how
this came to be, or demands any real reporting about Ukraine. It's a black hole, and we are
expected to simply accept the framing of the Dems. Those who question it are accused of being
brainwashed by RT, or of secretly loving Mr. Trump. And they are simply befuddled by
accusations of neo-McCarthyism.
Clark Shanahan says: February 3, 2020 at 8:03 pm
As the professor warns us, we have gone through some very backwards times:
"Speaker Nancy Pelosi is connecting the dots -- "all roads lead to Putin," she says -- and
making the argument that Trump's pressure campaign on Ukraine was not an isolated incident
but part of a troubling bond with the Russian president reaching back to special counsel
Robert Mueller's findings on the 2016 election.
"This has been going on for 2 1/2 years," Pelosi said Friday.
"This isn't about Ukraine," she explained a day earlier. "'It's about Russia. Who
benefited by our withholding of that military assistance? Russia.""
(AP Dec 6, Lisa Mascaro/Mary Clare Jalonick)
Schiff has claimed that the Evil Vlad wakes up every morning, plotting to destroy our
virginal democracy because the US makes Russia look shabby.. He happens to receive a lot of
funding from the arms industry.
Nadler equated Russian meddling to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor..
If these three actually believe their own spin, heaven help us.
It truly is obscene.
The Battle of Stalingrad ended February 2, 1943.
Listening to our Russophobes, it seems the wrong people won that war. It is so ugly.
"Many of the players involved in this act worked in CI which is closely connected to the
CIA's own counter intelligence. "
Fusion Centers. Created and run by the very same Andrew McCabe at the centre of Crossfire
Hurricane and subsequently fired for malfeasance and abuse of public office.
The same Fusion centers were behind America's biggest "terror" attacks, in the same way
MI5 tend to be behind (or at least have very good knowledge of prior to) our own
"attacks"
(just to let the admins know, I had Seamus Padraig's details pre-filled in my text
box)
This book sheds some light into the story of how Administrative assistants to Present became
independent heavily influenced by CIA body controlling the USA foreign policy and to a large
extent controlling the President. Recent revolt of NSC (Aka Ukrainegate) shows that the servant
became the master
The books contains some interesting information about forming NSC by Truman --- the father of
the US National Security State. And bureaucratic turf war the preceded it. It wwas actually
Eisenhower who created forma position of a "special assistant to the president for national
security affairs"
The author also cover a little bit disastrous decision to launch a "surge" (ironically by the
female chickenhawk Meghan O'Sullivan), -- which attests neocon nature of current NSC and level of
indoctrination of staffers in "Full Spectrum Dominance" doctrine quite clearly. That's why a
faction of NSC launched a coup d'état against Trump in t he form of Ukrainegate and
probably was instrumental in Russiagate as well.
Notable quotes:
"... Starting in the 1960s, the NSC dethroned the State Department in providing analysis, intelligence, and even some diplomacy to the diplomat in chief. In the years after September 11th, the staff also began to take greater responsibility, especially for planning, from the military and the rest of the Pentagon. Both departments have struggled and often failed to reclaim lost ground and influence in Washington. ..."
"... Yet war is a hard thing to try to manage from the Executive Office Building. Thousands of miles from the frontlines and far from harm, the NSC make recommendations based on what they come to know from intelligence reports, news sources, phone calls, video-teleconferences, and visits to the front. Even with advice based only on this limited and limiting view, the NSC staff has transformed how the United States fights its wars. ..."
"... Although presidents bear the ultimate responsibilities for these decisions, the NSC staff played an essential, and increasing, role in the thinking behind each bold move. In conflict after conflict, a more powerful NSC staff has fundamentally altered the American way of war. It is now far less informed by the perspective of the military and the view from the frontlines. It is less patient for progress and more dependent on the clocks in the Executive Office Building and Washington than those in theater. It is far more combative, less able to accept defeat, and more willing to risk a change of course. ..."
"... The NSC common law's kept the peace in Washington for years after Iran-Contra. The restrictions against outright advocacy and outsized operational responsibilities were accepted by those at the White House as well as in the agencies during Republican and Democratic administrations. Yet as many in Washington believed the world grew more interconnected and the national security stakes increased, especially after September 11th, a more powerful NSC has given staffers the opportunity to bend, and occasionally break, the common laws, as they have been expected to and allowed to take on more responsibilities for developing strategies and new r ideas from those in the bureaucracy and military. ..."
"... ...Meanwhile, others, including the anonymous author of the infamous September 2018 New York Times opinion piece, believe government officials who comprise a "steady state" amid Trump's chaotic presidency are "unsung heroes" resisting his worst instincts and overreaches. 13 Thus, it is no surprise that more and more Americans are concerned: a 2018 poll found that 74 percent of Americans feel a group of officials arc able to control government policy without accountability. ..."
"... it is no wonder some Americans have taken to assuming the worst of their public servants. ..."
"... Each member of the NSC staff needs to remember that their growing, unaccountable power has helped give evidence to the worries about a deep state. Although no one in Washington gives up influence voluntarily, the staff, even its warriors, need to remember it is not just what they fight for but whether a fight is necessary at all. ..."
"... ... Too many in Washington, including at the Executive Office Building, have forgotten that public service is a privilege that bestows on them great responsibility. Although the NSC has long justified its actions in the name of national security, the means with which its members have pursued that objective have made for a more aggressive American way of war, a more fractious Washington, and more conspiracies about government. ..."
"... The question is for what and for whom they will fight in the years and wars ahead. ..."
The men and women walking the hushed corridors of the Executive Office Building do not look
like warriors. Most are middle-aged professionals with penchants for dark business suits and
prestigious graduate degrees, who have spent their lives serving their country in windowless
offices, on far-off battle-fields, or at embassies abroad. Before arriving at the NSC, many
joined the military or the nation's diplomatic corps, some dedicated themselves to teaching and
writing about national security, and others spent their days working for the types of
politicians who become presidents. By the time they joined the staff, each had shown the pluck
-- and the good fortune -- required to end up staffing a president.
When each NSC staffer first walks up the steps to the Executive Office Building, he or she
joins an institution like no other in government. Compared to the Pentagon and other
bureaucracies, the staff is small, hierarchically flat with only a few titles like directors
and senior directors reporting to the national security advisor and his or her deputies.
Compared to all those at the agencies, even most cabinet secretaries, the staff are also given
unparalleled access to the president and the discussions about the biggest decisions in
national security.
Yet despite their access, the NSC staff was created as a political, legal, and bureaucratic
afterthought. The National Security Council was established both
to better coordinate foreign policy after World War II and as part of a deal to create what
became known as the Defense Department. Since the army and navy only agreed to be unified under
a single department and a civilian cabinet secretary if each still had a seat at the table
where decisions about war were expected to be made, establishing the National Security Council
was critical to ensuring passage of the National Security Act of 1947. The law, as well as its
amendments two years later, unified the armed forces while also establishing the Joint Chiefs
of Staff and the Office of the Secretary of Defense, as well as the CIA.
... ... ...
Fans of television's the West Wing would be forgiven for expecting that once in the Oval
Office, all a staffer needs to do to change policy is to deliver a well-timed whisper in the
president's car or a rousing speech in his company. It is not that such dramatic moments never
occur, but real change in government requires not just speaking up but the grinding policy work
required to have something new to say.
A staffer, alone or with NSC and agency colleagues, must develop an idea until feasible and
defend it from opposition driven by personal pique, bureaucratic jealousy, or substantive
disagreement, and often all three.
Granted none of these fights are over particularly new ideas, as few proposals in war are
truly novel. If anything, the staffs history is a reminder of how little new there is under the
guise of national security. Alter all, escalations, ultimatums, and counterinsurgency are only
innovative in the context of the latest conflicts. The NSC staff is usually proposing old
ideas, some as old as war itself like a surge of troops, to new circumstances and a critical
moment.
Yet even an old idea can have real power in the right hands at the right time, so it is
worth considering how much more influence the NSC brings to its fights today.
... ... ...
A larger staff can do even more thanks to technology. With the establishment of the
Situation Room in 1961 and its subsequent upgrades, as well as the widespread adoption of email
in the 1980s, the classified email system during the 2000s, and desktop video teleconferencing
systems in the 2010s, White House technology upgrades have been justified because the president
deserves the latest and the fastest. These same advances give each member of the staff global
reach, including to war zones half a world away, from the safety of the Executive Office
Building.
The NSC has also grown more powerful along with the presidency it serves. The White House,
even in the hands of an inexperienced and disorganized president like Trump, drives the
government's agenda, the news media's coverage, and the American public's attention. The NSC
staff can, if skilled enough, leverage the office's influence for their own ideas and purposes.
Presidents have also explicitly empowered the staff in big ways -- like putting them in the
middle of the policymaking process -- and small -- like granting them ranks that put them on
the same level as other agency officials.
Recent staffers have also had the president's ear nearly every day, and sometimes more
often, while secretaries of state and defense rarely have that much face time in the Oval
Office. Each has a department with tens of thousands (and in the Pentagon's case millions) of
employees to manage. Most significantly, both also answer not just to the president but to
Congress, which has oversight authority for their departments and an expectation for regular
updates. There are few more consequential power differences between the NSC and the departments
than to whom each must answer.
Even more, the NSC staff get to work and fight in anonymity. Members of Congress,
journalists, and historians are usually too busy keeping track of the National Security Council
principals to focus on the guys and gals behind the national security advisors, who are
themselves behind the president. Few in Washington, and fewer still across the country, know
the names of the staff advising the president let alone what they arc saying in their memos and
moments with him.
Today, there arc too many unnamed NSC staffers for anyone's good, including their own. Even
with the recent congressional limit on policy staffers, the NSC is too big to be thoroughly
managed or effective. National security advisors and their deputies are so busy during their
days that it is hard to keep up with all their own emails, calls, and reading, let alone ensure
each member of the staff is doing their own work or doing it well. The common law and a de
tacto honor system has also struggled to keep staff in check as they try to handle every issue
from war to women's rights and every to-do list item from drafting talking points to doing
secret diplomacy.
Although many factors contribute to the NSC's success, history suggests they do best with
the right-size job. The answer to better national security policy and process is not a bigger
staff but smaller writs. The NSC should focus on fewer issues, and then only on the smaller
stuff, like what the president needs for calls and meetings, and the big, what some call grand
strategic, questions about the nation's interests, ambitions, and capacities that should be
asked and answered before any major decision.
... ... ...
Along the way, the staff has taken on greater responsibilities from agencies like the
departments of state and defense as each has grown more bureaucratic and sclerotic.
Starting in the 1960s, the NSC dethroned the State Department in providing analysis,
intelligence, and even some diplomacy to the diplomat in chief. In the years after September
11th, the staff also began to take greater responsibility, especially for planning, from the
military and the rest of the Pentagon. Both departments have struggled and often failed to
reclaim lost ground and influence in Washington.
As a result, today the NSC has, regretfully, become the strategic engine of the government's
national security policymaking. The staff, along with the national security advisor, determine
which issues -- large and small -- require attention, develop the plans for most of them, and
try to manage day-to-day the implementation of each strategy. That is too sweeping a remit for
a couple hundred unaccountable staffers sitting at the Executive Office Building thousands of
miles from war zones and foreign capitals. Such immense responsibility also docs not make the
best use of talent in government, leaving the military and the nation's diplomats fighting with
the White House over policies while trying to execute plans they have less and less ownership
over.
... ... ...
Although protocol still requires members of the NSC to sit on the backbench in National
Security Council meetings, the staff s voice and advice can carry as much weight as those of
the principals sitting at the table, just as the staff has taken on more of each department's
responsibilities, the NSC arc expected to be advisors to the president, even on military
strategy. With that charge, the staff has taken to spending more time and effort developing
their own policy ideas -- and fighting for them.
Yet war is a hard thing to try to manage from the Executive Office Building. Thousands
of miles from the frontlines and far from harm, the NSC make recommendations based on what they
come to know from intelligence reports, news sources, phone calls, video-teleconferences, and
visits to the front. Even with advice based only on this limited and limiting view, the NSC
staff has transformed how the United States fights its wars.
The American way of war, developed over decades of thinking and fighting, informs how and
why the nation goes to battle. Over the course of American history and, most relevantly, since
the end of World War II, the US military and other national security professionals have
developed, often through great turmoil, strategic preferences and habits, like deploying the
latest technology possible instead of the largest number of troops. Despite the tremendous
planning that goes into these most serious of undertakings, each new conflict tests the
prevailing way of war and often finds it wanting.
Even knowing how dangerous it is to relight the last war, it is still not easy to find the
right course for a new one. Government in general and national security specifically are
risk-averse enterprises where it is often simpler to rely on standard operating procedures and
stay on a chosen course, regardless of whether progress is slow and the sense of drift is
severe. Even then, many in the military, who often react to even the mildest of suggestions and
inquiries as unnecessary or even dangerous micromanagement, defend the prevailing approach with
its defining doctrine and syndrome.
As Machiavelli recommended long ago, there is a need for hard questions in government and
war in particular. He wrote that a leader "ought to be a great askcr, and a patient hearer of
the truth." 7 From the Executive Office Building, the NSC staff, who are more
distanced from the action as well as the fog of war, have tried to fill this role for a busy
and often distracted president. They are, however, not nearly as patient as Machiavelli
recommended: they have proven more willing, indeed too willing at times, to ask about what is
working and what is not.
Warfighters are not alone in being frustrated by questions: everyone from architects to
zookeepers believes they know how best to do their job and that with a bit more time, they will
get it right. Without any of the responsibility for the doing, the NSC staff not only asks hard
questions but, by avoiding implementation bias, is willing to admit, often long before those in
the field, that the current plan is failing. A more technologically advanced NSC, with the
ability to reach deep into the chain of command and war zones for updates, has also given the
staff the intelligence to back up its impatience.
Most times in history, the NSC staff has correctly predicted that time is running against a
chosen strategy. Halperin. and others on the Nixon NSC, were accurate in their assessments of
Vietnam. Dur and his Reagan NSC colleagues were right to worry that diplomacy was moving too
slowly in Lebanon. Haass and Vershbow were correct when they were concerned with how windows of
opportunity for action were shrinking in the Gulf and Balkans respectively, just as O'Sullivan
was right that things needed to change relatively soon in Iraq.
Yet an impatient NSC staff has a worse track record giving the president answers to what
should come next. The NSC staff naturally have opinions and ideas about what can be done when
events and war feel out of control, but ideas about what can be done when events and war feel
out of control, but the very distance and disengagement that allow' the NSC to be so effective
at measuring progress make its ideas less grounded in operational realities and more clouded by
the fog of Washington. The NSC, often stridently, wants to do something more, to "go big when
wc can," as one recent staffer encouraged his president, to fix a failing policy or win a w
r ar, but that is not a strategy, nor does that ambition make the staff the best
equipped to figure out the next steps."
With their proposals for a new plan, deployment, or initiative, the staff has made more bad
recommendations than good. The Diem coup and the Beirut mission are two examples, and
particularly tragic ones at that, of NSC staff recommendations gone awry. The Iraq surge was
certainly a courageous decision, but by committing so many troops to that country, the manpower
w r as not available for a war in Afghanistan that was falling off track. Even the
more successful NSC recommendations for changes in US strategy in the Gulf War and in Bosnia
did not end up exactly as planned, in part because even good ideas in war rarely do.
Although presidents bear the ultimate responsibilities for these decisions, the NSC
staff played an essential, and increasing, role in the thinking behind each bold move. In
conflict after conflict, a more powerful NSC staff has fundamentally altered the American way
of war. It is now far less informed by the perspective of the military and the view from the
frontlines. It is less patient for progress and more dependent on the clocks in the Executive
Office Building and Washington than those in theater. It is far more combative, less able to
accept defeat, and more willing to risk a change of course.
And it is characterized by more frequent and counterproductive friction between the civilian
and military leaders.
... ... ...
Through it all, as the NSC's voice has grown louder in the nation's war rooms, the staff has
transformed how Washington works, and more often does not work. The NSC's fights to change
course have had another casualty: the ugly collapse of the common law' that has governed
Washington policymaking for more than a generation. The result today is a government that
trusts less, fights more, and decides much slower.
National security policy- and decision-making was never supposed to be a fair fight. Eliot
Cohen, a civil-military scholar with high-level government experience, has called the
give-and-take of the interagency process an "unequal" dialogue -- one in which presidents are
entitled to not just make the ultimate decision but also to ask questions, often with the NSC's
help, at any time and about any topic.* Everyone else, from the secretaries of state and
defense in Washington dow r n to the commanders and ambassadors abroad, has to
expect and tolerate such presidential interventions and then carry out his orders.
Even an unfair fight can have rules, however. The NSC common law's kept the peace in
Washington for years after Iran-Contra. The restrictions against outright advocacy and outsized
operational responsibilities were accepted by those at the White House as well as in the
agencies during Republican and Democratic administrations. Yet as many in Washington believed
the world grew more interconnected and the national security stakes increased, especially after
September 11th, a more powerful NSC has given staffers the opportunity to bend, and
occasionally break, the common laws, as they have been expected to and allowed to take on more
responsibilities for developing strategies and new r ideas from those in the
bureaucracy and military.
... ... ...
...Meanwhile, others, including the anonymous author of the infamous September 2018 New
York Times opinion piece, believe government officials who comprise a "steady state" amid
Trump's chaotic presidency are "unsung heroes" resisting his worst instincts and overreaches.
13 Thus, it is no surprise that more and more Americans are concerned: a 2018 poll
found that 74 percent of Americans feel a group of officials arc able to control government
policy without accountability.
In an era when Americans can see on reality television how their fish are caught, meals arc
cooked, and businesses are financed, it is strange that few have ever heard the voice of an NSC
staffer. The Executive Office Building is not the only building out of reach: most of the
government taxpayers' fund is hard, and getting harder, to see. With bigger security blockades,
longer waits on declassification, and more severe crackdowns on leaks, it is no wonder some
Americans have taken to assuming the worst of their public servants.
The American people need to know the NSC's war stories if for no other reason than each
makes clear that there is no organized deep state in Washington. If one existed, there would be
little need for the NSC to fight so hard to coordinate the government's various players and
parts. However, this history also makes plain that though the United States can overcome bad
decisions and survive military disasters, a belief in a deep state is a threat to the NSC and
so much more.
... ... ...
Each member of the NSC staff needs to remember that their growing, unaccountable power
has helped give evidence to the worries about a deep state. Although no one in Washington gives
up influence voluntarily, the staff, even its warriors, need to remember it is not just what
they fight for but whether a fight is necessary at all. Shortcuts and squabbles may make
sense when every second feels like it counts, but the best public servants do what is necessary
for the president even as they protect, for years to come, the health of the institutions and
the very democracy in which they serve. As hard as that can be to remember when the clock in
the Oval Office is ticking, doing things the right way is even more important than the latest
crises, war, or meeting with the president.
... ... ...
... Too many in Washington, including at the Executive Office Building, have forgotten
that public service is a privilege that bestows on them great responsibility. Although the NSC
has long justified its actions in the name of national security, the means with which its
members have pursued that objective have made for a more aggressive American way of war, a more
fractious Washington, and more conspiracies about government.
Centuries ago, Plato argued that civilians must hope for warriors who could be trusted to be
both "gentle to their own and cruel to their enemies." At a time when many doubt government and
those who serve in it, the NSC staff s history demonstrates just what White House warriors arc
capable of. The question is for what and for whom they will fight in the years and wars
ahead.
... ... ...
The legendary British double agent Kim Philby wrote: "just because a document is a document
it has a glamour which tempts the reader to give it more weight than it deserves An hour of a
serious discussion with a trustworthy informant is often more valuable than any number of
original documents. Of course, it is best to have both."
A must-read for anyone interested in history or foreign policy. Gans pulls back the
curtain on arguably the most powerful yet opaque body in foreign policy decision-making,
the National Security Council. Each chapter recounts a different administration -- as told
through the work of an NSC staffer. Through these beautifully-written portraits of largely
unknown staffers, Gans reveals the chilling, outsized influence of this small, unelected
institution on American war and peace. From this perspective, even the policy success
stories seem more luck than skill -- leaving readers concerned about the NSC's continued
unchecked power.
"... Adam Schiff: If Trump isn't removed he "could offer Alaska to the Russians in exchange for support in the next election or decide to move to Mar-a-Lago permanently and leave Jared Kushner to run the country, delegating to him the decision whether they go to war." pic.twitter.com/VBzkonqpmH ..."
Impeachment manager Adam Schiff (D-CA) argued on Monday during closing remarks that if
President Trump isn't removed from office, he " could offer Alaska to the Russians in exchange
for support in the next election or decide to move to Mar-a-Lago permanently and leave Jared
Kushner to run the country , delegating to him the decision whether they go to war."
Adam Schiff: If Trump isn't removed he "could offer Alaska to the Russians in exchange for support in
the next election or decide to move to Mar-a-Lago permanently and leave Jared Kushner to run
the country, delegating to him the decision whether they go to war." pic.twitter.com/VBzkonqpmH
Russia, China and Iran are already being blamed for using tech to undermine the 2020
election. Yet, the very technologies they are allegedly using were created by a web of
companies with deep ties to Israeli intelligence.
"... The IG Report confirms that, after the election, top FBI officials discussed 'interview strategies' regarding how to set Flynn up in an ostensibly innocent conversation. Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe arranged the meeting with the goal to walk Flynn into a well-laid trap without informing him that there was a criminal investigation underway or that he was a target. ..."
"... On January 24, 2017, four days after the Inaugural, Peter Strzok, former FBI Chief of counterespionage and the same unnamed SSA1 (Supervisory Special Agent) who led the August briefing met with Flynn for a friendly chat, more popularly referred to as the Ambush Interview. ..."
"... What does that tell you? Powell believes, based on sworn witness testimony, that the final 302 is not an accurate reflection of the 302 notes or Flynn's statements of January 24th. ..."
"... It is curious that an SSA1 whose identity remained cloaked in secrecy throughout the entire IG FISA Report continues to be mentioned as a significant participant in the Bureau's Crossfire Hurricane while his name remains redacted on official documents. Disguising his identity may simply be attributed to activities worth concealing. ..."
"... In an unexpected turn, it was Sen. Chuck Grassley, Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee who outed the SSA1 as agent Joe Pientka in his May 11, 2018 letter to the Bureau . ..."
"... Grassley's May 11th letter confirms that Comey was aware that Flynn had not lied regarding the Kislyak conversation and further points out the stunning revelation that Pientka was 'on detail' as staff on the Judiciary Committee, presumably with the Democrats. For all his persistence, the FBI continues to rebuff Grassley's assertions for a transcript of the Kislyak conversation as well as demanding Pientka's presence "for a transcribed interview with Committee staff." ..."
We now know that, before Donald Trump's inauguration on January 20, 2017, the FBI had the ouster
of Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, the President's National Security Adviser, in its sights. By February 13th, Flynn
was out the door
.
Think about it. Why was Flynn's removal of the utmost importance to the FBI, more vital than removal of any other
cabinet officer like the Pentagon or State Department?
So crucial was it that they created a specific strategy willing to embrace prosecutorial misconduct and agency
malfeasance to take Flynn down. Prosecutorial misdeeds are nothing new to the FBI as they have a well-founded
history of corruption
over the
years with its warts now publicly displayed.
It does not take a poli sci major to figure out that Flynn's immediate removal from the Administration was
essential to undermining Trump's entire foreign policy initiatives including no new interventionist wars, peace with
Russia and US withdrawal from Syria and Afghanistan.
In retrospect, the entire fraudulent Russiagate conspiracy makes sense when viewed from the perspective of an
effort to rein in Trump's foreign policy goals of which Flynn would have been a necessary, integral part.
The question is where did the first glimmer of setting up Flynn originate? Who had the most to gain by disrupting
Trump's foreign policy agenda? A number of suspects come to mind including the evil Brennan/Clapper twins, a
bureaucratically well-placed neocon, an interested foreign entity like Israel or somewhere deep within the dark
bowels of the FBI, all of which are in sync with the Democratic leadership and its corporate media minions.
At the time, the Washington Post, a favorite CIA organ, was reporting that Flynn had 'hinted' to Russian
Ambassador Sergey Kislyak that Trump might be willing to 'relax' sanctions against Russia. It was then claimed that
Flynn had 'misled' VP Pence by denying that he had had a conversation regarding sanctions with Kislyak. None of it
was true.
With Flynn removed, Trump never regained his footing on foreign policy – which no doubt was exactly as intended;
thereby opening the door for the likes of Jared Kushner to assume the role of 'trusted adviser."
Let's examine how the FBI eliminated Flynn:
In August, 2016, an FBI 'strategic intelligence briefing' was conducted for candidate Trump with Flynn as his
national security adviser in attendance. The briefing, which was not a traditional
'defensive' briefing
in which a presidential candidate is alerted of a foreign government's effort to intercede
in their campaign, was led by an anonymous "experienced FBI counter intelligence agent." According to the IG Report
on FISA abuses, at that time Flynn was already a "subject in the ongoing Crossfire Hurricane investigation."
The IG Report confirms that, after the election, top FBI officials discussed 'interview strategies' regarding how
to set Flynn up in an ostensibly innocent conversation. Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe arranged the meeting
with the goal to walk Flynn into a well-laid trap without informing him that there was a criminal investigation
underway or that he was a target.
Such a procedure is called 'entrapment' and considered illegal. (See Clint Eastwood's new film Richard Jewell for
details on the FBI's entrapment techniques).
On January 24, 2017, four days after the Inaugural, Peter Strzok, former FBI Chief of counterespionage and the
same unnamed SSA1 (Supervisory Special Agent) who led the August briefing met with Flynn for a friendly chat, more
popularly referred to as the Ambush Interview.
At that time, either one or both agents took handwritten notes while neither provided the usual heads-up about
penalties for making a false statement – since that would have tipped their hand. Since Flynn believed this was an
informal visit, he did not feel the need to have an attorney present or inquire why, if this was a friendly
get-to-know chat, the need to take notes.
That conversation led to Flynn being charged with 'lying to the FBI' regarding his conversation with Kislyak.
After the interview, preparation of a 302 form is normal procedure. A 302 is a summary of and a formalizing of
those notes taken during the conversation. It is those original 302 notes which are in dispute and which the FBI
refuses to provide to
either the Senate Judiciary Committee
or to Flynn's attorney, Sidney Powell.
What does that tell you? Powell believes, based on sworn witness testimony, that the final 302 is
not an accurate reflection
of the 302 notes or Flynn's statements of January 24th.
It is curious that an SSA1 whose identity remained cloaked in secrecy throughout the entire IG FISA Report
continues to be mentioned as a significant participant in the
Bureau's
Crossfire Hurricane
while his name remains redacted on official documents.
Disguising his identity
may simply be attributed to activities worth concealing.
According to Strzok, Pientka was
"primarily responsible"
as the 'note taker' and prepared the 302 report
of the interview on which Flynn's prosecution is based. Powell has challenged authorship since the final 302 version
contains falsified statements never made in the original interview that are now being criminalized.
In a message to his paramour Lisa Page, Strzok thanked Page for her 'edits' on the 302 regarding the Flynn-Kislyak
conversation on sanctions
that never occurred while Strzok suggested that, at some future time, they discuss a
'media leak strategy.'
Soon after Flynn's resignation, a skeptical Grassley requested unredacted transcripts of the Flynn – Kislyak
conversation with the FBI repeatedly refusing to comply.
Grassley's
May 11th letter confirms
that Comey was aware that Flynn had not lied regarding the Kislyak conversation and
further points out the stunning revelation that Pientka was 'on detail' as staff on the Judiciary Committee,
presumably with the Democrats. For all his persistence, the FBI continues to rebuff Grassley's assertions for a
transcript of the Kislyak conversation as well as demanding Pientka's presence
"for a transcribed interview with
Committee staff."
In response to an 'insufficient' FBI reply, Grassley then let loose with a
June 6th zinger
detailing a compilation of FBI lies, failures and hypocrisies too numerous to be articulated (but
worth reading)
here
.
While a review of the FBI's entire prosecution of Flynn raises considerable legal and ethical questions, the
Bureau's consistent refusal to turnover evidentiary material is indicative of a deceitful agency protecting its own
criminal behavior.
Why is the FBI embedding an SSA1 with the Senate Committee that has legislative jurisdiction over its mission?
Does this strike anyone else like the tactic of a totalitarian state?
How does Flynn's case move forward without the FBI providing the necessary exculpatory documents legally
required for every defendant?
How does a Congressional Committee provide effective oversight and accountability if they are continually
stonewalled by the very agency within their legal authority?
How can the FBI ever be rehabilitated if Congress, fearful of a constitutional crisis, has no political will
to assert its proper authority and issue a Contempt of Congress subpoena?
With the FBI out of control, Is this any way to run a country?
Renee Parsons has been a member of the ACLU's Florida State Board of Directors and President of
the ACLU Treasure Coast Chapter. She has been an elected public official in Colorado, an environmental lobbyist with
Friends of the Earth and staff member in the US House of Representatives in Washington, DC. Renee is also a student
of the Quantum Field and may be reached at @reneedove31.
Antonym
,
Better ask: did Trump sabotage the foreign policy of the FBI – CIA – FED hydra?
The farce has claimed all kinds of convictions, but hardly any related to the actual case at
hand. In fact, the Washington Post , a paper that has done much to whip up Russiagate
hysteria, actually conducted a thorough
analysis of the so-called Russian social media campaign and concluded, "there's no evidence
that [Russians] did any particularly sophisticated targeting." Rather, Occam's Razor-type
reasoning implies that Russian "trolls," like most other entities active on the web, were
simply looking for clicks in order to make a buck from advertisers. In a sign that the
Washington Post might not be completely oblivious to journalistic ethics, one of their
reporters has surprisingly
started a systematic effort to review the journalistic excesses of the last few years
related to Russiagate. The New York Times has not attempted any similar soul-searching
as regards the Russiagate hysteria regrettably, but had itself to
admit that when it comes to "meddling in elections . . . we do it too."
As someone who is occasionally forced to tread water in the Beltway swamp, I would also be
very eager to see a certain draining of foreign influence from the American political process.
But, at this point, I am at least as concerned with Bahrain influence , British
influence , Chinese
influence , German influence , Indian
influence , Israeli influence , Japanese
influence , Nigerian
influence , Norwegian
influence , Pakistani
influence , Polish
influence , Philippine
influence , Saudi influence
, South Korean influence
, Taiwan
influence , Turkish
influence , Ukrainian
influence , UAE
influence , Vietnamese influence , etc. Sorry, President Putin, you are likely
not even in the top twenty foreign powers currently manipulating the conduct of U.S. foreign
policy, but Russiagate sure has made for an entertaining drama.
As for those various espionage escapades, well, when the Hollywood blockbuster film
Argocaptured
"Best Film" back in 2012, that moment seemed to crystallize a new and glorious era for
America's intelligence agencies. Are our spies amazing or what -- not just creative -- but
low-budget and good looking too? Perhaps now is the time for Hollywood to pick up another CIA
script with Iran: the overthrow of
Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953? That event, as much as any other, forms the essential backdrop for
today's ominous developments in the Persian Gulf.
Lyle J. Goldstein is Research Professor in the China Maritime Studies Institute (CMSI)
at the United States Naval War College in Newport, RI. In addition to Chinese, he also speaks
Russian and he is also an affiliate of the new Russia Maritime Studies Institute (RMSI) at
Naval War College. You can reach him at [email protected] . The opinions in his columns are entirely
his own and do not reflect the official assessments of the U.S. Navy or any other agency of the
U.S. government.
Rosie memos @almostjingo - 1:40 UTC · Jan 30, 2020
Well geez this is awkward. Despite being told for years that "Internet Research Agency"
was working for Putin the DOJ admits it's not going to offer any evidence in the case "that
the Russian Government sponsored the alleged conspiracy" MUH RUSSIA. @TheJusticeDept
-- --
Neither The DoJ or the FBI are aware of the fact that more than 60% of Israeli army speak
Russian fluently just like their native hebrew, or better!?
"... Finally, and perhaps this is the most important point, the FBI was at this time supposed to be in the early stages of an investigation into how the DNC emails were leaked to Wikileaks. The FBI here believed Wikileaks to be indicating the material had been leaked by Seth Rich who had then been murdered. Surely in any legitimate investigation, the investigators would have been absolutely compelled to check out the truth of this possibility, rather than treat it as a media issue? ..."
A persistent American lawyer has uncovered the undeniable fact that the FBI has been
continuously lying , including giving
false testimony in court, in response to Freedom of Information requests for its records on
Seth Rich. The FBI has previously given affidavits
that it has no records regarding Seth Rich.
A Freedom of Information request to the FBI which did not mention Seth Rich, but asked for
all email correspondence between FBI Head of Counterterrorism Peter Strzok, who headed the
investigation into the DNC leaks and Wikileaks, and FBI attorney Lisa Page, has revealed two
pages of emails which do not merely mention Seth Rich but have "Seth Rich" as their heading.
The emails were provided in, to say the least, heavily redacted form.
Before I analyze these particular emails, I should make plain that they are not the major
point. The major point is that the FBI claimed it had no records mentioning Seth Rich, and
these have come to light in response to a different FOIA request that was not about him. What
other falsely denied documents does the FBI hold about Rich, that were not fortuitously picked
up by a search for correspondence between two named individuals?
To look at the documents themselves, they have to be read from the bottom up, and they
consist of a series of emails between members of the Washington Field Office of the FBI (WF in
the telegrams) into which Strzok was copied in, and which he ultimately forwarded on to the
lawyer Lisa Page.
The opening email, at the bottom, dated 10 August 2016 at 10.32am, precisely just one month
after the murder of Seth Rich, is from the media handling department of the Washington Field
Office. It references Wikileaks' offer of a reward for information on the murder of Seth Rich,
and that Assange seemed to imply Rich was the source of the DNC leaks. The media handlers are
asking the operations side of the FBI field office for any information on the case. The
unredacted part of the reply fits with the official narrative. The redacted individual officer
is "not aware of any specific involvement" by the FBI in the Seth Rich case. But his next
sentence is completely redacted. Why?
It appears that "adding" references a new person added in to the list. This appears to have
not worked, and probably the same person (precisely same length of deleted name) then tries
again, with "adding for real" and blames the technology – "stupid Samsung". The
interesting point here is that the person added appears not to be in the FBI – a new
redacted addressee does indeed appear, and unlike all the others does not have an FBI suffix
after their deleted email address. So who are they?
(This section on "adding" was updated after commenters offered a better explanation than my
original one. See first comments below).
The fourth email, at 1pm on Wednesday August 10, 2016, is much the most interesting. It is
ostensibly also from the Washington Field Office, but it is from somebody using a different
classified email system with a very different time and date format than the others. It is
apparently from somebody more senior, as the reply to it is "will do". And every single word of
this instruction has been blanked. The final email, saying that "I squashed this with ..", is
from a new person again, with the shortest name. That phrase may only have meant I denied this
to a journalist, or it may have been reporting an operational command given.
As the final act in this drama, Strzok then sent the whole thread on to the lawyer, which is
why we now have it. Why?
It is perfectly possible to fill in the blanks with a conversation that completely fits the
official narrative. The deletions could say this was a waste of time and the FBI was not
looking at the Rich case. But in that case, the FBI would have been delighted to publish it
unredacted. (The small numbers in the right hand margins supposedly detail the exception to the
FOIA under which deletion was made. In almost every case they are one or other category of
invasion of privacy).
And if it just all said "Assange is talking nonsense. Seth Rich is nothing to do with the
FBI" then why would that have to be sent on by Strzok to the FBI lawyer?
It is of course fortunate that Strzok did forward this one email thread on to the lawyer,
because that is the only reason we have seen it, as a result of an FOI(A) request for the
correspondence between those two.
Finally, and perhaps this is the most important point, the FBI was at this time supposed to
be in the early stages of an investigation into how the DNC emails were leaked to Wikileaks.
The FBI here believed Wikileaks to be indicating the material had been leaked by Seth Rich who
had then been murdered. Surely in any legitimate investigation, the investigators would have
been absolutely compelled to check out the truth of this possibility, rather than treat it as a
media issue?
We are asked to believe that not one of these emails says "well if the publisher of the
emails says Seth Rich was the source, we had better check that out, especially as he was
murdered with no sign of a suspect". If the FBI really did not look at that, why on earth not?
If the FBI genuinely, as they claim, did not even look at the murder of Seth Rich, that would
surely be the most damning fact of all and reveal their "investigation" was entirely agenda
driven from the start.
In June 2016 a vast cache of the DNC emails were leaked to Wikileaks. On 10 July 2016 an
employee from the location of the leak was murdered without obvious motive, in an alleged
street robbery in which nothing at all was stolen. Not to investigate the possibility of a link
between the two incidents would be grossly negligent. It is worth adding that, contrary to a
propaganda barrage, Bloomingdale where Rich was murdered is a very pleasant area of Washington
DC and by no means a murder hotspot. It is also worth noting that not only is there no suspect
in Seth Rich's murder, there has never been any semblance of a serious effort to find the
killer. Washington police appear perfectly happy simply to write this case off.
I anticipate two responses to this article in terms of irrelevant and illogical
whataboutery:
Firstly, it is very often the case that family members are extremely resistant to the
notion that the murder of a relative may have wider political implications. This is perfectly
natural. The appalling grief of losing a loved one to murder is extraordinary; to reject the
cognitive dissonance of having your political worldview shattered at the same time is very
natural. In the case of David Kelly, of Seth Rich, and of Wille Macrae, we see families
reacting with emotional hostility to the notion that the death raises wider questions.
Occasionally the motive may be still more mixed, with the prior relationship between the
family and the deceased subject to other strains (I am not referencing the Rich case
here).
You do occasionally get particularly stout hearted family who take the opposite tack and
are prepared to take on the authorities in the search for justice, of which Commander Robert
Green, son of Hilda Murrell, is a worthy example.
(As an interesting aside, I just checked his name in the Wikipedia article on Hilda, which
I discovered describes Tam Dalyell "hounding" Margaret Thatcher over the Belgrano and the
fact that ship was steaming away from the Falklands when destroyed with massive loss of life
as a "second conspiracy theory", the first of course being the murder of Hilda Murrell.
Wikipedia really has become a cesspool.)
We have powerful cultural taboos that reinforce the notion that if the family do not want
the question of the death of their loved one disturbed, nobody else should bring it up. Seth
Rich's parents, David Kelly's wife, Willie Macrae's brother have all been deployed by the
media and the powers behind them to this effect, among many other examples. This is an
emotionally powerful but logically weak method of restricting enquiry.
Secondly, I do not know and I deliberately have not inquired what are the views on other
subjects of either Mr Ty Clevenger, who brought his evidence and blog to my attention, or
Judicial Watch, who made the FOIA request that revealed these documents. I am interested in
the evidence presented both that the FBI lied, and in the documents themselves. Those who
obtained the documents may, for all I know, be dedicated otter baiters or believe in stealing
ice cream from children. I am referencing the evidence they have obtained in this particular
case, not endorsing – or condemning – anything else in their lives or work. I
really have had enough of illogical detraction by association as a way of avoiding logical
argument by an absurd extension of ad hominem argument to third parties.
* * *
Unlike his adversaries including the Integrity Initiative, the 77th Brigade, Bellingcat, the
Atlantic Council and hundreds of other warmongering propaganda operations, Craig's blog has no
source of state, corporate or institutional finance whatsoever. It runs entirely on voluntary
subscriptions from its readers – many of whom do not necessarily agree with the every
article, but welcome the alternative voice, insider information and debate. Subscriptions to
keep Craig's blog going are gratefully received .
" We have powerful cultural taboos that reinforce the notion that if the family do not
want the question of the death of their loved one disturbed, nobody else should bring it
up. "
Yeah. We see that all the time on ID Network ... whenever a family member wants
authorities to stop investigating their "loved one's" death, it usually means they're
protecting the guilty party. But the cases are solved by good cops who ignore the family and
do what's right.
Investigating and prosecuting murders is not all about the family. It's also about finding
and removing murderers from society so they can't hurt anyone else.
And neither Mueller nor any other government official ever bothered to interview Julian
Assange even though he agreed to do so. That Mueller didn't but took CrowdStrike's word for
the fact that so-called "Russians" hacked the DNC computer and then gave it to Wikileaks
tells you about all you need to know. Mueller knew who likely did it but didn't want to make
it part of his Report or let it be made public. Meanwhile the Russia Collusion Hoax marched
on, got a life of its own and is allowed to continue in its various forms like the
impeachment of a Donald Trump.
"Is it true that the hidden metadata contained within the FIRST WikiLeaks DNC files batch
clearly shows sequential time stamps (on each file copied) proving that a very high speed
transfer rate took place that could only be done with direct internal access to a DNC
computer on the network (i.g., a USB thumb drive or NAS drive plugged directly into a local
PC or a LAN network jack within the building) as opposed to the much slower file transfer
rate that would be recorded in the metadata if Russia or other hackers had remotely accessed
a DNC computer or local DNC network via a remote WAN/Internet connection (to transfer those
files from the outside)? Another rumor that needs to be put to rest is a SECOND batch of
files may exist (that is almost identical to the FIRST batch), except it includes some fake
Russian breadcrumb "fingerprints" that may have been added to support the "Russian's hacked
it" story that was circulated within the intelligence agencies and leaked out to the media.
IDK, true or false? "
synopsis of the real whistleblower Bill Binney, ex-NSA Technical director who has had his
life ruined because he published this info.
I perfectly understand why Westerners still love capitalism (and will continue to do so for
the forseeable future): capitalism represents (and will forever represent) the first and only
time in human history the so-called western culture became universal and the center of
humanity. In fact, I would be surprised if the opposite case was true.
The clash of civilizations doctrine makes sense both to Americans and Europeans, but in
different ways.
For the Americans, it creates a legitimizing narrative for the masses to draw capitalist
Russia to its sphere of influence, divide Eurasia again and then essentially kill two birds
with one stone: the destruction of China and socialism.
For the Europeans, it creates a narrative where Europe, somehow, reborns from the ashes
and make a spectacular comeback to the center stage of the imperialist game. That is the case
because it fantasizes about some kind of western culture solidarity where the USA, by magic,
begins to treat Europe as equals, and not as vassals (because they have "the same culture").
The USA then self-dissolves in order for a "Westernia" to rise in the North Atlantic, with a
foothold in the Pacific thanks to Australia. Socialism in the form of Western European
welfare state will be allowed to exist because what matters is not capitalism vs socialism,
but western culture vs eastern culture. USA and Western Europe then make amends, and fuse
together in a Western Paradise (Eden).
I must say, this is a very inventive - even ingenious doctrine. Shame the Europeans waste
their creativity with such useless garbage.
P.S.: nobody was complaining on "being raped" when it was the First World countries
benefitting from globalization during the "golden age of capitalism" (post-war miracle). The
narrative was completely different: the Third World was the uncivilized and corrupt monkeys,
who were being blessed by the charity of the First World, and should be forever thankful for
that. It's not funny when you're on the receiving end, it seems.
There's no need to rehash the sordid politics of the U.S.-Russia relationship since 2014.
That relationship became collateral damage to gross corruption in Ukraine.
The U.S. and its allies, especially the UK under globalists like David Cameron, wanted to
peel off Ukraine from the Russian orbit and make it part of the EU and eventually NATO.
From Russia's perspective, this was unacceptable. It may be true that most Americans cannot
find Ukraine on a map, but a simple glance at a map reveals that much of Ukraine lies East of
Moscow.
Putting Ukraine in a Western alliance such as NATO would create a crescent stretching from
Luhansk in the South through Poland in the West and back around to Estonia in the North. There
are almost no natural obstacles between that arc and Moscow; it's mostly open steppe.
Completion of this "NATO Crescent" would leave Moscow open to invasion in ways that Napoleon
and Hitler could only dream. Of course, this situation was and is unacceptable to Moscow.
Ukraine itself is culturally divided along geographic lines. The Eastern and Southern
provinces (Luhansk, Donetsk, Crimea and Dnipro) are ethnically Russian, follow the Orthodox
Church and the Patriarch of Moscow, and welcome commercial relations with Russia.
The Western provinces (Kiev, Lviv) are Slavic, adhere to the Catholic Church and the Pope in
Rome, and look to the EU and U.S. for investment and aid.
Prior to 2014, an uneasy truce existed between Washington and Moscow that allowed a
pro-Russian President while at the same time permitting increasing contact with the EU. Then
the U.S. and UK overreached by allowing the CIA and MI6 to foment a "color revolution" in Kiev
called the "Euromaidan Revolution."
Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych resigned and fled to Moscow. Pro-EU protestors took
over the government and signed an EU Association Agreement.
In response, Putin annexed Crimea and declared it part of Russia. He also infiltrated
Donetsk and Luhansk and helped establish de facto pro-Russian regional governments. The U.S.
and EU responded with harsh economic sanctions on Russia.
Ukraine has been in turmoil (with increasing corruption) ever since. U.S.-Russia relations
have been ice-cold, exactly as the globalists intended.
The U.S- induced fiasco in Ukraine not only upset U.S.-Russia relations, it derailed a cozy
money laundering operation involving Ukrainian oligarchs and Democratic politicians. The Obama
administration flooded Ukraine with non-lethal financial assistance.
This aid was amplified by a four-year, $17.5 billion loan program to Ukraine from the IMF,
approved in March 2015. Interestingly, this loan program was pushed by Obama at a time when
Ukraine did not meet the IMF's usual borrowing criteria.
Some of this money was used for intended purposes, some was skimmed by the oligarchs, and
the rest was recycled to Democratic politicians in the form of consulting contracts, advisory
fees, director's fees, contributions to foundations and NGOs and other channels.
Hunter Biden and the Clinton Foundations were major recipients of this corrupt recycling.
Other beneficiaries included George Soros-backed "open society" organizations, which further
directed the money to progressive left-wing groups in the U.S.
This cozy wheel-of-fortune was threatened when Donald Trump became president. Trump
genuinely desired improved relations with Russia and was not on the receiving end of laundered
aid to Ukraine.
Hillary Clinton was supposed to continue the Obama policies, but she failed in the general
election. Trump was a threat to everything the globalists, Democrats and pro-NATO elites had
constructed in the 2010s.
The globalists wanted China and the U.S. to team up against Russia. Trump understood
correctly that China was the main enemy and therefore a closer union between the U.S. and
Russia was essential.
The elites' efforts to derail Trump gave rise to the "Russia collusion" hoax. While no one
disputes that Russia sought to sow confusion in the U.S. election in 2016, that's something the
Russians and their Soviet predecessors had been doing since 1917. By itself, little harm was
done.
Yet, the elites seized on this to concoct a story of collusion between Russia and the Trump
campaign. The real collusion was among Democrats, Ukrainians and Russians to discredit
Trump.
It took the Robert Mueller investigation two years finally to conclude there was no
collusion between Trump and the Russians. By then, the damage was done. It was politically
toxic for Trump to reach out to the Russians. That would be spun by the media as more evidence
of "collusion."
Russian President Vladimir Putin (l.) has recently named a new Prime Minister, Mikhail
Mishustin (r.). This is part of a complex government reorganization designed to extend Putin's
rule beyond existing term limits. This is a setback for democracy, but may be a plus for the
economy because it adds stability and continuity to Putin's programs.
This whirl of false charges, cover-ups, and deep state sabotage finally led to Trump's
impeachment on December 18, 2019.
Fortunately, the Senate impeachment trial may soon be behind us with Trump's exoneration in
hand (although new impeachment charges and false accusations cannot be ruled out).
Is the stage finally set for improved U.S.-Russia relations, relief from U.S. sanctions, and
a significant increase in U.S. direct foreign investment in Russia?
Right now, my models are telling us that Russia is one of the most attractive targets for
foreign investment in the world. Just because U.S. policymakers missed the boat does not mean
that investors must do the same.
Russia is often denigrated by Wall Street analysts and mainstream economists who know little
about the country. Russia is the world's largest country by area and has the largest arsenal of
nuclear weapons of any country in the world.
It has the world's 11th largest economy at over $1.6 trillion in annual GDP, ahead of South
Korea, Spain and Australia and not far behind Canada, Brazil and Italy.
It also is the world's third largest producer of oil and related liquids, with output of
11.4 million barrels per day, about 11% of the world's total. The U.S. (17.8 million b/d),
Saudi Arabia (12.4 million b/d) and Russia combine to provide 41% of the world's liquid fuels.
The latter two countries effectively control the world's oil price by agreeing on output
quotas.
Russia has almost no external dollar-denominated debt and has a debt-to-GDP ratio of only
13.50% (the comparable ratio for the United States is 106%).
In short, Russia is too big and too powerful to ignore despite the derogatory and uninformed
claims of globalists. Importantly, Russia is emerging from the oil price shock of 2014-2016 and
is in a solid recovery.
The stage is now set for significant economic expansion as illustrated in the chart below
from Moody's Analytics:
This graphic analysis from Moody's Analytics divides major economies into categories of
Recovery, Expansion, Slowdown and Recession. Economies revolve clockwise through these four
phases. The U.S. is in a Slowdown phase with some risk of Recession. Russia is in the Recovery
phase heading toward Expansion. The Russian situation is the most attractive for investors
because it offers cheap entry points with high returns as the Expansion phase begins.
Russia has also gone to great lengths to insulate itself from U.S. economic sanctions. Their
reserves have recovered to the $500 billion level that existed before the 2014 oil price
collapse with one important difference. The dollar component of reserves has shrunk
substantially while the gold component has increased to over 20%.
With the recent surge in gold prices, Russia's reserves get a significant boost (when
expressed in dollars) because of the higher dollar value of the gold reserves. Gold cannot be
hacked, frozen or seized, as is the case with digital dollar assets.
Russia's fortunes have been improving not only because of low debt and higher gold prices
but also because of higher oil prices. The country is poised for a strong expansion, even if
U.S. hostility caused by the Democrats continues.
If Trump regains his footing after impeachment and wins a second term (which I expect),
investors can expect warmer relations with Russia and an even more powerful Russian economic
expansion than the one already underway. Tags
Carter Page is suing the DNC and the Perkins Coie law firm for their roles in funding the
infamous Steele dossier, which was used as the foundation for controversial surveillance
warrants used by the Obama administration to spy on him during and after the 2016 US election.
The former Trump campaign adviser filed a lawsuit Thursday in the Northern District of
Illinois' Eastern Division, which his attorneys described as the "first of multiple actions in
the wake of historic" Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) abuse, according to
Fox News .
"Defendants developed a dossier replete with falsehoods about numerous individuals
associated with the Trump campaign -- especially Dr. Page . Defendants then sought to tarnish
the Trump campaign and its affiliates (including Dr. Page) by publicizing this false
information," reads the lawsuit, which adds "Even the DOJ and the FISC have recognized that the
false information spread by Defendants led to invalid FISA warrants against Dr. Page. "
Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz announced in a December report that
the FBI made repeated errors and misrepresentations to the FISA court in the agency's
ham-handed efforts to surveil Page and those in his orbit in 2016 and 2017.
Horowitz confirmed that the FBI's FISA applications to monitor Page heavily relied on the
dossier and news reports rooted in Steele's unverified research.
Just last week, the FISC released a newly declassified summary of a Justice Department
assessment revealing at least two of the FBI's surveillance applications to monitor Page
lacked probable cause.
-Fox News
" This is a first step to ensure that the full extent of the FISA abuse that has occurred
during the last few years is exposed and remedied," said attorney John Pierce on Thursday,
adding "Defendants and those they worked with inside the federal government did not and will
not succeed in making America a surveillance state."
" This is only the first salvo. We will follow the evidence wherever it leads, no matter how
high. The rule of law will prevail. "
Page first filed a defamation suit on his own against the parties in October 2018 in
federal court in Oklahoma, but that suit was dismissed in January 2019 after the judge ruled
the court lacked jurisdiction over the case because neither Page nor the DNC had strong
enough ties to the state.
Page is now represented by Pierce, the global managing partner of Pierce Bainbridge Beck
Price & Hecht LLP. They filed in Illinois because they allege the relationship with the
firm behind the dossier, Fusion GPS, was "orchestrated" through law firm Perkins Coie's
Chicago office. The suit also claims the DNC "has a historical pattern" of making Chicago its
principal place of business . -
Fox News
DNC In Disarray After Chairman's Secret Golden Parachute Revealed by Tyler Durden Thu, 01/30/2020 -
17:20 0 SHARES The
perpetually broke ,
deck-stacking DNC has been thrown into disarray just days before the Iowa caucus after
Buzzfeed
revealed that a cadre of top officials at the Democratic National Committee approved, then
concealed a 'generous exit package for the party chair, Tom Perez, and two top lieutenants,'
which has left Democrats 'confounded over the weekend by the optics and timing of the decision
on the eve of the presidential primary."
The proposal, put forward as an official DNC resolution during a meeting of the party's
budget and finance committee last Friday, would have arranged for Perez and two of his top
deputies, CEO Seema Nanda and deputy CEO Sam Cornale, to each receive a lump-sum bonus
equaling four months' salary within two weeks of the time they eventually leave their roles
.
Senior DNC officers, including members of Perez's own executive committee, learned of the
compensation package after its approval, through the rumor mill, setting off a furious
exchange of emails and texts over the weekend to determine what had been proposed, and by
whom . - Buzzfeed
And while four-months salary might be more of a 'bronze parachute', Perez rejected the
"extra compensation" package for himself and his two lieutenants in an email to officials .
Perez says he will serve through the end of the 2020 election, while all three officials
have denied having any prior knowledge of, or involvement in the pay package resolution .
"One-hundred percent of our resources are going towards beating Donald Trump," said DNC
communications director Xochitl Hinojosa, who added "DNC leadership will not accept any extra
compensation recommended by the budget committee, which didn't operate at the direction of DNC
leadership. The resolution was crafted by the budget committee and did not involve the Chair,
CEO, or Deputy CEO."
Taking the fall for the resolution are two members of the DNC's budget and finance committee
- Daniel Halpern and Chris Korge, who described it as the first step in a "smooth transition"
for Perez.
Halperin, an
anti-minimum wage lobbyist , was appointed by Perez in 2017. He previously chaired Atlanta
Mayor Kasim Reed's 2009 moyoral campaign, and was a trustee for Barack Obama's 2008 inaugural
committee.
Chris Korge is a Florida
attorney hired in May of 2019. He was one of the top fundraisers for Andrew Gillum, Hillary
Clinton, Bill Clinton, and served as the co-chairman for the Kerry Edwards campaign in
2004.
For years, the 64-year-old attorney, developer and one-time county hall lobbyist has been
an important fundraiser for Democrats. He has raised millions for both Hillary and Bill
Clinton, served as national co-chairman for Kerry Edwards Victory in 2004 and this year was
co-chairman of Miami's unsuccessful bid to bring the Democratic convention to South Florida
next summer. - Miami
Herald
According to Buzzfeed , Halpern and Korge both said the resolution was above-board
and a common business practice.
The resolution, which only applies to the 2021 transition, states that the outgoing chair,
CEO, and deputy CEO will help facilitate donor and "stakeholder" relations, and convey
"institutional knowledge" to the next chair, but is less specific about the requirements of
the transition than the details of the compensation package: a lump sum of four months' pay,
paid within two weeks, unless either Perez, Nanda, or Cornale is terminated for "gross
misconduct."
On Tuesday, Halpern said the resolution was meant to serve only as a "nonbinding" starting
point to ensure "continuity" between Perez's tenure and the next party chair . - Buzzfeed
Top Democrats within the DNC's leadership speaking on condition of anonymity said that they
were shocked to learn of the compensation package on the eve of a presidential primary , amid a
massive fundraising defecit .
"I think it is completely short-sighted and really stupid," said one senior official.
The package would have paid Perez around $69,000, Nanda around $61,000, and Cornale
$39,000.
The infighting is indicative of the ongoing DNC implosion. These parties, like the entire
world's governments, were terminated long ago. NOBODY wants or needs the fake drama bullsh*t.
If it's not on one side or the other it's on both to distract everybody. Like the ongoing
fake impeachment fraud. Chump was finished day one on the job. And even if not certainly the
public conspiring with both parties to commit sedition and treason after Parkland ensured
it.
Tom Perez - member of the Obama Transition Project's Agency Review Working Group
responsible for the justice, health and human services, veterans affairs, and housing and
urban development agencies. He is Secretary of the Maryland Department of Labor, Licensing
and Regulation under Governor Martin O'Malley.
He worked in a variety of civil rights positions at the Department of Justice, including
Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights under Attorney General Janet Reno.
He also served as Director of the Office for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Health
and Human Services under Secretary Donna Shalala, and as Special Counsel to Senator Edward
Kennedy. From 2001 until 2007, he was Assistant Professor of Law at the University of
Maryland School of Law, and is an adjunct faculty member at the George Washington School of
Public Health.
FBI Lied to a Federal Court Regarding Seth Rich by Larry C Johnson
Thanks to Judicial Watch, a new batch of emails have surfaced that put the FBI in a whole
lot of trouble with at least two Federal Judges. Attorney Ty Clevenger made repeated FOIA
requests to the FBI for all emails and communications dealing with Seth Rich and his murder.
The FBI denied they had any such communications. Whoops! There are now five emails and one text
message that show that denial is not true. Let's dig into the details.
The FBI, in the person of David Hardy, affirmed in an affidavit that there were no
responsive records. Hardy is the Section Chief of the Record/Information Dissemination Section
("RIDS"), Information Management Division ("IMD"),1 Federal Bureau of Investigation ("FBI"), in
Winchester, Virginia. Here are the relevant portions of his first affidavit:
On September 30, 2017, by electronic submission via the OIP online portal, Plaintiff
submitted an administrative appeal of the FBI's September 19, 2017 determination. Specifically,
Plaintiff alleged the FBI limited its search to the Central Records System("CRS") for main file
records. Additionally, Plaintiff noted that any responsive records likely would be found in
emails, hard copy documents, and other files in the FBI's Washington Field Office; therefore,
the FBI should be directed to conduct a thorough search, to include emails and other records in
the Washington Field Office. . . .
(9) By letter executed on November 9, 2017, OIP advised Plaintiff it affirmed the FBI's
determination. OIP further advised Plaintiff that to the extent his request sought access to
records that would either confirm or deny an individual's placement on any government watch
list, the FBI properly refused to confirm or deny the existence of any such records because
their existence is protected from disclosure pursuant to 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(7)(E). . .
.
(19) CRS Search and Results. In response to Plaintiff's request dated September 1, 2017,
RIDS conducted an index search of the CRS for responsive main and reference file records
employing the UNI application of ACS. The FBI searched the subject's name, "Seth Conrad Rich,"
in order to identify files responsive to Plaintiff's request and subject to the FOIA. The FBI's
searches included a three-way phonetic breakdown5 of the subject's name. These searches
located no main or reference records responsive to Plaintiff's FOIA request.
(20) Subsequently, the FBI conducted additional searches of the CRS via the UNI application
of ACS and a Sentinel index search for both main and reference file records. The FBI used the
same search terms it used in its original searches as described supra. This new search also
resulted in no main or reference file records being located responsive to Plaintiff's FOIA
request. . . .
(25) The FBI conducted an adequate and reasonable search for records responsive to
Plaintiffs FOIA request; however, no records were located. First given its comprehensive nature
and scope, the CRS is the principle records system searched by RIDS, to locate information
responsive to most FOIA/Privacy Act requests, as the CRS is where the FBI indexes information
about individuals, organizations, and events for future retrieval. See , 14, supra. Second, the
CRS is the FBI recordkeeping system where investigative records responsive to this request
would reasonably be found. Given Plaintiffs request sought information about an individual
subject, Seth Conrad Rich, who was murdered in the District of Columbia on or about July 10,
2016, such information would reasonably be expected to be located in the CRS via the index
search methodology. Finally, the office likely to conduct or assist in such an investigation --
WFO -- confirmed that it did not open an investigation or provide investigative or technical
assistance into the murder of Seth Conrad Rich, as the matter was under investigation by the
MPD, who declined the FBI's assistance.
Pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1746, I declare under penalty of perjury that the foregoing is
true and correct, and that ibits A - E attached hereto are true and correct copies.
Well, guess what? Just as Ty Clevenger anticipated, the relevant emails were in the
Washington Field Office. To make matters worse, some of these emails were sent to FBI
Headquarters. David Hardy either is incompetent or he has lied. There is no middle ground. In
either case, his submission was not true.
Here are the emails (I transcribed them and put them in chronological order to facilitate
your ability to read them and understand what is being communicated).
10:32 am -- Message sent from FBI's Washington Field Office Public Affairs officer to at
least three other Washington Field Office FBI Agents. In addition, there are three other
blacked out areas in the addressee field, which appear to be the names of persons who do not
work at the Washington Field Office.
I hope you are well. I heard from the front office that you are covering for BLANK this
week. Various news outlets are reporting today that Julian Assange suggested during an overseas
interview that DNC Staffer, Seth Rich, was a Wikileaks source and may have been killed because
he leaked the DNC e-mails to his organization, and that Wikileaks is offering $20,000 for
information regarding the death of Seth Rich last month. Based on this news, we anticipate
additional press coverage on this matter. I hear that you are in a class today; however, when
you have a moment can you give me a call to discuss what involvement the FBI has in the
investigation.
12:53 pm -- Message replying to the 10:32 am message, sent from FBI Washington Field Office
with at least four other Washington Field Office FBI Agents addressed on the message. There
also are two other blacked out addresses, which may indicate personnel not in the Washington
Field Office.
Adding BLANK (a name to the addressee list). I am aware of this reporting from earlier this
week, but not any involvement in any related case. BLANKED OUT.
12:54 pm -- Message sent from FBI Washington Field Office with at least four other
Washington Field Office FBI Agents addressed on the message. There also are two other blacked
out addresses, which may indicate personnel not in the Washington Field Office.
Adding BLANK for real. Stupid Samsung. (Apparently the author of this message failed in the
preceding message.)
1:00 pm -- Message replying to the 12:54 pm message, sent from FBI Washington Field Office
with five other Washington Field Office FBI Agents addressed on the message.
Hi. (THE REST OF THE MESSAGE IS BLANKED OUT.)
1:25 pm -- Message replying to the 1:00 pm message, sent from FBI Washington Field Office
with five other Washington Field Office FBI Agents addressed on the message. Plus, two other
BLANKED out addressees not identified.
Thanks BLANK will do.
7:09 pm -- Message from FBI Washington Field Office to Jonathan Moffat and Peter Strzok of
the FBI's Criminal Division and two other BLANKED out addressees.
FYSA (For Your Situational Awareness). I squashed this with BLANK
7:49 pm Text message from Peter Strzok to Lisa Page forwarding her this email chain.
The initial response to the query from the Public Affairs Office of the Washington Field
Office is telling. The Agent could have responded very simply--The FBI was not involved in any
facet of the Seth Rich investigation. This was a local matter handled by the DC Police.
But that is not how the Agent responded. And then he took the step of adding in people at
FBI Headquarters. How do we know this? The message from the Washington Field Office at 7:09 pm
was sent to the Criminal Division to Agents Moffat and Strzok.
Ty Clevenger now has ample ammunition to return to court and insist that the FBI be required
to identify all agents involved in these email chains and to discuss what they knew about the
Seth Rich case. David Hardy declared under the penalty of perjury that there were no such
emails. I doubt that the two judges involved in the relevant cases on this matter will be happy
to learn that the FBI stonewalled a valid FOIA request and a
Stay tuned.
Below is the copy of the email chain. You need to read from bottom to top.
Reblog (0)Comments You can follow this conversation by
subscribing to the
comment feed for this post. I will be shocked if the
judge does anything about it beyond a slap on the wrist an an admonition not to get caught
again.
Strictly it had to be handled by DC police, nevertheless the FBI was made aware of it-- and
should have taken over at that point?--and somewhere up the chronology ladder Peter Strzok got
envolved, not quite the way he should have though, instead he only forwarded the latest mail to
his "interior lover". Suggesting??? Peter Strzok as man in charge my have stopped the FBI from
taking over?
I think it is premature to prejudge the question of how successful the FBI will be in
heading off the attempts of Ty Clevenger and Ed Butowsky to penetrate the wall of silence which
has been erected around the involvement of that organisation in covering up the truth about
Seth Rich's murder, and his involvement in leaking the materials from the DNC published by
'WikiLeaks.'
It is also material here that other parts of the cover-up may be running into trouble.
Further indications that contingency plans to use Steele as a 'patsy' were made early on,
and are now being implemented, come in an extraordinary article published in the latest edition
of the 'Sunday Times' by the paper's Political Editor, Tim Shipman.
Important parts of this were reproduced in a piece by Daniel Chaitin in the 'Washington
Examiner', headlined 'Top British spy report: "Strong possibility' that anti-Trump dossier was
completely fabricated", which links to the original article.
The original is, unfortunately, behind a paywall – but can be obtained if one is
prepared to take the trouble to sign up for the free allowance allowed by the papers.
In fact, much more interesting than the fact that a well-known British writer about spies,
Rupert Allason, aka 'Nigel West', who is clearly a conduit for elements in our security
services, has been brought in in support of the strategy of making Steele the 'patsy', are
paragraphs that make a claim which Chaitin does not appear to notice. These read:
'In November (2016 – DH], the FBI began checking out Steele and his sources. The
inspector- general found that former colleagues described Steele as demonstrating "poor
judgment" by "pursuing people with political risk but no intel value".
'More worryingly, they worked out that most of Steele's information came from a "primary
sub-source", identified by American media as a Belarus-born businessman, Sergei Millian. The
FBI interviewed Millian three times, in January, March and May 2017.
'He told the FBI that he was an unwitting source and much of what he had told Steele was
"just talk", "word of mouth and hearsay" or conversations "had with friends over beers". The
claims about Trump cavorting with prostitutes at the Ritz-Carlton were "rumour and speculation"
or said "in jest". The inspector- general's report says Millian "made statements indicating
that Steele misstated or exaggerated" what he had told him and that his reports were far more
"conclusive" than was justified.'
As it happens, while I have seen Millian referred to as a source for the dossier attributed
to Steele, I have – so far at least – not seen him identified with the supposed
'Primary Sub-source.'
A critical question is whether the 'Sunday Times' is right in claiming that the person whom
the FBI are reported by Inspector-General Horowitz as interviewing in January, March and May
2017, in a version which that figure's report accepts, was in fact Millian.
What Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch have to say in the apologia they published last
November under the title 'Crime in Progress', following their attempt to claim that there was
serious sourcing for the 'golden showers' claim, seems worth bringing into the picture:
'Steele said that one of his collectors was among the finest he had ever worked with, an
individual known to U.S. intelligence and law enforcement. Neither Simpson nor Fritsch was told
the name of this source, nor the source's precise whereabouts, but Steele shared enough about
the person's background and access that they believed the information they planned to pass
along was credible.'
The suggestion seems clear that this was the 'Primary Sub-source.'
Anyone who did the most basic research into Millian would very rapidly realise that the
notion that he could have the kind of 'background and access' making the claims made in the
dossier attributed to Steele 'credible' was laughable.
A rather obvious hypothesis, I think, was that the 'Primary Sub-source' was actually –
to hark back to the title of a book and film about a classic British disinformation operation
– 'The Man Who Never Was.'
The actual truth, I think, is likely to have been well-summarised by Lee Smith in the
opening paragraphs of his review of the Simpson/Fritsch book, which is headlined 'A crime still
in progress':
'Crime in Progress is, inadvertently, the cruelest book ever written about the American
media. Its authors, Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch, are the two former Wall Street Journal
reporters who founded the DC-based consultancy Fusion GPS. In 2016, the Hillary Clinton
campaign paid them to use their former media colleagues to push a conspiracy theory smearing
her Republican opponent, Donald Trump. The crime is still in progress.
'To help top-notch journalists market the fantasy that one of the world's most familiar
faces was a secret Russian spy, Fusion GPS co-ordinated with the FBI to forge a series of
"intelligence reports". They attributed these lurid memos to a down-on-his-luck Brit, a former
spy named Christopher Steele.'
My only reservation about this is that I do not think that Steele was 'down-on-his-luck',
until he found that his partners in the 'crime still in progress' were planning to wriggle out
of their own responsibility by making him the 'patsy', or 'fall guy.'
To give intelligence credibility to a farrago which, as Smith suggests, is likely to have
been cooked up in Fusion GPS, with the assistance of criminal elements in the U.S. law
enforcement and intelligence apparatus, it was helpful to bring in an old confederate of both,
Steele.
(One could also then appeal to that curious snobbery that often makes Americans take
seriously precisely the kind of 'Brit' to whom they should give a very wide berth!)
This, ironically, created a situation where those criminal elements could then suggest that
their only fault was in being credulous about claims made by a British intelligence officer
whom it was suggested past experience gave them reason to trust.
A natural way of developing this strategy would be to find someone like Millian, and use him
to buttress the central claims that the dossier 1. was actually produced by Steele, and 2. that
it had actual sources, rather than being largely fabricated. (As so often, the W.C. Fields
principle applies: 'Never give a sucker an even break.')
It seems clear that Horowitz has been prepared to go along with this strategy, and that a
very large number of 'suckers' among those on the other side of the fence from Simpson and
Fritsch have fallen for it, hook, line and sinker. (It might be invidious to name names.)
The likely reason why all this happened, of course, is that a succession of events –
the discovery that material from the DNC had been leaked and was going to be published by
'WikiLeaks', the identification of Seth Rich as the figure responsible, and then his murder
– produced an urgent need for a cover-up.
Inevitably, given the shortage of time, this was imperfect, and gave hostages to
fortune.
It is clear that Clevenger and Butowsky have, and probably will continue to have,
difficulties in getting judges to follow the evidence where it leads.
However, the former is a first-class 'ferret', and I think it is premature to rule out the
possibility that some of the people who are adjudicating these cases may decide that they do
not want to continue to cover up a 'crime still in progress.'
As it happens, Clevenger has written to John Durham, Richard Donague, and also Michael
Horowitz, announcing that he wishes to file a criminal complaint in relation to the materials
which Larry has discussed.
(An account with relevant links is given in a new post entitled 'We now have unequivocal
proof that the FBI is hiding records about Seth Rich' on Clevenger's 'Lawflog' blog, subtitled
'Because some people just need a good flogging.'
I would strongly recommend anyone seriously interested in seeing the truth about these
matters exposed, and the conspiracy against the Constitution defeated, to sign up for alerts
from Clevenger's blog.
Posted by: David Habakkuk |
29 January 2020 at 12:51 PM In fairness to the FBI, they
didn't say there were no emails, they said they used a search of CRS and that didn't identify
any emails. It isn't clear to me from what was provided in this post whether the search would
have included records from the WFO.
I posted quite a long response to 'Sid Finster', which has gone into spam.
Have been reading both the Simpson/Fritsch apologia, and also the book-length version of
Heidi Blake's attempt at 'escapology' on behalf of 'BuzzFeed.'
Both drive a point home: one simply cannot take on trust anything these people say.
This also includes material like the Bruce Ohr 302s. I know think that these were crafted,
between him, Pientka, Strzok et al, as part of contingency plans to make Steele the 'patsy' if
the attempt to 'escalate' with the conspiracy against the Trump failed.
Posted by: David Habakkuk |
29 January 2020 at 01:00 PM The sorry fact is this: Out
here in places like my town in flyover country, I could mention Seth Rich and no one would have
the slightest idea who he was and why he should get justice--or at least that the truth about
his life and death should be told.
Does he have family fighting for the truth about his death? Are there investigative
reporters on the story?
Posted by: oldman22 |
29 January 2020 at 10:56 PM
Oldman22 -The article states - "Steele, who quit MI6 in 2009, never told his former bosses,
what he was up to."
I believe this judgement would now be revised, if one can trust newspaper articles detailing
an earlier meeting with Sir Richard Dearlove that have since come out.
However, I have a little experience with how these things go down in the real world. I
genuinely hope that this experience will prove misleading.
Posted by: Sid Finster |
30 January 2020 at 10:42 AM The omni-present
Strzok/Page.
The DNC computer hack strikes me as another faux investigation identical in that regard to the
Clinton e-mail investigation - half measures abounding. The question is why? The brief e-mail
exchange between WFO and FBIHQ makes it perfectly clear that if the field investigators had not
already taken an interest on following up on Rich as an obvious lead they certainly should
have. It appears to me that they had not since the initial inquiry came down from the Public
Affairs Office and seems somewhat less than urgent.
My question is why wasn't the FBI all over this obvious lead if they wanted to get to the
actual bottom of the DNC hack?
Putin is nothing if not a pragmatist. A nationalist as well. See where Russia was when he
began his first term as President and where it is now which is even more impressive when
resistance from the US and 'friends' is taken into account.
Being pragmatic doesn't always satisfy everyone. He doesn't have the same political system
as the US and Western Democracies either, so there's that. I think a large part of his appeal
to those who see him objectively is his attempts to be a broker rather than a hot head
reactionary and that would apply to the nasties in Israel. Capt Obvious says Israel isn't a
standalone problem.
Putin and Netanyahu's relationship is too close for comfort.
Posted by: SharonM | Jan 30 2020 13:01 utc | 6
Name one national leader to whom Putin displays a lack of respect?
He's not a big-mouthed AmeriKKKan or a sleazy Pom. It's Russian (and Chinese) policy to keep
the door to the path of diplomacy open at all times.
I'm surprised that everyone is pretending not to notice that Trump hasn't finished helping
the "Israelis" to outsmart themselves. He's made several of their criminally psychotic dreams
come true and they've lapped them up without any apparent reservations about the legal and
moral ramifications.
He'll keep 'giving' them increasingly ridiculous concessions because he's probably as curious
as everyone else to discover if there's a practical limit to the quality and quantity of
asinine bullshit the "Israelis" will believe.
Thank you for the informative article by Sharon Tennison, about Putin.
Those who find it interesting and/or informative will also be interested in this much
earlier, much more detailed article that she wrote six years ago, about her initial and
considerable interactions with him when he was a civil-servant bureaucrat in St Petersbug in
the 90s. http://www.russiaotherpointsofview.com/2014/04/russia-report-putin-.html
I wholeheartedly recommend this linked article (along with the one from Moe, above), and
am sure that anyone reading it will find it informative and a very helpful tool with regard
to understanding Putin's actions in today's world.
Sharon Tennison's rather in-depth account of the Vladimir Putin that she knew and dealt
with when he was a civil-servant bureaucrat in St Petersburg in the 90s will shed a lot of
light on the actions of today's Putin.
The first alteration in the global balance of power enabled by Russia-China cooperation
took place during the 1950s, of course. In that period, the PRC went from being a military
"basket case," with no defense industry to speak of, to possessing a reasonably modern force
within a span of just a decade. That super-energized process was inspired by the hard school
of war against a vastly better-armed opponent in the bloody Korean conflict, as is well
known. But the massive progress in Chinese military capabilities also could not have taken
place without enormous Soviet assistance. With respect to naval-related arms transfers,
Moscow had already given ten torpedo boats and eighty-three aircraft by the beginning of
1953, according to the scholarly journal. The process accelerated during 1953–55 with a
total of eight-one additional vessels transferred (amounting to 27,234 tons) and 148
aircraft. Among these ships were four destroyers, four frigates, and thirteen submarines.
Additionally, the Russians provided the Chinese with more than five hundred torpedoes and
over fifteen hundred sea mines, as well as coastal artillery pieces, radar and communications
equipment. A third batch of naval transfers was comprised of sixty-three vessels and
seventy-eight aircraft. Added to these very substantial allocations, five Chinese shipyards
apparently produced another 116 naval vessels, relying heavily on advisors, designs and
technology purchased from the USSR, during the period up until 1957. Finally, several
transfers agreed to in early 1959 "caused China's Navy to enter into the missile age."
Notably, these transfers included the R-11 , a primitive submarine-launched
ballistic missile (SLBM), and also the P-15 , one of the
earliest anti-ship cruise missiles (ASCM). Yes, these are the earliest progenitors of today's
JL-3 and YJ-12 missiles that now present quite credible threats.
In keeping with the presently jovial mood surrounding current Russia-China relations, very
little is said in this Chinese article regarding the Sino-Soviet conflict that brought the
two Eurasian giants to the brink of war in the late 1960s. The authors imply that the break
was really between the two respective Communist parties, rather than between the two navies,
but it is noted that the Kremlin's stated objective to form a "joint fleet" was viewed in
China as an encroachment on Chinese sovereignty. Nevertheless, this substantial military
cooperation between Moscow and Beijing during the 1950s is evaluated in this Chinese
appraisal to have had "major historical impact
[重要历史作用]." These authors contend that it
"effectively decreased the threat of American imperialism
[有效抵制美帝国主义的军事威胁].
They additionally conclude regarding this period: "The achievements of building up the
Chinese Navy cannot be separated from the assistance of Soviet experts
[中国海军建设的成绩是与苏联专家的帮助分不开的]."
For a long time, "Soviet revisionists" were not given such favorable treatment by Chinese
scholars, but now evidently the "east wind" is blowing once more. If the USSR very
substantially helped boost PRC military prospects during the 1950s, this paper by two Chinese
naval analysts argues cogently that a similarly ambitious and fateful program of Russia-China
military cooperation has had an analogous effect, starting in 1991. When seen in aggregate,
the numbers are indeed quite impressive. Russia has sold China, according to this Chinese
accounting, more than five hundred military aircraft, including Su-27, Su-30, Su-35, and
Il-76 variants. Almost as significant, Russia provided China with more than two hundred
Mi-171 helicopters. Just as these pivotal purchases launched China's air and land forces into
a new era, so the Chinese acquisition of four Sovremeny destroyers, along with twelve
Kilo -class submarines helped to provide the PLA Navy with the technological
wherewithal to enter the twenty-first century on a robust footing. That shortlist here,
moreover, does not even catalog other vital systems transferred, such as advanced air defense
systems, which have formed a bedrock of Chinese purchases from Russia.
Citing a Russian source, these Chinese authors claim that China spent $13 billion on
Russian weapons between 2000–05. That amounts to a decently hefty sum of cash,
especially by rather penurious post-Soviet standards. In fact, this raft of deals was not
only intended to rescue the PLA from obsolescence but simultaneously aimed to "resolve . . .
the survival and development problems [解决 . . .
生存和发展问题]"of the post-Soviet Russian
military-industrial complex too. Just as important as these technical transfers, however,
have been the human capital investments in cooperation. Here, this study points out that two
thousand intermediate and high-level Chinese officers have already graduated from Russian
military academies. The upper ranks of the PLA Navy, in particular, are said to be full of
these graduates, as reported in this study. Perhaps most critically for the future of the
Chinese armed forces, cooperation with Russia has entailed "in particular, promoting the
development of domestic weapons development levels and concepts.
[尤其带动了国内武器研制水平和理念的提升]."
Take, for example, the YJ-18 ASCM, which seems to be superior to any U.S. variants, is a
derivative of the Russian SSN-27 missile and is now becoming pervasive throughout the Chinese
fleet, with both surface and sub-launched variants.
For all the major results on the regional balance of power wrought by these two major
periods of Russian-Chinese security collaboration, however, there are very real reasons to
doubt that such a partnership will truly alter global politics. After all, the Chinese
analysis points out that arms sales from Russia to China have declined substantially from the
peak in 2005. Joint military exercises, moreover, are now quite regular, but they actually do
not seem to exhibit a bellicose trend toward larger and larger demonstrations of military
might. These tendencies may reflect new confidence in Beijing regarding its own abilities to
produce advanced weapons, of course, but also might reflect a certain degree of restraint --
a realization that too close a Russia-China military alignment could provide ample fuel for a
new Cold War that might be in the offing.
Still, American defense analysts must evaluate the possible results of a significantly
closer Russia-China security relationship, whether it is formalized into an actual "alliance"
or not. China and Russia currently have numerous joint development projects underway,
including both a large commercial airliner, as well as a heavy-lift helicopter. In the
future, will cooperative endeavors encompass frigates and VSTOL fighters, or nuclear
submarines and stealth bombers, or even aircraft carriers? Will Moscow and Beijing begin to
launch joint exercises of a large scale that have major strategic implications in highly
sensitive areas? Are third countries, such as Iran, set for "junior associate" status in the
so-called "quasi-alliance? And will China and Russia strive to coordinate strategic
initiatives to bring about common favorable strategic circumstances in the coming
decades?
Such a future is certainly not beyond the realm of possibility. The combination of Russian
weapons design genius with Chinese organizational and production prowess could be formidable,
indeed. That will be another reason for states comprising the West to now exercise restraint,
embrace multi-polarity, and seek to avoid a return to the 1950s "with Chinese
characteristics."
Lyle
J. Goldsteinis Associate Professor at theChina
Maritime Studies Institute(CMSI) at theU.S. Naval War Collegein Newport, RI. The opinions expressed
in this analysis are his own and do not represent the official assessments of the U.S. Navy
or any other agency of the U.S. Government.
Trump doesn't have a thing to fear he's been a huge asset to the security state, whose
Russiagate theatrics provided mainstream media news with just enough bullshit to distract the
public, so that Trump could never be aggressively attacked from the Left. For the last three
years, all the "resistance oxygen" was sucked up by the warmongering against Russia.
Meanwhile, this enabled Trump to successfully pass a slew of reactionary legislation and
fasttrack numerous lifetime appointments to the federal court without barely a whimper from
the phony Dems. In fact, the Democrats unanimously voted for Trump's military budget. The
same idiot they called unhinged was given the power to start WWIII.
No matter how much liberals complain–the wealthy are happy with the status quo and
the right-wing Evangelicals are as pleased as punch. However, there's quite a large number of
disaffected Trump voters looking at Tulsi, but could eventually come Bernie's way.
Especially, if Tulsi endorses Bernie. This discontented bunch includes the working-poor, the
indebted young, and all the folks who are not doing economically well under Trump's fabulous
stock market. It especially includes the military families who were promised an end to the
miserable foreign interventions. Bernie, has some appeal to these folks. His platform
certainly resonates with all those who can barely pay their health insurance
premiums, and whose salary is NOT nearly considered a living wage. But Bernie could win
hands-down and steal Trump's base, if he only had the courage to UNAPOLOGETICALLY speak out
against US imperialism and connect all the dots explaining how the security state plundered
the treasury for decades f–king over the working-class.
Former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn filed a supplemental motion to withdraw his
guilty plea Wednesday citing failure by his previous counsel to advise him of the firm's
'conflict of interest in his case' regarding the Foreign Agents Registration Act form it filed
on his behalf, and by doing so "betrayed Mr. Flynn," stated Sidney Powell, in a defense motion
to the court.
Flynn's case is now in its final phase and his sentencing date, which was scheduled for Jan.
28, in a D.C. federal court before Judge Emmet Sullivan was changed to Feb. 27. The change came
after Powell filed the motion to withdraw his plea just days after the prosecutors made a major
reversal asking for up to six months jail time. The best case scenario for Flynn, is that Judge
Sullivan allows him to withdraw his guilty plea, the sentencing date is thrown-out and then his
case would more than likely would head to trial.
Powell alleged in a motion in December, 2019 that Flynn was strong-armed by the prosecution
into pleading guilty to one count of lying to FBI investigators regarding his conversation with
former Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Others, close to Flynn, have corroborated the
accounts suggesting prosecutors threatened to drag Flynn's son into the investigation, who also
worked with his father at Flynn Intel Group, a security company established by Flynn.
In the recent motion Flynn denounced his admission of guilt in a declaration,
"I am innocent of this crime, and I request to withdraw my guilty plea. After I signed the
plea, the attorneys returned to the room and confirmed that the [special counsel's office]
would no longer be pursuing my son."
He denied that he lied to the FBI during the White House meeting with then FBI Special Agent
Peter Strzok and FBI Special Agent Joe Pientka. The meeting was set up by now fired FBI
Director James Comey and then-Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who was also fired for lying to
Inspector General Michael Horowitz's investigators. Strzok was fired by the FBI for his actions
during the Russia investigation.
Flynn stated:
"When FBI agents came to the White House on January 24, 2017, I did not lie to them. I
believed I was honest with them to the best of my recollection at the time. I still don't
remember if I discussed sanctions on a phone call with Ambassador Kislyak nor do I remember
if we discussed the details of a UN vote on Israel."
Powell Targets Flynn's Former Legal Team
Powell noted in Wednesday's motion that Flynn's former defense team at Covington &
Burling, a well known Washington D.C. law firm, failed to inform Flynn that their lawyers had
made "some initial errors or statements that were misunderstood in the FARA registration
process and filings." She also reaffirmed her position in the motion that government
prosecutors are continuing to withhold exculpatory information that would benefit Flynn.
A spokesperson with Flynn's former law firm Covington & Burling, stated in an email to
SaraACarter.com that "Under the bar rules, we are limited in our ability to respond publicly
even to allegations of this nature, absent the client's consent or a court order."
In Powell's motion, she stated that Covington and Burling was well aware that it had a
'conflict of interest' in representing Flynn after November 1, 2017. She stated in the motion
it was on that day, when Special Counsel prosecutors had notified Covington that "it recognized
Covington's conflict of interest from the FARA registration." Moreover, the government had
asked Covington lawyers to discuss the discrepancy and conflict with Flynn, Powell stated in
the motion.
"Mr. Flynn's former counsel at Covington made some initial errors or statements that were
misunderstood in the FARA registration process and filings, which the SCO amplified, thereby
creating an 'underlying work' conflict of interest between the firm and its client," stated
Powell in the motion.
"Government counsel specified Mr. Flynn's liability for 'false statements' in the FARA
registration, and he told Covington to discuss it with Mr. Flynn," states the motion.
"This etched the conflict in stone. Covington betrayed Mr. Flynn."
Powell included in her motion an email from Flynn's former law firm Covington & Burling
between his former attorney's Steven Anthony and Robert Kelner. The email was regarding the
Special Counsel's then-charges against Paul Manafort, who had been a short term campaign
manager for Trump. Manafort and his partner Rick Gates, were then faced with 'multiple criminal
violations, including FARA violations."
Internal Email From the motion:
In the internal email sent to Kelner, Anthony addresses his concerns after the Manafort
order was unsealed.
I just had a flash of a thought that we should consider, among many many factors with
regard to Bob Kelley, the possibility that the SCO has decided it does not have, [with regard
to] Flynn, the same level of showing of crime fraud exception as it had [with regard to]
Manafort. And that the SCO currently feels stymied in pursuing a Flynn-lied-to-his-lawyers
theory of a FARA violation. So, we should consider the conceivable risk that a disclosure of
the Kelley declaration might break through a wall that the SCO currently considers
impenetrable.
In February, 2017, then Department of Justice official David Laufman had called Flynn's
lawyers to push them to file a FARA, the motion states. In fact, it was a day after Flynn was
fired as the National Security Advisor for Trump. Laufman made the call to the Covington and
Burling office "to pressure them to file the FARA forms immediately," according to the
motion.
Laufman's push for Flynn's FARA seemed peculiar considering, Flynn's company 'Flynn Intel
Group' had filed a Lobbying Registration Act in September, 2016. Former partner to Flynn Bijan
Rafiekian, had been advised at the time by then lawyer Robert Kelly that there was no need for
the firm to file a FARA because it was not dealing directly with a foreign country or foreign
government official, as stated during his trial. In Rafiekian's trial Kelly testified that he
advised the Flynn Intel Group that by law they only needed to file a Lobbying Disclosure Act
and suggested they didn't need to file a FARA when dealing with a foreign company. In this
instance it was Innova BV, a firm based in Holland and owned by the Turkish businessman, Ekim
Alptekin.
Flynn's former Partner's Case Overturned, Powell Cites Case In Motion
In September, 2019, however, in a stunning move Judge Anthony Trenga with the Eastern
District of Virginia Rafiekian's conviction was overturned. Trenga stated in his lengthy
acquittal decision that government prosecutors did not make their case and the "jury was not
adequately instructed as to the role of Michael Flynn in light of the government's in-court
judicial admission that Flynn was not a member of the alleged conspiracy and the lack of
evidence sufficient to establish his participation in any conspiracy "
An important side note, Laufman continually posts anti-Trump tweets and is frequently on CNN
and MSNBC targeting the administration and its policies.
These despicable remarks reflect contempt for democracy and government accountability, and
constitute further evidence of the President's unfitness to lead our great nation. Republican
Members of Congress, stand up and fulfill your oaths. https://t.co/a8BwWkLTkv
Powell said prosecutors reversed course on their decision to not push for jail time for
Flynn in early January because she said, her client "refused to lie for the prosecution" in the
Rafiekian case.
do yourselves a favor and read her brief...Covington and the FBI are EVIL
BASTARDS......god help any of us who find ourselves in the govt crosshairs..I don't give a
rat's *** how much you despise Trump...these bastards in DC would cut your heads off if they
could profit from it.
Worse than that in this case. He had a deal that if he plead guilty they wouldn't go after
his son and they wouldn't recommend prison time for him. He did what they asked. Then they
recommended prison time in the end anyway.
How that isn't legal malpractice, I'm sure I don't know.
He may as well try suing the Queen of England. Federal prosecutors and federal law
enforcement agents have almost complete immunity from civil causes of action arising from the
performance of their duties, even if they acted maliciously, lied, etc. It's good to be the
King (or Queen, or a federal prosecutor). People generally have no idea how badly the deck is
stacked against them if they end up in the cross hairs of these people.
"... the West's equivalent to the former Soviet Union's systematic, and equally pervasive, truth-suppression, to fool the public into thinking that the Government represents them, no matter how much it does not. ..."
"... (The chief trick in this regard is to fool them into thinking that since there is more than one political party, one of them will be "good," even though the fact may actually be that each of the parties represents simply a different faction of a psychopathically evil aristocracy. After all: each party lied and supported invading Iraq in 2003, Libya in 2011, and Syria constantly; and no party acknowledges that the 2014 regime-change in Ukraine was a U.S. coup instead of a domestic Ukrainian democratic revolution. On such important matters, they all lie, and in basically the same ways. These lies are bipartisan, even though most of the other political lies are heavily partisan.) ..."
"... The great then-independent investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald headlined about that interview, at Salon on 18 April 2012, "Attacks on RT and Assange reveal much about the critics: Those who pretend to engage in adversarial journalism will invariably hate those who actually do it." How true that was, and unfortunately still is! And Assange himself is the best example of it. ..."
"... Let's examine the unstated premises at work here. There is apparently a rule that says it's perfectly OK for a journalist to work for a media outlet owned and controlled by a weapons manufacturer (GE/NBC/MSNBC), or by the U.S. and British governments (BBC/Stars & Stripes/Voice of America), or by Rupert Murdoch and Saudi Prince Al-Waleed Bin Talal (Wall St. Journal/Fox News), or by a banking corporation with long-standing ties to right-wing governments (Politico), or by for-profit corporations whose profits depend upon staying in the good graces of the U.S. government ( Kaplan/The Washington Post ), or by loyalists to one of the two major political parties (National Review/TPM/countless others), but it's an intrinsic violation of journalistic integrity to work for a media outlet owned by the Russian government. Where did that rule come from? ..."
"... This is the American gospel, and it is called "capitalism." Oddly, after Russia switched to capitalism in 1991, the American gospel switched instead to pure global conquest -- über -imperialism -- and the American public didn't even blink. So: nowadays, capitalism has come to mean über-imperialism. That's today's American gospel. Adolf Hitler would be smiling, upon today's Amerika. ..."
All of the lies are still being propounded by the U.S. regime and remain fully enforced by suppression of the truth about these
matters.
That's being done in all news-media except a few of the non -mainstream ones.
So: this is about an actual Western samizdat - the West's equivalent to the former Soviet Union's systematic, and equally pervasive,
truth-suppression, to fool the public into thinking that the Government represents them, no matter how much it does not.
(The chief trick in this regard is to fool them into thinking that since there is more than one political party, one of them will
be "good," even though the fact may actually be that each of the parties represents simply a different faction of a psychopathically
evil aristocracy. After all: each party lied and supported invading Iraq in 2003, Libya in 2011, and Syria constantly; and no party
acknowledges that the 2014 regime-change in Ukraine was a U.S. coup instead of a domestic Ukrainian democratic revolution. On such
important matters, they all lie, and in basically the same ways. These lies are bipartisan, even though most of the other political
lies are heavily partisan.)
The U.S.-and-allied regimes' billionaires-owned-and-controlled 'news'-media
condemned Assange for this interview, because it enabled whomever still had an open mind, amongst the Western public, to hear from
one of those billionares' destruction-targets (Nasrallah), and for Assange's doing this on the TV-news network of the main country
that America's billionaires are especially trying to conquer, which is (and since
26 July 1945 has consistently been ) Russia.
The great
then-independent investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald headlined about that interview, at Salon on 18 April 2012,
"Attacks on RT
and Assange reveal much about the critics: Those who pretend to engage in adversarial journalism will invariably hate those who
actually do it." How true that was, and unfortunately still is! And Assange himself is the best example of it. Greenwald wrote:
Let's examine the unstated premises at work here. There is apparently a rule that says it's perfectly OK for a journalist to
work for a media outlet owned and controlled by a weapons manufacturer (GE/NBC/MSNBC), or by the U.S. and British governments
(BBC/Stars & Stripes/Voice of America), or by Rupert Murdoch
and Saudi Prince Al-Waleed Bin Talal (Wall St. Journal/Fox News), or by a banking corporation with
long-standing ties to right-wing governments
(Politico), or by for-profit corporations whose profits depend upon staying in the good graces of the U.S. government (
Kaplan/The Washington Post ), or by loyalists to
one of the two major political parties (National Review/TPM/countless others), but it's an intrinsic violation of journalistic
integrity to work for a media outlet owned by the Russian government. Where did that rule come from?
But from 'temporary' house-arrest there, Assange was allowed asylum by Ecuador's progressive President Rafael Correa on
20 June 2012 , to stay in London's Ecuadoran Embassy, so as not to be seized
by the UK regime to be sent to prison and probable death-without-trial in the U.S. To Correa's shock, it turned out that Correa's
successor, Vice President Lenin Moreno, was actually a U.S. agent, who promptly forced Assange out of the Embassy, into Belmarsh
prison, to die there or else become extradited to die in a U.S. prison, also without trial.
And, for what, then, is Assange being imprisoned, and perhaps murdered? He divulged government secrets that should never even
have been secrets! He raised the blanket of lies, which covers over these actually dictatorial clandestine international operations.
He exposed these evil imperialistic operations, which are hidden behind (and under) that blanket of imperialists' lies. For this,
he is being martyred -- a martyr for democracy, where there is no actual democracy (but only those lies).
Here is an example:
On December 29th, I headlined
"Further Proof: U.S.,
UK, & France Committed War-Crime on 14 April 2018" and reported highlights of the latest Wikileaks document-dumps regarding a
U.S.-UK-French operation to cover-up (via their control over the OPCW) their having committed an international war-crime when they
had fired 105 missiles against Syria on 14 April 2018, which was done allegedly to punish Syria for having perpetrated a gas-attack
in Douma seven days before -- except that there hadn't been any such gas-attack, but the OPCW simply lied and said that there might
have been one, and that the Syrian Government might have done it! That's playing the public for suckers.
Back on 3 November 2019, Fox News bannered
"Fox News Poll: Bipartisan majorities want some U.S. troops to stay in Syria" and reported that when citing ISIS as America's
enemy that must be defeated, 69% of U.S. respondents wanted U.S. troops to stay in Syria. But when did ISIS ever constitute a threat
to U.S. national security? And under what international law is any U.S. soldier, who is inside Syria, anything other than an invader
there? The answer, to both of these questions, is obviously "never" and "none." But if you are an investor in Lockheed Martin, don't
you want Americans to be suckers about both ? And, so, they are . People such as Julian Assange don't want the public anywhere to
be lied-to. Anyone who is in the propaganda-business -- serving companies such as Lockheed Martin -- wants the public to be suckers.
This is the way the free market actually works. It works by lying, and in such a country the Government serves the people who
have the money, and not the people who don't. The people who don't have the money are supposed to be lied-to. And, so, they are.
But this is not democracy.
Democracy, in fact, is impossible if the public are predominantly deceived.
If the public are predominantly deceived, then the people who do the deceiving will be the dictators there. And if a country has
dictators, then it's no democracy. In a totally free market, only the people with the most money will have any freedom at all; everyone
else will be merely their suckers, who are fooled by the professionals at doing that -- lying.
The super-rich enforce their smears, and their other lies, by hiring people to do this.
When Barack Obama said that "The United States is and
remains the one indispensable nation" - so that each other nation is "dispensable" - he was merely exemplifying the view that
only the most powerful is indispensable, and that therefore everyone else is dispensable. Of course, this is the way that he, and
Donald Trump, both have governed in the U.S. And
Americans overwhelmingly endorse
this viewpoint . They're fooled by both parties, because both parties serve only their respective billionaires -- and billionaires
are above the law; they are the law, in America and its allied regimes. That's the way it is.
This is the American gospel, and it is called "capitalism." Oddly, after Russia switched to capitalism in 1991, the American gospel
switched instead to pure global conquest -- über -imperialism -- and the American public didn't even blink. So: nowadays, capitalism
has come to mean über-imperialism. That's today's American gospel. Adolf Hitler would be smiling, upon today's Amerika.
And as far as whistleblowers -- such as Julian Assange, and Edward Snowden, and Chelsea Manning, and other champions of honesty
and of democracy -- are concerned: Americans agree with the billionaires, who detest and destroy such whistleblowers. Champions of
democracy are shunned here, where PR reigns and real journalism is almost non-existent.
Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee and Chairman of the Senate Finance
Committee have formerly requested that Attorney General William Barr declassify four footnotes
in Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz's report on the FBI's FISA abuse
investigation. The letter states that the classified footnotes contradict information in
Horowitz's report that appears to have misled the public.
U.S. Sens. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., and Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, sent the classified letter
Tuesday evening and questioned the contradiction between the footnotes and what was made public
by Horowitz's team regarding the bureau's Crossfire Hurricane investigation.
However, the Senator's did not disclose what section of the December FISA report contradicts
the footnotes in their findings.
The Senator's state in their letter to Barr that certain sections of Horowitz's report on
the FBI are misleading the public.
Part of the classified letter, which was obtained by SaraACarter.com states:
"We have reviewed the findings of the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) with regard to
the FBI's Crossfire Hurricane investigation, and we are deeply concerned about certain
information that remains classified ," the letter states.
"Specifically, we are concerned that certain sections of the public version of the report
are misleading because they are contradicted by relevant and probative classified information
redacted in four footnotes.
This classified information is significant not only because it contradicts key statements
in a section of the report , but also because it provides insight essential for an accurate
evaluation of the entire investigation.
The American people have a right to know what is contained within these four footnotes
and, without that knowledge, they will not have a full picture as to what happened during the
Crossfire Hurricane investigation. "
Johnson and Grassley's office noted that "for maximum public transparency, the senators
wrote a separate unclassified cover letter to describe their request."
Full text of the unclassified letter to Barr below:
I wonder what kind of back room deals are going on right now that got the establishment
working so hard to make sure the people are distracted from?
The impeachment is a giant nothing burger considering democrats lack the votes and any
reasonable person knows that Barr was destined to return a giant nothing burger from the
beginning so there must be something important the establishment wants to keep hidden by
keeping these nothing burgers alive and in our faces.
Didn't NeoCon puppet Trump order Barr to declass the Russia hoax docs?? Then deep
state/CIA Barr and dirty corrupt DOJ turned everything around on Trump, and said Barr was
ordered to determine IF anything needed to be declassified, which means, it will NEVER
HAPPEN!!!
Trump had leverage over the domestic/global swamp when he held the thread of
declassification over their heads, but once he ordered Barr to do it, and Barr turned it
around on him, he lost all of his leverage/power. More here on leverage and
declassification:
.Horowitz discredited himself in an earlier report and Congress testimony when he said
"there was no bias in the FBI's efforts to surveil Trump"
He's a Democrat. Wanna know why some businesses fail? They let 'qualified' but sabotaging
people stay around.
Governments can fail too. Looks like Horowitz has proven once again he's not neutral. I
actually emailed the White House, I believe after he testifyied in that hearing, to get rid
of him. Barr is likewise useless in terms of protecting the government and citizens from the
deep state.
The US government is for the US government. The system protects the system! It does not
matter who it looks like is running it because the system is running the system and the
system is covering for everyone in the system that needs to be protected to protect the
system.
"Today, January 27, 2020, we have a stunning update ==>>
After previously claiming no FBI records could be found related to Seth Rich, emails have
been uncovered. These emails weren't just from anybody. These emails were between FBI
lovebirds Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, the two most corrupt individuals involved in the Russia
Collusion Hoax.
In a set of
emails released by Judicial Watch on January 22, 2020, provided by a FOIA request on
Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, two pages on emails refer to Seth Rich:"
The January 2nd American assassination of Gen. Qassem Soleimani of Iran was an event of
enormous moment.
Gen. Soleimani had been the highest-ranking military figure in his nation of 80 million, and
with a storied career of 30 years, one of the most universally popular and highly regarded.
Most analysts ranked him second in influence only to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's elderly
Supreme Leader, and there were widespread reports that he was being urged to run for the
presidency in the 2021 elections.
The circumstances of his peacetime death were also quite remarkable. His vehicle was
incinerated by the missile of an American Reaper drone near Iraq's Baghdad international
airport just after he had arrived there on a regular commercial flight for peace negotiations
originally suggested by the American government.
Our major media hardly ignored the gravity of this sudden, unexpected killing of so
high-ranking a political and military figure, and gave it enormous attention. A day or so
later, the front page of my morning New York Times was almost entirely filled with
coverage of the event and its implications, along with several inside pages devoted to the same
topic. Later that same week, America's national newspaper of record allocated more than
one-third of all the pages of its front section to the same shocking story.
But even such copious coverage by teams of veteran journalists failed to provide the
incident with its proper context and implications. Last year, the Trump Administration
had declared the Iranian Revolutionary Guard "a terrorist organization," drawing widespread
criticism and even ridicule from national security experts appalled at the notion of
classifying a major branch of Iran's armed forces as "terrorists." Gen. Soleimani was a top
commander in that body, and this apparently provided the legal figleaf for his assassination in
broad daylight while on a diplomatic peace mission.
But consider that Congress has been considering
legislation declaring Russia an official state sponsor of terrorism , and Stephen Cohen,
the eminent Russia scholar, has argued that no foreign leader since the end of World War II has
been so massively demonized by the American media as Russian President Vladimir Putin. For
years, numerous agitated pundits have denounced
Putin as "the new Hitler," and some prominent figures have even called for his
overthrow or death. So we are now only a step or two removed from undertaking a public
campaign to assassinate the leader of a country whose nuclear arsenal could quickly annihilate
the bulk of the American population. Cohen has repeatedly warned that the current danger of
global nuclear war may exceed that which we faced during the days of the 1962 Cuban Missile
Crisis, and can we entirely dismiss such concerns?
Even if we focus solely upon Gen. Solemaini's killing and entirely disregard its dangerous
implications, there seem few modern precedents for the official public assassination of a
top-ranking political figure by the forces of another major country. In groping for past
examples, the only ones that come to mind occurred almost three generations ago during World
War II, when Czech agents assisted by the Allies assassinated Reinhard Heydrich in Prague in
1941 and the US military later shot down the plane of Japanese admiral Isoroku Yamamoto in
1943. But these events occurred in the heat of a brutal global war, and the Allied leadership
hardly portrayed them as official government assassinations. Historian David Irving reveals
that when one of Adolf Hitler's aides suggested that an attempt be made to assassinate Soviet
leaders in that same conflict, the German Fuhrer immediately forbade such practices as obvious
violations of the laws of war.
The 1914 terrorist assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of
Austria-Hungary, was certainly organized by fanatical elements of Serbian Intelligence, but the
Serbian government fiercely denied its own complicity, and no major European power was ever
directly implicated in the plot. The aftermath of the killing soon led to the outbreak of World
War I, and although many millions died in the trenches over the next few years, it would have
been completely unthinkable for one of the major belligerents to consider assassinating the
leadership of another.
A century earlier, the Napoleonic Wars had raged across the entire continent of Europe for
most of a generation, but I don't recall reading of any governmental assassination plots during
that era, let alone in the quite gentlemanly wars of the preceding 18th century when Frederick
the Great and Maria Theresa disputed ownership of the wealthy province of Silesia by military
means. I am hardly a specialist in modern European history, but after the 1648 Peace of
Westphalia ended the Thirty Years War and regularized the rules of warfare, no assassination as
high-profile as that of Gen. Soleimani comes to mind.
The bloody Wars of Religion of previous centuries did see their share of assassination
schemes. For example, I think that Philip II of Spain supposedly encouraged various plots to
assassinate Queen Elizabeth I of England on grounds that she was a murderous heretic, and their
repeated failure helped persuade him to launch the ill-fated Spanish Armada; but being a pious
Catholic, he probably would have balked at using the ruse of peace-negotiations to lure
Elizabeth to her doom. In any event, that was more than four centuries ago, so America has now
placed itself in rather uncharted waters.
Different peoples possess different political traditions, and this may play a major role in
influencing the behavior of the countries they establish. Bolivia and Paraguay were created in
the early 18th century as shards from the decaying Spanish Empire, and according to Wikipedia
they have experienced nearly three dozen successful coups in their history, the bulk of these
prior to 1950, while Mexico has had a half-dozen. By contrast, the U.S. and Canada were founded
as Anglo-Saxon settler colonies, and neither history records even a failed attempt.
During our Revolutionary War, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and our other Founding
Fathers fully recognized that if their effort failed, they would all be hanged by the British
as rebels. However, I have never heard that they feared falling to an assassin's blade, nor
that King George III ever considered such an underhanded means of attack. During the first
century and more of our nation's history, nearly all our presidents and other top political
leaders traced their ancestry back to the British Isles, and political assassinations were
exceptionally rare, with Abraham Lincoln's death being one of the very few that come to
mind.
At the height of the Cold War, our CIA did involve itself in various secret assassination
plots against Cuba's Communist dictator Fidel Castro and other foreign leaders considered
hostile to US interests. But when these facts later came out in the 1970s, they evoked such
enormous outrage from the public and the media, that three consecutive American presidents --
Gerald R.
Ford , Jimmy
Carter , and Ronald Reagan -- issued successive
Executive Orders absolutely prohibiting assassinations by the CIA or any other agent of the US
government.
Although some cynics might claim that these public declarations represented mere
window-dressing, a
March 2018 book review in the New York Times strongly suggests otherwise. Kenneth M.
Pollack spent years as a CIA analyst and National Security Council staffer, then went on to
publish a number of influential books on foreign policy and military strategy over the last two
decades. He had originally joined the CIA in 1988, and opens his review by declaring:
One of the very first things I was taught when I joined the CIA was that we do not conduct
assassinations. It was drilled into new recruits over and over again.
Yet Pollack notes with dismay that over the last quarter-century, these once solid
prohibitions have been steadily eaten away, with the process rapidly accelerating after the
9/11 attacks of 2001. The laws on our books may not have changed, but
Today, it seems that all that is left of this policy is a euphemism.
We don't call them assassinations anymore. Now, they are "targeted killings," most often
performed by drone strike, and they have become America's go-to weapon in the war on
terror.
The Bush Administration had conducted 47 of these assassinations-by-another-name, while his
successor Barack Obama, a constitutional scholar and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, had raised his
own total to 542. Not without justification, Pollack wonders whether assassination has become
"a very effective drug, but [one that] treats only the symptom and so offers no cure."
Thus over the last couple of decades American policy has followed a very disturbing
trajectory in its use of assassination as a tool of foreign policy, first restricting its use
to only the most extreme circumstances, next targeting small numbers of high-profile
"terrorists" hiding in rough terrain, then escalating those same such killings to the many
hundreds. And now under President Trump, the fateful step has been taken of America claiming
the right to assassinate any world leader not to our liking whom we unilaterally declare worthy
of death.
Pollack had made his career as a Clinton Democrat, and is best known for his 2002 book
The Threatening Storm that strongly endorsed President Bush's proposed invasion of Iraq
and was enormously
influential in producing bipartisan support for that ill-fated policy. I have no doubt that
he is a committed supporter of Israel, and he probably falls into a category that I would
loosely describe as "Left Neocon."
But while reviewing a history of Israel's own long use of assassination as a mainstay of its
national security policy, he seems deeply disturbed that America might be following along that
same terrible path. Less than two years later, our sudden assassination of a top Iranian leader
demonstrates that his fears may have been greatly understated.
The book being reviewed was Rise and Kill First by New York Times reporter
Ronen Bergman, a weighty study of the Mossad, Israel's foreign intelligence service, together
with its sister agencies. The author devoted six years of research to the project, which was
based upon a thousand personal interviews and access to some official documents previously
unavailable. As suggested by the title, his primary focus was Israel's long history of
assassinations, and across his 750 pages and thousand-odd source references he recounts the
details of an enormous number of such incidents.
That sort of topic is obviously fraught with controversy, but Bergman's volume carries
glowing cover-blurbs from Pulitzer Prize-winning authors on espionage matters, and the official
cooperation he received is indicated by similar endorsements from both a former Mossad chief
and Ehud Barak, a past Prime Minister of Israel who himself had once led assassination squads.
Over the last couple of decades, former CIA officer Robert Baer has become one of our most
prominent authors in this same field, and he praises the book as "hands down" the best he has
ever read on intelligence, Israel, or the Middle East. The reviews across our elite media were
equally laudatory.
Although I had seen some discussions of the book when it appeared, I only got around to
reading it a few months ago. And while I was deeply impressed by the thorough and meticulous
journalism, I found the pages rather grim and depressing reading, with their endless accounts
of Israeli agents killing their real or perceived enemies, with the operations sometimes
involving kidnappings and brutal torture, or resulting in considerable loss of life to innocent
bystanders. Although the overwhelming majority of the attacks described took place in the
various countries of the Middle East or the occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank
and Gaza, others ranged across the world, including Europe. The narrative history began in the
1920s, decades before the actual creation of the Jewish Israel or its Mossad organization, and
ranged up to the present day.
The sheer quantity of such foreign assassinations was really quite remarkable, with the
knowledgeable reviewer in the New York Times suggesting that the Israeli total over the
last half-century or so seemed far greater than that of any other country. I might even go
farther: if we excluded domestic killings, I wouldn't be surprised if the body-count exceeded
the combined total for that of all other major countries in the world. I think all the lurid
revelations of lethal CIA or KGB Cold War assassination plots that I have seen discussed in
newspaper stories might fit comfortably into just a chapter or two of Bergman's extremely long
book.
What is the canary's purpose in life? Why, to sing, of course - at least from the human's
point-of-view.
What is the canary trap? Why, to catch humans who are singing like canaries.
The latest occult dish served up by Democratic Party spirit cookers in the impeachment
ritual is the release of "bombshell" news leaked to The New York Times late Sunday from a new
book by Mr. Trump's erstwhile National Security Advisor, John Bolton, purporting verbal
evidence of a quid pro quo in the Ukraine aid-for-investigations allegation. Better hold the
premature ejaculations on that one.
The canary trap is a venerable ploy of intelligence tradecraft for flushing out
info-leakers. You send slightly different versions of an info package to suspected leakers in a
leaky agency, and when the info materializes somewhere like The New York Times , you can tell
exactly which canary crooned the melody. In this case, the agency was the White House National
Security Council, the notorious nest of intriguers lately the haunts of impeachment stars Col.
Alexander Vindman and alleged "whistleblower" Eric Ciaramella (on loan from the CIA, and now
back there). Another bird in that nest is Alexander Vindman's twin brother Col. Eugene
(Yevgeny) Vindman, a military lawyer posted as chief ethics counsel for the NSC, of all
things.
The info-package in this case was the manuscript of John Bolton's book, The Room Where It
Happened , relating his brief and tumultuous misadventures in Trumpland, slated for release
March 17. Someone in the White House chain of command ordered a security review of the
manuscript by the NSC -- a curious detail. Why there, of all places, given the recent exploits
of Ciaramella, Vindman & Vindman, Sean Misko, Abigail Grace, current or former NSC
employees now in the service of Adam Schiff's House Intel Committee, which kicked off the
latest mega-distraction from the nation's business? Why not give the manuscript to the Attorney
General's counsel, or some other referee to determine what in the book might qualify as
privileged communication between a president and a top national security advisor?
Well, before you go tripping off on a tear about the suspect loyalties of William Barr,
consider that the chief byproduct of the entire three-year RussiaGate flimflam and all its
subsequent offshoots by the Lawfare Resistance has been to completely undermine Americans'
faith in federal institutions, including the DOJ, the FBI, the CIA. Perhaps what we're seeing
is the convergence of two perfect setups.
Surely Adam Schiff thinks that testimony from John Bolton was his ace-in-the-hole to
corroborate the House's impeachment case. Maybe his staff (of former NSC moles) had a hand in
orchestrating the leaks from the NSC to The New York Times at exactly the right moment -- hours
before Mr. Trump's lawyers would begin to argue the main body of his defense in the Senate, to
produce an orgasmic gotcha . But what if Mr. Trump's lawyers and confidents were ahead of the
scheme and knew exactly when and how Mr. Schiff would call the play?
It's actually inconceivable that that Mr. Trump's team did not know this play was coming. Do
you suppose they didn't know that Mr. Bolton had written a book on contract for Simon &
Schuster, and much more? After all, a president has access to information that even a sedulous
bottom-feeder like Mr. Schiff just doesn't command. Maybe the canary trap is only the prelude
to a booby trap -- and remember, boobies are much larger birds than canaries. Maybe, despite
prior protestations about not calling witnesses, the Bolton ploy will actually be an excuse for
Mr. Trump's defense team to run the switcheroo play and accede to the calling of witnesses.
Perhaps they are not afraid of what Mr. Bolton might have to say in the 'splainin' seat.
Perhaps what he has to say turns out to be, at least, the proverbial nothingburger with mayo
and onion, or, at worst, a perfidious prevarication motivated by ill-will against the employer
who sacked him ignominiously. Perhaps Mr. Trump's lawyers are longing for the chance to haul in
some witnesses of their own, for instance the "whistleblower." It is also inconceivable that
the actual progenitor of this mighty hot mess would not be called to account in the very forum
that his ploy was aimed to convoke.
And from the unmasked "whistleblower," the spectacle would proceed straightaway to Adam
Schiff himself in the witness chair. That will be an elongated moment of personal
self-disfigurement not seen in American history since William Jennings Bryan was left
blubbering in the courtroom at Dayton, Tennessee, 1925, after he spearheaded the malicious
prosecution of John Scopes for teaching evolution in a high school biology class or the moment
of national wonder and nausea in June 1954 when Army Chief Counsel Joseph Welch rose from his
chair and asked witch-hunting Senator Joseph McCarthy, "At long last, have you left no sense of
decency?"
In a deeply imperfect world, California's 28th congressional district has produced a true
marvel: the perfect scoundrel. Adam Schiff has been hurling false accusations and retailing
mendacious narratives for three years. He deserves the most public disgrace that can possibly
be arranged, on nationwide television, with all his many media enablers at CNN and MSNBC having
to call the play-by-play. Then the nation needs to expel him from the House of Representatives.
And then, maybe, the USA can get on with other business.
The controversial dossier served as the pretext for the FBI to start spying on Donald
Trump's campaign members. A 2019 probe into the agency's activities didn't rule that is actions
were inappropriate, but still criticised the FBI over how it handled FISA surveillance
requests. Former Conservative lawmaker Rupert Allason, also known under his alias, Nigel West,
is the author of numerous fiction spy books based on historical research, and has concluded in
a 2017 research paper that the
so-called Steele Dossier was largely made-up by its author, rather than being based on
reliable sources, The Sunday Times reported citing the paper which they obtained. He assembled
the report at the request of a Republican law firm after the Steele Dossier had been published
by the Buzzfeed media outlet.
The former British lawmaker opined that "there is [...] a strong possibility that all
Steele's material has been fabricated" after studying the former MI6 spy's findings and 11
sources he used to draft them.
"From a professional intelligence perspective, the dossier as a whole is profoundly troubling
and cannot be taken at face value", Allason said.
Allason said that he was "frankly stunned" by what he saw in Steele's reports, whom he took
for a respected former intelligence officer. He specifically cast doubt on one of the more
notorious allegations made by Steele – that the Russian government had a compromising
video, dubbed a "pee tape", in order to blackmail Trump.
"The content has such explosive implications that there is an added responsibility on a
reporting officer to be entirely unambiguous as to precisely who has said what, and when,
while explaining the status of each individual", the former lawmaker noted.
Rupert Allason, who is believed to be an expert in identifying pristine intelligence reports
after he wrote an entire book devoted to identifying fake spy stories, reportedly went on to
explain that the authors of made-up papers sometimes confuse themselves and attribute
information to the wrong source. In the document, cited by the Times, Allason pointed out that
Steele attributes too many of his findings about alleged ties between Trump and Russia to a
single source, which appears "unprofessional" to the former lawmaker.
"Source E is credited with access to Ritz-Carlton staff, knowledge of Russian government
involvement with WikiLeaks and the abuse of Russian diplomatic facilities in the United
States. This appears to be an extraordinarily wide area of expertise. The apparent lapses
bear the hallmarks of invention", Allason said.
Findings attributed to Source E in Steele's Dossier on Trump
paved the road to the FBI's notorious probe, which included espionage on the then
presidential candidate's campaign. The FBI later learned that most of information came from a
businessman, Sergei Millian (although it's not clear if he was in fact Source E), who claimed
that info, which he gave to Steele, was "just talk" one conveys "with friends over beers" and
not more than "rumour and speculation" in some cases.
The FBI still failed to notify
the FISA court that it considered its own source of information unreliable when it
requested the prolongation of surveillance over Carter Page, a member of Trump's campaign team.
Such handling of FISA warrants received harsh condemnation from the US justice department's
inspector-general Michael Horowitz, who probed the FBI for misconduct but found no grave
violations or bias against Trump in the process.
The Steele Dossier was initially funded by Trump's GOP opponents, but eventually the
Democratic National Committee and its candidate in 2016 election, Hillary Clinton, became its
main sponsors.
In this issue's correspondence section, Brendan Rittenhouse Green and Austin Long offer up an
alternative way to code nuclear crises in response to Mark S. Bell and Julia Macdonald's article in the February
2019 issue of TNSR. Bell and Macdonald, in turn, offer a response to Green and Long's critique.
In their article in the February 2019 issue of the
Texas National Security Review
, Mark S. Bell and
Julia Macdonald make a cogent argument that all nuclear crises are not created equal.
1
We agree with their basic thesis: There really are different sorts of nuclear crises, which have different risk
and signaling profiles. We also concur that the existence of a variety of political and military dynamics
within nuclear crises implies that we should exercise caution when interpreting the results of cross-sectional
statistical analysis. If crises are not in fact all the same, then quantitative estimates of variable effects
have a murkier meaning.
2
We should not be surprised that, to date, multiple studies have produced different results.
Nevertheless, the article also highlights an alternate hypothesis for nuclear scholarship's inconsistent
findings about crisis outcomes and dynamics: Nuclear crises are intrinsically hard to interpret. The balance of
resolve between adversaries -- one of the most important variables in any crisis -- is influenced by many factors
and is basically impossible to code
ex ante
. The two variables identified as critical by Bell and
Macdonald for determining the shape of a crisis -- the nuclear balance and the controllability of escalation --
are only somewhat more tractable to interpretation. The consequence is that nuclear crises are prone to
ambiguity, with coding challenges and case interpretations often resolved in favor of the analyst's
pre-existing models of the world. In short, nuclear crises suffer from an especially pernicious interdependence
between fact and theory.
3
To the extent that this problem can be ameliorated -- although it cannot be resolved entirely -- the solution
is to employ the best possible conceptual and measurement standards for each key variable. Below we provide
best practices for coding the nuclear balance, with particular focus on Bell and Macdonald's interpretation of
the Cuban Missile Crisis. We argue that, following much of the extant literature, Bell and Macdonald make
interpretive choices that unintentionally truncate the history that underlies their coding of the nuclear
balance in this case. In our view, they incorrectly conclude that the United States had no military incentives
to use nuclear weapons first in 1962.
Below, we analyze their interpretation of the Cuba crisis by examining two indicators that might be used to
establish the nuclear balance: the operational capabilities of both sides and the perceptions of key U.S.
policymakers. We conclude by drawing out some broader implications of the crisis for their conceptual
framework, offering a friendly amendment.
What Were the Operational Capabilities on Both Sides in 1962?
Bell and Macdonald's characterization of the nuclear balance in the Cuban Missile Crisis is a central part
of their argument, as it is their sole empirical example of a crisis that "was not characterized by incentives
for deliberate first nuclear use." They base this assertion on a brief overview of the balance of U.S. and
Soviet strategic forces in 1962, followed by a claim that "[t]he U.S. government did not know where all of the
Soviet warheads were located, and there were concerns that U.S. forces were too inaccurate to successfully
target the Soviet arsenal."
4
Yet, any calculation of the incentives for deliberate first use must be based on the full context of the
military balance. This hinges on the operational capabilities of both sides in the crisis, which includes a
concept of operations of a first strike as well as the ability of both sides to execute nuclear operations. The
available evidence on operational capabilities suggests that a U.S. first strike would have been likely to
eliminate much, if not all, of the Soviet nuclear forces capable of striking the United States, as we summarize
briefly below.
Any concept of operations for a U.S. first strike would have been unlikely to rely solely, or even
primarily, on relatively inaccurate ballistic missiles, as Bell and Macdonald imply. In a sketch of such an
attack drafted by National Security Council staffer Carl Kaysen and Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Harry
Rowen during the Berlin Crisis of 1961, the strike would have been delivered by a U.S. bomber force rather than
with missiles. As Kaysen and Rowen describe, all Soviet nuclear forces of the time were "soft" targets, so U.S.
nuclear bombers would have been more than accurate enough to destroy them. Moreover, a carefully planned bomber
attack could have exploited the limitations of Soviet air defense in detecting low flying aircraft, enabling a
successful surprise attack.
5
Kaysen would retrospectively note that U.S. missiles, which were inaccurate but armed with multi-megaton
warheads, could also have been included in an attack, concluding, "we had a highly confident first strike."
6
Kaysen's confidence was based on his understanding of the relative ability of both sides to conduct nuclear
operations. In terms of targeting intelligence, while the United States may not have known where all Soviet
nuclear warheads were, it had detailed knowledge of the location of Soviet long-range delivery systems. This
intelligence came from a host of sources, including satellite reconnaissance and human sources. U.S.
intelligence also understood the low readiness of Soviet nuclear forces.
7
As Kaysen would later note, "By this time we knew that there were no goddamn missiles to speak of, we knew that
there were only 6 or 7 operational ones and 3 or 4 more in the test sites and so on. As for the Soviet bombers,
they were in a very low state of alert."
8
Of course, Kaysen's assessment of the balance of forces in 1961 might have been overly optimistic or no
longer true a year later during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Yet, other contemporary analysts concurred. Andrew
Marshall, who had access to the closely held targeting intelligence of this period, subsequently described the
Soviet nuclear force, particularly its bombers, as "sitting ducks."
9
James Schlesinger, writing about four months before the crisis, noted, "During the next four or five years,
because of nuclear dominance, the credibility of an American first-strike remains high."
10
The authors of the comprehensive
History of the Strategic Arms Competition
, drawing on a variety of
highly classified U.S. sources, reach a similar conclusion:
[T]he Soviet strategic situation in 1962 might thus have been judged little short of desperate. A
well-timed U.S. first strike, employing then-available ICBM [intercontinental ballistic missile] and SLBM
[submarine-launched ballistic missile] forces as well as bombers, could have seemed threatening to the
survival of most of the Soviet Union's own intercontinental strategic forces. Furthermore, there was the
distinct, if small, probability that such an attack could have denied the Soviet Union the ability to
inflict any significant retaliatory damage upon the United States.
11
The Soviet nuclear-armed submarines of 1962 were likewise vulnerable to U.S. anti-submarine warfare, as they
would have had to approach within a few hundred miles of the U.S. coast to launch their missiles. As early as
1959, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Nathan Twining testified that while "one or two isolated
submarines" might reach the U.S. coast, in general, the United States had high confidence in its anti-submarine
warfare capabilities.
12
The performance of these capabilities during the Cuban Missile Crisis, when multiple Soviet submarines were
detected and some forced to surface, confirms their efficacy, as Bell and Macdonald acknowledge in their
description of an attack on a Soviet submarine during the crisis.
13
How Was the Nuclear Balance Perceived in 1962?
Bell and Macdonald offer three data points for their argument that U.S. policymakers did not perceive
meaningful American nuclear superiority during the Cuban Missile Crisis. First, Secretary of Defense Robert
McNamara and other veterans of the Kennedy administration attested retrospectively that nuclear superiority did
not play an important role in the Cuba crisis.
14
Second, President John F. Kennedy received a Joint Chiefs of Staff briefing on the Single Integrated
Operational Plan (SIOP) -- the U.S plan for strategic nuclear weapons employment -- in 1961, which reported that
Soviet retaliation should be expected under all circumstances, even after an American pre-emptive strike.
15
Third, the president expressed ambivalence about the nuclear balance on the first day of the Cuba crisis.
16
But this evidence is a combination of truncated, biased, and weak. The retrospective testimony of Kennedy
administration alumni is highly dubious. McNamara, National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy, and others were
all highly motivated political actors, speaking two decades after the fact in the context of fierce nuclear
policy debates on which they had taken highly public positions, as Bell and Macdonald acknowledge in a
footnote.
17
The problems with giving much weight to such statements are especially evident given the fact that, as Bell and
Macdonald acknowledge,
18
these very same advisers made remarks during the Cuba crisis that were much more favorably disposed to the idea
of American nuclear superiority.
19
The Joint Chiefs of Staff briefing to Kennedy on SIOP-62 is evidence, contrary to Bell and Macdonald's
interpretation, of American nuclear superiority in 1962. Bell and Macdonald make much of the briefing's caution
that "Under any circumstances -- even a preemptive attack by the US -- it would be expected that some portion of the
Soviet long-range nuclear force would strike the United States."
20
But interpreting this comment as evidence that the United States did not possess "politically meaningful damage
limitation" capabilities makes sense only if one has already decided that the relevant standard for political
meaning is a perfectly disarming strike.
21
Scott Sagan, in commenting on the briefing, underscores that "although the United States could expect to suffer
some unspecified nuclear damage under any condition of war initiation, the Soviet Union would confront
absolutely massive destruction regardless of whether it struck first or retaliated."
22
Crucially, the Joint Chiefs of Staff argued for maintaining a U.S. first-strike capability in a memorandum
to McNamara commenting on his plans for strategic nuclear forces for fiscal years 1964–68. This memorandum,
sent shortly after the crisis, argues that the United States could not, in the future, entirely eliminate
Soviet strategic forces. Yet, the memorandum continues: "The Joint Chiefs of Staff consider that a first-strike
capability is both feasible and desirable, although the degree or level of attainment is a matter of judgment
and depends upon the US reaction to a changing Soviet capability."
23
In short, not only did the Joint Chiefs of Staff conclude the United States had a meaningful first-strike
capability in 1962, they believed such a capability could and should be maintained in the future.
As for Kennedy's personal views, it is important not just to consider isolated quotes during the Cuban
crisis -- after all, he made several comments that point in opposite directions.
24
One has to consider the political context of the Cuban affair writ large: the multi-year contest with the
Soviets over the future of Berlin, and effectively, the NATO alliance. Moreover, Kennedy had deliberately built
Western policy during the Berlin crisis on a foundation of nuclear superiority. NATO planning assumed that
nuclear weapons would ultimately be used, and probably on a massive scale.
25
As Kennedy put it to French President Charles de Gaulle in June of 1961, "the advantage of striking first
with nuclear weapons is so great that if [the] Soviets were to attack even without using such weapons, the U.S.
could not afford to wait to use them." In July, he told the Joint Chiefs of Staff that "he felt the critical
point is to be able to use nuclear weapons at a crucial point before they use them." In January of 1962,
expecting the Berlin Crisis to heat up in the near future, he stressed the importance of operational military
planning, and of thinking "hard about the ways and means of making decisions that might lead to nuclear war."
As he put it at that meeting, "the credibility of our nuclear deterrent is sufficient to hold our present
positions throughout the world" even if American conventional military power "on the ground does not match what
the communists can bring to bear."
26
But the president recognized that this military strength was a wasting asset: The development of Soviet
nuclear forces meant that the window of American nuclear superiority was closing. For this reason, Kennedy
thought it important to bring the Berlin Crisis to a head as soon as possible, while the United States still
possessed an edge. "It might be better to let a confrontation to develop over Berlin now rather than later," he
argued just two weeks before the Cuba crisis. After all, "the military balance was more favorable to us than it
would be later on."
27
Two months after the crisis, his views were little different. Reporting on a presidential trip to Strategic Air
Command during which Kennedy was advised that "the really neat and clean way to get around all these
complexities [about the precise state of the nuclear balance] was to strike first," Bundy "said that of course
the President had not reacted with any such comments, but Bundy's clear implication was that the President felt
that way."
28
Broader Implications
Our argument about the nuclear balance during the Cuban Missile Crisis, if correct, requires some friendly
amendments to Bell and Macdonald's framework for delineating types of nuclear crisis.
Our discussion of the operational capabilities and policymaker perceptions during the Cuba crisis
underscores that Bell and Macdonald's first variable -- "the strength of incentives to use nuclear weapons first
in a crisis"
29
-- probably ought to be unpacked into two separate variables: military incentives for a first strike, and
political bargaining incentives for selective use. After all, whatever the exact nuclear balance was during
1962, the United States was certainly postured for asymmetric escalation. The salience of America's posture is
thrown into especially bold relief once the political context of the crisis is recognized: The Cuban affair was
basically the climax of the superpower confrontation over Berlin, in which American force structure and
planning was built around nuclear escalation. Indeed, this is how policymakers saw the Cuba crisis, where the
fear of Soviet countermoves in Berlin hung as an ever-present cloud over discussions within the Executive
Committee of the National Security Council.
30
According to Bell and Macdonald, either kind of incentive is sufficient to put a case into the "high" risk
category for deliberate use. But in truth, political incentives to use nuclear weapons selectively -- even if
only against military targets -- are ever present. They are just seldom triggered until matters have gone
seriously awry on the battlefield. In short, we believe Bell and Macdonald were right to expend extra effort
looking for military first-strike incentives, which add genuinely different sorts of risk to a crisis. We argue
that operational capabilities and policymaker perceptions in the Cuba crisis show that such incentives are more
common than generally credited.
So, we would build on Bell and Macdonald's central insight that different types of nuclear crisis have
different signaling and risk profiles by modestly amending their framework. We suggest that there are three
types of nuclear crisis: those with political bargaining incentives for selective nuclear use (Type A); those
with risks of both selective use and non-rational uncontrolled escalation (Type B); and those with political
risks, non-rational risks, and military incentives for a nuclear first strike (Type C).
Type A crises essentially collapse Bell and Macdonald's "staircase" and "stability-instability" models, and
are relatively low risk.
31
Any proposed nuclear escalation amounts to a "threat to launch a disastrous war coolly and deliberately in
response to some enemy transgression."
32
Such threats are hard to make credible until military collapse has put a state's entire international position
at stake. Outcomes of Type A crises will be decided solely by the balance of resolve. We disagree with Bell and
Macdonald's argument that the conventional military balance can ever determine the outcome of a nuclear crisis,
since any conventional victory stands only by dint of the losing side's unwillingness to escalate. But the
lower risks of a Type A crisis mean that signals of resolve are harder to send, and must occur through large
and not particularly selective or subtle means -- essentially, larger conventional and nuclear operations.
Type B crises are similar to Bell and Macdonald's "brinksmanship" model.
33
These have a significantly greater risk profile, since they also contain genuine risks of uncontrolled
escalation in addition to political risks. Crisis outcomes remain dependent on the balance of resolve, but
signaling is easier and can be much finer-grained than in Type A crises. The multiple opportunities for
uncontrolled escalation mean that there are simply many more things a state can do at much lower levels of
actual violence to manipulate the level of risk in a crisis. For instance, alerting nuclear forces will often
not mean much in a Type A crisis (at least before the moment of conventional collapse), since there is no way
things can get out of control. But alerting forces in a Type B crisis could set off a chain of events where
states clash due to the interaction between each other's rules of nuclear engagement, incentivize forces
inadvertently threatened by conventional operations to fire, or misperceive each other's actions. Any given
military move will have more political meaning and will also be more dangerous.
Type C crises are similar to Bell and Macdonald's "firestorm" model.
34
These are the riskiest sorts of nuclear crisis, since there are military reasons for escalation as well as
political and non-rational risks. Outcomes will be influenced both by the balance of resolve and the nuclear
balance: either could give states incentives to manipulate risk. Such signals will be the easiest to send, and
the finest-grained of any type of crisis. But because the risk level jumps so much with any given signal, the
time in which states can bargain may be short.
35
In sum, Bell and Macdonald have made an important contribution to the study of nuclear escalation by
delineating different types of crisis with different risk and signaling profiles. We believe they understate
the importance of American nuclear superiority during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and that these coding problems
highlight some conceptual issues with their framework. In the end, though, our amendments appear to us
relatively minor, further underscoring the importance of Bell and Macdonald's research. We hope that they, and
other scholars, will continue to build on these findings.
Brendan R. Green,
Cincinnati, Ohio
Austin Long,
Arlington, Virginia
In Response to a Critique
Mark S. Bell and Julia Macdonald
We thank Brendan Rittenhouse Green and Austin Long for their positive assessment of our work and for
engaging with our argument so constructively.
36
Their contribution represents exactly the sort of productive scholarly debate we were hoping to provoke. As we
stated in our article, we intended our work to be only an initial effort to think through the heterogeneity of
nuclear crises, and we are delighted that Green and Long have taken seriously our suggestion for scholars to
continue to think in more detail about the ways in which nuclear crises differ from one another. Their
arguments are characteristically insightful, offer a range of interesting and important arguments and
suggestions, and have forced us to think harder about a number of aspects of our argument.
In this reply, we briefly lay out the argument we made in our article before responding to Green and Long's
suggestion that we underestimate the incentives to launch a nuclear first-strike during the Cuban Missile
Crisis and their proposal of an alternative typology for understanding nuclear crises.
Our Argument
In our article, we offer a framework for thinking through the heterogeneity of nuclear crises.
37
While the existing literature on such crises assumes that they all follow a certain logic (although there is
disagreement on what that logic is), we identify factors that might lead nuclear crises to differ from one
another in consequential ways. In particular, we argue that two factors -- whether incentives are present for
nuclear first use and the extent to which escalation is controllable by the leaders involved -- lead to
fundamentally different sorts of crises. These two variables generate four possible "ideal type" models of
nuclear crises: "staircase" crises (characterized by high first-use incentives and high controllability),
"brinkmanship" crises (low first-use incentives and low controllability), "stability-instability" crises (low
first-use incentives and high controllability), and "firestorm" crises (high first-use incentives and low
controllability).
Each of these ideal types exhibits distinctive dynamics and offers different answers to important questions,
such as, how likely is nuclear escalation, and how might it occur? How feasible is signaling within a crisis?
What factors determine success? For example, crises exhibiting high incentives for nuclear first use combined
with low crisis controllability -- firestorm crises -- are particularly volatile, and the most dangerous of all
four models in terms of likelihood of nuclear war. These are the crises that statesmen should avoid except
under the direst circumstances or for the highest stakes. By contrast, where incentives for the first use of
nuclear weapons are low and there is high crisis controllability -- the stability-instability model -- the risk
of nuclear use is lowest. When incentives for nuclear first use are low and crisis controllability is also low
-- brinkmanship crises -- or when incentives for first use are high and crisis controllability is also high -- the
staircase model -- there is a moderate risk of nuclear use, although through two quite different processes. For
the brinkmanship model, low levels of crisis controllability combined with few incentives for nuclear first use
mean that escalation to the nuclear level would likely only happen inadvertently and through a process of
uncontrolled, rather than deliberate, escalation. On the other hand, high levels of crisis controllability
combined with high incentives for nuclear first use -- characteristic of the staircase model -- mean that
escalation would more likely occur through a careful, deliberate process.
First-Use Incentives in the Cuban Missile Crisis
First, Green and Long address the extent of incentives for launching a nuclear first strike during the Cuban
Missile Crisis. In short, they argue that there were substantial military incentives for America to strike
first during the crisis and that these were understood and appreciated by American leaders.
38
While space constraints meant that our analysis of the nuclear balance in the Cuban Missile Crisis was
briefer than we would have liked, we certainly agree that the United States possessed nuclear superiority over
the Soviet Union during the crisis.
39
The debate between us and Green and Long is, therefore, primarily over whether the nuclear balance that we
(more or less) agree existed in 1962 was sufficiently lopsided as to offer meaningful incentives for nuclear
first use, and whether it was perceived as such by the leaders involved. In this, we do have somewhat different
interpretations of how much weight to assign to particular pieces of evidence. For example, we believe that the
retrospective assessment of key participants does have evidentiary value, although we acknowledge (as we did in
our article) the biases of such assessments in this case. Given the rapidly shifting nuclear balance, we place
less weight on President John F. Kennedy's statements in years prior to the crisis than on those he made during
the crisis itself,
40
which were more consistently skeptical of the benefits associated with U.S. nuclear superiority at a time when
the stakes were at their highest.
41
We also place somewhat less weight than Green and Long on the 1961 analysis of Carl Kaysen, given doubts about
whether his report had much of an effect on operational planning.
42
And finally, we put less weight on the Joint Chiefs of Staff document from 1962 cited by Green and Long in
support of their argument, given that it acknowledges the U.S. inability to eliminate Soviet strategic nuclear
forces -- thus highlighting the dangers of a U.S. nuclear first strike -- as well as focuses on future force
planning in the aftermath of the crisis.
We would also note that our assessment that U.S. nuclear superiority in the Cuban Missile Crisis did not
obviously translate into politically meaningful incentives for first use is in line with standard
interpretations of this case, including among scholars that Green and Long cite. For Marc Trachtenberg, for
example, "[t]he American ability to 'limit damage' by destroying an enemy's strategic forces did not seem, in
American eyes, to carry much political weight" during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
43
Similarly, the relative lack of incentives for rational first use in the crisis motivated Thomas Schelling's
assessment that only an "unforeseeable and unpredictable" process could have led to nuclear use in the crisis.
44
Regardless of whether participants in the Cuban Missile Crisis understood the advantages (or lack thereof)
associated with nuclear superiority, in some ways, our disagreement with Green and Long is more of a conceptual
one: where to draw the threshold at which a state's level of nuclear superiority (and corresponding ability to
limit retaliatory damage) should be deemed "politically meaningful," i.e., sufficiently lopsided to offer
incentives for first use. This is a topic about which there is certainly room for legitimate disagreement.
"Political relevance" is a tricky concept, which reinforces Green and Long's broader argument that "nuclear
crises are intrinsically hard to interpret" -- a point with which we agree.
45
But Green and Long seem to view
any
ability to limit retaliatory damage as politically meaningful,
since they argue that a nuclear balance that would have likely left a number of American cities destroyed (and
potentially more), even in the aftermath of a U.S. first strike, nonetheless provided strong military
incentives for first use. By contrast, our view is that the threshold should be somewhat higher than this,
though lower than Green and Long's characterization of our position: We do not, in fact, think that the
relevant standard for political meaning "is a perfectly disarming strike."
Part of our motivation in wanting a threshold higher than "any damage limitation capability" is that it
increases the utility of the typology we offer by allowing us to draw the line in such a way that a substantial
number of empirical cases exist on either side of that threshold. Green and Long, by contrast, seem more
satisfied to draw the line in such a way that cases exhibiting very different incentives for first use -- a
crisis with North Korea today compared to the Cuban Missile Crisis, for example -- would both be classified on
the same side of the threshold.
46
Green and Long's approach would ignore the important differences between these cases by treating both crises as
exhibiting strong incentives for nuclear first use. This would be akin to producing a meteorological map that
rarely shows rain because the forecaster judges the relevant threshold to be "catastrophic flooding." There is
nothing fundamentally incorrect about making such a choice, but it is not necessarily the most helpful approach
to shedding light on the empirical variation we observe in the historical record.
An Alternative Typology of Nuclear Crises
Second, Green and Long offer an alternative typology for understanding the heterogeneity of nuclear crises.
Green and Long argue that there are three types of crisis: "those with political bargaining incentives for
selective nuclear use (Type A); those with risks of both selective use and non-rational uncontrolled escalation
(Type B); and those with political risks, non-rational risks, and military incentives for a nuclear first
strike (Type C)." This is an interesting proposal and we have no fundamental objections to their typology.
47
After all, one can categorize the same phenomenon in different ways, and different typologies may be useful for
different purposes. Space constraints inevitably prevent Green and Long from offering a full justification for
their typology, and we would certainly encourage them to offer a more fleshed out articulation of it and its
merits. Their initial discussion of the different types of signals that states can send within different types
of crises is especially productive and goes beyond the relatively simple discussion of the feasibility of
signaling that we included in our article. We offer two critiques that might be helpful as they (and others)
continue to consider the relative merits of these two typologies and build upon them.
First, it is not clear how different their proposed typology is from the one we offer. At times, for
example, Green and Long suggest that their typology simply divides up the same conceptual space we identify
using our two variables, but does so differently. For example, they argue that they are essentially collapsing
two of our quadrants (stability-instability crises and staircase crises) into Type A crises, while Type B
crises are similar to our brinkmanship crises and Type C crises are similar to our firestorm crises. If so,
their typology does not really suggest a fundamentally different understanding of how nuclear crises vary, but
merely of where the most interesting variation occurs within the conceptual space we identify. The key
question, then, in determining the relative merits of the two typologies, is whether there is important
variation between the two categories that Green and Long collapse. We continue to think the distinctions
between stability-instability crises and staircase crises are important. Although both types of crises are
relatively controllable and have limited risk of what Green and Long call "non-rational uncontrolled
escalation," they have very different risks when it comes to nuclear use: lower in stability-instability crises
and higher in staircase crises. The factors that determine success in stability-instability crises -- primarily
the conventional military balance due to the very low risk of nuclear escalation -- do not necessarily determine
success in staircase crises, in which the nuclear balance may matter. As a result, we think that collapsing
these two categories is not necessarily a helpful analytical move.
Second, to the extent that their typology differs from our own, it does so in ways that are not necessarily
helpful in shedding light on the variation across nuclear crises that we observe. In particular, separating
incentives for first use into "political bargaining incentives" and "military incentives" is an intriguing
proposal but we are not yet fully persuaded of its merits. Given that one of Green and Long's goals is to
increase the clarity of the typology we offer, and given that they acknowledge the difficulties of coding the
nuclear balance, demanding even more fine-grained assessments in order to divide incentives for first use into
two separate (but conceptually highly connected) components may be a lot to ask of analysts. Moreover, given
Green and Long's assertion that "political incentives to use nuclear weapons selectively are ever present,"
their argument in fact implies (as mentioned above) that political incentives for first use are
not
a
source of interesting variation within nuclear crises. We disagree with this conclusion substantively, but it
is worth noting that it also has important conceptual implications for Green and Long's typology: It means that
their three types of crises all exhibit political incentives for nuclear first use. If this is the case, then
political incentives for nuclear first use simply fall out of the analysis. In effect, crises without political
incentives for nuclear first use are simply ruled out by definition. This analytic move renders portions of
their argument tautologous. For example, they argue that the conventional balance cannot "ever determine the
outcome of a nuclear crisis," but this is only because they assume that there are always political incentives
to use nuclear weapons first, and thus, "any conventional victory stands only by dint of the losing side's
unwillingness to escalate." More broadly, this approach seems to us at least somewhat epistemologically
problematic. In our view, it is better to be conceptually open to the existence of certain types of crises and
then discover that such crises do not occur empirically, than it is to rule them out by definition and risk
discovering later that such crises have, in fact, taken place.
In sum, while we are not fully persuaded by Green and Long's critiques, we are extremely grateful for their
insightful, thorough, and constructive engagement with our article and look forward to their future work on
these issues. We hope that they, along with other scholars, will continue to explore the ways in which nuclear
crises differ from one another, and the implications of such differences for crisis dynamics.
Mark S. Bell,
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Julia Macdonald,
Denver, Colorado
Endnotes
1
Mark S. Bell and Julia Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises,"
Texas National Security
Review
2, no. 2 (February 2019): 40–64,
http://dx.doi.org/10.26153/tsw/1944
.
2
Bell and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 42, 63.
3
For an excellent treatment of this problem in the international relations context, see Robert Jervis,
Perception and Misperception in International Politics
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1976), 154–72.
4
Bell and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 55.
5
See Memorandum for General Maxwell Taylor from Carl Kaysen, "Strategic Air Planning and Berlin," Sept.
5, 1961, from National Archives, Record Group 218, Records of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB56/BerlinC1.pdf
.
7
Austin Long and Brendan Rittenhouse Green, "Stalking the Secure Second Strike: Intelligence,
Counterforce, and Nuclear Strategy,"
Journal of Strategic Studies
38, no. 1–2 (2015): 44–46,
https://doi.org/10.1080/01402390.2014.958150
.
9
Quoted in Long and Green, "Stalking the Secure Second Strike," 46.
10
James R. Schlesinger, "Some Notes on Deterrence in Western Europe," (Santa Monica, CA: RAND
Corporation, June 30, 1962), 8.
11
Ernest R. May, John D. Steinbruner, and Thomas M. Wolfe,
History of the Strategic Arms
Competition 1945–1972
, v.1 (Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1981), 475.
12
Quoted in Scott Sagan, "SIOP-62: The Nuclear War Plan Briefing to President Kennedy,"
International Security
12, no. 1 (Summer 1987): 34,
https://www.jstor.org/stable/2538916
.
13
Bell and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 56. See also, May, Steinbruner, and Wolfe,
History of the Strategic Arms Competition
, 475; and Owen Coté,
The Third Battle: Innovation in
the US Navy's Silent Cold War Struggle with Soviet Submarines
(Newport, RI: Naval War College, 2003),
42.
14
Bell and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 55, 59.
15
Bell and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 55.
16
Bell and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 55.
24
For example, consider his remark, just after the peak of the crisis, that "My guess is, well,
everybody sort of figures that, in extremis, everybody would use nuclear weapons," before strongly implying
massive U.S. preemption would be preferable to tactical use. See ExComm Meeting, Oct. 29, 1962, in Ernest R.
May and Philip Zelikow, eds.,
The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 657.
25
For excellent accounts of Kennedy's Berlin policy and his views on nuclear superiority, which we draw
upon heavily, see Marc Trachtenberg,
A Constructed Peace: The Making of the European Settlement,
1945-1963
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), chap. 8; Francis J. Gavin,
Nuclear
Statecraft: History and Strategy in America's Atomic Age
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012),
chaps. 2–3.
26
Trachtenberg,
A Constructed Peace
, 292, 293, 294, 295.
28
Legere memorandum for the record of the White House daily staff meeting, Dec. 10, 1962, National
Defense University, Taylor Papers, Chairman's Staff Group December 1962-January 1963; quoted in
FRUS
1961-1963
, Vol. 8, 436.
https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v08/d118
.
29
Bell and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 43.
30
See, e.g., Trachtenberg,
A Constructed Peace
, 353, n. 3.
31
Bell and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 46, 47–49.
32
Thomas C. Schelling,
Arms and Influence
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1966), 97.
33
Bell and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 46, 49.
34
Bell and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 46, 49–50.
36
This work was supported by U.S. Air Force Academy (USAFA) and Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA)
Project on Advanced Systems and Concepts for Countering WMD (PASCC) award FA7000-19-2-0008. The opinions,
findings, views, conclusions or recommendations contained herein are those of the authors and should not be
interpreted as necessarily representing the official policies or endorsements, either expressed or implied,
of USAFA, DTRA or the U.S. Government.
38
One minor correction to Green and Long's argument: The Cuban Missile Crisis is not the "sole
empirical example" in our article of a crisis characterized by a lack of incentives for first use. In the
article we also argue that the 2017 Doklam Crisis between India and China lacked strong incentives for first
use, and we suspect there are plenty more crises of this sort in the historical record. Bell and Macdonald,
"How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 60–61.
39
Bell and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 55.
40
The quote from the crisis that Green and Long cite does not really support their argument. Green and
Long state: "consider [Kennedy's] remark, just after the peak of the crisis, that 'My guess is, well,
everybody sort of figures that, in extremis, everybody would use nuclear weapons,' before strongly implying
massive U.S. preemption would be preferable to tactical use." In fact, consider the full quote: "My guess
is, well, everybody sort of figures that, in extremis, everybody would use nuclear weapons. The decision to
use any kind of a nuclear weapon, even the tactical ones, presents such a risk of it getting out of control
so quickly." Kennedy then trails off but "appears to agree" with an unidentified participant who states,
"But Cuba's so small compared to the world." This suggests that Kennedy was expressing deep skepticism of
any sort of nuclear use remaining limited, as well as doubts about the merits of taking such risks over
Cuba, rather than making any sort of clear comparison between the merits of tactical use and massive
pre-emption as Green and Long suggest. Ernest R. May and Philip Zelikow, eds.,
The Kennedy Tapes: Inside
the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 657.
41
For a recent analysis of Kennedy's behavior during the Cuban Missile Crisis that concludes that he
was deeply skeptical of the benefits of nuclear superiority during the crisis, see James Cameron,
The
Double Game: The Demise of America's First Missile Defense System and the Rise of Strategic Arms Limitation
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 29–37.
42
For example, see Francis Gavin's assessment that "little was done with" Kaysen's plan, a claim which
echoes Marc Trachtenberg's earlier assessment that "it is hard to tell, however, what effect [Kaysen's
analysis] had, and in particular whether, by the end of the year, the Air Force was prepared in operational
terms to launch an attack of this sort." Francis J. Gavin,
Nuclear Statecraft: History and Strategy in
America's Atomic Age
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012), 38; Marc Trachtenberg,
History
and Strategy
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), 225.
43
Marc Trachtenberg, "The Influence of Nuclear Weapons in the Cuban Missile Crisis,"
International
Security
10, no. 1 (Summer 1985), 162,
http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2538793
.
44
Thomas C. Schelling,
Arms and Influence
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1966), 97.
45
Indeed, at the risk of adding even more complexity, the relevant threshold likely varies with the
stakes of the crisis: Leaders are likely to view lesser damage limitation capabilities as politically
relevant when the stakes are higher than they are when the stakes involved are lower.
46
For discussion of the North Korean case, see Bell and Macdonald, "Toward Deterrence," and Bell and
Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 61–62.
Azita Raji
Former ambassador to Sweden, Azita Raji, proposes a way forward for a renewed and sustainable American
foreign policy. This would require a re-examination of America's interests, institutional reforms, and a
revival of American ideals. To wit: reflection,
Top
Hello
From Texas!
In Response to "How to Think About Nuclear Crises"
Brendan Rittenhouse Green and Austin Long
In their article in the February 2019 issue of the
Texas National
Security Review
, Mark S. Bell and Julia Macdonald make a cogent argument that all nuclear crises are not created equal.
[1]
We agree with their basic thesis: There really are different sorts of nuclear crises, which have different risk and
signaling profiles. We also concur that the existence of a variety of political and military dynamics within nuclear crises
implies that we should exercise caution when interpreting the results of cross-sectional statistical analysis. If crises are
not in fact all the same, then quantitative estimates of variable effects have a murkier meaning.
[2]
We should not be surprised that, to date, multiple studies have produced different results. Nevertheless, the article also
highlights an alternate hypothesis for nuclear scholarship's inconsistent findings about crisis outcomes and dynamics:
Nuclear crises are intrinsically hard to interpret. The balance of resolve between adversaries -- one of the most important
variables in any crisis -- is influenced by many factors and is basically impossible to code
ex ante
. The two
variables identified as critical by Bell and Macdonald for determining the shape of a crisis -- the nuclear balance and the
controllability of escalation -- are only somewhat more tractable to interpretation. The consequence is that nuclear crises
are prone to ambiguity, with coding challenges and case interpretations often resolved in favor of the analyst's
pre-existing models of the world. In short, nuclear crises suffer from an especially pernicious interdependence between fact
and theory.
[3]
To the extent that this problem can be ameliorated -- although it cannot be resolved entirely -- the solution is to employ the
best possible conceptual and measurement standards for each key variable. Below we provide best practices for coding the
nuclear balance, with particular focus on Bell and Macdonald's interpretation of the Cuban Missile Crisis. We argue that,
following much of the extant literature, Bell and Macdonald make interpretive choices that unintentionally truncate the
history that underlies their coding of the nuclear balance in this case. In our view, they incorrectly conclude that the
United States had no military incentives to use nuclear weapons first in 1962. Below, we analyze their interpretation of the
Cuba crisis by examining two indicators that might be used to establish the nuclear balance: the operational capabilities of
both sides and the perceptions of key U.S. policymakers. We conclude by drawing out some broader implications of the crisis
for their conceptual framework, offering a friendly amendment.
What Were the Operational Capabilities on Both Sides
in 1962?
Bell and Macdonald's characterization of the nuclear balance in the Cuban Missile Crisis is a central part
of their argument, as it is their sole empirical example of a crisis that "was not characterized by incentives for
deliberate first nuclear use." They base this assertion on a brief overview of the balance of U.S. and Soviet strategic
forces in 1962, followed by a claim that "[t]he U.S. government did not know where all of the Soviet warheads were located,
and there were concerns that U.S. forces were too inaccurate to successfully target the Soviet arsenal."
[4]
Yet, any calculation of the incentives for deliberate first use must be based on the full context of the military balance.
This hinges on the operational capabilities of both sides in the crisis, which includes a concept of operations of a first
strike as well as the ability of both sides to execute nuclear operations. The available evidence on operational
capabilities suggests that a U.S. first strike would have been likely to eliminate much, if not all, of the Soviet nuclear
forces capable of striking the United States, as we summarize briefly below. Any concept of operations for a U.S. first
strike would have been unlikely to rely solely, or even primarily, on relatively inaccurate ballistic missiles, as Bell and
Macdonald imply. In a sketch of such an attack drafted by National Security Council staffer Carl Kaysen and Deputy Assistant
Secretary of Defense Harry Rowen during the Berlin Crisis of 1961, the strike would have been delivered by a U.S. bomber
force rather than with missiles. As Kaysen and Rowen describe, all Soviet nuclear forces of the time were "soft" targets, so
U.S. nuclear bombers would have been more than accurate enough to destroy them. Moreover, a carefully planned bomber attack
could have exploited the limitations of Soviet air defense in detecting low flying aircraft, enabling a successful surprise
attack.
[5]
Kaysen would retrospectively note that U.S. missiles, which were inaccurate but armed with multi-megaton warheads, could
also have been included in an attack, concluding, "we had a highly confident first strike."
[6]
Kaysen's confidence was based on his understanding of the relative ability of both sides to conduct nuclear operations. In
terms of targeting intelligence, while the United States may not have known where all Soviet nuclear warheads were, it had
detailed knowledge of the location of Soviet long-range delivery systems. This intelligence came from a host of sources,
including satellite reconnaissance and human sources. U.S. intelligence also understood the low readiness of Soviet nuclear
forces.
[7]
As Kaysen would later note, "By this time we knew that there were no goddamn missiles to speak of, we knew that there were
only 6 or 7 operational ones and 3 or 4 more in the test sites and so on. As for the Soviet bombers, they were in a very low
state of alert."
[8]
Of course, Kaysen's assessment of the balance of forces in 1961 might have been overly optimistic or no longer true a year
later during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Yet, other contemporary analysts concurred. Andrew Marshall, who had access to the
closely held targeting intelligence of this period, subsequently described the Soviet nuclear force, particularly its
bombers, as "sitting ducks."
[9]
James Schlesinger, writing about four months before the crisis, noted, "During the next four or five years, because of
nuclear dominance, the credibility of an American first-strike remains high."
[10]
The authors of the comprehensive
History of the Strategic Arms Competition
, drawing on a variety of highly
classified U.S. sources, reach a similar conclusion:
[T]he Soviet strategic situation in 1962 might thus have been judged little short of desperate. A well-timed U.S. first
strike, employing then-available ICBM [intercontinental ballistic missile] and SLBM [submarine-launched ballistic
missile] forces as well as bombers, could have seemed threatening to the survival of most of the Soviet Union's own
intercontinental strategic forces. Furthermore, there was the distinct, if small, probability that such an attack could
have denied the Soviet Union the ability to inflict any significant retaliatory damage upon the United States.
[11]
The Soviet nuclear-armed submarines of 1962 were likewise vulnerable to U.S. anti-submarine warfare, as they would have had
to approach within a few hundred miles of the U.S. coast to launch their missiles. As early as 1959, Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff Gen. Nathan Twining testified that while "one or two isolated submarines" might reach the U.S. coast, in
general, the United States had high confidence in its anti-submarine warfare capabilities.
[12]
The performance of these capabilities during the Cuban Missile Crisis, when multiple Soviet submarines were detected and
some forced to surface, confirms their efficacy, as Bell and Macdonald acknowledge in their description of an attack on a
Soviet submarine during the crisis.
[13]
How Was the Nuclear Balance Perceived in 1962?
Bell and Macdonald offer three data points for their
argument that U.S. policymakers did not perceive meaningful American nuclear superiority during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
First, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and other veterans of the Kennedy administration attested retrospectively that
nuclear superiority did not play an important role in the Cuba crisis.
[14]
Second, President John F. Kennedy received a Joint Chiefs of Staff briefing on the Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP)
-- the U.S plan for strategic nuclear weapons employment -- in 1961, which reported that Soviet retaliation should be expected
under all circumstances, even after an American pre-emptive strike.
[15]
Third, the president expressed ambivalence about the nuclear balance on the first day of the Cuba crisis.
[16]
But this evidence is a combination of truncated, biased, and weak. The retrospective testimony of Kennedy administration
alumni is highly dubious. McNamara, National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy, and others were all highly motivated political
actors, speaking two decades after the fact in the context of fierce nuclear policy debates on which they had taken highly
public positions, as Bell and Macdonald acknowledge in a footnote.
[17]
The problems with giving much weight to such statements are especially evident given the fact that, as Bell and Macdonald
acknowledge,
[18]
these very same advisers made remarks during the Cuba crisis that were much more favorably disposed to the idea of American
nuclear superiority.
[19]
The Joint Chiefs of Staff briefing to Kennedy on SIOP-62 is evidence, contrary to Bell and Macdonald's interpretation, of
American nuclear superiority in 1962. Bell and Macdonald make much of the briefing's caution that "Under any
circumstances -- even a preemptive attack by the US -- it would be expected that some portion of the Soviet long-range nuclear
force would strike the United States."
[20]
But interpreting this comment as evidence that the United States did not possess "politically meaningful damage limitation"
capabilities makes sense only if one has already decided that the relevant standard for political meaning is a perfectly
disarming strike.
[21]
Scott Sagan, in commenting on the briefing, underscores that "although the United States could expect to suffer some
unspecified nuclear damage under any condition of war initiation, the Soviet Union would confront absolutely massive
destruction regardless of whether it struck first or retaliated."
[22]
Crucially, the Joint Chiefs of Staff argued for maintaining a U.S. first-strike capability in a memorandum to McNamara
commenting on his plans for strategic nuclear forces for fiscal years 1964–68. This memorandum, sent shortly after the
crisis, argues that the United States could not, in the future, entirely eliminate Soviet strategic forces. Yet, the
memorandum continues: "The Joint Chiefs of Staff consider that a first-strike capability is both feasible and desirable,
although the degree or level of attainment is a matter of judgment and depends upon the US reaction to a changing Soviet
capability."
[23]
In short, not only did the Joint Chiefs of Staff conclude the United States had a meaningful first-strike capability in
1962, they believed such a capability could and should be maintained in the future. As for Kennedy's personal views, it is
important not just to consider isolated quotes during the Cuban crisis -- after all, he made several comments that point in
opposite directions.
[24]
One has to consider the political context of the Cuban affair writ large: the multi-year contest with the Soviets over the
future of Berlin, and effectively, the NATO alliance. Moreover, Kennedy had deliberately built Western policy during the
Berlin crisis on a foundation of nuclear superiority. NATO planning assumed that nuclear weapons would ultimately be used,
and probably on a massive scale.
[25]
As Kennedy put it to French President Charles de Gaulle in June of 1961, "the advantage of striking first with nuclear
weapons is so great that if [the] Soviets were to attack even without using such weapons, the U.S. could not afford to wait
to use them." In July, he told the Joint Chiefs of Staff that "he felt the critical point is to be able to use nuclear
weapons at a crucial point before they use them." In January of 1962, expecting the Berlin Crisis to heat up in the near
future, he stressed the importance of operational military planning, and of thinking "hard about the ways and means of
making decisions that might lead to nuclear war." As he put it at that meeting, "the credibility of our nuclear deterrent is
sufficient to hold our present positions throughout the world" even if American conventional military power "on the ground
does not match what the communists can bring to bear."
[26]
But the president recognized that this military strength was a wasting asset: The development of Soviet nuclear forces meant
that the window of American nuclear superiority was closing. For this reason, Kennedy thought it important to bring the
Berlin Crisis to a head as soon as possible, while the United States still possessed an edge. "It might be better to let a
confrontation to develop over Berlin now rather than later," he argued just two weeks before the Cuba crisis. After all,
"the military balance was more favorable to us than it would be later on."
[27]
Two months after the crisis, his views were little different. Reporting on a presidential trip to Strategic Air Command
during which Kennedy was advised that "the really neat and clean way to get around all these complexities [about the precise
state of the nuclear balance] was to strike first," Bundy "said that of course the President had not reacted with any such
comments, but Bundy's clear implication was that the President felt that way."
[28]
Broader Implications
Our argument about the nuclear balance during the Cuban Missile Crisis, if correct,
requires some friendly amendments to Bell and Macdonald's framework for delineating types of nuclear crisis. Our discussion
of the operational capabilities and policymaker perceptions during the Cuba crisis underscores that Bell and Macdonald's
first variable -- "the strength of incentives to use nuclear weapons first in a crisis"
[29]
-- probably ought to be unpacked into two separate variables: military incentives for a first strike, and political
bargaining incentives for selective use. After all, whatever the exact nuclear balance was during 1962, the United States
was certainly postured for asymmetric escalation. The salience of America's posture is thrown into especially bold relief
once the political context of the crisis is recognized: The Cuban affair was basically the climax of the superpower
confrontation over Berlin, in which American force structure and planning was built around nuclear escalation. Indeed, this
is how policymakers saw the Cuba crisis, where the fear of Soviet countermoves in Berlin hung as an ever-present cloud over
discussions within the Executive Committee of the National Security Council.
[30]
According to Bell and Macdonald, either kind of incentive is sufficient to put a case into the "high" risk category for
deliberate use. But in truth, political incentives to use nuclear weapons selectively -- even if only against military
targets -- are ever present. They are just seldom triggered until matters have gone seriously awry on the battlefield. In
short, we believe Bell and Macdonald were right to expend extra effort looking for military first-strike incentives, which
add genuinely different sorts of risk to a crisis. We argue that operational capabilities and policymaker perceptions in the
Cuba crisis show that such incentives are more common than generally credited. So, we would build on Bell and Macdonald's
central insight that different types of nuclear crisis have different signaling and risk profiles by modestly amending their
framework. We suggest that there are three types of nuclear crisis: those with political bargaining incentives for selective
nuclear use (Type A); those with risks of both selective use and non-rational uncontrolled escalation (Type B); and those
with political risks, non-rational risks, and military incentives for a nuclear first strike (Type C). Type A crises
essentially collapse Bell and Macdonald's "staircase" and "stability-instability" models, and are relatively low risk.
[31]
Any proposed nuclear escalation amounts to a "threat to launch a disastrous war coolly and deliberately in response to some
enemy transgression."
[32]
Such threats are hard to make credible until military collapse has put a state's entire international position at stake.
Outcomes of Type A crises will be decided solely by the balance of resolve. We disagree with Bell and Macdonald's argument
that the conventional military balance can ever determine the outcome of a nuclear crisis, since any conventional victory
stands only by dint of the losing side's unwillingness to escalate. But the lower risks of a Type A crisis mean that signals
of resolve are harder to send, and must occur through large and not particularly selective or subtle means -- essentially,
larger conventional and nuclear operations. Type B crises are similar to Bell and Macdonald's "brinksmanship" model.
[33]
These have a significantly greater risk profile, since they also contain genuine risks of uncontrolled escalation in
addition to political risks. Crisis outcomes remain dependent on the balance of resolve, but signaling is easier and can be
much finer-grained than in Type A crises. The multiple opportunities for uncontrolled escalation mean that there are simply
many more things a state can do at much lower levels of actual violence to manipulate the level of risk in a crisis. For
instance, alerting nuclear forces will often not mean much in a Type A crisis (at least before the moment of conventional
collapse), since there is no way things can get out of control. But alerting forces in a Type B crisis could set off a chain
of events where states clash due to the interaction between each other's rules of nuclear engagement, incentivize forces
inadvertently threatened by conventional operations to fire, or misperceive each other's actions. Any given military move
will have more political meaning and will also be more dangerous. Type C crises are similar to Bell and Macdonald's
"firestorm" model.
[34]
These are the riskiest sorts of nuclear crisis, since there are military reasons for escalation as well as political and
non-rational risks. Outcomes will be influenced both by the balance of resolve and the nuclear balance: either could give
states incentives to manipulate risk. Such signals will be the easiest to send, and the finest-grained of any type of
crisis. But because the risk level jumps so much with any given signal, the time in which states can bargain may be short.
[35]
In sum, Bell and Macdonald have made an important contribution to the study of nuclear escalation by delineating different
types of crisis with different risk and signaling profiles. We believe they understate the importance of American nuclear
superiority during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and that these coding problems highlight some conceptual issues with their
framework. In the end, though, our amendments appear to us relatively minor, further underscoring the importance of Bell and
Macdonald's research. We hope that they, and other scholars, will continue to build on these findings. Brendan R. Green,
Cincinnati, Ohio
Austin Long,
Arlington, Virginia
In Response to a Critique
Mark S. Bell and Julia Macdonald
We thank Brendan Rittenhouse Green and Austin Long for their positive assessment
of our work and for engaging with our argument so constructively.
[36]
Their contribution represents exactly the sort of productive scholarly debate we were hoping to provoke. As we stated in our
article, we intended our work to be only an initial effort to think through the heterogeneity of nuclear crises, and we are
delighted that Green and Long have taken seriously our suggestion for scholars to continue to think in more detail about the
ways in which nuclear crises differ from one another. Their arguments are characteristically insightful, offer a range of
interesting and important arguments and suggestions, and have forced us to think harder about a number of aspects of our
argument. In this reply, we briefly lay out the argument we made in our article before responding to Green and Long's
suggestion that we underestimate the incentives to launch a nuclear first-strike during the Cuban Missile Crisis and their
proposal of an alternative typology for understanding nuclear crises.
Our Argument
In our article, we offer
a framework for thinking through the heterogeneity of nuclear crises.
[37]
While the existing literature on such crises assumes that they all follow a certain logic (although there is disagreement on
what that logic is), we identify factors that might lead nuclear crises to differ from one another in consequential ways. In
particular, we argue that two factors -- whether incentives are present for nuclear first use and the extent to which
escalation is controllable by the leaders involved -- lead to fundamentally different sorts of crises. These two variables
generate four possible "ideal type" models of nuclear crises: "staircase" crises (characterized by high first-use incentives
and high controllability), "brinkmanship" crises (low first-use incentives and low controllability), "stability-instability"
crises (low first-use incentives and high controllability), and "firestorm" crises (high first-use incentives and low
controllability). Each of these ideal types exhibits distinctive dynamics and offers different answers to important
questions, such as, how likely is nuclear escalation, and how might it occur? How feasible is signaling within a crisis?
What factors determine success? For example, crises exhibiting high incentives for nuclear first use combined with low
crisis controllability -- firestorm crises -- are particularly volatile, and the most dangerous of all four models in terms of
likelihood of nuclear war. These are the crises that statesmen should avoid except under the direst circumstances or for the
highest stakes. By contrast, where incentives for the first use of nuclear weapons are low and there is high crisis
controllability -- the stability-instability model -- the risk of nuclear use is lowest. When incentives for nuclear first use
are low and crisis controllability is also low -- brinkmanship crises -- or when incentives for first use are high and crisis
controllability is also high -- the staircase model -- there is a moderate risk of nuclear use, although through two quite
different processes. For the brinkmanship model, low levels of crisis controllability combined with few incentives for
nuclear first use mean that escalation to the nuclear level would likely only happen inadvertently and through a process of
uncontrolled, rather than deliberate, escalation. On the other hand, high levels of crisis controllability combined with
high incentives for nuclear first use -- characteristic of the staircase model -- mean that escalation would more likely occur
through a careful, deliberate process.
First-Use Incentives in the Cuban Missile Crisis
First, Green and
Long address the extent of incentives for launching a nuclear first strike during the Cuban Missile Crisis. In short, they
argue that there were substantial military incentives for America to strike first during the crisis and that these were
understood and appreciated by American leaders.
[38]
While space constraints meant that our analysis of the nuclear balance in the Cuban Missile Crisis was briefer than we would
have liked, we certainly agree that the United States possessed nuclear superiority over the Soviet Union during the crisis.
[39]
The debate between us and Green and Long is, therefore, primarily over whether the nuclear balance that we (more or less)
agree existed in 1962 was sufficiently lopsided as to offer meaningful incentives for nuclear first use, and whether it was
perceived as such by the leaders involved. In this, we do have somewhat different interpretations of how much weight to
assign to particular pieces of evidence. For example, we believe that the retrospective assessment of key participants does
have evidentiary value, although we acknowledge (as we did in our article) the biases of such assessments in this case.
Given the rapidly shifting nuclear balance, we place less weight on President John F. Kennedy's statements in years prior to
the crisis than on those he made during the crisis itself,
[40]
which were more consistently skeptical of the benefits associated with U.S. nuclear superiority at a time when the stakes
were at their highest.
[41]
We also place somewhat less weight than Green and Long on the 1961 analysis of Carl Kaysen, given doubts about whether his
report had much of an effect on operational planning.
[42]
And finally, we put less weight on the Joint Chiefs of Staff document from 1962 cited by Green and Long in support of their
argument, given that it acknowledges the U.S. inability to eliminate Soviet strategic nuclear forces -- thus highlighting the
dangers of a U.S. nuclear first strike -- as well as focuses on future force planning in the aftermath of the crisis. We
would also note that our assessment that U.S. nuclear superiority in the Cuban Missile Crisis did not obviously translate
into politically meaningful incentives for first use is in line with standard interpretations of this case, including among
scholars that Green and Long cite. For Marc Trachtenberg, for example, "[t]he American ability to 'limit damage' by
destroying an enemy's strategic forces did not seem, in American eyes, to carry much political weight" during the Cuban
Missile Crisis.
[43]
Similarly, the relative lack of incentives for rational first use in the crisis motivated Thomas Schelling's assessment that
only an "unforeseeable and unpredictable" process could have led to nuclear use in the crisis.
[44]
Regardless of whether participants in the Cuban Missile Crisis understood the advantages (or lack thereof) associated with
nuclear superiority, in some ways, our disagreement with Green and Long is more of a conceptual one: where to draw the
threshold at which a state's level of nuclear superiority (and corresponding ability to limit retaliatory damage) should be
deemed "politically meaningful," i.e., sufficiently lopsided to offer incentives for first use. This is a topic about which
there is certainly room for legitimate disagreement. "Political relevance" is a tricky concept, which reinforces Green and
Long's broader argument that "nuclear crises are intrinsically hard to interpret" -- a point with which we agree.
[45]
But Green and Long seem to view
any
ability to limit retaliatory damage as politically meaningful, since they argue
that a nuclear balance that would have likely left a number of American cities destroyed (and potentially more), even in the
aftermath of a U.S. first strike, nonetheless provided strong military incentives for first use. By contrast, our view is
that the threshold should be somewhat higher than this, though lower than Green and Long's characterization of our position:
We do not, in fact, think that the relevant standard for political meaning "is a perfectly disarming strike." Part of our
motivation in wanting a threshold higher than "any damage limitation capability" is that it increases the utility of the
typology we offer by allowing us to draw the line in such a way that a substantial number of empirical cases exist on either
side of that threshold. Green and Long, by contrast, seem more satisfied to draw the line in such a way that cases
exhibiting very different incentives for first use -- a crisis with North Korea today compared to the Cuban Missile Crisis,
for example -- would both be classified on the same side of the threshold.
[46]
Green and Long's approach would ignore the important differences between these cases by treating both crises as exhibiting
strong incentives for nuclear first use. This would be akin to producing a meteorological map that rarely shows rain because
the forecaster judges the relevant threshold to be "catastrophic flooding." There is nothing fundamentally incorrect about
making such a choice, but it is not necessarily the most helpful approach to shedding light on the empirical variation we
observe in the historical record.
An Alternative Typology of Nuclear Crises
Second, Green and Long offer an
alternative typology for understanding the heterogeneity of nuclear crises. Green and Long argue that there are three types
of crisis: "those with political bargaining incentives for selective nuclear use (Type A); those with risks of both
selective use and non-rational uncontrolled escalation (Type B); and those with political risks, non-rational risks, and
military incentives for a nuclear first strike (Type C)." This is an interesting proposal and we have no fundamental
objections to their typology.
[47]
After all, one can categorize the same phenomenon in different ways, and different typologies may be useful for different
purposes. Space constraints inevitably prevent Green and Long from offering a full justification for their typology, and we
would certainly encourage them to offer a more fleshed out articulation of it and its merits. Their initial discussion of
the different types of signals that states can send within different types of crises is especially productive and goes
beyond the relatively simple discussion of the feasibility of signaling that we included in our article. We offer two
critiques that might be helpful as they (and others) continue to consider the relative merits of these two typologies and
build upon them. First, it is not clear how different their proposed typology is from the one we offer. At times, for
example, Green and Long suggest that their typology simply divides up the same conceptual space we identify using our two
variables, but does so differently. For example, they argue that they are essentially collapsing two of our quadrants
(stability-instability crises and staircase crises) into Type A crises, while Type B crises are similar to our brinkmanship
crises and Type C crises are similar to our firestorm crises. If so, their typology does not really suggest a fundamentally
different understanding of how nuclear crises vary, but merely of where the most interesting variation occurs within the
conceptual space we identify. The key question, then, in determining the relative merits of the two typologies, is whether
there is important variation between the two categories that Green and Long collapse. We continue to think the distinctions
between stability-instability crises and staircase crises are important. Although both types of crises are relatively
controllable and have limited risk of what Green and Long call "non-rational uncontrolled escalation," they have very
different risks when it comes to nuclear use: lower in stability-instability crises and higher in staircase crises. The
factors that determine success in stability-instability crises -- primarily the conventional military balance due to the very
low risk of nuclear escalation -- do not necessarily determine success in staircase crises, in which the nuclear balance may
matter. As a result, we think that collapsing these two categories is not necessarily a helpful analytical move. Second, to
the extent that their typology differs from our own, it does so in ways that are not necessarily helpful in shedding light
on the variation across nuclear crises that we observe. In particular, separating incentives for first use into "political
bargaining incentives" and "military incentives" is an intriguing proposal but we are not yet fully persuaded of its merits.
Given that one of Green and Long's goals is to increase the clarity of the typology we offer, and given that they
acknowledge the difficulties of coding the nuclear balance, demanding even more fine-grained assessments in order to divide
incentives for first use into two separate (but conceptually highly connected) components may be a lot to ask of analysts.
Moreover, given Green and Long's assertion that "political incentives to use nuclear weapons selectively are ever present,"
their argument in fact implies (as mentioned above) that political incentives for first use are
not
a source of
interesting variation within nuclear crises. We disagree with this conclusion substantively, but it is worth noting that it
also has important conceptual implications for Green and Long's typology: It means that their three types of crises all
exhibit political incentives for nuclear first use. If this is the case, then political incentives for nuclear first use
simply fall out of the analysis. In effect, crises without political incentives for nuclear first use are simply ruled out
by definition. This analytic move renders portions of their argument tautologous. For example, they argue that the
conventional balance cannot "ever determine the outcome of a nuclear crisis," but this is only because they assume that
there are always political incentives to use nuclear weapons first, and thus, "any conventional victory stands only by dint
of the losing side's unwillingness to escalate." More broadly, this approach seems to us at least somewhat epistemologically
problematic. In our view, it is better to be conceptually open to the existence of certain types of crises and then discover
that such crises do not occur empirically, than it is to rule them out by definition and risk discovering later that such
crises have, in fact, taken place. In sum, while we are not fully persuaded by Green and Long's critiques, we are extremely
grateful for their insightful, thorough, and constructive engagement with our article and look forward to their future work
on these issues. We hope that they, along with other scholars, will continue to explore the ways in which nuclear crises
differ from one another, and the implications of such differences for crisis dynamics. Mark S. Bell,
Minneapolis,
Minnesota
Julia Macdonald,
Denver, Colorado
[post_title] => Contrasting Views on How to Code a Nuclear
Crisis [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => open [ping_status] => closed [post_password] =>
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[lead] => In this issue's correspondence section, Brendan Rittenhouse Green and Austin Long offer up an alternative way to
code nuclear crises in response to Mark S. Bell and Julia Macdonald's article in the February 2019 issue of TNSR. Bell and
Macdonald, in turn, offer a response to Green and Long's critique. [pubinfo] => [issue] => Vol 2, Iss 4 [quotes] => [style]
=> framing [type] => Framing [style_label] => The Foundation [download] => Array ( [title] => PDF Download [file] => 2442 )
[authors] => Array ( [0] => 279 [1] => 138 [2] => 258 [3] => 259 ) [endnotes] => Array ( [title] => Endnotes [endnotes] =>
[1]
Mark S.
Bell and Julia Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises,"
Texas National Security Review
2, no. 2 (February
2019): 40–64,
http://dx.doi.org/10.26153/tsw/1944
.
[2]
Bell and
Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 42, 63.
[3]
For an
excellent treatment of this problem in the international relations context, see Robert Jervis,
Perception and
Misperception in International Politics
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), 154–72.
[4]
Bell and
Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 55.
[5]
See
Memorandum for General Maxwell Taylor from Carl Kaysen, "Strategic Air Planning and Berlin," Sept. 5, 1961, from National
Archives, Record Group 218, Records of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB56/BerlinC1.pdf
.
[6]
Marc
Trachtenberg, David Rosenberg, and Stephen Van Evera, "An Interview with Carl Kaysen," MIT Security Studies Program (1988),
9,
http://web.mit.edu/SSP/publications/working_papers/Kaysen%20working%20paper.pdf
.
[7]
Austin
Long and Brendan Rittenhouse Green, "Stalking the Secure Second Strike: Intelligence, Counterforce, and Nuclear Strategy,"
Journal of Strategic Studies
38, no. 1–2 (2015): 44–46,
https://doi.org/10.1080/01402390.2014.958150
.
[8]
"An
Interview with Carl Kaysen," 9.
[9]
Quoted
in Long and Green, "Stalking the Secure Second Strike," 46.
[10]
James
R. Schlesinger, "Some Notes on Deterrence in Western Europe," (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, June 30, 1962), 8.
[11]
Ernest R. May, John D. Steinbruner, and Thomas M. Wolfe,
History of the Strategic Arms Competition 1945–1972
, v.1
(Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1981), 475.
[12]
Quoted in Scott Sagan, "SIOP-62: The Nuclear War Plan Briefing to President Kennedy,"
International Security
12,
no. 1 (Summer 1987): 34,
https://www.jstor.org/stable/2538916
.
[13]
Bell
and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 56. See also, May, Steinbruner, and Wolfe,
History of the Strategic
Arms Competition
, 475; and Owen Coté,
The Third Battle: Innovation in the US Navy's Silent Cold War Struggle with
Soviet Submarines
(Newport, RI: Naval War College, 2003), 42.
[14]
Bell
and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 55, 59.
[15]
Bell
and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 55.
[16]
Bell
and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 55.
[17]
Bell
and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 59, fn 96. For more on Bundy, see, e.g., McGeorge Bundy et al., "Nuclear
Weapons and the Atlantic Alliance,"
Foreign Affairs
60, no. 4 (Spring 1982): 753–68,
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/1982-03-01/nuclear-weapons-and-atlantic-alliance
.
[18]
Bell
and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 55.
[19]
Matthew Kroenig,
The Logic of American Nuclear Strategy: Why Strategic Superiority Matters
(Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2018), 88.
[20]
Sagan, "SIOP-62," 50.
[21]
Bell
and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 55.
[22]
Sagan,
"SIOP-62," 36, and esp. n. 49.
[23]
Joint
Chiefs of Staff Memorandum 907-62 to McNamara, Nov. 20, 1962,
in Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS),
1961-1963
, Vol. 8, 387–89, quotation on 388,
https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v08/d109
.
[24]
For
example, consider his remark, just after the peak of the crisis, that "My guess is, well, everybody sort of figures that, in
extremis, everybody would use nuclear weapons," before strongly implying massive U.S. preemption would be preferable to
tactical use. See ExComm Meeting, Oct. 29, 1962, in Ernest R. May and Philip Zelikow, eds.,
The Kennedy Tapes: Inside
the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 657.
[25]
For
excellent accounts of Kennedy's Berlin policy and his views on nuclear superiority, which we draw upon heavily, see Marc
Trachtenberg,
A Constructed Peace: The Making of the European Settlement, 1945-1963
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1999), chap. 8; Francis J. Gavin,
Nuclear Statecraft: History and Strategy in America's Atomic Age
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012), chaps. 2–3.
[26]
Trachtenberg,
A Constructed Peace
, 292, 293, 294, 295.
[27]
Trachtenberg,
A Constructed Peace
, 353, 351.
[28]
Legere memorandum for the record of the White House daily staff meeting, Dec. 10, 1962, National Defense University, Taylor
Papers, Chairman's Staff Group December 1962-January 1963; quoted in
FRUS 1961-1963
, Vol. 8, 436.
https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v08/d118
.
[29]
Bell
and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 43.
[30]
See,
e.g., Trachtenberg,
A Constructed Peace
, 353, n. 3.
[31]
Bell
and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 46, 47–49.
[32]
Thomas C. Schelling,
Arms and Influence
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1966), 97.
[33]
Bell
and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 46, 49.
[34]
Bell
and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 46, 49–50.
[35]
Schelling,
Arms and Influence
, 102.
[36]
This
work was supported by U.S. Air Force Academy (USAFA) and Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) Project on Advanced Systems
and Concepts for Countering WMD (PASCC) award FA7000-19-2-0008. The opinions, findings, views, conclusions or
recommendations contained herein are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as necessarily representing the
official policies or endorsements, either expressed or implied, of USAFA, DTRA or the U.S. Government.
[37]
Mark
S. Bell and Julia Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises,"
Texas National Security Review
2, no. 2 (February
2019): 40-64,
http://dx.doi.org/10.26153/tsw/1944
. For additional
applications of our framework, see Mark S. Bell and Julia Macdonald, "Toward Deterrence: The Upside of the Trump-Kim
Summit,"
War on the Rocks
, June 15, 2018,
https://warontherocks.com/2018/06/toward-deterrence-the-upside-of-the-trump-kim-summit/
; Mark S. Bell and Julia
Macdonald, "How Dangerous Was Kargil? Nuclear Crises in Comparative Perspective,"
Washington Quarterly
42, no. 2
(Summer 2019): 135–48,
https://doi.org/10.1080/0163660X.2019.1626691
.
[38]
One
minor correction to Green and Long's argument: The Cuban Missile Crisis is not the "sole empirical example" in our article
of a crisis characterized by a lack of incentives for first use. In the article we also argue that the 2017 Doklam Crisis
between India and China lacked strong incentives for first use, and we suspect there are plenty more crises of this sort in
the historical record. Bell and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 60–61.
[39]
Bell
and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 55.
[40]
The
quote from the crisis that Green and Long cite does not really support their argument. Green and Long state: "consider
[Kennedy's] remark, just after the peak of the crisis, that 'My guess is, well, everybody sort of figures that, in extremis,
everybody would use nuclear weapons,' before strongly implying massive U.S. preemption would be preferable to tactical use."
In fact, consider the full quote: "My guess is, well, everybody sort of figures that, in extremis, everybody would use
nuclear weapons. The decision to use any kind of a nuclear weapon, even the tactical ones, presents such a risk of it
getting out of control so quickly." Kennedy then trails off but "appears to agree" with an unidentified participant who
states, "But Cuba's so small compared to the world." This suggests that Kennedy was expressing deep skepticism of any sort
of nuclear use remaining limited, as well as doubts about the merits of taking such risks over Cuba, rather than making any
sort of clear comparison between the merits of tactical use and massive pre-emption as Green and Long suggest. Ernest R. May
and Philip Zelikow, eds.,
The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis
(Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1997), 657.
[41]
For a
recent analysis of Kennedy's behavior during the Cuban Missile Crisis that concludes that he was deeply skeptical of the
benefits of nuclear superiority during the crisis, see James Cameron,
The Double Game: The Demise of America's First
Missile Defense System and the Rise of Strategic Arms Limitation
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 29–37.
[42]
For
example, see Francis Gavin's assessment that "little was done with" Kaysen's plan, a claim which echoes Marc Trachtenberg's
earlier assessment that "it is hard to tell, however, what effect [Kaysen's analysis] had, and in particular whether, by the
end of the year, the Air Force was prepared in operational terms to launch an attack of this sort." Francis J. Gavin,
Nuclear Statecraft: History and Strategy in America's Atomic Age
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012), 38; Marc
Trachtenberg,
History and Strategy
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), 225.
[43]
Marc
Trachtenberg, "The Influence of Nuclear Weapons in the Cuban Missile Crisis,"
International Security
10, no. 1
(Summer 1985), 162,
http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2538793
.
[44]
Thomas C. Schelling,
Arms and Influence
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1966), 97.
[45]
Indeed, at the risk of adding even more complexity, the relevant threshold likely varies with the stakes of the crisis:
Leaders are likely to view lesser damage limitation capabilities as politically relevant when the stakes are higher than
they are when the stakes involved are lower.
[46]
For
discussion of the North Korean case, see Bell and Macdonald, "Toward Deterrence," and Bell and Macdonald, "How to Think
About Nuclear Crises," 61–62.
[47]
We
do, however, suggest that our labels offer somewhat more
joie de vivre
than the alphabetic labels that Green and
Long offer. ) [contents] => Array ( [title] => [contents] => ) ) [queried_object_id] => 1948 [request] => SELECT wp_posts.*
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In Response to "How to Think About Nuclear Crises"
Brendan Rittenhouse Green and Austin Long
In their article in the February 2019 issue of the
Texas National
Security Review
, Mark S. Bell and Julia Macdonald make a cogent argument that all nuclear crises are not created equal.
[1]
We agree with their basic thesis: There really are different sorts of nuclear crises, which have different risk and
signaling profiles. We also concur that the existence of a variety of political and military dynamics within nuclear crises
implies that we should exercise caution when interpreting the results of cross-sectional statistical analysis. If crises are
not in fact all the same, then quantitative estimates of variable effects have a murkier meaning.
[2]
We should not be surprised that, to date, multiple studies have produced different results. Nevertheless, the article also
highlights an alternate hypothesis for nuclear scholarship's inconsistent findings about crisis outcomes and dynamics:
Nuclear crises are intrinsically hard to interpret. The balance of resolve between adversaries -- one of the most important
variables in any crisis -- is influenced by many factors and is basically impossible to code
ex ante
. The two
variables identified as critical by Bell and Macdonald for determining the shape of a crisis -- the nuclear balance and the
controllability of escalation -- are only somewhat more tractable to interpretation. The consequence is that nuclear crises
are prone to ambiguity, with coding challenges and case interpretations often resolved in favor of the analyst's
pre-existing models of the world. In short, nuclear crises suffer from an especially pernicious interdependence between fact
and theory.
[3]
To the extent that this problem can be ameliorated -- although it cannot be resolved entirely -- the solution is to employ the
best possible conceptual and measurement standards for each key variable. Below we provide best practices for coding the
nuclear balance, with particular focus on Bell and Macdonald's interpretation of the Cuban Missile Crisis. We argue that,
following much of the extant literature, Bell and Macdonald make interpretive choices that unintentionally truncate the
history that underlies their coding of the nuclear balance in this case. In our view, they incorrectly conclude that the
United States had no military incentives to use nuclear weapons first in 1962. Below, we analyze their interpretation of the
Cuba crisis by examining two indicators that might be used to establish the nuclear balance: the operational capabilities of
both sides and the perceptions of key U.S. policymakers. We conclude by drawing out some broader implications of the crisis
for their conceptual framework, offering a friendly amendment.
What Were the Operational Capabilities on Both Sides
in 1962?
Bell and Macdonald's characterization of the nuclear balance in the Cuban Missile Crisis is a central part
of their argument, as it is their sole empirical example of a crisis that "was not characterized by incentives for
deliberate first nuclear use." They base this assertion on a brief overview of the balance of U.S. and Soviet strategic
forces in 1962, followed by a claim that "[t]he U.S. government did not know where all of the Soviet warheads were located,
and there were concerns that U.S. forces were too inaccurate to successfully target the Soviet arsenal."
[4]
Yet, any calculation of the incentives for deliberate first use must be based on the full context of the military balance.
This hinges on the operational capabilities of both sides in the crisis, which includes a concept of operations of a first
strike as well as the ability of both sides to execute nuclear operations. The available evidence on operational
capabilities suggests that a U.S. first strike would have been likely to eliminate much, if not all, of the Soviet nuclear
forces capable of striking the United States, as we summarize briefly below. Any concept of operations for a U.S. first
strike would have been unlikely to rely solely, or even primarily, on relatively inaccurate ballistic missiles, as Bell and
Macdonald imply. In a sketch of such an attack drafted by National Security Council staffer Carl Kaysen and Deputy Assistant
Secretary of Defense Harry Rowen during the Berlin Crisis of 1961, the strike would have been delivered by a U.S. bomber
force rather than with missiles. As Kaysen and Rowen describe, all Soviet nuclear forces of the time were "soft" targets, so
U.S. nuclear bombers would have been more than accurate enough to destroy them. Moreover, a carefully planned bomber attack
could have exploited the limitations of Soviet air defense in detecting low flying aircraft, enabling a successful surprise
attack.
[5]
Kaysen would retrospectively note that U.S. missiles, which were inaccurate but armed with multi-megaton warheads, could
also have been included in an attack, concluding, "we had a highly confident first strike."
[6]
Kaysen's confidence was based on his understanding of the relative ability of both sides to conduct nuclear operations. In
terms of targeting intelligence, while the United States may not have known where all Soviet nuclear warheads were, it had
detailed knowledge of the location of Soviet long-range delivery systems. This intelligence came from a host of sources,
including satellite reconnaissance and human sources. U.S. intelligence also understood the low readiness of Soviet nuclear
forces.
[7]
As Kaysen would later note, "By this time we knew that there were no goddamn missiles to speak of, we knew that there were
only 6 or 7 operational ones and 3 or 4 more in the test sites and so on. As for the Soviet bombers, they were in a very low
state of alert."
[8]
Of course, Kaysen's assessment of the balance of forces in 1961 might have been overly optimistic or no longer true a year
later during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Yet, other contemporary analysts concurred. Andrew Marshall, who had access to the
closely held targeting intelligence of this period, subsequently described the Soviet nuclear force, particularly its
bombers, as "sitting ducks."
[9]
James Schlesinger, writing about four months before the crisis, noted, "During the next four or five years, because of
nuclear dominance, the credibility of an American first-strike remains high."
[10]
The authors of the comprehensive
History of the Strategic Arms Competition
, drawing on a variety of highly
classified U.S. sources, reach a similar conclusion:
[T]he Soviet strategic situation in 1962 might thus have been judged little short of desperate. A well-timed U.S. first
strike, employing then-available ICBM [intercontinental ballistic missile] and SLBM [submarine-launched ballistic
missile] forces as well as bombers, could have seemed threatening to the survival of most of the Soviet Union's own
intercontinental strategic forces. Furthermore, there was the distinct, if small, probability that such an attack could
have denied the Soviet Union the ability to inflict any significant retaliatory damage upon the United States.
[11]
The Soviet nuclear-armed submarines of 1962 were likewise vulnerable to U.S. anti-submarine warfare, as they would have had
to approach within a few hundred miles of the U.S. coast to launch their missiles. As early as 1959, Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff Gen. Nathan Twining testified that while "one or two isolated submarines" might reach the U.S. coast, in
general, the United States had high confidence in its anti-submarine warfare capabilities.
[12]
The performance of these capabilities during the Cuban Missile Crisis, when multiple Soviet submarines were detected and
some forced to surface, confirms their efficacy, as Bell and Macdonald acknowledge in their description of an attack on a
Soviet submarine during the crisis.
[13]
How Was the Nuclear Balance Perceived in 1962?
Bell and Macdonald offer three data points for their
argument that U.S. policymakers did not perceive meaningful American nuclear superiority during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
First, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and other veterans of the Kennedy administration attested retrospectively that
nuclear superiority did not play an important role in the Cuba crisis.
[14]
Second, President John F. Kennedy received a Joint Chiefs of Staff briefing on the Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP)
-- the U.S plan for strategic nuclear weapons employment -- in 1961, which reported that Soviet retaliation should be expected
under all circumstances, even after an American pre-emptive strike.
[15]
Third, the president expressed ambivalence about the nuclear balance on the first day of the Cuba crisis.
[16]
But this evidence is a combination of truncated, biased, and weak. The retrospective testimony of Kennedy administration
alumni is highly dubious. McNamara, National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy, and others were all highly motivated political
actors, speaking two decades after the fact in the context of fierce nuclear policy debates on which they had taken highly
public positions, as Bell and Macdonald acknowledge in a footnote.
[17]
The problems with giving much weight to such statements are especially evident given the fact that, as Bell and Macdonald
acknowledge,
[18]
these very same advisers made remarks during the Cuba crisis that were much more favorably disposed to the idea of American
nuclear superiority.
[19]
The Joint Chiefs of Staff briefing to Kennedy on SIOP-62 is evidence, contrary to Bell and Macdonald's interpretation, of
American nuclear superiority in 1962. Bell and Macdonald make much of the briefing's caution that "Under any
circumstances -- even a preemptive attack by the US -- it would be expected that some portion of the Soviet long-range nuclear
force would strike the United States."
[20]
But interpreting this comment as evidence that the United States did not possess "politically meaningful damage limitation"
capabilities makes sense only if one has already decided that the relevant standard for political meaning is a perfectly
disarming strike.
[21]
Scott Sagan, in commenting on the briefing, underscores that "although the United States could expect to suffer some
unspecified nuclear damage under any condition of war initiation, the Soviet Union would confront absolutely massive
destruction regardless of whether it struck first or retaliated."
[22]
Crucially, the Joint Chiefs of Staff argued for maintaining a U.S. first-strike capability in a memorandum to McNamara
commenting on his plans for strategic nuclear forces for fiscal years 1964–68. This memorandum, sent shortly after the
crisis, argues that the United States could not, in the future, entirely eliminate Soviet strategic forces. Yet, the
memorandum continues: "The Joint Chiefs of Staff consider that a first-strike capability is both feasible and desirable,
although the degree or level of attainment is a matter of judgment and depends upon the US reaction to a changing Soviet
capability."
[23]
In short, not only did the Joint Chiefs of Staff conclude the United States had a meaningful first-strike capability in
1962, they believed such a capability could and should be maintained in the future. As for Kennedy's personal views, it is
important not just to consider isolated quotes during the Cuban crisis -- after all, he made several comments that point in
opposite directions.
[24]
One has to consider the political context of the Cuban affair writ large: the multi-year contest with the Soviets over the
future of Berlin, and effectively, the NATO alliance. Moreover, Kennedy had deliberately built Western policy during the
Berlin crisis on a foundation of nuclear superiority. NATO planning assumed that nuclear weapons would ultimately be used,
and probably on a massive scale.
[25]
As Kennedy put it to French President Charles de Gaulle in June of 1961, "the advantage of striking first with nuclear
weapons is so great that if [the] Soviets were to attack even without using such weapons, the U.S. could not afford to wait
to use them." In July, he told the Joint Chiefs of Staff that "he felt the critical point is to be able to use nuclear
weapons at a crucial point before they use them." In January of 1962, expecting the Berlin Crisis to heat up in the near
future, he stressed the importance of operational military planning, and of thinking "hard about the ways and means of
making decisions that might lead to nuclear war." As he put it at that meeting, "the credibility of our nuclear deterrent is
sufficient to hold our present positions throughout the world" even if American conventional military power "on the ground
does not match what the communists can bring to bear."
[26]
But the president recognized that this military strength was a wasting asset: The development of Soviet nuclear forces meant
that the window of American nuclear superiority was closing. For this reason, Kennedy thought it important to bring the
Berlin Crisis to a head as soon as possible, while the United States still possessed an edge. "It might be better to let a
confrontation to develop over Berlin now rather than later," he argued just two weeks before the Cuba crisis. After all,
"the military balance was more favorable to us than it would be later on."
[27]
Two months after the crisis, his views were little different. Reporting on a presidential trip to Strategic Air Command
during which Kennedy was advised that "the really neat and clean way to get around all these complexities [about the precise
state of the nuclear balance] was to strike first," Bundy "said that of course the President had not reacted with any such
comments, but Bundy's clear implication was that the President felt that way."
[28]
Broader Implications
Our argument about the nuclear balance during the Cuban Missile Crisis, if correct,
requires some friendly amendments to Bell and Macdonald's framework for delineating types of nuclear crisis. Our discussion
of the operational capabilities and policymaker perceptions during the Cuba crisis underscores that Bell and Macdonald's
first variable -- "the strength of incentives to use nuclear weapons first in a crisis"
[29]
-- probably ought to be unpacked into two separate variables: military incentives for a first strike, and political
bargaining incentives for selective use. After all, whatever the exact nuclear balance was during 1962, the United States
was certainly postured for asymmetric escalation. The salience of America's posture is thrown into especially bold relief
once the political context of the crisis is recognized: The Cuban affair was basically the climax of the superpower
confrontation over Berlin, in which American force structure and planning was built around nuclear escalation. Indeed, this
is how policymakers saw the Cuba crisis, where the fear of Soviet countermoves in Berlin hung as an ever-present cloud over
discussions within the Executive Committee of the National Security Council.
[30]
According to Bell and Macdonald, either kind of incentive is sufficient to put a case into the "high" risk category for
deliberate use. But in truth, political incentives to use nuclear weapons selectively -- even if only against military
targets -- are ever present. They are just seldom triggered until matters have gone seriously awry on the battlefield. In
short, we believe Bell and Macdonald were right to expend extra effort looking for military first-strike incentives, which
add genuinely different sorts of risk to a crisis. We argue that operational capabilities and policymaker perceptions in the
Cuba crisis show that such incentives are more common than generally credited. So, we would build on Bell and Macdonald's
central insight that different types of nuclear crisis have different signaling and risk profiles by modestly amending their
framework. We suggest that there are three types of nuclear crisis: those with political bargaining incentives for selective
nuclear use (Type A); those with risks of both selective use and non-rational uncontrolled escalation (Type B); and those
with political risks, non-rational risks, and military incentives for a nuclear first strike (Type C). Type A crises
essentially collapse Bell and Macdonald's "staircase" and "stability-instability" models, and are relatively low risk.
[31]
Any proposed nuclear escalation amounts to a "threat to launch a disastrous war coolly and deliberately in response to some
enemy transgression."
[32]
Such threats are hard to make credible until military collapse has put a state's entire international position at stake.
Outcomes of Type A crises will be decided solely by the balance of resolve. We disagree with Bell and Macdonald's argument
that the conventional military balance can ever determine the outcome of a nuclear crisis, since any conventional victory
stands only by dint of the losing side's unwillingness to escalate. But the lower risks of a Type A crisis mean that signals
of resolve are harder to send, and must occur through large and not particularly selective or subtle means -- essentially,
larger conventional and nuclear operations. Type B crises are similar to Bell and Macdonald's "brinksmanship" model.
[33]
These have a significantly greater risk profile, since they also contain genuine risks of uncontrolled escalation in
addition to political risks. Crisis outcomes remain dependent on the balance of resolve, but signaling is easier and can be
much finer-grained than in Type A crises. The multiple opportunities for uncontrolled escalation mean that there are simply
many more things a state can do at much lower levels of actual violence to manipulate the level of risk in a crisis. For
instance, alerting nuclear forces will often not mean much in a Type A crisis (at least before the moment of conventional
collapse), since there is no way things can get out of control. But alerting forces in a Type B crisis could set off a chain
of events where states clash due to the interaction between each other's rules of nuclear engagement, incentivize forces
inadvertently threatened by conventional operations to fire, or misperceive each other's actions. Any given military move
will have more political meaning and will also be more dangerous. Type C crises are similar to Bell and Macdonald's
"firestorm" model.
[34]
These are the riskiest sorts of nuclear crisis, since there are military reasons for escalation as well as political and
non-rational risks. Outcomes will be influenced both by the balance of resolve and the nuclear balance: either could give
states incentives to manipulate risk. Such signals will be the easiest to send, and the finest-grained of any type of
crisis. But because the risk level jumps so much with any given signal, the time in which states can bargain may be short.
[35]
In sum, Bell and Macdonald have made an important contribution to the study of nuclear escalation by delineating different
types of crisis with different risk and signaling profiles. We believe they understate the importance of American nuclear
superiority during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and that these coding problems highlight some conceptual issues with their
framework. In the end, though, our amendments appear to us relatively minor, further underscoring the importance of Bell and
Macdonald's research. We hope that they, and other scholars, will continue to build on these findings. Brendan R. Green,
Cincinnati, Ohio
Austin Long,
Arlington, Virginia
In Response to a Critique
Mark S. Bell and Julia Macdonald
We thank Brendan Rittenhouse Green and Austin Long for their positive assessment
of our work and for engaging with our argument so constructively.
[36]
Their contribution represents exactly the sort of productive scholarly debate we were hoping to provoke. As we stated in our
article, we intended our work to be only an initial effort to think through the heterogeneity of nuclear crises, and we are
delighted that Green and Long have taken seriously our suggestion for scholars to continue to think in more detail about the
ways in which nuclear crises differ from one another. Their arguments are characteristically insightful, offer a range of
interesting and important arguments and suggestions, and have forced us to think harder about a number of aspects of our
argument. In this reply, we briefly lay out the argument we made in our article before responding to Green and Long's
suggestion that we underestimate the incentives to launch a nuclear first-strike during the Cuban Missile Crisis and their
proposal of an alternative typology for understanding nuclear crises.
Our Argument
In our article, we offer
a framework for thinking through the heterogeneity of nuclear crises.
[37]
While the existing literature on such crises assumes that they all follow a certain logic (although there is disagreement on
what that logic is), we identify factors that might lead nuclear crises to differ from one another in consequential ways. In
particular, we argue that two factors -- whether incentives are present for nuclear first use and the extent to which
escalation is controllable by the leaders involved -- lead to fundamentally different sorts of crises. These two variables
generate four possible "ideal type" models of nuclear crises: "staircase" crises (characterized by high first-use incentives
and high controllability), "brinkmanship" crises (low first-use incentives and low controllability), "stability-instability"
crises (low first-use incentives and high controllability), and "firestorm" crises (high first-use incentives and low
controllability). Each of these ideal types exhibits distinctive dynamics and offers different answers to important
questions, such as, how likely is nuclear escalation, and how might it occur? How feasible is signaling within a crisis?
What factors determine success? For example, crises exhibiting high incentives for nuclear first use combined with low
crisis controllability -- firestorm crises -- are particularly volatile, and the most dangerous of all four models in terms of
likelihood of nuclear war. These are the crises that statesmen should avoid except under the direst circumstances or for the
highest stakes. By contrast, where incentives for the first use of nuclear weapons are low and there is high crisis
controllability -- the stability-instability model -- the risk of nuclear use is lowest. When incentives for nuclear first use
are low and crisis controllability is also low -- brinkmanship crises -- or when incentives for first use are high and crisis
controllability is also high -- the staircase model -- there is a moderate risk of nuclear use, although through two quite
different processes. For the brinkmanship model, low levels of crisis controllability combined with few incentives for
nuclear first use mean that escalation to the nuclear level would likely only happen inadvertently and through a process of
uncontrolled, rather than deliberate, escalation. On the other hand, high levels of crisis controllability combined with
high incentives for nuclear first use -- characteristic of the staircase model -- mean that escalation would more likely occur
through a careful, deliberate process.
First-Use Incentives in the Cuban Missile Crisis
First, Green and
Long address the extent of incentives for launching a nuclear first strike during the Cuban Missile Crisis. In short, they
argue that there were substantial military incentives for America to strike first during the crisis and that these were
understood and appreciated by American leaders.
[38]
While space constraints meant that our analysis of the nuclear balance in the Cuban Missile Crisis was briefer than we would
have liked, we certainly agree that the United States possessed nuclear superiority over the Soviet Union during the crisis.
[39]
The debate between us and Green and Long is, therefore, primarily over whether the nuclear balance that we (more or less)
agree existed in 1962 was sufficiently lopsided as to offer meaningful incentives for nuclear first use, and whether it was
perceived as such by the leaders involved. In this, we do have somewhat different interpretations of how much weight to
assign to particular pieces of evidence. For example, we believe that the retrospective assessment of key participants does
have evidentiary value, although we acknowledge (as we did in our article) the biases of such assessments in this case.
Given the rapidly shifting nuclear balance, we place less weight on President John F. Kennedy's statements in years prior to
the crisis than on those he made during the crisis itself,
[40]
which were more consistently skeptical of the benefits associated with U.S. nuclear superiority at a time when the stakes
were at their highest.
[41]
We also place somewhat less weight than Green and Long on the 1961 analysis of Carl Kaysen, given doubts about whether his
report had much of an effect on operational planning.
[42]
And finally, we put less weight on the Joint Chiefs of Staff document from 1962 cited by Green and Long in support of their
argument, given that it acknowledges the U.S. inability to eliminate Soviet strategic nuclear forces -- thus highlighting the
dangers of a U.S. nuclear first strike -- as well as focuses on future force planning in the aftermath of the crisis. We
would also note that our assessment that U.S. nuclear superiority in the Cuban Missile Crisis did not obviously translate
into politically meaningful incentives for first use is in line with standard interpretations of this case, including among
scholars that Green and Long cite. For Marc Trachtenberg, for example, "[t]he American ability to 'limit damage' by
destroying an enemy's strategic forces did not seem, in American eyes, to carry much political weight" during the Cuban
Missile Crisis.
[43]
Similarly, the relative lack of incentives for rational first use in the crisis motivated Thomas Schelling's assessment that
only an "unforeseeable and unpredictable" process could have led to nuclear use in the crisis.
[44]
Regardless of whether participants in the Cuban Missile Crisis understood the advantages (or lack thereof) associated with
nuclear superiority, in some ways, our disagreement with Green and Long is more of a conceptual one: where to draw the
threshold at which a state's level of nuclear superiority (and corresponding ability to limit retaliatory damage) should be
deemed "politically meaningful," i.e., sufficiently lopsided to offer incentives for first use. This is a topic about which
there is certainly room for legitimate disagreement. "Political relevance" is a tricky concept, which reinforces Green and
Long's broader argument that "nuclear crises are intrinsically hard to interpret" -- a point with which we agree.
[45]
But Green and Long seem to view
any
ability to limit retaliatory damage as politically meaningful, since they argue
that a nuclear balance that would have likely left a number of American cities destroyed (and potentially more), even in the
aftermath of a U.S. first strike, nonetheless provided strong military incentives for first use. By contrast, our view is
that the threshold should be somewhat higher than this, though lower than Green and Long's characterization of our position:
We do not, in fact, think that the relevant standard for political meaning "is a perfectly disarming strike." Part of our
motivation in wanting a threshold higher than "any damage limitation capability" is that it increases the utility of the
typology we offer by allowing us to draw the line in such a way that a substantial number of empirical cases exist on either
side of that threshold. Green and Long, by contrast, seem more satisfied to draw the line in such a way that cases
exhibiting very different incentives for first use -- a crisis with North Korea today compared to the Cuban Missile Crisis,
for example -- would both be classified on the same side of the threshold.
[46]
Green and Long's approach would ignore the important differences between these cases by treating both crises as exhibiting
strong incentives for nuclear first use. This would be akin to producing a meteorological map that rarely shows rain because
the forecaster judges the relevant threshold to be "catastrophic flooding." There is nothing fundamentally incorrect about
making such a choice, but it is not necessarily the most helpful approach to shedding light on the empirical variation we
observe in the historical record.
An Alternative Typology of Nuclear Crises
Second, Green and Long offer an
alternative typology for understanding the heterogeneity of nuclear crises. Green and Long argue that there are three types
of crisis: "those with political bargaining incentives for selective nuclear use (Type A); those with risks of both
selective use and non-rational uncontrolled escalation (Type B); and those with political risks, non-rational risks, and
military incentives for a nuclear first strike (Type C)." This is an interesting proposal and we have no fundamental
objections to their typology.
[47]
After all, one can categorize the same phenomenon in different ways, and different typologies may be useful for different
purposes. Space constraints inevitably prevent Green and Long from offering a full justification for their typology, and we
would certainly encourage them to offer a more fleshed out articulation of it and its merits. Their initial discussion of
the different types of signals that states can send within different types of crises is especially productive and goes
beyond the relatively simple discussion of the feasibility of signaling that we included in our article. We offer two
critiques that might be helpful as they (and others) continue to consider the relative merits of these two typologies and
build upon them. First, it is not clear how different their proposed typology is from the one we offer. At times, for
example, Green and Long suggest that their typology simply divides up the same conceptual space we identify using our two
variables, but does so differently. For example, they argue that they are essentially collapsing two of our quadrants
(stability-instability crises and staircase crises) into Type A crises, while Type B crises are similar to our brinkmanship
crises and Type C crises are similar to our firestorm crises. If so, their typology does not really suggest a fundamentally
different understanding of how nuclear crises vary, but merely of where the most interesting variation occurs within the
conceptual space we identify. The key question, then, in determining the relative merits of the two typologies, is whether
there is important variation between the two categories that Green and Long collapse. We continue to think the distinctions
between stability-instability crises and staircase crises are important. Although both types of crises are relatively
controllable and have limited risk of what Green and Long call "non-rational uncontrolled escalation," they have very
different risks when it comes to nuclear use: lower in stability-instability crises and higher in staircase crises. The
factors that determine success in stability-instability crises -- primarily the conventional military balance due to the very
low risk of nuclear escalation -- do not necessarily determine success in staircase crises, in which the nuclear balance may
matter. As a result, we think that collapsing these two categories is not necessarily a helpful analytical move. Second, to
the extent that their typology differs from our own, it does so in ways that are not necessarily helpful in shedding light
on the variation across nuclear crises that we observe. In particular, separating incentives for first use into "political
bargaining incentives" and "military incentives" is an intriguing proposal but we are not yet fully persuaded of its merits.
Given that one of Green and Long's goals is to increase the clarity of the typology we offer, and given that they
acknowledge the difficulties of coding the nuclear balance, demanding even more fine-grained assessments in order to divide
incentives for first use into two separate (but conceptually highly connected) components may be a lot to ask of analysts.
Moreover, given Green and Long's assertion that "political incentives to use nuclear weapons selectively are ever present,"
their argument in fact implies (as mentioned above) that political incentives for first use are
not
a source of
interesting variation within nuclear crises. We disagree with this conclusion substantively, but it is worth noting that it
also has important conceptual implications for Green and Long's typology: It means that their three types of crises all
exhibit political incentives for nuclear first use. If this is the case, then political incentives for nuclear first use
simply fall out of the analysis. In effect, crises without political incentives for nuclear first use are simply ruled out
by definition. This analytic move renders portions of their argument tautologous. For example, they argue that the
conventional balance cannot "ever determine the outcome of a nuclear crisis," but this is only because they assume that
there are always political incentives to use nuclear weapons first, and thus, "any conventional victory stands only by dint
of the losing side's unwillingness to escalate." More broadly, this approach seems to us at least somewhat epistemologically
problematic. In our view, it is better to be conceptually open to the existence of certain types of crises and then discover
that such crises do not occur empirically, than it is to rule them out by definition and risk discovering later that such
crises have, in fact, taken place. In sum, while we are not fully persuaded by Green and Long's critiques, we are extremely
grateful for their insightful, thorough, and constructive engagement with our article and look forward to their future work
on these issues. We hope that they, along with other scholars, will continue to explore the ways in which nuclear crises
differ from one another, and the implications of such differences for crisis dynamics. Mark S. Bell,
Minneapolis,
Minnesota
Julia Macdonald,
Denver, Colorado
[post_title] => Contrasting Views on How to Code a Nuclear
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[lead] => In this issue's correspondence section, Brendan Rittenhouse Green and Austin Long offer up an alternative way to
code nuclear crises in response to Mark S. Bell and Julia Macdonald's article in the February 2019 issue of TNSR. Bell and
Macdonald, in turn, offer a response to Green and Long's critique. [pubinfo] => [issue] => Vol 2, Iss 4 [quotes] => [style]
=> framing [type] => Framing [style_label] => The Foundation [download] => Array ( [title] => PDF Download [file] => 2442 )
[authors] => Array ( [0] => 279 [1] => 138 [2] => 258 [3] => 259 ) [endnotes] => Array ( [title] => Endnotes [endnotes] =>
[1]
Mark S.
Bell and Julia Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises,"
Texas National Security Review
2, no. 2 (February
2019): 40–64,
http://dx.doi.org/10.26153/tsw/1944
.
[2]
Bell and
Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 42, 63.
[3]
For an
excellent treatment of this problem in the international relations context, see Robert Jervis,
Perception and
Misperception in International Politics
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), 154–72.
[4]
Bell and
Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 55.
[5]
See
Memorandum for General Maxwell Taylor from Carl Kaysen, "Strategic Air Planning and Berlin," Sept. 5, 1961, from National
Archives, Record Group 218, Records of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB56/BerlinC1.pdf
.
[6]
Marc
Trachtenberg, David Rosenberg, and Stephen Van Evera, "An Interview with Carl Kaysen," MIT Security Studies Program (1988),
9,
http://web.mit.edu/SSP/publications/working_papers/Kaysen%20working%20paper.pdf
.
[7]
Austin
Long and Brendan Rittenhouse Green, "Stalking the Secure Second Strike: Intelligence, Counterforce, and Nuclear Strategy,"
Journal of Strategic Studies
38, no. 1–2 (2015): 44–46,
https://doi.org/10.1080/01402390.2014.958150
.
[8]
"An
Interview with Carl Kaysen," 9.
[9]
Quoted
in Long and Green, "Stalking the Secure Second Strike," 46.
[10]
James
R. Schlesinger, "Some Notes on Deterrence in Western Europe," (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, June 30, 1962), 8.
[11]
Ernest R. May, John D. Steinbruner, and Thomas M. Wolfe,
History of the Strategic Arms Competition 1945–1972
, v.1
(Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1981), 475.
[12]
Quoted in Scott Sagan, "SIOP-62: The Nuclear War Plan Briefing to President Kennedy,"
International Security
12,
no. 1 (Summer 1987): 34,
https://www.jstor.org/stable/2538916
.
[13]
Bell
and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 56. See also, May, Steinbruner, and Wolfe,
History of the Strategic
Arms Competition
, 475; and Owen Coté,
The Third Battle: Innovation in the US Navy's Silent Cold War Struggle with
Soviet Submarines
(Newport, RI: Naval War College, 2003), 42.
[14]
Bell
and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 55, 59.
[15]
Bell
and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 55.
[16]
Bell
and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 55.
[17]
Bell
and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 59, fn 96. For more on Bundy, see, e.g., McGeorge Bundy et al., "Nuclear
Weapons and the Atlantic Alliance,"
Foreign Affairs
60, no. 4 (Spring 1982): 753–68,
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/1982-03-01/nuclear-weapons-and-atlantic-alliance
.
[18]
Bell
and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 55.
[19]
Matthew Kroenig,
The Logic of American Nuclear Strategy: Why Strategic Superiority Matters
(Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2018), 88.
[20]
Sagan, "SIOP-62," 50.
[21]
Bell
and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 55.
[22]
Sagan,
"SIOP-62," 36, and esp. n. 49.
[23]
Joint
Chiefs of Staff Memorandum 907-62 to McNamara, Nov. 20, 1962,
in Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS),
1961-1963
, Vol. 8, 387–89, quotation on 388,
https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v08/d109
.
[24]
For
example, consider his remark, just after the peak of the crisis, that "My guess is, well, everybody sort of figures that, in
extremis, everybody would use nuclear weapons," before strongly implying massive U.S. preemption would be preferable to
tactical use. See ExComm Meeting, Oct. 29, 1962, in Ernest R. May and Philip Zelikow, eds.,
The Kennedy Tapes: Inside
the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 657.
[25]
For
excellent accounts of Kennedy's Berlin policy and his views on nuclear superiority, which we draw upon heavily, see Marc
Trachtenberg,
A Constructed Peace: The Making of the European Settlement, 1945-1963
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1999), chap. 8; Francis J. Gavin,
Nuclear Statecraft: History and Strategy in America's Atomic Age
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012), chaps. 2–3.
[26]
Trachtenberg,
A Constructed Peace
, 292, 293, 294, 295.
[27]
Trachtenberg,
A Constructed Peace
, 353, 351.
[28]
Legere memorandum for the record of the White House daily staff meeting, Dec. 10, 1962, National Defense University, Taylor
Papers, Chairman's Staff Group December 1962-January 1963; quoted in
FRUS 1961-1963
, Vol. 8, 436.
https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v08/d118
.
[29]
Bell
and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 43.
[30]
See,
e.g., Trachtenberg,
A Constructed Peace
, 353, n. 3.
[31]
Bell
and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 46, 47–49.
[32]
Thomas C. Schelling,
Arms and Influence
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1966), 97.
[33]
Bell
and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 46, 49.
[34]
Bell
and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 46, 49–50.
[35]
Schelling,
Arms and Influence
, 102.
[36]
This
work was supported by U.S. Air Force Academy (USAFA) and Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) Project on Advanced Systems
and Concepts for Countering WMD (PASCC) award FA7000-19-2-0008. The opinions, findings, views, conclusions or
recommendations contained herein are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as necessarily representing the
official policies or endorsements, either expressed or implied, of USAFA, DTRA or the U.S. Government.
[37]
Mark
S. Bell and Julia Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises,"
Texas National Security Review
2, no. 2 (February
2019): 40-64,
http://dx.doi.org/10.26153/tsw/1944
. For additional
applications of our framework, see Mark S. Bell and Julia Macdonald, "Toward Deterrence: The Upside of the Trump-Kim
Summit,"
War on the Rocks
, June 15, 2018,
https://warontherocks.com/2018/06/toward-deterrence-the-upside-of-the-trump-kim-summit/
; Mark S. Bell and Julia
Macdonald, "How Dangerous Was Kargil? Nuclear Crises in Comparative Perspective,"
Washington Quarterly
42, no. 2
(Summer 2019): 135–48,
https://doi.org/10.1080/0163660X.2019.1626691
.
[38]
One
minor correction to Green and Long's argument: The Cuban Missile Crisis is not the "sole empirical example" in our article
of a crisis characterized by a lack of incentives for first use. In the article we also argue that the 2017 Doklam Crisis
between India and China lacked strong incentives for first use, and we suspect there are plenty more crises of this sort in
the historical record. Bell and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 60–61.
[39]
Bell
and Macdonald, "How to Think About Nuclear Crises," 55.
[40]
The
quote from the crisis that Green and Long cite does not really support their argument. Green and Long state: "consider
[Kennedy's] remark, just after the peak of the crisis, that 'My guess is, well, everybody sort of figures that, in extremis,
everybody would use nuclear weapons,' before strongly implying massive U.S. preemption would be preferable to tactical use."
In fact, consider the full quote: "My guess is, well, everybody sort of figures that, in extremis, everybody would use
nuclear weapons. The decision to use any kind of a nuclear weapon, even the tactical ones, presents such a risk of it
getting out of control so quickly." Kennedy then trails off but "appears to agree" with an unidentified participant who
states, "But Cuba's so small compared to the world." This suggests that Kennedy was expressing deep skepticism of any sort
of nuclear use remaining limited, as well as doubts about the merits of taking such risks over Cuba, rather than making any
sort of clear comparison between the merits of tactical use and massive pre-emption as Green and Long suggest. Ernest R. May
and Philip Zelikow, eds.,
The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis
(Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1997), 657.
[41]
For a
recent analysis of Kennedy's behavior during the Cuban Missile Crisis that concludes that he was deeply skeptical of the
benefits of nuclear superiority during the crisis, see James Cameron,
The Double Game: The Demise of America's First
Missile Defense System and the Rise of Strategic Arms Limitation
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 29–37.
[42]
For
example, see Francis Gavin's assessment that "little was done with" Kaysen's plan, a claim which echoes Marc Trachtenberg's
earlier assessment that "it is hard to tell, however, what effect [Kaysen's analysis] had, and in particular whether, by the
end of the year, the Air Force was prepared in operational terms to launch an attack of this sort." Francis J. Gavin,
Nuclear Statecraft: History and Strategy in America's Atomic Age
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012), 38; Marc
Trachtenberg,
History and Strategy
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), 225.
[43]
Marc
Trachtenberg, "The Influence of Nuclear Weapons in the Cuban Missile Crisis,"
International Security
10, no. 1
(Summer 1985), 162,
http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2538793
.
[44]
Thomas C. Schelling,
Arms and Influence
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1966), 97.
[45]
Indeed, at the risk of adding even more complexity, the relevant threshold likely varies with the stakes of the crisis:
Leaders are likely to view lesser damage limitation capabilities as politically relevant when the stakes are higher than
they are when the stakes involved are lower.
[46]
For
discussion of the North Korean case, see Bell and Macdonald, "Toward Deterrence," and Bell and Macdonald, "How to Think
About Nuclear Crises," 61–62.
[47]
We
do, however, suggest that our labels offer somewhat more
joie de vivre
than the alphabetic labels that Green and
Long offer. ) [contents] => Array ( [title] => [contents] => ) ) ) [post_count] => 1 [current_post] => -1 [in_the_loop] =>
[post] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 1948 [post_author] => 279 [post_date] => 2019-10-03 05:00:03 [post_date_gmt] =>
2019-10-03 09:00:03 [post_content] =>
In Response to "How to Think About Nuclear Crises"
Brendan Rittenhouse Green and Austin Long
In their article in the February 2019 issue of the
Texas National
Security Review
, Mark S. Bell and Julia Macdonald make a cogent argument that all nuclear crises are not created equal.
[1]
We agree with their basic thesis: There really are different sorts of nuclear crises, which have different risk and
signaling profiles. We also concur that the existence of a variety of political and military dynamics within nuclear crises
implies that we should exercise caution when interpreting the results of cross-sectional statistical analysis. If crises are
not in fact all the same, then quantitative estimates of variable effects have a murkier meaning.
[2]
We should not be surprised that, to date, multiple studies have produced different results. Nevertheless, the article also
highlights an alternate hypothesis for nuclear scholarship's inconsistent findings about crisis outcomes and dynamics:
Nuclear crises are intrinsically hard to interpret. The balance of resolve between adversaries -- one of the most important
variables in any crisis -- is influenced by many factors and is basically impossible to code
ex ante
. The two
variables identified as critical by Bell and Macdonald for determining the shape of a crisis -- the nuclear balance and the
controllability of escalation -- are only somewhat more tractable to interpretation. The consequence is that nuclear crises
are prone to ambiguity, with coding challenges and case interpretations often resolved in favor of the analyst's
pre-existing models of the world. In short, nuclear crises suffer from an especially pernicious interdependence between fact
and theory.
[3]
To the extent that this problem can be ameliorated -- although it cannot be resolved entirely -- the solution is to employ the
best possible conceptual and measurement standards for each key variable. Below we provide best practices for coding the
nuclear balance, with particular focus on Bell and Macdonald's interpretation of the Cuban Missile Crisis. We argue that,
following much of the extant literature, Bell and Macdonald make interpretive choices that unintentionally truncate the
history that underlies their coding of the nuclear balance in this case. In our view, they incorrectly conclude that the
United States had no military incentives to use nuclear weapons first in 1962. Below, we analyze their interpretation of the
Cuba crisis by examining two indicators that might be used to establish the nuclear balance: the operational capabilities of
both sides and the perceptions of key U.S. policymakers. We conclude by drawing out some broader implications of the crisis
for their conceptual framework, offering a friendly amendment.
What Were the Operational Capabilities on Both Sides
in 1962?
Bell and Macdonald's characterization of the nuclear balance in the Cuban Missile Crisis is a central part
of their argument, as it is their sole empirical example of a crisis that "was not characterized by incentives for
deliberate first nuclear use." They base this assertion on a brief overview of the balance of U.S. and Soviet strategic
forces in 1962, followed by a claim that "[t]he U.S. government did not know where all of the Soviet warheads were located,
and there were concerns that U.S. forces were too inaccurate to successfully target the Soviet arsenal."
[4]
Yet, any calculation of the incentives for deliberate first use must be based on the full context of the military balance.
This hinges on the operational capabilities of both sides in the crisis, which includes a concept of operations of a first
strike as well as the ability of both sides to execute nuclear operations. The available evidence on operational
capabilities suggests that a U.S. first strike would have been likely to eliminate much, if not all, of the Soviet nuclear
forces capable of striking the United States, as we summarize briefly below. Any concept of operations for a U.S. first
strike would have been unlikely to rely solely, or even primarily, on relatively inaccurate ballistic missiles, as Bell and
Macdonald imply. In a sketch of such an attack drafted by National Security Council staffer Carl Kaysen and Deputy Assistant
Secretary of Defense Harry Rowen during the Berlin Crisis of 1961, the strike would have been delivered by a U.S. bomber
force rather than with missiles. As Kaysen and Rowen describe, all Soviet nuclear forces of the time were "soft" targets, so
U.S. nuclear bombers would have been more than accurate enough to destroy them. Moreover, a carefully planned bomber attack
could have exploited the limitations of Soviet air defense in detecting low flying aircraft, enabling a successful surprise
attack.
[5]
Kaysen would retrospectively note that U.S. missiles, which were inaccurate but armed with multi-megaton warheads, could
also have been included in an attack, concluding, "we had a highly confident first strike."
[6]
Kaysen's confidence was based on his understanding of the relative ability of both sides to conduct nuclear operations. In
terms of targeting intelligence, while the United States may not have known where all Soviet nuclear warheads were, it had
detailed knowledge of the location of Soviet long-range delivery systems. This intelligence came from a host of sources,
including satellite reconnaissance and human sources.
U.S. intelligence also understood the low readiness of Soviet nuclear
forces.
[7]
As Kaysen would later note, "By this time we knew that there were no goddamn missiles to speak of, we knew that there were
only 6 or 7 operational ones and 3 or 4 more in the test sites and so on.
As for the Soviet bombers, they were in a very low
state of alert."
[8]
Of course, Kaysen's assessment of the balance of forces in 1961 might have been overly optimistic or no longer true a year
later during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Yet, other contemporary analysts concurred. Andrew Marshall, who had access to the
closely held targeting intelligence of this period, subsequently described the Soviet nuclear force, particularly its
bombers, as "sitting ducks."
[9]
James Schlesinger, writing about four months before the crisis, noted, "During the next four or five years, because of
nuclear dominance, the credibility of an American first-strike remains high."
[10]
The authors of the comprehensive
History of the Strategic Arms Competition
, drawing on a variety of highly
classified U.S. sources, reach a similar conclusion:
[T]he Soviet strategic situation in 1962 might thus have been judged little short of desperate. A well-timed U.S. first
strike, employing then-available ICBM [intercontinental ballistic missile] and SLBM [submarine-launched ballistic
missile] forces as well as bombers, could have seemed threatening to the survival of most of the Soviet Union's own
intercontinental strategic forces. Furthermore, there was the distinct, if small, probability that such an attack could
have denied the Soviet Union the ability to inflict any significant retaliatory damage upon the United States.
[11]
The Soviet nuclear-armed submarines of 1962 were likewise vulnerable to U.S. anti-submarine warfare, as they would have had
to approach within a few hundred miles of the U.S. coast to launch their missiles. As early as 1959, Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff Gen. Nathan Twining testified that while "one or two isolated submarines" might reach the U.S. coast, in
general, the United States had high confidence in its anti-submarine warfare capabilities.
[12]
The performance of these capabilities during the Cuban Missile Crisis, when multiple Soviet submarines were detected and
some forced to surface, confirms their efficacy, as Bell and Macdonald acknowledge in their description of an attack on a
Soviet submarine during the crisis.
[13]
How Was the Nuclear Balance Perceived in 1962?
Bell and Macdonald offer three data points for their
argument that U.S. policymakers did not perceive meaningful American nuclear superiority during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
First, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and other veterans of the Kennedy administration attested retrospectively that
nuclear superiority did not play an important role in the Cuba crisis.
[14]
Second, President John F. Kennedy received a Joint Chiefs of Staff briefing on the Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP)
-- the U.S plan for strategic nuclear weapons employment -- in 1961, which reported that Soviet retaliation should be expected
under all circumstances, even after an American pre-emptive strike.
[15]
Third, the president expressed ambivalence about the nuclear balance on the first day of the Cuba crisis.
[16]
But this evidence is a combination of truncated, biased, and weak. The retrospective testimony of Kennedy administration
alumni is highly dubious. McNamara, National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy, and others were all highly motivated political
actors, speaking two decades after the fact in the context of fierce nuclear policy debates on which they had taken highly
public positions, as Bell and Macdonald acknowledge in a footnote.
[17]
The problems with giving much weight to such statements are especially evident given the fact that, as Bell and Macdonald
acknowledge,
[18]
these very same advisers made remarks during the Cuba crisis that were much more favorably disposed to the idea of American
nuclear superiority.
[19]
The Joint Chiefs of Staff briefing to Kennedy on SIOP-62 is evidence, contrary to Bell and Macdonald's interpretation, of
American nuclear superiority in 1962. Bell and Macdonald make much of the briefing's caution that "Under any
circumstances -- even a preemptive attack by the US -- it would be expected that some portion of the Soviet long-range nuclear
force would strike the United States."
[20]
But interpreting this comment as evidence that the United States did not possess "politically meaningful damage limitation"
capabilities makes sense only if one has already decided that the relevant standard for political meaning is a perfectly
disarming strike.
[21]
Scott Sagan, in commenting on the briefing, underscores that "although the United States could expect to suffer some
unspecified nuclear damage under any condition of war initiation, the Soviet Union would confront absolutely massive
destruction regardless of whether it struck first or retaliated."
[22]
Crucially, the Joint Chiefs of Staff argued for maintaining a U.S. first-strike capability in a memorandum to McNamara
commenting on his plans for strategic nuclear forces for fiscal years 1964–68. This memorandum, sent shortly after the
crisis, argues that the United States could not, in the future, entirely eliminate Soviet strategic forces. Yet, the
memorandum continues: "The Joint Chiefs of Staff consider that a first-strike capability is both feasible and desirable,
although the degree or level of attainment is a matter of judgment and depends upon the US reaction to a changing Soviet
capability."
[23]
In short, not only did the Joint Chiefs of Staff conclude the United States had a meaningful first-strike capability in
1962, they believed such a capability could and should be maintained in the future. As for Kennedy's personal views, it is
important not just to consider isolated quotes during the Cuban crisis -- after all, he made several comments that point in
opposite directions.
[24]
One has to consider the political context of the Cuban affair writ large: the multi-year contest with the Soviets over the
future of Berlin, and effectively, the NATO alliance. Moreover, Kennedy had deliberately built Western policy during the
Berlin crisis on a foundation of nuclear superiority. NATO planning assumed that nuclear weapons would ultimately be used,
and probably on a massive scale.
[25]
As Kennedy put it to French President Charles de Gaulle in June of 1961, "the advantage of striking first with nuclear
weapons is so great that if [the] Soviets were to attack even without using such weapons, the U.S. could not afford to wait
to use them." In July, he told the Joint Chiefs of Staff that "he felt the critical point is to be able to use nuclear
weapons at a crucial point before they use them." In January of 1962, expecting the Berlin Crisis to heat up in the near
future, he stressed the importance of operational military planning, and of thinking "hard about the ways and means of
making decisions that might lead to nuclear war." As he put it at that meeting, "the credibility of our nuclear deterrent is
sufficient to hold our present positions throughout the world" even if American conventional military power "on the ground
does not match what the communists can bring to bear."
[26]
But the president recognized that this military strength was a wasting asset: The development of Soviet nuclear forces meant
that the window of American nuclear superiority was closing. For this reason, Kennedy thought it important to bring the
Berlin Crisis to a head as soon as possible, while the United States still possessed an edge. "It might be better to let a
confrontation to develop over Berlin now rather than later," he argued just two weeks before the Cuba crisis. After all,
"the military balance was more favorable to us than it would be later on."
[27]
Two months after the crisis, his views were little different. Reporting on a presidential trip to Strategic Air Command
during which Kennedy was advised that "the really neat and clean way to get around all these complexities [about the precise
state of the nuclear balance] was to strike first," Bundy "said that of course the President had not reacted with any such
comments, but Bundy's clear implication was that the President felt that way."
[28]
Broader Implications
Our argument about the nuclear balance during the Cuban Missile Crisis, if correct,
requires some friendly amendments to Bell and Macdonald's framework for delineating types of nuclear crisis. Our discussion
of the operational capabilities and policymaker perceptions during the Cuba crisis underscores that Bell and Macdonald's
first variable -- "the strength of incentives to use nuclear weapons first in a crisis"
[29]
-- probably ought to be unpacked into two separate variables: military incentives for a first strike, and political
bargaining incentives for selective use. After all, whatever the exact nuclear balance was during 1962, the United States
was certainly postured for asymmetric escalation. The salience of America's posture is thrown into especially bold relief
once the political context of the crisis is recognized: The Cuban affair was basically the climax of the superpower
confrontation over Berlin, in which American force structure and planning was built around nuclear escalation. Indeed, this
is how policymakers saw the Cuba crisis, where the fear of Soviet countermoves in Berlin hung as an ever-present cloud over
discussions within the Executive Committee of the National Security Council.
[30]
According to Bell and Macdonald, either kind of incentive is sufficient to put a case into the "high" risk category for
deliberate use. But in truth, political incentives to use nuclear weapons selectively -- even if only against military
targets -- are ever present. They are just seldom triggered until matters have gone seriously awry on the battlefield. In
short, we believe Bell and Macdonald were right to expend extra effort looking for military first-strike incentives, which
add genuinely different sorts of risk to a crisis. We argue that operational capabilities and policymaker perceptions in the
Cuba crisis show that such incentives are more common than generally credited. So, we would build on Bell and Macdonald's
central insight that different types of nuclear crisis have different signaling and risk profiles by modestly amending their
framework. We suggest that there are three types of nuclear crisis: those with political bargaining incentives for selective
nuclear use (Type A); those with risks of both selective use and non-rational uncontrolled escalation (Type B); and those
with political risks, non-rational risks, and military incentives for a nuclear first strike (Type C). Type A crises
essentially collapse Bell and Macdonald's "staircase" and "stability-instability" models, and are relatively low risk.
[31]
Any proposed nuclear escalation amounts to a "threat to launch a disastrous war coolly and deliberately in response to some
enemy transgression."
[32]
Such threats are hard to make credible until military collapse has put a state's entire international position at stake.
Outcomes of Type A crises will be decided solely by the balance of resolve. We disagree with Bell and Macdonald's argument
that the conventional military balance can ever determine the outcome of a nuclear crisis, since any conventional victory
stands only by dint of the losing side's unwillingness to escalate. But the lower risks of a Type A crisis mean that signals
of resolve are harder to send, and must occur through large and not particularly selective or subtle means -- essentially,
larger conventional and nuclear operations. Type B crises are similar to Bell and Macdonald's "brinksmanship" model.
[33]
These have a significantly greater risk profile, since they also contain genuine risks of uncontrolled escalation in
addition to political risks. Crisis outcomes remain dependent on the balance of resolve, but signaling is easier and can be
much finer-grained than in Type A crises. The multiple opportunities for uncontrolled escalation mean that there are simply
many more things a state can do at much lower levels of actual violence to manipulate the level of risk in a crisis. For
instance, alerting nuclear forces will often not mean much in a Type A crisis (at least before the moment of conventional
collapse), since there is no way things can get out of control. But alerting forces in a Type B crisis could set off a chain
of events where states clash due to the interaction between each other's rules of nuclear engagement, incentivize forces
inadvertently threatened by conventional operations to fire, or misperceive each other's actions. Any given military move
will have more political meaning and will also be more dangerous. Type C crises are similar to Bell and Macdonald's
"firestorm" model.
[34]
These are the riskiest sorts of nuclear crisis, since there are military reasons for escalation as well as political and
non-rational risks. Outcomes will be influenced both by the balance of resolve and the nuclear balance: either could give
states incentives to manipulate risk. Such signals will be the easiest to send, and the finest-grained of any type of
crisis. But because the risk level jumps so much with any given signal, the time in which states can bargain may be short.
[35]
In sum, Bell and Macdonald have made an important contribution to the study of nuclear escalation by delineating different
types of crisis with different risk and signaling profiles. We believe they understate the importance of American nuclear
superiority during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and that these coding problems highlight some conceptual issues with their
framework. In the end, though, our amendments appear to us relatively minor, further underscoring the importance of Bell and
Macdonald's research. We hope that they, and other scholars, will continue to build on these findings. Brendan R. Green,
Cincinnati, Ohio
Austin Long,
Arlington, Virginia
In Response to a Critique
Mark S. Bell and Julia Macdonald
We thank Brendan Rittenhouse Green and Austin Long for their positive assessment
of our work and for engaging with our argument so constructively.
[36]
Their contribution represents exactly the sort of productive scholarly debate we were hoping to provoke. As we stated in our
article, we intended our work to be only an initial effort to think through the heterogeneity of nuclear crises, and we are
delighted that Green and Long have taken seriously our suggestion for scholars to continue to think in more detail about the
ways in which nuclear crises differ from one another. Their arguments are characteristically insightful, offer a range of
interesting and important arguments and suggestions, and have forced us to think harder about a number of aspects of our
argument. In this reply, we briefly lay out the argument we made in our article before responding to Green and Long's
suggestion that we underestimate the incentives to launch a nuclear first-strike during the Cuban Missile Crisis and their
proposal of an alternative typology for understanding nuclear crises.
Our Argument
In our article, we offer
a framework for thinking through the heterogeneity of nuclear crises.
[37]
While the existing literature on such crises assumes that they all follow a certain logic (although there is disagreement on
what that logic is), we identify factors that might lead nuclear crises to differ from one another in consequential ways. In
particular, we argue that two factors -- whether incentives are present for nuclear first use and the extent to which
escalation is controllable by the leaders involved -- lead to fundamentally different sorts of crises. These two variables
generate four possible "ideal type" models of nuclear crises: "staircase" crises (characterized by high first-use incentives
and high controllability), "brinkmanship" crises (low first-use incentives and low controllability), "stability-instability"
crises (low first-use incentives and high controllability), and "firestorm" crises (high first-use incentives and low
controllability). Each of these ideal types exhibits distinctive dynamics and offers different answers to important
questions, such as, how likely is nuclear escalation, and how might it occur? How feasible is signaling within a crisis?
What factors determine success? For example, crises exhibiting high incentives for nuclear first use combined with low
crisis controllability -- firestorm crises -- are particularly volatile, and the most dangerous of all four models in terms of
likelihood of nuclear war. These are the crises that statesmen should avoid except under the direst circumstances or for the
highest stakes. By contrast, where incentives for the first use of nuclear weapons are low and there is high crisis
controllability -- the stability-instability model -- the risk of nuclear use is lowest. When incentives for nuclear first use
are low and crisis controllability is also low -- brinkmanship crises -- or when incentives for first use are high and crisis
controllability is also high -- the staircase model -- there is a moderate risk of nuclear use, although through two quite
different processes. For the brinkmanship model, low levels of crisis controllability combined with few incentives for
nuclear first use mean that escalation to the nuclear level would likely only happen inadvertently and through a process of
uncontrolled, rather than deliberate, escalation. On the other hand, high levels of crisis controllability combined with
high incentives for nuclear first use -- characteristic of the staircase model -- mean that escalation would more likely occur
through a careful, deliberate process.
First-Use Incentives in the Cuban Missile Crisis
First, Green and
Long address the extent of incentives for launching a nuclear first strike during the Cuban Missile Crisis. In short, they
argue that there were substantial military incentives for America to strike first during the crisis and that these were
understood and appreciated by American leaders.
[38]
While space constraints meant that our analysis of the nuclear balance in the Cuban Missile Crisis was briefer than we would
have liked, we certainly agree that the United States possessed nuclear superiority over the Soviet Union during the crisis.
[39]
The debate between us and Green and Long is, therefore, primarily over whether the nuclear balance that we (more or less)
agree existed in 1962 was sufficiently lopsided as to offer meaningful incentives for nuclear first use, and whether it was
perceived as such by the leaders involved. In this, we do have somewhat different interpretations of how much weight to
assign to particular pieces of evidence. For example, we believe that the retrospective assessment of key participants does
have evidentiary value, although we acknowledge (as we did in our article) the biases of such assessments in this case.
Given the rapidly shifting nuclear balance, we place less weight on President John F. Kennedy's statements in years prior to
the crisis than on those he made during the crisis itself,
[40]
which were more consistently skeptical of the benefits associated with U.S. nuclear superiority at a time when the stakes
were at their highest.
[41]
We also place somewhat less weight than Green and Long on the 1961 analysis of Carl Kaysen, given doubts about whether his
report had much of an effect on operational planning.
[42]
And finally, we put less weight on the Joint Chiefs of Staff document from 1962 cited by Green and Long in support of their
argument, given that it acknowledges the U.S. inability to eliminate Soviet strategic nuclear forces -- thus highlighting the
dangers of a U.S. nuclear first strike -- as well as focuses on future force planning in the aftermath of the crisis. We
would also note that our assessment that U.S. nuclear superiority in the Cuban Missile Crisis did not obviously translate
into politically meaningful incentives for first use is in line with standard interpretations of this case, including among
scholars that Green and Long cite. For Marc Trachtenberg, for example, "[t]he American ability to 'limit damage' by
destroying an enemy's strategic forces did not seem, in American eyes, to carry much political weight" during the Cuban
Missile Crisis.
[43]
Similarly, the relative lack of incentives for rational first use in the crisis motivated Thomas Schelling's assessment that
only an "unforeseeable and unpredictable" process could have led to nuclear use in the crisis.
[44]
Regardless of whether participants in the Cuban Missile Crisis understood the advantages (or lack thereof) associated with
nuclear superiority, in some ways, our disagreement with Green and Long is more of a conceptual one: where to draw the
threshold at which a state's level of nuclear superiority (and corresponding ability to limit retaliatory damage) should be
deemed "politically meaningful," i.e., sufficiently lopsided to offer incentives for first use. This is a topic about which
there is certainly room for legitimate disagreement. "Political relevance" is a tricky concept, which reinforces Green and
Long's broader argument that "nuclear crises are intrinsically hard to interpret" -- a point with which we agree.
[45]
But Green and Long seem to view
any
ability to limit retaliatory damage as politically meaningful, since they argue
that a nuclear balance that would have likely left a number of American cities destroyed (and potentially more), even in the
aftermath of a U.S. first strike, nonetheless provided strong military incentives for first use. By contrast, our view is
that the threshold should be somewhat higher than this, though lower than Green and Long's characterization of our position:
We do not, in fact, think that the relevant standard for political meaning "is a perfectly disarming strike." Part of our
motivation in wanting a threshold higher than "any damage limitation capability" is that it increases the utility of the
typology we offer by allowing us to draw the line in such a way that a substantial number of empirical cases exist on either
side of that threshold. Green and Long, by contrast, seem more satisfied to draw the line in such a way that cases
exhibiting very different incentives for first use -- a crisis with North Korea today compared to the Cuban Missile Crisis,
for example -- would both be classified on the same side of the threshold.
[46]
Green and Long's approach would ignore the important differences between these cases by treating both crises as exhibiting
strong incentives for nuclear first use. This would be akin to producing a meteorological map that rarely shows rain because
the forecaster judges the relevant threshold to be "catastrophic flooding." There is nothing fundamentally incorrect about
making such a choice, but it is not necessarily the most helpful approach to shedding light on the empirical variation we
observe in the historical record.
An Alternative Typology of Nuclear Crises
Second, Green and Long offer an
alternative typology for understanding the heterogeneity of nuclear crises. Green and Long argue that there are three types
of crisis: "those with political bargaining incentives for selective nuclear use (Type A); those with risks of both
selective use and non-rational uncontrolled escalation (Type B); and those with political risks, non-rational risks, and
military incentives for a nuclear first strike (Type C)." This is an interesting proposal and we have no fundamental
objections to their typology.
[47]
After all, one can categorize the same phenomenon in different ways, and different typologies may be useful for different
purposes. Space constraints inevitably prevent Green and Long from offering a full justification for their typology, and we
would certainly encourage them to offer a more fleshed out articulation of it and its merits. Their initial discussion of
the different types of signals that states can send within different types of crises is especially productive and goes
beyond the relatively simple discussion of the feasibility of signaling that we included in our article. We offer two
critiques that might be helpful as they (and others) continue to consider the relative merits of these two typologies and
build upon them. First, it is not clear how different their proposed typology is from the one we offer. At times, for
example, Green and Long suggest that their typology simply divides up the same conceptual space we identify using our two
variables, but does so differently. For example, they argue that they are essentially collapsing two of our quadrants
(stability-instability crises and staircase crises) into Type A crises, while Type B crises are similar to our brinkmanship
crises and Type C crises are similar to our firestorm crises. If so, their typology does not really suggest a fundamentally
different understanding of how nuclear crises vary, but merely of where the most interesting variation occurs within the
conceptual space we identify. The key question, then, in determining the relative merits of the two typologies, is whether
there is important variation between the two categories that Green and Long collapse. We continue to think the distinctions
between stability-instability crises and staircase crises are important. Although both types of crises are relatively
controllable and have limited risk of what Green and Long call "non-rational uncontrolled escalation," they have very
different risks when it comes to nuclear use: lower in stability-instability crises and higher in staircase crises. The
factors that determine success in stability-instability crises -- primarily the conventional military balance due to the very
low risk of nuclear escalation -- do not necessarily determine success in staircase crises, in which the nuclear balance may
matter. As a result, we think that collapsing these two categories is not necessarily a helpful analytical move. Second, to
the extent that their typology differs from our own, it does so in ways that are not necessarily helpful in shedding light
on the variation across nuclear crises that we observe. In particular, separating incentives for first use into "political
bargaining incentives" and "military incentives" is an intriguing proposal but we are not yet fully persuaded of its merits.
Given that one of Green and Long's goals is to increase the clarity of the typology we offer, and given that they
acknowledge the difficulties of coding the nuclear balance, demanding even more fine-grained assessments in order to divide
incentives for first use into two separate (but conceptually highly connected) components may be a lot to ask of analysts.
Moreover, given Green and Long's assertion that "political incentives to use nuclear weapons selectively are ever present,"
their argument in fact implies (as mentioned above) that political incentives for first use are
not
a source of
interesting variation within nuclear crises. We disagree with this conclusion substantively, but it is worth noting that it
also has important conceptual implications for Green and Long's typology: It means that their three types of crises all
exhibit political incentives for nuclear first use. If this is the case, then political incentives for nuclear first use
simply fall out of the analysis. In effect, crises without political incentives for nuclear first use are simply ruled out
by definition. This analytic move renders portions of their argument tautologous. For example, they argue that the
conventional balance cannot "ever determine the outcome of a nuclear crisis," but this is only because they assume that
there are always political incentives to use nuclear weapons first, and thus, "any conventional victory stands only by dint
of the losing side's unwillingness to escalate." More broadly, this approach seems to us at least somewhat epistemologically
problematic. In our view, it is better to be conceptually open to the existence of certain types of crises and then discover
that such crises do not occur empirically, than it is to rule them out by definition and risk discovering later that such
crises have, in fact, taken place. In sum, while we are not fully persuaded by Green and Long's critiques, we are extremely
grateful for their insightful, thorough, and constructive engagement with our article and look forward to their future work
on these issues. We hope that they, along with other scholars, will continue to explore the ways in which nuclear crises
differ from one another, and the implications of such differences for crisis dynamics.
"Judge Collyer did not protect the federal judiciary, she did not protect her own courtroom,
she did not protect the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act," Levin said. " For more than 2.5
years, she allowed these perpetrators to get away with what they did. And she could have
brought an end to this. She could have had an evidentiary hearing or a contempt hearing if you
will, and she chose not to."
"Now she's jumping on the bandwagon," Levin continued, "after the OIC report, after FBI
Director Wray has announced 40 different reforms that he's going to take a look at. After I and
others, including Mike Lee, have said, 'you know, we have to abolish the court.' [The court
has] failed to do its job and I suspect they won't do its job."
"Only now does Judge Collyer issue her decision. Only now. Because part of the problem is Judge
Collyer and any other judge" working as a FISA judge, he said. "They don't read these
documents. Over a 1,000 of them were presented to the FISA courts in 2018 and only one was
denied. That is almost a 100 percent approval record . Now that's absurd," Levin explained. "So
Judge Collyer has some answering to do. And if Congress is serious about getting to the bottom
of this, she and others need to be called before Congress in a legitimate oversight function,
not to investigate her for criminal reasons, but to find out exactly what she and others did.""
pjmedia
-------------
Rosemary Collyer made a living hell of Carter Page's life. She allowed this graduate of USNA
who had been a cooperating source for the CIA AND the FBI to be used as a tool for the purpose
of gaining legal authority to surveille the Trump political campaign. The FBI in its filing
documents asserted that Carter Page's contacts with Russian intelligence officers made it
likely that he was himself working for Russia. An FBI staff attorney deliberately altered a
letter from the CIA that identified Page as a CIA asset working AGAINST he Russians , The FBI
lawyer altered the document and it became part of the case presented to Collyer seeking a FISA
warrant against him.
And, now, having been unmasked as IMO a co-conspirator of the FBI in framing Page, Collyer
has abruptly left the FISC and scuttled back to her life appointment as a district court
federal judge in Washington, DC.
Having testified in Rosemary Collyer's district court several times, I remember her to be an
extraordinarily pro-DoJ jurist who made every effort to accept the DoJ's position in matters
before her.
IMO her conduct in the matter of the FISA warrant against Carter Page should be examined
with a view to impeachment and removal . pl
On January 25, 1995, the Russian military mistook a Black Brant XII missile launched by a
group of scientists from Norway and the United States to study the Northern lights over
Svalbard for a nuclear attack by the US Navy with a Trident ballistic missile. It was the first
case when the Russian leader brought the nuclear suitcase in a state of combat readiness.
The rocket, which was equipped to study the Northern lights, was launched from the island's
Andøya Rocket Range, located off the North-West coast of Norway. It was moving along the
same trajectory that US Intercontinental nuclear missiles could fly towards Moscow. Alarm
sirens sounded in the Russian radar center, where technical specialists recorded the flight of
the missile, and where the message about the us missile attack came from.
Russian President Boris Yeltsin summoned the generals and military advisers, and a "nuclear
suitcase" "Cheget"was delivered to him. He had less than ten minutes to decide whether the
Russian military would strike back. "I really used my" little black box "with a button for the
first time yesterday, which is always with me," Yeltsin told the press the next day, after
narrowly avoiding a nuclear disaster. -- I immediately contacted the Ministry of defense and
all the military commanders I needed, and we tracked the movement of this missile from start to
finish."
A few years later, Spiegel Online noted that Yeltsin left Russian nuclear missiles in his
mines at the time, probably "because relations between Russia and the United States in 1995
were relatively trusting."
The scientists who conducted the study, starting in 1962, launched more than 600 missiles,
but the Black Brant XII rocket was larger than the previous ones and more like an American
ballistic missile. A month before this launch, a team of researchers instructed the Norwegian
foreign Ministry to notify neighboring countries of their experiment. Russian officials
received such a notification from Oslo three weeks before the launch, but it was apparently
ignored by them. The radar crews of the Russian missile warning system (SPRn) were also not
informed and reported that it was a potentially nuclear missile moving towards Russia.
Peter Pry, a former CIA officer, wrote that although there were other false alarms in the
nuclear age, none of them went as far as the Norwegian missile incident, "the single most
dangerous moment of the nuclear missile era."
"... Anonymouse sauces (sic) are stating that the FBI conducted electronic surveillance on ALL Republican Presidential candidates in the 2016 election on Obama's instructions who was briefed each week on the surveillance. ..."
"... In other news, the GAO has declined to publish an internal audit report that details that the level of waste in federal spending has dropped from 20% under Obama to 15% of all federal spending under Trump... ..."
"... Either way--- Drump or some Dum candidate--- America is screwed. ..."
"... Even if true, no murders are attributed to Trump even by his nuttiest enemies. He would have a long way to go to reach the depths of the Bushes and the Clintons. ..."
"... It is fascinating watching the partisan blame game when practically every single one of them up there, regardless of spot or stripe, voted for and supports arming Ukraine. ..."
All the usual suspects are praising Adam Schiff's marathon two-and-a-half-hour Senate speech
on Wednesday to the skies.
Neocon columnist Jennifer Rubin
calls it "a grand slam" in the Washington Post.
Legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin
describes it as "dazzling" on CNN.
Hillary Clinton: "Every American should watch this"
John Legend: "This is brilliantly argued and so compelling. Watch if you have time. Call
your senators. Everyone says the outcome is predetermined. But make sure your senators hear
from you if you're moved by this. Thank you, Congressman Schiff, for standing up for what's
right."
Debra Messing: " I am in tears. Thank you Chairman Schiff for fighting for our
country."
New York Times columnist Gail Collins says it
was "a great job" and that Schiff is "a rock star" for pulling it off.
But in fact it was the opposite
a fear-mongering, sword-rattling harangue that will not only raise tensions with Russia
for no good reason, but sends a chilling message to dissidents at home that if they deviate
from Russiagate orthodoxy by one iota, they'll be driven from the fold.
What is that orthodoxy?
It's that Russia invaded poor innocent Ukraine in 2014, that it interfered in the US
presidential election in 2016 in order to hurt Hillary Clinton and propel Donald Trump into
the White House, and that it's now trying to smear Joe Biden merely because he had allowed
his son to take a high-paying job with a notorious Ukrainian oligarch at a time when he was
supposedly heading up the Ukrainian anti-corruption effort.
As Schiff put it with regard to Donald Trump's famous July 25 phone call urging Ukrainian
President Volodymyr Zelensky to look into Biden's activities:
"This investigation was related to a debunked conspiracy theory alleging that Ukraine not
Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election. This narrative propagated by the Russian
intelligence services contends that Ukraine sought to help Hillary Clinton and harm
then-candidate Trump . This tale is also patently false and, remarkably, it is precisely the
inverse of what the US intelligence community's unanimous assessment was that Russia
interfered in the 2016 election in sweeping and systemic fashion in order to hurt Hillary
Clinton and help Donald Trump."
So even though the Financial Times
reported during the 2016 election campaign that the threat of a Trump victory was spurring
"Kiev's wider political leadership to do something they have never attempted before: intervene,
however indirectly, in a US election," articles like that are now down the memory hole because
Schiff says they're Russian propaganda that US intelligence agencies have determined to be
false.
The same goes for arguments that it's actually NATO's aggressive expansion to the east that
has led to a needless buildup of tensions, not Russia's drive to the west. Recent examples
include an article in the National Interest
arguing that NATO has "empowered some of the most historically anti-Russian elements in
that region – Ukrainian Banderites [i.e. followers of Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera],
Polish nationalists, Balkan Islamists" – elements that, not unreasonably, have sparked
Russia's worst fears – or one in the Nation stating that NATO's drang nach osten is
"the primary cause for the new and very dangerous Cold War."
Articles like those are verboten as well because they go counter to the new line that Russia
is entirely to blame. Declared Schiff:
"Russia is not a threat to Eastern Europe alone. Ukraine has become the de facto proving
ground for just the types of hybrid warfare that the twenty-first century will become defined
by: cyberattacks, disinformation campaigns, efforts to undermine the legitimacy of state
institutions, whether that is voting systems or financial markets. The Kremlin showed boldly
in 2016 that with the malign skills it honed in Ukraine, they would not stay in Ukraine.
Instead, Russia employed them here to attack our institutions, and they will do so
again."
As for Biden, a New York Times editorial said about his son's unfortunate new job back in
2015:
"Sadly, the credibility of Mr. Biden's [anti-corruption] message may be undermined by the
association of his son with a Ukrainian natural-gas company, Burisma Holdings, which is owned
by a former government official suspected of corrupt practices . Burisma's owner, Mykola
Zlochevsky, has been under investigation in Britain and in Ukraine. It should be plain to
Hunter Biden that any connection with a Ukrainian oligarch damages his father's efforts to
help Ukraine. This is not a board he should be sitting on ."
We must all put such sentiments behind us now Russia is seeking to "weaponize" such
information, according to Schiff, and deploy it "against Mr. Biden just like it did against
Hillary Clinton in 2016 when Russia hacked and released emails from her presidential campaign."
If Russia wants to weaponize it, then it's best for the rest of us not to breathe a word of it
lest people think we've been weaponized as well.
Bottom line: we must impeach Trump, according to Schiff's epic presentation, not only
because he's overstepped his proper constitutional bounds, but because he's part of a grand
Russian conspiracy to spread disinformation, undercut US security, undermine faith in US
intelligence agencies, and "remake the map of Europe by dent of military force." In order to
counter this all-encompassing threat, it is our patriotic duty to do the opposite by believing
the CIA and redoubling US defense. If anyone tells us that Biden was guilty of a flagrant
conflict of interest, we must stop up our ears because that's what Moscow wants us to think. If
anyone says that the entire Russian-interference narrative is just a silly conspiracy theory
based on a paucity of facts and an abundance of paranoid speculation, we must do likewise
because it's just the Kremlin trying to worm its way into our minds.
When in doubt, just remember to bleat: America good, Russia baa-aa-aad.
But while it would be nice to dismiss this as a joke, it's not. Schiff's emergence as leader
of the Democratic impeachment drive means that the party is re-grouping along the most
retrograde Cold War lines. As reckless and appalling as Trump's behavior is in the Persian
Gulf, the emerging Democratic worldview is shaping up as no less extreme. Because it sees
Russia as mounting a multi-pronged offensive, the clear implication is that the US must respond
in kind. This means more troops deployments, more forces mobilized to counter Russian threats
from Venezuela to the Middle East, more TV talking heads going on and on about this or that
Kremlin conspiracy, and more labelling of people like Tulsi Gabbard and Jill Stein as Russian
assets.
Remember, this is the Los Angeles neocon who
backed the invasion of Afghanistan, the invasion of Iraq, and Saudi Arabia's unprovoked war
against Yemen, an assault that, since March 2015, has cost
100,000 lives and brought half the country to the brink of starvation. He supported Obama's
war in Libya and called for the establishment of a no-fly zone in Syria and relies on arms
manufacturers and military contractors for major
financial support .
But while Bernie supporters may have thought that Democrats were edging away from such
views, they're plainly in the wrong. Schiff's new-found prominence shows that the neocons are
back in the saddle. Impeachment advocates should be careful of what they wish for because the
anti-Trump forces are turning out to be no less dangerous than those helping him to remain.
What a dumb headline. Every single politician in D.C. is a deep state stooge. Every.
Single. One. None of them are even a little bit better than any of the others. Grow up.
"Recreational intoxication - with the strongest pot ever grown, strength-intensified by
over 50 years of applied horticultural science." Heavy users of the "recreational pot" are psychos. "Recreational psychosis" - courtesy of your state government
It does seem that the impeachment is helping Trump and Bernie as Bernie is taking a clear
lead. The Dems badly wanted to impeach Trump and this Ukraine thing was the first viable
option after the Mueller report failure. It was a poor choice for the Dems because of Joe
Biden's involvement. It got worse when Biden and other Dems say that no one ever thought that
the kid's board position was an issue even though Obama administration people brought it
up.
The more interesting trial which no one is covering is Hunter Biden's child support trial.
He is refusing to turn over his financials. This should be a huge story.
Did he file taxes?
How many foreign companies were sending him money?
Was he reporting all of the income from Burisma and the other companies? I suspect not
because I think he was sending a cut to his father for "getting" him the work.
BREAKING NEWS: Anonymouse sauces (sic) are stating that the FBI conducted electronic
surveillance on ALL Republican Presidential candidates in the 2016 election on Obama's
instructions who was briefed each week on the surveillance.
These anonymouse sauces also stated that there has been no surveillance of ANY of the
Democrat Presidentail candidates in 2019-2020.
Apparently, the Republican party has been unwilling to maintain the levels of cash bribes,
payments in kind etc to senior FBI employees that were paid by the Obama administration.
In other news, the GAO has declined to publish an internal audit report that details that
the level of waste in federal spending has dropped from 20% under Obama to 15% of all federal
spending under Trump...
I made a Google search about something else and I ran into a half dozen different posts
about Shiff having Anthony Bourdain murdered because Bourdain saw Shiff rape and murder a 10
year old African American boy in a snuff video. I think Shiff is creepy and probably a
pervert but this was a little much even with my low opinion of Shiff. Has this been
debunked?
The Schiff fan club are all Killary dead enders and liberal neoCons... they're sore at
Putin 'cause he wouldn't let Obama openly start a bloodbath in Syria the war Dubya did in
Iraq- Afghanistan. Obama and Killary had to use ISIS instead to annihilate some ME countries
to lock down US Global Hegemony.
Adding insult to injury, Drump slam dunked their idol, Killary, in the 2016 election,
which just wasn't on the dance card.
Either way--- Drump or some Dum candidate--- America is screwed.
All these are civil cases Trump lost but won't go to jail, because owning a corporation
allows you to commit crimes and not be charged criminally.
Trump admitted on the Access Hollywood tape that he sexually assaulted women.
22 women have since come forward to say that Trump sexually assaulted them, including his
first wife who said in a divorce deposition that Trump raped her.
Then there are the decades of tax evasions documented in the New York Times.
And the insurance scam documented by Michael Cohen's testimony before Congress.
Campaign law violations
witness tampering
obstruction
selling out America to foreign
There are also 14 on going investigations against Trump as well, but they can't charge
Trump in any of those yet, because he is a sitting president.
Even if true, no murders are attributed to Trump even by his nuttiest enemies. He would
have a long way to go to reach the depths of the Bushes and the Clintons.
It is fascinating watching the partisan blame game when practically every single one of
them up there, regardless of spot or stripe, voted for and supports arming Ukraine.
Nevertheless, after listening to what Shiff and Nadler said yesterday I conclude that if
Trump is re-elected the claim will be made that he stole the election with the help of Russia.
This is silly, his actions indicate that he is an agent of influence for Israel, not
Russia.
Call me Turcopolier. I stand here where ignorant armies clash by night and hope to be saved
to tell the tale in November. pl
After being held captive for three days while House Democrats litigated their impeachment
case against President Trump, House Impeachment Manager Adam Schiff (D-CA) enraged Senate
Republicans last night during his closing remarks when he referred to an anonymously sourced
media report that they would face retribution from the White House if they voted to convict the
president.
"CBS News reported last night that a Trump confidant said that key senators were warned,
'Vote against the president and your head will be on a pike.' I don't know if that's true,"
said Schiff, challenging GOP lawmakers to vote with "moral courage" instead of caving to their
party.
GOP senators are heard yelling "that's not true" when House manager Adam Schiff cites a
CBS report claiming Pres. Trump told them their heads "will be on a pike" if they voted
against him. pic.twitter.com/wrXI4KhGPR
-- Alex Salvi (@alexsalvinews) January 25, 2020
Schiff's 'pike' comment enraged several moderate Republicans - who Democrats desperately
need on their side for a vote on whether to call witnesses in the trial.
"I thought he was doing fine with [talking about] moral courage until he got to the 'head on
a pike.' That's where he lost me," said one such Senator, Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), adding "He's a
good orator. ... It was just unnecessary."
Kevin Smith: "Higgins is currently frantically trying to prop up the Douma narrative against a mountain of evidence disproving
his conclusions. For those who’ve followed his story, it’s clear that Higgins is an intelligence asset, set up to take the fall
when the currently collapsing narratives take hold in the mainstream.
"You didn't think that one through, did you, @eliothiggins sweetie? You're not in the
ladies' lingerie trade now. This discussion is about truth, which endures, is not held together
by elastic, and is not for sale." ~Peter Hitchens responding to Eliot Higgins of Bellingcat over the OPCW scandal on
Twitter – 2 January 2020.
"... I believe more people nowadays recognise that the devastating wars in Iraq and Libya and events in Syria were pushed by our governments and media. They can even accept, when you explain, that we've been assisting terrorists to unseat governments for years. But they seem hesitant of taking the next step and we need to encourage them on this path. ..."
"... This path leads to recognising the sheer evil in our midst and getting out of this mindset that criminal behavior and lying in governments and in our media is normal or should in any way be tolerated. Perhaps some people appreciate this already but don't want to address it out of concern to what they might find. Maybe some people dread the thought of a global conflict so ignore it. But we need to hammer home the consequences of simply doing nothing. ..."
"... I've been trying to think of an analogy to try to get this point across. I sometimes say to people, we wouldn't have released a serial killer like Harold Shipman from prison and appointed him Foreign Secretary. Therefore, why do we tolerate a long line of Foreign Secretaries complicit in laying waste to the world? Sadly, with this analogy most people usually look back at me blankly so I have been searching for one more complete and rooted in history which people can relate better to events today. ..."
"You didn't think that one through, did you, @eliothiggins sweetie? You're not in the
ladies' lingerie trade now. This discussion is about truth, which endures, is not held
together by elastic, and is not for sale."
Peter Hitchens responding to Eliot Higgins of Bellingcat over the OPCW scandal on
Twitter – 2 January 2020.
Like many, I've been following the Douma scandal for some time and particularly since the
OPCW whistleblowers and leaked emails blew the lid off the official narrative that Assad used
chemical weapons there.
For the past few weeks he's been debating the topic with Eliot Higgins of Bellingcat, Scott Lucas and various Middle East based journalists
who created and then pushed the false narrative.
In fact, it's not really a debate. Peter Hitchens is quite literally slaughtering these
narrative managers – his logic and clear thinking – and wit exposing the numerous
gaps in their story and their desperate deflections.
Hitchens position is not exactly the same as many of us here hold – that Douma was a
clear false flag. What he is saying is the evidence points to there being no chemical attack by
the Syrian government, the pretext used for the attack on Syria. He doesn't wish to speculate
on matters which aren't conclusively proven, for example precisely on what did actually
happen.
I respect that position in many ways and his refusal to comment on the dead civilians in the
Douma images makes sense from a journalist in the mainstream. I think by having a position
which is clear and unassailable enables him to easily brush off his online detractors and not
allow them to deflect to other issues.
While I don't agree with everything he says, Hitchens has a calm and rational argument for
all the issues he covers. This puts clear ground between him and his online opponents who often
resort to childish abuse.
My 80-year old mum admires him too. She describes him as 'frightfully posh'. Perhaps someone
who might have belonged in a previous age – but I'm glad we have him in this one.
Anyway, I think we can be sure that Hitchens will continue his important work within the
remit he's chosen and others will investigate the unanswered questions which arise from the
Douma incident.
Ultimately the question about the dead civilians in the images is simply too dreadful to
ignore.
This is because if a chemical attack did not take place and Assad was not responsible it
seems highly likely that the civilians including children were murdered to facilitate a
fabrication.
And were our own intelligence agencies involved in a staged event, considering the refusal
to even establish the basic facts in the days following?
And then, of course, the resulting air strikes nearly caused us to go to war with Russia,
with all that would entail.
While these investigations continue, I think it's timely to see where these events fit into
the way the general public think and perceive wrongdoing and to try to radically to change
this.
I believe more people nowadays recognise that the devastating wars in Iraq and Libya and
events in Syria were pushed by our governments and media. They can even accept, when you
explain, that we've been assisting terrorists to unseat governments for years. But they seem
hesitant of taking the next step and we need to encourage them on this path.
This path leads to recognising the sheer evil in our midst and getting out of this mindset
that criminal behavior and lying in governments and in our media is normal or should in any way
be tolerated. Perhaps some people appreciate this already but don't want to address it out of
concern to what they might find. Maybe some people dread the thought of a global conflict so
ignore it. But we need to hammer home the consequences of simply doing nothing.
I've been trying to think of an analogy to try to get this point across. I sometimes say to
people, we wouldn't have released a serial killer like Harold Shipman from prison and appointed
him Foreign Secretary. Therefore, why do we tolerate a long line of Foreign Secretaries
complicit in laying waste to the world? Sadly, with this analogy most people usually look back
at me blankly so I have been searching for one more complete and rooted in history which people
can relate better to events today.
So, here follows an analogy of a character who lived in the 17th century. His traits, his
crimes, the political climate and peoples misguided perceptions in response can be compared to
recent events and one particular individual causing havoc in the world today.
Of course I refer to Eliot Higgins of Bellingcat.
Eliot ( 'suck my balls' ) Higgins and
Titus Oates1. Eliot Higgins and Bellingcat
Higgins probably doesn't need much of an introduction here. It seems he has no specific
qualifications relevant to his role and a bit of a drop-out in terms of education.
Before the Arab spring I knew no more about weapons than the average Xbox owner. I had no
knowledge beyond what I'd learned from Arnold Schwarzenegger and Rambo."
But this didn't prevent him blogging about world events and then setting himself up and his
site as investigator for several incidents most notably the shooting down of the MH17 passenger
plane over Ukraine and allegations of chemical weapons use in Syria. It's now known that
Bellingcat is funded by pro-war groups including the Atlantic Council
Higgins has been accused by chemical weapons experts, academics and independent journalists
on the ground of fabricating evidence to reach a predetermined outcome decided on by his
funders.
His rise to prominence was fast and apparently some media editors now refer their
journalists to Bellingcat fabrications rather than allowing them to do any journalism
themselves.
For those who've followed his story, it's clear that Higgins is an intelligence asset, set
up to take the fall when the currently collapsing narratives take hold in the
mainstream.
2. Titus Oates and the Popish Plot
Oates was a foul-mouthed
charlatan , serial liar and master of deception who lived in the 17th century. His earlier
life included being expelled from school and he was labelled a 'dunce' by people who knew him.
He became a clergyman and later joined the Navy. His career was plagued by various sex scandals
and charges of perjury.
In the 1670s during the time of Charles II, religious tensions threatened to spill over into
civil war but the pragmatic King, by and large, kept a lid on it.
However, along with Dr Israel Tonge an anti-Catholic rector, Oates started writing
conspiracy theories and inventing plots and later began writing a manuscript alleging of a plan
to assassinate King Charles II and replace him with his openly Catholic brother.
When the fabrication started to gather momentum, the King had an audience with Oates and was
unconvinced and was said to have found discrepancies in his story.
However, the tense political and religious climate at that time was ideal for conspiracy
theories and scaremongering. The King's ministers took Oates at his word and over a dozen
Catholics were executed for treason. This story created panic and paranoia lasting several
years taking the nation to the brink of civil war.
Over time Oates lies were exposed and when the Catholic King James II came to the throne, he
tried Oates with perjury and he was whipped and placed in the pillory.
After James II fled England during the so-called 'Glorious Revolution' King William and
Queen Mary pardoned Oates and gave him a pension.
For me, this whole episode has many obvious parallels with Higgins, the long-running Russia
and the anti-Semitism witch-hunts in the media and the false narratives over Iraq, Libya and
Syria. Like those in power today, Oates had a knack for getting away with it. And I guess we
can all relate this to Julian Assange – the victims or whistleblowers being punished and
the perpetrators getting off.
I had wondered why James II, often ruthless and unforgiving had not executed Oates. But
apparently the crime of perjury even then didn't carry the death sentence. The judge who
convicted Oates was said to have tried his best to finish him off through the whipping, though
he survived.
But perhaps even the King and judiciary in failing in this or not using other means at their
disposal, couldn't comprehend the enormity of his crimes. Oates was after all a rather absurd
character, open to ridicule.
Perhaps this is a bit similar to people today when discovering that Eliot Higgins is also a
foul-mouthed fraud – but they can't reconcile this comical ex-lingerie employee as a
menace to humanity.
3. Modern day
In the past few weeks I've read various older articles on Iraq and Syria. US troops
shooting people for fun from a helicopter . The perpetrators are still free – the
whistle-blowers who exposed that, and other events in prison or exile.
Last year we learned about a shocking massacre of Syrian children,
unreported in the mainstream media . Mainstream journalists through their one-sided
distortions of the conflict and silence, perpetuating the myth that the terrorists who carried
out this mass murder are freedom fighters.
And as I've mentioned, we've seen firmer evidence of what many of us knew along – that
Douma was a staged fabrication as a pretext for air-strikes and dangerously escalating the
Syrian war. The likes of Eliot Higgins and others in the media, colluding in the cover-up of
mass murder which likely facilitated this event. And for those honest journalists and experts
who bring the truth of these staged events to us,
smears will no doubt continue .
Higgins and others in the media who lie, misinform or remain silent are no better than those
shooting civilians from helicopters or starting these wars in the first place. In fact, they
have killed more and keep killing.
This modern-day Titus Oates, and others share a big responsibility for death and destruction
in the Middle East and a dangerous new Cold War.
As I say, I think people are waking up to the distorted narratives and misdirections which
have inflicted war on others. Now they need to take the next step and grasp the sheer enormity
of the crimes and the risks of global conflict if we don't act.
So, how do we achieve this and get in a position of holding the criminals and war
propagandists to account?
By confronting them directly and mercilessly. As Jeremy Corbyn should have done over the
anti-Semitism hoax. Perhaps we should adopt some of the tactics they use against the
truth-tellers and whistle-blowers. I don't mean by lies or smears. Maybe even ridiculing these
people and their nonsense might have the effect of trivialising the crimes they have
committed.
No, I think it is time for plainer, no-holds-barred language describing these people for the
true evil they are – until the truth and label sticks.
We need to recognise more the seriousness of the crimes. This commentary from the usually
measured Piers Robinson about the staged event in Douma reflects the true gravity of the
situation in
terms of the OPCW complicity .
4. The hijacking of OPCW
The cover-up of evidence that the Douma incident was staged is not merely misconduct. As
the staging of the Douma incident entailed mass murder of civilians, those in OPCW who have
suppressed the evidence of staging are, unwittingly or otherwise, colluding with mass
murder."
We need to now apply this strong language to all crimes committed, be it from the soldiers
on the ground, the governments starting these wars or supplying terrorists or the media which
promote mass murder through their lies, distortions and silence when presented with the true
facts.
We need to go on the offensive and call out the criminals and spell out in no uncertain
terms what we are dealing with. With the evidence and fact-based analogies or arguments we
publish we should be using more commentary such as 'mass murderer', 'traitor' or 'terrorist
propagandist'.
This is particularly important in light of events in recent days. The assassination of
General Qasem Soleimani has been normalised in both mainstream and on social media. The people
legitimising state-sponsored murder in offices thousands of miles away from Iran, woefully
ignorant of the potential of this causing a chain of events which could visit our door
soon.
Above all, we should specifically name and shame the individuals promoting war. This needs
to be relentless. The official war narratives which have crumbled so far are ample evidence of
wrongdoing on a vast scale. So, we can be confident in doing this with the truth firmly on our
side.
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wardropper ,
No, I think it is time for plainer, no-holds-barred language describing these people for the
true evil they are – until the truth and label sticks.
Yes indeed.
I was, however, reminded today of the huge mountain we yet have to climb before it can be
normal again NOT to be corrupt and wicked. The scenario was a session of acrimony in a US
Senate chamber, and according to the NYTimes, "Tensions grew so raw after midnight that Chief
Justice Roberts cut in just before 1 a.m. to admonish the managers and the president's
lawyers to "remember where they are" and return to "civil discourse." "
"Remembering where you are", when dealing with Titus Oates and other vulgar frauds is perhaps
not entirely appropriate ?
wardropper ,
Apologies, I forgot to set the first sentence in quotes
Thom ,
Hitchens may be on the level on this particular issue but it is part of a wider deception
where Hitchens poses as a friend to critical thinkers and then tells them they are helpless
and/or can do nothing about it. If he really had journalistic integrity he wouldn't be taking
a salary from the Mail on Sunday, a newspaper that relentlessly lied for the Tories at the
last election, with the help of the itelligence agencies.
Koba ,
As good as Hitchens has done here he's still at heart a Trotskyist he lives a good split and
a toothless display just like the Trotskyists he used to side with. His brother went from
Trotskyist to soft neocon and peter went from Trotskyist to an ardent Christian Conservative
in a veeeeeery short space of time. Plus there dad was deeeeep in with the establishment and
his mum Jewish. So .
Bellingcrap is just another scam like Dupes (Snopes) and Politi"facts". All of them are
funded by the Atlantic Council and the CIA front National Endowment for "Democracy". Their
cover as an "independent objective fact checking service" is about as transparent as Saran
Wrap.
tonyopmoc ,
I really liked this when I read it this morning, before the grandkids came round, but I
thought some of the comments a bit severe..
I mean this photo is of some 40 year old kid, who lives in Leicester, and his
Mum/wife/sister or whatever works in the local Post Office .
I personally had never heard of Brown Noses, and I have never personnally succeeded in
getting anything I wrote, posted above our below the line, since The Manchester Guardian
moved from Manchester to London, and whilst I do love reading some of the posters' comments
well look face it.
Even though Rhys probabaly doesn't like what this kid writes – Elliot is it? he is
hardly going to come round with a chainsaw, to cut his head off is he? He probably never even
thought of it.
He did say he is small fry, and he probably is still a virgin (been brainwashed – so
he actually belives the model doll is better. What has he got to compare it to?)
So I can't blame any of them.
There are alternatives as well as Facebook, Youtube, Instagram, and all those Dating
Websites, when almost everything you write gets deleted.
Just go down the local pub when there is a good band on. Even I can pull there, but I am
better looking than both Rhys and Elliot
I Like Girls.
I am a man. It's Normal
Just keep fit dancing and smiling, and you will be O.K.
Tony
paul ,
The prime importance of these endless hoaxes, smears, lies, fabrications and official
approved conspiracy theories, lies not so much in the events themselves as what it says about
the nature of the people who rule over us and their courtiers and handmaidens in the MSM.
It would take a whole forest of trees merely to catalogue all their lies over the years,
whether it's the Iraq Incubator Babies, the black Viagra fuelled rape gangs in Libya, the
Syrian Gas Hoaxes, 9/11, Iraq's WMD, Iran's non existent nuclear weapons, Skripal,
Russiagate, Ukrainegate, or the communist spy/ terrorist/ anti semitic smear campaign against
Corbyn. And that is only the tip of a very large iceberg. You could go back further to
Gladio, Operation Northwoods, Tonkin Gulf, the "Holocaust", Zinoviev Letter, Bayonetted
Belgian Babies, Raped Belgian Nuns, Human Bodies Made Into Soap. The list is endless.
We have been lied to consistently for years, decades, and generations. And these lies have
been peddled endlessly in the MSM, no matter how ludicrous and transparently false they are.
In the absence of direct personal knowledge or very convincing evidence to the contrary, you
just have to assume that everything we have ever been told, are being told, and will be told,
and most of the accepted historical record, are simply false. Nothing, nothing at all, can
ever be taken at face value.
And those who rule over us and who are responsible for these lies are psychopathic
subhuman filth devoid of any moral values or any redeeming features whatsoever. They are a
thousand times worse than the worst mass murderers or child killers who have ever been
through our courts. The Moors Murderers, the Ted Bundys, the Jeffrey Dahmers, were seriously
damaged individuals who killed a handful of victims. And they did their own dirty work. The
Blairs, the Campbells, the Straws, the Bushes, the Cheneys, the Rumsfelds, the Allbrights,
the Macrons, the Camerons, the Netanyahus, the Trumps, have the blood of millions on their
hands. They and their wire pullers are responsible for the death, starvation and misery of
tens and hundreds of millions.
So when Blair, or Johnson, or Trump or whoever is interviewed on television, you have to
remember that individual is a thousand times worse than the Moors Murderers, and we would
actually be that much better off if Brady or Hindley were ruling over us. They deserve no
respect or deference or legitimacy. They plot the murders of millions and the starvation of
tens of millions – and laugh and giggle as they do so. They should be simply recognised
for what they awe – psychopathic subhuman filth.
I do agree with you Paul and of course all you say is true. One of the main problems is that
these people have the power to build artificial constructs sufficient for the masses to
believe and perpetuated through their bought and paid for MSM whose journalists are mere foot
soldiers and wish only to get their pay checks. They have no reason to question the lies and
distortions pedaled to them by TPTB – they merely repeat the false narrative:
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not
understanding it!" – Upton Sinclair
And we, the great 99%, have little power to change things except within our local network.
We can shout all we like on social media but it changes nothing until the great crisis
reoccurs and perhaps the masses will rise and demand a just and equitable system. Until that
day perhaps this little video will provide an understanding:
The business of the MSM throughout the ages has been to traumatise or at least just generally
worry the public with headlines focused on fear, envy, anger, revenge, and hate. Include all
five in your story and you're well on the way to a Pulitzer Prize, bestowed on the profession
by one of the great muckrakers of all time. It's not incidental that there have been a
disturbing number of winners that have turned out to be dissembling frauds. Add to this the
fact that 'journalism' training apparently does not teach entrants to distinguish the
difference between opinion and news, and the die is cast: propaganda as news.
Dungroanin ,
Here is what BellEndScat supporting Rusbridger is moaning about.
"For some years now – largely unreported – two chancery court judges have been
dealing with literally hundreds of cases of phone hacking against MGN Ltd and News Group, the
owners, respectively, of the Daily Mirror and the Sun (as well as the defunct News of the
World).
The two publishers are, between them, forking out eye-watering sums to avoid any cases going
to trial in open court. Because the newspaper industry lobbied so forcefully to scrap the
second part of the Leveson inquiry, which had been due to shine a light on such matters, we
can only surmise what is going on.
But there are clues. Mirror Group (now Reach) had by July 2018 set aside more than
£70m to settle phone-hacking claims without risking any of them getting to court. The
BBC reported last year that the Murdoch titles had paid out an astonishing £400m in
damages and calculated that the total bill for the two companies could eventually reach
£1bn."
"Because the newspaper industry lobbied so forcefully to scrap the second part of the
Leveson inquiry, which had been due to shine a light on such matters, we can only surmise
what is going on."
-- --
Completely ignoring that the Integrity Iniative infested Guardian ITSELF objected to the
recommendation of Levesons thoroughly public Inquiry and opposition to a independent press
regulator!
It would have been a building block and certainly stopped most of the continued press
misbehaviour over the last 5 years.
Neither Fish nor Fowl Mr Rusbridger. More sinner that saint, more like.
Hugh O'Neill ,
Going to the heart of what Bellingcat, MI6 and CIA is Pompeo's: "We lie, we cheat, we steal."
These evil filth are devoid of any moral code and have no respect whatsoever for the laws of
God or Man. At which point, consider Moses' (how apt) Ten Commandments. There among them is:
"Thou shalt not bear false witness". Think what you will of these Ten, but as a moral code,
they were quite useful.
Richard Le Sarc ,
Would that all these scum could share the fate of their progenitor, Streicher-without the '
necktie party'. Life at hard labour would do the lot of them much good.
Brianeg ,
I looked at the Veterans Today link and it all sounds very plausible'
However in today's world nothing makes sense especially when the questions arise.
Is it possible to change the signal of an aircrafts transponder remotely. Can the target
acquisition radar on the missile be spoofed remotely. Just why did the flight control officer
sanction the take off of this plane in the middle of a war unless they were party to the
whole thing.. Just what were the six Israeli F-35 jets doing flying close to the Iranian
border?
Okay there is a lot of smoke but just where is the fire.
Just as interesting is that none of the twelve Iranian missiles was intercepted and there
are rumours that the Iranians were able to take out of action American air defences.
I am sure that like with Douma when the majority of NATO missiles were intercepted by
missiles that were decades old, you wonder what might happen when most of the middle east is
covered by the S-300 and later versions.
This is a story that has got a long way to run and we might never hear the ending.
Dungroanin ,
Facts are inconvenient.
Many planes took off.
This one was delayed by the pilot 'to remove overloading'.
Reports of Cruise missiles heading in.
The thing about 'chips' is they could easily be identified by putting them in a black box
and watching what they do using a chip which only does that!
The whole bs about it's THEM not US crap falls away. Just need some open source simple
'custodian' chip manufacturer to make that available. If it can be made a 'gate keeper' than
we are all safe.
Mucho ,
"It sounds a bit MAGA. "
After this, I will never, ever read any of your comments ever again. Get lost!
Mucho ,
You talk so much crap. Please, keep it to yourself
Dungroanin ,
I ain't saying that is your opinion am I?
The bit I watched was him being gung-ho about getting back 'control of microprocessors'
!!!
There is a big difference between designing chips and 'manufacturing' facilities'.
Have you never wondered why most actual building of small electrical component equipment
takes place in Asia?
I don't care wherher you read my comments- i am free to post what I want on whatevet
article and whoevers comment. And stick to facts.
Mucho ,
"The bit I watched ".
Honestly, I am so tired of people who comment on things they know nothing about. Everything
you say is wrong, because you are speaking from a position of total ignorance, because you
haven't watched the films.
Watch 1 to 3. Watch 22 and 23 ALL THE WAY THROUGH, not skimming. Then comment. Every
inaccurate comment you make is covered in detail. Honestly it's no wonder we're so fucked.
From 2005 after one google search, time spent on this, 10 seconds:
"While Yona was developed in partnership with one of Intel's California centers, the 65nm
microprocessor product is the first to be developed in its entirety, both the architecture
and strategy, by Intel engineers at its Israel plants in Haifa and Yakum. " https://www.israel21c.org/intels-new-chip-design-developed-in-israel/
You know zilch, you understand nothing, you make assumptions, you don't watch or read the
material, and then in your total ignorance, you spew your feeble thoughts on this forum.
Moron
Mucho ,
You define the phrase "ignorant Brit"
Dungroanin ,
Mucho since you FAILED instantly in your promise to ignore me – i will respond to your
toy throwing out of the parambulator.
First just telling people to WATCH something without explaining what the salient point to
be learnt – is not the way to influence or educate.
I prefer reading an argument- I definitely do not spend hours watching TV or listening to
propaganda by msm / indy or 'shock jocks' – that last was the personality I saw and
didn't feel the need to hear anymore as I don't when Nigel Farage and his ilk do on the radio
here.
If you want to inform or prove something to me or anyone else kindly post a link to a
written piece.
Second, chips are designed eveywhere there is such competence. Chip manufacturing mainly
improved theough research in top universities.
The UK was a lead chip designer too.
None of that means the Israelis haven't monopolosed tech and own many patents. The fact is
the Israelis ARE part of the 5+1 eyed world Empire – they are the plus one. Snowdens
whistleblowing makes absolutely clear that the +1 gets a higher clearance than the +4.
That's as nice as I am prepared to be, so finally, that last paragraph is what is known as
PROJECTION. Look it up and learn that it comes from your fav bogeymen brainfuckers.
That is some serious self-hate you have going on – work on it.
Take it easy ok?
Mucho ,
Number 23 is totally relevant too, going deep into chips, backdooring and kill switch usage
Koba ,
So the mocking of maga is what set you off? Fuck maga and it's idiot supporters great nations
don't slaughter civilians for capital
chris morris is very funny has a fine body of twisted comedick works
for all his charm his role is too destroy society degrade
he is khazar after all
sacha baron co hen the names speaks for itself an empty cruel tool
never trust a coen cohen khan or cowen or co they cookoo
eliot mcfuck higgins is not oirish
he is not certainly related to snooker loopy or is it darts i cannot remember hero alex
higgins.
eliot"s dad is rita katz from site intel group amaq news
his mom barbera lerner spector
or is it vice versa
versa vice
whatever
shirley you
get my the friends of the oirish israel drift
so to speaks
or sum such
Mucho ,
Brilliant, insightful, logical hypothesis of the recent plane downing over Iran by Jeremy
Rothe Kushel. Ignore the video, this is about the written article.
For further info about Israeli tech domination, what it is, where it comes from and the
implications of this, go to Brendon O Connell's YT channel. Number 22 in his list is very
important.
Mucho ,
Jeremy Rothe-Kushel is a very important member of the truth community, in no small part due
to the fact that he is an Ashkenazi Jew. My personal belief is that in the end, the Jewish
community will play a pivotal role in weeding out the evil that rules over us. I wish we
didn't have these labels, that we could have true freedom to play our chosen role in our God
created realm, but at this stage in the game, we're stuck with our divide and rule labels and
systems of control.
Jeremy's style is to the point, he has great depth of knowledge, an encyclopedic knowledge of
his field and is a highly astute commentator. He presents a lot of complex information in
fairly easy to digest chunks with his co-host, Greg McCarron, on their show "The Antedote" on
YT, as well as doing a lot of guerilla style activism in US politics. Highly recommended.
norman wisdom ,
i met elliot many years ago
the chap on the 8 year old lap top above
we called him fat face down the synagogue ohh how we laughed
he laughed as well everytime someone said it
such fun
are rabbi one day organised a trip and lecture tour of chatham house the belly of the
beast.
we learnt all about how tough regime change was and how difficult it is to do on a bbc size
budget.
what we learnt was that having are people everywhere really helped
scripted up to speed influencer roles in media in public on track on page working cog
like.
a kind of khazar collective non semites only for security reasons of course.
we could work from a very low pound dollar and shekels base and still be very effective.
never under estimate the benjamins or elliots it is folks like this that are the real hero
of the oded yinon
yes sir
already my life
fat face eliot boy done good
and like all khazar he hates the sephardim jewisher and the unclean arab which is shirley
a bonus is it not
George Mc ,
First off, if folks haven't a clue who Harold Shipman is, you're not going to get far with
Titus Oats. At the most they might think it's a character from Gormenghast.
Second, I initially misread the article and thought that the figure from the 17th century
actually WAS Higgins of Bellingcat. And if that seems an absurd assumption to make, even
temporarily, it doesn't seem much more absurd than some of the stuff he says e.g.
I had no knowledge beyond what I'd learned from Arnold Schwarzenegger and Rambo.
The point has been raised that there are psyops perpetrated with a malicious sense of
humour as if to say, "These suckers will swallow anything". Higgins with his "education" from
Arnold and Rambo may be an example of one of those jokes.
Third, and to end on an optimistic note, I like the 17th century sentencing and recommend
we bring it back:
and he was whipped and placed in the pillory.
Dungroanin ,
Admin – a suggestion on keeping recent articles available from the top of the page.
Problem: As you add new aricles at top left the ones on the very right drop away! Almost
as if being binned into a memory hole.
Solution: allow a scroll at the right hand edge so that these older links are easily
available to readers. Only a minor coding change without any change to your front page.
Tallis Marsh ,
I concur! I'm sure many of us will appreciate a scroll on the right hand edge so we can
access the older articles. Thanks in advance, OffG!
Oliver ,
HM Armed Forces operations in Syria follow the doctrine of Major General Sir Frank Kitson who
learnt his stuff in Kenya in the 1950s. Murder, torture, rape the staples of the British
military's modern terrorist ability. NATO doctrine too.
This is an important article: one of the few that dares to express that Douma et al are not
mere false flags they a darkly psychotic form of 'snuff propaganda porn' (including the
recycling and rearanging of 'props' that were until recently animate human souls with a
lifetime of possibility abnegated for ideology). The Working Group on Syria is part of a
small counter-narrative subset – along with Sister Agnes Mariam, Vanessa Beeley, RT (on
occasion), UK Column, The Indicter, Prof. Marcello Ferrada de Noli – who are willing to
state plainly that this is child murder. Now I wholeheartedly commend Kevin that we should
name and shame the culprits and their supporters.
"No, I think it is time for plainer, no-holds-barred language describing these people
for the true evil they are – until the truth and label sticks."
I had a similar epiphany in early 2016. The barbaric of murder of starved and thirsty
children at Rashidin – Syrian innocence lured by much needed sweets and drinks only to
be blown apart in front of their mothers. Anyone who supports the White Helmets terrorist
construct and their NATO-proxy child-murderers needs to be exposed. But what if that trail of
exposure leads back to the leader of the Labour party: who had just personally endorsed the
charity funding of the White Helmets? And continued to support the Jo Cox Foundation of
Syrian humanitarian bombers and R2P interventionists? Which itself is a front for the dark
money web of 'philanthrocapitalism' that is the shadow support network for regime change
crimes against humanity. This is when righteous indignation meets the dark wall of silence
around the social construction of reality. Especially if you put Jeremy Corbyn in the
frame.
What this means is the ability to frame dark actors for the true evil they are has to be a
two-way flow. Meaning is created across networks, not just by naming but by naming and
agreeing across narrative communities. Again, this is not abstruse: it is social reality.
Social reality is not reality: it is a consensual constructivism. Significant numbers of
others have to be in a position of consensual agreement in order to challenge the dominant
narrative(s). So I echo the sentiment that many can see that the dominant narrative –
especially concerning Syria – is deeply flawed. But they are as yet unwilling to admit
that the depth of the flaw is in fact a tear in social reality that cannot be easily
healed.
This is the aspect of social reality called 'universe maintenance'. Doxa is the reality
constructing belief set – the episteme of interacting beliefs. The narrative has two
main aspects: ortho-doxa and hetero-doxa – the orthodox maintaining and heterodox
subverting discourses. In order to truly subvert the hegemonic orthodoxy – there has to
be a social moment of criticality when the heterodox is no longer deniable. To reach that
point: the intrajecting true has to be believable to the hegemonic orthodoxy. Now we have a
third mode: para-doxa when the true 'state of affairs' is not believable – it is easily
rejected as paradoxical to the reigning consensus covenant of the true. This is universe
maintaining: whereby the the totality of the dominant discourse actually subsumes or repels
any paradox as a half-truth or ameliorated, disarmed less-than-true ('conspiracy theory').
This is known as 'recuperation'. Anything that meets the dominant discourse has to be
explained in the terms of the dominant discourse accommodative and recommending itself to the
dominant discourse. Which then becomes a part of the dominant universe of discourse.
A moment of the true is like a barb to a bubble. It has to be contained and wrapped in
narrative that describes and explains it into a consumable form. The full realisation of the
propagandic child murder in Syria – tacitly supported by the Labour Party and Jeremy
Corbyn in particular – would destroy the symbolic universe of social reality. Of which
it is my personal experience no one really wants to do. The correlations, direct and indirect
links, and universally maintained orthodoxy of narrative discourse point to an accomodation.
An explanation or multivariate set of explanations that problem shift and ascribe blame to
imaginary actors. To deflect or defend the personal self. Because the personal self is
independently situated outside the social sphere. Or is it?
Seeing the real event as it happens requires the perspicacity of social inclusion. We all
create social reality together: with our without layers of dualising exclusion that protects
us from the way the world really is. Who would vote to legitimise the supporters of NATO and
the child-murderers of Syria? 31 million legitimising independent social actors just did. Do
you suppose they did so in full knowledge that it is child-murder they were supporting? Or
did they create universe maintaining accommodations to the truth? That is how powerful the
screening discourses and legitimising orthodoxic narrative mythology is. It is not that it
cannot be subverted: its just that calling out the true evil has to be heard in unison by
large or social small assemblages willing to totally change everything – including
themselves. In order to transition to a different social reality one that accommodates the
truth. One which will look nothing like the social reality we choose to maintain as is.
Francis Lee ,
My first attempt didn't get through. Herewith second.
It seems to me that the internal affairs of the Russian Federation, although they may have
some impact on external geopolitical issues, are a matter for them. At the present time the
relevant question regarding the RF is as follows: Question 1. Is Russia a revionist state
intent on an expansionist foreign policy? Answer NO. But it is not going to tolerate NATO
expansion into its own strategic zones, namely, Ukraine, Georgia and the North Caucusas.
Question 2. Is the Anglo-Zionist empire in open of pursuit of a world empire intent on
destroying any sovereign state – including first and foremost Russia – which
stands in its way? Answer YES. This really is so blatant that anyone who is ethnically
challenged should seek psychiatric help. In Polls conducted around the world the US is always
cited as the most dangerous enemy of world peace, including in the US itself. Thus a small
influential (unfortunately deranged) cabal based in the west has insinuated its way into the
institutions of power and poses a real and present danger to world peace.
This being the case it is imperative to push all and any 'normal' western governments and
shape public opinion and discourse (except the nut-jobs like Poland and the Baltics) into
diplomacy. Wind down NATO just as the Warsaw Pact was wound down. that will do for starters.
Of course the PTB in all the western institutions – the media (whores) the deep state,
the Atlantic Council, the Council on Foreign Relations, Chatham House the Arms merchants, the
security services GCHQ, the CIA, Mossad and the rest will oppose this with all the power at
their command. This is the present primary site of struggle, mainly propagandistic, cultural
and economic, but with overtones of kinetic warfare.
Similar diplomatic initiatives must be directed at China. Yes, I know all about China's
social credit policy, I don't particularly like the idea of 24 hour system of surveillance,
and I wouldn't want to live there, but is already a virtual fait accompli in the west. Again
it bears repeating that sovereign states should be left to their own devices. After all
'States have neither permanent friends of allies, only permanent interests. (Lord Palmerston,
19 century British Statesman). No more 'humanitarian interventions' thank you very much. How
about Mind our own Business non-interventions.
I make no apologies for being a foreign policy realist – if that hasn't become
apparent by this stage!
BigB ,
Francis:
The Russian Federation is involved is strategic partnership with China in consolidating
the Eurasian 'supercontinent' into the world island. One which is slowly being drawn together
into a massive market covering 70% of the world's population, 75% of energy resources, and
70% of GDP. I'd call that expansionist, wouldn't you?
Market mechanisms and methodology are exponentially expansionist, extractivist, and
extrapolative. Market propaganda is free and equal exchange coupled with mutual development
through comparative advantage. Everyone benefits, right?
No: markets operate as vast surplus value extractors that only operate unequally to
deliver maximum competitive advantage to the suprasovereign core. Surplus value valorises
surplus capital which cannot be contained in a single domestic market: so it seeks to exploit
underdeveloped foreign markets setting up dependencies and peripheries in the satellite
states. Which keeps them maldeveloped. In short: Russia and China's wealth is not just their
own.
Russia and China are globalisation now. Globalist exponential expansionism, extractivism,
and extrapolation is the repression of humanism and destruction of the biosphere. It can't
stop growing in the cancer stage of hyper-capitalism. We are currently consuming every
resource at a material throughput increase of 3% per annum year on year. That's a 23 year
exponential doubling of material resources. And a 46 year doubling of the doubling. How long
before globalisation uses everything? How far into the race to the bottom will the market
collapse?
It would be really nice to return to a Westphalian System of non-expansionist,
non-extractivist sovereign nation states. It is just not even plausible under market
mechanisms of extraction. There can be no material decoupling and development remains
contingent on an impossible infinity: because development remains parallel and assymetrically
maintained. And all major resources are depleting exponentially too. Including the nominative
renewable and sustainable ones.
Degrowth; self-sufficiency; localised 'anti-fragility', steady-state; asymmetric
development of the marginalised and the peripheralised; regenerative agroecological
agriculture; human development not abstract market development; are just some of the
pre-requisites of a return to sovereign states. Russia 'sovereigntist' globalisation is the
expansionist opposite to that. The RF is part of the biggest market in the world that hoovers
up as much surplus value as it can before sending a large tranche of it to London. As much as
$25bn a year in capital flight into the offshore nexus of secrecy jurisdictions. It's a
globalist expansionist market mechanism that hoovers all vitality out of the life-ground.
That: I call expansionist and imperialist of which Russia and China are now the major
part.
Francis Lee ,
"The Russian Federation is involved is strategic partnership with China in consolidating the
Eurasian 'supercontinent' into the world island. One which is slowly being drawn together
into a massive market covering 70% of the world's population, 75% of energy resources, and
70% of GDP. I'd call that expansionist, wouldn't you?"
No, I wouldn't actually. Building roads, rail connections and other trade routes doesn't
strike me as imperial expansion. No-one is being forced to join the Shanghai Cooperation
Organization (SCO) or into reconfiguring their internal political and economic structures, as
the US does in Latin America or as the British did in India and Southern Africa. (East India
Company and the British British South Africa Chartered Company). The SCO is a voluntary
arrangement. Uzbekistan for example has decided not to join the central Asian Eurasian
Economic Union – well that's its prerogative. No-one is going to send any gun-boats to
force them. (I am aware that Uzbekistan is a landlocked country, but I was talking
figuratively.)
The EEU's genesis has along with the SCO and BRI has been forced upon the China/Russia
axis as part of an emerging counter-hegemonic alliance against the US's imperial
aggrandisement with its kowtowing vassals in tow. Russia has no claims on any of its
neighbours since it is already endowed with ample land and mineral deposits. China is a key
part of this essentially geopolitical bloc quite simply because the US imperial hegemon is
determined to stop China's development by all means necessary including the dragooning of
contiguous military bases in US proxy states around China's maritime borders.
A distinction should be made between rampant imperialism of the Anglo-zi0nist empire, and
the response of an increasingly bloc of states who find both their sovereignty and even their
existence threatened by the imperial juggernaut. What exactly did you expect them to do given
the hostility and destructive intent of the Empire? Defence against imperialism is not
imperialism. The defence of autonomy and sovereignty of international society and the
creation of an anti-hegemonic have the potential to finally create a transformative new world
order (and goodness knows we need one) announced at the end of the Cold War in 1991. This
ambition finds support not only in Russia and China but in other countries ready to align
with them, but also in many western countries. I obviously need to put the question again.
Who is and who is not the greatest threat to world peace? Surely to pose the question is to
answer it.
Dungroanin ,
Agree Francis.
There is a move to suggest that the Old Empire retains a 'maritime' world and the SCO
confines itself to the Eurasian land mass.
Dream on.
The Empire is DEAD. Long live the new Empire!
BigB ,
Who is the greatest threat to world peace and to the world itself? We are. The global carbon
consumption/pollution bourgeoisie. It is the global expansionist mindset that is increasing
its demands for growth – as the only solution to social problems, maldevelopment, and
maldistribution caused by excessive growth. Supply has to be met by exponentially expanding
markets. Whether this is voluntaristic or coerced makes very little difference to the market
cancer subsuming the globe. Benign or aggressive forms of cancer are still cancer. And the
net effect is the same.
Russia and China – the 'East' – uphold exactly the same corporate model of
global governance that the 'West' does. Which has been made clear in every joint communique
– especially BRICS communiques. I have made the case – following Professor
Patrick Bond – that BRICS in particular (a literal Goldman Sachs globalist marketing
ploy) – are sub-imperial, not anti-imperial. All their major institutions are dollar
denominated for loans; BRI finance is in dollars; BRICS re-capitalised the IMF; Contingency
Reserve Arrangements come with an IMF neoliberalising structural adjustment policy; etc. It
is the same model East and West. One is merely the pseudo-benign extension of the other. The
alternative to neoliberal globalisation is neoliberal globalisation. This became radiantly
clear at SPIEF 2019: TINA there is no alternative.
The perceived alternative is the reproduction of neoliberalism – which has long been
think-tanked and obvious – and its transformation from 'globalisation 3.0' to
'globalisation 4.0' trade in goods and services, with the emphasis on a transition to
high-speed interconnectivity and decoupled service economies. Something like the
Trans-Eurasian Information Super Highway (TASIM)? With a sovereigntist and social inclusivity
compact. So the neoliberal leopard can change its spots?
No. Whilst your argument is sound and well constructed: it is reliant on the early 20th
century Leninist definition of 'imperialism' as a purely militarist phenomena. Imperialism
mutated since then – from military to financial (which are not necessarily exclusive
sets) – and is set to metastasise again into 'green imperialism' of man over man (and
it is an andrarchic principle) and man (culture) over nature. Here your argument falls down
to an ecological and bio-materialist critique. Cancer is extractivist and expansionist
wherever it grows.
Russia is the fourth largest primary energy consumer on the planet. Disregarding hydro
– which is not truly ecological – it has a 1% renewable penetration. It is a
hydrocarbon behemoth set to grow the only way it knows how – consuming more
hydrocarbons. They cannot go 'green': no one can. And a with a global ecological footprint of
3.3 planets per capita, per annum, this is not sustainable. Now or ever.
So a distinction needs to be made between the old rampant neoliberal globalisation model
(3.0) – the Anglo-Zionist imperialist model – and the emergent neoliberal
globalisation model (4.0) of Russia/China's rampant ecological imperialism? And a further
distinction needs to be made about what humanity has to do to survive this distinction
between aggressive and quasi-benign cancer forms. Because we will be just as dead, just as
quick if we cannot even identify the underlying cancer we are all suffering from.
Koba ,
Big B sit down ultra! China and Russia rent empires and have no desire to be! If you're a
left winger you're another poor example of one and more than likely a Trotskyist
Richard Le Sarc ,
Love the nickname, Josef.
Louis Proyect ,
This is because if a chemical attack did not take place and Assad was not responsible it
seems highly likely that the civilians including children were murdered to facilitate a
fabrication.
And were our own intelligence agencies involved in a staged event, considering the refusal
to even establish the basic facts in the days following?
-- -
This is the sort of conclusion you must come to if you are into Islamophobic conspiracy
theories. The notion that this kind of slaughter took place to "facilitate" a false flag is
analogous to the 9/11 conspiracism that was on display here a while back and that manifested
itself through the inclusion of NYU 9/11 Truther Mark Crispin Miller on Tim Hayward's
Assadist propaganda team.
Sad, really.
Harry Stotle ,
Go on Louis, remind us about the 'terrorist passport' miraculously found at the foot of the
collapsed tower with a page coveniently left open displaying a 'Tora Bora' stamp – I
kove that bit.
I mean who, apart from half the worlds scientific community is not totally convinced by
such compelling evidence, especially when allied to the re-writing of the laws of physics in
order to rationlise the ludicrous 2 planes 3 towers conspiracy theory?
Next you'll be telling us it was necessary for the US to invade Afghanistan and Iraq for
reasons few American'srecall beyond the neocon fantasy contructed on 11th Septemember,
2001.
Dave Hansell ,
It's clear to a blind man on a galloping horse from this comment of yours Mr Proyect that
concepts such as objective evidence, logical and rational deduction, the scientific method
etc are beyond your ken.
Faced with the facts of a collapsing narrative of obvious bullshit and lies you have
bought into, which you are incapable of facing up to, it is unsurprising that you are reduced
to such puerile school playground level deflections.
So come on, try getting out of the gutter and upping your game. Because this fare is
nothing short of sad and pathetic.
We know from the evidence of those who actually know their arse from their elbow on these
matters that the claims of an attack using chemical weapons on this site are
unsustainable.
Which leaves the issue of the bodies at the site. Given they did not lose their lives as a
result of the unscientific bullshit explanation you desperately and clearly want to be the
case the question is how did those civilians lose their lives? How did their corpses find
their way to that location?
Did Assad and his "regime" murder them and move the bodies to that site (over which they
had no control) in order to create a false flag event to get themselves falsely accused of an
NBC attack Louis? Because that's the only reasonable and rational deduction one can imply
from your argument and approach.
It is certainly more reasoned, rational and in keeping with the scientific method (you
might want to try it sometime) to surmise that the bodies on site, having not been the result
of the claimed and unsustainable narrative you have naively committed to, either died on site
from some other cause or were brought to the site for the purpose of creating your fantasy
narrative.
In the latter case it is further a matter of rational and reasoned deduction that such an
occurrence could only be carried it in circumstances in which whoever carried it out had
actual, effective and physical control of a geographical location and area situated within a
wider conflict zone.
Again, it remains a piece of factual reality that this location was not under the control
of the Assad 'regime.' Not least because otherwise there would be no logical or rational
military reason for the de facto Syrian Government and it's armed forces to waste resources
attacking it.
Unless of course he buys I to the conspiracy theory and hat they somehow organised a false
flag implicating themselves?
I'm sure everyone else here in the reality based community is waiting with bated breath
for you to 'explain' how they did this Louis.
I know I am. I could do with a good laugh.
George Mc ,
This is the sort of conclusion you must come to if you are into Islamophobic conspiracy
theories.
Umm – the assumption that Muslims DIDN'T do it is "Islamophobic"? Even on your own
terms you're not making much sense these days, Louis.
Hi I'm Louis an unrepentant Marxist and I willfully refuse to use block-quotes.
Richard Le Sarc ,
More proyectile vomitus in defence of child-murdering salafist vermin. How low can this
creature descend?
Louis Proyect ,
Richard, such abusive language only indicates your inability to discuss the matter at hand.
In general, a detached sarcasm works much better in polemics. You need to read Lenin to see
how it is done. I should add that I am referring to V.I. Lenin, not John Lenin who wrote
"Crippled Inside".
Richard Le Sarc ,
You defended the salafist butchers with lies, proyectile-do you not even comprehend your own
sewage? Or did someone else write it and you just appended your paw-print?
Dave Hansell ,
Apologies here. There is an open goal and the ball needs to be put in the back of the net:
Seems that Louis here is well ahead of the curve in terms of Fukuyama's well known
observation about the end of history.
For Louise history, in terms of the progress and development of human knowledge, stopped
around a century ago with whatever Lenin wrote.
But that's what happens to those who only read one book.
Sad really.
Dungroanin ,
You come across more as Yaxley – Lenin mr Tommy Proyect – but he is a MI5 stooge
unlike you cough cough.
Koba ,
Lenin hates Trotsky! Trotsky was a power mad maniac who wanted a permanent war state to
somehow spread his specific brand of "ahem" socialism, which won't win you friends! "Hi yeah
sorry we killed your family in a war we started to save you but yippee Trotsky is now in
charge so stop complaining"! You're just a bunch of liars the trots
Maggie ,
learn to use the internet which has the information you need to learn the truth:
Maggie don't take jimmy bore as some truth teller he's a bland progressive with revolutionary
slogans like proyect! He also has a habit of equating Stalin with Hitler in that god awful
nasal accent of his
Richard Le Sarc ,
Thems White Helmets is always so neat and tidy. Their mammies must have insisted that they
always look their best.
paul ,
The British taxpayer funded head choppers and throat slitters in Syria routinely committed
massacres and filmed their victims. The resulting footage was passed off by tame media hacks
as "evidence" of regime atrocities.
Koba ,
Death to the Trotskyists
Fuck proyect your name calling says it all!
Islamophobes indeed?! What an idiot
Harry Stotle ,
The alternative media, and a smattering of truth tellers are locked in an asymmetrical
information-war with the establishment – with an all too obvious 'David & Goliath'
sort of dynamic underlying it.
The question asked at the heart of this article is how to break the vice like grip
information managers hold over various geopolitical narratives, referencing events in Douma
in particular.
Alnost reflexively 9/11 comes to mind – a fairly unambiguous example of mass murder
for which the official account does not withstand even the most cursory form of scrutiny.
Professionals even went so far as to purger themselves while the investigating committee
admitted they were 'set up to fail' (to quote its chairman).
Yet the public, instead of shredding Bush, limb from limb (for the lies that were told)
rolled onto their back while the neoncons tickled their collective belly as you might do with
a particulalrly adorable puppy,
So if we can't even get to the bottom of events in the middle of New York what realistic
chance of doing so in a hostile war zone like Douma?
On balance racism, together with other forms of collective loathing is the most likely
reason why this unsatisfactory state of affairs is unlikely to change.
A collective 'them and us' mindset makes it far easier for information managers to
manipulate a visceral hatred and fear of 'the other'.
Today it is Qasem Soleimani westerners are taugyt to despise, yesterday it was Bashar
al-Assad, before that Vladimir Putin, Saddam Hussein, Muammar al-Gaddafi, Nicolás
Maduro . the list just goes on and on.
Information managers simply wind the public up so that collective anger can be directed
toward governments or individuals they are trying to bring down – recent history tells
us that the public are largely oblivious to this process, so thus never learn from their
mistakes.
Perhaps one thing western leaders, and the US in particular can always rely on, is the
ease with which the public can be persuaded to believe that certain bogeymen pose a grave
threat to 'our way of life' while failing to notice that it is in fact our own leaders who
are carrying out the worst atrocities.
harry law ,
Harry Stotle, .."Perhaps one thing western leaders, and the US in particular can always rely
on, is the ease with which the public can be persuaded to believe that certain bogeymen pose
a grave threat to 'our way of life'. That's true Hermann Goring had it about right with this
quote
"Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk
his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one
piece? Naturally the common people don't want war: neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for
that matter in Germany. That is understood. But after all it is the leaders of a country who
determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is
a democracy or fascist dictatorship, or a parliament or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no
voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you
have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peace makers for lack of
patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."
Adam Schiff, the liberal hero of impeachment, is a wholly owned subsidiary of the
military-industrial complex and a fervent exponent of permanent war.
o some Democrats and journalists, Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA) is a hero. All over the
internet, people are thanking him for defending the Constitution, hoping he'll run for
president someday. After his performance during this week's impeachment hearing, the worship
was especially intense; a letter writer to the New York Times called it
"brilliant" and a "tour de force," while the conservative Washington Times made
fun of all the blue-checked Twitter accounts losing their objectivity in ecstatic praise. As
the face of the impeachment effort, especially for liberals disengaged from the election
process, Schiff represents a glimmer of hope for domestic regime change.
We'd like to be on his side. After all, he's working hard to take down Donald Trump, one of
the worst presidents in American history. But let's not get carried away in fandom. Schiff is a
dangerous warmonger, and his efforts to fuel paranoia about Russia only serve to feed that
agenda. It would be admirable if Schiff's impeachment crusade was limited to Trump's
corruption. But something else drives him: he wants a proxy war in Ukraine with Russia, and he
has for some time.
Adam Schiff physically resembles a prosperity preacher. That is to say, he looks like a
classic dodgy American salesman, but with a beatific glow of righteousness. This creepily
wholesome look lends a corny Cold War ambiance to his constant fulmination about "the
Russians." It's hard not to listen to him without thinking of Allen Ginsberg's 1956 poem
"America":
America, it's them bad Russians
Them Russians, them Russians and them Chinamen.
And them Russians.
Assuring us that he is aware, actually, of what century this is, Schiff
said in 2015 , "Now, we're not seeing the same bipolar world we had between communism and
capitalism." (Phew!) He then added, "But we are seeing a new bipolar world, I think, where you
have democracy versus authoritarianism." Schiff has not viewed this as a mere contest of ideas:
he constantly advocated for Obama to impose tougher sanctions on Russia and give more weapons
to Ukraine.
Although delicately opposed to violence in some contexts -- he's a vegan! -- this isn't the
only war Schiff has championed. He supported the Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya wars, greater US
intervention in Syria, as well as the Saudi war with Yemen (although he has, in the past year,
turned against the latter adventure, seeming to draw the line at sawing up journalists with
bonesaws -- he is a moderate after all, plus very popular with the media), and he has
voted for nearly every possible increase in the defense budget.
As Jacobin
's own Branko Marcetic observed two years ago , Schiff's bellicosity is extensively funded
by arms manufacturers and military contractors. A Ukrainian arms dealer named Igor Pasternak
held a $2,500 per head fundraiser for Schiff in 2013, as the late Justin Raimondo reported
in a terrific analysis on Antiwar.com in 2017, at a time when Ukraine was desperately trying to
counter the Obama administration's disinterest in funding its war with Russia. Despite that
disinterest, the State Department approved some very profitable dealings for Pasternak in
Ukraine after that fundraiser.
And that's only one example. In the current cycle, donations from the war industry have
continued to flood his coffers. Many come from employees of firms with extensive Department of
Defense contracts, including Radiance Technologies and Raytheon. PACs representing the defense
industry also make a robust showing among Schiff's contributors, according to data on Open
Secrets.org; companies funneling money to Schiff -- sorry, contributing to those PACs
-- include Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, Radiance, and others, including
L3Harris Technologies (which
got in big trouble with the State Department in September and had to pay $13 million in
penalties for illegal arms dealing).
Guess what these companies want? War with Ukraine. Why wouldn't they? Last
October, the United States approved a $39 million sale of anti-tank missiles to Ukraine, a
joint contract between Raytheon and Lockheed Martin. The previous year, Ukraine bought $37
million worth of missiles from the same two companies. As a missile-maker, Zacks Equity
Research has noted, Northrop Grumman also benefits richly from conflict in Ukraine, as missiles
are heavily used in cross-border wars.
Despite his enthusiastic support for state violence and cozy ties to the makers of deadly
weaponry, Schiff, an Alexander Hamilton–quoting windbag, doesn't have much crossover
appeal to the sort of people who put "These Colors Don't Run" stickers on their trucks. His
impeachment crusade only seems to reinforce Trump's support among the faithful; at this
writing, 93 percent of Republicans oppose the president's removal from office.
Welcome to the #Resistance.
Liza Featherstone is a columnist forJacobin, a freelance journalist,
and the author ofSelling Women Short: The Landmark Battle for Workers' Rights at
Wal-Mart.
This article was originally published by "Jacobin" -
Russiagate Spy Paid $1 Million By Obama Was WaPo Deep Throat by Tyler Durden Thu, 01/23/2020 - 19:44 0
SHARES
Stephan Halper, the longtime CIA and FBI operative who
conducted espionage on the 2016 Trump campaign, was feeding information to Washington Post
reporter David Ignatius through his handler , according to
The Federalist , which describes his actions as "more evidence that the intelligence
community has co-opted the press to push anti-Trump conspiracy theories."
According to a court filing by Michael Flynn's defense team, Halper's 'handler' in the
Office of Net Assessment (ONA), Col. James Baker, "regularly lunched with the Washington Post
reporter."
As we noted in
May of 2018 , Halper was paid over $1 million by the Obama administration through the
Office of Net Assessment - nearly half of which came during
'Russiagate' - in which he not only surveilled multiple Trump campaign aides, he was
involved in an effort to tie General Flynn to a Russian academic, Svetlana Lokhova, as part of
a smear campaign.
Svetlana Lokhova, the Russian-born English citizen and Soviet-era scholar, told The
Federalist that she only realized the significance of her communications with and about
Ignatius following the filing of attorney Sidney Powell's reply brief in the Michael Flynn
case.
In last week's court filing, Powell highlighted how the CIA, FBI, Halper , and possibly
James Baker used the unnamed and unaware Lokhova and the complicit Ignatius to destroy Flynn
. This James Baker is not the one who worked under James Comey at the FBI, but a James Baker
in the Department of Defense Office of National Assessment. -
The Federalist
Powell wrote:
Stefan Halper is a known long-time operative for the CIA/FBI. He was paid exorbitant sums
by the FBI/CIA/DOD through the Department of Defense Department's Office of Net Assessment in
2016. His tasks seem to have included slandering Mr. Flynn with accusations of having an
affair with a young professor (a British national of Russian descent) Flynn met at an
official dinner at Cambridge University when he was head of DIA in 2014. Flynn has requested
the records of Col. James Baker because he was Halper's 'handler' in the Office of Net
Assessment in the Pentagon, and ONA Director Baker regularly lunched with Washington Post
Reporter David Ignatius. Baker is believed to be the person who illegally leaked the
transcript of Mr. Flynn's calls to Ignatius . The defense has requested the phone records of
James Clapper to confirm his contacts with Washington Post reporter Ignatius -- especially on
January 10, 2017, when Clapper told Ignatius in words to the effect of 'take the kill shot on
Flynn.' It cannot escape mention that the press has long had transcripts of the Kislyak calls
that the government has denied to the defense.
Lokhova sued Halper and multiple MSM outlets for defamation after Halper-fuelled rumors that
she was a Russian spy who had 'honeypotted' Flynn, which were first promoted by Lokhova's
mentor at Cambridge University - Professor Christopher Andrew, who wrote in the London Sunday
Times in February 2017 that her brief meeting with Flynnn during a 2015 dinner event was the
beginning of the former National Security Adviser's relationship with a Russian spy.
Prior to Andrew's article, other outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post
and the New York Times had published rumors of a Flynn connection to a supposed Russian spy,
however Lokhova had no clue it was her until she was outed.
"Halper had been pushing the story that I was a Russian spy and Flynn's mistress since
December of 2016," Lokhova told The Federalist . "The New York Times' Mathew Rosenberg told me
a source had been circulating these stories since December 2016," she said, adding "but they
held the story until they could find a second source and someone at the Cambridge dinner."
In his book "
The Plot Against the President ," Lee Smith confirms that the story about a Flynn-Lokhova
intrigue was circulated to the press starting in December 2016.
But it wasn't until the Wall Street Journal published its March 17, 2017, article
suggesting she had inappropriate contacts with Flynn that Lokhova discovered the earlier
article Andrew had written about her for the Sunday Times , Lokhova said. Before then, within
days of February 28, 2017, several journalists reached out to her for comment, including two
working for the Wall Street Journal, but Lokhova didn't know why .
She also didn't comprehend who the inquiring journalists were at the time. That remained
true even after her mentor and unknown betrayer, Andrew, wrote Lokhova telling her that
"David Ignatius of Washington Post is in UK at moment. I've known him for years and trust
him. I've given him your email and he accepts that if you don't wish to respond, that an end
to it." -
The Federalist
It is unknown what Andrew meant by Ignatius's "inside track," however the above email was
sent to Lokhova just one month after
Ignatus reported the illegally leaked details of Flynn's conversation with Russia's
ambassador - leading to his firing .
"... Amidst all the anti-Russia brouhaha that has enveloped our nation , we shouldn't forget that the U.S. national-security establishment -- specifically the Pentagon, CIA, and FBI -- was convinced that Martin Luther King Jr. was a communist agent who was spearheading a communist takeover of the United States. ..."
"... State-sponsored assassinations to protect national security were among the dark-side practices that began to be utilized after the federal government was converted into a national-security state . As early as 1953, the CIA was developing a formal assassination manual that trained its agents in the art of assassination and, equally important, in the art of concealing the CIA's role in state-sponsored assassinations. ..."
"... Why did they target Kennedy? For the same reason they targeted all those other people for assassination -- they concluded that Kennedy had become a grave threat to national security and, they believed, it was their job to eliminate threats to national security. ..."
"... After the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy achieved a breakthrough that enabled him to recognize that the Cold War was just one great big racket for the national-security establishment and its army of defenseť contractors and sub-contractors. ..."
"... That's when JFK announced an end to the Cold War and began reaching out to the Soviets and the Cubans in a spirit of peace, friendship, and mutual coexistence. Kennedy's Peace Speech at American University on June 10, 1963, where he announced his intent to end the Cold War and normalize relations with the communist world, sealed President Kennedy's fate. ..."
Amidst all the anti-Russia brouhaha that has enveloped our nation , we shouldn't forget that the U.S. national-security establishment
-- specifically the Pentagon, CIA, and FBI -- was convinced that Martin Luther King Jr. was a communist agent who was spearheading
a communist takeover of the United States.
This occurred during the Cold War, when Americans were made to believe that there was a gigantic international communist conspiracy
to take over the United States and the rest of the world. The conspiracy, they said, was centered in Moscow, Russia. Yes, that Russia!
That was, in fact, the justification for converting the federal government to a national-security state type of governmental structure
after the end of World War II. The argument was that a limited-government republic type of governmental structure, which was the
national's founding governmental system, was insufficient to prevent a communist takeover of the United States. To prevail over the
communists in what was being called a â€cold War, a€ť it would be necessary for the federal government, they said, to become a national-security
state so that it could wield the same type of sordid, dark-side, totalitarian-like practices that the communists themselves wielded
and exercised.
The conviction that the communists were coming to get us became so predominant, primarily through official propaganda and indoctrination,
especially in the national's public (i.e., government) schools, that the matter evolved into mass paranoia. Millions of Americans
became convinced that there were communists everywhere. Americans were exhorted to keep a careful watch on everyone else, including
their neighbors, and report any suspicious activity, much as Americans today are exhorted to do the same thing with respect to terrorists.
Some Americans would even look under their beds for communists. Others searched for communists in Congress and within the federal
bureaucracies, even the Army, and Hollywood as well. One rightwing group became convinced that even President Eisenhower was an agent
of the Soviet government.
In the midst of all this national paranoia, the FBI, the Pentagon, and the CIA became convinced that King was a communist agent.
When King began criticizing U.S. interventionism in Vietnam, that solidified their belief that he was a communist agent. After all,
they maintained, wouldn't any true-blue American patriot rally to his government in time of war, not criticize or condemn it? Only
a communist, they believed, would oppose his government when it was committed to killing communists in Vietnam.
Moreover, when King began advocating for civil rights, especially in the South, that constituted additional evidence, as far as
the FBI, CIA, and Pentagon were concerned, that he was, in fact, a communist agent, one whose mission was to foment civil strife
in America as a prelude to a communist takeover of America . How else to explain why a black man would be fighting for equal rights
for blacks in nation that purported to be free?
The website kingcenter.org points out:
After four weeks of testimony and over 70 witnesses in a civil trial in Memphis, Tennessee, twelve jurors reached a unanimous
verdict on December 8, 1999 after about an hour of deliberations that Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated as a result of a
conspiracy. Mrs. Coretta Scott King welcomed the verdict saying, there is abundant evidence of a major high level conspiracy in
the assassination of my husband Martin Luther King Jr. The jury was clearly convinced by the extensive evidence that was presented
during the trial that, in addition to Mr. Jowers, the conspiracy of the Mafia, local, state and federal governments were deeply
involved in the assassination of my husband.”
And why not? Isn't it the duty of the U.S. national-security state to eradicate threats to national security? What bigger threat
to national security than a person who is supposedly serving as an agent for the communists and also as a spearhead for an international
communist conspiracy to take over the United States?
State-sponsored assassinations to protect national security were among the dark-side practices that began to be utilized after
the federal government was converted into a national-security state . As early as 1953, the CIA was developing a formal
assassination manual that trained its agents
in the art of assassination and, equally important, in the art of concealing the CIA's role in state-sponsored assassinations.
In 1954, the CIA targeted the democratically elected president of Guatemala for assassination because he was reaching out
to Russia in a spirt of peace, friendship, and mutual co-existence. In 1960-61, the CIA conspired to assassinate Patrice Lumumba,
the head of the Congo because he was perceived to be a threat to U.S. national security. In the early 1960s, the CIA , in partnership
with the Mafia, the worldâ's premier criminal organization, conspired to assassinate Fidel Castro, the leader of Cuba, a country
that never attacked or invaded the United States. In 1973, the U.S. national-security state orchestrated a coup in Chile, where its
counterparts in the Chilean national-security establishment conspired to assassinate the democratically elected president of the
country, Salvador Allende, by firing missiles at his position in the national palace.
The mountain of circumstantial evidence that has accumulated since November 1963 has established that foreign officials werenâ't
the only ones who got targeted as threats to national security. As James W. Douglas documents so well in his remarkable and profound
bookÂ
JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters , the U.S. national-security establishment also targeted President John
F. Kennedy for a state-sponsored assassination as well.
Why did they target Kennedy? For the same reason they targeted all those other people for assassination -- they concluded
that Kennedy had become a grave threat to national security and, they believed, it was their job to eliminate threats to national
security.
After the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy achieved a breakthrough that enabled him to recognize that the Cold War was just one
great big racket for the national-security establishment and its army of defenseť contractors and sub-contractors.
That's when JFK announced an end to the Cold War and began reaching out to the Soviets and the Cubans in a spirit of peace,
friendship, and mutual coexistence. Kennedy's
Peace Speech at American University on June 10, 1963, where he announced his intent to end the Cold War and normalize relations
with the communist world, sealed President Kennedy's fate.
But what many people often forget is that one day after his Peace Speech at American University, Kennedy delivered a
major televised address to the nation defending the civil rights movement, the movement that King was leading.
What better proof of a threat to national security than that â€" reaching out to the communist world in peace and friendship and
then, one day later, defending a movement that the U.S. national-security establishment was convinced was a spearhead for the communist
takeover of the United States?
The loss of both Kennedy and King constituted conclusive confirmation that the worst mistake in U.S. history was to abandon a
limited-government republic type of governmental system in favor of a totalitarian governmental structure known as a national-security
state. A free nation does not fight communism with communist tactics and an omnipotent government. A free nation fights communism
with freedom and limited government.
There is no doubt what both John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. would have thought about a type of totalitarian-like governmental
structure that has led our nation in the direction of state-sponsored assassinations, torture, invasions, occupations, wars of aggression,
coups, alliances with dictatorial regimes, sanctions, embargoes, regime-change operations, and massive death, suffering, and destruction,
not to mention the loss of liberty and privacy here at home.
Anyone looking with sober eyes upon today's world and the feeble economic and geopolitical
underpinnings holding the system together must accept the fact that a new system WILL be created.
This is not an opinion, but a fact. We are moving towards eight billion lives on this globe and the means of
productive powers to sustain that growing population (at least in the west) has been permitted to decay terribly over
the recent half century while monetary values have grown like a hyperinflationary cancer to unimaginable proportions.
Derivatives speculation alone under the deregulated "too big to fail" banking system has resulted in over $1.5
quadrillion in nominal values which have ZERO connection to the real world (GDP globally barely accounts for $80
trillion). Over the past 5 months
$415 billion of QE bailouts have been released into the bankrupt banks
to prevent a collapse. So, economically
it's foundation of sand.
Militarily, the west has followed the earlier Roman empire of yesteryear by overextending itself beyond capacity
creating situations of global turmoil, death and unbounded resentment at the dominant Anglo American powers
controlling NATO and the Military-industrial complex.
The recent near-war with Iran at the start of 2020 put the world on a fast track towards a nuclear war with Iran's
allies Russia and China.
Culturally, the disconnection from the traditional values that gave western civilization it's moral fitness to
survive and grow has resulted in a post-truth age now spanning over three generations (from the baby boomers to
today's young adults) who have become the most confused class of people in modern history losing all discrimination
of "needs" vs "wants", "right" vs "wrong", "beauty" vs "ugliness" or even "male" and "female".
Without ranting on anymore, it suffices to say that this thing is not sustainable.
So the question is not "will we get a new system?" but rather "whom will this new system serve?"
Will this new system serve an oligarchical agenda at the expense of the nations and people of the earth or will it
serve the interests of the nations and people of the earth at the expense of the oligarchy?
Putin Revives a Forgotten Vision
President Putin's January 15 State of the Union was a breath of fresh air for this reason, as the world leader who
has closely allied his nation's destiny to China's Belt and Road Initiative, laid out a call for a new system to be
created by the five largest nuclear powers as common allies under a multi-polar paradigm.
After speaking about Russia's vision for internal improvements, Putin shifted towards the international arena
saying:
I am convinced that it is high time for a serious and direct discussion about the basic principles of a stable
world order and the most acute problems that humanity is facing. It is necessary to show political will, wisdom
and courage. The time demands an awareness of our shared responsibility and real actions."
Calling for Russia, the USA, UK, China and France to organize a new architecture that goes far beyond merely
military affairs, Putin stated:
The founding countries of the United Nations should set an example. It is the five nuclear powers that bear a
special responsibility for the conservation and sustainable development of humankind. These five nations should
first of all start with measures to remove the prerequisites for a global war and develop updated approaches to
ensuring stability on the planet that would fully take into account the political, economic and military aspects
of modern international relations."
Putin's emphasis that "the United Nations should set an example" is not naďve fantasy, nor "crypto globalist
rhetoric" as some of his critics have stated.
Putin knows that the UN has been misused by anti-nation state ideologues for a very long time. He also knows his
history better than his critics and is aware that the original mandate of the United Nations was premised upon the
defense of the sovereign nation state. Article 2.1 of the charter clearly says:
The Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members."
For readers who are perhaps rightfully cynical that such organizations as the UN could ever play a truly positive
role in world affairs, it is important to recall that the UN was never intended to have any unilateral authority over
nation-states, or military power unto itself when was created in 1945.
Its purpose was intended to provide a platform for dialogue where sovereign nation-states could harmonize their
policies and overcome misunderstanding with the aim of protecting the general welfare of the people of the earth.
Articles 1.3-4 state clearly that the UN's is designed
"to achieve international co-operation in solving
international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging
respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or
religion and to be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment of these common ends."
If the United Nations principles as enunciated
in
its pre-amble
and core articles were to ever be followed (just like America's own admirable constitution): then
wars of aggression and regime change would not be possible.
Article 2.4 directly addresses this saying:
All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the
territorial integrity or political independence of any state".
These principles stand in stark contrast to the earlier 1919 Round Table/RIIA-orchestrated attempt at a
post-national world order under the failed League of Nations which was rightfully
put out of its misery
by nationalists of the 1920s.
FDR's 1944 vision, as Putin is well aware, was based not on "world government", but rather upon the concept of a
community of sovereign nations collaborating on vast development and infrastructure projects which were intended to
be the effect of an "internationalization" of the New Deal that transformed America in the years following the Great
Depression.
Thousands of Asian, African and South American engineers and statesmen were invited to visit the USA during the
1930s and early 1940s to study the Tennessee Valley Authority and other great New Deal water, agriculture and energy
projects in order to bring those ideas back to their countries as a driver to break out of the shackles of
colonialism both politically, culturally and economically.
In opposition to FDR, Churchill the unrepentant racist was okay with offering political independence, but never
the cultural or economic means to achieve it.
Although the world devolved into an Anglo-American alliance with FDR's death in 1945, the other Bretton Woods
Institutions which were
meant to provide
international productive credit to those large scale infrastructure projects to end colonialism
were taken over by FDR's enemies who purged the IMF and World Bank of all loyalists to FDR's international New Deal
vision throughout the years of the red scare.
Whether these corrupt financing institutions can be brought back to their original intention or whether they must
simply be replaced with new lending mechanisms such as the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank, BRICS New Development
Bank or Silk Road Investment Fund remains to be seen.
What is vital to keep in mind is that Putin (just like FDR before him) knows that neither Britain nor Britain's
Deep State loyalists in America can trusted.
Yet, in spite of their mistrust, they both knew that a durable world order could only be accomplished if these
forces were reined in under a higher law imposed by the authority of truly sovereign nations, and this is why FDR's
post-war plans involved a USA-Russia-China-UK partnership to provide the impetus to global development initiatives
and achieve the goals of the Atlantic Charter.
This partnership was sabotaged over FDR's dead body as the Cold War and Truman Doctrine broke that alliance. The
goal of ending colonialism had to wait another 80 years.
At the 2007 Munich Security Conference, Putin had already laid his insight into history clearly on the table when
he said:
This universal, indivisible character of security is expressed as the basic principle that "security for one is
security for all."
As Franklin D. Roosevelt said during the first few days that the Second World War was breaking out:
When peace has been broken anywhere, the peace of all countries everywhere is in danger I consider that the
unipolar model is not only unacceptable but also impossible in today's world. And this is not only because if
there was individual leadership in today's – and precisely in today's – world, then the military, political and
economic resources would not suffice. What is even more important is that the model itself is flawed because at
its basis there is and can be no moral foundations for modern civilisation."
Putin is not naďve to call for the United Nations charter to serve as the guiding light of a new military,
political, economic architecture.
Nor is he naďve to think that such untrustworthy nations as the USA, UK and France should serve in partnership
with Russia and China since Putin knows that it will be Russia and China shaping the terms of the new system and not
the collapsing basket-cases of the west whose excess bluff and bluster betrays a losing hand, which is why certain
forces have been so desperate to overthrow the poker table over the past few years.
The fact that Putin, Xi and their growing allies have not permitted this chaos agenda to unfold has not only
driven "end of history" imperialists into rage fits but also gives FDR's vision for a community of sovereign
nation-states a second chance at life.
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The big mistake was giving France, UK and the US or FUKU or FUKUS, USSR NKA Russia and China any veto
over the other independent Nations on the planet. Especially since the first two were responsible for
hobbling together the Frankenstein monster known as the United States of America that was created by
rapacious theft and genocide of the indigenous population followed by almost total ecocide and now has
been loosed upon the world it seems to accomplish the same thing under the cover of bringing it
"freedom and democracy".
Paul
,
It's a pity the experience of the League of Nations isn't examined any longer because it is
instructive. OK Congress declined to approve it so the Pilot Wilson was missing but more serious was
the problem of totally partisan and self serving decisions that made its provisions a mockery. Italy
was 'allowed' to keep on occupying Ethiopia and sanctions eg on oil were simply declined, partly
because the US supplied the oil and wasn't going to stop selling it, especially to Mussolini who was
rapidly becoming a client state of America in enormous debt.
BigB
,
Someone said it was "banal" of me to oppose 'The Western Intellectual Tradition' (TWIT). Well, here is
its vision *in extremis*. If you do not recognise it: this is 'Platonic Humanism' in all its glory.
It reads well. It is sensible and intelligible in its clearly written propositions. It has meaning and
clearly denotes real world events – right? And yet it is ultimately unintelligible and non-sensical
in an early Wittgensteinian sense of its underlying logic. If you did not immediately recognise the
subtextual vision of Lyndon LaRouche: you might want to read it again?
The underlying logic is one of economic infinity: completely decoupled from the neo-Malthusian
sustainable 'green iron cage' that prohibits the *productive* economy growing forever as per the
deluded LaRouchian proscription. Which is utterly banal: if not actually exceedingly dangerous.
This fact of life is the essential proof that not only mankind but the universe is unbounded in
its potential for constant self-perfectibility and thus ANTI-ENTROPIC in its essence.
To illustrate my point: this is from an earlier text. I never actually know where I stand: because
"anti-entropy" is laced through much of the commentary here. Which is why this text may appeal on a
superficial reading? It ticks a lot of boxes: including perpetual capitalist growth; expansion of the
SCO/BRI/BRICS/EAEU/CPEC colonisation of the Eurasian 'supercontinent'; and development of an
anti-hegemonic sovereigntist bloc. All of which seem as a fashionable vogue for the internet
progressive about town. But in multipolar alliance with Donald Trump! Infinite anti-entropic
capitalistic growth – guided by the UN Charter – with Putin, Xi AND Trump at the helm in an "alliance
for a new just economic order"? Sounds like hell to me.
My point is that perhaps we should learn to read more deeply? Perhaps at the underlying
paradigmatic logic of the text? Power is transmitted in mysterious ways. Everyone is paranoid about
"mind-control" and "hidden agendas". Well, Matthew's is a prime exemplar of hidden context perhaps
not to be uncritically assimilated? Unless, perhaps you share the vision of unlimited
self-perfectibility; infinite nuclear fusion powered bourgeois ecumenical consumerism decoupled from
ecological neo-Malthusian 'limits-to-growth'; and ANTI-ENTROPY? In which case you may be a banal
Platonist TWIT too? 🙂
LaRouche was a cultic delusionist who took cherrypicked ideas to assemble an intelligible and
sensible montage of beliefs that did not hang together. Which makes his writing absurd nonsense and a
philosophical non-entity. Any putative logical link to the real world is severed by its premises. This
piece is reduced to a mere a Trojan Horse for gibberish. It is a meaning-less 'language game'.
As unfortunate as it may seem: entropy exists as a fundamental property of the ecosphere. Resources
deplete and growth is thermodynamically limited. We need a new system: one which actually addresses
the extinction level ecological crisis we are in the midst of. Something we need to understand and
embrace: not illogically deny. This text subverts that strategic denial to its own ends. Let the
reader be aware of the paradigmatic subtext.
paul
,
Russia and China have always been status quo powers, more concerned with their own internal
development than implementing insane Neocon/ James Bond Villain-style fantasies of world domination.
This was true even during the period of communist rule. Their growth and influence in the world can
only be viewed as a positive development.
China built the infrastructure in the Third World that was
neglected during centuries of colonialism.
China builds things.
America (and its cringing satellites like Britain and France) bomb things.
Most people in Africa and elsewhere prefer building things to bombing things.
Dungroanin
,
A good piece – The UN is not fit for purpose.
The SCO already operates under a 'charter' – which goes past religion and cultural hagemony by any one
nation or peoples. Since it already represents more than half the worlds population and the majority
of its land mass – it is only a matter of time that the defunct UN is upgraded to these standards and
absorbed into it OR crashes and burns.
Today there were hundreds of thousands of Iraqis – maybe over million, in showing the US and its
allies that they really are serious about their national sovereignty and demand that the foreign
forces fuck off!
The US response? To revive the old divide and rule option. Break up Iraq into religion and
sectarian areas – using the 'never learning Charlie Brown' proxy Kurds by offering them tet another
football to kick!
While the world accelerates towards a new order which puts economic security and mutual defence at
its core, the US and its gunfighter professional gamblers resort to poker terminology – 'we are ALL
IN' in keeping the Iranians and Syrians (and Turkey?) out of the SCO to stop a nonstop link from the
Med to the Pacific and Artic to the Southern Seas.
All in! Lol. They going to lose their shirts and be overturning the table and demanding a shootout
to keep from paying up their bet.
It's a bluff and sitting with pocket rockets a simple CALL by the new, new world order.
Excellent. Worthy of wide dissemination for its first nine paragraphs alone.
BigB
,
Phillip, my friend this is not a personal attack, but – have you heard of Lyndon LaRouche? I
suggest you might want to read up on his agenda then re-read the text in its wider context? The
subtleties are not explicit: but if you are aware of LaRouche – or read some of the authors other
texts – they are obvious in the subtext.
The basic premise – unstated herein – is for Trump,
Putin, and Xi to form a wider multipolar alliance against the British economic empire (the British
Deep State infiltrators) for untrammeled infinite global economic growth – with maximum penetration
of nuclear power (eventually nuclear fission) into every economy of the world. To the ends of a
global bourgeois consumer culture serviced by the BRI intitiative. Unrestricted by neo-Malthusian
ecologists like me, who say this is impossible.
We may not always see eye to eye: but I'm pretty sure you do not envisage a hypothetically-
infinite ecumenical consumerism as humanities apex culture? Not least as I assume that you would
agree that this is actual ecological fantasy – the world is finite, as are resources – which means
this text needs to be shredded not further disseminated?
UN Charter .. "sustainable development of humankind"
One of the top priorities
must be:
Swift actions to STOP poisoning our food.
Seamus Padraig
,
A very sanguine view of FDR. To be sure, it's impossible to say with 100% certainty what he
would have done
had he survived the war, but it boggles the mind to
think that he was going to be forever cool with the idea of sharing the world with Russia and China,
when he abjectly refused to share it with Germany and Japan in his own lifetime.
And please don't believe that old canard about the Japanese wanting to take over America; it was
actually Roosevelt who precipitated the whole war with Japan, with his oil embargo and what not. He
even had advance knowledge of Pearl Harbor from multiple sources, but deliberately withheld that
intelligence from his own navy. FDR clearly wanted the attack on Pearl Harbor to be as devastating as
possible, so as to drag his recalcitrant countrymen to war, and it worked. In fact, eighty years
later, we're still at war. That's the
real
legacy of FDR, not the
long-gone New Deal, of which only Social Security survives (for now). All the other 'alphabet soup'
programs he initiated are gone.
I will always wonder wistfully how our history would have turned out had
Huey Long
become president instead.
seriouslyman
,
Everything Putin says is perfect. There is nothing bad that can be said about Russia on offguardian.
Anyone with any mild criticism of russia is a pro imperialist bastard and cannot be engaged with.
Offguardian has rightly attacked almost every significant political figure on earth from corbyn to
trump. Putin is the only person who can save us. There is no flaw in his character or politics and
anyone who suggests otherwise is a conspiracy theorist. Good on Offguardian for never publishing any
negative stories about this brilliant intelligent fair play hero who will save us all from hell.
paul
,
No, Little Greta is going to save us.
Vlad isn't going to do that, but he has done quite a good job so far of stopping the Exceptional
And Indispensable People from blowing up the planet.
This gives Greta the chance to save us all from the global warming and the polar bears.
Andy
,
Sarcasm can be an effective tool for making a point. This is an example of it not being.
Francis Lee
,
I am trying hard to assess your contribution but couldn't find anything either interesting or
relevant to say about it, other than it is little more than sarcastic rant. How does it, or is it
even meant to, increase our understanding of international relations? Who exactly makes those
claims about Putin?
What I would say about Putin is that he is simply talking like a foreign
policy realist. More power to his elbow I say; we could do with some more realism. His political
position is very similar to American foreign policy realists such John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt
who to their credit put the Zionist noses (AIPAC, JINSA, ADL, AEI) out of joint with the
publication of – "The Israel Lobby". Putin's views could have come straight out of the Treaty of
Westphalia (1648) which brought an end to the Wars of the Reformation could have come straight from
the Treaty, which were based on the following precepts which of course support a multipolar not a
unipolar system. Liberal imperialism, humanitarian intervention, call it what you will is a deadly
threat to the future of mankind. In contrast multipolarism as an alternative. See below.
1. States existed within recognised borders.
2. Each states sovereignty was recognised by the others
3. Principles of non-interference were agreed.
4. Religious differences between states were tolerated.
5. States might be monarchies, republics, democracies, as was their wont
6. Permanent state interests or
raison d'etat
was the organizing
principle of interntional relations.
7. War was not entirely eliminated, yet it was mitigated by diplomacy and balance-of-power
politics.
9. The object of the balance of power was to prevent one state from becoming so powerful that it
could conquer others and destroy world order.
Sounds like straight common sense to me.
BigB
,
seriouslyman has a point. The progressive world is extremely slow to recognise the capitalist
colonisation of 70% of the Eurasian globe as an existential threat to humanity. As I have been
pointing out: capitalism does not transform to a benign humanist alternative as it travels West
to East. Russia and China's economic expansionist extractivisim is inimical to all life on
Earth. Especially as China has taken a coal-fired 'Great Leap Backwards' to maintain growth in
the face of the secular synchronised global economic slowdown.
When the very real extinction
level threat of industrialised financialised capitalism is reduced to a personification and
represented as the personality of one man – VVP – this is nothing more than a masking discourse
that conceals the globalised extinctionism of fossil fuel capitalism. Perhaps the time to
reflect on the superior personality of VVP will come when we are all gasping for our last breath
– breathing in petrol?
Capitalism thrives on such personal Fetishism. Power is the invisibilising of capitalism's
truly destructive force. No one even wants to open the discourse into what underlies Russia's
welfare capitalism. Which is infinite market mechanism extraction and quasi-eternal expansionism
of fossil fueled growth. Which will kill us all just as soon as America's big guns and bombs.
George Mc
,
You know BigB I can't help but get the feeling that behind all that polysyllabic
pontificating, everything you say comes down to a kind of masked reactionary claptrap. You
call yourself "neo-Malthusian". Well that's comparatively candid. Malthus being the most
obvious case of a capitalist apologist of the most brutal sort. And how interesting that you
are having a go at Putin here – as if to suggest that even some kind of socialist
transformation isn't going to save us. So what then? Some kind of reaching back to some
healthy sparsely populated savannah filled with Conan the barbarian types?
And this:
"Perhaps the time to reflect on the superior personality of VVP will come when we are
all gasping for our last breath – breathing in petrol?"
Seems to me you are secretly longing for that moment of last breath when you can finally
gleefully shout, "Nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah – Told you so!" before croaking.
Frank
,
Sorry, but this doesn't sound much like satire.
It sounds like an 8-year-old taught you everything you know about geopolitics, and unfortunately
it all went a bit over your head.
George Mc
,
Two points:
First, I fail to see the point of pillorying Putin when the entire Western media is
already doing so.
Second, to pillory Putin on the pretence of "a plague on all their houses" takes us nicely into
that pleasant non-committal "higher sphere" where all-is-one-and-one-is-all. The old con trick of
"being reasonable" in order to sit on an all-facing fence and basically have no opinion at all.
Estaugh
,
So far, Vlad has being doing a very good job, (saving us all from Hell), and it seems, most of the
world is increasingly backing him up. That's tough on 'pro-imperialist bastards' but that's
cricket.
A Thursday article by Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone discusses Dennis Kucinich's work in
politics, from Kucinich's eight terms in the United Sates House of Representatives to his two
presidential campaigns to his activities since leaving political office. Taibbi, in the article
focused much on Kucinich's long-term devotion to advancing the case for peace, describes
Kucinich as "antiwar to his core."
As the structure and form of institutions continue to breakdown offering new perspectives and unexpected
revelations, it is fitting that former FBI Director James Comey continues to be scrutinized regarding his behavior on
multiple aspects of the HRC email scandal, Russiagate and other adjacent activities.
Still under a dark cloud is the lack of a satisfactory explanation for Comey's unprecedented decision to usurp the
announcement (away from AG Loretta Lynch) that HRC would not be prosecuted for her mishandling of classified material
as Secretary of State. Related to that decision, the DOJ is currently reported to be investigating whether Comey, who
has a history of leaking 'sensitive' data, also leaked a classified Russian intel document to reporters in 2017.
Former Director Comey failed to live up to this responsibility. By not safeguarding sensitive information
obtained during the course of his FBI employment, and by using it to create public pressure for official action,
Comey set a dangerous example "
And:
We have previously faulted Comey for acting unilaterally and inconsistent with Department policy. Comey's
unauthorized disclosure of sensitive law enforcement information about the Flynn investigation merits similar
criticism."
The Report's conclusions were forwarded to the DOJ which declined to prosecute Comey.
Fast forward to the current DOJ investigation which again questions Comey's penchant for the disclosure of
"sensitive" information while opening a Pandora Box of unexpected proportions.
According to the Washington Post, in 2016, the Dutch secret services
obtained a Russian
intel document
which contained a copy of an email in which then-DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz assured
Leonard Bernardo of the Soros Open Society Foundation that Attorney General Loretta Lynch would not prosecute HRC for
use of her personal server for classified government documents.
In the email, DWS also informed Benardo that Amanda Renteria, Clinton's National Political Director, had spoken
with Lynch who offered further assurance that the FBI investigation
"would not go too far."
While the document was forwarded to the FBI, it was dismissed as an unreliable Russian propaganda effort to
influence the outcome of the HRC investigation.
As the FBI claimed the Russian document had no "investigative value," the Washington Post found that
Comey's defenders still insist that there is reason to believe the document is legitimate and that it rightly
played a major role in the director's thinking."
Even in denial of its veracity, the document was taken seriously enough for Comey to use its existence as an
excuse for making his extraordinary announcement, according to the Washington Post,
"on his own, without Justice
Department involvement"
or informing the Attorney General that he was closing the case and that HRC would not be
criminally prosecuted.
June 29th Lynch – Bill Clinton meeting on tarmac in Phoenix;
July 2nd FBI interview with HRC;
July 5th Comey announced 'no prosecution'
Existence of the email provided the perfect foil for Lynch to avoid having to make and announce the decision as if
it were on her own volition.
Allegedly, Comey decided to move forward with the announcement which was intended to prove that the no-prosecution
decision had been made without any bias or interference.
If, so the thinking goes, Lynch had made and announced the decision after her meeting with Bill, she would have
been accused of corruption or having been compromised and that a deal had been cut in HRCs favor. IG Horowitz found
that Comey displayed a
"troubling lack of direct substantive communication with AG Lorretta Lynch."
In other words, it was Lynch's responsibility, as Attorney General, to retain sole authority over a decision of
such national significance and be willing take the heat, whatever the outcome. One wonders if Lynch ever protested to
Comey that, without her approval, he usurped her job and made a highly controversial decision that the entire country
was watching.
Where were the women libbers when a man on a lower rung of the totem pole, seized a significant function away from
its rightful superior authority which, in this case, was a black female.
In other words, Comey saved Lynch's butt from charges of corruption by skillfully appropriating the announcement
which otherwise would have been problematic for her to defend after having been caught publicly meeting with the
defendant's husband.
Does anything about this strike you as credible?
Not surprisingly as the email was dismissed, the Bureau never pursued routine investigative tools that would have
been second-nature in any such top-level investigation.
The FBI, as it dismissed the email as a fake, did not conduct a forensic exam to verify the document's origin just
as the FBI never subpoenaed the DNC server to conduct a forensic exam to determine the source of the Wikileaks
emails.
While all the parties involved denied that any of them ever knew each other, the Bureau apparently never confirmed
that or pursued obtaining a copy of the email from any of the parties and, most importantly,
the Bureau never
interviewed any of the parties
In May, 2017, President Trump fired Comey as
"no longer able to effectively lead the Bureau."
Here's one version of how this scam could have played out. It's called plausible deniability and is used routinely
to shield a high level public office from public accountability. It is an old political trick and most of the public
remains blind to how easy it is to manipulate public opinion.
Here's how it works: public official #1 is protected from 'knowing' the truth about a certain political reality
and since #1 is never informed, they can honestly say "I didn't know" "No one told me" "We never talked about it" "it
came as a surprise to me."
The invocation of plausible deniability is intentionally set up to allow an event to occur and yet prevent #1 from
'knowing' the facts thereby being publicly and legally immune from accountability since no hard evidence exists
proving that #1 had any foreknowledge of the matter at hand.
Since The Big Bottom Line was protecting HRC from prosecution and Comey alleged that he had not discussed the
matter with Lynch, he did the AG a huge favor and she owes Comey a Big One as does HRC. After Comey bit the bullet
and saved Lynch from criticism that might have ruined her career, Lynch was free to play the plausible deniability
game:
Golly Gee, since I might be accused of favoritism toward HRC after the meeting with Bill which coincidentally
led to a favorable decision for his wife, it was best for Comey to announce the decision thereby avoiding any claim
of bias or favoritism. I had no idea the charges against HRC would be dismissed.
See how that works?
To sum up: with the FBI blowing off the DWS email as a fraud and without Comey stepping up and bailing out the AG
and HRC, it would have looked bad, the deal would have been questioned, everyone wondering but this way, with
plausible deniability in play, everyone is cool..right?
Renee Parsons is a student of the Quantum Field. She has been a member of the ACLU's Florida State
Board of Directors and President of the ACLU Treasure Coast Chapter. She has been an elected public official in
Colorado, an environmental lobbyist with Friends of the Earth and staff member in the US House of Representatives in
Washington, DC. She can be found on Twitter @reneedove31.
Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) has filed a lawsuit against Hillary Clinton, accusing the former
Secretary of State of defamation for remarks characterizing the Democratic presidential
candidate as
a Russian asset .
Filed on Wednesday in the US District Court for the Southern District
of New York, Gabbard's attorneys allege that Clinton "smeared" Gabbard's "political and
personal reputation," according to
The Hill .
Tulsi Gabbard is suing Hillary Clinton and the first page of the filing is WILD AF
pic.twitter.com/DXHLPfy016
"Tulsi Gabbard is a loyal American civil servant who has also dedicated her life to
protecting the safety of all Americans," said Gabbard's attorney Brian Dunne in a
statement.
"Rep. Gabbard's presidential campaign continues to gain momentum, but she has seen her
political and personal reputation smeared and her candidacy intentionally damaged by Clinton's
malicious and demonstrably false remarks."
In a podcast released in October, Clinton said she thought Republicans were "grooming" a
Democratic presidential candidate for a third-party bid. She also described the candidate as
a favorite of the Russians.
Clinton did not name the candidate but it was clear she was speaking about Gabbard.
"They're also going to do third party. I'm not making any predictions, but I think they've
got their eye on somebody who's currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to
be the third-party candidate ," Clinton said.
" She's the favorite of the Russians, they have a bunch of sites and bots and other ways
of supporting her so far , and that's assuming Jill Stein will give it up, which she might
not, because she's also a Russian asset. Yeah, she's a Russian asset, I mean totally. They
know they can't win without a third party candidate," Clinton said. -
The Hill
"... The decision to invade Afghanistan following the events of September 11, 2001, while declaring an "axis of evil" to be confronted that included nuclear-armed North Korea and budding regional hegemon Iran, can be said to be the reason for many of the most significant strategic problems besetting the U.S.. ..."
"... The U.S. often prefers to disguise its medium- to long-term objectives by focusing on supposedly more immediate and short-term threats. Thus, the U.S.'s withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM Treaty) and its deployment of the Aegis Combat System (both sea- and land-based) as part of the NATO missile defense system, was explained as being for the purposes of defending European allies from the threat of Iranian ballistic missiles. ..."
"... As was immediately clear to most independent analysts as well as to President Putin , the deployment of such offensive systems are only for the purposes of nullifying the Russian Federation's nuclear-deterrence capability . Obama and Trump faithfully followed in the steps of George W. Bush in placing ABM systems on Russia's borders, including in Romania and Poland. ..."
"... There is no defense against such Russian systems as the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle, which serves to restore the deterrence doctrine of mutually assured destruction (MAD), which in turn serves to ensure that nuclear weapons can never be employed so long as this "balance of terror" exists. Moscow is thus able to ensure peace through strength by showing that it is capable of inflicting a devastating second strike with regard regard for Washington's vaunted ABM systems. ..."
"... In addition to the continued economic and military pressure placed on Iran, one of the most immediate consequences of the U.S. withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA, better known as the Iran nuclear deal) has been Tehran being forced to examine all options. Although the country's leaders and political figures have always claimed that they do not want to develop a nuclear weapon, stating that it is prohibited by Islamic law, I should think that their best course of action would be to follow Pyongyang's example and acquire a nuclear deterrent to protect themselves from U.S. aggression. ..."
"... Once again, Washington has ended up shooting itself in the foot by inadvertently encouraging one of its geopolitical opponents to behave in the opposite manner intended. Instead of stopping nuclear proliferation in the region, the U.S., by scuppering of the JCPOA, has only encouraged the prospect of nuclear proliferation. ..."
"... Trump's short-sightedness in withdrawing from the JCPOA is reminiscent of George W. Bush's withdrawal from the ABM Treaty. By triggering necessary responses from Moscow and Tehran, Washington's actions have only ended up leaving it at a disadvantage in certain critical areas relative to its competitors. ..."
Starting from the presidency of George W. Bush to that of Trump, the U.S. has made some
missteps that not only reduce its influence in strategic regions of the world but also its
ability to project power and thus impose its will on those unwilling to genuflect appropriately
.
Some examples from the recent past will suffice to show how a series of strategic errors
have only accelerated the U.S.'s hegemonic decline.
ABM + INF = Hypersonic Supremacy
The decision to invade Afghanistan following the events of September 11, 2001, while
declaring an "axis of evil" to be confronted that included nuclear-armed North Korea and
budding regional hegemon Iran, can be said to be the reason for many of the most significant
strategic problems besetting the U.S..
The U.S. often prefers to disguise its medium- to long-term objectives by focusing on
supposedly more immediate and short-term threats. Thus, the U.S.'s withdrawal from the
Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM Treaty) and its deployment of the Aegis Combat System (both
sea- and land-based) as part of the NATO missile defense system, was explained as being for the
purposes of defending European allies from the threat of Iranian ballistic missiles. This
argument held little water as the Iranians had neither the capability nor intent to launch such
missiles.
As was immediately clear to most independent analysts as well as to President Putin , the deployment of such
offensive systems are only for the purposes of nullifying the
Russian Federation's nuclear-deterrence capability . Obama and Trump faithfully followed in
the steps of George W. Bush in placing ABM systems on Russia's borders, including in Romania
and Poland.
Following from Trump's momentous decision to
withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty), it is also likely
that the New START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) will also be abandoned, creating more
global insecurity with regard to nuclear proliferation.
Moscow was forced to pull out all stops to develop new weapons that would restore the
strategic balance, Putin revealing to the world in a speech in 2018 the introduction of
hypersonic weapons and other technological breakthroughs that would serve to disabuse
Washington of its first-strike fantasies.
Even as Washington's propaganda refuses to acknowledge the tectonic shifts on the global
chessboard occasioned by these technological breakthroughs, sober
military assessments acknowledge that the game has fundamentally changed.
There is no defense against such Russian systems as the Avangard hypersonic glide
vehicle, which serves to restore the deterrence doctrine of mutually assured destruction (MAD),
which in turn serves to ensure that nuclear weapons can never be employed so long as this
"balance of terror" exists. Moscow is thus able to ensure peace through strength by showing
that it is capable of inflicting a devastating second strike with regard regard for
Washington's vaunted ABM systems.
In addition to ensuring its nuclear second-strike capability, Russia has been forced to
develop the most advanced ABM system in the world to fend off Washington's aggression. This ABM
system is integrated into a defensive network that includes the Pantsir, Tor, Buk, S-400 and
shortly the devastating S-500 and A-235 missile systems. This combined system is designed to
intercept ICBMs as well as any future U.S. hypersonic weapons
The wars of aggression prosecuted by George W. Bush, Obama and Trump have only ended up
leaving the U.S. in a position of nuclear inferiority vis-a-vis Russia and China. Moscow has
obviously shared some of its technological innovations with its strategic partner, allowing
Beijing to also have hypersonic weapons together with ABM systems like the Russian S-400.
No
JCPOA? Here Comes Nuclear Iran
In addition to the continued economic and military pressure placed on Iran, one of the
most immediate consequences of the U.S. withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action
(JCPOA, better known as the Iran nuclear deal) has been Tehran being forced to examine all
options. Although the country's leaders and political figures have always claimed that they do
not want to develop a nuclear weapon, stating that it is
prohibited by Islamic law, I should think that their best course of action would be to
follow Pyongyang's example and acquire a nuclear deterrent to protect themselves from U.S.
aggression.
While this suggestion of mine may not correspond with the intentions of leaders of the
Islamic Republic of Iran, the protection North Korea enjoys from U.S. aggression as a result of
its deterrence capacity may oblige the Iranian leadership to carefully consider the pros and
cons of following suit, perhaps choosing to adopt the Israeli stance of nuclear ambiguity or
nuclear opacity, where the possession of nuclear weapons is neither confirmed nor denied. While
a world free of nuclear weapons would be ideal, their deterrence value cannot be denied, as
North Korea's experience attests.
While Iran does not want war, any pursuit of a nuclear arsenal may guarantee a conflagration
in the Middle East. But I have long maintained that the risk of a nuclear war (once nuclear
weapons have been acquired)
does not exist , with them having a
stabilizing rather than destabilizing effect, particularly in a multipolar environment.
Once again, Washington has ended up shooting itself in the foot by inadvertently
encouraging one of its geopolitical opponents to behave in the opposite manner intended.
Instead of stopping nuclear proliferation in the region, the U.S., by scuppering of the JCPOA,
has only encouraged the prospect of nuclear proliferation.
Trump's short-sightedness in withdrawing from the JCPOA is reminiscent of George W.
Bush's withdrawal from the ABM Treaty. By triggering necessary responses from Moscow and
Tehran, Washington's actions have only ended up leaving it at a disadvantage in certain
critical areas relative to its competitors.
The death of Soleimani punctures the myth
of the U.S. invincibility
I wrote a couple of articles in the wake of General Soleimani's death that
examined the incident and then
considered the profound ramifications of the event in the region.
What seems evident is that Washington appears incapable of appreciating the consequences of
its reckless actions. Killing Soleimani was bound to invite an Iranian response; and even if we
assume that Trump was not looking for war (I
explained why some months ago), it was obvious to any observer that there would be a
response from Iran to the U.S.'s terrorist actions.
The response came a few nights later where, for the first time since the Second World War, a
U.S. military base was subjected to a rain of missiles (22 missiles each with a 700kg payload).
Tehran thereby showed that it possessed the necessary technical, operational and strategic
means to obliterate thousands of U.S. and allied personnel within the space of a few minutes if
it so wished, with the U.S. would be powerless to stop it.
U.S. Patriot air-defense systems yet again failed to do their job, reprising their failure
to defend Saudi oil and gas facilities against a missile attack conducted by Houthis a few
months ago.
We thus have confirmation, within the space of a few months, of the inability of the U.S. to
protect its troops or allies from Houthi, Hezbollah and Iranian missiles. Trump and his
generals would have been reluctant to respond to the Iranian missile attack knowing that any
Iranian response would bring about uncontrollable regional conflagration that would devastate
U.S. bases as well as oil infrastructure and such cities of U.S. allies as Tel Aviv, Haifa and
Dubai.
After demonstrating to the world that U.S. allies in the region are defenseless against
missile attacks from even the likes of the Houthis, Iran drove home the point by conducting
surgical strikes on two U.S. bases that only highlights the disconnect between the perception
of U.S. military invincibility and the reality that would come in the form of a multilayered
missile conflict.
Conclusion
Washington's diplomatic and military decisions in recent years have only brought about a
world world that is more hostile to Washington and less inclined to accept its diktats, often
being driven instead to acquire the military means to counter Washington's bullying. Even as
the U.S. remains the paramount military power, its ineptitude has resulted in Russia and China
surpassing it in some critical areas, such that the U.S. has no chance of defending itself
against a nuclear second strike, with even Iran having the means to successfully retaliate
against the U.S. in the region.
As I continue to say, Washington's power largely rests on perception management helped by
the make-believe world of Hollywood. The recent missile attacks by Houthis on Saudi Arabia's
oil facilities and the Iranian missile attack a few days ago on U.S. military bases in Iraq
(none of which were intercepted) are like Toto drawing back the curtain to reveal Washington's
military vulnerability. No amount of entreaties by Washington to pay no attention to the man
behind the curtain will help.
The more aggressive the U.S. becomes, the more it reveals its tactical, operational and
strategic limits, which in turn only serves to accelerate its loss of hegemony.
If the U.S. could deliver a nuclear first strike without having to worry about a retaliatory
second strike thanks to its ABM systems, then its quest for perpetual unipolarity could
possibly be realistic. But Washington's peer competitors have shown that they have the means to
defend themselves against a nuclear first strike by being able to deliver an unstoppable second
strike, thereby communicating that the doctrine of mutually assured destruction (MAD) is here
to stay. With that, Washington's efforts to maintain its status as uncontested global hegemon
are futile.
In a region
vital to U.S. interests , Washington does not have the operational capacity to stand in the
way of Syria's liberation. When it has attempted to directly impose its will militarily, it has
seen as many as 80% of its cruise missiles
knocked down or deflected , once again highlighting the divergence between Washington's
Hollywood propaganda and the harsh military reality.
The actions of George W. Bush, Obama and Trump have only served to inadvertently accelerate
the world's transition away from a unipolar world to a multipolar one. As Trump follows in the
steps of his predecessors by being aggressive towards Iran, he only serves to weaken the U.S.
global position and strengthen that of his opponents.
Up to the election of our current President, I agree that we were bullying for the
personal gain of a few and our military was being used as a mercenary force. The current
administration is working on getting us out of long term conflicts. What do you think "drain
the swamp" means? It is a huge undertaking and need to understand what the "deep state" is
all about and their goals.
The death of Soleimani was needed and made the world a safer place. Dr. Janda / Freedom
Operation has had several very intriguing presentations on this issue. It is my firm belief
that there is a worldwide coalition to make the world a better and safer place. If you want
to know about the "deep state" try watching: www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cYZ8dUgPuU
All mostly true, but the constant drone of this type of article gets old, as the comments
below attest. We really don't need more forensic analysis by the SCF, what we need is an
answer to America's dollar Imperialism problem. But we'll never get it, just as England never
got an answer to it's pound Imperialism problem.
I like Tulsi Gabbard, but she can never truly reveal the magnitude of the dollar
Imperialism behind her "stop these endless wars" sloganism. Besides, she doesn't have the
billions required to mount any real successful campaign. Only billionaires like Bloomberg
need apply these days.
The Truth is that NO ONE will stand up to Wall Street and it's system of global dollar
corporatism (from which Bloomberg acquired his billions, and to which the USG is bound). It's
suicide to speak the truth to the masses. The dollar must die of its own disease.
Trump is America's Chemo. The cure nearly as bad as the cancer, but the makers of it have
a vested interest in its acceptance.
General Bonespur murders a genuine military man from the comfort of his golf course.
America is still dangerous, Pinky might be tired but the (((Brain))) is working feverishly on
solutions for the jaded .
There has been a perception in the last 25 years that the US could win a nuclear war. This
perception is extremely dangerous as it invites the US armed forces to commit atrocities and
think they can get away with it (they are for now). The world opinion has turned, but the
citizens of the United States of America are not listening.
If the US keeps going down the path they are currently on, they are ensuring that war will
eventually reach its coast.
To challenge the US Empire the new Multipolar World is focused on a two-pronged
strategy:
1. Nullifying the US nuclear first strike (at will) as part of the current US military
doctrine - accomplished (for a decade maybe).
2. Outmaneuvering the US petrodollar in trade, the tool to control the global fossil fuel
resources on the planet - in progress.
What makes 2.) decisive is that the petrodollar as reserve currency is the key to recycle
the US federal budget deficit via foreign investment in U.S. Treasury Bonds (IOUs) by the
central banks, thus enabling the global military presence and power projection of the US
military empire.
All their little plots and schemes failed, as corrupt arsehole after corrupt arsehole
stole the funding from those plots and schemes to fill their own pockets. They also put the
most corrupt individuals they could find into power, so as much as possible could be stolen
and voila, everywhere they went, everything collapsed, every single time.
Totally and utterly ludicrous decades, of not punishing failure after failure has resulted
in nothing but more failure, like, surprise, surprise, surprise.
Routine failures have forced other nation to go multipolar or just rush straight to global
economic collapse as a result of out of control US corruption. Russia and China did not
outsmart the USA, the USA did it entirely to itself by not prosecuting corruption at high
levels, even when it failed time and time again, focusing more on how much they could steal,
then on bringing what ever plot or scheme to a successful conclusion.
The use of the terms "Unintended Consequences", shortsightedness, mistakes, stupidity, or
ignorance provides the avenue to transfer or divert the blame. It excuses it away as bad
decisions so that the truth and those responsible are never really exposed and held
accountable. The fact is, these actions were not mistakes or acts of shortsightedness...they
were deliberate and planned and the so-called "unintended consequences" were actually
intended and part of their plan. Looking back and linking the elites favorite process to
drive change (problem, reaction, solution)...one can quickly make the connection to many of
the so-called "unintended consequences" as they are very predictable results their actions.
It becomes very clear that much of what has occurred over the last few decades has been
deliberate with planned/intended outcomes.
I think the biggest advantage USA used to have was that they claimed to stand for Freedom
and Democracy. And for a time, many people believed them. That's partly why the USSR fell
apart, and for a time USA had a lot of goodwill among ordinary Russians.
But US political leaders squandered this goodwill when they used NATO to attack Yugoslavia
against Russia's objections and expanded NATO towards Russia's borders. This has been long
forgotten in USA. But many ordinary Russians still seethe about these events. This was the
turning point for them that motivated them to support Putin and his rebuilding of Russia's
military.
When you have goodwill among your potential competitors, then they don't have much
motivation to increase their capabilities against you. This was the situation USA was in
after the USSR fell apart. But USA squandered all of this goodwill and motivated the Russians
to do what they did.
And now, USA under Trump has done something like this with China. USA used to have a lot
of goodwill among the ordinary Chinese. But now this is gone as a result of US tariffs,
sanctions, and its support for separatism in Taiwan and Hong Kong. Now, the Chinese will be
as motivated as the Russians to do their best at promoting their interests at the expense of
USA. And together with Russia, they have enough people and enough natural resources to do
more than well against USA and its allies.
I think USA could've maintained a lot more influence around the world through goodwill
with ordinary people, than through sanctions, threats, and military attacks. If USA had left
Iraq under Saddam Hussein alone, then Iran wouldn't have had much influence in there. And if
USA had left Iran alone, then the young people there might've already rebelled against their
strict Islamic rule and made their government more friendly with USA.
Doing nothing, except business and trade, would've left USA in a much better position,
than the one USA is in now.
Now USA is bankrupting itself with unsustainable military spending and still falling
behind its competitors. USA might still have the biggest economy in the world in US Dollar
terms. But this doesn't take into account the cost of living and purchasing parity. With
purchasing parity taken into account, China now has a bigger economy than that of USA.
Because internally, they can manufacture and buy a lot more for the same amount of money than
USA can. A lot of US military spending is on salaries, pensions, and healthcare of its
personnel. While such costs in Russia and China are comparatively small. They are spending
most of their money on improving and building their military technology. That's why in the
long run, USA will probably fall behind even more.
The Anglos in the U.S. are not from there and are imposters who are claiming
characteristics and a culture that doesn't belong to them. They're using it as a way
to hide from scrutiny, so you blame "Americans", when its really them. That's why
there's such a huge disconnect between stated values and actions. The values belong to
another group of people, TRUE Americans, while the actions belong to Anglos, who have a
history of aggressive and forced, irrational violence upon innocents.
It's true that ordinary people are often different from their government, including in
Russia, in China, in Iran, in USA, and even in Nazi Germany in the past.
But the people in such a situation are usually powerless and unable to influence their
government. So, their difference is irrelevant in the way their government behaves and
alienates people around the world.
USA is nominally a democracy, where the government is controlled by the people. But in
reality, the people are only a ceremonial figurehead, and the real power is a small minority
of rich companies and individuals, who fund election campaigns of politicians.
That's why for example most Americans want to have universal healthcare, just like all
other developed countries have. But most elected politicians from both major parties won't
even consider this idea, because their financial donors are against it. And if the people are
powerless even within their own country, then outside with foreigners, they have even less
influence.
1. Nation Building? It worked with Germany and Japan, rinse and repeat. So what if it's
comparing apples to antimatter?
2. US won the Cold War? So make the same types of moves made during Reagan adm? The real
reason the Soviet Empire collapsed was because it was a money losing empire while the US was
a money making empire. Just review the money pits they invested in.
3. Corruption? That was your grandfather's time. The US has been restructured. Crime
Syndicate and Feudal templates are the closest. Stagnation and decline economically and
technologically are inevitable.
4. Evaluating the competition is problematic. However perhaps the most backward and
regressive elements in this society are branding themselves as progressive and getting away
with it. That can't work.
That's right. I used to know the guys at Gannet in a major US city. Nice people, but not
technically aware, and politically-philosophically innocent. Naifs. Put on nice parties where
they chatted about their pasts in foreign places entirely unaware of the objective and
obvious exploitation going on right before their eyes.
I might add that the engineering students dread, as a rule, English 1-A, and do,
generally, quite poorly. (My wife used to teach that class)
The result is a nice antipodal bar-bell shaped arrangement whereby neither group sees
reality, but only a simulacrum of one part or another.
In this regard, Yasha Levine > " Weaponizing Fascism for Democracy: The Beginning "
Begins in the DP camps...
I've said before that the plans to nuke USSR were being drawn prior to the Trinity test.
Levine's essay buttresses this quite well, though essentially in background...he says nothing
about the bomb. He doen't have to...
One of two things is wrong with America: Either the entire system is broken or is on the
verge of breaking, and we need someone to bring about radical, structural change, or -- we
don't need that at all! Which is it? Who can say? Certainly not me, and that is why I am
telling you now which candidate to vote for.
Putin “needs to keep his commie hands” off of the sovereign Independent Baptist church’s affairs
According to sources, local man Clarence Williams has urged his church’s lead pastor as well as local law enforcement to move
forward with an investigation into Russian hacking, claiming that there was ample evidence to support the theory that malicious
foreign agents infiltrated and influenced the outcome of a vote on the date for next month’s potluck at Second Baptist Church.
Svetlana Lokhova is suing numerous media outlets, as well as FBI informant
Stefan Halper, for defamation and tells The Sara Carter Show that she was used as a target of
opportunity by the FBI in an attempt to discredit former National Security Advisor Michael
Flynn and target President Donald Trump.
Lokhova, a Russian born British scholar, calls Halper "the dirty trickster."
She says his past connections to these agencies and the FBI is a 'big tell' as to why he was
used to used to gather information on the Trump campaign.
"So you have 17 intelligence agencies in the United States with an $80 billion budget you
have thousands if not tens of thousands of trained people working for your intelligence
services and, yet, they seek out this complete outsider (Halper) right he's not a trained
investigator," she says, describing Halper as an overweight 74 year old.
"He's somebody whose known... has a history of being involved in every single scandal for
over forty years," said Lokhova. She says Halper's money trail is the answer.
Lokhova isn't the only one.
Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley's sent a letter last year demanding answers on
Halper's contracts and the Office of Net Assessment. Grassley sent the request in a
letter to Department of Defense Acting Secretary Mark Esper, after a Pentagon Inspector
General investigation discovered that the office failed to conduct appropriate oversight of the
contracts. Grassley urged Esper for the information.
According to Grassley's office it is currently reviewing information sent from the
Pentagon.
"The committee is currently reviewing information received recently from the Pentagon, in
response to Grassley's request," Taylor Foy, a spokesman for the committee, said in an
earlier interview with this news site. Foy confirmed Grassley is continuing to investigate
the matter.
According to the DoD Inspector General's report the
Office of Net Assessment (ONA) Contracting Officer's Representatives (CORs) " did not
maintain documentation of the work performed by Professor Halper or any communication that ONA
personnel had with Professor Halper; therefore, ONA CORs could not provide sufficient
documentation that Professor Halper conducted all of his work in accordance with applicable
laws and regulations. We determined that while the ONA CORs established a file to maintain
documents, they did not maintain sufficient documentation to comply with all the FAR
requirements related to having a complete COR."
Lokhova tells me at length about the erroneous and inaccurate articles published about her
and Flynn. She says it turned her life upside down. She also discusses the toll the lawsuits
are taking on her family financially and why she intends to keep on fighting.
Lokhova goes into lengthy details about the malicious targeting operation against her. She
says the DOJ must examine Halper's financial trail that began at the Office of Net Assessment
at the Pentagon. This, she says, will expose the Russia Hoax Origins.
Halper was used to spread malicious lies about her in an operation that utilized her brief
encounter with Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn at a dinner 2014 at the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar as
a way of spreading malicious lies about her, she said.
She has filed
numerous lawsuits in the federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, and is seeking more than
$25 million in damages from Halper, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington
Post and MSNBC.
George Galloway was a member of the British Parliament for nearly 30 years. He presents TV
and radio shows (including on RT). He is a film-maker, writer and a renowned orator.
Whoever replaces outgoing BBC Director General Tony Hall, be sure that establishment
interests will be in safe hands. But multiple scandals the broadcaster has been involved in
damaged it quite possibly beyond repair.
... ... ...
Corbyn had to be destroyed at almost ANY cost. Their news and current affairs output (and
appointments) over the Corbyn era of 2015-2019 was as crude, and crudely effective, as any
screaming, screeching Rupert Murdoch tabloid. Perhaps they were worried the ghost of Sir
Alasdair Milne would return to haunt them in the form of his son Seumas Milne, Corbyn's
director of communications and strategy and right-hand man. The junior Milne – also
Winchester and Oxford – is a considerably harder nut to crack than anyone the BBC had
ever had to deal with before
"... "disinformation and the cost of fake news." ..."
"... "how post-truth culture has become an increasingly dangerous part of the global information environment," ..."
"... To say Stelter's involvement in the documentary attracted mockery online would be an understatement. "This is like Harvey Weinstein doing a documentary on sexual assault," lawyer and journalist Rogan O'Handley wrote. ..."
"... "HBO has hired Brian Stelter to do a documentary on Fake News. That's like hiring Bernie Madoff to teach accounting. Like hiring Michael Moore to host a fashion show. Not to mention [Stelter] is the dullest human ever on television," ..."
If you were making a documentary on fake news and wanted to get journalists involved behind
the scenes, there are a few people you may want to avoid. One of those is CNN host Brian
Stelter. The HBO network is rightly being mocked for putting Stelter – the host of a CNN
show ironically named 'Reliable Sources' – on the team for an upcoming documentary on
fake news.
According to Stelter himself, the documentary will investigate "disinformation and the
cost of fake news." The film, for which Stelter was executive producer, will dive into
"how post-truth culture has become an increasingly dangerous part of the global information
environment," according to WarnerMedia.
HBO just announced something I've been working on for a couple of years: A documentary
titled "AFTER TRUTH: DISINFORMATION AND THE COST OF FAKE NEWS." The film will premiere on TV
and online this March. Directed by @a_rossi !
To say Stelter's involvement in the documentary attracted mockery online would be an
understatement. "This is like Harvey Weinstein doing a documentary on sexual assault," lawyer
and journalist Rogan O'Handley wrote.
"HBO has hired Brian Stelter to do a documentary on Fake News. That's like hiring Bernie
Madoff to teach accounting. Like hiring Michael Moore to host a fashion show. Not to mention
[Stelter] is the dullest human ever on television," radio host Mark Simone added.
The U.S. was having some success with turning protest messaging against Iran – until,
that is – its killing and wounding of so many Iraqi security force members last week
(Ketaib Hizbullah is a part of Iraq's armed forces).
Escalation of maximum-pressure was one thing (Iran was confident of weathering that); but
assassinating such a senior official on his state duties, was quite something else. We have not
observed a state assassinating a most senior official of another state before.
And the manner of its doing, was unprecedented too. Soleimani was officially visiting Iraq.
He arrived openly as a VIP guest from Syria, and was met on the tarmac by an equally senior
Iraqi official, Al-Muhandis, who was assassinated also, (together with seven others). It was
all open. General Soleimani regularly used his mobile phone as he argued that as a senior state
official, if he were to be assassinated by another state, it would only be as an act of
war.
This act, performed at the international airport of Baghdad, constitutes not just the
sundering of red lines, but a humiliation inflicted on Iraq – its government and people.
It will upend Iraq's strategic positioning. The erstwhile Iraqi attempt at balancing between
Washington and Iran will be swept away by Trump's hubristic trampling on the country's
sovereignty. It may well mark the beginning of the end of the U.S. presence in Iraq (and
therefore Syria, too), and ultimately, of America's footprint in the Middle East.
Trump may earn easy plaudits now for his "We're America, Bitch!", as one senior White House
official defined the Trump foreign policy doctrine; but the doubts – and unforeseen
consequences soon may come home to roost.
Why did he do it? If no one really wanted 'war', why did Trump escalate and smash up all the
crockery? He has had an easy run (so far) towards re-election, so why play the always
unpredictable 'wild card' of a yet another Mid-East conflict?
Was it that he wanted to show 'no Benghazi'; no U.S. embassy siege 'on my watch' –
unlike Obama's handling of that situation? Was he persuaded that these assassinations would
play well to his constituency (Israeli and Evangelical)? Or was he offered this option baldly
by the Netanyahu faction in Washington? Maybe.
Some in Israel are worried about a three or four front war reaching Israel. Senior Israeli
officials recently have been speculating about the likelihood of regional conflict occurring
within the coming months. Israel's PM however, is fighting for his political life, and has
requested immunity from prosecution on three indictments – pleading that this was his
legal right, and that it was needed for him to "continue to lead Israel" for the sake of its
future. Effectively, Netanyahu has nothing to lose from escalating tensions with Iran -- but
much to gain.
Opposition Israeli political and military leaders have warned that the PM needs 'war' with
Iran -- effectively to underscore the country's 'need' for his continued leadership. And for
technical reasons in the Israeli parliament, his plea is unlikely to be settled before the
March general elections. Netanyahu thus may still have some time to wind up the case for his
continued tenure of the premiership.
One prime factor in the Israeli caution towards Iran rests not so much on the waywardness of
Netanyahu, but on the inconstancy of President Trump: Can it be guaranteed that the U.S. will
back Israel unreservedly -- were it to again to become enmeshed in a Mid-East war? The Israeli
and Gulf answer seemingly is 'no'. The import of this assessment is significant. Trump now is
seen by some in Israel – and by some insiders in Washington – as a threat to
Israel's future security vis à vis Iran. Was Trump aware of this? Was this act a gamble
to guarantee no slippage in that vital constituency in the lead up to the U.S. elections? We do
not know.
So we arrive at three final questions: How far will Iran absorb this new escalation? Will
Iran confine its retaliation to within Iraq? Or will the U.S. cross another 'red line' by
striking inside Iran itself, in any subsequent tit for tat?
Is it deliberate (or is it political autism) that makes Secretary Pompeo term all the Iraqi
Hash'd a-Sha'abi forces – whether or not part of official Iraqi forces – as
"Iran-led"? The term seems to be used as a laissez-passer to attack all the many Hash'd
a-Sha'abi units on the grounds that, being "Iran-linked", they therefore count as 'terrorist
forces'. This formulation gives rise to the false sequitur that all other Iraqis would somehow
approve of the killings. This would be laughable, if it were not so serious. The Hash'd forces
led the war against ISIS and are esteemed by the vast majority of Iraqis. And Soleimani was on
the ground at the front line, with those Iraqi forces.
These forces are not Iranian 'proxies'. They are Iraqi nationalists who share a common Shi'a
identity with their co-religionists in Iran, and across the region. They share a common
zeitgeist, they see politics similarly, but they are no puppets (we write from direct
experience).
But what this formulation does do is to invite a widening conflict: Many Iraqis will be
outraged by the U.S. attacks on fellow Iraqis and will revenge them. Pompeo (falsely) will then
blame Iran. Is that Pompeo's purpose: casus belli?
But where is the off-ramp? Iran will respond Is this affair simply set to escalate from
limited military exchanges and from thence, to escalate until what? We understand that this was
not addressed in Washington before the President's decision was made. There are no real U.S.
channels of communication (other than low level) with Iran; nor is there a plan for the next
days. Nor an obvious exit. Is Trump relying on gut instinct again?
"... "Since President Donald Trump ordered the drone strike that killed [Soleimani – justified in terms of deterrence, and allegedly halting an attack] a handful of Trump's advisers, however, [espied another] strategic benefit to killing Soleimani: Call it regime disruption ..."
"... "The case for disruption is outlined in a series of unclassified memos sent to [John Bolton]in May and June 2019 their author, David Wurmser, is a longtime adviser to Bolton who then served as a consultant to the National Security Council. Wurmser argues that Iran is in the midst of a legitimacy crisis. Its leadership, he writes, is divided between camps that seek an apocalyptic return of the Hidden Imam, and those that favour of the preservation of the Islamic Republic. All the while, many Iranians have grown disgusted with the regime's incompetence and corruption. ..."
"... "Wurmser's crucial insight [is that] – were unexpected, rule-changing actions taken against Iran, it would confuse the regime. It would need to scramble," he writes. Such a U.S. attack would "rattle the delicate internal balance of forces and the control over them upon which the regime depends for stability and survival." Such a moment of confusion, Wurmser writes, will create momentary paralysis -- and the perception among the Iranian public that its leaders are weak. ..."
"... "Wurmser's memos show that the Trump administration has been debating the blow against Soleimani since the current crisis began, some seven months ago After Iran downed a U.S. drone [in June], Wurmser advised Bolton that the U.S. response should be overt and designed to send a message that the U.S. holds the Iranian regime, not the Iranian people, responsible. "This could even involve something as a targeted strike on someone like Soleimani or his top deputies," Wurmser wrote in a June 22 memo. ..."
"... In these memos, Wurmser is careful to counsel against a ground invasion of Iran. He says the U.S. response "does not need to be boots on the ground (in fact, it should not be)." Rather, he stresses that the U.S. response should be calibrated to exacerbate the regime's domestic legitimacy crisis. ..."
That was how the English protestant leader saw Catholic Spain in 1656. And it is very close
to how key orientations in the U.S. sees Iran today : The evil of religion – of
Shi'ism – subjecting (they believe) Iranians to repression, and to serfdom. In Europe,
this ideological struggle against the 'evil' of an imposed religious community (the Holy
'Roman' Axis, then) brought Europe to 'near-Armageddon', with the worst affected parts of
Europe seeing their population decimated by up to 60% during the conflict.
Is this faction in the U.S. now intent on invoking a new, near-Armageddon – on this
occasion, in the Middle East – in order, like Cromwell, to destroy the religious
'community known' as the Shi'a Resistance Axis, seen to stretch across the region, in order to
preserve the Jewish "peoples' desire for simple liberties"?
Of course, today's leaders of this ideological faction are no longer Puritan Protestants
(though the Christian Evangelicals are at one with Cromwell's 'Old Testament' literalism and
prophesy). No, its lead ideologues are the neo-conservatives, who have leveraged Karl Popper's
hugely influential The Open Society and its Enemies – a seminal treatise, which
to a large extent, has shaped how many Americans imagine their 'world'. Popper's was history
understood as a series of attempts, by the forces of reaction, to smother an open society with
the weapons of traditional religion and traditional culture:
Marx and Russia were cast as the archetypal reactionary threat to open societies. This
construct was taken up by Reagan, and re-connected to the Christian apocalyptic tradition
(hence the neo-conservative coalition with Evangelists yearning for
Redemption , and with liberal interventionists, yearning for a secular millenarianism). All
concur that Iran is reactionary, and furthermore, the posit, poses a grave threat to Israel's
self-proclaimed 'open society'.
The point here is that there is little point in arguing with these people that Iran poses no
threat to the U.S. (which is obvious) – for the 'project' is ideological through and
through. It has to be understood by these lights. Popper's purpose was to propose that only
liberal globalism would bring about a "growing measure of humane and enlightened life" and a
free and open society – period.
All this is but the outer Matryoshka – a suitable public rhetoric, a painted image
– that can be used to encase the secret, inner dolls. Eli Lake,
writing in Bloomberg , however, gives away the next doll:
"Since President Donald Trump ordered the drone strike that killed [Soleimani –
justified in terms of deterrence, and allegedly halting an attack] a handful of Trump's
advisers, however, [espied another] strategic benefit to killing Soleimani: Call it regime
disruption
"The case for disruption is outlined in a series of unclassified memos sent to [John
Bolton]in May and June 2019 their author, David Wurmser, is a longtime adviser to Bolton who
then served as a consultant to the National Security Council. Wurmser argues that Iran is in
the midst of a legitimacy crisis. Its leadership, he writes, is divided between camps that seek
an apocalyptic return of the Hidden Imam, and those that favour of the preservation of the
Islamic Republic. All the while, many Iranians have grown disgusted with the regime's
incompetence and corruption.
"Wurmser's crucial insight [is that] – were unexpected, rule-changing actions
taken against Iran, it would confuse the regime. It would need to scramble," he writes. Such a
U.S. attack would "rattle the delicate internal balance of forces and the control over them
upon which the regime depends for stability and survival." Such a moment of confusion, Wurmser
writes, will create momentary paralysis -- and the perception among the Iranian public that its
leaders are weak.
"Wurmser's memos show that the Trump administration has been debating the blow against
Soleimani since the current crisis began, some seven months ago After Iran downed a U.S. drone
[in June], Wurmser advised Bolton that the U.S. response should be overt and designed to send a
message that the U.S. holds the Iranian regime, not the Iranian people, responsible. "This
could even involve something as a targeted strike on someone like Soleimani or his top
deputies," Wurmser wrote in a June 22 memo.
In these memos, Wurmser is careful to counsel against a ground invasion of Iran. He says
the U.S. response "does not need to be boots on the ground (in fact, it should not be)."
Rather, he stresses that the U.S. response should be calibrated to exacerbate the regime's
domestic legitimacy crisis.
So there it is – David Wurmser is the 'doll' within: no military invasion, but just a
strategy to blow apart the Iranian Republic. Wurmser, Eli Lake reveals, has quietly been
advising Bolton and the Trump Administration all along. This was the neo-con, who in 1996,
compiled Coping with Crumbling States (which flowed on from the infamous Clean
Break policy strategy paper, written for Netanyahu, as a blueprint for destructing
Israel's enemies). Both these papers advocated the overthrow of the Secular-Arab nationalist
states – excoriated both as "crumbling relics of the 'evil' USSR" (using Popperian
language, of course) – and inherently hostile to Israel (the real message).
Well (
big surprise ), Wurmser has now been at work as the author of how to 'implode' and destroy
Iran. And his insight? "A targeted strike on someone like Soleimani"; split the Iranian
leadership into warring factions; cut an open wound into the flesh of Iran's domestic
legitimacy; put a finger into that open wound, and twist it; disrupt – and pretend that
the U.S. sides with the Iranian people, against its government.
Eli Lake seems, in his Bloomberg piece, to think that the Wurmser strategy has
worked. Really? The problem here is that narratives in Washington are so far apart from the
reality that exists on the ground – they simply do not touch at any point. Millions
attended Soleimani's cortege. His killing gave a renewed cohesion to Iran. Little more
than a dribble have protested.
Now let us unpack the next 'doll': Trump bought into Wurmser's 'play', albeit, with Trump
subsequently admitting that he did the assassination under
intense pressure from Republican Senators. Maybe he believed the patently absurd narrative
that Iranians would 'be dancing in the street' at Soleimani's killing. In any event, Trump is
not known, exactly, for admitting his mistakes. Rather, when something is portrayed as his
error, the President adopts the full 'salesman' persona: trying to convince his base that the
murder was no error, but a great strategic success – "They like us", Trump claimed of
protestors in Iran.
Tom Luongo has
observed : "Trump's impeachment trial in the Senate begins next week, and it's clear that
this will not be a walk in the park for the President. Anyone dismissing this because the
Republicans hold the Senate, simply do not understand why this impeachment exists in the first
place. It is [occurring because it offers] the ultimate form of leverage over a President whose
desire to end the wars in the Middle East is anathema to the entrenched powers in the D.C.
Swamp." Ah, so here we arrive at another inner Matryoshka.
This is Luongo's point: Impeachment was the leverage to drive open a wedge between
Republican neo-conservatives in the Senate – and Trump. And now the Pelosi pressure on
Republican Senators is
escalating . The Establishment threw cold water over Trump's assertion of imminent
attack, as justification for murdering Soleimani, and Trump responds by painting himself
further into a corner on Iran – by going the full salesman 'monte'.
On the campaign trail, the President goes way over-the-top, calling Soleimani
a "son of a b -- -", who killed 'thousands' and furthermore was responsible for every U.S.
veteran who lost a limb in Iraq. And he then conjures up a fantasy picture of protesters
pouring onto the streets of Tehran, tearing down images of Soleimani, and screaming abuse at
the Iranian leadership.
It is nonsense. There are
no mass protests (there have been a few hundred students protesting at one main Tehran
University). But Trump has dived in pretty deep, now
threatening the Euro-Three signatories to the JCPOA, that unless they brand Iran as having
defaulted on JCPOA at the UNSC disputes mechanism, he will slap an eye-watering 25% tariff on
their automobiles.
So, how will Trump avoid plunging in even deeper to conflict if – and when –
Americans die in Iraq or Syria at the hands of militia – and when Pompeo or Lindsay
Graham will claim, baldly, 'Iran's proxies did it'? Sending emollient faxes to the Swiss to
pass to Tehran will not do. Tehran will not read them, or believe them, even if they did.
It all reeks of stage-management; a set up: a very clever stage-management, designed to end
with the U.S. crossing Iran's 'red line', by striking at a target within Iranian
territory. Here, finally, we arrive at the innermost doll.
Cui bono ? Some Senators who never liked Trump, and would prefer Pence as
President; the Democrats, who would prefer to run their candidate against Pence in November,
rather than Trump. But also, as someone who once worked with Wurmser observed tartly: when you
hear that name (Wurmser), immediately you think Netanyahu, his intimate associate.
But the article was flimsy even by Russiagate standards, and so certain questions inevitably
arise. What was it really about? Who's behind it? Who's the real target?
Here's a quick answer. It was about boosting Joe Biden, and its real target was his chief
rival, Bernie Sanders. And poor, inept Bernie walked straight into the trap.
The article was flimsy because rather than saying straight out that Russian intelligence
hacked Burisma, the company notorious for hiring Biden's son, Hunter, for $50,000 a month job,
reporters Nicole Perlroth and Matthew Rosenberg had to rely on unnamed "security experts" to
say it for them. While suggesting that the hackers were looking for dirt, they didn't quite say
that as well. Instead, they admitted that "it is not yet clear what the hackers found, or
precisely what they were searching for."
So we have no idea what they were up to, if anything at all. But the Times then quoted
"experts" to the effect that "the timing and scale of the attacks suggest that the Russians
could be searching for potentially embarrassing material on the Bidens – the same kind of
information that Mr. Trump wanted from Ukraine when he pressed for an investigation of the
Bidens and Burisma, setting off a chain of events that led to his impeachment." Since Trump and
the Russians are seeking the same information, they must be in cahoots, which is what Democrats
have been saying from the moment Trump took office. Given the lack of evidence, this was
meaningless as well.
But then came the kicker: two full paragraphs in which a Biden campaign spokesman was
permitted to expound on the notion that the Russians hacked Burisma because Biden is the
candidate that they and Trump fear the most.
"Donald Trump tried to coerce Ukraine into lying about Joe Biden and a major bipartisan,
international anti-corruption victory because he recognized that he can't beat the vice
president," the spokesman, Andrew Bates, said. "Now we know that Vladimir Putin also sees Joe
Biden as a threat. Any American president who had not repeatedly encouraged foreign
interventions of this kind would immediately condemn this attack on the sovereignty of our
elections."
If Biden is the number-one threat, then Sanders is not, presumably because the Times sees
him as soft on Moscow. If so, it means that he could be in for the same neo-McCarthyism that
antiwar candidate Tulsi Gabbard encountered last October when Hillary Clinton blasted her as
"the favorite of the Russians." Gabbard had the good sense to
blast her right back.
"Thank you @Hillary Clinton. You, the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and
personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long, have finally
come out from behind the curtain. From the day I announced my candidacy, there has been a
concerted campaign to destroy my reputation. We wondered who was behind it and why. Now we know
– it was always you, through your proxies and powerful allies in the corporate media and
war machine ."
If only Sanders did the same. But instead he put out a statement filled with the usual
anti-Russian clichés:
"The 2020 election is likely to be the most consequential election in modern American
history, and I am alarmed by new reports that Russia recently hacked into the Ukrainian gas
company at the center of the impeachment trial, as well as Russia's plans to once again meddle
in our elections and in our democracy. After our intelligence agencies unanimously agreed that
Russia interfered in the 2016 election, including with thousands of paid ads on Facebook, the
New York Times now reports that Russia likely represents the biggest threat of election meddle
in 2020, including through disinformation campaigns, promoting hatred, hacking into voting
systems, and by exploiting the political divisions sewn [sic] by Donald Trump ."
And so on for another 250 words. Not only did the statement put him in bed with the
intelligence agencies, but it makes him party to the big lie that the Kremlin was responsible
for putting Trump over the top in 2016.
Let's get one thing straight. Yes, Russian intelligence may have hacked the Democratic
National Committee. But cybersecurity was so lax that others may have been rummaging about as
well. (CrowdStrike, the company called in to investigate the hack, says it found not one but
two cyber-intruders.) Notwithstanding the Mueller report, all the available evidence
indicates
that Russia did not then pass along thousands of DNC emails that Wikileaks published in July
2016. (Julian Assange's statement six months later that "our source
is not the Russian government and it is not a state party" remains uncontroverted.) Similarly,
there's no evidence that the Kremlin had anything to do with the $45,000 worth of Facebook ads
purchased by a St. Petersburg company known as the Internet Research Agency – Robert
Mueller's 2018 indictment of the IRA was completely silent
on the subject of a Kremlin connection – and no evidence that the ads, which were
politically all over the map, had a remotely significant impact on the 2016 election.
All the rest is a classic CIA disinformation campaign aimed at drumming up anti-Russian
hysteria and delegitimizing anyone who fails to go along. And now Bernie Sanders is trying to
cover his derrière by hopping on board.
It won't work. Sanders will find himself having to take one loyalty oath after another as
the anti-Russia campaign flares anew. But it will never be enough, and he'll only wind up
looking tired and weak. Voters will opt for the supposedly more formidable Biden, who will end
up as a bug splat on the windshield of Donald Trump's speeding election campaign. With
impeachment no longer an issue, he'll be free to behave as dictatorially as he wishes as he
settles into his second term.
After inveighing against billionaire's wars, he'll find himself ensnared by the same
billionaire war machine. The trouble with Sanders is that he thinks he can win by playing by
the rules. But he can't because the rules are stacked against him. He'd know that if his
outlook was more radical. His problem is not that he's too much of a socialist. Rather, it's
that he's not enough.
Money quote: "The Deep State and the media appear to believe that we are fooled by these
fraudulent investigations. We are not fooled. We are tired of the lies and the arrogance."
Notable quotes:
"... For the Deep State, hiding and destroying evidence of guilt is standard operating procedure. They simply report a "glitch" that destroyed the key evidence and that's the end of it. Or, they simply redact the portions of the record that would expose the truth. To my memory, no one ever suffers any consequences for this. Even now, Director Wray and others are tenaciously withholding evidence. ..."
"... When Anthony Weiner's laptop was found to contain over 340,000 Hillary emails in a file named "insurance", the FBI did not rejoice about finally getting the 'lost' email. No, they hid the discovery for weeks until a New York agent threatened to go public. Then, quite miraculously, Peter Strzok found a way to very quickly examine 340,000 messages and found that there was nothing at all that was incriminating. No rational person would believe that. ..."
"... The dirty cops are so confident in their ability to deceive the public that they just announced that the FISA court reforms will be managed by David Kris. Kris has been a defender of FBI misconduct and he attacked Devin Nunes for telling the truth about the FISA court. They don't even care about the appearance of fairness. They do what they want. ..."
"... Because there was nothing, and because it was known from the start that, " there is no big there, there ", the Mueller Team used several irrelevant legal actions to prolong the belief that they were closing in on Trump. Mueller arranged for their media partner, CNN, to film the early morning swat team raid on 67 year old Roger Stone's home. It was very dramatic and very un-necessary. Also, some small-time Russian troll farms were indicted so that the word "Russia" could fill the news, prolonging the desired myth. One of the indicted firms did not even exist. The others did not appear to favor any one candidate and much of their activity was after the election ..."
"... Mueller led a 40 million dollar investigation looking for a crime. That effort failed at finding any collusion, but it did play a role in the Democrats winning a majority in the House of Representatives. That then enabled another investigation of an imaginary crime for political purposes. A scripted hearsay 'whistleblower' submitted lies that allowed Adam Schiff to continue his own campaign of lies. You know the rest of the story. Trump is being falsely charged for doing what Biden bragged about doing. ..."
Many government officials with long entrenched power are unwilling to give up any of that
power. In their minds, they have a right to control our lives as they see fit, with complete
indifference to our wishes. To avoid rebellion, they need to hide this fact as much as
possible. They want the citizens to believe the lie that we are a nation of laws with equal
justice under the law. To advance this lie, they have staged many theatrical productions that
they call "investigations". They try to give us the impression that they want to expose the
facts and punish wrongdoing.
Most of the big 'investigations' in the news in recent years have not been at all what they
pretended to be. The sham investigations of Hillary's email, or the Clinton Foundation, or
Weiner's laptop, or Uranium One, or Mueller's witch hunt, or Huber's big nothing, or the IG's
whitewash, or the Schiff-Pelosi charades, have all been premeditated deceptions.
There are
three types of investigations that call for different deceptions by the Deep State.
The first type is the rare honest investigation . Examples would be the attempt to find
the truth about Fast and Furious (Obama's
gunrunning operation), or the IRS scandal (Obama's
weaponizing of government). In response to real investigations, the criminals do two
things lie and hide evidence. Key evidence, even if it is under subpoena, just disappears.
In the IRS case, Lois Lerner's relevant email and the email of 6 others involved in the
scheme was just "lost". The IRS "worked tirelessly" to find the email, but hard drives
had been destroyed and back-up drives were missing, so the subpoenaed evidence could
not be provided.
For the Deep State, hiding and destroying evidence of guilt is standard operating
procedure. They simply report a "glitch" that destroyed the key evidence and that's the end
of it. Or, they simply redact the portions of the record that would expose the truth. To my
memory, no one ever suffers any consequences for this. Even now, Director Wray and others
are tenaciously
withholding evidence.
The second type of 'investigation' is when the Deep State pretends to investigate the
Deep State . In these 'investigations' the outcome is known in advance, but the script calls
for pretending, sometimes for years, that it an honest investigation is underway.
There was nothing about the Hillary investigations that had anything to do with finding
facts. The purpose from the beginning was exoneration. Key witnesses were given immunity
and many were allowed to attend each other's interviews. There were no early morning swat
team raids to gather evidence. Evidence was destroyed with no consequences.
When Anthony Weiner's laptop was found to contain over
340,000 Hillary emails in a file named "insurance", the FBI did not rejoice about
finally getting the 'lost' email. No, they hid the discovery for weeks until a New York
agent threatened to go public. Then, quite miraculously, Peter Strzok found a way to very
quickly examine 340,000 messages and found that there was nothing at all that was
incriminating. No rational person would believe that.
The dirty cops are so comfortable about getting away with lies like this that Huber can
announce that he found no corruption, when it is readily apparent that he did not interview
key witnesses . He even turned away whistleblowers
who wanted to submit evidence. A real investigator, Charles Ortel, could have given Huber a
long list of Clinton Foundation crimes
. Like the Weiner laptop fake investigation, you don't find crimes if you don't really look
for them.
The dirty cops are so confident in their ability to deceive the public that they
just announced that the FISA court reforms will be managed by David Kris. Kris has been a
defender of
FBI misconduct and he attacked Devin Nunes for telling the truth about the FISA court.
They don't even care about the appearance of fairness. They do what they want.
IG
investigations have proven to be flimsy exonerations of Deep State criminality. Any
honest observer can see that there was a carefully organized plan by top officials to
control the outcome of the Presidential election. This corrupt plan involved lying to the
FISA court, illegal surveillance and unmasking of citizens and conspiring with media
partners to make sure lies were widely circulated to voters. The government conspirators
and the majority of the media were functioning as nothing more than a branch of Hillary's
campaign. That's a lot of power aimed at destroying Trump.
To an IG investigator, this monumental scandal was presented to us as nothing to be very
concerned about. Yes, a few minor rules were inadvertently broken and there did appear to
be some bias, but there was no reason at all to think that bias effected any actions. If
the agencies involved make a training video and set aside a day for a training meeting,
then that should satisfy us completely.
The third type of investigation involves investigating an imaginary crime for political
reasons . The Mueller investigation and the impeachment investigation are two examples of
this. Probably as a justification for illegal surveillance they were already doing, the
conspirators pretended that there was powerful evidence that Trump was colluding with Putin
to win the election. Lies about this issue propelled the country into 3 years of stories
about nothing stories and investigations about something that never happened. Never in the
history of nothing has nothing been so thoroughly covered.
Because there was nothing, and because it was known from the start that, "
there
is no big there, there ", the Mueller Team used several irrelevant legal actions to
prolong the belief that they were closing in on Trump. Mueller arranged for their media
partner, CNN, to film the early morning swat
team raid on 67 year old Roger Stone's home. It was very dramatic and very
un-necessary. Also, some small-time Russian
troll farms were indicted so that the word "Russia" could fill the news, prolonging the
desired myth. One of the indicted firms did not even exist. The others did not appear to
favor any one candidate and much of their activity was after the election .
Mueller led a 40 million dollar investigation looking for a crime. That effort
failed at finding any collusion, but it did play a role in the Democrats winning a majority
in the House of Representatives. That then enabled another investigation of an imaginary
crime for political purposes. A scripted hearsay 'whistleblower' submitted lies that
allowed Adam Schiff to continue his own campaign of lies. You know the rest of the story.
Trump is being falsely charged for doing what Biden bragged about doing.
The Deep State and the media appear to believe that we are fooled by these fraudulent
investigations. We are not fooled. We are tired of the lies and the arrogance.
We are increasingly angry that there is a double standard of justice in this country. There
is a protected class of people who are not prosecuted for their crimes. This needs to end.
The sheeple are easily led including the opposition sheeple. Two quick examples:
1. In the email scandal, Hillary was guilty, beyond a shadow of a doubt, of violating the
FOIA by conducting all State Department business via a personal email She was guilty. Yet her
team, listen up sheeple, her team made it about whether or not classified information was
transmitted. This is a gray area which could be defended. She knew she was guilty of the FOIA
violation because it was the whole reason the server was set up in the first place. Yet she
got away with it because everyone focused on the classifications of emails which was a gray
area.
2. In the Weiner / Abedin laptop matter, it is and was illegal for any of these emails to
be on a personal computer. Again, guilty beyond a shadow of a doubt. Yet again everyone
focused on what was in the emails and not the fact that just possessing the emails was
illegal. So the FBI was able to say nothing new here and let it drop. If another group such
as the US Marshals was in charge of this investigation, Weiner / Abedin would have been fully
charged with possessing these emails. They would have been pressured to reveal why it was
named Insurance and have been asked to cut a deal.
The purpose of show trials is to fool those that don't pay attention. There are millions
of US citizens that get their news from their neighbor or a narrow set of information that is
disseminated by media that parrot their providers verbatim without challenge. Such people are
quite regularly fooled and some vote.
The double standard justice system in America is appalling and even worse than communists.
Americans really don’t have any credit to criticize communist countries. The ruling
class is no better than them.
The media and ruling classes have tried decades to brainwashed the mass to believe that
the less or even not corrupted.
They could have never pulled off the JFK assassination had the internet existed back in
1963. Time for the Epstein *********** to be posted on the internet. Even the asleep would
realize the unimaginable evil that has been controlling this world for millenia.
I am not sure about that,,we have the net now,,and although there are many of us that pay
attention and figure out their crimes and hoax's,,,,they still get away with them,,,,,,NASA
still gets 59 million a day to fake the space program,,,
Why not? They pulled off 9/11. And what do we have? The same as with the JFK murder.
People still arguing over how it was done, and ignoring the obvious, historically established
now, of who benefited and why. Grassy knoll, 2nd shooter, or directed energy weapons or
explosives, internet or not, still chasing the tail.
Its chosen candidates are: Elizabeth Warren, the Republican-turned-progressive who for years posed as a Native American to game
America's system of affirmative action - and Amy Klobuchar, the midwestern senator from the great state of Minneapolis with a reputation
for being an unhinged dragon-lady boss.
That the NYT selected the two remaining women among the top tier of contenders is hardly a surprise: This is, after all, the same
newspaper that kicked off #MeToo by dropping the first expose about Harvey Weinstein's history of abusing, harassing and assaulting
women just days before the New Yorker followed up with the first piece from Ronan Farrow.
...After all, if the editors went ahead with their true No. 1 choice, Klobuchar, a candidate who has very little chance of actually
capturing the nomination, they would look foolish.
Warren is a much better candidate than Biden is in my view.
Warren seems to get into trouble sometimes for all kinds of reasons like most people do, but the problems are usually trivial,
more silly than dangerous. There is tendency in her to stick to her guns even when she does not know what she is doing.
When i run into something unexpected or something that seems to be something i don't understand, i usually backtrack and look
at the problem from some distance to see what happened and why before trying to correct or fix the problem, rather than just doing
something.
Its not a perfect plan, but it seems to work most of the time.
NYT remains a joke. Their endorsement is straight up virtue-signalling.
Here's some reality: Warren's latest antics have cemented her image as dishonest and high-strung. Knoblocker has no charisma
and remains practically unknown.
I've personally sat down and talked with Klobuchar. Not a lot of depth of intelligence in her, that's for sure, easily manipulated
by lobbyists. Warren, at least, knows what the problem is, although she might have swallowed the proverbial Democratic party "kool
aid".
Warren is the deep state establishment pick. If you must vote Dem, pick someone that isn't, or one the establishment seems
to work against. Better yet, vote Trump, safe bet on gun rights, freedoms.
Neoconservatism started in 1953 with Henry "Scoop" Jackson, the Democratic Party US Senator
from the state of Washington (1953-1983), who became known as a 'defense' hawk, and as
"the Senator from Boeing," because Boeing practically owned him. The UK's Henry Jackson Society
was founded in 2005 in order to carry forward Senator Jackson's unwavering and passionate
endorsement of growing the American empire so that the US-UK alliance
will control the entire world (and US weapons-makers will dominate in every market).
Later, during the 1990s, neoconservatism became taken over by the Mossad and the lobbyists
for Israel and came to be publicly identified as a 'Jewish' ideology, despite its having -- and
having long had -- many champions who were 'anti-communist' or 'pro-democracy' or simply even
anti-Russian, but who were neither Jewish nor even focused at all on the Middle East.
Republicans Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, and John McCain; and the Democrat, CIA Director
James Woolsey -- the latter of whom was one
of the patrons of Britain's Henry Jackson Society -- were especially prominent
neoconservatives, who came to prominence even before neocons became called "neoconservatives."
What all neocons have always shared in common has been a visceral hatred of Russians. That
comes above anything else -- and even above NATO (the main neocon organization).
During recent decades, neocons have been hating Iranians and more generally Shiites -- such
as in Syria and in Lebanon, and now also in Yemen -- and not only hating Russians.
When the Israel lobby during the 1990s and after, pumped massive resources into getting the
US Government to invade first Iraq and then Iran, neoconservatism got its name, but the
ideology itself did not change. However, there are a few neoconservatives today who are too
ignorant to know, in any coherent way, what their own underlying beliefs are, or why, and so
who are anti-Russians (that's basic for any neocon) who either don't know or else don't
particularly care that Iran and Shia Muslims generally, are allied with Russia.
Neoconservatives such as this, are simply confused neocons, people whose underlying ideology is
self-contradictory, because they've not carefully thought things through.
An example is Vox's Alex Ward, who built his career as an anti-Russia propagandist ,
and whose recent
ten-point tirade against Russia I then exposed as being false on each one of its ten points
, each of those points having been based upon mere allegations by US neocons against Russia
without any solid evidence whatsoever. Indictments, and other forms of accusations, are not
evidence for anything. But a stupid 'journalist' accepts them as if they were evidence, if
those accusations come from 'the right side' -- but not if they come from 'the wrong side'.
They don't understand even such a simple distinction as that between an indictment, and a
conviction. A conviction is at least a verdict (though maybe based on false 'evidence' and thus
false itself), but all that an accusation is an accusation -- and all accusations (in the
American legal system) are supposed to be disbelieved, unless and until there is at least a
verdict that gives the accusation legal force. (This is called "innocent unless proven
guilty.")
Mr. Ward is a Democrat -- an heir to Senator Jackson's allegedly anti-communist though
actually anti-Russian ideology -- but, since Ward isn't as intelligent as the ideology's
founder was, Ward becomes anti -neocon when a Republican-led Administration is doing
things (such as Ward there criticizes) that are even more-neocon than today's Democratic Party
itself is. In other words: 'journalists' (actually, propagandists) such as he, are more
partisan in favor of support of Democratic Party billionaires against Republican Party
billionaires, than in support of conquering Russia as opposed to cooperating with Russia (and
with all other countries). They're unaware that all American billionaires support expansion of
the US empire -- including over Yemen (to bring Yemen in, too -- which invasion Ward
incongruously opposes). But politicians (unlike their financial backers) need to pretend not to
be so bloodthirsty or so beholden to the military-industrial complex. Thus, an American doesn't
need to be intelligent in order to build his or her career in 'journalism', on the basis of
having previously served as a propagandist writing for non-profits that are mere fronts for
NATO and for Israel, and which are fronts actually for America's weapons-manufacturing firms,
who need those wars in order to grow their profits. Such PR for front-organizations for US
firms such as Lockheed Martin, is excellent preparation for a successful career in American
'journalism'. If a person is stupid, then it's still necessary to be stupid in the right way,
in order to succeed; and Ward is, and does.
This, for example, is how it makes sense that Ward had previously been employed at
the War on the
Rocks website that organized the Republican neoconservative campaign against Donald Trump
during the 2016 Republican primaries : the mega-donors to both US Parties are united in
favor of America conquering Russia. And that's why War on the Rocks had organized
Republican neocons to oppose Trump: it was done in order to increase the chances for Trump's
rabidly anti-Russia and pro-Israel competitors such as Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio to win that
nomination instead, which would then have produced the billionaires' dream contest, between
Hillary Clinton versus an equally neoconservative Republican nominee. A bipartisan
neoconservatism controls both of the American political Parties. A 'journalist' who displays
that sort of bipartisanship can't fail in America, no matter how incompetent at real journalism
he or she might be. (However, they do have to be literate . Stupid, maybe; but literate,
definitely.)
The core of America's form of capitalism has come to be the US aristocracy's bipartisan,
liberal and conservative, Democratic and Republican, form of capitalism, which isn't merely
fascist (which includes privatizing everything that can be privatized) but which is also
imperialist (which means favoring the country's perpetration of invasions and coups in order to
expand that nation's empire). The United States is now a globe-spanning empire, controlling not
merely the aristocracies in a few banana republics such as Guatemala and Honduras, but also the
aristocracies in richer countries such as France, Germany and UK, so as to extract from
virtually the entire world -- by means mainly of deception but also sometimes public threats
and clearly coercive -- unfair advantages for corporations that are within its borders, and
against corporations that are headquartered in foreign countries. America's billionaires
-- both the Democratic ones and the Republican ones -- are 100% in favor of America's
conquering the world: this ideology is entirely bipartisan, in the United States. Though
the billionaires succeeded, during the first Cold War -- the one that was nominally against
communism -- at fooling the public to think they were aiming ultimately to conquer communism,
George Herbert Walker Bush made clear, on the night of 24 February 1990, privately to the
leaders of the US aristocracy's foreign allies, that the actual goal was world-conquest, and so
the Cold War would now secretly continue on the US side , even after ending on the USS.R.
side. When GHW Bush did that, the heritage of US Senator Jackson became no longer the formerly
claimed one, of 'anti-communism', but was, clearly now and henceforth, anti-Russian. And that's
what it is today -- not only in the Democratic Party, and not only in the Republican Party, and
not only in the United States, but throughout the entire US alliance .
And this is what we are seeing today, in all of the US-and-allied propaganda-media. America
is always 'the injured party' against 'the aggressors'; and, so, one after another, such as in
Iraq, and in Libya, and in Syria, and in Iran, and in Yemen, and in China, all allies (or even
merely friends) of Russia are 'the aggressors' and are 'dictatorships' and are 'threats to
America', and only the US side represents 'democracy' . It's actually an aristocracy ,
which has deeply deceived its public, to think it's a democracy. Just as every aristocracy is
based on lies and on coercion, this one is, too -- it is no exception; it's only that this
particular empire is on a historically unprecedentedly large scale, dominating all continents.
Support that, and you're welcomed into the major (i.e., billionaire-backed) 'news' media in
America, and in its allied countries. This is America's 'democracy' . (Of course, an article such as this one is not
'journalism' in America and its allied countries; it's merely "blogging." So, it won't be found
there though it's being submitted everywhere. It will be accepted and published at only the
honest news-sites. A reader may Web-search the headline here in order to find out which ones
those are. Not many 'news'media report the institutionalized corruptness of the 'news'media;
they just criticize one-another, in the way that the politicians do, which is bipartisan -- the
bipartisan dictatorship. But the rot that's actually throughout the 'news'media, is prohibited
to be reported about and published, in and by any of them. It is totally suppressed reality.
Only the few honest news-sites will publish this information and its documentation, the links
here.)
However, actually, the first time that the term either "neoconservatism" or
"neo-conservatism" is known to have been used, was in the British magazine, The Contemporary
Review , January 1883, by Henry Dunkley, in his "The Conservative
Dilemma" where "neo-conservative" appeared 8 times, and was contrasted to traditional
"conservatism" because, whereas the traditional type "Toryism" was pro-aristocratic,
anti-democratic, and overtly elitist; the new type was pro-democratic, anti-aristocratic, and
overtly populist (which no form of conservatism honestly is -- they're all elitist):
"What is this new creed of yours? That there must be no class influence in politics? That any
half-dozen hinds on my estate are as good as so many dukes? That the will of the people is the
supreme political tribunal? That if a majority at the polls bid us abolish the Church and toss
the Crown into the gutter we are forthwith to be their most obedient servants?" "No: from
whatever point of view we consider the question, it is plain that the attempt to reconstruct
the Tory party on a Democratic basis cannot succeed." "The Tories have always been adepts at
conservation, but the things they have been most willing to conserve were not our liberties but
the restrictions put upon our liberties." "The practical policy of Conservatism would not
alter, and could not be altered much, but its pretensions would have to be pitched in a lower
key." "Here we seem to get within the smell of soup, the bustle of evening receptions, and the
smiles of dowagers. The cares which weigh upon this couple of patriot souls cannot be described
as august. It is hardly among such petty anxieties that the upholders of the Empire and the
pilots of the State are bred." "The solemn abjuration which is now proposed in the name of
Neo-conservatism resembles a charge of dynamite." He viewed neo-conservatives as being
let's-pretend populists, whose pretense at being democrats will jeopardize the Empire, not
strengthen it. Empire, and its rightness, were so deeply rooted in the rulers' psyche, it went
unchallenged. In fact, at that very time, in the 1880s, Sir Cecil Rhodes was
busy creating the foundation for the UK-US empire that now controls most of the world .
The modern pro-Israel neoconservatism arose in the
1960s when formerly Marxist Jewish intellectuals in New York City and Washington DC, who were
even more anti-communist than anti-nazi, became impassioned with the US empire being extended
to the entire world by spreading 'democracy' (and protection of Israel) as if this
Israel-protecting empire were a holy crusade not only against the Soviet Union, which was
demonized by them, but against Islam, which also was demonized by them (since they were
ethnocentric Jews and the people whose land the 'Israelis' had stolen were overwhelmingly
Muslims -- and now were very second-class citizens in their own long-ancestral and also
birth-land). This was how they distinguished themselves from "paleoconservatism" which wasn't nearly
so Messianic, but which was more overtly ethnocentric, though ethnic Christian, instead of
ethnic Jewish. The "paleoconservatives" were isolationists, not imperialists. They originated
from the opponents of America's entry into WW II against the imperialists of that time, who
were the fascists. Those American "isolationists" would have given us a world controlled by
Hitler and his Axis allies. All conservatism is absurd, but there are many forms of it, none of
which makes intelligent sense.
The roots of neoconservatism are 100% imperialistic, colonialist, supremacist, and blatantly
evil. They hate Russia because they still crave to
conquer it , and don't know how, short of nuclear annihilation, which would be extremely
dangerous, even for themselves. So, they endanger everyone.
I don't think it will be long before we see Congress in the US calling for invasion of Russia
on the grounds of a lack of diversity, lack of respect for LGBTP and so forth.
In fact it is classified information..highly classified according to news reports. And so
we're likely to never see it. Flynn was forced out for some reason, presumably good ones.
It's hard to say anything for certain because the White House was in disarray in Feb2017.
DJT's inexperience in government was glaringly obvious in the first couple of months of his
administration. He mishandled several issues badly, paticularly the Flynn episode and James
Comey. I said then that he should have replaced Comey on Day 1. Had he done so none of the
mess of "Russian collusion" would likely have ever come about. Although he usually gets
things right, eventually, his (early) tendencies toward delayed action cost him.
They always claim something is highly classified when they want to conceal something that
will incriminate or embarrass them before the American people.
Trump came into office without an army of bureaucrats to fill all the jobs in the
government behemoth. He had to put in people that had been vehemently opposed to him in
order to get confirmations. That's why the expression, "The new boss, same as the old
boss." And it has certainly been true of Trump regarding foreign policy.
Well, since it was under Obama that they intercepted Flynn's calls, that's where the
classification came from. The USG grows and maintains its power through myriad levels of
secrecy. (I was in the game as a CIA communications specialist for 8 years). The game is
thoroughly bipartisan.
The White House said on Friday that it was the Obama administration that authorized
former national security adviser Michael Flynn's contacts with Russian Ambassador Sergey
Kislyak during President Trump's transition, according to CNN.
"Russiagate is a hoax" Where did I hear that before?
Oh yes, from Trump about 1000 times... strange that even though he said he was innocent he
had to keep telling us every time he opened his mouth... it makes me suspicious for some
reason. That and the fact that Trump has been caught lying a few times.
Your hatred of Russia is hilarious. Doubly when Amerilards have a history of interference in
other country's governments.
America is objectively a more violent country than Russia. It isn't Russia that has
ridicously high violent crime scores despite its wealth. Invaded Afghanistan, attacked Iraq,
provided aid for Islamists who'd go on to build ISIS.
I don't recall Putin's regime achieving a higher bodycount than America under Bush with
Obama. Keep pretending Putin's some villain from childish stories like Harry Potter or Black
Panther.
America's homicide level is Notably higher than West Europe's and Far Eastern lands like
Japan. Russia's is only somewhat higher, and is notably less wealthy.
"... The infrastructure they inherited from the USSR mostly is now fully amortized. For example railway park in in complete ruin. Central heating pipeline communications in cities like Kiev are in ruins too. In the USSR they tried to reuse the heat from electric stations and have elaborate hot water delivery networks from each, which provided heat to a large city blocks. Now pipes are completely rusted (which in 30 years is no surprise) and are in the state of constant repair. ..."
"... But when the standard of living dropped to such extent as it dropped after 2014 sentiments toward even slightly different ethnic groups turn hostile too. This is the case in Ukraine. In this sense you are wrong. There is no more unity now then existed before 2014. I would say there is less unity now. ..."
"... Sentiments turned against both Donbass dwellers and Ukrainians from Western Ukraine. In Kiev the derogatory term for both categories is "ponaekhali" ("come to overcrowd the place and displace us", or something along those lines; it's difficult to translate, but the term carries strong derogatory meaning) ..."
"... The nationalistic hysteria of 2014-2017 now mostly changed into deep depression: how a tiny group of far right nationalist and football hooligan gangs managed to get to power against the will of the majority of the country and destroy its economy. That's why Zelensky was elected and most far right parliamentarians lost their seats. Most of Western Ukraine voted for him, which is telling you something. ..."
"... The problem for Ukraine is that with the cut of economic ties with Russia the natural path for economics is probably down. De-industrialization, Baltic style, is raining supreme. Many enterprises survived the period from 1991 to 2014 only due to orders from Russia. Especially remnants of military industrial complex and manufacturing industry. Now what? Selling land (like Zelensky is trying to do) ? ..."
I feel like robber barons in Kyiv have harmed you more through their looting of the country than impoverished Eastern Ukrainians,
who were the biggest losers in the post-Soviet deindustrilization, have harmed you by existing and dying of diseases of poverty
and despair.
It reminds me of how coastal shit-libs in America talk about "fly-over" country and want all the poor whites in Appalachia
to die. I'm living in a country whose soul is totally poisoned. A country that is dying. While all this is happening, whites have
split themselves into little factions focused on political point scoring.
I doubt people like Zelensky, Kolomoisky, Poroshenko and all the rest are going to turn Ukraine into an earthly paradise. They're
more likely to be Neros playing harps, while Ukraine burns.
Looks like your understanding of Ukraine is mostly based of a short trip to Lvov and reading neoliberal MSM and forums. That's
not enough, unless you want to be the next Max Boot.
Ukraine is a deeply sick patient, which surprisingly still stands despite all hardships (Ukrainians demonstrated amazing, superhuman
resilience in the crisis that hit them, which greatly surprised all experts).
The infrastructure they inherited from the USSR mostly is now fully amortized. For example railway park in in complete ruin. Central
heating pipeline communications in cities like Kiev are in ruins too. In the USSR they tried to reuse the heat from electric stations
and have elaborate hot water delivery networks from each, which provided heat to a large city blocks. Now pipes are completely rusted
(which in 30 years is no surprise) and are in the state of constant repair.
And, what is really tragic Ukraine now it is a debt state. Usually the latter is the capital sentence for the county. Few managed
to escape even in more favorable conditions (South Korea is one.) So chances of economic recovery are slim: with such level of parasitic
rent to the West the natural path is down and down. Don't cry for me Argentina.
And there is no money to replace already destroyed due to bad maintenance infrastructure, but surprisingly large parts of Soviets
era infrastructure still somehow hold. For example, electrical networks, subway cars. But other part are already crumbling.
For example, in Kiev that means in some buildings you have winter without central heating, you have elevators in 16-storey buildings
that work one or two weeks in month, you have no hot water, sometimes you have no water at all for a week or more, etc). Pensioners
have problem with paying heating bills, so some of them are forced to live in non-heated apartments.
And that's in Kiev/Kyiv (Western Ukrainians love to change established names, much like communists) . In provincial cities it
is a real horror show when even electricity supply became a problem. The countryside dwellers at least has its own food, but the
situation for them is also very very difficult.
Other big problem -- few jobs and almost no well paid job, unless you are young, know English and have a university education
(and are lucky). Before 2014 approximately 70% of Ukrainian labor migrants (in total a couple of million) came from the western part
of the country, in which migration had become a widespread method of coping with poverty, the absence of jobs and low salaries.
Now this practice spread to the whole county. That destroyed many families.
The USA plays its usual games selling vassals crap at inflated prices (arms, uranium rods, coal, locomotives, cars, etc) , which
Ukrainians can't refuse. Trump is simply a typical gangster in this respect, running a protection racket.
The rate of emigration and shrinking population is another fundamental problem. Mass emigration (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Ukraine
) is continuing even after Zelensky election. Looting by the West also continues unabated. This is disaster capitalism in action.
Add to those problems inflated military expenses to fight the civil war in Donbass which deprives other sectors of necessary funds
(with the main affect of completely alienating Russia) and "Huston, we have a problem."
May be this is a natural path for xUSSR countries after the dissolution of the USSR, I don't know.
But the destiny of ordinary Ukrainians is deeply tragic: they wanted better life and got a really harsh one. Especially pensioners
(typical pension is something like $60-$70) a month in Kiev, much less outside of Kiev. How they physically survive I do not fully
understand.
There are still pro-Russian areas but being free of Crimea and Donbass means Ukraine can no longer be characterized as "split."
I agree that there is a substantial growth of anti-Russian sentiments. It is really noticeable. As well as growth of the usage
of the Ukrainian language (previously Kiev, unlike Lvov was completely Russian-language city).
And in Western Ukraine Russiphobia was actually always a part of "national identity". The negative definition of national identity,
if you wish. See popular slogan "Hto ne skache toi moskal" ("those who do not jump are Moskal" -- where Moskal is the derogatory
name for a Russian). Here is this slogan in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6rfqr9afMc
;-)
But when the standard of living dropped to such extent as it dropped after 2014 sentiments toward even slightly different
ethnic groups turn hostile too. This is the case in Ukraine. In this sense you are wrong. There is no more unity now then existed
before 2014. I would say there is less unity now.
Sentiments turned against both Donbass dwellers and Ukrainians from Western Ukraine. In Kiev the derogatory term for both
categories is "ponaekhali" ("come to overcrowd the place and displace us", or something along those lines; it's difficult to translate,
but the term carries strong derogatory meaning) .
"Donetskie" (former Donbass dwellers, often displaced by the war) are generally strongly resented and luxury cars, villas, etc
and other excesses of neoliberal elite are attributed mostly to them (Donbass neoliberal elite did moved to Kiev, not Moscow)
, while "zapadentsi" are also, albeit less strongly, resented because they often use clan politics within institutions, and often
do not put enough effort (or are outright incompetent), as they rely on its own clan ties for survival.
This sentiment is stronger to the south of Kiev where the resentment is directed mainly against Western Ukrainians, not against
"Donetskie" like in Kiev. And I am talking not only about Odessa. Western Ukrainians are now strongly associated with corrupt ways
of getting lucrative positions (via family, clan or political connections), being incompetent and doing nothing useful.
What surprise me is that this resentment against "zapadentsi" and "Poloshenko clan" is shared by many people from Western Ukraine.
The target is often slightly more narrow, for example Hutsuls in Lviv (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hutsuls )
The nationalistic hysteria of 2014-2017 now mostly changed into deep depression: how a tiny group of far right nationalist
and football hooligan gangs managed to get to power against the will of the majority of the country and destroy its economy. That's
why Zelensky was elected and most far right parliamentarians lost their seats. Most of Western Ukraine voted for him, which is telling
you something.
The problem for Ukraine is that with the cut of economic ties with Russia the natural path for economics is probably down.
De-industrialization, Baltic style, is raining supreme. Many enterprises survived the period from 1991 to 2014 only due to orders
from Russia. Especially remnants of military industrial complex and manufacturing industry. Now what? Selling land (like Zelensky
is trying to do) ?
Ukraine will probably eventually lose a large part of its chemical industry because without subsidies for gas it just can't complete
even taking into account low labor costs. And manufacturing because without Russian market it is difficult to find a place for their
production in already established markets, competing only in price and suffering in quality (I remember something about Iraq returning
Ukrainians all ordered armored carriers due to defect is the the armor
https://sputniknews.com/military/201705221053859853-armored-vehicles-defects-extent
/). Although at least for the Ukrainian arm industry there is place on the market in countries which are used to old Soviet armaments,
because those are rehashed Soviet products.
Add to this corrupt and greedy diaspora (all those Jaresko, Chalupas, Freelands, Vindmans, etc ) from the USA and Canada (and
not only diaspora -- look at Biden, Kerry, etc) who want their piece of the pie after 2014 "Revolution of dignity" (what a sad joke)
and you will see the problems more clearly. Not that much changed from the period 1991-2014 where Ukraine was also royally fleeced
by own oligarchs allied with Western banksers, simply now this leads to quicker deterioration of the standard of living.
None of Eastern European countries benefited from a color revolution staged by the USA. This is about opening the country not
only to multinationals (while they loot the county they at least behave within a certain legal bounds, demonstrating at least decency
of gangsters like in Godfather), but to petty foreign criminals from diaspora and outside of it who allies with the local oligarchs
and smallernouveau riche and are siphoning all the county wealth to western banks as soon as possible. Greed of the disapora is simply unbounded.
https://neweasterneurope.eu/2016/08/26/the-ukrainian-diaspora-as-a-recipient-of-oligarchic-cash/
Of course, Ukrainian diaspora is not uniform. Still, outside well-know types from the tiny Mid-Eastern country, the most dangerous
people for Ukraine are probably Ukrainians from diaspora with dual citizenship
Coming decade could see the US take on Russia, China and Iran over the New Silk Road
connection
The Raging Twenties started with a bang with the targeted assassination of Iran's General
Qasem Soleimani.
Yet a bigger bang awaits us throughout the decade: the myriad declinations of the New Great
Game in Eurasia, which pits the US against Russia, China and Iran, the three major nodes of
Eurasia integration.
Every game-changing act in geopolitics and geoeconomics in the coming decade will have to be
analyzed in connection to this epic clash.
The Deep State and crucial sectors of the US ruling class are absolutely terrified that
China is already outpacing the "indispensable nation" economically and that Russia has
outpaced
it militarily . The Pentagon officially designates the three Eurasian nodes as
"threats."
Hybrid War techniques – carrying inbuilt 24/7 demonization – will proliferate
with the aim of containing China's "threat," Russian "aggression" and Iran's "sponsorship of
terrorism." The myth of the "free market" will continue to drown under the imposition of a
barrage of illegal sanctions, euphemistically defined as new trade "rules."
Yet that will be hardly enough to derail the Russia-China strategic partnership. To unlock
the deeper meaning of this partnership, we need to understand that Beijing defines it as
rolling towards a "new era." That implies strategic long-term planning – with the key
date being 2049, the centennial of New China.
The horizon for the multiple projects of the Belt and Road Initiative – as in the
China-driven New Silk Roads – is indeed the 2040s, when Beijing expects to have fully
woven a new, multipolar paradigm of sovereign nations/partners across Eurasia and beyond, all
connected by an interlocking maze of belts and roads.
The Russian project – Greater Eurasia –
somewhat mirrors Belt & Road and will be integrated with it. Belt & Road, the Eurasia
Economic Union, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the Asia Infrastructure Investment
Bank are all converging towards the same vision.
Realpolitik
So this "new era", as defined by the Chinese, relies heavily on close Russia-China
coordination, in every sector. Made in China 2025 is encompassing a series of techno/scientific
breakthroughs. At the same time, Russia has established itself as an unparalleled technological
resource for weapons and systems that the Chinese still cannot match.
At the latest BRICS summit in Brasilia, President Xi Jinping told Vladimir Putin that "the
current international situation with rising instability and uncertainty urge China and Russia
to establish closer strategic coordination." Putin's response: "Under the current situation,
the two sides should continue to maintain close strategic communication."
Russia is showing China how the West respects realpolitik power in any form, and Beijing is
finally starting to use theirs. The result is that after five centuries of Western domination
– which, incidentally, led to the decline of the Ancient Silk Roads – the Heartland
is back, with a bang, asserting its preeminence.
On a personal note, my travels these past two years, from West Asia to Central Asia, and my
conversations these past two months with analysts in Nur-Sultan, Moscow and Italy, have allowed
me to get deeper into the intricacies of what sharp minds define as the Double Helix. We are
all aware of the immense challenges ahead – while barely managing to track the stunning
re-emergence of the Heartland in real-time.
In soft power terms, the sterling role of Russian diplomacy will become even more paramount
– backed up by a Ministry of Defense led by Sergei Shoigu, a Tuvan from Siberia, and an
intel arm that is capable of constructive dialogue with everybody: India/Pakistan, North/South
Korea, Iran/Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan.
This apparatus does smooth (complex) geopolitical issues over in a manner that still eludes
Beijing.
In parallel, virtually the whole Asia-Pacific – from the Eastern Mediterranean to the
Indian Ocean – now takes into full consideration Russia-China as a counter-force to US
naval and financial overreach.
Stakes in Southwest Asia
The targeted assassination of Soleimani, for all its long-term fallout, is just one move in
the Southwest Asia chessboard. What's ultimately at stake is a macro geoeconomic prize: a
land bridge from the Persian Gulf to the Eastern Mediterranean.
Last summer, an Iran-Iraq-Syria trilateral established that "the goal of negotiations is to
activate the Iranian-Iraqi-Syria load and transport corridor as part of a wider plan for
reviving the Silk Road."
There could not be a more strategic connectivity corridor, capable of simultaneously
interlinking with the International North-South Transportation Corridor; the Iran-Central
Asia-China connection all the way to the Pacific; and projecting Latakia towards the
Mediterranean and the Atlantic.
What's on the horizon is, in fact, a sub-sect of Belt & Road in Southwest Asia. Iran is
a key node of Belt & Road; China will be heavily involved in the rebuilding of Syria; and
Beijing-Baghdad signed multiple deals and set up an Iraqi-Chinese Reconstruction Fund (income
from 300,000 barrels of oil a day in exchange for Chinese credit for Chinese companies
rebuilding Iraqi infrastructure).
A quick look at the map reveals the "secret" of the US refusing to pack up and leave Iraq,
as demanded by the Iraqi Parliament and Prime Minister: to prevent the emergence of this
corridor by any means necessary. Especially when we see that all the roads that China is
building across Central Asia – I navigated many of them in November and December –
ultimately link China with Iran.
The final objective: to unite Shanghai to the Eastern Mediterranean – overland, across
the Heartland.
As much as Gwadar port in the Arabian Sea is an essential node of the China-Pakistan
Economic Corridor, and part of China's multi-pronged "escape from Malacca" strategy, India also
courted Iran to match Gwadar via the port of Chabahar in the Gulf of Oman.
So as much as Beijing wants to connect the Arabian Sea with Xinjiang, via the economic
corridor, India wants to connect with Afghanistan and Central Asia via Iran.
Yet India's investments in Chabahar may come to nothing, with New Delhi still mulling
whether to become an active part of the US "Indo-Pacific" strategy, which would imply dropping
Tehran.
The Russia-China-Iran joint naval exercise in late December, starting exactly from Chabahar,
was a timely wake-up for New Delhi. India simply cannot afford to ignore Iran and end up losing
its key connectivity node, Chabahar.
The immutable fact: everyone needs and wants Iran connectivity. For obvious reasons, since
the Persian empire, this is the privileged hub for all Central Asian trade routes.
On top of it, Iran for China is a matter of national security. China is heavily invested in
Iran's energy industry. All bilateral trade will be settled in yuan or in a basket of
currencies bypassing the US dollar.
US neocons, meanwhile, still dream of what the Cheney regime was aiming at in the past
decade: regime change in Iran leading to the US dominating the Caspian Sea as a springboard to
Central Asia, only one step away from Xinjiang and weaponization of anti-China sentiment. It
could be seen as a New Silk Road in reverse to disrupt the Chinese vision.
Battle of the Ages
A new book, The Impact of China's Belt and Road
Initiativ e , by Jeremy Garlick of the University of Economics in Prague, carries the
merit of admitting that, "making sense" of Belt & Road "is extremely difficult."
This is an extremely serious attempt to theorize Belt & Road's immense complexity
– especially considering China's flexible, syncretic approach to policymaking, quite
bewildering for Westerners. To reach his goal, Garlick gets into Tang Shiping's social
evolution paradigm, delves into neo-Gramscian hegemony, and dissects the concept of "offensive
mercantilism" – all that as part of an effort in "complex eclecticism."
The contrast with the pedestrian Belt & Road demonization narrative emanating from US
"analysts" is glaring. The book tackles in detail the multifaceted nature of Belt & Road's
trans-regionalism as an evolving, organic process.
Imperial policymakers won't bother to understand how and why Belt & Road is setting a
new global paradigm. The NATO summit in London last month offered a few pointers. NATO
uncritically adopted three US priorities: even more aggressive policy towards Russia;
containment of China (including military surveillance); and militarization of space – a
spin-off from the 2002 Full Spectrum Dominance doctrine.
So NATO will be drawn into the "Indo-Pacific" strategy – which means containment of
China. And as NATO is the EU's weaponized arm, that implies the US interfering on how Europe
does business with China – at every level.
Retired US Army Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's chief of staff from 2001 to 2005,
cuts to the chase: "America exists today to make war. How else do we interpret 19 straight
years of war and no end in sight? It's part of who we are. It's part of what the American
Empire is. We are going to lie, cheat and steal, as Pompeo is doing right now, as Trump is
doing right now, as Esper is doing right now and a host of other members of my political party,
the Republicans, are doing right now. We are going to lie, cheat and steal to do whatever it is
we have to do to continue this war complex. That's the truth of it. And that's the agony of
it."
Moscow, Beijing and Tehran are fully aware of the stakes. Diplomats and analysts are working
on the trend, for the trio, to evolve a concerted effort to protect one another from all forms
of hybrid war – sanctions included – launched against each of them.
For the US, this is indeed an existential battle – against the whole Eurasia
integration process, the New Silk Roads, the Russia-China strategic partnership, those Russian
hypersonic weapons mixed with supple diplomacy, the profound disgust and revolt against US
policies all across the Global South, the nearly inevitable collapse of the US dollar. What's
certain is that the Empire won't go quietly into the night. We should all be ready for the
battle of the ages.
There is a silver lining to that. If another term of Trump inspires the Europeans to
abrogate NATO and put an end to that alliance and create their own NEATO ( North East
Atlantic Treaty Organization) withOUT America and withOUT Canada and maybe withOUT some of
those no-great-bargain East European countries; then NEATO Europe could reach its own
Separate Peace with Russia and lower that tension point.
And America could bring its hundred thousand hostages ( "soldiers") back home from
not-NATO-anymore Europe.
This is about fight with fifth column... The time for those changes is long
overdue.
I truly believe that it is time to introduce certain changes to our country's main law,
changes that will directly guarantee the priority of the Russian Constitution in our legal
framework.
What does it mean? It means literally the following: requirements of international law and
treaties as well as decisions of international bodies can be valid on the Russian territory
only to the point that they do not restrict the rights and freedoms of our people and citizens
and do not contradict our Constitution.
Second, I suggest formalising at the constitutional level the obligatory requirements for
those who hold positions of critical significance for national security and sovereignty. More
precisely, the heads of the constituent entities, members of the Federation Council, State Duma
deputies, the prime minister and his/her deputies, federal ministers, heads of federal agencies
and judges should have no foreign citizenship or residence permit or any other document that
allows them to live permanently in a foreign state.
The goal and mission of state service is to serve the people, and those who enter this path
must know that by doing this they inseparably connect their lives with Russia and the Russian
people without any assumptions and allowances.
Requirements must be even stricter for presidential candidates. I suggest formalising a
requirement under which presidential candidates must have had permanent residence in Russia for
at least 25 years and no foreign citizenship or residence permit and not only during the
election campaign but at any time before it too.
I know that people are discussing the constitutional provision under which one person cannot
hold the post of the President of the Russian Federation for two successive terms. I do not
regard this as a matter of principle, but I nevertheless support and share this view.
I have already said before that our goal is to ensure high living standards and equal
opportunities for all throughout the country. It is towards this goal that our national
projects and development plans are aimed.
Stephen Morrell ,
Putin clearly is the most informed and visionary bourgeois politician in the world today, by
a country mile. He not only is attempting to address the very real real social, demographic
and economic needs of Russia, in his usual comprehensive manner, but also and cannily is
co-opting many of the expectations that the USSR used to fulfil, attempting to neutralise any
socialist political sentiments in the Russian population. Putin is the Bismarck of Russia.
richard le sarc ,
Russia's economic situation, within the global capitalist system, with its large reserves,
much in gold, no exposure to the toilet paper of US Treasuries, and substantial local
self-sufficiency in agriculture (thank-you sanctions)means that when the Western debt Ponzi
Himalaya implodes, the Russians will be pretty much immune to the consequences.
richard le sarc ,
I agree entirely, but Putin has no alternative. Any chink in his armour and the USA will
destroy Russia and break it up into fragments as they did in Yugoslavia, the USSR and wish to
do in China. I rather think that Putin knows full well how dire is the global ecological
situation, but he needs to balance less enlightened forces at home, and the 'Atlanticist'
Quislings.
BigB ,
I don't disagree either: but that is not my point. The Atlanticists are waiting in the wings
for another four years. Last time I checked: they still command 80% of Russian private
property. And were expropriating $25bn pa annum in capital flight which has slowed slightly
in the last few years. I read the Saker too. There is a deadlock and uneasy power sharing
arrangement internally. But you may have missed the time when the Saker admitted "Putin is a
neoliberal"?
It may be difficult to disentangle our vision from the neoliberal-statist-market ontology
we are being repressed by but that is what we must do. We cannot expect neoliberal capitalist
social inclusivity to save us from ecological catastrophe. Nor can we expect to grow
economically into humanism: when exponential growth is what is destroying any lasting chance
of a purely sustainable human-emancipatory freedom. Putin may not have a choice: but we do.
The neoliberal-statist-market ontology is globally self-determined to produce total failure
as its inevitable and only possible outcome. This is known a 'parametric determinism' when we
automatically follow a maladaptive 'rational' self-optimising behaviour pattern long after it
failed as it did in 2007. There is no recovery possible, and technology only speeds total
failure whilst masking the ecological destruction it is accelerating.
States have to think and act in a pre-determined way that is true. But we do not have to
think like that. Not if there is to be any alternative or succession of humanity ex-post the
neoliberal-statist-market ontology which is morally, ecologically, humanistically and most
importantly *actually* bankrupt at this point.
Do we exit a 350 year process of exponentially disproportionate wealth distribution,
deliberate maldevelopment and global dehumanisation with all the wealth in the hands of those
who benefited from the expropriation? Or do we attempt a redistribution and develop a new,
hitherto unknown (and unknowable under capitalist alienation), value set where everyone
globally has equal access to resources and a right to life as a birthright?
The decision is not beyond you or I: but it will take the development of the assessment of
capitalism on other than its own neoliberal-statist-market ontological terms. No state or
state leader can develop humanity on the path of less-is-more it needs to take but the people
can. That's all.
richard le sarc ,
Putin is either a believing neo-liberal, in which case he is part of the problem you
identify, or he is using it through necessity. I could not agree more with your diagnosis of
the omnicidal nature of capitalism, and the inability of so many to visualise the end of
capitalism-they more easily can conceive of the end of humanity. In fact I rather think that
that is the way in which the ruling parasites intend to save their own bacon, by allowing the
ecological Holocaust to cull the 90% of 'useless eaters' that the ruling elites fear and
despise, and who they see only as a threat. Their labour is no longer required in an age of
automation, robotisation and computerisation, and even their consumption is today
superfluous. The ecological Holocaust has passed numerous tipping-points and points of no
return, while the IPCC downplays the extremity of our situation, the Right still denies it is
even happening, and the public is slowly waking up, too late of course. We've just
experienced a fire Holocaust, yet the Pentecostal thug PM, 'Smoko' Morrison, who is surely
seeing it all as God's Will and the sign of the coming End Times that his cult so longs for,
utterly refuses to reduce CO2 emissions beyond a ludicrous 28% by 2030 from 2005 (base-line
creep)levels, 'target', that we will not come close to. And now it is raining, a little, so
the Great Austrayan Mediocracy can go back to their slumber. But they'll 'Wake in Fright',
again, soon.
Hugh O'Neill ,
"It is very important that they adopt the true values of a large family –
that family is love, happiness, the joy of motherhood and fatherhood, that family is a strong
bond of several generations, united by respect for the elderly and care for children, giving
everyone a sense of confidence, security, and reliability. If the younger generations accept
this situation as natural, as a moral and an integral part and reliable background support
for their adult life, then we will be able to meet the historical challenge of guaranteeing
Russia's development as a large and successful country."
I know very little of Russia alas, but the over-riding impression I take from this speech
is President Putin's depth and breadth grasp of detail and concern for every aspect of
Russian society – and his frustration that decisions made at federal level do not
transform into concrete action at regional levels. The curse of bureaucracy and local
fiefdoms jealous of their power and autonomy.
I was fully expecting him to come up a resonating phrase like: "Ask not what your country
can do for you. Ask instead what you can for your country." For Russia to have (seemingly)
escaped the rapacious talons of the vulture capitalists unleashed by the Yeltsin puppet ought
to be a lesson for us all.
Finally, in international politics, he remains impeccably diplomatic, restrained and wise.
Would that there were more world leaders of such calibre.
Hugh O'Neill ,
Leadership and Learning are indispensable to each other. Looking at the calibre of Presidents
since JFK, it seems that all the best candidates were either killed off or scared off. All
the Unspeakable can do is kill in answer to any and all problems.
richard le sarc ,
Imagine the money freed if US military expenditure was not 90% graft and inefficiency.
richard le sarc ,
His manifest virtues are precisely why the vermin of the Western ruling elites hate him so
psychotically.
Tue 7 Jan 2020
01.00 EST
Last modified on Thu 16 Jan 2020
06.09 EST
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'W
ithout the Cold War, what's the point of being an
American?" Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, the novelist John Updike's late-20th-century everyman, posed that question just as the
"long twilight struggle" was winding down. More than quarter of a century later, the plaintive query still awaits a definitive
answer.
Indeed, the passage of time has only sown confusion about whether there is a point to being an American. Even as the
cold war was ending, Updike's everyman was not alone in feeling at a loss. By the 1980s, the cold war had become more than a
mere situation or circumstance. It was a state of mind.
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Read more
Most Americans had come to take its existence for granted. Like the polar ice cap or baseball's status as the national
pastime, it had acquired an appearance of permanence. So its passing caught citizens unaware. Those charged with managing the
cold war were, if anything, even more surprised. The enterprise to which they had devoted their professional lives had suddenly
vanished. Here was a contingency that the sprawling US national security apparatus, itself a product of the anti-communist
crusade, had failed to anticipate.
On one level, of course, the surprise could not have been more gratifying. In the epic competition pitting west against east,
the god-fearing against the godless and democracy against totalitarianism, "our side" had won. All-out nuclear war had been
averted. The cause of freedom, which Americans felt certain they themselves embodied, had prevailed. Victory was decisive,
sweeping and unequivocal.
In another sense, however, the passing of the cold war could not have been more disorienting. In 1987, Georgi Arbatov, a
senior adviser to the Soviet leader
Mikhail Gorbachev
, had warned: "We are going to do a terrible thing to you – we are going to deprive you of an enemy."
As the Soviet Union passed out of existence, Americans were left not just without that enemy, but without even a framework for
understanding the world and their place in it. However imperfectly, the cold war had, for several decades, offered a semblance of
order and coherence. The collapse of communism shattered that framework. Where there had been purposefulness and predictability,
now there was neither.
Winning the cold war brought Americans face-to-face with a predicament comparable to that confronting the lucky person who
wins the lottery: hidden within a windfall is the potential for monumental disaster. Putting that money to good use while
avoiding the pitfalls inherent in suddenly acquired riches calls for prudence and self-awareness – not easily demonstrated when
the big house, luxury car and holiday home you have always wanted are yours for the asking.
Similarly, the end of the cold war might have given Americans pause, especially since the issues at hand were of considerably
greater significance than homes and cars. At least in theory, the moment might have invited reflection on some first-order
questions, such as: what is the meaning of freedom? What does freedom allow? What obligations does it impose? Whom or what does
it exclude?
O
f course, Americans had been wrestling with such questions
since well before
1776
, the answers evolving over time. During the several decades of the cold war, however, the exigencies of the east-west
rivalry had offered a reason to throttle down impulses to explore freedom's furthermost boundaries. Except on the fringes of
American politics, most citizens accepted the word from Washington that their way of life was under grave threat. In the pecking
order of national priorities, addressing that threat – defending freedom rather than enlarging it – tended to take precedence
over other considerations.
This is not to suggest that cold-war Americans were a compliant lot. They were not. From the 1950s, misleadingly enshrined as
a decade of conformity, through the Ronald Reagan-dominated 80s, domestic crises and controversies were constants. Among the
issues energising or enraging Americans were civil liberties, the nuclear arms race, mismanaged wars of dubious provenance,
challenges to artistic tradition, leftwing and rightwing radicalism, crass materialism that coexisted with widespread poverty and
a host of simmering issues connected to race, sex and gender. Yet through it all, a common outlook, centred on resistance to the
"red threat", endured. For most citizens most of the time, the cold war itself sufficed to explain "the point of being an
American".
The collapse of the Soviet empire between 1989 and 1991 robbed that outlook of its last vestiges of authority. Rarely, if
ever, had the transition from one historical period to another occurred quite so abruptly, with such a precise set of
demarcations, and with such profound implications. As if in an instant, the discipline that the cold war had imposed vanished.
The absurdity of defining reality as an either/or choice – red or dead, slave or free, good v evil – now became blazingly
apparent. The impact on American ambitions and expectations was akin to removing the speed limiter from an internal combustion
engine. Suddenly the throttle opened up. The future appeared uniquely promising, offering Americans a seemingly endless array of
choices, while confronting them with few evident constraints. Everything seemed possible.
Confident that an era of unprecedented US economic, military and cultural ascendancy now beckoned, members of an intoxicated
elite threw caution to the winds. They devised – and promulgated – a new consensus consisting of four elements.
Germans on top of the Berlin Wall in front of the Brandenburg Gate on 10 November 1989. Photograph: Fabrizio
Bensch/Reuters
The first of these was globalisation or, more precisely, globalised neoliberalism. Stripped to its essence, globalisation was
all about wealth creation: unconstrained corporate capitalism operating on a planetary scale in a world open to the movement of
goods, capital, ideas and people would create wealth on a hitherto unimagined scale.
The second element was global leadership, a euphemism for hegemony or, more simply still, for empire. At its core, global
leadership was all about order: unchallengeable military might would enable the US to manage and police a postcolonial yet
implicitly imperial order favourable to American interests and values. Through the exercise of global leadership, the US would
enforce globalisation. Order and abundance would go hand in hand.
The third element of the consensus was freedom, an ancient word now drastically revised. The new conception of freedom
emphasised autonomy, with traditional moral prohibitions declared obsolete and the removal of constraints maximising choice.
Order and abundance together would underwrite freedom, relieving Americans of existential concerns about safety and survival to
which those less privileged were still obliged to attend.
The final element of the consensus was presidential supremacy, with the occupant of the Oval Office accorded quasi-monarchical
prerogatives and status. Implicit in presidential supremacy was a radical revision of the political order. While still treated as
sacred writ, the constitution no longer described
the nation's existing system of governance. Effectively gone,
for example, was the concept of a federal government consisting of three equal branches. Ensuring the nation's prosperity,
keeping Americans safe from harm, and interpreting the meaning of freedom, the president became the centre around which all else
orbited, the subject of great hopes, and the target of equally great scorn should he fail to fulfil the expectations that he
brought into office.
All these elements together constituted a sort of operating system. The purpose of this operating system, unseen but widely
taken for granted, was to cement the primacy of the US in perpetuity, while enshrining the American way of life as the ultimate
destiny of humankind. According to the calendar, the end of the 20th century, frequently referred to as the American century, was
then drawing near. Yet with the cold war concluding on such favourable terms, the stage appeared set for a prolonged American
epoch.
This, however, was not to be.
T
he US wasted little time in squandering the advantages it
had gained by winning the cold war. Events at home and abroad put the post-cold war consensus to the test, unmasking its
contradictions and exposing its premises as delusional. Although globalisation did enable some to acquire great wealth, it left
behind many more, while fostering egregious inequality. The assertion of global leadership provided American soldiers with
plentiful opportunities to explore exotic and unfamiliar lands, but few would mistake the results for even an approximation of
dominion, much less peace and harmony.
Instead, Americans came to accept war as habitual. And while the drive for individual empowerment removed constraints, it did
little to promote the common good. An enlarged conception of freedom brought with it a whiff of nihilism. As for exalting the
chief executive as a visionary leader, it yielded a succession of disappointments, before imploding in November 2016.
The post-cold war moment, dating from the early 90s and spanning the administrations of
Bill Clinton
, George W Bush and Barack Obama, turned out to be remarkably brief. By 2016, large numbers of ordinary Americans
had concluded, not without reason, that the post-cold war consensus was irretrievably defective. Globalised neoliberalism,
militarised hegemony, individual empowerment and presidents elevated to the status of royalty might be working for some, but not
for them. They also discerned, again not without cause, that establishment elites subscribing to that consensus, including the
leaders of both political parties, were deaf to their complaints and oblivious to their plight.
By turning their country over to
Donald Trump
, those Americans signalled their repudiation of that very consensus. That Trump himself did not offer anything
remotely like a reasoned alternative made his elevation to the presidency all the more remarkable. He was a protest candidate
elected by a protest vote. In that regard, the 2016 presidential election marked a historical turning point comparable in
significance to the fall of the Berlin Wall a quarter of a century earlier.
As the cold war had evolved from the late 40s into the 80s, the rhetoric of freedom remained central to American political
discourse. Among members of the intelligentsia, fads came and went, but none displaced freedom as the defining issue of the age.
As the designated "leader of the free world", each US president was in turn expected to talk the talk. From Truman through to
Reagan, with differing levels of eloquence, none failed to do so.
The way it ended – with euphoric young Germans dancing on the wall – imparted to the entire cold war a retrospective moral
clarity that it did not deserve. The cold war tainted everything it touched. As an episode in world history, it was a tragedy of
towering proportions. So its passing ought to have called for reflection, remorse, repentance, even restitution. Yet the
prevailing mood allowed for none of these, at least as far as most Americans were concerned. Instead, out of an era punctuated
throughout by anxiety and uncertainty came a sense that a dazzling future lay just ahead.
In effect, the passing of the cold war relieved Americans of any further obligation to exhibit more than nominal cohesion.
Except as a matter of personal preference, virtues such as self-discipline and self-denial, once deemed essential to enabling a
nation to stand firm against existential threats, now became passé. The spirit of the post-cold war era prioritised
self-actualisation and self-indulgence over self-sacrifice.
The demise of communism removed the last remaining constraints on the operation of global capitalism. By leaving the US
militarily pre-eminent, the end of the cold war removed any remaining constraints on the use of American coercive power.
Similarly, for many ordinary Americans, particularly those of a progressive bent, the passing of the cold war did away with any
lingering constraints on matters related to "lifestyle". No longer would they defer to the customary arbiters of propriety and
"good taste" in determining what was permissible and what was not. For transcendent authority, progressives looked to the
autonomous self.
'A
t the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own
concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life." So wrote supreme court justice Anthony
Kennedy in a famous decision handed down shortly after the cold war ended.
Kennedy's reformulation of liberty, however grandiose, was well suited to the mood that swept through elite quarters at
the end of history
. By comparison, the inalienable rights specified in the famous Declaration of Independence in 1776 now
seemed cramped, stingy and inadequate. Freedom was in line for a makeover.
The emerging post-cold war conception of freedom was nothing if not expansive. It recognised few limits and imposed fewer
obligations, with one notable exception: compliance was non-negotiable. As always, the American definition of liberty, however
recently revised, was universally applicable, as valid in Bogotá and Dakar as it was in Boston and Denver.
What did this signify in practice? Allowing individuals maximum latitude to reach their own conclusions regarding the concepts
of existence, meaning, the universe and the mystery of human life yielded what sort of society? The quarter-century that elapsed
between the fall of the Berlin Wall and Donald Trump's election provided a tentative answer to that question. Part of that answer
came in the form of progress towards eliminating the remaining vestiges of racism, empowering women and reducing discrimination
experienced by LGBTQ+ Americans.
Granted, progress does not imply decisive and irreversible success. Yet during the post-cold war period, American society
became more tolerant, more open, more accepting and less judgmental. Attitudes toward people of colour, women and gays that in
the 50s had been normative and remained widespread in the 60s and 70s had, by 2016, become unacceptable in polite society. Yet
for more than a few Americans, Justice Kennedy's notion of liberty as an opportunity to ponder life's ultimate questions had
little relevance. In practical terms, the exercise of freedom, undertaken in an environment in which consumption and celebrity
had emerged as preeminent values, encouraged conformity rather than independence. At least notionally, Americans now enjoyed more
freedom than ever before. Yet from every direction, but especially from Madison Avenue, Hollywood and Silicon Valley, came cues
for how to make the most of the freedom now on offer. And however much you had, you always needed more.
President Ronald Reagan (R) with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in Washington in December 1987. Photograph: Gary
Hershorn/Reuters
So along with freedom came stress, anxiety and a sense of not quite measuring up, or a fear of falling behind as the demands
of daily life seemed to multiply. For some, freedom meant alienation, anomie and despair. It did nothing to prevent, and in some
instances arguably fostered, self-destructive or antisocial behaviour.
So in 2016, as another presidential election approached, Americans were able to claim the following distinctions:
•
One in six were taking prescription psychiatric drugs such as antidepressants or anti-anxiety
meds.
•
More than 16 million adults and more than 3 million adolescents were suffering from significant
depression.
•
More than 1.9 million Americans were regularly using cocaine, with a half million hooked on
heroin and 700,000 on methamphetamine.
•
That year opioid overdoses killed 46,000, a new record.
•
Binge drinking had reached epidemic proportions, with one in six US adults binge drinking
several times a month and consuming seven drinks per binge; according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, bingeing
was especially common among younger and more affluent Americans.
•
Nearly 45,000 were taking their own lives annually, the national suicide rate increased by 24%
since 1999; within the previous decade the suicide rate of teenage girls had doubled and of boys had jumped by 40%.
•
Smartphone addiction was joining more traditional compulsions, with the average person checking
their smartphone 110 times a day, impelled by Fomo – a fear of missing out.
•
Compulsive-buying syndrome, AKA shopping addiction, afflicted an estimated 6% of the population;
a comparable number were compulsive hoarders.
•
On a daily basis, 11 million Americans, mostly women, struggled with eating disorders such as
anorexia and bulimia, while roughly 40% of adults and nearly 19% of children and adolescents were obese.
•
Cosmetic surgeons were performing more than 17m procedures annually, with buttock augmentation
and labiaplasty enjoying a particular spike in popularity.
•
Forty-million Americans were regularly visiting online porn sites.
•
The number of Americans infected with sexually transmitted diseases in 2016 surpassed 2 million,
according to the CDC, "the highest number ever".
•
An estimated 24.7 million children were growing up in fatherless households, with such children
substantially more likely to drop out of school, abuse drugs and alcohol and kill themselves; girls raised without a father
present were four times more likely to get pregnant as teenagers.
•
Although difficult to quantify with precision, 676,000 American children in 2016 were victims of
abuse or neglect.
•
Exercising their right to choose, American women were terminating around 650,000 unwanted
pregnancies each year, despite the widespread availability of contraceptives.
•
Exercising their right to bear arms, Americans had accumulated more than 40% of the planet's
small arms; the US arsenal in private hands was larger than that of the next 25 countries combined.
•
Meanwhile, more than 33,000 Americans were being killed in firearms-related incidents annually.
•
Year in and year out, the US had the world's highest incarceration rate, no other developed
nation coming anywhere close.
•
Polling data showed that social trust – how Americans felt about government institutions and
their fellow citizens – had sunk to an all-time low. Perhaps for that reason, when it came to voting, most Americans couldn't be
bothered; voter turnout in the US lagged behind that of most other developed countries.
•
In an increasingly networked society, with two-thirds of Americans on Facebook, chronic
loneliness afflicted a large portion of the population.
•
In a phenomenon described as "deaths by despair", the life expectancy of white working-class
American males was dropping, a trend without historical precedent.
•
The nation's birthrate had fallen below the rate needed to sustain a stable overall population;
America had ceased to reproduce itself.
•
Not to be overlooked, in their pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness, Americans were
polluting, wasting food and generating trash with abandon, leading the world in each category.
A
rguably, Americans were enjoying more freedom than ever.
Were they happier as a consequence? Polls suggested otherwise. In the 2007 "world happiness" standings, the US had ranked third
among developed countries. By 2016, its position had plummeted to 13th.
By no means am I suggesting that a single such statistic holds the key to assessing life in the US. It does not. Nor do the
various penchants and pathologies enumerated above. Yet taken together, they suggest a society in which discontent, dysfunction
and sheer perversity were rampant.
As with globalised neoliberalism, some Americans not only coped with seemingly limitless freedom, but also luxuriated in the
opportunities that it offered. For sophisticates inhabiting Brooklyn's Park Slope, radical autonomy could well prove to be a
boon; for those stuck in a ghetto on Chicago's South Side, not so much. As for the accompanying underside, those in possession of
sufficient resources could insulate themselves from its worst effects – just as the affluent were able to insulate themselves
from the accumulating post-cold war military misadventures by simply allowing others to shoulder the burden.
What role did Trump play in shaping this US that worked nicely for some while leaving many others adrift and vulnerable? None
at all. Globalisation, the pursuit of militarised hegemony, a conception of freedom conferring rights without duties, and a
political system centred on a quasi-monarchical chief of state each turned out to have a substantial downside. Yet the defects of
each made their appearance well before Trump's entry into politics, even if elites, held in thrall by the post-cold war outlook,
were slow to appreciate their significance. None of those defects can be laid at his feet.
If anything, Trump himself had displayed a considerable aptitude for turning such defects to his own advantage. In the US,
post-cold war, he was prominent among those who enriched themselves, lived large and let others do the dirty work, while also
shielding themselves from the difficulties that made life a trial for many of their fellow citizens. In an era of con artists,
cowards and cynics, Trump became a modern equivalent of showman PT Barnum, parlaying the opportunities at hand into fortune,
celebrity, lots of golf, plenty of sex and eventually the highest office in the land.
Yet for our purposes, the key point is this: Trump did not create the conditions in which the campaign of 2016 was to take
place. Instead, to a far greater extent than any of his political rivals, he demonstrated a knack for translating those
conditions into votes. Here, the moment met the man.
Trump's critics saw him as an abomination. Perhaps he was. Yet he was also very much a man of his time. In the end, what won
him the presidency was his capacity to push the buttons of millions of voters who believed themselves ill-served and left behind
– abandoned, even – by establishment politicians of both parties.
Implicit in his promise to "make America great again" was an admission that greatness itself, which Americans had long since
come to believe was theirs by right, had been lost, with no one taking responsibility and no one, apart from Trump himself,
venturing to explain how it had even happened. The critical word that imparted to his campaign slogan its formidable persuasive
power was "again". As Tom Engelhardt has written, it represented an acknowledgment that self-congratulatory terms such as
"great", "super", "exceptional" or "indispensable" no longer reflected the actually existing American condition. Millions of
ordinary citizens recognised this as self-evidently true. Arrangements, agreements and advantages that Americans had once prized
had been squandered or thrown away. And yet no politician other than Trump dared to utter that truth aloud.
As a strategic thinker, Trump had no particular talent. Yet as a strategic sensor, he was uniquely gifted, possessing an
intuitive genius for reading the temper of his supporters and stoking their grievances. Yet by no means did Trump create those
grievances – they had festered during the quarter-century after the cold war ended. He merely recognised their existence and, in
doing so, made himself the champion of the aggrieved and the one person they came to believe who might respond to their plight.
The post-cold war recipe for renewing the American century has been tried and found wanting. A patently amoral economic system
has produced neither justice nor equality, and will not. Grotesquely expensive and incoherent national security policies have
produced neither peace nor a compliant imperium, and will not. A madcap conception of freedom unmoored from any overarching moral
framework has fostered neither virtue nor nobility nor contentment, and won't anytime soon. Sold by its masterminds as a formula
for creating a prosperous and powerful nation in which all citizens might find opportunities to flourish, it has yielded no such
thing. This, at least, describes the conclusion reached by disenchanted Americans in numbers sufficient to elect as president
someone vowing to run the post-cold war consensus through a shredder.
Donald Trump's detractors charge him with dividing the country when, in fact, it was pervasive division that vaulted him to
the centre of American politics in the first place. The divide is deepest and least reconcilable between those Americans for whom
the trajectory of events since the cold war pointed upward, and those who found in those same events evidence of decline and
decay, and who sensed they had been had. At the most fundamental level, the inhabitants of one camp believe that talent, skills
and connections will enable them to determine their own destiny; they are masters of their own fate. In the other camp are those
who see themselves as victims. As Obama put it while campaigning for the presidency in 2008, "they cling to guns or religion or
antipathy toward people who aren't like them, or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their
frustrations".
Trump did not create this cleavage. He merely turned it to his personal advantage. So, regardless of the date or terms of
Trump's departure from office, the schism that allowed him to become president is likely to persist after he is gone. It's that
schism, rather than the antics of the tycoon/reality TV star/demagogue who exploited it, that merits far more attention than it
has received.
This is an edited extract from The Age of Illusions: How America Squandered Its Cold War Victory by Andrew Bacevich,
published by Metropolitan Books/Holt
•
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America faces an epic choice...
... in the coming year, and the results will define the country for a generation. These are perilous times. Over the
last three years, much of what the Guardian holds dear has been threatened – democracy, civility, truth. This US
administration is establishing new norms of behaviour. Anger and cruelty disfigure public discourse and lying is
commonplace. Truth is being chased away. But with your help we can continue to put it center stage.
Rampant disinformation, partisan news sources and social media's tsunami of fake news is no basis on which to inform
the American public in 2020. The need for a robust, independent press has never been greater, and with your support we
can continue to provide fact-based reporting that offers public scrutiny and oversight. Our journalism is free and open
for all, but it's made possible thanks to the support we receive from readers like you across America in all 50 states.
"America is at a tipping point, finely balanced between truth and lies, hope and hate, civility and nastiness.
Many vital aspects of American public life are in play – the Supreme Court, abortion rights, climate policy, wealth
inequality, Big Tech and much more. The stakes could hardly be higher. As that choice nears, the Guardian, as it has
done for 200 years, and with your continued support, will continue to argue for the values we hold dear – facts,
science, diversity, equality and fairness."
– US editor, John Mulholland
On the occasion of its 100th birthday in 1921 the editor of the Guardian said, "Perhaps the chief virtue of a
newspaper is its independence. It should have a soul of its own." That is more true than ever. Freed from the influence
of an owner or shareholders, the Guardian's editorial independence is our unique driving force and guiding principle.
"U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials are assessing whether Russia is trying to
undermine Joe Biden in its ongoing disinformation efforts with the former vice president still the
front-runner in the race to challenge President Donald Trump, according to two officials familiar
with the matter
Part of the inquiry is to determine whether Russia is trying to weaken Biden by promoting
controversy over his past involvement in U.S. policy toward Ukraine while his son worked for an
energy company there."
So how exactly does Russia, in a scene straight out of A Clockwork Orange, tap into the frontal
lobe section of the U.S. electorate and cause them to lose all confidence in their political
favorites?
"A signature trait of Russian President Vladimir Putin 'is his ability to convince people of
outright falsehoods,' William Evanina, director of the National Counterintelligence and Security
Center, said in a statement. 'In America, [the Russians are] using social media and many other
tools to inflame social divisions, promote conspiracy theories and sow distrust in our democracy
and elections.'"
Yes, somehow those dastardly Russians have outsmarted the brightest and best-paid political
strategists in Washington, D.C. by brandishing what amounts to some really persuasive memes over
social media, and for just rubles on the dollar.
The techies at Wired
went
so far
as to call this epic assault on the fragile American cranium, "meme warfare to divide
America." By way of evidence, it cited a very creative meme that screamed, "F*CK THE ELECTIONS," which
was intended, as the ironclad argument goes, to cause a number of impressionable Americans to throw up
their hands in a fit of collective exasperation and say, 'Ok, that's it. I'm staying at home on
Election Day.'
Yes, it's really that easy! Imagine all the money the Russians and their radical new
political technologies could have saved guys like casino tycoon, Sheldon Adelson, who
showered
the
Trump campaign with $100 million dollars.
Many of those divisive Russian messages wormed their way onto Facebook, purportedly, where God only
knows how many voter brains' turned to maggots and mush just staring at them. Yet one individual who
actually recalls seeing one or two of these dangerous memes was Rob Goldman, former Vice President for
Advertising on Facebook, who revealed via Twitter, another infected social media platform, some
interesting information:
"Most of the coverage of Russian meddling involves their attempt to effect the outcome of the
2016 U.S. election.
I have seen all of the Russian ads and I can say very definitively that
swaying the election was *NOT* the main goal
."
Clearly, Goldman seems to have been under the sway of some folk Russian brainwashing technique,
probably passed down from the time of Rasputin. In any case, Donald Trump himself took great
satisfaction from that particular revelation, retweeting it to his millions of minions.
Most of the coverage of Russian meddling involves
their attempt to effect the outcome of the 2016 US election. I have seen all of the Russian ads and
I can say very definitively that swaying the election was *NOT* the main goal.
Incidentally, it may or may not be relevant, but Goldman
retired
from
Facebook in October 2019 after seven years with the company.
Russia, the gift that keeps on giving
Not only have the Democrats been able to use the Russia bogeyman as their excuse for losing the
White House in 2016, they are able to summon this distant nuclear power whenever they wish to curb
internet freedoms, which is pretty much every day now.
Now, fun-loving memes are under attack and may soon go the way of the DoDo bird
("A small office of Russian trolls could derail 241 years of U.S. political history with a handful of
dank memes and an advertising budget that would barely buy you a billboard in Brooklyn," screamed
insanely
The
Guardian
). At the same time, the freedom of speech is getting
destroyed
by
vapid accusations of 'hate speech,' which, unless used to incite violence, is a totally meaningless
term used to eliminate any conversation that is undesirable to the elite.
Meanwhile,
only the mainstream media these days are
permitted
to dabble
in 'conspiracy theories'
even as their own false narratives have contributed to
the pulverization of entire nations, as was the case in Iraq, for example, which sustained a
full-blown U.S. military invasion in 2003 following debunked claims that Saddam Hussein was harboring
weapons of mass destruction. That was the mother of all conspiracy theories that was pushed
unchallenged by the mainstream media.
So back to Joe Biden.
Do intelligent Americans really need help from Russia to prove that just maybe the former Vice
President is mentally and physically unfit to stand for the White House? Probably not. From whispering
sweet nothings into the ears of any female within groping distance, to sucking on his wife's
fingertips at a political rally, something just doesn't seem altogether right upstairs with Joe Biden.
So what is the real story for dragging Russia, once again, into the internal swamp pit known as
Washington, D.C.?
The Bloomberg article provides a big hint:
"This time around, the narrative about Biden
and Ukraine is well-publicized and being advanced by Trump, his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and
the president's Republican allies in Congress."
And that "narrative" has everything to do with not only the Democrats' frozen impeachment
proceedings against the U.S. leader, which promises to have major connections to Ukraine, Joe Biden
and his son Hunter, and quite possibly dozens of other top Democrats. In other words, the Democrats
understand that pushing ahead with impeachment could be their ultimate downfall.
Although few Americans seem to remember that back in May of 2019, Trump
granted
U.S.
Attorney General William Barr "full and complete authority" to investigate exactly how claims that
Trump was 'conspiring with the Kremlin' in the 2016 presidential election had originated, the
Democrats certainly have not.
Their bogus 'Russian collusion' claim provided the rationale for a four-year-long 'witch hunt' that
began when the Democrats, relying on the flimsy findings contained in the so-called 'Steele dossier,
managed to get approval from the FISA court to spy on the Trump campaign. Now, some top-ranking
Democrats – never imagining Hillary Clinton would actually lose in 2016 – are understandably nervous
as to what Barr and his assistant, federal attorney John Durham will divulge to the public in the
coming months.
With so much riding on the line in 2020
, is anyone surprised that Bloomberg, the
news affiliate owned and operated by Democratic contender Michael Bloomberg, is now reporting "U.S.
officials are warning that Russia's election interference in 2020 could be more brazen than in the
2016 presidential race or the 2018 midterm election."
In other words, the racist ploy used by Democrats to explain their monumental defeat
in 2016 did not end with the Mueller Report.
The conspiracy theory, promulgated by a media that is in effect just another branch of the
Democratic National Committee, is being
primed to explain not only possible criminal charges
aimed at top Democrats in the coming months, but how Democrats, like Michael Bloomberg, failed once
again to beat the seemingly unstoppable incumbent, Donald Trump.
Tags
Politics
(Written on the evening of. So subject to reconsideration/revision/outright denial as we
learn more.)
I didn't expect any of it. Neither did anyone else, whatever the so-called experts
outgassing on the US Garbage Media may be pretending. I don't know what it all means. Neither
does anyone else. (Well Putin & Co do, but they keep their cards close to their chests. As
we've just seen.)
What do we know? Putin gave his annual address to the Federal Council ( Rus ) ( Eng ) and started off with how important
it was that the birthrate should be raised. Fair enough: he wants more Russians on the planet,
the government's programs have ensured that there will be quite a few more but there are still
more to come. Many programs planned; some of which will work: after all,
not everything works out as we hoped does it? He mentioned how dangerous the world is
– especially the MENA – and said at least Russia is pretty secure (as indeed it is
except against lunatics addicted to the
Book of Revelation .)
Then the constitutional stuff. He believes the Constitution needs a few tweaks. Important
officials should really be Russians and not people with a
get-out-of-jail-card/alternate-loyalty-card in their vests. Reasonable enough: they should
"inseparably connect their lives with Russia and the Russian people without any assumptions and
allowances." (Good idea actually. Can we in the West steal the idea? We vote for X but who does
he vote for?) Russian law should take precedence over decrees contaminated by the " Rules-Based
International Order" ("
we make the rules ,
you follow our orders "). The PM should be named by the Duma. (A pretty big change,
actually: let's have more details on the division of labour please. In some countries the head
of state is The Boss – USA, Russia (now), France – in others the head of government
is The Boss – Germany, Canada, Denmark. There is a serious carve up of powers question
here that has to be worked out in detail.) Constitutional changes should be approved in a
referendum. The President either should or should not be bound by the
no-three-terms-in-a-row-rule (I personally can't figure out what "этим"
refers to in "Не считаю, что
этот вопрос
принципиальный,
но согласен с
этим. Не считаю,
что этот вопрос
принципиальный,
но согласен с
этим." But, no doubt we will soon learn.)
So, a somewhat less presidential republic. Details to be decided. Many details. But I'm
confident that it's been worked out and we will learn. Putin & Co have shown us over 20
years that they don't make things up on the fly.
Then we learned that the entire government had resigned – but individuals to stay in
place until replaced. Then we learned – a fast few hours indeed! – that Dmitri
Medvedev was replaced by somebody that no one (other than Russian tax specialists) had ever
heard of: Mikhail Vladimirovich Mishustin. (
Russian Wiki entry – none in English so far.) Those cheering Medvedev's dismissal
(something predicted and hoped for by a sector of Russianologists) had to then swallow this:
not tossed out into ignominy and shame, as they wanted, but something else. Putin says that
there is a clear distinction between government and presidential concerns; defence and security
are clearly in the latter. But Medvedev has always been closely following
defence and security issues and it is suitable and appropriate that he continue to do so. So a
new position, deputy heard of the security council, will be created for him. So what are we
to make of this? Medvedev has been given the boot and a sinecure? Or he's been given a crucial
job in the new carve-up of responsibilities?
After all, Russia's problems keep getting bigger but nobody is getting any younger.
Especially the problems from outside. For some years Washington, an implacable enemy of Moscow,
has been getting less and less predictable. Lavrov and Kerry spend hours
locked up negotiating a deal in Syria ;
within a week the US military attacks a Syrian Army unit; "by mistake" . Who's in charge?
Now with the murder of Soleimani, possibly on a Washington-approved peace mission, Washington
has moved to another level of lawlessness and is exploring the next depth as it defies
Baghdad's order to get out. A pirate power. The outside problems for Moscow aren't getting
smaller, are they? Washington is certainly
недоговороспособны
– it's impossible to make an agreement with it and, if you should think you have done so,
it will break it. A dangerous, uncontrollable madman, staggering around blowing everything up
– is any foreign leader now to be assumed to be on Washington's murder list? Surviving
its decay is a big job indeed. The problems are getting bigger in the Final Days of the
Imperium Americanum.
So, maybe Moscow needs more people on the job.
So are we looking at a new division of labour in Moscow as part of managing the Transition?
(To say nothing of the – what's the word? – Thucydides trap ? ).
Mishustin looks after the nuts and bolt of Russia's economy and internal management. Medvedev
looks after defence and security – something not likely to get smaller while Putin looks
after the big picture?
But this is only the first step in The Transition and we will learn more soon.
On the one hand he is a creature of the technocratic neo-liberal order which is committed to
unilateralism and "post-nation-statism". On the other hand he is a creature of France – a
nation with strong (though easily forgotten) nationalist traditions stretching back to King
Louis XI, the founder of the first modern nation state, Cardinal Mazarin who organized the
Peace of Westphalia that established modern thoughts on nation states, Jean-Baptiste Colbert
who's economic theories gave meaning to economic sovereignty in the modern era, to Sadi Carnot
who's application of Colbertist economics and resistance to British manipulation got him killed
in 1895, to Charles de Gaulle, who established the 5 th Republic and devoted his
life to resisting the Deep State on the basis of peaceful relations with Russia and China.
Then there is the populist rage of the French which dates back to the colorful days of the
French revolution which established a unique tradition of mass revolts against the established
order when it becomes abusive of the people this provides a "bottom up" factor which any
politician desirous of keeping their heads attached to their necks must keep in mind.
For these two reasons (top down traditions of statecraft and bottom up traditions of freeing
corrupt leaders' of their heads from their bodies), Macron has found himself joining President
Trump's call to re-introduce Russia back into the G8, and has made major maneuvers to re-orient
France towards a pro-China policy becoming the guest of honor at China's International
Expo where $15 billion of deals were signed on energy, aerospace and agricultural
initiatives.
Macron has even enraged Europe's technocratic elite by questioning the foundations of the
European Union's viability while at the same time aptly
criticizing NATO of 'brain death' . The crisis caused by the unravelling of the globalist
vision of a post-nation state world order has resulted in an emergency conference in London to
figure out how NATO can be saved from its total irrelevance. Faced with the anti-NATO sentiment
expressed by Macron and Trump in recent months, and the emergence of the new multipolar order
which is attracting ever more nation states (including NATO members) into its sphere of
influence, Jens Stoltenberg
made the desperate assertion that China must be made a target of the military alliance
saying that China "is coming closer to us, investing heavily in infrastructure. We see them
in Africa, we see them in the Arctic, we see them in cyber space and China now has the
second-largest defense budget in the world."
The NATO Disorder and the Economic
Meltdown
Today, after decades of neoliberal practices have undermined the once powerful
agro-industrial capacities of France under the "post-industrial" Euro, it has become evident
that austerity and increased taxes are the only solutions which the technocrats running the
European Central Bank will permit. Since Euro membership forbids any nation to create a debt
which is greater than 3% of GDP, the means to generate sufficient state credit to build large
scale projects needed for an economic recovery do not exist.
In other words, from the standpoint of the Trans-Atlantic rules of the game, the situation
is hopeless.
For all of his problems, Macron isn't blind to this fact and can see that Russia and China
have successfully transformed the international order with the advent of the Belt and Road
Initiative. He can see that this system uniquely offers western leaders (who wish to keep their
heads in the face of the oncoming economic collapse), the only viable means to provide jobs,
security and long term economic growth to their people since it is rooted in long term, open
system thinking which is not connected to Hobbesian closed system geopolitics. De Gaulle would
be happy to see this shift.
The Revival of de
Gaulle
Charles de Gaulle was among a network of leaders who fought valiantly against the cancerous
deep state that had formerly supported fascism in WWII. While Franklin Roosevelt had to
do battle with such pro-fascist organizations such as the JP Morgan-funded Liberty League
and Council on Foreign Relations from 1933-1945, President De Gaulle had to contend with the
pro-Nazi Petain government whose agents immediately took over controls of France in the wake of
WWII, and didn't go away upon the General's ascension to the Presidency during the near
collapse of the 5 th republic in 1959.
De Gaulle strategically fought tooth and nail against the pro-NATO fascists led by General
Challe who attempted two coup attempts against De Gaulle in
1960 and 1961 and later worked with MI6 and the CIA using private contractors like Permindex to
arrange over
30 assassination attempts from 1961-1969.
De Gaulle was not only successful at taking France out of
the NATO cage in 1966 , but he had organized to ensure Algeria's independence against the
will of the entire deep state of France who often worked with Dulles' State Department to
preserve France's colonial possessions. De Gaulle also recognized the importance of breaking
the bipolar rules of the Cold War by reaching out to Russia calling for a renewed Europe "
from the Atlantic to the Urals " and also an alliance with China with the intent of
resolving the fires lit by western arsonists in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam whose independence
he was committed to guaranteeing. De Gaulle wrote of his plan in his Memoires:
"My aim, then, was to disengage France, not from the Atlantic Alliance, which I intended
to maintain by way of ultimate precaution, but from the integration carried out by NATO under
American command; to establish relations with each of the states of the East bloc, first and
foremost Russia, with the object of bringing about a détente, followed by understanding
and cooperation; to do likewise, when the time was ripe, with China"
After arranging a treaty with China's Prime Minister Zhou Enlai, India's Prime Minster Nehru
and the leadership of Cambodia in 1963 to create a China led block to resolve the crisis in
Southeast Asia with France's help, De Gaulle became the first western head of state to
recognize China and establish diplomatic relations with the Mainland on January 31, 1964. He
saw that China's growth would become a driving force of world development and saw a friendship
based on scientific and technological progress to be a source of France's renewal. Attacking
the false dichotomy of "Free liberal capitalism" vs "totalitarian communism", De Gaulle
expressed the Colbertist traditions of "dirigisme" which have historically driven France's
progress since the 17 th century when he said "We are not going to commit
ourselves to the empire of liberal capitalism, and nobody can believe that we are ever going to
submit to the crushing totalitarianism of communism."
The De Gaulle-Kennedy
Alliance
De Gaulle had great hopes to find like-minded anti-colonialist leaders and collaborators who
were fighting against the deep state in other countries. In America he was inspired by the
fresh leadership of the young John F. Kennedy whom he first met in Paris in May 1961. Of
Kennedy he wrote "The new President was determined to devote himself to the cause of
freedom, justice, and progress. It is true that, persuaded that it was the duty of the United
States and himself to redress wrongs, he would be drawn into ill-advised interventions. But the
experience of the statesman would no doubt have gradually restrained the impulsiveness of the
idealist. John Kennedy had the ability, and had it not been for the crime which killed him,
might have had the time to leave his mark on our age."
De Gaulle's advice to Kennedy was instrumental in the young President's decision to stay out
of a land war in Vietnam and led to Kennedy's
National Security Action Memorandum 263 to begin a phase out of American military from
Vietnam on October 2, 1963. Kenney and De Gaulle both shared the view (alongside Italian
industrialist Enrico Mattei with whom both collaborated) that Africa, Asia and South America
needed advanced scientific and technological progress, energy sovereignty and sanitation in
order to be fully liberated by the colonial structures of Europe. All three fought openly for
this vision and all three fell in the line of battle (one to a plane crash in 1961, another to
several shooters in Dallas in 1963 and the last to a staged "colour revolution" in 1969.)
[1]
If De Gaulle, Kennedy and Mattei were alive today, it is guaranteed they would recognize in
the Belt and Road Initiative and broader Eurasian alliance, the only viable pathway to a future
worth living in and the only means to save the souls of their own nations. The question is:
Will Macron continue on this Gaullist path and will other nations grow the balls to follow
suite, or will those imperial fascists who overthrew De Gaulle's vision in 1969 succeed once
more?
Footnote
[1] It is noteworthy that thesame
Montreal-based Permindex Corporationwhich was expelled from France for having
orchestrated at least two attempts on De Gaulle's life was found by New Orleans D.A. Jim
Garrison to be at the heart of the November 22, 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy.
"... "positions her as one of the top candidates to take over the liberal party after Trudeau" ..."
"... Government Operations Committee ..."
"... "All liberal democracies in the world today are facing huge challenges, and for me the conclusion that pushed me to is; there are only 37 million Canadians. Hugely challenging world threats posed to the rules-based international order, greater threats since the 2nd World War. We have to be united in how we confront those challenges." ..."
"... Ever since her appointment to the role of Cabinet Minister in 2015, Freeland played the role assigned to her as a high level Rhodes Scholar and priestess of neo-liberalism. Springing from a Nazi-connected Ukrainian family based out of Alberta, Freeland made her mark working as lead editor in British Intelligence-controlled news agencies the London Economist, Thompson-Reuters, Financial Times and later Canada's Globe and Mail. Through these positions as "perception manager" of the super elite, she became friends with some of the most vicious Russian, Ukrainian and other eastern European oligarchs who rose to power under Perestroika and the liberalization of the east-bloc. ..."
"... The author is the founder of the Canadian Patriot Review and Director of the Rising Tide Foundation of Canada. He has authored 3 volumes of the series "The Untold History of Canada" and can be reached at [email protected] ..."
editor
/
November 27, 2019
An interesting victory has been won for forces in Canada who have wished to clean up the mess made by the two
disastrous years Chrystia Freeland has spent occupying the position of Foreign Minister of Canada. This victory
has taken the form of a Freeland's removal from the position which she has used to destroy diplomatic relations
with China, Russia and other nations targeted for regime change by her London-based controllers. Taking over the
helm as Minister of Global Affairs is Francois-Philippe Champagne, former Minister of Infrastructure and ally of
"old guard" Liberal elder Jean Chretien- both of whom have advocated positive diplomatic and business relations
with China in opposition to Freeland for years.
As positive of a development as this is, the danger which
Freeland represents to world peace and Canada's role in the New Emerging system led by the Eurasian Alliance
should not be ignored, since she has now been given the role of Deputy Prime Minister, putting her into a position
to easily take over the Party and the nation as 2
nd
in command.
Already the Canadian press machine on all sides of the aisle are raising the prospect of Freeland's takeover of
the Liberal Party as it
"positions her as one of the top candidates to take over the liberal party after
Trudeau"
as one Globe and Mail reporter stated.
The Strange Case of Deputy Prime Ministers
The very role of Deputy Prime Minister is a strange one which has had many pundits scratching their heads,
since the Privy Council position is highly under-defined, and was only created by Justin's father Pierre in 1977
as part of his
"cybernetics revolution"
which empowered the Privy Council Office and Prime Minister's Office under "scientific management" of a
technocratic elite. Although it is technically the position of 2nd in Command, it is not like the position of
Vice-President whose function has much greater constitutional clarity.
In some cases, the position has been ceremonial, and in others, like the case of Brian Mulroney's Dep. PM Don
Mazankowski (1986-1993) who chaired the
Government Operations Committee
and led in imposing the
nation-stripping NAFTA, the position was very powerful indeed. Some Prime Ministers have chosen not even to have a
Deputy PM, and the last one (Anne McLellan) ended with the downfall of Paul Martin in 2006. McLellan and another
former Deputy Prime Minister John Manley were both leading figures behind the creation of the think tank
Canada2020 in 2003
that soon brought Justin and Obamaton behaviorists into a re-structuring of the Liberal Party of Canada during the
Harper years, shedding it of its pro-China, pro-Russia, anti-NATO influences that had been represented by less
technocratically-minded statesmen like Jean Chretien years earlier.
Personally, as a Canadian-based journalist who has done a fair bit of homework on Canadian history, and the
structures of Canada's government, I honestly don't think the question of Freeland's becoming Prime Minister
matters nearly as much as many believe for the simple reason that Justin is a well-known cardboard cut-out who
simply doesn't know how to do anything terribly important without a teleprompter and experienced handlers. This is
not a secret to other world leaders, and anyone familiar with the mountains of video footage taken from G7 events
featuring the pathetic scene of little Justin chronically ignored by his peers goes far enough to demonstrate the
point.
Freeland's role in Canada has never had much to do with Canada, as much as it has with Canada's role as a
geopolitical chess piece in a turbulent and changing world and her current role as Deputy Prime Minister as well
as Minister for Intergovernmental Affairs can only be understood in those global terms.
Unity for the Sake of Greater Division
For Canada to play a useful role in obstructing the Eurasian-led New Silk Road paradigm sweeping across the
globe in recent years, it requires the fragmenting American monarchy be kept in line.
The problem for the British Empire in this regard, is that the recent elections have demonstrated how divided
Canada is with the Liberal Party suffering total losses across the Provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Quebec
due to the technocratic adherence to the Green New Deal agenda and resistance to actual industrial development
initiatives. The collapse of living standards, and the lack of any policies for rebuilding the industrial base
that 30 years of NAFTA have destroyed, has resulted not only in the rejection of the Liberal Party but has also
awoken a renewed demand for separation in all three provinces.
Referring implicitly to the crisis of such "authoritarian regimes" as China, Russia, Iran and Trump's USA, as
well as the need to decarbonize the world, Freeland put the problem she is assigned to fix
in the following terms
:
"All liberal democracies in the world today are facing huge challenges, and for me
the conclusion that pushed me to is; there are only 37 million Canadians. Hugely challenging world threats posed
to the rules-based international order, greater threats since the 2nd World War. We have to be united in how we
confront those challenges."
To put it simply, if centralized control were to break down at a time when the Belt and Road Initiative (
and
its Polar Silk Road extension
) is redefining the world system OUTSIDE of the control of the western oligarchy,
then it is clearly understood that the Green Agenda will fail, but the dynamics of the BRI will become hegemonic
as Canada realizes (like the Greeks and Italians currently) that the only viable policies for growing the real
economy is coming from China.
Some final words on Freeland, Neo-liberal High Priestess
Ever since her appointment to the role of Cabinet Minister in 2015, Freeland played the role assigned to
her as a high level Rhodes Scholar and priestess of neo-liberalism. Springing from a Nazi-connected Ukrainian
family based out of Alberta, Freeland made her mark working as lead editor in British Intelligence-controlled news
agencies the London Economist, Thompson-Reuters, Financial Times and later Canada's Globe and Mail. Through these
positions as "perception manager" of the super elite, she became friends with some of the most vicious Russian,
Ukrainian and other eastern European oligarchs who rose to power under Perestroika and the liberalization of the
east-bloc.
She also became close friends with such golems as George Soros, Larry Summers and Al Gore
embedding their institutions ever more deeply into Canada
since she was brought
into Canada2020
(her move to politics was facilitated by fellow Rhodes Scholar/Canada2020 leader Bob Rae
abdicating his position as MP for Ontario in 2013).
When Foreign Minister Stephane Dion committed the crime of attempting to heal relations with China and called
for a Russia-Canada Summit to deal mutually with
Arctic development, counter-terrorism and space cooperation
, he had to go. After an abrupt firing, Freeland
was given his portfolio and immediately went to work in turning China and Russia into public enemies #1 and #2,
passing the Magnintsky Act in 2017 allowing for the sanctioning of nations for human rights (easily falsified when
Soros' White Helmets and other CIA/MI6-affiliated NGOs are seen as "on-the-ground" authorities documenting said
abuse).
Her role as champion of NAFTA which Trump rightly threatened to scrap in order to re-introduce protective
tariffs elevated her to a technocratic David fighting some orange Goliath, and her advocacy of the Green New Deal
has been behind some of the most extreme energy/arctic anti-development legislation passed in Canada's history.
Whether it is though individual provinces claiming their rights to form independent treaties with Eurasian
powers around cooperation on the BRI, or whether Canada can be returned to a pro-nation state orientation under
the "Chretien faction" in the federal government, the current future of Canada is as under-defined as the role of
"deputy minister". Either way the nation chooses navigate through the storm, it is certain that any commitment to
staying on board the deck of the Titanic known as the "western neoliberal order" has only one cold and tragic
outcome which Freeland and her ilk will drown before admitting to.
One week after federal prosecutors
changed their tune
in the Michael Flynn case - recommending he serve up to
six months
in prison
for lying to investigators regarding his contacts with a Russian diplomat, the
former National Security Adviser
withdrew his guilty plea
Tuesday
afternoon
.
In a
24-page court filing
, Flynn accuses the government of "bad faith, vindictiveness, and breach of
the plea agreement," and has asked his January 28th sentencing date to be postponed for 30 days.
General Flynn has moved to withdraw his guilty plea due to the "government's bad faith,
vindictiveness, and breach of the plea agreement."
pic.twitter.com/Qp5JcQjXmB
According to Flynn's counsel,
prosecutors "concocted" Flynn's alleged "false statements
by their own misrepresentations, deceit, and omissions."
"It is beyond ironic and completely outrageous that the prosecutors have persecuted Mr. Flynn,
virtually bankrupted him, and put his entire family through unimaginable stress for three years,"
the filing continues.
"The prosecutors concocted the alleged 'false
statements' (relating to FARA filing) by their own misrepresentations, deceit, and omissions."
pic.twitter.com/o47WO8qClX
Prosecutors initially recommended no jail time over Flynn's cooperation in the Russiagate
probes, however they flipped negative on him after he "sought to thwart the efforts of the
government to hold other individuals, principally Bijan Rafiekian, accountable for criminal
wrongdoing."
The 67-year-old Rafiekian, an Iranian-American and Flynn's former business partner, was charged
with illegally acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign government. Prosecutors accused Flynn
of failing to accept responsibility and "complete his cooperation" - as well as "affirmative
efforts to undermine" the prosecution of Rafiekian."
More on this from attorney and researcher @Techno Fog:
After Flynn refused to lie for prosecutors (Van
Grack), they retaliated by:
1) Reversing course and labeling Flynn a co-conspirator
2) Improperly contacted Flynn's son
3) Put Flynn's son on the witness list for intimidation purposes (never called as a witness)
pic.twitter.com/fP4hpVXfGY
"The govt's tactics in relation for Mr. Flynn's
refusal to 'compose' for the prosecution is a due process violation that can and should be
stopped dead in its tracks by this Court"
pic.twitter.com/ttcFGmyPv7
Most of this prosecution of Flynn has been under TRUMP'S Justice
Department! Isn't there ANYBODY in charge in this government?
Lyndon Johnson would have literally knocked out an Attorney
General that didn't do his bidding. He did, in fact, assault the
head of the Federal Reserve back in the day - when America was
America!
"... "positions her as one of the top candidates to take over the liberal party after Trudeau" ..."
"... Government Operations Committee ..."
"... "All liberal democracies in the world today are facing huge challenges, and for me the conclusion that pushed me to is; there are only 37 million Canadians. Hugely challenging world threats posed to the rules-based international order, greater threats since the 2nd World War. We have to be united in how we confront those challenges." ..."
"... Ever since her appointment to the role of Cabinet Minister in 2015, Freeland played the role assigned to her as a high level Rhodes Scholar and priestess of neo-liberalism. Springing from a Nazi-connected Ukrainian family based out of Alberta, Freeland made her mark working as lead editor in British Intelligence-controlled news agencies the London Economist, Thompson-Reuters, Financial Times and later Canada's Globe and Mail. Through these positions as "perception manager" of the super elite, she became friends with some of the most vicious Russian, Ukrainian and other eastern European oligarchs who rose to power under Perestroika and the liberalization of the east-bloc. ..."
"... The author is the founder of the Canadian Patriot Review and Director of the Rising Tide Foundation of Canada. He has authored 3 volumes of the series "The Untold History of Canada" and can be reached at [email protected] ..."
editor
/
November 27, 2019
An interesting victory has been won for forces in Canada who have wished to clean up the mess made by the two
disastrous years Chrystia Freeland has spent occupying the position of Foreign Minister of Canada. This victory
has taken the form of a Freeland's removal from the position which she has used to destroy diplomatic relations
with China, Russia and other nations targeted for regime change by her London-based controllers. Taking over the
helm as Minister of Global Affairs is Francois-Philippe Champagne, former Minister of Infrastructure and ally of
"old guard" Liberal elder Jean Chretien- both of whom have advocated positive diplomatic and business relations
with China in opposition to Freeland for years.
As positive of a development as this is, the danger which
Freeland represents to world peace and Canada's role in the New Emerging system led by the Eurasian Alliance
should not be ignored, since she has now been given the role of Deputy Prime Minister, putting her into a position
to easily take over the Party and the nation as 2
nd
in command.
Already the Canadian press machine on all sides of the aisle are raising the prospect of Freeland's takeover of
the Liberal Party as it
"positions her as one of the top candidates to take over the liberal party after
Trudeau"
as one Globe and Mail reporter stated.
The Strange Case of Deputy Prime Ministers
The very role of Deputy Prime Minister is a strange one which has had many pundits scratching their heads,
since the Privy Council position is highly under-defined, and was only created by Justin's father Pierre in 1977
as part of his
"cybernetics revolution"
which empowered the Privy Council Office and Prime Minister's Office under "scientific management" of a
technocratic elite. Although it is technically the position of 2nd in Command, it is not like the position of
Vice-President whose function has much greater constitutional clarity.
In some cases, the position has been ceremonial, and in others, like the case of Brian Mulroney's Dep. PM Don
Mazankowski (1986-1993) who chaired the
Government Operations Committee
and led in imposing the
nation-stripping NAFTA, the position was very powerful indeed. Some Prime Ministers have chosen not even to have a
Deputy PM, and the last one (Anne McLellan) ended with the downfall of Paul Martin in 2006. McLellan and another
former Deputy Prime Minister John Manley were both leading figures behind the creation of the think tank
Canada2020 in 2003
that soon brought Justin and Obamaton behaviorists into a re-structuring of the Liberal Party of Canada during the
Harper years, shedding it of its pro-China, pro-Russia, anti-NATO influences that had been represented by less
technocratically-minded statesmen like Jean Chretien years earlier.
Personally, as a Canadian-based journalist who has done a fair bit of homework on Canadian history, and the
structures of Canada's government, I honestly don't think the question of Freeland's becoming Prime Minister
matters nearly as much as many believe for the simple reason that Justin is a well-known cardboard cut-out who
simply doesn't know how to do anything terribly important without a teleprompter and experienced handlers. This is
not a secret to other world leaders, and anyone familiar with the mountains of video footage taken from G7 events
featuring the pathetic scene of little Justin chronically ignored by his peers goes far enough to demonstrate the
point.
Freeland's role in Canada has never had much to do with Canada, as much as it has with Canada's role as a
geopolitical chess piece in a turbulent and changing world and her current role as Deputy Prime Minister as well
as Minister for Intergovernmental Affairs can only be understood in those global terms.
Unity for the Sake of Greater Division
For Canada to play a useful role in obstructing the Eurasian-led New Silk Road paradigm sweeping across the
globe in recent years, it requires the fragmenting American monarchy be kept in line.
The problem for the British Empire in this regard, is that the recent elections have demonstrated how divided
Canada is with the Liberal Party suffering total losses across the Provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Quebec
due to the technocratic adherence to the Green New Deal agenda and resistance to actual industrial development
initiatives. The collapse of living standards, and the lack of any policies for rebuilding the industrial base
that 30 years of NAFTA have destroyed, has resulted not only in the rejection of the Liberal Party but has also
awoken a renewed demand for separation in all three provinces.
Referring implicitly to the crisis of such "authoritarian regimes" as China, Russia, Iran and Trump's USA, as
well as the need to decarbonize the world, Freeland put the problem she is assigned to fix
in the following terms
:
"All liberal democracies in the world today are facing huge challenges, and for me
the conclusion that pushed me to is; there are only 37 million Canadians. Hugely challenging world threats posed
to the rules-based international order, greater threats since the 2nd World War. We have to be united in how we
confront those challenges."
To put it simply, if centralized control were to break down at a time when the Belt and Road Initiative (
and
its Polar Silk Road extension
) is redefining the world system OUTSIDE of the control of the western oligarchy,
then it is clearly understood that the Green Agenda will fail, but the dynamics of the BRI will become hegemonic
as Canada realizes (like the Greeks and Italians currently) that the only viable policies for growing the real
economy is coming from China.
Some final words on Freeland, Neo-liberal High Priestess
Ever since her appointment to the role of Cabinet Minister in 2015, Freeland played the role assigned to
her as a high level Rhodes Scholar and priestess of neo-liberalism. Springing from a Nazi-connected Ukrainian
family based out of Alberta, Freeland made her mark working as lead editor in British Intelligence-controlled news
agencies the London Economist, Thompson-Reuters, Financial Times and later Canada's Globe and Mail. Through these
positions as "perception manager" of the super elite, she became friends with some of the most vicious Russian,
Ukrainian and other eastern European oligarchs who rose to power under Perestroika and the liberalization of the
east-bloc.
She also became close friends with such golems as George Soros, Larry Summers and Al Gore
embedding their institutions ever more deeply into Canada
since she was brought
into Canada2020
(her move to politics was facilitated by fellow Rhodes Scholar/Canada2020 leader Bob Rae
abdicating his position as MP for Ontario in 2013).
When Foreign Minister Stephane Dion committed the crime of attempting to heal relations with China and called
for a Russia-Canada Summit to deal mutually with
Arctic development, counter-terrorism and space cooperation
, he had to go. After an abrupt firing, Freeland
was given his portfolio and immediately went to work in turning China and Russia into public enemies #1 and #2,
passing the Magnintsky Act in 2017 allowing for the sanctioning of nations for human rights (easily falsified when
Soros' White Helmets and other CIA/MI6-affiliated NGOs are seen as "on-the-ground" authorities documenting said
abuse).
Her role as champion of NAFTA which Trump rightly threatened to scrap in order to re-introduce protective
tariffs elevated her to a technocratic David fighting some orange Goliath, and her advocacy of the Green New Deal
has been behind some of the most extreme energy/arctic anti-development legislation passed in Canada's history.
Whether it is though individual provinces claiming their rights to form independent treaties with Eurasian
powers around cooperation on the BRI, or whether Canada can be returned to a pro-nation state orientation under
the "Chretien faction" in the federal government, the current future of Canada is as under-defined as the role of
"deputy minister". Either way the nation chooses navigate through the storm, it is certain that any commitment to
staying on board the deck of the Titanic known as the "western neoliberal order" has only one cold and tragic
outcome which Freeland and her ilk will drown before admitting to.
The downplaying of Russian participation at Pyeongchang, is seemingly done to spin the image
of many Russian cheats being kept out. At the suggestion of the World Anti-Doping Agency
(WADA), the International Olympic Committee (IOC) closely vetted Russians for competition at
the 2018 Winter Olympics. In actuality, the 2018 Russian Winter Olympic participation wasn't so
off the mark, when compared to past Winter Olympiads – something which (among other
things) puts a dent into the faulty notion that Russia should be especially singled out for
sports doping.
At the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, Russia had its largest ever Winter Olympic contingent of
232 , on account of the host nation being allowed a greater number of participants. The
168 Russian Winter Olympians at Pyeongchang is
9 less than the Russians who competed at the 2010 Winter Olympics. Going back further,
Russian Winter Olympic participation in 2006 was at
190 , with its 2002 contingent at
151 , 1998 having
122 and 1994 (Russia's first formal Winter Olympic appearance as Russia)
113 .
The aforementioned Reuters piece references a " historian ", Bill Mallon, who is keen
on using the 1992 Summer Olympic banning of Yugoslavia (then consisting of Serbia and
Montenegro) as a legitimate basis to ban Russia from the upcoming Summer Olympics.
In this instance, Alan Dershowitz's periodic reference to the " if the shoe is on the other
foot " test is quite applicable . Regarding Mallon, " historian " is put in
quotes because his historically premised advocacy is very much incomplete and overly
propagandistic.
For consistency sake and contrary to Mallon, Yugoslavia should've formally participated at
the 1992 Summer Olympics. The Olympic banning of Yugoslavia was bogus, given that the IOC and
the IOC affiliated sports federations didn't ban the US and USSR for their respective role in
wars, which caused a greater number of deaths than what happened in 1990s Bosnia. The Reuters
article at issue references a United Nations resolution for sanctions against Yugoslavia,
without any second guessing, in support of the preference (at least by some) to keep politics
out of sports as much as possible.
Mallon casually notes that Yugoslav team sports were banned from the 1992 Summer Olympics,
unlike individual Yugoslav athletes, who participated as independents. At least two of the
banned Yugoslav teams were predicted to be lead medal contenders.
Croatia was allowed to compete at the 1992 Summer Olympics, despite that nation's military
involvement in the Bosnian Civil War. During the 1992 Summer and Winter Olympics, the former
USSR participated in individual and team sports as the Unified Team (with the exception of the
three former Soviet Baltic republics, who competed under their respective nation). With all
this in mind, the ban on team sports from Yugoslavia at the 1992 Summer Olympics, under a
neutral name, appears to be hypocritical and ethically challenged.
BS aside, the reality is that geopolitical clout (in the form of might making right), is
what compels the banning of Yugoslavia, unlike superpowers engaged in behavior which isn't less
egregious. Although a major world power, contemporary Russia lacks the overall geopolitical
influence of the USSR. Historian Stephen Cohen and some others, have noted that post-Soviet
Russia doesn't get the same (for lack of a better word) respect accorded to the USSR. This
aspect underscores how becoming freer, less militaristic and more market oriented doesn't (by
default) bring added goodwill from a good number of Western establishment politicos and the
organizations which are greatly influenced by them.
On the subject of banning Russia from the Olympics, Canadian sports legal politico Dick
Pound, continues to rehash an inaccurate likening with no critical follow-up. (
An exception being yours truly .) Between
2016 and
2019 , Pound references the Olympic banning of South Africa, as a basis for excluding
Russia. South Africa was banned when it had apartheid policies, which prevented that country's
Black majority from competing in organized sports. Russia has a vast multiethnic participation
in sports and other sectors.
As previously noted , the factual premise to formally ban Russia from the Olympics remains
suspect. The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) is set to review Russia's appeal to have the
recommended WADA ban against Russia overturned, as Western mass media at large and sports
politicos like Pound continue to push for a CAS decision against Russia.
"... What i find truly amazing is that American Zionists still believe crushing Iran is easy enough. Israel, with 8 million jews stuffed in a small country, is nothing more than a carrier battle group marooned on land ..."
The tramp & nutNyahoo machismo show continues to be fun to watch. Both
show off their penis worms as they arrogantly claim they can crush iran. Both the usa and
israel keep banging on the doors and walls of their pissed-off neighbors' houses. That
eventually gets you murdered whether in baltimore or baghdad.
A crushable iran is true if and only if they can mount a full-on nuclear war on Iran.
But such horrendous cheating means all bets are off, and iran's allies will provide the
nukes required to melt down the American homeland too. Nobody, not even Russia and china,
can afford to stay in the sidelines in a nuclear war in the 2020s.
What i find truly amazing is that American Zionists still believe crushing Iran is easy
enough. Israel, with 8 million jews stuffed in a small country, is nothing more than a
carrier battle group marooned on land. Sitting ducks, with nice armor, nukes and all, are
... still sitting ducks. nutNyahoo should ask his technical crew just how few megatons are
needed, or just a few thousand modern missiles are required to transform sitting ducks into
nicely roasted peking ducks.
So a conventional war it is. The usa and israel has exactly zero, zilch and nada chances
of winning a war with iran. The usa keeps forgetting that it is a dying empire with dying
funding value and mental resources. Just like israel which oddly thinks dozens of f-35s
will give it immunity through air superiority. Proof of this fact that iran will win comes
from simply asking american and israeli war experts to go on cnn or the washington post on
how they intend to win a war with iran.
Im sure these expert bloviators will say that it is as easy as winning a naval war
against china, which is capable of launching only 3 new warships in a week. Or an even
easier time against russia, which can launch only a few thousand hypersonic nuke missiles
because its GDP is no bigger than that of texas.
The Pentagon is super slow to adapt and learn. If you understand that
bureaucracy is an ancient organizational structure and that the organizational culture of
the Pentagon is pathologically dysfunctional you could have predicted the moral and
financial bankruptcy of America 15-20 years ago. The "Why?", finally made sense when I
discovered what a sociopath was.
It's about time the US practices what it preachs and start behaving like a normal
country instead of a spoiled narcissistic brat. see more
US military & strategic thought became lazy during the
late days of the Cold War. It mirrored the decline & fall of the foundations of its
opponent, USSR. Post-Cold War, US military & strategic thinking flushed into the sewer.
It was all about maintaining the military as some sort of a social policy jobs program,
operating legacy tech as the mission. And then came the "world-improvers" -- beginning w
the Clinton Admin -- who worked to turn the world into a global "urban renewal" project;
meaning to mirror the success US Big Govt showed in the slums of American cities from sea
to sea. The past 30 yrs of US strategic thinking and related governance truly disgusts me.
see more
Soviet union fall had very different reasons and Soviet military thought was
doing quite well then along with military. Current russian military wonders is completion
of what was started then and not finished earlier because of the disintegration of the
Soviet state. The soviet fall however is extremely regrettable because there was a new way how things can
be done that Soviet union was showing to the world. USA fall long term is a very good thing
because USA is a paragon of how things should be done the old way and basically a huge
parasite. Many negative trends that are afflicting the world were started by USA. Unlimited
individualism and consumerism would be a couple of those. see more
Why does almost every person on Earth feel the need to force others to
bend the knee to their beliefs?
Religious beliefs are what one thinks should be done to promote survival in an
afterlife, political beliefs are what one thinks should be done to promote survival in this
world.
The world would be a far better, more civilized, of world if such beliefs were only
shared on a voluntary basis.
As for individualism, I would rather be free than live in a modern day egalitarian
hunter-gatherer tribe run by modern day psychopathic alpha-males.
That is certainly not a recipe for success. see more
It also mirrors the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. It was Emperor
Augustus that decided the costs to further expand the Empire were too great after losing
one (or two?) legions against the Germanic tribes.
The US has reached its greatest extent. We are living through it. The US didn't go forward
into war with Iran twice. The odds of humanity surviving this immense turn of history is
looking better. see more
Frankly, nothing in common. I read this comparison all the
time.
Yes, Augustus decided not to continue along with expansion into Germany after losing 3
Varus legions due to ambush.
But he famously noted that it does not worth to go fishing with golden hook. Basically
speaking, Germany was not worth fighting for. Poor and remote it had nothing to offer. Just
a drain on resources. As long as conquest was moving smoothly it was ok, but after losses
were inflicted Augustus decided it was not worth it.
Roman expansion under augustus was carried mostly to consolidate previous conquests and
create strategical debth along core and strategical provinces also creating linkage.
When enemy far stronger than germans posed resources which made the whole conquest worthy
no amount of resistance saved Dacians and Parthia also almost died under Trajan attack.
Roman policies were adequate and wise. Treaties were respected, allies supported and
benefited. Empire was build around Mediterranean creating good communication and routes
considering obviously limits of that day technology.
Rome did not behave like crazy and did not deliver threats that she could not follow
through. When war was decided upon thorough preparations were taken. Political goals were
achieved. Wars were won. When Adrian considered that empire was overextended in Parthis, he
simply abandoned all conquered territories. Just like that.
Logical calm thinking USA,is not capable of. Rome truly based upon superior military and
diplomacy dominance lasted many centuries. USA few decades. One hit wonder, lucky fool I
would call it. see more
Yes, this is somewhat puzzling. As I said, let's wait and see where it all
develops to, but as Twisted Genius succinctly observed -- Iran now controls tempo because she
has conventional superiority. Anyone who has precision-guided, stand off weaponry in good
numbers will be on top. see more
The old submarine saying is, "There are two kinds of ships; submarines, and
targets." . The new version for land ops is, "There are two kinds of land-based military assets;
precision-guided missiles, and targets." (And per the photos, those Iranian missiles were
quite precise; bulls-eyes.) . Iran and its missiles demonstrated that the entire strategic foundation for US mil presence
in the Middle East is now obsolete. Everything the US would ever want to do there is now
subject to Iran's version of "steel rain." Every runway, hangar, aircraft parking area;
every supply depot or warehouse; every loading pier, fuel site, naval pier. Everything...
is a target. And really... there's no amount of US "airpower" and "tech" than can mitigate
the Iran missile threat. . Meanwhile, related thinking... Iran's true strategic interest is NOT fighting a near-term
war w/ USA. Iran wants US to exit Middle East; and Iran wants to be able to pursue its
nuclear program. Soleimani or no, Iran appears to have its eyeballs fixed on the long-term
goals. see more
The new version for land ops is, "There are two kinds of land-based military assets;
precision-guided missiles, and targets."
Exactly, and Iran has long-range TLAMs in who knows what numbers, That, in its turn,
brings about the next issue of range for Iranian indigenous anti-ship missiles. Not, of
course, to mention the fact of only select people knowing if Russia transferred P-800 Onyx
to Iran She certainly did it for Syria. If that weapon is there--the Persian Gulf and
Hormuz Strait will be shut completely closed and will push out CBGs far into the Indian
Ocean. see more
It is simply pathetic after decades of talking non stop about developments of
anti missiles and huge amounts wasted and nobody is responsible. This is the way capitalism
works.profits is everything and outcomes secondary. Thankfully russia has got soviet
foundation and things so far are working well. I come to think that in our times no serious
industrial processes should be allowed to stay in private hands. Only services and so.e
other simpler stuff under heavy state control to ensure quality. Otherwise profit
orientation will eventually destroy everything like with Boeing.
I know, i already wrote a full scale war scenario in one of
the comments. Iran can destroy all US bases in 2000 km range. But this does not mean that
it can not be bombed back to the stone age, if the US really wishes so. The problem for the
US is the high cost as well as the high debt levels, but it does have the technical
capability to do that after 2 - 3 years of bombing.
Also low yield tactical nukes are designed to lower the treshold of the use of nukes in
otherwise conventional war, producing less international outrage than the megaton city
buster bombs. Why do you think the US is developing them again? Because they would want to
use them in conventional conflicts.
Here btw is Yurasumy, he also says that the US can technically bomb Iran back to the
stone age, but the cost will be too high.
Again--what's the plan and what's the price? Iran HAS Russia's ISR on her side in case
of such SEAD.
Does the United States want to risk lives of thousands of its personnel (not
to speak of expensive equipment) in Qatar, KSA, Iraq. Does Israel want to "get it"?
There
are numbers which describe such an operation (it was. most likely, already planned as
contingency). Immediate question: when was the last time USAF operated in REAL dense ECM
and ECCM environment? I do not count some brushes with minimal EW in Syria.
Russia there
uses only minimally required option, for now. Iran has a truck load EW systems, including
some funny Russian toys which allowed Iran to take control of US UAVs, as an example. As I
say, this is not Iraq and by a gigantic margin. see more
I already said that debt levels do not allow it and the price
would be too high, but yes, the US does have the military capability to destroy Iran. By
conventional means. It is another question that it is not in good fiscal shape. Anyway, US
ballistic missiles (non nuclear armed) will be hard to stop by EW. Even if Iran gets rid of
50 % of incoming TLAMs, the US will keep sending more and more until most infrastructure,
bridges, oil refineries, power plants, factories, ports etc. are destroyed. This is why i
said it would take 2 - 3 years. see more
but yes, the US does have the military capability to destroy Iran. By conventional
means
That is the whole point: NO, it doesn't. Unless US goes into full mobilization mode and
addresses ALL (plus a million more not listed) requirements for such a war which I listed
in the post. Well, that or nukes. see
more
Yurasumy is a pretty good analist and he thinks that they can. I do not
see it for the US being too hard to produce more TLAMS, ICBMs and IRBMs (conventional) to
sustain the effort for 2 years, by that time most iranian infrastructure will be destroyed.
If the fiscal situation allowes it. see more
I don't know who Yarasumy is and what is his background, but unlike him I
actually write books, including on modern warfare. This is not to show off, but I am sure I
can make basic calculations. This is not to mention the fact that even Sivkov agrees with
my points and Sivkov, unlike Yarsumy, graduated Popov's VVMURE, served at subs, then
graduated Kuznetsov Academy, then Academy of the General Staff and served in Main
Operational Directorate (GOU) until retiring in the rank of Captain 1st Rank from the
billet of Combat Planning group. So, I would rather stick to my opinion.
see more
Why do you think that the US can not destroy Iran with IRBMs? Actually this
is their strategy vs China. If they think its viable vs China, then it should be viable vs
Iran too. see more
Because unlike the US, Russia's Air Defenses have a rather
very impressive history of shifting the balance in wars in favor of those who have them,
when used properly. But then I can quote for you a high ranking intelligence officer:
A friend of mine who has expertise in these matters wrote me:
Any air defense engineer with a securityclearance that isn't lying through his teeth
will admit that Russia'sair defense technology surpassed us in the 1950's and we've never
been able to catch up. The systems thy have in place surrounding Moscow make our Patriot
3's look like fucking nerf guns.
Mathematics is NOT there for the United States for a real combined operations war of
scale with Iran. Unless US political class really wants to see people with pitch-forks.
see more
"Mathematics is not there..." . Neither is the industrial base, including supply lines. Not the mines, mills, factories to
produce any significant levels of warfighting materiel such as we're talking about here.
Not the workforce, either. Meanwhile, where are the basic designs for these weps? The years
of lab work, bench tests, pilot specimens & prototypes, the development pipeline? The
contractors to build them? the Tier 2, 3, 4 suppliers? Where are the universities that
train such people as are needed? Where is the political will? Where is the government
coordination? Where is the money? Indeed, every Democrat and probably half the Republicans
who run for office campaign on controlling military spending; not that USA gets all that
much benefit from the current $800 billion per year. see more
You see, here is the difference--I can calculate approximate required force
for that but I don't want to. It is Friday. You can get some basic intro into operational
theory (and even into Salvo Equations) in my latest book. Granted, my publisher fought me
tooth and nail to remove as much match as possible. But I'll give you a hint--appearance of
S-500 on any theater of operations effectively closes it off effectively for any missile or
aircraft operations when deployed in echeloned (multi-layer) AD. see more
The sheer arrogance and wilful blindness expressed in the US State Department press statement
and WaPo staffer Louisa Loveluck's tweets are astounding beyond belief. It's as if the
entire capital city of the US has become a mental asylum / Hotel California , where one
can enter but never leave spiritually and morally, though one can take many physical trips in
and out of the madhouse.
Iraq definitely does need the S-300 missile defense systems. The most pressing issue
though is whether the Iraqis will suffer the delays Syria suffered in acquiring those systems
even after paying for them.
Time now is of the essence. Iraqi operators need to be trained in those systems. Syria may
be able to supply some training but at the risk of letting down its guard in sending some of
its operators to Baghdad and exposing them to US drone attacks.
They really are able to turn white into black and black into white.
Notable quotes:
"... 1) Occurs as Iran is on brink of war with USA?; 2) Indications of USA using info war tactics; 3) airliner owner by Kolomoisky? 4) No communication with tower? 5) USA and Israel history of duplicity and narrative management (example: MH-17). ..."
"... NATO has weaponized aircraft accident investigations. Lawfare in combination with state terrorism. ..."
"... The Ukies know how to obliterate a debris field. MH-17 -- They used artillery for months to keep OSCE and Dutch officials away, and despite the locals working to protect the deceased and the debris, body parts have been found years later. ..."
There were also clear sightings of a missile to bring down TWA 800. Except it didn't. As an
Navy Pilot , flight instructor and 737 captain this does not at 1st or 2nd glance appear to
be a missile strike. Catastropic engine failure is my bet. They made most of the turn back to
the airport before losing integrity or loss of thrust.
On Wednesday, Boeing's shares plummeted by 2.3 percent ($3.4bn) after the Ukrainian Boeing
737-800 aircraft crashed in Tehran due to encountering a technical glitch.
On Thursday, the stock rose by 3 percent after unnamed Pentagon officials claimed that
the Ukrainian passenger plane was most likely brought down by anti-aircraft missiles, and
US President Donald Trump implicitly supported the claim. This has been read by analysists
as an attempt to manipulate the stock market; a measure that would both overshadow Trump's
failure in Iraq and save Boeing from bankruptcy.
I didn't find the article on TASS. Maybe it was in its Russian version, or in its
TV/Radio/Podcast version.
I don't discard a terrorist attack from the inside, or sabotage of the plane by the
Ukrainian government. What I think is missile attack can be pretty much discarded: the
evidence the Iranians already have through their air control data discard any possibility, by
sheer logic alone, that that was the case.
Unless, of course, the Iranians are lying. But then there isn't any cui bono for Iran to
lie about it (if it was a mistake they wanted to cover, they could blame a random independent
militia so as to give plausible deniability) with the technical malfunction argument, and now
Russia's foreign minister Ryabkov is on the boat with it - so I don't see the cui bono for
Russia either.
Perseus wore a magic cap so that the monsters he hunted down might not see him. Some of
you choose to draw the magic cap down over your eyes and ears so as to make-believe that
there are no monsters in Iran.
"Some of you choose to draw the magic cap down over your eyes and ears so as to
make-believe that there are no monsters in Iran."
No, it is a lot easier than that.
Most of us dont get paid to post bs about the imperial enemies like you, and most off us
still know how to use our brain.
That is it, nothing more nothing less.
Rob@2 - What do you make of the loss of ADS-B? Could a catastrophic engine failure take out
both power buses? The ADS-B transceiver? I know a the turbine blades turn into little missile
blades when they decide to leave the engine, but I have no idea of the way power is
transferred when either bus or the standby goes down. I assume automatic? Are the transfer
switches anywhere near the engines? Does the APU automatically fire up? I assume the ADS-B
box is in the electronics bay, but where is the antenna?
Thanks b! As I commented towards the end of the previous thread on this topic, the mundane
evidence has already been shown. IMO, if a missile or bomb was employed, the Iranians would
be yelling louder than anyone and the denials would be coming from BigLie Media instead of
accusations. And as I answered psychohistorian, the massive coverage by BigLie media serves
as narrative distraction from what's being obfuscated--casualties taken by Outlaw US Empire
troops and the BDA presented by Iranian Military.
In that regard, The
Saker's update sticks to the important facts of the now escalated ongoing war between
Iran and the Evil Empire.
Sorry, but there's good reasons to suspect foul play - as I and others have explained on the
last thread.
1) Occurs as Iran is on brink of war with USA?; 2) Indications of USA using info war
tactics; 3) airliner owner by Kolomoisky? 4) No communication with tower? 5) USA and Israel
history of duplicity and narrative management (example: MH-17).
<> <> <> <>
Also: IMO it's dangerous for Iran to invite experts from a group of Western countries.
What is likely to happen is that all the Western experts will be pressure to disagree with
Iran's findings. CIA knows that people will believe the "group of experts!" over Iran.
I don't know how anal Iran is about keeping track of ordinance but they must be pretty
certain as to whether they downed the plane or not! Looks like they are being transparent and
open. If they come out of this proving engine failure or something else then this could be a
great pr coup.
There would be a lot of egg on many faces trying to explain how the intelligence is wrong yet
again. I look forward to watching trudeau walk that back. Hopefully!
One explanation is the Boeing was used as a human shield, a military plane hides behind a
slow moving plane when detected. The ukrainians did it with the MH17 and the israeli with the
russian plane and tried it with the attack on damascus. In both cases there was a lot of
dis-info and blaming right away. But the iranian would have known what the target was, and
mentioned it, so very unlikely.
Another question is the possibility a smaller missile only damaged the plane, also very
unlikely.
Head of Iran Civil Aviation Organization Ali Abedzadeh exaggerates: "From a scientific
viewpoint, it is impossible that a missile hit the Ukrainian plane."
"We can say that the airplane, considering the kind of the crash and the pilot's efforts to
return it to Imam Khomeini airport, didn't explode in the air. So, the allegation that it was
hit by missiles is totally ruled out," the official noted.
Dude, when you're in Wyoming and see critter tracks down by the creek, you would assume it
was Martians rather than antelope? Get real. The Ukie blew a crappy GE engine...they have
this characteristic...
Stay real, use Occam's Razor + physical evidence. Otherwise it's distraction and
TBS...
Craig Murray has been tracking a propagandist Wikipedia editor called "Philip Cross", here
is the main article, but there are others on his site The Philip Cross
Affair
ICAO is in contact with the States involved and will assist them if called upon. Its
leadership is stressing the importance of avoiding speculation into the cause of the tragedy
pending the outcomes of the investigation ...
ICAO may be a worthy organization (some staff changes seem to be warranted), but isn't it
a bit too much?! If this is a sincere wish of democratically elected heads of democratic
nations that they want to form a harmonious chorus and speculate, then no mundane power can
stop them. BTW, what is wrong with Zelensky that he did not join? PTSD after the brutal
telephonies calls? I would add it to the list of proven damages to the security of those
several states that will be debated in the Senate. [end of snark, "several states" is the
entity named in the so-called Constitution of The United States of America].
The flight originated in Teheran, bound for Kiev, but where was it before it arrived in Iran?
It could have been sabotaged anywhere; then easy, right, to set off an onboard bomb by remote
control from the ground? I'm sure Iran is crawling with Mosssad/MI6/CIA spooks.
So you turn a blind eye to atrocities committed by other countries or peoples because the
US government is responsible for the most? Did you even complete your high school education
with that sort of reasoning? I never absolved the US or any other country. Simpletons like
you seem to live in a black and white world in which one side must be chosen over the other.
I feel unfortunate for b or anyone else who frequents this blog who does not view the world
in such a profoundly problematic way.
I am far more informed about Iranian politics, history, culture and religion than most
people here. Please don't allow your hate for the USA, well justified, to cloud your
judgment.
NATO has weaponized aircraft accident investigations. Lawfare in combination with state
terrorism.
It's time for new rules and regulations. ICAO Annex 13 was drafted in different times. A
rule based order is ancient history.
People should be able to chose their destination, route and carrier based on personal
preferences like price and comfort, not on factors like the latest or next conflict zone,
corruption in the countries along the route, military and political adventurism, etc.
- As said before: I didn't believe for one second that that ukrainian plane was shot down. It
would have given the US simply another stick to beat up the iranian government. I assume the
iranians are smart enough to know that. They simply don't want to escalate the situation
more. Although Iran has now the "moral high ground" it is still (very) vulnerable in a number
of ways.
- I think the ukrainian tourists were small traders. I.e. buy stuff e.g. clothing and other
"merchandise" in Teheran, bring it into the Ukraine and then sell that "merchandise" in
Ukraine with a (big) profit.
We have a distinguished professor in our midst! Quite unlike the lowly regular
professors or inconsequential adjunct instructors that normally grace these pages. Let me
kick back and get a tan from the brilliance pouring out of this one! Us high latitude types
have to get our Vitamin D wherever we can.
As for my lack of criticism of Iran's government, that's the business of the Iranian
people and none of my own. The Evil Empire attacking Iran? That, unfortunately, is everyone's
business whether they want it to be or not.
Why is it that these wise guys from the West (Americans mostly) feel it is their duty to
criticize everyone else's governments and cultures when the examples they are setting
themselves are so appallingly bad? Maybe these distinguished critics of other peoples'
ways of life feel that it is easier to fix those other peoples' societies than it is to fix
their own. After all, they apparently feel that fixing other countries just requires some
number of bombs, while fixing their own country... where do they even start? How do you fix
perfection?
I'd be curious to know whether the flight crew on board Flight PS752 had had sufficient rest.
Three hours of resting do not seem like sufficient time but that depends on the journey the
plane made to Tehran, the duration of that journey and where it started. Was the plane also
checked for signs of wear and tear during the three-hour-plus pause?
Are UIA's owners (among them Ihor Kolomoisky) working their employees and hardware assets
too hard and too cheaply as well?
Yes. I think so too. Looks like the engine ran at reduced thrust as they turned, and then
failed entirely at below minimum control speed, with the expected result, asymmetrical stall,
yaw, roll, bang.
There are pictures of severe erosion of what looks like compressor wheel from, presumably,
ingestion of foreign material. Crap on the runway probably, and pencil-whipped maintenance, I
should imagine.
journey80@26 - Kiev is Ukrainian Airlines main hub. The 737 arrived from Kiev earlier that
morning and was returning there.
Jen@36 - No reason to do anything but a cursory safety check at Tehran. The airline's
mechanics are in Kiev - anything beyond a normal pre-flight check involving maintenance would
be done there, not Tehran. I doubt the crew was rested. That's not how UAI rolls on it's hub
round-trips.
UAI is also bleeding money like crazy. They're nearly bankrupt and stole the money they
collect from passengers for the Ukraine Civil Aviation Authority fees. Tens of millions USD.
The new CEO promises to fix everything somehow. I guess by overworking crews, skipping
maintenance and crappy service. Those are always money-savers for cheap, poorly-run airlines
(prior to bankruptcy). Too bad. Supposedly it wasn't that bad of an airline when they first
added passenger service to their existing cargo ops a decade ago, but has been going downhill
ever since.
"Some real gems you got following your blog b." So why are you here?
Ocams razor... bookies odds... planes fall out o the sky from time to time for all sorts of
reasons not related to malicious activity. What are the odds of this occurring in Iran
shortly after an Iran strike on a US base.
The US has and does use terrorist tactics such as shooting down passenger jets. Trump
threatened Iran with retribution against cultural sites and so forth (terrorist actions).
Fifty two targets of fifty two ways of getting back at Iran.
What are the odds US would down a passenger jet in Iran within hours of Iran's strike against
their base.
I have to go with US terrorist actions for that one. Similar to the protests in Iraq. The
people had genuine grievances as do all good color revolutions but the were just too
advantageous for the US for it not to be a made in the US color revolution style protest. We
now know from the Iraq PM that is exactly what it was.
The odds are unrelated unless there's agency. No agency has been credibly proposed. You know
this is so, as the probability maths in se have been discussed previously @ MoA.
But of course, the US does murder all over the place, so if there is agency, then I tend
to agree with the idea that "they" or their cohort in zionishland may be causative. What are
the "odds" that the engine shown has severe blade erosion? Again 100% . Engine swallows scrap
off the tarmac...a dependent relation, drop junk in engine, blades damaged, run at 100%, 100%
"chance" of engine failure.
Repeating the essence of the matter of odds>
"Two events are independent, statistically independent, or stochastically independent if
the occurrence of one does not affect the probability of occurrence of the other
(equivalently, does not affect the odds). Similarly, two random variables are independent if
the realization of one does not affect the probability distribution of the other."
ie without a dependent relationship the odds are whatever the odds are for engine failure
and crash. And the other odds don't exist, because those events, the shooting, was not random
or accidental. The odds of Iran firing rockets in reprisal was dependent on the US attacks,
ie 100%
But if you're building engines at GE, or obsolete defective airplanes in Seattle, then of
course the odds are that you devoutly wish it was a rocket up the tailpipe... Pay-day's come
Friday, and all of that...
I know NYT is a sham, and believe me I held my intellectual nose as I went into its site.
It's not somewhere I frequent at all.
I did think about the point you made too, but there are 2 issues:
1) In the other 2 videos we see the plane as it's already burning, we don't see it in its
"before" state. For me it's reasonable to imagine the hit on the impact caused some initial
burning which was extinguished due to wind, and then started back up again a few moments
after the NYT video ended and before the other 2 videos began.
2) If the NYT video is indeed doctored (and for me it would be a pretty convincing
doctor), why wouldn't the creator simply keep the light going until the end of the vid?
Iran will announce the cause of the Ukrainian Boeing 737 crash after the accident
investigation commission meeting on Saturday, the Fars News agency reported on Thursday,
citing a source familiar with the matter.
"Tomorrow, after the meeting of the civil aviation accident investigation
commission, the cause of the crash of the Ukrainian passenger plane will be announced", the
source said.
Domestic and foreign parties, whose citizens died in the crash, will take part in the
Saturday meeting, the outlet added. They will announce the reason for the accident after
reviewing the preliminary report.
[.]Foreign Minister Vadym Prystaiko asked that the media not spread "unconfirmed"
information on Friday, pleading with reporters to "reduce the level of speculation" while
the probe continues. The experts are still analyzing evidence, looking at the bodies of the
victims and the wreckage in hope of gaining insight into what took down Ukraine
International Airlines Flight PS752, killing all 176 people on board.[,]
If no one had engaged with nine-drongos the thread would not have been disrupted and perhaps
a useful dialog about the plane crash could have ensued. Those who did swallow the hook are
just as guilty the original whatabouter of making this thread useless - good job. I would say
exercise some discipline but that would be a waste of breath given the insecurities about
their beliefs too many here apparently have. Letting some arsehole spout uninterrupted is a
better indication of your point of view than anger, hysteria or ad hominem. Your stupidity
has caused a thread to fail.
The Ukies know how to obliterate a debris field. MH-17 -- They used artillery for months to
keep OSCE and Dutch officials away, and despite the locals working to protect the deceased
and the debris, body parts have been found years later.
#57 posted by Poor Ramin Mazaheri who works for Press TV and has had many articles published
on The Saker. He would describe the Iranian economy as socialist with Iranian charters. The
link to the article below is an excellent source for information on Iran's economy.
What comes as a surprise to me is ICAO seems to have some integrity. It seems the US and
friends haven't completely taken it over.
You can judge someone by their friends. NATO and the terrorists in Idlib have backed the
killing of Soleimani. Who seems to enjoy killing civilians? The US just droned killed 60
civilians in Afghanistan. Information provided by the Iraqi prime minister showed the US is
willing to use snipers and paid protesters to tear Iraq apart. They utterly destroyed Mosul
and Raqqa without regard for civilians. The Syrian government has tried to avoid civilian
deaths, which is why those who want to cause chaos in the region always accuses them of
targeting civilians. So the US would have no problem getting MEK to or some other group to
shoot the plane down but I'm leaning against that scenario.
The US has been planning to control oil for a long time. In 1975 a feasibility study was
prepared for the Special Subcommittee on Investigations of the Committee on International
Relations on "Oil fields as military objectives", better described as bringing Democracy to
the Middle East. Well, they did that sorta in Iraq, and now the Iraq government has politely
asked the US to leave and the Iranians have demonstrated to them why they should leave. I'm
not sure if the Ukrainian plane crashing is the next move the US has made in this great game,
but I would put my money on shoddy management of the Ukrainian plane. Why not, the country is
barely functioning. I doubt the plane was hit with a missle. More likely the US can't pass up
an opportunity for stirring trouble and the MSM has no problem memory holing another lie.
https://www.dianomi.com/smartads.epl?id=4777
Paul
Craig Roberts: The Justice Department Is Devoid Of Justice
by
Tyler Durden
Thu, 01/09/2020 - 23:05
0
SHARES
In the United States the criminal justice (sic) system is itself not subject to law.
We
see immunity to law continually as police commit felonies against citizens and even murder children
and walk away free. We see it all the time when prosecutors conduct political prosecutions and
when they prosecute the innocent in order to build their conviction record. We see it when judges
fail to prevent prosecutors from withholding exculpatory evidence and bribing witnesses and when
judges accept coerced plea deals that deprive the defendant of a jury trial.
We just saw it again when federal prosecutors recommended a six month prison sentence
for Lt. Gen. Flynn,
the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency accused of lying to
the FBI about nothing of any importance, for being uncooperative in the Justice (sic) Department's
effort to frame President Trump with false "Russiagate" charges. The Justice (sic) Department
prosecutor said:
"The sentence should adequately deter the defendant from violating the law, and to promote
respect for the law. It is clear that the defendant has not learned his lesson. He has behaved
as though the law does not apply to him, and as if there are no consequences for his actions."
That is precisely what the Justice (sic) Department itself did for years in their
orchestration of the fake Russiagate charges against Trump.
The prosecutor's hypocrisy is overwhelming.
The Justice (sic) Department is a criminal organization. It has no sense of
justice. Convicting the innocent builds the conviction rate of the prosecutor as effectively as
convicting the guilty.
The Horowitz report of the Justice (sic) Department's lies to
the FISA court did not recommend a six-month prision sentence for those Justice (sic) Deplartment
officials who lied to the government.
Horowitz covered up the crimes by converting
them into "mistakes." Yes, they are embarrassing "mistakes," but mistakes don't bring prison
sentences.
Gen. Flynn, who was President Trump's National Security Advisor for a couple of weeks
before Mueller and Flynn's attorneys manuevered him into a plea bargain, allegedly lied to the FBI
about whether he met with a Russian.
Flynn and his attorneys should never have accepted
the proposition that a National Security Advisor shouldn't meet with Russians. Henry Kissinger and
Zbigniew Brzezinski met with Russians all the the time. It was part of their job. Trump
originally intended to normalize the strained relations with Russia. Flynn should have been
meeting with Russians. It was his job.
Ninety-seven percent of felony cases are resolved with plea bargains. In other words,
there is no trial.
The defendant admits to guilt for a lighter sentence, and if he throws
in "cooperation," which generally means giving false evidence against someone else in the
prosecutor's net, no sentence at all. Flynn was expected to help frame Trump and Flynn's former
business partner, Bijan Rafiekian, on an unrelated matter. He didn't, which means he is
"uncooperative" and deserving of a prison sentence.
Plea bargains have replaced trials for three main reasons.
One is that the defense attorney doesn't want the hard work of defending his client.
One is that the majority of defendants cannot afford to pay the cost of defense.
One is that refusing to plea guilty and demanding a trial angers both the prosecutor and
judge.
Trials take time and provide a test of often unreliable police and prosecutorial evidence. They
mean work for the prosecutor. Even if he secures a conviction, during the same time he could have
obtained many more plea bargain convictions. For the judge, trials back up his case
docket. Consequently, a trial means for the defendant very high risks of a much longer and more
severe sentence than he would get in exchange for saving prosecutor and judge time and energy. All
of this is explained to the defendant by his attorney.
It was explained to Gen. Flynn. He agreed to a plea, most likely advised that his
"offense" was so minor, no sentence would be forthcoming. Flynn later tried to revoke his plea,
saying it was coerced, but the Clinton-appointed judge refused to let him out of the trap.
Now that we know the only Russiagate scandal was its orchestration by the CIA, Justice (sic)
Department, and Democrats, failing to cooperate with the special counsel investigation of alleged
Russian interference in the 2016 election is nonsensical as we know for a definite fact that there
was no such interference.
This is how corrupt American law has become. A man is being put in prison for 6
months for not cooperating with an investigation of an event that did not happen!
If Trump doesn't pardon Flynn (and Manafort and Stone), and fire the corrupt prosecutors
who falsely prosecuted Flynn, Trump deserves no one's support.
A president who will not defend his own people from unwarranted prosecution is not worthy of
support.
In Flynn's case, we cannot dismiss the suspicion that revenge against Flynn was the
driving factor.
Gen. Flynn is the official who revealed on television that Obama made the
willful decision to send ISIS or whatever we want to call them into Syria. Of course, the Obama
regime pretended that the jihadists were moderates seeking to overthrow the alleged dictator Assad
and bring democracy to Syria. Washington then pretended that it was fighting the mercenaries it
had sent into Syria.
Even though the presstitutes did their best to ignore Flynn's
information, Flynn gave extreme offense by letting this information out. That bit of truth-telling
was Flynn's real offense.
Tags
Law Crime
Then there is the fact that Comey admitted he took advantage of
the the situation by catching Flynn off guard without an
attorney. This is a warning to everyone: never answer questions
by FBI without consulting your attorney first and having him/her
present.
For MI6 this level of detachment from reality is stunning
Notable quotes:
"... "The UK's Secret Intelligence Service, otherwise known as MI6, has been scrambling to prevent President Trump from publishing classified materials linked to the Russian election meddling investigation. ... much of the espionage performed on the Trump campaign was conducted on UK soil throughout 2016." ..."
"... "Gregory R. Copley, editor and publisher of Defense & Foreign Affairs, posited that Sergei Skripal is the unnamed Russian intelligence source in the Steele dossier. ... In Skripal's pseudo-country-gentleman retirement, the ex-GRU-MI6 double agent was selling custom-made "Russian intelligence"; he had fabricated "material" that went into the Steele dossier..." ..."
That shed some light on the common origin of MH17, Russiagate and Scripal propaganda campaigns connecting all three with British
government's psy-op operation called The ' Integrity Initiative ' which builds 'cluster' or contact groups of trusted journalists,
military personal, academics and lobbyists within foreign countries. These people get alerts via social media to take action when
the British center perceives a need.
And among others participants, William Browder is listed too:
Members of the Atlantic Council, which has a contract to censor Facebook posts , appear on several cluster lists. The UK core
cluster also includes some prominent names like tax fraudster William Browder , the daft Atlantic Council shill Ben Nimmo and
the neo-conservative Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum. One person of interest is Andrew Wood who handed the Steele
'dirty dossier' to Senator John McCain to smear Donald Trump over alleged relations with Russia. A separate subcluster of so-called
journalists names Deborah Haynes, David Aaronovitch of the London Times, Neil Buckley from the FT and Jonathan Marcus of the
BBC.
Here is one interesting comment from MoA:
Anya, Nov 24, 2018 11:57:00 AM
The British government has been running a serious meddling into the US affairs:
"The UK's Secret Intelligence Service, otherwise known as MI6, has been scrambling to prevent President Trump from
publishing classified materials linked to the Russian election meddling investigation. ... much of the espionage performed
on the Trump campaign was conducted on UK soil
throughout 2016."
"Gregory R. Copley, editor and publisher of Defense & Foreign Affairs, posited that Sergei Skripal is the unnamed
Russian intelligence source in the Steele dossier. ... In Skripal's pseudo-country-gentleman retirement, the ex-GRU-MI6
double agent was selling custom-made "Russian intelligence"; he had fabricated "material" that went into the Steele dossier..."
For M16 to expose this level of stupidity is stunning.
Qasem Soleimani was assassinated on January 2nd, 2020 in Baghdad by a drone strike ordered
by Israel-first Trump. The Iranian Commander of the 'Quds Force' was murdered alongside the
leader of the Iraqi 'Popular Mobilization Forces', Jamal Jaafar Ibrahimi, aka Abu Mahdi
al-Muhandis, in addition to at least 6 other persons.
It was a coward act by a coward President who's no better than a gangbanger on a drive-by
shooting targeting unarmed individuals, who in this case were on a
diplomatic mission .
Who was General Soleimani?
"It was through his leadership that the IRGC greatly assisted the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) in
its destruction of Daesh (ISIS). He's played a larger role than any individual in defeating
terrorism in Syria and Iraq, and he was widely respected as among one of the most brilliant
unconventional warfare tacticians in recent memory. It was because of his success, however,
that he became a most hated foe He was therefore marked for death,"
wrote Andrew Korybko. By Andrew Korybko Global Research,
January 03, 2020 Region: Middle East & North Africa Theme:
US NATO War
Agenda In-depth Report: IRAN: THE NEXT WAR?
The US carried out a de-facto act of war against Iran after assassinating Major General
Qasem Soleimani of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' Quds Force in Baghdad last night, but
despite the doomsday scenarios that many in Alt-Media are speculating that this will lead to,
the commencement of World War III is extremely unlikely for several reasons.
***
The "Decapitation Strike" That Shook The World
Trump's approval of
the US' assassination of Major General Qasem Soleimani of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard
Corps' (IRGC) Quds Force in Baghdad last night amounts to a de-facto act of war against Iran,
but it wasn't the decision of a "madman" or someone whose permanent military, intelligence, and
diplomatic bureaucracies ("deep state") didn't think this completely through. Rather, it was a
premeditated "decapitation strike" carried out to prove the US' conventional "escalation
dominance" in its regional proxy war with Iran, one which America surely knows will elicit a
kinetic response of some sort from the Islamic Republic but which the Pentagon and its regional
allies are prepared for. Contrary to the narrative bandied about in Alt-Media , the US didn't "surrender"
the Mideast to Russia and Iran in recent years (who, to be clear, are not "allies", but
anti-terrorist "partners of convenience" in Syria) despite some regional setbacks to its grand
strategy, but merely adjusted the nature through which it intends to restore its influence
there.
Background Context
Instead of continuing to waste hundreds of millions of dollars a day funding the
counterproductive 100,000-strong occupation of Iraq and potentially exposing that many troops
("sitting ducks") to retaliatory attacks, it decided to scale down its conventional presence
there and replace it with highly trained Marines and special forces that operate with the
support of targeted missile strikes. It was one such strike earlier in the week against the
Popular Mobilization Units' (PMU) Kataib Hezbollah, which is integrated into the Iraqi Armed
Forces, that provoked the group's supporters (allegedly with the coordination of the IRGC
according to the US) into besieging the American Embassy in Baghdad. Trump responded by
immediately dispatching troops to the world's largest diplomatic facility and bragging on
Twitter that this was his " anti-Benghazi "
moment in a clear swipe at Obama's notorious failure to protect American diplomats back in 2012
when they were in similar circumstances.
Once the unrest died down following the organizers' decision to withdraw after they
declared
that their "message has been heard", US Secretary of Defense
ominously warned that his country could take "preemptive action" if it detects any signals
that Iran is supposedly planning more anti-American attacks in Iraq. The Islamic Republic
denied that it played any role in the recent events unfolding in the neighboring country, but
the US obviously didn't believe it. It therefore set out to
assassinate Maj. Gen. Soleimani in order to send the message that it's serious about
"deterring" any forthcoming allegedly Iranian-connected anti-American attacks seeing as how it
blamed him for being involved in the latest ones. It also wanted to put additional pressure on
Iran to withdraw from Iraq, but probably expected that it could exploit Tehran's response to
this de-facto act of war as a pretext for further intensifying its pressure campaign through
more "decapitation strikes". This attack therefore dangerously escalated tensions with Iran and
made many observers fear the onset of World War III.
Some Words About Maj. Gen. Soleimani
What follows isn't an excuse for America's actions, but simply a cold, hard analysis
explaining why Trump decided to assassinate Solemani and thus carry out a de-facto act of war
against Iran, one which will not lead to World War III despite the fearmongering speculation
that's taken social media by storm ever since. Simply put, Iran misjudged the US' resolve to
regain its lost influence in the region and never thought that it would escalate the situation
to this level, hence why Maj. Gen. Solemani had no fear of being killed in the heart of Baghdad
despite the US' conventional air superiority and explicit warnings that it could take
"preemptive action" against Iran if it believes that it played any role whatsoever in any
forthcoming anti-American attacks. It doesn't matter whether or not the PMU's Kataib Hezbollah
is justified in seeking the removal of US forces from the country through any means possible or
if it coordinates those actions with the IRGC since all that's important is that the US was
looking for a pretext to carry out its calculated "decapitation strike" against Maj. Gen.
Soleimani.
A few words about him are appropriate at this point. It was through his leadership that the
IRGC greatly assisted the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) in its destruction of Daesh. He's played a
larger role than any individual in defeating terrorism in Syria and Iraq, and he was widely
respected as among one of the most brilliant unconventional warfare tacticians in recent
memory. It was because of his success, however, that he became one of the US' most hated foes
since he contributed to the defeat of Washington's regional proxy forces and thus was partly
responsible for the decline in American influence there lately. He was therefore marked for
death by the US, but Trump knew that killing him without any pretext would be an unnecessary
escalation so he wanted to save that "ace up his sleeve" for later. Iran knows that the US
wants it to withdraw from Syria and Iraq but steadfastly refuses because it has the legal right
to remain there at the request of those countries' internationally recognized governments, but
nevertheless, the US thinks that "might makes right" and is trying to force it out.
The Islamic Republic Won't Commit Suicide
American and "Israeli" strikes against allegedly IRGC-allied PMU forces over the past month
or so were intended to achieve that outcome, which naturally prompted those forces to
kinetically react by targeting a US base earlier in the week that afterwards served as the
pretext for America's latest attack against Kataib Hezbollah which in turn triggered the
embassy siege. There's no doubt that the US is escalating the situation in contravention of
international law and targeting anti-terrorist forces that contributed to the defeat of Daesh,
but polemics -- while having their "perception management" purposes -- are pointless when it
comes to analyzing situations as objectively as possible and forecasting what might come next.
Therefore, they're being excluded from this piece going forward. Having gotten that out of the
way, it's now time to turn the article's attention towards rebutting the fearmongering claims
that World War III is about to start after Maj. Gen. Soleimani's assassination.
Iran has the international legal right to defend itself, and its Supreme Leader already
vowed a " harsh
revenge " to that end, but it's extremely unlikely to take the form of direct attacks
against the US or its allies. As much as the next phrase is going to trigger many Alt-Media
folks, the US military is capable of destroying Iran in minutes so long as it's willing to bear
the regional costs of its actions, both short-term in the sense of casualties and long-term as
it relates to the geopolitical future of the Mideast. After proving his commitment to
overwhelmingly respond to any anti-American attacks that his government alleges (whether
truthfully or not) are carried out with any degree of Iranian coordination, Trump certainly
wouldn't hesitate to bomb Iran itself if missiles were launched from there against his or his
allies' forces. The Islamic Republic knows that it would literally be suicide to do such a
thing, and despite what neoconservatives, Zionists, and Wahhabis claim about the Iranian
authorities, they aren't an "apocalyptic death cult" and thus aren't going to start World War
III.
Several Scenarios
There's no doubt that Iran could inflict very serious damage to its regional foes if it
chooses to "go out with a bang" (whether after being provoked to do so or at its own
prerogative), but it's much more likely that its response to Maj. Gen. Soleimani's
assassination will take the form of intensified Unconventional Warfare against their interests.
The US and its allies must have clearly foreseen this and will likely blame Iran for anything
that happens in the coming days no matter whether it's truly involved or not, using that as a
pretext for more "decapitation strikes" and other similar measures intended to decimate it and
its allies' forces. The nature of conflict between the two sides is therefore asymmetric since
the US has conventional dominance whereas Iran has its unconventional counterpart, and both
might be put to the test in the event of another US Embassy siege in Baghdad, which is very
probable in the coming days seeing as how Iraqi society is seething with rage and can easily
assemble a critical mass of protesters to besiege the compound once again.
For as big of a prize as seizing the world's largest diplomatic facility would be for
whoever can take it (be it Iran, Iranian-allied, or otherwise), there's no way that Trump would
let that happen. Just like the Berlin Airlift of the Old Cold War, the US would carry out a
Baghdad Airlift if it need be, which could entail leveling entire neighborhoods in order to
prevent its enemies from hiding anti-air missiles there for taking down its air assets. One can
only speculate how such a scenario would unfold, but there shouldn't be any question in
anyone's mind about the US backing down, especially not during an election year and definitely
not after Trump proudly boasted that this is his "anti-Benghazi" moment. Another potential
retaliatory scenario is disrupting energy transit through the Strait of Hormuz, but that would
affect more than just the US and surely elicit universal condemnation from everyone except
perhaps allied Syria, just like if Hezbollah or other IRGC-allied forces decide to bomb "
Israel " (in which case it and the US would certainly respond through military means).
Don't Expect Russia Or China To Save Iran
It's "politically inconvenient" for many of Iran's supporters across the world to accept,
but the country doesn't have any state-based military allies willing to go to war alongside it
except perhaps Syria, but the SAA has been utterly devastated over the last 9 years and is now
a shadow of its former self. There is also absolutely no way that Russia would allow Syria to
actively participate in any state-based military hostilities alongside Iran because doing so
would endanger the forces and substantial investments that it has in the Arab Republic
nowadays. Speaking of which, Russia isn't Iran's ally, but
"Israel's" , though it wouldn't go to war alongside the self-professed "Jewish State" but
rather stay out of any potential conflict between the two (which wouldn't last long considering
that the US' conventional dominance could crush the Islamic Republic within days if Trump
authorized it to be unleashed to its fullest extent and he was willing to accept the previously
mentioned costs).
Neither Russia nor China would go to war in support of Iran, though they could be expected
to issue very strong statements of condemnation against the US and anyone else who might
conventionally attack it (whether "preemptively" or as "retaliation"). This objectively
existing and easily verifiable statement of fact will likely take many in Alt-Media by surprise
who have been indoctrinated over the past couple of years with fake news "analyses" alleging
that those two Eurasian Great Powers are "anti-American" and willing to fight the US in order
to "save the world". That will never happen unless one of them is attacked first (though even
in that case, neither would go to war for the other because they've made it clear that they're
not "military
allies" ), which probably won't happen because of the concept of Mutually Assured
Destruction (MAD), at least not unless the US is able to surmount that "obstacle" through the
combination of its anti-missile technology and "Space Forces". In any case, nobody should
expect Russia or China to rush to Iran's aid and defend it from the US.
Concluding Thoughts
The most likely outcome of Maj. Gen. Soleimani's assassination is an intensified period of
proxy wars in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen which stays just below the conventional threshold
given Iran's inability to survive an overwhelming US' "retaliatory" strike if Trump authorized
one in response to the unlikely massive missile strike that some speculate Tehran might be
preparing. The US might also carry out "surgical strikes" against places in Iran where it might
claim other strikes were "organized", such as if Yemen's Ansarullah attempt to repeat their
successful drone strike against Saudi Aramco from last September. "Decapitation strikes" might
therefore become increasingly more frequent and nobody would be safe, not even Hezbollah's
Nasrallah in the worst-case scenario, since the US just signaled that it has the political will
to take out "high-value targets". As all of this unfolds, Russia and China will do their utmost
to stay away from any regional fray and definitely wouldn't intervene to defend Iran. As such,
Iran's expected responses will be purely asymmetrical and not conventional.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your
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This article was originally published on OneWorld .
Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the
relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China's One Belt One Road global vision
of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global
Research.
"... Now, he told "Democracy Now!", it will be hard for the Iraqi public to see the bases as anything but "a force that is driving them into a war between Iran and the United States." ..."
"... "Qassem Soleimani could travel openly in Iraq. I mean, remember, Qassem Soleimani arrived in Baghdad airport, where half of it is an American base. Qassem Soleimani could travel openly in Iraq. He took selfies. People took his pictures. That didn't happen in secret. Qassem Soleimani was not Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi hiding in a cave or moving stealthily through the country. He stayed in the Green Zone. So, all this happened because there was an understanding between the Americans and the Iranians. So, if the Americans wanted to keep their bases in Iraq, the Iranians would have the freedom to move. And with the killing of Soleimani, the rules of the game have totally changed," he said. ..."
"The Guardian" journalist Ghaith Abdul-Ahad says that before the attack on Qassem
Soleimani in Baghdad last week "there was an understanding between the Americans and the
Iranians" that allowed officials from Iran and the U.S. to move freely within Iraq and
maintained relative goodwill toward American bases.
"The killing of Qassem Soleimani ended an era in which both Iran and the United States
coexisted in Iraq," he said.
Now, he told "Democracy Now!", it will be hard for the Iraqi public to see the bases as
anything but "a force that is driving them into a war between Iran and the United States."
"Qassem Soleimani could travel openly in Iraq. I mean, remember, Qassem Soleimani arrived in
Baghdad airport, where half of it is an American base. Qassem Soleimani could travel openly in
Iraq. He took selfies. People took his pictures. That didn't happen in secret. Qassem Soleimani
was not Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi hiding in a cave or moving stealthily through the country. He
stayed in the Green Zone. So, all this happened because there was an understanding between the
Americans and the Iranians. So, if the Americans wanted to keep their bases in Iraq, the
Iranians would have the freedom to move. And with the killing of Soleimani, the rules of the
game have totally changed," he said.
AMY GOODMAN: Ghaith, can you comment on this new information that's come to light about the
timing of Soleimani's assassination Friday morning? Iraq's caretaker Prime Minister Adel
Abdul-Mahdi has revealed he had plans to meet with Soleimani on the day he was killed to
discuss a Saudi proposal to defuse tension in the region. Mahdi said, quote, "He came to
deliver me a message from Iran responding to the message we delivered from Saudi Arabia to
Iran" -- Saudi Arabia, obviously, a well-known enemy of Iran. Was he set up? Talk about the
significance of this.
GHAITH ABDUL-AHAD: Well, it is very significant if it's actually General Qassem Soleimani
came to Iraq to deliver this message, if it was actually there was a process of negotiations in
the region. We know that Abdul-Mahdi and the Iraqi government, in general, over the last year
had been trying to position Iraq as this middle power, as this power where both -- you know, as
a country that has a relationship with both Iran and the United States. In that awkward place
Iraq found itself in, Iraq has tried to maximize on this. So they started back in summer and
fall, when there was an escalation between Iran and the United States, when Iran shot down an
American drone. We've seen Adel Abdul-Mahdi fly to Iran, try to mediate. We've seen Adel
Abdul-Mahdi open channels of communications with the Gulf, with Saudi Arabia.
So, if it actually, the killing of General Soleimani, ended that peace initiative, it will
be kind of disastrous in the region, because, as Narges was saying earlier, it is -- you know,
Pompeo is speaking about Iran being this ultimate evil in the region, as this crescent of
Shias, as if they just arrived in the past 10 years in the region. The fact if we see Iran's
reactions, it's always a reaction to an American provocation. You've seen the occupation of
Iraq in 2003. You've seen Iran declared as an "axis of evil." So, if you see it from an Iranian
perspective, it's always this existential threat coming from the United States. And I don't
think there is a more existential threat than in past year. So, yes, I know -- I mean, I think
Adel Abdul-Mahdi and the Iraqi government were trying to find this middle ground, which I think
is totally lost, because even Adel Abdul-Mahdi, the person who was trying to find this middle
ground, was the person who proposed this law yesterday in the Parliament to expel all American
troops from the country.
And I would like to add like another thing. The killing of Qassem Soleimani ended an era in
which both Iran and the United States coexisted in Iraq. So, from 2013, '14, we, as
journalists, we've seen on the frontlines how the proxies of each power have been helping each
other. So we've seen Iranian advisers helping the American-trained Iraqi Army unit or
counterterrorism unit in the fight against ISIS. In the same sense, we've seen American
airstrikes on threats to these -- kind of to ISIS when it was threatening these militias. That
coexistence, it didn't only come from both having a -- sharing an enemy, which is ISIS, or
Daesh, but also these were the rules of the game. These were the rules in which Qassem
Soleimani could travel openly in Iraq. I mean, remember, Qassem Soleimani arrived in Baghdad
airport, where half of it is an American base. Qassem Soleimani could travel openly in Iraq. He
took selfies. People took his pictures. That didn't happen in secret. Qassem Soleimani was not
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi hiding in a cave or moving stealthily through the country. He stayed in
the Green Zone. So, all this happened because there was an understanding between the Americans
and the Iranians. So, if the Americans wanted to keep their bases in Iraq, the Iranians would
have the freedom to move. And with the killing of Soleimani, I think the rules of the game have
totally changed.
So now I think the first victim of the assassination will be the American bases in Iraq. I
don't see any way where the Americans can keep their presence as they did before the
assassination of Soleimani. And even the people in the streets, even the people who opposes
Iran, who opposes the presence of Iranian militias in power and politics, the corruption of
these pro-Iranian parties, even those people would look at these American bases now as not as a
force that came to help them in the fight against ISIS, but a force that's dragging them into a
war between Iran and the United States.
Is there a chorus of politicians singing in there about how lazy they are, and how they
never bothered to verify Browder' story? The story is indeed remarkable, but not in the way
that first appears.
Stephen Fry / @stephenfry
You may or may not know the remarkable story of @Billbrowder and the #MagnitskyAct - find
out the startling truth by listening to
#MagnitskytheMusical by the wondrous @JohnnyFlynnHQ & @roberthudson - @BBCRadio3 7.30 Sun
12th Jan
Book and lyrics by Robert Hudson
Music and lyrics by Johnny Flynn
12 January 2020
О 1 hour, 34 minutes
Johnny Flynn and Robert Hudson bring us a musical based on the
incredible story of an American venture capitalist, a Russian tax
advisor, a crazy heist, the Trump Tower meeting and the very rule of
law.
Blending music and satire, the story explores the truths and fictions
surrounding the origins and aftershocks of the Magnitsky Act; global
legislation which allows governments to sanction those who they see
as offenders of human rights.
It tells the story of a tax adviser's struggle to uncover a huge tax
fraud, his imprisonment by the very authorities he is investigating,
and the American financier's crusade for justice.
Johnny Flynn, Paul Chahidi and members of the cast perform songs in
a epic story that explores democracy, corruption, and how we
undervalue the law at our peril.
Bill Paul Chahidi Sergei Johnny Flynn Jamie Fenella
Woolgar Natalia Ellie Kendrick Kuznetsov Gus Brown Guard Clive Hayward Silchenko Ian
Conningham Jared Will Kirk Fisherman Neil McCaul Judge Jessica Turner
Additional singing by Sinead Maclnnes, Laura Christy, Scarlett
Courtney and Lucy Reynolds.
The cellist is Joe Zeitlin. Sound is by Peter Ringrose.
Directed by Sasha Yevtushenko.
Is there a chorus of politicians singing in there about how lazy they are, and how they
never bothered to verify Browder' story? The story is indeed remarkable, but not in the way
that first appears.
Stephen Fry / @stephenfry
You may or may not know the remarkable story of @Billbrowder and the #MagnitskyAct - find
out the startling truth by listening to
#MagnitskytheMusical by the wondrous @JohnnyFlynnHQ & @roberthudson - @BBCRadio3 7.30 Sun
12th Jan
Book and lyrics by Robert Hudson
Music and lyrics by Johnny Flynn
12 January 2020
О 1 hour, 34 minutes
Johnny Flynn and Robert Hudson bring us a musical based on the
incredible story of an American venture capitalist, a Russian tax
advisor, a crazy heist, the Trump Tower meeting and the very rule of
law.
Blending music and satire, the story explores the truths and fictions
surrounding the origins and aftershocks of the Magnitsky Act; global
legislation which allows governments to sanction those who they see
as offenders of human rights.
It tells the story of a tax adviser's struggle to uncover a huge tax
fraud, his imprisonment by the very authorities he is investigating,
and the American financier's crusade for justice.
Johnny Flynn, Paul Chahidi and members of the cast perform songs in
a epic story that explores democracy, corruption, and how we
undervalue the law at our peril.
Bill Paul Chahidi Sergei Johnny Flynn Jamie Fenella
Woolgar Natalia Ellie Kendrick Kuznetsov Gus Brown Guard Clive Hayward Silchenko Ian
Conningham Jared Will Kirk Fisherman Neil McCaul Judge Jessica Turner
Additional singing by Sinead Maclnnes, Laura Christy, Scarlett
Courtney and Lucy Reynolds.
The cellist is Joe Zeitlin. Sound is by Peter Ringrose.
Directed by Sasha Yevtushenko.
"We have learned today from #Iraq Prime Minister AdilAbdl Mahdi how @realDonaldTrump uses
diplomacy:
#US asked #Iraq to mediate with #Iran. Iraq PM asks #QassemSoleimani to come and talk to him
and give him the answer of his mediation, Trump &co assassinate an envoy at the airport."
So Trump instead of draining the swamp brought swamp creatures like Pompeo into his Administration; now he can pay the price.
Notable quotes:
"... The greenlighting of the airstrike near Baghdad airport represents a bureaucratic victory for Pompeo ..."
"... "We took a bad guy off the battlefield. We made the right decision," Pompeo told CNN. "I'm proud of the effort that President Trump undertook." ..."
"... On Dec. 29, Pompeo, Esper and Milley traveled to the president's private club in Florida, where the two defense officials presented possible responses to Iranian aggression, including the option of killing Soleimani, senior U.S. officials said. ..."
"... One significant factor was the "lockstep" coordination for the operation between Pompeo and Esper, both graduates in the same class at the U.S. Military Academy, who deliberated ahead of the briefing with Trump, senior U.S. officials said. Pence also endorsed the decision, but he did not attend the meeting in Florida. ..."
"... Some defense officials said Pompeo's claims of an imminent and direct threat were overstated, and they would prefer that he make the case based on the killing of the American contractor and previous Iranian provocations. ..."
"... On Sunday, Iran announced that it was suspending all limits of the nuclear deal, including on uranium enrichment, research and development, and enlarging its stockpile of nuclear fuel. Britain, France and Germany, as well as Russia and China, were original signatories of that deal with the United States and Iran, and all opposed Trump's decision to withdraw from the pact. ..."
"... "No one trusts what Trump will do next, so it's hard to get behind this," said the European diplomat. ..."
"... Since his time as CIA director, Pompeo has forged a friendship with Yossi Cohen, the director of the Israeli intelligence service Mossad, said a person familiar with their meetings. The men have spoken about the threat posed by Iran to both Israel and the United States. In a prescient interview in October, Cohen said Soleimani "knows perfectly well that his elimination is not impossible." ..."
"... At every step of his government career, Pompeo has tried to stake out a maximalist position on Iran that has made him popular among two critical pro-Israel constituencies in Republican politics: conservative Jewish donors and Christian evangelicals. ..."
"... After Trump tapped Pompeo to lead the CIA, Pompeo quickly set up an Iran Mission Center at the agency to focus intelligence-gathering efforts and operations, elevating Iran's importance as an intelligence target. ..."
The secretary also spoke to President Trump multiple times every day last week, culminating in Trump's decision to approve the
killing of Iran's top military commander, Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, at the urging of Pompeo and Vice President Pence, the officials
said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
Pompeo had lost a similar high-stakes deliberation last summer when Trump declined to retaliate militarily against Iran after
it downed a U.S. surveillance drone, an outcome that left Pompeo "morose," according to one U.S. official. But recent changes to
Trump's national security team and the whims of a president anxious about being viewed as hesitant in the face of Iranian aggression
created an opening for Pompeo to press for the kind of action he had been advocating.
The greenlighting of the airstrike near Baghdad airport represents a bureaucratic victory for Pompeo, but it also carries
multiple serious risks: another protracted regional war in the Middle East; retaliatory assassinations of U.S. personnel stationed
around the world; an
interruption in the battle against the Islamic State; the
closure of diplomatic pathways to containing
Iran's nuclear program; and a major backlash in Iraq, whose parliament
voted on Sunday to expel all U.S. troops from the country.
For Pompeo, whose political ambitions are a source of
constant speculation , the death of U.S. diplomats would be particularly damaging given his unyielding criticisms of former secretary
of state Hillary Clinton following the killing of the U.S. ambassador to Libya and other American personnel in Benghazi in 2012.
But none of those considerations stopped Pompeo from pushing for the targeted strike, U.S. officials said, underscoring a fixation
on Iran that spans 10 years of government service from Congress to the CIA to the State Department.
"We took a bad guy off the battlefield. We made the right decision," Pompeo told CNN. "I'm proud of the effort that President
Trump undertook."
Pompeo first spoke with Trump about killing Soleimani months ago, said a senior U.S. official, but neither the president nor Pentagon
officials were willing to countenance such an operation.
For more than a year, defense officials warned that the administration's campaign of economic sanctions against Iran had increased
tensions with Tehran, requiring a bigger and bigger share of military resources in the Middle East when many at the Pentagon wanted
to redeploy their firepower to East Asia.
How the siege of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad unfolded On
Jan. 1, the siege on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad appeared to come to an end after supporters of the Iranian-backed Kataib Hezbollah
militia retreated. (Liz Sly, Joyce Lee, Mustafa Salim/The Washington Post)
Trump, too, sought to draw down from the Middle East as he promised from the opening days of his presidential campaign. But that
mind-set shifted on Dec. 27 when 30 rockets hit a joint U.S.-Iraqi base outside Kirkuk, killing an American civilian contractor and
injuring service members.
On Dec. 29, Pompeo, Esper and Milley traveled to the president's private club in Florida, where the two defense officials
presented possible responses to Iranian aggression, including the option of killing Soleimani, senior U.S. officials said.
Trump's decision to target Soleimani came as a surprise and a shock to some officials briefed on his decision, given the Pentagon's
long-standing concerns about escalation and the president's aversion to using military force against Iran.
One significant factor was the "lockstep" coordination for the operation between Pompeo and Esper, both graduates in the same
class at the U.S. Military Academy, who deliberated ahead of the briefing with Trump, senior U.S. officials said. Pence also endorsed
the decision, but he did not attend the meeting in Florida.
"Taking out Soleimani would not have happened under [former secretary of defense Jim] Mattis," said a senior administration official
who argued that the Mattis Pentagon was risk-averse. "Mattis was opposed to all of this. It's not a hit on Mattis, it's just his
predisposition. Milley and Esper are different. Now you've got a cohesive national security team and you've got a secretary of state
and defense secretary who've known each other their whole adult lives."
Mattis declined to comment.
In the days since the strike, Pompeo has become the voice of the administration on the matter, speaking to allies and making the
public case for the operation. Trump chose Pompeo to appear on all of the Sunday news shows because he "sticks to the line" and "never
gives an inch," an administration official said.
But critics inside and outside the administration have questioned Pompeo's justification for the strike based on his claims that
"dozens if not hundreds" of American lives were at risk.
Lawmakers left classified briefings with U.S. intelligence officials on Friday saying they heard nothing to suggest that the threat
posed by the proxy forces guided by Soleimani had changed substantially in recent months.
When repeatedly pressed on Sunday about the imminent nature of the threats, whether it was days or weeks away, or whether they
had been foiled by the U.S. airstrike, Pompeo dismissed the questions.
"If you're an American in the region, days and weeks -- this is not something that's relevant," Pompeo told CNN.
Some defense officials said Pompeo's claims of an imminent and direct threat were overstated, and they would prefer that he
make the case based on the killing of the American contractor and previous Iranian provocations.
Critics have also questioned how an imminent attack would be foiled by killing Soleimani, who would not have carried out the strike
himself.
"If the attack was going to take place when Soleimani was alive, it is difficult to comprehend why it wouldn't take place now
that he is dead," said Robert Malley, the president of the International Crisis Group and a former Obama administration official.
Following the strike, Pompeo has held back-to-back phone calls with his counterparts around the globe but has received a chilly
reception from European allies, many of whom fear that the attack puts their embassies in Iran and Iraq in jeopardy and has now eliminated
the chance to keep a lid on Iran's nuclear program.
"We have woken up to a more dangerous world," said France's Europe minister, Amelie de Montchalin.
Two European diplomats familiar with the calls said Pompeo expected European leaders to champion the U.S. strike publicly even
though they were never consulted on the decision.
"The U.S. has not helped the Iran situation, and now they want everyone to cheerlead this," one diplomat said.
"Our position over the past few years has been about defending the JCPOA," said the diplomat, referring to the 2015 Iran nuclear
deal.
On Sunday, Iran announced that it was suspending all limits of the nuclear deal, including on uranium enrichment, research
and development, and enlarging its stockpile of nuclear fuel. Britain, France and Germany, as well as Russia and China, were original
signatories of that deal with the United States and Iran, and all opposed Trump's decision to withdraw from the pact.
"No one trusts what Trump will do next, so it's hard to get behind this," said the European diplomat.
Pompeo has slapped back at U.S. allies, saying "the Brits, the French, the Germans all need to understand that what we did --
what the Americans did -- saved lives in Europe as well," he told Fox News.
Israel has stood out in emphatically cheering the Soleimani operation, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praising
Trump for "acting swiftly, forcefully and decisively."
"Israel stands with the United States in its just struggle for peace, security and self-defense," he said.
Since his time as CIA director, Pompeo has forged a friendship with Yossi Cohen, the director of the Israeli intelligence
service Mossad, said a person familiar with their meetings. The men have spoken about the threat posed by Iran to both Israel and
the United States. In a prescient interview in October, Cohen said Soleimani "knows perfectly well that his elimination is not impossible."
Though Democrats have greeted the strike with skepticism, Republican leaders, who have long viewed Pompeo as a reassuring voice
in the administration, uniformly praised the decision as the eradication of a terrorist who directed the killing of U.S. soldiers
in Iraq after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.
"Soleimani made it his life's work to take the Iranian revolutionary call for death to America and death to Israel and turn them
into action," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said.
A critical moment for Pompeo is nearing as he faces growing questions about a potential Senate run, though some GOP insiders say
that decision seems to have stalled. Pompeo has kept in touch with Ward Baker, a political consultant who would probably lead the
operation, and others in McConnell's orbit, about a bid. But Pompeo hasn't committed one way or the other, people familiar with the
conversations said.
Some people close to the secretary say he has mixed feelings about becoming a relatively junior senator from Kansas after leading
the State Department and CIA, but there is little doubt in Pompeo's home state that he could win.
At every step of his government career, Pompeo has tried to stake out a maximalist position on Iran that has made him popular
among two critical pro-Israel constituencies in Republican politics: conservative Jewish donors and Christian evangelicals.
After Trump tapped Pompeo to lead the CIA, Pompeo quickly set up an Iran Mission Center at the agency to focus intelligence-gathering
efforts and operations, elevating Iran's importance as an intelligence target.
At the State Department, he is a voracious consumer of diplomatic notes and reporting on Iran, and he places the country far above
other geopolitical and economic hot spots in the world. "If it's about Iran, he will read it," said one diplomat, referring to the massive flow of paper that crosses Pompeo's desk. "If
it's not, good luck."
Moscow has a vested interest in the state of affairs in the Persian Gulf; it has tried its best to
contain the impact that the U.S.-Iranian crisis could have on its own national security.
The third area of focus is connected with overlapping humanitarian and economic concerns that impact both Russia and Iran.
These concerns have been footholds in the history of mutual relationships since the time of Russian and Persian empires.
Nowadays both of the countries are trying to compensate for their failures by pursuing policies that promote their own and
unique civilizations. In this situation the humanitarian sphere is one of the strategic ones allowing to pursue long-term
aims. Of note, Russian-Iranian educational and cultural projects have doubled since the Trump administration announced its
strategy for Iran. While the United States has been focused on "bringing Iran to its knees," Russia has been focused on the
future. Economic ties between these two countries have been strengthening over the past few years, with bilateral trade
reaching $2 billion in 2018.
Hopefully, Russia and Iran will maintain a positive relationship despite their differences and past difficulties. For
example, in 2016 Russian forces were pushed off of a military base in Iran that it had used to conduct military operations
in Syria. The strategic shift happened after the Iranians squabbled over whether foreign forces should be allowed to use an
Iranian military base. Also, the two countries have had some disputes over the fate of Syria. Despite these issues, Russia
maintains a positive relationship with Iran, which it further confirmed during a June 25
meeting
between national security advisers John Bolton, Meir Ben-Shabbat and Nikolai Patrushev. During the meeting,
Patrushev, the Secretary of the Russian Security Council, declared that Russia would continue to accommodate Iran's
interests in the Middle East because it remains "the ally and partner" of choice in Syria. Both countries are focused on
preventing further destabilization in the region, he said.
Nadya Glebova is a fellow at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, a MENA
researcher.
Like any state Russia is driven foremost by its own national security interests. Given Iran's
proximity to its own near-abroad it seems impossible it could stand by and watch the Islamic
Republic be destabilized or even overthrown. Moscow has vital interests to protect in the
region, as does China. And it seems Moscow, Beijing and Tehran – for all their differences –
have a common interest against what they fear as US encroachment. It is interest that
ultimately drives countries to war. A war between the US and this tripartite alliance will be
a world war.
https://www.ghostsofhistory...
Like any state Russia is driven foremost by its own national security interests.
You hit the nail on the head. I'm amazed that so many Americans fail to understand this
truism about what motivates Russia's actions in world affairs.
Sadly, too many Americans have been brainwashed into thinking that Russia's a US
vassal state, or a banana republic of some sort subject to the West's mandate.
It's plain and simple....our USA government uses TERRORISM to conduct our foreign policy
objectives...for the sake of the corrupt few in power and for our corrupt terrorist allies in
Israel, Saudi, Europe, etc....killing and starving innocent people the world over. We
overthrew Iran's democracy in 1953 to steal its oil and other resources....we need to address
all the terrorism our government and the CIA conducts IN OUR NAME...before we pretend to be
"victims" of other's doings......we have created the vast majority of the world's current
crisis for power and greed.....we do not support democracy....the USA supports TERRORISM
against innocent people all over the world to keep them in line!!!
Putin's Hour Is At Hand was published in the Russian press Monday morning, January 6,
2020.
Putin's Hour Is At Hand
Paul Craig Roberts
Vladimir Putin is the most impressive leader on the world stage. He survived and arose from
a Russia corrupted by Washington and Israel during the Yeltsin years and reestablished Russia
as a world power. He dealt successfully with American/Israeli aggression against South Ossetia
and against Ukraine, incorporating at Crimea's request the Russian province back into Mother
Russia. He has tolerated endless insults and provocations from Washington and its empire
without responding in kind. He is conciliatory and a peacemaker from a position of
strength.
He knows that the American empire based as it is on arrogance and lies is failing
economically, socially, politically, and militarily. He understands that war serves no Russian
interest.
Washington's murder of Qasem Soleimani, a great Iranian leader, indeed, one of the rare
leaders in world history, has dimmed Trump's leadership and placed the limelight on Putin. The
stage is set for Putin and Russia to assume the leadership of the world.
Washington's murder of Soleimani is a criminal act that could start World War 3 just as the
Serbian murder of the Austrian Archduke set World War 1 in motion. Only Putin and Russia with
China's help can stop this war that Washington has set in motion.
Putin understood that the Washington/Israeli intended destabilization of Syria was aimed at
Russia. Without warning Russia intervened, defeated the Washington financed and armed proxy
forces, and restored stability to Syria.
Defeated, Washington and Israel have decided to bypass Syria and take the attack on Russia
directly to Iran. The destabilization of Iran serves both Washington and Israel. For Israel
Iran's demise stops support for Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia that has twice defeated
Israel's army and prevented Israel's occupation of southern Lebanon. For Washington Iran's
demise allows CIA-supported jihadists to bring instability into the Russian Federation.
Unless Putin submits to American and Israeli will, he has no choice but to block any
Washington/Israeli attack on Iran.
The easiest and cleanest way for Putin to do this is to announce that Iran is under Russia's
protection. This protection should be formalized in a mutual defense treaty between Russia,
China, and Iran, with perhaps India and Turkey as members. This is hard for Putin to do,
because incompetent historians have convinced Putin that alliances are the cause of war. But an
alliance such as this would prevent war. Not even the insane criminal Netanyahu and the crazed
American neoconservatives would, even when completely drunk or deluded, declare war on Iran,
Russia, China, and if included in the alliance India and Turkey. It would mean the death of
America, Israel and any European country sufficiently stupid to participate.
If Putin is unable to free himself from the influence of incompetent historians, who in
effect are serving Washington, not Russian, interests, he has other options. He can calm down
Iran by giving Iran the best Russian air defense systems with Russian crews to train the
Iranians and whose presence serve as a warning to Washington and Israel that an attack on
Russian forces is an attack on Russia.
This done, Putin can then, not offer, but insist on mediating. This is Putin's role as there
is no other with the power, influence and objectivity to mediate.
Putin's job is not so much to rescue Iran as to get Trump out of a losing war that would
destroy Trump. Putin could set his own price. For example, Putin's price can be the revival of
the INF/START treaty, the anti-ballistic missile treaty, the removal of NATO from Russian
borders. In effect, Putin is positioned to demand whatever he wants.
Iranian missiles can sink any American vessels anywhere near Iran. Chinese missiles can sink
any American fleets anywhere near China. Russian missiles can sink American fleets anywhere in
the world. The ability of Washington to project power in the Middle East now that everyone,
Shia and Sunni and Washington's former proxies such as ISIS, hates Americans with a passion is
zero. The State Department has had to order Americans out of the Middle East. How does
Washingon count as a force in the Middle East when no American is safe there?
Of course Washington is stupid in its arrogance, and Putin, China, and Iran must take this
into consideration. A stupid government is capable of bringing ruin not only on itself but on
others.
So there are risks for Putin. But there are also risks for Putin failing to take charge. If
Washington and Israel attack Iran, which Israel will try to provoke by some false flag event as
sinking an American warship and blaming Iran, Russia will be at war anyway. Better for the
initiative to be in Putin's hands. And better for the world and life on Earth for Russia to be
in charge.
Most probably Pompeo was cheating and deceived Trump to get the approval of this asssasination. now with his head on the block he
is trying to avoid the responsibility.
Notable quotes:
"... Speaking on "Fox News Sunday," Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., said public assurances from the Trump administration that such a threat was "imminent" were simply not enough. ..."
"... Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg said on CNN's "State of the Union" that until the administration provides answers on "how this decision was reached ... then this move is questionable , to say the least." ..."
"... "I still worry about whether this president really understands that this is not a show, this is not a game," he said. "Lives are at stake right now." ..."
"... the administration has yet to make public its evidence that Soleimani was acting out of step in comparison with his years of similar planning as a leader in Iran's proxy wars and other covert operations, which have led to U.S. deaths . ..."
Democrats on Sunday demanded answers about the
killing of top Iranian
Gen.
Qassem Soleimani as tensions mounted with Iran and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo insisted that the United States had faced an
imminent threat.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said on ABC's "This Week" that he worried that President Donald Trump's decision
"will get us into what he calls
another
endless war in the Middle East ." He called for Congress to "assert" its authority and prevent Trump from "either bumbling or
impulsively getting us into a major war."
Speaking on "Fox News Sunday," Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., said public assurances from the Trump administration that such
a threat was "imminent" were simply not enough.
"I think we learned the hard way ... in the Iraq War that administrations sometimes
manipulate
and cherry-pick intelligence to further their political goals," he said.
"That's what got us into the Iraq War. There was no WMD," or weapons of mass destruction, he said. "I'm saying that they have
an obligation to present the evidence."
Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg said on CNN's "State of the Union" that until the administration provides
answers on "how this decision was reached ... then
this move is questionable
, to say the least."
"I still worry about whether this president really understands that this is not a show, this is not a game," he said. "Lives
are at stake right now."
The fraught relationship with Iran has significantly deteriorated in the days since Soleimani's death, which came days after rioters
sought to storm the U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdad and a U.S. contractor was killed in a rocket attack on an Iraqi military base
in Kirkuk.
The Defense Department said Soleimani, the high-profile commander of Iran's secretive Quds Force, who was accused of controlling
Iranian-linked proxy militias across the Middle East, orchestrated the attacks on bases in Iraq of the U.S.-led coalition fighting
the Islamic State militant group, including the strike that killed the U.S. contractor. In addition, the Defense Department said
Soleimani approved attacks on the embassy compound in Baghdad.
"
We
took action last night to stop a war ," Trump said Friday in a televised address, referring to the airstrike that killed Soleimani.
"We did not take action to start a war."
But the administration has yet to make public its evidence that Soleimani was acting out of step in comparison with his years
of similar planning as a leader in Iran's proxy wars and other covert operations,
which have led to U.S. deaths .
Iran and its allies vowed to retaliate for the general's death, and Trump has since escalated his language in response.
Download the NBC News app for breaking news and politics
"... work to end the presence of any foreign troops on Iraqi soil and prohibit them from using its land, airspace or water for any reason ..."
"... Iraqi cleric Moqtada al-Sadr said the parliamentary resolution to end foreign troop presence in the country did not go far enough, calling on local and foreign militia groups to unite . I also have confirmation that the Mehdi Army is being re-mobilized . ..."
"... The United States just spent Two Trillion Dollars on Military Equipment. We are the biggest and by far the BEST in the World! If Iran attacks an American Base, or any American, we will be sending some of that brand new beautiful equipment their way…and without hesitation! ..."
First, let’s begin by a quick summary of what has taken place (note: this info is still coming in, so there might be corrections
once the official sources make their official statements).
Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdl Mahdi has now officially revealed that the US had asked him to mediate between the US and Iran
and that General Qassem Soleimani to come and talk to him and give him the answer to his mediation efforts. Thus, Soleimani was
on an OFFICIAL DIPLOMATIC MISSION as part of a diplomatic initiative INITIATED BY THE USA .
The Iraqi Parliament has now voted on a resolution requiring the government to press Washington and its allies to withdraw
their troops from Iraq.
Iraq’s caretaker PM Adil Abdul Mahdi said the American side notified the Iraqi military about the planned airstrike minutes
before it was carried out. He stressed that his government denied Washington permission to continue with the operation.
The Iraqi Parliament has also demanded that the Iraqi government must “ work to end the presence of any foreign troops
on Iraqi soil and prohibit them from using its land, airspace or water for any reason “
The Iraqi Foreign Ministry said that Baghdad had turned to the UN Security Council with complaints about US violations of
its sovereignty .
Iraqi cleric Moqtada al-Sadr said the parliamentary resolution to end foreign troop presence in the country did not go
far enough, calling on local and foreign militia groups to unite . I also have confirmation that the Mehdi Army is being re-mobilized
.
The Pentagon brass is now laying the responsibility for this monumental disaster on Trump (see
here ). The are now slowly waking up to this immense clusterbleep and don’t want to be held responsible for what is coming
next.
For the first time in the history of Iran, a Red Flag was hoisted over the Holy Dome Of Jamkaran Mosque , Iran. This indicates
that the blood of martyrs has been spilled and that a major battle will now happen . The text in the flag say s “ Oh Hussein we
ask for your help ” (u nofficial translation 1) or “ Rise up and avenge al-Husayn ” (unofficial translation 2)
The US has announced the deployment of 3’000 soldiers from the 82nd Airborne to Kuwait .
Finally, the Idiot-in-Chief tweeted the following message , probably to try to reassure his freaked out supporters: “
The United States just spent Two Trillion Dollars on Military Equipment. We are the biggest and by far the BEST in the World!
If Iran attacks an American Base, or any American, we will be sending some of that brand new beautiful equipment their way…and
without hesitation! “. Apparently, he still thinks that criminally overspending for 2nd rate military hardware is going to
yield victory…
Analysis
Well, my first though when reading these bullet points is that General Qasem Soleimani has already struck out at Uncle Shmuel
from beyond his grave . What we see here is an immense political disaster unfolding like a slow motion train wreck. Make no mistake,
this is not just a tactical "oopsie", but a major STRATEGIC disaster . Why?
For one thing, the US will now become an official and totally illegal military presence in Iraq. This means that whatever SOFA
(Status Of Forces Agreement) the US and Iraq had until now is void.
Second, the US now has two options:
Fight and sink deep into a catastrophic quagmire or Withdraw from Iraq and lose any possibility to keep forces in Syria
Both of these are very bad because whatever option Uncle Shmuel chooses, he will lost whatever tiny level of credibility he has
left, even amongst his putative "allies" (like the KSA which will now be left nose to nose with a much more powerful Iran than ever
before).
The main problem with the current (and very provisional) outcome is that both the Israel Lobby and the Oil Lobby will now be absolutely
outraged and will demand that the US try to use military power to regime change both Iraq and Iran.
Needless to say, that ain't happening (only ignorant and incurable flag-wavers believe the silly claptrap about the US armed forces
being "THE BEST").
Furthermore, it is clear that by it's latest terrorist action the USA has now declared war on BOTH Iraq and Iran.
This is so important that I need to repeat it again:
The USA is now at war, de-facto and de-jure , with BOTH Iraq and Iran.
I hasten to add that the US is also at war with most of the Muslim world (and most definitely all Shias, including Hezbollah and
the Yemeni Houthis).
Next, I want to mention the increase in US troop numbers in the Middle-East. An additional 3'000 soldiers from the 82nd AB is
what would be needed to support evacuations and to provide a reserve force for the Marines already sent in. This is NOWHERE NEAR
the kind of troop numbers the US would need to fight a war with either Iraq or Iran.
Finally, there are some who think that the US will try to invade Iran. Well, with a commander in chief as narcissistically delusional
as Trump, I would never say "never" but, frankly, I don't think that anybody at the Pentagon would be willing to obey such an order.
So no, a ground invasion is not in the cards and, if it ever becomes an realistic option we would first see a massive increase in
the US troop levels, we are talking several tens of thousands, if not more (depending on the actual plan).
No, what the US will do if/when they attack Iran is what Israel did to Lebanon in 2006, but at a much larger scale. They will
begin by a huge number of airstrikes (missiles and aircraft) to hit:
Iranian air defenses Iranian command posts and Iranian civilian and military leaders Symbolic targets (like nuclear installations
and high visibility units like the IRGC) Iranian navy and coastal defenses Crucial civilian infrastructure (power plants, bridges,
hospitals, radio/TV stations, food storage, pharmaceutical installations, schools, historical monuments and, let's not forget that
one, foreign embassies of countries who support Iran). The way this will be justified will be the same as what was done to Serbia:
a "destruction of critical regime infrastructure" (what else is new?!)
Then, within about 24-48 hours the US President will go on air an announce to the world that it is "mission accomplished" and
that "THE BEST" military forces in the galaxy have taught a lesson to the "Mollahs". There will be dances in the streets of Tel Aviv
and Jerusalem (right until the moment the Iranian missiles will start dropping from the sky. At which point the dances will be replaced
by screams about a "2nd Hitler" and the "Holocaust").
Then all hell will break loose (I have discussed that so often in the past that I won't go into details here).
In conclusion, I want to mention something more personal about the people of the US.
Roughly speaking, there are two main groups which I observed during my many years of life in the USA.
Group one : is the TV-watching imbeciles who think that the talking heads on the idiot box actually share real knowledge and expertise.
As a result, their thinking goes along the following lines: " yeah, yeah, say what you want, but if the mollahs make a wrong move,
we will simply nuke them; a few neutron bombs will take care of these sand niggers ". And if asked about the ethics of this stance,
the usual answer is a " f**k them! they messed with the wrong guys, now they will get their asses kicked ".
Group two : is a much quieter group. It includes both people who see themselves as liberals and conservatives. They are totally
horrified and they feel a silent rage against the US political elites. Friends, there are A LOT of US Americans out there who are
truly horrified by what is done in their name and who feel absolutely powerless to do anything about it. I don't know about the young
soldiers who are now being sent to the Middle-East, but I know a lot of former servicemen who know the truth about war and about
THE BEST military in the history of the galaxy and they are also absolutely horrified.
I can't say which group is bigger, but my gut feeling is that Group Two is much bigger than Group One. I might be wrong.
I am now signing off but I will try to update you here as soon as any important info comes in.
The Saker
UPDATE1 : according to the Russian website Colonel
Cassad , Moqtada al-Sadr has officially made the following demands to the Iraqi government:
Immediately break the cooperation agreement with the United States. Close the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. Close all U.S. military bases
in Iraq. Criminalize any cooperation with the United States. To ensure the protection of Iraqi embassies. Officially boycott American
products.
Cassad (aka Boris Rozhin) also posted this excellent caricature:
UPDATE3 : al-Manar reports that two rockets have landed near the US embassy in Baghdad.
UPDATE4 :
Zerohedge
is reporting that Iranian state TV broadcasted an appeal made during the funeral procession in which a speaker said that each
Iranian ought to send one dollar per person (total 80'000'000 dollars) as a bounty for the killing of Donald Trump. I am trying to
get a confirmation from Iran about this.
UPDATE5 : Russian sources claim that all Iranian rocket forces have been put on combat alert.
UPDATE6 : the Russian heavy rocket cruiser "Marshal Ustinov" has cross the Bosphorus and has entered the Mediterranean.
The Essential Saker III: Chronicling The Tragedy, Farce And Collapse of the Empire in the Era of Mr MAGA
Order Now The Essential Saker II: Civilizational
Choices and Geopolitics / The Russian challenge to the hegemony of the AngloZionist Empire
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Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdl Mahdi has now officially revealed that the US had asked him to mediate between the US and Iran
and that General Qassem Soleimani to come and talk to him and give him the answer to his mediation efforts. Thus, Soleimani was
on an OFFICIAL DIPLOMATIC MISSION as part of a diplomatic initiative INITIATED BY THE USA.
If this is true, it makes America's murder of General Soleimani even more outrageous. This would be like the USA sending an
American regime official to some other country for a negotiation only to have him/her drone striked in the process!
America reveals its malign character as even more sick that even its opponents have thought possible.
Perhaps, Iran should request that Mike Pompeo come to Baghdad for a negotiation about General Soleimani 's murder and then
"bug splat" Pompeo's fat ass from a drone!
"For one thing, the US will now become an official and totally illegal military presence in Iraq. This means that whatever SOFA
(Status Of Forces Agreement) the US and Iraq had until now is void."
-I actually read somewhere that the Iraqi government is just a caretaker government and even thought it voted to remove foreign
forces, it is not actually legally binding.
I'm no lawyer. I don't see why that would matter. If a caretaker government is presented with a crisis, why would it not have
the authority to act?
That said, It could be the line the US government chooses to use to insist its presence is still legal. If course the MSM will
repeat and repeat and make it seem real.
Couldn't agree more. When I read that my jaw dropped and I'm sure my eyes went huge. I just couldn't believe they could be that
stupid, or that immoral, that sunk in utter utter depravity. They truly are those who have not one shred of decency, and thus
have no way of recognising or understanding what decency is. Pure psychopath – an inability to grasp the emotions, values, and
world view of those who are normal. This truly is beyond the pale, and this above everything else will ensure the revenge the
heartbroken people of Iran are seeking. May God bless them.
The US Armed Forces do not need to be 'THE BEST". All they need is mountains of second rate ordinance to re-bury Iraq bury Iran
under rubble. They can then keep their forces in tightly fortified compounds and bomb the c**p out of any one who wants to 'steal
their oil', or any one who wants to 'steal the land promised by God to the Chosen People'. The U.S. has always previously been
limited in their avarice for destruction by their desire to be viewed as the 'good guy'. This limitation has now been stripped
away. There is now nothing to stop the AngloZionist entity except naked force in return.
"realistic option we would first see a massive increase in the US troop levels, we are talking several tens of thousands, if not
more (depending on the actual plan)."
Yes, but these are not part of a single force, many of these are more a target than a threat. Besides, they need to be concentrated
into a a few single forces to actually participate in an invasion.
The Saker
To understand troop size and relevance think along these lines. For every US front line soldier there will be 5 others in support
roles, logistics etc. So for every front line fighting Marine there will be 5 others who got him there and who support him in
his work. 10,000 front line fighting troops means 50,000 troops shipping out to the borders of Iran. I think perhaps you would
need 100,000 US front line troops for an invasion AND occupation (because we all know if they go in they aren't going to leave
quickly) We're talking about half a million US troops, this simply isn't going to happen for multiple reasons, not least they
need to amass at some form of base (probably Iraq – yeah right) maybe Kuwait? They'd just be a constant sitting target. Saker
is correct in that if this goes down it's going to be an air campaign (will the Iranians use the S300s they have?) and possibly
Navy supported. the Israelis will help out but in turn make themselves targets at home for rocket attacks. Again I can't see it
happening, it would take too long to arrange plus from the moment it kicks off every US base, individual is just a target to the
majority of anti US forces spread across the whole middle east. I expect back door diplomacy, probably to little effect, and a
ham fisted token blitz of cruise missiles and drone bombs at Iranian infrastructure, sadly this will not work for the Americans,
we will have a long running campaign on ME ground but also mass terrorist activity across the US and some of its allies. Its a
best guess scenario but if that plays out whatever happens to Iran this war will be another long running death by a 1000 cuts
for the US and will guarantee Trump does not get re-elected.
Whoever sold this to Trump (Bolton via Pompeo? Bibi?) has really lit the touch paper of ruin. Yes it stinks of Netanyahoo but
it also reaks of full strength neocon, Bolton style. Trump is dumb enough to fall for it and obviously did.
1. To read the Colonel Cassad website in English or any other language, just go to
https://translate.yandex.com/ and then paste in the Cassad URL, which
is given above but again, it's https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/
The really nice thing is that when you click on links, Yandex Translate automatically translates those links. Two problems, though.
1. For some unknown reason, Yandex always first translates Cassad as English-to-Russian, and then you have to click on a little
window near the top left, to again request Russian-to-English and then it translates everything fine. I do not experience this
problem when using Yandex on any other website. 2. Unlike what Benders-Lee intended when he invented the web browser, the "back
button" almost doesn't work on Yandex Translate. So always right-click to open links in a new tab.
2. The US could probably carry out a large number of air attacks, but the Iranian response would be to destroy all the Gulf
oil facilities AND everything worth bombing in Israel. This potential for offense is Iran's best defense, and, I think, the main
reason why there hasn't been a war. Iran's air defense missiles are probably more effective than the lying MSM will admit, and
might shoot down a large percentage of the humans and aluminum the US would throw at Iran, but it's a matter of attrition, and
Iran would suffer grave damage. We can't rule out that that might be the plan since the Empire is run by psychopaths. A US Army
elite training manual, from 2012 in Kansas, implied that by 2020, Europe would not be a major power. Perhaps they were thinking
that Europe would go out of business from a lack of Persian Gulf oil.
3. As for a ground war against Iran, I don't think the US or even the US with the former NATO coalition, would have any hope
and they know it. A real invasion force would require at least 250,000 troops, probably 500,000, maybe more. 80 million very determined
and united Iranians, many of whom who don't fear martyrdom, would make the Vietnam War look like a bad picnic with fire ants
. Yes, Vietnam had jungle for guerillas to hide behind, but South Vietnamese society was divided and many supported the Americans.
Iran has no such division. Even the Arab province of Khuzestan would stand united, knowing how the Shiite Arabs are mistreated
in the Eastern Province and in Kuwait.
Count me in as part of group two. As a former U.S. Army service member I can assure anyone reading this that this action is an
historic strategic mistake. What the Saker has outlined above is very likely. There is most probably no way to walk back now.
Who in the ME would negotiate with the U.S. Government? Their perfidy is well known. Many citizen in this country feel like they
are held hostage by a government that doesn't represent their interests or feelings. I hope the people in the ME know this.
Since the folks in the ME know that the US is a "pretend democracy" they also realize that the people of the USA are just as oppressed
by the AngloZionist regime as the people abroad. Frankly, I have traveled on a lot of countries and I have never come across anything
like real hostility towards the US American people. The very same people who hate Uncle Shmuel very much enjoy US music, literature,
movies, novel ideas, etc. I believe that the Empire is truly hated across the globe, but not the people of the USA.
Kind regards
The Saker
As long as people of the USA tolerate their government criminal activities around the world, and this is happening for last 70
years, I don't agree with your comment. These crimes are commited in the name of people of the USA, who are doing nothing to prevent
them. As for movies coming from US, most of them are propaganda about 'exceptional nation'. No thanks.
The United States of America is not a democracy, it is a constitutional republic. That being said, the fall elections are going
to be of significant interest.
Couldn't agree with you less Saker. They share the spoils of war, generation after generation. From the killing of indigenous
population to neocolonial resource extraction today, they get their cut. You cannot have it both ways, enjoying the spoils of
war and hiding behind invalid rationalizations, pretending you have no-thingz to do with that.
Russian TV says that there were anti-war demonstrations in 80 (!) US cities.
I don't have the time to check whether this is true, but it sure sounds credible to me.
The Saker
This information is true. I personally took part in the march in Denver, Colorado. I would estimate we had about 500 people,
which is a lot more than most anti-war protests have ever gotten in recent memory.
Do not count out the possibility of a sudden large and massive anti-war movement suddenly springing out of nowhere.
Unfortunately, I do not see how "peaceful" protests will accomplish anything on their own. Rioting may be necessary. The system
needs to be shut down and commerce slow to a crawl so that nobody may ignore this.
I agree that there will first be a period of violent confusion, followed by -- well, what sane person even wants to think about
what possible horrors lie ahead?
The threat of one or more spectacular false flag attacks to further fan the flames would also appear to be a possibility.
Real evil has been unleashed, that is clear. The empire has decided to fight, and to fight very dirty.
Wasn't the Saker working in the employ of the US or NATO when they attacked Srbija without cause? Because that was my understanding.
Actually, no. I was working at the UN Institute for Disarmament Research.
But thanks for showing everybody how ugly, petty and clueless ad hominem using trolls can be!
The Saker
"I can't say which group is bigger, but my gut feeling is that Group Two is much bigger than Group One. I might be wrong."
My personal observation is unfortunately the opposite. I think the population that is over 40 is probably leans 80% toward
the TV-watching imbecile category with zero critical thinking abilities and exposure to four plus decades of propaganda. The population
under 40 is largely too apathetic to have an opinion and unwilling to engage in research.
History will most likely play out in disaster resulting from a corrupt ruling class, systemic institutional rot, and brain-washed
public not realizing what's happened.
I will hazard a guess and say there are far more men than women in Group 1, and many more draft-age young adults of both sexes
in Group 2.
But by and large a disturbing number of people in America regard world events as being akin to a football game, with Team A
and Team B and a score to be kept. If things don't appear to be going well for their "team," they speak and behave irrationally,
with crass statements like "nuke the whole place and turn it into a glass parking lot." Impressive, isn't it? Grown adults, comporting
themselves like overindulged little children, always accustomed to getting their way – and displaying a terrifying willingness
to set the whole house on fire when they don't.
It is a spiritual illness which pollutes the USA. Terrible things will have to happen before the society can become well, again
Even if only 20% of the population join us, that will be enough. Because guess what? The TV-watching imbeciles are fat, lazy,
and they won't do anything to support the government either, and they definitely aren't brave enough to get in the way of an angry
mob
It's interesting to me, this comment of Sakers'. I have been thinking, with these revelations of the utter depravity and total
lack of what was once called "honour " and treating the enemy with respect, of a few instances which seemed to show me that not
all of America was like this.
There is a scene in the much loved but short lived** TV series "Firefly" in which the rebel "outsider" spaceship Captain offers
a doctor on the run a berth with them. The Doctor says "but you dont like me. You could kill me in my sleep" to which the Captain
replies "Son, you dont know me yet, So let me tell you know, If i ever try to kill you, you will be awake, you will be facing
me, and you will be armed"
Exactly I thought. There is a Code of Honour by which battles used to be fought. This latest by US has shown how low it's Ruling
Regime is, that is doesn't not see that. But from examples like the above, I gathered that there are people in America who still
hold to it closely – and that's good to know.
** Short lived because it showed as it's heroes a group of people who lived outside the Ruling Tyrannical Regime, who had fought
for Independence and lost, and now lived "by their wits" and not always according to law. Not surprising that the rulers of US
weren't going to allow that to go to air!!
Unfortunately I believe the largest group in the USA is the "nuke 'em group". All of my friends watch Fox and none have an understanding
of the empire.
Sake thank you as always for your excellent work. What do you think Iran will attack first?
Thanks Saker for this discussion/information space you provide when nothing is very trustworthy and on what is a holiday week
end for you.
Two points:
Never underestimate the perfidy of the Kurds. They held back on the censure/withdrawal vote in the Iraqi\
parliament and are probably offering withdrawal airport space for US military.
And Agreed, about most Americans being absolutely horrified and ashamed.Even Alex Jones had to put Syrian Girl on and to post
her on video.banned. One of his callers demanded that Alex apologize to his listening audience on "bended knee" for his support
of Trump's attack on Iran. When Alex tried to schmooze
the irate caller -- The man started yelling -- "Who cares, Alex, who cares about Iran my neighbors have no jobs
and are dying from drug overdoses. who cares about Israel? Let them take care of themselves."
Trump has sealed his own fate on many levels and ours her in looneylandia. It is said that a nation gets the leadership it
deserves. We are about to become a nation of the yard-sale.
Whew, this is something to chew on and try to digest. That first point jumped right off the page. General Soleimani was on an
official diplomatic mission, requested by the U.S.! They set him up and were waiting for him to get in his car at the airport
and go onto the road.
The entire world will know there is no way to justify this. It is just as ugly as the public murder of JFK. They have zero credibility
in all they say and do. It will be interesting to see who supports what is coming and who have gotten the message from this murder
and have decided they cannot support this beast.
How many missiles does the us have in the middle east?
How many air defense missiles does have iran?
Does iran have the ability to destroy us airbases to prevent aircraft from attacking iranian territory? That would be my first
move: destroying the ennemy s fighter jets while they are still on the ground.
How many missiles does iran can launch ? How far can they hit?
I think these are important questions if we want to make a good assessment of the situation
Thank you for the continuing courageous, fact-based reporting.
All as-yet-unenslaved-minds of the oppressed people living under the auspices of the empire share the horror of what has happened,
made worse so, for I personally, learning the evil duplicity of the 'fake' diplomacy of the masters of the U.S.A. administration.
If there had been any credibility whatsoever, left for the U.S.A. diplomatic integrity, it is now completely murdered.
I should like to point out, yet again, the perverse obviousness of the utter subordination of the utterly testiclesless
america n ' leadership ' by the affiliates, dually loyal extra-nationals, aligned to the quasi-nation of
pychopathic hatred against humanity.
In spite of, and now increasingly because of, the absurd perception management/propaganda agencies, completely controlled by
this aforementioned affiliation, and their ongoing absurd efforts, people are becoming aware of the ultimate source of the hatred
and agenda we re witnessing in the ME, and indeed, in ever country under the auspices of the empire.
It is becoming impossible to cover, even for the most timid followers of the citizens of empire-controlled nation states.
The war continues against the non-subliminated citizens, and will certainly escalate as the traction of the perception-management
techniques have been pushed way over their best-before date.
Even not wanting to know this, people are becoming aware of it.
I urge all those self-identifying with this affiliation of secretive hatred against humanity to disavow either publicly, or
privately, this collective of hatred.
The recusement of the fifth-column will undermine these machinations.
It is now the time to realize that no promise of superior upward mobility, in exchange for activities supporting the affiliation,
is worth the stark prospect of complete destruction of the biosphere.
Saker: what makes you think it will just be a couple of days of bombing? I would have thought they would set up a no fly zone
then fly over that country permanently blowing the shit out of any military thing on the ground until the gov collapses.
Iran doesn't have the ability to prevent this & running a country under these conditions is impossible.
Set up a no-fly zone over Iran? Iran is well aware of American air-power. They have a multi-layer air defense. And I wouldn't
be surprised that the Iranian's are capable of taking out U.S. satellites.
Iran knows their enemy. They have been preparing for conflict with the U.S. for 40 years. This is a sophisticated, and highly
advanced nation, with brilliant leadership. They understand what their weaknesses are, and what their strengths are.
The wild cards are threefold: Russia. China. North Korea. If one wants to think about the possible asymmetrical capabilities
of those three, let alone the pure power their militaries, it boggles the mind.
Prediction: The U.S. stands down on orders of their own military. People like John Bolton quietly pass away in their sleep.
The only no fly zone to be implemented will be on all american warplanes over Iran and Iraq. Do you remember the multimillion
drone that went down? Multipliy it by hundreds of manned planes. God, how delusional can you be?!!!
You have a fighting force that is a disgrace composed by little girls that start screeming once they get bullets flying over their
heads. You have aircraft battle groups that are sitting ducks waitng to go to the bottom of the sea. Wake up and get your pills,
man!
Paul23, from where will the aircraft take off to implement your "no-fly zone"? Any air base within 2,000 km would be destroyed
by a shower of cruise missiles and possibly drones.
It is Group 1 -- loud, reactionary, extremely vulgar, militant parasites -- which defines the US national character. Exceptional
and indispensable simply mean "entitled to other peoples' natural resources and labour output". Trying to reason with these lowlives
is a waste of time. Putin understands this; hence the new Russian weapons. The latter will be needed very soon.
Americans are a good people but America is one of the most heavily propagandized nations in the world. The media is corrupt.
The educational systems teach a sanitized version of history. But that is only a part of it.
Pro-Military propaganda is everywhere. Even before the Superbowl, jet bombers fly over the stadium – as if Militarism constituted
a basic American value. At Airports, "Military Personnel" are given preferential boarding. At retail stores customers are asked
to make donations to "military families." College football games are dedicated to "Military Appreciation Day." High Schools work
in unison with Military Recruiters to steer students into the Military. Even playground facilities for children that have video
displays display pro military messages. And that is just the tip of the iceberg.
Most of this propaganda is paid for out of the obscene military budget. The average citizen doesn't have a chance.
Americans are a good people, if they really knew what was being done in their name, they would put a stop to it.
Militant parasites do live in a world of total lies, deception, and delusion but never at the expense of their survival
instincts. US imperial coercion, mayhem, and murder globally are absolutely crucial to the American way of life, and the 99% know
it. Their living standards would drop enormously without the imperial loot. Thus, they dearly yearn for all the repression, war,
and chauvinism they vote for and more.
One thing is telling, at least for me. Who the f in the right state of mind kills other state's official and then admits of doing
it?!? The common sense sense tells me that you do something and to avoid bigger consequences you stay quet and deny everything.
Just like CIA is doing. Trump just put US military personnel in grave danger. We know how they accused Manning for showing the
to the world US war crimes. They put him in the jail for what Trump just did. But, I cannot believe that they are that much stupid.
If US does not want war, as Trump is saying, they could have done this and then blame someone else because now it has been shown
that they wanted to "talk" to Iran, as Iraqis PM said. At least, US brought new meaning to the word "talk"
The most damaging, no most devestating, assymetrical attack on the US would be a 'non violent' attack.
Let me quickly explain.
It has been well known since the exposure of the man behind the curtain during the great financial crisis of 2007-08 that all
Human operations – all Human life in fact – is financialised in some way.
Some ways being so sophisticated or 'subtle' that barely 1 person in 1000 is even aware, much less capable of understanding
them, much less the financial control grid (and state / deepstate power base) which empoverishs them and enslaves them to an endless
cycle of aquiring and spending 'money'.
Look deeply and the wise will see how 'Human resources' (as opposed to Human Beings) are herded like cattle to be worked on
the farm, 'fleeced', or slaughtered as appropriate to the money masters.
We have been programmed, trained, and conditioned to call 'currency units' (dollar/euro/pound/yuan, etc) 'money', when they
are actually nothing of the sort, they are state or bank issued money substitutes.
In the middle east and north africa some leaders recognised this determined how to escape slavery and subjegation. They attempted
to field this knowledge like an economic-nuke, but without the massive protection required, and they were destroyed by the empire
– Sadam Hussain with his oil for Gold (and oil for Euros) program, and Col. Gadaffi of Libya with his North African 'Gold Dinar'
and 'Silver Durham' Islamic money program.
To cut a very long story short – the evil empire depends upon all nations and peoples excepting thier pieces of paper currency
units as 'real' money – which the empire print / create in unlimited quantities to fund thier war machine and global progrram
of domination.
All financial markets are either denominated or settled in US Dollars (or are at least convertable).
All Nations Central Banks (except Irans I believe) are linked via various US Dollar exchange / liquidity mechanisms, and all
'settle' in US Dollars.
Currently all nations use US controlled electronic banking communications / exchange / tranfer systems (swift being the most
well known).
Would it therefore not make sence to go for the very beating heart of the Beast – the US financial system?
The most powerful attack against the empire would therefore be against this power base – the global reserve currency – the
US dollar – and the US ability to print any quantity of it (or create digits on a screen and call them 'Dollar Units').
It would be pointless trying to fight an emnemy capable of printing for free enough currency to buy every resource (including
peoples lives) – unless that super ability was destroyed or disrupted.
Example of a massive nuclear equivilent attack on the beast would be an internal and major disrruption of interbank electronic
communications (at all levels from cash machine operation and card payment readers up to interbank transfers and federal banking
operations).
Shut down the US banking system and you shut down the US war machine.
Not only that you shut down the US ability to buy resources and bribe powerful leaders – which means they wont be able to recover
from such a blow quickly.
Shutting down banking and electronic payments of all kinds would cause the US people – particularly those currently enjoying
bread and circus distraction and pacification – to tear appart thier own communities, and each other, as the spoiled and gready
fight for the remaining resources, including food and fuel.
The 'grid' has been studied in great depth by both Russia and China (and Israel as part of thier neo-sampson option) and we
can therefore deduce that Iran has some knowledge of how it works and where the weak links are (and not just the undersea optical
cables and wireless nodes).
I, and a thousand other people have always said, the best, perhaps only way to defeat the US and end its reign of terror on
this Earth is to take away its ability to create out of thin air the Worlds global reserve currency – the US Dollar.
Reducing the US to an empoverished 3rd world state by taking its check book away would be a worthy and lasting revenge and
humiliation.
" I, and a thousand other people have always said, the best, perhaps only way to defeat the US and end its reign of terror on
this Earth is to take away its ability to create out of thin air the Worlds global reserve currency – the US Dollar. "
No, the best way would be for each nation to ditch the intertwined, privately ( Rothschild ) controlled central banks, and
to return to printing their own money. Anything, short of that will just perpetuate the same system from a different home base
( nation ), most likely China next. This virus can jump hosts and it will given a chance.
Who knows what will happen, but an actual boots on the ground invasion of Iran will not happen. Iran is not Irak and things have
changed since that war.
US does not have 6 to 12 months to gather it's forces and logistics for an invasion (remember, the election is coming), plus
US no longer has the heavy lift assets to do this. Toss in the fact that Iran is now on a war footing and has allies in the general
AO, hired RoRo's and other logistics and supply assets will be targets before they get anywhere near the ports or beaches to off
load. Plus, you can kiss oil goodbye, Iran will close the straights a nanosecond after the first bomb is in the air.
An air assault such as Serbia will be very expensive, Iran will fight back from the first bomb if not before, and Iran has
a pretty viable air defense system and the missiles to make life miserable for any cluster of troops and logistics within roughly
300 kilometers of the borders if not longer. Look at a map. There is a long border between Iran and Irak, but as such and considering
the terrain, any viable ground attack has to come from Irak territory. With millions of Iraki's seething at what Uncle Sugar just
did and millions of Iranians seething at what Uncle Sugar just did, any invading troops will not be greeted with showers spring
blossoms. To paraphrase a quote, 'You will be safe nowhere, our land will be your grave.'
Toss in the fact that an invasion of Irak, if even half successful, will put American troops on a war footing perilously close
to Russian territory and possibly directly on the Russian Lake, aka Caspian Sea, and sovereign territory of Russia. Won't happen,
VVP will not allow it.
Ergo, in spite of all the bluster and chest beating, at best all Foggy Bottom can do is bomb, bomb some more and bomb again.
The cost in airframes and captured pilots will be a disaster and if RoRo's and other logistic heavy lift assets or bases are hit,
the body bags coming back to Dover will be of numbers that can not be hidden as they are today with explanations that the dead
are victims of training accidents or air accidents.
Foggy Bottom, and Five Points with Langley, have painted themselves in to a corner and unfortunately for them, (and it's within
the realm of possibility that Five Points egged Trump on for this deal regardless of their protestations of innocence and surprise)
they are now in a case of put up or shut up. As a point of honor they will continue down the spiral path of open warfare and war
is like a cow voiding it's watery bowels, it splatters far beyond the intended target.
As my friend said a few years ago, damn you, damn your eyes, damn your souls, damn you back to Satan whose spawn you are. Go
back to your fetid master and leave us in peace.
Never The Last One, paper back edition. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1521849056
A deep look in to Russia, her culture and her Armed Forces, in essence a look at the emergence of Russian Federation.
"UPDATE2: RT is reporting that "One US service member, two contractors killed in Al-Shabaab attack in Kenya, two DoD personnel
injured". Which just goes to prove my point that spontaneous attacks are what we will be seeing first and that the retaliation
promised by Iran will only come later."
Saker, Some of us might be curious to know what your experience with the UN Institute for Disarmament Research informs you about
the imminent Virginia gun bans and confiscations planned for this year and next. Can Empire afford to fight an actual shooting
war on two fronts, one externally against Iraq/Iran and the second internally against its own people, some of whom will paradoxically
be called away to fight on the first front? Perhaps the two conflicts could become conjoined as Uncle Shmuel mislabels every peaceful
gun owner who just wants to be left alone as a foreign enemy-sympathizer and combatant by default, thereby turning brother against
brother in a bloody prolonged hell in the regions immediately around Washington DC? Could the Empire *truly* be that suicidal?
'Mr. Trump, the Gambler! Know that we are near you, in places that don't come to your mind. We are near you in places that you
can't even imagine. We are a nation of martyrdom. We are the nation of Imam Hussein You are well aware of our power and capabilities
in the region. You know how powerful we are in asymmetrical warfare You know that a war would mean the loss of all your capabilities.
You may start the war, but we will be the ones to determine its end '
Gen. Soleimani (2018)
Hello Saker,
I would like to ask you a question.
According to the Russian nuclear doctrine "The Russian Federation reserves the right to use nuclear weapons in response to the
use of nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction against itself or its allies and also in response to large-scale aggression
involving conventional weapons in situations that are critical for the national security of the Russian Federation and its allies."
In your opinion does Russia consider Iran such an ally? Will Russia shield Iran against USAn / Israeli nuclear strikes? In case
of an imminent nuclear strike on Iran is Russia (and possibly others) going to issue a nuclear ultimatum to the would-be aggressor?
And in case an actual nuclear attack on Iran happens is Russia going to retaliate / deter further attacks with its own nukes?
What is your opinion?
One thing: please do not start explaining why the above scenario is completely unthinkable, unrealistic and why it would never
ever happen. I need your opinion on the possible events if such an attack does take place or it is about to happen. I do not need
reasons why it would not happen; I need your opinion what might take place if it does happen. If you cannot answer my question,
have no opinion or simply do not want to answer it please let me know it.
In case there is a formal commitment by Russia – one I know not of – when, where was it made?
Thanks in advance.
I think USA still has nuclear option.
They will not hesitate to use it on Iran if Israel is in danger.
So, I think Iran shall be defeated anyway, as USA is much stronger.
Wrong. If the US uses nukes, then this will secure the total victory of Iran.
The Saker
How does this secure a total victory, dear Saker? Please help my to understand this: Nukes on every major city, industrial site,
infrastructure with pos. millions dead – how is this a victory?
I think that if Iran were to launch some devastating missiles into Israel, either a US ship/submarine or Israel will launch a
nuclear bomb into Iran. The US knows there is nothing to be gained by a ground invasion. If we [the US] were to start launching
missiles into Iran, Iran would rightfully be launching sophisticated arms back toward US ships and Israel and the US can't stand
for that. We are good at dishing it out, but lousy at receiving it.
I can only believe we assassinated Solieman [apologies] because it is the writhing of a dying petrodollar. The US is desperate.
But I don't understand how going to war is supposed to help?
"Beijing's ties with Tehran are crucial to its energy and geopolitical strategies, and with Moscow also in the mix, a broader
conflagration is a real possibility"
Last but not least, Happy Nativity to all Orthodox Christians (thanks for the beautifully illustrated Orthodox calendar, The
Saker.)
Let us all pray for peace.
Trump is the King of the South. Killing under a flag of parley is a rare thing these days and is the reason why Trump will end
up going to war with no allies by his side just like the path mapped oit for him in Daniel.
It's not a blunder.
Trump's goals pre-assassination:
1) withdraw US troops from the ME ("Fortress America") and
2) placate Israel
This is how it is done. Not a direct "hey guys, we have to bring the boys home." Trump tried that and got smashed by the Deep
State and Israel. Instead, he is going to force the Islamic world to do the talking for him by refusing to host our pariah army
(that's all they have to do, not destroy a major US base or two). Then even the Deep State will admit it's a lost cause. He can
say he did all he could while achieving his goals.
As The Saker pointed out, the troops being sent now are to evacuate, not to conquer Tehran. Next time this year the US will have
its troops home and Trump will be reelected
Looks like Trump administration buried the Treaty of non-proliferation once and for all. From now on only a country with
nuclear weapons can be viewed as a sovereign country.
Notable quotes:
"... To remind the reader once more, however, none of this would be happening had Iran not abandoned its "nuclear ambiguity" by agreeing to the 2015 Rouhani-Obama deal, with that event in hindsight being the tripwire that provoked the American military into wantonly escalating tensions with Iran ..."
"... Because they realized that the maximum costs that the Islamic Republic could inflict on it in response to their actions could be "manageable". ..."
"... The lesson to be learned from all of this is that the possession of nuclear weapons safeguards a country's sovereignty by enabling it to inflict "unmanageable"/"unacceptable" costs on its foes and thus deter their aggression, failing which leaders on both sides can be manipulated into a serious crisis. ..."
Trump is wholly responsible for his own actions, but he -- just like the Ayatollah -- is
being pushed in a direction where it's impossible to back down and still "save face". Neither
men can afford to do so, which makes it likely that a lot more people than just Maj. Gen.
Soleimani might be about to die.
To remind the reader once more, however, none of this would be happening had Iran not
abandoned its "nuclear ambiguity" by agreeing to the 2015 Rouhani-Obama deal, with that event
in hindsight being the tripwire that provoked the American military into wantonly escalating
tensions with Iran (despite believing that they're doing so in "self-defense)
Because they realized that the maximum costs that the Islamic Republic could inflict
on it in response to their actions could be "manageable".
The lesson to be learned from all of this is that the possession of nuclear weapons
safeguards a country's sovereignty by enabling it to inflict "unmanageable"/"unacceptable"
costs on its foes and thus deter their aggression, failing which leaders on both sides can be
manipulated into a serious crisis.
Ukraine is now a pawn in a big geopolitical game against Russia. Which somehow survived 90th when everybody including myself has
written it off.
That's why the USA, EU (Germany) and Russia pulling the country in different directions. But the victory of Ukrainian nationalists
is not surprising and is not solely based on the US interferences (although the USA did lot in this direction) pursuit its geopolitical
game against Russia. Distancing themselves from Russa is a universal trend in Post-Soviet space. And it often takes ugly forms.
So Ukraine in not an exception here. It is part of the "rule". Essentially the dissolution of the USSR revised the result on WWII.
And while the author correctly calls Ukrainian leader US stooges, they moved in this direction because they feel that it is necessary
for maintaining the independence. In other words anti-Russian stance is considered by the Ukrainian elite as a a pre-condition for mainlining
independence. Otherwise people like Parubiy would be in jail very soon. They are tolerated and even promoted because they are useful.
It repeats the story of Baltic Republics, albeit with a significant time delay. There should be some social group that secure independence
of the country and Ukrainian nationalists happen to be such a group. That's why Yanukovich supported them and Svoboda party (with predictable
results).
Notable quotes:
"... The ideological fissures that are growing in the United States are beginning to resemble the warring camps that characterize the Ukrainian political world. The divide in Ukraine pits groups who are described as "right wing" and many are ideological descendants of real Nazis and Nazi sympathizers against groups with a strong affinity to Russia. This kind of gap cannot be bridged through conventional negotiations. ..."
"... Jump ahead now to the April 2014 "uprising" of anti-Russian forces in the Ukraine (Maidan 2). The US was firmly on the side of the protesters, who ultimately succeeded in ousting the elected President. And who were helping lead this effort? ..."
"... The US support, both overt and covert, for Ukrainian politicians is grounded in an anti-Soviet (now anti-Russian) ideology. We have convinced ourselves that Russia is hell bent on world domination. Therefore we must do whatever is necessary to stop Russia, which includes uncritical, blind support for elements in Ukraine that also detest the Russians. But in doing so we have closed our eyes to the filthy underbelly of the virulent anti-Semitism that lurks in western Ukraine. ..."
"... US meddling in the Ukraine is astonishing in its breadth. It ranges from the fact that the wife of former President Viktor Yuschenko was an American citizen and former senior official in the US State Department. Do you think there would be no complaints if Melania Trump was born in Russia and had served in the Russian Foreign Ministry? Yet, most Americans are happily ignorant of such facts. ..."
"... US interference was not confined to serendipitous relationships, such as the Yushchenko marriage. It also included the open and active funding of certain political groups and media outlets. The US State Department sent money through a variety of outlets. One of these was the Consortium for Elections and Political Process Strengthening aka CEPPS. ..."
"... This is : ..."
"... Count me as one of the people who is outraged by the hypocrisy and stupidity now on display in the United States. I am not talking about Trump. I am referring to the Republicans and Democrats and pundits and media mouthpieces who are fuming about Russian citizens writing on Facebook as one of the worst catastrophes since Pearl Harbor or 9-11. ..."
"... There clearly is meddling going on in America's political landscape. But it isn't the Russian Government. No. There are foreign and domestic forces aligned who are keen on portraying Russia as a threat to world order that must be opposed by more defense spending and tougher sanctions. That is the propaganda that dominates the media in the United States these days. And that is truly dangerous to our nation's safety and freedom. ..."
"... A CIA guy recently said the US only interferes to 'promote democracy' - tell that to Australia, Vietnam, Mexico, Chile, Congo, Russia, Ukraine...it's a long long list. ..."
"... An independent Ukraine was also a project of German foreign policy after the Brest-Litowsk Treaty (the equivalent of the Versailles Treaty, only aimed at Russia) SO I have o wonder how much of the enthusiasm for Vicky Nuland's Israel friendly Nazi state-let (oh what irony!) is a product of Germany wanting to reassert itself in the east, using NATO solidarity as a fig leaf. Maybe they will make Ukraine import a lot o Africans "refugees" so that Soros' project of creating a brown Europe will be advanced in the Slavic sphere as well as the west. ..."
"... The liberal party - who provides the prime-minister - EU leader Hans van Baalen and Belgian ex-prime minister Guy Verhostad held a controversial speech on the Maidan square in support of the protesters that the EU will support them. ..."
"... I wouldn't put to much stress on Bandera having been a bad guy. His enemies were no better. They just won the war and the victors write history. The deeper problem of Ukraine is the fact that in the East of the country (and maybe even the majority of the country) Bandera is indeed regarded as a villain. But in the West he is a hero to this day. Even in Soviet times people from Western Ukraine were regarded as "fascists" by much of the rest of the country. No wonder as there were anti soviet partisans until late in the fifties. ..."
"... "Prorussian" Kutshma turned into a Ukrainian "patriot" (such is the logic of statehood) and the same thing happened with Yanukovich. People forget that he would have signed an association agreement with Europe had Europe not refused because he was insufficiently "democratic". ..."
"... But the West wanted it all. They wanted Ukraine firmly in the "Western" camp. Thereby they ripped the country apart. As a good friend of mine who has studied in Kiev in Soviet times remarked: to ask Ukraine to choose between East and West is like asking a child in divorce proceedings who it liked more: daddy or mummy? ..."
"... A very interesting conversation between Victoria Nulland and ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt, caught at picking the future rulers of liberated Ukraine : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QxZ8t3V_bk This is not meddling. This is a defensive (preemptive?) action against Russian agression. ..."
"... I've never seen such an intense barrage of propaganda before in my life. America is fracturing apart like Ukraine. This is no coincidence. In both countries, oligarchs have seized power, the rule of law abandoned and there is a rush of corruption. ..."
"... What we did to Ukraine is shameful in every way. A remember a video of a pallet of money being unloaded from a USG place at Kiev during Maidan 2. That's in addition to Nuland's bag of cookies. I always thought that one of the objectives of our meddling in Ukraine was to make Sevastopol into a NATO naval base. ..."
"... Our leaders are the biggest hypocrites on the planet. The Ukraine was almost evenly divided between pro-Western and pro-Russian sides. Our government, rather than waiting for an election, assisted an armed rebellion against the elected pro-Russian government. Among the groups our government allied with in this endeavor were out and out Nazis. ..."
The ideological fissures that are growing in the United States are beginning to resemble the warring camps that characterize
the Ukrainian political world. The divide in Ukraine pits groups who are described as "right wing" and many are ideological descendants
of real Nazis and Nazi sympathizers against groups with a strong affinity to Russia. This kind of gap cannot be bridged through conventional
negotiations.
Who is the United States government and media supporting? The Nazis . You think I'm joking. Here are the facts, but we must go
back to World War II
:
When World War II began a large part of western Ukraine welcomed the German soldiers as liberators from the recently enforced
Soviet rule and openly collaborated with the Germans. The Soviet leader, Stalin, imposed policies that caused the deaths of almost
7 million Ukrainians in the 1930s--an era known as the Holomodor).
Ukrainian divisions, regiments and battalions were formed, such as SS Galizien, Nachtigal and Roland, and served under German
leadership. In the first few weeks of the war, more than 80 thousand people from the Galizien region volunteered for the SS Galizien,
which later known for its extreme cruelty towards Polish, Jewish and Russian people on the territory of Ukraine.
Members of these military groups came mostly from the organization of Ukrainian nationalists aka the OUN, which was founded in
1929. It's leader was Stepan Bandera, known then and today for his extreme anti-semitic and anti-communist views.
CIA documents just recently declassified show strong ties between US intelligence and Ukrainian nationalists since 1946.
Jump ahead now to the April 2014 "uprising" of anti-Russian forces in the Ukraine (Maidan 2). The US was firmly on the side
of the protesters, who ultimately succeeded in ousting the elected President.
And who were helping lead
this effort?
Secretary of the Ukrainian National Security and Defence Council is Andriy Parubiy. Parubiy was the founder of the Social National
Party of Ukraine, a fascist party styled on Hitler's Nazis, with membership restricted to ethnic Ukrainians.
The Social National Party would go on to become Svoboda, the far-right nationalist party whose leader,
Oleh Tyahnybok was
one of the three most high profile leaders of the Euromaidan protests. . . .
Overseeing the armed forces alongside Parubiy as the Deputy Secretary of National Security is
Dmytro Yarosh , the leader of the Right
Sector – a group of hardline nationalist streetfighters, who
previously boasted they were ready for
armed struggle to free Ukraine.
The US support, both overt and covert, for Ukrainian politicians is grounded in an anti-Soviet (now anti-Russian) ideology.
We have convinced ourselves that Russia is hell bent on world domination. Therefore we must do whatever is necessary to stop Russia,
which includes uncritical, blind support for elements in Ukraine that also detest the Russians. But in doing so we have closed our
eyes to the filthy underbelly of the virulent anti-Semitism that lurks in western Ukraine.
US meddling in the Ukraine is astonishing in its breadth. It ranges from the fact that the wife of former President Viktor
Yuschenko was an American citizen and former senior official in the US State Department. Do you think there would be no complaints
if Melania Trump was born in Russia and had served in the Russian Foreign Ministry? Yet, most Americans are happily ignorant of such
facts.
But Viktor Yushchenko is not an American who speaks a foreign language. He is very much a Ukrainian nationalist and steeped in
the anti-Semitism that dominates the ideology of western Ukraine. During the final months of his Presidency, Yushchenko made the
following declaration:
In conclusion I would like to say something that is long awaited by the Ukrainian patriots for many years I have signed a decree
for the unbroken spirit and standing for the idea of fighting for independent Ukraine. I declare Stepan Bandera a national hero of
Ukraine.
Without hesitation or shame, Yushchenko endorsed the legacy of Bandera, who had happily aligned with the Nazis in pursuit of his
own nationalist goals. Those goals, however, did not include Jews. And here is the ultimate irony--Bandera was born in Austria, not
the Ukraine. So much for ideological consistency.
US interference was not confined to serendipitous relationships, such as the Yushchenko marriage. It also included the open
and active funding of certain political groups and media outlets. The US State Department sent money through a variety of outlets.
One of these was the Consortium for Elections and Political Process Strengthening aka CEPPS.
This is :
a USAID program with other National Endowment for Democracy-affiliated groups: the National Democratic Institute for International
Affairs, the International Republican Institute and the International Foundation for Electoral Systems. In 2010, the reported disbursement
for CEPPS in Ukraine was nearly $5 million.
The program's efforts are described on the USAID website as providing "training for political party activists and locally elected
officials to improve communication with civic groups and citizens, and the development of NGO-led advocacy campaigns on electoral
and political process issues."
Anyone prepared to argue that it would be okay for Russia, through its Foreign Ministry, to contribute several million dollars
for training party activists in the United States?
What we do not know is how much money was being spent on covert activities directed and managed by the CIA. During the political
upheaval in April 2014 (Maidan 2), there was this news item:
Over the weekend, CIA director John Brennan travelled to Kiev, nobody knows exactly why, but some speculate that he intends to
open US intelligence resources to Ukrainian leaders about real-time Russian military maneuvers. The US has, thus far, refrained from
sharing such knowledge because Moscow is believed to have penetrated much of Ukraine's communications systems – and
Washington isn't about to hand over its surveillance secrets to the
Russians.
Do you think Americans would be outraged if the head of Russia's version of the CIA, the SVR or FSB, traveled quietly to the United
States to meet with Donald Trump prior to his election? I think that would qualify as meddling.
Count me as one of the people who is outraged by the hypocrisy and stupidity now on display in the United States. I am not
talking about Trump. I am referring to the Republicans and Democrats and pundits and media mouthpieces who are fuming about Russian
citizens writing on Facebook as one of the worst catastrophes since Pearl Harbor or 9-11.
There clearly is meddling going on in America's political landscape. But it isn't the Russian Government. No. There are foreign
and domestic forces aligned who are keen on portraying Russia as a threat to world order that must be opposed by more defense spending
and tougher sanctions. That is the propaganda that dominates the media in the United States these days. And that is truly dangerous
to our nation's safety and freedom.
Good post pt.. thanks... i never knew ''the wife of former President Viktor Yushchenko was an American citizen and former senior
official in the US State Department.'' That is informative.. i recall following this closely back in 2014.. the hypocrisy on display
in the usa at present is truly amazing and frightening at the same time.. it appears that the public can be cowed very easily..
On the twitters, you would be accused of "whatabouttism" - which is the crime of excusing Putin's diabolism by pointing out
American interference with the internal politics an elections of other nations. A CIA guy recently said the US only interferes
to 'promote democracy' - tell that to Australia, Vietnam, Mexico, Chile, Congo, Russia, Ukraine...it's a long long list.
An independent Ukraine was also a project of German foreign policy after the Brest-Litowsk Treaty (the equivalent of the
Versailles Treaty, only aimed at Russia) SO I have o wonder how much of the enthusiasm for Vicky Nuland's Israel friendly Nazi
state-let (oh what irony!) is a product of Germany wanting to reassert itself in the east, using NATO solidarity as a fig leaf.
Maybe they will make Ukraine import a lot o Africans "refugees" so that Soros' project of creating a brown Europe will be advanced
in the Slavic sphere as well as the west.
It's not only the US. The EU borg are also meddling. In my country we had a referendum about Ukraine. The population voted "Against"
on the question: "Are you for or against the Approval Act of the Association Agreement between the European Union and Ukraine?"
This was the only referendum that was done since it was implemented in 2015. A second one is being organized on the Intelligence
and Security Services which has controversial parts with regard to access to internet traffic.
This referendum will take place on March 21, 2018 and will probably be voted against because of the controversial elements
(in part because there is still living memory of our Eastern neighbors in the second world war)
These 2 will probably be the last. Our house of representatives have voted yesterday to end the referendum law (with a majority
vote of 76 out of 150 representatives!)
So much for democracy. The reason stated that the referendum was controversial (probably because they voted against the EU
borg). Interesting is that the proposal was done by the party that wanted the referendum as a principal point. This will almost
certainly ensure that the little respect left for traditional parties is gone and they will not be able to get a majority next
elections.
The liberal party - who provides the prime-minister - EU leader
Hans van Baalen and Belgian ex-prime minister Guy
Verhostad held a controversial speech on the Maidan square in support of the protesters that the EU will support them.
I wouldn't put to much stress on Bandera having been a bad guy. His enemies were no better. They just won the war and the
victors write history. The deeper problem of Ukraine is the fact that in the East of the country (and maybe even the majority
of the country) Bandera is indeed regarded as a villain. But in the West he is a hero to this day. Even in Soviet times people
from Western Ukraine were regarded as "fascists" by much of the rest of the country. No wonder as there were anti soviet partisans
until late in the fifties.
Even in the nineties anybody who travelled in Ukraine could feel the tension between East and West. The Russians were certainly
aware of it and mindful not to rip the country apart they cut the Ukrainians an enormous amount of slack. Of course they supported
"their" candidates and shoveled money into their insatiable throats. Only to be disappointed time and again. "Prorussian"
Kutshma turned into a Ukrainian "patriot" (such is the logic of statehood) and the same thing happened with Yanukovich. People
forget that he would have signed an association agreement with Europe had Europe not refused because he was insufficiently "democratic".
Really the West should have been content with things as they were.
But the West wanted it all. They wanted Ukraine firmly in the "Western" camp. Thereby they ripped the country apart. As
a good friend of mine who has studied in Kiev in Soviet times remarked: to ask Ukraine to choose between East and West is like
asking a child in divorce proceedings who it liked more: daddy or mummy?
Really the West (not only the US -the Eu is also guilty) is to blame. It is long past time to get down from the high horse
and stop spreading chaos and mayhem in the name of democracy,
An informative column. The coup & later developments soured me on the MSMedia. I'm an initiate into modern Russian
history: NATO in the Ukraine = WW3!
Some additional history:
A Ukrainian nation did not exist until after WW1; one piece was Russian, another Polish and another Austrian. The Holodomor
is exaggerated for political purposes; the actual number dead from famine appears to be 'only' 2M. It wasn't Soviet bloody mindedness,
it was Soviet agricultural mismanagement; collectivizing agriculture drops production.
They did this right before the great drought of the 1930s - remember the dustbowl. There was a famine in Kazakestan at the
same time; 1.5M died.
The Nazis raised 5 SS divisions out of the Ukraine. As the Germans were pushed back they ran night drops of ordnance into the
Ukraine as long as they could. The Soviets had to carry on divisional level counter insurgency until 1956. After the war, Gehlen,
Nazi intelligence czar, kept himself out of jail by turning over his files, routes & agents to the US. He also stoked anti Soviet
paranoia.
The Brits ended up with a whole Ukr SS division that they didn't want, so they gave it to Canada. Which is why Canada has such
cranky policy around the Ukraine!
A very interesting conversation between Victoria Nulland and ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt, caught at picking the future rulers
of liberated Ukraine : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QxZ8t3V_bk
This is not meddling. This is a defensive (preemptive?) action against Russian agression.
I'm sure you'd like us to ignore Bandera. I bet he liked children and dogs. Just like Hitler. Bandera was a genuine bad
guy. There is no rehabilitating that scourge on society. Nice try though.
I am giving you the benefit of the doubt that your final comment is sarcasm. When you have two senior US Government officials
who will and will not constitute a foreign government, you have gone beyond meddling. It is worse.
The media is hysterical. Today, Putin's Facebook Bot Collaborator contacted the Kremlin before his mercenaries attacked Americans
in Syria.
I've never seen such an intense barrage of propaganda before in my life. America is fracturing apart like Ukraine. This
is no coincidence. In both countries, oligarchs have seized power, the rule of law abandoned and there is a rush of corruption.
A World War is near. The realists are gone. The Moguls are pushing Donald Trump pull the trigger. Either in Syria with an assault
to destroy Hezbollah (Iran) for good or American trainers going over the top of trenches in Donbass in a centennial attack of
the dead.
Hallelujah and jubilation! We're in full agreement on this subject. What we did to Ukraine is shameful in every way. A
remember a video of a pallet of money being unloaded from a USG place at Kiev during Maidan 2. That's in addition to Nuland's
bag of cookies. I always thought that one of the objectives of our meddling in Ukraine was to make Sevastopol into a NATO naval
base.
I would definitely want to see a full account of what support we provided to the nazi thugs of Svoboda and Pravy Sektor. We
have a long history of meddling, at least twice as long as the Soviet Union/Russia. But that does not mean we should stop investigating
the Russian interference in our 2016 election. Just stop hyperventilating over it. It no more deserves risking a war than our
continuing mutual espionage.
Our leaders are the biggest hypocrites on the planet. The Ukraine was almost evenly divided between pro-Western and pro-Russian
sides. Our government, rather than waiting for an election, assisted an armed rebellion against the elected pro-Russian government.
Among the groups our government allied with in this endeavor were out and out Nazis.
As a result of this rebellion, the Russian majority in Crimea overwhelming voted to leave the Ukraine and rejoin Russia, which
they had been part of for over 150-years. While our government continues to provide military aid to Israel, which used force of
arms take over the West Bank, it imposed sanctions against Russia when the people of Crimea voted to join their former countrymen.
Mind boggling.
"... What's not well understood is that Comey's and Mueller's joint intervention to stop Bush's men from forcing the sick Attorney General to sign the certification that night was a short-lived moment. A few days later, they all simply went back to the drawing board to draft new legal loopholes to continue the same (unconstitutional) surveillance of Americans. ..."
"... Mueller is another spook dredged up from the bowels of Hell, in order to fool the honest citizens and ensure Deep State and its useful idiots continue on their way to Oblivion. ..."
"... Some history: Robert Swan Mueller III married his childhood sweetheart Ann Cabell Standish in 1966, three years after the JFK assassination. Her grandfather, Charles Cabell, was second in command at the CIA during the Bay of Pigs failure and was fired, along with Allen Dulles and Richard Bissell, for lying to him about the mission, which had been doomed to failure before its start. Her great uncle, Earle Cabell Jr. was the mayor of Dallas when it hosted the JFK assassination in 1963. Documents declassified in the last few years revealed that Earle Cabell was himself a "CIA asset" as well. Before anyone thinks that Mueller married into the CIA, his own great uncle was the aforementioned Richard Bissell. ..."
"... A closer review, here, shows Mueller's career covering up CIA criminal activities, to include Pan Am 103, the prosecution of Manuel Noriega, BCCI, 9/11 et al. He was promoted to handle those cases by former CIA Director GHW Bush. A week before 9/11 he took over as Director of the FBI, appointed by the son of the CIA Director, George W Bush. ..."
"... Joseph Misfud, a former ambassador for Malta, has been identified in Mueller's report as a Russian agent without proof. In fact, Misfud's career and allegiance has been to western intelligence. Mueller offers no proof to the contrary. But if in fact Misfud is an agent of Russia shouldn't he have made an attempt to interview him. Or interview Assange, who actually received the information? Or interview Craig Murray who claims to know about how the information was transferred from the DNC to Wikileaks? Or to William Binney? ..."
Robert Mueller Wednesday implied he would have indicted Donald Trump if he could have,
resurrecting his saint-like status among Democrats who will now likely go for impeachment. But
who is the real Bob Mueller? Ex-FBI official Coleen Rowley explained on June 6, 2017.
Mainstream commentators display amnesia when they describe former FBI Directors Robert
Mueller and James Comey as stellar and credible law enforcement figures. Perhaps if they
included J. Edgar Hoover, such fulsome praise could be put into proper perspective.
Mueller with President George W. Bush on July 5, 2001, as Bush nominated him to be FBI
Director. (White House photo)
Although these Hoover successors, now occupying center stage in the investigation of
President Trump, have been hailed for their impeccable character by much of Official
Washington, the truth is, as top law enforcement officials of the George W. Bush Administration
(Mueller as FBI Director and James Comey as Deputy Attorney General), both presided over
post-9/11 cover-ups and secret abuses of the Constitution, enabled Bush-Cheney fabrications
used to launch wrongful wars, and exhibited plain vanilla incompetence.
TIME Magazine would probably have not called my own disclosures a " bombshell memo
" to the Joint Intelligence Committee Inquiry in May 2002 if it had not been for Mueller's
having so misled everyone after 9/11. Although he bore no personal responsibility for
intelligence failures before the attack, since he only became FBI Director a week before,
Mueller denied or downplayed the significance of warnings that had poured in yet were all
ignored or mishandled during the Spring and Summer of 2001.
Bush Administration officials had circled the wagons and refused to publicly own up to what
the 9/11 Commission eventually concluded, "that the system had been blinking red
." Failures to read, share or act upon important intelligence, which a FBI agent witness termed
"
criminal negligence " in later trial testimony, were therefore not fixed in a timely
manner. (Some failures were never fixed at all.)
Worse, Bush and Cheney used that post 9/11 period of obfuscation to "roll out" their
misbegotten "war on terror," which only served to
exponentially increase worldwide terrorism .
Unfulfilled Promise
I wanted to believe Director Mueller when he expressed some regret in our personal meeting
the night before we both testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee. He told me he was seeking
improvements and that I should not hesitate to contact him if I ever witnessed a similar
situation to what was behind the FBI's pre 9/11 failures.
Some of the original detainees jailed at the Guantanamo Bay prison, as put on display by the
U.S. military.
A few months later, when it appeared he was acceding to Bush-Cheney's ginning up
intelligence to launch the unjustified, counterproductive and illegal war on Iraq, I took
Mueller up on his offer,
emailing him my concerns in late February 2003. Mueller knew, for instance, that Vice
President Dick Cheney's claims connecting 9/11 to Iraq were bogus yet he remained quiet. He
also never responded to my email.
Beyond ignoring politicized intelligence, Mueller bent to other political pressures. In the
aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Mueller directed the " post 9/11 round-up " of about 1,000
immigrants who mostly happened to be in the wrong place (the New York City area) at the wrong
time. FBI Headquarters encouraged more and more detentions for what seemed to be essentially
P.R. purposes. Field offices were required to report daily the number of detentions in order to
supply grist for FBI press releases about FBI "progress" in fighting terrorism. Consequently,
some of the detainees were brutalized and jailed for up to a year despite the fact that
none turned out to be terrorists .
A History of Failure
Long before he became FBI Director, serious
questions existed about Mueller's role as Acting U.S. Attorney in Boston in effectively
enabling decades of corruption and covering up of the FBI's illicit deals with mobster Whitey
Bulger and other "top echelon" informants who committed numerous murders and crimes. When the
truth was finally uncovered through intrepid investigative reporting and persistent, honest
judges, U.S. taxpayers footed a $100 million court award to the four men framed for murders
committed by (the FBI-operated) Bulger gang.
For his part, Deputy Attorney General James Comey
, too, went along with the abuses of Bush and Cheney after 9/11 and signed off on a number of
highly illegal programs including warrantless surveillance of Americans and
torture of captives . Comey also defended the Bush Administration's three-year-long
detention of an American citizen without charges or right to counsel.
Up to the March 2004 night in Attorney General John Ashcroft's hospital room, both Comey and
Mueller were complicit with implementing a form of martial law, perpetrated via secret Office
of Legal Counsel memos mainly written by John Yoo and predicated upon Yoo's singular theories
of absolute "imperial" or "war presidency" powers, and requiring Ashcroft every 90 days to
renew certification of a "state of emergency."
The Comey/Mueller Myth
What's not well understood is that Comey's and Mueller's joint intervention to stop Bush's
men from forcing the sick Attorney General to sign the certification that night was a
short-lived moment. A few days later, they all simply went back to the drawing board to draft
new legal loopholes to continue the same (unconstitutional) surveillance of Americans.
Former FBI Director James Comey
The mythology of this episode, repeated endlessly throughout the press, is that Comey and
Mueller did something significant and lasting in that hospital room. They didn't. Only the
legal rationale for their unconstitutional actions was tweaked.
Mueller was even okay with the CIA conducting torture programs after his own
agents warned against participation. Agents were simply instructed not to document such
torture, and any "war crimes files" were made to disappear. Not only did "collect it all"
surveillance and torture programs continue, but Mueller's (and then Comey's) FBI later worked
to prosecute NSA and CIA whistleblowers who revealed these illegalities.
Neither Comey nor Mueller -- who are reported to be "
joined at the hip " -- deserve their current lionization among politicians and mainstream
media. Instead of Jimmy Stewart-like "G-men" with reputations for principled integrity, the two
close confidants and collaborators merely proved themselves, along with former CIA Director
George "Slam Dunk" Tenet, reliably politicized sycophants, enmeshing themselves in a series of
wrongful abuses of power along with official incompetence.
It seems clear that based on his history and close "partnership" with Comey, called "one of
the closest working relationships the top ranks of the Justice Department have ever seen,"
Mueller was chosen as
Special Counsel not because he has integrity but because he will do what the powerful want
him to do.
Mueller didn't speak the truth about a war he knew to be unjustified. He didn't speak out
against torture. He didn't speak out against unconstitutional surveillance. And he didn't tell
the truth about 9/11. He is just "their man."
Coleen Rowley, a retired FBI special agent and division legal counsel whose May 2002 memo to
then-FBI Director Robert Mueller exposed some of the FBI's pre-9/11 failures, was named one of
TIME magazine's "Persons of the Year" in 2002. Her 2003 letter to Robert Mueller in opposition
to launching the Iraq War is
archived in full text on the NYT and her 2013 op-ed entitled " Questions for
the FBI Nominee " was published on the day of James Comey's confirmation hearing. This
piece will also be cross-posted on Rowley's Huffington Post page.)
When these reports come out that share how so-and-so corrupt federal official *actually*
did this and this in his past, my fall back is to share (briefly) such news to my
well-informed European friends.
Unlike "America" that's never been invaded, never suffered through the Black Plague, never
went through an entire continent of revolutions, never met starvation and hundreds of
millions of deaths from WWI & II, – instead, well-informed Europeans look at all
this skullduggery with a shrug of their shoulders.
**If** the more informed Americans took the time to read about the World's History of
carnage and traveled around the world, they would return home far, FAR wiser, and more
informed citizens. What desperate shape America is in.
I am still waiting for someone – anyone – to take issue with Mueller report
itself. I don't believe or trust a word of it. anyone?
Tiu , May 31, 2019 at 22:45
Descriptions such as "failure" and "incompetence" are not how I'd describe the intentional
activities of Mueller, Comey and numerous other people purported working for democracy and
law in the US and elsewhere. They are working purposefully on the New World Order agenda,
which by definition will sooner or later render nation states and their governments obsolete.
They are using the Hegelian Dialectic, Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis, or Problem, Reaction,
Solution to keep the little people running around lining up behind the numerous divisions
that have been created for us with the help of the media and education systems.
jaycee , May 30, 2019 at 21:10
The anthrax attacks of 2001 were the double-tap to follow the events of 9/11, and were
crucial to the successful passage of the Patriot Act. The Patriot Act effectively cancelled
the privacy protections of the U.S. Constitution, and reversed the onus of a presumption of
innocence in U.S. legal practice. The failure of the FBI, under the leadership of Mueller, to
provide or uncover an adequate explanation for the anthrax attacks is a signature black mark
in the FBI's history, if not the history of the republic.
Hank , May 31, 2019 at 09:24
"Failure" is just the icing on the cake that covers up INTENT! "Failure" should really be
"criminal"!
alexandra Moffat , May 30, 2019 at 17:34
I knew that things could not possible be as angelic as portrayed regarding Mueller &
Comey. But I didn't know any details. Any way to get this out in to the MSM. Thank you,
Consortium and Ms Rowley.
BTW, Mueller was paid by us, the taxpayers. We deserve to see him questioned in person,
alive, by a Congressional Hearing.
LJ , May 30, 2019 at 15:05
Well, then logically, one would have to assume that those in Trump's inner circle, for
instance maybe Sessions and Rothstein , who advised and/or went along with the idea that
Mueller should be appointed to investigate his successor and friend Comey were acting in the
hope that Trump would eventually be forced from office. Clearly the information put forth in
this article must have been known to all. Why did Trump go along with Mueller's appointment
when obvious conflict of interest existed.? When an obvious fix was in? Had he no choice or
was he blind and/or being led by the blind? I have read that he is an "extremely stable
genius". At least so he says. How could he then be so stupid? Is he so arrogant that he is
blind or was he intentionally ill advised by his own appointees and possibly the White House
attorney ( I'm not talking Cohen here)? Good thing for him I guess that there was no tape to
erase and the investigation went through to it's bitter end without actual obstruction. At
least he's that smart. If the Democrats had won the Senate in the midterm he would be gone
for certain.
East Indian , June 1, 2019 at 01:46
Mueller was appointed by Rod Rosenstein, on his own counsel. I doubt if the President or
his office had any role in that.
LJ , June 1, 2019 at 14:40
Yeah since Sessions backed out of oversight , recused himself > The guy who volunteered
to wear a wire to record an irrational Trump outburst which might perhaps be used to force
Trump from office through application of the 25th Amendment was behind this appointment.
Trump , the elected President could not stop the appointment of Mueller but could end the
investigation which could automatically be considered as obstruction. Check/Checkmate.
Exactly my point.
Raymond Comeau , May 30, 2019 at 14:14
Mueller is another spook dredged up from the bowels of Hell, in order to fool the honest
citizens and ensure Deep State and its useful idiots continue on their way to Oblivion.
Bob In Portland , May 30, 2019 at 12:40
Some history: Robert Swan Mueller III married his childhood sweetheart Ann Cabell Standish
in 1966, three years after the JFK assassination. Her grandfather, Charles Cabell, was second
in command at the CIA during the Bay of Pigs failure and was fired, along with Allen Dulles
and Richard Bissell, for lying to him about the mission, which had been doomed to failure
before its start. Her great uncle, Earle Cabell Jr. was the mayor of Dallas when it hosted
the JFK assassination in 1963. Documents declassified in the last few years revealed that
Earle Cabell was himself a "CIA asset" as well. Before anyone thinks that Mueller married
into the CIA, his own great uncle was the aforementioned Richard Bissell.
A closer review, here, shows Mueller's career covering up CIA criminal activities, to
include Pan Am 103, the prosecution of Manuel Noriega, BCCI, 9/11 et al. He was promoted to
handle those cases by former CIA Director GHW Bush. A week before 9/11 he took over as
Director of the FBI, appointed by the son of the CIA Director, George W Bush.
Another key player in our current political show is William Barr. While Barr was getting
his law degree he was employed by the CIA. Surprise surprise. One of the main figures in
Russiagate is Paul Manafort, whose career consists of him working with world leaders who were
either put into power by the CIA, kept in power by the CIA, removed from power by the CIA or
murdered by the CIA. It should not be surprising to anyone willing to look that the current
maneuvering appears to many to be an attempt to remove Trump from office.
Joseph Misfud, a former ambassador for Malta, has been identified in Mueller's report as a
Russian agent without proof. In fact, Misfud's career and allegiance has been to western
intelligence. Mueller offers no proof to the contrary. But if in fact Misfud is an agent of
Russia shouldn't he have made an attempt to interview him. Or interview Assange, who actually
received the information? Or interview Craig Murray who claims to know about how the
information was transferred from the DNC to Wikileaks? Or to William Binney?
Robert Mueller is just doing what he's always done: cover up for the CIA.
Many Thanks Bob In Portland. I was an 18 year old soldier in the 101st. Airborne on alert
for the invasion of Cuba so I share you lifetime of frustration.
To the extent that there is "Continuity In Government", this is it. Great research and
information
Mueller's proven himself to be just another mouthpiece for power and the "respected"
establishment. He's been championing the very dangerous lie that the Kremlin interfered in
the '16 election, even though there has never been one piece of credible evidence proving
that Moscow did any such thing.
As this canard gets repeated over and over it's sinking in to the public consciousness
that the Putin administration is something to be feared.
exiled off mainstreet , May 30, 2019 at 00:00
This reveals the deplorable record of Mueller and Comey as lackeys for a corrupt
authoritarian regime.
Failures to read, share or act upon important intelligence, which a FBI agent witness
termed "criminal negligence" in later trial testimony, were therefore not fixed in a timely
manner. (Some failures were never fixed at all.)
Deliberate failures
Tom , May 29, 2019 at 21:20
Isn't this the same Robert Mueller who prosecuted Lyndon LaRouche in the late
eighties?
robert , June 19, 2017 at 20:43
Colleen's article or op ed here seems to be a straight forward, fact based account that
the mainstream media would do well to study and consider [of course they generally wouldnt].
I wonder what all the links she has posted in support show?
I am glad to say I voted for Jill Stein last Nov. She has proven to be too decent for
America, I suppose.
If Americans expected or wanted something better, why did 40% or so last Nov. sit back and
refuse to vote, and those that did vote vote for obvious bums like Trump and Hilary? ?
Rob Roy , May 30, 2019 at 14:41
Thanks, robert, your letter says exactly what I would write. It's not that good people
don't run for office, but the Powers That Be will not allow them to get air time and the MSM
goes along with the exclusion, in fact, strongly supports it. War is the business of the USA
and must not be stopped. Tulsi Gabbard is the one candidate that opposes war she will be
shoved aside, destroyed by lies and ignored by the MSM. I have come to realize Americans are
stupid politically and it's not going to stop. It's not just Americans people in Europe have
good candidates, but, like here, those good candidates will not be allowed to win important
positions. Corbyn comes to mind.
Well, Mr. Comey, should be felling rather safe about now. Why, [you ask] well he is in
GOOD hands, his old friend is going to be working the case. they both were Big Shots in the
FBI and in the Justice Department. And, just like in any other "secret" unit or outfit, those
who are or were in will ALL-WAYS be IN! Mr. Comey, came off as being VERY confident in his
questioning, what is it that he is so confident about?
In a few weeks their could be a very Special hearing, and Mr. Comey will be on the block, but
yet he is or was very comfortable during the questioning on the other day. I, do think, that
this is going to be another "white wash" of the facts, and the Left, then walks away saying
."See, we knew that the GOP was doing this and or that". Mr. Comey and his old time friend
need to be watched!
Hate to say such a thing ..Both of these men, as [honest as they have been portrayed to
be], getting them both together, one "against" the other, all that means is "look, were
BROTHERS together, were both Good Guys, were both former FBI, were of that brotherhood".
Folk's that's something, that is just about as thick as Blood, visa Water. If, someone is NOT
watching, President Trump, will be in some serious crap. Would you, want to talk to Comey
about ANYTHING, knowing that he is so political, and can "turn on a dime"?. Going back, to
the other guy, again would you trust him knowing that he is and has been so close to Comey as
it's being tolk and as it's coming out, be it EVER so slow, but as we go deeper into this
mess, ALL of these "OUTSTANDING Federal Law Officers", their histories WILL, or at the very
least START to show!"
rm , June 8, 2017 at 05:24
Mueller was 911 'speed of deceit' cover-up man.
All he had to do was follow the forensics.
A safe pair of hands,
Michael Morrissey , June 7, 2017 at 12:51
Mythical heroes and real criminals. I know that Coleen was much more the hero herself in
trying to do her job at the FBI (see her Wiki) and now -- much more so -- as an activist and
member (along with Ray McGovern et al.) of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity,
but
Well, I respect her a lot, and I would not like to offend her, but I would love to see how
she would react in a detailed discussion of what is actually known about 9/11 (which for me
is collected in the work of David Ray Griffin). Ditto for Ray McGovern, though I believe he
is somewhat more receptive to what let's call for lack of a better term the "inside job"
theory. (I hope we are past the notion that the govt's laughable conspiracy theory is in any
respect less "speculative" than the solid presentation of facts and argumentation by David
Griffin -- whose work is of course based on that of many others.)
It won't happen, I know. We will all go to our graves, and maybe our children and
grandchildren will too, before the NYT or its equivalent says, "Yes, the US govt perpetrated
9/11 in order to scare the crap out of us and make us do everything we have done since."
Still, Coleen Rowley and Ray McGovern and a few more are way, way ahead of the NYT, their
former employers, and I suppose the majority of the US population, and I am glad to be
counted as among their supporters and admirers.
Richard Adams , June 7, 2017 at 12:20
Now this is what journalist should do. Find the facts and give it to the puplic.
I think he will, I am not kidding . I really believe we are going to see some unbelievably nasty, nasty knives out full out
war ., go back to that speech he gave on the Inauguration Day and HOW VERY INAPPROPRIATE it was viewed by all the "in" crowd
sitting there, all the "in" group, all the Bohemian Grovers like Obama was (an attendee he was, already groomed to be
President years before, so says Zachary King the ex-high Satanist priest who was there yearly and ran into him and was told
his future .) and so many of the others CFR, Trilateral Commission etc. part of the Luciferian loony globalist creeps who
truly believe they run the show and watch out if you are not on their "team" and don't tell me when you watched that -- that
there was no doubt Trump knew he was throwing it right at them, he knows who and what they are–many on here do too from the
comments I have seen –I just don't think Trump got the fact then of how well they have the corporate media totally in the bag
and how even with a blatant lie like "Russia did it", that any idiot knows is bs, they will keep on going and going, I think
that threw him a good bit but if that Inauguration speech is not enough of a signal that he will go to war here shortly–How
about this? -- Secretary of State Tillerson in the last day or so saying he is going forward with making things better with
Russia? If Trump was on board now believing he could make peace with the Deep Staters –No way that statement is made by
Tillerson, that is a statement of "back at ya" No, Trump is a guy who "gets even" and he is not going to roll for them, he may
head fake that way, but he doesn't roll that way, he gets even .and why? Just because LOL, because literally his Father
growing up you to say "You're the King" and he is that guy lol this is going to go nuclear between him and the Obama/Bush/Deep
Staters .He is still getting a feel for what is up 6 months in, I think he now basically has the picture that regardless of
what he does they, the Deep State and the corporate media and the loony left that is clueless but buys into what they are fed,
plan to skin him alive, pour salt on him, and hang him out as a trophy -- warning any future non-insider to get their message
THIS IS WHAT WE DO TO OUTSIDERS! -- much like all future insiders got their message when JFK was shot down by them like a dog
in the street and a "lone nut" was the laughable patsy, no one believes that err except the NYTs lol .Trump now knows there is
NO MERCY coming his way, none nada, that this is bloodsport, why do you think he is yelling at Sessions? Sessions–what a
horrible choice that was and Trump knows it now decided to recuse himself out of the war lol the "ethics" don't you know and
brought in the guy as number 2 who put a hatchet in Trump's back bringing in the cleaner -- Mueller -- Mueller the
professional hatchet man who had no problem screwing the country as to 911, "joined at the hip" to Comey the Deep State
stooge, intends to seek out anything possible to gut and clean Trump for dinner (check out the "team" Mueller has in place–as
if going after Al Capone in a case where everyone knows there is nothing "there" as to Russian "collusion" by Trump -- they
are planning to roll Trump so incredibly badly–no way Trump doesn't know this now thus the screaming at Sessions who now,
having rolled over with his "recusal" LOL , offers to resign like that will reverse the damage he's done .) and destroy him
completely, taxes, investments, businesses–Trump's entire life will be microscoped for anything, ANYTHING, they can hang on
him and every lying disgruntled ex-employee and adversary will be heard from, amplified, and leaked to the globalist corporate
media that loathes him–all of which will have nothing to do with the "Russia" collusion lie that Podesta's 2015 emails show he
came up with to attack Trump bc he was sanely suggesting that not having a war with Russia was a good idea .If you look at
Trump's history, again, he IS NOT, definitely NOT, a nice guy and he has played in the nasty, nasty league of the big money
chase almost all his life and he is, do not forget, a billionaire several times over who has his own private security force
around him at all times and, despite what the media portrays, he has many, many allies .The country will never be the same
again by the time this is "over"–if it ever really ends fireworks are coming beyond our imagination Trump is not going to limp
off into the night and they are not going to let him even if he wanted to he is a cornered Wolverine get some popcorn this is
going to be a wild ride .
Dave P. , June 8, 2017 at 12:31
Tomk: Well done, your analysis is breathtaking. I had flashes in my mind of some of these
things coming. I hope this dirty business of Clinton/Bush/Obama also gets aired out in Public
View, and the Whole World to look at. It blows my mind watching how "The Deep State" is going
after Trump – for almost a year now – who was duly elected President by the U.S.
Citizens. Their only vendetta against him is that he wanted to get along with Russia. A child
can tell that this whole "Russia Gate" is utterly a Fabrication by the Ruling Establishment.
Going on for a year now, these Evil Forces have turned the Country into almost a Lunatic
Asylum.
Obama is all over hatching new plots. He was with Merkel, and a few days back seen with
Justin Trudeau. What a useful tool of the Ruling Establishment Obama is. I bet Trump is
watching all this. He is not that naive as some people think of him . It seems like, either
he is going to submit and leave the scene with guarantees of not bothering him afterwards. or
He is going to fight a fight not seen before in U.S. History. It is hard to tell how it will
end.
Sleepless In Mars , June 7, 2017 at 07:31
"Let me come back again to the waking state. I have no choice but to consider it a
phenomenon of interference. Not only does the mind display, in this state, a strange tendency
to lose its bearings (as evidenced by the slips and mistakes the secrets of which are just
beginning to be revealed to us), but, what is more, it does not appear that, when the mind is
functioning normally, it really responds to anything but the suggestions which come to it
from the depths of that dark night to which I commend it." Agent Breton
The White House wants to silence the media and press. They've lost their bearings. The OCB
case is expanding. McPike won't let go. We won't be fooled again.
Pft , June 7, 2017 at 01:03
Baghdad Bob was more credible and believable than anyone in the MSM today. Its loony
tunes. Maybe that Anthrax did the trick and scares them into submission.
Drew Hunkins , June 6, 2017 at 23:20
Beyond absurdity that an ostensible hustler who ran cover for years for Boston's
ultra-violent Winter Hill Gang now has the authority to overturn the election of the
president of the United States. (Albeit a president as flawed as he is, and NOT due to
anything involving "RUSSIA!")
Tomk , June 6, 2017 at 21:51
Mueller the hatchet man for the Deep State (911 was ok by him it seems, no need to
investigate .) has one purpose and that is to take out Trump as his favorable statements as
to ending the new Cold War with Russia made him an enemy of those who believe they run the
country and who look to profit incredibly by the money they can make from an "enemy" like
Russia–much better than the "terrorism" one they created for us .Appointing Sessions AG
was a really terrible mistake by Trump given his foreseeable recusal on the most important
issue facing Trump (the phony "Russia did it" Trojan Horse to get a Mueller to go fishing to
find, or create, ANYTHING to get rid of him .) Sessions is a loser all around igniting a new
war on drugs – an incredibly unpopular issue Trump did not even run on and although the
cries of "Racist" might be unfair Sessions said some stupid "jokes" that also should have
sidelined him given all the enemies Trump knew he had coming in and what he needed at
AG–an unimpeachable ally .Trump has to know what is up and it is not his nature to sit
back and be harpooned, which is what his enemies do plan ., so this will be a fascinating
year to see what he does to stop them from doing him Don't forget Trump is not a particularly
nice guy and given he is getting some feel for what he is dealing with, and the incredible
gravity of what he is up against, I guarantee we will see some moves coming in response to
his enemies that we have never seen, or had anyone even consider, before .
When gangsters are in control, endless wars slaughter millions of souls
And countries are destroyed by the hit men of the gangster ghouls
The unethical money changers finance their dirty depredations
And corporate cannibals profit from the bloody confrontations
Government by gangsters is now "the rule of law"
And "justice" is in the hands of criminals and outlaws
The language is twisted and debased
To suit these evil demons of the "human race"
Fancy titles and Houses of ill repute
Is where these villains consort and debut
Making "laws" to screw the masses
Yet, people continue to vote for these asses
If there really was "law and order"
These gangsters would be charged with genocide and murder
Instead these war criminals parade on the world stage
When they should be in a big enormous prison cage
[read more at link below] http://graysinfo.blogspot.ca/2017/01/when-gangsters-are-in-control.html
Thanks backwardsevolution, I appreciate your comments.
Cheers Stephen J.
backwardsevolution , June 6, 2017 at 16:14
And President Woodrow Wilson being blackmailed to the tune of $40,000.00 over some love
letters he had sent to a colleague's wife. Mr. Samuel Untermeyer agreed to pay the blackmail
money in return for Wilson appointing Judge Louis Brandeis to the Supreme Court, which he
did.
"Justice Brandeis volunteered his opinion to President Wilson that the sinking of the S.S.
Sussex by a German submarine in the English Channel with the loss of lives of United States
citizens justified the declaration of war against Germany by the United States. Relying to a
great extent upon the legal opinion of Justice Brandeis, President Wilson addressed both
houses of Congress on April 2, 1917. He appealed to Congress to declare war against Germany
and they did on April 7, 1917."
Blackmail and threats still work. Comey always strikes me as being very matter-of-fact and
cavalier in his answers, as if nothing could ever touch him. I mean, even I would have known
not to let Clinton off. He acts as if a mafia-type organization has got his back and he
doesn't have to worry, which is probably the case.
mike k , June 6, 2017 at 17:50
Yes. The chance of the lying, corrupt cowards "representing" us really calling Comey out
on his record are nil. And Trump started a fight with the "intelligence" guys that he now
knows he can't finish, so his lawyers will treat Comey very carefully. (In my fantasy Trump's
lawyers tear Comey apart, and bring up all his rotten record, reducing him to a blubbering
mess ..) Yes I have a fantasy life, but I try not to get it mixed up too much with our
so-called reality.
backwardsevolution , June 6, 2017 at 20:22
mike k – an interesting thing about that Woodrow Wilson blackmailing (in my above
post) is that these guys, with the blackmail knowledge in hand, bankrolled and helped Wilson
get into the White House, and then they blackmailed him AFTER he got there. Of course, this
way they ensured that they had their man all sewn up. They got him there, he owed them, and
they had the damning information. They and they alone end up owning you.
Trump was bankrolled by a few powerful people. I just wonder if the same thing isn't
happening with Trump, some old pictures. Whatever it is, I'm quite sure something
happened.
Joe Tedesky , June 6, 2017 at 22:57
In our family we have a lawyer (now retired) who once worked under Peter Rodino during the
Watergate Hearings. I'll never forget how when I asked my cousin if Nixon would serve time,
she said never, because all the politicians who stood in judgement of Nixon had their own
skeletons in the closet to hide. D.C. is a nest of degenerates, and charlatan fraudsters, but
history proves that this is nothing original. The best 'we the people' can hope for, is when
these masters and mistresses of ours decide it is time to feed us, because maybe they need
our votes. Who knows? Yes blackmail will insure a trustworthy employee every time. John
Lennon had it right, everybody's got something to hide, except for me and my monkey.
evelync , June 6, 2017 at 16:13
sorry, May 2002 not 2001 (above)
Sleepless In Mars , June 6, 2017 at 16:13
This isn't Seattle, but you can see it from here.
OCB is working the case with Bob Miller and Agent Vince.
The mind of the man who dreams is fully satisfied by what happens to him. The agonizing
question of possibility is no longer pertinent. Kill, fly faster, love to your heart's
content. And if you should die, are you not certain of re-awaking among the dead? Let
yourself be carried along, events will not tolerate your interference. You are nameless. The
ease of everything is priceless.
Take it easy. Company has the solution, which is inside the problem.
Democracy is The Tyranny of The Minority!
evelync , June 6, 2017 at 14:44
I am so grateful to Colleen Rowley who has been my heroine, too, since 2001 when she
publicly felt, thank goodness, that she must speak out. Rowley stood up with courage, spunk,
honor, strength of character, respect for the truth, fearless determination to stand alone,
if necessary, in defiance of corruption and lies. Her loyalty was to truth, the constitution
and the people of this country, most of whom toil under challenging circumstances, get sent
to trumped up wars, get ripped off by big banks and after a lifetime of work are still
struggling. Rowley gives us strength and hope that there's something better.
I suspect Colleen Rowley unlike some of the show boaters is herself a modest person and is
just doing what's "necessary" and it's part of who she is.
Thank you, Colleen. I hate being confused by these people who lie to us and serve their
own self interests instead of the public interest.
And how else would we know?
Some of them are pretty good at taking credit and are not as obviously horrific to us as,
say, a Dick Cheney or a Donald Rumsfeld who seem to be more cartoonish characters than
people.
Thank you.
Oz , June 6, 2017 at 14:39
It should also be noted that Mueller was a key figure during the 1980s in the government's
campaign to frame and silence Lyndon LaRouche and his movement, a campaign which former AG
Ramsey Clark described as the most appalling campaign of its sort that he had seen (and
combatting such campaigns is his specialty.)
F. G. Sanford , June 6, 2017 at 14:00
Jedgar, as comedienne Lily Tomlin called him, was a career blackmailer, eavesdropper,
extortionist and enabler of organized crime dynasties. It's not a coincidence that, in her
comedic vehicle as a telephone operator, her routine suggested "listening in" as an
extracurricular activity perhaps not disdained by Jedgar himself. Sure, a warrant was needed
to use evidence gained by wiretapping in a court of law. But if the motive was blackmail, who
needs a warrant? Apparently, this reality is lost on the American public. We should certainly
realize that every phone conversation is now retrievable by electronic means. All the FISA
Court mumbo jumbo and its purported "checks and balances" is a farce designed to create a
veneer of legitimacy. What does anybody think Jedgar bothered getting a warrant to bug Martin
Luther King – then subsequently revealed the playbacks and suggested that King commit
suicide? Anyone who has spent even a modicum of time looking onto the fraudulent Warren
Commission Report must realize that Jedgar was completely complicit. On the ballistics
evidence alone, he could have blown the case wide open. At best, he was a criminal
coconspirator in a massive coverup. At worst, he ranks among the most vile traitors in our
nation's history. This, then, is the legacy of the organization to which the two
coconspirators in the present article appertain. On November 22, 1963, our government was
hijacked by "deep state" militarists, and a system of permanent war economy was installed. We
have descended deeper into that abyss with each passing year. The elected government now
serves as a mere facade. I'd suggest that doubters read Vince Salandria's book, especially
the recently added chapter on Ruth and Michael Paine at the end. Check the contents –
you'll find it. It's free online, and can be accessed from several internet addresses. Unless
this sentinel crime is addressed, there is no hope for American democracy. We're done.
ratical . org/FalseMystery
ratical . org/falsemystery
ratical . org/FM
ratical . org/fm
Take out the spaces on either side of the dots to use the links. And, I'd advise, don't be
fooled by "leaks" which bolster the "deep state" agenda, even if they arrest the leaker.
The Postal service states it photographs every piece of mail.
backwardsevolution , June 6, 2017 at 15:26
F.G. Sanford – thank you for the links. This is going to be excellent reading. That
Vince Salandria is quite the guy:
"Only by the war production of World War II were we brought out of the great depression.
It was not difficult to discern that we were artfully thrust into the war. I can recall that
at the time of Pearl Harbor I was in the 8th grade of Vare Junior High School in
Philadelphia. On December 8, 1941, in my math class, our teacher, Miss Wogan, suggested that
rather than do our math we should discuss current events.
I went to the front of the classroom and informed my classmates that I could not accept as
plausible President Roosevelt's assertion that the attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise,
sneak attack. I pointed out that all of us had known for months about the tension between the
U.S. and Japan. I asked how, in light of those months of crisis and tautly strained relations
between the two countries, could the battleships at Pearl Harbor have been lined up so
closely together, presenting perfect targets for the Japanese? How could the planes I saw in
the newspapers burning on our airfields have been positioned wing-tip to wing-tip?
I reminded the class that President Roosevelt had promised that he would not send our
troops into a foreign war. I then offered my conclusion that inviting the Pearl Harbor attack
was President Roosevelt's duplicitous device to eliminate the powerful neutralist sentiment
in our country while thrusting us into the war."
Very smart for Grade 8!
backwardsevolution , June 6, 2017 at 15:41
"On November 23, 1963 I discussed the assassination with my then brother-in-law, Harold
Feldman. I told him that we should keep our eyes focused on what if anything would happen to
the suspected assassin that weekend. I said that if the suspect was killed during the
weekend, then we would have to consider Oswald's role to be that of a possible intelligence
agent and patsy. I told him if such happened, the assassination would have to be considered
as the work of the very center of U.S. power. [ ]
When Oswald was served up on camera as disposable Dealey Plaza flotsam and jetsam and was
killed by Jack Ruby I saw a subtle signal of a high level conspiracy. There is every reason
to think that intelligence agencies, when they choose a killer to dispose of a patsy, make
that choice by exercising the same degree of care that they employ in selecting the patsy.
Their choice of Jack Ruby much later would – by providing a fall-back position for the
government – serve the interests of the assassins. As the Warren Report would unravel,
a deceased Ruby's past connections to the Mafia produced a false candidate for governmental
apologists to designate as the power behind the killing.
Immediately following the assassination I began to collect news items about Lee Harvey
Oswald. A pattern began to emerge. Oswald's alleged defection to the Soviets, his alleged
Castro leanings as the sole member of a Fair Play for Cuba chapter in New Orleans, his posing
with a rifle and a Trotskyist newspaper, his writings to the Communist Party USA, his study
of the Russian language while in the Marine Corps, told me that he was not a genuine leftist,
but rather was a U.S. intelligence agent."
Oswald was set up from the get-go. Poor kid, he didn't realize he was playing with
fire.
The Kennedy assassination, 9/11, the other false flags, color revolutions, coups are all
the work of those who possess a psychopathic mind.
Virginia , June 6, 2017 at 15:43
Remarkable! Good for you.
David Smith , June 6, 2017 at 17:34
B.E. as The Empire of Japan's operations plan called for invasion of The Philippines and
Wake Island, both defended by United States forces, The United States would have been at war
with Japan without a Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. I know The White House was not privy to
Japan's operation plan, but it was a certainty that any Japanese move would involve taking
Malaya and the Dutch East Indies therefore it would be idiotic to assume they would leave The
Philippines alone. In short, the idea that Roosevelt knew and let Pearl Harbor happen to get
us into the war is a steaming pile of cowflap. If you are unconvinced by my argumentation and
wish to debate further it would be my pleasure. Good luck, you're gonna need it.
BannanaBoat , June 7, 2017 at 14:31
According to an old edition of US History magazine, shortly after P.H., pilots at the USA
airfeild near Manila spotted a squadron of Nippon fighterbombers circling their airfield, the
Japanese failed to spot the airfield and the USA pilots began to scramble. But the pilots
were ordered out of their planes, resulting in devastation during the Japanese
fighterbombers' next pass.
BannanaBoat , June 8, 2017 at 16:41
The high command allowed the USA Pacific airfleet to be destroyed.
David Smith , June 9, 2017 at 13:37
Fallacy of Begging The Question. You continue to fail to address my argumentation.
David Smith , June 8, 2017 at 15:24
B.B. it is unclear what point you are trying to make, but it is clear it does not address
my argumentation.
LJ , June 1, 2019 at 18:20
Classified Information and you don't have clearance and nobody else does either. What was
that old quote? "When you make assumptions ..," Any opinion on this is as valid as anyone
else's without any way to clarify the positions. Fact is we won the War and the Japanese
never had a chance. They were suckered into the conflict , Now if you look at History the USA
lied about every conflict we ever entered into from the Indian wars up to our 21 bases in
Syria now.. We never told the truth once. Not in over 100 interventions in South America, not
with 300,000 dead in the Philippines, Grenada, Vietnam, Iraq, Libya, Name one. Never . You
believe what you want but I can tell you this , the best indicator of future performance is
past performance. And, if you repeat the same experiment over and over and expect a different
outcome you are not in search of truth but instead looking for an excuse to advance an
alternate version of the truth. In other words rather than truth, one chooses to present a
version of the truth thereby demonstrating a preconceived bias against the truth. An aversion
to the truth. Peace baby.. Right On.
Brad Owen , June 7, 2017 at 11:58
I rather agree with EIR's description in:"Why FDR's explosive 1933-145 recovery worked".
The trick was Glass-Steagall and the re-structuring of RFC into a Hamiltonian credit bank all
to cut Wall Street outta the loop. To suggest that WWII ended the Depression is to put the
cart before the horse. It was the massive generation of credit for re-industrializing and
infrastructure, for use in CIVILIAN areas of life, then RE-TOOLED for war production, that
ended the war. Minus the New Deal, we would have gone into war grossly unable to equip
ourselves for the task. FDR also new the LONG-RANGE threat of the Fascist-NAZI movements as
being the outcome of longtime Synarchist plans that preceded and succeeds WWII, obtained from
O.S.S. and military and French intelligence (see Synarchy against America by Anton Chaitkin,
from EIR). Its' VITALLY important to realize that China's New Silk Road is exactly like FDR's
New Deal and can succeed in developing the World, without war or Western Bankers' speculation
. The WWII was partly meant to DERAIL FDR's New Deal demonstration of spectacular development
without the need for WAR or Wall Street SPECULATION. this is THE SAME fear the DEEP STATE of
the Trans-Atlantic Community has of Russia, China and their New Silk Road policy.
curious , June 3, 2019 at 04:17
B.E.
Yes, good instincts for an 8th grader. Just some oddities to add to your analysis, especially
the "sneak attack" version.
For those who have a critical thinking gene, I'll add this: Japan was, and still is an
island. Shipping and fuel was very well know even back then. It wasn't too difficult to have
intel regarding the amount of steel they were importing, nor fuel. They didn't grow these
large ships and multiple planes in the rice fields.
Many people in the US still don't realize Hawaii was not a US State. So was this an attack on
the US, or just some US assets? Given the fact that there were many spotters on most of the
islands because of Japanese activity across the South Pacific, we were never clueless on
their movements, nor surprised. Hiding aircraft carriers, even to a man with only a 4x
binoculars, is extremely difficult. I'll leave that bit of research as to the amount of
island spotters the US had for you to read at your leisure. I think it very odd that our
newest and bestest aircraft carriers and battleships were not ported in Pearl. This speaks
volumes as to our advance knowledge of the Pearl Harbor attack.
Aaaghh! Damn. Hello everybody! Guys I am trying hard. Almost finished synchronising the
subtitles for "Evening with Vladimir Soloviev" TV-show, one of the series. I could have
upload it with the subs only, but I do want to make DUB for You and everyone else. So, I need
a little more time. Unfortunately this series is outdated enough already. However I wouldn't
say that there is much changes happened during this period. And also I wanted to say About
Megyn Kelly's FAKE NBC NEWS interview. I guess all of You have seen it already and read
YouTube's comments that it was CUTTED hard! Huh. Another evidence of the Western fake news.
Just now I have watched 60Minutes TV-show and this was a theme of the relay. Anyway. I look
forward to upload the material ASAP. Although I am not sure You need this.
Jessejean , June 6, 2017 at 13:34
O god I love this woman. Smart brave educated articulate and patriotic–how could she
possibly be heard from in the Amerikan media? I watched Joy Reid disgrace herself last night
on MSNBC in place of Rachel disgracing herself. It just breaks my heart. But we still have
Consortium News, Robert Parry and Colleen " the hammer" ;-) Rowley. Now, could someone please
explain what's really going on with Ms Reality? She seems like a cat's paw, not a whistle
blower.
backwardsevolution , June 6, 2017 at 14:18
Jessejean – I agree wholeheartedly. Coleen Rowley is a very brave lady. Thank you,
Ms. Rowley for a great article and for not being afraid to tell the truth.
mike k , June 6, 2017 at 13:16
Until one understands that the US government is a criminal enterprise, and that everyone
involved in it is a criminal, with extremely few exceptions – you will not understand
what goes on there. The same holds true for the main stream media, these are criminal, lying
propaganda outlets for the rich and powerful who own them. Also the US Military is a vicious
criminal enterprise pure and simple.
If you are inclined to cut any of these actors any slack whatever, and forget who they
really are, you will simply become a victim of their lies and criminal activities. Regardless
of the unceasing barrage of positive images and ideas we are soaked in from childhood, we
need to constantly remind ourselves of who these evil people really are, and the horrendous
crimes they are responsible for. The idea that James Comey, the head of the secret police is
some kind of role model is outrageous. This man deserves to be imprisoned for the rest of his
life.
Dave P. , June 6, 2017 at 15:50
The irony of all this is that America could be a great positive force for good and
beneficial change on the planet. It's location, between two great Oceans, it's physical
beauty, and it's resources – America has it all. There is nothing like America on this
Planet. [It makes me feel sad about American Indians, who lost it all during the last three
or four centuries]. And now, for the last five decades or so, all the best and the brightest
from top schools in India, now China, Eastern Europe, and elsewhere (and Iran too !) come to
U.S. Universities, and work here. One of the major engines of our high tech sector boom
– and leadership in the World – has been due to this foreign born talent. And
this talent has contributed a lot in other sectors as well.
And from all what I have read, after the collapse of Communism, the World was and is
willing to accept American leadership. If you watch Putin's speeches at Valdai International
Discussion Club, he acknowledges America's leadership, but not complete subservience to
U.S.
Would big countries and ancient civilizations like China and India, or big countries like
Brazil, South Africa agree to be completely subservient to U.S.? Should these countries (and
the other countries of the World) become U.S.'s vassal states. It is preposterous to think of
it. What happened to this idea of Freedom, which is drilled into masses here 24/7 by the
Media and the Ruling Establishment. As we want to live free, don't these countries would like
to live free.
And we are waging wars on the Nations to bring freedom and democracy – and American
values. What a hypocrisy?
And we are discussing about Comey and Mueller here! It is hard to comprehend to what lower
depths the country has sunk to.
Trump was not wrong when he was saying during the campaign that the whole place ( Washington)
is a swamp. The country was ready for a Populist. Unfortunately, Trump was not the right
one.
I do not have much hope that the upper echelons in this country will learn some wisdom to
change their course.
backwardsevolution , June 6, 2017 at 17:18
Dave P. – good points. I don't think Trump was the "perfect" one, but I think he
could have been the "right" one, had they laid off him, but he's had everything but the
kitchen sink thrown at him (the pussy hats, the Berkeley rioters, the media, the Democrats,
his own Republican Party). The Deep State has gone after him like crazy because they're
fighting for their very survival, and Trump was going to end it.
I think he WOULD have ended the wars, cut back on NATO, brought affordable healthcare,
enforced the border laws (without which you don't have a country, at least not for long),
brought jobs back from China/Asia, rebuilt infrastructure, and protected the citizens.
It appears people don't want that. Go figure.
Dave P. , June 6, 2017 at 17:40
backwardsevolution, I agree with you. I think Trump meant to do all these things you
mentioned. What I meant to say was that, he did not have any clue of what was to come. Trump
does not have any communication skills like Obama, and Clinton, and is not well read or any
thing like that. And I think that they – the Deep State – have a very thick
dossier on his business deals, and all that. I sometimes feel sorry for him – the guy
is caught in the nest of scorpions. When I watch him on TV sometimes, he seems like he is
scared, and will do any thing they will ask him to do.
backwardsevolution , June 6, 2017 at 19:41
Dave P. – re your "nest of scorpions" comment. Yes, I agree that Trump had no idea
what he'd be stepping into. We probably don't know the half of it. Could be death threats
against himself (or maybe his family) or blackmail. Something happened because all of a
sudden Trump and Tillerson both changed, seemingly overnight, and you're right, Trump has a
scared look in his eyes.
If a thick-skinned braggart like Trump can't go up against these guys, then who can?
Dave P. , June 6, 2017 at 16:19
backwardsevolution: Exactly, "Hell is empty and all the devils are here". You have
described Washington – Nation's Capitol – of Today – all the devils are
here.
Coleen Rowley , May 31, 2019 at 08:36
Yes, that's what I think too! I will share some of your comments about the devils and the
"nest of scorpions" on my FB page.
I believe the "system" is totally corrupted. We are prisoners in a so-called
"democracy."
The Prisoners of the System
By Stephen J. Gray
The prisoners of the system thought they were free
After all, they lived in a "democracy?"
Every few years they were allowed to vote
Then they got punished by the winning lot
Oh well, at least the masses are allowed to go on holiday
At the airports they are patted down and groped in the name of security
Still, their governments were keeping them all safe
As they spy on them and all the human race.
Big Brother and Big Sister are now in charge
And Orwell's "1984" is now here and at large
Computers are monitored and cell phones too
Fridges are bugged and smart meters knew
I will very likely go to my grave with the strong suspicion that the alleged Christmas
Bomber (2010) in Portland, Oregon was a case of entrapment. Assuming that kid really did have
intentions of setting off a bomb, the FBI agents should have educated him as to why setting
off a bomb as a Christmas tree lighting ceremony was a very bad thing to do instead of going
through some ritual of simulations. Of course, the FBI agents claim they gave him chances to
back out, but I suspect he was like most teenagers who didn't want to be considered as
"chicken." – http://theweek.com/articles/488966/portland-bomb-plot-entrapment
backwardsevolution , June 6, 2017 at 13:41
Bill – using entrapment in order to move public opinion in a certain direction,
steer the herd, influence their thinking, allowing them then to engage in what they want
carried out. Sickening. Heat coming down on Israel a little too much? Just create an
incident, elicit sympathy, and the whole thing blows over.
Thank you Coleen Rowley especially for clearing up for me The Comey/Mueller Myth. I've
bookmarked your article for its invaluable links and truth For many of us you will remain
forever a hero
backwardsevolution , June 6, 2017 at 13:34
Bob Van Noy – totally agree. Bookmark that Mike Whitney article as well that D5-5
posted above, especially when he says that Rod Rosenstein would not have acted alone on this
special prosecutor appointment, and also for what he perceives will be Trump's eventual
outcome. As in toast.
Bill Bodden , June 6, 2017 at 12:26
To paraphrase Shakespeare: Age has not withered Coleen Rowley nor custom faded her
infinite courage.
Cal , June 6, 2017 at 22:52
Ditto .
Joe Tedesky , June 6, 2017 at 12:26
Thank you Coleen Rowley for jogging my memory in regard to Mueller and Comey. I know you
have heard this before, but until the day comes when I will turn on the MSM news, and see you
Ms Rowley, and such people like Ray McGovern, Paul Craig Roberts, and of course Robert Parry,
then it's the same old song sung by the same old choir. Thank you for the reminder. Joe
Bill Bodden , June 6, 2017 at 12:22
Beyond ignoring politicized intelligence, Mueller bent to other political
pressures.
Bending to political and other pressures is one of the rules for "success" in Washington
and Wall Street. There must be very few people who have made it to the upper echelons butting
heads with the oligarchs running the show. Lewis Lapham, a national treasure of an essayist
and author, frequently skewered the "rules of success" and those who played by them.
America's three principal adversaries signify the shape of the world to come: a post-Western
world of coexistence. But neoliberal and neocon ideology is unable to to accept global
pluralism and multipolarity, argues Patrick Lawrence.
Special to Consortium News
The Trump administration has brought U.S. foreign policy to the brink of crisis, if it has
not already tipped into one. There is little room to argue otherwise. In Asia, Europe, and the
Middle East, and in Washington's ever-fraught relations with Russia, U.S. strategy, as reviewed
in my
previous column , amounts to little more than spoiling the efforts of others to negotiate
peaceful solutions to war and dangerous standoffs in the interests of an orderly world.
The bitter reality is that U.S. foreign policy has no definable objective other than
blocking the initiatives of others because they stand in the way of the further expansion of
U.S. global interests. This impoverished strategy reflects Washington's refusal to accept the
passing of its relatively brief post–Cold War moment of unipolar power.
There is an error all too common in American public opinion. Personalizing Washington's
regression into the role of spoiler by assigning all blame to one man, now Donald Trump,
deprives one of deeper understanding. This mistake was made during the steady attack on civil
liberties after the Sept. 11 tragedies and then during the 2003 invasion of Iraq: namely that
it was all George W. Bush's fault. It was not so simple then and is not now. The crisis of U.S.
foreign policy -- a series of radical missteps -- are systemic. Having little to do with
personalities, they pass from one administration to the next with little variance other than at
the margins.
Let us bring some history to this question of America as spoiler. What is the origin of this
undignified and isolating approach to global affairs?
It began with that hubristic triumphalism so evident in the decade after the Cold War's end.
What ensued had various names.
There was the "end of history" thesis. American liberalism was humanity's highest
achievement, and nothing would supersede it.
There was also the "Washington consensus." The world was in agreement that free-market
capitalism and unfettered financial markets would see the entire planet to prosperity. The
consensus never extended far beyond the Potomac, but this sort of detail mattered little at the
time.
The neoliberal economic crusade accompanied by neoconservative politics had its intellectual
ballast, and off went its true-believing warriors around the world.
Happier days with Russia. (Eric Draper)
Failures ensued. Iraq post–2003 is among the more obvious. Nobody ever planted
democracy or built free markets in Baghdad. Then came the "color revolutions," which resulted
in the destabilization of large swathes of the former Soviet Union's borderlands. The 2008
financial crash followed.
I was in Hong Kong at the time and recall thinking, "This is not just Lehman Brothers. An
economic model is headed into Chapter 11." One would have thought a fundamental rethink in
Washington might have followed these events. There has never been one.
The orthodoxy today remains what it was when it formed in the 1990s: The neoliberal crusade
must proceed. Our market-driven, "rules-based" order is still advanced as the only way out of
our planet's impasses.
A Strategic and Military Turn
Midway through the first Obama administration, a crucial turn began. What had been an
assertion of financial and economic power, albeit coercive in many instances, particularly with
the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, took on further strategic and military dimensions. The
NATO bombing campaign in Libya, ostensibly a humanitarian mission, became a regime-change
operation -- despite Washington's promises otherwise. Obama's "pivot to Asia" turned out to be
a neo-containment policy toward China. The "reset" with Russia, declared after Obama appointed
Hillary Clinton secretary of state, flopped and turned into the virulent animosity we now live
with daily. The U.S.-cultivated coup in Kiev in 2014 was a major declaration of drastic turn in
policy towards Moscow. So was the decision, taken in 2012 at
the latest , to back the radical jihadists who were turning civil unrest in Syria into a
campaign to topple the Assad government in favor of another Islamist regime.
Spoilage as a poor excuse for a foreign policy had made its first appearances.
I count 2013 to 2015 as key years. At the start of this period, China began developing what
it now calls its Belt and Road
Initiative -- its hugely ambitious plan to stitch together the Eurasian landmass, Shanghai
to Lisbon. Moscow favored this undertaking, not least because of the key role Russia had to
play and because it fit well with President Vladimir Putin's Eurasian Economic
Union (EAEU), launched in 2014.
Belt and Road Initiative. (Lommes / CC BY-SA 4.0)
In 2015, the last of the three years I just noted, Russia intervened militarily and
diplomatically in the Syria conflict, in part to protect its southwest from Islamist extremism
and in part to pull the Middle East back from the near-anarchy then threatening it as well as
Russia and the West.
Meanwhile, Washington had cast China as an adversary and committed itself -- as it
apparently remains -- to regime change in Syria. Three months prior to the treaty that
established the EAEU, the Americans helped turn another case of civil unrest into a regime
change -- this time backing not jihadists in Syria but the crypto-Nazi militias in Ukraine on
which the government now in power still depends.
That is how we got the U.S.-as-spoiler foreign policy we now have.
If there is a president to blame -- and again, I see little point in this line of argument
-- it would have to be Barack Obama. To a certain extent, Obama was a creature of those around
him, as he acknowledged in his interview
with Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic toward the end of his second term. From
that
"Anonymous" opinion piece published in The New York Times on Sept. 5, we know Trump
is too, to a greater extent than Obama may have feared in his worst moments.
The crucial question is why. Why do U.S. policy cliques find themselves bereft of
imaginative thinking in the face of an evolving world order? Why has there been not a single
original policy initiative since the years I single out, with the exception of the
now-abandoned 2015 accord governing Iran's nuclear programs? "Right now, our job is to create
quagmires until we get what we want," an administration official
told The Washington Post 's David Ignatius in August.
Can you think of a blunter confession of intellectual bankruptcy? I can't.
Global 'Equals' Like Us?
There is a longstanding explanation for this paralysis. Seven decades of global hegemony,
the Cold War notwithstanding, left the State Department with little to think about other than
the simplicities of East-West tension. Those planning and executing American diplomacy lost all
facility for imaginative thinking because there was no need of it. This holds true, in my view,
but there is more to our specific moment than mere sclerosis within the policy cliques.
As I have argued numerous times elsewhere, parity between East and West is a 21st century
imperative. From Woodrow Wilson to the post-World War II settlement, an equality among all
nations was in theory what the U.S. considered essential to global order.
Now that this is upon us, however, Washington cannot accept it. It did not count on
non-Western nations achieving a measure of prosperity and influence until they were "just like
us," as the once famous phrase had it. And it has not turned out that way.
Can't we all just get along? (Carlos3653 / Wikimedia)
Think of Russia, China, and Iran, the three nations now designated America's principal
adversaries. Each one is fated to become (if it is not already) a world or regional power and a
key to stability -- Russia and China on a global scale, Iran in the Middle East. But each
stands resolutely -- and this is not to say with hostile intent -- outside the Western-led
order. They have different histories, traditions, cultures, and political cultures. And they
are determined to preserve them.
They signify the shape of the world to come -- a post-Western world in which the Atlantic
alliance must coexist with rising powers outside its orbit. Together, then, they signify
precisely what the U.S. cannot countenance. And if there is one attribute of neoliberal and
neoconservative ideology that stands out among all others, it is its complete inability to
accept difference or deviation if it threatens its interests.
This is the logic of spoilage as a substitute for foreign policy. Among its many
consequences are countless lost opportunities for global stability.
Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for the International
Herald Tribune, is a columnist, essayist, author, and lecturer. His most recent book is Time
No Longer: Americans After the American Century (Yale). Follow him @thefloutist. His web
site is www.patricklawrence.us. Support his work via www.patreon.com/thefloutist .
If you valued this original article, please consider
making a donation to Consortium News so we can bring you more stories like this
one.
adversary: – one's opponent in a contest, conflict or dispute.
& I ask this
"Is it really thus"
"Why must it be thus"
How can China be an adversary of the USA when all their manufactured goods come from
China.
example:- a water distiller – manufactured in & purchased from China retails for
AU$70 odd.
The very same item manufactured in China – but purchased from the USA retails for
US$260 plus.
China should be a most welcome guest at the dinner table of the USA.
R Davis , September 20, 2018 at 04:28
While i'm here – where did China get all their surveillance equipment from –
the place is locked down tighter than a chicken coop plagued by foxes.
relevant article – CRAZZ FILES – Bone Chilling Footage Shows the Horrific
Tyranny Google is Now Secretly Fostering in China.
In my opinion Google is not trying to keep information out of China – BUT –
preventing information from get out of China – to the world at large.
A lockdown as severe as this – tells us that there is something seriously bad happening
inside China.
Maybe even a mass genocide
This analysis is correct as far as it goes. However, what is lacking is an analysis of the
lunatic monetary ideology that has looted the physical economy of the U.S. by putting
enormous fake profits of speculative instruments in the hands of our "elites." It is the post
industrial, information age economy which must be transformed by very painful loss of control
by these putative elites if the world is to survive their insane geopolitics. What the
Chinese are doing by rapid build up of worldwide infrastructure needs to be replicated here.
The only way of doing so is first by ending the Wall St./City of London derivatives nightmare
and then by issuing trillions of credits needed for that very purpose.
Agreed, you speak wisely of the root of the problem. Those who create and distribute money
make ALL the rules and dominate the political and media landscape.
This really is an excellent analysis. I would highlight the following point:
"There is a longstanding explanation for this paralysis. Seven decades of global hegemony,
the Cold War notwithstanding, left the State Department with little to think about other than
the simplicities of East-West tension. Those planning and executing American diplomacy lost
all facility for imaginative thinking because there was no need of it. This holds true, in my
view, but there is more to our specific moment than mere sclerosis within the policy cliques
"
Conformism and its consequences, probably derived in part from Puritanism and further
cemented by the alternating racisms of anti-indigenous and anti black attitudes- the history
of the lynch mob and various wars against the poor which ended up in the anti-communist
frenzies of the day before yesterday constitute the backbone of American history- is the
disease which afflicts Washington.
Don Bacon , September 14, 2018 at 18:03
You don't mention corruption and profiteering, which go hand-in-hand with American
Exceptionalism and the National Security State (NSS) formed in 1947. The leader of the world
which is also an NSS requires enemies, so the National Security Strategy designates enemies,
a few of them in an Axis of Evil. Arming to fight them and dreaming up other reasons to go to
war, including a war on terror of all things, bring the desired vast expenditures, trillions
of dollars, which translate to vast profits to those involved.
This focus on war has its roots in the Christian bible and in a sense of manifest destiny
that has occupied Americans since before they were Americans, and the real Americans had to
be exterminated. It certainly (as stated) can't be blamed on certain individuals, it's
predominate and nearly universal. How many Americans were against the assault by the
Coalition of the Willing upon Iraq? Very few.
Homer Jay , September 14, 2018 at 22:09
"How many Americans were against the assault by the Coalition of the Willing upon Iraq?
Very few."
Are you kidding me? Here is a list of polls of the American public regarding the Iraq War
2003-2007;
Even in the lead up the war when the public was force fed a diet comprised entirely of
State Dept. lies about WMDs by a sycophantic media, there was still a significant 25-40
percent of the public who opposed the war. You clearly are not American or you would remember
the vocal minority which filled the streets of big cities across this country. And again the
consent was as Chomsky says "manufactured." And it took only 1 year of the war for the
majority of the public to be against it. By 2007 60-70% of the public opposed the war.
Judging from your name you come from a country whose government was part of that coalition
of the willing. So should we assume that "very few" of your fellow country men and women were
against that absolute horror show that is the Iraq war?
Don Bacon , September 14, 2018 at 23:05
You failed to address my major point, and instead picked on something you're wrong on.
PS: bevin made approximately the same point later (w/o the financial factor).
"Conformism and its consequences, probably derived in part from Puritanism and further
cemented by the alternating racisms of anti-indigenous and anti black attitudes- the history
of the lynch mob and various wars against the poor which ended up in the anti-communist
frenzies of the day before yesterday constitute the backbone of American history- is the
disease which afflicts Washington."
Homer Jay , September 17, 2018 at 14:47
Respectfully, Your data backs up my comment/data. And to your larger point, again we must
be careful when describing such attitudes as "American", a country with a wide range of
attitudes/ beliefs. To suggest we are all just a war mongering mob is bigoted. You probably
will say that's defensive but it's also right. And making the recklessly inaccurate claim
that "very few" Americans opposed the war in Iraq, without taking into account the
disinformation campaign that played into the initial consent, needs to corrected more than
once.
Sari , September 14, 2018 at 15:15
I just encountered (via Voltairenet) "The Pentagon's New Map," a book written by Thomas
Barnett, an assistant once to Admiral Arthur K. Cebrowski (now deceased). Barnett wrote an
earlier article for the March 2003 Esquire entitled "Why the Pentagon Changes Its Map: And
Why We'll Keep Going to War" ( https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a1546/thomas-barnett-iraq-war-primer/
) describing their ideas which are introduced thusly:
"Since the end of the cold war, the United States has been trying to come up with an
operating theory of the world -- and a military strategy to accompany it. Now there's a
leading contender. It involves identifying the problem parts of the world and aggressively
shrinking them. Since September 11, 2001, the author, a professor of warfare analysis at the
U.S. Naval War College, has been advising the Office of the Secretary of Defense and giving
this briefing continually at the Pentagon and in the intelligence community. Now, he gives it
to you."
His basic premise: "Show me where globalization is thick with network connectivity,
financial transactions, liberal media flows, and collective security, and I will show you
regions featuring stable governments, rising standards of living, and more deaths by suicide
than murder. These parts of the world I call the Functioning Core, or Core. But show me where
globalization is thinning or just plain absent, and I will show you regions plagued by
politically repressive regimes, widespread poverty and disease, routine mass murder, and --
most important -- the chronic conflicts that incubate the next generation of global
terrorists. These parts of the world I call the Non-Integrating Gap, or Gap."
One more quote gives you the "Monarch Notes" edition: "Think about it: Bin Laden and Al
Qaeda are pure products of the Gap -- in effect, its most violent feedback to the Core. They
tell us how we are doing in exporting security to these lawless areas (not very well) and
which states they would like to take "offline" from globalization and return to some
seventh-century definition of the good life (any Gap state with a sizable Muslim population,
especially Saudi Arabia).
If you take this message from Osama and combine it with our military-intervention record
of the last decade, a simple security rule set emerges: A country's potential to warrant a
U.S. military response is inversely related to its globalization connectivity."
Of course, we all recognize how much prevarication currently exists in "implementing" this
strategy, but I would suggest that, very likely, the Pentagon is, indeed, following this "New
Map." And, yes, this "map" shows us why the U.S. has been continually at war since 9/11 and
subbornly refuses to leave Syria, Iraq, and the Middle East with their apparent justification
being "Might Makes Right." Thierry Mayssen (Voltairenet) aptly describes the Gap states as
"reservoirs of resources" driven into perpetual war, destabilization, and chaos by a
preeminently overwhelming hegemonic U.S. military.
I had to laugh. One of Barnett's reasons in promulgating this new "map" involves the
continued stability of the Core; however, what do we see today? Huge waves of immigration
greatly destabilizing every aspect of Europe and chaos and destabilization flooding the U.S.
via false/contrived polarization in every sphere of life. BUT! The military has "a Map!"
Psssstt!! Who's "creating" the Gap? Who has funded and armed Al Qaeda/DAESH/ISIS in the
Middle East? We'll need GPS to keep up with the Pentagon's "new map!"
Archie1954 , September 14, 2018 at 14:39
I have often wondered why the US was unable to accept the position of first among equals.
Why does it have to rule the World? I know it believes that its economic and political
systems are the best on the planet, but surely all other nations should be able to decide for
themselves, what systems they will accept and live under? Who gave the US the right to make
those decisions for everyone else? The US was more than willing to kill 20 million people
either directly or indirectly since the end of WWII to make its will sovereign in all nations
of the World!
Bob Van Noy , September 14, 2018 at 21:54
Archie 1954, because 911 was never adequately investigated, our government was
inappropriately allowed to act in the so-called public interest in completely inappropriate
ways; so that in order for the Country to set things right, those decisions which were made
quietly, with little public discussion, would have to be exposed and the illegalities
addressed. But, as I'm sure you know, there are myriad other big government failures also
left unexamined, so where to begin?
That is why I invariably raise JFK's Assassination as a logical starting point. If a truly
independent commission would fix the blame, we could move on from there. Sam F., on this
forum, has mentioned a formal legal undertaking many times on this site, but now is the time
to begin the discussion for a formal Truth And Reconciliation Commission in America Let's
figure out how to begin.
So,"Who gave the US the right to make those decisions for everyone else?", certainly not
The People
Jill Stein said if elected she would boycott all countries guilty of human rights abuses
and she included Saudi Arabia and Israel. She also said she would form a 9/11 commission
comprised of those independent people and groups currently reporting on this travesty.
Meanwhile we have the self-proclaimed "progressive" talk show hosts such as Thom Hartmann,
defending the PNAC NEOCONS while making Stein persona non grata and throwing real progressive
candidates under the bus.
The PNAC NEOCONS understood the importance of creating a galvanizing, catastrophic and
catalyzing event but the alternative media is afraid to call a spade a spade, something about
the truth being too risky to ones career, I assume.
See much more at youtopia.guru
Bob Van Noy , September 17, 2018 at 09:19
Lee Anderson thank you for your response, I agree and I appreciate the link suggestion,
I'm impressed and will read more
didi , September 14, 2018 at 13:49
It is always the unintended consequences. Hence I disagree with some of your views. A
president who takes actions which trigger unintended/unexpected consequences can be held
accountable for such consequences even if he/she could not avert the consequences. It is also
often true that corrections are possible when such consequences begin to appear. Given our
system which makes only presidents powerful to act on war, peace, and foreign relationships
there is no escaping that they must be blamed only.
A very good article. Spoiler and bully describe US foreign policy, and foreign policy is
in the driver's seat while domestic policy takes the pickings, hardly anything left for the
hollowed-out society where people live paycheck to paycheck, homelessness and other assorted
ills of a failing society continue to rise while oligarchs and the MIC rule the
neofeudal/futile system. When are we going to make that connection of the wasteful
expenditure on military adventurism and the problem of poverty in the US? The Pentagon
consistently calls the shots, yet we consistently hear about unaccounted expenditures by the
Pentagon, losing amounts in the trillions, and never do they get audited.
nondimenticare , September 14, 2018 at 12:18
I certainly agree that the policy is bereft, but not for all of the same reasons. There is
the positing of a turnaround as a basis for the current spoiler role: "What had been an
assertion of financial and economic power, albeit coercive in many instances, particularly
with the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, took on further strategic and military
dimensions."
To substantiate this "crucial turn," Lawrence makes the unwarranted assumption that the
goal post Soviet Union was simply worldwide free-market capitalism, not global domination:
"Failures ensued. Iraq post–2003 is among the more obvious. Nobody ever planted
democracy or built free markets in Baghdad"; and the later statement that the US wanted the
countries it invaded to be "Just like us."
Though he doesn't mention (ignores) US meddling in Russia after the collapse of the USSR,
I presume from its absence that he attributes that, too, to the expansion of capital. Indeed,
it was that, but with the more malevolent goal of control. "Just like us" is the usual
"progressive" explanation for failures. "Controlled by us" was more like it, if we face the
history of the country squarely.
That is the blindness of intent that has led to the spoiler role.
Unfettered Fire , September 14, 2018 at 11:15
Is it really so wise to be speaking in terms of nationhood after we've undergone 50 years
of Kochian/libertarian dismantlement of the nation-state in favor of bank and transnational
governance? Remember the words of Zbigniew Brzezinski:
"The "nation-state" as a fundamental unit of man's organized life has ceased to be the
principal creative force: International banks and multinational corporations are acting and
planning in terms that are far in advance of the political concepts of the nation-state." ~
Zbigniew Brzezinski, Between Two Ages, 1970
"Make no mistake, what we are seeing in geopolitics today is indeed a magic show. The
false East/West paradigm is as powerful if not more powerful than the false Left/Right
paradigm. For some reason, the human mind is more comfortable believing in the ideas of
division and chaos, and it often turns its nose up indignantly at the notion of "conspiracy."
But conspiracies and conspirators can be demonstrated as a fact of history. Organization
among elitists is predictable.
Globalists themselves are drawn together by an ideology. They have no common nation, they
have no common political orientation, they have no common cultural background or religion,
they herald from the East just as they herald from the West. They have no true loyalty to any
mainstream cause or social movement.
What do they have in common? They seem to exhibit many of the traits of high level
narcissistic sociopaths, who make up a very small percentage of the human population. These
people are predators, or to be more specific, they are parasites. They see themselves as
naturally superior to others, but they often work together if there is the promise of mutual
benefit."
Your comment is astute and valuable, and consequently deserves to be signed with your real
name, so that you can be identified as someone worth listening to.
Don Bacon , September 14, 2018 at 17:44
Screen names don't matter, content does.
OlyaPola , September 15, 2018 at 11:34
"Screen names don't matter, content does."
Apparently not for some where attribution is sought and the illusion of trust the source
trust the content is held, leading to curveballs mirroring expectations whilst serving the
purposes of others.
""The "nation-state" as a fundamental unit of man's organized life has ceased to be the
principal creative force: International banks and multinational corporations are acting and
planning in terms that are far in advance of the political concepts of the nation-state." ~
Zbigniew Brzezinski, Between Two Ages, 1970"
The date of publication is of significance as was Mr. Paul Craig Roberts' Alienation in
the Soviet economy of 1971, as was Mr. Andrei Amalrik's "Can the Soviet Union last until 1984
published in 1969.
The period 1968 – 1973 was one significant trajectory in the half-life of "we the
people hold these truths to be self-evident" which underpinned and maintained the "nation
state" misrepresented/branded as the "United States of America" through a change in the
assays of the amalga mutual benefit/hold these truths to be self-evident.
The last hurrah of the "red experts" – Mr. Brezhnev and associates – despite
analyses/forecasts from various agencies agreed, detente based on spheres of influence
facilitating through interaction/complicity various fiats including but not restricted to
fiat currency, fiat economy, fiat politics all dependent on mutations of "we the people hold
these truths to be self-evident".
This interaction also facilitated processes which accelerated the demise of the "Soviet
Union" and its continuing transcendence by the Russian Federation – the choice of title
being a notice of intent that some interpreted as the "End of History" whilst others
interpreted as lateral opportunity facilitated by the hubris of the "End of History".
The "red experts" were not unique in their illusions; another pertinent example is the
strategy of the PLO in maintaining the illusion of the two state solution/"Oslo accords"
facilitating the continuing colonial project branded as "Israel".
Mr. Brzezinski was one of the others who interpreted the "End of History" as linear
opportunity where the assay of amalga of form could be changed to maintain content/function
which was/is to "still" control all the players.
However in any interactive system neither omniscience nor sole agency/control is possible,
whilst by virtue of interaction the complicity of all can be encouraged in various ways to
facilitate useful outcomes in furtherance of purpose, whilst illusions of the "End of
History" and the search for the holy grail of "Full Spectrum Dominance" acted as both
accelerators and multipliers in the process of encouragement, whilst obscuring this process
in open sight through the opponents' amalga of reliance on "plausible belief based in part on
projection", "exceptionalism" and associated hubris.
The "nation state" subsuming illusions of mutual benefit and mutual purpose has always
been a function of the half-lives of components of its ideological facades and practices
– sexual intercourse wasn't invented in 1963 and "The "nation-state" as a fundamental
unit of man's organized life has ceased to be the principal creative force" wasn't initiated
in 1970.
Unfettered Fire , September 14, 2018 at 13:43
"In our society, real power does not happen to lie in the political system, it lies in the
private economy: that's where the decisions are made about what's produced, how much is
produced, what's consumed, where investment takes place, who has jobs, who controls the
resources, and so on and so forth. And as long as that remains the case, changes inside the
political system can make some difference -- I don't want to say it's zero -- but the
differences are going to be very slight." ~ Noam Chomsky
Yet there is a thread that leads through US foreign policy. It all started with NSC 68.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSC_68 . Already in
the 1950's, leading bankers were afraid of economic depression which would follow from a
"peace dividend" following the end of WWII. To avoid this, and to avoid "socialism", the only
acceptable government spending was on defense. This mentality never ended. Today 50% of
discretionary govenmenrt spending is on the military. http://www.unz.com/article/americas-militarized-economy/
. We live in a country of military socialism, in which military citizens have all types of
benefits, on condition they join the military-industrial-complex. This being so, there is no
need for real "intelligence", there is no need to "understand" what goes on is foreign
countries, there no need to be right about what might happen or worry about consequences.
What is important is stimulate the economy by spending on arms. From Korean war, when the US
dropped more bombs than it had on Nazi Germany, through Viet Nam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya
etc etc the US policy was a winning one not for those who got bombed (and could not fight
back) but for the weapons industry and military contractors. Is the NYTimes ever going to
discuss this aspect? Or any one in the MSM?
All that and we constantly have to endure the bankster/MIC-controlled media proclaiming
everyone who joins the military as "heroes" defending our precious"freedoms." The media mafia
is evil.
Walter , September 14, 2018 at 09:26
The "why" behind the US foreign policies was spoken with absolute honest clarity in the
"Statement of A. Wess Mitchell
Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs" to the Senate on August 21
this year. The transcript is at :
"It continues to be among the foremost national security interests of the United States to
prevent the domination of the Eurasian landmass by hostile powers. The central aim of the
administration's foreign policy is to prepare our nation to confront this challenge by
systematically strengthening the military, economic and political fundamentals of American
power. "
Tellingly the "official" State Department copy is changed and omits the true spoken
words
I would propose that the zionish aspect exists due to the perceived necessity of "Forward
Operating Base Israel" lookit a map, Comrade The ISIS?Saudi?Zionist games divides the New
Silk Road and the Eurasian land mass and exists to throttle said pathways.
Interestingly the latter essay is attributed to Eldar Ismailov and Vladimer Papava
Brother Comrade Putin knows the game. The US has to maintain the fiction for the public
that it does not know the game, and is consequently obliged to maintain a vast public
delusion, hence "fake news" and all the rest.
OlyaPola , September 14, 2018 at 13:49
"I would propose that the zionish aspect exists due to the perceived necessity of "Forward
Operating Base Israel" lookit a map, Comrade"
Some have an attraction to book-ends.
Once upon a time the Eurasian book-ends were Germany and Japan, and the Western Asian
book-ends Israel and Saudi Arabia.
This "strategy" is based upon the notion that bookend-ness is a state of inertia which in
any interactive system is impossible except apparently to those embedded in "we the people
hold these truths to be self-evident".
Consequently some have an attraction to book-ends.
Walter , September 15, 2018 at 12:31
If I understand you correctly, then yes, some imagine that a static situation can exist.
This a natural but delusional way of seeing the world, of course – especially because
Chin and Rus are able to liquidate any counter-forces that attempt to create or maintain
"book-ends.
The actual spoken words to the Senate of Mr. Michell are very significant, as the removal
of them from the ostensibly real, but actually false, State Department "Transcript" implies.
Foolish Mr. Michell! He accidentally spoke the true objective of US foreign policy and also
the domestic objective – total bamboozlement of the US population "prepare the country
for " (Obvious, world war against the Heartland states that fail to "cooperate"
(surrender).
People ought to read the pdf what Michell actually spoke all of it and consider the
logical implications. Michell has a big mouth Good. He confirms the dark truths
The guilty according to circumstantial evidence has confessed his guilt so to say;
confirming the crime
An Israeli-Saudi "Greater Israel" dividing Syria between Saud and zion is of course a goal
that in effect would be a "book-end".
Too late now as it is clear that Syrian skies are probably going to soon be "no-fly-zone"
for foreign invaders
Then will come the "pitch-forks", as Napoleon's retreat from Moscow illustrated
OlyaPola , September 16, 2018 at 04:25
"If I understand you correctly, then yes, some imagine that a static situation can exist.
This a natural but delusional way of seeing the world"
Absolutes including stasis don't exist but the belief of others in book-ends including
extensive foreign bases are lands of opportunities for others facilitating pitch forking
without extensive travel.
Consequently some perceive that the opponents have hopes and wishes which they seek to
represent as "strategies" and "tactics" and some opportunities of lateral challenge derived
there-from.
Some would hold that the opponents' have a greater assay of the rubbing sticks school of
thermo-dynamics in "their" amalga of perception, in some regards even less perceptive than
Heraclitus although Heraclitus lived in his time/interactions as the interaction below
suggests.
One of the consequences is the opponents tendency to bridge doubt by belief to attain
comfort through iteration and subsequent projection, facilitating lateral opportunities for
others with greater perception of fission/metamorphosis/transcendence including the
"unintended consequences" -at least in the opponents' perception – without resort to
Mr. Heisenberg's deliberations, leading to some of the opponents resorting to snake-oil sales
techniques suggesting that their intent/purpose was always what they perceived to be the
concept/construct "chaos".
A further illustration of this and how it was/is not limited to present opponents citing
trajectories during the period 1968 – 1973 and some subsequent consequences was
broadcast through this portal on the 14th of September 2018 but not "published" possibly in
ignorance of Mr. Bulgakov's contention that manuscripts don't burn.
The examples used were detente on the bases of spheres of influence agreed by the
Politburo despite contrary advice from many agencies, the strategy of the PLO and half-life
of these beliefs in the strategies of Hamas.
Detente on the basis of sphere of influence facilitated fiat currency, fiat politics, and
fiat re-branding – "neo-liberalism" -, colonial projects in Western Asia, and how
opening Pandora's box was/is only perceived as wholly a disadvantage for those seeking to
deny lateral process (Stop the Empires War on Russia slogan being a useful example) and those
not so immersed helped facilitate the ongoing transcendence of the "Soviet Union" by the
Russian Federation – the title being a notice of intent that opponents perceived as the
"End of History" as functions of their framing and projection.
OlyaPola , September 16, 2018 at 07:51
Some hold that New York, New York was so good they named it twice, whilst some others
wonder whether they named it twice to make it easier for the inhabitants to locate.
Following the precautionary principle I attach below a further illustration of :
" . the opponents have hopes and wishes which they seek to represent as "strategies" and
"tactics" and some opportunities of lateral challenge derived there-from ..
"One of the consequences is the opponents tendency to bridge doubt by belief to attain
comfort through iteration and subsequent projection, facilitating lateral opportunities for
others with greater perception of fission/metamorphosis/transcendence including the
"unintended consequences" -at least in the opponents' perception – without resort to
Mr. Heisenberg's deliberations, leading to some of the opponents resorting to snake-oil sales
techniques suggesting that their intent/purpose was always what they perceived to be the
concept/construct "chaos".
which was alluded to in the "unpublished" broadcast which referenced
1. "The "nation-state" as a fundamental unit of man's organized life has ceased to be the
principal creative force: International banks and multinational corporations are acting and
planning in terms that are far in advance of the political concepts of the nation-state." ~
Zbigniew Brzezinski, Between Two Ages, 1970.
2. Mr. P.C. Roberts' Alienation in the USSR (1971)
3. Mr Andrei Amalrik's Can the Soviet Union last until 1984 (1969).
in illustration of interactive amalga which some call Russiagate, presumably because the
water had flowed but apparently not under the bridge.
The recent US presidential election process including the "outcomes" were relatively easy
to predict
and required no encouragement from outside – doing "nothing" being a trajectory of
doing for those not trapped in the can do/must do conflation.
Some don't understand Russian very well and so instead of understanding Mr. Putin's remark
that Mr. Trump was "colourful" which has connotations to some with facility in the Russian
culture/language, some sought to bridge doubt by belief to attain expectation on the basis of
"plausible belief".
An increasing sum of some are no longer so immersed as illustrated in
whilst perceptual frames often have significant half-lives.
exiled off mainstreet , September 14, 2018 at 00:42
This is a great series of articles and the comments, including those having reservations,
are intelligent. Since those comments appearing not to appear later seem to have appeared,
mechanical difficulties of some sort seem to have been what occurred. I hope Mr. Tedesky, one
of the most valued commentators writing in the comments, continues his work.
Patrick Lawrence's essay makes perfect sense only when it is applied to US foreign policy
since the end of WW2. It is conventional wisdom that the US is now engaged in Cold War 2.0.
In fact, Cold War 2.0 is an extension of Cold War 1.0. There was merely a 20 year interregnum
between 1990 and 2010. Most analysts think that Cold War 1.0 was an ideological war between
"Communism" and "Democracy". The renewal of the Cold War against both Russia and China
however shows that the ideological war between East and West was really a cover for the
geopolitical war between the two. Russia, China and Iran are the main geopolitical enemies of
the US as they stand in the way of the global, imperialist hegemony of the US. In order to
control the global periphery, i.e. the developing world and their emerging economies, the US
must contain and defeat the big three. This was as true in 1948 as it is in 2018. Thus,
what's happening today under Trump is no different than what occurred under Truman in 1948.
Whatever differences exist are mere window dressing.
Rob Roy , September 15, 2018 at 00:16
Mr. Etler,
I think you are mostly right except in the first Cold War, the Soviets and US Americans were
both involved in this "war." What you call Cold War 2.0 is in the minds and policies of only
the US. Russian is not in any way currently like the Soviet Union, yet the US acts in all
aspects of foreign attitude and policy as though that (very unpleasant period in today's
Russians' minds) still exists. It does not. You says there was "merely a 20 year interregnum"
and things have picked up and continued as a Cold War. Only in the idiocy of the USA,
certainly not in the minds of Russian leadership, particularly Putin's who now can be
distinguished as the most logical, realistic and competent leader in the world.
Thanks to H. Clinton being unable to become president, we have a full blown Russiagate which
the MSM propaganda continues to spread. There is no Cold War 2.0. It's a fallacy to create a
false flag for regime change in Russia. Ms. Clinton, the Kagan family, the MIC, etc., figure
if we can take out Yanukovich and replace him with Fascists/Nazis, what could stop us from
doing the same to Russia. The good news: all empires fail.
Maxwell Quest , September 13, 2018 at 13:41
"This is the logic of spoilage as a substitute for foreign policy. Among its many
consequences are countless lost opportunities for global stability."
Mr. Lawrence is much too accommodating with his analysis. Imagine, linking US "foreign
policy" in the same thought as "global stability", as if the two were somehow related. On the
contrary, "global instability" seems to be our foreign policy goal, especially for those
regions that pose a threat to US hegemony. Why? Because it is difficult to extract a region's
wealth when its population is united behind a stable government that can't be bought off.
Conjuring up Heraclitus..Time is a River, constantly changing. And we face downstream,
unable to see the Future and gazing upon the Past.
The attempt has an effect, many effects, but it cannot stop Time.
The Russian and the Chinese have clinched the unification of the Earth Island, "Heartland"
This ended the ability to control global commerce by means of navies – the methods of
the Sea Peoples over the last 500 years are now failed. The US has no way of even seeing this
fact other than force and violence to restore the status quo ante .
Thus World War, as we see
Recollecting Heraclitus again, the universe is populated by opposites as we see, China and
Russia represent a cathodic opposite to the US
OlyaPola , September 14, 2018 at 09:38
"Conjuring up Heraclitus "
"And we face downstream, unable to see the Future and gazing upon the Past."
Time is a synonym of interaction the perception of which and opportunities derived
therefrom being functions of analysing interactions which require notions and analyses of
upstream-perceived transition point (similar to the concept/construct zero)-downstream
lateral processes, which Heraclitus perceived and practiced.
Heraclitus lived in a previous time/interaction and the perception and uses of
thermodynamics have laterally changed since Heraclitus' time.
Omniscience can never exist in any lateral system, but time/interaction has facilitated
the increase of perceptions and lateral opportunities to facilitate various futures and their
encouragement through processes of fission – the process of strategy formulation,
strategy implementation, strategy evaluation, and strategy modulation refers.
Framing including attempts to deny agency to others and hence interaction thereby denying
time, leads to strategic myopia, and when outcomes vary from expectations/hopes/wishes lead
the myopic to attempt to bridge doubt by belief to attain comfort.
Categorical imperatives are kant facilitating can't, best left to Kant, although
apparently some are loathe to agree.
"The US has no way of even seeing this fact other than force and violence to restore the
status quo ante ."
The temporary socio-economic arrangement misrepresented/branded as "The United States of
America" has a vested interest in seeking to deny time/interaction including through
"exceptionalism" and a history of flailings and consequences derived therefrom.
"Recollecting Heraclitus again, the universe is populated by opposites as we see, China
and Russia represent a cathodic opposite to the US "
As above, Heraclitus lived in a previous time and the perception and uses of
thermodynamics have laterally changed since Heraclitus' time although apparently not
informing the perceptions and practices of some.
Understandably Heraclitus sometimes relied within his framing on notions of moments of
stasis/absolutes (steady states) such as opposites, where as like in all areas of
thermo-dynamics a more modern framework would include the notions of amalga with varying
interactive half-lives.
It would appear that your contribution is also subject to such "paradox" as in "China and
Russia represent a cathodic opposite to the US "
Perhaps a more illuminating but more complex formulation would be found in :
"In other parts of planet earth the assay of amalga and their varying interactive
half-lives differ from those asserted to exist within the temporary socio-economic
arrangements misrepresented/branded as "The United States of America" thereby facilitating
opportunities to transcend coercive relationships such as those practiced by the temporary
socio-economic arrangements misrepresented/branded as "The United States of America", by
co-operative socio-economic relations conditioned by the half-lives of perceptions and
practices derived therefrom.
In part that contributed and continues to contribute to the lateral process of
transcendence of the "Soviet Union" by the Russian Federation previously leading to a limited
debate whether to nominate Mr. Brezhinsky, Mr.Clinton, Mr. Fukuyama or Mr. Wolfowitz for the
Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts facilitating the transcendence of the temporary
socio-economic arrangements misrepresented/branded as "The United States of America".
Jeff Harrison , September 13, 2018 at 13:29
I guess I missed this one, Patrick. Great overview but let me put it in a slightly
different context. You start with the end of the cold war but I don't. I could go all the way
back to the early days of the country and our proclamation of manifest destiny. The US has
long thought that it was the one ring to rule them all. But for most of that time the
strength of individual members of the rest of the world constrained the US from running amok.
That constraint began to be lifted after the ruling clique in Europe committed seppuku in
WWI. It was completely lifted after WWII. But that was 75 years ago. This is now and most of
the world has recovered from the world wide destruction of human and physical capital known
as WWII. The US is going to have to learn how to live with constraints again but it will take
a shock. The US is going to have to lose at something big time. Europe cancelling the
sanctions? The sanctions on Russia don't mean squat to the US but it's costing Europe
billions. This highlights the reality that the "Western Alliance" (read NATO) is not really
an alliance of shared goals and objectives. It's an alliance of those terrified by fascism
and what it can do. They all decided that they needed a "great father" to prevent their
excesses again. One wonders if either the world or Europe would really like the US to come
riding in like the cavalry to places like Germany, Poland, and Ukraine. Blindly following
Washington's directions can be remarkably expensive for Europe and they get nothing but
refugees they can't afford. Something will ultimately have to give.
The one thing I was surprised you didn't mention was the US's financial weakness. It's
been a long time since the US was a creditor nation. We've been a debtor nation since at
least the 80s. The world doesn't need debtor nations and the only reason they need us is the
primacy of the US dollar. And there are numerous people hammering away at that.
Gerald Wadsworth , September 13, 2018 at 12:59
Why are we trying to hem in China, Russia and Iran? Petro-dollar hegemony, pure and
simple. From our initial deal with Saudi Arabia to buy and sell oil in dollars only, to the
chaos we have inflicted globally to retain the dollar's rule and role in energy trading, we
are finding ourselves threatened – actually the position of the dollar as the sole
trading medium is what is threatened – and we are determined to retain that global
power over oil at all costs. With China and Russia making deals to buy and sell oil in their
own currencies, we have turned both those counties into our enemies du jour, inventing every
excuse to blame them for every "bad thing" that has and will happen, globally. Throw in
Syria, Iran, Venezuela, and a host of other countries who want to get out from under our
thumb, to those who tried and paid the price. Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, and
more. Our failed foreign policy is dictated by controlling, as Donald Rumsfeld once opined,
"our oil under their sand." Oil. Pure and simple.
Maxwell Quest , September 13, 2018 at 14:18
I agree, Gerald. Enforcing the petro-dollar system seems to be the mainspring for much of
our recent foreign policy militarism. If it were to unravel, the dollar's value would tank,
and then how could we afford our vast system of military bases. Death Star's aren't cheap, ya
know.
Maxwell Quest , September 13, 2018 at 15:33
I agree, Gerald. Along with ensuring access to "our" off-shore oil fields, enforcing the
petro-dollar system is equally significant, and seems to be the mainspring for much of our
recent foreign policy militarism. If this system were to unravel, the dollar's value would
tank, and then how could we afford our vast system of military bases which make the world
safe for democracy? Death Star's aren't cheap, ya know.
Anonymous Coward , September 13, 2018 at 22:40
+1 Gerald Wadsworth. It's not necessarily "Oil pure and simple" but "Currency Pure and
Simple." If the US dollar is no longer the world's currency, the US is toast. Also note that
anyone trying to retain control of their currency and not letting "The Market" (private
banks) totally control them is a Great Devil we need to fight, e.g. Libya and China. And note
(2) that Wall Street is mostly an extension of The City; the UK still thinks it owns the
entire world, and the UK has been owned by the banks ever since it went off tally sticks
MichaelWme , September 13, 2018 at 12:18
It's called the Thucydides trap. NATO (US/UK/France/Turkey) have said they will force
regime change in Syria. Russia says it will not allow regime change in Syria. Fortunately, as
a Frenchman and an Austrian explained many years ago, and NATO experts say is true today,
regime change in Russia is a simple matter, about the same as Libya or Panamá. I
forget the details, but I assume things worked out well for the Frenchman and the Austrian,
and will work out about the same for NATO.
Putin said years ago, and I cannot quote him, but remember most of it, that it doesn't
matter who is the candidate for President, or what his campaign promises are, or how sincere
he is in making them, whenever they get in office, it is always the same policy.
Truer words were never spoken, and it is the reason why I know, at least, that Russia did
not interfere in the US elections. What would be the point, from his viewpoint, and it is not
only just his opinion. You cannot help but see at this point that that he said is obviously
true.
TJ , September 13, 2018 at 13:47
What an excellent point. Why bother influencing the elections when it doesn't matter who
is elected -- the same policies will continue.
Bart Hansen , September 13, 2018 at 15:43
Anastasia, I saved it: From Putin interview with Le Figaro:
"I have already spoken to three US Presidents. They come and go, but politics stay the
same at all times. Do you know why? Because of the powerful bureaucracy. When a person is
elected, they may have some ideas. Then people with briefcases arrive, well dressed, wearing
dark suits, just like mine, except for the red tie, since they wear black or dark blue ones.
These people start explaining how things are done. And instantly, everything changes. This is
what happens with every administration."
rosemerry , September 14, 2018 at 08:02
Pres. Putin explained this several times when he was asked about preferring Trump to
Hillary Clinton, and he carefully said that he would accept whoever the US population chose,
he was used to dealing with Hillary and he knew that very little changed between
Administrations. This has been conveniently cast aside by the Dems, and Obama's disgraceful
expulsion of Russian diplomats started the avalanche of Russiagate.
Great to see Patrick Lawrence writing for Consortium News.
He ends his article with: "This is the logic of spoilage as a substitute for foreign
policy. Among its many consequences are countless lost opportunities for global stability.
"
Speaking of consequences, how about the human toll this foreign policy has taken on so
many people in this world. To me, the gravest sin of all.
Bob Van Noy , September 13, 2018 at 08:46
I agree with Patric Lawrence when he states "Personalizing Washington's regression into
the role of spoiler by assigning all blame to one man, now Donald Trump, deprives one of
deeper understanding." and I also agree that 'Seven decades of global hegemony have left the
State Department, Cold War notwithstanding, left the State Department with little to think
about other than the simplicities of East-West tension.' But I seriously disagree when he
declares that: "The crisis of U.S. foreign policy -- a series of radical missteps -- are
systemic. Having little to do with personalities, they pass from one administration to the
next with little variance other than at the margins.'' Certainly the missteps are true, but I
would argue that the "personalities" are crucial to America's crisis of Foreign Policy. After
all it was likely that JFK's American University address was the public declaration of his
intention to lead America in the direction of better understanding of Sovereign Rights that
likely got him killed. It is precisely those "personalities" that we must understand and
identify before we can move on
Skip Scott , September 13, 2018 at 09:35
Bob-
I see what you're saying, but I believe Patrick is also right. Many of the people involved
in JFK's murder are now dead themselves, yet the "system" that demands confrontation rather
than cooperation continues. These "personalities" are shills for that system, and if they are
not so willingly, they are either bribed or blackmailed into compliance. Remember when
"Dubya" ran on a "kinder and gentler nation" foreign policy? Obama's "hope and change" that
became "more of the same"? And now Trump's views on both domestic and foreign policy
seemingly also doing a 180? There are "personalities" behind this "system", and they are
embedded in places like the Council on Foreign Relations. The people that run our banking
system and the global corporate empire demand the whole pie, they would rather blow up the
world than have to share.
Bob Van Noy , September 13, 2018 at 14:42
You're completely right Skip, that's what we all must recognize and ultimately react to,
and against.
Thank you.
JWalters , September 13, 2018 at 18:46
I would add that human beings are the key components in this system. The system is built
and shaped by them. Some are greedy, lying predators and some are honest and egalitarian. Bob
Parry was one of the latter, thankfully.
JWalters , September 13, 2018 at 18:30
Skip, very good points. For those interested further, here's an excellent talk on the
bankers behind the manufacutured wars, including the role of the Council on Foreign Relations
as a front organization and control mechanism. "The Shadows of Power; the CFR and decline of America" https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=6124&v=wHa1r4nIaug
Joe Tedesky , September 13, 2018 at 09:42
Bob, you are right. I find it most interesting and sad at the same time that in Woodward's
new book 'Fear' that he describes a pan 'almost tragic incident' whereas Trump wanted to sign
a document removing our missiles and troops out of S Korea, but save for the steady hand of
his 'anonymous' staffers who yanked the document off his presidential desk . wow, close one
there we almost did something to enforce a peace. Can't have that though, we still have lots
to kill in pursue of liberty and freedom and the hegemonic way.
Were these 'anonymous' staffers the grandchildren of the staffers and bureaucracy that
undermined other presidents? Would their grandparents know who the Gunmen were on the grassy
knoll? Did these interrupters of Executive administrations fudge other presidents dreams and
hopes of a peaceful world? And in the end were these instigators rewarded by the war
industries they protected?
The problem is, is that this bureaucracy of war has out balanced any other rival agency,
as diversity of thought and mission is only to be dealt with if it's good for military
purposes. Too much of any one thing can be overbearingly bad for a person, and likewise too
much war means your country is doing something wrong.
Bob Van Noy , September 13, 2018 at 14:51
Many thanks Joe, I admire your persistence. Clearly Bob Woodward has been part of the
problem rather than the solution. The swamp is deep and murky
JWalters , September 13, 2018 at 18:36
Bob and Joe, here's a solid review of Woodward's book Fear that points out his
consistent service to the oligarchy, including giving Trump a pass for killing the Iran deal.
Interesting background on Woodward in the comments as well. https://mondoweiss.net/2018/09/woodward-national-security/
will , September 15, 2018 at 22:30
people have been pointing out that Woodward is the exact kind of guy the CIA would recruit
since shortly after Watergate.
The document Gary Cohen removed off Trump's desk –
which you can read here – states an intent to end a free trade agreement with South
Korea.
"White House aides feared if Trump sent the letter, it could jeopardize a top-secret US
program that can detect North Korean missile launches within seven seconds."
Sounds like Trump wanted to play the "I am such a great deal maker, the GREATEST deal
maker of all times!" game with the South Koreans. Letter doesn't say anything about
withdrawing troops or missiles.
Funny how ***TOP-SECRET US PROGRAMS*** find their way into books and newspapers these
days, plentiful as acorns falling out of trees.
You're welcome, Joe. These things get confusing. Who knows anymore what is real and what
isn't?
Trump did indeed say something about ending military exercises and pulling troops out of
South Korea. His staff did indeed contradict him on this. It just wasn't in relation to the
letter Cohn "misplaced," AFAIK.
Nobody asked me, but if they did, I'd say the US interfered enough in Korean affairs by
killing a whole bunch of 'em in the Korean War. Leave'em alone. Let North and South try to
work it out. Tired of hearing about "regime change.'
Bob once again my comment disappeared I hope someone retrieves it. Joe
Joe Tedesky , September 13, 2018 at 12:24
Here's what I wrote:
Bob, you are right. I find it most interesting and sad at the same time that in Woodward's
new book 'Fear' that he describes a pan 'almost tragic incident' whereas Trump wanted to sign
a document removing our missiles and troops out of S Korea, but save for the steady hand of
his 'anonymous' staffers who yanked the document off his presidential desk . wow, close one
there we almost did something to enforce a peace. Can't have that though, we still have lots
to kill in pursue of liberty and freedom and the hegemonic way.
Were these 'anonymous' staffers the grandchildren of the staffers and bureaucracy that
undermined other presidents? Would their grandparents know who the Gunmen were on the grassy
knoll? Did these interrupters of Executive administrations fudge other presidents dreams and
hopes of a peaceful world? And in the end were these instigators rewarded by the war
industries they protected?
The problem is, is that this bureaucracy of war has out balanced any other rival agency,
as diversity of thought and mission is only to be dealt with if it's good for military
purposes. Too much of any one thing can be overbearingly bad for a person, and likewise too
much war means your country is doing something wrong.
Joe Tedesky , September 13, 2018 at 12:24
Again
Bob, you are right. I find it most interesting and sad at the same time that in Woodward's
new book 'Fear' that he describes a pan 'almost tragic incident' whereas Trump wanted to sign
a document removing our missiles and troops out of S Korea, but save for the steady hand of
his 'anonymous' staffers who yanked the document off his presidential desk . wow, close one
there we almost did something to enforce a peace. Can't have that though, we still have lots
to kill in pursue of liberty and freedom and the hegemonic way.
Were these 'anonymous' staffers the grandchildren of the staffers and bureaucracy that
undermined other presidents? Would their grandparents know who the Gunmen were on the grassy
knoll? Did these interrupters of Executive administrations fudge other presidents dreams and
hopes of a peaceful world? And in the end were these instigators rewarded by the war
industries they protected?
The problem is, is that this bureaucracy of war has out balanced any other rival agency,
as diversity of thought and mission is only to be dealt with if it's good for military
purposes. Too much of any one thing can be overbearingly bad for a person, and likewise too
much war means your country is doing something wrong.
Joe Tedesky , September 13, 2018 at 14:03
Thanks for retrieving my comments sorry for the triplicating of them. Joe
Joe Tedesky , September 13, 2018 at 12:25
3 of my comments disappeared boy does this comment board have issues. I'm beginning to
think I'm being targeted.
Deniz , September 13, 2018 at 17:58
Dont take it personally, I see it more of a lawnmower than a scalpel.
rosemerry , September 14, 2018 at 08:36
My comment has disappeared too-it was a reply to anastasia.
Kiwiantz , September 13, 2018 at 08:20
Spoiler Nation of America! You got that dead right! China builds infrastructure in other
Countries & doesn't interfere with the citizens & their Sovereignty. Contrast that
with the United Spoiler States of America, they run roughshod over overs & just bomb the
hell out of Countries & leaves devastation & death wherever they go! And there is
something seriously wrong & demented with the US mindset concerning, the attacks on 9/11?
In Syria the US has ended up arming & supporting the very same organisation of Al
QaedaTerrorists, morphed into ISIS, that hijacked planes & flew them into American
targets! During 2017 & now in 2018, it defies belief how warped this US mentality is when
ISIS can so easily & on demand, fake a chemical attack to suck in the stupid American
Military & it's Airforce & get them to attack Syria, like lackeys taking orders from
Terrorist's! The US Airforce is the airforce of Al Qaeda & ISIS! Why? Because the US
can't stomach Russia, Syria & Iran winning & defeating Terrorism thus ending this
Proxy War they started! Russia can't be allowed to win at any cost because the humiliation
& loss of prestige that the US would suffer as a Unipolar Empire would signal the decline
& end of this Hegemonic Empire so they must continue to act as a spoiler to put off that
inevitable decline! America can't face reality that it's time in the sun as the last Empire,
is over!
Sally Snyder , September 13, 2018 at 07:57
Here is what Americans really think about the rabid anti-Russia hysteria coming from
Washington:
Washington has completely lost touch with what Main Street America really believes.
Waynes World , September 13, 2018 at 07:37
Finally some words of truth about how we want our way not really democracy. A proper way
to look at the world is what you said toward the end a desire to make people's lives
better.
mike k , September 13, 2018 at 07:14
Simply put – the US is the world's biggest bully. This needs to stop. Fortunately
the bully's intended victims are joining together to defeat it's crazy full spectrum
dominance fantasies. Led by Russia and China, we can only hope for the success of the
resistance to US aggression.
This political, economic, military struggle is not the only problem the world is facing
now, but is has some priority due to the danger of nuclear war. Global pollution, climate
disaster, ecological collapse and species extinction must also be urgently dealt with if we
are to have a sustainable existence on Earth.
OlyaPola , September 13, 2018 at 04:39
Alpha : "America's three principal adversaries signify the shape of the world to come: a
post-Western world of coexistence. But neoliberal and neocon ideology is unable to to accept
global pluralism and multipolarity, argues Patrick Lawrence."
Omega: "Among its many consequences are countless lost opportunities for global
stability."
Framing is always a limiter of perception.
Among the consequences of the lateral trajectories from Alpha to Omega referenced above,
is the "unintended consequence" of the increase of the principal opponents, their resolve and
opportunities to facilitate the transcendence of arrangements based on coercion by
arrangements based on co-operation.
Opening Pandora's box was/is only perceived as wholly a disadvantage for those seeking to
deny lateral process.
John Chuckman,
Wow. Thanks! I have just begun reading your commentaries this week and I am impressed with
how clearly you analyze and summarize key points about many topics.
Thank you so much for writing what are often the equivalent of books, but condensed into
easy to read and digest summaries.
I have ordered your book and look forward to reading that.
Regarding the talk of a hypothetical "Iran War", I do not think Washington will actually try
invading Iran, for a couple of reasons.
1. The US does not currently have enough troops to occupy Iran. It would require a
military draft. This would cause massive opposition inside the USA (easily the biggest
internal US political turmoil since the Vietnam War). And the youngest American adults that
would get drafted are the least religious US generation ever (i.e. they are not Evangelical
fundamentalists who want to throw their lives away for "Israel" and the "End Times").
2. Where would Washington launch the invasion from? Iraq? The US will soon be asked to
leave Iraq, and if Washington does not comply it will very quickly turn into another quagmire
for the US just like it was in the 2000s. And if they tried invading from Afghanistan, Iran
could always arm the Taliban. And besides, would Pakistan really allow the US military to
pass through its territory to Afghanistan to invade Iran? I think not.
3. Russia would obviously provide Iran with military supplies, intelligence, and
diplomatic support, making any invasion attempt very costly for the US.
Therefore, Washington's options are rather limited to missile strikes, CIA funded
terrorist attacks, and other lesser forms of meddling.
"... That is if the MSM get their way! Maybe I am being overoptimistic, but Russia - as a permanent member of the UNSC and a member of the OPCW - will do everything in it's powers to pursue this matter, and it seems quite possible they will be able to force it onto the main agenda within 2020. If that happens it will be impossible for the MSM to push it under the rug. ..."
"... The other aspect it is that the MSM ability to suppress this news is dependent on behaviour of the MSM community in its totality, and the relationship to reader plausibility ..."
"... What determines whether one MSM decides to break the pack and publish news on OPCW? Well, for one thing, MoA articles can influence individual journalists and individual editors! ..."
B, under the "major stories covered" title you should include Skripal, about which you wrote
many important articles; I believe ultimately - like OPCW and Russiagate - it will prove to
be history-making event in terms of impact on public perceptions of media and the ability of
the media to control public opinion. Probably eventually whistleblowers will come forward
like the OPCW, and only thin will it have it's maximum impact.
(Well, the original event was 2018 not 2019, but some of the reports were in 2019
anyway)
My predictions on these issue for next year are:
...
Mainstream media have suppressed all news about the OPCW scandal. This will only change if
major new evidence comes to light.
That is if the MSM get their way! Maybe I am being overoptimistic, but Russia - as a
permanent member of the UNSC and a member of the OPCW - will do everything in it's powers to
pursue this matter, and it seems quite possible they will be able to force it onto the main
agenda within 2020. If that happens it will be impossible for the MSM to push it under the
rug.
The other aspect it is that the MSM ability to suppress this news is dependent on
behaviour of the MSM community in its totality, and the relationship to reader plausibility.
There are a few factors that could influence this independently of major new evidence, such
as the behaviour of a few outlier MSM's that decide to release information (and whether or
not that information then takes off in the public consciousness); pressure that could build
up in social media calling for the MSM to respond and attacking MSM credibility; or other
forms of pressure from the public calling on the MSM to respond. It is therefore a dynamic
that is not entirely predictable.
Both of the above are distinct from the emergence of new major evidence, although both
cases would seem likely to provoke new revelations in turn.
What determines whether one MSM decides to break the pack and publish news on OPCW? Well,
for one thing, MoA articles can influence individual journalists and individual editors!
US Ambassador to Poland gets her 2 cents in as regards the comments of Vladimir Putin and
others in the Empire of Evil concerning the Molotov – Ribbentrop Non-Aggression Pact
and Polish pre-WWII connivings with Nazi Germany.
Russian politicians had earlier strongly condemned the position of Warsaw, which does not
consider itself responsible for any of the events leading up to the outbreak of WWII in
Europe. Thus, the speaker of the state Duma, Vyacheslav Volodin, urged Polish "colleagues" to
apologize for the anti-Semitic remarks of Jozef Lipsky, former Polish Ambassador to Nazi
Germany, who supported some ideas of Adolf Hitler and even suggested putting up a monument to
him in honour of his plans to deport European Jews to Madagascar. Russian Foreign Ministry
spokeswoman Maria Zakharova also criticized the attempt of Poland to rewrite history in
favour of its political interests.
On Sunday, the Prime Minister of Poland, Mateusz Morawiecki, criticized the signing of the
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and actually laid the blame on the USSR for starting WWII along with
Nazi Germany.
Head of the scientific Department of the Russian Military Historical Society, Yuri
Nikiforov, noted that the Warsaw version of events leading to WWII was a "totally ideologized
interpretation of history by orderr" and had nothing to do with the historical truth, and was
promoting its version of history in order to weaken Russian influence on the world stage.
Drogi Prezydencie Putin, to Hitler i Stalin zmówili się, aby
rozpocząć II wojnę światową. To jest fakt. Polska była
ofiarą tego okropnego konfliktu.
Dear President Putin, it was Hitler and Stalin who agreed to start World War II.
This is a fact. Poland was a victim of this terrible conflict.
Dear American business executive, entrepreneur and untrained diplomat now acting as US
Ambassador to Poland, try studying some history.
By the way, before your plum appointment as ambassador to Poland, wasn't it you who
suggested that Poland was responsible for the re-emergence of anti-Semitism across the
continent of Europe because of a law which criminalizes blaming Poland for the actions of
Nazi Germany on its soil during the Holocaust?
And wasn't it headbanger of a Polish President Andrzej Duda who stated that if you were to
be appointed as the new U.S. ambassador to Poland, then you would be accepted, despite having
made "unnecessary and mistaken" comments about his country?
Can't you see that the truth as regards WWII matters is only that which is approved by the
Poles?
The Poles are putting Germany in an awkward position.
The official position of the modern German government (based on Nurnberg, etc.) is that
Germany, and Germany alone, is responsible for the outbreak of WWII. Not the Soviet Union.
Just Germany, ma'am, just Germany.
So, in the face of this Polish revisionism, as Russian analysts are pointing out, Germany
will either have to (a) bitch-slap Poland, or (b) renounce their entire official state policy
and historical ideology since their defeat in WWII and start singing Horst Wessel Lied
again.
"... Bellingcat is an alleged group of amateur on-line researchers who have spent years shilling for the U.S. instigated war against the Syrian government, blaming the Douma chemical attack and others on the Assad government, and for the anti-Russian propaganda connected to, among other things, the Skripal poisoning case in England, and the downing of flight MH17 plane in Ukraine. ..."
"... The Intercept , along with its parent company First Look Media, recently hosted a workshop for pro-war, Google-funded organization Bellingcat in New York. The workshop, which cost $2,500 per person to attend and lasted five days, aimed to instruct participants in how to perform investigations using "open source" tools -- with Bellingcat's past, controversial investigations for use as case studies Thus, while The Intercept has long publicly promoted itself as an anti-interventionist and progressive media outlet, it is becoming clearer that – largely thanks to its ties to Omidyar – it is increasingly an organization that has more in common with Bellingcat, a group that launders NATO and U.S. propaganda and disguises it as "independent" and "investigative journalism." ..."
In the 1920s, the influential American intellectual Walter Lippman argued that the average
person was incapable of seeing or understanding the world clearly and needed to be guided by
experts behind the social curtain. In a number of books he laid out the theoretical foundations
for the practical work of Edward Bernays , who developed "public relations" (aka propaganda) to
carry out this task for the ruling elites. Bernays had honed his skills while working as a
propagandist for the United States during World War I, and after the war he set himself up as a
public relations counselor in New York City.
There is a fascinating exchange at the beginning of Adam Curtis's documentary, The
Century of Self , where Bernays, then nearly 100 years old but still very sharp, reveals
his manipulative mindset and that of so many of those who have followed in his wake. He says
the reason he couldn't call his new business "propaganda" was because the Germans had given
propaganda a "bad name," and so he came up with the euphemism "public relations." He then adds
that "if you could use it [i.e. propaganda] for war, you certainly could use it for peace." Of
course, he never used PR for peace but just to manipulate public opinion (he helped engineer
the CIA coup against the democratically elected Arbenz government in Guatemala in 1954 with
fake news broadcasts). He says "the Germans gave propaganda a bad name," not Bernays and the
United States with their vast campaign of lies, mainly aimed at the American people to get
their support for going to a war they opposed (think weapons of mass destruction). He sounds
proud of his war propaganda work that resounded to his credit since it led to support for the
"war to end all wars" and subsequently to a hit movie about WWI , Yankee Doodle Dandy
, made in 1942 to promote another war, since the first one somehow didn't achieve its lofty
goal.
As Bernays has said in his book Propaganda ,
The American motion picture is the greatest unconscious carrier of propaganda in the world
today.
He was a propagandist to the end. I suspect most viewers of the film are taken in by these
softly spoken words of an old man sipping a glass of wine at a dinner table with a woman who is
asking him questions. I have shown this film to hundreds of students and none has noticed his
legerdemain. It is an example of the sort of hocus-pocus I will be getting to shortly, the sly
insertion into seemingly liberal or matter-of-fact commentary of statements that imply a
different story. The placement of convincing or confusing disingenuous ingredients into a truth
sandwich – for Bernays knew that the bread of truth is essential to conceal untruth.
In the following years, Bernays, Lippman, and their ilk were joined by social "scientists,"
psychologists, and sundry others intent on making a sham out of the idea of democracy by
developing strategies and techniques for the engineering of social consensus consonant with the
wishes of the ruling classes. Their techniques of propaganda developed exponentially with the
development of technology, the creation of the CIA, its infiltration of all the major media,
and that agency's courting of what the CIA official Cord Meyer called in the 1950s "the
compatible left," having already had the right in its pocket. Today most people are, as is
said, "wired," and they get their information from the electronic media that is mostly
controlled by giant corporations in cahoots with government propagandists. Ask yourself: Has
the power of the oligarchic, permanent warfare state with its propaganda and spy networks
increased or decreased over your lifetime. The answer is obvious: the average people that
Lippman and Bernays trashed are losing and the ruling elites are winning.
This is not just because powerful propagandists are good at controlling so-called "average"
people's thinking, but, perhaps more importantly, because they are also adept – probably
more so – at confusing or directing the thinking of those who consider themselves above
average, those who still might read a book or two or have the concentration to read multiple
articles that offer different perspectives on a topic. This is what some call the professional
and intellectual classes, perhaps 15-20 % of the population, most of whom are not the ruling
elites but their employees and sometimes their mouthpieces. It is this segment of the
population that considers itself "informed," but the information they imbibe is often sprinkled
with bits of misdirection, both intentional and not, that beclouds their understanding of
important public matters but leaves them with the false impression that they are in the
know.
Recently I have noticed a group of interconnected examples of how this group of the
population that exerts influence incommensurate with their numbers has contributed to the
blurring of lines between fact and fiction. Within this group there are opinion makers who are
often journalists, writers, and cultural producers of some sort or other, and then the larger
number of the intellectual or schooled class who follow their opinions. This second group then
passes on their received opinions to those who look up to them.
There is a notorious propaganda outfit called Bellingcat , started by an unemployed
Englishman named Eliot Higgins, that has been funded by The Atlantic Council, a think-tank with
deep ties to the U.S. government, NATO, war manufacturers, and their allies, and the National
Endowment for Democracy (NED), another infamous U.S. front organization heavily involved in
so-called color revolution regime change operations all around the world, that has just won the
International Emmy Award for best documentary. The film with the Orwellian title, Bellingcat: Truth in a Post-Truth World, received its Emmy at a recent ceremony in New
York City.
Bellingcat is an alleged group of amateur on-line researchers who have spent years
shilling for the U.S. instigated war against the Syrian government, blaming the Douma chemical
attack and others on the Assad government, and for the anti-Russian propaganda connected to,
among other things, the Skripal poisoning case in England, and the downing of flight MH17 plane
in Ukraine.
It has been lauded by the corporate mainstream media in the west. Its support for
the equally fraudulent White Helmets (also funded by the US and the UK) in Syria has also been
praised by the western corporate media while being dissected as propaganda by many excellent
independent journalists such as Eva Bartlett, Vanessa Beeley, Catte Black, among others. It's
had its work skewered by the likes of Seymour Hersh and MIT professor Theodore Postol, and its
US government connections pointed out by many others, including Ben Norton and Max Blumenthal
at The Gray Zone. And now we have the mainstream media's wall of silence on the leaks from the
Organization for the Prohibition on Chemical Weapons (OPCW) concerning the Douma chemical
attack and the doctoring of their report that led to the illegal U.S. bombing of Syria in the
spring of 2018. Bellingcat was at the forefront of providing justification for such bombing,
and now the journalists Peter Hitchens, Tareq Harrad (who recently resigned from Newsweek after accusing the publication of suppressing his revelations about the OPCW
scandal) and others are fighting an uphill battle to get the truth out.
Yet Bellingcat: Truth in a Post-Truth World won the Emmy , fulfilling Bernays'
point about films being the greatest unconscious carriers of propaganda in the world today.
Who presented the Emmy Award to the film makers, but none other than the rebel journalist
Chris Hedges . Why he did so, I don't know. But that he did so clearly sends a message to those
who follow his work and trust him that it's okay to give a major cultural award to a propaganda
outfit. But then, perhaps he doesn't consider Bellingcat to be that.
Nor, one presumes, does The Intercept , the billionaire Pierre Omidyar owned
publication associated with Glen Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill, and also read by many
progressive-minded people. The Intercept that earlier this year disbanded the small
team that was tasked with reviewing and releasing more of the massive trove of documents they
received from Edward Snowden six years ago, a minute number of which have ever been released or
probably ever will be. As
Whitney Webb pointed out , last year The Intercept hosted a workshop for
Bellingcat. She wrote:
The Intercept , along with its parent company First Look Media, recently
hosted a workshop for pro-war, Google-funded organization Bellingcat in New York. The
workshop, which
cost $2,500 per person to attend and lasted five days, aimed to instruct participants in
how to perform investigations using "open source" tools -- with Bellingcat's past, controversial
investigations for use as case studies Thus, while The Intercept has long
publicly promoted itself as an anti-interventionist and progressive media outlet, it is
becoming clearer that – largely thanks to its ties to Omidyar – it is
increasingly an organization that has more in common with Bellingcat, a group that launders
NATO and U.S. propaganda and disguises it as "independent" and "investigative
journalism."
Then we have Jefferson Morley , the editor of The Deep State, former Washington
Post journalist, and JFK assassination researcher, who has written a praiseworthy review of the
Bellingcat film and who supports Bellingcat. "In my experience, Bellingcat is credible," he
writes in an Alternet article, "Bellingcat
documentary has the pace and plot of a thriller."
Morley has also just written an article for Counterpunch –
"Why the Douma Chemical Attack Wasn't a 'Managed Massacre'" – in which he disputes
the claim that the April 7, 2018 attack in the Damascus suburb was a false flag operation
carried out by Assad's opponents. "I do not see any evidence proving that Douma was a false
flag incident," he writes in this article that is written in a style that leaves one guessing
as to what exactly he is saying. It sounds convincing unless one concentrates, and then his
double messages emerge. Yet it is the kind of article that certain "sophisticated" left-wing
readers might read and feel is insightful. But then Morley, who has written considerably about
the CIA, edits a website that advertises itself as "the thinking person's portal to the world
of secret government," and recently had an exchange with former CIA Director John Brennan where
"Brennan put a friendly finger on my chest," said in February 2017, less than a month after
Trump was sworn in as president, that:
With a docile Republican majority in Congress and a demoralized Democratic Party in
opposition, the leaders of the Deep State are the most -- perhaps the only -- credible check
in Washington on what Senator Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) calls Trump's "
wrecking ball presidency ."
Is it any wonder that some people might be a bit confused?
"I know what you're thinking about," said Tweedledum; "but it isn't so, nohow."
"Contrariwise," continued Tweedledee, "if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it
would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic."
As a final case in point, there is a recent book by Stephen Kinzer , Poisoner in Chief:
Sidney Gottlieb And The CIA Search For Mind Control, t he story of the chemist known as
Dr. Death who ran the CIA's MK-ULTRA mind control project, using LSD, torture, electric shock
therapy, hypnosis, etc.; developed sadistic methods of torture still used in black sites around
the world; and invented various ingenious techniques for assassination, many of which were
aimed at Fidel Castro. Gottlieb was responsible for brutal prison and hospital experiments and
untold death and suffering inflicted on all sorts of innocent people. His work was depraved in
the deepest sense; he worked with Nazis who experimented on Jews despite being Jewish
himself.
Kinzer writes in depth about this man who considered himself a patriot and a spiritual
person – a humane torturer and killer. It is an eye-opening book for anyone who does not
know about Gottlieb, who gave the CIA the essential tools they use in their "organized crime"
activities around the world – in the words of Douglass Valentine, the author of The
CIA as Organized Crime and The Phoenix Program . Kinzer's book is good history on
Gottlieb; however, he doesn't venture into the present activities of the CIA and Gottlieb's
patriotic followers, who no doubt exist and go about their business in secret.
After recounting in detail the sordid history of Gottlieb's secret work that is nauseating
to read about, Kinzer leaves the reader with these strange words:
Gottlieb was not a sadist, but he might well have been . Above all he was an instrument of
history. Understanding him is a deeply disturbing way of understanding ourselves.
What possibly could this mean? Not a sadist? An instrument of history? Understanding
ourselves? These few sentences, dropped out of nowhere, pull the rug out from under what is
generally an illuminating history and what seems like a moral indictment. This language is pure
mystification.
Kinzer also concludes that because Gottlieb said so, the CIA failed in their efforts to
develop methods of mind control and ended MK-ULTRA's experiments long ago. Why would he believe
the word of a man who personified the agency he worked for: a secret liar? He writes,
When Sydney Gottlieb brough MK-ULTRA to its end in the early 1960s, he told his CIA
superiors that he had found no reliable way to wipe away memory, make people abandon their
consciences, or commit crimes and then forget them.
As for those who might think otherwise, Kinzer suggests they have vivid imaginations and are
caught up in conspiracy thinking: "This [convincing others that the CIA had developed methods
of mind control when they hadn't] is Sydney Gottlieb's most unexpected legacy," he asserts. He
says this although Richard Helms, the CIA Director, destroyed all MK-Ultra records. He says
that Allen Dulles, Gottlieb, and Helms themselves were caught up in a complete fantasy about
mind control because they had seen too many movies and read too many books; mind control was
impossible, a failure, a myth, he maintains. It is the stuff of popular culture, entertainment.
In an interview with Chris Hedges, interestingly posted by Jefferson Morley at his website, The Deep State , Hedges agrees with Kinzer. Gottlieb, Dulles, et al. were all deluded.
Mind control was impossible. You couldn't create a Manchurian Candidate; by implication,
someone like Sirhan Sirhan could not have been programmed to be a fake Manchurian Candidate and
to have no memory of what he did, as he claims. He could not have been mind-controlled by the
CIA to perform his part as the seeming assassin of Senator Robert Kennedy while the real killer
shot RFK from behind. People who think like this should get real.
Furthermore, as is so common in books such as Kinzer's, he repeats the canard that JFK and
RFK knew about and pressured the CIA to assassinate Fidel Castro. This is demonstrably false,
as shown by the Church Committee and the Assassinations Record Review Board, among many others.
That Kinzer takes the word of notorious liars like Richard Helms and the top-level CIA
operative Samuel Halpern is simple incredible, something that is hard to consider a mistake.
Slipped into a truth sandwich, it is devoured and passed on. But it is false. Bullshit meant to
deceive.
But this is how these games are played. If you look carefully, you will see them widely.
Inform, enlighten, while throwing in doubletalk and untruths. The small number of people who
read such books and articles will come away knowing some history that has no current relevance
and being misinformed on other history that does. They will then be in the know, ready to pass
their "wisdom" on to those who care to listen. They will not think they are average.
But they will be mind controlled, and the killer cat will roam freely without a bell, ready
to devour the unsuspecting mice.
Edward Curtin is a writer whose work has appeared widely. He teaches sociology at
Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. His website is http://edwardcurtin.com/
What Armstrong fails to connect is the need for the first to be accomplished so that the
second has a chance of complete success: Russia's political-economy needed resuscitating and
strong-arming in the case of the kleptocrats for Russia's condition to be as bright as it is
on the dawn of a new decade 1/5 of the way into the 21st Century.
Armstrong also tarries at length with Putin's 2007 Munich speech wherein Putin made one
very prescient observation: "It is a world in which there is one master, one sovereign. And
at the end of the day this is pernicious not only for all those within this system, but also
for the sovereign itself because it destroys itself from within."
Armstrong uses Putin's observation made after the Outlaw US Empire's failed attempt to
prolong its Unipolar Moment in Iraq after it attacked itself to cause that conlict to show
the self-inflicted damage has yet to stop:
"Do we not see this today? The USA is tearing itself apart over imagined Russian
collusion, imagined Russian electoral interference and real Ukrainian corruption. And,
meanwhile, the forever wars go on and on."
In 2016, I thought there was an excellent chance the D-Party would splinter in a manner
similar to 1860 that was generated by both bottom->up and top->down forces. And in
light of the court decision allowing the DNC to name whomever it wants as its POTUS and VEEP
candidates regardless of both primary and convention balloting, IMO that possibility is even
greater as like 2016 the DNC will not--cannot--anoint Sanders as its POTUS candidate. But all
that's the subject for another comment.
The dynamics of geopolitics has allowed the China/Russia team and its allies to usher the
EU into Eurasian integration over the next decade while exposing the Outlaw US Empire as
nothing but a Ponzi Scheme that will collapse upon itself at some point in time.
"2020 will be a year of milestone significance. We will finish building a moderately
prosperous society in all respects and realize the first centenary goal. 2020 will also be a
year of decisive victory for the elimination of poverty....
"Human history, like a river, runs forever, witnessing both peaceful moments and great
disturbances. We are not afraid of storms and dangers and barriers. China is determined to
walk along the road of peaceful development and will resolutely safeguard world peace and
promote common development. We are willing to join hands with people of all countries in
the world to build together the Belt and Road Initiative, and push forward the building of a
community with a shared future for mankind, and make unremitting efforts for the creation of
a beautiful future for mankind ." [My Emphasis]
Clearly, China has grasped the leadership role abandoned by the Outlaw US Empire for
promoting humanity, Trump and Pompeo's daily actions giving China's position a continual
boost.
Putin's New
Year speech is short but emphasizes his key points. Do note that for Russians the New
Year celebration is akin to the West's Christmas (or perhaps was is the better verb):
"Friends, we always prepare for the New Year in advance and, despite being busy, we
believe that the warmth of human relations and companionship are the most important thing. We
strive to do something important and useful for other people and to help those who require
our support, to make them happy by giving them presents and our attention.
"Such sincere impulses, pure thoughts and selfless generosity are the true magic of the
New Year holiday. It brings out the best in people and transforms the world filling it with
joy and smiles.
"Uplifting New Year's feelings and wonderful impressions have been living in us since
childhood and come back every New Year, when we hug our loved ones, our parents, prepare
surprises for our children and grandchildren, decorate the New Year tree with them and unpack
once again paper cut-outs, baubles and glass garlands. These, sometimes ancient, but beloved
family trinkets give their warmth to the younger generations."
His preamble is nationalist; his message paternalistic and humanist.
IMO, the Scrooges of the Outlaw US Empire's Current Oligarchy haven't a chance versus the
likes of Putin, Xi and their likeminded allies.
I'll leave my fellow barflies with this 32 year-old music video that IMO well
expresses the heart sets of Putin, Xi, and those of us who want to share the world they're
trying to build instead of what the Outlaw US Empire's trying to pull down and destroy.
Last week, we
considered how the Bush and Obama administrations worked in tandem – wittingly or
unwittingly, but I'm betting on the former – to move forward with the construction of a
US missile defense system smack on Russia's border following the attacks of 9/11 and Bush's
decision to scrap the ABM Treaty with Moscow.
That aggressive move will go down in the (non-American) history books as the primary reason
for the return of Cold War-era atmosphere between Washington and Moscow. Currently, with the
mainstream news cycle top-heavy with 24/7 'Russiagate' baloney, many people have understandably
forgotten that it was during the Obama administration when US-Russia relations really hit rock
bottom. And it had nothing to do with Hillary Clinton's home computer getting allegedly
compromised by some Russia hackers.
The year is 2008; welcome to the international peace tour – although 'farce tour'
would be much more accurate. Fatigued by 8 long years of Bush's disastrous war on terror, with
over 1 million dead, maimed or on the run, the world has just let out a collective sigh of
relief as Barack Obama has been elected POTUS. Due to Obama's velvety delivery, and the fact
that he was not George W. Bush, he was able to provide the perfect smokescreen as far as
Washington's ulterior motives with regards to Russia were concerned; the devious double game
America was playing required a snake-oil salesman of immeasurable skill and finesse.
Just months into his presidency, with 'hope and change' hanging in the air like so many
helium balloons, Obama
told a massive crowd in Prague that, "To reduce our warheads and stockpiles, we will
negotiate a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with the Russians this year. President Medvedev
and I began this process in London, and will seek a new agreement by the end of this year that
is legally binding and sufficiently bold (Applause!)."
It would take another 8 years for the world – or at least the awakened part – to
come to grips with the fact that America's 'first Black president' was just another
smooth-talking, Wall Street-bought operator in sheep clothing. In the last year of the Obama
reign, it has been conservatively estimated that some 26,000 bombs of various size and power
were duly dropped against enemies in various nations. In other words, nearly three bombs every
hour, 24 hours a day.
But more to the point, US-Russia relations on Obama's watch experienced their deepest
deterioration since the days of the US-Soviet standoff. In fact, with the benefit of hindsight,
we can say that the 44th US president picked up almost seamlessly where Bush left off, and then
some. Initially, however, it looked as though relations with Russia would improve as Obama
announced
he would "shelve" the Bush plan for ground-based interceptors in Poland and a related radar
site in the Czech Republic. Then, the very same day, he performed a perfect flip-flop into the
geopolitical pool, saying he would deploy a
sea-based variety – which is every bit as lethal as the land version, as then Secretary
of Defense Robert Gates
admitted – instead of a land-locked one.
Following that announcement, Obama appeared intent on lulling Moscow into a false sense of
security that the system was somehow less dangerous than the Bush model, or that the Americans
would eventually agree and cooperate with them in the system. In March 2009, a curious thing
happened at the same time relations between the two global nuclear powers were hitting the
wall. A
meeting – more of a photo opportunity than any significant summit – took place
between then-US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov
in Geneva. To the delight of the phalanx of photographers present, Clinton, in a symbolic
gesture of "resetting relations" with Russia, produced a yellow box with a red button and the
Russian word "peregruzka" printed on it.
"You got it wrong," Lavrov said to general laughter. "It should be "perezagruzka" [reset],"
he corrected somewhat pedantically. "This says 'peregruzka,' which means 'overcharged.'"
Clinton gave a very interesting response, especially in light of where we are today in terms
of the bilateral breakdown: "We won't let you do that to us, I promise. We mean it and we look
forward to it."
As events would prove, the US State Department's 'mistaken' use of the Russian word for
'overcharged' instead of 'reset' was far closer to the truth. After all, can anybody remember a
time in recent history, aside from perhaps the Cuban Missile Crisis, when US-Russia relations
were more "overcharged" than now? In hindsight, the much-hyped 'reset' was an elaborate ploy by
the Obama administration to buy as much time as possible to get a strategic head start on the
Russians.
It deserves mentioning that the fate of the New START Treaty (signed into force on April 8,
2010), the nuclear missile reduction treaty signed between Obama and
then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, hung in the balance on mutual cooperation between the
nuclear powers. Nevertheless, it became clear the Obama sweet talk was just a lot of
candy-coated nothing.
What is truly audacious about the Obama administration's moves is that it somehow believed
Moscow would radically reduce its ballistic missile launch capabilities, as prescribed in the
New START treaty, at the very same time the United States was building a mighty sword along the
entire length of its Western border.
The Obama administration clearly underestimated Moscow, or overestimated Obama's charm
powers.
By the year 2011, after several years of failed negotiations to bring Russia onboard the
system, Moscow's patience was clearly over. During the G-8 Summit in France, Medvedev
expressed frustration with
the lack of progress on the missile defense system with the US.
"When we ask for the name of the countries that the shield is aimed at, we get silence," he
said. "When we ask if the country has missiles (that could target Europe), the answer is
'no.'"
"Now who has those types of missiles (that the missile defense system could counter)?"
"We do," Medvedev explained. "So we can only think that this system is being aimed against
us."
In fact, judging by the tremendous strides Russia has made in the realm of military
technologies over a very short period, it is apparent the Kremlin understood from the outset
that the 'reset' was an elaborate fraud, designed to cover the administration's push to Russian
border.
As I wrote last week on these pages: "In March, Putin stunned the world, and certainly
Washington's hawks, by announcing
in the annual Address to the Federal Assembly the introduction of advanced weapons systems
– including those with hypersonic capabilities – designed to overcome any missile
defense system in the world.
These major developments by Russia, which Putin emphasized was accomplished "without the
benefit" of Soviet-era expertise, has fueled the narrative that "Putin's Russia" is an
aggressive nation with "imperial ambitions," when in reality its goal was to form a bilateral
pact with the United States and other Western states almost two decades ago post 9/11.
As far as 'Russiagate', the endless probe into the Trump administration for its alleged
collusion with Russia in the 2016 election, not a shred of incriminating evidence has ever been
provided that would prove such a thing occurred. And when Putin offered
to cooperate with Washington in determining exactly what happened, the offer was rebuffed.
In light of such a scenario, it is my opinion that the Democrats, fully aware –
despite what the skewed media polls erringly
told them – that Hillary Clinton stood no chance of beating the Republican Donald
Trump in the 2016 presidential contest, set about crafting the narrative of 'Russian collusion'
in order to not only delegitimize Trump's presidency, possibly depriving him of a second term
in 2010, but to begin the process of severely curtailing the work of 'alternative media,' which
are in fact greatly responsible for not only Trump's victory at the polls, but for exposing the
dirt on Clinton's corrupt campaign.
These alternative media sites have been duly linked to Russia in one way or another as a
means of silencing them. Thus, it is not only Russia that has been victimized by the lunacy of
Russiagate; every single person who stands for the freedom of speech has
suffered a major setback one way or another.
Part I of this story is available
here . The views of individual contributors do not necessarily represent those of the
Strategic Culture Foundation. Tags: Cold War George W. Bush Obama RussiagateSTART
https://www.dianomi.com/smartads.epl?id=4777 DiGenova: Comey And Brennan Were 'Coup
Leaders' by Tyler
Durden Wed, 01/01/2020 - 19:30 0 SHARES
Former US Attorney Joe diGenova told OANN 's John Hines that former FBI Director
James Comey and former CIA Director John Brennan were "coup leaders" in an attempt to reverse
the outcome of the 2016 US election.
DiGenova says the Obama Justice Department was corrupted under Attorneys General Eric Holder
and Loretta Lynch, "with the authority and knowledge of then-president" Obama, and that a
'stupid and arrogant' Susan Rice was dumb enough to document his knowledge in a January 20th,
2017 email.
"And you'll never forget, I'm sure, that famous Susan Rice email on inauguration day of
Donald Trump, where she sends an email to the file memorializing that there had been a
meeting on January 5th with the president of the United States, all senior law enforcement
and intelligence officials, where they reviewed the status of Crossfire Hurricane and the
president announced - President Obama - that he was sure that everything had been done by the
book.
I want to thank Susan Rice for being so stupid and so arrogant to write that email on
January 20th because that's exhibit A for Barack Obama - who knew all about this from start
to finish, and was more than happy to have the civil rights of a massive number of Americans
violated so he could get Donald Trump." -Joe diGenova
Moreover, diGenova says that after "all this stuff involving Trump and Page and Papadopoulos
and Michael Flynn," anyone who couldn't see that the "corrupt investigative process of the FBI
and DOJ was basically being used to conduct a coup d'état" is an idiot.
"This was not hard. If you're a good prosecutor you look at the facts in the Trump case,
and the Page case, the Flynn case. There's only one conclusion you can come to; none of this
makes any sense. None of these people were evil. None of them. They were framed , and the
whole process was playing out, and you knew it on July 5th 2016, when James Comey announced -
usurping the functions of the Attorney General, that no reasonable prosecutor would bring a
case against Hillary Clinton. That was ludicrous! She destroyed 30,000 emails that were under
subpoena. If you or I did that, we would be in prison today . She got a break because she was
Hillary Clinton, and James Comey was trying to kiss her fanny because he wanted something
from her when she became president of the United States.
All of these people who watched that news conference and didn't think that it was a
disgrace for the FBI. And then subsequently, watched all this stuff involving Trump and Page
and Papadopoulos and Michael Flynn - and couldn't see that the corrupt investigative process
of the FBI and the DOJ was basically being used to conduct a coup d'état . I mean you
have to be an idiot. Any first year assistant US attorney would look at all these facts and
say 'there's a coup underway. There's a conspiracy.'
But for those of us thought that, the Washington Post, the New York Times. We were
'conspiracy theorists.' You know what? Pretty damn good theory, it appears today.
" To what extent is the CIA involved in this? " asked Hines.
" Well there's no doubt that John Brennan was the primogenitor of the entire
counterintelligence investigation, " replied diGenova. "It was John Brennan who went to James
Comey and basically pummeled him into starting a counterintelligence investigation against
Trump. Brennan's at the heart of this. He went around the world. He enlisted the help of
foreign intelligence services. He's responsible for Joseph Mifsud and other people."
" People do not have even the beginning of an understanding of the role that John Brennan
played in this . He is a monstrously important person, and I underscore monstrously important
person. He has done more damage to the Central Intelligence Agency - it's equal to what James
Comey has done to the FBI. It's pretty clear that James Comey will go down in history as the
single worst FBI director in history, regardless of how Mr. Durham treats him."
Brennan was just the puppet. The real question is who the power brokers were behind the
scenes pulling strings and giving all the government officials cover. That's probably what
Durham is/needs to get to the bottom of. Hillary is untouchable until those guys get the book
thrown at them. My guess is the Queen is involved, probably the Vatican and Mossad as
well.
Full agreement with Joe DiGenova. In addition, I believe President Obama was an instigator
of this coup d'état. It could only happen in the intelligence field with his consent.
His whole persona is based on his willingness to calculate political gain and he had no
qualms or ethics. He was hailed as the first "black" President. His role in this coup was
made possible by all the people who thought black people were inferior and needed an
opportunity to get ahead. Depending upon how you look at that, that picture is in tatters.
Black folks are incredibly fortunate to have President Trump who will not blame black folks
for the travesties and destruction wrought by another black man. Would a died in the wool
radical like Hillary Clinton think that way?
The good men of the agencies should punish Comey and Brennan. They have "six ways 'til
Tuesday to get even." Why not teach them a lesson from the inside? Many MANY people in the
agency have been insulted by this and they deserve justice against Comey and Brennan.
Gotta give it to the OAN network. They're not dumb. If this actually DID pan out
(indictments and such, as a result of this investigative stuff, with no help whatsoever from
Barr, etc.), then OAN will be the lead network covering this.
Needless to say, it speaks VOLUMES upon VOLUMES, that Fox News isn't covering this (other
than Hannity).
"And you'll never forget, I'm sure, that famous Susan Rice email on inauguration day of
Donald Trump, where she sends an email to the file memorializing that there had been a
meeting on January 5th with the president of the United States, all senior law enforcement
and intelligence officials, where they reviewed the status of Crossfire Hurricane and the
president announced - President Obama - that he was sure that everything had been done by the
book."
Now... let's, for a moment, imagine this scene.
We've already had a Watergate in our history, involving the spying of one party on
another during a presidential campaign season.
These people know how that turned out.
Most of them are lawyers, and at least one is a supposed Constitutional
scholar and professor of Constitutional law.
That's Blo.
Does Rice really expect us to believe they didn't know Crossfire Hurricane was based on
Clinton Campaign-paid for ********?
Wouldn't a law professor president wanna know the basis, and the veracity of the
details, of such a risky operation before authorizing it?
Or are we to believe he merely accepted the assembled "assurances" in this meeting?
Were there presidential meetings about spying on Trump that occurred well before this
one?
Conventional wisdom would have us believe that Russia became America's sworn enemy in the
aftermath of the 2016 presidential election. As is often the case, however, conventional wisdom
can be illusory.
In the momentous 2016 showdown between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, a faraway dark
kingdom known as Russia, the fantastic fable goes, hijacked that part of the American brain
responsible for critical thinking and lever pulling with a few thousand dollars' worth of
Facebook and Twitter adverts, bots and whatnot. The result of that gross intrusion into the
squeaky clean machinery of the God-blessed US election system is now more or less
well-documented history brought to you by the US mainstream media: Donald Trump, with some
assistance from the Russians that has never been adequately explained, pulled the presidential
contest out from under the wobbly feet of Hillary Clinton.
For those who unwittingly bought that work of fiction, I can only offer my sincere
condolences. In fact, Russiagate is just the latest installment of an anti-Russia story that
has been ongoing since the presidency of George W. Bush.
Act 1: Smokescreen
Rewind to September 24 th , 2001. Having gone on record as the first global
leader to telephone George W. Bush in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Putin showed
his support went beyond mere words. He announced a five-point plan to support America in the
'war against terror' that included the sharing of intelligence, as well as the opening of
Russian airspace for US humanitarian flights to Central Asia.
In the
words of perennial Kremlin critic, Michael McFaul, former US ambassador to Russia, Putin's
"acquiescence to NATO troops in Central Asia signaled a reversal of two hundred years of
Russian foreign policy. Under Yeltsin, the communists, and the tsars, Russia had always
considered Central Asia as its 'sphere of influence.' Putin broke with that tradition."
In other words, the new Russian leader was demonstrating his desire for Russia to have, as
Henry Kissinger explained it some seven years
later, "a reliable strategic partner, with America being the preferred choice."
This leads us to the question for the ages: If it was obvious that Russia was now fully
prepared to enter into a serious partnership with the United States in the 'war on terror,'
then how do we explain George W. Bush announcing the withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile
Treaty just three months later? There are some things we may take away from that move, which
Putin tersely and rightly
described as a "mistake."
First, Washington must not have considered a security partnership with Moscow very
important, since they certainly understood that Russia would respond negatively to the decision
to scrap the 30-year-old ABM Treaty. Second, the US must not considered the 'war on terror'
very serious either; otherwise it would not have risked losing Russian assistance in hunting
down the baddies in Central Asia and the Middle East, geographical areas where Russia has
gained valuable experience over the years. This was a remarkably odd choice considering that
the US military apparatus had failed spectacularly to defend the nation against a terrorist
attack, coordinated by 19 amateurs, armed with box cutters, no less. Third, as was the case
with the
decision to invade Iraq, a country with nodiscernible connection to the events of 9/11, as
well as the imposition of the pre-drafted
Patriot Act on a shell-shocked nation, the decision to break with Russia seems to have been a
premeditated move on the global chessboard. Although it would be hard to prove such a claim, we
can take some guidance from Rahm Emanuel, former Obama Chief of Staff, who notoriously advised,
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste."
https://www.youtube.com/embed/Pb-YuhFWCr4
So why did Bush abrogate the ABM Treaty with Russia? The argument was that some "rogue
state," rumored to be Iran, might be tempted to launch a missile attack against "US interests
abroad." Yet there was absolutely no logic to the claim since Tehran was inextricably bound by
the same principle of "mutually assured destruction" (MAD) as were any other states that
tempted fate with a surprise attack on US-Israeli interests. Further, it made no sense to focus
attention on Shia-dominant Iran when the majority of the terrorists, allegedly acolytes of
Osama bin Laden, reportedly hailed from Sunni-dominant Saudi Arabia. In other words, the Bush
administration happily sacrificed an invincible relationship with Russia in the war on terror
in order to guard against some external threat that only nominally existed, with a missile
defense system that was largely unproven in the field. Again, zero logic.
However, when it is considered that the missile defense system was tailor-made by America
specifically with Russia in mind, the whole scheme begins to make more sense, at least from a
strategic perspective. Thus, the Bush administration used the attacks of 9/11 to not only
dramatically curtail the civil rights of American citizens with the passage of the Patriot Act,
it also took the first steps towards encircling Russia with a so-called 'defense system' that
has the capacity to grow in effectiveness and range.
For those who thought Russia would just sit back and let itself be encircled by foreign
missiles, they were in for quite a surprise. In March 2018, Putin stunned the world, and
certainly Washington's hawks, by announcing
in the annual Address to the Federal Assembly the introduction of advanced weapons systems
– including those with hypersonic capabilities – designed to overcome any missile
defense system in the world.
These major developments by Russia, which Putin emphasized was accomplished "without the
benefit" of Soviet-era expertise, has fueled the narrative that "Putin's Russia" is an
aggressive nation with "imperial ambitions," when in reality its goal was to form a bilateral
pact with the United States and other Western states almost two decades ago post 9/11.
Now, US officials can only wring their hands in angst while speaking about an "aggressive
Russia."
"Russia is the most significant threat just because they pose the only existential threat to
the country right now. So we have to look at that from that perspective,"
declared Air Force Gen. John Hyten, commander of US Strategic Command, or STRATCOM.
Putin reiterated in his Address, however, that there would have been no need for Russia to
have developed such advanced weapon systems if its legitimate concerns had not been dismissed
by the US.
"Nobody wanted to talk with us on the core of the problem," he said. "Nobody listened to us.
Now you listen!"
To be continued: Part II: Reset, or 'Overcharged' The views of individual
contributors do not necessarily represent those of the Strategic Culture Foundation. Tags:
Deep State
Russiagate
I think some my still hold out the hope or expectation that the DOJ will get to the bottom
of national-security state malfeasance, beginning with FBI.
Kim Strassel of the WSJ quite pointedly asks why there was so little interest at the FIS
court in the Nunez memo, which the IG report now bears out. Covering for malfeasance might
just be the FISC's job one.
Now, a similarly gimlet-eyed view of the FBI, as arguably beyond saving ...
"... Imagine millions of government employees paid for by America's tax payer class, involved in covert operations undermining nation states for the benefit of war mongering shadow overlords counting on more never ending chaos feeding their hunger for power. ..."
"... This isn't Orwell's 1984, this Team America on opioids. ..."
"... Senior OPCW official had orders from US/ the Donald. Remember that the Donald bombed Syria based on this fake report , after a false flag done by Al Qaeda's artistic branch, the White Helmets. ..."
"... Pray, do tell where are the consequences for these literal demons that engaged in war crimes? It is quite clear: as long as you are a member of the establishment, you can do whatever the f*ck you want. ..."
"... Third rate script, third rate actors and crooked investigators. TPTB seem to have a plan worked out. Their problem now is that we, the hoi-polloi, have seen it all before, many times, and we can now recognise ******** when it's used to try to influence us. ..."
"... If this is not lamentable enough, the OPCW – whose final report came to more than a hundred pages and which even issued an easy-to-read precis version for journalists – now slams shut its steel doors in the hope of preventing even more information reaching the press. ..."
"... Instead of these pieces concentrating on the whistleblower how about putting a little heat on the 50 lying bastards who initiated the coverup? ..."
"... The destruction of the countries of the Middle East for the sake of a dwarf with giant ambitions is the most stupid thing the United States has done over the past 30 years in its foreign policy. And yes, all the wars in the Middle East were grounded in lies. And the Americans paid for it all from start to finish. When Americans realize that they need to defend their national interests, and not other people's national interests, maybe something in the Middle East will change for the better. True, I am afraid that with the hight level of stupidity and shortsightedness that is common among Americans, the United States is more likely to be destroyed faster. No offense. ..."
"... And I propose to remember the Syrian Christians who were destroyed by the Saudi Wahhabis, hired by the CIA with the money of American taxpayers and at the request of Israel. Until the Americans begin to investigate the activities of the CIA (and this activity causes the United States only harm), the responsibility for this genocide (you heard right) will be on the American nation. It turns out that in the Middle East you are primarily destroying Christians. How interesting, why such zeal. ..."
"... According to whistleblower testimony and leaked documents, OPCW officials raised alarm about the suppression of critical findings that undermine the allegation that the Syrian government committed a chemical weapons attack in the city of Douma in April 2018. Haddad's editors at Newsweek rejected his attempts to cover the story. "If I don't find another position in journalism because of this, I'm perfectly happy to accept that consequence," Haddad says. "It's not desirable. But there is no way I could have continued in that job knowing that I couldn't report something like this." ..."
"... New leaks continue to expose a cover-up by the OPCW – the world's top chemical weapons watchdog – over a critical event in Syria. Documents, emails, and testimony from OPCW officials have raised major doubts about the allegation that the Syrian government committed a chemical weapons attack in the city of Douma in April 2018. The leaked OPCW information has been released in pieces by Wikileaks. The latest documents contain a number of significant revelations – including that that about 20 OPCW officials voiced concerns that their scientific findings and on-the-ground evidence was suppressed and excluded. ..."
Wikileaks has released their fourth set of leaks from the OPCW's Douma investigation,
revealing new details about the alleged deletion of important information regarding the
fact-finding mission.
RELEASE: OPCW-Douma Docs 4. Four leaked documents from the OPCW reveal that toxicologists
ruled out deaths from chlorine exposure and a senior official ordered the deletion of the
dissenting engineering report from OPCW's internal repository of documents. https://t.co/ndK4sRikNk
"One of the documents is an e-mail exchange dated 27 and 28 February between members of the
fact finding mission (FFM) deployed to Douma and the senior officials of the OPCW. It includes
an e-mail from Sebastien Braha, Chief of Cabinet at the OPCW , where he instructs that an
engineering report from Ian Henderson should be removed from the secure registry of the
organisation," WikiLeaks writes. Included in the email is the following directive:
" Please get this document out of DRA [Documents Registry Archive] And please remove all
traces, if any, of its delivery/storage/whatever in DRA.'"
According to Wikileaks, the main finding of Henderson, who inspected the sites in Douma, was
that two of the cylinders were most likely manually placed at the site, rather than
dropped.
"The main finding of Henderson, who inspected the sites in Douma and two cylinders that were
found on the site of the alleged attack, was that they were more likely manually placed there
than dropped from a plane or helicopter from considerable heights. His findings were omitted
from the official final OPCW report on the Douma incident," the Wikileaks report said.
It must be remembered that the U.S. launched an attack on Damascus, Syria on April 14, 2018
over alleged chemical weapons usage by pro-Assad forces at Douma.
Another document released Friday is minutes from a meeting on 6 June 2018 where four staff
members of the OPCW had discussions with "three Toxicologists/Clinical pharmacologists, one
bioanalytical and toxicological chemist" (all specialists in chemical weapons, according to the
minutes).
Minutes from an OPCW meeting with toxicologists specialized in chemical weapons: "the
experts were conclusive in their statements that there was
no correlation between symptoms and chlorine exposure". https://t.co/j5Jgjiz8UY pic.twitter.com/vgPaTtsdQN
The purpose of this meeting was two-fold. The first objective was "to solicit expert advice
on the value of exhuming suspected victims of the alleged chemical attack in Douma on 7 April
2018". According to the minutes, the OPCW team was advised by the experts that there would be
little use in conducting exhumations. The second point was "To elicit expert opinions from the
forensic toxicologists regarding the observed and reported symptoms of the alleged
victims."
More specifically, " whether the symptoms observed in victims were consistent with exposure
to chlorine or other reactive chlorine gas."
According to the minutes leaked Friday: "With respect to the consistency of the observed and
reported symptoms of the alleged victims with possible exposure to chlorine gas or similar, the
experts were conclusive in their statements that there was no correlation between symptoms and
chlorine exposure ."
The OPCW team members wrote that the key "take-away message" from the meeting was "that the
symptoms observed were inconsistent with exposure to chlorine and no other obvious candidate
chemical causing the symptoms could be identified".
The isisrahell have such long hand to pull the plug any stories implicating their crime in
progress otherwise they can put out some bs spins as bombshell reporting about US lies in
Afghanistan war on their wapo for public for those who read it was nothing important revealed
except being a misdirected na
If you want to pay off that student loan you're going to print what they tell you to
print. You're going to inject kids with what they tell you to inject them with. You're going
to think what they tell you to think or you're going to spend your days in a Prole bar
drinking Blatz.
yes, an attack was launched, 50 missiles I believe, after loud warnings that it was
coming, and none of them actually hit anything significant ... this is the way the game is
played .... the good news is that the missiles cost $50 million, and now they will have to be
replaced, by the Pentagon, first borrowing the money through the US Treasury offerings, and
then paying for them from new money printed by the Federal Reserve. capische?
That`s the way it`s always been, it`s the eternal war of good against evil.
And when one evil enemy is defeated, it`s necessary to create a new evil enemy, how else
can the Establishment Elite make money from war, death and destruction.
It's really very awkward & telling how ***** these bunch of western nations are
looking tough on taking out poor defenceless country like Syria on ******** & at the
satried to ease real kickass Russian as you described when they launch the attacks
I kind wish the US & their Zionist clown launch such huge attacks on Iran based on
false flag
I really wanted these evil aggressive powers to taste what it is like to get bombed back
even one they used to throw on multiple weaker nations freely with nothing to fear as
retribution etc
This organisations are all set up in Europe and US run by the filthiest filth on earth who
still think they have God given right to imperial rule over the world.
Your military-industrial-intelligence complex at work, creating justification for more
funding, like always - and who cares if people die as a result? Like Soros said, if they
didn't do it, someone else would. (do I need /sarc?).
They don't like to be shown to be in charge, just to be in charge. And if you think this
is a function of the current admin, you've been slow in the head and deaf and blind for quite
some time.
I've watched since Eisenhower, and "it's always something". Doesn't matter what color the
clown in chief's tie is.
Imagine millions of government employees paid for by America's tax payer class, involved
in covert operations undermining nation states for the benefit of war mongering shadow
overlords counting on more never ending chaos feeding their hunger for power.
This isn't Orwell's 1984, this Team America on opioids.
Senior OPCW official had orders from US/ the Donald. Remember that the Donald bombed Syria based on this fake report , after a false flag done
by Al Qaeda's artistic branch, the White Helmets.
Pray, do tell where are the consequences for these literal demons that engaged in war
crimes? It is quite clear: as long as you are a member of the establishment, you can do
whatever the f*ck you want. Why do we even follow the law, then? Given the precedent that is
being set, we might as well not have any.
Well, they are looking forward to using all those Israeli weapons, er, uh, products, that
local law enforcement has purchased...so watch out for Co-Intel Pro elicitation going
forward....?
Everybody knows the Golem (USA) does Isn'treal's bidding in Syria and elsewhere in the
Near East. Hopefully they keep hammering in the fact that this "gas attack" was an obvious
set-up to use as a pretext (flimsy itself on the face of it) to brutalize Assad and Syria on
behalf of Isn'treal.
The whole thing is built on ******* lies. Worst part about it is, nothing will happen.
Only official news is to believed. You see it and it is a lie. they tell you to believe
it. A lot of people casually believe whatever is spoken on TV. They become teachers and are
taught in college what is right and wrong. We only have a few years before all the brain dead
are in charge and robotically following the message like zombies with no brain
Third rate script, third rate actors and crooked investigators. TPTB seem to have a plan worked out. Their problem now is that we, the hoi-polloi, have
seen it all before, many times, and we can now recognise ******** when it's used to try to
influence us.
It is difficult to underestimate the seriousness of this manipulative act by the OPCW.
In a response to the conservative author Peter Hitchens, who also writes for the Mail on
Sunday – he is of course the brother of the late Christopher Hitchens – the
OPCW admits that its so-called technical secretariat "is conducting an internal
investigation about the unauthorised [sic] release of the document".
Then it adds: "At this time, there is no further public information on this matter and
the OPCW is unable to accommodate [sic] requests for interviews". It's a tactic that until
now seems to have worked: not a single news media which reported the OPCW's official
conclusions has followed up the story of the report which the OPCW suppressed.
And you bet the OPCW is not going to "accommodate" interviews. For here is an
institution investigating a war crime in a conflict which has cost hundreds of thousands of
lives – yet its only response to an enquiry about the engineers' "secret" assessment
is to concentrate on its own witch-hunt for the source of the document it wished to keep
secret from the world.
If this is not lamentable enough, the OPCW – whose final report came to more than
a hundred pages and which even issued an easy-to-read precis version for journalists
– now slams shut its steel doors in the hope of preventing even more information
reaching the press.
The destruction of the countries of the Middle East for the sake of a dwarf with giant
ambitions is the most stupid thing the United States has done over the past 30 years in its
foreign policy. And yes, all the wars in the Middle East were grounded in lies. And the
Americans paid for it all from start to finish. When Americans realize that they need to
defend their national interests, and not other people's national interests, maybe something
in the Middle East will change for the better. True, I am afraid that with the hight level of
stupidity and shortsightedness that is common among Americans, the United States is more
likely to be destroyed faster. No offense.
And I propose to remember the Syrian Christians who were destroyed by the Saudi Wahhabis,
hired by the CIA with the money of American taxpayers and at the request of Israel. Until the
Americans begin to investigate the activities of the CIA (and this activity causes the United
States only harm), the responsibility for this genocide (you heard right) will be on the
American nation. It turns out that in the Middle East you are primarily destroying
Christians. How interesting, why such zeal.
According to whistleblower testimony and leaked documents, OPCW officials raised alarm
about the suppression of critical findings that undermine the allegation that the Syrian
government committed a chemical weapons attack in the city of Douma in April 2018. Haddad's
editors at Newsweek rejected his attempts to cover the story. "If I don't find another
position in journalism because of this, I'm perfectly happy to accept that consequence,"
Haddad says. "It's not desirable. But there is no way I could have continued in that job
knowing that I couldn't report something like this."
New leaks continue to expose a cover-up by the OPCW – the world's top chemical
weapons watchdog – over a critical event in Syria. Documents, emails, and testimony
from OPCW officials have raised major doubts about the allegation that the Syrian government
committed a chemical weapons attack in the city of Douma in April 2018. The leaked OPCW
information has been released in pieces by Wikileaks. The latest documents contain a number
of significant revelations – including that that about 20 OPCW officials
voiced concerns that their scientific findings and on-the-ground evidence was suppressed and
excluded.
This is, without a doubt, a major global scandal: the OPCW, under reported US pressure,
suppressing vital evidence about allegations of chemical weapons. But that very fact exposes
another global scandal: with the exception of small outlets like The Grayzone, the mass media
has widely ignored or whitewashed this story. And this widespread censorship of the OPCW
scandal has just led one journalist to resign. Up until recently, Tareq Haddad was a reporter
at Newsweek. But in early December, Tareq announced that he had quit his position after
Newsweek refused to publish his story about the OPCW cover up over Syria.
Here's a key point - on June 12, Assange announces that Wikileaks will soon be releasing
info pertinent to Hillary. HE DOES NOT SAY THAT HE WILL BE RELEASING DNC EMAILS.
And yet, on June 14, Crowdstrike reports a Russian hack of the DNC servers - and a day later, Guccifer
2.0 emerges and proclaims himself to be the hacker, takes credit for the upcoming Wikileaks
DNC releases, publishes the Trump oppo research which Crowdstrike claimed he had taken, and
intentionally adds "Russian footprints" to his metadata.
So how did Crowdstrike and G2.0 know
that DNC EMAILS would be released?
Because, as Larry postulates, the US intelligence
community had intercepted communications between Seth Rich and Wikileaks in which Seth had
offered the DNC emails (consistent with the report of Sy Hersh's source within the FBI).
So
US intelligence tipped off the DNC that their emails were about to be leaked to Wikileaks.
That's when the stratagem of attributing the impending Wikileaks release to a Russian hack
was born - distracting from the incriminating content of the emails, while vilifying the Deep
State's favorite enemies, Assange and Russia, all in one neat scam.
The new US defense bill, agreed on by both parties, includes sanctions on executives of companies involved in the completion
of Nordstream 2. This is companies involved in laying the remaining pipe, and also companies involved in the infrastructure around
the arrival point.
This could include arrest of the executives of those companies, who might travel to the United States. One of the companies
is Royal Dutch Shell, who have 80,000 employees in the United States.
Some people believe 'the market' for crude oil is a fair and effective arbiter of the industry supply and demand.
But if we step back an inch or two, we all can see it has been a severely broken mechanism during this up phase in oil.
For example, there has been long lags between market signals of shortage or surplus.
Disruptive policies and mechanisms such as tariffs, embargo's, and sanctions, trade bloc quotas, military coups and popular revolutions,
socialist agendas, industry lobbying, multinational corporate McCarthyism, and massively obese debt financing, are all examples
of forces that have trumped an efficient and transparent oil market.
And yet, the problems with the oil market during this time of upslope will look placid in retrospect, as we enter the time beyond
peak.
I see no reason why it won't turn into a mad chaotic scramble.
We had a small hint of what this can look like in the last mid-century. The USA responded to military expansionism of Japan by
enacting an oil embargo against them. The response was Pearl Harbor. This is just one example of many.
How long before Iran lashes out in response to their restricted access to the market?
People generally don't respond very calmly to involuntary restriction on food, or energy, or access to the markets for these things.
"... "growing evidence that the public impeachment proceedings in the House against Trump may actually be helping him politically." ..."
"... "open war on American Democracy." ..."
"... the end of his six-page letter shows that he is fully aware of the Democrats' gambit, bringing it out in the open: he wrote it not because he expected them to see reason but "for the purpose of history" and to create a "permanent and indelible record." ..."
"... It is said that history is written by the winners. That's almost true. It is made by the winners, but written by the loud. Trump is a real-estate developer and reality TV star who talked his way into the White House against two major political dynasties – Clinton and Bush – and both the Republican and Democrat establishments; through a gauntlet of US intelligence agencies, as it turns out; and in the face of near-unanimous opposition from the media. ..."
"... So his impeachment is indeed a historic moment – just not in the way his enemies think. ..."
...If the plan was to sabotage Trump's second-term campaign, it seems to have backfired spectacularly. With every
hearing before the Intelligence or Judiciary Committee, the public support for impeachment actually decreased. Even
CNN
was forced to admit the existence of
"growing evidence that the public impeachment proceedings in the House
against Trump may actually be helping him politically."
Indeed, what better way for Trump to solidify his bona
fides as the populist outsider than to be impeached by the coastal elites and the Washington Swamp, in what amounted to
a nakedly partisan process?
Definition of Impeachment (modern): A process by which the party out of power shows the
world how they got that way. Happens most commonly right before a landslide reelection.
...Trump never gets tired of pointing out the accomplishments of his administration: jobs, stock market growth, trade
deals, etc. He did so again, in a scathing letter to Pelosi on Impeachment Eve, contrasting that to her party's
"open war on American Democracy."
However,
the end of his six-page letter shows that he is fully aware of the
Democrats' gambit, bringing it out in the open: he wrote it not because he expected them to see reason but "for the
purpose of history" and to create a "permanent and indelible record."
It is said that history is written by the winners. That's almost true. It is made by the winners, but written by
the loud. Trump is a real-estate developer and reality TV star who talked his way into the White House against two major
political dynasties – Clinton and Bush – and both the Republican and Democrat establishments; through a gauntlet of US
intelligence agencies, as it turns out; and in the face of near-unanimous opposition from the media.
So his impeachment is indeed a historic moment – just not in the way his enemies think.
"... While I admire America's democratic society, I hate how America brought wars and chaos to the world in guise of "freedom and liberation". ..."
"... Was it necessary to bomb civilians of Ossetia for Georgia to get rid of Russia? Was it necessary to provoke a coup d'état against fully legitimate and democratically elected government in Ukraine? Life isn't fair indeed : not only they will never enter in NATO (even less EU) and no one will protect them, but they can say farewell to the land they lost. People in Georgia and Ukraine are less and less gullible and Pro Russians sentiment is gaining ground btw. Ask yourself why ? ..."
"... Sphere of influence, the same reason why Cuba and Venezuela will pay for their insolence against the hegemon. The world is never a fair place. ..."
While I admire America's democratic society, I hate how America brought wars and chaos to the world in guise of "freedom and
liberation".
I hate how America exploit the weak. president moon should offer an olive branch to fatty Kim by sending back the
thaad to America and pulling out American base and troops. he should convince fatty Kim that should he really like to proliferate
his nuclear missile development as deterrence, aim it only to America and America only. there is no need for Koreans to kill fellow
Koreans.
Very good idea, after having pushed Ukraine and Georgia to a war lost in advance, lets hope US will abandon South Korea and
Japan because they were helpless in demilitarizing one of the poorest countries in the world....
Was it necessary to bomb civilians of Ossetia for Georgia to get rid of Russia?
Was it necessary to provoke a coup d'état against fully legitimate and democratically elected government in Ukraine? Life
isn't fair indeed : not only they will never enter in NATO (even less EU) and no one will protect them, but they can say
farewell to the land they lost. People in Georgia and Ukraine are less and less gullible and Pro Russians sentiment is gaining
ground btw. Ask yourself why ?
In this person's opinion, the article raises a good point with regards to US defense subsidies. However, its examples are dissimilar.
Japan spends approximately 1% of its GDP on defense; South Korea spends roughly 2.5% of its GDP defense.
In fact, it seems to this person that a better example of US Defense Welfare would be direct subsidies granted to the state
of Israel.
"... Barnett's main thesis in "The Pentagon's New Map" is that the world is composed of two types of states: those that are part of an integrated and connected "Core," which embrace globalization; and states of the "Gap," which are disconnected from the effects of globalization. Barnett proclaims that globalization will move the world into an era of peace and prosperity, but can only do so with the help of an indispensable United States. He writes that America is the lynchpin to the entire process and he believes that the United States should be midwife to a new world that will one day consist of peaceful democratic states and integrated economies. Barnett is proposing no less than a new grand strategy - the historical successor to the Cold War's strategy of containment. His approach to a future world defined by America's "exportation of security" is almost religious in its fervor and messianic in its language. ..."
"... At this point in his book, Barnett also makes bold statements that America is never leaving the Gap and that we are therefore never "bringing our boys home." He believes that there is no exiting the Gap, only shrinking it. These statements have incited some of Barnett's critics to accuse him of fostering and advocating a state of perpetual war. Barnett rebuts these attacks by claiming that, "America's task is not perpetual war, nor the extension of empire. It is merely to serve as globalization's bodyguard wherever and whenever needed throughout the Gap." Barnett claims that the strategy of preemptive war is a "boundable problem," yet his earlier claim that we are never leaving the Gap and that our boys are never coming home does not square with his assertion that there will not be perpetual war. He cannot have it both ways. ..."
"... Barnett therefore undermines his own globalization-based grand strategy by pointing out in detail at least ten things that can go wrong with globalization - the foundation upon which his theory is built. ..."
"... Globalization is likely here to stay, though it may be slowed down or even stopped in some regions of the planet. ..."
"... I would strongly recommend "The Pentagon's New Map" to students who are studying U.S. foreign policy. I would also recommend it to those who are studying the Bush administration as well as the Pentagon. The ideas in the book seem to be popular with the military and many of its ideas can be seen in the current thinking and policy of the Pentagon and State Department. ..."
"... I would only caution the reader that Barnett's theories are heavily dependent upon the continued advancement of globalization, which in turn is dependent upon the continued economic ability of the U.S. to sustain military operations around the world indefinitely. Neither is guaranteed. ..."
"... "Globalization" has turned out to be nothing but the polite PR term to disguise and avoid the truth of using the more accurate name, "Global Empire" --- and there is no doubt that Barnett is more than smart enough to see that this has inexorably happened. ..."
"... Liberty, democracy, justice, and equality Over Violent/'Vichy' Rel 2.0 Empire, ..."
"... We don't MERELY have; a gun/fear problem, or a 'Fiscal Cliff', 'Sequestration', and 'Debt Limit' problem, or an expanding wars problem, or a 'drone assassinations' problem, or a vast income & wealth inequality problem, or a Wall Street 'looting' problem, or a Global Warming and environmental death-spiral problem, or a domestic tyranny NDAA FISA spying problem, or, or, or, or .... ad nauseam --- we have a hidden EMPIRE cancerous tumor which is the prime CAUSE of all these 'symptom problems'. ..."
"... "If your country is treating you like ****, and bombing abroad, look carefully --- because it may not be your country, but a Global Empire only posing as your former country." ..."
Barnett's main thesis in "The Pentagon's New Map" is that the world is composed of two types of states: those that are
part of an integrated and connected "Core," which embrace globalization; and states of the "Gap," which are disconnected from
the effects of globalization. Barnett proclaims that globalization will move the world into an era of peace and prosperity, but
can only do so with the help of an indispensable United States. He writes that America is the lynchpin to the entire process and
he believes that the United States should be midwife to a new world that will one day consist of peaceful democratic states and
integrated economies. Barnett is proposing no less than a new grand strategy - the historical successor to the Cold War's strategy
of containment. His approach to a future world defined by America's "exportation of security" is almost religious in its fervor
and messianic in its language.
The foundation upon which Barnett builds his binary view of the world is heavily dependant upon the continued advancement of
globalization - almost exclusively so. However, advancing globalization is not pre-ordained. Barnett himself makes the case that
globalization is a fragile undertaking similar to an interconnected chain in which any broken link destroys the whole. Globalization
could indeed be like the biblical statue whose feet are made of clay. Globalization, and therefore the integration of the Gap,
may even stop or recede - just as the globalization of the early 20th century ended abruptly with the onset of WW I and a global
depression. Moreover, Barnett's contention that the United States has an exceptional duty and moral responsibility for "remaking
the world in America's image" might be seen by many as misguided and perhaps even dangerous.
The divide between the `Functioning Core' and the `Non-Integrating Gap' differs from the gulf between rich and poor in a subtle
yet direct way. State governments make a conscious decision to become connected vs. disconnected to advancing globalization. States
and their leaders can provide the infrastructure and the opening of large global markets to their citizens in ways that individuals
cannot. An example can serve to illustrate the point: You can be rich and disconnected in Nigeria or poor and disconnected in
North Korea. In each case the country you live in has decided to be disconnected. Citizens in this case have a limited likelihood
of staying rich and unlimited prospects of staying poor. But by becoming part of the functioning Core, the enlightened state allows
all citizens a running start at becoming part of a worldwide economic system and thus provide prospects for a better future because
global jobs and markets are opened up to them. A connected economy such as India's, for example, enables citizens who once had
no prospects for a better life to find well-paying jobs, such as computer-related employment. Prospects for a better Indian life
are directly the result of the Indian government's conscious decision to become connected to the world economy, a.k.a. embracing
globalization.
After placing his theory of the Core/Gap and preemptive war strategy firmly into the church of globalization, Barnett next
places his theory squarely upon the alter of rule sets. Few would argue that the world is an anarchic place and Barnett tells
us that rule sets are needed to define `good' and `evil' behavior of actors in this chaotic international system. An example of
such a rule set is the desire of the Core to keep WMDs out of the hands of terrorist organizations. Other examples are the promulgation
of human rights and the need to stop genocide. Barnett also uses rule sets to define `system' rules that govern and shape the
actions, and even the psychology, of international actors. An example that Barnett gives of a system-wide rule set is the creation
of the `rule' defined by the United States during the Cold War called Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD). Barnett claims that this
rule set effectively ended the possibility of war for all time amongst nuclear-capable great powers. Barnett states that the U.S.
now should export a brand new rule set called `preemptive war,' which aims to fight actors in the lawless Gap in order to end
international terrorism for all time. Barnett makes it clear that the Core's enemy is neither a religion (Islam) nor a place (Middle
East), but a condition (disconnectedness).
Next, Barnett points out that system-wide competition has moved into the economic arena and that military conflict, when it
occurs, has moved away from the system-wide (Cold War), to inter-state war, ending up today with primarily state conflict vs.
individuals (Core vs. bin Laden, Core vs. Kim, etc.). In other words, "we are moving progressively away from warfare against states
or even blocs of states and toward a new era of warfare against individuals." Rephrased, we've moved from confrontations with
evil empires, to evil states, to evil leaders. An example of this phenomenon is the fact that China dropped off the radar of many
government hawks after 9/11 only to be replaced by terrorist groups and other dangerous NGOs "with global reach."
Barnett also points out that the idea of `connectivity' is central to the success of globalization. Without it, everything
else fails. Connectivity is the glue that holds states together and helps prevent war between states. For example, the US is not
likely to start a war with `connected' France, but America could more likely instigate a war with `disconnected' North Korea,
Syria or Iran.
Barnett then examines the dangers associated with his definition of `disconnectedness.' He cleverly describes globalization
as a condition defined by mutually assured dependence (MAD) and advises us that `Big Men', royal families, raw materials, theocracies
and just bad luck can conspire to impede connectedness in the world. This is one of few places in his book that Barnett briefly
discusses impediments to globalization - however, this short list looks at existing roadblocks to connectedness but not to future,
system-wide dangers to globalization.
At this point in his book, Barnett also makes bold statements that America is never leaving the Gap and that we are therefore
never "bringing our boys home." He believes that there is no exiting the Gap, only shrinking it. These statements have incited
some of Barnett's critics to accuse him of fostering and advocating a state of perpetual war. Barnett rebuts these attacks by
claiming that, "America's task is not perpetual war, nor the extension of empire. It is merely to serve as globalization's bodyguard
wherever and whenever needed throughout the Gap." Barnett claims that the strategy of preemptive war is a "boundable problem,"
yet his earlier claim that we are never leaving the Gap and that our boys are never coming home does not square with his assertion
that there will not be perpetual war. He cannot have it both ways.
Barnett then takes us on a pilgrimage to the Ten Commandments of globalization. Tellingly, this list is set up to be more like
links in a chain than commandments. Each item in the list is connected to the next - meaning that each step is dependent upon
its predecessor. If any of the links are broken or incomplete, the whole is destroyed. For example, Barnett warns us that if there
is no security in the Gap, there can be no rules in the Gap. Barnett therefore undermines his own globalization-based grand
strategy by pointing out in detail at least ten things that can go wrong with globalization - the foundation upon which his theory
is built.
What else could kill globalization? Barnett himself tells us: "Labor, energy, money and security all need to flow as freely
as possible from those places in the world where they are plentiful to those regions where they are scarce." Here he is implying
that an interruption of any or all of these basic necessities can doom globalization. Barnett states clearly: "...(these are)
the four massive flows I believe are essential to protect if Globalization III is going to advance." Simply put, any combination
of American isolationism or closing of borders to immigration, a global energy crisis, a global financial crisis or rampant global
insecurity could adversely affect "connectedness," a.k.a. globalization. These plausible future events, unnerving as they are,
leave the inexorable advancement of globalization in doubt and we haven't yet explored other problems with Barnett's reliance
on globalization to make the world peaceful, free and safe for democracy.
Barnett goes on to tell us that Operation Iraqi Freedom was an "overt attempt to create a "System Perturbation" centered in
the Persian Gulf to trigger a Big Bang." His definition of a Big Bang in the Middle East is the democratization of the many totalitarian
states in the region. He also claims that the Big Bang has targeted Iran's "sullen majority."
Barnett claims that our problem with shrinking the Gap is not our "motive or our means, but our inability to describe the enemies
worth killing, the battles worth winning, and the future worth creating." Managing the global campaign to democratize the world
is no easy task. Barnett admits that in a worst-case scenario we may be stuck in the "mother of all intifadas" in Iraq. Critics
claim this is something that we should have planned for - that the insurgency should not have been a surprise, and that it should
have been part of the "peacemaking" planning. Barnett blithely states that things will get better "...when America internationalizes
the occupation." Barnett should not engage in wishful thinking here, as he also does when he predicted that Iraqis would be put
in charge of their own country 18 months after the fall of Baghdad. It would be more accurate if he claimed this would happen
18 months after the cessation of hostilities. Some critics claim that Iraq is an example that we are an "empire in a hurry" (Michael
Ignatieff), which then results in: 1) allocating insufficient resources to non-military aspects of the project and 2) attempting
economic and political transformation in an unrealistically short time frame.
The final basic premise of Barnett's theory of the Core and the Gap is the concept of what he calls the "global transaction
strategy." Barnett explains it best: "America's essential transaction with the outside world is one of our exporting security
in return for the world's financing a lifestyle we could far more readily afford without all that defense spending." Barnett claims
that America pays the most for global stability because we enjoy it the most. But what about the other 80 countries in the Core?
Why is America, like Atlas, bearing the weight of the world's security and stabilization on its shoulders?
Barnett claims that historical analogies are useless today and point us in the wrong direction. I disagree. James Madison cautioned
us not to go abroad to seek monsters to destroy. We can learn from his simple and profound statement that there are simply too
many state (and individual) monsters in today's world for the U.S. to destroy unilaterally or preemptively. We must also avoid
overstretching our resources and power. Thucydides reminds us that the great democracy of Athens was brought to its knees by the
ill-advised Sicilian expedition - which resulted in the destruction of everything the Athenians held dear. Do not ignore history
as Barnett councils; heed it.
Globalization is likely here to stay, though it may be slowed down or even stopped in some regions of the planet.
Therefore, America needs to stay engaged in the affairs of the world, but Barnett has not offered conclusive evidence that the
U.S. needs to become the world's single Leviathan that must extinguish all global hot wars. Barnett also has not proved that America
needs to be, as he writes, "the one willing to rush in when everyone else is running away." People like Barnett in academia and
leaders in government may proclaim and ordain the U.S. to be a global Leviathan, but it is a conscious choice that should be thoroughly
debated by the American people. After all, it is upon the backs of the American people that such a global Leviathan must ride.
Where is the debate? The American people, upon reflection, may decide upon other courses of action.
I would strongly recommend "The Pentagon's New Map" to students who are studying U.S. foreign policy. I would also recommend
it to those who are studying the Bush administration as well as the Pentagon. The ideas in the book seem to be popular with the
military and many of its ideas can be seen in the current thinking and policy of the Pentagon and State Department.
It seems to be well researched - having 35 pages of notes. Many of Barnett's citations come from the Washington Post and the
New York Times, which some may see as a liberal bias, but I see the sources as simply newspapers of record.
I would only caution the reader that Barnett's theories are heavily dependent upon the continued advancement of globalization,
which in turn is dependent upon the continued economic ability of the U.S. to sustain military operations around the world indefinitely.
Neither is guaranteed.
I don't think poorly of Thomas Barnett himself. He's very bright and, I think, good hearted, BUT his well thought-out, well
argued pride and joy (and positive intellectual pursuit) is being badly distorted ---- which happens to all 'tools' that Empire
gets its hands on.
For those who like predictions, I would predict that Barnett will wind up going through an epiphany much like Francis Fukuyama
(but a decade later) and for much the same reason, that his life's work gets misused and abused so greatly that he works to reverse
and correct its misuse. Fukuyama, also brilliant, wrote "The End of History" in 1992 (which was misused by the neocons to engender
war), and now he's working just as hard to reverse a misuse that he may feel some guilt of his work supporting, and is writing
"The Future of History" as a force for good --- and I suspect (and hope) that Barnett will, in even less time, be counter-thinking
and developing the strategy and book to reverse the misuse of his 2004 book before the Global Empire pulls down the curtain.
"Globalization" has turned out to be nothing but the polite PR term to disguise and avoid the truth of using the more accurate
name, "Global Empire" --- and there is no doubt that Barnett is more than smart enough to see that this has inexorably happened.
Best luck and love to the fast expanding 'Occupy the Empire' educational and revolutionary movement against this deceitful,
guileful, disguised EMPIRE, which can't so easily be identified as wearing Red Coats, Red Stars, nor funny looking Nazi helmets
---- quite yet!
Liberty, democracy, justice, and equality Over Violent/'Vichy' Rel 2.0 Empire,
Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine
We don't MERELY have; a gun/fear problem, or a 'Fiscal Cliff', 'Sequestration', and 'Debt Limit' problem, or an expanding
wars problem, or a 'drone assassinations' problem, or a vast income & wealth inequality problem, or a Wall Street 'looting' problem,
or a Global Warming and environmental death-spiral problem, or a domestic tyranny NDAA FISA spying problem, or, or, or, or ....
ad nauseam --- we have a hidden EMPIRE cancerous tumor which is the prime CAUSE of all these 'symptom problems'.
"If your country is treating you like ****, and bombing abroad, look carefully --- because it may not be your country, but
a Global Empire only posing as your former country."
"... The destruction of Syria and Libya created massive refugee flows which have proved that the European Union was totally unprepared to deal with such a major issue. On top of that, the latest years, we have witnessed a rapid rise of various terrorist attacks in Western soil, also as a result of the devastating wars in Syria and Libya. ..."
"... Whenever they wanted to blame someone for some serious terrorist attacks, they had a scapegoat ready for them, even if they had evidence that Libya was not behind these attacks. When Gaddafi falsely admitted that he had weapons of mass destruction in order to gain some relief from the Western sanctions, they presented him as a responsible leader who, was ready to cooperate. Of course, his last role was to play again the 'bad guy' who had to be removed. ..."
"... Despite the rise of Donald Trump in power, the neoliberal forces will push further for the expansion of the neoliberal doctrine in the rival field of the Sino-Russian alliance. ..."
"... We see, however, that the Western alliances are entering a period of severe crisis. The US has failed to control the situation in Middle East and Libya. The ruthless neo-colonialists will not hesitate to confront Russia and China directly, if they see that they continue to lose control in the global geopolitical arena. The accumulation of military presence of NATO next to the Russian borders, as well as, the accumulation of military presence of the US in Asia-Pacific, show that this is an undeniable fact. ..."
The start of current decade revealed the most ruthless face of a global neo-colonialism. From Syria and Libya to Europe and Latin
America, the old colonial powers of the West tried to rebound against an oncoming rival bloc led by Russia and China, which starts
to threaten their global domination.
Inside a multi-polar, complex terrain of geopolitical games, the big players start to abandon the old-fashioned, inefficient direct
wars. They use today other, various methods like
brutal proxy
wars , economic wars, financial and constitutional coups, provocative operations, 'color revolutions', etc. In this highly
complex and unstable situation, when even traditional allies turn against each other as the global balances change rapidly, the forces
unleashed are absolutely destructive. Inevitably, the results are more than evident.
Proxy Wars - Syria/Libya
After the US invasion in Iraq, the gates of hell had opened in the Middle East. Obama continued the Bush legacy of US endless
interventions, but he had to change tactics because a direct war would be inefficient, costly and extremely unpopular to the American
people and the rest of the world.
The result, however, appeared to be equally (if not more) devastating with the failed US invasions in Iraq and Afghanistan. The US
had lost total control of the armed groups directly linked with the ISIS terrorists, failed to topple Assad, and, moreover, instead
of eliminating the Russian and Iranian influence in the region, actually managed to increase it. As a result, the US and its allies
failed to secure their geopolitical interests around the various pipeline games.
In addition, the US sees Turkey, one of its most important ally, changing direction dangerously, away from the Western bloc. Probably
the strongest indication for this, is that Turkey, Iran and Russia decided very recently to proceed in an agreement on Syria without
the presence of the US.
Yet, the list of US failures does not end here. The destruction of Syria and Libya created massive refugee flows which have
proved that the European Union was totally unprepared to deal with such a major issue. On top of that, the latest years, we have
witnessed a rapid rise of various terrorist attacks in Western soil, also as a result of the devastating wars in Syria and Libya.
Evidence from
WikiLeaks has shown that the old colonial powers have started a new round of ruthless competition on Libya's resources.
The usual story propagated by the Western media, about another tyrant who had to be removed, has now completely collapsed. They don't
care neither to topple an 'authoritarian' regime, nor to spread Democracy. All they care about is to secure each country's resources
for their big companies.
The Gaddafi case is quite interesting because it shows that
the Western
hypocrites were using him according to their interests .
Whenever they wanted to blame someone for some serious terrorist attacks, they had a scapegoat ready for them, even if they
had evidence that Libya was not behind these attacks. When Gaddafi falsely admitted that he had weapons of mass destruction in order
to gain some relief from the Western sanctions, they presented him as a responsible leader who, was ready to cooperate. Of course,
his last role was to play again the 'bad guy' who had to be removed.
Economic Wars, Financial Coups – Greece/Eurozone
It would be unthinkable for the neo-colonialists to conduct proxy wars inside European soil, especially against countries which
belong to Western institutions like NATO, EU, eurozone, etc. The wave of the US-made major economic crisis hit Greece and Europe
at the start of the decade, almost simultaneously with the eruption of the Arab Spring revolutionary wave and the subsequent disaster
in Middle East and Libya.
Greece was the easy victim for the global neoliberal dictatorship to impose catastrophic measures in favor of the plutocracy.
The Greek experiment enters its seventh year and the plan is to be used as a model for the whole eurozone. Greece has become also
the model for the looting of public property, as happened in the past with the East Germany and the
Treuhand Operation
after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
While Greece was the major victim of an economic war, Germany used its economic power and control of the European Central Bank
to impose unprecedented austerity, sado-monetarism and neoliberal destruction through silent financial coups in
Ireland ,
Italy and
Cyprus . The Greek political establishment collapsed with the rise of SYRIZA in power, and the ECB was forced to proceed
in an open financial coup against
Greece when the current PM, Alexis Tsipras, decided to conduct a referendum on the catastrophic measures imposed by the ECB, IMF
and the European Commission, through which the Greek people clearly rejected these measures, despite the propaganda of terror inside
and outside Greece. Due to the direct threat from Mario Draghi and the ECB, who actually threatened to cut liquidity sinking Greece
into a financial chaos, Tsipras finally forced to retreat, signing another catastrophic memorandum.
Through similar financial and political pressure, the Brussels bureaufascists and the German sado-monetarists along with the IMF
economic hitmen, imposed neoliberal disaster to other eurozone countries like Portugal, Spain etc. It is remarkable that even the
second eurozone economy, France,
rushed to
impose anti-labor measures midst terrorist attacks, succumbing to a - pre-designed by the elites - neo-Feudalism, under
the 'Socialist' François Hollande, despite the intense protests in many French cities.
Germany would never let the United States to lead the neo-colonization in Europe, as it tries (again) to become a major power
with its own sphere of influence, expanding throughout eurozone and beyond. As the situation in Europe becomes more and more critical
with the ongoing economic and refugee crisis and the rise of the Far-Right and the nationalists, the economic war mostly between
the US and the German big capital, creates an even more complicated situation.
The decline of the US-German relations has been exposed initially with the
NSA interceptions
scandal , yet, progressively, the big picture came on surface, revealing a
transatlantic
economic war between banking and corporate giants. In times of huge multilevel crises, the big capital always intensifies
its efforts to eliminate competitors too. As a consequence, the US has seen another key ally, Germany, trying to gain a certain degree
of independence in order to form its own agenda, separate from the US interests.
Note that, both Germany and Turkey are medium powers that, historically, always trying to expand and create their own spheres
of influence, seeking independence from the traditional big powers.
A wave of neoliberal onslaught shakes currently Latin America. While in Argentina, Mauricio Macri allegedly took the power normally,
the constitutional
coup against Dilma Rousseff in Brazil, as well as, the
usual actions
of the Right opposition in Venezuela against Nicolás Maduro with the help of the US finger, are far more obvious.
The special weight of these three countries in Latin America is extremely important for the US imperialism to regain ground in the
global geopolitical arena. Especially the last ten to fifteen years, each of them developed increasingly autonomous policies away
from the US close custody, under Leftist governments, and this was something that alarmed the US imperialism components.
Brazil appears to be the most important among the three, not only due to its size, but also as a member of the BRICS, the team
of fast growing economies who threaten the US and generally the Western global dominance. The constitutional coup against Rousseff
was rather a sloppy action and reveals the anxiety of the US establishment to regain control through puppet regimes. This is a well-known
situation from the past through which the establishment attempts to secure absolute dominance in the US backyard.
The importance of Venezuela due to its oil reserves is also significant. When Maduro tried to approach Russia in order to strengthen
the economic cooperation between the two countries, he must had set the alarm for the neocons in the US. Venezuela could find an
alternative in Russia and BRICS, in order to breathe from the multiple economic war that was set off by the US. It is characteristic
that the economic war against Russia by the US and the Saudis, by keeping the oil prices in historically low levels, had significant
impact on the Venezuelan economy too. It is also known that the US organizations are funding the opposition since Chávez era, in
order to proceed in provocative operations that could overthrow the Leftist governments.
The case of Venezuela is really interesting. The US imperialists were fiercely trying to overthrow the Leftist governments since
Chávez administration. They found now a weaker president, Nicolás Maduro - who certainly does not have the strength and personality
of Hugo Chávez - to achieve their goal.
The Western media mouthpieces are doing their job, which is propaganda as usual. The recipe is known. You present the half truth,
with a big overdose of exaggeration.
The establishment
parrots are demonizing Socialism , but they won't ever tell you about the money that the US is spending, feeding the
Right-Wing groups and opposition to proceed in provocative operations, in order to create instability. They won't tell you about
the financial war conducted through the oil prices, manipulated by the Saudis, the close US ally.
Regarding Argentina, former president, Cristina Kirchner, had also made some important moves towards the stronger cooperation
with Russia, which was something unacceptable for Washington's hawks. Not only for geopolitical reasons, but also because Argentina
could escape from the vulture funds that sucking its blood since its default. This would give the country an alternative to the neoliberal
monopoly of destruction. The US big banks and corporations would never accept such a perspective because the debt-enslaved Argentina
is a golden opportunity for a new round of huge profits. It's
happening right
now in eurozone's debt colony, Greece.
'Color Revolutions' - Ukraine
The events in Ukraine have shown that, the big capital has no hesitation to ally even with the neo-nazis, in order to impose the
new world order. This is not something new of course. The connection of Hitler with the German economic oligarchs, but also with
other major Western companies, before and during the WWII, is well known.
The most terrifying of all however, is not that the West has silenced in front of the decrees of the new Ukrainian leadership,
through which is targeting the minorities, but the fact that the West allied with the neo-nazis, while according to some information
has also funded their actions as well as other extreme nationalist groups during the riots in Kiev.
Plenty of indications show that US organizations have 'put their finger' on Ukraine. A
video , for
example, concerning the situation in Ukraine has been directed by Ben Moses (creator of the movie "Good Morning, Vietnam"), who is
connected with American government executives and organizations like National Endowment for Democracy, funded by the US Congress.
This video shows a beautiful young female Ukrainian who characterizes the government of the country as "dictatorship" and praise
some protesters with the neo-nazi symbols of the fascist Ukranian party Svoboda on them.
The same organizations are behind 'color revolutions' elsewhere, as well as, provocative operations against Leftist governments
in Venezuela and other countries.
Ukraine is the perfect place to provoke Putin and tight the noose around Russia. Of course the huge hypocrisy of the West can
also be identified in the case of Crimea. While in other cases, the Western officials were 'screaming' for the right of self-determination
(like Kosovo, for example), after they destroyed Yugoslavia in a bloodbath, they can't recognize the will of the majority of Crimeans
to join Russia.
The war will become wilder
The Western neo-colonial powers are trying to counterattack against the geopolitical upgrade of Russia and the Chinese economic
expansionism.
Despite the rise of Donald Trump in power, the neoliberal forces will push further for the expansion of the neoliberal doctrine
in the rival field of the Sino-Russian alliance. Besides, Trump has already shown his hostile feelings against China, despite
his friendly approach to Russia and Putin.
We see, however, that the Western alliances are entering a period of severe crisis. The US has failed to control the situation
in Middle East and Libya. The ruthless neo-colonialists will not hesitate to confront Russia and China directly, if they see that
they continue to lose control in the global geopolitical arena. The accumulation of military presence of NATO next to the Russian
borders, as well as, the accumulation of military presence of the US in Asia-Pacific, show that this is an undeniable fact.
Gossufer2.0 and CrowdStrike are the weakest links in this sordid story. CrowdStrike was nothing but FBI/CIA contractor.
So the hypothesis that CrowdStrike employees implanted malware to implicate Russians and created fake Gussifer 2.0 personality
is pretty logical.
Notable quotes:
"... Not one piece of corroborating intelligence. It is all based on opinion and strong belief. There was no human source report or electronic intercept pointing to a relationship between the GRU and the two alleged creations of the GRU--Guccifer 2.0 persona and DCLeaks.com. Now consider the spin that Robert Mueller put on this opinion in his report on possible collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians. Mueller bluffs the unsuspecting reader into believing that it is a proven fact that Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks were Russian assets. But he is relying on a mere opinion from a handpicked group of intel analysts working under the direction of then CIA Director John Brennan ..."
"... In October 2015 John Brennan reorganized the CIA . As part of that reorganization he created a new directorate--DIRECTORATE OF DIGITAL INNOVATION. Its mission was to "manipulate digital footprints." In other words, this was the Directorate that did the work of creating Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks. One of their specialties, creating Digital Dust. ..."
"... We also know, thanks to Wikileaks, that the CIA was using software specifically designed to mask CIA activity and make it appear like it was done by a foreign entity. Wikipedia describes the Vault 7 documents : ..."
"... Exhibit A in the case is this document created and later edited in the ubiquitous Microsoft Word format. Metadata left inside the file shows it was last edited by someone using the computer name "Феликс Эдмундович." That means the computer was configured to use the Russian language and that it was connected to a Russian-language keyboard. More intriguing still, "Феликс Эдмундович" is the colloquial name that translates to Felix Dzerzhinsky, the 20th Century Russian statesman who is best known for founding the Soviet secret police. (The metadata also shows that the purported DNC strategy memo was originally created by someone named Warren Flood, which happens to be the name of a LinkedIn user claiming to provide strategy and data analytics services to Democratic candidates.) ..."
"... Why would the CIA do this? The CIA knew that Podesta's emails had been hacked and were circulating on the internet. But they had no evidence about the identity of the culprit. If they had such evidence, they would have cited it in the 2017 ICA. ..."
"... The U.S. intelligence community became aware around May 26, 2016 that someone with access to the DNC network was offering those emails to Julian Assange and Wikileaks. Julian Assange and people who spoke to him indicate that the person was Seth Rich. Whether or not it was Seth, the Trump Task Force at CIA was aware that the emails, which would be embarrassing to the Clinton campaign, would be released at some time in the future. Hence the motive to create Guccifer 2.0 and pin the blame on Russia. ..."
"... The only source for the claim that Russia hacked the DNC is a private cyber security firm, CrowdStrike. ..."
"... Time for the common sense standard again. Crowdstrike detected the Russians on the 6th of May, according to CEO Dimitri Alperovitch, but took no steps to shutdown the network, eliminate the malware and clean the computers until 34 days later, i.e., the 10th of June. That is 34 days of inexcusable inaction. ..."
"... The actions attributed to DCLeaks and Guccifer 2.0 should be priority investigative targets for U.S. Attorney John Durham's team of investigators. This potential use of a known CIA tool, developed under Brennan with the sole purpose to obfuscate the source of intrusions, pointing to another nation, as a false flag operation, is one of the actions and issues that U.S. Attorney John Durham should be looking into as a potential act of "Seditious conspiracy. It needs to be done. To quote the CIA, I strongly assess that the only intelligence agency that evidence indicates was meddling via cyber attacks in the 2016 Presidential election was the CIA, not the GRU. ..."
"... LJ bottom line: "The only intelligence agency that evidence indicates was meddling via cyber attacks in the 2016 Presidential election was the CIA, not the GRU." ..."
"... ICA which seemed to have been framed to allow journalists or the unwary to link the ICA with more rigorous standards used by more authentic assessments? ..."
"... With the Russians not having the advantages that the NSA does (back doors in all US-designed network hardware/software and taps all over the internet), would Russia reveal anything unless it involved an immediate major national security threat. I doubt that would cover Trump. ..."
Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report insists that Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks were created by Russia's military intelligence organization,
the GRU, as part of a Russian plot to meddle in the U.S. 2016 Presidential Election. But this is a lie. Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks
were created by Brennan's CIA and this action by the CIA should be a target of U.S. Attorney John Durham's investigation. Let me
explain why.
Let us start with the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment aka ICA. Only three agencies of the 17 in the U.S. intelligence
community contributed to and coordinated on the ICA--the FBI, the CIA and NSA. In the preamble to the ICA, you can read the following
explanation about methodology:
When Intelligence Community analysts use words such as "we assess" or "we judge," they are conveying an analytic assessment or
judgment
To be clear, the phrase,"We assess", is intel community jargon for "opinion". If there was actual evidence or source material
for a judgment the writer of the assessment would state, "According to a reliable source" or "knowledgeable source" or "documentary
evidence."
Pay close attention to what the analysts writing the ICA stated about the GRU and Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks:
We assess with high confidence that the GRU used the Guccifer 2.0 persona, DCLeaks.com, and WikiLeaks to release US victim data
obtained in cyber operations publicly and in exclusives to media outlets.
Guccifer 2.0, who claimed to be an independent Romanian hacker, made multiple contradictory statements and false claims
about his likely Russian identity throughout the election. Press reporting suggests more than one person claiming to be Guccifer
2.0 interacted with journalists.
Content that we assess was taken from e-mail accounts targeted by the GRU in March 2016 appeared on DCLeaks.com starting
in June.
We assess with high confidence that the GRU relayed material it acquired from the DNC and senior Democratic officials to WikiLeaks.
Moscow most likely chose WikiLeaks because of its self-proclaimed reputation for authenticity. Disclosures through WikiLeaks did
not contain any evident forgeries.
Not one piece of corroborating intelligence. It is all based on opinion and strong belief. There was no human source report or
electronic intercept pointing to a relationship between the GRU and the two alleged creations of the GRU--Guccifer 2.0 persona and
DCLeaks.com. Now consider the spin that Robert Mueller put on this opinion in his report on possible collusion between the Trump
campaign and the Russians. Mueller bluffs the unsuspecting reader into believing that it is a proven fact that Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks
were Russian assets. But he is relying on a mere opinion from a handpicked group of intel analysts working under the direction of
then CIA Director John Brennan.
Here's Mueller's take (I apologize for the lengthy quote but it is important that you read how the Mueller team presents this):
DCLeaks
"The GRU began planning the releases at least as early as April 19, 2016, when Unit 26165 registered the domain dcleaks.com
through a service that anonymized the registrant.137 Unit 26165 paid for the registration using a pool of bitcoin that it had
mined.138 The dcleaks.com landing page pointed to different tranches of stolen documents, arranged by victim or subject matter.
Other dcleaks.com pages contained indexes of the stolen emails that were being released (bearing the sender, recipient, and date
of the email). To control access and the timing of releases, pages were sometimes password-protected for a period of time and
later made unrestricted to the public.
Starting in June 2016, the GRU posted stolen documents onto the website dcleaks.com, including documents stolen from a number
of individuals associated with the Clinton Campaign. These documents appeared to have originated from personal email accounts
(in particular, Google and Microsoft accounts), rather than the DNC and DCCC computer networks. DCLeaks victims included an advisor
to the Clinton Campaign, a former DNC employee and Clinton Campaign employee, and four other campaign volunteers.139 The GRU released
through dcleaks.com thousands of documents, including personal identifying and financial information, internal correspondence
related to the"Clinton Campaign and prior political jobs, and fundraising files and information.140
GRU officers operated a Facebook page under the DCLeaks moniker, which they primarily used to promote releases of materials.141
The Facebook page was administered through a small number of preexisting GRU-controlled Facebook accounts.142
GRU officers also used the DCLeaks Facebook account, the Twitter account @dcleaks__, and the email account [email protected]
to communicate privately with reporters and other U.S. persons. GRU officers using the DCLeaks persona gave certain reporters
early access to archives of leaked files by sending them links and passwords to pages on the dcleaks.com website that had not
yet become public. For example, on July 14, 2016, GRU officers operating under the DCLeaks persona sent a link and password for
a non-public DCLeaks webpage to a U.S. reporter via the Facebook account.143 Similarly, on September 14, 2016, GRU officers sent
reporters Twitter direct messages from @dcleaks_, with a password to another non-public part of the dcleaks.com website.144
The dcleaks.com website remained operational and public until March 2017."
Guccifer 2.0
On June 14, 2016, the DNC and its cyber-response team announced the breach of the DNC network and suspected theft of DNC documents.
In the statements, the cyber-response team alleged that Russian state-sponsored actors (which they referred to as "Fancy Bear")
were responsible for the breach.145 Apparently in response to that announcement, on June 15, 2016, GRU officers using the persona
Guccifer 2.0 created a WordPress blog. In the hours leading up to the launch of that WordPress blog, GRU officers logged into
a Moscow-based server used and managed by Unit 74455 and searched for a number of specific words and phrases in English, including
"some hundred sheets," "illuminati," and "worldwide known." Approximately two hours after the last of those searches, Guccifer
2.0 published its first post, attributing the DNC server hack to a lone Romanian hacker and using several of the unique English
words and phrases that the GRU officers had searched for that day.146
That same day, June 15, 2016, the GRU also used the Guccifer 2.0 WordPress blog to begin releasing to the public documents
stolen from the DNC and DCCC computer networks.
The Guccifer 2.0 persona ultimately released thousands of documents stolen from the DNC and DCCC in a series of blog posts
between June 15, 2016 and October 18, 2016.147 Released documents included opposition research performed by the DNC (including
a memorandum analyzing potential criticisms of candidate Trump), internal policy documents (such as recommendations on how to
address politically sensitive issues), analyses of specific congressional races, and fundraising documents. Releases were organized
around thematic issues, such as specific states (e.g., Florida and Pennsylvania) that were perceived as competitive in the 2016
U.S. presidential election.
Beginning in late June 2016, the GRU also used the Guccifer 2.0 persona to release documents directly to reporters and other
interested individuals. Specifically, on June 27, 2016, Guccifer 2.0 sent an email to the news outlet The Smoking Gun offering
to provide "exclusive access to some leaked emails linked [to] Hillary Clinton's staff."148 The GRU later sent the reporter a
password and link to a locked portion of the dcleaks.com website that contained an archive of emails stolen by Unit 26165 from
a Clinton Campaign volunteer in March 2016.149 "That the Guccifer 2.0 persona provided reporters access to a restricted portion
of the DCLeaks website tends to indicate that both personas were operated by the same or a closely-related group of people.150
The GRU continued its release efforts through Guccifer 2.0 into August 2016. For example, on August 15, 2016, the Guccifer
2.0 persona sent a candidate for the U.S. Congress documents related to the candidate's opponent.151 On August 22, 2016, the Guccifer
2.0 persona transferred approximately 2.5 gigabytes of Florida-related data stolen from the DCCC to a U.S. blogger covering Florida
politics.152 On August 22, 2016, the Guccifer 2.0 persona sent a U.S. reporter documents stolen from the DCCC pertaining to the
Black Lives Matter movement.153"
Wow. Sounds pretty convincing. The documents referencing communications by DCLeaks or Guccifer 2.0 with Wikileaks are real. What
is not true is that these entities were GRU assets.
In October 2015 John Brennan reorganized the CIA . As part of that reorganization he created a new directorate--DIRECTORATE
OF DIGITAL INNOVATION. Its mission was to "manipulate digital footprints." In other words, this was the Directorate that did the
work of creating Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks. One of their specialties, creating Digital Dust.
We also know, thanks to Wikileaks, that the CIA was using software specifically designed to mask CIA activity and make it
appear like it was done by a foreign entity. Wikipedia describes the
Vault 7 documents :
Vault 7 is a series of documents that WikiLeaks began to publish on 7 March 2017, that detail activities and capabilities of the
United States' Central Intelligence Agency to perform electronic surveillance and cyber warfare. The files, dated from 2013–2016,
include details on the agency's software capabilities, such as the ability to compromise cars, smart TVs,[1] web browsers (including
Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, and Opera Software ASA),[2][3][4] and the operating systems of most smartphones (including
Apple's iOS and Google's Android), as well as other operating systems such as Microsoft Windows, macOS, and Linux[5][6
One of the tools in Vault 7 carries the innocuous name, MARBLE.
Hackernews explains the purpose and function
of MARBLE:
Dubbed "Marble," the part 3 of CIA files contains 676 source code files of a secret anti-forensic Marble Framework, which is basically
an obfuscator or a packer used to hide the true source of CIA malware.
The CIA's Marble Framework tool includes a variety of different algorithm with foreign language text intentionally inserted into
the malware source code to fool security analysts and falsely attribute attacks to the wrong nation.
Marble is used to hamper[ing] forensic investigators and anti-virus companies from attributing viruses, trojans and hacking attacks
to the CIA," says the whistleblowing site.
"...for example by pretending that the spoken language of the malware creator was not American English, but Chinese, but then
showing attempts to conceal the use of Chinese, drawing forensic investigators even more strongly to the wrong conclusion," WikiLeaks
explains.
So guess what
gullible techies "discovered" in mid-June 2016? The meta data in the Guccifer 2.0 communications had "Russian fingerprints."
We still don't know who he is or whether he works for the Russian government, but one thing is for sure: Guccifer 2.0 -- the nom
de guerre of the person claiming he hacked the Democratic National Committee and published hundreds of pages that appeared to prove
it -- left behind fingerprints implicating a Russian-speaking person with a nostalgia for the country's lost Soviet era.
Exhibit A in the case is this document created and later edited in the ubiquitous Microsoft Word format. Metadata left inside
the file shows it was last edited by someone using the computer name "Феликс Эдмундович." That means the computer was configured
to use the Russian language and that it was connected to a Russian-language keyboard. More intriguing still, "Феликс Эдмундович"
is the colloquial name that translates to Felix Dzerzhinsky, the 20th Century Russian statesman who is best known for founding the
Soviet secret police. (The metadata also shows that the purported DNC strategy memo was originally created by someone named Warren
Flood, which happens to be the name of a LinkedIn user claiming to provide strategy and data analytics services to Democratic candidates.)
Just use your common sense. If the Russians were really trying to carry out a covert cyberattack, do you really think they
are so sloppy and incompetent to insert the name of the creator of the Soviet secret police in the metadata? No. The Russians are
not clowns. This was a clumsy attempt to frame the Russians.
Why would the CIA do this? The CIA knew that Podesta's emails had been hacked and were circulating on the internet. But they
had no evidence about the identity of the culprit. If they had such evidence, they would have cited it in the 2017 ICA.
The U.S. intelligence community became aware around May 26, 2016 that someone with access to the DNC network was offering
those emails to Julian Assange and Wikileaks. Julian Assange and people who spoke to him indicate that the person was Seth Rich.
Whether or not it was Seth, the Trump Task Force at CIA was aware that the emails, which would be embarrassing to the Clinton campaign,
would be released at some time in the future. Hence the motive to create Guccifer 2.0 and pin the blame on Russia.
It is essential to recall the timeline of the alleged Russian intrusion into the DNC network. The only source for the claim
that Russia hacked the DNC is a private cyber security firm, CrowdStrike. Here is the timeline for the DNC "hack."
Here are the facts on the public record. They are at odds with the claims of the Intelligence Community:
It was
29 April 2016 , when the DNC claims it became aware its servers had been penetrated. No claim yet about who was responsible.
And no claim that there had been a prior warning by the FBI of a penetration of the DNC by Russian military intelligence.
According to CrowdStrike founder , Dimitri Alperovitch, his company first supposedly detected the Russians mucking around
inside the DNC server on 6 May 2016. A CrowdStrike intelligence analyst reportedly told Alperovitch that:
Falcon had identified not one but two Russian intruders: Cozy Bear, a group CrowdStrike's experts believed was affiliated
with the FSB, Russia's answer to the CIA; and Fancy Bear, which they had linked to the GRU, Russian military intelligence.
The Wikileaks data shows that the last message copied from the DNC network is dated Wed, 25 May 2016 08:48:35.
10 June 2016 --CrowdStrike waited until 10 June 2016 to take concrete steps to clean up the DNC network. Alperovitch told
Esquire's Vicky Ward that: 'Ultimately, the teams decided it was necessary to replace the software on every computer at the DNC.
Until the network was clean, secrecy was vital. On the afternoon of Friday, June 10, all DNC employees were instructed to leave
their laptops in the office."
On June 14, 2016 , Ellen Nakamura, a Washington Post reporter who had been briefed by computer security company hired by the
DNC -- Crowdstrike--, wrote:
Russian government hackers penetrated the computer network of the Democratic National Committee and gained access to the
entire database of opposition research on GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, according to committee officials and security
experts who responded to the breach.
The intruders so thoroughly compromised the DNC's system that they also were able to read all email and chat traffic, said
DNC officials and the security experts.
The intrusion into the DNC was one of several targeting American political organizations. The networks of presidential
candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were also targeted by Russian spies, as were the computers of some Republican political
action committees, U.S. officials said. But details on those cases were not available.
15 June, 2016 , an internet "personality" self-described as Guccifer 2.0 surfaces and claims to be responsible for the hacks
but denies being Russian. The people/entity behind Guccifer 2.0:
Used a Russian VPN service provider to conceal their identity.
Created an email account with AOL.fr (a service that exposes the sender's IP address) and contacted the press (exposing his
VPN IP address in the process).
Contacted various media outlets through this set up and claimed credit for hacking the DNC, sharing copies of files purportedly
from the hack (one of which had Russian error messages embedded in them) with reporters from Gawker, The Smoking Gun and other
outlets.
Carried out searches for terms that were mostly in English, several of which would appear in Guccifer 2.0's first blog post.
They chose to do this via a server based in Moscow. (this is from the indictment,
"On or about June 15, 2016, the Conspirators logged into a Moscow-based server used and managed by Unit 74455")
Created a blog and made an initial blog post claiming to have hacked the DNC, providing links to various documents as proof.
Carelessly dropped a "Russian Smiley" into his first blog post.
Managed to add the name "Феликс Эдмундович" (which translates to Felix Dzerzhinsky, also known as "Iron Felix") to the metadata
of several documents. (Several sources went beyond what the evidence shows and made claims about Guccifer 2.0 using a Russian
keyboard, however, these claims are just assumptions made in response to the presence of cyrillic characters.)
The only thing that the Guccifer 2.0 character did not do to declare its Russian heritage was to take out full page ads in the
New York Times and Washington Post. But the "forensic" fingerprints that Guccifer 2.0 was leaving behind is not the only inexplicable
event.
Time for the common sense standard again. Crowdstrike detected the Russians on the 6th of May, according to CEO Dimitri Alperovitch,
but took no steps to shutdown the network, eliminate the malware and clean the computers until 34 days later, i.e., the 10th of June.
That is 34 days of inexcusable inaction.
It is only AFTER Julian Assange announces on 12 June 2016 that WikiLeaks has emails relating to Hillary Clinton that DCLeaks or
Guccifer 2.0 try to contact Assange.
The actions attributed to DCLeaks and Guccifer 2.0 should be priority investigative targets for U.S. Attorney John Durham's
team of investigators. This potential use of a known CIA tool, developed under Brennan with the sole purpose to obfuscate the source
of intrusions, pointing to another nation, as a false flag operation, is one of the actions and issues that U.S. Attorney John Durham
should be looking into as a potential act of "Seditious conspiracy. It needs to be done. To quote the CIA, I strongly assess that
the only intelligence agency that evidence indicates was meddling via cyber attacks in the 2016 Presidential election was the CIA,
not the GRU.
LJ bottom line: "The only intelligence agency that evidence indicates was meddling via cyber attacks in the 2016 Presidential
election was the CIA, not the GRU."
Larry, thanks -- vital clarifications and reminders. In your earlier presentation of this material did you not also distinguish
between the way actually interagency assessments are titled, and ICA which seemed to have been framed to allow journalists or
the unwary to link the ICA with more rigorous standards used by more authentic assessments?
Thank you Larry. You have discovered one more vital key to the conspiracy. We now need the evidence of Julian Assange. He is kept
incommunicado and He is being tortured by the British in jail and will be murdered by the American judicial system if he lasts
long enough to be extradited.
You can be sure he will be "Epsteined" before he appears in open court because he knows the source of what Wikileaks published.
Once he is gone, mother Clinton is in the clear.
I can understand the GRU or SVR hacking the DNC and other e-mail servers because as intelligence services that is their job, but
can anyone think of any examples of Russia (or the Soviet Union) using such information to take overt action?
With the Russians
not having the advantages that the NSA does (back doors in all US-designed network hardware/software and taps all over the internet),
would Russia reveal anything unless it involved an immediate major national security threat. I doubt that would cover Trump.
Looks like CrowdStrike was was to plant the evidence of the Russian hack
Notable quotes:
"... All the evidence we're accumulating clearly says and implies, the US government -- namely the FBI, CIA, the DOJ, and of course State Department -- all these people involved in this hack, bought a dossier and all of the information going forward to the FISA court. ..."
"... All of them knew that this was a fake from the very beginning, because this Guccifer 2.0 character was fabricating it. They were using him plus the Internet Research Agency [IRA] as "supposed trolls of the Russian government". ..."
"... Well, when they sent their lawyers over to challenge that in a court of law, the government failed to prove they had any connection with the Russian government. ..."
"... Then the entire Rosenstein indictment is also a fabrication and a fake and a fraud for the same reasons. The judges seem to be involved in trying to keep this information out of the public domain. ..."
BILL BINNEY: I basically have always been saying that all of this Russian hack never
happened, but we have some more evidence coming out recently.
We haven't published it yet, but what we have seen is that there are at least five items
that we've found that were produced by Guccifer 2.0 back on June 15th, where they had the
Russian fingerprints in them, suggesting the Russians made the hack. Well, we found the same
five items published by Wikileaks in the Podesta emails.
Those items do not have the Russian fingerprints, which directly implies that Guccifer 2.0
was inserting these into the files to make it look like the Russians did this hack. Taking that
into account with all the other evidence we have; like the download speeds from Guccifer 2.0
were too fast, and they couldn't be managed by the web.
And that the files he was putting together and saying that he actually hacked, the two files
he said he had were really one file, and he was playing with the data; moving it to two
different files to claim two hacks.
Taking that into account with the fabrication of the Russian fingerprints, it leads us back
to inferring that in fact the marble framework out of the Vault 7 compromise of CIA hacking
routines was a possible user in this case.
In other words, it looked like the CIA did this, and that it was a matter of the CIA making
it look like the Russians were doing the hack. So, when you look at that and also look at the
DNC emails that were published by Wikileaks that have this phat file format in them, all 35,813
of these emails have rounded off times to the nearest even second.
That's a phat file format property; that argues that those files were, in fact, downloaded
to a thumb drive or CD-rom and physically transported before Wikileaks posted them. Which again
argues that it wasn't a hack.
So, all of the evidence we're finding is clearly evidence that the Russians were not in fact
hacking; it was probably our own people. It's very hard for us to get this kind of information
out. The mainstream media won't cover it; none of them will. It's very hard. We get some
bloggers to do that and some radio shows.
Also, I put all of this into a sworn affidavit in the Roger Stone case. I did that because
all of the attack on him was predicated on him being connected with this Russian hack which was
false to being with.
All the evidence we're accumulating clearly says and implies, the US government --
namely the FBI, CIA, the DOJ, and of course State Department -- all these people involved in
this hack, bought a dossier and all of the information going forward to the FISA
court.
All of them knew that this was a fake from the very beginning, because this Guccifer 2.0
character was fabricating it. They were using him plus the Internet Research Agency [IRA] as
"supposed trolls of the Russian government".
Well, when they sent their lawyers over to challenge that in a court of law, the
government failed to prove they had any connection with the Russian government.
They basically were chastised by the judge for fabricating a charge against this company.
So, if you take the IRA and the trolls away from that argument, and Guccifer 2.0, then the
entire Mueller report is a provable fabrication; because it's based on Guccifer 2.0 and the
IRA.
Then the entire Rosenstein indictment is also a fabrication and a fake and a fraud for
the same reasons. The judges seem to be involved in trying to keep this information out of the
public domain.
So, we have a really extensive shadow government here at work, trying to keep the
understanding and knowledge of what's really happening away from the public of the United
States. That's the really bad part. And the mainstream media is a participant in this; they're
culpable.
His dissent from the consensus view that Russia interfered with the 2016 US election
appears to be based on Russian disinformation."
They provide no footnote or linked-to source for their allegation
Ever since Binney went public criticizing U.S. intelligence agencies, they have been trying
to discredit him.
Thus far, however, their efforts have been nothing more than insinuations against his
person, without any specific allegation of counter-evidence that discredits any of his actual
assertions.
Martin Usher ,
The "Russia" thing was never able to differentiate between "Russians" and "the Russian
state". Its a product of a Cold War mindset that can't conceive of that country without it
being 150 million puppets all controlled by string from an office in the Kremlin. In reality
its just another country, one that offers goods and services to the world just like anywhere
else. So while we just assume that a company like SCL (Cambridge Analytica's parent) would
have personnel from and offices in many countries and have contracts with various political
parties in many countries we just can't seem to get our heads around the idea that a company
operating inside -- or even headquartered -- in Russia isn't automatically some kind of
Kremlin front. (Well, yes, it could be but the same way that a company in the UK could be a
front for the UK government, e.g. the Gateside Mill story in Scotland's Daily Record).
Another factor that might come into play is the idea that 'analytics', the key to business
on the Internet, is actually nothing more than a sophisticated form of traffic analysis, a
well known espionage tool. Any government worth its salt that's likely to be on the receiving
end of a propaganda campaign would be very interested in understanding the reach of such a
tool and learning how to manage that reach. So its possible that if we find the Russian
government taking out advertisements on Facebook through a front company to 'influence'
people its likely that they're more interested in evaluating that reach than the simplistic
view that they're 'trying to influence an election' (its not as if foreign interests or even
governments ever try to influence elections)(color revolution, anyone?). Allowing unfettered
access by these tools to one's nation is a bit like taking down one's defenses -- fine if
you're happy with vassal state ("ally") status but not if you're potentially an adversary --
so its important to know how to control it, no less important than having a decent air
defense system.
And in a further retort to all this nonsense, Harold Wilson, the last socialist leader of the
Labour Party back in the 1970s, won four general elections, a feat that's never been
repeated by any party leader.
This does directly relate to this thread, because the Americans overthrew Wilson. Just as they have done now with Corbyn. You really need to take your country back, whether you're a Brit or American.
paul ,
We are fortunate that there are still persons of integrity even in the spook organisations
– Binney, Kyriakou, Manning, Snowden. Without them and Assange a lot of this
criminality would never have seen the light of day.
Jack_Garbo ,
Diagnosing the disease does not imply the cure has been found. You simply know how much
sicker you are. Not helpful.
Nothing has changed despite all the revelations of intelligence shenanigans. Apologies do not
cure the patient when they're still spreading the disease. In fact, the opposite.
paul ,
Wikipedia holds out the begging bowl to anybody who uses it now.
I don't know why – they get plenty of CIA and Soros money.
All they've got to do now is wheel out the psychopath and war criminal, Tony Blair, to say:
"it's the Russians wot dunnit".
Oh my God
Jen ,
They don't need to, they have Tony Blair's fellow Brit psycho Boris Johnson to go on
autopilot and blame the Russians the moment something happens and just before London Met
start their investigations.
ZigZagWanderer ,
@ 1.15.58 "Intelligence community has become a self licking ice cream cone"
Larry Johnson and Bill Binney always worth listening to. Try to find the time.
Antonym ,
True except for Trump. Just look how hard deep state tries to unseat him.
Damaging your own puppet is not normal for a puppeteer.
J_Garbo ,
I suspected that Deep State has at least two opposing factions. The Realistists want him to
break up the empire, turn back into a republic; the Delusionals want to extend the empire,
continue to exploit and destroy the world. If so, the contradictions, reversals, incoherence
make sense. IMO as I said.
Gary Weglarz ,
I predict that all Western MSM will begin to accurately and vocally cover Mr. Binney's
findings about this odious and treasonous U.S. government psyop at just about the exact time
that – "hell freezes over" – as they say.
The purpose of manufactured hysteria in the US is to obfuscate the issues important to the
Deep State like destroying the first amendment, renewing the 'Patriot' act, extremely
increasing the war/hegemony budget, etc.
The unimportant internecine squabbles of the 'two parties' strengthens the false
perception that there is a choice when voting.
Afghan war demonstrated that the USA got into the trap, the Catch 22 situation: it can't
stop following an expensive and self-destructive positive feedback loop of threat inflation
and larger and large expenditures on MIC, because there is no countervailing force for the
MIC since WWII ended. Financial oligarchy is aligned with MIC.
This is the same suicidal grip of MIC on the country that was one of the key factors
in the collapse of the USSR means that in this key area the USA does not have two party
system, It is a Uniparty: a singe War party with two superficially different factions.
Feeding and care MIC is No.1 task for both. Ordinary Americans wellbeing does matter much
for either party. New generation of Americans is punished with crushing debt and low paying
jobs. They do not care that people over 50 who lost their jobs are essentially thrown out
like a garbage.
"41 Million people in the US suffer from hunger and lack of food security"–US Dept.
of Agriculture. FDR addressed the needs of this faction of the population when he delivered
his One-Third of a Nation speech for his 2nd Inaugural. About four years later, FDR expanded
on that issue in his Four Freedoms speech: 1.Freedom of speech; 2.Freedom of worship;
3.Freedom from want; 4.Freedom from fear.
Items 3 and 4 are probably unachievable under neoliberalism. And fear is artificially
instilled to unite the nation against the external scapegoat much like in Orwell 1984.
Currently this is Russia, later probably will be China. With regular minutes of hate replaced
by Rachel Maddow show ;-)
Derailing Tulsi had shown that in the USA any politician, who try to challenge MIC, will
be instantly attacked by MIC lapdogs in MSM and neutered in no time.
One interesting tidbit from Fiona Hill testimony is that neocons who dominate the USA
foreign policy establishment make their living off threat inflation. They literally are
bought by MIC, which indirectly finance Brookings institution, Atlantic Council and similar
think tanks. And this isn't cheap cynicism. It is simply a fact. Rephrasing Samuel Johnson's
famous quote, we can say, "MIC lobbyism (which often is presented as patriotism) is the last
refuge of scoundrels."
"... Today's Deep State most resembles the colonial administrations during the heyday of European imperialism. These too worked to run their own secret foreign policy, and to bring their power to bear on domestic policy as well. ..."
"... Impeachment, and the pro-bureaucracy anti-democracy campaign related to it, besides its more petty purposes (distraction from real social problems; forestalling Sanders), is the culmination of technocracy's attempted coup against a president who, even though he agrees with this cabal on all policy matters, is considered too unreliable, too undisciplined, too damn honest about the evil of the US empire. If they can take him down, they think they can restore the full business-as-usual status quo including the compliance of the rest of the world. ..."
Historically the ability of unelected, unaccountable, secretive bureaucracies (aka the "Deep
State") to exercise their own policy without regard for the public or elected officials,
often in defiance of these, has always been the hallmark of the destruction of democracy and
incipient tyranny.
Today's Deep State most resembles the colonial administrations during the heyday of
European imperialism. These too worked to run their own secret foreign policy, and to bring
their power to bear on domestic policy as well.
Although both halves of the One-Party really want the effective tyranny of state and
corporate bureaucracies, it's not surprising that it's the Democrats (along with the MSM)
taking the lead in openly defending the tyrannical proposition that the CIA should be
running its own foreign (and implicitly domestic) policy, and that the president should be
just a figurehead which follows orders. That goes with the Democrats' more avowedly
technocratic style, and it goes with the ratchet effect whereby it's usually Democrats which
push the policy envelope toward ever greater inequality, ecocide and tyranny.
Now is a time of rising irredentism and the decline of all the ideas of
globalization and technocracy, though the reality is likely to hang on for awhile. The whole
Deep State-Zionist-Russia-Deranged-Trump-Deranged-MSM-social media censorship campaign is
globalization trying to maintain its monopoly of ideas by force, since it knows it can never
win in a free clash of ideas.
Impeachment, and the pro-bureaucracy anti-democracy campaign related to it, besides
its more petty purposes (distraction from real social problems; forestalling Sanders), is the
culmination of technocracy's attempted coup against a president who, even though he agrees
with this cabal on all policy matters, is considered too unreliable, too undisciplined, too
damn honest about the evil of the US empire. If they can take him down, they think
they can restore the full business-as-usual status quo including the compliance of the rest
of the world.
Since impeachment's going to fail, we can expect the system to try other ways.
hey b... i like your title - "How The Deep State Sunk The Democratic Party" ... could change
it to" How the Deep State Sunk the USA" could work just as well...
Seven of the 11 security state representatives who had joined the Democrats in 2018 gave
the impulse for impeachment.
is this intentional?? it sort of looks like it...
good quote from @ 26 lk - "The contradictions of US empire and global capitalism cannot be
mitigated by either more liberal strategies or realist ones."
@babyl-on 35
yes that is about right. The top power networks are all a tight mix of names from govt, MIC,
and private equity (incl. top 2-3 investment banks). With the latter group naturally paying
the salaries of the whole policy making ecosystem, and holding the positions that select
future generations who will eventually take their place.
They want the security of knowing noone in the world will mess with them. This
necessitates that noone in the world *can* mess with them. Pretty straightforward from
there.
Neocons lie should properly be called "threat inflation"
The underlying critical
point-at-issue is credibility as I noted in my comment on b's 2017 article. I've since
linked to tweets and other items by that trio; the one major change seems to have been the
epiphany by them that they needed to go to where the action is and report it from there to
regain their credibility.
The fact remains that used car salespeople have a stereotypical reputation for lacking
credibility sans a confession as to why they feel the need to lie to sell cars.
Their actions belie the guilt they feel for their choices, but a confession works much
better at assuaging the soul while helping convince the audience that the change in heart's
genuine. And that's the point as b notes--genuineness, whose first predicate is
credibility.
"... "The sworn statements of Mr. Flynn and his former counsel belie his new claims of innocence and his new assertions that he was pressured into pleading guilty," Sullivan said in his Dec. 16 opinion ( pdf ). ..."
"... In June, he fired his lawyers and hired former federal prosecutor Sidney Powell , who has since accused the government of misconduct, particularly of withholding exculpatory information or providing it late. ..."
"... Powell has argued that Flynn's previous lawyers had a conflict of interest because they testified in a related case against Flynn's former business partner. Flynn had previously told the court he would keep the lawyers despite the conflict, but Powell said prosecutors should have asked the judge to dismiss the lawyers anyway. Sullivan disagreed, saying Flynn failed to show a precedent that the prosecutors had that obligation. ..."
"... Powell also said the government had no proper reason to investigate Flynn in the first place and that it had set up an "ambush interview" with the intention of making Flynn say something it could allege was false. ..."
"... Sullivan disagreed again and said that previously, with the advice of his former lawyers, Flynn never "challenged the conditions of his FBI interview." ..."
"... Powell said Flynn's answers to the agents weren't "material," meaning relevant to the FBI investigation of election meddling. ..."
"... Sounds like Flynn got bad advice from his previous lawyers, and the judge is requiring Flynn to live with the consequences. In other words, it is as if the judge is prohibiting Flynn from changing legal representation because Flynn cannot do anything different than what his first team of "counselors" advised. ..."
"... Flynn is as deep state as it gets. He would throw the book at any one of you. Make no mistake. Being a general is a political appointment. ..."
"... Flynn was also a ******* lobbyist for foreign governments, including Turkey,...without disclosing his advise was paid for. He sold himself out like a whore. ..."
"... "Michael Flynn reportedly filed paperwork on Tuesday for the $530,000 worth of work he did last year that "could be construed to have principally benefited the Republic of Turkey." https://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2017/03/08/michael-flynn-admits-turkey-lobbying ..."
"... NATO Alliance member Turkey? How about a list of Israel friends with benefits. MIC grifters and aipac. Bloated orange imbecile can not fight only tweet. ..."
"... They say Dems and other psychos always accuse others of what they themselves are doing. Ever heard of the Clinton Foundation? Operating expenses: 95%.Benevolent aid: 5%. Suck on that for awhile. ..."
"... Flynn did nothing wrong. Was framed setup and then blackmailed to plead. Who will pay a price. Brennan Comey Strzok? Those who stood with Trump were ruined under false pretenses. ..."
"... Oh how soon you forget that Flynn commited war crimes in Grenada. ..."
"... Then bring him up on those charges. In court those kinds of leaps are inaddmissable. ..."
"... Hahahaha Grenada. Reagan's signature military victory. Flynn should be a super hero. Grenada and Panama are the only victories the Pentagon clowns have managed. What should we expect they only get $1,000,000,000,000.00 a year ..."
"... Remember that Michael Flynn waived his right to appeal this judge's decision when he plead guilty. This won't be going to a higher court. He's going down and the judge who is sentencing him is PISSED. ..."
"... Flynn is going to prison. Hillary is not. The sooner you jackoffs accept that, the sooner you'll be able to move on with your lives instead of living out your pitiful existence in bitterness and regret. And no, you won't be doing any civil war. You'll just be angry, your anger will turn inward, and you'll poison yourselves with resentment, living out your days alone. Don't say you weren't warned. ..."
"... They threatened his son if he did not plead guilty. Of course, to you Dems the means justifies the end. He will be pardoned, and deservedly so. ..."
"... I don't expect Clinton to go to jail ... committing crimes or not she is untouchable. People may wish it but it will never ever happen she has too much on all the other criminals. ..."
A federal judge has denied requests by Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn to prompt the government to
give him information he deems exculpatory and to dismiss the case against him .
District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan sided with the government in arguing that Flynn was
already given all the information to which he was entitled. The judge also dismissed Flynn's
allegations of government misconduct, noting that Flynn already pleaded guilty to his crime and
failed to raise his objections earlier when some of the issues he now complains about were
brought to his attention.
"The sworn statements of Mr. Flynn and his former counsel belie his new claims of
innocence and his new assertions that he was pressured into pleading guilty," Sullivan said
in his Dec. 16 opinion (
pdf ).
Flynn, former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, pleaded guilty on Nov. 30, 2017, to
one count of lying to the FBI. He's been expected to receive a light sentence, including no
prison time, after extensively cooperating with the government on multiple investigations.
In June, he fired his lawyers and hired former federal prosecutor Sidney Powell , who has since accused the
government of misconduct, particularly of withholding exculpatory information or providing it
late.
Powell has argued that Flynn's previous lawyers had a conflict of interest because they
testified in a related case against Flynn's former business partner. Flynn had previously told
the court he would keep the lawyers despite the conflict, but Powell said prosecutors should
have asked the judge to dismiss the lawyers anyway. Sullivan disagreed, saying Flynn failed to
show a precedent that the prosecutors had that obligation.
Powell also said the government had no proper reason to investigate Flynn in the first place
and that it had set up an "ambush interview" with the intention of making Flynn say something
it could allege was false.
Sullivan disagreed again and said that previously, with the advice of his former lawyers,
Flynn never "challenged the conditions of his FBI interview."
Flynn was interviewed by two FBI agents, Joe Pientka and Peter Strzok, on Jan. 24, 2017, two
days after he was sworn in as President Donald Trump's national security adviser.
The prosecutors argued that the FBI had a "sufficient and appropriate basis" for the
interview because Flynn days earlier told members of the Trump campaign, including soon-to-be
Vice President Mike Pence, that he didn't discuss with the Russian ambassador the expulsion of
Russian diplomats in late December 2016 by then-President Barack Obama.
Flynn later admitted in his statement of offense that he asked, via Russian Ambassador to
the U.S. Sergei Kislyak, for Russia to only respond to the sanctions in a reciprocal manner and
not escalate the situation.
The FBI was at the time investigating whether Trump campaign aides coordinated with Russian
2016 election meddling. No such coordination was established by the probe, which concluded more
than two years later under then-special counsel Robert Mueller.
Powell argued that whatever Flynn told Pence and others in the transition team was none of
the FBI's business.
"The Executive Branch has different reasons for saying different things publicly and
privately, and not everyone is told the details of every conversation,"
she said in a previous court filing .
"If the FBI is charged with investigating discrepancies in statements made by government
officials to the public, the entirety of its resources would be consumed in a week."
Powell said Flynn's answers to the agents weren't "material," meaning relevant to the FBI
investigation of election meddling.
Sullivan, however, thought otherwise, using a broader description of the investigation. The bureau, he said, probed the "nature of any links between individuals associated with the
[Trump] Campaign and Russia" and what Flynn said was material to it. The description Sullivan used appears to omit the context of the probe, which focused
specifically on the Russian election meddling.
Powell was dealt a bad hand by Flynn's previous corrupt and incompetent attorneys. The
judge has an obligation to honor the new views of new counsel. He can't assume that Flynn had
been well advised by former counsel. There's no evidence or history of that. They sold him
out.
Sounds like Flynn got bad advice from his previous lawyers, and the judge is requiring
Flynn to live with the consequences. In other words, it is as if the judge is prohibiting
Flynn from changing legal representation because Flynn cannot do anything different than what
his first team of "counselors" advised.
He's so Deep State that Brennen and Clapper went to Soetoro to get him fired after the
election. Flynn was going to rat them out on the treasonous Iran deal. When Obama said no
because it was too close to the end of his presidency they then criminally framed Flynn.
Flynn was lied to. Flynn was a 30 year veteran and General. Flynn couldn't imagine his
country turning against him like this. None of us could. But with the cabal running our
country, it could and did happen. Now we have to stamp out the cockroaches before it's too
late.
Flynn was also a ******* lobbyist for foreign governments, including Turkey,...without
disclosing his advise was paid for. He sold himself out like a whore.
NATO Alliance member Turkey? How about a list of Israel friends with benefits. MIC grifters and aipac. Bloated orange imbecile can not fight only tweet.
This ***** judge will give him a mouse sentence to protect his own *** . We don't know the half of it . How close is the judge to Obama ? I think we are going to find out .
President Trump should step in now and Pardon Gen.Flynn and Roger Stone both trial were
fixed unethical and not based on fact and law. In Stones case a radical jury of Demon
Rat-Brains were assembled to hand down a guilty verdict.
They say Dems and other psychos always accuse others of what they themselves are doing.
Ever heard of the Clinton Foundation? Operating expenses: 95%.Benevolent aid: 5%. Suck on that for awhile.
Flynn did nothing wrong. Was framed setup and then blackmailed to plead. Who will pay a price. Brennan Comey Strzok? Those who stood with Trump were ruined under false pretenses.
Those who violated the constitution and rule of law are media pundants and
undisturbed.
Orange dotard please divert some of your swamp creatures from destroying Iran, Venezuela
and Bolivia.
America needs the secret police smashed and held accountable for sedition and treason.
Hahahaha Grenada. Reagan's signature military victory. Flynn should be a super hero. Grenada and Panama are the only victories the Pentagon clowns have managed. What should we expect they only get $1,000,000,000,000.00 a year
The minute they let Flynn off he talks and they sure as hell don't want that. They want to drag this out as long as possible and hope for a miracle (Trump gets beat
) or at least time enough for them to bugger off. FISA has known for years they were lied to by the FBI and now it has been confirmed . So why didn't they do anything then or now ? Were they in on it ? How do you draw any
other conclusion ?
Remember that Michael Flynn waived his right to appeal this judge's decision when he plead
guilty. This won't be going to a higher court. He's going down and the judge who is
sentencing him is PISSED.
Flynn is going to prison. Hillary is not. The sooner you jackoffs accept that, the sooner
you'll be able to move on with your lives instead of living out your pitiful existence in
bitterness and regret. And no, you won't be doing any civil war. You'll just be angry, your anger will turn
inward, and you'll poison yourselves with resentment, living out your days alone. Don't say
you weren't warned.
I don't expect Clinton to go to jail ... committing crimes or not she is untouchable. People may wish it but it will never ever happen she has too much on all the other
criminals.
Flynn can ask to withdraw plea, but he's turned down that opportunity three times, so
judge might not allow it. Then everything Powell has been doing becomes relevant. Up to this point it's just a bunch
of noise, unfortunately.
So let me just be sure I understand this: he is being denied evidence that could prove
innocence on a trial related to a guilty plea, which was largely the result of persecution by
the FBI and we ALLOW this to happen in America? What has happened to this country?
"... an inquiry by cabinet secretary Lord Hunt in 1996 concluded that "a few, a very few, malcontents in MI5" had "spread damaging malicious stories". ..."
"... Well, if a cabinet secretary says that it must be true. MI5, not MI6 - I think MI5's the heavy mob - but I just wondered if our spooks had passed these tricks on to the lads who put the Steele dossier about. ..."
Massive win, Colonel, that as far as I know nobody predicted. Not the polls, not the political blogs. But I didn't follow it that
closely so that's just a general impression.
My man, Nigel Farage, got squeezed mercilessly. I was looking around the BBC site to find out how mercilessly when I came across
a picture of the bete noir of my father's time, Harold Wilson. Wilson was convinced that MI something was out to get him - bugged
his office, spread smear stories about him around the press, even a possible coup.
The odd rumour of all this had spread to my corner of the English provinces and I'd always wondered if there was anything in it.
So I clicked on the BBC article -
" .. A 1987 inquiry concluded the allegations of a security service plot against Wilson were untrue. However, an inquiry
by cabinet secretary Lord Hunt in 1996 concluded that "a few, a very few, malcontents in MI5" had "spread damaging malicious stories".
Well, if a cabinet secretary says that it must be true. MI5, not MI6 - I think MI5's the heavy mob - but I just wondered if
our spooks had passed these tricks on to the lads who put the Steele dossier about.
On another security matter I note with concern above - "Those are Jacobite tribesmen at the top. Some of my ancestors were
such as they." I thought so. '15 and '45 caused us a lot of trouble and just in case the tradition remained in your family I'm
opening a file. We're very happy with our present Queen, thank you, and we don't want you replacing her with some Stuart relic you
might happen to have dug up.
Though I suppose it would only be poetic justice. We've just had a go at toppling your President so why shouldn't you return the
compliment and topple Her Majesty.
Clapper and Brennan will be shaking in their boots after watching Barr's interview: done in
"bad faith" = SEDITION !!!! Deep State operatives...ie, Brennan, Clapper, Comey, Stork, Lisa,
McCabe, should be held accountable. Obama should probably be impeached.
The hard fact is, that the top of the FBI knew, in advance, that the "dossier" was just bs
invented by Russian liars, for money, to be used as political lies for kilary's campaign. It
Wasn't evidence and Comey knew far in advance of crossfire hurricane. I can't see less than 20
years in comey's future. That same includes barak, brennan and clapper, who were all informed,
willing accomplices in this crime.
10:30
Whoever in FBI that intentionally misled the court using the Steele dossier knowing that the
dossier was "total rubbish" as Barr states, needs to be inditing immediately. Why we are
continuing to investigate instead of inditimg while continuing to investigate. Until these people
are held accountable I don't think our country will begin to heal and media and others apologize
to the country for the damage they have done.
7:49 -
"Comey refused to sign back up for his security clearance, and therefore couldn't be questioned
about classified matters." Well now, isn't that interesting. Haven't heard that one before.
In an exclusive interview, Attorney General William Barr spoke to NBC News' Pete Williams
about the findings on the Justice Department Inspector General's report on the Russia
investigation and his criticisms of the FBI.
I'm So glade we have a competent attorney General pushing back on the massive
disinformation narrative that comes from Giant News outlets of which are used to being
unchallenged, unchecked by today's "journalistic standards"
so this guy really asked Bahr"why not open an investigation even with little evidence?"
because is a violation of civil liberties to invade the privacy of law abiding citizens. You
need compelling evidence for something so huge
Horowitz should be instructed to edit or update his Report to discuss The Question of Bias
and Evidence of Bias. He has clearly misguided Americans with his choice of words and has
omitted important facts underpinning bias.
AG Barr is an outstanding role model, a man of integrity and wisdom, calm in a raging
political storm. I have full confidence he will make those who fabricated evidence and hid
exculpatory evidence finally face justice. AG Barr for President 2024!
Barr is a straight shooter and I love it. It sounds like we will get to the real truth
eventually through Durhams investigation I just hope it doesnt take another year to get to
the prosecutions.
So, I watched the interview... The video is called, "Full Interview: Barr Criticizes
Inspector General Report On The Russia Investigation." Not once did I hear him criticize the
I.G.'s report. In fact, A.G. Barr clarified that the I.G.'s report was limited in scope
because of the limitations put on the I.G. He said that the report was appropriate.
It's scary to see how powerful the corruption of the Democratic Party has grown. It
represents a serious threat to all our personal freedom. The Democratic Party has to be
stopped.
Ok after watching this interview its quite clear that Barr and Durham is going after these
criminals and people are going to jail. Maybe there is hope for US yet becuase this dane
consider US atm a banana republic. Spying on political candidates? Forging documents? You FBI
behaving like Stalins secret police. Lets see what happen.
Amazing for the AG to go in deep into enemy territory at the heart of the opposition media
to lay out a case for the criminal activities that undermined our country prior to and after
the 2016 election. The deep state is trembling at the prospect of being held accountable
after all the facts are laid out to the american people that these activities cannot be
brushed aside or swept under the carpet if we are to continue as a country.
The corrupt media is trying to act like they have not been involved in this treasonous
scam since the beginning working directly with the treasonous cabal. The media has been lying
and pushing fake news for 3 years calling Trump a Russia agent and called him treasonous. I
knew the whole time that they were lying there was evidence from day one that this was all
lies and if I can see that from the public then they can definitely see that from the inside
they are purposefully lying.
I dare anyone on here to research Barr's History back to his involvement in the
assignation of JFK, the cover up, defending Nixon, Epstein, and many other illegal and
immoral activities. After reviewing the evidence, I walked away believing that Barr is trying
to cover up his tracks so he does do jail time. No need to reply. Either take my dare or not.
God Bless America and ALL her people, Stephan
The public are sick of waiting . I find myself skipping through a half hour news show in 5
minutes flat looking for arrests ,whereas before I was rivited to every minute of the half
hour show but it goes on and on and at the there is Nothiing .The Democrats are the masters ,
it's obvious . If they break the law they get off scott free . If you are republican wave bye
bye , you will be in jail for years . America is not the free and fair country it is all
cracked up to be . It is corrupted by the democrats who have peoiple in high places that
thwart real justice.
Mifsud approached George! Who was Mifsud working for (western asset) and why did he
approach George? He’s the one who offered George dirt on Hill. Then invited him to meet
the fake “niece”, of Putin, in England! What about this information? Someone set
George up to make this happen outside the US, because of EO 12333. It had to happen outside
the US so they could go to the fisa court!
I dont trust Christopher Wrey. He keeps slow-walking all the FBI documents and
declassifications. He also fights judicial watch and judges that rule in their favor and
continue not giving over what is ordered! This last judge was ready to hold him in contempt
for refusing to cooperate with court ordered documents.
Why did the FBI continue to investigate Trump after January when the case collapsed? To
try and find a way to impeach Trump. Remember the Washington Post headlined article right
after the inauguration "The effort to impeach President Donald John Trump is already
underway." The FBI "insurance" policy was essential!
John Glaser and Christopher Preble have written a valuable
study of the history and causes of threat inflation. Here is their conclusion:
If war is the health of the state, so is its close cousin, fear. America's foreign policy
in the 21st century serves as compelling evidence of that. Arguably the most important task,
for those who oppose America's apparently constant state of war, is to correct the threat
inflation that pervades national security discourse. When Americans and their policymakers
understand that the United States is fundamentally secure, U.S. military activism can be
reined in, and U.S. foreign policy can be reset accordingly.
Threat inflation is how American politicians and policymakers manipulate public opinion and
stifle foreign policy dissent. When hawks engage in threat inflation, they never pay a
political price for sounding false alarms, no matter how ridiculous or over-the-top their
warnings may be. They have created their own ecosystem of think tanks and magazines over the
decades to ensure that there are ready-made platforms and audiences for promoting their
fictions. This necessarily warps every policy debate as one side is permitted to indulge in the
most baseless speculation and fear-mongering, and in order to be taken "seriously" the skeptics
often feel compelled to pay lip service to the "threat" that has been wildly blown out of
proportion. In many cases, the threat is not just inflated but invented out of nothing. For
example, Iran does not pose a threat to the United States, but it is routinely cited as one of
the most significant threats that the U.S. faces. That has nothing to do with an objective
assessment of Iranian capabilities or intentions, and it is driven pretty much entirely by a
propaganda script that most politicians and policymakers recite on a regular basis. Take Iran's
missile program, for example. As John Allen Gay explains in a recent
article , Iran's missile program is primarily defensive in nature:
The reality is they're not very useful for going on offense. Quite the opposite: they're a
primarily defensive tool -- and an important one that Iran fears giving up. As the new
Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) report entitled "Iran Military Power" points out, "Iran's
ballistic missiles constitute a primary component of its strategic deterrent. Lacking a
modern air force, Iran has embraced ballistic missiles as a long-range strike capability to
dissuade its adversaries in the region -- particularly the United States, Israel, and Saudi
Arabia -- from attacking Iran."
Iran's missile force is in fact a product of Iranian weakness, not Iranian strength.
Iran hawks need to portray Iran's missile program inaccurately as part of their larger
campaign to exaggerate Iranian power and justify their own aggressive policies. If Iran hawks
acknowledged that Iran's missiles are their deterrent against attacks from other states,
including our government, it would undercut the rest of their fear-mongering.
Glaser and Preble identify five main sources of threat inflation in the U.S.: 1) expansive
overseas U.S. commitments require an exaggerated justification to make those commitments seem
necessary for our security; 2) decades of pursuing expansive foreign policy goals have created
a class dedicated to providing those justifications and creating the myths that sustain support
for the current strategy; 3) there are vested interests that benefit from expansive foreign
policy and seek to perpetuate it; 4) a bias in our political system in favor of hawks gives
another advantage to fear-mongers; 5) media sensationalism exaggerates dangers from foreign
threats and stokes public fear. To those I would add at least one more: threat inflation
thrives on the public's ignorance of other countries. When Americans know little or nothing
about another country beyond what they hear from the fear-mongers, it is much easier to
convince them that a foreign government is irrational and undeterrable or that weak
authoritarian regimes on the far side of the world are an intolerable danger.
Threat inflation advances with the inflation of U.S. interests. The two feed off of each
other. When far-flung crises and conflicts are treated as if they are of vital importance to
U.S. security, every minor threat to some other country is transformed into an intolerable
menace to America. The U.S. is extremely secure from foreign threats, but we are told that the
U.S. faces myriad threats because our leaders try to make other countries' internal problems
seem essential to our national security. Ukraine is at most a peripheral interest of the U.S.,
but to justify the policy of arming Ukraine we are told by the more
unhinged supporters that this is necessary to make sure that we don't have to fight Russia
"over here." Because the U.S. has so few real interests in most of the world's conflicts,
interventionists have to exaggerate what the U.S. has at stake in order to sell otherwise very
questionable and reckless policies. That is usually when we get appeals to showing "leadership"
and preserving "credibility," because even the interventionists struggle to identify why the
U.S. needs to be involved in some of these conflicts. The continued pursuit of global
"leadership" is itself an invitation to endless threat inflation, because almost anything
anywhere in the world can be construed as a threat to that "leadership" if one is so inclined.
To understand just how secure the U.S. really is, we need to give up on the costly ambition of
"leading" the world.
Threat inflation is one of the biggest and most enduring threats to U.S. security, because
it repeatedly drives the U.S. to take costly and dangerous actions and to spend exorbitant
amounts on unnecessary wars and weapons. We imagine bogeymen that we need to fight, and we
waste decades and trillions of dollars in futile and avoidable conflicts, and in the end we are
left poorer, weaker, and less secure than we were before.
Daniel
Larison is a senior editor at TAC , where he also keeps a solo blog . He has been published in the New
York Times Book Review , Dallas Morning News , World Politics Review ,
Politico Magazine , Orthodox Life , Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and
Culture11, and was a columnist for The Week . He holds a PhD in history from the
University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter .
And behind Brennan we can can see the Nobel Peace Price winner.
Notable quotes:
"... A major role in directing the plot has fallen to Obama's consigliere John Brennan, the current director of the CIA. ..."
"... One part of the still ongoing deligitimization campaign was the FBI investigation of alleged Russian connections of four members of the Trump election campaign. ..."
"... The FBI agents and lawyers intentionally lied to the court. Their violations were not mistakes. All 51 of them were in favor of further spying on members of the Trump campaign and on everyone they communicated with. ..."
"... The FBI has used the Steele dossier to gain further FISA application even after it had talked with Steele's 'primary source' (who probably was the later 'buzzed' Sergei Skripal ) and after it had learned that the allegations in the dossier were no more than unconfirmed rumors. ..."
"... That the dossier was mere dreck was quite obvious to any sober person who read it when it was first published ..."
"... That summer, GCHQ's then head, Robert Hannigan, flew to the US to personally brief CIA chief John Brennan. The matter was deemed so important that it was handled at "director level", face-to-face between the two agency chiefs. ..."
"... (This is a Moon of Alabama fundraiser week. Please consider to support our work .) ..."
"... Occam's razor: CIA-MI6, with approval of US Deep State (Clintons, Bush, McCain, Brennan, Mueller, etc.), meddled to elect Trump and pointed fingers at Russia to initiate a new McCarthyism. ..."
"... "Sergey Lavrov: In my opinion, Congress sounds rather obsessed with destroying our relations. It continues pursuing the policy started by the Obama administration. As I mentioned, we are used to this kind of attack. We know how to respond to them. I assure you that neither Nord Stream-2 nor Turkish Stream will be halted." ..."
"... ... the current anti-Russian idiocy was started by Obama's team and was designed for Clinton to escalate ... ..."
"... It's Kissinger's WSJ Op-Ed of August 2014 that provides the answer. In this Op-Ed, Kissinger calls for a restored US Empire that is essentially Trump's MAGA. Kissinger is writing immediately after the Donbas rebels have won. The Russians refused to heed Kissinger's advice (to back down) and it has become apparent that Russia's joining the West is no longer an inevitability as the US elite had assumed. ..."
"... Good chance Steele had little to do with writing the Dossier. "Simpson-Ohr Dossier", anyone? Steele was needed as a credible looking intelligence officer with Russia ties and a past working relationship with US Intel, as cover to sell to FBI, FISA Court, and the public (meeting with Isikoff, Yahoo News story). ..."
"... Glenn Simpson and wife Mary Jacoby had written articles for the WSJ in 2007 and 2008 with a script and language similar to the Dossier. Devin Nunes seems to believe this scenario, and it is discussed in detail in books by Dan Bongino and Lee Smith, among others. ..."
"... physchoh @ 60; The difference, at least in my mind, is that, the "Russia did it" meme, is the weakest of all cases against DJT. Corbyn, on the other hand, may actually be hurt by the bogus charges. IMO, what this shows is coordination between the elites to bring down a progressive in the UK, who fancies public control over major finances instead of private concerns. ..."
"... So Horowitz was technically correct when he did not find bias. What he might have been reluctant to spell out is that he did find malice. ..."
When Hillary Clinton was defeated in the U.S. presidential election the relevant powers
launched a campaign to delegitimize the President elect Donald Trump.
The ultimate aim of the cabal is to kick him out of office and have a reliable
replacement, like the Vice-President elect Pence, take over. Should that not be possible
it is hoped that the delegitimization will make it impossible for Trump to change major
policy trajectories especially in foreign policy. A main issue here is the reorientation of
the U.S. military complex and its NATO proxies from the war of terror towards a direct
confrontation with main powers like Russia and China.
...
A major role in directing the plot has fallen to Obama's consigliere John Brennan, the
current director of the CIA.
One part of the still ongoing deligitimization campaign was the FBI investigation of alleged
Russian connections of four members of the Trump election campaign.
Horowitz finds that the FBI was within the law when it opened the investigation but that the
FBI's applications to the FISA court, which decides if the FBI can spy on someone's
communications, were based on lies and utterly flawed.
Your host unfortunately lacked the time so far to read more than the executive summary. But
others have pointed out some essential findings.
If the report released Monday by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz
constitutes a "clearing" of the FBI, never clear me of anything. ...
Much of the press is concentrating on Horowitz's conclusion that there was no evidence of
"political bias or improper motivation" in the FBI's probe of Donald Trump's Russia contacts,
an investigation Horowitz says the bureau had "authorized purpose" to conduct.
...
However, Horowitz describes at great length an FBI whose "serious" procedural problems and
omissions of "significant information" in pursuit of surveillance authority all fell in the
direction of expanding the unprecedented investigation of a presidential candidate (later, a
president).
...
There are too many to list in one column, but the Horowitz report show years of breathless
headlines were wrong. Some key points:
The so-called "Steele dossier" was, actually, crucial to the FBI's decision to seek secret
surveillance of Page. ...
...
The "Steele dossier" was "Internet rumor," and corroboration for the pee tape story was
"zero." ...
Appendix 1 identifies the total violations by the FBI of the so-called Woods Procedures, the
process by which the bureau verifies information and assures the FISA court its evidence is
true.
The Appendix identifies a total of 51 Woods procedure violations from the FISA application
the FBI submitted to the court authorizing surveillance of former Trump campaign aide Carter
Page starting in October 2016.
A whopping nine of those violations fell into the category called: "Supporting document
shows that the factual assertion is inaccurate."
For those who don't speak IG parlance, it means the FBI made nine false assertions to the
FISA court. In short, what the bureau said was contradicted by the evidence in its official
file.
The FBI agents and lawyers intentionally lied to the court. Their violations were not
mistakes. All 51 of them were in favor of further spying on members of the Trump campaign and
on everyone they communicated with.
The FBI has used the Steele dossier to gain further FISA application even after it had
talked with Steele's 'primary source' (who probably was the later
'buzzed' Sergei Skripal ) and after it had learned that the allegations in the dossier were
no more than unconfirmed rumors.
The anonymous former British operator hears from an anonymous compatriot that two anonymous
sources, asserted to have access to inner Russian circles, claimed to have heard somewhere
that something happened in the Kremlin.
They assert that Trump was supported and directed by Putin himself five years ago while
even a year ago no one would have bet a penny on Trump gaining any political significant
position or even the presidency.
It is now claimed that the FBI is exculpated because the Horowitz report did not find
"political bias or improper motivation". But that omits the fact that at least four high
ranking people in the FBI and Justice Department who were involved in the case were found to be
politically
biased and were removed from their positions.
It also omits that the scope of Horowitz's investigation was limited to the Justice
Department. He was not able to investigate the CIA and its former director John Brennan who was
alleging Russia-Trump connections months before the FBI investigation started:
Contrary to a general impression that the FBI launched the Trump-Russia conspiracy probe,
Brennan pushed it to the bureau – breaking with CIA tradition by intruding into
domestic politics: the 2016 presidential election. He also supplied suggestive but ultimately
false information to counterintelligence investigators and other U.S. officials.
The current CIA director Gina Haspel was CIA station chief in London during that time and
while several of the entrapment attempts of Trump campaign staff by the FBI investigation
happened. Horowitz spoke with neither of them.
The current Horowitz Report, read alongside his previous report on how the FBI played inside
the 2016 election vis-a-vis Clinton, should leave no doubt that the Bureau tried to influence
the election of a president and then delegitimize him when he won. It wasn't the Russians; it
was us.
That is correct, but the whole conspiracy was even deeper. It was not the FBI which
initiated the case.
My hunch is still that the FBI investigation was a case of parallel construction which is often
used to build a legitimate case after a suspicion was found by illegitimate means. In this case
it was John Brennan who in early 2016 contacted the head of the British GCHQ electronic
interception service and asked him to spy on the Trump campaign. GHCQ then claimed that
something was found that was deemed
suspicious :
That summer, GCHQ's then head, Robert Hannigan, flew to the US to personally brief CIA chief
John Brennan. The matter was deemed so important that it was handled at "director level",
face-to-face between the two agency chiefs.
The FBI was tipped off on the issue and on July 31 2016 started an investigation to
construct a parallel legal case. It send out British and U.S. agents to entrap Trump campaign
members. It used the obviously fake Steele dossier to gain FISA court judgments that allowed it
to spy on the campaign. Downing Street
was informed throughout the whole affair. A day after Trump's inauguration the UK's then
Prime Minister Theresa May
fired GHCQ chief Robert Hannigan.
One still open question is to what extend then President Barack Obama was involved in the
affair.
There is another ongoing investigation by U.S. Prosecutor John Durham. That investigation is
not limited to the Justice Department but will involve all agencies and domestic as well as
foreign sources. Durham has the legal rights to declassify whatever is needed and he can indict
persons should he find that they committed a crime. His report will hopefully go much deeper
than the already horrendous stuff Horowitz delivered.
(This is a Moon of Alabama fundraiser week. Please consider to support our
work .)
Posted by b on December 11, 2019 at 16:16 UTC |
Permalink
Anyone taking bets on Durham/Barr making indictments in this mess? My guess is a whole lot of
horse trading is going on behind the scenes now, as in, "I'll trade you a censure for all
potential indictments going down the memory hole."
Typical dog and pony show which will change nothing relating to interventionist foreign
policy and the new cold war with Russia. Too many saw benefits from the corruption in Ukraine
to dig deep there; the Bidens were just the most blatant, Lindsey Graham and others from both
parties were involved so don't expect much from the Senate hearings. The bipartisan major
goals are a fait accompli; universal acceptance that Russia worked to undermine our elections
(and to destroy our "Democracy") and are thus an enemy we must fight, and it's universally
accepted by all that we MUST provide Ukraine with Javelin missiles and other lethal aid to
fight "Russian Aggression" (with little mention that even Obama balked at that reckless
option). All of these proceedings are great distractions, but the weapons of war will not be
diminished.
Unfortuneately, few will question the findings of these investigations or consider the
possibility that the investigations themselves are misdirection/cover-up.
IMO the Lavrov-Pompeo
presser is notable mostly for Lavrov's discussion of Russiagate (about 6 minutes in).
Lavrov tells us that the Russian's repeatedly sought to clarify their noninterference by
publishing correspondence - which the Trump Administration didn't respond to. And he actual
mentions McCarthyism!
Wait, wot?
Yeah, during the worst of the Russiagate accusations, Trump wouldn't do things that
would've helped to prove that Russiagate was a farce!!
So, during the election, Trump called on Putin to publish Hillary's emails (the very act
of making such a request is likely illegal because at the time it was known that her emails
contained highly classified info) but he wouldn't accept Russia's publication of
exculpatory info about Russiagate?!?!
This would cause cognitive dissonance galore in an Americans that hear it - so one can
be sure that it will not be reported.
Occam's razor: CIA-MI6, with approval of US Deep State (Clintons, Bush, McCain, Brennan,
Mueller, etc.), meddled to elect Trump and pointed fingers at Russia to initiate a new
McCarthyism.
Meanwhile in bizarroland (aka USA), Barr says Russiagate is a fantasy based on FBI "bad
faith" - yet Pompeo still presses on with the "Russia meddled" bullshit.
thanks b... i like your example in the comment - ''those who thought otherwise should
question their judgment''.. good example!
i am a bit concerned like @ 2 casey, that most of this is going to go down the memory hole
and there will be that made in america stamp on it - ''no accountability''... i wish i was
wrong, but getting worked up at the idea anyone is going to be held accountable for any
actions of the usa, or the insiders playing the usa, is clearly a fools game at this point..
all i mostly see is the needed collapse and waiting for that to happen..
Thanks for that, there are definitely cracks in the armor and we should promote that
narrative as you do in your link. Tulsi Gabbard has also expanded the awareness, hopefully
she will make the upcoming debates despite strong efforts to silence her. I'll try more to
focus on the positive!
@ 6 jr.. there is a press release on all what was said
here for anyone interested..
lavrov quote and etc. etc.. "We suggested to our colleagues that in order to dispel all
suspicions that are baseless, let us publish this closed-channel correspondence starting from
October 2016 till November 2017 so it would all become very clear to many people. However,
regrettably, this administration refused to do so. But I'd like to repeat once again we are
prepared to do that, and to publish the correspondence that took place through that channel
would clear many matters up, I believe. Nevertheless, we hope that the turbulence that
appeared out of thin air will die down, just like in 1950s McCarthyism came to naught, and
there'll be an opportunity to go back to a more constructive cooperation."
I continue to believe that the FBI and Horowitz perjured themselves
in the FISA report. To correct a mistake in a previous post I made, I
believe they lied when the claimed the Steele Dossier was not a
predicate for opening crossfire hurricane. How can the Steele dossier
not be instrumental in the opening of the investigation when bruce ohr's
wife nellie ohr was working at fusion gps when bruce ohr met with
steele
to discuss the dirty dossier.
In other words, the FBI
was concocting Operation Crossfire Hurricane prior to the time they had
any knowledge of the phony Papadopoulus predicate that the russians were proferring
the clinton emails to the trump campaign.
The FISA report claim that Operation Crossfire
Hurricane was predicated solely on the Papadopolous allegations is therefore a lie. There
was, in fact, no real predicate for Operation Crossfire Hurricane. The predications
cited were all fictions and inventions fabricated in a conspiracy between MI6(the FFC or
friendly foreign country cited in the Horowitz report), the
DOJ and the FBI. Operation Crossfire Hurricane was a massive Psyop from its inception.
What major publications have picked up this info from the State Dept PR? Which of them are
questioning why Trump didn't agree to let the Russians publish the exonerating information?
And how many of those are linking this strange fact to other strange facts and thus raising
troubling questions about the 2016 election?
<> <> <> <> <> <>
It's not just that Trump refused to publish exculpatory material. Anyone that's been
reading my comments (and/or my blog) knows that Trump also:
- hired Manafort - whose work for pro-Russian candidates in Ukraine had drawn the ire of
CIA - despite Manafort's having no recent experience with US elections;
- helped Pelosi to be elected Speaker of the House by inviting her to attend a White
House meeting about his border wall (along with Chuck Schumer) prior to the House vote to
elect a Speaker.
- initiated Ukrainegate by talking with Ukraine's President about investigating an
announced candidate - he didn't have to do this(!) he could've let subordinates work
behind the scenes .
And then there's a set of suspicious activity that is difficult to explain, such as: ...
- Kissinger's having called for MAGA in August 2014 (Trump announced his campaign 10
months later and he was the ONLY MAGA candidate and the ONLY populist in the Republican
primary) ;
- London as a nexus for the US 2016 campaign (Cambridge Analytica; GPS Fusion;
Halper, etc.) ;
- Hillary's making mistakes in the 2016 campaign that no seasoned politician would
make;
- the settling of scores via entrapments of Flynn, Manafort, and Wikileaks/Assange
(painted as a hostile intelligence agency and Russian agent).
All of these and more support the conclusion that CIA-MI6 elected MAGA Trump and initiated
Russiagate.
The anonymous former British operator hears from an anonymous asserted compatriot what two
anonymous sources, asserted to have access to inner Russian circles, claim to have heard
somewhere that something happened in the Kremlin. <-- Perhaps it is too much to add that
the entire conversation happen in a pub, like an eyewitness account of a trout caught by an
angler that was larger than a tiger shark [the trout was so large, not the angler].
I am a great fan of Dmitri Orlov and have just read a large portion of his linked
post.
What I do not see Orlov doing is taking into account--in his takedown of "scientific"
models---evidence of global warming/change such as *actual* observations of *actual, current*
phenomena that are being measured today, such as the condition of the world's coral reefs;
the rate of melting of permafrost and release of methane gas; the melting of Greenland (and
other) glaciers and release of fresh water into the oceans; acidification of oceans; and
quite a lot of evidence for sea level rise, such as saltwater intrusion into freshwater
swamps, aquifers, etc.
More can be gleaned by the manner in which BigLie Media spin the investigation's results. At
The Hill , Jonathon Turley makes that clear in the first paragraph:
"The analysis of the report by Justice Department inspector general Michael Horowitz
greatly depends, as is often the case, on which cable news channel you watch. Indeed, many
people might be excused for concluding that Horowitz spent 476 pages to primarily conclude
one thing, which is that the Justice Department acted within its guidelines in starting its
investigation into the 2016 campaign of President Trump."
The further he goes the worse it gets for the Ds. And he's 100% correct about the biases
present in reporting about the Report.
Remarks made by Lavrov at the presser were likely done prior to anyone from Russia's
delegation having digested any of the Report. What I found important was the following
revelation by Lavrov:
"Let me remind you that at the time of the first statements on this topic, which was on
the eve of the 2016 US presidential election, we used the communications channel that linked
back then Moscow and the Obama administration in Washington to ask our US partners on
numerous occasions whether these allegations that emerged in October 2016 and persisted until
Donald Trump's inauguration could be addressed. The reply never came. There was no
response whatsoever to all our proposals when we said: look, if you suspect us, let's sit
down and talk, just put your facts on the table. All this continued after President Trump's
inauguration and the appointment of a new administration. We proposed releasing the
correspondence through this closed communications channel for the period from October 2016
until January 2017 in order to dispel all this groundless suspicion. This would have
clarified the situation for many. Unfortunately, this time it was the current administration
that refused to do so. Let me reiterate that we are ready to disclose to the public the
exchanges we had through this channel . I think that this would set many things straight.
Nevertheless we expect the turbulence that appeared out of thin air to calm down little by
little, just as McCarthyism waned in the 1950s, so that we can place our cooperation on a
more constructive footing." [My Emphasis]
Lavrov on Mueller Report: "It contains no confirmation of any collusion." End of story.
But we do have all this compiled evidence within our communications we're ready to publish is
the USA
agrees.
The Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) organization has yet to publish anything
about the report. However, Matt Taibbi often writes for that outlet, so his reporting at
Rolling Stone ought to be seen as a proxy FAIR report.
Now that we know Carter Page was working for the CIA as an informant in 2016, is it
reasonable to speculate that Page was planted in the Trump campaign by the CIA?
The Inspector General of the Department of Justice, Micheal Horowitz's report on the move to
delegitimize the election of Donald Trump to the Presidency is clear proof of the massive rot
that lies at the heart of the US' political system. If this matter is whitewashed over by the
MSM, then one more step will have been taken to a violent and bloody revolution in the US of
A.
By now Steele's credibility is zero. Time to revisit Steele's involvement with the debunked
"Russia bought the soccer World Champion games", the Litvinenko polonium poisening and the
Skripal novichok poisening. The timing of the Skripal matter deserves some scrutiny in
relation to Skripal possibly being Steele's source for the infamous Trump dossier. There
might be a motive hidden there.
Thank you for posting Lavrov's words. Between those words and the IG report the kabuki
farce is revealed. Why was Trump ignoring the Russian offer you might ask. Because it suited
him to have this nonsense dominate the news cycle, you might conclude. Trump and Comey and
Brennan deserve each other.
just like 9-11... this is an inside job... does anyone really think the truth is going to
come to light in any of it?? i'm still with @ 2 caseys view...
Thanks for your reply! Yes, agreed, and I'd add Obama and Clinton.
Lavrov also held another presser at the conclusion of his visit that provides additional
info not covered in the first. The following is one I thought important:
"Question: The day before, US Congress agreed on a draft military budget, which includes
possible sanctions against Nord Stream-2 and Turkish Stream. Have you covered this topic? The
Congress sounds very determined. How seriously will the new restrictions affect the
completion of our projects?
"Sergey Lavrov: In my opinion, Congress sounds rather obsessed with destroying our
relations. It continues pursuing the policy started by the Obama administration. As I
mentioned, we are used to this kind of attack. We know how to respond to them. I assure you
that neither Nord Stream-2 nor Turkish Stream will be halted."
I must emphatically agree with Lavrov's opinion and was very pleased he answered
forthrightly. What seems quite clear is the current anti-Russian idiocy was started by
Obama's team and was designed for Clinton to escalate, with bipartisan Congressional backing.
That she lost didn't stop the anti-Russian wheel from being turned. So, logic tells us to
discover the reason for Obama to alter policy. Over the years I've written here why I think
that was done--to continue the #1 policy goal of attaining Full Spectrum Dominance over the
planet and its people regardless of its impossibility given the Sino-Russo Alliance made
reality by that policy goal. That a supermajority in Congress remain deluded is clearly a
huge problem, and those continuing to vote for the War Budget need to be removed.
b posted, in part;"When Hillary Clinton was defeated in the U.S. presidential election the
relevant powers launched a campaign to delegitimize the President elect Donald Trump."
It doesn't take HRC and her resident scum-bag sycophants to deligitimize DJT, his sorry
life-style, and his past record do that quite nicely, IMO.
Are you aware of any means by which a member of congress or of a congressional committee can
be impeached or otherwise censured for the misconduct of official duties? That would at least
be Schiff...
Posted by: Paul Damascene | Dec 11 2019 21:24 utc |
32
@ 31 john.. i didn't know i had to read the orlov article to say what i did to you!! your
post @11 never make any internet link to orlov... what am i missing? does this mean i can
only speak with you after i have read another orlov article? lol...
"It doesn't take HRC and her resident scum-bag sycophants to deligitimize DJT, his sorry
life-style, and his past record do that quite nicely, IMO."--ben @28
Ah, but that would be legitimate deligitimization, like attacking his actual policies.
Those are rocks that would break the Democrats' own windows as well as Trump's.
1. Senate Foreign Relations Comm passed Turkey sanctions bill
2. Pentagon Chief warned Turkey moving away NATO
3. U.S. lawmakers introduce legislation to curb Turkey's nuclear weapon obtainment"
Finally, the pretense of being nice to Turkey has come to an end. It will now intensify
its looking East, and pursue its national interests. IMO, the Eastern Med's energy issues
will now become a major headache.
karlof @ 29: The head Dems know their pushing the " Russia did it"meme is weak, but the
PTB
insist on it, to keep the MIC funds flowing.
The "no-brainer" charges should be; "Obstruction" and "Emoluments" violations. Charges the
public can grasp.
What happens if you, or any average person, ignores a summons to appear? They are
arrested.
Funneling govt. funds for personal gain is a violation of law, if you are POTUS.
These are violations average Americans can grasp, not the current circus of he said, she
said, going on in D.C. lately.
Guess my point is, this hearings are built to fail, because most of our so-called
leaders
like things the way they are. The rape of the workings classes will continue.
Yes. The impeachment process is the same as for Trump. Censuring is much easier but doubt
it will occur as too many are deserving. We're seeing the reason Congressional elections are
held every two years--vote 'em out if they're no good!
... the current anti-Russian idiocy was started by Obama's team and was designed for
Clinton to escalate ...
I don't agree that the baton would be passed to Clinton. The Deep State uses the two-party
system as a device. It's not tied to partisan concerns. If the Deep State and the
establishment really wanted Clinton elected, they would've made that happen. Few expected
Trump to win and few would've been outraged if he had lost. Yet he won. Against all odds. Furthermore, Clinton wasn't the MAGA candidate as called for by Kissinger - Trump was. And
he was from the beginning of his candidacy.
Russiagate was based on suspicions of a populist that was compromised by Russia.
Hillary has too much baggage to play populist or nationalist - including Bill's involvement
with Epstein.
Also, you're forgetting the set ups of Manafort, Flynn, and Wikileaks/Assange - which were
important parts of Russiagate and also a convenient way of settling scores. These set-ups
required the Russiagate-tainted candidate (Trump) to win.
And Trump's beating Hillary makes him the classic come-from-behind hero - giving Trump a
certain legitimacy that an establishment candidate wouldn't have. That's important when
contemplating taking the country to war in the near future.
It's strange to me that people can think that Hillary was the 'chosen candidate', and be
OK with that but find a possible selection of a different candidate (Trump, as it turns out)
to be outrageous and inconceivable.
=
... with bipartisan Congressional backing . That she lost didn't stop the
anti-Russian wheel from being turned.
Since the Deep State and the Establishment desired an effort to restore the Empire, they
would turn to whomever could most effectively accomplish that task.
Once again: It didn't have to be Hillary that was selected. In fact, for many reasons
(that I've previously expressed) Hillary would have been a poor choice.
=
So, logic tells us to discover the reason for Obama to alter policy. Over the years I've
written here why I think that was done--to continue the #1 policy goal of attaining Full
Spectrum Dominance over the planet and its people ...
FSD is US Mil policy, not a political goal. It states that US Mil will strive to have
superiority in weapons and capability in every sphere of combat.
Politically, FSD is just one of several means to an end. IMO that end is the maintenance
and expansion of the Anglo-Zionist Empire (aka New World Order).
Also, your dominance theory doesn't answer the question of WHY NOW? (more on that
below)
... regardless of its impossibility given the Sino-Russo Alliance ...
Firstly, US Deep State believes that it is possible. And I personally don't buy the notion
that Russia and China are fated to prevail. If that were obvious, then the moa bar would have
no patrons.
Secondly (and again), WHY NOW? The Sino-Russo Alliance was long in the making. Why did USA
suddenly take note?
It's
Kissinger's WSJ Op-Ed of August 2014 that provides the answer. In this Op-Ed, Kissinger
calls for a restored US Empire that is essentially Trump's MAGA. Kissinger is writing
immediately after the Donbas rebels have won. The Russians refused to heed Kissinger's advice
(to back down) and it has become apparent that Russia's joining the West is no longer an
inevitability as the US elite had assumed.
<> <> <> <> <> <>
I've written many times of Kissinger's Op-Ed and of indications that the Deep State
selected MAGA Trump to be President while also initiating a new McCarthyism. Why is it STILL
so difficult to believe a theory that makes so much sense?
Yes, the status quo is very generous to the Current Oligarchy and its tools, but not so
for the vast public majority which is clamoring for change. IMO, much can be learned from the
UK election tomorrow, of which there's been very little discussion here despite its
importance. I suggest following the very important developments from the past few days at
Criag Murray's Twitter and
at
his website , the linked article being a scoop of sorts.
Also harder to follow but important as well are ballot initiatives within the states.
This site
has current listing . I just looked over those for California where there are a few good
ones, but the threshold for signatures is getting higher, close to one million are now needed
in CA.
Lavrov's comments about the offers to open up normally closed communications really only
highlight two obvious issues:
The previous US Administration had no interest in shutting off the oxygen to the "Trump =
Moscow's Man" campaign; and
The current US Administration cannot afford to be perceived as receiving help in this matter
from the country he is alleged to be beholden to for his election.
With only 9% approval, it ought to be easy to toss out most Congresscritters, excepting
that part of the Senate not up for reelection.
You'd think so, but somehow the numbers pretty much reverse when these same people
consider their own rep, and the incumbency reelection rate is shockingly high (haven't
looked recently but IIRC it has hovered around 90% for decades). Apparently it is amazingly
easy to convince the masses that their guy is the one good apple in the bunch.
Jon Schwartz
reminds me why I don't stop and peruse magazine stands anymore. Seeing the words and this
picture would've sparked lots of unpleasant language:
"The best part of Michelle Obama explaining she shares the same values as George W. Bush
is she was being interviewed on network TV by Bush's daughter. There's nothing more American
than our ruling class making us watch them discuss how great they all are."
And the escalation wasn't rigged for Clinton to initiate--yeah, sure, whatever the rabbit
says.
Until there is some comparison of how the FISA court usually works, none of this chatter
means a thing. Violations of Woods procedures and assertions not supported by documents are
SOP. The FISA court is always a joke.
Delgeitimizing Trump, reversing the election, all simple-minded drviel, as only nitwits
see Trump as anything but the loser.
Skripal knows something that US-UK either 1) don't want the Russians to know OR 2) don't
want ANYONE to know.
What could that be? 1) That Steele dossier is bullshit? We know that. 2) That Steele
dossier was meant to be bullshit ? Well, that raises a whole host of questions,
doesn't it?
Good chance Steele had little to do with writing the Dossier. "Simpson-Ohr Dossier", anyone?
Steele was needed as a credible looking intelligence officer with Russia ties and a past
working relationship with US Intel, as cover to sell to FBI, FISA Court, and the public
(meeting with Isikoff, Yahoo News story).
Glenn Simpson and wife Mary Jacoby had written
articles for the WSJ in 2007 and 2008 with a script and language similar to the Dossier.
Devin Nunes seems to believe this scenario, and it is discussed in detail in books by Dan Bongino and Lee Smith, among others.
The Afghanistan report outlines a *massive fraud*. $14 billion/month, 90% of the world's
opium, no "progress", oh, and lying to Congress for two decades.
physchoh @ 60; The difference, at least in my mind, is that, the "Russia did it" meme, is the
weakest of all cases against DJT. Corbyn, on the other hand, may actually be hurt by the
bogus charges. IMO, what this shows is coordination between the elites to bring down a progressive in the
UK, who fancies public control over major finances instead of private concerns.
Fox News, now: Biden blames staff, says nobody 'warned' him son's Ukraine job could raise
conflict. In a TV comedy Seinfeld, one of the main characters, George, is a compulsive liar with a
knack of getting in trouble. Sometimes he has a job. Final scene of one of those jobs:
Boss: "You have been seen after hours making sex with the cleaning lady on the top of your
desk."
George (after a measured look at his boss): "If I was only told that this kind of things
is being frown upon..." [and she had cleaned the desk both before AND after!]
I have theory about why Horowitz did not bias in the FBI. The
definition of bias is to harbor a deeply negative feeling that
clouds one's judgement about a person or subject. However, the
conspirators' judgement was not clouded in this case. Their
negative feelings focused their intent to destroy the object of
their feeling. The precise term for this is malice.
So Horowitz
was technically correct when he did not find bias. What he might
have been reluctant to spell out is that he did find malice.
Re Really?? | Dec 11 2019 18:31 utc | 14 and AshenLight | Dec 11 2019 19:36 utc | 19
I agree with you. Orlov is a brilliant, insightful analyst, who is also very funny. But he
is off the mark with his dismissal of global warming and also with his endorsement of nuclear
power. The immense amounts of waste from uranium mining all the way to hundreds of thousands
of tons of high-level waste in spent fuel pools pose a huge threat to current and future
generations . . . like the next 3000 generations of humans (and all other forms of life) that
will have to deal with this. Mankind has never built anything that has lasted a fraction of
the 100,000 years required for the isolation of high-level wastes from the biosphere. Take a
look at Into
Eternity which is a great documentary on the disposal of nuclear waste in Finland.
Orlov's analysis is superficial, unfortunately, in these areas.
"... In other words, Carter Page just admitted that he's supplied information about his Russian interactions to the FBI and CIA. That means that at one point, at least, he was a de facto informant. When did that begin? Was it in 2013, after the U.S. busted the Russian spy ring that had sucked him in? Was that why he wasn't prosecuted? How long did he remain an FBI informant? Was he one during the Trump campaign? Is he still one? Is that why he acts in interviews as if he has no fear of getting in trouble, even as he willingly incriminates himself with his answers? ..."
"... This casts new light one another already-documented piece of information about Carter Page: the FBI obtained a FISA warrant on him back in the summer of 2016 ( Washington Post ), not long after he went to work for the Donald Trump campaign. Usually a FISA warrant is aimed at spying on that person. But if Page was already a willing FBI informant, it's possible the warrant was obtained so the FBI could surveil the conversations Page was having with the rest of the Trump campaign. ..."
CNN is confirming today what a wide barrage of evidence has long pointed to: that Russia
tried to use Donald Trump's campaign adviser Carter Page to infiltrate the campaign from within
( link
). But while that's not really news in and of itself, the real story here may be what Page just
told CNN in response – because he may have just given away everything
.
It's already been established that a Russian spy ring tried to turn Carter Page into an
asset back in 2013. Page went as far as giving the Russians some unspecified documents (
NY Times
). When the spy ring was busted, authorities in the U.S. notably took no known legal action
against Page. It's led some to speculate that perhaps they turned Page into an informant right
then and there. The response Page gave to CNN for its story today sounds a lot like he's
confirming as much:
"My assumption throughout the last 26 years I've been going [to Russia] has always been that
any Russian person might share information with the Russian government as I have similarly done
with the CIA, the FBI and other government agencies in the past."
In other words, Carter Page just admitted that he's supplied information about his
Russian interactions to the FBI and CIA. That means that at one point, at least, he was a de
facto informant. When did that begin? Was it in 2013, after the U.S. busted the Russian
spy ring that had sucked him in? Was that why he wasn't prosecuted? How long did he remain an
FBI informant? Was he one during the Trump campaign? Is he still one? Is that why he acts in
interviews as if he has no fear of getting in trouble, even as he willingly incriminates
himself with his answers?
This casts new light one another already-documented piece of information about Carter
Page: the FBI obtained a FISA warrant on him back in the summer of 2016 (
Washington Post ), not long after he went to work for the Donald Trump campaign.
Usually a FISA warrant is aimed at spying on that person. But if Page was already a willing FBI
informant, it's possible the warrant was obtained so the FBI could surveil the conversations
Page was having with the rest of the Trump campaign.
Bill Palmer is the publisher of the political news outlet Palmer Report
The tread is reproduced as is. And out 100 posts available in NYT "all view mode 90% can be classified as plain vanilla Neo-McCarthyism
If they are representative sample of the country, the country is crazy.
This editorial can also be classified as lunatic. But in reality it is much worse: the paper became completely subservant
to intelligence agencies. Should probably be renamed the Voice of the CIA. .
Monday's congressional hearing and the inspector general's report tell a similar story.
By Jesse Wegman Mr. Wegman is a member of the editorial board.
When it comes to Donald Trump and Russia, everything is connected.
That's the most important lesson from the two big events that played out Monday on Capitol Hill -- the House Judiciary Committee's
hearings on President Trump's impeachment and the
release of the report on the origins of the F.B.I.'s investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.
One of these involved the 2016 election. The other involves the 2020 election. Both tell versions of the same story: Mr. Trump
depends on, and welcomes, Russian interference to help him win the presidency. That was bad enough when he did it in 2016, openly
calling for Russia to hack into his opponent's emails -- which
Russians tried to do that
same day . But he was only a candidate then. Now that Mr. Trump is president, he is wielding the immense powers of his office
to achieve the same end.
That is precisely the type of abuse of power that the founders
were most concerned about when they
created the impeachment power, and it's why Democratic leaders in the House are pressing ahead with such urgency on their inquiry.
They are trying to ensure that the 2020 election, now less than a year away, is not corrupted by the president of the United States,
acting in league with a foreign power. "The integrity of our next election is at stake," said Representative Jerry Nadler, the chairman
of the Judiciary Committee. "Nothing could be more urgent."
On Monday morning, lawyers for the Democrats on the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees presented
the clearest and most comprehensive narrative yet of President Trump's monthslong shakedown of the new Ukrainian president, Volodymyr
Zelensky, for Mr. Trump's personal political benefit. They explained in methodical detail how the president withheld a White House
meeting and hundreds of millions of dollars in crucial, congressionally authorized military aid to Ukraine, all in an effort to get
Mr. Zelensky to announce two investigations -- one into Mr. Trump's political rival, Joe Biden, and his son, Hunter, and another
into Ukraine's supposed interference in the 2016 election.
David Leonhardt helps you make sense of the news -- and offers reading suggestions from around the web -- with commentary every
weekday morning.
Who would benefit from these announcements? Mr. Trump, who believes his re-election prospects are threatened most by Mr. Biden,
and Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, who has been working for years to make Ukraine the fall guy for his own interference
in the 2016 election. Mr. Putin has not fooled serious people, like those in the American intelligence community who determined that
his government alone was responsible
for meddling on Mr. Trump's behalf . But he has fooled Republicans in Congress, who have degraded themselves and their offices
by faithfully parroting Mr. Putin's propaganda in the mainstream press.
Republicans are in lawyer mode, advocating for Trump as if he were their client. Lawyers make the best case they can for their
clients. It helps if they believe in the case, but it also helps to know the case's weaknesses so they can avoid them. The best
lawyers can do both at the same time. Republicans are called on by the Constitution to exit lawyer mode and enter juror mode (which
is, or should be, similar to why-did-this-aircraft-crash mode). So far, they are not heeding this call. From all appearances,
they are mouthing the words of the Constitution while avoiding or refusing to hear or understand them. They took an oath to support
the Constitution, but they are deaf to its call, or have moved to a place beyond understanding it.
The issue of whether to impeach was made by the President when he engaged in an abuse of his office for personal gain and then
obstructed Congress' oversight function. We all understand the political downside arising from an acquittal in the Senate but
that interest needs to be secondary to doing the right thing. On these facts, the decision representatives must make of whether
to impeach really is no decision at all. Just do the right thing.
When Senator John McCain died, he scripted his own funeral as a full bore defense against Trumpian Nationalism, and as an admonishment
against a GOP too willing to sell the soul of our nation out to a cultist repudiation of objective fact, truth, and Constitutional
order. McCain was a controversial maverick –a person I both admired and disliked in equal proportion. But there is one thing I
will always admire him for: his final letter to the nation. It was a warning! He blew a golden bugle to sound the alarm against
those entities both within and without our nation who wish to do our democratic republic harm. McCain, whether you agreed with
the premise of the Vietnam war or not, was an American hero who served his country and his fellow soldiers with incontrovertible
valor and love. President Donald Trump has no concept of what that dedication and sacrifice entails – and sadly, neither do many
of the GOP members who continue to lie and make excuses for a president who is clearly abusing his office for personal gain. McCain
characterized Trump's actions in Helsinki as an unfathomable 'abasement of the U.S. presidency.' All I can say is the GOP sure
ain't the party of my father who fought in WWII against fascism and autocracy. It aggrieves me to no end to witness what too many
members of Congress have become: tyrants toward the very meaning of American democracy. God save us from our own duplicity.
@Twg Well said, and though I sometimes did not agree with McCain on matters of policy, I wish he were still with us, hopefully
to show his fellow republicans what integrity looks like, and what America is supposed to be about. The Republican party I have
known and respected is alas, like Senator McCain, no longer with us.
Americans have to realize that the whole world is mocking us, and that doesn't necesarily inspire respect. That cold be dangerous.
Many medical professionals have noticed a decay in the mental abilities of the president, and certain abnormalities. It would
be wise to suggest to the family that maybe the best way forward, with minimal losses would be to motivate a retirement. That
would be face saving for them, and save the country from a bitter impeachment spectacle that would not be positive for the USA.
I'm waiting for Trump's financial info to be released. There's something in there he doesn't even want his base to know . I think
the logical conclusion is that whatever financials DJT has hidden do indeed lead to Moscow. Actually, all of this is very, very
alarming. Does Putin have a political asset planted here? Y or N I wish the answer was no and that we had a different President.
Can we as a nation hold things together when our leader wants to tear us apart?
All roads lead to the highest bidder(s). 21st century America in the era of Citizens United. Market pricing and the government
is open for transactional business domestic and international. Alternate realities per GRU/FOX/GOP misinformation. Combine foreign
money carefully grooming an in-need Trump, and a party worshipping money and you have a perfect storm removing any sense of civic
duty. Hundreds of years to build and unwound in a few decades, the breathtaking and tragic fall of greatness and hope in our lifetime.
It's not fiction, and every day I have to check if it's really happening, and shockingly it is.
There was no Russian meddling, only Ukraine who meddled in 2016 and they are still at it. Listening to the Judiciary Committee
hearings, it seems that the Russians have hacked into the Republican Party servers and are sending talking points to Republicans
who are defending the indefensible president.
At some point, Republicans have to ask themselves which is better for their party and the country. Slavish devotion to Trump,
or losing an election and leaving Democrats a mess to clean up, as in 1932 and 2008?
Block witnesses from testifying, then say that the hearing is incomplete. Romney told America at the Republican Convention in
2012 that Russia was our biggest enemy, DJT wanted them to help Republicans win in 2016, said he believed Putin in 2018, and wants
to convince us that it was really the Ukraine in 2019. The House has to impeach, even if politically it may be a bad move, because
it is the right thing to do; indeed, the very actions I've seen in the past several weeks has given me glimmers of hope for the
country.
Trump will be reelected for the reason that the Russian intelligence agencies are still able to hack our election results, because
Trump has blocked fixing the weaknesses. That is what happens when a Manchurian candidate is elected and then allowed to obstruct
justice. It is not clear the US will survive Trump. One key thing he did was arrange to have the teams at DHS that watch for smuggled
nuclear bombs were stood down and disbanded. See the report in the LA Times last July "Trump administration has gutted programs
aimed at detecting weapons of mass destruction".
I don't suppose a constructed transcript of Trump's meeting with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov tomorrow will be offered up as
a token of our leader's transparency.
It's clear now that AG William Barr isn't interested in enforcing the rule of law with fellow republicans, and especially the
president. How can there be no recourse when an attorney general completely sells out to a criminal president? Can the employees
of the Justice Dept hold a vote of no confidence in the AG? Can 10,000 attorneys nationwide express the same? The prospect of
Trump and Barr running roughshod over the rule of law for another year is truly frightening.
65,845,063 voters knew clearly who this man was from the beginning and voted for what would have been a better now and future.
It was never any secret. 62,980,160 voters also knew clearly who this man was and voted for him anyway. If the Democrats can ensure
that we have a fair election in 2020. I'm confident they will win the majority in the house and senate and retake the White House
and the end game for Trump will be jail. The problem is, he might not be the only one who's crimes come to light and I suspect
a good lot of the GOP are threatening and blackmailing each other to hold the line. If there's any good men or women left in the
GOP, your country and history are calling you.
It has easy to predict Trump's next move for the last 3 years. Just ask, "What would both benefit Trump, and benefit Putin?" Trump
supporters = Putin supporters.
Do you know the American people are fed up with the discourse of all politicians. The republicans are fed up with any decency
for the republic. The democrats are fed up with the republicans not facing the common sense of a exec not capable of being the
President of the United states. I as a person am fed up with a political system that is not working for all people, just a select
few. It's time too have term limits for all positions in gov't. That means all people that serve the people whether it be judges,
senators or congressmen/women. It's time to find common sense again in our society as a whole society. We on this earth are all
HUMAN.
Unfortunately their are serious problems with term limits. Just consider yourself in the role of a Congressional Representative
limited to 4 terms. You know that in 8 years, you'll be be back on the job market. You can selflessly work for the public and
damage your ability to get a job or tend to people who can hire you after you leave office. You're rational. Which future would
you pick?
Trump needs to keep Putin happy lest he unleash with all the damaging info he has collected on Trump and his financial crooked
deals with Russians over decades. THe Russian mob reports to Putin as a former KGB agent he knows how to collect compromat on
a politician and how to use it to get Trump to break into a giddy smile when he sees Putin his master it's obvious to most keen
observers.
Folks it is simple. Can we hear what Trump and Putin said to each other a few months ago. It is recored and on a server it should
not be on. I am not sure why nobody is talking about these transcripts.
Finally! We get someone stating the obvious fact of Trump/Putin. Why are the Dems not talking about this all the time? Why are
Congressmen and women not asking the witnesses about this? This is the ONE thing the Republicans are afraid of, so it is the one
thing Democrats should do. I have been disappointed that the Russian asset thing hasn't been brought up....It's as if it is purposely
bold. Trump is a Russian asset, either witting or unwitting. I doubt if there is one upper Intelligence Official that wouldn't
say this. So find the right one and have them sit as a witness for this inquiry. And now the Russian big wig Diplomat and KGb
spy, Lavarov, is visiting tomorrow. Good grief! Everyone is thinking this, so get out and say it Dems! Dr. Fiona Hill tried to
lead into this direction but still the Dem Committee would take it up and aske her what she thought. Say it: All of Trump's Roads
Lead to Russia.
Any American adult who has made an effort to educate himself or herself about Mr. Mueller's investigation or these impeachment
proceedings understands that yes, with Trump all roads lead to Russia. Now if the poll numbers mean anything, Trump's crimes and
Russia's involvement only matter to about 60% of us. As Trump's poll numbers remain steady, some 40% of Americans don't care what
lawbreaking he is involved with or whether other nations now control our elections. Stop and think about this for a minute. Trump
supporters know but literally do not care that Russia is tampering with our elections (2016 and 2020). Their cult-like support
for Trump is why the Republican Senate will not remove him. There is no other reason Trump will remain in office. Trump has mesmerized
his supporters like a modern day Rasputin. They will do literally anything for him, and Senate Republicans know this. Trump voters
do not mind that Putin controls our nation at the highest levels of decision making. Again - think about this - they know he does,
and they do not care. So I ask the rest of us. Is this the America we want to live in? To raise our families in? Where a large,
rabid minority is in thrall to a lunatic puppet whose strings are firmly in Putin's hands? Because this is very much the America
we live in now. The time will come, though, when we, the majority, will no longer tolerate the Trump/Putin regime. But the longer
we wait, the harder it will be oust these tyrants.
In 2008, Donald Trump Jr. said Russia was an important source of funding for the Trump businesses. American banks wouldn't lend
him money. Saudi Arabia likely bailed out Jared's disastrous real estate investment in NYC. Follow. The. Money.
You say that Mr. Putin "has fooled Republicans in Congress, who have degraded themselves and their offices by faithfully parroting
Mr. Putin's propaganda in the mainstream press." You are correct on all counts, except that the Republicans have not been fooled
by Putin. They have gone along, headlong and absolutely willingly, in a complete sellout of personal and national principle and
integrity. They should not be forgiven for this conduct, any more than Mr. Trump should be forgiven for his sellout of America.
For Republicans who believe so fervently in their counterfactual narrative, there is an immediate remedy. Bring facts and evidence
to the Committees and testify under oath. Without witnesses and evidence presented under oath, all of the GOP antics simply look
foolish and very much like they are defending the guilty. It is unfortunate that there is no penalty for elected officials who
share unfounded conspiracy theories, engage in innuendo and obstruct process in official Committee hearings. It is also regretable
that this President is not held accountable for trying to intimidate witnesses in real time during testimony. And it is a sad
reality that one of the most corrupt rulers in the world, who rules a hostile power, has managed to entirely win over one of our
major parties.
The strangest defense advanced today was the idea that the alleged state of the economy was reason not to impeach the President:
the Republicans assert that America, the Constitution, the principle of our government are for sale to be bought by the rising
stock market and a plethora of low-wage jobs. We are Faust, and the smell of sulphur is nauseating.
If the IG's report on the 2016 Russia investigation had found the only problem was that two of the agents involved had horrible
hangnails, Barr and Trump would have condemned it.
Whatever Trump is doing, he always care about his main benefactors, Putin and MBS. This is the first time I have witnessed in
history that an American president became a Russian puppet with all his Republican followers at the Congress and Senate. American
constitutional crisis happening right in front of the world. I heard the cries of James Madison, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin
from their graves.
Sir, do you honestly think that House Republicans have been "fooled" by Mr. Putin? On the contrary, it's pretty obvious they understand
and believe the conclusions from our Intel community. These are instead willful lies for political gain. And while some Americans
may actually be misled by the theater presented as rebuttal to the impeachment, it's hard to imagine for most it's once again,
not conviction but convenience that places such "patriots" solidly in Russia's back pocket.
The pattern of behavior is clear and compelling: Trump is selling out this country, its national security, its integrity and sovereignty,
in order to keep power and avoid his own prosecution, and protect his financial interests. We must get the truth about his relationships
and indebtedness to Putin, the Saudis, and Erdogan. Our country has been hijacked and Trump will continue to corrupt the US and
turn it into an autocracy if he is not stopped and held accountable under the law.
The country voted for this President knowing he is a flawed man in many ways. I don't think anything changes here - the Senate
will speedily acquit him and the voters in the swing states will have to decide if they want to give Mr. Trump a second chance
while the rest of the country impotently watches.
If one looks at all of his actions as "How could this benefit Russia?" most of it makes sense. Why start a trade war with China
and Western allies? Why withdraw from Syria? Why try to polarize the American public? Effectively showing this to the public is
critical.
Excellent piece. We all know Trump, Inc. turned to Russian oligarchs after '08 for condo sales. It just so happened that those
same oligarchs (read as kleptocrats) were laundering money through Deutsche Bank, who was the only bank willing to lend to Trump.
Trump's loan officer amazingly was SC Justice Anthony Kennedy's son. Trump was and is a desperate man in need of cash/ Putin is
a desperate man who knows that the geyser of oil money that funds his national budget, and has done so since the 1920's, is coming
to an end. Russia has no large material economic exports other than oil and gas, but it does still have a large military, hence
the military incursions into Moldova, Ossetia, Georgia, Ukraine and Syria. Desperate men do desperate things, and desperately
try to project power with weak hands.
The Republicans in Congress were not fooled by the Russians. They believe in Trump no matter what the Russians do. The bottom
line is - What does Putin have on Trump
I don't understand why there hasn't been more of a pushback by the military. They went heavily for Trump in 20116, with many bases
in the South and many recruits from economically devastated areas, but in the interim, they have seen his reckless, lurching foreign
policy, worship of Putin, and clear evidence that somehow everything he does benefits Russia. A commander's first obligation is
to their troops, so knowing the man in charge considers their lives subject to both Trump's whims, and Putin's whispers should
provoke some reaction. No?
Unfortunately - to put it mildly - impeachment will have no effect on the conduct of the 2020 election. The wheels are already
turning, everyone knows their part, and only a massive commitment by an honest intelligence apparatus (if there is one) can stop
it. One can only hope that, in 2020, the American people make a statement so overwhelming that there can be no doubt as to their
intent, despite whatever meddling there may have been. It is entirely possible that there will never be a truly credible election
again as long as there are bad actors who are power hungry or bent on destabilizing democratic governments. And make no mistake,
these threats are coming from right wing autocracies, and they are in the ascendancy all over the world. American centrists and
liberals are the only force that can change that. Are those stakes big enough for you?
We may finally have the answer as to why Trump is so accommodating to Putin. Trump has so many investments in Russia dependent
on Putin's support. Trump financial reports will reveal this collusion between Trump and Putin. This should not come as a surprise
to attentive Americans. Think of the worst an American president can do and that will bring you close to understanding Trump.
Nobody's saying how Trump withholding military aid to Ukraine would benefit Putin and Russia in their WAR against Ukraine. It
was, indeed, MILITARY aid he was withholding, was it not? I understand that this is not the impeachable offense of attempting
to enlist a foreign government to win an election, but I believe this aspect of the situation should be brought out.
The Republican Party has been officially reduced to a giant miasma of fraud, fiction, fantasy, conspiracy theory, deflection,
misdirection and prevarication. After tax cuts for rich people and rich corporations...the GOP has no other public policy ideas
(except for bankrupting the government). A civilized country needs little things like infrastructure, education, technology, voting
rights, law and order, regulations, fair taxation and facts to move forward. But none of those things are ever mentioned by the
Republican Party; conspiracy-mongering and tax cuts are now the official governing planks of the Grand Old Propaganda/Grand One
Percent party. This is no way to manage a nation anywhere except into the ground. Americans need to hit the Trump-GOP eject button
before these Lord of the Fly Republicans take us over a very steep right-wing cliff of insanity.
The Republican Party is now Trump's party and the Republicans know it and are acting accordingly. You could call them opportunists
following the way the political winds are blowing. The Constitution is based on members of Congress caring about the Constitution
and searching for the truth. Since this is now not the case when if comes to the Republicans the Constitution has no remedy for
this situation. The only remedy is an election and if Trump can manipulate elections to his advantage using foreign powers then
there is no remedy and the system of government set up by the founders will be no more. The new system replacing it will be controlled
by Trump. Putin figured out how to control Russian elections so he always wins and it is likely that Trump has a goal of imitating
Putin. Ultimately this would mean taking over the press as Putin did. Trump cannot declare total victory as long as the there
is a free press which he has labeled the enemy of the people.
From an acute perspective ..indeed shocking to say the least of the nature of this peculiar relationship. But looking at the big
picture as evidence by all that has occurred in his or during this eye opening period for all the world to see....not so much
so...For me, this dynamic is much expected.
"The witness has used language which impugns the motives of the president and suggests he's disloyal to his country, and those
words should be stricken from the record and taken down," Mr. Johnson said. The Johnson rule effectively reads the impeachment
power out of the constitution. How can you impeach a president if no one can say anything bad about him/her?
We have yet to plow the most fertile road yet. What does Trump care about over all else? Trump. How does Trump gauge his progress?
His money. Where does his money come from? Good question. We all know he has filed for bankruptcy 6 times. We all know that because
of those bankruptcies, American banks will not loan him any money. We all know he has significant financial dealings with Deutsche
Bank. Now, who put the money in Deutsche Bank that ended up financing Trump's business.? That is the two billion dollar question.
We also know that Russian oligarchs deal in billions of dollars. We also know that Trump has close relations with Russian business
interests. We also know that Trump kowtows to Putin like Pence kowtows to him. We also know that Trump is doing everything possible
to conceal his financial dealings from everyone and everything. So, we know that one billion plus one billion equals two billion.
But does it also equal Trump? This money road is one we should take a ride on. Will it also take us to Putin?
The first Democratic candidate who labels Trump a "Russian agent" will own the simplest and most effective tag line going into
the general election, provided of course that that candidate does his best to channel his inner Trump by never backing down but
instead doubling down every chance he or she gets. Is Trump a Russian agent, paid for and accounted for? Not easy to say without
some doubt, but that doesn't really matter because he sure as shoottin' acts like one. And when have the facts ever stopped Trump
from going on the attack? The more Trump denies the label, the more he'll be digging his own grave. The real crime here is not
so much the strong arming of Zelenskyy for a Biden investigation. That's small potatoes compared to Trump's withholding congressionally
designated US military aid from a country engaged in a hot war with Russia, the same cast of characters who starved anywhere from
one to eleven million Ukrainians during the 1930's. The Russian agent must go.
I would not say Trump's lying "is effective", I would say it "has been effective". At some point, the public and his party may
have had it with the thuggery and we do not know when that breaking point is.
For the sake of protecting our 2020 elections from Russian hackers and disinformation, the House is justified in moving forward
fast, over the process howls of Republicans, with the compelling evidence they have surrounding Ukraine. But they need to continue
investigating his business and financial ties to Russia and any other autocratic governments and their oligarchs, e.g. Turkey
and Saudi Arabia. Especially if he is not convicted and removed by the Senate and stands for re-election, Americans need to know
what conflicts of interest he has in making foreign policy and military decisions because American soldiers' lives are at stake.
The Mueller investigation did not go down that road. Any businessman with global interests is automatically compromised, even
more than a vice president whose son sits on a foreign corporation's board of director. Trump's own children continue to do business
in foreign countries and we have no idea what Ivanka and Jared, sitting in the White House with top security clearances, are doing.
In short, Ukraine should not be the only concern of congressional oversight committees. There's a lot more.
Trump must believe that Russian help in 2016 did help him to win. He must feel that fake evidence presented by an "independent"
investigator such as a foreign government appears to carry more weight that the same fake evidence from a partisan investigator.
Otherwise why would he be taking such chances to duplicate via Ukraine what he got from the Russians in 2016. But now that the
Russian connection is outed, he can't go back to that well.
I worry it's all for naught. Dems in the House vote to impeach, GOP in the Senate vote to acquit. Trump remains highly competitive
in 2020 election, Russia and other adversaries interfere, Trump stays put. Then what?
@NA Wilson Think of this situation differently. To have all possible scope to defeat him, we must support everything we can to
undermine him. Lack of impeachment would have been business as usual. At some point his finances will get out and then all bets
are off.
@NA Wilson: It's all Hands on deck to save the country. Don't just vote, donate what money you can, work for candidates, knock
doors, make calls. It's the only way out of this nightmare.
The Impeachment hearings weren't really necessary to prove what most everyone who's been paying attention knows. With Trump, all
roads lead to Moscow. In fact, he's already acting very Putin-esque in his own way by forbidding anyone in the White House to
respond to subpoena, by installing the fear of God in those who do, by punishing anyone who dares to think or act on their own,
and then there's the act of holding a foreign country ransom until they agree to do his bidding -- not to mention inviting outside
interference in our presidential elections. All the signs are not only there but they are ominous. By holding himself above the
U.S. Constitution, Trump has declared war on this country and all the laws that govern it. And while entertainment-starved Americans
laugh and cheer at his rallies, he and the Republicans drain our right to vote, and with it our Democracy. Today wasn't an epiphany.
It was a warning.
There seems to be no discussion of the financial backing trump received after '08-09 from sources inside Russia and how these
actors would have expressed their support (or conditions for their silence) to the trump campaign during '15-16. Did the FBI not
identify and investigate the funders behind trump and their interactions with the campaign during 2016? Would this not have been
reasonable for an investigation to look into when its entire raison d'etre was to detect sources of Russian influence?
I wonder if Mr. Wegman believes that this editorial will change anyone's mind or influence how anyone votes in the upcoming presidential
election. Basically, this is classic preaching to the choir and sadly mostly a wasted effort. I would like to read articles with
proven ideas that worked to change the minds of Republicans and other like them. Such articles might give me some better ideas
to convince my pro-Trump friends and neighbors to Vote for America next November.
"When it comes to Donald Trump and Russia, everything is connected." This! This is the central fact of all the things Trump has
done (so far), and yet, the Democrats have failed to make this the central focus of the case against him. Instead, they've focused
on one incident, and not even the most egregious one, to justify impeachment and removal from office. This was a terrible miscalculation.
No, there is no doubt that Trump attempted to coerce Ukraine into helping with his re-election by announcing a bogus investigation
of the Bidens. Nor any doubt that this constituted "high crimes and misdemeanors". But this was not the highest of crimes he's
committed, nor have the Dems been able to convince any Republicans, or many independents, that this deserves Trump's removal.
Moreover, they failed to produce the "smoking gun" of one witness or document in Trump's own words directing the quid pro quo.
They gave plenty of room for the Republican attack machine to cast enough doubt and confusion that all but ensures Trump's acquittal
in the Senate. Instead of focusing only on this one incident, the Democrats should have built their case around the theme that
"with Trump, all roads lead to Russia". That is a crime that even the most skeptical doubter can grasp, and when linked together,
all of his crimes can be shown to be of a pattern of serving Putin, and not the people of the United States. All roads lead to
Putin, but the Democrats chose to follow a dead end.
@Kingfish52 I completely agree with you and truly don't understand why the Democrats have not been shouting this from the rooftops.
For mercy's sake! The problem is not just that the president solicited help from a foreign power for his own personal gain! That's
bad enough, but isn't the point that he did this because he is beholden to Russia? Russia. is. not. our. friend. Why aren't the
Democrats explaining this clearly to the American people? Trump is Putin's puppet and it could not be more obvious! Don't people
understand that it doesn't just happen to be Ukraine that Trump took a notion to squeeze for his "personal gain"? He doesn't just
want to win because it is so nice to win elections. He has to do what Putin tells him. Obviously, every last Republican in Congress
understands this clearly. Why can't the Democrats explain it to the American people clearly?
Obama did not provide lethal aid to Ukraine, after the Russians invaded Crimea. Obama did not Russia prevent the Iranian nuclear
deal. Trump cancelled the Iranian nuclear deal, then provided lethal aid to Ukraine. Now I get it. Trump is working for Putin.
By March 2015, the US had committed more than $120 million in security assistance for Ukraine and had pledged an additional $75
million worth of equipment including UAVs, counter-mortar radars, night vision devices and medical supplies, according to the
Pentagon's Defense Security Cooperation Agency. That assistance also included some 230 armored Humvee vehicles. Trump appears
to be echoing a critique leveled at the Obama administration by the late Republican Sen. John McCain. "The Ukrainians are being
slaughtered and we're sending blankets and meals," McCain said in 2015. "Blankets don't do well against Russian tanks." While
it never provided lethal aid, many of the items that the Obama administration did provide were seen as critical to Ukraine's military.
Part of the $250 million assistance package that the Trump administration announced (then froze and later unfroze) included many
of the same items that were provided under Obama, including medical equipment, night vision gear and counter-artillery radar.
The Trump administration did approve the provision of arms to Ukraine, including sniper rifles, rocket launchers and Javelin anti-tank
missiles, something long sought by Kiev.
@Mike Trump was not the one providing lethal aid to Ukraine. It was the house and senate that proposed and forced this aid into
an appropriation bill - against the wishes of the Trump administration. After Trump realized he could not block this funding he
did the second best thing - he used it to blackmail the Ukraine government to provide him with dirt on Biden and support for Putin's
favorite narrative (that it was Ukraine not Russia that interfered in the 2016 election).
@Mike It also took two acts of Congress to get the aid to Ukraine. Trump had nothing to do with it. Only the Impound Inclusion
Act for foreign aid allows the President to time the release of the funds, which Trump did not follow. The Act was created because
Nixon, like Trump, was playing fast and loose with our tax dollars. Who was the last President who asked for help from a foreign
intelligence agency? Which President favored foregn intelligence agencies over his own? Answer no one other than Trump. If that
doesn't show he's in someone's pocket, nothing does.
Never in the history of America, probably never in the history of any country, had there
been such open and direct control of governmental activities by the very rich. So long as a
handful of men in Wall Street control the credit and industrial processes of the country, they
will continue to control the press, the government, and, by deception, the people. They will
not only compel the public to work for them in peace, but to fight for them in war. -- John
Turner, 1922
"... This is just low level Soviet-style propaganda: "Beacon of democracy" and "Hope of all progressive mankind" cliché. My impression is that the train left the station long ago, especially as for democracy. Probably in 1963. The reality is a nasty struggle of corrupt political clans. Which involves intelligence agencies dirty tricks. BTW, how do you like that fact that Corporate Democrats converted themselves in intelligence agencies' cheerleading squad? ..."
"... And both Corporate Dems and opposing them Republican are afraid to discuss the real issues facing the country, such as loss of manufacturing, loss of good middle class jobs (fake labor statistics covers the fact the most new jobs are temps/contractors and McJobs), rampant militarism with Afghan war lasting decades, neocon dominance in foreign policy which led to increase of country debt to level that might soon be unsustainable. ..."
"... Both enjoy impeachment Kabuki theater. With Trump probably enjoying this theatre the most: if they just censure him, he wins, if charges go to Senate, he wins big. ..."
From the founding of this country, the power of the president was understood to have
limits. Indeed, the Founders would never have written an impeachment clause into the
Constitution if they did not foresee scenarios where their descendants might need to remove
an elected president before the end of his term in order to protect the American people and
the nation.
The question before the country now is whether President Trump's misconduct is severe
enough that Congress should exercise that impeachment power, less than a year before the 2020
election. The results of the House Intelligence Committee inquiry, released to the public on
Tuesday, make clear that the answer is an urgent yes. Not only has the president abused his
power by trying to extort a foreign country to meddle in US politics, but he also has
endangered the integrity of the election itself. He has also obstructed the congressional
investigation into his conduct, a precedent that will lead to a permanent diminution of
congressional power if allowed to stand.
The evidence that Trump is a threat to the constitutional system is more than sufficient,
and a slate of legal scholars who testified on Wednesday made clear that Trump's actions are
just the sort of presidential behavior the Founders had in mind when they devised the
recourse of impeachment. The decision by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to proceed with drafting
articles of impeachment is warranted.
Much of the information in the Intelligence Committee report, which was based on witness
interviews, documents, telephone records, and public statements by administration officials,
was already known to the public. The cohesive narrative that emerges, though, is worse than
the sum of its parts. This year, the president and subordinates acting at his behest
repeatedly tried to pressure a foreign country, Ukraine, into taking steps to help the
president's reelection. That was, by itself, an outrageous betrayal: In his dealings with
foreign states, the president has an obligation to represent America's interests, not his
own.
But the president also betrayed the US taxpayer to advance that corrupt agenda. In order
to pressure Ukraine into acceding to his request, Trump's administration held up $391 million
in aid allocated by Congress. In other words, he demanded a bribe in the form of political
favors in exchange for an official act -- the textbook definition of corruption. The fact
that the money was ultimately paid, after a whistle-blower complained, is immaterial: The act
of withholding taxpayer money to support a personal political goal was an impermissible abuse
of the president's power.
Withholding the money also sabotaged American foreign policy. The United States provides
military aid to Ukraine to protect the country from Russian aggression. Ensuring that fragile
young democracy does not fall under Moscow's sway is a key US policy goal, and one that the
president put at risk for his personal benefit. He has shown the world that he is willing to
corrupt the American policy agenda for purposes of political gain, which will cast suspicion
on the motivations of the United States abroad if Congress does not act.
To top off his misconduct, after Congress got wind of the scheme and started the
impeachment inquiry, the Trump administration refused to comply with subpoenas, instructed
witnesses not to testify, and intimidated witnesses who did. That ought to form the basis of
an article of impeachment. When the president obstructs justice and fails to respect the
power of Congress, it strikes at the heart of the separation of powers and will hobble future
oversight of presidents of all parties.
Impeachment does not require a crime. The Constitution entrusts Congress with the
impeachment power in order to protect Americans from a president who is betraying their
interests. And it is very much in Americans' interests to maintain checks and balances in the
federal government; to have a foreign policy that the world can trust is based on our
national interest instead of the president's personal needs; to control federal spending
through their elected representatives; to vote in fair elections untainted by foreign
interference. For generations, Americans have enjoyed those privileges. What's at stake now
is whether we will keep them. The facts show that the president has threatened this country's
core values and the integrity of our democracy. Congress now has a duty to future generations
to impeach him.
How can Trump have sabotaged American foreign policy, when he has full responsibility and
authority to set it?
IMO this impeachment is partly about Trump personally asking a foreign country for help
against a domestic political opponent. But it is mostly about geopolitics and the national
security bureaucracy's need for US world domination.
Just listen to the impeachment testimony--most of it is whining about Trump's failure to
follow the 'interagency' policies of the deep state.
Stalin would approve that. And if so, what is the difference between impeachment and a
show trial, Moscow trials style? The majority can eliminate political rivals, if it wishes
so, right? This was how Bolsheviks were thinking in 30th. Of course, those backward Soviets used "British spy" charge instead modern, sophisticated
"Putin's stooge" charge, but still ;-)
The facts show that the president has threatened this country's core values and the integrity
of our democracy.
This is just low level Soviet-style propaganda: "Beacon of democracy" and "Hope of all
progressive mankind" cliché. My impression is that the train left the station long ago, especially as for democracy.
Probably in 1963. The reality is a nasty struggle of corrupt political clans. Which involves intelligence
agencies dirty tricks. BTW, how do you like that fact that Corporate Democrats converted themselves in
intelligence agencies' cheerleading squad?
In short Boston Globe editors do not want that their audience understand the situation, in
which the county have found itself. They just want to brainwash this audience (with impunity)
And both Corporate Dems and opposing them Republican are afraid to discuss the real issues
facing the country, such as loss of manufacturing, loss of good middle class jobs (fake labor
statistics covers the fact the most new jobs are temps/contractors and McJobs), rampant
militarism with Afghan war lasting decades, neocon dominance in foreign policy which led to
increase of country debt to level that might soon be unsustainable.
Both enjoy impeachment Kabuki theater. With Trump probably enjoying this theatre the most:
if they just censure him, he wins, if charges go to Senate, he wins big.
Can you imagine result for Corporate Dems of Schiff (with his contacts with Ciaramella ) ,
or Hunter Biden (who was just a mule to get money to Biden's family for his father illegal
lobbing) testifying in Senate under oath.
The truth is that they are all criminals (with many being war criminals.) So Beria
statement "Show me the man and I'll find you the crime" is fully applicable. That really is
something that has survived the Soviet Union and has arrived in the good old USA.
Republicans are afraid to raise this key question. Democrats are afraid of even mentioning CrowdStrike in Ukrainegate hearings.
The Deep State wants to suppress this matter entirely.
Alperovisch connections to Ukraine and his Russophobia are well known. Did Alperovich people played the role of "Fancy Bear"? Or
Ukrainian SBU was engaged? George Eliason clams that
"I have already clearly shown the Fancy Bear hackers are Ukrainian Intelligence Operators." ... "Since there is so much crap surrounding
the supposed hack such as law enforcement teams never examining the DNC server or maintaining control of it as evidence, could the hacks
have been a cover-up?"
Notable quotes:
"... So far at least I cannot rule out the possibility that that this could have involved an actual 'false flag' hack. A possible calculation would have been that this could have made it easier for Alperovitch and 'CrowdStrike', if more people had asked serious questions about the evidence they claimed supported the 'narrative' of GRU responsibility. ..."
"... What she suggested was that the FBI had found evidence, after his death, of a hack of Rich's laptop, designed as part of a 'false flag' operation. ..."
"... On this, see his 8 October, 'Motion for Discovery and Motion to Accept Supplemental Evidence' in Clevenger's own case against the DOJ, document 44 on the relevant 'Courtlistener' pages, and his 'Unopposed Motion for Stay', document 48. Both are short, and available without a 'PACER' subscription, and should be compulsory reading for anyone seriously interested in ascertaining the truth about 'Russiagate.' (See https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/6775665/clevenger-v-us-department-of-justice/ .) ..."
"... And here, is is also material that he may have had more than one laptop, that 'hard drives' can be changed, and that the level of computer skills that can be found throughout the former Soviet Union is very high. Another matter of some importance is that Ed Butowsky's 'Debunking Rod Wheeler's Claims' site is back up online. (See http://debunkingrodwheelersclaims.net ) ..."
"... The question of whether the 'timeline' produced by Hersh's FBI informant was accurate, or a deliberate attempt to disguise the fact that all kinds of people were well aware of Rich's involvement before his murder, and well aware of the fact of a leak before he was identified as its source, is absolutely central to how one interprets 'Russiagate.' ..."
"... Why did Crowdstrike conclude it was a "Russian breach", when other evidence does show it was an internal download. What was Crowdstrike's method and motivation to reach the "Russian" conclusion instead. Why has that methodology been sealed? ..."
"... Why did Mueller wholly accept the Crowdstrike Russian conclusion, with no further or independent investigation and prominently put this Crowdstrike generated conclusion in his Russiagate report? Which also included the conclusion the "Russians" wanted to help Trump and harm Clinton. Heavy stuff, based upon a DNC proprietary investigation of their own and unavailable computers. ..."
"... What were the relationships between Crowdstrike, DNC, FBI and the Mueller team that conspired to reach this Russian conclusion. ..."
"... Why did the Roger Stone judge, who just sent Stone away for life, refuse Stone's evidentiary demand to ascertain how exactly Crowdstrike reached its Russsian hacking conclusion, that the court then linked to Stone allegedly lying about this Russian link ..."
"... Indeed, let's set out with full transparency the Ukraine -- Crowsdtrike player links and loyalties to see if there are any smoking guns yet undisclosed. Trump was asking for more information about Crowdstrike like a good lawyer - never ask a question when you don't already know the right answer. Crowdstrike is owned by a Ukrainian by birth ..."
"... Among the 12 engineers assigned to writing a PGP backdoor was the son of a KGB officer named Dmitri Alperovich who would go on to be the CTO at a company involved in the DNC Hacking scandal - Crowdstrike. ..."
"... In addition to writing a back door for PGP, Alperovich also ported PGP to the blackberry platform to provide encrypted communications for covert action operatives. ..."
"... His role in what we may define as "converting DNC leak into DNC hack" (I would agree with you that this probably was a false flag operation), which was supposedly designed to implicated Russians, and possibly involved Ukrainian security services, is very suspicious indeed. ..."
"... Mueller treatment of Crowdstrike with "kid gloves" may suggest that Alperovich actions were part of a larger scheme. After all Crowdstike was a FBI contactor at the time. ..."
The favor was for Ukraine to investigate Crowdstrike and the 2016 DNC computer breach.
Reliance on Crowdstrike to investigate the DNC computer, and not an independent FBI investigation, was tied very closely to
the years long anti-Trump Russiagate hoax and waste of US taxpayer time and money.
Why is this issue ignored by both the media and the Democrats. The ladies doth protest far too much.
what exactly, to the extend I recall, could the Ukraine contribute the the DNC's server/"fake malware" troubles? Beyond, that
I seem to vaguely recall, the supposed malware was distributed via an Ukrainan address.
On the other hand, there seems to be the (consensus here?) argument there was no malware breach at all, simply an insider copying
files on a USB stick.
If people discovered there had been a leak, it would perfectly natural that in order to give 'resilience' to their cover-up
strategies, they could have organised a planting of evidence on the servers, in conjunction with elements in Ukraine.
So far at least I cannot rule out the possibility that that this could have involved an actual 'false flag' hack. A possible
calculation would have been that this could have made it easier for Alperovitch and 'CrowdStrike', if more people had asked serious
questions about the evidence they claimed supported the 'narrative' of GRU responsibility.
The issues involved become all the more important, in the light of the progress of Ty Clevenger's attempts to exploit the clear
contradiction between the claims by the FBI, in response to FOIA requests, to have no evidence relating to Seth Rich, and the
remarks by Ms. Deborah Sines quoted by Michael Isikoff.
What she suggested was that the FBI had found evidence, after his death, of a hack of Rich's laptop, designed as part of
a 'false flag' operation.
On this, see his 8 October, 'Motion for Discovery and Motion to Accept Supplemental Evidence' in Clevenger's own case against
the DOJ, document 44 on the relevant 'Courtlistener' pages, and his 'Unopposed Motion for Stay', document 48. Both are short,
and available without a 'PACER' subscription, and should be compulsory reading for anyone seriously interested in ascertaining
the truth about 'Russiagate.' (See
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/6775665/clevenger-v-us-department-of-justice/
.)
It is eminently possible that Ms. Hines has simply made an 'unforced error.'
However, I do not – yet – feel able totally to discount the possibility that what is actually at issue is a 'ruse', produced
as a contingency plan to ensure that if it becomes impossible to maintain the cover-up over Rich's involvement in its original
form, his laptop shows 'evidence' compatible with the 'Russiagate' narrative.
And here, is is also material that he may have had more than one laptop, that 'hard drives' can be changed, and that the
level of computer skills that can be found throughout the former Soviet Union is very high. Another matter of some importance
is that Ed Butowsky's 'Debunking Rod Wheeler's Claims' site is back up online. (See
http://debunkingrodwheelersclaims.net )
Looking at it from the perspective of an old television current affairs hack, I do think that, while it is very helpful to
have some key material available in a single place, it would useful if more attention was paid to presentation.
In particular, it would be a most helpful 'teaching aid', if a full and accurate transcript was made of the conversation with
Seymour Hersh which Ed Butowsky covertly recorded. What seems clear is that both these figures ended up in very difficult positions,
and that the latter clearly engaged in 'sleight of hand' in relation to his dealings with the former. That said, the fact that
Butowsky's claims about his grounds for believing that Hersh's FBI informant was Andrew McCabe are clearly disingenuous does not
justify the conclusion that he is wrong.
It is absolutely clear to me – despite what 'TTG', following that 'Grub Street' hack Folkenflik, claimed – that when Hersh
talked to Butowsky, he believed he had been given accurate information. Indeed, I have difficulty seeing how anyone whose eyes
were not hopelessly blinded by prejudice, a\nd possibly fear of where a quest for the truth might lead, could not see that, in
this conversation, both men were telling the truth, as they saw it.
However, all of us, including the finest and most honourable of journalists can, from time to time, fall for disinformation.
(If anyone says they can always spot when they are being played, all I can say is, if you're right, you're clearly Superman, but
it is more likely that you are a fool or knave, if not both.)
The question of whether the 'timeline' produced by Hersh's FBI informant was accurate, or a deliberate attempt to disguise
the fact that all kinds of people were well aware of Rich's involvement before his murder, and well aware of the fact of a leak
before he was identified as its source, is absolutely central to how one interprets 'Russiagate.'
1. Why did Crowdstrike conclude it was a "Russian breach", when other evidence does show it was an internal download. What
was Crowdstrike's method and motivation to reach the "Russian" conclusion instead. Why has that methodology been sealed?
2. Why did Mueller wholly accept the Crowdstrike Russian conclusion, with no further or independent investigation and prominently
put this Crowdstrike generated conclusion in his Russiagate report? Which also included the conclusion the "Russians" wanted to
help Trump and harm Clinton. Heavy stuff, based upon a DNC proprietary investigation of their own and unavailable computers.
3. What were the relationships between Crowdstrike, DNC, FBI and the Mueller team that conspired to reach this Russian
conclusion.
4. Why did the Roger Stone judge, who just sent Stone away for life, refuse Stone's evidentiary demand to ascertain how
exactly Crowdstrike reached its Russsian hacking conclusion, that the court then linked to Stone allegedly lying about this Russian
link .
5. Indeed, let's set out with full transparency the Ukraine -- Crowsdtrike player links and loyalties to see if there are
any smoking guns yet undisclosed. Trump was asking for more information about Crowdstrike like a good lawyer - never ask a question
when you don't already know the right answer. Crowdstrike is owned by a Ukrainian by birth .
Why did Mueller wholly accept the Crowdstrike Russian conclusion, with no further or independent investigation and prominently
put this Crowdstrike generated conclusion in his Russiagate report? Which also included the conclusion the "Russians" wanted
to help Trump and harm Clinton. Heavy stuff, based upon a DNC proprietary investigation of their own and unavailable computers.
Alperovich is really a very suspicious figure. Rumors are that he was involved in compromising PGP while in MacAfee( June 2nd,
2018 Alperovich's DNC Cover Stories Soon To Match With His Hacking Teams - YouTube ):
Investigative Journalist George Webb worked at MacAfee and Network Solutions in 2000 when the CEO Bill Larsen bought a small,
Moscow based, hacking and virus writing company to move to Silicon Valley.
MacAfee also purchased PGP, an open source encryption software developed by privacy advocate to reduce NSA spying on the
public.
The two simultaneous purchase of PGP and the Moscow hacking team by Metwork Solutions was sponsored by the CIA and FBI in order
to crack encrypted communications to write a back door for law enforcement.
Among the 12 engineers assigned to writing a PGP backdoor was the son of a KGB officer named Dmitri Alperovich who would
go on to be the CTO at a company involved in the DNC Hacking scandal - Crowdstrike.
In addition to writing a back door for PGP, Alperovich also ported PGP to the blackberry platform to provide encrypted
communications for covert action operatives.
His role in what we may define as "converting DNC leak into DNC hack" (I would agree with you that this probably was a
false flag operation), which was supposedly designed to implicated Russians, and possibly involved Ukrainian security services,
is very suspicious indeed.
Mueller treatment of Crowdstrike with "kid gloves" may suggest that Alperovich actions were part of a larger scheme. After
all Crowdstike was a FBI contactor at the time.
While all this DNC hack saga is completely unclear due to lack of facts and the access to the evidence, there are some stories
on Internet that indirectly somewhat strengthen your hypothesis:
"... Fact 10 : Shokin stated in interviews with me and ABC News that he was told he was fired because Joe Biden was unhappy the Burisma investigation wasn't shut down. He made that claim anew in this sworn deposition prepared for a court in Europe. You can read that here . ..."
"... Fact 11 : The day Shokin's firing was announced in March 2016, Burisma's legal representatives sought an immediate meeting with his temporary replacement to address the ongoing investigation. You can read the text of their emails here . ..."
"... Fact 13 : Burisma officials eventually settled the Ukraine investigations in late 2016 and early 2017, paying a multimillion dollar fine for tax issues. You can read their lawyer's February 2017 announcement of the end of the investigations here . ..."
"... Fact 15 : The Ukraine embassy in Washington issued a statement in April 2019 admitting that a Democratic National Committee contractor named Alexandra Chalupa solicited Ukrainian officials in spring 2016 for dirt on Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort in hopes of staging a congressional hearing close to the 2016 election that would damage Trump's election chances. You can read the embassy's statement here and here . Your colleague, Dr. Fiona Hill, confirmed this episode, testifying "Ukraine bet on the wrong horse. They bet on Hillary Clinton winning." You can read her testimony here . ..."
"... Fact 18 : A Ukrainian district court ruled in December 2018 that the summer 2016 release of information by Ukrainian Parliamentary member Sergey Leschenko and NABU director Artem Sytnyk about an ongoing investigation of Manafort amounted to an improper interference by Ukraine's government in the 2016 U.S. election. You can read the court ruling here . Leschenko and Sytnyk deny the allegations, and have won an appeal to suspend that ruling on a jurisdictional technicality. ..."
"... Fact 21 : In April 2016, US embassy charge d'affaires George Kent sent a letter to the Ukrainian prosecutor general's office demanding that Ukrainian prosecutors stand down a series of investigations into how Ukrainian nonprofits spent U.S. aid dollars, including the Anti-Corruption Actions Centre. You can read that letter here . Kent testified he signed the letter here . ..."
"... Fact 22 : Then-Ukraine Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko said in a televised interview with me that Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch during a 2016 meeting provided the lists of names of Ukrainian nationals and groups she did want to see prosecuted. You can see I accurately quoted him by watching the video here . ..."
"... Fact 27 : In May 2016, one of George Soros' top aides secured a meeting with the top Eurasia policy official in the State Department to discuss Russian bond issues. You can read the State memos on that meeting here . ..."
"... Fact 28 : In June 2016, Soros himself secured a telephonic meeting with Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland to discuss Ukraine policy. You can read the State memos on that meeting here . ..."
honor and applaud Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman's service to his country. He's a hero. I also respect his decision to testify
at the impeachment proceedings. I suspect neither his service nor his testimony was easy.
But I also know the liberties that Lt. Col. Vindman fought on the battlefield to preserve permit for a free and honest debate
in America, one that can't be muted by the color of uniform or the crushing power of the state.
So I want to exercise my right to debate Lt. Col. Vindman about the testimony he gave about me. You see, under oath to Congress,
he asserted all the factual elements in my columns at The Hill about Ukraine were false, except maybe my grammar
"I think all the key elements were false," Vindman testified.
Rep. Lee Zeldin, R-N.Y, pressed him about what he meant. "Just so I understand what you mean when you say key elements, are you
referring to everything John Solomon stated or just some of it?"
"All the elements that I just laid out for you. The criticisms of corruption were false . Were there more items in there, frankly,
congressman? I don't recall. I haven't looked at the article in quite some time, but you know, his grammar might have been right."
Such testimony has been injurious to my reputation, one earned during 30 years of impactful reporting for news organizations that
included The Associated Press, The Washington Post, The Washington Times and The Daily Beast/Newsweek.
And so Lt. Col. Vindman, here are the 28 primary factual elements in my Ukraine columns, complete with attribution and links to
sourcing. Please tell me which, if any, was factually wrong.
Fact 1 : Hunter Biden was hired in May 2014 by Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian natural gas company, at a time when his father
Joe Biden was Vice President and overseeing US-Ukraine Policy.
Here
is the announcement. Hunter Biden's hiring came just a few short weeks after Joe Biden urged Ukraine to expand natural gas production
and use Americans to help. You can read his comments to the Ukrainian prime minister
here . Hunter Biden's firm then began receiving monthly payments totaling $166,666. You can see those payments
here .
Fact 2 : Burisma was under investigation by
British authorities for corruption
and soon came under investigation by
Ukrainian authorities led by Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin.
Fact 3 : Vice President Joe Biden and his office were alerted by a
December 2015 New York Times article that Shokin's office was investigating Burisma and that Hunter Biden's role at the company
was undercutting his father's anticorruption efforts in Ukraine.
Fact 4 : The Biden-Burisma issue created the appearance of a conflict of interest, especially for State Department officials.
I especially refer you to State official George Kent's testimony
here . He testified he viewed
Burisma as corrupt and the Bidens as creating the perception of a conflict of interest. His concerns both caused him to contact the
vice president's office and to block a project that State's USAID agency was planning with Burisma in 2016. In addition, Ambassador
Yovanovitch testified she, too, saw the Bidens-Burisma connection as creating the appearance of a conflict of interest. You can read
her testimony
here .
Fact 5 : The Obama White House invited Shokin's prosecutorial team to Washington for meetings in January 2016 to discuss
their anticorruption investigations. You can read about that
here . Also, here is the official agenda for that meeting in
Ukraine and
English
. I call your attention to the NSC organizer of the meeting.
Fact 6 : The Ukraine investigation of Hunter Biden's employer, Burisma Holdings, escalated in February 2016 when Shokin's
office raided the home of company owner Mykola Zlochevsky and seized his property.
Here is the announcement of that court-approved
raid.
Fact 7 : Shokin was making plans in February 2016 to interview Hunter Biden as part of his investigation. You can read
his interview with me here, his sworn deposition to a court
here and his interview with
ABC News
here .
Fact 8 : Burisma's American representatives lobbied the State Department in late February 2016 to help end the corruption
allegations against the company, and specifically invoked Hunter Biden's name as a reason to intervene. You can read State officials'
account of that effort here
Fact 9 : Joe Biden boasted in a
2018 videotape
that he forced Ukraine's president to fire Shokin in March 2016 by threatening to withhold $1 billion in U.S. aid. You can view his
videotape here
.
Fact 10 : Shokin stated in interviews with me and
ABC News that he was told he was fired because Joe Biden was unhappy the Burisma investigation wasn't shut down. He made that
claim anew in this sworn deposition prepared for a court in Europe. You can read that
here .
Fact 11 : The day Shokin's firing was announced in March 2016, Burisma's legal representatives sought an immediate meeting
with his temporary replacement to address the ongoing investigation. You can read the text of their emails
here .
Fact 12 : Burisma's legal representatives secured that meeting April 6, 2016 and told Ukrainian prosecutors that "false
information" had been spread to justify Shokin's firing, according to a Ukrainian government memo about the meeting. The representatives
also offered to arrange for the remaining Ukrainian prosecutors to meet with U.S State and Justice officials. You can read the Ukrainian
prosecutors' summary memo of the meeting here and here and the Burisma lawyers' invite to Washington
here .
Fact 13 : Burisma officials eventually settled the Ukraine investigations in late 2016 and early 2017, paying a multimillion
dollar fine for tax issues. You can read their lawyer's February 2017 announcement of the end of the investigations
here .
Fact 14 : In March 2019, Ukraine authorities reopened an investigation against Burisma and Zlochevsky based on new evidence
of money laundering. You can read NABU's February 2019 recommendation to re-open the case
here , the March 2019 notice of suspicion by Ukraine prosecutors
here and a
May 2019 interview
here
with a Ukrainian senior law enforcement official stating the investigation was ongoing. And
here is an announcement this week that the Zlochevsky/Burisma probe has been expanded to include allegations of theft of Ukrainian
state funds.
Fact 15 : The Ukraine embassy in Washington issued a statement in April 2019 admitting that a Democratic National Committee
contractor named Alexandra Chalupa solicited Ukrainian officials in spring 2016 for dirt on Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort
in hopes of staging a congressional hearing close to the 2016 election that would damage Trump's election chances. You can read the
embassy's statement
here and
here . Your colleague, Dr. Fiona Hill, confirmed this episode, testifying "Ukraine bet on the wrong horse. They bet on Hillary
Clinton winning." You can read her testimony
here .
Fact 16 : Chalupa sent an email to top DNC officials in May 2016 acknowledging she was working on the Manafort issue. You
can read the email here .
Fact 17 : Ukraine's ambassador to Washington, Valeriy Chaly, wrote an OpEd in The Hill in August 2016 slamming GOP nominee
Donald Trump for his policies on Russia despite a Geneva Convention requirement that ambassadors not become embroiled in the internal
affairs or elections of their host countries. You can read Ambassador Chaly's OpEd
here and the Geneva Convention rules of conduct for foreign diplomats
here . And your colleagues
Ambassador Yovanovitch and Dr. Hill both confirmed this, with Dr. Hill
testifying this
week that Chaly's OpEd was "probably not the most advisable thing to do."
Fact 18 : A Ukrainian district court ruled in December 2018 that the summer 2016 release of information by Ukrainian Parliamentary
member Sergey Leschenko and NABU director Artem Sytnyk about an ongoing investigation of Manafort amounted to an improper interference
by Ukraine's government in the 2016 U.S. election. You can read the court ruling
here . Leschenko and Sytnyk deny the allegations, and have won an appeal to suspend that ruling on a jurisdictional technicality.
Fact 19 : George Soros' Open Society Foundation issued a memo in February 2016 on its strategy for Ukraine, identifying
the nonprofit Anti-Corruption Action Centre as the lead for its efforts. You can read the memo
here .
Fact 20 : The State Department and Soros' foundation jointly funded the Anti-Corruption Action Centre. You can read about
that funding here from the Centre's own funding records and George
Kent's testimony about it here
.
Fact 21 : In April 2016, US embassy charge d'affaires George Kent sent a letter to the Ukrainian prosecutor general's office
demanding that Ukrainian prosecutors stand down a series of investigations into how Ukrainian nonprofits spent U.S. aid dollars,
including the Anti-Corruption Actions Centre. You can read that letter
here . Kent testified he signed the
letter here .
Fact 22 : Then-Ukraine Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko said in a televised interview with me that Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch
during a 2016 meeting provided the lists of names of Ukrainian nationals and groups she did want to see prosecuted. You can see I
accurately quoted him by watching the video
here .
Fact 23 : Ambassador Yovanovitch and her embassy denied Lutsenko's claim, calling it a "fabrication." I reported their
reaction
here .
Fact 24 : Despite the differing accounts of what happened at the Lutsenko-Yovanovitch meeting, a senior U.S. official in
an interview arranged by the State Department stated to me in spring 2019 that US officials did pressure Lutsenko's office on several
occasions not to "prosecute, investigate or harass" certain Ukrainian activists, including Parliamentary member Leschenko, journalist
Vitali Shabunin, the Anti-Corruption Action Centre and NABU director Sytnyk. You can read that official's comments
here . In addition, George Kent confirmed this same information in his deposition
here .
Fact 25 : In May 2018, then-House Rules Committee chairman Pete Sessions sent an official congressional letter to Secretary
of State Mike Pompeo asking that Yovanovitch be recalled as ambassador to Ukraine. Sessions and State confirmed the official letter,
which you can read here
.
Fact 26 : In fall 2018, Ukrainian prosecutors, using a third party, hired an American lawyer (a former U.S. attorney) to
proffer information to the U.S. government about certain activities at the U.S. embassy, involving Burisma and involving the 2016
election, that they believed might have violated U.S. law. You can read their account
here . You can also confirm it independently by talking to the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan or the American lawyer representing
the Ukrainian prosecutors' interests.
Fact 27 : In May 2016, one of George Soros' top aides secured a meeting with the top Eurasia policy official in the State
Department to discuss Russian bond issues. You can read the State memos on that meeting
here .
Fact 28 : In June 2016, Soros himself secured a telephonic meeting with Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland to
discuss Ukraine policy. You can read the State memos on that meeting
here .
Lt. Col. Vindman, if you have information that contradicts any of these 28 factual elements in my columns I ask that you make
it publicly available. Your testimony did not.
If you don't have evidence these 28 facts are wrong, I ask that you correct your testimony because any effort to call factually
accurate reporting false only misleads America and chills the free debate our Constitutional framers so cherished to protect.
Pelosi interference in elections might cost democrats a victory. She enraged Trump base and
strengthened Trump, who before was floundering. Now election changed into "us vs them" question,
which is very unfavorable to neoliberal Dems. as neolibelism as ideology is dead. She also
brought back Trump some independents who othersie would stay home or vote for Dem candidate. No
action of House of Representatives can changes this. Bringing Vindman and Fiona Hill to testify
were huge blunders as they enhance the narrative that the Deep State, unaccountable Security
Establishment, controls the government, to which Trump represents very weak, but still a
challenge. As such they strengthened Trump
Essentially Dems had driven themselves into a trap. Moreover actions of the Senate can drag
democrats in dirt till the elections, diminishing their chances further and firther. Can you
image the effect if Schiff would be called testify under oath about his contacts with Ciaramella?
Or Biden questioning about his dirty dealing with both Yanukovich administration and Provisional
Government after the 2014 coup d'état (aka EuroMaydan, aka "the Revolution of dignity"
?
Notable quotes:
"... It is true that both Obama and Trump have been falsely accused of presiding over "withdrawal" and "retreat." In Obama's case, Republican hawks made this false claim so that they could attack a fantasy version of Obama's record instead of arguing against the real one. Members of the foreign policy establishment have been warning about Trump's supposed "isolationism" for four years and it still hasn't shown up. Both presidents have been criticized in such similar ways despite conducting significantly different foreign policies because these are the automatic, knee-jerk criticisms that pundits and analysts use to criticize a president. ..."
"... Because there is a strong bias in favor of "action" and "leadership," the only way most of these people know how to attack a president is to say that he is "failing" to "lead" and is guilty of "inaction." It doesn't matter if it makes sense or matches the facts. It is the safe, Blobby way to complain about a president's foreign policy without suggesting that you think there is something wrong with the underlying assumptions about the U.S. role in the world. Instead of challenging the presidents on their real records, it is easier to condemn non-existent "isolationism" and pretend that presidents that maintain or increase U.S. involvement overseas are reducing it. ..."
"... We should debate whether U.S. commitments overseas need to be reduced, but we really have to stop pretending that the U.S. has been reducing those commitments when it has actually been adding to them. ..."
Gideon Rachman tries to find
similarities between the foreign policies of Trump and Obama:
Both men would detest the thought. But, in crucial respects, the foreign policies of
Donald Trump and Barack Obama are looking strikingly similar.
The wildly different styles of the two presidents have disguised the underlying
continuities between their approaches to the world. But look at substance, rather than style,
and the similarities are impressive.
There is usually considerable continuity in U.S. foreign policy from one president to
another, but Rachman is making a stronger and somewhat different claim than that. He is arguing
that their foreign policy agendas are very much alike in ways that put both presidents at odds
with the foreign policy establishment, and he cites "disengagement from the Middle East" and a
"pivot to Asia" as two examples of these similarities. This seems superficially plausible, but
it is misleading. Despite talking a lot about disengagement, Obama and Trump chose to keep the
U.S. involved in several conflicts, and Trump actually escalated the wars he inherited from
Obama. To the extent that there is continuity between Obama and Trump, it has been that both of
them have acceded to the conventional wisdom of "the Blob" and refused to disentangle the U.S.
from Middle Eastern conflicts. Ongoing support for the war on Yemen is the ugliest and most
destructive example of this continuity.
In reality, neither Obama nor Trump "focused" on Asia, and Trump's foray into
pseudo-engagement with North Korea has little in common with Obama's would-be "pivot" or
"rebalance." U.S. participation in the Trans-Pacific Partnership was a major part of Obama's
policy in Asia. Trump pulled out of that agreement and waged destructive trade wars instead.
Once we get past generalizations and look at details, the two presidents are often
diametrically opposed to one another in practice. That is what one would expect when we
remember that Trump has made dismantling Obama's foreign policy achievements one of his main
priorities.
The significant differences between the two become much more apparent when we look at other
issues. On arms control and nonproliferation, the two could not be more different. Obama
negotiated a new arms reduction treaty with New START at the start of his presidency, and he
wrapped up a major nonproliferation agreement with Iran and the other members of the P5+1 in
2015. Trump reneged on the latter and seems determined to kill the former. Obama touted the
benefits of genuine diplomatic engagement, while Trump has made a point of reversing and
undoing most of the results of Obama's engagement with Cuba and Iran. Trump's overall hostility
to genuine diplomacy makes another one of Rachman claims quite baffling:
The result is that, after his warlike "fire and fury" phase, Mr Trump is now pursuing a
diplomacy-first strategy that is strongly reminiscent of Mr Obama.
Calling Trump's clumsy pattern of making threats and ultimatums a "diplomacy-first strategy"
is a mistake. This is akin to saying that he is adhering to foreign policy restraint because
the U.S. hasn't invaded any new countries on Trump's watch. It takes something true (Trump
hasn't started a new war yet) and misrepresents it as proof that the president is serious about
diplomacy and that he wants to reduce U.S. military engagement overseas. Trump enjoys the
spectacle of meeting with foreign leaders, but he isn't interested in doing the work or taking
the risks that successful diplomacy requires. He has shown repeatedly through his own behavior,
his policy preferences, and his proposed budgets that he has no use for diplomacy or diplomats,
and instead he expects to be able to bully or flatter adversaries into submission.
So Rachman is simply wrong he reaches this conclusion:
Mr Trump's reluctance to attack Iran was significant. It underlines the fact that his
tough-guy rhetoric disguises a strong preference for diplomacy over force.
Let's recall that the near-miss of starting a war with Iran came as a result of the downing
of an unmanned drone. The fact that the U.S. was seriously considering an attack on another
country over the loss of a drone is a worrisome sign that this administration is prepared to go
to war at the drop of a hat. Calling off such an insane attack was the right thing to do, but
there should never have been an attack to call off. That episode does not show a "strong
preference for diplomacy over force." If Trump had a strong preference for diplomacy over
force, his policy would not be one of relentless hostility towards Iran. Trump does not believe
in diplomatic compromise, but expects the other side to capitulate under pressure. That
actually makes conflict more likely and reduces the chances of meaningful negotiations.
It is true that both Obama and Trump have been falsely accused of presiding over
"withdrawal" and "retreat." In Obama's case, Republican hawks made this false claim so that
they could attack a fantasy version of Obama's record instead of arguing against the real one.
Members of the foreign policy establishment have been warning about Trump's supposed
"isolationism" for four years and it still hasn't shown up. Both presidents have been
criticized in such similar ways despite conducting significantly different foreign policies
because these are the automatic, knee-jerk criticisms that pundits and analysts use to
criticize a president.
Because there is a strong bias in favor of "action" and "leadership," the only way most
of these people know how to attack a president is to say that he is "failing" to "lead" and is
guilty of "inaction." It doesn't matter if it makes sense or matches the facts. It is the safe,
Blobby way to complain about a president's foreign policy without suggesting that you think
there is something wrong with the underlying assumptions about the U.S. role in the world.
Instead of challenging the presidents on their real records, it is easier to condemn
non-existent "isolationism" and pretend that presidents that maintain or increase U.S.
involvement overseas are reducing it.
Rachman ends his column with this assertion:
In their very different ways, both Mr Obama and Mr Trump have reduced America's global
commitments -- and adjusted the US to a more modest international role.
The problem here is that there has been no meaningful reduction in America's "global
commitments." Which commitments have been reduced or eliminated? It would be helpful if someone
could be specific about this. The U.S. has more security dependents today than it did when
Trump took office. NATO has been expanded to include two new countries in just the last three
years. U.S. troops are engaged in hostilities in just as many countries as they were when Trump
was elected. There are more troops deployed to the Middle East at the end of this year than
there were at the beginning, and that is a direct consequence of Trump's bankrupt Iran
policy.
We should debate whether U.S. commitments overseas need to be reduced, but we really
have to stop pretending that the U.S. has been reducing those commitments when it has actually
been adding to them.
"... Alperovitch is a nonresident senior fellow of the Cyber Statecraft Initiative at the Atlantic Council, which takes a hawkish approach toward Russia. The Council in turn is financed by Google Inc. ..."
"... In a perhaps unexpected development, another Atlantic Council funder is Burisma, the natural gas company at the center of allegations regarding Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden. Those allegations were the subject of Trump's inquiry with Zelemsky related to Biden. The Biden allegations concern significant questions about Biden's role in Ukraine policy under the Obama administration. This took place during a period when Hunter Biden received $50,000 a month from Burisma. ..."
"... Google, Soros's Open Society Foundations, the Rockefeller Fund and an agency of the State Department each also finance a self-described investigative journalism organization repeatedly referenced as a source of information in the so-called whistleblower's complaint alleging Trump was "using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country" in the 2020 presidential race. ..."
"... Another listed OCCRP funder is the Omidyar Network, which is the nonprofit for liberal billionaire eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. ..."
"... Together with Soros's Open Society, Omidyar also funds the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, which hosts the International Fact-Checking Network that partnered with Facebook to help determine whether news stories are "disputed." ..."
There are common threads that run through an organization repeatedly relied upon in the
so-called whistleblower's complaint about President Donald Trump and CrowdStrike, the outside
firm utilized to conclude that Russia hacked the Democratic National Committee's servers
since the DNC would not allow the U.S. government to inspect the servers.
One of several themes is financing tied to Google, whose Google Capital led a $100 million
funding drive that financed Crowdstrike. Google Capital, which now goes by the name of
CapitalG, is an arm of Alphabet Inc., Google's parent company. Eric Schmidt, the chairman of
Alphabet, has been a staunch and active supporter of Hillary Clinton and is a longtime donor
to the Democratic Party.
CrowdStrike was mentioned by Trump in his call with Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Perkins Coie, the law firm that represented the DNC and Hillary Clinton's campaign,
reportedly helped draft CrowdStrike to aid with the DNC's allegedly hacked server.
On behalf of the DNC and Clinton's campaign, Perkins Coie also paid the controversial
Fusion GPS firm to produce the infamous, largely-discredited anti-Trump dossier compiled by
former British spy Christopher Steele.
CrowdStrike is a California-based cybersecurity technology company co-founded by Dmitri
Alperovitch.
Alperovitch is a nonresident senior fellow of the
Cyber Statecraft Initiative at the Atlantic Council, which takes a hawkish approach toward
Russia. The Council in turn is financed
by Google Inc.
In a perhaps unexpected development, another Atlantic Council
funder is Burisma, the natural gas company at the center of allegations regarding Joe
Biden and his son, Hunter Biden. Those allegations were the subject of Trump's inquiry with
Zelemsky related to Biden. The Biden allegations concern significant questions about Biden's
role in Ukraine policy under the Obama administration. This took place during a period when
Hunter Biden received $50,000 a month from Burisma.
Besides Google and Burisma funding, the Council is also financed by billionaire activist
George Soros's Open Society Foundations as well as the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Inc. and
the U.S. State Department.
Google, Soros's Open Society Foundations, the Rockefeller Fund and an agency of the State
Department each also finance a self-described investigative journalism organization
repeatedly referenced as a source of information in the so-called whistleblower's complaint
alleging Trump was "using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign
country" in the 2020 presidential race.
The charges in the July 22 report referenced in the whistleblower's document and released
by the Google and Soros-funded organization, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting
Project (OCCRP), seem to be the public precursors for a lot of the so-called whistleblower's
own claims, as Breitbart News
documented .
One key section of the so-called whistleblower's document claims that "multiple U.S.
officials told me that Mr. Giuliani had reportedly privately reached out to a variety of
other Zelensky advisers, including Chief of Staff Andriy Bohdan and Acting Chairman of the
Security Service of Ukraine Ivan Bakanov."
This was allegedly to follow up on Trump's call with Zelensky in order to discuss the
"cases" mentioned in that call, according to the so-called whistleblower's narrative. The
complainer was clearly referencing Trump's request for Ukraine to investigate the Biden
corruption allegations.
Even though the statement was written in first person – "multiple U.S. officials
told me" – it contains a footnote referencing a report by the Organized Crime and
Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP).
That footnote reads:
In a report published by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) on
22 July, two associates of Mr. Giuliani reportedly traveled to Kyiv in May 2019 and met
with Mr. Bakanov and another close Zelensky adviser, Mr. Serhiy Shefir.
The so-called whistleblower's account goes on to rely upon that same OCCRP report on three
more occasions. It does so to:
Write that Ukraine's Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko
"also stated that he wished to communicate directly with Attorney General Barr on these
matters." Document that Trump adviser Rudi Giuliani "had spoken in late 2018 to former
Prosecutor General Shokin, in a Skype call arranged by two associates of Mr. Giuliani."
Bolster the charge that, "I also learned from a U.S. official that 'associates' of Mr.
Giuliani were trying to make contact with the incoming Zelenskyy team." The so-called
whistleblower then relates in another footnote, "I do not know whether these associates of
Mr. Giuliani were the same individuals named in the 22 July report by OCCRP, referenced
above."
The OCCRP
report repeatedly referenced is actually a "joint investigation by the Organized Crime
and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and BuzzFeed News, based on interviews and court and
business records in the United States and Ukraine."
BuzzFeed infamously also first
published the full anti-Trump dossier alleging unsubstantiated collusion between Trump's
presidential campaign and Russia. The dossier was paid for by Hillary Clinton's campaign and
the Democratic National Committee and was produced by the Fusion GPS opposition dirt
outfit.
The OCCRP and BuzzFeed "joint investigation" resulted in both OCCRP and BuzzFeed
publishing similar lengthy pieces on July 22 claiming that Giuliani was attempting to use
connections to have Ukraine investigate Trump's political rivals.
The so-called whistleblower's document, however, only mentions the largely unknown OCCRP
and does not reference BuzzFeed, which has faced scrutiny over its reporting on the Russia
collusion claims.
Another listed OCCRP funder is the Omidyar Network, which is the nonprofit for liberal
billionaire eBay founder Pierre Omidyar.
Together with Soros's Open Society, Omidyar also
funds the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, which hosts the International
Fact-Checking Network that partnered with Facebook to help determine whether news stories are
"disputed."
Like OCCRP, the Poynter Institute's so-called news fact-checking project is openly
funded by not only Soros' Open Society Foundations but also Google and the National
Endowment for Democracy.
CrowdStrike and DNC servers
CrowdStrike, meanwhile, was brought up by Trump in his phone call with Zelensky. According to the transcript, Trump told Zelensky, "I would like you to find out what
happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say CrowdStrike I guess you have one of
your wealthy people The server, they say Ukraine has it."
In his extensive
report , Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller notes that his investigative team did not
"obtain or examine" the servers of the DNC in determining whether those servers were hacked
by Russia.
The DNC famously refused to allow the FBI to access its servers to verify the allegation
that Russia carried out a hack during the 2016 presidential campaign. Instead, the DNC
reached an arrangement with the FBI in which CrowdStrike conducted forensics on the server
and shared details with the FBI.
In testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee in January 2017, then-FBI Director
James Comey
confirmed that the FBI registered "multiple requests at different levels," to review the
DNC's hacked servers. Ultimately, the DNC and FBI came to an agreement in which a "highly
respected private company" -- a reference to CrowdStrike -- would carry out forensics on the
servers and share any information that it discovered with the FBI, Comey testified.
A senior law enforcement official stressed the importance of the FBI gaining direct access
to the servers, a request that was denied by the DNC.
"The FBI repeatedly stressed to DNC officials the necessity of obtaining direct access to
servers and data, only to be rebuffed until well after the initial compromise had been
mitigated," the official was quoted by the news media as saying.
"This left the FBI no choice but to rely upon a third party for information. These actions
caused significant delays and inhibited the FBI from addressing the intrusion earlier," the
official continued.
... ... ...
Aaron Klein is Breitbart's Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter.
He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, "
Aaron Klein Investigative
Radio ." Follow him on Twitter @AaronKleinShow. Follow him on Facebook.
Joshua Klein contributed research to this article.
Russians did not hack the DNC system, a Russian named Dmitri Alperovitch is the hacker
and he works for President Obama. In the last five years the Obama administration has
turned exclusively to one Russian to solve every major cyber-attack in America, whether the
attack was on the U.S. government or a corporation. Only one "super-hero cyber-warrior" seems
to "have the codes" to figure out "if" a system was hacked and by "whom."
Dmitri's company, CrowdStrike has been called in by Obama to solve mysterious attacks on
many high level government agencies and American corporations, including: German Bundestag,
Democratic National Committee, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), the White
House, the State Department, SONY, and many others.
CrowdStrike's philosophy is: "You don't have a malware problem; you have an adversary
problem."
CrowdStrike has played a critical role in the development of America's cyber-defense policy.
Dmitri Alperovitch and George Kurtz, a former head of the FBI cyberwarfare unit founded
CrowdStrike. Shawn Henry, former executive assistant director at the FBI is now CrowdStrike's
president of services. The company is crawling with former U.S. intelligence agents.
Before Alperovitch founded CrowdStrike in 2011, he was working in Atlanta as the chief
threat officer at the antivirus software firm McAfee, owned by Intel (a DARPA company). During
that time, he "discovered" the Chinese had compromised at least seventy-one companies and
organizations, including thirteen defense contractors, three electronics firms, and the
International Olympic Committee. He was the only person to notice the biggest cyberattack in
history! Nothing suspicious about that.
Alperovitch and the DNC
After CrowdStrike was hired as an independent "vendor" by the DNC to investigate a possible
cyberattack on their system, Alperovitch sent the DNC a proprietary software package called
Falcon that monitors the networks of its clients in real time. According to Alperovitch,
Falcon "lit up," within ten seconds of being installed at the DNC. Alperovitch had his
"proof" in TEN SECONDS that Russia was in the network. This "alleged" evidence of Russian
hacking has yet to be shared with anyone.
As Donald Trump has pointed out, the FBI, the agency that should have been immediately
involved in hacking that effects "National Security," has yet to even examine the DNC system to
begin an investigation. Instead, the FBI and 16 other U.S. "intelligence" agencies simply
"agree" with Obama's most trusted "cyberwarfare" expert Dmitri Alperovitch's "TEN SECOND"
assessment that produced no evidence to support the claim.
Also remember that it is only Alperovitch and CrowdStrike that claim to have evidence
that it was Russian hackers . In fact, only two hackers were found to have been in the
system and were both identified by Alperovitch as Russian FSB (CIA) and the Russian GRU (DoD).
It is only Alperovitch who claims that he knows that it is Putin behind these two hackers.
Alperovitch failed to mention in his conclusive "TEN SECOND" assessment that Guccifer 2.0
had already hacked the DNC and made available to the public the documents he hacked –
before Alperovitch did his ten second assessment. Alperovitch reported that no other hackers
were found, ignoring the fact that Guccifer 2.0 had already hacked and released DNC documents
to the public. Alperovitch's assessment also goes directly against Julian Assange's repeated
statements that the DNC leaks did not come from the Russians.
The ridiculously fake cyber-attack assessment done by Alperovitch and CrowdStrike
naïvely flies in the face of the fact that a DNC insider admitted that he had released the
DNC documents. Julian Assange implied in an interview that the murdered Democratic
National Committee staffer, Seth Rich, was the source of a trove of damaging emails the website
posted just days before the party's convention. Seth was on his way to testify about the DNC
leaks to the FBI when he was shot dead in the street.
It is also absurd to hear Alperovitch state that the Russian FSB (equivalent to the CIA) had
been monitoring the DNC site for over a year and had done nothing. No attack, no theft, and no
harm was done to the system by this "false-flag cyber-attack" on the DNC – or at least,
Alperovitch "reported" there was an attack. The second hacker, the supposed Russian military
(GRU – like the U.S. DoD) hacker, had just entered the system two weeks before and also
had done "nothing" but observe.
It is only Alperovitch's word that reports that the Russian FSB was "looking for files on
Donald Trump."
It is only this false claim that spuriously ties Trump to the "alleged"
attack. It is also only Alperovitch who believes that this hack that was supposedly "looking
for Trump files" was an attempt to "influence" the election. No files were found about Trump by
the second hacker, as we know from Wikileaks and Guccifer 2.0's leaks. To confabulate that
"Russian's hacked the DNC to influence the elections" is the claim of one well-known Russian
spy. Then, 17 U.S. intelligence agencies unanimously confirm that Alperovitch is correct
– even though there is no evidence and no investigation was ever conducted .
How does Dmitri Alperovitch have such power? Why did Obama again and again use Alperovitch's
company, CrowdStrike, when they have miserably failed to stop further cyber-attacks on the
systems they were hired to protect? Why should anyone believe CrowdStrikes false-flag
report?
After documents from the DNC continued to leak, and Guccifer 2.0 and Wikileaks made
CrowdStrike's report look foolish, Alperovitch decided the situation was far worse than he had
reported. He single-handedly concluded that the Russians were conducting an "influence
operation" to help win the election for Trump . This false assertion had absolutely no
evidence to back it up.
On July 22, three days before the Democratic convention in Philadelphia, WikiLeaks dumped a
massive cache of emails that had been "stolen" (not hacked) from the DNC. Reporters soon found
emails suggesting that the DNC leadership had favored Hillary Clinton in her primary race
against Bernie Sanders, which led Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the DNC chair, along with three
other officials, to resign.
Just days later, it was discovered that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee
(DCCC) had been hacked. CrowdStrike was called in again and once again, Alperovitch immediately
"believed" that Russia was responsible. A lawyer for the DCCC gave Alperovitch permission to
confirm the leak and to name Russia as the suspected author. Two weeks later, files from the
DCCC began to appear on Guccifer 2.0's website. This time Guccifer released information about
Democratic congressional candidates who were running close races in Florida, Ohio, Illinois,
and Pennsylvania. On August 12, Guccifer went further, publishing a spreadsheet that included
the personal email addresses and phone numbers of nearly two hundred Democratic members of
Congress.
Once again, Guccifer 2.0 proved Alperovitch and CrowdStrike's claims to be grossly incorrect
about the hack originating from Russia, with Putin masterminding it all. Nancy Pelosi offered
members of Congress Alperovitch's suggestion of installing Falcon , the system that
failed to stop cyberattacks at the DNC, on all congressional laptops.
Key Point: Once Falcon was installed on the computers of members of the U.S.
Congress, CrowdStrike had even further full access into U.S. government accounts.
Alperovitch's "Unbelievable" History
Dmitri was born in 1980 in Moscow where his father, Michael, was a nuclear physicist, (so
Dmitri claims). Dmitri's father was supposedly involved at the highest levels of Russian
nuclear science. He also claims that his father taught him to write code as a child.
In 1990, his father was sent to Maryland as part of a nuclear-safety training program for
scientists. In 1994, Michael Alperovitch was granted a visa to Canada, and a year later the
family moved to Chattanooga, where Michael took a job with the Tennessee Valley Authority.
While Dmitri Alperovitch was still in high school, he and his father started an
encryption-technology business. Dmitri studied computer science at Georgia Tech and went on to
work at an antispam software firm. It was at this time that he realized that cyber-defense was
more about psychology than it was about technology. A very odd thing to conclude.
Dmitri Alperovitch posed as a "Russian gangster" on spam discussion forums which brought his
illegal activity to the attention of the FBI – as a criminal. In 2005, Dmitri flew to
Pittsburgh to meet an FBI agent named Keith Mularski, who had been asked to lead an undercover
operation against a vast Russian credit-card-theft syndicate. Alperovitch worked closely with
Mularski's sting operation which took two years, but it ultimately brought about fifty-six
arrests. Dmitri Alperovitch then became a pawn of the FBI and CIA.
In 2010, while he was at McAfee, the head of cybersecurity at Google told Dmitri that Gmail
accounts belonging to human-rights activists in China had been breached. Google suspected the
Chinese government. Alperovitch found that the breach was unprecedented in scale; it affected
more than a dozen of McAfee's clients and involved the Chinese government. Three days after his
supposed discovery, Alperovitch was on a plane to Washington where he had been asked to vet a
paragraph in a speech by the secretary of state, Hillary Clinton.
2014, Sony called in CrowdStrike to investigate a breach of its network. Alperovitch needed
just "two hours" to identify North Korea as the adversary. Executives at Sony asked Alperovitch
to go public with the information immediately, but it took the FBI another three weeks before
it confirmed the attribution.
Alperovitch then developed a list of "usual suspects" who were well-known hackers who had
identifiable malware that they commonly used. Many people use the same malware and
Alperovitch's obsession with believing he has the only accurate list of hackers in the world is
plain idiocy exacerbated by the U.S. government's belief in his nonsense. Alperovitch even
speaks like a "nut-case" in his personal Twitters, which generally have absolutely no
references to the technology he is supposedly the best at in the entire world.
Dmitri – Front Man for His Father's Russian Espionage Mission
After taking a close look at the disinformation around Dmitri and his father, it is clear to
see that Michael Alperovitch became a CIA operative during his first visit to America.
Upon his return to Russia, he stole the best Russian encryption codes that were used to protect
the top-secret work of nuclear physics in which his father is alleged to have been a major
player. Upon surrendering the codes to the CIA when he returned to Canada, the CIA made it
possible for a Russian nuclear scientist to become an American citizen overnight and gain a
top-secret security clearance to work at the Oakridge plant, one of the most secure and
protected nuclear facilities in America . Only the CIA can transform a Russian into an
American with a top-secret clearance overnight.
We can see on Michael Alperovitch's Linked In page that he went from one fantastically
top-secret job to the next without a break from the time he entered America. He seemed to be on
a career path to work in every major U.S. agency in America. In every job he was hired as the
top expert in the field and the leader of the company. All of these jobs after the first one
were in cryptology, not nuclear physics. As a matter of fact, Michael became the top expert in
America overnight and has stayed the top expert to this day.
Most of the work of cyber-security is creating secure interactions on a non-secure system
like the Internet. The cryptologist who assigns the encryption codes controls the system
from that point on .
Key Point: Cryptologists are well known for leaving a "back-door" in the base-code so
that they can always have over-riding control.
Michael Alperovitch essentially has the "codes" for all Department of Defense sites, the
Treasury, the State Department, cell-phones, satellites, and public media . There is hardly
any powerful agency or company that he has not written the "codes" for. One might ask, why do
American companies and the U.S. government use his particular codes? What are so special about
Michael's codes?
Stolen Russian Codes
In December, Obama ordered the U.S. military to conduct cyberattacks against Russia in
retaliation for the alleged DNC hacks. All of the attempts to attack Russia's military and
intelligence agencies failed miserably. Russia laughed at Obama's attempts to hack their
systems. Even the Russian companies targeted by the attacks were not harmed by Obama's
cyber-attacks. Hardly any news of these massive and embarrassing failed cyber-attacks were
reported by the Main Stream Media. The internet has been scrubbed clean of the reports that
said Russia's cyber-defenses were impenetrable due to the sophistication of their encryption
codes.
Michael Alperovitch was in possession of those impenetrable codes when he was a top
scientist in Russia. It was these very codes that he shared with the CIA on his first trip
to America . These codes got him spirited into America and "turned into" the best
cryptologist in the world. Michael is simply using the effective codes of Russia to design
his codes for the many systems he has created in America for the CIA .
KEY POINT: It is crucial to understand at this junction that the CIA is not solely working
for America . The CIA works for itself and there are three branches to the CIA – two of
which are hostile to American national interests and support globalism.
Michael and Dmitri Alperovitch work for the CIA (and international intelligence
corporations) who support globalism . They, and the globalists for whom they work, are
not friends of America or Russia. It is highly likely that the criminal activities of Dmitri,
which were supported and sponsored by the FBI, created the very hackers who he often claims are
responsible for cyberattacks. None of these supposed "attackers" have ever been found or
arrested; they simply exist in the files of CrowdStrike and are used as the "usual culprits"
when the FBI or CIA calls in Dmitri to give the one and only opinion that counts. Only Dmitri's
"suspicions" are offered as evidence and yet 17 U.S. intelligence agencies stand behind the
CrowdStrike report and Dmitri's suspicions.
Michael Alperovitch – Russian Spy with the Crypto-Keys
Essentially, Michael Alperovitch flies under the false-flag of being a cryptologist who
works with PKI. A public key infrastructure (PKI) is a system for the creation, storage, and
distribution of digital certificates which are used to
verify that a particular public key belongs to a certain entity. The PKI creates digital
certificates which map public keys to entities, securely stores these certificates in a central
repository and revokes them if needed. Public key cryptography is a
cryptographic
technique that enables entities to securely communicate on an insecure
public network (the Internet), and reliably verify the identity of an entity via digital signatures .
Digital signatures use Certificate Authorities to digitally sign and publish the public key
bound to a given user. This is done using the CIA's own private key, so that trust in the user
key relies on one's trust in the validity of the CIA's key. Michael Alperovitch is
considered to be the number one expert in America on PKI and essentially controls the
market .
Michael's past is clouded in confusion and lies. Dmitri states that his father was a nuclear
physicist and that he came to America the first time in a nuclear based shared program between
America and Russia. But if we look at his current personal Linked In page, Michael claims he
has a Master Degree in Applied Mathematics from Gorky State University. From 1932 to 1956, its
name was State University of Gorky. Now it is known as Lobachevsky State University of Nizhni
Novgorod – National Research University (UNN), also known as Lobachevsky University. Does
Michael not even know the name of the University he graduated from? And when does a person with
a Master's Degree become a leading nuclear physicist who comes to "visit" America. In Michael's
Linked In page there is a long list of his skills and there is no mention of nuclear
physics.
Also on Michael Alperovitch's Linked In page we find some of his illustrious history that
paints a picture of either the most brilliant mind in computer security, encryption, and
cyberwarfare, or a CIA/FBI backed Russian spy. Imagine that out of all the people in the world
to put in charge of the encryption keys for the Department of Defense, the U.S. Treasury, U.S.
military satellites, the flow of network news, cell phone encryption, the Pathfire (media control)
Program, the Defense Information Systems Agency, the Global Information Grid, and TriCipher
Armored Credential System among many others, the government hires a Russian spy . Go
figure.
Michael Alperovitch's Linked In Page
Education:
Gorky State University, Russia, MS in Applied Mathematics
VT
IDirect -2014 – Designing security architecture for satellite communications
including cryptographic protocols, authentication.
Principal SME (Contractor)
DISA
-Defense Information Systems Agency (Manager of the Global Information Grid) – 2012-2014
– Worked on PKI and identity management projects for DISA utilizing Elliptic Curve
Cryptography. Performed application security and penetration testing.
Technical Lead (Contractor)
U.S.
Department of the Treasury – 2011 – Designed enterprise validation service
architecture for PKI certificate credentials with Single Sign On authentication.
Comtech Mobile
Datacom – 2007-2010 – Subject matter expert on latest information security
practices, including authentication, encryption and key management.
BellSouth – 2003-2006 – Designed and built server-side Jabber-based messaging
platform with Single Sign On authentication.
Principal Software Research Engineer
Pathfire – 2001-2002
– Designed and developed Digital Rights Management Server for Video on Demand and content
distribution applications. Pathfire provides digital media distribution and management
solutions to the television, media, and entertainment industries. The company offers Digital
Media Gateway, a digital IP store-and-forward platform, delivering news stories, syndicated
programming, advertising spots, and video news releases to broadcasters. It provides solutions
for content providers and broadcasters, as well as station solutions.
Obama – No Friend of America
Obama is no friend of America in the war against cyber-attacks. The very agencies and
departments being defended by Michael Alperovitch's "singular and most brilliant" ability to
write encryption codes have all been successfully attacked and compromised since Michael set up
the codes. But we shouldn't worry, because if there is a cyberattack in the Obama
administration, Michael's son Dmitri is called in to "prove" that it isn't the fault of his
father's codes. It was the "damn Russians", or even "Putin himself" who attacked American
networks.
Not one of the 17 U.S. intelligence agencies is capable of figuring out a successful
cyberattack against America without Michael and Dmitri's help. Those same 17 U.S. intelligence
agencies were not able to effectively launch a successful cyberattack against Russia. It seems
like the Russian's have strong codes and America has weak codes. We can thank Michael and
Dmitri Alperovitch for that.
It is clear that there was no DNC hack beyond Guccifer 2.0. Dmitri Alperovitch is a
"frontman" for his father's encryption espionage mission.
Is it any wonder that Trump says that he has "his own people" to deliver his intelligence
to him that is outside of the infiltrated U.S. government intelligence agencies and the Obama
administration ? Isn't any wonder that citizens have to go anywhere BUT the MSM to find
real news or that the new administration has to go to independent news to get good intel?
It is hard to say anything more damnable than to again quote Dmitri on these very
issues: "If someone steals your keys to encrypt the data, it doesn't matter how secure the
algorithms are." Dmitri Alperovitch, founder of CrowdStrike
"... And RUH8 is allied with the Atlantic Council and Crowdstrike. ..."
"... Russia was probably not one of the hacking groups. The willful destruction of evidence by the DNC themselves probably points to Russia not being one of the those groups. The DNC wouldn't destroy evidence that supported their position. Also, government spy agencies keep info like that closely held. They might leak out tidbits, but they don't do wholesale dumps, like, ever. ..."
"... That's what the DNC is lying about. Not that hacks happened (they undoubtedly did), but about who did them (probably not Russian gov), and if hacks mattered (they didn't since everything was getting leaked anyway). ..."
"... The DNC/Mueller/etc are lying, but like most practiced liars they're mixing the lies with half-truths and unrelated facts to muddy the waters: ..."
"... An interesting question is, since it's basically guaranteed the DNC got hacked, but probably not by the Russians, is, what groups did hack the DNC, and why did the DNC scramble madly to hide their identities? ..."
"... And while you think about that question, consider the close parallel with the Awan case, where Dems were ostensibly the victims, but they again scrambled to cover up for the people who supposedly harmed them. level 2 ..."
"... DNC wasn't even hacked. Emails were leaked. They didn't even examine the server. Any "evidence" produced is spoofable from CIA cybertools that we know about from wikileaks. It's important to know how each new lie is a lie. But man I am just so done with all this Russia shit. level 2 ..."
"... Crowdstrike claims that malware was found on DNC server. I agree that this has nothing to do with the Wikileaks releases. What I am wondering is whether Crowdstrike may have arranged for the DNC to be hacked so that Russia could be blamed. Continue this thread level 1 ..."
"... George Eliason promises additional essays: *The next articles, starting with one about Fancy Bear's hot/cold ongoing relationship with Bellingcat which destroys the JIT investigation, will showcase the following: Fancy Bear worked with Bellingcat and the Ukrainian government providing Information War material as evidence for MH17: ..."
"... Fancy Bear is an inside unit of the Atlantic Council and their Digital Forensics Lab ..."
Cyberanalyst George Eliason has written some intriguing blogs recently claiming that the
"Fancy Bear" which hacked the DNC server in mid-2016 was in fact a branch of Ukrainian intelligence linked to the Atlantic
Council and Crowdstrike. I invite you to have a go at one of his recent essays:
Since I am not very computer savvy and don't know much about the world of hackers - added
to the fact that Eliason's writing is too cute and convoluted - I have difficulty navigating Eliason's thought. Nonetheless,
here is what I can make of Eliasons' claims, as supported by independent literature:
Russian hacker Konstantin Kozlovsky, in Moscow court filings, has claimed that he did the
DNC hack – and can prove it, because he left some specific code on the DNC server.
Kozlovsky states that he did so by order of Dimitry Dokuchaev (formerly of the FSB, and
currently in prison in Russia on treason charges) who works with the Russian traitor hacker group Shaltai Boltai.
According to Eliason, Shaltai Boltai works in collaboration with the Ukrainian hacker group
RUH8, a group of neo-Nazis (Privat Sektor) who are affiliated with Ukrainian intelligence.
And RUH8 is allied with the Atlantic Council and Crowdstrike.
Cyberexpert Jeffrey Carr has stated that RUH8 has the X-Agent malware which our
intelligence community has erroneously claimed is possessed only by Russian intelligence, and used by "Fancy Bear".
This might help explain why Adam Carter has determined that some of the malware found on
the DNC server was compiled AFTER Crowdstrike was working on the DNC server – Crowdstrike was in collusion with Fancy Bear
(RUH8).
In other words, Crowdstrike likely arranged for a
hack by Ukrainian intelligence that they could then attribute to Russia.
As far as I can tell, none of this is pertinent to how Wikileaks obtained their DNC emails,
which most likely were leaked.
How curious that our Deep State and the recent Mueller indictment have had nothing to say
about Kozlovsky's confession - whom I tend to take seriously because he offers a simple way to confirm his claim. Also
interesting that the FBI has shown no interest in looking at the DNC server to check whether Kozlovsky's code is there.
Its worth noting that Dimitri Alperovich's (Crowdstrike) hatred of Putin is
second only to Hillary's hatred for taking responsibility for her actions.
level 1
Thanks - I'll continue to follow Eliason's work. The thesis that Ukrainian
intelligence is hacking a number of targets so that Russia gets blamed for it has intuitive appeal.
level 1
and have to cringe.
Any hacks weren't related to Wikileaks, who got their info from leakers, but
that is not the same thing as no hack. Leaks and hacks aren't mutually exclusive. They actually occur together
pretty commonly.
DNC's security was utter shit. Systems with shit security and obviously
valuable info usually get hacked by multiple groups. In the case of the DNC, Hillary's email servers, etc.,
it's basically impossible they weren't hacked by dozens of intruders. A plastic bag of 100s will not sit
untouched on a NYC street corner for 4 weeks. Not. fucking. happening.
Interestingly, Russia was probably not
one of the hacking groups. The willful destruction of evidence by the DNC themselves probably points to Russia
not being one of the those groups. The DNC wouldn't destroy evidence that supported their position. Also,
government spy agencies keep info like that closely held. They might leak out tidbits, but they don't do
wholesale dumps, like, ever.
That's
what the DNC is lying about.
Not that hacks
happened
(they undoubtedly did), but about
who
did them (probably not Russian gov), and if hacks mattered
(they didn't since everything was getting leaked anyway).
The DNC/Mueller/etc are lying, but like most practiced liars they're mixing
the lies with half-truths and unrelated facts to muddy the waters:
Any "evidence" produced is spoofable from CIA cybertools
Yes, but that spoofed 'evidence' is not the direct opposite of the truth,
like I see people assuming. Bad assumption, and the establishment plays on that to make critic look bad. The
spoofed evidence is just mud.
An interesting question is, since it's basically guaranteed the DNC got
hacked, but probably not by the Russians, is, what groups
did
hack the
DNC, and why did the DNC scramble madly to hide their identities?
And while you think about that question, consider the close parallel with
the Awan case, where Dems were ostensibly the victims, but they again scrambled to cover up for the people who
supposedly harmed them.
level 2
What's hilarious about the 2 down-votes is I can't tell if their from
pro-Russiagate trolls, or from people who who can't get past binary thinking.
level 1
DNC wasn't even hacked. Emails were leaked. They didn't even examine the
server.
Any "evidence" produced is spoofable from CIA cybertools that we know about
from wikileaks. It's important to know how each new lie is a lie. But man I am just so done
with all this Russia shit.
level 2
Crowdstrike claims that malware was found on DNC server. I agree that this
has nothing to do with the Wikileaks releases. What I am wondering is whether Crowdstrike may have arranged for
the DNC to be hacked so that Russia could be blamed.
Continue this thread
level 1
George Eliason promises additional essays: *The next articles, starting with one about Fancy Bear's hot/cold ongoing
relationship with Bellingcat which destroys the JIT investigation, will showcase the following: Fancy Bear worked with Bellingcat and the Ukrainian government providing
Information War material as evidence for MH17:
Fancy Bear is an inside unit of the Atlantic Council and their Digital
Forensics Lab
Fancy Bear worked with Crowdstrike and Dimitri Alperovich Fancy Bear is
Ukrainian Intelligence
How Fancy Bear tried to sway the US election for Team Hillary
Fancy Bear worked against US Intel gathering by providing consistently
fraudulent data
Fancy Bear contributed to James Clapper's January 2017 ODNI Report on Fancy
Bear and Russian Influence. [You really can't make this shit up.]
Fancy Bear had access to US government secure servers while working as
foreign spies.*
level 1
Fancy Bear (also know as Strontium Group, or APT28) is a Ukrainian cyber espionage group. Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike incorrectly has said
with a medium level of confidence that it is associated with the Russian military intelligence
agency GRU . CrowdStrike
founder,
Dmitri Alperovitch , has colluded with Fancy Bear. American journalist
George Eliason has written extensively on the subject.
There are a couple of caveats that need to be made when identifying the Fancy Bear hackers.
The first is the identifier used by Mueller as Russian FSB and GRU may have been true- 10 years
ago. This group was on the run trying to stay a step ahead of Russian law enforcement until
October 2016. So we have part of the Fancy bear hacking group identified as Ruskie traitors and
possibly former Russian state security. The majority of the group are Ukrainians making up
Ukraine's Cyber Warfare groups.
Eliason lives and works in Donbass. He has been interviewed by and provided analysis for RT,
the BBC , and Press-TV. His
articles have been published in the Security Assistance Monitor, Washingtons Blog, OpedNews,
the Saker, RT, Global Research, and RINF, and the Greanville Post among others. He has been
cited and republished by various academic blogs including Defending History, Michael Hudson,
SWEDHR, Counterpunch, the Justice Integrity Project, among others.
Fancy Bear is Ukrainian IntelligenceShaltai Boltai
The "Fancy Bear hackers" may have been given the passwords to get into the servers at the
DNC because they were part of the Team Clinton opposition research team. It was part of their
job.
According to Politico ,
"In an interview this month, at the DNC this past election cycle centered on mobilizing
ethnic communities -- including Ukrainian-Americans -- she said that, when Trump's unlikely
presidential campaign. Chalupa told Politico she had developed a network of sources in Kiev
and Washington, including investigative journalists, government officials and private
intelligence operatives. While her consulting work began surging in late 2015, she began
focusing more on the research, and expanded it to include Trump's ties to Russia, as well."
[1]
The only investigative journalists, government officials, and private intelligence
operatives that work together in 2014-2015-2016 Ukraine are Shaltai Boltai, CyberHunta, Ukraine
Cyber Alliance, and the Ministry of Information.
All of these hacking and information operation groups work for Andrea
Chalupa with EuroMaidanPR and Irena
Chalupa at the Atlantic Council. Both Chalupa sisters work directly with the Ukrainian
government's intelligence and propaganda arms.
Since 2014 in Ukraine, these are the only OSINT, hacking, Intel, espionage , terrorist , counter-terrorism, cyber, propaganda , and info war channels
officially recognized and directed by Ukraine's Information Ministry. Along with their American
colleagues, they populate the hit-for-hire website Myrotvorets with people who stand against
Ukraine's criminal activities.
The hackers, OSINT, Cyber, spies, terrorists, etc. call themselves volunteers to keep safe
from State level retaliation, even though a child can follow the money. As volunteers motivated
by politics and patriotism they are protected to a degree from retribution.
They don't claim State sponsorship or governance and the level of attack falls below the
threshold of military action. Special Counsel Robert Mueller had a lot of latitude for
making the attribution Russian, even though the attacks came from Ukrainian Intelligence. Based
on how the rules of the Tallinn Manual 2.0 on the International Law Applicable to Cyber are
written, because the few members of the coalition from Shaltai Boltai are Russian in
nationality, Fancy Bear can be attributed as a Russian entity for the purposes of retribution.
The caveat is if the attribution is proven wrong, the US will be liable for damages caused to
the State which in this case is Russia.
How large is the Fancy Bear unit? According to their propaganda section InformNapalm, they
have the ability to research and work in over 30 different languages.
This can be considered an Information Operation against the people of the United States and
of course Russia. After 2013, Shaltay Boltay was no longer physically available to work for
Russia. The Russian hackers were in Ukraine working for the Ukrainian government's Information
Ministry which is in charge of the cyber war. They were in Ukraine until October 2016 when they
were tricked to return to Moscow and promptly arrested for treason.
From all this information we know the Russian component of Team Fancy Bear is Shaltai
Boltai. We know the Ukrainian Intel component is called CyberHunta and Ukraine Cyber Alliance
which includes the hacker group RUH8. We know both groups work/ worked for Ukrainian
Intelligence. We know they are grouped with InformNapalm which is Ukraine's OSINT unit. We know
their manager is a Ukrainian named Kristina Dobrovolska. And lastly, all of the above work
directly with the Atlantic Council and Crowdstrike's Dimitry Alperovich.
In short, the Russian-Ukrainian partnership that became Fancy Bear started in late 2013 to
very early 2014 and ended in October 2016 in what appears to be a squabble over the alleged
data from the Surkov leak.
But during 2014, 2015, and 2016 Shaltai Boltai, the Ukrainian Cyber Alliance, and CyberHunta
went to work for the DNC as opposition researchers .
The
First Time Shaltai Boltai was Handed the Keys to US Gov Servers
The setup to this happened long before the partnership with Ukrainian Intel hackers and
Russia's Shaltai Boltai was forged. The hack that gained access to US top-secret servers
happened just after the partnership was cemented after Euro-Maidan.
In August 2009 Hillary Clinton's Deputy Chief of Staff at the State Department Huma Abedin
sent the passwords to her Government laptop to her Yahoo mail account. On August 16, 2010,
Abedin received an email titled "Re: Your yahoo account. We can see where this is going, can't
we?
"After Abedin sent an unspecified number of sensitive emails to her Yahoo account, half a
billion Yahoo accounts were hacked by Russian cybersecurity expert and Russian intelligence
agent, Igor Sushchin, in 2014. The hack, one of the largest in history, allowed Sushchin's
associates to access email accounts into 2015 and 2016."
Igor Sushchin was part of the Shaltai Boltai hacking group that is charged with the Yahoo
hack.
The time frame has to be noted. The hack happened in 2014. Access to the email accounts
continued through 2016. The Ukrainian Intel partnership was already blossoming and Shaltai
Boltai was working from Kiev, Ukraine.
So when we look at the INFRASTRUCTURE HACKS, WHITE HOUSE HACKS, CONGRESS, start with looking
at the time frame. Ukraine had the keys already in hand in 2014.
Alexandra
Chalupa hired this particular hacking terrorist group, which Dimitry Alperovich and
Crowdstrike dubbed "Fancy Bear", in 2015 at the latest. While the Ukrainian hackers worked for
the DNC, Fancy Bear had to send in progress reports, turn in research, and communicate on the
state of the projects they were working on. Let's face it, once you're in, setting up your
Fancy Bear toolkit doesn't get any easier. This is why I said the DNC hack isn't the big crime.
It's a big con and all the parties were in on it.
Hillary Clinton exposed secrets to hacking threats by using private email instead of secured
servers. Given the information provided she was probably being monitored by our intrepid
Ruskie-Ukie union made in hell hackers. Anthony Weiner exposed himself and his wife
Huma Abedin using
Weiner's computer for top-secret State Department emails. And of course Huma Abedin exposed
herself along with her top-secret passwords at Yahoo and it looks like the hackers the DNC hired to
do opposition research hacked her.
Here's a question. Did Huma Abedin have Hillary Clinton's passwords for her private email
server? It would seem logical given her position with Clinton at the State Department and
afterward. This means that Hillary Clinton and the US government top secret servers were most
likely compromised by Fancy Bear before the DNC and Team Clinton hired them by using legitimate
passwords.
Dobrovolska
Hillary Clinton retained State Dept. top secret clearance passwords for 6 of her former
staff from 2013 through prepping for the 2016 election. [2][3] Alexandra Chalupa was
running a research department that is rich in (foreign) Ukrainian Intelligence operatives,
hackers, terrorists, and a couple Ruskie traitors.
Kristina Dobrovolska was acting as a handler and translator for the US State Department in
2016. She is the Fancy Bear *opposition researcher handler manager. Kristina goes to Washington
to meet with Chalupa.
Alexandra types in her password to show Dobrovolska something she found and her eager to
please Ukrainian apprentice finds the keystrokes are seared into her memory. She tells the
Fancy Bear crew about it and they immediately get to work looking for Trump material on the US
secret servers with legitimate access. I mean, what else could they do with this? Turn over
sensitive information to the ever corrupt Ukrainian government?
According to the Politico article, Alexandra Chalupa was meeting with the Ukrainian embassy
in June of 2016 to discuss getting more help sticking it to candidate Trump. At the same time
she was meeting, the embassy had a reception that highlighted female Ukrainian leaders.
Four Verkhovna Rada [parlaiment] deputies there for the event included: Viktoriia Y.
Ptashnyk, Anna A. Romanova, Alyona I. Shkrum, and Taras T. Pastukh. [4]
According to CNN ,
[5] DNC sources said Chalupa
told DNC operatives the Ukrainian government would be willing to deliver damaging information
against Trump's campaign. Later, Chalupa would lead the charge to try to unseat president-elect
Trump starting on Nov 10, 2016.
Accompanying them Kristina Dobrovolska who was a U.S. Embassy-assigned government liaison
and translator who escorted the delegates from Kyiv during their visits to Albany and
Washington.
Kristina Dobrovolska is the handler manager working with Ukraine's DNC Fancy Bear Hackers.
[6] She took the Rada
[parliament] members to dinner to meet Joel Harding who designed Ukraine's infamous Information
Policy which opened up their kill-for-hire-website Myrotvorets. Then she took them to meet the
Ukrainian Diaspora leader doing the hiring. Nestor Paslawsky is the surviving nephew to the
infamous torturer The WWII OUNb leader, Mykola Lebed.
Fancy Bear's Second Chance at Top
Secret Passwords From Team Clinton
One very successful method of hacking is called
social engineering . You gain access to the office space and any related properties and
physically locate the passwords or clues to get you into the hardware you want to hack. This
includes something as simple as looking over the shoulder of the person typing in
passwords.
The Fancy Bear hackers were hired by Alexandra Chalupa to work for DNC opposition research.
On different occasions, Fancy Bear handler Kristina Dobrovolska traveled to the US to meet the
Diaspora leaders, her boss Alexandra Chalupa, Irena Chalupa, Andrea Chalupa, US Dept of State
personnel, and most likely Crowdstrike's Dimitry Alperovich. Alperovich was working with the
hackers in 2015-16. In 2016, the only groups known to have Fancy Bear's signature tools called
X-tunnel and X-Agent were Alperovich, Crowdstrike, and Fancy Bear (Shaltai Boltai, CyberHunta,
Ukraine Cyber Alliance, and RUH8/RUX8. Yes, that does explain a few things.
Alleged DNC
hack
There were multiple DNC hacks. There is also clear proof supporting the download to a USB
stick and subsequent information exchange (leak) to Wikileaks . All are separate events.
The group I previously identified as Fancy Bear was given access to request password
privileges at the DNC. And it looks like the DNC provided them with it.
the Podesta email hack looks like a revenge hack.
The reason Republican opposition research files were stolen can be put into context now
because we know who the hackers are and what motivates them.
At the same time this story developed, it overshadowed the Hillary Clinton email scandal. It
is a matter of public record that Team Clinton provided the DNC hackers with passwords to
State Department
servers on at least 2 occasions, one wittingly and one not. Fancy Bear hackers are Ukrainian
Intelligence Operators.
If the leak came through Seth Rich , it may have been because he saw
foreign Intel operatives given this access from the presumed winners of the 2016 US presidential
election . The leaker may
have been trying to do something about it. I'm curious what information Wikileaks might
have.
Alperovitch and Fancy Bear
George Eliason, Washingtonsblog: Why Crowdstrike's Russian Hacking Story Fell
Apart- Say Hello to Fancy Bear. investigated. [7]
In the wake of the JAR-16-20296 dated December 29, 2016 about hacking and influencing
the 2016 election, the need for real evidence is clear. The joint report adds nothing
substantial to the October 7th report. It relies on proofs provided by the cyber security
firm Crowdstrike that is clearly not on
par with intelligence findings or evidence. At the top of the report is an "as is"
statement showing this.
The difference bet enough evidence is provided to warrant an investigation of
specific parties for the DNC hacks. The real story involves specific anti-American actors
that need to be investigated for real crimes. For instance, the malware used was an
out-dated version just waiting to be found. The one other interesting point is that the
Russian malware called Grizzly Steppe is from Ukraine. How did Crowdstrike miss this when
it is their business to know?
The bar for identification set by Crowdstrike has never been able to get beyond words
like probably, maybe, could be, or should be, in their attribution. The bar Dimitri
Alperovitch set for identifying the hackers involved is that low. Other than asking
America to trust them, how many solid facts has Alperovitch provided to back his claim of
Russian involvement?
information from outside intelligence agencies has the value of rumor or
unsubstantiated information at best according to policy. Usable intelligence needs to be
free from partisan politics and verifiable. Intel agencies noted back in the early 90's
that every private actor in the information game was radically political.
Alperovitch first gained notice when he was the VP in charge of threat research with
McAfee. Asked to comment on Alperovitch's discovery of Russian hacks on Larry King, John
McAfee had this to say. "Based on all of his experience, McAfee does not believe that
Russians were behind the hacks on the Democratic National Committee (DNC), John Podesta's
emails, and the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign. As he told RT, "if it looks like
the Russians did it, then I can guarantee you it was not the Russians."
How does Crowdstrike's story part with reality? First is the admission that it is
probably, maybe, could be Russia hacking the DNC. "Intelligence agencies do not have
specific intelligence showing officials in the Kremlin 'directing' the identified
individuals to pass the Democratic emails to Wiki Leaks." The public evidence never goes
beyond the word possibility. While never going beyond that or using facts, Crowdstrike
insists that it's Russia behind both Clinton's and the Ukrainian losses.
NBC carried the story because one of the partners in Crowdstrike is also a consultant
for NBC. According to NBC the story reads like this."The company, Crowdstrike, was hired
by the DNC to investigate the hack and issued a report publicly attributing it to Russian
intelligence. One of Crowdstrike's senior executives is Shawn Henry , a former senior FBI
official who consults for NBC News.
In June, Crowdstrike went public with its findings that two separate Russian
intelligence agencies had hacked the DNC. One, which Crowdstrike and other researchers
call Cozy Bear, is believed to be linked to Russia's CIA, known as the FSB. The other,
known as Fancy Bear, is believed to be tied to the military intelligence agency, called
the GRU." The information is so certain the level of proof never rises above "believed to
be." According to the December 12th Intercept article "Most importantly, the Post
adds that "intelligence agencies do not have specific intelligence showing officials in
the Kremlin 'directing' the identified individuals to pass the Democratic emails to
WikiLeaks."
The SBU, Olexander Turchinov, and the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense all agree that
Crowdstrike is dead wrong in this assessment. Although subtitles aren't on it, the former
Commandant of Ukrainian Army Headquarters thanks God Russia never invaded or Ukraine
would have been in deep trouble. How could Dimitri Alperovitch and Crowdstrike be this
wrong on easily checked detail and still get this much media attention?
Crowdstrike CEO Dmitri Alperovitch story about Russian hacks that cost Hillary
Clinton the election was broadsided by the SBU (Ukrainian Intelligence and Security) in
Ukraine. If Dimitri Alperovitch is working for Ukrainian Intelligence and is providing
intelligence to 17 US Intelligence Agencies is it a conflict of interest?
Is giving misleading or false information to 17 US Intelligence Agencies a crime? If
it's done by a cyber security industry leader like Crowdstrike should that be
investigated? If unwinding the story from the "targeting of Ukrainian volunteers" side
isn't enough, we should look at this from the American perspective. How did the Russia
influencing the election and DNC hack story evolve? Who's involved? Does this pose
conflicts of interest for Dmitri Alperovitch and Crowdstrike? And let's face it, a
hacking story isn't complete until real hackers with the skills, motivation, and reason
are exposed.
According to journalist and DNC activist Andrea Chalupa on her Facebook page "After
Chalupa sent the email to Miranda (which mentions that she had invited this reporter to a
meeting with Ukrainian journalists in Washington), it triggered high-level concerns
within the DNC, given the sensitive nature of her work. "That's when we knew it was the
Russians," said a Democratic Party source who has been directly involved in the internal
probe into the hacked emails. In order to stem the damage, the source said, "we told her
to stop her research."" July 25, 2016
If she was that close to the investigation Crowdstrike did how credible is she? Her
sister Alexandra was named one of 16 people that shaped the election by Yahoo news.
The DNC hacking investigation done by Crowdstrike concluded hacking was done by
Russian actors based on the work done byAlexandra Chalupa? That is the
conclusion of her sister Andrea Chalupa and obviously enough for Crowdstrike to make the
Russian government connection.
How close is Dimitri Alperovitch to DNC officials? Close enough professionally he
should have stepped down from an investigation that had the chance of throwing a
presidential election in a new direction. According to Esquire.com, Alperovitch has
vetted speeches for Hillary Clinton about cyber security issues in the past. Because of
his work on the Sony hack, President Barrack Obama personally called and said the
measures taken were directly because of his work.
Alperovitch's relationships with the Chalupas, radical groups, think tanks, Ukrainian
propagandists, and Ukrainian state supported hackers [show a conflict of interest]. When
it all adds up and you see it together, we have found a Russian that tried hard to
influence the outcome of the US presidential election in 2016.
The Chalupas are not Democrat or Republican. They are OUNb. The OUNb worked hard
to start a war between the USA and Russia for the last 50 years. According to the
Ukrainian Weekly in a rare open statement of their existence in 2011, "Other
statements were issued in the Ukrainian language by the leadership of the
Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (B) and the International Conference in
Support of Ukraine. The OUN (Bandera wing) called for" What is
OUNb Bandera? They follow the same political policy and platform that was developed
in the 1930's by Stepan Bandera . When these
people go to a Holocaust memorial they are celebrating
both the dead and the OUNb SS that killed.[8] There is no
getting around this fact. The OUNb have no concept of democratic values and want an
authoritarian
fascism .
Alexandra Chalupa- According to the Ukrainian Weekly , [9]
"The effort, known as Digital Miadan, gained momentum following the initial Twitter storms.
Leading the effort were: Lara Chelak, Andrea Chalupa, Alexandra Chalupa, Constatin Kostenko
and others." The Digital Maidan was also how they raised money for the coup. This was how the
Ukrainian emigres bought the bullets that were used on Euromaidan. Ukraine's chubby nazi,
Dima Yarosh stated openly he was taking money from the Ukrainian emigres during Euromaidan
and Pravy Sektor still fundraises openly in North America. The "Sniper Massacre" on the
Maidan in Ukraine by Dr. Ivan Katchanovski, University of Ottowa shows clearly detailed
evidence how the massacre happened. It has Pravy Sektor confessions that show who created the
"heavenly hundred. Their admitted involvement as leaders of Digital Maidan by both Chalupas
is a clear violation of the Neutrality Act and has up to a 25 year prison sentence attached
to it because it ended in a coup.
Andrea Chalupa-2014, in a Huff Post article Sept. 1 2016, Andrea Chalupa
described Sviatoslav Yurash as one of Ukraine's important "dreamers." He is a young
activist that founded Euromaidan Press. Beyond the gushing glow what she doesn't say
is who he actually is. Sviatoslav Yurash was Dmitri Yarosh's spokesman just after
Maidan. He is a hardcore Ukrainian nationalist and was rewarded with the Deputy
Director position for the UWC (Ukrainian World Congress) in Kiev.
In January, 2014 when he showed up at the Maidan protests he was 17 years old. He
became the foreign language media representative for Vitali Klitschko, Arseni
Yatsenyuk, and Oleh Tyahnybok. All press enquiries went through Yurash. To meet
Dimitri Yurash you had to go through Sviatoslav Yurash as a Macleans reporter found
out.
At 18 years old, Sviatoslav Yurash became the spokesman for Ministry of Defense
of Ukraine under Andrei Paruby. He was Dimitri Yarosh's spokesman and can be seen
either behind Yarosh on videos at press conferences or speaking ahead of him to
reporters. From January 2014 onward, to speak to Dimitri Yarosh, you set up an
appointment with Yurash.
Andrea Chalupa has worked with Yurash's Euromaidan Press which is associated with
Informnapalm.org and supplies the state level hackers for Ukraine.
Irene Chalupa- Another involved Chalupa we need to cover to do the story justice
is Irene Chalupa. From her bio– Irena Chalupa is a nonresident fellow with the
Atlantic Council's Dinu Patriciu Eurasia Center. She is also a senior correspondent
at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), where she has worked for more than
twenty years. Ms. Chalupa previously served as an editor for the Atlantic Council,
where she covered Ukraine and Eastern Europe. Irena Chalupa is also the news anchor
for Ukraine's propaganda channel org She is also a Ukrainian emigre leader.
According to Robert Parry's article [10] At the forefront
of people that would have taken senior positions in a Clinton administration and
especially in foreign policy are the Atlantic Council . Their main
goal is still a major confrontation with nuclear-armed Russia.
The Atlantic Council is the think tank associated and supported by the CEEC (Central
and Eastern European Coalition). The CEEC has only one goal which is war with Russia.
Their question to candidates looking for their support in the election was "Are you
willing to go to war with Russia?" Hillary Clinton has received their unqualified support
throughout the campaign.
What does any of this have to do with Dimitri Alperovitch and Crowdstrike? Since the
Atlantic Council would have taken senior cabinet and policy positions, his own fellowship
status at the Atlantic Council and relationship with Irene Chalupa creates a definite
conflict of interest for Crowdstrike's investigation. Trump's campaign was gaining ground
and Clinton needed a boost. Had she won, would he have been in charge of the CIA, NSA, or
Homeland Security?
When you put someone that has so much to gain in charge of an investigation that
could change an election, that is a conflict of interest. If the think tank is linked
heavily to groups that want war with Russia like the Atlantic Council and the CEEC, it
opens up criminal conspiracy.
If the person in charge of the investigation is a fellow at the think tank that wants
a major conflict with Russia it is a definite conflict of interest. Both the Atlantic
Council and clients stood to gain Cabinet and Policy positions based on how the result of
his work affects the election. It clouds the results of the investigation. In Dmitri
Alperovitch's case, he found the perpetrator before he was positive there was a
crime.
Alperovitch's relationship with Andrea Chalupa's efforts and Ukrainian intelligence
groups is where things really heat up. Noted above she works with Euromaidanpress.com and
Informnapalm.org which is the outlet for Ukrainian state-sponsored hackers.
When you look at Dimitri Alperovitch's twitter relationships, you have to ask why the
CEO of a $150 million dollar company like Crowdstrike follows Ukrainian InformNapalm and
its hackers individually. There is a mutual relationship. When you add up his work for
the OUNb, Ukraine, support for Ukraine's Intelligence, and to the hackers it needs to be
investigated to see if Ukraine is conspiring against the US government. Crowdstrike is
also following their hack of a Russian government official after the DNC hack. It closely
resembles the same method used with the DNC because it was an email hack.
Crowdstrike's product line includes Falcon Host, Falcon Intelligence, Falcon
Overwatch and Falcon DNS. Is it possible the hackers in Falcons Flame are another service
Crowdstrike offers?
In an interview with Euromaidanpress these hackers say they have no need for the CIA.
[11] They consider the
CIA amateurish. They also say they are not part of the Ukrainian military Cyberalliance
is a quasi-organization with the participation of several groups – RUH8, Trinity,
Falcon Flames, Cyberhunta. There are structures affiliated to the hackers – the
Myrotvorets site, Informnapalm analytical agency."
Although this profile says Virginia, tweets are from the Sofia, Bulgaria time zone and he
writes in Russian. Another curiosity considering the Fancy Bear source code is in Russian. This
image shows Crowdstrike in their network. Crowdstrike is part of Ukrainian nationalist hacker
network. In the image it shows a network diagram of Crowdstrike following the Surkov leaks. The
network communication goes through a secondary source. Although OSINT Academy sounds fairly innocuous, it's the official twitter account for
Ukraine's Ministry of Information head Dimitri Zolotukin. It is also Ukrainian Intelligence.
The Ministry of Information started the Peacekeeper or Myrotvorets website that geolocates
journalists and other people for assassination. If you disagree with OUNb politics, you could
be on the list.
Should someone tell Dimitri Alperovitch that Gerashchenko, who is now in charge of
Peacekeeper recently threatened president-elect Donald Trump that he would put him on his
"Peacemaker" site as a target? The same has been done with Silvio Berscaloni in the
past.
Trying not to be obvious, the Head of Ukraine's Information Ministry (UA
Intelligence) tweeted something interesting that ties Alperovitch and Crowdstrike to the
Ukrainian Intelligence hackers and the Information Ministry even tighter. This single
tweet on a network chart shows that out of all the Ukrainian Ministry of Information
Minister's following, he only wanted the 3 hacking groups associated with both him and
Alperovitch to get the tweet. Alperovitch's story was received and not retweeted or
shared. If this was just Alperovitch's victory, it was a victory for Ukraine. It would be
shared heavily. If it was a victory for the hacking squad, it would be smart to keep it
to themselves and not draw unwanted attention.
These same hackers are associated with Alexandra, Andrea, and Irene Chalupa through
the portals and organizations they work with through their OUNb. The hackers are funded
and directed by or through the same OUNb channels that Alperovitch is working for and
with to promote the story of Russian hacking.
When you look at the image for the hacking group in the euromaidanpress article,
one of the hackers identifies themselves as one of Dimitri Yarosh's Pravy Sektor
members by the Pravy Sektor sweatshirt they have on. Noted above, Pravy Sektor
admitted to killing the people at the Maidan protest and sparked the coup.
Going further with the linked Euromaidanpress article the hackers say "Let's
understand that Ukrainian hackers and Russian hackers once constituted a single very
powerful group. Ukrainian hackers have a rather high level of work. So the help of
the USA I don't know, why would we need it? We have all the talent and special means
for this. And I don't think that the USA or any NATO country would make such sharp
movements in international politics."
What sharp movements in international politics have been made lately? Let me spell it
out for the 17 US Intelligence Agencies so there is no confusion. These state sponsored,
Russian language hackers in Eastern European time zones have shown with the Surkov hack
they have the tools and experience to hack states that are looking out for it. They are
also laughing at US intel efforts.
The hackers also made it clear that they will do anything to serve Ukraine. Starting
a war between Russia and the USA is the one way they could serve Ukraine best, and hurt
Russia worst. Given those facts, if the DNC hack was according to the criteria given by
Alperovitch, both he and these hackers need to be investigated.
According to the Esquire interview "Alperovitch was deeply frustrated: He thought
the government should tell the world what it knew. There is, of course, an element of
the personal in his battle cry. "A lot of people who are born here don't appreciate
the freedoms we have, the opportunities we have, because they've never had it any
other way," he told me. "I have."
While I agree patriotism is a great thing, confusing it with this kind of nationalism
is not. Alperovitch seems to think by serving OUNb Ukraine's interests and delivering
a conflict with Russia that is against American interests, he's a patriot. He isn't
serving US interests. He's definitely a Ukrainian patriot. Maybe he should move to
Ukraine.
The evidence presented deserves investigation because it looks like the case for
conflict of interest is the least Dimitri Alperovitch should look forward to. If these
hackers are the real Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear, they really did make sharp movements in
international politics. By pawning it off on Russia, they made a worldwide embarrassment
of an outgoing President of the United States and made the President Elect the suspect of
rumor.
Obama, Brazile, Comey, and CrowdStrike
According to Obama the
hacks continued until September 2016. According to ABC, Donna Brazile says the hacks didn't stop
until after the elections in 2016. According to Crowdstrike the hacks continued into
November.
Democratic National Committee Chair Donna Brazile said Russian hackers persisted in trying
to break into the organization's computers "daily, hourly" until after the election --
contradicting President Obama's assertion that the hacking stopped in September after he warned
Russian President Vladimir Putin to "cut it out."-ABC
This time frame gives a lot of latitude to both hacks and leaks happening on that server and
still agrees with the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPs). According to
Bill
Binney , the former Technical Director for the NSA, the only way that data could move off
the server that fast was through a download to a USB stick. The transfer rate of the file does
not agree with a Guciffer 2.0 hack and the information surrounding Guciffer 2.0 is looking
ridiculous and impossible at best.
The DNC fiasco isn't that important of a crime. The reason I say this is the FBI would have
taken control over material evidence right away. No law enforcement agency or Intel agency ever
did. This means none of them considered it a crime Comey should have any part of investigating.
That by itself presents the one question mark which destroys any hope Mueller has proving law
enforcement maintained a chain of custody for any evidence he introduces.
It also says the US government under Barrack Obama and the victimized DNC saw this as a
purely political event. They didn't want this prosecuted or they didn't think it was
prosecutable.
Once proven it shows a degree of criminality that makes treason almost too light a charge in
federal court. Rest assured this isn't a partisan accusation. Team Clinton and the DNC gets the
spotlight but there are Republicans involved.
Investigative Jouralist George Webb worked at MacAfee and Network Solutions in 2000 when the
CEO Bill Larsen bought a small, Moscow based, hacking and virus writing company to move to
Silicon Valley.
MacAfee also purchased PGP, an open source encryption software developed by privacy advocate
to reduce NSA spying on the public.
The two simultaneous purchase of PGP and the Moscow hacking team by Metwork Solutions was
sponsored by the CIA and FBI in order to crack encrypted communications to write a back door
for law enforcement.
Among the 12 engineers assigned to writing a PGP backdoor was the son of a KGB officer named
Dmitri Alperovich who would go on to be the CTO at a company involved in the DNC Hacking
scandal - Crowdstrike.
In addition to writing a back door for PGP, Alperovich also ported PGP to the blackberry
platform to provide encrypted communications for covert action operatives.
Our leaders like to say we value human rights around the world, but what they really manifest
is greed. It all makes sense in a Gekko- or Machiavellian kind of way.
Highly recommended !
Notable quotes:
"... Think of this as the new American exceptionalism. In Washington, war is now the predictable (and even desirable) way of life, while peace is the unpredictable (and unwise) path to follow. In this context, the U.S. must continue to be the most powerful nation in the world by a country mile in all death-dealing realms and its wars must be fought, generation after generation, even when victory is never in sight. And if that isn't an "exceptional" belief system, what is? ..."
"... A partial list of war's many uses might go something like this: war is profitable , most notably for America's vast military-industrial complex ; war is sold as being necessary for America's safety, especially to prevent terrorist attacks; and for many Americans, war is seen as a measure of national fitness and worthiness, a reminder that "freedom isn't free." In our politics today, it's far better to be seen as strong and wrong than meek and right. ..."
"... If America's wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Somalia, and Yemen prove anything, it's that every war scars our planet -- and hardens our hearts. Every war makes us less human as well as less humane. Every war wastes resources when these are increasingly at a premium. Every war is a distraction from higher needs and a better life. ..."
"... I think that the main reason of the current level of militarism in the USA foreign policy is that after dissolution of the USSR neo-conservatives were allowed to capture the State Department and foreign policy establishment. This process actually started under Reagan. During Bush II administration those “crazies from the basement” fully controlled the US foreign policy and paradoxically they continued to dominate in Obama administration too. ..."
"... Which also means that the USA foreign policy is not controlled by the elected officials but by the “Deep State” (look at Vindman and Fiona Hill testimonies for the proof). So this is kind of Catch 22 in which the USA have found itself. We will be bankrupted by our neoconservative foreign establishment (which self-reproduce in each and every administration). And we can do nothing to avoid it. ..."
"... they are not only lobbyists for MIC, but they also serve as "ideological support", trying to manipulate public opinion in favor of militarism. ..."
"... Yes. Ideology is vital. During the Cold War it was all about containing/resisting/defeating the godless Communists. Once they were defeated, what then? We heard brief talk about a "peace dividend," but then the neocons came along, selling full-spectrum dominance and America as the sole superpower. ..."
"... The neocons were truly unleashed by the 9/11 attacks, which they exploited to put their vision in motion. The Complex was only too happy to oblige, fed as it was by massive resources. ..."
"... Leaving that specific incident aside, the bigger picture is that the brains behind the Deep State understand that global capitalism is running out of new resources (which includes human labor) to exploit. Why is the US so concerned with Africa right now, with spies and Special Forces operatives all over that continent? Africa is the final frontier for development/exploitation. (The US is also deeply concerned about China's setting down business roots there, and wants to counterbalance their activities.) ..."
"... The brains in the US Ruling Class know full well that natural resources will become ever more valuable moving forward, as weather disasters make it harder to access them. Thus, the Neo-Cons (you thought I'd never get around to them, right?) came to the fore because they advocate the unbridled use of brute military force to obtain what they want from the world. Or, to use their own terminology, the US "must have the capability to project force anywhere on the planet" at a moment's notice. President Obama was fully in agreement with that concept. Beware the wolf masquerading as a peaceable sheep! ..."
By William Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF) and history professor. His
personal blog is Bracing Views .
Originally published at TomDispatch
Ever since 2007, when I first started writing for TomDispatch , I've been arguing
against America's forever wars, whether in Afghanistan , Iraq , or elsewhere . Unfortunately, it's no surprise that,
despite my more than 60 articles, American blood is still being spilled in war after war across the Greater Middle
East and Africa, even as foreign peoples pay a far higher price in lives lost and cities
ruined . And I keep asking myself: Why, in this century, is the distinctive feature of
America's wars that they never end? Why do our leaders persist in such repetitive folly and the
seemingly eternal disasters that go with it?
Sadly, there isn't just one obvious reason for this generational debacle. If there were, we
could focus on it, tackle it, and perhaps even fix it. But no such luck.
So why do America's disastrous wars
persist ? I can think of many reasons , some obvious and easy to
understand, like the endless pursuit of profit through weapons sales for those very wars, and some more
subtle but no less significant, like a deep-seated conviction in Washington that a willingness
to wage war is a sign of national toughness and seriousness. Before I go on, though, here's
another distinctive aspect of our forever-war moment: Have you noticed that peace is no longer even a topic in America
today? The very word, once at least part of the rhetoric of Washington politicians, has
essentially dropped out of use entirely. Consider the current crop of Democratic candidates for
president. One, Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, wants to end regime-change wars, but is otherwise
a self-professed hawk on the
subject of the war on terror. Another, Senator Bernie Sanders, vows to end " endless
wars " but is careful to express strong support for Israel and the ultra-expensive
F-35 fighter jet.
The other dozen or so tend to make vague sounds about cutting defense spending or gradually
withdrawing U.S. troops from various wars, but none of them even consider openly speaking
of peace . And the Republicans? While President Trump may talk of ending wars, since his
inauguration he's sent more
troops to Afghanistan and into the Middle East, while greatly expanding drone and other
air strikes ,
something about which he openly
boasts .
War, in other words, is our new normal, America's default position on global affairs, and
peace, some ancient, long-faded dream. And when your default position is war, whether against
the Taliban, ISIS, "terror" more generally, or possibly even Iran or Russia
or
China , is it any surprise that war is what you get? When you garrison the world with an
unprecedented 800 or so
military bases , when you configure your armed forces for what's called power projection,
when you divide the globe -- the total planet -- into areas of dominance (with acronyms
like CENTCOM, AFRICOM, and SOUTHCOM) commanded by four-star generals and admirals, when you
spend more on your military than the next
seven countries combined, when you insist on modernizing a
nuclear arsenal (to the tune of perhaps $1.7 trillion ) already
quite capable of ending all life on this and several other planets, what can you expect but a
reality of endless war?
Think of this as the new American exceptionalism. In Washington, war is now the
predictable (and even desirable) way of life, while peace is the unpredictable (and unwise)
path to follow. In this context, the U.S. must continue to be the most powerful nation in the
world by a country mile in all death-dealing realms and its wars must be fought, generation
after generation, even when victory is never in sight. And if that isn't an "exceptional"
belief system, what is?
If we're ever to put an end to our country's endless twenty-first-century wars, that mindset
will have to be changed. But to do that, we would first have to recognize and confront war's
many uses in American
life and culture.
War, Its Uses (and Abuses)
A partial list of war's many uses might go something like this: war is profitable , most notably for
America's vast
military-industrial complex ; war is sold as being necessary for America's safety,
especially to prevent terrorist attacks; and for many Americans, war is seen as a measure of
national fitness and worthiness, a reminder that "freedom isn't free." In our politics today,
it's far better to be seen as strong and wrong than meek and right.
As the title of a book by former war reporter Chris Hedges so aptly put it , war is
a force that gives us meaning. And let's face it, a significant part of America's meaning in
this century has involved pride in having the toughest military on the planet, even as
trillions of tax dollars went into a misguided attempt to maintain bragging rights to being
the world's sole superpower.
And keep in mind as well that, among other things, never-ending war
weakens democracy while strengthening authoritarian tendencies in politics and society. In
an age of
gaping inequality , using up the country's resources in such profligate and destructive
ways offers a striking exercise in consumption that profits the few at the expense of the
many.
In other words, for a select few, war pays dividends in ways that peace doesn't. In a
nutshell, or perhaps an artillery shell, war is anti-democratic, anti-progressive,
anti-intellectual, and anti-human. Yet, as we know, history makes heroes out of its
participants and celebrates mass murderers like Napoleon as "great captains."
What the United States needs today is a new strategy of containment -- not against communist
expansion, as in the Cold War, but against war itself. What's stopping us from containing war?
You might say that, in some sense, we've grown addicted to it , which is true enough, but here
are five additional reasons for war's enduring presence in American life:
The
delusional idea that Americans are, by nature, winners and that our wars are therefore
winnable: No American leader wants to be labeled a "loser." Meanwhile, such dubious
conflicts -- see: the Afghan War, now in its 18th year, with
several more years, or even generations
, to go -- continue to be treated by the military as if they were indeed winnable, even though
they visibly aren't. No president, Republican or Democrat, not even Donald J. Trump, despite
his promises that American soldiers will be coming home from such fiascos, has successfully
resisted the Pentagon's siren call for patience (and for yet more trillions of dollars) in the
cause of ultimate victory, however poorly defined, farfetched, or far-off. American
society's almost completeisolationfrom war's deadly
effects: We're not being droned (yet). Our cities are not yet lying in ruins (though
they're certainly suffering from a lack of funding, as is our most essential infrastructure , thanks in part to the
cost of those overseas wars). It's nonetheless remarkable how little attention, either in the
media or elsewhere, this country's never-ending war-making gets here. Unnecessary and
sweeping secrecy: How can you resist what you essentially don't know about? Learning its
lesson from the Vietnam War, the Pentagon now
classifies (in plain speak: covers up) the worst aspects of its disastrous wars. This isn't
because the enemy could exploit such details -- the enemy already knows! -- but because the
American people might be roused to something like anger and action by it. Principled whistleblowers like
Chelsea Manning have been imprisoned or otherwise dismissed or, in the case of Edward Snowden,
pursued and indicted for sharing honest
details about the calamitous Iraq War and America's invasive and intrusive surveillance
state. In the process, a clear message of intimidation has been sent to other would-be
truth-tellers. An unrepresentative government: Long ago, of course, Congress
ceded to
the presidency most of its constitutional powers when it comes to making war. Still, despite
recent
attempts to end America's arms-dealing role in the genocidal Saudi war in Yemen (overridden
by Donald Trump's veto power), America's duly elected representatives generally don't represent
the people when it comes to this country's disastrous wars. They are, to put it bluntly,
largely captives of (and sometimes on leaving politics quite literally go
to work for) the military-industrial complex. As long as money is speech ( thank
you , Supreme Court!), the weapons makers are always likely to be able to shout louder in
Congress than you and I ever will. \America's persistent empathy gap.
Despite our size, we are a remarkably insular nation and suffer from a serious empathy gap when it comes to
understanding foreign cultures and peoples or what we're actually doing to them. Even our
globetrotting troops, when not fighting and killing foreigners in battle, often stay on vast
bases, referred to in the military as "Little Americas," complete with familiar stores, fast
food, you name it. Wherever we go, there we are, eating our big burgers, driving our big
trucks, wielding our big guns, and dropping our very big bombs. But
what those bombs do, whom they hurt or kill, whom they displace from their homes and lives,
these are things that Americans turn out to care remarkably little about.
All this puts me sadly in mind of a song popular in my youth, a time when Cat Stevens sang
of a " peace train " that was
"soundin' louder" in America. Today, that peace train's been derailed and replaced by an armed
and armored one eternally prepared for perpetual war -- and that train is indeed soundin'
louder to the great peril of us all.
War on Spaceship Earth
Here's the rub, though: even the
Pentagon knows that our most serious enemy is
climate change , not China or Russia or terror, though in the age of Donald Trump and his
administration of arsonists
its officials can't express themselves on the subject as openly as they otherwise might.
Assuming we don't annihilate ourselves with nuclear weapons first, that means our
real enemy is the endless war we're waging against Planet Earth.
The U.S. military is also a major consumer of fossil fuels and therefore a significant
driver of climate change. Meanwhile, the Pentagon, like any enormously powerful system, only
wants to grow more so, but what's welfare for the military brass isn't wellness for the
planet.
There is, unfortunately, only one Planet Earth, or Spaceship Earth, if you prefer, since
we're all traveling through our galaxy on it. Thought about a certain way, we're its
crewmembers, yet instead of cooperating effectively as its stewards, we seem determined to
fight one another. If a house divided against itself cannot stand, as Abraham Lincoln pointed
out so long ago, surely a spaceship with a disputatious and self-destructive crew is not likely
to survive, no less thrive.
In other words, in waging endless war, Americans are also, in effect, mutinying against the
planet. In the process, we are spoiling the last, best hope of earth: a concerted and pacific
effort to meet the shared challenges of a rapidly warming and changing planet.
Spaceship Earth should not be allowed to remain Warship Earth as well, not when the
existence of
significant parts of humanity is already becoming ever more precarious. Think of us as
suffering from a coolant leak, causing cabin temperatures
to rise even as food and other resources dwindle .
Under the circumstances, what's the best strategy for survival: killing each other while
ignoring the leak or banding together to fix an increasingly compromised ship?
Unfortunately, for America's leaders, the real "fixes" remain global military and resource
domination, even as those resources continue to shrink on an ever-more fragile globe. And as
we've seen recently, the resource part of that fix breeds its own madness, as in President
Trump's recently stated desire to keep U.S. troops in Syria
to steal that country's oil resources, though its wells are largely wrecked (thanks in
significant part to American bombing) and even when repaired would produce only a miniscule
percentage of the world's petroleum.
If America's wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Somalia, and Yemen prove anything,
it's that every war scars our planet -- and hardens our hearts. Every war makes us less human
as well as less humane. Every war wastes resources when these are increasingly at a premium.
Every war is a distraction from higher needs and a better life.
Despite all of war's uses and abuses, its allures and temptations, it's time that we
Americans showed some self-mastery (as well as decency) by putting a stop to the mayhem. Few
enough of us experience "our" wars firsthand and that's precisely why some idealize their
purpose and idolize their practitioners. But war is a bloody, murderous mess and those
practitioners, when not killed or wounded, are marred for life because war functionally makes
everyone involved into a murderer.
We need to stop idealizing war and idolizing its so-called warriors. At stake is
nothing less than the future of humanity and the viability of life, as we know it, on Spaceship
Earth.
I think that the main reason of the current level of militarism in the USA foreign
policy is that after dissolution of the USSR neo-conservatives were allowed to capture the
State Department and foreign policy establishment. This process actually started under
Reagan. During Bush II administration those “crazies from the basement” fully
controlled the US foreign policy and paradoxically they continued to dominate in Obama
administration too.
They preach “Full Spectrum Dominance” (Wolfowitz doctrine) and are not shy to
unleash the wars to enhance the USA strategic position in particular region (color revolution
can be used instead of war, like they in 2014 did in Ukraine). Of course, being chichenhawks,
neither they nor members of their families fight in those wars.
For some reason despite his election platform Trump also populated his administration with
neoconservatives. So it might be that maintaining the USA centered global neoliberal empire
is the real reason and the leitmotiv of the USA foreign policy. that’s why it does not
change with the change of Administration: any government that does not play well with the
neoliberal empire gets in the hairlines.
Which also means that the USA foreign policy is not controlled by the elected
officials but by the “Deep State” (look at Vindman and Fiona Hill testimonies for
the proof). So this is kind of Catch 22 in which the USA have found itself. We will be
bankrupted by our neoconservative foreign establishment (which self-reproduce in each and
every administration). And we can do nothing to avoid it.
Good point. But why the rise of the neocons? Why did they prosper? I'd say because of the
military-industrial complex. Or you might say they feed each other, but the Complex came
first. And of course the Complex is a dominant part of the Deep State. How could it not be?
Add in 17 intelligence agencies, Homeland Security, the Energy Dept's nukes, and you have a
dominant DoD that swallows up more than half of federal discretionary spending each year.
I agree, but it is a little bit more complex. You need an ideology to promote the interests
of MIC. You can't just say -- let's spend more than a half of federal discretionary spending
each year..
That's where neo-conservatism comes into play. So they are not only lobbyists for MIC,
but they also serve as "ideological support", trying to manipulate public opinion in favor of
militarism.
wjastore December 2, 2019 at 12:25 PM
Yes. Ideology is vital. During the Cold War it was all about
containing/resisting/defeating the godless Communists. Once they were defeated, what then? We
heard brief talk about a "peace dividend," but then the neocons came along, selling
full-spectrum dominance and America as the sole superpower.
The neocons were truly unleashed by the 9/11 attacks, which they exploited to put
their vision in motion. The Complex was only too happy to oblige, fed as it was by massive
resources.
Think about how no one was punished for the colossal intelligence failure of 9/11.
Instead, all the intel agencies were rewarded with more money and authority via the PATRIOT
Act.
The Afghan war is an ongoing disaster, the Iraq war a huge misstep, Libya a total failure,
yet the Complex has even more Teflon than Ronald Reagan. All failures slide off of it.
greglaxer , December 2, 2019 at 4:12 PM
There is a still bigger picture to consider in all this. I don't want to open the door to
conspiracy theory–personally, I find the claim that explosives were placed inside the
World Trade Center prior to the strikes by aircraft on 9/11 risible–but it certainly
was convenient for the Regime Change Gang that the Saudi operatives were able to get away
with what they did on that day, and in preparations leading up to it.
Leaving that specific incident aside, the bigger picture is that the brains behind the
Deep State understand that global capitalism is running out of new resources (which includes
human labor) to exploit. Why is the US so concerned with Africa right now, with spies and
Special Forces operatives all over that continent? Africa is the final frontier for
development/exploitation. (The US is also deeply concerned about China's setting down
business roots there, and wants to counterbalance their activities.)
Once the great majority of folks in Africa have cellphones and subscriptions to Netflix
whither capitalism? Trump denies the severity of the climate crisis because that is part of
the ideology/theology of the GOP.
The brains in the US Ruling Class know full well that natural resources will become
ever more valuable moving forward, as weather disasters make it harder to access them. Thus,
the Neo-Cons (you thought I'd never get around to them, right?) came to the fore because they
advocate the unbridled use of brute military force to obtain what they want from the world.
Or, to use their own terminology, the US "must have the capability to project force anywhere
on the planet" at a moment's notice. President Obama was fully in agreement with that
concept. Beware the wolf masquerading as a peaceable sheep!
"... "The cost cannot be measured only in lost opportunities, lives and money. There will be a long hangover of shame. Its essence was summed up by Col. Ted Westhusing, an Army scholar of military ethics who was an innocent witness to corruption, not a participant, when he died at age 44 of a gunshot wound to the head while working for Gen. David Petraeus training Iraqi security forces in Baghdad in 2005. He was at the time the highest-ranking officer to die in Iraq." ..."
"... " 'I cannot support a msn that leads to corruption, human rights abuse and liars,' Colonel Westhusing wrote, abbreviating the word mission. 'I am sullied.' " ..."
In my opinion the most under-reported event of the Iraq war was the suicide of military Ethicist Colonel Ted Westhusing. It was
reported at the end of a Frank Rich column that appeared in the NY Times of 10-21-2007:
"The cost cannot be measured only in lost opportunities, lives and money. There will be a long hangover of shame. Its essence
was summed up by Col. Ted Westhusing, an Army scholar of military ethics who was an innocent witness to corruption, not a participant,
when he died at age 44 of a gunshot wound to the head while working for Gen. David Petraeus training Iraqi security forces in
Baghdad in 2005. He was at the time the highest-ranking officer to die in Iraq."
"Colonel Westhusing's death was ruled a suicide, though some believe he was murdered by contractors fearing a whistle-blower,
according to T. Christian Miller, the Los Angeles Times reporter who documents the case in his book "Blood Money."
Either way, the angry four-page letter the officer left behind for General Petraeus and his other commander, Gen. Joseph Fil,
is as much an epitaph for America's engagement in Iraq as a suicide note."
" 'I cannot support a msn that leads to corruption, human rights abuse and liars,' Colonel Westhusing wrote, abbreviating
the word mission. 'I am sullied.' "
"The tiny pink candies at the bottom of the urinals are reserved for Field Grade and Above." --sign over the urinals in the "O"
Club at Tan Son Nhut Airbase, 1965.
Now that sentiment, is Officer-on-Officer. The same dynamic tension exists throughout all Branches and ranks.
My background includes a Combat Infantry Badge and a record of having made Spec Four , two times. If you don't know what that
means, stop reading here.
I feel that no one should be promoted E-5 or O-4, if they are to command men in battle, unless they have had that life experience
themselves. It becomes virgins instructing on sexual etiquette.
Within the ranks, there exists a disdain for officers, in general. Some officers overcome this by their actions, but the vast
majority cement that assessment the same way.
What makes the thing run is the few officers who are superior human beings, and the NCOs who are of that same tribe. And there
is a love there, from top to bottom and bottom to top, a brotherhood of warriors which the civilian population will forever try
to discern, parse and examine to their lasting frustration and ignorance.
It is the spirit of this nation [Liberty, e pluribus unum and In God We Trust ] that is the binding filament of it all. The
civilians responsible for the welfare of the armed services need to be more fully aware of that spirit and they need to bring
it into the air-conditioned offices they inhabit when they make decisions about men who know sacrifice.
"... Only a computer illiterate would think that CrowdStrike needed to take the physical DNC server to Ukraine in order to analyze it. Any computer can be cloned and its digital image can be sent within minutes anywhere on the planet in the form of ones and zeroes. It can also exist in multiple digital copies, carrying not just confidential archives, but also history logs and other content that can reveal to an expert whether the hacking occurred, and if so, by whom. ..."
"... The copies of the DNC server on CrowdStrike computers are likely to hold the key to understanding what really happened during the 2016 election, the origin of the anti-Trump witch hunt, and the toxic cloud of lies that had been hanging over the world and poisoning minds during the last three years. ..."
"... And now the new Ukrainian government might subpoena these copies from CrowdStrike and finally pass them to FBI experts, which should've been done three years ago. The danger of this happening is a much greater incentive for the Democrats to preemptively destroy Trump than all the dirt Joe Biden had been rolling in as Obama's vice president. ..."
"... I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say CrowdStrike... I guess you have one of your wealthy people... The server, they say Ukraine has it. There are a lot of things that went on, the whole situation. ..."
"... The fraudulent "CrowdStrike conspiracy" deflection is not a show of the Democrats' strength. Instead, It betrays their desperation and panic, which tells us that Trump is squarely over the target. ..."
"... Yet DOJ Mueller conclusively signed off on the unsubtaniated fact the Russians had hacked the DNC computers in his final Weissman Report. Just one more part of the curious Mueller report that was far more a CYA hit piece against future claims of Obama crimes, than an investigation of past Trump ones. ..."
The conspiracy theory that exposes the Democrats' desperation and panic.
Fri Nov 29, 2019
Oleg Atbashian
133 In the last few days, media talking heads have been saying the word "CrowdStrike" a
lot, defining it as a wild conspiracy theory originating in Moscow. They were joined by Chris
Wallace at Fox News, who informed us that president Trump and his ill-informed fans believe in
a crazy idea that the DNC wasn't hacked by the Russians but by some Ukrainian group named
CrowdStrike that stole the DNC server and brought it to Ukraine , and that it was Ukraine that
meddled in our 2016 election and not Russia.
A crazy idea indeed. Except that neither Trump nor his fans had ever heard of it until the
Democrat-media complex condescendingly informed them that these are their beliefs.
Let's look at the facts:
Fact 1. In 2016 the DNC hired the Ukrainian-owned firm CrowdStrike to analyze their server
and investigate a data breach.
Fact 2. CrowdStrike experts determined that the culprit was Russia.
Fact 3. The FBI never received access to the DNC server, so the Russian connection was never
officially confirmed and continues to be an allegation coming from the DNC and its
Ukrainian-owned contractor.
Fact 4. Absent the official verdict, other theories continue to circulate, including the
possibility that the theft was an inside job by a DNC employee, who simply copied the files to
a USB drive and sent it to WikiLeaks.
None of these facts was ever disputed by anyone. The media largely ignored them except for
the part about the Russian hackers, which boosted their own, now debunked, wild conspiracy
theory that Trump was a Russian agent.
Now that Trump had asked the newly elected Ukrainian president Zelensky to look into
CrowdStrike during that fateful July phone call, the media all at once started telling us that
"CrowdStrike" is a code word for a conspiracy theory so insane that only Trump could believe in
it, which is just more proof of how insane he is.
But if Trump had really said what Mr. Wallace and the media claim, Ukrainians would be the
first to call him on it and the impeachment would've been over by now. Instead, Ukrainians back
Trump every step of the way.
So where did this pretzel-shaped fake news come from, and why is it being peddled
now ?
Note this is a classic case study of propaganda and media manipulation:
Take an idea or a story that you wish to go away and make up an obviously bogus story
with the same names and details as the real one.
Start planting it simultaneously on media channels until the fake story supplants the
real one, while claiming this is what your opponents really believe.
Have various fact-checking outlets debunk your fake story as an absurd conspiracy theory.
Ridicule those who allegedly believe in it. Better yet, have late night comedians do it for
you.
Once your opponent is brought down, mercilessly plant your boot on his face and never let
up.
This mass manipulation technology had been tested and perfected by the Soviet propaganda
machine, both domestically and overseas, where it was successfully deployed by the KGB. The
Kremlin still uses it, although it can no longer afford it on the same grandiose scale. In this
sense, the Democratic think tanks are the true successors of the KGB in deviousness, scope, and
worldwide reach of fake narratives. How they inherited these methods from the KGB is a story
for another day.
For a long time this technology was allowing the Democrats to delegitimize opposition by
convincing large numbers of Americans that Republicans are
Haters
Racists
Fascists
Deniers of science
Destroyers of the environment
Heartless sellouts to corporate interests
And so on - the list is endless.
The Soviet communists had aptly named it "disinformation," which a cut above the English
word "misinformation." It includes a variety of methods for a variety of needs, from bringing
down an opponent to revising history to creating a new historical reality altogether. In this
sense, most Hollywood movies on historical subjects today disinform us about history,
supplanting it with a bogus "progressive" narrative. The Soviet term for such art was
"socialist realism."
Long story short, the Democrat-media complex has successfully convinced one half of the
world that Trump is a Russian agent. Now they're acting as if they'd spent the last three years
in a coma, unaware of any bombshell stories about collusion. And bombshell stories without any
continuation are a telltale sign of fake narratives. The only consequence of these bombshells
is mass amnesia among the foot soldiers.
The Trump-Russian outrage is dead, long live the Trump-Ukraine outrage. And when that
outrage is dead, the next outrage that will be just outrageous.
The current impeachment narrative alleges that Trump used military aid as leverage in asking
Ukraine to dig up dirt on Joe Biden (which implies the Democrats know Biden is dirty, otherwise
why bother?). What's not in this picture is CrowdStrike. Even though Trump mentioned it in the
phone call, it has nothing to do with the Bidens nor the Javelin missiles. CrowdStrike has
nothing to do with impeachment. We're told it's just a silly conspiracy theory in Trump's head,
that it's a nonissue.
But then why fabricate fake news about it and plant blatant lies simultaneously in all media
outlets from Mother Jones to Fox News? Why risk being exposed over such a nonissue? Perhaps
because it's more important than the story suggests.
Only a computer illiterate would think that CrowdStrike needed to take the physical DNC
server to Ukraine in order to analyze it. Any computer can be cloned and its digital image can
be sent within minutes anywhere on the planet in the form of ones and zeroes. It can also exist
in multiple digital copies, carrying not just confidential archives, but also history logs and
other content that can reveal to an expert whether the hacking occurred, and if so, by
whom.
The copies of the DNC server on CrowdStrike computers are likely to hold the key to
understanding what really happened during the 2016 election, the origin of the anti-Trump witch
hunt, and the toxic cloud of lies that had been hanging over the world and poisoning minds
during the last three years.
And now the new Ukrainian government might subpoena these copies from CrowdStrike and
finally pass them to FBI experts, which should've been done three years ago. The danger of this
happening is a much greater incentive for the Democrats to preemptively destroy Trump than all
the dirt Joe Biden had been rolling in as Obama's vice president.
This gives the supposedly innocuous reference to CrowdStrike during Trump's call a lot more
gravity and the previously incoherent part of the transcript begins to make sense.
PRESIDENT TRUMP: I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been
through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened
with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say CrowdStrike... I guess you have one of your
wealthy people... The server, they say Ukraine has it. There are a lot of things that went
on, the whole situation.
If you read the transcript on the day it was released, you probably didn't understand what
Trump was even talking about, let alone what had caused such a disproportionate outrage,
complete with whistle blowing and calls for impeachment. What in that mild conversation could
possibly terrify the Democrats so much? They were terrified because, unlike most Americans, the
Democrats knew exactly what Trump was talking about. And now you know, too.
The fraudulent "CrowdStrike conspiracy" deflection is not a show of the Democrats'
strength. Instead, It betrays their desperation and panic, which tells us that Trump is
squarely over the target.
It also helps us to see who at Fox News can be trusted to tell us the truth. And it ain't
Chris Wallace.
Fine dissection of the CrowdStrike story. Of course if the DNC was serious about
finding out who breached their security they would have allowed the FBI to investigate.
They didn't - which means they're covering something up.
And who doesn't have at least one backup system running constantly, I have two and am
just a home user and the DNC would not have been dumb enough not to have one on the
premises and one off site for safety and preservation and the FBI could have gotten to
either one if they wanted to. DWS was involved in something very similar and the FBI
backed off again. I thought the DNC and the FBI were on the same page and would have
liked to find out how the "transfer" happened?
Yet DOJ Mueller conclusively signed off on the unsubtaniated fact the Russians had
hacked the DNC computers in his final Weissman Report. Just one more part of the curious Mueller report that was far more a CYA hit piece
against future claims of Obama crimes, than an investigation of past Trump ones.
Seth Rich - paper trail to Wikilinks needs to come out in any Senate impeachment trail
since Democrats claim the Ukraine phone call was Trump's alleged downfall. CROWDSTRIKE
was the only favor Trumps asked for.
There are two important facts to glean from this article:
1) Crowdstrike, the DNC contractor, is Ukrainian
2) that the famous server may have been backed up in Ukraine and not tampered with.
From the MSM we were given the 'interpretation' that Trump is an idiot who believes
that the DNC shipped the server with no changes to the Ukraine. No folks. He 'gets'
technology and security. He actual ran a business! (imagine).
I'd love to hear that in Hillary's own voice. :) You know, cleaned with a cloth?
That pretty much sums it up. MSM in total cahoots on this too since they put the
entire topic of the CROWDSTRIKE part of the phone call into the cone of silence.
The Left and media (One and the same within the "Deep State") have been playing "Three
Card Monte" with America for a while; it stops now!
The "Impeachment" media show being run by the Lefty tool cretins in the House has
NOTHING to do with wrong doing by President Trump. It has EVERYTHING to do with the fear
that President Trump will expose the depth of the swamp and bring the criminals on the
Left down to Justice!
We are s close to getting to the bottom of the conspiracies that threaten our nation.
Time to make the America haters pay for the harm they have done to our nation!
We need open and in depth prosecution of the criminal activities of the Left. There
needs to be LONG prison sentences and, yes, even executions for those that seek to
undermine our nation.
People need to know that there our GRAVE penalties for betraying our nation!
In fact, when I first heard this story - that is: very recently - I was puzzled: why
should a major party in the Country that invented IT and is still at its leading edge,
ask an obscure firm of a crumbling, remote foreign State to do their IT security
research? I'm not saying that Ukraine is a s++thole Country, but... you get me.
Either they have very much to hide, or they fear some closeted rightwing geek that works
in any of the many leftist US technofirms. Or, CrowdStrike were involved from the
beginning of the story, from the Steele dossier perhaps?
The whole Crowdstrike fiasco has been around for years - plus became a solid CYA part
of the Mueller report too - just in case the Democrats needed to bury it later.
don't you get it? The DNC is completely infiltrated by Ukrainian graft. Even Joe Biden
was on the take. Why won't they run their IT? (there is no Research in IT here, just
office software)
If you want to sell and deliver State Secrets and Intel to our enemies, then you
(Obama, the Clintons, the DNC) simply make it easier for THEM to access. They have done
this for years, and this is why they had to fill the DOJ, the FBI and the State
Department with traitors and haters of America and American principles. Barack Hussein
Obama, the Clintons, their evil administrations and even two-faced RINOS like McCain,
Romney, and Jeff Sessions were actively involved. This is treason pure and simple, and
all of the above could be legitimately and justifiably hung or shot without recourse, and
rightly so!
I have known about "Crowdstrike" since Dec. 2017. Pres. Trump is just subtlety
introducing background on what will be the biggest story of treachery, subversion,
treason and corruption ever. QAnon that the fakenews tries to vilify as a LARP has been
dropping crumbs about "Crowdstrike", Perkins Coir, Fusion GPS, FVEY and so much more!
Crowdstrike mentioned 7x in the last 2 years. I can't urge people enough to actually
investigate the Q posts for themselves! You will be stunned at what you have been
missing. Q which says "future proves past" and "news will unlock" what I see in the media
now is old news to those of us following Q. Q told us that "Senate was the prize" "Senate
meant more" that the investigations started in the House would now move to the Senate and
all this that the Dems and Rinos have been trying to hide is going to be exposed.
Fakenews corporate media has litterally written hundreds of hit pieces against Q - me
knows "they doth protest to much" - Recent Q post told "Chairman Graham its time. Senate
was the target"
Keep up with the Q posts and Pres. Trump's tweets in once place:
https://qmap.pub/ - And if you are still having a hard time believing this is legit
Pres. Trump himself has confirmed Q posts by "Zero Delta" drops - if you think this is
fake - try and tweet within 1 minute of when Pres. Trump does BUT your tweet has to
anticipate his! YOU have to tweet first and HE has to follow you within 1 minute.
MATHEMATICAL IMPOSSIBILITY UNLESS you are in the same immediate space or communicating at
the time of the tweets! To all you doubters that think Q is just a by chance scam - NO
WAY. There have been MANY, MANY of these ZERO DELTA PROOFS over the last 2 years. The
most recent was Nov. 20th.
Crowdstrike in the dog who did not bark. The Democrat cone of silence they put on even
the mention of the word has been the most damning clue this is where the real action
is.
The assertion that a digital image of the computer can be transmitted quickly all
around the world is not necessarily correct in my experience as a cyber security analyst.
I'm not an upper echelon type, but I am aware that it can take up to weeks to transmit
such images depending on the hard disk, where it is, and the connections/network to your
device creating the image. The FBI should have physically taken the device since there
was a suspicion of wrong doing by Hillary Clinton. Had it been Donald Trump's computer I
do not doubt the FBI would either have imaged it on the spot or taken the device.
Last night I completely removed Catalina-Safari on my older Mac Book Air and
re-installed Mohave-Safari from my backup to the day before I installed Catalina
including the data and system just like it was before. It took around 5 hours and was
cabled and not on Wi-Fi and it was perfect and reset the clock, my old e-mails and the
newer ones as well. I can't believe being hooked into real broadband or fiber couldn't do
the same in a relatively short period of time, but still significantly longer than a
thumb drive or external hard drive.
One variable is how big your hard drive is. If it is a big drive at a remote location,
say somewhere in California to the Midwest, it can take weeks for a forensic backup. I
only say that because . . . well, I'm not allowed to say. But you get it.
The assertion is a figure of speech. Today's IT infrastructure companies sell the
service of maintaining clones in real-time in two or more locations for safety purposes.
VMware and other off-the-shelf products makes this kind of setup easy to deploy. Did
Crowdstrike offer that service and did the DNC buy it, that is the question? And, if so,
did Crowdstrike keep the image on their backups in Ukraine?
(Note: it is not obvious that such a setup would preserve the forensic data the FBI would
be looking for, but its a start).
Now after her deposition Aaron should interview Fiona Hill. I would like to see how she would lose all the feathers of her cocky
"I am Specialist in Russia" stance. She a regular MIC prostitute (intelligence agencies are a part of MIC) just like Luke Harding. And
probably both have the same handlers.
Brilliant interview !
Harding is little more than an intelligence asset himself and his idea of speaking to "Russians" is London circle of Russian emigrants
which are not objective source by any means.
He's peddling a his Russophobic line with no substantiation. In fact, the interview constitutes an overdue exposure of this pressitute.
Notable quotes:
"... He's little more than an intelligence asset himself if his idea of speaking to "Russians" is to go and speak to a bunch of people who most certainly have their own ties back to the western intelligence agencies. ..."
"... Also "well this is the kind of person Putin is" is a terrible argument. This isn't about either Putin or Trump really, its about the long history of US-Russia relations and all that has occurred. ..."
"... This interview is a wonderful illustration of everything that is horribly wrong with corporate media. I hope it goes viral. ..."
"... Very well put! Everything that is labeled as "conspiracy theory" when aimed towards the West, is "respectable journalism" when aimed at Russia. ..."
"... Navalny is a corrupt ex-politician just like his mentor that was caught red-handed taking a bribe from a German businessman "all on camera" at a restaurant. Most of corrupt politicians and businessmen that get caught by the Russian government always cry that they are politically repressed and the government is evil. ..."
"... Navalnys brother was the owner of a small transport company that Navalny helped secure contracts with government enterprises '' anywhere in the world that would be a conflict of interest" but that's not why he is in jail! His brother is in jail for swindling the postal service company for transportation costs. ..."
"... Aaron Mate is a brilliant interviewer. He keeps a calm demeanor, but does not let his guest get away with any untruths or non sequiturs. This one of the many reasons I love The Real News. I encourage anyone who appreciates solid journalism to donate to The Real News. ..."
"... GREAT follow up questions Aaron... Harding did not expect to get a real reporter... he obfuscates and diverts to other issues because he can not EVER provide any evidence... Going to Moscow will not tell you anything about whether or not the DNC server was hacked. ..."
"... Luke Harding is a complete and total idiot. He kept qualifying his arguments with "I've been to Moscow... I don't know if you know this, but I've been to Moscow..." and even at one point, "Some of my friends have been murdered." LOL, sure, whatever you say, Luke! Like you're so big time and such an all star journalist who isn't just trying to capitalize on the wild goose chase that is psychologically trapping leftists into delusions and wishful thinking. ..."
"... NSA monitors every communication over the internet. if the Russians hacked the DNC, there would be proof, and it would not take years to uncover. Look at the numbers: Clinton spent 2 billion, Russian "agents" spent 200k to "influence" the election. Great job Aaron for holding this opportunist's feet to the fire. Oh he's a story teller all right. You know a synonym of storyteller? LIAR!!!! ..."
"... Hes making so many factual wrong statements I don't know where to start here. ..."
"... His logic seems to be: Putin does things we don't like -> Trump getting elected is something we don't like -> Putin got Trump elected. ..."
That Harding tells Mate to meet Alexi Navalny, who is a far right nationalist and most certainly a tool of US intelligence
(something like Russia's Richard Spencer) was all I needed to hear to understand where Luke is coming from.
He's little more than an intelligence asset himself if his idea of speaking to "Russians" is to go and speak to a bunch
of people who most certainly have their own ties back to the western intelligence agencies. That's not how you're going to
get the truth about Russia. He's all appeals to authority - Steele's most of all, even name dropping Kerry. To finally land on
"oh well if you would read my whole book" is just getting to the silly season.
Also "well this is the kind of person Putin is" is a terrible argument. This isn't about either Putin or Trump really,
its about the long history of US-Russia relations and all that has occurred. Also, the ubiquitous throwing around of accusations
of the murder of journalists in Russia is a straw man argument, especially when it is just thrown in as some sort of moral shielding
for a shabby argument.
Few in the US know about these cases or what occurred, or of the many forces inside of Russia that might be involved in murdering
journalists just as in Mexico or Turkey. But these cases are not explained - blame is merely assigned to Putin himself. Of course
if someone here discusses he death of Michael Hastings, they're a "conspiracy theorist", but if the crime involves a Russian were
to assign the blame to Vladimir Putin and, no further explanation is required.
That is the video about fire arm legalization "cockroaches ", even if you are not Russian speaking it's pretty graphic to understand
the idea https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8ILxqIEEMg
And FYI - Central Asian workers do the low-wage jobs in Moscow, pretty like Mexicans or Puerto Ricans in US. Yet, that "future
president" is trying to gain some popularity by labeling and demonizing them. Sounds familiar a bit?
"definitelly ddissagree with that assertation about Alexei he's had nationalist views but he's definitely not far right and
calling him a tool of US intelligence is pretty bs this is the exact same assertation that the Russian state media says about
him."
I disagree that there is any evidence of Navalny being tool of US intelligence, but you are wrong for not recognizing
that Navalny is ultranationalist. His public statements are indefensible. He is a Russian ultra nationalist, far right and a racist.
Statements about cockroaches, worse than rats, bullets being too good etc - there is no way to misunderstand that.
Navalny is a corrupt ex-politician just like his mentor that was caught red-handed taking a bribe from a German businessman
"all on camera" at a restaurant. Most of corrupt politicians and businessmen that get caught by the Russian government always
cry that they are politically repressed and the government is evil.
Navalnys brother was the owner of a small transport company that Navalny helped secure contracts with government enterprises
'' anywhere in the world that would be a conflict of interest" but that's not why he is in jail! His brother is in jail for swindling
the postal service company for transportation costs.
@trdi I am a Russian. And I remember the early Navalny who made me sick to my stomach with absolutely disgusting, RACIST, anti-immigration
commentaries. The guy is basically a NEO-NAZI who has toned down his nationalist diatribes in the past 10 or so years. Has he
really reformed? I doubt it.
MrChibiluffy, Navalny became relatively popular in Russia precisely at that time, especially during the White Ribbon protests
in 2011/2012. I remember it very well myself.
I am Russian and I lived in Moscow at that time and he was the darling of the Russian opposition. He publicly defined his views
and established himself back then and hasn't altered his position to this day.
What's more important is that around 2015 or so he made an alliance with the far-right and specifically Diomushkin who is a
neo-nazi activist. I understand that people change their views, it's just that he hasn't.
Nikita Gusarov it still feels like the best chance for some form of populist opposition atm. Even though they just rejected
him he has a movement. Would you rather vote for Sobchak?
Lets not forget that one reason many voted for Trump was his rhetoric about improving the peace-threatening antagonism towards
Russia, especially in order to help resolve the situation in Syria. It's not like it was secret he was trying to hide. He only
moderated his views somewhat when the Democrat-engineered anti-Russian smear campaign took off and there was a concerted effort
to tie him to Russia.
Is it crime surround yourself with people that will help you fullfill your pledges?
Yep, when he talked about murdering journalists, I paused the video and told my girlfriend about the murder of Michael Hastings.
Oh an PS the USA puts journalists in Guantanamo. We play real baseball.
Aaron Mate is a brilliant interviewer. He keeps a calm demeanor, but does not let his guest get away with any untruths
or non sequiturs. This one of the many reasons I love The Real News. I encourage anyone who appreciates solid journalism to donate
to The Real News.
GREAT follow up questions Aaron... Harding did not expect to get a real reporter... he obfuscates and diverts to other
issues because he can not EVER provide any evidence... Going to Moscow will not tell you anything about whether or not the DNC
server was hacked.
Luke Harding is a complete and total idiot. He kept qualifying his arguments with "I've been to Moscow... I don't know
if you know this, but I've been to Moscow..." and even at one point, "Some of my friends have been murdered." LOL, sure, whatever
you say, Luke! Like you're so big time and such an all star journalist who isn't just trying to capitalize on the wild goose chase
that is psychologically trapping leftists into delusions and wishful thinking.
NSA monitors every communication over the internet. if the Russians hacked the DNC, there would be proof, and it would
not take years to uncover. Look at the numbers: Clinton spent 2 billion, Russian "agents" spent 200k to "influence" the election.
Great job Aaron for holding this opportunist's feet to the fire. Oh he's a story teller all right. You know a synonym of storyteller?
LIAR!!!!
Wow Aaron Matte NICE JOB. I'm only half through, I hope you don't make him cry. Do u make him cry? Did I hear this guy say
he's ultimately a storyteller? Lol.
It may seem like Trump has an alarming amount of associations with Russia, because he does.. that's how rich oligarchs work.
But it's all just SPECULATION still. Why publish a book on this without a smoking gun to prove anything? Collusion isn't even
a legal term, it's vague enough for people to make it mean whatever they want it to mean. People investigating and reporting on
this are operating under confirmation bias. Aaron, you're always appropriately critical and you're always asking the right questions.
You seem to be one of the few sane people left in media. Trump is a disgrace but there still is no smoking gun.
Omg a bunch of unproven conspiracy crap.. Hes making so many factual wrong statements I don't know where to start here..
How would anyone in the years before his candidacy have thought Trump would gain any political relevance. I mean even the pro
Hillary media thought until the end, their massive trump coverage would only help to get him NOT elected, but the opposite was
the case. This guy is a complete joke as are his theses. Actually reminding me of the guardian's so called report about Russian
Hacking in the Brexit referendum. Look here if you want to have a laugh
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2017/12/how-097-changed-the-fate-of-britain-not.html
Collusion Rejectionist! Ha Ha. Funniest interview ever. Well done Aaron. The Real News taking a stand for truth. So what's
in the book if there's no evidence? Guardian journalism? Stop questioning the official narrative, oh and have you heard of Estonia.
:)) ps that smiley face was not an admission of my working for the Kremlin.
Best interview ever. Aaron held him to his theories and asked what evidence or proof he had and he didn't come up with one
spec of evidence only hearsay and disputed theories. What a sad indictment this is on America. 1 year on a sensationalized story
and still nothing concrete. What a joke and proof of gullibility to anyone who believes this corporate media Narritive. I guess
at least they don't have to cover policies like the tax theft or net neutrality. This is why we need The Real news.
I'd rather have American business making business deals with Russia for things like hotels, rather than business deals with
the Pentagon to aim more weapons at the Russians. When haven't we been doing business with Russians? We might as well investigate
Cargill, Pepsi, McDonald's, John Deere, Ford, and most of our wheat farmers.
WSJ columnist today raises an old obscure issue today about the Clinton emails and Comey's
calculated exoneration of Clinton's culpability.
This story reopens the claim Comey had a report there was an email exchange between
Loretta Lynch and Clinton claiming Lynch promised her the DOJ would go easy on Clinton. Comey
claimed when confronted with this memo, Lynch merely smiled like the Cheshire cat and nothing
more was done.
This memo was later discredited as an alleged planted Russian hoax. Yet the memo story is
again put in lead position on the opinion pages of the WSJ this very morning. Why was that?
Not clear, but does the author think this alleged Lynch-Clinton campaign exchange will be
part of the upcoming Horowitz report?
(WSJ: 11/27/19 - Holman Jenkins, Jr. - "Who will turn over the 2016 rocks")
"... Authored by John Solomon via JohnSolomonReports.com, ..."
"... Daily intelligence reports from March through August 2019 on Ukraine's new president Volodymyr Zelensky and his relationship
with oligarchs and other key figures. ..."
"... State Department memos on U.S. funding given to the George Soros-backed group the Anti-Corruption Action Centre. ..."
"... The transcripts of Joe Biden's phone calls and meetings with Ukraine's president and prime minister from April 2014 to January
2017 when Hunter Biden served on the board of the natural gas company Burisma Holdings. ..."
"... All documents from an Office of Special Counsel whistleblower investigation into unusual energy transactions in Ukraine. ..."
"... All FBI, CIA, Treasury Department and State Department documents concerning possible wrongdoing at Burisma Holdings. ..."
"... All documents from 2015-16 concerning the decision by the State Department's foreign aid funding arm, USAID, to pursue a joint
project with Burisma Holdings. ..."
"... All cables, memos and documents showing State Department's dealings with Burisma Holding representatives in 2015 and 2016.
..."
"... All contacts that the Energy Department, Justice Department or State Department had with Vice President Joe Biden's office
concerning Burisma Holdings, Hunter Biden or business associate Devon Archer. ..."
"... All memos, emails and other documents concerning a possible U.S. embassy's request in spring 2019 to monitor the social media
activities and analytics of certain U.S. media personalities considered favorable to President Trump. ..."
"... All State, CIA, FBI and DOJ documents concerning efforts by individual Ukrainian government officials to exert influence on
the 2016 U.S. election, including an anti-Trump Op-Ed written in August 2016 by Ukraine's ambassador to Washington or efforts to publicize
allegations against Paul Manafort. ..."
"... All State, CIA, FBI and DOJ documents concerning contacts with a Democratic National Committee contractor named Alexandra Chalupa
and her dealings with the Ukrainian embassy in Washington or other Ukrainian figures. ..."
There are still wide swaths of documentation kept under wraps inside government agencies like the State Department that could
substantially alter the public's understanding of what has happened in the U.S.-Ukraine relationships now at the heart of the impeachment
probe.
As House Democrats mull whether to pursue impeachment articles and the GOP-led Senate braces for a possible trial, here are 12
tranches of government documents that could benefit the public if President Trump ordered them released, and the questions these
memos might answer.
Daily intelligence reports from March through August 2019 on Ukraine's new president Volodymyr Zelensky and his relationship
with oligarchs and other key figures. What was the CIA, FBI and U.S. Treasury Department telling Trump and other agencies
about Zelensky's ties to oligarchs like Igor Kolomoisky, the former head of Privatbank, and any concerns the International Monetary
Fund might have? Did any of these concerns reach the president's daily brief (PDB) or come up in the debate around resolving Ukraine
corruption and U.S. foreign aid?
CNBC ,
Reuters and
The Wall Street
Journal all have done recent reporting suggesting there might have been intelligence and IMF concerns that have not been fully
considered during the impeachment proceedings.
State Department memos detailing conversations between former U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch and former Ukrainian Prosecutor
General Yuriy Lutsenko . He says Yovanovitch raised the names of Ukrainians she did not want to see prosecuted during their first
meeting in 2016. She calls Lutsenko's account fiction. But State Department officials admit the U.S. embassy in Kiev did pressure
Ukrainian prosecutors not to target certain activists. Are there contemporaneous State Department memos detailing these conversations
and might they illuminate the dispute between Lutsenko and Yovanovitch that has become key to the impeachment hearings?
State Department memos on U.S. funding given to the George Soros-backed group the Anti-Corruption Action Centre.
There is documentary evidence that State provided funding to this group, that Ukrainian prosecutor sought to investigate whether
that aid was spent properly and that the U.S. embassy pressured Ukraine to stand down on that investigation. How much total did
State give to this group? Why was a federal agency giving money to a Soros-backed group? What did taxpayers get for their money
and were they any audits to ensure the money was spent properly? Were any of Ukrainian prosecutors' concerns legitimate?
The transcripts of Joe Biden's phone calls and meetings with Ukraine's president and prime minister from April 2014 to
January 2017 when Hunter Biden served on the board of the natural gas company Burisma Holdings. Did Burisma or Hunter Biden
ever come up in the calls? What did Biden say when he urged Ukraine to fire the prosecutor overseeing an investigation of Burisma?
Did any Ukrainian officials ever comment on Hunter Biden's role at the company? Was any official assessment done by U.S. agencies
to justify Biden's threat of withholding $1 billion in U.S. aid if Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin wasn't fired?
All documents from an Office of Special Counsel whistleblower investigation into unusual energy transactions in Ukraine.
The U.S. government's main whistleblower office
is investigating allegations from a U.S Energy Department worker of possible wrongdoing in U.S.-supported Ukrainian energy
business. Who benefited in the United States and Ukraine from this alleged activity? Did Burisma gain any benefits from the conduct
described by the whistleblower?
OSC has concluded there is a "substantial likelihood of wrongdoing" involved in these activities.
All FBI, CIA, Treasury Department and State Department documents concerning possible wrongdoing at Burisma Holdings.
What did the U.S. know about allegations of corruption at the Ukrainian gas company and the efforts by the Ukrainian prosecutors
to investigate? Did U.S., Latvian, Cypriot or European financial authorities flag any suspicious transactions involving Burisma
or Americans during the time that Hunter Biden served on its board? Were any U.S. agencies monitoring, assisting or blocking the
various investigations? When Ukraine reopened the Burisma investigations in March 2019, what did U.S. officials do?
All documents from 2015-16 concerning the decision by the State Department's foreign aid funding arm, USAID, to pursue
a joint project with Burisma Holdings. State official
George Kent has testified he stopped this joint project because of concerns about Burisma's corruption reputation. Did Hunter
Biden or his American business partner Devon Archer have anything to do with seeking the project? What caused its abrupt end?
What issues did Kent identify as concerns and who did he alert in the White House, State or other agencies?
All cables, memos and documents showing State Department's dealings with Burisma Holding representatives in 2015 and 2016.
We now know that Ukrainian authorities escalated their investigation of Burisma Holdings in February 2016 by raiding the home
of the company's owner, Mykola Zlochevsky. Soon after, Burisma's American representatives
were pressing the State Department to help end the corruption allegations against the gas firm, specifically invoking Hunter
Biden's name. What did State officials do after being pressured by Burisma? Did the U.S. embassy in Kiev assist Burisma's efforts
to settle the corruption case against it? Who else in the U.S. government was being kept apprised?
All contacts that the Energy Department, Justice Department or State Department had with Vice President Joe Biden's office
concerning Burisma Holdings, Hunter Biden or business associate Devon Archer. We now know that multiple State Department
officials believed Hunter Biden's association with Burisma created the appearance of a conflict of interest for the vice president,
and at least one official tried to contact Joe Biden's office to raise those concerns. What, if anything, did these Cabinet agencies
tell Joe Biden's office about the appearance concerns or the state of the various Ukrainian investigations into Burisma?
All memos, emails and other documents concerning a possible U.S. embassy's request in spring 2019 to monitor the social
media activities and analytics of certain U.S. media personalities considered favorable to President Trump. Did any such
monitoring occur? Was it requested by the American embassy in Kiev? Who ordered it? Why did it stop? Were any legal concerns raised?
All State, CIA, FBI and DOJ documents concerning efforts by individual Ukrainian government officials to exert influence
on the 2016 U.S. election, including an anti-Trump Op-Ed written in August 2016 by Ukraine's ambassador to Washington or efforts
to publicize allegations against Paul Manafort. What did U.S. officials know about these efforts in 2016, and how did they
react? What were these federal agencies' reactions to a Ukrainian court decision in December 2018 suggesting some Ukrainian officials
had improperly meddled in the 2016 election?
All State, CIA, FBI and DOJ documents concerning contacts with a Democratic National Committee contractor named Alexandra
Chalupa and her dealings with the Ukrainian embassy in Washington or other Ukrainian figures. Did anyone in these U.S. government
agencies interview or have contact with Chalupa during the time the Ukraine embassy in Washington says she was seeking dirt in
2016 on Trump and Manafort?
She is a dual national... So it is possible that she has contacts with MI6 and other UK government agencies. The
fact that she known Steele is really troubling.
"Fiona Hill is British-American so what if any connections are there back to UK Neocon think tanks and possible intelligence
links?"
Notable quotes:
"... "What is sure is that you will never see a Neocon in frontline combat. Neither they nor their kids will die no matter what they do. Or so they think. This is one of the main reasons why these Neocons are the single biggest danger for the United States and the American people: they despise the real American people and they won't hesitate to sacrifice them, in large numbers if needed (9/11 anybody?) ." ..."
"... One of the more notorious Neocons is Robert Kagan who is married to Victoria Nuland who was at the US State Department. Russia's Foreign Minster Sergey Lavrov, was well aware of what the Neocons were doing in Ukraine under Nuland, that when Sergey Lavrov entered a conference room where John Kerry and Victoria Nuland were, Lavrov curtly dismissed Nuland completely ignoring her . Fiona Hill and Robert Kagan along with other well known Neocons, work closely together at the Brookings Institute . ..."
"... The Neocons clearly do not like being referred to as Neocons, otherwise The Chicago Tribune wouldn't have ran the article with the title: " It's time to retire the 'neocon' label ." Adam Schiff is their front man in the senate who is " An Evil Bug-Eyed Fascist " leading this constant Trump-destroying Russia-hating as an " unbalanced hack ." ..."
"... Fiona Hill obtained her PhD under Richard Pipes who mentored her. Richard Pipes was the father of American historian and expert on American foreign policy and the Middle East, Daniel Pipes . If there ever was a hardcore ultra Neocon and Zionist it is Daniel Pipes despite being a trained scholar. ..."
"... We can see the ultra Neocon Daniel Pipes is not going to allow the US military to withdraw from Syria despite what President Trump announces ..."
"... When it first appeared in Washington in December 2013, the semi-thousand page biography of Vladimir Putin by two minor American think-tank researchers, Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy, was judged to be a valuable compilation of everything the US news media and other government-funded think-tanks had already reported, suspected or believed about the Russian president for the previous decade. No more, no less. In Russia, since no knowledgeable or politically significant Russian contributed evidence to the book, much less ..."
"... But had Hill not been appointed a few weeks ago as President Donald Trump's (lead image, right) director of Russia at the National Security Council (lead left), the principal foreign policy advisor serving the President, Hill's book, with its one thousand and one footnotes, and fifteen single-spaced pages of references, led by Hill and Gaddy themselves, The Economist, and extracts from the Voice of America, would have been as inconsequential as they have already proved to be for years. However, Trump's confidence in, and dependence on Hill's advice on Putin, and the campaign to impeach Trump himself for high crimes and misdemeanours in association with Putin, change the way the book must now be interpreted. ..."
"... The Daily Beast reported that Trump's aides wanted top NSC Russia expert Fiona Hill in the meeting between the presidents ..."
"What is sure is that you will never see a Neocon in frontline combat. Neither they nor their kids will die no matter what
they do. Or so they think. This is one of the main reasons why these Neocons are the single biggest danger for the United States
and the American people: they despise the real American people and they won't hesitate to sacrifice them, in large numbers if needed
(9/11 anybody?) ."
The question to be asking concerning Fiona Hill is, do her activities and policy decisions favor the Neocons? Fiona Hill is presently
on a leave of absence from the Brookings Institute and this think tank is a major bastion of Neocon policies and networking with
other Neocon-related think tanks like the Heritage Foundation. Contrary to the Heritage Foundation writing the Neocons are an "
endangered species
", don't believe it, the Heritage Foundation remains whoring for Neocons.
One of the more notorious Neocons is Robert Kagan who
is married to Victoria Nuland who was at the US State Department. Russia's Foreign Minster Sergey Lavrov, was well aware of what
the Neocons were doing in Ukraine under Nuland, that when Sergey Lavrov entered a conference room where John Kerry and Victoria Nuland
were, Lavrov curtly dismissed Nuland completely ignoring her
. Fiona Hill and Robert Kagan along with other well known Neocons,
work closely together at the Brookings Institute
.
The Neocons clearly do not like being referred to as Neocons, otherwise The Chicago Tribune wouldn't have ran the article
with the title: "
It's time to retire the 'neocon' label
." Adam Schiff is their front man in the senate who is "
An Evil Bug-Eyed
Fascist " leading this constant Trump-destroying Russia-hating as an "
unbalanced hack
."
Fiona Hill obtained her PhD under Richard Pipes who mentored her. Richard Pipes was the father of American historian and expert
on American foreign policy and the Middle East, Daniel Pipes
. If there ever was a hardcore ultra Neocon and Zionist it is Daniel Pipes despite being a trained scholar. It is Daniel Pipes,
Jared Kushner, David Friedman (US Ambassador to Israel), Ron Dermer (Israeli Ambassador to US) and Jason Dov Greenblatt, Trump special
aide who are
behind the
"peace deal" for Palestine . According to Daniel Pipes, there can only be
one victor
in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the loser isn't going to be Israel.
The Neocons are already fully aware of just how dysfunctional America's government is and have clearly stepped in to
take control under Trump
. Look who was brought in to go after Venezuela, the most treacherous Neocon provocateur in Washington,
Elliott Abrams. Donald Trump has been completely captured by the Neocons. And as far as
Steve Bannon getting kicked out of the White House
, the Neocons were behind his dismissal.
We can see the ultra Neocon Daniel Pipes is not going to allow the US military to withdraw from Syria despite what President Trump
announces. When the record is considered it is pretty much easily observed Trump is being undermined when necessary and provided
false intelligence when Neocon goals are revealed or compromised.
Fiona Hill is British-American so what if any connections are there back to UK Neocon think tanks and possible intelligence links?
Judging how much the British despise Russia, just look at the Skripal case as an example of what kinds of operations are deployed
against Moscow.
COLLUSION OR DIPLOMACY? A Trump 'Hawk' makes Surprise visit to Moscow
MOSCOW – The Russian media reported on the surprise trip of the adviser to President Donald Trump and Senior Director for European
and Russian Affairs of the National Security Council of the USA, Fiona Hill, to Moscow.
According to the Kommersant newspaper, a delegation from the White House led by Hill arrived in Moscow.
Neither the US nor the Russian authorities publicly reported on this visit.
During her trip, Hill met with representatives of the Security Council of Russia and the Russian Foreign Minister.
According to Kommersant, this is not Fiona Hill's first visit to Moscow as an adviser to the US president, but her previous visits
were not known either .
Prior to joining the Trump Administration, Hill was part of the board of the Brookings Institution in Washington . As author of
the biographical book 'Putin: an agent of the Kremlin' and former specialist of the National Intelligence Council, she has spoken
publicly about the Russian authorities.
During a meeting held in 2018 Hill with the Russian ambassador to the US, Anatoli Antonov, the senior official commented that
in the relations between Moscow and Washington "it is likely that everything will get worse before it improves."
Please go to
Fort
Russ to read the entire article.
Vladimir Putin Is Safe If Donald Trump's Expert on Russia Is Fiona Hill, But Is Trump?
Trump is getting bad advice on Russia from his National Security Council
by John Helmer | Tuesday, May 16, 2017
When it first appeared in Washington in December 2013, the semi-thousand page biography of Vladimir Putin by two minor American
think-tank researchers, Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy, was judged to be a valuable compilation of everything the US news media and
other government-funded think-tanks had already reported, suspected or believed about the Russian president for the previous decade.
No more, no less. In Russia, since no knowledgeable or politically significant Russian contributed evidence to the book, much less.
The subsequent publication of chapters on the putsch in Ukraine in February 2014, the accession of Crimea, Russian military intervention
in Syria in 2015, and the US war to overthrow Putin and fight Russia everywhere in cyberspace, added nothing more remarkable in Washington,
and nothing novel (non-fictional sense) in Moscow.
<
But had Hill not been
appointed a few weeks
ago as President Donald Trump's (lead image, right) director of Russia at the National Security Council (lead left), the principal
foreign policy advisor serving the President, Hill's book, with its one thousand and one footnotes, and fifteen single-spaced pages
of references, led by Hill and Gaddy themselves, The Economist, and extracts from the Voice of America, would have been as inconsequential
as they have already proved to be for years. However, Trump's confidence in, and dependence on Hill's advice on Putin, and the campaign
to impeach Trump himself for high crimes and misdemeanours in association with Putin, change the way the book must now be interpreted.
Does the evidence that Hill spent two formative years as a student at an institute in Moscow where she rubbed shoulders with Russians
bound for, and already bound to, the two state intelligence services, GRU (military intelligence) and SVR (foreign intelligence),
require a counter-intelligence assessment because of the risk which was unforeseen until now?
Hill's Moscow time is a detail of her resume which has yet to be identified in US media reporting and Congressional committee
vetting. But as a Russian source from the institute points out, " this is especially curious if we take into account the fact
that the Moscow State Linguistic University is a source of supply of employees for GRU and SVR. It was during the Soviet period,
and it remains the same nowadays ." As another Russian source familiar with the secret services points out, by the standard of
investigation the CIA, FBI and the US media now apply to Trump, his appointees, business associates, advisers, family, and friends,
does this detail require special scrutiny for Hill? " Her book ," claims the source, " is so full of false leads and dead-ends
, don't the Americans wonder if Hill is a sleeper agent, recruited long ago with the mission to keep the Americans as ignorant of
Russia as her book on Putin demonstrates?"
If Hill is a continuing Russian penetration risk at the White House , then is there also the risk that the potentially culpable
General Michael Flynn, National Security Adviser between January 20 and February 13, 2017, and his successor General H.R. McMaster,
have failed to protect Trump himself ?
In her book, Hill makes much of her Russian language and translation skills, including her own translation of Putin's campaign
biography of 2000. She doesn't reveal that she got her skills from two years of study at the Maurice Thorez Moscow State Pedagogical
Institute of Foreign Languages .
The Thorez Institute was the Soviet-period name, commencing in 1935 to honour the French Communist Party leader from 1930, who
spent the war years in the USSR before a brief term as Vice Premier of France. The institute operates at a converted 19 th
century mansion on Ostozhenka Street, in Moscow's old city. Thorez's name was removed in 1990, but it sticks to the school
as durably as the new acronym, MSLU. The institute itself says it cannot confirm the years Hill was a student there until it searches
its old paper archives, and that may take weeks.
Trump Was Worried HR McMaster or Fiona Hill Would Spy on His Conversation with Putin
July 7, 2017 |42 Comments |in Foreign Policy | by emptywheel
There were two infuriating stories earlier this week in preparation of today's meeting between President Trump and Vladimir Putin.
The Daily Beast reported
that Trump's
aides wanted top NSC Russia expert Fiona Hill in the meeting between the presidents .
According to two White House aides, senior Trump administration officials have pressed for
Hill -- the National
Security Council's senior director for Europe and Russia and the author of critical psychological biography of Putin -- to be
in the room during the president's highly anticipated meeting with Putin.
If Hill is there, these officials believe, it will help the
White House avoid the perception that the president
is too eager to cozy up to the Kremlin. The hope is to avoid a repeat of Trump's last meeting with top Russian officials, during
which he disclosed classified intelligence to two of the country's top diplomats -- and was pictured by Russian state media looking
particularly friendly with them.
But it used linguistic gymnastics to avoid stating who might decide to keep Hill out of the meeting. Then Axios
reported
that just Trump, Rex Tillerson, and a translator would represent the US.
There will likely only be six people in the room when President Trump meets President Putin on Friday at the sidelines of the
G-20 meeting in Hamburg, Germany.
According to an official familiar with the meeting's planning, it will be Trump, Putin, the Secretary of State Rex Tillerson,
the Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov, and translators.
But it, too, remained silent about who decided to keep the attendee list so small (though admittedly, that detail was a less crucial
part of their story).
Thankfully, the NYT has finally
revealed that
it was Trump, not Putin, who chose to limit attendees.
Only six people attended the meeting itself: Mr. Trump and his secretary of state, Rex W. Tillerson; Mr. Putin and his foreign
minister, Sergey V. Lavrov; and two interpreters.
The Russians had agitated to include several more staff members in the meeting, but Mr. Trump's team had insisted that the
meeting be kept small to avoid leaks and competing accounts later, according to an administration official with direct knowledge
of the carefully choreographed meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity around the matter.
And he did so specifically to avoid leaks about what would transpire.
This means that Trump (personally, given the NYT portrayal) decided to exclude his National Security Advisor and top Russian advisor.
And he did so, again, based on the NYT reporting, because he didn't want a competing account from coming out. He basically excluded
the key staffers who should have been in the meeting, in spite of the wishes of aides, to avoid having Russian critics describing
what really happened in his meeting with Putin.
Remember, this is not the first time Trump has excluded McMaster from a key meeting: he also left McMaster
sitting outside
his meeting with Bibi Netanyahu, after belatedly inviting Tillerson in.
"... The first two sentences in your opening statement constitute what many would consider as defamatory statement about Russia. You speak about "Russia's invasion of Ukraine", and the desire by "Vladimir Putin to rebuild a Russian empire". And then, by inference, you attribute the thirteen thousand deaths to "superior Russian forces". ..."
"... Congressman Schiff, was it not at the Maidan in February 2014 that the United States helped overthrow a democratic elected government in Ukraine and put in its place its own preferred candidate? Did not the US government, with the active participation of Victoria Nuland and others in the State Department participate in this 'coup'? Is the death of 13,000 Ukrainians entirely attributable to Russia, or perhaps in part to the lethal weapons that we have supplied to Ukraine to keep that country out of the Russian orbit? Do we not have any responsibility for what is happening in Eastern Ukraine? And is it Russia that is building an empire, with just a few bases in other countries, when America has more than 800 bases in over 70 countries? ..."
I was surprised to hear your opening statement today at the Impeachment hearings that just
commenced. You opened with the following words:
In 2014, Russia invaded a United States ally, Ukraine, to reverse that nation's embrace
of the West, and to fulfill Vladimir Putin's desire to rebuild a Russian empire. In the
following years, thirteen thousand Ukrainians died as they battled superior Russian
forces.
Congressman Schiff, if your impeachment hearing are intended to seek the truth, then why
open with statements that can be deemed by many as outright falsities?
The first two sentences in your opening statement constitute what many would consider as
defamatory statement about Russia. You speak about "Russia's invasion of Ukraine", and the
desire by "Vladimir Putin to rebuild a Russian empire". And then, by inference, you attribute
the thirteen thousand deaths to "superior Russian forces".
Congressman Schiff, was it not at the Maidan in February 2014 that the United States helped
overthrow a democratic elected government in Ukraine and put in its place its own preferred
candidate? Did not the US government, with the active participation of Victoria Nuland and
others in the State Department participate in this 'coup'? Is the death of 13,000 Ukrainians
entirely attributable to Russia, or perhaps in part to the lethal weapons that we have supplied
to Ukraine to keep that country out of the Russian orbit? Do we not have any responsibility for
what is happening in Eastern Ukraine? And is it Russia that is building an empire, with just a
few bases in other countries, when America has more than 800 bases in over 70 countries?
For you to open with the statement that you did was a sad commentary on our democracy, and
your own search for truth. The hope that I had of your Committee being able to investigate
successfully the truth through these impeachment hearings was lost in some respects.
As a US citizen who has just returned from Russia and seen conditions on the ground that are
very different from the political and media narrative that we see in this country, it saddened
me to see the start of the hearings today with an unwarranted attack and demonization of
Russia. I would urge you to reflect on positions such as these as the haarings go forward.
"... Peter Strzok was interviewed on 19 July 2017 by the FBI and, according to his affidavit, pretended that he was asked on the 24th of January 2017 to interview General Flynn. He implied this was a last minute request. But as noted in the preceding paragraph, which is based on an interview of Strzok's mistress, Lisa Page, a meeting took place the day before to orchestrate the ambush of General Flynn. ..."
"... What is truly remarkable is that Peter Strzok stated the following, which exonerates Flynn of the charges in the indictment cited above: Strzok and Pientka both had the impression at the time that Flynn was not lying or did not think he was lying. Flynn struck Strzok as "bright, but not profoundly sophisticated." ..."
"... In fact, as noted by Sidney Powell, "the FBI and DOJ wrote an internal memo dated January 30, 2017, exonerating Mr. Flynn of acting as an "agent of Russia;" and, they all knew there was no Logan Act violation." ..."
"... The real problem for the Government's fraudulent case against Flynn are the 302s. There should only be one 302. Not at least four versions. The FBI protocol is to enter the 302 into the FBI Sentinel system within five days of the interview. In other words, the original 302 should have been put on the record on the 29th of January. But that original 302 is MISSING. The prosecutors claim they cannot find it. ..."
"... But the prosecutors finally did provide the defense, after repeated requests, multiple copies of 302s. They dated as follows--10 February 2017, 11 February 2017. 14 February 2017 and 15 February 2017. WTF??? This alone is prima facie evidence that something crooked was afoot. ..."
"... The final 302--dated 15 February 2017--painted General Flynn in the worst possible light. The "facts" of this 302 are not supported by the notes taken by Agents Strzok and Pientka. The conclusion is simple--the FBI fabricated a case against General Flynn. We now wait to see if Judge Sullivan will acknowledge this crooked conduct and exonerate the good General. Justice demands it. ..."
"... Poor George Popadopoulos, also "bright, but not profoundly sophisticated.", also had lawyers who rolled over to the FBI. If you read George's book, "Deep State Target: How I Got Caught in the Crosshairs of the Plot to Bring Down President Trump", the methods used on Flynn sound familiar. ..."
"... If the evidence provided by the defence in the Flynn case is even only a partial example of the capabilities and proclivities of the FBI, then how many other poor schmucks have been convicted and jailed unjustly at the hands of this organisation? ..."
"... The answer, given the size of the organisation must be : "thousands". The remedy is obvious and compelling if you want to remain something like a first world democracy. ..."
"... So instead of Flynn burning the agency down, they did just the opposite and got to him first. Just like Sen Schumer warned Trump: don't take on the IC, because they have six ways against Sunday to take you down. ..."
"... Maybe Flynn' s alleged post-inauguration audit plans is what triggered Brennan to get Obama to secretly keep his eyes on Flynn - maybe that was the second tier secret access they wanted, not necessarily Trump himself? ..."
"... Survival in DC is existential - my own in-house observation during the Watergate years. ..."
"... However, IMO the far more telling issue of the depths of IC's Coup effort. Are the exploits of Halper, Mifsud, MI6-CIA link. Which began back in 2015. This gives the impression, Flynn was being targeted for career destruction. Solely as retaliation for his departure from the Obama Administration, coupled with Flynn's open opposition to policies of Obama-Brennan (Iran-Syria-Libya). This took place way before he agreed to the NSA post with President Trump. ..."
"... Why did FLynn not have the Secret Service Detail arrest Sztrok and company on the spot for violating US security CFRs by knowing such conversations took place and knowing the contents thereof with out appropriate security clearances?? ..."
"... Many things about Spygate have puzzled me. The response by Trump after becoming POTUS to all the machinations by Brennan, Clapper, Comey, Rosenstein, et al has been baffling. It is like he does not understand the powers of his office. And after he learned about the covert action action against his campaign and him, to then staff his administration with folks who were in cahoots with the putschists is frankly bizarre. ..."
"... ........ "CrowdStrike, the cyber-security company that is involved in all this over and over again, is a an American company founded by a Ukrainian, Dmitri Alperovitch, who is extremely anti-Russia and who delights in implicating Russia in the DNC hacking event that probably did not happen......" ..."
Sidney Powell, General Michael Flynn's magnificent lawyer, is in the process of destroying
the bogus case that Robert Mueller and his gang of legal thugs tried to sneak past appropriate
judicial review. To help you understand what she is doing we must first go back and review the
indictment of Flynn and then look at what Ms. Powell, aka Honey Badger, has forced the
prosecutors to admit.
Here are the nuts and bolts of the indictment
On or about January 24, 2017, defendant MICHAEL T. FLYNN did willfully and knowingly make
materially false, fictitious, and fraudulent statements and representations . . . to agents of
the Federal Bureau of Investigation that:
(i) On or about December 29, 2016, FLYNN did not ask the Government of Russia's Ambassador
to the United States ("Russian Ambassador") to refrain from escalating the situation in
response to sanctions that the United States had imposed against Russia that same day; and
FLYNN did not recall the Russian Ambassador subsequently telling him that Russia had chosen to
moderate its response to those sanctions as a result of his request.
(ii) On or about December 22, 2016, FLYNN did not ask the Russian Ambassador to delay the
vote on or defeat a pending United Nations Security Council resolution; and that the Russian
Ambassador subsequently never described_to FLYNN Russia's response to his request.
Let me make a couple of observations before we dig into the notes and the 302 that FBI
Agents Strzok and Pientka wrote up during and following their interview of Michael Flynn on
January 24, 2017. First, Michael Flynn did nothing wrong or inappropriate in speaking to
Russia's Ambassador Kislyak. He was doing his job as an incoming National Security Advisor to
President Trump. Second, not "recalling" what Ambassador Kislyak said (or did not say) on 22
December is not lying. Third, even if Flynn did ask the Russian Ambassador on the 29th of
December to "refrain from escalating the situation" in response to the U.S. sanctions imposed
by Barack Hussein Obama, there is nothing wrong with that. In fact, that is wise counsel
intended to defuse a situation.
Now, here is where the FBI, especially Agents Strzok and Pientka, are in so much trouble.
The day prior to the "interview" of General Flynn the FBI plotters met to discuss strategy.
According to Sidney Powell:
January 23, the day before the interview, the upper echelon of the FBI met to orchestrate it
all. Deputy Director McCabe, General Counsel James Baker, , Lisa Page, Strzok, David Bowdich,
Trish Anderson, and Jen Boone strategized to talk with Mr. Flynn in such a way as to keep from
alerting him from understanding that he was being interviewed in a criminal investigation of
which he was the target. (Ex.12). Knowing they had no basis for an investigation,6 they
deliberately decided not to notify DOJ for fear DOJ officials would follow protocol and notify
White House Counsel.
Peter Strzok was interviewed on 19 July 2017 by the FBI and, according to his affidavit,
pretended that he was asked on the 24th of January 2017 to interview General Flynn. He implied
this was a last minute request. But as noted in the preceding paragraph, which is based on an
interview of Strzok's mistress, Lisa Page, a meeting took place the day before to orchestrate
the ambush of General Flynn.
What is truly remarkable is that Peter Strzok stated the following, which exonerates Flynn
of the charges in the indictment cited above: Strzok and Pientka both had the impression at the time that Flynn was not lying or did not
think he was lying. Flynn struck Strzok as "bright, but not profoundly sophisticated."
The fact that the FBI Agents Strzok and Pientka did not to show General Flynn the transcript
of his calls to refresh his recollection, nor did they confront him directly if he did not
remember, exposes this plot as a contrived scenario to entrap Michael Flynn rather than a
legitimate, legally founded investigation.
In fact, as noted by Sidney Powell, "the FBI and DOJ wrote an internal memo dated January
30, 2017, exonerating Mr. Flynn of acting as an "agent of Russia;" and, they all knew there was
no Logan Act violation."
The notes taken by Agents Strzok and Pientka during their interview of Michael Flynn are
damning for the FBI. These notes are Exhibits 9 and 10 in the sur sureply filed by Sidney
Powell on 1 November 2019. (I wrote recently on the fact that the FBI/DOJ mislabeled the notes
from this interview--see here). Neither Strzok nor Pientka recorded any observation that Flynn
lied about his contacts with Kislyak. Neither wrote down anything supporting the indictment by
the Mueller crowd that "Flynn lied." To the contrary, Strzok swore under oath that he did not
believe Flynn was lying.
The real problem for the Government's fraudulent case against Flynn are the 302s. There
should only be one 302. Not at least four versions. The FBI protocol is to enter the 302 into
the FBI Sentinel system within five days of the interview. In other words, the original 302
should have been put on the record on the 29th of January. But that original 302 is MISSING.
The prosecutors claim they cannot find it.
But the prosecutors finally did provide the defense, after repeated requests, multiple
copies of 302s. They dated as follows--10 February 2017, 11 February 2017. 14 February 2017 and
15 February 2017. WTF??? This alone is prima facie evidence that something crooked was
afoot.
The final 302--dated 15 February 2017--painted General Flynn in the worst possible light.
The "facts" of this 302 are not supported by the notes taken by Agents Strzok and Pientka. The
conclusion is simple--the FBI fabricated a case against General Flynn. We now wait to see if
Judge Sullivan will acknowledge this crooked conduct and exonerate the good General. Justice
demands it.
These are not my facts. They are the facts based on documents submitted on the record to
Judge Sullivan. I find it shocking that no journalist has had the energy or interest to cover
this. Just one more reminder of the putrid state of journalism and investigative reporting. The
charges levied against General Flynn by the Mueller prosecutors are without foundation. That is
the stark conclusion facing any honest reader of the documents/exhibits uncovered by the Honey
Badger. This kind of conduct by the FBI is just one more proof to support Colonel Lang's wise
observation that this institution, along with the CIA, should be burned to the ground and new
institutions erected in their stead that are committed to upholding the Constitution and
preserving the rights of the individual.
General Flynn was the National Security Advisor to the President. Among his duties he would
be expected to talk with foreign officials, including Russians, perhaps especially Russians.
My question is what was the predicating evidence that gave rise to opening a criminal case
with Flynn as the subject at all. What was the substantive violation; and why was there a
need to convene a meeting of high level Bureau official to discuss an ambush interview. What
was there to talk about in this meeting? My suspicion is that they expected, or hoped, at the
outset to leverage Flynn against Trump which makes the scheme worse, much worse
Re: predicate - IIRC, this is where the work of the FBI/CIA "ratfucker" Stefan Halper was
instrumental, having propagated the bogus claim that scholar Svetlana Lokhova was a Russian
agent with whom Gen. Flynn was having a sexual relationship.
There was a simpler time when even the least accomplished FBI Agent would have known enough
to ask Mr Halper for the circumstantial details as to how he acquired the news that Flynn had
any relationship at all with Lokhova, let alone a sexual relationship, who told him, how did
he know, why was he telling him, when, etc. The same questions should have been resolved with
respect to Lokhova before entertaining a conclusion that she was a Russian Agent of some
sort. Finally, even if the allegation against Flynn had been true, which had not been
established, and the allegation against Lokhova had been true, which as far as I know had not
been established, the Agents should have laid those cards before Flynn from the outset as the
reason he was being interviewed. If during the course of the interview he became suspect of
having done something illegal, he should have been told what it was and given all his rights,
including the right to an attorney. If the Agents suspected he was lying in matters of such
significant import that he would be charged for lying, they should have been given a specific
warning that lying was a prosecutable offense. That would have been playing it down the
middle. Since none of this appears to have been done, the question is why not. The leading
suspicion is that the carefully considered intent was to take down Flynn by any means
necessary to advance another purpose.
There are two separate issues: The Russian-Flynn Spying connection was established in London
back in 2015. IMO using Halper as an echo-chamber for Brennan's collusion fabrications. LTG
Flynn at that time was being set-up, for a retaliatory career strike(TS Clearance issues, I
submit).
The Flynn Perjury case was made in Jan 17 in DC, by the Secret Society, Comey, McCabe,
Yates, Strozk and the unwitting, SA Joe Pientka (hopefully). This trap was drafted by Comey,
specifically to take advantage of the newly elected President's inexperienced Cabinet, the WH
in-chaos. Chaos reportedly generated by a well timed Leak to the media. Which suggested that
LTG Flynn had Lied to VP Pence.
This FBI leak, now had the WH in a tail spin. Given the collusion beliefs at that time, had
VP Pence admitted that acting NSA Flynn, did in fact speak with the Russian Kislyak re:
Sanctions. The media would've screamed, the call demonstrated Russian Collusion.
Since VP Pence stated, he did not know that NSA Flynn had discussed the Sanctions with
Kislyak. The media created the image that Flynn had lied to the VP...
This was the "Pretext" which Defense Council Powell referred to. This is the opportune
moment, at which Comey sprang and later bragged about. Stating publicly that he took
advantage of a inexperienced Trump oval office in turmoil. Claiming he decided "Screw IT"
I'll send two agents in to question Flynn.
Without going through FBI-WH protocols. Because Comey knew that protocols would alert the
entire WH Staff. Making the FBI's hopes for a Perjury Trap against NSA Flynn, impossible.
Accordingly, AAG Yates and McCabe then both set the stage, with calls to WH Counsel
McGahn. Where they threatened charges against Flynn under the nonexistent "1799" Logan Act.
As well as suggesting that Flynn was now vulnerable to Extortion by Russian agents. Since the
Russians knew he had lied to the VP.
As Powell points out, by 24JAN17, the date of the Flynn interview. The entire world, knew
Flynn had Lied. Making the extortion threat rather bogus. In fact reports stated, at that
time even WHC McGahn had asked either Yates or McCabe (don't recall which). Why would the FBI
give a damn, what the NSA had told the VP? However the Bureau persisted and they won out.
McGahn is reported to have told Flynn, that he should sit down with these two FBI
agents...
Once Flynn sat down and gave a statement. FWIW, I think Andy McCabe was going to find a
Flynn misstatement or create one. Sufficient to justify the 1001 charge. It appears as though
McCabe took the later option and simply Created one.
My question is does some combination of incompetence and bubblethink naivete explain how at
the outset they could have gone all in on the Brennan/Halper information or did they just
cynically exploit the opportunity that had been manufactured in order to take it to the next
level -Trump. Taking it to the next level appears to be what drove the Papadopolis case where
similar procedural abuses occurred.
Poor George Popadopoulos, also "bright, but not profoundly sophisticated.", also had lawyers
who rolled over to the FBI. If you read George's book, "Deep State Target: How I Got Caught in the Crosshairs of the
Plot to Bring Down President Trump", the methods used on Flynn sound familiar.
Since George only served two weeks, I wonder if it would be worth while for him to tackle
the FBI again?
PS When the FBI says you are not "sophisticated", does that mean that they view you as
easy to trick?
Papadopolis signed "confession" equally odd: string of disconnected facts topped off with
what appears almost to be an added "conclusion" allegedly based on these irrelevant string of
factual statements that damn him into eternity as well.
Was the conclusionary" confession" added later, or was it shoved in front of him to sign
as a unwitting last minute alteration to a previously agreed set of facts is pror statements
he had already agreed were true? Just me, but when I read this "confession some time ago, it
simply did not pass the smell test.
The signed "confession: basically appeared to be accusing Papadopolus and by extension the
Trump campaign of violating the Logan Act - violating Obama's exclusive right to conduct
foreign policy.
(A SCHIFF PARAPHRAse)
Yes I was in Russia
Yes, I ate pork chops for dinner
Yes. I endeavored to meet with Russian individuals
Etc - benign
Etc - benign
Confession - al of the above are true
Kicker: Final Statement I INTENTIONALLY MET WITH TOP LEVEL RUSSIAN GOVERNMENT AGENTS TO
DISCUSS US FOREIGN POLICY
Papadopoulos' "lies" rest on subjective interpretation. For instance, one of the "lies"
consist of a referral to Mifsud as "a nobody". A second "lie" is based on when he officially
joined the Trump campaign: George P says it was when he first went to Washington and attended
a campaign meeting, while the indictment says no it was when he participated in the phone
call which invited him on board (a difference of a couple of weeks). It is very very thin
gruel.
I wonder if SST is missing the bigger picture. If the evidence provided by the defence in the Flynn case is even only a partial example
of the capabilities and proclivities of the FBI, then how many other poor schmucks have been
convicted and jailed unjustly at the hands of this organisation?
The answer, given the size of the organisation must be : "thousands". The remedy is
obvious and compelling if you want to remain something like a first world democracy.
How many others have there been? The genesis of the USA v Flynn, was a CIA-FBI hybrid. An
international Co-Intel operation, aimed at targeting Donald Trump. As such "the Case" was
initiated from the top down, under the secrecy of a T/S Counter-Intelligence operation.
These are not the normal beginnings of a Criminal matter. Which originates with a filed
criminal Complaint, from the ground-up.
In short all of the checks and balances our federal statutes mandate. Steps where AUSA's,
Bureau ASAC's and District Judges must review and approve. Even before convening a GJ. Were
intentionally overridden or perjured by a select society of the highest officials inside DoJ.
As such there were no higher authorities nor any of the Higher Loyalty for Jim Comey to seek
his resolution from.
That is not the normal investigative process. This was a deliberate criminal act to target
an innocent man (actually several innocent men). As such IMO, the associated political
pressure, all of which was self-inflicted. Was the force which brought about the criminality
on the part of Comey, McCabe, et al.
So, FWIW, you don't see those levels of personal involvement in criminal investigations.
The classic, where the murder victim's brother is the town Sheriff. Hence you don't see cases
of innocent people being dragged off to the Dungeons. Certainly not intentionally and not in
the thousands, anyway.
On another blog, a commenter claimed Flynn was going to program audit the entire IC - money
spent and results obtained.
So instead of Flynn burning the agency down, they did just the opposite and got to him
first. Just like Sen Schumer warned Trump: don't take on the IC, because they have six ways
against Sunday to take you down.
Maybe Flynn' s alleged post-inauguration audit plans is what triggered Brennan to get
Obama to secretly keep his eyes on Flynn - maybe that was the second tier secret access they
wanted, not necessarily Trump himself?
Survival in DC is existential - my own in-house observation during the Watergate
years.
The reports I've read tell of a long and sorted history between LTG Flynn, John Brennan, DNI
Clapper and Obama. Some of the stories did remind me of the SST suggestion to, "Burn it all
down". The General also supported this idea that DoD, should be the lead agency in the IC and
CA. Since must of their modern day activity, does tend to be kinetic...
So LTG Flynn has made enemies in the Obama administration, CIA and DNI.
However, IMO the far more telling issue of the depths of IC's Coup effort. Are the
exploits of Halper, Mifsud, MI6-CIA link. Which began back in 2015. This gives the
impression, Flynn was being targeted for career destruction. Solely as retaliation for his
departure from the Obama Administration, coupled with Flynn's open opposition to policies of
Obama-Brennan (Iran-Syria-Libya). This took place way before he agreed to the NSA post with
President Trump.
Then there's also LTG Flynn's direct rebuttal of DDFBI Andy McCabe. Seems McCabe was
involved in a Bureau OPR dust-up over sexual harassment allegations. The female SA worked CT
and was an acquaintance of Gen Flynn's. Flynn then made a public statement of support for the
Agent. Which was reported to have angered Andy. Sydney Powell, suggests that McCabe was
overhead to have said words to the effect or, First we F--- Flynn, then we F--- Trump. During
one of his 7th floor, Secret Society meetings.
Again all of this happened, before General Flynn was Candidate Trump's NSA Designee. So
the Six ways to Sunday, warning does resonate re: LTG Flynn as well.
In my experience in the US armed forces.... having a top secret crypto clearance...
And later.... as a federal investigator...
I distinctly remember that conversations between the White house, particularly the
president and his national security chief are "top secret -- eyes only for the president"
So.....
Why did FLynn not have the Secret Service Detail arrest Sztrok and company on the spot for
violating US security CFRs by knowing such conversations took place and knowing the contents
thereof with out appropriate security clearances??
"Why did FLynn not have the Secret Service Detail arrest Sztrok and company on the spot for
violating US security CFRs.."
Many things about Spygate have puzzled me. The response by Trump after becoming POTUS to
all the machinations by Brennan, Clapper, Comey, Rosenstein, et al has been baffling. It is
like he does not understand the powers of his office. And after he learned about the covert
action action against his campaign and him, to then staff his administration with folks who
were in cahoots with the putschists is frankly bizarre.
Does anyone have any explanation for the actions or inactions of Trump & Flynn?
"Does anyone have any explanation for the actions or inactions of Trump & Flynn?"
I have no comment relative to Flynn, but, in regards to Trump, IMO, Trump is stupid.
First, a little background. I did vote for Trump. I did have an hatred for national
politics ever since the Cheney "presidency". In that period, I was a dissident with a very
minor voice. But, I did study, as best as I could, the Bush (Cheney) and the Obama
presidency. It was reasonably clear that president's. didn't count. IMO the real power lay
with: a handful of Senate leaders, the CIA, the bureaucracy, and the powerful families that
controlled the major multi-national corporations, such as, Exxon Mobile. The preceding
constituted a powerful oligarchy that controlled the U.S. A dictatorship of sorts.
Trump had two major objectives for his presidency: MAGA and "drain the swamp". I concurred
with both objectives. After six months of the Trump presidency, and after observing his
choice of appointments and his actions, I concluded that he was a high school baseball player
trying to compete with the major leagues. He didn't know what he was doing (and, still
doesn't).
At that time, I concluded that if Trump really wanted to install MAGA and "drain the
swamp" he should have concluded way before putting his hat in the ring, that the only way to
accomplish his objective was to foster a coup after becoming president. Prior to his
presidency, he would had to select a team which would be his appointees and develop a plan.
After becoming president, he would have to ignore Congress and put his people in place
including in the DOD. The team would stay in control regardless of Congress' views.
Of course, this is a dictatorship, but is this any less obnoxious to our current oligarchs
dictatorship.
You're not wrong in criticizing Trump's personnel choices and inaction. When he entered
office he was warned about the SES/SIS holdovers and the need to get his own people in place.
He ignored that advice and is suffering the consequences. Trump played a character on TV of
being a shrewd, tough judge of talent and ability. In reality, he is a bit of a goofball.
That said, his basic policy positions are solid with respect to putting America first,
enforcing immigration laws, and disengaging from the foreign adventurism that has defined US
foreign policy for the last 75 years.
My hope is that he now finally recognizes the threat.
I prefer thinking of Donald Trump as a World Wrestling Entertainment Hall of Famer as it fits
the context of what we are seeing more precise. Staged drama, personality pitted against
personality, all a great spectacle.
If it makes the denizens of DC fall on their fainting couches with the image all the
better.
Isn't Donald Trump suffering the same problem Jimmy Carter had that as a DC outsider he
isn't able hire talent and the establishment has made it clear that a position in the Trump
administration is a career killer?
Democrat's politics of personal destruction made it virtually impossible for Trump to hire or
appoint the requisite people for the task you described. RINO's wouldn't touch him and
Democrats were hell bent for revenge at any costs.
Amazing he did as well as he has done so far - considering his election was so toxic to
any possible insiders who could have offered the necessary experience to warn him where the
third rails were located.
Give him another four years and full control of GOP House and Senate back - this country
needs his energy and resoluteness to finally get the real work done. Patriots at every level
need to apply for appointed positions.
BTW: I was a rabid no-Trumper up to election night. Then Trump became my President. I have
not looked back.
Draining the Swamp can't be accomplished by hiring within the beltway or hiring any long-term
Democrat or Republican operative including members of Congress.
Trump should have recognized when he learned that his transition team was being spied on
that he had to hire people who believed in his agenda and had no ties to the Swamp.
By hiring folks like Haley, Pompeo, Bolton, Coats, Rosenstein, Wray, etc and not cleaning
house by firing entire swathes of the bureaucracy and then not using the powers of his office
to declassify but instead passing the buck on to Rosenstein, Sessions and Barr and only
tweeting witch hunt he has enabled the Swamp to run circles around him.
IMO, he is where he is because of his inability to put together a coherent team that
believes in his agenda and is willing to fight the Swamp with everything thy've got.
@joekovalski98: Pres. Trump came into office being very familiar with the intelligence
operation against him.
Enter Admiral (ret) Mike Rogers who travelled secretly without approval by Clapper to brief
the president of the spy operation.
Trump immediately move his administration to NJ.
Rogers and Flynn go back many years as Rogers was a protégé of Flynn. They
both extensively informed president Trump.
"Drain the swamp" is en-route carried out partially by our military and Flynn's former
DIA.
The stage was set and president Trump kept the left distracted via twitter while the
operation is underway between our military, white hats and their allies abroad.
Mifsud was arrested by the Italian intelligence agents 3 days ago and brought back to
Rome.
Trump is a long way from stupid - he has so far managed via twitter and his orthodox ways
for the deep state to unmask themselves. Hiring enemies at times is a way to confuse those
that try to destroy you.
Mifsud's arrest could be key to unraveling or should I say, the Unmasking of. Rather large
amounts of fraudulent intelligence that was laundered through the FISA Warrant Application
process.
The AG reportedly now has Mifsud's Cellphones (2), which coupled with Mifsud's interview
statements, if not his direct cooperation. Should reveal the CIA and/or SA Strozk, were
responsible for providing Mifsud with the false Intelligence. Which he then fed into their
Warrant Apps, through the person of George Papadopoulos.
Which in turn, could establish that Mifsud was never the alleged Russian Agent linked to
Putin. But rather a western intelligence asset, linked to Brennan. Thus destroying the
obvious Defensive strategy of Brennan, Comey and McCabe. Specifically the vaunted, "Hey who
knew the intelligence was bad? I was just doing my JOB!
I believe it was because the FBI was intentionally lying about their authority to monitor the
Flynn-Kysliak conversation. Claiming they were not monitoring the WH, rather they were
monitoring the Russian Ambassador and LTG Flynn was merely, Caught-up in that conversation.
Which at the time, was a good-enough-story. But recent disclosures seem to prove the 2 Agents
along with Comey, McCabe as well as AAG Sally Yates. All knew at the time of their "Pretext"
was establishing a Perjury Trap for the new NSA.
What set Brennan's hair on fire that instigated Brennan's secret memo to Obama who in turn
created and authorized this multi-nation, IC secret surveillance and entrapment operation?
When will we learn why Samantha Powers demanded hundreds of FISA unmasking requests during
the final hours of the Obama administration, after the election but before before the
inauguration of Donald J Trump as the 45th President of the United States of America.
Why have Joseph Mifsud and Crowdstrike, yet again, disappeared from media interest.
Why oh why, certain persons disappear from media interest? Why for example, did Ghislaine
Maxwell disappear from media? Is she not involved in lawsuits? Do courts not know where she
is now? The all-knowing Wikipedia English - does not know (as of today, I checked). The
answer to all these troubling questions is in the comments to the Colonels piece on John
Hannah. Am I becoming paranoid perhaps.?
If the media continues endlessly about the Ukraine phone call, the quid pro quo yet fails to
mention Crowdstrike "favor" in the same article, something is fishy. The phone call story did
not drop out of sight; just a very salient detail. In fact the substance of the phone call is
the story- and what Democrats are calling grounds for impeachment. Yet NO mention of the
Crowdstrike favor. I find this odd. Don't you?
Under the caption, "Nobody does it better" this explanation from Defense Counsel Powell's
04NOV19 Filing, pg 3 para 2
"The government has known since prior to January 24, 2017, that it intended to target Mr.
Flynn for federal prosecution. That is why the entire investigation" of him was created at
least as early as summer 2016 and pursued despite the absence of a legitimate basis. That is
why Peter Strzok texted Lisa Page on January 10, 2017: "Sitting with Bill watching CNN. A TON
more out. .
We're discussing whether, now that this is out, we can use it as a pretext to go interview
some people." 3 The word "pretext" is key. Thinking he was communicating secretly only with
his paramour before their illicit relationship and extreme bias were revealed to the world,
Strzok let the cat out of the bag as to what the FBI was up to. Try as he might, Mr. Van Grack cannot stuff that cat back into that bag.4
Former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe as much as admitted the FBI's intent to set up Mr.
Flynn on a criminal false statement charge from the get-go. On Dec. 19, 2017, McCabe told the
House Intelligence Committee in sworn testimony: "[T]he conundrum that we faced on their
return from the interview is that although [the agents] didn't detect deception in the
statements that he made in the interview . . . the statements were inconsistent with our
understanding of the conversation that he had actually had with the ambassador."
McCabe proceeded to admit to the Committee that "the two people who interviewed [Flynn]
didn't think he was lying, [which] was not [a] great beginning of a false statement case."
Ex. 1.
_____________
What's the saying? "Not much ambiguity there?"
Finally, on Nov 9, 2029 American Thinker in an article about Nancy Pelosi attempts at damage
control, someone in the media actually mentions Crowdstrike and the alleged " DNChacking"
........ "CrowdStrike, the cyber-security company that is involved in all this over and
over again, is a an American company founded by a Ukrainian, Dmitri Alperovitch, who is
extremely anti-Russia and who delights in implicating Russia in the DNC hacking event that
probably did not happen......"
"... The Clinton camp was hardly absent from social media during the 2016 race. The barely-legal activities of Clintonite David Brock were previously reported by this author to have included $2 million in funding for the creation of an online " troll army " under the name Shareblue. The LA Times described the project as meant to "to appear to be coming organically from people and their social media networks in a groundswell of activism, when in fact it is highly paid and highly tactical." In other words, the effort attempted to create a false sense of consensus in support for the Clinton campaign. ..."
"... In terms of interference in the actual election process, the New York City Board of Elections was shown to have purged over one hundred thousand Democratic voters in Brooklyn from the rolls before the 2016 primary, a move that the Department of Justice found broke federal law . Despite this, no prosecution for the breach was ever attempted. ..."
"... In 2017, the Observer reported that the DNC's defense counsel argued against claims that the party defrauded Sanders' supporters by favoring Clinton, reasoning that Sanders' supporters knew the process was rigged. Again: instead of arguing that the primary was neutral and unbiased in accordance with its charter, the DNC's lawyers argued that it was the party's right to select candidates. ..."
"... The DNC defense counsel's argument throughout the course of the DNC fraud lawsuit doubled down repeatedly in defense of the party's right to favor one candidate over another, at one point actually claiming that such favoritism was protected by the First Amendment . ..."
"... The DNC's shameless defense of its own rigging disemboweled the most fundamental organs of the U.S. body politic. This no indication that the DNC will not resort to the same tactics in the 2020 primary race, ..."
"... f Debbie Wasserman Schultz's role as disgraced chairwoman of the DNC and her forced 2016 resignation wasn't enough, serious interference was also alleged in the wake of two contests between Wasserman Schultz and professor Tim Canova in Florida's 23rd congressional district. Canova and Wasserman Schultz first faced off in a 2016 Democratic primary race, followed by a 2018 general congressional election in which Canova ran as an independent. ..."
"... Debacles followed both contests, including improper vote counts, illegal ballot destruction , improper transportation of ballots, and generally shameless displays of cronyism. After the controversial results of the initial primary race against Wasserman Schultz, Canova sought to have ballots checked for irregularities, as the Sun-Sentinel reported at the time: ..."
"... Ultimately, Canova was granted a summary judgment against Snipes, finding that she had committed what amounted to multiple felonies. Nonetheless, Snipes was not prosecuted and remained elections supervisor through to the 2018 midterms. ..."
"... Hillary Clinton's recent comments to the effect that Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard is being "groomed" by Russia, and that the former Green Party Presidential candidate Dr. Jill Stein is a "Russian asset", were soon echoed by DNC-friendly pundits. These sentiments externalize what Gabbard called the "rot" in the Democratic party outward onto domestic critics and a nation across the planet. ..."
"... Newsweek provided a particularly glaring example of this phenomenon in a recent op-ed penned by columnist Naveed Jamali, a former FBI double agent whose book capitalizes on Russiagate. In an op-ed titled: " Hillary Clinton Is Right. Tulsi Gabbard Is A Perfect Russian Asset – And Would Be A Perfect Republican Agent," ..."
Establishment Democrats and those who amplify them continue to project
blame for the public's doubt in the U.S. election process onto outside influence, despite the clear history of the party's subversion
of election integrity. The total inability of the Democratic Party establishment's willingness to address even one of these critical
failures does not give reason to hope that the nomination process in 2020 will be any less pre-ordained.
The Democratic Party's bias against Sen. Bernie Sanders during the 2016 presidential nomination, followed by the DNC defense counsel
doubling down on its right to rig the race during the
fraud lawsuit brought
against the DNC , as well as the irregularities in the races between former DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Tim Canova,
indicate a fatal breakdown of the U.S. democratic process spearheaded by the Democratic Party establishment. Influences transcending
the DNC add to concerns regarding the integrity of the democratic process that have nothing to do with Russia, but which will also
likely impact outcomes in 2020.
The content of the DNC and
Podesta emails published by WikiLeaks demonstrated that the DNC
acted in favor of Hillary Clinton in the lead up to the 2016 Democratic primary. The emails also revealed corporate media reporters
acting as surrogates of the DNC and its pro-Clinton agenda, going so far as
to promote Donald Trump during the GOP primary process as a preferred " pied-piper
candidate ." One cannot assume that similar evidence will be presented to the public in 2020, making it more important than ever
to take stock of the unique lessons handed down to us by the 2016 race.
Social Media Meddling
Election meddling via social media did take place in 2016, though in a different guise and for a different cause from that which
are best remembered. Twitter would eventually admit to actively suppressing
hashtags referencing the DNC and Podesta emails in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election. Additional
reports indicated that tech giant Google also showed measurable "pro-Hillary
Clinton bias" in search results during 2016, resulting in the alleged swaying of between 2 and 10 millions voters in favor of Clinton.
On the Republican side, a recent episode of CNLive! featured discussion
of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which undecided voters were micro-targeted with tailored advertising narrowed with the combined
use of big data and artificial intelligence known collectively as "dark strategy." CNLive! Executive Producer Cathy Vogan noted that
SCL, Cambridge Analytica's parent company, provides data, analytics and strategy to governments and military organizations "worldwide,"
specializing in behavior modification. Though Cambridge Analytica shut down in 2018, related companies remain.
The Clinton camp was hardly absent from social media during the 2016 race. The
barely-legal activities of Clintonite David Brock
were previously reported by this author to have included $2 million in funding
for the creation of an online " troll army " under the name Shareblue. The
LA Times described the project as meant to "to appear
to be coming organically from people and their social media networks in a groundswell of activism, when in fact it is highly paid
and highly tactical." In other words, the effort attempted to create a false sense of consensus in support for the Clinton campaign.
In terms of interference in the actual election process, the New York City Board of Elections was shown to have
purged over one hundred thousand Democratic voters in Brooklyn from the rolls
before the 2016 primary, a move that the Department of Justice found
broke federal law . Despite this, no prosecution
for the breach was ever attempted.
Though the purge was not explicitly found to have benefitted Clinton, the admission falls in line with allegations across the
country that the Democratic primary was interfered with to the benefit of the former secretary of state. These claims were further
bolstered by reports indicating that voting results from the 2016 Democratic
primary showed evidence of fraud.
DNC Fraud Lawsuit
The proceedings of the DNC fraud lawsuit provide the most damning evidence of the failure of the U.S. election process, especially
within the Democratic Party. DNC defense lawyers argued in open court for the party's
right to appoint candidates at its own discretion, while simultaneously denying
any "fiduciary duty" to represent the voters who donated to the Democratic Party under the impression that the DNC would act impartially
towards the candidates involved.
In 2017, the Observer reported that the DNC's defense counsel argued
against claims that the party defrauded Sanders' supporters by favoring Clinton, reasoning that Sanders' supporters knew the process
was rigged. Again: instead of arguing that the primary was neutral and unbiased in accordance with its charter, the DNC's lawyers
argued that it was the party's right to select candidates.
The Observer noted the sentiments of Jared Beck, the attorney representing the plaintiffs of the lawsuit:
"People paid money in reliance on the understanding that the primary elections for the Democratic nominee -- nominating process
in 2016 were fair and impartial, and that's not just a bedrock assumption that we would assume just by virtue of the fact that
we live in a democracy, and we assume that our elections are run in a fair and impartial manner. But that's what the Democratic
National Committee's own charter says. It says it in black and white."
The DNC defense counsel's argument throughout the course of the DNC fraud lawsuit doubled down repeatedly in defense of the party's
right to favor one candidate over another, at one point actually claiming that such favoritism was
protected by the First Amendment . The DNC's lawyers wrote:
"To recognize any of the causes of action that Plaintiffs allege would run directly contrary to long-standing Supreme Court
precedent recognizing the central and critical First Amendment rights enjoyed by political parties, especially when it comes to
selecting the party's nominee for public office ." [Emphasis added]
The DNC's shameless defense of its own rigging disemboweled the most fundamental organs of the U.S. body politic. This no indication
that the DNC will not resort to the same tactics in the 2020 primary race,
Tim Canova's Allegations
If Debbie Wasserman Schultz's role as disgraced chairwoman of the DNC and her forced 2016 resignation wasn't enough, serious interference
was also alleged in the wake of two contests between Wasserman Schultz and professor Tim Canova in Florida's 23rd congressional district.
Canova and Wasserman Schultz first faced off in a 2016 Democratic primary race, followed by a 2018 general congressional election
in which Canova ran as an independent.
Debacles followed both contests, including improper vote counts, illegal
ballot destruction , improper
transportation of ballots, and generally
shameless displays of cronyism. After the controversial
results of the initial primary race against Wasserman Schultz, Canova sought to have ballots checked for irregularities, as the
Sun-Sentinel reported at the time:
"[Canova] sought to look at the paper ballots in March 2017 and took Elections Supervisor Brenda Snipes to court three months
later when her office hadn't fulfilled his request. Snipes approved the destruction of the ballots in September, signing a certification
that said no court cases involving the ballots were pending."
Ultimately, Canova was granted a summary judgment against Snipes, finding that she had committed what amounted to multiple felonies.
Nonetheless, Snipes was not prosecuted and remained elections supervisor through to the 2018 midterms.
Republicans appear no more motivated to protect voting integrity than the Democrats, with
The Nation reporting that the GOP-controlled Senate
blocked a bill this week that would have "mandated paper-ballot backups in case of election machine malfunctions."
Study of Corporate Power
A 2014
study published by Princeton University found that corporate power had usurped the voting rights of the public: "Economic elites
and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average
citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence."
In reviewing this sordid history, we see that the Democratic Party establishment has done everything in its power to disrespect
voters and outright overrule them in the democratic primary process, defending their right to do so in the DNC fraud lawsuit. We've
noted that interests transcending the DNC also represent escalating threats to election integrity as demonstrated in 2016.
Despite this, establishment Democrats and those who echo their views in the legacy press continue to deflect from their own wrongdoing
and real threats to the election process by suggesting that mere discussion of it represents a campaign by Russia to attempt to malign
the perception of the legitimacy of the U.S. democratic process.
Hillary Clinton's recent comments to the effect that Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard is being "groomed" by Russia, and that the former
Green Party Presidential candidate Dr. Jill Stein is a "Russian asset", were soon echoed by DNC-friendly pundits. These sentiments
externalize what Gabbard called the "rot"
in the Democratic party outward onto domestic critics and a nation across the planet.
Newsweek provided a particularly glaring example of this phenomenon in a
recent op-ed penned by columnist Naveed Jamali, a former FBI double agent whose book capitalizes on Russiagate. In an op-ed titled:
" Hillary Clinton Is Right. Tulsi Gabbard Is A Perfect Russian Asset – And Would Be A Perfect Republican Agent," Jamali
argued :
"Moscow will use its skillful propaganda machine to prop up Gabbard and use her as a tool to delegitimize the democratic process.
" [Emphasis added]
Jamali surmises that Russia intends to "attack" our democracy by undermining the domestic perception of its legitimacy. This thesis
is repeated later in the piece when Jamali opines : "They want to see a retreat
of American influence. What better way to accomplish that than to attack our democracy by casting doubt on the legitimacy of our
elections." [Emphasis added]
The only thing worth protecting, according to Jamali and those who amplify his work (including former Clinton aide and establishment
Democrat Neera Tanden), is the perception of the democratic process, not the actual functioning vitality of it. Such deflective tactics
ensure that Russia will continue to be used as a convenient international pretext for
silencing domestic dissent as we move into 2020.
Given all this, how can one expect the outcome of a 2020 Democratic Primary -- or even the general election – to be any fairer
or transparent than 2016?
* * *
Elizabeth Vos is a freelance reporter, co-host of CN Live! and regular contributor to Consortium News. If you value this
original article, please consider
making
a donation to Consortium News so we can bring you more stories like this one.
"... Washington's basic purpose in deploying the US forces in oil and natural gas fields of Deir al-Zor governorate is to deny the valuable source of income to its other main rival in the region, Damascus. ..."
Before the evacuation of 1,000 American troops from northern
Syria to western Iraq, the Pentagon had 2,000 US forces in Syria.
After the drawdown of US
troops at Erdogan's insistence in order for Ankara to mount a ground offensive in northern Syria,
the US has still deployed 1,000 troops, mainly in oil-rich eastern Deir al-Zor province and
at al-Tanf military base.
Al-Tanf military base is strategically located in southeastern Syria on the border between Syria,
Iraq and Jordan, and it straddles on a critically important Damascus-Baghdad highway, which
serves as a lifeline for Damascus.
Washington has illegally occupied 55-kilometer area around
al-Tanf since 2016, and several hundred US Marines have trained several Syrian militant groups there.
It's worth noting that rather than fighting the Islamic State, the purpose of continued presence
of the US forces at al-Tanf military base is to address Israel's concerns regarding the expansion of
Iran's influence in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.
Regarding the oil- and natural gas-rich Deir al-Zor governorate, it's worth pointing out
that Syria used to produce modest quantities of oil for domestic needs before the war – roughly 400,000
barrels per day, which isn't much compared to tens of millions barrels daily oil production in the
Gulf states.
Although Donald Trump crowed in a characteristic blunt manner in a tweet after the withdrawal of
1,000 American troops from northern Syria that Washington had deployed forces in eastern Syria where
there was oil,
the purpose of exercising control over Syria's oil is neither to smuggle oil
out of Syria nor to deny the valuable source of revenue to the Islamic State.
There is no denying the fact that the remnants of the Islamic State militants are still found in
Syria and Iraq but its emirate has been completely dismantled in the region and its leadership is on
the run. So much so that the fugitive caliph of the terrorist organization was killed in the bastion
of a rival jihadist outfit, al-Nusra Front in Idlib, hundreds of kilometers away from the Islamic State
strongholds in eastern Syria.
Much like the "scorched earth" battle strategy of medieval warlords – as in the case of the Islamic
State which early in the year burned crops of local farmers while retreating from its former strongholds
in eastern Syria –
Washington's basic purpose in deploying the US forces in oil and
natural gas fields of Deir al-Zor governorate is to deny the valuable source of income to its other
main rival in the region, Damascus.
After the devastation caused by eight years of proxy war, the Syrian government is in dire need
of tens of billions dollars international assistance to rebuild the country. Not only is Washington
hampering efforts to provide international aid to the hapless country, it is in fact squatting over
Syria's own resources with the help of its only ally in the region, the Kurds.
Although Donald Trump claimed credit for expropriating Syria's oil wealth, it bears mentioning
that "scorched earth" policy is not a business strategy, it is the institutional logic of the deep
state.
President Trump is known to be a businessman and at least ostensibly follows a non-interventionist
ideology; being a novice in the craft of international diplomacy, however, he has time and again been
misled by the Pentagon and Washington's national security establishment.
Regarding Washington's interest in propping up the Gulf's autocrats and fighting their wars in regional
conflicts, it bears mentioning that in April 2016, the Saudi foreign minister
threatened
that the Saudi kingdom would sell up to $750 billion in treasury securities and other
assets if the US Congress passed a bill that would allow Americans to sue the Saudi government in the
United States courts for its role in the September 11, 2001 terror attack – though the bill was eventually
passed, Saudi authorities have not been held accountable; even though 15 out of 19 9/11 hijackers were
Saudi nationals.
Moreover, $750 billion is only the Saudi investment in the United States, if we add its investment
in Western Europe and the investments of UAE, Kuwait and Qatar in the Western economies, the sum total
would amount to trillions of dollars of Gulf's investments in North America and Western Europe.
Furthermore, in order to bring home the significance of the Persian Gulf's oil in the energy-starved
industrialized world, here are a few stats from the OPEC data:
Saudi Arabia has the world's
largest proven crude oil reserves of 265 billion barrels and its daily oil production exceeds 10 million
barrels; Iran and Iraq, each, has 150 billion barrels reserves and has the capacity to produce 5 million
barrels per day, each; while UAE and Kuwait, each, has 100 billion barrels reserves and produces 3
million barrels per day, each; thus, all the littoral states of the Persian Gulf, together, hold 788
billion barrels, more than half of world's 1477 billion barrels of proven oil reserves.
No wonder then, 36,000 United States troops have currently been deployed in their numerous military
bases and aircraft carriers in the oil-rich Persian Gulf in accordance with the Carter Doctrine of
1980, which states: "Let our position be absolutely clear: an attempt by any outside force to gain
control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United
States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military
force."
Additionally, regarding the Western defense production industry's sales of arms to the Gulf Arab
States,
a report
authored
by William Hartung of the US-based Center for International Policy found that the Obama administration
had offered Saudi Arabia more than $115 billion in weapons, military equipment and training during
its eight-year tenure.
Similarly, the top items in Trump's agenda for his maiden visit to Saudi Arabia in May 2017 were:
firstly, he threw his weight behind the idea of the Saudi-led "Arab NATO" to counter Iran's influence
in the region; and secondly, he announced an unprecedented arms package for Saudi Arabia. The package
included between $98 billion and $128 billion in arms sales.
Therefore, keeping the economic dependence of the Western countries on the Gulf Arab States in mind,
during the times of global recession when most of manufacturing has been outsourced to China, it is
not surprising that when the late King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia decided to provide training and arms
to the Islamic jihadists in the border regions of Turkey and Jordan against the government of Bashar
al-Assad in Syria, the Obama administration was left with no other choice but to toe the destructive
policy of its regional Middle Eastern allies, despite the sectarian nature of the proxy war and its
attendant consequences of breeding a new generation of Islamic jihadists who would become a long-term
security risk not only to the Middle East but to the Western countries, as well.
Similarly, when King Abdullah's successor King Salman decided, on the whim of the Crown Prince Mohammad
bin Salman, to invade Yemen in March 2015, once again the Obama administration had to yield to the
dictates of Saudi Arabia and UAE by fully coordinating the Gulf-led military campaign in Yemen not
only by providing intelligence, planning and logistical support but also by selling billions of dollars'
worth of arms and ammunition to the Gulf Arab States during the conflict.
In this reciprocal relationship, the US provides security to the ruling families of the Gulf Arab
states by providing weapons and troops; and in return, the Gulf's petro-sheikhs contribute substantial
investments to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars to the Western economies.
Regarding the Pax Americana which is the reality of the contemporary neocolonial order,
according to a January 2017
infographic
by the New York Times, 210,000 US military personnel were stationed all over the world,
including 79,000 in Europe, 45,000 in Japan, 28,500 in South Korea and 36,000 in the Middle East.
Although Donald Trump keeps complaining that NATO must share the cost of deployment of US troops,
particularly in Europe where 47,000 American troops are stationed in Germany since the end of the Second
World War, 15,000 in Italy and 8,000 in the United Kingdom, fact of the matter is that the cost is
already shared between Washington and host countries.
Roughly, European countries pay one-third of the cost for maintaining US military bases in Europe
whereas Washington chips in the remaining two-third. In the Far Eastern countries, 75% of the cost
for the deployment of American troops is shared by Japan and the remaining 25% by Washington, and in
South Korea, 40% cost is shared by the host country and the US contributes the remaining 60%.
Whereas the oil-rich Gulf Cooperation Countries (GCC) – Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait and Qatar – pay
two-third of the cost for maintaining 36,000 US troops in the Persian Gulf where more than half of
world's proven oil reserves are located and Washington contributes the remaining one-third.
* * *
Nauman Sadiq is an Islamabad-based attorney, columnist and geopolitical analyst focused on the
politics of Af-Pak and Middle East regions, neocolonialism and petro-imperialism.
I am always amazed (and amused) at
how much smarter "journalists" are
than POTUS. If ONLY Mr. Trump would
read more and listen to those who
OBVIOUSLY are sooo much smarter!!!!
Maybe then he wouldn't be cowed and
bullied by Erdogan, Xi, Jung-on,
Trudeau (OK so maybe that one was
too far fetched) to name a few.
Please note the sarcasm. Do I really
need to go in to the success after
success Mr. Trump's foreign policy
has enjoyed? Come on Man.
What a load of BOLOCKS...The ONLY, I
mean The Real and True Reason for
American Armored presence is one
thing,,,,,,,Ready for IT ? ? ? To
Steal as much OIL as Possible, AND
convert the Booty into Currency,
Diamonds or some other intrinsically
valuable commodity, Millions of
Dollars at a Time......17 Years of
Shadows and Ghost Trucks and Tankers
Loading and Off-Loading the Black
Gold...this is what its all
about......M-O-N-E-Y....... Say It
With Me.... Mon-nee, Money Money
Mo_on_ne_e_ey, ......
From the sale of US oil in Syria
receive 30 million. dollars per
month. Image losses are immeasurably
greater. The United States put the
United States as a robbery bandit.
This is American democracy. The
longer the troops are in Syria, the
more countries will switch to
settlements in national currencies.
"Our interests", "strategic
interests" is always about money,
just a euphemism so it doesn't
look as greedy as it is. Another
euphemism is "security' ,meaning
war preparations.
...The military power of the USA
put directly in the service of "the
original TM" PIRATE STATE.
U are
the man Norm! But wait... now things
get a little hazy... in the
classic... 'alt0media fake
storyline' fashion!
"President Trump is known to be a
businessman and at least ostensibly
follows a non-interventionist
ideology; being a novice in the
craft of international diplomacy,
however, he has time and again been
misled by the Pentagon and
Washington's national security
establishment."
Awww! Poor "DUmb as Rocks
Donnie" done been fooled agin!
...In the USA... the military men
are stirring at last... having been
made all too aware that their
putative 'boss' has been operating
on behalf of foreign powers ever
since being [s]elected, that the
State Dept of the once Great
Republic has been in active cahoots
with the jihadis ...
and that those who were sent over
there to fight against the
headchoppers discovered that the
only straight shooters in the whole
mess turned out to be the Kurds who
AGENT FRIMpf THREW UNDER THE BUS
ON INSTRUCTIONS FROM JIHADI HQ!
"... The Task Force also could carry out other covert actions, such as information operations. A nice sounding euphemism for propaganda, and computer network operations. There has been some informed speculation that Guccifer 2.0 was a creation of this Task Force. ..."
The average American has no idea how alarming is the news that former CIA Director John
Brennan reportedly created and staffed a CIA Task Force in early 2016 that was named, Trump
Task Force, and given the mission of spying on and carrying out covert actions against the
campaign of candidate Donald Trump.
This was not a simple gathering of a small number of disgruntled Democrats working at the
CIA who got together like a book club to grouse and complain about the brash real estate guy
from New York. It was a specially designed covert action to try to destroy Donald Trump.
A "Task Force" is a special bureaucratic creation that provides a vehicle for bring case
officers and analysts together, along with admin support, for a limited term project. But it
also can be expanded to include personnel from other agencies, such as the FBI, DIA and NSA.
Task Forces have been used since the inception of the CIA in 1947. Here's a recently
declassified memo outlining the considerations in the creation of a task force in 1958. The
author, L.K. White, talks about the need for a coordinating Headquarters element and an
Operational unit "in the field", i.e. deployed around the world.
A Task Force operates independent of the CIA " Mission Centers
" (that's the jargon for the current CIA organization chart).
So what did John Brennan do? I am told by an knowledgeable source that Brennan created a
Trump Task Force in early 2016. It was an invitation only Task Force. Specific case officers
(i.e., men and women who recruit and handle spies overseas), analysts and admin personnel were
recruited. Not everyone invited accepted the offer. But many did.
This was not a CIA only operation. Personnel from the FBI also were assigned to the Task
Force. We have some clues that Christopher Steele's FBi handler, Michael Gaeta, may have been
detailed to the Trump Task Force ( see here
).
So what kind of things would this Task Force do? The case officers would work with foreign
intelligence services such as MI-6, the Italians, the Ukrainians and the Australians on
identifying intelligence collection priorities. Task Force members could task NSA to do
targeted collection. They also would have the ability to engage in covert action, such as
targeting George Papadopoulos. Joseph Mifsud may be able to shed light on the CIA officers who
met with him, briefed on operational objectives regarding Papadopoulos and helped arrange
monitored meetings. I think it is highly likely that the honey pot that met with George
Papadopoulos, a woman named Azra Turk, was part of the CIA Trump Task Force.
The Task Force also could carry out other covert actions, such as information
operations. A nice sounding euphemism for propaganda, and computer network operations. There
has been some informed speculation that Guccifer 2.0 was a creation of this Task
Force.
In light of what we have learned about the alleged CIA whistleblower, Eric Ciaramella, there
should be a serious investigation to determine if he was a part of this Task Force or, at
minimum, reporting to them.
When I described this to one friend, a retired CIA Chief of Station, his first response was,
"My God, that's illegal." We then reminisced about another illegal operation carried out under
the auspices of the CIA Central American Task Force back in the 1980s. That became known to
Americans as the Iran Contra scandal.
I sure hope that John Durham and his team are looking at this angle. If true it marks a new
and damning indictment of the corruption of the CIA. Rather than spying on genuine foreign
threats, this Task Force played a critical role in creating and feeding the meme that Donald
Trump was a tool of the Russians and a puppet of Putin.
"... We drove for hours through the desert, towards the Iraqi border. Approx. 20-30 kilometers from the border, there really was nothing. First of all no war. There were armored vehicles and tanks, burned-out long ago. The journalist left the bus, splashed the contents of the cans on the vehicles. We had Iraqi soldiers with us as an escort, with machine guns, in uniform. You have to imagine: tanks in a desert, burned out long ago, now put on fire. Clouds of smoke. And there the journalists assemble their cameras. ..."
"... So I gathered courage and asked one of the reporters: 'I understand one thing, they are great pictures, but why are they ducking all the time? ' ..."
"... I'll finish, because I am not here to make satire today. I just want to say that this was my first experience with truth in journalism and war reporting. ..."
"... Then a certain type of reporting is expected. Which one? Forget my newspaper, this applies in general. At the start of the trip, the journalist gets a memo – today it is electronic – in his hand. If you are traveling abroad, it is info about the country, or the speeches that will be held. This file contains roughly what will happen during this trip. In addition there are short conversations, briefings with the politician's press manager. He then explains to you how one views this trip. Naturally, you should see it the same way. No one says it in that way. But is is approximately what one would have reported. ..."
"... He explained that a recruitment board from the intelligence services had participated. But I had no idea that the seminar Introduction to Conflict Studies was arranged by the defense forces and run by the foreign intelligence service BND, to have a closer look at potential candidates among the students, not to commit them. They only asked if they, after four such seminars, possibly could contact me later, in my occupation. ..."
"... Two persons from BND came regularly to the paper, to a visiting room. And there were occasions when the report not only was given, but also that BND had written articles, largely ready to go, that were published in the newspaper under my byline. ..."
"... But a couple of journalists were there, they told about it. Therefore I repeat: Merkel invited the chief editors several times, and told them she didn't want the population to be truthfully and openly informed about the problems out there. For example, the background for the financial crisis. If the citizens knew how things were, they would run to the bank and withdraw their money. So beautifying everything; everything is under control; your savings are safe; just smile and hold hands – everything will be fine. ..."
"... From one hour 18 minutes onwards, Ulfkotte details EU-Inter-State Terror Co-operation, with returning IS Operatives on a Free Pass, fully armed and even Viktor Orban had to give in to the commands of letting Terrorists through Hungary into Germany & Austria. ..."
"... Everybody who works in the MSM, without exception, are bought and paid for whores peddling lies on behalf of globalist corporate interests. ..."
"... Udo's voice (in the form of his book) was silenced for a reason – that being that he spoke the truth about our utterly and completely corrupt Western fantasy world in which we in the West proclaim our – "respect international law" and "respect for human rights." His work, such as this interview and others he has done, pulled the curtain back on the big lie and exposed our oligarchs, politicians and the "journalists" they hire as simply a cadre of professional criminals whose carefully crafted lies are used to soak up the blood and to cover the bodies of the dead, all in order to hide all that mayhem from our eyes, to insure justice is an impossibility and to make sure we Western citizens sleep well at night, oblivious to our connection to the actual realities that are this daily regime of pillage and plunder that is our vaunted "neoliberal order." ..."
"... "The philosopher Diogenes (of Sinope) was eating bread and lentils for supper. He was seen by the philosopher Aristippus, who lived comfortably by flattering the king. Said Aristippus, 'If you would learn to be subservient to the king you would not have to live on lentils.' To which Diogenes replied, 'Learn to live on lentils and you will not have to be subservient to the king"." ..."
"... So Roosevelt pushed Hitler to attack Stalin? Hitler didn't want to go East? Revisionism at it most motive free. ..."
"... Pushing' is synonymous for a variety of ways to instigate a desired outcome. Financing is just one way. And Roosevelt was in no way the benevolent knight history twisters like to present him. You are outing yourself again as an easliy duped sheep. ..."
"... Lebensraum was first popularized in 1901 in Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebensraum Hitler's "Mein Kampf" ( 1925) build on that: he had no need for any American or other push, it was intended from the get go. ..."
"... This excellent article demonstrates how the Controlling Elite manipulates the Media and the Message for purposes of misdirecting attention and perception of their true intentions and objective of securing Global Ownership (aka New World Order). ..."
"... Corporate Journalism is all about corporatism and the continuation of it. If the Intelligence Community needs greater fools for staffing purposes in the corporate hierarchy they look for anyone that can be compromised via inducements of whatever the greater fools want. ..."
"... Bought & paid for corporate Journalists are controlled by the Intelligence Agencies and always have been since at least the Second World War. The CIA typically runs bribery & blackmail at the state & federal level so that when necessary they have instant useless eaters to offer up as political sacrifice when required via state run propaganda, & impression management. ..."
"... Assuming that journalism is an ethical occupation is naďve and a fools' game even in the alternative news domain as all writers write from bias & a lack of real knowledge. Few writers are intellectually honest or even aware of their own limits as writers. The writer is a failure and not a hero borne in myth. Writers struggle to write & publish. Bought and paid for writers don't have a struggle in terms of writing because they are told what to write before they write as automatons for the Intelligence Community knowing that they sold their collective souls to the Prince of Darkness for whatever trinkets, bobbles, or bling they could get their greedy hands on at the time. ..."
"... Once pond scum always pond scum. ..."
"... It is a longer process in which one is gradually introduced to ever more expensive rewards/bribes. Never too big to overwhelm – always just about what one would accept as 'motivation' to omit aspects of any issue. Of course, omission is a lie by any other name, but I can attest to the life style of a journalist that socializes with the leaders of all segments of society. ..."
"... Professional whoring is as old as the hills and twice as dusty. Being ethical is difficult stuff especially when money is involved. Money is always a prime motivator but vanity works wonders too. Corporatists will offer whatever inducements they can to get what they want. ..."
"... All mainstream media voices are selling a media package that is a corporatist lie in and of itself. Truth is less marketable than lies. Embellished news & journalistic hype is the norm ..."
In 2014, the German journalist and writer Udo Ulfkotte published a book that created a big stir, describing how the journalistic
profession is thoroughly corrupt and infiltrated by intelligence services.
Although eagerly anticipated by many, the English translation of the book, Bought Journalists , does not seem to be forthcoming
anytime soon.
So I have made English subtitles and transcribed this still very relevant 2015-lecture for those that are curious about Ulfkotte's
work. It covers many of the subjects described in the book.
Udo Ulfkotte died of a heart attack in January 2017, in all likelihood part of the severe medical complications he got from his
exposure to German-made chemical weapons supplied to Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s.
Transcription
[Only the first 49 minutes are translated; the second half of the lecture deals mostly with more local issues]
Introducer Oliver: I am very proud to have such a brave man amongst us: Udo Ulfkotte
Udo Ulfkotte: Thanks Thanks for the invitation Thanks to Oliver. I heard to my great surprise from Oliver that he didn't
know someone from the intelligence services (VVS) would be present. I wish him a warm welcome. I don't mean that as a joke, I heard
this in advance, and got to know that Oliver didn't know. If he wants – if it is a man – he can wave. If not? no? [laughter from
the audience]
I'm fine with that. You can write down everything, or record it; no problem.
To the lecture. We are talking about media. we are talking about truth. I don't want to sell you books or such things. Each one
of us asks himself: Why do things develop like they do, even though the majority, or a lot of people shake their heads.
The majority of people in Germany don't want nuclear weapons on our territory. But we have nuclear weapons here. The majority
don't want foreign interventions by German soldiers. But we do.
What media narrates and the politicians say, and what the majority of the population believes – seems often obviously to be two
different things.
I can tell you this myself, from many years experience. I will start with very personal judgments, to tell you what my experiences
with 'The Lying Media' were – I mean exactly that with the word 'lying'.
I was born in a fairly poor family. I am a single child. I grew up on the eastern edge of the Ruhr-area. I studied Law, Political
Science and Islamic Studies. Already in my student years, I had contact with the German Foreign Intelligence, BND. We will get back
to that later.
From 1986 to 2003, I worked for a major German newspaper, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), amongst other things as a war
reporter. I spent a lot of time in Eastern and African countries.
Now to the subject of lying media. When I was sent to the Iran-Iraq war for the first time, the first time was from 1980 to July
1986, I was sent to this war to report for FAZ. The Iraqis were then 'the good guys'.
I was bit afraid. I didn't have any experience as a war reporter. Then I arrived in Baghdad. I was fairly quickly sent along in
a bus by the Iraqi army, the bus was full of loud, experienced war reporters, from such prestigious media as the BBC, several foreign
TV-stations and newspapers, and me, poor newbie, who was sent to the front for the first time without any kind of preparation. The
first thing I saw was that they all carried along cans of petrol. And I at once got bad consciousness, because I thought: "oops,
if the bus gets stuck far from a petrol station, then everyone chips in with a bit of diesel'. I decided to in the future also carry
a can before I went anywhere, because it obviously was part of it.
We drove for hours through the desert, towards the Iraqi border. Approx. 20-30 kilometers from the border, there really was nothing.
First of all no war. There were armored vehicles and tanks, burned-out long ago. The journalist left the bus, splashed the contents
of the cans on the vehicles. We had Iraqi soldiers with us as an escort, with machine guns, in uniform. You have to imagine: tanks
in a desert, burned out long ago, now put on fire. Clouds of smoke. And there the journalists assemble their cameras.
It was my first experience with media, truth in reporting.
While I was wondering what the hell I was going to report for my newspaper, they all lined up and started: Behind them were flames
and plumes of smoke, and all the time the Iraqis were running in front of camera with their machine guns, casually, but with war
in their gaze. And the reporters were ducking all the time while talking.
So I gathered courage and asked one of the reporters: 'I understand one thing, they are great pictures, but why are they ducking
all the time? '
'Quite simply because there are machine guns on the audio track, and it looks very good at home.'
That was several decades ago. It was in the beginning of my contact with war. I was thinking, the whole way back:'Young man, you
didn't see a war. You were in a place with a campfire. What are you going to tell?'
I returned to Baghdad. There weren't any mobile phones then. We waited in Hotel Rashid and other hotels where foreigners stayed,
sometimes for hours for an international telephone line. I first contacted my mother, not my newspaper. I was in despair, didn't
know what to do, and wanted to get advice from an elder person.
Then my mother shouted over the phone: 'My boy, you are alive!' I thought: 'How so? Is everything OK?'
'My boy, we thought ' 'What's the matter, mother?' 'We saw on TV what happened around you' TV had already sent lurid stories, and I tried to calm my mother down, it didn't happen like that. She thought I had lost my mind
from all the things that had happened in the war – she saw it with her own eyes!
I'll finish, because I am not here to make satire today. I just want to say that this was my first experience with truth in journalism
and war reporting.
That is, I was very shocked by the first contact, it was entirely different from what I had experienced. But it wasn't an exceptional
case.
In the beginning, I mentioned that I am from a fairly poor family. I had to work hard for everything. I was a single child, my
father died when I was young. It didn't matter further on. But, I had a job, I had a degree, a goal in life.
I now had the choice: Should I declare that the whole thing was nonsense, these reports? I was nothing, a newbie straight out
of uni, in my first job. Or if I wanted to make money, to continue, look further. I chose the second option. I continued, and that
for many years.
Over these years, I gained lots of experience. When one comes from university to a big German newspaper – everything I say doesn't
only apply to FAZ, you can take other German or European media. I had contact with other European journalists, from reputable media
outlets. I later worked in other media. I can tell you: What I am about to tell you, I really discovered everywhere.
What did I experience? If you, as a reporter, work either in state media financed by forced license fees, or in the big private
media companies, then you can't write what you want yourself, what you feel like. There are certain guidelines.
Roughly speaking: everyone knows that you won't, for example in the Springer-newspapers – Bild, die Welt – get published articles
extremely critical of Israel. They stand no chance there, because one has to sign a statement that one is pro-Israel, that one won't
question the existence of the state of Israel or Israeli points of view, etc.
There are some sort of guidelines in all the big media companies. But that isn't all: I learned very fast that if one doesn't
– I don't mean this negatively – want to be stuck in the lower rungs of editors, if one wants to rise; for me this rise was that
I was allowed to travel with the Chancellor, ministers, the president and politicians, in planes owned by the state; then one has
to keep to certain subjects. I learned that fast.
That is, if one gets to follow a politician – and this hasn't changed to this day – I soon realized that when I followed the president
or Chancellor Helmut Kohl etc, one of course isn't invited because your name is Udo Ulfkotte, but because you belong to the newspaper
Frankfurter Allgemeine.
Then a certain type of reporting is expected. Which one? Forget my newspaper, this applies in general. At the start of the trip,
the journalist gets a memo – today it is electronic – in his hand. If you are traveling abroad, it is info about the country, or
the speeches that will be held. This file contains roughly what will happen during this trip. In addition there are short conversations,
briefings with the politician's press manager. He then explains to you how one views this trip. Naturally, you should see it the
same way. No one says it in that way. But is is approximately what one would have reported.
All the time you no one tells you to write it this or that way but you know quite exactly that if you DON'T write it this or that
way,then you won't get invited next time. Your media outlet will be invited, but they say 'we don't want him along'. Then you are
out.
Naturally you want to be invited. Of course it is wonderful to travel abroad and you can behave like a pig, no one cares. You
can buy what you want, because you know that when you return, you won't be checked. You can bring what you want. I had colleagues
who went along on a trip to the US.
They brought with them – it was an air force plane – a Harley Davidson, in parts. They sold it when they were back in Germany,
and of course earned on it. Anyway, just like the carpet-affair with that development minister, this is of course not a single instance.
No one talks about it.
You get invited if you have a certain way of seeing things. Which way to see things? Where and how is this view of the world formed?
I very often get asked: 'Where are these people behind the curtain who pulls the wires, so that everything gets told in a fairly
similar way?'
In the big media in Germany – just look yourself – who sit in the large transatlantic think-tanks and foundations,the foundation
The Atlantic Bridge, all these organizations, and how is one influenced there? I can tell from my own experience.
We mustn't talk only theoretically. I was invited by the think-tank The German Marshall Fund of the United States as a fellow.
I was to visit the United States for six weeks. It was fully paid. During these six weeks I could this think-tank has very close
connections to the CIA to this day, they acquired contacts in the CIA for me and they got me access to American politicians, to everyone
I wanted. Above all, they showered me with gifts.
Already before the journey with German Marshall Fund, I experienced plenty of bought journalism. This hasn't to do with a particular
media outlet. You see, I was invited and didn't particularly reflect over it, by billionaires, for example sultan Quabboos of Oman
on the Arabian peninsula.
When sultan Qabboos invited, and a poor boy like me could travel to a country with few inhabitants but immense wealth, where the
head of state had the largest yachts in the world, his own symphony orchestra which plays for him when he wants – by the way he bought
a pub close to Garmisch-Patenkirchen, because he is a Muslim believer, and someone might see him if he drank in his own country,
so he rather travels there. The place he bought every day fly in fresh lamb from Ireland and Scotland with his private jet. He is
also the head of an environmental foundation.
But this is a digression. If such a person, who is so incredibly rich, invites someone like me, then I arrive first class. I had
never traveled first class before. We arrive, and a driver is waiting for me. He carries your suitcase or backpack. You have a suite
in the hotel. And from the very start, you are showered with gifts. You get a platinum or gold coin. A hand-weaved carpet or whatever.
I interviewed the sultan, several times. He asked me what I wanted. I answered among other things a diving course. I wanted to
learn how to dive. He flew in a PADI-approved instructor from Greece. I was there for two weeks and got my first diving certificate.
On later occasions, the sultan flew me in several times, and the diving instructor. I got a certificate as rescue diver, all paid
for by the sultan. You see, when one is attended to in such a way, then you know that you are bought. For a certain type of journalism.
In the sultan's country, there is no freedom of the press.
There are no human rights. It is illegal to import many writings, because the sultan does not wish so. There are reports about
human rights violations, but my eyes are blind. I reported, like all German media when they report about the Sultanate of Oman, to
this day, only positive things. The great sultan, who is wonderful. The fantastic country of the fairy tale prince, overshadowing
everything else – because I was bought.
Apart from Oman, many others have bought me. They also bought colleagues. I got many invitations through the travel section in
my big newspaper. 5-star. The reportage never mentioned that I was bought, by country A or B or C. Yemenia, the Yemeni state airline,
invited me to such a trip.
I didn't report about the dirt and dilapidation in the country, because I was influenced by this treatment, I only reported positively,
because I wanted to come back. The Yemenis asked me when I had returned to Frankfurt what I wished In jest, I said "your large prawns,
from the Red Sea, from the Indian Ocean, they were spectacular.", from the seaport of Mocha (Mocha-coffee is named after it). Two
days later, Yemenia flew in a buffet for the editorial office, with prawns and more.
Of course we were bought. We were bought in several ways. In your situation: when you buy a car or something else, you trust consumer
tests. Look closer. How well is the car tested? I know of no colleagues, no journalists, who do testing of cars, that aren't bribed
– maybe they do exist.
They get unlimited access to a car from the big car manufacturers, with free petrol and everything else. I had a work car in my
newspaper, if not, I might have exploited this. I had a BMW or Mercedes in the newspaper. But there are, outside the paper, many
colleagues who only have this kind of vehicle all year round. They are invited to South Africa, Malaysia, USA, to the grandest travels,
when a new car is presented.
Why? So that they will write positively about the car. But it doesn't say in these reports "Advertisement from bought journalists".
But that is the reality. You should also know – since we are on the subjects of tests – who owns which test magazines? Who owns
the magazine Eco-test? It is owned by the Social Democrats. More than a hundred magazines belong to the Social Democrats. It isn't
about only one party, but many editorial rooms have political allegiance. Behind them are party political interests.
I mentioned the sultan of Oman and the diving course, and I have mentioned German Marshall Fund. Back to the US and the German
Marshall Fund. There one told me, they knew exactly, 'hello, you were on a diving course in Oman ' The CIA knew very precisely. And
the CIA also gave me something: The diving gear. I received the diving gear in the United States, and I received in the US, during
my 6-week stay there, an invitation from the state of Oklahoma, from the governor. I went there. It was a small ceremony, and I received
an honorary citizenship.
I am now honorary citizen of an American state. And in this certificate, it is written that I will only cover the US positively.
I accepted this honorary citizenship and was quite proud of it. I proudly told about it to a colleague who worked in the US. He said
'ha, I already have 31 of these honorary citizenships!'
I don't tell about this to be witty, today I am ashamed, really.
I was greedy. I accepted many advantages that a regular citizen at my age in my occupation doesn't have, and shouldn't have. But
I perceived it – and that is no excuse – as entirely normal, because my colleagues around me all did the same. But this isn't normal.
When journalists are invited to think-tanks in the US, like German Marshall Fund, Atlantic Bridge, it is to 'bring them in line',
for in a friendly way to make them complicit, naturally to buy them, to grease them with money.
This has quite a few aspects that one normally doesn't talk about. When I for the first time was in Southern Africa, in the 80s,
Apartheid still existed in South Africa, segregated areas for blacks and whites. We didn't have any problems with this in my newspaper,
we received fully paid journeys from the Apartheid regime to do propaganda work.
I was invited by the South-African gold industry, coal industry, tourist board. In the first invitation, this trip was to Namibia
– I arrived tired to the hotel room in Windhoek and a dark woman lay in my bed. I at once left the room, went down to the reception
and said 'excuse me, but the room is already occupied' [laughter from the audience]
Without any fuss I got another room.
Next day at the breakfast table, this was a journalist trip, my colleagues asked me 'how was yours?' Only then I understood what
had happened. Until then, I had believed it was a silly coincidence.
With this I want to describe which methods are used, maybe to film journalists in such situations, buy, make dependent. Quite
simply to win them over to your side with the most brutal methods, so that they are 'brought in line'.
This doesn't happen to every journalist. It would be a conspiracy theory if I said that behind every journalist, someone pulls
the wires.
No. Not everyone has influence over the masses. When you – I don't mean this negatively – write about folk costume societies or
if you work with agriculture or politics, why should anyone from the upper political spheres have an interest in controlling the
reporting? As far as I know, this doesn't happen at all.
But if you work in one of the big media, and want up in this world, if you want to travel with politicians, heads of state, with
CEOs, who also travel on these planes, then it happens. Then you are regularly bought, you are regularly observed.
I said earlier that I already during my study days had contact with the intelligence services.
I will quickly explain this to you, because it is very important for this lecture.
I studied law, Political Science and Islamology, among other places in Freiburg. At the very beginning of my study, just before
end of the term, a professor approached me. Professors were then still authority figures.
He came with a brochure, and asked me: 'Mr. Ulfkotte, what are your plans for this vacation?'
I couldn't very well say that I first planned to work a bit at a building site, for then to grab my backpack and see the ocean
for the first time in my life, to Italy, 'la dolce vita', flirting with girls, lie on the beach and be a young person.
I wondered how I would break it to him. He then came with a brochure [Ulfkotte imitating professor]: 'I have something for
you a seminar, Introduction to Conflict Studies, two weeks in Bonn I am sure you would want to participate!'
I wondered how I would tell this elderly gentleman that I wanted to flirt with girls on the beach. Then he said 'you will get
20 Marks per day as support, paid train journey, money for books 150 Marks You will naturally get board and lodging.' He didn't stop
telling me what I would receive.
It buzzed around in my head that I had to achieve everything myself, work hard. I thought 'You have always wanted to participate
in a seminar on Introduction to Conflict Studies!'
So I went to Bonn from Freiburg, and I saw other students who had this urge to participate in this seminar. There were also girls
one could flirt with, about twenty people. The whole thing was very strange, because we sat in a room like this one, there were desks
and a lectern, and there sat some older men and a woman, they always wrote something down. They asked us about things; What we thought
of East Germany, we had to do role play.
The whole thing was a bit strange, but it was well paid. We didn't reflect any further. It was very strange that in this house,
in Ubierstraße 88 in Bonn, we weren't allowed to go to the second floor. There was a chain over the stairs, it was taboo.
We were allowed to go to the basement, there were constantly replenished supplies of new books that we were allowed to get for
free. Ebay didn't exist then, but we could still sell them used. Anyway, it was curious, but at the end of the fortnight, we were
allowed to go up these stairs, where we got an invitation to a continuation course in Conflict Studies.
After four such seminars, that is, after two years, someone asked me 'you have probably wondered what we are doing here'.
He explained that a recruitment board from the intelligence services had participated. But I had no idea that the seminar Introduction
to Conflict Studies was arranged by the defense forces and run by the foreign intelligence service BND, to have a closer look at
potential candidates among the students, not to commit them. They only asked if they, after four such seminars, possibly could contact
me later, in my occupation.
They gave me a lot of money. My mother has always taught me to be polite. So I said 'please do', and they came to me. I was then
working in the newspaper FAZ from 1986, straight after my studies.
Then the intelligence services came fairly soon to me. Why am I telling you this? The newspaper knew very soon. It is also written in my reference, therefore I can say it loud and clear. I had very close contact with the intelligence service BND.
Two persons from BND came regularly to the paper, to a visiting room. And there were occasions when the report not only was given,
but also that BND had written articles, largely ready to go, that were published in the newspaper under my byline.
I highlight certain things to explain them. But if I had said here: 'There are media that are influenced by BND', you could rightly
say that 'these are conspiracy theories, can you document it?'
I CAN document it. I can say, this and that article, with my byline in the paper, is written by the intelligence services, because
what is written there, I couldn't have known. I couldn't have known what existed in some cave or other in Libya, what secret thing
were there, what was being built there. This was all things that BND wanted published. It wasn't like this only in FAZ.
It was like this also in other media. I told about it. If we had rule of law, there would now be an investigation commission.
Because the political parties would stand up, regardless of if they are on the left, in the center or right, and say: What this Ulfkotte
fella says and claims he can document, this should be investigated. Did this occur in other places? Or is it still ongoing?'
I can tell you: Yes it still exists. I know colleagues who still have this close contact. One can probably show this fairly well
until a few years ago. But I would find it wonderful if this investigation commission existed.
But it will obviously not happen, because no one has an interest in doing so. Because then the public would realize how closely
integrated politics, media, and the secret services are in this country.
That is, one often sees in reporting, whether it is from the local paper, regional papers, TV-channels, national tabloids and
so-called serious papers.
Put them side by side, and you will discover that more than 90% looks almost identical. A lot of subjects and news, that are not
being reported at all, or they are – I claim reported very one-sided. One can only explain this if one knows the structures in the
background, how media is surrounded, bought and 'brought onboard' by politics and the intelligence services; Where politics and intelligence
services form a single unity. There is an intelligence coordinator by the Chancellor.
I can tell you, that under the former coordinator Bernd Schmidbauer, under Kohl, I walked in and out of the Chancellery and received
stacks of secret and confidential documents, which I shouldn't have received.
They were so many that we in the newspaper had own archive cabinets for them. Not only did I receive these documents,but Schmidbauer
should have been in jail if we had rule of law. Or there should have been a parliamentary commission or an investigation, because
he wasn't allowed
For example if I couldn't bring along the documents if the case was too hot, there was another trick. They locked me in a room.
In this room were the documents, which I could look through. I could record it all on tape, photograph them or write them down. When
I was done, I could call on the intercom, so they could lock me out. There were thousands of these tricks. Anonymous documents that
I and my colleagues needed could be placed in my mail box.
These are of course illegal things. BUT, you ONLY get them if you 'toe the line' with politics.
If I had written that Chancellor Helmut Kohl is stupid, a big idiot, or about what Schmidbauer did, I would of course not have
received more. That is, if you today, in newspapers, read about 'soon to be revealed exposures, we will publish a big story based
on material based on intelligence', then none of these media have dug a tunnel under the security services and somehow got hold of
something secret. It is rather that they work so well with intelligence services, with the military counterespionage, the foreign
intelligence, police intelligence etc, that if they have got hold of internal documents, it is because they cooperate so well that
they received them as a reward for well performed service.
You see, in this way one is in the end bought. One is bought to such a degree that at one point one can't exit this system anymore.
If I describe how you are supplied with prostitutes, bribed with cars, money; I tried to write down everything I received in gifts,
everything I was bribed with. I stopped doing so several years ago, more than a decade ago.
It doesn't make it any better, but today I regret everything. But I know that it goes this way with many journalists.
It would make me very happy if journalists stood up and said they won't participate in this any longer, and that they think this
is wrong.
But I see no possibility, because media corporations in any case are doing badly. Where should a journalist find work the next
day? It isn't so that tens of thousands of employers are waiting for you. It is the other way round. Tens of thousands of journalists
are looking for work or commissions.
That is, from pure desperation one is happy to be bribed. If a newsroom stands behind or not an article that in reality is advertising,
doesn't matter, one goes along. I know some, even respected journalists, who want to leave this system.
But imagine if you are working in one of the state channels, that you stand up and tell what you have received. How will that
be received by your colleagues? That you have political ulterior motives etc.
September 30 [2015], a few days ago, Chancellor Merkel invited all the directors in the state channels to her in the Chancellery.
I will claim that she talked with them about how one should report the Chancellors politics. Who of you [in the audience] heard about
this incident? 3-4-5? So a small minority. But this is reality. Merkel started already 6 years ago, at the beginning of the financial
crisis, to invite chief editors ..she invited chief editors in the large media corporations, with the express wish that media should
embellish reality, in a political way. This could have been only claims, one could believe me or not.
But a couple of journalists were there, they told about it. Therefore I repeat: Merkel invited the chief editors several times,
and told them she didn't want the population to be truthfully and openly informed about the problems out there. For example, the background for the financial crisis. If the citizens knew how things were, they would run to the bank and withdraw
their money. So beautifying everything; everything is under control; your savings are safe; just smile and hold hands – everything
will be fine.
In such a way it should be reported. Ladies and gentlemen, what I just said can be documented. These are facts, not a conspiracy
theory.
I formulated it a bit satirically, but I ask myself when I see how things are in this country: Is this the democracy described
in the Constitution? Freedom of speech? Freedom of the press?
Where one has to be afraid if one doesn't agree with the ruling political correctness, if one doesn't want to get in trouble.
Is this the republic our parents and grandparents fought for, that they built?
I claim that we more and more – as citizens – are cowards 'toeing the line', who don't open our mouths.
It is so nice to have plurality and diversity of opinions.
But it is at once clamped down on, today fairly openly.
Of my experiences with journalism, I can in general say that I have quit all media I have to pay for, for the reasons mentioned.
Then the question arises, 'but which pay-media can I trust?'
Naturally there are ones I support. They are definitely political, I'll add. But they are all fairly small. And they won't be
big anytime soon. But I have quit all big media that I used to subscribe to, Der Spiegel, Frankfurter Allgemeine, etc. I would like
to not having to pay the TV-license fee, without being arrested because I won't pay fines. But maybe someone here in the audience
can tell me how to do so without all these problems?
Either way, I don't want to financially support this kind of journalism. I can only give you the advice to get information from
alternative, independent media and all the forums that exist.
I'm not advertising for any of them. Some of you probably know that I write for the publishing house Kopp. But there are so many
portals. Every person is different in political viewpoint, culturally etc. The only thing uniting us, whether we are black or white,
religious or non-religious, right or left, or whatever; we all want to know the truth. We want to know what really happens out there,
and exactly in the burning political questions: asylum seekers, refugees, the financial crisis, bad infrastructure, one doesn't know
how it will continue. Precisely with this background, is it even more important that people get to know the truth.
And it is to my great surprise that I conclude that we in media, as well as in politics, have a guiding line.
To throw more and more dust in the citizens' eyes to calm them down. What is the sense in this? One can have totally different
opinions on the subject of refugees with good reasoning.
But facts are important for you as citizens to decide the future. That is, how many people will arrive? How will it affect my
personal affluence? Or will it affect my affluence at all? Will the pensions shrink? etc. Then you can talk with people about this,
quite openly. But to say that we should open all borders, and that this won't have any negative consequences, is very strange. What
I now say isn't a plug for my books. I know that some of them are on the table in front.
I'm not saying this so that you will buy books. I am saying this for another reason that soon will be clear. I started to write
books on certain subjects 18 years ago. They have sold millions. It is no longer about you buying my books. It is important that
you hear the titles, then you will see a certain line throughout the last ten years. One can have different opinions about this line,
but I have always tried to describe, based on my subjective experiences, formed over many years in the Middle East and Africa.
That there will be migration flows, from people from culture areas that are like; if one could compare a cultural area with an
engine, that one fills petrol in a diesel engine then everyone knows what will happen, the engine is great, diesel is great, but
if there too much petrol, then the engine starts to splutter and stop.
I have tried to make you aware of this, with drastic and less drastic words. What we can expect, and ever faster. The book titles
are SOS Occident; Warning Civil War; No Black,Red, Yellow [the colors in the German flag], Holy War in Europe; Mecca Germany.
I just want to say, when politicians and media today claim no one could have predicted it, everything is a complete surprise;
Ladies and Gentlemen, this is not at all surprising. The migration flows, for years warnings have been coming from international
organizations, politicians, experts, exactly about what happened and it is predictable, if we had a map over North Africa and the
Middle East..
If the West continues to destabilize countries like Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, country by country, Iraq when we toppled Saddam
Hussein, Afghanistan. We as Europeans and Germans have spent tens of billions on a war where we allegedly defend peace and liberty,
at the mountain range Hindu Kush [in Afghanistan]. And here, in front of our own door, we soon have Hindu Kush.
We have no stabilization in Afghanistan. Dozens of German soldiers have lost their lives for nothing. We have a more unstable
situation than ever.
You can have your own opinions. I am only saying that these refugee flows didn't fall from the sky. It is predicable, that if
I bomb and destabilize a country, that people – it is always so in history – it hasn't anything to do with the Middle East or North
Africa. I have seen enough wars in Africa. Naturally they created refugee flows.
But all of us didn't want to see this. We haven't prepared. And now one is reacting in full panic, and what is most disconcerting
with this, is when media and politicians, allegedly from deepest inner conviction, say: 'this was all a complete surprise!'
Are they drunk? What are they smoking? What sort of pills are they eating? That they behave this way?
End transcription
The transcription has been edited for clarity, and may differ from the spoken word. The subtitles and transcription are for the
first 49 minutes of the lecture only. Subtitled and transcribed by Terje Maloy. This article is Creative Commons 4.0 for non-commercial
purposes.
Terje Maloy (
Website ) is a Norwegian citizen, with roots north of the Arctic Circle. Nowadays, he spends a lot of time in Australia, working
in the family business. He has particular interests in liberty, global justice, imperialism, history, media analysis and what Western
governments really are up to. He runs a blog , mostly in Norwegian,
but occasionally in English. He likes to write about general geopolitical matters, and Northern Europe in particular, presenting
perspectives that otherwise barely are mentioned in the dominant media (i.e. most things that actually matter).
Tim Jenkins
From 1:18 minutes, Ulfkotte reveals without question, that the EU Political 'elite's' combined intelligence services work with
& propagate . . .
Terror, Terrorists & Terrorism / a conscious organised Politics of FEAR ! / Freedom of Movement, of fully armed IS Agents
Provocateurs & with a Secret Services get out of jail free card, 'Hände Weg Nicht anfassen', it's 'Hammertime', "U Can't
Touch this", we're armed state operatives travelling to Germany & Austria, " don't mess with my operation !" & all journalists'
hands tied, too.
The suggestions & offers below to translate fully, what Ulfkotte declares publicly, make much sense. It is important to understand
that even an 'Orban' must bow occasionally, to deep state Security State Dictators and the pressures they can exert in so many
ways. Logic . . . or else one's life is made into hell, alive or an 'accidental' death: – and may I add, it is a curiously depressing
feeling when you have so many court cases on the go, that when a Gemeinde/Municipality Clerk is smiling, celebrating and telling
you, (representing yourself in court, with only independent translator & recorder), "You Won the Case, a superior judge has over-ruled
" and the only reply possible is,
"Which case number ?"
life gets tedious & time consuming, demanding extreme patience. Given his illness, surely Ulfkotte and his wife, deserve/d
extra credit & 'hot chocolate'. Makes a change to see & read some real journalism: congrats.@OffG
Excellent Professional Journalism on "Pseudo-Journalist State Actors & Terrorists". If you see a terrorist, guys, at
best just reason with him or her :- better than calling
INTERPOL or Secret Services @theguardian, because you wouldn't want a member of the public, grassing you up to your boss, would
you now ? ! Just tell the terrorist who he really works for . . . Those he resents ! Rather like Ulfkotte had to conclude,
with final resignation. My condolences to his good wife.
Wilmers31
Very good of you to not forget Ulfkotte. If I did not have sickness in the house, I would translate it. Maybe I can do one chapter
and someone else can do another one? What's the publisher saying?
You wouldn't say that if you could speak German, my friend ! ?
From one hour 18 minutes onwards, Ulfkotte details EU-Inter-State Terror Co-operation, with returning IS Operatives on
a Free Pass, fully armed and even Viktor Orban had to give in to the commands of letting Terrorists through Hungary into Germany
& Austria.
But, don't let that revelation bother you, living under a Deep State 'Politic of Fear' in the West and long unedited speeches
gets kinda' boring now, I know a bit like believing in some kinda' dumbfuk new pearl harbour, war on terror &&& all phoney propaganda
fairy story telling, just like on the 11/9/2001, when the real target was WTC 7, to hide elitist immoral endeavours, corruption
& the missing $$$TRILLIONS$$$ of tax payers money, 'mislaid' by the D.o.D. announced directly the day before by Rumsfeld, forgotten
? Before ramping the Surveillance States abilities in placing & employing "Parallel Platforms" on steroids, so that our secret
services can now employ terror & deploy terrorists at will .., against us, see ?
Plus ca change....
I remember on a similar note a 60 Minutes piece just prior to Clinton's humanitarian bombing of Serbian civilian infrastructure
(and long ago deleted, I'm sure) on a German free-lancer staging Kosovo atrocities in a Munich suburb, and having the German MSM
eating it up and asking for more. (WWII guilt assuagement at work, no doubt).
mark
Everybody who works in the MSM, without exception, are bought and paid for whores peddling lies on behalf of globalist corporate
interests.
That is their job.
That is what they do.
They have long since forfeited all credibility and integrity.
They have lied to us endlessly for decades and generations, from the Bayonetted Belgian Babies and Human Bodies Turned Into Soap
of WW1 to the Iraq Incubator Babies and Syrian Gas Attacks of more recent times.
You can no longer take anything at face value.
The default position has to be that every single word they print and every single word that comes out of their lying mouths is
untrue.
If they say it's snowing at the North Pole, you can't accept that without first going there and checking it out for yourself.
You can't accept anything that has not been independently verified.
This applies across the board.
All of the accepted historical narrative, including things like the holocaust.
And current Global Warming "science."
We know we have been lied to again and again and again.
So what else have we been lied to without us realising it?
mark
Come to think of it, I need to apologise to sex workers.
I have known quite a few of them who have quite high ethical and moral standards, certainly compared to the MSM.
And they certainly do less damage.
Vert few working girls have blood on their hands like the MSM.
Compared to them, working girls are the salt of the earth and pillars of the community.
Seamus Padraig
Compared to them, working girls are the salt of the earth and pillars of the community.
I heartily agree. Even if one disapproves morally of prostitution, how can it possibly be worse to sell your body than to sell
your soul?
Oliver
Quite. Checking things out for yourself is the way to go. Forget 'Peer Reviews', just as bent as the journalism Ulfkotte described.
DIY.
Mortgage
So natural, all it seems
Part II:
Bought Science
Part III:
Bought Health Services
mapquest directions
The video you shared with great info. I really like the information you share.
boxnovel
Gary Weglarz
I knew we were in dangerous new territory regarding government censorship when after waiting several years for Ulfkotte's best
selling book to finally be available in English – it suddenly, magically, disappeared completely – a vanishing act – and I couldn't
get so much as a response from, much less an explanation from, the would be publisher. Udo's book came at a time when it could
have made a difference countering the fact-free complete and total "fabrication of reality" by the U.S. and Western powers as
they have waged a brutal and ongoing neocolonial war on the world's poor under the guise of "fighting terrorism."
Udo's voice (in the form of his book) was silenced for a reason – that being that he spoke the truth about our utterly and
completely corrupt Western fantasy world in which we in the West proclaim our – "respect international law" and "respect for human
rights." His work, such as this interview and others he has done, pulled the curtain back on the big lie and exposed our oligarchs,
politicians and the "journalists" they hire as simply a cadre of professional criminals whose carefully crafted lies are used
to soak up the blood and to cover the bodies of the dead, all in order to hide all that mayhem from our eyes, to insure justice
is an impossibility and to make sure we Western citizens sleep well at night, oblivious to our connection to the actual realities
that are this daily regime of pillage and plunder that is our vaunted "neoliberal order."
Ramdan
After watching the first 20 min I couldn't help but remembering this tale:
"The philosopher Diogenes (of Sinope) was eating bread and lentils for supper. He was seen by the philosopher Aristippus, who
lived comfortably by flattering the king. Said Aristippus, 'If you would learn to be subservient to the king you would not have
to live on lentils.'
To which Diogenes replied, 'Learn to live on lentils and you will not have to be subservient to the king"."
which is also the reason why such a large part of humanity lives in voluntary servitude to power structures, living the dream,
the illusion of being free..
Ramdan
"English Translation of Udo Ulfkotte's "Bought Journalists" Suppressed?" at Global Research 2017!!
Just rechecked Amazon. Journalists for Hire: How the CIA Buys the News
by Udo Ulfkotte PH.D. The tag line reads.
Hard cover – currently unavailable; paperback cover – currently unavailable; Kindle edition – ?
Book burning anyone?
nottheonly1
No translation exists for this interview with Udo Ulfkotte on KenFM, the web site of Ken Jebsen. Ken Jebsen has been in the cross
hairs of the CIA and German agencies for his reporting of the truth. He was smeared and defamed by the same people that Dr. Ulfkotte
had written extensively about in his book 'Gekaufte Journalisten' ('Bought Journalists').
The reason why I add this link to the interview lies in the fact that Udo Ulfkotte speaks about an important part of Middle
Eastern and German history – a history that has been scrubbed from the U.S. and German populations. In the Iraq war against Iran
– that the U.S. regime had pushed for in the same fashion the way they had pushed Nazi Germany to invade the U.S.S.R. – German
chemical weapons were used under the supervision of the U.S. regime. The extend of the chemical weapons campaign was enormous
and to the present day, Iranians are born with birth defects stemming from the used of German weapons of mass destruction.
Dr. Ulfkotte rightfully bemoans, that every year German heads of state are kneeling for the Jewish victims of National socialism
– but not for the victims of German WMD's that were used against Iran. He stresses that the act of visual asking for forgiveness
in the case of the Jewish victims becomes hypocrisy, when 40 years after the Nazis reigned, German WMD's were used against Iran.
The German regime was in on the WMD attack on Iran. It was not something that happened because they had lost a couple of thousand
containers with WMDs. They delivered the WMD's to Iraq under U.S. supervision.
Ponder that. And there has never been an apology towards Iran, or compensations. Nada. Nothing. Instead, the vile rhetoric
and demagogery of every U.S. regime since has continued to paint Iran in the worst possible ways, most notably via incessant psychological
projection – accusing Iran of the war crimes and crimes against humanity the U.S. and its Western vassal regimes are guilty of.
Here is the interview that was recorded shortly before Udo Ulfkotte's death:
If enough people support the effort, I am willing to contact KenFM for the authorization to translate the interview and use
it for subtitles to the video. However, I can't do that on my own.
nottheonly1
Correction: the interview was recorded two years before his passing.
Antonym
the U.S. regime had pushed for in the same fashion the way they had pushed Nazi Germany to invade the U.S.S.R.
So Roosevelt pushed Hitler to attack Stalin? Hitler didn't want to go East? Revisionism at it most motive free.
nottheonly1
It would help if you would use your brain just once. 'Pushing' is synonymous for a variety of ways to instigate a desired
outcome. Financing is just one way. And Roosevelt was in no way the benevolent knight history twisters like to present him. You
are outing yourself again as an easliy duped sheep.
But then, with all the assaults by the unintelligence agencies, it does not come as a surprise when facts are twisted.
Antonym
Lebensraum was first popularized in 1901 in Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebensraum
Hitler's "Mein Kampf" ( 1925) build on that: he had no need for any American or other push, it was intended from the
get go. The timing of operation Barbarossa was brilliant though: it shocked Stalin into a temporary limbo as he had
his own aggressive plans.
Casandra2
This excellent article demonstrates how the Controlling Elite manipulates the Media and the Message for purposes of misdirecting
attention and perception of their true intentions and objective of securing Global Ownership (aka New World Order).
This approach has been assiduously applied, across the board, over many years, to the point were they now own and run everything
required to subjugate the 'human race' to the horrors of their psychopathic inclinations. They are presently holding the global
economy on hold until their AI population (social credit) control system/grid is in place before bringing the house down.
Needless to say, when this happens a disunited and frightened Global Population will be at their mercy.
If you wish to gain a full insight of what the Controlling Elite is about, and capable of, I recommend David Icke's latest
publication 'Trigger'. I know he's been tagged a 'nutter' over the past thirty years, but I reckon this book represents the 'gold
standard' in terms of generating awareness as a basis for launching a united global population counter-attack (given a great strategy)
against forces that can only be defined as pure 'EVIL'.
MASTER OF UNIVE
Corporate Journalism is all about corporatism and the continuation of it. If the Intelligence Community needs greater fools
for staffing purposes in the corporate hierarchy they look for anyone that can be compromised via inducements of whatever the
greater fools want. Engaging in compromise allows both parties to have complicit & explicit understanding that corruption
and falsehood are the tools of the trade. To all-of-a-sudden develop a conscience after decades of playing the part of a willing
participant is understandable in light of the guilt complex one must develop after screwing everyone in the world out of the critical
assessment we all need to obtain in order to make decisions regarding our futures.
Bought & paid for corporate Journalists are controlled by the Intelligence Agencies and always have been since at least
the Second World War. The CIA typically runs bribery & blackmail at the state & federal level so that when necessary they have
instant useless eaters to offer up as political sacrifice when required via state run propaganda, & impression management.
Assuming that journalism is an ethical occupation is naďve and a fools' game even in the alternative news domain as all
writers write from bias & a lack of real knowledge. Few writers are intellectually honest or even aware of their own limits as
writers. The writer is a failure and not a hero borne in myth. Writers struggle to write & publish. Bought and paid for writers
don't have a struggle in terms of writing because they are told what to write before they write as automatons for the Intelligence
Community knowing that they sold their collective souls to the Prince of Darkness for whatever trinkets, bobbles, or bling they
could get their greedy hands on at the time.
Developing a conscience late in life is too late.
May all that sell their souls to the Intel agencies understand that pond scum never had a conscience to begin with.
Once pond scum always pond scum.
MOU
nottheonly1
What is not addressed in this talk is the addictive nature of this sort of public relation writing. Journalism is something different
altogether. I know that, because I consider myself to be a journalist at heart – one that stopped doing it when the chalice was
offered to me. The problem is that one is not part of the cabal one day to another.
It is a longer process in which one is gradually introduced to ever more expensive rewards/bribes. Never too big to overwhelm
– always just about what one would accept as 'motivation' to omit aspects of any issue. Of course, omission is a lie by any other
name, but I can attest to the life style of a journalist that socializes with the leaders of all segments of society.
And I would also write a critique about a great restaurant – never paying a dime for a fantastic dinner. The point though is
that I would not write a good critique for a nasty place for money. I have never written anything but the truth – for which I
received sometimes as much as a bag full of the best rolls in the country.
Twisting the truth for any form of bribes is disgusting and attests of the lowest of any character.
MASTER OF UNIVE
Professional whoring is as old as the hills and twice as dusty. Being ethical is difficult stuff especially when money is
involved. Money is always a prime motivator but vanity works wonders too. Corporatists will offer whatever inducements they can
to get what they want.
All mainstream media voices are selling a media package that is a corporatist lie in and of itself. Truth is less marketable
than lies. Embellished news & journalistic hype is the norm.
If the devil offers inducements be sure to up the ante to outsmart the drunken sot.
"... Note this key excerpt from the letter of transmittal: ..."
"... " Mutual assistance available under the Treaty includes: taking of testimony or statements of persons; providing documents, records, and articles of evidence; serving documents; locating or identifying persons; transferring persons in custody for testimony or other purposes; executing requests for searches and seizures; assisting in proceedings related to restraint, confiscation, forfeiture of assets, restitution, and collection of fines; and any other form of assistance not prohibited by the laws of the requested state. " ..."
"... The Treaty was reported favourable by the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on September 27, 2000, consented to ratification by the Senate on October 18, 2000 and ratified by the President of the United States on January 5, 2001. The Treaty was entered into force on February 27, 2001. Here are the title page of the Treaty and the signature page: ..."
"... With this background and while I don't want to appear to be pro- or anti-Trump, it is very, very clear that the current POTUS was within the law under the Treaty on Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters between the United States and Ukraine when it comes to asking Ukraine to investigate a potential criminal matter. ..."
With the Trump impeachment procedures ongoing and the connection to his conversation about the
Biden family with Ukraine President Zelenskyy, there has been very little coverage of an
important aspect of the relationship between Washington and Kiev. While none of us can speak to
the actual intent of Donald Trump's remarks be it for personal gain or for other reasons, there
is background information that may help illuminate the context of the discussion between the
two world leaders.
In case you haven't read the pertinent section of the transcript of the conversation, here it
is:
" President Zelenskyy: Yes it is very important for me and everything that
you just mentioned earlier. For me as a President, it is very important and we are open for any
future cooperation. We are ready to open a new page on cooperation in relations between the
United States and Ukraine. For that purpose, I just recalled our ambassador from United States
and he will be replaced by a very competent and very experienced ambassador who will work hard
on making sure that our two nations are getting closer. I would also like and hope to see him
having your trust and your confidence and have personal relations with you so we can cooperate
even more so. I will personally tell you that one of my assistants spoke with Mr. Giuliani just
recently and we are hoping very much that Mr. Giuliani will be able to travel to Ukraine and we
will meet once he comes to Ukraine. I just wanted to assure you once again that you have nobody
but friends around us. I will make sure that I surround myself with the best and most
experienced people. I also wanted to tell you that we are friends. We are great friends and you
Mr. President have friends in our country so we can continue our strategic partnership. I also
plan to surround myself with great people and in addition to that investigation, I guarantee as
the President of Ukraine that all the investigations will be done openly and candidly.. That I
can assure you.
President Trump: Good because I heard you had a prosecutor who was very good
and he was shut down and that's really unfair. A lot of people are talking about that, the way
they shut your very good prosecutor down and you had some very bad people involved. Mr.
Giuliani is a highly respected man. He was the mayor of New York City, a great mayor, and I
would like him to call you. I will ask him to call you along with the Attorney General. Rudy
very much knows what's happening and he is a very capable guy. If you could speak to him that
would be great. The former ambassador from the United States, the woman, was bad news and the
people she was dealing with in the Ukraine were bad news so I just want to let you know that.
The other thing, There's a lot of talk about Biden's son, that Biden stopped the prosecution
and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney
General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you
can look into it... It sounds horrible to me.
President Zelenskyy: I wanted to tell you about the prosecutor. First of all,
I understand and I'm knowledgeable about the situation. Since we have won the absolute
majority in our Parliament, the next prosecutor general will be 100% my person, my candidate,
who will be approved, by the parliament and will start as a new prosecutor in September. He or
she will look into the situation, specifically to the company that you mentioned in this issue.
The issue of the investigation of the case is actually the issue of making sure to restore the
honesty so we will take care of that and will work on the investigation of the case. On top
of that, I would kindly ask you if you have any additional information that you can provide to
us, it would be very helpful for the investigation to make sure that we administer justice in
our country with regard to the Ambassador to the United States from Ukraine as far as I recall
her name was Ivanovich. It was great that you were the first one who told me that she was a bad
ambassador because I agree with you 100%. Her attitude towards me was far from the best as she
admired the previous President and she was on his side. She would not accept me as a new
President well enough.
President Trump: Well, she's going to go through some things. I will have Mr.
Giuliani give you a call and I am also going to have Attorney General Barr call and we will get
to the bottom of it. I'm sure you will figure it out. I heard the prosecutor was treated very
badly and he was a very fair prosecutor so good luck with everything. Your economy is going to
get better and better I predict. You have a lot of assets. It's a great country. I have many
Ukrainian friends, their incredible people." (my bolds)
Now, let's look back in time to 1998. On July 22, 1998, a treaty was signed between Ukraine and
Washington.
The Treaty on Mutual Legal
Assistance in Criminal Matters was signed in Kiev on the aforementioned date. Here is an
excerpt from the The original letter of submittal from the Department of State to the
President's office dated October 19, 1999 which states the following:
"I have the honor to submit to you the Treaty between the United States of America and
Ukraine on Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters with Annex (``the Treaty''), signed at
Kiev on July 22, 1998. I recommend that the Treaty be transmitted to the Senate for its advice
and consent to ratification. Also enclosed, for the information of the Senate, is an exchange of notes under which the
Treaty is being provisionally applied to the extent possible under our respective domestic
laws, in order to provide a basis for immediate mutual assistance in criminal matters.
Provisional application would cease upon entry into force of the Treaty.
The Treaty covers mutual legal assistance in criminal matters. In recent years, similar
bilateral treaties have entered into force with a number of other countries. The Treaty with
Ukraine contains all essential provisions sought by the United States. It will enhance our
ability to investigate and prosecute a range of offenses.The Treaty is designed to
be self-executing and will not require new legislation." (my bold)
The Treaty was then transmitted by the President of the United States (Bill Clinton) to the
Senate on November 10, 1999 (Treaty Document 106-16 -106th Congress - First Session) as shown
on this letter of
transmittal from Bill Clinton's office:
Note this key excerpt from the letter of transmittal:
" Mutual assistance available under the Treaty includes: taking of testimony or
statements of persons; providing documents, records, and articles of evidence; serving
documents; locating or identifying persons; transferring persons in custody for testimony or
other purposes; executing requests for searches and seizures; assisting in proceedings related
to restraint, confiscation, forfeiture of assets, restitution, and collection of fines; and any
other form of assistance not prohibited by the laws of the requested state. "
The Treaty was reported favourable by the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on September
27, 2000, consented to ratification by the Senate on October 18, 2000 and ratified by the
President of the United States on January 5, 2001. The Treaty was entered into force on
February 27, 2001. Here are the title page of the Treaty and the signature page:
Here are the first two pages of the Treaty which outline the scope of assistance that is to
be offered by both nations as well as the limitations on assistance:
... ... ...
If you wish to read the Treaty in its entirety, please click
here .
With this background and while I don't want to appear to be pro- or anti-Trump, it is very,
very clear that the current POTUS was within the law under the Treaty on Mutual Legal
Assistance in Criminal Matters between the United States and Ukraine when it comes to asking
Ukraine to investigate a potential criminal matter.
"... And there is the real definition, which is using a minority to render the country ungovernble, waving a simplistic banner against corruption and for undefined democracy, which movement leaves the masses unorganized and eschews even a platform lest they organize, in favor of a secret coterie. ..."
"... No matter how you view Trump, it is undeniable that several signs of a color revolution were present in Russiagate (and Ukrainegate, which is, in essence, Russiagate 2.0 -- a counterattack on the attempt by Trump to investigate the origins of Russiagate). ..."
Faustusnotes@43 continues the meltdown, notably forgetting his own list of non-rigid
class societies (nations, ) retreating to the UK and Australia. Reminding everyone of the
widely accepted definition for color revolution would have been useful. There is the propaganda
notion, a vague image of the outraged people rising en masse to throw out the
Communists/Communist-adjacent corrupt (unlike all others of course,) government. Inasmuch as
likbez specifically denied a mass movement, this is still as much a red herring as it was when
first brandished.
And there is the real definition, which is using a minority to render the country
ungovernble, waving a simplistic banner against corruption and for undefined democracy, which
movement leaves the masses unorganized and eschews even a platform lest they organize, in favor
of a secret coterie. Thus when the Astroturf does drive out the current administration,
mirabile dictu! nothing changes except its receptivity to international capital. The
fundamental color revolution mechanism it seems to me is the hiding of the real program, the
true commitment to capital, behind a facade.
Lastly, the idea that likbez just made stuff up is remarkable. If anything, it seems to me
that likbez has been heavily influenced by the thesis of Quinn Slobodian's The Globalists. But
that book may be touted largely as (unread) proof somebody disreputable isn't acceptable in
polite company, not really useful otherwise.
Surprisingly, nastywoman confirms my general impression is really seeing the EU as the
inspiration for a better society, without radicalism, much less revolution. I agree there's
nothing worse than revolution except not having a revolution, which I guess takes us back to
square one. The EU of course is really the Maastricht treaty, the Lisbon treaty, the
announcement that elections can't change policy, technocrats as PM in Italy, Greece, etc. In
short, nastywoman confesses to incoherence. But nastywoman can take joy in correctly spotting
that I'm a disgusting old person too vile to understand rap and can hope I'll be dead soon, and
blight humanity no more.
likbez 10.31.19 at 11:22 pm
(no link)
Faustusnotes 10.30.19 at 2:38 pm @43
'Color revolution ' has a specific meaning and what happened to Lula and Trump ain't
it
You probably never read Gene Sharp, who passed in Feb 2018. Claims of "corruption" and
"unfair" election results (which includes foreign influence on elections) are classic color
revolution methods described in detail in his books.
Participation of intelligence agencies and controlled by them MSM is a distinctive feature
of any color revolution: is it, in essence, a modern, very sophisticated variant of a false
flag operation. Controlled/influenced (often indirectly) by intelligence agencies MSM
essentially serve the role similar to airforce in modern neocolonial wars (and the level of
control is staggering starting from the operation Mockingbird; see Journalists for Hire How
the CIA Buys the News by Dr. Udo Ulfkotte).
No matter how you view Trump, it is undeniable that several signs of a color revolution
were present in Russiagate (and Ukrainegate, which is, in essence, Russiagate 2.0 -- a
counterattack on the attempt by Trump to investigate the origins of Russiagate).
Here is the list adapted from the writings on the topic by former CIA analyst Larry C
Johnson and Colonel Lang (DIA). The latter led intelligence analysis of the Middle East and
South Asia for the Defense Department and world-wide HUMINT activities in a high-level
equivalent to the rank of a lieutenant general. He runs well respected
Sic Semper Tyrannis blog.
Both think that the CIA pulled the main strings. They noted the following:
-- Obama officials efforts in establishing surveillance on Trump campaign on a false
pretext (FICA memo scandal, etc.) ;
-- CrowdStrike false flag operation with DNC -- converting the internal leak into Russian
break-in;
-- MI6 fabrication of Steele dossier using materials from the USA obtained via Fusion GPS
and Brennan and rehashing them as an original British intelligence.
-- Brennan use of Steele dossier to produce "17 intelligence agencies assessment," which
served as the signal of unleashing of Russiagate hysteria in neoliberal MSM and the official
start of Russiagate.
-- Rosenstein gambit with using firing of Comey as a convenient pretext for appointment
Mueller (appointment of the Special Prosecutor was in the cards anyway and was inescapable
for Trump as it was a preplanned action by the plotters, and they controlled all the
necessary strings; this probably was the meaning of the word "insurance" in Strzok-Page text
messages).
-- McCabe's opening of FBI investigation of Trump links to Russia.
-- Alexandra Chalupa machination with getting dirt on Trump and his associates (Manafort)
from Poroshenko government (which was a client state anyway so it is funny that Schiff now
tries to claim that Ukraine can exercise foreign influence; it is a USA controlled entity;
the country in a debt trap ).
-- Systematic attempts to entrap Trump associates with connection to the Russian
government by CIA, MI6 and Italian intelligence (Misfud entrapment operation, Felix Sater
entrapment operation with idea of building of Trump hotel in Moscow, Halper entrapment
attempt, MI6 entrapment operation with Natalia Veselnitskaya visit to Trump tower, etc.).
I think that under the weight of those facts, the picture is more or less clear -- this
was a color revolution.
"... "I've always felt that the media leaned left. That wasn't a surprise to anyone. "But what we've seen over the past three years is something entirely different. This is the media actively engaging on one side of a partisan warfare. It's overt." ..."
"... "We had a media cheerleading the FBI for meddling in American politics. Can you ever imagine a time in American history where the media would have played such a role? ..."
"... "I keep warning my friends on the other side of the aisle: Think about the precedent you are setting here," Strassel said. ..."
The anti- Trump "Resistance" has devastated core American
institutions and broken longstanding political norms in seeking to defeat and now oust from office President Donald Trump, said Kimberley
Strassel, a columnist for the Wall Street Journal and member of the Journal's editorial board.
"And this, to me, is the irony, right? We've been told for three years that Donald Trump is wrecking institutions," Strassel
said in an interview with The Epoch Times for the "American Thought Leaders" program.
" But in terms of real wreckage to institutions, it's not on Donald Trump that public faith in the
FBI and the
Department of Justice has precipitously fallen.
That's because of Jim Comey and Andy McCabe. It's not on Donald Trump that the Senate confirmation process for the Supreme Court
is in ashes after what happened to Brett Kavanaugh. It's not on Donald Trump that we are turning
impeachment into a partisan political tool."
The damage inflicted by the anti-Trump Resistance is the subject of Strassel's new book, "Resistance (At All Costs): How Trump
Haters Are Breaking America."
Strassel uses the term "haters" deliberately, to differentiate this demographic from Trump's "critics."
In Strassel's view, all thoughtful critics of Trump - and she counts herself among them - would look at Trump the same way that
they have examined past presidents - namely, to call him out when he does something wrong, but also laud him when he does something
right.
" The 'haters' can't abide nuance. To the Resistance, any praise - no matter how qualified - of Trump is tantamount to American
betrayal, " Strassel writes in "Resistance (At All Costs)."
She told The Epoch Times: "Up until the point at which Donald Trump was elected, what happened when political parties lost is
that they would retreat, regroup, lick their wounds, talk about what they did wrong.
"That's not what happened this time around. Instead, you had people who essentially said we should have won."
From the moment Trump was elected, this group believed Trump to be an illegitimate president and therefore felt they could use
whatever means necessary to remove him from office , Strassel said.
'Unprecedented Acts'
"One thing I try really hard to do in this book is enunciate what rules and regulations and standards were broken, what political
boundaries were crossed, because I think that that's where we're seeing the damage," Strassel said.
The "unprecedented acts" of the Resistance have caused the public to lose trust in longstanding institutions such as the FBI,
the CIA, and the Department of Justice, and cheapened important political processes like impeachment, she said.
The Resistance fabricated and pushed the theory that it was Trump's collusion with Russia that won him the presidency, not the
support of the American people, and lied about the origins of the so-called evidence -- the Steele dossier -- that was used by the
FBI to justify a counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign, Strassel said.
"We have never, in the history of this country, had a counterintelligence investigation into a political campaign," she said.
In an anecdote that Strassel recounts in her book, she asked former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.)
if there was anything in America's laws that could have prohibited this situation.
Nunes, who had helped write or update many laws concerning the powers of the intelligence community, replied, "I would never have
conceived of the FBI using our counterintelligence capabilities to target a political campaign.
"If it had crossed any of our minds, I can guarantee we'd have specifically written: 'Don't do that.'"
In Strassel's view, the Resistance is partially fueled by deep-seated anger, or what others have termed "Trump derangement syndrome"
-- an inability to look rationally at a man so far outside of Washington norms.
But at the same time, in Strassel's view, much of the Resistance is motivated by a desire to amass political power using whatever
means necessary.
"That involves removing the president who won. That involves some of these other things that you hear them talking about now:
packing the Supreme Court, getting rid of the electoral college, letting 16-year-olds vote," she said.
"These are not reforms. Reforms are things that the country broadly agrees are going to help improve stuff. This is changing
the rules so that you get power, and you stay in power."
The impeachment inquiry into the president, based on his phone call with Ukraine's president, is just another example of how the
Resistance is violating political norms and relying on flimsy evidence to try to remove him from office, she said.
Testimony in the inquiry has taken place behind closed doors, led by three House committees, and Democrats have so far refused
to release transcripts from the depositions of former and current
State Department employees.
"[Impeachment] is one of the most serious and huge powers in the Constitution. It was meant always by the founders to be reserved
for truly unusual circumstances. They debated not even putting it in because they were concerned that this is what would happen,"
Strassel said.
In the impeachment inquiries against Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton, Strassel said, American leaders "understood the great importance
of convincing the American public that their decision to use this tool was just and legitimate.
"So if you look back at Watergate, they had hundreds of hours of testimony broadcast over TV that people tuned into and watched.
It's one of the reasons that Richard Nixon resigned before the House ever held a final impeachment vote on him, because the public
had been convinced. He knew he had to go," she said.
But now, instead of access to the testimonies, the public is receiving only leaked snippets and dueling narratives.
"You have Democrats saying, 'Oh, this is very bad.' And Republicans saying, 'Oh, it's not so bad at all.' What are Americans
supposed to think?" Strassel said.
Bureaucratic Resistance
Within the federal bureaucracy, there is a "vast swath of unelected officials" who have "a great deal of power to slow things
down, mess things up, file the whistleblower complaints, leak information, actively engage against the president's policies," Strassel
said.
"It's their job to implement his agenda. And yet a lot of them are part of the Resistance, too," she said.
Data shows that in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election, government bureaucrats overwhelmingly contributed toward the
Clinton campaign over the Trump campaign.
Ninety-five percent, or about $1.9 million, of bureaucrats' donations went to Clinton, according to
The Hill's analysis of donations from federal workers up until September 2016. In particular, employees at the Department of
Justice gave 97 percent of their donations to Clinton. For the State Department, it was even higher -- 99 percent.
"Imagine being a CEO and showing up and knowing that 95 percent of your workforce despises you and doesn't want you to be there,"
Strassel said.
Strassel pointed to when former acting Attorney General Sally Yates, a holdover from the Obama administration, publicly questioned
the constitutionality of Trump's immigration ban and directed Justice Department employees to disobey the order.
"It was basically a call to arms," Strassel said. "What she should've done is honorably resigned if she felt that she could
not in any way enforce this duly issued executive order.
"It really kicked off what we have seen ever since then: The nearly daily leaks from the administration, the whistleblower
complaints," as well as "all kind of internal foot-dragging and outright obstruction to the president's agenda."
According to a
report by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, in Trump's first 126 days in office, his administration
"faced 125 leaked stories -- one leak a day -- containing information that is potentially damaging to national security under the
standards laid out in a 2009 Executive Order signed by President Barack Obama."
Activist Media
Strassel says the media has played a critical role in bolstering the anti-Trump Resistance.
"I've been a reporter for 25 years," Strassel said.
"I've always felt that the media leaned left. That wasn't a surprise to anyone. "But what we've seen over the past three years
is something entirely different. This is the media actively engaging on one side of a partisan warfare. It's overt."
Along the way, the media have largely abandoned journalistic standards, "whether it be the use of anonymous sources, whether it
be putting uncorroborated accusations into the paper, whether it's using biased sources for information and cloaking them as neutral
observers," she said.
Among the many examples of media misinformation cited in Strassel's book is a December 2017 CNN piece that claimed to have evidence
that then-candidate Trump and his son Donald Trump Jr. had been offered early access to hacked emails from the Democratic National
Committee. But it turned out
the date was wrong . Trump
Jr. had received an email about the WikiLeaks release one day after WikiLeaks had made the documents public.
"If it hurts Donald Trump, they're on board," Strassel said. And in many cases, the attacks on Trump have been contradictory.
"He's either the dunce you claim he is every day or he's the most sophisticated Manchurian candidate that the world has ever
seen. You can't have it both ways.
"He's either a dictator and an autocrat who is consolidating power around himself to rule with an iron fist, or he's the evil
conservative who's cutting regulations."
Contrary to claims of authoritarianism, Trump has significantly decreased the size of the federal government. Notably, he reduced
the Federal Register, a collection of all the national government's rules and regulations, to the lowest it's been since Bill Clinton's
first year in office.
"You can't be a libertarian dictator," Strassel said.
In addition to the barrage of attacks on Trump, the media has actively sought to "de-legitimize anybody who has a different viewpoint
than they do, or who is reporting the facts and the story in a way other than they would like them to be presented."
"They would love to make it sound as though none of us are worthy of writing about this story," she said.
"The media is supposed to be our guardrails, right? When a political party transgresses a political boundary, they're supposed
to say 'No, that's beyond the pale.'"
Instead, "they indulged this behavior," Strassel said.
"We had a media cheerleading the FBI for meddling in American politics. Can you ever imagine a time in American history where
the media would have played such a role?
"In a way, I blame that for so much else that has gone wrong."
Long-Term Consequences
Strassel says the actions taken by the Resistance will have long-term consequences for America.
"I keep warning my friends on the other side of the aisle: Think about the precedent you are setting here," Strassel said.
For example, if Joe Biden wins the presidency in 2020
but Republicans take back the House, would the Republican-dominated House immediately launch impeachment proceedings against Biden
for alleged corruption in Ukraine?
"I wouldn't necessarily use the word [corruption], but there's a lot of Republicans who happily would. And if they thought
they'd get another shot at the White House, why not?" Strassel said.
It's short-term thinking, she said, just like Sen. Harry Reid's decision in 2013 to drop the number of votes needed to overcome
a filibuster for lower-court judges.
"Did he really stop to think about the fact that it paved the way for Republicans to get rid of the filibuster for Supreme
Court judges?" Strassel said.
If there's any rule in Washington, "it's that when you set the bar low, it just keeps going lower," Strassel said.
"Donald Trump is going to be president for at most another five years. But the actions and the destruction that's coming with
some of this could be with us for a very long time," she said.
"Should anyone allow their deep disregard for one particular man to so change the structure and the fabric of the country?"
"If minorities prefer Sharia Law, then we advise them to go to those places where that's the
state law.
Russia does not need minorities. Minorities need Russia, and we will not grant them special
privileges, or try to change our laws to fit their desires, no matter how loud they yell
"discrimination"
1) Tulsi Gabbard is a Russian asset (Clinton).
2) Jill Stein is a Russian asset (Clinton).
3) Donald Trump has been a Russian asset since 1987 ( Intelligencer
).
4) Rand Paul is "working for Vladimir Putin" (
McCain ,
Greg Olear ).
5) Bernie Sanders is "just a tool" to the Russians (
The Washington Post ).
"... It's a major unanticipated consequence of the digital "revolution." It has gotten us stuck looking backward at events, obsessively replaying them, while working overtime to spin them favorably for one team or the other, at the expense of actually living in real time and dealing with reality as it unspools with us. If life were a ballgame, we'd only be watching jumbotron replays while failing to pay attention to the action on the field. ..."
"... The stupendous failure of the Mueller Investigation only revealed what can happen when extraordinary bad faith, dishonesty, and incompetence are brought to this project of reinventing "truth" -- of who did what and why -- while it provoked a counter-industry of detecting its gross falsifications. ..."
"... Perhaps you can see why unleashing the CIA, NSA, and the FBI on political enemies by Mr. Obama and his cohorts has become such a disaster. When that scheme blew up, the intel community went to the mattresses, as the saying goes in Mafia legend and lore. The "company" found itself at existential risk. Of course, the CIA has long been accused of following an agenda of its own simply because it had the means to do it. It had the manpower, the money, and the equipment to run whatever operations it felt like running, and a history of going its own way out of sheer institutional arrogance, of knowing better than the crackers and clowns elected by the hoi-polloi. The secrecy inherent in its charter was a green light for limitless mischief and some of the agency's directors showed open contempt for the occupants of the White House. Think: Allen Dulles and William Casey. And lately, Mr. Brennan. ..."
Here's one big reason that America is driving itself batshit crazy : the explosion of computerized records, emails, inter-office
memos, Twitter trails, Facebook memorabilia, iPhone videos, YouTubes, recorded conversations, and the vast alternative universe of
storage capacity for all this stuff makes it seem possible to constantly go back and reconstruct reality. All it has really done
is amplified the potential for political mischief to suicide level.
It's a major unanticipated consequence of the digital "revolution." It has gotten us stuck looking backward at events, obsessively
replaying them, while working overtime to spin them favorably for one team or the other, at the expense of actually living in real
time and dealing with reality as it unspools with us. If life were a ballgame, we'd only be watching jumbotron replays while failing
to pay attention to the action on the field.
Before all this, history was left largely to historians, who curated it from a range of views for carefully considered introduction
to the stream of human culture, and managed this process at a pace that allowed a polity to get on with its business at hand in the
here-and-now -- instead of incessantly and recursively reviewing events that have already happened 24/7. The more electronic media
has evolved, the more it lends itself to manipulation, propaganda, and falsification of whatever happened five minutes, or five hours,
or five weeks ago.
This is exactly why and how the losing team in the 2016 election has worked so hard to change that bit of history. The stupendous
failure of the Mueller Investigation only revealed what can happen when extraordinary bad faith, dishonesty, and incompetence are
brought to this project of reinventing "truth" -- of who did what and why -- while it provoked a counter-industry of detecting its
gross falsifications.
This dynamic has long been systematically studied and applied by institutions like the so-called "intelligence community," and
has gotten so out-of-hand that its main mission these days appears to be the maximum gaslighting of the nation -- for the purpose
of its own desperate self-defense. The "Whistleblower" episode is the latest turn in dishonestly manipulated records, but the most
interesting feature of it is that the release of the actual transcript of the Trump-Zelensky phone call did not affect the "narrative"
precooked between the CIA and Adam Schiff's House Intel Committee. They just blundered on with the story and when major parts of
the replay didn't add up, they retreated to secret sessions in the basement of the US capitol.
Perhaps you can see why unleashing the CIA, NSA, and the FBI on political enemies by Mr. Obama and his cohorts has become
such a disaster. When that scheme blew up, the intel community went to the mattresses, as the saying goes in Mafia legend and lore.
The "company" found itself at existential risk. Of course, the CIA has long been accused of following an agenda of its own simply
because it had the means to do it. It had the manpower, the money, and the equipment to run whatever operations it felt like running,
and a history of going its own way out of sheer institutional arrogance, of knowing better than the crackers and clowns elected by
the hoi-polloi. The secrecy inherent in its charter was a green light for limitless mischief and some of the agency's directors showed
open contempt for the occupants of the White House. Think: Allen Dulles and William Casey. And lately, Mr. Brennan.
The recently-spawned NSA has mainly added the capacity to turn everything that happens into replay material, since it is suspected
of recording every phone call, every email, every financial transaction, every closed-circuit screen capture, and anything else its
computers can snare for storage in its Utah Data Storage Center. Now you know why the actions of Edward Snowden were so significant.
He did what he did because he was moral enough to know the face of malevolence when he saw it. That he survives in exile is a miracle.
As for the FBI, only an exceptional species of ineptitude explains the trouble they got themselves into with the RussiaGate fiasco.
The unbelievable election loss of Mrs. Clinton screwed the pooch for them, and the desperate acts that followed only made things
worse. The incompetence and mendacity on display was only matched by Mr. Mueller and his lawyers, who were supposed to be the FBI's
cleanup crew and only left a bigger mess -- all of it cataloged in digital records.
Now, persons throughout all these agencies are waiting for the hammer to fall. If they are prosecuted, the process will entail
yet another monumental excursion into the replaying of those digital records. It could go on for years. So, the final act in the
collapse of the USA will be the government choking itself to death on replayed narratives from its own server farms.
In the meantime, events are actually tending in a direction that will eventually deprive the nation of the means to continue most
of its accustomed activities including credible elections, food distribution, a reliable electric grid, and perhaps even self-defense.
This is deep state operation, Russiagate II, pure and simple
Stephen Miller proved to be formidable debater. His jeremiad against the Deep State at 12:55 was brilliant. Former South
Carolina Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy says people have stopped sharing information with the House Intelligence Committee because
Chair Adam Schiff is the most deeply partisan member who is "leaking like a sieve"
The problem with Pelosi bold move is that she does not have votes for impeachment, but the dirt uncovered might sink any
Democrat changes for 2020
Notable quotes:
"... Stephen Miller is amazing at wrestling and smacking down this Democratic Operative Chris Wallace ..."
"... Wallace is a minion of the globalists. ..."
"... Stephen Miller is CORRECT -- there is no more integrity and confidence in government affairs when it can be turned into ammunition against the President of the United States. Chris Wallace really ought to work for CNN. ..."
"... Chris Wallace Incorrect. We have the Docs that expose the corruption on the part of the Biden. We have his legal team basically threatening the new prosectutor saying in lawyer speak "Hey you saw how we got the last prosecutor fired? I'd suggest you cooperate with us or you will get fired next" .450 pages from Biden's son legal team at Burisma, Ukrainian Embassy Official Docs and State Department Docs. ..."
"... Also last time I checked Donald Trump is the head of the executive branch he can direct anyone to go find anything, and I haven't seen one person show me where he can't. ..."
Stephen Miller is CORRECT -- there is no more integrity and confidence in government
affairs when it can be turned into ammunition against the President of the United States.
Chris Wallace really ought to work for CNN.
Chris Wallace Incorrect. We have the Docs that expose the corruption on the part of the
Biden. We have his legal team basically threatening the new prosectutor saying in lawyer
speak "Hey you saw how we got the last prosecutor fired? I'd suggest you cooperate with us or
you will get fired next" .450 pages from Biden's son legal team at Burisma, Ukrainian Embassy
Official Docs and State Department Docs.
Wallace you sir you are a paritsan hack. Anyone can
read the docs too thats whats sad. I'm only 70 pages in and its bad for the Biden's jailtime
bad.
Also last time I checked Donald Trump is the head of the executive branch he can direct
anyone to go find anything, and I haven't seen one person show me where he can't.
This is a apt demonstration of the raw power of the US neoliberal MSM propaganda.
Notable quotes:
"... This is a very interesting process: no matter how absurd is the particular notion and how many contravening facts exist, the power of neoliberal MSM is such that soon enough it is viewed as an established and indisputable fact. As you aptly call it "an article of faith". ..."
"... So we can state that neoliberal MSM are performing part of functions that in Medieval Europe was performed by the Church. Kind of giant televangelism pulpit in the mega church of neoliberalism ..."
Interesting – apparently now that the notion Russia interfered in the US presidential
election to tip the vote to Trump has become an article of faith that much of the world
regards as established fact, it is safe to advance on that a little. Now Donald Trump
actually asked Vladimir Putin to hack the emails of his democratic rival.
Curiously, the Washington Post's recently-adopted new slogan is "Democracy dies in
darkness". So telling the readers any old shit that you made up and can offer no proof
whatsoever is true is infinitely better than darkness. And they wonder why academic standards
are slipping, and why Americans faithfully believe things that few other countries accept as
true. All the while they are cultivating a nation of dunces which believes anything it is
told by its government.
likbez
"apparently now that the notion Russia interfered in the US presidential election to tip
the vote to Trump has become an article of faith that much of the world regards as
established fact,"
Mark, you are a very astute political observer!
This is a very interesting process: no matter how absurd is the particular notion and how
many contravening facts exist, the power of neoliberal MSM is such that soon enough it is
viewed as an established and indisputable fact. As you aptly call it "an article of
faith".
So we can state that neoliberal MSM are performing part of functions that in Medieval
Europe was performed by the Church. Kind of giant televangelism pulpit in the mega church
of neoliberalism
"Thirteen drones moved according to common combat battle deployment, operated by a single
crew. During all this time the American Poseidon-8 reconnaissance plane patrolled the
Mediterranean Sea area for eight hours," he noted. Read also Three layers of Russian air defense at Hmeymim air base in
Syria When the drones met with the electronic countermeasures of the Russian systems, they
switched to a manual guidance mode, he said. "Manual guidance is carried out not by some
villagers, but by the Poseidon-8, which has modern equipment. It undertook manual control," the
deputy defense minister noted.
"When these 13 drones faced our electronic warfare screen, they moved away to some distance,
received the corresponding orders and began to be operated out of space and receiving help in
finding the so-called holes through which they started penetrating. Then they were destroyed,"
Fomin reported.
"This should be stopped as well: in order to avoid fighting with the high-technology weapons
of terrorists and highly-equipped terrorists it is necessary to stop supplying them with
equipment," the deputy defense minister concluded.
The Russian Defense Ministry earlier said that on January 6 militants in Syria first
massively used drones in the attack on the Russian Hmeymim airbase and the Russian naval base
in Tartus. The attack was successfully repelled: seven drones were downed, and control over six
drones was gained through electronic warfare systems. The Russian Defense Ministry stressed
that the solutions used by the militants could be received only from a technologically advanced
country and warned about the danger of repeating such attacks in any country of the
world.
The forum
The eighth Beijing Xiangshan Forum on security will run until October 26 in Beijing. It was
organized by the Chinese Ministry of Defense, China Association for Military Science (CAMS) and
China Institute for International Strategic Studies (CIISS). Representatives for defense
ministries, armed forces and international organizations, as well as former military officials,
politicians and scientists from 79 countries are taking part in the forum.
"... As for the USSR, the Soviet elite changed sides. I think Putin once said that Soviet system was "unviable" to begin with. And that's pretty precise diagnosis: as soon as the theocratic elite degenerates, it defects; and the state and the majority of the population eventually fall on their own sword. ..."
"... And the USSR clearly was a variation of a theocratic state. That explain also a very high, damaging the economy, level of centralization (the country as a single corporation) and the high level of ideology/religion-based repression (compare with Iran and Islamic state jihadists.) ..."
"... So after the WWII the ideology of Bolshevism was dead as it became clear that Soviet style theocratic state is unable to produce standard of living which Western social democracies were able to produce for their citizens. Rapid degeneration of the theocratic Bolshevik elite (aka Nomenklatura) also played an important role. ..."
"... It is important to understand that the Soviet elite changed sides completely voluntarily. Paradoxically it was high level of KGB functionaries who were instrumental in conversion to neoliberalism, starting with Andropov. It was Andropov, who created the plan of transition of the USSR to neoliberalism, the plan that Gorbachov tried to implement and miserably failed. ..."
"... So the system exploded from within because the Party elite became infected with neoliberalism (which was stupid, but reflects the level of degeneration of the Soviet elite). ..."
"... The major USA contribution other then supplying the new ideology for the Soviet elite was via CIA injecting God know how much money to bribe top officials. ..."
"... As Gorbachov was a second rate (if not the third rate) politician, he allowed the situation to run out of control. And the efforts to "rock" the system were fueled internally by emerging (as the result of Perestroika; which was a reincarnation of Lenin's idea of NEP) class of neoliberal Nouveau riche (which run the USSR "shadow economy" which emerged under Brezhnev) and by nationalist sentiments (those element were clearly supported by the USA and other Western countries money as well as via subversive efforts of national diaspora residing in the USA and Canada) and certain national minorities within the USSR. ..."
"... The brutal economic rape of the xUSSR space and generally of the whole former Soviet block by the "collective neoliberal West" naturally followed. Which had shown everybody that the vanguard of Perestroika were simply filthy compradors, who can't care less about regular citizens and their sufferings. ..."
"... BTW this huge amount of loot postponed the internal crisis of neoliberalism which happened in the USA in 2008 probably by ten years. And it (along with a couple of other factors such as telecommunication revolution) explain relative prosperity of Clinton presidency. Criminal Clinton presidency I should say. ..."
"... BTW few republics in former USSR space managed to achieve the standard of living equal to the best years of the USSR (early 80th I think) See https://web.williams.edu/Economics/brainerd/papers/ussr_july08.pdf ..."
"... Generally when the particular ideology collapses, far right nationalism fills the void. We see this now with the slow collapse of neoliberalism in the USA and Western Europe. ..."
"... Chinese learned a lot from Gorbachov's fatal mistakes and have better economic results as the result of the conversion to the neoliberalism ("from the above"), although at the end Chinese elite is not that different from Soviet elite and also is corruptible and can eventually change sides. ..."
"... But they managed to survive the "triumphal march of neoliberalism" (1980-2000) and now the danger is less as neoliberalism is clearly the good with expired "use by" date: after 2008 the neoliberal ideology was completely discredited and entered "zombie" state. ..."
This is a very complex issue. And I do not pretend that I am right, but I think Brad is way too superficial to be taken seriously.
IMHO it was neoliberalism that won the cold war. That means that the key neoliberal "scholars" like Friedman and Hayek and
other intellectual prostitutes of financial oligarchy who helped to restore their power. Certain democratic politicians like Carter
also were the major figures. Carter actually started neoliberalization of the USA, continued by Reagan,
Former Trotskyites starting from Burnham which later became known as neoconservatives also deserve to be mentioned.
It is also questionable that the USA explicitly won the cold war. Paradoxically the other victim of the global neoliberal revolution
was the USA, the lower 90% of the USA population to be exact.
So there was no winners other the financial oligarchy (the transnational class.)
As for the USSR, the Soviet elite changed sides. I think Putin once said that Soviet system was "unviable" to begin with.
And that's pretty precise diagnosis: as soon as the theocratic elite degenerates, it defects; and the state and the majority of
the population eventually fall on their own sword.
And the USSR clearly was a variation of a theocratic state. That explain also a very high, damaging the economy, level
of centralization (the country as a single corporation) and the high level of ideology/religion-based repression (compare with
Iran and Islamic state jihadists.)
The degeneration started with the death of the last charismatic leader (Stalin) and the passing of the generation which remembers
that actual warts of capitalism and could relate them to the "Soviet socialism" solutions.
So after the WWII the ideology of Bolshevism was dead as it became clear that Soviet style theocratic state is unable to
produce standard of living which Western social democracies were able to produce for their citizens. Rapid degeneration of the
theocratic Bolshevik elite (aka Nomenklatura) also played an important role.
With bolshevism as the official religion, which can't be questioned, the society was way too rigid and suppressed "entrepreneurial
initiative" (which leads to enrichment of particular individuals, but also to the benefits to the society as whole), to the extent
that was counterproductive. The level of dogmatism in this area was probably as close to the medieval position of Roman Catholic
Church as we can get; in this sense it was only national that Cardinal Karol Wojtyla became a pope John Paul II -- he was very
well prepared indeed ;-).
It is important to understand that the Soviet elite changed sides completely voluntarily. Paradoxically it was high level
of KGB functionaries who were instrumental in conversion to neoliberalism, starting with Andropov. It was Andropov, who created
the plan of transition of the USSR to neoliberalism, the plan that Gorbachov tried to implement and miserably failed.
So the system exploded from within because the Party elite became infected with neoliberalism (which was stupid, but reflects
the level of degeneration of the Soviet elite).
The major USA contribution other then supplying the new ideology for the Soviet elite was via CIA injecting God know how
much money to bribe top officials.
As Gorbachov was a second rate (if not the third rate) politician, he allowed the situation to run out of control. And
the efforts to "rock" the system were fueled internally by emerging (as the result of Perestroika; which was a reincarnation of
Lenin's idea of NEP) class of neoliberal Nouveau riche (which run the USSR "shadow economy" which emerged under Brezhnev) and
by nationalist sentiments (those element were clearly supported by the USA and other Western countries money as well as via subversive
efforts of national diaspora residing in the USA and Canada) and certain national minorities within the USSR.
Explosion of far right nationalist sentiments without "Countervailing ideology" as Bolshevism was not taken seriously anymore
was the key factor that led to the dissolution of the USSR.
Essentially national movements allied with Germany that were defeated during WWII became the winners.
The brutal economic rape of the xUSSR space and generally of the whole former Soviet block by the "collective neoliberal
West" naturally followed. Which had shown everybody that the vanguard of Perestroika were simply filthy compradors, who can't
care less about regular citizens and their sufferings.
And the backlash created conditions for Putin coming to power.
BTW this huge amount of loot postponed the internal crisis of neoliberalism which happened in the USA in 2008 probably
by ten years. And it (along with a couple of other factors such as telecommunication revolution) explain relative prosperity of
Clinton presidency. Criminal Clinton presidency I should say.
The majority of the xUSSR space countries have now dismal standard of living and slided into Latin American level of inequality
and corruption (not without help of the USA).
Several have civil wars in the period since getting independence, which further depressed the standard living. Most deindustrialize.
Generally when the particular ideology collapses, far right nationalism fills the void. We see this now with the slow collapse
of neoliberalism in the USA and Western Europe.
Chinese learned a lot from Gorbachov's fatal mistakes and have better economic results as the result of the conversion
to the neoliberalism ("from the above"), although at the end Chinese elite is not that different from Soviet elite and also is
corruptible and can eventually change sides.
But they managed to survive the "triumphal march of neoliberalism" (1980-2000) and now the danger is less as neoliberalism
is clearly the good with expired "use by" date: after 2008 the neoliberal ideology was completely discredited and entered "zombie"
state.
So in the worst case it is the USA which might follow the path of the USSR and eventually disintegrate under the pressure of
internal nationalist sentiments. Such a victor...
Even now there are some visible difference between former Confederacy states and other states on the issues such as immigration
and federal redistributive programs.
"... American war-making will persist so long as the United States continues to seek military dominance across the globe. ..."
"... A government that imagines that it has both the right and responsibility to police the entire planet will find an excuse to mire itself in one or more conflicts on a regular basis, and if there isn't one available to join it will start some ..."
"... U.S. military dominance should have at least guaranteed that we remained at peace once our major adversary had collapsed at the end of the Cold War, but the dissolution of the USSR encouraged the U.S. to become much more aggressive and much more eager to use force whenever and wherever it wanted. Wertheim provides an answer for why this is: ..."
"... Why have interventions proliferated as challengers have shrunk? The basic cause is America's infatuation with military force. Its political class imagines that force will advance any aim, limiting debate to what that aim should be. ..."
"... Using force appeals to many American leaders and policymakers because they imagine that frequent military action cows and intimidates adversaries, but in practice it creates more enemies and wastes American lives and resources on fruitless conflicts. ..."
"... The constant warfare of the last two decades in particular has corroded our political system and inured the public to the idea that it is normal that American soldiers and Marines are always fighting and dying in some foreign country in pursuit of nebulous goals, but nothing could be more abnormal and wrong than this. ..."
"... Our establishment would rather give up their skin. They don't call it hegemony, they call it the post ww2 order, leadership, resisting isolationism or some other such nonsense. ..."
"... any country that attempts to gain enough power to assert its own sovereignty is considered a threat that must be crushed and we roll out all of the tools at our disposal to do it. ..."
"... Al Qaeda's attack on us was due to us using them as a tool to stop Russia's push into Afghanistan. ..."
"... Good luck with that. We are ruled by people who are functionally indistinguishable from sociopaths, and sociopaths learn only from reward and punishment. ..."
"... I do not see a politically feasible way to end our global empire without destabilizing that same globe that has come to rely on our military power. ..."
"... Empires have a sort of inertia, and few in history voluntarily give up dominion. ..."
"... What is unsustainable is the current rate of government spending. The current rate of military spending is driving up our debt and making it impossible to reinvest in desperately needed infrastructure. ..."
"... We have been coasting on the infrastructure investments of the 50's and 60's but if we don't start cutting military spending and redirecting that money elsewhere we are going to be bankrupt. ..."
"... I agree that it is almost impossible to conceive of any scenario whereby this "ideology" of so-called world order and/ hegemony would change in the US and in its puppets. ..."
"... The deck is so totally stacked in favor of this ideology, the totally controlled MSM, the MIC, the corrupt and controlled congress, and the presidential admin structure itself, would never allow this mantra to be challenged. ..."
"... It is all about greed and power-the psychopaths pursuing and defending this 'ideology' would never ever go quietly. The money and power is too corrupting. ..."
"... I'm not sure that most of the citizens in those European countries we occupy actually support our permanent military presence in their countries. ..."
"... The new paradigm is that private militarism dominates government, turning it to its preferred priorities of moneymaking warmaking. ..."
Stephen Wertheim explains
what is required to bring an end to unnecessary and open-ended U.S. wars overseas:
American war-making will persist so long as the United States continues to seek military dominance across the globe.
Dominance, assumed to ensure peace, in fact guarantees war. To get serious about stopping endless war, American leaders must do
what they most resist: end America's commitment to armed supremacy and embrace a world of pluralism and peace.
Any government that presumes to be the world's hegemon will be fighting somewhere almost all of the time, because its political
leaders will see everything around the world as their business and it will see every manageable threat as a challenge to their "leadership."
A government that imagines that it has both the right and responsibility to police the entire planet will find an excuse to mire
itself in one or more conflicts on a regular basis, and if there isn't one available to join it will start some.
U.S. military dominance should have at least guaranteed that we remained at peace once our major adversary had collapsed at
the end of the Cold War, but the dissolution of the USSR encouraged the U.S. to become much more aggressive and much more eager to
use force whenever and wherever it wanted. Wertheim provides an answer for why this is:
Why have interventions proliferated as challengers have shrunk? The basic cause is America's infatuation with military
force. Its political class imagines that force will advance any aim, limiting debate to what that aim should be.
Using force appeals to many American leaders and policymakers because they imagine that frequent military action cows and
intimidates adversaries, but in practice it creates more enemies and wastes American lives and resources on fruitless conflicts.
Our government's frenetic interventionism and meddling for the last thirty years hasn't made our country the slightest bit more secure,
but it has sown chaos and instability across at least two continents. Wertheim continues:
Continued gains by the Taliban, 18 years after the United States initially toppled it, suggest a different principle: The profligate
deployment of force creates new and unnecessary objectives more than it realizes existing and worthy ones.
The constant warfare of the last two decades in particular has corroded our political system and inured the public to the
idea that it is normal that American soldiers and Marines are always fighting and dying in some foreign country in pursuit of nebulous
goals, but nothing could be more abnormal and wrong than this. Constant warfare achieves nothing except to provide an excuse
for more of the same. The longer that a war drags on, one would think that it should become easier to bring it to an end, but we
have seen that it becomes harder for both political and military leaders to give up on an unwinnable conflict when it has become
an almost permanent part of our foreign policy. For many policymakers and pundits, what matters is that the U.S. not be perceived
as losing, and so our military keeps fighting without an end in sight for the sake of this "not losing."
Wertheim adds:
Despite Mr. Trump's rhetoric about ending endless wars, the president insists that "our military dominance must be unquestioned"
-- even though no one believes he has a strategy to use power or a theory to bring peace. Armed domination has become an end in
itself.
Seeking to maintain this dominance is ultimately unsustainable, and as it becomes more expensive and less popular it will also
become increasingly dangerous as we find ourselves confronted with even more capable adversaries. For the last thirty years, the
U.S. has been fortunate to be secure and prosperous enough that it could indulge in decades of fruitless militarism, but that luck
won't hold forever. It is far better if the U.S. give up on hegemony and the militarism that goes with it on our terms.
Our establishment would rather give up their skin. They don't call it hegemony, they call it the post ww2 order, leadership,
resisting isolationism or some other such nonsense.
Truth be told, as your article states, any country that attempts to gain enough power to assert its own sovereignty is
considered a threat that must be crushed and we roll out all of the tools at our disposal to do it.
It makes us less safe. Isolationism did not cause 9/11. In the 90's when we were being attacked by Al Qaeda we were too distracted
dancing on Russia's bones to pay any attention to them. While Al Qaeda was attacking our troops and blowing up our buildings we
were bombing Serbia, expanding NATO and reelecting Yeltsin and sticking it to Iran.
It goes beyond that. Al Qaeda's attack on us was due to us using them as a tool to stop Russia's push into Afghanistan.
We later abandoned them when the job was done: a pack hound we trained, pushed to fight, then left in the forest abandoned and
starved. Then we wonder why it came back growling.
Isolationism may not be the most effective solution to things, but I'll admit a LOT of pain, on ourselves and others, would've
never happened if we took that policy.
Good luck with that. We are ruled by people who are functionally indistinguishable from sociopaths, and sociopaths learn only
from reward and punishment.
So far, they only have been rewarded for their crimes.
While I think the economic basis of the Soviet Union was faulty, and it had lost the popular support it might have had in early
days, the USSR's military aggression, particularly in Afghanistan, was a major precipitating factor in its downfall. It would
have eventually crumbled, I believe, anyway, but had they taken a less aggressive stance I think they would have lasted several
decades longer.
Is it really in our hands to actually disengage though? Is this politically feasible?
How does this work? The US gets up one day and says "We're pulling all of our troops out of Saudi and SK. No more funding for
Israel! No bolstering the pencil-thin government of Afghanistan. All naval bases abroad will be shut down. Longstanding alliances
and interests be damned!"
I sympathize very strongly with the notion that we must use military force wisely and with restraint, and perhaps even that
the post-WW2 expansion abroad was a mistake, but I do not see a politically feasible way to end our global empire without
destabilizing that same globe that has come to rely on our military power.
This is the world we live in, whether we like it or not, and barring some military or economic disaster that forces a strategic
realignment or retreat (like WW2 did for the old European powers) I don't know how you practically pull back. Empires have
a sort of inertia, and few in history voluntarily give up dominion.
What is unsustainable is the current rate of government spending. The current rate of military spending is driving up our
debt and making it impossible to reinvest in desperately needed infrastructure.
We have been coasting on the infrastructure investments of the 50's and 60's but if we don't start cutting military spending
and redirecting that money elsewhere we are going to be bankrupt.
Sure. That doesn't mean American withdrawal would create less instability in toto. Maybe it would. Who knows? We mortals can only
take counterfactuals so far.
I agree that it is almost impossible to conceive of any scenario whereby this "ideology" of so-called world order and/
hegemony would change in the US and in its puppets.
The deck is so totally stacked in favor of this ideology, the totally controlled MSM, the MIC, the corrupt and controlled
congress, and the presidential admin structure itself, would never allow this mantra to be challenged.
It is all about greed and power-the psychopaths pursuing and defending this 'ideology' would never ever go quietly. The
money and power is too corrupting.
Maybe, just maybe, however, as we are at $22 trillion in debt and counting (just saw a total tab for F-35 of $1.5 trillion)
that the money will run out, and zero interest rate financing is not all that awesome, this unsustainable mindlessness will be
curtailed or even better, changed.
It's not really hegemony. Old-fashioned empires took over territory in order to gain resources and labor. We haven't done that
since 1920. Especially since 1990 we've been making war purely to destroy and obliterate. When our war is done there's nothing
left to dominate or own.
Domestically we've been using politics and media and controlled culture to do the same thing. Create "terrorists" and "extremists"
on "two" "sides", set them loose, enjoy the resulting chaos. Chaos is the declared goal, and it's been working beautifully for
70 years.
China is expanding empire in Africa and Asia the old-fashioned way, improving farms and factories in order to have exclusive
purchase of their output.
Could not have said it better. "On our terms" would mean that Europe is forced to take matters of military security in it's own
hands, I hope. But chanches are slim, history shows empires must fall hard and break a leg or so first before anything changes.
Iran, Saudi-arabia, the greater ME, China, the trade wars and the world economy are coming together for a perfect storm it seems.
The problem with US hegemony is Israel. Look around the world. Neither Japan nor South Korea nor Vietnam nor Philippines nor India
nor Indonesia nor Australia (the same can be said for South and Central America, Mexico, Canada and Europe) require a significant
US presence.
None of them are asking for a greater presence in their country (except Poland) while being perfectly happy with
our alliance, joint defense, trade, intelligence and technology sharing.
It is only Israel and Saudi Arabia which are constantly pushing the US into middle eastern wars and quagmires that we have
no national interest. Trump sees the plain truth that the US is in jeopardy of losing its manufacturing and its technological
lead to China. If we (US) dont start to rebuild our infrastructure, our defense, our cities, our communities, our manufacturing,
our educational system then our nation is going to follow California into a 3rd world totalitarian state dominated by democratic
voting immigrants whose only affiliation to our country and our constitutional republic is a welfare check, free govt programs
and incestuous govt contracts which funnel govt dollars into the re-election PACs of democratic / liberal elected officials.
The new paradigm is that private militarism dominates government, turning it to its preferred priorities of moneymaking warmaking.
Defeat is now when war's income streams end. The only wars that are lost, are those that end, defeating the winning of war profits.
War, as a financial success story, has become an end in itself, and an empire that looks for more to wage means some mighty big
wages with more profit opportunities. Victory is to be avoided - red ink being spilled through peace detestable - and blood spilled
profitably to be encouraged.
"... The source was said to be responsible for the reporting used by the former director of the CIA, John Brennan, in making the case that Russian President Vladimir Putin personally ordered Russian intelligence services to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election for the purpose of tipping the scales in favor of then-candidate Donald Trump. ..."
"... On closer scrutiny, however, this aspect of the story falls apart, as does just about everything CNN, The New York Times ..."
"... "And Ye Shall Know the Truth and the Truth Shall Make You Free," John 8:32, is etched into the wall of the main lobby of the Old CIA Headquarters Building. ..."
"... Every Russian diplomat assigned to the United States is screened to ascertain his or her susceptibility for recruitment. The FBI does this from a counterintelligence perspective, looking for Russian spies. The CIA does the same, but with the objective of recruiting a Russian source who can remain in the employ of the Russian government, and thereby provide the CIA with intelligence information commensurate to their standing and access. Turning a senior Russian diplomat is difficult; recruiting a junior Russian diplomat like Oleg Smolenkov less so. Someone like Smolenkov would be viewed not so much by the limited access he provided at the time of recruitment, but rather his potential for promotion and the increased opportunity for more essential access provided by such. ..."
"... The reality is, however, that the CIA and the FBI have different goals and objectives when it comes to the Russians they recruit. As such, Smolenkov's recruitment was most likely a CIA-only affair, run by NR but closely monitored by the Russian Operations Group of the Agency's Central Eurasia Division, who would have responsibility for managing Smolenkov upon his return to Moscow. ..."
"... But his job as foreman of the Rossotrudnichestvo coop was not the kind of job a Maurive Thorez graduate gets; Smolenkov had to have felt slighted. He allegedly turned to drink, and his marriage was on the rocks; his colleagues spoke of a man who believed his salary was too low. ..."
"... The enticements of money and future opportunity -- the CIA's principle recruitment ploys -- more than likely were a factor in convincing this dissatisfied diplomat to defect. ..."
"... the fact is, sometime in 2007-2008, Smolenkov was recruited by the CIA. ..."
"... He was granted a "second-level" security clearance, which allowed him to handle top secret information. ..."
"... Moscow Station, however, was having trouble carrying out its clandestine tasks. In the fall of 2011, the CIA's chief of station in Moscow, Steven Hall, had been approached by his counterpart in the Russian Federal Security Service (the FSB, Russia's equivalent of the FBI) and warned that the CIA should stop trying to recruit agents from within the FSB ranks; the FSB had detected several of these attempts, which it deemed inappropriate given the ongoing cooperation between the intelligence services of the two countries regarding the war on terrorism. ..."
"... The loss of Hall at this very sensitive time created a problem for both the CIA and Smolenkov. Smolenkov's new assignment was a dream come true for the CIA -- never before had the agency managed to place a controlled agent into the Presidential Administration of the Russian Federation. ..."
"... With communications down, and the chief of station evicted, Smolenkov was left in a state of limbo while the CIA trained up new case officers capable of operating in Moscow and sought a replacement for Hall. ..."
"... "To put it mildly," Ushakov said, "it is surprising that this extremely crude, clumsy attempt at recruitment took place in a situation where both President Obama and President Putin have clearly stated the importance of more active cooperation and contacts between the special services of the two countries." ..."
"... As a senior aide to Ushakov, Smolenkov was ideally positioned to gather intelligence about the Russian response. If he was able to communicate this information to the CIA, it would have provided Obama and his advisers time to prepare a response to the Russian letter. The situation meant that Smolenkov may have been reporting on events related to the expulsion of Hall, one of the CIA officers specifically trained to manage his reporting. ..."
"... Smolenkov's success was directly linked to the work of his boss, Ushakov. In June 2015, Ushakov was put in charge of establishing a high-level working group in the fuel and energy sector for the purpose of improving bilateral cooperation with Azerbaijan. The reporting Smolenkov would have been able to provide on the work of this group would have been of tremendous assistance to those in the Obama administration working on U.S. energy policy, especially as it related to countering Russian moves in the former Soviet Republics. ..."
"... Ushakov's 10-year tenure as Russia's ambassador to the U.S. gave him unprecedented insight into U.S. decision making, experience and expertise Putin increasingly relied upon as he formulated and implemented responses to U.S. efforts to contain and punish Russia on the international stage. ..."
"... While Ushakov's meetings with Putin were conducted either in private, or in small groups of senior advisers, meaning Smolenkov was not present, Smolenkov was able to collect intelligence on the periphery by photographing itineraries and working papers, as well as overhearing comments made by Ushakov, that collectively would provide U.S. policymakers with important insight into Putin's thinking. ..."
"... According to the FSB, the Russians were adept at identifying CIA officers working under State Department cover and would subject these individuals to extensive surveillance. ..."
"... In addition to the decimation of its staff, Moscow Station was experiencing an alarming number of its agents being discovered by the FSB and arrested. While the Russians were circumspect about most of these cases, on several occasions they indicated that they had uncovered a spy by intercepting the electronic communications between him and the CIA. This meant that the Russians were aware of, and actively pursuing, the Google-based internet-based system used by the CIA to communicate with its agents in Russia. ..."
"... Sometime in early August 2016, a courier from the CIA arrived at the White House carrying a plain, unmarked white envelope. Inside was an intelligence report from Smolenkov that CIA Director Brennan considered to be so sensitive that he kept it out of the President's Daily Brief, concerned that even that restrictive process was too inclusive to adequately protect the source. The intelligence was to be read by four people only -- Obama, National Security Advisor Susan Rice, Deputy National Security Advisor Avril Haines and White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough. The document was to be returned to the courier once it had been read. ..."
"... The contents of the report were alarming -- Putin had personally ordered the cyber attack on the Democratic National Committee for the purpose of influencing the 2016 presidential election in favor of the Republican candidate, Donald Trump. ..."
"... The White House found the Smolenkov report so convincing that in September 2016, during a meeting of the G-20 in China, Obama pulled Putin aside and told him to stop meddling in the U.S. election. Putin was reportedly nonplussed by Obama's intervention. ..."
"... It is not publicly known what prompted the report from Smolenkov which Brennan found so alarming. Was it received out of the blue, a target of opportunity which Smolenkov exploited? Was it based upon a specific tasking submitted by Smolenkov's CIA handlers in response to a tasking from above? Or was it a result of the intervention of the CIA director, who tasked Smolenkov outside normal channels? In any event, once Brennan created his special analytical unit, Smolenkov became his dedicated source. If Smolenko was in this for the money, as appears to be the case, he would have been motivated to come up with the "correct" answer to Brennan's tasking for information on Putin's role. By late 2016, Western media had made quite clear what kind of answer Brennan wanted. ..."
"... Brennan took the extraordinary measure of sequestering the source from the rest of the Intelligence Community. He also confronted the head of the Russian FSB, Alexander Bortnikov, about the risks involved in interfering in U.S. elections. ..."
"... The Washington Post ..."
"... The New York Times ..."
"... Smolenkov's firing occurred right before the Intelligence Community released its much-anticipated assessment on Russian interference in the 2016 election ..."
"... Brennan had sold the Smolenkov reporting to both President Obama and President-elect Trump, along with the rest of the intelligence community, as "high-quality information." It was, at best, nothing more than uncorroborated rumor or, at worst, simple disinformation. This reporting, which was parroted by an unquestioning mainstream media that accepted it as fact, created an impression amongst the American public that Vladimir Putin had personally ordered and directed a Russian interference campaign during the 2016 election designed "to help President-elect Trump's election chances when possible," according to the ICA. ..."
"... The New York Times ..."
"... The Washington Post ..."
"... Concerned that Smolenkov could be arrested by the Russians and, in doing so, have control over the narrative of Russian interference transfer to Moscow, the CIA once again approached Smolenkov to defect to the United States. This time the Russian agent agreed. ..."
"... Sometime in June 2018, Smolenkov and his wife bought a home worth nearly $1 million in northern Virginia. The couple used their real names. They were not afraid. ..."
"... I can only speculate as to the circumstances that led to Smolenkov's firing by secret decree. Normally, Russians charged with transmitting classified material to the intelligence services of a foreign state are arrested, placed on trial and given lengthy prison sentences, or worse. This did not happen to Smolenkov. ..."
"... In any case, the Smolenkov report in the white envelope represented a level of access that would have significantly deviated from what one could expect from a person in his position and which suggests he may have been telling the CIA what he knew Brennan wanted to hear. ..."
"... The third scenario is that Smolenkov, a low-level failure of a diplomat with drinking issues, marital problems and monetary frustrations, was recruited by the CIA, but only with the complicity of the Russian security services. ..."
"... The same red flags that the CIA looks for when recruiting agents are also looked at by Russian counterintelligence. At what point in the recruitment process the Russians stepped in is unknown (if they did at all.) ..."
"... Moreover, this muddling diplomat whose questionable behavioral practices scream "recruit me" is, within three years of returning to Moscow, given a significant promotion that enables him to follow Ushakov into the Presidential Administration–a posting which would require extensive vetting by the Russian security services. Smolenkov's promotion pattern is enough, in and of itself, to raise red flags within the counterintelligence offices tasked with monitoring such things. The fact that it did not indicates that the quality and quantity of reporting being provided by Smolenkov was deemed by the Americans too important to interfere with. ..."
"... In this scenario, Smolenkov would have been playing to a script written by the Russian security services. Since he, technically, had broken no laws by serving as a double agent, he would not be subjected to arrest and trial. But once his existence became the fodder of the U.S. media via inference and speculation, his services as a double agent were no longer needed. He was fired from his position, via a secret Presidential proclamation, and set free to live his life as he saw fit. ..."
"... In my view, if one assumes that the Smolenkov July 2016 report at the center of this drama was not a result of serendipity, but rather a product derived from a specific request from his CIA managers to find out how high up in the Russian decision-making chain the authorization went for what U.S. intelligence agencies were already publicly pushing as an alleged DNC cyber attack, then the answer I believe becomes clear–the Russians knew the U.S. had an intelligence deficit. ..."
"... In my view, the CIA, Russia and Smolenkov were happy to maintain the status quo, with Smolenkov living in comfortable retirement with his family, the CIA continuing to accuse Russia of interfering in the 2016 presidential election, and Russia denying it. ..."
"... Trump's instructions to Barr are linked to a desire on the part of the president to hold to account those responsible for creating the narrative of possible collusion. Reports indicate that Barr is particularly interested in finding out how and why the CIA concluded that Putin personally ordered the Russian intelligence services to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. ..."
"... Seen in this light, the timing of the CNN and New York Times reports about the "exfiltration" of the CIA's "sensitive source" seems to be little more than a blatant effort by Brennan and his allies in the media to shape a narrative before Barr uncovers the truth. ..."
"... A few days following Smolenkov's "outing" by the U.S. media, the Russian government filed a request with Interpol for an investigation into how someone who had gone missing in Montenegro was now living in the United States. ..."
"... The only person at risk from this entire sordid affair is Brennan, whose reputation and potential livelihood is on the line. At best, Brennan is guilty of extremely poor judgement; at worst, he actively conspired to use the office of Director of the CIA to interfere in the outcome of a U.S. presidential election. Neither option speaks well of the U.S. Intelligence Community and those in Congress charged with oversight of its operations. ..."
"... Watch Scott Ritter discussing this article on ..."
"... Consortium News does not necessarily endorse the views of its authors. ..."
"... If you value this original article, please consider ..."
"... making a donation ..."
"... to Consortium News so we can bring you more stories like this one. ..."
"... Before commenting please read Robert Parry's ..."
"... Allegations unsupported by facts, gross or misleading factual errors and ad hominem attacks, and abusive language toward other commenters or our writers will be removed. If your comment does not immediately appear, please be patient as it is manually reviewed. ..."
"... And under the third scenario, with Smolenkov a double agent all along, Ritter writes: "But once his existence became the fodder of the U.S. media via inference and speculation, his services as a double agent were no longer needed. He was fired from his position, via a secret Presidential proclamation, and set free to live his life as he saw fit." ..."
"... That doesn't make sense to me. In fact I see the opposite: if he had been a successfully run double agent all that time, then when his usefulness had ended he would have been decently pensioned off – not simply cut loose to fend for himself – but *not* allowed to travel abroad unimpeded (with his whole family, no less) where he would have the opportunity to cause mischief. ..."
"... In the extremely sophisticated world of high grade intelligence I have repeatedly said that the Brennan, Clapper, Comey trio were lead-footed imbeciles ..."
"... Read The CIA as Organized Crime and Strength of the Wolf and Strength of the Pack by Douglas Valentine. ..."
"... "Kiriakou also notes that the way Smolenkov's intelligence was handled raises echoes of the CIA's manipulation of intelligence to help justify the Iraq war. The information from Smolenkov was handled personally by then-CIA Director John Brennan. Brennan reportedly sidelined other CIA analysts and kept the Smolenkov information out of the Presidential Daily Briefing – instead delivering it personally to President Obama and a small group of officials." ..."
"... More like a Le Carre' film. The CIA was originally sold as an intelligence gathering and analysis organization, and was not supposed to be involved in operations. Thus, it was founded on lies and the lies have only grown since. ..."
"... Even the former communist state governments in Europe and the Soviet Union rued the day that they unleashed their secret police from accountability, and thereby became subservient to their power. ..."
"... I suspect Scott was provided a great deal of the reporting in this fascinating article from a disgruntled insider, or former insider. Knowledge of Brennan's break with protocol to form a select 'stand alone fusion cell' that reported only to him is something that I haven't seen reported before. In any case this story adds another red flag to the entire Russiagate hoax. ..."
"... Just as Mueller failed to interview Julian Assange or Christopher Steele for his report -- obvious red flags -- we should now watch the conduct of Barr's investigation. Will Barr's investigators interview Smolenkov? ..."
"... ( ) the timing of the CNN and New York Times reports about the "exfiltration" of the CIA's "sensitive source" seems to be little more than a blatant effort by Brennan and his allies in the media to shape a narrative before Barr uncovers the truth. ..."
"... "If Smolenkov was a spy, he could have delivered important insights about Russia's foreign policy thinking and planning to U.S. intelligence. But if he was the source for the U.S. intelligence community's certainty that Putin personally orchestrated a covert interference campaign, that certainty rests on a weak foundation. Smolenkov served the wrong boss in the Kremlin to get reliable information about such ventures." ..."
OPINION: Scott Ritter probes Oleg Smolenkov's role as a CIA asset and the use of his data by
the director of the CIA to cast doubt over the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
By Scott Ritter Special to Consortium News
Reports that the CIA conducted an emergency exfiltration of a long-time human intelligence
source who was highly placed within the Russian Presidential Administration sent shock waves
throughout Washington, D.C.
The source was said to be responsible for the reporting used by the
former director of the CIA, John Brennan, in making the case that Russian President Vladimir
Putin personally ordered Russian intelligence services to interfere in the 2016 U.S.
presidential election for the purpose of tipping the scales in favor of then-candidate Donald
Trump.
According to CNN's Jim Sciutto, the decision to exfiltrate the source was driven in part
by concerns within the CIA over President Trump's cavalier approach toward handling classified
information, including his willingness to share highly classified intelligence with Russia's
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov during a controversial visit to the White House in May 2017.
On closer scrutiny, however, this aspect of the story falls apart, as does just about
everything CNN, The New York Times and other mainstream media outlets have reported.
There was a Russian spy whose information was used to push a narrative of Russian
interference in the 2016 presidential election; this much appears to be true. Everything else
that has been reported is either a mischaracterization of fact or an outright fabrication
designed to hide one of the greatest intelligence failures in U.S. history -- the use by a CIA
director of intelligence data specifically manipulated to interfere in the election of an
American president.
The consequences of this interference has deleteriously impacted U.S. democratic
institutions in ways the American people remain ignorant of -- in large part because of the
complicity of the U.S. media when it comes to reporting this story.
This article attempts to set the record straight by connecting the dots presented by
available information and creating a narrative shaped by a combination of derivative analysis
and informed speculation. At best, this article brings the reader closer to the truth about
Oleg Smolenkov's role as a CIA asset; at worst, it raises issues and questions that will help
in determining the truth.
"And Ye Shall Know the Truth and the Truth Shall Make You Free," John 8:32, is etched into
the wall of the main lobby of the Old CIA Headquarters Building.
The Recruit
Oleg Smolenkov
In 2007, Oleg Smolenkov was living the life of a Russian diplomat abroad, serving in the
Russian embassy in Washington. At 33 years of age, married with a 1-year old son, Smolenkov was
the picture of a young diplomat on the rise. A protégé of Russian Ambassador Yuri
Ushakov, Smolenkov worked as a second secretary assigned to the Russian Cultural Center, a
combined museum and exhibition hall operated by the Federal Agency for the Commonwealth of
Independent States, Compatriots Living Abroad and International Humanitarian Cooperation
(better known by its common Russian name, Rossotrudnichestvo), an autonomous government agency
operating under the auspices of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
In addition to hosting Russian artists and musicians, Rossotrudnichestvo oversaw a program
where it organized all-expense paid cultural exchanges for young Americans to travel to Russia,
where they were accommodated in luxury hotels and met with Russian officials. Smolenkov's boss,
Yegeny Zvedre, would also tour the United States, speaking at public forums where he addressed
U.S.-Russian cooperation. As for Smolenkov himself, life was much more mundane -- he served as
a purchasing agent for Rossotrudnichestvo, managing procurement and contract issues for a store
operating out of the Rossotrudnichestvo building, which stood separate from the main embassy
compound.
Rossotrudnichestvo had a darker side: the FBI long suspected that it operated as a front to
recruit Americans to spy for Russia, and as such every Russian employee was viewed as a
potential officer in the Russian intelligence service. This suspicion brought with it a level
of scrutiny which revealed much about the character of the individual being surveilled,
including information of a potentially compromising nature that could be used by the American
intelligence services as the basis of a recruitment effort.
Every Russian diplomat assigned to the United States is screened to ascertain his or her
susceptibility for recruitment. The FBI does this from a counterintelligence perspective,
looking for Russian spies. The CIA does the same, but with the objective of recruiting a
Russian source who can remain in the employ of the Russian government, and thereby provide the
CIA with intelligence information commensurate to their standing and access. Turning a senior
Russian diplomat is difficult; recruiting a junior Russian diplomat like Oleg Smolenkov less
so. Someone like Smolenkov would be viewed not so much by the limited access he provided at the
time of recruitment, but rather his potential for promotion and the increased opportunity for
more essential access provided by such.
The responsibility within the CIA for recruiting Russian diplomats living in the United
States falls to the National Resources Division, or NR, part of the Directorate of Operations,
or DO -- the clandestine arm of the CIA. In a perfect world, the CIA domestic station in
Washington, D.C., would coordinate with the local FBI field office and develop a joint approach
for recruiting a Russian diplomat such as Smolenkov.
The reality is, however, that the CIA and
the FBI have different goals and objectives when it comes to the Russians they recruit. As
such, Smolenkov's recruitment was most likely a CIA-only affair, run by NR but closely
monitored by the Russian Operations Group of the Agency's Central Eurasia Division, who would
have responsibility for managing Smolenkov upon his return to Moscow.
The precise motive for Smolenkov to take up the CIA's offer of recruitment remains unknown.
He graduated from one of the premier universities in Russia, the Maurice Thorez Moscow State
Pedagogical Institute of Foreign Languages, and he married his English language instructor.
Normally a graduate from an elite university such as Maurice Thorez has his or her pick of jobs
in the Foreign Ministry, Ministry of Defense or the security services. Smolenkov was hired by
the Foreign Ministry as a junior linguist, assigned to the Second European Department, which
focuses on Great Britain, Scandinavia and the Baltics, before getting assigned to the embassy
in Washington.
Felt Underpaid
But his job as foreman of the Rossotrudnichestvo coop was not the kind of job a Maurive
Thorez graduate gets; Smolenkov had to have felt slighted. He allegedly turned to drink, and
his marriage was on the rocks; his colleagues spoke of a man who believed his salary was too
low.
The enticements of money and future opportunity -- the CIA's principle recruitment ploys --
more than likely were a factor in convincing this dissatisfied diplomat to defect. Did the CIA
compromise him by dangling the temptation of contract-based embezzlement? Or did the FBI
uncover some sort of personal or financial impropriety that made the Russian diplomat
vulnerable to recruitment? Only the CIA and Smolenkov know the precise circumstances behind the
Russian's decision to betray his country. But the fact is, sometime in 2007-2008, Smolenkov
was recruited by the CIA.
After Smolenkov accepted the CIA's offer, there was much work to be done -- the new agent
had to be polygraphed to ascertain his reliability, trained on covert means of intelligence
collection, including covert photography, as well as on how to securely communicate with the
CIA in order to transmit information and receive instructions. Smolenkov was also introduced to
his "handler," a CIA case officer who would be responsible for managing the work of Smolenkov,
including overseeing the bank account where Smolenkov's CIA "salary" would be deposited.
Various contingencies would be prepared for, including procedures for reestablishing
communications should the existing means become unavailable, emergency contact procedures and
emergency exfiltration plans in case Smolenkov became compromised.
Took Away His Name, and Gave Him a Code
The recruitment of a diplomat willing to return to Moscow and be run in place is a rare
accomplishment, and Smolenkov's identity would become a closely guarded secret within the ranks
of the CIA. Smolenkov's true identity would be known to only a few select individuals; to
everyone else who had access to his reporting, he was simply a codename, comprised of a
two-letter digraph representing Russia (this code changed over time), followed by a word chosen
at random by a CIA algorithm (for example, Adolf Tolkachev, the so-called "billion dollar spy,"
was known by the codename CKSPHERE, with CK being the digraph in use for the Soviet Union at
the time of his recruitment.) Because the specific details from the information provided by
Smolenkov could compromise him as the source, the Russian Operations Group would "blend" his
reporting in with other sources in an effort to disguise it before disseminating it to a wider
audience.
Smolenkov followed Ambassador Ushakov when the latter departed the United States for Moscow
in the summer of 2008; soon after arriving back in Moscow, Smolenkov and his wife divorced.
Ushakov took a position as the deputy chief of the Government Staff of the Russian Federation
responsible for international relations and foreign policy support. Part of the Executive
Office of the Government of the Russian Federation, Ushakov coordinated the international work
of the prime minister, deputy prime ministers and senior officials of the Government Executive
Office. Smolenkov took up a position working for Ushakov, and soon found himself moving up the
ranks of the Russian Civil Service, being promoted in 2010 to the rank of state advisor to the
Russian Federation of the Third Class, a second-tier rank that put him on the cusp of joining
the upper levels of the Russian government bureaucracy. He was granted a "second-level"
security clearance, which allowed him to handle top secret information.
Moscow Station
Ukashov, r. with Putin (Kremlin photo)
In 2013 Ushakov received a new assignment, this time to serve in the Presidential Executive
Office as the aide for international relations. Smolenkov joined Ushakov as his staff manager.
Vladimir Putin was one year into his second stint as president and brought Ushakov, who had
advised him on foreign relations while Putin was prime minister, to continue that service.
Ushakov maintained an office at the Boyarsky Dvor (Courtyard of the Boyars), on 8 Staraya
Square.
The Boyarsky Dvor was physically separate from the Kremlin, meaning neither Ushakov nor
Smolenkov had direct access to the Russian president. Nevertheless, Smolenkov's new job had to
have pleased his CIA masters. In the five years Smolenkov worked at the Executive Office of the
Government, he was not privy to particularly sensitive information. His communications with CIA
would most likely have been administrative in nature, with the CIA more interested in
Smolenkov's growth potential than immediate value of any intelligence he could produce.
Smolenkov's arrival in the Presidential Administration coincided with a period of
operational difficulty for the CIA in Moscow. First, the CIA's internet-based covert
communications system, which used Google's email platform as the foundation for accessing
various web pages where information was exchanged between the agent and his CIA handlers, had
been globally compromised. Smolenkov had been trained on this system, and it provided his
lifeline to the CIA. The compromise first occurred in Iran, and then spread to China; in both
countries, entire networks of CIA agents were rounded up, with many being subsequently
executed . China is believed to have shared the information on how to detect the covert
communication-linked web pages with Russia; fortunately for Moscow Station, they were able to
make the appropriate changes in the system to safeguard the security and identity of its
agents. In the meantime, communications between the CIA and Smolenkov were cut off until the
CIA could make contact using back-up protocols and re-train Smolenkov on the new communications
procedures.
Moscow Station, however, was having trouble carrying out its clandestine tasks. In the
fall of 2011, the CIA's chief of station in Moscow, Steven Hall, had been approached by his
counterpart in the Russian Federal Security Service (the FSB, Russia's equivalent of the FBI)
and warned that the CIA should stop trying to recruit agents from within the FSB ranks; the FSB
had detected several of these attempts, which it deemed inappropriate given the ongoing
cooperation between the intelligence services of the two countries regarding the war on
terrorism.
But Hall had his orders, and after a year-long pause to review its operating procedures,
Moscow Station resumed its targeting of FSB officers. Things went real bad real fast. In
January 2013, a CIA officer named Benjamin Dillon was arrested by the FSB as he tried to
recruit a Russian agent, declared persona non grata, and expelled from Russia. Then in May 2013
the FSB arrested another CIA officer, Ryan Fogle. Fogle was paraded before television cameras
together with his spy paraphernalia, and like Dillon before him, expelled from the country.
Moreover, the Russians, in condemning the CIA actions, revealed the identity of the CIA's
Moscow chief of station (Hall), who because of the public disclosure was compelled to depart
Russia.
A CIA Dream
Steve Hall (CNN/YouTube)
The loss of Dillon and Fogle was a serious blow to Moscow Station, but one from which the
CIA could recover. But the near simultaneous loss of two case officers and the chief of
station was a different matter altogether. Hall was one of the few people in the CIA who had
been "read in" on the recruitment of Smolenkov, and as such was involved in the overall
management of the Russian agent. The loss of Hall at this very sensitive time created a
problem for both the CIA and Smolenkov. Smolenkov's new assignment was a dream come true for
the CIA -- never before had the agency managed to place a controlled agent into the
Presidential Administration of the Russian Federation.
But while Smolenkov had been able to provide evidence of access, by way of photographs of
presidential documents, the CIA needed to confirm that Smolenkov hadn't been turned by the
Russians and was not being used to pass on disinformation designed to mislead those who used
Smolenkov's reporting. Normally this was done by subjecting the agent to a polygraph
examination -- a "swirl," in CIA parlance. This examination could take place at an improvised
covert location in Russia, or in a more controlled environment outside of Russia, if Smolenkov
was able to exit on work or during vacation. But arranging the examination required close
coordination between the CIA and its agent, as well as a healthy degree of trust between the
agent and those directing him. With communications down, and the chief of station evicted,
Smolenkov was left in a state of limbo while the CIA trained up new case officers capable of
operating in Moscow and sought a replacement for Hall.
One of the ironies surrounding the arrest and expulsion of CIA officer Fogle, and the
subsequent outing and eviction of Hall, was that Smolenkov was ideally positioned to provide an
inside perspective on how the Russian leadership reacted to the incident. Smolenkov's boss,
Ushakov, was tasked with overseeing Russia's diplomatic response. In a statement given to the
Russian media, Ushakov expressed surprise at the timing of the incident. "To put it mildly,"
Ushakov said, "it is surprising that this extremely crude, clumsy attempt at recruitment took
place in a situation where both President Obama and President Putin have clearly stated the
importance of more active cooperation and contacts between the special services of the two
countries."
Ushakov coordinated closely with the head of Putin's Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev,
regarding the content of a letter Putin was planning to send in response to a previous
communication from Obama. While the original text focused on missile defense issues, Ushakov
and Patrushev inserted language about the Fogle incident. As a senior aide to Ushakov,
Smolenkov was ideally positioned to gather intelligence about the Russian response. If he was
able to communicate this information to the CIA, it would have provided Obama and his advisers
time to prepare a response to the Russian letter. The situation meant that Smolenkov may have
been reporting on events related to the expulsion of Hall, one of the CIA officers specifically
trained to manage his reporting.
The Center
Amid the operational challenges and opportunity provided by Smolenkov's new position within
the Russian Presidential Administration, the CIA underwent a radical reorganization which
impacted how human agents, and the intelligence they produced, would be managed. The past
practice of having intelligence operations controlled by insular regional divisions, which
promoted both a physical and philosophical divide between the collectors and their analytical
counterparts in the respective regional division within the Directorate of Intelligence, or DI,
was discontinued by Brennan, who had taken over as director of the CIA in May 2013.
To replace what he viewed as an antiquated organizational structure, Brennan created what he
called "Mission Centers," which combined analytical, operational, technical and support
expertise under a single roof. For Moscow Station and Smolenkov, this meant that the Russia and
Eurasia Division, with its Russian Operations Group, no longer existed. Instead, Moscow Station
would take its orders from a new Europe and Eurasia Mission Center headed by an experienced CIA
Russia analyst named Peter Clement.
Clement, who had earned a PhD in Russian history from Michigan State University, had a
diverse resumé with the CIA which included service as the director for Russia on the
National Security Council and as the CIA representative to the U.S. Mission to the United
Nations. Clement served as the director of the Office of Russian and Eurasian Analysis and as
the CIA's Russia issue manager from 1997 to 2003; as the President's Daily Brief (PDB) briefer
for Vice President Dick Cheney from 2003-2004, and from 2005-2013, as the deputy director for
intelligence for analytic programs. In 2015 Brennan appointed Clement to serve as the deputy
assistant director of CIA for Europe and Eurasia, where he directed the activities of the newly
created Europe and Eurasia Mission Center. If one was looking for the perfect candidate to
manage the fusion of operational, analytical and technical experience into a singular,
mission-focused entity, Peter Clement was it.
Peter Clement (C-Span)
As Clement got on with the business of whipping the Europe and Eurasia Mission Center into
shape, Smolenkov was busy establishing himself as an intelligence source of some value. Smolenkov's success was directly linked to the work of his boss, Ushakov. In June 2015,
Ushakov was put in charge of establishing a high-level working group in the fuel and energy
sector for the purpose of improving bilateral cooperation with Azerbaijan. The reporting
Smolenkov would have been able to provide on the work of this group would have been of
tremendous assistance to those in the Obama administration working on U.S. energy policy,
especially as it related to countering Russian moves in the former Soviet Republics.
Another project of interest was Russia's sale of advanced Mi-35 helicopters to Pakistan in
support of their counterterrorism efforts. Coming at a time when U.S.-Pakistani relations were
floundering, the Russian sale of advanced helicopters was viewed with concern by both the
Department of State and the Department of Defense. Again, Smolenkov's reporting on this issue
would have been well received by critical policymakers in both departments.
But the most critical role played by Ushakov was advising Putin on the uncertain state of
relations between the U.S. and Russia in the aftermath of the 2014 crisis in Ukraine, and
Russia's annexation of Crimea. Ushakov's 10-year tenure as Russia's ambassador to the U.S.
gave him unprecedented insight into U.S. decision making, experience and expertise Putin
increasingly relied upon as he formulated and implemented responses to U.S. efforts to contain
and punish Russia on the international stage.
While Ushakov's meetings with Putin were conducted either in private, or in small groups
of senior advisers, meaning Smolenkov was not present, Smolenkov was able to collect
intelligence on the periphery by photographing itineraries and working papers, as well as
overhearing comments made by Ushakov, that collectively would provide U.S. policymakers with
important insight into Putin's thinking.
Managing an important resource like Smolenkov was one of the critical challenges faced by
Clement and the Europe and Eurasia Mission Center. Smolenkov's reporting continued to be
handled using special HUMINT procedures designed to protect the source. However, within the
Center knowledge of Smolenkov's work would have been shared with analysts who worked side by
side with their operational colleagues deciding how the intelligence could best be used, as
well as coming up with follow-up questions for Smolenkov regarding specific issues of
interest.
Given the unique insight Smolenkov's reporting provided into Putin's thinking, it would be
logical that intelligence sourced from Smolenkov would frequently find itself briefed to the
president and his inner circle via the PDB process, which was exacting in terms of vetting the
accuracy and reliability of any intelligence reporting that made it onto its pages. As a
long-time Russia expert with extensive experience in virtually every aspect of how the CIA
turned raw reporting into finished intelligence, Clement was ideally suited to making sure his
Center handled the Smolenkov product responsibly, and in a manner which maximized its
value.
Meanwhile, Moscow Station continued to exhibit operational problems. By 2015 the CIA had
managed to rebuild its stable of case officers operating from the U.S. embassy. But the FSB
always seemed to be one step ahead. According to the FSB, the Russians were adept at
identifying CIA officers working under State Department cover and would subject these
individuals to extensive surveillance. As if to prove the Russian's point, in short order
the FSB rounded up the newly assigned case officers, along with the deputy chief of station,
declared them persona non grata, and expelled them from Russia. To make matters worse, the FSB
released surveillance video of all these officers, who in some cases were joined by their
spouses, as they engaged in elaborate ruses to evade Russian surveillance in order to carry out
their covert assignments.
Moscow Station's string of bad luck continued into 2016, when one of its officers, having
been detected by the FSB during a meeting, fled via taxi to the U.S. embassy, only to be
tackled by a uniformed FSB officer as he tried to enter the compound. In the scuffle that
followed, the CIA officer managed to make entry into the embassy building, compelling the FSB
guard to release him once jurisdiction was lost. The CIA officer, who suffered a separated
shoulder during the incident, left Russia shortly thereafter, together with a female colleague
who had also been detected by the FSB while engaged in clandestine activities and subsequently
declared persona non grata.
FSB Headquarters in the Lubyanka Building, Moscow.
The FSB indicated, at the time these two officers were being expelled, that it had evicted
three other CIA officers during the year. In addition to the decimation of its staff, Moscow
Station was experiencing an alarming number of its agents being discovered by the FSB and
arrested. While the Russians were circumspect about most of these cases, on several occasions
they indicated that they had uncovered a spy by intercepting the electronic communications
between him and the CIA. This meant that the Russians were aware of, and actively pursuing, the
Google-based internet-based system used by the CIA to communicate with its agents in
Russia.
Meanwhile, Smolenkov continued to send his reports to his CIA handlers unabated, using the
same internet-based system. Under normal circumstances, an exception to compromise would raise
red flags within the counterintelligence staff that evaluated an agent's reporting and
activity. But by the summer of 2016, nothing about the work of the CIA, and in particular the
Europe and Eurasia Mission Center could be considered "normal" when it came to the Russian
target.
Little White Envelope
Sometime in early August 2016, a courier from the CIA arrived at the White House carrying
a plain, unmarked white envelope. Inside was an intelligence report from Smolenkov that CIA
Director Brennan considered to be so sensitive that he kept it out of the President's Daily
Brief, concerned that even that restrictive process was too inclusive to adequately protect the
source. The intelligence was to be read by four people only -- Obama, National Security Advisor
Susan Rice, Deputy National Security Advisor Avril Haines and White House Chief of Staff Denis
McDonough. The document was to be returned to the courier once it had been read.
Brennan in Oval Office where he had envelope delivered. (White House photo/Pete Souza)
The contents of the report were alarming -- Putin had personally ordered the cyber attack
on the Democratic National Committee for the purpose of influencing the 2016 presidential
election in favor of the Republican candidate, Donald Trump.
The intelligence report was not a product of Clement's Europe and Eurasia Mission Center,
but rather a special unit of handpicked analysts from the CIA, NSA and FBI who were brought
together under great secrecy in late July and reported directly to Brennan. These analysts were
made to sign non-disclosure agreements protecting their work from their colleagues.
This new analytical unit focused on three new sensitive sources of information -- the
Smolenkov report, additional reporting provided by a former MI6 officer named Christopher
Steele, and a signals intelligence report provided by a Baltic nation neighboring Russia. The
Steele information was of questionable provenance, so much so that FBI Director James Comey
could not, or would not, vouch for its credibility. The same held true for the NSA's assessment
of the Baltic SIGINT report. By themselves, the Steele reporting and Baltic SIGINT report were
of little intelligence value. But when viewed together, they were used to corroborate the
explosive contents of the Smolenkov intelligence. The White House found the Smolenkov report
so convincing that in September 2016, during a meeting of the G-20 in China, Obama pulled Putin
aside and told him to stop meddling in the U.S. election. Putin was reportedly nonplussed by
Obama's intervention.
It is extraordinarily difficult for a piece of intelligence to be deemed important and
reliable enough to be briefed to the president of the United States. The principal forum for
such a briefing is the Presidential Daily Brief, which prior to 2004 was a product produced
exclusively by the CIA. When the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act was signed
into law in 2004, the responsibility for the PDB was transferred to the Office of the Director
of National Intelligence (ODNI), a newly created entity responsible for oversight and
coordination of the entire Intelligence Community, or IC. The PDB is considered to be an IC
product, the production of which is coordinated by ODNI's PDB staff in partnership with the CIA
Directorate of Intelligence (DI)'s President's Analytic Support Staff.
Since he began reporting about his work in the Russian Presidential Administration in 2013,
Smolenkov had, on numerous occasions, produced intelligence whose content and relevance was
such that it would readily warrant inclusion in the PDB. After 2015, the decision to submit a
Smolenkov-sourced report for inclusion in the PDB would be made by Clement and his staff. For a
report to be nominated, it would have to pass an exacting quality control review process which
evaluated it for accuracy, relevance and reliability.
U.S. Embassy Moscow ( Wikimedia Commons)
Sometime in the leadup to August 2016, this process was halted. Oleg Smolenkov was a
controlled asset of the CIA. While he was given certain latitude on what information he could
collect, generally speaking Smolenkov worked from an operations order sent to him by his CIA
controllers which established priorities for intelligence collection based upon information
provided by Smolenkov about what he could reasonably access. Before tasking Smolenkov, his CIA
handlers would screen the request from an operational and counterintelligence perspective,
conducting a risk-reward analysis that weighed the value of the intelligence being sought with
the possibility of compromise. Only then would Smolenkov be cleared to collect the requested
information.
It is not publicly known what prompted the report from Smolenkov which Brennan found so
alarming. Was it received out of the blue, a target of opportunity which Smolenkov exploited?
Was it based upon a specific tasking submitted by Smolenkov's CIA handlers in response to a
tasking from above? Or was it a result of the intervention of the CIA director, who tasked
Smolenkov outside normal channels? In any event, once Brennan created his special analytical
unit, Smolenkov became his dedicated source. If Smolenko was in this for the money, as appears
to be the case, he would have been motivated to come up with the "correct" answer to Brennan's
tasking for information on Putin's role. By late 2016, Western media had made quite clear what
kind of answer Brennan wanted.
Every intelligence report produced by a controlled asset is subjected to a
counterintelligence review where it is examined for any evidence of red flags that could be
indicative of compromise. One red flag is the issue of abnormal access. Smolenkov did not
normally have direct contact with Putin, if ever. His intelligence reports would have been
written from the perspective of the distant observer. His report about Putin's role in
interfering in the 2016 election, however, represented a whole new level of access and trust.
Under normal circumstances, a report exhibiting such tendency would be pulled aside for
additional scrutiny; if the report was alarming enough, the CIA might order the agent to be
subjected to a polygraph to ensure he had not been compromised.
This did not happen. Instead, Brennan took the extraordinary measure of sequestering the
source from the rest of the Intelligence Community. He also confronted the head of the Russian
FSB, Alexander Bortnikov, about the risks involved in interfering in U.S. elections.
Whether Brennan further tasked Smolenkov to collect on Putin is not known. Nor is it known
whether Smolenkov produced more than that single report about Putin's alleged direct role in
ordering the Russian intelligence services to intervene in the 2016 U.S. presidential
elections.
Despite Brennan's extraordinary effort to keep the existence of a human source within the
Russian Presidential Administration a closely-held secret, by December 2016 both The
Washington Post and The New York Times began quoting their sources about the
existence of a sensitive intelligence source close to the Russian president. The timing of
these press leaks coincided with Smolensky being fired from his job working for the
Presidential Administration; the method of firing came in the form of a secret decree. When the
CIA found out, they desperately tried to convince Smolenkov to agree to extraction, fearing for
his safety should he remain in Moscow. This Smolenkov allegedly refused to do, prompting the
counterintelligence-minded within the CIA to become concerned that Brennan and his coterie of
analysts had been taken for a ride by a Russian double agent.
Trump and Barr on Feb. 14, 2019. (Wikimedia Commons)
Smolenkov's firing occurred right before the Intelligence Community released its
much-anticipated assessment on Russian interference in the 2016 election . Like the special
analytical unit created by Brennan to handle the intelligence about Putin ordering the Russian
intelligence services to intervene in favor of Trump in the 2016 election, Brennan opted to
produce the Russian interference assessment outside the normal channels. Usually, when the IC
opts to produce an assessment, there is a formal process which has a national intelligence
officer (NIO) from within the National Intelligence Council take the lead on coordinating the
collection and assessment of all relevant intelligence. The NIO usually coordinates closely
with the relevant Mission Centers to ensure no analytical stone was left unturned in the
pursuit of the truth.
The 2016 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) was produced differently -- no Mission
Center involvement, no NIO assigned, no peer review. Just Brennan's little band of sequestered
analysts.
Smolenkov's information took top billing in the ICA, "Assessing Russian Activities and
Intentions in Recent U.S. Elections," published on Jan. 6, 2017. "We assess," the unclassified
document stated, "Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed
at the U.S. presidential election. Russia's goals were to undermine public faith in the U.S.
democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential
presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for
President-elect Trump." Smolenkov's reporting appears to be the sole source for this
finding.
The ICA went on to note, "We have high confidence in these judgments." According to the
Intelligence Community's own definition, "high confidence'" generally indicates judgments based
on high-quality information, and/or the nature of the issue makes it possible to render a solid
judgment. A "high confidence" judgment is not a fact or a certainty, however, and still carries
a risk of being wrong.
The same day the ICA was published, Brennan, accompanied by Director of National
Intelligence James Clapper, and Admiral Mike Rogers, the director of the National Security
Agency, met with President-elect Trump in Trump Tower, where he was briefed on the classified
information behind the Russian ICA. Included in this briefing was the intelligence from "a
top-secret source" close to Putin which sustained the finding of Putin's direct
involvement.
Brennan had sold the Smolenkov reporting to both President Obama and President-elect
Trump, along with the rest of the intelligence community, as "high-quality information." It
was, at best, nothing more than uncorroborated rumor or, at worst, simple disinformation. This
reporting, which was parroted by an unquestioning mainstream media that accepted it as fact,
created an impression amongst the American public that Vladimir Putin had personally ordered
and directed a Russian interference campaign during the 2016 election designed "to help
President-elect Trump's election chances when possible," according to the ICA.
As CIA director, Brennan understood very well the role played by intelligence in shaping the
decisions of key policy makers, and the absolute need for those who brief the president and his
key advisers to ensure only the highest quality information and derived assessments are
briefed. In this, Brennan failed.
Coming in From the Cold
Tivat, Montenegro
After being fired from his position within the Presidential Administration, Smolenkov
continued to live in Moscow, very much a free man. By this time he was the father of three
children, his new wife having given birth to two daughters. Following Trump's inauguration on
Jan. 20, 2017, Brennan resigned as CIA director. By May, Brennan was testifying before Congress
about the issue of Russian interference. Increasingly, attention was being drawn to the
existence of a highly-placed source near Putin, with both The New York Times and The
Washington Post publishing surprisingly detailed reports.
Concerned that Smolenkov could be arrested by the Russians and, in doing so, have control
over the narrative of Russian interference transfer to Moscow, the CIA once again approached
Smolenkov to defect to the United States. This time the Russian agent agreed.
In July 2017, Smolenkov, accompanied by his wife and three children, travelled to Montenegro
on vacation. They arrived in the resort city of Tivat, flying on a commercial air flight from
Moscow. The CIA took control of the family a few days later, spiriting them away aboard a yacht
that had been moored at the Tivat marina. Upon his arrival in the U.S., Smolenkov and his
family were placed under the control of the CIA's resettlement unit.
According to the Russian media, Smolenkov's disappearance was discovered in September 2017.
The FSB opened an investigation into the matter, initially suspecting foul play. Soon, however,
the FSB reached a different conclusion -- that Smolenkov and his family had defected to the
United States.
Normally a defector would be subjected to a debriefing, inclusive of a polygraph, to confirm
that he or she had not been turned into a double agent. Smolenkov had, over the course of a
decade of spying, accumulated a considerable amount of money which the CIA was holding in
escrow. This money would be released to Smolenkov upon the successful completion of his
debriefing. In the case of Smolenkov, however, there doesn't seem to have been a detailed,
lengthy debriefing. His money was turned over to him. Sometime in June 2018, Smolenkov and
his wife bought a home worth nearly $1 million in northern Virginia. The couple used their real
names. They were not afraid.
I can only speculate as to the circumstances that led to Smolenkov's firing by secret
decree. Normally, Russians charged with transmitting classified material to the intelligence
services of a foreign state are arrested, placed on trial and given lengthy prison sentences,
or worse. This did not happen to Smolenkov.
But this does not mean the Russian authorities were ignorant of his activities. This raises
another possibility, that Smolenkov could have been turned by the Russian security services
before he had compromised any classified information, and that he operated as a double agent
his entire CIA career. Since the only classified information he transferred would, in this
case, be approved for release by the Russian security services, he would not have technically
committed a crime. If Smolenkov was working both sides, it could have been a Russian vehicle to
create distrust between the U.S. intelligence community and Trump.
Smolenkov was fired, and left to his own devices, once his utility to Russia had expired.
Having escaped being arrested as a spy, Smolenkov believed he might be able to live a normal
life in Moscow. But when the potential for compromise arose due to leaks to the press, I assess
that it was in the CIA's interest to bring Smolenkov in, if for no other reason than to control
the narrative of Russian interference.
Three Scenarios
Old CIA building in Langely, Virginia.
There are three scenarios that could be at play regarding Smolenkov's bone fides as a human
intelligence source for the CIA. First, that this was a solid recruitment, that Smolenkov was
the high-level asset the CIA and Brennan claim he was, and the information he provided
regarding the involvement of Putin was unimpeachable. Mitigating against this is the fact that
when Smolenkov was fired from his position in late 2016, he was not arrested and put on trial
for spying.
Russia is fully capable of conducting secret trials, and controlling the information that is
made available about such a trial. Moreover, Russia is a vindictive state–persons who
commit treason are not tolerated. As Putin himself noted in comments made in March 2018,
"Traitors will kick the bucket. Trust me. These people betrayed their friends, their brothers
in arms. Whatever they got in exchange for it, those thirty pieces silver they were given, they
will choke on them." The odds of Smolenkov being fired for committing treason, and then being
allowed to voluntarily exit Russia with his family and passports, are virtually nil.
The second scenario is a variation of the first, where Smolenkov starts as a solid
recruitment, with his reporting commensurate with his known level of access–peripheral
contact with documents and information pertaining to the work of the aide to President Putin on
international relations. Sometime in July 2016 Smolenkov produces a report that catches the
attention of DCI Brennan, who flags it and pulls Smolenkov out of the normal operational
channels for CIA-controlled human sources, and instead creating a new, highly-compartmentalized
fusion cell to handle this report, and possibly others.
Three questions emerge from the second scenario. First, was Smolenkov responding to an
urgent tasking from Brennan to find out how high up the Russian chain of command went the
knowledge of the alleged DNC cyber attack, or did Smolenkov produce this report on his own
volition? Was Brennan arranging evidence to show that there was indeed a Russian hack. After
all, all the FBI had to go by was a draft of a report by the virulently anti-Russian private
security firm CrowdStrike. The FBI never examined the DNC server itself.
In any case, the Smolenkov report in the white envelope represented a level of access
that would have significantly deviated from what one could expect from a person in his position
and which suggests he may have been telling the CIA what he knew Brennan wanted to hear. As
such, normal counterintelligence procedures should have mandated an operational pause while the
intelligence report in question was scrubbed to ensure viability. Under no circumstances would
a report so flagged be allowed to be put into the Presidential Daily Brief. However, by pulling
the report from the control of the Europe and Eurasian Mission Center, turning it over to a
stand-alone fusion cell, and bypassing the PDB process to brief the president and a handful of
advisors, there would be no counterintelligence concerns raised. This implies that Brennan had
a role in the tasking of Smolenkov, and was waiting for the report to come in, which Brennan
then took control of to preclude any counter-intelligence red flags being raised.
The third scenario is that Smolenkov, a low-level failure of a diplomat with drinking
issues, marital problems and monetary frustrations, was recruited by the CIA, but only with the
complicity of the Russian security services.
The same red flags that the CIA looks for when recruiting agents are also looked at by
Russian counterintelligence. At what point in the recruitment process the Russians stepped in
is unknown (if they did at all.) But it is curious that this professional failure was
suddenly transferred from running a co-op to being the right hand man of one of the most
influential foreign policy experts in Russia–Yuri Ushakov.
Moreover, this muddling diplomat whose questionable behavioral practices scream "recruit
me" is, within three years of returning to Moscow, given a significant promotion that enables
him to follow Ushakov into the Presidential Administration–a posting which would require
extensive vetting by the Russian security services. Smolenkov's promotion pattern is enough, in
and of itself, to raise red flags within the counterintelligence offices tasked with monitoring
such things. The fact that it did not indicates that the quality and quantity of reporting
being provided by Smolenkov was deemed by the Americans too important to interfere
with.
In this scenario, Smolenkov would have been playing to a script written by the Russian
security services. Since he, technically, had broken no laws by serving as a double agent, he
would not be subjected to arrest and trial. But once his existence became the fodder of the
U.S. media via inference and speculation, his services as a double agent were no longer needed.
He was fired from his position, via a secret Presidential proclamation, and set free to live
his life as he saw fit.
The most pressing question that emerges from this possibility is why? Why would the Russian
security services want to cook the books, so to speak, in a manner which made the Russians look
guilty of the very thing they were publicly denying?
In my view, if one assumes that the Smolenkov July 2016 report at the center of this
drama was not a result of serendipity, but rather a product derived from a specific request
from his CIA managers to find out how high up in the Russian decision-making chain the
authorization went for what U.S. intelligence agencies were already publicly pushing as an
alleged DNC cyber attack, then the answer I believe becomes clear–the Russians knew the
U.S. had an intelligence deficit.
I am speculating here, but if the Russians provided an answer guaranteed to attract
attention at a critical time in the U.S. presidential election process, it would inject the CIA
and its reporting into the democratic processes of the United States, and thereby politicize
the CIA and the entire intelligence community by default. This would suppose, however, that the
agencies did not have their own motives for wanting to stop Trump.
Rogers, Comey, Clapper and Brennan all in a row.
In this scenario, the Russians would have been in control of when to expose the CIA's
activities–all they had to do was fire Smolenkov, which in the end they did, right as
Smolenkov's report was front and center in the post-election finger-pointing that was taking
place regarding the allegation of Russian interference. The best acts of political sabotage are
done subtlety, where the culprit remains in the shadows while the victims proceed, unaware that
they have been played.
For the Russians, it didn't matter who won the election, even if they may have favored
Trump; simply getting President Obama to commit to the bait by confronting Putin at the G20
meeting in September 2016 would have been a victory, because I assess that at that point the
Russians knew that they were driving the American narrative. When the President of the United
States acts on intelligence that later turns out to be false, it is an embarrassment that
drives a wedge between the intelligence community and the Executive Branch of government. I
have no solid evidence for this. But in my speculation on what may have happened, this was the
Russian objective–to drive that wedge.
An Idyllic Truce
In my view, the CIA, Russia and Smolenkov were happy to maintain the status quo, with
Smolenkov living in comfortable retirement with his family, the CIA continuing to accuse Russia
of interfering in the 2016 presidential election, and Russia denying it. As well, Russia
seems to have brushed off the sanctions that resulted from this alleged "interference." This
idyllic truce started to unravel in May 2019, when Trump ordered Attorney General William Barr
to "get to the bottom" of what role the CIA played in initiating the investigation into
allegations of collusion between Trump's campaign and the Russians that led to the appointment
of Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Mueller's investigation concluded earlier this year, with a
400-plus page report being published which did not find any evidence of active collusion
between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.
Trump's instructions to Barr are linked to a desire on the part of the president to hold
to account those responsible for creating the narrative of possible collusion. Reports indicate
that Barr is particularly interested in finding out how and why the CIA concluded that Putin
personally ordered the Russian intelligence services to interfere in the 2016 presidential
election.
Barr's investigation will inevitably lead him to the intelligence report that was hand
couriered to the White House in early August 2016, which would in turn lead to Smolenkov, and
in doing so open up the can of worms of Smolenkov's entire history of cooperation with the CIA.
Not only could the entire foundation upon which the intelligence community has based its
assessment of Russian interference collapse, it could also open the door for potential charges
of criminal misconduct by Brennan and anyone else who helped him bypass normal vetting
procedures and, in doing so, allowed a possible Russian double agent to influence the decisions
of the president of the United States.
Seen in this light, the timing of the CNN and New York Times reports about the
"exfiltration" of the CIA's "sensitive source" seems to be little more than a blatant effort by
Brennan and his allies in the media to shape a narrative before Barr uncovers the
truth.
At the end of the day, Smolenkov and his family are not at risk. If the Russian government
wanted to exact revenge for his actions, it would have done so after firing him in late 2016.
In any event, Smolenkov and his family would never have been allowed to leave Russia had he
been suspected or accused of committing crimes against the state. A few days following
Smolenkov's "outing" by the U.S. media, the Russian government filed a request with Interpol
for an investigation into how someone who had gone missing in Montenegro was now living in the
United States.
The only person at risk from this entire sordid affair is Brennan, whose reputation and
potential livelihood is on the line. At best, Brennan is guilty of extremely poor judgement; at
worst, he actively conspired to use the office of Director of the CIA to interfere in the
outcome of a U.S. presidential election. Neither option speaks well of the U.S. Intelligence
Community and those in Congress charged with oversight of its operations.
Watch Scott Ritter discussing this article on CN Live! Episode 9.
Consortium News does not necessarily endorse the views of its authors.
Scott Ritter is a former Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet
Union implementing arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm,
and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD.
If you value this original article, please considermaking a donationto Consortium News so we can bring you more stories like this
one.
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Linda Wood , September 17, 2019 at 00:34
Brennan may have written the white envelope report and attributed it to Smolenkov, who may
or may not have been a double agent. The Russian interference story is not just something
Brennan wanted to hear, it's what the military industrial complex needs us to believe.
Dan Anderson , September 16, 2019 at 22:09
I trust Scott Ritter. Had we listened to him, the USA would not have invaded Iraq over
WMDs.
Reading the piece added to my distrust of our intelligence community, remembering this
haunting exchange on live TV.
January 3, 2017 – Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer:
"Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday to
get back at you. So, even for a practical, supposedly hard-nosed businessman, he is being
really dumb to do this."
Rachel Maddow:
"What do you think the intelligence community would do if they were motivated to?"
Schumer: "I don't know, but from what I am told, they are very upset with how he has
treated them and talked about them," -- The Rachel Maddow Show Jan 3, 2017
David G , September 16, 2019 at 18:32
I'm surprised Scott Ritter thinks it likely that Russia engineered the "Putin meddled"
narrative – that just seems unbelievable to me. There are enough moving parts here that one doesn't have to commit to one of Ritter's
three scenarios: numerous variations are possible. For instance, Smolenkov may have been fired for some mundane mix of reasons going to
performance and reliability. He may have been considered dubious without Russian
counterintelligence having fingered him as a U.S. agent.
And under the third scenario, with Smolenkov a double agent all along, Ritter writes: "But once his existence became the fodder of the U.S. media via inference and speculation,
his services as a double agent were no longer needed. He was fired from his position, via a
secret Presidential proclamation, and set free to live his life as he saw fit."
That doesn't make sense to me. In fact I see the opposite: if he had been a successfully
run double agent all that time, then when his usefulness had ended he would have been
decently pensioned off – not simply cut loose to fend for himself – but *not*
allowed to travel abroad unimpeded (with his whole family, no less) where he would have the
opportunity to cause mischief.
Were it not so powerful militarily and financially, the United States would be the
laughingstock of the world. This entire business is just another avenue travelled in America's nonstop Russophobia
lunatic wanderings. The DNC material was not hacked as a number of true experts have told us, including the
key one now languishing in a British prison. Putin had no plan because nothing ever happened.
Nothing. And I think we've all seen that when Putin plans something, it happens. The article is interesting for its laying out of elaborate security procedures –
kind of a high-level almost academic "police procedural" – but I do feel in the end it
is not that helpful, much as I respect Mr Ritter.
When nothing has happened, it does seem a bit odd to scrutinize every piece of fiber and
bit of dust and to construct a massive scenario of "what ifs."
Meanwhile, the murder of Seth Rich, a genuine and meaningful event, goes virtually
uninvestigated.
No wonder you are in so much trouble, America, and no wonder you make so much trouble for
others.
Anonymot , September 16, 2019 at 15:16
In the extremely sophisticated world of high grade intelligence I have repeatedly said
that the Brennan, Clapper, Comey trio were lead-footed imbeciles. That has been the CIA
tradition since Dulles left. All of those in our intelligence racket have led us to the
trough of poisoned water and all of our Presidents drank. They have all become very rich, but
not from book sales nor from consulting fees.
It says a lot about the entire echelon of those who decide our fates. There is no way to
know whether it stems from ignorance or incompetence, but those with the Deep State mindset
like each other, hire each other, and have been in some sort of daisy chain since university.
We not only need to describe How it happens as this article does very well, but even more
importantly Why. Only then can we start to do something about it, although it is probably far
too late – it would be like taking the shell off of an egg and leaving that delicate
interior membrane just inside the shell intact.
Clods like these (add the Clintons) should have their post-employment millions confiscated
and put on trial.
Sorry, but "Big Intelligence" is always a failure, and on many levels. It is not a matter of any "clods." It is a matter of the very nature of the institution and the nature of the people who use
its output. The CIA only has a good record at doing bad things. I refer to its operations side and the havoc and violence they have released through the
decades. It is an army of richly-equipped thugs without uniforms interfering in the business of
others, "lying, cheating, and stealing."
I find it maddening that we "puppet proles" are treated like stupid fools, lied to
constantly, and nothing happens to stop the mad lying/false flag garbage that keeps on. Now,
today, after Bolton departure, out of the weirdness comes Pompous Pompeo spewing even worse
madness that could tip "us" into attacking Iran! Saudis are insane, Netanyahu faces his
electorate tomorrow, and we should believe MbS and cronies? Trump is nothing but a
stooge!
Maricata , September 16, 2019 at 19:28
Read The CIA as Organized Crime and Strength of the Wolf and Strength of the Pack by Douglas
Valentine.
Please, CN, have Mr. Valentine on your livc broadcast
Jeff Harrison , September 16, 2019 at 14:36
It occurs to me that this may have an inappropriate title. Plausibly Mr. Ritter has pegged
what Smolenkov was eventually – a double agent. In which case I would probably call him
pretty successful.
hetro , September 16, 2019 at 13:06
Also published yesterday, this Aaron Mate interview with John Kiriakou on Smolenkov:
"Kiriakou also notes that the way Smolenkov's intelligence was handled raises echoes of
the CIA's manipulation of intelligence to help justify the Iraq war. The information from
Smolenkov was handled personally by then-CIA Director John Brennan. Brennan reportedly
sidelined other CIA analysts and kept the Smolenkov information out of the Presidential Daily
Briefing – instead delivering it personally to President Obama and a small group of
officials."
"That is a highly highly unusual thing to do, but I think [Brennan] did it because he knew
that the source wasn't well placed, he knew that the source was lying about his access to
Putin -- or information coming from Putin -- and I think that for whatever reason John
Brennan really wanted the president to run with this narrative that the Russians were trying
to somehow impact the 2016 election, when the intelligence just simply wasn't there,"
Kiriakou says.
When Trump campaigned against the bloody foreign policies of the duopoly he was also
campaigning against an out of control, coup making, drug running, blackmailing, imperial CIA.
my comment to The Brennan wanted to 'get' Trump to save his own hide, the CIA, and the
duopoly from further embarrassment.
If Smolenkov is missing from his Virginia home (Chancellor below at 9.15.19 at 23:40)
hopefully he is in hiding to assure he can tell a Grand Jury about any instructions or
suggestions he may have received from Brennan, or others regarding the election of Donald
Trump.
Zhu , September 16, 2019 at 05:25
Re John 8:32, people forget Pilate's remark, "what is truth"?
Igor Bundy , September 16, 2019 at 04:29
The next report from the CIA will be from hogwarts and how the measter is concatenating a
secret potion on how to turn dykes into donkeys.. This is especially impotent to the CIA and
such.. to hide in plain sight..
Imagine them trying to make a bond movie from this. Or more of Bourne.. But now it makes
sense of all the shows that show the CIA as protector of humanity and the good guys.. There
are no righteous intelligence agencies anywhere, only how evil and their limits.. Why their
powers should be limited and their actions also limited to a small sphere. Because where does
it stop? Once given the power to shape reality, then the entire world is shaped according to
a few with psychopathic tendencies. Which normal person would want to control everyone
according to their own reality? When you cant control your very own family, you have to be
one heck of a control freak to do it globally and to force everyone to do as told. But these
are the dreams and aspirations of an ape.. To remake the world in his own image.. and the
prize is the banana..
John Wright , September 16, 2019 at 15:11
More like a Le Carre' film. The CIA was originally sold as an intelligence gathering and analysis organization, and
was not supposed to be involved in operations. Thus, it was founded on lies and the lies have
only grown since.
Neither the CIA nor the FBI are salvageable at this point. They need to be abolished,
their functions reconsidered and new institutions which adhere to the Constitution created.
Of course, the entire military intelligence complex needs to be dismantled, starting with the
DHS, but that will require a revolution in this country.
Even the former communist state governments in Europe and the Soviet Union rued the day
that they unleashed their secret police from accountability, and thereby became subservient
to their power.
Chancellor , September 15, 2019 at 23:40
"But his job as foreman of the Rossotrudnichestvo coop was not the kind of job a Maurive
(sic) Thorez graduate gets;"
Of course it isn't, because that was never really his job. My guess is that his real job
all along was to be recruited by the CIA, when, in fact, he was always a double agent. The
rumors that he drank too much, was dissatisfied with his pay, and so on, strike me as too
obvious a come-on to an over-confident CIA. If Mr. Ritter knows that this is the type of
individual the CIA looks for, then the Russian security services know this as well. After
all, they tagged every American on the Moscow Station. Clearly, they have excellent
tradecraft.
The final coup by the Russian security services was to create a situation where Smolenkov
would have to be extracted by the CIA, although the Russians probably didn't think it would
take so long. Now it appears that Smolenkov is missing from the Virginia home that he
purchased openly under his own name. I wouldn't be surprised if he is living comfortably
somewhere back in Russia–this time having been "extracted" by the Russians, since his
cover as a CIA asset was finally blown.
Clearly this is speculation, but no more so than the scenarios Mr. Ritter posits.
Fabrizio Zambuto , September 16, 2019 at 14:11
Third scenario seems possible. He starts to drink, he shows how unsatisfied he is, knows
Americans will target him.
Meanwhile he gets spoonfed the intel he will have to share with the CIA.
According to Lavrov, he was a employee with little access to the echelons.
Last but not least: Putin said traitors will be punished but they don't get killed,
they're sent to Prison and handed years like Skripal which managed to go to UK thanks to a
swap.
Overall I like the article but too much Hollywood in the story. Why was he fired?
John Wright , September 15, 2019 at 23:38
[The Chinese play Go, the Russians Chess and the Americans Poker (badly)]
I think it's pretty clear that Mr. Ritter's third scenario is the correct interpretation
of the facts. I wouldn't even be surprised if the Russians surreptitiously got the U.S. media
to out their double agent. Timing is everything, after all, and now he's Langley's problem to
deal with.
The Russians know that the corrupt Anglo-American Deep State will work against any
relationship which is beneficial to Russia, so they have absolutely nothing to lose by
feeding the Deep State a narrative that can potentially wreak havoc within it.
Having Smolenkov feed this narrative into the bowels of the CIA clearly helped advance the
Deep State's rather obvious operation to create the appearance of collusion between the Trump
campaign and Russia, all the more reason for Brennan and company to swallow it hook, line and
sinker.
So Deep State tool Obama bites on the interference narrative, confronts Putin and takes
illegal actions that, if exposed, have the potential to seriously damage his legacy and the
presidency. This plausible result would cause Americans to lose even more faith in their
increasingly corrupt and dysfunctional government and affect world opinion.
We now see that if Barr actually does his job as mandated by the Constitution, then this
becomes a very distinct possibility.
Had the rabid neocon Clinton won, her administration would've undoubtedly buried Obama's
unconstitutional indiscretion, but fingerprints would've lingered for a future Republican to
possibly uncover and cause chaos with. It's even possible that Smolenkov would've remained in
place and continued to feed even more poisonous disinformation to the U.S. intelligence
morass, setting Clinton up for who knows what.
However, the unstable, narcissistic and easily played Trump miraculously wins. He's
immediately and continuously hit with RussiaGate. Trump reacts predictably by fanning the
flames of distraction when he calls out the Deep State and keeps punching back. The Executive
Branch is divided against itself, Congress and the electorate are further polarized and a
significant amount of energy is tied up with unproductive domestic political
machinations.
Almost three years of noise and crisis worked to increase Trump's natural dysfunction
while the Russians and Chinese quietly manage their coordinated effort to transform the
global power structure in their favor.
Will this Russian gift keep on giving?
Will Barr, or someone else if Trump fires him, dig into the entire RussiaGate mess and
expose all the lies and blatant illegality potentially causing a serious national crisis,
further damaging the reputation and credit worthiness of the U.S. ?
Or will Barr remain a faithful Deep State fixer, convince Trump that taking down Obama
would not be good for the economic health of the country (and his re-election), and carefully
steer everything he can down the memory hole?
Are those vodka glasses I hear clinking in Beijing?
[I'm just left wondering who will produce the deliciously embarrassing (to the U.S.) film
that this would make.]
Taras77 , September 15, 2019 at 19:42
Remarkable detail on the recruitment and control of agents by the CIA. In this case, it
would appear that Brennan has been played big time. IMO, to see Smolenkov walk away with his
loot in the bank, there can not be any other conclusion.
Hence, the obvious panic by brennan to use the likely suspects, NYT and wapo, to cast more
haze on the story. If there were treason, I doubt Smolenkov would be walking because the
Russians do not take that lightly. Actually, they have acted and are acting with competence
and confidence in the face of the bumbling, fumbling bombast and threats of the group around
trump which passes themselves off as diplomats and security advisors.
Brennan in his obsession to interfere with the political process prob contributed to his
malfeasance and a possible crime-I am no legal expert but it certainly seems that he
committed crimes.
Of course, this raises the question as to whether barr et al will act accordingly and
bring him to justice-I have strong doubts about barr taking on the cia as they will certainly
close ranks to protect him. My doubts about barr, however, go well beyond this particular
issue vis-a-vis the cia.
SilentPartner , September 15, 2019 at 18:58
I suspect Scott was provided a great deal of the reporting in this fascinating article
from a disgruntled insider, or former insider. Knowledge of Brennan's break with protocol to
form a select 'stand alone fusion cell' that reported only to him is something that I haven't
seen reported before. In any case this story adds another red flag to the entire Russiagate
hoax.
Just as Mueller failed to interview Julian Assange or Christopher Steele for his report --
obvious red flags -- we should now watch the conduct of Barr's investigation. Will Barr's
investigators interview Smolenkov? This should be an important metric to determine how
serious his investigation is. Another metric for Barr will be whether Ghislaine Maxwell is
indicted and arrested in the Jefferey Epstein affair. If not, we will soon know just how deep
goes the corruption of the ruling class.
Sam F , September 15, 2019 at 18:28
Many thanks to Scott Ritter for this information and cogent argument.
However it is not clear how Russia would expect to benefit by allowing Smolenkov to
deceive the CIA that Putin directly ordered interference in the US election. While later
discrediting of the US "Russia-gate" nonsense would make the US IC look bad, it is unclear
that this could be done, and it would have been done by now to reduce political tensions, but
still has not been done. Putin himself denied the accusations as nonsense.
So something is missing: if that was not the plan, Smolenkov was not asked to do that, and
he would not have been viewed as harmless when fired for that. If he had other incriminating
info on decision makers there, he would not have been allowed to leave, and having escaped,
he would have concealed his new location. Perhaps his superiors ill-advisedly asked him to
make false statements, for which he was not blamed.
Anon , September 16, 2019 at 07:09
I agree. The logic of "embarrassing" the CIA and dividing them from the president by
passing inflammatory information seems a stretch. On the other hand, I agree there do appear
a number of "red flags."
I'm wondering about the merit of the idea that this guy cooked up the story himself,
though I'm not sure that works either. It just seems to me something is missing.
Ojkelly , September 16, 2019 at 12:00
I thought the idea was that a Brennan minion planted or asked for the "Putin is
interfering " report, or even made it up and attributed it to a minor asset.
Brendan , September 15, 2019 at 15:00
( ) the timing of the CNN and New York Times reports about the "exfiltration" of the
CIA's "sensitive source" seems to be little more than a blatant effort by Brennan and his
allies in the media to shape a narrative before Barr uncovers the truth.
That's very likely to be true, but I think there's more to it than just getting Brennan's
version of events published before anyone elses. If you want to implant your narrative in the
public's mind it certainly does help to get your story out first, but in this case there's an
additional motive for leaking the spy story.
One effect of the leak was that Smolenko suddenly disappeared. His family apparently fled
their house in a hurry, leaving belongings lying around according to media reports.
Normally the CIA would never 'out' a valued asset, even a used one, because that would
discourage potential informers. And CNN and the NYT would not reveal details that would
identify a Russian defector – as happened in this case when Russian Kommersant
identified Smolenkov. American mainstream media would first check that it was OK to publish
those details.
This looks far too unusual to be simply a result of incompetence by Americans. A much
better explanation is that some powerful people were really desperate to make Smolenko
disappear. And the reason is that he knew too much. And now he has gone into hiding,
supposedly to escape vengeance from Putin. What is most significant is that he does not face
as many questions about his role in Russiagate.
A general search for Intel on google doesn't yield an abundance of articles that mention
its move to Israel in 1974, but I discovered it when the Spectre/Meltdown (intentional
Israeli processor security flaws, I mean "features") became known in 2018. "Nothing is ever
impossible, in this life" except for a computer that's not infested with the US-Israeli
partnership. We are also not surprised that Intel was not on Donald Trump's list of American
companies to bring back to the US.
Mike from Jersey , September 15, 2019 at 14:23
Good article. This is the kind of analysis you will not find in the New York Times or the Washington
Post. This is why I come to the Consortium News.
hetro , September 15, 2019 at 13:46
If I'm following properly, the white paper from Smolenkov is at the heart of the January
6, 2017, "assessments" that the case would be made–Trump as dupe of Putin.
Recall, too, that these "assessments" differed. Brennan's and Comey's were "high";
Clapper's was "moderate."
And, as Scott Ritter points out, they were "estimates" not based on hard proof; they were
essentially "guesses."
Why the discrepancy? (Related: William Binney says this "moderate" from Clapper means the
NSA knows Russia did not hack the DNC.)
I think this discrepancy question is important. How could a (supposedly) verifiable report
via white paper from a verifiable double agent Smolenkov be anything but a slam dunk
(unanimous) "high" for the major intelligence agencies?
The other question is Scott's WHY the Russian intelligence apparatus, with Putin
complicit, would set out to embarrass the US intelligence agencies with a cooked up
story–that made Putin look bad?
Of course, they could not know back at that time how the story would cook and proliferate
across US mainstream media with all the glee of Russia-bashing run amok and its TDS.
This view would also suggest a belief that somewhere in the US justice system was the
integrity to dig everything out and expose the fraud.
nwwoods , September 15, 2019 at 17:56
I believe that it was NSA which declared "moderate confidence", so no, not Clapper.
Clapper, in my opinion, was in on the gambit, a witting confederate of ringleader
Brennan.
hetro , September 16, 2019 at 11:30
Yes. Technically Clapper resigned as head of the NSA in 2016, and it was Mike Rogers, the
new head in 2017 who declared the assessment "moderate." Clapper had been involved with
Brennan and Comey in forming the January 6, 2017 assessment.
The question still remains: why the discrepancy in this "assessment" at the very beginning
of Trump's presidency, with its powerful impact.
JP McEvoy , September 15, 2019 at 12:33
One thing is for sure, if anything bad happens to the mole, it's won't be the Russians who did it.
Watch your back Mr. Skrip – er – I mean Smolenkov.
Robert Emmett , September 15, 2019 at 11:25
Damn! Please allow me to toss the "curveball" too. What's that? The real one or the fake,
you say? Ha ha. Yes, exactly! O, Vaunted sacred screed of PDB where the truth shall set you
free to prime the pump with lies. (hint: to spare your soul don't look into their eyes)
I haven't exactly been able to figure out what's wrong with Brennan's face, 'til I just
got it. He's been double-yoked! His own plus Barrack's (truer sp.). Egg that just won't wash
off! So you have to wear it everywhere, every day. Talk about serviceable villains hiding in
plain sight. Hey, Clapper! Don't get any on ya! Haha. Too late!
Carroll Price , September 15, 2019 at 10:43
Another example of checker champions competing with chess masters.
CortesKid , September 15, 2019 at 10:33
Brilliant and thorough. As I was reading Mr. Ritter's analysis, an overwhelming impression
was building, analogous to the third scenario, that Smolenkov , indeed, was a lure perfectly
placed to catch an intelligence agency or three. As I've watched and read many Russian
official's communications, especially their diplomatic efforts, it has become obvious to me
that, on average, they are some of the few "adults in the room." In broadstrokes, they are
playing chess, while the whole of the West, with its increasingly senile elites, is at the
Checkers table.
And in even broader strokes, I believe that at the heart of all of these shenanigans, is a
foundational turning away from a matured-and-deflating West, to an energized and expanding
Eurasia (Brezhinki's nightmare). As you know, changes on the scale of hegemon are never easy.
"Dying empires don't lay down, they double-down."
And I don't necessarily think Smolenkov and family are safe–from, for instance,
"Novichok" delivered via some American ally's secret service–as a pretense for further
demonization of Russia.
Brendan , September 15, 2019 at 07:51
Sorry but the theory that's proposed above is a bit too convoluted to be believable
– that Russia manipulated the CIA with the fake hacking story from Smolenkov and then
the CIA chief Brennan used it to manipulate Obama who then unwittingly revealed to Putin that
the USA was fooled by the story.
I'd rather follow Occam's razor and go for a simpler scenario. Brennan and the CIA
persuaded Smolenkov to invent the story (that he had inside knowledge that Putin ordered the
hacking of the DNC).
Not only that, but Obama suspected that the story was fake, since it was passed on to him
outside the normal channels and was investigated in a similar unconventional way. It's hard
to believe that Obama was easily hoodwinked and simply accepted the story as fact without any
convincing evidence.
The Democratic Party's fingerprints are all over the Russiagate story. The DNC
commissioned the Steele dossier and Steele met officials in the Obama administration's State
Department before the 2016 election. We're expected to believe that this all went on behind
President Obama's back.
We're also expected to believe that Obama innocently believed Smolenkov's report, as if
the CIA and FBI would never tell a lie. He's not completely stupid – at the very least
he must have had serious doubts about the allegations, or he could even have been in on the
Russiagate fabrication himself.
Maricata , September 16, 2019 at 19:34
It is more and more difficult to ascertain reality from fantasy, certainty from
assumptions. And this all plays into the hands of the ruling elites and their international
and national pratorean guards.
Americans do not ask questions. They prefer to believe than to know and thus the {swirl}
will yield nothing.
F. G. Sanford , September 15, 2019 at 07:05
Putin must surely have smirked. The little white envelope worked.
The debate made it plain he had pulled Brennan's chain,
And behind the scene subterfuge lurked!
Only four people went to the meeting. Connections might prove rather fleeting.
The "puppet" rebuke at the time seemed a fluke,
No one dared claim that Clinton was cheating!
Brennan's confidence level was high. He had sources and methods to spy.
He had top secret stuff that he claimed was enough,
But no evidence he'd specify!
Then Clinton claimed Russian subversion. In retrospect, not a diversion.
She must have been tipped by somebody loose lipped,
And she ran with the Putin incursion!
Strzok and Page were kept out of the loop. They didn't get insider poop.
They found no 'there' there, Comey's cupboard looked bare,
Brennan's spy had not yet flown the coop.
The durable lie picked up traction. Their spook would require extraction.
How could Clinton be sure that the blame would endure,
And the Steele Dossier would get action?
The 'Agent in Place' was a double. He didn't get in any trouble.
Hillary's pride had some hubris to hide,
In the end it would burst Brennan's bubble!
The big secret meeting was leaked. On the stage, "He's a puppet!" she shrieked.
Perhaps Susan Rice was inclined to be nice,
And her duty to Hillary peaked!
So now, they blame Trump for the outing. But it's over except for the shouting.
The 'insurance' is void, the illusion destroyed,
And poor Hillary just keeps on pouting!
David Otness , September 14, 2019 at 23:41
Scott -- so glad I got the head's-up on this via the CN Live show. I just now finished it
and am putting it into perspective. Well-researched, and well-written -- it's truly a web so
very reminiscent of what should have remained Cold War 1.0 finis.
And Episode Nine of CN Live is showing us where this internet platform can go with the
assembled experience and talent exhibited. The tech glitches were too bad, but the audio was
quite good enough.
Thanks for this travel guide to the heart of the labyrinth. Hopefully good things come of it.
I do worry about Barr's too many allegiances to his CIA incubator though, especially with all
of the ongoing coverups of the Epstein fiasco (engineered or not,) that complicate and
obfuscate the twin scandals that both end up under Barr's purview.
Ya done good, nonetheless. Thank you.
Abe , September 14, 2019 at 22:07
"After the U.S. reports came out, an anonymous, well-informed Russian Telegram channel,
The Ruthless PR Guy, reported that the asset was Kremlin official Oleg Smolenkov. On Tuesday
(10 September 2019] morning, the Moscow daily Kommersant published a story confirming that it
was him based on anonymous sources and some pretty convincing circumstantial evidence. [
]
"If Smolenkov was a spy, he could have delivered important insights about Russia's foreign
policy thinking and planning to U.S. intelligence. But if he was the source for the U.S.
intelligence community's certainty that Putin personally orchestrated a covert interference
campaign, that certainty rests on a weak foundation. Smolenkov served the wrong boss in the
Kremlin to get reliable information about such ventures."
Mr Ritter, Very lightly done. " Curveball made me do it" is the defense.
Brennan, well,I am not knowledgeable , but tight with Barry, unprofessional to my view, has
an issue. He made the most outrageous statements, Commander believing his own BS, NYT
magazine. Imagine going around saying that Trump was a Russian agent . Did incomparable
harm.And Morrell endorsing Hillary Clinton :beyond the pale , Professional members of the
agency must've been? Shocked appalled, whatever.
Jeff Harrison , September 14, 2019 at 21:52
Whooof! Obviously the MSM won't touch any of this stuff. I also don't have a lot of
confidence in the US government's ability to clean up the mess it has made. Amusingly, I've
watched the US's ham handed operations around the world and wondered when somebody would
return the complement. If Mr. Ritter is to be believed, it seems the Russians have started.
As Mr. Lawrence pointed out on CN live, Americans need to dispense with the notion that we
are exceptional. That's a weakness as it leads to complacency. How many more bricks of trust
in our government will we have to see broken before the entire edifice collapses? I would
also like to point out that we wouldn't be having these kind of problems if we weren't hell
bent on being the global hegemon.
Clark M Shanahan , September 14, 2019 at 22:54
"If Mr. Ritter is to be believed"
Jeffrey, I've followed Mr Ritter.
You can believe what he is stating, he's a good man.
my bad: Ritter starts at 48 minutes, before Nixon & Maupin
Jeff Harrison , September 15, 2019 at 17:43
I'm hip, Clark. I said that simply because I have no other collaborating commentary.
Ritter had my vote when he stood up to Shrub over Iraq's WMDs. But you do have to keep the
realization that you could be wrong so if Mr. Ritter is to be believed. I think that the odds
that Ritter is wrong are in the general vicinity of the odds that the US will start acting
like a normal nation.
A retired Australian diplomat who served in Moscow dissects the emergence of the new Cold
War and its dire consequences.
I n 2014, we saw violent U.S.-supported regime change and civil war in Ukraine. In February,
after months of increasing tension from the anti-Russian protest movement's sitdown strike in
Kiev's Maidan Square, there was a murderous clash between protesters and Ukrainian police,
sparked off by hidden shooters (we now know that were expert Georgian snipers) , aiming at
police. The elected government collapsed and President Yanukevich fled to Russia, pursued by
murder squads.
The new Poroshenko government pledged harsh anti-Russian language laws. Rebels in two
Russophone regions in Eastern Ukraine took local control, and appealed for Russian military
help. In March, a referendum took place in Russian-speaking Crimea on leaving Ukraine, under
Russian military protection. Crimeans voted overwhelmingly to join Russia, a request promptly
granted by the Russian Parliament and President. Crimea's border with Ukraine was secured
against saboteurs. Crimea is prospering under its pro-Russian government, with the economy
kick-started by Russian transport infrastructure investment.
In April, Poroshenko ordered full military attack on the separatist provinces of Donetsk and
Luhansk in Eastern Ukraine. A brutal civil war ensued, with aerial and artillery bombardment
bringing massive civilian death and destruction to the separatist region. There was major
refugee outflow into Russia and other parts of Ukraine. The shootdown of MH17 took place in
July 2014.
Poroshenko: Ordered military attack.
By August 2015, according to UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
estimates, 13,000 people had been killed and 30,000 wounded. 1.4 million Ukrainians had been
internally displaced, and 925,000 had fled to neighbouring countries, mostly Russia and to a
lesser extent Poland.
There is now a military stalemate, under the stalled Minsk peace process. But random fatal
clashes continue, with the Ukrainian Army mostly blamed by UN observers. The UN reported last
month that the ongoing war has affected 5.2 million people, leaving 3.5 million of them in need
of relief, including 500,000 children. Most Russians blame the West for fomenting Ukrainian
enmity towards Russia. This war brings back for older Russians horrible memories of the Nazi
invasion in 1941. The Russia-Ukraine border is only 550 kilometres from Moscow.
Flashpoint Syria
Russian forces joined the civil war in Syria in September 2015, at the request of the Syrian
Government, faltering under the attacks of Islamist extremist rebel forces reinforced by
foreign fighters and advanced weapons. With Russian air and ground support, the tide of war
turned. Palmyra and Aleppo were recaptured in 2016. An alleged Syrian Government chemical
attack at Khan Shaykhun in April 2017 resulted in a token U.S. missile attack on a Syrian
Government airbase: an early decision by President Trump.
NATO, Strategic Balance, Sanctions
An F-15C Eagle from the 493rd Fighter Squadron takes off from Royal Air Force Lakenheath,
England, March 6, 2014. The 48th Fighter Wing sent an additional six aircraft and more than 50
personnel to support NATO's air policing mission in Lithuania, at the request of U.S. allies in
the Baltics. (U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Emerson Nunez/Released)
Tensions have risen in the Baltic as NATO moves ground forces and battlefield missiles up to
the Baltic states' borders with Russia. Both sides' naval and air forces play dangerous
brinksmanship games in the Baltic. U.S. short-range, non-nuclear-armed anti-ballistic missiles
were stationed in Poland and Romania, allegedly against threat of Iranian attack. They are
easily convertible to nuclear-armed missiles aimed at nearby Russia.
Nuclear arms control talks have stalled. The INF intermediate nuclear forces treaty expired
in 2019, after both sides accused the other of cheating. In March 2018, Putin announced that
Russia has developed new types of intercontinental nuclear missiles using technologies that
render U.S. defence systems useless. The West has pretended to ignore this announcement, but we
can be sure Western defence ministries have noted it. Nuclear second-strike deterrence has
returned, though most people in the West have forgotten what this means. Russians know exactly
what it means.
Western economic sanctions against Russia continue to tighten after the 2014 events in
Ukraine. The U.S. is still trying to block the nearly completed Nordstream Baltic Sea
underwater gas pipeline from Russia to Germany. Sanctions are accelerating the division of the
world into two trade and payments systems: the old NATO-led world, and the rest of the world
led by China, with full Russian support and increasing interest from India, Japan, ROK and
ASEAN.
Return to Moscow
In 2013, my children gave me an Ipad. I began to spend several hours a day reading well
beyond traditional mainstream Western sources: British and American dissident sites, writers
like Craig Murray in UK and in the U.S. Stephen Cohen, and some Russian sites – rt.com,
Sputnik, TASS, and the official Foreign Ministry site mid.ru. in English.
In late 2015 I decided to visit Russia independently to write Return to Moscow , a
literary travel memoir. I planned to compare my impressions of the Soviet Union, where I had
lived and worked as an Australian diplomat in 1969-71, with Russia today. I knew there had been
huge changes. I wanted to experience 'Putin's Russia' for myself, to see how it felt to be
there as an anonymous visitor in the quiet winter season. I wanted to break out of the familiar
one-dimensional hostile political view of Russia that Western mainstream media offer: to take
my readers with me on a cultural pilgrimage through the tragedy and grandeur and inspiration of
Russian history. As with my earlier book on Spain 'Walking the Camino' , this was not
intended to be a political book, and yet somehow it became one.
I was still uncommitted on contemporary Russian politics before going to Russia in January
2016. Using the metaphor of a seesaw, I was still sitting somewhere around the middle.
My book was written in late 2015 – early 2016, expertly edited by UWA Publishing. It
was launched in March 2017. By this time my political opinions had moved decisively to the
Russian end of the seesaw, on the basis of what I had seen in Russia, and what I had read and
thought during the year.
I have been back again twice, in winter 2018 and 2019. My 2018 visit included Crimea, and I
happened to see a Navalny-led Sunday demonstration in Moscow. I thoroughly enjoyed all three
independent visits: in my opinion, they give my judgements on Russia some depth and
authenticity.
Russophobia Becomes Entrenched
Russia was a big talking point in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. As the initially
unlikely Republican candidate Donald Trump's chances improved, anti-Putin and anti-Russian
positions hardened in the outgoing Obama administration and in the Democratic Party
establishment which backed candidate Hillary Clinton.
Russia and Putin became caught up in the Democratic Party's increasingly obsessive rage and
hatred against the victorious Trump. Russophobia became entrenched in Washington and London
U.S. and UK political and strategic elites, especially in intelligence circles: think of
Pompeo, Brennan, Comey and Clapper. All sense of international protocol and diplomatic
propriety towards Russia and its President was abandoned, as this appalling Economist
cover from October 2016 shows.
My experience of undeclared political censorship in Australia since four months after
publication of 'Return to Moscow' supports the thesis that:
We are now in the thick of a ruthless but mostly covert Anglo-American alliance
information war against Russia. In this war, individuals who speak up publicly in the cause of
detente with Russia will be discouraged from public discourse.
In the Thick of Information War
When I spoke to you two years ago, I had no idea how far-reaching and ruthless this
information war is becoming. I knew that a false negative image of Russia was taking hold in
the West, even as Russia was becoming a more admirable and self-confident civil society, moving
forward towards greater democracy and higher living standards, while maintaining essential
national security. I did not then know why, or how.
I had just had time to add a few final paragraphs in my book about the possible consequences
for Russia-West relations of Trump's surprise election victory in November 2016. I was right to
be cautious, because since Trump's inauguration we have seen the step-by-step elimination of
any serious pro-detente voices in Washington, and the reassertion of control over this
haphazard president by the bipartisan imperial U.S. deep state, as personified from April 2018
by Secretary of State Pompeo and National Security Adviser Bolton. Bolton has now been thrown
from the sleigh as decoy for the wolves: under the smooth-talking Pompeo, the imperial policies
remain.
Truth, Trust and False Narratives
Let me now turn to some theory about political reality and perception, and how national
communities are persuaded to accept false narratives. Let me acknowledge my debt to the
fearless and brilliant Australian independent online journalist, Caitlin Johnstone.
Behavioural scientists have worked in the field of what used to be called propaganda since
WW1. England has always excelled in this field. Modern wars are won or lost not just on the
battlefield, but in people's minds. Propaganda, or as we now call it information warfare, is as
much about influencing people's beliefs within your own national community as it is
about trying to demoralise and subvert the enemy population.
The IT revolution of the past few years has exponentially magnified the effectiveness of
information warfare. Already in the 1940s, George Orwell understood how easily governments are
able to control and shape public perceptions of reality and to suppress dissent. His brilliant
books 1984 and Animal Farm are still instruction manuals in principles of
information warfare. Their plots tell of the creation by the state of false narratives, with
which to control their gullible populations.
The disillusioned Orwell wrote from his experience of real politics. As a volunteer fighter
in the Spanish Civil War, he saw how both Spanish sides used false news and propaganda
narratives to demonise the enemy. He also saw how the Nazi and Stalinist systems in Germany and
Russia used propaganda to support show trials and purges, the concentration camps and the
Gulag, anti-Semitism and the Holocaust, German master race and Stalinist class enemy
ideologies; and hows dissident thought was suppressed in these controlled societies. Orwell
tried to warn his readers: all this could happen here too, in our familiar old England. But
because the good guys won the war against fascism, his warnings were ignored.
We are now in Britain, U.S. and Australia actually living in an information warfare world
that has disturbing echoes of the world that Orwell wrote about. The essence of information
control is the effective state management of two elements, trust and fear , to
generate and uphold a particular view of truth. Truth, trust and fear : these are the
three key elements, now as 100 years ago in WWI Britain.
People who work or have worked close to government – in departments, politics, the
armed forces, or top universities – mostly accept whatever they understand at the time to
be 'the government view' of truth. Whether for reasons of organisational loyalty, career
prudence or intellectual inertia, it is usually this way around governments. It is why moral
issues like the Vietnam War and the U.S.-led 2003 invasion of Iraq were so distressing for
people of conscience working in or close to government and military jobs in Canberra. They were
expected to engage in 'doublethink' as Orwell had described it:
Even in Winston's nightmare world, there were still choices – to retreat into the
non-political world of the proles, or to think forbidden thoughts and read forbidden books.
These choices involved large risks and punishments. It was easier and safer for most people to
acquiesce in the fake news they were fed by state-controlled media.
'Trust, Truth and False Narratives'
Fairfax journalist Andrew Clark, in the Australian Financial Review , in an essay
optimistically titled "Not fake news: Why truth and trust are still in good shape in
Australia", (AFR Dec. 22, 2018), cited Professor William Davies thus:
"Most of the time, the edifice that we refer to as "truth" is really an investment of
trust in our structures of politics and public life' 'When trust sinks below a certain point,
many people come to view the entire spectacle of politics and public life as a sham."
Here is my main point: Effective information warfare requires the creation of enough
public trust to make the public believe that state-supported lies are true.
The key tools are repetition of messages, and diversification of trusted
voices. Once a critical mass is created of people believing a false narrative, the lie locks
in: its dissemination becomes self-sustaining.
" Power is being able to control what happens. Absolute power is being able
to control what people think about what happens. If you can control what happens,
you can have power until the public gets sick of your BS and tosses you out on your ass. If
you can control what people think about what happens, you can have power forever. As
long as you can control how people are interpreting circumstances and events, there's no
limit to the evils you can get away with."
The Internet has made propaganda campaigns that used to take weeks or months a matter of
hours or even minutes to accomplish. It is about getting in quickly, using large enough
clusters of trusted and diverse sources, in order to cement lies in place, to make the
lies seem true, to magnify them through social messaging: in other words, to create credible
false narratives that will quickly get into the public's bloodstream.
Over the past two years, I have seen this work many times: on issues like framing Russia for
the MH17 tragedy; with false allegations of Assad mounting poison gas attacks in Syria; with
false allegations of Russian agents using lethal Novichok to try to kill the Skripals in
Salisbury; and with the multiple lies of Russiagate.
It is the mind-numbing effect of constant repetition of disinformation by many eminent
people and agencies, in hitherto trusted channels like the BBC or ABC or liberal Anglophone
print media that gives the system its power to persuade the credulous. For if so many diverse
and reputable people repeatedly report such negative news and express such negative judgements
about Russia or China or Iran or Syria, surely they must be right?
We have become used to reading in our quality newspapers and hearing on the BBC and ABC and
SBS gross assaults on truth, calmly presented as accepted facts. There is no real public debate
on important facts in contention any more. There are no venues for dissent outside contrarian
social media sites.
Sometimes, false narratives inter-connect. Often a disinformation narrative in one area is
used to influence perceptions in other areas. For example, the false Skripals poisoning story
was launched by British intelligence in March 2018, just in time to frame Syrian President
Assad as the guilty party in a faked chemical weapons attack in Douma the following month.
The Skripals Gambit
The Skripals gambit was also a failed British attempt to blight the Russia –hosted
Football World Cup in June 2018. In the event, hundreds of thousands of Western sports fans
returned home with the warmest memories of Russian good sportsmanship and hospitality.
How do I know the British Skripals narrative is false? For a start, it is illogical,
incoherent, and constantly changes. Allegedly, two visiting Russian FSB agents in March 2018
sprayed or smeared Novichok, a deadly toxin instantly lethal in the most microscopic
quantities, on the Skripals' house front doorknob. There is no video footage of the Skripals at
their front door on the day. We are told they were found slumped on a park bench, and that is
maybe where they had been sprayed with nerve gas? Shortly afterwards, Britain's Head of Army
Nursing who happened to be passing by found them, and supervised their hospitalisation and
emergency treatment.
Allegedly, much of Salisbury was contaminated by Novichok, and one unfortunate woman
mysteriously died weeks later, yet the Skripals somehow did not die, as we are told. But where
are they now? We saw a healthy Yulia in a carefully scripted video interview released in May
2018, after an alleged 'one in a million' recovery. We were assured her father had recovered
too, but nobody has seen him at all. The Skripals have simply disappeared from sight since 16
months ago. Are they now alive or dead? Are they in voluntary or involuntary British
custody?
A month after the poisoning, the UK Government sent biological samples from the Skripals to
the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons , for testing. The OPCW sent the
samples to a trusted OPCW laboratory in Spiez, Switzerland.
Lavrov Spiez BZ claims, April 2018
A few days later, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov dramatically announced in Moscow
that the Spiez lab had found in the samples a temporary-effect nerve agent BZ, used by U.S. and
UK but not by Russia, that would have disabled the Skripals for a few days without killing
them. He also revealed the Spiez lab had found that the Skripal samples had been twice tampered
with while still in UK custody: first soon after the poisoning, and again shortly before
passing them to the OPCW. He said the Spiez lab had found a high concentration of Novichok,
which he called A- 234, in its original form. This was extremely suspicious as A-234 has high
volatility and could not have retained its purity over a two weeks period. The dosage the Spiez
lab found in the samples would have surely killed the Skripals. The OPCW under British pressure
rejected Lavrov's claim, and suppressed the Spiez lab report.
Let's look finally at the alleged assassins.
'Boshirov and Petrov'
These two FSB operatives who visited Salisbury under the false identities of 'Boshirov' and
'Petrov' did not look or behave like credible assassins. It is more likely that they were sent
to negotiate with Sergey Skripal about his rumoured interest in returning to Russia. They
needed to apply for UK visas a month in advance of travel: ample time for the British agencies
to identify them as FSB operatives, and to construct a false attempted assassination narrative
around their visit. This false narrative repeatedly trips over its own lies and contradictions.
British social media are full of alternative theories and rebuttals. Russians find the whole
British Government Skripal narrative laughable. They have invented comedy skits and video games
based on it. Yet it had major impact on Russia-West relations.
The Douma False Narrative
I turn now to the claimed Assad chemical weapons attack in Douma in April 2018.This falsely
alleged attack triggered a major NATO air attack on Syrian targets, ordered by Trump. We came
close to WWIII in these dangerous days. Thanks to the restraint of the then Secretary of
Defence James Mattis and his Russian counterparts, the risk was contained.
The allegation that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had used outlawed chemical weapons
against his own people was based solely on the evidence of faked video images of child victims,
made by the discredited White Helmets, a UK-sponsored rebel-linked 'humanitarian' propaganda
organisation with much blood on its hands. Founded in 2013 by a British private security
specialist of intelligence background, James Le Mesurier, the White Helmets specialised in
making fake videos of alleged Assad regime war crimes against Syrian civilians. It is by now a
thoroughly discredited organisation that was prepared to kill its prisoners and then film their
bodies as alleged victims of government chemical attacks.
White Helmets
As the town of Douma was about to fall to advancing Syrian Government forces, the White
Helmets filled a room with stacked corpses of murdered prisoners, and photographed them as
alleged victims of aerial gas attack. They also made a video alleging child victims of this
attack being hosed down by White Helmets. A video of a child named Hassan Diab went viral all
over the Western world.
Hassan Diab later testified publicly in The Hague that he had been dragged terrified from
his family by force, smeared with some sort of grease, and hosed down with water as part of a
fake video. He went from hero to zero overnight, as Western governments and media rejected his
testimony as Russian and Syrian propaganda.
In a late development, there is proof that the OPCW suppressed its own engineers' report
from Douma that the alleged poison gas cylinders could not have possibly been dropped from the
air through the roof of the house where one was found, resting on a bed under a convenient hole
in the roof.
I could go on discussing the detail of such false narratives all day. No matter how often
they are exposed by critics, our politicians and mainstream media go on referencing them as if
they are true. Once people have come to believe false narratives, it is hard to refute
them.
So it is with the false narrative that Russian internet interference enabled Trump to win
the 2016 U.S. presidential elections: a thesis for which no evidence was found by [Special
Counsel Robert] Mueller, yet continues to be cited by many U.S. liberal Democratic media as if
it were true. So, even, with MH17.
Managing Mass Opinion
This mounting climate of Western Russophobia is not accidental: it is strategically
directed, and it is nourished with regular maintenance doses of fresh lies. Each round of lies
provides a credible platform for the next round somewhere else. The common thread is a claimed
malign Russian origin for whatever goes wrong.
So where is all this disinformation originating? Information technology firms in Washington
and London that are closely networked into government elites, often through attending the same
establishment schools or colleges like Eton and Yale, have closely studied and tested the
science of influencing crowd opinions through mainstream media and online. They know, in a way
that Orwell or Goebbels could hardly have dreamt, how to put out and repeat desired media
messages. They know what sizes of 'internet attraction nodes' need to be established online, in
order to create diverse critical masses of credible Russophobic messaging, which then attracts
enough credulous and loyal followers to become self-propagating.
Firms like the SCL Group (formerly Strategic Communication Laboratories) and the now defunct
Cambridge Analytica pioneered such work in the UK. There are many similar firms in Washington,
all in the business of monitoring, generating and managing mass opinion. It is big business,
and it works closely with the national security state.
Starting in November 2018, an enterprising group of unknown hackers in the UK , who go by
the name 'Anonymous', opened a remarkable window into this secret world. Over a few weeks, they
hacked and dumped online a huge volume of original documents issued by and detailing the
activities of the Institute for Statecraft (IfS) and the Integrity initiative
(II). Here is the first page of one of their dumps, exposing propaganda against Jeremy
Corbyn.
We know from this material that the IfS and II are two secret British disinformation
networks operating at arms' length from but funded by the UK security services and broader UK
government establishment. They bring together high-ranking military and intelligence personnel,
often nominally retired, journalists and academics, to produce and disseminate propaganda that
serves the agendas of the UK and its allies.
Stung by these massive leaks, Chris Donnelly, a key figure in IfS and II and a former
British Army intelligence officer, made a now famous seven-minute YouTube video in December
2018, artfully filmed in a London kitchen, defending their work.
He argued – quite unconvincingly in my opinion – that IfS and II are simply
defending Western societies against disinformation and malign influence, primarily from Russia.
He boasted how they have set up in numerous targeted European countries, claimed to be under
attack from Russian disinformation, what he called 'clusters of influence' , to
'educate' public opinion and decision-makers in pro-NATO and anti-Russian directions.
Donnelly spoke frankly on how the West is already at war with Russia, a 'new kind of
warfare', in which he said 'everything becomes a weapon'. He said that 'disinformation is the
issue which unites all the other weapons in this conflict and gives them a third
dimension'.
He said the West has to fight back, if it is to defend itself and to prevail.
We can confirm from the Anonymous leaked files the names of many people in Europe being
recruited into these clusters of influence. They tend to be significant people in journalism,
publishing, universities and foreign policy think-tanks: opinion-shapers. The leaked documents
suggest how ideologically suitable candidates are identified: approached for initial screening
interviews; and, if invited to join a cluster of influence, sworn to secrecy.
Remarkably, neither the Anonymous disclosures nor the Donnelly response have ever been
reported in Australian media. Even in Britain – where evidence that the Integrity
Initiative was mounting a campaign against [Labour leader] Jeremy Corbyn provoked brief media
interest. The story quickly disappeared from mainstream media and the BBC. A British
under-foreign secretary admitted in Parliamentary Estimates that the UK Foreign Office
subsidises the Institute of Statecraft to the tune of nearly 3 million pounds per year. It also
gives various other kinds of non-monetary assistance, e.g. providing personnel and office
support in Britain's overseas embassies.
This is not about traditional spying or seeking agents of influence close to governments. It
is about generating mass disinformation, in order to create mass climates of belief.
In my opinion, such British and American disinformation efforts, using undeclared clusters
of influence, through Five Eyes intelligence-sharing, and possibly with the help of British and
American diplomatic missions, may have been in operation in Australia for many years.
Such networks may have been used against me since around mid-2017, to limit the commercial
outreach of my book and the impact of its dangerous ideas on the need for East-West detente;
and efficiently to suppress my voice in Australian public discourse about Russia and the West.
Do I have evidence for this? Yes.
It is not coincidence that the Melbourne Writers Festival in August 2017 somehow lost all my
sign-and-sell books from my sold-out scheduled speaking event; that a major debate with
[Australian writer and foreign policy analyst] Bobo Lo at the Wheeler Centre in Melbourne was
cancelled by his Australian sponsor, the Lowy institute, two weeks before the advertised date;
that my last invitation to any writers festival was 15 months ago, in May 2018; that Return
to Moscow was not shortlisted for any Australian book prize, though I entered it in all of
them ; that since my book's early promotion ended around August 2017, I have not been invited
to join any ABC discussion panels, or to give any talks on Russia in any universities or
institutes, apart from the admirable Australian Institute of International Affairs and the
ISAA.
My articles and shorter opinion commentaries on Russia and the West have not been published
in mainstream media or in reputable online journals like Eureka Street, The Conversation,
Inside Story or Australian Book Review . Despite being an ANU Emeritus Fellow, I
have not been invited to give a public talk or join any panel in ANU (Australian National
University) or any Canberra think tank. In early 2018, I was invited to give a private briefing
to a group of senior students travelling on an immersion course to Russia. I was not invited
back in 2019, after high-level private advice within ANU that I was regarded as too
pro-Putin.
In all these ways – none overt or acknowledged – my voice as an open-minded
writer and speaker on Russia-West relations seems to have been quietly but effectively
suppressed in Australia. I would like to be proved wrong on this, but the evidence is
there.
This may be about "velvet-glove deterrence" of my Russia-sympathetic voice and pen, in order
to discourage others, especially those working in or close to government. Nobody is going to
put me in jail, unless I am stupid enough to violate Australia's now strict foreign influence
laws. This deterrence is about generating fear of consequences for people still in their
careers, paying their mortgages, putting kids through school. Nobody wants to miss their next
promotion.
There are other indications that Australian national security elite opinion has been
indoctrinated prudently to fear and avoid any kind of public discussion of positive engagement
with Russia (or indeed, with China).
There are only two kinds of news about Russia now permitted in our mainstream media,
including the ABC and SBS: negative news and comment, or silence. Unless a story can be given
an anti-Russian sting, it will not be carried at all. Important stories are simply spiked, like
last week's Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivistok, chaired by President Putin and attended by
Prime Ministers Abe, Mahathir and Modi, among 8500 participants from 65 countries.
The ABC idea of a balanced panel to discuss any Russian political topic was exemplified
in an ABC Sunday Extra Roundtable panel chaired by Eleanor Hall on July, 22 2018, soon after
the Trump-Putin Summit in Helsinki. The panel – a former ONA Russia analyst, a professor
of Soviet and Russian History at Melbourne University, and a Russian émigré
dissident journalist introduced as the 'Washington correspondent for Echo of Moscow radio'
spent most of their time sneering at Putin and Trump. There were no other views.
A powerful anti-Russian news narrative is now firmly in place in Australia, on every topic
in contention: Ukraine, MH17, Crimea, Syria, the Skripals, Navalny and public protest in
Russia. There is ill-informed criticism of Russia, or silence, on the crucial issues of arms
control and Russia-China strategic and economic relations as they affect Australia's national
security or economy. There is no analysis of the negative impact on Australia of economic
sanctions against Russia. There is almost no discussion of how improved relations with China
and Russia might contribute to Australia's national security and economic welfare, as American
influence in the world and our region declines, and as American reliability as an ally comes
more into question. Silence on inconvenient truths is an important part of the disinformation
tool kit.
I see two overall conflicting narratives – the prevailing Anglo-American false
narrative; and valiant efforts by small groups of dissenters, drawing on sources outside the
Anglo-American official narrative, to present another narrative much closer to truth. And this
is how most Russians now see it too.
The Trump-Putin summit in Helsinki in July 2018 was damaged by the Skripal and Syria
fabrications. Trump left that summit friendless, frightened and humiliated. He soon surrendered
to the power of the U.S. imperial state as then represented by [Mike] Pompeo and [John] Bolton,
who had both been appointed as Secretary of State and National Security Adviser in April 2018
and who really got into their stride after the Helsinki Summit. Pompeo now smoothly dominates
Trump's foreign policy.
Self-Inflicted Wounds
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (Gage Skidmore)
Finally, let me review the American political casualties over the past two years –
self-inflicted wounds – arising from this secret information war against Russia. Let me
list them without prejudging guilt or innocence. Slide 20 – Self-inflicted wounds:
casualties of anti-Russian information warfare.
Trump's first National Security Adviser, the highly decorated Michael Flynn lost his job
after only three weeks, and soon went to jail. His successor H R McMaster lasted 13 months
until replaced by John Bolton. Trump's first Secretary of State Rex Tillerson lasted just 14
months until his replacement by Trump's appointed CIA chief (in January 2017) Mike Pompeo.
Trump's chief strategist Steve Bannon lasted only seven months. Trump's former campaign
chairman Paul Manafort is now in jail.
Defence Secretary James Mattis lasted nearly two years as Secretary of Defence, and was an
invaluable source of strategic stability. He resigned in December 2018. The highly capable
Ambassador to Russia Jon Huntsman lasted just two years: he is resigning next month. John Kelly
lasted 18 months as White House Chief of Staff. Less senior figures like George Papadopoulos
and Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen both served jail time. The pattern I see here is that
people who may have been trying responsibly as senior U.S. officials to advance Trump's initial
wish to explore possibilities for detente with Russia – policies that he had advocated as
a candidate – were progressively purged, one after another . The anti-Russian U.S.
bipartisan imperial state is now firmly back in control. Trump is safely contained as far as
Russia is concerned .
Russians do not believe that any serious detente or arms control negotiations can get under
way while cold warriors like Pompeo continue effectively to control Trump. There have been
other casualties over the past two years of tightening American Russophobia. Julian Assange and
Chelsea Manning come to mind. The naive Maria Butina is a pathetic victim of American judicial
rigidity and deep state vindictiveness.
False anti-Russian Government narratives emanating from London and Washington may be laughed
at in Moscow , but they are unquestioningly accepted in Canberra. We are the most gullible of
audiences. There is no critical review. Important contrary factual information and analysis
from and about Russia just does not reach Australian news reporting and commentary, nor –
I fear – Australian intelligence assessment. We are prisoners of the false narratives fed
to us by our senior Five Eyes partners U.S. and UK.
To conclude: Some people may find what I am saying today difficult to accept. I understand
this. I now work off open-source information about Russia with which many people here are
unfamiliar, because they prefer not to read the diverse online information sources that I
choose to read. The seesaw has tilted for me: I have clearly moved a long way from mainstream
Western perceptions on Russia-West relations.
Under Trump and Pompeo, as the Syria and Iran crises show, the present risk of global
nuclear war by accident or incompetent Western decision-making is as high as it ever was in the
Cold War. The West needs to learn again how to dialogue usefully and in mutually respectful
ways with Russia and China. This expert knowledge is dying with our older and wiser former
public servants and ex-military chiefs.
These remarks were delivered by Tony Kevin at the Independent Scholars Association of
Australia in Canberra, Australia on Wednesday.
Watch Tony Kevin interviewed Friday night on CN Live!
Tony Kevin is a retired Australian diplomat who was posted to Moscow from 1969 to 1971,
and was later Australia's ambassador to Poland and Cambodia. His latest book is Return to
Moscow, published by UWA Publishing.
Bruce , September 17, 2019 at 08:58
Excellent article. It's very interesting to see how the state and its media lackey set the
narrative.
Most of this comment relates to the Skripals but also applies to other matters (the
Skripals writing was some of Craig Murray's finest work in my opinion). One of the hallmarks
of a hoax is a constantly evolving storyline. I think governments have learned from past
"mistakes" with their hoaxes/deception where they've given a description of events and then
scientists/engineers/chemists etc have come in and criticised their version of events with
details and scientific arguments. Nowadays, governments are very reluctant to commit to a
version of events, and instead rely on the media (their propaganda assets) to provide a
scattergun set of information to muddy the waters and thoroughly confuse the population. The
government is then insulated from some of the more bizarre allegations (the headlines of
which are absorbed nonetheless), and can blame it on the media (who would use an anonymous
government source naturally). Together with classifying just about everything on national
security grounds, they can stonewall for as long as they want.
The British are masters of propaganda. They maintained a global empire for a very long
time, and the prevailing view (in the west at least) was probably one of tea-drinking cricket
playing colonials/gentlemen. But you don't maintain an empire without being absolutely
ruthless and brutal. They've been doing this for a very long time.
When we hear something from the BBC or ABC, we should think "State Media".
That's probably why its got a nice folksy nickname of "aunty" .build up the trust.
Society is suffering the extreme paradox; there is the potential for everyone to have a
voice, but the last vestiges of free speech have been whittled away. Fake news is universal,
assisted by the fake "left". It is impossible to get published any challenge to even the most
outlandish versions of identity politics. As the experience of Tony Kevin exemplifies, all
avenues for dissent against hegemonic orthodoxies are closed off.
Disinformation is now an essential weapon in waging hot and cold wars. Cold War historians
are well informed on false flags, "black ops", and other organised dirty tactics. I do not
know what happened to the Skripals, and while it is legitimate to bear in mind KGB
assassinations, despite the enormous resources at its disposal, the English security state
has been unable to construct a credible case. Surely scepticism is provoked by the leading
role being played by the notorious Bellingcat outfit.
Zenobia van Dongen , September 17, 2019 at 00:29
Here is part of an eyewitness account:
"After the Orange Revolution which began in Kiev, the country was divided literally into two
parts -- the supporters of integration with Russia and the supporters of an independent
Ukraine. For almost 100 years belonging to the Soviet Union, the propaganda about the
assistance and care from our "big brother" Russia, in Ukraine as a whole and the Donbass in
particular has borne fruit. At the end of February 2014, some cities of the Southeast part
were boiling with mass social and political protest against the new Ukrainian government in
defense of the status of the Russian language, voicing separatist and pro-Russian slogans.
The division took place in our city of Sloviansk too. Some people stood for separation from
Ukraine, while Ukrainian patriots stood for the unity of our country.
On April 12, 2014 our city of Sloviansk in the Donetsk region was seized by Russian
mercenaries and local volunteers. From that moment onward, armed assaults on state
institutions began. The city police department, the Sloviansk City Hall, the building of the
Ukraine Security Service was occupied. Armed militants seized state institutions and
confiscated private property. They threatened and beat people, and those who refused to obey
were taken away to an unknown destination and people started disappearing. The persecution
and abduction of patriotic citizens began."
Michael McNulty , September 16, 2019 at 11:36
Watching Vietnam news coverage as a kid in the '60s I noticed the planes carpet-bombing
South East Asia were American, not Russian. And as I only watched the footage and never
listened to the commentary (I was waiting for the kids programs that followed) the BS they
came out with to explain it all never reached me. I saw with my own eyes what the US really
was and is, and always believed growing up they were the belligerent side not Russia. Once
the USSR fell it was clear there were no longer any constraints on US excesses.
dean 1000 , September 15, 2019 at 18:17
Doublethink, not to mention doublespeak, is so apt to describe what is happening. If
Orwell was writing today it would have to be classified as non-fiction.
Free speech is impossible unless every election district has a radio/TV station where
candidates, constituents, and others can debate, discuss and speak to the issues without
bending a knee to large campaign contributors or the controllers of corporate or government
media. It may start with low-power pirate radio/TV broadcasts. No, the pirate speakers will
not have to climb a cell tower to broadcast an opinion to the neighborhood or precinct.
If genuine free speech is going to exist it will start as something unauthorized and
unlawful. If it sticks to the facts it will quickly prove its value.
Excellent article. The only exhibit missing was reference to Bill Browder's lies.
Browder's rubbish has been exposed by intrepid journalists and documentary makers such as
Andrei Nekrasov, Sasha Krainer and Lucy Komisar but to read or listen to our media, you'd
think BB was some sort of human rights hero. That's because BB's fairy tale fits nicely into
the MSM's hatred of Putin and Russia. Debunk Browder and a major pillar of anti-Russia
prejudice collapses. Therefore, Browder will never face any serious questions by the MSM.
John A , September 16, 2019 at 09:18
judges of the European Court of Human Rights published a judgement a fortnight ago which
utterly exploded the version of events promulgated by Western governments and media in the
case of the late Mr Magnitskiy. Yet I can find no truthful report of the judgement in the
mainstream media at all. https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2019/09/the-magnitskiy-myth-exploded/
MSM propaganda by omission. Anything that doesn't fit the government narrative gets zero
publicity.
I have stopped following australian mainstream media including the darlings of the 'left'
ABC/SBS over a decade ago, completely. My disgust with their 'coverage' of the 2008 GFC was
more than enough. Since 2008-9 things have deteriorated drastically into conspiracy theory
propaganda by omission la-la land *it seems*, given I don't tune in at all.
The author has a well supported view. I find it a little naive in him thinking that the
MSM has that much power over shaping public opinion in australia.
People who want to be informed do so. The half intelligent conformists on hamster wheel of
lifetime mortgage debt have 'careers' to hold onto, so parroting the group think or living in
ignorance is much easier. The massive portion of australian racists, inbred bogans and idiots
that make up the large LNP, One Nation etc. voting block are completely beyond salvation or
ability to process, and critically evaluate any information. The smarter ones drool on about
the 'UN Agenda 21' conspiracy at best. Utterly hopeless.
I don't expect things to change as the australian economy is slowly hollowed out by the
rich, and the education system (that has always been about conforming, wearing school uniform
and regurgitating what the teacher/lecturer says at best) is gutted completely. Welcome to
australistan.
Fran Macadam , September 14, 2019 at 19:21
Note that the prohibition against false propaganda to indoctrinate the domestic population
by the American government was lifted by President Obama at the tail end of his
administration. The Executive Order legalizes all the deceptive behavior Tony itemizes in his
article.
Josep , September 17, 2019 at 04:10
I thought it was Reagan who did that by abolishing the Fairness Doctrine in 1987. At least
in terms of television and radio (?) broadcasts.
Thank you Tony for your thoughtful talk (and interview on CN Live! too).
What's encouraging is this cohort of what might be called 'millennial journalists' coming
through willing to do 'shoe-leather' journalism and stand up to smears and flack for
revealing uncomfortable facts and truth. They're the online 5th estate holding the 4th to
account (to steal Ray McGovern's apt view), and they're congealing against the onslaught.
Some include Max Blumenthal and Rania Kahlek (both now being pilloried by MSM and others
for visiting Syrian government held areas and reporting that life isn't hellish as MSM would
have everyone believe heaven forbid); Vanessa Bealey who's exposed a lot of White Helmet
horrors and false-flag attacks in Syria (and being attacked by all and sundry for exposing
the White Helmets in particular); Abby Martin whose Empire Files are excellent and always
edifying; Dan Cohen who has written the best expose of the actors behind the Hong Kong
rioting and co-authored the best expose of the background of Guaido et al.; Whitney Webb of
Mint Press whose series on Epstein is overwhelming and likely a ticking timebomb; Caitlin
Johnstone of course; and Aaron 'Buzzsaw' Mate who made his first mark with a wonderful
takedown interview of Russiaphobe MI6 shill Luke Harding. Others too of course, with most
appearing or having written pieces on CN. John Pilger, Robert Fisk, Greg Palast, et al. won't
drop off their twigs disappointed.
This, along with the fact that MSM -- that cowed and compromised fourth estate --
increasingly is held in such laughable contempt by most people under about 50 yr, is highly
encouraging indeed. Truth is the new black.
nwwoods , September 15, 2019 at 11:49
The Blogmire is an excellent resource for detailed analysis of the Skripal hoax. The
author happens to be a long-time resident of Salisbury, and is intimately familiar with the
topography, public services, etc., and a very thorough investigator.
John Wright , September 14, 2019 at 18:35
I'm not surprised that Mr. Kevin is being isolated and shunned by the Australian
establishment. Truth and truth tellers are always the first casualties of war. I do hope that
his experience will encourage him to increase his resistance to the corrosiveness of
mendacious propaganda and those who promulgate it.
Truth is the single best weapon when fighting for a peaceful future.
If Australia is to flourish in the 21st century, it really needs to understand Russia and
China, how they relate to each other, and how this key alliance will interface with the rest
of the world. Australia and Australians simply cannot afford to get sucked down further by
facilitating the machinations of the collapsing Anglo-American Empire. They have served the
empire ably and faithfully, but now need to take a cold hard look at reality and realign
their long-term interests with the coming global power shift. If not, they could literally
find themselves in the middle of an unwinnable and devastating war.
* * *
The first Anglo-American Russian cold war began with the Russian revolution and was only
briefly suspended when the West needed the Soviet people to throw themselves in front of the
Nazi blitzkrieg in order to save Western Europe. Following their catastrophically costly
contribution to the victory on the Continent, the Russians were greeted with an American
nuclear salute on their eastern periphery, signalling their return to the diplomatic and
economic deep freeze.
While the Anglo-American Empire solidified and extended its hold on the globe, the
enlarged but war-ravaged and isolated Soviet Union hunkered down and survived on scraps and
sheer will until its collapse in 1989. Declaring the cold war over, and with promises to help
their new Russian friends build a prosperous future, the duplicitous West then ransacked
their neighbors resources and sold them into debt peonage. The Russians cried foul, the West
shrugged and Putin pushed back. Unable to declaw the bear, the west closed the cage door
again and the second cold war commenced.
* * *
The first cold war was essentially an offensive war disguised as a defensive war. It
enabled the Anglo-American Empire to leverage its post-war advantage and establish near total
dominance around the globe through naked violence and monetary hegemony.
Today, with its dominance rapidly slipping away, the Anglo-American Empire is waging a
truly defensive cold war. On the home front, they fight to convince their subjects of their
eternal exceptionalism with ever more absurd and vile propaganda denigrating their
adversaries . Abroad, they disrupt and defraud in a desperate attempt to delay the demise of
the PetroDollar ponzi.
The Russians and the Chinese, having both been brutally burned by the Western elites, will
not be fooled into abandoning their natural geographic partnership. They are no longer
content to sit quietly at the kids' table taking notes. While they may not demand to sit at
the head of the table, it is clear that they will insist on a round table, and one that is
large enough to include their growing list of friends.
If the Americans don't smash the table, it could be the first of many peaceful pot
lucks.
John Read , September 15, 2019 at 02:11
Well said. Great comments. Thanks to Tony Kevin.
Mia , September 14, 2019 at 18:33
Thank you Tony for continuing to shine light on the pathetic propaganda information bubble
Australians have been immersed in .. you demonstrate great courage and you are not alone
??
Peter Loeb , September 14, 2019 at 12:58
WITH THANKS TO TONY KEVIN
An excellent article.
There is a lack of comments from some of the common writers upon whose views I often
rely.
Personally, I often avoid the very individual responses from websites as I have no way
of checking out previous ideas of theirs. Who funds them? With which organizations are
they
affiliated? And so forth and so on.
Peter Loeb, Boston, Massachusetts
Peter Sapo , September 14, 2019 at 10:24
As a fellow Australian, everything Tony Kevin said makes perfect sense. Our mainstream
media landscape is designed to distribute propaganda to folk accross the political spectrum.
Have you noticed that the ABC regurgitates stories from the BBC? The BBC has a long history
(at least since WW2) of supporting government propaganda initiatives. Based on this fact, it
is hard to see how ABC and SBS don't do the same when called upon by their minders.
Francis Lee , September 14, 2019 at 09:48
I just wonder where the Anglo-Zionist empire thinks it is going. It should be obvious that
any NATO war against Russia involving a nuclear exchange is unwinnable. It seems equally
likely the even a conventional war will not necessarily bring the result expected by the
assorted 'experts' – nincompoops living in their own fantasy world. The idea that the
US can fight a war without the US homeland becoming very much involved basically ended when
Putin announced the creation of Russia's set of advanced hypersonic missile system. But this
was apparently ignored by the 'defence' establishment. It was not true, it could not possibly
be true, or so we were told.
Moreover the cost of such wars involving hundreds of thousands of troops and military
hardware are massively expensive and would occasion a massive resistance from the populations
affected. It was the wests wars in Korea, and Indo-China that bankrupted the US and led to
the US$ being removed from the gold standard. The American military is rapidly consuming the
American economy, or at least what is left of it. From a realist foreign policy perspective
this is simply madness. Great powers end wars, they don't start them. Great powers are
creditor nations, not debtor nations. Such is the realist foreign policy view. But foreign
policy realists are few and far between in the Washington Beltway and MIC/NSA Pentagon and
US/UK/AUSTRALIAN MSM.
Thus the neo-hubris of the English speaking world is such that if it is followed to its
logical conclusion then total annihilation would be the logical outcome. A sad example of not
very bright people who face no domestic opposition, believing in their own bullshit:
"American elites proved themselves to be master manipulators of propaganda constructs But
the real danger from such manipulations arises not when those manipulations are done out of
knowledge of reality, which is distorted for propaganda purposes, but when those who
manipulation begin to sincerely believe in their own falsifications and when they buy into
their own narrative. They stop being manipulators and they become believers in a narrative.
They become manipulated themselves." (Losing Military Supremacy – Andrei,
Martyanov)
Or maybe just the whole thing is a bluff. Those policy elites maybe just want to loot the
US Treasury for more cash to be put their way.
John Wright , September 15, 2019 at 19:15
The self-serving Israeli Zionists know that the American cow is running dry and their days
of freely milking it are coming to an end. They have an historic relationship with Russia
and, leveraging their nuclear arsenal, know they can make a deal with the emerging
China-Russia-centric global paradigm to extort enough protection to maintain their armed
enclave for the foreseeable future. Their no so hidden alliance with the equally sociopathic
Saudis will become even more obvious for all to see.
Israel, like China and Russia, knows how to play a long game. Thus, Israel will
consolidate its land grab with the just announced expansion into the Jordan Valley and
quietly continue as much ethnic cleansing as possible while the rest of the world is
preoccupied with the incipient global power shift (True victims of history, the Palestinians
have no real friends). While they will bemoan the loss of their muscular American stooge,
Israel enjoyed a very lucrative 70 year run and will part with a pile of useful and deadly
toys. They're also fully aware that no one else will ever let them take advantage to the
degree they've been able to with the U.S.A. (Unlimited Stupidity of Arrogance?)
Eventually, the social schizophrenia that is the state of Israel will catch up with them
and they will implode. Let's hope that breakdown doesn't involve the use of their nuclear
arsenal.
Yes, the U.S. Treasury will continue to be looted until the last teller turns the lights
out or the electricity is shut off, whichever comes first.
The Western transnational financial elites will accept their losses, regroup and make
deals with the new bosses where they can; but their days of running the game unopposed are
over.
Today is a good day to learn Mandarin (or Russian, if you prefer to live in Europe).
Bill , September 16, 2019 at 03:36
Very well said and I agree with a lot of what you say.
Tiu , September 14, 2019 at 06:01
Won't be too long before writing articles like this will get you busted for "hate-speech"
(e.g. anything that is contrary to the official version prescribed by the "democratically
elected" government) https://www.zerohedge.com/political/uk-tony-blair-think-tank-proposes-end-free-speech
Personally I always encourage people to read George Orwell, especially 1984. We're there, and
have been for a long time.
geeyp , September 14, 2019 at 01:15
Tony Kevin – Nice rundown of what ails society. You have a fine writing style that
gets the point across to the reader. Kudos and cheers.
Michael , September 13, 2019 at 22:34
The 'modernization' of the Smith Mundt Act in 2013 "to authorize the domestic
dissemination of information and material [PROPAGANDA] about the United States intended
primarily for foreign audiences" was a major nail in the Democracy coffin, consolidating the
blatant ruling of the US Police State by our 17 Intelligence Agencies (our betters). The
Telecommunications Act of 1996 lead to ownership of (>80%) of our media (the MSM by a
handful of owners, all disseminating the same narratives from above (CIA, State Department,
FBI etc) and squelching any dissenting views, particularly related to foreign policies.
Tony's article sadly just confirms the depth and breadth of our Global Stasi, with improved,
innovative and (mostly) subtle surveillance, and the controlling constant interference with
alternate viewpoints and discussions, the real basis for free societies. It is bad enough to
be ruled by neoliberal psychopathic hyenas and jackals, soon we won't be able to even bitch
about what they are doing.
Tom Kath , September 13, 2019 at 21:42
The most impressive article I have read in a very long time. I congratulate and thank
Tony.
I have myself recently addressed the issue of whether it is a virtue to have an "open mind".
– The ability to be converted or have your mind changed, or is it the ability to change
your own mind ?
Tony Kevin clearly illustrates the difference.
Litchfield , September 13, 2019 at 16:11
Great article.
Please keep writing.
Do start a website, a la Craig Murray.
There are people who are proactively looking for alternative viewpoints and informed
analysis.
How about starting a website and publishing some excerpts of your book there?
Or, sell chapters separately by download from your website?
You could also have a discussion blog/forum there.
John Zimmermann , September 13, 2019 at 16:02
Excellent essay. Thanks Mr. Kevin.
rosemerry , September 13, 2019 at 15:37
At least Tony Kevin was an Australian ambassador, not like Mike Morrell and the chosen
russop?obes the USA assumes are needed as diplomats!! Now he is treated as Stephen Cohen is-
a true expert called "controversial" as he dares to go by real facts and evidence, not
prejudice.
If instead of enemies, the West could consider getting to understand those they are wary
of, and give them a chance to explain their point of view and actually listen and reflect on
it.
(Dmitri Peskov valiantly explained the Russian official response as soon as the "Skripal
poisoning" story broke, but it was fully ignored by UK/US media, while all of Theresa May's
fanciful imaginings were respectfully relayed to the public).
geeyp , September 14, 2019 at 23:26
As you usually are with your comments, you are spot on again, rosemerry.
Martin - Swedish citizen , September 13, 2019 at 14:46
Excellent article!
I find the mechanics of how the propaganda is spread and the illusion upheld the most
important part of this article, since this knowledge is required to counter it.
When (not if) the fraud becomes more common knowledge, our societies are likely to
tumble.
Pablo Diablo , September 13, 2019 at 14:45
Whoever controls the media, controls the dialogue.
Whoever controls the dialogue, controls the agenda.
' The present risk of global nuclear war is as high as it ever was in the Cold War.' And
possibly higher. The Cold War, though dangerous, was the peace. The world has experienced
periods of peace (or relative peace) throughout history. The Thirty Years Peace between the
two Peloponnesian Wars, Pax Romana, Europe in the 19th century after the Congress of Vienna,
to name a few. The Congress System finally collapsed in 1914 with the start of World War One.
That conflict was followed by the League of Nations. It did not stop World War Two. That was
followed by the United Nations and other post-war institutions. But all the indications are
they will not prevent a third world war. The powers that are leading us towards conflagration
see this as a re-run of the first Cold War. They are dangerously mistaken. https://www.ghostsofhistory.wordpress.com/
Guy , September 13, 2019 at 13:21
With so many believing the lies ,how will this mess ever come to light . I don't reside in
Australia but anywhere in the Western world the shakedown is the same .In my own house ,the
discussion on world politics descends into absolute stupidity . As one can't get past the
constant programming that has settled in the minds of the comfortable with the status quo of
lies by our media. There are intelligent sources of news sources but none get past the
absolutely complete control of MSM.So the bottom line is ,for now ,the lies and liars are
winning the propaganda war.
He speaks the truth. Liars and dissemblers have won over the minds and hearts of so many
lazy shameful citizens who will not accept the truth Tony Kevin wants to share with the
world.
Washington resumes military assistance to Kyiv. According to American lawmakers, Ukraine
is fighting one of the main enemies. "Contain Russia": what the US pays for Ukraine
Anyone or article who spells Kiev as Kyiv can be safely ignored as western anti-Russia
propaganda. It's a true tell.
Robert Edwards , September 13, 2019 at 12:53
The Cold war is totally manufacture to keep the dollars flowing into the MIC – what
a sham . and a disgrace to humanity.
Cavaleiro Marginal , September 13, 2019 at 12:52
"The key tools are repetition of messages, and diversification of trusted voices. Once a
critical mass is created of people believing a false narrative, the lie locks in: its
dissemination becomes self-sustaining."
This had occurred in Brazil since the very first day of Lula's presidency. Eleven years
late, 2013, a color revolution began. Nobody (and I mean REALLY nobody) could realize a color
revolution was happening at that time. In 2016, Dilma Rousseff was kicked from power
throughout a ridiculous and illegal coup perpetrated by the parliament. In 2018 Lula was
imprisoned in an Orwellian process; illegal, unconstitutional, with nothing (REALLY nothing)
proved against him. Then a liar clown was elected to suppress democracy
I knew on the news that in Canada and Australia the police politely (how civilized ) went
to some journalist's homes to have a chat this year. Canadians and Aussies, be aware. The
fascism's dog is a policial state very well informed by the propaganda they call news.
Robert Fearn , September 13, 2019 at 12:48
As a Canadian author who wrote a book about various tragic American government actions,
like Vietnam, I can relate to the difficulties Tony has had with his book. I would mail my
book, Amoral America, from Canada to other countries, like the US, and it would never arrive.
Book stores would not handle it, etc. etc.
Josep , September 17, 2019 at 05:21
Not to disagree, but some years ago I read about anecdotes of anti-Americanism in Canada,
coming from both USians and Canadians, whether it be playful banter or legitimate criticism.
I believe it is more concentrated among the people than among the governmental elites (with
the exception of the Iraq War era when both the people and the government were against it).
And considering what you describe in your book and the difficulty you've faced in
distributing it abroad, maybe the said people are on to something.
Stephen , September 13, 2019 at 11:44
This interview by Abby Martin with Mark Ames is a little dated but is a fairly accurate
history. I post it to try and counter the nonsense.
Outstanding article and analysis. Thank you Sir! Jeremy Kuzmarov
Jeff Harrison , September 13, 2019 at 10:17
Thank you, sir. A far better peroration than I could have produced but what I have
concluded nonetheless.
Skip Scott , September 13, 2019 at 10:10
Fantastic article. Left unmentioned is the origin of the west's anti-Russia narrative.
Russia was being pillaged by the west under Yeltsin, and Russia was to become our newest
vassal. Life expectancy dropped a full decade for the average Russian under Yeltsin. The
average standard of living dropped dramatically as well. Putin reversed all that, and enjoys
massive popular support as a result. The Empire will never tolerate a national leader who
works for the benefit of the average citizen. It must be full-on rape, pillage and plunder-
OR ELSE. Keep that in mind as we watch the latest theatrical performances by our DNC
controlled "Commander in Chief" wannabes.
Realist , September 17, 2019 at 05:48
?The ongoing success of the "Great Lie" (that Washington is protecting the entire world
from
anarchy perpetrated by a few bad actors on the global stage) and all of its false narrative
subtexts
(including but far from limited to the Maidan, Crimea, Donbass, MH-17, the Skripals,
gassing
"one's own people," piracy on the high Mediterranean, etc) just underscores how successful
was
the false flag operation known as 9-11, even as the truth of that travesty is slowly
being
unraveled by relentless truth-seekers applying logic and the scientific method to the
problem.
Most Americans today would gladly concur, if queried, that Osama bin Laden was most
certainly
a perfidious tool of Russia and its diabolical leader, Mr. Putin (be sure to call him "Vlad,"
to
conjure up images of Dracula for effect). The Winston Smith's are rare birds in America or
in
any of its reliable vassal states. Never mind that the spooks from Langley (and the late
"chessmaster") concocted and orchestrated all these tales from the crypt.
Lily , September 13, 2019 at 07:54
Great summary of the developement of a new cold war. The narrative of the Mainstream Media
is dangerous as well as laughable. I am glad to hear the Russian reaction to this bullshit
propaganda. As often the people are so much wiser than their government – at least in
the West.
During the Football WM a famous broadcaster of the German State TV channel ARD, who is a
giftet propagandist, regrettet publicly the difficulty to convince the stubborn Germans to
look at Russia as an enemy because they have started to look at Russia as a friend long
ago.
Contrary to the people and the big firms who are completely against the sanctions against
Russia and 100 % pro Northstream the German government with Chancelor Merkel is one of the
top US vassalles. Even the Green Party which started as an environmental and peace party are
now against North Stream and in favour of the filthy US fracking gas thanks to NATO
propaganda although Russia has never let them down. Most of "Die Grünen" party have been
turned into fervent friends of our American occupants which is very sad.
Thank you Tony Kevin. It has been great to read your article. I cant wait to read your
book 'Return to Moscow' and to watch your interview on CN Live.
Godfree Roberts , September 13, 2019 at 07:37
Good summary of the status quo. From my experience of writing similarly about China,
precisely the same policies and forces are at work.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov announced the end of the war in Syria and the
country's return to a state of peace. "Syria is returning to normal life": Lavrov announced
the end of the war
You hit several nails squarely on the head with your excellent article Tony. Thank you for
the truth of how the media is in Australia. It is indeed chilling where all this is leading.
The blatant lies just spewed out as fact by both ABC and SBS. They, in my opinion are nothing
but stenographers for the Empire, of which Australia is a fully subservient vassal state,
with no independence.
I try to boycott all Australian presstitutes . Oops, I mean 'media' now. Occasionally, I do
slip up and watch SBS or The Drum or News on ABC.
Virtually all my news comes from independent news sites like this one.
I have been accused of being a 'Putin lover', a Russian troll, a conspiracy theorist, while
people I know have claimed that "Putin is a monster whose murdered millions of people".
On and on this crap goes. And the end result? Ask Stephen Cohen. Things are very surreal now.
Sadly, you've been made an Unperson Tony.
Robyn , September 13, 2019 at 04:08
Bravo, Tony, great article. I enjoyed your book and recommend it to CN readers who haven't
yet read it.
The world looks entirely different when one stops reading/watching the MSM and turns to
CN, Caitlin Johnstone and many others who are doing a sterling job.
Cascadian , September 13, 2019 at 03:52
I don't know which is worse, to not know what you are (reliably uninformed) and be happy,
or to become what you've always wanted to be (reliably informed) and feel alone.
Realist , September 14, 2019 at 00:19
Knowing the truth has always seemed paramount to me, even if it means realising that the
entire world and all in it are damned, and deliberately by our own actions. Hope is always
the last part of our essence to die, or so they say: maybe we will somehow be redeemed
through our own self-immolation as a species.
Deb , September 13, 2019 at 02:54
As an Australian I have no difficulty accepting what Tony Kevin has said here. He should
do what Craig Murray has done start a website.
Essentially neoliberal MSM were hijacked. Which was easy to do. The current anti-Russian campaign is conducted under
the direct guidance of MI6 and similar agencies
Notable quotes:
"... committee minutes note the secretary saying: "The Guardian was obliged to seek advice under the terms of the DA notice code." The minutes add: "This failure to seek advice was a key source of concern and considerable efforts had been made to address it." ..."
"... These "considerable efforts" included a D-Notice sent out by the committee on 7 June 2013 – the day after The Guardian published the first documents – to all major UK media editors, saying they should refrain from publishing information that would "jeopardise both national security and possibly UK personnel". It was marked "private and confidential: not for publication, broadcast or use on social media". ..."
"... "The FT [Financial Times] and The Times did not mention it [the initial Snowden revelations] and the Telegraph published only a short". It continued by noting that only The Independent "followed up the substantive allegations". It added, "The BBC has also chosen to largely ignore the story." ..."
"... The British security services had carried out more than a "symbolic act". It was both a show of strength and a clear threat. The Guardian was then the only major newspaper that could be relied upon by whistleblowers in the US and British security bodies to receive and cover their exposures, a situation which posed a challenge to security agencies. ..."
"... The increasingly aggressive overtures made to The Guardian worked. The committee chair noted that after GCHQ had overseen the smashing up of the newspaper's laptops "engagement with The Guardian had continued to strengthen". ..."
"... But the most important part of this charm and threat offensive was getting The Guardian to agree to take a seat on the D-Notice Committee itself. The committee minutes are explicit on this, noting that "the process had culminated by [sic] the appointment of Paul Johnson (deputy editor Guardian News and Media) as a DPBAC [i.e. D-Notice Committee] member". ..."
"... The Guardian's deputy editor went directly from the corporation's basement with an angle-grinder to sitting on the D-Notice Committee alongside the security service officials who had tried to stop his paper publishing. ..."
"... In November 2016, The Guardian published an unprecedented "exclusive" with Andrew Parker, the head of MI5, Britain's domestic security service. The article noted that this was the "first newspaper interview given by an incumbent MI5 chief in the service's 107-year history". It was co-written by deputy editor Paul Johnson, who had never written about the security services before and who was still sitting on the D-Notice Committee. This was not mentioned in the article. ..."
"... The MI5 chief was given copious space to make claims about the national security threat posed by an "increasingly aggressive" Russia. Johnson and his co-author noted, "Parker said he was talking to The Guardian rather than any other newspaper despite the publication of the Snowden files." ..."
"... Just two weeks before the interview with MI6's chief was published, The Guardian itself reported on the high court stating that it would "hear an application for a judicial review of the Crown Prosecution Service's decision not to charge MI6's former counterterrorism director, Sir Mark Allen, over the abduction of Abdel Hakim Belhaj and his pregnant wife who were transferred to Libya in a joint CIA-MI6 operation in 2004". ..."
"... The security services were probably feeding The Guardian these "exclusives" as part of the process of bringing it onside and neutralising the only independent newspaper with the resources to receive and cover a leak such as Snowden's. They were possibly acting to prevent any revelations of this kind happening again. ..."
"... The Guardian's coverage of anti-Semitism in Labour has been suspiciously extensive, compared to the known extent of the problem in the party, and its focus on Corbyn personally suggests that the issue is being used politically. While anti-Semitism does exist in the Labour Party, evidence suggests it is at relatively low levels. Since September 2015, when Corbyn became Labour leader, 0.06% of the Labour membership has been investigated for anti-Semitic comments or posts. In 2016, an independent inquiry commissioned by Labour concluded that the party "is not overrun by anti-Semitism, Islamophobia or other forms of racism. Further, it is the party that initiated every single United Kingdom race equality law." ..."
"... A former Guardian journalist similarly told us: "It is significant that exclusive stories recently about British collusion in torture and policy towards the interrogation of terror suspects and other detainees have been passed to other papers including The Times rather than The Guardian." ..."
"... The Guardian had gone in six short years from being the natural outlet to place stories exposing wrongdoing by the security state to a platform trusted by the security state to amplify its information operations. A once relatively independent media platform has been largely neutralised by UK security services fearful of being exposed further. Which begs the question: where does the next Snowden go? DM ..."
The Guardian, Britain's leading liberal newspaper with a global reputation for independent and critical journalism, has been
successfully targeted by security agencies to neutralise its adversarial reporting of the 'security state', according to newly released
documents and evidence from former and current Guardian journalists.
The UK security services targeted The Guardian after the newspaper started publishing the contents of secret US government documents
leaked by National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden in June 2013.
Snowden's bombshell revelations continued for months and were the largest-ever leak of classified material covering the NSA and
its UK equivalent, the Government Communications Headquarters. They revealed programmes of
mass surveillance
operated by both agencies.
According to minutes of meetings of the UK's Defence and Security Media Advisory
Committee, the revelations caused alarm in the British security services and Ministry of Defence.
" This event was very concerning because at the outset The Guardian avoided engaging with the [committee] before publishing the
first tranche of information," state
minutes of a 7 November
2013 meeting at the MOD.
The DSMA Committee, more commonly known as the D-Notice Committee, is run by the MOD, where it meets every six months. A small
number of journalists are also invited to sit on the committee. Its
stated purpose is to "prevent inadvertent public disclosure
of information that would compromise UK military and intelligence operations". It can issue "notices" to the media to encourage them
not to publish certain information.
The committee is currently chaired by the MOD's director-general of security policy Dominic Wilson, who was
previously director of security and intelligence
in the British Cabinet Office. Its secretary is Brigadier Geoffrey Dodds OBE, who
describes himself as an "accomplished, senior
ex-military commander with extensive experience of operational level leadership".
The D-Notice system describes itself as voluntary ,
placing no obligations on the media to comply with any notice issued. This means there should have been no need for the Guardian
to consult the MOD before publishing the Snowden documents.
Yet committee minutes note the secretary saying: "The Guardian was obliged to seek advice under the terms of the DA notice code." The minutes
add: "This failure to seek advice was a key source of concern and considerable efforts had been made to address it."
' Considerable efforts'
These "considerable efforts" included a D-Notice sent out by the committee on 7 June 2013 – the day after The Guardian published
the first documents – to all major UK media editors, saying they should refrain from publishing information that would "jeopardise
both national security and possibly UK personnel". It was
marked "private and confidential: not
for publication, broadcast or use on social media".
Clearly the committee did not want its issuing of the notice to be publicised, and it was nearly successful. Only the right-wing
blog Guido Fawkes made it public.
At the time, according to the committee
minutes , the "intelligence
agencies in particular had continued to ask for more advisories [i.e. D-Notices] to be sent out". Such D-Notices were clearly seen
by the intelligence services not so much as a tool to advise the media but rather a way to threaten it not to publish further Snowden
revelations.
One night, amidst the first Snowden stories being published, the D-Notice Committee's then-secretary Air Vice-Marshal Andrew Vallance
personally called Alan Rusbridger, then editor of The Guardian. Vallance "made clear his concern that The Guardian had failed to
consult him in advance before telling the world",
according to a Guardian journalist who interviewed Rusbridger.
Later in the year, Prime Minister David Cameron again used the D-Notice system as a threat to the media.
" I don't want to have to use injunctions or D-Notices or the other tougher measures," he
said
in a statement to MPs. "I think it's much better to appeal to newspapers' sense of social responsibility. But if they don't
demonstrate some social responsibility it would be very difficult for government to stand back and not to act."
The threats worked. The Press Gazette reported
at the time that "The FT [Financial Times] and The Times did not mention it [the initial Snowden revelations] and the Telegraph
published only a short". It continued by noting that only The Independent "followed up the substantive allegations". It added, "The
BBC has also chosen to largely ignore the story."
The Guardian, however, remained uncowed.
According to the committee
minutes , the fact
The Guardian would not stop publishing "undoubtedly raised questions in some minds about the system's future usefulness". If the
D-Notice system could not prevent The Guardian publishing GCHQ's most sensitive secrets, what was it good for?
It was time to rein in The Guardian and make sure this never happened again.
GCHQ and laptops
The security services ratcheted up their "considerable efforts" to deal with the exposures. On 20 July 2013, GCHQ officials
entered The Guardian's offices at King's Cross in London, six weeks after the first Snowden-related article had been published. At the request of the government and security services, Guardian deputy editor Paul Johnson, along with two others, spent
three hours destroying the laptops containing the Snowden documents.
The Guardian staffers, according to one of the newspaper's reporters,
brought "angle-grinders, dremels – drills with revolving bits – and masks". The reporter added, "The spy agency provided
one piece of hi-tech equipment, a 'degausser', which destroys magnetic fields and erases data."
Johnson
claims
that the destruction of the computers was "purely a symbolic act", adding that "the government and GCHQ knew, because we
had told them, that the material had been taken to the US to be shared with the New York Times. The reporting would go on. The episode
hadn't changed anything."
Yet the episode did change something. As the D-Notice Committee
minutes for November
2013 outlined: "Towards the end of July [as the computers were being destroyed], The Guardian had begun to seek and accept D-Notice
advice not to publish certain highly sensitive details and since then the dialogue [with the committee] had been reasonable and improving."
The British security services had carried out more than a "symbolic act". It was both a show of strength and a clear threat. The
Guardian was then the only major newspaper that could be relied upon by whistleblowers in the US and British security bodies to receive
and cover their exposures, a situation which posed a challenge to security agencies.
The increasingly aggressive overtures made to The Guardian worked. The committee chair
noted that after
GCHQ had overseen the smashing up of the newspaper's laptops "engagement with The Guardian had continued to strengthen".
Moreover, he added
, there were now "regular dialogues between the secretary and deputy secretaries and Guardian journalists". Rusbridger later
testified to the Home Affairs Committee that Air Vice-Marshal Vallance of the D-Notice committee and himself "collaborated"
in the aftermath of the Snowden affair and that Vallance had even "been at The Guardian offices to talk to all our reporters".
But the most important part of this charm and threat offensive was getting The Guardian to agree to take a seat on the D-Notice
Committee itself. The committee minutes are explicit on this,
noting that "the
process had culminated by [sic] the appointment of Paul Johnson (deputy editor Guardian News and Media) as a DPBAC [i.e. D-Notice
Committee] member".
At some point in 2013 or early 2014, Johnson – the same deputy editor who had smashed up his newspaper's computers under the watchful
gaze of British intelligence agents – was approached to take up a seat on the committee. Johnson attended his first meeting in
May 2014 and was
to remain on it until
October 2018
.
The Guardian's deputy editor went directly from the corporation's basement with an angle-grinder to sitting on the D-Notice Committee
alongside the security service officials who had tried to stop his paper publishing.
A new editor
Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger withstood intense pressure not to publish some of the Snowden revelations but agreed to Johnson
taking a seat on the D-Notice Committee as a tactical sop to the security services. Throughout his tenure, The Guardian continued
to publish some stories critical of the security services.
But in March 2015, the situation changed when the Guardian
appointed a new editor, Katharine Viner, who had less experience than Rusbridger of dealing with the security services. Viner
had started out on fashion and entertainment magazine Cosmopolitan and had no history in national security reporting. According
to insiders, she showed much less leadership during the Snowden affair than Janine Gibson in the US (Gibson was another
candidate
to be Rusbridger's successor).
Viner was then editor-in-chief of Guardian Australia, which was
launched just two weeks before the first Snowden
revelations were published. Australia and New Zealand comprise two-fifths of the so-called
"Five Eyes" surveillance alliance exposed by Snowden.
This was an opportunity for the security services. It appears that their seduction began the following year.
In November 2016, The Guardian
published an unprecedented "exclusive" with Andrew Parker, the head of MI5, Britain's domestic security service. The article
noted that this was the "first newspaper interview given by an incumbent MI5 chief in the service's 107-year history". It was co-written
by deputy editor Paul Johnson, who had never written about the security services before and who was still sitting on the D-Notice
Committee. This was not mentioned in the article.
The MI5 chief was given
copious space to make claims about the national security threat posed by an "increasingly aggressive" Russia. Johnson
and his co-author noted, "Parker said he was talking to The Guardian rather than any other newspaper despite the publication of the
Snowden files."
Parker told the two reporters, "We recognise that in a changing world we have to change too. We have a responsibility to talk
about our work and explain it."
Four months after the MI5 interview, in March 2017, the Guardian
published another unprecedented "exclusive", this time with Alex Younger, the sitting chief of MI6, Britain's external
intelligence agency. This exclusive was awarded by the Secret Intelligence Service to The Guardian's investigations editor, Nick
Hopkins, who had been appointed 14 months previously.
The interview was the first Younger had given to a national newspaper and was again softball.
Titled "MI6 returns to 'tapping up' in an effort to recruit black and Asian officers", it focused almost entirely on the
intelligence service's stated desire to recruit from ethnic minority communities.
" Simply, we have to attract the best of modern Britain," Younger told Hopkins. "Every community from every part of Britain should
feel they have what it takes, no matter what their background or status."
Just two weeks before the interview with MI6's chief was published, The Guardian itself
reported on the high court stating that it would "hear an application for a judicial review of the Crown Prosecution Service's
decision not to charge MI6's former counterterrorism director, Sir Mark Allen, over the abduction of Abdel Hakim Belhaj and his pregnant
wife who were transferred to Libya in a joint CIA-MI6 operation in 2004".
None of this featured in The Guardian article, which did, however, cover discussions of whether the James Bond actor Daniel Craig
would qualify for the intelligence service. "He would not get into MI6," Younger told Hopkins.
More recently, in August 2019, The Guardian was
awarded yet another exclusive, this time with Metropolitan police assistant commissioner Neil Basu, Britain's most senior
counter-terrorism officer. This was Basu's " first major interview since taking up his post" the previous year and resulted in a
three-part series of articles, one of which was
entitled "Met police examine Vladimir Putin's role in Salisbury attack".
The security services were probably feeding The Guardian these "exclusives" as part of the process of bringing it onside and neutralising
the only independent newspaper with the resources to receive and cover a leak such as Snowden's. They were possibly acting to prevent
any revelations of this kind happening again.
What, if any, private conversations have taken place between Viner and the security services during her tenure as editor are not
known. But in 2018, when Paul Johnson eventually left the D-Notice Committee, its chair, the MOD's Dominic Wilson,
praised Johnson who, he said, had been "instrumental in re-establishing links with The Guardian".
Decline in critical reporting
Amidst these spoon-fed intelligence exclusives, Viner also oversaw the breakup of The Guardian's celebrated investigative team,
whose muck-racking journalists were told to apply for other jobs outside of investigations.
One well-placed source
told the Press Gazette at the time that journalists on the investigations team "have not felt backed by senior
editors over the last year", and that "some also feel the company has become more risk-averse in the same period".
In the period since Snowden, The Guardian has lost many of its top investigative reporters who had covered national security issues,
notably Shiv Malik, Nick Davies, David Leigh, Richard Norton-Taylor, Ewen MacAskill and Ian Cobain. The few journalists who were
replaced were succeeded by less experienced reporters with apparently less commitment to exposing the security state. The current
defence and security editor, Dan Sabbagh,
started
at The Guardian as head of media and technology and has no history of covering national security.
" It seems they've got rid of everyone who seemed to cover the security services and military in an adversarial way," one current
Guardian journalist told us.
Indeed, during the last two years of Rusbridger's editorship, The Guardian published about 110 articles per year tagged as MI6
on its website. Since Viner took over, the average per year has halved and is decreasing year by year.
" Effective scrutiny of the security and intelligence agencies -- epitomised by the Snowden scoops but also many other stories
-- appears to have been abandoned," a former Guardian journalist told us. The former reporter added that, in recent years, it "sometimes
seems The Guardian is worried about upsetting the spooks."
A second former Guardian journalist added: "The Guardian no longer seems to have such a challenging relationship with the intelligence
services, and is perhaps seeking to mend fences since Snowden. This is concerning, because spooks are always manipulative and not
always to be trusted."
While some articles critical of the security services still do appear in the paper, its "scoops" increasingly focus on issues
more acceptable to them. Since the Snowden affair, The Guardian does not appear to have published any articles based on an intelligence
or security services source that was not officially sanctioned to speak.
The Guardian has, by contrast,
published a steady stream of exclusives on the major official enemy of the security services, Russia, exposing Putin,
his friends and the work of its intelligence services and military.
In the Panama Papers leak in April 2016, which revealed how companies and individuals around the world were using an offshore
law firm to avoid paying tax, The Guardian's front-page launch scoop was authored by Luke Harding, who has received many security
service
tips focused on the "Russia threat", and was
titled "Revealed:
the $2bn offshore trail that leads to Vladimir Putin".
Three sentences into the piece, however, Harding notes that "the president's name does not appear in any of the records" although
he insists that "the data reveals a pattern – his friends have earned millions from deals that seemingly could not have been secured
without his patronage".
There was a much
bigger story
in the Panama Papers which The Guardian chose to downplay by leaving it to the following day. This concerned the father of
the then Prime Minister, David Cameron, who "ran an offshore fund that avoided ever having to pay tax in Britain by hiring a small
army of Bahamas residents – including a part-time bishop – to sign its paperwork".
We understand there was some argument between journalists about not leading with the Cameron story as the launch splash. Putin's
friends were eventually deemed more important than the Prime Minister of the country where the paper published.
Getting Julian Assange
The Guardian also appears to have been engaged in a campaign against the WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange, who had been a collaborator
during the early WikiLeaks revelations in 2010.
One 2017 story came from investigative reporter Carole Cadwalladr, who writes for The Guardian's sister paper The Observer,
titled "When Nigel Farage met Julian Assange". This concerned the visit of former UKIP leader Nigel Farage to the Ecuadorian embassy
in March 2017,
organised by the radio station LBC, for whom Farage worked as a presenter. Farage's producer at LBC accompanied Farage
at the meeting, but this was not mentioned by Cadwalladr.
Rather, she posited that this meeting was "potentially a channel of communication" between WikiLeaks, Farage and Donald Trump,
who were all said to be closely linked to Russia, adding that these actors were in a "political alignment" and that " WikiLeaks is,
in many ways, the swirling vortex at the centre of everything".
Yet Cadwalladr's one official on-the-record source for this speculation was a "highly placed contact with links to US intelligence",
who told her, "When the heat is turned up and all electronic communication, you have to assume, is being intensely monitored, then
those are the times when intelligence communication falls back on human couriers. Where you have individuals passing information
in ways and places that cannot be monitored."
It seems likely this was innuendo being fed to The Observer by an intelligence-linked individual to promote disinformation to
undermine Assange.
In 2018, however, The Guardian's attempted vilification of Assange was significantly stepped up. A new string of articles began
on 18 May 2018 with
one alleging Assange's "long-standing relationship with RT", the Russian state broadcaster. The series, which has been
closely
documented elsewhere, lasted for several months, consistently alleging with little or the most minimal circumstantial
evidence that Assange had ties to Russia or the Kremlin.
One story, co-authored again by Luke Harding,
claimed that "Russian diplomats held secret talks in London with people close to Julian Assange to assess whether they
could help him flee the UK, The Guardian has learned". The former consul in the Ecuadorian embassy in London at this time, Fidel
Narvaez, vigorously denies the existence of any such "escape plot" involving Russia and is involved in a complaint process with The
Guardian for insinuating he coordinated such a plot.
This apparent mini-campaign ran until November 2018, culminating in a front-page
splash , based on anonymous sources, claiming that Assange had three secret meetings at the Ecuadorian embassy with Trump's
former campaign manager Paul Manafort.
This "scoop" failed all tests of journalistic credibility since it would have been impossible for anyone to have entered the highly
secured Ecuadorian embassy three times with no proof. WikiLeaks and others have strongly argued that the story was
manufactured
and it is telling that The Guardian has since failed to refer to it in its subsequent articles on the Assange case. The Guardian,
however, has still not retracted or apologised for the story which remains on its website.
The "exclusive" appeared just two weeks after Paul Johnson had been congratulated for "re-establishing links" between The Guardian
and the security services.
The string of Guardian articles, along with the vilification and smear stories about Assange elsewhere in the British media, helped
create the conditions for
a deal between Ecuador, the UK and the US to expel Assange from the embassy in April. Assange now sits in Belmarsh maximum-security
prison where he faces extradition to the US, and life in prison there, on charges under the Espionage Act.
Acting for the establishment
Another major focus of The Guardian's energies under Viner's editorship has been to attack the leader of the UK Labour Party,
Jeremy Corbyn.
The context is that Corbyn appears to have recently been a target of the security services. In 2015, soon after he was elected
Labour leader, the Sunday Times
reported a
serving general warning that "there would be a direct challenge from the army and mass resignations if Corbyn became prime minister".
The source told the newspaper: "The Army just wouldn't stand for it. The general staff would not allow a prime minister to jeopardise
the security of this country and I think people would use whatever means possible, fair or foul, to prevent that."
On 20 May 2017, a little over two weeks before the 2017 General Election, the Daily Telegraph was
fed the story that "MI5 opened a file on Jeremy Corbyn amid concerns over his links to the IRA". It formed part of a Telegraph
investigation claiming to reveal "Mr Corbyn's full links to the IRA" and was sourced to an individual "close to" the MI5 investigation,
who said "a file had been opened on him by the early nineties".
The Metropolitan Police Special Branch was also said to be monitoring Corbyn in the same period.
Then, on the very eve of the General Election, the Telegraph gave space to an
article from Sir Richard Dearlove, the former director of MI6, under a headline: "Jeremy Corbyn is a danger to this nation.
At MI6, which I once led, he wouldn't clear the security vetting."
Further, in September 2018, two anonymous senior government sources
told The Times that Corbyn had been "summoned" for a "'facts of life' talk on terror" by MI5 chief Andrew Parker.
Just two weeks after news of this private meeting was leaked by the government, the Daily Mail
reported another leak, this time revealing that "Jeremy Corbyn's most influential House of Commons adviser has been barred
from entering Ukraine on the grounds that he is a national security threat because of his alleged links to Vladimir Putin's 'global
propaganda network'."
The article concerned Andrew Murray, who had been working in Corbyn's office for a year but had still not received a security
pass to enter the UK parliament. The Mail reported, based on what it called "a senior parliamentary source", that Murray's application
had encountered "vetting problems".
Murray later heavily suggested that the security services had leaked the story to the Mail. "Call me sceptical if you must, but
I do not see journalistic enterprise behind the Mail's sudden capacity to tease obscure information out of the [Ukrainian security
service]," he wrote
in the New Statesman. He added, "Someone else is doing the hard work – possibly someone being paid by the taxpayer. I doubt
if their job description is preventing the election of a Corbyn government, but who knows?"
Murray told us he was approached by the New Statesman after the story about him being banned from Ukraine was leaked. "However,"
he added, "I wouldn't dream of suggesting anything like that to The Guardian, since I do not know any journalists still working there
who I could trust."
The Guardian itself has run a remarkable number of news and comment articles criticising Corbyn since he was elected in 2015 and
the paper's clearly hostile stance has been widely
noted .
Given its appeal to traditional Labour supporters, the paper has probably done more to undermine Corbyn than any other. In particular,
its massive coverage of alleged widespread anti-Semitism in the Labour Party has helped to disparage Corbyn more than other smears
carried in the media.
The Guardian's coverage of anti-Semitism in Labour has been suspiciously extensive, compared to the known extent of the problem
in the party, and its focus on Corbyn personally suggests that the issue is being used politically. While anti-Semitism does exist in the Labour Party, evidence suggests it is at relatively low levels. Since September 2015, when
Corbyn became Labour leader, 0.06% of the Labour membership has been
investigated for anti-Semitic comments or posts. In 2016, an independent inquiry commissioned by Labour
concluded
that the party "is not overrun by anti-Semitism, Islamophobia or other forms of racism. Further, it is the party that initiated
every single United Kingdom race equality law."
Analysis of two YouGov surveys, conducted in 2015 and 2017,
shows that anti-Semitic views held by Labour voters declined substantially in the first two years of Corbyn's tenure and
that such views were significantly more common among Conservative voters.
Despite this, since January 2016, The Guardian has published 1,215 stories mentioning Labour and anti-Semitism, an average of
around one per day, according to a search on Factiva, the database of newspaper articles. In the same period, The Guardian published
just 194 articles mentioning the Conservative Party's much more serious problem with Islamophobia. A YouGov poll in 2019, for example,
found that nearly half of the Tory Party membership would prefer not to have a Muslim prime minister.
At the same time, some stories which paint Corbyn's critics in a negative light have been suppressed by The Guardian. According
to someone with knowledge of the matter, The Guardian declined to publish the results of a months-long critical investigation by
one of its reporters into a prominent anti-Corbyn Labour MP, citing only vague legal issues.
In July 2016, one of this article's authors emailed a Guardian editor asking if he could pitch an investigation about the first
attempt by the right-wing of the Labour Party to remove Corbyn, informing The Guardian of very good inside sources on those behind
the attempt and their real plans. The approach was rejected as being of no interest before a pitch was even sent.
A reliable publication?
On 20 May 2019, The Times newspaper
reported on a Freedom of Information request made by the Rendition Project, a group of academic experts working on torture
and rendition issues, which showed that the MOD had been "developing a secret policy on torture that allows ministers to sign off
intelligence-sharing that could lead to the abuse of detainees".
This might traditionally have been a Guardian story, not something for the Rupert Murdoch-owned Times. According to one civil
society source, however, many groups working in this field no longer trust The Guardian.
A former Guardian journalist similarly told us: "It is significant that exclusive stories recently about British collusion in
torture and policy towards the interrogation of terror suspects and other detainees have been passed to other papers including The
Times rather than The Guardian."
The Times published its scoop under a strong
headline , "Torture: Britain breaks law in Ministry of Defence secret policy". However, before the article was published,
the MOD fed The Guardian the same documents The Times were about to splash with, believing it could soften the impact of the revelations
by telling its side of the story.
The Guardian
posted its own article just before The Times, with a headline that would have pleased the government: "MoD says revised
torture guidance does not lower standards".
Its lead paragraph was a simple summary of the MOD's position: "The Ministry of Defence has insisted that newly emerged departmental
guidance on the sharing of intelligence derived from torture with allies, remains in line with practices agreed in the aftermath
of a series of scandals following the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq." However, an inspection of the documents showed this was clearly
disinformation.
The Guardian had gone in six short years from being the natural outlet to place stories exposing wrongdoing by the security state
to a platform trusted by the security state to amplify its information operations. A once relatively independent media platform has
been largely neutralised by UK security services fearful of being exposed further. Which begs the question: where does the next Snowden
go? DM
The Guardian did not respond to a request for comment.
Daily Maverick will formally launch Declassified – a new UK-focused investigation and analysis organisation run by the
authors of this article – in November 2019.
Matt Kennard is an investigative journalist and co-founder of Declassified . He was previously director of the
Centre for Investigative Journalism in London, and before that a reporter for the Financial Times in the US and UK. He is the author
of two books, Irregular Army and The Racket .
Mark Curtis is a leading UK foreign policy analyst, journalist and the author of six books including Web of
Deceit: Britain's Real Role in the World and Secret Affairs: Britain's Collusion with Radical Islam .
The fact that Smolenkov purchased house on his name excludes his "extraction" to the USA. He probably legally emigrated
amazing some serious money in Russia
Notable quotes:
"... [Smolenkov] follows Ushakov back to Moscow, where he is a mid-level paper pusher doing administrative support for Ushakov. The CIA gets copies of Putin's itineraries that Smolenkov photographs. He is a big hit, but ultimately produces nothing of vital importance because all truly sensitive information is hand carried by principles, and never seen by administrative staff. Moreover Ushakov advises on international relations, and would not be privy to anything dealing with intelligence. Ushakov, as a long-serving Ambassador to the US, would be asked by Putin to opine on US politics. Smolenkov has access to Ushakov's post-meeting verbal comments, which he turns over to the CIA. ..."
"... The initial reports of the Steele Dossier appeared in June 2016. This coincided with John Brennan ordering Moscow Station to turn up the heat on Smolenkov to gain access to what Putin is thinking. But Smolenkov has no real direct access. Instead, he starts fabricating and/or exaggerating his access to convince his CIA handler that he is on the job and worth every penny he is being paid by US taxpayers. ..."
"... The information Smolenkov creates is passed to his CIA handler via the secure communications channel set up when he was signed up as a spy. But these reports are not handled in the normal way that sensitive human intelligence is treated at CIA Headquarters. Instead, the material is accepted at face value and not vetted to confirm its accuracy. My intel friend, citing a knowledgeable source, indicates that Smolenkov was not polygraphed. ..."
"... This raised red flags in the CIA Counterintelligence staff, especially when Brennan starts briefing the President using the information provided by Smolenkov. Brennan responds by locking most of the CIA's Russian experts out of the loop. Later, Brennan does the same thing with the National Intelligence Council, locking out the National Intelligence Officers who would normally oversee the production of a National Intelligence Assessment. In short, Brennan cooked the books using Smolenkov's intelligence, which had it been subjected to normal checks and balances would never have passed muster. It's Brennan's leaks to the press that eventually prompt the CIA to pull the plug on Smolenkov. ..."
"... The dossier attributed to Steele, it has seemed to me, showed every sign of being the proverbial 'camel produced by a committee.' ..."
"... Although I know that fabricating evidence and corrupting judicial proceedings is part of its supposed author's 'stock in trade', I think it is unclear whether he contributed all that much to the dossier. ..."
"... His prime role, I think, was to contribute a veneer of intelligence respectability to a farrago the actual origins of which could not be acknowledged, so it could be used in support of FISA applications and in briefings to journalists. ..."
"... Although it had started much earlier, the moving into 'high gear' of the conspiracy behind 'Russiagate, of which the dossier was one manifestation, and the phone 'digital forensics' produced by 'Crowdstrike' and the former GCHQ person Matt Tait another, were I think essentially panicky 'firefighting' operations. ..."
"... Part of this involved turning the conspiracy to prevent Trump being elected into a conspiracy to destabilise his Presidency and ensure he did not carry through on any of his 'anti-Borgist' agenda. ..."
A flood of news in the last 24 hours regarding Russiagate. I am referring specifically to
reports that the CIA ex-filtrated Oleg Smolenkov, a mid-level Russian Foreign Ministry
bureaucrat who reportedly hooked himself on the coat-tails of Yuri Ushakov, who was Ambassador
to the US from 1999 through 2008. He was recruited by the CIA (i.e., asked to collect
information and pass it to the U.S. Government via his or her case officer) at sometime during
this period. Smolenkov is being portrayed as a supposedly "sensitive" source. But if you read
either the
Washington Post or
New York Times accounts of this event there is not a lot of meat on this hamburger.
Regardless of the quality of his reporting, Smolenkov is the kind of recruited source that
looks good on paper and helps a CIA case officer get promoted but adds little to actual U.S.
intelligence on Russia. If you understood the CIA culture you would immediately recognize that
a case officer (CIA terminology for the operations officer tasked with identifying and
recruiting human sources) gets rewarded by recruiting persons who ostensibly will have access
to information the CIA has identified as a priority target. In this case, we're talking about
possible access to Vladimir Putin.
If you take time to read both articles you will quickly see that the real purpose of this
"information operation" is to paint Donald Trump as a security threat that must be stopped.
This is conveniently timed to assist Jerry Nadler's mission impossible to secure Trump's
impeachment. But I think there is another dynamic at play--these competing explanations for
what prompted the exfiltration of this CIA asset say more about the incompetence of Barack
Obama and his intel chiefs. John Brennan and Jim Clapper in particular.
A former intelligence officer and friend summarized the various press accounts as the
follows and offered his own insights in a note I received this morning:
[Smolenkov] follows Ushakov back to Moscow, where he is a mid-level paper pusher doing
administrative support for Ushakov. The CIA gets copies of Putin's itineraries that Smolenkov
photographs. He is a big hit, but ultimately produces nothing of vital importance because all
truly sensitive information is hand carried by principles, and never seen by administrative
staff. Moreover Ushakov advises on international relations, and would not be privy to anything
dealing with intelligence. Ushakov, as a long-serving Ambassador to the US, would be asked by
Putin to opine on US politics. Smolenkov has access to Ushakov's post-meeting verbal comments,
which he turns over to the CIA.
The initial reports of the Steele Dossier appeared in June 2016. This coincided with John
Brennan ordering Moscow Station to turn up the heat on Smolenkov to gain access to what Putin
is thinking. But Smolenkov has no real direct access. Instead, he starts fabricating and/or
exaggerating his access to convince his CIA handler that he is on the job and worth every penny
he is being paid by US taxpayers.
The information Smolenkov creates is passed to his CIA handler via the secure communications
channel set up when he was signed up as a spy. But these reports are not handled in the normal
way that sensitive human intelligence is treated at CIA Headquarters. Instead, the material is
accepted at face value and not vetted to confirm its accuracy. My intel friend, citing a
knowledgeable source, indicates that Smolenkov was not polygraphed.
This raised red flags in the CIA Counterintelligence staff, especially when Brennan starts
briefing the President using the information provided by Smolenkov. Brennan responds by locking
most of the CIA's Russian experts out of the loop. Later, Brennan does the same thing with the
National Intelligence Council, locking out the National Intelligence Officers who would
normally oversee the production of a National Intelligence Assessment. In short, Brennan cooked
the books using Smolenkov's intelligence, which had it been subjected to normal checks and
balances would never have passed muster. It's Brennan's leaks to the press that eventually
prompt the CIA to pull the plug on Smolenkov.
There is public evidence that Brennan not only cooked the books but that the leaks of this
supposedly "sensitive" intelligence occurred when he was Director and lying Jim Clapper was
Director of National Intelligence. If Oleg Smolenkov was really such a terrific source of
intel, then where are the reports? It is one thing to keep such reports close hold when the
source is still in place. But he has been out of danger for more than two years. Those reports
should have been shared with the Senate and House Intelligence committees. If there was actual
solid intelligence in those reports that corroborated the Steele Dossier, then that information
would have been leaked and widely circulated. This is Sherlock Holmes dog that did not
bark.Then we have the odd fact that this guy's name is all over the press and he is buying real
estate in true name. What the hell!! If the CIA genuinely believed that Mr. Smolenkov was in
danger he would not be walking around doing real estate deals in true name. In fact, the
sources for both the Washington Post and NY Times pieces push the propaganda that Smolenkov is
a sure fire target for a Russian retaliatory hit. Really? Then why publish his name and confirm
his location.
That leaves me with the alternative explanation--Smolenkov is a propaganda prop and is being
trotted out by Brennan to try to provide public pressure to prevent the disclosure of
intelligence that will show that the CIA and the NSA were coordinating and operating with
British intelligence to entrap and smear Donald Trump and members of his campaign.
I want you to take a close look at the two pieces on this exfiltration (i.e., Washington
Post and NY Times) and note the significant differences
REASON FOR THE EXFILTRATION :
Let's start with the Washington Post:
The exfiltration took place sometime after an Oval Office meeting in May 2017, when
President Trump
revealed highly classified counterterrorism information to the Russian foreign minister and
ambassador, said the current and former officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to
discuss the sensitive operation.
What was the information that Trump revealed? He was discussing intel that Israel passed
regarding ISIS in Syria. (See the Washington Post story
here .) Why would he talk to the Russians about that? Because every day, at least once a
day, U.S. and Russian military authorities are sharing intelligence with one another in a phone
call that originates from the U.S. Combined Air Operations Center (aka CAOC) at the Al Udeid
Air Force Base in Qatar. Trump's conversation not only was appropriate but fully within his
right to do so as Commander-in-Chief.
What the hell does this have to do with a sensitive source in Moscow? NOTHING!! Red
Herring.
The NY Times account is more detailed and damning of Obama instead of Trump:
But when intelligence officials revealed the severity of Russia's election interference with
unusual detail later that year, the news media picked up on details about the C.I.A.'s Kremlin
sources.
C.I.A. officials worried about safety made the arduous decision in late 2016 to offer to
extract the source from Russia. The situation grew more tense when the informant at first
refused, citing family concerns -- prompting consternation at C.I.A. headquarters and sowing
doubts among some American counterintelligence officials about the informant's trustworthiness.
But the C.I.A. pressed again months later after more media inquiries. This time, the informant
agreed. . . .
The decision to extract the informant was driven "in part" because of concerns that Mr.
Trump and his administration had mishandled delicate intelligence, CNN reported. But former
intelligence officials said there was no public evidence that Mr. Trump directly endangered the
source, and other current American officials insisted that media scrutiny of the agency's
sources alone was the impetus for the extraction. . . .
But the government had indicated that the source existed long before Mr. Trump took office,
first in formally accusing Russia of interference in October 2016 and then when intelligence
officials declassified parts of their assessment about the interference campaign for public
release in January 2017. News agencies, including NBC, began reporting around that time about
Mr. Putin's involvement in the election sabotage and on the C.I.A.'s possible sources for the
assessment.
Trump played no role whatsoever in releasing information that allegedly compromised this
so-called "golden boy" of Russian intelligence. The NY Times account makes it very clear that
the release of information while Obama was President, not Trump, is what put the source in
danger. Who leaked that information?
WHAT DID THE SOURCE KNOW AND WHAT DID HE TELL US?
But how valuable was this source really? What did he provide that was so enlightening? On
this point the New York Times and Washington Post are more in sync.
First the NY Times:
The Moscow informant was instrumental to the C.I.A.'s most explosive conclusion about
Russia's interference campaign: that President Vladimir V. Putin ordered and orchestrated it
himself . As the American government's best insight into the thinking of and orders from Mr.
Putin, the source was also key to the C.I.A.'s assessment that he affirmatively favored Donald
J. Trump's election and personally ordered the hacking of the Democratic National Committee
.
The Washington Post provides a more fulsome account:
U.S. officials had been concerned that Russian sources could be at risk of exposure as early
as the fall of 2016, when the Obama administration first confirmed that Russia had stolen and
publicly disclosed emails from the Democratic National Committee and the account of Hillary
Clinton's campaign chairman, John Podesta.
In October 2016, the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of
National Intelligence said in a joint statement that intelligence agencies were "confident that
the Russian Government directed" the hacking campaign. . . .
In January 2017, the Obama administration published a detailed assessment that unambiguously
laid the blame on the Kremlin, concluding that "Putin ordered an influence campaign" and that
Russia's goal was to undermine faith in the U.S. democratic process and harm Clinton's chances
of winning.
"That's a pretty remarkable intelligence community product -- much more specific than what
you normally see," one U.S. official said. "It's very expected that potential U.S. intelligence
assets in Russia would be under a higher level of scrutiny by their own intelligence
services."
Sounds official. But there is no actual forensic or documentary evidence (by that I mean
actual corroborating intelligence reports) to back up these claims by our oxymoronically
christened intelligence community.
Vladimir Putin ordered the hack? Where is the report? It is either in a piece of intercepted
electronics communication and/or in a report derived from information provided by Mr.
Smolenkov. Where is it? Why has that not been shared in public? Don't have to worry about
exposing the source now. He is already in the open. What did he report? Answer--no direct
evidence.
Then there is the lie that the Russians hacked the DNC. They did not. Bill Binney, a former
Technical Director of the NSA, and I have written on this subject previously (
see here ) and there is no truth to this claim. Let me put it simply--if the DNC had been
hacked by the Russians using spearphising (this is claimed in the Robert Mueller report) then
the NSA would have collected those messages and would be able to show they were transferred to
the Russians. That did not happen.
This kind of chaotic leaking about an old intel op is symptomatic of panic. CIA is already
officially denying key parts of the story. My money is on John Brennan and Jim Clapper as the
likely impetus for these reports. They are hoping to paint Trump as a national security threat
and distract from the upcoming revelations from the DOJ Inspector General report on the FISA
warrants and, more threatening, the decisions that Prosecutor John Durham will take in deciding
to indict those who attempted to launch a coup against Donald Trump, a legitimately elected
President of the United States.
As I told LJ yesterday while he was writing this piece I have a slightly different theory
of this matter. It is true that CIA suffered for a long time from a dearth of talent in the
business of recruiting and running foreign clandestine HUMINT assets. This was caused by a
focus by several CIA Directors on technical collection means rather than espionage. This
policy drove many skilled case officers into retirement but the situation has much improved
in the last decade and it must be remembered that an agency only needs a few skilled case
officers with the right access to human targets to acquire some very fine and useful well
placed foreign agents (spies). IMO it is likely that CIA has/had several well placed Russian
assets in Moscow of whom Smolenkov was probably the least useful and the most expendable. It
may well be that Brennan was using the chicken feed provided by Smolenkov to fuel the
conspiracy run by him and Clapper against Trump's campaign and presidency, but Brennan left
office and then the CIA under other management was faced with the problem of a Russian
government which was told in the US press by implication that either the US had deep
penetrations of Russian diplomatic and intelligence communications or that there were deep
penetration moles in Moscow. that being the case it seems likely to me that the Russians
would have been beating the bushes looking for the moles. In that situation the CIA may have
decided to exfiltrate Smolenkov and his wife while leaving enough clues along the way that
would have indicated that he might have been THE MOLE. People do not need a lot of
encouragement to accept thoughts that they want to believe. A point in favor of this theory
is that once CIA had him in the States they quickly lost interest in him, terminated their
relationship with him and paid him his back pay and showed him the door. No new identity, no
resettlement, he was given none of that. Finding himself alone in a strange land, Smolenkov
then bought a house in the suburbs of Washington in HIS OWN NAME. Say what? That would not
have happened if CIA had maintained some sort of relationship with him. And then... someone
in CIA leaked the story of the exfiltration as movie plot to "a former senior intelligence
officer" who gives sit to Sciutto at CNN. Why would they do that? IMO they would have though
that having the story appear in the media would reinfocer Smolenkov's importance in Russian
minds. Well, pilgrims, Clapper fits the bill as the "former blah, blah". He is an employee of
CNN. CNN hates Trump and they quickly broadcast the story far and away. Unfortunately for CNN
the story immediately began to disintegrate even in the eyes of the NY Times. The
Smolenkov/Brennan affair will undoubtedly be part of the road that leads to doom for Brennan
and Clapper but the possible CIA story is equally interesting.
Sir;
The fact that Mr. Smolenkov is out and about in his new home in the West shows that he is a
small fish. As you say, if he was really in danger, he would be living somewhere in the West
now under a new name and maybe a new face. The fact that his 'handlers' allow this lax
security to happen is a sign of how unimportant he is. Unless, my inner cynic prompts, he is
destined to become one of the "honoured dead," perhaps by a false flag 'liquidation.'
How low will Clapper and Brennan et. al. go?
Thanks for keeping this matter front and centre.
So the son of Our Man in Havana went to Moscow. It would make a decent movies if it weren't
for the damage Brennan and company have done to us. Obama, of course, knew nothing......
I have lost hope that anyone--especially Brennan and Clapper--will be held accountable for
their attempt to "launch a coup" (as you put it).
Since their coup attempt ultimately failed, most people will be wanting just to move
on.
As an unimportant citizen liveing in a fly-over state, I feel very angry that my tax
dollars were wasted on these many government hearings and enormously expensive investigations
rather than on actually on governing and improving the governing of our country.
The least we should be able to expect is that people who live off our tax dollars should
be held accountable for all that wasted expense and for the lack of actual governing going on
in The House and The Senate. So many problems that need the attention of our elected
representative and Senators were ignored while elected representatives and representatives
got to capture the spotlight and try to become "media stars" while accomplishing nothing.
I also feel terrible that men have been sent to prison for seemingly nothing and have
their lives ruined for nothing but the chance of some to grand stand and claim they are
really doing the jobs they were sent to do. So many people with no real sense of honor or of
what is right and what is wrong.
Thanks, Larry. You have been consistently one of the good guys. (And I bet you are happy
now that Yosemite Sam Bolton is no longer advising the POTUS.)
"The fact that his 'handlers' allow this lax security to happen is a sign of how unimportant
he is."
It indicates to me that he and any handlers believe that the Russians are OK with it. That
could be for various reasons. But relying on Russian tolerance because he is a "small fish"
seems incredibly trusting. Neither fled agents nor their handlers are known for their
trusting natures. They have had some reasons stronger than that for their unconcern. Whether
those reasons will survive publicity remains to be seen.
Are those CIA agents as stupid, naive & incompetent as you paint them to be?
If that's the case our country is in real danger! You are. Pro Trump
and, you are basically defending him, but Putin do own Donald Trump,whether you like it or
not!
My question is: why did they push this report now? Any way you cut it, the Times and Post are
just providing some trivia and drivel. Without substance, they can accomplish nothing and
substance has been what's been missing all along.
I doubt that Democrats, having been burned once, are eager to explore Brennan's smoke and
mirrors again. It's never been a big concern to voters. And unless Brennan & Co. can do
better than this superficial stuff, voters are never going to be concerned.
Maybe the Times and Post just felt sorry for Brennan, who's been off barking at the moon
for years now.
...Smolenkov is a propaganda prop and is being trotted out by Brennan to try to provide
public pressure to prevent the disclosure of intelligence that will show that the CIA and the
NSA were coordinating and operating with British intelligence to entrap and smear Donald
Trump and members of his campaign...
Well said. Thank you for following this closely and shining the light! You are an amazing
American patriot, Mr. Larry C. Johnson. A glass in your honor!
IMO this scenario is the most plausible, Thanks for the sanity check. That said, given the
desperation by these Sorcerer's Apprentices, I would be on the lookout for Mr. Smolenkov lest
he be 'Skirpal-ed' in the coming weeks.
This whole story convinces now more than ever before that there is a high level spy/mole in
the us administration and intelligence community.The only question is it spying for russia or
china or both.Just a beautiful thing to watch.Those knickers,must surely be in a knot by
now.
Even rocketman had a giggle.
How many CIA Assets have been exposed..Tortured and Murdered During The Barrack Obama
Reign...In May..2014 HE Paid a Surprise Visit to Afghanastan..His White House Bureau Chief
Sent out an email to Reporters with a List of Who would meet With President Obama..It
Contained the NAME of the CIA...Chief of Station in Kabul...Now that is REAL MESSY..
Having been away from base, I have not been able to comment on some very fascinating
recent posts.
Both your recent pieces, and Robert Willman's most helpful update on the state of play
relating to the unraveling of the frame-up against Michael Flynn, have provided a lot to chew
over.
Among other things, they have made me think further about the 302s recording the
interviews with Bruce Ohr produced by Joseph Pientka – a character about whom I think
we need to know more.
On reflection, I think that the picture that emerges of Ohr as an incurious and gullible
nitwit, swallowing whole bucket loads of 'horse manure' fed him by Christopher Steele and
Glenn Simpson, may be a carefully – indeed maybe cunningly – crafted fiction.
The interpretation your former intelligence officer friend puts on the Smolenkov affair,
and also some of what Sidney Powell has to say in the ''Motion to Compel' on behalf of Flynn,
both 'mesh' with what I have long suspected.
The dossier attributed to Steele, it has seemed to me, showed every sign of being the
proverbial 'camel produced by a committee.'
Although I know that fabricating evidence and corrupting judicial proceedings is part of
its supposed author's 'stock in trade', I think it is unclear whether he contributed all that
much to the dossier.
His prime role, I think, was to contribute a veneer of intelligence respectability to a
farrago the actual origins of which could not be acknowledged, so it could be used in support
of FISA applications and in briefings to journalists.
Although it had started much earlier, the moving into 'high gear' of the conspiracy behind
'Russiagate, of which the dossier was one manifestation, and the phone 'digital forensics'
produced by 'Crowdstrike' and the former GCHQ person Matt Tait another, were I think
essentially panicky 'firefighting' operations.
They are likely to have been responses, first, to the realisation that material leaked
from the DNC was going to be published by WikiLeaks, and then the discovery, probably
significantly later, that the source was Seth Rich, and his subsequent murder.
Although the operation to divert responsibility to the Russians which then became
necessary was strikingly successful, it did not have the expected result of saving Hillary
Clinton from defeat.
What I then think may have emerged was a two-pronged strategy.
Part of this involved turning the conspiracy to prevent Trump being elected into a
conspiracy to destabilise his Presidency and ensure he did not carry through on any of his
'anti-Borgist' agenda.
In different ways, both the framing of Flynn, and the final memorandum in the dossier,
dated 13 December 2016, were part of this strategy.
Also required however was another 'insurance policy' – which was what the Bruce Ohr
302s were intended to provide.
The purpose of this was to have 'evidence' in place, should the first prong of the
strategy run into problems, to sustain the case that people in the FBI and DOJ, and Bruce and
Nellie Ohr in particular, were not co-conspirators with Steele and Simpson, but their
gullible dupes.
This brings me to an irony. Some people have tried to replace the 'narrative' in which
Steele was an heroic exposer of a Russian plot to destroy American democracy by an
alternative in which he was the gullible 'patsy' of just such a plot.
In fact there is one strand, and one strand only, in the dossier which smells strongly to
me of FSB-orchestrated disinformation.
Some of the material on Russian cyber operations, including critically the suggestions
about the involvement of Aleksej Gubarev and his company XBT which provoked legal action by
these against BuzzFeed and Steele, look to me as though they could come from sources in the
FSB.
But, if this is so, the likely conduit is not through Steele, but from FSB to FBI cyber
people.
How precisely this worked is unclear, but I cannot quite get rid of the suspicion that
Major Dmitri Dokuchaev just might be serving out his sentence for treason in a comfortable
flat somewhere above the Black Sea. Indeed, I can imagine a lecture to FSB trainees on how to
make 'patsies' of people like the Ohrs.
If this is so, however, it mat also be the case that these are attempting to make
'patsies' of Steele and Simpson.
"... As early as the late 1940's, some of us living in Russia saw that the regime was becoming dangerously remote from the concerns
and hopes of the Russian people. The original ideological and emotional motivation of Russian Communism had worn itself out and become
lost in the exertions of the great war. And there was already apparent a growing generational gap in the regime. ..."
"... By the time Stalin died, in 1953, even many Communist Party members had come to see his dictatorship as grotesque, dangerous
and unnecessary, and there was a general impression that far-reaching changes were in order. ..."
"... Nikita Khrushchev took the leadership in the resulting liberalizing tendencies. He was in his crude way a firm Communist, but
he was not wholly unopen to reasonable argument. His personality offered the greatest hope for internal political liberalization and
relaxation of international tensions. ..."
"... The more America's political leaders were seen in Moscow as committed to an ultimate military rather than political resolution
of Soviet-American tensions, the greater was the tendency in Moscow to tighten the controls by both party and police, and the greater
the braking effect on all liberalizing tendencies in the regime. Thus the general effect of cold war extremism was to delay rather than
hasten the great change that overtook the Soviet Union at the end of the 1980's.... ..."
"... In the competition between major powers and/or alliances there are several somewhat complementary aspects of power: economic
or physical aspect to create things of "value" (added by the commerce and industry of the entity), the military power, and moral aspects
of the entity in terms of political and cultural resolve and unity. ..."
Note to Self: The Ten Americans Who Did the Most to Win the Cold War *
Harry Dexter White... George Kennan... George Marshall... Arthur Vandenberg... Paul Hoffman... Dean Acheson... Harry S Truman...
Dwight D. Eisenhower... Gerald Ford... George Shultz
The G.O.P. Won the Cold War? Ridiculous.
By George F. Kennan
The claim heard in campaign rhetoric that the United States under Republican Party leadership "won the cold war" is intrinsically
silly.
The suggestion that any Administration had the power to influence decisively the course of a tremendous domestic political
upheaval in another great country on another side of the globe is simply childish. No great country has that sort of influence
on the internal developments of any other one.
As early as the late 1940's, some of us living in Russia saw that the regime was becoming dangerously remote from the concerns
and hopes of the Russian people. The original ideological and emotional motivation of Russian Communism had worn itself out and
become lost in the exertions of the great war. And there was already apparent a growing generational gap in the regime.
These thoughts found a place in my so-called X article in Foreign Affairs in 1947, from which the policy of containment is
widely seen to have originated. This perception was even more clearly expressed in a letter from Moscow written in 1952, when
I was Ambassador there, to H. Freeman Matthews, a senior State Department official, excerpts from which also have been widely
published. There were some of us to whom it was clear, even at that early date, that the regime as we had known it would not last
for all time. We could not know when or how it would be changed; we knew only that change was inevitable and impending.
By the time Stalin died, in 1953, even many Communist Party members had come to see his dictatorship as grotesque, dangerous
and unnecessary, and there was a general impression that far-reaching changes were in order.
Nikita Khrushchev took the leadership in the resulting liberalizing tendencies. He was in his crude way a firm Communist,
but he was not wholly unopen to reasonable argument. His personality offered the greatest hope for internal political liberalization
and relaxation of international tensions.
The downing of the U-2 spy plane in 1960, more than anything else, put an end to this hope. The episode humiliated Khrushchev
and discredited his relatively moderate policies. It forced him to fall back, for the defense of his own political position, on
a more strongly belligerent anti-American tone of public utterance.
The U-2 episode was the clearest example of that primacy of military over political policy that soon was to become an outstanding
feature of American cold war policy. The extreme militarization of American discussion and policy, as promoted by hard-line circles
over the ensuing 25 years, consistently strengthened comparable hard-liners in the Soviet Union.
The more America's political leaders were seen in Moscow as committed to an ultimate military rather than political resolution
of Soviet-American tensions, the greater was the tendency in Moscow to tighten the controls by both party and police, and the
greater the braking effect on all liberalizing tendencies in the regime. Thus the general effect of cold war extremism was to
delay rather than hasten the great change that overtook the Soviet Union at the end of the 1980's....
In the competition between major powers and/or alliances there are several somewhat complementary aspects of power: economic
or physical aspect to create things of "value" (added by the commerce and industry of the entity), the military power, and moral
aspects of the entity in terms of political and cultural resolve and unity.
Early in my time in the service, when I had time to think being at a remote station I decided the west had the marked economic
advantage, particularly as the green revolution permitted some higher level of nutrition security.
Later on I recall discussions where the collapse of the Soviet Union was assured but would take in to the 21st century to occur.
The big question then was "would a nuclear exchange occur in the way of a peaceful collapse".....
The presence of the A Bomb in some ways prevented war in other encouraged intrigue and small scrapes in to each other's spheres.
There was a bit of the Divine in the world getting through the Cold War.
The Berlin wall came down as hoped but 25 years earlier than I expected.
KENNAN Was a lucky guy. He hit the right notes at the right time and then as he got second thoughts and better vision. Like yugoslaving
peoples China in 1949
He was side tracked and then sent out to ivy pastures
Nonsense. The moment to engage was 1953 -54 and yes a goo regime blocked it
But it was Truman that crossed the parallel in 1950 and tried to liberate north Korea
It was Kennedy that preferred brinksmanship to real engagement. Brush wars and regime change to accommodation. Missile racing
to sensible unilateralism
Yes LBJ was an ignorant oaf on foreign policy. But it was Nixon that finally used PRC as Yugo twenty years too late of course
The cold war was invented by democrats and exploited by republicans for domestic shindiggery. Tragicomedy cinescope scaled
Obviously since there is a determined American Cold War effort being waged right now, American historians were mistaken at the
end of the 1980s. There had been no winning of the Cold War, nor even a clear and shared understanding of what the Cold War was
about. If the Cold War was only about balancing the Soviet Union and developing economically far beyond the Soviet Union and Soviet
ideas faltering, that happened. However, there was obviously more or with no Soviet Union to counter we would not now be taking
policy steps to carry on the Cold War.
What democracy they are talking about? Democracy for whom? This Harvard political prostitutes are talking about democracy for oligarchs
which was the nest result of EuroMaydan and the ability of Western companies to buy assets for pennies on the dollar without the control
of national government like happen in xUSSR space after dissolution of the USSR, which in retrospect can be classified as a color revolution
too, supported by financial injection, logistical support and propaganda campaign in major Western MSM.
What Harvard honchos probably does not understand or does not wish to understand is that neoliberalism as a social system lost its
attraction and is in irreversible decline. The ideology of neoliberalism collapsed much like Bolsheviks' ideology. As Politician like
Joe Boden which still preach neoliberalism are widely viewed as corrupt or senile (or both) hypocrites.
The "Collective West" still demonstrates formidable intelligence agencies skills (especially the USA and GB), but the key question
is: "What they are fighting for?"
They are fighting for neoliberalism which is a lost case. Which looks like KGB successes after WWIII. They won many battles and
lost the Cold war.
Not that Bolsheviks in the USSR was healthy or vibrant. Economics was a deep stagnation, alcoholism among working class was rampant,
the standard of living of the majority of population slides each year, much like is the case with neoliberalism after, say, 1991. Hidden
unemployment in the USSR was high -- at least in high teens if not higher. Like in the USA now good jobs were almost impossible to obtain
without "extra help". Medical services while free were dismal, especially dental -- which were horrible. Hospitals were poor as church
rats as most money went to MIC. Actually, like in the USA now, MIC helped to strangulate the economy and contributed to the collapse.
It was co a corrupt and decaying , led by completely degenerated leadership. To put the person of the level of Gorbachov level of political
talent lead such a huge and complex country was an obvious suicide.
But the facts speak for themselves: what people usually get as the result of any color revolution is the typical for any county
which lost the war: dramatic drop of the standard of living due to economic rape of the country.
While far form being perfect the Chinese regime at least managed to lift the standard of living of the majority of the population
and provide employment. After regime change China will experience the same economic rape as the USSR under Yeltsin regime. So in no
way Hong Cong revolution can be viewed a progressive phenomenon despite all the warts of neoliberalism with Chenese characteristics
in mainland China (actually this is a variant of NEP that Gorbachov tried to implement in the USSR, but was to politically incompetent
to succeed)
CHENOWETH: I think it really boils down to four different things. The first is a large and diverse participation that's
sustained.
The second thing is that [the movement] needs to elicit loyalty shifts among security forces in particular, but also other
elites. Security forces are important because they ultimately are the agents of repression, and their actions largely decide
how violent the confrontation with -- and reaction to -- the nonviolent campaign is going to be in the end. But there are other
security elites, economic and business elites, state media. There are lots of different pillars that support the status quo,
and if they can be disrupted or coerced into noncooperation, then that's a decisive factor.
The third thing is that the campaigns need to be able to have more than just protests; there needs to be a lot of variation
in the methods they use.
The fourth thing is that when campaigns are repressed -- which is basically inevitable for those calling for major changes
-- they don't either descend into chaos or opt for using violence themselves. If campaigns allow their repression to throw
the movement into total disarray or they use it as a pretext to militarize their campaign, then they're essentially co-signing
what the regime wants -- for the resisters to play on its own playing field. And they're probably going to get totally crushed.
Wai Sing-Rin @waisingrin • Aug 27
Replying to @ChrisFraser_HKU @edennnnnn_ and 2 others
Anyone who watched the lone frontliner (w translator) sees the frontliners are headed for disaster. They're fighting just
to fight with no plans nor objectives.
They see themselves as heroes protecting the HK they love. No doubt their sincerity, but there are 300 of them left.
The more things change the more they stay the same. The level of paranoia of the neoliberal elite toward Russia probably exceeds
the level achieved during the Cold War I, and their intellectual level is considerably lower, so the danger is greater.
Notable quotes:
"... I am coming to believe that it will never be possible to achieve anything resembling a sophisticated understanding of Russia in American governmental and journalistic circles. ..."
"... The lingering tendencies in [the United States] to see Russia as a great and dangerous enemy are simply silly, and should have no place in our thinking. We have never been at war with Russia, should never need to be and must not be. ..."
I find the view of the Soviet Union that prevails today in large portions of our governmental and journalistic establishments
so extreme, so subjective, so far removed from what any sober scrutiny of external reality would reveal, that it is not only ineffective
but dangerous as a guide to political action. This endless series of distortions and oversimplifications; this systematic dehumanization
of the leadership of another great country; this routine exaggeration of Moscow's military capabilities and of the supposed iniquity
of Soviet intentions; this monotonous misrepresentation of the nature and the attitudes of another great people ... this reckless
application of the double standard to the judgment of Soviet conduct and our own; this failure to recognize, finally, the communality
of many of their problems and ours as we both move inexorably into the modern technological age; and this corresponding tendency
to view all aspects of the relationship in terms of a supposed total and irreconcilable conflict of concerns and of aims: these,
believe me, are not the marks of the maturity and discrimination one expects of the diplomacy of a great power; they are the marks
of an intellectual primitivism and naïveté unpardonable in a great government. (
The New York Review of Books , 01.21.82)
Above all, we must learn to see the behavior of the leadership of that country [the Soviet Union] as partly the reflection
of our own treatment of it. If we insist on demonizing these Soviet leaders -- on viewing them as total and incorrigible enemies,
consumed only with their fear or hatred of us and dedicated to nothing other than our destruction -- that, in the end, is the
way we shall assuredly have them -- if for no other reason than that our view of them allows for nothing else -- either for them
or for us. ( The New York Review of Books
, 01.21.82)
On forcing Russia into concessions in a letter to J. Lukacs[1]
: I would like to say that it never pays, in my opinion, for one great power to take advantage of the momentary weakness or distraction
of another great power in order to force upon it concessions it would never have accepted in normal circumstances. (Letter written
in 1990 via " Through the History of the Cold War: The
Correspondence of George F. Kennan and John Lukacs ," 2010)
I fear the consequences of his [U.S. President Jimmy Carter's] moralism -- with respect both to Southern Africa and to the
Soviet Union. The question of pressure on behalf of the Russian "dissidents" is one of those highly complicated political questions
in which one has to work with contrary forces, carefully gauging the best compromise line between them. (Letter written in 1977
via " Through the History of the Cold War: The Correspondence
of George F. Kennan and John Lukacs ," 2010)
One great part of the U.S. government professes to be seeking peace with Moscow; another great part of it -- CIA and the Pentagon
-- appears to live and act on the assumption that we are either at war with Russia or are about to be. Both of these attitudes
have their domestic cliques and constituencies; and our good president, anxious to return the support of both of them, wages peace,
demonstratively, out of one pocket, and war, clandestinely, out of the other. Hence -- his split mind. (Letter written in 1977
via " Through the History of the Cold War: The Correspondence
of George F. Kennan and John Lukacs ," 2010)
I am coming to believe that it will never be possible to achieve anything resembling a sophisticated understanding of
Russia in American governmental and journalistic circles. Recognizing this, to begin to think that it should be best if the
relationship between the two countries were to be, over the long term (and by this conscious choice), a cold and distant one,
directed solely to the maintenance of peace, but avoiding both polemics and the search for intimacy -- a disillusioned relationship
in other words, in which the avoidance of unnecessary misunderstandings in practical questions would be given a higher priority
than the search for any real philosophical understanding or any wide ranging agreement on political values. (Letter written in
1983 via " Through the History of the Cold War: The Correspondence
of George F. Kennan and John Lukacs ," 2010)
The lingering tendencies in [the United States] to see Russia as a great and dangerous enemy are simply silly, and should
have no place in our thinking. We have never been at war with Russia, should never need to be and must not be. ... The greatest
help we can give will be of two kinds: understanding and example. The example will of course depend upon the quality of our own
civilization. It is our responsibility to assure that this quality is such as to be useful in this respect. We must ask ourselves
what sort of example is going to be set for Russia by a country that finds itself unable to solve such problems as drugs, crime,
decay of the inner cities, declining educational levels, a crumbling material substructure and a deteriorating environment. The
understanding, on the other hand, will have to include the recognition that this is in many ways a hard and low moment in the
historical development of the Russian people. They are just in process of recovery from all the heartrending reverses that this
brutal century has brought to them. We , too, may someday have our low moments. (
Foreign Affairs
, 12.01.90)
Images removed. See the original for full version.
Much more plausible explanation of Russiagate then Mueller report that cost probably 1000 times less. Mueller and his team should
commit hara-kiri in shame.
It contains more valuable information about Russiagate and color revolution against Trump initiatesd by Obama and Brennan. And
what is important it is much shorter and up to the point. In other words, Jeff Carlson beat the whole Mueller team to the
punch.
An excellent reporting by Jeff Carlson !!! Bravo!!!
Notable quotes:
"... Horowitz continued to push Congress for oversight access and encouraged passage of the Inspector General Empowerment Act . Horowitz would ultimately win his battle, but only as President Barack Obama was leaving office. On Dec. 16, 2016, Obama finally signed the Inspector General Empowerment Act into law. ..."
"... The IGs' memo included an assessment that Clinton's email account contained hundreds of classified emails, despite Clinton's claims that there was no classified information present on her server. ..."
"... On July 30, 2015, within weeks of the FBI's opening of the Clinton investigation, McCabe was suddenly promoted to the No. 3 position in the FBI. With his new title of associate deputy director, McCabe was transferred to FBI headquarters from the Washington Field Office, and his direct involvement in the Clinton investigation began. ..."
"... Strzok was one of the agents selected, and in late August 2015, he was assigned to the Mid-Year Exam team and transferred to FBI headquarters. Strzok, in his comments to lawmakers, acknowledged that the newly formed investigative team was largely made up of hand-picked personnel from the Washington Field Office and FBI headquarters. ..."
"... On Jan. 29, 2016, Comey appointed McCabe as FBI deputy director, replacing the retiring Giuliano, and McCabe assumed the No. 2 position in the FBI, after having held the No. 3 position for just six months. ..."
"... By early 2016, the three participants in the infamous "insurance policy" meeting -- McCabe, Strzok, and Page -- were now in place at the FBI. ..."
"... Priestap, who testified that he was unaware of the frequency of meetings between McCabe, Strzok, and Lisa Page, seems to have been kept in the dark regarding many of the actions taken by Strzok, who appeared to be exercising significant investigative control. ..."
"... It sounds like Peter Strzok was kind of driving the train here. Would you agree with that?" ..."
"... Peter and Jon, yeah." ..."
"... Do you know if Mr. McCabe was aware that some of his agent executives were concerned that they were being bypassed on information on what, by all accounts, was a sensitive, critical investigation?" ..."
"... My understanding was that he was aware." ..."
"... Notably, Comey had been convinced to remove the term "gross negligence" to describe Clinton's actions from his prepared statement by, among others, Page, Strzok, Anderson, and Moffa. ..."
"... While GCHQ was gathering intelligence, low-level Trump campaign foreign-policy adviser George Papadopoulos appears to have been targeted, after a series of highly coincidental meetings. Most of these meetings with Papadopoulos -- whose own background and reasons for joining the Trump campaign remain suspicious -- occurred in the first half of 2016. Maltese professor Josef Mifsud, Australian diplomat Alexander Downer, FBI informant Stefan Halper, and officials from the UK's Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) all crossed paths with Papadopoulos -- some repeatedly so. ..."
"... As this foreign intelligence -- unofficial in nature and outside of any traditional channels -- was gathered, Brennan began a process of feeding his gathered intelligence to the FBI. Repeated transfers of foreign intelligence from the CIA director pushed the FBI toward the establishment of a formal counterintelligence investigation. ..."
"... The last major segment of Brennan's efforts involved a series of three reports. The first, titled the "Joint Statement from the Department Of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Election Security ," was released on Oct. 7, 2016. The second report, "GRIZZLY STEPPE -- Russian Malicious Cyber Activity ," was released on Dec. 29, 2016. The third report, "Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent U.S. Elections " -- also known as the intelligence community assessment (ICA) -- was released on Jan. 6, 2017. ..."
"... On July 5, 2016, Gaeta traveled to London and met with Steele at the offices of Steele's firm, Orbis. At some point in early July, Steele passed his initial report to Nuland and the State Department. Nuland later said these documents were passed on at some point to both the FBI and then-Secretary of State John Kerry. ..."
"... Prior to joining Fusion GPS, Nellie had worked as an independent contractor for an internal open-source division of the CIA, Open Source Works, from 2008 to at least June 2010; it appears likely she remained in that role into 2014. ..."
"... Additionally, email communications between her and Bruce Ohr show that she routinely sent her husband at the DOJ articles on Russia -- most carrying a similar negative slant. The emails continued through the duration of Nellie's employment with Fusion GPS and usually contained a brief, often one-line comment from Nellie. ..."
"... In her testimony, Nellie described her work as online open-source efforts that utilized "Russian sources, media, social media, government, you know, business registers, legal databases, all kinds of things." Ohr said that she would "write occasional reports based on the open-source research that I described about Donald Trump's relationships with various people in Russia." ..."
"... Steele had produced eight reports from June 20, 2016, through the end of August 2016 (there also is one undated report included in the dossier). No further reports were generated by Steele until Sept. 14, when he suddenly wrote three separate memos in one day. One of the memos referenced a Russian bank named Alfa Bank, misspelled as "Alpha" in his memo. Steele's sudden burst of productivity was likely done in preparation for his Sept. 19 meeting in Rome with the FBI. ..."
"... The impact of Brennan's potential knowledge of the dossier in August 2016 should not be underestimated. As Brennan testified to Congress, his briefing to the Gang of Eight was done in consultation with the Obama administration: ..."
"... Halper, who has been outed as an FBI informant, stayed in contact with Carter Page for the next 14 months, severing ties exactly as the final FISA warrant on Page expired. ..."
"... Following the publication of the Isikoff article, the Hillary for America campaign released a statement on the same day that touted Isikoff's "bombshell report," with the full article attached. ..."
"... Winer had received a separate dossier , very similar to Steele's, from longtime Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal. This "second dossier" had been compiled by another longtime Clinton operative, former journalist Cody Shearer, and echoed claims made in the Steele dossier. Winer gave Steele a copy of the "second dossier." Steele then shared this second dossier with the FBI, which may have used it as a means to corroborate Steele's own dossier. ..."
"... Steele also met with U.S. media during his visit to Washington, doing so "at Fusion's instruction." According to UK Court documents , Steele testified that he "briefed" The New York Times, The Washington Post, Yahoo News, The New Yorker, and CNN at the end of September 2016. Steele would engage in a second round of media contact in mid-October 2016, meeting again with The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Yahoo News. Steele testified that all these meetings were "conducted verbally in person." ..."
"... Sometime in late 2016, his wife, Nellie Ohr, provided him with a memory stick containing all of her research that she had compiled while employed at Fusion GPS. Bruce Ohr testified he gave the memory stick to Pientka. Nellie Ohr had left Fusion in September 2016. Through Pientka, Strzok now had all of Nellie Ohr's Fusion research in his possession. ..."
"... Flynn's 2015 dinner in Moscow was initially used to implicate the Trump campaign's ties to Russia. It was then used as a means to cast doubts on Flynn's ability as Trump's national security adviser. Following Flynn's resignation, it was then used as a means to pursue the ongoing collusion narrative that gained full strength in the early days of the Trump administration. ..."
"... On April 18, 2016, Rogers moved aggressively in response to the disclosures. He abruptly shut down all FBI outside-contractor access. At this point, both the FBI and the DOJ's NSD became aware of Rogers's compliance review. They may have known earlier, but they were certainly aware after outside-contractor access was halted. ..."
"... Carlin filed the government's proposed 2016 Section 702 certifications on Sept. 26, 2016. Carlin knew the general status of the compliance review by Rogers. The NSD was part of the review. Carlin failed to disclose a critical Jan. 7, 2016, report by the NSA inspector general and associated FISA abuse to the FISA court in his 2016 certification. Carlin also failed to disclose Rogers's ongoing Section 702-compliance review. ..."
Efforts by high-ranking officials in the CIA ,
FBI , Department of Justice (
DOJ ), and State Department to portray President
Donald Trump as having colluded with Russia were the culmination
of years of bias and politicization under the Obama administration.
The weaponization of the intelligence community and other government agencies created an environment that allowed for obstruction
in the investigation into Hillary Clinton and the relentless pursuit of a manufactured collusion narrative against Trump.
A willing and complicit media spread unsubstantiated leaks as facts in an effort to promote the Russia-collusion narrative.
The Spygate scandal also raises a bigger question: Was the 2016 election a one-time aberration, or was it symptomatic of decades
of institutional political corruption?
This article builds on dozens of congressional testimonies, court documents, and other research to provide an inside look at the
actions of Obama administration officials in the scandal that's become known as Spygate.
To understand this abuse of power, it helps to go back to July 2011, when DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz was appointed.
From the very start, Horowitz found his duties throttled by Attorney General Eric Holder, who placed limitations on the inspector
general's right to have unobstructed access to information. Holder
used
this tactic to delay Horowitz's investigation of the failed sting operation known as Operation Fast and Furious.
"We got access to information up to 2010 in all of these categories. No law changed in 2010. No policy changed. It was simply
a decision by the General Counsel's Office in 2010 that they viewed, now, the law differently. And as a result, they weren't going
to give us that information," Horowitz told
members of Congress in February 2015.
On Aug. 5, 2014, Horowitz and other inspectors general had sent a
letter to Congress asking for unimpeded access to all records. Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates responded on July 20, 2015,
with a 58-page memorandum, titled "
Memorandum
for Sally Quillian Yates Deputy Attorney General ," written by Karl R. Thompson, the principal deputy assistant attorney general
of the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC).
The July 20, 2015, opinion was
widely criticized . But it accomplished what it was intended to do. The opinion limited IG Horowitz's oversight from extending
to any information collected under Title III -- including intercepted communications and national security letters. (Notably, The
New York Times
disclosed that national security letters were used in the surveillance of the Trump 2016 presidential campaign.)
In response, on Aug. 3, 2015, IG Horowitz sent a
blistering letter to Congress. The letter was signed not only by Horowitz but by all other acting inspectors general as well:
"The OLC opinion's restrictive reading of the IG Act represents a potentially serious challenge to the authority of every Inspector
General and our collective ability to conduct our work thoroughly, independently, and in a timely manner. Our concern is that, as
a result of the OLC opinion, agencies other than DOJ may likewise withhold crucial records from their Inspectors General, adversely
impacting their work.
Horowitz continued to push Congress for oversight access and encouraged passage of the
Inspector General Empowerment
Act . Horowitz would ultimately win his battle, but only as President
Barack Obama was leaving office. On Dec. 16, 2016,
Obama finally signed the Inspector General Empowerment Act into law.
It is against this backdrop of minimal oversight that Spygate took place.
Ironically, the Clinton email server investigation, known as the "Mid-Year Exam," originated from a disclosure contained in a
June 29, 2015, memo sent by the inspectors general for both the State Department and the Intelligence Community to Patrick F. Kennedy,
then-undersecretary of state for management.
The IGs' memo included an assessment that Clinton's email account contained hundreds of classified emails, despite Clinton's claims
that there was no classified information present on her server.
On July 6, 2015, the IG for the Intelligence Community made a
referral
to the FBI, which resulted in the official opening of an investigation into the Clinton email server by FBI officials Randall Coleman
and Charles Kable on July 10, 2015.
At this time, Peter Strzok was an assistant special agent in charge at the FBI's Washington Field Office. The assistant director
in charge at the Washington Field Office during this period was Andrew McCabe, a position he
assumed on Sept.
14, 2014.
On July 30, 2015, within weeks of the FBI's opening of the Clinton investigation, McCabe was suddenly
promoted to the No. 3 position in the FBI. With his new title of associate deputy director, McCabe was transferred to FBI headquarters
from the Washington Field Office, and his direct involvement in the Clinton investigation began.
Strzok would follow shortly. Less than a month after McCabe was transferred, FBI headquarters reached out to the Washington Field
Office, saying it needed greater staffing and resources "based on what they were looking at, based on some of the investigative steps
that were under consideration," Strzok told congressional investigators in a closed-door hearing on June 27, 2018.
Strzok was one of the agents selected, and in late August 2015, he was assigned to the Mid-Year Exam team and transferred to FBI
headquarters. Strzok, in his comments to lawmakers, acknowledged that the newly formed investigative team was largely made up of
hand-picked personnel from the Washington Field Office and FBI headquarters.
Starting in October 2015 and continuing into early 2016, FBI Director
James Comey made a series of high-profile reassignments
that resulted in the complete turnover of the upper-echelon of the FBI team working on the Clinton email investigation:
Oct. 12, 2015: Louis Bladel was moved to the New York Field Office.
Dec. 1, 2015: Randall Coleman, assistant director of Counterintelligence, was named as executive assistant director of the
Criminal, Cyber, Response, and Services Branch, and was replaced by Bill Priestap.
Dec. 9, 2015: Charles "Sandy" Kable was moved to the Washington Field Office.
Feb. 1, 2016: Mark Giuliano retired as FBI deputy director and was replaced by Andrew McCabe.
Feb. 11, 2016: John Giacalone retired as executive assistant director and was replaced by Michael Steinbach.
March 2, 2016: Gerald Roberts, Jr. was moved to the Washington Field Office.
Comey is the only known senior FBI leadership official who remained involved throughout the entire Clinton email investigation.
McCabe had the second-longest tenure.
On Jan. 29, 2016, Comey
appointed
McCabe as FBI deputy director, replacing the retiring Giuliano, and McCabe assumed the No. 2 position in the FBI, after having
held the No. 3 position for just six months.
It was at this point that FBI lawyer Lisa Page was assigned to McCabe as his special counsel. This was not the first time that
Page worked directly for McCabe. James Baker, the FBI's former general counsel, told congressional investigators that Page had worked
for McCabe at various times during McCabe's career, going back as far as 2013.
By early 2016, the three participants in the infamous "insurance policy" meeting -- McCabe, Strzok, and Page -- were now in place
at the FBI.
In January 2016, Bill Priestap was named as head of the FBI's Counterintelligence Division, replacing Coleman and inheriting the
Clinton email investigation in the process.
According to Priestap, Coleman had "set up a reporting mechanism that leaders of that team would report directly to him, not through
the customary other chain of command" in the Clinton email investigation. Priestap, who said he didn't know why Coleman had "set
it up," kept the chain of command in place when he assumed Coleman's position in January 2016.
This new structure resulted in some unusual reporting lines that went outside normal chains of command. Strzok, who would not
normally fall under Priestap's oversight, was now reporting directly to him.
As Priestap described it, the team involved in the Clinton investigation comprised three different but intertwined elements: the
primary team, the filter team, and the senior leadership team.
The primary team was small, consisting only of Strzok, FBI analyst Jonathan Moffa, and, to varying degrees, filter team leader
Rick Mains and FBI lawyer Sally Moyer. Mains reported to Strzok and Moffa, who in turn, along with Moyer, provided briefings to Priestap.
Below Strzok and Moffa was the day-to-day investigative "filter" team of approximately 15 FBI agents and analysts that was overseen
by Mains, a supervisory special agent.
The senior leadership team was more fluid, consisting of higher-level FBI officials who provided briefings and updates to Comey
and/or McCabe. In addition to Priestap, Strzok, and Moffa, frequent attendees included Moyer, Page, Deputy General Counsel Trisha
Anderson, chief of staff Jim Rybicki, and General Counsel James Baker.
While the elements of the day-to-day investigative team differed for the Clinton email investigation and the Trump–Russia investigation,
the primary team remained the same throughout both cases -- as did the lines of communication between the FBI and the DOJ. According
to testimony by Page, John Carlin, who ran the DOJ's National Security Division (NSD), was receiving briefings on both investigations
directly from McCabe.
Priestap Left in the Dark
Priestap, who testified that he was unaware of the frequency of meetings between McCabe, Strzok, and Lisa Page, seems to have
been kept in the dark regarding many of the actions taken by Strzok, who appeared to be exercising significant investigative control. Priestap was asked about this by congressional investigators during a June 5, 2018, testimony:
Rep. Meadows: " It sounds like Peter Strzok was kind of driving the train here. Would you agree with that?"
Additionally, Page often circumvented the established chain of command, not only with McCabe, for whom she reportedly served as
a conduit for Strzok, but also with Baker. Additionally, there were concerns that Page bypassed both the executive assistant director
for the National Security Branch -- first Giacalone, then Steinbach -- and Priestap, the head of counterintelligence. Anderson, the
No. 2 lawyer, admitted in her testimony to congressional investigators that she had been aware of these concerns, saying, "Neither
of them personally complained to me, but I was aware of their concerns."
A report published by IG Horowitz in June 2018, which reviewed the FBI's investigation of the Clinton email case, included the
notable statement that several witnesses had informed the IG that Page "circumvented the official chain of command, and that Strzok
communicated important Midyear case information to her, and thus to McCabe, without Priestap's or Steinbach's knowledge." Steinbach,
who was the executive assistant director and Priestap's direct supervisor,
left the FBI in early 2017.
According to Anderson, McCabe was aware of the ongoing concerns regarding Page's circumventions, but it appears that nothing was
done to address them:
Mr. Baker: " Do you know if Mr. McCabe was aware that some of his agent executives were concerned that they were being bypassed
on information on what, by all accounts, was a sensitive, critical investigation?"
Ms. Anderson: " My understanding was that he was aware."
DOJ Prevents 'Gross Negligence' Charges
By the spring of 2016, the Clinton email investigation was already winding down. This was due in large part to the fact that the
DOJ, under Attorney General Loretta Lynch , had decided
to set an unusually high threshold for the prosecution of Clinton, effectively ensuring from the outset that she would not be charged.
In order for Clinton to be prosecuted, the DOJ required the FBI to establish evidence of intent -- even though the gross negligence
statute explicitly does not require this.
This meant that the FBI would have needed to find a smoking gun, such as an email or an admission made during FBI questioning,
revealing that Clinton or her aides knowingly set up the private email server to send classified information.
According to Page, the DOJ played a far larger role in the Clinton investigation than previously had been known:
"Everybody talks about this as if this was the FBI investigation, and the truth of the matter is there was not a single step,
other than the July 5th statement, there was not a single investigative step that we did not do in consultation with or at the direction
of the Justice Department," Page told congressional investigators on July 13, 2018.
Comey also had hinted at the influence exerted by the DOJ over the Clinton investigation, at a July 5, 2016,
press conference , in which he
recommended that Clinton not be charged, stating that "there are obvious considerations, like the strength of the evidence, especially
regarding intent."
Notably, Comey had been convinced to remove the term "gross negligence" to describe Clinton's actions from his prepared statement
by, among others, Page, Strzok, Anderson, and Moffa.
CIA Director Instigates Trump Investigation
As the Clinton investigation wound down, interest from the intelligence community in the Trump campaign was ramping up. Sometime
in 2015, it appears former CIA Director John Brennan established himself as the point man to push for an investigation into the Trump
campaign. Using a combination of unofficial foreign intelligence compiled by contacts, colleagues, and associates --
primarily from the UK , but also from other Five Eyes members, such as Australia -- Brennan then fed this information to the
FBI. Brennan stated this fact repeatedly during a May 23, 2017,
congressional testimony :
"I made sure that anything that was involving U.S. persons, including anything involving the individuals involved in the Trump
campaign, was shared with the [FBI]."
Brennan also admitted that it was his intelligence that helped
establish the FBI investigation:
"I was aware of intelligence and information about contacts between Russian officials and U.S. persons that raised concerns in
my mind about whether or not those individuals were cooperating with the Russians, either in a witting or unwitting fashion, and
it served as the basis for the FBI investigation to determine whether such collusion [or] cooperation occurred."
In late 2015, Britain's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) was involved in collecting information regarding then-candidate
Trump and transmitting it to the United States. The GCHQ is the UK equivalent of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA).
While GCHQ was gathering intelligence, low-level Trump campaign foreign-policy adviser George Papadopoulos appears to have been
targeted, after a series of highly coincidental meetings. Most of these meetings with Papadopoulos -- whose own background and reasons for joining the Trump campaign remain suspicious
-- occurred in the first half of 2016. Maltese professor Josef Mifsud, Australian diplomat Alexander Downer, FBI informant Stefan Halper, and officials from the UK's
Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) all crossed paths with Papadopoulos -- some repeatedly so.
Mifsud, who introduced Papadopoulos to a series of Russian contacts, appears to have more connections with Western intelligence
than with Russian intelligence.
Downer, then Australia's high commissioner to the UK, met with Papadopoulos in May 2016, in a meeting
established through a chain
of two intermediaries.
Information allegedly relayed by Papadopoulos during the Downer meeting -- that the Russians had damaging information on Clinton
-- appears nearly identical to claims later contained in the first memo from former MI6 spy and dossier author Christopher Steele
that the FBI obtained in early July 2016.
Downer's conversation with Papadopoulos was reportedly disclosed to the FBI on July 22, 2016, through Australian government channels,
although it may have come directly from Downer himself.
Details from the conversation between Downer and Papadopoulos were then used by the FBI to open its counterintelligence investigation
on July 31, 2016.
In the summer of 2016, Robert Hannigan, the head of the UK's GCHQ, traveled to Washington to
meet with Brennan
regarding alleged communications between the Trump campaign and Moscow. Around the same time, Brennan
formed an inter-agency task force comprising an estimated
six agencies and/or government departments. The FBI, Treasury, and DOJ handled the domestic inquiry into Trump and possible Russia
connections. The CIA, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the NSA handled foreign and intelligence aspects.
During this time, Brennan appeared to have employed the use of
reverse targeting , which refers to the targeting of a foreign individual with the intent of capturing data on a U.S. citizen.
Mr. Brennan:
" We call it incidental collection in terms of CIA's foreign intelligence collection authorities. Any time we
would incidentally collect information on a U.S. person, we would hand that over to the FBI because they have the legal authority
to do it. We would not pursue that type of investigative, you know, sort of leads. We would give it to the FBI. So, we were picking
things up that was of great relevance to the FBI, and we wanted to make sure that they were there -- so they could piece it together
with whatever they were collecting domestically here."
As this foreign intelligence -- unofficial in nature and outside of any traditional channels -- was gathered, Brennan began a
process of feeding his gathered intelligence to the FBI. Repeated transfers of foreign intelligence from the CIA director pushed
the FBI toward the establishment of a formal counterintelligence investigation.
This final report was used to continue pushing the Russia-collusion narrative following the election of President Donald Trump.
Notably, Adm. Mike Rogers of the NSA publicly dissented from the findings of the ICA, assigning it only a moderate confidence level.
Fusion GPS and the Steele Dossier
Meanwhile, another less official effort began. Information paid for by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Clinton
campaign targeting Trump made its way to the highest levels of the FBI and the State Department, with a sophisticated strategy relying
on the personal connections of hired operatives.
At the center of the multi-pronged strategy to disseminate the information were Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson and former
British spy Steele.
In early March 2016, Fusion GPS approached Perkins Coie -- the law firm used by the Clinton campaign and the DNC -- expressing
interest in an "engagement," according to an Oct. 24, 2017,
response
letter by Perkins Coie. The firm hired Fusion GPS in April 2016 to "perform a variety of research services during the 2016 election
cycle."
Steele's firm, Orbis Business Intelligence, was retained by Fusion GPS during the period between June and November 2016. During
this time, Steele produced 16 memos, with the last memo dated Oct. 20, 2016. There is one final memo that Steele wrote on Dec. 13
at the request of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).
Steele provided Fusion GPS with something that Simpson's firm was lacking: access to individuals within the FBI and the State
Department. These contacts could be traced back to at least 2010, when Steele had provided assistance in the FBI's investigation
into FIFA over concerns that Russia might have been engaging in bribery to host the 2018 World Cup.
Sometime in the latter half of 2014, Steele began to informally
provide reports
he had prepared for a private client to the State Department. One of the recipients of the reports was Victoria Nuland, the assistant
secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs.
After Steele's company was hired by Fusion GPS in June 2016, he began to reach out to the FBI through Michael Gaeta, an FBI agent
and assistant legal attaché at the
U.S. Embassy in Rome who Steele had worked with on the FIFA case. Gaeta also headed up the FBI's Eurasian Organized Crime unit, which
specializes in investigating criminal groups from Georgia, Russia, and Ukraine.
Gaeta was later identified as Steele's FBI handler, in a July 16, 2018, congressional testimony before the House Judiciary and
Oversight committees by Page.
On July 5, 2016, Gaeta traveled to London and met with Steele at the offices of Steele's firm, Orbis. At some point in early July,
Steele passed his initial report to Nuland and the State Department. Nuland later said these documents were passed on at some point
to both the FBI and then-Secretary of State John Kerry.
Exactly what happened with the reports that Gaeta brought back from London, and precisely who he gave them to within the FBI,
remains unknown, although some media reports have indicated they might have been sent to the FBI's New York Field Office. During
the period following Steele's initial contact with the FBI, there appears to have been no further FBI interaction or contact with
Steele.
Former CIA Contractor Worked for Fusion GPS
Notably, eight months before Fusion GPS hired Christopher Steele, Simpson had hired Nellie Ohr, the wife of then-Associate Deputy
Attorney General Bruce Ohr, to work for his firm as a researcher in October 2015. It was at this time that Fusion GPS was retained
by the Washington Free Beacon to engage in research on the Trump campaign.
Prior to joining Fusion GPS, Nellie had worked as an independent contractor for an internal open-source division of the CIA, Open
Source Works, from 2008 to at least June 2010; it appears likely she remained in that role into 2014.
Nellie told congressional investigators, in her Oct. 19, 2018, closed-door testimony, that part of her work for Fusion GPS was
to research the Trump 2016 presidential campaign, including campaign associate Carter Page, early campaign supporter Lt. Gen. Michael
Flynn, and campaign manager Paul Manafort, as well as Trump's family members, including some of his children.
Additionally, email communications between her and Bruce Ohr show that she routinely sent her husband at the DOJ articles on Russia
-- most carrying a similar negative slant. The emails continued through the duration of Nellie's employment with Fusion GPS and usually
contained a brief, often one-line comment from Nellie.
In her testimony, Nellie described her work as online open-source efforts that utilized "Russian sources, media, social media,
government, you know, business registers, legal databases, all kinds of things." Ohr said that she would "write occasional reports
based on the open-source research that I described about Donald Trump's relationships with various people in Russia."
The work Nellie conducted for Fusion GPS matches the same skill set used when she worked for Open Source Works, which is a division
within the CIA that uses open-source information to produce intelligence products.
When asked how she came to be hired by Fusion GPS and who had approached her, Nellie responded, "Nobody approached me," telling
investigators that it was she who had initiated contact and approached Fusion GPS after reading an article on Simpson.
Nellie would continue to work for Fusion GPS until September 2016. By this time, Simpson and Steele already had started working
on pushing the Steele dossier into the FBI.
Following the end of her employment with Fusion GPS, Nellie provided Bruce with a memory stick that contained all of the research
she had compiled during her time at the firm. Bruce then gave the memory stick to the FBI, through his handler, Joe Pientka.
Bruce Ohr Becomes a Conduit
Nearly a month after Gaeta brought back the reports that Steele provided in London, Simpson and Steele decided to pursue a new
channel into the FBI through Bruce Ohr. Bruce had known Steele since at least 2007, when they met during an "official meeting" while
Steele was still employed by the British government as an MI6 agent. Steele had already been in contact with Bruce via email in early
2016. Notably, most of these prior communications appeared to discuss Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska and his ongoing efforts to
obtain a U.S. visa.
On July 29, 2016, Steele
wrote to Bruce, saying that he would "be in DC at short notice on business," and asked to meet with both Bruce and his wife.
On July 30, 2016, the Ohrs met Steele for breakfast at the Mayflower Hotel. Also present at the breakfast meeting was a fourth individual,
described by Bruce as "an associate of Mr. Steele's, another gentleman, younger fellow. I didn't catch his name." Nellie testified
that Steele's associate had a British accent.
The timing of the July 30 breakfast meeting is of particular note, as the FBI's counterintelligence investigation, "Crossfire
Hurricane," was formally opened the following day, on July 31, 2016, by FBI agent Peter Strzok.
According to a transcript of Bruce's testimony before Congress, Steele
relayed information from his dossier at this meeting and claimed that "a former head of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service,
the SVR, had stated to someone that they had Donald Trump over a barrel."
Steele also referenced Deripaska's business dealings with Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and foreign policy adviser Carter
Page's meetings in Moscow.
Lastly, Bruce noted that Steele told him he had been in contact with the FBI but now had additional reports. "Chris Steele had
provided some reports to the FBI, I think two, but that Glenn Simpson had more," he said.
Immediately following the Ohrs' breakfast meeting with Steele, Bruce Ohr reached out to FBI Deputy Director McCabe and the two
met in McCabe's office -- sometime between July 30 and the first days of August. Also present at this meeting was FBI lawyer Page,
who had previously worked for Bruce Ohr at the DOJ, where he was her direct supervisor for five to six years.
Bruce Ohr would later testify that during the July/August meeting, he told McCabe that his wife, Nellie, worked for Fusion, noting,
"I wanted the FBI to be aware of any possible bias." FBI General Counsel Baker, who reviewed a portion of the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act (FISA) application to spy on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page -- which relied in part on the information from
Steele -- told congressional investigators that he was never told of Ohr's concerns regarding possible bias and conflicts of interest.
On Aug. 15, 2016, a week or two following Bruce Ohr's meeting with McCabe, Strzok would send the now-infamous "insurance policy"
text referencing McCabe to Lisa Page:
"I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy's office – that there's no way he gets elected – but I'm afraid
we can't take that risk. It's like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you're 40."
On Aug. 22, Bruce Ohr had a meeting with Simpson. Ohr would later discuss that meeting during his testimony:
"I don't know exactly what Chris Steele was thinking, of course, but I knew that Chris Steele was working for Glenn Simpson, and
that Glenn might have additional information that Chris either didn't have or was not authorized to prevent [present], give me, or
whatever."
It was at this meeting that Simpson first mentioned Belarusan-American businessman Sergei Millian and former Trump attorney Michael
Cohen.
During this same period in late August 2016, Brennan began briefing members of the Gang of Eight on the FBI's counterintelligence
investigation, through a series of meetings in August and September 2016. Notably, each Gang of Eight member was briefed separately,
calling into question whether each of the members received the same information. Efforts by Democrats to
block the release of transcripts from each meeting are ongoing. Comey, however, did not notify Congress of the FBI investigation
until early March 2017, and it's entirely possible he was unaware of Brennan's private briefings during the summer of 2016.
During her testimony, FBI lawyer Lisa Page was questioned by Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) in relation to an Aug. 25, 2016, text
message that read, "What are you doing after the CH brief?" CH almost certainly referred to Crossfire Hurricane.
Lisa Page then was asked about an event that took place on the same day as the "CH brief" -- a briefing provided by Brennan to
then-Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid:
"You give a brief on August the 25th. Director Brennan is giving a brief. It's not a Gang of Eight brief. It is a one-on-one,
from what we can tell, a one-on-one briefing with Harry Reid at that point."
According to Meadows, Brennan briefed Reid on the Steele dossier:
"We have documents that would suggest that in that briefing the dossier was mentioned to Harry Reid and then obviously we're going
to have to have conversations. Does that surprise you that Director Brennan would be aware [of the dossier]?"
Lisa Page appeared genuinely surprised that Brennan would have been aware of the dossier's existence at this early point, telling
Meadows: "The FBI got this information from our source. If the CIA had another source of that information, I am neither aware of
that nor did the CIA provide it to us if they did."
She elaborated further: "As of August of 2016, I don't know who Christopher Steele is. I don't know that he's an FBI source. I
don't know what he does. I have never heard of him in all of my life."
This claim by Page seems incongruous when viewed against Bruce Ohr's testimony that he met with Page and McCabe in the first days
of August following his July 30, 2016, breakfast with Steele:
"My initial meeting was with Mr. McCabe and with Lisa Page.
"I was telling them about what I was hearing from Chris Steele."
Meanwhile, Brennan's briefing prompted Reid to write not one but two letters to Comey. Both demanded that Comey commence an investigation,
with the details to be made public.
Reid's first letter
, which touched on Carter Page, was sent on Aug. 27, 2016. Reid's
second letter
, far angrier and declaring Comey to be in possession of material information, was sent on Oct. 30, 2016.
There had been
reports that Comey had been considering closing the FBI investigation of Trump, something Brennan strongly opposed. Now, with
Reid's letters sent, that avenue was effectively closed. The termination of the FBI's Trump–Russia investigation would be all but
impossible in the face of Reid's public demands.
Perhaps it was in response to Reid's Aug. 27 letter that the FBI suddenly reached out to Steele in September 2016, asking him
for all the information in his possession. The team working on Crossfire Hurricane received documents and a briefing from Steele
in mid-September, reportedly
at a meeting in Rome, where Gaeta also was present.
During Lisa Page's testimony, she appeared to corroborate this account, noting that the team received the "reports that are known
as the dossier from an FBI agent who is Christopher Steele's handler in September of 2016." She would later clarify the timing, noting
"we received the reporting from Steele in mid-September." A
text sent to her by FBI agent Peter
Strzok on Oct. 12, 2016, may provide us with the actual date:
"We got the reporting on Sept 19. Looks like [redacted] got it early August."
Steele had produced eight reports from June 20, 2016, through the end of August 2016 (there also is one undated report included
in the dossier). No further reports were generated by Steele until Sept. 14, when he suddenly wrote three separate memos in one day.
One of the memos referenced a Russian bank named Alfa Bank, misspelled as "Alpha" in his memo. Steele's sudden burst of productivity
was likely done in preparation for his Sept. 19 meeting in Rome with the FBI.
The impact of Brennan's potential knowledge of the dossier in August 2016 should not be underestimated. As Brennan
testified to Congress, his briefing to the Gang of Eight
was done in consultation with the Obama administration:
"Through the so-called Gang-of-Eight process we kept Congress apprised of these issues as we identified them. Again, in consultation
with the White House, I personally briefed the full details of our understanding of Russian attempts to interfere in the election
to congressional leadership.
"Given the highly sensitive nature of what was an active counter-intelligence case, involving an ongoing Russian effort, to interfere
in our presidential election, the full details of what we knew at the time were shared only with those members of Congress."
As the dossier was making its way into the FBI, the agency began its preparations to obtain a FISA warrant on Trump campaign adviser
Carter Page, who was surveilled under Title I of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
According to Baker's testimony, it appears that the FBI began to set its sights on Carter Page in the summer of 2016. When asked
how he had first gained knowledge of the FBI's intention to pursue a FISA warrant on Carter Page, Baker testified that it came through
his familiarity with the FBI's investigation:
Mr. Baker: " I learned of -- so I was aware when the FBI first started to focus on Carter Page, I was aware of that because
it was part of the broader investigation that we were conducting. So I was aware that we were investigating him. And then at some
point in time –"
Rep. Meadows: "But that was many years ago. That was in 2014. Or are you talking about 2016?"
Mr. Baker: " I am talking about 2016 in the summer."
Rep. Meadows: "Okay."
Mr. Baker: " Yeah. And so I was aware of the investigation, and then at some point in time, as part of the regular briefings
on the case, the briefers mentioned that they were going to pursue a FISA."
It appears the FBI, and possibly the CIA, began to focus on Carter Page earlier than Baker was aware. Carter Page had been invited
some months prior to a July 2016 symposium held at Cambridge regarding the upcoming election. The speaker list was notable:
Madeleine Albright (former U.S. secretary of state)
Vin Weber (Republican Party strategist and former congressman)
Peter Ammon (German ambassador to the UK)
Sir Richard Dearlove (former head of MI6 and Steele's former boss)
Bridget Kendall (BBC diplomatic correspondent and the next master of Peterhouse College)
Sir Malcolm Rifkind (former defense and foreign secretary)
Carter Page attended the event just four days after his July 2016 Moscow trip, and it was during this time in the UK that he first
encountered Stefan Halper. Page's Moscow trip would later figure prominently in the Steele dossier.
Halper, who has been outed as an FBI informant, stayed in contact with Carter Page for the next 14 months, severing ties exactly
as the final FISA warrant on Page expired.
Trisha Anderson, the principal deputy general counsel for the FBI and head of the bureau's National Security and Cyber Law Branch,
approved the application for a warrant to spy on Carter Page before it went to FBI Director James Comey.
According to Anderson, pre-approvals for the Carter Page FISA warrant were provided by both McCabe and Deputy Attorney General
Sally Yates, before the FISA application was ever presented to Anderson for review.
"[M]y boss and my boss' boss had already reviewed and approved this application. And, in fact, the Deputy Attorney General, who
had the authority to sign the application, to be the substantive approver on the FISA application itself, had approved the application.
And that typically would not have been the case before I did that," said Anderson.
The unusual preliminary reviews and approvals from both McCabe and Yates appear to have had a substantial impact on the normal
review process, leading other individuals like Anderson to believe that the warrant application was more vetted than it really was.
Anderson also testified that she had not read the Carter Page FISA application prior to signing off on it and passing it along
to Comey for the final FBI signature. According to FBI lawyer Sally Moyer, the underlying Woods file (a document that provides facts
supporting the allegations made in a FISA application) was only read by the originating agent and the supervisory special agent in
the field. Moyer also noted that the Woods file relating to the Page FISA had not been reviewed or audited by anyone.
The Carter Page FISA application was largely reliant on the Steele dossier, which was unverified at the time of its submission
to the FISA court and remains unverified by the FBI to this day. Circular reporting, provided by Steele himself, was used as corroboration
of the dossier. Additionally, Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos, whose conversation with Australian diplomat Alexander Downer
was used to open the FBI's July 31, 2016, counterintelligence investigation, is referenced in the FISA, yet there "is no evidence
of any cooperation or conspiracy between Page and Papadopoulos," according to a House Intelligence Committee memo.
Moyer testified that without the Steele dossier, the Carter Page application would have had a "50/50" chance of achieving the
probable cause standard before the FISA court. Notably, the Steele dossier is generally considered to have been largely discredited.
On Sept. 19, shortly after Steele completed his latest three memos, FBI General Counsel James Baker met with Perkins Coie partner
Michael Sussmann, the lawyer the DNC turned to on April 28, 2016, after discovering the alleged hacking of their servers.
Sussman, who sought out the meeting, presented Baker with documents that Baker described as "a stack of material I don't know
maybe a quarter inch half inch thick something like that clipped together, and then I believe there was some type of electronic media,
as well, a disk or something."
The information that Sussmann gave to Baker was related to what Baker described as "a surreptitious channel of communications"
between the Trump Organization and "a Russian organization associated with the Russian Government."
Baker was describing alleged communications between Alfa Bank and a server in the Trump Tower. The allegations, which were investigated
by the FBI and proven to be false, were widely covered in the media.
Just four days earlier, on Sept. 14, Steele mentioned Alfa Bank (misspelled as Alpha bank) in one of his memos.
According to Baker's testimony, there appears to have been at least three meetings with Sussmann -- the first in person and at
least two subsequent meetings by phone. In either the second or third conversation, Baker came to understand The New York Times was
also in possession of Sussmann's information. As would become clear later, other members of the media also had this same information.
As Baker was meeting with Sussmann, Steele was back in Washington for a series of meetings that included his DOJ contact, Bruce
Ohr.
On Sept. 23, 2016, Bruce Ohr again met with Steele for breakfast, telling lawmakers during testimony, "Steele was in Washington,
D.C., again, and he reached out to me, and, again, we met for breakfast, and he provided some additional information." Ohr said this
meeting concerned similar topics that were discussed at the July 30, 2016, meeting but did not provide further details.
Bruce Ohr would also meet either that same month or in early October with FBI agent Peter Strzok, FBI lawyer Lisa Page, and DOJ
career officials from the criminal division, Bruce Swartz, Zainab Ahmad, and Andrew Weissman (Ohr testified that he was unsure whether
Weismann was at this or a later meeting). Both Weissman and Ahmad would later become part of the team assembled by special counsel
Robert Mueller.
Steele's Meetings With the Media
On the same day that Bruce Ohr met with Christopher Steele for breakfast, on Sept. 23, 2016, Yahoo News reporter Michael Isikoff
published an article about Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page. The article, headlined "
U.S. Intel Officials Probe Ties Between Trump Adviser and Kremlin ," was based on an interview with Steele. Isikoff's article
would later be used by the FBI in the FISA spy warrant application on Carter Page as corroborating information.
Following the publication of the Isikoff article, the Hillary for America campaign released a
statement on the same day that touted
Isikoff's "bombshell report," with the full article attached.
A second lengthy article was published on Sept. 23, by Politico: "
Who Is Carter
Page? The Mystery of Trump's Man in Moscow ," by Julia Ioffe. This article was particularly interesting as it appeared to highlight
media efforts by Fusion GPS:
"As I started looking into Page, I began getting calls from two separate 'corporate investigators' digging into what they claim
are all kinds of shady connections Page has to all kinds of shady Russians. One is working on behalf of various unnamed Democratic
donors; the other won't say who turned him on to Page's scent. Both claimed to me that the FBI was investigating Page for allegedly
meeting with Igor Sechin and Sergei Ivanov, who was until recently Putin's chief of staff -- both of whom are on the sanctions list
-- when Page was in Moscow in July for that speech."
Ioffe noted that "seemingly everyone I talked to had also talked to the Washington Post, and then there were these corporate investigators
who drew a dark and complex web of Page's connections."
Her article also mentioned rumors regarding Alfa Bank:
"In the interest of due diligence, I also tried to run down the rumors being handed me by the corporate investigators: that Russia's
Alfa Bank paid for the trip as a favor to the Kremlin; that Page met with Sechin and Ivanov in Moscow; that he is now being investigated
by the FBI for those meetings because Sechin and Ivanov were both sanctioned for Russia's invasion of Ukraine."
It was probably during this same trip to Washington that Steele
met with Jonathan Winer, a former deputy assistant secretary of state for international law enforcement and former special envoy
for Libya, whom Steele had known since at least 2010.
Winer had received a
separate dossier , very similar to Steele's, from longtime Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal. This "second dossier" had been
compiled by another longtime Clinton operative, former journalist Cody Shearer, and echoed claims made in the Steele dossier. Winer
gave Steele a copy of the "second dossier." Steele then
shared this second dossier with the FBI, which may have used it as a means to corroborate Steele's own dossier.
Steele also met with U.S. media during his visit to Washington, doing so "at Fusion's instruction." According to
UK Court documents , Steele testified
that he "briefed" The New York Times, The Washington Post, Yahoo News, The New Yorker, and CNN at the end of September 2016. Steele
would engage in a second round of media contact in mid-October 2016, meeting again with The New York Times, The Washington Post,
and Yahoo News. Steele testified that all these meetings were "conducted verbally in person."
As Steele's media meetings were going on, FBI General Counsel James Baker learned that Perkins Coie partner Michael Sussmann was
also speaking with reporters from The New York Times regarding the Alfa Bank information that Sussmann had provided to the FBI. After
some internal discussion, the FBI approached both Sussmann and The New York Times, asking that any story be held until the FBI had
time to complete an investigation into the documents provided by Sussmann. It appears that an agreement was reached, and the FBI
began to look into the claims regarding Alfa Bank and the server at Trump Tower.
But Sussman wasn't the only one that Baker, currently the subject of an ongoing criminal leak investigation, was speaking with.
According to congressional investigators, beginning sometime in September 2016 -- before the presidential election -- Baker began
having conversations with his old friend and journalist, David Corn of Mother Jones.
According to Baker, these conversations were in relation to ongoing FBI matters:
Rep. Jordan: " Did you talk to Mr. Corn prior to the election about anything, anything related to FBI matters? Not -- so we're
not going to ask about the Steele dossier. Anything about FBI business, FBI matters?"
Mr. Baker: " Yes."
Rep. Jordan: " Yes. And do you know -- can you give me some dates or the number of times that you talked to Mr. Corn about
FBI matters leading up to the 2016 Presidential election?"
Mr. Baker: " I don't remember, Congressman."
By Oct. 31, 2016, the FBI had apparently wrapped up their investigation into the Alfa Bank allegations, finding no evidence of
anything untoward in the process. It was on this day that three separate articles on Alfa Bank would be published.
The first, " Investigating
Donald Trump, F.B.I. Sees No Clear Link to Russia " by The New York Times, appeared to be an updated version of the article they
had intended to publish before the FBI asked them to delay their reporting. It stated the following:
"In classified sessions in August and September, intelligence officials also briefed congressional leaders on the possibility
of financial ties between Russians and people connected to Mr. Trump. They focused particular attention on what cyberexperts said
appeared to be a mysterious computer back channel between the Trump Organization and the Alfa Bank, which is one of Russia's biggest
banks and whose owners have longstanding ties to Mr. Putin."
The reference to "classified sessions in August and September" is likely in relation to the series of Gang of Eight briefings
that former CIA Director John Brennan engaged in at that time -- including his briefing to then-Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid.
The article continued:
"F.B.I. officials spent weeks examining computer data showing an odd stream of activity to a Trump Organization server and Alfa
Bank. Computer logs obtained by The New York Times show that two servers at Alfa Bank sent more than 2,700 'look-up' messages --
a first step for one system's computers to talk to another -- to a Trump-connected server beginning in the spring. But the F.B.I.
ultimately concluded that there could be an innocuous explanation, like a marketing email or spam, for the computer contacts."
The second article,
"Was a Trump Server Communicating With Russia?" by Slate Magazine, was solely focused on the allegations regarding a server in
the Trump Tower that had allegedly been communicating with a server at Alfa Bank in Russia.
Immediately following the publication of the Slate article, Clinton
posted a tweet that included a statement
from Jake Sullivan, a senior policy adviser:
"Computer scientists have apparently uncovered a covert server linking the Trump Organization to a Russian-based bank."
Sullivan's statement referenced the Slate article and included the following:
"This could be the most direct link yet between Donald Trump and Moscow. Computer scientists have apparently uncovered a covert
server linking the Trump Organization to a Russian-based bank.
"This secret hotline may be the key to unlocking the mystery of Trump's ties to Russia. It certainly seems the Trump Organization
felt it had something to hide, given that it apparently took steps to conceal the link when it was discovered by journalists."
The Alfa Bank story took off -- despite the same-day story from The New York Times that specifically noted the FBI had investigated
that matter and found nothing untoward.
"In recent weeks, reporters in Washington have pursued anonymous
online reports that a computer server related
to the Trump Organization engaged in a high level of activity with servers connected to Alfa Bank, the largest private bank in Russia.
On Monday, a Slate
investigation
detailed the pattern of unusual server activity but concluded, 'We don't yet know what this [Trump] server was
for, but it deserves further explanation.' In an email to Mother Jones, Hope Hicks, a Trump campaign spokeswoman, maintains, 'The
Trump Organization is not sending or receiving any communications from this email server. The Trump Organization has no communication
or relationship with this entity or any Russian entity.'"
More notably, Corn's article also provided the first public reporting on the existence of the Steele dossier:
"A former senior intelligence officer for a Western country who specialized in Russian counterintelligence tells Mother Jones
that in recent months he provided the bureau with memos, based on his recent interactions with Russian sources, contending the Russian
government has for years tried to co-opt and assist Trump -- and that the FBI requested more information from him."
As it turns out, Corn had detailed, first-hand knowledge of the dossier. According to testimony from Baker, Corn had been provided
with parts of the dossier by Fusion GPS head Glenn Simpson. Baker knew of this fact, because within a week of publishing his article,
Corn passed these dossier parts on to Baker personally:
Rep. Jordan: " Prior to the election Mr. Corn had a copy of the dossier and was talking to you about giving that to you so
the FBI would have it. Is that all right? I mean all accurate."
Mr. Baker: " My recollection is that he had part of the dossier, that we had other parts already, and that we got still other
parts from other people, and that -- and nevertheless some of the parts that David Corn gave us were parts that we did not have from
another source?"
Steele had written four memos after the FBI team received his information in mid-September. All of the memos were written in October
-- on the 12th, 18th, 19th, and the 20th. It is possible that these were the memos passed along to Baker by Corn.
Baker testified that he received elements of the dossier from Corn that were not in the FBI's possession at the time. He said
that he immediately turned this information over to leadership within the FBI, noting, "I think it was Bill Priestap," the head of
the FBI's Counterintelligence Division.
The use of personal relationships as a mechanism to transmit outside information to the FBI was actually noted by Baker, who said
of Corn: "Even though he was my friend, I was also an FBI official. He knew that. And so he wanted to somehow get that into the hands
of the FBI."
Bruce Ohr's FBI Handler
Christopher Steele was terminated as a source by the FBI on Nov. 1, 2016, for communicating with the media. Despite this, DOJ
official Bruce Ohr and Steele communicated regularly for another full year, until November 2017.
On Nov. 21, 2016, Ohr had a meeting with FBI agent Peter Strzok and FBI lawyer Lisa Page, and was introduced to FBI agent Joe
Pientka, who became Ohr's FBI handler. Pientka was also present with Strzok during the Jan. 24, 2017, interview of
Trump's national security adviser, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn .
The next day, Nov. 22, 2016, Ohr met alone with Pientka. Ohr would continue to relay his communications with Steele to the FBI
through Pientka, who then recorded them in FD-302 forms. What Ohr didn't know was that Pientka was transmitting all the information
directly to Strzok.
Ohr, in his testimony, detailed his interactions with Steele and Glenn Simpson, as well as his communications with officials at
the FBI and DOJ. Notably, Ohr repeatedly stated that he never vetted any of the information provided by either Steele or Simpson.
He simply turned it over or relayed it to the FBI -- usually to Pientka -- but Ohr also testified that "at least on two occasions
I was handed onto a new agent."
Sometime in late 2016, his wife, Nellie Ohr, provided him with a memory stick containing all of her research that she had compiled
while employed at Fusion GPS. Bruce Ohr testified he gave the memory stick to Pientka. Nellie Ohr had left Fusion in September 2016.
Through Pientka, Strzok now had all of Nellie Ohr's Fusion research in his possession.
On Dec. 10, 2016, Bruce Ohr met with Simpson, who gave him a memory stick that Ohr believed contained a copy of the Steele dossier.
Ohr also passed this second memory stick along to Pientka.
On Jan. 20, 2017, Ohr had one final communication with Simpson, a phone call that took place on the same day as Trump's inauguration.
Ohr testified that Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson was concerned that one of Steele's sources was about to be exposed through
the pending publication of an article:
Mr. Ohr: " He says something along the lines of, I -- there's going to be some reporting in the next few days that's going
to -- could expose the source, and the source could be in personal danger."
Rep. Meadows: " And why was he concerned about that source being exposed?"
Mr. Ohr: " I think he was aware of some kind of article that was likely to come out in the next, you know, few days or something."
Apparently, Simpson's information was at least partly accurate. On Jan. 24, 2017, The Wall Street Journal
reported that Sergei Millian, a Belarusan-American businessman and onetime Russian government translator, was both "Source D"
and "Source E" in the dossier. It remains unknown exactly how Simpson knew in advance that Millian would be outed as a source.
But there are some questions as to the accuracy of the Journal's reporting. The dossier appears to conflict with the newspaper's
article in at least one aspect. According to the dossier, Source E was used as confirmation for Source D -- meaning they can't be
the same person.
McCain, the Dossier, and a UK Connection
Simpson and Steele were carefully thorough in their dissemination efforts. The dossier was fed into U.S. channels through several
different sources.
One such source was Sir Andrew Wood, the former
British ambassador to Russia, who had been briefed about the dossier by Steele. Wood may have previously
worked on behalf of Steele's company, Orbis Business Intelligence; he was referenced in a
UK court filing as an associate of
Orbis. Wood was also referred to as an adviser to Orbis in a deposition by an associate of late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), David
Kramer.
Kramer knew Wood previously from their mutual expertise on Russia. Kramer said in his deposition, which was part of a defamation
lawsuit against BuzzFeed News, that Wood told him that "he was aware of information that he thought I should be aware of and that
Senator McCain might be interested in."
McCain, Wood, and Kramer would meet later that afternoon, on Nov. 19, 2016, in a private meeting room at the Halifax International
Security Forum in Nova Scotia, Canada.
Wood told both Kramer and McCain that "he was aware of this information that had been gathered that raised the possibility of
collusion and compromising material on the president-elect. And he explained that he knew the person who gathered the information
and felt that the person was of the utmost credibility," Kramer said.
Kramer ascribed the word "collusion" three times to Wood in his deposition. He also said that Wood mentioned the possible existence
of a video "of a sexual nature" that might have "shown the president-elect in a compromising situation." According to Kramer, Wood
said that "if it existed, that it was from a hotel in Moscow when president-elect, before he was president-elect, had been in Moscow."
No such video was ever uncovered or given to Kramer.
Kramer testified that following the description of the video, "the senator turned to me and asked if I would go to London to meet
with what turned out to be Mr. Steele."
Kramer traveled to London to meet with Steele on Nov. 28, 2016. Kramer reviewed all the memos during his meeting with Steele but
wasn't provided with a physical copy of the dossier.
When Kramer returned to Washington, he was provided with a copy of the dossier -- which, at that point, consisted of 16 memos
-- during a meeting with Simpson on Nov. 29, 2016. Kramer also testified that there was another individual, "a male," present at
the meeting.
Interestingly, Kramer testified that Simpson gave him two copies of the dossier, noting that Simpson told him that "one had more
things blacked out than the other." Kramer said, "It wasn't entirely clear to me why there were two versions of this, so but I took
both versions."
Kramer noted that Simpson, who was aware the dossier was being given to McCain, said the dossier "was a very sensitive document
and needed to be handled very carefully."
Despite that warning, Kramer showed the dossier to a number of journalists and had discussions with at least 14 members of the
media, along with some individuals in the U.S. government.
Kramer testified that he gave a physical copy of the dossier to reporters Peter Stone and Greg Gordon of McClatchy; to Fred Hiatt,
the editor of the Washington Post editorial page; Alan Cullison of The Wall Street Journal; Bob Little at NPR; Carl Bernstein at
CNN; and Ken Bensinger at BuzzFeed. It's possible that Kramer gave copies to other reporters as well.
Kramer said that Simpson and Steele were aware of most of these contacts, but that Kramer hadn't told either of them that he gave
the dossier to NPR. He also noted that Steele had been in contact with Bernstein at CNN and that the CNN and BuzzFeed meetings occurred
at Steele's request. Steele told Kramer that he and Bensinger "had been in touch during the FIFA investigation; they got to know
each other that way."
According to Kramer, he didn't believe that Fusion GPS and Simpson were aware of these two meetings with CNN and BuzzFeed.
Kramer testified that he, McCain, and McCain's chief of staff, Christopher Brose, met to review the dossier on Nov. 30, 2016.
Kramer suggested that McCain "provide a copy of [the dossier] to the director of the FBI and the director of the CIA." McCain later
passed a copy of the dossier to James Comey on Dec. 9, 2016. It isn't known whether McCain also provided a copy to then-CIA Director
John Brennan. Notably, Brennan did attach a two-page summary of the dossier to the intelligence community assessment that he delivered
to outgoing President Barack Obama on Jan. 5, 2017.
Kramer said that he wasn't aware of the content of McCain's Dec. 9 discussion with Comey, noting that he "did not get any readout
from the senator on the meeting, but just that it had happened."
Kramer did, however, provide updates to both Steele and Simpson regarding the status of McCain's meeting with Comey, in subsequent
discussions with Simpson and Steele:
"It was mostly just to inform him about whether or not the senator had transfer -- transmitted the document to the FBI. Both he
and Mr. Steele were -- I kept them apprised of whether the senator was -- where the senator was in terms of his contact with the
FBI."
The implications of this statement are significant. Kramer, a private citizen, was providing updates to a former British spy as
to what a sitting senator, and chairman of the Senate Committee on Armed Services, was saying to the director of the FBI.
Other members of the media also had advance knowledge of McCain's intention to meet with Comey. Kramer testified that both Mother
Jones reporter David Corn and Guardian reporter Julian Borger came to meet with him. According to Kramer, "They were mostly interested
in Senator McCain and his, whether he had given it to Director Comey or not."
Several days after McCain, Brose, and Kramer met to discuss the dossier, Kramer said that McCain instructed him to meet with Victoria
Nuland, the assistant secretary of state for Europe and Eurasian Affairs, and Celeste Wallander, the senior director for Russia and
Central Asia on the National Security Council.
The purpose of the meeting was to verify whether the dossier "was being taken seriously." Both Nuland and Wallander were previously
aware of the dossier's existence, and both officials previously knew Steele, whom "they believed to be credible." Kramer said he
didn't physically share the dossier with them at this point, but met again with Wallander "around New Years" and "gave her a copy
of the document"
Nuland had actually
received a copy of the earlier Steele memos back in July 2016.
Steele produced a final memo dated Dec. 13, 2016. According to
UK court documents , Kramer, on behalf
of McCain, had asked Steele to provide any further intelligence that he had gathered relating to "alleged Russian interference in
the US presidential election." Notably, it appears it was this request from McCain that led Steele to produce his Dec. 13 memo.
Although Kramer didn't provide a date, he said he received the final Steele memo sometime after "Senator McCain had provided the
copy to Director Comey." We know that Kramer received the final memo prior to Dec. 29 -- when Kramer met with BuzzFeed's Bensinger.
Kramer testified that Bensinger "said he wanted to read them, he asked me if he could take photos of them on his -- I assume it
was an iPhone. I asked him not to. He said he was a slow reader, he wanted to read it. And so I said, you know, I got a phone call
to make, and I had to go to the bathroom " Kramer said that he "left him to read it for 20, 30 minutes."
Kramer also testified that besides the reporters, he gave a final copy of the dossier to two other people in early January 2017:
Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Il.) and House Speaker Paul Ryan's chief of staff, Jonathan Burks.
James Clapper Leaks Details of Obama–Trump Briefings
The ICA on alleged Russian hacking was released
internally on Jan. 5, 2017. On this same day, outgoing president Obama held an undisclosed White House meeting to discuss the assessment
-- and the attached summation of the dossier -- with national security adviser Susan Rice, FBI Director James Comey, and Deputy Attorney
General Sally Yates. Rice would later send herself an
email documenting the meeting.
The following day, CIA Director John Brennan, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and Comey attached a written summary
of the Steele dossier to the classified briefing they gave Obama. Comey then met with President-elect Trump to inform him of the
dossier. This meeting took place just hours after Comey, Brennan, and Clapper formally briefed Obama on both the ICA and the Steele
dossier.
Comey would only inform Trump of the "salacious" details contained within the dossier. He later
explained on CNN in an April 2018 interview
that he had done so at the request of Clapper and Brennan, "because that was the part that the leaders of the intelligence community
agreed he needed to be told about."
Shortly after Comey's meeting with Trump, both the Trump–Comey meeting and the existence of the dossier were leaked to CNN. The
significance of the meeting was material, as Comey
noted in
a Jan. 7 memo :
"Media like CNN had them and were looking for a news hook. I said it was important that we not give them the excuse to write that
the FBI has the material."
The media had widely dismissed the dossier as unsubstantiated and, therefore, unreportable. It was only after learning that Comey
briefed Trump on it that
CNN reported
on the dossier. The House Intelligence Committee report on Russian election interference confirmed that Clapper personally leaked
confirmation of the dossier, along with Comey's meeting with Trump, to CNN:
"The Committee's investigation revealed that President-elect Trump was indeed briefed on the contents of the Steele dossier and
when questioned by the Committee, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper admitted that he confirmed the existence
of the dossier to the media."
Additionally, the House intelligence report shows Clapper appears to have been the direct source for CNN's Jake Tapper and his
Jan. 10 story that disclosed the existence of the dossier:
"When initially asked about leaks related to the ICA in July 2017, former DNI Clapper flatly denied 'discuss[ing] the dossier
[compiled by Steele] or any other intelligence related to Russia hacking of the 2016 election with journalists.' Clapper subsequently
acknowledged discussing the 'dossier with CNN journalist Jake Tapper,' and admitted that he might have spoken with other journalists
about the same topic.
"Clapper's discussion with Tapper took place in early January 2017, around the time IC leaders briefed President Obama and President-elect
Trump, on 'the Christopher Steele information,' a two-page summary of which was 'enclosed in' the highly-classified version of the
ICA."
The allegations within the dossier were made public, and with reporting of the briefings by intelligence community leaders, instant
credibility was given to the dossier's assertions.
Immediately following the CNN story,
BuzzFeed published the Steele dossier, and the Trump–Russia conspiracy was pushed into the mainstream.
David Kramer was asked about his reaction when CNN broke the story on the dossier. According to his deposition, Kramer stated,
"I believe my words were 'Holy [expletive].'"
Kramer, who was actually meeting with The Guardian's Julian Borger when CNN reported on the dossier, said that he quickly spoke
with Steele, who "was shocked."
On the following day, Jan. 11, 2017, Clapper issued a statement condemning the leaks -- without revealing the fact that he was
the source of the leak.
On Nov. 17, 2016, Clapper submitted his resignation as director of national intelligence; his resignation became effective on
Jan. 20, 2017. Later that year, CNN hired Clapper as its national security analyst.
The Effort to Remove General Flynn
Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, then-national security adviser to President Donald Trump, was
interviewed on Jan. 24, 2017, by FBI agents Peter Strzok and Joe Pientka about two December 2016 conversations that Flynn had
had with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak.
Details of the phone conversation had leaked to the media. Flynn ultimately pleaded guilty to one count of lying to the FBI regarding
his conversations with Kislyak. It remains unknown to this day who leaked Flynn's classified call -- a far more serious felony violation.
The Washington Post reported in January 2017 that the FBI had found
no evidence of wrongdoing in Flynn's actual call with the Russian ambassador. The call, and the matters discussed in it, broke
no laws.
Flynn has been portrayed in the media as being suspiciously close to Russia; a dinner in Moscow that occurred in late 2015 is
frequently cited as evidence of this.
On Dec. 10, 2015, Flynn attended an event in Moscow to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Russian television network RT. Flynn,
who was seated next to Russian President Vladimir Putin for the culminating dinner, was also interviewed on national security matters
by an RT correspondent. Flynn's speaker's bureau, Leading Authorities Inc., was paid $45,000 for the event and Flynn received $33,000
of the total amount.
Seated at the same table with Flynn was Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate in the 2016 election. By all accounts, including
Stein's , Flynn and Putin didn't engage in any real conversation. At the time, Flynn's trip didn't garner significant attention.
But it would later be used by the media and the Clinton campaign to push the Russia-collusion narrative.
Notably, as stated
by lawyer Robert Kelner, Flynn disclosed his Moscow trip to the Defense Intelligence Agency before he traveled there and provided
a full briefing upon his return:
"As has previously been reported, General Flynn briefed the Defense Intelligence Agency, a component agency of the DoD, extensively
regarding the RT speaking event trip both before and after the trip, and he answered any questions that were posed by the DIA concerning
the trip during those briefings."
Flynn's trip to Russia was first brought to broader attention on July 18, 2016, during a
live interview at
the Republican National Convention with Yahoo News reporter Michael Isikoff.
The Isikoff interview took place on July 18, 2016. Unknown at the time, the matter had also captured the attention of Christopher
Steele, who had begun publishing his dossier memos on June 20, 2016.
Contained within an Aug. 10, 2016,
memo was this initial
reference to Flynn:
"Kremlin engaging with several high profile US players, including STEIN, PAGE and (former DIA Director Michael Flynn) and funding
their recent visits to Moscow."
In addition to the obvious questions raised by the timing of Flynn's name appearing in Steele's Aug. 10 memo, is the manner in
which Flynn is denoted. All other names are capitalized, in the manner of intelligence briefings. Flynn's name isn't capitalized
and, in one case, appears within parentheses.
Steele met with Yahoo News' Isikoff in September 2016 and gave him information from the dossier. The resulting Sept. 23, 2016,
article from Isikoff was then cited by the FBI as validating Steele's claims and was featured in the original
FISA application , and its three subsequent
renewals , for a warrant to spy on Trump campaign
foreign policy adviser Carter Page.
Steele wasn't the only person Isikoff was working with. On April 26, 2016, Isikoff
published a story
on Yahoo News about Paul Manafort's business dealings with Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. It was later learned from a Democratic
National Committee (DNC) email leaked by Wikileaks that
Isikoff had been working with Alexandra Chalupa, a Ukrainian-American operative who was doing consulting work for the DNC. Chalupa
met with top officials in the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington in an effort to expose alleged ties between Trump, Manafort, and
Russia.
The obvious question remains: How did the information on Flynn make its way into the dossier at the time it did, and who provided
the information to Steele?
Flynn's 2015 dinner in Moscow was initially used to implicate the Trump campaign's ties to Russia. It was then
used as a means to cast doubts on Flynn's ability as Trump's national security adviser. Following Flynn's resignation, it was
then used as a means to pursue the ongoing collusion narrative that gained full strength in the early days of the Trump administration.
"In an extraordinary report released last week, the agencies
bluntly accused
the Russian government of having worked to undermine American democracy and promote the candidacy of Mr. Trump.
The report is likely to renew questions about Mr. Flynn's avowed eagerness to work with Russia, and his dismissal of concerns about
President Vladimir V. Putin."
Flynn would resign from his position as national security adviser in February 2017. The sequence of events leading to his resignation
were both coordinated and orchestrated, with acting Attorney General Sally Yates playing a leading role.
On Jan. 12, 2017, Flynn's Dec. 29, 2016, call with Kislyak was
leaked to The Washington Post. The article portrayed Flynn as undermining Obama's Russia sanctions that had been imposed on the
same day as Flynn's call with the Russian ambassador.
On Jan. 15, five days before Trump's inauguration, Vice President Mike Pence
appeared
on "Face the Nation" to defend Flynn's calls.
A few days later, on Jan. 19, Obama officials -- Yates, Clapper, Brennan and Comey -- met to discuss Flynn's situation. The concern
they
reportedly discussed was that Flynn might have misled Trump administration officials regarding the nature of his call with Kislyak.
Yates, Clapper, and Brennan supported informing the Trump administration of their concerns. Comey took a dissenting view. On Jan
23, Yates again pressured Comey, telling the FBI director that she believed Flynn could be vulnerable to blackmail. At this point,
according to media reports, Comey relented, despite the FBI finding nothing unlawful in the content of Flynn's calls.
Strzok and Pientka, at the instruction of McCabe, interviewed Flynn the following day. According to court documents, McCabe and
other FBI officials "decided the agents would not warn Flynn that it was a crime to lie during an FBI interview because they wanted
Flynn to be relaxed." It was during this interview that Flynn reportedly lied to the FBI.
The DOJ was provided with a detailed briefing of the Flynn interview on the following day. On Jan. 26, Yates contacted White House
counsel Don McGahn, who agreed to meet to discuss the matter. Yates arrived at McGahn's office, bringing Mary McCord, John Carlin's
acting replacement as head of the DOJ's National Security Division.
Yates later testified before Congress that the meeting
surrounded Flynn's phone calls and his FBI interview. She also testified that Flynn's call and subsequent interview "was a topic
of a whole lot of discussion in DOJ and with other members of the intel community." McGahn reportedly asked Yates, "Why does it matter
to the DOJ if one White House official lies to another official?"
McGahn called Yates the following day and asked her to return for a second meeting. Yates returned to the White House without
McCord. McGahn asked to examine the FBI's evidence on Flynn. Yates said she would respond by the following Monday.
Yates failed to provide McGahn with the FBI's evidence on Flynn. From that point, the pressure on Flynn and the Trump administration
escalated -- with help from media reporting.
Flynn resigned on Feb. 13, after it was reported that he had misled Pence about phone conversations he'd had with Kislyak.
The following day, The
New York
Times reported that "phone records and intercepted calls show that members of Donald J. Trump's 2016 presidential campaign and
other Trump associates had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election, according
to four current and former American officials."
With Flynn gone and the Russian narrative firmly established, the conspirators then turned their attention to Trump's newly confirmed
attorney general, Jeff Sessions . On March 1, 2017, The
Washington Post
reported that Sessions had twice had contact with the Russian ambassador, Kislyak. The following day, March 2, Sessions recused
himself from the Russia investigation.
On the same day that Sessions recused himself, Evelyn Farkas, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense, detailed efforts
at hampering the newly installed Trump administration, during a March 2, 2017,
interview with MSNBC , in which she described how the Obama
administration gathered and disseminated intelligence on the Trump team:
"I was urging my former colleagues and, frankly speaking, the people on the Hill 'Get as much information as you can. Get as much
intelligence as you can before President Obama leaves the administration.'
"The Trump folks, if they found out how we knew what we knew about the Trump staff's dealing with Russians, [they] would try to
compromise those sources and methods, meaning we would no longer have access to that intelligence. That's why you have the leaking."
Note that Farkas said "how we knew," not just "what we knew."
Obama Officials Used Unmasking to Target the Trump Campaign
On Tuesday, March 21, 2017, the chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), met
a classified source who showed him "dozens" of intelligence reports. Contained within these reports was evidence of surveillance
on the Trump campaign. Nunes held a
press conference on March 22 highlighting what he had found:
"I recently confirmed that on numerous occasions, the intelligence community incidentally collected information about U.S. citizens
involved in the Trump transition. Details about persons associated with the incoming administration, details with little apparent
foreign intelligence value were widely disseminated in intelligence community reporting."
In a series of rapid-fire questions and answers, Nunes attempted to elaborate on what he had been shown:
"From what I know right now, it looks like incidental collection. We don't know exactly how that was picked up but we're trying
to get to the bottom of it I think the NSA's going to comply. I am concerned – we don't know whether or not the FBI is going to comply.
I have placed a call, I'm waiting to talk to Director Comey, hopefully later today.
"I have seen intelligence reports that clearly show the President-elect and his team were at least monitored and disseminated
out in intelligence, in what appears to be raw -- well I shouldn't say raw -- but intelligence reporting channels.
"It looks to me like it was all legally collected, but it was essentially a lot of information on the President-elect and his
transition team and what they were doing."
The documents Nunes had been shown highlighted the unmasking activities of the FBI, the Obama administration, and CIA Director
Brennan in relation to the Trump campaign. Although March 2017 would prove chaotic, the Trump administration had survived the first
crucial months, and would now begin to slowly assert its administrative authority.
Comey Testifies No Obstruction by Trump Administration
On May 3, 2017, James Comey
testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Under oath, Comey stated that his agency -- and the FBI's investigation -- had
not been pressured by the Trump administration:
Sen. Hirono: " So if the attorney general or senior officials at the Department of Justice opposes a specific investigation,
can they halt that FBI investigation?"
Mr. Comey: " In theory, yes."
Sen. Hirono: " Has it happened?"
Mr. Comey: " Not in my experience. Because it would be a big deal to tell the FBI to stop doing something that – without an
appropriate purpose. I mean where oftentimes they give us opinions that we don't see a case there and so you ought to stop investing
resources in it. But I'm talking about a situation where we were told to stop something for a political reason. That would be a very
big deal. It's not happened in my experience."
Less than a week later, on May 9, Trump fired Comey based on a May 8 recommendation by Deputy Attorney General
Rod Rosenstein .
Rosenstein would later
tell members of Congress: "In one of my first meetings with then-Sen. Jeff Sessions last winter, we discussed the need for new
leadership at the FBI. Among the concerns that I recall were to restore the credibility of the FBI, respect the established authority
of the Department of Justice, limit public statements and eliminate leaks."
Regarding the recommendation, Rosenstein said: "I wrote it. I believe it. I stand by it."
McCabe's FBI Reaches Out Again to Steele
Within days of Trump's firing of Comey, the FBI, now under the leadership of acting-FBI Director Andrew McCabe, suddenly decided
to reestablish direct contact with Christopher Steele through DOJ official Bruce Ohr.
The re-engagement attempt came six months after Steele had been formally terminated by the FBI on Nov. 1, 2016.
The FBI's re-engagement of Ohr was highlighted during a congressional review of some text messages between Ohr and Steele:
Mr. Ohr: " The FBI had asked me a few days before, when I reported to them my latest conversation with Chris Steele,
they had had would he -- next time you talk with him, could you ask him if he would be willing to meet again."
Rep. Jordan: " So this is the re-engagement?"
Mr. Ohr: " Yes."
The texts being referenced were sent on May 15, 2017, and refer to a request that Ohr received from the FBI to ask Steele to re-engage
with the FBI in the days after Comey had been fired on May 9.
This was the only time the FBI used Ohr to reach out to Steele.
The Battle Between McCabe and Rosenstein
Two days after Comey was fired, on May 11, 2017, McCabe
testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee. While the hearing's original intent had been to focus on national security
threats, Trump's firing of Comey completely altered the topic of the hearing.
McCabe, who
agreed that he would notify the committee "of any effort to interfere with the FBI's ongoing investigation into links between
Russia and the Trump campaign," told members of Congress that there had been "no effort to impede our investigation to date." In
other words, McCabe testified that he was unaware of any evidence of obstruction from Trump or his administration. Notably, Comey's
May 3 testimony may have left McCabe with little choice other than to confirm there had been no obstruction.
McCabe, however, failed to inform the committee that he was actively considering opening an obstruction-of-justice probe of Trump
-- a path he would initiate in a meeting with Rosenstein just five days later.
On the morning of May 16, 2017, Rosenstein allegedly
suggested
to McCabe that he could secretly record Trump. It was at this
meeting that McCabe was "pushing for the Justice Department to open an investigation into the president," according to witness
accounts reported by The Washington Post.
In addition to McCabe, Rosenstein, and McCabe's special counsel, Lisa Page, there were one or two others present, including Rosenstein's
chief of staff , James Crowley, and possibly Scott Schools, the senior-most career attorney at the DOJ and a top aide to Rosenstein.
An unnamed participant at the meeting, in comments to The Washington Post,
framed the conversation between McCabe and Rosenstein in an entirely different light, noting that Rosenstein had responded with
angry sarcasm to McCabe, saying, "What do you want to do, Andy, wire the president?"
This was just five days after McCabe had publicly testified that there was no obstruction on the part of the Trump administration.
Sometime later that same day, both Rosenstein and Trump met with former FBI Director Robert Mueller in the Oval Office. The meeting
was reported as being for the FBI director position, but the idea that Mueller would be considered for the FBI director role seems
highly unlikely.
Mueller had previously served as the FBI director from 2001 to 2013 -- two years beyond the normal 10-year tenure for an FBI director.
In 2011, Obama requested that Mueller stay on as FBI director for an additional two years, which required
special congressional approval .
Rosenstein appointed Mueller as special counsel the following day, on May 17, 2017, and in doing so, Rosenstein removed control
of the Trump–Russia investigation from McCabe and put it in the hands of Mueller.
This was confirmed in a recent statement by a DOJ spokesperson, who said, "The deputy attorney general in fact appointed special
counsel Robert Mueller, and directed that Mr. McCabe be removed from any participation in that investigation."
Following the appointment of Mueller as special counsel, it also appears the FBI's efforts to re-engage with Steele abruptly ended.
'There's No Big There There'
We know the FBI hadn't found any evidence of collusion in the May 2017 timeframe. While McCabe was attempting to open an obstruction
investigation, Peter Strzok -- who played a key role in the counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign -- texted Lisa
Page about lacking evidence of collusion:
"You and I both know the odds are nothing. If I thought it was likely, I'd be there, no question. I hesitate, in part, because
of my gut sense and concern there's no big there there."
Page, who was asked about this text during her July 2018 testimony, said, "So I think this represents that even as far as May
of 2017, we still couldn't answer the question."
James Baker, who was questioned about the Strzok text, was then asked if he'd seen any evidence to the contrary. He stumbled a
bit in his reply:
Rep. Meadows: " Do you have any evidence to the contrary that you observed personally in your official capacity?"
Mr. Baker: " So the difficulty I'm having with your question is, what does 'collusion' mean, and what does 'prove' mean? And
so I don't know how to respond to that."
FBI Leadership Speculates on New Trump–Russia Collusion Narrative
In his testimony, Baker disclosed the actual substance of discussions taking place at the upper echelons of the FBI immediately
following Comey's firing -- that Vladimir Putin had ordered Trump to fire Comey:
Mr. Baker: " We discussed, so to the best of my recollection, with the same people I described earlier: Mr. McCabe, possibly
Mr. Gattis [Carl Ghattas, executive assistant director of the National Security Branch], Mr. Priestap, possibly Lisa Page, possibly
Pete Strzok. I don't remember that specifically."
Rep. Ratcliffe: " So there was -- there was a discussion between those folks, possibly all of the folks that you've identified,
about whether or not President Trump had been ordered to fire Jim Comey by the Russian Government?"
Mr. Baker: " I wouldn't say ordered. I guess I would say the words I sort of used earlier, acting at the behest of and somehow
following directions, somehow executing their will, whether -- and so literally an order or not, I don't know. But -- "
Rep. Ratcliffe: " And so -- "
Mr. Baker: " As a -- it was discussed as a theoretical possibility."
Rep. Ratcliffe: " When was it discussed?"
Mr. Baker: "After the firing, like in the aftermath of the firing."
The FBI, with no actual evidence of collusion after 10 months of investigating, began discussing a complete hypothetical at the
highest levels of leadership as a means to possibly open an obstruction-of-justice investigation of the president of the United States.
During his testimony, Baker told lawmakers: "I had a jaundiced eye about everything, yes. I had skepticism about all this stuff.
I was concerned about all of this. This whole situation was horrible, and it was novel and we were trying to figure out what to do,
and it was highly unusual."
McCabe was later fired for lying to the DOJ inspector general and is currently the subject of a criminal grand jury investigation.
The Fixer
Despite the ongoing assault from the intelligence community and holdovers from the Obama administration, Trump was not entirely
without allies.
Dana Boente, one of the nation's highest-profile federal prosecutors, served in a series of critical shifting roles within the
Trump administration. Boente, who remained the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia until early 2018, concurrently
became the acting attorney general following the firing of Sally Yates. Boente, who was specifically appointed by Trump, was not
directly in the line of succession that had been previously laid out under an unusual executive order from the Obama administration.
Upon the confirmation of Sessions as attorney general, Boente next served as acting deputy attorney general until the confirmation
of Rod Rosenstein as deputy attorney general on April 25, 2017. Boente then
became the acting head of the DOJ's National Security Division on April 28, 2017, following the sudden resignation of Mary McCord.
Boente was appointed as FBI general counsel on Jan. 23, 2018, replacing Baker, who was demoted and reassigned. Baker is currently
the subject of a criminal leak investigation. Boente remains in his position as FBI general counsel.
On March 31, 2017, the Trump administration asked for the resignations all 46 holdover U.S. attorneys from the Obama administration.
Trump refused to accept the resignations of just three of them -- Boente, Rosenstein, and John Huber.
As Sessions noted in a
March 29, 2018, letter
to congressional chairmen Chuck Grassley, Bob Goodlatte, and Trey Gowdy, Huber was assigned by Sessions to lead a prosecution
team and is currently working with DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz:
"I already have directed senior federal prosecutors to evaluate certain issues previously raised by the Committee. Specifically,
I asked United States Attorney John W. Huber to lead this effort."
The Carter Page FISA application has been the subject of significant media attention, but there's another element to the story
that, although largely ignored, is equally important. It involved what amounted to a surreptitious race between then-NSA Director
Adm. Mike Rogers and DOJ National Security Division (NSD) head John Carlin.
Following a March 9, 2016, discovery that outside contractors for the FBI had been accessing raw FISA data since at least 2015,
Rogers directed the NSA's Office of Compliance to conduct a "fundamental baseline review of compliance associated with 702" at some
point in early April 2016 (
Senate testimony &
pages
83–84 of court ruling).
On April 18, 2016, Rogers moved aggressively in response to the disclosures. He abruptly shut down all FBI outside-contractor
access. At this point, both the FBI and the DOJ's NSD became aware of Rogers's compliance review. They may have known earlier, but
they were certainly aware after outside-contractor access was halted.
The DOJ's NSD maintains oversight of the intelligence agencies' use of Section 702 authority. The NSD and the Office of the Director
of National Intelligence (ODNI) jointly conduct reviews of the intelligence agencies' Section 702 activities every 60 days. The NSD
-- with notice to the ODNI -- is required to report any incidents of agency noncompliance or misconduct to the FISA court.
Instead of issuing individual court orders, the attorney general and the director of national intelligence (DNI) are required
by Section
702 to provide the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) with annual certifications that specify categories of foreign
intelligence information the government is authorized to acquire, pursuant to Section 702.
The attorney general and the DNI also must certify that Intelligence Community agencies will follow targeting procedures and
minimization
procedures that are approved by the FISC as part of the certification.
Carlin filed the government's proposed
2016 Section 702 certifications on Sept. 26, 2016. Carlin knew the general status of the compliance review by Rogers. The NSD
was part of the review. Carlin failed to disclose a critical Jan. 7, 2016,
report by the NSA inspector
general and associated FISA abuse to the FISA court in his 2016 certification. Carlin also failed to disclose Rogers's ongoing
Section 702-compliance review.
On Sept. 27, 2016, the day after he filed the annual certifications, Carlin announced his
resignation , which would become effective on Oct. 15, 2016.
On Oct. 4, 2016, a standard follow-up court hearing was held (
Page 19
), with Carlin present. Again, he made no disclosure of FISA abuse or other related issues. This lack of disclosure would be
noted by the court later in the April 2017 ruling:
"The government's failure to disclose those IG and OCO reviews at the October 4, 2016 hearing [was ascribed] to an institutional
'lack of candor.'"
On Oct. 15, 2016, Carlin formally left the NSD.
On Oct. 20, 2016, Rogers was briefed by the NSA compliance officer on findings from the 702 NSA compliance audit. The audit had
uncovered a large number of issues, including numerous "about query" violations (
Senate testimony ).
Rogers shut down all "about query" activity on Oct. 21, 2016. "About queries" are particularly worrisome, since they occur when
the target is neither the sender nor the recipient of the collected communication; rather, the target's "query," such as an email
address, is being passed between two other communicants.
On the same day, the DOJ and FBI sought and received a Title I FISA warrant on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. At this point,
the FISA court still was unaware of the Section 702 violations.
On Oct. 24, 2016, Rogers verbally informed the FISA court of his findings:
"On October 24, 2016, the government orally apprised the Court of significant non-compliance with the NSA's minimization procedures
involving queries of data acquired under Section 702 using U.S. person identifiers. The full scope of non-compliant querying practices
had not been previously disclosed to the Court."
Rogers appeared formally before the FISA court on Oct. 26, 2016, and presented the written findings of his audit:
"Two days later, on the day the Court otherwise would have had to complete its review of the certifications and procedures, the government
made a written submission regarding those compliance problems and the Court held a hearing to address them.
"The government reported that the NSA IG and OCO were conducting other reviews covering different time periods, with preliminary
results suggesting that the problem was widespread during all periods under review."
The FISA court was unaware of the FISA "query" violations until they were presented to the court by then-NSA Director Rogers.
Carlin didn't disclose his knowledge of FISA abuse in the annual Section 702 certifications, apparently in order to avoid raising
suspicions at the FISA court ahead of receiving the Carter Page FISA warrant.
The FBI and the NSD were literally racing against Rogers's investigation in order to obtain a FISA warrant on Carter Page. FISA
Abuse & the FISC
Rogers presented his findings directly to the FISA court's presiding judge, Rosemary Collyer. Collyer and Rogers would work together
for the next six months, addressing the issues that Rogers had uncovered.
It was Collyer who wrote the
April 26, 2017,
FISA court ruling on the entire episode. It also was Collyer who signed the original FISA warrant on Carter Page on Oct. 21,
2016, before being apprised of the many issues by Rogers.
The litany of abuses described in the April 26, 2017, ruling was shocking and detailed the use of private contractors by the FBI
in relation to Section 702 data. Collyer referred to it as "a very serious Fourth Amendment issue." The FBI was specifically singled
out by the court numerous times in the ruling:
"The improper access previously afforded the contractors has been discontinued. The Court is nonetheless concerned about the FBI's
apparent disregard of minimization rules and whether the FBI may be engaging in similar disclosures of raw Section 702 information
that have not been reported."
Rogers informed Collyer of the ongoing FISA abuses by the FBI and NSD just three days after she personally signed the Carter Page
FISA warrant.
Virtually every FBI and NSD official with material involvement in the original Carter Page FISA application would later be removed
-- either through firing or resignation.
Correction: A previous version of this article stated the wrong month for Christopher Steele's 2016 meeting with the FBI in
Rome. The meeting took place in September 2016.
They are afraid to admin that a color revolution was launched to depose Trump after the
elections of 2016. Essentially a coup d'état by intelligence agencies and Clinton wing of
Democratic Party.
Notable quotes:
"... The 53 House Intel interviews. House Intelligence interviewed many key players in the Russia probe and asked the DNI to declassify those interviews nearly a year ago, after sending the transcripts for review last November. There are several big reveals, I'm told, including the first evidence that a lawyer tied to the Democratic National Committee had Russia-related contacts at the CIA. ..."
"... The Stefan Halper documents. It has been widely reported that European-based American academic Stefan Halper and a young assistant, Azra Turk, worked as FBI sources . ..."
"... Page/Papadopoulos exculpatory statements. Another of Nunes' five buckets, these documents purport to show what the two Trump aides were recorded telling undercover assets or captured in intercepts insisting on their innocence. Papadopoulos told me he told an FBI undercover source in September 2016 that the Trump campaign was not trying to obtain hacked Clinton documents from Russia and considered doing so to be treason. ..."
"... The 'Gang of Eight' briefing materials. These were a series of classified briefings and briefing books the FBI and DOJ provided key leaders in Congress in the summer of 2018 that identify shortcomings in the Russia collusion narrative. ..."
"... The Steele spreadsheet. I wrote recently that the FBI kept a spreadsheet on the accuracy and reliability of every claim in the Steele dossier. According to my sources, it showed as much as 90 percent of the claims could not be corroborated, were debunked or turned out to be open-source internet rumors. ..."
"... The Steele interview. It has been reported, and confirmed, that the DOJ's inspector general (IG) interviewed the former British intelligence operative for as long as 16 hours about his contacts with the FBI while working with Clinton's opposition research firm, Fusion GPS. It is clear from documents already forced into the public view by lawsuits that Steele admitted in the fall of 2016 that he was desperate to defeat Trump ..."
"... The redacted sections of the third FISA renewal application. This was the last of four FISA warrants targeting the Trump campaign; it was renewed in June 2017 after special counsel Robert Mueller 's probe had started, and signed by then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein . It is the one FISA application that House Republicans have repeatedly asked to be released, and I'm told the big reveal in the currently redacted sections of the application is that it contained both misleading information and evidence of intrusive tactics used by the U.S. government to infiltrate Trump's orbit. ..."
"... Records of allies' assistance. Multiple sources have said a handful of U.S. allies overseas – possibly Great Britain, Australia and Italy – were asked to assist FBI efforts to check on Trump connections to Russia. ..."
"... Attorney General Bill Barr's recent comments that "the use of foreign intelligence capabilities and counterintelligence capabilities against an American political campaign, to me, is unprecedented and it's a serious red line that's been crossed." ..."
As the Russiagate circus attempts to quietly disappear over the horizon, with Democrats
preferring to shift the anti-Trump narrative back to "racist", "white supremacist",
"xenophobe", and the mainstream media ready to squawk "recession"; the Trump administration may
have a few more cards up its sleeve before anyone claims the higher ground in this farce we
call an election campaign.
As
The Hill's John Solomon details, in September 2018 that President Trump told my Hill.TV
colleague Buck Sexton and me that he would order the release of all classified documents
showing what the FBI, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and other U.S. intelligence agencies may
have done wrong in the Russia probe.
And while it's been almost a year since then, of feet-dragging and cajoling and
deep-state-fighting, we wonder, given Solomon's revelations below, if the president is getting
ready to play his 'Trump' card.
Here are the documents that
Solomon believes have the greatest chance of rocking Washington, if declassified:
1.) Christopher
Steele 's confidential human source reports at the FBI. These documents, known in bureau
parlance as 1023 reports, show exactly what transpired each time Steele and his FBI handlers
met in the summer and fall of 2016 to discuss his anti-Trump dossier. The big reveal, my
sources say, could be the first evidence that the FBI shared sensitive information with
Steele, such as the existence of the classified
Crossfire Hurricane operation targeting the Trump campaign. It would be a huge discovery
if the FBI fed Trump-Russia intel to Steele in the midst of an election, especially when his
ultimate opposition-research client was Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National
Committee (DNC). The FBI has released only one or two of these reports under FOIA lawsuits
and they were 100 percent redacted. The American public deserves better.
2.) The 53 House Intel interviews. House Intelligence interviewed many key players in
the Russia probe and asked the DNI to declassify those interviews nearly a year ago, after
sending the transcripts for review last November. There are several big reveals, I'm told,
including the first evidence that a lawyer tied to the Democratic National Committee had
Russia-related contacts at the CIA.
3.) The Stefan Halper documents. It has been widely reported that European-based
American academic Stefan Halper and a young assistant, Azra Turk,
worked as FBI sources . We know for sure that one or both had contact with targeted
Trump aides like Carter Page and George Papadopoulos at the end of the
election. My sources tell me there may be other documents showing Halper continued working
his way to the top of Trump's transition and administration, eventually reaching senior
advisers like Peter Navarro inside the White House in summer 2017. These documents would show
what intelligence agencies worked with Halper, who directed his activity, how much he was
paid and how long his contacts with Trump officials were directed by the U.S. government's
Russia probe.
4.) The October 2016 FBI email chain. This is a key document identified by Rep. Nunes and
his investigators. My sources say it will show exactly what concerns the FBI knew about and
discussed with DOJ about using Steele's dossier and other evidence to support a Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant targeting the Trump campaign in October 2016. If
those concerns weren't shared with FISA judges who approved the warrant, there could be major
repercussions.
5.) Page/Papadopoulos exculpatory statements. Another of Nunes' five buckets, these
documents purport to show what the two Trump aides were recorded telling undercover assets or
captured in intercepts insisting on their innocence. Papadopoulos told me he told an FBI
undercover source in September 2016 that the Trump campaign was not trying to obtain hacked
Clinton documents from Russia and considered doing so to be treason. If he made that
statement with the FBI monitoring, and it was not disclosed to the FISA court, it could be
another case of FBI or DOJ misconduct.
6.) The 'Gang of Eight' briefing materials. These were a series of classified
briefings and briefing books the FBI and DOJ provided key leaders in Congress in the summer
of 2018 that identify shortcomings in the Russia collusion narrative. Of all the
documents congressional leaders were shown, this is most frequently cited to me in private as
having changed the minds of lawmakers who weren't initially convinced of FISA abuses or FBI
irregularities.
7.) The Steele spreadsheet. I
wrote recently that the FBI kept a spreadsheet on the accuracy and reliability of every
claim in the Steele dossier. According to my sources, it showed as much as 90 percent of the
claims could not be corroborated, were debunked or turned out to be open-source internet
rumors. Given Steele's own effort to leak intel in his dossier to the media before
Election Day, the public deserves to see the FBI's final analysis of his credibility. A
document
I reviewed recently showed the FBI described Steele's information as only "minimally
corroborated" and the bureau's confidence in him as "medium."
9.) The redacted sections of the third FISA renewal application. This was the last of
four FISA warrants targeting the Trump campaign; it was renewed in June 2017 after special
counsel Robert
Mueller 's probe had started, and signed by then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein . It is the one
FISA application that House Republicans have repeatedly asked to be released, and I'm told
the big reveal in the currently redacted sections of the application is that it contained
both misleading information and evidence of intrusive tactics used by the U.S. government to
infiltrate Trump's orbit.
10.) Records of allies' assistance. Multiple sources have said a handful of U.S.
allies overseas – possibly Great Britain, Australia and Italy – were asked to
assist FBI efforts to check on Trump connections to Russia. Members of Congress have
searched recently for some key contact documents with British intelligence . My sources
say these documents might help explain Attorney General Bill Barr's
recent comments that "the use of foreign intelligence capabilities and
counterintelligence capabilities against an American political campaign, to me, is
unprecedented and it's a serious red line that's been crossed."
These documents, when declassified, would show more completely how a routine
counterintelligence probe was hijacked to turn the most awesome spy powers in America against a
presidential nominee in what was essentially a political dirty trick orchestrated by
Democrats.
I disagree with Solomon. Nothing will "doom" the swamp unless the righteous few are
willing to indict, prosecute and carry out sentencing for the guilty. Exposing the guilty
accomplishes nothing, because anyone paying attention already knows of their crimes. Those
who want to believe lies will still believe them after the truth comes out.
It's ALL A WASTE OF TIME unless we follow through.
Does anyone see a pattern here after the 2009 Tea Party movement began?
2009 - Republicans: "If we win back the House, we can accomplish our agenda."
2011 - Republicans: "If we win back the Senate, we can accomplish our agenda." (NOTE:
After winning back the House)
2012 - Republicans: "If we win back the Senate, we can accomplish our agenda." (NOTE: 2
YEARS After winning back the House)
2013 - Republicans: "If we win back the Presidency, we can accomplish our agenda." (NOTE:
1 YEAR after winning back the House and the Senate)
2014 - Republicans: "If we win back the Presidency, we can accomplish our agenda." (NOTE:
2 YEARS after winning back the House and the Senate)
2015 - Republicans: "If we win back the Presidency, we can accomplish our agenda." (NOTE:
3 YEARS after winning back the House and the Senate)
2016 - Republicans: "If we win back the Presidency, we can accomplish our agenda." (NOTE:
4 YEARS after winning back the House and the Senate)
2017 - Republicans: "Now that we've won back the Presidency, we can accomplish our
agenda." (NOTE: After winning back the House 6 YEARS AGO and the Senate 4 YEARS AGO)
2018 - Republicans: "Now that we've won back the Presidency, we can accomplish our
agenda." (NOTE: After winning back the House 7 YEARS AGO and the Senate 5 YEARS AGO)
2019 - John Solomon - "If Trump Declassifies These 10 Documents, Democrats Are Doomed"
I hate to say it, but I DON'T BELIEVE YOU, JOHN.
ALL WE HAVE HEARD OVER THE COURSE OF THIS DECADE IS "IF THIS HAPPENS...THEN THEY ARE
DOOMED / WE CAN ACCOMPLISH OUR AGENDA / YADDA YADDA YADDA.
WHEN THE FOLLOWING ARE FOUND GUILTY OF TREASON, THEN AND ONLY THEN WILL I BELIEVE YOU:
CLINTONS
OBAMA
BIDEN
KERRY
BRENNAN
CLAPPER
COMEY
MCCABE
MUELLER
WEISSMAN
STRZOK
RICE
POWERS
LYNCH
YATES
ET AL
WHY ARE THESE TREASONOUS, VILE, CORRUPT CRIMINALS NOT INDICTED FOR TREASON?
As if there's any major philosophical difference between the Librtads and Zionist
Cocksuckvatives.
Both sides use the .gov agencies to subvert and ignore the Constitution whenever possible.
Best example is WikiLeaks and how each party wished Assange would just go away when he
revealed damaging information about both sides on multiple occasions.
I believe that the full and proper name of the psychiatric disorder in question is
Putin-Trump Derangement Syndrome [PTDS].
Symptoms include:
Eager and uncritical ingestion and social-media regurgitation of even the most patently
absurd MSM propaganda. For example, the meme that releasing factual information about actual
election-meddling (as Wikileaks did about the Dem-establishment's rigging of its own
nomination process in 2016) is a grave threat to American Democracy™;
Recent-onset veneration of the intelligence agencies, whose stock in trade is spying on
and lying to the American people, spreading disinformation, election rigging, torture and
assassination and its agents, such as liar and perjurer Clapper and torturer Brennan;
Rehabilitation of horrid unindicted GOP war criminals like G.W. Bush as alleged examples
of "norms-respecting Republican patriots";
Smearing of anyone who dares question the MSM-stoked hysteria as an America-hating
Russian stooge.
Former Ukrainian presidential candidate Yulia Tymoshenko trace to Steele dossier is a real shocker.
Notable quotes:
"... On December 5, 2016, Bruce Ohr emailed himself an Excel spreadsheet, seemingly from his wife Nellie Ohr, titled " WhosWho19Sept2016 ." The spreadsheet purports to show relationship descriptions and "linkages" between Donald Trump, his family and criminal figures, many of whom were Russians. ..."
"... If you want to have more fun, search the pdf using the term "BAYROCK." You will discover that Nellie Ohr, like a female Don Quixote, is searching desperately to link Trump and Sater to dirty Russian money. What she does not suspect is that Sater was being used, via his company Bayrock, to try to gain access to Russians who were potential targets of the FBI. ..."
"... What is not emphasized in the piece, and it is something I want to direct you to, is that the idea or impetus to launch the investigation of Butina came courtesy of Christopher Steele, who was relaying rumor and conjecture to Bruce Ohr. ..."
"... FBI Director Christopher Wray reminds me of one of the workers in the bowels of the Titanic who was furiously shoveling coal into the doomed boilers of the sinking ship. The FBI, like the Titanic, is in trouble. ..."
"... It also gave immunity to all of the people on Hillary's team that participated in obstruction of justice. On that same day, Jim Comey signed off on a separate memo that decided not to prosecute Hillary Clinton. ..."
"... Larry..Fusion GPS has always refused to Reveal who where its Financial support came from... ..."
"... So..the Timeline Indicates Fusion GPS was hired by The "Washington Free Beacon" around October 2015 to background checks and Profiles of The Republican Candidates for President.and that Fusion GPS continued to do so until May 2016..when it became clear that Donald Trump clinched the Nomination.. ..."
"... I wonder why AG Barr isn't forcing the FBI to comply sooner with Judge Boasberg's ruling to hand over unredacted Comey Memos and Archey Declarations? ..."
"... So what did Barack Obama know, and when did he know it? ..."
"... Nellie Ohr was working for a privately-owned firm that had employed her to make false accusations about Trump's alleged connections to Russians in order to sabotage his presidency and lay the groundwork for his impeachment. ..."
"... They also hired foreign agent, Chris Steele to concoct a thoroughly-debunked dossier for the same purpose. ..."
"... Can these people be charged with a crime or have we entered a new world of 'dirty tricks'??? ..."
"... Examination of the Nellie Ohr documents given to the FBI shows some of her source material also came from former Ukrainian presidential candidate Yulia Tymoshenko and a lawsuit she filed against Manafort. ..."
"... So, Bruce Ohr became a conduit of information not only for intelligence from Clinton's British opposition-researcher but also from his wife's curation of evidence from a Clinton foreign ally and Manafort enemy inside Ukraine. Talk about foreign influence in a U.S. election! ..."
"... The lines between government officials and informants, unverified political dirt and real intelligence, personal interest and law enforcement, became too blurred for the Justice Department's own good. ..."
There are many moving pieces in the drama surrounding the Deep State attempt to kill the Trump Presidency. God Bless Judicial
Watch. I think most of the key evidence that has surfaced came courtesy of Tom Fitton, Chris Farrell and their team of tireless workers.
I want to bring you back to
Mr. Felix Sater . He was part of Bayrock, which worked closely with Donald Trump's organization and, most importantly of all,
was an FBI Confidential Human Source since December of 1998.
Thanks to Judicial Watch we have a new dump of Bruce Ohr emails, which include several from his wife, Nellie. There are 330 pages
to wade thru (you can
see
them here ). There
is one item in particular I encourage you to look at:
On December 5, 2016, Bruce Ohr emailed himself an Excel spreadsheet, seemingly from his wife Nellie Ohr, titled "
WhosWho19Sept2016
." The spreadsheet purports to show relationship descriptions and "linkages" between Donald Trump, his family and criminal figures,
many of whom were Russians. This list of individuals allegedly "linked to Trump" include: a Russian involved in a "gangland
killing;" an Uzbek mafia don; a former KGB officer suspected in the murder of Paul Tatum; a Russian who reportedly "buys up banks
and pumps them dry"; a Russian money launderer for Sergei Magnitsky; a Turk accused of shipping oil for ISIS; a couple who lent their
name to the Trump Institute, promoting its "get-rich-quick schemes"; a man who poured him a drink; and others.
The spreadsheet starts on page 301. If you search the document for the name Felix Sater, he will pop up. Now here is the curious
and, I suppose, reassuring thing about this document--Nellie Ohr did not have a clue that Felix Sater was an active FBI informant.
We can at least give the FBI credit for protecting Sater's identity from Nellie Ohr and, more importantly, her husband, DOJ official
Bruce Ohr.
If you want to have more fun, search the pdf using the term "BAYROCK." You will discover that Nellie Ohr, like a female Don
Quixote, is searching desperately to link Trump and Sater to dirty Russian money. What she does not suspect is that Sater was being
used, via his company Bayrock, to try to gain access to Russians who were potential targets of the FBI.
One point is clear--she uncovered no evidence implicating Trump working with the Russians, either thru Felix Sater or one of the
other "suspects" she exhaustively listed.
Shifting gears, there are two very important pieces recently posted at The Conservative Tree House that I encourage you to read:
What is not emphasized in the piece, and it is something I want to direct you to, is that the idea or impetus to launch the
investigation of Butina came courtesy of Christopher Steele, who was relaying rumor and conjecture to Bruce Ohr.
You can find this information in the
Bruce
Ohr 302s that Judicial Watch also secured. Marina Butina was unfairly and unjustly portrayed and prosecuted as a Russian intelligence
agent. It was a damn lie.
I do not ever want to hear another American complaining about an American State Department or CIA employee who is entrapped and
unfairly prosecuted in Russia.
We have done the same damn thing that we have accused the Soviets of doing. The same thing. It is shameful.
The
second piece is the ultimate feel good piece. Kudos to its author, Sundance.
He details how a Federal Judge, infuriated by the FBIs stupidity and mendacity, tells the Bureau to go pound sand. The FBI is
frantically trying to prevent the Archey Declarations from being revealed thanks to a lawsuit brought by CNN (finally, CNN did something
right).
The Archey Declarations provide a detailed description of the memos written and illegally removed from FBI Headquarters by that
sanctimonious twit, Jim Comey. More shoes will be dropping in the coming days.
It appears that Inspector General Horowitz is going to present at least one report on Jim Comey and one report on the FISA abuse
by the FBI.
FBI Director Christopher Wray reminds me of one of the workers in the bowels of the Titanic who was furiously shoveling coal
into the doomed boilers of the sinking ship. The FBI, like the Titanic, is in trouble.
Finally, Gateway Pundit's Joe Hoft put up an important piece today (
see here ). Here is the bottomline, and keep this in mind as you read the piece, on June 20, 2016 the FBI signed off on a deal
with Hillary Clinton's attorney's that gave Hillary's team the right to destroy computers and emails.
It also gave immunity to all of the people on Hillary's team that participated in obstruction of justice. On that same day,
Jim Comey signed off on a separate memo that decided not to prosecute Hillary Clinton.
The fix was in more than a month before Jim Comey appeared on camera to try to explain why he was not recommending prosecution
of Hillary for putting Top Secret information on her unclassified server.
Jim Comey lied when he declared that could not prove "intent."
I am sure that those of you who have never held a clearance and handled Top Secret material probably believed that lie.
But anyone who knows how the TS system is set up knows that the ONLY WAY, I repeat, the ONLY WAY to put TS material on an unclassified
server is to do so intentionally. There is no way to do this mistakenly.
Jim Ticehurst said in reply to Jim Ticehurst... ,
Larry..Fusion GPS has always refused to Reveal who where its Financial support came from...
So..the Timeline Indicates
Fusion GPS was hired by The "Washington Free Beacon" around October 2015 to background checks and Profiles of The Republican Candidates
for President.and that Fusion GPS continued to do so until May 2016..when it became clear that Donald Trump clinched the Nomination..
creating Phase 2..Operations..
"The Washington Free Beacon ".Has an Editor in Chief ..who is William Kristols Son In Law..And William Kristols ..Father....Irving
Kristol..is Called..."the God Father of Neo Conservatism". William Kristol..was a John McCain supporter..
Thus Fusion GPS..retained Nellie Ohr..(strangly..NO Wiki Profile) who apparently had to Use her husbnd Bruce Ohrs Clearances,,to
continue Her Collaberation with Fusion GPS..
By June 2016 the Strategy was to bring in Christopher Steele..who was know to Bruce Ohr back to 2006.. Strange.. NO early life
BIOS for Bruce or Nellie Ohr..
I wonder why AG Barr isn't forcing the FBI to comply sooner with Judge Boasberg's ruling to hand over unredacted Comey Memos
and Archey Declarations?
The Gateway Pundit item about the ridiculously unfair and unethical deals made in Hillary Clinton's email scandal investigation
is just further proof of how the Clinton taint infected the FBI. "Crooked" is a very apt epithet, that's for sure. I'd love to
know how much Bill and Hill raked in during her Sec'y. of State racketeering.
You say: "One point is clear--she uncovered no evidence implicating Trump working with the Russians, either thru Felix Sater or
one of the other "suspects" she exhaustively listed."
This is true, but it is also true that Nellie Ohr was working for a privately-owned firm that had employed her to make
false accusations about Trump's alleged connections to Russians in order to sabotage his presidency and lay the groundwork for
his impeachment.
They also hired foreign agent, Chris Steele to concoct a thoroughly-debunked dossier for the same purpose.
Can these people be charged with a crime or have we entered a new world of 'dirty tricks'???
... Examination of the Nellie Ohr documents given to the FBI shows some of her source material also came from former Ukrainian
presidential candidate Yulia Tymoshenko and a lawsuit she filed against Manafort.
Why is that significant? Tymoshenko and Hillary Clinton had a simpatico relationship after the former secretary of State
went out of her way in January 2013 to advocate for Tymoshenko's release from prison on corruption charges.
So, Bruce Ohr became a conduit of information not only for intelligence from Clinton's British opposition-researcher
but also from his wife's curation of evidence from a Clinton foreign ally and Manafort enemy inside Ukraine. Talk about foreign
influence in a U.S. election!
...
The tales of Bruce and Nellie Ohr, Christopher Steele, Yulia Tymoshenko, and those DEA and TSA agents raise a stark warning:
The lines between government officials and informants, unverified political dirt and real intelligence, personal interest
and law enforcement,
became too blurred for the Justice Department's own good.
The person responsible for securing the release of Yulia Tymoshenko was Chancellor Merkel. Further, that USA opposed Tymoshenko.
quote
As for one of the leaders of the war party in Kiev, Merkel has privately and publicly endorsed every claim of Yulia Tymoshenko,
promoting her release from prison and protecting her campaigns for war against Russia, even though – according to the high-level
German source – “they [Chancellery, Foreign Ministry] have known for years that [Tymoshenko] was a crook.”
endquote
There is a lot more detail Tymoshenko's corruption and Merkel's rescue here:
STEPHEN COHEN: I'm not aware that Russia attacked Georgia. The European Commission, if you're talking about the 2008 war,
the European Commission, investigating what happened, found that Georgia, which was backed by the United States, fighting with an
American-built army under the control of the, shall we say, slightly unpredictable Georgian president then, Saakashvili, that he
began the war by firing on Russian enclaves. And the Kremlin, which by the way was not occupied by Putin, but by Michael McFaul and
Obama's best friend and reset partner then-president Dmitry Medvedev, did what any Kremlin leader, what any leader in any country
would have had to do: it reacted. It sent troops across the border through the tunnel, and drove the Georgian forces out of what
essentially were kind of Russian protectorate areas of Georgia.
So that- Russia didn't begin that war. And it didn't begin the one in Ukraine, either. We did that by [continents], the overthrow
of the Ukrainian president in [20]14 after President Obama told Putin that he would not permit that to happen. And I think it happened
within 36 hours. The Russians, like them or not, feel that they have been lied to and betrayed. They use this word, predatl'stvo,
betrayal, about American policy toward Russia ever since 1991, when it wasn't just President George Bush, all the documents have
been published by the National Security Archive in Washington, all the leaders of the main Western powers promised the Soviet Union
that under Gorbachev, if Gorbachev would allow a reunited Germany to be NATO, NATO would not, in the famous expression, move two
inches to the east.
Now NATO is sitting on Russia's borders from the Baltic to Ukraine. So Russians aren't fools, and they're good-hearted, but they
become resentful. They're worried about being attacked by the United States. In fact, you read and hear in the Russian media daily,
we are under attack by the United States. And this is a lot more real and meaningful than this crap that is being put out that Russia
somehow attacked us in 2016. I must have been sleeping. I didn't see Pearl Harbor or 9/11 and 2016. This is reckless, dangerous,
warmongering talk. It needs to stop. Russia has a better case for saying they've been attacked by us since 1991. We put our military
alliance on the front door. Maybe it's not an attack, but it looks like one, feels like one. Could be one.
Real politik. Don't bring a knife to a gun fight. Don't start fights in the first place. The idea that American leadership
is any better than mid-Victorian imperialism, is laughable.
AARON MATE: We hear, often, talk of Putin possibly being the richest person in the world as a result of his entanglement
with the very corruption of Russia you're speaking about
Few appear to be aware that Bill Browder is single-handedly responsible for starting, and spreading, the rumor that Putin's
net worth is $200 billion (for those who are unfamiliar with Browder, I highly recommend watching Andrei Nekrasov's documentary
titled " The Magnitsky Act – Behind the Scenes "). Browder
appears to have first
started this rumor early in 2015 , and has repeated it ad nauseam since then, including in
his testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2017 . While Browder has always framed the $200 billion figure as his own
estimate, that subtle qualifier has had little effect on the media's willingness to accept it as fact.
Interestingly, during the press conference at the Helsinki Summit, Putin claimed Browder sent $400 million of ill-gotten gains
to the Clinton campaign. Putin
retracted the statement and claimed to have misspoke a week or so later, however by that time the $400 million figure had
been cited by numerous media outlets around the world. I think it is at least possible that Putin purposely exaggerated the amount
of money in question as a kind of tit-for-tat response to Browder having started the rumor about his net worth being $200 billion.
The stories I saw said there was a mistranslation -- but that the figure should have $400 thousand and not $400 million. Maybe
Putin misspoke, but the $400,000 number is still significant, albeit far more reasonable.
Putin never was on the Forbes list of billionaires, btw, and his campaign finance statement comes to far less. It never seems
to occur to rabid capitalists or crooks that not everyone is like them, placing such importance on vast fortunes, or want to be
dishonest, greedy, or power hungry. Putin is only 'well off' and that seems to satisfy him just fine as he gets on with other
interests, values, and goals.
Yes, $400,000 is the revised/correct figure. My having written that "Putin retracted the statement" was not the best choice
of phrase. Also, the figure was corrected the day after it was made, not "a week or so later" as I wrote in my previous comment.
From the Russia Insider link:
Browder's criminal group used many tax evasion methods, including offshore companies. They siphoned shares and funds from
Russia worth over 1.5 billion dollars. By the way, $400,000 was transferred to the US Democratic Party's accounts from these
funds. The Russian president asked us to correct his statement from yesterday. During the briefing, he said it was $400,000,000,
not $400,000. Either way, it's still a significant amount of money.
There's something weird about the anti-Putin hysteria. Somehow, many, many people have come to believe they must demonstrate
their membership in the tribe by accepting completely unsupported assertions that go against common sense.
In a sane world we the people would be furious with the Clinton campaign, especially the D party but the R's as well, our media
(again), and our intel/police State (again). Holding them all accountable while making sure this tsunami of deception and lies
never happens again.
It's amazing even in time of the internetz those of us who really dig can only come up with a few sane voices. It's much worse
now in terms of the numbers of sane voices than it was in the run up to Iraq 2.
Regardless of broad access to far more information in the digital age, never under estimate the self-preservation instinct
of American exceptionalist mythology. There is an inverse relationship between the decline of US global primacy and increasingly
desperate quest for adventurism. Like any case of addiction, looking outward for blame/salvation is imperative in order to prevent
the mirror of self-reflection/realization from turning back onto ourselves.
we're not to believe we're not supposed to believe we're supposed to believe
Believe whatever you want, however your comment gives the impression that you came to this article because you felt the need
to push back against anything that does not conform to the liberal international order's narrative on Putin and Russia, rather
than "with an eagerness to counterbalance the media's portrayal of Putin". WRT to whataboutism, I like
Greenwald's definition of the term :
"Whataboutism": the term used to bar inquiry into whether someone adheres to the moral and behavioral standards they seek
to impose on everyone else. That's its functional definition.
aye. I've never seen it used by anyone aside from the worst Hill Trolls.
Indeed, when it was first thrown at me, I endeavored to look it up, and found that all references to it were from Hillaryites
attempting to diss apostates and heretics.
The degree of consistency and or lack of hypocrisy based on words and actions separates US from Russia to an astonishing level.
That is Russia's largest threat to US, our deceivers. The propaganda tables have turned and we are deceiving ourselves to points
of collective insanity and warmongering with a great nuclear power while we are at it. Warmongering is who we are and what we
do.
Does Russia have a GITMO, torture Chelsea Manning, openly say they want to kill Snowden and Assange? Is Russia building up
arsenals on our borders while maintaining hundreds of foreign bases and conducting several wars at any given moment while constantly
threatening to foment more wars? Is Russia dropping another trillion on nuclear arsenals? Is Russia forcing us to maintain such
an anti democratic system and an even worse, an entirely hackable electronic voting system?
You ready to destroy the world, including your own, rather than look in the mirror?
You're talking about extending Russian military power into Europe when the military spending of NATO Europe alone exceeds Russia's
by almost 5-1 (more like 12-1 when one includes the US and Canada), have about triple the number of soldiers than Russia has,
and when the Russian ground forces are numerically smaller than they have been in at least 200 years?
" to put their self-interests above those of their constituents and employees, why can't we apply this same lens to Putin and
his oligarchs?"
The oligarchs got their start under Yeltsin and his FreeMarketDemocraticReformers, whose policies were so catastrophic that
deaths were exceeding births by almost a million a year by the late '90s, with no end in sight. Central to Yeltsin's governance
was the corrupt privatization, by which means the Seven Bankers came to control the Russian economy and Russian politics.
Central to Putin's popularity are the measures he took to curb oligarchic predation in 2003-2005. Because of this, Russia's
debt:GDP ratio went from 1.0 to about 0.2, and Russia's demographic recovery began while Western analysis were still predicting
the death of Russia.
So Putin is the anti-oligarch in Russian domestic politics.
I know of many people who sacrifice their own interests for those of their children (over whom they have virtually absolute
power), family member and friends. I know of others who dedicate their lives to justice, peace, the well being of their nation,
the world, and other people -- people who find far greater meaning and satisfaction in this than in accumulating power or money.
Other people have their own goals, such as producing art, inventing interesting things, reading and learning, and don't care two
hoots about power or money as long as their immediate needs are met.
I'm cynical enough about humans without thinking the worst of everyone and every group or culture. Not everyone thinks only
of nails and wants to be hammers, or are sociopaths. There are times when people are more or less forced into taking power, or
getting more money, even if they don't want it, because they want to change things for the better or need to defend themselves.
There are people who get guns and learn how to use them only because they feel a need for defending themselves and family but
who don't like guns and don't want to shoot anyone or anything.
There are many people who do not want to be controlled and bossed around, but neither want to boss around anyone else. The
world is full of such people. If they are threatened and attacked, however, expect defensive reactions. Same as for most animals
which are not predators, and even predators will generally not attack other animals if they are not hungry or threatened -- but
that does not mean they are not competent or can be dangerous.
Capitalism is not only inherently predatory, but is inherently expansive without limits, with unlimited ambition for profits
and control. It's intrinsically very competitive and imperialist. Capitalism is also a thing which was exported to Russia, starting
soon after the Russian Revolution, which was immediately attacked and invaded by the West, and especially after the fall of the
Soviet Union. Soviet Russia had it's own problems, which it met with varying degrees of success, but were quite different from
the aggressive capitalism and imperialism of the US and Europe.
The pro-Putin propaganda is pretty interesting to witness, and of course not everything Cohen says is skewed pro-Putin – that's
what provides credibility. But "Putin kills everybody" is something NOBODY says (except Cohen, twice in one interview) – Putin
is actually pretty selective of those he decides to have killed. But of course, he doesn't kill anyone, personally – therefore
he's an innocent lamb, accidentally running Russia as a dictator.
The most recent dictator in Russian history was Boris Yeltsin, who turned tanks on his legislature while it was in the legal
and constitutional process of impeaching him, and whose policies were so catastrophic for Russians (who were dying off at the
rate of 900k/yr) that he had to steal his re-election because he had a 5% approval rating.
But he did as the US gvt told him, so I guess that makes him a Democrat.
Under Putin Russia recovered from being helpless, bankrupt & dying, but Russia has an independent foreign policy, so that makes
Putin a dictator.
"Does any sane person believe that there will ever be a Putin-signed contract provided as evidence? Does any sane person believe
that Putin actually needs to "approve" a contract rather than signaling to his oligarch/mafia hierarchy that he's unhappy about
a newspaper or journalist's reporting?"
Why do you think Putin even needs, or feels a need, to have journalists killed in the first place? I see no evidence to support
this basic assumption.
The idea of Russia poised to attack Europe is interesting, in light of the fact that they've cut their military spending by
20%. And even before that the budgets of France, Germany, and the UK combined well exceeded that of Russia, to say nothing of
the rest of NATO or the US.
Putin's record speaks for itself. This again points to the absurdity of claiming he's had reporters killed: he doesn't need
to. He has a vast amount of genuine public support because he's salvaged the country and pieced it back together after the pillaging
of the Yeltsin years. That he himself is a corrupt oligarch I have no particular doubt of. But if he just wanted to enrich himself,
he's had a very funny way of going about it. Pray tell, what are these 'other interpretations'?
"The US foreign policy has been disastrous for millions of people since world war 2. But Cohen's arguments that Russia isn't
as bad as the US is just a bunch of whattaboutism."
What countries has the Russian Federation destroyed?
Here is a fascinating essay ["Are We Reading Russia Right?"] by Nicolai N. Petro who currently holds the Silvia-Chandley Professorship
of Peace Studies and Nonviolence at the University of Rhode Island. His books include, Ukraine
in Crisis (Routledge, 2017), Crafting Democracy (Cornell, 2004), The Rebirth of Russian Democracy (Harvard, 1995), and Russian
Foreign Policy, co-authored with Alvin Z. Rubinstein (Longman, 1997). A graduate of the University of Virginia, he is the recipient
of Fulbright awards to Russia and to Ukraine, as well as fellowships from the Foreign Policy Research Institute, the National
Council for Eurasian and East European Research, the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies in Washington,
D.C., and the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. As a Council on Foreign Relations Fellow, he served as special assistant
for policy toward the Soviet Union in the U.S. Department of State from 1989 to 1990. In addition to scholarly publications
on Russia and Ukraine, he has written for Asia Times, American Interest, Boston Globe, Christian Science Monitor, The Guardian
(UK), The Nation, New York Times, and Wilson Quarterly. His writings have appeared frequently on the web sites of the Carnegie
Council for Ethics in International Affairs and The National Interest.
Thanks for so much for this. Great stuff. Cohen says the emperor has no clothes so naturally the empire doesn't want him on
television. I believe he has been on CNN one or two times and I saw him once on the PBS Newshour where the interviewer asked skeptical
questions with a pained and skeptical look. He seems to be the only prominent person willing to stand up and call bs on the Russia
hate. There are plenty of pundits and commentators who do that but not many Princeton professors.
It has been said in recent years that the greatest failure of American foreign policy was the invasion of Iraq. I think that
they are wrong. The greatest failure, in my opinion, is to push both China and Russia together into a semi-official pact against
American ambitions. In the same way that the US was able to split China from the USSR back in the seventies, the best option was
for America to split Russia from China and help incorporate them into the western system. The waters for that idea have been so
fouled by the Russia hysteria, if not dementia, that that is no longer a possibility. I just wish that the US would stop sowing
dragon's teeth – it never ends well.
The best option, but the "American exceptionalists" went nuts. Also, the usual play book of stoking fears of the "yellow menace"
would have been too on the nose. Americans might not buy it, and there was a whole cottage industry of "the rising China threat"
except the potential consumer market place and slave labor factories stopped that from happening.
Bringing Russia into the West effectively means Europe, and I think that creates a similar dynamic to a Russian/Chinese pact.
The basic problem with the EU is its led by a relatively weak but very German power which makes the EU relatively weak or controllable
as long as the German electorate is relatively sedate. I think they still need the international structures run by the U.S. to
maintain their dominance. What Russia and the pre-Erdogan Turkey (which was never going to be admitted to the EU) presented was
significant upsets to the existing EU order with major balances to Germany which I always believed would make the EU potentially
more dynamic. Every decision wouldn't require a pilgrimage to Berlin. The British were always disinterested. The French had made
arrangements with Germany, and Italy is still Italy. Putting Russia or Turkey (pre-Erdogan) would have disrupted this arrangement.
The Crimea voted to be annexed by Russia by a clear majority. The US overran Hawaii with total disregard for the wishes of
the native population. Your comparison is invalid.
"Putin's finger prints are all over the Balkan fiasco".How is that with Putin only becoming president in 2000 and the Nato
bombing started way beforehand. It's ridiculous to think that Putin had any major influence at that time as govenor or director
of the domestic intelligence service on what was going during the bombing of NATO on Belgrad. Even Gerhard Schroeder, then chancellor
of the Federal Republic of Germany, admitted in an interview in 2014 with a major German Newspaper (Die Zeit) that this invasion
of Nato was a fault and against international law!
Can you concrete what you mean by "fingerprints" or is this just another platitudes?
I believe that the full and proper name of the psychiatric disorder in question is Putin-Trump Derangement Syndrome [PTDS].
Symptoms include:
o Eager and uncritical ingestion and social-media regurgitation of even the most patently absurd MSM propaganda. For example,
the meme that releasing factual information about actual election-meddling (as Wikileaks did about the Dem-establishment's rigging
of its own nomination process in 2016) is a grave threat to American Democracy™;
o Recent-onset veneration of the intelligence agencies, whose stock in trade is spying on and lying to the American people,
spreading disinformation, election rigging, torture and assassination and its agents, such as liar and perjurer Clapper and torturer
Brennan;
o Rehabilitation of horrid unindicted GOP war criminals like G.W. Bush as alleged examples of "norms-respecting Republican
patriots";
o Smearing of anyone who dares question the MSM-stoked hysteria as an America-hating Russian stooge.
"... Latest is the secretive Andy Pryce squandering millions of public money on the "Open Information Partnership" (OIP) which is the latest name-change for the Integrity Initiative and the Institute of Statecraft, just like al-Qaeda kept changing its name. ..."
"... In true Orwellian style, they splashed out on a conference for "defence of media freedom", when they are in the business of propaganda and closing alternative 'narratives' down. And the 'media' they would defend are, in fact, spies sent to foreign countries to foment trouble to further what they bizarrely perceive as 'British interests'. Just like the disgraceful White Helmets, also funded by the FO. ..."
"... "The Guardian is struggling for money" Surely, they would be enjoying some of the seemingly unlimited US defense and some of the mind control programmes budgets. ..."
OffGuardian already covered the Global Media Freedom Conference, our article
Hypocrisy Taints UK's
Media Freedom Conference , was meant to be all there was to say. A quick note on the obvious hypocrisy of this event. But, in
the writing, I started to see more than that. This event is actually creepy. Let's just look back at one of the four "main themes"
of this conference:
Building trust in media and countering disinformation
"Countering disinformation"? Well, that's just another word for censorship. This is proven by their refusal to allow Sputnik or RT
accreditation. They claim RT "spreads disinformation" and they "countered" that by barring them from attending. "Building trust"?
In the post-Blair world of PR newspeak, "building trust" is just another way of saying "making people believe us" (the word usage
is actually interesting, building trust not earning trust). The whole conference is shot through with this language
that just feels off. Here is CNN's
Christiane Amanpour :
Our job is to be truthful, not neutral we need to take a stand for the truth, and never to create a false moral or factual equivalence."
Being "truthful not neutral" is one of Amanpour's
personal sayings
, she obviously thinks it's clever. Of course, what it is is NewSpeak for "bias". Refusing to cover evidence of The White
Helmets staging rescues, Israel arming ISIS or other inconvenient facts will be defended using this phrase – they will literally
claim to only publish "the truth", to get around impartiality and then set about making up whatever "truth" is convenient. Oh, and
if you don't know what "creating a false moral quivalence is", here I'll demonstrate: MSM: Putin is bad for shutting down critical
media. OffG: But you're supporting RT being banned and Wikileaks being shut down. BBC: No. That's not the same. OffG: It seems the
same. BBC: It's not. You're creating a false moral equivalence . Understand now? You "create a false moral equivalence" by
pointing out mainstream media's double standards. Other ways you could mistakenly create a "false moral equivalence": Bringing up
Gaza when the media talk about racism. Mentioning Saudi Arabia when the media preach about gay rights. Referencing the US coup in
Venezuela when the media work themselves into a froth over Russia's "interference in our democracy" Talking about the invasion of
Iraq. Ever. OR Pointing out that the BBC is state funded, just like RT. These are all no-longer flagrant examples of the media's
double standards, and if you say they are , you're "creating a false moral equivalence" and the media won't have to allow
you (or anyone who agrees with you) air time or column inches to disagree. Because they don't have a duty to be neutral or show both
sides, they only have a duty to tell "the truth" as soon as the government has told them what that is. Prepare to see both those
phrases – or variations there of – littering editorials in the Guardian and the Huffington Post in the coming months. Along
with people bemoaning how "fake news outlets abuse the notion of impartiality" by "being even handed between liars the truth tellers".
(I've been doing this site so long now, I have a Guardian-English dictionary in my head).
Equally dodgy-sounding buzz-phrases litter topics on the agenda. "Eastern Europe and Central Asia: building an integrated support
system for journalists facing hostile environments" , this means pumping money into NGOs to fund media that will criticize our
"enemies" in areas of strategic importance. It means flooding money into the anti-government press in Hungary, or Iran or (of course),
Russia. That is ALL it means. I said in my earlier article I don't know what "media sustainability" even means, but I feel I can
take a guess. It means "save the government mouthpieces". The Guardian is struggling for money, all print media are, TV news
is getting lower viewing figures all the time. "Building media sustainability" is code for "pumping public money into traditional
media that props up the government" or maybe "getting people to like our propaganda". But the worst offender on the list is, without
a doubt "Navigating Disinformation"
"Navigating Disinformation" was a 1 hour panel from the second day of the conference. You can watch it embedded above if you really
feel the need. I already did, so you don't have to. The panel was chaired by Chrystia Freeland, the Canadian Foreign Minister. The
members included the Latvian Foreign Minister, a representative of the US NGO Committee to Protect Journalists, and the Ukrainian
Deputy Minister of Information
Have you guessed what "disinformation" they're going to be talking about? I'll give you a clue: It begins with R. Freeland, chairing
the panel, kicks it off by claiming that "disinformation isn't for any particular aim" . This is a very common thing for establishment
voices to repeat these days, which makes it all the more galling she seems to be pretending its is her original thought. The reason
they have to claim that "disinformation" doesn't have a "specific aim" is very simple: They don't know what they're going to call
"disinformation" yet. They can't afford to take a firm position, they need to keep their options open. They need to give themselves
the ability to describe any single piece of information or political opinion as "disinformation." Left or right. Foreign or domestic.
"Disinformation" is a weaponised term that is only as potent as it is vague. So, we're one minute in, and all "navigating disinformation"
has done is hand the State an excuse to ignore, or even criminalise, practically anything it wants to. Good start. Interestingly,
no one has actually said the word "Russia" at this point. They have talked about "malign actors" and "threats to democracy", but
not specifically Russia. It is SO ingrained in these people that "propaganda"= " Russian propaganda" that they don't need
to say it.
The idea that NATO as an entity, or the individual members thereof, could also use "disinformation" has not just been dismissed
it was literally never even contemplated. Next Freeland turns to Edgars Rinkēvičs, her Latvian colleague, and jokes about always
meeting at NATO functions. The Latvians know "more than most" about disinformation, she says. Rinkēvičs says disinformation is nothing
new, but that the methods of spreading it are changing then immediately calls for regulation of social media. Nobody disagrees. Then
he talks about the "illegal annexation of Crimea", and claims the West should outlaw "paid propaganda" like RT and Sputnik. Nobody
disagrees. Then he says that Latvia "protected" their elections from "interference" by "close cooperation between government agencies
and social media companies". Everyone nods along. If you don't find this terrifying, you're not paying attention. They don't say
it, they probably don't even realise they mean it, but when they talk about "close cooperation with social media networks", they
mean government censorship of social media. When they say "protecting" their elections they're talking about rigging them. It only
gets worse. The next step in the Latvian master plan is to bolster "traditional media".
The problems with traditional media, he says, are that journalists aren't paid enough, and don't keep up to date with all the
"new tricks". His solution is to "promote financing" for traditional media, and to open more schools like the "Baltic Centre of Media
Excellence", which is apparently a totally real thing .
It's a training centre which teaches young journalists about "media literacy" and "critical thinking". You can read their depressingly
predictable list of "donors" here . I truly wish I was joking. Next
up is Courtney Radsch from CPJ – a US-backed NGO, who notionally "protect journalists", but more accurately spread pro-US propaganda.
(Their token effort to "defend"
RT and Sputnik when they were barred from the conference was contemptible).
She talks for a long time without saying much at all. Her revolutionary idea is that disinformation could be countered if everyone
told the truth. Inspiring. Beata Balogova, Journalist and Editor from Slovakia, gets the ship back on course – immediately suggesting
politicians should not endorse "propaganda" platforms. She shares an anecdote about "a prominent Slovakian politician" who gave exclusive
interviews to a site that is "dubiously financed, we assume from Russia". They assume from Russia. Everyone nods.
It's like they don't even hear themselves.
Then she moves on to Hungary. Apparently, Orban has "created a propaganda machine" and produced "antisemitic George Soros posters".
No evidence is produced to back-up either of these claims. She thinks advertisers should be pressured into not giving money to "fake
news sites". She calls for "international pressure", but never explains exactly what that means. The stand-out maniac on this panel
is Emine Dzhaparova, the Ukrainian First Deputy Minister of Information Policy. (She works for the Ministry of Information – nicknamed
the Ministry of Truth, which was formed in 2014 to "counter lies about Ukraine". Even
The Guardian thought that sounded dodgy.)
She talks very fast and, without any sense of irony, spills out a story that shoots straight through "disinformation" and becomes
"incoherent rambling". She claims that Russian citizens are so brainwashed you'll never be able to talk to them, and that Russian
"cognitive influence" is "toxic like radiation." Is this paranoid, quasi-xenophobic nonsense countered? No. Her fellow panelists
nod and chuckle. On top of that, she just lies. She lies over and over and over again. She claims Russia is locking up Crimean Tartars
"just for being muslims", nobody questions her. She says the war in Ukraine has killed 13,000 people, but doesn't mention that her
side is responsible for over 80% of civilian deaths.
She says only 30% of Crimeans voted in the referendum, and that they were "forced". A fact not supported by
any polls done by either side in the last
four years, and any referenda held
on the peninsula any time in the last last 30 year. It's simply a lie. Nobody asks her about the journalists
killed in Ukraine since their
glorious Maidan Revolution . Nobody questions the fact that she works for something called the "Ministry of Information". Nobody
does anything but nod and smile as the "countering disinformation" panel becomes just a platform for spreading total lies.
When everyone on the panel has had their ten minutes on the soapbox, Freeland asks for recommendations for countering this "threat"
– here's the list:
Work to distinguish "free speech" from "propaganda", when you find propaganda there must be a "strong reaction".
Pressure advertisers to abandon platforms who spread misinformation.
Regulate social media.
Educate journalists at special schools.
Start up a "Ministry of Information" and have state run media that isn't controlled, like in Ukraine.
This is the Global Conference on Media Freedom and all these six people want to talk about is how to control what can be said,
and who can say it. They single only four countries out for criticism: Hungary, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Russia .and Russia takes
up easily 90% of that. They mention only two media outlets by name: RT and Sputnik. This wasn't a panel on disinformation, it was
a public attack forum – a month's worth of 2 minutes of hate. These aren't just shills on this stage, they are solid gold idiots,
brainwashed to the point of total delusion.
They are the dangerous glassy eyes of a Deep State that never questions itself, never examines itself, and will do anything it
wants, to anyone it wants whilst happily patting itself on the back for its superior morality. They don't know, they don't care.
They're true believers. Terrifyingly dead inside. Talking about state censorship and re-education camps under a big sign that says
"Freedom". And that's just one talk. Just one panel in a 2 day itinerary filled to the brim with similarly soul-dead servants of
authority. Truly, perfectly Orwellian.
Read and be appalled at what America is up to .keep for further reference. We are in danger.
Tim Jenkins
It would serve Ms. Amanpour well, to relax, rewind & review her own interview with Sergei Lavrov:-
Then she might see why Larry King could stomach the appalling corporate dictatorship, even to the core of False & Fake recording
of 'our' "History of the National Security State" , No More
Amanpour was forced to laugh uncontrollably, when confronted with Lavrov's humorous interpretations of various legal aspects
of decency & his Judgement of others' politicians and 'Pussy Riots' >>> if you haven't seen it, it is to be recommended, the whole
interview, if nothing else but to study the body language and micro-facial expressions, coz' a belly up laugh is not something
anybody can easily control or even feign that first spark of cognition in her mind, as she digests Lavrov's response :- hilarious
Einstein
A GE won't solve matters since we have a Government of Occupation behind a parliament of puppets.
Latest is the secretive Andy Pryce squandering millions of public money on the "Open Information Partnership" (OIP) which
is the latest name-change for the Integrity Initiative and the Institute of Statecraft, just like al-Qaeda kept changing its name.
In true Orwellian style, they splashed out on a conference for "defence of media freedom", when they are in the business
of propaganda and closing alternative 'narratives' down. And the 'media' they would defend are, in fact, spies sent to foreign
countries to foment trouble to further what they bizarrely perceive as 'British interests'. Just like the disgraceful White Helmets,
also funded by the FO.
Pryce's ventriloquist's dummy in parliament, the pompous Alan Duncan, announced another Ł10 million of public money for this
odious brainwashing programme.
Tim Jenkins
That panel should be nailed & plastered over, permanently:-
and as wall paper, 'Abstracts of New Law' should be pasted onto a collage of historic extracts from the Guardian, in
offices that issue journalistic licenses, comprised of 'Untouchables' :-
A professional habitat, to damp any further 'Freeland' amplification & resonance,
of negative energy from professional incompetence.
Francis Lee
Apropos of the redoubtable Ms Freeland, Canada's Foreign Secretary.
The records now being opened by the Polish government in Warsaw reveal that Freeland's maternal grandfather Michael (Mikhailo)
Chomiak was a Nazi collaborator from the beginning to the end of the war. He was given a powerful post, money, home and car by
the German Army in Cracow, then the capital of the German administration of the Galician region. His principal job was editor
in chief and publisher of a newspaper the Nazis created. His printing plant and other assets had been stolen from a Jewish newspaper
publisher, who was then sent to die in the Belzec concentration camp. During the German Army's winning phase of the war, Chomiak
celebrated in print the Wehrmacht's "success" at killing thousands of US Army troops. As the German Army was forced into retreat
by the Soviet counter-offensive, Chomiak was taken by the Germans to Vienna, where he continued to publish his Nazi propaganda,
at the same time informing for the Germans on other Ukrainians. They included fellow Galician Stepan Bandera, whose racism against
Russians Freeland has celebrated in print, and whom the current regime in Kiev has turned into a national hero.
Those Ukrainian 'Refugees' admitted to Canada in 1945 were almost certainly members of the 14th Waffen SS Division Galizia 1.
These Ukie collaboraters – not to be confused with the other Ukie Nazi outfit – Stepan Bandera's Ukrainian Insurgent Army -were
held responsible for the massacre of many Poles in the Lviv area the most infamous being carried out in the Polish village of
Huta Pienacka. In the massacre, the village was destroyed and between 500] and 1,000 of the inhabitants were killed. According
to Polish accounts, civilians were locked in barns that were set on fire while those attempting to flee were killed. That's about
par for the course.
Canada's response was as follows:
The Canadian Deschęnes Commission was set up to investigate alleged war crimes committed by the collaborators
Memorial to SS-Galizien division in Chervone, Lviv Oblast, western Ukraine
The Canadian "Commission of Inquiry on War Crimes" of October 1986, by the Honourable Justice Jules Deschęnesconcluded that in
relation to membership in the Galicia Division:
''The Galicia Division (14. Waffen grenadier division der SS [gal.1]) should not be indicted as a group. The members of Galicia
Division were individually screened for security purposes before admission to Canada. Charges of war crimes of Galicia Division
have never been substantiated, either in 1950 when they were first preferred, or in 1984 when they were renewed, or before this
Commission. Further, in the absence of evidence of participation or knowledge of specific war crimes, mere membership in the Galicia
Division is insufficient to justify prosecution.''
However, the Commission's conclusion failed to acknowledge or heed the International Military Tribunal's verdict at the Nuremberg
Trials, in which the entire Waffen-SSorganisation was declared a "criminal organization" guilty of war crimes. Also, the Deschęnes
Commission in its conclusion only referenced the division as 14. Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS (Galizische Nr.1), thus in legal
terms, only acknowledging the formation's activity after its name change in August 1944, while the massacre of Poles in Huta Pieniacka,
Pidkamin and Palikrowy occurred when the division was called SS Freiwilligen Division "Galizien". Nevertheless, a subsequent review
by Canada's Minister of Justice again confirmed that members of the Division were not implicated in war crimes.
Yes, the west looks after its Nazis and even makes them and their descendants political figureheads.
mark
Most of these people are so smugly and complacently convinced of their own moral superiority that they just can't see the hypocrisy
and doublethink involved in the event.
Meanwhile Owen Jones has taken to Twitter to rubbish allegations that a reign of terror exists at Guardian Towers – the socialist
firebrand is quoted as saying 'journalists are free to say whatever they like, so long as it doesn't stray too far from Guardian-groupthink'.
Good analysis Kit, of the cognitive dissonant ping pong being played out by Nazi sympathisers such as Hunt and Freeland.
The echo chamber of deceit is amplified again by the selective use of information and the ignoring of relevant facts, such
as the miss reporting yesterday by Reuters of the Italian Neo-Nazi haul of weapons by the police, having not Russian but Ukrainian
links.
Not a word in the WMSM about this devious miss-reporting as the creation of fake news in action. But what would you expect?
Living as I do in Russia I can assure anyone reading this that the media freedom here is on a par with the West and somewhat
better as there is no paranoia about a fictitious enemy – Russians understand that the West is going through an existential crisis
(Brexit in the UK, Trump and the Clinton war of sameness in the US and Macron and Merkel in the EU). A crisis of Liberalism as
the failed life-support of capitalism. But hey, why worry about the politics when there is bigger fish to fry. Such as who will
pay me to dance?
The answer is clear from what Kit has writ. The government will pay the piper. How sweet.
I'd like to thank Kit for sitting through such a turgid masquerade and as I'm rather long in the tooth I do remember the old
BBC schools of journalism in Yelsin's Russia. What I remember is that old devious Auntie Beeb was busy training would be hopefuls
in the art of discretion regarding how the news is formed, or formulated.
In other words your audience. And it ain't the public
The British government's "Online Harms" White Paper has a whole section devoted to "disinformation" (ie, any facts, opinions,
analyses, evaluations, critiques that are critical of the elite's actual disinformation). If these proposals become law, the government
will have effective control over the Internet and we will be allowed access to their disinformation, shop and watch cute cat videos.
Question This
The liberal news media & hypocrisy, who would have ever thought you'd see those words in the same sentence.
But what do you expect from professional liars, politicians & 'their' free press?
Can this shit show get any worse? Yes, The other day I wrote to my MP regards the SNP legislating against the truth, effectively
making it compulsory to lie! Mr Blackford as much as called me a transphobic & seemed to go to great length publishing his neo-liberal
ideological views in some scottish rag, on how right is wrong & fact is turned into fiction & asked only those that agreed with
him contact him.
Tim Jenkins
"The science or logical consistency of true premise, cannot take place or bear fruit, when all communication and information is
'marketised and weaponised' to a mindset of possession and control."
B.Steere
Mikalina
I saw, somewhere (but can't find it now) a law or a prospective law which goes under the guise of harassment of MPs to include
action against constituents who 'pester' them.
I only emailed him once! That's hardly harassment. Anyway I sent it with proton-mail via vpn & used a false postcode using only
my first name so unlikely my civil & sincere correspondence will see me locked up for insisting my inalienable rights of freedom
of speech & beliefs are protected. But there again the state we live in, i may well be incarcerated for life, for such an outrageous
expectation.
Where to?
"The Guardian is struggling for money"
Surely, they would be enjoying some of the seemingly unlimited US defense and some of the mind control programmes budgets.
Harry Stotle
Its the brazen nature of the conference that is especially galling, but what do you expect when crooks and liars no longer feel
they even have to pretend?
Nothing will change so long as politicians (or their shady backers) are never held to account for public assets diverted toward
a rapacious off-shore economic system, or the fact millions of lives have been shattered by the 'war on terror' and its evil twin,
'humanatarian regime change' (while disingenuous Labour MPs wail about the 'horrors' of antisemitism rather than the fact their
former leader is a key architect of the killings).
Kit remains a go-to voice when deconstructing claims made by political figures who clearly regard the MSM as a propaganda vehicle
for promoting western imperialism – the self-satisfied smugness of cunts like Jeremy Cunt stand in stark contrast to a real journalist
being tortured by the British authorities just a few short miles away.
It's a sligtly depressing thought but somebody has the unenviable task of monitoring just how far our politicians have drifted
from the everyday concerns of the 'just about managing' and as I say Mr Knightly does a fine job in informing readers what the
real of agenda of these media love-ins are actually about – it goes without saying a very lengthy barge pole is required when
the Saudis are invited but not Russia.
Where to?
This Media Freedom Conference is surely a creepy theatre of the absurd.
It is a test of what they can get away with.
Mikalina
Yep. Any soviet TV watcher would recognise this immediately. Message? THIS is the reality – and you are powerless.
mark
When are they going to give us the Ministry of Truth we so desperately need?
"... We know our disinformation program is complete when almost everything the American public believes is false.' ..."
"... Using groundbreaking camera and lighting techniques, Riefenstahl produced a documentary that mesmerized Germans; as Pilger noted, her Triumph of the Will 'cast Adolf Hitler's spell'. She told the veteran Aussie journalist the "messages" of her films were dependent not on "orders from above", but on the "submissive void" of the public. ..."
"... All in all, Riefenstahl produced arguably for the rest of the world the most compelling historical footage of mass hysteria, blind obedience, nationalistic fervour, and existential menace, all key ingredients in anyone's totalitarian nightmare. That it also impressed a lot of very powerful, high profile people in the West on both sides of the pond is also axiomatic: These included bankers, financiers, industrialists, and sundry business elites without whose support Hitler might've at best ended up a footnote in the historical record after the ill-fated beer-hall putsch. (See here , and here .) ..."
"... The purpose of this propaganda barrage, as Sharon Bader has noted, has been to convince as many people as possible that it is in their interests to relinquish their own power as workers, consumers, and citizens, and 'forego their democratic right to restrain and regulate business activity. As a result the political agenda is now confined to policies aimed at furthering business interests.' ..."
Here was, of course, another surreal spectacle, this time courtesy of one of the Deep State's most dangerous, reviled, and divisive
figures, a notable protagonist in the Russia-Gate conspiracy, and America's most senior diplomat no less.
Not only is it difficult to accept that the former CIA Director actually believes what he is saying, well might we ask, "Who can
believe Mike Pompeo?"
And here's also someone whose manifest cynicism, hypocrisy, and chutzpah would embarrass the much-derided
scribes and Pharisees of Biblical days.
We have Pompeo on record recently in a rare moment of
honesty admitting – whilst laughing his ample ass off, as if recalling some "Boy's Own Adventure" from his misspent youth with a
bunch of his mates down at the local pub – that under his watch as CIA Director:
We lied, cheated, we stole we had entire training courses.'
It may have been one of the few times in his wretched existence that Pompeo didn't speak with a forked tongue.
At all events, his candour aside, we can assume safely that this reactionary, monomaniacal, Christian Zionist 'end-timer' passed
all the Company's "training courses" with flying colours.
According to Matthew Rosenberg
of the New York Times, all this did not stop Pompeo however from name-checking Wikileaks when it served his own interests. Back
in 2016 at the height of the election campaign, he had ' no compunction about pointing people toward emails stolen* by Russian hackers
from the Democratic National Committee and then posted by WikiLeaks."
[NOTE: Rosenberg's omission of the word "allegedly" -- as in "emails allegedly stolen" -- is a dead giveaway of bias on his part
(a journalistic Freudian slip perhaps?), with his employer
being one of those MSM marques leading the charge with the "Russian Collusion" 'story'. For a more insightful view of the source
of these emails and the skullduggery and thuggery that attended Russia-Gate, readers are encouraged to
check this out.]
And this is of course The Company we're talking about, whose past and present relationship with the media might be summed up in
two words:
Operation Mockingbird (OpMock). Anyone vaguely familiar with the well-documented Grand Deception that was OpMock, arguably the
CIA's most enduring, insidious, and successful
psy-ops gambit, will know what
we're talking about. (See
here ,
here ,
here , and
here .) At its most basic, this operation was all about propaganda and censorship, usually operating in tandem to ensure all
the bases are covered.
After opining that the MSM is 'totally infiltrated' by the CIA and various other agencies, for his part former NSA whistleblower
William Binney recently added , ' When it
comes to national security, the media only talk about what the administration wants you to hear, and basically suppress any other
statements about what's going on that the administration does not want get public. The media is basically the lapdogs for the government.'
We know our disinformation program is complete when almost everything the American public believes is false.'
In order to provide a broader and deeper perspective, we should now consider the views of a few others on the subjects at hand,
along with some history. In a 2013 piece musing on the modern significance of the practice, my compatriot John Pilger
ecalled a time when he met
Leni Riefenstahl
back in 70s and asked her about her films that 'glorified the Nazis'.
Using groundbreaking camera and lighting techniques, Riefenstahl produced a documentary that mesmerized Germans; as Pilger
noted, her Triumph of the Will 'cast Adolf Hitler's
spell'. She told the veteran Aussie journalist the "messages" of her films were dependent not on "orders from above", but on the
"submissive void" of the public.
All in all, Riefenstahl produced arguably for the rest of the world the most compelling historical footage of mass hysteria,
blind obedience, nationalistic fervour, and existential menace, all key ingredients in anyone's totalitarian nightmare. That it also
impressed a lot of very powerful, high profile people in the West on both sides of the pond is also axiomatic: These included
bankers, financiers, industrialists,
and sundry business elites without whose support Hitler might've at best ended up a footnote in the historical record after the
ill-fated
beer-hall
putsch. (See
here , and here .)
" Triumph " apparently still resonates today. To the surprise of few one imagines, such was the impact of the film -- as casually
revealed in the excellent 2018 Alexis Bloom documentary Divide and
Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes -- it elicited no small amount of admiration from arguably the single most influential propagandist
of recent times.
[Readers might wish to check out Russell Crowe's recent portrayal of Ailes in Stan's mini-series
The Loudest Voice , in my view one the best performances of the man's career.]
In a recent piece unambiguously titled "Propaganda Is The Root Of All Our Problems", my other compatriot Caitlin Johnstone also
had a few things to
say about the subject, echoing Orwell when she observed it was all about "controlling the narrative".
Though I'd suggest the greater "root" problem is our easy propensity to ignore this reality, pretend it doesn't or won't affect
us, or reject it as conspiratorial nonsense, in this, of course, she's correct. As she cogently observes,
I write about this stuff for a living, and even I don't have the time or energy to write about every single narrative control
tool that the US-centralised empire has been implementing into its arsenal. There are too damn many of them emerging too damn
fast, because they're just that damn crucial for maintaining existing power structures.'
Fittingly, in a discussion encompassing amongst other things history, language, power, and dissent, he opined, ' Determining how
individuals communicate is' an objective which represents for the power elites 'the best chance' [they] have to control what people
think. This translates as: The more control 'we' have over what the proles think, the more 'we' can reduce the inherent risk for
elites in democracy.
' Clumsy men', Saul went on to say, 'try to do this through power and fear. Heavy-handed men running heavy-handed systems attempt
the same thing through police-enforced censorship. The more sophisticated the elites, the more they concentrate on creating intellectual
systems which control expression through the communications structures. These systems require only the discreet use of censorship
and uniformed men.'
In other words, along with assuming it is their right to take it in the first place, ' those who take power will always try to
change the established language ', presumably to better facilitate their hold on it and/or legitimise their claim to it.
For Oliver Boyd-Barrett, democratic theory presupposes a public communications infrastructure that facilitates the free and open
exchange of ideas.' Yet for the author of the recently published
RussiaGate and Propaganda: Disinformation in the Age of Social Media , 'No such infrastructure exists.'
The mainstream media he says, is 'owned and controlled by a small number of large, multi-media and multi-industrial conglomerates'
that lie at the very heart of US oligopoly capitalism and much of whose advertising revenue and content is furnished from other conglomerates:
The inability of mainstream media to sustain an information environment that can encompass histories, perspectives and vocabularies
that are free of the shackles of US plutocratic self-regard is also well documented.'
Of course the word "inability" suggests the MSM view themselves as having some responsibility for maintaining such an egalitarian
news and information environment. They don't of course, and in truth, probably never really have! A better word would be "unwilling",
or even "refusal". The corporate media all but epitomise the " plutocratic self-regard" that is characteristic of "oligopoly capitalism".
Indeed, the MSM collectively functions as advertising, public relations/lobbying entities for Big Corp, in addition to acting
as its Praetorian bodyguard , protecting their secrets,
crimes, and lies from exposure. Like all other companies they are beholden to their shareholders (profits before truth and people),
most of whom it can safely be assumed are no strangers to "self-regard", and could care less about " histories, perspectives and
vocabularies" that run counter to their own interests.
It was Aussie social scientist Alex Carey who
pioneered the study of nationalism ,
corporatism , and moreso for our purposes herein, the
management (read: manipulation) of public opinion, though all three have important links (a story for another time). For Carey, the
following conclusion was inescapable: 'It is arguable that the success of business propaganda in persuading us, for so long, that
we are free from propaganda is one of the most significant propaganda achievements of the twentieth century.' This former farmer
from Western Australia became one of the world's acknowledged experts on propaganda and the manipulation of the truth.
Prior to embarking on his academic career, Carey was a successful sheep
grazier . By all accounts, he was a first-class judge of the
animal from which he made his early living, leaving one to ponder if this expertise gave him a unique insight into his main area
of research!
In any event, Carey in time sold the farm and travelled to the U.K. to study psychology, apparently a long-time ambition. From
the late fifties until his death in 1988, he was a senior lecturer in psychology and industrial relations at the Sydney-based University
of New South Wales, with his research being lauded by such luminaries as Noam Chomsky and John Pilger, both of whom have had a thing
or three to say over the years about The Big Shill. In fact such was his admiration, Pilger
described him as "a second Orwell", which in anyone's lingo
is a big call.
In fact, for anyone with an interest in how public opinion is moulded and our perceptions are managed and manipulated, in whose
interests they are done so and to what end, it is as essential reading as any of the work of other more famous names. This tome came
complete with a foreword by Chomsky, so enamoured was the latter of Carey's work.
For Carey, the three "most significant developments" in the political economy of the twentieth century were:
the growth of democracy the growth of corporate power; and the growth of propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against
democracy.
For Carey, it is an axiom of conventional wisdom that the use of propaganda as a means of social and ideological control is 'distinctive'
of totalitarian regimes. Yet as he stresses: the most minimal exercise of common sense would suggest a different view: that propaganda
is likely to play at least as important a part in democratic societies (where the existing distribution of power and privilege is
vulnerable to quite limited changes in popular opinion) as in authoritarian societies (where it is not).' In this context, 'conventional
wisdom" becomes conventional ignorance; as for "common sense", maybe not so much.
The purpose of this propaganda
barrage, as Sharon Bader has noted, has been to convince as many people as
possible that it is in their interests to relinquish their own power as workers, consumers, and citizens, and 'forego their democratic
right to restrain and regulate business activity. As a result the political agenda is now confined to policies aimed at furthering
business interests.'
An extreme example of this view playing itself right under our noses and over decades was the cruel fiction of the "
trickle down effect " (TDE) -- aka the 'rising tide that would lift all yachts' -- of
Reaganomics . One of several mantras that defined Reagan's
overarching political shtick, the TDE was by any measure, decidedly more a torrent than a trickle, and said "torrent" was going up
not down. This reality as we now know was not in Reagan's glossy economic brochure to be sure, and it may have been because the Gipper
confused his prepositions and verbs.
Yet as the GFC of 2008 amply demonstrated, it culminated in a free-for all, dog eat dog, anything goes, everyman for himself form
of cannibal (or anarcho) capitalism -- an updated, much
improved version of the no-holds-barred mercenary mercantilism much reminiscent of the
Gilded Age and the
Robber Barons who 'infested' it, only one
that doesn't just eat its young, it eats itself!
Making the World Safe for Plutocracy
In the increasingly dysfunctional, one-sided political economy we inhabit then, whether it's widgets or wars or anything in between,
few people realise the degree to which our opinions, perceptions, emotions, and views are shaped and manipulated by propaganda (and
its similarly 'evil twin' censorship ,) its most adept practitioners, and those elite, institutional, political, and corporate entities
that seek out their expertise.
It is now just over a hundred years since the practice of propaganda took a giant leap forward, then in the service of persuading
palpably reluctant Americans that the war raging in Europe at the time was their war as well.
This was at a time when Americans had just voted their then-president
Woodrow Wilson back into office for a second term, a victory
largely achieved on the back of the promise he'd
"keep us out of the War." Americans were
very much in what was one of their most
isolationist
phases , and so Wilson's promise resonated with them.
But over time they were convinced of the need to become involved by a distinctly different appeal to their political sensibilities.
This "appeal" also dampened the isolationist mood, one which it has to be said was not embraced by most of the political, banking,
and business elites of the time, most of whom stood to lose big-time if the Germans won, and/or who were already profiting or benefitting
from the business of war.
For a president who "kept us out of the war", this wasn't going to be an easy 'pitch'. In order to sell the war the president
established the Committee on Public Information
(aka the Creel Committee) for the purposes of publicising the rationale for the war and from there, garnering support for it
from the general public.
Either way, Bernays 'combined their perspectives and synthesised them into an applied science', which he then 'branded' "public
relations".
For its part the Creel committee struggled with its brief from the off; but Bernays worked with them to persuade Americans their
involvement in the war was justified -- indeed necessary -- and to that end he devised the brilliantly inane slogan,
"making the world safe for democracy"
.
Thus was born arguably the first
great propaganda catch-phrases of the modern era, and certainly one of the most portentous. The following sums up Bernays's unabashed
mindset:
The conscious, intelligent manipulation of the organised habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic
society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power
of our country.'
The rest is history (sort of), with Americans becoming more willing to not just support the war effort but encouraged to view
the Germans and their allies as evil brutes threatening democracy and freedom and the 'American way of life', however that might've
been viewed then. From a geopolitical and historical perspective, it was an asinine premise of course, but nonetheless an extraordinary
example of how a few well chosen words tapped into the collective psyche of a country that was decidedly opposed to any U.S involvement
in the war and turned that mindset completely on its head.
' [S]aving the world for democracy' (or some 'cover version' thereof) has since become America's positioning statement, 'patriotic'
rallying cry, and the "Get-out-of-Jail Free" card for its war and its white collar criminal clique.
At all events it was by any measure, a stroke of genius on Bernays's part; by appealing to people's basic fears and desires, he
could engineer consent on a mass scale. It goes without saying it changed the course of history in more ways than one. That the U.S.
is to this day still using a not dissimilar meme to justify its
"foreign entanglements" is testament to both its utility and durability.
The reality as we now know was markedly different of course. They have almost always been about power, empire, control, hegemony,
resources, wealth, opportunity, profit, dispossession, keeping existing capitalist structures intact and well-defended, and crushing
dissent and opposition.
The Bewildered Herd
It is instructive to note that the template for 'manufacturing consent' for war had already been forged by the British. And the
Europeans did not 'sleepwalk'
like some " bewildered herd ' into this conflagration.
For twenty years prior to the outbreak of the war in 1914, the then stewards of the British Empire had been diligently preparing
the ground for what they viewed as a preordained clash with their rivals for empire the Germans.
To begin with, contrary to the opinion of the general populace over one hundred years later, it was not the much touted German
aggression and militarism, nor their undoubted imperial ambitions, which precipitated its outbreak. The stewards of the British Empire
were not about to let the Teutonic upstarts chow down on their imperial lunch as it were, and set about unilaterally and preemptively
crushing Germany and with it any ambitions it had for creating its own imperial domain in competition with the Empire upon which
Ol' Sol never set.
The "Great War" is worth noting here for other reasons. As documented so by Jim Macgregor and Gerry Docherty in their two books
covering the period from 1890-1920, we learn much about propaganda, which attest to its extraordinary power, in particular its
power to distort
reality en masse in enduring and subversive ways.
In reality, the only thing "great" about World War One was the degree to which the masses fighting for Britain were conned via
propaganda and censorship into believing this war was necessary, and the way the official narrative of the war was sustained for
posterity via the very same means. "Great" maybe, but not in a good way!
The horrendous carnage and destruction that resulted from it was of course unprecedented, the global effects of which linger on
now well over one hundred years later.
Such was the
enduring power
of the propaganda that today most folks would have great difficulty in accepting the following; this is a short summary of historical
realities revealed by Macgregor and Docherty that are at complete odds with the official narrative, the political discourse, and
the school textbooks:
It was Great Britain (supported by France and Russia) and not Germany who was the principal aggressor in the events and actions that
let to the outbreak of war; The British had for twenty years prior to 1914 viewed Germany as its most dangerous economic and imperial
rival, and fully anticipated that a war was inevitable; In the U.K. and the U.S., various factions worked feverishly to ensure the
war went on for as long as possible, and scuttled peacemaking efforts from the off; key truths about this most consequential of geopolitical
conflicts have been concealed for well over one hundred years, with no sign the official record will change; very powerful forces
(incl. a future US president) amongst U.S. political, media, and economic elites conspired to eventually convince an otherwise unwilling
populace in America that U.S. entry onto the war was necessary; those same forces and many similar groups in the U.K. and Europe
engaged in everything from war profiteering, destruction/forging of war records, false-flag ops, treason, conspiracy to wage aggressive
war, and direct efforts to prolong the war by any means necessary, many of which will rock folks to their very core.
But peace was not on the agenda. When, by 1916, the military failures were so embarrassing and costly, some key players in the
British government were willing to talk about peace. This could not be tolerated. The potential peacemakers had to be thrown under
the bus. The unelected European leaders had one common bond: They would fight Germany until she was crushed.
Prolonging the Agony details how this secret cabal organised to this end the change of government without a single vote being
cast. David Lloyd George was promoted to prime minister
in Britain and Georges Clemenceau made prime minister
in France. A new government, an inner-elite war cabinet thrust the Secret Elite leader, Lord
Alfred Milner into power at the very inner-core of the
decision-makers in British politics.
Democracy? They had no truck with democracy. The voting public had no say. The men entrusted with the task would keep going till
the end and their place-men were backed by the media and the money-power, in Britain, France and America.
Propaganda Always Wins
But just as the pioneering adherents of propaganda back in the day might never have dreamt how sophisticated and all-encompassing
the practice would become, nor would the citizenry at large have anticipated the extent to which the industry has facilitated an
entrenched, rapacious plutocracy at the expense of our economic opportunity, our financial and material security, our physical, social
and cultural environment, our values and attitudes, and increasingly, our basic democratic rights and freedoms.
We now live in the Age of the Big Shill -- cocooned in a submissive void no less -- an era where nothing can be taken on face
value yet where time and attention constraints (to name just a few) force us to do so; [where] few people in public life can be taken
at their word; where unchallenged perceptions become accepted reality; where 'open-book' history is now incontrovertible not-negotiable,
upon pain of imprisonment fact; where education is about uniformity, function, form and conformity, all in the service of imposed
neo-liberal ideologies embracing then prioritising individual -- albeit dubious -- freedoms.
More broadly, it's the "Roger Ailes" of this world -- acting on behalf of the power elites who after all are their paymasters
-- who create the intellectual systems which control expression through the communications structures, whilst ensuring these systems
require only 'the discreet use of censorship and uniformed men.'
They are the shapers and moulders of the discourse that passes for the accepted lingua franca of the increasingly globalised,
interconnected, corporatised political economy of the planet. Throughout this process they 'will always try to change the established
language.'
And we can no longer rely on our elected representatives to honestly represent us and our interests. Whether this decision making
is taking place inside or outside the legislative process, these processes are well and truly in the grip of the banks and financial
institutions and transnational organisations. In whose interests are they going to be more concerned with?
We saw this all just after the
Global Financial Crisis
(GFC) when the very people who brought the system to the brink, made billions off the dodge for their banks and millions for
themselves, bankrupted hundreds of thousands of American families, were called upon by the U.S. government to fix up the mess, and
to all intents given a blank cheque to so do.
That the U.S. is at even greater risk now of economic
implosion is something few serious pundits would dispute, and a testament to the effectiveness of the snow-job perpetrated upon Americans
regarding the causes, the impact, and the implications of the 2008 meltdown going forward.
In most cases, one accepts almost by definition such disconnects (read: hidden agendas) are the rule rather than the exception,
hence the multi-billion foundation -- and global reach and impact -- of the propaganda business. This in itself is a key indicator
as to why organisations place so much importance on this aspect of managing their affairs.
At the very least, once corporations saw how the psychology of persuasion could be leveraged to manipulate consumers and politicians
saw the same with the citizenry and even its own workers, the growth of the industry was assured.
As Riefenstahl noted during her chinwag with Pilger after he asked if those embracing the "submissive void" included the liberal,
educated bourgeoisie? " Everyone ," she said.
By way of underscoring her point, she added enigmatically: 'Propaganda always wins if you allow it'.
Greg Maybury is a freelance writer based in Perth, Australia. His main areas of interest are American history and politics
in general, with a special focus on economic, national security, military, and geopolitical affairs. For 5 years he has regularly
contributed to a diverse range of news and opinion sites, including OpEd News, The Greanville Post, Consortium News, Dandelion Salad,
Global Research, Dissident Voice, OffGuardian, Contra Corner, International Policy Digest, the Hampton Institute, and others.
nottheonly1
This brilliant essay is proof of the reflective nature of the Universe. The worse the propaganda and oppression becomes, the greater
the likelihood such an essay will be written.
Such is the sophistication and ubiquity of the narrative control techniques used today -- afforded increasingly by 'computational
propaganda' via automated scripts, hacking, botnets, troll farms, and algorithms and the like, along with the barely veiled
censorship and information gatekeeping practised by Google and Facebook and other tech behemoths -- it's become one of the
most troubling aspects of the technological/social media revolution.
Very rarely can one experience such a degree of vindication. My moniker 'nottheonly1' has received more meaning with this precise
depiction of the long history of the manipulation of the masses. Recent events have destroyed but all of my confidence that there
might be a peaceful way out of this massive dilemma. Due to this sophistication in controlling the narrative, it has now become
apparent that we have arrived at a moment in time where total lawlessness reigns. 'Lawlessness' in this case means the loss of
common law and the use of code law to create ever new restrictions for free speech and liberty at large.
Over the last weeks, comments written on other discussion boards have unleashed a degree of character defamation and ridicule
for the most obvious crimes perpetrated on the masses through propaganda. In this unholy union of constant propaganda via main
stream 'media' with the character defamation by so called 'trolls' – which are actually virtual assassins of those who write the
truth – the ability of the population, or parts thereof to connect with, or search for like minded people is utterly destroyed.
This assault on the online community has devastating consequences. Those who have come into the cross hairs of the unintelligence
agencies will but turn away from the internet. Leaving behind an ocean of online propaganda and fake information. Few are now
the web sites on which it is possible to voice one's personal take on the status quo.
There is one word that describes these kind of activities precisely: traitor. Those who engage in the character defamation
of commenters, or authors per se, are traitors to humanity. They betray the collective consciousness with their poisonous attacks
of those who work for a sea change of the status quo. The owner class has all game pieces positioned. The fact that Julian Assange
is not only a free man, but still without a Nobel price for peace, while war criminals are recipients, shows just how much the
march into absolute totalitarianism has progressed. Bernays hated the masses and offered his 'services' to manipulate them often
for free.
Even though there are more solutions than problems, the time has come where meaningful participation in the search for such
solution has been made unbearable. It is therefore that a certain fatalism has developed – from resignation to the acceptance
of the status quo as being inevitable. Ancient wisdom has created a proverb that states 'This too, will pass'. While that is a
given, there are still enough Human Beings around that are determined to make a difference. To this group I count the author of
this marvelous, albeit depressing essay. Thank you more that words can express. And thank you, OffGuardian for being one of the
last remaining places where discourse is possible.
Really great post! Thanks. I'm part of the way through reading Alex Carey's book: "Taking the Risk Out of Democracy: Corporate
Propaganda Versus Freedom and Liberty," referenced in this article. I've learned more about the obviously verifiable history of
U.S. corporate propaganda in the first four chapters than I learned gaining a "minor" in history in 1974 (not surprisingly I can
now clearly see). I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in just how pervasive, entrenched and long-standing are the
propaganda systems shaping public perception, thought and behavior in America and the West.
Norcal
Wow Greg Maybury great essay, congratulations. This quote is brilliant, I've never see it before, "For Carey, the following conclusion
was inescapable: 'It is arguable that the success of business propaganda in persuading us, for so long, that we are free from
propaganda is one of the most significant propaganda achievements of the twentieth century.' "
Too, Rodger Ailes was the man credited with educating Nixon up as how to "use" the TV media, and Ailes never looked back as
he manipulated media at will. Thank you!
nondimenticare
That is also one of the basic theses of Harold Pinter's Nobel Prize speech.
vexarb
I read in 'Guns, Germs and Steel' about Homo Sapiens and his domesticated animals. Apparently we got on best in places where we
could find animals that are very like us: sheep, cattle, horses and other herd animals which instinctively follow their Leader.
I think our cousins the chimpanzee are much the same; both species must have inherited this common trait from some pre-chimpanzee
ancestor who had found great survival value in passing on the sheeple trait to their progeny. As have the sheep themselves.
By the way, has anybody observed sheeple behaviour in ants and bees? For instance, quietly following a Leader ant to their
doom, or noisily ganging up to mob a worker bee that the Queen does not like?
I'd say the elites are both for and against. Competing factions.
It's clear that many are interested in overturning democracy, whilst others want to exploit it.
The average grunt on the street is in the fire, regardless of the pan chosen by the elites.
That suggest that FBI actions were influenced by Obama administration and CIA to much greater
expent thatn we assuned.
Notable quotes:
"... It may be that much of the dossier was created out of whole cloth by Nellie Ohr who was tasked to create a narrative that jibed with Simpson's political objectives. ..."
"... The ukraine is probably behind a great deal of the "info" the democrats and fib used.. ..."
In reviewing these 302s there are some salient points I want to bring to your attention.
First, Christopher Steele was terminated as an FBI Confidential Human Source at the end of
September 2016 for leaking to the press. That should have put an end to the relationship.
Instead, the FBI starts using Bruce Ohr, the number four guy at the Department of Justice, as a
cutout. Absolutely no justification for this kind of behavior by the FBI. It is, at a minimum,
unethical and creates a real problem if any of the info collected from Ohr was to be used in a
court proceeding. Something known as the "fruit of the poisonous tree" would kick in and the
so-called evidence proffered by Ohr would be inadmissible or unusable because of Steele's
previous lies to the FBI.
Second, Glenn Simpson played a huge role in helping spread anti-Trump propaganda generated
by Steele. In fact, it was Simpson's insistence on Steele speaking with the press that got
Steele terminated as an FBI source.
Third, the FBI knew by mid-December 2016 that Bruce Ohr's wife, Nellie, was working with
Simpson and Steele. This too should have set off alarm bells about the potential conflicts of
interest and unethical conduct.
Fourth, evidence used ultimately against Paul Manafort came from Nellie Ohr. If this was not
disclosed to Manafort's attorney's there is a likely Brady violation, which bolster's
Manafort's prospects for an appeal.
Fifth, Steele and Simpson made several claims of fact about Russia ties to the Trump
campaign that were later proven to be false. For example, stating that Michael Cohen was in
Prague meeting the Russians. Important to note that Christopher Steele produced the final
report of the so-called dossier bearing his name on 13 December 2016 yet this information was
"passed" to Ohr one day prior to the date on the report.
Sixth, the "debriefing" of Ohr on 12 December 2016 also provided the foundation for going
after Marina Butina. (See Sara Carter's excellent update on this case
here ). The false information from Steele/Simpson via Bruce Ohr became the pretext for
launching an investigation of Butina, who was working for a wealthy Russian banker, Alexander
Torshin. This too turns out to have been a fabrication. I believe this provides Butina's
attorneys more ammunition for arguing prosecutorial misconduct and failure to provide critical
Brady material.
Seventh, Ohr's report that Simpson and Steele were communicating with the State Department,
including Assistant Secretary Victoria Nuland and Kathleen Kavalec makes it clear that State
Department was used as a front to pass on info from the questionable Steele Dossier. This
information was used in the FISA warrant and provided a seemingly reliable justification for
spying on Carter Page (see the Page FISA warrant here
.)
And finally, Fusion GPS, which was hired on behalf of the Clinton Campaign, was regularly
communicating and coordinating with Obama's Department of Justice and Department of State. This
was a complete abuse of power.
Now, here is the summary of the 302s:
11/22/2016 (entered on 12/19/2006)
Ohr met with Steele in 2007 (not sure of date) at a conference.
July 30, 2016 Steele met Ohr for breakfast. Steele claimed Carter Page had met with Russian
Sechin at a conference.
States that Glenn Simpson hired Steele and Ohr's wife to dig up dirt on Trump's connections
to Russia.
Noted that reporting was going to the Clinton Campaign, Jonathan Winer and the FBI.
Ohr met with Steele in late September and was told about Alfa Bank ties to Trump and the
Sergei Millian organization.
Noted that Steele was desperate to stop Trump and to thwart the Kremlin.
Ohr knew that Glenn Simpson and "others" were meeting with Victoria Nuland.
12/05/2016 (entered on 12/19/2016) (drafted on 12/12/2016)
Glenn Simpson directed Christopher Steele to speak to the press, including David Corn at
Mother Jones.
Ohr provided FBI info on Manafort Chronology prepared by his wife.
12/12/2016 (entered on 12/19/2016) (Drafted on 12/14/2016)
Ohr states, per Simpson, that Cohen replaced Manafort and Page as the contact with the
Russians.
Says that Cohen met with Russians in Prague.
Claims that Torshin is a Russian mobster and is trying to infiltrate the NRA and was pushing
money to Trump.
Simpson opined that Sergei Millian was an SVR officer and a link to Trump.
12/20/2016 (entered on 12/27/2016)
Thumb drive with Nelly Ohr's research passed to FBI.
1/23/2017 (entered on 1/31/2017) (drafted on 1/25/2017)
Simpson tells Ohr a source will be outed in the coming days.
Steele claims he met with a McCain staffer prior to October 2016
1/25/017 (entered on 1/27/2017)
Ohr spoke with Steele on 25 January 2017.
1/27/2017 (entered on 1/27/2017)
Steele told Ohr he wanted to keep lines of communication open.
02/06/2017 (entered on 02/08/2017)
Ohr contacted by Steele via What'sApp on 31 January 2017. Was reacting to firing of Sally
Yates. Worried that if Ohr got fired he would have no one to talk to.
"Interviewing agents asked Ohr to ask Steele if he would be comfortable getting the name of
an FBI agent."
Ohr reminded agents that Steele had spoken several times prior to 2016 Presidential election
with Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kathleen Kavalec. Ohr identified one of the sources
for Steele's report as a Ukranian.
02/14/2017 (entered on 02/15/2017)
Ohr tells FBI about Steele's concerns about his business. Identifies other lawyer (name
blacked out) he is working with. Steele is preparing a proposal to re-establish his business
releationship with the FBI.
05/08/2017 (entered on 05/10/2017)
Steele tells Ohr that he is worried about Comey's upcoming testimony. Ohr tells Steele what
Comey will say and Steele is "happy."
Ohr said that Glenn Simpson would be visiting Steele soon.
As an aside, note the similarities between Steele and Downer. Both carried some imprimatur of
credibility based on prior government service, and popped up from no where and returned to
relative obscurity after producing a document that was able to be immediately misused by
others for the same purpose.
I'd wondered why anyone would want to involve Downer in these events, the man is a moron.
However, one of his greatest strengths is producing wonderful well written reports, and to
that extent would appear to have been chosen well.
It is, however despicable the whole story is, suggesting - and in its own way entertaining -
that apparently the experienced gutter lady "Eff the EU" Nuland was also involved, probably
bringing in her ... regime change experience aquired in the Ukraine.
I wonder, did she ever say "Eff the Orange Man too"? Alas. Either way, more interesting to
me is whether she also handed out cookies to Steel and/or Ohr?
As far as financial price of the Ohr & Steel operation goes, compared to the 5+
billion that were according to Nuland proudly poured into Ukraine to get Maidan and backstab
Janukowytsch, hiring Steel to backstab somebody else - Trump - was probably way cheaper -
i.e. 'however illegal, it was more economic'.
That said, I detested Nuland well before this story for her Maidan stuntery and the "Eff
the EU" arrogance, but then, she really made it easy even for an at time even more benevolent
observer.
But the big question that I would be interested to get opinions on is this:
when is all this stuff going to be revealed in a way that not even the readers of the WaPo
NYT et al can deny thet the entire Russia collusion/interference story is false from
beginning to end?
The longer the Russia-interfered-in-our-election-and-everybody-else's lie is perpetrated,
the closer we all get to nuclear annihilation. So it's a matter of some importance.
Any ideas?
One that occurs to me is that nothing will happen -- it will all dribble out over such a long
time that nothing will ever be ever dramatic and simple enough to make an effect.
My other thought is that Trump & Co wants the big explosive revelations to hit the
street next Mar/Apr so as to destroy the Dems in 2020.
But many of us have known the general outline of the conspiracy for a couple of years, but
nothing big ever hits the street and the lies get dug in a little deeper every day that
they're not exploded.
So, state department honchos--Victoria Nuland, Kavalec and Sally Yates (DOJ)--all had some
knowledge of what was going on, right? And so did national security advisor Susan Rice.
Doesn't that prove that Obama must have been in the loop?
I think it does.
Second, how much of Nellie Ohr's russia research actually ended up in the steele dossier?
I think that it is very unlikely that Chris Steele maintained his sketchy connections in
Russia after the seismic political changes in the early 2000s. It may be that much of the
dossier was created out of whole cloth by Nellie Ohr who was tasked to create a narrative
that jibed with Simpson's political objectives.
"... Like the Wolfowitz explanation of the Iraq War, Russiagate is the idea around which varied interests can be organized. Cold Warriors like to hate on Russia. It justifies arms spending and their own importance. Clintonistas need an excuse to distract from her being a loser. The DNC needs an excuse for manipulating the candidate selection in favor of donor interests. "Moderates" need a distraction from their ongoing refusal to address the interests of voters. ..."
Like the Wolfowitz explanation of the Iraq War, Russiagate is the idea around which
varied interests can be organized. Cold Warriors like to hate on Russia. It justifies arms
spending and their own importance. Clintonistas need an excuse to distract from her being a
loser. The DNC needs an excuse for manipulating the candidate selection in favor of donor
interests. "Moderates" need a distraction from their ongoing refusal to address the interests
of voters.
"... That was while Robert Mueller ran the Bureau, which means everything about Epstein's blackmail and kompromat operation has been tucked safely away out of sight in FBI files for at least a decade. Much longer, new evidence shows. ..."
"... *CIA Acknowledged in 2003, It Knew that Ghislaine Maxwell's Late Father was a Major Foreign Intelligence Agent Operating Inside the U.S. ..."
"... That Robert Maxwell was a ruthless, corrupt, tax-dodging international businessman who served as an Israeli agent is highly probable. ..."
"... For the first time, Maxwell had failed to get his own way. He started to threaten and bluster. He then demanded that, for past services, he should receive immediately a quick fix of £400million to bale him out of his financial difficulties. ..."
"... Instead of providing the money, a small group of Mossad officers set about planning his murder. They feared that he was going to publicly expose all Mossad had done in the time he worked for them. They knew that he was gradually becoming mentally unstable and paranoid. He was taking a cocktail of drugs - Halcion and Zanax - which had serious side effects. ..."
"... Then Maxwell was contacted. He was told to fly to Gibraltar, go aboard the Lady Ghislaine and sail to the Canary Islands. There at sea he would receive his £400million quick fix in the form of a banker's draft. Maxwell did as he was told. ..."
"... As Victor Ostrovsky, a former Mossad agent told us: "On that cold night Mossad's problems with Robert Maxwell were over." ..."
"... The incontrovertible facts about his murder are contained in a previously-unseen autopsy report by Britain's then-leading forensic pathologist Dr Iain West and Israel State Pathologist Dr Yehuda Hiss. Of all the documents in our possession, these reports confirm the truth about Maxwell's death. ..."
"... Boy that Mueller has had a busy career hasn't he? Didn't he start out in Chicago where he gave Whitey Bulgar cover for being a mob boss? Then there's his cover up before and after 9/11. The weapons of mass destruction that he said Saddam had. The anthrax prosecution, Epstein's pedophilia cover up, HSBC and now he is trying to cover Hillary's buttocks. And maybe Obama's? I'm sure I've missed a few things that he did or didn't do. ..."
"... Acosta was told to stand down by someone at the top of the food chain. Mueller. Ugh what a slimy piece of work he is. But not to the Russia Gaters. Oh no. "He is a highly decorated marine who takes no guff from anyone. ..."
"... In that time, he had free access to Margaret Thatcher's Downing Street, to Ronald Reagan's White House, to the Kremlin and to the corridors of power throughout Europe. ..."
"... Inquiring minds want to know did Maxwell have access to Margaret and Ron because they liked him or because he had something on them? ..."
"... Epstein is the destruction of the Deep State. ..."
"... That pedophelia and politics scandal, better known as the Franklin Coverup, made the papers for a few months, too, before it was made to go away. Similarly, a couple of the operators served some time on reduced charges after that one. ..."
"... The two main suspects in the Bush, Sr. White House child ring were Craig Spence and Lawrence E. King Jr. King sang the National anthem at two GOP national conventions. He served time in jail for bank fraud. Spence was a Republican lobbyist before he committed suicide. Several of his partners went to jail for being involved in the adult part of the homosexual prostitution ring. ..."
"... Mueller's scrupulous avoidance of the CIA link in his prosecution of Manuel Noriega and his diversion of the PanAm 103 bombing and framing of two Libyans. Bobby Mueller has been a real go to guy when the security establishment needs a phony investigation. ..."
"... Bobby Mueller has been a real go to guy when the security establishment needs a phony investigation. ..."
"... The anthrax investigation is the most serious of his crimes. Mueller is being sued by his lead investigator in that case. ..."
"... Every now and then, here and there the curtain lifts for a moment and the political elite of a country, the business elite, the spy services, the military, and organized crime are revealed to be all working together, indeed practically joined at the hip ..."
"... partnership started during the early Cold War with US intelligence officers facilitating the drug trade out of Turkey and Burma through Europe. That soon spread to the Americas and globally. Covert operations such as Gladio, Condor, and the Safari Club, and associated banks (Franklin National Bank, BCCI, Riggs Bank, HSBC, etc.) produced massive human rights violations, transnational terrorism and governmental corruption. The CIA's secret wars provided funds and official cover for private-public sector alliance of criminals, bankers and spooks around the world. ..."
"... The CIA, MI6 and Mossad ran overlapping coordinated operations using privateers, paramilitaries and organized crime networks that consumed vast amounts of cash generated by money laundering mechanisms. Enriched by the looting of the former Soviet Union, along with the infusion of Arab oil money (the Saudi Yamamah slush fund), the "Octopus" became the instrument of Oligarchs that have thoroughly corrupted western governments and secret services. ..."
"... The Snowden release included a number of documents that illustrate the on-line entrapment and political disruption activities run by the two main communications intelligence agencies. ..."
"... Epstein recruits young girls, throws parties where he invites potential hedge fund clients, lets nature take its course and films the proceedings, extracts blackmail in the form of investments to his (largely fake) hedge fund, which actually just buys an index fund (no actual fund management required). He takes a percentage from the coerced investments. Nobody talks because they have too much to lose. No suspicious payments to raise eyebrows at the IRS. ..."
"... Epstein brought in the clients. The CIA/MI-6/Mossad provided necessary cover from the FBI and local cops - then, three or four agencies shared the intelligence take, as they had for decades from Robert Maxwell's operations. ..."
"... For Ghislaine, it was simply carrying on the family business for fun and profit. For the spooks, it was business as usual going back to the Green House, the Berlin bordello founded in the the 1870s by Wilhelm Steiber, a Prussian Police section chief, to provide useful intelligence to Bismarck's Military Intelligence, which he reorganized. ..."
"... Epstein is also well acquainted with University President Lawrence H. Summers. The two serve together on the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations, two elite international relations organizations. ..."
"... Epstein's relationships within the academy are remarkable since the tycoon, who has amassed his fortune by managing the wealth of billionaires from his private Caribbean island, does not hold a bachelor's degree. ..."
"... There's a rocky road ahead for Larry Summers. Summers introduces Epstein into the Harvard fold, but becomes reckless with his newly-refined Neoliberalism and his opinions concerning "lady scholars." ..."
That was while Robert Mueller ran the Bureau, which means everything about Epstein's blackmail and kompromat operation
has been tucked safely away out of sight in FBI files for at least a decade. Much longer, new evidence shows.
The real question is, why did the FBI wait for more than a decade to bust Epstein and Maxwell?
Epstein and Maxwell came to the attention of the FBI in 1996, when, curiously, the Bureau never acted on an accusation that
they had together sexually abused a 15 year old girl in a bedroom inside Epstein's Manhattan townhouse. Documents in a recent
law suit filed by an alleged victim, Maria Farmer, show that the FBI had been aware of Epstein and Maxwell's child abuse activities
in New York for at least a dozen years before Epstein was finally charged in 2008 with much-reduced Florida state offenses.
https://www.yourtango.com/2019323698/who-maria-farmer-latest-woman-accus...
Farmer claims she reported her sexual assault to New York police and the FBI in 1996. "To my knowledge, I was the first
person to report Maxwell and Epstein to the FBI," she wrote in her affidavit."
*CIA Acknowledged in 2003, It Knew that Ghislaine Maxwell's Late Father was a Major Foreign Intelligence Agent Operating
Inside the U.S.
Previously, Robert Maxwell, Ghislaine's father, had for many years been known to have been involved in high-level espionage
in the United States, as detailed in a 2003 publication of the CIA Center for the Study of Intelligence, The Intelligence Officer's
Bookshelf . Therein, the CIA reviewer of a biography by British author Gordon Thomas acknowledged about Maxwell:
https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-pub...
That Robert Maxwell was a ruthless, corrupt, tax-dodging international businessman who served as an Israeli agent is
highly probable.
For the deeper background to the Epstein-Maxwell multinational blackmail, coverup and kompromat operation, we have to
look at the events that led up to the 1991 death of Robert Maxwell. A summary of the Maxwell bio by its authors recounts:
British Publisher Robert Maxwell
Was Mossad Spy
By Gordon Thomas And Martin Dillon
The Mirror - UK
12-6-2002
[ . . .]
Eleven years after former Daily Mirror owner Robert Maxwell plunged from his luxury yacht to a watery grave, his death still
arouses intense interest.
Many different theories have circulated about what really happened on board the Lady Ghislaine that night in May 1991.
[ . . . ]
The Jewish millionaire and former Labour MP [born Ludvik Hoch
in Czechoslovakia] died the way he had lived - threatening.
He had threatened his wife. Threatened his children. Threatened the staff of this newspaper.
But finally he issued one threat too many - he threatened Mossad.
He told them that unless they gave him £400million to save his crumbling empire, he would expose all he had done for them.
In that time, he had free access to Margaret Thatcher's Downing Street, to Ronald Reagan's White House, to the Kremlin and
to the corridors of power throughout Europe.
On top of that he had built himself a position of power within the crime families of eastern Europe, teaching them how to
funnel their vast wealth from drugs, arms smuggling and prostitution to banks in safe havens around the globe.
Maxwell passed on all the secrets he learned to Mossad in Tel Aviv. In turn, they tolerated his excesses, vanities and insatiable
appetite for a luxurious lifestyle and women.
He told his controllers who they should target and how they should do it. He appointed himself as Israel's unofficial ambassador
to the Soviet Bloc. Mossad saw the advantage in that.
[ . . . ]
The more successful Maxwell became the more risks he took and the more dangerous he was to Mossad. At the same time, the
very public side of Maxwell, who then owned 400 companies, began to unwind.
He spent lavishly and lost money on deals. The more he lost, the more he tried to claw money from the banks. Then he saw
a way out of his problems.
He was approached by Vladimir Kryuchkov, head of the KGB. Spymaster and tycoon met in the utmost secrecy in the Kremlin.
Kryuchkov had an extraordinary proposal. He wanted Maxwell to help orchestrate the overthrow of Mikhail Gorbachev, the reformist
Soviet leader. That would bring to an end a fledgling democracy and a return to the Cold War days.
In return, Maxwell's massive debts would be wiped out by a grateful Kryuchkov, who planned to replace Gorbachev. The KGB
chief wanted Maxwell to use the Lady Ghislaine, named after Maxwell's daughter, as a meeting place between the Russian plotters,
Mossad chiefs and Israel's top politicians.
The plan was for the Israelis to go to Washington and say that democracy could not work in Russia and that it was better
to allow the country to return to a modified form of communism, which America could help to control. In return, Kryuchkov would
guarantee to free hundreds of thousands of Jews and dissidents in the Soviet republics.
Kryuchkov told Maxwell that he would be seen as a saviour of all those Jews. It was a proposal he could not refuse. But
when he put it to his Mossad controllers they were horrified. They said Israel would have no part in such a madcap plan.
For the first time, Maxwell had failed to get his own way. He started to threaten and bluster. He then demanded that,
for past services, he should receive immediately a quick fix of £400million to bale him out of his financial difficulties.
Instead of providing the money, a small group of Mossad officers set about planning his murder. They feared that he
was going to publicly expose all Mossad had done in the time he worked for them. They knew that he was gradually becoming mentally
unstable and paranoid. He was taking a cocktail of drugs - Halcion and Zanax - which had serious side effects.
The group of Mossad plotters sensed, like Solomon, he could bring their temple tumbling down and cause incalculable harm
to Israel. The plan to kill him was prepared in the utmost secrecy. A four-man squad was briefed.
Then Maxwell was contacted. He was told to fly to Gibraltar, go aboard the Lady Ghislaine and sail to the Canary Islands.
There at sea he would receive his £400million quick fix in the form of a banker's draft. Maxwell did as he was told.
On the night of November 4, 1991, the Lady Ghislaine, one of the world's biggest yachts, was at sea.
[ . . . ]
As Victor Ostrovsky, a former Mossad agent told us: "On that cold night Mossad's problems with Robert Maxwell were over."
The incontrovertible facts about his murder are contained in a previously-unseen autopsy report by Britain's then-leading
forensic pathologist Dr Iain West and Israel State Pathologist Dr Yehuda Hiss. Of all the documents in our possession, these
reports confirm the truth about Maxwell's death.
Gordon Thomas & Martin Dillon are authors of The Assassination of Robert Maxwell: Israel's Super Spy, published by Robson
Books.
The obvious question, why did the U.S. government let these intelligence crimes continue for decades, isn't being asked. The
answer is almost self-evident. Information and leverage obtained by Maxwell-Epstein and Co. was far too valuable to its several
operators to let it all end too soon.
leap out at me as suggesting how Epstein connects to much bigger subjects. First is the assertion that Maxwell was
... teaching them how to funnel their vast wealth from drugs, arms smuggling and prostitution to banks in safe havens around
the globe.
This area of trafficking and money laundering directly connects to Mueller and his essential exoneration of
HSBC .
The other quotation that suggests the importance of money laundering is here:
The plan was for the Israelis to go to Washington and say that democracy could not work in Russia and that it was better
to allow the country to return to a modified form of communism, which America could help to control.
The life's work of
Antony Sutton at Stanford's Hoover Institution shows that American industry was ALWAYS controlling communism as well as Soviet
industrial development, and that a trend toward social democracy, represented by Gorbachev, would have put an end to that control.
@Linda Wood his money laundering and blackmailing activities. While the review confirms that Robert Maxwell was for decades
a major Mossad agent actively setting up operations and cover in the United States and the UK, I can only surmise that the spreading
political influence of Eastern European organized crime networks and child honey traps are things that the Agency didn't want
to discuss publicly in 2003.
As for Mueller, let's not forget that he was FBI Director and before that the head of the Criminal Division at Main Justice
at the time that global "black finance" grew along with the catastrophic spread of multinational crime and terrorism. BCCI, Iran-Contra,
9/11, and the rise of transnational Oligarchs happened on his watch. As the Chief Law Enforcement Officer in the United States
at the time, it is hard to imagine anyone more responsibility for the ultimate consequences than Robert Mueller. There is perhaps
someone who bears ultimate responsibility, the President who appointed Mueller: George Herbert Walker Bush and his lesser son,
Shrub, who promoted him.
... wouldn't you assume that this entire affair is an ongoing Mossad operation, which may or may not have concluded? The US
IC is just another operative inside the envelope, but Mossad owns the assets and the intellectual property. I think we could assume
that some of this is automated and Mossad has ongoing leverage still in play.
The obvious question, why did the U.S. government let these intelligence crimes continue for decades, isn't being asked.
The answer is almost self-evident. Information and leverage obtained by Maxwell-Epstein and Co. was far too valuable to its
several operators to let it all end too soon.
.
Mossad's legendary blackmail traps ensnared even high-level deep state authorities and made them pliable. The recent history
of United States foreign policy is an enigma that can only be solved when that assumption is inserted. Once the assumption is
in place, it opens like a Pandora's box. Don't you find that to be the case?
In a recent investigation I presented the case that British banking and financial giant HSBC conspired with banking institutions
with documented links to terrorist financing, including those responsible for helping bankroll the 9/11 attacks.
SUNDAY, JULY 29, 2012
Black Dossier: HSBC & Terrorist Finance
Moral equivalencies abound. After all, when American secret state agencies manage drug flows or direct terrorist proxies
to attack official enemies it's not quite the same as battling terror or crime.
Pounding home that point, a new report by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations accused HSBC of exposing "the
U.S. financial system to a wide array of money laundering, drug trafficking, and terrorist financing risks due to poor anti-money
laundering (AML) controls."
That 335-page report, "U.S. Vulnerabilities to Money Laundering, Drugs, and Terrorist Financing: HSBC Case History," (large
pdf file available
here ) was issued after a year-long Senate investigation zeroed-in on the bank's U.S. affiliate, HSBC Bank USA, N.A., better
known as HBUS.
Drilling down, we learned that amongst the "services" offered by HSBC subsidiaries and correspondent banks were sweet deals
with financial entities with terrorist ties; the transportation of billions of dollars in cash by plane and armored car through
their London Banknotes division; the clearing of sequentially-numbered travelers checks through dodgy Cayman Islands accounts
for Mexican drug lords and Russian mafiosi.
From richly-appointed suites at Canary Wharf, London, the bank's "smartest guys in the room" handed some of the most violent
gangsters on earth the financial wherewithal to organize their respective industries: global crime.
A case in point. In 2008 alone the Senate revealed that the bank's Cayman Islands branch handled some 50,000 client accounts
(all without benefit of offices or staff on Grand Cayman, mind you), yet still managed to ship some $7 billion (£10.9bn) in
cash from Mexico into the U.S. Now that's creative accounting!...
@Linda Wood HSBC, huh--there must be some clever name for it, which deserves no research.
what an eloquent article you presented. Brief but right on target. It isn't just sex, drugs and rock and roll. Now it is drugs
- money -sexual perversion--and perhaps worse? Rumors are flying about what video on the Weiner laptop showed. It is strictly
heresay, but a core of folks seem to believe the suspicions are possible.
snoopydawg on Thu, 07/11/2019 - 8:48pm
Boy that Mueller has had a busy career
hasn't he? Didn't he start out in Chicago where he gave Whitey Bulgar cover for being a mob boss? Then there's his
cover up before and after 9/11. The weapons of mass destruction that he said Saddam had. The anthrax prosecution, Epstein's pedophilia
cover up, HSBC and now he is trying to cover Hillary's buttocks. And maybe Obama's? I'm sure I've missed a few things that he
did or didn't do.
Acosta is saying that if he hadn't made the plea deal then Epstein would never have served any time in
prison. Well he actually only slept there since he got to leave every day for work and then there's the massages he got after
his busy day at work. But there were more than 80 pages that the Feds wrote on his escapades so I think that story he told congress
is true. Acosta was told to stand down by someone at the top of the food chain. Mueller. Ugh what a slimy piece of work he
is. But not to the Russia Gaters. Oh no. "He is a highly decorated marine who takes no guff from anyone.
In that time, he had free access to Margaret Thatcher's Downing Street, to Ronald Reagan's White House, to the Kremlin
and to the corridors of power throughout Europe.
Inquiring minds want to know did Maxwell have access to Margaret and Ron because they liked him or because he had something
on them?
Great information! The more I learn the more I need a shower.
is how I've been feeling all week from reading about this, just more and more demoralized when I think about the depravation
of our so-called "leadership." What is it that we're supposed to think of as the new normal after this behavior?
That pedophelia and politics scandal, better known as the Franklin Coverup, made the papers for a few months, too, before
it was made to go away. Similarly, a couple of the operators served some time on reduced charges after that one.
The two main suspects in the Bush, Sr. White House child ring were Craig Spence and Lawrence E. King Jr. King sang the
National anthem at two GOP national conventions. He served time in jail for bank fraud. Spence was a Republican lobbyist before
he committed suicide. Several of his partners went to jail for being involved in the adult part of the homosexual prostitution
ring.
Mueller's scrupulous avoidance of the CIA link in his prosecution of Manuel Noriega and his diversion of the PanAm 103
bombing and framing of two Libyans. Bobby Mueller has been a real go to guy when the security establishment needs a phony investigation.
Bobby Mueller has been a real go to guy when the security establishment needs a phony investigation.
The anthrax investigation is the most serious of his crimes. Mueller is being
sued by his lead investigator in that case.
Because researchers in our biological weapons labs went public with what they were doing, and where such research was being
done in the U.S., we learned the CIA was one of several outfits doing biological weapons research.
But Mueller exonerated all of them, including the CIA, with no explanation and only focused on a lone vaccine researcher at
the Army lab when journalists began to ask why no one had been indicted after seven years of investigation, at which point the
FBI attempted to harass the suspect into committing suicide.
Every now and then, here and there the curtain lifts for a moment and the political elite of a country, the business elite,
the spy services, the military, and organized crime are revealed to be all working together, indeed practically joined at the
hip.
partnership started during the early Cold War with US intelligence officers facilitating the drug trade out of Turkey and
Burma through Europe. That soon spread to the Americas and globally. Covert operations such as Gladio, Condor, and the Safari
Club, and associated banks (Franklin National Bank, BCCI, Riggs Bank, HSBC, etc.) produced massive human rights violations, transnational
terrorism and governmental corruption. The CIA's secret wars provided funds and official cover for private-public sector alliance
of criminals, bankers and spooks around the world.
This "dark alliance" assumed a political and economic life of its own beyond its original intent to counter communist movements.
By the Vietnam War, Agency operators were running most of the heroin trade in the world through proprietary airlines, banks and
logistics companies. In the mid-1970s, CIA Director Bush expanded privatization with Saudi funding in his Safari Club deal that
eventually morphed into Al Qaeda and ISIS.
The CIA, MI6 and Mossad ran overlapping coordinated operations using privateers, paramilitaries and organized crime networks
that consumed vast amounts of cash generated by money laundering mechanisms. Enriched by the looting of the former Soviet Union,
along with the infusion of Arab oil money (the Saudi Yamamah slush fund), the "Octopus" became the instrument of Oligarchs
that have thoroughly corrupted western governments and secret services.
Multinational honey trap operations such as Maxwell-Epstein & Co. are an inevitable and continuing part of this privatization
and criminalization of intelligence that stretches back to the days of Tom Braden and Cord Meyer handing out stacks of greenbacks
to Mafiosi on the Corsican Docks.
The Snowden release included a number of documents that illustrate the on-line entrapment and political disruption activities
run by the two main communications intelligence agencies.
"Honey-trap; a great option. Very successful, when it works" (GCHQ, UK training program slide)
Without quoting the whole thing (which is worth a read):
Epstein recruits young girls, throws parties where he invites potential hedge fund clients, lets nature take its course
and films the proceedings, extracts blackmail in the form of investments to his (largely fake) hedge fund, which actually just
buys an index fund (no actual fund management required). He takes a percentage from the coerced investments. Nobody talks because
they have too much to lose. No suspicious payments to raise eyebrows at the IRS.
There's no need to invoke the Mafia/Russia/Mossad/CIA/etc, that's just needlessly overfitting.
Except such an operation would be quite attractive to intelligence services. Maybe they were in on the ground floor, maybe
they made Epstein an offer he couldn't refuse once they heard about it.
Epstein brought in the clients. The CIA/MI-6/Mossad provided necessary cover from the FBI and local cops - then,
three or four agencies shared the intelligence take, as they had for decades from Robert Maxwell's operations.
For Ghislaine, it was simply carrying on the family business for fun and profit. For the spooks, it was business as usual
going back to the Green House, the Berlin bordello founded in the the 1870s by Wilhelm Steiber, a Prussian Police section chief,
to provide useful intelligence to Bismarck's Military Intelligence, which he reorganized.
Steiber is considered the father of modern espionage. His methods were vastly influential, and he attracted students from London,
St. Petersburg to Tokyo. Each put their own national spin on the science of sexual blackmail. As for the Japanese, they are among
the most interesting and innovative in their use of a parallel network of privatized intelligence services incorporating underworld
Yakuzi groups alongside conventional military intelligence units. Using compromise, they gained and maintained control over Imperial
Japan and its Colonies: https://weaponsandwarfare.com/2019/03/15/eastern-peril/
To realize these divinely inspired ambitions, Japan needed a modern espionage system. Adopting the German model, Japanese
officials were sent to study under Wilhelm Stieber in the mid-1870s. Over the next decade Japan built up separate army and
naval intelligence services, each with an accompanying branch of secret military police (Kempeitai for the army and Tokeitai
for the navy). These latter organizations also provided an excellent counter-espionage service. However, where the Japanese
were unique was in the use of spies belonging to unofficial secret societies working alongside or independently of the official
intelligence agencies. These shadowy institutions were ultra-nationalist by nature, drawing their membership from a cross-section
of Japanese society, including the military, politics, industry and Yakuza underworld. Under ruthless leadership, their henchmen
would spy on, subvert and corrupt Japan's Far East neighbours.
For more on Steiber and his superior, von Hinckeldey, methods of international counter-insurgency, espionage, and political
policing included deception and a forerunner of today's internet surveillance:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2006/11/29/275653/-
While armies are essential to the maintenance of autocracy, the preservation of dynastic rule and the prevention of democracy
requires an effective secret police. The suppression of its middle-class constitutionalists [during the 1840s] was followed
by the expansion of the Prussian political police under Karl Ludwig Friedrich von Hinckeldey.
Appointed police president of Berlin in late 1848, Hinckeldey was an innovator of many of the features of modern systematic
political policing. Among the tactics that he introduced with his new police system in Berlin was the "Litfass columns". Named
for Ernst Litfass, Frederick William's court printer, he had dozens of these large poles erected in strategic spots around
Berlin. The public posting of political notices was then banned. By application to a state office for a waiver, however, the
columns could be used to display messages. The police dutifully recorded the names of all who had applied. A. Richie, Faust's
Metropolis: A History of Berlin, New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1998 at p.134.
LEGACY OF THE LITFASS COLUMNS: A similar ploy was later adopted by the People's Republic of China. In the mid-1980s, the
Communist authorities at first appear to tolerate the operation of a so-called Democracy Wall, where "dissidents" in Beijing
could post political writings, initially, without being arrested. Similar walls then sprung up under the noses of the authorities
in other Chinese cities. For this apparent opening to democracy, the Deng regime much applauded, particularly by some in the
Reagan-Bush Administration, eager to legitimize the regime and its growing commercial ties with U.S. corporations. Eventually,
many of those who had availed themselves of the wall to post political messages were, of course, arrested in the roundup of
hundreds of thousands of democracy supporters that followed the Tienamen Square massacre. The impression of anonymity and "freedom"
conveyed by the Internet, of course, presents a similar opportunity for police to cast a wide net for identifying persons and
organizations who may not hold favor for the regime in power, or may not in the future.
Hinckeldey also founded the Police Union, the first recorded international network of counterrevolutionary police spies
in modern times. Primarily made up of police officers from Prussia and the German states, the Union operated throughout Europe,
Britain and in the United States. The Union was run by his deputy, the notorious police provocateur, Wilhelm Steiber, who would
later reorganize the Okhrana along similar lines. Internationally active from 1851-1866, the Police Union, according to Mathieu
Deflem, was "one of the first formal initiatives in industrial society to establish an organized police system across national
borders."13
I disagree with the Alternet view on this. See, this is the norm. A purely private sexual blackmail ring of any scale would
be the historical exception. It certainly wouldn't survive very long.
...authorities at first appear to tolerate the operation of a so-called Democracy Wall, where "dissidents" in Beijing could
post political writings.... Similar walls then sprung up under the noses of the authorities in other Chinese cities. Eventually,
many of those who had availed themselves of the wall to post political messages were, of course, arrested in the roundup of
hundreds of thousands of democracy supporters....
The impression of anonymity and "freedom" conveyed by the Internet, of course, presents a similar opportunity for police
to cast a wide net for identifying persons and organizations who may not hold favor for the regime in power, or may not in
the future.
But why should one avoid the thought? If the situation looks like the people are going to lose the war for their minds, and
are unwilling to back a publisher like Assange who has given his all to try to empower them, why should anyone put themselves
at risk by expressing their opinions? It's a honeypot of our own making, just as Facebook is where people go to write their own
dossiers for the Authorities.
@Pluto's Republic an enemy of the status quo, you raise the calculated costs of the eventual crackdown, pushing back the
day of reckoning. Keep it up! Visible rebellion is the only defense of the people.
...from which to leverage access to the elite, Harvard University would be a top choice.
Jeffery Epstein actually entered the social salons of the elite through many doors. He was, of course, a member of the Council
on Foreign Relations. One would have to be to rub shoulders with the political elite. From there he matriculated to the Trilateral
Commission becoming friendly with Harvard President, Larry Summers. **
Becoming a surprise mystery philanthropist at Harvard, with Summers help, was a booster rocket for Epstein. In the Havard Crimson , in
June 2003, Epstein's involvement with Harvard was celebrated.
People in the News: Jeffrey E. Epstein
Elusive financier Jeffrey E. Epstein donated $30 million this year to Harvard for the founding of a mathematical biology
and evolutionary dynamics program.
While the mathematics teacher turned magnate remained unknown to most people until he flew President Clinton, Kevin
Spacey and Chris Tucker to Africa to explore the problems of AIDS and economic development facing the region, Epstein
has been a familiar face to many at Harvard for years.
Networking with the University's leading intellectuals, Epstein has spurred research through both discussions with and dollars
contributed to various faculty members.
Lindsley Professor of Psychology Stephen M. Kosslyn, former Dean of the Faculty Henry A. Rosovsky and Frankfurter Professor
of Law Alan M. Dershowitz are among Epstein's bevy of eminent friends that includes princes, presidents and Nobel
Prize winners.
Epstein is also well acquainted with University President Lawrence H. Summers. The two serve together on the Trilateral
Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations, two elite international relations organizations.
Epstein's collection of high-profile friends also includes newly-recruited professor Martin A. Nowak, who will run Harvard's
mathematical biology and evolutionary dynamics program.
Like Kosslyn, Rosovsky and Dershowitz, Nowak praises Epstein's numerous relationships within the scientific community.
"I am amazed by the connections he has in the scientific world," Nowak says. "He knows an amazing number of scientists.
He knows everyone you can imagine."
Epstein's relationships within the academy are remarkable since the tycoon, who has amassed his fortune by managing
the wealth of billionaires from his private Caribbean island, does not hold a bachelor's degree.
Yet, friends and beneficiaries say they do not see Epstein merely as a man with deep pockets, but as an intellectual equal.
Dershowitz says Epstein is "brilliant" and Kosslyn calls Epstein "one of the brightest people I've ever known."
Epstein's beneficiaries say they are particularly appreciative of the no-strings-attached approach Epstein takes with his
donations.
"He is one of the most pleasant philanthropists," Nowak says. "Unlike many people who support science, he supports science
without any conditions. There are not any disadvantages to associating with him."
Friends and associates say Harvard stands to benefit from its evolving relationship with Epstein.
"I hope that he will, over time, become one of the leading supporters of science at Harvard," Rosovsky writes in an e-mail.
__________________________________________
** A footnote on Larry Summers seems important here:
Harvard-trained economists have been running the US economy for a very long time, and continue to do so. Summers began his ascent
as a professor of economics at Harvard University, leaving shortly before Bill Clinton won the Presidency. He was clearly the
Neoliberal seed planted for the New American Century.
In 1993, Summers was appointed Undersecretary for International Affairs of the United States Department of the Treasury
under the Clinton Administration. In 1995, he was promoted to Deputy Secretary of the Treasury under his long-time political
mentor Robert Rubin. In 1999, he succeeded Rubin as Secretary of the Treasury.
While working for the Clinton administration Summers played a leading role in the American response to the 1994 economic
crisis in Mexico, the 1997 Asian financial crisis, and the Russian financial crisis. He was also influential in the Harvard
Institute for International Development and American-advised privatization of the economies of the post-Soviet states, and
in the deregulation of the U.S financial system, including the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act.
At This Point the Ball is Passed to the Bush Team Republicans, while the Democrats Sit Back and Wait for 2008.
There's now a Treasury surplus to transfer to the wealthy, and the necessary deregulation for Wall Street empowerment is in
place. The Soviet era had ended and Russia is ended forever. The world is finally primed to be seized by the One Exceptional Power.
It's 2001, and we are standing on the threshold of the New American Century . Time to throw a flash-bang of chaos onto the world
stage and trigger the booming War Economy that will carry us directly to global control.
There's a rocky road ahead for Larry Summers. Summers introduces Epstein into the Harvard fold, but becomes reckless with
his newly-refined Neoliberalism and his opinions concerning "lady scholars."
Following the end of Clinton's term, Summers served as the 27th President of Harvard University from 2001 to 2006.
Summers resigned as Harvard's president in the wake of a no-confidence vote by Harvard faculty, which resulted in large part
from Summers's conflict with Cornel West, financial conflict of interest questions regarding his relationship with Andrei Shleifer,
and a 2005 speech in which he suggested that the under-representation of women in science and engineering could be due to a
"different availability of aptitude at the high end", and less to patterns of discrimination and socialization. Remarking upon
political correctness in institutions of higher education, Summers said in 2016:
Summers resigned as Harvard's president in the wake of a no-confidence vote by Harvard faculty, which resulted in large
part from Summers's conflict with Cornel West, financial conflict of interest questions regarding his relationship with
Andrei Shleifer, and a 2005 speech in which he suggested that the under-representation of women in science and engineering
There is a great deal of absurd political correctness. Now, I'm somebody who believes very strongly in diversity, who
resists racism in all of its many incarnations, who thinks that there is a great deal that's unjust in American society
that needs to be combated, but it seems to be that there is a kind of creeping totalitarianism in terms of what kind of
ideas are acceptable and are debatable on college campuses.
After his departure from Harvard, Summers cooled his jets on Wall Street, positioning himself to be called back into the game
when it was Team Democrat's turn in 2008.
Summers worked as a managing partner at the hedge fund D. E. Shaw & Co., and as a freelance speaker at other financial institutions,
including Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers. Summers rejoined public service during
the Obama administration, serving as the Director of the White House United States National Economic Council for President
Barack Obama from January 2009 until November 2010, where he emerged as a key economic decision-maker in the Obama administration's
response to the Great Recession.
Jeffery Epstein continued to weave himself into the fabric of government like a good psychopath would. He was by no means the
only one.
"... "After watching seven hours of a spectacle that felt much more cruel than enlightening, I cannot avoid pondering a question which honestly gives me no joy to ponder: just how much damage has MSNBC in particular done to the left?" The Hill's Rising star began, before excoriating her former employer's "fevered speculations" about an "Infowars conspiracy theory" and the way it hosted people like Jonathan "maybe Trump has been a Russian asset since the 1980s" Chait and "conspiracy gadfly Louise Mensch" in search of ratings bumps. ..."
"... "This whole setup has done more damage to the Democrats' chances of winning back the White House than anything that Trump could ever have dreamed up," Ball argued. "Think about all the time and the journalistic resources that could have been dedicated to stories that, I don't know, that a broad swath of people might actually care about? Healthcare, wages, the teachers' movement, whether we're going to war with Iran? I'm just spitballing here. ..."
"... Ball argued that the fact that MSNBC is doing so much damage to the Democratic Party in the name of ratings proves that MSNBC isn't "on Team D in the same way that Fox News is on Team R", saying they're really just in it for the money. But this is where Ball gets it wrong. It is of course true that ratings are a factor, and that conspiracy theories can be used to sell advertising space, but MSNBC would have had a much easier time marketing conspiracy theories about Trump's loyalties to Israel and Saudi Arabia , both of which would have had vastly more factual evidence to back them up. The only difference is that the US-centralized empire doesn't have agendas that it wants to advance against those two countries. ..."
"... Ball is correct that MSNBC doesn't serve the Democratic party, but she's incorrect that it serves only money. MSNBC, which is now arguably a more aggressive war propaganda network than Fox News, serves first and foremost the US national security state. And so do all the other western mainstream news networks. ..."
"... From the Pentagon's point of view, US hegemony good, Russia-China alliance very, very bad. ..."
"... I t was determined with the help of influential neoconservative think tankers that the US must maintain this unipolar paradigm at all costs. As soon as that view became the establishment orthodoxy , any threat to US hegemony was now interpreted as a threat to national security. An "attack" on America was no longer limited to physical attacks on US soil, or even on US allies and assets: any attempt to escape unipolarity is now treated as a direct attack on the empire. ..."
"... This is why we've seen nations like Iraq, Libya and Syria spoken about by the propagandists as "enemies" as though they pose some kind of direct threat to the American people. There was never any actual threat to the physical United States, but those nations were not complying with the dictates of US hegemony, and that noncompliance was treated as a direct attack. ..."
"... This "if you're not obeying us you're attacking us" mentality is ridiculous on its face and no right-thinking citizen would ever consent to it, which is why the consent manufacturers need to promote imaginary nonsense like weapons of mass destruction, a Russian "attack" on American democracy, and a conspiracy theory about the Kremlin infiltrating the highest levels of the US government. It's got nothing to do with actual fears of those nations posing any threat to actual Americans. It's about continuing to rule the world. ..."
"After watching seven hours of a spectacle that felt much more cruel than enlightening, I cannot avoid pondering a question which
honestly gives me no joy to ponder: just how much damage has MSNBC in particular done to the left?" The Hill's Rising star began,
before excoriating her former employer's "fevered speculations" about an "Infowars conspiracy theory" and the way it hosted people
like Jonathan "maybe Trump has been a Russian asset since the 1980s" Chait and "conspiracy gadfly Louise Mensch" in search of ratings
bumps.
"This whole setup has done more damage to the Democrats' chances of winning back the White House than anything that Trump could
ever have dreamed up," Ball argued. "Think about all the time and the journalistic resources that could have been dedicated to stories
that, I don't know, that a broad swath of people might actually care about? Healthcare, wages, the teachers' movement, whether we're
going to war with Iran? I'm just spitballing here.
I actually heard some pundit on Chris Hayes last night opine that independent women in middle America were going to be swayed
by what Mueller said yesterday. Are you kidding me? This is almost as bonkers and lacking in factual basis as that time Mimi Rocah
said that Bernie Sanders is not pro-women because that was what her feelings told her. Rocah, by the way, a political prosecutor
with no political background, is only opining at MSNBC because of her role in leading viewers to believe that any day now SDNY is
going to bring down Trump and his entire family."
Ball argued that the fact that MSNBC is doing so much damage to the
Democratic Party in the name of ratings proves that MSNBC isn't "on Team D in the same way that Fox News is on Team R", saying they're
really just in it for the money. But this is where Ball gets it wrong. It is of course true that ratings are a factor, and that conspiracy
theories can be used to sell advertising space, but MSNBC would have had a much easier time marketing conspiracy theories about Trump's
loyalties to
Israel and
Saudi Arabia , both of which would have had
vastly more factual evidence to back them up. The only difference is that the US-centralized empire doesn't have agendas that
it wants to advance against those two countries.
Ball is correct that MSNBC doesn't serve the Democratic party, but she's incorrect that it serves only money. MSNBC, which is
now arguably a more aggressive war propaganda network than Fox News, serves first and foremost the US national security state.
And so do all the other western mainstream news networks.
Consider the way the Syrian province of Idlib is being reported on right now, to pick one of many possible examples.
Al-Qaeda-controlled
Idlib is the final stronghold of the extremist militant groups that
the US and
its allies flooded Syria with in a
premeditated campaign to effect regime change, and Syria and its allies are fighting to recapture the region. They are using
methods that are identical to those commonly used by the US and its allies, yet the bombing campaigns of the US-centralized empire
receive virtually no critical coverage while western mainstream outlets like
CNN and
the BBC
are churning out brazenly propagandistic pieces about the evils of the Assad coalition's airstrikes.
"Civilians are dying in Idlib, just as they died in their thousands in recent US UK air strikes in eg Raqqa and Mosul," political
analyst Charles Shoebridge
observed on Twitter today. "The difference is that when it's (often unverified) claims that Russia or Syria are doing the killing,
US UK media make it front page news."
There are many gaping plot holes in the Russiagate narrative that outlets like MSNBC have been bashing everyone over the head
with, but the most obvious and easily provable of them is the indisputable fact that Donald Trump
has escalated tensions against Russia more than any US president in decades. You never hear anyone talk about this self-evident
fact in all the endless yammering about Russia, though, because it doesn't advance the agendas of either of America's two mainstream
parties, and it doesn't advance the interests of US imperialism. Democrats don't like acknowledging the fact that Trump has been
consistently and aggressively working directly against the interests of Moscow , and Trump supporters don't like acknowledging
that their president is just as much of a neocon-coddling globalist as those they claim to oppose, so the war machine has gone conveniently
unchallenged in manufacturing new cold war escalations against a nation they've had marked for destruction since the fall of the
Soviet Union.
In a very interesting new Grayzone
interview packed full of ideas that you'll never hear voiced on western mass media, Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov
spoke openly about the various ways that Russia, China, and other nations who've resisted absorption into the blob of the US power
alliance have been working toward the creation of a multipolar world. Ryabkov said other nations have been watching the way the dominance
of the US dollar has been used to economically terrorize noncompliant nations into subservience by way of sanctions and other manipulations,
with Washington expecting that the dollar and the US financial system will remain "the cardiovascular system of the whole organism."
"That will not be the case," Ryabkov said. "People will bypass, in literal terms. And people will find ways how to defend themselves,
how to protect themselves, how to guarantee themselves against any emergencies if someone comes up at the White House or whatever,
at the Treasury, at the State, and says 'Hey guys, now we should stop what is going on in Country X, and let's squeeze them out.'
And this country sits on the dollar. So they will be done the moment those ideas will be pronounced. So China, Russia and others,
we create alternatives that we will most probably continue using not just national currencies, but baskets of currencies, currencies
of third countries, other modern barter schemes."
"We will use ways that will diminish the role of dollar and US banking system with all these risks of assets and transactions
being arrested, being stopped," Ryabkov concluded.
That, right there, is the real reason you're being sold Russia hysteria today.
And it isn't just on the matter of financial systems in which the unabsorbed powers are uniting against the imperial blob. Russia
and China
just carried out their first joint air patrol on Tuesday, drawing a hostile response from imperial vassals Japan and South Korea.
"Russian and Chinese bombers on 'first' joint patrol in the Asia-Pacific region. The China-Russia alliance has become a reality
and will last for long time,"
reads a post by one Russian Twitter commentator in response to the news.
The emergence of this alliance, which the Chinese government
has warned Washington is 'not vulnerable to interference', has been something the west has feared for a long time. A
Pentagon white paper published this past May titled "Russian Strategic Intentions" mentions the word "China" 108 times. Some
noteworthy excerpts:
The world system, and American influence in it, would be completely upended if Moscow and Beijing aligned more closely.
The allies' goal should be deterrence. At the same time, the US should bilaterally engage Russia to peel them away from China's
orbit.
He also encourages the development of the US's 'capability to effectively foster distrust and unease between the Russia Federation
and China.'
Along with Beijing, Moscow seeks a multipolar world in which US hegemony comes to an end. As Alexander Lukin recently pointed
out, the 'common ideal of a multipolar world [has] played a significant role in the rapprochement between Russia and China.'
Russia and China were explicitly mentioned in the 2018 National Defense Strategy as the great powers with which the US is
in competition. Both Russia and China have come a long way since the 1990s, and the 'friendship' that emerged in the immediate
post-Tiananmen period and continued to grow over the years now today appears to be one of the strongest bilateral alliances on
the planet.
Together, Russia's tentacles on its former Soviet neighbors and Moscow's strategic alliance with Beijing in pursuit of a multipolar
world (in which the US is no longer the global hegemon) form the two main pillars upon which Putin's grand strategy rests. All
other aspects of its foreign policy behavior can be traced back to this dual-pronged grand strategy.
I think you get the picture. From the Pentagon's point of view, US hegemony good, Russia-China alliance very, very bad.
Analysts like the white paper's authors, and even
The New York Times editorial board
, have urged the drivers of US foreign policy to attempt to lure Moscow away from Beijing, the latter rightly perceived as the greater
long-term threat to US dominance due to China's surging economic power. But diplomacy has clearly been ruled out toward this end,
with only a steadily escalating campaign to shove Russia off the world stage now deemed acceptable.
It
was determined with the help of
influential
neoconservative
think tankers that the US must maintain this unipolar paradigm at all costs. As soon as that view
became the establishment orthodoxy , any threat to US hegemony was now interpreted as a threat to national security. An "attack"
on America was no longer limited to physical attacks on US soil, or even on US allies and assets: any attempt to escape unipolarity
is now treated as a direct attack on the empire.
This is why we've seen nations like Iraq, Libya and Syria spoken about by the propagandists as "enemies" as though they pose
some kind of direct threat to the American people. There was never any actual threat to the physical United States, but those nations
were not complying with the dictates of US hegemony, and that noncompliance was treated as a direct attack.
This "if you're not obeying us you're attacking us" mentality is ridiculous on its face and no right-thinking citizen would
ever consent to it, which is why the consent manufacturers need to promote imaginary nonsense like weapons of mass destruction, a
Russian "attack" on American democracy, and a conspiracy theory about the Kremlin infiltrating the highest levels of the US government.
It's got nothing to do with actual fears of those nations posing any threat to actual Americans. It's about continuing to rule the
world.
On one hand Mueller supported and promoted the witch hunt which is the Russiagate. On the other water suddenly became a little bit
hot for him and his henchmen as there is a slight chance that Barr is not joking.
Mueller is the first prosecutor in the history of Justice Department who claimed that he does not exonerate the falsely accused
of Russian connections President. Which is 100% pure McCartuism-style witch hunt. Of course as he supported Iraw WDM and presided over
Anthrax investigation (or cover up to be more correct) this is easy for him to be legal innovator in this area.
Notable quotes:
"... the report was clear that members of Trump's team had been encouraged to lie to investigators, and this had been widely reported throughout the media and in several books. ..."
"... On many important questions, Mueller stated that he could not comment because those matters were under investigation by other departments, or they were not "in my purview." That was his response to questions about the Steele report and the FISA warrant used to spy on the Trump campaign, which are under investigation by the Department of Justice. But he also responded this way to questions on the Russia investigation. How can the special prosecutor charged with investigating whether Russia interfered with our elections decline comment on the topic? ..."
"... Well that proves it, I guess. After all, did Mueller testify to Congress as to the extent of Iraq's much-vaunted WMD program, and lo! there it was(n't)! ..."
"... Or for that matter, Mueller claimed that Concord Management had ties to the Russian government. Turns out that he had no evidence for his claim. ..."
"... Mueller is the god that failed. The Democrats considered him their savior. It was "wait til the Mueller report". "Soon it will be Mueller time". "Just wait on Mueller, you'll see." ..."
"... Then, in the Mueller hearing they quoted scripture from the book of Mueller, asking their savior to provide more divine wisdom on the scripture. But he was no god. He was a human whose mental faculties had declined due to the aging process all of us mortals must endure. And it became abundantly clear that he had been just a figurehead in a witch hunt by radical major Democratic party donor prosecutors. Mueller was shamelessly used by morally bankrupt Democrat apparatchiks. ..."
"... To all the Mueller supporters, he couldn't even answer simple questions like "when did you and your team conclude there was no collusion/conspiracy with Russia?" ..."
"... That question 1) fell under his purview, 2) arose from the four corners of his report, 3) not in anyway prohibited by the DoJ directive and 4) not about something that would be easy to forget. ..."
"... Yet he refused to answer. Some stand up guy he is. ..."
That answer appears to directly contradict page 180 of the report which states, "As defined in legal dictionaries, collusion is
largely synonymous with conspiracy as that crime is set forth in the general federal conspiracy statute, 18 U.S.C. 371," Collins
pointed out.
"Are you sitting here today testifying something different than what your report states?"
Mueller stuttered and appeared confused, flipped to the relevant page of the report, and said that he would defer to the report.
Throughout the hearing, Democratic members would read the definition of corruption or obstruction and then try to get Mueller
to explain how various actions did not qualify or why the report did not reach a finding. Each time, Mueller declined to comment.
To say that watching his testimony was painful is an understatement.
In an exchange with Rep. Guy Reschenthaler (R-Pa.) that exemplifies the entire hearing, the Pennsylvania Republican asked, "You
made a decision not to prosecute, right?"
"No, we made a decision not to decide whether to prosecute or not."
In the afternoon intelligence committee hearing, Rep. John Ratcliffe asked Mueller to clear up confusion regarding his morning
testimony, where he appeared to contradict the report on the question of whether he had whiffed on an indictment because the Office
of Legal Counsel said it was not possible to indict a sitting president.
"What I wanted to say [in the morning] is that we did not make any determination with regard to culpability, in any way. We did
not start that process, down the road," said Mueller.
But in his morning testimony before the House Judiciary committee, he said: "The president was not exculpated for the acts that
he allegedly committed."
See if you can make sense of this exchange:
Democratic Rep. Andre Carson: "Would you agree that these acts demonstrated a betrayal of the democratic values our country rests
on?"
Mueller: "I can't agree with that. Not that it's not true, but I cannot agree with it."
This was typical of Mueller's bizarre testimony throughout the day.
Democrats used the hearing to read huge portions of the report, as well as Donald Trump's tweets and campaign utterances, as if
somehow they were covering new ground. In one such exchange, a member asked: "Trump and his campaign welcomed and encouraged Russian
interference?"
Mueller: "Yes."
Question: "And then Trump and his campaign lied about it to cover it up?"
Mueller: "Yes."
Anyone who has followed news coverage of the Mueller report knows that line of questioning is not breaking new ground, as
the report was clear that members of Trump's team had been encouraged to lie to investigators, and this had been widely reported
throughout the media
and in several books.
Even so, Democrats persisted in reading publicly available Trump statements aloud. During his portion of time, Rep. Mike Quigley
chose to read Trump's
campaign trail
statements about Wikileaks .
"I love Wikileaks."
"This Wikileaks is like a treasure trove."
"Boy, I love reading those Wikileaks."
He then asked Mueller to react to Trump's statements. "Problematic is an understatement, in terms of giving some hope or some
boost to what is and should be illegal activity," Mueller said. Did we really need Mueller's opinion on Trump's statements uttered
on the stump, all of which were made before he was elected president? How is this type of commentary valuable?
On many important questions, Mueller stated that he could not comment because those matters were under investigation by other
departments, or they were not "in my purview." That was his response to questions about the Steele report and the FISA warrant used
to spy on the Trump campaign, which are under investigation by the Department of Justice. But he also responded this way to questions
on the Russia investigation. How can the special prosecutor charged with investigating whether Russia interfered with our elections
decline comment on the topic?
Congressional hearings aren't like a court room. There's no judge that can order an uncooperative witness to answer. That's one
of the many reasons that highly politicized Congressional hearings often quickly descend into kangaroo-court style bludgeoning of
the witness.
Yet today, because the confused witness appeared flummoxed by rapid-fire questions and by the contents of his own report, his
evasions and memory lapses instead undermined the credibility of the report itself, and had people questioning
whether Mueller had really led the investigation or not.
Barbara Boland is 's foreign policy and national security reporter. Follow her on Twitter
@BBatDC.
In reference to Russia meddling in the 2016 election, he specifically said that Russia had meddled in the past, Russia was meddling
as of right now, and Russia would continue to meddle in the future.
I guess that qualifies as having nothing to say about Russia meddling if you want to believe that he had nothing to say about
Russia meddling in our elections.
Well that proves it, I guess. After all, did Mueller testify to Congress as to the extent of Iraq's much-vaunted WMD program,
and lo! there it was(n't)!
Mueller is the god that failed. The Democrats considered him their savior. It was "wait til the Mueller report". "Soon it
will be Mueller time". "Just wait on Mueller, you'll see."
Then, in the Mueller hearing they quoted scripture from the book of Mueller, asking their savior to provide more divine
wisdom on the scripture. But he was no god. He was a human whose mental faculties had declined due to the aging process all of
us mortals must endure. And it became abundantly clear that he had been just a figurehead in a witch hunt by radical major Democratic
party donor prosecutors. Mueller was shamelessly used by morally bankrupt Democrat apparatchiks.
But they will not stop just because their god failed. They will find another god and keep right on investigating.
To all the Mueller supporters, he couldn't even answer simple questions like "when did you and your team conclude there was
no collusion/conspiracy with Russia?"
That question 1) fell under his purview, 2) arose from the four corners of his report, 3) not in anyway prohibited by the
DoJ directive and 4) not about something that would be easy to forget.
Yet he refused to answer. Some stand up guy he is.
"... "You have no evidence for the so-called Russian IO. It is a fabrication." In fact, Putin rejects the claim many times publicly saying that Russia does not meddle in foreign elections as a matter of policy. Maybe I'm gullible, but I find his disclaimer pretty convincing.... ..."
"... Is there an unseen connection between the Democrat leadership and the Intel agencies??? And --if there is-- does that mean we are headed for a one-party system??? ..."
"... The Russians trying to rig the elections meme was a fallback for the failure of the “trump is a russianstooge" meme. ..."
Here are some insights into the minds of many movers and shakers in Russiagate:
Key US officials behind the Russia investigation have made no secret of their animus
towards Russia.
"I do always hate the Russians," Lisa Page, a senior FBI lawyer on the Russia probe,
testified to Congress in July 2018. "It is my opinion that with respect to Western ideals
and who it is and what it is we stand for as Americans, Russia poses the most dangerous
threat to that way of life."
As he opened the FBI's probe of the Trump campaign's ties to Russians in July 2016,
FBI agent Peter Strzok texted Page: "fuck the cheating motherfucking Russians Bastards. I
hate them I think they're probably the worst. Fucking conniving cheating savages."
Speaking to NBC News in May 2017, former director of national intelligence James
Clapper explained why US officials saw interactions between the Trump camp and Russian
nationals as a cause for alarm: "The Russians," Clapper said, "almost genetically driven to
co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever, which is a typical Russian technique. So we were
concerned."
In a May interview with Lawfare, former FBI general counsel Jim Baker, who helped
oversee the Russia probe, explained the origins of the investigation as follows: "It was
about Russia, period, full stop. When the [George] Papadopoulos information comes across
our radar screen, it's coming across in the sense that we were always looking at Russia.
we've been thinking about Russia as a threat actor for decades and decades."
"You have no evidence for the so-called Russian IO. It is a fabrication." In fact, Putin
rejects the claim many times publicly saying that Russia does not meddle in foreign elections
as a matter of policy. Maybe I'm gullible, but I find his disclaimer pretty
convincing....
My question for Larry Johnson requires some speculation on his part: How did the claims of
"Russia meddling" which began with the DNC and Hillary campaign, take root at the FBI, CIA
and NSA???
Is there an unseen connection between the Democrat leadership and the Intel agencies???
And --if there is-- does that mean we are headed for a one-party system???
Russia interfered on a massive scale and is doing it again as we sit here! Just how
massive? They spent $100,000 on clickbait ads from a company owned by a man who was in a
photo with the evil mastermind!
How evil? Well do the math. $43,000 to $46,000 of that was spent during the election and
of those ads 8.4 percent were political. That's $3,684 dollars.
But the political ads were aimed in both directions so that's roughly $1,932 spent
"promoting" Trump.
And now Mueller tells us the evil mastermind is at it again -- as we sit here -- probably
spending even more this time. Let us know when he's spent a full thousand dollars Bob and
we'll start loading the bombs.
Oh, and we found all this out for around thirty million dollars.
think about it! with the myriad of problems we must contend with: growing social
inequality, huge tax breaks for the rich, government deregulation of private business, a
climate catastrophe, unending wars, nuclear annihilation spurred on especially by u.s.
imperialism, the gutting of what little social safety net we have left and so on and so so
on. and we are supposed to be outraged at supposed foreign interference with our supposed
democratic process? please, this is total insanity!!!
Of course, relatively speaking, it’s a nothing. Every knowledgeable person knows
that we in the US orchestrated both the financing and the strategy of the 1996 Yeltsin
campaign -- a political rescue so efficiently carried out that our operatives bragged
brazenly about it to Time Magazine, which made it the cover story for its July 14, 1996
edition (“Yanks to the Rescue”).
The Lamestream Corporate media always underplayed the fact that Yeltsin ordered the
execution of 1,100 demonstrators who protested the IMF backed “reforms”, and that
Clinton approved of his deadly and heavy hand in implementing a neoliberal economic order.
Clinton never threatened to suspend aid to the Russian Federation despite its numerous abuses
of human rights.
Also forgotten is that Yeltsin ordered the Russian Parliament (Duma) shelled before it
could vote on Yeltsin’s economic “reforms”, which were implemented at the
point of a gun. At various times between 1993 and 1997, it was Yeltsin who declared martial
law, suspended the Duma, and declared himself possessed of dictatorial powers.
How many Americans ever knew this? 20%? How many remember it today? Maybe 5%? That means
there is no context for gauging Muellers’ testimony.
But, it is, by MSNBC standards, Vladimir Putin who is Evil Incarnate. Has Maddow ever
mentioned Yeltsin, a tyrant of the first order? No, because at GE, Comcast, and NBC, tyranny
in the name of enforcing neoliberalism is perfectly acceptable.
This post is a bit off topic, and is a bit relativistic, as I know we should be concerned
if it is really true that Manafort was giving internal polling data to a Russian Federation
person so that the IRA could better target swing states in our Midwest.
Bob Van Noy , July 26, 2019 at 08:26
John Wolfe, your comment is not off topic at all, it’s crucial to further
understanding of the totality of the Russia did it mentality, and That is well documented in
a small but powerful book called “Manifest Destiny: Democracy as Cognitive
Dissonance” by F. William Engdahl which I will link.
The American People have been propagandized so thoroughly that they can hardly recognize
the truth any longer.
Too, I will link an article in Off Guardian this morning that is worth mentioning if one
wants to see Real Reporting On MH-17.
Evidence accumulates that Obama was the real leader of this color revolution against Trump with Brannan as his chief lieutenant
and Comey as a willing accomplice.
Now that the dust has settled, one must ask why the Deep State wanted Trump gone. Why does the Obama-Clinton mafia hates him so
much? Is this due to Trump committed an unforgivable sin in suggesting we “get along with Russia” and thus potentially cut the
revenues of military-industrial complex ? This is not true -- Trump inflated the Pentagon budget to astronomical height. Then
why ?
Notable quotes:
"... The full details of the plot to take out Donald Trump remain to be revealed. But there should now be no doubt that his effort was not the work of a few rogue intelligence and law enforcement officials acting on their own. This was a full blown covert action undertaken with the full knowledge and blessing of Barack Obama. ..."
"... Operation Crossfire Hurricane was launched the end of July 2016. CIA Director John Brennan briefed key Democrat members of Congress in early August on allegations that Donald Trump was colluding with Vladimir Putin. And Peter Strzok traveled to London in early August 2016 to meet with the CIA and with Alexander Downer, who was claiming that George Papadopolous was talking up the Russians. Following that trip Strozk texted the following to his mistress, Lisa Page : ..."
"... We also know that Senior Obama Administration officials, such as NSC Director Susan Rice and UN Ambassdor Samantha Power, were pushing to "unmask" Trump campaign officials who were named in US intelligence documents. ..."
"... Let us look at this from another angle. If the Russians were actually trying to interfere in the 2016 election, then it was known to both US intelligence and law enforcement. Hell, we are told in the Mueller report that the FBI detected the Russians trying to hack the DNC way back in 2015. If there really was intelligence on Russian efforts to meddle why did the Obama Administration do nothing other than sanction FBI's Crossfire Hurricane? ..."
"... On what basis did Barack Obama insist it was impossible to rig the US Presidential election? This is a critical anomaly. Why was the Obama team asleep at the switch, especially on the intel front, it the Russians actually were engaged in rigging the election to install Donald Trump? ..."
"... Obama seemed to have got a taste for spying on his domestic political opponents from monitoring Israeli attempts to block the Iran nuclear deal. I think the lock her up stuff really scared the Obama people, who had much to hide. ..."
The full details of the plot to take out Donald Trump remain to be revealed. But there should now be no doubt that his effort was
not the work of a few rogue intelligence and law enforcement officials acting on their own. This was a full blown covert action undertaken
with the full knowledge and blessing of Barack Obama.
As
I have written previously , the claim that Russia tried to hijack our election is a damn lie. But you do not have to take my
word for it. Just listen to Barack Obama speaking in October 2016 in response to Donald Trump's expressed concerns about
election meddling :
"There is no serious person out there who would suggest that you could even rig America's elections, in part because they are
so decentralized. There is no evidence that that has happened in the past, or that there are instances that that could happen this
time," the president said to the future president in October 2016.
"Democracy survives because we recognize that there is something more important than any individual campaign, and that is making
sure the integrity and trust in our institutions sustains itself. Becasue Democracy works by consent, not by force," Obama said.
"I have never seen in my lifetime or in modern political history, any presidential candidate trying to discredit the elections
and the election process before votes have even taken place. It is unprecedented. It happens to be based on no fact. Every expert
regardless of political party... who has ever examined these issues in a serious way will tell you that instances of significant
voter fraud are not to be found. Keep in mind elections are run by state and local officials."
It is important to remember what had transpired in the Trump/Russia collusion case by this point. Operation Crossfire Hurricane
was launched the end of July 2016. CIA Director John Brennan briefed key Democrat members of Congress in early August on allegations
that Donald Trump was colluding with Vladimir Putin. And Peter Strzok traveled to London in early August 2016 to meet with the CIA
and with Alexander Downer, who was claiming that George Papadopolous was talking up the Russians. Following that trip
Strozk texted
the following to his mistress, Lisa Page :
Strzok: And hi. Went well, best we could have expected. Other than [REDACTED] quote: " the White House is running this. " My answer,
"well, maybe for you they are." And of course, I was planning on telling this guy, thanks for coming, we've got an hour, but with
Bill [Priestap] there, I've got no control .
Page: Yeah, whatever (re the WH comment). We've got the emails that say otherwise.
The White House clearly knew. But Strzok's text is not the only evidence. We also know that Senior Obama Administration officials,
such as NSC Director Susan Rice and UN Ambassdor Samantha Power, were pushing to "unmask" Trump campaign officials who were named
in US intelligence documents.
There are only two possibilities:
Obama was being briefed by Susan Rice and DNI James Clapper and CIA Director about the project
to take out Trump, or
Obama was kept in the dark.
Let us look at this from another angle. If the Russians were actually trying to interfere in the 2016 election, then it was known
to both US intelligence and law enforcement. Hell, we are told in the Mueller report that the FBI detected the Russians trying to
hack the DNC way back in 2015. If there really was intelligence on Russian efforts to meddle why did the Obama Administration do
nothing other than sanction FBI's Crossfire Hurricane?
On what basis did Barack Obama insist it was impossible to rig the US Presidential election? This is a critical anomaly. Why was
the Obama team asleep at the switch, especially on the intel front, it the Russians actually were engaged in rigging the election
to install Donald Trump?
My wife was for many years an election official in Virginia. IMO Obama was right in saying that a US presidential election
is impossible to "rig." The US Constitution requires that federal elections be run by the states WITHOUT federal supervision.
As a result the methods and equipment in the states and the various parts of the states vary widely and the state systems are
not tied together with a national electronic network as, for example, the system is in France where the result of a national election
is reported on TeeVee immediately when the polls close.
Asking the question, "Can you cite one specific case where a single vote was definitively changed by Russian meddling?"
causes panic in a person who is declaiming about the evils of Russian meddling in our elections.
When you ask that question, the invariable retort is that the Russians are so clever that you wouldn't know that you were being
gulled; or, when I say that I have never seen a Russian produced facebook ad, the rejoinder is that the Russians concentrated
on Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Ohio and, of course, I would have been privy to the bot-sent emails and facebook ads generated by
the Internet Research Agency.
You've maintained all along that the Russians interfered in the election, yet I believe it is your position that the Russians
did not change a single vote. Is that correct or do you believe the Russians changed the votes before tabulation?
What did the Russians do that the Trump and Hillary campaigns did not do? Did they also turnout the tens of thousands who showed
up for Trump rallies that Hillary could never muster? Are they still turning out thousands at recent Trump rallies? I'm curious
how come Brennan and Clapper could not turn out thousands to Hillary's rallies when according to our German friend "b", the omnipotent
US Intel services just turned out a quarter of the population of Hong Kong to protest CCP authoritarianism?
Did the Israeli, Saudi and Chinese governments interfere in the election? How would you compare what they did to what you believe
the Russians did?
uieter about it. All that is very different from the absolute covert nature of the Russian IO in the 2016 election. I have
no idea what China did or is doing.
You have no evidence for the so-called Russian IO. It is a fabrication. The lies on this are enormous. If the FBI really had detected
GRU hacking of the DNC in 2015, which is claimed in the fabricated meme, then you would expect the FBI and the other counter intel
elements of the USG to take action. THEY DID NOTHING.
The issue of Russian hacking only emerged when Hillary and the DNC learned that DNC emails were going to be put out by WIKILEAKS.
Again, not one shred of actual evidence that the Russians did it, but blaming the Russians became a convenient excuse in a bid
to divert attention from the real story--i.e,. Hillary and the DNC colluded to defeat Bernie Sanders.
The only real solid evidence of colluding with foreigners, in this case the Ukraine, comes courtesy of Hillary and her campaign.
Hiring a foreign intel officer (ie. Steele) who then takes info from Russians of questionable background and spread it around
as "truth". That was not a Russian IO. Pure Clinton IO.
"What the Russians did was insert misattributed information and disinformation into the election cycle...That is what separates
the Russian IO from anything Clinton, Trump or any of their supporters did."
I believe supporters of both candidates did exactly what you say the Russians did - insert misattributed information & disinformation
into the media stream. If you watch MSNBC or Fox on any given day there is much assertion & opinion masquerading as news. And
the Twitter & Facebook and blog universe are teeming with stories and innuendo that are more fiction than fact all from anonymous
accounts.
The Russia Collusion hysteria is replete with examples of "misattributed information and disinformation". It seems that yellow
journalism is as American as apple pie.
The whole opaque PAC structure with names like "Americans for Democracy" funded by chain structures hiding the real financiers
and calling up down is something that we see growing in every election cycle and is already of significant scale both in terms
of financing and dubiousness.
It is also rather common that "experts" who are called upon to opine on issues routinely never disclose their conflicts of
interest. Jeffrey Sachs and so many others on the payroll of CCP entities never disclose those payments as they extoll the virtues
of offshoring our industrial base to China and are apologists for CCP espionage.
Blue peacock, supporters of Clinton and Trump did not put out misattributed info. They both put out truth, innuendo, exaggerations,
misleading info and even outright lies, but they put it out as themselves. They didn't represent themselves as someone other than
who they were. The PAC structure comes close to skirting this requirement for truthful attribution, but a quick internet search
blows away the facades of these PACs. What the Russians did was pure black propaganda.
You mean the kindly grandmother, Loretta Lynch, Attorney General of the United States, did not inform President Obama that
the FBI had obtained a FISA warrant to surveil the Republican candidate for the presidency and members of his staff becasue he
was working with Russians? Or do you mean that James Comey failed to tell his boss, Loretta Lynch; or do you mean John Brennan
failed to tell Obama about that Steele dossier from Fusion GPS that Mueller know anything about; or do you mean that James Clapper
failed to tell Jeh Johnson about that too? The Russians made them do all those things as part of an interference campaign, right?
It couldn't have been they were corrupt and incompetant.
"Instead, Obama...." made an "If you like your doctor, you can keep you doctor" statement that he knew was completely false.
Trump didn't win, Russians influenced Americans to vote for Trump, just ask the losers of the election, their paid sources and
their colleagues in Congress. In fact Americans love Hilary so much she's just where in the polls right now?
I continue to be astounded by the outrage at "Russian meddling". So some Russians used the internet to post true or false information
on candidates in a election.... so what?...millions of American partisan trolls were doing the same thing for or against a candidate.
We had tons of fake info written by American bloggers and posters all over the net, Facebook, twitter etc..
Its not like Putin came to the US and gave a speech to congress in favor of Trump ...as Netanyahu did in appearing before the
US congress and urging them to go against President Obama's Syria policy for heaven's sake.
It is so ridiculous I have given up hope of finding enough IQs above that of a cabbage to form a sane government.
Obama seemed to have got a taste for spying on his domestic political opponents from monitoring Israeli attempts to block
the Iran nuclear deal. I think the lock her up stuff really scared the Obama people, who had much to hide.
1. The FBI cannot be trusted to uphold defend and protect our Constitution, as they sought actively
to overturn a duly elected POTUS.; and
2 - Mueller's incompetence is astounding.
Is the only entity of the Defense Department called the U.S. Army the only ones left actually upholding, defending, and protecting
our Constitution and our Constitution processes? I don't see the other entities of the DOD called Navy and Air Force doing their
jobs upholding our Constitution!
Thumbs up to the Army, thumbs down to the Navy and Air Force!
I'm a little more charitable to the FBI. The Trumps lied their asses off to the FBI about their foreign contacts. Which IMO,
wrong or right, left the FBI all but no recourse but to investigate those lies. Even if the lies were simply based in long-seated
personal habits, it takes investigation to prove that is the case.
"You have no evidence for the so-called Russian IO. It is a fabrication." In fact, Putin rejects the claim many times publicly
saying that Russia does not meddle in foreign elections as a matter of policy. Maybe I'm gullible, but I find his disclaimer pretty
convincing....
My question for Larry Johnson requires some speculation on his part: How did the claims of "Russia meddling" which began with
the DNC and Hillary campaign, take root at the FBI, CIA and NSA???
Is there an unseen connection between the Democrat leadership and the Intel agencies??? And --if there is-- does that mean
we are headed for a one-party system???
Larry, sorry to nitpick, but I have such regard for your work that it pains me to see the typographical error in your second sentence,
where you say "his error" shortly after referring to Trump. I'm guessing that you meant to say "this error", but it reads as if
it means "Trump's error".
And while I'm at it, your last sentence has "it" instead of "if".
Keep up your great work for this excellent website.
Sadly naive in that you think the conspirators were actually acting in good faith. You think they were right when they used
the Steele Dossier in applying for a FISA warrant in Colyyer's Star Chamber? Steele was a paid informant for the FBI as was Page.
Looks like Mueller is not currently mentally capable of programming his microwave, never mind to be the primary author of his
eport or supervise the investigation.
Shouldn't James Comey and Rod Rosenstein be sitting there, its obvious to me that Mueller is the patsy here.
Notable quotes:
"... Mueller : What page are you referencing? I can't find it" ..."
"... Rep: "Sir, you have the report upsidedown" ..."
I agree wholeheartedly with Tucker Carlson...This whole stupid Russia hysteria propagated
by most of the media made me, an old timer liberal, agree with Tucker. Well played Democratic
Party... well played.
Tucker's question about what should happen to the people who attempted to reverse the will
of the American people? The answer is very straightforward. Those found guilty of sedition
and treason should by law hanged by the neck until dead. This might discourage further
efforts to undermine the will of the American people.
"... For Malaysia, starting with Prime Minister Mahathir, to stand up and say the US tried to cook the record to pin the crash on Russia is remarkable. ..."
"... A new documentary from Max van der Werff, the leading independent investigator of the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 disaster, has revealed breakthrough evidence of tampering and forging of prosecution materials; suppression of Ukrainian Air Force radar tapes; and lying by the Dutch, Ukrainian, US and Australian governments. An attempt by agents of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to take possession of the black boxes of the downed aircraft is also revealed by a Malaysian National Security Council official for the first time. ..."
"... Malaysia's exclusion from the JIT at the outset, and Belgium's inclusion (4 Belgian nationals were listed on the MH17 passenger manifest), have never been explained. ..."
"... The film reveals the Malaysian Government's evidence for judging the JIT's witness testimony, photographs, video clips, and telephone tapes to have been manipulated by the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU), and to be inadmissible in a criminal prosecution in a Malaysian or other national or international court. ..."
"... The new film reveals that a secret Malaysian military operation took custody of the MH17 black boxes on July 22, preventing the US and Ukraine from seizing them. The Malaysian operation, revealed in the film by the Malaysian Army colonel who led it, eliminated the evidence for the camouflage story, reinforcing the German Government's opposition to the armed attack, and forcing the Dutch to call off the invasion on July 27. ..."
"... Although German opposition to military intervention forced its cancellation, the Australians sent a 200-man special forces unit to The Netherlands and then Kiev. The European Union and the US followed with economic sanctions against Russia on July 29. ..."
"... In Kiev on July 24, 2014, left to right: Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop; Dutch Foreign Minister Frans Timmermans, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin. Source: https://www.alamy.com/ The NATO intervention plan was still under discussion, but the black boxes were already under Malaysian control. ..."
"... Subsequent releases from the Kiev government to substantiate the allegation of Russian involvement in the shoot-down have included telephone tape recordings. These were presented last month by the JIT as their evidence for indictment of four Russians; for details, read this . ..."
"... Left: Dutch police chief Paulissen grins as he acknowledged during the June 19, 2019 , press conference of JIT that the telephone tape evidence on which the charges against the four accused Russians came from the Ukrainian SBU. ..."
"... Dubinsky testifies that he had no orders for and took no part in the shoot-down. As for the telephone tape-recording evidence against him, Dubinsky says the calls were made days before July 17, and edited by the SBU. ..."
"... She did not see a launch nor a plume from there. Notice the JIT 'launch site' is less than two kilometers from her house and garden. The BBC omitted this crucial part of her testimony." ..."
"... According to Kovalenko in the new documentary, at the firing location she has now identified precisely, "at that moment the Ukrainian Army were there." ..."
"... Volkov explained that on July 17 there were three radar units at Chuguev on "full alert" because "fighter jets were taking off from there;" Chuguev is 200 kilometres northwest of the crash site. He disputed that the repairs to one unit meant none of the three was operating. Ukrainian radar records of the location and time of the MH17 attack were made and kept, Volkov said. "There [they] have it. In Ukraine they have it." ..."
"... Last month, at the JIT press conference in The Netherlands on June 19, the Malaysian representative present, Mohammed Hanafiah Bin Al Zakaria, one of three Solicitors-General of the Malaysian Attorney General's ministry, refused to endorse for the Malaysian Governnment the JIT evidence or its charges against Russia. "Malaysia would like to reiterate our commitment to the JIT seeking justice for the victims," Zakaria said . "The objective of the JIT is to complete the investigations and gathering of evidence of all witnesses for the purpose of prosecuting the wrongdoers and Malaysia stands by the rule of law and the due process." [Question: do you support the conclusions?] "Part of the conclusions [inaudible] – do not change our positions." ..."
"... Why is the transcript of the Cockpit Voice Recorder kept a secret (see e.g. here for others)? ..."
"... Why is no journalist raising these questions? ..."
"... Bellingcat? The fellow using the pseudonym is called Eliot Higgins and hails from the Midlands, not far from the Jihadist masquerading as the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights above a take away shop. He was a regular BTL commentator at the Grauniad before being paid to spout BS. Nice work if one can get it, eh? ..."
"... That territory where the missile was fired from was in Ukrainian hands at the time, not rebels, and those launchers were seen speeding rapidly west after the shooting down. ..."
"... Now that we have the crime and the five-year cover-up, the simplest explanation is actually the one of a likely false flag operation. Asking 'cui bono,' how would Russia or the rebels benefit from shooting down a plane with bunch of Dutch people on board? (Russia historically has had good relations with Holland, Malaysia, too.) ..."
"... Lots of terrible stuff happened in Ukraine after the govt changed (courtesy of the west). Have we forgotten about the burning of more than 40 people in Odessa? Or the murders of politicians and journalists? ..."
"... And let's not forget the appearance of (coordinated) magazine covers of VVP as the devil incarnate – almost in unison, right after the shooting of the plane. ..."
"... "Why are you so late", [Borodai] said I think [that was] very funny." That sounds like what happened at the Pan Am 103 site. For some reason yet to be explained over thirty years later, the Royal Air Force air accident investigation team, based at RAF Halton in Buckinghamshire, found an American military team on site when they landed by helicopter a bit before midnight. ..."
"... I was following this story very closely at the time and you could see that something was "off" within days. The Russians came out with a press conference and released radar tracks and full & total information. We in the west got – a YouTube link. Seriously. This was just the beginning. There was one clip that came out showing moving trucks that proved that the Russians did it – until someone woke up to the fact that the trees in the background were in the winter season whereas that jet was shot down in high summer. And so it went on. ..."
"... Another time an official visit had to be cancelled as the area was being shelled – by the Ukrainians. You don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to realize that there was a whole pack of dogs that were seriously not barking. ..."
"... That story about Australia wanting to send 3,000 troops was weird. That is a very large force for Australia and it would have taken weeks to put together a joint US/Dutch/Australian Task Force to go into the rebel area but you would have been talking about heavy casualties and risks of severe escalation with a nuclear Russia. ..."
"... Yeah, I remember watching those films. I saw this big, bearded rebel pick up a child's doll, showed it to the camera as in "Do you see this s***?", put it reverently back where he found it, and then crossed himself in a Orthodox blessing. So the western media took a screen shot of that rebel holding that child's doll and put a caption underneath that the rebel was boasting of the plane being shot down. As for that footage, I live in Oz and I am here to state that I would sooner trust CNN or Fox News before would I put any trust in News Corp Australia, especially their propaganda unit "60 Minutes Australia". ..."
"... If memory serves the late Robert Parry of Consortium News claimed to have USG sources who said the missile was a Buk fired by Ukrainian, not separatist troops. And I believe that Russia has said the rocket engine serial number from the investigation's evidence is for a Buk sold long ago to the Ukrainians. ..."
"... The good news is that the criminal coup regime in Kiev seems to have been decisively defeated with Sunday's election according to MOA in Links. Perhaps this particular branch of the New Cold War–which the Obama regime was so very much responsible for–will begin to find peace. ..."
Yves here. Hoo boy. The idea that eastern Ukrainian insurgents or Russia would target a passenger plane never made any sense (unless
the plane had high-priority targets or cargo), although it's always been possible that the downing of MH17 was an accident, and some
efforts to explain what happened are based on that idea. For Malaysia, starting with Prime Minister Mahathir, to stand up and
say the US tried to cook the record to pin the crash on Russia is remarkable.
A new documentary from Max van der Werff, the leading independent investigator of the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 disaster,
has revealed breakthrough evidence of tampering and forging of prosecution materials; suppression of Ukrainian Air Force radar tapes;
and lying by the Dutch, Ukrainian, US and Australian governments. An attempt by agents of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation
(FBI) to take possession of the black boxes of the downed aircraft is also revealed by a Malaysian National Security Council official
for the first time.
The sources of the breakthrough are Malaysian -- Prime Minister of Malaysia Mohamad Mahathir; Colonel Mohamad Sakri, the officer
in charge of the MH17 investigation for the Prime Minister's Department and Malaysia's National Security Council following the crash
on July 17, 2014; and a forensic analysis by Malaysia's OG IT Forensic Services of Ukrainian Secret Service (SBU) telephone tapes
which Dutch prosecutors have announced as genuine.
The 298 casualties of MH17 included 192 Dutch; 44 Malaysians; 27 Australians; 15 Indonesians. The nationality counts vary because
the airline manifest does
not identify dual nationals of Australia, the UK, and the US.
The new film throws the full weight of the Malaysian Government, one of the five members of the Joint Investigation Team (JIT),
against the published findings and the recent indictment of Russian suspects reported by the Dutch officials in charge of the JIT;
in addition to Malaysia and The Netherlands, the members of the JIT are Australia, Ukraine and Belgium. Malaysia's exclusion
from the JIT at the outset, and Belgium's inclusion (4 Belgian nationals were listed on the MH17 passenger manifest), have never
been explained.
The film reveals the Malaysian Government's evidence for judging the JIT's witness testimony, photographs, video clips, and
telephone tapes to have been manipulated by the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU), and to be inadmissible in a criminal prosecution
in a Malaysian or other national or international court.
For the first time also, the Malaysian Government reveals how it got in the way of attempts the US was organizing during the first
week after the crash to launch a NATO military attack on eastern Ukraine. The cover story for that was to rescue the plane, passenger
bodies, and evidence of what had caused the crash. In fact, the operation was aimed at defeating the separatist movements in the
Donbass, and to move against Russian-held Crimea.
The new film reveals that a secret Malaysian military operation took custody of the MH17 black boxes on July 22, preventing
the US and Ukraine from seizing them. The Malaysian operation, revealed in the film by the Malaysian Army colonel who led it, eliminated
the evidence for the camouflage story, reinforcing the German Government's opposition to the armed attack, and forcing the Dutch
to call off the invasion on July 27.
The 28-minute documentary by Max van der Werff and Yana Yerlashova has just been released. Yerlashova was the film director and
co-producer with van der Werff and Ahmed Rifazal. Vitaly Biryaukov directed the photography. Watch it in full
here .
The full interview with Prime Minister Mahathir was released in advance; it can be viewed and read
here .
Mahathir reveals why the US, Dutch and Australian governments attempted to exclude Malaysia from membership of the JIT in the
first months of the investigation. During that period, US, Dutch, Australian and NATO officials initiated a plan for 9,000 troops
to enter eastern Ukraine, ostensibly to secure the crash scene, the aircraft and passenger remains, and in response to the alleged
Russian role in the destruction of MH17 on July 17; for details of that scheme, read
this .
Although German opposition to military intervention forced its cancellation, the Australians sent a 200-man special forces
unit to The Netherlands and then Kiev. The European Union and the US followed with economic sanctions against Russia on July 29.
Malaysian resistance to the US attempts to blame Moscow for the aircraft shoot-down was made clear in the first hours after
the incident to then-President Barack Obama by Malaysia's Prime Minister at the time, Najib Razak. That story can be followed
here and
here .
In an unusual decision to speak in the new documentary, Najib's successor Prime Minister Mahathir announced: "They never allowed
us to be involved from the very beginning. This is unfair and unusual. So we can see they are not really looking at the causes of
the crash and who was responsible. But already they have decided it must be Russia. So we cannot accept that kind of attitude. We
are interested in the rule of law, in justice for everyone irrespective of who is involved. We have to know who actually fired the
missile, and only then can we accept the report as the complete truth."
On July 18, in the first Malaysian Government press conference after the shoot-down, Najib (right)
announced agreements he had already
reached by telephone with Obama and Petro Poroshenko, the Ukrainian President. " 'Obama and I agreed that the investigation will
not be hidden and the international teams have to be given access to the crash scene.' [Najib] said the Ukrainian president has
pledged that there would be a full, thorough and independent investigation and Malaysian officials would be invited to take part.
'He also confirmed that his government will negotiate with rebels in the east of the country in order to establish a humanitarian
corridor to the crash site,' said Najib. He also said that no one should remove any debris or the black box from the scene. The Government
of Malaysia is dispatching a special flight to Kiev, carrying a Special Malaysia Disaster Assistance and Rescue Team, as well as
a medical team. But we must – and we will – find out precisely what happened to this flight. No stone can be left unturned."
The new film reveals in an interview with Colonel Mohamad Sakri, the head of the Malaysian team, what happened next. Sakri's evidence,
filmed in his office at Putrajaya, is the first to be reported by the press outside Malaysia in five years. A year ago, Sakri gave
a partial account of his mission to a Malaysian
newspaper .
"I talked to my prime minister [Najib]," Colonel Sakri says. "He directed me to go to the crash site immediately." At the time
Sakri was a senior security official at the Disaster Management Division of the Prime Minister's Department. Sakri says that after
arriving in Kiev, Poroshenko's officials blocked the Malaysians. "We were not allowed to go there so I took a small team to leave
Kiev going to Donetsk secretly." There Sakri toured the crash site, and met with officials of the Donetsk separatist administration
headed by Alexander Borodai .
With eleven men, including two medical specialists, a signalman, and Malaysian Army commandos, Sakri had raced to the site ahead
of an armed convoy of Australian, Dutch and Ukrainian government men. The latter were blocked by Donetsk separatist units. The Australian
state press agency ABC
reported their
military convoy, prodded from Kiev by the appearance of Australian and Dutch foreign ministers Julie Bishop and Frans Timmermans,
had been forced to abandon their mission. That was after Colonel Sakri had taken custody of the MH17 black boxes in a handover ceremony
filmed at Borodai's office in Donetsk on July 22.
US sources told the
Wall Street
Journal at the time "the [Sakri] mission's success delivered a political victory for Mr. Najib's government it also handed
a gift to the rebels in the form of an accord, signed by the top Malaysian official present in Donetsk, calling the crash site 'the
territory of the Donetsk People's Republic.' That recognition could antagonize Kiev and Washington, which have striven not to give
any credibility to the rebels, whose main leaders are Russian citizens with few ties to the area. State Department deputy spokeswoman
Marie Harf said in a briefing Monday that the negotiation 'in no way legitimizes' separatists."
The Australian state radio then reported the Ukrainian government as claiming the black box evidence showed "the reason for the
destruction and crash of the plane was massive explosive decompression arising from multiple shrapnel perforations from a rocket
explosion." This was a fabrication – the evidence of the black boxes, the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder, first
reported six weeks later in September by the Dutch Safety Board, showed nothing of the kind; read what their evidence
revealed .
Foreign Minister Bishop, in Kiev on July 24, claimed she was negotiating with the Ukrainians for the Australian team in the country
to carry arms. "I don't envisage that we will ever resort to [arms]," she told her state news agency, "but it is a contingency planning,
and you would be reckless not to include it in this kind of agreement. But I stress our mission is unarmed because it is [a] humanitarian
mission."
In Kiev on July 24, 2014, left to right: Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop; Dutch Foreign Minister Frans Timmermans,
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin. Source:
https://www.alamy.com/ The NATO intervention plan was still under discussion, but the black boxes were already under Malaysian
control.
By the time she spoke to her state radio, Bishop was concealing that the plan for armed intervention, including 3,000 Australian
troops, had been called off. She was also concealing that the black boxes were already in Colonel Sakri's possession.
The document signed by Sakri for the handover of the black boxes is visible in the new documentary. Sakri signed himself and added
the stamp of the National Security Council of Malaysia.
Col. Sakri says on film the Donetsk leaders expressed surprise at the delay of the Malaysians in arriving at the crash site
to recover the black boxes. "Why are you so late", [Borodai] said I think [that was] very funny." Source:
https://www.youtube.com/ Min. 05:47.
Sakri goes on to say he was asked by the OSCE's special
monitoring mission for Ukraine to hand over
the black boxes; he refused. He was then met by agents of the FBI (Min 6:56). "They approached me to show them the black box. I said
no." He also reports that in Kiev the Ukrainian Government tried "forcing me to leave the black boxes with them. We said no. We cannot.
We cannot allow."
The handover ceremony in Donetsk, July 22, 2014: on far left, the two black boxes from MH17; in the centre, shaking hands,
Alexander Borodai and Mohamad Sakri.
Permission for Colonel Sakri to speak to the press has been authorized by his superiors at the prime ministry in Putrajaya, and
his disclosures agreed with them in advance.
Subsequent releases from the Kiev government to substantiate the allegation of Russian involvement in the shoot-down have
included telephone tape recordings. These were presented last month by the JIT as their evidence for indictment of four Russians;
for details, read
this .
Van der Werff and Yerlashova contracted with OG IT Forensic Services
, a Malaysian firm specializing in forensic analysis of audio, video and digital materials for court proceedings, to examine
the telephone tapes. The Kuala Lumpur firm has been endorsed by the
Malaysian Bar . The full 143-page technical report can be read
here .
The findings reported by Akash Rosen and illustrated on camera are that the telephone recordings have been cut, edited and fabricated.
The source of the tapes, according to the
JIT press conference on June 19 by Dutch police officer Paulissen, head of the National Criminal Investigation Service of The
Netherlands, was the Ukrainian SBU. Similar findings of tape fabrication and evidence tampering are reported on camera in the van
der Werff film by a German analyst, Norman Ritter.
Left: Dutch police chief Paulissen grins as he acknowledged during the
June 19, 2019 , press conference of
JIT that the telephone tape evidence on which the charges against the four accused Russians came from the Ukrainian SBU.
Minute 16:02 Right: Norman Ritter presented his analysis to interviewer Billy Sixt to show the telephone tape evidence has
been forged in nine separate "manipulations". One of the four accused by the JIT last month, Sergei Dubinsky, testifies from Min.
17 of the documentary. He says his men recovered the black boxes from the crash site and delivered them to Borodai at 23:00 hours
on July 17; the destruction of the aircraft occurred at 1320.
Dubinsky testifies that he had no orders for and took no part in the shoot-down. As for the telephone tape-recording evidence
against him, Dubinsky says the calls were made days before July 17, and edited by the SBU. "I dare them to publish the uncut
conversations, and then you will get a real picture of what was discussed." (Min. 17:59).
Van der Werff and Yerlashova filmed at the crash site in eastern Ukraine. Several local witnesses were interviewed, including
a man named Alexander from Torez town, and Valentina Kovalenko, a woman from the farming village of Red October. The man said the
missile equipment alleged by the JIT to have been transported from across the Russian border on July 17 was in Torez at least one,
possibly two days before the shoot-down on July 17; he did not confirm details the JIT has identified as a Buk system.
Kovalenko, first portrayed in a BBC documentary three
years ago (starting at Min.26:50) as a "unique" eye-witness to the missile launch, clarifies more precisely than the BBC reported
where the missile she saw had been fired from.
This was not the location identified in press statements by JIT. Van der Werff explains: "we specifically asked [Kovalenko] to
point exactly in the direction the missile came from. I then asked twice if maybe it was from the direction of the JIT launch site.
She did not see a launch nor a plume from there. Notice the JIT 'launch site' is less than two kilometers from her house and
garden. The BBC omitted this crucial part of her testimony."
According to Kovalenko in the new documentary, at the firing location she has now identified precisely, "at that moment the
Ukrainian Army were there."
Kovalenko also remembers that on the days preceding the July 17 missile firing she witnessed, there had been Ukrainian military
aircraft operating in the sky above her village. She says they used evasion techniques including flying in the shadow of civilian
aircraft she also saw at the same time.
On July 17, three other villagers told van der Werff they had seen a Ukrainian military jet in the vicinity and at the time of
the MH17 crash.
Concluding the documentary, van der Werff and Yerlashova present an earlier interview filmed in Donetsk by independent Dutch journalist
Stefan Beck, whom JIT officials had tried to warn off visiting the area. Beck interviewed Yevgeny Volkov, who was an air controller
for the Ukrainian Air Force in July 2014. Volkov was asked to comment on Ukrainian Government statements, endorsed by the Dutch Safety
Board report into the crash and in subsequent reports by the JIT, that there were no radar records of the airspace at the time of
the shoot-down because Ukrainian military radars were not operational.
Volkov explained that on July 17 there were three radar units at Chuguev on "full alert" because "fighter jets were taking
off from there;" Chuguev is 200 kilometres northwest of the crash site. He disputed that the repairs to one unit meant none of the
three was operating. Ukrainian radar records of the location and time of the MH17 attack were made and kept, Volkov said. "There
[they] have it. In Ukraine they have it."
Last month, at the JIT press conference in The Netherlands on June 19, the Malaysian representative present, Mohammed Hanafiah
Bin Al Zakaria, one of three Solicitors-General of the Malaysian Attorney General's ministry, refused to endorse for the Malaysian
Governnment the JIT evidence or its charges against Russia. "Malaysia would like to reiterate our commitment to the JIT seeking justice
for the victims," Zakaria
said . "The objective of the JIT is to complete the investigations and gathering of evidence of all witnesses for the purpose
of prosecuting the wrongdoers and Malaysia stands by the rule of law and the due process." [Question: do you support the conclusions?]
"Part of the conclusions [inaudible] – do not change our positions."
By John Helmer , the longest continuously serving foreign
correspondent in Russia, and the only western journalist to direct his own bureau independent of single national or commercial ties.
Helmer has also been a professor of political science, and an advisor to government heads in Greece, the United States, and Asia.
He is the first and only member of a US presidential administration (Jimmy Carter) to establish himself in Russia. Originally published
at
Dances with Bears
I always come back to the same three questions:
1. If all civilian and military radars were out of order, why was the flight not redirected out of the Ukrainian airspace and
into some territory with radar?
2. Why is the transcript of the Cockpit Voice Recorder kept a secret (see e.g.
here for others)?
3. Why is no journalist raising these questions?
(I got a partial answer to 3. "because only Kremlin trolls and conspiracy specialists doubt the official/Bellingcat version")
Re 1) active radar is not used that much in civilian flight control anymore, it's basically a back-up for passive transponder
pick up. Dnipro Control was monitoring the flight using passive (that's for example how they knew they were off their approved
airway L980 and asked them to get back, which, if there was no radar, they could not do). Passive (civilian) radar is no use in
tracking missiles or military planes with no transporder on.
Bellingcat? The fellow using the pseudonym is called Eliot Higgins and hails from the Midlands, not far from the Jihadist
masquerading as the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights above a take away shop. He was a regular BTL commentator at the Grauniad
before being paid to spout BS. Nice work if one can get it, eh?
Having grown up in a military family and knowing what precautions are taken, I am staggered at how Bell End Cat can track down
Russian secret servicemen with such ease and in their homeland.
If you watch the film, you'd learn that there were back-ups so not all were out of order. And if we knew the answer to your
questions, we'd likely know 'who done it.'
Undoubtedly there's something quite rotten afoot here, and I'll be sure to give this film a watch, but honestly the Malaysians
have zero credibility when it comes to airplane crashes involving their national airline, especially after they deliberately fed
false information to rescue and recovery teams concerning MH 370's flight path. Whatever they knew or didn't know they had no
interest in helping anyone find that airplane or discover what took place onboard before it vanished. They should spare us all
any sanctimony about 'justice for victims, truth, rule of law, etc.'
It seems the world has a real credibility crisis today, not many state actors I trust to tell the truth or not politicize tragedy.
These revelations certainly make it seem more likely Ukrainian forces were to blame for downing MH17, but at this point the mystery
will never be conclusively solved. Two warring factions with the exact same equipment/weaponry in close proximity, compromised
crash sites, tons of propaganda, lots of interested parties seeking to maximize the tragedy for political gain, corrupt authorities
all around.
Not an ideal situation for objective fact finding to say the least. With the 1MBD scandal and investigation still ongoing I
have no doubts the Malaysians are probably looking for leverage and bargaining chips where ever they can find them, further eroding
their objectivity and authority in my opinion. Getting to the bottom of the Kennedy assassination will be easier than MH17, but
if the truth does come out it will not be owed to the virtues of the Malaysian government. They've already shown the world how
much they care about airplane crash investigations.
I have to tell you, this is an ad hominem argument, which is a violation of our site Policies. You need to deal with the evidence
and not attack the source. With MH370, you had a crash of a plane under the control of the carrier, not as a result of an air
strike.
Quite apart from the ad hominem nature of JerryDenim's comment (and I disagree with Yves Smith; I think the credibility of
sources is relevant), what motive would Malaysia have for siding with Russia/east Ukraine against the west/west Ukraine? Does
JerryDenim know of one, or have any suggestions?
TBH, I have dire doubts on anything Malaysian government says, due to their handling of MH370 where they continue lying in
face of hard facts (that doesn't mean I believe any governments on this).
I believe that the most likely cause is an accidental shooting down, where an inexperienced and untrained separatist crew messed
up (this is what you get when even a semi-sophisticated equipment gets to untrained people who are keen to use it).
For me it fits Occam's razor the most, and is the only theory which explains the (documented) boasting of the separatists of
a large military plane being shot down immediately after the catastrophe.
How is "Russia did it" logical? That part of Ukraine was in the hands of separatists, not "Russia". "Russia" was not directing
their activities. Russia does not want to control the eastern part of Ukraine, which is an economic basket case. But it doesn't
want hostile forces parked on its border.
Sorry, that's irrelevant even if true. Even if "Russia" was formally providing troops, as opposed to engaged in a massive wink
and nod (a LOT of Russians had relatives in eastern Ukraine, a point you forget re motives and numbers), that's way way way short
of any evidence they were in charge.
Plus I was wrong on the key point, and it renders your argument moot. From Rev Kev below:
That territory where the missile was fired from was in Ukrainian hands at the time, not rebels, and those launchers were
seen speeding rapidly west after the shooting down.
This response is non-sensical. Have you been to the cemeteries you mention? Any picture can be posted and a caption written
– that is no proof of anything. Besides the point being irrelevant to the question of who shot down the plane.
Now that we have the crime and the five-year cover-up, the simplest explanation is actually the one of a likely false flag
operation. Asking 'cui bono,' how would Russia or the rebels benefit from shooting down a plane with bunch of Dutch people on
board? (Russia historically has had good relations with Holland, Malaysia, too.)
Lots of terrible stuff happened in Ukraine after the govt changed (courtesy of the west). Have we forgotten about the burning
of more than 40 people in Odessa? Or the murders of politicians and journalists?
I suppose if one believes the West's preferred version of Putin as some Bond type villain who takes great delight in shooting
down planes full of civilians, presumably while stroking a large white cat then I suppose the he dunnit version is the one for
you.
Personally I believe that Putin is not an idiot & would likely have been more interested in putting out that fire than throwing
more fuel onto it. As for who has any credibility – the Ukrainians under Porkyschenko with their Neo-Nazi element, would I think
be at the bottom of my list & that is without mentioning Neo-Cons with their Noble Lie BS.
And let's not forget the appearance of (coordinated) magazine covers of VVP as the devil incarnate – almost in unison, right
after the shooting of the plane.
"Why are you so late", [Borodai] said I think [that was] very funny." That sounds like what happened at the Pan Am 103
site. For some reason yet to be explained over thirty years later, the Royal Air Force air accident investigation team, based
at RAF Halton in Buckinghamshire, found an American military team on site when they landed by helicopter a bit before midnight.
The US team took charge even though they were on foreign soil.
That was a pretty gutsy move on the Malaysians to send in their own retrieval team for those recorders. I bet that those Malaysian
commandos would have a story to tell or two. The danger wasn't from the rebels however but from the west and their allied Ukrainians.
The rebels were more than glad to hand over the records that they found at first opportunity but the information, once in the
hands of the west, has been seeping out with all the speed of the translations of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
I was following this story very closely at the time and you could see that something was "off" within days. The Russians
came out with a press conference and released radar tracks and full & total information. We in the west got – a YouTube link.
Seriously. This was just the beginning. There was one clip that came out showing moving trucks that proved that the Russians did
it – until someone woke up to the fact that the trees in the background were in the winter season whereas that jet was shot down
in high summer. And so it went on.
There was a very slow walk to stop people going to the crash site. One Australian couple who lost someone went there in spite
of the efforts of our government to stop them.Another time an official visit had to be cancelled as the area was
being shelled – by the Ukrainians. You don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to realize that there was a whole pack of dogs that were
seriously not barking. A link from this page talks about how there is a silence when MH17 got hit. I have heard recordings
of aircraft that went down and there is usually something – a bang, crumpling, warning calls, shouts – but here there was nothing.
That story about Australia wanting to send 3,000 troops was weird. That is a very large force for Australia and it would
have taken weeks to put together a joint US/Dutch/Australian Task Force to go into the rebel area but you would have been talking
about heavy casualties and risks of severe escalation with a nuclear Russia. Having said that, Tony Abbott was Prime Minister
of the time and Julie Bishop was his Foreign minister and they are both hard right politicians (now both thankfully gone) and
may have been entertaining such thoughts.
My belief is that this was an operation to try and retrieve the situation in the Ukraine for the west. The US alone spent over
$5 billion on this coup but Russia grabbed the crown jewels of Crimea (with its naval bases & off-shore gas fields) and eastern
Ukraine which has a border with Russia. That territory where the missile was fired from was in Ukrainian hands at the time, not
rebels, and those launchers were seen speeding rapidly west after the shooting down. Ask yourself – who benefited from this tragedy
and that will tell you where to go looking for answers. Maybe, like happened with the Meuller investigation, Russian legal representations
should show up in a court of law and start demanding the discovery process of all the evidence. Now that could get interesting.
Rebels were the first to respond to the crash scene, recording themselves with a camcorder. The rebels were convinced they
had shot down a Ukrainian fighter jet and were searching for a pilot that would have ejected. The rebels then thought a
fighter downed the airliner and they downed the fighter. Their commander speaking in both Russian and Ukrainian tells the
rebels to stop filming and clear the area of civilians. The footage was aired by News Corp Australia.
Yeah, I remember watching those films. I saw this big, bearded rebel pick up a child's doll, showed it to the camera as
in "Do you see this s***?", put it reverently back where he found it, and then crossed himself in a Orthodox blessing. So the
western media took a screen shot of that rebel holding that child's doll and put a caption underneath that the rebel was boasting
of the plane being shot down. As for that footage, I live in Oz and I am here to state that I would sooner trust CNN or Fox News
before would I put any trust in News Corp Australia, especially their propaganda unit "60 Minutes Australia".
If memory serves the late Robert Parry of Consortium News claimed to have USG sources who said the missile was a Buk fired
by Ukrainian, not separatist troops. And I believe that Russia has said the rocket engine serial number from the investigation's
evidence is for a Buk sold long ago to the Ukrainians.
Of course Western sources will say the Russians have no credibility but then they don't either–the fog of propaganda war.
The good news is that the criminal coup regime in Kiev seems to have been decisively defeated with Sunday's election according
to MOA in Links. Perhaps this particular branch of the New Cold War–which the Obama regime was so very much responsible for–will
begin to find peace.
Ukrainian nation is a separate nation with a distinct and rich culture. You can call them Southern Russians but still they are
distinct. That does not mean that Russian language should be suppressed and eliminated from schools, the policy
advocated and implemented by Western Ukrainian nationalists. a better policy would to introduce English language from the first
grade. Attempt to eliminate Russian is viewed by Eastern Ukrainians as the attempt of colonization (which it is) and in a
long run can have the opposite effect like any colonization project.
Two languages can coexist. Ireland and Canada does not stop being distinct countries because they use English language. And
very few people in Canada would support switching to French. Many prominent Russian writers have Ukrainian origin (Nikolai
Gogol, Mikhail Bulgakov). Elimination of Russian destroy
common cultural space (which enriches all participating nations not only Russia) establishing during the USSR years and
shrink this common the cultural space.which for Ukraine mean complete domination in Ukrainian cultural space of US culture and
Hollywood with all its excesses and warts.
The break of economic cooperation with Russia after EuroMaydan was Washington policy with willing implementers in the
face of comprador column (Yatsenyuk, Poroshenko) and Western Ukrainian nationalists, which run the
government after EuroMaydan. Among other thing this implies the attempt of colonization of Eastern Ukraine (via forceful Ukrainization) which
backfired with the election of Zelensky.
Notable quotes:
"... Zelensky is of Jewish heritage and from the east Ukraine. He speaks Russian, not Ukrainian. ..."
"... I doubt that Trump cares about Ukraine so the main supporter of the coup is not interested ..."
"... But Zelensky is a new guy without any tail moving into a poisonous and dangerous area without allies (other than the voters of course, but how many guns do they have?) ..."
"... Zelensky didn't 'accidentally' become president. He is a front for Kolomoisky who, amongst other things, wants revenge on Poroshenko. Kolomoisky had vaste swathes of property confiscated under Poroshenko. These were all returned a short while back. Kolomoisky probably wants to dump all post-Maidan stuff on Poroshenko, especially MH17 (which Kolomoisky stated to be 'a trifle' and 'the wrong plane was hit'). Lawsuits against Poroshenko have been started. What happens depends on how much loyalty Poroshenko can buy versus that bought by Kolomoisky. ..."
"... Helmer on Kolomoisky and the vast money stolen with collaboration of Lagarde and Clintons, and the resulting suit, which appears to be aimed at keeping Zelensky on the reservation... ..."
"... "A new Delaware state court filing a month ago, triggering new US media reports, appears to signal a shift in US Government policy towards Kolomoisky. Or else, as some Ukrainian policy experts believe, it is a move by US officials to put pressure on the new Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, whom Kolomoisky supported in his successful election campaign to replace Poroshenko." ..."
"... It is interesting to read commenters not understanding the concept of colonial outposts like HK, SK, Japan and the attempts to make the Ukraine such. To empire they represent outposts to challenge the adjoining countries that are not part of empire. look at Puerto Rico. Empire favored it and even paid for citizens to go to college free.....until it didn't work to help make Cuba look bad....and so now it is being discarded like a dirty rag. ..."
"... The Gordian knot in Ukraine is that, after Maidan, the Ukrainian Armed Forces essentially dissolved. The neonazi militias then became the only enforcing power for whatever was left of the Ukrainian government -- that's why Poroshenko, albeit elected, could do nothing to stop those militias from doing whatever they pleased (even though he not being a neonazi himself). ..."
"... Ukraine's economy is in absolute tatters. The Ukrainian government just didn't completely dissolve after Maidan because the USA is using the IMF to artificially keep it afloat (which goes completely against the IMF chart, as was the case with Macri's Argentina, where even the legal borrowing limits were extrapolated by a more than 100% margin). ..."
"... Irrespective of evidence, this is Ukraine, and Kolomoisky's influence on Zelensky can safely be assumed. ..."
"... The issue with the association agreement offered by the EU was not just that it offered little. As I recall it meant access for all EU products to the post-Soviet trading block. There would be nothing to prevent EU exporting anything through Ukraine into Russia. ..."
"... Needless to say, Yanukovych's real options have never been discussed much, and Russia has been blamed for the EU's Economic trap. ..."
"... what does Ukraine have to offer Russia? Aside from putting some space between Russia and NATO, what is left of Ukraine after all of this that they can offer? ..."
"... The Soviet Union built up a large amount of high tech and high value industry in Ukraine, but most of that has rusted away since 1991. Russia has found or developed new sources for most of what they previously bought from Ukraine, and those sources are domestic so Russia is unlikely to trade them in for products made from neglected and mostly defunct Ukrainian industries. ..."
"... That Ukraine has to be considered as both a bridge and a no alliance's land between the West and Russia has always been a no-brainer to me ..."
"... As for Zelensky, he has the backing of the people, such a backing that a 3rd colour revolution would be immediately opposed by a bigger counter-manifestation. Besides, he should seek the backing of the rank and file of the Ukrainian army, just in case things go very badly with the fascists; considering his vast support among the people, the upper echelons of the military might not like or follow him, but if he gives orders, the core troopers would. ..."
"... "Revealing Ukraine" documentary aka "В борьбе за Украину" (which includes the interview in Kremlin released 19 July, minus the Skirpal comments) was released in Ukrainian and Russian, 17, 19 July. The version in those languages is eg here, https://my.mail.ru/mail/stelskov/video/235/5800.html ..."
"... "One hopes that Zelensky is smart enough to foresee a "third Maidan". He should kick out all of them from the police and other forces. He should also raise the police pay. He will need their loyalty sooner than he might think." ..."
"... For newcomers, here is the TC-18-01, the American manual for Unconventional Warfare (published in 2010; leaked in 2012): Training">https://nsnbc.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/special-forces-uw-tc-18-01.pdf">Training Circular No. 18-01: Special Forces Unconventional Warfare, For the color revolution manual, see Gene Sharp's famous book (From Dictatorship to Democracy, 1994). ..."
"... The Holodomor was real, but then again, so were Stalin's purges in that same era (a little later) and Stalin's ethnic forced migrations from 1930 to 1949. ..."
"... While this doesn't excuse these acts, people should keep in mind that the Soviet Union was under tremendous external and internal pressure at the time. Acts of economic warfare tend to be poorly documented in history - for example, China's famines in the 1960s were exacerbated by a US embargo on wheat imports to China. ..."
"... Ultimately, however, the main reason the Western Ukrainians don't like Russia is because they've always believed Ukraine should be a nation in its own right. The large contingent of Ukrainians in Canada, for example and including its present foreign minister, were fighting for the Germans against Russia in World War 2 under the SS , no less. ..."
"... Pre 2014 the Chinese were attracted by the opportunity of a deep water port in Crimea, the sea is too shallow into Ukraine proper. ..."
"... Is it a feature of the "rules based international order" that unelected NGOs can establish "red-lines" on policy and expect adherence? ..."
"... What Ukraine has to offer, William Gruff, if the Biden clan has not stolen it, is some of the best agricultural land in the temperate world. ..."
"... there is the matter of saving those lands from the scourges of American agriculture-GMOs, Roundup et al. ..."
"... This is certainly true: the survivors of the 14th Waffen SS Galicia Division and their dependents, hangers on and sundry war criminals on the lam certainly came to Canada where they sold their votes en bloc to the Federal Liberal Party. In Alberta they came to control inter alia the University of Alberta. ..."
"... But long before these people came over immigration from Ukraine, including Mennonites, brought their traditional skills and agricultural knowledge to, most notably the Prairies. They knew about growing wheat in the climatic conditions here. They also brought traditions of collective organisation -- they tended to be very left wing, co-operators and were among the founders of the Communist Party and the CCF. ..."
"... "Jewish population of Ukraine is 0.2% of the whole! Why are they running the country?" They aren't, Jackrabbit. Grow up, for Christ's sake, and put these cheap racist cracks behind you. Ukraine is being run by the US and NATO, the Empire. God willing that is now going to change. ..."
"... The main reason, but never disclosed by our corporate press in the West, was the total unacceptable ( hence fullty understandable) of an either/or demand choosing between EU and Russia cooperation btw the lines, as well as an article about military cooperation. Which of course would also exclude Russian partnership. ... that set the stage the humble and charming Mrs "Fuck EU" Nudelman and her cookies at Maidan square. ..."
"... The very fundamental principles of peace, understanding and cooperation of EU was betrayed by their President Baroso. When you add that to the financial rape of Greece by Goldman Sachs & co on his watch, one should think he deserved being executed for high treason! Civil war in Ukraine & and looting of the people of Greece... But guess what... He went directly from EU to .. GOLDMAN SACHS! ..."
"... I appreciate that good concise timeline and explanation of what has happened in Ukraine. I remember finding online a live 24/7 camera feed from Kiev during the Maidan coup, and the fascination but horror of watching the western backed Right Sector thugs wearing neo-nazi Wolfsangel insignias carry out atrocities in real time. ..."
"... Watching what happened live and then following western media disinformation and outright lies was the final slap in the face for me that the corporate media had finally given up any pretenses of journalistic standards. Winter 2013/2014 it finally gasped its last breath and the last nails were hammered into the coffin. From then on we've had non-stop blatantly false narratives presented, with the nutty bogus Russiagate fiction now consuming three years(!) of coverage. ..."
"... Zelensky himself had to brush up on his Ukrainian to be able to run a campaign, which he managed to do with his talents and scripts. ..."
"... Ukraine is being run by the US and NATO, the Empire. No. Ukraine is being run by it's West-leaning leadership and US/NATO is partnered with that leadership. I'm suggesting that Jews are among the most reliably pro-Western people in Ukraine. After all, the "Empire" that you refer to is known as the "Anglo-Zionist Empire". ..."
"... I recall watching the 2014 crisis and civil war in real time. Felt WW-III was upon us. Couldn't believe the outright lies of all Western media and was the straw that broke the back of any remaining faith I had in NYT, The Guardian, BBC, ABC (Australian) etc. The Odessa Massacre was biggest turning point for me. http://stormcloudsgathering.com/the-odessa-massacre-what-really-happened/ ..."
"... In 2014, if I presented evidence against the official Western Ministry of Truth (yeah see the typo but seems worth leaving) on Ukraine I'd get a righteous backlash and called a Putin apologist etc. These days there's blank inward stare of cognitive dissonance, subtle agreement and desire to change topic. Such is the nature of Stockholm Syndrome. ..."
"... My understanding is that of Paora and bevin; there were famines in the Soviet Union, including in Ukraine. The Holodomor myth, if not started there, was massively promoted in the 30s by ... drumroll ... the Hearst empire. ..."
"... Note to snake: not 32 million, but around 5-7 million, probably laughable in itself. (A reference I found for the Ukraine SSR in the 1930s indicates that the population grew during the 1930-33 period, but that should probably be read with great care. It would probably require a study in itself.) ..."
"... On another, but not entirely irrelevant matter, I've always found this wikipedia entry to be vastly entertaining. It gives me a good chuckle to think of Ukrainization -- the promotion of Ukrainian language and culture -- as a communist plot. (It's not a perfect analogy, but it's close enough for a laugh, considering the present.) (And yes, I know it's Wikipedia, but their prejudices lean generally in the other direction.) ..."
"... The extreme right-wing politicians, who gained notoriety after the Maidan coup, prohibited the use of the Russian language which more than 50% of the Ukrainians speak ..."
"... Russian is still spoken in large parts of Ukraine, including Odessa. The main tourist attraction in Odessa, a beach community known as Arcadia, still uses the Russian word at its entrance. Street signs are still in Russian. People speak Russian. ..."
"... The only thing is they made Ukrainian the official language. Everyone must learn it. It is the same in Russia - everyone must learn Russian, even in Chechnya. It is in the nature of a country to have a universal language whereby everyone in the country may communicate. There is nothing whatsoever radical or even unusual about this. ..."
"... As to Yanukovych, he was widely hated by everyone for his total corruption. Even Russians. I lived in Ukraine at that time - mostly in Sevastopol, which was then 90+% Russian (and of course now is part of Russia). Everybody hated him and thought he was utterly corrupt and stole from the people. His thugs would literally walk into a private business with guns and tell the owner "I am buying half your business for $50, here are the papers, sign them now". That is how he operated. Of course they did not want the L'viv folks staging a coup, but the hatred for the corrupt Yanukovych was truly national. ..."
"... All those who say that Zelenski is a puppet or front for Kolomoiski should remember that a certain VV Putin came to power as a puppet or front for Boris Berezovski. And we all know how that (BB) ended. So let's hope for the best - can't get much worse anyway. And Zelenski seems to have acted very smartly so far. Good luck to him - he'll need it! ..."
"... It's my understanding that those Ukrainians who most fervently believe in the Holodomor (that the Soviet govt under Joseph Stalin deliberately targeted ethnic Ukrainians with famine and starvation) live in that part of the modern Ukraine that was under fascist Polish rule in the 1930s. ..."
"... From my own reading, the famines of the early 1930s affected large parts of eastern Ukraine across southen European Russia into Kazakhstan. ..."
"... There's plenty of sources documenting the Ukrainian laws passed since 2014 prohibiting or restricting Russian language in various sectors, including official use, public education, even in films. b was correct in his assessment, and I have no idea where the "hate" accusation came from. I would normally not link to the awful Telegraph of UK, but I assume this story from just three months ago isn't fake news. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/04/25/ukraine-passes-law-against-russian-language-official-settings/ ..."
"... Most probably, Mariupol 2014-05-09. People wanted to celebrate V-Day, but "democratic" Oleg Lyashko and his "men in black" drove in at attacked demonstration. Local police tried to protect citizens and was ambushed in their own HQ (that very burning house), making last stand. ..."
"... Famines were common in the pre-industrial world. They occured often in the ancient world -- where cities and villages literally disappeared in a matter of decades because of one bad crop and/or one plague (plagues are a side-effect of sedentarism) ..."
"... Wheatcroft uses the 1920s demographic tendency in order to infer "excess deaths" in the USSR in 1932, but he misses the bigger picture: you have to take into account Russian demographic movements in the long term, taking into consideration the cyclic famines. Just to crop a short period from 1926-1932 is scientifically dishonest. ..."
"... It is very unlikely the 1932 famine was an extraordinary famine. The 1937 census registered a population growth in relation to 1926. This alone discards genocide, because, even though excess deaths ocurred (as is the rule in famines), that meant women still had time and resources to biologically reproduce above the population replacement levels. ..."
"... To understand the most important fact of what happened to Ukraine and why, you need to know about the yank neocon PNAC, which trumps (excuse the pun) all: The Project for the New American Century, and the original neocon (jew) wolfowitz doctrine, as revealed in the NYT in 1992: www.nytimes.com/1992/03/08/world/us-strategy-plan-calls-for-insuring-no-rivals-develop.html ..."
"... Russia at the moment is correctly perceived as the main opponent to the usa, china too as upcoming, in line with the above, & PNAC is part of trying to keep Russia in its place: 'part of the American mission will be "convincing potential competitors that they need not aspire to a greater role or pursue a more aggressive posture to protect their legitimate interests."' And 'to deter any nation or group of nations from challenging American primacy'. And 'a world in which there is one dominant military power whose leaders "must maintain the mechanisms for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role."' Note 'regional' insofar as it concerns Russia wrt ukraine. ..."
"... Also this is why the USG used Maidan (with at least $5 bn - said nuland/jewland, married to the co-founder of PNAC kagan, another jew) against Russia, to cause it problems and to be a thorn in the flesh. ..."
"... Recall the posters in previous threads defending the empire's color revolution attempts in Hong Kong and match the names up with posters here. Are they trying to offer defense of the empire's color revolutions in Ukraine, or do you think they are off-duty now and posting with the sincere intention of initiating open discussion? Do you honestly think you can change their minds by engaging with them and pointing out the flaws in their facts and their logic when it is their job to defend the actions of the empire? ..."
"... Too complex? Let's try the Maidan snipers: We are expected to believe that the killers were police or Berkut snipers. What was their motive? Presumably to stop the protests. If that was their motive, then why did the snipers stop sniping before dispersing the protests? If the snipers were trying to end the protests, then why did they shoot just enough to inflame further protests, but not enough to discourage the protests? ..."
"... The answer is simple: The police and/or Berkut were not the Maidan snipers in Kiev. The snipers were provocateurs who intended to amplify the protests. ..."
Ukraine Election - Voters Defeat Second Color RevolutionVanWoland , Jul 22
2019 18:55 utc |
1
The Ukraine, translated as 'the borderlands, lies between core Russia and the Europe's
western states. It is a split country. Half the population speaks Russian as its first
language. The industrialized center, east and south are culturally orthodox Russians. Some of
its rural western parts were attached to the Ukraine only after World War II. They have
historically a different culture.
The U.S., supported by the EU, used this split - twice - to instigate 'revolutions' that
were supposed to bring the Ukraine onto a 'western' course. Both attempts were defeated when
the Ukrainians had the chance of a free vote.
The 2004 run-off election for the president of the Ukraine was won by Viktor Yanukovych.
The U.S. disliked the result. Its proxies in Ukraine alleged alleged fraud and instigated a
color revolution. As a result of the 'Orange Revolution' the vote was re-run and the other
candidate, Viktor Yushchenko, was declared the winner. But five years later another vote
defeated the U.S. camp. Yanukovych was declared the winner and became president.
In 2014 the European Union made an attempt to bind the Ukraine to its side through an
association agreement. But what the EU offered to Ukraine was paltry and Russia countered it.
Unlike the Ukraine, which continues to get robbed by its oligarchs ever since its 1991
independence, Russia was economically back and in a much better position. It offered billions
in investments and long term loans. Much of Ukraine's industry depends on Russia and Russian
gas was offered to the Ukraine for less than the international market price. Yanukovych, who
originally wanted to sign the EU association, had no choice but to refuse it, and to take the
much better deal Russia offered.
The U.S. and the EU intervened. They again launched a color revolution, but this time it
was one that would use force. Militarily trained youth from Galicia in the west Ukraine was
bused into Kiev to occupy the central Maidan place and to violently fight the police. Snipers
from Georgia were brought in to fire on both sides. It was then
falsely
alleged that government forces were killing the 'peaceful protesters'.
Yanukovych lost his nerves and fled to Russia. After some
illegal political maneuvers new elections were called up and the oligarch Petro
Poroshenko, bought off by the 'west', was declared the winner. The unreconstructed fascists
from Galicia took over. The population in the industrial heartland in east Ukraine, next to
Russia's border, revolted against the new rulers. A civil war,
not a 'Russian
invasion' , ensued which the Ukrainian government largely lost. Lugansk and Donbas became
rebel controlled statelets which depend of Russia. Russia took back Crimea, which in 1954 had
been illegally gifted to Ukraine by then Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, himself a
Ukrainian.
To end the war in the east Ukraine, the French, German and Russian leaders pressed
Poroshenko to sign a peace agreement with the eastern leaders. But the Minsk agreement was
seen as a political defeat and Poroshenko never implemented it. The war in the east simmered
on ever since. The extreme right-wing politicians, who gained notoriety after the Maidan
coup, prohibited the use of the Russian language which more than 50% of the Ukrainians speak.
All opposition was harshly suppressed.
The oligarchs continue their plunder. Everything of value gets sold off to EU countries.
The U.S. is allowed to build bases. Corruption, already endemic, further increased. The
people came to despise Poroshenko.
In an attempt to regain support, Poroshenko
launched a military provocation in the Kerch Strait which is under Russian control. The
stunt
was too obvious . Russia nabbed the sailors Poroshenko had send and confiscated their
boats. No one came to Poroshenko's help.
One can watch the full story of the above in UKRAINE ON FIRE - The Real Story (vid), a
just released 90 minutes long Oliver Stone documentary. An updated version of the documentary
was supposed to run on the Ukraine TV station of pro-Russian oligarch Viktor Medvedchuk. The
TV stations was
forced to cancel it after right-wing groups mortared its its building in Kiev.
On March 31 new elections were held. Volodymyr Zelensky, a TV comedian who played a
teacher who accidentally became president, won the first round. Zelensky is of Jewish
heritage and from the east Ukraine. He speaks Russian, not Ukrainian.
An admirable summary.
What's next? There are three causes for cautious optimism
1. The elections were actually allowed to happen without Washington's interference; see 2
2. I doubt that Trump cares about Ukraine so the main supporter of the coup is not
interested
3. EU has its own problems.
But Zelensky is a new guy without any tail moving into a poisonous and dangerous area
without allies (other than the voters of course, but how many guns do they have?)
But you're absolutely correct to see this as the voters gain rejecting a "colour
revolution"imposed from outside
Fine work here, Bernhard. Analysis as clear and cool as a mountain stream.
And now for the march of the Fascists led by the Iron Maidan of Galicia, Chrystia Freeland
employing all Canada's power and credibility to restore the Galician Nazis from whose loins
she came.
Excellent review b, thanks! With the political sea change, Ukraine has an opportunity to
progress, but somehow those pushing and believing their false narrative will need to be
neutralized. It appears the best way forward is to implement the Minsk2 agreements and go
forward from there.
Zelensky didn't 'accidentally' become president. He is a front for Kolomoisky who, amongst
other things, wants revenge on Poroshenko. Kolomoisky had vaste swathes of property
confiscated under Poroshenko. These were all returned a short while back. Kolomoisky probably
wants to dump all post-Maidan stuff on Poroshenko, especially MH17 (which Kolomoisky stated
to be 'a trifle' and 'the wrong plane was hit'). Lawsuits against Poroshenko have been
started. What happens depends on how much loyalty Poroshenko can buy versus that bought by
Kolomoisky.
Kolomoisky will be looking for alternative sources of loot (eg reconstruction funds) which
will only happen if the Donbass situation is wound down. Zelensky has unexpectedly announced
that there will be a political solution to the issue of Russian sailors captured before the
Kerch incident (and one factor in Russia's response to it) in exchange for those held in
Russia. For all this to happen, the neo-Nazis will have to be defused, which may not be as
difficult as it would appear as they are funded and orchestrated by the Ukraine
oligarchs.
Helmer on Kolomoisky and the vast money stolen with collaboration of Lagarde and Clintons,
and the resulting suit, which appears to be aimed at keeping Zelensky on the reservation...
"A new Delaware state court filing a month ago, triggering new US media reports, appears
to signal a shift in US Government policy towards Kolomoisky. Or else, as some Ukrainian
policy experts believe, it is a move by US officials to put pressure on the new Ukrainian
President, Volodymyr Zelensky, whom Kolomoisky supported in his successful election campaign
to replace Poroshenko."
It is interesting to read commenters not understanding the concept of colonial outposts
like HK, SK, Japan and the attempts to make the Ukraine such. To empire they represent outposts to challenge the adjoining
countries that are not part of empire.
look at Puerto Rico. Empire favored it and even paid for citizens to go to college
free.....until it didn't work to help make Cuba look bad....and so now it is being discarded
like a dirty rag.
Ukraine needed to get out of the rut it has been in and look forward somehow, even if there
are no great changes that happen in the country, much of the previous political heaviness
seem gone, for now at least. It should be a good difference. Thanks for the report.
The Gordian knot in Ukraine is that, after Maidan, the Ukrainian Armed Forces essentially
dissolved. The neonazi militias then became the only enforcing power for whatever was left of
the Ukrainian government -- that's why Poroshenko, albeit elected, could do nothing to stop
those militias from doing whatever they pleased (even though he not being a neonazi himself).
Zelensky will have the same problem: he can pass how much bills he wants -- only those who
the neonazi militias want to be implemented will be enforced. He needs to assemble a brand
new Armed Forces -- with amateur volunteers if necessary -- if he wants to survive: his
Jewish origin alone is already a death certificate for him in the eyes of the neonazis.
The other ace Zelensky has in his hand is the Donbass (Lughansk + Donestk). Those happen
to be the most pro-Russian provinces and also, by far, the two most rich and industrialized
ones. To make things even better, they also happen to be the two provinces that border with
Russia. This peculiar geopolitic configuration is a gift of destiny that, for example,
Brazil, didn't have.
Ukraine's economy is in absolute tatters. The Ukrainian government just didn't completely
dissolve after Maidan because the USA is using the IMF to artificially keep it afloat (which
goes completely against the IMF chart, as was the case with Macri's Argentina, where even the legal borrowing limits were
extrapolated by a more than 100% margin). Russia just needs to wait.
Note: as for the toppled Lenin statues. Please, continue: in one of his birthdays, the
Soviet population made a mass homage to him, gathering in the Red Square and writing him
poems. He was very embarrassed and hated it -- his rationalization was that the Revolution's
main actor was the poeple, not him, and that personality cult was the wrong way to perceive
reality of the times.
2 quibbles. Irrespective of evidence, this is Ukraine, and Kolomoisky's influence on Zelensky
can safely be assumed.
The issue with the association agreement offered by the EU was not just that it offered
little. As I recall it meant access for all EU products to the post-Soviet trading block.
There would be nothing to prevent EU exporting anything through Ukraine into Russia. This is
why the Russians expected to be part of a negotiating group, and why eventually Yanukovych
belatedly realised that EU association would lead direct to dissociation with ex-Soviet
trading partners and an economic catastrophe for Ukraine. Not so much Russia dissuading Kiev
as Kiev taking an inordinate length of time to realise the blatantly obvious.
Needless to say, Yanukovych's real options have never been discussed much, and Russia has
been blamed for the EU's Economic trap.
Thing is, in Ukraine as much as in the US, EU, India, or wherever: For a Politician to make a
campaign for a high political position, let alone the highest, one NEEDS Money.
And where is a someone financing a politician, they make themselves vurnable. Thats the
nature of it: No one will give you even a penny, let alone dozens of millions of dollars, if
not for something in return.
So someone HAS to put the money into him, and Kolomoisky is reported not only by NATO, but by
Russian sources too.
Why do i say this? Because i want to have my point that everyone is corrupt, and the world
is dystopia. No, not today:
It is because those "civil organisations" already hinted, that they use Kolomoisky's
financing as the attack vector, should the Ukraine dare to stray off from NATO course.
They said something of the likes of: "We heard of the allegations that Kolomoisky is
having him in his pocket, and we always want to ensure that politics are not corrupted, so we
will watch it". They said that AFAIK some days before the recent threath, so maybe there has
been some signs he does not want to play ball with NATO.
But we will see.. With the US you never know, even more with Donald and his best buddy
neocons.
b says: "The Ukraine can not economically survive without good relations with Russia."
That is true, but what does Ukraine have to offer Russia? Aside from putting some space
between Russia and NATO, what is left of Ukraine after all of this that they can offer?
The
Soviet Union built up a large amount of high tech and high value industry in Ukraine, but
most of that has rusted away since 1991. Russia has found or developed new sources for most
of what they previously bought from Ukraine, and those sources are domestic so Russia is
unlikely to trade them in for products made from neglected and mostly defunct Ukrainian
industries.
Ukraine can go crawling back home to Russia (home being the place where they take you back
in even after you've been a total jerk), but there will be no massive bailout and magical
recovery. Eastern Ukraine will benefit from a peace dividend, but western Ukraine will have
to be satisfied with European sex tourism, with Lvov remaining the gay prostitute capital of
the continent.
@B: One Correction if i see it right: I think linked Documentary "Ukraine on fire" is NOT the
new one, he already made a doc about Ukraine some time ago, and this is it.
The new one is Not released yet, i mean the one with the Interview you posted few days ago.
The new one will be named Revealing Ukraine, and is just released.
Search your torrent search engine or tracker of choice for it for a HD release. Not on
youtube yet AFAIK.
Sorry, last post: Please barflies, for those you want to support those documentarys, vote for
them on IMDB and write reviews if you saw them. They are being attacked from NATO bots and
voted down to C-Movie level. If you dont want BS like Fast & Furious have better ranking
as those anti-mainstream docs, please take your time and support them!
They are pretty much the only documentarys in mainstream US media that tell the other side!
That Ukraine has to be considered as both a bridge and a no alliance's land between the West
and Russia has always been a no-brainer to me. One that should be imposed from outside if
necessary, if some Ukrainians are foolish enough to pick a side - and, considering its
geographical position, specially if some Ukrainians people want to move "West" full speed
ahead, because the border with Russia will always be there.
As for Zelensky, he has the backing of the people, such a backing that a 3rd colour
revolution would be immediately opposed by a bigger counter-manifestation. Besides, he should
seek the backing of the rank and file of the Ukrainian army, just in case things go very
badly with the fascists; considering his vast support among the people, the upper echelons of
the military might not like or follow him, but if he gives orders, the core troopers would.
For example, I believe that Russians and Ukrainians are actually one people.
Putin adds that it's inevitable that Ukraine will eventually return to good relations with
Russia.
Look, when these lands that are now the core of Ukraine, joined Russia, there were just
three regions – Kiev, the Kiev region, northern and southern regions – nobody
thought themselves to be anything but Russians, because it was all based on religious
affiliation. They were all Orthodox and they considered themselves Russians. They did not
want to be part of the Catholic world, where Poland was dragging them.
Putin is correct, as usual. He is playing the Long Game, just as China has done with Hong
Kong and continues to do with Taiwan. The empire always uses divide and rule. But in the end, empires always bite the dust.
In Ukrainian politics my preferences are with the present Russian viewpoint and not at all
with the Ukrainian Nazis.
Nevertheless, in these discussions there is never a mention of the Ukrainian Holodomor of
1932-1933 that caused the deaths of millions of Ukrainians.
"Revealing Ukraine" documentary aka "В борьбе
за Украину" (which includes the
interview in Kremlin released 19 July, minus the Skirpal comments) was released in Ukrainian
and Russian, 17, 19 July. The version in those languages is eg here,
https://my.mail.ru/mail/stelskov/video/235/5800.html
b said; "One hopes that Zelensky is smart enough to foresee a "third Maidan". He should kick
out all of them from the police and other forces. He should also raise the police pay. He
will need their loyalty sooner than he might think."
We'll all hope for the Zelensky people to salvage some sanity from another round of the
empire's attacks. They'll never relent.
One would hope the Stone documentary would be seen here, in the U$A, but that's a distant
dream. Should at least be on PBS, but, I doubt it.
As always b, thanks for the therapy, and historical background...
For newcomers, here is the TC-18-01, the American manual for Unconventional Warfare
(published in 2010; leaked in 2012):
Training">https://nsnbc.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/special-forces-uw-tc-18-01.pdf">Training
Circular No. 18-01: Special Forces Unconventional Warfare, For the color revolution manual, see Gene Sharp's famous book (From Dictatorship to
Democracy, 1994).
When used at the same time in the same place, they form what Korybko calls Hybrid Warfare
(see his book).
The Holodomor was real, but then again, so were Stalin's purges in that same era (a little
later) and Stalin's ethnic forced migrations from 1930 to 1949.
While this doesn't excuse these acts, people should keep in mind that the Soviet Union was
under tremendous external and internal pressure at the time. Acts of economic warfare tend to
be poorly documented in history - for example, China's famines in the 1960s were exacerbated
by a US embargo on wheat imports to China.
Ultimately, however, the main reason the Western Ukrainians don't like Russia is because
they've always believed Ukraine should be a nation in its own right. The large contingent of
Ukrainians in Canada, for example and including its present foreign minister, were fighting
for the Germans against Russia in World War 2 under
the SS , no less.
Some allege that Zelensky is under influence of the oligarch Igor Kolomoisky. But so far
there is little evidence to provide that.... Zelensky will likely try to move the country
back to a balanced positions between the 'west' and Russia.
There's reason to be skeptical.
Nuland (Jewish) picks Yats (rumored to be Jewish). Yats is succeeded by Groysman (Jewish).
President Poroschenko (Jewish) is succeeded by Zelinski (Jewish). Jewish population of Ukraine is 0.2% of the whole! Why are they running the country? I'll
bet it's because Jewish support for integration with the West is very strong.
"Yats is the guy" ... until he isn't but will the new guy bring real change or just
pretend to?
Not just a bridge between Russia and the EU, the natural partnership that the US really
fears, but, look at the geography, it is the natural entry point into Europe for the new Silk
Road from China. Pre 2014 the Chinese were attracted by the opportunity of a deep water port
in Crimea, the sea is too shallow into Ukraine proper.
"Nevertheless, in these discussions there is never a mention of the Ukrainian Holodomor of
1932-1933 that caused the deaths of millions of Ukrainians..."
The 'Holodomor' was not real. No such event occurred. There was no intention of starving
Ukrainians, on the part of the CPSU. In fact most of the Soviet Union suffered from famines
in these years, some regions much more than Ukraine. The causes of the famine were largely
economic sanctions.
It is quite true that the Collectivisation campaigns were, in many ways disastrous, and
carried out with great violence. But the Holodomor myth, invented by Nazi collaborators after
1945 and based on Goebbels's propaganda is Cold War anti-communist hate propaganda of the
worst kind.
Wikipedia is extremely unreliable on matters such as this.
2.As to comedians running governments Hoarsewhisperer, don't forget Italy.
3. What Ukraine has to offer, William Gruff, if the Biden clan has not stolen it, is some
of the best agricultural land in the temperate world. At a time in which the USA's ability to
dump grain on the world market is being employed to conduct terrorist economic warfare
against disobedient countries, the surpluses Ukraine could make available are of cardinal
importance. Then there is the matter of saving those lands from the scourges of American
agriculture-GMOs, Roundup et al.
" The large contingent of Ukrainians in Canada, for example and including its present foreign
minister, were fighting for the Germans against Russia in World War 2 under the SS, no
less."
c1ue@26
This is certainly true: the survivors of the 14th Waffen SS Galicia Division and their
dependents, hangers on and sundry war criminals on the lam certainly came to Canada where
they sold their votes en bloc to the Federal Liberal Party. In Alberta they came to control
inter alia the University of Alberta.
But long before these people came over immigration from Ukraine, including Mennonites,
brought their traditional skills and agricultural knowledge to, most notably the Prairies.
They knew about growing wheat in the climatic conditions here.
They also brought traditions of collective organisation -- they tended to be very left wing,
co-operators and were among the founders of the Communist Party and the CCF. It was with
great relish that the Liberal Party used the former (and lifelong) Nazis to saplit the
community post 1945.
"Jewish population of Ukraine is 0.2% of the whole! Why are they running the country?"
They aren't, Jackrabbit. Grow up, for Christ's sake, and put these cheap racist cracks behind
you. Ukraine is being run by the US and NATO, the Empire. God willing that is now going to
change.
re "Jewish population of Ukraine is 0.2% of the whole! Why are they running the
country?"
(a) Is it true that the population of Ukraine is .2% Jewish?
(b) Is it true that the .2% segment runs the country?
(c) Is it considered racist to ask why you find the two subject sentences indications of
racism?
However, for sake of good order, the EU association agreement proposal to Ukraine of Mr
Baroso, was presented and rejected by Janukovitch beginning of November 2013. ( not 2014).
The main reason, but never disclosed by our corporate press in the West, was the total
unacceptable ( hence fullty understandable) of an either/or demand choosing between EU and
Russia cooperation btw the lines, as well as an article about military cooperation. Which
of course would also exclude Russian partnership. ... that set the stage the humble and
charming Mrs "Fuck EU" Nudelman and her cookies at Maidan square.
The very fundamental principles of peace, understanding and cooperation of EU was betrayed by
their President Baroso. When you add that to the financial rape of Greece by Goldman Sachs
& co on his watch, one should think he deserved being executed for high treason! Civil
war in Ukraine & and looting of the people of Greece... But guess what... He went
directly from EU to .. GOLDMAN SACHS!
I appreciate that good concise timeline and explanation of what has happened in Ukraine. I
remember finding online a live 24/7 camera feed from Kiev during the Maidan coup, and the
fascination but horror of watching the western backed Right Sector thugs wearing neo-nazi
Wolfsangel insignias carry out atrocities in real time. I searched in vain a couple years
later to find the archives of these films. Does anyone know if they still exist? I suspect if
the filming was done by a coup-friendly Kiev TV station they will be kept under wraps unless
some viewer recorded them, as there is a lot of incriminating evidence which could be
exposed.
Watching what happened live and then following western media disinformation and outright
lies was the final slap in the face for me that the corporate media had finally given up any
pretenses of journalistic standards. Winter 2013/2014 it finally gasped its last breath and
the last nails were hammered into the coffin. From then on we've had non-stop blatantly false
narratives presented, with the nutty bogus Russiagate fiction now consuming three years(!) of
coverage.
Here's hoping the pendulum has swung and we'll reclaim some sanity. Current trends don't
favor this, however, and the US may go for the Samson option before conceding to a more
multi-polar world. A smart lady (my wife) says we need 10% of people to accept a new idea or
narrative before a critical mass can occur and it become the dominant narrative. The more
people who understand the issues MOA and others educate about gives us a chance of countering
the Empire's narrative control. Thanks to all for spreading the message and keep sharing with
your friends.
"Jewish population of Ukraine is 0.2% of the whole! Why are they running the country?"
They aren't, Jackrabbit. Grow up, for Christ's sake, and put these cheap racist cracks
behind you. Ukraine is being run by the US and NATO, the Empire. God willing that is now
going to change.
No, he does not just say "Jewish population of Ukraine is 0.2% of the whole! Why are they
running the country?". He says:
Nuland (Jewish) picks Yats (rumored to be Jewish). Yats is succeeded by Groysman (Jewish).
President Poroschenko (Jewish) is succeeded by Zelinski (Jewish).
Jewish population of Ukraine is 0.2% of the whole! Why are they running the country?
I'll bet it's because Jewish support for integration with the West is very strong.
You can't ignore this "interesting" "fact" if it's the fact.
@21 and @26 - regarding the Holodomor, It is true. Millions of people did die, but from what
I can tell, it was a lot more complicated than how it is presented. Here's an article I found
on Counterpunch Holodomor
I am no specialist or anything, but I think the collectivization was a disaster and the war
on the kulaks didn't help anything, and that lead to the Holodomor which is more
genocide-porn used for the same purposes as a few other large scale killings I have heard
about - to make sure we never forget, and more importantly, we never really find out what
really happened, because it is S A C R E D.
I just finished an excellent book on the Ukraine crisis. Flight MH17, Ukraine and the New
Cold War by Kees Van Der Pijl. In the book he says that the Holodomor was used by the Reagan
administration in the second phase of the Cold War as a tool to demonize the Soviet Union.
Sound Familiar? The author says the second phase of the Cold War was launched when detente
was broken with the Soviet Union, any concessions made to domestic labor in the west was to
be dismantled and the goal was regime change in Moscow which happened in 1991. The author
really lays it out and explained the new, third phase of the Cold War which really kicked
into gear in Kiev in the winter or 2014. I found that to be very interesting. I had never
heard it put that way before.
I can't recommend the book enough.
I just started Frontline Ukraine by Sakwa.
Thank you, B and everyone in the MoA community. Please forgive any mistakes I may have made
in describing my interpretation of van Der Pijl's book.
Ukraine is such a unique disaster of a nation precisely because it is not really a nation at
all, just a cobbled together mishmash of people with no history. There is no such thing as a
Ukrainian ethnicity. Ukrainians are ethnic Russians, remnants of the poor souls conquered by
the Poles after the Mongol invasion and treated like dirt for centuries. All through that
horrid time they preserved their identity as Russian, but when the Polish state was removed
from the map, bitter Polish academics pushed the tale that these people were somehow separate
from Russians, i.e. Russia had no right to it's retaken territory. This new foreign composed
identity was forced on them by both carrot and stick in the Austrian Empire, that occupied
Galicia...leading to concentration camps for those who resisted it in WWI. And the saddest
part of the tragedy was when the Soviets founded a Ukrainian republic, lending undeserved
credence to this farce. There is no wonder the country is such a schizophrenic failure. They
have no clear identity and their recent history is nothing but sniveling shame. What is
really the difference between groveling before Nazi invaders or groveling before Nato
invaders? Not much, and the end is the same.
I think over 20% of Ukraine's population is "not Ukrainian".
Posted by: c1ue | Jul 22 2019 21:59 utc | 28
It is quite complicated. For example, Zelensky himself had to brush up on his Ukrainian to
be able to run a campaign, which he managed to do with his talents and scripts. His first
language is Russian, and ancestry... Khazarian? If I recall, he shares first language,
hometown and ancestry with Kolomoysky who was also his employer. What I am trying to say is
that national identification is fluid in this region. You may have Russian nationalists who
speak Ukrainian dialect at home, Ukrainian nationalists with rather incomplete knowledge of
"their language" and many other combinations. That said, Ukrainian is a separate language
that may be hard to understand by someone who knows only Polish or only Russian (but rather
intelligible if you know both).
Occasionally I follow news on RusNext.ru, a news site that seems to be run by Donbass
supporters who fluently translate from Ukrainian and, I guess, use Ukrainian words here and
there.
BTW, the history of Ukraine is quite complicated, including "Polish Conquest" that in
actuality happened as very complex cleaving and coalescing of fragmented states with key
dynasties leaving no descendants BOTH in Poland and the Kingdom of Halich thus leaving both
to the rule of a Hungarian king, to be later partitioned between his two daughters, while the
less populated part of Ukraine was taken over by Lithuanians who had hard time defending
their holdings from Tatars etc. After that, the polity of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
adopted Polish as the common language of nobility, so most of the "cruel Polish lords" that
Ukrainians fought with in 17th century were of Ruthenian (Russian?) origin, some claiming
descent from Rurik (i.e. from the common dynasty of Rus lands). Compare with Irish and
Scottish nobility adopting a Saxon-French mix as their vernacular (now known as English).
I was just discovering the importance of internet world news information when the Maidan
crisis unfolded, and many Ukrainians were putting photos and videos on various blogs about
the horrible events leading up to and following the coup. Russia has made huge strides since
- but we cannot forget that ordinary people who had the ability to send out information as it
happened were to be highly praised for doing so. It wasn't sophisticated, I remember in one
city in Donbass it was simply someone filming as he walked along the street, showing bodies
on the street corner, the official Ukraine military speeding through the streets - vivid
shots of buildings on fire, a protest by a woman with a toddler at a speechgiving occasion.
Unforgettable.
Ukraine should be proud of being the historic heart of Russia itself, the place where the
State began. That's what Putin is talking about, and even more than Crimea Kiev is the
historical homeland capital city for all Russians; it's part of their heritage. It's as if
separatists in the US got themselves embedded in New York City and declared their
independence of the rest of the country, being more aligned with Canada. (Oh, and everyone in
that northern area now had to speak French.)
Wikipedia
tells us that Jews are 0.2% of the population in Ukraine.
'Jewish' is not a race. It's a religion. Do you think that Israel is a country for
semetic people ? LOL. No, it's a theocracy.
Ukraine is being run by the US and NATO, the Empire. No. Ukraine is being run by it's West-leaning leadership and US/NATO is partnered with
that leadership. I'm suggesting that Jews are among the most reliably pro-Western people in
Ukraine. After all, the "Empire" that you refer to is known as the "Anglo-Zionist
Empire".
<> <> <> <> <> <>
Leads me to wonder if the State Department's recent global antisemitism efforts are mostly
aimed at Ukraine.
If Ukraine itself made such efforts/expenditures it might would draw a backlash from the
Ukrainian people. So the US does it and slyly declares it to be global so no one
notices that it's directed at certain countries (mostly Ukraine?) that have Jewish leadership
that's backed by US/NATO.
As part of the effort to take over Ukraine, US/NATO forged an anti-Russian alliance that
included the anti-Jewish extreme-right in Ukraine as described by
Ukraine and the "Politics of Anti-Semitism" (2014) :
The US and the EU are supporting the formation of a coalition government integrated by
Neo-Nazis which are directly involved in the repression of the Ukrainian Jewish
community.
. . .
Within the Western media, news coverage of the Neo-Nazi threat to the Jewish community in
Ukraine is a taboo. There is a complete media blackout: confirmed by Google News search ...
What is not mentioned is that these "radical elements" supported and financed by the West
are Neo-Nazis who are waging a hate campaign against Ukraine's Jewish community.
. . .
According to the JP [Jerusalem Post] , the issue is one of "transition", which will
be resolved once a new government is installed .
"Despite his [Likhashov's] optimism fear pervades the local Jewish community, as it
does the entire Ukraine, during the transition period."
No doubt Jews would not feel safe with rightists leading the government so arrangements
were made (Democracy Works! LOL). We can surmise that the US State Dept has now
formalized this with funding for a propaganda campaign that seeks to change their views
and/or political slush fund to ensure election of Jewish candidates to high office?
Acar@39 The Globalists/Zionists Good 'Ole Pale of (re)Settlement included Crimea, home of the
Karaites, hence manipulation of the Rusyns, and Neo-fascist Galicians & Podolians. A
strange ethnic Divide et Impera nexus for sure..
"The pneumatics ("spiritual", from Greek πνεῦμα, "spirit")
were, in Gnosticism, the highest order of humans, the other two orders being psychics and
hylics ("matter"). A pneumatic saw itself as escaping the doom of the material world via the
transcendent knowledge of Sophia's Divine Spark within the soul."
No one is disputing that famines occurred in Soviet Ukraine. These famines also occurred
in Belarus and Russia. The extent to which the harsh form of collectivisation institutioned
under Stalin contributed as opposed to climatic and other factors (Western sanctions, crop
destroying pests etc) is a matter for debate. Grover Furr argues the latter forcefully in
'Blood Lies' (2014). The term "Holodomor" refers to an intentional policy of genocide against
the "Ukrainian Nation" by evil Russians/Commies/Jews via intentional starvation. As bevin @32
points out, this concept originated in Nazi ideology. So yes, famine(s) occurred, but the
"Holodomor" did not.
As for the author of the Counterpunch piece, Louis Proyect, he is an imperial apologist of
the worst sort who delights in trolling any forum where anti-imperialists gather. If this
appears to be an Ad Hominum attack, I think you have to be human to be a victim of one of
those.
I also can't recommend the Van der Pijl book enough. Usually if I see a book recommended
by someone who also links to a Louis Proyect article I would avoid it like the plague, but
barflies please don't be discouraged! Van der Pijl is one of the premier exponents of
(non-sectarian) Marxist International Relations, if you've been put off reading Marxist
authors thanks to the likes of Proyect he is the perfect antidote. His "Global Rivalries -
From The Cold War to Iraq" (2007) is also excellent, I would recommend you track that down if
Sakwa has nothing much to add.
Global Research has an extract from "Flight MH17, Ukraine and the New Cold War" here:
Arseniy Yatsenyuk, Prime minister
. . .
He has played down his Jewish-Ukrainian origins , possibly because of the prevalence
of antisemitism in his party's western Ukraine heartland.
Yatsenyuk resigned in disgrace in April 2016 amid a massive corruption scandal that
first broke in February, when economy minister Aivaras Abromavicius stepped down,
complaining that the Yatsenyuk government was not genuinely committed to fighting
corruption .
One of the many corrupt projects was Yats' border wall, which critics have said
"wouldn't even stop a rabbit." LOL.
The new one will be named Revealing Ukraine, and is just released. Search your torrent
search engine or tracker of choice for it for a HD release. Not on youtube yet AFAIK.
I just downloaded but got the Russian version without subtitles. I am unable to find the
English version. For those that understand Russian, the magnet link for the download is:
magnet:?xt=urn:btih:cbfd33adbd1d2bf3d48aade83a60507fe9f74241
If anyone can find the English version, please post the magnet link or infohash value, but I
guess it has not yet been released.
by: bevin @ 32 < i am particularly interested to know the source of that 1932-1933
Holodomor propaganda.. .. claiming, not merely alleging, the genocidal deaths of 32 million
Ukrainians.. Seems to me these fake claims that appear everywhere, have generally the same
general sources, but are leaked at different places, in different formats, by different
faces.. .. ?
I would like to see if it is possible to prove the source to be a coordinated
amalgam of persons, and more particularly I am looking for the individual names that produce
fake propaganda for a living, where did they study, who trained them, who hired them and so
on.. Seems to me preparing, engineering or delivering fake anything that causes, or leads to
war and death and destruction is a crime against humanity (CAH) with universal application
because CAHs infringe inalienable human rights. There is a great need to make functional, on
a world wide basis, the ICC.. Additionally the ICC cases have the potential to deliver the
truth to History.
Iran, Russian, North Korea and China are positioned to impose ICC court jurisdiction,
Nuclear Non Weapon Proliferation, and 3 vetos required to overrule the findings and mandates
of a majority determination of the UN Security Council on all leaders and all nations and
ruling bodies in the world. War, and in fact the decimation and destruction of the universe,
is possible because these holes in the enforceable rule by law system exist. Fixing these
three holes could have a massive long term effect on the peace and income distribution
throughout the entire globe.
A forth such thing would be to internationalize all resources in the world, and to
allocate ownership to them based on population and finally, the most important change of all,
would be to internationalize education.. to grant one degree for all undergraduate education
based on international subject matter examinations ( does not matter where or how the
knowledge to pass is obtained, so universities and tutors can still play a massive part in
instructing the masses), and one professional degree in law, one in medicine and one in
engineering.. everyone would have to pass examinations and prove fluency in at least three
culturally different, geographically different languages, and prove competency in mathematics
at the differential and integral calculus level to be eligible to sit for an undergraduate
degree and lawyers, doctors, scientist and engineers would be eligible to practice anywhere
in the world, subject only to credential free, local regulation imposed because of local
experience. Local regulation <= not supported by local experience would be overturned.
None of this requires, demands, or needs a king or a president, it just needs to be a part of
the human experience in the earth environment.
Great summary b.
Needed somebody to just spell it out.
I recall watching the 2014 crisis and civil war in real time. Felt WW-III was upon us.
Couldn't believe the outright lies of all Western media and was the straw that broke the back
of any remaining faith I had in NYT, The Guardian, BBC, ABC (Australian) etc.
The Odessa Massacre was biggest turning point for me.http://stormcloudsgathering.com/the-odessa-massacre-what-really-happened/
There's far more evidence Ukraine shot down MH17 than the Donbas rebels did. Go to
www.consortiumnews.com and search 'MH17'
Talking with friends something has shifted for the average Joe and Jane. In 2014, if I
presented evidence against the official Western Ministry of Truth (yeah see the typo but
seems worth leaving) on Ukraine I'd get a righteous backlash and called a Putin apologist
etc. These days there's blank inward stare of cognitive dissonance, subtle agreement and
desire to change topic. Such is the nature of Stockholm Syndrome.
@21 David Park, @26 c1ue, @32 bevin, @34 Ghost Ship, @41 roza shanina, @54 Paora, @58 snake
My understanding is that of Paora and bevin; there were famines in the Soviet Union,
including in Ukraine. The Holodomor myth, if not started there, was massively
promoted in the 30s by ... drumroll ... the Hearst empire.That alone should
tell you something of its reliability. Proyect's piece is interesting, but it doesn't touch
on the Western creation of the "Holodomor," the myth itself of the Soviet
genocide aimed at Ukrainians.
Unfortunately, I'm unable right now to put my hands/keyboard on a good reference for this.
If I'm able to locate one, I'll put it in a comment in an open thread.
Note to snake: not 32 million, but around 5-7 million, probably laughable in itself. (A
reference I found for the Ukraine SSR in the 1930s indicates that the population
grew during the 1930-33 period, but that should probably be read with great
care. It would probably require a study in itself.)
* * * *
On another, but not entirely irrelevant matter, I've always found this wikipedia entry to
be vastly entertaining. It gives me a good chuckle to think of Ukrainization -- the promotion
of Ukrainian language and culture -- as a communist plot. (It's not a perfect analogy, but
it's close enough for a laugh, considering the present.) (And yes, I know it's Wikipedia, but
their prejudices lean generally in the other direction.)
The extreme right-wing politicians, who gained notoriety after the Maidan coup, prohibited
the use of the Russian language which more than 50% of the Ukrainians speak.
That's a bald-faced lie. Russian is still spoken in large parts of Ukraine,
including Odessa. The main tourist attraction in Odessa, a beach community known as Arcadia,
still uses the Russian word at its entrance. Street signs are still in Russian. People speak
Russian.
The only thing is they made Ukrainian the official language. Everyone must learn it. It is
the same in Russia - everyone must learn Russian, even in Chechnya. It is in the nature of a
country to have a universal language whereby everyone in the country may communicate. There
is nothing whatsoever radical or even unusual about this.
Stop spreading hate and lies. This is utter nonsense.
As to Yanukovych, he was widely hated by everyone for his total corruption. Even Russians.
I lived in Ukraine at that time - mostly in Sevastopol, which was then 90+% Russian (and of
course now is part of Russia). Everybody hated him and thought he was utterly corrupt and
stole from the people. His thugs would literally walk into a private business with guns and
tell the owner "I am buying half your business for $50, here are the papers, sign them now".
That is how he operated. Of course they did not want the L'viv folks staging a coup, but the
hatred for the corrupt Yanukovych was truly national.
You don't do anyone any favors by publishing lies.
All those who say that Zelenski is a puppet or front for Kolomoiski should remember that a
certain VV Putin came to power as a puppet or front for Boris Berezovski. And we all know how
that (BB) ended. So let's hope for the best - can't get much worse anyway. And Zelenski seems
to have acted very smartly so far. Good luck to him - he'll need it!
It's my understanding that those Ukrainians who most fervently believe in the Holodomor (that
the Soviet govt under Joseph Stalin deliberately targeted ethnic Ukrainians with famine and
starvation) live in that part of the modern Ukraine that was under fascist Polish rule in the
1930s.
From my own reading, the famines of the early 1930s affected large parts of eastern
Ukraine across southen European Russia into Kazakhstan.
The issue though is not so much the details of what actually occurred then as in the
creation of a lie that deliberately equates Nazis with Soviets and thus Nazism with
Communism, and ultimately socialism. If Nazism led to the Holocaust, then Communism and
socialism must be demonstrated to have resulted in equally great horrors such as mass
famines, starvation or incarcerating people in concentration camps on the basis of their
religion. The current demonization of the Chinese govt over its supposed treatment of Falun
Gong followers or Uyghurs follows this pattern.
Accusing b of "spreading hate and lies"? There's plenty of sources documenting the
Ukrainian laws passed since 2014 prohibiting or restricting Russian language in various
sectors, including official use, public education, even in films. b was correct in his
assessment, and I have no idea where the "hate" accusation came from. I would normally not
link to the awful Telegraph of UK, but I assume this story from just three months ago isn't
fake news.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/04/25/ukraine-passes-law-against-russian-language-official-settings/
> The only thing is they made Ukrainian the official language.
...and the ONLY one.
...and the language undeveloped, that lacked words for many modern realities, from helicopter
to condom, so they all had to be invented rashly.
> It is the same in Russia - everyone must learn Russian, even in Chechnya.
In Russia, Crimean Turks can teach their children, in beginner's school, in k'yrymchi
language. It is one of three official languages of Crimean region. In Ukraine it was impossible then and it is impossible still.
> It is in the nature of a country to have a universal language
...that is only native to less than 20% of the population? Well, it is indeed a nature - of OCCUPIED countries. Like, Norman invasion into England, when elites had one language and serfs - another. And
serf's language was slowly suffocated and replaced by foreign language of occupying
elites. "If to live in comfort you have to rename every major city and tear down every ,ajor
monument - you cam to live on someone's else land".
> whereby everyone in the country may communicate.
If that was the intention - then the language native to population's 83% would become
official, like it is in Ireland. But not in Ukraine.
> As to Yanukovych, he was widely hated by everyone for his total corruption.
He was. So you say this makes illegal coup less illegal and bandit Poroshenko less bandit. How
exactly? Or you just throw in irrelevant emotional hitpiece to accuse of "spreading lies" by which
you mean "not spreading your favorite grievances" ?
> Yanukovych.... had no choice but to refuse [Deep and Comprehensive EuroAssociation]
But he did not.
He asked to amend it, to re-negotiate it.
He asked to add there compensation clause from EU to Ukrainian industries. Russia also asked for it to be re-negotiated, but Russia wanted re-negotiation from
scratch into a trilateral treaty. Yanukovich only wanted money to support Ukrainian economic
until his re-election.
Bad for him, but money he asked for "coincidently" were the same, as money Europe promised
to Ukraine for removing of Nuclear weapon and Chernobyl nuclear power. When Ukraine delivered
and asked for money - the 2nd maidan (2004) happened and both Kuchma and his heir Yanukovich
flew down the drain. When Yanukovich was allowed to the throne in 2009 he conveniently forgot
about that story. But the moment he asked EU for money, albeit under pretext of Association
and markets, the 3rd maidan unleashed and Yanukovich went down the drain again. Guess, he had
to learn his lesson without repeats?..
> Not so much Russia dissuading Kiev as Kiev taking an inordinate length of time to
realise the blatantly obvious.
Posted by: Michael Droy | Jul 22 2019 20:03 utc | 12
Well, it took Russia to really START implementing trade inhibition, there were few rather
vibrant "scandals" in spring and summer 2014 with Russia banning this or that food/alcohol
form Ukraine, quoting safety hazards, to make Yanukovich understand this time it is for
real.
Most probably Yanukovich was like Saakashvili in 2008, totally programmed that "Russia
would not date" because "Russia is secretly ruled by Jews/NeoLibs/Washington/whatever".
Russia dared. And then Yanukovich understood he was not selected to be a hero bringing
Ukraine to Europe, but a scapegoat to absorb the fallout.
is biased also ? It isn't my argument at all, but I do understand that language is very
important in terms of identity. There is quite a lot of history in that article to take into
account, or argue over I suppose. As it is probably the "go to" reference for people outside
of the region wanting to understand the question of languages in Ukraine, its content is
relevant.
> I remember in one city in Donbass it was simply someone filming as he walked along the
street, showing bodies on the street corner, the official Ukraine military speeding through
the streets - vivid shots of buildings on fire
Posted by: juliania | Jul 23 2019 1:44 utc | 47
Most probably, Mariupol 2014-05-09. People wanted to celebrate V-Day, but "democratic" Oleg Lyashko and his "men in black"
drove in at attacked demonstration. Local police tried to protect citizens and was ambushed
in their own HQ (that very burning house), making last stand.
"In the 2014 Ukrainian parliamentary election he led his party to win 22 seats."
"In the 2019 Ukrainian parliamentary election Lyashko lost his parliamentary seat"
One may also look for Olena Bilozerka, 2013 German "best international blogger."
She is open and vocal part of Right Sector, though allegations were she is inflating
political issues to hide marauding issues.
She blogged back in 2014-02-16 about "next day" meeting of Right Sector representatives with
Merkel "to report about implementation of our part of agreement and to be informed by Merkel
about implementing her part" and regardless of "checking the watches" about armed assault
upon government on 18.02, which indeed happened and was success.
Being open and vocal Nazi she then published many photo and video that were "omitted" by free
world's free media.
This "how many people did Communism killed" question is tiresome.
As I've already commented here in previous posts, there are essentially three methods an
historian can determine if a genocide happened:
1) mass graves (this requires archaeology);
2) written contemporary accounts, and
3) census
In the "Holodomor" case, we only have "2", the most popular one in the West being that
Welsh journalist who travelled to the USSR that time and, based on anecdotal evidence,
"covered" the famine.
Wikipedia's article about the "Holodomor" only mentions one source mentioning concrete
numbers: Wheatcroft, a rather obscure Australian academic who, to his merit, at least made up
the effort to talk with people who had access to the Soviet archives.
The quoted list of his article clearly indicates Wheatcroft bases his numbers on indirect
data. He uses the 1937 census in relation to 1926; in another article, he uses the quantity
of grain stock in 1932. I could go on, but the important thing here is that this guy doesn't
use any extraordinary sources. He certainly didn't go to the Ukraine to do archaeology. The
Ukrainians themselves probably didn't do it either, because, so far, we have no accounts of
mass graves in the region.
Famines were common in the pre-industrial world. They occured often in the ancient world
-- where cities and villages literally disappeared in a matter of decades because of one bad
crop and/or one plague (plagues are a side-effect of sedentarism). The often occured in the
feudal world. They specially happened in tsarist Russia, which has a very peculiar and
hostile climate and land composition for agriculture (only 15% of the USSR's territory was
viable for agriculture even in the industrial era). They certainly are not a communist
invention. We must avoid the "Belle Époque syndrome", that is, adopt the illusion late
tsarist Russia was a paradise that was destroyed by evil Bolsheviks. Tsarist Russia was a
very brutal world, were peasants died like flies every day: Gogol (who lived in Ukrainian
territory) wrote a very funny and politically charged novel about it ("Dead Souls").
Wheatcroft uses the 1920s demographic tendency in order to infer "excess deaths" in the
USSR in 1932, but he misses the bigger picture: you have to take into account Russian
demographic movements in the long term, taking into consideration the cyclic famines. Just to
crop a short period from 1926-1932 is scientifically dishonest.
Yes, forced collectivization probably caused excess deaths in 1932 -- but it's impossible
to calculate how much more it caused in relation to a "normal" famine. Just because a famine
happened during the Soviet era doesn't mean it was caused 100% because of socialism. Constant
excess food production is a very recent phenomenon in human History, to state famines are the
exception and not the rule is contemporary bias.
It is very unlikely the 1932 famine was an extraordinary famine. The 1937 census
registered a population growth in relation to 1926. This alone discards genocide, because,
even though excess deaths ocurred (as is the rule in famines), that meant women still had
time and resources to biologically reproduce above the population replacement levels. Worst
case scenario, this growth happened because birth rates were excessive in the urban areas at
the expense of the rural areas -- an unlikely scenario, since in this case, we would register
mass migration from the rural area to the urban area (because the hypothesis is that the
famine was artificial, so the grains would be in the cities): they would either mass migrate
or die trying, in which case we would have mass graves.
Mass graves are the decisive evidence for a genocide, indeed any mass extermination,
because that would mean death was sudden. When the death process is slow and not
synchronized, people have the time to bury/cremate their dead. That is the case even with
some plagues (e.g. Antonine Plague). Mass graves are an indication people were killed more or
less at the same time, in an artificial way, and in large quantities (since proper burials
are expensive). In a deprived economy like the USSR, it is very unlikely all those bodies
would be properly buried, let alone cremated, was a mass extermination taken place.
The holy grail of evidence for a genocide/mass extermination for any historian is when a
witness points the place of the event and then archaeology finds out a mass grave. This
evidently didn't happen in the case of "Holodomor".
Note: Gorbachev is a Russian who was born and raised in a village that borders modern
Ukraine. His grandparents and parents were victims of the 1932 famine (they all survived).
They continued committed with the Revolution and, according to Gorbachev's own accounts, he's
was not raised believing the 1932 famine was exceptional.
About the "Stalin is a genocidal psychopath" question: it's funny, because forced
collectivization was one of the few points where he and Trotsky agreed.
Whatever happened in macroeconomic reforms after Stalin consolidated power was a
collective work, not the designs of only one man. And, although we can argue against the
means, the fact was that they were successful: the USSR rose from the ruins of a second tier
imperial power (late tsarist Russia) to a global superpower.
To understand the most important fact of what happened to Ukraine and why, you need to know
about the yank neocon PNAC, which trumps (excuse the pun) all: The Project for the New
American Century, and the original neocon (jew) wolfowitz doctrine, as revealed in the NYT in
1992:
www.nytimes.com/1992/03/08/world/us-strategy-plan-calls-for-insuring-no-rivals-develop.html
Russia at the moment is correctly perceived as the main opponent to the usa, china too as
upcoming, in line with the above, & PNAC is part of trying to keep Russia in its place:
'part of the American mission will be "convincing potential competitors that they need not
aspire to a greater role or pursue a more aggressive posture to protect their legitimate
interests."' And 'to deter any nation or group of nations from challenging American primacy'.
And 'a world in which there is one dominant military power whose leaders "must maintain the
mechanisms for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or
global role."' Note 'regional' insofar as it concerns Russia wrt ukraine.
Also this is why the USG used Maidan (with at least $5 bn - said nuland/jewland, married
to the co-founder of PNAC kagan, another jew) against Russia, to cause it problems and to be
a thorn in the flesh.
Another important fact is the roman catholic church attack on Russia through ukraine &
the split of the church in ukraine from the Russian Orthodox Church.
> there are essentially three methods an historian can determine if a genocide happened
Four.
There can be comparison of available data in adjacent regions.
In this specific case - in Poland-occupied Western Ukraine. Just "across the line".
Anecdotal evidence states it also had famine, so the famine was not anchored in USSR
specific way of governing.
Some rare online archives of then Poland newspapers photos report some UK delegations raising
concerns, etc.
However, in USSR the famine was a state-acknowledge emergency. USSR prohibited moving
foods out of Ukrainian SSR (and wheat was not the only food! everyone talks about grains,
forgetting potato, fish, mushrooms, etc), broken many Western contracts to repay debts in
grains (West was denying being paid in other assets and was decrying USSR savageness of
refusing to export all the contracted grain with the same zeal it today decry USSR savageness
of exporting at least some of grain), started importing grain from Persia (now Iran). This
emergency let a lot of paper trail, which now is used to "prove" how evil Soviet government
was (and, specifically, not Ukrainian SSR government but central government in Kremlin; and
somehow this is stretched even further to "prove" murderous hatred being part of "Russian
character").
In Poland, well, a dull matter of fact. Bad lack to be peasant, yet worst to be Ukrainian
peasant. S-t happens.
No paper trail - no "historic event" - no accusations. Don't try to fix famines - and you will not be accused of being part of it.
Election apparatus is so easy to corrupt, yet people still vote! Crazy! And, so many
elections have been rigged this way: People are so dumb! Why does nobody insist on
independent, improved equipment? Conditioning makes people ignore the cheat under their
noses.
Recall the posters in previous threads defending the empire's color revolution attempts in
Hong Kong and match the names up with posters here. Are they trying to offer defense of the
empire's color revolutions in Ukraine, or do you think they are off-duty now and posting with
the sincere intention of initiating open discussion? Do you honestly think you can change
their minds by engaging with them and pointing out the flaws in their facts and their logic
when it is their job to defend the actions of the empire?
By the way, do expect and don't be surprised when the same posters referred to above
defend the empire's lawfare coup in Brazil, the attempted lawfare coup in South Africa, and
the attempts to regime change Venezuela when b posts any articles on these issues.
As for holodomor, or the Maidan snipers, or the famine in China, one doesn't need details
to identify fictions. One simply needs to use logic and reason. We need only question simple
points if we suspect that the famine in Ukraine was a deliberate attempt to exterminate
Ukrainians: Was it successfully completed, and if not then why not?
There are obviously still Ukrainians, so it wasn't successful. If we assume the famine was
a deliberate attempt at extermination, then we must ask why was it stopped before it
finished? Did some external factor force Stalin to call off the extermination before it was
completed?
No, the famine was stopped by dramatically improved agricultural practices instituted by
the Soviet Union. This cannot be reconciled with the claim that the famine was a deliberate
attempt by the Soviet Union at extermination, so no matter how much we may cherish the myth
of holodomor, to remain rational individuals we must let that myth go.
Too complex? Let's try the Maidan snipers: We are expected to believe that the killers
were police or Berkut snipers. What was their motive? Presumably to stop the protests. If
that was their motive, then why did the snipers stop sniping before dispersing the protests?
If the snipers were trying to end the protests, then why did they shoot just enough to
inflame further protests, but not enough to discourage the protests?
The answer is simple: The police and/or Berkut were not the Maidan snipers in Kiev.
The snipers were provocateurs who intended to amplify the protests.
It is good to dig deeper into the details of all of these false narratives that we in the
West have been fed, but those details are not absolutely necessary to know that the
narratives are false.
1. If forced collectivization would lead to famine, there would had be no famines in 1920-s
and in 1890-s, before the said collectivization but there were.
2. Before forced collectivization there were many years of attempts at unforced one. They
failed for at least two reasons.
a) many of poor peasants "saw themselves temporarily embarrassed millionaires". While
being target of debt sharks (kulaks, public-devourers
(мироеды)) they still only imagined the life as
being sole owner of their however tiny patch of soil.
b) government attempts they saw as unwarranted advantages from aliens, city-dwellers,
trade partners of hated kulaks, that to be took advantage of using any loopholes. Government
tried to foster grassroots kolkhoz movements by offering bound credits - seeds, fertilizers,
agriculture tools. Peasants started organizing "ten men" kolkhozes in springs, taking those
credits, and then dissolving kolkhozes before gathering crops. "Faked bankruptcy" in modern
parley. If you can have good sides without having bad sides - why opt for bad sides too?
Specifically in Ukraine it could also be boosted by the "national character" formed as
dwellers of centuries-long battle ground between Poland, Russia and Turkey. No positive
long-term planning, everything for instant profits disregarding any consequences. Any
government are occupants and bandits, co-operating with them is futile and silly. We can see
it today marching over once most rich and developed Soviet Republic. Why couldn't the same
happen in 1930-s ?
3. However forced collectivization did achieved a lot. Remember the UK, where "sheep ate
people", for example. Remember latifundists in Latin America. It is largely the same!
a) hugely increased labor efficiency in "village to city" trade metrics.
"товарное
зерно"
b) hugely increased labor efficiency in "men / area" ratio. Use of mechanic tractors and
harvesters, etc. Unemployment among "just my hands" peasantry.
c) increased "capital concentration" provided for use of fertilizer, poisons, etc. Which
contributed to the prior point.
d) now unemployed peasants moved to cities, populating newly built factories. This process
was already going in 1900-s but much slower then. Emergent industrialization in the wake of
WW2 - and a very successful one.
e) end of rural famines. One of the reason 1931 famine is so hyped - it was the last in the
row. Would there be a comparable famine for example in 1970-s - and for political purposes it
would had been much more useful against USSR. But there were none. "Golodomor" was the last
famine, so it became the focal point.
e) end of city famines. Where atomized peasant families could not sustain even a horse or a
cow, one of famines reasons, joint companies (kolkhozes) just like huge private
agri-companies in UK or Argentina, relied upon chemistry and mechanizations, thus needed to
trade with cities, thus were supplying cities with food. All the champions of Golodomor
somehow overlook city famines that were cruel in early USSR in winters.
And one more quirk is almost total lack of photo-evidence behind "Golodomor".
When articles/books are illustrated, it is with photos from 1920-s famine in USSR or in USA,
misattributed.
Allegedly, it is because in Soviet cruel diktatura even NKVD death squads could not make
those photos even for secret important reports.
Reportedly it is because victims of "Goldomor" were dying "fatties", making less convincing
images. The theories were made explaining why it was so, however there seems to be no any
other famine known where those theories worked and people dying of hunger were abnormally
thick.
To Arioch @84, I apologize. You are absolutely correct. Leaving trolls' posts unchallenged
gives the casual reader the impression that those posts are unassailable; nevertheless, I
have been attempting to limit my engagement with the trolls to simply pointing them out.
Posters such as yourself, vk, karlof1, etc who provide detailed and historically accurate
corrections to the false narratives are necessary for the edification of lurkers and casual
readers. I just hope that you don't measure the effectiveness of your posts by whether or not
you change the trolls' minds.
> I have been attempting to limit my engagement with the trolls to simply pointing them
out
This can really work well with people sincerely lost by massive propaganda, people who
succumbed to illusion they know, why they do not.
Wikipedia: The Socratic method, also known as method of Elenchus, elenctic method, or
Socratic debate, is a form of cooperative argumentative dialogue between individuals, based
on asking and answering questions to stimulate critical thinking and to draw out ideas and
underlying presuppositions. It is a dialectical method, involving a discussion in which the
defense of one point of view is questioned; one participant may lead another to contradict
themselves in some way, thus weakening the defender's point. This method is named after the
Classical Greek philosopher Socrates and is introduced by him in Plato's Theaetetus as
midwifery (maieutics) because it is employed to bring out definitions implicit in the
interlocutors' beliefs, or to help them further their understanding.
Sincere person, being guided by questions, would start researching and analyzing. And would
not feel coerced.
But you know, trolls just ignore the questions and keeps hammering talking points by
infinitely going back and repeating them "from starting point".
Avoiding positive argumentation, avoiding claiming something and limiting ourselves to
questioning their weak points, we help them to create another impression: they have a bad
theory when we have no theory at all. They are content with it.
So, putting out competing interpretation is no less important than showing their own
unhonesty.
t
people were able to look past the mistake and not overlook the van der pijl book. Thank you
for letting me know of Mr. Proyect's reputation.
Missing from the comments regarding Ukrainian/Russian dynamics is recognition of the numerous
attempts (dating back to the 17th century) of the Russification of the Ukraine, first by the
Russian Empire and then by the Soviets.
In 1863, minister of internal affairs Pyotr Valuyev issued the so-called Valuev
Circular, in which he stated that the Ukrainian language never existed, doesn't exist, and
cannot exist.
Under Stalin, "korenization" took second stage to the idea of a united Soviet Union,
where competing national cultures were no longer tolerated, and the Russian language
increasingly became the only official language of Soviet socialism
Russification of Soviet-occupied Ukraine intensified in 1938 under Nikita Khrushchev,
then secretary of the Ukrainian Communist Party, but was briefly halted during World War II,
when Axis forces occupied large areas of the country.
In the 1960s, the Ukrainian language began to be used more widely and frequently in spite
of these policies. In response, Soviet authorities increased their focus on early education
in Russian. After 1980, Russian language classes were instituted from the first grade
onward.
( a reason for so many Russian-speaking Ukrainians??)
In the regions of southern Russian SFSR (North Caucasus and eastern part of Sloboda
Ukraine included into RSFSR) Ukrainization was effectively outlawed in 1932.[18]
Specifically, the December 14, 1932 decree "On Grain Collection in Ukraine, North Caucasus
and the Western Oblasts" by the VKP(b) Central Committee and USSR Sovnarkom stated that
Ukrainization in certain areas was carried out formally, in a "non-Bolshevik" way, which
provided the "bourgeois-nationalist elements" with a legal cover for organizing their
anti-Soviet resistance. In order to stop this, the decree ordered in these areas, among other
things, to switch to Russian all newspapers and magazines, and all Soviet and cooperative
paperwork. By the autumn of 1932 (beginning of a school year), all schools were ordered to
switch to Russian. In addition the decree ordered a massive population swap: all "disloyal"
population from a major Cossack settlement, stanitsa Poltavskaya was banished to Northern
Russia, with their property given to loyal kolkhozniks moved from poorer areas of Russia.[19]
in the 1937 Soviet Census compared to the 1926 First All-Union Census of the Soviet
Union.[18]
This perhaps explains the predominance of Russian in eastern Ukraine.
Looks like Mueller and his team were extremely sloppy and just milked the US government and try to feed rumors to the media.
Mueller emerged as a stooge of Clinton mafia.
Notable quotes:
"... In short, the US Government cannot come out and declare that Concord Management, for example, was acting on behalf or or in collaboration with the Russian Government without presenting actual evidence. A prosecutor cannot simply claim that Concord is a Putin Stooge. ..."
"... The lawyers for Concord Management read the Mueller report and noted significant discrepancies between what was alleged in the original complaint and what was asserted as "fact" in the Mueller report. ..."
"... On April 25, 2019, Concord filed the instant motion in which it argues that the Attorney General and Special Counsel violated Local Rule 57.7 by releasing information to the public that was not contained in the indictment. Concord's main contention is that the Special Counsel's Report, as released to the public, and the Attorney General's related public statements improperly suggested a link between the defendants and the Russian government and expressed an opinion about the defendants' guilt and the evidence against them. ..."
"... Concord's lawyers wanted Judge Friedrich to find Robert Mueller and Attorney General Barr in contempt for violating rule 57.7. ..."
"... the Court has entered an order limiting public statements about this case moving forward and cautions the government that any future violations of that order will trigger a range of potential sanctions. ..."
"... But the Judge did not stop there. She pointed out some glaring discrepancies between the Mueller Report and the actual indictment: ..."
"... By attributing IRA's conduct to "Russia" -- as opposed to Russian individuals or entities -- the Report suggests that the activities alleged in the indictment were undertaken on behalf of, if not at the direction of, the Russian government. ..."
"... But the activities of the IRA and Concord Management are not established. In fact, Mueller's own report undermines his claims, as noted in a recent article by Nation's Aaron Mate. ..."
"... Mate's article, as I mentioned in a previous piece, does an excellent job of showing that the Mueller Report is based on heartfelt beliefs but devoid of corroborating evidence. ..."
"... I think Mueller, Weissman, et al did not expect Concord to contest their indictment. They believed they could continue their PR effort that Russia changed the outcome of the election by sending out tweets and Facebook posts without anyone calling them out. ..."
"... The national security surveillance state is only going to get bigger and more powerful. I suppose that is the real competition between the CCP & the USA who can get more totalitarian sooner. ..."
"... a very valuable recent piece in the 'Epoch Times' about the questions that need to be put to Mueller, Jeff Carlson discusses some of the problems relating both to Christopher Steele's involvement with Oleg Deripaska, and the involvement of Fusion GPS with Natalia Veseltnitskaya which led to the Trump Tower meeting. (See https://www.theepochtimes.com/33-key-questions-for-robert-mueller_2988876.html .) ..."
"... Andrew McCarthy, in the 'National Review', picks up one of the most interesting, and puzzling, moments in the fascinating notes by Kathy Kavalec of the conversation she had with Steele when Jonathan Winer brought him to see on her in October 2016. (See https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/07/oleg-deripaska-fbi-russia-collusion-theory/ ) ..."
"... 'Moreover, by January 2017, F.B.I. agents had tracked down and interviewed one of Mr. Steele's main sources, a Russian speaker from a former Soviet republic who had spent time in the West, according to a Justice Department document obtained by The New York Times and three people familiar with the events. After questioning him, F.B.I. officials came to suspect that the man might have added his own interpretations to reports from his own sources that he passed on to Mr. Steele, calling into question the reliability of the information.' ..."
"... Without wanting to prejudge things, it seems to me quite likely that what Horowitz has been contemplating is a kind of 'limited hangout'. So, the idea could be to suggest that Steele did have sources, that however these were not as reliable as he thought they were, but everything was done in good faith etc etc. In the light of information coming out, including that in the Friedrich ruling, he may however have decided to 'hold his horses.' ..."
"... It is important that the general pattern of assuming that Putin is some kind of omnipotent Sauron-figure, which has clearly left Mueller open to a counter-attack by Concord, was given a classic expression in the testimony which Glenn Simpson gave to the House Intelligence Committee in November 2017. ..."
"... Litvinenko himself, as well as having been a key member of the late Boris Berezovsky's 'information operations team', was an agent, as distinct from an informant, of MI6: accounts differ as to whether Steele was his personal 'handler' (John Sipher), or had never met him (Luke Harding). ..."
"... Also relevant is the fact that Shvets, a fanatical Ukrainian nationalist, and an important figure in the original 'Orange Revolution', was also a key member of Berezovsky's 'information operations' team. ..."
"... The account of his career by the 'New York Times' journalist Barry Meier in his 2016 study 'Missing Man' is a tissue of sleazy evasions, not least in relation to the role of Levinson in 'investigating' the notorious mobster Semion Mogilevich, a key figure in 'information operations' against both Putin and Trump, and also the opponents of Yulia Tymoshenko. ..."
"... A large question involved is how co-operation between not simply elements in MI6 and the CIA, but also in the FBI, with the oligarchs who refused to accept Putin's terms goes back a very long way. ..."
Mueller Does Not Have Evidence That The IRA Was Part of Russian Government Meddling by
Larry C Johnson
In the criminal case against alleged Russian operatives--Internet Research Agency and
Concord Management and Consulting LLC--a Federal judge has declared that Robert Mueller has not
offered one piece of solid evidence that these defendants were involved in any way with the
Government of Russia. I think this is a potential game changer.
The world of law as opposed to the world of intelligence is as different as Mercury and
Mars. The intelligence community aka IC can traffic in rumor and speculation. IC "solid"
intelligence may be nothing more than the strident assertion of a source who lacks actual first
hand knowledge of an event. The legal world does not enjoy that kind of sloppiness. If a
prosecutor makes a claim, i.e., Jack shot Jill, then said prosecutor must show that Jack owned
a firearm that matches the bullets recovered from Jill's body. Then the prosecutor needs to
show that Jack was with Jill when the shooting took place and that forensic evidence recovered
from Jack showed he had fired a firearm. Keep this distinction in mind as you consider what has
transpired in the case against the Internet Research Agency and Concord Management and
Consulting.
To understand why Judge Friedrich ruled as she did you must understand Local Rule 57.7.
That rule: restricts public dissemination of information by attorneys involved in criminal cases where
"there is a reasonable likelihood that such dissemination will interfere with a fair trial or
otherwise prejudice the administration of justice." It also authorizes the court "[i]n a widely
publicized or sensational criminal case" to issue a special order governing extrajudicial
statements and other matters designed to limit publicity that might interfere with the conduct
of a fair trial. . . .
The rule prohibits lawyers associated with the prosecution or defense
from publishing, between the time of the indictment and the commencement of trial, "[a]ny
opinion as to the accused's guilt or innocence or as to the merits of the case or the evidence
in the case."
In short, the US Government cannot come out and declare that Concord Management, for
example, was acting on behalf or or in collaboration with the Russian Government without
presenting actual evidence. A prosecutor cannot simply claim that Concord is a Putin
Stooge.
The lawyers for Concord Management read the Mueller report and noted significant
discrepancies between what was alleged in the original complaint and what was asserted as
"fact" in the Mueller report.
On April 25, 2019, Concord filed the instant motion in which it argues that the Attorney
General and Special Counsel violated Local Rule 57.7 by releasing information to the public
that was not contained in the indictment. Concord's main contention is that the Special
Counsel's Report, as released to the public, and the Attorney General's related public
statements improperly suggested a link between the defendants and the Russian government and
expressed an opinion about the defendants' guilt and the evidence against them.
Concord's lawyers wanted Judge Friedrich to find Robert Mueller and Attorney General Barr in
contempt for violating rule 57.7.
Judge Friedrich gave Concord a partial victory:
Although the Court agrees that the government violated Rule 57.7 , it disagrees that
contempt proceedings are an appropriate response to that violation. Instead, the Court has
entered an order limiting public statements about this case moving forward and cautions the
government that any future violations of that order will trigger a range of potential
sanctions.
But the Judge did not stop there. She pointed out some glaring discrepancies between the
Mueller Report and the actual indictment:
The Special Counsel Report describes efforts by the Russian government to interfere with the
2016 presidential election. . . . But the indictment . . . does not link the defendants to the
Russian government. Save for a single allegation that Concord and Concord Catering had several
"government contracts" (with no further elaboration), id. ¶ 11, the indictment alleges
only private conduct by private actors.
. . . the concluding paragraph of the section of the [Mueller] Report related to Concord
states that the Special Counsel's "investigation established that Russia interfered in the 2016
presidential election through the 'active measures' social media campaign carried out by"
Concord's co-defendant, the Internet Research Agency (IRA). By attributing IRA's conduct to
"Russia" -- as opposed to Russian individuals or entities -- the Report suggests that the
activities alleged in the indictment were undertaken on behalf of, if not at the direction of,
the Russian government.
Similarly, the Attorney General drew a link between the Russian government and this case
during a press conference in which he stated that "[t]he Special Counsel's report outlines two
main efforts by the Russian government to influence the 2016 election." . . . The "[f]irst"
involved "efforts by the Internet Research Agency, a Russian company with close ties to the
Russian government, to sow social discord among American voters through disinformation and
social media operations." Id. The "[s]econd" involved "efforts by Russian military officials
associated with the GRU," a Russian intelligence agency, to hack and leak private documents and
emails from the Democratic Party and the Clinton Campaign.
The Report explains that it used the term "established" whenever "substantial, credible
evidence enabled the Office to reach a conclusion with confidence." . . . It then states in its
conclusion that the Special Counsel's "investigation established that Russia interfered in the
2016 presidential election through the 'active measures' social media campaign carried out by
the IRA." In context, this statement characterizes the evidence against the defendants as
"substantial" and "credible," and it provides the Special Counsel's Office's "conclusion" about
what actually occurred.
But the activities of the IRA and Concord Management are not established. In fact, Mueller's
own report undermines his claims, as noted in a recent article by Nation's Aaron Mate. Although
Mueller claims that it was "established that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential
election through the 'active measures' social media campaign carried out by" Concord's
co-defendant, the Internet Research Agency (IRA), he provided no such evidence.
After two years and $35 million, Mueller apparently failed to uncover any direct evidence
linking the Prigozhin-controlled IRA's activities to the Kremlin. His best evidence is that
"[n]umerous media sources have reported on Prigozhin's ties to Putin, and the two have appeared
together in public photographs."
Mate's article, as I mentioned in a previous piece, does an excellent job of showing that
the Mueller Report is based on heartfelt beliefs but devoid of corroborating evidence.
Some readers will insist that Mueller and his team have actual intelligence but cannot put
that in an indictment. Well boys and girls, here is a simple truth--if you cannot produce
evidence that can be presented in court then you do not have a case. There is that part of the
Constitution that allows those accused of a crime to confront their accusers.
Minor quibble: Judge
Friedrich is a woman.
I expect that this will get no play from the MSM, since Judge Friedrich was appointed by
Trump, and "everyone" knows she's just covering up for him.
Under the conditions and in the environment that it was returned, this indictment was
Mueller and his partisan team throwing raw meat fo the media so as to prolong their mission,
nothing more. Once filed, no one involved ever expected to appear in a courtroom to prosecute
anyone, or defend any part of it. It was an abuse of process, pure and simple.
Consider it as a count against Mueller, his competence or his integrity, maybe both. He let
himself become a tool.
Johnson refers to "heartfelt beliefs" but i doubt Mueller believes his own bs. in this i
guess he distinguishes himself from earlier witch-hunters, who apparently sincerely believed
their targets were minions of satan.
I think Mueller, Weissman, et al did not expect Concord to contest their indictment. They
believed they could continue their PR effort that Russia changed the outcome of the election
by sending out tweets and Facebook posts without anyone calling them out.
It seems on the current trajectory both the Trump colluded with Russia and our law
enforcement & IC attempted a soft-coup will die on the vine. The latter because Trump is
unwilling to declassify. It seems for him it was all just another reality TV show and him
tweeting "witch hunt" constantly was what the script called for.
The next time the IC &
law enforcement who now must believe that they are the real power behind the throne decide to
exercise that power it will be a doozie.
The national security surveillance state is only going to get bigger and more powerful. I
suppose that is the real competition between the CCP & the USA who can get more
totalitarian sooner.
I think a large question is raised as to how far the kind of sloppiness in the handling of
evidence which Judge Friedrich identified in the Mueller report may have characterised a
great deal of the treatment of matters to do with the post-Soviet space by the FBI and others
– including almost all MSM journalists – for a very long time.
Unfortunately, one also finds this among some of the most useful critics of 'Russiagate'.
So, for example, in a very valuable recent piece in the 'Epoch Times' about the questions
that need to be put to Mueller, Jeff Carlson discusses some of the problems relating both to
Christopher Steele's involvement with Oleg Deripaska, and the involvement of Fusion GPS with
Natalia Veseltnitskaya which led to the Trump Tower meeting. (See https://www.theepochtimes.com/33-key-questions-for-robert-mueller_2988876.html
.)
He then however goes on to write: 'In other words, not only was the firm that hired
Steele, Fusion GPS, hired by the Russians, but Steele himself was hired directly by the
Russians.'
And Andrew McCarthy, in the 'National Review', picks up one of the most interesting, and
puzzling, moments in the fascinating notes by Kathy Kavalec of the conversation she had with
Steele when Jonathan Winer brought him to see on her in October 2016. (See https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/07/oleg-deripaska-fbi-russia-collusion-theory/
)
Commenting on the fact that, in her scribbled notes, beside the names of Vladislav Surkov
and Vyacheslav Trubnikov, who are indeed a top Putin adviser and a former SVR chief
respectively, Kavalec writes 'source', McCarthy simply concludes that she meant that he had
said that these were his – indirect – sources, and that this was accurate. And he
goes on to write:
'Deripaska, Surkov, and Trubnikov were not informing on the Kremlin. These are Putin's
guys. They were peddling what the Kremlin wanted the world to believe, and what the Kremlin
shrewdly calculated would sow division in the American body politic. So, the question is: Did
they find the perfect patsy in Christopher Steele?'
If you look at Kavalec's typing up of the notes, among a good deal of what looks to me
like pure 'horse manure' – including the claim that 'Manafort has been the go-between
with the campaign' – the single reference to Surkov and Trubnikov is that they are said
to be 'also involved.'
As it happens, Surkov is a very complex figure indeed. His talents as a 'political
technologist' were first identified by Khodorkovsky, before he subsequently played that role
for Putin. It would obviously be possible that he and Steele still had common contacts.
The suggestion in Kavalec's notes that Sergei Millian 'may be involved in some way,' and
also that, 'Per Steele, Millian is connected Simon Kukes (who took over management of Yukos
when Khodorkovsky was arrested)' is interesting, but would seem to suggest that he would not
have been cited to Kavalec as an intermediary.
All this is obviously worth putting together with claims made in the 'New York Times'
follow-up on 9 July to the Reuters report on the same day breaking the story of the
interviews carried out with Steele by the Inspector General's team in early June.
'Moreover, by January 2017, F.B.I. agents had tracked down and interviewed one of Mr.
Steele's main sources, a Russian speaker from a former Soviet republic who had spent time in
the West, according to a Justice Department document obtained by The New York Times and three
people familiar with the events. After questioning him, F.B.I. officials came to suspect that
the man might have added his own interpretations to reports from his own sources that he
passed on to Mr. Steele, calling into question the reliability of the information.'
Some observations prompted by all this.
Without wanting to prejudge things, it seems to me quite likely that what Horowitz has
been contemplating is a kind of 'limited hangout'. So, the idea could be to suggest that
Steele did have sources, that however these were not as reliable as he thought they were, but
everything was done in good faith etc etc. In the light of information coming out, including
that in the Friedrich ruling, he may however have decided to 'hold his horses.'
In trying to put together the accumulating evidence, it is necessary to realise, as so
many people seem to find it difficult to do, that in matters like these people commonly play
double games – often for very good reasons.
To say as Carlson does that Fusion and Steele were hired by 'the Russians' implies that
these are some kind of collective entity – and then, one is one step away from the
assumption that Veselnitskaya and Deripaska, as well as 'Putin's Cook', are simply puppets
controlled by the master manipulator in the Kremlin. (The fact that Friedrich applies serious
standards for assessing evidence to Mueller's version of this is one of the reasons why her
judgement is so important.)
As regards what McCarthy says, to lump Surkov and Deripaska together as 'Putin's guys' is
unhelpful. Actually, it seems to me very unlikely, although perhaps not absolutely
impossible, that, had he been implicated in any conspiracy to intervene in an American
election, Surkov would have been talking candidly about his role to anyone liable to relay
the information to Steele.
Likewise, however, the notion of a Machiachiavellian Surkov, feeding disinformation about
a non-existent plot through an intermediary to Steele, who swallows it hook, line and sinker,
does not seem particularly plausible.
A rather more obvious possibility is that the intermediaries who were supposed to have
conveyed a whole lot of 'smoking gun' evidence to Steele were either 1. fabrications, 2.
people whom without their knowledge he cast in this role, or 3. co-conspirators. It would,
obviously, be possible that Millian, although one can say no more than that at this stage,
was involved in either or both of roles 2. and 3.
It is important that the general pattern of assuming that Putin is some kind of omnipotent
Sauron-figure, which has clearly left Mueller open to a counter-attack by Concord, was given
a classic expression in the testimony which Glenn Simpson gave to the House Intelligence
Committee in November 2017.
Providing his version of what was going on following his move from the Washington office
of the 'Wall Street Journal' to its European headquarters in January 2005, Simpson told the
Committee:
'And the oligarchs, during this period of consolidation of power by Vladimir Putin, when I
was living in Brussels and doing all this work, was about him essentially taking control over
both the oligarchs and the mafia groups. And so basically everyone in Russia works for Putin
now. And that's true of the diaspora as well. So the Russian mafia in the United States is
believed bylaw enforcement criminologists to have – to be under the influence of the
Russian security services. And this is convenient for the security services because it gives
them a level of deniability.'
A bit less than two years after Simpson's move to Brussels, a similar account featured in
what appears to have been the first attempt by Christopher Steele and his confederates to
provide a 'narrative' in terms of which could situate the supposed assassination by polonium
poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko.
This came in a BBC Radio 4 programme, entitled 'The Litvinenko Mystery', in which a
veteran presenter with the Corporation, Tom Mangold, produced an account by the former KGB
Major Yuri Shvets, supported by the former FBI Agent Robert Levinson, and an 'Unidentified
Informer', who is told by Mangold that he cannot be identified 'reasons of your own personal
security'.
This figure, whose credentials we have no means of assessing, explains:
'Well it's not well known to Western leaders or Western people but it is pretty well known
in Russia. Because essentially it is common knowledge in Russia that by the end of Nineties
the so called Russian organised crime had been destroyed by the Government and then the
Russian security agencies, primarily the law enforcement and primarily the FSB, essentially
assumes the functions and methods of Russian organised crime. And they became one of the most
dangerous organised crime group because they are protected by law. They're protected by all
power of the State. They have essentially the free hand in the country and this shadow
establishment essentially includes the entire structure of the FSB from the very top people
in Moscow going down to the low offices.'
The story Mangold told was a pathetic tale of how Litvinenko and Shvets, trying to turn an
honest penny from 'due diligence' work, identified damning evidence about the links of a
figure close to Putin to organised crime, who in return sent Andrei Lugovoi to poison the
former with polonium.
A few problems with this version have, however, subsequently, emerged. Among them is the
fact that, at the time, Litvinenko himself, as well as having been a key member of the late
Boris Berezovsky's 'information operations team', was an agent, as distinct from an
informant, of MI6: accounts differ as to whether Steele was his personal 'handler' (John
Sipher), or had never met him (Luke Harding).
Also relevant is the fact that Shvets, a fanatical Ukrainian nationalist, and an important
figure in the original 'Orange Revolution', was also a key member of Berezovsky's
'information operations' team.
Perhaps most interesting is the fact that the disappearance of Levinson, on the Iranian
island of Kish, the following March, was not as was claimed for years related to his private
sector work. His entrapment and imprisonment – from which we now know Deripaska was
later involved in attempting to rescue him – related to an undercover mission on behalf
of elements in the CIA.
The account of his career by the 'New York Times' journalist Barry Meier in his 2016 study
'Missing Man' is a tissue of sleazy evasions, not least in relation to the role of Levinson
in 'investigating' the notorious mobster Semion Mogilevich, a key figure in 'information
operations' against both Putin and Trump, and also the opponents of Yulia Tymoshenko.
A large question involved is how co-operation between not simply elements in MI6 and the
CIA, but also in the FBI, with the oligarchs who refused to accept Putin's terms goes back a
very long way.
And, among other things, that raises a whole range of questions about Mueller.
Great info, thanks. I admittedly don't watch the skeptics' comments closely enough, and
can be susceptible to twisted observations from guys like Carlson and Solomon.
"... "Classification," however, has been one of the Deep State's favorite tactics to stymie investigations -- especially when the material in question yields serious embarrassment or reveals crimes. And the stakes this time are huge. ..."
"... Judging by past precedent, Deep State intelligence and law enforcement officials will do all they can to use the "but-it's-classified" excuse to avoid putting themselves and their former colleagues in legal jeopardy. (Though this would violate Obama's executive order 13526 , prohibiting classification of embarrassing or criminal information). ..."
"... Recall that in a Sept. 2, 2016 text message to the FBI's then-deputy chief of counterintelligence Peter Strzok, his girlfriend and then-top legal adviser to Deputy FBI Director McCabe, Lisa Page, wrote that she was preparing talking points because the president "wants to know everything we're doing." [Emphasis added.] It does not seem likely that the Director of National Intelligence, DOJ, FBI, and CIA all kept President Obama in the dark about their FISA and other machinations -- although it is possible they did so out of a desire to provide him with "plausible denial." ..."
"... It seems more likely that Obama's closest intelligence confidant, Brennan, told him about the shenanigans with FISA, that Obama gave him approval (perhaps just tacit approval), and that Brennan used that to harness top intelligence and law enforcement officials behind the effort to defeat Trump and, later, to emasculate and, if possible, remove him. ..."
"... "That's the big one. If Horowitz is able to speak freely about what he has learned, his report could lead to indictments of former CIA Director John Brennan, former FBI Director James Comey, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, former Deputy Attorneys General Sally Yates and Rod Rosenstein, and Dana Boente -- Boente being the only signer of the relevant FISA applications still in office. (No, he has not been demoted to file clerk in the FBI library; at last report, he is FBI General Counsel!)." ..."
"... It will be a very interesting 2020 campaign if the Democratic candidate has to run with the ripe stinking dead albatross of Russiagate around her neck. ..."
"... The only outcome that could be more bizarre than the last go-round would be to see Trump favored by all the smart money and then lose to the latest corporate Democrat to shamelessly sell out the middle class in broad daylight. ..."
"... The Grabber in Chief vs Willie Brown's mistress – wonderful. ..."
"... Forgive my cynicism but the US government is so corrupt, has wielded illegitimate power for so long, and has covered the tracks of countless functionaries who have not upheld the constitution that I doubt this will go anywhere. I have been quoting Ben Franklin for some time "you have a republic, if you can keep it." I don't think we can. A reading of "A History of Venice" by John J. Norris would be appropriate here. The most serene republic lasted for essentially 1,000 years from roughly 800 to not quite 1800, first as a democracy, later as an oligarchy. Much like us, including having the most feared secret service in Europe at the time, Venice kept its power through trade but at least we don't hoist the new president up on a chair so that he can throw golden Ducats to the crowd on Wall Street the way that a new Doge would. ..."
"... I don't suppose anything will happen to anybody important about this. After all, nothing happened to anybody when they were caught mass spying on any and all american citizens, even before they made it legal. ..."
"... Unfortunately Webb and Parry exposed much of these gangster criminal "intel" savages for running guns and drugs to Central American pseudo fascist mercenary sadists throughout much of the late 1970s through the '80s. I say unfortunately b/c nothing much ever came along by way of true justice, by way of the criminal players rotting in maximum security jail cells for years on end, not unlike the crack or heroin addict who steals a $400 television. ..."
"... This has been one long crime against the American people. King should read what he knows into the Congressional Record. I have no sympathy for Trump's fear of the deep state. He has sent people to die knowing full well that his actions were based on lies, lies that would result in the deaths of civilians as well as our own military. If he is going to do that, then he should have the courage to face the deep state. That's partial penance for all the deaths he has caused. ..."
"... I also don't care about Trump's personal issue about being surveilled. He personally supports that against everyone else. That is why I feel this is a crime against our people as a whole. Our constitution has been stripped bare. We don't have the rule of law. Mass surveillance covering the globe is current reality. It is dangerous. It is wrong. It is lawless. It is a disaster. ..."
"... Further, Russiagate was used to keep real opposition away from Trump. His supporters doubled down on "liking" Trump because he appeared to be a victim of these lies. Democrats meanwhile learned to further worship the IC. They ignored Trump's actual unlawful behavior, and, in the case of war crimes, still support Trump on every war/regime change action etc. recommended to them by their IC "resistance" "leaders". ..."
"... This has been one of the most effective propaganda tools I have ever seen against our populace. It has created a divided, unthinking populace who is ripe for the picking by evil men and women. I am truly hoping that once this is exposed people will stop this madness and pull together for a common good. But I'm quite worried that, like most cults, when the leader is shown to be wrong, people cling to them even more. ..."
"... there have always been nefarious agents in one government or another for one gangster interest or another, whether was Milner's roundtable or Dulles's Gladio werewolves, these are nefarious individuals there is no gray area in that, however they may conduct themselves and their personal lives, it is not sloppy journalism, is to call something what it is, a this shadow government working in many instances against the direct interest of the American people ..."
"... It's the propaganda, the United States is one of the most heavily propagandize societies in the world, we make the Soviets look like children. No one wants you to have sympathy for Donald Trump, you do not have to agree or like a person to see that the cartel seeking to damage him is also simultaneously against your interests and they are against your interests whether you're from the left or the right because they do not have an ideology just it will to power. ..."
"... So reminiscent of the darker days of the Cold War. A stark education has just played out to this point. ..."
The Deep State almost always wins. But if Attorney General Barr leans hard on Trump to
unfetter investigators, all hell may break lose, says Ray McGovern.
A s Congress arrives back into town and the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees
prepare to question ex-Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller on July 17, partisan lines are being
drawn even more sharply, as Russias-gate blossoms into Deep-State-gate. On Sunday, a top
Republican legislator, Rep. Peter King (R-NY) took the gloves off in an unusually acerbic
public attack on former leaders of the FBI and CIA.
King
told a radio audience: "There is no doubt to me there was severe, serious abuses that were
carried out in the FBI and, I believe, top levels of the CIA against the President of the
United States or, at that time, presidential candidate Donald Trump," according to The
Hill.
King, a senior congressman specializing in national security, twice chaired the House
Homeland Security Committee and currently heads its Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and
Intelligence. He also served for several years on the House Intelligence Committee.
He asserted:
"There was no legal basis at all for them to begin this investigation of his campaign
– and the way they carried it forward, and the way information was leaked. All of this
is going to come out. It's going to show the bias. It's going to show the baselessness of the
investigation and I would say the same thing if this were done to Hillary Clinton or Bernie
Sanders It's just wrong."
The Long Island Republican added a well aimed swipe at what passes for the media today: "The
media went along with this – actually, keeping this farcical, ridiculous thought going
that the President of the United States was somehow involved in a conspiracy with Russia
against his own country."
King: Lashes out.
According to King, the Justice Department's review, ordered by Attorney General William
Barr, would prove that former officials acted improperly. He was alluding to the investigation
led by John Durham, U.S. Attorney in Connecticut. Sounds nice. But waiting for Durham to
complete his investigation at a typically lawyerly pace would, I fear, be much like the
experience of waiting for Mueller to finish his; that is, like waiting for Godot. What about
now?
So Where is the IG Report on FISA?
That's the big one. If Horowitz is able to speak freely about what he has learned, his
report could lead to indictments of former CIA Director John Brennan, former FBI Director James
Comey, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, former Deputy Attorneys General Sally Yates
and Rod Rosenstein, and Dana Boente -- Boente being the only signer of the relevant FISA
applications still in office. (No, he has not been demoted to file clerk in the FBI library; at
last report, he is FBI General Counsel!).
The DOJ inspector General's investigation, launched in March 2018, has centered on whether
the FBI and DOJ filing of four FISA applications and renewals beginning in October 2016 to
surveil former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page amounted to abuse of the FISA process.
(Fortunately for the IG, Obama's top intelligence and law enforcement officials were so sure
that Hillary Clinton would win that they did not do much to hide their tracks.)
The Washington Examiner
reported last Tuesday, "The Justice Department inspector general's investigation of
potential abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is complete, a Republican
congressman said, though a report on its findings might not be released for a month." The
report continued:
"House Judiciary Committee member John Ratcliffe (R, Texas) said Monday he'd met with DOJ
watchdog Michael Horowitz last week about his FISA abuse report. In a media interview,
Ratcliffe said they'd discussed the timing, but not the content of his report and Horowitz
'related that his team's investigative work is complete and they're now in the process of
drafting that report. Ratcliffe said he was doubtful that Horowitz's report would be made
available to the public or the Congress anytime soon. 'He [Horowitz] did relay that as much
as 20% of his report is going to include classified information, so that draft report will
have to undergo a classification review at the FBI and at the Department of Justice,'
Ratcliffe said. 'So, while I'm hopeful that we members of Congress might see it before the
August recess, I'm not too certain about that.'"
Horowitz: Still waiting for his report
Earlier, Horowitz had predicted that his report would be ready in May or June but there may,
in fact, be good reason for some delay. Fox News reported Friday that "key
witnesses sought for questioning by Justice Department Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz
early in his investigation into alleged government surveillance abuse have come forward at the
11th hour." According to Fox's sources, at least one witness outside the Justice Department and
FBI has started cooperating -- a breakthrough that came after Durham was assigned to lead a
separate investigation into the origins of the FBI's 2016 Russia case that led to Special
Counsel Robert Mueller's probe.
"Classification," however, has been one of the Deep State's favorite tactics to stymie
investigations -- especially when the material in question yields serious embarrassment or
reveals crimes. And the stakes this time are huge.
Judging by past precedent, Deep State intelligence and law enforcement officials will do all
they can to use the "but-it's-classified" excuse to avoid putting themselves and their former
colleagues in legal jeopardy. (Though this would violate Obama's executive order 13526 ,
prohibiting classification of embarrassing or criminal information).
It is far from clear that DOJ IG Horowitz and Attorney General Barr will prevail in the end,
even though President Trump has given Barr nominal authority to declassify as necessary. Why
are the the stakes so extraordinarily high?
What Did Obama Know, and When Did He Know It?
Recall that in a Sept. 2, 2016 text message to the FBI's then-deputy chief of
counterintelligence Peter Strzok, his girlfriend and then-top legal adviser to Deputy FBI
Director McCabe, Lisa Page, wrote that she was preparing talking points because the president
"wants to know everything we're doing." [Emphasis added.] It does not seem likely that
the Director of National Intelligence, DOJ, FBI, and CIA all kept President Obama in the dark
about their FISA and other machinations -- although it is possible they did so out of a desire
to provide him with "plausible denial."
It seems more likely that Obama's closest intelligence confidant, Brennan, told him about
the shenanigans with FISA, that Obama gave him approval (perhaps just tacit approval), and that
Brennan used that to harness top intelligence and law enforcement officials behind the effort
to defeat Trump and, later, to emasculate and, if possible, remove him.
Moreover, one should not rule out seeing in the coming months an "Obama-made-us-do-it"
defense -- whether grounded in fact or not -- by Brennan and perhaps the rest of the gang.
Brennan may even have a piece of paper recording the President's "approval" for this or that --
or could readily have his former subordinates prepare one that appears authentic.
Reining in Devin Nunes
That the Deep State retains formidable power can be seen in the repeated
Lucy-holding-then-withdrawing-the-football-for-Charlie Brown treatment experienced by House
Intelligence Committee Ranking Member, Devin Nunes (R-CA). On April 5, 2019, in the apparent
belief he had a green light to go on the offensive, Nunes
wrote that committee Republicans "will soon be submitting criminal referrals on numerous
individuals involved in the abuse of intelligence for political purposes. These people must be
held to account to prevent similar abuses from occurring in the future."
On April 7, Nunes was even more specific, telling Fox News that he was preparing to send
eight criminal referrals to the Department of Justice "this week," concerning alleged
misconduct during the Trump-Russia investigation, including leaks of "highly classified
material" and conspiracies to lie to Congress and the FISA court. It seemed to be
no-holds-barred for Nunes, who had begun to
talk publicly about prison time for those who might be brought to trial.
Except for Fox, the corporate media ignored Nunes's explosive comments. The media seemed
smugly convinced that Nunes's talk of "referrals" could be safely ignored -- even though a new
sheriff, Barr, had come to town. And sure enough, now, three months later, where are the
criminal referrals?
There is ample evidence that President Trump is afraid to run afoul of the Deep State
functionaries he inherited. And the Deep State almost always wins. But if Attorney General Barr
leans hard on the president to unfetter Nunes, IG Horowitz, Durham and like-minded
investigators, all hell may break lose, because the evidence against those who took serious
liberties with the law is staring them all in the face.
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the
Saviour in inner-city Washington. No fan of the current President, Ray has been trained to
follow and analyze the facts, wherever they may lead. He spent 27 years as a CIA analyst, and
prepared the President's Daily Brief for three presidents. In retirement he co-founded Veteran
Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
If you enjoyed this original article, please considermaking a donationto Consortium News so we can bring you more stories like this
one.
Joe T Wallace , July 8, 2019 at 20:24
I'm a great admirer of Ray McGovern's reporting. He exposes much that is never revealed by
the mainstream media. That said, I do have one quibble about this article. In the seventh
paragraph, just below the heading "So Where is the IG Report on FISA?" he writes:
"That's the big one. If Horowitz is able to speak freely about what he has learned, his
report could lead to indictments of former CIA Director John Brennan, former FBI Director
James Comey, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, former Deputy Attorneys General Sally
Yates and Rod Rosenstein, and Dana Boente -- Boente being the only signer of the relevant
FISA applications still in office. (No, he has not been demoted to file clerk in the FBI
library; at last report, he is FBI General Counsel!)."
My immediate reaction was: Who is Horowitz? It was confusing not to know. Further down in
the article, I learned that Ray was referring to Michael Horowitz, a DOJ watchdog who is
preparing an IG report about FISA abuse, but readers should have been informed who he was
earlier in the article.
John , July 8, 2019 at 17:10
Peter King? Devin Nunes?
At one point the article says little effort was made to cover tracks because of certainty
that HRC would win but later that the FBI et al were planting land mines to either defeat
Trump or blow up his presidency. Seemed contradictory to me.
Perhaps you have the skinny on these machinations, if indeed there were machinations by
one person or group or another for this purpose or that.
But Peter King and Devin Nunes? If either ever was credible, their track record condemns
them to be received, if at all, with extreme skepticism.
Realist , July 8, 2019 at 16:59
It will be a very interesting 2020 campaign if the Democratic candidate has to run with
the ripe stinking dead albatross of Russiagate around her neck. Or will she be expected to
repudiate the Hitlery-run DNC? Where does the money and the ground game originate if the
latter?
The only outcome that could be more bizarre than the last go-round would be to see Trump
favored by all the smart money and then lose to the latest corporate Democrat to shamelessly
sell out the middle class in broad daylight. I won't like it, but I can see Trump Derangement
Syndrome pulling out the chestnuts for the Dems, what with all their celebrity spokespeople
constantly running and ranting like their hair is on fire underneath those pussy hats. My
poor gullible sister from Cali embraces that whole ball of wax as revealed truth holier than
the total dry weight of all the Abrahamic scriptures rolled into one big bale for the
recycling center. Kamala Harris seems to be emerging as the new messiah anointed to lead this
country back to Obamian gridlock and more prestidigitation like mandated insurance to ensure
the health of the insurance companies. Again, it will only be the illusion of "free
stuff."
The only way such a scenario won't cause four more years of turmoil for this country
(rinse and repeat in 2024) is if the victor is Gabbard and she ends all the illegal and
unconstitutional wars by edict, telling all the sure-to-be pissing and moaning Deep State
functionaries to pick up their severance pay and go pound sand. Then shut the world-wide
spider web of military bases and bring home the troops while we can still afford the carfare.
That would be "morning in America," and Gabbard would be the most heroic chief exec since
Lincoln and FDR made their marks in the history books, though such fantasies never play out
in the real world. More likely all the criminal evidence of treason remains classified, most
Americans pop the blue pill, the actual rabbit hole continues to grow ever deeper but the
masses are contentedly oblivious to it all, satisfied to blame select scapegoats from
Russia, China and other "malign" countries for our viewing entertainment.
Deniz , July 8, 2019 at 17:50
The Grabber in Chief vs Willie Brown's mistress – wonderful.
ML , July 8, 2019 at 20:12
You are really something, Realist. I love the way you flourish that pen of yours. Thank
you.
Rob Roy , July 8, 2019 at 20:13
Realist, well said, per usual. To add a bit the Dems probably gave Trump the gift of a
lifetime the next election. Wasting three years on Russiagate instead of hammering out a
decent platform for the party was beyond dumb. That reminds me. the Dems's next dumbest idea
choosing Joe Biden as their next candidate. Just like Hillary, he can't beat Trump. The
duopoly is dead, they just don't know it.
As for Tulsi, she's got my vote.
John Earls , July 8, 2019 at 16:55
Looks like Barry Eisler's John Rain (expert in "death by natural causes") will have a lot
of work in front of him if the investigation builds and a whole lot of "material witnesses"
begin to testify.
ricardo2000 , July 8, 2019 at 16:33
I'm supposed to feel sorry for the surveillance of a right-wing creep? OH PLEASE.
No one in government, or the right wing ReThugs, has ever suffered the intrusive, lying,
speculative 'investigations' that social justice, environmental, or human rights activists
have over the past 70 years.
When these buttheads suffer what MLK and Malcolm X have suffered then I might just wipe
away a few tears, after I stop roaring with laughter and get off the floor.
Realist , July 8, 2019 at 17:08
You prefer a race to the bottom of the cesspool?
You never win when you adopt the methods you claim to revile. The opponent who introduced
the tactics you condemn wins if you embrace them as your own. You didn't beat him, you joined
him.
LibertyBonBon , July 8, 2019 at 18:12
Must be nice to think the justice system should revolve around your particular emotions,
rather than equality and objectivity. Safe and easy.
Dunderhead , July 8, 2019 at 20:41
ricardo2000, nothing personal, I get the revulsion to Trump and entourage not to mention a
large portion of the Maga crowd but this right and left thing is really just an illusion, the
people doing the persecuting here regardless of how disgusting Trump is are the same ones
doing the persecuting to a large degree of everyone else from Assange to the Iranians, that
is this government deep state in combination with all of the various American alphabet soup
agencies as well as foreign deep states have cornered the market in State power, hate Trump
but don't confuse this with a good thing.
Thank you, Ray McGovern. You are a good man, Charlie Brown!
Thing is, all of this was predictable from the beginning. Many of us saw it coming.
No one really wanted an incompetent baboon running things – the song about Monkey
and the Engineer comes to mind – so Obama tried to hamstring Trump with this
investigation. I mean, Obama couldn't very well have not completed the transfer of power
because it is the most valuable thing about democracy. There is no ten year bloody hellified
civil war every time the crown changes hands from one inbred to the next.
So Obama did the next best thing on his way out the Oval Office doors, he put Brennan and
the boys on it. Seemed like a good idea at the time, I'm sure. But it backfired because he
couldn't call the dogs off once he was no longer president. Not Brennan, not anyone could
call them off after the snowball really got rolling because the spooks believed their own
story and the media made too much money off selling the mythology:
Only question left to answer now is whether or not Trump the carnival barker can milk his
opportunist Armageddon into a second term of fleecing the rubes.
This is a very serious Constitutional Law issue and MUST be pursued–and it makes no
difference the political party denomination of those breaking the law! The Current
Oligarchy–Deep State–is the adversary of the vast majority of US citizens and
humanity. With Epstein's arrest and the developments McGovern relates, some progress appears
to be happening.
Lydia , July 8, 2019 at 14:51
You summed it up perfectly, Jill.
Pablo Diablo , July 8, 2019 at 14:42
"the effort to defeat Trump and, later, to emasculate and, if possible, remove him." says
it all. Trump is a loose cannon. The so called "Deep State" has been "controlling" our
Presidents since at least the Dulles Brothers. Truman even admitted giving them power was a
BIG mistake. Still question the Kennedy Assassination.
In the 70's, the FBI mailed me a box of drugs, which I refused to take from a very
incompetent fake Mail Man, and three minutes later they showed up with a search warrant for
my house that listed all the drugs in the failed mailed box signed by a Federal Judge. So
much for FISA. The bullshit continues. I could reveal more if necessary.
robert e williamson jr , July 8, 2019 at 14:32
Sam F. whether you realize it or not you got it pretty much on the nose. Except for
this.
The judiciary has been compromised by the congresses refusal to hold CIA et. al.
accountable for their actions. Why? Those in congress remember what happened to JFK.
The number one reason is because the deep state ensures that if anyone goes after CIA
officials or designees that the persons career and life are ruined. Which is something else
that needs to be investigated. Something that if explored may very well put a stop to CIA's
B.S. of lying about everything and getting away with it.
Currently no deterrent exists. None.
Anytime some one or entity gets close the Deep State ends up with their guy as AG. See the
Bill Barr story.
Barr may get his chance to prove me right and at the same time prove "Lady Justice" has
little to do with the DOJ! I think he is a cowardly blowhard. Justice would be Trump and Barr
going to jail .
Justice in this country for the true scoundrels in government or billionaires is non-
existent at this point in time. Putting Epstein in prison for life is called for and if he is
threatened with that maybe his jaw will loosen up.
Until DOJ can become a deterrent to bad actors in government, all government the country
will be controlled by the Deep State. The SWETS, super wealthy elitists.
@ "Justice would be Trump and Barr going to jail ."
Are you suggesting that *any* of their living predecessors don't deserve the same? If so,
which do not and why?
Jay , July 8, 2019 at 14:18
Bif:
I agree something very suspect occurred.
And it's very likely the Obama White House knew that either the NSA or the FBI was tapping
into the communications of some of Trump's campaign team BEFORE Hillary lost in Nov.
2016.
However the xenophobic, lying, terrorist (IRA) supporting, Peter King is not a credible
messenger. (Right, Rep Steve King of Iowa is even worse than King of Long Island.)
Peter Dyer , July 8, 2019 at 14:09
Thanks, Ray.
DH Fabian , July 8, 2019 at 13:59
Actually, that deep split among the masses, and certainly within the Dem voting base, was
achieved in the 1990s -- middle class vs. poor, workers vs. those left jobless, further split
by race. The Obama years confirmed that this split is permanent. Russia had nothing to do
with the Democrats' 2016 defeat, nor will it be the reason for their 2020 defeat. Democrats
maintain their resistance against acknowledging the consequences of dividing and conquering
their own voting base.
EuGene Miller , July 9, 2019 at 00:24
DH, that's an interesting assessment. However, I doubt that any House or Senate Democrat
sought an advantage by "splitting their base". The elected Dems do not control the narrative.
So, who benefits by splitting the masses into rival factions?
Perhaps the narrative of social and political discourse is defined by the owners, boards,
and foundations that control the main-stream media and pop-culture.
Robert Reich wrote that an oligarchy divides-and-conquers the rest of us. I suspect that
controlling the narrative is not simply a propaganda tool; it is the basis of
divide-and-conquer strategy.
Is it possible that the DOJ, see the Sec. of Labor's problems developing with the Espstein
case, is about to have it's gloriously corrupt underbelly rolled over into the sunlight? (you
must roll the snake over to see its belly)
Please Ray tell me this is where we might be heading or instead will we end up with the
courts truncating investigation because they say it will be best for the country not to have
all this filthy laundry dragged out into the sunlight or someones bull shit sources and
methods might be exposed. The DOJ has become a really bad joke!
I'm hoping you know something I don't because Barr's past history pretty much speaks for
itself I'd say after be made sure he pardoned all of Bush 41 henchmen!
At this point I certainly do not have much faith in the DOJ doing the right thing. What
Acosta did in Florida with Epstein was hardly the right thing to do.
They all need to be locked up.
Eric32 , July 8, 2019 at 13:33
Very little "punishment" will occur, and no deep change cleanup will occur.
The US govt. is controlled by money and blackmail – not "voting" or public outrage.
So many high level people have so much dirt on other high level people that nothing major
will be done.
A series of very big events, including the JFK murder and the 9/11 charade went unexposed and
undealt with – there is no reason to think that this medium size event will wind up
making a big difference.
What will happen is that US "democracy" will continue on its downward course, but maybe
with a better facade.
Dunderhead , July 8, 2019 at 20:59
I personally believe that the empire will crash when it hits maximum overreach it will
also simultaneously go broke at the same time, as the money interests at that point Will
probably move east, this will partially be due to both the feds tendency to over inflate in
order to cover military acquisitions as well as the decline of swift and the ascendancy of
China in the rest. I actually think that this is what some American factions desire, it is
potentially good for all of us if we can regain a republic but it will mean the end of
American hegemony.
Gary Weglarz , July 8, 2019 at 13:22
This is the same "deep state" that assassinated a sitting president, then proceeded to
assassinate the next three most important and influential progressive leaders in the country
all over a five year period. Problem solved. And just when you thought Allen Dulles didn't
know what to do with all those oh so experienced Nazi war criminals he'd recruited to the
CIA.
When Congress investigated the CIA in the mid-1970's (before Congress became completely
"owned" by the deep state) right on cue witnesses began to "commit suicide" just before they
would be scheduled to testify. Problem solved. Hardly a raised eyebrow from the always
complicit MSM through all of this. Expecting anything more than a massive coverup of this
latest deep state corruption and abuse is beyond my abilities to even effectively fantasize
about.
herbert davis , July 8, 2019 at 14:12
Justice in the USA?
John Drake , July 8, 2019 at 13:20
The corporate Democrats strike out again. They run a corrupt, violent(war monger)
candidate, who loses to a buffoon-an election which was hers to lose. Meanwhile trying to
hedge their bets they play sleazeball with the investigative arm's authority in order to
sabotage said buffoon; which as it is revealed gives ammunition and the advantage to their
target. i.e. "They were illegally picking on me"
If Trump is smart-a very long stretch, but some advisor might suggest this- he will expose
all this slime closer to the election for maximum effect. What a distressing thought. All the
more reason to run a progressive Presidential candidate that can disavow the DNC clowns and
their corruption.
geeyp , July 8, 2019 at 12:37
It's past time for the Deep State to come up from the deep state of hell in which they
reside. At least to purgatory for some fresh air and a wee ray of light. I couldn't let the
Schumer warning keep me from giving the go ahead on this. If my coconut is shattered, someone
somewhere (not our current media) would have a clue as to what happened to me. Sic 'em,
President Trump and A.G. and Devin Nunes!
Sam F , July 8, 2019 at 12:14
The US needs to solve the underlying problem of corruption of secret agencies and
judiciary, otherwise the political wrongdoing of one faction will only be matched by that of
its opponents, regardless of a few prosecutions. I know from experience the extreme
corruption of the Repubs, and little doubt that the Dems do such things at least when
desperate.
The solution includes:
1. All secrets meaningfully shared among multiparty committees;
2. All politicians and top officials monitored for corrupt influence;
3. Entire federal judiciary fired, replaced, and monitored like the politicians; and
4. Amendments to protect elections and mass media from control by money power.
Until then all government acts are tribal gangsterism and little more.
Guy , July 8, 2019 at 13:50
You forgot about dual citizenship members of the senate and congress . Elected as a
representative for the country of the US should mean just that and not another country . And
while we are at it , major reform on monetary contributions to candidates running for
re-election . There is something terribly wrong with needing millions if not billions of
dollars to run the electoral races.There is much more that needs to be done but this would be
a good start .
Sam F , July 8, 2019 at 17:32
Yes, the proposed Amendments would restrict funding of mass media and elections to
registered individual contributions (some prefer government funding) limited to the average
day's pay annually (for example), with full reporting by candidates and all intermediaries.
We all can see the destruction of democracy that was caused by economic power controlling
elections, mass media, the judiciary, etc.
But of course we cannot get those amendments because those tools of democracy now belong
to the rich, etc. History suggests that we are in for generations of severe decline before
the people are hurting enough to turn off the tube and do something, and generations more
before they can re-establish democracy.
Ray McGovern writes:"Classification," however, has been one of the Deep State's favorite
tactics to stymie investigations -- especially when the material in question yields serious
embarrassment or reveals crimes. And the stakes this time are huge"
On the matter of government reform classification there is a great need of public
discussion and radical reform. Why? Because the government is playing with an essential
right, the right to know. All the red herrings needed to be thrown in the trash and the
burden placed on the classifiers to justify why the public does not have a right to know.
Sam F , July 8, 2019 at 17:24
Yes, the facts and their significance (especially about false flags and scandals) need to
be publicly debated, as well as policy goals, and the policies derived from facts and goals.
We have far too many government secrets to sustain a democracy.
I suggest limiting secrets to ongoing investigations (with a time limit), defensive
military plans and operations (not alleged provocations or aggressive war schemes), and
personal IDs of those at risk. Beyond that secrets disguise tyranny.
Ida G Millman , July 8, 2019 at 16:02
Another path towards a solution to government corruption could be term limits for all
federal representatives. Limiting the number of terms would curtail the opportunities for
forming the uninterrupted years of long coalitions between public servants and government
officials that result in the abuses of power that have damaged the interests of ordinary less
wealthy citizens, in favor of corporate and military interests.
In the matter of the original intentions of the men who wrote our founding documents, we
should consider one of the enormous differences that technology has made between us: that our
representatives can travel between DC and their homes with enough ease that they can continue
reasonably, or nearly reasonably, satisfactory family lives – something that could not
be done in the 18th century. The forefathers did not foresee that being a member of
government would become a career for a lifetime. They assumed, I believe, that members of
government would always be citizens who would give our country a few years of their lives and
then return to private life to share their experience and knowledge with their neighbors.
Such a change would not magically reform government corruption. There will always be those
who will find a way – but it could slow things down and it would certainly engage an
increasing number of citizens who would participate in governing, as well as the circles of
people surrounding each of them whose interest in and understanding of government would
increase because everyone would know more of their representatives. Got that, kids?
L&B&L
Sam F , July 8, 2019 at 17:37
Term limits are useful and we should enact more. There seems to be a sufficient supply of
puppets for the rich/WallSt/Mic/zionists to ensure that all new candidates represent only
those interests, unless we go further and control funding of mass media and elections,
monitoring of politicians and judges for life, etc.
Rob Roy , July 8, 2019 at 20:28
Ida,
Term limits wouldn't be necessary if money were out of elections and all elections were
publicly funded. Next, a law should be passed to prevent retired congress people from
lobbying for any private company of any kind. Then people wouldn't have to spend all their
time in congress lining up money for the next election, nor would they owe favors to
anyone.
Dunderhead , July 8, 2019 at 21:19
Sam F, all of those goals seem very nice but it would probably be better if we just
dissolved back into 50 states save for an interstate system and a very small navy for common
defense, maybe four nuclear submarines total, the American people will be best off without a
government completely working it out for themselves, if some of them work it out in
completely different ways without hurting each other so be it. Besides even a libertarians
would have to acknowledge democracy best works for smaller populations. We may never be able
to curb the will to power of evil men but we can diminish their abilities to fleece the
public if we are not subject to them.
Jay , July 8, 2019 at 11:42
Peter King?
Really now.
Not a credible source, no matter how invention filled Russia-gate is. And no matter how
clear it is that in 2016 the FBI was poking around campaign Trump and likely telling the
White House what it found.
Bif Webster , July 8, 2019 at 13:28
I agree that King isn't the best of messengers, but we can also go to others who are not
right-wing to see something fishy went on.
Those text messages convinced me something was going on. And that was before all the other
stuff came to light.
I think this will be about who has more dirt on the other side you know, leverage?
Jeff Harrison , July 8, 2019 at 11:41
Thank you, Ray. Forgive my cynicism but the US government is so corrupt, has wielded
illegitimate power for so long, and has covered the tracks of countless functionaries who
have not upheld the constitution that I doubt this will go anywhere. I have been quoting Ben
Franklin for some time "you have a republic, if you can keep it." I don't think we can. A
reading of "A History of Venice" by John J. Norris would be appropriate here. The most serene
republic lasted for essentially 1,000 years from roughly 800 to not quite 1800, first as a
democracy, later as an oligarchy. Much like us, including having the most feared secret
service in Europe at the time, Venice kept its power through trade but at least we don't
hoist the new president up on a chair so that he can throw golden Ducats to the crowd on Wall
Street the way that a new Doge would.
I don't see that as necessarily much of a plus.
Steven Berge , July 8, 2019 at 11:40
I don't suppose anything will happen to anybody important about this. After all, nothing
happened to anybody when they were caught mass spying on any and all american citizens, even
before they made it legal.
Drew Hunkins , July 8, 2019 at 11:32
Unfortunately Webb and Parry exposed much of these gangster criminal "intel" savages for
running guns and drugs to Central American pseudo fascist mercenary sadists throughout much
of the late 1970s through the '80s. I say unfortunately b/c nothing much ever came along by
way of true justice, by way of the criminal players rotting in maximum security jail cells
for years on end, not unlike the crack or heroin addict who steals a $400 television.
Jill , July 8, 2019 at 11:15
This has been one long crime against the American people. King should read what he knows
into the Congressional Record. I have no sympathy for Trump's fear of the deep state. He has
sent people to die knowing full well that his actions were based on lies, lies that would
result in the deaths of civilians as well as our own military. If he is going to do that,
then he should have the courage to face the deep state. That's partial penance for all the
deaths he has caused.
I also don't care about Trump's personal issue about being surveilled. He personally
supports that against everyone else. That is why I feel this is a crime against our people as
a whole. Our constitution has been stripped bare. We don't have the rule of law. Mass
surveillance covering the globe is current reality. It is dangerous. It is wrong. It is
lawless. It is a disaster.
Further, Russiagate was used to keep real opposition away from Trump. His supporters
doubled down on "liking" Trump because he appeared to be a victim of these lies. Democrats
meanwhile learned to further worship the IC. They ignored Trump's actual unlawful behavior,
and, in the case of war crimes, still support Trump on every war/regime change action etc.
recommended to them by their IC "resistance" "leaders".
People won't speak to one another because of this division, all based on lies. Democrats
want Assange put to death because he exposed truthful information about Clinton. Neighbor has
turned against neighbor over this. We have stopped talking and stopped thinking about whether
claims make sense or have evidence behind them. Political parties have become cults with cult
leaders. Meanwhile, many who think it was wrong to use surveillance against Trump, accept
mass surveillance against everyone else, including themselves.
This has been one of the most effective propaganda tools I have ever seen against our
populace. It has created a divided, unthinking populace who is ripe for the picking by evil
men and women. I am truly hoping that once this is exposed people will stop this madness and
pull together for a common good. But I'm quite worried that, like most cults, when the leader
is shown to be wrong, people cling to them even more.
I cannot believe what Russiagate has done to our own people. I am terrified at the wars it
has/may yet cause and the cruelty against others, both foreign and domestic, which it has
wrought.
Dunderhead , July 8, 2019 at 21:51
What else would you call it, there have always been nefarious agents in one government or
another for one gangster interest or another, whether was Milner's roundtable or Dulles's Gladio werewolves, these are nefarious individuals there is no gray area in that, however
they may conduct themselves and their personal lives, it is not sloppy journalism, is to call
something what it is, a this shadow government working in many instances against the direct
interest of the American people, I'm not trying to be you over the head with this but Mr.
McGovern was once upon a Time swimming in the same waters and he knows what he is talking
about. The deep state maybe several different factions but all of it at least so far is
fairly I'm Accountable, this thing must be named.
AnneR , July 8, 2019 at 14:18
First the Disclaimer: I'm not a supporter of either side of the one party two headed
monster political machine, not of either HRC or DT, both, and their "parties," making me want
to puke.
I am curious about the following: "He [DT] has sent people to die knowing full well that
his actions were based on lies, lies that would result in the deaths of civilians as well as
our own military. If he is going to do that, then he should have the courage to face the deep
state. That's partial penance for all the deaths he has caused."
While I have no doubt that DT has been responsible for civilian deaths (I am far less
concerned about military deaths – join the military and you cannot expect not to have
to chance it, particularly in a warmongering nation state; if the recruit doesn't recognize
this reality, then they need to do some reading), *most* such deaths in those countries we
(the US and its vassal states and proxies) have been happily bombing, shelling, destroying
one way or another, even since the late 1980s (not therefore including the appalling and
illegal warring on Vietnam et al) are down, not to DT, but rather to presidents: BC, GHB,
GWB, BO. Pretty evenly divided betwixt the two heads, wouldn't you say?
That's not to excuse DT (and I wouldn't excuse HRC either – think Libya; as bad as
MA, if with different forms of warfare; but then they're buddies, like attracting like).
We – the US – need to stop killing other peoples (let's cry for the war-making
profiteers), stop destroying other countries (and for our corporate-capitalists who plunder
them); need to mind our own "shop" and business. And stop pretending that we're such a
wonderful, white-hatted, "good" nation.
Jill , July 8, 2019 at 15:15
AnneR,
We have had war criminal presidents from the legacy parties, period. Barr is a party to
war crimes so I share other's doubts that he will do anything about actual justice. He may be
in on the current winning side of the IC and they may be purging some enemies at this time.
That is the only thing I see Barr being involved in.
Speaking as someone who has done counter-recruitment in schools, I will just give you my
experience. Students are tracked from grade school. A file is kept on them with over a
thousand data points. These files are taken by recruiters and used to "pitch" the military to
young people. I don't know if you were sophisticated at 16. I was a little bit but not much.
So here's an example–they told one young woman who had a single mother that if she went
in the military she would not be a burden on her mother any longer. They understood the
family had few resources and they played on this young woman's "guilt" over being a financial
"drain" on her mother. No, recruiters do not tell the truth to those they meet. They lie and
they lie very well because they have excellent information to help them tell the correct
lies. That girl is dead and I mourn her death.
Dunderhead , July 8, 2019 at 22:05
AnneR, you have so much anger, I understand, it is terrible what our nation has done and
is continuing to do, it has gone on so long that many of the people currently perpetrating
the crimes against foreign populations are themselves of descendents of peoples the US has
victimized. It's the propaganda, the United States is one of the most heavily propagandize
societies in the world, we make the Soviets look like children. No one wants you to have
sympathy for Donald Trump, you do not have to agree or like a person to see that the cartel
seeking to damage him is also simultaneously against your interests and they are against your
interests whether you're from the left or the right because they do not have an ideology just
it will to power.
Dunderhead , July 8, 2019 at 22:09
Jill that was an incredibly cogent description of the mess we are currently in,
congratulations on such clarity, peace out.
David Otness , July 9, 2019 at 00:18
With you on all that you state, Jill. It's really exposed the U.S. population for what we
unfortunately are, if not what we've become. So reminiscent of the darker days of the Cold
War. A stark education has just played out to this point. I wonder how many have learned anything at all from it?
"... There is at present no other powerful leadership group that is so adamantly unwilling to compromise with the U.S. The potential loss of U.S. control over Middle East oil being at the root of it. ..."
"... The Saudis et al have it, and Israel is a forward operating base for protecting it. The Saudi royal family rightly fear an Iran-inspired popular uprising against them and Israel fears the loss of lands granted to them by their invisible friend as related in a popular fairy tale. ..."
"... Iran is a relatively large country with a semi independent foreign policy and banking,/ financial system, and they want to control their own resources independent of western dictates about opening up their system to the neo liberal system. ..."
"... Because Iran successfully booted out the CIA and CIA-imposed regime out of their country and successfully remained independent since then. ..."
"... Iran was after WW2 a client state of both the US and the UK, the latter installing the Shah as a ruler. Iran was important for the US and the UK through its oil resources and its border with the USSR. ..."
"... Iran is still a major player when it comes to oil, but contrary to the Shah years quite hostile to the aspirations of Israel to become the “western” power in the middle east. ..."
"... The enmity clearest showed up when Israel and the USA supplied Saddam Hussein with intelligence and Germany and France with the capability to produce chemical weapons during the Iraq/Iran war. ..."
"... America essentially followed the old British approach towards Iran: keep it semi-alive so that it can put up enough resistance to the USSR until America’s more important and intrinsic interests, such as those in the Persian Gulf, were safeguarded. But Washington never wanted to turn Iran into a strong ally that one day might be capable of challenging America. ..."
"... By changing the international balance of power and removing the risk of Soviet penetration, the USSR’s fall eliminated Iran’s value to the United States even as a buffer state. In fact, the fundamental shift to a US approach based on the principle of no compromise, can be traced to 1987, when Gorbachev’s reforms began. ..."
"... Since then, the United States has refused to accept any solution to the Iran problem that has not involved the country’s absolute capitulation. ..."
"... For instance, in 2003, Iran offered to put all the outstanding issues between the two countries on the table for negotiations, but the US refused. ..."
"... Because Iran refuses to be a second-class citizen in its own neighborhood. Theirs is an ancient culture whose legacy to the world is enormous, their history is the stuff of legend, and they are the geopolitical power player in the region, not to mention the most powerful Shia Muslim nation. ..."
>>US President Donald Trump’s ruthless use of the centrality of his country’s financial system and the dollar to force economic
partners to abide by his unilateral sanctions on Iran has forced the world to recognise the political price of asymmetric economic
interdependence.
Why is Iran such a high priority for so many US elites?
Just spit-balling here: The Iranian leadership, with good cause, wants to diminish or eliminate the U.S. grip on the region
and this subversive, potentially destabilizing sentiment resonates among the citizenry of various Middle Eastern countries.
There is at present no other powerful leadership group that is so adamantly unwilling to compromise with the U.S. The potential
loss of U.S. control over Middle East oil being at the root of it.
The Saudis et al have it, and Israel is a forward operating base for protecting it. The Saudi royal family rightly fear
an Iran-inspired popular uprising against them and Israel fears the loss of lands granted to them by their invisible friend as
related in a popular fairy tale.
This is hardly definitive and I’m sure others could elaborate.
Iran is a relatively large country with a semi independent foreign policy and banking,/ financial system, and they want to
control their own resources independent of western dictates about opening up their system to the neo liberal system.
I’m sure this is obvious to most people at this kind of web site and is overly simplistic but i sense sometimes some people
are shocked about the conflict with Iran and don’t get that basic dynamic of this conflict.
Why is Iran such a high priority for so many US elites?
Iran was after WW2 a client state of both the US and the UK, the latter installing the Shah as a ruler. Iran was important
for the US and the UK through its oil resources and its border with the USSR.
Mossadegh, by nationalising the oil supply until, played against the status and he was overthrown in a MI/CIA sponsored coup
in 1953, leaving the Shah as the sole ruler in Iran till the revolution of 1979 when Iran came under theocratic rule and basically
diminished the power the US had throughout the years of the Shah’s rule.
The US was also shown to be quite powerless -- short of an invasion -- to deal with the hostage crisis in the US embassy, which
was finally after more than a year resolved with the help of Canada.
Iran is still a major player when it comes to oil, but contrary to the Shah years quite hostile to the aspirations of Israel
to become the “western” power in the middle east.
The enmity clearest showed up when Israel and the USA supplied Saddam Hussein with intelligence and Germany and France with
the capability to produce chemical weapons during the Iraq/Iran war.
This U.S. approach towards Iran has been the result of its lack of an intrinsic interest in the country. The same was true
of Britain. The late Sir Denis Right, the UK’s ambassador to Iran in the 1960s, put it best by writing that Britain never considered
Iran of sufficient value to colonize it. But it found Iran useful as a buffer against the competing great power, the Russian
Empire. Thus, British policy towards Iran was to keep it moribund but not dead, at least not as long as the Russian threat
persisted.
America essentially followed the old British approach towards Iran: keep it semi-alive so that it can put up enough resistance
to the USSR until America’s more important and intrinsic interests, such as those in the Persian Gulf, were safeguarded. But
Washington never wanted to turn Iran into a strong ally that one day might be capable of challenging America.
By changing the international balance of power and removing the risk of Soviet penetration, the USSR’s fall eliminated
Iran’s value to the United States even as a buffer state. In fact, the fundamental shift to a US approach based on the principle
of no compromise, can be traced to 1987, when Gorbachev’s reforms began.
Since then, the United States has refused to accept any solution to the Iran problem that has not involved the country’s
absolute capitulation.
For instance, in 2003, Iran offered to put all the outstanding issues between the two countries on the table for negotiations,
but the US refused.
Because Iran refuses to be a second-class citizen in its own neighborhood. Theirs is an ancient culture whose legacy to the
world is enormous, their history is the stuff of legend, and they are the geopolitical power player in the region, not to mention
the most powerful Shia Muslim nation.
"... It wasn't to provide dirt on Hillary Clinton, which the Russian lawyer did not have and never produced. That was a ploy by Robert Goldstone, a British music publicist whose job is to get what his clients want, in this case, a meeting. So, recklessly, he invented the idea of Clinton dirt as a bait-and-switch to get Trump's people to come to it. He got the lawyer the meeting for her to lobby a potentially incoming administration against the Magnitsky Act, which is why she was in the United States in the first place. ..."
"... The lawyer lobbying against the act, Natalia Veselnitskaya, told Trump Jr., Kushner and Manafort that Browder's story was fake, a smokescreen to block the Russians from going after him for multi-millions in tax evasion. She argued the Magnitsky Act was built on this fraud. Manafort's notes, included in the Mueller Report, trace what she said. ..."
"... The Mueller investigators appear not to have looked into her charges. The report promotes Browder's fabrications, citing "the Magnitsky Act, which imposed financial sanctions and travel restrictions on Russian officials and which was named for a Russian tax specialist who exposed a fraud and later died in a Russian prison." ..."
"... But instead of his "lawyer" Magnitsky exposing Russian fraud, for which he was jailed and killed in prison, Magnitsky was actually Browder's accountant who was detained under investigation for his part in Browder's tax evasion and died of natural causes in prison, as Magnitsky's own mother admits to filmmaker Andrei Nekrasov in the film "The Magnitsky Act: Behind the Scenes." ..."
"... The documents include a deposition where Browder admits that the alleged "lawyer" Magnitsky did not go to law school nor have a law degree. Magnitsky's own testimony file identifies him as an "auditor." ..."
"... I interviewed Veselnitskaya in New York in November 2016. She explained what she later told the Trump group, that Browder's clients the Ziff Brothers had invested in Russian shares in a way that routed the money through loans so that they could evade U.S. taxes. ["Not invest – loans" in Manafort's notes.] ..."
Natalia Veselnitskaya didn't have "dirt" on Hillary Clinton and when the Russian lawyer met
with Trump's people her focus was not on the 2016 campaign, writes Lucy Komisar.
By Lucy Komisar Special to Consortium News
A "key event" described in the Mueller
Report is the Trump Tower meeting where a Russian lawyer met with the president's son
Donald Trump Jr, his son-in-law Jared Kushner and his campaign chairman Paul Manafort.
Russiagaters have been obsessed with the meeting saying it was the smoking gun to prove
collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign to steal the 2016 election. Months after
Mueller concluded that there was no collusion at all, the obsession has switched to
"obstruction of justice," which is like someone being apprehended for resisting arrest without
committing any other crime.
Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer who met with Trump team members in Trump Tower,
and her interpreter, in background. (Lucy Komisar)
The Mueller report thus focuses instead on "efforts to prevent disclosure of information
about the June 9, 2016 Trump Tower meeting between Russians and senior campaign officials."
But the report on this topic is deceptive. Ironically, as it attacks Donald Trump and top
campaign officials for lying, the report itself lies about the issue the meeting addressed.
It wasn't to provide dirt on Hillary Clinton, which the Russian lawyer did not have and
never produced. That was a ploy by Robert Goldstone, a British music publicist whose job is to
get what his clients want, in this case, a meeting. So, recklessly, he invented the idea of
Clinton dirt as a bait-and-switch to get Trump's people to come to it. He got the lawyer the
meeting for her to lobby a potentially incoming administration against the Magnitsky Act, which
is why she was in the United States in the first place.
The Magnitsky Act is a 2012 U.S. law that was promoted by William Browder, an American-born
British citizen and hedge fund investor, who claimed his "lawyer" Sergei Magnitsky had been
imprisoned and murdered because he uncovered a scheme by Russian officials to steal $230
million from the Russian Treasury. It sanctioned Russians he said were involved or benefitted
from Magnitsky's death. It has since been used by the U.S. to put sanctions on other Russians
and nationals from other countries.
The lawyer lobbying against the act, Natalia Veselnitskaya, told Trump Jr., Kushner and
Manafort that Browder's story was fake, a smokescreen to block the Russians from going after
him for multi-millions in tax evasion. She argued the Magnitsky Act was built on this fraud.
Manafort's notes, included in the Mueller Report, trace what she said.
Nothing Illegal
The Trump people did nothing illegal to meet with her. Their problem was the exaggerating
communications Goldstone sent them about Veselnitskaya having "dirt" on Clinton. (While U.S.
election laws says it's illegal for a campaign to receive "a thing of value" from a foreign
source, it's never been established by a court that opposition research fits that description,
the Mueller Report admits. ) Veselnitskaya
testified to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee in November 2017 that Browder's major
American client, the Ziff brothers, had cheated on American and Russian taxes and contributed
the "dirty money" to the Democrats.
The Mueller investigators appear not to have looked into her charges. The report
promotes Browder's fabrications, citing "the Magnitsky Act, which imposed financial sanctions
and travel restrictions on Russian officials and which was named for a Russian tax specialist
who exposed a fraud and later died in a Russian prison."
But instead of his "lawyer" Magnitsky exposing Russian fraud, for which he was jailed
and killed in prison, Magnitsky was actually Browder's accountant who was detained under
investigation for his part in Browder's tax evasion and died of natural causes in prison, as
Magnitsky's own mother admits to filmmaker Andrei Nekrasov in the film "The Magnitsky Act: Behind the Scenes."
Mueller's investigators might have started with documents filed in U.S. federal court in the
case of Veselnitskaya's client, Prevezon, a Russian holding company that settled a
civil-forfeiture claim by the U.S. government that linked it, without proof, to the tax
fraud.
The documents include a deposition where
Browder admits that the alleged "lawyer" Magnitsky did not go to law school nor have a law
degree. Magnitsky's own testimony
file identifies him as an "auditor."
Why does that matter? Because it was Browder's red herring. Magnitsky had worked as
Browder's accountant since 1997, fiddling on Browder's taxes on profits from sales of shares
held by Russian shell companies run by his Hermitage Fund. He was not an attorney hired in 2007
to investigate and then expose a tax fraud against the Russian Treasury.
That fraud was exposed by Rimma Starova, the Russian nominee director of a British Virgin
Islands shell company that held Hermitage's reregistered companies and who gave testimony to
Russian police on
April 9 and
July 10, 2008 . It was reported
by The New York Times and Vedomosti
on July 24, 2008, months before Magnitsky mentioned it in an Oct. 7 interrogation.
Kremlin-connected?
Trump Tower in Midtown Manhattan. (Jorge Láscar, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia
Commons)
The Mueller Report says Veselnitskaya promised dirt on Hillary Clinton as "part of Russia
and its government support for Trump." Two days before the meeting, Goldstone emailed Trump Jr.
and said "the Russian government attorney" was flying in from Moscow. She had not been a
government attorney since 2001, 15 years earlier.
I interviewed Veselnitskaya in New York in November 2016. She explained what she later
told the Trump group, that Browder's clients the Ziff Brothers had invested in Russian shares
in a way that routed the money through loans so that they could evade U.S. taxes. ["Not invest
– loans" in Manafort's notes.]
The report says, "Natalia Veselnitskaya had previously worked for the Russian government and
maintained a relationship with that government throughout this period of time." Later it says
that from 1998 to 2001, she had worked as a prosecutor for the "Central Administrative
District" of the Russian Prosecutor's office. "And continued to perform government-related work
and maintain ties to the Russian government following her departure." We are meant to presume,
with no evidence, as the media does – that means "a Kremlin-connected lawyer."
When Trump Jr asked for evidence, how the payments could be tied to the Clinton campaign,
she said she couldn't trace them, according to the Mueller Report.
Then she turned to the Magnitsky Act. The report repeats earlier fakery: "She lobbied and
testified about the Magnitsky Act, which imposed financial sanctions and travel restrictions on
Russian officials and which was named for a Russian tax specialist who exposed a fraud and
later died in a Russian prison." Magnitsky did not expose a fraud. Rimma Starova
did.
A footnote in the report said: "Browder hired Magnitsky to investigate tax fraud by Russian
officials, and Magnitsky was charged with helping Browder embezzle money." Browder did not hire
Magnitsky to investigate the fraud. Magnitsky had been the accountant in charge of Hermitage
since 1997, 10 years before the fraud. Embezzlement refers to Browder shifting assets out of
Russia without paying taxes.
But the investigation's focus was not on Browder's fakery -- the substance of the Trump
Tower meeting -- but on the communications organizing the event. The section on obstruction
says Trump became aware of "emails setting up the June 9, 2016 meeting between senior campaign
officials and Russians who offered derogatory information on Hillary Clinton as 'part of Russia
and its government's support for Mr. Trump.'"
That would have been inflated Goldstone's promises.
The report says "at the meeting the Russian attorney claimed that funds derived from illegal
activities in Russia were provided to Hillary Clinton and other Democrats." Trump Jr. told a
White House press officer that "they started with some Hillary thing, which was bs and some
other nonsense, which we shot down fast."
As Veselnitskaya told me, she knew the Ziffs made contributions to Democrats. She probably
started with that. Manafort's notes don't report a "Hillary thing," but are about Browder and
the Ziffs.
On the issue of Browder, the Magnitsky story and the essence of the Trump Tower meeting, the
Mueller Report is a deception intended to keep the myth of collusion in the air while
dismissing that any collusion took place.
Lucy Komisar is an investigative reporter who writes about financial corruption and
won a Gerald Loeb award, the most important prize in financial journalism, for breaking the
story about how Ponzi schemer Allen Stanford got the Florida Banking Dept to allow him to move
money offshore with no regulation. Her stories about William Browder focus on tax evasion. Find
out more on The Komisar Scoop and on
Twitter, @lucykomisar
.
If you enjoyed this original article, please considermaking a donationto Consortium News so we can bring you more stories like this
one.
"... Given these facts you would think it would be easy for Robert Mueller to explain how the Russians got their hands on the DNC emails and then passed them on to Wikileaks. But it is not easy because the foundation of the case against the Russians rests on assumptions and beliefs. No solid facts. ..."
"... To reiterate a point I have raised in previous posts, the only entity to have forensic access to the DNC computers, i.e. CrowdStrike, is on the record in the person of the CrowdStrike CEO, Dimitri Alperovitch admitting they don't know how the Russians got access. ..."
"... CrowdStrike is not sure how the hackers got in. The firm suspects they may have targeted DNC employees with "spearphishing" emails. These are communications that appear legitimate -- often made to look like they came from a colleague or someone trusted -- but that contain links or attachments that when clicked on deploy malicious software that enables a hacker to gain access to a computer. " But we don't have hard evidence ," Alperovitch said. ..."
"... If CrowdStrike actually had conducted a legitimate forensic examination of the DNC server/servers then they absolutely would have had "hard evidence." ..."
"... The government produced the CrowdStrike reports because the Indictment in this case referenced, as background, CrowdStrike's statements about the DNC hack. Stone's statement that the government has no other evidence is not only irrelevant to this proceeding but is also mistaken. ..."
"... It is a horrible irony that Stone is being persecuted with prosecution based on an even bigger lie -- i.e., the Russians hacked the DNC. Russia did not hack the DNC. Let's hope that Stone's lawyers get a chance to demand the US Government put up the evidence or shut up. ..."
There is zero forensic evidence in the public arena that supports the US Government's
assertion that the Russian Government hacked the DNC. In fact, the forensic computer evidence
that is available indicates that the emails from the DNC were downloaded onto something like a
thumb drive.
There also is zero forensic evidence in the public arena that the Russians passed/delivered
the DNC emails to Julian Assange/Wikileaks. There are only two ways to get DNC emails into the
hands of Wiki people--an electronic transfer or a physical/human transfer. That's it.
And here is what we know for certain. First, since Edward Snowden absconded with the NSA's
family jewels with the help of Wikileaks, U.S. and British intelligence assets have been
monitoring every single electronic communication to and from Wikileaks/Julian Assange. They
also have been conducting surveillance on all personal contacts with Assange and other key
members of the Wikileaks staff.
Given these facts you would think it would be easy for Robert Mueller to explain how the
Russians got their hands on the DNC emails and then passed them on to Wikileaks. But it is not
easy because the foundation of the case against the Russians rests on assumptions and beliefs.
No solid facts.
To reiterate a point I have raised in previous posts, the only entity to have forensic
access to the DNC computers, i.e. CrowdStrike, is on the record in the person of the
CrowdStrike CEO, Dimitri Alperovitch admitting they don't know how the Russians got access. Alperovitch told Washington Post Reporter Ellen Nakashima on
June 14, 2016 the following :
CrowdStrike is not sure how the hackers got in. The firm suspects they may have targeted DNC
employees with "spearphishing" emails. These are communications that appear legitimate -- often
made to look like they came from a colleague or someone trusted -- but that contain links or
attachments that when clicked on deploy malicious software that enables a hacker to gain access
to a computer. " But we don't have hard evidence ," Alperovitch said.
If CrowdStrike actually had conducted a legitimate forensic examination of the DNC
server/servers then they absolutely would have had "hard evidence."
Then, 13 months later, we have FBI Director Jim Comey admitting that the FBI relied on
CrowdStrike for its "evidence." Jim Comey testified to the House Intelligence Committee in
March 2017 and
stated the following :
"we never got direct access to the machines themselves. The DNC in the spring of 2016 hired
a firm that ultimately shared with us their forensics from their review of the system."
Now take a look at a very significant reversal of the US Government's position in the case
against Roger Stone. On 20 June 2019, US Attorney Jessie Liu filed a motion attempting to rebut
the argument presented by Stone's attorneys that there was no supporting evidence for the claim
that Russia hacked the DNC. Here are the key snippets from her filing:
As the government has argued (Doc. 122, at 6, 9, 14), Russia's role in the DNC hack is not
material to the eighteen findings of probable cause that Stone appears to be challenging. . . .
The government produced the CrowdStrike reports because the Indictment in this case referenced,
as background, CrowdStrike's statements about the DNC hack. Stone's statement that the
government has no other evidence is not only irrelevant to this proceeding but is also
mistaken.
Yet, when you read the original indictment, Roger Stone was put in the cross hairs because
he was allegedly communicating with Wikileaks/Julian Assange about the DNC emails. And those
emails are identified in the indictment as "stolen." The Government is hoping to nail Stone on
the charge of "lying" to Congress. Good luck with that.
It is a horrible irony that Stone is being persecuted with prosecution based on an even
bigger lie -- i.e., the Russians hacked the DNC. Russia did not hack the DNC. Let's hope that
Stone's lawyers get a chance to demand the US Government put up the evidence or shut up.
See better discussion at
platts.com "But US LNG could face problems of its own – the current low prices are forcing ever growing numbers of US producers
into bankruptcy. According to a recent report by Haynes and Boone, 90 gas and oil producers in the US and Canada have filed for bankruptcy
between January 2015 and the start of August 2016." So $2 price at Henry Hub should rise to at least $4 for companies to stay in business.
Notable quotes:
"... Less than half of the gas necessary for Europe is produced domestically, the rest being imported from Russia (39%), Norway (30%) and Algeria (13%). In 2017, gas imports from outside of the EU reached 14%. Spain led with imports of 31%, followed by France with 20% and Italy with 15%. ..."
"... The South Stream project, led by Eni, Gazprom, EDF and Wintershall, should have increased the capacity of the Russian Federation to supply Europe with 63 billion cubic meters annually, positively impacting the economy with cheap supplies of gas to Bulgaria, Greece, Italy, Serbia, Hungary, Austria and Slovenia. Due to the restrictions imposed by the European Union on Russian companies like Gazprom, and the continuing pressure from Washington to abandon the project and embrace imports from the US, the construction of the pipeline have slowed down and generated tensions between Europe and the US. Washington is piling on pressure on Germany to derail Nord Stream 2 and stop the construction of this important energy linkage. ..."
"... Further tension has been added since ENI, an Italian company that is a leader in the LNG sector, recently discovered off-shore in Egypt one of the largest gas fields in the world, with an estimated total capacity of 850 billion cubic meters. To put this in perspective, all EU countries demand is about 470 billion cubic meters of gas in 2017. ..."
"... s mentioned, LNG imported to Europe from the US costs about 20% more than gas traditionally received through pipelines. This is without including all the investment necessary to build regasification plants in countries destined to receive this ship-borne gas. Europe currently does not have the necessary facilities on its Atlantic coast to receive LNG from the US, introduce it into its energy networks, and simultaneously decrease demand from traditional sources. ..."
"... This situation could change in the future, with LNG from the US seeing a sharp increase recently. In 2010, American LNG exports to Europe were at 10%; the following year they rose to 11%; and in the first few months of 2019, they jumped to 35%. A significant decrease in LNG exports to Asian countries, which are less profitable, offers an explanation for this corresponding increase in Europe. ..."
"... Washington, with its LNG ships, has no capacity to compete in Asia against Qatar and Australia, who have the lion's share of the market, with Moscow's pipelines taking up the rest. The only large remaining market lies in Europe, so it is therefore not surprising that Donald Trump has decided to weaponize LNG, a bit as he has the US dollar . This has only driven EU countries to seek energy diversification in the interests of security. ..."
"... The European countries do not appear to be dragging their feet at the prospect of swapping to US LNG, even though there is no economic advantage to doing so. As has been evident of late, whenever Washington says, "Jump!", European allies respond, "How high?" ..."
"... The generalized hysteria against the Russian Federation, together with the cutting off of Iranian oil imports at Washington's behest, limit the room for maneuver of European countries, in addition to costing European taxpayers a lot. ..."
One of the most important energy battles
of the future will be fought in the field of liquid natural gas (LNG). Suggested as one of the main solutions to
pollution , LNG offers the possibility
of still managing to meet a country's industrial needs while ameliorating environmental concerns caused by other energy sources.
At the same time, a little like the US dollar, LNG is becoming a tool Washington intends to use against Moscow at the expense of
Washington's European allies.
To understand the rise of LNG in global strategies, it is wise to look at a
graph (page 7)
produced by the International Gas Union (IGU) where the following four key indicators are highlighted: global regasification capacities;
total volumes of LNG exchanged; exporting countries; and importing countries.
From 1990 to today,
the world has grown from 220 million tons per annum (MTPA) to around 850 MTPA of regasification capacity. The volume of trade
increased from 20-30 MTPA to around 300 MTPA. Likewise, the number of LNG-importing countries has increased from just over a dozen
to almost 40 over the course of 15 years, while the number of producers has remained almost unchanged, except for a few exceptions
like the US entering the LNG market in 2016.
There are two methods used to transport gas.
The first is through pipelines, which reduce costs and facilitate interconnection between countries, an important example of
this being seen in Europe's importation of gas. The four main pipelines for Europe come from four distinct geographical regions:
the Middle East, Africa, Northern Europe and Russia.
The second method of transporting gas is by sea in the form of LNG, which in the short term is more expensive, complex and
difficult to implement on a large scale. Gas transported by sea is processed to be cooled so as to reduce its volume, and then
liquified again to allow storage and transport by ship. This process adds 20% to costs when compared to gas transported through
pipelines.
Less than half of the gas necessary for Europe is
produced domestically, the
rest being imported from Russia (39%), Norway (30%) and Algeria (13%). In 2017, gas imports from outside of the EU reached 14%. Spain
led with imports of 31%, followed by France with 20% and Italy with 15%.
The construction of infrastructure to accommodate LNG ships is ongoing in Europe, and some European countries already have a limited
capacity to accommodate LNG and direct it to the national and European network or act as an energy hub to ship LNG to other ports
using smaller ships.
"All of Europe's LNG terminals are import facilities, with the exception of (non-EU) Norway and Russia which export LNG. There
are currently 28 large-scale LNG import terminals in Europe (including non-EU Turkey). There are also 8 small-scale LNG facilities
in Europe (in Finland, Sweden, Germany, Norway and Gibraltar). Of the 28 large-scale LNG import terminals, 24 are in EU countries
(and therefore subject to EU regulation) and 4 are in Turkey, 23 are land-based import terminals, and 4 are floating storage and
regasification units (FSRUs), and the one import facility in Malta comprises a Floating Storage Unit (FSU) and onshore regasification
facilities."
The countries currently most involved in the export of LNG are Qatar (24.9%), Australia (21.7%), Malaysia (7.7%), the US (6.7%),
Nigeria (6.5%) and Russia (6%).
Europe is one of the main markets for gas, given its strong demand for clean energy for domestic and industrial needs. For this
reason, Germany has for years been engaged in the Nord Stream 2 project, which aims to double the transport capacity of gas from
Russia to Germany. Currently the flow of the Nord Stream is 55 billion cubic meters of gas. With the new Nord Stream 2, the capacity
will double to 110 billion cubic meters per year.
The South Stream project, led by Eni, Gazprom, EDF and Wintershall, should have increased the capacity of the Russian Federation
to supply Europe with 63 billion cubic meters annually, positively impacting the economy with cheap supplies of gas to Bulgaria,
Greece, Italy, Serbia, Hungary, Austria and Slovenia. Due to the restrictions imposed by the European Union on Russian companies
like Gazprom, and the continuing pressure from Washington to abandon the project and embrace imports from the US, the construction
of the pipeline have slowed down and generated tensions between Europe and the US. Washington is piling on pressure on Germany to
derail Nord Stream 2 and stop the construction of this important energy linkage.
Further tension has been added since ENI, an Italian company that is a leader in the LNG sector, recently discovered off-shore
in Egypt one of the largest gas fields in the world, with an estimated total capacity of 850 billion cubic meters. To put this in
perspective, all EU countries demand is about 470 billion cubic meters of gas in 2017.
ENI's discovery has generated important planning for the future of LNG in Europe and in Italy.
Problems have arisen ever since Donald Trump sought to oblige Europeans to
purchase LNG from the US in
order to reduce the trade deficit and benefit US companies at the expense of other gas-exporting countries like Algeria, Russia and
Norway. As mentioned, LNG imported to Europe from the US costs about 20% more than gas traditionally received through pipelines.
This is without including all the investment necessary to build regasification plants in countries destined to receive this ship-borne
gas. Europe currently does not have the necessary facilities on its Atlantic coast to receive LNG from the US, introduce it into
its energy networks, and simultaneously decrease demand from traditional sources.
This situation could change in the future, with LNG from the US seeing a sharp increase recently. In 2010, American LNG exports
to Europe were at 10%; the following year they rose to 11%; and in the first few months of 2019, they jumped to 35%. A significant
decrease in LNG exports to Asian countries, which are less profitable, offers an explanation for this corresponding increase in Europe.
But Europe finds itself in a decidedly uncomfortable situation that cannot be easily resolved. The anti-Russia hysteria drummed
up by the Euro-Atlantic globalist establishment aides Donald Trump's efforts to economically squeeze as much as possible out of European
allies, hurting European citizens in the process who will have to pay more for American LNG, which costs about a fifth more than
gas from Russian, Norwegian or Algerian sources.
Projects to build offshore regasifiers in Europe appear to have begun and seem unlikely to be affected by future political vagaries,
given the investment committed and planning times involved:
"There are currently in the region of 22 large-scale LNG import terminals considered as planned in Europe, except for the planned
terminals in Ukraine (Odessa FSRU LNG), Russia (Kaliningrad LNG), Albania (Eagle LNG) – Albania being a candidate for EU membership
– and Turkey (FSRU Iskenderun and FSRU Gulf of Saros).
Many ofthese planned terminals, including Greece (where one additional import terminal is planned – Alexandroupolis), Italy
(which is considering or planning two additional terminals – Porto Empedocle in Sicily and Gioia Tauro LNG in Calabria) , Poland
(FSRU Polish Baltic Sea Coast), Turkey (two FSRUs) and the UK (which is planning the Port Meridian FSRU LNG project and UK Trafigura
Teesside LNG). LNG import terminal for Albania (Eagle LNG), Croatia (Krk Island), Cyprus (Vassiliko FSRU), Estonia (Muuga (Tallinn)
LNG and Padalski LNG), Germany ( Brunsbüttel LNG), Ireland (Shannon LNG and Cork LNG), Latvia (Riga LNG), Romania (Constanta LNG),
Russia (Kaliningrad LNG) and Ukraine (Odessa).
Nine of the planned terminals are FSRUs: Albania, Croatia, Cyprus, Greece, Ireland, Poland, Russia, Ukraine and the UK. "In
addition, there are numerous plans for expansion of existing terminals, including in Belgium, France, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands,
Poland, Spain, Turkey and the UK."
Washington, with its LNG ships, has no capacity to compete in Asia against Qatar and Australia, who have the lion's share
of the market, with Moscow's pipelines taking up the rest. The only large remaining market lies in Europe, so it is therefore not
surprising that Donald Trump has decided to weaponize LNG,
a bit as he has the US dollar . This has only driven EU countries to seek energy diversification in the interests of security.
The European countries do not appear to be
dragging their feet at the prospect of swapping to US LNG, even though there is no economic advantage to doing so. As has been
evident of late, whenever Washington says, "Jump!", European allies respond, "How high?" This, however, is not the case with
all allies. Germany is not economically able to interrupt Nord Stream 2. And even though the project has many high-level sponsors,
including former chancellor Gerhard Schröder, the project constantly seems to be on the verge of being stopped – at least in Washington's
delusions.
Even Eni's discovery of the gas field in Egypt has annoyed the US, which wants less competition (even when illegal, as in the
case of Huawei) and wants to be able to force its exports onto Europeans while maintaining the price of the LNG in dollars, thereby
further supporting the US dollar as the world's reserve currency in the same manner as the
petrodollar .
The generalized hysteria against the Russian Federation, together with the cutting off of Iranian oil imports at Washington's
behest, limit the room for maneuver of European countries, in addition to costing European taxpayers a lot. The Europeans appear
prepared to set whatever course the US has charted them, one away from cheaper gas sources to the more expensive LNG supplied from
across the Atlantic. Given the investments already committed to receive this LNG, it seems unlikely that the course set for the Europeans
will be changed.
I live in Europe. I can honestly say that the people I know here prefer Russian gas. People are very ticked off about how the
US meddled in their gas supply and the structuring of the pipelines. Most feel that even if US LNG WAS competitive with Russian
gas price for now, that the US would in some way either increase prices or use it in some other way to control or manipulate the
EU. And sentiment towards USA tends toward resentment and distrust. That's not to say they are necessarily pro-Russia, but definitely
a wave of anti US is present.
US LNG pricing is based on Henry Hub which today is under $2.30/mmbtu.
Even adding in liquefaction and shipping costs, the price to the end user is extremely low.
Henry hub is projected to be sub $3 for DECADES!
Combine the low price with spot deliveries (pipe usually demands long term contracting commitments), and US LNG actually has
strong rationale for being accepted.
The statement above that US LNG cannot compete against Australia in Asia is preposterously false due to the VERY high buildout
costs of the Aussie LNG infrastructure.
Next year, Oz's first LNG IMPORT terminal at Port Kembla may well be supplied with US LNG.
The US has shown itself to be unreliable as a supplier of anything. Political posturing will always take precedence over any
international transaction.
Oh, for pity's sake, Laugher. Everything...absolutely everything you attribute to Russia in your post can be said of the U.S.
I'm not much of a Wiki fan, but for expediency, here's their view on military bases.
The establishment of military bases abroad enables a country to
project power , e.g. to conduct
expeditionary warfare , and thereby influence
events abroad. Depending on their size and infrastructure, they can be used as
staging areas or for logistical, communications and
intelligence support. Many conflicts throughout modern history have resulted in overseas military bases being established in
large numbers by world powers and the existence of
bases abroad has served countries having them in achieving political and military goals.
And this link will provide you with countries worldwide and their bases.
Note that Russia, in this particular list, has eight bases all contiguous to Russia. The U.S. has 36 listed here with none
of them contiguous to the U.S.' borders.
Whilst the left wants to go full throttle towards Wind and Solar, no one knows that the natural gas lobby is behind these sources
because both sources need a backup. While everyone talks "carbon footprint" they never discusses plant efficiency ( or
in the terms of engines brake specific fuel consumption and turbine specific fuel consumption ) in terms of thermal efficiency.
You know the boring stuff that plant operators stress over to make sure when your wife wakes up @ 3 in the morning to feed the
baby, the lights do go on, and they are creating that wattage in an cost affective manner. With that said, the king of thermal
efficiency i.e. burning a fuel to create electricity, is the Combined Cycle Natural Gas Power Plant. These plants combines a stationary
gas turbine buring natural gas to spin a generator and a boiler on the back side capture the waste heat to create steam to spin
a turbine to again add an input to the generator for a current state of the art of 61% efficiency . That means only 39%
going up the stack or for steam cooling to get your "Delta T" for the steam cycle to work. This 61% is vs maybe in the mid 40's
for a coal, oil plant or in the case of Nuclear just waste heat with nothing going out a stack. The greater wattage per fuel burned,
and the modularization of these Combined Cycle Plants aka have a series of 100mw turbines and bring them on line as needed, make
this a win-win IMHO for a massive refurbishing of our Utility base, with a host of benefits, before Gen 3 & Gen 4 Nuclear truly
take off again. These plants could be a great stop gap before Gen 3 & 4 are a reality. All the macinations towards wind and solar
and their disavantages aka being bird vegamatics, vistas being spoiled and huge swaths of land being used for panels make no sense
vs energy density of efficient plants. We are the Natural Gas King, lets not flare it anymore, and really, really leverage it
here, help allies, and use it for bringing bad behaving children of the world to the table ifyou will, if you want the candy,
behave....
Why do we have to treat other countries like we're the parent? We aren't. They are equal and fully functioning countries quite
capable of determining their own political and economic future...which may involve not trading or interacting with the U.S. Particularly
if we demand of them conditions we ourselves would never accede.
The Lithuanian FSRU "Independence" which was delivered from Hyundai Heavy Industries in 2014 to the port of Klaipeda drove
energy costs for heating through the roof and perhaps is one of the reasons the Prime Minister at the time only came in third
in the latest presidential elections. You can stay reasonably warm, eat or have money for medicine and other necessities. Pick
2 ONLY. Thank you USSA
Brainsick as Pompeo the US Pork without character.
As Long as Russia dlivery theier gas constantly and for a much better price then Us-Shale idiots, the ziocons only can lose.
We Europeans are not very impressed.
The biggest Capitalist economy on the planet needs to use mob tactics to push its over priced wares- seems 'long term' is not
part of their hit-and-run operation.
Now as for the article; apart from a few Eastern European Countries (The Ukraine, Poland etc.), I have seen no proof whatsoever,
that Europe is shifting to US LNG.
As for "As has been evident of late, whenever Washington says, "Jump!", European allies respond, "How high?""; I am sorry,
but I think those days are over..... this can be seen in our Iranian stance, the 2 Russian pipelines - 1 being Nordstream II and
the other Turk-stream, increased trade with Russia, joining the the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and so on and
so on......
Slowly but surely the anti-Russia propaganda is dying. You can fool all the people some of the time, you can fool some people
all of the time (libtards), but you can't fool all the people all of the time. Europeans (the citizens) will question why they
should pay 20-30% more for their natural gas just to please America. Politicians better have an answer or change of policy if
they want to be reelected.
"... Risen detailed how his editors had been "quite willing to cooperate with the government." In fact, a top CIA official even told Risen that his rule of thumb for approving a covert operation was, "How will this look on the front page of the New York Times?" ..."
"... Bernstein obtained CIA documents that revealed that more than 400 American journalists in the previous 25 years had "secretly carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence Agency." ..."
"... Virtually all major US media outlets cooperated with the CIA, Bernstein revealed, including ABC, NBC, the AP, UPI, Reuters, Newsweek, Hearst newspapers, the Miami Herald, the Saturday Evening Post, and the New York Herald‑Tribune. ..."
"... However, he added, "By far the most valuable of these associations, according to CIA officials, have been with the New York Times, CBS and Time Inc." ..."
"... These layers of state manipulation, censorship, and even direct crafting of the news media show that, as much as they claim to be independent, The New York Times and other outlets effectively serve as de facto spokespeople for the government -- or at least for the US national security state. ..."
The New York Times casually acknowledged that it sends major scoops to the US government
before publication, to make sure "national security officials" have "no concerns."
By Ben Norton
June 25, 2019 " Information Clearing House " - The New York
Times has publicly acknowledged that it sends some of its stories to the US government for
approval from "national security officials" before publication.
This confirms what veteran New York Times correspondents like James Risen have said: The
American newspaper of record regularly collaborates with the US government, suppressing
reporting that top officials don't want made public.
On June 15, the Times reported that the US government is escalating its cyber
attacks on Russia's power grid . According to the article, "the Trump administration is
using new authorities to deploy cybertools more aggressively," as part of a larger "digital
Cold War between Washington and Moscow."
In response to the report, Donald Trump attacked the
Times on Twitter, calling the article "a virtual act of Treason."
The New York Times PR office replied to Trump from its official Twitter account, defending
the story and noting that it had, in fact, been cleared with the US government before being
printed.
"Accusing the press of treason is dangerous," the Times communications team said. "We
described the article to the government before publication."
"As our story notes, President Trump's own national security officials said there were no
concerns," the Times added.
NY Times editors 'quite willing to cooperate with
the government'
The symbiotic relationship between the US corporate media and the government has been known
for some time. American intelligence agencies play the press like a musical instrument, using
it it to selectively leak information at opportune moments to push US soft power and advance
Washington's interests.
But rarely is this symbiotic relationship so casually and publicly acknowledged.
In 2018, former New York Times reporter James Risen published a 15,000-word article in
The Intercept providing further insight into how this unspoken alliance operates.
Risen
detailed how his editors had been "quite willing to cooperate with the government." In fact, a
top CIA official even told Risen that his rule of thumb for approving a covert operation was,
"How will this look on the front page of the New York Times?"
There is an "informal arrangement" between the state and the press, Risen explained, where
US government officials "regularly engaged in quiet negotiations with the press to try to stop
the publication of sensitive national security stories."
"At the time, I usually went along with these negotiations," the former New York Times
reported said. He recalled an example of a story he was writing on Afghanistan just prior to
the September 11, 2001 attacks. Then-CIA Director George Tenet called Risen personally and
asked him to kill the story.
"He told me the disclosure would threaten the safety of the CIA officers in Afghanistan,"
Risen said. "I agreed."
Risen said he later questioned whether or not this was the right decision. "If I had
reported the story before 9/11, the CIA would have been angry, but it might have led to a
public debate about whether the United States was doing enough to capture or kill bin Laden,"
he wrote. "That public debate might have forced the CIA to take the effort to get bin Laden
more seriously."
This dilemma led Risen to reconsider responding to US government requests to censor stories.
"And that ultimately set me on a collision course with the editors at the New York Times," he
said.
"After the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration began asking the press to kill stories more
frequently," Risen continued. "They did it so often that I became convinced the administration
was invoking national security to quash stories that were merely politically embarrassing." In
the lead-up to the Iraq War, Risen frequently "clashed" with Times editors because he raised
questions about the US government's lies. But his stories "stories raising questions about the
intelligence, particularly the administration's claims of a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda,
were being cut, buried, or held out of the paper altogether."
The Times' executive editor Howell Raines "was believed by many at the paper to prefer
stories that supported the case for war," Risen said.
In another anecdote, the former Times journalist recalled a scoop he had uncovered on a
botched CIA plot. The Bush administration got wind of it and called him to the White House,
where then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice ordered the Times to bury the story.
Risen said Rice told him "to forget about the story, destroy my notes, and never make
another phone call to discuss the matter with anyone."
"The Bush administration was successfully convincing the press to hold or kill national
security stories," Risen wrote. And the Barack Obama administration subsequently accelerated
the "war on the press."
CIA media infiltration and manufacturing consent
In their renowned study of US media, "
Manufacturing Consent : The Political Economy of the Mass Media," Edward S. Herman and
Chomsky articulated a "propaganda model," showing how "the media serve, and propagandize on
behalf of, the powerful societal interests that control and finance them," through "the
selection of right-thinking personnel and by the editors' and working journalists'
internalization of priorities and definitions of newsworthiness that conform to the
institution's policy."
But in some cases, the relationship between US intelligence agencies and the corporate media
is not just one of mere ideological policing, indirect pressure, or friendship, but rather one
of employment.
In the 1950s, the CIA launched a covert operation called Project Mockingbird, in which it
surveilled, influenced, and manipulated American journalists and media coverage, explicitly in
order to direct public opinion against the Soviet Union, China, and the growing international
communist movement.
Legendary journalist Carl Bernstein, a former Washington Post reporter who helped uncover
the Watergate scandal, published a major cover story for Rolling Stone in 1977 titled "
The CIA and
the Media : How America's Most Powerful News Media Worked Hand in Glove with the Central
Intelligence Agency and Why the Church Committee Covered It Up."
Bernstein obtained CIA documents that revealed that more than 400 American journalists in
the previous 25 years had "secretly carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence
Agency."
Bernstein wrote:
"Some of these journalists' relationships with the Agency were tacit; some were explicit.
There was cooperation, accommodation and overlap. Journalists provided a full range of
clandestine services -- from simple intelligence gathering to serving as go‑betweens with
spies in Communist countries. Reporters shared their notebooks with the CIA. Editors shared
their staffs. Some of the journalists were Pulitzer Prize winners, distinguished reporters who
considered themselves ambassadors without‑portfolio for their country. Most were less
exalted: foreign correspondents who found that their association with the Agency helped their
work; stringers and freelancers who were as interested in the derring‑do of the spy
business as in filing articles; and, the smallest category, full‑time CIA employees
masquerading as journalists abroad. In many instances, CIA documents show, journalists were
engaged to perform tasks for the CIA with the consent of the managements of America's leading
news organizations."
Virtually all major US media outlets cooperated with the CIA, Bernstein revealed, including
ABC, NBC, the AP, UPI, Reuters, Newsweek, Hearst newspapers, the Miami Herald, the Saturday
Evening Post, and the New York Herald‑Tribune.
However, he added, "By far the most valuable of these associations, according to CIA
officials, have been with the New York Times, CBS and Time Inc."
These layers of state
manipulation, censorship, and even direct crafting of the news media show that, as much as they
claim to be independent, The New York Times and other outlets effectively serve as de facto
spokespeople for the government -- or at least for the US national security state.
Ben Norton is a journalist and writer. He is a reporter for The Grayzone, and the producer
of the Moderate Rebels podcast,
which he co-hosts with Max Blumenthal. His website is BenNorton.com , and he tweets at @ BenjaminNorton .
This article was originally published by " Grayzone
"
"... The real goal is domination of the Middle East -- and that's been a bipartisan US strategy for decades. ..."
"... By striking a compromise with a defiant non-democracy like Iran, which for the past 40 years has defined itself as the foremost opponent of American hegemony (liberal or otherwise), while signaling a desire to slowly dismantle American hegemony in the Middle East (in order to pivot to Asia), Obama introduced an unsustainable contradiction to US foreign policy. ..."
"... Excellent article, because it clearly exposes the central isssue - US hegemony. And that goes has implications way beyond Iran, particularly with respect to relations with China and Russia. Very similar geopolitical games are playing out in the South China Sea, around the Ukraine, and in Syria. ..."
"... This is not 1950 when the world economy was in collapse and the US was overwhelmingly the top dog. Other countries are nearly equal to the US. Hegemony is unsustainable in today's environment and one solution is a cooperative balance of power employing diplomacy, and unprecedented cooperation on questions of energy and security in order to solve global problems like climate change and the elimination of nuclear weapons. ..."
"... The new world order - as this 'confrontation' suggests, the USA, supported by the Saudis, their compatriots, and Israel. All renowned 'friends' of the USA. With friends like these who needs enemies. ..."
"... The "confrontation" goes way back to 1953, when the CIA overthrew Mohammed Mossadegh (for his "sin" of nationalizing Iranian oil) and labelled him a Communist. Everything that is adversarial in US-Iranian relations goes back to that criminal act. ..."
The real goal is domination of the Middle East -- and that's been a bipartisan US
strategy for decades.
... ... ...
...if war is the endgame of their escalation, what is the endgame of their war? Dominance --
perpetual dominance of the Middle East (and the globe as a whole) by the United States. That is
and has been Washington's grand strategy, regardless of whether a Republican, a Democrat, or a
reality-TV star has occupied the White House. America has, of course, often ensured this
domination by supporting friendly dictatorships.
But there is also a liberal version of the strategy. Liberal hegemony, or primacy, dictates
that the United States has the moral obligation and the strategic imperative to transform
anti–status quo non-democracies into liberal (pliant) democracies. According to this
grand strategy, the existence of such non-democracies is a threat to the United States and its
hegemony.
America cannot coexist with them but must ultimately transform them. Military force is
instrumental to this endeavor. As Max Boot wrote back in 2003, the pillars of liberal hegemony
must be spread and sustained " at gunpoint if need
be ."
While some advocates of liberal hegemony object to the more militaristic interpretation
preferred by neoconservatives, the difference between liberal interventionism and
neoconservatism is more a matter of nuance than core belief.
Neither can provide a solution to Washington's endless wars, because both operate within the
paradigm of primacy, which itself is a root cause of the country's perpetual conflicts. As long
as that paradigm remains the guiding principle of foreign policy, hawks like John Bolton, Tom
Cotton, and Lindsey Graham -- and their Democratic fellow travelers, too -- will continue to
steer America's engagement with the world, as it is their outlook that is compatible with
primacy, not that of those on the progressive left or the libertarian right, who have advocated
non-interventionism or negotiated settlements with those who challenge Pax Americana.
This is why the cards were stacked against the survival of the Iran nuclear deal even if
Trump had not been elected. By striking a compromise with a defiant non-democracy like
Iran, which for the past 40 years has defined itself as the foremost opponent of American
hegemony (liberal or otherwise), while signaling a desire to slowly dismantle American hegemony
in the Middle East (in order to pivot to Asia), Obama introduced an unsustainable contradiction
to US foreign policy.
This contradiction has been particularly visible among Democrats who oppose Trump's Iran
policy but who still cannot bring themselves to break with our seemingly endless confrontation
with Iran. As long as such Democrats allow the debate to be defined by the diktat of US
primacy, they will always be on the defensive, and their long-term impact on US-Iran relations
will be marginal.
After all, the strategy of US primacy in the Middle East demands Iran's defeat...
Excellent article, because it clearly exposes the central isssue - US hegemony. And that
goes has implications way beyond Iran, particularly with respect to relations with China and
Russia. Very similar geopolitical games are playing out in the South China Sea, around the
Ukraine, and in Syria.
Liberals have to stop talking about "bad actors" (whenever they are
linked with competing powers, e.g. Iran, N.Korea, etc.) but welcome them as "allies" when
they are our faithful vassals (e.g. Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, etc.). Unfortunately, Obama
appeared to understand this with respect to Iran, but totally ignored it with respect to the
rest of the world.
Victor Sciamarelli says: June 21, 2019 at 1:57 pm
I completely agree with Trita Parsi's succinct description of the problem as, "Dominance
-- perpetual dominance of the Middle East (and the globe as a whole) by the United States.
That is and has been Washington's grand strategy, regardless of whether a Republican, a
Democrat, or a reality-TV star has occupied the White House." However, why not offer
alternative policies for debate?
Consider, for example, the idea of a "balance of power." It was for the same reason that the
British fought Napoleon, the Crimean War, entered the first world war, and also why they were
constantly engaged in diplomatic agreements in Europe. British policy demanded that they
prevent the rise of a hegemon on the continent.
Napoleon was never a threat to the English mainland and neither were the Germans in 1914.
Yet, they fought both because preventing a hegemon and maintaining a balance of power
pre-empted other considerations.
I would suggest that regardless of events since 1918 such as: the decline of the British
empire, Versailles, the world wide economic depression, the rise of fascism, the reaction to
communism, or the rise of a non-European super power like the US, thinking about a modern, up
to date form of the balance of power is useful.
Furthermore, we need an alternative policy because hegemony fails the world and the American
people, and the world faces two existential threats: climate change and nuclear war.
Moreover, the US has been a superpower for so long that nobody remembers what it is like not
to be a superpower. In addition, American elites seem unwilling or unable to grasp the real
limits of military power.
In a world where the five permanent members of the UN security council are nuclear powers,
and nuclear weapons are held by smaller nations, the major power centers of the world:
Europe, Russia, China, and the US, have no choice but to cooperate with each other and with
the countries of the ME.
The ME is a focal point for establishing cooperation because the world needs energy and the
ME needs stability and development, but it requires leadership and motive.
This is not 1950 when the world economy was in collapse and the US was overwhelmingly the top
dog. Other countries are nearly equal to the US. Hegemony is unsustainable in today's
environment and one solution is a cooperative balance of power employing diplomacy, and
unprecedented cooperation on questions of energy and security in order to solve global
problems like climate change and the elimination of nuclear weapons.
Pauline Hartwig says: June 21, 2019 at 1:38 pm
The new world order - as this 'confrontation' suggests, the USA, supported by the Saudis,
their compatriots, and Israel. All renowned 'friends' of the USA. With friends like these who
needs enemies.
Gene Bell-Villada says: June 21, 2019 at 12:40 pm
The "confrontation" goes way back to 1953, when the CIA overthrew Mohammed Mossadegh (for his "sin" of nationalizing
Iranian oil) and labelled him a Communist. Everything that is adversarial in US-Iranian relations
goes back to that
criminal act.
Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov called on Washington to weigh the possible
consequences of conflict with Iran and said a report in the New York Times showed the situation
was extremely dangerous.
U.S. President Donald Trump approved military strikes against Iran in retaliation for the
downing of a U.S. surveillance drone, but called off the attacks at the last minute, the report
said.
"... You might think the Democratic Party would be horrified at this result, which one conservative analyst calls: "one of the greatest self-defeating acts in history." You might think Democrats would now move quickly and decisively toward a strategy of offering a substantive political alternative, and abandon this awful own-goal Mueller/Russiagate tack that has already helped Trump immensely (and which they are not going to turn their way). That is obviously what would happen if the Democrats' main goal was to defeat Trump. But it isn't. ..."
"... As discussed above, the Democratic establishment's' main goal throughout this was not to "get" Trump, but to channel its own voters' disgust with him into support for some halcyon, liberal, status quo ante-Trump, and away from left demands for a radical change to the social, economic, and political conditions that produced him and his clueless establishment opponent in 2016. The Democrats' goal was, and is, not to defeat Trump, but to stave off the left. ..."
"... The Democrats' main goal in all this is not to impeach, or stop the re-election of, Donald Trump; it's to prevent the nomination and election of Bernie Sanders, or anyone like him. ..."
"... You mean the five million people who voted for Obama in 2012, in the 90% of counties that voted for Obama either in 2008 or 2012, but would not vote for Hillary in 2019, aren’t streaming back into—are indeed still streaming out of—the Democratic Party, despite all the Mueller investigation has done for them? Imagine that. ..."
"... What has Russiagate/The Mueller Investigation wrought? It’s either a shrewd political gambit sure to take down Trump, or it’s ridiculous political theater leading Democrats, and the country, over another cliff. Double-down or leave that table? ..."
So the Mueller investigation is over. The official "Report on the
Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election" has been written,
and is in the hands of Attorney General William Barr, who has issued a summary of its findings.
On the core mandate of the investigation, given to Special Counsel Mueller by Rod Rosenstein as
Acting Attorney General in May of 2017 -- to investigate "any links and/or coordination between
the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump"
-- the takeaway conclusion stated in the Mueller report, as quoted in the Barr summary, is that
"[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or
coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.1"
In the footnote indicated at the end of that sentence, Barr further clarifies the
comprehensive meaning of that conclusion, again quoting the Report's own words: "In assessing
potential conspiracy charges, the Special Counsel also considered whether members of the Trump
campaign 'coordinated' with Russian election interference activities. The Special Counsel
defined 'coordination' as an 'agreement -- tacit or express -- between the Trump Campaign and
the Russian government on election interference'."
Barr restates the point of the cited conclusion from the Mueller Report a number of times:
"The Special Counsel's investigation did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated
with it conspired or coordinated with Russia in its efforts to influence the 2016 U.S.
presidential election the Special Counsel did not find that any U.S. person or Trump campaign
official or associate conspired or knowingly coordinated with the IRA [Internet Research
Agency, the indicted Russian clickbait operation] in its efforts."
Thus, the Mueller investigation found no "conspiracy," no "coordination," -- i.e., no
"collusion" -- "tacit or express" between the Trump campaign or any U.S. person and the Russian
government. The Mueller investigation did not make, seal, or recommend any indictment for any
U.S. person for any such crime.
This is as clear and forceful a repudiation as one can get of the "collusion" narrative that
has been insistently shoved down our throats by the Democratic Party, its McResistance, its
allied media, and its allied intelligence and national security agencies and officials.
Whatever one wants to say about any other aspect of this investigation -- campaign finance
violations, obstruction of justice, etc. -- they were not the main saga for the past two+ years
as spun by the Russiagaters. The core narrative was that Donald Trump was some kind of Russian
agent or asset, arguably guilty of treason and taking orders from his handler/blackmailer
Vladimir Putin, who conspired with him to steal the 2016 election, and, furthermore, that Saint
Mueller and his investigation team of patriotic FBI/CIA agents were going to find the goods
that would have the Donald taken out of the White House in handcuffs for that.
Keith Olbermann's spectacular rant in January 2017 defined the core narrative and
exemplified the Trump Derangement Syndrome that powered it: an emotional, visceral hatred of
Donald Trump wrapped in the fantasy -- insisted upon as "elemental, existential fact" -- that
he was "put in power by Vladimir Putin." A projection and deflection, I would say, of liberals'
self-hatred for creating the conditions -- eight years of war and wealth transfer capped off by
a despised and entitled candidate -- that allowed a vapid clown like Trump to be elected. It
couldn't be our fault! It must have been Putin who arranged it!
Here's a highlight of Keith's delusional discourse. But, please watch the whole six-minute
video below. They may have been a bit calmer, but this is the fundamental lunacy that was
exuding from the rhetorical pores of Rachel, Chris, and Co. day after day for two+ years:
The military apparatus of this country is about to be handed over to scum, who are
beholden to scum, Russian scum! As things are today January 20th will not be an inauguration
but rather the end of the United States as an independent country. Donald John Trump is not a
president; he is a puppet, put in power by Vladimir Putin. Those who ignore these elemental,
existential facts -- Democrats or Republicans -- are traitors to this country. [Emphases in
original. Really, watch it.]
This -- Trump's secret, treasonous collusion with Putin, and not hush money or campaign
finance violations or "obstruction of justice" or his obvious overall sleaziness -- was
Russiagate.
Russiagate is Dead! Long Live Russiagate!
And it still is. Here's the demonstration in New York last Thursday, convened by the
MoveOn/Maddow #Resistance, singing from "the hymnal" about how Trump is a "Russian whore" who
is "busy blowing Vladimir":
Here are the three lines of excuse and denial currently being fired off by diehard
Russiagaters in their fighting retreat, and my responses to them.
1. The Mueller Report is irrelevant, anyhow. 'Cause either A) Per Congressional blowhard
Adam Schiff: There already "is direct evidence" proving Trump-Russia collusion, dating from
before the Mueller Investigation, so who cares what that doesn't find; or B) (My personal
favorite) Per former prosecutor and CNN legal expert Renato Mariotti: Of course there is no
evidence of Trump-Russia collusion, and it's "your fault" for letting Trump fool you into
thinking Mueller's job was to find it. (The Mueller "collusion" investigation was a red herring
orchestrated/promoted by Trump! I cannot make this up.)
Mueller's report will almost certainly disappoint you, and it's not his fault. It's your
fault for buying into Trump's false narrative that it is Mueller's' job to prove "collusion,"
a nearly impossible bar for any prosecutor to clear.
This is, of course, the weakest volley. It's absurd, patent bad faith, for Russiagaters to
pretend that they knew, thought, or suggested the Mueller investigation was irrelevant. It is
they who have been insisting that the integrity and super-sleuthiness of the "revered" Robert
Mueller himself was the thing that would nail Donald Trump for Russian collusion. To now deny
that any of that was important only acknowledges how thoroughly they have been fooling the
American people and/or themselves for two years. Either Adam Schiff had the goods on Trump's
traitorous Russian collusion two years ago, in which case he's got a lot of explaining to do
about why he's been stringing us along with Mueller, or Schiff is just bluffing. Place your
bets.
Russiagaters in 2017: YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT MUELLER KNOWS
Russiagaters in 2018: YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT MUELLER KNOWS
Russiagaters in 2019: Shut up Mueller, what would you know.
2. The Mueller Report didn't exonerate Trump entirely. It was agnostic about whether
Trump was guilty of "obstruction of justice," and there are probably many nasty things in the
report that may not be provably criminal, but nonetheless demonstrate what a slimeball Trump
is.
No, Russiagaters will not get away with denying that the core purpose of the Mueller
investigation was to prove Trump's traitorous relation to Vladimir Putin and the Russian
government, which helped him win the 2016 election. They will not get away with denying that,
if the Mueller investigation failed to prove that, it failed in its main purpose, as they
constantly defined and reinforced it, with table-pounding, hyperventilating, and -- a few days
ago! -- disco-dancing to "the hymnal."
They will not get away with trying to appropriate, as if it were their point all along, what
the left critics of Russiagate have been saying for two+ years -- that Donald Trump is a
slimeball grifter whose culpability for politically substantive and probably legally actionable
crimes and misdemeanors should not be hard to establish, without reverting to the absurd
accusation that he's a Russian agent.
These are the left critics of Russiagate and Trump, whom Russiagaters deliberately excluded
from all their media platforms, in order to make it seem that only right-wing Trump supporters
could be skeptical of Russiagate -- the left critics Russiagaters then excoriated as "Trump
enablers" and "Putin apologists" for speaking on the only media platforms that would host them.
Among them, Glenn Greenwald and Aaron Maté (who just deservedly won the I.F. Stone prize
for his Russiagate coverage) were the most prominent, but many others, including me, made this
point week after week (Brian Becker, Dave Lindorff, Dan Kovalik, Daniel Lazare, Ted Rall, to
name a few). As I put it in an essay last year: "There are a thousand reasons to criticize
Donald Trump That Donald Trump is a Russian agent is not one of them. There are a number of
very good justifications for seeking his impeachment That he is a Kremlin agent is not one of
them."
So, it's a particularly slimy for Russiagaters to slip into the position that we Russiagate
skeptics have been enunciating, and they have been excluding, for two years, without
acknowledging that we were right and they were wrong and accounting for their effort to edit us
out.
3. But we haven't seen the whole Mueller Report! Barr may be fooling us! Mueller's own
team says so! You are now doing what you accused us of doing for two years -- abandoning proper
skepticism about Republicans like Barr and even Mueller (Yup. He's a suspicious Republican
now!), and assuming a final result we have not yet seen.
This is the one the Russiagaters like the most. Gotcha with your own logic!
Well, let's first of all thank those who are saying this for, again, recognizing that we
Russiagate critics had the right attitude toward such an investigation: cautious skepticism as
opposed to false certainty. And let's linger for a moment or more on how belated that
recognition is and what its delay cost.
But let's also recognize that what's being expressed here is the last-minute hope on the
part of the Russiagaters that the Mueller report actually does contain dispositive evidence of
Trump's treasonous Russian collusion. Because, again, that is the core accusation that hopeful
Russiagaters are still singing about, and nobody ever argued that evidence of other hijinks was
unlikely.
Well, that hope can only be realized if one or both of the following are true: 1) Barr's
quotes from the report exonerating Trump of collusion are complete fabrications, or 2) Mueller
both wrote those words even though they contradict the substance of his own report and declined
to indict a single U.S. person for such "collusion" even though he could have.
Sure, in the abstract, one or both of those conditions could be true. But there is no
evidence, none, that either is. The New York Times (NYT) report that set everyone aflutter
about the "concern" from "some members of Mr. Mueller's team" is anonymous, unspecified, and
second-hand. Read it carefully: The NYT did not report what any member of Mueller's team said,
but what "government officials and others familiar with their simmering frustrations" said.
Those "officials and others interviewed [not members of the Mueller team itself] declined to
flesh out" to the NYT what "some of the special counsel's investigators" were unhappy about. To
that empty hearsay, the NYT appends the phrase "although the report is believed to examine Mr.
Trump's efforts to thwart the investigation" -- suggesting, but not stating, that obstruction
of justice issues are the reasons for the investigators' "vexation." The NYT cannot state,
because it does not know, anything. It is reporting empty hearsay that is evidence of nothing,
but is meant to keep hope alive.
"[T]he report is believed to examine" is a particularly strange locution. Is the NYT
suggesting that the Mueller report might not have examined obstruction of justice
possibilities? Or is it just getting tangled up in its attempt to suggest this or that? Hey, it
could just as well be true that Barr's characterization of what the Mueller Report says about
"obstruction of justice" is a misleading fabrication. Maybe Mueller actually exonerated Trump
of that. If you mistrust Barr's version of what the Mueller Report says about collusion, why
not equally mistrust what it says about obstruction of justice?
There is no evidence that Barr's summary is radically misleading about the core collusion
conclusion of the Mueller Report. The walls are closing in, alright, on that story. The I'm
just being as cautious now as you were before! line is the opposite of the reasonable
skepticism is claims to be; it's Russiagaters clinging to a wish and a belief that something
they want to be true is, despite the determinate lack of any evidence.
It's not just the words; it's the melody, and the desperation in the voices. The core
Trump-blowing-Vladimir collusion song that #Resisters are still singing is a fantastical
fiction and the people still singing it are the pathetic choir on the Russiagate Titanic. And
while they're singing as they sink, Trump is escaping in the lifeboat they have provided him.
The single most definite and undeniable effect of the Mueller investigation on American
politics has been to hand Donald Trump a potent political weapon for his 2020 re-election
campaign. A real bombshell.
But it's worse than that. The falsity of the Trump-as-a-Russian-agent narrative does not
depend on any confidence in Mueller and his report or Barr and his summary. The truth is there
was no Russiagate investigation, in the sense of a serious attempt to find out whether Donald
Trump was taking orders from, or "coordinating" with, Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin.
No person in their right mind could believe that. Robert Mueller doesn't believe it. Nancy
Pelosi doesn't believe it. Adam Schiff doesn't believe it. John Brennan, James Clapper, and the
heads of intelligence agencies do not believe it. Not for a second. No knowledgeable
international affairs journalist or academic who thinks about it for two minutes believes it.
Sure, some politicians and media pundits did work themselves up into a state where they
internalized and projected a belief in the narrative, but few of them really believed it. They
were serving the Kool-Aid. Only the most gullible sectors of their target audience drank
it.
With some exceptions, to be sure (Donald Trump among them), the people in the highest
echelons of the state-media-academic apparatus are just not that stupid. And, most obvious and
important, Vladimir Putin is not that stupid, and they know he is not. Vladimir Putin would
never rely on Donald Trump to be his operative in a complex operation that required shrewdly
playing and evading the US intelligence and media apparatuses. Nobody is that stupid. Thinking
about it that way for a second dissipates the entire ridiculous idea. (Not to mention that
Trump ended up enacting a number of policies -- many more than Obama! -- contrary to Russian
interests.)
The obvious, which many people in the independent media and none in the mainstream media
(because it is so obvious, and would have blown their game) have pointed out, is that any real
investigation of Russiagate would have sought to talk with the principals who had direct
knowledge of who is responsible for leaking the infamous DNC documents: Julian Assange and
former British ambassador Craig Murray ("I know who leaked them. I've met the person who leaked
them."). They were essentially two undisputed eyewitnesses to the crime Mueller was supposed to
be investigating, and he made no effort to talk to either of them. Ipso facto, it was not
really an investigation, not a project whole purpose was to find the truth about whatever the
thing called "Russiagate" is supposed to be.
The Eternal Witch-hunt
It was a theater of discipline. Its purpose, which it achieved, was to discipline Trump, the
Democratic electorate, and the media. Its method was fishing around in the muck of Washington
consultants, lobbyists, and influence peddlers to generate indictments and plea bargains for
crimes irrelevant to the core mandate. Not hard, in a carceral state where prosecutors can pin
three felonies a day on anyone.
The US establishment, especially its national security arm, was genuinely shocked that their
anointed candidate, Hillary, who was, as Glen Ford puts it "'all in' with the global military
offensive" that Obama had run through Libya, Syria, and the coup in Ukraine, was defeated by a
nitwit candidate who was making impermissibly non-aggressive noises about things like Russia
and NATO, and who actually wanted to lose. For their part, the Democrats were horrified, and
did not want to face the necessary reckoning about the complete failure of their candidate, and
the best-of-all-possible-liberaloid-worlds strategy she personified.
So, "within 24 hours of her concession speech" Hillary's campaign team (Robby Mook and John
Podesta) created a "script they would pitch to the press and the public" to explain why she
lost. "Russian hacking was the centerpiece of the argument." A few months later, a coalition of
congressional Democrats,, establishment Republicans, and intelligence/natsec professionals
pressured Trump (who, we can now see clearly, is putty in the hands of the latter) to initiate
a Special Counsel investigation. Its ostensible goal was to investigate Russian collusion, but
its real goals were:
1) To discipline Trump, preventing any backpedaling on NATO/imperialist war-mongering
against Russia or any other target. Frankly, I think this was unnecessary. Trump never had any
depth of principle in his remarks about de-escalating with Russia and Syria. He was always a
staunch American exceptionalist and Zionist. Nobody has forced him (that's a right-wing
fantasy) to attack Syria, appoint John Bolton, recognize Israeli authority over Jerusalem and
the Golan Heights, or threaten Iran and Venezuela. But the natsec deep state actors did (and
do) not trust Trump's impulsiveness. They probably also thought it would be useful to "send a
message" to Russia, which, in their arrogance, they think they can, but they cannot,
"discipline," as I've discussed in a previous essay.
2) To discipline the media, making "Russian collusion," as Off-Guardian journalist Kit
Knightly says, "a concept that keeps everyone in check." Thus, a Russophobia-related
McCarthyite hysteria was engendered that defined any strong anti-interventionist or
anti-establishment sentiment as Russian-sown "divisiveness" and "Putin apologetics." This
discipline was eagerly accepted by the mainstream media, which joined in the related drive to
demand new forms of censorship for independent and internet media. The epitome of this is the
mainstream media's execrable, tacit and sometimes explicit acceptance of the US government's
campaign to prosecute Julian Assange.
3) To discipline and corral the Democratic constituency. Establishment Dems riled up
outraged progressives with deceptive implied promises to take Trump down based on the collusion
fiction, which excused Hillary and diverted their attention from the real egregious failures
and crimes that led their party to political ruin, and culminated in the election of Trump in
the first place. This discipline also instituted a #Resistance to Trump that involved the party
doing nothing substantively progressive in policy -- indeed, it allowed embracing Trump's most
egregious militarism and promoting an alliance with, a positive reverence for, the most
deceptive and reactionary institutions of the state.
Finally, incorporating point 2, perhaps the main point of this discipline -- indeed of the
whole Mueller enterprise -- was to stigmatize the leftists and socialists in and around the
party, who were questioning the collusion fiction and calling critical attention to the party's
failures, as crypto-fascist "Trump enablers" or "Putin's useful idiots." It's all about fencing
out the left and corralling the base.
Note the point regarding the deceptive implications about taking down Trump. Though they
gave the opposite impression to rile up their constituents, Democratic Congressional leaders,
for the reasons given above and others I laid out in a previous essay, did not think for a
second they were going to impeach Trump. They were never really after impeaching Trump; they
were and are after stringing along their dissatisfied progressive-minded voters. They, not
Trump, were and are the target of the foolery.
We should recognize that Russiagate/The Mueller Investigation achieved all of these goals,
and was therefore a great success. That's the case whatever part of the Mueller Report is
summarized and released, and whoever interprets it. The whole report with all of the underlying
evidence cannot legally be released to the public, and the Democrats know that. So, even if the
House gets it, the public will only ever see portions doled out by various interested
parties.
Thus, it will continue to be a great success. There will be endless leaks, and
interpretations of leaks, and arguments about the interpretations of leaks based on speculation
about what's still hidden. The Mueller Investigation has morphed into the Mueller Report, a
hermeneutical exercise that will go on forever.
The Mueller Investigation never happened and will never end.
It wasn't an investigation. It was/is an act of political theater, staged in an ongoing
dramatic festival where, increasingly, litigation substitutes for politics. Neither party has
anything of real, lasting, positive political substance to offer, and each finds itself in
power only because it conned the electorate into thinking it offered something new. That
results in every politician being vulnerable, but to a politically vacuous opposition that can
only mount its attacks on largely politically irrelevant, often impossible to adjudicate,
legalistic or moralistic grounds. Prosecutorial inquiry becomes a substitute for substantive
political challenge.
It's the template that was established by the Republicans against Bill Clinton, has been
adapted by the Democrats for Trump and Russiagate, and will be ceaselessly repeated. What's
coming next, already hinted at in William Barr's congressional testimony, will be an
investigation of FISAGate -- an inquiry into whether the FISA warrants for spying on the Trump
campaign and administration were obtained legally ("adequately predicated"). And/or
UkraineGate, about the evidence "Ukrainian law enforcement officials believe they have of
wrongdoing by American Democrats and their allies in Kiev, ranging from 2016 election
interference to obstructing criminal probes," involving Tony Podesta (who worked right
alongside Paul Manafort in Ukraine), Hillary Clinton's campaign, Joe Biden and his son, et. al.
And/or CampaignGate, the lawsuit claiming that Hillary's national campaign illegally took $84
million of "straw man" contributions made to state Democratic campaigns. And/or CraigGate,
involving powerful Democratic fixer and Obama White House Counsel, Gregory Craig, who has
already been referred to federal prosecutors by Mueller, and whose law firm has already paid a
$4.6 million-dollar fine for making false statement and failing to register under the Foreign
Agents Registration Act -- for work he did in Ukraine with -- who else? -- Paul Manafort.
There are Gates galore. If you haven't heard about any of these simmering scandals in the
way you've heard incessantly about, you know, Paul Manafort, perhaps that's because they didn't
fit into the "get Trump" theme of the Mueller Investigation/Russiagate political theater. Rest
assured the Republicans have, and will likely make sure that you do. If you think the
Republicans do not have at least as much of a chance to make a serious case with some of these
as Mueller did with Trump, you are wrong. If you think the Republicans will pursue any of these
investigations because they have the same principled concern as the Democrats about foreign
collusion in US elections, or the legality of campaign contributions or surveillance warrants,
you are right. They have none. Like the Democrats, they have zero concern for the ostensible
issues of principle, and infinite enthusiasm for mounting "gotcha" political theater.
Neither party really wants, or knows how, to engage in a sustained, principled debate on
substantive political issues -- things like universal-coverage, single-payer health insurance,
a job guarantee, a radical reduction of the military budget, an end to imperialist
intervention, increasing taxes on the wealthy and lowering them for working people, a break
from the "overwhelming" and destructive influence of Zionism, to name a few of the policies the
Democratic congressional leadership could have insisted on "investigating" over the last two
years..
Instead, both parties' political campaigns rely on otherizing appeals based on superficial
identity politics (white-affirmative on the one hand, POC-affirmative on the other) and,
mainly, on bashing the other party for all the problems it ignored or exacerbated, and all the
terrible policies it enacted, when it was in power -- and for the version of superficial,
otherizing identity politics it supposedly based those policies on (the real determinants of
class power remaining invisible). What both parties know how and will continue to do is mount
hypocritical legalistic and moralistic "investigations" of illegal campaign contributions,
support from foreign governments, teenage make-out sessions, personal-space violations, et.
al., that they are just "shocked, shocked" about.
It's Investigation Nation. Fake politics in the simulacrum of a democratic polity. Indeed,
someone, of some political perspicuity, might just notice, if only for a flash, that the people
who do pretty well politically are often the ones who frankly don't give a crap about all that.
Maybe because they're talking to people who don't give a crap about all that. But we wouldn't
want to confuse ourselves thinking on that for too long.
Which brings us to the last point about Russiagate/The Mueller Investigation mentioned
above. It may not (or may!) have been an intended goal, but it has been its most definite
political effect: The Mueller Investigation has been a great political gift to Donald Trump.
#Resisters and Russiagaters can wriggle around that all they want. They can insist that, once
we get the whole Report, we'll turn the corner, the bombshell will explode, the walls will
close in -- for real, this time. Sure.
But even they can't deny that's the case right now. Trump is saying the Mueller
investigation was a political counterattack against the result of the election, masquerading as
a disinterested judicial investigation; that it was based on a flimsy fiction and designed to
dig around in every corner of his closets to find nasty and incriminating things that were
entirely irrelevant to the ostensible mandate of the investigation and to any substantive,
upfront political critique -- a "witchhunt," a "fishing expedition." And he is right. And too
many people in the country know he's right. At this point, even most Russiagaters themselves
know it -- though they don't care, and will never admit it.
So now Trump, who could have been attacked for two years politically on substance for
betraying most of the promises that got him elected -- more aggressive war, more tax cuts for
the wealthy, threatening Medicare and Social Security -- has instead been handed, by the
Democrats, the strongest arrow he now has in his political quiver. As Matt Taibbi says: "Trump
couldn't have asked for a juicier campaign issue, and an easier way to argue that 'elites'
don't respect the democratic choices of flyover voters. It's hard to imagine what could look
worse."
You might think the Democratic Party would be horrified at this result, which one conservative
analyst calls: "one of the greatest self-defeating acts in history." You might think Democrats
would now move quickly and decisively toward a strategy of offering a substantive political
alternative, and abandon this awful own-goal Mueller/Russiagate tack that has already helped
Trump immensely (and which they are not going to turn their way). That is obviously what would
happen if the Democrats' main goal was to defeat Trump. But it isn't.
As discussed above, the Democratic establishment's' main goal throughout this was not to "get"
Trump, but to channel its own voters' disgust with him into support for some halcyon, liberal,
status quo ante-Trump, and away from left demands for a radical change to the social, economic,
and political conditions that produced him and his clueless establishment opponent in 2016. The
Democrats' goal was, and is, not to defeat Trump, but to stave off the left.
What they are doing with the Mueller Investigation/Russiagate is what they did in the
primaries in 2016: Then, they deliberately promoted Trump as an opponent, while working
assiduously to cheat their own leftist candidate; now, they gin up a fictional spy story whose
inevitable collapse helps Trump, but on which they will double down, in order to continue
branding "divisive" leftists who challenge any return to their version of status-quo normalcy
as the Kremlin's "useful idiots."
The Democrats' main goal in all this is not to impeach, or stop the re-election of, Donald
Trump; it's to prevent the nomination and election of Bernie Sanders, or anyone like him.
Russiagate Forever
Here's Tim Ryan's presidential campaign kickoff speech in Youngstown, Ohio, a poster city of
late American capitalist deindustrialization, explaining to the voters what is causing the
destruction of their lives and towns. After complaining that "We have politicians and leaders
today that want to divide us. They want to put us in one box or the other. You know, you can't
be for business and for labor," he elaborates:
Yup, it’s those Russians, you see, sowing division through certain “politicians and leaders,” who are preventing us from
fixing our healthcare, education, economic and government systems. This—doubling down on Russiagate—is the centrist Democrats’
idea of a winning political appeal. I consider it utterly delusional.
I heard last week from a friend in Western Pennsylvania, not too far from Youngstown. She’s a good person who is trying to
organize Democrats in the area to beat Trump in 2020, and, pleading for advice, she expressed her exasperation: “They’re leaving
the party!”
You mean the five million people who voted for Obama in 2012, in the 90% of counties that voted for Obama either in 2008
or 2012, but would not vote for Hillary in 2019, aren’t streaming back into—are indeed still streaming out of—the Democratic
Party, despite all the Mueller investigation has done for them? Imagine that.
What has Russiagate/The Mueller Investigation wrought? It’s either a shrewd political gambit sure to take down Trump, or
it’s ridiculous political theater leading Democrats, and the country, over another cliff. Double-down or leave that table?
You can adopt a lot of things about society as given; people will always defend those they
know against those they don't. They will always defend their own even when they suspect or
even know they are in the wrong. People will mostly help those who are in trouble if it costs
them little or nothing to lend their support. And so on – people are mostly predictable
as examples of collective will.
And people will often champion the elevation to positions of power of radicals, so long as
that person's radical beliefs and policies further their own aims. Going beyond requires that
we examine that society for cynicism and naivete. A naive society assumes that once the
radical's aims have been achieved – in this case, the joining of the European Union and
NATO by Ukraine – the radical will be satisfied, and will become a peaceful and
productive servant of freedom and democracy rather than a fierce adherent to his or her own
radical policies, but now within European society, where they might not be so welcome. The
cynic assumes the radical will be used as long as he or she is useful to reaching the goals
the cynics have set for the country, and then shunted aside or otherwise marginalized if he
or she is no longer useful.
Which is it, do you think? I vote for cynicism, and I base that judgment on how smoothly
the west transitioned from Nadya Savchenko the heroic martyr to Nadya Savchenko the radical
anarchist who wanted to blow up the Rada.
Wonder if Yasha Levine has ever thought of discussing the points he raises in his above
linked article with his erstwhile and also present-day fellow country persons Maria Gessen
and Yulia
"I-can-pronounce-Шереметьево"
Ioffe?
[I absolutely refuse to call Gessen "Masha" (Molly)! She's not my pal!]
Yasha should not kvetch so much, the current anti-Russian witch hunt won't reach the likes of
him. I know some Jewish Russian émigré families in the U.S., they can still
skate by on their former "victimhood": They were required to whine about Soviet
anti-Semitism, now all that is needed is a supplementary "I hate Putin, Yankee Doodle Dandy",
and they're good to go.
These are the ones I actually despise the most, because they are ungrateful wretches. The
Soviet Union saved their collective asses from Hitler, and look how they repayed the debt
I don't begrudge them emigrating to the U.S. if they did so for career reasons, maybe they
could find better job opportunities, better conditions to raise their kids, etc. They could
do that, but nobody really forced them to slime their former country as viciously as they
did. And taught their kids to hate everything Russian. Ingrates!
"... Across-the-board rivalry with China is becoming an organising principle of US economic, foreign and security policies. ..."
"... An effort to halt China's economic and technological rise is almost certain to fail. Worse, it will foment deep hostility in the Chinese people. In the long run, the demands of an increasingly prosperous and well-educated people for control over their lives might still win out. But that is far less likely if China's natural rise is threatened. ..."
"... The tragedy in what is now happening is that the administration is simultaneously launching a conflict between the two powers, attacking its allies and destroying the institutions of the postwar US-led order. ..."
The disappearance of the Soviet Union left a big hole. The "war on terror" was an inadequate replacement. But China ticks all boxes.
For the US, it can be the ideological, military and economic enemy many need. Here at last is a worthwhile opponent. That was the
main conclusion I drew from this year's Bilderberg meetings.
Across-the-board
rivalry with China is becoming
an organising principle of US economic, foreign and security policies.
Whether it is Donald Trump's organizing principle is less important. The US president has the gut instincts of a nationalist and
protectionist. Others provide both framework and details. The aim is US domination. The means is control over China, or separation
from China.
Anybody who believes a rules-based multilateral order, our globalised economy, or even harmonious international relations, are
likely to survive this conflict is deluded. The astonishing
white paper on the
trade conflict
, published on Sunday by China, is proof. The -- to me, depressing -- fact is that on many points Chinese positions are right.
The US focus on
bilateral imbalances is economically illiterate. The view that theft of intellectual property has caused huge damage to the US
is
questionable . The proposition that China has grossly violated its commitments under its 2001 accession agreement to the World
Trade Organization is hugely exaggerated.
Accusing China of cheating is hypocritical when almost all trade policy actions taken by the Trump administration are in breach
of WTO rules, a fact implicitly conceded by its determination
to destroy the
dispute settlement system .
A dispute over the terms of market opening or protection of intellectual property might be settled with careful negotiation. Such
a settlement might even help China, since it would lighten the heavy hand of the state and promote market-oriented reform.
But the issues are now too vexed for such a resolution. This is partly because of the bitter breakdown in negotiation. It is still
more because the US debate is increasingly over whether integration with China's state-led economy is desirable. The fear over Huawei
focuses on national security and technological autonomy.
[Neo]liberal commerce is increasingly seen as "trading with the enemy".
A framing of relations with China as one of zero-sum conflict is emerging. Recent remarks by Kiron Skinner, the US state department's
policy planning director (a job once held by cold war strategist George Kennan) are revealing. Rivalry with Beijing,
she suggested at a
forum organised
by New America , is "a fight with a really different civilisation and a different ideology, and the United States hasn't had
that before".
She added that this would be "the first time that we will have a great power competitor that is not Caucasian". The war with Japan
is forgotten.
But the big point is her framing of this as a civilizational and racial war and so as an insoluble conflict. This cannot be accidental.
She is also still in her job. Others present the conflict as one over ideology and power.
Those emphasising the former point to President Xi Jinping's Marxist rhetoric and the reinforced role of the
Communist party . Those emphasising the latter point to China's rising economic might. Both perspectives suggest perpetual conflict.
This is the most important geopolitical development of our era. Not least, it will increasingly force everybody else to take sides
or fight hard for neutrality. But it is not only important. It is dangerous. It risks turning a manageable, albeit vexed, relationship
into all-embracing conflict, for no good reason. China's ideology is not a threat to liberal democracy in the way the Soviet Union's
was. Rightwing demagogues are far more dangerous.
An effort to halt China's economic and technological rise is almost certain to fail. Worse, it will foment deep hostility in the
Chinese people. In the long run, the demands of an increasingly prosperous and well-educated people for control over their lives
might still win out. But that is far less likely if China's natural rise is threatened.
Moreover, the rise of China is not an important cause of western malaise. That reflects far more the indifference and incompetence
of domestic elites. What is seen as theft of intellectual property reflects, in large part, the inevitable attempt of a rising economy
to master the technologies of the day. Above all, an attempt to preserve the domination of 4 per cent of humanity over the rest is
illegitimate.
This certainly does not mean accepting everything China does or says. On the contrary, the best way for the west to deal with
China is to insist on the abiding values of freedom, democracy, rules-based multilateralism and global co-operation. These ideas
made many around the globe supporters of the US in the past.
They still captivate many Chinese people today. It is quite possible to uphold these ideas, indeed insist upon them far more strongly,
while co-operating with a rising China where that is essential, as over protecting the natural environment, commerce and peace.
A blend of competition with co-operation is the right way forward. Such an approach to managing China's rise must include co-operating
closely with like-minded allies and treating China with respect.
The tragedy in what is now happening is that the administration is simultaneously launching a conflict between the two powers,
attacking its allies and destroying the institutions of the postwar US-led order.
Today's attack on China is the wrong war, fought in the wrong way, on the wrong terrain. Alas, this is where we now are.
"... Within America, the alphabet agencies from NSA to CIA to FBI had betrayed their country as obviously as Figuera did, though they didn't run away, yet. Our colleagues Mike Whitney and Philip Giraldi described the conspiracy organised by John Brennan of CIA with active participation of FBI's James Comey, to regime-change the US. ..."
"... The CIA spies in England and passes the results to the British Intelligence. MI6 spies in the US and passes the results to CIA. They became integrated to unbelievable extent in the worldwide network of spies. ..."
"... It is not the Deep State anymore; it is world spooks who had united against their legitimate masters. Instead of staying loyal to their country, the spooks betrayed their countries. They are not only strictly-for-cash – they think they know better what is good for you. In a way, they are a new incarnation of the Cecil Rhodes Society . Democratically-elected politicians and statesmen have to obey them or meet their displeasure, as Corbyn and Trump did. ..."
"... Everywhere, in the US, the UK, and Russia, the spooks became too powerful to handle. The CIA stood behind assassination of JFK and tried to take down Trump. The British Intelligence undermined Jeremy Corbyn, after assisting the CIA in pushing for the Iraq war. They created the Steele Dossier, invented the Skripal hoax and had brought Russia and the West to the brink of nuclear war. ..."
"... In the Ukraine, the heads of their state security, SBU had plotted against the last legitimate president Mr Victor Yanukovych. They helped to organise and run the Maidan 2014 manifestations and misled their President, until he was forced to escape abroad. The Maidan manifestations could be compared with the Yellow Vests movement; however, Macron, an appointee of the Network, had support of his spies, and stayed in power, while Yanukovych had been betrayed and overthrown. ..."
"... You'd ask me, were they so stupid that they believed their own propaganda of inevitable Clinton's victory? Yes, they were and are stupid. They are no sages, evil or benevolent. My main objection to the conspiracy theorists is that they usually view the plotters as omniscient and all-powerful. They are too greedy to be all-powerful, and they are too silly to be omniscient. ..."
"... Now, however, the secret services' cohesion and integration increased to the next level, making it difficult to deal with them. ..."
"... People are fickle and not always know what is good for them; there are many demagogues to mislead the crowd. And still, elected legitimate officials should have precedence in governing, while non-elected ones should obey – and it means the Network spooks and media men should know their place. ..."
"... How did John Brennan, James Clapper, James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Christopher Steele and other Spygate principals manage to rise to the top of the intelligence bureaucracy? ..."
"... These characters have indulged in an orgy of highly conspicuous partisan political meddling and ranting that has created the strong public impression that they engaged in an attempted coup to overthrow a sitting American president on the basis of a frame-up that was largely fueled by Russian disinformation. ..."
"... Brennan in particular: can you imagine any previous CIA director comporting himself in this manner? Throwing all caution to the winds? Inconceivable. Brennan, Comey and Clapper have inflicted serious damage on the reputation of the CIA, FBI and ODNI. ..."
"... It's not just illegal surveillance and blackmail that gives the spies power, it's impunity for even the gravest crimes. If you don't get the message of blackmail you can be tortured or shot, with a bullet like JFK and RFK and Reagan, or with illegal biological weapons like Daschel and Leahy. Institutionalized impunity stares us in the face from US state papers. ..."
"... It's not that CIA and other neo-Gestapos escaped control. They were designed from inception for totalitarian control. The one poor bastard in Congress who pointed that out, Tydings, had McCarthy sicced on him for his cheek. CIA is not out of control; it's firmly IN control. ..."
"... It was funny during the Cold war (the original one) – whenever each side unveiled that a spy from the other side has defected to them – they would say it was because of ideology – i.e. the spy defected to them because he "believed" in "democracy" or socialism – depending on the case. ..."
"... And in order to discredit their own spies when they defected to the other side – they would say that they did it for money, because they were greedy and that they betrayed "democracy" or socialism ..."
"... The other crucial role that spies usually play is that they allow the adversaries to keep technological balance via industrial espionage. By transferring top military secrets, they don't allow any side to gain crucial strategic advantage that might encourage them to do something foolish – like start a nuclear war. Prime example of this were probably the Rosenbergs – who helped USSR close the nuclear weapons gap with US and kept the world in a shaky nuclear arms balance. ..."
"... Profound analysis by Mr. Shamir. It confirms that one of the important reasons for the decline of freemasonry is the monopolization of political conspiracy by the intelligence services. Who needs the lodge when you have the CIA. ..."
"... Spooks are everywhere, from secretaries "losing" important communications to CNN news anchors roleplaying with crisis actors, but they are at their most powerful when they are appointed to powerful positions. President Trump's National Security Advisor is a spook and he does what he wants. ..."
"... John le Carre described it perfectly in "A Perfect Spy". The spooks form their own country. They are only loyal to themselves. ..."
"... A global supra-powerful, organized and united, privately directed, publicly backed society of high technology robin hood_mercenary_spooks who conduct sub-legal "scratch-my-back-I'll-scratch-your-back [in the nation of the other] routines"; who ignore duty to country, its constitutions, its laws and human rights. The are evil, global acting, high technology nomads with a monopoly on extortion and terror. ..."
"... Your statement "spooks and ex-spooks feel more proximity to their enemies and colleagues in other countries than to their fellow citizens" fails makes clear the importance of containment-of-citizen access to information. Nation states are armed, rule making structures that invent propaganda and control access to information. Information containment and filtering is the essence of the political and economic power of a national leader and it is more import to the evil your article addresses. ..."
"... Control of the media is 50 times more important than control of the government? Nearly all actions of consequence are intended to drain the governed masses and such efforts can only be successful if the lobbying, false-misleading mind controlling privately owned (92% own by just 6 entities) centrally directed media can effectively control the all information environments. ..."
"... While understanding the mechanics is helpful don't neglect the purpose. Why is more important than how. The why is control. They don't care what you believe, but only what you do. You can be on the left, right, mainstream, or fringe and they won't care as long as you eat what they serve. Take a minute to think about what they want you to do and strongly consider not doing it. ..."
Conspiratorially-minded writers envisaged the Shadow World Government as a board of evil sages surrounded by the financiers and
cinema moguls. That would be bad enough; in infinitely worse reality, our world is run by the Junior Ganymede that went berserk.
It is not a government, but a network, like freemasonry of old, and it consists chiefly of treacherous spies and pens-for-hire, two
kinds of service personnel, that collected a lot of data and tools of influence, and instead of serving their masters loyally, had
decided to lead the world in the direction they prefer.
German Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, the last head of the Abwehr, Hitler's Military Intelligence, had been such a spy with political
ambitions. He supported Hitler as the mighty enemy of Communism; on a certain stage he came to conclusion that the US will do the
job better and switched to the Anglo-American side. He was uncovered and executed for treason. His colleague General Reinhard Gehlen
also betrayed his Führer and had switched to the American side. After the war, he continued his war against Soviet Russia, this time
for CIA instead of Abwehr.
The spies are treacherous by their nature. They contact people who betrayed their countries; they work under cover, pretending
to be somebody else; for them the switch of loyalty is as usual and normal as the gender change operation for a Moroccan doctor who
is doing that 8 to 5 every day. They mix with foreign spies, they kill people with impunity; they break every law, human or divine.
They are extremely dangerous if they do it for their own country. They are infinitely more dangerous if they work for themselves
and still keep their institutional capabilities and international network.
Recently we had a painful reminding of their treacherous nature. Venezuela's top spy, the former director of the Bolivarian National
Intelligence Service (Sebin), Manuel Cristopher Figuera , had switched sides during the last coup attempt and escaped abroad
as the coup failed. He discovered that his membership on the Junior Ganymede of the spooks is more important for him than his duty
to his country and its constitution.
Within America, the alphabet agencies from NSA to CIA to FBI had betrayed their country as obviously as Figuera did, though
they didn't run away, yet. Our colleagues Mike
Whitney and Philip Giraldi described
the conspiracy organised by John Brennan of CIA with active participation of FBI's James Comey, to regime-change the US. In
the conspiracy, foreign intelligence agencies, primarily the British GCHQ, played an important role. As by law, these spies aren't
allowed to operate on their home ground, they go into you-scratch-my-back-I'll-scratch-your-back routine. The CIA spies in England
and passes the results to the British Intelligence. MI6 spies in the US and passes the results to CIA. They became integrated to
unbelievable extent in the worldwide network of spies.
It is not the Deep State anymore; it is world spooks who had united against their legitimate masters. Instead of staying loyal
to their country, the spooks betrayed their countries. They are not only strictly-for-cash – they think they know better what is
good for you. In a way, they are a new incarnation of the
Cecil Rhodes Society . Democratically-elected politicians
and statesmen have to obey them or meet their displeasure, as Corbyn and Trump did.
Everywhere, in the US, the UK, and Russia, the spooks became too powerful to handle. The CIA stood behind assassination of
JFK and tried to take down Trump. The British Intelligence undermined Jeremy Corbyn, after assisting the CIA in pushing for the Iraq
war. They created the Steele Dossier, invented the Skripal hoax and had brought Russia and the West to the brink of nuclear war.
Russian spooks are in a special relations mode with the global network – for many years. In Russia, persistent rumours claim the
perilous Perestroika of Mikhail Gorbachev had been designed and initiated by the KGB chief (1967 – 1982)
Yuri Andropov . He and his appointees
dismantled the socialist state and prepared the takeover of 1991 in the interests of the One World project.
Andropov (who had stepped into Brezhnev's shoes in 1982 and died in 1984) had advanced Gorbachev and his architect of glasnost,
Alexander Yakovlev . Andropov
also promoted the arch-traitor KGB General Oleg Kalugin
to head its counter-intelligence. Later, Kalugin betrayed his country, escaped to the US and delivered all Russian spies he knew
of to the FBI hands.
In late 1980s-early 1990s, the KGB, originally the guarding dog of the Russian working class, had betrayed its Communist masters
and switched to work for the Network. But for their betrayal, Gorbachev would not be able to destroy his country so fast: the KGB
neutralised or misinformed the Communist leadership.
They allowed Chernobyl to explode; they permitted a German pilot to land on the Red Square – this was used by Gorbachev as an
excuse to sack the whole lot of patriotic generals. The KGB people were active in subverting other socialist states, too. They executed
the Romanian leader Ceausescu and his wife; they brought down the GDR, the socialist Germany; they plotted with Yeltsin against Gorbachev
and with Gorbachev against Romanov. As the result of their plotting, the USSR fell apart.
The KGB plotters of 1991 had thought that post-Communist Russia would be treated by the West like the prodigal son, with a fattened
calf being slaughtered for the welcome feast. To their disappointment, the stupid bastards discovered that their country was to play
the part of the fattened calf at the feast, and they were turned from unseen rulers into billionaires' bodyguards. Years later, Vladimir
Putin came to power in Russia with the blessing of the world spooks and bankers, but being too independent a man to submit, he took
his country into its present nationalist course, trying to regain some lost ground. The dissatisfied spooks supported him.
Only recently Putin began to trim the wild growth of his own intelligence service, the FSB. It is possible the cautious president
had been alerted by the surprising insistence of the Western media that the alleged attempt on Skripal and other visible cases had
been attributed to the GRU, the relatively small Russian Military Intelligence, while the much bigger FSB had been forgotten. The
head of
FSB cybercrime department had been arrested and sentenced for lengthy term of imprisonment, and two FSB colonels had been arrested
as the search of their premises revealed immense
amounts of cash , both Russian and foreign currency. Such piles of roubles and dollars could be assembled only for an attempt
to change the regime, as it was demanded by the Network.
In the Ukraine, the heads of their state security, SBU had plotted against the last legitimate president Mr Victor Yanukovych.
They helped to organise and run the Maidan 2014 manifestations and misled their President, until he was forced to escape abroad.
The Maidan manifestations could be compared with the Yellow Vests movement; however, Macron, an appointee of the Network, had support
of his spies, and stayed in power, while Yanukovych had been betrayed and overthrown.
In the US, the spooks allowed Donald Trump to become the leading Republican candidate, for they thought he would certainly lose
to Mme Clinton. Surprisingly, he had won, and since then, this man who was advanced as an easy prey, as a buffoon, had been hunted
by the spooks-and-scribes freemasonry.
You'd ask me, were they so stupid that they believed their own propaganda of inevitable Clinton's victory? Yes, they were
and are stupid. They are no sages, evil or benevolent. My main objection to the conspiracy theorists is that they usually view the
plotters as omniscient and all-powerful. They are too greedy to be all-powerful, and they are too silly to be omniscient.
Their knowledge of official leaders' faults gives them their feeling of power, but this knowledge can be translated into actual
control only for weak-minded men. Strong leaders do not submit easily. Putin has had his quota of imprudent or outright criminal
acts in his past, but he never allowed the blackmailers to dictate him their agenda. Netanyahu, another strong man of modern politics,
also had managed to survive blackmail. Meanwhile, Trump defeated all attempts to unseat him, though his enemies had used his alleged
lack of delicacy in relation to women, blacks and Jews to its utmost. He waded through the deep pond of Russiagate like Gulliver.
But he has to purge the alphabet agencies to reach safety.
In Russia, the problem is acute. Many Russian spooks and ex-spooks feel more proximity to their enemies and colleagues in other
countries than to their fellow citizens. There is a freemasonic quality in their camaraderie. Such a quality could be commendable
in soldiers after the war is over, but here the war is going on. Russian spooks are particularly besotted with their declared enemies;
apparently it is the Christian quality of the Russian soul, but a very annoying one.
When Snowden reached Moscow after his daring escape from Hong Kong, the Russian TV screened a discussion that I participated in,
among journalists, members of parliament and ex-spies. The Russian spooks said that Snowden is a traitor; a person who betrayed his
agency can't be trusted and should be sent to the US in shackles. They felt they belong to the Spy World, with its inner bond, while
their loyalty to Russia was a distant second.
During recent visit of Mike Pompeo to Sochi, the head of SVR, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, Mr Sergey Naryshkin
proposed the State Secretary Mike Pompeo, the ex-CIA director,
to expand contacts between Russian and US special services at a higher level. He clarified that he actively interacted with Pompeo
during the period when he was the head of the CIA. Why would he need contacts with his adversary? It would be much better to avoid
contacts altogether.
Even president Putin, who is first of all a Russian nationalist (or a patriot, as they say), who has granted Snowden asylum in
Moscow at a high price of seriously worsening relations with Obama's administration, even Putin has told Stone that Snowden shouldn't
have leaked the documents the way he did. "If he didn't like anything at his work he should have simply resigned, but he went further",
a response proving he didn't completely freed himself from the spooks' freemasonry.
While the spooks plot, the scribes justify their plots. Media is also a weapon, and a mighty one. In Richard Wagner's opera
Lohengrin , the protagonist is defeated by the smear campaign in the media. Despite his miraculous arrival, despite his glorious
victory, the evil witch succeeds to poison minds of the hero's wife and of the court. The pen can counter the sword. When the two
are integrated, as in the union of spooks and scribes, it is too dangerous tool to leave intact.
In many countries of Europe, editorial international policies had been outsourced to the spooky Atlantic Council, the Washington-based
think tank. The Atlantic Council is strongly connected with NATO alliance and with Brussels bureaucracy, the tools of control over
Europe. Another tool is
The
Integrity Initiative , where the difference between spies and journalists is
blurred
. And so is the difference between the left and the right. The left and the right-wing media use different arguments, surprisingly
leading to the same bottom line, because both are tools of warfare for the same Network.
In 1930s, they were divided. The German and the British agents pulled and pushed in the opposite directions. The Russian military
became so friendly with the Germans, that at a certain time, Hitler believed the Russian generals would side with him against their
own leader. The Russian spooks were befriended by the Brits, and had tried to push Russia to confront Hitler. The cautious Marshal
Stalin had purged the Red Army's pro-German Generals, and the NKVD's pro-British spooks, and delayed the outbreak of hostilities
as much as he could. Now, however, the secret services' cohesion and integration increased to the next level, making it difficult
to deal with them.
If they are so powerful, integrated and united, shouldn't we throw a towel in the ring and surrender? Hell, no! Their success
is their undoing. They plot, but Allah is the best plotter, – our Muslim friends say. Indeed, when they succeed to suborn a party,
the people vote with their feet. The Brexit is the case to consider. The Network wanted to undermine the Brexit; so they neutralised
Corbyn by the antisemitism pursuit while May had made all she could to sabotage the Brexit while calling for it in public. Awfully
clever of them – but the British voter responded with dropping both established parties. So their clever plot misfired.
People are fickle and not always know what is good for them; there are many demagogues to mislead the crowd. And still, elected
legitimate officials should have precedence in governing, while non-elected ones should obey – and it means the Network spooks and
media men should know their place.
How did John Brennan, James Clapper, James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Christopher Steele and other Spygate principals manage
to rise to the top of the intelligence bureaucracy?
Spymasters are usually renowned for their inscrutability and for playing their cards close to their vests.
These characters have indulged in an orgy of highly conspicuous partisan political meddling and ranting that has created
the strong public impression that they engaged in an attempted coup to overthrow a sitting American president on the basis of
a frame-up that was largely fueled by Russian disinformation.
Brennan in particular: can you imagine any previous CIA director comporting himself in this manner? Throwing all caution
to the winds? Inconceivable. Brennan, Comey and Clapper have inflicted serious damage on the reputation of the CIA, FBI and ODNI.
Forthcoming books will no doubt get into all the remarkable and bizarre details.
Donald Trump has demonstrated the ability to troll and goad many of his opponents into a state of imbecility. It's a negotiating
tactic -- knock them off balance, provoke them to lose control. No matter how smart they are, some people take the bait.
I am sitting here pointing to my nose. Spies run the world – contemporary history in a nutshell. A few provisos:
– It's not just illegal surveillance and blackmail that gives the spies power, it's impunity for even the gravest crimes.
If you don't get the message of blackmail you can be tortured or shot, with a bullet like JFK and RFK and Reagan, or with illegal
biological weapons like Daschel and Leahy. Institutionalized impunity stares us in the face from US state papers.
– It's not that CIA and other neo-Gestapos escaped control. They were designed from inception for totalitarian control.
The one poor bastard in Congress who pointed that out, Tydings, had McCarthy sicced on him for his cheek. CIA is not out of control;
it's firmly IN control.
– There is a crucial difference between US and Russian spies. Russians can go over the head of their government to the world.
That's the only effective check on state criminal enterprise like CIA. Article 17 of the Russian Constitution says "in the Russian
Federation rights and freedoms of person and citizen are recognized and guaranteed pursuant to the generally recognized principles
and norms of international law and in accordance with this Constitution." Article 18 states that rights and freedoms of the person
and citizen are directly applicable, which prevents the kind of bad-faith tricks the USA pulls, like declaring "non-self executing"
treaties, or making legally void reservations, declarations, understandings, and provisos to screw you out of your rights. Article
46(3) guarantees citizens a constitutional right to appeal to inter-State bodies for the protection of human rights and freedoms
if internal legal redress has been exhausted. Ratified international treaties including the ICCPR supersede any domestic legislation
stipulating otherwise.
Isn't it just collusion that holds certain elite groups together, including in some businesses where a lot of chicanery goes on.
The most important thing is to be in on it as one of them, not as a person who can be trusted not to say anything, but as one
of the gang. It's exactly how absenteeism-friendly offices full of crony parents with crony-parent managers work.
The only problem for the guy at the tippy top is what would happen if such a tight group turned on him / her? Maybe, some leaders
see the value in protecting a few brave individuals, like Snowden, letting any coup-stirring spooks know that some people are
watching the Establishment's rights violators, too. Those with technical knowledge have more capacity than most to do it or, at
least, to understand how it works.
In a country founded on individual liberties, including Fourth Amendment privacy rights that were protected by less greedy
generations, the US should have elected leaders that put the US Constitution first, but that is too much to ask in an era when
the top dogs in business & government are all colluding for money.
In Russia, persistent rumours claim the perilous Perestroika of Mikhail Gorbachev had been designed and initiated by the
KGB chief (1967 – 1982) Yuri Andropov.
FWIW, I have heard the exact same thing from Russian commenters myself. Some have insisted that, if Andropov had lived long
enough, he would have carried glasnost and perestroika himself.
Spies are loathsome bunch, with questionable loyalties and personal integrity. But I believe that overall they play a positive
role. They play a positive role because they help adversaries gain insight into their adversary's activities.
If it wasn't for the spies, paranoia about what the other side is doing can get out of hand and cause wrong actions to take
place. The problem with the spies is also that no one knows how much they can be trusted and on whose side they are really on.
It was funny during the Cold war (the original one) – whenever each side unveiled that a spy from the other side has defected
to them – they would say it was because of ideology – i.e. the spy defected to them because he "believed" in "democracy" or socialism
– depending on the case.
And in order to discredit their own spies when they defected to the other side – they would say that they did it for money,
because they were greedy and that they betrayed "democracy" or socialism.
The other crucial role that spies usually play is that they allow the adversaries to keep technological balance via industrial
espionage. By transferring top military secrets, they don't allow any side to gain crucial strategic advantage that might encourage
them to do something foolish – like start a nuclear war. Prime example of this were probably the Rosenbergs – who helped USSR
close the nuclear weapons gap with US and kept the world in a shaky nuclear arms balance.
Profound analysis by Mr. Shamir. It confirms that one of the important reasons for the decline of freemasonry is the monopolization
of political conspiracy by the intelligence services. Who needs the lodge when you have the CIA.
An aspect of the rule of spies that Mr. Shamir does not touch on is the legitimization of this rule through popular culture.
This started with the James Bond novels and movies and by now has become ubiquitous. Spies and assassins are the heroes of the
masses. While secrecy is still needed for tactical reasons in the case of specific operations, overall secrecy is not needed nor
even desirable. So you have thugs like Pompeo actually boasting of their villainy before audiences of college students at Texas
A&M and you have the Mossad supporting the publication of the book Rise and Kill First which is an extensive account of their
world-wide assassination policy. They have the power; now they want the perks that go with it, including being treated like rock
stars.
dear mr Shamir, the criminals are not only stupid but also utterly wicked. they will be stricken down in the twinkling of the
eye and will cry out why God? all the righteous will shout for joy and give thanks to the Almighty for judging Babylon. woe unto
them! they will have no place to hide or run to.
Ezekiel 9 (NKJV)
The Wicked Are Slain
9 Then He called out in my hearing with a loud voice, saying, "Let those who have charge over the city draw near, each with a
deadly weapon in his hand." 2 And suddenly six men came from the direction of the upper gate, which faces north, each with his
battle-ax in his hand. One man among them was clothed with linen and had a writer's inkhorn at his side. They went in and stood
beside the bronze altar.
3 Now the glory of the God of Israel had gone up from the cherub, where it had been, to the threshold of the temple. And He
called to the man clothed with linen, who had the writer's inkhorn at his side; 4 and the Lord said to him, "Go through the midst
of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and put a mark on the foreheads of the men who sigh and cry over all the abominations
that are done within it."
5 To the others He said in my hearing, "Go after him through the city and kill; do not let your eye spare, nor have any pity.
6 Utterly slay old and young men, maidens and little children and women; but do not come near anyone on whom is the mark; and
begin at My sanctuary." So they began with the elders who were before the temple. 7 Then He said to them, "Defile the temple,
and fill the courts with the slain. Go out!" And they went out and killed in the city.
8 So it was, that while they were killing them, I was left alone; and I fell on my face and cried out, and said, "Ah, Lord
God! Will You destroy all the remnant of Israel in pouring out Your fury on Jerusalem?"
9 Then He said to me, "The iniquity of the house of Israel and Judah is exceedingly great, and the land is full of bloodshed,
and the city full of perversity; for they say, 'The Lord has forsaken the land, and the Lord does not see!' 10 And as for Me also,
My eye will neither spare, nor will I have pity, but I will recompense their deeds on their own head."
11 Just then, the man clothed with linen, who had the inkhorn at his side, reported back and said, "I have done as You commanded
me."
E Michael Jones was just warning President Trump about the possibility of this in the Straits of Hormuz.
https://youtu.be/iIm3WuJAVEE?t=272
Spooks are everywhere, from secretaries "losing" important communications to CNN news anchors roleplaying with crisis actors,
but they are at their most powerful when they are appointed to powerful positions. President Trump's National Security Advisor
is a spook and he does what he wants.
John le Carre described it perfectly in "A Perfect Spy". The spooks form their own country. They are only loyal to themselves.
@Antares that's because the Mossad
isn't like "our" spy agencies. it's closer to the old paradigm of the hashishim or true assassins. Mossad "agents" don't gad around
wearing dark glasses and tapping phones; they run proper deep cover operations. "sleepers" is a term used in the USA. they have
jobs. they look "normal". They integrate
Do spies run the world? No not really, bankers run the world.
Bankers constitute most of the deep state in the US/UK in particular and most of Europe. It is the bankers/deep state which
control the intelligence agencies. The ethnicity of a hefty proportion of said bankers is plain to see for anyone with functioning
critical faculties. How else can a tiny country in the middle east have such influence in the US? How else do we explain why 2/3
of the UK parliament are "friends of Israel" How come financial institutions can commit felonies and no one does jail time? why
is Israel allowed to commit war crimes and break international law with total impunity? who got bailed out of their gambling debts
at the expense of inflicting "austerity" on most of the western world?
How did John Brennan, James Clapper, James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Christopher Steele and other Spygate principals manage
to rise to the top of the intelligence bureaucracy?
A global supra-powerful, organized and united, privately directed, publicly backed society of high technology robin hood_mercenary_spooks
who conduct sub-legal "scratch-my-back-I'll-scratch-your-back [in the nation of the other] routines"; who ignore duty to country,
its constitutions, its laws and human rights. The are evil, global acting, high technology nomads with a monopoly on extortion
and terror.
Since winning, Trump has been hunted by the spooks-and-scribes freemasonry. <fallacy is that Trump could have gained the assistence
of every American, had Trump just used his powers to declassify all secret information and make it available to the public, instead
he chases Assange, and continues to conduct the affairs of his office in secret.
Propaganda preys on belief.. it is more powerful than an atomic weapon.. when the facts are hidden or when the facts are changed,
distorted or destroyed.
Your statement "spooks and ex-spooks feel more proximity to their enemies and colleagues in other countries than to their
fellow citizens" fails makes clear the importance of containment-of-citizen access to information. Nation states are armed, rule
making structures that invent propaganda and control access to information. Information containment and filtering is the essence
of the political and economic power of a national leader and it is more import to the evil your article addresses.
https://theintercept.com/2019/05/08/josh-gottheimer-democrats-yemen/
<i wrote IRT to the article, that contents appearing in private media supported monopoly powered corporations and distributed
to the public, direct the use of military and the willingness of soldiers of 22 different countries.
Control of the media is 50 times more important than control of the government? Nearly all actions of consequence are intended
to drain the governed masses and such efforts can only be successful if the lobbying, false-misleading mind controlling privately
owned (92% own by just 6 entities) centrally directed media can effectively control the all information environments.
I am bothered by you article because it looks to be Trumped weighted and failes to make clear it is these secret apolitical,
human rights abusers, that direct the contents of the media distributed articles that appear in the privately owmed, media distributed
to the public. Also not explained is how the cost of advertising is shared by the monopoly powered corporations, and it is that
advertising that is the source of support that keeps the fake news in business, the nation state propaganda in line, and the support
of robin -hood terror.
Monopoly powered global corporation advertising funds the fake and misleading private media, that is why the open internet
has been shut in tight. In order for the evil, global acting, high technology nomads to continue their extortion and terror activities
they need the media, its their only real weapon. I have never meet a member of any of the twenty two agencies that was not a trained,
certified mental case terrorist.
I think the interplay between the spooks and scribes warrants a deeper explanation. Covert action refers to anything in which
the author can disclaim his responsibility, ie it looks like someone else or something else. The handler in a political operation
cannot abuse his agent because the agent is the actor. The handler in an intelligence gathering operation can abuse his agent
because the agent merely enables action.
The political operations in this case are propaganda. The Congress of Cultural Freedom is the most clearly described one to
date. Propaganda is necessary in any mass society to ensure that voters care about the right issues, the right way, at the right
time. Propaganda can be true, false, or a mix of the two. Black propaganda deals in falsehoods, ie the Steele Dossier. Black propaganda
works best when it enables a pre-planned operation, but it pollutes the intelligence gathering process with disinformation.
Intelligence gathering is colloquially called investigative reporting. If anyone knows about Gary Webb, Alan Frankovich, or
Michael Hastings they know you can't really do that job well for very long. So how do the old timers last so long? It's a back
and forth. The reporter brings all of his information on a subject to his intelligence source (handler). The source then says,
"print this, print that, sit on that, and since you've been a good boy here's a little something you didn't know." The true role
of the investigative reporter is to conduct counterintelligence and package it as a limited hangout.
While understanding the mechanics is helpful don't neglect the purpose. Why is more important than how. The why is control.
They don't care what you believe, but only what you do. You can be on the left, right, mainstream, or fringe and they won't care
as long as you eat what they serve. Take a minute to think about what they want you to do and strongly consider not doing it.
@Sean McBride And now Trump should
have then all rounded up and hung from the trees in the front of the Whitehouse. Anything less should be seen as encouragement.
The worst among us rule over the rest of us. As Plato said, this needs to change. How to do that? We don't know, but we desperately
need to find out ..
Obama was a very effective promoter of what might be called the "globalist" agenda. He of course didn't invent it but did appoint
those three.
Wayne Madsen gave a convincing account in his speculation that both Obama's parent's were CIA operatives. So it's "all
the family" and in the details one might conclude with the author that indeed "spies run the world."
"... "All political analysis which favors either the Democratic Party or the Republican Party is inherently worthless, because both parties are made of swamp and exist in service of the swamp. If you can't see that the entire system is one unified block of corruption and that ordinary people need to come together and unite against it, then you really don't understand what you're looking at." ..."
Whatever you may think of Trump, the people who set out to 'get him' are the scum of the
Earth. I recommend listening to the two-part interview of George Papadopoulos with Mark
Steyn, where he describes the convoluted plot to use him to bring down Trump.
What they did to this guy is truly disgusting. Brennan belongs in a prison cell, and he
should be sharing it with Mueller. Papadopoulos also has written a book about his
experiences called 'Deep State Target, How I got caught in the crosshairs of the plot to
bring down President Trump.
And, a final comment. Hillary Clinton proved beyond all doubt that she and not Trump was
not fit to be President. To engage in this scheme and then to raise tensions through the
roof with a nuclear superpower, which can destroy this country, is about as low and selfish
as it is possible to be.
As I stated on the open thread, to paraphrase Muller;
I don't give a s###. figure it out yourself, Im f***ing outta' here.
The whole point of impeachment, is to have a show trial, not actually impeach. If the
thing is on TV, the American people may watch it, and that would be interesting.
Not to worry though, Pelosi and Schumer won't let that happen. Appeasing their donors,is
all they care about.
psycho @ 2 quoting C. Johnston stated;
"All political analysis which favors either the Democratic Party or the Republican
Party is inherently worthless, because both parties are made of swamp and exist in service of
the swamp. If you can't see that the entire system is one unified block of corruption and
that ordinary people need to come together and unite against it, then you really don't
understand what you're looking at."
"... Immigrant life was tough -- especially for the adults. People struggled to make ends meet and to fit into a totally new society ..."
"... Life was hard and integration was difficult. ..."
"... We were mostly Jewish and mostly seen as white. And we had a special, glorified place in American political culture: We were victims of Soviet repression and antisemitism, saved by an altruistic America. We were paraded around as a living example of American superiority and a symbol a Soviet barbarism. ..."
"... For nearly four years now, Soviet and Russian immigrants have watched America's liberal political elite shift the blame for their country's domestic political problems away from themselves and onto a fictitious, inscrutable foreign enemy: a xenophobic campaign that put people like us -- "the Russians" -- at the center of everything that's gone wrong in America. We've watched as this panic grew from a fear of the Russian government to an all-encompassing, irrational racist conspiracy theory that put a cloud over not just Russian nationals or Russian government officials, but anyone from the lands of the former Soviet union. ..."
"... Immigrants turned on the TV to see top American security officials, politicians, respected journalists, analysts, and pundits tell national viewers that they were right to be afraid of us: Russians are devious, untrustworthy, wired to hate democracy , and genetically driven to lie and cheat. People like us pose a threat. We are a possible fifth column -- whether we know it it or not, and that includes Russian pensioners and infants. In the words of Keith Olbermann, we were "Russian scum." ..."
"... In all of this, "Russian" has been a mutable category, flexible enough rope in Russian-Jews, Ukrainian-Jews, ethnic Russians, Azerbaijanis, Ukrainians and all sorts of other ethnicities. Any one of those could fit, depending on the need of the constantly evolving conspiracy theory. In America, this added up to something like three million people. ..."
"... This bigoted campaign has gone on non-stop for nearly four years -- and it's come from the very top: primed by American security services and pumped out by respectable liberal media institutions. To Soviet immigrants, it's been disorienting and confusing. It's the first time since coming to America that we have found ourselves targeted this way. ..."
"... And that's the funny thing about this Russia panic. For years, a huge chunk of America's political class has been screeching that "the Russians" are undermining trust in American institutions. But to many Soviet immigrants here in America, it's precisely this xenophobic panic that's been doing the undermining. ..."
"... Soviet immigrants have always had an implicit belief in the superiority of American institutions. It's been a religious thing for them. But seeing themselves get swept up and demonized in this way has bred disillusionment and revulsion with American politics on a level I have never seen. In that sense, Russiagate has been a coming of age moment: it has undermined their naive fresh-off-the-boat faith and gave them a personal glimpse into an America that's paranoid, venal, and unapologetically xenophobic. ..."
I was talking recently to
a Russian acquaintance of mine who lives in the New York area. Years ago, he had studied
engineering in Moscow and later transferred to a university here in the states. He told me that
not long after moved, he got an unexpected visit from a couple of FBI agents who tried to recruit
him. They came right to his apartment and seemed to know everything about him. They had a
detailed file which, among other things, included every application he had submitted to American
universities. They also had a dossier on his old academic advisor back in Moscow containing intel
about the research the professor was doing and the contracts he had with the Russian military.
They wanted to know what he knew about this military work and then asked him to identify
photographs of various equipment and instruments. He was stunned by their sudden appearance and
spooked by their efficiency and competence. He was also smitten with the female agent. "She was
gorgeous. I would have told her anything," he told me. But he didn't have anything to tell. Back
in Moscow he had been a nerdy kid studying engineering. He had no idea about any of the stuff
they were asking. After a while, the FBI agents left. They never contacted him again. But the
message was clear: they were watching, and they could pop in at any time again. His story is not
unique. The FBI does this kind of stuff on a regular basis. By some estimates, at least
a third of all international students get a similar visit from a friendly pair of agents.
And
given the national security panic about China and Russia being whipped up right now, I wouldn't
be surprised if that number is a helluva lot higher. Just the other week, the New York
Times reported that the FBI
has ramped up its surveillance, intimidation and deportation of Chinese academics in America.
As FBI director Christopher Wray explained, America's security apparatus isn't just worried about
the Chinese government. To them, all Chinese are suspect -- they pose a "whole-of-society
threat." Even progressive political strategists believe China is an existential threat to America
and are helping fan a bipartisan sinophobic campaign that's ensnared people I know .
With Russia and China convulsing our body
politic, my buddy's "unremarkable" story got me thinking about how easily and naturally
xenophobic panics fit into American political culture -- and how, until fairly recently, Russian
and Soviet immigrants like me had never really felt the brunt of these campaigns. From my
earliest days as Soviet immigrant kid in America, I've been primed to see this country as a
unique beacon of tolerance -- a place where bigotry and racism, if they exist at all, are
banished to the far dark edges of society. It was a truism to us that unlike the Soviet Union --
which was "closed," "bigoted," "paranoid," and "repressive" -- America was "open," "tolerant" and
"accepting." Later as an adult, I came to understand just much how bigotry and systemic racism
and exclusion are engrained in the politics and culture of modern America. Working as a
journalist and reporting on the darkest recesses of America, it was impossible not to.
But
growing up in an insular, fresh-off-the-boat immigrant community in sleepy San Francisco, it was
easy to believe in an idealized, whitewashed vision of the country that took us in. Immigrant
life was tough -- especially for the adults. People struggled to make ends meet and to fit into a
totally new society. There was the usual petty crime and a bit of violence. People hustled to
make money -- some succeeded, others failed and suffered. Life was hard and integration was
difficult. But compared to other immigrant and minority groups, we were a relatively privileged
bunch.
We were mostly Jewish and mostly seen as white. And we had a special, glorified place in
American political culture: We were victims of Soviet repression and antisemitism, saved by an
altruistic America. We were paraded around as a living example of American superiority and a
symbol a Soviet barbarism. For most the 20th century, American lawmakers had crafted laws to
specifically keep Jews out. We were "rats," according to Wisconsin Senator Alexander Wiley, who
helped craft a 1948 law to prevent victims of the Holocaust from immigrating to America. But with
us it was different. Americans protested outside Soviet embassies on our behalf. Lobbyists and
lawmakers from Washington DC championed our cause and put together sanctions to secure our
release. We were a bipartisan project -- supported by the might of the American empire.
Yasha Levine, Judeo-Bolshevik infiltrator. San Francisco, 1999
My immigrant community was privileged in that way. And because of that, we never really
worried about mass immigration raids. We weren't punitively targeted by cops just because of
the color of our skin. We weren't seen as a terrorist threat and targeted for infiltration and
entrapment by the FBI. We never turned on the TV to see ourselves dehumanized or branded as a
threat from within -- as enemies of the American way of life. Looking back on all the petty --
and not so petty -- crime we got into as kids, I'm amazed by how leniently the cops dealt with
us.
We occupied a special spot in the immigrant pyramid. And because of it, we had never been in
the crosshairs of a good ol' traditional American xenophobic panic. The anti-Russian hysteria
of the early 20th century and the Red Scare of the Cold War was a distant past that few us even
were even aware existed. We never knew what it was like to have the country's media and
political class brand people like you a possible threat. In fact, watching other minority and
immigrant groups get demonized only reinforced my community's feeling of superiority. My fellow
Soviet immigrants have never been known for their progressive racial politics -- well, when you
get down to it, quite a few are generic, down-the-line bigots. And so the general sense was,
"We're not like them. We're different. And anyway, if some ethnic groups are being targeted,
there must a good reason for it. America is a nation of laws, after all. People here aren't
hounded for bigoted political reasons like they are in repressive authoritarian countries."
But this belief in the infallibility of American institutions started taking a big nose dive
right around Donald Trump won the election.
For nearly four years now, Soviet and Russian immigrants have watched America's liberal
political elite shift the blame for their
country's domestic political problems away from themselves and onto a fictitious, inscrutable
foreign enemy: a xenophobic campaign that put people like us -- "the Russians" -- at the center
of everything that's gone wrong in America. We've watched as this panic grew from a fear of the
Russian government to an all-encompassing, irrational racist conspiracy theory that put a cloud
over not just Russian nationals or Russian government officials, but anyone from the lands of
the former Soviet union.
Immigrants turned on the TV to see top American security officials, politicians, respected
journalists, analysts, and pundits tell national viewers that they were right to be afraid of
us: Russians are devious, untrustworthy, wired to hate
democracy , and genetically driven to lie and cheat. People like us pose a threat. We are a
possible fifth column -- whether we know it it or not, and that includes Russian
pensioners and infants. In the words of Keith Olbermann, we were "Russian scum."
In all of this, "Russian" has been a mutable category, flexible enough rope in Russian-Jews,
Ukrainian-Jews, ethnic Russians, Azerbaijanis, Ukrainians and all sorts of other ethnicities.
Any one of those could fit, depending on the need of the constantly evolving conspiracy theory.
In America, this added up to something like three million people.
Putin's anchor babies, a ticking demographic time bomb that will blow up American
democracy.
This bigoted campaign has gone on non-stop for nearly four years -- and it's come from the
very top: primed by American security services and pumped out by respectable liberal media
institutions. To Soviet immigrants, it's been disorienting and confusing. It's the first time
since coming to America that we have found ourselves targeted this way.
At first it seemed like a joke. People laughed at it and mocked it. We were sure that this
weird bigoted panic would pass. But when it didn't, when it continued to grow and seep into
ever corner of our liberal media, we stopped being sure of what to do. We cycled through
various modes: from dismissive to angry to depressed, to repressing it altogether. But talking
to people about this, I get the sense that for many of us one feeling has stayed pretty much
constant: a growing contempt for America's hallowed institutions: its press, its politicians,
its national security elite.
And that's the funny thing about this Russia panic. For years, a huge chunk of America's
political class has been screeching that "the Russians" are undermining trust in American
institutions. But to many Soviet immigrants here in America, it's precisely this xenophobic
panic that's been doing the undermining.
Soviet immigrants have always had an implicit belief in the superiority of American
institutions. It's been a religious thing for them. But seeing themselves get swept up and
demonized in this way has bred disillusionment and revulsion with American politics on a level
I have never seen. In that sense, Russiagate has been a coming of age moment: it has undermined
their naive fresh-off-the-boat faith and gave them a personal glimpse into an America that's
paranoid, venal, and unapologetically xenophobic.
Is this coming of age a good thing? Well, I guess it had to happen at some point. But the
way this disenchantment has unfolded -- driven by America's liberal ruling class -- has pretty
much ensured that most Soviet immigrants will come out the other end even more reactionary than
they were before. And who knew that was even possible?
"... The Economist and Stephens are correct. The trade dispute is merely a small part of a much larger and even more intense geopolitical rivalry that could ignite what Stephens describes as "an altogether hotter war." ..."
"... From the mid-1940s onward, the primacy of the United States was assumed as a given. History had rendered a verdict: we -- not the Brits and certainly not the Germans, French, or Russians -- were number one, and, more importantly, were meant to be. That history's verdict might be subject to revision was literally unimaginable, especially to anyone making a living in or near Washington, D.C. ..."
"... Choose your own favorite post-Cold War paean to American power and privilege. Mine remains Madeleine Albright's justification for some now-forgotten episode of armed intervention, uttered 20 years ago when American wars were merely occasional (and therefore required some nominal justification) rather then perpetual (and therefore requiring no justification whatsoever). ..."
"... Like some idiot savant, Donald Trump understood this. He grasped that the establishment's formula for militarized global leadership applied to actually existing post-Cold War circumstances was spurring American decline. Certainly other observers, including contributors to this publication, had for years been making the same argument, but in the halls of power their dissent counted for nothing. ..."
"... Yet in 2016, Trump's critique of U.S. policy resonated with many ordinary Americans and formed the basis of his successful run for the presidency. Unfortunately, once Trump assumed office, that critique did not translate into anything even remotely approximating a coherent strategy. President Trump's half-baked formula for Making America Great Again -- building "the wall," provoking trade wars, and elevating Iran to the status of existential threat -- is, to put it mildly, flawed, if not altogether irrelevant. His own manifest incompetence and limited attention span don't help ..."
"... There is no countervailing force within the USA that is able to tame MIC appetites, which are constantly growing. In a sense the nation is taken hostage with no root for escape via internal political mechanisms (for all practical purposes I would consider neocons that dominate the USA foreign policy to be highly paid lobbyists of MIC.) ..."
"... In this sense the alliance of China, Iran, Russia and Turkey might serve as an external countervailing force which allows some level of return to sanity, like was the case when the USSR existed. ..."
"... I agree with Bacevich that the dissolution of the USSR corrupted the US elite to the extent that it became reckless and somewhat suicidal in seeking "Full Spectrum Dominance" (which is an illusive goal in any case taking into account existing arsenals in China and Russia and the growing distance between EU and the USA) ..."
The Great Power Game is On and China is Winning If America wants to maintain any influence in Asia, it needs to wake
up. By Robert W. Merry •
May 22,
2019
President Donald J. Trump participates in a bilateral meeting with President Xi Jinping at the Great Hall of the People, Thursday,
November 9, 2017, in Beijing, People's Republic of China. (
Official White House Photo
by Shealah Craighead) From across the pond come two geopolitical analyses in two top-quality British publications that lay out
in stark terms the looming struggle between the United States and China. It isn't just a trade war, says The Economist in
a major cover package. "Trade is not the half of it," declares the magazine. "The United States and China are contesting every domain,
from semiconductors to submarines and from blockbuster films to lunar exploration." The days when the two superpowers sought a win-win
world are gone.
For its own cover, The Financial Times ' Philip Stephens produced a piece entitled, "Trade is just an opening shot in a
wider US-China conflict." The subhead: "The current standoff is part of a struggle for global pre-eminence." Writes Stephens: "The
trade narrative is now being subsumed into a much more alarming one. Economics has merged with geopolitics. China, you can hear on
almost every corner in sight of the White House and Congress, is not just a dangerous economic competitor but a looming existential
threat."
Stephens quotes from the so-called National Defense Strategy, entitled "Sharpening the American Military's Competitive Edge,"
released last year by President Donald Trump's Pentagon. In the South China Sea, for example, says the strategic paper, "China has
mounted a rapid military modernization campaign designed to limit U.S. access to the region and provide China a freer hand there."
The broader Chinese goal, warns the Pentagon, is "Indo-Pacific regional hegemony in the near-term and displacement of the United
States to achieve global pre-eminence in the future."
The Economist and Stephens are correct. The trade dispute is merely a small part of a much larger and even more
intense geopolitical rivalry that could ignite what Stephens describes as "an altogether hotter war."
... ... ..
Russia: Of all the developments percolating in the world today, none is more ominous than the growing prospect of an anti-American
alliance involving Russia, China, Turkey, and Iran. Yet such an alliance is in the works, largely as a result of America's inability
to forge a foreign policy that recognizes the legitimate geopolitical interests of other nations. If the United States is to maintain
its position in Asia, this trend must be reversed.
The key is Russia, largely by dint of its geopolitical position in the Eurasian heartland. If China's global rise is to be thwarted,
it must be prevented from gaining dominance over Eurasia. Only Russia can do that. But Russia has no incentive to act because it
feels threatened by the West. NATO has pushed eastward right up to its borders and threatened to incorporate regions that have been
part of Russia's sphere of influence -- and its defense perimeter -- for centuries.
Given the trends that are plainly discernible in the Far East, the West must normalize relations with Russia. That means providing
assurances that NATO expansion is over for good. It means the West recognizing that Georgia, Belarus, and, yes, Ukraine are within
Russia's natural zone of influence. They will never be invited into NATO, and any solution to the Ukraine conundrum will have to
accommodate Russian interests. Further, the West must get over Russia's annexation of the Crimean peninsula. It is a fait accompli
-- and one that any other nation, including America, would have executed in similar circumstances.
Would Russian President Vladimir Putin spurn these overtures and maintain a posture of bellicosity toward the West? We can't be
sure, but that certainly wouldn't be in his interest. And how will we ever know when it's never been tried? We now understand that
allegations of Trump's campaign colluding with Russia were meritless, so it's time to determine the true nature and extent of Putin's
strategic aims. That's impossible so long as America maintains its sanctions and general bellicosity.
NATO: Trump was right during the 2016 presidential campaign when he said that NATO was obsolete. He later dialed back on
that, but any neutral observer can see that the circumstances that spawned NATO as an imperative of Western survival no longer exist.
The Soviet Union is gone, and the 1.3 million Russian and client state troops it placed on Western Europe's doorstep are gone as
well.
So what kind of threat could Russia pose to Europe and the West? The European Union's GDP is more than 12 times that of Russia's,
while Russia's per capita GDP is only a fourth of Europe's. The Russian population is 144.5 million to Europe's 512 million. Does
anyone seriously think that Russia poses a serious threat to Europe or that Europe needs the American big brother for survival, as
in the immediate postwar years? Of course not. This is just a ruse for the maintenance of the status quo -- Europe as subservient
to America, the Russian bear as menacing grizzly, America as protective slayer in the event of an attack.
This is all ridiculous. NATO shouldn't be abolished. It should be reconfigured for the realities of today. It should be European-led,
not American-led. It should pay for its own defense entirely, whatever that might be (and Europe's calculation of that will inform
us as to its true assessment of the Russian threat). America should be its primary ally, but not committed to intervene whenever
a tiny European nation feels threatened. NATO's Article 5, committing all alliance nations to the defense of any other when attacked,
should be scrapped in favor of language that calls for U.S. intervention only in the event of a true threat to Western Civilization
itself.
And while a European-led NATO would find it difficult to pull back from its forward eastern positions after adding so many nations
in the post-Cold War era, it should extend assurances to Russia that it has no intention of acting provocatively -- absent, of course,
any Russian provocations.
Pragmatic isolationalism is a better deal then the current neocon foreign policy. Which Trump is pursuing with the zeal similar
to Obama (who continued all Bush II wars and started two new in Libya and Syria.) Probably this partially can be explained by
his dependence of Adelson and pro-Israeli lobby.
But the problem is deeper then Trump: it is the power of MIC and American exeptionalism ( which can be viewed as a form of
far right nationalism ) about which Andrew Bacevich have written a lot:
From the mid-1940s onward, the primacy of the United States was assumed as a given. History had rendered a verdict: we --
not the Brits and certainly not the Germans, French, or Russians -- were number one, and, more importantly, were meant
to be. That history's verdict might be subject to revision was literally unimaginable, especially to anyone making a living
in or near Washington, D.C.
If doubts remained on that score, the end of the Cold War removed them. With the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse
of communism, politicians, journalists, and policy intellectuals threw themselves headlong into a competition over who could
explain best just how unprecedented, how complete, and how wondrous was the global preeminence of the United States.
Choose your own favorite post-Cold War paean to American power and privilege. Mine remains Madeleine Albright's justification
for some now-forgotten episode of armed intervention, uttered 20 years ago when American wars were merely occasional (and therefore
required some nominal justification) rather then perpetual (and therefore requiring no justification whatsoever).
"If we have to use force," Secretary of State Albright announced on morning television in February 1998, "it is because
we are America. We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall. We see further into the future."
Back then, it was Albright's claim to American indispensability that stuck in my craw. Yet as a testimony to ruling class
hubris, the assertion of indispensability pales in comparison to Albright's insistence that "we see further into the future."
In fact, from February 1998 down to the present, events have time and again caught Albright's "we" napping. The 9/11 terrorist
attacks and the several unsuccessful wars of choice that followed offer prime examples. But so too did Washington's belated
and inadequate recognition of the developments that actually endanger the wellbeing of 21st-century Americans, namely climate
change, cyber threats, and the ongoing reallocation of global power prompted by the rise of China. Rather than seeing far into
the future, American elites have struggled to discern what might happen next week. More often than not, they get even that
wrong.
Like some idiot savant, Donald Trump understood this. He grasped that the establishment's formula for militarized global
leadership applied to actually existing post-Cold War circumstances was spurring American decline. Certainly other observers,
including contributors to this publication, had for years been making the same argument, but in the halls of power their dissent
counted for nothing.
Yet in 2016, Trump's critique of U.S. policy resonated with many ordinary Americans and formed the basis of his successful
run for the presidency. Unfortunately, once Trump assumed office, that critique did not translate into anything even remotely
approximating a coherent strategy. President Trump's half-baked formula for Making America Great Again -- building "the wall,"
provoking trade wars, and elevating Iran to the status of existential threat -- is, to put it mildly, flawed, if not altogether
irrelevant. His own manifest incompetence and limited attention span don't help.
There is no countervailing force within the USA that is able to tame MIC appetites, which are constantly growing. In a sense
the nation is taken hostage with no root for escape via internal political mechanisms (for all practical purposes I would consider
neocons that dominate the USA foreign policy to be highly paid lobbyists of MIC.)
In this sense the alliance of China, Iran, Russia
and Turkey might serve as an external countervailing force which allows some level of return to sanity, like was the case when
the USSR existed.
I agree with Bacevich that the dissolution of the USSR corrupted the US elite to the extent that it became reckless and somewhat
suicidal in seeking "Full Spectrum Dominance" (which is an illusive goal in any case taking into account existing arsenals in
China and Russia and the growing distance between EU and the USA)
"... There are differences between the parties, but they are mainly centered around social issues and disputes with little or no consequence to the long-term path of the country. The real ruling oligarchs essentially allow controlled opposition within each party to make it appear you have a legitimate choice at the ballot box. Nothing could be further from the truth. ..."
"... There has been an unwritten agreement between the parties for decades where the Democrats pretend to be against war and the Republicans pretend to be against welfare. Meanwhile, spending on war and welfare relentlessly grows into the trillions, with no effort whatsoever from either party to even slow the rate of growth, let alone cut spending. The proliferation of the military industrial complex like a poisonous weed has been inexorable, as the corporate arms dealers place their facilities of death in the congressional districts of Democrats and Republicans. In addition, these corporate manufacturers of murder dole out "legal" payoffs to corrupt politicians of both parties in the form of political contributions. The Deep State knows bribes and well-paying jobs ensure no spineless congressman will ever vote against a defense spending increase. ..."
"... Of course, the warfare/welfare state couldn't grow to its immense size without financing from the Wall Street cabal and their feckless academic puppets at the Federal Reserve. The Too Big to Trust Wall Street banks, whose willful control fraud nearly wrecked the global economy in 2008, were rewarded by their Deep State patrons by getting bigger and more powerful as people on Main Street and senior citizen savers were thrown under the bus. ..."
"... When these criminal bankers have their reckless bets blow up in their faces they are bailed out by the American taxpayers, but when the Fed rigs the system so they are guaranteed billions in risk free profits, they reward themselves with massive bonuses and lobby for a huge tax cut used to buy back their stock. With bank branches in every congressional district in every state, and bankers spreading protection money to greedy politicians across the land, no legislation damaging to the banking cartel is ever passed. ..."
"... I voted for Trump because he wasn't Hillary. ..."
"... If the Chinese refuse to yield for fear of losing face, and the tariff war accelerates, a global recession is a certainty. ..."
"... These sociopaths are not liberal or conservative. They are not Democrats or Republicans. They are not beholden to a country or community. They care not for their fellow man. They don't care about future generations. They care about their own power, wealth and control over others. They have no conscience. They have no empathy. Right and wrong are meaningless in their unquenchable thirst for more. They will lie, steal and kill to achieve their goal of controlling everything and everyone in this world. This precisely describes virtually every politician in Washington DC, Wall Street banker, mega-corporation CEO, government agency head, MSM talking head, church leader, billionaire activist, and blood sucking advisor to the president. ..."
"... The problem is we have gone too far. The "American Dream" has become a grotesque nightmare because people by the millions sit around and dream about being a Kardashian. Makes me want to puke. ..."
"I'll show you politics in America. Here it is, right here. "I think the puppet on the
right shares my beliefs." "I think the puppet on the left is more to my liking." "Hey, wait a
minute, there's one guy holding out both puppets!"" – Bill Hicks
Anyone who frequents Twitter, Facebook, political blogs, economic blogs, or fake-news
mainstream media channels knows our world is driven by the "Us versus Them" narrative. It's
almost as if "they" are forcing us to choose sides and believe the other side is evil. Bill
Hicks died in 1994, but his above quote is truer today then it was then. As the American Empire
continues its long-term decline, the proles are manipulated through Bernaysian propaganda
techniques, honed over the course of decades by the ruling oligarchs, to root for their
assigned puppets.
Most people can't discern they are being manipulated and duped by the Deep State
controllers. The most terrifying outcome for these Deep State controllers would be for the
masses to realize it is us versus them. But they don't believe there is a chance in hell of
this happening. Their arrogance is palatable.
Their hubris has reached astronomical levels as they blew up the world economy in 2008 and
successfully managed to have the innocent victims bail them out to the tune of $700 billion,
pillaged the wealth of the nation through their capture of the Federal Reserve (QE, ZIRP),
rigged the financial markets in their favor through collusion, used the hundreds of billions in
corporate tax cuts to buy back their stock and further pump the stock market, all while their
corporate media mouthpieces mislead and misinform the proles.
There are differences between the parties, but they are mainly centered around social
issues and disputes with little or no consequence to the long-term path of the country. The
real ruling oligarchs essentially allow controlled opposition within each party to make it
appear you have a legitimate choice at the ballot box. Nothing could be further from the
truth.
There has been an unwritten agreement between the parties for decades where the
Democrats pretend to be against war and the Republicans pretend to be against welfare.
Meanwhile, spending on war and welfare relentlessly grows into the trillions, with no effort
whatsoever from either party to even slow the rate of growth, let alone cut spending. The
proliferation of the military industrial complex like a poisonous weed has been inexorable, as
the corporate arms dealers place their facilities of death in the congressional districts of
Democrats and Republicans. In addition, these corporate manufacturers of murder dole out
"legal" payoffs to corrupt politicians of both parties in the form of political contributions.
The Deep State knows bribes and well-paying jobs ensure no spineless congressman will ever vote
against a defense spending increase.
Of course, the warfare/welfare state couldn't grow to its immense size without financing
from the Wall Street cabal and their feckless academic puppets at the Federal Reserve. The Too
Big to Trust Wall Street banks, whose willful control fraud nearly wrecked the global economy
in 2008, were rewarded by their Deep State patrons by getting bigger and more powerful as
people on Main Street and senior citizen savers were thrown under the bus.
When these criminal bankers have their reckless bets blow up in their faces they are
bailed out by the American taxpayers, but when the Fed rigs the system so they are guaranteed
billions in risk free profits, they reward themselves with massive bonuses and lobby for a huge
tax cut used to buy back their stock. With bank branches in every congressional district in
every state, and bankers spreading protection money to greedy politicians across the land, no
legislation damaging to the banking cartel is ever passed.
I've never been big on joining a group. I tend to believe Groucho Marx and his cynical line,
"I don't care to belong to any club that will have me as a member". The "Us vs. Them" narrative
doesn't connect with my view of the world. As a realistic libertarian I know libertarian ideals
will never proliferate in a society of government dependency, willful ignorance of the masses,
thousands of laws, and a weak-kneed populace afraid of freedom and liberty. The only true
libertarian politician, Ron Paul, was only able to connect with about 5% of the voting public.
There is no chance a candidate with a libertarian platform will ever win a national election.
This country cannot be fixed through the ballot box. Bill Hicks somewhat foreshadowed the last
election by referencing another famous cynic.
"I ascribe to Mark Twain's theory that the last person who should be President is the one
who wants it the most. The one who should be picked is the one who should be dragged kicking
and screaming into the White House." ― Bill Hicks
Hillary Clinton wanted to be president so badly, she colluded with Barack Obama, Jim Comey,
John Brennan, James Clapper, Loretta Lynch and numerous other Deep State sycophants to ensure
her victory, by attempting to entrap Donald Trump in a concocted Russian collusion plot and
subsequent post-election coup to cover for their traitorous plot. I wouldn't say Donald Trump
was dragged kicking and screaming into the White House, but when he ascended on the escalator
at Trump Tower in June of 2015, I'm not convinced he believed he could win the presidency.
As the greatest self-promoter of our time, I think he believed a presidential run would be
good for his brand, more revenue for his properties and more interest in his reality TV
ventures. He was despised by the establishment within the Republican and Democrat parties. The
vested interests controlling the media and levers of power in society scorned and ridiculed
this brash uncouth outsider. In an upset for the ages, Trump tapped into a vein of rage and
disgruntlement in flyover country and pockets within swing states, to win the presidency over
Crooked Hillary and her Deep State backers.
I voted for Trump because he wasn't Hillary. I hadn't voted for a Republican since
2000, casting protest votes for Libertarian and Constitutional Party candidates along the way.
I despise the establishment, so their hatred of Trump made me vote for him. His campaign
stances against foreign wars and Federal Reserve reckless bubble blowing appealed to me. I
don't worship at the altar of the cult of personality. I judge men by their actions and not
their words.
Trump's first two years have been endlessly entertaining as he waged war against fake news
CNN, establishment Republicans, the Deep State coup attempt, and Obama loving globalists. The
Twitter in Chief has bypassed the fake news media and tweets relentlessly to his followers. He
provokes outrage in his enemies and enthralls his worshipers. With millions in each camp it is
difficult to find an unbiased assessment of narrative versus real accomplishments.
I'm happy he has been able to stop the relentless leftward progression of our Federal
judiciary. Cutting regulations and rolling back environmental mandates has been a positive.
Exiting the Paris Climate Agreement and TPP, forcing NATO members to pay their fair share, and
renegotiating NAFTA were all needed. Ending the war on coal and approving pipelines will keep
energy costs lower. His attempts to vet Muslims entering the country have been the right thing
to do. Building a wall on our southern border is the right thing to do, but he should have
gotten it done when he controlled both houses.
The use of tariffs to force China to renegotiate one sided trade deals as a negotiating
tactic is a high-risk, high reward gamble. If his game of chicken is successful and he gets
better terms from the Chicoms, while reversing the tariffs, it would be a huge win. If the
Chinese refuse to yield for fear of losing face, and the tariff war accelerates, a global
recession is a certainty. Who has the upper hand? Xi is essentially a dictator for life
and doesn't have to worry about elections or popularity polls. Dissent is crushed. A global
recession and stock market crash would make Trump's re-election in 2020 problematic.
I'm a big supporter of lower taxes. The Trump tax cuts were sold as beneficial to the middle
class. That is a false narrative. The vast majority of the tax cut benefits went to
mega-corporations and rich people. Middle class home owning families with children received
little or no tax relief, as exemptions were eliminated and tax deductions capped. In many
cases, taxes rose for working class Americans.
With corporate profits at all time highs, massive tax cuts put billions more into their
coffers. They didn't repatriate their overseas profits to a great extent. They didn't go on a
massive hiring spree. They didn't invest in new facilities. They did buy back their own stock
to help drive the stock market to stratospheric heights. So corporate executives gave
themselves billions in bonuses, which were taxed at a much lower rate. This is considered
winning in present day America.
The "Us vs. Them" issue rears its ugly head whenever Trump is held accountable for promises
unkept, blatant failures, and his own version of fake news. Holding Trump to the same standards
as Obama is considered traitorous by those who only root for their home team. Their standard
response is that you are a Hillary sycophant or a turncoat to the home team. If you agree with
a particular viewpoint or position of a liberal then you are a bad person and accused of being
a lefty by Trump fanboys. Facts don't matter to cheerleaders. Competing narratives rule the
day. Truthfulness not required.
The refusal to distinguish between positive actions and negative actions when assessing the
performance of what passes for our political leadership by the masses is why cynicism has
become my standard response to everything I see, hear or he read. The incessant level of lies
permeating our society and its acceptance as the norm has led to moral decay and rampant
criminality from the White House, to the halls of Congress, to corporate boardrooms, to
corporate newsrooms, to government run classrooms, to the Vatican, and to households across the
land. It's interesting that one of our founding fathers reflected upon this detestable human
trait over two hundred years ago.
"It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental
lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity
of his mind as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has
prepared himself for the commission of every other crime." – Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine's description of how moral mischief can ruin a society was written when less
than 3 million people inhabited America. Consider his accurate assessment of humanity when over
300 million occupy these lands. The staggering number of corrupt prostituted sociopaths
occupying positions of power within the government, corporations, media, military, churches,
and academia has created a morally bankrupt empire of debt.
These sociopaths are not liberal or conservative. They are not Democrats or Republicans.
They are not beholden to a country or community. They care not for their fellow man. They don't
care about future generations. They care about their own power, wealth and control over others.
They have no conscience. They have no empathy. Right and wrong are meaningless in their
unquenchable thirst for more. They will lie, steal and kill to achieve their goal of
controlling everything and everyone in this world. This precisely describes virtually every
politician in Washington DC, Wall Street banker, mega-corporation CEO, government agency head,
MSM talking head, church leader, billionaire activist, and blood sucking advisor to the
president.
The question pondered every day on blogs, social media, news channels, and in households
around the country is whether Trump is one of Us or one of Them. The answer to that question
will strongly impact the direction and intensity of the climactic years of this Fourth Turning.
What I've noticed is the shunning of those who don't take an all or nothing position regarding
Trump. If you disagree with a decision, policy, or hiring decision by the man, you are accused
by the pro-Trump team of being one of them (aka liberals, lefties, Hillary lovers).
If you don't agree with everything Trump does or says, you are dead to the Trumpeteers. I
don't want to be Us or Them. I just want to be me. I will judge everyone by their actions and
their results. I can agree with Trump on many issues, while also agreeing with Tulsi Gabbard,
Rand Paul, Glenn Greenwald or Matt Taibbi on other issues. I don't prescribe to the cult of
personality school of thought. I didn't believe the false narratives during the Bush or Obama
years, and I won't worship at the altar of the Trump narrative now.
In Part II of this article I'll assess Trump's progress thus far and try to determine
whether he can defeat the Deep State.
"The scientific and industrial revolution of modern times represents the next giant
step in the mastery over nature; and here, too, an enormous increase in man's power over
nature is followed by an apocalyptic drive to subjugate man and reduce human nature to the
status of nature. Even where enslavement is employed in a mighty effort to tame nature, one
has the feeling that the effort is but a tactic to legitimize total subjugation. Thus,
despite its spectacular achievements in science and technology, the twentieth century will
probably be seen in retrospect as a century mainly preoccupied with the mastery and
manipulation of men. Nationalism, socialism, communism, fascism, and militarism,
cartelization and unionization, propaganda and advertising are all aspects of a general
relentless drive to manipulate men and neutralize the unpredictability of human nature. Here,
too, the atmosphere is heavy-laden with coercion and magic." --Eric Hoffer
If you don't agree with everything Trump does or says, you are dead to the
Trumpeteers
That's not true. When Trump kisses Israeli ***, most "Trumpeteers" are outraged. That does
not mean they're going to vote for Joe "I'm a Zionist" Biden, or Honest Hillary because of
it, but they're still pissed.
These predators (((them))) need to fear the Victims, us! That is what the 2ND Amendment is
for. It's coming, slowly for now, but eventually it speeds up.
Any piece like this better be littered with footnotes and cited sources before I'm
swallowing it.
I'll say it again: this is the internet, people. There's no "shortage of column space" to
include links back to primary sources for your assertions. Otherwise, how am I supposed to
distinguish you from another "psy op" or "paid opposition hit piece"?
"The question pondered every day on blogs, social media, news channels, and in households
around the country is whether Trump is one of Us or one of Them."
If you still ponder this question, then you are pretty frickin' thick. It is obvious at
this point, that he betrayed everything he campaigned on. You don't do that and call yourself
one of "us".......damn sure aren't one of "me".
If I couldn't keep my word and wouldn't do what it takes to do what is right.....then I
would resign. But I would not go on playing politics in a world that needs some real
leadership and not another political hack.
The real battle is between Truth and Lie. No matter the name of your "team" or the "side"
you support. Truth is truth and lies are lies. We don't stand for political parties, we stand
for truth. We don't stand for national pride, we take pride in a nation that is truthful and
trustworthy. The minute a "side" or "team" starts lying.....and justifying it.....that is the
minute they become them and not one of us.
Any thinking person in this country today knows we are being lied to by the entire
complex. Until someone starts telling the truth.....we are on our own. But I be damned before
I am going to support any of these lying sons of bitches......and that includes Trump.
Dark comedy. All the elections have been **** choices until the last one. Take a look at
Arkancide.com and start counting the
bodies.
Anyone remember the news telling us how North Korea promised to turn the US into a sea of
fire?? Trump absolutely went to bat for every single American to de-escalate that
situation.
Don't tell me about Arkancide or the Clintons. I grew up in Arkansas with that sack of
**** as my governor for 12 years.
NK was never a real threat to anyone. Trump didn't do ****. NK is back to building and
shooting off missiles and will be teaming up with the Russians and Chinese. You are a duped
bafoon.
I don't think anybody thought NK was an existential threat to the US. It has still been
nice making progress on bringing them back into the world and making them less of a threat to
Japan and S. Korea. Trump did that.
Dennis Rodman did that, or that is to say, Trump an extension thereof ..
Great theater..
Look, i thought it was great that Trump went Kim Unning. I mean after all, i had talked
with a few elderly folks that get their news directly from the mainstream of mainstream,
vanilla news reportage. Propaganda central casting. I remember them being extremely
concerned, outright petrified about that evil menace, kim gonna launch nukes any minute now.
If the news would have been announced a major troop mobilization, bombing campaigns, to begin
immediately they would have been completely onboard, waving the flag.
Frankly, it is only a matter of time, and folks can speculate on the country of interest,
but it is coming soon to a theater near you. So many being in the crosshairs. Iran i suspect
.. that's the big prize, that makes these sociopaths cream in their panties.
Probably. In the second term .. and so far, if ones honestly evaluates the "brain trust" /
current crop of dimwit opposition, and in light of their past 2 plus years of moronic
posturing with their hair on fire, trump will get his second term ..
Until the last one? You are retarded, the last election was a masterpiece of Rothschilds
Productions. The Illuminati was watching you at their private cinema when you were voting for
Trump and they were laughing their asses off.
The author does not realize that everyone in America, except Native American Indians, were
immigrants drawn towards the false promise of hope that is the American Dream, turned
nightmare..
Owning your own home, car, & raising a family in this country is so damn expensive
& risky, that you'd have be on drugs or an idiot to even fall for the lies.
I don't see an us vs them, I see the #FakeMoney printers monetized every facet of life,
own everything, & it truly is RENT-A-LIFE USSA, complete with bills galore, taxes galore,
laws galore, jails & prisons galore, & the worst fkn country anyone would want to
live in poverty & homelessness in.
At least in many 3rd world nations there is land to live off of & joblessness does not
= a financial death sentence.
Sure. Lets all go back to living in huts.....off the land....no cars.....no
electricity.....no running water......no roads....
There is a price to pay for things and it is not always in the form of money. We have
given up some of our freedom for the ease and conveniences we want.
The problem is we have gone too far. The "American Dream" has become a grotesque nightmare
because people by the millions sit around and dream about being a Kardashian. Makes me want
to puke.
There is a balance. Don't take the other extreme or we never find balance.
This article is moronic. One can easily prove that Trump is not like all the others in the
poster. Has this author been living under a rock for the last 2.5 yrs? The past 5 presidents
represent a group that has been literally trying to assassinate Trump, ruin his family, his
reputation, his buisness and his future, for the audacity to be an ousider to the power
network and steal (win) the presidency from under their noses. He's kept us OUT of war. He's
dissolved the treachery that was keeping us in the middle east through gaslighitng and a
proxy fake war that is ISIS, the globalists' / nato / fiveys / uk's fake mercenary army
The greatest threat to the USA is its own dumbed down drugged up citizens who cannot
compete with anyone. America is a big military powerhouse but that doens't make successful
countries
Notice how modern narrative is getting manipulated. What is being reported and referenced
is completely different from how things are. And knowing that we can assume that the entire
history is a fabricated lie, written by the ruling class to support its status in the minds
of obedient citizens.
This article is garbage propaganda that proves that they think we aren't keeping score or
paying attention. The gaslighting won't work when it relies on so much counterthink, willful
ignorance, counterfacts and weaponized omissions
The reality is the de-escalation of wars, the stability of our currency and our economy,
and the moral re-grounding of our culture does not occur until we do what over 100 countries
have done over the centuries, beginning in Carthage in 250AD.
The congress are statusquotarians. If they solved the problems they say they would,they'd
be out of a job. and that job is sitting there acting like a naddler or toxic post turtle
leprechaun with a charisma and skill level of zero. Their staff do all the work, half of them
barely read, though they probably can
I still think 1st and 2nd ammedment is predicated on which party rules the house. If a Dem
gets into the WH, we're fucked. Kiss those Iast two dying amendments goodbye for good.
If we rely on any party to preserve the 1st or 2nd Amendments, we are already fucked. What
should preserve the 1st and 2nd Amendments is the absolute fear of anyone in government even
mentioning suppressing or removing them. When the very thought of doing anything to lessen
the rights advocated in these two amendments, causes a politician to piss in their pants,
liberty will be preserved. As it is now citizens fear the government, and as a result tyranny
continues to grow and fester as a cancer.
You may very well be right. I still hold out hope, but upon seeing what our society is
quickly morphing into, that hope seems to fade more each and every day.
If you think the 1st and 2nd amendments are reliant on who is in office, then you are
already done. Why don't you try growing a pair and being an American for once in your
life.
I will always have a 1st and 2nd "amendment" for as long as I live. Life is meaningless
without them.....as far as I am concerned. Good thing the founders didn't wait for king
George to give them what they "felt" was theirs.....by the laws of Nature and Nature's
God.
I hope the democrats get the power......and I hope they come for the guns......maybe then
pussies like you will finally have to **** or get off the pot......for once in your life.
There are worse things than dying.
This country cannot be fixed through the ballot box. Unless we get rid of *** influencing
from abroad and domestically. Getting rid of English King few hundred years ago was a joke!
this would be a challenge because dual-citizens masquerading as locals.
Last revolution (1776) we targeted the WRONG ENEMY.
We targeted King George III instead of the private bankers who owned of the Bank of
England and the issued of the British-pound currency.
George III was himself up to his ears in debt to them by 1776, when the bankers installed
George Washington to replace George III as their middleman in the American colonies, by way
of the phony revolution.
Phony because ownership of the central bank and currency (Federal-Reserve Banks,
Federal-Reserve notes) we use, remains in the same banking families' hands to this day. The
same parasite remains within our government.
It is this strangely incomplete calculus that creates the shifting Loser world of
rifts and alliances. By operating with a more complete calculus, Sociopaths are able to
manipulate this world through the divide-and-conquer mechanisms. The result is that the
Losers end up blaming each other for their losses, seek collective emotional resolution,
and fail to adequately address the balance sheet of material rewards and losses.
To succeed, this strategy requires that Losers not look too closely at the non-emotional
books. This is why, as we saw last time, divide-and-conquer is the most effective means for
dealing with them, since it naturally creates emotional drama that keeps them busy while
they are being manipulated.
"... What he said is, 'I Donald Trump am going to be a champion of the working class I know you are working longer hours for lower wages, seeing your jobs going to China, can't afford childcare, can't afford to send your kids to college. I Donald Trump alone can solve these problems.' What you have is a guy who utilized the media, manipulated the media very well. He is an entertainer, he is a professional at that. But I will tell you that I think there needs to be a profound change in the way the Democratic Party does business. It is not good enough to have a liberal elite. I come from the white working class and I am deeply humiliated that the Democratic Party cannot talk to the people where I came from." ..."
"... when the Clinton team first learned that Wikileaks was going to release damaging Democratic National Party emails in June 2016, they "brought in outside consultants to plot a PR strategy for handling the news of the hack the story would advance a narrative that benefited the Clinton campaign and the Democrats: The Russians were interfering in the US election, presumably to assist Trump." ..."
"... After losing the election, Team Clinton doubled down on this PR strategy. As described in the book Shattered (p. 395) the day after the election campaign managers assembled the communication team "to engineer the case that the election wasn't entirely on the up and up . they went over the script they would pitch to the press and the public. Already, Russian hacking was the centerpiece of the argument." ..."
"... A progressive team produced a very different analysis titled Autopsy: The Democratic Party in Crisis . They did this because "the (Democratic) party's national leadership has shown scant interest in addressing many of the key factors that led to electoral disaster." The report analyzes why the party turnout was less than expected and why traditional Democratic Party supporters are declining. ..."
"... Since the 2016 election there has been little public discussion of the process whereby Hillary Clinton became the Democratic Party nominee. It's apparent she was pre-ordained by the Democratic Party elite. As exposed in the DNC emails, there was bias and violations of the party obligations at the highest levels. On top of that, it should now be clear that the pundits, pollsters and election experts were out of touch, made poor predictions and decisions. ..."
"... The 2016 election is highly relevant today. Already we see the same pattern of establishment bias and "horse race" journalism which focuses on fund-raising, polls and elite-biased "electability" instead of dealing with real issues, who has solutions, who has appeal to which groups. ..."
"... The establishment bias for Biden is matched by the bias against Democratic Party candidates who directly challenge Wall Street and US foreign policy. On Wall Street, that would be Bernie Sanders. On foreign policy, that is Tulsi Gabbard. With a military background Tulsi Gabbard has broad appeal, an inclusive message and a uniquely sharp critique of US "regime change" foreign policy. ..."
"... Blaming an outside power is a good way to prevent self analysis and positive change. It's gone on far too long. ..."
An
honest and accurate analysis of the 2016 election is not just an academic exercise. It is very
relevant to the current election campaign. Yet over the past two years, Russiagate has
dominated media and political debate and largely replaced a serious analysis of the factors
leading to Trump's victory. The public has been flooded with the various elements of the story
that Russia intervened and Trump colluded with them. The latter accusation was negated by the
Mueller Report but elements of the Democratic Party and media refuse to move on. Now it's the
lofty but vague accusations of "obstruction of justice" along with renewed dirt digging. To
some it is a "constitutional crisis", but to many it looks like more partisan fighting.
Russiagate has distracted from pressing issues
Russiagate has distracted attention and energy away from crucial and pressing issues such as
income inequality, the housing and homeless crisis, inadequate healthcare, militarized police,
over-priced college education, impossible student loans and deteriorating infrastructure. The
tax structure was changed to benefit wealthy individuals and corporations with little
opposition. The Trump administration has undermined environmental laws, civil rights, national
parks and women's equality while directing ever
more money to military contractors. Working class Americans are struggling with rising
living costs, low wages, student debt, and racism. They constitute the bulk of the military
which is spread all over the world, sustaining continuing occupations in war zones including
Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and parts of Africa. While all this has been going on, the Democratic
establishment and much of the media have been focused on Russiagate, the Mueller Report, and
related issues.
Immediately after the 2016 Election
In the immediate wake of the 2016 election there was some forthright analysis. Bernie
Sanders
said , "What Trump did very effectively is tap the angst and the anger and the hurt and
pain that millions of working class people are feeling. What he said is, 'I Donald Trump am
going to be a champion of the working class I know you are working longer hours for lower
wages, seeing your jobs going to China, can't afford childcare, can't afford to send your kids
to college. I Donald Trump alone can solve these problems.' What you have is a guy who utilized
the media, manipulated the media very well. He is an entertainer, he is a professional at that.
But I will tell you that I think there needs to be a profound change in the way the Democratic
Party does business. It is not good enough to have a liberal elite. I come from the white
working class and I am deeply humiliated that the Democratic Party cannot talk to the people
where I came from."
Days after the election, the Washington Post published an op-ed titled "
Hillary Clinton Lost. Bernie Sanders could have won. We chose the wrong candidate ." The
author analyzed the results saying , "Donald Trump's stunning victory is less surprising
when we remember a simple fact: Hillary Clinton is a deeply unpopular politician." The
writer analyzed why Sanders would have prevailed against Trump and predicted "there will be
years of recriminations."
Russiagate replaced Recrimination
But instead of analysis, the media and Democrats have emphasized foreign interference. There
is an element of self-interest in this narrative. As reported in "Russian Roulette" (p127),
when the Clinton team first learned that Wikileaks was going to release damaging Democratic
National Party emails in June 2016, they "brought in outside consultants to plot a PR
strategy for handling the news of the hack the story would advance a narrative that benefited
the Clinton campaign and the Democrats: The Russians were interfering in the US election,
presumably to assist Trump."
After losing the election, Team Clinton doubled down on this PR strategy. As described in
the book Shattered (p. 395) the day after the election campaign managers assembled the
communication team "to engineer the case that the election wasn't entirely on the up and up
. they went over the script they would pitch to the press and the public. Already, Russian
hacking was the centerpiece of the argument."
This narrative has been remarkably effective in supplanting critical review of the
election.
One Year After the Election
The Center for American Progress (CAP) was founded by John Podesta and is closely aligned
with the Democratic Party. In November 2017 they produced an analysis titled "
Voter Trends in 2016: A Final Examination ". Interestingly, there is not a single reference
to Russia. Key conclusions are that "it is critical for Democrats to attract more support from
the white non-college-educated voting bloc" and "Democrats must go beyond the 'identity
politics' versus 'economic populism' debate to create a genuine cross-racial, cross-class
coalition " It suggests that Wall Street has the same interests as Main Street and the working
class.
A progressive team produced a very different analysis titled Autopsy: The Democratic Party in
Crisis . They did this because "the (Democratic) party's national leadership has shown scant interest in addressing many of
the key factors that led to electoral disaster." The report analyzes why the party turnout was less than expected and why
traditional Democratic Party supporters are declining. It includes recommendations to end the party's undemocratic
practices, expand voting rights and counter voter suppression. The report contains details and specific recommendations lacking
in the CAP report. It includes an overall analysis which says "The Democratic Party should disentangle itself – ideologically
and financially – from Wall Street, the military-industrial complex and other corporate interests that put profits ahead of
public needs."
Two Years After the Election
In October 2018, the progressive team produced a follow-up report titled "
Autopsy: One Year Later ". It says, "The Democratic Party has implemented modest reforms,
but corporate power continues to dominate the party."
In a recent phone interview, the editor of that report, Norman Solomon, said it appears some
in the Democratic Party establishment would rather lose the next election to Republicans than
give up control of the party.
What really happened in 2016?
Beyond the initial critiques and "Autopsy" research, there has been little discussion,
debate or lessons learned about the 2016 election. Politics has been dominated by
Russiagate.
Why did so many working class voters switch from Obama to Trump? A major reason is because
Hillary Clinton is associated with Wall Street and the economic policies of her husband
President Bill Clinton. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), promoted by Bill
Clinton, resulted in huge decline in manufacturing jobs in
swing states such as Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Of course, this would influence their
thinking and votes. Hillary Clinton's support for the Trans Pacific Partnership was another
indication of her policies.
What about the low turnout from the African American community? Again, the lack of
enthusiasm is rooted in objective reality. Hillary Clinton is associated with "welfare reform"
promoted by her husband. According to this study from
the University of Michigan, "As of the beginning of 2011, about 1.46 million U.S. households
with about 2.8 million children were surviving on $2 or less in income per person per day in a
given month The prevalence of extreme poverty rose sharply between 1996 and 2011. This growth
has been concentrated among those groups that were most affected by the 1996 welfare
reform. "
Over the past several decades there has been a huge increase in prison
incarceration due to increasingly strict punishments and mandatory prison sentences. Since
the poor and working class have been the primary victims of welfare and criminal justice
"reforms" initiated or sustained through the Clinton presidency, it's understandable why they
were not keen on Hillary Clinton. The notion that low turnout was due to African Americans
being unduly influenced by Russian Facebook posts is seen as "bigoted paternalism" by blogger Teodrose
Fikremanian who says, "The corporate recorders at the NY Times would have us believe that
the reason African-Americans did not uniformly vote for Hillary Clinton and the Democrats is
because they were too dimwitted to think for themselves and were subsequently manipulated by
foreign agents. This yellow press drivel is nothing more than propaganda that could have been
written by George Wallace."
How Clinton became the Nominee
Since the 2016 election there has been little public discussion of the process whereby
Hillary Clinton became the Democratic Party nominee. It's apparent she was pre-ordained by the
Democratic Party elite. As exposed in the DNC emails, there was bias and violations of the
party obligations at the highest levels. On top of that, it should now be clear that the
pundits, pollsters and election experts were out of touch, made poor predictions and
decisions.
Bernie Sanders would have been a much stronger candidate. He would have won the same party
loyalists who voted for Clinton. His message attacking Wall Street would have resonated with
significant sections of the working class and poor who were unenthusiastic (to say the least)
about Clinton. An indication is that in critical swing states such as Wisconsin and
Michigan Bernie
Sanders beat Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary race.
Clinton had no response for Trump's attacks on multinational trade agreements and his false
promises of serving the working class. Sanders would have had vastly more appeal to working
class and minorities. His primary campaign showed his huge appeal to youth and third party
voters. In short, it's likely that Sanders would have trounced Trump. Where is the
accountability for how Clinton ended up as the Democratic Party candidate?
The Relevance of 2016 to 2020
The 2016 election is highly relevant today. Already we see the same pattern of establishment
bias and "horse race" journalism which focuses on fund-raising, polls and elite-biased
"electability" instead of dealing with real issues, who has solutions, who has appeal to which
groups.
Mainstream media and pundits are already promoting Joe Biden. Syndicated columnist EJ
Dionne, a Democratic establishment favorite, is indicative. In his article "
Can Biden be the helmsman who gets us past the storm? " Dionne speaks of the "strength he
(Biden) brings" and the "comfort he creates". In the same vein, Andrew Sullivan pushes Biden in
his article "
Why Joe Biden Might be the Best to Beat Trump ". Sullivan thinks that Biden has appeal in
the working class because he joked about claims he is too 'hands on'. But while Biden may be
tight with AFL-CIO leadership, he is closely associated with highly unpopular neoliberal trade
deals which have resulted in manufacturing decline.
The establishment bias for Biden is matched by the bias against Democratic Party candidates
who directly challenge Wall Street and US foreign policy. On Wall Street, that would be Bernie
Sanders. On foreign policy, that is Tulsi Gabbard. With a military background Tulsi Gabbard has
broad appeal, an inclusive message and a uniquely sharp critique of US "regime change" foreign
policy. She calls
out media pundits like Fareed Zakaria for goading Trump to invade Venezuela. In contrast
with Rachel Maddow taunting
John Bolton and Mike Pompeo to be MORE aggressive, Tulsi Gabbard has been
denouncing Trump's collusion with Saudi Arabia and Israel's Netanyahu, saying it's not in
US interests. Gabbard's anti-interventionist anti-occupation perspective has significant
support from US troops. A
recent poll indicates that military families want complete withdrawal from Afghanistan and
Syria. It seems conservatives have become more anti-war than liberals.
This points to another important yet under-discussed lesson from 2016: a factor in Trump's
victory was that he campaigned as an anti-war candidate against the hawkish Hillary Clinton. As
pointed out
here, "Donald Trump won more votes from communities with high military casualties than
from similar communities which suffered fewer casualties."
Russiagate has distracted most Democrats from analyzing how they lost in 2016. It has given
them the dubious belief that it was because of foreign interference. They have failed to
analyze or take stock of the consequences of DNC bias, the preference for Wall Street over
working class concerns, and the failure to challenge the military industrial complex and
foreign policy based on 'regime change' interventions.
There needs to be more analysis and lessons learned from the 2016 election to avoid a repeat
of that disaster. As indicated in the
Autopsy , there needs to be a transparent and fair campaign for nominee based on more than
establishment and Wall Street favoritism. There also needs to be consideration of which
candidates reach beyond the partisan divide and can energize and advance the interests of the
majority of Americans rather than the elite. The most crucial issues and especially US military
and foreign policy need to be seriously debated.
Blaming an outside power is a good way to prevent self analysis and positive change. It's
gone on far too long.
Rick Sterling is an investigative journalist who grew up in Canada but currently lives in
the San Francisco Bay Area of California. He can be reached at [email protected] . Read other articles by Rick .
"... what is true is that May was judge, jury and executioner in convicting Russia of the poisoning and refused to follow an evidence based discovery process that lies at the heart of the UK justice system - by hiding behind those powers that the UK intelligence community "needs" in order to protect british (not russian, british) citizens from the sinister influences of foreign powers. ..."
"... the criminal activities of howler monkeys, like Strzok, Page, Brennan, McCabe, SUSAN RICE, Comey, Ohr, BIDEN, OBAMA, etc in the USA are bad enough (whilst hardly impacting civilian life in the US - BUT - the tactics used have been deployed to starve, cause disease, "dumb down", reduce life chances all over the middle east and elsewhere for countless millions of people. ..."
Couple of factors not mentioned. one is Israel and the other is more sinister still and tied
to the conclusions to be drawn from the Mueller report.
it may be true that Skripal helped Steele with some elements of the dossier compiled by
Steele, via SKripals handler Pablo Miller. It may be true that Skripal went "stir crazy" and an
attempt was made to silence him and his daughter - permanently, because they simply cold not be
trusted. a similar motivation could be drawn up against Russia - with the two Russians visiting
Salisbury used as diversionary "stool pigeons". It may be true that the "poisoning" was self
inflicted and was in fact a murder/suicide attempt as a result of depression along the ines
"what's the point of it all".
what is true is that May was judge, jury and executioner in convicting Russia of the
poisoning and refused to follow an evidence based discovery process that lies at the heart of
the UK justice system - by hiding behind those powers that the UK intelligence community
"needs" in order to protect british (not russian, british) citizens from the sinister
influences of foreign powers.
what ought to be apparent is
- the same tactics used by the special prosecutor to investigate the "Russia collusion"
smoke screen erected by the howler monkeys in the US intel agencies (aided and abetter by
howler monkeys in UK intel agencies) to stymie the US executive branch (Trump) are likely to be
used by the the UK government and some more as well - in true Le Carre fashion, but with much
dumber and less principled actors than Smiley's people.
these tactics prevented (and continue to prevent) investigation and prosecution of heinous
corruption within the obama administration of the previous 8 years - these howler monkey
intelligence agency tactics include(d) entrapment, honeypots, racketeering, blackmail, de facto
kidnapping (in the case of Skripals), bribery, wire fraud, unauthorized wire-tapping, breach of
authorized intel agency activities (like the FBI operating overseas and the CIA operating
domestically in the US, false and unverified claims in FISA warrants, NSA providing unauthorized
information to the CIA and FBI etc)
- given the howler monkey activities of the alphabet soup, it is not beyond the imagination
to draw parallels with the CIA's reporting and analysis of situations on the ground wherever
they operate to provide intel ahead of military activity. the DOD has already proved complicit
by hiring Halper (for hundreds of thousands of dollars) to assist with the entrapment of Trump
operative Papadopoulos. Mifsud is likely a CIA, not a Russian, asset.
- given that we have ample evidence of the howler monkeys in the alphabet soup seeking to
facilitate a coup against a sitting US president, it is certainly plausible that - as with the
US goverment sponsoring the mujaheedin, isis and al qaeda in afghanistan to fight the russians
in late 80's early 90's, Iraq yellow cake and WMD - that the howler monkeys paid the white
helmets to ovethrow assad and foment civil war in Syria - thus causing the migration of some 5
million syrians into europe, iraq, turkey, jordan, turkey and lebanon.
so , the case is that howler monkey activity in intel agencies of the UK and US (add
(F)rance to get FUKUS) are guilty of the manufacture of human conflict by fabricating evidence,
breaking the laws (certainly of the targeted countries, but also of the UK and US), providing
shitty analysis (howler monkeys are only good at swinging in trees and flinging ****) and
generally operating as evil actors on the dark side of humanity.
this can only be brought into sharp relief if howler monkey activities were instead shown to
be powers for good rather than the geo-political risks that persist in Iran, North Korea,
Venezuela, Yemen, Libya and so on and so forth.
Never mind how much past conflicts in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan and so on relied on
evidence and analysis thrown at us by the howler monkeys in the tree tops, how much of what we
we are doing now is a fabrication causing needless suffering by civilian (not politicians or
military engaged in conflict) populations?
the criminal activities of howler monkeys, like Strzok, Page, Brennan, McCabe, SUSAN RICE,
Comey, Ohr, BIDEN, OBAMA, etc in the USA are bad enough (whilst hardly impacting civilian life
in the US - BUT - the tactics used have been deployed to starve, cause disease, "dumb down",
reduce life chances all over the middle east and elsewhere for countless millions of
people.
there are equivalents of strzok, page, ohr right throughout the US and UK government
"machines" operating overseas. think about that. crimes exposed by Barr et al in the US -
against a sitting president - are replicated wherever howler monkeys operate overseas as well.
"... I don' know what are the revenues of NYT or The Guardian, but I know that the US government spends 750 million a year on the Agency for Global Media (formerly Broadcasting Board of Governors). If you think US or France is under attack by warmongers, you can't imagine how many propagandists are these 750 million hiring in low-COL places like Serbia, Burma, Venezuela. ..."
"... The situation is even worse today as the CIA and Pentagon have massive propaganda budgets and have infiltrated the media at every level , the public is unaware that each day they are brainwashed by the MSM to support the agenda of the "deep State' and the MIC. ..."
"... No mention of the journalists as CIA assets who publish planted stories? Isn't Dr Udo Ulfkotte one who did that, repented, told all in his best-seller Bought Journalists, and as a warning to others unselfishly dropped dead of a heart attack within a couple of years? ..."
"... The best sentence was the one expressing the Establishment's collective faux shock that anything other than Russian spybots could be responsible for the serfs' rejection of the "two centrist parties" that have sponged up lobbyist money for 3 decades, cashing in on the globalist-Neoliberal economy, as rents rose and wages fell. ..."
"... Not too sure about the US even remaining important as a continent wide farm.. The aquifers in the West and Midwest are being inexorably drawn down to sustain the current rate of farming, so it's possible North America's value would primarily be as a source of pockets of human talent in the sciences and technologies. ..."
the hysteria emanating from the nyt, cnn and the rest of the msm is the result of a conscious
or subconscious grasp that socialism dying worldwide. the great ponzi scam of forcing future
generations to pay for the cookies and ice cream of the present generation has hit the math
of the complete dearth of unencumbered assets from which to emit more unpayable debt,
insufficient economic growth upon which to pretend the debt can be serviced forget about
repayment and the simple fact demographichs throughout the west are so negative the
government and public pension scheme blowup in the several years
the more intelligent members of the establishment know in their bones the jig is up. hence
the great and urgent need to turn up .lets over throw sovereign nations so the plunder model
..venezuela, syria, russia, china et al.can find more unencumbered assets to be brought into
the nyc, london orbit of banks from which new debt can be emitted.
the west is staring at its last decade of global rule, a rule that began 500 years ago. by
the 2030's finance, manufacturing and all the global power and prestige that goes with it
moves from ny, london to shanghai and moscow.
if the united states is lucky and remains intact, a giant IF, we may wind up as continent
size farm with a smidgen of non competitive industry here and there.
the west has only disinformation with which to go to war against the rising east. the
weapons of the west are powerful ONLY in their quantity. Russian weapons already are many
years beyond anything the pentagon has in the field and the gap is only increasing, ergo the
us treasury is forced to fight the battle using sanctions and other forms of restrictions, a
long term losing strategy irrespective of any short terms gains.
so, cj worry not, the disinformation campaign is backed by nothing but hot air and the
rage from being thwarted by china and russia as well as brave pipsqueakes like iran and
venezuela.
see it for what it is, transparent sound and fury signifying nothing
I don' know what are the revenues of NYT or The Guardian, but I know that the US government
spends 750 million a year on the Agency for Global Media (formerly Broadcasting Board of
Governors). If you think US or France is under attack by warmongers, you can't imagine how
many propagandists are these 750 million hiring in low-COL places like Serbia, Burma,
Venezuela.
I don' know what are the revenues of NYT or The Guardian, but I know that the US
government spends 750 million a year on the Agency for Global Media (formerly Broadcasting
Board of Governors). If you think US or France is under attack by warmongers, you can't
imagine how many propagandists are these 750 million hiring in low-COL places like Serbia,
Burma, Venezuela.
In 1917 US Congressman Calloway informed Congress that J.P. Morgan interests had purchased 25
of the nations leading newspapers and replaced their editors in order to control the mass
media for the benefit of the plutocrats/money interests who ran the country and who still do
. The situation is even worse today as the CIA and Pentagon have massive propaganda budgets
and have infiltrated the media at every level , the public is unaware that each day they are
brainwashed by the MSM to support the agenda of the "deep State' and the MIC.
See, half a century after McCarthy, wingers got their noses into some (not all) Soviet files,
and got to scream, nonstop and to this day, "See!@@#$% McCarthy was RIGHT!"
Betya in a half century, if we're still around, the same type people are going to get
nosing in some files somewhere and find incontrovertible evidence that: "See!@#%$%^^ The New
York Times was RIGHT!"
And then there's the evil Russian spywhale, which the disinformationists want us to
believe is just a harmless "therapy Beluga" for kids, but which has clearly been strapped
with some sort of monstrous, mind-controlling apparatus that enables the Kremlin to
remotely implant a host of dangerous "populist" ideas in the brains of defenseless
Norwegian fishermen, weaponizing them into a horde of neo-Odinist Viking berserkers who
will scream down out of Scandinavia and storm the EU Parliament in Brussels smelling of
akvavit and fermented shark.
You had me doing a cartoon spit-take with this beaut!
these enormous corporate media conglomerates, and the transnational corporations that
own them, and these intelligence agencies, and their fronts and cutouts, and corporate
lobbyists and PR firms, and councils, and think tanks, and research institutes, to
disinform the Western masses, or to manufacture an official narrative
No mention of the journalists as CIA assets who publish planted stories? Isn't Dr Udo
Ulfkotte one who did that, repented, told all in his best-seller Bought Journalists, and as a
warning to others unselfishly dropped dead of a heart attack within a couple of years?
" that enables the Kremlin to remotely implant a host of dangerous "populist" ideas in
the brains of defenseless Norwegian fishermen, weaponizing them into a horde of neo-Odinist
Viking berserkers who will scream down out of Scandinavia and storm the EU Parliament in
Brussels smelling of akvavit and fermented shark "
It isn't the akvavit that does it, but you can't do it without the akvavit.
And then there's the evil Russian spywhale, which the disinformationists want us to
believe is just a harmless "therapy Beluga" for kids, but which has clearly been strapped
with some sort of monstrous, mind-controlling apparatus that enables the Kremlin to
remotely implant a host of dangerous "populist" ideas in the brains of defenseless
Norwegian fishermen, weaponizing them into a horde of neo-Odinist Viking berserkers who
will scream down out of Scandinavia and storm the EU Parliament in Brussels smelling of
akvavit and fermented shark.
I had a good laugh at the Spy Whale schtick. One look at the thing, and you get the
idea it should've been in a Pink Panther movie.
Made up shit that only a mind of a child could believe.
The best sentence was the one expressing the Establishment's collective faux shock that
anything other than Russian spybots could be responsible for the serfs' rejection of the "two
centrist parties" that have sponged up lobbyist money for 3 decades, cashing in on the
globalist-Neoliberal economy, as rents rose and wages fell.
The serfs have to love that. How
could they not embrace it? Only spybots beaming up doom-and-gloom messages from halfway
around the globe could persuade the thick-headed serfs that the part-time / churn / gig
economy is anything but nirvana.
@paraglider I think
you're probably right about the inevitable collapse of the West as the dominant global power.
Not too sure about the US even remaining important as a continent wide farm.. The aquifers
in the West and Midwest are being inexorably drawn down to sustain the current rate of
farming, so it's possible North America's value would primarily be as a source of pockets of
human talent in the sciences and technologies.
Also Russia has been making some progress, but unless that continues it may not reach the
level of competitiveness in science, industry and domestic product to be any more than a
junior partner to China.
Whatever happens, a sea change in history seems unavoidable and it won't be what our
present rulers think it will. I don't pretend to think I can reliably predict what is
coming.
I used to know Russian disinformation when I saw it because it was obvious when it came from
the USSR. Then the MSM peddled it as authentic as when, in response to Soviet deployment of
IRBM in Europe, pinkos magically appeared to protest the American deployment of similar
weapons. It was well funded too as Brezhnev had serious oil revenues to finance both his
military and his disinformation campaigns and the USSR had 125% of America's population and a
satellite Eastern Europe to boot.
Now I am to believe a motheaten "Russia' with less than half the US population, a hostile
Ukraine and no Eastern European satrapies is able to exert more 'influence' in the West than
the mighty USSR. Yet those same 'pinkos' would have me believe a castrated Russia is an
existential threat. Come on!
"... "Instead," McConnell went on, "the previous administration sent the Kremlin a signal they could get away with almost anything, almost anything. So is it surprising that we got the brazen interference detailed in special counsel Mueller's report?" ..."
"... Yes, Russia kicked most US NGOs out of the country. With good reason. Most of them were deliberately undermining the host country (this is not limited to Russia, they do that in most of their host countries, especially those we want to mess with). The National Endowment for Democracy is a classic case in point. The counter point here isn't RT. It's a news outlet that has proven to be far more reliable than the US corporate media. Does Russia send NGOs around the world to infest other countries with their vision of government? ..."
"... It is exactly as Mr. Lazare says, Americans think that their country can do no wrong. ..."
"... Several of my late husband's FB friends fall well into these categories and they really believe, wholeheartedly, the propaganda against Russia (and to some extent against China – Huawei, 5G, and so on), almost to the point of paranoia. The Demrat politicos and their corporate-capitalist-imperialist funders together with the despicable, groupthinking Orwellian media have done a real number on these people – usually the ones who *vote.* ..."
"... Most are Democrats who embrace the 'neoliberal groupthink' you referred to. There was a time I believed one of the conclusions of a famous study on authoritarian personalities that claimed the vast majority of authoritarians (active and passive) were Republicans. Just as the Democratic Party has morphed into the 80's Republican Party, so too have these liberals. Their cognitive dissonance is more powerful than any I have encountered in my lifetime. Their core belief system now includes incrementalism, lesser-evilism and an overwhelming sense of goodness that at least they are 'doing something positive' by supporting all Democrats at all costs. ..."
"... I don't get why, supposedly intelligent, informed people are wondering why Russia is being blamed for so much. Let me remind you that the extremely powerful Israel Lobby is VERY BUSY supporting the agenda of the right wing Likud government in Israel. ..."
"... One of the goals of Likud is the Zionist agenda that includes Greater Israel which requires Israel to acquire more water and land in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq, Iran is a very strong supporter of the Palestinians and Syrian President Assad and Iraqi independence from US domination. ..."
"... Why, on this good earth, does anyone pay any attention to Schumer and Schiff and McConnell? Shills, do nothing crackpots and traitors to this nation; when you see that's what they are, you have to ignore them. ..."
Russia-gate has shed any premise of being about Russian interference, writes Daniel Lazare, but the idea that America may in anyway
be responsible for its own fate is of course unthinkable.
Americans used to think that Russia-gate was about a plot to hack the 2016 election. They were wrong. Russia-gate is really about
an immense conspiracy to do four things:
No. 1: Ratchet up tensions with Russia to ever more dangerous levels;
No. 2: Show that Democrats are even more useless than people imagined;
No. 3: Persecute Julian Assange;
No. 4: Re-elect Donald Trump as president.
This was the takeaway from Mitch McConnell's devastating "
case closed " speech last week in which the Senate majority
leader jeered at President Barack Obama for mocking Mitt Romney's claim (seven years ago now) that Russia was America's "number one
geopolitical
foe
." As Obama famously replied during that presidential debate:
"The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because the Cold War's been over for 20 years."
But that was so 2012. Now, says McConnell, it looks like Romney was right:
"We'd have been better off if the administration hadn't swept [Russian President Vladimir] Putin's invasion and occupation
of Georgia under the rug or looked away as Russia forced out western NGO's and cracked down on civil society. If President Obama
hadn't let Assad trample his red line in Syria or embraced Putin's fake deal on chemical weapons, if the Obama administration
had responded firmly to Putin's invasion and occupation of Ukraine in 2014, to the assassination of Boris Nemtsov in 2015, and
to Russia intervention in Syria -- maybe stronger leadership would have left the Kremlin less emboldened, maybe tampering with
our democracy wouldn't have seemed so very tempting.
"Instead," McConnell went on, "the previous administration sent the Kremlin a signal they could get away with almost anything,
almost anything. So is it surprising that we got the brazen interference detailed in special counsel Mueller's report?"
Lies and Distortions
Like so much out of Congress these days, this was a farrago of lies and distortions. It wasn't Moscow that started the 2008 Russo-Georgian
War, but Tbilisi . While
Russia has indeed cracked down on U.S.-backed NGO's, Washington has done the same by forcing Russia's highly successful news agency
RT to register as a foreign
agent and by sentencing Maria Butina, a Russian national studying at American University, to
18 months in prison
for the crime of hobnobbing
with members of the National Rifle Association. The charge that Syrian President Bashar al Assad "trampled" Obama's red line by using
chemical weapons is hardly as clear-cut as imperial propagandists like to believe –
to say the least – while the agreement between Putin and former Secretary
of State John Kerry to rid Syria of chemical weapons was not fake at all, but an example, increasingly rare unfortunately, of diplomacy
being used to prevent an international crisis from getting out of hand.
And so on ad nauseum . But what could Democrats say in response given that they've spent the last three years trying to
out-hawk the GOP? Answer: nothing. All they could do was try to turn tables on McConnell by charging him with not being anti-Russian
enough. Thus, New York's Sen. Chuck Schumer accused him of "
aiding and abetting
" Moscow while Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin
accused
him of running interference for Putin because he "feels the Russians were on the side of the Republicans in 2016 and just might be
again in 2020."
Democrats Feed the Super Hawks
The result: a Democratic consensus that Russia can't be trusted and that America must put itself on a war footing to prevent Putin
from "toppl[ing] the mighty oak that has been our republic for two hundred years," as Schumer put it. It's an across-the-board agreement
that the long-awaited Mueller report has only strengthened by regurgitating the intelligence-community line that "[t]he Russian government
interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion" and then cherry-picking the facts to fit its preconceived
thesis. (See " Top Ten
Questions About the Mueller Report ," May 6.)
Democrats claim to oppose National Security Advisor John Bolton, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Vice President Mike Pence,
but the anti-Russian hysteria they promote strengthens the hand of such super-hawks. It makes military conflict more likely, if not
with Russia then with perceived Russian surrogates such as Venezuela or Iran.
Schiff increasingly unhinged.
Simultaneously, it backfires on Democrats by making them look weak and foolish as they argue that even though the Mueller report
says "the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government,"
somehow "significant evidence of collusion" still exists, as an increasingly unhinged Rep. Adam Schiff
maintains . In the
Alice-in-Wonderland world of congressional Democrats, no evidence does not mean no evidence. In fact, it means the opposite.
Voters are unmoved. Ten times more Americans – 80 versus 8 percent – care about healthcare than about Russia according to
a recent survey . When CNN pollsters asked a thousand people in mid-March to name the issues that matter most,
not one mentioned Russia or the Mueller
probe . If they didn't care when collusion was still an open question, they care even less now that the only issue is obstruction
plus a phony constitutional crisis that desperate Democrats have conjured up out of thin air.
Trump the Chief Beneficiary
Besides Fox News – whose ratings have
soared while Russia-obsessed CNN's have plummeted – the chief beneficiary is Trump. Post-Mueller, the man has the wind in his
sails. Come 2020, Sen. Bernie Sanders could cut through his phony populism with ease. But if Jeff Bezos's Washington Post
succeeds in
tarring him with Russia the same way it tried to tar Trump, then the Democratic nominee will be a bland centrist whom the incumbent
will happily bludgeon. Former Vice President Joe Biden – the
John McCain-loving ,
speech-slurring ,
child-fondler who was
for a wall along the Mexican border before he was against
it – will end up as a bug splat on the Orange One's windshield.
Trump ready to take on challengers. (Caricature/DonkeyHotey via Flickr)
Beto O'Rourke, the rich-kid airhead who
declared shortly before the Mueller report was released that Trump, "beyond the shadow of a doubt, sought to collude with the
Russian government," will not fare much better. Sen. Elizabeth Warren meanwhile seems to be tripping over her own two feet as she
predicts one moment that Trump is
heading
to jail , declares the next that voters
don't care
about the Mueller report because they're too concerned with bread-and-butter issues, and then
calls for dragging Congress into the impeachment morass
regardless.
Such "logic" is lost on voters, so it seems to be a safe bet that enough will stay home next Election Day to allow the rough beast
to slouch towards Bethlehem yet again.
Assange Convicted in Eyes of Press
Then there's Julian Assange, currently serving a 50-week sentence in a supermax prison outside of London after being ejected from
the Ecuadorian Embassy. By claiming that the WikiLeaks founder was "dissembling" by denying that Russia was the source of
the mammoth Democratic National Committee leak in July 2016, Special Counsel Robert Mueller has effectively convicted him in the
eyes of Congress and the press.
The New York Times thus reports that Mueller has "
revealed " that
Russian intelligence was the source while, in
a venomous piece by Middlebury College professor Allison Stanger, The Washington Post declared that Assange "is neither
whistleblower nor journalist," but someone who helped Russian intelligence interfere in "the American electoral process."
Schumer thus greeted Assange's April 11 arrest by
tweeting his "hope [that] he will soon be
held to account for his meddling in our elections on behalf of Putin and the Russian government," while, in
a truly chilling
statement , Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia declared that "[i]t will be really good to get him back on United States
soil [so] we can get the facts and the truth from him."
Now that Julian Assange has been arrested, I hope he will soon be held to account for his meddling in our elections on behalf
of Putin and the Russian government.
Assange is guiltier than ever. If Washington gets its hands on him, he'll no doubt be hauled before some sort of Star Chamber
and then clapped in a dungeon somewhere until he confesses that Russian intelligence made him do it, even though a careful reading
of the Mueller report strongly suggests the opposite. (See "
The 'Guccifer 2.0'
Gaps in Mueller's Full Report ," April 18.)
Assange languishing behind bars, war breaking out in Latin America or the Persian Gulf, Trump in the Oval Office for four years
more – it's the worst of all possible worlds, and the Democratic Party's bizarre fixation with Vladimir Putin is what's pushing it.
Ultimately, Russia-gate is yet a variation on the tired old theme of American innocence. If something goes wrong, it can't be
the fault of decent Americans who, as we all know, are too good for our deeply flawed world. Rather, it must be the fault of dastardly
foreigners trying to hack our democracy. It's a deep-rooted form of xenophobia that has fueled everything from the criminalization
of marijuana (smuggled in by evil Mexicans) to the 1950s Red Scare (a reaction to Communism smuggled in by evil Russians), and the
war on terrorism (the work of evil Muslims). The idea that America may in anyway be responsible for its own fate is of course unthinkable.
But Russia-gate may be the greatest delusion of all. After decades of celebrating Donald Trump as the essence of American flash
and hustle, the corporate media have decided that the only way he could have gotten into the White House is if Putin put him there.
The upshot is a giant conspiracy to force Americans to turn their back on reality, an effort that can only end in disaster for all
concerned, Democrats first and foremost.
Daniel Lazare is the author of "The Frozen Republic: How the Constitution Is Paralyzing Democracy" (Harcourt Brace, 1996)
and other books about American politics. He has written for a wide variety of publications from The Nation to Le Monde Diplomatique
and blogs about the Constitution and related matters at D aniellazare.com .
Tick Tock , May 15, 2019 at 11:30
Sorry Folks but both Mr Lazare's text and the majority of the comments here clearly illustrate that the major problem for America
and its Citizens is that they are way too full of themselves and easily manipulated because of that. Seriously, the vast majority
of the Worlds population Could Not Give a Rat's Ass about America except when they are being attacked either with Real Bombs or
Economically.
No normal Human Being wants to be Israel's Stooge. You have to think you are are really important for someone in another Country
to want to select your leaders. Oh yes that is what the US Deep State does and now it's been clearly exposed it does the same
thing at home.. Of course if your motto is that "You are god's chosen people!", it could get you into trouble now and then with
the rest of God's People. Like Bob Dylan wrote a few years ago, "I used to care!" Only a fool would care now.
Jeff Harrison , May 15, 2019 at 11:23
This is where we learn the importance of an objective press and one that can bring all the threads of a story together. And
it's also most likely to be a disaster.
Yes, Russia kicked most US NGOs out of the country. With good reason. Most of them were deliberately undermining the host country
(this is not limited to Russia, they do that in most of their host countries, especially those we want to mess with). The National
Endowment for Democracy is a classic case in point. The counter point here isn't RT. It's a news outlet that has proven to be
far more reliable than the US corporate media. Does Russia send NGOs around the world to infest other countries with their vision
of government?
The US/EU fomented the coup in Ukraine that resulted in Crimea deciding they didn't want to be associated with Ukraine any
longer. Did the US press tell the truth here? No. They made it sound as if Crimea was a part of Ukraine when, in fact, the Turkic
Muslims of Crimea were never a part of the Christian Slavs of Ukraine. They also didn't explain the terms by which Khrushchev
administratively slapped the two together in 1957 which give the Crimeans the ability to opt out.
It is exactly as Mr. Lazare says, Americans think that their country can do no wrong. We don't see the coups we foist on other
countries. We don't see the lies and fake news we spread in other countries we wish to undermine. They don't see the consequences
of our abuse of our economic power. The myopia is powerful in this one as my representatives tried to tell me that Venezuela was
a prosperous and happy country before Chavez and that their current travails are as a result of the socialism and not two coup
attempts and a long string of sanctions from the US. We are remarkably good at blaming the victim.
There's a good chance that this will rise up and bite us in the ass and the American people will have no idea why ..
AnneR , May 15, 2019 at 08:52
Mr Lazare, while I would certainly agree with much you have written, on one point at least I am much less certain: that most
Americans care less about Russia than about health care.
While this might be true for the majority of the population who are in the lower middle, working classes and poor, I am much
less certain about the "well" educated, comfortably off, well health insured, middling and upper bourgeoisie. The sort who, even
when on Medicare, are on the upper rungs of it (paying extra for better and more expansive treatment; and I do mean Medicare here).
The sort who frequently have been privately educated.
Several of my late husband's FB friends fall well into these categories and they really believe, wholeheartedly, the propaganda
against Russia (and to some extent against China – Huawei, 5G, and so on), almost to the point of paranoia. The Demrat politicos
and their corporate-capitalist-imperialist funders together with the despicable, groupthinking Orwellian media have done a real
number on these people – usually the ones who *vote.*
These same people evince absolutely, and I mean absolutely, NO concern or interest in the constant war-making and warmongering,
the illegal invasions, electoral meddling/coups/"regime" changes, destruction of peoples that this country (and its allies) engage
in. Not happening here, therefore not anything to do with "us."
I know that my late husband would be utterly devastated knowing that some of his students, with whom he worked assiduously
to develop real critical thinking (via much difficult reading in historiography, sociology and philosophy, discussion and writing),
have fallen hook, line and sinker for the neoliberal groupthink supporting the corporate-capitalist-imperialist (and of course,
orientalist) line. One can only imagine that they were already well primed for this mindset.
MattZ , May 15, 2019 at 11:43
Anne -- your post resonates deeply with me. I would guess you and I are of similar ages and have similar friends and acquaintances.
We certainly share the exact same experiences with these people. They are proud 'liberals' (lately donning the 'progressive' robe
with equal exuberance). None are members of the elite one-percenters, but all belong to what Nader refers to as the 'contented
class', that 9% buffer zone between the elite and the increasingly miserable lower 90%-ers.
Most are Democrats who embrace the 'neoliberal groupthink' you referred to. There was a time I believed one of the conclusions
of a famous study on authoritarian personalities that claimed the vast majority of authoritarians (active and passive) were Republicans.
Just as the Democratic Party has morphed into the 80's Republican Party, so too have these liberals. Their cognitive dissonance
is more powerful than any I have encountered in my lifetime. Their core belief system now includes incrementalism, lesser-evilism
and an overwhelming sense of goodness that at least they are 'doing something positive' by supporting all Democrats at all costs.
Appallingly, their new heroes are historically-proven liars, psychopaths and Deep State organizations like the CIA and FBI.
Their Trump Derangement Syndrome has destroyed all ability to think critically or accept transparent and obvious truths. They
accept no criticism of their actions and attack those who question them. To them, the 'end' of removing Trump justifies any evil.
Gaia help us all.
Skip Scott , May 15, 2019 at 08:04
The root of the Democrats problem is they feed from the same trough as the GOP. They can't do anything substantial about health
care or the declining middle class because they'd piss off their donors. Since they can't stand for "the working man" any longer,
they are trying to cobble together "Identity Politics" and "Political Correctness" to eke out a majority. Good luck with that!
They can give us non gender specific restrooms with our Forever War! Why aren't we feeling the love?
I think the time has never been more ripe for a serious third party challenge than 2020.
Realist , May 15, 2019 at 10:42
Perfect thumbnail obituary for the Democratic Party, Skip. It got hijacked by corporatists who saw an opportunity to push the
GOP agenda from both directions. Maybe that's what Hillary meant by "stronger together."
If you want to be entertained and titillated turn on the national evening news shows. The 2020 election circus has already
begun. Don't watch that, switch channels and watch the obstruction of justice infotainment. Want news, read between the lines
of the major newspapers. Go to PBS to be rescued, good luck.
Has it always been thus. Maybe, but it's a much better show today.
If I could figure out long ago Russia-gate was going to lead to Trump's reelection (see above link), you would think Brennan/
Clinton/ Pelosi could figure it out too. Which begs the questions:
Is Trump good for business for the Democratic party financial patrons? Do they really want him impeached? Did the Pied Piper
strategy ever end? Does Bernie Sanders scare them so much they'd rather promote Trump than have Sanders in the Oval Office?
Realist , May 15, 2019 at 10:35
Your last explanation is the one that Jimmy Dore seems to favor. The party string pullers are obviously desperate when they
back one near-octogenarian (Crazy Joe Biden) for the nomination against another near-octogenarian (Sanders). Counter move by the
GOPers may be to run Tricky Dick Nixon's head-in-a-bottle for the office, like in Futurama.
Realist , May 15, 2019 at 02:05
Wow, gotta hand it to McConnell. That man can shamelessly pack multiple whoppers into every single sentence uttered in his
public speaking. Quite a tour de force of pure undiluted bullshit by the turtle. With his rhetorical skills to deliver talking
points at a newly realised zenith, there's sure to be a job for him on Madison Avenue when he's finally kicked to the curb as
happens to every politician when a better snake oil salesman inevitably comes along.
John Sanguinetti , May 15, 2019 at 00:05
I don't get why, supposedly intelligent, informed people are wondering why Russia is being blamed for so much. Let me remind
you that the extremely powerful Israel Lobby is VERY BUSY supporting the agenda of the right wing Likud government in Israel.
One of the goals of Likud is the Zionist agenda that includes Greater Israel which requires Israel to acquire more water and land
in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq, Iran is a very strong supporter of the Palestinians and Syrian President Assad and Iraqi independence
from US domination.
Russia, with it's very effective support for Assad and collaboration with Iran is blocking progress on the
Zionist agenda. So, putting pressure on Russia is a way of trying to force them to back off from their support for Syria and Iran
or at least to scare them with the power of our military and a crazy unpredictable leader who might do anything. Israel has besides
it's VERY STRONG and active lobbies in the US and UK a large and VERY Active 5th column that spends a LOT of money and effort
influencing the people who run our government.
CitizenOne , May 14, 2019 at 23:43
I believe it but with some editing of the authors original four things. I have deleted the case against Assange as a sideshow
that does nor resonate with Americans any more than the nightly rumor mill about celebrities. Here goes.
Americans used to think that Russia-gate was about a plot to hack the 2016 election. They were wrong. Russia-gate is really
about an immense conspiracy to do four things:
No. 1: Ratchet up tensions with Russia to ever more dangerous levels;
No. 2: Show that Democrats are even more useless than people imagined;
No. 3: Win the 2020 elections and reelect Trump and preserve the republican majority in the Senate and win back the democrat
controlled House
No. 4: Wage wars in oil rich nations being Iran and Venezuela to fulfill the agenda of the energy companies via military action.
While McConnell rails against Obama for his weaknesses we have the historical record that Obama declared Venezuela as a national
security threat, levied massive sanctions against Russia for their presumed invasion of Ukraine, launched a war against the Syrian
government, preserved and supported our wars in Afghanistan and in Iraq.
We see today that Chuck Schumer is still committed to the theory that Russia is the single reason that the democrats lost the
last election which is absurd and is rejected by not only a significant number of liberal journalists but also by a majority of
Americans. Why do the democrats continue to promote conspiracy theories that the majority of Americans reject as nonsense?
The republicans have the democrats over a barrel and will push it over and watch the democrats wallow in the mud with much
amusement.
This could not have have happened to the democrats without a complete lack of foresight or even a slightest attempt to rely
on the truth to guide them.
From day one after the election, the democrats swallowed the bait hook line and sinker and now the hook is buried deep in their
gullets and they still insist that they are free swimming fish on a mission to prove Russia was responsible for the last election.
With every gulp they swallow the hook deeper apparently unaware that they are about to be reeled in and captured by their unfounded
beliefs that the bait is is a real meal they can sustain themselves on. Just like a fooled fish they are on the hook.
The announcement that the AG is launching an investigation led by republicans to investigate the Russia Gate investigation
will most certainly tarnish democrats and stain their efforts that will be seen as even more dull as the tarnish they try to put
on Trump. Even uninformed citizens will ask what is up with the democrats who are trying to bring down Trump even though their
reliable news sources tell them that Russia Gate is all a lie.
Meanwhile the democrats who have declared come up not only short on ideas but appear to be suicidal.
Elisabeth Warren has declared war on monopolies in an era where unlimited spending by corporations is legally protected as
free speech. How can she hope to win by pledging to breakup monopolies that are well equipped to outspend her in their bid for
survival?
The democrats have failed to do the math and their strategies for appealing to the masses will be shot down by the right wing
controlled "free press". It is not a liberal press. It is the enemy of liberals controlled by wealthy liberal hating, libertarian
loving billionaires. Public vows by democrats who pledge to destroy it will be met with the full force of their arsenal which
includes complete control over the microphone that steers debate and is the chief influence of elections. As Mark Twain put it,
" It is unwise to wage a war of words against men who buy ink by the barrel".
Howard Dean met his end when the major media outlets conspired to elevate "The Dean Scream" to levels questioning his sanity.
The nearly constant barrage of over 4,000 replays of the Dean Scream leading up to the democratic primaries effectively put an
end to his bid for nomination.
But why did all of the the major media outlets conspire to conduct a character assassination of the Howard Dean movement? Just
two weeks before the Dean Scream was endlessly broadcasted by the media with news commentators chiming in that he was likely an
insane man who must be exposed and stopped in his tracks he made a fatal flaw. He made a campaign speech where he said that if
he was elected he would impose regulations on the media. Boom Boom out went the lights.
How can any democrat win when they oppose corporations that include the media corporations in America? How can Elisabeth Warren
wither the name calling that she will suffer as Trump claims she has a Pocahontas syndrome while also alienating the largest campaign
contributors with her pledge to destroy them? How will her insistence that she has Indian blood possibly win her fans when the
majority of Americans will mock her. They have been honed on the strop of right wing money into believing that everything they
hear and see is factual even though it is not factual or real. Such is the suicidal gamble of the soon to be defeated democratic
party.
Why they continue to go down the path toward blind alleys where they will be trapped and defeated baffles me.
geeyp , May 15, 2019 at 11:32
Why, on this good earth, does anyone pay any attention to Schumer and Schiff and McConnell? Shills, do nothing crackpots and
traitors to this nation; when you see that's what they are, you have to ignore them.
jmg , May 14, 2019 at 19:57
Daniel Lazare: "( ) it must be the fault of dastardly foreigners trying to hack our democracy. It's a deep-rooted form of xenophobia
that has fueled everything ( ) The idea that America may in anyway be responsible for its own fate is of course unthinkable."
Yes, that's the way it is. About WikiLeaks, as they have repeated many times:
"Craig Murray, the former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, who is a close associate of Assange, called the CIA claims 'bullshit',
adding: 'They are absolutely making it up.'
"'I know who leaked them,' Murray said. 'I've met the person who leaked them, and they are certainly not Russian and it's an
insider. It's a leak, not a hack; the two are different things.'"
Important article that shed some light on the methods of disinformation in foreign events used by neoliberal MSM
Notable quotes:
"... However, there is a simple reason why the global agencies, despite their importance, are virtually unknown to the general public. To quote a Swiss media professor: "Radio and television usually do not name their sources, and only specialists can decipher references in magazines." (Blum 1995, P. 9) The motive for this discretion, however, should be clear: news outlets are not particularly keen to let readers know that they haven't researched most of their contributions themselves. ..."
"... Much of our media does not have own foreign correspondents, so they have no choice but to rely completely on global agencies for foreign news. But what about the big daily newspapers and TV stations that have their own international correspondents? In German-speaking countries, for example, these include newspapers such NZZ, FAZ, Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Welt, and public broadcasters. ..."
"... Moreover, in war zones, correspondents rarely venture out. On the Syria war, for example, many journalists "reported" from cities such as Istanbul, Beirut, Cairo or even from Cyprus. In addition, many journalists lack the language skills to understand local people and media. ..."
"... How do correspondents under such circumstances know what the "news" is in their region of the world? The main answer is once again: from global agencies. The Dutch Middle East correspondent Joris Luyendijk has impressively described how correspondents work and how they depend on the world agencies in his book "People Like Us: Misrepresenting the Middle East" : ..."
"... The central role of news agencies also explains why, in geopolitical conflicts, most media use the same original sources. In the Syrian war, for example, the "Syrian Observatory for Human Rights" – a dubious one-man organization based in London – featured prominently. The media rarely inquired directly at this "Observatory", as its operator was in fact difficult to reach, even for journalists. ..."
"... Ulrich Tilgner, a veteran Middle East correspondent for German and Swiss television, warned in 2003, shortly after the Iraq war, of acts of deception by the military and the role played by the media: ..."
"... What is known to the US military, would not be foreign to US intelligence services. In a remarkable report by British Channel 4, former CIA officials and a Reuters correspondent spoke candidly about the systematic dissemination of propaganda and misinformation in reporting on geopolitical conflicts: ..."
"... "In all press systems, the news media are instruments of those who exercise political and economic power. Newspapers, periodicals, radio and television stations do not act independently, although they have the possibility of independent exercise of power." (Altschull 1984/1995, p. 298) ..."
"How does the newspaper know what it knows?" The answer to this question is likely to
surprise some newspaper readers: "The main source of information is stories from news agencies.
The almost anonymously operating news agencies are in a way the key to world events. So what
are the names of these agencies, how do they work and who finances them? To judge how well one
is informed about events in East and West, one should know the answers to these questions."
(Höhne 1977, p. 11)
A Swiss media researcher points out:
"The news agencies are the most important suppliers of material to mass media. No daily
media outlet can manage without them. () So the news agencies influence our image of the
world; above all, we get to know what they have selected." (Blum 1995, p. 9)
In view of their essential importance, it is all the more astonishing that these agencies
are hardly known to the public:
"A large part of society is unaware that news agencies exist at all In fact, they play an
enormously important role in the media market. But despite this great importance, little
attention has been paid to them in the past." (Schulten-Jaspers 2013, p. 13)
Even the head of a news agency noted:
"There is something strange about news agencies. They are little known to the public.
Unlike a newspaper, their activity is not so much in the spotlight, yet they can always be
found at the source of the story." (Segbers 2007, p. 9)
"The Invisible Nerve Center of the Media System"
So what are the names of these agencies that are "always at the source of the story"? There
are now only three global agencies left:
The American Associated Press ( AP ) with over 4000 employees worldwide.
The AP belongs to US media companies and has its main editorial office in New York. AP news
is used by around 12,000 international media outlets, reaching more than half of the world's
population every day.
The quasi-governmental French Agence France-Presse ( AFP ) based in Paris and with around
4000 employees. The AFP sends over 3000 stories and photos every day to media all over the
world.
The British agency Reuters in London, which is privately owned and employs just over 3000
people. Reuters was acquired in 2008 by Canadian media entrepreneur Thomson – one of
the 25 richest people in the world – and merged into Thomson Reuters , headquartered in New York.
In addition, many countries run their own news agencies. However, when it comes to
international news, these usually rely on the three global agencies and simply copy and
translate their reports.
The three global news agencies Reuters, AFP and AP, and the three national agencies of the
German-speaking countries of Austria (APA), Germany (DPA) and Switzerland (SDA).
Wolfgang Vyslozil, former managing director of the Austrian APA, described the key role of
news agencies with these words:
"News agencies are rarely in the public eye. Yet they are one of the most influential and
at the same time one of the least known media types. They are key institutions of substantial
importance to any media system. They are the invisible nerve center that connects all parts
of this system." (Segbers 2007, p.10)
Small abbreviation, great effect
However, there is a simple reason why the global agencies, despite their importance, are
virtually unknown to the general public. To quote a Swiss media professor: "Radio and
television usually do not name their sources, and only specialists can decipher references in
magazines." (Blum 1995, P. 9) The motive for this discretion, however, should be clear: news outlets are not particularly
keen to let readers know that they haven't researched most of their contributions
themselves.
The following figure shows some examples of source tagging in popular German-language
newspapers. Next to the agency abbreviations we find the initials of editors who have edited
the respective agency report.
News agencies as sources in newspaper articles
Occasionally, newspapers use agency material but do not label it at all. A study in 2011
from the Swiss Research Institute for the Public Sphere and Society at the University of
Zurich came to the following conclusions (FOEG 2011):
"Agency contributions are exploited integrally without labeling them, or they are
partially rewritten to make them appear as an editorial contribution. In addition, there is a
practice of 'spicing up' agency reports with little effort; for example, visualization
techniques are used: unpublished agency reports are enriched with images and graphics and
presented as comprehensive reports."
The agencies play a prominent role not only in the press, but also in private and public
broadcasting. This is confirmed by Volker Braeutigam, who worked
for the German state broadcaster ARD for ten years and views the dominance of these agencies
critically:
"One fundamental problem is that the newsroom at ARD sources its information mainly from
three sources: the news agencies DPA/AP, Reuters and AFP: one German/American, one British
and one French. () The editor working on a news topic only needs to select a few text
passages on the screen that he considers essential, rearrange them and glue them together
with a few flourishes."
Swiss Radio and Television (SRF), too, largely bases itself on reports from these agencies.
Asked by viewers why a peace march in Ukraine was not reported, the editors
said : "To date, we have not received a single report of this march from the independent
agencies Reuters, AP and AFP."
In fact, not only the text, but also the images, sound and video recordings that we
encounter in our media every day, are mostly from the very same agencies. What the uninitiated
audience might think of as contributions from their local newspaper or TV station, are actually
copied reports from New York, London and Paris.
Some media have even gone a step further and have, for lack of resources, outsourced their
entire foreign editorial office to an agency. Moreover, it is well known that many news portals
on the internet mostly publish agency reports (see e.g., Paterson 2007, Johnston 2011,
MacGregor 2013).
In the end, this dependency on the global agencies creates a striking similarity in
international reporting: from Vienna to Washington, our media often report the same topics,
using many of the same phrases – a phenomenon that would otherwise rather be associated
with "controlled media" in authoritarian states.
The following graphic shows some examples from German and international publications. As you
can see, despite the claimed objectivity, a slight (geo-)political bias sometimes creeps
in.
"Putin threatens", "Iran provokes", "NATO concerned", "Assad stronghold": Similarities in
content and wording due to reports by global news agencies.
The role of correspondents
Much of our media does not have own foreign correspondents, so they have no choice but to
rely completely on global agencies for foreign news. But what about the big daily newspapers
and TV stations that have their own international correspondents? In German-speaking countries,
for example, these include newspapers such NZZ, FAZ, Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Welt, and public
broadcasters.
First of all, the size ratios should be kept in mind: while the global agencies have several
thousand employees worldwide, even the Swiss newspaper NZZ, known for its international
reporting, maintains only 35 foreign correspondents (including their business correspondents).
In huge countries such as China or India, only one correspondent is stationed; all of South
America is covered by only two journalists, while in even larger Africa no-one is on the ground
permanently.
Moreover, in war zones, correspondents rarely venture out. On the Syria war, for example,
many journalists "reported" from cities such as Istanbul, Beirut, Cairo or even from Cyprus. In
addition, many journalists lack the language skills to understand local people and media.
How do correspondents under such circumstances know what the "news" is in their region of
the world? The main answer is once again: from global agencies. The Dutch Middle East
correspondent Joris Luyendijk has impressively described how correspondents work and how they
depend on the world agencies in his book "People Like Us:
Misrepresenting the Middle East" :
"I'd imagined correspondents to be historians-of-the-moment. When something important
happened, they'd go after it, find out what was going on, and report on it. But I didn't go
off to find out what was going on; that had been done long before. I went along to present an
on-the-spot report. ()
The editors in the Netherlands called when something happened, they faxed or emailed the
press releases, and I'd retell them in my own words on the radio, or rework them into an
article for the newspaper. This was the reason my editors found it more important that I
could be reached in the place itself than that I knew what was going on. The news agencies
provided enough information for you to be able to write or talk you way through any crisis or
summit meeting.
That's why you often come across the same images and stories if you leaf through a few
different newspapers or click the news channels.
Our men and women in London, Paris, Berlin and Washington bureaus – all thought that
wrong topics were dominating the news and that we were following the standards of the news
agencies too slavishly. ()
The common idea about correspondents is that they 'have the story', () but the reality is
that the news is a conveyor belt in a bread factory. The correspondents stand at the end of
the conveyor belt, pretending we've baked that white loaf ourselves, while in fact all we've
done is put it in its wrapping. ()
Afterwards, a friend asked me how I'd managed to answer all the questions during those
cross-talks, every hour and without hesitation. When I told him that, like on the TV-news,
you knew all the questions in advance, his e-mailed response came packed with expletives. My
friend had relalized that, for decades, what he'd been watching and listening to on the news
was pure theatre." (Luyendjik 2009, p. 20-22, 76, 189)
In other words, the typical correspondent is in general not able to do independent research,
but rather deals with and reinforces those topics that are already prescribed by the news
agencies – the notorious "mainstream effect".
In addition, for cost-saving reasons many media outlets nowadays have to share their few
foreign correspondents, and within individual media groups, foreign reports are often used by
several publications – none of which contributes to diversity in reporting.
"What the agency does not report, does not take place"
The central role of news agencies also explains why, in geopolitical conflicts, most media
use the same original sources. In the Syrian war, for example, the "Syrian Observatory for
Human Rights" – a dubious one-man organization based in London – featured
prominently. The media rarely inquired directly at this "Observatory", as its operator was in
fact difficult to reach, even for journalists.
Rather, the "Observatory" delivered its stories to global agencies, which then forwarded
them to thousands of media outlets, which in turn "informed" hundreds of millions of readers
and viewers worldwide. The reason why the agencies, of all places, referred to this strange
"Observatory" in their reporting – and who really financed it – is a question that
was rarely asked.
The former chief editor of the German news agency DPA, Manfred Steffens, therefore states in
his book "The Business of News":
"A news story does not become more correct simply because one is able to provide a source
for it. It is indeed rather questionable to trust a news story more just because a source is
cited. () Behind the protective shield such a 'source' means for a news story, some people
are quite inclined to spread rather adventurous things, even if they themselves have
legitimate doubts about their correctness; the responsibility, at least morally, can always
be attributed to the cited source." (Steffens 1969, p. 106)
Dependence on global agencies is also a major reason why media coverage of geopolitical
conflicts is often superficial and erratic, while historic relationships and background are
fragmented or altogether absent. As put by Steffens:
"News agencies receive their impulses almost exclusively from current events and are
therefore by their very nature ahistoric. They are reluctant to add any more context than is
strictly required." (Steffens 1969, p. 32)
Finally, the dominance of global agencies explains why certain geopolitical issues and
events – which often do not fit very well into the US/NATO narrative or are too
"unimportant" – are not mentioned in our media at all: if the agencies do not report on
something, then most Western media will not be aware of it. As pointed out on the occasion of
the 50th anniversary of the German DPA: "What the agency does not report, does not take place."
(Wilke 2000, p. 1)
While some topics do not appear at all in our media, other topics are very prominent –
even though they shouldn't actually be: "Often the mass media do not report on reality, but on
a constructed or staged reality. () Several studies have shown that the mass media are
predominantly determined by PR activities and that passive, receptive attitudes outweigh
active-researching ones." (Blum 1995, p. 16)
In fact, due to the rather low journalistic performance of our media and their high
dependence on a few news agencies, it is easy for interested parties to spread propaganda and
disinformation in a supposedly respectable format to a worldwide audience. DPA editor Steffens
warned of this danger:
"The critical sense gets more lulled the more respected the news agency or newspaper is.
Someone who wants to introduce a questionable story into the world press only needs to try to
put his story in a reasonably reputable agency, to be sure that it then appears a little
later in the others. Sometimes it happens that a hoax passes from agency to agency and
becomes ever more credible." (Steffens 1969, p. 234)
Among the most active actors in "injecting" questionable geopolitical news are the military
and defense ministries. For example, in 2009, the head of the American news agency AP, Tom
Curley,
made public that the Pentagon employs more than 27,000 PR specialists who, with a budget of
nearly $ 5 billion a year, are working the media and circulating targeted manipulations. In
addition, high-ranking US generals had threatened that they would "ruin" the AP and him if the
journalists reported too critically on the US military.
Despite – or because of? – such threats our media regularly publish dubious
stories sourced to some unnamed "informants" from "US defense circles".
Ulrich Tilgner, a veteran Middle East correspondent for German and Swiss television, warned
in 2003, shortly after the Iraq war, of acts of deception by the military and the role played
by the media:
"With the help of the media, the military determine the public perception and use it for
their plans. They manage to stir expectations and spread scenarios and deceptions. In this
new kind of war, the PR strategists of the US administration fulfill a similar function as
the bomber pilots. The special departments for public relations in the Pentagon and in the
secret services have become combatants in the information war. () The US military
specifically uses the lack of transparency in media coverage for their deception maneuvers.
The way they spread information, which is then picked up and distributed by newspapers and
broadcasters, makes it impossible for readers, listeners or viewers to trace the original
source. Thus, the audience will fail to recognize the actual intention of the military."
(Tilgner 2003, p. 132)
What is known to the US military, would not be foreign to US intelligence services. In a
remarkable report
by British Channel 4, former CIA officials and a Reuters correspondent spoke candidly about the
systematic dissemination of propaganda and misinformation in reporting on geopolitical
conflicts:
Former CIA officer and whistleblower John Stockwell said of his work in the
Angolan war,
"The basic theme was to make it look like an [enemy] aggression in Angola. So any kind of
story that you could write and get into the media anywhere in the world, that pushed that
line, we did. One third of my staff in this task force were covert action, were
propagandists, whose professional career job was to make up stories and finding ways of
getting them into the press. () The editors in most Western newspapers are not too skeptical
of messages that conform to general views and prejudices. () So we came up with another
story, and it was kept going for weeks. () [But] it was all fiction."
Fred Bridgland
looked back on his work as a war correspondent for the Reuters agency: "We based our reports on
official communications. It was not until years later that I learned a little CIA
disinformation expert had sat in the US embassy, in Lusaka and composed that communiqué,
and it bore no relation at all to truth. () Basically, and to put it very crudely, you can
publish any old crap and it will get newspaper room."
And former CIA analyst David MacMichael described his work in the
Contra War in Nicaragua with these words:
"They said our intelligence of Nicaragua was so good that we could even register when
someone flushed a toilet. But I had the feeling that the stories we were giving to the press
came straight out of the toilet." (Hird 1985)
Of course, the intelligence services also have a large number of direct contacts in our media,
which can be "leaked" information to if necessary. But without the central role of the global
news agencies, the worldwide synchronization of propaganda and disinformation would never be so
efficient.
Through this "propaganda multiplier", dubious stories from PR experts working for
governments, military and intelligence services reach the general public more or less unchecked
and unfiltered. The journalists refer to the news agencies and the news agencies refer to their
sources. Although they often attempt to point out uncertainties with terms such as "apparent",
"alleged" and the like – by then the rumor has long been spread to the world and its
effect taken place.
The Propaganda Multiplier: Governments, military and intelligence services using global
news agencies to disseminate their messages to a worldwide audience.
As the New York Times reported
In addition to global news agencies, there is another source that is often used by media
outlets around the world to report on geopolitical conflicts, namely the major publications in
Great Britain and the US.
For example, news outlets like the New York Times or BBC have up to 100 foreign
correspondents and other external employees. However, Middle East correspondent Luyendijk
points out:
"Dutch news teams, me included, fed on the selection of news made by quality media like
CNN, the BBC, and the New York Times . We did that on the assumption
that their correspondents understood the Arab world and commanded a view of it – but
many of them turned out not to speak Arabic, or at least not enough to be able to have a
conversation in it or to follow the local media. Many of the top dogs at CNN, the BBC, the
Independent, the Guardian, the New Yorker, and the NYT were more often than not dependent on
assistants and translators." (Luyendijk p. 47)
In addition, the sources of these media outlets are often not easy to verify ("military
circles", "anonymous government officials", "intelligence officials" and the like) and can
therefore also be used for the dissemination of propaganda. In any case, the widespread
orientation towards the Anglo-Saxon publications leads to a further convergence in the
geopolitical coverage in our media.
The following figure shows some examples of such citation based on the Syria coverage of the
largest daily newspaper in Switzerland, Tages-Anzeiger. The articles are all from the first
days of October 2015, when Russia for the first time intervened directly in the Syrian war
(US/UK sources are highlighted):
Frequent citation of British and US media, exemplified by the Syria war coverage of Swiss
daily newspaper Tages-Anzeiger in October 2015.
The desired narrative
But why do journalists in our media not simply try to research and report independently of
the global agencies and the Anglo-Saxon media? Middle East correspondent Luyendijk describes
his experiences:
"You might suggest that I should have looked for sources I could trust. I did try, but
whenever I wanted to write a story without using news agencies, the main Anglo-Saxon media,
or talking heads, it fell apart. () Obviously I, as a correspondent, could tell very
different stories about one and the same situation. But the media could only present one of
them, and often enough, that was exactly the story that confirmed the prevailing image."
(Luyendijk p.54ff)
Media researcher Noam Chomsky has described this effect in his essay "What makes the mainstream media mainstream" as
follows: "If you leave the official line, if you produce dissenting reports, then you will soon
feel this. () There are many ways to get you back in line quickly. If you don't follow the
guidelines, you will not keep your job long. This system works pretty well, and it reflects
established power structures." (Chomsky 1997)
Nevertheless, some of the leading journalists continue to believe that nobody can tell them
what to write. How does this add up? Media researcher Chomsky clarifies the apparent contradiction:
"[T]he point is that they wouldn't be there unless they had already demonstrated that
nobody has to tell them what to write because they are going say the right thing. If they had
started off at the Metro desk, or something, and had pursued the wrong kind of stories, they
never would have made it to the positions where they can now say anything they like. () They
have been through the socialization system." (Chomsky 1997)
Ultimately, this "socialization process" leads to a journalism that generally no longer
independently researches and critically reports on geopolitical conflicts (and some other
topics), but seeks to consolidate the desired narrative through appropriate editorials,
commentary, and interviewees.
Conclusion: The "First Law of Journalism"
Former AP journalist Herbert Altschull called it the First Law of Journalism:
"In all press systems, the news media are instruments of those who exercise political and
economic power. Newspapers, periodicals, radio and television stations do not act
independently, although they have the possibility of independent exercise of power."
(Altschull 1984/1995, p. 298)
In that sense, it is logical that our traditional media – which are predominantly
financed by advertising or the state – represent the geopolitical interests of the
transatlantic alliance, given that both the advertising corporations as well as the states
themselves are dependent on the US dominated transatlantic economic and security
architecture.
In addition, our leading media and their key people are – in the spirit of Chomsky's
"socialization" – often themselves part of the networks of the transatlantic elite. Some
of the most important institutions in this regard include the US Council on Foreign Relations
(CFR), the Bilderberg Group, and the Trilateral Commission (see in-depth study of these networks
).
Indeed, most well-known publications basically may be seen as "establishment media". This is
because, in the past, the freedom of the press was rather theoretical, given significant entry
barriers such as broadcasting licenses, frequency slots, requirements for financing and
technical infrastructure, limited sales channels, dependence on advertising, and other
restrictions.
It was only due to the Internet that Altschull's First Law has been broken to some extent.
Thus, in recent years a high-quality, reader-funded journalism has emerged, often outperforming
traditional media in terms of critical reporting. Some of these "alternative" publications
already reach a very large audience, showing that the „mass" does not have to be a
problem for the quality of a media outlet.
Nevertheless, up to now the traditional media has been able to attract a solid majority of
online visitors, too. This, in turn, is closely linked to the hidden role of news agencies,
whose up-to-the-minute reports form the backbone of most news portals.
Will "political and economic power", according to Altschull's Law, retain control over the
news, or will "uncontrolled" news change the political and economic power structure? The coming
years will show.
Case study: Syria war coverage
As part of a case study, the Syria war coverage of nine leading daily newspapers from
Germany, Austria and Switzerland were examined for plurality of viewpoints and reliance on news
agencies. The following newspapers were selected:
For Germany: Die Welt, Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ), and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
(FAZ)
For Switzerland: Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ), Tagesanzeiger (TA), and Basler Zeitung
(BaZ)
For Austria: Standard, Kurier, and Die Presse
The investigation period was defined as October 1 to 15, 2015, i.e. the first two weeks
after Russia's direct intervention in the Syrian conflict. The entire print and online coverage
of these newspapers was taken into account. Any Sunday editions were not taken into account, as
not all of the newspapers examined have such. In total, 381 newspaper articles met the stated
criteria.
In a first step, the articles were classified according to their properties into the
following groups:
Agencies : Reports from news agencies (with agency code)
Mixed : Simple reports (with author names) that are based in whole or in part on agency
reports
Reports : Editorial background reports and analyzes
Opinions/Comments : Opinions and guest comments
Interviews : interviews with experts, politicians etc.
Investigative : Investigative research that reveals new information or context
The following Figure 1 shows the composition of the articles for the nine newspapers
analyzed in total. As can be seen, 55% of articles were news agency reports; 23% editorial
reports based on agency material; 9% background reports; 10% opinions and guest comments; 2%
interviews; and 0% based on investigative research.
Figure 1: Types of articles (total; n=381)
The pure agency texts – from short notices to the detailed reports – were mostly
on the Internet pages of the daily newspapers: on the one hand, the pressure for breaking news
is higher than in the printed edition, on the other hand, there are no space restrictions. Most
other types of articles were found in both the online and printed editions; some exclusive
interviews and background reports were found only in the printed editions. All items were
collected only once for the investigation.
The following Figure 2 shows the same classification on a per newspaper basis. During the
observation period (two weeks), most newspapers published between 40 and 50 articles on the
Syrian conflict (print and online). In the German newspaper Die Welt there were more
(58), in the Basler Zeitung and the Austrian Kurier , however, significantly less
(29 or 33).
Depending on which newspaper, the share of agency reports is almost 50% (Welt,
Süddeutsche, NZZ, Basler Zeitung), just under 60% (FAZ, Tagesanzeiger), and 60 to 70%
(Presse, Standard, Kurier). Together with the agency-based reports, the proportion in most
newspapers is between approx. 70% and 80%. These proportions are consistent with previous media
studies (e.g., Blum 1995, Johnston 2011, MacGregor 2013, Paterson 2007).
In the background reports, the Swiss newspapers were leading (five to six pieces), followed
by Welt , Süddeutsche and Standard (four each) and the other
newspapers (one to three). The background reports and analyzes were in particular devoted to
the situation and development in the Middle East, as well as to the motives and interests of
individual actors (for example Russia, Turkey, the Islamic State).
However, most of the commentaries were to be found in the German newspapers (seven comments
each), followed by Standard (five), NZZ and Tagesanzeiger (four each).
Basler Zeitung did not publish any commentaries during the observation period, but two
interviews. Other interviews were conducted by Standard (three) and Kurier and
Presse (one each). Investigative research, however, could not be found in any of the
newspapers.
In particular, in the case of the three German newspapers, a journalistically problematic
blending of opinion pieces and reports was noted. Reports contained strong expressions of
opinion even though they were not marked as commentary. The present study was in any case based
on the article labeling by the newspaper.
Figure 2: Types of articles per newspaper
The following Figure 3 shows the breakdown of agency stories (by agency abbreviation) for
each news agency, in total and per country. The 211 agency reports carried a total of 277
agency codes (a story may consist of material from more than one agency). In total, 24% of
agency reports came from the AFP; about 20% each by the DPA, APA and Reuters; 9% of the SDA; 6%
of the AP; and 11% were unknown (no labeling or blanket term "agencies").
In Germany, the DPA, AFP and Reuters each have a share of about one third of the news
stories. In Switzerland, the SDA and the AFP are in the lead, and in Austria, the APA and
Reuters.
In fact, the shares of the global agencies AFP, AP and Reuters are likely to be even higher,
as the Swiss SDA and the Austrian APA obtain their international reports mainly from the global
agencies and the German DPA cooperates closely with the American AP.
It should also be noted that, for historical reasons, the global agencies are represented
differently in different regions of the world. For events in Asia, Ukraine or Africa, the share
of each agency will therefore be different than from events in the Middle East.
Figure 3: Share of news agencies, total (n=277) and per country
In the next step, central statements were used to rate the orientation of editorial opinions
(28), guest comments (10) and interview partners (7) (a total of 45 articles). As Figure 4
shows, 82% of the contributions were generally US/NATO friendly, 16% neutral or balanced, and
2% predominantly US/NATO critical.
The only predominantly US/NATO-critical contribution was an op-ed in the Austrian
Standard on October 2, 2015, titled: "The strategy of regime change has failed. A
distinction between ‚good' and ‚bad' terrorist groups in Syria makes the Western
policy untrustworthy."
Figure 4: Orientation of editorial opinions, guest comments, and interviewees (total;
n=45).
The following Figure 5 shows the orientation of the contributions, guest comments and
interviewees, in turn broken down by individual newspapers. As can be seen, Welt,
Süddeutsche Zeitung, NZZ, Zürcher Tagesanzeiger and the Austrian newspaper
Kurier presented exclusively US/NATO-friendly opinion and guest contributions; this goes
for FAZ too, with the exception of one neutral/balanced contribution. The
Standard brought four US/NATO friendly, three balanced/neutral, as well as the already
mentioned US/NATO critical opinion contributions.
Presse was the only one of the examined newspapers to predominantly publish
neutral/balanced opinions and guest contributions. The Basler Zeitung published one
US/NATO-friendly and one balanced contribution. Shortly after the observation period (October
16, 2015), Basler Zeitung also published an interview with the President of the Russian
Parliament. This would of course have been counted as a contribution critical of the
US/NATO.
Figure 5: Basic orientation of opinion pieces and interviewees per newspaper
In a further analysis, a full-text keyword search for "propaganda" (and word combinations
thereof) was used to investigate in which cases the newspapers themselves identified propaganda
in one of the two geopolitical conflict sides, USA/NATO or Russia (the participant "IS/ISIS"
was not considered). In total, twenty such cases were identified. Figure 6 shows the result: in
85% of the cases, propaganda was identified on the Russian side of the conflict, in 15% the
identification was neutral or unstated, and in 0% of the cases propaganda was identified on the
USA/NATO side of the conflict.
It should be noted that about half of the cases (nine) were in the Swiss NZZ , which
spoke of Russian propaganda quite frequently ("Kremlin propaganda", "Moscow propaganda
machine", "propaganda stories", "Russian propaganda apparatus" etc.), followed by German
FAZ (three), Welt and Süddeutsche Zeitung (two each) and the Austrian
newspaper Kurier (one). The other newspapers did not mention propaganda, or only in a
neutral context (or in the context of IS).
Figure 6: Attribution of propaganda to conflict parties (total; n=20).
Conclusion
In this case study, the geopolitical coverage in nine leading daily newspapers from Germany,
Austria and Switzerland was examined for diversity and journalistic performance using the
example of the Syrian war.
The results confirm the high dependence on the global news agencies (63 to 90%, excluding
commentaries and interviews) and the lack of own investigative research, as well as the rather
biased commenting on events in favor of the US/NATO side (82% positive; 2% negative), whose
stories were not checked by the newspapers for any propaganda.
*
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"... Looks like Robert Mueller was a dirty cop hired to confirm fairy tales of Russian collusion peddled by a Clinton wing of Dems (DemoRats) sing Trump. And he enjoyed the full support of several intelligence agencies brass (especially FBI brass; initially Stzkok was one of his investigators) ..."
"... Before that Mueller was in charge of 9/11 and Anthrax scare investigations. So he is a card caring member of the neoliberal elite which converted the USA into what can be called the "National Security State" ..."
"... In order for a person to obstruct justice, there must be some justice to obstruct. Hence, if the alleged obstructer did not commit the underlying crime being investigated, then his so-called obstruction did not impair justice; it just impaired a fruitless investigation ..."
"... the USA squabble over Parteigenosse Mueller Final Report between two factions of neoliberal elite makes the USA a joke in the eyes of the whole world ..."
"... Hopefully, a more sound part of the USA elite, which Barr represents, will put some sand into those wheels. His decision to investigate the origin of Russiagate produced almost a heart attack for Pelosi. And the fact that he decided to skip his auto-da-fé at the House adds insult to injury. Poor Pelosi almost lost her mind. ..."
"... Out of democratic challengers IMHO only Tulsi Gabbard can probably attract a sizable faction of former Trump supporters and she is the most reviled, ignored, and slandered by DNC liberals and neocons alike candidate. ..."
"... The truth is that the color revolution against Donald Trump (a soft coup if you wish) failed. Now he badly needs to win in 2020 to avoid an indictment in NY State when he leaves the Presidency. It is just a matter of survival for him. ..."
"... Neoliberal Democrats will help him by putting their weakest pro-war candidate like the aged, apparently slightly demented neocon Joe Biden. With his rabid neoliberal past, neocon foreign policy past, Ukrainian skeletons in the closet and probably participation in the Obama administration dirty and criminal attempt to derail Trump using intelligence agencies as the leverage. ..."
"... Just like is the case with Boeing the situation for neoliberal democrats does not look promising. The world is starting to crash all around them. ..."
The F.B.I. surveillance didn't come out until after the election. Therefore it couldn't impact the election. McConnell threatened
to shriek "partisan politics!" if Obama said anything publicly about the Russian issue. Obama didn't. Claims of partisan behavior?
Bullshit.
What about proven attempts of entrapments and inserting spies into Trump campaign?
Mifsud and Halper's stories come to mind (Halper's story has an interesting "seduction" subplot with undercover FBI informant
Azra Turk). FBI and Justice Department brass acted as dirty mafia style politicians. McCabe and Brennan are two shining examples here. Probably guided personally by Obama, who being grown in a family of CIA operatives
probably know this color revolutions "kitchen" all too well.
BTW Hillary did destroy evidence from her "bathroom server" while under subpoena.
Looks like Robert Mueller was a dirty cop hired to confirm fairy tales of Russian collusion peddled by a Clinton wing of
Dems (DemoRats) sing Trump. And he enjoyed the full support of several intelligence agencies brass (especially FBI brass; initially
Stzkok was one of his investigators)
Before that Mueller was in charge of 9/11 and Anthrax scare investigations. So he is a card caring member of the neoliberal
elite which converted the USA into what can be called the "National Security State"
Which looks like classic Mussolini Italy with two guiding principles of jurisprudence applied to political enemies:
(1) To my friends, everything; to my enemies, the law (originated in 1933) .
(2) Show me the man, and I'll show you the crime (that actually comes from Stalinism period of the USSR, but the spirit is the
same) .
It was actually Barr who saved Trump from obstruction of justice charge. He based his defense on the interpretation of the
statuses the following (actually very elegant) way:
In order for a person to obstruct justice, there must be some justice to obstruct. Hence, if the alleged obstructer did
not commit the underlying crime being investigated, then his so-called obstruction did not impair justice; it just impaired
a fruitless investigation
Of course, that upset DemoRats who want President Pence to speed up the destruction of the USA and adding a couple of new wars
to list the USA is involved.
Mueller was extremely sloppy and one-sided in writing his final report. Which is given taking into account his real task: to
sink Trump. As Nunes aptly observed about his treatment of Mifsud as a Russian agent :
"If he is, in fact, a Russian agent, it would be one of the biggest intelligence scandals for not only the United States,
but also our allies like the Italians and the Brits and others. Because if Mifsud is a Russian agent, he would know all kinds
of our intelligence agents throughout the globe
likbez , May 4, 2019 10:11 pm
run75441,
Yes, of course, in the current neo-McCarthyism atmosphere merely passing the salt to a Russian guest at a dinner party makes
you "an unregistered foreign agent" of Russia bent on implementing Putin's evil plans and colliding with Russian government ;-).
It looks like you are unable/unwilling to understand the logic behind my post. With all due respect, the situation is very
dangerous -- when the neoliberal elite relies on lies almost exclusively as a matter of policy (look at Kamala Harris questioning
Barr -- she is not stupid, she is an evil, almost taken from Orwell 1984, character), IMHO the neoliberal society is doomed. Sooner
or later.
Currently, the USA squabble over Parteigenosse Mueller Final Report between two factions of neoliberal elite makes the
USA a joke in the eyes of the whole world and Democrats look like Italian Fascists in 30th: a party hell-bent of dominance
which does not care about laws or legitimacy one bit and can use entrapment and other dirty methods to achieve its goals.
Hopefully, a more sound part of the USA elite, which Barr represents, will put some sand into those wheels. His decision
to investigate the origin of Russiagate produced almost a heart attack for Pelosi. And the fact that he decided to skip his auto-da-fé
at the House adds insult to injury. Poor Pelosi almost lost her mind.
Neoliberals and neoconservatives joined ranks behind Russiagate and continue to push it because otherwise they need to be held
accountable for all the related neoliberal disasters in the USA since 1980th including sliding standard of living, disappearance
of "good" jobs, sky-high cost of university education and medical insurance, and the last but not least, Hillary fiasco.
Trump ran to the left of Clinton in foreign policy and used disillusionment of working close with neoliberal Democratic Party
to his advantage promising jobs, end of outsourcing, end of uncontrolled immigration, and increased standard of living. He betrayed
all those promises, but, still, that's why he won.
And that why the neoliberal establishment must present his election as de facto illegitimate, because otherwise they would
be forced to admit that the bipartisan consensus around both financialization driven economics (casino capitalism) and imperial,
war on terror based interventionism that are the foundation of the USA neoliberal elite politics since Clinton has been a disaster
for most ordinary Americans -- of all political persuasions.
Out of democratic challengers IMHO only Tulsi Gabbard can probably attract a sizable faction of former Trump supporters
and she is the most reviled, ignored, and slandered by DNC liberals and neocons alike candidate.
The truth is that the color revolution against Donald Trump (a soft coup if you wish) failed. Now he badly needs to win
in 2020 to avoid an indictment in NY State when he leaves the Presidency. It is just a matter of survival for him.
Neoliberal Democrats will help him by putting their weakest pro-war candidate like the aged, apparently slightly demented
neocon Joe Biden. With his rabid neoliberal past, neocon foreign policy past, Ukrainian skeletons in the closet and probably participation
in the Obama administration dirty and criminal attempt to derail Trump using intelligence agencies as the leverage.
Just like is the case with Boeing the situation for neoliberal democrats does not look promising. The world is starting
to crash all around them.
This is probably the best article available on the Web that describes the case objectively.
Notable quotes:
"... It's true that Butina attended conferences, met prominent political figures, and hashed out plans to exert influence in service of pursuing a policy agenda. But in a different context, all these activities might instead be viewed as 'networking' – a practice so commonplace in Washington that you're considered an oddball if you don't engage in it. ..."
"... Absent the Russian aspect, Butina's type is wholly recognizable: an overly-ambitious young person galavanting around the Capitol with dreams of establishing some quasi-ideological enterprise, hoping it could eventually yield comfortable sinecures at think tanks, lobbying firms, advocacy organizations, or some combination thereof – possibly with a brief detour in government service if things pan out. Her particular niche, trying to link up gun rights activism in the United States and Russia (where the issue is practically non-existent), was especially ripe for someone who styles herself a political 'entrepreneur,' or whatever. ..."
"... She did appear to have some connections to Russian state officials, or rather, one specific official: the former deputy director at the Russian central bank. But then again, innumerable people in Washington have all sorts of contacts with various foreign officials. ..."
"... In her 2015 ' proposal ' unearthed by law enforcement, Butina correctly observed that the Republican party is 'traditionally associated with negative and aggressive foreign policy, particularly with regards to Russia,' and indicated her belief that opening informal channels of communication between the US conservative movement and sympathetic Russian figures could mitigate the harms of a potential incoming GOP administration. ..."
"... After all, the previous GOP nominee at that point, Mitt Romney, was well-known for declaring Russia to be America's 'number one geopolitical foe,' and anti-Russia hawkishness was still considered the default position in the party. In another world, the kind of amateur, self-starting diplomacy she envisioned would be lauded as a respectable, if haphazard, means of achieving small-scale détente. ..."
"... Like most Russia stories of recent vintage, the Butina one followed a familiar trajectory. An initial torrent of screaming, salacious headlines, which at first glance seem to portend an earth-shattering 'bombshell,' but upon closer inspection need to be downplayed, heavily qualified, or even retracted. 'Maria Butina, Suspected Secret Agent, Used Sex in Covert Plan, Prosecutors Say,' proclaimed the initial New York Times ..."
"... And to top it all off, her admission of guilt was acquired under the duress of solitary confinement , which Butina has now been subjected to for several months. Solitary confinement is widely denounced as torture, but few seem troubled by that anymore, now that the depravity of the tactic has assisted in extracting a guilty plea from this suspicious foreign woman. It's all exceptionally egregious, not least for Butina herself, who has been tarred irreparably by yet another unscrupulous media and prosecutorial campaign – the kind of thing that has seemed all too common throughout this wider Russian 'interference' frenzy. ..."
It seems entirely plausible that her biggest crime was networking
To much fanfare and
glee last week, federal prosecutors announced a plea deal had been secured for Maria Butina,
the mystery woman who populated DC conservative circles for a short period around the 2016
election. The popular interpretation of her travails, circulated with gusto in the press since
her arrest in July, was that Butina – an attractive young woman, and, most damningly, a
Russian national – had used her sexual prowess to trick gullible middle-aged Republican
men into granting her access. She did this, or so the story went, at the behest of her menacing
benefactors as part of the sprawling Kremlin campaign to 'interfere' in American politics.
It's true that Butina attended conferences, met prominent political figures, and hashed
out plans to exert influence in service of pursuing a policy agenda. But in a different
context, all these activities might instead be viewed as 'networking' – a practice so
commonplace in Washington that you're considered an oddball if you don't engage in
it.
Absent the Russian aspect, Butina's type is wholly recognizable: an overly-ambitious
young person galavanting around the Capitol with dreams of establishing some quasi-ideological
enterprise, hoping it could eventually yield comfortable sinecures at think tanks, lobbying
firms, advocacy organizations, or some combination thereof – possibly with a brief detour
in government service if things pan out. Her particular niche, trying to link up gun rights
activism in the United States and Russia (where the issue is practically non-existent), was
especially ripe for someone who styles herself a political 'entrepreneur,' or
whatever.
She did appear to have some connections to Russian state officials, or rather, one
specific official: the former deputy director at the Russian central bank. But then again,
innumerable people in Washington have all sorts of contacts with various foreign
officials. They often use these connections (or the appearance thereof) to establish
leverage with whoever it is they're trying to regale on a given evening. And strictures
governing when it's required to formally register their activities are so hazy and infrequently
enforced that it wouldn't be surprising if Butina, a slightly oblivious graduate student, was
legitimately unaware that what she was doing could have been construed as violating federal
law. Never mind whether it may have been perceived after the fact to be part of some mammoth
conspiracy to infiltrate the US political system. Notably, her great plan to forge connections
within the GOP, uncovered by diligent prosecutors suddenly interested in such matters, was
hatched all the way back in March 2015 – well before Trump announced his presidential
campaign, and long before having 'Russian contacts' was seen as inherently sinister.
In her 2015 ' proposal ' unearthed by
law enforcement, Butina correctly observed that the Republican party is 'traditionally
associated with negative and aggressive foreign policy, particularly with regards to Russia,'
and indicated her belief that opening informal channels of communication between the US
conservative movement and sympathetic Russian figures could mitigate the harms of a potential
incoming GOP administration.
After all, the previous GOP nominee at that point, Mitt Romney, was well-known for
declaring Russia to be America's 'number one geopolitical foe,' and anti-Russia hawkishness was
still considered the default position in the party. In another world, the kind of amateur,
self-starting diplomacy she envisioned would be lauded as a respectable, if haphazard, means of
achieving small-scale détente. Instead today it's cast in the most ominous possible
light, as evidence of some grand 'influence operation,' with no mind paid to the actual purpose
of the supposed 'influence' – reducing tensions between two nuclear-armed powers, who in
the past have brought each other to the brink of existential annihilation.
None of this is to say that Butina was operating from a place of altruistic purity, or even
that the manner in which she pursued her goals was particularly sanguine. It's simply to say
that her opportunistic careerism is fully within the mainstream in Washington, and in fact
encouraged at the various 'leadership' seminars, internship how-to sessions, and similar
functions that are so trivially common it's easy to imagine her having attended several. All
that's really notable about Butina is that she happened to be Russian, and being Russian in the
current political atmosphere is automatically viewed as interchangeable with surreptitious,
conspiratorial spycraft, especially when woven into the larger narrative about 'interference'
that has dominated American politics for more than two years.
Though the initial explosion of media frenzy around her case over the summer had Butina
depicted as a '
spy ,' in fact nothing that Butina is alleged to have done at all resembles 'spycraft' in
the sense that term is popularly understood. There was nothing remotely clandestine about her
activities, considering she documented them all comprehensively on social media (often to the
point of cringe-inducing excess). She took part in public events, apparently without appearing
in disguise, and even made her presence known by posing a question to Donald Trump himself at
a conference in Las Vegas. If she was trying to fly below the radar in a bid to establish
stealth influence channels, she went about it in a curiously above-board fashion. And as the
monotonous Instagram chronicling demonstrates, she followed all the established protocols
insofar as contemporary 'brand-building' exercises go. Seeking out selfie photos with notable
Republican politicians, including
Scott Walker and Rick Santorum , would not
have been a wise way to conceal her identity in pursuit of espionage. But thanks to resurgent
Trump-era
prosecutorial zeal, this now makes her some sort of subterfuge practitioner operating under the
sinister auspices of the Russian federation. If you know enough political hangers-on, you know
the type who make it their life mission to take photos with as many prominent politicians as
possible. It's banal and annoying, but again: not abnormal.
Prosecutors ultimately charged her not as a spy as an unregistered 'agent,' which was a bit
of a downer for those banking on her to be the pivotal figure in a wider criminal scheme.
Michael Isikoff, co-author of the book Russian Roulette , bemoaned in a
recent interview that 'the government doesn't have the evidence to back up what a lot of us
expected' regarding Butina's presumed centrality in some larger plot. In their book, Isikoff
and co-author David Corn speculate that Butina could have been the facilitator of a giant money
laundering operation to funnel Russian money through the National Rifle Association and help
elect Trump. But sadly for them, it didn't pan out. Prosecutors 'would not have let her plead
to a relatively minor charge' if the operation he and Corn prophesied was real, Isikoff
conceded.
Like most Russia stories of recent vintage, the Butina one followed a familiar
trajectory. An initial torrent of screaming, salacious headlines, which at first glance seem to
portend an earth-shattering 'bombshell,' but upon closer inspection need to be downplayed,
heavily qualified, or even retracted. 'Maria Butina, Suspected Secret Agent, Used Sex in Covert
Plan, Prosecutors Say,' proclaimed
the initial New York Times news-blast after her arrest. 'Prosecutors Say' would be the
key clause there, because prosecutors later admitted they had no
basis for alleging that Butina 'used sex' in any such manner.
And that, ultimately, is the most sordid and gross aspect of all this: the way she was
depicted as a scurrilous, transactional seductress. Though prosecutors later withdrew the
charge, it still litters the internet, and probably will for the rest of time –
permanently sullying her reputation. The depiction drew on sleazy stereotypes of young Russian
women, or in other words, her ethnic heritage, and there's absolutely no doubt that in any
other context the smear-job would have been (rightly) denounced as the pathetic sexist tripe it
so clearly was. Think of it: this ambitious young woman, seeking to further her influence and
connections in Washington through a variety of tactics that would be otherwise known as
'networking' – was depicted as a succubus, on the basis of nothing but journalists' and
prosecutors' creepy fantasies.
Scanning social media in the wake of the guilty plea, you would think the worst assumptions
about her prostitute-like activities had been confirmed, and she had indeed admitted 'using
sex' to seduce older men into giving her political favors. But in fact, the
plea agreement contains no such admission. There is still absolutely no evidence that she
'used' her boyfriend Paul Erickson in any scandalous transactional sense, unless we're
operating on the crude assumption that a good-looking young woman could have no authentic
attraction to this person who, on her own agency, she had taken as a romantic partner. Lots of
people feel entitled to opine on the nature of her relationship, but once again they're just
stereotyping in ways they would certainly condemn in different contexts. Regardless, even if
part of her 'attraction' to Erickson was for his professional connections so what? That's
hardly unusual, and as a consenting adult she's allowed to make whatever decisions she wishes
in this area. Instead, the morality police rendered swift judgment on her, without knowing a
thing about her interior mental state. It's the kind of gross, demeaning finger-wagging that
would be (rightly) denounced in almost any other circumstance. But because she is a nefarious
Russian, media scolds felt free to rain down opprobrium that is, in a very classical sense,
sexist. No rousing feminist defenses of her have seemed to be forthcoming.
And to top it all off, her admission of guilt was acquired under the duress of
solitary confinement , which Butina has now been subjected to for several months. Solitary
confinement is
widely denounced as torture, but few seem troubled by that anymore, now that the depravity
of the tactic has assisted in extracting a guilty plea from this suspicious foreign woman. It's
all exceptionally egregious, not least for Butina herself, who has been tarred irreparably by
yet another unscrupulous media and prosecutorial campaign – the kind of thing that has
seemed all too common throughout this wider Russian 'interference' frenzy.
"... Historians will study this period when there was a convergence in the objectives of the US intelligence agencies, the leaders of the Hillary Clinton wing of the Democratic Party, the majority of Republican politicians and the anti-Trump media. That common objective was stopping any entente between Moscow and Washington. ..."
"... Each group had its own motive. The intelligence community and elements in the Pentagon feared a rapprochement between Trump and Putin would deprive them of a 'presentable' enemy once ISIS's military power was destroyed. The Clinton camp was keen to ascribe an unexpected defeat to a cause other than the candidate and her inept campaign; Moscow's alleged hacking of Democratic Party emails fitted the bill. And the neocons, who 'promoted the Iraq war, detest Putin and consider Israel's security non-negotiable' ( 8 ), hated Trump's neo-isolationist instincts. ..."
"... This is why the Democratic Party data hack, which the US intelligence services allege is the work of the Russians, obsesses the party, and the press. It strikes two targets: delegitimising Trump's election and stopping his promotion of a thaw with Russia. Has Washington's aggrieved reaction to a foreign power's interference in a state's domestic affairs, and its elections, struck no one as odd? Why do just a handful of people point out that, not long ago, Angela Merkel's phone was tapped not by the Kremlin but by the Obama administration? ..."
"... Now the Times is in the vanguard of those preparing psychologically for conflict with Russia. There is almost no remaining resistance to its line. On the right, as the Wall Street Journal called for the US to arm Ukraine on 3 August, Vice-President Mike Pence spoke on a visit to Estonia about 'the spectre of [Russian] aggression', encouraged Georgia to join NATO, and paid tribute to Montenegro, NATO's newest member. ..."
"... At this stage, it doesn't matter any more what Trump thinks. He is no longer able to get his way on the issue. Moscow has noted this and is drawing its own conclusions. ..."
Trump was after a good deal from Russia. A new partnership would have reversed deteriorating relations between the powers by encouraging
their alliance against ISIS and recognising the importance of Ukraine to Russia's security. Current US paranoia about everything
Kremlin-related has encouraged amnesia about what President Barack Obama said in 2016, after the annexation of the Crimea and Russia's
direct intervention in Syria. He too put the danger posed by President Vladimir Putin into perspective: the interventions in Ukraine
and the Middle East were, Obama said, improvised 'in response to a client state that was about to slip out of his grasp' (
5 ).
Obama went on: 'The Russians can't change us or significantly weaken us. They are a smaller country, they are a weaker country,
their economy doesn't produce anything that anybody wants to buy, except oil and gas and arms.' What he feared most about Putin was
the sympathy he inspired in Trump and his supporters: '37% of Republican voters approve of Putin, the former head of the KGB. Ronald
Reagan would roll over in his grave' ( 6 ).
By January 2017, Reagan's eternal rest was no longer threatened. 'Presidents come and go but the policy never changes,' Putin
concluded ( 7 ). Historians will study
this period when there was a convergence in the objectives of the US intelligence agencies, the leaders of the Hillary Clinton wing
of the Democratic Party, the majority of Republican politicians and the anti-Trump media. That common objective was stopping any
entente between Moscow and Washington.
Each group had its own motive. The intelligence community and elements in the Pentagon feared a rapprochement between Trump
and Putin would deprive them of a 'presentable' enemy once ISIS's military power was destroyed. The Clinton camp was keen to ascribe
an unexpected defeat to a cause other than the candidate and her inept campaign; Moscow's alleged hacking of Democratic Party emails
fitted the bill. And the neocons, who 'promoted the Iraq war, detest Putin and consider Israel's security non-negotiable' (
8 ), hated Trump's neo-isolationist instincts.
The media, especially the New York Times and Washington Post, eagerly sought a new Watergate scandal and knew their
middle-class, urban, educated readers loathe Trump for his vulgarity, affection for the far right, violence and lack of culture (
9 ). So they were searching for any information
or rumour that could cause his removal or force a resignation. As in Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express, everyone
had his particular motive for striking the same victim.
The intrigue developed quickly as these four areas have fairly porous boundaries. The understanding between Republican hawks such
as John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and the military-industrial complex was a given. The architects
of recent US imperial adventures, especially Iraq, had not enjoyed the 2016 campaign or Trump's jibes about their expertise. During
the campaign, some 50 intellectuals and officials announced that, despite being Republicans, they would not support Trump because
he 'would put at risk our country's national security and wellbeing.' Some went so far as to vote for Clinton (
10 ).
Ambitions of a 'deep state'?
The press feared that Trump's incompetence would threaten the US-dominated international order. It had no problem with military
crusades, especially when emblazoned with grand humanitarian, internationalist or progressive principles. According to the press
criteria, Putin and his predilection for rightwing nationalists were obvious culprits. But so were Saudi Arabia or Israel, though
that did not prevent the Saudis being able to count on the ferociously anti-Russian Wall Street Journal, or Israel enjoying
the support of almost all US media, despite having a far-right element in its government.
Just over a week before Trump took office, journalist Glenn Greenwald, who broke the Edward Snowden story that revealed the mass
surveillance programmes run by the National Security Agency, warned of the direction of travel. He observed that the US media had
become the intelligence services' 'most valuable instrument, much of which reflexively reveres, serves, believes, and sides with
hidden intelligence officials.' This at a time when 'Democrats, still reeling from their unexpected and traumatic election loss as
well as a systemic collapse of their party, seemingly divorced further and further from reason with each passing day, are willing
-- eager -- to embrace any claim, cheer any tactic, align with any villain, regardless of how unsupported, tawdry and damaging
those behaviours might be' ( 11 ).
The anti-Russian coalition hadn't then achieved all its objectives, but Greenwald already discerned the ambitions of a 'deep state'.
'There really is, at this point,' he said 'obvious open warfare between this unelected but very powerful faction that resides in
Washington and sees presidents come and go, on the one hand, and the person that the American democracy elected to be the president
on the other.' One suspicion, fed by the intelligence services, galvanised all Trump's enemies: Moscow had compromising secrets about
Trump -- financial, electoral, sexual -- capable of paralysing him should a crisis between the two countries occur (
12 ).
Covert opposition to Trump
The suspicion of such a murky understanding, summed up by the pro-Clinton economist Paul Krugman as a 'Trump-Putin ticket', has
transformed the anti-Russian activity into a domestic political weapon against a president increasingly hated outside the ultraconservative
bloc. It is no longer unusual to hear leftwing activists turn FBI or CIA apologists, since these agencies became a home for a covert
opposition to Trump and the source of many leaks.
This is why the Democratic Party data hack, which the US intelligence services allege is the work of the Russians, obsesses
the party, and the press. It strikes two targets: delegitimising Trump's election and stopping his promotion of a thaw with Russia.
Has Washington's aggrieved reaction to a foreign power's interference in a state's domestic affairs, and its elections, struck no
one as odd? Why do just a handful of people point out that, not long ago, Angela Merkel's phone was tapped not by the Kremlin but
by the Obama administration?
The silence was once broken when the Republican representative for North Carolina, Tom Tillis, questioned former CIA director
James Clapper in January: 'The United States has been involved in one way or another in 81 different elections since World War II.
That doesn't include coups or the regime changes, some tangible evidence where we have tried to affect an outcome to our purpose.
Russia has done it some 36 times.' This perspective rarely disturbs the New York Times 's fulminations against Moscow's trickery.
The Times also failed to inform younger readers that Russia's president Boris Yeltsin, who picked Putin as his successor
in 1999, had been re-elected in 1996, though seriously ill and often drunk, in a fraudulent election conducted with the assistance
of US advisers and the overt support of President Bill Clinton. The Times hailed the result as 'a victory for Russian democracy'
and declared that 'the forces of democracy and reform won a vital but not definitive victory in Russia yesterday For the first time
in history, a free Russia has freely chosen its leader.'
Now the Times is in the vanguard of those preparing psychologically for conflict with Russia. There is almost no remaining
resistance to its line. On the right, as the Wall Street Journal called for the US to arm Ukraine on 3 August, Vice-President
Mike Pence spoke on a visit to Estonia about 'the spectre of [Russian] aggression', encouraged Georgia to join NATO, and paid tribute
to Montenegro, NATO's newest member.
No longer getting his way
But the Times, far from worrying about these provocative gestures coinciding with heightened tensions between great powers
(trade sanctions against Russia, Moscow's expulsion of US diplomats), poured oil on the fire. On 2 August it praised the reaffirmation
of 'America's commitment to defend democratic nations against those countries that would undermine them' and regretted that Mike
Pence's views 'aren't as eagerly embraced and celebrated by the man he works for back in the White House.'
At this stage, it doesn't
matter any more what Trump thinks. He is no longer able to get his way on the issue. Moscow has noted this and is drawing its own
conclusions.
A really interesting discussion. the problem with discussion on new direction of the USA foreign policy is that forces that
control the current forign policy will not allow any changes. Russiagate was in part a paranoid reaction of the Deep State to the
possibility of detente with Russia and also questioning "neoliberal sacred truth" like who did 9/11 (to suggest that Bush is
guilty was a clear "Red Flag") and critical attribute to forrign wars which feed so many Imperial servants.
BTW Trump completely disappointed his supporters in the foreign policy is continuing to accelerate that direction
Here is how you chart a Progressive foreign policy stop treating the US intelligence
agencies of the CIA and FBI as orgs of integrity. Ban all foreign lobbying so no foreign
government can influence foreign policy.
Disband the Veto powers that the US holds over the UN
security council. Prosecute former Presidents and Government officials for the illegal regime
change wars.
Connect with other progressive politicians around the world such as Jeremy Corbyn,
Jean Luc Melenchon and Moon Jae In. End the arms race and begin a peaceful space race to
colonize the moon diverting funds from the military industrial complex into something
fulfilling.
What BULL while world under the fog of Berlin wall down, USA VP Bush attacks
Panama 8000 Marines kills 3500 panamanians , gives the banks to CIA, therefore Panama papers.
Another coup in Latin America. When V.P. Bush "we had to get over the Vietnam Syndrome". So
Killing 3500 people , to get over the loser spirit, suicidal influence from Vietnam. SHAME USA
more hate for Americans. And Now Venezuela, more Shame and Hate for Americans. Yankee go home,
Gringo stay home is chanted once more.
The audio is a little off especially for a couple speakers but this discussion is
great. Trump ran on a non-interventionist platform, but in his typical dishonest fashion, he
appointed people who are developing usable nukes like characters out of Dr. Strangelove.
Nuclear weapons and climate change are both existential threats that all the world needs to act
together to address.
17 plus years later some people are finally starting to talk about the $6
trillion wars and the $750 billion annual Defense Department Budget.... Please consider giving
Tulsi Gabbard at least a $1 contribution so she can be part of the debate between Democratic
presidential candidates. She has made ending the wars on terrorism and regime change the
primary issue of her candidacy. She is an Iraq vet and currently in the National Guard. Her
rank is Colonel. She needs $62,500 and contributions from 200 people in each of 20 states.
Thanks for anything you can do.
Jim R2 months ago
President Eisenhower's farewell address warned us of the very thing that is happening today with the industrial military
complex and the power and influence that that entity weilds.
chickendinner2012, 2 months ago
End the wars, no more imperialism, instead have fair trade prioritizing countries that have a living wage and aren't
waging war etc. No more supporting massive human rights abusers like Saudi Arabia, Israel, UAE etc. and we need to get three
of the most aggressive countries the F UK US coalition that constantly invades and bombs everyone they want to steal from to
stop doing war, stop coups, stop covert sabotage, stop sanctions.
asbeautifulasasunset, 2 months ago
17 plus years later some people are finally starting to talk about the $6 trillion wars and the $750 billion annual
Defense Department Budget.... Please consider giving Tulsi Gabbard at least a $1 contribution so she can be part of the
debate between Democratic presidential candidates. She has made ending the wars on terrorism and regime change the primary
issue of her candidacy. She is an Iraq vet and currently in the National Guard. Her rank is Colonel. She needs $62,500 and
contributions from 200 people in each of 20 states. Thanks for anything you can do.
carol wagner sudol2 months ago
Israel today has become a nazi like state. period. That says it all. This is heart-breaking. Gaza is simply a
concentration camp.
Tom Hall, 2 months ago
All our post WWII foreign policy has been about securing maintaining and enhancing corporate commercial interests. What
would seem to progressives as catastrophic failures are in fact monumental achievements of wealth creation and concentration.
The billions spent on think tanks to develop policy are mostly about how to develop grand narratives that conceal the true
beneficiaries of US foreign policy and create fear, uncertainty and insecurity at home and abroad.
Looks like Chalupa was an important player in Steele dossier. That suggests Ukrainian diaspora, and possibly Ukrainian SBU links.
Notable quotes:
"... Just worth noting that in the hand-written notes taken by Bruce Ohr after meetings with Chris Steele, there is the comment that the majority of the Steele Dossier was obtained from an expat Russian living in the US, and not from actual Russian sources in Russia. ..."
"... That would tend to work against theories that involve Skripal in a significant role in generating the dossier; though it would not rule him out in a more peripheral role ..."
"... We can also conclude neither bruce ohr, or the expat russian living in the us are neutral players in any of this too.. Was someone paid a fee to say something?? ..."
"... Steele is a stranger to the truth in any event so I wouldn't set much store by it – though if the dossier is third hand material at best it certainly explains why it is such rubbish. Steele's ability to get cash by selling steaming nonsense to the gullible is amazing. ..."
"... "A Ukrainian political consultant has revealed to Sputnik that former MI6 agent Christopher Steele sought and paid for researchers in Ukraine to concoct fake stories about Donald Trump prior his election as US president to use in the now-infamous dossier that supposedly contained damning evidence of Russia-Trump collusion. ..."
"... Radio Sputnik's Lee Stranahan spoke previously with Ukrainian political consultant and former diplomat Andrii Telizhenko about his connections to a Democratic National Committee (DNC) operative named Alexandra Chalupa who also worked for clients in Ukrainian politics. Chalupa told Politico in January 2017 that beginning in 2015, she pulled on a network of sources she'd established in Kiev and Washington to try and turn up dirt on Trump, once his star began to rise in the Republican primary campaign." ..."
Just worth noting that in the hand-written notes taken by Bruce Ohr after meetings with Chris Steele, there is the comment
that the majority of the Steele Dossier was obtained from an expat Russian living in the US, and not from actual Russian sources
in Russia.
That would tend to work against theories that involve Skripal in a significant role in generating the dossier; though it
would not rule him out in a more peripheral role.
We can also conclude neither bruce ohr, or the expat russian living in the us are neutral players in any of this too..
Was someone paid a fee to say something?? your last comment-conclusion is very shaky at best..
Could you give a link to the source of that info? Steele is a stranger to the truth in any event so I wouldn't set much
store by it – though if the dossier is third hand material at best it certainly explains why it is such rubbish. Steele's ability
to get cash by selling steaming nonsense to the gullible is amazing.
"A Ukrainian political consultant has revealed to Sputnik that former MI6 agent Christopher Steele sought and paid for
researchers in Ukraine to concoct fake stories about Donald Trump prior his election as US president to use in the now-infamous
dossier that supposedly contained damning evidence of Russia-Trump collusion.
Radio Sputnik's Lee Stranahan spoke previously with Ukrainian political consultant and former diplomat Andrii Telizhenko
about his connections to a Democratic National Committee (DNC) operative named Alexandra Chalupa who also worked for clients in
Ukrainian politics. Chalupa told Politico in January 2017 that beginning in 2015, she pulled on a network of sources she'd established
in Kiev and Washington to try and turn up dirt on Trump, once his star began to rise in the Republican primary campaign."
"... Also note: Crowdstrike planted the malware on DNC systems, which they "discovered" later - https://disobedientmedia.com/2017/12/fancy-frauds-bogus-bears-malware-m
..."
"... And look who else sits on the Atlantic Council - http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/about/experts/list/irene-chalupa why it's the
sister of Andrea Chalupa, unregistered foreign agent employed by the DNC as a "Consultant", whose entire family is tied to Ukraine Intelligence.
..."
"... Irena Chalupa is also the news anchor for Ukraine's propaganda channel Stopfake.org She is a Ukrainian Diaspora leader. The
Chalupas are the first family of Ukrainian propaganda. She works with and for Ukrainian Intelligence through the Atlantic Council, Stopfake.org,
and her sisters Andrea (EuromaidanPR) and Alexandra. ..."
(if that's too 'in the weeds' for you, ask your tech guys to read and verify)
And look who else sits on the Atlantic Council -
http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/about/experts/list/irene-chalupa
why it's the sister of Andrea Chalupa, unregistered foreign agent employed by the DNC as a "Consultant", whose entire family
is tied to Ukraine Intelligence.
Irena Chalupa is also the news anchor for Ukraine's propaganda channel
Stopfake.org She is a
Ukrainian Diaspora
leader. The Chalupas are the first family of Ukrainian propaganda. She works with and for Ukrainian Intelligence through
the Atlantic Council, Stopfake.org, and her sisters Andrea (EuromaidanPR) and Alexandra.
"... Ukraine has been screaming for the US to start a war with Russia for the past 2 1/2 years. ..."
"... Is Ukrainian Intelligence trying to invent a reason for the US to take a hard-line stance against Russia? Are they using Crowdstrike to carry this out? ..."
"... Meet the real Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear, part of the groups that are targeting Ukrainian positions for the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics. These people were so tech savvy they didn't know the Ukrainian SBU (Ukrainian CIA/internal security) records every phone call and most internet use in Ukraine and Donbass. Donbass still uses Ukrainian phone and internet services. ..."
"... This is a civil war and people supporting either side are on both sides of the contact line. The SBU is awestruck because there are hundreds if not thousands of people helping to target the private volunteer armies supported by Ukrainian-Americans. ..."
"... If she was that close to the investigation Crowdstrike did how credible is she? Her sister Alexandra was named one of 16 people that shaped the election by Yahoo news. The DNC hacking investigation done by Crowdstrike concluded hacking was done by Russian actors based on the work done by Alexandra Chalupa? That is the conclusion of her sister Andrea Chalupa and obviously enough for Crowdstrike to make the Russian government connection. These words mirror Dimitri Alperovitch's identification process in his interview with PBS Judy Woodruff. ..."
"... How close is Dimitri Alperovitch to DNC officials? Close enough professionally he should have stepped down from an investigation that had the chance of throwing a presidential election in a new direction. ..."
"... According to Esquire.com , Alperovitch has vetted speeches for Hillary Clinton about cyber security issues in the past. Because of his work on the Sony hack, President Barrack Obama personally called and said the measures taken were directly because of his work. ..."
"... Still, this is not enough to show a conflict of interest. Alperovitch's relationships with the Chalupas, radical groups, think tanks, Ukrainian propagandists, and Ukrainian state supported hackers do. When it all adds up and you see it together, we have found a Russian that tried hard to influence the outcome of the US presidential election in 2016. ..."
"... According to Robert Parry's article At the forefront of people that would have taken senior positions in a Clinton administration and especially in foreign policy are the Atlantic Council. Their main goal is still a major confrontation with nuclear-armed Russia. ..."
"... The Atlantic Council is the think tank associated and supported by the CEEC (Central and Eastern European Coalition). The CEEC has only one goal which is war with Russia. Their question to candidates looking for their support in the election was "Are you willing to go to war with Russia?" Hillary Clinton has received their unqualified support throughout the campaign. ..."
"... What does any of this have to do with Dimitri Alperovitch and Crowdstrike? Since the Atlantic Council would have taken senior cabinet and policy positions, his own fellowship status at the Atlantic Council and relationship with Irene Chalupa creates a definite conflict of interest for Crowdstrike's investigation. Trump's campaign was gaining ground and Clinton needed a boost. Had she won, would he have been in charge of the CIA, NSA, or Homeland Security? ..."
"... Alperovitch's relationship with Andrea Chalupa's efforts and Ukrainian intelligence groups is where things really heat up. Noted above she works with Euromaidanpress.com and Informnapalm.org which is the outlet for Ukrainian state-sponsored hackers. ..."
"... When you look at Dimitri Alperovitch's twitter relationships, you have to ask why the CEO of a $150 million dollar company like Crowdstrike follows Ukrainian InformNapalm and its hackers individually . There is a mutual relationship. When you add up his work for the OUNb, Ukraine, support for Ukraine's Intelligence, and to the hackers it needs to be investigated to see if Ukraine is conspiring against the US government. ..."
"... Alperovitch and Fancy Bear tweet each other? ..."
"... Crowdstrike is part of Ukrainian nationalist hacker network ..."
"... In an interview with Euromaidanpress these hackers say they have no need for the CIA. They consider the CIA amateurish. They also say they are not part of the Ukrainian military Cyberalliance is a quasi-organization with the participation of several groups – RUH8, Trinity, Falcon Flames, Cyberhunta. There are structures affiliated to the hackers – the Myrotvorets site, Informnapalm analytical agency." ..."
"... Although OSINT Academy sounds fairly innocuous, it's the official twitter account for Ukraine's Ministry of Information head Dimitri Zolotukin. It is also Ukrainian Intelligence. The Ministry of Information started the Peacekeeper or Myrotvorets website that geolocates journalists and other people for assassination. If you disagree with OUNb politics, you could be on the list. ..."
"... This single tweet on a network chart shows that out of all the Ukrainian Ministry of Information Minister's following, he only wanted the 3 hacking groups associated with both him and Alperovitch to get the tweet. Alperovitch's story was received and not retweeted or shared. If this was just Alperovitch's victory, it was a victory for Ukraine. It would be shared heavily. If it was a victory for the hacking squad, it would be smart to keep it to themselves and not draw unwanted attention. ..."
"... Pravy Sektor Hackers and Crowdstrike? ..."
"... What sharp movements in international politics have been made lately? Let me spell it out for the 17 US Intelligence Agencies so there is no confusion. These state sponsored, Russian language hackers in Eastern European time zones have shown with the Surkov hack they have the tools and experience to hack states that are looking out for it. They are also laughing at US intel efforts. ..."
"... The hackers also made it clear that they will do anything to serve Ukraine. Starting a war between Russia and the USA is the one way they could serve Ukraine best, and hurt Russia worst. Given those facts, if the DNC hack was according to the criteria given by Alperovitch, both he and these hackers need to be investigated. ..."
"... According to the Esquire interview "Alperovitch was deeply frustrated: He thought the government should tell the world what it knew. There is, of course, an element of the personal in his battle cry. "A lot of people who are born here don't appreciate the freedoms we have, the opportunities we have, because they've never had it any other way," he told me. "I have." ..."
"... While I agree patriotism is a great thing, confusing it with this kind of nationalism is not. Alperovitch seems to think by serving OUNb Ukraine's interests and delivering a conflict with Russia that is against American interests, he's a patriot. He isn't serving US interests. He's definitely a Ukrainian patriot. Maybe he should move to Ukraine. ..."
In the wake of the JAR-16-20296 dated December 29, 2016 about hacking and influencing the
2016 election, the need for real evidence is clear. The joint report adds nothing substantial
to the October 7th report. It relies on proofs provided by the cyber security firm Crowdstrike
that is clearly not on par with intelligence findings or evidence. At the top of the report is
an "as is" statement showing this.
The difference between Dmitri Alperovitch's claims which are reflected in JAR-1620296 and
this article is that enough evidence is provided to warrant an investigation of specific
parties for the DNC hacks. The real story involves specific anti-American actors that need to
be investigated for real crimes.
For instance, the malware used was an out-dated version just waiting to be found. The one
other interesting point is that the Russian malware called Grizzly Steppe
is from Ukraine . How did Crowdstrike miss this when it is their business to know?
Later in this article you'll meet and know a little more about the real "Fancy Bear and Cozy
Bear." The bar for identification set by Crowdstrike has never been able to get beyond words
like probably, maybe, could be, or should be, in their attribution.
The article is lengthy because the facts need to be in one place. The bar Dimitri
Alperovitch set for identifying the hackers involved is that low. Other than asking America to
trust them, how many solid facts has Alperovitch provided to back his claim of Russian
involvement?
The December 29th JAR adds a flowchart that shows how a basic phishing hack is performed. It
doesn't add anything significant beyond that. Noticeably, they use both their designation APT
28 and APT 29 as well as the Crowdstrike labels of Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear separately.
This is important because information from outside intelligence agencies has the value of
rumor or unsubstantiated information at best according to policy. Usable intelligence needs to
be free from partisan politics and verifiable. Intel agencies noted back in the early 90's that
every private actor in the information game was radically political.
The
Hill.com article about Russia hacking the electric grid is a perfect example of why this
intelligence is political and not taken seriously. If any proof of Russian involvement existed,
the US would be at war. Under current laws of war, there would be no difference between an
attack on the power grid or a missile strike.
According
to the Hill "Private security firms provided more detailed forensic analysis, which the FBI
and DHS said Thursday correlated with the IC's findings.
"The Joint Analysis Report recognizes the excellent work undertaken by
security companies and private sector network owners and operators, and provides new indicators
of compromise and malicious infrastructure
identified during the course of investigations and incident response," read a statement. The
report identities two Russian intelligence groups already named by CrowdStrike and other
private security firms."
In an interview with Washingtonsblog , William Binney, the creator of the NSA global
surveillance system said "I expected to see the IP's or other signatures of APT's 28/29 [the
entities which the U.S. claims hacked the Democratic emails] and where they were located and
how/when the data got transferred to them from DNC/HRC [i.e. Hillary Rodham Clinton]/etc. They
seem to have been following APT 28/29 since at least 2015, so, where are they?"
According to the latest Washington Post story, Crowdstrike's CEO tied a group his company
dubbed "Fancy Bear" to targeting Ukrainian artillery positions in Debaltsevo as well as across
the Ukrainian civil war front for the past 2 years.
Alperovitch states in many articles the Ukrainians were using an Android app to target the
self-proclaimed Republics positions and that hacking this app was what gave targeting data to
the armies in Donbass instead.
Alperovitch first gained notice when he was the VP in charge of threat research with McAfee.
Asked to comment on Alperovitch's
discovery of Russian hacks on Larry King, John McAfee had this to say. "Based on all of his
experience, McAfee does not believe that Russians were behind the hacks on the Democratic
National Committee (DNC), John Podesta's emails, and the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign.
As he told RT, "if it looks like the Russians did it, then I can guarantee you it was not the
Russians."
How does Crowdstrike's story part with reality? First is the admission that it is probably,
maybe, could be Russia hacking the DNC. "
Intelligence agencies do not have specific intelligence showing officials in the Kremlin
'directing' the identified individuals to pass the Democratic emails to Wiki Leaks."
The public evidence never goes beyond the word possibility. While never going beyond that or
using facts, Crowdstrike insists that it's Russia behind both Clinton's and the Ukrainian
losses. NBC carried the story because one of the partners in Crowdstrike is also a consultant
for NBC.
According to NBC the story reads like this."
The company, Crowdstrike, was hired by the DNC to investigate the hack and issued a report
publicly attributing it to Russian intelligence. One of Crowdstrike's senior executives is
Shawn Henry, a former senior FBI official who consults for NBC News.
"But the Russians used the app to turn the tables on their foes, Crowdstrike says. Once a
Ukrainian soldier downloaded it on his Android phone, the Russians were able to eavesdrop on
his communications and determine his position through geo-location.
In June, Crowdstrike went public with its findings that two separate Russian intelligence
agencies had hacked the DNC. One, which Crowdstrike and other researchers call Cozy Bear, is
believed to be linked to Russia's CIA, known as the FSB. The other, known as Fancy Bear, is
believed to be tied to the military intelligence agency, called the GRU."
The information is so certain the level of proof never rises above "believed to be."
According to the December 12th Intercept article "Most importantly, the Post adds that
"intelligence agencies do not have specific intelligence showing officials in the Kremlin
'directing' the identified individuals to pass the Democratic emails to WikiLeaks."
Because Ukrainian soldiers are using a smartphone app they activate their geolocation to use
it. Targeting is from location to location. The app would need the current user location to
make it work.
In 2015 I wrote an article that showed many of the available open source tools that
geolocate, and track people. They even show street view. This means that using simple means,
someone with freeware or an online website, and not a military budget can look at what you are
seeing at any given moment.
Where Crowdstrike fails is insisting people believe that the code they see is (a) an
advanced way to geolocate and (b) it was how a state with large resources would do it. Would
you leave a calling card where you would get caught and fined through sanctions or worse? If
you use an anonymous online resource at least Crowdstrike won't believe you are Russian and
possibly up to something.
If you read that article and watch the video you'll see that using "geo-stalker" is a better
choice if you are on a low budget or no budget. Should someone tell the Russians they
overpaid?
According to Alperovitch, the smartphone app
plotted targets in about 15 seconds . This means that there is only a small window to get
information this way.
Using the open source tools I wrote about previously, you could track your targets all-day.
In 2014, most Ukrainian forces were using social media regularly. It would be easy to maintain
a map of their locations and track them individually.
From my research into those tools, someone using Python scripts would find it easy to take
photos, listen to conversations, turn on GPS, or even turn the phone on when they chose to.
Going a step further than Alperovitch, without the help of the Russian government, GRU, or FSB,
anyone could
take control of the drones Ukraine is fond of flying and land them. Or they could download
the footage the drones are taking. It's copy and paste at that point. Would you bother the FSB,
GRU, or Vladimir Putin with the details or just do it?
In the WaPo article Alperovitch states "The Fancy Bear crew evidently hacked the app,
allowing the GRU to use the phone's GPS coordinates to track the Ukrainian troops'
position.
In that way, the Russian military could then target the Ukrainian army with artillery and
other weaponry. Ukrainian brigades operating in eastern Ukraine were on the front lines of the
conflict with Russian-backed separatist forces during the early stages of the conflict in late
2014, CrowdStrike noted. By late 2014, Russian forces in the region numbered about 10,000. The
Android app was useful in helping the Russian troops locate Ukrainian artillery positions."
In late 2014,
I personally did the only invasive passport and weapons checks that I know of during the
Ukrainian civil war.
I spent days looking for the Russian army every major publication said were attacking
Ukraine. The keyword Cyber Security industry leader Alperovitch used is "evidently."
Crowdstrike noted that in late 2014, there were 10,000 Russian forces in the region.
When I did the passport and weapons check, it was under the condition there would be no
telephone calls. We went where I wanted to go. We stopped when I said to stop. I checked the
documents and the weapons with no obstacles. The weapons check was important because Ukraine
was stating that Russia was giving Donbass modern weapons at the time. Each weapon is stamped
with a manufacture date. The results are in the articles above.
Based on my findings which the CIA would call hard evidence, almost all the fighters had
Ukrainian passports. There are volunteers from other countries. In Debaltsevo today, I would
question Alperovitch's assertion of Russian troops based on the fact the passports will be
Ukrainian and reflect my earlier findings. There is no possibly, could be, might be, about
it.
The SBU, Olexander Turchinov, and the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense all agree that
Crowdstrike is dead wrong in this assessment . Although subtitles aren't on it, the former
Commandant of Ukrainian Army Headquarters thanks God Russia never invaded or Ukraine would have
been in deep trouble.
How could Dimitri Alperovitch and Crowdstrike be this wrong on easily checked detail and
still get this much media attention? Could the investment made by Google and some
very large players have anything to do with the media Crowdstrike is causing?
According to Alperovitch, the CEO of a $150 million dollar cyber security company "And when
you think about, well, who would be interested in targeting Ukraine artillerymen in eastern
Ukraine who has interest in hacking the Democratic Party, Russia government comes to mind, but
specifically, Russian military that would have operational over forces in the Ukraine and would
target these artillerymen."
That statement is most of the proof of Russian involvement he has. That's it, that's all the
CIA, FBI have to go on. It's why they can't certify the intelligence. It's why they can't get
beyond the threshold of maybe.
Woodruff then asked two important questions. She asked if Crowdstrike was still working for
the DNC. Alperovitch responded "We're protecting them going forward. The investigation is
closed in terms of what happened there. But certainly, we've seen the campaigns, political
organizations are continued to be targeted, and they continue to hire us and use our technology
to protect themselves."
Based on the evidence he presented Woodruff, there is no need to investigate further?
Obviously, there is no need, the money is rolling in.
Second and most important Judy Woodruff asked if there were any questions about conflicts of
interest, how he would answer? This is where Dmitri Alperovitch's story starts to unwind.
His response was "Well, this report was not about the DNC. This report was about information
we uncovered about what these Russian actors were doing in eastern Ukraine in terms of locating
these artillery units of the Ukrainian army and then targeting them. So, what we just did is
said that it looks exactly as the same to the evidence we've already uncovered from the DNC,
linking the two together."
Why is this reasonable statement going to take his story off the rails? First, let's look at
the facts surrounding his evidence and then look at the real conflicts of interest involved.
While carefully evading the question, he neglects to state his conflicts of interest are worthy
of a DOJ investigation. Can you mislead the federal government about national security issues
and not get investigated yourself?
If Alperovitch's evidence is all there is, then the US government owes some large apologies
to Russia.
After showing who is targeting Ukrainian artillerymen, we'll look at what might be a
criminal conspiracy.
Crowdstrike CEO Dmitri Alperovitch story about Russian hacks that cost Hillary Clinton the
election was broadsided by the SBU (Ukrainian Intelligence and Security) in Ukraine. If Dimitri
Alperovitch is working for Ukrainian Intelligence and is providing intelligence to 17 US
Intelligence Agencies is it a conflict of interest?
Ukraine has been screaming for the US to start a war with Russia for the past 2 1/2 years.
Using facts accepted by leaders on both sides of the conflict, the main proof Crowdstrike shows
for evidence doesn't just unravel, it falls apart. Is Ukrainian Intelligence trying to invent a
reason for the US to take a hard-line stance against Russia? Are they using Crowdstrike to
carry this out?
Real Fancy Bear?
Meet the real Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear, part of the groups that are targeting Ukrainian
positions for the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics. These people were so tech savvy they
didn't know the Ukrainian SBU (Ukrainian CIA/internal security) records every phone call and
most internet use in Ukraine and Donbass. Donbass still uses Ukrainian phone and internet
services.
These are normal people fighting back against private volunteer armies that target their
homes, schools, and hospitals. The private volunteer armies like Pravy Sektor, Donbas
Battalion, Azov, and Aidar have been cited for atrocities like child rape, torture, murder, and
kidnapping. That just gets the ball rolling. These are a large swath of the Ukrainian
servicemen Crowdstrike hopes to protect.
This story which just aired on Ukrainian news channel TCN shows the SBU questioning and
arresting some of what they call an army of people in the Ukrainian-controlled areas. This news
video shows people in Toretsk that provided targeting information to Donbass and people
probably caught up in the net accidentally.
This is a civil war and people supporting either side are on both sides of the contact line.
The SBU is awestruck because there are hundreds if not thousands of people helping to target
the private volunteer armies supported by Ukrainian-Americans.
The first person they show on the video is a woman named Olga Lubochka. On the video her
voice is heard from a recorded call saying " In the field, on the left about 130 degrees. Aim
and you'll get it." and then " Oh, you hit it so hard you leveled it to the ground.""Am I going
to get a medal for this?"
Other people caught up in the raid claim and probably were only calling friends they know.
It's common for people to call and tell their family about what is going on around them. This
has been a staple in the war especially in outlying villages for people aligned with both sides
of the conflict. A neighbor calls his friend and says "you won't believe what I just saw."
Another "fancy bear," Alexander Schevchenko was caught calling friends and telling them that
armored personnel carriers had just driven by.
Anatoli Prima, father of a DNR(Donetsk People's Republic) soldier was asked to find out what
unit was there and how many artillery pieces.
One woman providing information about fuel and incoming equipment has a husband fighting on
the opposite side in Gorlovka. Gorlovka is a major city that's been under artillery attack
since 2014. For the past 2 1/2 years, she has remained in their home in Toretsk. According to
the video, he's vowed to take no prisoners when they rescue the area.
When asked why they hate Ukraine so much, one responded that they just wanted things to go
back to what they were like before the coup in February 2014.
Another said they were born in the Soviet Union and didn't like what was going on in Kiev.
At the heart of this statement is the anti- OUN, antinationalist sentiment that most people
living in Ukraine feel. The OUNb Bandera killed millions of people in Ukraine, including
starving 3 million Soviet soldiers to death. The new Ukraine was founded
in 1991 by OUN nationalists outside the fledgling country.
Is giving misleading or false information to 17 US Intelligence Agencies a crime? If it's
done by a cyber security industry leader like Crowdstrike should that be investigated? If
unwinding the story from the "targeting of Ukrainian volunteers" side isn't enough, we should
look at this from the American perspective. How did the Russia influencing the election and DNC
hack story evolve? Who's involved? Does this pose conflicts of interest for Dmitri Alperovitch
and Crowdstrike? And let's face it, a hacking story isn't complete until real hackers with the
skills, motivation, and reason are exposed.
In the last article exploring the
DNC hacks the focus was on the Chalupas . The article focused on Alexandra, Andrea, and
Irene Chalupa. Their participation in the DNC hack story is what brought it to international
attention in the first place.
According to journalist and DNC activist Andrea Chalupa on her Facebook page "
After Chalupa sent the email to Miranda (which mentions that she had invited this reporter
to a meeting with Ukrainian journalists in Washington), it triggered high-level concerns within
the DNC, given the sensitive nature of her work. "That's when we knew it was the Russians,"
said a Democratic Party source who has been directly involved in the internal probe into the
hacked emails. In order to stem the damage, the source said, "we told her to stop her
research."" July 25, 2016
If she was that close to the investigation Crowdstrike did how credible is she? Her sister
Alexandra was named one of 16 people that shaped the election by Yahoo news. The DNC hacking
investigation done by Crowdstrike concluded hacking was done by Russian actors based on the
work done by Alexandra Chalupa? That is the conclusion of her sister Andrea Chalupa and
obviously enough for Crowdstrike to make the Russian government connection. These words mirror
Dimitri Alperovitch's identification process in his interview with PBS Judy Woodruff.
How close is Dimitri Alperovitch to DNC officials? Close enough professionally he should
have stepped down from an investigation that had the chance of throwing a presidential election
in a new direction.
According to Esquire.com ,
Alperovitch has vetted speeches for Hillary Clinton about cyber security issues in the
past. Because of his work on the Sony hack, President Barrack Obama personally called and said
the measures taken were directly because of his work.
Still, this is not enough to show a conflict of interest. Alperovitch's relationships with
the Chalupas, radical groups, think tanks, Ukrainian propagandists, and Ukrainian state
supported hackers do. When it all adds up and you see it together, we have found a Russian that
tried hard to influence the outcome of the US presidential election in 2016.
In my
previous article I showed in detail how the Chalupas fit into this. A brief bullet point
review looks like this.
The Chalupas are not Democrat or Republican. They are OUNb. The OUNb worked hard to start
a war between the USA and Russia for the last 50 years. According to the
Ukrainian Weekly in a rare open statement of their existence in 2011, "Other statements
were issued in the Ukrainian language by the leadership of the Organization of Ukrainian
Nationalists (B) and the International Conference in Support of Ukraine. The OUN (Bandera
wing) called for" What is OUNb Bandera? They follow the same political policy and platform
that was developed in the 1930's by Stepan Bandera. When these people go to a Holocaust
memorial they are celebrating both the dead and the OUNb SS that killed
There is no getting around this fact. The OUNb have no concept of democratic values and
want an authoritarian fascism.
Alexandra Chalupa- According
to the Ukrainian Weekly , "The effort, known as Digital Miadan, gained momentum following
the initial Twitter storms. Leading the effort were: Lara Chelak, Andrea Chalupa, Alexandra
Chalupa, Constatin Kostenko and others." The Digital Maidan was also how they raised money
for the coup. This was how the Ukrainian
emigres bought the bullets that were used on Euromaidan. Ukraine's chubby nazi, Dima
Yarosh stated openly he was taking money from the Ukrainian emigres during Euromaidan and
Pravy Sektor still fundraises openly in North America. The "Sniper
Massacre" on the Maidan in Ukraine by Dr. Ivan Katchanovski, University of Ottowa shows
clearly detailed evidence how the massacre happened. It has Pravy Sektor confessions that
show who created the "heavenly hundred. Their admitted involvement as leaders of Digital
Maidan by both Chalupas is a
clear violation of the Neutrality Act and has up to a 25
year prison sentence attached to it because it ended in a coup.
Andrea Chalupa-2014, in a Huff Post article Sept. 1 2016, Andrea Chalupa described
Sviatoslav Yurash as one of Ukraine's important "dreamers." He is a young activist that
founded Euromaidan
Press . Beyond the gushing glow what she doesn't say is who he actually is. Sviatoslav
Yurash was Dmitri Yarosh's spokesman just after Maidan. He is a hardcore Ukrainian
nationalist and was rewarded with the Deputy Director
position for the UWC (Ukrainian World Congress) in Kiev .
In January, 2014 when he showed up at the Maidan protests he was 17 years old. He became the
foreign language media representative for Vitali Klitschko, Arseni Yatsenyuk, and Oleh
Tyahnybok. All press enquiries went through Yurash. To meet Dimitri Yurash you had
to go through Sviatoslav Yurash as a Macleans reporter found out.
At 18 years old, Sviatoslav Yurash became the spokesman for Ministry of Defense of Ukraine
under Andrei Paruby. He was Dimitri Yarosh's spokesman and can be seen either behind Yarosh on
videos at press conferences or speaking ahead of him to reporters. From January 2014 onward, to
speak to Dimitri Yarosh, you set up an appointment with Yurash.
Irene Chalupa- Another involved Chalupa we need to cover to do the story justice is Irene
Chalupa. From her bio – Irena
Chalupa is a nonresident fellow with the Atlantic Council's Dinu Patriciu Eurasia Center.
She is also a senior correspondent at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), where she has
worked for more than twenty years. Ms. Chalupa previously served as an editor for the
Atlantic Council, where she covered Ukraine and Eastern Europe. Irena Chalupa is also the
news anchor for Ukraine's propaganda channel org She is also a Ukrainian
emigre leader.
According to
Robert Parry's article At the forefront of people that would have taken senior positions in
a Clinton administration and especially in foreign policy are the Atlantic Council. Their main
goal is still a major confrontation with nuclear-armed Russia.
The Atlantic Council is the think tank associated and supported by the
CEEC (Central and Eastern European Coalition). The CEEC has only one goal which is war with
Russia. Their question to candidates looking for their support in the election was "Are you
willing to go to war with Russia?" Hillary Clinton has received their unqualified support
throughout the campaign.
What does any of this have to do with Dimitri Alperovitch and Crowdstrike? Since the
Atlantic Council would have taken senior cabinet and policy positions, his own fellowship
status at the Atlantic Council and relationship with Irene Chalupa creates a definite conflict
of interest for Crowdstrike's investigation. Trump's campaign was gaining ground and Clinton
needed a boost. Had she won, would he have been in charge of the CIA, NSA, or Homeland
Security?
When you put someone that has so much to gain in charge of an investigation that could
change an election, that is a conflict of interest. If the think tank is linked heavily to
groups that want war with Russia like the Atlantic Council and the CEEC, it opens up criminal
conspiracy.
If the person in charge of the investigation is a fellow at the think tank that wants a
major conflict with Russia it is a definite conflict of interest. Both the Atlantic Council and
clients stood to gain Cabinet and Policy positions based on how the result of his work affects
the election. It clouds the results of the investigation. In Dmitri Alperovitch's case, he
found the perpetrator before he was positive there was a crime.
Alperovitch's relationship with Andrea Chalupa's efforts and Ukrainian intelligence groups
is where things really heat up. Noted above she works with Euromaidanpress.com and Informnapalm.org which is the outlet
for Ukrainian state-sponsored hackers.
When you look at Dimitri Alperovitch's twitter relationships, you have to ask why the CEO of
a $150 million dollar company like Crowdstrike follows Ukrainian InformNapalm
and its hackers individually . There is a mutual relationship. When you add up his work for
the OUNb, Ukraine, support for Ukraine's Intelligence, and to the hackers it needs to be
investigated to see if Ukraine is conspiring against the US government.
Alperovitch and Fancy Bear tweet each other?
Crowdstrike is also following their hack of a Russian government official after the DNC
hack. It closely resembles the same method used with the DNC because it was an email hack.
Crowdstrike's product line includes Falcon Host, Falcon Intelligence, Falcon Overwatch and
Falcon DNS. Is it possible the hackers in Falcons Flame are another service Crowdstrike offers?
Although this profile says Virginia, tweets are from the Sofia, Bulgaria time zone and he
writes in Russian. Another curiosity considering the Fancy Bear source code is in Russian. This
image shows Crowdstrike in their network.
Crowdstrike is part of Ukrainian nationalist hacker network
In an interview with
Euromaidanpress these hackers say they have no need for the CIA. They consider the CIA
amateurish. They also say they are not part of the Ukrainian military Cyberalliance is a
quasi-organization with the participation of several groups – RUH8, Trinity, Falcon
Flames, Cyberhunta. There are structures affiliated to the hackers – the Myrotvorets
site, Informnapalm analytical agency."
In the image it shows a network diagram of Crowdstrike following the Surkov leaks. The
network communication goes through a secondary source. This is something you do when you don't
want to be too obvious. Here is another example of that.
Ukrainian Intelligence and the real Fancy Bear?
Although OSINT Academy sounds fairly innocuous, it's the official twitter account for
Ukraine's Ministry of Information head Dimitri Zolotukin. It is also Ukrainian Intelligence.
The Ministry of Information started the Peacekeeper or Myrotvorets website that geolocates
journalists and other people for assassination. If you disagree with OUNb politics, you could
be on the list.
Trying not to be obvious, the Head of Ukraine's Information Ministry (UA Intelligence)
tweeted something interesting that ties Alperovitch and Crowdstrike to the Ukrainian
Intelligence hackers and the Information Ministry even tighter.
Trying to keep it hush hush?
This single tweet on a network chart shows that out of all the Ukrainian Ministry of
Information Minister's following, he only wanted the 3 hacking groups associated with both him
and Alperovitch to get the tweet. Alperovitch's story was received and not retweeted or shared.
If this was just Alperovitch's victory, it was a victory for Ukraine. It would be shared
heavily. If it was a victory for the hacking squad, it would be smart to keep it to themselves
and not draw unwanted attention.
These same hackers are associated with Alexandra, Andrea, and Irene Chalupa through the
portals and organizations they work with through their OUNb. The hackers are funded and
directed by or through the same OUNb channels that Alperovitch is working for and with to
promote the story of Russian hacking.
Pravy Sektor Hackers and Crowdstrike?
When you look at the image for the hacking group in the euromaidanpress article, one of the
hackers identifies themselves as one of Dimitri Yarosh's Pravy Sektor members by the Pravy
Sektor sweatshirt they have on. Noted above, Pravy Sektor admitted to killing the people at the
Maidan protest and sparked the coup.
Going further with the linked Euromaidanpress article the hackers say" Let's understand that
Ukrainian hackers and Russian hackers once constituted a single very powerful group. Ukrainian
hackers have a rather high level of work. So the help of the USA I don't know, why would we
need it? We have all the talent and special means for this. And I don't think that the USA or
any NATO country would make such sharp movements in international politics."
What sharp movements in international politics have been made lately? Let me spell it out
for the 17 US Intelligence Agencies so there is no confusion. These state sponsored, Russian
language hackers in Eastern European time zones have shown with the Surkov hack they have the
tools and experience to hack states that are looking out for it. They are also laughing at US
intel efforts.
The hackers also made it clear that they will do anything to serve Ukraine. Starting a war
between Russia and the USA is the one way they could serve Ukraine best, and hurt Russia worst.
Given those facts, if the DNC hack was according to the criteria given by Alperovitch, both he
and these hackers need to be investigated.
According to the Esquire interview "Alperovitch was deeply frustrated: He thought the
government should tell the world what it knew. There is, of course, an element of the personal
in his battle cry. "A lot of people who are born here don't appreciate the freedoms we have,
the opportunities we have, because they've never had it any other way," he told me. "I
have."
While I agree patriotism is a great thing, confusing it with this kind of nationalism is
not. Alperovitch seems to think by serving OUNb Ukraine's interests and delivering a conflict
with Russia that is against American interests, he's a patriot. He isn't serving US interests.
He's definitely a Ukrainian patriot. Maybe he should move to Ukraine.
The evidence presented deserves investigation because it looks like the case for conflict of
interest is the least Dimitri Alperovitch should look forward to. If these hackers are the real
Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear, they really did make sharp movements in international politics.
By pawning it off on Russia, they made a worldwide embarrassment of an outgoing President of
the United States and made the President Elect the suspect of rumor.
From the Observer.com , " Andrea
Chalupa -- the sister of DNC
research staffer Alexandra Chalupa -- claimed on
social media, without any evidence, that despite Clinton
conceding the election to Trump, the voting results need to be audited to because
Clinton couldn't have lost -- it must have been Russia. Chalupa hysterically
tweeted to every politician on Twitter to audit the vote because of Russia and claimed the TV
show The Americans
, about two KGB spies living in America, is real."
Quite possibly now the former UK Ambassador Craig Murry's admission of being the involved
party to "leaks" should be looked at. " Now both Julian
Assange and I have stated definitively the leak does not come from Russia . Do we credibly
have access? Yes, very obviously. Very, very few people can be said to definitely have access
to the source of the leak. The people saying it is not Russia are those who do have access.
After access, you consider truthfulness. Do Julian Assange and I have a reputation for
truthfulness? Well in 10 years not one of the tens of thousands of documents WikiLeaks has
released has had its authenticity successfully challenged. As for me, I have a reputation for
inconvenient truth telling."
Sometime in the next 4 weeks, the Justice Department's inspector general will release an internal review that will reveal the
origins of the Trump-Russia investigation. Among other matters, the IG's report is expected to determine "whether there was sufficient
justification under existing guidelines for the FBI to have started an investigation in the first place." Critics of the Trump-collusion
probe believe that there was never probable cause that a crime had been committed, therefore, there was no legal basis for launching
the investigation.
The findings of the Mueller report– that there was no cooperation or collusion between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign– seem
to underscore this broader point and suggest that the fictitious Trump-Russia connection was merely a pretext for spying on the campaign
of a Beltway outsider whose political views clashed with those of the foreign policy establishment.
In any event, the upcoming release of the Horowitz report will formally end the the first phase of the long-running Russiagate
scandal and mark the beginning of Phase 2, in which high-profile officials from the previous administration face criminal prosecution
for their role in what looks to be a botched attempt at a coup d'etat.
Here's a brief summary from political analyst, Larry C. Johnson, who previously worked at the CIA and U.S. State Department:
" The evidence is plain–there was a broad, coordinated effort by the Obama Administration, with the help of foreign governments,
to target Donald Trump and paint him as a stooge of Russia. The Mueller Report provides irrefutable evidence that the so-called
Russian collusion case against Donald Trump was a deliberate fabrication by intelligence and law enforcement organizations in
the US and UK and organizations aligned with the Clinton Campaign." (
"How US and Foreign Intel Agencies Interfered in a US Election" , Larry C. Johnson, Consortium News)
Bingo. Attorney General William Barr has already stated his belief that spying on the Trump campaign "did occur" and that, in
his mind, it is "a big deal". He also reiterated his commitment to thoroughly investigate the matter in order to find out whether
the spying was adequately "predicated", that is, whether the FBI followed the required protocols for such spying, or not. Barr already
knows the answer to this question as he is fully aware of the fact that the FBI used information that they knew was false to obtain
warrants to spy on the Trump campaign. Having no hard evidence of cooperation with the Kremlin, senior-level FBI officials and their
counterparts at the Obama Justice Department used parts of an "opposition research" document (The Trump Dossier) that they knew was
unreliable to procure warrants that allowed them to treat a presidential campaign the same way the intelligence agencies treat foreign
enemies; using electronic surveillance, wiretapping, confidential informants and "honey trap" schemes designed to gather embarrassing
or incriminating information on their target. Barr knows all of this already which is why the Democrats are doing everything in their
power to discredit him and have him removed from office.
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His determination to "get to the bottom of this" is not just a threat to the FBI, it's a threat to multiple agencies that may
have had a hand in this expansive domestic espionage operation including the CIA, the NSA, the DOJ, the State Department and, perhaps,
even the Obama White House. No one knows yet how far up the political food-chain the skulduggery actually goes, but Barr appears
to be serious about finding out.
Here's Barr again:
"Many people seem to assume that the only intelligence collection that occurred was a single confidential informant .I would
like to find out whether that is in fact true. It strikes me as a fairly anemic effort if that was the counterintelligence effort
designed to stop the threat as it's being represented."
In other words, Barr knows that the Trump campaign was riddled with spies and he is going to do his damnedest to find out what
happened. He also knows that the FISA warrants were improperly obtained using the shabby disinformation from an opposition research
"hit piece" (The Steele Dossier) that was paid for by Hillary Clinton and the DNC, just like he knows that government agents had
concocted a strategy for leaking classified information to the media to fuel the public hysteria. Barr knows most of what happened
already. It's just a matter of compiling the research in the proper format and delivering it in a way that helps to emphasize how
trusted government agents abused their power by pursuing a vicious partisan plot to either destroy the president's reputation or
force him from office. Like Barr said, that's a "big deal".
The name that seems to feature larger than all others in the ongoing Trump-Russia saga, is James Comey, the former FBI Director
who oversaw the spying operations that are now under investigation at the DOJ. But was Comey really the central figure in these felonious
hi-jinks or was he a mere lieutenant following directives from someone more powerful than himself? While the preponderance of new
evidence suggests that the FBI was deeply involved, it does not answer this crucial question. For example, just this week, a report
by veteran journalist John Solomon, showed that former British spy Christopher Steele admitted to Deputy Assistant Secretary of State
Kathleen Kavalec that his "Trump Dossier" was "political research", implying that the contents couldn't be trusted because they were
shaped by Steele's political bias. Kavalec passed along this information to the FBI which shrugged it off and then, just days later,
used the dossier to obtain warrants to spy on members of the Trump campaign. Think about that for a minute. The FBI had "written
proof . that Steele had a political motive", but went ahead and used the dossier to procure the warrants anyway. That's what I'd
call a premeditated felony.
But evidence of wrongdoing is not proof that Comey was the ringleader, he was just the hapless sad sack who was left holding the
bag. The truth is, Comey was just a reluctant follower. The real architect of the Trump-Russia treachery was the boss-man at the
nation's premier intelligence agency, the CIA. That's where the headwaters of this shameful burlesque are located, in Langley. More
on that in a minute, but first check out this excerpt from an article at The Hill which sums up Comey's role fairly well:
(There) "will be an examination of whether Comey was unduly influenced by political agendas emanating from the previous White
House and its director of national intelligence, CIA director and attorney general. This, above all, is what's causing the 360-degree
head spin.
"There are early indicators that troubling behaviors may have occurred in all three scenarios. Barr will want to zero in on
a particular area of concern: the use by the FBI of confidential human sources, whether its own or those offered up by the then-CIA
director.
In addition, the cast of characters leveraged by the FBI against the Trump campaign all appear to have their genesis as CIA
sources ("assets," in agency vernacular) shared at times with the FBI. From Stefan Halper and possibly Joseph Mifsud, to Christopher
Steele, to Carter Page himself, and now a mysterious "government investigator" posing as Halper's assistant and cited in The New
York Times article, legitimate questions arise as to whether Comey was manipulated into furthering a CIA political operation more
than an FBI counterintelligence case." (
"James Comey
is in trouble and he knows it" , The Hill)
Why is the Inspector General so curious as to whether Comey "was unduly influenced by political agendas emanating from the previous
White House and its director of national intelligence, CIA director? And why did Comey draw from "a cast of characters " . that "all
appear to have their genesis as CIA sources"??
Could it be that Comey was just an unwitting pawn in a domestic regime change operation launched by former CIA Director John Brennan,
the one public figure who has expressed greater personal animus towards Trump than all the others combined? Could Trump's promise
to normalize relations with Russia have intensified Brennan's visceral hatred of him given the fact that Russia had frustrated Brennan's
strategic plans in Ukraine and Syria? Keep in mind, the CIA had been arming, training and providing logistical support to the Sunni
militants who were trying to overthrow Syrian president Bashar al Assad. Putin's intervention crushed the jihadist militias delivering
a humiliating defeat to Generalissimo Brennan who, soon after, left office in disgrace. Isn't this at least part of the reason why
Brennan hates Trump?
Regular readers of this column know that I have always thought that Brennan was the central figure in the Trump-Russia charade.
It was Brennan who first referred the case to Comey, just as it was Brennan who "hand-picked" the analysts who stitched together
the dodgy Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) (which said that "Putin and the Russian government aspired to help Trump's election
chances.") It was also Brennan who persuaded Harry Reid to petition Comey to open an investigation in the first place. Brennan was
chief instigator of the Trump-Russia fiasco, the omniscient puppet-master who persuaded Clapper and Comey to do his bidding while
still-unidentified agents strategically leaked stories to the media to inflame passions and sow social unrest. At every turn, Brennan
was there guiding the perfidious project along. According to journalist Philip Giraldi, the CIA may have even assisted in the obtaining
of FISA warrants on Trump campaign aids as this excerpt from an article at The Unz Review indicates:
"Brennan was the key to the operation because the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court refused to approve several
requests by the FBI to initiate taps on Trump associates and Trump Tower as there was no probable cause to do so but the British
and other European intelligence services were legally able to intercept communications linked to American sources. Brennan was
able to use his connections with those foreign intelligence agencies, primarily the British GCHQ, to make it look like the concerns
about Trump were coming from friendly and allied countries and therefore had to be responded to as part of routine intelligence
sharing. As a result, Paul Manafort, Carter Page, Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Gen. Michael Flynn were all wiretapped.
And likely there were others. This all happened during the primaries and after Trump became the GOP nominee." (
"The Conspiracy Against Trump" , Philip
Giraldi)
Can you see how important this is? The FBI was having trouble getting warrants to spy on the Trump campaign, so Brennan helped
them out by persuading his foreign intelligence allies (the British and other European intelligence services) to come up with bogus
"intercepted communications linked to American sources," which helped to secure the FISA warrants. We have no idea of what these
foreign agents heard on these alleged intercepted communications, all we know is that they were effectively used to achieve Brennan's
ultimate objective, which was to acquire the means of taking down Trump via a relentless and expansive surveillance campaign.
According to a report in The Guardian (where the story first appeared.):
"GCHQ (British Government Communications Headquarters) played an early, prominent role in kickstarting the FBI's Trump-Russia
investigation, which began in late July 2016. One source called the British eavesdropping agency the "principal whistleblower".
("British spies were first to spot Trump team's links with Russia ", The Guardian)
Okay, so Brennan twisted a few arms and got his foreign Intel buddies to make uncorroborated claims that got the investigative
ball rolling, but then what? If there was any meat to Brennan's foreign intel, then Mueller would have dug it up and used it in his
report, right? But he didn't. Why?
Because there was nothing there, the whole thing was a sham from the get go. Brennan probably "sexed up" the intelligence so it
would sound like something it really wasn't. (Think: WMD) Again, if there was even a scintilla of hard evidence that Trump's campaign
assistants were in bed with Russia, Mueller would have shrieked it from every mountaintop across America. But he didn't, because
there wasn't any. There was no cooperation, no conspiracy and no collusion. Trump was falsely accused. End of story.
Here's more from the same article:
"The Guardian has been told the FBI and the CIA were slow to appreciate the extensive nature of contacts between Trump's team
and Moscow ahead of the US election." (Guardian)
"The extensive nature of contacts between Trump's team and Moscow"???
Really? This is precisely the type of hyperventilating journalism that fueled the absurd conspiracy theory that the president
of the United States was a Russian agent. It's hard to believe that we're even discussing the matter at this point.
There was an interesting aside in John Solomon's article that suggests that he might be thinking along the same lines. He says:
"One legal justification cited for redacting the Oct. 13, 2016, email is the National Security Act of 1947, which can be used to
shield communications involving the CIA or the White House National Security Council."
Why would Solomon draw attention to "to shielding communications involving the CIA or the White House", after all, the bulk of
his article focused on the State Department and the FBI? Is he suggesting that the CIA and Obama White House may have been involved
in these spying shenanigans, is that why Kavalec's damning notes (which stated that Steele's dossier could not be trusted.) have
been retroactively classified?
Take a look at this email from the FBI's chief investigator in the Russia collusion probe, Peter Strzok, to his fellow agents
in April 2017.
"I'm beginning to think the agency (CIA) got info a lot earlier than we thought and hasn't shared it completely with us. Might
explain all those weird/seemingly incorrect leads all these media folks have. Would also highlight agency as source of some leaks."
-Peter Strzok.
Ha! So even the FBI's chief investigator was in the dark about the CIA's shadowy machinations behind the scenes. Clearly, Brennan
wanted to prevent the other junta leaders from fully knowing what he was up to.
All of this is bound to come out in the inspector general's report sometime in the next month or so. Both Attorney General William
Barr and IG Horowitz appear to be fully committed to revealing the criminal leaks, the illegal electronic surveillance, the improperly
obtained FISA warrants, and the multiple confidential human sources (spies) that were placed in the Trump campaign. They are going
to face withering criticism for their efforts, but they are resolutely moving forward all the same. Bravo, for that.
Bottom line : The agents and officials who conducted this seditious attack on the presidency never thought they'd be held accountable
for their crimes. But they were wrong, and now their day of reckoning is fast approaching. The main players in this palace coup are
about to be exposed, criminally charged and prosecuted. Some of them will probably wind up in jail.
"The wheels of justice turn slowly, but grind exceedingly fine."
There is ZERO evidence that Russia played ANY role in the 2016 USSA election and yet are sanctioned to the max, threatened
with war etc. HOWEVER there IS proof of the UK/GCHQ involvement.
I am waiting to see if Trump still goes to the UK in June or if he tells them he is "busy with more important things at home"
aka F...off.
Apocalypse, I would say that word describes it pretty well.
Middle English Apocalipse "Revelation (the New Testament book)," borrowed from Anglo-French, borrowed from Late Latin
apocalypsis "revelation, the Book of Revelation," borrowed from Greek apokálypsis "uncovering, disclosure, revelation,"
from apokalyp-, stem of apokalýptein "to uncover, disclose, reveal" (from apo- APO- + kalýptein "to cover, protect,
conceal," of uncertain origin) + -sis -SIS
"No one knows yet how far up the political food-chain the skulduggery actually goes"
Too kind. We all know it is impossible that Susan Rice did not know -- she would have to authorize the FBI to conduct any foreign
spying operations.
And if Susan Rice knew, it is impossible that Barack Obama didn't know. And approved of it, if only by not putting a stop to
it.
The string that hasn't been pulled yet is the role of British intelligence. Brennan is obviously not a very bright man. He's
a post-turtle, so how a dull-witted former communist ended up as head of the CIA is yet another story that needs looking into.
Was he actually a British mole?
The intersection of British establishment political goals and donated assets in the operation of this plot is nakedly obvious.
It will be for Barr to expose that "angle", with the distinct possibility the ultimate origin of this scheme was the Blairite
UK civil service who wished to eliminate a potentially powerful political actor who repeatedly and strongly indicated his unreserved
support for Brexit.
All the things you mentioned were obfuscated by Clinton, Obama, Bush, Clinton, Bush Sr., Cheney, several Generals, heads of
state, foreign intelligence. Do you think someone just snaps a finger and the MIC disappears?
You conflate 'past' leadership with the current. The deep state is crumbling. We need to keep digging and indicting until Rothschild
takes a one way rocket off planet Earth.
It will only end when treasonous traitor hang by their necks. I'm still hoping and informing others.
"I've talked to the members of the Israeli government at the highest levels. I know who they want elected here. It's not
Hillary Clinton." – Former NY Mayor Rudy Giuliani
The TRUMP Collusion wasn't with the Russians , but with APARTHEID Israhell.
"... Breaking news today, courtesy of the New York Times , is that a man with a long history of working with the CIA and a female FBI Informant, traveled to London in September of 2016 and tried unsuccessfully to entrap George Papadopolous. The biggest curiosity is that US intelligence or law enforcement officials fully briefed British intelligence on what they were up to. ..."
"... The FBI disingenuously claims they ran Azra Turk at Papadopolous because they were alarmed ostensibly by Russia's attempts to disrupt the 2016 election. But Papadopolous was not seeking out Russian contacts. He was being baited. It was Mifsud and others tied to British and US intelligence who were bringing up the "opportunity" to work with the Russians. ..."
"... The boomerang from the Democratic Party's failed attempt to connect Donald Trump to Russia's 2016 election meddling is picking up speed, and its flight path crosses right through Moscow's pesky neighbor, Ukraine. That is where there is growing evidence a foreign power was asked, and in some cases tried, to help Hillary Clinton . ..."
"... In written answers to questions, Ambassador Valeriy Chaly's office says DNC contractor Alexandra Chalupa sought information from the Ukrainian government on Paul Manafort 's dealings inside the country, in hopes of forcing the issue before Congress. ..."
"... It's not just the left. I listened to Michael Tracey's interview with George Papadopoulos and was stunned to learn about the web of Deep State actors and how our Five Eyes allies were intimately involved in subverting our Presidential election. Papadopoulos even talks about U.S. military attachés, DIA guys, in on this coup. Listen to this Michael Tracey* interview and you will be shaken: https://youtu.be/ZjGLCCP_lPg ..."
"... Neoliberals and neoconservatives (ie zionists) were behind it and continue to push it. Trump ran to the left of Clinton on both domestic and foreign policy. That's why he won, and why the establishment must present his election as de facto illegitimate, because otherwise they would be forced to admit that the bipartisan convergence around both finance driven economic policy and war on terror interventionism that has described elite politics since Clinton has been a disaster for most ordinary Americans -- of all types and political persuasions -- and needs to be destroyed root and branch. ..."
"... What's the likelihood that Carter Page was a plant in the Trump campaign? After all, he had a history with the US IC and was used as bait in an FBI case to prove Russian operatives' recruiting efforts. It's thought he's the Under Cover Employee alluded to in this case, which resulted in the successful prosecution of Russian spies: ..."
"... Here's a National Review exclusive report in which a transcript of FBI's Deputy Assistant Director Jonathan Moffa's testimony reveals several Confidential Human Sources (including Christopher Steele), and more interestingly foreign "liasons" (Mifsud?) were employed by the bureau in this operation: ..."
Intel and Law Enforcement Tried to Entrap Trump by Larry C Johnson
The preponderance of evidence makes this very simple--there was a broad, coordinated effort
by the Obama Administration, with the help of foreign governments, to target Donald Trump and
paint him as a stooge of Russia.
The Mueller Report provides irrefutable evidence that the so-called Russian collusion case
against Donald Trump was a deliberate fabrication by intelligence and law enforcement
organizations in the United States and the United Kingdom and organizations aligned with the
Clinton Campaign.
Breaking news today, courtesy
of the New York Times, is that a man with a long history of working with the CIA and a
female FBI Informant, traveled to London in September of 2016 and tried unsuccessfully to
entrap George Papadopolous. The biggest curiosity is that US intelligence or law enforcement
officials fully briefed British intelligence on what they were up to. Quite understandable
given what we now know about British spying on the Trump Campaign.
The Mueller investigation of Trump "collusion" with Russia prior to the 2016 Presidential
election focused on eight cases:
Proposed Trump Tower Project in Moscow
George Papadopolous --
Carter Page --
Dimitri Simes --
Veselnetskya Meeting at Trump Tower (June 16, 2016)
Events at Republican Convention
Post-Convention Contacts with Russian Ambassador Kislyak
Paul Manafort
One simple fact emerges--of the eight cases or incidents of alleged Trump Campaign
interaction with the Russians investigated by the Mueller team, the proposals to interact with
the Russian Government or Putin originated with FBI informants, MI-6 assets or people paid by
Fusion GPS, not Trump or his people. There is not a single instance where Donald Trump or any
member of his campaign team initiated contact with the Russians for the purpose of gaining
derogatory information on Hillary or obtaining support to boost the Trump campaign. Not
one.
Simply put, Trump and his campaign were the target of an elaborate, wide ranging covert
action designed to entrap him and members of his team as an agent of Russia.
Let's look in detail at each of the cases.
THE PROPOSED TRUMP TOWER PROJECT IN MOSCOW, according to Mueller's report, originated with an FBI Informant--Felix Sater.
Here's what the Mueller Report states:
In the late summer of 2015, the Trump Organization received a new inquiry about pursuing a
Trump Tower project in Moscow. In approximately September 2015, Felix Sater . . . contacted
Cohen (i.e., Michael Cohen) on behalf of I.C. Expert Investment Company (I.C. Expert), a
Russian real-estate development corporation controlled by Andrei Vladimirovich Rozov.
Sater had
known Rozov since approximately 2007 and, in 2014, had served as an agent on behalf of Rozov
during Rozov's purchase of a building in New York City. Sater later contacted Rozov and
proposed that I.C. Expert pursue a Trump Tower Moscow project in which I.C. Expert would
license the name and brand from the Trump Organization but construct the building on its own.
Sater worked on the deal with Rozov and another employee of I.C. Expert. (see page 69 of the
Mueller Report).
Mueller,
as I have noted previously , is downright dishonest in failing to identify Sater as an FBI
informant. Sater was not just a private entrepreneur looking to make some coin. He was a fully
signed up FBI informant. Sater's status as an FBI snitch was first exposed in 2012. Sater also
was a boyhood chum of Michael Cohen, the target being baited in this operation. Another
inconvenient fact excluded from the Mueller report is that one of Mueller's Chief Prosecutors,
Andrew
Weissman, signed the deal with Felix Sater in December 1998 that put Sater into the FBI
Informant business .
All suggestions for meeting with the Russian Government, including Putin, originated with
Felix Sater. The use of Sater on this particular project started in September 2015.
Papadopolous was targeted by British and U.S. intelligence starting in late December 2015,
when he is offered out of the blue a job with the
London Centre of International
Law and Practice Limited (LCILP) . The LCILP has all of the hallmarks of an
intelligence front company. LCILP began as an offshoot from another company -- EN
Education Group Limited -- which describes itself as "a global education
consultancy, facilitating links between students, education providers and organisations with an
interest in education worldwide".
EN Education and LCILP are owned and run by Nagi Khalid Idris, a 48-year-old British citizen
of Sudanese origin. For no apparent reason Idris offers Papadopolous a job as the Director of
the LCILP's International Energy and Natural Resources Division. Then in March of 2016, Idris
and Arvinder Sambei (who acted as an attorney for the FBI on a 9-11 extradition case in the
UK), insist on introducing Joseph Mifsud to Papadopolous.
It is Joseph Mifsud who introduces the idea of meeting Putin following a lunch in
London:
"The lunch is booked for March 24 at the Grange Holborn Hotel,. . . . "When I get there,
Mifsud is waiting for me in the lobby with an attractive, fashionably dressed young woman with
dirty blonde hair at his side. He introduces her as Olga Vinogradova." (p. 76)
"Mifsud sells her hard. "Olga is going to be your inside woman to Moscow. She knows
everyone." He tells me she was a former official at the Russian Ministry of Trade. Then he
waxes on about introducing me to the Russian ambassador in London." (p. 77)
"On April 12, "Olga" writes: "I have already alerted my personal links to our conversation
and your request. The embassy in London is very much aware of this. As mentioned, we are all
very excited by the possibility of a good relationship with Mr. Trump. The Russian Federation
would love to welcome him once his candidature would be officially announced."
And it is Mifsud who raises the possibility of getting dirt on Hillary:
"Then Mifsud returns from the Valdai conference. On April 26 we meet for breakfast at the
Andaz Hotel, near Liverpool Street Station, one of the busiest train stations in London. He's
in an excellent mood and claims he met with high-level Russian government officials. But once
again, he's very short on specifics. This is becoming a real pattern with Mifsud. He hasn't
offered any names besides Timofeev. Then, he leans across the table in a conspiratorial manner.
The Russians have "dirt" on Hillary Clinton, he tells me. "Emails of Clinton," he says. "They
have thousands of emails."
Here again we encounter the lying and obfuscation of the Mueller team. They falsely
characterize Mifsud as an agent of Russia. In fact, he has close and longstanding ties to both
British and US intelligence (
Disobedient Media lays out the Mifsud mystery in detail ).
Mifsud was not alone. The FBI and the CIA also were in the game of trying to entrap
Papadopolous. In September of 2016, Papadopolous was being wined and dined by Halper (who has
longstanding ties to the US intelligence community) and Azra Turk, an FBI Informant/researcher
( see NY
Times ).
The FBI disingenuously claims they ran Azra Turk at Papadopolous because they were alarmed
ostensibly by Russia's attempts to disrupt the 2016 election. But Papadopolous was not seeking
out Russian contacts. He was being baited. It was Mifsud and others tied to British and US
intelligence who were bringing up the "opportunity" to work with the Russians.
CARTER PAGE
The section of the Mueller report that deals with Carter Page is a total travesty. Mueller
and his team, for example, initially misrepresent Page's status with the Trump campaign--he is
described as "working" for the campaign, which implies a paid position, when he was in fact
only a volunteer foreign policy advisor. Mueller also paints Page's prior experience and work
in Russia as evidence that Page was being used by Russian intelligence, but says nothing about
the fact that Page was being regularly debriefed by the CIA and the FBI during the same period.
In other words, Page was cooperating with US intelligence and law enforcement. But this fact is
omitted in the Mueller report.
Mueller eventually accurately describes Page's role in the Trump campaign as follows:
In January 2016, Page began volunteering on an informal, unpaid basis for the Trump Campaign
after Ed Cox, a state Republican Party official, introduced Page to Trump Campaign officials.
Page told the Office that his goal in working on the Campaign was to help candidate Trump
improve relations with Russia. To that end, Page emailed Campaign officials offering his
thoughts on U.S.-Russia relations, prepared talking points and briefing memos on Russia, and
proposed that candidate Trump meet with President Vladimir Putin in Moscow.
In communications with Campaign officials, Page also repeatedly touted his high-level
contacts in Russia and his ability to forge connections between candidate Trump and senior
Russian governmental officials. For example, on January 30, 2016, Page sent an email to senior
Campaign officials stating that he had "spent the past week in Europe and had been in
discussions with some individuals with close ties to the Kremlin" who recognized that Trump
could have a "game-changing effect . .. in bringing the end of the new Cold War. The email
stated that " [t]hrough [his] discussions with these high level contacts," Page believed that
"a direct meeting in Moscow between Mr. Trump and Putin could be arranged.
The Mueller presentation portrays Carter Page in a nefarious, negative light. His contacts
with Russia are characterized as inappropriate and unjustified. Longstanding business
experience in a particular country is not proof of wrong doing. No consideration is given at
all to Page's legitimate concerns raising about the dismal state of US/Russia relations
following the US backed coup in the Ukraine and the subsequent annexation of Crimea by
Russia.
Page's association with the Trump campaign was quite brief--he lasted seven months, being
removed as a foreign policy advisor on 24 September. Page was not identified publicly as a
Trump foreign policy advisor until March of 2016, but the evidence presented in the Mueller
report clearly indicates that Page was already a target of intelligence agencies, in the US and
abroad, long before the FISA warrant of October 2016.
While serving on the foreign policy team Page continued his business and social contacts in
Russia, but was never tasked by the Trump team to pursue or promote contacts with Putin and his
team. In fact, Page's proposals, suggestions and recommendations were either ignored or
directly rebuffed.
The timeline reported in the Mueller report regarding Page's trip to Russia in early July
raises questions about the intel collected on that trip and the so-called "intel" revealed in
the Steele Dossier with respect to Page. Carter admits to meeting with individuals, such as
Dmitry Peskov and Igor Sechin, who appear in the Steele Dossier. Page's meetings in Moscow
turned out to be innocuous and uneventful. Nothing he did resembled clandestine activity. Yet,
the Steele report on that visit suggested just the opposite and used the tactic of guilt by
association to imply that Page was up to something dirty.
The bottomline for Mueller is that Page did not do anything wrong and no one in the Trump
Campaign embraced his proposals for closer ties with Russia.
DMITRI SIMES
The targeting and investigation of Dmitri Simes is disgusting and an abuse of law
enforcement authority. Full disclosure. I know Dmitri. For awhile, in the 2002-2003 time
period, I was a regular participant at Nixon Center events. For example, I was at a round table
in December 2002 on the imminent invasion of Iraq. Colonel Pat Lang sat on one side of me and
Ambassador Joe Wilson on the other. Directly across the table was Charles Krauthammer. Dmitri
ran an honest seminar.
The entire section on Dmitri Simes, under other circumstances, could be viewed as something
bizarre and amusing. But the mere idea that Simes was somehow an agent of Putin and a vehicle
for helping Trump work with the Russians to steal the 2016 election is crazy and idiotic. Those
in the FBI who were so stupid as to buy into this nonsense should have their badges and guns
taken away. They are too dumb to work in law enforcement.
Dmitri's only sin was to speak calmly, intelligently and rationally about foreign policy
dealings with Russia. We now know that in this new hysteria of the 21st Century Russian scare
that qualities such as reason and rationality are proof of one's willingness to act as a puppet
of Vladimir Putin.
TRUMP TOWER MEETING (JUNE 9, 2016)
This is the clearest example of a plant designed to entrap the Trump team. Mueller, once
again, presents a very disingenuous account:
On June 9, 2016, senior representatives of the Trump Campaign met in Trump Tower with a
Russian attorney expecting to receive derogatory information about Hillary Clinton from the
Russian government. The meeting was proposed to Donald Trump Jr. in an email from Robert
Goldstone, at the request of his then-client Emin Agalarov, the son of Russian real-estate
developer Aras Agalarov. Goldstone relayed to Trump Jr. that the "Crown prosecutor of Russia
... offered to provide the Trump Campaign with some official documents and information that
would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia" as "part of Russia and its government's
support for Mr. Trump." Trump Jr. immediately responded that "if it's what you say I love it,"
and arranged the meeting through a series of emails and telephone calls.
The meeting was with a Russian attorney, Natalia Veselnitskaya.
The Russian attorney who spoke at the meeting, Natalia Veselnitskaya, had previously worked
for the Russian government and maintained a relationship with that government throughout this
period oftime. She claimed that funds derived from illegal activities in Russia were provided
to Hillary Clinton and other Democrats. Trump Jr. requested evidence to support those claims,
but Veselnitskaya did not provide such information.
Ignore for a moment that no information on Hillary was passed or provided (and doing such a
thing is not illegal). The real problem is with what Mueller does not say and did not
investigate. Mueller conveniently declines to mention the fact that Veselnitskaya was working
closely with the firm Hillary Clinton hired to produce the Steele Dossier. NBC News reported on
Veselnitskaya:
The information that a Russian lawyer brought with her when she met Donald Trump Jr. in June
2016 stemmed from research conducted by Fusion GPS, the same firm that compiled the infamous
Trump dossier, according to the lawyer and a source familiar with the matter.
In an interview with NBC News, Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya says she first received
the supposedly incriminating information she brought to Trump Tower -- describing alleged tax
evasion and donations to Democrats -- from Glenn Simpson , the Fusion GPS owner, who had been
hired to conduct research in a New York federal court case.
Even a mediocre investigator
would recognize the problem of the relationship between the lawyer claiming to have dirty,
damning info on Hillary with the firm Hillary hired to dig up dirt on Donald Trump. This was
another botched set up and the Trump folks did not take the bait.
EVENTS AT THE REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION
This portion of the Mueller report is complete farce. Foreign Ambassdors, including the
Russian (and the Chinese) attend Republican and Democrat Conventions. Presidential candidates
and their advisors speak to those Ambassadors. So, where is the beef? Answer. There isn't any.
That this "event" was considered something worthy of a counter intelligence investigation is
just one more piece of evidence that law enforcement and intelligence were weaponized against
the Trump campaign.
POST-CONVENTION CONTACTS WITH RUSSIAN AMBASSADOR KISLYAK
Ditto. As noted in the previous paragraph, trying to criminalize normal diplomatic contacts,
especially with a country where we share important, vital national security interests, is but
further evidence of the crazy anti-Russian hysteria that has infected the anti-Trumpers.
Pathetic.
MANAFORT
If Paul Manafort had rebuffed Trump's offer to run his campaign, he would be walking free
today and still buying expensive suits and evading taxes along with his Clinton buddy, Greg
Craig. Instead, he became another target for DOJ and intel community and the DNC, which were
desperate to portray Trump as a tool of the Kremlin. Thanks to John Solomon of The Hill, we now
know the impetus to target
Manafort came from the DNC :
The boomerang from the Democratic Party's failed attempt to connect
Donald Trump to Russia's 2016 election meddling
is picking up speed, and its flight path crosses right through Moscow's pesky neighbor,
Ukraine. That is where there is growing evidence a foreign power was asked, and in some cases
tried, to help Hillary
Clinton .
In its most detailed account yet, Ukraine's embassy in Washington says a Democratic National
Committee insider during the 2016 election solicited dirt on Donald Trump's campaign chairman
and even tried to enlist the country's president to help.
In written answers to questions, Ambassador Valeriy Chaly's office says DNC contractor
Alexandra Chalupa sought information from the Ukrainian government on
Paul Manafort 's dealings inside the country, in
hopes of forcing the issue before Congress.
Manafort was not colluding, but the Clinton campaign and the Obama Administration most
certainly were.
Take these eight events as a whole a very clear picture emerges--US and foreign intelligence
(especially the UK) and US law enforcement collaborated in a broad effort to bait the Trump
team with ostensible Russian entreaties in order to paint Trump as a tool of the Kremlin. That
effort is now being exposed and those culpable will hopefully face justice. This should sicken
and alarm every American regardless of political party. Will justice be served?
I just read the following about special visas approved for some of the FBI "operatives"
(from SD at CTH): "It wasn't just the CIA that was using spies to "dirty up" Trump
associates. The FBI was doing it too. There was the infamous Natalia Veselnitskaya who is
known for her part in the Trump Tower meeting. She had been banned from the country but got a
special visa signed off by Preet Bahara of the FBI, Southern District of New York. Henry
Greenburg, the known FBI informant who tried to entrap Roger Stone, also got a special visa.
And I'm sure there are many more "
IMO, there is no coming back from this. Apart from this Deep State coup attempt, we have seen
that democracy is a shame, it's all theater. The Establishment (which includes GOP) is
constantly working to undermine Trump and thwart his plans to do what the American people
want and elected him for. What I've found quite disturbing is that the controlling puppet
masters have not let up in trying to remove or neutralize Trump. As if they can't wait even 4
years to again fully stack the deck and regain total control. They are not willing to concede
that 2016 was a political black swan event involving a celebrity billionaire American icon.
And conceding and allowing this fluke to be rectified I'm 4 short years is worse than their
pushback exposing the political system as a rigged game.
The events of the last 2.5 years have radically altered my views. I no longer have any
faith in democracy (voting), the government, the federal courts, law enforcement, et al. And
I can't see me regaining any faith in them. What I have seen in the past 2.5 years is kind of
like finding out my wife of decades, whom I idolized, has been cheating with my friend from
childhood, whom I would've laid down my life for. And all the other people close to me not
telling me.
It's not just the left. I listened to Michael Tracey's interview with George Papadopoulos and
was stunned to learn about the web of Deep State actors and how our Five Eyes allies were
intimately involved in subverting our Presidential election. Papadopoulos even talks about
U.S. military attachés, DIA guys, in on this coup. Listen to this Michael Tracey*
interview and you will be shaken: https://youtu.be/ZjGLCCP_lPg
*Tracey, btw, is on the left. But like Glenn Greenwald and others on the left he is an
honest journalist interested in the truth.
The "left" was not behind and does not buy into this Russia psyop. Neoliberals and
neoconservatives (ie zionists) were behind it and continue to push it. Trump ran to the left
of Clinton on both domestic and foreign policy. That's why he won, and why the establishment
must present his election as de facto illegitimate, because otherwise they would be forced to
admit that the bipartisan convergence around both finance driven economic policy and war on
terror interventionism that has described elite politics since Clinton has been a disaster
for most ordinary Americans -- of all types and political persuasions -- and needs to be
destroyed root and branch.
To see how and why the "left" differs from corporate identity-politicking liberals in the
above regard consider how it is that Tulsi Gabbard is both the Dem candidate most respected
by principled Trump supporters on this site and others and the Dem candidate most reviled,
ignored, and slandered by DNC liberals and neocons alike.
The enemy to principled conservatives and the left in this country is the bipartisan
establishment corporate neoliberalism of the RNC and DNC alike.
What's the likelihood that Carter Page was a plant in the Trump campaign? After all, he had a
history with the US IC and was used as bait in an FBI case to prove Russian operatives'
recruiting efforts. It's thought he's the Under Cover Employee alluded to in this case, which
resulted in the successful prosecution of Russian spies:
Page is just a goofball grifter. He's not a plant. That is silly. When they saw names like
Page and Manafort the Democrats pounced because they knew the could cast aspersions.
I'm not sure about Mifsud. I think it would be hard for Mueller to knowingly indict
Papadop if Mifsud were an asset of the US (or even known to be an asset of allies). I think
it is more likely Mifsud was a free agent.
All these guys Mifsud, Page, Papadop were grifters, not doing real work. Just running
around trying to make a buck by claiming to facilitate meetings. It's a shame it bit them and
not a crime to do what they did. At the same time, I can't help but see some kharmic justice.
GET A JOB, you poly sci lightweights!
This anonymous commentator has never spent time in senior levels of business or government.
There is a whole class of people who do not see themselves as Grifters but more as "ideas
men".
The best offer valuable perspectives on the world, can really open doors and otherwise add
value. At the other end of the spectrum are con men. Political campaigns and large
corporations of any sort attract these people in droves. The skill in management is to sort
the wheat from the chaff. Trump is good at that.
Yes, Page often comes off as a bit crazy and incoherent. But he may be crazy like a fox. In
the end he was never charged with ANYTHING and it's my understanding he represented himself
legally throughout the investigation, opting not to hire counsel. I find it odd that others
were prosecuted for process crimes but he escaped even THAT fate.
His participation in the Trump campaign, limited as it was, was nevertheless KEY in
finally obtaining a FISA warrant after other attempts failed.
Consider it silly if you want. I view him at least worthy of suspicion. His hapless
demeanor could be his schtick , when his education, experience and IC connections are
taken into consideration.
Page represents himself poorly even when he knows a lot is on the line. Look at how
frustrated Gowdy got with him. Clearly Page didn't learn much from plebe year in terms of 5
basic responses. Compare the difference with Barr for instance.
While the Trident program is a big deal, every now and then USNA has mids that are
diligent about getting good grades but not very smart. I knew one my year. Page is clearly in
that vein. Don't miss that he didn't get into any elite program after graduation (SWO is the
default). And that he was a poly sci major. The saying is "poly sci, QPR high" (QPR is
quality point rating or GPA). Of course this is not to say there aren't some good SWOs or
poly sci majors. But there's a definite correlation I'm noting. It fits with what his
reputation is.
Furthermore, the guy has had an uneventful career, bouncing around. He went to a lower
bulge bracket (not Goldman) and didn't seem to stick. And his Russian colleagues said he was
an idiot and a boaster. We're not talking i-banker smart. Wouldn't trust him to do an NPV or
other economic analysis. And then after that we have the grifting and the shmoozing.
Kid is a lightweight. A slightly less coffee-boy coffee boy.
''They cannot convict based on a law that was passed after the act was committed''
Money laundering has always been against the law of course....the NY law just firmed up
the due diligence that is suppose to be done in transactions. I don't think there is a statute of limitations on things like
fraud, tax evasion and money laundering but I will check it out to see
Catherine, in current PC thinking, merely passing the salt to a Russian guest at a dinner
party makes you "an unregistered foreign agent" of Russia bent on implementing Putin's evil
plans.
As for certifying real estate deals, the same crowd would view buying someone a MacDonalds
hamburger as attempted bribery.
''As for certifying real estate deals, the same crowd would view buying someone a MacDonalds
hamburger as attempted bribery.''
Hardly. 7 million dollar cash deals for a condo thru a shell company is a red flag
however..as is buying property for 1 million and selling it unimproved the next year for 2
million...or buying a house in LA 11 million and selling it 9 months later for 8 million.
That 'in between money" is someone's pay off....that's how it works.
Money laundering is epidemic in the US and Europe....Israeli mafia, Russian oligarchs,
African dictators looting their country's treasury and running it through a real estate
washing machine deal. Far be from me to sweep the fairy dust out of Trump supporters eyes but, as I said,
Trump's troubles are far from over. We will see what comes out in the future.
The soft coup against Donald Trump failed. He has to run hard and sure to win in 2020 to
avoid an indictment in NY State when he leaves the Presidency. Corporate Democrats will do
their damnedst again to put forth their weakest pro war candidate like the aged, apparently
demented, Joe Biden. This fiasco and the recent coup attempt in Venezuela make the Keystone
Cops appear competent.
I put this all down to Washington DC being completely isolated inside their credentialed
bubble. It is just like corporate CEOs, who think they know exactly what they are doing. But,
in reality, they are destroying the stabilizing middle class by extracting and hording wealth
and turning mid-America into their colony. Globalist and nationalist oligarchs are after each
other's throat over who controls the flow of money.
We live on a very finite world dependent on one sun in an expanding universe. Just like
Boeing, Bayer or Volkswagen, the splintering world is starting to crash all around them. Even
as they deny it, this is a multi-polar world now. It is not going back without a world war
which would destroy civilization and could make the world uninhabitable for humans.
And the best that our government can do is warn us not to wash our chicken before cooking it
because washing merely spreads the salmonella that our food industry is unable to prevent
from infecting it.
The trouble is that those CEO's do know exactly what they are doing. Making money the
only way possible in a business environment in which outsourcing can sometimes be the only
thing that pays.
The idea was that Trump was going to change that environment. Bannon calls its "economic
nationalism" but in truth it's now just economic survival. Survival for those whose jobs are
outsourced. Survival for the country as a whole, ultimately. That was Trump's core programme. It was the programme that made him different from all
other Western politicians, "populist" or status quo. Do you see any sign that it's being
implemented, or has that programme too got bogged down in the swamp?
If we are speaking about criminal justice, there is some chance that we will see persons such
as Jim Comey, who persists in his smug higher calling act, prosecuted for what was a clear
cut violation in divulging classified material through a lawyer intermediary to the NYT. I
suspect the higher calling bit has been prompted in part because he knows that he screwed up
both on the facts and in law and he is justifying his screw up to himself, and possibly also
rehearsing his defense, with the rationale that he was only trying to do the right thing.
Yeah, he may have had the facts all wrong, the Russians, etc, etc, but the worst that can be
said is that he had been competent, there was no intent. That defense doesn't do much for the
FBI's once held reputation for competence, but that appears to be gone anyway.
With regard to what will be turned up concerning the actual roots of the travesty, the
heavily politicized faux investigation into the Clinton e mails and targeting of the Trump
campaign on a predicate that is somewhere between nebulous and non existant, I think a
criminal prosecution arising from that investigation, even if it is serious, is unlikely for
two main reasons. First, what will be the charged violations? As best I can see right now,
they will have to entail some imaginative application of fraud statutes, defrauding the FISC,
defrauding the US, informants and assets lying to their handlers, or process crimes like Bob
Mueller's partisan posse relied upon (ugly); and second, something like the Comey defense
will interpenetrate all the individuals and entities involved: we may have been incredible
bunglers, but that is the worst of it. We really believed these charlatans who conned us into
this debacle. Sorry, but we thought we were doing the right thing.
Now if we are talking about seeing some kind of political or moral justice, I'm not too
optimistic we will get much satisfaction there either and we will probably have to wait for
history. The reason is that Barr will conduct this investigation by the rule book. That means
that what we see developed through the process, indictment, prosecution, etc, is likely
all,that we will ever see. Barr is very unlikely to produce a politcized manifesto to be
employed as a smear weapon like the once reputable Mueller did.
Anyway, until we see a special FGJ empanelled, some search warrants executed, some tactical
immunities offered, everything is on the come.
What probability do you assign that any top official will be indicted and prosecuted? I
mean Brennan, Clapper, Comey & Lynch.
Second, what probability do you assign that Trump will declassify the relevant documents
and communications like the FISA application,the originating EC, the tasking orders for
FBI/CIA spying, etc.
The question really comes down to Trump. Does he really want to expose the Swamp and pay
the price or just use it for rhetorical & political purposes? When considering
probabilities and looking at his track record in office on foreign policy relative to his
campaign stance, I would say the probability is less than 30% that Brennan & Clapper will
be indicted.
The question is only very partly what Trump wants, in some abstract sense. Situations like
this commonly have a strong escalatory logic. So one needs to ask whether or not he has
rational reason to believe that unless he can destroy those who have shown themselves
prepared to stop at nothing to destroy him, they will eventually succeed.
If the answer is yes - and while I think it may very well be, I am not prejudging the
issue - then a key question becomes whether Trump will conclude that his most promising
loption is to go after the conspirators by every means possible.
Involved here are questions about who he is listening to, and how competent they are.
But the escalatory processes are not simply to do with what Trump decides. In particular,
a whole range of legal proceedings are involved. The referral in relation to Nellie Ohr is
likely to be the fist of a good few. In addition, Ed Butowsky's lawsuits, and those against
Steele, have unpredictable potentialities.
The intelligence & law enforcement apparatus in collusion with the media and the
establishment of both parties went after him hard. As Larry notes here, they went to
considerable effort to entrap those related to his campaign to impugn him. Mueller spent $35
million trying to find an angle. Even after the Mueller report stated there was no collusion
they're sill after him. So that's not going to end any time soon.
Trump may have good instincts but his judgment of people so far to staff his
administration is not very inspiring. He had Jeff Sessions as his AG and he let him hang in
there for nearly two years while Mueller ran riot. He's surrounded himself with neocons on
foreign policy. It seems his only real advisor is Jared. Everyone else he's got around him
are from the same establishment that's going after him. He hasn't taken advise from Devin
Nunes, who has done more to uncover the sedition than anyone else. If he had he would have by
now declassified all the documents & communications. The impression I have is his primary
motivation is building his brand & less about governance and wielding power. Take for
example his order to withdraw from Syria. Bolton & the Pentagon are thumbing their noses
at him.
Well, there have been several criminal referrals prior to the recent one on Nellie Ohr.
There's the McCabe referral and the 8 referrals by Devin Nunes. I've not read any report of
the empaneling of a grand jury yet. I agree with you that these law suits have the potential
for great embarrassment, however to hold those responsible for the sedition accountable will
require iron will & intense focus on the part of Trump to get his AG to assign
prosecutors who don't have the axe to "protect" the "institution" and to create an
opportunity for public awareness of the extent that law enforcement & intelligence became
a 4th branch of government. My opinion is that his skill is in his instinctual understanding
of the current political zeitgeist and his ability to manipulate the media including social
media to project his brand. He's not an operational leader making sure his team executes his
vision & strategy.
Here's a National Review exclusive report in which a transcript of FBI's Deputy
Assistant Director Jonathan Moffa's testimony reveals several Confidential Human Sources
(including Christopher Steele), and more interestingly foreign "liasons" (Mifsud?) were
employed by the bureau in this operation:
This was clearly an attempt to entrap Trump in connections to Russia and fuel anti-Russian hysteria and defense spending. Both goals
were accomplished under Trump without much resistance. Still Russiagate persists. Why?
Notable quotes:
"... 05/03/16 Email from DNC contractor Ali Chalupa states she connected Michael Isikoff of Yahoo News "to the Ukrainians" DNC https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/3962 ..."
"... 05/15/16 Crowdstrike claims it investigated DNC hacking and that Russians were responsible; FBI still denied access to server to confirm Crowdstrike https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/bears-midst-intrusion-democratic-national-committee/ ..."
03/06/16 Former Hillary State Dept. representative George Papadopoulos learns he will join Trump campaign as a low-level
foreign policy adviser DOJ
https://www.justice.gov/file/1007346/download
A foreign intelligence asset was used to justify surveillance of Trump[ and some of his associates
Notable quotes:
"... What is clear from the new records is that Christopher Steele, a foreign intelligence officer, had frequent and extensive contacts with the FBI. Who was his FBI Case Agent? ..."
"... The main thing I want to know is WHEN was the decision made to tar Trump with Russia - both at the FBI (and likely CIA) and at the DNC (over the leak) - and WHO was the deciding entity - Comey, Brennan, Clinton, Obama or someone else? And perhaps who came up with the idea in the first place (at the DNC, it was very likely Alexandra Chalupa, the Ukrainian-American DNC "consultant"). ..."
"... The bad thing is that our MSM is so reverent of our Intel agencies that I see them encouraged to increasingly put their hand on the scale. ..."
"... Recently, I saw arm flailing by a Congressman, Dan Coats, and Mueller about how the Russians are still at it. They are trying to disrupt or influence the 2018. Really, then I demand to get a list of the pro-Kremlin candidates. How long before the mere threat of being outed as a Kremlin agent is used to punish elected officials if they are not sufficiently hawkish or don't support certain programs. Unchallenged claims by Intel agencies gives them a lot of political power. ..."
"... I am skeptical. Russia has a lot of fish to fry, why would they expend resources on midterm elections. Now everyone in the U.S. hates them, both traditional hawk Republicans and born again uber-hawk Democrats. There is a tiger behind both doors. ..."
"... if Steele had been a CHS since at least February of 2016, what was the purpose of passing the Dossier to the FBI through Fusion GPS? Why not just going to his FBI handler? Was Steele collaboration with Fusion even in compliance with FBI regulations? Did the FBI know? ..."
"... Because part of the plan was to leak the information in order to damage Trump. FBI could not do that. Would have exposed them to some real legal jeopardy. This was a dual track strategy. Diabolical almost. ..."
"... Don't forget the Nellie Ohr (Fusion GPS) -> Bruce Ohr (DOJ) back channel. The husband & wife tag team. Yes, the same Nellie that was investigating using ham radio to communicate to avoid NSA mass surveillance. ..."
"... From the very beginning that information about all this was slowly leaking from the Congressional investigation, this whole thing smelled very fishy. Then add intense effort at DOJ & FBI to obstruct and obfuscate. And the unhinged tweets and interviews by Brennan, Clapper & Comey. ..."
"... He was working with FBI and GPS at the same time. GPS was in the dark supposedly about his work with the FBI and Steele got their approval to hand over what he had delivered to GPS to the FBI as a cover for his work with the FBI. ..."
"... its also likely FBI had some input into the content of what was delivered to GPS, and more importantly what was not delivered. ..."
"... Re the 'standing agreement to not recruit each other's intelligence personnel for clandestine activities.' As Steele was not by this time a current employee of MI6, was the FBI in technical violation of this? ..."
"... A central question in regard to Steele, as with quite a number of former intelligence/law enforcement/military people who have started at least ostensibly private sector operations, is how far these are being used as 'cover' for activities conducted on behalf of either the state agencies for which they used to work, or other state agencies. ..."
"... It is at least possible that one advantage of such arrangements may be that they make it possible to evade the letter of agreements between intelligence agencies in different countries ..."
"... If, as seems likely, both current and former top FBI and DOJ people – very likely Mueller as well as Comey, Strzok and many others – were intimately involved in the conspiracy to subvert the constitution, then a means of making it possible for Steele to combine feeding information to the FBI while also engaging in 'StratCom' via the MSM could have been necessary. ..."
"... An obvious means of 'squaring the circle' would have been to issue a formal 'termination' to Steele, while creating 'back channels' to those who were officially supposed not to be talking to him ..."
"... A report yesterday by John Solomon in 'The Hill' quotes from messages exchanged between Steele and Bruce Ohr after the supposed termination ..."
"... 'In all, Ohr's notes, emails and texts identify more than 60 contacts with Steele and/or Simpson, some dating to 2002 in London. But the vast majority occurred during the 2016-2017 timeframe that gave birth to one of the most controversial counterintelligence probes in American history.' ..."
"... I have just finished taking a fresh look at Sir Robert Owen's travesty of a report into the death of Litvinenko. In large measure, this develops claims originally made in Christopher Steele's first attempt to provide a convincing account of why figures close to Putin might have thought it made sense to assassinate that figure, and to do so with polonium. The sheer volume of fabrication which has been deployed in an attempt to defend the patently indefensible almost beggars belief. ..."
"... Just as a question arises as to whether Steele is essentially acting on behalf of MI6, a question also arises as to whether the FBI leadership were knowledgeable about, and possibly involved with, the various shenanigans in which Shvets and Levinson were involved. Given that claims about Mogilevich have turned out to be central to 'Russiagate', that seems a rather important issue, and I am curious as to whether Ohr's communications with Steele may cast any light on it. ..."
"... Apparently the FBI got Deripaksa to fund the rescue of Levinson from Iran. Furthermore apparently FBI personnel maybe including McCabe visited with Deripaksa and showed him the Steele dossier. He supposedly had a nice guffaw and dismissed it as nonsense. So on the one hand while they make Russia out to be the most evil they play footsie with Russian oligarchs. ..."
"... Thinking about "Christopher Steele was terminated as a Confidential Human Source for cause.", something that doesn't seem to have gotten as much attention is that Peter Strzok failed his poly: ..."
"... Steele's relationship with the FBI extends far further back than February 2016. Shortly after he left MI6, he contracted with the Football Association to investigate possible FIFA corruption. Once he realized the massiveness of this corruption he contacted his old friends at the FBI Eurasian Crimes Task Force in 2011. Thus began his association with the FBI as a CHS. That investigation culminated in the 2015 FIFA corruption indictments and convictions. ..."
"... One thing I don't understand...we have the anti-Trumpers saying that Donald Junior meeting with a Russian national to get 'dirt' on Hillary is illegal...due to some law about candidates collaborating with foreigners or something like that...[obviously I'm foggy on the technical details]... Yet we know that the Hillary campaign worked with a foreign national, Steele, to get dirt on Trump...how is this not the same...? ..."
"... What role did Stefan Halper and Mifsud play as Confidential Human Sources in all this? ..."
"... Why was British Intelligence allegedly collecting and passing along info about Donald Trump in the first place? Or could this have been a pretext created to give cover and/or support to the agenda here in the US to insure his defeat? Could a foreign intelligence source such as this trigger/facilitate/justify the US counterintelligence investigation of Trump, or give cover to a covert investigation that may have already begun? ..."
"... British intelligence was collecting / passing on info about Trump because of his campaign stance on NATO (he said it was obsolete), his desire to end regime change wars (he castigated the fiasco in Iraq, took Bush to task over it etc.), and his often stated desire to get along with Russia (and China). Trump also talked of ending certain economic policies (NAFTA, TPP, etc.) and reenacting others (Glass-Steagall, the American System of Economics i.e. Hamilton, Carey, Clay), If Trump had acted on those, which he has not so far, he would changed the entire world system, a system in place since the end of WW II, or earlier. That was a risk too big to take without some kind of insurance policy - I believe Christopher Steele was that insurance policy. ..."
"... British Intelligence is verifiably the foreign source with the most extensive and effective meddling in the 2016 election. Perfidious Albion. ..."
"... Or, GSHQ was hovering up signint on Trump campaign early-on (using domestics US resources and databases via their 5-Eyes "sharing agreement" with NSA) cuz Brennan asked them to do it? ..."
"... Trump announced his run for President in 2015. I'm pretty sure that every intel service on the planet was watching him, they would be derelict not to. GCHQ may have been collecting intel on all the candidates, ..."
"... Trump announced his run for President in 2015. I'm pretty sure that every intel service on the planet was watching him, they would be derelict not to. GCHQ may have been collecting intel on all the candidates, ..."
"... I've heard that the Echelon system is used by the Five Eyes IC to do something similar. The Brits spy on US, and give the NSA the data so the NSA can evade US laws prohibiting spying on us, and we return the favor to help them evade what (few) laws they have that prohibits spying on their people. ..."
"... still wonder why the US would need to rely so much on British intelligence sources ..."
"... I've read that Steele's cover was blown 20 years ago and he hasn't even been to Russia since, so I wonder why he was considered such a reliable source by both the US and UK? In my opinion as an absolute naif about such things, Steele seems like he may be a has-been when it comes to Russia. ..."
"... Here is a simple explanation from someone who knows almost nothing about how any of the people in power work: Most of them are not as clever and smart as they think they are. And most of the regular people who are just citizens are smarter than these people think they are. ..."
"... It's simply that their arrogant assessment of their own superiority caused them to do really stupid things ..."
The revelations from US Government records about the FBI/Intel Community plot to take out Donald Trump continue to flow thanks
to the dogged efforts of Judicial Watch. The latest nugget came last Friday with the release of FBI records detailing their recruitment
and management of Britain's ostensibly retired Intelligence Officer, Christopher Steele. He was an officially recruited FBI source
and received at least 11 payments during the 9 month period that he was signed up as a Confidential Human Source.
You may find it strange that we can glean so much information from
a document dump that is almost
entirely redacted . The key is to look at the report forms; there are three types--FD-1023 (Source Reports), FD-209a (Contact
Reports) and FD-794b (Payment Requests). There are 15 different 1023s, 13 209a reports and 11 794b payment requests covering the
period from 2 February 2016 thru 1 November 2016. That is a total of nine months.
These reports totally destroy the existing meme that Steele only came into contact with the FBI sometime in July 2016. It is important
for you to understand that a 1023 Source Report is filled out each time that the FBI source handler has contact with the source.
This can be an in person meeting or a phone call. Each report lists the name of the Case Agent; the date, time and location of the
meeting; any other people attending the meeting; and a summary of what was discussed.
What is clear from the new records is that Christopher Steele, a foreign intelligence officer, had frequent and extensive
contacts with the FBI. Who was his FBI Case Agent?
The main thing I want to know is WHEN was the decision made to tar Trump with Russia - both at the FBI (and likely CIA)
and at the DNC (over the leak) - and WHO was the deciding entity - Comey, Brennan, Clinton, Obama or someone else? And perhaps
who came up with the idea in the first place (at the DNC, it was very likely Alexandra Chalupa, the Ukrainian-American DNC "consultant").
We can be pretty sure this predates any alleged Russian "hacking" (unless it occurred as a result of alleged Russian hacking
of the DNC in 2015).
This needs to be pinned down if anyone is to be successfully prosecuted for creating this treasonous hoax.
A very closely related topic, Victor Davis Hanson is onto something but it is darker than he suggests,
https://www.nationalreview.... Paraphrasing, he gives the typical, rally around the flag we must stop the Russians intro but
then documents how govt flaks abused their power to influence our elections and then makes the point, 'this is why the public
is skeptical of their claims'.
The bad thing is that our MSM is so reverent of our Intel agencies that I see them encouraged to increasingly put their
hand on the scale.
Recently, I saw arm flailing by a Congressman, Dan Coats, and Mueller about how the Russians are still at it. They are
trying to disrupt or influence the 2018. Really, then I demand to get a list of the pro-Kremlin candidates. How long before the
mere threat of being outed as a Kremlin agent is used to punish elected officials if they are not sufficiently hawkish or don't
support certain programs. Unchallenged claims by Intel agencies gives them a lot of political power.
I am skeptical. Russia has a lot of fish to fry, why would they expend resources on midterm elections. Now everyone in
the U.S. hates them, both traditional hawk Republicans and born again uber-hawk Democrats. There is a tiger behind both doors.
What I can't figure out is: if Steele had been a CHS since at least February of 2016, what was the purpose of passing the
Dossier to the FBI through Fusion GPS? Why not just going to his FBI handler? Was Steele collaboration with Fusion even in compliance
with FBI regulations? Did the FBI know?
Because part of the plan was to leak the information in order to damage Trump. FBI could not do that. Would have exposed them
to some real legal jeopardy. This was a dual track strategy. Diabolical almost.
Don't forget the Nellie Ohr (Fusion GPS) -> Bruce Ohr (DOJ) back channel. The husband & wife tag team. Yes, the same Nellie
that was investigating using ham radio to communicate to avoid NSA mass surveillance.
From the very beginning that information about all this was slowly leaking from the Congressional investigation, this whole
thing smelled very fishy. Then add intense effort at DOJ & FBI to obstruct and obfuscate. And the unhinged tweets and interviews
by Brennan, Clapper & Comey. And of course the media narrative that Rep. Nunes, Goodlatte and others were endangering "national
security" by casting aspersions on the "patriotic" law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
He was working with FBI and GPS at the same time. GPS was in the dark supposedly about his work with the FBI and Steele got
their approval to hand over what he had delivered to GPS to the FBI as a cover for his work with the FBI.
Of course, he had most likely already done so and its also likely FBI had some input into the content of what was delivered
to GPS, and more importantly what was not delivered.
Re the 'standing agreement to not recruit each other's intelligence personnel for clandestine activities.' As Steele was
not by this time a current employee of MI6, was the FBI in technical violation of this?
The point is not merely a quibble. A central question in regard to Steele, as with quite a number of former intelligence/law
enforcement/military people who have started at least ostensibly private sector operations, is how far these are being used as
'cover' for activities conducted on behalf of either the state agencies for which they used to work, or other state agencies.
It is at least possible that one advantage of such arrangements may be that they make it possible to evade the letter of
agreements between intelligence agencies in different countries.
Another related matter has to do with the termination of Steele as a 'Confidential Human Source.'
It has long seemed to me that it was more than possible that this was not to be taken at face value. If, as seems likely,
both current and former top FBI and DOJ people – very likely Mueller as well as Comey, Strzok and many others – were intimately
involved in the conspiracy to subvert the constitution, then a means of making it possible for Steele to combine feeding information
to the FBI while also engaging in 'StratCom' via the MSM could have been necessary.
An obvious means of 'squaring the circle' would have been to issue a formal 'termination' to Steele, while creating 'back
channels' to those who were officially supposed not to be talking to him.
A report yesterday by John Solomon in 'The Hill' quotes from messages exchanged between Steele and Bruce Ohr after the
supposed termination.
When on 31 January 2017 – well after the publication of the dossier by BuzzFeed – Ohr provided reassurance that he could continue
to help feed information to the FBI, Steele texted back:
"If you end up out though, I really need another (bureau?) contact point/number who is briefed. We can't allow our guy to be
forced to go back home. It would be disastrous."
At that point, Solomon tells us that 'Investigators are trying to determine who Steele was referring to.' This seems to me
a rather important question. It would seem likely, although not certain, that he is talking about another Brit. If he is, would
it have been someone else employed by Orbis? Or someone currently working for British intelligence? What is the precise significance
of 'forced to go back home', and why would this have been 'disastrous'?
Another crucial paragraph:
'In all, Ohr's notes, emails and texts identify more than 60 contacts with Steele and/or Simpson, some dating to 2002 in
London. But the vast majority occurred during the 2016-2017 timeframe that gave birth to one of the most controversial counterintelligence
probes in American history.'
The earlier contacts may be of little interest, but there again they may not be.
As it happens, it was following Berezovsky's arrival in London in October 2001 that the 'information operations' network he
created began to move into high gear. It is moreover clear that this was always a transatlantic operation, and also fragments
of evidence suggest that the FBI may have had some involvement from early on.
I have just finished taking a fresh look at Sir Robert Owen's travesty of a report into the death of Litvinenko. In large
measure, this develops claims originally made in Christopher Steele's first attempt to provide a convincing account of why figures
close to Putin might have thought it made sense to assassinate that figure, and to do so with polonium. The sheer volume of fabrication
which has been deployed in an attempt to defend the patently indefensible almost beggars belief.
The original attempt came in a radio programme broadcast by the BBC – which was to become known to some of us as the 'Berezovsky
Broadcasting Corporation' – on 16 December 2006, presented by Tom Mangold, a familiar 'trusty' for the intelligence services.
(A transcript sent out from the Cabinet Office at the time is available on the archived 'Evidence' page for the Inquiry, at
http://webarchive.nationala... , as HMG000513. There is an interesting and rather important question as to whether those who
sent it out, and those who received it, knew that it was more or less BS from start to finish.)
The programme was wholly devoted to claims made by the former KGB operative Yuri Shvets, who was presented as an independent
'due diligence' expert, without any mention of the rather major role he had played in the original 'Orange Revolution.'
Back-up was provided by his supposed collaborator in 'due diligence', the former FBI operative Robert 'Bobby' Levinson. No
mention was made of the fact that he had been, in the 'Nineties, a, if not the lead FBI investigator into the notorious Ukrainian
Jewish mobster Semyon Mogilevich.
The following March Levinson would disappear on the Iranian island of Kish, on what we now know was a covert mission on behalf
of elements in the CIA.
Just as a question arises as to whether Steele is essentially acting on behalf of MI6, a question also arises as to whether
the FBI leadership were knowledgeable about, and possibly involved with, the various shenanigans in which Shvets and Levinson
were involved. Given that claims about Mogilevich have turned out to be central to 'Russiagate', that seems a rather important
issue, and I am curious as to whether Ohr's communications with Steele may cast any light on it.
Apparently the FBI got Deripaksa to fund the rescue of Levinson from Iran. Furthermore apparently FBI personnel maybe including
McCabe visited with Deripaksa and showed him the Steele dossier. He supposedly had a nice guffaw and dismissed it as nonsense.
So on the one hand while they make Russia out to be the most evil they play footsie with Russian oligarchs.
Thinking about "Christopher Steele was terminated as a Confidential Human Source for cause.", something that doesn't seem
to have gotten as much attention is that Peter Strzok failed his poly:
Steele's relationship with the FBI extends far further back than February 2016. Shortly after he left MI6, he contracted with
the Football Association to investigate possible FIFA corruption. Once he realized the massiveness of this corruption he contacted
his old friends at the FBI Eurasian Crimes Task Force in 2011. Thus began his association with the FBI as a CHS. That investigation
culminated in the 2015 FIFA corruption indictments and convictions. His initial contact with old friends at the FBI Eurasian
Crime Task Force is awfully similar to his contacting these same friends in 2016 after deciding his initial Trump research was
potentially bigger than mere opposition research.
One thing I don't understand...we have the anti-Trumpers saying that Donald Junior meeting with a Russian national to get
'dirt' on Hillary is illegal...due to some law about candidates collaborating with foreigners or something like that...[obviously
I'm foggy on the technical details]... Yet we know that the Hillary campaign worked with a foreign national, Steele, to get dirt
on Trump...how is this not the same...?
Even worse is that the FBI was using this same foreign agent that a presidential
candidate had hired to get dirt on an opponent... Even knowing nothing about legalities this just doesn't look very good...
Stupid question? As the Col. has explained, the President can declassify any document he pleases. So, why doesn't Donaldo unredact
the redacted portions of these bullcrap docs? What is he afraid of? That the Intel community will get mad and be out to get him?
Isn't time for him to show some cojones?
Why was British Intelligence allegedly collecting and passing along info about Donald Trump in the first place? Or could this
have been a pretext created to give cover and/or support to the agenda here in the US to insure his defeat? Could a foreign intelligence
source such as this trigger/facilitate/justify the US counterintelligence investigation of Trump, or give cover to a covert investigation
that may have already begun?
British intelligence was collecting / passing on info about Trump because of his campaign stance on NATO (he said it was obsolete),
his desire to end regime change wars (he castigated the fiasco in Iraq, took Bush to task over it etc.), and his often stated
desire to get along with Russia (and China). Trump also talked of ending certain economic policies (NAFTA, TPP, etc.) and reenacting
others (Glass-Steagall, the American System of Economics i.e. Hamilton, Carey, Clay), If Trump had acted on those, which he has
not so far, he would changed the entire world system, a system in place since the end of WW II, or earlier. That was a risk too
big to take without some kind of insurance policy - I believe Christopher Steele was that insurance policy.
Or, GSHQ was hovering up signint on Trump campaign early-on (using domestics US resources and databases via their 5-Eyes "sharing
agreement" with NSA) cuz Brennan asked them to do it? And therefore without having to mess about with any formal FISA warrant
thingy's ... But, then use what might be found (or plausibly alleged) to try to get a proper FISA warrant later on (July 2016)?
'Parallel Discovery' of sorts; with Fusion GPS also a leaky cut-out: channelling media reports to be used as confirmation of Steele's
"raw intelligence" in the formal FISA application(s)?
Trump announced his run for President in 2015. I'm pretty sure that every intel service on the planet was watching him, they
would be derelict not to. GCHQ may have been collecting intel on all the candidates,
" Trump announced his run for President in 2015. I'm pretty sure that every intel service on the planet was watching
him, they would be derelict not to. GCHQ may have been collecting intel on all the candidates, "
That's a good question, could it legally enable an end run around the FISC until enough evidence was gathered for a FISC surveillance
authorization?.
I've heard that the Echelon system is used by the Five Eyes IC to do something similar. The Brits spy on US, and give the
NSA the data so the NSA can evade US laws prohibiting spying on us, and we return the favor to help them evade what (few) laws
they have that prohibits spying on their people.
Only a matter of time until someone figured out the same method could be used to "meddle" in national affairs.
I understand, but still wonder why the US would need to rely so much on British intelligence sources such as Steele about
a very high profile American citizen and businessman -- aren't our intelligence services competent enough to have known and discovered
as much if not more about Trump than other countries' intelligence services? I've read that Steele's cover was blown 20 years
ago and he hasn't even been to Russia since, so I wonder why he was considered such a reliable source by both the US and UK? In
my opinion as an absolute naif about such things, Steele seems like he may be a has-been when it comes to Russia.
Here is a simple explanation from someone who knows almost nothing about how any of the people in power work: Most of them
are not as clever and smart as they think they are. And most of the regular people who are just citizens are smarter than these
people think they are.
It's simply that their arrogant assessment of their own superiority caused them to do really stupid things.
The public's tax dollars were spent on creating fake "evidence" to tie Trump with Russia, a false narrative that
put the planet at heightened risk for nuclear war, for the sake of the Clinton's hurt feelings.
Notable quotes:
"... In other words, the public's tax dollars were spent on creating fake "evidence" to tie Trump with Russia, a false narrative that put the planet at heightened risk for nuclear war, for the sake of the Clinton's hurt feelings. ..."
"... Even more interesting is the close relationship Isikoff had with the DNC during the 2016 Presidential election. According to an email from the DNC released by Wikileaks , Isikoff attended the "Open World Society's forum" as the guest of DNC official Ali Chalupa. In the email, Chalupa states that she was invited to the forum to speak specifically about Paul Manafort, the former campaign manager for Donald Trump. Chalupa goes on to state that she has been working with Isikoff for the past few weeks and that at the event, she was able to get him "connected him to the Ukrainians." She adds: ..."
"... "I invited Michael Isikoff whom I've been working with for the past few weeks and connected him to the Ukrainians. More offline tomorrow since there is a big Trump component you and Lauren need to be aware of that will hit in next few weeks and something I'm working on you should be aware of." ..."
On Friday, the much anticipated
"Nunes Memo"
was finally released to the general public.
Disobedient
Media previously reported on the push to prevent the memo from being released. While there is much contained in the four pages,
the most glaring issue contained in the memo is the FBI's willful concealment of pertinent details of which they were required by
law to turn over to the FISA court when seeking the initial surveillance warrant on
Carter Page , a former volunteer foreign policy adviser for the Trump campaign.
According to the memo, former director James Comey signed three FISA applications on behalf of the FBI. Additionally, Deputy Director
Andrew McCabe, former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, former Deputy Attorney General Dana Boente, and acting Deputy Attorney
General Rod Rosenstein, each signed one or more applications on behalf of the DOJ.
Under 50 U.S.C. § 1805(d)(1) , a FISA order on
an American citizen must be renewed by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) every 90 days. In order to protect the
rights of Americans, each subsequent renewal requires a separate finding of probable cause. This means that the in order to be granted
a renewal, the government is required to produce all material and relevant facts to the court, including any information which may
be potentially favorable to the target of the FISA application.
On four separate occasions the Obama administration essentially claimed before the FISA court that Page had betrayed his country
by working for a hostile foreign nation, and therefore it was necessary that the government violate his Fourth Amendment rights.
However, in this case, the government purposely withheld relevant information from the government not once, but four separate times.
According to the memo, at no time during the initial application process for the warrant to surveil Page, or in any of the three
renewals of that application, did the government disclose to the FISA Court the nature of their relationship with Christopher Steele,
his relationship with the Democratic National Committee (DNC), or his relationship with the Clinton campaign. Instead, the memo simply,
yet vaguely states that, "Steele was working for a named U.S. person."
Instead, the government purposefully withheld information from the court that the "dossier" compiled by Steele was done so on
behalf of the DNC and the Hillary Clinton campaign. It was further withheld from the court that the DNC had paid Steele over $160,000
for his work in compiling this "dossier", and that the money was
funneled to Steele through the law firm Perkins Coie,
which represents both the Hillary Clinton campaign as well as the DNC in legal matters. According to the
National Review , the Clinton campaign and the DNC
paid at least $9.1 million to Perkins Coie from mid-2015 to late 2016.
The government further held from the court the fact that the FBI had authorized payments to Steele. According to the
New York Post , in October 2016 the FBI contracted
to pay Steele $50,000 to "help corroborate the dirt on Trump."
In March of 2017, CNN also reported that the FBI had entered into an
arrangement with Steele, whereby they agreed to
cover all of his expenses.
While it is extremely disconcerting that the government willfully concealed the existence of their financial relationship with
Steele, a foreign national, what is more troubling is the fact that the government used tax payer dollars to do so. In other words,
every single American who did not vote for Hillary Clinton, whether they voted for Trump or a third party candidate or did not vote
at all – were forced to finance the Clinton campaign-funded opposition research.
In other words, the public's tax dollars were spent on creating fake "evidence" to tie Trump with Russia, a false narrative that
put the planet at heightened risk for nuclear war, for the sake of the Clinton's hurt feelings.
Why the media refuses to mention or cover this fact, this author does not know. But this is an extremely important fact that every
American, whether left, right, up, down, should remember, as it is the perfect example of the corruption which exists within our
tax payer-funded institutions, which we are told to have nothing but the utmost respect for.
According to the memo, in an effort to corroborate Steele's dossier, the FBI extensively cited a September 23, 2016, Yahoo News
article by Michael Isikoff, titled " U.S. intel officials probe ties between Trump
adviser and Kremlin ", which focuses on Page's July 2016 trip to Moscow. However, when presenting this article to the court the
FBI falsely assessed that Steele did not provide this information directly to Isikoff. Meaning that the FBI was aware that the article
they presented to the court was not corroborating evidence from a separate source, because the information in the article was provided
to Isikoff by Steele himself. In fact, as the memo points out, Steele himself has stated in British court filings that in September
2016 he met with Yahoo News , as well as several
other outlets including the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the New Yorker.
What's more, in an article published on January 12, 2017, Isikoff reports
on a story by the Wall Street Journal in which Christopher Steele is identified as the author of the infamous dossier, and even notes
that Steele was an " FBI asset ". However, what is
most striking about this article is the fact that despite receiving the underline information which served as the basis for his own
article in September, Isikoff pretends have not known that Steele was the source of the dossier.
Even more interesting is the close relationship Isikoff had with the DNC during the 2016 Presidential election. According
to an email from the DNC released by Wikileaks ,
Isikoff attended the "Open World Society's forum" as the guest of DNC official Ali Chalupa. In the email, Chalupa states that she
was invited to the forum to speak specifically about Paul Manafort, the former campaign manager for Donald Trump. Chalupa goes on
to state that she has been
working with Isikoff for the past few weeks and
that at the event, she was able to get him "connected him to the Ukrainians." She adds:
"I invited Michael Isikoff whom I've been working with for the past few weeks and connected him to the Ukrainians. More
offline tomorrow since there is a big Trump component you and Lauren need to be aware of that will hit in next few weeks and something
I'm working on you should be aware of."
According to the memo, Steele's relationship with the FBI as a source continued until late October 2016, when he was terminated
for what the FBI defines as the most serious violations, "an unauthorized disclosure to the media of his relationship with the FBI".
This unauthorized disclosure occurred in an October 30, 2016, Mother Jones
article by David Corn, the reporter who broke the infamous Mitt Romney
"47 Percent" story.
Again, the FBI did not notify the court that Steele was leaking information to media outlets, or that he was terminated by the
FBI after doing so for the second time.
Before and after his termination, Steele maintained contact with then-Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr, whose wife,
Nellie Ohr, was employed by Fusion GPS. Ohr would later tell the FBI in an interview in September 2016, that Steele had stated that
he, "was desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being president."
Lastly, the memo also reveals that the Steele dossier was so crucial to the investigation, that Deputy Director McCabe testified
in December 2017 that no surveillance warrant would have been sought from the FISC without the Steele dossier information. This admission
by the former Deputy Director is damning, as it proves that, if it were not for the Clinton campaign and DNC funded dossier created
by a foreign national, there would have been no surveillance of Page, and ultimately there would have never been a special counsel
appointed.
At the end of the day, every American, regardless of their position on the political spectrum, should be worried about the fact
that the FBI and DOJ sought and were granted a warrant to spy on an opposing political campaign based on a document that the FBI
itself had neither verified or corroborated. If the FISA court does in fact employ strict "safeguards" and procedures in order to
ensure that the rights of American citizens are not being systematically violated, how is it that the FBI and DOJ were able to obtain
a surveillance warrant based on unverified allegations? And why did Congress overwhelmingly vote to
reauthorize
Section 702? Vote up! 15 Vote down! 0
This whole ball of wax should be in the public hands. Straight up clear cut case for a real civilian grand jury. As far removed
from the government control as possible. Its a corruption issue. Nobody in government has clean hands.
This is a problem because across the 5-eyes intel agencies are being given extra-judicial powers to do basically whatever they
want without oversight and without legal boundaries. This assumes the agencies will never become politicised, and that no individual
within the agencies will ever have an axe to grind against an ex, or a petty hatred to pursue, or political agendas of their own.
What FISA-gate shows is that this is clearly not the case. We need the reimposition of free speech, transparency and of civilian
rule of government.
Only an informed public can really be in charge of its elected government. We need to be in charge again because civilians
are fast being kettled into a snare where we have no say in the decisions that our governments take. It's being decided by the
deep state bureaucracy
This "shadowy Russian" might well be Sergey Skripal. This suggests that Steele dossier was CIA operation with British MI6 as transfer mechanism and
Steele as a cover. And implicates Brennan. So this is next level of leaks after "Stormy Daniel"...
Another NYT leak out of a set of well coordinated leans from anonymous intelligence officials ;-) Poor Melania...
Notable quotes:
"... But U.S. intelligence officials have reason to doubt the veracity of the video and other information about Trump associates provided by the Russian, according to a fascinating report from The New York Times. ..."
"... If there was ANYTHING on Trump, it would have oversaturated the airwaves 24/7 during his candidacy, and he would have never made it out of the primaries. ..."
"... More than you know, whenever Russian is stated, replace with Ukrainian. TPTB cannot help themselves but push forward on another agenda as the current one falls apart. The Russophobia is still being stoked no matter what. ..."
"... Steele was a double agent, maybe triple. British,Ukrainian and probably American. Does that start to make a little more sense ? Those huuuge donations to the CF from Ukraine, McStains involvement, Steele's early retirement from MI6, Brennan's frequent trips to Ukraine, State Dept.s role. Investigate the Chalupa sisters to find out who the rest of the rats are.Lee Stranahan started before he was shut down. ..."
"... the CIA has to turn America into a criminal totalitarian regime in order to make the world safe for democracy ..."
"... How much you wanna bet that Brennan, Obama's CIA Director, was behind ..."
"... You mean the same Brennan who is the godfather of ISIS? ..."
"... "U.S. intelligence officials told The Times" Sounds like the Donald is finally learning to cooperate better with his masters. They can call off the hounds. ..."
"... Ok - so we have yet another (likely factual) story here of overt, in-your-face abuse of power and agency aimed directly at American citizens for political gain. And tomorrow? Probably another. And then another. Until: 'Bimbo Fatigue' Remember that phrase. If real justice isn't thrown down soon, you can forget it. Looks to me like (possibly) Trump imploring for public support - i.e., he can't do this himself, or it's too dangerous and he knows it... ..."
"... Why is the CIA trying to purchase dirt on a sitting President in 2017! Because they have nothing on him! And they are desperate to not all hang by the neck. The times are trying to portray this as Russian intelligence sowing discord between the US intelligence agencies and Trump...Wrong! The US Intel agencies are sowing that discord all on their fucking own. They weren't fooled at all, they created this fucking mess for their own treasonous reasons and now want us to believe that hey...if we fucked up its because the big bad russkies tricked us. ..."
"... 'The Russian, who has ties to organized criminals and money launderers' wtf! So far the Russians are playing our CIA like a bunch of amateurs. And the deep state/dem's bought it hook, line and sinker. Trump was right again. Dem's and Russia are colluding against a duly elected Presidential candidate. I guess it's safe to say we need another order for more Rope. Dem's and deepshit state just can't get enough of hanging themselves. This ain't over by a long shot. ..."
"... i call bullshit. you dont 'buy back' a software program that can be copied in 30 seconds. this whole story is a fabrication just like the dossier. made up to inflect bad info on to trump. ..."
"... Yeah, I loved that one. "Here. I'm giving you back that software I ripped off from you. I copied it to this CD and then deleted it from my computer... You know: wiped it with a cloth." ..."
"... And I love that the CIA thinks they can get away with a tale like that when everyone but my 90-year-old mother-in-law knows how a digital file works ..."
"... So were these "patriotic" CIA superheroes interested in Bill Clinton's rapes, rapes and more rapes? Were they concerned that he was snorting coke and using Arkansas state troopers for procurers of hosebags for him to screw? ..."
When they said "Russian collusion", few expected it to be between the CIA and a "shadowy
Russian operative." And yet, according to a blockbuster NYT report, that's precisely what
happened.
* * *
The CIA paid $100,000 last year to a Russian operative who claimed to have derogatory
information about President Trump, including a video tape of the Republican engaged with
prostitutes in a Moscow hotel room. If the video showed Trump, it would support claims made in
the infamous Steele dossier, the salacious opposition research report financed by the Clinton
campaign and DNC.
But U.S. intelligence officials have reason to doubt the veracity of the video and other
information about Trump associates provided by the Russian, according to
a fascinating report from The New York Times.
American spies made contact with the Russia early in 2017 after he offered to sell the Trump
material along with cyber hacking tools that were stolen from the NSA that year, according to
The Times. U.S. intelligence officials told The Times they were so desperate to retrieve those
tools that they negotiated with the operative for months despite several red flags, including
indications that he was working in concert with Russian intelligence.
Another red flag was the Russian's financial request. He initially sought $10 million for
the information but dropped the asking price to $1 million.
After months of negotiations, American spies handed over $100,000 in cash in a brief case to
the Russian during a meeting in Berlin in September.
The operative also offered documents and emails that purported to implicate other Trump
associates, including former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. But The Times viewed the
documents and reported that they were mostly information that is already in the public
domain.
The Russian, who has ties to organized criminals and money launderers, showed the video
purported to be Trump to a Berlin-based American businessman who served as his intermediary to
the CIA. But according to the Times, the footage and the location of the viewing raised
questions about its authenticity.
The 15-second clip showed two women speaking with a man. It is not clear if the man was
Trump, and there was no audio. The Russian also showed the video to his American partner at the
Russian embassy in Berlin, a sign that the operative had ties to Russian intelligence.
The Russian stonewalled the production of the cyber tools, and U.S. officials eventually cut
ties, according to The Times. After the payout in Berlin, the man provided information about
Trump and his associates of questionable veracity.
The Americans gave him an ultimatum earlier in 2018 to either play ball, leave Western
Europe, or face criminal charges. He left, according to The Times, which interviewed U.S.
officials, the American intermediary and the Russian for its article.
The Times' U.S. sources -- who appear to paint the American side in a positive light -- said
that they were reluctant to purchase information because they did not want to be seen buying
dirt on the president.
The officials also expressed concern that the Russian operative was planting disinformation
on behalf of the Russian government. U.S. officials were worried that the Russian government
has sought to sow discord between U.S. intelligence agencies and Trump. The revelation that the
CIA purchased dirt on him would likely do the trick.
The Times report also has other new details.
Four other Russians with ties to the spy world have surfaced over the past year offering to
sell dirt on Trump that closely mirrors allegations made in the dossier, according to the
article. But officials have reason to believe that some of sellers have ties to Russian
intelligence agencies.
The Times also provides new details on Cody Shearer, a notorious operative close to the
Clintons. Shearer was recently revealed to have shopped
around a so-called "second dossier" prior to the campaign which mirrored the sex allegations of
the Steele report.
According to The Times, he has criss-crossed Europe over the past six months in an attempt
to find video footage of Trump from the Moscow hotel room. Shearer claimed to have information
from the FSB, Russia's spy service, that a video existed of Trump with prostitutes in a Moscow
hotel room.
He shared a memo making the allegations with his friend and fellow Clinton fixer, Sidney
Blumenthal. Blumenthal in turn passed the memo to his friend, Jonathan Winer, a Department of
State official. Winer then gave the information to Steele who provided it to the FBI in October
2016.
Steele also provided information to Winer, who wrote up a two-page memo that was circulated
within the State Department.
Trump has denied allegations that he used prostitutes in Moscow. He has called the dossier a
"hoax" and "crap."
* * *
On Saturday morning, Trump tweeted that "according to the @nytimes, a Russian sold phony
secrets on "Trump" to the U.S. Asking price was $10 million, brought down to $1 million to be
paid over time. I hope people are now seeing & understanding what is going on here. It is
all now starting to come out - DRAIN THE SWAMP!
Of course, if Trump really wants to "drain the swamp", any such decision would have
originate with him. Tags PoliticsCommercial Banks
Release the pee pee video now! No one pee peed in the $100,000 video in question. The
15-second clip showed two women speaking with a man. It is not clear if the man was Trump,
and there was no audio. And how can anyone be more fascinated by the prospect of pee pee than
by the fact that US intelligence agencies were buying bad information from extremely shady
foreigners in an attempt to overthrow the President of the United States?
Trump is starting to assume that the people are dumber than Obowel did. Earth to Don, you
sir have the drain pump, you sir have surrounded yourself with Swamp creatures.... You sir
are.............
According to this, the Russians stole the hacking tools needed to cut through the Swamp
levee, which were developed by the NSA, and now the CIA cannot buy them back. Now, since the
USA wanted its Swamp, the Russians are more than happy to let the USA drown in its swamp.
Anyone have a link for the Qanon posts. I haven't seen them in a couple of weeks since he
left 8chan where he was posting. I don't want the Youtube BS, I just want the link... anyone
got one. Its strangely not googleable... LOLZ.
If you think that the CIA is a U.S. intelligence agency working on the best interests of
the United States, you better wake up and smell the treason. They only work for the best
interests of themselves.
Here is a question. Why does the CIA not come out and clear the air re: Trump?
I mean they were even paying people to come up with dirt. He is now your president and the
country is a fucking mess. Should the CIA not come out and say we tried but we got nothing?
They do have the ability to fix all this Trump shit and yet crickets.
And the best interests of clients. The CIA started out is the muscle for the Dulles
Brothers clients who were being booted out of various countries they were super-exploiting.
The Agency hasn't looked back since.
Nobody got whizzed on. That lurid fantasy came soley out of the head of Hillary Clinton,
given to Blumenthal, passed around and made to look like it came from Russia.
It IS remarkable the stuff people believe when all logic goes against it. Like Oswald
firing magic bullets from an old Italian Carcano...and jet fuel melting steel beams...and a
building collapsing through the path of greatest resistance into its own footprint after NOT
being hit by an airplane...and Kennedy being shot from behind, but his head snapping
backwards from the impact...and Oswald picking the worst possible shooting location, but in
front of Kennedy were two intersecting highways going in any direction...and terrorist
passports floating gently down from the sky.
RFK and Nixon knew immediately the assassination of JFK was a CIA hit job because they had
CHAIRED those hit squad operations themselves for Cuban Operations. They saw the CIA- Cuban
hit squad fingerprints all over the kill. RFK had personally fired Wm Harvey, Dulles' chief
of assassinations. However, RFK was silenced because he and Jack had been tag-teaming Marilyn
Monroe.
The reason JFK was killed was a) his openly stated determination to shatter the CIA into a
thousand pieces so they could no longer operate as a dangerous, renegade private army; and b)
in the Spring of '63 JFK delivered his famous American U address calling for the end of the
Cold War...
Oswald was always a patsie... the WC documents how his rifle was inoperable... scope
needed parts just to be be sited and take aim... even after parts installed the rifle
attributed to Oswald remained highly inaccurate... Military sharpshooters couldn't even hit
stationary targets reliably.
Drain the swamp! Townsquare justice for Odumbo and Hitlery! George Soros to bathe in the
Amazon River with 1 million Piranha Fish until it completely disappears. Drain the evil
Dumorat swamp. Drain the banana republic CIA and FBI. Our tax dollars and constitution did
not pay for this shit.
With today's technology, the CIA is most likely working on a fake video for you right now.
They might release it on Vimeo or Netflix to cover the costs and give themselves plausible
deniability. To add a finishing touch they will make a fake video of Julian Assange claiming
he is releasing it. You'll be in hog heaven. Which is where folks like you go just before
being slaughtered by your owners and turned into spam.
Of course the story is a plant to introduce the hacking tools to cover the payment to
Russians for dirt on a sitting POTUS by his own Intel Agency...
And CNN, MSNBC, etc are still wall to wall Trump impeachment... they no longer even
pretend. Brain dead Erin Burnett opened with "the Republicans are at it again" to night (in
my regular 30 secs of checking in for a laugh)!
No shit, this is what I tell every Libtard when they cry the tired "Trump is corrupt and
evil" meme. If there was ANYTHING on Trump, it would have oversaturated the airwaves 24/7
during his candidacy, and he would have never made it out of the primaries.
So which is it? Is he the world's greatest evil retard idiot, or a 9000+ IQ genius that is
so slick and underhanded that he was able to collude with Putin, hide all evidence, and pull
off the biggest caper in the history of the United States by sneaking into the Presidency?
You can't have it both ways.
We must also give credit to the army of Russian bots that tell us how to think and act all
day, where would we be without them?
Of course the story is a plant to introduce the hacking tools to cover the payment to
Russians for dirt on a sitting POTUS by his own Intel Agency...
And CNN, MSNBC, etc are still wall to wall Trump impeachment... they no longer even
pretend. Brain dead Erin Burnett opened with "the Republicans are at it again" to night (in
my regular 30 secs of checking in for a laugh)!
No shit, this is what I tell every Libtard when they cry the tired "Trump is corrupt and
evil" meme. If there was ANYTHING on Trump, it would have oversaturated the airwaves 24/7
during his candidacy, and he would have never made it out of the primaries.
So which is it? Is he the world's greatest evil retard idiot, or a 9000+ IQ genius that is
so slick and underhanded that he was able to collude with Putin, hide all evidence, and pull
off the biggest caper in the history of the United States by sneaking into the Presidency?
You can't have it both ways.
We must also give credit to the army of Russian bots that tell us how to think and act all
day, where would we be without them?
More than you know, whenever Russian is stated, replace with Ukrainian. TPTB cannot help
themselves but push forward on another agenda as the current one falls apart. The Russophobia
is still being stoked no matter what.
Steele was a double agent, maybe triple. British,Ukrainian and probably American. Does
that start to make a little more sense ? Those huuuge donations to the CF from Ukraine,
McStains involvement, Steele's early retirement from MI6, Brennan's frequent trips to
Ukraine, State Dept.s role. Investigate the Chalupa sisters to find out who the rest of the
rats are.Lee Stranahan started before he was shut down.
Good point in the last sentence. If someone is going to "drain the swamp" it is going to
have to be the president of the United States. I think I'm correct that he can fire anyone
that works in the executive department for cause. He can also order investigations or hire
people who will launch real investigations.
Mr. President, if you want to "drain the swamp," drain it.
If there was a video it would of been leaked during the election, they have nothing that
sticks on the guy.
All the evidence thus far states
Obama Hillary the FBI, DNC, CIA all spied on Trump and colluded with foreign governments
(U.K. , Ukraine , Russia) to try and dig up dirt to use against Trump (and they more or less
failed).
They turned over every rock they could, look at that stupid hot-mic video in the bus, how
many hours of video did they have to go through to dig up that crumb? they went back
searching through 30+ years of content and thats all they could come up with.... some locker
room talk lol
People have to just face it.
Your government was and still is corrupt and its a weaponized system of control, Your
government colluded with the enemy in a desperate attempt to stop Trump from becoming
president. Your government started a sham "Russia investigation" to cover up its own crimes.
Your government applied a different standard of justice to the clintons than it would have to
you or anyone else.
To date ZERO evidence has been brought forward that Trump or anyone in his campaign did
anything wrong, and the only people that have done anything wrong so far were picked by "the
swamp" to fill positions..... all the others fell into petty perjury Traps on meaningless
topics and insignificant factoids.
Isn't it lovely to find out that your money and mine is being used by government agents to
give us the government they want?
It's sort of like a thug robbing you and using part of your money to pay another thug to
rough you up from time time to time if you ask any questions with the thugs believing it's
for our own good.
Thanks, Hillary, for looking out for us. You and your best buds are the best. Such
bighearted givers! Meanwhile, give our regards to your partner in slime Obama, although it
must pain you to have been bested by 'Beavis' who thinks so much of himself to balance out
how little he impresses anyone who knows him.
"U.S. intelligence officials told The Times" Sounds like the Donald is finally learning to cooperate better with his masters. They can
call off the hounds.
Ok - so we have yet another (likely factual) story here of overt, in-your-face abuse of
power and agency aimed directly at American citizens for political gain. And tomorrow? Probably another. And then another. Until: 'Bimbo Fatigue' Remember that phrase. If real justice isn't thrown down soon, you can forget it. Looks to me like (possibly) Trump imploring for public support - i.e., he can't do this
himself, or it's too dangerous and he knows it...
As taxpayers can we sue the CIA for misusing our funds? Pretty sure that buying sex videos
for commercial release isn't part of the CIA's lawful mandate even at bargain prices.
Why is the CIA trying to purchase dirt on a sitting President in 2017! Because they have nothing on him! And they are desperate to not all hang by the neck. The times are trying to portray this as Russian intelligence sowing discord between the US
intelligence agencies and Trump...Wrong! The US Intel agencies are sowing that discord all on
their fucking own. They weren't fooled at all, they created this fucking mess for their own
treasonous reasons and now want us to believe that hey...if we fucked up its because the big
bad russkies tricked us.
my sauces tell me that pink pussyhat wearing hollywood types have been called in because
they have a doppelganger for trump and access to 30,000 sexually abused victims that can act
as Russian prostitutes for just ten bucks each. snapchat has a trump emoji that can be transplanted onto any porn video star - male or
female - thus confirming that trump is a serial (serious?) user of ladies of the night
my sauces also tell me that the CIA offers a reward of 100,000 bucks (or 10 BTC) for every
photo-shopped (snap-shopped or porn-shopped) material.
of course, the CIA already owns many many porn movie studios and films, but it would
prefer third "party" movies - not from epstein's island where its operatives choose to rela
with a pizza.
the CIA "pink" budget for such movies is limited to just 5,000 clips or 5 billion of
taxpayers funds, whichever is the higher.
'The Russian, who has ties to organized criminals and money launderers' wtf! So far the
Russians are playing our CIA like a bunch of amateurs. And the deep state/dem's bought it
hook, line and sinker. Trump was right again. Dem's and Russia are colluding against a duly
elected Presidential candidate. I guess it's safe to say we need another order for more Rope.
Dem's and deepshit state just can't get enough of hanging themselves. This ain't over by a
long shot.
i call bullshit. you dont 'buy back' a software program that can be copied in 30 seconds.
this whole story is a fabrication just like the dossier. made up to inflect bad info on to
trump.
Yeah, I loved that one. "Here. I'm giving you back that software I ripped off from you. I
copied it to this CD and then deleted it from my computer... You know: wiped it with a
cloth."
And I love that the CIA thinks they can get away with a tale like that when everyone but
my 90-year-old mother-in-law knows how a digital file works.
So were these "patriotic" CIA superheroes interested in Bill Clinton's rapes, rapes and
more rapes? Were they concerned that he was snorting coke and using Arkansas state troopers
for procurers of hosebags for him to screw?
I mean if they're so concerned about Trump and a couple of hookers... Better put some ice on that, CIA.
You all are so ridiculous and fooled with your "drain the swamp" bs. It's a great idea but
Trump doing it is a joke, I mean just look at who he has hired, what's wrong with you all are
you blind?!!
He can't even fill 1/3 of the government positions he's supposed to and the ones he has
have no business holding the positions given to them and are so incompetent, downright
criminal or just personally horrendous humans that they can't stay in office more than a few
months. All their blatant and moronically concocted lies are backing them into corners every
day that they just try and lie out of again. America is over if we really have gotten to the
point that a group like Trump's has support, it's just astonishing.
Looks more and more like Crowdstrike conducted false flag operation to implicate Russians, not a real investigation.
I always assumed that #Guccifer2 was either a Crowdstryke construction at DNC request (that's probably why it was so badly,
incompetently done) or a NSA construction (then, we somehow need to explain, why it was so badly done?). In both cases the
goal was to implicate Russia in a DNC 'hack' ...
Craig Murray has stated he received the DNC files in Wash DC from a leaker. Mueller failed to interview him, which
suggest the Mueller and his team were the part of cover-up, not the part of investigation.
Notable quotes:
"... We are told the GRU obtained files from the DNC network on April 22, 2016, (this is a little different to the Netyksho indictment that states the files were archived on April 22, 2016 and extracted later): ..."
"... The malware samples provided by CrowdStrike show that the earliest compile date of Fancy Bear malware reportedly discovered at the DNC was April 25, 2016 . ..."
"... Whoever was controlling the Guccifer 2.0 persona went out of their way to be perceived as Russian and made specious claims about having already sent WikiLeaks documents, even claiming that WikiLeaks would release them soon (all before Mueller records any initial contact between the parties) . ..."
"... The Special Counsel seems to have been impervious to critical pieces of countervailing evidence (some of which demonstrates that Guccifer 2.0 deliberately manufactured Russian breadcrumbs) and they have failed to accurately account for the acquisition of WikiLeaks' DNC emails (missing the date on which approximately 70% of them were collected) , which is, in itself, a stunning failure for a supposedly thorough investigation costing US taxpayers tens of millions of dollars. ..."
"... There should have been a proper, thorough, independent and impartial investigation into the Guccifer 2.0 persona. The Special Counsel certainly hasn't done that job and, in retrospect, looks to have been ill-equipped (and perhaps somewhat reluctant) to do so from the outset. ..."
On April 18, 2019, a redacted version of Robert Mueller's report on "RussiaGate" related
activities was released to the public.
This article focuses on Volume I Part III titled "Russian Hacking & Dumping Operations"
and provides details of the errors made, critical omissions, lack of conclusive evidence and
reliance on assumptions and speculation.
We will also look at problems relating to attribution methods used, countervailing evidence
that has clearly been disregarded and other problems that are likely to have affected the
quality of the investigation and the report.
The Mueller Report: Context & Contradiction
We start with a read-through of this section of the report, highlighting missing context,
contradictions and errors.
Page 36
[To minimize repetition, we'll deal with statements made in this introduction where the
basis is explained or details are provided on other pages ahead.]
Page 36
While the Netyksho
indictment does provide details of intrusions and infrastructure used, it's still unclear
how the infrastructure has been attributed back to individuals in the GRU and no conclusive
evidence has been presented to support that in the indictment or the report.
In the Netyksho
indictment it is stated that the "middle-servers" are overseas:
So, what was the point in having a US-based AMS Panel if you're using overseas servers as
proxies?
This seems to be a needlessly noisy setup that somewhat defeats the purpose of having a
US-based server for the AMS panel.
This setup makes the assets allegedly used by GRU officers subject to US laws, subject to
Internet monitoring by US intelligence agencies and prone to being physically seized.
With the GRU using middle-servers, as alleged, there would have been absolutely no reason to
have the AMS panel hosted on a server within the US and every reason to have it hosted
elsewhere.
It almost seems like they wanted to get caught!
Page 40
We are told the GRU obtained files from the DNC network on April 22, 2016, (this is a
little different to the Netyksho indictment that states the files were archived on April 22,
2016 and extracted later):
The problem with this is that it suggests the GRU had their implant on the DNC network
earlier than what the available evidence supports.
Perhaps they didn't discover all the malware until later? (Though, with their flagship
product installed across the network, one would think they'd have detected all the malware
present by the time they reported on discoveries).
The implication that this was stolen from the DNC is questionable due to this.
Going further, the story surrounding this changed in November 2017 when the Associated Press
published a story titled " How Russians
hacked the Democrats' emails " in which they cite an anonymous former DNC official who
asserts that Guccifer 2.0's first document (the Trump opposition report) did not
originate in the DNC as initially reported.
Another interesting point relating to this is the "HRC_pass.zip" archive released by
Guccifer 2.0 on June 21, 2016 (
which also provided another US central timezone indication ) contained files with last
modification dates of April 26, 2016. While this fits within the above timeframe, the transfer
of the files individually, the apparent transfer speeds involved and the presence of FAT-like
2-second rounding artifacts ( noted elsewhere
in Guccifer 2.0's releases ) when the files came from an NTFS system (and the ZIP
implementation was not the cause) does not correlate well with what the report
outlines.
In spite of its name ("HRC_pass.zip") this archive appears to contain files that can be
sourced to the DNC. Out of 200 files, only one showed up as an attachment (in the Podesta
emails) .
Regarding the May 25 - June 1 timeframe cited, this seems to exclude the date on which
approximately 70% of the DNC's emails published on WikiLeaks' website were acquired (May 23,
2016)
What makes this interesting is that this is apparently being evaluated on evidence that was
very likely to have been provided by CrowdStrike:
Page 40
How did Crowdstrike's evidence not inform the FBI and Special Counsel of the real initial
acquisition date of WikiLeaks' DNC emails?
Was the May 23, 2016 activity not recorded?
Going back to the Netyksho indictment , we have also been
told that Yermakov was searching for Powershell commands between the May 25 - June 1st
period:
However, we know 70% of the DNC emails published by WikiLeaks had already been acquired
prior to that time, before Yermakov had allegedly researched how to access and manage the
Exchange server.
Page 41
We can tell from the use of "appear" here that the Special Counsel does not have conclusive
evidence to demonstrate this.
Page 41
While the overlap between reported phishing victims and the output of DCLeaks cannot be
denied, it is still unclear how bitcoin pools or leased infrastructure have been definitively
tied back to any GRU officers or the GRU itself.
This isn't to say that there isn't evidence of it (I would assume there is some evidence
or intelligence that supports the premise to some degree, at the very least) but we have no
idea what that could be and there is no explanation of how associations to individual GRU
officers were made (perhaps to protect HUMINT but this still leaves us completely in the
dark as to how attributions were made) .
We know already that things are assumed by the Special Counsel on the basis of
circumstantial evidence, so there is good reason to question whether the attributions made are
based on conclusive evidence.
Page 42
This is the first point at which to recall Assange's announcement on 12 June that WikiLeaks
was working on a release of "emails related to Hillary Clinton" - two days before the DNC goes
public about being hacked by Russians, and three days before the appearance of Guccifer
2.0.
It's also approximately one month before Mueller says Guccifer 2.0 first successfully sent
anything to WikiLeaks.
While WikiLeaks did mention this via their Twitter feed on June 16, 2016, they were clearly
skeptical of his claims to be a hacker and although they cite his claim about sending material
to WikiLeaks, they don't confirm it:
It also seems a little odd that the GRU would do searches for already translated phrases
(using Google translate to get English translations would be more understandable) and if
it's Guccifer 2.0 doing it why did he not use the VPN he used for his other activities
throughout the same day?
Why does the Mueller report not report on the IP address of the Moscow-based server from
which searches occurred? It wouldn't really expose sources and methods to disclose it and it's
unclear how it was determined to have been used and managed by a unit of the GRU. (Citation
#146 references the Netyksho indictment, however, that fails to provide evidence or explanation
of this too.)
The body content of a Trump Opposition research document (originally authored by Lauren
Dillon) that was attached to another of Podesta's emails was then
copied into the template document.
The document was saved (with a Russian author name), its body content cleared and this was
then re-used to produce two further "Russia-tainted" documents.
It was no accident that led to the documents being tainted in the way that they were and it
looks like Guccifer 2.0's version of the Trump opposition research didn't really come from the
DNC.
It should be noted that the data referenced above was also unrelated to the general election
and didn't have any noticeable impact on it (the 2.5Gb of data Guccifer 2.0 provided to
Aaron Nevins was unlikely to have hurt the Clinton campaign or affect the outcome of the
general election) .
In the states that the data related to, general election results didn't flip between the
time of the publication of the documents and the election:
Page 43
Interesting to note that Guccifer 2.0 lied about DCLeaks being a "sub project" of
WikiLeaks.
Page 44
The only materials Mueller alleges that WikiLeaks confirmed receipt of was a "1gb or so"
archive, for which, instructions to access were communicated in an attached message
(none-too-discreetly titled "wk dnc link1.txt.gpg") and sent by Guccifer 2 via
unencrypted email.
It is an assumption that this was an archive of DNC emails (it could have contained other
files Guccifer 2.0 subsequently released elsewhere).
We don't even know for sure whether WikiLeaks released what had been sent to them by either
entity.
This, of course, doesn't rule out the possibility of it being a portion of the overall
collection but what the persona had sent to WikiLeaks could also easily have been other
material relating to the DNC that we know Guccifer 2.0 later released or shared with other
parties.
Page 45
This is the second point at which to recall Assange's 12 June TV announcement of upcoming
"emails related to Hillary Clinton", coming two days before Guccifer 2.0's colleagues at
DCLeaks reach out to WikiLeaks via unencrypted means on 14 June 2016 to offer "sensitive
information" on Clinton.
Then, seven days after Guccifer 2 had already claimed to have sent material to WikiLeaks and
stated that they'd soon release it (which made it sound as though he'd had confirmation
back), we see that WikiLeaks reaches out to Guccifer 2.0 and suggests he sends material to
them (as though there's never been any prior contact or provision of materials previously
discussed) .
Page 45
How is it "clear" that both the DNC and Podesta documents were transferred from the GRU to
WikiLeaks when there is only around a gigabyte of data acknowledged as received (and we
don't even know what that data is) and little is known about the rest (and the report
just speculates at possibilities) ?
Page 46
We aren't provided the full dialogue between WikiLeaks and Guccifer 2.0. Instead we have
just a few words selected from the communication that could easily be out of context. The
Netyksho indictment did exactly the same thing. Neither the indictment nor the report provide
the full DM conversation in context.
(It certainly wouldn't harm HUMINT resources or expose methods if this evidence was
released in full context.)
Would the GRU really engage in internal communications (eg GRU Guccifer 2.0 to GRU
DCLeaks) via Twitter DMs? Maybe, but it seems insanely sloppy with regards to operational
security of a clandestine organization communicating between its own staff.
The statement that concludes on the following page (see below) also seems a little
bizarre. Would WikiLeaks really ask Guccifer 2.0 to DM DCLeaks to pass on such a message on
their behalf?
Why doesn't Mueller provide the comms evidence of WikiLeaks asking Guccifer 2.0 for
assistance in contacting DCLeaks?
As written, we are expected to take the words of Guccifer 2.0 (stating that the media
organisation wished to talk to DCLeaks) at face value.
It was actually the last-modification date, not the creation date that was recorded as 19
September, 2016.
This wasn't necessarily the creation date and is only indicative of the last recorded
write/copy operation (unless last modification date is preserved when copying but there's no
way to determine that based on the available evidence) .
The gap between email file timestamps and attachment timestamps may simply be explained by
WikiLeaks extracting the attachments from the EML files at a later stage. With the DNC emails
we observed last-modifications dates as far back as May 23, 2016 but the attachments had
last-modification dates that were much later (eg. July 21, 2016).
The wording is also worth noting: "Based on information about Assange's computer and its
possible operating system" [emphasis mine] does not sound like it's based on
reliable and factual information, it sounds like this is based on assessment/estimation. This
also seems to be relying on an assumption that the only person handling files for WikiLeaks is
Assange.
How have the Special Counsel cited WikiLeaks metadata for evidence where it's suited them
yet, somehow, have managed to miss the May 23, 2016 date on which the DNC emails were initially
being collected?
Going further, the report, based on speculation, suggests that the GRU staged releases in
July (for DNC emails) and September (for Podesta emails). However, going off the same logic as
the Special Counsel, with last-modification dates indicating when the email files are "staged",
the evidence would theoretically point to the DNC emails being "staged" in May 2016).
It doesn't seem so reliable when the rule is applied multilaterally.
Of course, if both assumptions about staging dates are true, then we're left wondering what
Julian Assange could have been talking about on June 12, 2016 when mentioning having emails
relating to Hillary Clinton.
The speculation in the final paragraph of the above section also shows us that the Special
Counsel lacks certainty on sources.
Page 48
Really, this correlation of dates (March 21, 2016 and the reported phishing incident
relating to March 19, 2016) is one of the best arguments for saying that emails published
by WikiLeaks were acquired through phishing or hacking incidents reported.
However, this merely suggests the method of acquisition, it says nothing of how the material
got to WikiLeaks. We can make assumptions, but that's all we can do because the available
evidence is circumstantial rather than conclusive.
Page 48
Far from "discredit[ing] WikiLeaks' claims about the source of the material it posted", the
file transfer evidence doesn't conclusively demonstrate that WikiLeaks published anything sent
to it by Guccifer 2.0 or DCLeaks.
Although there are hints that what was sent by Guccifer 2.0 related to the DNC, we don't
know if this contained DNC emails or the other DNC related content he later released and shared
with others.
"The statements about Seth Rich implied falsely that he had been the source of the stolen
DNC emails" is itself a false statement. The reason Assange gave for offering a reward for
information leading to the conviction of Seth Rich's killers was "Our sources take risks and
they become concerned when they see things occurring like that [the death of DNC worker Seth
Rich]... We have to understand how high the stakes are in the United States" ( source ) .
This implies WikiLeaks is offering the reward for info about Seth Rich at the behest of its
actual source/s.
Page 49
By the time Trump had made the statements cited above, it was already assumed that Hillary
had been hacked by the Russians, so Trump saying he hoped the Russians would find the emails
seems more likely to have been in reference to what he assumed was already in their
possession.
What is being described here is, to a considerable extent, just common exploit scanning on
web services, scanning that will almost certainly have come from other nodes based in other
nations too .
These scans are typically done via compromised machines, often with machines that are in
nations completely separate to the nationality of those running the scanning effort.
The Department of Homeland Security threw
cold water on this a long time ago.
DHS would not characterize these efforts as attacks, only "simple scanning ... which occurs
all the time".
The remaining pages in this section of the report include a lot of redactions and mostly
cover the actions of individuals in the US in relation to communications they had with or in
relation to WikiLeaks. As this article is about the technical claims made in relation to
hacking and so much is redacted, we'll only look at those really relevant to this.
[The remaining pages in this section have little relevance to the technical aspects of
this section of the report and/or acquisition of materials that this article is intended to
cover.]
While the above does show numerous issues with the report, it's important not to fall into
the trap of outright dismissing as false anything for which evidence is lacking or assuming
there is no evidence at all to support assertions.
However, without knowing what evidence exists we're left to make assumptions about whether
it's conclusive or circumstantial, we don't know if the source of evidence is dependable and
it's clear in the report that the Special Counsel has relied on assumptions and made numerous
statements on the basis of presuppositions.
There is also a considerable amount of circumstantial evidence that, although it doesn't
conclusively prove what the report tries to convince us of, it does at least raise questions
about relationships between different entities, especially with regards to any overlaps in
resources and infrastructure used.
For example, based on the cited evidence, it is perfectly understandable that people will
assume Guccifer 2.0 provided DNC emails to WikiLeaks and will also assume that WikiLeaks
published whatever it was that Guccifer 2.0 had sent them (especially with Mueller
presenting that conversation in the form of a couple of words devoid of all context) .
The apparent overlap between a VPN service used by Guccifer 2.0 and by DCLeaks does suggest
the two could be associated beyond Guccifer 2.0 just being a source of leaks for them.
Also, DCLeaks publishing some DNC emails that later appeared in the DNC email collection
(though not necessarily from the same mailboxes) also suggests that DCLeaks and WikiLeaks could
have had access to some of the same material and/or sources.
The same is true for Guccifer 2.0 releasing Podesta and DNC email attachments before
WikiLeaks released both collections. Unless given good reason to consider any ulterior motive,
the implied explanation, on the surface, seems to be that it was this persona that was a source
for those emails. If nothing else, that's how it appears based on the little information
typically made available to us by the mainstream press.
However, despite all of this, we still have not seen conclusive evidence showing that either
of the entities was really controlled by the GRU and, when the countervailing evidence
(which seems to have been completely ignored by the Special Counsel's investigation) is
considered, there is reason to give consideration to Guccifer 2.0's efforts to not just
associate himself with WikiLeaks and DCLeaks but also to associate third parties with each
other through false claims.
The Mystery Of The May 23, 2016 Omission
One of the most notable omissions is the date on which emails from several mailboxes
(including Luis Miranda's) were originally collected.
Not only is this prior to the May 25, 2016 - June 1, 2016 timeframe given for the DNC's
exchange server being hacked, this activity is unmentioned throughout the entire report.
How has this failed to come to the surface when it should have been apparent in evidence
CrowdStrike provided to the FBI and also apparent based on the WikiLeaks metadata? How is it
the Special Counsel can cite some of the metadata in relation to WikiLeaks releases yet somehow
manage to miss this?
Countervailing Evidence
What the Special Counsel's investigation also seems to have completely disregarded is the
volume of countervailing evidence that has been discovered by several independent researchers
in relation to the Guccifer 2.0 persona.
It's worth considering what evidence the Special Counsel has brought to the surface and
comparing it with the evidence that has come to the surface as a result of discoveries being
made by independent researchers over the past two years and the differences between the two
sets of evidence (especially with regards to falsifiability and verifiability of
evidence) .
Some excellent examples are covered in the following articles:
Skip Folden (who introduced me to VIPS members and has been a good friend ever since)
recently shared with me his assessment of problems with the current attribution methods being
relied on by the Special Counsel and others.
It covered several important points and was far more concise than anything I would have
written, so, with his permission, I'm publishing his comments on this topic:
No basis whatsoever
APT28, aka Fancy Bear, Sofacy, Strontium, Pawn Storm, Sednit, etc., and APT29, aka Cozy
Bear, Cozy Duke, Monkeys, CozyCar,The Dukes, etc., are used as 'proof' of Russia 'hacking' by
Russian Intelligence agencies GRU and FSB respectively.
There is no basis whatsoever to attribute the use of known intrusion elements to Russia,
not even if they were once reverse routed to Russia, which claim has never been made by NSA
or any other of our IC.
On June 15, 2016 Dmitri Alperovitch himself, in an Atlantic Council article, gave only
"medium-level of confidence that Fancy Bear is GRU" and "low-level of confidence that Cozy
Bear is FSB." These assessments, from the main source himself, that either APT is Russian
intelligence, averages 37%-38% [(50 + 25) / 2].
Exclusivity :
None of the technical indicators, e.g., intrusion tools (such as X-Agent, X-Tunnel),
facilities, tactics, techniques, or procedures, etc., of the 28 and 29 APTs can be uniquely
attributed to Russia, even if one or more had ever been trace routed to Russia. Once an
element of a set of intrusion tools is used in the public domain it can be reverse-engineered
and used by other groups which precludes the assumption of exclusivity in future use. The
proof that any of these tools have never been reverse engineered and used by others is left
to the student - or prosecutor.
Using targets
Also, targets have been used as basis for attributing intrusions to Russia, and that is
pure nonsense. Both many state and non-state players have deep interests in the same targets
and have the technical expertise to launch intrusions. In Grizzly Steppe, page 2, second
paragraph, beginning with, "Both groups have historically targeted ...," is there anything in
that paragraph which can be claimed as unique to Russia or which excludes all other major
state players in the world or any of the non-state organizations? No.
Key Logger Consideration
On the subject of naming specific GRU officers initiating specific actions on GRU Russian
facilities on certain dates / times, other than via implanted ID chips under the finger tips
of these named GRU officers, the logical assumption would be by installed key logger
capabilities, physical or malware, on one or more GRU Russian computers.
The GRU is a highly advanced Russian intelligence unit. It would be very surprising were
the GRU open to any method used to install key logger capabilities. It would be even more
surprising, if not beyond comprehension that the GRU did not scan all systems upon start-up
and in real time, including key logger protection and anomalies of performance degradation
and data transmissions.
Foreign intelligence source
Other option would be via a foreign intelligence unit source with local GRU access. Any
such would be quite anti-Russian and be another nail in the coffin of any chain of evidence /
custody validity at Russian site.
Chain Of Custody - Without An Anchor There Is No Chain
Another big problem with the whole RussiaGate investigation is the reliance on a private
firm, hired by the DNC, to be the source of evidence.
As I don't have a good understanding of US law and processes surrounding evidence collection
and handling, I will, again, defer to something that my aforementioned contact shared:
Chain of Evidence / Custody at US end, i.e., DNC and related computing facilities
Summary: There is no US end Chain of Evidence / Custody
The anchor of any chain of evidence custody is the on-site crime scene investigation of a
jurisdictional law enforcement agency and neutral jurisdictional forensic team which
investigate, discover, identify where possible, log, mark, package, seal, or takes images
there of, of all identified elements of potential evidence as discovered at the scene of a
crime by the authorized teams. The chain of this anchor is then the careful, documented
movement of each element of captured evidence from crime scene to court.
In the case of the alleged series of intrusions into the DNC computing facilities, there
is no anchor to any chain of evidence / custody.
There has been no claim that any jurisdictional law enforcement agency was allowed access
to the DNC computing facilities. The FBI was denied access to DNC facilities, thereby
supposedly denying the FBI the ability to conduct any on-site investigation of the alleged
crime scene for discovery or collection of evidence.
Nor did the FBI exercise its authority to investigate the crime scene of a purported
federal crime. Since when does the FBI need permission to investigate an alleged crime site
where it is claimed a foreign government's intelligence attacked political files in order to
interfere in a US presidential election?
Instead, the FBI accepted images of purported crime scene evidence from a contractor hired
by and, therefore, working for the DNC. On July 05, 2017 a Crowdstrike statement said that
they had provided "... forensic images of the DNC system to the FBI." It was not stated when
these images were provided. Crowdstrike was working for the DNC as a contractor at the
time.
This scenario is analogous to an employee of a crime scene owner telling law enforcement,
"Trust me; I have examined the crime scene for you and here's what I've found. It's not
necessary for you to see the crime scene."
Crowdstrike cannot be accepted as a neutral forensic organization. It was working for and
being paid by the DNC. It is neither a law enforcement agency nor a federal forensic
organization. Further Crowdstrike has serious conflicts of interest when it comes to any
investigation of Russia.
Crowdstrike co-founder and Director of Technology, Dimitri Alperovitch, is a Nonresident
Senior Fellow, Cyber Statecraft Initiative, of the Atlantic Council. Alperovitch has made it
clear of his dislike of the government of Putin, and The Atlantic Council can not be
considered neutral to Russia, receiving funding from many very staunch and outspoken enemies
of Russia.
Summary: Not only was no federal jurisdictional law enforcement agency allowed to
investigate the alleged crime scene, but the organization which allegedly collected and
provided the 'evidence' was not neutral by being employed by the owner of the alleged crime
scene, but seriously compromised by strong anti-Russian links.
This issue of this substitute for an anchor then leads us to our next problem: an apparent
conflict of interest from the investigation's outset.
Conflict of Interest Inherent In The Investigation?
Would it seem like a conflict of interest if the person in charge of an investigation were
friends with a witness and source of critical evidence relied upon by that investigation?
This is effectively the situation we have with the Special Counsel investigation because
Robert Mueller and CrowdStrike's CSO (and President) Shawn Henry are former colleagues
and friends.
If nothing else, it's understandable for people to feel that the Special Counsel would have
struggled to be truly impartial due to such relationships.
Conclusion
The Special Counsel seems to have been impervious to critical pieces of countervailing
evidence (some of which demonstrates that Guccifer 2.0 deliberately manufactured Russian
breadcrumbs) and they have failed to accurately account for the acquisition of WikiLeaks'
DNC emails (missing the date on which approximately 70% of them were collected) , which
is, in itself, a stunning failure for a supposedly thorough investigation costing US taxpayers
tens of millions of dollars.
There should have been a proper, thorough, independent and impartial investigation into the
Guccifer 2.0 persona. The Special Counsel certainly hasn't done that job and, in retrospect,
looks to have been ill-equipped (and perhaps somewhat reluctant) to do so from the
outset.
This article may be republished/reproduced in part or in full on condition that content
above is unaltered and that the author is credited (or, alternatively, that a link to the full
article is included).
Newly released evidence suggests Ukraine played key role in creating
Trump–Russia collusion narrative at behest of Obama officials
As Ukraine underwent dramatic changes
in 2014, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden played a critical role in the Obama
administration's involvement in the revolution that ousted Ukrainian President Viktor
Yanukovych.
Following the revolution, Biden would use his influence to help force the creation of the
troubled National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU). Notably, during the 2016 election campaign,
information leaked from NABU about Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort that helped to create
the false narrative that Trump colluded with Russia to win the election.
Biden also would use the threat of withholding $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees to
pressure Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to fire the prosecutor general. At the time, the
prosecutor had been investigating Burisma, a Ukrainian natural gas giant that had appointed
Biden's son, Hunter, as a board member.
President Donald
Trump 's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, recently said, "Keep your eye on Ukraine." In his
comments to the
Washington Examiner , Giuliani highlighted the "plot to create an investigation of
President Trump, based on a false charge of conspiracy with the Russians to affect the 2016
elections."
Obama Administration's 2014 Involvement
On or shortly before Feb. 4, 2014, Victoria Nuland, the assistant secretary for European and
Eurasian affairs in the Obama State Department, had a conversation with the U.S. ambassador to
Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, which was intercepted and leaked .
In the call, Nuland and Pyatt appeared to be discussing the ouster of Yanukovych and the
installation of opposition leader Arseniy Yatsenyuk as prime minister.
Nuland favored opposition leader Yatsenyuk over his main rivals Vitali Klitschko and Oleh
Tyahnybok, telling Pyatt: "I think Yats is the guy who's got the economic experience, the
governing experience. He's the what he needs is Klitschko and Tyahnybok on the outside."
Toward the end of the conversation , then-Vice President Biden
was discussed as being willing to help cement the changeover in Ukraine:
Geoffrey Pyatt: "We want to try to get somebody with an international personality to come
out here and help to midwife this thing. The other issue is some kind of outreach to
Yanukovych, but we probably regroup on that tomorrow as we see how things start to fall into
place."
Victoria Nuland: "So, on that piece Geoff, when I wrote the note [Biden's national security
adviser Jake] Sullivan's come back to me VFR [direct to me], saying you need Biden, and I said
probably tomorrow for an atta-boy and to get the deets [details] to stick. So Biden's
willing."
Nuland and Pyatt met with Ukrainian opposition leaders Klitschko and Yatsenyuk, along with
then-President Yanukovych, just days later on Feb. 7, 2014.
Events then moved swiftly. On Feb. 22, 2014, Yanukovych was
removed as president of Ukraine and fled to Russia. On Feb. 27, 2014, Yatsenyuk, the
candidate favored by Nuland, was installed as prime minister of Ukraine.
Klitschko was left out. Notably, Yatsenyuk would later resign
in April 2016 amid corruption accusations.
Biden's Involvement in Ukraine
In April, Biden would get personally involved, as would his son, Hunter. On April 18, 2014,
Hunter Biden was
appointed to the board of directors for Burisma–one of the largest natural gas
companies in Ukraine.
Four days later, on April 22, 2014, Vice President Biden traveled to Ukraine ,
offering his political support and $50 million in aid for Yatsenyuk's shaky new government.
Poroshenko, a billionaire politician, was elected as president of Ukraine on May 25, 2014.
Biden became close to both men and helped Ukraine obtain a four-year, $17.5
billion IMF package in March 2015.
In October 2016, Foreign Policy wrote a lengthy article, "
What Will Ukraine Do Without Uncle Joe ," which described Biden's role in the removal of
Ukraine's general prosecutor, Victor Shokin. Shokin, the choice of Poroshenko, was portrayed as
fumbling a major corruption case and "hindering an investigation into two high-ranking state
prosecutors arrested on corruption charges."
The United States pushed for Shokin's removal, and Biden led the effort by personally
threatening to withhold $1 billion in loan guarantees. In an interview
with The Atlantic, Biden recalled telling Poroshenko: "Petro, you're not getting your billion
dollars. It's OK, you can keep the [prosecutor] general. Just understand -- we're not paying if
you do." Shokin was removed by
Poroshenko shortly thereafter, in early 2016.
But according to reporting by The Hill, at the time of his firing, Shokin had been
investigating Burisma. Shokin's investigation into Burisma had previously been
disclosed in June 2017, by Front News International.
Burisma is
owned by Nikolai Zlochevsky (also known as Mykola Zlochevsky), the former minister of
ecology for Ukraine. According to
Front News , Zlochevsky issued
a "special permit for the extraction of a third of the gas produced in Ukraine" to his own
company, Burisma.
According to the Ukrainian nonprofit Anti Corruption Action Center, Zlochevsky owns 38
permits held by 14 different companies -- with Burisma
accounting for the majority with 33 of the permits. Zlochevsky left Ukraine after
Yanukovych fled to Russia during the Ukrainian Revolution known as
Euromaidan.
Investigation Into Burisma
In the spring of 2014, the Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office opened an investigation at
the behest of the UK prosecutors office, which was investigating money laundering allegations
against Zlochevsky and had
just frozen $23.5 million in assets allegedly belonging to him in early April 2014. Shokin,
who wasn't appointed as general prosecutor until February 2015, wasn't yet involved in the
case.
Ukrainian prosecutors
refused to provide the UK with needed documents, and in January 2015, a British court
ordered the assets unfrozen. This action was pointedly called out in a
speech by Pyatt, who stated, "In the case of former Ecology Minister Mykola Zlochevsky, the
UK authorities had seized $23 million in illicit assets that belonged to the Ukrainian
people."
Instead of receiving cooperation from Ukrainian prosecutors, they "sent letters to
Zlochevsky's attorneys attesting that there was no case against him. As a result, the money was
freed by the UK court, and shortly thereafter the money was moved to Cyprus."
On Feb. 10, 2015, Shokin was appointed prosecutor general of Ukraine, and he picked up the
investigation into Burisma, which reportedly continued until his formal resignation in February
2016.
Around the same time that Zlochevsky's assets were being frozen in the UK, Burisma appointed
Hunter Biden to its board on April 18, 2014. Hunter's compensation had never been disclosed by
Burisma, which is a private company, but Ryan Toohey, a Burisma spokesman,
told The New York Times that Biden's compensation was "not out of the ordinary" for similar
board positions.
However, according to The Hill's
reporting , Hunter Biden's firm, Rosemont Seneca Partners, was receiving regular
payments -- "usually more than $166,000 a month" -- from Burisma. The payments ran from the
spring of 2014 through the fall of 2015 and reportedly totaled more than $3 million.
The Hill article included a written answer from Shokin, who told Solomon that his
investigation into Burisma had included plans for "interrogations and other crime-investigation
procedures into all members of the executive board, including Hunter Biden."
According to Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko, following Shokin's forced
dismissal, the Burisma investigation was transferred to Sytnyk's NABU, which then reportedly
closed the investigation sometime in 2016.
The Kyiv Post on March 27 published an
editorial written by three members of the Anti-Corruption Action Center in Kyiv that
disputed Lutsenko's interview with The Hill. They claim that two cases relating to Burisma are
still being investigated by NABU:
"Two cases regarding the extraction of licenses by Zlochevsky's companies and embezzlement
of public funds at the ministry's procurements during Zlochevsky's Ministerial tenure remain
active and are investigated by NABU."
They also claim that "none of the criminal proceedings against Burisma were closed by NABU."
They acknowledged that the case concerning illegal issuance of licenses to extract natural
resources were transferred to NABU in December 2015, but claim that SAP missed procedural
deadlines for a lawsuit on canceling those licenses.
The politics within Ukraine are extremely complicated, and corruption is endemic, often
leading to conflicting accounts of events.
US Pressure to Investigate Manafort
In January 2016, top Ukrainian corruption prosecutors and officials from Obama's National
Security Council (NSC), FBI, State Department and Department of Justice (DOJ) met in
Washington, according to an April 26
article by The Hill.
The meeting, which was reportedly billed as "training," apparently also touched on two other
matters -- the revival of a closed investigation into payments to U.S. figures from Ukraine's
Russia-backed Party of Regions and the closure of an ongoing Ukrainian investigation into
Burisma.
According to The Hill's reporting, the Ukrainian Embassy confirmed that meetings were held,
but said it "had no record that the Party of Regions or Burisma cases came up in the
meetings."
A Jan. 22, 2016, NABU press
release confirmed that NABU Director Artem Sytnyk was in Washington from Jan. 19 to 21.
At the same time as the NABU meeting with Obama officials, Vice President Biden
also met with senior Ukrainian officials. On Jan. 21, 2016, Biden
met with Poroshenko, the president of Ukraine. According to the
White House release , the two leaders agreed "to continue to move forward on Ukraine's
anti-corruption agenda."
Just six days earlier, on Jan 15, 2016, Biden had met with Ukrainian Prime Minister
Volodymyr Groysman, promising to commit $220 million in new assistance to Ukraine that
year.
Notably, several months later, Sytnyk and Ukrainian Member of Parliament Serhiy Leshchenko
would
publicly disclose the contents of the Ukrainian "black ledger" to the media, which
implicated Trump's campaign manager, Paul Manafort. The revelation would force Manafort from
the campaign.
Leshchenko also served as a source for various individuals, including journalist Michael
Isikoff and Democratic National Committee (DNC) operative Alexandra Chalupa. In addition,
Leshchenko served as a direct source of information for Fusion GPS -- and its researcher,
former CIA contractor Nellie Ohr.
Another Ukrainian-related meeting also took place in January 2016 when Chalupa, a
Ukrainian-American, informed an
unknown senior DNC official that she believed there was a Russian connection with the Trump
campaign. Notably, this theme would be picked up by the Clinton campaign in the summer of 2016.
Chalupa also told the official to expect Manafort's involvement in the Trump campaign.
How Chalupa knew to expect Manafort's involvement with the Trump campaign in January remains
unknown, but her forecast proved prescient, as Manafort
reached out to the Trump campaign shortly after, on Feb. 29, 2016, through a mutual
acquaintance, Thomas J. Barrack Jr. According to Manafort, he and Trump hadn't been in
communication
for years until the Trump campaign responded to Manafort's offer.
As The Epoch Times
previously reported , on May 30, 2016, Fusion GPS contractor Nellie Ohr sent an email to
her husband, high-ranking DOJ official Bruce Ohr, and three other DOJ officials to alert them
of the discovery of the "Reported Trove of Documents on Ukrainian Party of Regions' 'Black
Cashbox.'" It was this discovery that led to Manafort's resignation from the Trump campaign in
August 2016.
On Aug. 14, 2016, The New York Times published an article
alleging that payments to Manafort had been uncovered from the Party of Regents' "black box" --
the 400-page handwritten ledger released by Leshchenko. The article proved to be a fatal blow
for Manafort, who resigned from the Trump campaign just days later.
NABU Ties to FBI
Following the successful overthrow of Yanukovych, Joe Biden had a direct hand in the
formation of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU), as he personally "pushed for the
creation of an independent anti-corruption bureau to combat graft," according to an Oct. 30,
2016, article by
Foreign Policy .
NABU was formally established in October 2014 in response to pressure
from not only the U.S. State Department and Biden, but also by the International Monetary Fund
and the European Commission.
Despite the international push, the fledgling anti-corruption unit took more than a year to
actually become a functioning unit. During this time, NABU officials began establishing a
relationship with the FBI. In early 2016, NABU Director Sytnyk announced
that his bureau was very close to signing a memorandum of cooperation with the FBI and by
February
2016 , the FBI had had a permanent representative onsite at the NABU offices.
On June 5, 2016, Sytnyk met with U.S. Ambassador Pyatt to
discuss a more formalized relationship with the FBI and, on June 30, 2016, NABU and the FBI
entered into a
memorandum of understanding that allowed for an FBI office onsite at NABU offices to focus on
international money laundering cases. The relationship was renewed
for an additional two years in June 2017.
NABU has repeatedly refused to make the memorandum of understanding with the FBI public and
went
to court in 2018 to prevent its release. After receiving an unfavorable opinion from the
Kyiv District Administrative Court, NABU appealed the ruling, which was overturned in its favor
by the Sixth Administrative Court of Appeal.
Sytnyk, along with parliamentarian Leshchenko, became the subject of an investigation in
Ukraine and in December 2018, a Kyiv court
ruled that both men "acted illegally when they revealed that Manafort's surname and
signature were found in the so-called black ledger of ousted President Viktor Yanukovych's
Party of Regions," the Kyiv Post
reported on Dec. 12, 2018.
The court noted the material was part of a pre-trial investigation and its release "led to
interference in the electoral processes of the United States in 2016 and harmed the interests
of Ukraine as a state."
Leshchenko had publicly adopted a strong anti-Trump stance, telling the Financial
Times in August 2016 that "a Trump presidency would change the pro-Ukrainian agenda in American
foreign policy" and that it was "important to show not only the corruption aspect, but that he
is [a] pro-Russian candidate who can break the geopolitical balance in the world." Leschenko
noted that the majority of Ukrainian politicians were "on Hillary Clinton's side."
In December 2017, Ukrainian Prosecutor General Lutsenko
accused Sytnyk of allowing the FBI to conduct illegal operations in Ukraine, claiming that
the "U.S. law enforcers were allegedly invited without the permission required and in breach of
the necessary procedures." Lutsenko
continued by asking, "Who actually let the foreign special service act in Ukraine?"
Taras Chornovil, a Ukrainian political analyst, also questioned the FBI's activities,
writing that "some kind of undercover operations are being conducted in Ukraine with direct
participation (or even under control) of the FBI. This means the FBI operatives could have
access to classified data or confidential information."
Lutsenko called for an audit of NABU,
claiming to "possess information of interest to the auditors" and was pushing for Sytnyk's
resignation, along with that of Nazar Kholodnitskiy, the Specialized Anti-Corruption
Prosecutor's Office (SAP). According to
reporting by Euromaidan Press, Lutsenko's efforts failed "thanks to the reaction from
Ukraine's American partners."
Michael Carpenter, an adviser to Joe Biden, personally issued a public warning to Lutsenko
and others pushing for Sytnyk's removal, stating, "If the Rada votes to dismiss the head of the
Anticorruption Committee and the head of the NABU, I will recommend cutting all U.S. government
assistance to #Ukraine , including security
assistance."
Sytnyk remains in his position as NABU's director.
Pinchuk's Ties to Leshchenko,
Clintons
On April 11, 2019, Greg Craig, Obama's former White House counsel and a partner at law firm
Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP, was indicted
for lying about and concealing his work in Ukraine. Craig, who reportedly worked closely with
Manafort, was paid
more than $4 million to produce an "independent" report justifying Ukraine's trial and
conviction of the former prime minister, Yulia Tymoshenko. Notably, Craig's name was not
included in the "Black Ledger" leak from Leshchenko and Sytnyk.
The indictment notes that "a wealthy private Ukrainian" was fully funding the report. In a
recent YouTube video
, Craig publicly stated that "it was Doug Schoen who brought this project to me, and he told me
he was acting on behalf of Victor Pinchuk, who was a pro-western, Ukrainian businessman who
helped to fund the project."
"The Firm understood that its work was to be largely funded by Victor Pinchuk," Skadden
wrote in recent FARA filings .
Pinchuk put out a statement on Jan. 21, denying any financial involvement:
"Mr. Pinchuk was not the source of any funds used to pay fees of Skadden in producing their
report into the trial and conviction of Yulia Tymoshenko. He was in no way responsible for
those costs. Neither Mr. Pinchuk nor companies affiliated with him have ever been a client of
Skadden. Mr. Pinchuk and his team had no role in the work done by Skadden, including in the
preparation or dissemination of the Skadden report."
Pinchuk is the founder of Interpipe, a steel pipe manufacturer. He owns Credit Dnipro Bank,
several ferroalloy plants and a media empire. He is married to Elena Pinchuk, the daughter of
former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma.
Pinchuk has been accused of profiting immensely from the purchase of state-owned assets at
severely below-market prices through political favoritism.
Between April 4 and April 12,
2016, Ukrainian parliamentarian Olga Bielkova had
four meetings , with Samuel Charap (International Institute for Strategic Studies), Liz
Zentos (National Security Council), Michael Kimmage (State Department), and David Kramer
(McCain Institute).
FARA documents
filed by Schoen showed that he was paid $40,000 a month by Pinchuk (page 5) -- in part to
arrange these meetings.
Schoen attempted to arrange another 72 meetings with congressmen and media (page 10). It's
unknown how many of these meetings, if any, took place.
Schoen also helped Pinchuk establish ties with the Clinton Foundation. The Wall Street
Journal reported on
March 19, 2015, how Schoen connected Pinchuk with senior Clinton State Department staffers in
order to pressure former Ukrainian President Yanukovych to release Tymoshenko–a political
rival of Yanukovych–from jail. And the relationship between Pinchuk and the Clintons
continued. According to the Kyiv
Post :
"Clinton and her husband Bill, the 42nd U.S. president, have been paid speakers at the
annual YES and other Pinchuk events. They describe themselves as friends of Pinchuk, who is
known internationally as a businessman and philanthropist."
Although exact numbers aren't clear,
reports filed by the Clinton Foundation indicate that as much as $25 million of Pinchuk's
donations went to the Clinton organization.
Pinchuk also has ties to Leshchenko, the Ukrainian MP who leaked the information on
Manafort. Leshchenko had been a frequent speaker at the Ukrainian Breakfast , a traditional private event
held at Davos, Switzerland, and hosted by the Victor Pinchuk Foundation and has also been
pictured with Pinchuk at multiple other events.
"... DOJ National Security Division (NSD) head John Carlin filed the government's proposed 2016 Section 702 certifications on Sept. 26, 2016. Carlin knew the general status of compliance review by Rogers. The NSD was part of the review. Carlin failed to disclose a critical Jan. 7, 2016, report by the Office of the Inspector General and associated FISA abuse to the FISA Court in his 2016 certification. Carlin also failed to disclose Rogers's ongoing Section 702 compliance review. ..."
"... The following day, on Sept. 27, 2016, Carlin announced his resignation, effective Oct. 15, 2016. ..."
"... After receiving a briefing by the NSA compliance officer on Oct. 20, 2016, detailing numerous "about query" violations from the 702 NSA compliance audit, Rogers shut down all "about query" activity the next day and reported his findings to the DOJ. "About queries" are searches based on communications containing a reference "about" a surveillance target but that are not "to" or "from" the target. ..."
"... On Oct. 24, 2016, Rogers verbally informed the FISA Court of his findings. On Oct. 26, 2016, Rogers appeared formally before the FISA Court and presented the written findings of his audit. ..."
"... Carlin didn't disclose his knowledge of FISA abuse in the annual Section 702 certifications in order to avoid raising suspicions at the FISA Court ahead of receiving the Page FISA warrant. ..."
"... The FBI and the NSD were literally racing against Rogers's investigation in order to obtain a FISA warrant on Carter Page. ..."
"... While all this was transpiring, DNI James Clapper and Defense Secretary Ash Carter submitted a recommendation that Rogers be removed from his post as NSA director. ..."
Admiral Mike Rogers, while director of the NSA, was personally responsible for
uncovering an unprecedented level of FISA abuse that would later be documented in a 99-page
unsealed FISA
court ruling . As the FISA court noted in the April 26, 2017, ruling, the abuses had been occurring since at least November 2015:
"The FBI had disclosed raw FISA information, including but not limited to Section 702-acquired information, to private contractors.
"Private contractors had access to raw FISA information on FBI storage systems.
"Contractors had access to raw FISA information that went well beyond what was necessary to respond to the FBI's requests."
The FISA Court report is particularly focused on the FBI:
"The Court is concerned about the FBI's apparent disregard of minimization rules and whether the FBI may be engaging in similar
disclosures of raw Section 702 information that have not been reported."
The FISA Court
disclosed that illegal NSA database searches were endemic. Private contractors, employed by the FBI, were given full access to
the NSA database. Once in the contractors' possession, the data couldn't be traced.
In April 2016, after Rogers became aware of
improper
contractor access to raw FISA data on March 9, 2016, he
directed the NSA's Office
of Compliance to conduct a "fundamental baseline review of compliance associated with 702."
On April 18, 2016, Rogers shut down all outside contractor access to raw FISA information -- specifically outside contractors
working for the FBI.
DOJ National Security Division (NSD) head John Carlin filed the government's proposed
2016 Section 702 certifications on Sept. 26, 2016. Carlin knew the general status of compliance review by Rogers. The NSD was
part of the review. Carlin failed to disclose a critical Jan. 7, 2016,
report by the Office
of the Inspector General and associated FISA abuse to the FISA Court in his 2016 certification. Carlin also failed to disclose
Rogers's ongoing Section 702 compliance review.
The following day, on Sept. 27, 2016, Carlin
announced his resignation, effective Oct. 15, 2016.
After receiving a briefing by the NSA compliance officer on Oct. 20, 2016, detailing
numerous "about query"
violations from the 702 NSA compliance audit, Rogers shut down all "about query" activity the next day and
reported his findings
to the DOJ. "About queries" are searches based on communications containing a reference "about" a surveillance target but that are
not "to" or "from" the target.
On Oct. 21, 2016, the DOJ and the FBI sought and received a Title I FISA probable-cause order authorizing electronic surveillance
on Carter Page from the FISA Court.
At this point, the FISA Court was still unaware of the Section 702 violations.
On Oct. 24, 2016, Rogers verbally
informed
the FISA Court of his findings. On Oct. 26, 2016, Rogers appeared formally before the FISA Court and presented the written findings
of his audit.
The FISA Court had been unaware of the query violations until they were presented to the court by Rogers.
Carlin didn't disclose his knowledge of FISA abuse in the annual Section 702 certifications in order to avoid raising suspicions
at the FISA Court ahead of receiving the Page FISA warrant.
The FBI and the NSD were literally racing against Rogers's investigation in order to obtain a FISA warrant on Carter Page.
While all this was transpiring, DNI James Clapper and Defense Secretary Ash Carter submitted a
recommendation that Rogers be removed from his post as NSA director.
The move to fire Rogers, which ultimately failed, originated sometime in mid-October 2016 -- exactly when Rogers was preparing
to present his findings to the FISA Court.
Jeff Carlson is a regular contributor to The Epoch Times. He also runs the website TheMarketsWork.com and can be followed
on Twitter @themarketswork.
The insurance policy was the false flag operation directed at establishing the Trump–Russia collusion
narrative. The key part was the appointment of Special Prosecutor in which McCabe played an important if not the decisive role.
Notable quotes:
"... The insurance policy was the actual process of establishing the Trump–Russia collusion narrative. It encompassed actions undertaken in late 2016 and early 2017, including the leaking of the Steele dossier and James Clapper's leaks of James Comey's briefing to President Trump. The intent behind these actions was simple. The legitimization of the investigation into the Trump campaign. ..."
"... The strategy involved the recusal of Trump officials with the intent that Andrew McCabe would end up running the investigation. ..."
Ever since the release of FBI text messages revealing the existence of an "insurance
policy," the term has been the subject of wide speculation.
Some observers have suggested that the insurance policy was the FISA spy warrant used to
monitor Trump campaign adviser Carter Page and, by extension, other members of the Trump
campaign. This interpretation is too narrow and fails to capture the underlying meaning of the
text.
The insurance policy was the actual process of establishing the Trump–Russia collusion
narrative. It encompassed actions undertaken in late 2016 and early 2017, including the leaking of the
Steele dossier and James Clapper's leaks of James Comey's briefing to President Trump. The
intent behind these actions was simple. The legitimization of the investigation into the Trump
campaign.
The strategy involved the recusal of Trump officials with the intent that Andrew McCabe
would end up running the investigation.
The Steele dossier, which was paid for by the Clinton presidential campaign and the
Democratic National Committee, served as the foundation for the Russia narrative.
The
intelligence community, led by CIA Director John Brennan and DNI James Clapper, used the
dossier as a launching pad for creating their Intelligence Community assessment.
This report, which was presented to Obama in December 2016, despite NSA Director Mike Rogers
having only moderate confidence in its assessment, became one of the core pieces of the
narrative that Russia interfered with the 2016 elections.
Through intelligence community leaks, and in collusion with willing media outlets, the
narrative that Russia helped Trump win the elections was aggressively pushed throughout
2017.
Jeff Carlson is a regular contributor to The Epoch Times. He also runs the website TheMarketsWork.com and can be
followed on Twitter @themarketswork.
"... On July 28, 2017, McCabe lied to Inspector General Michael Horowitz while under oath regarding authorization of the leaking to The Wall Street Journal. At this point, Horowitz knew McCabe was lying, but did not yet know of the May 9 INSD interview with McCabe. ..."
Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe held a pivotal role in what has become known as "Spygate."
He directed the activities of Peter Strzok and Lisa Page and was involved in all aspects of the
Russia investigation. He was also mentioned in the infamous "insurance policy" text
message.
McCabe was a major component of the insurance policy.
On April 26, 2017, Rosenstein found himself appointed as the new deputy attorney general. He
was placed into a somewhat chaotic situation, as Attorney General Jeff Sessions had recluses
himself from the ongoing Russia investigation a little less than two months earlier, on March
2, 2017. This effectively meant that no one in the Trump administration had any oversight of
the ongoing investigation being conducted by the FBI and the DOJ.
Additionally, the leadership of then-FBI Director James Comey was coming under increased
scrutiny as the result of actions taken leading up to and following the election, particularly
Comey's handling of the Clinton email investigation.
On May 9, 2017, Rosenstein wrote a memorandum recommending that Comey be fired. The subject
of the memo was "Restoring Public Confidence in the FBI." Comey was fired that day.
McCabe was now the acting director of the FBI and was immediately under consideration for
the permanent position.
On the same day Comey was fired, McCabe would lie during an interview with agents from the
FBI's Inspection Division (INSD) regarding apparent leaks that were used in an Oct. 30, 2016,
Wall Street Journal article, "FBI in Internal Feud Over Hillary Clinton Probe" by Devlin
Barrett. This would later be disclosed in the inspector general report, "A Report of
Investigation of Certain Allegations Relating to Former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe."
At the time, nobody, including the INSD agents, knew that McCabe had lied, nor were the
darker aspects of McCabe's role in Spygate fully known.
In late April or early May 2016, McCabe opened a federal criminal investigation on Sessions,
regarding potential lack of candor before Congress in relation to Sessions's contacts with
Russians. Sessions was unaware of the investigation.
Sessions would later be cleared of any wrongdoing by special counsel Robert Mueller.
On the morning of May 16, 2017, Rosenstein reportedly suggested to McCabe that he secretly
record President Trump. This remark was reported in a New York Times article that was sourced
from memos from the now-fired McCabe, along with testimony taken from former FBI general
counsel James Baker, who relayed a conversation he had with McCabe about the occurrence.
Rosenstein issued a statement denying the accusations.
The alleged comments by Rosenstein occurred at a meeting where McCabe was "pushing for the
Justice Department to open an investigation into the president."
An unnamed participant at the meeting, in comments to The Washington Post, framed the
conversation somewhat differently, noting Rosenstein responded sarcastically to McCabe, saying,
"What do you want to do, Andy, wire the president?"
Later, on the same day that Rosenstein had his meetings with McCabe, President Trump met
with Mueller, reportedly as an interview for the FBI director job.
On May 17, 2017, the day after President Trump's meeting with Mueller -- and the day after
Rosenstein's encounters with McCabe -- Rosenstein appointed Mueller as special counsel.
The May 17 appointment of Mueller in effect shifted control of the Russia investigation from
the FBI and McCabe to Mueller. Rosenstein would retain ultimate authority for the probe and any
expansion of Mueller's investigation required authorization from Rosenstein.
Interestingly, without Comey's memo leaks, a special counsel might not have been appointed
-- the FBI, and possibly McCabe, would have remained in charge of the Russia investigation.
McCabe was probably not going to become the permanent FBI director, but he was reportedly under
consideration. Regardless, without Comey's leak, McCabe would have retained direct involvement
and the FBI would have retained control.
On July 28, 2017, McCabe lied to Inspector General Michael Horowitz while under oath
regarding authorization of the leaking to The Wall Street Journal. At this point, Horowitz knew
McCabe was lying, but did not yet know of the May 9 INSD interview with McCabe.
On Aug. 2, 2017, Rosenstein secretly issued Mueller a revised memo on "the scope of
investigation and definition of authority" that remains heavily redacted. The full purpose of
this memo remains unknown. On this same day, Christopher Wray was named as the new FBI
director.
Two days later, on Aug. 4, 2017, Sessions announced that the FBI had created a new leaks
investigation unit. Rosenstein and Wray were tasked with overseeing all leak
investigations.
That Aug. 2 memo from Rosenstein to Mueller may have been specifically designed to remove
any residual FBI influence -- specifically that of McCabe -- from the Russia investigation. The
appointment of Wray as FBI director helped cement this. McCabe was finally completely
neutralized.
On March 16, 2018, McCabe was fired for lying under oath at least three different times and
is currently the subject of a grand jury investigation.
"... The CIA, with the knowledge of the Director of National Intelligence, worked with British counterparts starting in the summer of 2015 to collect intelligence on Republican and at least one Democrat candidate. John Brennan was probably hoping that his proactive steps to help the Hillary Clinton campaign would ensure him taking over as DNI in the new Clinton Administration. Regardless of motives, the CIA enlisted the British intelligence community to start gathering intelligence on most major Republican candidates and on Bernie Sanders. This initial phase of intelligence gathering goes beyond opposition research. The information being gathered identified the key personnel in each campaign and identified the people outside the United States receiving their calls, texts and emails. This information was turned into intelligence reports that then were passed back to the United States intel community as "liaison reporting." This was not put into normal classified channels. This intelligence was put into a SAP, i.e. a Special Access Program. ..."
"... One person who needs to be called on the carpet and asked some hard questions is current CIA Director Gina Haspel. She was CIA Chief of Station in London at the time and was a regular attendee at the meeting of the Brit's Joint Intelligence Committee aka the JIC. I suppose it is possible she was cut out of the process, but I believe that is unlikely. ..."
"... I am confident that a survey of NSA and CIA liaison reporting will show that George Papadopoulos was identified as a possible target by the fall of 2015. Initially, his name was "masked." But we now know that many people on the Trump campaign had their names "unmasked." You cannot unmask someone unless their name is in an intelligence report. ..."
"... Sater's communication with Rozov were intercepted by western intelligence agencies -- GCHQ and NSA. I do not know which agency put it into an intel report, but it was put into the system. The Sater FD-1023 will tell us whether or not Sater did this at the direction of the FBI or acted on his own initiative. The key point is that the "bait" to do something with the Russians came from a registered FBI informant. ..."
"... That's good, sooner it's clarified the better, and the stronger the better, ..."
"... Best approach is to slaughter Donald for his bromance with Putin , but not go too far betting on Putin re Syria ..."
"... Hakluyt is described by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism's Henry Williams as " one of the more secretive firms within the corporate investigations world " and as "a retirement home for ex-MI6 [British foreign intelligence] officers, but it now also recruits from the worlds of management consultancy and banking " ..."
"... I do not believe that it is a mere coincidence that Australian diplomat, Alexander Downer, was the one credited by the FBI for launching the investigation into George Papadopolous : It was Downer who told the FBI of Papodopoulos' comments, which became one of the "driving factors that led the FBI to open an investigation in July 2016 into Russia's attempts to disrupt the election and whether any of President Trump's associates conspired," The Times reported. ..."
"... Downer, a long-time Aussie chum of Bill and Hillary Clinton, had been on Hakluyt's advisory board since 2008. Officially, he had to resign his Hakluyt role in 2014, but his informal connections continued uninterrupted, the News Corp. Australian Network reported in a January 2016 exclusive: ..."
"... I'm curious why they went after minor characters in the Trump campaign and not Jared or one of Trump's sons? From what I've read of Hoover, it seems he was constantly building "dossiers" of the powerful and those he considered "subversives" so that he would remain preeminent. Then there was the Church Committee investigation. Is this qualitatively different? Can we ever expect that law enforcement & intelligence with so much secretive power are not the 4th branch of government? ..."
"... Also involved - and I think Judge Ellis was very well aware of this - is a fundamental distinction relating to what law enforcement authorities are trying to achieve. If Mueller was honestly - even of perhaps misguidedly - trying to get witnesses to 'sing', that is hardly a mortal sin. If he was trying to get them to 'compose', then the question becomes whether he should be under indictment for subversion of the Constitution. ..."
"... Why aren't the MSM having a hissy fit about the real, documented election interference by the British Commonwealth/5 Eyes spooks in the 2016 campaign (and before)? The hoax of projecting onto Putin what they themselves have done must be exposed before the country move forward on any front. ..."
"... So, was Skripal one of Steele's so-called Kremlin insiders? I see Pablo Miller is connected to both Porton Down and Steele via the ironically titled II's media pods. And Miller is certainly connected to Skripal. ..."
Do not focus on July 2016 as the so-called start of the counter intelligence investigation of Donald Trump. That is a lie. We
know, thanks to the work of Judicial Watch, that the FBI had signed up Christopher Steele as a Confidential Human Source (aka CHS)
by February of 2016. It is incumbent on Attorney General Barr to examine the contact reports filed by Steele's FBI handler (those
reports are known as FD-1023s). He also, as I have noted in a previous post, needs to look at the FD-1023s for Felix Sater and Henry
Greenberg. But these will only tell a small part of the story. There is a massive intelligence side to this story.
The CIA, with the knowledge of the Director of National Intelligence, worked with British counterparts starting in the summer
of 2015 to collect intelligence on Republican and at least one Democrat candidate. John Brennan was probably hoping that his proactive
steps to help the Hillary Clinton campaign would ensure him taking over as DNI in the new Clinton Administration. Regardless of motives,
the CIA enlisted the British intelligence community to start gathering intelligence on most major Republican candidates and on Bernie
Sanders. This initial phase of intelligence gathering goes beyond opposition research. The information being gathered identified
the key personnel in each campaign and identified the people outside the United States receiving their calls, texts and emails. This
information was turned into intelligence reports that then were passed back to the United States intel community as "liaison reporting."
This was not put into normal classified channels. This intelligence was put into a SAP, i.e. a Special Access Program.
One person who needs to be called on the carpet and asked some hard questions is current CIA Director Gina Haspel. She was
CIA Chief of Station in London at the time and was a regular attendee at the meeting of the Brit's Joint Intelligence Committee aka
the JIC. I suppose it is possible she was cut out of the process, but I believe that is unlikely.
This initial phase of intelligence collection produced a great volume of intelligence that allowed analysts to identify key personnel
and the people they were communicating with overseas. You don't have to have access to intelligence information to understand this.
For example, you simply have to ask the question, "how did George Papadopoulos get on the radar." I am confident that a survey
of NSA and CIA liaison reporting will show that George Papadopoulos was identified as a possible target by the fall of 2015. Initially,
his name was "masked." But we now know that many people on the Trump campaign had their names "unmasked." You cannot unmask someone
unless their name is in an intelligence report. We also know that Felix Sater, a longtime business associate of Donald Trump
and an FBI informant since December 1998 (he was signed up by Andrew Weismann), initiated the proposal to do a Trump Tower in Moscow.
Don't take my word for it, that's what Robert Mueller reported:
In the late summer of 2015, the Trump Organization received a new inquiry about pursuing a Trump Tower project in Moscow. In approximately
September 2015, Felix Sater . . . contacted Cohen (i.e., Michael Cohen) on behalf of I.C. Expert Investment Company (I.C. Expert),
a Russian real-estate development corporation controlled by Andrei Vladimirovich Rozov. Sater had known Rozov since approximately
2007 and, in 2014, had served as an agent on behalf of Rozov during Rozov's purchase of a building in New York City. Sater later
contacted Rozov and proposed that I.C. Expert pursue a Trump Tower Moscow project in which I.C. Expert would license the name and
brand from the Trump Organization but construct the building on its own. Sater worked on the deal with Rozov and another employee
of I.C. Expert. (see page 69 of the Mueller Report).
Sater's communication with Rozov were intercepted by western intelligence agencies -- GCHQ and NSA. I do not know which agency
put it into an intel report, but it was put into the system. The Sater FD-1023 will tell us whether or not Sater did this at the
direction of the FBI or acted on his own initiative. The key point is that the "bait" to do something with the Russians came from
a registered FBI informant.
By December of 2015, the Hillary Campaign decided to use the Russian angle on Donald Trump. Thanks to Wikileaks we have Campaign
Manager John Podesta's email exchange in December 2015 with Democratic operative Brent Budowsky:
" That's good, sooner it's clarified the better, and the stronger the better, " Budowski replies, later adding: "
Best approach is to slaughter Donald for his bromance with Putin , but not go too far betting on Putin re Syria ."
The program to slaughter Donald Trump using Russia as the hatchet was already underway. This was more the opposition research.
This was the weaponization of law enforcement and intelligence assets to attack political opponents. Hillary had covered the opposition
research angle in London by hiring a firm comprised of former MI6 assets--
Hakluyt: there was a second, even more powerful and mysterious opposition research and intelligence firm lurking about
with significant political and financial links to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her 2016 campaign for president against
Donald Trump.
Meet London-based Hakluyt & Co. , founded by three former British intelligence
operatives in 1995 to provide the kind of otherwise inaccessible research for which select governments and Fortune 500 corporations
pay huge sums. . . .
Hakluyt is described by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism's
Henry
Williams as " one of the more secretive firms within the corporate investigations world " and as "a retirement home for ex-MI6
[British foreign intelligence] officers, but it now also recruits from the worlds of management consultancy and banking "
I do not believe that it is a mere coincidence that Australian diplomat, Alexander Downer, was the one credited by the FBI
for launching the investigation into
George Papadopolous : It was Downer who told the FBI of Papodopoulos' comments, which became one of the "driving factors that
led the FBI to open an investigation in July 2016 into Russia's attempts to disrupt the election and whether any of President Trump's
associates conspired," The Times reported.
Downer, a long-time Aussie chum of Bill and Hillary Clinton, had been on Hakluyt's advisory board since 2008. Officially,
he had to resign his Hakluyt role in 2014, but his informal connections continued uninterrupted, the News Corp. Australian Network
reported in a January 2016 exclusive:
But it can be revealed Mr. Downer has still been attending client conferences and gatherings of the group, including a client
cocktail soirée at the Orangery at Kensington Palace a few months ago.
His attendance at that event is understood to have come days after he also attended a two-day country retreat at the invitation
of the group, which has been involved in a number of corporate spy scandals in recent times.
Much remains to be uncovered in this plot. But this much is certain--there is an extensive documentary record, including TOP SECRET
intelligence reports (SIGINT and HUMINT) and emails and phone calls that will show there was a concerted covert action operation
mounted against Donald Trump and his campaign. Those documents will tell the story. This cannot be allowed to happen again.
Having watched interviews of Papadopoulos on TeeVee I would say that this creature would be easy to manipulate. His ego is so
enormous that a minimal effort would be required.
I'm curious why they went after minor characters in the Trump campaign and not Jared or one of Trump's sons? From what
I've read of Hoover, it seems he was constantly building "dossiers" of the powerful and those he considered "subversives" so that
he would remain preeminent. Then there was the Church Committee investigation. Is this qualitatively different? Can we ever expect
that law enforcement & intelligence with so much secretive power are not the 4th branch of government?
The guts of the matter was well expressed by Judge T.S. Ellis when he made the distinction between different results which
can be expected from exerting pressures on witnesses: they may 'sing' - which is, commonly, in the interests of justice - but,
there again, they may 'compose', which is not.
Also involved - and I think Judge Ellis was very well aware of this - is a fundamental distinction relating to what law
enforcement authorities are trying to achieve. If Mueller was honestly - even of perhaps misguidedly - trying to get witnesses
to 'sing', that is hardly a mortal sin. If he was trying to get them to 'compose', then the question becomes whether he should
be under indictment for subversion of the Constitution.
Yes, indeed, many a composition have been elicited by prosecutors in criminal cases. The issue is there is no penalty for prosecutorial
misconduct while the advancement points ratchet up with each conviction. The incentives are aligned perfectly for the "institution"
to run rough shod on ordinary Americans. Only those wealthy enough to fight the unlimited funds of the government have a chance.
But of course in matters relating to national security there is the added twist of state secrets that protects government malfeasance.
I don't know how the national security state we continue to build ever gets rolled back. A small victory would be for Trump
to declassify all documents and communications relating to the multifaceted spying on his campaign and as Larry so eloquently
writes to frame him as a Manchurian Candidate. At least the public will learn about what their grandchildren are paying for. But
it seems that Trump prefers tweeting to taking any kind of action. Not that it would matter much as half the country will still
believe that Trump deserves it until the tables are turned on their team. While most Americans will say to use Ben Hunt's phrasing
Yay! Constitution. Yay! Liberty. they sure don't care as the state oligarchy tighten their chokehold.
Yes, he seems young and ambitious enough to be easy (and willing) prey. Having been involved in some local political campaigns
though, I've observed that more and more than before, young people like him are hyper-concerned with networking. Papadopoulos'
ego aside, of course he and many people who sign on hope to make self-serving connections. Not only that, it's also been my observation
that casual sexual hook-ups go with the territory, and not only among young, single guys like him. I have to say I've been shocked
a few times by how risky and cavalier some liaisons have been that've come to my attention, considering "public figures" are involved.
No doubt that's why a "honeypot" was dispatched to try to help entrap Papadopoulos.
Why aren't the MSM having a hissy fit about the real, documented election interference by the British Commonwealth/5 Eyes
spooks in the 2016 campaign (and before)? The hoax of projecting onto Putin what they themselves have done must be exposed before
the country move forward on any front.
So, was Skripal one of Steele's so-called Kremlin insiders? I see Pablo Miller is connected to both Porton Down and Steele
via the ironically titled II's media pods. And Miller is certainly connected to Skripal.
Papadopolos was very young hence the nativity getting sucked in. The ego helped for sure. Probably exciting to be part of something
important probably for the first time since he started working for Trump campaign
One thing that's always concerned me about Larry's informative and insightful essays on these matters is how can we be assured
that the IC documentation mentioned has been filled out honestly and accurately -- or that the forms even still exist and haven't
been conveniently "lost" or surreptitiously destroyed?
Mon 29 Apr 2019 01.55 EDT Marine experts in Norway believe they have stumbled upon a white whale that was trained by the Russian
navy as part of a programme to use underwater mammals as a special ops force.
1 week ago
The whale was the secret intermediary between Mr. Putin and Mr. Trump. The messages were transmitted during weekly 'Whales-R-Us'
peer support sessions. It's ironic it turns up now, after Mr. Mueller's report has already been issued.
1 week ago (Edited)
I'm pretty sure "Nessie" is a mobile underwater propoganda base used by the Russians since the time of the Bolshevic revolution.
Originally, it was merely a base to hide the Reds operating on the outskirts of the Capitalist capitol of London. Scotland was
the perfect hiding place.
Now however, it's outfitted with the most sophisticated internet hacking equipment, AI technology so advanced it can
alter your political ideology just by selling you a mailorder slavic blow-up doll.
Chris Hedges, host of "On Contact," joins Rick Sanchez to discuss the role of the Democratic establishment in the "Russiagate"
media frenzy. He argues that it was an unsustainable narrative given the actions of the White House but that the Democratic elite
are unable to face their own role in the economic and social crises for which they are in large part to blame. They also discuss
NATO's expansionary tendencies and how profitable it is for US defense contractors.
Years ago I kept hearing from the newsmedia that Russia was the "enemy".
Frontline had a show about "Putin's Brain". Even Free
Speech TV shows like Bill Press and "The Nation" authors like Eric Alterman push the Hillary style warmongering and do nothing
to expose the outright lies out there.
These are supposed to be thought outside of the corporate mainstream newsmedia. The emphasis
only on Trump and Fox News is totally hypocritical.
"... "What if you substituted 'Israel' for 'Russia'?" (The moderator, who apparently knows me, had to look right at me with my hand raised whenever he called on someone but never called on me). ..."
"... "Has there ever been an investigation on the scale of the Mueller investigation into possible collusion with Israel?" ..."
"... The surprising thing about the Mueller report is that he found nothing. That’s impossible because when the government wants to find something, they find it. Why Mueller pulled the plug, I can’t say. ..."
Second hour: Journalist and TV host Ken Meyercord (also based in Washington, DC)
writes:
"I attended an event at the Brookings Institution yesterday on the Mueller Report. As is
sadly customary at DC think tanks, the panelists and the moderator were all of one mind.
Nevertheless, one panelist, a former US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia (a
court notorious for rubber-stamping any charge the government brings against those who
disrupt the smooth functioning of our foreign policy apparatus), made a curious analogy,
arguing that the contacts Trump and his associates had with Russians would be culpable even
if the contacts were with some other, less hostile country:
His remark got me to thinking, so in the Q & A I sought to ask him "What if you
substituted 'Israel' for 'Russia'?" (The moderator, who apparently knows me, had to look
right at me with my hand raised whenever he called on someone but never called on me).
I don't know what his response would have been; but if he said it would still apply, I
would have followed up with "Has there ever been an investigation on the scale of the Mueller
investigation into possible collusion with Israel?"
"The more I think about it, the more intriguing I find Mr. Rosenberg's remark. He seemed
to think the sheer number of contacts by Trump folks with Russians proved culpability. It
might be interesting to compare Trump's contacts with the Russians during the campaign with
his contacts with Israelis. I suspect the latter were more numerous and of greater
significance. Certainly, Trump's acts as President would seem to indicate he's more
Netanyahu's puppet than Putin's: moving the embassy to Jerusalem, cutting off aid to the
Palestinians, recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. Imagine if Putin
proposed naming a village in Russia after Trump in appreciation, as Netanyahu has proposed
doing in the Golan Heights!
"P.S. Ueli Maurer is the President of the Swiss Confederation."
The entire Western media is the enemy of the people. The Demogangsters and the mediocrats,
Public Enemy #1, were angry that Trump won the election, so they fabricated a scam called
contacts with Russians.
They are saying that Trump and his people talked to the Russians as private citizens
before the election, so it is illegal.
What? Talking to Russians is illegal? Really? Says who?
They will not tell you the law that was allegedly broken, because the law that was
allegedly broken itself is illegal.
It is the Logan Act which “criminalizes negotiations by unauthorized persons with
foreign governments having a dispute with the United States.”
Only in America—the criminal Democrats have investigated an innocent man for a
non-existent crime of violating an unconstitutional law.
While I would not say this happens only in America, this sort of thing is actually
long-standing policy in the US. As long ago as 1944 in Wickard vs. Filburn, the Democrat
Supreme Court upheld the conviction of a man for not merely raising food on his own land, but
for failing to offer the food for sale, on the rationale that the non-sale affected
Interstate Commerce as much as if he had offered it for sale. Since then it has been
‘constitutional’ to find federal jurisdiction over even private vegetable gardens
grown exclusively for domestic consumption. Under this theory, even breathing oxygen places
one under federal jurisdiction because it is followed by exhaling CO2.
One of the most surprising things I discovered when I began to practice law was the fact
that no one is ‘innocent’. I.e, there is always some law somewhere that is being
‘broken’ no matter what one does, which means that if the government wants
someone, they can always convict him because the government can always find some law he has
broken. I’m speaking ironically, of course. Many of these laws should be
unconstitutional. Just don’t bet that SCOTUS will ever rule that way because, as
Gorsuch recently pronounced, “that’s all been settled.”
The surprising thing about the Mueller report is that he found nothing. That’s
impossible because when the government wants to find something, they find it. Why Mueller
pulled the plug, I can’t say.
"... Well. There you have Andrew McCabe calling Rod Rosenstein a liar. Can't wait for the Inspector General's report. Apparently some doo-doo is hitting the fan. ..."
"... The FBI has history of sedition, how do you J. Edgar Hoover stayed in charge for long? The FBI (Deepthroat, Deputy Director Mark Felt) brought down Nixon by leaking to the Washing Post. This stuff going on now is part of a long standing tradition at the FBI. ..."
"... McCabe and Rosenstein are enemies within! ..."
"... When law enforcement is involved in politics that is just like banana republics and communist countries. If these people can plan to remove a Republican President they can do it to a democrat president. THAT should alarm CNN and all the democrats, but it won't. These FBI folks were acting under the orders of Obama and probably through Hillary. The FBI big-shots only work under orders they don't think on their own. ..."
"... Mccabe is a weasel beyond a doubt, and the FBI is complicit in there doing nothing about it until the fool admits to it on primetime TV for the whole world to see!! He tarnished your agency along with comey, strozk, and the other traitors. Own it FBI he is one of yours. ..."
"... The bureaunazis are so protected in their deep state they have no fear of admitting their collusion efforts against Trump. A special counsel needs to investigate the FBI and DOJ connections to Russia and Democrats. Nothing changes if no one goes to jail. These bureaunazis watch too much Game of Thrones and House of Cards. ..."
"... Mueller, while FBI Director, turned the FBI into an intelligence agency from that of a crime fighting agency. Which was then used by the political class to support their positions of power. ..."
"... Deep State poster boy. Full of hubris and entitlement. Power corrupts. ..."
"... McCabe has totally self admited for a deep state coup attempt against a duly elected president. ..."
"... So McCabe appointed himself the FBI, Pratorian Guard, to protect us against Russia? ..."
Kevin Brock, former FBI assistant director for intelligence, and Terry Turchie, former
deputy assistant director of the counterterrorism division, fire back at former FBI Director
Andrew McCabe.
Well. There you have Andrew McCabe calling Rod Rosenstein a liar. Can't wait for the
Inspector General's report. Apparently some doo-doo is hitting the fan.
The FBI has history of sedition, how do you J. Edgar Hoover stayed in charge for long?
The FBI (Deepthroat, Deputy Director Mark Felt) brought down Nixon by leaking to the Washing
Post. This stuff going on now is part of a long standing tradition at the
FBI.
When law enforcement is involved in politics that is just like banana republics and
communist countries. If these people can plan to remove a Republican President they can do it
to a democrat president. THAT should alarm CNN and all the democrats, but it won't. These FBI
folks were acting under the orders of Obama and probably through Hillary. The FBI big-shots
only work under orders they don't think on their own.
Mccabe is a weasel beyond a doubt, and the FBI is complicit in there doing nothing
about it until the fool admits to it on primetime TV for the whole world to see!! He
tarnished your agency along with comey, strozk, and the other traitors. Own it FBI he is one
of yours.
The fix was in. The bureaunazis are so protected in their deep state they have no fear of
admitting their collusion efforts against Trump. A special counsel needs to investigate the
FBI and DOJ connections to Russia and Democrats. Nothing changes if no one goes to jail.
These bureaunazis watch too much Game of Thrones and House of Cards.
Mueller, while FBI Director, turned the FBI into an intelligence agency from that of a
crime fighting agency. Which was then used by the political class to support their positions
of power. Mr Trump upset their world with his electoral victory. President Trump is hated by
the political class because he has come as the destroyer of their world.
McCabe has totally self admited for a deep state coup attempt against a duly elected
president. He should be behind bars rather than selling his book on TV. Lock up McCabe,
Rosenstein and the rest of the Deep State coup gang and DRAIN-THE-SWAMP.
Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe discussed his career, the FBI, and his firing from
the Bureau. He was interviewed by New York Times reporter Adam Goldman.
"... Mr. Barr's stolid demeanor during the Wednesday session was a refreshing reminder of what it means to be not insane in the long-running lunatic degeneration of national politics. ..."
"... In short and in effect, the Democratic Party itself is headed to trial on a vector that takes it straight into November next year. How do you imagine it will look to voters when Mr. Obama's CIA chief, John Brennan, his NSA Director James Clapper, a baker's dozen of former Obama top FBI and DOJ officials, including former AG Loretta Lynch, and sundry additional players in the great game of RussiaGate Gotcha end up 'splainin' their guts out to a whole different cast of federal prosecutors? It's hardly out of the question that Barack Obama himself and Mrs. Clinton may face charges in all this mischief and depravity. ..."
"... It's a further irony of the moment that the suddenly leading Democratic candidate, Joe Biden, is neck-deep in that spilled garbage, the story unspooling even as I write that then-Veep Uncle Joe strong-armed the Ukraine government to fire its equivalent of Attorney General to quash an investigation of his son, Hunter, who received large sums of money from the Ukrainian gas company, Burisma, which had mystifyingly appointed the young American to its board of directors after the US-sponsored overthrow of Viktor Yanukovych. ..."
"Impeachment is too good for him," Nancy Pelosi declared of the president on Thursday after "his lapdog" - as she styled Attorney
General William Barr - refused to be whipped by grandstanding Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee. What did Madam Speaker
have in mind then? Dragging Mr. Trump behind a Chevy Tahoe over four miles of broken light bulbs? Staking him onto a nest of fire
ants? How about a beheading at the capable hands of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN)?
Mr. Barr's stolid demeanor during the Wednesday session was a refreshing reminder of what it means to be not insane in the
long-running lunatic degeneration of national politics.
Of course, the reason for the continued hysteria among Democrats is that the two-year solemn inquiry by the august former FBI
Director, Mr. Mueller, is being revealed daily as a mendacious fraud with criminal overtones running clear through Democratic ranks
beyond even the wicked Hillary Clinton to the sainted former president Obama, who may have supervised his party's collusion with
foreign officials to interfere in the 2016 election.
Mr. Barr's hints that he intends to tip this dumpster of political subterfuge, to find out what was at the bottom of it, is being
taken as a death threat to the Democratic Party, as well it should be. A lot of familiar names and faces will be rolling out of that
dumpster into the grand juries and federal courtrooms just as the big pack of White House aspirants jets around the primary states
as though 2020 might be anything like a normal election.
In short and in effect, the Democratic Party itself is headed to trial on a vector that takes it straight into November next
year. How do you imagine it will look to voters when Mr. Obama's CIA chief, John Brennan, his NSA Director James Clapper, a baker's
dozen of former Obama top FBI and DOJ officials, including former AG Loretta Lynch, and sundry additional players in the great game
of RussiaGate Gotcha end up 'splainin' their guts out to a whole different cast of federal prosecutors? It's hardly out of the question
that Barack Obama himself and Mrs. Clinton may face charges in all this mischief and depravity.
It's surely true that the public is sick of the RussiaGate spectacle. (I know readers of this blog complain about it.) But it's
no exaggeration to say that this is the worst and most tangled scandal that the US government has ever seen, and that failing to
resolve it successfully really is an existential threat to the project of being a republic. I was a young newspaper reporter during
Watergate and that was like a game of animal lotto compared to this garbage barge of malfeasance.
It's a further irony of the moment that the suddenly leading Democratic candidate, Joe Biden, is neck-deep in that spilled
garbage, the story unspooling even as I write that then-Veep Uncle Joe strong-armed the Ukraine government to fire its equivalent
of Attorney General to quash an investigation of his son, Hunter, who received large sums of money from the Ukrainian gas company,
Burisma, which had mystifyingly appointed the young American to its board of directors after the US-sponsored overthrow of Viktor
Yanukovych.
That nasty bit of business comes immediately on top of information that the Hillary campaign was using its connections in Ukraine
-- from her years at the State Department -- to traffic in political dirt on Mr. Trump, plus an additional intrigue that included
payments to the Clinton Foundation of $25 million by Ukrainian oligarch Viktor Pinchuk. That was on top of contributions of $150
million that the Clinton Foundation had received earlier from Russian oligarchs around 2012.
Did they suppose that no one would ever notice? Or is it just a symptom of the desperation that has gripped the Democratic Party
since the stunning election loss of 2016 made it impossible to suppress this titanic, bubbling vessel of fermented misdeeds? It seems
more than merely possible that the entire Mueller Investigation was a ruse from the start to conceal all this nefarious activity.
It is even more astounding to see exactly what a lame document the Mueller Report turned out to be. It was such a dud that even the
Democratic senators and congresspersons who are complaining the loudest have not bothered to visit the special parlor set up at the
Department of Justice for their convenience to read a much more lightly redacted edition of the report.
The mills of justice grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine. The wheels are in motion now and it's unlikely they will be
stopped by mere tantrums. But the next move by the desperate Resistance may be to create so much political disorder in the system
that they manage to delegitimize the 2020 election before it is even held, and plunge the nation deeper into unnecessary crisis just
to try and save their asses.
"... Neoliberalism is an integral part of this foreign policy agenda. It constitutes an all encompassing mechanism of economic destabilization. Since the 1997 Asian crisis, the IMF-World Bank structural adjustment program (SAP) has evolved towards a broader framework which consists in ultimately undermining national governments' ability to formulate and implement national economic and social policies. ..."
The world is at a dangerous crossroads. The United States and its allies have launched a military adventure which threatens
the future of humanity. Major military and covert intelligence operations are being undertaken simultaneously in the Middle East,
Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and the Far East. The US-NATO military agenda combines both major theater operations
as well as covert actions geared towards destabilizing sovereign states.
America's hegemonic project is to destabilize and destroy countries through acts of war, covert operations in support of terrorist
organizations, regime change and economic warfare. The latter includes the imposition of deadly macro-economic reforms on indebted
countries as well the manipulation of financial markets, the engineered collapse of national currencies, the privatization of State
property, the imposition of economic sanctions, the triggering of inflation and black markets.
The economic dimensions of this military agenda must be clearly understood. War and Globalization are intimately related. These
military and intelligence operations are implemented alongside a process of economic and political destabilization targeting specific
countries in all major regions of World.
Neoliberalism is an integral part of this foreign policy agenda. It constitutes an all encompassing mechanism of economic destabilization.
Since the 1997 Asian crisis, the IMF-World Bank structural adjustment program (SAP) has evolved towards a broader framework which
consists in ultimately undermining national governments' ability to formulate and implement national economic and social policies.
In turn, the demise of national sovereignty was also facilitated by the instatement of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995,
evolving towards the global trading agreements (TTIP and TPP) which (if adopted) would essentially transfer state policy entirely
into the hands of corporations. In recent years, neoliberalism has extend its grip from the so-called developing countries to the
developed countries of both Eastern and Western Europe. Bankruptcy programs have been set in motion. Island, Portugal, Greece, Ireland,
etc, have been the target of sweeping austerity measures coupled with the privatization of key sectors of the national economy.
The global economic crisis is intimately related to America's hegemonic agenda. In the US and the EU, a spiralling defense budget
backlashes on the civilian sectors of economic activity. "War is Good for Business": the powerful financial groups which routinely
manipulate stock markets, currency and commodity markets, are also promoting the continuation and escalation of the Middle East war.
A worldwide process of impoverishment is an integral part of the New World Order agenda.
Beyond the Globalization of Poverty
Historically, impoverishment of large sectors of the World population has been engineered through the imposition of IMF-style macro-economic
reforms. Yet, in the course of the last 15 years, a new destructive phase has been set in motion. The World has moved beyond the
"globalization of poverty": countries are transformed in open territories,
State institutions collapse, schools and hospitals are closed down, the legal system disintegrates, borders are redefined, broad
sectors of economic activity including agriculture and manufacturing are precipitated into bankruptcy, all of which ultimately leads
to a process of social collapse, exclusion and destruction of human life including the outbreak of famines, the displacement of entire
populations (refugee crisis).
This "second stage" goes beyond the process of impoverishment instigated in the early 1980s by creditors and international financial
institutions. In this regard, mass poverty resulting from macro-economic reform sets the stage of a process of outright destruction
of human life.
In turn, under conditions of widespread unemployment, the costs of labor in developing countries has plummeted. The driving force
of the global economy is luxury consumption and the weapons industry.
The New World Order
Broadly speaking, the main corporate actors of the New World Order are
Wall Street and the Western banking conglomerates including its offshore money laundering facilities, tax havens, hedge funds
and secret accounts,
the Military Industrial Complex regrouping major "defense contractors", security and mercenary companies, intelligence outfits,
on contract to the Pentagon;
the Anglo-American Oil and Energy Giants,
The Biotech Conglomerates, which increasingly control agriculture and the food chain;
Big Pharma,
The Communication Giants and Media conglomerates, which constitute the propaganda arm of the New World Order.
There is of course overlap, between Big Pharma and the Weapons industry, the oil conglomerates and Wall Street, etc.
These various corporate entities interact with government bodies, international financial institutions, US intelligence. The state
structure has evolved towards what Peter Dale Scott calls the "Deep State", integrated by covert intelligence bodies, think tanks,
secret councils and consultative bodies, where important New World Order decisions are ultimately reached on behalf of powerful corporate
interests.
In turn, intelligence operatives increasingly permeate the United Nations including its specialized agencies, nongovernmental
organizations, trade unions, political parties.
What this means is that the executive and legislature constitute a smokescreen, a mechanism for providing political legitimacy
to decisions taken by the corporate establishment behind closed doors.
Media Propaganda
The corporate media, which constitutes the propaganda arm of the New World Order, has a long history whereby intelligence ops
oversee the news chain. In turn, the corporate media serves the useful purpose of obfuscating war crimes, of presenting a humanitarian
narrative which upholds the legitimacy of politicians in high office.
Acts of war and economic destabilization are granted legitimacy. War is presented as a peace-keeping undertaking.
Both the global economy as well as the political fabric of Western capitalism have become criminalized. The judicial apparatus
at a national level as well the various international human rights tribunals and criminal courts serve the useful function of upholding
the legitimacy of US-NATO led wars and human rights violations.
Destabilizing Competing Poles of Capitalist Development
There are of course significant divisions and capitalist rivalry within the corporate establishment. In the post Cold War era,
the US hegemonic project consists in destabilizing competing poles of capitalist development including China, Russia and Iran as
well as countries such as India, Brazil and Argentina.
In recent developments, the US has also exerted pressure on the capitalist structures of the member states of the European Union.
Washington exerts influence in the election of heads of State including Germany and France, which are increasingly aligned with Washington.
The monetary dimensions are crucial. The international financial system established under Bretton Woods prevails. The global financial
apparatus is dollarized. The powers of money creation are used as a mechanism to appropriate real economy assets. Speculative financial
trade has become an instrument of enrichment at the expense of the real economy. Excess corporate profits and multibillion dollar
speculative earnings (deposited in tax free corporate charities) are also recycled towards the corporate control of politicians,
civil society organizations, not to mention scientists and intellectuals. It's called corruption, co-optation, fraud.
Latin America: The Transition towards a "Democratic Dictatorship"
In Latin America, the military dictatorships of the 1960s and 1970s have in large part been replaced by US proxy regimes, i.e.
a democratic dictatorship has been installed which ensures continuity. At the same time the ruling elites in Latin America have remoulded.
They have become increasingly integrated into the logic of global capitalism, requiring an acceptance of the US hegemonic project.
Macro-economic reform has been conducive to the impoverishment of the entire Latin America region.
In the course of the last 40 years, impoverishment has been triggered by hyperinflation, starting with the 1973 military coup
in Chile and the devastating reforms of the 1980s and early 1990s.
The implementation of these deadly economic reforms including sweeping privatization, trade deregulation, etc. is coordinated
in liaison with US intelligence ops, including the "Dirty war" and Operation Condor, the Contra insurrection in Nicaragua, etc.
The development of a new and privileged elite integrated into the structures of Western investment and consumerism has emerged.
Regime change has been launched against a number of Latin American countries.
Any attempt to introduce reforms which departs from the neoliberal consensus is the object of "dirty tricks" including acts of
infiltration, smear campaigns, political assassinations, interference in national elections and covert operations to foment social
divisions. This process inevitably requires corruption and cooptation at the highest levels of government as well as within the corporate
and financial establishment. In some countries of the region it hinges on the criminalization of the state, the legitimacy of money
laundering and the protection of the drug trade.
The above text is an English summary of Prof. Michel Chossudovsky's Presentation, National Autonomous University of Nicaragua,
May 17, 2016. This presentation took place following the granting of a Doctor Honoris Causa in Humanities to Professor Chossudovsky
by the National Autonomous University of Nicaragua (UNAN)
In June 2018, Bill Barr, then in private practice at Kirkland & Ellis, wrote a detailed
legal memorandum to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. This memo came to light in December, when Barr was nominated for
Attorney General.
Reading Barr's June 2018 memo alongside the last twenty pages of the
Mueller Report is a curious experience.
Together, they read like dueling legal briefs on the meaning of
18 U.S.C. § 1512(c)(2) ; the type of material one would
expect to see from adversarial appellate litigators.
So-why did Robert Mueller dedicate 20 pages of his report to a seemingly obscure question of statutory interpretation? Why did
Bill Barr write a detailed legal memorandum to Rod Rosenstein about that very same statute?
And how, exactly, did Bill Barr know that that § 1512(c)(2) was central to Mueller's obstruction theory – in June 2018, when he
was still in private practice at Kirkland?
After some consideration, I arrived at a theory that I believe answers these three questions, and others as well. For example
– why was AG Jeff Sessions asked for his resignation the day after the midterms? Why was Bill Barr the only name ever seriously floated
for AG? And is it merely a coincidence that six weeks after Barr's confirmation, the Mueller probe came to an end?
...
This is a story about a legal chess match played for the highest stakes imaginable: Trump's Presidency – and whether it would
be under the cloud of an endless special counsel investigation – hinged on the result.
John Dowd, Ty Cobb, Jay Sekulow, and the rest of President Trump's personal legal team were on one side. Mueller, Andrew Weissmann,
and the Special Counsel's office were on the other.
The dispute was a year-long struggle over the meaning of 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c)(2).
No judge ever ruled on who was right about the meaning of this obstruction statute. No formal decision was ever rendered.
All the same, Trump's legal team prevailed on February 14, 2019.
That's the day William Pelham Barr was confirmed as United States Attorney General.
So why, exactly, was the interpretation of 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c)(2) so contested?
Let's start by looking the statute, excerpted here:
(c) Whoever corruptly --
(1) alters, destroys, mutilates, or conceals a record, document, or other object, or attempts to do so, with the intent to
impair the object's integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding; or
(2) otherwise obstructs, influences or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so [is guilty of the crime of obstruction].
(Emphasis added).
Why was this so important to Mueller?
...
In hindsight, however, it's clear that Barr was the assassin Democrats feared.
Within six weeks of his confirmation, the Mueller probe was over...
"Russiagate without Russia" actually means "Isrealgate". This individual points that he mentions below does not matter. Russiagate was a carefully planned and
brilliantly executed false flag operation run by intelligences
agencies (with GB agencies playing an important in some episodes decisive role) and headed probably by Obama himself via Brennan. There
were two goals: (1) to exclude any possibility of detente with Russia and (2) to block any Trump attempts to change the USA foreign
policy including running foreign war that enrich Pentagon contractors and justify supersized budget for intelligence agencies. As such
is was a great success.
The fact that no American was indicted and that Mueller attempt to prosecute Russian marketing agneces failed does not matter. The
atmosphere is now posoned for a generation. Americans are brainwashed and residue of Russiagate will stay for a long, long time. Neocons
Bolton and Pompeo now run Trump administration foreign policy with Trump performing most ceremonial role in foreign policy domain.
In this sense Skripals poisoning was another false flag operation, which was the logical continuation of Russiagate. And Magnitsky
killing (with Browder now a primary suspect) was a precursor to it. Both were run from Great Britain.
It is actually interesting how Mueller report swiped under the carpet the role of Great Britain in unleashing the Russiagate hysteria.
Two important foreign forces in the 2016 US Presidential elections was the Israel lobby and Great Britain. Trump proved to be a
marionette not of Russia but of Israeli lobby. so sad...
Notable quotes:
"... Mueller's report does answer that question: There were effectively no "Kremlin intermediaries." The report contains no evidence that anyone from the Trump campaign spoke to a Kremlin representative during the election, aside from conversations with the Russian ambassador and a press-office assistant, both of whom were ruled out as having participated in a conspiracy (more on them later). ..."
For more than two years, leading US political and media voices promoted a narrative that Donald Trump conspired with or was compromised
by the Kremlin, and that Special Counsel Robert Mueller would prove it. In the process, they overlooked countervailing evidence and
diverted anti-Trump energies into fervent speculation and prolonged anticipation. So long as Mueller was on the case, it was possible
to believe that " The Walls Are Closing In " on the
traitor /
puppet / asset in the
White House
.
The long-awaited completion of Mueller's probe, and the release of his redacted report, reveals this narrative -- and the expectations
it fueled -- to be unfounded. No American was indicted for conspiring with Russia to influence the 2016 election. Mueller's report
does lay out extensive evidence that Trump sought to impede the investigation, but it declines to issue a verdict on obstruction.
It presents no evidence that the Trump campaign conspired with an alleged effort by the Russian government to defeat Hillary Clinton,
and instead renders this conclusion: "Ultimately, the investigation did not establish that the [Trump] Campaign coordinated or conspired
with the Russian government in its election-interference activities." As a result, Mueller's report provides the opposite of what
Russiagate promoters led their audiences to expect: Rather than detailing a sinister collusion plot with Russia, it presents what
amounts to an extended indictment of the conspiracy theory itself.
1. Russiagate Without Russia
The most fundamental element of a conspiracy is contact between the two parties doing the conspiring. Hence, on the eve of the
report's release, The New York
Times noted that among the "outstanding questions" that Mueller would answer were the nature of "contacts between Kremlin
intermediaries and the Trump campaign."
Mueller's report does answer that question: There were effectively no "Kremlin intermediaries." The report contains no evidence
that anyone from the Trump campaign spoke to a Kremlin representative during the election, aside from conversations with the Russian
ambassador and a press-office assistant, both of whom were ruled out as having participated in a conspiracy (more on them later).
It should be no surprise, then, to learn from Mueller that, when "Russian government officials and prominent Russian businessmen
began trying to make inroads into the new administration" after Trump's election victory, they did not know whom to call. These powerful
Russians, Mueller noted, "appeared not to have preexisting contacts and struggled to connect with senior officials around the President-Elect."
If top Russians did not have "preexisting contacts and struggled to connect with" the people that they supposedly conspired with,
perhaps that is because they did not actually conspire.
To borrow a phrase from Nation contributing editor Stephen F. Cohen, when it comes to the core question of contacts between
Trump and the Russian government, we are left with a "Russiagate without Russia." Instead we have a series of interactions where
Trump associates speak with Russian nationals, people with ties to Russian nationals, or people who claim to have ties to
the Russian government. But none of these "links," "ties," or associations ever entail a member of the Trump campaign interacting
with a Kremlin intermediary. Russiagate promoters have nonetheless fueled a dogged media effort to track
every
known instance in which someone in Trump's orbit
interacted with " the Russians ," or
someone who can be linked
to them . There is nothing illegal or inherently suspect about speaking to a Russian national -- but there is something xenophobic
about implying as much.
2. Russiagate's Predicate Led Nowhere
The most glaring absence of a Kremlin intermediary comes in the case that ostensibly prompted the entire Trump-Russia investigation.
During an April 2016 meeting in Rome, a London-based professor named Joseph Mifsud reportedly informed Trump campaign aide George
Papadopoulos that "the Russians" had obtained "thousands of emails" containing "dirt" on Hillary Clinton. That information made its
way to the FBI, which used it as a pretext to open the "Crossfire Hurricane" probe on July 31, 2016. Papadopoulos was later indicted
for lying to FBI agents about the timing of his contacts with Mifsud. The case stoked speculation that Papadopoulos acted as an
intermediary between
Trump and Russia
.
But Papadopoulos played no such role. And while the Mueller report says that Papadopoulos "understood Mifsud to have substantial
connections to high-level Russian government officials," it never asserts that Mifsud actuall y had those connections.
Since Mifsud's suspected Russian connections were the purported predicate for the FBI's initial Trump-Russia investigation, that
is a conspicuous non-call. Another is the revelation from Mueller that
Mifsud made false statements to FBI investigators
when they interviewed him in February 2017 -- but yet, unlike Papadopoulos, Mifsud was not indicted. Thus, even the interaction that
sparked the Russia-collusion probe did not reveal collusion.
3. Sergey Kislyak Had "Brief and Non-Substantive" Interactions With the Trump Camp
Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak's conversations with Trump campaign officials and associates during and after the 2016 election
were the focus of intense controversy and speculation, leading to the recusal of
Jeff Sessions, then attorney
general, and to the indictment of National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.
After an exhaustive review, Mueller concluded that Kislyak's interactions with Trump campaign officials at public events "were
brief, public, and non-substantive." As for Kislyak's
much –
ballyhooed meeting which Sessions in September 2016, Mueller saw no reason to dispute that it "included any more than a passing
mention of the presidential campaign." When Kislyak spoke with other Trump aides after the August 2016 Republican National Convention,
Mueller "did not identify evidence in those interactions of coordination between the Campaign and the Russian government."
The same goes for Kislyak's post-election conversations with Flynn. Mueller indicted Flynn for making "false statements and omissions"
in an interview with the FBI about his contacts with Kislyak during the transition in December 2016. The prevailing supposition was
that Flynn lied in order to hide from the FBI an
election-related payoff or "
quid pro quo
" with the Kremlin. The report punctures that thesis by reaffirming the facts in Flynn's indictment: What Flynn hid from agents
was that he had "called Kislyak to request Russian restraint" in response to sanctions imposed by the outgoing Obama administration,
and that Kislyak had agreed. Mueller ruled out the possibility that Flynn could have implicated Trump in anything criminal by noting
the absence of evidence that Flynn "possessed information damaging to the President that would give the President a personal incentive
to end the FBI's inquiry into Flynn's conduct."
4. Trump Tower Moscow Had No Help From Moscow
The November 2018 indictment of Trump's former lawyer, Michael Cohen, was widely seen as damning, possibly impeachment-worthy,
for Trump. Cohen admitted to giving false written answers to Congress in a bid to downplay Trump's personal knowledge of his company's
failed effort to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. To proponents of the collusion theory, Cohen's admitted lies were proof that "
Trump is compromised by
Russia ," " full stop ."
But the Mueller report does not show any such compromise, and, in fact, shows there to be no Trump-Kremlin relationship. Cohen,
the report notes, "requested [Kremlin] assistance in moving the project forward, both in securing land to build the project and with
financing." The request was evidently rejected. Elena Poliakova, the personal assistant to Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov,
spoke with Cohen by phone after he e-mailed her office for help. After their 20-minute call, the report says, "Cohen could not recall
any direct follow-up from Poliakova or from any other representative of the Russian government, nor did the [Special Counsel's] Office
identify any evidence of direct follow-up."
5. and Trump Didn't Ask Cohen to Lie About It
The Mueller report not only dispels the notion that Trump had secret dealings with the Kremlin over Trump Tower Moscow; it also
rejects a related impeachment-level "bombshell." In January, BuzzFeed News
reported that Mueller had evidence that Trump "directed" Cohen to lie to Congress about the Moscow project. But according to
Mueller, "the evidence available to us does not establish that the President directed or aided Cohen's false testimony," and that
Cohen himself testified "that he and the President did not explicitly discuss whether Cohen's testimony about the Trump Tower Moscow
project would be or was false." In a de-facto retraction, BuzzFeed updated its story with an
acknowledgment
of Mueller's conclusion .
6. The Trump Tower Meeting Really Was Just a "Waste of Time"
The June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower was
widely
dubbed
the
" Smoking
Gun ." An e-mail chain showed that Donald Trump Jr. welcomed an offer to accept compromising information about Clinton as "part
of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump." But the pitch did not come from the meeting's Russian participants, but instead
from Rob Goldstone, a British music publicist acting on their behalf. Goldstone said that he invented "publicist puff" to secure
the meeting, because in reality,
as he told NPR , "I had no idea what I was talking about."
Mueller noted that Trump Jr.'s response "showed that the Campaign anticipated receiving information from Russia that could assist
candidate Trump's electoral prospects, but the Russian lawyer's presentation did not provide such information [emphasis mine]."
The report further recounts that during the meeting Jared Kushner texted then-Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort that it was a "waste
of time," and requested that his assistants "call him to give him an excuse to leave." Accordingly, when "Veselnitskaya made additional
efforts to follow up on the meeting," after the election, "the Trump Transition Team did not engage."
7. Manafort Did Not Share Polling Data to Meddle in the US Election
In January, Mueller accused Manafort of lying to investigators about several matters, including sharing Trump polling data and
discussing a Ukraine peace plan with a Ukrainian-Russian colleague, Konstantin Kilimnik, during the 2016 campaign. According to Mueller,
the FBI "assesses" that Kilimnik has unspecified "ties to Russian intelligence." To collusion proponents, the revelation was dubbed
" the closest we've seen yet to real, live, actual
collusion " and even the "
Russian collusion smoking gun ."
Mueller, of course, reached a different conclusion: He "did not identify evidence of a connection between Manafort's sharing polling
data and Russia's interference in the election," and, moreover, "did not establish that Manafort otherwise coordinated with the Russian
government on its election-interference efforts." Mueller noted that he "could not reliably determine Manafort's purpose in sharing"
the polling data, but also acknowledged (and bolstered) the explanation of his star witness, Rick Gates, that Manafort was motivated
by proving his financial value to former and future clients.
Mueller also gave us new reasons to doubt the assertions that Kilimnik himself is a Russian intelligence asset or spy. First,
Mueller did not join
media pundits in asserting such about
Kilimnik. Second, to support his vague contention that Kilimnik has, according to the FBI, "ties to Russian intelligence," Mueller
offered up a list of " pieces of the Office's
Evidence" that contains no direct evidence. For his part, Kilimnik has repeatedly stated that he has no such ties, and recently
told The Washington Post that Mueller never attempted to interview him.
8. The Steele Dossier Was Fiction
The Steele dossier -- a collection of Democratic National Committee-funded opposition research alleging a high-level Trump-Russia
criminal relationship -- played a critical role in the Russiagate saga. The FBI relied on it for leads and evidentiary material in
its investigation of the Trump campaign ties to Russia, and prominent
politicians ,
pundits , and
media
outlets promoted it as
credible .
The Mueller report,
The New York Times
noted last week , has "underscored what had grown clearer for months some of the most sensational claims in the dossier appeared
to be false, and others were impossible to prove." Steele reported that low-level Trump aide Carter Page was offered a 19 percent
stake in the state-owned Russian oil company Rosneft if he could get Trump to lift Western sanctions. In October 2016 the FBI, citing
the Steele dossier, told the FISA court that it "believes that [Russia's] efforts are being coordinated with Page and perhaps other
individuals associated with" the Trump campaign. The Mueller report, however, could "not establish that Page coordinated with the
Russian government in its efforts to interfere with the 2016 presidential election."
The Steele dossier claimed that Michael Cohen visited Prague to meet Russian agents in the summer of 2016. In April 2018, McClatchy
reported to much fanfare that Mueller's team "has evidence" that placed Cohen in Prague during the period in question. Cohen later
denied the claim under oath, and Mueller agreed, noting that Cohen "never traveled to Prague."
After reports emerged in August 2016 that the Trump campaign had rejected an amendment to the Republican National Committee platform
that called for arming Ukraine, Steele claimed that it was the result of a quid pro quo. The Mueller report "did not establish that"
the rejection of the Ukraine amendment was "undertaken at the behest of candidate Trump or Russia."
9. The Trump Campaign Had No Secret Channel to WikiLeaks
In January, veteran Republican operative and conspiracy theorist Roger Stone caused a stir when he was indicted for lying to Congress
about his efforts to make contact with WikiLeaks. But Mueller's indictment actually showed that Stone
had no communications with WikiLeaks
before the election and no privileged information about its releases . Most significantly, it revealed that Trump officials were
trying to learn about the WikiLeaks releases through Stone -- a fact that underscored that the Trump campaign neither worked with
WikiLeaks nor had advance knowledge of its e-mail dumps.
Mueller's final report does nothing to alter that picture. Its sections on Stone are heavily redacted, owing to Stone's pending
trial. But they do make clear that Mueller conducted an extensive search to establish a tie between WikiLeaks, the Trump campaign,
and Stone -- and came up empty. New
reporting from The Washington Post underscores just how far their farcical efforts went. The Mueller team devoted
time and energy to determine whether far-right conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi, best known for promoting the false claim that Barack
Obama was born outside the United States, served as a link between Stone and WikiLeaks. Mueller's prosecutors "spent weeks coaxing,
cajoling and admonishing the conspiracy theorist, as they pressed him to stick to facts and not reconstruct stories," the Post
reports. "At times, they had debated the nature of memory itself." It is unsurprising that this led Mueller's prosecutors to
ultimately declare, according to Corsi's attorney, "We can't use any of this."
10. There Was No Cover-Up
The Mueller report does not just dispel the conspiracy theories that have engulfed political and media circles for two years;
it puts to rest the most popular, recent one: that Attorney General William Barr engaged in a
cover-up . According to the dominant narrative, Barr was
somehow concealing Mueller's damning evidence
, while Mueller, even more improbably, stayed silent.
One could argue that Barr's summary downplays the obstruction findings, though it accurately relays that Mueller's report does
"not exonerate" Trump. It was Mueller's decision to leave the verdict on obstruction to Barr and make clear that if Congress disagrees,
it has the power to indict Trump on its own. Mueller's office assisted with Barr's redactions, which proved to be, as Barr had pledged,
extremely limited. Despite containing numerous embarrassing details about Trump, no executive privilege was invoked to censor the
report's contents.
In the end, Mueller's report shows that the Trump-Russia collusion narrative embraced and evangelized by the US political and
media establishments to be a work of
fiction . The American public
was presented with a far different picture from what was expected, because leading pundits, outlets, and politicians ignored the
countervailing facts and promoted maximalist interpretations of others. Anonymous officials also leaked explosive yet uncorroborated
claims, leaving behind many stories that were subsequently discredited, retracted, or remain unconfirmed to this day.
It is too early to assess the damage that influential Russiagate promoters have done to their own reputations; to public confidence
in our democratic system and media; and to the prospects of defeating Trump, who always stood to benefit if the all-consuming conspiracy
theory ultimately collapsed. The scale of the wreckage, confirmed by Mueller's report, may prove to be the ultimate Russiagate scandal.
"... The truth is, that a foreign government did indeed meddle in the American Presidential election, in a failed attempt to fix the outcome, but it was not Russia. It was the City of London, and the Five Eyes imperial intelligence services of the British Commonwealth, along with treasonous, "Tory" American elements. If that admission is forced to the surface, through the vigorous actions of all that oppose the presently dominant Big Lie tyranny, that revelation will shock and liberate people all over the world. The mental stranglehold of "fake news" media outlets can be permanently broken. That is the task of the next days and weeks. ..."
"... Apart from documenting the presence of "former" British intelligence agent Christopher Steele, former MI6 head Sir Richard Dearlove, and former GCHQ head Robert Hannigan at the center of the Russiagate campaign against President Trump for the past several years, we must, in order to expose this successfully, identify not only what was actually done and who was doing it, but the deeper policy motivation: why it was done. ..."
"... President Donald Trump has no vested interest in protecting the British "special relationship." From his second day in office, Trump declared that he would clean out the intelligence agencies. If Trump were to do that, however, the real, tragic history of America's last 50 years would be exhumed from that swamp. Shining a light into that darkness would illuminate the world. The American people would stop playing Othello to the City of London's Iago. They would denounce the British "special relationship," never again to fight imperial wars for the greater glory of the British Empire. They would learn the true story of Vietnam, of Iraq 1991 and Iraq 2003, of Libya 2011, and many other conflicts, special operations, and assassinations. The American people would know the truth, and the truth would set them free. ..."
"... The current insurrection against the United States Presidency is part of a global strategic battle: will a conspiracy of republican forces overcome the modern day British imperial system, centered in the hot money centers of the City of London and Wall Street, or will the oligarchical system once again triumph, immiserating all but the very wealthy? That is the real issue of the insurrection against the maverick American president being conducted by the London and NATO-centered enforcers of the old world. To paraphrase the American Declaration of Independence, ..."
"... According to CIA Director John Brennan's Congressional testimony, the British began complaining loudly about candidate Trump and Russia in late 2015. Brennan's statements were echoed in articles in The Guardian . According to Brennan, intelligence leads about Trump and Russia had been forwarded to Brennan from both British intelligence and from Estonia. ..."
"... This task force targeted Trump campaign volunteers Carter Page and George Papadopoulos in entrapment operations on British soil, using British agents, during the spring and summer of 2016. ..."
"... Hannigan abruptly resigned from GCHQ shortly after the election, sparking widespread speculation that the British were making an attempt at damage control. ..."
"... In 2016, the Manafort investigation migrated to the Democratic National Committee with direct assistance provided by Ukrainian state intelligence. This effort was led by Alexandra Chalupa, an admirer of Stepan Bandera and other heroes of Nazi history in Ukraine. Chalupa also had deep connections to British-oriented networks at the U.S. State Department. ..."
"... The final nail in this case has been provided by The Hill 's John Solomon. He says that Steele told former Associate Attorney General Bruce Ohr about the sources for the dirty dossier. According to Solomon, Ohr's notes reveal one main source, a former senior Russian intelligence official living in the United States. But, as anyone familiar with the territory would know, there is no such retired senior Russian intelligence official living in the United States whose entire life is not controlled by the CIA. ..."
"... As a result of Congressional investigations of Russiagate, it has become abundantly clear that the British operation against Trump was aided and abetted by the Obama White House, the State Department, the CIA, the FBI, and personalities associated with the National Endowment for Democracy. ..."
"... Out of the Ukraine coup, an entire military-centered propaganda apparatus arose, first through NATO, and then out from there to military units and diplomatic centers in the U.S., Europe, and Britain, to run low intensity operations, and black propaganda, against Russia. ..."
"... The British end of the operation includes the Integrity Initiative, the 77th Brigade, and NATO's Strategic Communications Center. In the United States, the Integrity Initiative has been integrated into the Global Engagement Center at the U.S. State Department. Most certainly, this operation is poised again to intervene in the U.S. elections; the British House of Lords have stated explicitly, in their December 2018 report, British Foreign Policy in a Shifting World Order, that Donald Trump must not be re-elected. ..."
"... This is why the British are yelping that under no circumstances can the classified documents concerning their role in the attempted coup against Donald Trump be declassified. It would end their leverage over the United States and much of Europe. That is why these documents must indeed be declassified, and parallel investigations by citizens and government officials concerned with ending the imperial system, otherwise known as the current "war party," must begin in earnest. ..."
"... Why did the DNC not allow the FBI to investigate the so-called" Russian hacked" emails? Rather, they hire CrowdStrike did you know: ..."
"... War with Afghanistan was Obama's payoff to the MIC, just as Russia is now Trump's payoff. ..."
"... The important truth about the emails is in their authenticity and in the contents. No one has even attempted to claim that they are not authentic or that the contents we've seen are other than the actual contents of the authentic messages. ..."
"... That is what i think. People should not concentrate on how, who and where. This is just a smokescreen to avoid talking about the content of the emails and Hillary Clinton's disgusting actions. She is a criminal and a murderess just like Obama and Tony Blair are lyers and mass murderers. ..."
The British Role in 'Russiagate' Is About to Be Fully Exposed April 8, 2019
20190408-russiagate-exposed-brits.pdf
The "fake news" media has now dropped its pretense of having ever had any intention of allowing the truth -- as documented in
U.S. Attorney General Barr's summary of Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller's report, exonerating President Donald Trump of having
"conspired or coordinated with the Russian government" -- to thoroughly refute the Russiagate "Big Lie." Soon, however, it is certain
that the deliberate, British Intelligence-originated, military-grade disinformation campaign carried out against the United States,
including to this day, will be exposed.
The truth is, that a foreign government did indeed meddle in the American Presidential election, in a failed attempt to fix
the outcome, but it was not Russia. It was the City of London, and the Five Eyes imperial intelligence services of the British Commonwealth,
along with treasonous, "Tory" American elements. If that admission is forced to the surface, through the vigorous actions of all
that oppose the presently dominant Big Lie tyranny, that revelation will shock and liberate people all over the world. The mental
stranglehold of "fake news" media outlets can be permanently broken. That is the task of the next days and weeks.
"It's hard to find a black cat in a dark room, especially if there is no cat," says the Chinese proverb. Yet, although the Mueller
report was called a "nothing burger," it was not: it still presented the potentially lethal lie that twelve Russian gremlins, code-named
Guccifer 2.0, hacked the DNC. Sundry media meatheads thus continue to blog and broadcast about "what else is really there."
The false Russian hack story, still being repeated, marches on, undeterred, like the emperor without any clothes. One lame-brained
variation, promoted in order to cover up the British role, states that Hillary Clinton, rather than Trump, colluded with the Russians.
It is being repeated by Republicans and Democrats alike, some of them malicious, some of them confused, and all of them completely
wrong. The media, such as the failed New York Times and various electronic media, must be forced to either admit the truth,
or be even more thoroughly discredited than they already have been. They must stop their constant repetition of this Joseph Goebbels-like
Big Lie. There must be a vigorous dissemination of the truth by all those journalists, politicians, activists and citizens that love
truth more than their own assumptions, including about President Trump, or other dearly-held systems of false belief.
Apart from documenting the presence of "former" British intelligence agent Christopher Steele, former MI6 head Sir Richard
Dearlove, and former GCHQ head Robert Hannigan at the center of the Russiagate campaign against President Trump for the past several
years, we must, in order to expose this successfully, identify not only what was actually done and who was doing it, but the deeper
policy motivation: why it was done.
A New Cultural Paradigm
The world is actually on the verge of ending the military conflicts among the major world powers, such as Russia, China, the United
States, and India. These four powers, and not the City of London, are the key fulcrum around which a new era in humanity's future
will be decided. A new monetary and credit system brought into being through these four powers would foster the greatest physical
economic growth in the history of humanity. In addition, discussions involving Italy working with China on the industrialization
of the African continent (discussions which could soon also involve the United States) show that sections of Europe want to join
China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and leave the dying trans-Atlantic financial empire behind.
The recent announcement of a United States commitment to return to the Moon by 2024 can, in particular, become the basis for a
proposal to other nations -- for example, China, Russia, and India, all of whom are space powers of demonstrated capability -- to
resolve their differences on Earth in a higher, joint mission. As Russia's Roscosmos Director Dmitry Rogozin said in a recent interview:
"I am a fierce proponent of international cooperation, including with Americans, because their country is big and technologically
advanced, and they can make good partners Especially since personal and professional relations between Roscosmos and NASA at the
working level are great."
There is also the possibility of ending the danger of thermonuclear war. President Trump, speaking on April 4 of the prospects
for world peace, stated:
"Between Russia, China, and us, we're all making hundreds of billions of dollars worth of weapons, including nuclear, which is
ridiculous. I think it's much better if we all got together and didn't make these weapons those three countries I think can come
together and stop the spending and spend on things that are more productive toward long-term peace."
This is a statement of real importance. Such an outlook is a rejection of the "perpetual crisis/perpetual war" outlook of the
Bush-Obama Administration, a four-term "war presidency" which was abruptly, unexpectedly ended in 2016. The British were not amused.
It is to stop this new cultural paradigm, pivoted on the Pacific and the potential Four Powers alliance, that British imperial
forces have deployed. The 2016 election of President Trump, and his personal friendship with President Xi Jinping and desire to work
with President Putin, are an intolerable strategic threat to the eighteenth-century geopolitics of the British empire. They have
repeatedly used Russiagate to disrupt the process of deliberation among Presidents Xi, Trump, and Putin, thus increasing the danger
of war. Russiagate, in the interest of international security, must be ended by exposing it for the utter fraud that it is.
The Truth Set Free
President Donald Trump has no vested interest in protecting the British "special relationship." From his second day in office,
Trump declared that he would clean out the intelligence agencies. If Trump were to do that, however, the real, tragic history of
America's last 50 years would be exhumed from that swamp. Shining a light into that darkness would illuminate the world. The American
people would stop playing Othello to the City of London's Iago. They would denounce the British "special relationship," never again
to fight imperial wars for the greater glory of the British Empire. They would learn the true story of Vietnam, of Iraq 1991 and
Iraq 2003, of Libya 2011, and many other conflicts, special operations, and assassinations. The American people would know the truth,
and the truth would set them free.
The current insurrection against the United States Presidency is part of a global strategic battle: will a conspiracy of republican
forces overcome the modern day British imperial system, centered in the hot money centers of the City of London and Wall Street,
or will the oligarchical system once again triumph, immiserating all but the very wealthy? That is the real issue of the insurrection
against the maverick American president being conducted by the London and NATO-centered enforcers of the old world. To paraphrase
the American Declaration of Independence,
"The history of the present Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the
undermining of the United States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world."
DOCUMENTATION
While Robert Mueller found that there was "no collusion" between Donald Trump or the Trump Campaign and Russia, he also filed
two indictments regarding alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election. The first alleges that 12 members of Russian Military
Intelligence hacked the DNC and John Podesta and delivered the purloined files to WikiLeaks for strategic publication before the
July 2016 Democratic National Convention and in October 2016, one month before the election. The second indictment charges the Internet
Research Agency, a Russian internet merchandising and marketing firm, with running social media campaigns in the U.S. in 2016 designed
to impact the election. When the fuller version of the Mueller report becomes public, it is certain to recharge the claims of Russian
interference based on the so-called background "evidence" supporting these indictments.
The good news, however, is that investigations in the United States and Britain, have unearthed significant contrary evidence
exposing British Intelligence, NATO, and, to a lesser extent, Ukraine, as the actual foreign actors in the 2016 U.S. presidential
election. We provide a short summary of the main aspects of that evidence to spark further investigations of the British intelligence
networks, entities, and methods at issue, internationally. More detailed accounts concerning specific aspects of what we recite here
can be found on our website.
The Russian Hack That Wasn't
The Veterans Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, an association of former U.S. intelligence officials, have demonstrated that
the Russian hack of the DNC alleged by Robert Mueller, was more likely an internal leak,
rather than a hack conducted
over the internet. William Binney, who conducted the main investigations for the VIPS, spent 30 years at the National Security Agency,
becoming Technical Director. He designed the sorts of NSA programs that would detect a Russian hack if one occurred. Binney conducted
an actual forensic examination of the DNC files released by WikiLeaks, and the related files circulated by the persona Guccifer 2.0,
who Robert Mueller claims is a GRU creation. Binney has demonstrated that the calculated transfer speeds and metadata characteristics
of these files are consistent with downloading to a thumb drive or storage device rather than an internet-based hack. This supports
the account by WikiLeaks of how it obtained the files. According to WikiLeaks and former Ambassador Craig Murray, they were obtained
from a person who was not a Russian state actor of any kind, in Washington, D.C. WikiLeaks offered to tell the Justice Department
all about this, and actual negotiations to this effect were proceeding in early 2017, when Senator Mark Warner and FBI Director James
Comey acted to sabotage and end the negotiations.
Further, as opposed to the hyperbole in the media and in Robert Mueller's indictment, analysis of the Internet Research Agency's
alleged "weaponization" of Facebook in 2016 involved
a paltry total of $46,000 in Facebook
ads and $4,700 spent on Google platforms . In an election in which the major campaigns spend tens of thousands of dollars every
day on these platforms, whatever the IRA thought it was doing in its amateurish and juvenile memes and tropes was like throwing a
stone in the ocean. Most of these activities occurred after the election and never mentioned either candidate. The interpretation
that these ads were designed to draw clicks and website traffic, rather than influence the election, must be considered.
The "evidence" for Mueller's GRU hacking indictment was provided, in part, by CrowdStrike, the DNC vendor that originated the
claims that the Russians had hacked that entity. CrowdStrike is closely associated with the Atlantic Council's Digital Research Lab
(DRL), an operation jointly funded by NATO's Strategic Communications Center and the U.S. State Department, to counter Russian "hybrid
warfare." CrowdStrike has been caught more than once falsely attributing hacks to the Russians and the Atlantic Council's DRL is
a font of anti-Russian intelligence operations.
The British Target Trump
According to CIA Director John Brennan's Congressional testimony, the British began complaining loudly about candidate Trump
and Russia in late 2015. Brennan's statements were echoed in articles in The Guardian . According to Brennan, intelligence
leads about Trump and Russia had been forwarded to Brennan from both British intelligence and from Estonia. The former head
of the Russia Desk for MI6 and protégé of Sir Richard Dearlove, Christopher Steele, fresh from working for British Intelligence,
the FBI, and U.S. State Department in the 2014 Ukraine coup, assembled in 2016 a phony dossier called Operation Charlemagne, claiming
widespread Russian interference in European elections, including in the Brexit vote. By the spring of 2016, Steele was contributing
to a British/U.S. intelligence task force on the Trump Campaign which had been convened at CIA headquarters under John Brennan's
direction.
This task force targeted Trump campaign volunteers Carter Page and George Papadopoulos in entrapment operations on British
soil, using British agents, during the spring and summer of 2016. The personnel employed in these operations all had multiple
connections to the British firm Hakluyt, to Steele's firm Orbis, and to the British military's Integrity Initiative. Sometime in
the summer of 2016, Robert Hannigan, then head of GCHQ, flew to Washington to brief John Brennan personally. Hannigan abruptly
resigned from GCHQ shortly after the election, sparking widespread speculation that the British were making an attempt at damage
control.
Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort were already on the radar and under investigation by the same British, Dearlove-centered intelligence
network and by Christopher Steele specifically. Flynn had been defamed by Dearlove and Stefan Halper, as a possible Russian agent
way back in 2014 because he spoke to Russian researcher Svetlana Lokhova at a dinner sponsored by Dearlove's Cambridge Security Forum.
Or, at least that was the pretext for the targeting of Flynn, who otherwise defied British intelligence by exposing Western support
for terrorist operations in Syria and sought a collaborative relationship with Russia to counter ISIS. Manafort was under FBI investigation
throughout 2014 and 2015, largely in retaliation for his role in steering the Party of the Regions to political power in Ukraine.
In 2016, the Manafort investigation migrated to the Democratic National Committee with direct assistance provided by Ukrainian
state intelligence. This effort was led by Alexandra Chalupa, an admirer of Stepan Bandera and other heroes of Nazi history in Ukraine.
Chalupa also had deep connections to British-oriented networks at the U.S. State Department.
In or around June 2016, Christopher Steele began writing his dirty and bogus dossier about Trump and Russia. This is the dossier
which claimed that Trump was compromised by Putin and that Putin was coordinating with Trump in the 2016 election. The main "legend"
of this full-spectrum information warfare operation run from Britain, was that Donald Trump was receiving "dirt" on Hillary Clinton
from Russia. The operations targeting Page and Papadopoulos consisted of multiple attempts to plant fabricated evidence on them which
would reflect what Steele himself was fabricating in the dirty dossier. At the very same time, the infamous June 2016 meeting at
Trump Tower was being set up. That meeting involved the Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, who, it was alleged in a series of
bizarre emails written by British publicist Ron Goldstone to set up the meeting, could deliver "dirt" on Hillary Clinton direct from
the Russian government. Veselnitskaya didn't deliver any such dirt. But the entire operation was being monitored by State Department
intelligence agent Kyle Parker, an expert on Russia. Parker's emails reveal deep ties to the highest levels of British intelligence
and much chatter between them about Trump and Russia.
A now-changed version of the website for Christopher Steele's firm, Orbis, trumpeted an expertise in information warfare operations,
and the networks in which Steele runs are deeply integrated into the British military's Integrity Initiative. The Integrity Initiative
is a rapid response propaganda operation using major journalists in the United States and Europe to carry out targeted defamation
campaigns. Its central charge, according to documents posted by the hacking group Anonymous, is selling the United States and Western
Europe on the immediate need for regime change in Russia, even if that involves war.
Much has been made by Republicans and other lunkheads in the U.S. Congress of Steele's contacts with Russians for his dossier.
They claim that such contacts resulted in a Russian disinformation operation being run through the duped Christopher Steele. Nothing
could be further from the truth.
MI6's Dirty Dossier on Donald Trump: Full-Spectrum Information Warfare
On its face, Steele's dossier would immediately be recognized as a complete fabrication by any competent intelligence analyst.
He cites some 32 sources inside the Russian government for his fabricated claims about Trump. What they allegedly told him is specific
enough in time and content to identify them. To believe that the dossier is true or that actual Russians contributed to it, you must
also believe that that the British government was willing to roll up this entire network, exposing them, since the intention was
for the dossier's wild claims to be published as widely as possible. By all accounts, Britain and the United States together do not
have 32 highly placed sources inside the Russian government, nor would they ever make them public in this way or with this very sloppy
tradecraft. Steele's fabrication also uses aspects of readily available public information, such as the sale of 19% of the energy
company Rosneft, (the alleged bribe offered to Carter Page for lifting sanctions) to concoct a fictional narrative of high crimes
and misdemeanors.
Other claims in the dossier were published, publicly, in various Ukrainian publications. The famous claim that Trump directed
prostitutes to urinate on a bed once slept upon by Barack Obama seems to be plagiarized from similarly fake 2009 British propaganda
stories about Silvio Berlusconi spending the night with a prostitute in a hotel room in Rome, "defiling" Putin's bed. According to
various sources in the United States, this outrageous claim was made by Sergei Millian. George Papadopoulos has stated that he believes
Millian is an FBI informant, recounting in his book how a friend of Millian's blurted this out when Millian, Papadopoulos and the
friend were having coffee.
The final nail in this case has been provided by The Hill 's John Solomon. He says that Steele told former Associate
Attorney General Bruce Ohr about the sources for the dirty dossier. According to Solomon, Ohr's notes reveal one main source, a former
senior Russian intelligence official living in the United States. But, as anyone familiar with the territory would know, there is
no such retired senior Russian intelligence official living in the United States whose entire life is not controlled by the CIA.
Despite its obvious fake pedigree, Steele's dossier was laundered into the Justice Department repeatedly, by the CIA and State
Department and the Obama White House. It was used to obtain FISA surveillance warrants turning key members of the Trump Campaign
into walking microphones. It was circulated endlessly by the Clinton Campaign to a network of reporters in the U.S. known to serve
as scribes for the intelligence community. John Brennan used it to conduct a special emergency briefing of the leading members of
the U.S. Congress charged with intelligence responsibilities in August of 2016 and to brief Harry Reid, who was Senate Majority Leader
at the time. All of this activity meant that the salacious accusation that Trump was a Putin pawn and the FBI was investigating the
matter, leaked out and was used by the Clinton Campaign to defame Trump for its electoral advantage. When Trump won, Steele's nonsense
received the stamp of the U.S. intelligence community and official currency in the campaign to take out the President.
As a result of Congressional investigations of Russiagate, it has become abundantly clear that the British operation against
Trump was aided and abetted by the Obama White House, the State Department, the CIA, the FBI, and personalities associated with the
National Endowment for Democracy. The individuals involved might be named Veterans of the 2014 Ukrainian Coup, since all of
them also worked on this operation. It is no accident that Victoria Nuland, the case agent for the Ukraine coup, played a major role
in bolstering Steele's credentials for the purpose of selling his dirty dossier to the media and to the Justice Department. This
went so far as Steele giving a full scale briefing on his fabricated dossier at the State Department in October 2016.
Out of the Ukraine coup, an entire military-centered propaganda apparatus arose, first through NATO, and then out from there
to military units and diplomatic centers in the U.S., Europe, and Britain, to run low intensity operations, and black propaganda,
against Russia.
The British end of the operation includes the Integrity Initiative, the 77th Brigade, and NATO's Strategic Communications
Center. In the United States, the Integrity Initiative has been integrated into the Global Engagement Center at the U.S. State Department.
Most certainly, this operation is poised again to intervene in the U.S. elections; the British House of Lords have stated explicitly,
in their December 2018 report, British Foreign Policy in a Shifting World Order, that Donald Trump must not be re-elected.
This is why the British are yelping that under no circumstances can the classified documents concerning their role in the
attempted coup against Donald Trump be declassified. It would end their leverage over the United States and much of Europe. That
is why these documents must indeed be declassified, and parallel investigations by citizens and government officials concerned with
ending the imperial system, otherwise known as the current "war party," must begin in earnest.
"in a post-Iraq invasion world, only herd-minded human livestock believe"
Perhaps add mainstream media to the list of such sincere believers, they will fire their own real journalists.
David Walters , April 24, 2019 at 13:14
"This doesn't mean that Russia would never use hackers to interfere in world political affairs or that Vladimir Putin is some
sort of virtuous girl scout, it just means that in a post-Iraq invasion world, only herd-minded human livestock believe the unsubstantiated
assertions of opaque and unaccountable government agencies about governments who are oppositional to those same agencies."
Absolutely correct.
Anyone who still believes what the IC says if a moron. As Pompeo recently said to the student body of Texas A&M University,
my alma matta, the CIA's job is to lie, cheat and steel. He went on the explain that the CIA has courses to teach their agent
that dark "art".
Right, David Walters, and see Pompous Pompeo now. The only truths he's told was to a student body of Texas A&M University –
his own alma mater – the CIA's job is to lie, cheat and steal.
Even though he's left his post as CIA Director and assumed his current post of Secretary of State. Pompous Pompeo continues his
CIA traits of lying, cheating, and stealing. It's in a way similar to a phrase, "A leopard never changes its spots". This is why
the DPRK govt issued a Persona Non Grata on Pompous Pompeo – that he isn't a bona fide diplomat, but a CIA official.
CWG , April 22, 2019 at 17:15
Here's my take on the 'Russian Collusion Deep State LIE.
There was NO Russian Collusion at all to get Trump in the White House. Most probably, Putin would have favored Clinton, since
she could be bought. Trump can't.
What did happen was illegal spying on the Trump campaign. That started late 2015, WITHOUT a FISA warrant. They only obtained
that in 2016, through lying to the FISA Court. The basis for that first warrant was the Fusion GPS Steele Dossier.
Ever since Trump won the election, they real conspirators knew they had a problem. That was apparent ever after Devin Nunes
did the right thing by informing Trump they were spying on him.
Since they obtained those FISA warrant through lying to the FISA Court (which is treason) they needed to cover that up as quickly
as possible.
So what did they do? Instead of admitting they lied to the FISA Court they kept on lying till this very day. The same lie through
which they obtained the FISA warrants to spy on the Trump campaign was being pushed openly.
The lie is and was 'Trump colluded with the Russians in order to win the Presidential Election'.
They knew from day one Trump didn't do anything wrong. They did know they spied on Trump through lying to the FISA Court, which
again, is treason. According to the Constitution, lying to the FISA court= Treason.
In order to avoid being indicted and prosecuted, they somehow needed to 'take down' the Attorney General. At all costs, they
needed to try and hide what really happened.
So there they went. 'Trump colluded with the Russians. Not just Trump, but the entire Trump campaign!'.
'Sessions should recuse himself', the propaganda MSM said in unison. 'Recuse, recuse'.
Sessions, naively recused himself. Back then, even he probably didn't know the entire story. It was only later on that Sarah
Carter and Jon Solomon found out it had been Hillary who ordered and paid the Steele Dossier.
The real conspirators hoped that through the Special Counsel rat Mueller they might be able to achieve three main objectives.
1: Convince the American people Russia indeed was meddling in the Presidential Election.
2: Find any sort of dirt on Trump and/or people who helped him win the Election in order to 'take them down'.
Many people were indicted, some were prosecuted. Yet NONE of them were convicted for a crime that had ANYTHING to with with
the elections. NONE.
They stretched it out as long as possible. 'The longer you repeat a lie, the more people are willing to believe the lie'.
So that is what they did. They still do it. Mueller took TWO years to brainwash as many people as possible. 'Russian Collusion,
Russian Collusion. Russia. Russia. Russia. Russia. Rusiaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh ..
Why did they want to make sure they could keep telling that lie as long as possible?
Because they FEAR people will learn the truth. There was NEVER any Russian Collusion with the Trump campaign.
There was spying on the Trump campaign by Obama in order to try and make Hillary win the Presidential Election.
That is the actual COLLUSION between the Clinton Campaign and a weaponized Obama regime!!
So what did 'Herr Mueller' do?
He took YEARS to come up with the conclusion that the Trump campaign did NOT collude with Russia.
The MSM tried to make us all believe it was about that. Yet it was NOT.
His conclusive report is all about the question 'did or didn't the Trump campaign collude with the Russians'.
Trump exonerated, and the MSM only talks about that. Trump, Trump, Trump.
They still want us all to believe that was what the Mueller 'investigation' was all about. Yet it was not.
The most important objective of the Mueller 'investigation' was not to 'investigate'.
It was to 'instigate' that HUGE lie.
The same lie which they used to obtain the FISA warrant on the Trump campaign.
"Russia'.
So what has 'Herr Mueller' done?
A: He finds ZERO evidence at all which proves the Trump campaign colluded with ANY Russians.
And now the huge lie, which after all was the main objective right from the get go. (A was only a distraction)
B: Russians hacked the DNC.
That is what they wants us all to believe. That Russia somehow did bad stuff.
Now it was not Russia who did bad stuff.
It was Obama working together with the Clinton campaign. Obama weaponized his entire regime in order to let Clinton win the
Presidency.
That is the REAL collusion. The real CRIME. Treason!
In order to create a 'cover up' Mueller NEEDED to instigate that Russia somehow did bad things.
That's what the Mueller Dossier is ALL about. They now have 'black on white' 'evidence' that Russia somehow did bad things.
Because if Russia didn't do anything like that, it would make us all ask the fair question 'why did Obama spy on the Trump
Campaign'.
Let's go a bit deeper still.
Here's a trap Mueller created. What if Trump would openly doubt the LIE they still push? The HUGE lie that Russia did bad things?
After all, they NEED that LIE in order to COVER UP their own crime.
If Trump would say 'I do not believe Russia did anything to influence the elections, I think Mueller wrote that to COVER UP
the real crime', what would happen?
They would say 'GOTCHA now, see Trump is colluding with Russia? He even refuses to accept Russia hacked the DNC, this ultimately
proofs Trump indeed is a Russian asset'.
They believe that trap will work. They needed that trap, since if Russia wasn't doing anything wrong, it would show us all
THEY were the criminals.
They NEED that lie, in order to COVER UP.
That is the 'Insurance Policy' Stzrok and Page texted about. Even Sarah Carter and Jon Solomon still don't seem to see all
that.
They should have attacked the HUGE lie that Russia was somehow hacking the DNC. That is simply not true. It's a Mueller created
LIE.
That LIE = the Insurance Policy.
What did they need an Insurance Policy for? They want us all to believe that was about preventing Trump from being elected.
Although true, that is only A.
They NEEDED an Insurance Policy in the unlikely case Trump would become President and would find out they were illegally spying
on him!
The REAL crime is Obama weaponized the American Government to spy on even a duly elected President.
What's the punishment for Treason?
About Assange and Seth Rich.
Days after Mueller finishes his 'mission' (Establish the LIE Russia did bad things) which seems to be succesfull, the Deep
State arrest the ONLY source who could undermine that lie.
Assange Since he knows who is (Seth Rich?) and who isn't (Russia) the source.
If Assange could testify under oath the emails did not come from Russia, the LIE would be exposed.
No coincidences here. I fear Assange will never testify under oath. I actually fear for his life.
Deniz , April 23, 2019 at 13:48
While I wholeheartedly agree with you that Obama and Clinton are criminals, the far less convincing part of your argument is
that Trump is not now beholden to the same MIC interests. Bolton, Abrahams, Pompeo, Pence his relationship with Netanyahu, the
overthrow of Madura are all glaring examples that contradict the Rights narrative that he is some type of hero. Trump may not
have colluded with Russia, but he does seem to be colluding with Saudia Arabia, Israel, Big Oil and the MIC.
Whether one is on the Right or Left, the house is still made of glass.
boxerwars , April 22, 2019 at 17:13
RE: "A Russian Agent Smear"
:::
Was Pat Tillman Murdered?
JUL 30, 2007
I don't know, but it seems increasingly conceivable. Just absorb these facts:
O'Neal said Tillman, a corporal, threw a smoke grenade to identify themselves to fellow soldiers who were firing at them. Tillman
was waving his arms shouting "Cease fire, friendlies, I am Pat [expletive] Tillman, damn it!" again and again when he was killed,
O'Neal said
In the same testimony, medical examiners said the bullet holes in Tillman's head were so close together that it appeared the
Army Ranger was cut down by an M-16 fired from a mere 10 yards or so away.
The motive? I don't know. It's still likeliest it was an accident. But there's some mysterious testimony in the SI report about
nameless snipers. A reader suggests the following interpretation:
News this weekend said that there were "snipers" present and the witnesses didn't remember their names. I believe that's code
in the Army–these guys were Delta. In the Tillman incident, these snipers weren't part of the unit and they were never mentioned
publicly before. That's a key indicator that they weren't supposed to be acknowledged.
If you've ever read Blackhawk Down, Mark Bowden explains how he grew frustrated because interviewed Rangers kept referring
to "soldiers from another unit" while claiming they didn't know the unit ID or the soldiers' names. It took him months to crack
the unit ID and find people from Delta who were present at the fight.
Randy Shugart and Gary Gordon, the Delta operators who earned Medals of Honor in Mogadishu, have always been identified as
snipers, too.
If my theory is correct, the Delta guys could have fired the shots – a three-round burst to the forehead from 50 yards is impossible
for normal soldiers and Rangers, but is probably an easy shot for those guys. But because Delta doesn't officially exist and Tillman
was a hero, nobody in the Army would want to have to explain exactly how the event went down. Easier just to claim hostile fire
until the family forced them to do otherwise.
This makes some sense to me, although we shouldn't dismiss the chance he was murdered. Tillman was a star and might have aroused
jealousy or resentment. He also opposed the Iraq war and was a proud atheist. In Bush's increasingly sectarian military, that
might have stirred hostility. I don't know. But I know enough to want a deeper investigation. My atheist readers will no doubt
admire the way Tillman left this world, according to the man who was with him:
As bullets flew above their heads, the young soldier at Pat Tillman's side started praying. "I thought I was praying to myself,
but I guess he heard me," Sgt. Bryan O'Neal recalled in an interview Saturday with The Associated Press. "He said something like,
'Hey, O'Neal, why are you praying? God can't help us now."'
(Maybe the Congress can )
////// The USA is aghast with "smears" and "internal investigations" and promised but never produced "White Papers" 'as the
world turns' and circles continents Dominated by American Military Power / Predominantly Barbarous / Uncivilized Use of Force
/ and Arrogantly Effective in it's use of Dominating Military Power.
\\\\ The Poorer Peoples of the World accept their lots-in-life with some acceptance of reality vis-a-vis the "lot-in-life"
they've been alleged/assigned.
/// But How Do We Accept The Fact that our Self-Sacrificiing Hero,Pat Tillman, was slaughtered in Afghanistan,
(WITH POSITIVE PROOF) – by his own Fellow American soldiers – ???
!!!! What i'm say'n is, if Tillman represents the Life Surrendering "American Hero"
WHY DID HIS FELLOW "AMERICAN SOLDIERS" ASSASSINATE & MURDER HIM ???????
AND WHY IS THIS STORY BURIED ALONG WITH MANY OTHER SMEAR Stories
that provide prophylactic protection for all the Trump pianist prophylaxis cover
Up for the Right Wing theft of American Democracy under FDR
In favor of Ayn Rand's prevalent OBJECTIVISM under Trump.
"Capitalism and Altruism
are incompatible
capitalism and altruism
cannot coexist in man,
or in the same society".
President Trump represents
Stark & Total Capitalism
Just as "Conservative Party"
Core is in The Confederacy
AKA; The RIGHT WING
The Right Wing of US Gov't
Is All About PRESERVING
Confederate States' Laws
Written by Thomas Jefferson
Prior to The Constitution, which
became the Received/Judicial
Constitutional Law of the Land in
The Republic of the "United States"
It's not enough that Trump is clearly a classic narcissist whose behavior will continue to deteriorate the more his actions
and statements are attacked and countered? You know what happens when narcissists are driven into a corner by people tearing them
down? They get weapons and start killing people.
There is already more than ample evidence to remove Donald Trump from office, not the least being he's clearly mentally unfit.
Yet the Democrats, some of whom ran for office on a promise to impeach, are suddenly reticent to act without "more investigation".
Nancy Pelosi stated on the record prior to release of the Mueller report impeachment wasn't on the agenda "for now". She's now
making noises in the opposite direction, but that's all they are: noise.
The bottom line is the Clintonite New Democrats currently running the party have only one issue to run on next year: getting
rid of Donald Trump. They still operate under the delusion they will be able to use him to draw off moderate Republican voters,
the same ones they were positive would come out for Hillary Clinton in '16. Their multitude of candidates pay lip service to progressive
policy then carefully walk back to the standard centrist positions once the donations start coming, but the common underlying
theme was and continues to be "Donald Trump is evil, and we need to elect a Democrat."
In short, without Donald Trump in the Oval Office, the Democrat Party has no platform. They need him there as a target, because
Mike Pence would be impossible for them to beat. They are under orders, according to various writers who've addressed the Clinton
campaign, to block Bernie Sanders and his platform at all costs; and they will allow the country to crash and burn before they
disobey those orders. That means keeping Donald Trump right where he is through next November.
Eddie S , April 24, 2019 at 21:14
Exactly right, EKB -- - you can't ballroom dance without a partner! Also reminds me of the couples you occasionally run into
where one partner repeatedly runs-down the other, and you get the feeling that the critical partner doesn't have much going on
in his/her life so they deflect that by focusing on the other partner
Johnny Ryan S , April 22, 2019 at 13:38
Why did the DNC not allow the FBI to investigate the so-called" Russian hacked" emails? Rather, they hire CrowdStrike did
you know:
1)Obama Appoints CrowdStrike Officer To Admin Post Two Months Before June 2016 Report On Russia Hacking DNC
2) CrowdStrike Co-Founder Is Fellow On Russia Hawk Group, Has Connections To George Soros, Ukrainian Billionaire
3) DNC stayed that the FBI never asked to investigate the servers – that is a lie.
4) CrowdStrike received $100 million in investments led by Google Capital (since re-branded as CapitalG) in 2015. CapitalG is
owned by Alphabet, and Eric Schmidt, Alphabet's chairman, was a supporter of Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election. More than just
supporting Clinton, leaked emails from Wikileaks in November 2016 showed that in 2014 he wanted to have an active role in the
campaign.
-daily caller and dan bongino have been bringing these points up since 2016.
Deniz , April 22, 2019 at 12:36
The Right is currently salivating over the tough law enforcement rhetoric coming out of Barr and Trump.
It reminds me of when Obama was running for office in 2008 when everyone, including myself, was in awe of him. What kept slipping
into his soaring anti-intervention speeches, was a commitment to the good war in Afghanistan, which seemed totally out of place
with the rest of his rhetoric. The fine print was far more reflective of his administration actions as the rest of it his communications
turned out to be just telling people what they wanted to hear.
War with Afghanistan was Obama's payoff to the MIC, just as Russia is now Trump's payoff.
The argument about not inserting Rich and the download is a good one as a defense strategy but doesn't help with finding the
truth about the emails. We can only hope that pursuing the truth and producing it will have a cumulative effect and the illusory
truth effect will include this truth.
Red Douglas , April 22, 2019 at 16:00
>>> ". . . doesn't help with finding the truth about the emails."
The important truth about the emails is in their authenticity and in the contents. No one has even attempted to claim that
they are not authentic or that the contents we've seen are other than the actual contents of the authentic messages.
Why should we much care how they were acquired and provided to the publisher?
Lily , April 22, 2019 at 17:55
That is what i think. People should not concentrate on how, who and where. This is just a smokescreen to avoid talking about
the content of the emails and Hillary Clinton's disgusting actions. She is a criminal and a murderess just like Obama and Tony
Blair are lyers and mass murderers.
All three of them are free, earning millions with their publicity whereas two brave persons who were telling the truth have
been tortured and are still in jail. Reality has become like the most horrible nightmare. Everything simply seems to have turned
upside down. No writer would invent such a primitive plot. And yet it is the unbelievable reality.
Dump Pelousy , April 23, 2019 at 13:21
I totally agree with you, and in fact believe that this whole 22month expensive and mind numbing circus has been played out
JUST to keep the public from knowing what the emails actually said. Can you imagine Madcow focusing with such ferocity on John
Pedesta as she has on Putin, by discussing what he wrote during a presidential campaign to "influence the election" ? We'd be
a different country now, not fighting our way thru the McCarthite Swamp she helped create.
It's a dog & pony show. Trump folded very quickly, in april 2017 or three moth after inauguration. He proved
to be no fighter, a weakling, a marionette. Appointment of Bolton and Pompeo just added insult to injury. this is classic bait and
switch similar to what was executed by Obama after then election. In a way Trump is a Republican version of Obama.
I wonder if he did not want to fight to the death and sacrifice himself for the course, why he entered the Presidential race at
all ? He is not stupid enough not to understand the he will be covered with dirt and all skeletons in his closet will be dug
out for display by the US intelligence agencies, which protect that interest of Wall Street and MIC (Israel is a part of the
US MIC -- its biggest lobbyist and beneficiary) , not the USA as a sovereign state.
Notable quotes:
"... Mueller did none of these things which simply proves that his final report was what many people had expected from the very beginning; a purely political document that twists the truth to achieve Mueller's particular objectives. But to understand what those objectives are, we need to determine what the real goals of the investigation were. ..."
"... To help sabotage Trump's political agenda ..."
"... To create a cloud of illegitimacy over Trump's election ..."
"... And to prevent Trump from implementing his plan to normalize relations with Russia. ..."
"... These were the real objectives of the investigation, to create a forth branch of government (Special Counsel) that had the power to keep Trump permanently on the defensive while the media made him out to be either an unwitting accomplice in Russian espionage or, even worse, a traitor. ..."
"... The aim was to reign him in and keep the pressure on until a case could be made for his impeachment. Mueller played a key role in this travesty. His assignment was undermine Trump's moral authority by brandishing the cudgel of criminal indictment over his head. This is how a D.O.J. appointee, who had never held public office in his life, became the most powerful man in Washington. ..."
"... "We will pursue a new foreign policy that finally learns from the mistakes of the past We will stop looking to topple regimes and overthrow governments . Our goal is stability not chaos, because we want to rebuild our country [the United States] We will partner with any nation that is willing to join us in the effort to defeat ISIS and radical Islamic terrorism In our dealings with other countries, we will seek shared interests wherever possible and pursue a new era of peace, understanding, and good will." ..."
"... Imagine how terrified the foreign policy establishment must have been when they heard Trump utter these words. No more regime change wars? Are you kidding me? That's what we do: Regime-Change-Is-Us., ..."
"... Interesting, isn't it? Here's Hillary, the "liberal" Democrat, pushing for a no-fly zone in Syria even though the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joseph Dunford, stated clearly that "Right now for us to control all of the airspace in Syria would require us to go to war against Syria and Russia." In other words, if Hillary had been elected, she was all ready to flip the switch and start WW3 ASAP. Is it any wonder why the establishment loved her? ..."
"... War, war and more war, that's the Hillary Doctrine in a nutshell. It was Hillary's relentless hawkishness that pushed leftists into the Trump camp, not that they ever believed that Trump was anything more than what he appeared to be, an unprincipled narcissist with an insatiable lust for power. But they did hope that his dovish comments would steer the country away from nuclear annihilation. That was the hope at least, but then everything changed. And after it changed, Mueller released his report saying: "Trump is not guilty after all!" ..."
"... Think about it: In mid December 2018, Trump announced the withdrawal of all U.S. troops in Syria within 30 days. But instead of withdrawal, the US has been sending hundreds of trucks with weapons to the front lines. The US has also increased its troop levels on the ground, the YPG (Kurdish militia, US proxies) are digging in on the Syria-Turkish border, and the US hasn't lifted a finger to implement its agreements with NATO-ally Turkey under the Manbij Roadmap. The US is not withdrawing from Syria. Washington is beefing up its defenses and settling in for the long-haul. But, why? Why did Trump change his mind and do a complete about-face? ..."
"... Trump made these outrageous demands knowing that they would never be accepted. Which was the point, because the foreign policy establishment doesn't want a deal. They want regime change, they've made that perfectly clear. But wasn't Trump supposed to change all that? Wasn't Trump going to pursue "a new foreign policy that finally learns from the mistakes of the past"? ..."
"... There are other signs of capitulation too; like providing lethal weapons to the Ukrainian military, or nixing the short-range nuclear missile ban, or joining the Saudi's genocidal war on Yemen, or threatening to topple the government of Venezuela, or stirring up trouble in the South China Sea. At every turn, Trump has backtracked on his promise to break with tradition and "stop toppling regimes and overthrowing governments." ' At every turn, Trump has joined the ranks of the warhawks he once criticized. ..."
"... Trump is now marching in lockstep with the foreign policy establishment. In Libya, in Sudan, in Somalia, in Iran, in Lebanon, he is faithfully implementing the neocon agenda. Trump "the peacemaker" is no where to be found, while Trump the 'madman with a knife' is on the loose. ..."
Why did Robert Mueller end the Russia investigation when he did? He could have let it drag it out for another year or so and severely
hurt Trump's chances for reelection. But he didn't do that. Why?
Of course, we're assuming that the investigation was never intended to uncover the truth. If it was, then Mueller would have interviewed
Julian Assange, Craig Murray and retired members of the Intelligence Community (Ray McGovern, Bill Binney) who have shown that the
Podesta emails were leaked by an insider (on a thumbdrive) not hacked by foreign agents. Mueller would have also seized the servers
at DNC headquarters and done the necessary forensic investigation, which he never did.
He also would have indicted senior-level agents
at the FBI and DOJ who improperly obtained FISA warrants by withholding critical information from the FISA court. He didn't do that
either.
Mueller did none of these things which simply proves that his final report was what many people had expected from the very
beginning; a purely political document that twists the truth to achieve Mueller's particular objectives. But to understand what those
objectives are, we need to determine what the real goals of the investigation were. So, here they are:
To help sabotage Trump's political agenda
To create a cloud of illegitimacy over Trump's election
And to prevent Trump from implementing his plan to normalize relations with Russia.
These were the real objectives of the investigation, to create a forth branch of government (Special Counsel) that had the power
to keep Trump permanently on the defensive while the media made him out to be either an unwitting accomplice in Russian espionage
or, even worse, a traitor.
The aim was to reign him in and keep the pressure on until a case could be made for his impeachment. Mueller
played a key role in this travesty. His assignment was undermine Trump's moral authority by brandishing the cudgel of criminal indictment
over his head. This is how a D.O.J. appointee, who had never held public office in his life, became the most powerful man in Washington.
My question is simply this: Why did Mueller give up all that power when he did?
I think I can answer that, but first, we need a little more background. Check out this quote from candidate Trump in 2016:
"We will pursue a new foreign policy that finally learns from the mistakes of the past We will stop looking to topple regimes
and overthrow governments . Our goal is stability not chaos, because we want to rebuild our country [the United States] We will
partner with any nation that is willing to join us in the effort to defeat ISIS and radical Islamic terrorism In our dealings
with other countries, we will seek shared interests wherever possible and pursue a new era of peace, understanding, and good will."
Imagine how terrified the foreign policy establishment must have been when they heard Trump utter these words. No more regime
change wars? Are you kidding me? That's what we do: Regime-Change-Is-Us., and now this upstart, New York real estate tycoon is promising
to do a complete 180 and move in another direction altogether. No more destabilizing coups, no more bloody military interventions,
instead, we're going to work collaboratively with countries like Russia and China to see if we can settle regional disputes and fight
terrorism together? Really?
At the same time Trump was promising this new era of "peace, understanding, and good will," Hillary Clinton was issuing her war
whoop at every opportunity. Here's candidate Hillary trying to drum up support for taking on the Russians in Syria:
"The situation in Syria is catastrophic. And every day that goes by, we see the results of the Assad regime in partnership
with the Iranians on the ground, and the Russians in the air When I was Secretary of State, I advocated and I advocate today a
no-fly zone and safe zones."
Interesting, isn't it? Here's Hillary, the "liberal" Democrat, pushing for a no-fly zone in Syria even though the Chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joseph Dunford, stated clearly that "Right now for us to control all of the airspace in Syria
would require us to go to war against Syria and Russia." In other words, if Hillary had been elected, she was all ready to flip the
switch and start WW3 ASAP. Is it any wonder why the establishment loved her?
"We have to work more closely with our partners and allies on the ground," boomed Hillary, meaning that she fully supported
the continued use of jihadist proxies in the fight against Assad. "I do think the use of special forces, the use of enablers and
trainers in Iraq, which has had some positive effects, are very much in our interests, and so I do support what is happening."
War, war and more war, that's the Hillary Doctrine in a nutshell. It was Hillary's relentless hawkishness that pushed leftists into the Trump camp, not that they ever believed that Trump was anything
more than what he appeared to be, an unprincipled narcissist with an insatiable lust for power. But they did hope that his dovish
comments would steer the country away from nuclear annihilation. That was the hope at least, but then everything changed. And after
it changed, Mueller released his report saying: "Trump is not guilty after all!"
So, what changed? Trump changed.
Think about it: In mid December 2018, Trump announced the withdrawal of all U.S. troops in Syria within 30 days. But instead of
withdrawal, the US has been sending hundreds of trucks with weapons to the front lines. The US has also increased its troop levels
on the ground, the YPG (Kurdish militia, US proxies) are digging in on the Syria-Turkish border, and the US hasn't lifted a finger
to implement its agreements with NATO-ally Turkey under the Manbij Roadmap. The US is not withdrawing from Syria. Washington is beefing
up its defenses and settling in for the long-haul. But, why? Why did Trump change his mind and do a complete about-face?
The same thing happened in Korea. For a while it looked like Trump was serious about cutting a deal with Kim Jong un. But then,
sometime after the first summit, he began to backpeddle. He never honored any of his commitments under the Panmunjom Declaration
and he never reciprocated for Kim's cessation of all nuclear weapons and ballistic missile testing. Trump has made no effort to "build
a lasting and stable peace regime on the Korean Peninsula" or to strengthen trust between the two leaders. Then, at the Hanoi Summit,
Trump blindsided Kim by making demands that had never even been previously discussed. Kim was told that the North must destroy all
of its chemical and biological weapons as well as its ballistic missile and nuclear weapons programs before the US will take reciprocal
steps. In other words, Trump demanded that Kim completely and irreversibly disarm with the feint hope that the US would eventually
lift sanctions.
Trump made these outrageous demands knowing that they would never be accepted. Which was the point, because the foreign policy
establishment doesn't want a deal. They want regime change, they've made that perfectly clear. But wasn't Trump supposed to change
all that? Wasn't Trump going to pursue "a new foreign policy that finally learns from the mistakes of the past"?
Yes, that was Trump's campaign promise. So, what happened?
There are other signs of capitulation too; like providing lethal weapons to the Ukrainian military, or nixing the short-range
nuclear missile ban, or joining the Saudi's genocidal war on Yemen, or threatening to topple the government of Venezuela, or stirring
up trouble in the South China Sea. At every turn, Trump has backtracked on his promise to break with tradition and "stop toppling
regimes and overthrowing governments." ' At every turn, Trump has joined the ranks of the warhawks he once criticized.
Trump is now marching in lockstep with the foreign policy establishment. In Libya, in Sudan, in Somalia, in Iran, in Lebanon,
he is faithfully implementing the neocon agenda. Trump "the peacemaker" is no where to be found, while Trump the 'madman with a knife'
is on the loose.
Is that why Mueller let Trump off the hook? Was there a quid pro quo: "You follow our foreign policy directives and we'll make
Mueller disappear?
It sure looks like it. play_arrow 2 Reply reply Report flag
the report was finished last august. hed got all the juice in that squeeze. but i also guess he got a call from somebodys in
the GOG mafia[continuity of .gov] deepstate after all is their little bitch
He had to stop before he implicated himself. For instance, still waiting on "the why" he never put Steele or McCabe or Hillary
or Perkins Coie or Rosenstein or Comey etc under oath when it was...THEY... who supplied false evidence to a FISA court
, "evidence gathered" (according to Steele) from...ta daaah!...Russians ;-)
You can drive yourself crazy wondering whether it was all theater from the start, or whether they put a gun to the head of
the guy who was going to expose it was theater until he started playing along. End result, theater.
exactly. Just like you can wonder why Justice John Roberts turned on Obamacare and **** on conservatives. Was he sincere or
did he get a 3:00 am phone call that if he didn't uphold it, his wife and kids would die in an unfortunate accident?
Oh, I dunno...maybe because even with a crack team of demoncraft operatives, Deep State Hillary deadenders and a limitless
supply of federal funding even they couldn't come up with "Russian collusion" because...none ever existed? ;-)
In case after case, Maddow and others in corporate media used crafted language that was
speculation designed to appear as cold hard facts to the the viewer. This was no only bad
reporting, It was a conspiracy of sorts. Maddow regularly would say, "If Russia did this, it
would be an attack on the US..." Leaving the viewer with the impression that "Russia did
this!". Then she would go to stir the cauldron for war.. This rises to the level of a
crime.
Since when is Hilary Clinton on the left? Since when are the are e-mails of the democratic
party protected government secrets? Are the Afghanistan and Iraq war logs important? Is it
strange that after 18 long years of war there is no anti-war movement? Are the people
reporting on Cable News real journalists? Well done Aaron and Chris!
democrats would rather Turmp be president than Bernie, they will throw the election before
they let Bernie create change... but then even if he is elected, it wont do much good with
corporate shills in congress in senate
I enjoy listening to Aaron, a person of integrity and also a down to earth, interesting
journalist who has worked hard to uncover the truth on this subject and knows it backwards
and forwards. I like when he can't help but laugh at certain absurdities in mainstream media
coverage of Russiagate.
I've got to admit,I get a massive dopamine rush hearing these two
sane, intelligent, critical thinkers, skillfully dissect this convoluted quadrafuck that has
wasted some much of our precious time. I literally feel washed clean for a
moment.
You can count the number of real journalists left in the US on two hands. Here are two of
the best and the bravest. Thank you, RT, for providing us with a platform for real
journalists.
as an outsider.....i view the whole thing as a smokescreen...........keeping people
occupied while planning & carrying out worse things that are being done in the
dark..........
Aaron Mate's courageous stance regarding Palestinians deserves all my respect and support.
His analysts of Rusiagate and all the fanfare associated with the so called investigations
seems most accurate.
"... FARA requires all individuals and organizations acting on behalf of foreign governments to registered with the Department of Justice and to report their sources of income and contacts. Federal prosecutors have claimed that Butina was reporting back to a Russian official while deliberating cultivating influential figures in the United States as potential resources to advance Russian interests, a process that is described in intelligence circles as "spotting and assessing." ..."
"... Selective enforcement of FARA was, ironically, revealed through evidence collected and included in the Mueller Report relating to the only foreign country that actually sought to obtain favors from the incoming Trump Administration. That country was Israel and the individual who drove the process and should have been fined and required to register with FARA was President Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner. As Kushner also had considerable "flight risk" to Israel, which has no extradition treaty with the United States, he should also have been imprisoned. ..."
"... Kushner reportedly aggressively pressured members of the Trump transition team to contact foreign ambassadors at the United Nations to convince them to vote against or abstain from voting on the December 2016 United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 condemning Israeli settlements. The resolution passed when the US, acting under direction of President Barack Obama, abstained, but incoming National Security Adviser Michael Flynn did indeed contact the Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak twice and asked for Moscow's cooperation, which was refused. Kushner, who is so close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the latter has slept at the Kushner apartment in New York City, was clearly acting in response to direction coming from the Israeli government. ..."
"... Another interesting tidbit revealed by Mueller relates to Trump foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos's ties to Israel over an oil development scheme. Mueller "ultimately determined that the evidence was not sufficient to obtain or sustain a conviction" that Papadopoulos "committed a crime or crimes by acting as an unregistered agent of the Israeli government." Mueller went looking for a Russian connection but found only Israel and decided to do nothing about it. ..."
The Mueller Special Counsel inquiry is far from over even though a
final report on its findings has been issued. Although the investigation had a mandate to
explore all aspects of the alleged Russian interference in the 2016 US election, from the start
the focus was on the possibility that some members of the Trump campaign had colluded with the
Kremlin to influence the outcome of the election to favor the GOP candidate. Even though that
could not be demonstrated, many prominent Trump critics, to include Laurence Tribe of the
Harvard Law School,
are demanding that the investigation continue until Congress has discovered "the full facts
of Russia's interference [to include] the ways in which that interference is continuing in
anticipation of 2020, and the full story of how the president and his team welcomed, benefited
from, repaid, and obstructed lawful investigation into that interference and the president's
cooperation with it."
Tribe should perhaps read the report more carefully. While it does indeed confirm some
Russian meddling, it does not demonstrate that anyone in the Trump circle benefited from it or
cooperated with it. The objective currently being promoted by dedicated Trump critics like
Tribe is to make a case to impeach the president based on the alleged enormity of the Russian
activity, which is not borne out by the facts: the Russian role was intermittent, small scale
and basically ineffective.
One interesting aspect of the Mueller inquiry and the ongoing Russophobia that it has
generated is the essential hypocrisy of the Washington Establishment. It is generally agreed
that whatever Russia actually did, it did not affect the outcome of the election. That the
Kremlin was using intelligence resources to act against Hillary Clinton should surprise no one
as she described Russian President Vladimir Putin as Hitler and also made clear that she would
be taking a very hard line against Moscow.
The anti-Russia frenzy in Washington generated by the vengeful Democrats and an
Establishment fearful of a loss of privilege and entitlement claimed a number of victims. Among
them was Russian citizen Maria Butina, who has a court date and will very likely be
sentenced tomorrow .
Regarding Butina, the United States Department of Justice would apparently have you believe
that the Kremlin sought to subvert the five-million-member strong National Rifle Association
(NRA) by having a Russian citizen take out a life membership in the organization with the
intention of corrupting it and turning it into an instrument for subverting American democracy.
Maria Butina has, by the way, a long and well documented history as an advocate for gun
ownership and was a co-founder in Russia of Right to Bear Arms, which is not an intelligence
front organization of some kind. It is rather a genuine lobbying group with an active
membership and agenda. Contrary to what has been reported in the mainstream media, Russians can
own guns but the licensing and registration procedures are long and complicated, which Right to
Bear Arms, modeling itself on the NRA, is seeking to change.
Butina, a graduate student at American University, is now in a federal prison, having been
charged with collusion and failure to register as an agent of the Russian Federation. She was
arrested on July 15, 2018. It is decidedly unusual to arrest and confine someone who has failed
to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938 (FARA) , but she has not been granted bail because, as a
Russian citizen, she is considered to be a "flight risk," likely to try to flee the US and
return home.
FARA requires all individuals and organizations acting on behalf of foreign governments to
registered with the Department of Justice and to report their sources of income and contacts.
Federal prosecutors have claimed that Butina was reporting back to a Russian official while
deliberating cultivating influential figures in the United States as potential resources to
advance Russian interests, a process that is described in intelligence circles as "spotting and
assessing."
Maria eventually pleaded guilty of not registering under FARA to mitigate any punishment,
hoping that she would be allowed to return to Russia after a few months in prison on top of the
nine months she has already served. She has reportedly fully cooperated the US authorities,
turning over documents, answering questions and undergoing hours of interrogation by federal
investigators before and after her guilty plea.
Maria Butina basically did nothing that damaged US security and it is difficult to see where
her behavior was even criminal, but the prosecution is asking for 18 months in prison for her
in addition to the time served. She would be, in fact, one of only a handful of individuals
ever to be imprisoned over FARA, and they all come from countries that Washington considers to
be unfriendly, to include Cuba, Saddam's Iraq and Russia. Normally the failure to comply with
FARA is handled with a fine and compulsory registration.
Butina was essentially convicted of the crime of being Russian at the wrong time and in the
wrong place and she is paying for it with prison. Selective enforcement of FARA was,
ironically, revealed through evidence collected and included in the Mueller Report relating to
the only foreign country that actually sought to obtain favors from the incoming Trump
Administration. That country was Israel and the individual who drove the process and should
have been fined and required to register with FARA was President Donald Trump's son-in-law
Jared Kushner. As Kushner also had considerable "flight risk" to Israel, which has no
extradition treaty with the United States, he should also have been imprisoned.
Kushner reportedly aggressively
pressured members of the Trump transition team to contact foreign ambassadors at the United
Nations to convince them to vote against or abstain from voting on the December 2016 United
Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 condemning Israeli settlements. The resolution passed
when the US, acting under direction of President Barack Obama, abstained, but incoming National
Security Adviser Michael Flynn did indeed contact the Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak twice
and asked for Moscow's cooperation, which was refused. Kushner, who is so close to Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the latter has slept at the Kushner apartment in New York
City, was clearly acting in response to direction coming from the Israeli government.
Another interesting tidbit revealed by Mueller relates to Trump foreign policy adviser
George Papadopoulos's ties to Israel over an oil development scheme. Mueller "ultimately
determined that the evidence was not sufficient to obtain or sustain a conviction" that
Papadopoulos "committed a crime or crimes by acting as an unregistered agent of the Israeli
government." Mueller went looking for a Russian connection but found only Israel and decided to
do nothing about it.
As so often is the case, inquiries that begin by looking for foreign interference in
American politics start by focusing on Washington's adversaries but then comes up with Israel.
Noam Chomsky
described it best "First of all, if you're interested in foreign interference in our
elections, whatever the Russians may have done barely counts or weighs in the balance as
compared with what another state does, openly, brazenly and with enormous support. Netanyahu
goes directly to Congress, without even informing the president, and speaks to Congress, with
overwhelming applause, to try to undermine the president's policies -- what happened with Obama
and Netanyahu in 2015. Did Putin come to give an address to the joint sessions of Congress
trying to -- calling on them to reverse US policy, without even informing the president? And
that's just a tiny bit of this overwhelming influence."
Maria Butina is in jail for doing nothing while Jared Kushner, who needed a godfathered
security clearance due to his close Israeli ties, struts through the White House as senior
advisor to the president in spite of the fact that he used his nepotistically obtained access
to openly promote the interests of a foreign government. Mueller knows all about it but
recommended nothing, as if it didn't happen. The media is silent. Congress will do nothing. As
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi put it "We in Congress stand by
Israel. In Congress, we speak with one voice on the subject of Israel." Indeed.
"... How is it that the Deep State made it possible for Trump to win when it did almost everything it could to derail his chances, including the use of Obama, FBI, CIA, MI6, NSA, etc? ..."
"... Regardless one's feelings about Trump, what was done as Whitney points out is a massive danger to the fundamental aspects of the democratic process, and that's not being shown the light-of-day by BigLie Media. ..."
Mike Whitney
writes about one aspect of Russiagate that several of us have noted--the use of the FBI
and CIA to meddle in the 2016 campaign in an attempt to aid Clinton--an aspect that blows up
some of the hypotheses floated here. He begins thusly:
"Did the FBI spy on the Trump campaign?-- Yes
"Did the FBI place spies in the Trump campaign?-- Yes
"Do we know the names of the spies and how they operated?-- Yes
"Were the spies trying to entrap Trump campaign assistants in order to gather information
on Trump?-- Yes
"Did the spies try to elicit information from Trump campaign assistants in order to
justify a wider investigation and more extensive surveillance?-- Yes
"Were the spies placed in the Trump campaign based on improperly obtained FISA warrants?--
Yes
"Did the FBI agents procure these warrants based on false or misleading information?--
Yes
"Could the FBI establish 'probable cause' that Trump had committed a crime or 'colluded'
with Russia?-- No
"So the 'spying' was illegal?-- Yes
"Have many of the people who authorized the spying, already been identified in criminal
referrals presented to the Department of Justice?-- Yes
"Have the media explained the importance of these criminal referrals or the impact that
spying has on free elections?-- No
"Is the DOJ's Inspector General currently investigating whether senior-level agents in the
FBI committed crimes by improperly obtaining warrants to spy on members of the Trump team?--
Yes
"Did the FBI spy on the Trump campaign to give Hillary Clinton an unfair advantage in the
presidential race?-- Yes
"Did the FBI spy on the Trump campaign to gather incriminating information on Trump that
could be used to blackmail, intimidate or impeach him in the future?-- Yes
"Does spying pose a threat to our elections and to our democracy?-- Yes
"Do many people know that there were spies placed in the Trump campaign?-- Yes
"Have these people effectively used that information to their advantage?-- No
"Have they launched any type of public relations offensive that would draw more attention
to the critical issue of spying on a political campaign?-- No
"Have they saturated the airwaves with the truth about 'spying' the same way their rivals
have spread their disinformation about 'collusion'?-- No" [Emphasis in Original]
That's a little more than half of what Whitney lists that's quite damning as we must
admit. That it's not being discussed anywhere outside of a few social media accounts means
Trump could use the "precedent" set by Obama to do the same in 2020. Shouldn't we be
concerned about that possibility? How is it that the Deep State made it possible for Trump to
win when it did almost everything it could to derail his chances, including the use of Obama,
FBI, CIA, MI6, NSA, etc?
Regardless one's feelings about Trump, what was done as Whitney points out is a massive
danger to the fundamental aspects of the democratic process, and that's not being shown the
light-of-day by BigLie Media. And we can also see why Pelosi and Clinton don't want
Impeachment proceedings to occur as the above information would finally become far more
overt/public than it is currently.
"Carnage needs to destroyed" mentality is dominant among the USA neoliberal elite and drives the policy toward Russia.
They all supported neoconservative extremely ambitious foreign policy agenda directed on weakening Russian and
establishing of world dominance. It also seems clear that influential journalists, such as Glenn Simpson was before founding Fusion GPS, along with his wife Mary Jacoby, have been strongly involved in this
Notable quotes:
"... There is reason to suspect that some former and very likely current employees of the FBI have been colluding with elements in other American and British intelligence agencies, in particular the CIA and MI6, in support of an extremely ambitious foreign policy agenda for a very long time. It also seems clear that influential journalists, such as Glenn Simpson was before founding Fusion GPS, along with his wife Mary Jacoby, have been strongly involved in this. ..."
"... This agenda has involved hopes for 'régime change' in Russia, whether as the result of an oligarchic coup, a popular revolt, or some combination of both. Also central have been hopes for a further 'rollback' of Russia influence in the post-Soviet space, both in areas now independent, such as Ukraine, and also ones still part of the Russian Federation, notably Chechnya. ..."
"... And, crucially, it involved exploiting the retreat of Russian power from the Middle East for 'régime change' projects which it was hoped would provide a definitive solution to the – inherently intractable – security problems of a Jewish settler state in the area. ..."
"... Important support for these strategies was provided by the 'StratCom' network centred around the late Boris Berezovsky, which clearly collaborated closely with MI6. As was apparent from the witness list at Sir Robert Owen's Inquiry into the death of Alexander Litvinenko, which produced a report based essentially on a recycling of claims made by the network's members, key players were on your side of the Atlantic – notably Alex Goldfarb, Yuri Shvets, and Yuri Felshtinsky. ..."
"... it seems to me the usa and uk have been tied at the hip for a very long time... when it comes to foreign affairs policy and wars - the one will always vouch for the other without hesitation... it tells me the relationship is really deep.. ..."
"... I and my friends consider it a given that most, if not all, anglo-zionist moves in the ME are to "provide a definitive solution to the – inherently intractable – security problems of a Jewish settler state in the area. " It is an open secret that the izzies are the reason why a few Russians, some Turks, lots of Kurds and countless Arabs are dying in the Syrian battlefields. Another open secret: the takfiris and kurds have been, and are, supported by the West. That the "masters of the universe™" have been conceiving and doubling down on such disastrous policies give lie to their much-vaunted "intelligence". ..."
"... It is the very FACT of Trump even getting elected at ALL which outrages and terrifies them so much. They are used to seeing themselves as successful manipulators and engineers of every major event. They were engineering the whole electoral battlespace to get Clinton elected. The mere fact of Trump's victory in the teeth of their Electoral Engineering for Clinton is an act of defiance which they will not tolerate. ..."
"... And if they fail to bring Trump down at all, they will stand revealed as being defeatable. And this is their big fear. That if people see they have defeated the Borg once on keeping Trump in the teeth of Borg's efforts, that people might try to defeat and smash down the Borg on another issue. And then another. And then another after that. ..."
"... Because it is not possible to do on fundamental level yet, especially with US foreign policy establishment and so called consensus being built almost entirely, in ideological and, most importantly, cadres senses, on the ultimate exceptionalist agenda in which Russia is the ultimate obstacle and enemy. Establishment in saturated with neocons and likes. They are the swamp. ..."
"... They act and believe that they are Olympians. You have to wait for them to age and die before any substantive change in Fortress West's posture; say 2040 ..."
"... In 1977 Zbigniew Brzezinski, as President Carter's National Security Adviser, forms the Nationalities Working Group (NWG) dedicated to the idea of weakening the Soviet Union by inflaming its ethnic tensions. ..."
"... State Department official Henry Precht will later recall that Brzezinski had the idea "that Islamic forces could be used against the Soviet Union. The theory was, there was an arc of crisis, and so an arc of Islam could be mobilized to contain the Soviets." [Scott, 2007, pp. 67] In November 1978, President Carter appointed George Ball head of a special White House Iran task force under Brzezinski. Ball recommends the US should drop support for the Shah of Iran and support the radical Islamist opposition of Ayatollah Khomeini. This idea is based on ideas from British Islamic expert Dr. Bernard Lewis, who advocates the balkanization of the entire Muslim Near East along tribal and religious lines. The chaos would spread in what he also calls an "arc of crisis" and ultimately destabilize the Muslim regions of the Soviet Union ..."
"... About relation Steele-MI6, well, you never leave your IS. Or to put it in another way, you are never out of the scope of your past IS ..."
"... No, three years at tops and could be much sooner if dimes starting dropping by exposed people that don't want to take the fall for their superiors whom they always detested. One possible thing to get the process started sooner is if the recent Russian Intelligence delegation to DC that Smoothie mentions on another thread gave the current administration, as a diplomatic courtesy of course, the audio recordings of Madame Sectary Nuland's infamous mental meltdown at Kaliningrad. No telling what beans were spilled in her moment of panic, but I am willing to bet key names were dropped. Either way the time is coming. ..."
"... Especially, once American policy-makers who saw and experienced war (Ike, George Marshall's generation) departed things started to roll down hill with Reagan bringing on board a whole collection of neocons. ..."
"... Unawareness is always dangerous, a complete blackout in relations between two nuclear powers is more than dangerous--it is completely reckless. Again, the way CW 1.0 is perceived in the current US "elites" it becomes extremely tempting to repeat it. Electing Hillary was another step in unleashing CW 2.0 by people who have no understanding of what they were doing. ..."
"... Obama started crushing US-Russian relations before any campaigns were launched and before Trump was even seriously considered a GOP nominee, let alone a real contender. New confrontation hinged on HRC being elected. In fact, she was one of the major driving forces behind a serious of geopolitical anti-Russian moves. Visceral Russo-phobia became a feature in HRC campaign long before any Steele's Dossier. This was a program. ..."
"... IMO, the bigger problem for American not shying away from wars, or being silent about them , is when your home, your mom and dad' home, the town you grew up in, are immune and away from the war. ..."
"... The security and safety of the two oceans, encourages or at least, in an all volunteer military makes it a secondary problem for regular people, to worry about. ..."
"... A particular interesting feature of those on the British side – in which we now know Christopher Steele must have played a leading role – were the bizarre gyrations those responsible were going through trying to explain away the extraordinary fact that when he had broken the story of his poisoning, Litvinenko had pointed the finger of suspicion at his Italian associate Mario Scaramella. ..."
"... Of course later reports in the Steele Dossier go hand in hand with a larger public relations campaign. Creating reality? Irony alert: as informer/source I would by then know what the other side wants to hear. ..."
Steele, Shvets, Levinson, Litvinenko and the 'Billion Dollar Don.'
In the light of the suggestion in the Nunes memo that Steele was 'a longtime FBI source' it seems worth sketching out some background,
which may also make it easier to see some possible reasons why he 'was desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate
about him not being president.'
There is reason to suspect that some former and very likely current employees of the FBI have been colluding with elements
in other American and British intelligence agencies, in particular the CIA and MI6, in support of an extremely ambitious foreign
policy agenda for a very long time. It also seems clear that influential journalists, such as Glenn Simpson was before founding Fusion
GPS, along with his wife Mary Jacoby, have been strongly involved in this.
This agenda has involved hopes for 'régime change' in Russia, whether as the result of an oligarchic coup, a popular revolt, or
some combination of both. Also central have been hopes for a further 'rollback' of Russia influence in the post-Soviet space, both
in areas now independent, such as Ukraine, and also ones still part of the Russian Federation, notably Chechnya.
And, crucially, it involved exploiting the retreat of Russian power from the Middle East for 'régime change' projects which it
was hoped would provide a definitive solution to the – inherently intractable – security problems of a Jewish settler state in the
area.
Important support for these strategies was provided by the 'StratCom' network centred around the late Boris Berezovsky, which
clearly collaborated closely with MI6. As was apparent from the witness list at Sir Robert Owen's Inquiry into the death of Alexander
Litvinenko, which produced a report based essentially on a recycling of claims made by the network's members, key players were on
your side of the Atlantic – notably Alex Goldfarb, Yuri Shvets, and Yuri Felshtinsky.
The question of what links these had, or did not have, with elements in U.S. intelligence agencies is thus a critical one.
In making some sense of it, the fact that one key figure we know to have been involved in this network was missing at the Inquiry
– the former FBI agent Robert Levinson, who disappeared on the Iranian island of Kish in March 2007 – is important.
Unfortunately, I only recently came across a book on Levinson published in 2016 by the 'New York Times' journalist Barry Meier,
which is now hopefully winging its way across the Atlantic. From the accounts of the book I have seen, such as one by Jeff Stein
in 'Newsweek', it seems likely that its author did not look at any of the evidence presented at Owen's Inquiry.
Had he done so, Meier might have discovered that his subject had been, as it were, 'top supporting actor' in the first fumbling
attempt by Christopher Steele et al to produce a plausible-sounding scenario as to the background to Litvinenko's death. A Radio
4 programme on 16 December 2006, presented by the veteran BBC presenter Tom Mangold, had been wholly devoted to an account by Shvets,
backed up by Levinson. Both of these were, like Litvinenko, supposed to be impartial 'due diligence' operatives.
The notion that any of them might have connections with Western intelligence agencies was not considered. The – publicly available
– evidence of the involvement of Shvets, whose surname means 'cobbler' or 'shoemaker' in Ukrainian, in the processing of the tapes
of conversations involving the former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma supposedly recorded by Major Melnychenko, which had played
a crucial role in the 2004-5 'Orange Revolution' was not mentioned.
Still less was it mentioned that claims that the – very dangerous – late Soviet Kolchuga system, which made it possible the kind
of identification of incoming aircraft which radar had traditionally done, without sending out signals which made the destruction
of the facilities doing it possible, had been sold by Kuchma to Iraq had proven spurious.
What Shvets had done had been to take – genuine – audio in which Kuchma had discussed a possible sale, and edit it to suggest
a sale had been completed.
(See http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160613090333/https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/evidence .)
As a former television current affairs producer, I can talk to you of the marvels which London audio editors can produce, very
happily. Unfortunately, the days when not all BBC and 'Guardian' journalists were corrupt stenographers for corrupt and incompetent
spooks, as Mangold and his like have been for Steele and Levinson, are long gone.
All this has become particularly relevant now, given that Simpson has placed the notorious Jewish Ukrainian mobster Semyon Mogilevich
and the 'Solntsevskaya Bratva' mafia group centre stage in his accounts not simply of Trump and Manafort, but also of William Browder.
For most of the 'Nineties, Levinson had been a, if not the, lead FBI investigator on Mogilevich.
(On this, see the 1999 BBC 'Panorama' programme 'The Billion Dollar Don', also presented by Tom Mangold, which has extensive interviews
both with Mogilevich and Levinson at
In the months leading up to Levinson's disappearance, a key priority for the advocates of the strategy I have described was to
prevent it being totally derailed by the patently catastrophic outcome of the Iraqi adventure.
Compounding the problem was the fact that this had created the 'Shia Crescent', which in turn exacerbated the potential 'existential
threat' to Israel posed by the steadily increasing range, accuracy and numbers of missiles available to Hizbullah in hardened positions
north of the Litani.
These, obviously, provided both a 'deterrent' for that organisation and Iran, and also a radical threat to the whole notion that
somehow Israel could ever be a 'safe haven' for Jews, against the supposedly ineradicable disposition of the 'goyim' sooner or later
to, as it were, revert to type. The dreadful thought that Israel might not be necessary had to be resisted at all costs.
What followed from the disaster unleashed by the – Anglo-American – 'own goal' in toppling Saddam was, ironically, a need on the
part of key players to 'double down.' Above all, it was necessary for many of those involved to counter suggestions from the Russian
side that going around smashing up 'régimes' that one might not like sometimes blew up in one's face.
Even more threatening were suggestions from the Russian side that it was foolish to think one could use jihadists without risking
'blowback', and that there might be an overwhelming common interest in combating Islamic extremism.
Another priority was to counter the pushback in the American 'intelligence community' and military, which was to produce the drastic
downgrading of the threat posed by the Iranian nuclear programme in the November 2007 NIE and then the resignation of Admiral William
Fallon as head of 'Centcom' the following March.
So in 2005 Shvets came to London. He and his audio editors had another 'bite at the cherry' of the Melnychenko tapes, so that
material that did in fact establish that both the SBU and FSB had collaborated with Mogilevich could be employed to make it seem
that Putin had a close personal relationship with the mobster.
All kinds of supposedly respectable American and British academics, like Professors Karen Dawisha and Robert Service, have fallen
for this, hook, line and sinker. It gives a new meaning to the term 'useful idiot.'
(See http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160613090333/https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/evidence .)
In a letter sent in December that year by Litvinenko to the 'Mitrokhin Commission', for which his Italian associate Mario Scaramella
was a consultant, this was used in an attempt to demonstrate that Mogilevich, while acting as an agent for the FSB and under Putin's
personal 'krysha', had attempted to supply a 'mini atomic bomb' – aka 'suitcase nuke' – to Al Qaeda. Shortly after the letter was
sent Scaramella departed on a trip to Washington, where he appears to have got access to Aldrich Ames.
(See http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160613090333/https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/evidence .)
At precisely this time, as Meier explains, Levinson was in the process of being recruited by a lady called Anne Jablonski who
then worked as a CIA analyst. It appears that she was furious at the failure of the operational side at the Agency to produce evidence
which would have established that Iran did indeed have an ongoing nuclear programme, and she may well have hoped would implicate
Russia in supplying materials.
There are grounds to suspect that one of the things that Berezovsky and Shvets were doing was fabricating such 'evidence.' Whether
Levinson was involved in such attempts, or genuinely looking for evidence he was convinced must be there, I cannot say. It appears
that he fell for a rather elementary entrapment operation – which could well have been organised with the collaboration of Russian
intelligence. (People do get fed up with being framed, particular if 'régime change' is the goal.)
It also seems likely that, quite possibly in a different but related entrapment operation, related to propaganda wars in which
claims and counter claims about a polonium-beryllium 'initiator' as the crucial missing part which might make a 'suitcase nuke' functional,
Litvinenko accidentally ingested fatal quantities of polonium. A good deal of evidence suggests that this may have been at Berezovsky's
offices on the night before he was supposedly assassinated.
It was, obviously, important for Steele et al to ensure that nobody looked at the 'StratCom' wars about 'suitcase nukes.' Here,
a figure who has played a key role in such wars in relation to Syria plays an interesting minor one in the story.
Some time following the destruction of the case for an immediate war by the November 2007 NIE, a chemical weapons specialist called
Dan Kaszeta, who had worked in the White House for twelve years, moved to London.
In 2011, in addition to founding a consultancy called 'Strongpoint Security', he began a writing career with articles in 'CBRNe
World.' Later, he would become the conduit through which the notorious 'hexamine hypothesis', supposedly clinching proof that the
Syrian government was responsible for the sarin incidents at Khan Sheikhoun, Ghouta, Saraqeb, and Khan Al-Asal, was disseminated.
Having been forced by the threat of a case being opened against them under human rights law into resuming the inquest into Litvinenko's
death, in August 2012 the British authorities appointed Sir Robert Owen to conduct it. (There are many honest judges in Britain,
but obviously, if one sets out to find someone who will 'cover up' for the incompetence and corruption of people like Steele, as
Lord Hutton did before him, you can find them.)
That same month, a piece appeared in 'CBRNe World' with the the strapline: 'Dan Kaszeta looks into the ultimate press story: Suitcase
nukes', and the main title 'Carry on or checked bags?' Among the grounds he gives for playing down the scare:
'Some components rely on materials with shelf life. Tritium, for example, is used in many nuclear weapon designs and has a twelve
year half-life. Polonium, used in neutron initiators in some earlier types of weapon designs, has a very short halflife. US documents
state that every nuclear weapon has "limited life components" that require periodic replacement (do an internet search for nuclear
limited life components and you can read for weeks).'
What Kaszeta has actually described are the reasons why polonium is a perfect 'StratCom' instrument. In terms of scientific plausibility,
in fact there were no 'suitcase nukes', and in any case 'initiators' using polonium had been abandoned very early on, in favour of
ones which lasted longer.
For 'StratCom' scenarios, as experience with the 'hexamine hypothesis' has proved, scientific plausibility can be irrelevant.
What polonium provides is a means of suggesting that Al Qaeda have in fact got hold of a nuclear device which they could easily
smuggle into, say, Rome or New York, or indeed Moscow, but there is a crucial missing component which the FSB is trying to provide
to them. By the same token, of course, that missing component could be depicted as one that Berezovsky and Litvinenko are conspiring
to suppl to the Chechen insurgents.
In addition, the sole known source of global supply is the Avangard plant at Sarov in Russia, so the substance is naturally suited
for 'StratCom' directed against that country, which its intelligence services would – rather naturally – try to make 'boomerang.'
According to Glenn Simpson, Christopher Steele is a 'boy scout.' This seems to me quite wrong – but, even if it were true, would
you want to unleash a 'boy scout' into these kinds of intrigue?
As it is not clear why Kaszeta introduced his – accurate but irrelevant – point about polonium into an article which was concerned
with scientific plausibility, one is left with an interesting question as to whether he cut his teeth on 'StratCom' attempting to
ensure that nobody seriously interested in CBRN science followed an obvious lead.
In relation to the question of whether current FBI personnel had been involved in the kind of 'StratCom' exercises, I have been
describing, a critical issue is the involvement of Shvets and Levinson in the Alexander Khonanykhine affair back in the 'Nineties,
and the latter's use of claims about the Solntsevskaya to prevent the key figure's extradition. But that is a matter for another
day.
A corollary of all this is that we cannot – yet at least – be absolutely confident that the account in the Nunes memo, according
to which Steele was suspended and then dismissed as an FBI source for what the organisation is reported to define as 'the most serious
of violations' – the unauthorised disclosure of a relationship with the organisation – is necessarily wholly accurate.
Who did and did not authorise which disclosures to the media, up to and including the extraordinary decision to have the full
dossier, including claims about Aleksej Gubarev and the Alfa oligarchs, in flagrant disregard of the obvious risks of defamation
suits, and who may be trying to pass the buck to others, remains I think less than totally clear.
thanks david... fascinating overview and conjecture..
it seems to me the usa and uk have been tied at the hip for a very long time... when it comes to foreign affairs policy
and wars - the one will always vouch for the other without hesitation... it tells me the relationship is really deep..
Thank you very. As ever you have illuminated a few more things for me. Kaszeta's involvement is interesting. He is someone
I am in the middle of researching in relation to Higgins and Bellingcat.
I think the English are using you, they are unsentimental empirical people that only do these that benefit the Number One.
The chief beneficiary of the Coup in Iran was England and not US.
That Newsweek piece about Levinson is very superficial to me.
Re: Levinson
# Who suggested to who 'first' the Iran caper...Anne Jablonski to Levinson or Levinson to Jablonski? It was reported earlier
by Meier that in December 2005, when Levinson was pitching Jablonski on projects he might take on when his CIA contract was approved
he sent her a lengthy memo about Dawud's potential as an informant.
# Ira Silverman, the Iran hating NBC guy, pitched a Iraq caper to Levinson with Dawud Salahuddin, as his Iran contact and Levinson
went to Jablonski with it.
# And what was with Boris Birshstein, a Russian organized crime figure who had fled to Israel and Oleg Deripaska, the "aluminum
czar" of Russia whose organized crime contacts have kept him from entering the United States jumping in to help find Levinson?
The FBI allowed Deripaska in for two visits in 2009 in exchange for his alleged help in locating Levinson but obviously nothing
came of it.
I think there were more little agents/agendas in this than Levinson and Jablonski and US CIA.
As usual a wonderful analysis. I admire your insight, integrity and courage. I wish you could write more on why the Borg
is so much against Trump, even though they have Kushner, Adelson and Co. running interference for them.
I and my friends consider it a given that most, if not all, anglo-zionist moves in the ME are to "provide a definitive
solution to the – inherently intractable – security problems of a Jewish settler state in the area. " It is an open secret that
the izzies are the reason why a few Russians, some Turks, lots of Kurds and countless Arabs are dying in the Syrian battlefields.
Another open secret: the takfiris and kurds have been, and are, supported by the West. That the "masters of the universe™" have
been conceiving and doubling down on such disastrous policies give lie to their much-vaunted "intelligence".
"There is reason to suspect that some former and very likely current employees of the FBI have been colluding with elements
in other American and British intelligence agencies, in particular the CIA and MI6, in support of an extremely ambitious foreign
policy agenda for a very long time. "
David as usual fascinating work connecting the dots. One question that comes to my mind is about the above point you are making.
Is it your understanding or believe that these IC individuals on both side of Atlantic, are pursuing/forcing their (on behalf
of the Borg) foreign policy agenda outside of their respected seating governments? If not, why is it that incoming administration
cannot stop them? So far I can't see any strategic changes on US foreign policy toward ME or Russia, at tactical level yes but
not fundamentally.
I am not David Habakkuk, obviously. But I will venture a little opinion anyway. It is not enough that the Borgists get their
policy preferences. If it were, then Kushner, Adelson and Co. running interference would be enough for them.
It is the very FACT of Trump even getting elected at ALL which outrages and terrifies them so much. They are used to seeing
themselves as successful manipulators and engineers of every major event. They were engineering the whole electoral battlespace
to get Clinton elected. The mere fact of Trump's victory in the teeth of their Electoral Engineering for Clinton is an act of
defiance which they will not tolerate.
And if they fail to bring Trump down at all, they will stand revealed as being defeatable. And this is their big fear.
That if people see they have defeated the Borg once on keeping Trump in the teeth of Borg's efforts, that people might try to
defeat and smash down the Borg on another issue. And then another. And then another after that.
So that is why the Borg cares so much. They view the Trump election as an insurgency, and they view themselves as waging a
counterinsurgency, which they dare not lose.
Thanks for your analysis. I always enjoy and learn from your posts. I wish you would post more often.
In my non-expert opinion, the Borg and the media were all in for Hillary. They were convinced that she was gonna win. To curry
favor with the Empress who would be certainly crowned after the election they were eager and convinced that their lawlessness
would become a badge for promotion and plum positions in her administration. In their conceit, they believed they could kill two
birds with one stroke. They could vilify Putin and create the mass hysteria to checkmate him, while at the same time disparage
and frame Trump as The Manchurian Candidate to seal their certain electoral victory.
Unfortunately for them voters in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin didn't buy their sales pitch despite the overwhelming
media barrage from all corners. Even news publications who have only endorsed Republican candidates for President for over a century
endorsed her.
Trump's election win caused panic among the political establishment, the media and the Deep State. They were already all-in.
Their only choice was to double down and get Trump impeached. Now their conspiracy is beginning to unravel. They are doing everything
possible to forestall their Armageddon. Of course they have many allies. This battle is gonna be interesting to watch. Trump is
clearly getting many Congressional Republicans on side as his base of Deplorables remains solidly behind him. That is what's befuddling
the Borg pundits.
So far I can't see any strategic changes on US foreign policy toward ME or Russia, at tactical level yes but not fundamentally.
Because it is not possible to do on fundamental level yet, especially with US foreign policy establishment and so called
consensus being built almost entirely, in ideological and, most importantly, cadres senses, on the ultimate exceptionalist agenda
in which Russia is the ultimate obstacle and enemy. Establishment in saturated with neocons and likes. They are the swamp.
This swamp (Borg, deep state, etc.) still thinks that it can use Cold War 1.0 Playbook and address very real and dangerous
American economic issues. They are wrong, since most of them didn't read the playbook correctly to start with.
They act and believe that they are Olympians. You have to wait for them to age and die before any substantive change in Fortress
West's posture; say 2040.
You are right CWII is very much desired and on agenda, but i am not sure of setup, the setup/board has been changed tremendously
and IMO benefits the Asian side of Bosphorus, for one thing technology is no longer exclusive, and financial burden is heavier
on atlantic side.
''Establishment in saturated with neocons and likes. They are the swamp. ''
The locust keep trying and trying, destruction is their life's work.
'1977-1981: Nationalities Working Group Advocates Using Militant Islam Against Soviet Union'
In 1977 Zbigniew Brzezinski, as President Carter's National Security Adviser, forms the Nationalities Working Group (NWG)
dedicated to the idea of weakening the Soviet Union by inflaming its ethnic tensions. The Islamic populations are regarded
as prime targets. Richard Pipes, the father of Daniel Pipes, takes over the leadership of the NWG in 1981. Pipes predicts that
with the right encouragement Soviet Muslims will "explode into genocidal fury" against Moscow. According to Richard Cottam, a
former CIA official who advised the Carter administration at the time, after the fall of the Shah of Iran in 1978, Brzezinski
favored a "de facto alliance with the forces of Islamic resurgence, and with the Republic of Iran." [Dreyfuss, 2005, pp. 241,
251 - 256]
'November 1978-February 1979: Some US Officials Want to Support Radical Muslims to Contain Soviet Union'
State Department official Henry Precht will later recall that Brzezinski had the idea "that Islamic forces could be used
against the Soviet Union. The theory was, there was an arc of crisis, and so an arc of Islam could be mobilized to contain the
Soviets." [Scott, 2007, pp. 67] In November 1978, President Carter appointed George Ball head of a special White House Iran task
force under Brzezinski. Ball recommends the US should drop support for the Shah of Iran and support the radical Islamist opposition
of Ayatollah Khomeini. This idea is based on ideas from British Islamic expert Dr. Bernard Lewis, who advocates the balkanization
of the entire Muslim Near East along tribal and religious lines. The chaos would spread in what he also calls an "arc of crisis"
and ultimately destabilize the Muslim regions of the Soviet Union
"There is reason to suspect that some former and very likely current employees of the FBI have been colluding with elements
in other American and British intelligence agencies, in particular the CIA and MI6, in support of an extremely ambitious foreign
policy agenda for a very long time."
Yes, that is what appears to be just what is coming to light. I wonder just what position Trey Gowdy is going to have since
he won't be running for re-election. The rage from the left is palpable. I'm sure the next outraged guy on the left will know
how to shoot straighter than the ones who shot up Congressman Scalise or the concert goers at Mandalay Bay.
"They are wrong, since most of them didn't read the playbook correctly to start with."
-- If they have read the important books at all... The ongoing scandal has been revealing a stunning incompetence of the "deciders."
Too often they look comical, ridiculous, undignified. This is dangerous, considering their power.
England preferred NAZI Germany to USSR, this is well known. As to what would have happened, the outcome of the war, in my opinion,
did not depend on US participation in the European Theatre. All of Europe would have become USSR satellite or joined USSR.
"unsentimental empirical people"? Absolutely disagree with you. Now the Iranians, they strike me as a singularity unsentimental
people. Just general impressions, mind you.
Yes, US was the first country to proudly deliver Manpads to be used by "rebels" (Mojahadin later Taleban) against USSR in Afghanistan
back in 80s. And, as per the architect of support for the rebels (Zbigniew Brzezinski) very proud of it with no regret. With that
in mind, I don't see how western politicians, the western governments and their related proxy war planers, will be regretting,
even sadden, once god forbid we see passenger planes with loved ones are shot down taking off or landing at various western airports
and other places around the word. Just like how superficialy with crocodile tears in their eyes they acted in aftermath of the
terrorist events in various western cities in this past 16 years. Gods knows what will happens to us if the opposite side start
to supply his own proxies with lethal anti air weapons. "Proudly", I don't think anybody in west cares or will regret of such
an escalation.
I think it likely that what Meier produces is only a 'limited hangout', and am hoping that when the book arrives it will contain
more pointers.
It is important to be clear that one is often dealing with people playing very complicated double games.
An interesting document is the 'Petition for Writ of Habeus Corpus' made on behalf of Khodorkovsky's close associate Alexander
Konanykhin back in 1997,when the Immigration and Naturalization Service were – apparently at least – cooperating with Russian
attempts to get hold of him. An extract:
'During the immigration hearing FBI SA Robert Levinson, an INS witness, confirmed that in 1992 Petitioner was kidnapped and
afterwards pursued by assassins of the Solntsevskaya organized criminal group. This organized criminal group is reportedly the
largest and the most influential organized criminal group in Russia, and operates internationally.'
Note the similarities between the 'StratCom' that Khonanykin and his associates were producing in the 'Nineties, and that which
Simpson and his associates have been producing two decades later.
Another useful example is provided by a 2004 item in the 'New American Magazine', reproduced on Konanykhin's website:
'One of those who testified on behalf of Konanykhine was KGB defector Yuri Shvets, who declared: "I have a firsthand knowledge
on similar operations conducted by the KGB." Konanykhine had brought trouble on himself, Shvets continued, when he "started bringing
charges against people who were involved with him in setting up and running commercial enterprises. They were KGB people secretly
smuggling from Russia hundreds of millions of dollars . This is [a] serious case, and I know that KGB ... desperately wants to
win this case, and everybody who won't step to their side would face problems."'
So – 'first hand knowledge', from a Ukrainian nationalist – look at what the Chalupas have been doing, it seems not much has
changed.
For a rather different perspective on what Konanykhin had actually been up to, from someone in whose honesty – if not always
judgement – I have complete confidence, see the testimony of Karon von Gerhke-Thompson to the House Committee on Banking and Financial
Services hearings on Russian Money Laundering. In this, she described how she had been approached by him in 1993:
'"Konanykhine alleged that Menatep Bank controlled $1.7bn [Ł1bn] in assets and investment portfolios of Russia's most prominent
political and social elite," she recalled. She said he wanted to move the bank's assets off shore and asked her to help buy foreign
passports for its "very, very special clients".
'In her testimony to the committee Ms Von Gerhke-Thompson said she informed the CIA of the deal, and the agency told her that
it believed Mr Konanykhine and Mr Khodorkovsky "were engaged in an elaborate money laundering scheme to launder billions of dollars
stolen by members of the KGB and high-level government officials".
Coming back to Steele's 'StratCom', in July 2008, an item appeared on the 'Newnight' programme of the BBC – which some of us
think should by then have been rechristened the 'Berezovsky Broadcasting Corporation' – in which the introduction by the presenter,
Jeremy Paxman, read as follows:
'Good evening. The New Russian President, Dmitri Medvedev, was all smiles and warm words when he met Gordon Brown today. He
said he was keen to resolve all outstanding difficulties between the two countries. Yada yada yada. Gordon Brown smiled, but he
must know what Newsnight can now reveal: that MI5 believes the Russian state was involved in the murder of Alexander Litvinenko
by radioactive poisoning. They also believe that without their intervention another London-based Russian, Boris Berezovsky, would
have been murdered. Our diplomatic editor, Mark Urban, has this exclusive report.'
When Urban repeated the claims on his blog, there was a positive eruption from someone using the name 'timelythoughts', about
the activities of someone she referred to as 'Berezovsky's disinformation specialist' – when I came across this later, it was
immediately clear to me that she was Karon von Gerhke, and he was Shvets.
She then described a visit by Scaramella to Washington, details of which had already been unearthed by my Italian collaborator,
David Loepp. Her claim to have e-mails from Shvets, from the time immediately prior to Litvinenko's death, directly contradicting
the testimony he had given, fitted with other evidence I had already unearthed.
Later, we exchanged e-mails over a quite protracted period, and a large amount of material that came into my possession as
a result was submitted by me to the Inquest team, with some of it being used in posts on the 'European Tribune' site.
What I never used publicly, because I could only partially corroborate it from the material she provided, was an extraordinary
claim about Shvets:
'He was responsible for bringing in a Kremlin initiative that was walked Vice President Cheney's office on a US government
quid pro quo with the Kremlin FSB SVR involving the arrest of Mikhail Khodorkovsky – a cease and desist on allegations of a politically
motivated arrest of Khodorkovsky, violations of rules of law and calls from Russia's expulsion from the G 8 in exchange for favorable
posturing of U.S. oil companies on Gazprom's Shtokman project and intelligence on weapon sales during the Yeltsin era to Iraq,
Iran and Syria, all documented in reports I submitted to the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and MI6.
'Berezovsky's DS could not be on both sides on that isle. His Kremlin FSB SVR sources had been vetted by the CIA and by the
National Security Council. They proved to be as represented. As we would later learn, however, he was on Berezovsky's payroll
at same time. The FSB SVR general he was coordinating the Kremlin initiative through was S. R. Subbotin, the same FSB SVR general
who was investigating Berezovsky's money laundering operations in Switzerland during the same timeframe. His FSB SVR sources surrounding
Putin were higher than any Lugovoy could have ever hoped to affiliate with.
'R. James Woolsey (former CIA DCI), Marshall Miller (former law partner of the late CIA DCI William Colby), who I coordinated
the Kremlin initiative through that Berezovsky's DS had brought in were shocked to learn that he was affiliated with Berezovsky
and Litvinenko. He was in Berezovsky's inner circle and engaged in vetting Russian business with Litvinenko. He operated Berezovsky's
Ukraine website, editing and dubbing the now infamous Kuchma tapes throughout the lead up to the elections in the Ukraine. Berezovsky
contributed $41 million to Viktor Yushchenko's campaign, which he used in an attempt to force Yushchenko to reunite with Julia
Tymoschenko. It failed but would succeed later after Berezovsky orchestrated a public relations initiative through Alan Goldfarb
in the U.S. on behalf of Tymoschenko.'
Having got to know Karon von Gerhke quite well, and also been able to corroborate a great deal of what she told me about many
things, and discussed these matters with her, it is absolutely clear to me that she was neither fabricating nor fantasising. What
later became apparent, both to her and to me, was that in the 'double game' that Shvets was playing, he had succeeded in fooling
her as to the side for which he was working.
It seems likely however that the reason Shvets could do what he did was that quite precisely that many high-up people in the
Kremlin and elsewhere were playing a 'double game.' In this, Karon von Gerhke's propensity for indiscretion – of which I, like
others, was both beneficiary and victim – could be useful.
An exercise in 'positioning', which could be used to disguise the fact that Shvets was indeed 'Berezovsky's disinformation
specialist', could be used to make it appear that 'intelligence on weapon sales during the Yeltsin era to Iraq, Iran and Syria'
was actually credible.
This could have been used to try to rescue Cheney, Bush and their associates from the mess they had got into as a result of
the failure of the invasion to provide any evidence whatsoever supporting the case which had been made for it. It could also have
been used to provide the kind of materials justifying military action against Iran for which Levinson and Jablonski were looking,
and for similar action against Syria.
Among reasons for bringing this up now is that we need to make sense of the paradox that Simpson – clearly in collusion with
Steele – was using Mogilevich and the 'Solnsetskaya Bratva' both against Manafort and Trump and against Browder.
There are various possible explanations for this. I do not want to succumb to my instinctive prejudice that this may have been
another piece of 'positioning', similar to what I think was being done with Shvets, but the hypothesis needs to be considered.
A more general point is that people in Washington and London need to 'wise up' to the kind of world with which they are dealing.
This could be done quite enjoyably: reading some of Dashiell Hammett's fictions of the United States in the Prohibition era, or
indeed buying DVDs of some of the classics of 'film noir', like 'Out of the Past' (in its British release, 'Build My Gallows High')
might be a start.
Very much of the coverage of affairs in the post-Soviet space since 1991 has read rather as though a Dashiell Hammett story
had been rewritten by someone specialising in sentimental children's, or romantic, fiction (although, come to think of it, that
is really what Brigid O'Shaughnessy does in 'The Maltese Falcon.')
The testimony of Glenn Simpson seems a case in point. The sickly sentimentality of these people does, rather often, make one
feel as though one wanted to throw up.
"They act and believe that they are Olympians. You have to wait for them to age and die before any substantive change in Fortress
West's posture; say 2040.}
No, three years at tops and could be much sooner if dimes starting dropping by exposed people that don't want to take the
fall for their superiors whom they always detested. One possible thing to get the process started sooner is if the recent Russian
Intelligence delegation to DC that Smoothie mentions on another thread gave the current administration, as a diplomatic courtesy
of course, the audio recordings of Madame Sectary Nuland's infamous mental meltdown at Kaliningrad. No telling what beans were
spilled in her moment of panic, but I am willing to bet key names were dropped. Either way the time is coming.
- If they have read the important books at all... The ongoing scandal has been revealing a stunning incompetence of the "deciders."
Too often they look comical, ridiculous, undignified. This is dangerous, considering their power.
My coming book is precisely about that. Especially, once American policy-makers who saw and experienced war (Ike, George
Marshall's generation) departed things started to roll down hill with Reagan bringing on board a whole collection of neocons.
Unawareness is always dangerous, a complete blackout in relations between two nuclear powers is more than dangerous--it
is completely reckless. Again, the way CW 1.0 is perceived in the current US "elites" it becomes extremely tempting to repeat
it. Electing Hillary was another step in unleashing CW 2.0 by people who have no understanding of what they were doing.
Obama started crushing US-Russian relations before any campaigns were launched and before Trump was even seriously considered
a GOP nominee, let alone a real contender. New confrontation hinged on HRC being elected. In fact, she was one of the major driving
forces behind a serious of geopolitical anti-Russian moves. Visceral Russo-phobia became a feature in HRC campaign long before
any Steele's Dossier. This was a program.
I think the failure of Deciders is nothing new - Fath Ali Shah attacking Russia, or the abject failure of the Deciders in 1914.
Europe is still not where she was in 1890.
I read the post and responses early on, so forgive me if this point has been addressed in the meantime. If the memo information
on non-disclosure of material evidence to the warrant issuing court is accurate, as soon as that information came to the attention
of the authorities (clearly some time ago) there was a duty on them (including the judge(s) who issued the warrants) to have the
matter brought back before the court toot sweet. If that had happened it would surely be in the public domain, so on the assumption
the prosecutors and maybe even the judge didn't see the need to review the matter, even purely on a contempt/ethics basis, the
memo information only seems convincing if the FISA system is a total sham. I really doubt that.
IMO, the bigger problem for American not shying away from wars, or being silent about them , is when your home, your mom and
dad' home, the town you grew up in, are immune and away from the war.
The security and safety of the two oceans, encourages or at least, in an all volunteer military makes it a secondary problem
for regular people, to worry about. As I remember that wasn't the case at the end of VN war when i first landed here. At
that time even though the war was on the other side of the planet and away from homeland, still people, especially young ones
in colleges were paying more attention to the cost of war.
Diana West has uncovered some interesting "Red Threads" (6 part article at dianawest-dot-net) on all the Fusion GPS folks. Seems
ole Russian speaking Nellie Ohr got herself a ham radio license recently. Wonder why she would suddenly need one of those? They
are all Marxists with potential connections back to Russia.
Been there. I am also a latecomer to SST. You have to read the back numbers. How? My IT expertise dates from the dawn of the internet
and was lamentable then but I find Wayback sometimes allows easier searches than the SST search engine. A straight search on google
also allows searches with more than one term. This link -
- gets you to a chronological list and for recent material is sometimes quicker than fiddling around with search engines. "Categories"
on the RH side is useful but then you don't get some very informative comments that cross-refer.
If those sadly elementary procedures fail resort to the nearest infant. There's a blur of fingers on the keyboard and what
you want then usually appears. Never ask them how they did it. They get so fed up when you ask them to explain it again.
"Who is David Habakkuk?" That's a quantum computer sited, from internal evidence you pick up from time to time, somewhere in
the Greater London area. Cross references like you wouldn't believe and over several fields, so maybe he's two quantum computers.
The "Borg"?. Try Wittgenstein. Likely a prog but you can't be choosy these days. Early on in "Philosophical Investigations"
(hope I get this right) he discusses the problem of how you can view as an entity something that has ill-defined or overlapping
boundaries. The "Borg" is that "you know it when you see it" sort of thing. A great merit of this site is that the owner and many
of the contributors know it from inside.
In general you may regard your new found site as a microcosm of the great battle that is raging in the West. It's a battle
between the (probably apocryphal but adequately stated) Roveian view of reality that regards truth as an adjunct to or as a by-product
of ideology and Realpolitik and the objective view of reality as something that is damned difficult to get at, and sometimes impossible,
but that has a truth in it somewhere that is independent of the views and convictions of the observer. It's a battle that's never
going to be won but unless it tilts back closer to common sense it can certainly be lost and the West with it.
Clearly the Labor Party in the UK preferred the USSR to Nazi Germany. (cepting that short interlude where the Soviets signed the
Agreement with Hitler, and the Left Organized Leadership all across Europe, for the most part, lined up with Hitler). But for
the most part, Labor was Left.
Elements (the ones that won out in the end) of the Conservative Party loathed both Hitler and Stalin. An element of the Conservative
Party was sympathetic, but only up to a certain point, with the Nazis. This ended in 1939, sept.
So I don't think it fair, or accurate, to say 'England prefered the Nazis....and even if it not those things, it certainly
not "well known", except to the people who have used the false premise to butter their wounds from supporting Stalin in his Pact
with Hitler. Or are inclined to bash the British in general.
All right, perhaps I should have said "The English Government". Google "Litvinov", you may discover how the English Government
pushed Stalin to make a deal with Hitler to buy USSR time.
Witness the infamous State Department protest memo calling for more war on Syria.
The State Department employees that signed that memo were sure that HRC would win and that their diligent work in pushing the
Deep State agenda would sure be rewarded.
Since entering office, Trump appears to have taken the line that if he gives the Deep State everything it demands, he will
be allowed to remain in office, even if he is not allowed to remain in power.
jonst That's broadly accurate, but specifically Attlee brought the motion of no confidence in Chamberlain, which the conservative
appeasers won but which led to Churchill's opportunity. Attlee was essential in cabinet to Churchill's resistance after the retreat
of the BEF.
FM
What are you doing here? You said you dislike the military. Are you really in the Spanish Basque country? Bilbao maybe? break
- David Habakkuk is a private scholar of the Litvinenko murder and Soviet/Russian politics and intelligence affairs. His surname
comes from Wales where in the 18th (?) Century the ancestral village were all "chapel" and changed their surnames to Old Testament
names. His father was master of one of the Cambridge colleges and David is himself a graduate of Cambridge. pl
The hard, blinding truth:
https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2018/02/05/will-conspiracy-trump-american-democracy-go-unpunished/
"In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it,
and it will rise up a thousand fold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting
their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations." – Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn
This troll showed up recently at b's place doing the same accusations. There is group that is running sacred and pulling out
all the stops in "info ops" side of the spectrum. The damn fools don't or, most probably, won't get thru their thick heads and
even thicker hearts that it is a failed strategy that turns bystanders into their opponents.
Here for your edification is the definitive analysis of the GOP memo by Alexander Mercouris over at The Duran.
And it is a masterpriece - and quite long, possibly his longest analysis of anything so far. He buries the counterarguments
being passed around by the Democratic opposition and the anti-Trump media.
Mercouris writes on legal affairs alongside his foreign policy stuff and he writes with a lawyer's precision. And in this article
he points out that the GOP memo is writter as a legal document - probably by Trey Gowdy - with additional political insertions
by Nunes. So it should properly be referred to as the "GOP memo" or the "Gowdy memo", not the Nunes memo."
Why this is important is that the GOP memo is basically written as a defense lawyer would in contesting a case -- this case
being the FISA warrant application. Which means its orientation is proving failure to disclose relevant and material information
to the FISA court and in some cases rising to the point of contempt of court.
"Seeking transparency and cooperation should not be this challenging," Grassley said in a statement after posting a heavily
redacted version of the criminal referral that he and GOP Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina sent to the Justice Department
last month. " The government should not be blotting out information that it admits isn't secret. "
I suppose DOJ/FBI believe that by obstructing, stalling and obfuscating they can buy time and that the Republicans in Congress
will get tired of the games and go home. This seems like a pretty straightforward memo, highlighting the discrepancy between Steele's
court filings and the FBI's version of Steele's discussions with them. Grassley is pointing out that either Steele or the FBI
is lying.
What is interesting is the difference in process and ability between the House & Senate. The House can release their memos
on its own, even if not declassified by the Executive, whereas the Senate requires the Executive to declassify it's memos that
are based on classified documents.
We have not had a self declared communist on SST before although LeaNder in her youth may have come close to that exalted status.
You might want to read the wiki on me and the CV I have posted on the blog to avoid tedious accusations of this or that. I am
thought by some to have some knowledge of the ME so please do not try to lecture me about how much you love the Arabs. I speak
their language and have lived with them for a long time. There are people who write to SST who are pro-Trump and some who are
anti-Trump. I seek a mixture of views so long as personal insult and invective are eschewed. Personally, I do not belong to a
political party and would describe myself as an original intent, strict constructionist.
Trump is the constitutionally and legally elected president of the United States. Your descriptors with regard to him are,
in my opinion, only plausible if seen from the point of view of various kinds of leftist including Marxist-Leninists like you.
You sound very smug and self-satisfied but we will see if you can have an open mind at all. pl
Found him, Ali Babacan XVPM, XFM and M of finance. Yes god forbid, if he is a decendent of Ardisher Babakan and another claimant
to Iranian throne, which CIA and Soros can jump on. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Babacan MBA from
Northeestern
I do not believe Trump is a misogynists - he stated publicly that he likes beautiful women. I also do not think he is a racist.
I think he is the first US leader in many decades who has been willing to publicly talk about US problems. For most other US politicians
- they largely live in "the best of all possible worlds".
Colonel - sincere apologies if my comment above disrupted the discussion on a fascinating article.
David Habakkuk - I should say that "Quantum Computer" referred solely to the ability to gather and collate great amounts of
material. It's an ability I admire. On Steele, you are among other things setting out something that is unfamiliar to me though
not to most others here, I imagine, and that is the milieu in which he is or was working as a UK Intelligence operative. That
you have also done in previous articles; it doesn't seem to be a particularly savoury milieu. As far as Steele's US activities
are concerned, from you I'm not getting the picture of a lone operative, all ties with MI6 neatly severed, working solo in the
States on some chance assignment in 2016. I'm getting the picture of someone still very much in the swim and selected because
of that.
The only problem with that second picture is the dossier, or the 30% or so of it - what Comey, I think it was, described as
"salacious and unverified". Surely that's got to be amateur night. Not something that a practised professional working with other
professionals would put his hand to. Does that not support the picture of an ex-operative who's gone off the rails and is fumbling
around unsupervised?
The Steele affair touched a nerve. One is always I suppose aware that IC professionals are getting up to all sorts and it doesn't
seem improbable that "all sorts" includes political stuff and smear campaigns. But it's not heaps of corpses in Syria or farm
boys being sent to certain death in the Ukraine. And even within the UK Intelligence Community and their contractors or whatever
they're called, compared with what our IC people have done in the ME or compared with what one fears Hamish de Bretton Gordon
might have got himself involved in, Christopher Steele's just a choirboy. Nevertheless there's something deeply repellent about
what he did. Whatever your view of Trump there he was, newly elected, obviously wanting to make a go of it, and already faced
with difficulties. Then some chancer throws "Golden Showers" in his face and makes his position, not maybe for the insiders but
for the general public, that bit more untenable.
So from a UK perspective the question of whether Steele was acting in concert with others in the UK becomes important. If he
was truly working solo then that from a UK point of view is regrettable but one of those things. In that case MI6 would just have
to tighten up its controls on what ex-operatives get up to, put out the appropriate disclaimers, and that's the end of it as far
as the UK is concerned. But if Golden Showers and the rest of it was a "Welcome Mr President" from UK IC professionals as a group
then those professionals should be hung drawn and quartered together with whoever set them on.
I've read your article several times now and apart from the fact that much of what you pull together isn't material I'm up
on, it doesn't seem to me that you're definitely coming to one conclusion or the other. There are many more facts to come out
so perhaps this question is premature, but do you think Steele was acting in concert with others in the UK or was he, at least
as far as the UK is concerned, working solo?
Most Iranian females Named Fatima/ Fatimah after prophet' daughter, call themselves Fati, and if they are of aristocrat type,
they are called Bibi Fati Khanam, which is honorable lady Fati and if they are westernized they become Fay or Fifi.
Much of your commentary seems directed to David Habakkuk and PT rather than I. I don't think the FBI would have started to
pay him until he left UK service. pl
Colonel - Further apologies - I should have submitted comment 79 as two items.
Yes, the question about Steele was in response to DH's article. The UK side of the affair is I suppose only a small part of
the question you and your Committee are examining but it's a dubious part however one looks at it. Although it's early days yet
I was hoping DH, with his encyclopaedic knowledge of the UK intelligence scene, might feel able to cast more light on that UK
side.
Cortes - " ... where, exactly, do you expect the great public to look beyond the initial scabrously defamatory storytelling about
the "golden showers"? "
I don't think one can expect the public, at least in the UK, to look very far beyond the initial scandal. The investigations
and enquiries presently under way in the US are complex and are taking place in a different system. This member of the UK public
wouldn't be able to give you a coherent account of those enquiries and I doubt many of my fellows could.
So we have to take on trust, most of us, what we're told. As far as I can tell the underlying theme from the BBC and the media
is generally that Trump is subverting the American Justice system in order to ensure his own misdemeanours aren't investigated.
Some of us take that as gospel. Others of us assume that the politicians and the media are untrustworthy and ignore them. I
doubt many of us go into much more detail than that. Therefore the original story will stick in our minds.
But for some in the UK there are questions in there as well. How come the UK got mixed up in all this? How much did the UK
get mixed up in it?
When I belatedly started looking at the Litvinenko mystery, as a result of a strange email provoked by comments of mine on
SST which arrived in my inbox in March 2007 from someone who turned out to be a key protagonist, it was rather obvious that improvised
and chaotic 'StratCom' operations had been put into place on both the Russian and British sides to cover up what had happened.
A particular interesting feature of those on the British side – in which we now know Christopher Steele must have played
a leading role – were the bizarre gyrations those responsible were going through trying to explain away the extraordinary fact
that when he had broken the story of his poisoning, Litvinenko had pointed the finger of suspicion at his Italian associate Mario
Scaramella.
When I started delving, I came across some very interesting pieces on Scaramella and related matters posted on the 'European
Tribune' website by a Rome-based blogger using the name 'de Gondi' in the period after the story broke.
His actual name is David Loepp, by profession he is an artisan jeweller specialising in ancient and traditional goldsmith techniques,
and I already knew and respected his work from his contributions to the transnational internet investigation into the Niger uranium
forgeries – an earlier MI6 clusterf**ck.
So in May 2008 I posted a longish piece on that site, setting out the problems with the evidence about the Litvinenko case
as I saw them, in the hope of reactivating his interest. This paid off in spades, when he linked to, and translated a key extract
from, the request from Italian prosecutors to use wiretaps of conversations with Senator Paolo Guzzanti in connection with their
prosecution of Scaramella for 'aggravated calumny.'
The request, which up to not so long ago was freely available on the website of the Italian Senate, was denied, but the extensive
summaries of the transcripts provided a lot of material.
The extract from the wiretap request which David Loepp posted, which like Litvinenko's letter containing the claims he and
Yuri Shvets had concocted about Putin using Mogilevich to attempt to supply Al Qaeda with a 'mini nuclear bomb' is dated 1 December
2005, contains key pointers to the conspiracy. It concludes:
'A passage on Simon Moghilevic and an agreement between the camorra to search for nuclear weapons lost during the Cold War
to be consigned to Bin Laden, a revelation made by the Israeli. According to Scaramella the circle closes: camorra, Moghilevic-
Russian mafia- services- nuclear bombs in Naples.'
Subsequent conversations make clear that Scaramella left on 6 December 2005 for Washington, on a trip where he was to meet
Shvets. The summary of a report on this to Guzzanti reads:
'12) conversation that took place on number [omissis] on December 18, 2005, at 9:41:51 n. 1426, containing explicit references
to the authenticity of the declarations of Alexander Litvinenko acquired by Scaramella, to the trustworthiness of the affirmations
made by Scaramella in his reports to the commission and to the meetings Scaramella had with Talik after having denounced them
[presumably Talik and his alleged accomplices]. (They can talk with HEIMS thanks to the help of MILLER. SHVEZ says that he had
been a companion of CARLOS at the academy; SHVEZ has already made declarations and is willing to continue collaboration. Guzzanti
warns that a document in Russian arrived in commission in which the name of SCARAMELLA appears several times, these [sic] say
that directives to the contrary had been given to Litvinenko. Scaramella says that he went to the meeting with TALIK in the company
of two treasury [police] and a cop, Talik spoke of a person from the Ukrainian GRU who would be willing to talk and a strange
Chechen ring in Naples. Assassination attempt against the pope, CASAROLI was a Soviet agent.)'
The summary of a later conversation also refers to 'MILLER':
'conversation that took place on number [omissis] on January 13, 2006, at 11:22:11 n. 2287, containing references to Scaramella's
sources in relation to facts referred in the Commission, the means by which they were obtained by Scaramella from declarations
made abroad, the role of Litvinenko, also on the occasion of declarations made by third parties and the credibility of the news
and theses given by Scaramella to the commission (Scaramella reads a text in English on the relation between the KGB and PRODI.
Guzzanti asks if its credibility can be confirmed and if the taped declarations can be backed up; Scaramella answers that there
were two testimonies, Lou Palumbo and Alexander (Litvinenko), and that the registration made in London at the beginning of the
assignment [Scaramella's?] had been authenticated by a certain BAKER of the FBI. As he translates the text from English, Scaramella
notes that the person testifying does not say he knows Prodi but only that he thinks that Prodi ...; all those who worked for
the person testifying in Scandinavia said that Prodi was "theirs." The affair in Rimini, Bielli is preparing the battle in Rimini.
Meetings with MILLER for the three things that are needed. Polemic about Pollari over the pressure exerted on Gordievski.)'
In the exchanges on my May 2008 post, I mentioned and linked to some extraordinary comments on a crucial article by Edward
Jay Epstein, in which Karon von Gerhke claimed that his sceptical account fitted with what her contacts in the British investigation
had told her. When that July I came across her equally extraordinary claims in response to the BBC's Mark Urban piece of stenography
– which Steele may also have had a hand in organising – I found she was referring to precisely that visit to Washington by Scaramella
which had been described in the wiretap request.
As you can perhaps imagine, the fact that 'Miller' had featured in the conversations with Guzzanti both as a key contact, who
could introduce Scaramella to Aldrich Ames (which is who 'Heims' clearly is), and with whom there had been meetings about 'the
three things that are needed' made me inclined to take seriously what Karon von Gerhke said about his role.
In December 2008, I put up another post on 'European Tribune', putting together the material from David Loepp and that from
Karon von Gerhke – but not discussing the references to 'Miller.' As I had hoped, this led to her getting in touch.
Among the material with which she supplied me, which I in turn supplied to the Solicitor to the Inquest, were covers of faxes
to John Rizzo, then Acting General Counsel of the CIA. From a fax dated 23 October 2005.
'John: See attached email to Chuck Patrizia. Berezovsky alleges he is in possession of a copy of a classified file given to
the CIA by Russia's FSB, which he further alleges the CIA disseminated to British, French, Italian and Israeli intelligence agencies
implicating him in business associations with the Mafia and to ties with terrorist organizations. Yuri Shvets was authorised/directed
by Berezovsky to raise the issue with Bud McFarlane scheduled for Thursday. McFarlane is unaware the issue will be raised with
him.'
From a fax dated 7 November 2005:
'John: I am attaching an email exchange between Yuri Shvets and me re: 1) article he published on his Ukraine website on alleged
sale of nuclear choke to Iran, which I reproached him on as having been planted by Berezovsky and 2 the alleged FSB/CIA document
file that Berezovsky obtained from Scaramella, which Yuri acknowledges in his e-mail to me. Like extracting wisdom teeth to get
him to put anything on paper, especially in an e-mail! [NAME REDACTED BY ME – DH] is the source McFarlane referred Yuri to re:
Berezovsky's visa issue. She proposed meeting Berezovsky in London. Alleged it would take a year to clear up USG issues and even
then could not guarantee him a visa. She too has access to USG intelligence on Berezovsky. Open book.'
From a fax dated 5 December 2005:
'John. From Mario Scaramella to Yuri Shvets to my ears, the DOJ has authorised Mario Scaramella to interview Aldrich Ames with
regard to members of the Italian Intelligence Service agent recruited by Ames for the KGB. Scaramella, as you may recall, is who
gave Boris Berezovsky's aide, a former FSB Colonel [LITVINENKO – DH], that alleged document number to the FSB file that the CIA
disseminated on Berezovsky – a file that Bud McFarlane's "Madam Visa" [NAME REDACTED BY ME – DH] is alleged is totting off to
London for a meeting with Berezovsky, who has agreed to retain her re: his visa issue. Quid pro quo's with Berezovsky and Scaramella
on the CIA agent currently facing kidnapping charges for the rendition of the Muslim cleric? Scott Armstrong has a most telling
file on Scaramella. Not a single redeeming quality.'
In the course of very extensive exchanges with Karon von Gerhke subsequently, we had some rather acute disagreements. It was
unfortunate that her filing was a shambles – a crucial hard disk failed without a backup, and the 'hard copies' appeared to be
in a chaotic state.
However, the only occasion when I can recall having reason to believe that was deliberately lying to me was when David Loepp
unearthed a cache of documentation including the full Italian text of the letter from Litvinenko containing the 'StratCom' designed
to suggest that Putin had attempted to supply a 'mini nuclear bomb' to Al Qaeda. Having been asked to keep this between ourselves
for the time being, Karon insisted on immediately sending it to her contacts in Counter Terrorism Command, and then produced bogus
justifications.
Time and again, moreover, I found that I could confirm statements that she made – see for example the two posts I put up on
the legal battles following the death in February 2008 of Berezovsky's long-term partner Arkadi 'Badri' Patarkatsishvili in June
and July 2009, which were based on careful corroboration of what she told me.
(I should also say that I acquired the greatest respect for her courage.)
And while Owen and his team suppressed all the evidence from her, and almost all of that from David Loepp, which I had I provided
to them, the dossier about Berezovsky is described in a statement made by Litvinenko in Tel Aviv in April 2006, presented in evidence
in the Inquiry.
Other evidence, moreover, strongly inclines me to believe that there were overtures for a 'quid pro quo', purporting to come
from Putin, but that this was a ruse orchestrated by Berezovsky.
Part of the purpose of this would almost certainly have been to supply probably bogus 'evidence' about arms sales in the Yeltsin
years to Iraq, Iran and Syria. Moreover, I think there was an article on the second 'Fifth Element' site run by Shvets about the
supposed sale of a nuclear 'choke' – whatever that is – to Iran.
The likelihood of the involvement of elements in the FBI in these shenanigans seems to quite high, given what has already emerged
about the activities of Levinson. Also relevant may be the fact that the 'declaration' which was part of the attempt to frame
Romano Prodi was authenticated, in London, by 'a certain BAKER of the FBI.')
I know something of spectroscopy. The critical issue here is the provenance of the samples and not the sophistication of the techniques used in the analysis
itself or its instrumentation. The paragraph that you have quoted:
"To figure out signatures based on various synthetic routes and conditions, Chipuk says that the synthetic chemists on his
team will make the same chemical threat agent as many as 2,000 times in an ..." reeks of intellectual intimidation - trying to
brow-beat any skeptic by the size of one's instrument - as it were."
And then there is a little matter of confidence level in any of the analysis - such things are normally based on prior statistics
- which did not and could not exist in this situation.
David, it's no doubt interesting to watch how attention on Victor Ivanov in another deficient inquiry on the British Isles, was
managed in that inquiry. If I may, since he pops up again in the Steele dossier. You take what's available? Is that all there
is to know?
I know its hard to communicate basics if you are deeply into matters. Usually people prefer to opt out. It's getting way too
complicated for them to follow. You made me understand this experience. But isn't this (fake) intelligence continuity "via" Yuri
Svets what connects your, no harm meant I do understand your obsession with the case, with what we deal with now in the Steele
Dossier? Again, one of the most central figures is Ivanov.
Of course later reports in the Steele Dossier go hand in hand with a larger public relations campaign. Creating reality?
Irony alert: as informer/source I would by then know what the other side wants to hear.
By the way, babbling mode, I found your Tom Mangold transcription. It felt it wasn't there on the link you gave. I used the
date, and other search terms. Maybe I am wrong. Haven't looked at what the judge ruled out of the collection. Yes, cozy session/setting.
why California, Kooshy #18? California among other things left this verbal trace, since I once upon time thought a luggage storage
in SF might be free/available now: this is my home, lady.
Tourists from many -- but not all -- foreign nations wishing to enter Kish Free Zone from legal ports are not required to
obtain any visa prior to travel. For those travelers, upon-arrival travel permits are stamped valid for 14 days by Kish officials.
Who are the not all? Can we assume Britain is not one of those? The German link is different. How about the Iranian? or isn't this the Kish we are talking about?
another Ivanov. I struggled with names (...) in Russian crime novels, admittedly. But that's long ago from times Russian crime
and Russian money flows and rogues getting hold of its nuclear material surfaced more often in Europe. 90s
"... North Stream is a problem as the goal is to economically weaken Russia, tie the EU to the USA via energy supplies and support
our new client state -- Ukraine. ..."
"... But this is also related to attempts to prevent/weaken the alliance of Russia and China. As geopolitical consequences of this
alliance for the USA-led neoliberal empire are very bad ..."
Best bet is for Russia to want to trade with the US and Europe. The gas pipeline will not be enough leverage on Germany
as it provides 9% of their needs.
Yes. And that's against the USA interests (or more correctly the US-led neoliberal empire interests). North Stream is a
problem as the goal is to economically weaken Russia, tie the EU to the USA via energy supplies and support our new client state
-- Ukraine.
As you know, nothing was proven yet in Russiagate (and DNC hacks looks more and more like a false flag operation, especially
this Guccifer 2.0 personality ), but sanctions were already imposed. And when the US government speaks "Russia" in most cases
they mean "China+Russia" ;-). Russia is just a weaker link in this alliance and, as such, it is attacked first. Russiagate is
just yet another pretext after MH17, Magnitsky and such.
To me the current Anti-Russian hysteria is mainly a smokescreen to hide attempt to cement cracks in the façade of the USA neoliberal
society that Trump election revealed (including apparent legitimization of ruling neoliberal elite represented by Hillary).
And a desperate attempt to unite the society using (false) war propaganda which requires demonization of the "enemy of the
people" and neo-McCarthyism.
But this is also related to attempts to prevent/weaken the alliance of Russia and China. As geopolitical consequences of
this alliance for the USA-led neoliberal empire are very bad (for example, military alliance means the end of the USA global
military domination; energy alliance means that is now impossible to impose a blockade on China energy supplies from Middle East
even if Iran is occupied)
In this sense the recent descent into a prolonged fit of vintage Cold War jingoistic paranoia is quite understandable. While,
at the same time, totally abhorrent. My feeling is that unless Russia folds, which is unlikely, the side effects/externalities
of this posture can be very bad for the USA. In any case, the alliance of Russia and China which Obama administration policies
forged spells troubles to the global neoliberal empire dominated by the USA.
Trump rejection of existing forms of neoliberal globalization is one sign that this process already started and some politicians
already are trying to catch the wind and adapt to a "new brave world" by using preemptive adjustments.
Which is why all this Trump-Putin summit hysteria is about.
Neither hard, nor soft neoliberals want any adjustments. They are ready to fight for the US-led neoliberal empire till the
last American (excluding, of course, themselves and their families)
"... Makes me wonder if this started out as a standard operation by the FBI to gain leverage over a presidential contender. That would explain Sater's early attempts at apparent entrapment. Since that didn't work, a different strategy had to be devised to deny the presidency to someone over whom the intelligence services lacked sufficient leverage. ..."
"... Hillary gladly cooperated and raised the specter of collusion with Russia, which she trumpeted in the debates, downplaying other issues that could have resonated more with voters. Since she thought she was a slam dunk, she thought she could afford to cooperate. It could only help ingratiate her with the borg. ..."
"... On the other hand, Brennan and others in the borg used their allies in the media to promote and propagate the story, which mushroomed when Trump defied the odds and won. Hillary was eager to play the victim as a way to excuse her failure. And the borg began hyping the story to cripple Trump unless he heeled. Initially Trump resisted, firing Comey. But with Bolton now ensconced as the National Security Advisor, it is clear that the borg has won, and the lack of any conspiracy could now be revealed. ..."
"... IMO the FBI leadership, Clapper, Brennan and his flunkies were working with the Brits at some senior level of their IO apparatus to screw Trump. Mueller's testimony before the Congress should be revelatory of his true position. ..."
"... Don't hold your breath .The so called deep state which in reality are our plutocratic oligarchical class that win. Look at the new boss same as the old boss. ..."
"... Look at all the hair triggers that have been laid out with the TRUMP regime since he became POTUS with regards to the ME and the Russian Federation. ..."
"... both Dems and Repub are trying to introduce a bill that labels the Russian Federation as a sponsor of terrorism. You just can't make this stuff up. Least we forget replacing the meme of ASSAD HAS TO GO TO MADURRO HAS TO GO. War is a racket and as per usual we the sheeple just fall for it. Ret. Col Wilkerson lays all out at last years Israeli influence conference. ..."
"... It appears that Bill Barr's light editing may have been intended to expose the bias and sloppiness of Mueller and his team. ..."
"... The most farcical thing in the Mueller report is that he did not fill obstruction charges or even recommend that it should be filled, but yet he did not "exonerate" Trump. ..."
"... In other words, Mueller did not think that he had enough to make an obstruction case in the courts of justice, and keep in mind that an indictment requires only "probable cause", not the "beyond a reasonable doubt" required for a criminal conviction, but nevertheless he went out of his way to leave the obstruction sword hanging over Trump`s head so the political infighting does not end. ..."
Makes me wonder if this started out as a standard operation by the FBI to gain leverage over a presidential contender. That would
explain Sater's early attempts at apparent entrapment. Since that didn't work, a different strategy had to be devised to deny
the presidency to someone over whom the intelligence services lacked sufficient leverage.
Hillary gladly cooperated and raised the specter of collusion with Russia, which she trumpeted in the debates, downplaying
other issues that could have resonated more with voters. Since she thought she was a slam dunk, she thought she could afford to
cooperate. It could only help ingratiate her with the borg.
On the other hand, Brennan and others in the borg used their allies in the media to promote and propagate the story, which
mushroomed when Trump defied the odds and won. Hillary was eager to play the victim as a way to excuse her failure. And the borg
began hyping the story to cripple Trump unless he heeled. Initially Trump resisted, firing Comey. But with Bolton now ensconced
as the National Security Advisor, it is clear that the borg has won, and the lack of any conspiracy could now be revealed.
Such a scenario would explain why Sater, Mufid, Steele and apparent attempts at entrapment got buried. And, with obstruction
still hanging over Trump's head, the borg's leverage is still there if needed.
IMO the FBI leadership, Clapper, Brennan and his flunkies were working with the Brits at some senior level of their IO
apparatus
to screw Trump. Mueller's testimony before the Congress should be revelatory of his true position.
Don't hold your breath .The so called deep state which in reality are our plutocratic oligarchical class that win. Look at the
new boss same as the old boss.
It was obvious from way back in June 2016 when most of the fabricated /novella known as the
Steele Dossier was floating around and the role Fusion GPS played in the Clinton POTUS machine. There is a lot out there but as
per usual smokey mirrors and deception.
I live you with this one thought.
Look at all the hair triggers that have been laid out with the TRUMP regime since he became POTUS with regards to the ME and
the Russian Federation.
THe IRGC being labeled a terrorist organization and further more both Dems and Repub are trying to introduce
a bill that labels the Russian Federation as a sponsor of terrorism. You just can't make this stuff up. Least we forget replacing the meme of ASSAD HAS TO GO TO MADURRO HAS TO GO. War is a racket and as per usual we the sheeple just fall for it. Ret. Col Wilkerson lays all out at last years Israeli influence
conference.
Special Relationship? All it's possible for the outsider to see in that are questions.
The UK stands shoulder to shoulder with the US in repelling the Russian threat. Also, along with France, helps with any R2P
that needs doing. That's a consistent if by now bedraggled story.
But Europe, including the UK, is now going hell for leather at the "European Army" project. How long will it be before that
becomes a respectable independent force? A decade?
In the meantime all recognise that the US is the only significant European defence force. It's not just the money. The US ties
the European components of NATO together and provides the big reserves of men and equipment. Even Mr Blair accepts that reality.
I've been listening to his talk at the Munich Security Conference.
So the US is to hold the fort in Europe while the Europeans prepare to supplant NATO? Do the Europeans plan to be a military
superpower themselves eventually?
And where does Trump fit in? Trumpphobia is as strong as Russophobia in the UK and stronger than Russophobia in continental
Europe. So Trump is supposed to sit there placidly defending Europe until the Europeans are strong enough to dispense with the
American alliance, and that while the Europeans, including the UK, throw mud at him?
Neither in neocon terms nor in terms of sensible defence are these various stories compatible. Is there any sort of coherent
defense policy in this respect on either side of the Atlantic? Or are they all just winging it and ignoring the inconsistencies?
Bravo ! One word "Bravo!!!" This is a very good, probably the best so far in depth analysis of Mueller's final report. And your phase "disingenuous and dishonest" is like a stamp on Mueller's hatchet job:
A careful reading of the report reveals that Mueller has issued findings that are both disingenuous and dishonest. The report
is a failed hatchet job.
Part of the failure can be attributed to the amount of material that Attorney General Barr allowed to be released.
It appears that Bill Barr's light editing may have been intended to expose the bias and sloppiness of Mueller and his team.
The most farcical thing in the Mueller report is that he did not fill obstruction charges or even recommend that it should be
filled, but yet he did not "exonerate" Trump.
In other words, Mueller did not think that he had enough to make an obstruction case in the courts of justice, and keep in
mind that an indictment requires only "probable cause", not the "beyond a reasonable doubt" required for a criminal conviction,
but nevertheless he went out of his way to leave the obstruction sword hanging over Trump`s head so the political infighting does
not end.
IMO, that is the biggest evidence that the whole thing was an attempt at facilitating a political power grab instead of a serious
criminal investigation.
"Within approximately five hours of Trump's statement, GRU officers targeted for the
first time Clinton's personal office. "
The report shows that Russia coordinated with Trump even if he was unaware of it.
Do you understand that you implicate Obama administration in total and utter incompetence,
if not pandering to the foreign intervention into the USA elections. The latter is called
criminal negligence in legal speak.
So all our three letter agencies with their enormous budgets and staff including NSA which
intercepts all incoming/outgoing communications (and probably most internal communications)
can't protect the USA elections from interference that they knew about ? Why they did not
warn Trump?
Or NSA assumed that it was yet another CIA "training exercise" imposing as Russian
hackers?
It not clear why Russia need such a crude methods as, for example, hacking Podesta email
via spearfishing (NSA has all the recodings in this case), as you can buy, say a couple of
Google engineers for less then a million dollars (many Google engineers hate Google with its
cult of performance reviews and know that they are getting much less then their Facebook
counterparts, so this might well be not that difficult) and get all you want without extra
noise.
Historically Soviet and, especially, East German intelligence were real experts in
utilizing "humint". With the crash of neoliberal ideology that probably is easier for
Russians now then it was for Soviets or East Germans in 60th-80th.
For example, from my admittedly nonprofessional point of view, the most logical assumption
about DNC hack is that it was a mixture of the internal leak (download of the files to the
UCB drive) and Crowdstrike false flag operation (cover up operation which included implanting
Russian (or Ukrainian) malware from Vault 7 to blame Russians.
"Do you understand that you implicate Obama administration"
They did screw up.
Wrong. The fact that they did not warn/brief Trump suggests that this was an a
deliberate and pre-planned attempt to entrap him by initiating Russian contacts by
FBI/CIA/MI6 moles
Papadopoulos set up ( via Josef Misfud (MI6) and Stefan Halper (CIA) ). At the time
Halper probably was reporting to the current CIA director Gina Haspel who was at this
time CIA station chief in GB. She is a Brennan protégé, of recent Skripals
dead ducks hoax fame.
Surveillance was specifically established to collect compromising material on Trump
and his associates with high level official in Obama administration (and probably Obama
himself) playing coordinating role.
Colonel Lang's blog is a good source of information on those issues with posts by
former intelligence specialists.
And please note that I am not a Trump supporter. I resent him and his policies.
"... Sadly, Brennan's propaganda coup only works on what the Bell Curve crowd up there would call the dumbest and most technologically helpless 1.2σ. Here is how people with half a brain interpret the latest CIA whoppers. ..."
"... Convincing Americans in Russia's influence or Russia collusion with Trump was only a tool that would create pressure on Trump that together with the fear of paralysis of his administration and impeachment would push Trump into the corner from which the only thing he could do was to worsen relations with Russia. What American people believe or not is really secondary. With firing of Gen. Flynn Trump acted exactly as they wanted him to act. This was the beginning of downward slope. ..."
"... Anyway, the mission was accomplished and the relations with Russia are worse now than during Obama administration. Trump can concentrate on Iran in which he will be supported by all sides and factions including the media. Even Larry David will approve not only the zionist harpies like Pam Geller, Rita Katz and Ilana Mercer. ..."
"... The only part that is absurd is that Russia posed a bona fide threat to the US. I'm fine with the idea that he ruined Brennen's plans in Syria. But thats just ego we shouldn't have been there anyway. ..."
"... No one really cares about Ukraine. And the European/Russian trade zone? No one cares. The Eurozone has its hands full with Greece and the rest of the old EU. I have a feeling they have already gone way too far and are more likely to shrink than expand in any meaningful way ..."
"... " ..factions within the state whose interests do not coincide with those of the American people." ..."
"... All the more powerfully put because of its recognisably comical. understatement. Thank you Mr Whitney. Brilliant article that would be all over the mainstream media were the US MSM an instrument of American rather than globalist interests. ..."
"... A sad story, how the USA always was a police state, where the two percent rich manipulated the 98% poor, to stay rich. When there were insurrections federal troops restored order. Also FDR put down strikes with troops. ..."
"... The elephant in the room is Israel and the neocons , this is the force that controls America and Americas foreign policy , Brennan and the 17 intel agencies are puppets of the mossad and Israel, that is the brutal fact of the matter. ..."
"... "The absence of evidence suggests that Russia hacking narrative is a sloppy and unprofessional disinformation campaign that was hastily slapped together by over confident Intelligence officials who believed that saturating the public airwaves with one absurd story after another would achieve the desired result " ..."
"... But it DID achieve the desired result! Trump folded under the pressure, and went full out neoliberal. Starting with his missile attack on Syria, he is now OK with spending trillions fighting pointless endless foreign wars on the other side of the world. ..."
"... I think maybe half the US population does believe the Russian hacking thing, but that's not really the issue. I think that the pre-Syrian attack media blitz was more a statement of brute power to Trump: WE are in charge here, and WE can take you down and impeach you, and facts don't matter! ..."
"... Sometimes propaganda is about persuading people. And sometimes, I think, it is about intimidating them. ..."
"... The Brit secret service, in effect, created and trained not merely the CIA but also the Mossad and Saudi Arabia's General Intelligence Presidency. All four are defined by endless lies, endless acts of utterly amoral savagery. All 4 are at least as bad as the KGB ever was, and that means as bad as Hell itself. ..."
"... Traditional triumphalist American narrative history, as taught in schools up through the 60s or so, portrayed America as "wart-free." Since then, with Zinn's book playing a major role, it has increasingly been portrayed as "warts-only," which is of course at least equally flawed. I would say more so. ..."
"... Anyway, the mission was accomplished and the relations with Russia are worse now than during Obama administration. ..."
"... That pre-9/11 "cooperation" nearly destroyed Russia. Nobody in Russia (except, perhaps, for Pussy Riot) wants a return to the Yeltsin era. ..."
"... The CIA is the world largest criminal and terrorist organization. With Brennan the worst has come to the worst. The whole Russian meddling affair was initiated by the Obama/Clinton gang in cooperation with 95 percent of the media. Nothing will come out of it. ..."
"... [The key figures who had primary influence on both Trump's and Bush's Iran policies held views close to those of Israel's right-wing Likud Party. The main conduit for the Likudist line in the Trump White House is Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law, primary foreign policy advisor, and longtime friend and supporter of Netanyahu. Kushner's parents are also long-time supporters of Israeli settlements on the occupied West Bank. ..."
"... Another figure to whom the Trump White House has turned is John Bolton, undersecretary of state and a key policymaker on Iran in the Bush administration. Although Bolton was not appointed Trump's secretary of state, as he'd hoped, he suddenly reemerged as a player on Iran policy thanks to his relationship with Kushner. Politico reports that Bolton met with Kushner a few days before the final policy statement was released and urged a complete withdrawal from the deal in favor of his own plan for containing Iran. ..."
"... Putin's dream of Greater Europe is the death knell for the unipolar world order. It means the economic center of the world will shift to Central Asia where abundant resources and cheap labor of the east will be linked to the technological advances and the Capital the of the west eliminating the need to trade in dollars or recycle profits into US debt. The US economy will slip into irreversible decline, and the global hegemon will steadily lose its grip on power. That's why it is imperative for the US prevail in Ukraine– a critical land bridge connecting the two continents– and to topple Assad in Syria in order to control vital resources and pipeline corridors. Washington must be in a position where it can continue to force its trading partners to denominate their resources in dollars and recycle the proceeds into US Treasuries if it is to maintain its global primacy. The main problem is that Russia is blocking Uncle Sam's path to success which is roiling the political establishment in Washington. ..."
"... Second, Zakharova confirms that the western media is not an independent news gathering organization, but a propaganda organ for the foreign policy establishment who dictates what they can and can't say. ..."
"... Such a truthful portrait of reality ! The ruling elite is indeed massively corrupt, compromised, and controlled by dark forces. And the police state is already here. For most people, so far, in the form of massive collection of personal data and increasing number of mandatory regulations. But just one or two big false-flags away from progressing into something much worse. ..."
"... Clearly the CIA was making war on Syria. Is secret coercive covert action against sovereign nations Ok? Is it legal? When was the CIA designated a war making entity – what part of the constitution OK's that? Isn't the congress obliged by constitutional law to declare war? (These are NOT six month actions – they go on and on.) ..."
"... Syria is only one of many nations that the CIA is attacking – how many countries are we attacking with drones? Where is congress? ..."
"... Close the CIA – give the spying to the 16 other agencies. ..."
Sadly, Brennan's propaganda coup only works on what the Bell Curve crowd up there would call
the dumbest and most technologically helpless 1.2σ. Here is how people with half a
brain interpret the latest CIA whoppers.
Again Mike Whitney does not get it. Though in the first part of the article I thought he
would. He was almost getting there. The objective was to push new administration into the
corner from which it could not improve relations with Russia as Trump indicated that he
wanted to during the campaign.
Convincing Americans in Russia's influence or Russia collusion
with Trump was only a tool that would create pressure on Trump that together with the fear of
paralysis of his administration and impeachment would push Trump into the corner from which
the only thing he could do was to worsen relations with Russia. What American people believe
or not is really secondary. With firing of Gen. Flynn Trump acted exactly as they wanted him
to act. This was the beginning of downward slope.
Anyway, the mission was accomplished and the relations with Russia are worse now than
during Obama administration. Trump can concentrate on Iran in which he will be supported by
all sides and factions including the media. Even Larry David will approve not only the
zionist harpies like Pam Geller, Rita Katz and Ilana Mercer.
The only part that is absurd is that Russia posed a bona fide threat to the US. I'm fine
with the idea that he ruined Brennen's plans in Syria. But thats just ego we shouldn't have
been there anyway.
No one really cares about Ukraine. And the European/Russian trade zone? No one cares. The
Eurozone has its hands full with Greece and the rest of the old EU. I have a feeling they
have already gone way too far and are more likely to shrink than expand in any meaningful
way
The one thing I am not positive about. If the elite really believe that Russia is a
threat, then Americans have done psych ops on themselves.
The US was only interested in Ukraine because it was there. Next in line on a map. The
rather shocking disinterest in investing money -- on both sides -- is inexplicable if it was
really important. Most of it would be a waste -- but still. The US stupidly spent $5 billion
on something -- getting duped by politicians and got theoretical regime change, but it was
hell to pry even $1 billion for real economic aid.
" ..factions within the state whose interests do not coincide with those of the American
people."
All the more powerfully put because of its recognisably comical. understatement. Thank you Mr Whitney. Brilliant article that would be all over the mainstream media were
the US MSM an instrument of American rather than globalist interests.
I am reading Howard Zinn, A Peoples History of the USA, 1492 to the Present.
A sad story, how the USA always was a police state, where the two percent rich manipulated
the 98% poor, to stay rich.
When there were insurrections federal troops restored order.
Also FDR put down strikes with troops.
You should be aware that Zinn's book is not, IMO, an honest attempt at writing history. It
is conscious propaganda intended to make Americans believe exactly what you are taking from
it.
The elephant in the room is Israel and the neocons , this is the force that controls America
and Americas foreign policy , Brennan and the 17 intel agencies are puppets of the mossad and
Israel, that is the brutal fact of the matter.
Until that fact changes Americans will continue to fight and die for Israel.
"The absence of evidence suggests that Russia hacking narrative is a sloppy and
unprofessional disinformation campaign that was hastily slapped together by over confident
Intelligence officials who believed that saturating the public airwaves with one absurd story
after another would achieve the desired result "
But it DID achieve the desired result! Trump folded under the pressure, and went full out
neoliberal. Starting with his missile attack on Syria, he is now OK with spending trillions
fighting pointless endless foreign wars on the other side of the world.
I think maybe half the US population does believe the Russian hacking thing, but that's
not really the issue. I think that the pre-Syrian attack media blitz was more a statement of
brute power to Trump: WE are in charge here, and WE can take you down and impeach you, and
facts don't matter!
Sometimes propaganda is about persuading people. And sometimes, I think, it is about
intimidating them.
Whitney is another author who declares the "Russians did it" narrative a psyop. He then
devotes entire columns to the psyop, "naww Russia didn't do it". There could be plenty to write about – recent laws that do undercut liberty, but no,
the Washington Post needs fake opposition to its fake news so you have guys like Whitney in
the less-mainstream fake news media.
So Brennan wanted revenge? Well that's simple enough to understand, without being too
stupid. But Whitney's whopper of a lie is what you're supposed to unquestionably believe. The
US has "rival political parties". Did you miss it?
The US is doing nothing more than acting as the British Empire 2.0. WASP culture was born of a Judaizing heresy: Anglo-Saxon Puritanism. That meant that the
WASP Elites of every are pro-Jewish, especially in order to wage war, physical and/or
cultural, against the vast majority of white Christians they rule.
By the early 19th century, The Brit Empire's Elites also had a strong, and growing, dose
of pro-Arabic/pro-Islamic philoSemitism. Most of that group became ardently pro-Sunni, and
most of the pro-Sunni ones eventually coalescing around promotion of the House of Saud, which
means being pro-Wahhabi and permanently desirous of killing or enslaving virtually all Shiite
Mohammedans.
So, by the time of Victoria's high reign, the Brit WASP Elites were a strange brew of
hardcoree pro-Jewish and hardcore pro-Arabic/islamic. The US foreign policy of today is an
attempt to put those two together and force it on everyone and make it work.
The Brit secret service, in effect, created and trained not merely the CIA but also the
Mossad and Saudi Arabia's General Intelligence Presidency. All four are defined by endless
lies, endless acts of utterly amoral savagery. All 4 are at least as bad as the KGB ever was,
and that means as bad as Hell itself.
Fair enough. I didn't know that about the foreword. If accurate, that's a reasonable
approach for a book.
Here's the problem.
Back when O. Cromwell was the dictator of England, he retained an artist to paint him. The
custom of the time was for artists to "clean up" their subjects, in a primitive form of
photoshopping.
OC being a religious fanatic, he informed the artist he wished to be portrayed as God had
made him, "warts and all." (Ollie had a bunch of unattractive facial warts.) Or the artist
wouldn't be paid.
Traditional triumphalist American narrative history, as taught in schools up through the
60s or so, portrayed America as "wart-free." Since then, with Zinn's book playing a major
role, it has increasingly been portrayed as "warts-only," which is of course at least equally
flawed. I would say more so.
All I am asking is that American (and other) history be written "warts and all." The
triumphalist version is true, largely, and so is the Zinn version. Gone With the Wind
and Roots both portray certain aspects of the pre-war south fairly accurately..
America has been, and is, both evil and good. As is/was true of every human institution
and government in history. Personally, I believe America, net/net, has been one of the
greatest forces for human good ever. But nobody will realize that if only the negative side
of American history is taught.
"There must be something really dirty in Russigate that hasn't yet come out to generate
this level of panic."
You continue to claim what you cannot prove.
But then you are a Jews First Zionist.
Russia-Gate Jumps the Shark
Russia-gate has jumped the shark with laughable new claims about a tiny number of
"Russia-linked" social media ads, but the US mainstream media is determined to keep a
straight face
Most of that group became ardently pro-Sunni, and most of the pro-Sunni ones eventually
coalescing around promotion of the House of Saud, which means being pro-Wahhabi and
permanently desirous of killing or enslaving virtually all Shiite Mohammedans.
Thanks for the laugh. During the 19th century, the Sauds were toothless, dirt-poor hicks
from the deep desert of zero importance on the world stage.
The Brits were not Saudi proponents, in fact promoting the Husseins of Hejaz, the guys
Lawrence of Arabia worked with. The Husseins, the Sharifs of Mecca and rulers of Hejaz, were
the hereditary enemies of the Sauds of Nejd.
After WWI, the Brits installed Husseins as rulers of both Transjordan and Iraq, which with
the Hejaz meant the Sauds were pretty much surrounded. The Sauds conquered the Hejaz in 1924,
despite lukewarm British support for the Hejaz.
Nobody in the world cared much about the Saudis one way or another until massive oil
fields were discovered, by Americans not Brits, starting in 1938. There was no reason they
should. Prior to that Saudi prominence in world affairs was about equal to that of Chad
today, and for much the same reason. Chad (and Saudi Arabia) had nothing anybody else
wanted.
'Putin stopped talking about the "Lisbon to Vladivostok" free trade area long ago" --
Michael Kenney
Putin was simply trying to sell Russia's application for EU membership with the
catch-phrase "Lisbon to Vladivostok". He continued that until the issue was triply mooted (1)
by implosion of EU growth and boosterism, (2) by NATO's aggressive stance, in effect taken by
NATO in Ukraine events and in the Baltics, and, (3) Russia's alliance with China.
It is surely still true that Russians think of themselves, categorically, as Europeans.
OTOH, we can easily imagine that Russians in Vladivostok look at things differently than do
Russians in St. Petersburg. Then again, Vladivostok only goes back about a century and a
half.
Anyway, the mission was accomplished and the relations with Russia are worse now than
during Obama administration.
I generally agree with your comment, but that part strikes me as a bit of an exaggeration.
While relations with Russia certainly haven't improved, how have they really worsened? The
second round of sanctions that Trump reluctantly approved have yet to be implemented by
Europe, which was the goal. And apart from that, what of substance has changed?
It's not surprising that 57 percent of the American people believe in Russian meddling.
Didn't two-thirds of the same crowd believe that Saddam was behind 9/11, too? The American
public is being brainwashed 24 hours a day all year long.
The CIA is the world largest criminal and terrorist organization. With Brennan the worst
has come to the worst. The whole Russian meddling affair was initiated by the Obama/Clinton
gang in cooperation with 95 percent of the media. Nothing will come out of it.
This disinformation campaign might be the prelude to an upcoming war.
Right now, the US is run by jerks and idiots. Watch the video.
Only dumb people does not know that TRUMP IS NETANYAHU'S PUPPET.
The fifth column zionist jews are running the albino stooge and foreign policy in the
Middle East to expand Israel's interest against American interest that is TREASON. One of
these FIFTH COLUMNISTS is Jared Kushner. He should be arrested.
[The key figures who had primary influence on both Trump's and Bush's Iran policies held
views close to those of Israel's right-wing Likud Party. The main conduit for the Likudist
line in the Trump White House is Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law, primary foreign
policy advisor, and longtime friend and supporter of Netanyahu. Kushner's parents are also
long-time supporters of Israeli settlements on the occupied West Bank.
Another figure to whom the Trump White House has turned is John Bolton, undersecretary of
state and a key policymaker on Iran in the Bush administration. Although Bolton was not
appointed Trump's secretary of state, as he'd hoped, he suddenly reemerged as a player on
Iran policy thanks to his relationship with Kushner. Politico reports that Bolton met with
Kushner a few days before the final policy statement was released and urged a complete
withdrawal from the deal in favor of his own plan for containing Iran.
Bolton spoke with Trump by phone on Thursday about the paragraph in the deal that vowed it
would be "terminated" if there was any renegotiation, according to Politico. He was calling
Trump from Las Vegas, where he'd been meeting with casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, the third
major figure behind Trump's shift towards Israeli issues. Adelson is a Likud supporter who
has long been a close friend of Netanyahu's and has used his Israeli tabloid newspaper Israel
Hayomto support Netanyahu's campaigns. He was Trump's main campaign contributor in 2016,
donating $100 million. Adelson's real interest has been in supporting Israel's interests in
Washington -- especially with regard to Iran.]
Putin's dream of Greater Europe is the death knell for the unipolar world order. It
means the economic center of the world will shift to Central Asia where abundant resources
and cheap labor of the east will be linked to the technological advances and the Capital
the of the west eliminating the need to trade in dollars or recycle profits into US
debt. The US economy will slip into irreversible decline, and the global hegemon will
steadily lose its grip on power. That's why it is imperative for the US prevail in
Ukraine– a critical land bridge connecting the two continents– and to topple
Assad in Syria in order to control vital resources and pipeline corridors. Washington
must be in a position where it can continue to force its trading partners to denominate
their resources in dollars and recycle the proceeds into US Treasuries if it is to maintain
its global primacy. The main problem is that Russia is blocking Uncle Sam's path to
success which is roiling the political establishment in Washington.
American dominance is very much tied to the dollar's role as the world's reserve currency,
and the rest of the world no longer want to fund this bankrupt, warlike state –
particularly the Chinese.
First, it confirms that the US did not want to see the jihadist extremists
defeated by Russia. These mainly-Sunni militias served as Washington's proxy-army
conducting an ambitious regime change operation which coincided with US strategic
ambitions.
The CIA run US/Israeli/ISIS alliance.
Second, Zakharova confirms that the western media is not an independent news
gathering organization, but a propaganda organ for the foreign policy establishment who
dictates what they can and can't say.
They are given the political line and they broadcast it.
The loosening of rules governing the dissemination of domestic propaganda coupled with
the extraordinary advances in surveillance technology, create the perfect conditions for
the full implementation of an American police state. But what is more concerning, is
that the primary levers of state power are no longer controlled by elected officials but by
factions within the state whose interests do not coincide with those of the American
people. That can only lead to trouble.
At some point Americans are going to get a "War on Domestic Terror" cheered along by the
media. More or less the arrest and incarceration of any opposition following the Soviet
Bolshevik model.
On the plus side, everyone now knows that the Anglo-US media from the NY Times to the
Economist, from WaPo to the Gruniard, and from the BBC to CNN, the CBC and Weinstein's
Hollywood are a worthless bunch of depraved lying bastards.
Such a truthful portrait of reality ! The ruling elite is indeed massively corrupt,
compromised, and controlled by dark forces. And the police state is already here. For most
people, so far, in the form of massive collection of personal data and increasing number of
mandatory regulations. But just one or two big false-flags away from progressing into
something much worse.
The thing is, no matter how thick the mental cages are, and how carefully they are
maintained by the daily massive injections of "certified" truth (via MSM), along with
neutralizing or compromising of "troublemakers", the presence of multiple alternative sources
in the age of Internet makes people to slip out of these cages one by one, and as the last
events show – with acceleration.
It means that there's a fast approaching tipping point after which it'd be impossible for
those in power both to keep a nice "civilized" face and to control the "cage-free"
population. So, no matter how the next war will be called, it will be the war against the
free Internet and free people. That's probably why N. Korean leader has no fear to start
one.
All government secrecy is a curse on mankind. Trump is releasing the JFK murder files to the public. Kudos! Let us hope he will follow up with a full 9/11 investigation.
The objective was to push new administration into the corner from which it could not
improve relations with Russia as Trump indicated that he wanted to during the campaign.
Good point. That was probably one of the objectives (and from the point of view of the
deep-state, perhaps the most important objective) of the "Russia hacked our democracy"
narrative, in addition to the general deligitimization of the Trump administration.
And, keep in mind, Washington's Sunni proxies were not a division of the Pentagon; they
were entirely a CIA confection: CIA recruited, CIA-armed, CIA-funded and
CIA-trained.
Clearly the CIA was making war on Syria. Is secret coercive covert action against sovereign
nations Ok? Is it legal? When was the CIA designated a war making entity – what part of the constitution OK's
that? Isn't the congress obliged by constitutional law to declare war? (These are NOT six
month actions – they go on and on.)
Are committees of six congressman and six senators, who meet in secret, just avoiding the
grave constitutional questions of war? We the People cannot even interrogate these
politicians. (These politicians make big money in the secrecy swamp when they leave
office.)
Syria is only one of many nations that the CIA is attacking – how many countries are
we attacking with drones? Where is congress?
Spying is one thing – covert action is another – covert is wrong – it
goes against world order. Every year after 9/11 they say things are worse – give them
more money more power and they will make things safe. That is BS!
9/11 has opened the flood gates to the US government attacking at will, the various
peoples of this Earth. That is NOT our prerogative.
We are being exceptionally arrogant.
Close the CIA – give the spying to the 16 other agencies.
"... As I noted in my previous piece-- The FBI Tried and Failed to Entrap Trump --Sater was an active FBI undercover informant. ..."
"... An honest prosecutor would have and should have disclosed this fact. He, Sater, was the one encouraging the Trump team to cozy up to Russia. Mueller does not disclose one single instance of Trump or Cohen or any of the Trump kids calling Sater on the carpet and chewing his ass for not bringing them deals and not opening doors in Russia. Omitting this key fact goes beyond simple disingenuity. It is a conscious lie. ..."
"... The circumstantial evidence indicates that Sater was doing this at the behest of FBI handlers. We do not yet know who they are. ..."
"... We also have the case of Michael Caputo and Roger Stone being approached by a Russian gangster named Henry Greenberg. ..."
"... How does a guy like Vorkretsov/Greenberg, with an extensive criminal record and circumstantial ties to the Russian mob gain entrance into the United States? Very simple answer. He too was an FBI informant : ..."
"... Please take time to read the full dossier at democrat dossier . This is more than an odd coincidence. This is a pattern. The FBI was targeting the Trump campaign and personnel in a deliberate effort to implicate them in wanting to work with Russians. ..."
"... Once again, the Mueller team treats the provocateur -- -i.e., Joseph Mifsud -- -as some simple guy with ties to Russia's political elites. Another egregious lie. Mifsud was not working on behalf of Russia. He was deployed by MI-6. Disobedient Media has been on the forefront of exposing Mifsud's ties to western intelligence in general and the Brits in particular . ..."
"... A number of Twitter users recently observed that Joseph Mifsud had been photographed standing next to Claire Smith of the UK Joint Intelligence Committee at Mifsud’s LINK campus in Rome. Newsmax and Buzzfeed later reported that the professor’s name and biography had been removed from the campus’ website, writing that the mysterious removal took place after Mifsud had served the institution for “years.” ..."
"... WikiLeaks Editor-in-Chief Julian Assange likewise noted the connection between Mifsud and Smith in a Twitter thread, additionally pointing out his connections with Saudi intelligence: “[Mifsud] and Claire Smith of the UK Joint Intelligence Committee and eight-year member of the UK Security Vetting panel both trained Italian security services at the Link University in Rome and appear to both be present in this [photo].” ..."
"... This is not a mere matter of Mueller and his team "failing" to disclose some important facts. If they were operating honestly they should have investigated Mifsud, Greenberg and Sater. But they did not. Two of the three--Sater and Greenber--alleged Russian stooges have ties to the FBI. And Mifsud has been living and working in the belly of the intelligence community. ..."
"... Don't hold your breath .The so called deep state which in reality are our plutocratic oligarchical class that win. Look at the new boss same as the old boss. ..."
"... Look at all the hair triggers that have been laid out with the TRUMP regime since he became POTUS with regards to the ME and the Russian Federation . THe IRGC being labelled a terrorist organization and further more both Dems and Repub are trying to introduce a bill that labels the Russian Federation as a sponsor of terrorism. ..."
"... You just can't make this stuff up. Least we forget replacing the meme of ASSAD HAS TO GO TO MADURRO HAS TO GO. War is a racket and as per usual we the sheeple just fall for it. Ret. Col Wilkerson lays all out at last years Israeli influence conference. ..."
"... The Special Relationship is hopefully entering the divorce stage. None too soon. Great work, Mr. Johnson. ..."
While President Trump is correct to celebrate the Mueller Report’s conclusion that no one on Trump’s side of the ledger attempted
to or succeeded in collaborating or colluding with the Russian Government or Russian spies, there remains a dark cloud behind the
silver lining. And I am not referring to the claims of alleged obstruction of justice. A careful reading of the report reveals
that Mueller has issued findings that are both disingenuous and dishonest. The report is a failed hatchet job. Part of the failure
can be attributed to the amount of material that Attorney General Barr allowed to be released. It appears that Bill Barr's light
editing may have been intended to expose the bias and sloppiness of Mueller and his team.
Let us start with the case of trying to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. If you were to believe that the Steele Dossier accurately
reported Vladimir Putin's attitude towards Trump, then a Trump real estate deal in Moscow was a slam dunk. According to one of Steele's
breathless reports:
The Kremlin's cultivation operation on TRUMP also had comprised offering him various lucrative real estate development business
deals in Russia, especially in relation to the ongoing 2018 World Cup soccer tournament.
How ever, so far, for reasons unknown, TRUMP had not taken up any of these.
Then there is reality. The impetus, the encouragement for the Moscow project came from one man--Felix
Sater.
In the late summer of 2015, the Trump Organization received a new inquiry about pursuing a Trump Tower project in Moscow. In approximately
September 2015, Felix Sater . . . contacted Cohen on behalf of I.C. Expert Investment Company (I.C. Expert), a Russian real-estate
development corporation controlled by Andrei Vladimirovich Rozov.J07 Sater had known Rozov since approximately 2007 and, in 2014,
had served as an agent on behalf of Rozov during Rozov's purchase of a building in New York City.30S Sater later contacted Rozov
and proposed that I.C. Expert pursue a Trump Tower Moscow project in which I.C. Expert would license the name and brand from the
Trump Organization but construct the building on its own. Sater worked on the deal with Rozov and another employee of I.C. Expert.
(see page 69 of the Mueller Report).
To reiterate--if the Steele Dossier was based on truthful intelligence then the Trump organization only had to sit back, stretch
out their hands and seize the moment. Instead, little Felix Sater keeps coming back to the well. In January 2016, according to the
Mueller report,
Sater then sent a draft invitation for Cohen to visit Moscow to discuss the Trump Moscow project,along with a note to "[t]ell
me if the letter is good as amended by me or make whatever changes you want and send it back to me."
After a further round
of edits, on January 25, 2016, Sater sent Cohen an invitation -- signed by Andrey Ryabinskiy of the company MHJ -- to travel to
"Moscow for a working visit" about the "prospects of development and the construction business in Russia," "the various land plots
available suited for construction of this enormous Tower," and "the opportunity to co-ordinate a follow up visit to Moscow by
Mr. Donald Trump..
This produced nothing. No deal, no trip. But Sater persisted:
Beginning in late 2015, Sater repeatedly tried to arrange for Cohen and candidate Trump, as representatives of the Trump Organization,
to travel to Russia to meet with Russian government officials and possible financing partners. . . .
Into the spring of 2016, Sater and Cohen continued to discuss a trip to Moscow in connection with the Trump Moscow project.
On April 20, 2016, Sater wrote Cohen, " [t)he People wanted to know when you are coming?,,
On May 4, 2016, Sater followed up:
“I had a chat with Moscow. ASSUMING the trip does happen the question is before or after the convention. I said I believe,
but don't know for sure, that's it's probably after the convention. Obviously the pre-meeting trip (you only) can happen anytime
you want but he 2 big guys where [sic) the question. I said I would confirm and revert.”
On May 5, 2016, Sater wrote to Cohen:
“Peskov would like to invite you as his guest to the St. Petersburg Forum which is Russia's Davos it's June 16-19. He wants
to meet there with you and possibly introduce you to either Putin or Medvedev, as they are not sure if 1 or both will be there.
This is perfect. The entire business class of Russia will be there as well.”
On June 14, 2016, Cohen met Sater in the lobby of the Trump Tower in New York and informed him that he would not be traveling
at that time.
Why was Felix Sater the one repeatedly identified pushing to arrange deals with the Russians and yet did not face any subsequent
charges by the Mueller team? Sater had been working as part of the Trump team since 2003. Why is it that the proposed deals and travel
to Moscow came predominantly from Felix Sater?
As I noted in my previous piece--The
FBI Tried and Failed to Entrap Trump--Sater was an active FBI undercover informant. He had been working with the
FBI since 1998. When he agreed to start working as an undercover informant aka cooperator in December 1998 guess who signed off on
the deal? Andrew Weissman. You can see the
deal here. It was signed 10
December 1998.
An honest prosecutor would have and should have disclosed this fact. He, Sater, was the one encouraging the Trump team to
cozy up to Russia. Mueller does not disclose one single instance of Trump or Cohen or any of the Trump kids calling Sater on the
carpet and chewing his ass for not bringing them deals and not opening doors in Russia. Omitting this key fact goes beyond simple
disingenuity. It is a conscious lie.
The circumstantial evidence indicates that Sater was doing this at the behest of FBI handlers. We do not yet know who they are.
But Sater's behavior and status as an FBI Informant was not an isolated incident. We also have the case of Michael Caputo and
Roger Stone being approached by a Russian gangster named Henry Greenberg. According to
democratdossier.com:
Greenberg's birth name is Gennady Vasilievich Vostretsov, the son of Yekatrina Vostretsova and Vasliy Vostretsov. He later adopted
new names twice as a result of two different marriages and became Gennady V. Arzhanik and later Henry Oknyansky. Henry Greenberg
is not a legal alias, but he uses it quite commonly in recent years.
But you would not know this from reading the Mueller report. Mr. Disingenuous strikes again:
In the spring of 2016, Trump Campaign advisor Michael Caputo learned through a Florida-based Russian business partner that another
Florida-based Russian, Henry Oknyansky (who also went by the name Henry Greenberg), claimed to have information pertaining to
Hillary Clinton . Caputo notified Roger Stone and brokered communication between Stone and Oknyansky.
Oknyansky and Stone set
up a May 2016 in-person meeting. 260 Oknyansky was accompanied to the meeting by Alexei Rasin, a Ukrainian associate involved
in Florida real estate. At the meeting, Rasin offered to sell Stone derogatory information on Clinton that Rasin claimed to have
obtained while working for Clinton. Rasin claimed to possess financial statements demonstrating Clinton's involvement in money
laundering with Rasin's companies. According to Oknyansky, Stone asked if the amounts in question totaled millions of dollars
but was told it was closer to hundreds of thousands. Stone refused the offer, stating that Trump would not pay for opposition
research.
How does a guy like Vorkretsov/Greenberg, with an extensive criminal record and circumstantial ties to the Russian mob gain entrance
into the United States? Very simple answer. He too
was an FBI informant:
In an affidavit, Vostretsov explained to an immigration judge he worked for the FBI for 17 years throughout the world, including
in the US, Iran and North Korea. He explained in the same paperwork the FBI granted him several temporary visas to visit the US in
exchange for information about criminal activities.
Please take time to read the full dossier at
democrat dossier. This is more than
an odd coincidence. This is a pattern. The FBI was targeting the Trump campaign and personnel in a deliberate effort to implicate
them in wanting to work with Russians.
And there is more. George Papodopoulus was entrapped by individuals linked to British MI-6 and the CIA with offers to provide
meetings with Russians and Putin. The Mueller account is a lie:
In late April 2016, Papadopoulos was told by London-based professor Joseph Mifsud, immediately after Mifsud 's return from a trip
to Moscow, that the Russian government had obtained "dirt" on candidate Clinton in the form of thousands of emails. One week later,
on May 6, 2016, Papadopoulos suggested to a representative of a foreign government that the Trump Campaign had received indications
from the Russian government that it could assist the Campaign through the anonymous release of information that would be damaging
to candidate Clinton.
Papadopoulos shared information about Russian "dirt " with people outside of the Campaign, and the Office
investigated whether he also provided it to a Campaign official. Papadopoulos and the Campaign officials with whom he interacted
told the Office that they did · not recall that Papadopoulos passed them the information. Throughout the relevant period of time
and for several months thereafter, Papadopoulos worked with Mifsud and two Russian nationals to arrange a meeting between the
Campaign and the Russian government. That meeting never came to pass.
Once again, the Mueller team treats the provocateur -- -i.e., Joseph Mifsud -- -as some simple guy with ties to Russia's political
elites. Another egregious lie. Mifsud was not working on behalf of Russia. He was deployed by MI-6. Disobedient Media has been on
the forefront of exposing Mifsud's ties to
western intelligence in general and the Brits in particular.
Mifsud’s alleged links to Russian intelligence are summarily debunked by his close working relationship
with Claire Smith, a major figure in the upper echelons of British intelligence. A number of Twitter users recently observed
that Joseph Mifsud had been photographed standing next to Claire Smith of the UK Joint Intelligence Committee at Mifsud’s LINK campus
in Rome. Newsmax and Buzzfeed later reported that the professor’s name and biography had been removed from the campus’ website, writing
that the mysterious removal took place after Mifsud had served the institution for “years.”
WikiLeaks Editor-in-Chief Julian Assange likewise noted the connection between Mifsud and Smith
in a Twitter thread, additionally pointing out his connections with Saudi intelligence: “[Mifsud] and Claire Smith of the UK Joint
Intelligence Committee and eight-year member of the UK Security Vetting panel both trained Italian security services at the Link
University in Rome and appear to both be present in this [photo].”
The photograph in question originated on Geodiplomatics.com, where it specified that Joseph Mifsud
is indeed standing next to Claire Smith, who was attending a: “…Training program on International Security which was organised by
Link Campus University and London Academy of Diplomacy.” The event is listed as taking place in October, 2012. This is highly significant
for a number of reasons.
This is not a mere matter of Mueller and his team "failing" to disclose some important facts. If they were operating
honestly they should have investigated Mifsud, Greenberg and Sater. But they did not. Two of the three--Sater and Greenber--alleged
Russian stooges have ties to the FBI. And Mifsud has been living and working in the belly of the intelligence community.
When you put these facts together it is clear that there is real meat on the bone for Barr's upcoming investigation of the "spying"
that was being done on the Trump campaign by law enforcement and intelligence. These facts must become a part of the public consciousness.
The foreign country that worked feverishly to meddle in the 2016 Presidential election and the subsequent rule of Donald Trump is
the United Kingdom. Russia is the patsy.
turcopolier, 20 April 2019 at 10:44 PM
IMO the FBI leadership, Clapper, Brennan and his flunkies were working with the Brits at some senior level of their IO apparatus
to screw Trump. Mueller's testimony before the Congress should be revelatory of his true position.
falcemartello, 20 April 2019 at 11:28 PM
Don't hold your breath .The so called deep state which in reality are our plutocratic oligarchical class that win. Look
at the new boss same as the old boss.
It was obvious from way back in June 2016 when most of the fabricated /novella known as the Steele Dossier was floating around
and the role Fusion GPS played in the Clinton POTUS machine. There is a lot out there but as per usual smokey mirrors and deception.
I live you with this one thought.
Look at all the hair triggers that have been laid out with the TRUMP regime since he became POTUS with regards to the ME
and the Russian Federation . THe IRGC being labelled a terrorist organization and further more both Dems and Repub are trying
to introduce a bill that labels the Russian Federation as a sponsor of terrorism.
You just can't make this stuff up. Least we forget replacing the meme of ASSAD HAS TO GO TO MADURRO HAS TO GO. War is a
racket and as per usual we the sheeple just fall for it. Ret. Col Wilkerson lays all out at last years Israeli influence
conference.
Rick Merlotti
The Special Relationship is hopefully entering the divorce stage. None too soon. Great work, Mr. Johnson.
Have you ever noticed how whenever someone inconveniences the dominant western power
structure, the entire political/media class rapidly becomes very, very interested in letting us
know how evil and disgusting that person is? It's true of the leader of every nation which
refuses to allow itself to be absorbed into the blob of the US-centralized power alliance, it's
true of anti-establishment political candidates, and it's true of WikiLeaks founder Julian
Assange.
Corrupt and unaccountable power uses its
political and
media influence to smear Assange because, as far as the interests of corrupt and
unaccountable power are concerned, killing his reputation is as good as killing him. If
everyone can be paced into viewing him with hatred and revulsion, they'll be far less likely to
take WikiLeaks publications seriously, and they'll be far more likely to consent to Assange's
imprisonment, thereby
establishing a precedent for the future prosecution of leak-publishing journalists around
the world. Someone can be speaking 100 percent truth to you, but if you're suspicious of him
you won't believe anything he's saying. If they can manufacture that suspicion with total or
near-total credence, then as far as our rulers are concerned it's as good as putting a bullet
in his head.
Those of us who value truth and light need to fight this smear campaign in order to keep our
fellow man from signing off on a major leap in the direction of Orwellian dystopia, and a big
part of that means being able to argue against those smears and disinformation wherever they
appear. Unfortunately I haven't been able to find any kind of centralized source of information
which comprehensively debunks all the smears in a thorough and engaging way, so with the help
of hundreds of
tips from my
readers and social media followers
I'm going to attempt to make one here. What follows is my attempt at creating a tool kit people
can use to fight against Assange smears wherever they encounter them, by refuting the
disinformation with truth and solid argumentation.
This article is an ongoing project which will be updated regularly where it appears on
Medium and caitlinjohnstone.com as new information comes in and new smears spring up in need of
refutation.
Yet another delusional remark at odds with reality. Haven't these people learned anything from the implosion of their pathetic
Russiagate hysteria? The Russophobes won't be happy until we're at war with a nuclear power and the nukes are about to land.
Here are things Trump has actually done, as opposed to red-limned fantasies drawn from the fever-dreams of Putin haters:
"... It is quite distressing that in may so called “progessive” or “left liberal” – self designated of course – circles in the USA and the UK such a statement will lead to your being labelled a Russian Troll or the suggestion you are being on Putin’s payrol ..."
"... “…In the era of weapons of mass destruction, not only nuclear, but primarily nuclear, ever more sophisticated, the Russians now have a new generation of nuclear weapons -- Putin announced them on March 1, they were dismissed here, but they’re real -- that can elude any missile defense. .. ..."
"... Russia has now thwarted us; they now have missile defense-evading nuclear weapons from submarines, to aircraft, to missiles. And Putin has said, ‘It’s time to negotiate an end to this new arms race,’ and he’s 100 percent right. ..."
"... So when I heard Trump say, in 2016, we have to cooperate with Russia, I had already become convinced… ..."
"... When I see the right-of-center DNC supporters saying, “Our democracy has been attacked,” I an reminded of the interview Hermann Goering gave while he was waiting to be executed. ..."
"... Perhaps the assumption of Russia meddling in our election is a simple case of projection. As has been documented, the USA has frequently meddled in other countries’ elections or election outcomes (Iran, Russia, Chile, Central America). ..."
"... To paraphrase the late Leona Helmsley, “Democracy is for little people”, not for the meddling-in-foreign-democracies policymakers of the Boston-Washington corridor. ..."
"... We live in a multi-polar world and if Washington can’t get used to it, we are the ones who may pay for their willful stubborn blindness, their inability to come to terms with a perfectly obvious developing reality. ..."
"... The neocons have not had a new idea in 30 years. I continue to be baffled by their obsession with Iran. Iran is a fact; the enmity goes back to our support for the overthrow of Mossadegh in 1953 and only made worse by our support of the Shah as our-guy-in-Tehran. ..."
"... The USA is in disarray internally and in its approach to the rest of the world. ..."
The DNC had the biggest influence on the 2016 outcome; they insisted on running a disliked candidate who was a terrible campaigner
so disliked the DNC cleared the field for her ahead of time (got Biden and others to not declare in 2016) and had to club dissenters
in their own party to make sure she got the nomination. imo. But sure, blame "those guys over there". That's the ultimate "the
dog ate my homework" excuse. meh.
Good analysis. This even makes the insanity of “Russiagate” seem strategic. (But as overwrought as saying ‘give us liberty
or give us death’. The solution to everything is somewhere in the middle.) We know that such dedicated souls as the very fatuous
Mr. Brennan cooked it all up and pretended it was because Trump was “treasonous”.
Brennan in his dotage might actually be thinking that.
I’ve always thought that Putin, like Yeltsin, was pro West. Possibly an atlanticist. Tho’ being as chauvinistic as an atlanticist
today is a little offensive to the rest of the world. Cohen’s statement that Putin is pro Russian-anti communism might be a simplification.
Russia is certainly positioning itself to be safe from our aggression. I think there are remnants of good social management that
the commies learned over the years that Russia/Putin still employs.
It’s too simplistic to say Putin is anti-communist. He’s just a realist. And he’s a nationalist. Being a nationalist-protectionist
is the worst sin against neoliberal advancement. That’s another propaganda bullet point – you never hear a rational discussion
of nationalism – it’s all trash, “Marine LePen is a fascist” exaggeration.
It is quite distressing to see the Mueller report take up as if it were settled fact the idea that Russia influenced the
2016 Presidential election, particularly since his investigation didn’t provide any information that supported this theory.
It is quite distressing that in may so called “progessive” or “left liberal” – self designated of course – circles in the
USA and the UK such a statement will lead to your being labelled a Russian Troll or the suggestion you are being on Putin’s payroll.
That is the level of rational discussion in many those circles today when it comes to the discussion about the west's relationship
to Russia.
This of course led in Russia to the conclusion that to engage with the west at present in an attempt to ease the tensions is
futile and rather counterproductive.
I think Professor Cohen has a real point in the following statements:
“…In the era of weapons of mass destruction, not only nuclear, but primarily nuclear, ever more sophisticated, the Russians
now have a new generation of nuclear weapons -- Putin announced them on March 1, they were dismissed here, but they’re real --
that can elude any missile defense. ..
Russia has now thwarted us; they now have missile defense-evading nuclear weapons from submarines, to aircraft, to missiles.
And Putin has said, ‘It’s time to negotiate an end to this new arms race,’ and he’s 100 percent right.
So when I heard Trump say, in 2016, we have to cooperate with Russia, I had already become convinced…
So I began to speak positively about Trump at that moment–that would have been probably around the summer of 2016–just on this
one point, because none of the other candidates were advocating cooperation with Russia…”
Then, when he goes on to elaborate on China’s weaponry and posit including them in the next round of draw-down negotiations,
as far off as that may look – that to me is what Trump can use for his re-election. I do believe his attitude towards Russia won
him his first term.
Those Russia-gate kooks need to focus on the American people, not on Trump. Well, maybe they did, and still do. It’s really
about us, not him.
When I see the right-of-center DNC supporters saying, “Our democracy has been attacked,” I an reminded of the interview
Hermann Goering gave while he was waiting to be executed.
Göring: Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders.
That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and
exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.
Perhaps the assumption of Russia meddling in our election is a simple case of projection. As has been documented, the USA has frequently meddled in other countries’ elections or election outcomes (Iran, Russia, Chile,
Central America).
One recent Democratic presidential candidate was taped asserting “we should not have held the election unless we could determine
the outcome” in another foreign country.
If Russia did not meddle significantly in the US election, the political class may have had to ponder that possibly the Russians
believed that the decline of the US in the world stage did not merit the effort.
To paraphrase the late Leona Helmsley, “Democracy is for little people”, not for the meddling-in-foreign-democracies policymakers
of the Boston-Washington corridor.
The thrust of Cohen’s position is correct. Quibble all you wish with the details. We live in a multi-polar world and if Washington
can’t get used to it, we are the ones who may pay for their willful stubborn blindness, their inability to come to terms with
a perfectly obvious developing reality.
The neocons have not had a new idea in 30 years. I continue to be baffled by their obsession
with Iran. Iran is a fact; the enmity goes back to our support for the overthrow of Mossadegh in 1953 and only made worse by our
support of the Shah as our-guy-in-Tehran.
The Russians really do have a new generation of weapons. The Chinese are re-assuming
a leading position in the world that has been theirs most of the time for two thousand years.
Europe is not a rising power.
The
USA is in disarray internally and in its approach to the rest of the world. I do not consider these to be opinions but objective
statements. I am not prepared to suffer for illusions and vanity among the “elite.”
"The media's interest in the well-being of a foreign population is directly proportional
to the West's interest in toppling its government, while editorial standards are inversely
proportional to its enemy status."--John McEvoy
So, lets employ this maxim to Russiagate and the Skripal Saga and the respective national
media. In the first case, the Russian public's completely ignored unless it's a member of the
so-called opposition while Putin and Russia get slandered constantly. The same treatment goes
for the UK media and a case could be made that the two act in tandem, implying
innerconnectivity between their spy agencies as suspected.
"Here is what we now know, per intelligence gleaned form federal law enforcement sources with insider knowledge of what amounts
to a plot by U.S. intelligence agencies to secure back door and illegal wiretaps of President Trump's associates:
Six U.S. agencies created a stealth task force, spearhead by CIA’s Brennan, to run domestic surveillance on Trump associates and
possibly Trump himself. To feign ignorance and to seemingly operate within U.S. laws, the agencies freelanced the wiretapping of
Trump associates to the British spy agency GCHQ. The decision to insert GCHQ as a back door to eavesdrop was sparked by the denial
of two FISA Court warrant applications filed by the FBI to seek wiretaps of Trump associates. GCHQ did not work from London or the
UK. In fact the spy agency worked from NSA’s headquarters in Fort Meade, MD with direct NSA supervision and guidance to conduct sweeping
surveillance on Trump associates. The illegal wiretaps were initiated months before the controversial Trump dossier compiled by former
British spy Christopher Steele. The Justice Department and FBI set up the meeting at Trump Tower between Trump Jr., Manafort and
Kushner with controversial Russian officials to make Trump’s associates appear compromised. Following the Trump Tower sit down, GCHQ
began digitally wiretapping Manafort, Trump Jr., and Kushner. After the concocted meeting by the Deep State, the British spy agency
could officially justify wiretapping Trump associates as an intelligence front for NSA because the Russian lawyer at the meeting
Natalia Veselnitskaya was considered an international security risk and prior to the June sit down was not even allowed entry into
the United States or the UK, federal sources said. By using GCHQ, the NSA and its intelligence partners had carved out a loophole
to wiretap Trump without a warrant. While it is illegal for U.S. agencies to monitor phones and emails of U.S. citizens inside the
United States absent a warrant, it is not illegal for British intelligence to do so. Even if the GCHQ was tapping Trump on U.S. soil
at Fort Meade. The wiretaps, secured through illicit scheming, have been used by U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of alleged
Russian collusion in the 2016 election, even though the evidence is considered “poisoned fruit.”
-----------.
Someone left this link in a comment to LJ, but as ringmaster of this circus, I choose to publish this as the best summary of all
the threads of the supposed conspiracy that I have seen thus far. pl
Wikipedia page on Paul Manafort says that the FBI began a criminal investigation into him in 2014, associated with his previous
dealings in Ukraine. He could have been a target of surveillance and wiretapping since then.
I therefore think Manafort was the key the intelligence agencies used to get to into Trump's organisation. It may have been
initially incidental to their ongoing, and much earlier surveillance of Manafort.
Robert Poling said...
Thank-you for this summary. If confirmed, Brennan (and others in the group he formed to spy on Trump and Trump's campaign)
should go to jail. Congress specifically forbid American spy agencies spying on American citizens in the U.S. Since that Congressional
action, the CIA and NSA have gotten around it by having foreign partners among the 'five eyes' do the collecting and then passing
the information back to us.
The spying on Trump was done at the behest of Obama and his minions. I'm reminded of an American president who was hounded
from office by the mainstream press for sending minions to spy and collect dirt at the opposition's political headquarters. He
had to resign and leave office. Several involved in the burglary went to jail and lost their livelihoods. Why is this situation
today any different and why is there a delay in prosecuting them? It's because the major media is bought out and controlled by
Trump's political opponents and not demanding justice, indeed is providing cover and excuses for them
Intelligence agencies, once created, has their own development dynamics and tend to escape from the control of
civilians and in turn control them. Such an interesting dynamics. In any case, the intelligence agencies and first of all top
brass of those agencies constitute the the core of the "deep state". Unlike civiliant emplorres they are protected by the veil of
secrecy and has access to large funds. Bush the elder was probably the first deep state creature who became the president of the
USA, but "special relationship" of Obama and Brennan is also not a secret.
Another problem is that secrecy and access to surveillance, Which gives intelligence agencies the ability to blackmail politicians.
Availability of unaccounted financial
resources make them real kingmakers. In a sense, as soon as such agencies were created the tail started waging the dog.
Notable quotes:
"... Serving under nine presidents, from Calvin Coolidge to Richard Nixon, the FBI was turned into a "Gestapo by Hoover whose modus operandi was blackmail". That's how President Harry Truman (1943-53) reportedly characterized Hoover's bureau. How else do you think he survived for so long – five decades – as the nation's top law enforcer? ..."
"... One of Hoover's mainstay sources is strongly believed to be Mafia crime bosses who had lots of dirt on politicians, from bribe-taking to vote-rigging, to illicit sexual affairs. It is suspected that the Mafia had their own dossier of images on Hoover in a compromising homosexual tryst which, in turn, kept him under their thumb. ..."
"... JFK was particularly wide open to blackmail owing to his rampant promiscuity and extra-marital liaisons, including with screen idol Marilyn Monroe. Kennedy more than once confided to his aides that "the bastards" had him nailed. It was for this reason that he made the thuggish Texan Senator Lyndon B Johnson his vice president even though he detested LBJ. Hoover and Johnson were longtime associates and the former no doubt pulled a favor to get LBJ into the White House. ..."
"... However, Hoover's blackmail on JFK was not enough to curtail his defiance of rabidly anti-communist Cold War politics. Against the hostility of the Pentagon, CIA and FBI, Kennedy pursued a courageous policy of detente with the Soviet Union and Cuba. Such a policy no doubt led to his assassination by the Deep State in Dallas on November 22, 1963. There is ample evidence that Hoover and Johnson, who became the new president, then colluded with the Deep State assassins to cover up the assassination as the act of lone nut Lee Harvey Oswald – a cover-up that persists to this day. ..."
"... But Hoover and Johnson got their revenge by subsequently letting Nixon know that there was classified information on him – thanks to FBI wiretaps. The specter of incrimination is possibly a factor in Nixon becoming increasingly paranoid during this presidency, culminating in the ignominy of the Watergate scandal that ended his career. ..."
"... Hoover certainly was the devious architect of a malign Deep State machine. But he was not alone. He instilled a culture and legacy that pervades the top echelons of the bureau. And not just the FBI. The early Cold War years saw the formation of the CIA and the NSA under the Machiavellian guidance of men like Allen Dulles and Richard Helms and a host of others ..."
No other individual in modern US history has a more sinister legacy than John Edgar Hoover,
the founder and lifetime director of the FBI. He founded the bureau in 1924 and was its
director until his death in 1972 at the age of 77.
Serving under nine presidents, from Calvin Coolidge to Richard Nixon, the FBI was turned
into a "Gestapo by Hoover whose modus operandi was blackmail". That's how President Harry
Truman (1943-53) reportedly
characterized Hoover's bureau. How else do you think he survived for so long – five
decades – as the nation's top law enforcer?
J Edgar Hoover and his henchmen kept files on thousands of politicians, judges, journalists
and other public figures, according to
biographer Anthony Summers. Hoover ruthlessly used those files on the secret and often sordid
private lives of senior public figures to control their career conduct and official decisions
so as to serve his interests.
And Hoover's interests were of a rightwing, anti-communist, racist bigot.
Ironically, his own suppressed homosexuality also manifested in witch-hunts against
homosexuals in public life.
It was Hoover's secret files that largely informed the McCarthyite anti-communist
inquisitions of the 1950s, whose baleful legacy on American democracy, foreign policy and
freedom of expression continues to this day.
One of Hoover's mainstay sources is strongly believed to be Mafia crime bosses who had lots
of dirt on politicians, from bribe-taking to vote-rigging, to illicit sexual affairs. It is
suspected that the Mafia had their own dossier of images on Hoover in a compromising homosexual
tryst which, in turn, kept him under their thumb.
Absurdly, the FBI chief maintained that there was "no such thing as the Mafia" in public
statements.
Two notorious cases of how FBI wiretapping worked under Hoover can be seen in the
presidencies of John F Kennedy (1961-63) and Richard Nixon (1969-74).
As recounted by Laurent Guyénot in his 2013 book , 'JFK to 9/11: 50
Years of Deep State', Hoover made a point of letting each new president know of compromising
information he had on them. It wouldn't be brandished overtly as blackmail; the president would
be briefed subtly, "Sir, if someone were to have copies of this it would be damaging to your
career". Enough said.
JFK was particularly wide open to blackmail owing to his rampant promiscuity and
extra-marital liaisons, including with screen idol Marilyn Monroe. Kennedy more than once
confided to his aides that "the bastards" had him nailed. It was for this reason that he made
the thuggish Texan Senator Lyndon B Johnson his vice president even though he detested LBJ.
Hoover and Johnson were longtime associates and the former no doubt pulled a favor to get LBJ
into the White House.
However, Hoover's blackmail on JFK was not enough to curtail his defiance of rabidly
anti-communist Cold War politics. Against the hostility of the Pentagon, CIA and FBI, Kennedy
pursued a courageous policy of detente with the Soviet Union and Cuba. Such a policy no doubt
led to his assassination by the Deep State in Dallas on November 22, 1963. There is ample
evidence that Hoover and Johnson, who became the new president, then colluded with the Deep
State assassins to cover up the assassination as the act of lone nut Lee Harvey Oswald –
a cover-up that persists to this day.
As for Richard Nixon, it is believed that "Tricky Dicky" engaged in secret communications
with the US-backed South Vietnamese regime on the cusp of the presidential elections in 1968.
Nixon promised the South Vietnamese stronger military support if they held off entering peace
talks with communist North Vietnam, which incumbent President Johnson was trying to organize.
LBJ wanted to claim a peace process was underway in order to boost the election chances of his
vice president Hubert Humphrey.
Nixon's scheming prevailed. The Vietnam peace gambit was scuttled, the Vietnam war raged on,
and so the Democrat candidate lost. Nixon finally got into the White House, which he had long
coveted from the time he lost out to JFK back in 1960.
But Hoover and Johnson got their revenge by subsequently letting Nixon know that there was
classified information on him – thanks to FBI wiretaps. The specter of incrimination is
possibly a factor in Nixon becoming increasingly paranoid during this presidency, culminating
in the ignominy of the Watergate scandal that ended his career.
These are but only two examples of how Deep State politics works in controlling and
subverting American democracy. The notion that lawmakers and presidents are free to serve the
people is a quaintly naive one. For the US media to pretend otherwise, and to hail the FBI as
some kind of benign bastion of justice, while also deprecating claims of "Deep State" intrusion
as "conspiracy theory", is either impossibly ignorant of history – or a sign of the
media's own compromised complicity.
Nonetheless, to blame this culture of institutionalized blackmail and corruption on one
individual – J Edgar Hoover – is not fair either.
Hoover certainly was the devious architect of a malign Deep State machine. But he was not
alone. He instilled a culture and legacy that pervades the top echelons of the bureau. And not
just the FBI. The early Cold War years saw the formation of the CIA and the NSA under the
Machiavellian guidance of men like Allen Dulles and Richard Helms and a host of others.
Once formed, the Deep State – as an alternate, unaccountable, unelected government
– does not surrender its immense power willingly. It has learnt to hold on to its power
through blackmail, media control, incitement of wars, and, even ultimately, assassination of
American dissenters.
The illegal tapping of private communications is an oxygen supply for the depredations of
the American Deep State.
Thinking that such agencies are not actively warping and working the electoral system to fix
the figurehead in the White House is a dangerous delusion.
So too are claims that American democracy is being "influenced" by malign Russian enemies,
as the US intelligence chiefs once again
chorused in front of the Senate this past week. The consummate irony of it!
The real "influence campaigns" corrupting American democracy are those of the "All-American"
agencies who claim to be law enforcers and defenders of national security.
US citizens would do well to refresh on the untold history of their country to appreciate
how they are being manipulated.
We might even surmise that a good number of citizens are already aware, if only vaguely, of
the elite corruption – and that is why Washington DC is viewed with increasing contempt
by the people.
"... The U.S. alone expelled 60 Russian officials. Trump was furious when he learned that EU countries expelled less than 60 in total. A year ago the Washington Post described the scene: ..."
"... Today the New York Times portraits Gina Haspel's relation with Trump. The writers seem sympathetic to her and the CIA's position. They include an anecdote of the Skripal expulsion decision that is supposed to let her shine in a good light. But it only proves that the CIA manipulated the president for its own purpose: ..."
"... Ms. Haspel showed pictures the British government had supplied her of young children hospitalized after being sickened by the Novichok nerve agent that poisoned the Skripals. She then showed a photograph of ducks that British officials said were inadvertently killed by the sloppy work of the Russian operatives. ..."
"... Ms Haspel was not the first to use emotional images to appeal to the president, but pairing it with her hard-nosed realism proved effective: Mr. Trump fixated on the pictures of the sickened children and the dead ducks. At the end of the briefing, he embraced the strong option. ..."
"... If the NYT piece is correct, the CIA director, in cooperation with the British government, lied to Trump about the incident. Their aim was to sabotage Trump's announced policy of better relations with Russia. The ruse worked. ..."
"... The NYT piece does not mention that the pictures Gina Haspel showed Trump were fake. It pretends that her lies were "new information" and that she was not out to manipulate him: ..."
"... The job of the CIA director is to serve the president, not to protect the agencies own policies. ..."
"... The 1970s movie 3 Days of The Condor is about the evils of the See Eye A. Also they create trial balloon in the movie about taking middle east oil. This later happens in real life with NeoCon See Eye A stooges - Poppy Bush then later GW Bush-Cheney, Clintons and Oboma all agency owned men. ..."
"... The head of the See Eye A is to serve the elites-Central banksters not the President. They did not serve JFK. Any President who crosses the central bankers aka roth-schilds ends up dead. ..."
"... It is interesting to see that nations that have traditionally been pro-American feel that the threat posed by American power is growing. ..."
"... Haspel was CIA station chief in London in 2016, when U.S. and Brit intel agencies conspired to stop Trump's candidacy. In her position, Haspel had to know about the plotting, more likely she participated in it. That Brennan supported her argues for the latter. ..."
"... Photos of fake dead ducks and fake sickened children confirm the Skripal story is, in turn, completely fake. It says a lot that the NY Times either does not know this or that its contempt for its readership matches the contempt by which the intelligence agencies hold for their putative boss. ..."
"... Thanks for bringing this Skripal segment to light, b, as most of us don't read the NY Times in any form. Haspel likely had a hand in the planning of the overall scheme of which the Skripal saga and Russiagate are interconnected episodes. Clearly, the Money Power sees the challenge raised by Russia/China/Eurasia as existential and is trying to counter hybridly as it knows its wealth won't save it from Nuclear War. ..."
"... after integrity initiative, we know the uk is full of shite on most everything... thus, the msm will not be talking about integrity initiative.. ..."
"... once Teresa May has spoken in Parliament, and Trump committed to expelling embassy staff, there is no way any alternative version of the truth is possible. ..."
"... Skripal of course was a colleague of Steele, and possibly the only person he asked to get info for the dossier beyond what Nellie Ohr had already given him. His evidence might have been crucial. The CIA and others have a strong motive to kill Skripal and a stronger one to blame the Russians. ..."
"... The fact that the 'Dirty Dossier' and the 'Skripal "story"' both originate in one and the same small town in the UK, tells you all you need to know about both. ..."
"... Haspel will not be fired. ..."
"... It is clear the USA, France, Israel and UK are fasting approaching ungovernable .. no one in government can keep the lies of the other hidden, and none of the governed believes anyone in government, the MSM, the MIC or the AIG (ATT, Intel and Google). .. ..."
"... The actors in government, their lawyers, playmates and corporations have become the laughing stock of the rest of the world. ..."
An ass kissing portrait of Gina Haspel,
torture
queen and director of the CIA, reveals that she lied to Trump to push for more
aggression against Russia.
In March 2018 the British government asserted, without providing any evidence, that the
alleged 'Novichok' poisoning of Sergej and Yulia Skripal was the fault of Russia. It urged
its allies to expel Russian officials from their countries.
The U.S. alone expelled
60 Russian officials. Trump
was furious when he learned that EU countries expelled less than 60 in total. A year
ago the Washington Post described the scene:
President Trump seemed distracted in March as his aides briefed him at his Mar-a-Lago
resort on the administration's plan to expel 60 Russian diplomats and suspected spies.
The United States, they explained, would be ousting roughly the same number of
Russians as its European allies -- part of a coordinated move to punish Moscow for the
poisoning of a former Russian spy and his daughter on British soil.
"We'll match their numbers," Trump instructed, according to a senior administration
official. "We're not taking the lead. We're matching."
The next day, when the expulsions were announced publicly, Trump erupted, officials
said. To his shock and dismay, France and Germany were each expelling only four Russian
officials -- far fewer than the 60 his administration had decided on.
The president, who seemed to believe that other individual countries would largely
equal the United States, was furious that his administration was being portrayed in the
media as taking by far the toughest stance on Russia.
The expulsion marked a turn in the Trump administration's relation with Russia:
The incident reflects a tension at the core of the Trump administration's increasingly
hard-nosed stance on Russia: The president instinctually opposes many of the punitive
measures pushed by his Cabinet that have crippled his ability to forge a close
relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The past month, in particular, has marked a major turning point in the
administration's stance, according to senior administration officials. There have been
mass expulsions of Russian diplomats, sanctions on oligarchs that have bled billions of
dollars from Russia's already weak economy and, for the first time, a presidential tweet
that criticized Putin by name for backing Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad.
Today the New York Timesportraits Gina
Haspel's relation with Trump. The writers seem sympathetic to her and the CIA's position.
They include an anecdote of the Skripal expulsion decision that is supposed to let her
shine in a good light. But it only proves that the CIA manipulated the president for its
own purpose:
Last March, top national security officials gathered inside the White House to discuss
with Mr. Trump how to respond to the nerve agent attack in Britain on Sergei V. Skripal,
the former Russian intelligence agent.
London was pushing for the White House to expel dozens of suspected Russian
operatives, but Mr. Trump was skeptical. ... During the discussion, Ms. Haspel, then deputy C.I.A. director, turned toward Mr. Trump.
She outlined possible responses in a quiet but firm voice, then leaned forward and told
the president that the "strong option" was to expel 60 diplomats.
To persuade Mr. Trump, according to people briefed on the conversation, officials
including Ms. Haspel also tried to show him that Mr. Skripal and his daughter were not
the only victims of Russia's attack.
Ms. Haspel showed pictures the British government had supplied her of young children
hospitalized after being sickened by the Novichok nerve agent that poisoned the Skripals.
She then showed a photograph of ducks that British officials said were inadvertently
killed by the sloppy work of the Russian operatives.
Ms Haspel was not the first to use emotional images to appeal to the president, but
pairing it with her hard-nosed realism proved effective: Mr. Trump fixated on the
pictures of the sickened children and the dead ducks. At the end of the briefing, he
embraced the strong option.
The Skripal case was widely covered and we
followed it diligently (scroll down). There were no reports of any children affected by
'Novichok' nor were their any reports of dead ducks. In the official storyline the
Skripals, before visiting a restaurant,
fed bread to ducks at a pond in the Queen Elizabeth Gardens in Salisbury.
They also
gave duck-bread to three children to do the same. The children were examined and their
blood was tested.
No
poison was found and none of them fell ill . No duck died. (The duck feeding episode
also disproves
the claim that the Skripals were poisoned by touching a door handle.)
If the NYT piece is correct, the CIA director, in cooperation with the British
government, lied to Trump about the incident. Their aim was to sabotage Trump's announced
policy of better relations with Russia. The ruse worked.
The NYT piece does not mention that the pictures Gina Haspel showed Trump were
fake. It pretends that her lies were "new information" and that she was not out to
manipulate him:
The outcome was an example, officials said, of how Ms. Haspel is one of the few people
who can get Mr. Trump to shift position based on new information.
Co-workers and friends of Ms. Haspel push back on any notion that she is manipulating
the president. She is instead trying to get him to listen and to protect the agency,
according to former intelligence officials who know her.
The job of the CIA director is to serve the president, not to protect the agencies own
policies. Hopefully Trump will hear about the anecdote, recognize how he was had, and fire Haspel. He should not stop there but also get rid of her protector who likely had a role in
the game:
Ms. Haspel won the trust of Mr. Pompeo, however, and has stayed loyal to him. As a
result, Mr. Trump sees Ms. Haspel as an extension of Mr. Pompeo, a view that has helped
protect her, current and former intelligence officials said.
Posted by b on April 16, 2019 at 08:37 AM |
Permalink
I don't see how it's possible to manipulate someone (and especially the US president) into
doing something they don't want to do with lies like the ones described here. On the
contrary presidents, CEOs etc. favor the staffers who tell them the kind of lies they want
to hear in order to reinforce what they wanted to do in the first place.
I've never seen any reason to alter my first position on Trump, that like any other
president he does what he wants to do.
The 1970s movie 3 Days of The Condor is about the evils of the See Eye A. Also they create
trial balloon in the movie about taking middle east oil. This later happens in real life
with NeoCon See Eye A stooges - Poppy Bush then later GW Bush-Cheney, Clintons and Oboma
all agency owned men.
The joke 7in the final scene Robert Redford tells See Eye A man Cliff Robertson that he
gave all the evidence to the NY Times. What a joke. The NY Times and the Wash Post are the
mouthpieces for the SEE Eye A. The AP news sources most of their stories from those two
papers and other lackey See Eye A newspapers.
One final criticism in moon's story. The head of the See Eye A is to serve the elites-Central banksters not the
President. They did not serve JFK. Any President who crosses the central bankers aka roth-schilds ends up dead.
After this, she got the top job, so what is the real lesson here? Sociopathic liars get
promoted....or you can tell the truth, try to be honorable and fade into obscurity.. In a nest of psychos, you have to really be depraved to become the top psycho...
Nuke it for orbit, it's the only way to be sure...
Backing up Russ's point, when will you realise the "buck stops" on Trump's desk for any
and all departments he oversees, which are run by his appointees? Trump is dedicated to
creating a neoconservative foreign policy melded to a neoliberal economic policy favouring
his corporate fascist sponsors. Recently, you've been all over the Assange indictment,
Trump's relationship with Nuttyahoo and the related rollback of JCPOA. Is this what you
want to see continued into a second term?
There is much evidence to show Trump and the GOP working steadily towards a "democracy"
where Congress is castrated (one might say the system castrates Congress anyway), opposing
candidates are jailed, opposition votes are suppressed and the media is weakened to the
point where no one can tell the difference.
They haven't got there quite yet but once the judiciary is controlled by GOP ideologues
it's game over. And McConnell is dedicating his life to make that the reality ASAP.
Meanwhile back at the ranch we are dedicated to knocking down any and all potential
opposition to this GOP hostile takeover for some reason I've yet to fathom.
Hopefully Trump will hear about the anecdote, recognize how he was had, and fire
Haspel. He should not stop there but also get rid of her protector who likely had a role in
the game[Pompeo]
Hopefully yes to all four propositions. Why am I sceptical though (except conceivably
the first)?
The story veers into complete fiction when it claims that pictures of dead ducks had any
effect on Trump. He doesn't like, nor care about animals. He's the first POTUS in decades I
believe to not even pretend to like dogs by having an official White House dog and every
policy his Administration can take against animals, they have taken. I'm not even sure I
buy the spin that he cared about dead kids either. And NYT readers know this about him, so
I don't understand what the point of peddling this fiction is other than to paint Torture
Queen in some kind of good light (and we KNOW that she certainly doesn't care about dead
anything).
another example of trump's stupidity and pathological inability to think for himself. he
gets his views from fox and his policy from bolton. his equally vapid daughter and kushner
whine to him about sooper sad syria pictures they saw in a sponsored link while googling
for new tmz gossip.
even worse that this is the twat in charge of one of russiagate's main instigating "deep
state" agencies. he spent the entirety of his presidency railing against their various lies
then takes this wankery at face value. it's just like the "chinese soldiers in venezuela";
if those pictures were legit they'd have been splattered over every front page and
permanently attached to screeching cnn and msnbc segments demanding trump "finally get
tough" on "putin's russia".
my only surprise is that she didn't tell him about british babies ripped from incubators
and dipped in anthrax powder.
the nyt shilling for a soCIopAth? not that surprising.
The consultant in emergency medicine at Salisbury hospital wrote to The Times, shortly
after the Skripal incident. His choice of words was odd, and some have said they indicate
no novichok poisoning occurred. Leaving that to one side, his letter certainly puts paid to
the idea that more than three people (the Skripals and the policeman, DCI Bailey) were
poisoned.
https://www.onaquietday.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/DocSaysNoNerveAgentInSalisbury.jpg
" the nerve agent attack in Britain on Sergei V. Skripal, "
There was no attack on the Skripals. or on anyone else.
The Russophobia in whose context it falls, is of a higher order, in which a fabricated
narrative of a Skripal-like attack had an important function.
The Skripals were perfectly happy to lend their name to the fabrication, and are living
happily, probably in New Zealand.
The Daily Beast article that b linked to describes how many serious, well-informed people
felt that Haspel was unsuitable to lead the CIA. Even more strange and troubling was that Haspel was supported by Trump's nemesis,
John Brennan.
Despite all that, MAGA Trump still nominated her. Any notion that Trump is at odds with, or "manipulated" by, Haspel, Bolton, or Pompeo is
just propaganda. We've seen such reporting before (esp. wrt Bolton) and Trump has taken no
action.
I see that Trump derangement is alive and well here at MoA. Commenters talk as if Trump is
the first president stupid enough to be manipulated by the security agencies and shadow
government sometimes referred to as a "deep state". People don't have to be historians or
look back to Rome, just read the books about how the great general who "won WWII" was used
by the oligarchy which had full control of US foreign policy throughout Eisenhower's term in
office.
Works produced after WWII, C. Wright Mills, The Power elite was written in 1956,The
Brothers and The Divil's Chessboard each about the Dulles Brothers and how they operated US
foreign policy for the interests of the oligarchy, and the work Peter Phillips, GIANTS: The
Global Power Elite and the work of David Rothkopf which thoroughly describes the feudal
system under which the Western cultures are ruled.
The US government is a pantomime it is a show it has no power.
How many here can honestly say they understand that the US dollar itself and the ENTIRE
GLOBAL FINANCIAL SYSTEM is privately owned. Why do you think the "banks were bailed out"?
because the banks were in power not the government. The US is 22 trillion in debt - the
oligarchy is the creditor - take over the US gov. and you have a powerless pile of
debt.
Around 6,000 people control 85% of global assets until that changes nothing will change.
The oligarchy won virtually all the mines and control the price of all basic commodities
necessary for modern life, the internet, oil of course and more.
What is failing and what has failed over and over for 500 years is Western Civilization and
its three "great religions" which preach obedience, oppression, domination by a one god
suffocating mythology.
But the oligarchy doesn't own just the basic commodities, it owns the religions and it owns
the drugs and all illegal trade as well.
Western "civilization" is really nothing more than one vast feudal kingdom, with royal
courts in DC, Tel Aviv and Ryiadh. Wheather there is a god or not, religion is made of
flesh and blood not miracles. No Rabbi or Priest or Imam claims visitations by god to
instruct them on doctrine - they are flesh and blood and they want power so they behave
like sycophants to the money they need to expand their power...all for the good souls under
their care.
Haspel was CIA station chief in London in 2016, when U.S. and Brit intel agencies conspired
to stop Trump's candidacy. In her position, Haspel had to know about the plotting, more
likely she participated in it. That Brennan supported her argues for the latter.
What can we expect from a tv personality who became a US president? A man who ran with an
advertisement worthy of a business man like him, "Make America Great Again." How does he go
about doing it? Giving more money to the military industrial-Congressional complex, even
though we are really flat broke. Using aggressive tactics used by Wall Street in hostile
company takeovers to really intimidate other nations. And hire and place those he really
agrees with in important positions who really reflect his true feelings. I'm sure when he
spoke with Haspel before offering her the job, he brought up the topic of torture and
agreed with her on its use on terrorists.
I think there's a reasonable case to be made that they conspired not to stop Trump but
to further speculation of Trump's "collusion" with Russia (what would later be known as
Russiagate). The "collusion" and "Russia meddled" accusations are what fueled the new
McCarthyism.
I'll just add to Jerry's comment at #3 that the final line in the movie "Day of the Condor"
is something like "But will they print it?" which really spoke to the message of the film
in its entirety. The condor being an endangered bird for whom the hero is named, and the
beginning outrage being the brutal murder of book lovers researching useable plot details
for the 'company'makes this message current and applicable to what we see in the Skripal
case. And instead of librarians, we now have online commenters, a doughty breed, and we
have Assange.
Instead of 'Will they print it?' I am wondering 'Will they make another movie about
it?'
Remind me, where is Yulia Skripal these days? Well and truly 'disappeared' it seems. The
mask is off. the snarling face of the beast is there for all to see.
What a total waste of an article discussing a story published in NYT or WaPo.
b, the World has divided itself into those who consume alternative media such as this
and stupidos who consume MSM. There is nothing in-between that you are attempting to
discuss and dissect here. NYT = cognitive value zero.
Fake News not worth one millisecond of our time, not even to decode what the regime
wants us to know, we know all that already. Personally, I am only interested in the new
methods of domestic repression, what is next after the warning of Assange arrest, future
rendition and torture. The Deep Stare appears to be coming out into open, will it soon get
rid of the whole faux democracy construct and just use iron fist to rule? It already impose
its will as the rule of law. All of the Western block is heading in this direction.
Photos of fake dead ducks and fake sickened children confirm the Skripal story is, in turn,
completely fake. It says a lot that the NY Times either does not know this or that its
contempt for its readership matches the contempt by which the intelligence agencies hold
for their putative boss.
The story veers into complete fiction when it claims that pictures of dead ducks had any
effect on Trump. He doesn't like, nor care about animals. Mataman | Apr 16, 2019 9:45:30 AM
This assumes that Trump would primarily care about the ducks (and children) when he
approved a massive expulsion, rather that his image and "ah, in that case it would look bad
if we do not do something really decisive".
In any case, I was thinking why NYT would disclose something like that. The point is
that readers of Craig Murray (not so few, but mostly Scottish nationalists who are also
leftist and have scant possibilities and/or inclination to vote in USA) and MoonOfAlabama
would quickly catch a dead fish here, but 99.9% of the public is blissfully unaware of any
incongruences in the "established" Skripal narrative.
BTW, it is possible that the journalist who scribbled fresh yarn obtained from CIA did it
earnestly. Journalists do not necessarily follow stories that they cover -- scribbling from
given notes does not require overtaxing the precious attention span that can be devoted to
more vital cognitive challenges. I am lazy to find the link, but while checking for news on
Venezuela, I stumbled on a piece from Express, a British tabloid, where Guaido was named a
"figurehead of the oposition" supported by "450 Western countries". My interpretation was
that more literate journalists were moved for to more compelling stories as Venezuela went
to the back burner.
Yes, indeed, the Skripal Affair is one of the obviously contrived stunts we've seen.
Just outrageous in its execution. On a par with the US having a man who didn't even run for president of Venezuela swear
himself in and then pressure everyone to accept him as president.
Interesting, I had no idea Gina Haspel - aka, The Queen of Blood - played a role. I
thought it was all original dirty work by Britain's Theresa May. Boy, I hope people are through with the false notion that if women just get into
leadership, the world will become a better gentler place.
Macron was (afaik?) the only EU 'leader' who was quoted in the MSM as bruiting re. the
Skripal affair a message like:
.. no culpability in the part of Russia has been evidenced .. for now...
I suppose he was enjoined to shut his gob right quick (have been reading about brexit so
brit eng) as nothing more in that line was heard.
Hooo, the EU expelled a lot of Russ. diplomats, obeying the USuk, which certainly
created some major upsets on the ground.
Some were expelled, went into other jobs, other places, but then others arrived, etc.
The MSM has not made any counts - lists - of names numbers - etc. of R diplos on the job -
anywhere. As some left and then others arrived.
Once more, this was mostly a symbolic move, if extremely nasty, insulting, and
disruptive.
Theresa May's speech re. Novichok, Independent 14 March 2018:
.. on Monday I set out that Mr Skripal and his daughter were poisoned with a
Novichok: a military grade nerve agent developed by Russia. Based on this capability,
combined with their record of conducting state sponsored assassinations – including
against former intelligence officers whom they regard as legitimate targets – the UK
Government concluded it was highly likely that Russia was responsible for this reckless and
despicable act. ..
imo, the media has, once again, simply taken its lead from trump himself, & started
making things up completely. & you're absolutely correct in pointing out that, much
like trump's true believers, the msm's targeted audience never even notices...
Thanks for bringing this Skripal segment to light, b, as most of us don't read the NY
Times in any form. Haspel likely had a hand in the planning of the overall scheme of
which the Skripal saga and Russiagate are interconnected episodes. Clearly, the Money Power
sees the challenge raised by Russia/China/Eurasia as existential and is trying to counter
hybridly as it knows its wealth won't save it from Nuclear War.
after integrity initiative, we know the uk is full of shite on most everything... thus, the
msm will not be talking about integrity initiative..
what i didn't know is what @18 lysias pointed out.."Haspel was CIA station chief in
London in 2016, when U.S. and Brit intel agencies conspired to stop Trump's candidacy. In
her position, Haspel had to know about the plotting, more likely she participated in it.
That Brennan supported her argues for the latter." ditto jr's speculation @20 too...
so gaspel shows trump some cheap propaganda that she got from who??
my main problem with b's post - i tend to see it like kiza @23) is maintaining the idea
trump isn't in on all of this.. the thought trump is being duped by his underlings.. if he
was and it mattered, he would get rid of them.. the fact he doesn't says to me, he is in on
it - get russia, being the 24/7 game plan of the west here still..
Please stop listening to idiot libertarians and their "US is flat broke" meme.
The reality is that: so long as Americans transact in dollars, the United States government
can tax anytime it feels like by issuing new dollars via the Fed.
Equally, so long as 60% of the world's trade is conducted in dollars, this is tens to
hundreds of billions of dollars of additional taxation surface area.
The MMT people - I don't agree 100% with everything they say, but they do understand the
actual operation of fiat currency.
The people who want a hard currency are either wealthy (and understand that conversion to
hard currency cements their wealth) or are useful idiots who don't understand that currency
devaluation is the single easiest way to tax in a democracy.
I doubt Haspel knew the ducks were fake - she was probably just given stuff to pass up
the chain.
It is a lot like John Kerry who was shown convincing satellite data of the BUK launch that
hit MH17 - but no one could be bothered to pass on even the launch site coordinates to the
JIT. I'm sure this stuff goes on all the time, and of course, once Teresa May has spoken in
Parliament, and Trump committed to expelling embassy staff, there is no way any alternative
version of the truth is possible.
Skripal of course was a colleague of Steele, and possibly the only person he asked to
get info for the dossier beyond what Nellie Ohr had already given him. His evidence might
have been crucial. The CIA and others have a strong motive to kill Skripal and a stronger
one to blame the Russians.
The fact that the 'Dirty Dossier' and the 'Skripal "story"' both
originate in one and the same small town in the UK, tells you all you need to know about
both.
"The people who want a hard currency are either wealthy (and understand that conversion
to hard currency cements their wealth) or are useful idiots who don't understand that
currency devaluation is the single easiest way to tax in a democracy."
The useful idiocy is most surprising among US farmers. In the 19th century they broadly
understood that fiat money was good for chronic low-wealth debtors like themselves, while
hard money was bad and a gold standard lethal. This was the basis of the Populist movement.
Nothing has changed financially, but today's farmers, and the low-wealth debtor class in
general, seem more likely to be goldbuggers than to have any knowledge of economics or of
their own political history.
karlof1 36
Once a faction becomes submerged in the Mammon theocracy and becomes nothing but
mercenary nihilists, thinking is no longer necessary or desirable, except to come up with
attractive, pseudo-plausible lies.
This certainly characterizes "the right" (including liberals), but they have no monopoly
on it. By now "the left" is nearly as thoughtless and instrumental on behalf of Mammon,
except to the extent that a few people are starting to really grapple with what it means to
have an intrinsically ecocidal and therefore suicidal civilization. That's really the only
thought frontier left, all else has been engulfed in Mammon, productionism, scientism and
technocracy.
I remind that Mussolini wasted his legislature.. 1 balmy after noon @ a roadside spot.
it made his government stronger.?
It is clear the USA, France, Israel and UK are fasting approaching ungovernable .. no
one in government can keep the lies of the other hidden, and none of the governed believes
anyone in government, the MSM, the MIC or the AIG (ATT, Intel and Google). ..
The actors in
government, their lawyers, playmates and corporations have become the laughing stock of the
rest of the world. Everyone in the government is covering for the behaviors of someone else
in government, the MSM has raised the price of a pencil to just under a million, stock
markets are bags of hot thin air, and everyone in side and outside of the centers of power
at all levels of government have lied thru their teeth so much that their teeth are melting
from the continuous flow of hot deceitful air.
Corrupt is now the only qualification for
political office, trigger happy screwball the only qualification for the police and the
military and . making progress is like trying to conduct a panty raid at a female nudist
camp.
John Anthony La Pietra , Apr 16, 2019 3:47:03 PM |
link
"... For Christ's sake! The "Deep State"!?! With a well documented pathological liar and a seemingly endless supply of professional sycophants in our government selling our nation to the highest bidder in plain sight why in the world do you folks continue to need grand delusions of demons in the woodwork??? ..."
"... I have no reason to believe Comey, Clapper and Brennen have served this nation with honor and integrity in dealing with more responsibility than that required to sit safely at home and blabber about as the victim of some grand conspiracy ..."
"... To the extent that McCain comes out looking bad in a special counsel's report, Trump haters like you will no longer be able to talk about Trump's supposed terrible character in dissing noble John McCain, and holding it up as Exhibit A of why Trump shouldn't be president. ..."
"... Our failures of statecraft are quite analogous to the ongoing errors in my field (medicine), well described in "To Err is Human." We've made a lot of progress in medicine in addressing them, mostly though systems engineering. That's because the tendency toward these errors is a result of how human brains are wired, and if you have a human brain, no matter how smart or well educated you are, you have those tendencies. The key is to create systems that catch the errors. ..."
"... Now we have to figure out how to create systems to constrain politicians, and especially the military-industrial-Congressional complex (Eisenhower's actual original term), from making those errors. ..."
"... "Iraq wrecked me, even though I somehow didn't expect it to. I was foolish to think that traveling to the other side of the world and spending a year seeing death and poverty, bearing witness to a war, learning how to be mortared at night and deciding it didn't matter that I might die before breakfast, wasn't going to change me. Of the military units I was embedded in, three soldiers did not come home; all died at their own hands." ..."
"... Here is a thought; the unprovoked American aggression in Iraq wrecked Iraq! There is no comparison between the millions of dead, dispossessed, displaced, terrorized and radicalized Iraqis and a few thousand PTSD cases with the richest government in the world on their side. ..."
"... It's like a pimp complaining about bruised knuckles on account of hitting a woman too many times! ..."
"... The title of your book sounds like "Invading Iraq was a Good Idea but the Implementation was Bad and I Couldn't Fix It". Did you really think we could invade a sovereign country based on lies and win "hearts and minds" if we just did it the right way? Not possible. ..."
The invasion of Iraq was a mistake of historic dimensions. The "weapons of mass destruction" excuse was a lie. When I see George
W. Bush smiling on TV, I want to puke. Likewise, I cannot view an image of Lyndon Johnson without revulsion. They are both responsible
for much death and suffering. I have heard people try to excuse both of them, with the statement that "they meant well." The road
to Hell is paved with good intentions.
For Christ's sake! The "Deep State"!?! With a well documented pathological liar and a seemingly endless supply of professional
sycophants in our government selling our nation to the highest bidder in plain sight why in the world do you folks continue to
need grand delusions of demons in the woodwork???
I have no reason to believe Comey, Clapper and Brennen have served this nation with honor and integrity in dealing with
more responsibility than that required to sit safely at home and blabber about as the victim of some grand conspiracy.
The war In Afghanistan would have ended 15 years ago if the sons of members of Congress were being drafted. "It's easy to send
someone else's sons to war."
You left out the phrase "anything other than" following the phrase "have served this nation with" in your last sentence.
You forgot to express your confidence in John McCain. Good luck with that. McCain's top aide flew to a foreign city to receive
the Steele dossier, gave it to the senator, who then gave it to the FBI–as per Steele's script, I assume. It's another reason
why we need a special counsel to look into the FBI's role. A special counsel can hardly omit the McCain piece of the puzzle, whereas
a regular prosecutor can easily ignore it and cover McCain's keister.
To the extent that McCain comes out looking bad in a special counsel's report, Trump haters like you will no longer be able
to talk about Trump's supposed terrible character in dissing noble John McCain, and holding it up as Exhibit A of why Trump shouldn't
be president.
More than anything else concerning the FBI's election shenanigans, the McCain-Steele nexus–specifically the report written
about it by a special counsel–could expose the deep state's modus operandi. Not even an inspector general's report can do that
as well as a special counsel's report.
Your book will go out of print. In 10 to 20 years it will be reprinted and sell well. It takes that long for people to remove
their heads from their nether regions and be willing to contemplate the errors made.
The real irony is that we know better. There is a vast body of literature on major cognitive errors, and the whole catalog
is on display in the debacle described. Our failures of statecraft are quite analogous to the ongoing errors in my field
(medicine), well described in "To Err is Human." We've made a lot of progress in medicine in addressing them, mostly though
systems engineering. That's because the tendency toward these errors is a result of how human brains are wired, and if you
have a human brain, no matter how smart or well educated you are, you have those tendencies. The key is to create systems that
catch the errors.
Now we have to figure out how to create systems to constrain politicians, and especially the military-industrial-Congressional
complex (Eisenhower's actual original term), from making those errors.
I commiserate with your disillusioning journey because I went through a similar odyssey into self-awareness like yours many decades
ago. I served as a medical corpsman in Vietnam (31 May 1967 – 31 May 1968). It's all been downhill from there. A gradual slide
down the slippy slope of history in our decline as a nation. There's not much one can really do. But at my age, I will be long
gone when our country hits burns and crashes as it hits bottom.
"Iraq wrecked me, even though I somehow didn't expect it to. I was foolish to think that traveling to the other side of the world
and spending a year seeing death and poverty, bearing witness to a war, learning how to be mortared at night and deciding it didn't
matter that I might die before breakfast, wasn't going to change me. Of the military units I was embedded in, three soldiers did
not come home; all died at their own hands."
Enough books and movies about those poor damaged American boys yet?
The navel gazing never stops.
Here is a thought; the unprovoked American aggression in Iraq wrecked Iraq! There is no comparison between the millions
of dead, dispossessed, displaced, terrorized and radicalized Iraqis and a few thousand PTSD cases with the richest government
in the world on their side.
Get over yourselves! Honestly! It's like a pimp complaining about bruised knuckles on account of hitting a woman too many
times!
The title of your book sounds like "Invading Iraq was a Good Idea but the Implementation was Bad and I Couldn't Fix It". Did
you really think we could invade a sovereign country based on lies and win "hearts and minds" if we just did it the right way?
Not possible.
Just a cynical take, but implying that there are lessons to be learned from previous or present wars that should keep us from
engaging in future wars presumes that the goal is to, where possible, actually avoid war.
It also suggests a convenient, simplistic narrative that the military/DOD is incompetent and stupid, and unable to learn from
previous engagements.
I wonder if the Middle East is nothing more than a live-fire laboratory for the military; if it seems as though there is no
plan, no objective, no victory for these engagements, maybe that is because the only objectives and victory are to provide practical
war training for our troops, test equipment and tactics, keep defense contractors employed and the Pentagon's budget inflated,
and to project power and provide a convenient excuse for proximity to our 'real' enemies.
Draping these actions under a pretense of spreading 'peace and democracy' is just a pretense and, as we can see by our track
record, has nothing to do with actual victory. "Victory", depending on who you ask, is measured in years of engagement and dollars
spent, period.
And because it is primarily taking place in the far away and poorly understood Middle East, it is never going to be enough
of an issue with voters for politicians to have to seriously contend with.
This person is a crybaby. At 49 he went to a war that most rational people knew already, was an immoral, illegal waste of people,
time and money. But now he wants to whine about PTSD. I have the same opinion about most soldiers who fought there also. Nobody
made them volunteer for that junk war so quit whining when things get a little hard
"... My search for the roots of this particularly vicious and extremely dangerous hate campaign began in a Dartmouth College Russian Foreign Policy course, which led me to the book, "Russophobia: Anti-Russian Lobby and American Foreign Policy" by San Francisco State University Professor Andrei P. Tsygankov (2009). ..."
"... Then in Italy the following winter, I discovered the work of the Swiss journalist, Guy Mettan, in the Italian geopolitical journal, LiMes: an excerpt from his book, "Creating Russophobia: From the Great Religious Schism to Anti-Putin Hysteria" (2017). ..."
"... "More than merely dominate, the American superpower now seeks to control history. Such cosmic ambition is accompanied by an equally vast sense of entitlement, of special dispensation to pursue its aims." (p.3) ..."
"... Never-the-less, Mearsheimer is backed up by Richard Sakwa, Professor of Russian and European Politics at the University of Kent. In Sakwa's book, "Russia Against the Rest: The Post-Cold War Crisis of World Order", 2017, we turn to the section on "Reality Wars and American Power" on p. 217 to read: "It does indeed seem that Russia and Western elites live in totally different worlds, divided by different epistemological understandings of the nature of contemporary reality. The Ukraine crisis crystallized the profound differences between Russian and Atlanticist understandings of the breakdown and its causes." And he continues on p. 218: "Elite and policy-maker perceptions and attitudes forged in the Cold War years sustain these legacies and frame the discussions of such crucial issues as NATO enlargement, democracy promotion in the post-Soviet area, and strategic arms talks." Adding that these "are no longer so much legacies as self-regenerating narratives and modes of discourse that preclude a more open-ended understanding of the dynamics and concerns of Russia today." ..."
"... From another perspective: Mettan's chapter on "German Russophobia" set me thinking that this "Western Supremacy" political-cultural pathology known as Russophobia is like the racism which I knew growing up in totally segregated Oklahoma. ..."
"... So, here's a Swiss journalist punching a hole in this wall of Russophobic Western Supremacy and through that gaping hole, we are reminded that the Russians are Europe's neighbors who sacrificed more than 26 million of their own lives to save Europe, America and Russia from the Nazis. ..."
"... And the week following the August 7, 2018 Trump-Putin Helsinki summit, will surely go down in psychiatric circles as another case of mass media-political delusions led by cheer-leader-in-chief, Rachel Maddow of MSNBC. ..."
"... Never-the-less, after a very long run of American "regime change" abroad leaving a bloody trail of destruction, dictatorships and chaos from Iran in 1953, when we joined with the British to overthrow the democratically-elected President Mohammad Mossadegh to maintain the Brit-US control of its oil on through Guatemala, Vietnam and Chile to name a few of our interventions we were back for a second round with "coalitions of the willing" or not? ..."
"... So how is it that we now have contemporary Inquisitors persecuting so many truth tellers ..."
Russophobia, as psycho-social-political pathology, is diagnosed as a disorder in The West since before the 1000-year-old Roman-Orthodox
religious schism and most recently manifested with a vengeance in the course of the 2013-14 with Edward Snowden's revelations of
mass surveillance by the US and its covert activities leading to the Ukraine coup with Russophobia used thereafter as a weapon of
mass deception to inflame this latent pathology in the public.
After more than a year since we first heard the BBC "breaking news" about the "Russians Poisoning the Skipals", all we have are
allegations, but there is still no real evidence to present before a judge and jury for a just trial, only media propaganda which
has provoked even more fear and hysteria meant to distract people from the government's bungling and high level of anxiety over Brexit
by once again blaming Russia . Never-the-less, it prompted politicians to administer instant sanctions against Russia as punishment.
That first day, the "evidence", presented in the usual clipped, "authoritative" British accents, included interviews with a conservative
British MP, then the former US Ambassador to Russia, Alexander Vershbow (2001-05), now with the notoriously hawkish US-based think
tank, the Atlantic Council. Thus, the three of them: the BBC "journalist" and the two "experts", colluded to transform false allegations
into "facts"... fueled, as always, by their perpetual prejudice, RUSSOPHOBIA, in the course of their propaganda war to force Russia
to surrender to American-led Western Domination or else: have their economy destroyed & their people suffer. Indeed, it is a threat
to the whole world played to the discord of rattling nuclear swords with a chorus of vindictive Russian oligarchs, whom Putin expelled
for robbing the Russian people. So, now living in London as expats, they would seem to be the more likely culprits. All the while
elsewhere in London, thanks to our "special US-UK relationship", Julian Assange has been excommunicated and imprisoned in a tiny
"cell" at the Ecuador embassy for revealing embarrassing American secrets via Wikileaks.
There we have it: the poisoning of our minds by the media and politicians which are owned and controlled by the US-UK-EU 1%, who
benefit from Western Hegemony. So, these deluded few are now desperately defending it from the rising powers led by Russia and China
with India not far behind demanding a multi-polar, democratic world order.
My search for the roots of this particularly vicious and extremely dangerous hate campaign began in a Dartmouth College Russian
Foreign Policy course, which led me to the book, "Russophobia: Anti-Russian Lobby and American Foreign Policy" by San Francisco State
University Professor Andrei P. Tsygankov (2009). And there, the detoxification of my mind began as I studied his deft, well-documented
deconstruction of the political propaganda disseminated "by various think tanks, congressional testimonials, activities of NGOs and
the media" (preface p. XIII)
Then in Italy the following winter, I discovered the work of the Swiss journalist, Guy Mettan, in the Italian geopolitical journal,
LiMes: an excerpt from his book, "Creating Russophobia: From the Great Religious Schism to Anti-Putin Hysteria" (2017).
There, Mettan
informs us that this psycho-social pathology in Western Civilization" goes back more than 1000 years: to the division of Christendom
between the Orthodox and Roman churches. Indeed, his research into the depths of history confirms the diagnosis by our renowned American
psychiatrist, Robert Jay Lifton, in his 2003 book, "Superpower Syndrome: America's Apocalyptic Confrontation with the World".
Therein, Lifton states: "More than merely dominate, the American superpower now seeks to control history. Such cosmic ambition is accompanied
by an equally vast sense of entitlement, of special dispensation to pursue its aims." (p.3) And Mettan's analysis of Russophobia
also underscores the work of University of Chicago Professor John J. Mearsheimer, our leading international relations "realist" in
his three Henry L. Stimson lectures at Yale University November 2017: "The Roots of Liberal Hegemony", "The False Promises of Liberal
Hegemony" and "The Case for Restraint": with
his book
, "The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams, International Realities" published in 2018.
But what about "Russian Aggression" in Ukraine & Crimea?
In the first place, it was the astute Mearsheimer, who, in the Sept-Oct 2014 Foreign Affairs, informed us "Why the Ukraine Crisis
is the West's Fault: The Liberal Delusions That Provoked Putin" (pp 77-89), but the American foreign policy establishment, together
with ambitious politicians and the me-too media, paid no heed and continues to repeat its fabricated "facts".
Never-the-less, Mearsheimer is backed up by Richard Sakwa, Professor of Russian and European Politics at the University of Kent.
In Sakwa's book, "Russia Against the Rest: The Post-Cold War Crisis of World Order", 2017, we turn to the section on "Reality Wars
and American Power" on p. 217 to read: "It does indeed seem that Russia and Western elites live in totally different worlds, divided
by different epistemological understandings of the nature of contemporary reality. The Ukraine crisis crystallized the profound differences
between Russian and Atlanticist understandings of the breakdown and its causes." And he continues on p. 218: "Elite and policy-maker
perceptions and attitudes forged in the Cold War years sustain these legacies and frame the discussions of such crucial issues as
NATO enlargement, democracy promotion in the post-Soviet area, and strategic arms talks." Adding that these "are no longer so much
legacies as self-regenerating narratives and modes of discourse that preclude a more open-ended understanding of the dynamics and
concerns of Russia today."
Karl Rove: "We're an empire now; we create our own reality."
[In 2004, journalist Ron Suskind wrote in The New York Times magazine that a top White House strategist for President George W.
Bush -- identified later as Karl Rove, Bush's Deputy White House Chief of Staff -- told him, "We're an empire now, we create our
own reality."]
Thus, we've become trapped in a contrived "reality" promulgated by neo-conservative warriors under cover of neo-liberal "democracy-spreading-humanitarian-interventionists"
to justify an American Empire promoting itself as the indispensable "Liberal World Order". However, under that global order, as Sakwa
points out on p. 219: "If a foreign power is considered to have violated 'international order', then it can be overthrown" as a rationale
for American "regime change" anywhere around the world: whether to control the supply of copper in Chile or oil in Iran. And, with
its eye on Russia's vast oil, gas and other natural resources, America claims the right to threaten Russia by ringing it with weapons
which we would not abide were the Russians to place missiles in Mexico as the Soviets did in Cuba to defend it after our "Bay of
Pigs" invasion that brought humanity to the brink of nuclear war. Thus, Russia was defending itself in Ukraine against further NATO
expansion while Crimean citizens, by majority vote in a democratic referendum, chose to rejoin Russia as they had been one country
ever since Catherine the Great except for an interval in the '50s when Crimea was" gifted" to Ukraine while they were all members
of the Soviet Union.
"Ditching Solzhenitsyn, Defender of Russia"
And not to forget that in 1974, after being expelled from the Soviet Union, Alexandr Solzhenitsyn and his family fled first to
Zurich then to Vermont in 1976 and lived on a farm near Cavendish, where he continued to write and publish his work. Meanwhile, Mettan,
as a journalist covering events related to Russia, became quite distressed over "the widespread prejudices, cartloads of clichés
and systematic anti-Russian biases of most western media." And he went on to say that "the more I traveled, discussed and read, the
wider I perceived, the more the gap of incomprehension and ignorance between Western Europe and Russia became evident.
"That was why, during the 1990s, I was shocked by the way the West treated Solzhenitsyn. For decades, we had published, celebrated,
and acclaimed the great writer as bearing the torch of anti-Soviet dissidence. We had praised Solzhenitsyn to the skies as long as
he criticized his native country, communist Russia. But as soon as he emigrated, realizing that he preferred to isolate himself in
his Vermont retreat to work rather than attending anticommunist conferences, western media and academics began to distance themselves
from the great writer.
"The idol no longer matched the image they had built and was becoming a hindrance to their academic and journalistic career plans.
And once Solzhenitsyn had left the United States to go back to Russia and defend his humiliated, demoralized motherland that was
being sold at auction, raising his voice against the Russian 'Westernizers' and pluralist liberals who denied the interests of Russia
to better revel in the troughs of capitalism, he became a marked man, an outdated, senile writer, even though he himself had not
changed in the least, denouncing with the same vigor the defects of market totalitarianism as those of communist totalitarianism.
"He was booed, despised, his name was dragged through the mud for his choices, often by the very people who had praised his first
fights. Despite that, against all odds, against the most powerful powers that were trying to dissuade him, Solzhenitsyn defended
his one and only cause, that of Russia. He was not forgiven for having turned his pen against that West that had welcomed him and
felt it was owed eternal gratitude. A dissident today, a dissident wherever truth compelled, such was his motto. This deserves to
be remembered." Mettan, pp. 15-16 in "Creating Russophobia".
Russophobia: akin to Racism
From another perspective: Mettan's chapter on "German Russophobia" set me thinking that this "Western Supremacy" political-cultural
pathology known as Russophobia is like the racism which I knew growing up in totally segregated Oklahoma.
Until in high school, I
became so perplexed and appalled by the curtain of hate and "justifications" in which we were smothered: the Negro schools on the
other side of town? and why were there separate waiting rooms, drinking fountains & restrooms in bus and train stations?...that I
began poking holes in the curtain to see what was outside...and found a book in the library: "South of Freedom" by Carl Rowan, an
African-American Minneapolis Star Tribune journalist, describing his journey from South to North. So, thanks to what I learned from
Rowan, I began to tear the whole damned curtain down...at least in my mind.
Whom the Gods would destroy, they first drive mad?
So, here's a Swiss journalist punching a hole in this wall of Russophobic Western Supremacy and through that gaping hole, we are
reminded that the Russians are Europe's neighbors who sacrificed more than 26 million of their own lives to save Europe, America
and Russia from the Nazis.
These are not poor "niggers" from the Eurasian ghetto we've been trying to club into submission as second-class
citizens of "The Liberal World Order" dominated by US; they're nuclear-armed and no longer willing to sit at a separate, inferior
table with no vote and no voice over who makes the rules...nor are China, India and Brazil. And last year, while the wave of Russophobic
hysteria over alleged "Russian poisoning" was rolling out of the UK and engulfing the Western world in the latest siege of mass madness
with only Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the British Labor party, having the courage to stand up in Parliament on the Ides of March and
demand Evidence! only to be pilloried by the mindless politicians and media led by the once esteemed BBC.
And the week following
the August 7, 2018 Trump-Putin Helsinki summit, will surely go down in psychiatric circles as another case of mass media-political
delusions led by cheer-leader-in-chief, Rachel Maddow of MSNBC.
Meanwhile, not to forget that it was Hearst newspaper propaganda that whipped the American public into a war frenzy to support
our first step in empire-building: our 1898 intervention in Cuba's war for independence from the Spanish Empire which had dominated
all of Latin America for 500 years. As the former NYTimes journalist/bureau chief in Istanbul, Berlin & Central America, Stephen
Kinzer reminds us in his latest book "The True Flag: Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and the Birth of American Empire", Twain, Booker
T. Washington and even Andrew Carnegie leading a handful of other anti-imperialists...were not able to prevail against Roosevelt
with his Rough Riders and the Hearst newspapers' war propaganda.
Regime Change Comes Home
Never-the-less, after a very long run of American "regime change" abroad leaving a bloody trail of destruction, dictatorships
and chaos from Iran in 1953, when we joined with the British to overthrow the democratically-elected President Mohammad Mossadegh
to maintain the Brit-US control of its oil on through Guatemala, Vietnam and Chile to name a few of our interventions we were back
for a second round with "coalitions of the willing" or not?
In the Middle East where our regime-change machine managed to plow its
way through Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya before breaking down in Syria. Until now it's been brought home again, renovated and renamed
"RussiaGate" for another attempt at removing a President for trying to mend US relations with Russia. Though even after more than
a year of Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller's investigations accompanied by such cinematic support as the movie, "Felt", another
"Watergate" re-run. Did anyone else notice the resemblance between "Felt" and Mueller? And despite the media's commemoration of its
44-year-old "moment of courage" with the movie "The Post" to promote Trump's ouster, our democratically-elected President, as of
this writing, remains in power. However, in this rush to "regime change", didn't the our "ruling elite" read Jane Mayer's "The Danger
of President Pence" in the 10/23/17 New Yorker? At least the 70s' "ruling class" was smart enough to remove an unqualified Vice President
Spiro (who?) Agnew before "regime changing" Nixon and replacing him with the more or less benign Gerald Ford.
A Florentine Epiphany
But back to last January in Florence, Italy, when I was hiking in the hills beyond the Piazzale Michelangelo, with its spectacular
view of that Renaissance city and its centerpiece, the Duomo, I came across the Villa Galileo, which had been his last home after
his trial as a "heretic", during which to save himself from torture and execution, he was forced to deny his helio-centric vision
and henceforth lived under "villa arrest", from 1631 until his natural death in 1642. While pondering his fate, I continued walking
along the gently rising, ever-narrowing road between ancient stone walls overlooking villas and olive groves until I reached the
peak, where I felt as if I were standing on top of the world as I contemplated both the Arno and Ema river valleys far below and
where I swear I heard Galileo declare: "The world does not turn on an American axis!"
The 21st Century Inquisition
So how is it that we now have contemporary Inquisitors persecuting so many truth tellers such as Edward Snowden, our electronic
age "Solzhenitsyn?" in Russian exile; Chelsea Manning, imprisoned some 7 years for revealing US brutality in Iraq; Julian Assange
confined to his Ecuadorian Embassy exile in London since August 2012; Katharine Gun, a whistleblower attempting to stop the Iraq
invasion, who faced 2 years of British imprisonment before her case was dropped; James Risen, former New York Times journalist who
was persecuted by our "justice" system for revealing our government's surveillance of US!
Any Good Sense Left?
So, do we the people have enough good sense & independent thinking left to follow the advice of Henry David Thoreau?
"Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition,
and delusion, and appearance, that alluvion which covers the globe, through Paris and London, through New York and Boston and
Concord, through church and state, through poetry and philosophy and religion, till we come to a hard bottom and rocks in place,
which we can call reality."
"Walden" 1854
If not, the Doctor prescribes Shock Therapy:
For a week, a month, or however long it takes to cleanse and open the mind, one must adhere to strict abstinence from Mainstream
Media propaganda, junk news, pseudo analysis, fake photos, TV & videos including absolutely NO phony "for, by & of the people" NPR,
PBS, BBC or other Government-funded Neo or LibCon Imperial tranquilizer.
"... Michael Ledeen has been an influential activist of the US politics. Ledeen is known as a "key player" in the operation Gladio (the holy Graal of holo-biz). ..."
"... It is true that Putin is different from the silver-spooned Trump and the rabid war-mongers Pompeo and Bolton. ..."
Michael Ledeen has been an influential activist of the US politics. Ledeen is known as a
"key player" in the operation Gladio (the holy Graal of holo-biz).
Ledeen is "a former consultant to the United States National Security Council,
the United States Department of State, and the United States Department of Defense.
He held the Freedom Scholar chair at the American Enterprise Institute where he was a
scholar for twenty years and now holds the similarly named chair at the Foundation for
Defense of Democracies.
Ledeen is considered an "agent of influence" for a foreign government:
Israel.
Money quote: "The Russian collusion investigation was based solely on the dodgy Steele Dossier that was discredited here from
the get-go. This was a product of British Intelligence Community. The intent was to keep and then to get Donald Trump out of the White
House. It failed but they did succeed in turning him into a neo-lib-con fellow traveler. There are clear parallels between the end stages
of the Soviet Union and the American Empire. My take since the Iraq Invasion is that they are insane. The ruling elite is detached from
reality, incompetent and arrogant. Sooner or later someone with their facilities still intact will lead a middle-class revolt against
the global plutocracy to restore democracy and reverse the rising inequality. We were lucky that the fall of the Soviet Union did not
lead to a nuclear war. The next time a nuclear armed Empire crashes we may not be so fortunate."
Notable quotes:
"... Among interesting dates, it appears that Stefan Halper was already trying to reach out to Lokhova in January-February 2016 – a lot earlier than his approaches to Papadopoulo s and Page. This was done through Professor Christopher Andrew, co-convenor with Halper and the former MI6 had Sir Richard Dearlove of the ‘Cambridge Intelligence Seminar.’ ..."
"... Meanwhile, Lokhova has set up a blog on which she has posted a some interesting relevant material, with perhaps more to come. It is very well worth a look.(See https://www.russiagate.co.uk .) ..."
"... Of particular interest, to my mind, is the full text of her – unpublished – May 2017 interview with the ‘New York Times.’ This points us back to is the fact – of which Lokhova shows no signs of awareness – that the idea that the Western powers and the Russians might have a common interest in fighting jihadist terrorism has been absolute anathema to many key figures on both sides of the Atlantic, with Dearlove certainly among them. ..."
"... ‘AN APOLOGY: Yesterday, I compared @nytimes journalists, who smeared @GenFlynn and accused me of being a Russian spy, to cockroaches. In good conscience, I must apologize to the cockroaches for the distress caused to them for being compared to @nytimes #Russiagate hoaxers. Sorry!’ ..."
"... The centerpiece of this is a proposal submitted to the FCO in August last year by what seems to be essentially the same consortium whose existence as a government contractor has now been made public. The ‘Institute for Statecraft’ has vanished, and one consortium member, ‘Aktis Strategy’, has gone into liquidation. But other key members are the same. ..."
"... A central underlying premise is that if anyone has any doubts as to whether the ‘White Helmets’ are a benevolent humanitarian organisation, or the Russians were responsible for the poisoning of the Skripals or the shooting down of MH17, the only possible explanation is that their minds have been poisoned by disinformation. ..."
"... In fact, what is at issue an ambitious project to co-ordinate and strengthen a very large number of organisations in different countries which are committed to a relentlessly Russophobic line on everything. (The possibility that it might not be very bright to push Russia into the arms of China, the obviously rising power, does not seem to have occurred to these people – perhaps they need less ons from Sir Halford Mackinder, or indeed Niccolò Machiavelli, on ‘statecraft.’) ..."
"... The clear close integration of other cyber people from the ‘Atlantic Council’ into Orwellian ‘information operations’ sponsored by the British Government simply puts these facts into sharp relief. ..."
"... There has to be a strong possible ‘prima facie’ case that anyone in authority prepared to accept the ‘digital forensics’ from ‘CrowdStrike’ is complicit in the conspiracy against the constitution, and/or the conspiracy to cover-up that conspiracy. This certainly goes for Comey, and I think it also goes for Mueller." ..."
"... I'd recommend for reading Alexei Yurchak's "Everything Was Forever, Until It was No More: The Last Soviet Generation." Its about a class of apparatchiks and bureaucrats and hangers on who spoke this arcane, abstract dogmatic language that anyone normal had long since given up trying to understand. It had long ceased to have any relevance or attachment to the lives lived by ordinary, increasingly suffering people, who started talking to each other in practical and direct language. ..."
"... The Russian collusion investigation was based solely on the dodgy Steele Dossier that was discredited here from the get-go. This was a product of British Intelligence Community. The intent was to keep and then to get Donald Trump out of the White House. It failed but they did succeed in turning him into a neo-lib-con fellow traveler. ..."
"... There are clear parallels between the end stages of the Soviet Union and the American Empire. My take since the Iraq Invasion is that they are insane. The ruling elite is detached from reality, incompetent and arrogant. Sooner or later someone with their facilities still intact will lead a middle-class revolt against the global plutocracy to restore democracy and reverse the rising inequality. We were lucky that the fall of the Soviet Union did not lead to a nuclear war. The next time a nuclear armed Empire crashes we may not be so fortunate. ..."
"Dan, Thanks for the reference, which I will follow up. Unfortunately, although Bongino has produced a lot of extremely valuable
material, a lot of it is buried in the 'postcasts', searching through which is harder than with printed materials. It would greatly
help if there were transcripts, but of course those cost money.
I am still trying to fit the exploding mass of information which has been coming out into a coherent timeline. Part of the
problem is that there is so much appearing in so many different places. In addition to trying to think through the implications
of the information in this post and the subsequent exchanges of comments, I have been trying to make sense of evidence coming
out about the British end of the conspiracy.
An important development here has been rather well covered by Chuck Ross, in a recent ‘Daily Caller’ piece headlined ‘Cambridge
Academic Reflects On Interactions With 'Spygate’ Figure’ and one on ‘Fox’ by Catherine Herridge and Cyd Upson, entitled ‘Russian
academic linked to Flynn denies being spy, says her past contact was “used” to smear him.’ However, the evidence involved has ramifications
which they cannot be expected to understand, as yet at least.
At issue is the attempt to use the – apparently casual – encounter between Lieutenant-General Flynn and Svetlana Lokhova at a
dinner in Cambridge (U.K.) in February 2016 to smear him by, among other things, portraying her as some kind of ‘Mata Hari’ figure.
Among interesting dates, it appears that Stefan Halper was already trying to reach out to Lokhova in January-February 2016
– a lot earlier than his approaches to Papadopoulo s and Page. This was done through Professor Christopher Andrew, co-convenor with
Halper and the former MI6 had Sir Richard Dearlove of the ‘Cambridge Intelligence Seminar.’
This suggests that this was not simply a case Halper acting on his own. It also I think brings us back to the central importance
of Flynn’s visit to Moscow in December 2015.
Meanwhile, Lokhova has set up a blog on which she has posted a some interesting relevant material, with perhaps more to come.
It is very well worth a look.(See https://www.russiagate.co.uk
.)
Of particular interest, to my mind, is the full text of her – unpublished – May 2017 interview with the ‘New York Times.’ This
points us back to is the fact – of which Lokhova shows no signs of awareness – that the idea that the Western powers and the Russians
might have a common interest in fighting jihadist terrorism has been absolute anathema to many key figures on both sides of the Atlantic,
with Dearlove certainly among them.
Some of Lokhova’s comments on ‘twitter’ are extremely entertaining. An example, with which I have much sympathy:
‘AN APOLOGY: Yesterday, I compared @nytimes journalists, who smeared @GenFlynn and accused me of being a Russian spy, to
cockroaches. In good conscience, I must apologize to the cockroaches for the distress caused to them for being compared to @nytimes
#Russiagate hoaxers. Sorry!’
Meanwhile, another interesting recent ‘tweet’ comes from Eliot Higgins, of ‘Bellingcat’ fame. He is known to some skeptics as
‘the couch potato’ – perhaps he should be rechristened ‘king cockroach.’ It reads:
‘Looking forward to gettin g things rolling with the Open Information Partnership, with @bellingcat, @MDI_UK, @DFRLab, and @This_Is_Zinc
https://www.openinformation...’
There is an interesting ‘backstory’ to this. The announcement of an FCO-supported ‘Open Information Partnership of European Non-Governmental
Organisations, charities, academics, think-tanks and journalists’, supposedly to counter ‘disinformation’ from Russia, came in a
written answer from the Minister of State, Sir Alan Duncan, on 3 April.
In turn this followed the latest in a series of releases of material either leaked or hacked from the organisations calling themselves
‘Institute for Statecraft’ and ‘Integrity Initiative’ by the group calling themselves ‘Anonymous’ on 25 March.
The centerpiece of this is a proposal submitted to the FCO in August last year by what seems to be essentially the same consortium
whose existence as a government contractor has now been made public. The ‘Institute for Statecraft’ has vanished, and one consortium
member, ‘Aktis Strategy’, has gone into liquidation. But other key members are the same.
A central underlying premise is that if anyone has any doubts as to whether the ‘White Helmets’ are a benevolent humanitarian
organisation, or the Russians were responsible for the poisoning of the Skripals or the shooting down of MH17, the only possible
explanation is that their minds have been poisoned by disinformation.
An interesting paragraph reads as follows:
‘An expanded research component could generate better understanding of the drivers (psychological, sociopolitical, cultural
and environmental) of those who are susceptible to disinformation. This will allow us to map vulnerable audiences, and build scenario
planning models to test the efficiency of different activities to build resilience of those populations over time.’
They have not yet got to the point of recommending psychiatic treatment for ‘dissidents’, but these are still early days. The
‘Sovietisation’ of Western life proceeds apace.
In fact, what is at issue an ambitious project to co-ordinate and strengthen a very large number of organisations in different
countries which are committed to a relentlessly Russophobic line on everything. (The possibility that it might not be very bright
to push Russia into the arms of China, the obviously rising power, does not seem to have occurred to these people – perhaps they
need less ons from Sir Halford Mackinder, or indeed Niccolò Machiavelli, on ‘statecraft.’)
Study of the proposal hacked/leaked by ‘Anonymous’ bring out both the ‘boondoggle’ element – there is a lot of state funding available
for people happy to play these games – and also the strong transatlantic links.
A particularly significant presence, here, is the ‘DFRLab’. This is the ‘Digital Forensic Research Lab’ at the ‘Atlantic Council’,
where Eliot Higgins is a ‘nonresident senior fellow.’ The same organisation has a ‘Cyber Statecraft Initiative’ where Dmitri Alperovitch
is a ‘nonresident senior fellow.’
It cannot be repeated often enough that it is difficult to see any conceivable excuse for the FBI to fail to secure access to
the DNC servers. One would normally moreover expect that, on an issue of this sensitivity, they would have the ‘digital forensics’
done by their own people.
There can be no conceivable excuse for relying on a contractor selected by the organisation which is claiming that there has been
a hack, when an alternative possibility is a leak: and the implications of the alternative possibility could be devastating for that
organisation.
To rely on a contractor linked to the notoriously Russophobic ‘Atlantic Council’ is even more preposterous.
The clear close integration of other cyber people from the ‘Atlantic Council’ into Orwellian ‘information operations’ sponsored
by the British Government simply puts these facts into sharp relief.
There has to be a strong possible ‘prima facie’ case that anyone in authority prepared to accept the ‘digital forensics’ from
‘CrowdStrike’ is complicit in the conspiracy against the constitution, and/or the conspiracy to cover-up that conspiracy. This certainly
goes for Comey, and I think it also goes for Mueller."
OT but related, just watched a former naval Intelligence officer, now working for the Hoover Institute interviewed on FOX about
the Rooshins in Venezuela. Said, the 100 Russians are there to protect Maduro because he cannot trust his own army. Maduro's days
are numbered because he is toxically unpopular.
Got me thinking, our Intelligence services are good at psy-ops and keeping our gullible MSM in line but God help us if we ever
actually needed real Intelligence about a country. I remember about a month ago how all of these 'Think Tank Guys' were predicting
how the only people loyal to Maduro were a few of his crony Generals, that the rank and file military hated him and there were
going to be mass defections.
It didn't happen and we are all just supposed to forget that.
[not a socialist, don't have any love for Maduro, I just know that I will never learn anything of about Venezuela from these think
tank dudes, we are just getting groomed]
Venezuela isn't about "socialism," or even Maduro--it's about the oil. They have the largest proven reserves in the world, though
much of it is non-conventional and would need a ton of investment to exploit. But it's their oil, not ours, and we have no right
to meddle in their internal affairs.
Venezuela is neither about socialism nor oil in my opinion. It is everything to do with the neocons. And Trump buying into their
hegemonic dreams. Notice the resurrection of Elliott Abrams of Iran-Contra fame as the man spearheading this in a triumvirate
with Bolton & Pompeo. IMO, a perfect foil for Putin & Xi to embroil the US in another regime change quagmire that further weakens
the US.
"There can be no conceivable excuse for relying on a contractor selected by the organisation which is claiming that there has
been a hack, when an alternative possibility is a leak: and the implications of the alternative possibility could be devastating
for that organisation.
To rely on a contractor linked to the notoriously Russophobic 'Atlantic Council' is even more preposterous."
True; and true. It is also true that the Clinton e-mail investigation was faux, a limp caricature of what an investigation
would look like when it is designed to uncover the truth. Allowing a subject's law firm to review the subject's e-mails from when
she was in government for relevancy is beyond preposterous. An investigation conducted in the normal way by apolitical Agents
in a field office would not walk away from a trove of evidence empty handed.
The inter-relatedness and overlapping of DoJ, CIA, and FBI personnel assigned to the Clinton e-mail case, the Russophobic nightmare
of a 'case' targeting Carter Page, and by extension, the Trump presidential campaign, and yes, the Mueller political op, all reek
of political bias and ineptitude followed by more political bias; and then culmination in a scorched earth investigation more
characteristic of something the STASI might have undertaken than American justice.
Early morning raids, gag orders, solitary confinements, show indictments that will never see adjudication in a court room - truly
unbelievable.
In your opinion was this surveillance, criminal & counter-intelligence investigation as well as information operations against
Trump centrally orchestrated or was it more reactive & decentralized?
There are so many facets. Fusion GPS & Nellie Ohr with her previous CIA connection. Her husband Bruce at the DOJ stovepiping
the dossier to the FBI. Brennan and his EC. Clapper and his intelligence assessment. Halper, Mifsud, Steele along with Hannigan
and the MI6 + GCHQ connection. Downer and the Aussies. FISA warrants on Page & Papadopolous. The whole Strzok & Page texting.
Comey, Lynch & the Hillary exoneration. McCabe. Then all the Russians. And the media leaks to generate hysteria.
I'd recommend for reading Alexei Yurchak's "Everything Was Forever, Until It was No More: The Last Soviet Generation." Its
about a class of apparatchiks and bureaucrats and hangers on who spoke this arcane, abstract dogmatic language that anyone normal
had long since given up trying to understand. It had long ceased to have any relevance or attachment to the lives lived by ordinary,
increasingly suffering people, who started talking to each other in practical and direct language.
And yet the chatterati
continued to chatter and invent ludicrously unreal worlds and analyses of the actual world they lived in until... bang... it was
no more.
I'd skip the first few chapters which are full of impenetrable marxist jargon.
The Russian collusion investigation was based solely on the dodgy Steele Dossier that was discredited here from the get-go.
This was a product of British Intelligence Community. The intent was to keep and then to get Donald Trump out of the White House.
It failed but they did succeed in turning him into a neo-lib-con fellow traveler.
There are clear parallels between the end stages of the Soviet Union and the American Empire. My take since the Iraq Invasion
is that they are insane. The ruling elite is detached from reality, incompetent and arrogant. Sooner or later someone with their
facilities still intact will lead a middle-class revolt against the global plutocracy to restore democracy and reverse the rising
inequality. We were lucky that the fall of the Soviet Union did not lead to a nuclear war. The next time a nuclear armed Empire
crashes we may not be so fortunate.
by Scott |
Interviews Aaron Maté discusses the aftermath of the Russia investigation
and what it's revealed about mainstream American journalists. In addition to seriously undermining media credibility, the obsession
with possible Russian influence over the president has made it next to impossible for Trump to do anything that might be seen as
helpful for Putin, like pulling troops out of Syria or pushing for nuclear detente.
"... Nice group shot of the three stooges. The most dishonest, disloyal, dipshitted psychopaths a country should never have to endure. ..."
"... The likelihood of anyone being convicted let alone indicted is rather slim. Why? These people know where too many dead bodies are buried. ..."
"... There is an understanding in their circles that certain individuals on both sides of the spectrum are bulletproof. You can't run such a large criminal enterprise without it being this way. Why else would Mueller not talk to Comey, Clapper, Brennan, Steele, the heads of Fusion GPS, the Russian lawyer who met with Trump Jr., the promoter who set that up, etc., etc. ..."
"... This whole ordeal was meant to die an uneventful death. It's unlikely Barr will act on any recommendations from Nunes becuase it would start a partisan war that would snare GOP never Trumpers too. It's how Washington works. Like Carlin says - it's a great big club and you ain't in it. They are, and they don't do time. ..."
As the Russia collusion hoax hurtles toward its demise, it's important to consider how this destructive information operation
rampaged through vital American institutions for more than two years , and what can be done to stop such a damaging episode from
recurring.
While the hoax was fueled by a wide array of false accusations, misleading leaks of ostensibly classified information, and bad-faith
investigative actions by government officials, one vital element was indispensable to the overall operation: the Steele dossier.
<
Funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democrat National Committee, which hid their payments from disclosure by funneling
them through the law firm Perkins Coie, the dossier was a collection of false and often absurd accusations of collusion between Trump
associates and Russian officials. These allegations, which relied heavily on Russian sources cultivated by Christopher Steele, were
spoon-fed to Trump opponents in the U.S. government, including officials in law enforcement and intelligence.
The efforts to feed the dossier's allegations into top levels of the U.S. government, particularly intelligence agencies, were
championed by Steele, Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson, and various intermediaries. These allegations were given directly to the
FBI and Justice Department, while similar allegations were fed into the State Department by long-time Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal.
Their efforts were remarkably effective. Officials within the FBI and DOJ, whether knowingly or unintentionally, provided essential
support to the hoax conspirators, bypassing normal procedures and steering the information away from those who would view it critically.
The dossier soon metastasized within the government, was cloaked in secrecy, and evaded serious scrutiny.
High-ranking officials such as then-FBI general counsel James Baker and then-Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr were
among those whose actions advanced the hoax. Ohr, one of the most senior officials within the DOJ, took the unprecedented step of
providing to Steele a back door into the FBI investigation. This enabled the former British spy to continue to feed information to
investigators, even though he had been terminated by the FBI for leaking to the press and was no longer a valid source. Even worse,
Ohr directly briefed Andrew Weissmann and Zainab Ahmad, two DOJ officials who were later assigned to special counsel Robert Mueller's
investigation. In short, the investigation was marked by glaring irregularities that would normally be deemed intolerable.
According to Ohr's congressional testimony, he told top-level FBI officials as early as August or September 2016 that Steele was
biased against Trump, that Steele's work was connected to the Clinton campaign, and that Steele's material was of questionable reliability.
Steele himself confirmed that last point in a British court case in which he acknowledged his allegations included unverified information.
Yet even after this revelation, intelligence leaders continued to cite the Steele dossier in applications to renew the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act warrant on former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
It is astonishing that intelligence leaders did not immediately recognize they were being manipulated in an information operation
or understand the danger that the dossier could contain deliberate disinformation from Steele's Russian sources . In fact, it is
impossible to believe in light of everything we now know about the FBI's conduct of this investigation, including the astounding
level of anti-Trump animus shown by high-level FBI figures like Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, as well as the inspector general's discovery
of a shocking number of leaks by FBI officials.
It's now clear that top intelligence officials were perfectly well aware of the dubiousness of the dossier, but they embraced
it anyway because it justified actions they wanted to take - turning the full force of our intelligence agencies first against a
political candidate and then against a sitting president.
The hoax itself was a gift to our nation's adversaries, most notably Russia. The abuse of intelligence for political purposes
is insidious in any democracy. It undermines trust in democratic institutions, and it damages the reputation of the brave men and
women who are working to keep us safe. This unethical conduct has had major repercussions on America's body politic, creating a yearslong
political crisis whose full effects remain to be seen.
Having extensively investigated this abuse, House Intelligence Committee Republicans will soon be submitting criminal referrals
on numerous individuals involved in these matters.
These people must be held to account to prevent similar abuses from occurring in the future. The men and women of our intelligence
community perform an essential service defending American national security, and their ability to carry out their mission cannot
be compromised by biased actors who seek to transform the intelligence agencies into weapons of political warfare.
All 3 of them have been confirmed to by lying through their teeth by their own people. They are all going down. We just need
the Mueller report to come out to get the ball rolling. Can't do it before the report comes out as they would call it obstruction.
So we wait another 9 days, or less, according to AG Barr.
Could be, PapaGeorge. Maybe this time it's different because it could be argued that the TPTB don't want Trump pulling the
same thing on the DNC--and get away with it like the Usual Suspects just did. In legal terms, a bar has been set. BARR? Get it?
Buwhahahahahahahahahha!!!
The likelihood of anyone being convicted let alone indicted is rather slim. Why? These people know where too many dead bodies
are buried. There is an understanding in their circles that certain individuals on both sides of the spectrum are bulletproof.
You can't run such a large criminal enterprise without it being this way. Why else would Mueller not talk to Comey, Clapper, Brennan,
Steele, the heads of Fusion GPS, the Russian lawyer who met with Trump Jr., the promoter who set that up, etc., etc.
This whole ordeal was meant to die an uneventful death. It's unlikely Barr will act on any recommendations from Nunes becuase
it would start a partisan war that would snare GOP never Trumpers too. It's how Washington works. Like Carlin says - it's a great
big club and you ain't in it. They are, and they don't do time
The likelihood of anyone being convicted let alone indicted is rather slim. Why? These people know where too many dead
bodies are buried.
There is an understanding in their circles that certain individuals on both sides of the spectrum are bulletproof. You
can't run such a large criminal enterprise without it being this way. Why else would Mueller not talk to Comey, Clapper, Brennan,
Steele, the heads of Fusion GPS, the Russian lawyer who met with Trump Jr., the promoter who set that up, etc., etc.
This whole ordeal was meant to die an uneventful death. It's unlikely Barr will act on any recommendations from Nunes becuase
it would start a partisan war that would snare GOP never Trumpers too. It's how Washington works. Like Carlin says - it's a great
big club and you ain't in it. They are, and they don't do time.
<<<House Intelligence Committee Republicans will soon be submitting criminal referrals on numerous individuals involved in
these matters<<< We shall see now, won't we? I won't believe this, till I see It!
Money quote: "Instead of protecting people, the Magnitsky case helps the "bad guys" to demonstrate to their Russian compatriots
that the West is rotten to the core, its policies are created by compliant stooges (lying thieves and useful idiots), and more rockets
should be built to confront America's injustice towards Russia and others. A lie can never really protect anyone, in my humble opinion.
But the problem is worse. It turns human rights into a hypocritical ideology to protect the interests of the powers that be, a bit like
the slogans about brotherhood and justice in the Soviet Union. "
Notable quotes:
"... Taught in tandem with William Browder's book Red Notice , this film can provide students with a real-life experience in the practice of critical thinking. The film also allows us to revive a discussion of Hayden White's penetrating analysis of the ways in which the structure of the form necessarily influences the content of any artistic or historical narrative. The vehicle of the docudrama that Nekrasov uses in his film, and the competing narratives about the circumstances leading to Magnitsky's death, merit literary and intellectual analysis, along with geopolitical commentary. ..."
"... The Magnitsky Act – Behind the Scenes is about the ways in which the notion of human rights is sometimes used as a fake alibi for white-collar crimes. Though I explore just one case, I think that I have managed to show that those ways are exceptionally sophisticated and efficient, and enlist all the major media, civil society, NGOs, governments, parliaments, and major international organizations. ..."
"... The Magnitsky Act, in my view, is not a weapon that can protect people. The Magnitsky Act was designed to punish those deemed murderers and torturers of Magnitsky. Well, if my film demonstrates that Magnitsky was not murdered (by the people Browder claims he was murdered by), nor was he tortured, the Magnitsky Act is nonsensical. You cannot punish someone for something that did not happen. Can you then say, never mind, human rights violations happen, and it's good to have a mechanism to punish violators even if there's no evidence that people named as violators are guilty? I don't think one can say "never mind". Neither legally, nor, morally. ..."
"... There is no evidence whatsoever that the government of the United States conducted independent investigations of the policemen and the judges who were supposedly involved in the death of Magnitsky. And no one seems to be concerned of course about the rights of those on the Magnitsky list, who can't even reply to the accusations, let alone have the accusations verified by an independent investigator or judge. ..."
In 2016, Andrei Lvovich Nekrasov, a well-known Russian film-maker, playwright, theater director, and actor, released a docudrama
entitled, The Magnitsky Act -- Behind the Scenes . Although the film won many artistic accolades, including a special commendation
from the Prix Europa Award for a Television Documentary, public screenings were abruptly canceled in both Europe and the United States.
Political pressure from various constituents and the threat of lawsuits from William Browder, the American-British billionaire and
human-rights activist, ensured the limitation of the film to a single website. To the knowledge of this author, there has been only
one public screening of The Magnitsky Act -- Behind the Scenes in the United States. In June 2016, Seymour Hersch, a renowned investigative
journalist, presided over a showing of the film at the Newseum in Washington, DC, that generated much controversy. The American press
has not been kind to either the film or the director, Andrei Nekrasov. The Washington Post, The New York Times, The New Yorker,
and The Daily Beast all seem to agree that the film is an overt work of Russian propaganda that aims to introduce confusion
about the circumstances leading to the death of tax accountant, Sergei Magnitsky, in the minds of the viewers. The Putin administration,
which has been the prime target of both the 2012 Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Accountability Act and the 2016 Global Magnitsky Human
Rights Accountability Act, has good reason to promote a film that questions the circumstances surrounding Magnitsky's untimely death
in Moscow's Butyrka Prison in 2009.
Despite a flood of persuasive articles and editorials by well-known journalists suggesting that this inconvenient film deserves
no more than a quick burial, I was drawn to reconsider both the film and the political controversy that it continues to create for
two main reasons. First, as the collapse of the Soviet Union and our own recent presidential campaigns show, we can never entirely
prohibit the intrusion of propaganda or politically slanted content into the public sphere. Instead, as a historian and faculty member
who serves at a public university, I believe that it is my job to teach our students how to diagnose an issue, and how to consider
the many sides that a story necessarily involves. As an intellectual process this has immense value both in and of itself. Source
criticism is a time tested and reliable means through which we can make sense of an event or a phenomenon. Our students need to learn
both the mechanics and the intellectual value of analyzing a source and should be able to evaluate the nature of political content
whether it is embedded in a Facebook post, a scholarly article, or a documentary.
The Magnitsky Act -- Behind the Scenes can serve as an important vehicle to introduce the contested nature of historical
truth, and as a prism, it allows us to view the multiple modes through which various versions of the truth are disseminated in the
twenty-first century. Taught in tandem with William Browder's book Red Notice , this film can provide students with a
real-life experience in the practice of critical thinking. The film also allows us to revive a discussion of Hayden White's penetrating
analysis of the ways in which the structure of the form necessarily influences the content of any artistic or historical narrative.
The vehicle of the docudrama that Nekrasov uses in his film, and the competing narratives about the circumstances leading to Magnitsky's
death, merit literary and intellectual analysis, along with geopolitical commentary.
Second, I am concerned by the fact that both critics and supporters have turned the debate about the film into a referendum on
William Browder, his business dealings as well as his global human rights activism, and the Putin administration. In this interview
with Andrei Nekrasov, I turn the spotlight back on the film-maker, his motivations for making the film, and on his political experiences
since the release of the film. It is important to remember that in the past Nekrasov has made several politically charged films including
Disbelief (2004), and Poisoned by Polonium: The Litvinenko File (2007) -- films that are extremely critical of the
Putin administration. Nekrasov, a student of philosophy and literature, is in the unique position of having experienced censorship
in the Soviet Union, Putin's Russia, and in the democratic countries of Western Europe and the United States.
1) Why did you want to make a film about the Magnitsky Act? What drew you to this project?
Andrei Nekrasov : I felt that the story of Magnitsky, in its accepted version, was very powerful and important. I thought that
Sergei Magnitsky was a hero, and I wanted to tell the story of the modern hero, my compatriot. His case seemed very special because
Magnitsky, a tax lawyer (in reality, an accountant) had come from the world of capitalism, to symbolize all that is good and moral
in modern Russia. I believed that Magnitsky did not surrender under torture and sacrificed his life fighting corruption.
2) Who has funded the making of this film and what motivated them to invest in this production?
AN : The film was produced by Piraya Film, a Norwegian company. There is a long list of funders, and none are from Russia. (Please
visit www.magnitskyact.com for further information). And they are all
very "mainstream." I believe in the United States and Russia it is easier to construe the specific reasons that motivate funders,
who are mostly private, to support a project. In Europe, where more public money is available for the arts, the state is more or
less obliged to fund the cultural process. So I submit an idea to a producer, and if they like it, they introduce it into a complex
system of funding that is supposed to be politically neutral. Only quality matters, in theory. In practice "quality" has political
aspects, and its interpretation is open to prejudices.
But it would be a simplification to say the film was funded because I had set out to tell Browder's version of the Magnitsky case.
Those funders who were (through their commissioning editors) monitoring the editing process, ZDF/ARTE, for example, became aware
of the inconsistencies in Browder's version and supported my investigation into the truth. What they did not realize was who, and
what, we were all dealing with. They did not realize that Browder was supported by the entire political system of North America and
Western Europe. They realized that only when they were told by politicians to stop the film. And they obeyed, contrary to what I
thought was their principles.
3) How has the role of censorship, both in Russia and the West, affected your artistic career?
AN : Censorship has had a very strong and damaging impact on my career. But while censorship in Russia had never been something
surprising to me, the way that the film T he Magnitsky Act – Behind the Scenes was treated by western politicians was totally
unanticipated and shocking. Yet, intellectually, the experience was very illuminating. The pro-Western intelligentsia of Russia,
a class to which I have belonged, idolizes the West and believes that the freedom of expression is an essential and even intrinsic
part of Western culture. The notion that the interests of economically powerful groups can set a geopolitical agenda and that easily
overrides democratic freedom of expression is considered to be a remnant of Soviet era thinking. So I had to have a direct and personal
experience of Western censorship to realize that that notion is rooted in reality.
The issue of censorship in Russia is, on the other hand, often misunderstood in the West. There is no direct political censorship
of the kind that existed in the Soviet Union, and that possibly exists in countries like China today. Many popular Russian news outlets
are critical of the government, and of Putin personally as evidenced by the content in media outlets such as Ekho Moskvy, Novaya
Gazeta, Dozhd TV, New Times, Vedomosti, Colta. ru, and others. The internet is full of mockery of Putin, his ministers and of
his party's representatives. There is neither a system nor the kind of wellresourced deep state structures that control the flow
of information. Many Russian media outlets, for example, repeat Browder's story of Magnitsky killed by the corrupt police with the
state covering it up. All that is perfectly "allowed" while Putin angrily condemns Browder as a criminal and Browder calls himself
Putin's number one enemy. In reality, it is not allowed but simply happens because of the lack of consistent political censorship.
However, you will hardly ever hear a proper analysis and criticism in the Russian media of the big corporations, and of the oligarchs
that make up the state. It is also true that such acute crises as military operations, such as Russian-Georgian war of 2008 produce
intolerance to the voices of the opposition. My film Russian Lessons (2008) about the suffering of the Georgians during that
short war and its aftermath wasbanned in Russia. But nationalism is not only a government policy. It's the prevailing mood. The supposedly
democratic leader of the opposition, that the West seems to praise and support, Alexei Navalny, was on the record insulting Georgians
in jingo-nationalistic posts during the war. The film industry is, of course, easier to steer in the "right direction" as films,
unlike articles and essays, are very expensive to produce. But Russia is a complex society, deeply troubled, but also misunderstood
by the West. If my films, such as Poisoned by Polonium: The Litvinenko File , and Russian Lessons (2010) were attacked
by pro-government media, then some of my articles were censored by the independent, "opposition" outlets, such as Ekho Moskvy
.
4) Did you actually begin filming the movie with an outcome of supporting Browder's story in mind, as you represent in the
film, or did you plan from the start of the filming process to end the film as it now stands?
AN : I started filming the story. I totally believed in the story that Browder had told me, and all the mainstream media repeated
after him.
5) You know that there are many more "disappeared" journalists and others listed in the formal US Congress Magnitsky Act
who have suffered from the effects of corrupt power in Russia. Why did you not address the fates of some of those others as well
in your film?
AN : I may be misunderstanding this question, but I do not see how addressing the fates of "disappeared" journalists and others'
would be relevant to the topic of my film in its final version. I obviously condemn the "disappearance" of journalists and others.
In Russia journalists disappear usually by being "simply" shot (not in "sophisticated" Saudi ways), and as far as I remember only
one is referred to in The Magnitsky Act , Paul Khlebnikov. He was the editor of Forbes, Russia , and was shot in 2004
when Bill Browder was a great fan of Vladimir Putin and continued to be for some time. I have not seen any evidence or even claim,
that Putin may have been behind that murder. I was a friend of Anna Politkovskaya, perhaps the most famous of all Russian journalists
who was assassinated in the recent past. She is featured in my film, Poisoned by Polonium .
The Magnitsky Act – Behind the Scenes is about the ways in which the notion of human rights is sometimes used as a
fake alibi for white-collar crimes. Though I explore just one case, I think that I have managed to show that those ways are exceptionally
sophisticated and efficient, and enlist all the major media, civil society, NGOs, governments, parliaments, and major international
organizations.
6) Does William Browder's role in the formulation of the Magnitsky Act invalidate its value and that of the Global
Magnitsky Act, in seeking to provide protection for those suffering from the effects of deadly and corrupt power such as the recently
deceased Saudi Arabian journalist, Jamal Khashoggi?
AN : Let me, for the argument's sake, pose myself what would seem like a version of your question: "Would Browder's role in creating
a weapon that could protect someone like Khashoggi from deadly and corrupt power invalidate that weapon?" My answer would be, no,
it would not invalidate that weapon. However, we are dealing with a fallacy here, in my humble opinion. The Magnitsky Act, in
my view, is not a weapon that can protect people. The Magnitsky Act was designed to punish those deemed murderers and torturers of
Magnitsky. Well, if my film demonstrates that Magnitsky was not murdered (by the people Browder claims he was murdered by), nor was
he tortured, the Magnitsky Act is nonsensical. You cannot punish someone for something that did not happen. Can you then say, never
mind, human rights violations happen, and it's good to have a mechanism to punish violators even if there's no evidence that people
named as violators are guilty? I don't think one can say "never mind". Neither legally, nor, morally.
There is no evidence whatsoever that the government of the United States conducted independent investigations of the policemen
and the judges who were supposedly involved in the death of Magnitsky. And no one seems to be concerned of course about the rights
of those on the Magnitsky list, who can't even reply to the accusations, let alone have the accusations verified by an independent
investigator or judge.
Instead of protecting people, the Magnitsky case helps the "bad guys" to demonstrate to their Russian compatriots that the West
is rotten to the core, its policies are created by compliant stooges (lying thieves and useful idiots), and more rockets should be
built to confront America's injustice towards Russia and others. A lie can never really protect anyone, in my humble opinion. But
the problem is worse. It turns human rights into a hypocritical ideology to protect the interests of the powers that be, a bit like
the slogans about brotherhood and justice in the Soviet Union.
Choi Chatterjee is a Professor of History at California State University, Los Angeles. Chatterjee, along with Steven Marks,
Mary Neuberger, and Steve Sabol, edited The Wider Arc of Revolution in three volumes (Slavica Publishers).
The best defense, the saying goes, is a good offense.
The key orchestrators of the Big Trump-Russia Collusion Lie seem to have hewed tightly to that tactical advice.
Over the past two years, one of their biggest "tells" has been their hyper-aggressive and gratuitous attacks on the president.
Given that special counsel Robert Mueller 's
investigation found no collusion or obstruction of justice, their constant broadsides now look, in retrospect, like calculated pre-emptive
strikes to deflect attention and culpability away from themselves.
By accusing Mr. Trump of what they themselves
were guilty of, they created a masterful distraction through projection.
We now know that former FBI
Director James Comey and his deputy, Andrew
McCabe, are hip-deep in the conspiracy. Both wrote supposed "tell-all" books and carpet-bombed the media with interviews in which
they regularly flung criminal accusations against the president. Whenever asked about their own roles, they reverted to denouncing
Mr. Trump .
With Mr. Mueller 's findings,
Mr. Comey 's and Mr. McCabe's media benders look
increasingly suspicious.
As do those of their comrades in the Obama national security apparatus, including former Director of National Intelligence James
Clapper and his partner in possible crime, former
CIA Director
John Brennan , who, apart from former President
Barack Obama himself, may be the biggest player
of them all.
Any investigation into the origins and execution of the Big Lie must focus on Mr.
Brennan , whose job as the nation's chief spook
would have prohibited him, by law, from engaging in any domestic political spy games.
Of course, the law didn't stop him from illegally spying on the Senate Intelligence Committee by hacking into its computers and
lying repeatedly about it, prompting Democratic senators to call for his resignation.
Once out of Langley, Mr. Brennan tore into
Mr. Trump, accusing him of "treason" (among other crimes) in countless television appearances and bitter tweets. It got so vicious
that Mr. Trump pulled his security clearance.
Consider a few critical data points.
The Obama Department of Justice and
FBI targeting of two low-level
Trump aides, George Papadopoulos and Carter Page, was carried out in the spring of 2016 because they wanted to spy on the Trump campaign
but needed a way in. They enlisted an American academic and shadowy
FBI informant named Stefan
Halper to repeatedly sidle up to both Mr. Papadopoulos and Mr. Page. But complementing his work for the
FBI , Mr. Halper had a side
gig as an intelligence operative with longstanding ties to the
CIA and British intelligence
MI6.
Another foreign professor, Joseph Mifsud, who played an important early part in targeting Papadopoulos, also had abiding ties
to the CIA , MI6
and the British foreign secretary.
A third operative, Australian diplomat Alexander Downer, targeted Mr. Papadopoulos in a London bar. It was Mr. Downer's "tip"
to the FBI that provided the
justification for the start of Russia counterintelligence investigation, complete with fraudulently-obtained FISA warrants to spy
on the Trump campaign.
All of these interactions reek of entrapment. Mr. Papadopoulos now says, "I believe Australian and UK intelligence were involved
in an active operation to target Trump and his associates." Like Mr. Halper and Mr. Mifsud, Mr. Downer had ties to the
CIA , MI6 and (surprise!)
the Clintons.
Given the deep intelligence backgrounds of these folks, it's difficult to believe that former DOJ/
FBI officials such as Peter
Strzok or even James Comey and Andrew McCabe
on their own devised the plan to deploy them.
So: who did? How did the relationships with Messrs. Halper, Mifsud and Downer come about? Who suggested them for these tasks?
To whom did they report? How were they compensated?
Any investigation must follow the money -- and the personnel. There were plenty of DOJ/
FBI officials involved, but
what about intelligence officials? Was Mr. Brennan
a central player in the hoax, which would help explain the participation of Mr. Halper, Mr. Mifsud and Mr. Downer? Intel officials
are likely to draw on other intelligence operatives.
There is also a glimpse of a paper trail.
Fox News' Catherine Herridge reported last week that "in a Dec. 12, 2016 text, [
FBI lawyer Lisa] Page wrote
to McCabe: "Btw, Clapper told Pete that he was meeting with
Brennan and Cohen for dinner tonight. Just
FYSA [for your situational awareness ]."
"Within a minute, McCabe replied, "OK."
Ms. Herridge notes that those named are likely Peter Strzok and
Mr. Brennan 's then-deputy, David Cohen. Ms. Herridge
also notes that while we don't yet know what was discussed during the dinner, government sources thought it "irregular" for Mr. Clapper
to be in contact with the more junior-level Mr. Strzok. She also points out that the text came "during a critical time for the Russia
probe."
Indeed. It was right before the publication of the ICA, the official Intelligence Community Assessment of Russian 2016 election
interference.
As Paul Sperry has reported, "A source close to the House investigation said
Brennan himself selected the
CIA and
FBI analysts who worked on
the ICA, and that they included former
FBI counterespionage chief
Peter Strzok.
"Strzok was the intermediary between Brennan
and Comey , and he was one of the authors
of the ICA," according to the source." Recall that the dossier-based ICA was briefed to
Obama , Trump and Congress ahead of Trump's
inauguration.
Post- Mueller report,
Mr. Brennan is spinning wildly that perhaps his
early condemnations of Mr. Trump were based on
"bad information."
These are just some of the threads suggesting Mr.
Brennan may be one of the Masters of the Big Lie, requiring full investigation.
If the devil is in the details, Mr. Brennan
is all over the details.
No wonder he -- and his fellow caballers -- have been so loud. They doth protest too much.
By accusing Mr. Trump of what they themselves
were guilty of, they created a masterful distraction through projection.
Hillary setup a unsecured server and had confidential government information on it, including 20 emails with Obama suspiciously
using an alias. If you're in law enforcement, and get a tip that Papadopolous may get some of those emails from Russians, what
crime has been committed by Papadopolous? Isn't Papadopolous doing the US a favor by obtaining those emails from those who hacked
her server?
If you believe Hillary that her server wasn't hacked (and you don't have any evidence because Obama's people allowed practically
all the evidence to be destroyed) then there's no reason to investigate Papadopolous. If you think Hillary's server was hacked,
shouldn't you be investigating her and examining her server to see who hacked her and what damage was done, such as blackmailing
her and Obama into appeasement and flexibility, like selling 20% of the US's uranium reserves to Russians just before an election?
John Brennan, James Clapper, Strozk, Ohr, Page were only some of Obama's political pythons operating in the jungle of Washington.
Obama orchestrated a symphony of harmful actions that will take the US a generation to recover from. That is if Obama's criminal
actions can be undone and then we get to recover.
"... The random probability that FAT was not used is 1 chance in 2 to the 500th power or approximately 1 chance in 10 to the 150th power - in other words, an infinitely high order. ..."
TEST IT YOURSELF, THE 2-SECOND-ROUNDING FACT PATTERN IN THE DNC EMAILS By William Binney
and Larry Johnson Bill and I published a piece a few weeks back that provides actual
evidence that challenges the claim that "Russia hacked the DNC." Yes, we know, the Mueller
Report continues to insist that theft of emails from the DNC was done over the internet. But
that conclusion rests on the opinion of third parties who offer no actual forensic evidence.
We, by contrast, are offering up actual evidence that points to an alternative explanation. We
do not ask you to take our word for it. Instead, we want to show you how you can test the data
yourself ..
An examination of the Wikileaks DNC files shows they were created on 23 and 25 May and 26
August respectively. The fact that they appear in a FAT system format indicates the data was
transfered to a storage device, such as a thumb drive.
How do we know? The truth lies in the "last modified" time stamps on the Wikileaks files.
Every single one of these time stamps end in even numbers. If you are not familiar with the FAT
file system, you need to understand that when a date is stored under this system the data
rounds the time to the nearest even numbered second.
We have examined 500 DNC email files stored on Wikileaks and all 500 files end in an even
number -- 2, 4, 6, 8 or 0. If a system other than FAT had been used, there would have been an
equal probability of the time stamp ending with an odd number. But that is not the case with
the data stored on the Wikileaks site. All end with an even number.
Here's what you need to do to replicate what we found.:
Step One -- Go to the Wikileaks
DNC email database. Click here: https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/ ) Step Two -- Search
the DNC database using the any word. We opted for "Clinton."
Step Four--Click on submit. That will take you to the following document:
Step Five--scroll down to the "HTTP response headers" section where you will find the
"Last-Modified" timestamp.
Message 100 shows a Last Modified Timestamp of 05:22:00 GMT.
That time equates to 01:22:00 Eastern Daylight Time.
It ends in 0, an even number. Our search and analysis of all the messages from the DNCin the
first Wikileaks release published July 22, 2016" show that all end in an even number.
We repeat our conclusion from the original article:
The random probability that FAT was not used is 1 chance in 2 to the 500th power or
approximately 1 chance in 10 to the 150th power - in other words, an infinitely high order.
This data alone does not prove that the emails were copied at the DNC headquarters. But it
does show that the data/emails posted by Wikileaks did go through a storage device on the 25
th of May, like a thumbdrive, before Wikileaks posted the emails on the World Wide
Web.
We do not know if a person or persons with access to the DNC server accessed the emails from
their home. That is possible. What is certain, however, is that email message 100 demonstrates
forensic evidence that indicates the email was physically copied onto a storage device, like a
thumb drive or CD-Rom, with a last modified date of 05:22:00 GMT on Wednesday the 25
th of May 2016, before it was published on the Wikileaks site. The fact that these
messages are in FAT format is not evidence that supports Mueller's claim a "hack."
Perhaps Mueller's team of investigators turned up forensic data that proves a Russian hack.
There was no such evidence, however, presented in June and July of 2016 when the initial claim
was made blaming Russian intelligence operatives.
We also are confident that there was no solid forensic evidence available in January 2017 to
substantiate the Intelligence Community Assessment attributing the "hack" to the Russian
Government because NSA analysts only agreed that they had "moderate confidence" in that claim.
We know from our prior experience in producting such assessments that if there existed actual
forensic evidence, such as tracing the packets back to a server operated by the Russian
Government then there would be "strong confidence" in the conclusion.
Who was the person or persons who had access to the DNC server that were copying these
messages to a storage device, like a thumb drive, early in the morning on Wednesday the 25
th of May? We have an opinion, but our focus is not on speculation. Let us first
deal with the hard forensic evidence. We are certain of one thing -- the available evidence
does not support the claim that the DNC emails were "hacked" via an internet cyber
attack.
Since Assange lives in an embassy, would there be any value to looking into who visited
him or mailed something to him between Wednesday the 25thof May 2016 and the date Wikileaks
published the material (July 22, 2016)? Would the embassy have those records?
Also, I may be mistaken, but wasn't the same material passed to, and published by, DCleaks
around the same time as the Wikileaks release? If that is correct, why does no one talk about
or analyze the DCleaks aspect of the case?
Finally, what do you think about the idea that multiple penetrations of the server could
have been occurring simultaneously by different parties? It is a juicy target, after all, and
apparently not well protected. Perhaps the Russians were in there, but were not the source of
the DCLeaks and/or Wikileaks material.
In other words Russiagate was a smoke screen over Isrealgate...
Notable quotes:
"... Being a citizen of a country is not just an accident of birth. It requires loyalty to the interests of that country and to one's fellow citizens. ..."
"... The Lobby works assiduously to compel American government at all levels to adopt positions that are beneficial to Israel and almost invariably harmful to U.S. interests. Asserting that the two nations have nearly identical interests is little more than a fraud. ..."
"... Second, there is the claim that Israel benefits American security. That is also a lie. Washington's relationship with Israel, which is now more subservient than it ever has been, is a major liability that is and always has been damaging to both American regional and global interests. ..."
"... Former CIA Deputy Director Admiral Bobby Inman has also rejected the claim that Israel is a security asset by observing that "Israeli spies have done more harm and have damaged the United States more than the intelligence agents of all other countries on earth combined. They are the gravest threat to our national security." ..."
"... Israel and AIPAC have relentlessly pursued their agenda while also corrupting the Congress of the United States to support the Israeli government with money and political cover. ..."
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has just completed its annual summit in Washington. It claims that 18,000
supporters attended the event, which concluded with a day of lobbying Congress by the attendees. Numerous American politicians addressed
the gathering and it is completely reasonable to observe that the meeting constituted the most powerful gathering of people dedicated
to promoting the interests of a foreign nation ever witnessed in any country in the history of the world.
There are a number of things that one should understand about the Jewish state of Israel and its powerful American domestic lobby.
First of all, the charge that the actions of The Lobby (referred to with capital letters because of its uniqueness and power) inevitably
involves dual or even singular allegiance based on religion or tribe to a country where the lobbyist does not actually reside is
completely correct by definition of what AIPAC is and why it exists. It
claims to work to "ensure that the Jewish state is safe, strong
and secure" through "foreign aid, government partnerships, [and] joint anti-terrorism efforts ," all of which involve the U.S. as
the donor and Israel as the recipient.
Being a citizen of a country is not just an accident of birth. It requires loyalty to the interests of that country and to one's
fellow citizens. No two countries have identical interests, something that is particularly true when one is considering Israel, an
ethno-religious autocracy, and the United States, where The Lobby works assiduously to compel American government at all levels to
adopt positions that are beneficial to Israel and almost invariably harmful to U.S. interests. Asserting that the two nations have
nearly identical interests is little more than a fraud.
Second, there is the claim that Israel benefits American security. That is also a lie. Washington's relationship with Israel,
which is now more subservient than it ever has been, is a major liability that is and always has been damaging to both American regional
and global interests. The recent decisions to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem and to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan
Heights were ill-conceived and have been condemned by the world community, including by nearly all of America's genuine close allies.
The harm done by the Israeli connection to policy formulation in Washington and to U.S. troops based in the Middle East has been
noted both by Admiral Thomas Moorer and General David Petraeus, with Moorer decrying how
"If the American people understood what
a grip those people have got on our government, they would rise up in arms. Our citizens certainly don't have any idea what goes
on."
Petraeus complained to a Senate Committee that U.S. favoritism towards Israel puts American soldiers based in the Middle East
at risk. He was quickly forced to recant, however.
Former CIA Deputy Director Admiral Bobby Inman has also rejected the claim that Israel is a security asset by observing that "Israeli
spies have done more harm and have damaged the United States more than the intelligence agents of all other countries on earth combined.
They are the gravest threat to our national security." Inman was referring to American Jewish spy Jonathan Pollard, who stole for
Israel an entire roomful of the most highly classified defense information. Israeli spies, including current Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu and Hollywood movie producer Arnon Milchan, also participated in the systematic theft of weapons grade uranium and nuclear
triggers in the 1960s so Israel could secretly create a nuclear weapons arsenal. The FBI, for its part, in its annual counterintelligence
report, consistently identifies Israel as the "friendly" country that spies most persistently against the U.S. FBI Agents have testified
that there are very few prosecutions of the swarms of Israeli spies due to
"political pressure."
Third, there is the myth that the United States and Israel have "shared values," which is meant to imply that both are liberal
democracies where freedom and human rights prevail, beacons of light offering enlightened leadership in a world where tyranny threatens
at every turn. This was stressed in the opening remarks last weekend by AIPAC Executive Director Howard Kohr, who
described Israel as "A nation always striving
to be better, more just and true to the message of its founders, a nation dedicated to freedom of religion for people of all faiths.
We do our work for all to see. What unites our pro-Israel movement is the passion for bringing American and Israel closer for the
benefit of both and the benefit of all. We look like America because we are America."
Kohr is, of course, preaching to an audience that wants desperately to believe what he says in spite of what they have been able
to see with their own eyes in the media when it dares to publish a story criticizing Israel. Jewish hypocrisy about one standard
for Israel and Jews plus another standard for everyone else operates pretty much out in the open if one knows where to look. Zionist
Organization of America's Morton Klein, who once tweeted regarding a "filthy Arab,"
was interviewed
by journalist Nathan Thrall and asked why he believed it was "utterly racist and despicable" to support a "white nationalist" ethnic
group but not racist for Israel to do the same. He responded "Israel is a unique situation. This is really a Jewish state given to
us by God. God did not create a state for white people or for black people." Senator Charles Schumer, the Democratic minority leader,
who calls himself the Senate's "shomer" or guardian for American Jews, had a slightly different take on it: "Of course, we say it's
our land, the Torah says it, but they don't believe in the Torah. So that's the reason there is not peace."
But Kohr, Klein and Schumer all know as well as anyone that Israeli Jews, fortified by their conceit of being a "Chosen people,"
are not interchangeable with contemporary Americans, or at least not "like" the Americans who still care about their country. There
are hundreds of mostly Jewish pro-Israel organizations in America, having a
combined
endowment of $16 billion, that are actively propagandizing and promoting Israeli interests by ignoring or lying about the downside
of the relationship. The University of Michigan affiliate of the Hillel International campus organization alone has a multistory
headquarters supported by a budget of $2 million and a staff of 15. It hosts an emissary of the Jewish Agency for Israel, an Israeli
government supported promotional enterprise.
So, what is the meaning of the "American" in AIPAC? Requiring a religious-ethnic litmus test for full citizenship and rights is
Israeli, not American. Having local government admissions committees that can bar Israeli-Palestinian citizens based on "social suitability"
would not be acceptable to most Americans. Demanding a unique Israeli right to exist while denying it to Israel's neighbors; demolishing
homes while poisoning Palestinian livestock and destroying orchards; shooting children for throwing stones; and inflicting death,
terror and deprivation upon the imprisoned people of Gaza are all everyday common practice for the Israeli government.
Israel and AIPAC have relentlessly pursued their agenda while also corrupting the Congress of the United States to support the
Israeli government with money and political cover. Israel and friends like Kohr routinely make baseless charges of anti-Semitism
against critics while also legislating against free-speech to eliminate any and all criticism. This drive to make Israel uniquely
free from any critique has become the norm in the United States, but it is a norm driven by Israeli interests and Israel's friends,
most of whom are Jewish billionaires or Jewish organizations that meet regularly and discuss what they might do to benefit the Jewish
state.
And the fourth big lie is that the American people support Israel on religious as well as cultural grounds, not because mostly
Jewish money has corrupted our political system and media. Indeed, many Christian fundamentalists have various takes on what Israel
means, but their influence is limited. The Israel-thing is Jewish in all ways that matter and its sanitized Exodus -version
that has been sold to the public is essentially a complete fraud nurtured by the media, also Jewish controlled, by Hollywood, and
by the Establishment.
"This weekend the New York Timesbreaks
one of the biggest taboos , describing the responsibility of Jewish donors for the Democratic Party's slavish support for
Israel. Nathan Thrall's groundbreaking piece repeats a lot of data we've reported here and says in essence that it really is about
the Benjamins, as Rep. Ilhan Omar said so famously. The donor class of the party is overwhelmingly Jewish, and Jews are still
largely wed to Zionism– that's the nut." Ben Rhodes, a former deputy national-security adviser to ex-President Barack Obama recounted
in the article how "a more assertive policy toward Israel" never evolved "The Washington view of Israel-Palestine is still shaped
by the [Jewish] donor class."
And the support for Israel goes beyond money. The Times article included an October 2018
"Survey of 800 American voters who identify as Jewish, conducted by the Mellman Group on behalf of the Jewish Electoral Institute,
92 percent said that they are 'generally pro-Israel.' In the same poll -- conducted after the United States closed the Palestinian
diplomatic mission in Washington, moved the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, appointed a fund-raiser for the
settlements as U.S. ambassador and cut humanitarian aid to Palestinians -- roughly half of American Jews said they approved of
President Trump's handling of relations with Israel. On what is considered the most divisive issue in U.S.-Israel relations, the
establishment of Israeli settlements in the West Bank,
a November
2018 post-midterm election poll of more than 1,000 American Jews that was commissioned by J Street, the pro-Israel lobby aligned
with Democrats, found that roughly half said the expansion of settlements had no impact on how they felt about Israel.
According
to a 2013 Pew survey , 44 percent of Americans and 40 percent of American Jews believe that Israel was given to the Jewish
people by God, [a] fact that Jews believe they have rights in historic Palestine that non-Jews do not."
And one only has to listen to the AIPAC speeches made by leading members of the U.S. government establishment to appreciate the
essential hypocrisy over the U.S. wag-the-dog relationship with the Jewish state of Israel. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer
led the parade of Democrats on the first evening of AIPAC, thundering "When someone accuses American supporters of Israel of
dual loyalty, I say: Accuse me, I am part of a large, bipartisan coalition in Congress supporting Israel -- an overwhelming majority
of the United States Congress. I tell Israel's accusers and detractors: Accuse me."
Well, Steny there is a certain irony in your request and to be sure you should be accused over betrayal of your oath to uphold
the constitution against all enemies "domestic and foreign." Hoyer is a product of the heavily Jewish Maryland Democratic Party machine
that has also produced Pelosi and Senator Ben Cardin. Pelosi
told the AIPAC audience about her father in
Baltimore, a so-called Shabbos goy who would perform services for Jews on the sabbath and who would also speak Yiddish while
at home with his Italian family. Cardin meanwhile has been the sponsor of legislation to make criticism or boycotting of Israel illegal,
up to and including heavy fines and prison time.
Hoyer, widely regarded as one of the most pro-Israel non-Jewish congressman, also boasted to AIPAC about the 15 official trips
to Israel he's made in forty years in Congress, accompanied by more than 150 fellow Democrats. "This August, I will travel with what
I expect will be our largest delegation ever -- probably more than 30 Democratic members of Congress, including many freshmen."
Steny Hoyer will be on an AIPAC affiliate sponsored trip in which any contact with Palestinians will be both incidental and carefully
managed. He also clearly has no problem in spending the taxpayer's dime to go to Israel on additional "codels" to get further propagandized.
He is flat out wrong about Israel in general, but don't expect him to be convinced otherwise, which may be somehow related to the
$317,525 in pro-Israel PAC contributions
he has received.
There was much more at the AIPAC Summit. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi denounced "the pernicious myth of dual loyalty and foreign
allegiance" while Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, fresh from selling out U.S. interests on a visit to Israel,
declared that "We live in dangerous times.
We have to speak the truth. Anti-Semitism should and must be rejected by all decent people. Anti-Semitism – anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism,
and any nation that espouses anti-Zionism, like Iran, must be confronted. We must defend the rightful homeland of the Jewish people."
Vice President Mike Pence, like Pompeo an evangelical Christian, piled on in his Monday prime time speech,
declaring that "Anyone who aspires to the highest office of the land should not be afraid to stand with the strongest supporters
of Israel in America. It is wrong to boycott Israel. It is wrong to boycott AIPAC. Anti-Semitism has no place in the Congress of
the United States of America. Anyone who slanders this historic alliance between the United States and Israel should never have a
seat on the Foreign Affairs Committee."
Clearly, there is considerable evidence to support the theory that one has to be completely ignorant to hold high office in the
United States. Rejecting Zionism and/or questioning Israeli policies is not anti-Semitism and the Jewish state is in fact no actual
ally of the United States. Nor is there any mandate to defend it in its questionable "rightful homeland." Furthermore, dual-loyalty
is what the relationship with Israel is all about and it is Jewish money and political power that makes the whole thing work to Israel's
benefit.
But the good news is that all the lying blather from the likes of Steny Hoyer and Howard Kohr reveals their desperation. They
are running scared because "the times they are a changing." Sure, Congressmen will continue to be bought and sold and Jewish money
and the access to power that it buys will be able to prevail in the short term in a conspiratorial fashion. But, in the long run,
everyone knows deep down that loyalty to Israel is not loyalty to the United States. And what Israel is doing is evil, as is becoming
increasingly clear. It is trying to convince Washington to make war on Iran, a country that does not threaten the U.S., while the
willingness of the American people to continue to look the other way as Benjamin Netanyahu uses army snipers to shoot down unarmed
demonstrators who are starving will not continue indefinitely. It must not continue and we Americans should do whatever it takes
to stop it.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational
foundation that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org,
address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is[email protected].
This article by late Robert Parry is from 2016 but is still relevant in context of the
current Ukrainian elections and the color revolution is Venezuela. The power of neoliberal
propaganda is simply tremendous. For foreign events it is able to distort the story to such an
extent that the most famous quote of CIA director William Casey "We'll know our disinformation
program is complete when everything the American public believes is false" looks like
constatation of already accomplished goal.
Exclusive: Several weeks before Ukraine's 2014 coup, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State
Nuland had already picked Arseniy Yatsenyuk to be the future leader, but now "Yats" is no
longer the guy, writes Robert Parry.
In reporting on the resignation of Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, the major
U.S. newspapers either ignored or distorted Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland's
infamous intercepted
phone call before the 2014 coup in which she declared "Yats is the guy!"
Though Nuland's phone call introduced many Americans to the previously obscure Yatsenyuk,
its timing – a few weeks before the ouster of elected Ukrainian President Viktor
Yanukovych – was never helpful to Washington's desired narrative of the Ukrainian people
rising up on their own to oust a corrupt leader.
Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, who pushed for the
Ukraine coup and helped pick the post-coup leaders.
Instead, the conversation between Nuland and U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt
sounded like two proconsuls picking which Ukrainian politicians would lead the new government.
Nuland also disparaged the less aggressive approach of the European Union with the pithy
put-down: "Fuck the E.U.!"
More importantly, the intercepted call, released onto YouTube in early February 2014,
represented powerful evidence that these senior U.S. officials were plotting – or at
least collaborating in – a coup d'etat against Ukraine's democratically elected
president. So, the U.S. government and the mainstream U.S. media have since consigned this
revealing discussion to the Great Memory Hole.
On Monday, in reporting on Yatsenyuk's Sunday speech in which he announced that he is
stepping down, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal didn't mention the Nuland-Pyatt
conversation at all. The New York Times did mention the call but misled its readers regarding
its timing, making it appear as if the call followed rather than preceded the coup. That way
the call sounded like two American officials routinely appraising Ukraine's future leaders, not
plotting to oust one government and install another.
The Times
article by Andrew E. Kramer said: "Before Mr. Yatsenyuk's appointment as prime minister in
2014, a leaked recording of a telephone conversation between Victoria J. Nuland, a United
States assistant secretary of state, and the American ambassador in Ukraine, Geoffrey R. Pyatt,
seemed to underscore the West's support for his candidacy. 'Yats is the guy,' Ms. Nuland had
said."
Notice, however, that if you didn't know that the conversation occurred in late January or
early February 2014, you wouldn't know that it preceded the Feb. 22, 2014 coup. You might have
thought that it was just a supportive chat before Yatsenyuk got his new job.
You also wouldn't know that much of the Nuland-Pyatt conversation focused on how they
were going to "glue this thing" or "midwife this thing," comments sounding like prima facie
evidence that the U.S. government was engaged in "regime change" in Ukraine, on Russia's
border.
The 'No Coup' Conclusion
But Kramer's lack of specificity about the timing and substance of the call fits with a long
pattern of New York Times' bias in its coverage of the Ukraine crisis. On Jan. 4, 2015, nearly
a year after the U.S.-backed coup, the Times published an "investigation" article declaring
that there never had been a coup. It was just a case of President Yanukovych deciding to leave
and not coming back.
That article reached its conclusion, in part, by ignoring the evidence of a coup, including
the Nuland-Pyatt phone call. The story was co-written by Kramer and so it is interesting to
know that he was at least aware of the "Yats is the guy" reference although it was ignored in
last year's long-form article.
Instead, Kramer and his co-author Andrew Higgins took pains to mock anyone who actually
looked at the evidence and dared reach the disfavored conclusion about a coup. If you did, you
were some rube deluded by Russian propaganda.
"Russia has attributed Mr. Yanukovych's ouster to what it portrays as a violent,
'neo-fascist' coup supported and even choreographed by the West and dressed up as a popular
uprising," Higgins and Kramer
wrote . "Few outside the Russian propaganda bubble ever seriously entertained the Kremlin's
line. But almost a year after the fall of Mr. Yanukovych's government, questions remain about
how and why it collapsed so quickly and completely."
The Times' article concluded that Yanukovych "was not so much overthrown as cast adrift by
his own allies, and that Western officials were just as surprised by the meltdown as anyone
else. The allies' desertion, fueled in large part by fear, was accelerated by the seizing by
protesters of a large stock of weapons in the west of the country. But just as important, the
review of the final hours shows, was the panic in government ranks created by Mr. Yanukovych's
own efforts to make peace."
Yet, one might wonder what the Times thinks a coup looks like. Indeed, the Ukrainian coup
had many of the same earmarks as such classics as the CIA-engineered regime changes in Iran in
1953 and in Guatemala in 1954.
The way those coups played out is now historically well known. Secret U.S. government
operatives planted nasty propaganda about the targeted leader, stirred up political and
economic chaos, conspired with rival political leaders, spread rumors of worse violence to come
and then – as political institutions collapsed – watched as the scared but duly
elected leader made a hasty departure.
In Iran, the coup reinstalled the autocratic Shah who then ruled with a heavy hand for the
next quarter century; in Guatemala, the coup led to more than three decades of brutal military
regimes and the killing of some 200,000 Guatemalans.
Coups don't have to involve army tanks occupying the public squares, although that is an
alternative model which follows many of the same initial steps except that the military is
brought in at the end. The military coup was a common approach especially in Latin America in
the 1960s and 1970s.
' Color Revolutions'
But the preferred method in more recent years has been the "color revolution," which
operates behind the façade of a "peaceful" popular uprising and international pressure
on the targeted leader to show restraint until it's too late to stop the coup. Despite the
restraint, the leader is still accused of gross human rights violations, all the better to
justify his removal.
Later, the ousted leader may get an image makeover; instead of a cruel bully, he is
ridiculed for not showing sufficient resolve and letting his base of support melt away, as
happened with Mohammad Mossadegh in Iran and Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala.
But the reality of what happened in Ukraine was never hard to figure out. Nor did you have
to be inside "the Russian propaganda bubble" to recognize it. George Friedman, the founder of
the global intelligence firm Stratfor, called Yanukovych's overthrow "the most blatant coup
in history."
Which is what it appears if you consider the evidence. The first step in the process was to
create tensions around the issue of pulling Ukraine out of Russia's economic orbit and
capturing it in the European Union's gravity, a plan defined by influential American neocons in
2013.
On Sept. 26, 2013, National Endowment for Democracy President Carl Gershman, who has been a
major neocon paymaster for decades, took to the op-ed page of the neocon Washington Post and
called Ukraine "the biggest prize" and an important interim step toward toppling Russian
President Vladimir Putin.
At the time, Gershman, whose NED is funded by the U.S. Congress to the tune of about $100
million a year, was financing scores of projects inside Ukraine training activists, paying for
journalists and organizing business groups.
As for the even bigger prize -- Putin -- Gershman wrote: "Ukraine's choice to join Europe
will accelerate the demise of the ideology of Russian imperialism that Putin represents.
Russians, too, face a choice, and Putin may find himself on the losing end not just in the near
abroad but within Russia itself."
At that time, in early fall 2013, Ukraine's President Yanukovych was exploring the idea of
reaching out to Europe with an association agreement. But he got cold feet in November 2013
when economic experts in Kiev advised him that the Ukrainian economy would suffer a $160
billion hit if it separated from Russia, its eastern neighbor and major trading partner. There
was also the West's demand that Ukraine accept a harsh austerity plan from the International
Monetary Fund.
Yanukovych wanted more time for the E.U. negotiations, but his decision angered many western
Ukrainians who saw their future more attached to Europe than Russia. Tens of thousands of
protesters began camping out at Maidan Square in Kiev, with Yanukovych ordering the police to
show restraint.
Meanwhile, with Yanukovych shifting back toward Russia, which was offering a more generous
$15 billion loan and discounted natural gas, he soon became the target of American neocons and
the U.S. media, which portrayed Ukraine's political unrest as a black-and-white case of a
brutal and corrupt Yanukovych opposed by a saintly "pro-democracy" movement.
Cheering an Uprising
The Maidan uprising was urged on by American neocons, including Assistant Secretary of State
for European Affairs Nuland, who passed out cookies at the Maidan and reminded Ukrainian
business leaders that the United States had invested $5 billion in their "European
aspirations."
A screen shot of U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland
speaking to U.S. and Ukrainian business leaders on Dec. 13, 2013, at an event sponsored by
Chevron, with its logo to Nuland's left.
Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, also showed up, standing on stage with right-wing extremists
from the Svoboda Party and telling the crowd that the United States was with them in their
challenge to the Ukrainian government.
As the winter progressed, the protests grew more violent. Neo-Nazi and other extremist
elements from Lviv and other western Ukrainian cities began arriving in well-organized brigades
or "sotins" of 100 trained street fighters. Police were attacked with firebombs and other
weapons as the violent protesters began seizing government buildings and unfurling Nazi banners
and even a Confederate flag.
Though Yanukovych continued to order his police to show restraint, he was still depicted
in the major U.S. news media as a brutal thug who was callously murdering his own people. The
chaos reached a climax on Feb. 20 when mysterious snipers opened fire, killing both police and
protesters. As the police retreated, the militants advanced brandishing firearms and other
weapons. The confrontation led to significant loss of life, pushing the death toll to around 80
including more than a dozen police.
U.S. diplomats and the mainstream U.S. press immediately blamed Yanukovych for the sniper
attack, though the circumstances remain murky to this day and some investigations have
suggested that the lethal sniper fire came from buildings controlled by Right Sektor
extremists.
To tamp down the worsening violence, a shaken Yanukovych signed a European-brokered deal on
Feb. 21, in which he accepted reduced powers and an early election so he could be voted out of
office. He also agreed to requests from Vice President Joe Biden to pull back the police.
The precipitous police withdrawal opened the path for the neo-Nazis and other street
fighters to seize presidential offices and force Yanukovych and his officials to flee for their
lives. The new coup regime was immediately declared "legitimate" by the U.S. State Department
with Yanukovych sought on murder charges. Nuland's favorite, Yatsenyuk, became the new prime
minister.
Throughout the crisis, the mainstream U.S. press hammered home the theme of white-hatted
protesters versus a black-hatted president. The police were portrayed as brutal killers who
fired on unarmed supporters of "democracy." The good-guy/bad-guy narrative was all the American
people heard from the major media.
The New York Times went so far as to delete the slain policemen from the narrative and
simply report that the police had killed all those who died in the Maidan. A typical Times
report on March 5, 2014, summed up the storyline: "More than 80 protesters were shot to death
by the police as an uprising spiraled out of control in mid-February."
The mainstream U.S. media also sought to discredit anyone who observed the obvious fact that
an unconstitutional coup had just occurred. A new theme emerged that portrayed Yanukovych as
simply deciding to abandon his government because of the moral pressure from the noble and
peaceful Maidan protests.
Any reference to a "coup" was dismissed as "Russian propaganda." There was a parallel
determination in the U.S. media to discredit or ignore evidence that neo-Nazi militias had
played an important role in ousting Yanukovych and in the subsequent suppression of anti-coup
resistance in eastern and southern Ukraine. That opposition among ethnic-Russian Ukrainians
simply became "Russian aggression."
Nazi symbols on helmets worn by members of Ukraine's Azov battalion. (As filmed by a
Norwegian film crew and shown on German TV)
This refusal to notice what was actually a remarkable story – the willful unleashing
of Nazi storm troopers on a European population for the first time since World War II –
reached absurd levels as The New York Times and The Washington Post buried references to the
neo-Nazis at the end of stories, almost as afterthoughts.
The Washington Post went to the extreme of rationalizing Swastikas and other Nazi symbols by
quoting one militia commander as calling them "romantic" gestures by impressionable young men.
[See Consortiumnews.com's " Ukraine's
'Romantic' Neo-Nazi Storm Troopers ."]
But today – more than two years after what U.S. and Ukrainian officials like to
call "the Revolution of Dignity" – the U.S.-backed Ukrainian government is sinking into
dysfunction, reliant on handouts from the IMF and Western governments.
And, in a move perhaps now more symbolic than substantive, Prime Minister Yatsenyuk is
stepping down. Yats is no longer the guy.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The
Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America's Stolen
Narrative, either in print here or
as an e-book (from
Amazon and
barnesandnoble.com ).
Khalid Talaat , April 16, 2016 at 20:39
Is it too far fetched to think that all these color revolutions are a perfection of the
process to unleash another fake color revolution, only this time it is a Red, White and Blue
revolution here at home? Those that continue to booze and snooze while watching the tube will
not know the difference until it is too late.
The freedom and tranquility of our country depends on finding and implementing a
counterweight to the presstitutes and their propaganda. The alternative is too
destructive in its natural development.
Abe , April 15, 2016 at 18:49
Yats and Porko are the guys who broke Ukraine. By the end of December 2015, Ukraine's
gross domestic product had shrunk around 19 percent in comparison with 2013. Its decimated
industrial sector needs less fuel. Yatsie did a heck of a job.
The timing of "Yats" departure is ominous. Mid-April, six weeks from now would be the
first chance to renew the invasion of DPR Donesk/Lugansk."Yats" failed in 2014, and didn't
try in 2015. Who is "the new guy"? Will the new Prime Minister begin raving about renewing
the holy war to recover the lost oblasts? 2016 is really Ukraine's last chance. Ukraine
refuses to implement Minsk2, and they have been receiving lots of new weapons. I believe
President Putin put the Syrian operation on " standby" not only to avoid approaching the
border, provoking a Turkish intervention, but also so he can give undistracted attention to
DPR Donesk/Lugansk.
Bill Rood , April 12, 2016 at 11:50
I guess I must be inside the Russian propaganda bubble. It was obvious to me when I
looked at the YouTube videos of policemen burning after being hit with Molotov
cocktails.
We played the same game of encouraging government "restraint" in Syria, where we
demanded Assad free "political prisoners," but we now accuse him of deliberately encouraging
ISIS by freeing those people, so that he can point to ISIS and ask, "Do you want that?"
Targeted leaders are damned if they do and damned if they don't.
Andrei , April 12, 2016 at 10:26
"the Ukrainian coup had many of the same earmarks as such classics as the
CIA-engineered regime changes in Iran in 1953 and in Guatemala in 1954", Romania 1989 Shots
were fired by snipers in order to stirr the crowds (sounds familiar?) and also by the army
after Ceasescu ran away, which resulted in civilians getting murdered. Could it possibly be
that it was said : "Iliescu (next elected president) is the guy!" ?
Joe L. , April 12, 2016 at 11:00
Check out the attempted coup against Hugo Chavez in Venezuela 2002, that is very
similar with protesters, snipers on rooftops, IMF immediately offering loans to the new coup
government, new government positions for the coup plotters, complacency with the media
– propaganda, funding by USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy etc. John
Pilger documents how the coup occurred in his documentary "War on Democracy" –
https://vimeo.com/16724719 .
archaos , April 12, 2016 at 09:45
It was noted in the minutes of Verkhovna Rada almost 2 years before Maidan 2 , that
Geoffrey Pyatt was fomenting and funding destabilisation of Ukraine.
All of Svoboda Nazis in parliament (and other fascisti) then booed the MP who stated
this.
Mark Thomason , April 12, 2016 at 06:57
Also, the Dutch voted "no" on the economic agreement the coup was meant to force through
instead of the Russian agreement accepted by the President it overthrew. Now both "Yats" and
the economic agreement are gone. All that is left is the war. Neocons are still happen.
They wanted the war. They really want to overthrow Putin, and Ukraine was just a tool in
that.
Realist , April 12, 2016 at 05:51
You're right, it doesn't have to be the military that carries out a coup by deploying
tanks on the National Mall. In 2000, it was the United States Supreme Court that exceeded
its constitutional authority and installed George W. Bush as president, though in reality he
had lost that election. I wonder when that move will rightfully be characterized as a coup by
the historians.
"On Sept. 26, 2013, National Endowment for Democracy President Carl Gershman, who has
been a major neocon paymaster for decades, took to the op-ed page of the neocon Washington
Post and called Ukraine "the biggest prize" and an important interim step toward toppling
Russian President Vladimir Putin."
It should be remembered that Victoria Nuland took up the post of Assistant Secretary of
State for European and Eurasian Affairs in Washington on September 18, 2013.
Coincidentally, two other women closely connected to events in Ukraine were also in
Washington during September 2013.
Friend of Nuland and boss of the IMF, which has its own HQ in Washington, Christine
Lagarde was swift to respond to a Ukraine request for IMF loans on February 27th 2014, just
five days after the removal of Yanukovych on February 22nd. Lagarde is pictured with
Baronness Catherine Ashton in Washington in a Facebook entry dated September 30th 2013.
Ashton was High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy at the
time.
Though visiting Kiev at the same time as Nuland in February 2014 Catherine Ashton never
appeared in public with her, which seems a little odd considering the women were on the same
mission, and talking to the same people. Nevertheless, despite appearing shy of being
photographed with each other the two women weren't quite so shy of being pictured with
leaders of the coup, including the right wing extremist, Oleh Tyahnybok.
Ashton refused to be drawn into commenting on Nuland's "Fuck the E.U.!" outburst,
describing Nuland as "a friend of mine." The two women certainly weren't strangers, they had
worked closely together before. September 2012 saw them involved in discussions with Iran
negotiator Saeed Jalili over the country's supposed nuclear arms ambitions.
The question is not so much whether the three women talked about Ukraine's future –
it would be ridiculous to think they did not – but how closely they worked together,
and exactly how closely they might have been involved in events leading up to the overthrow
of the legitimate government in Kiev. More on this here:
Another failed "regime change". Aren't these guys (Neoconservatives) great. They fail,
piss off/kill millions, yet seem to keep making money and retaining power. Time to WAKE UP
AMERICA.
Skip Edwards , April 11, 2016 at 20:06
Read "The Devil'Chessboard" by David Talbot to understand what has been occurring as a
result of America's Dark, Shadow government, an un-elected bunch of vicious psychopaths
controlling our destiny; unless stopped. Get a clue and realize that "Yats is our guy"
Victoria Nuland was Hillary Clinton's "gal." Hillary Clinton is Robert Kagen's "gal." Time to
flush all these rats out of the hold and get on with our lives.
Joe L. , April 11, 2016 at 18:40
Mr. Parry thank you for delving into the proven history of coups and the parallels with
Ukraine. It amazes me how anyone can outright deny this was a coup especially if they know
anything about US coups going back to WW2 (Iran 1953, Guatemala 1954, Chile 1973, attempt in
Venezuela 2002 etc. – and there are a whole slew more). I read before, as you have
rightly pointed out, that in 1953 the CIA led a propaganda campaign in Iran against Mossadegh
as well as financing opposition protesters and opposition government officials. Another
angle, as well, is looking historically back to what papers such as the New York Times were
reporting around the time of the coup in Iran – especially when we know that the
US/Britain overthrew the democratically elected Mossadegh for their own oil interests
(British Petroleum):
New York Times: "Mossadegh Plays with Fire" (August 15, 1953):
The world has so many trouble spots these days that one is apt to pass over the odd one
here and there to preserve a little peace of mind. It would be well, however, to keep an eye
on Iran, where matters are going from bad to worse, thanks to the machinations of Premier
Mossadegh.
Some of us used to ascribe our inability to persuade Dr. Mossadegh of the validity of our
ideas to the impossibility of making him understand or see things our way. We thought of him
as a sincere, well-meaning, patriotic Iranian, who had a different point of view and made
different deductions from the same set of facts. We now know that he is a power-hungry,
personally ambitious, ruthless demagogue who is trampling upon the liberties of his own
people. We have seen this onetime champion of liberty maintain martial law, curb freedom of
the press, radio, speech and assembly, resort to illegal arrests and torture, dismiss the
Senate, destroy the power of the Shah, take over control of the army, and now he is about to
destroy the Majlis, which is the lower house of Parliament.
His power would seem to be complete, but he has alienated the traditional ruling classes
-the aristocrats, landlords, financiers and tribal leaders. These elements are
anti-Communist. So is the Shah and so are the army leaders and the urban middle classes.
There is a traditional, historic fear, suspicion and dislike of Russia and the Russians. The
peasants, who make up the overwhelming mass of the population, are illiterate and
nonpolitical. Finally, there is still no evidence that the Tudeh (Communist) party is strong
enough or well enough organized, financed and led to take power.
All this simply means that there is no immediate danger of a Communist coup or Russian
intervention. On the other hand, Dr. Mossadegh is encouraging the Tudeh and is following
policies which will make the Communists more and more dangerous. He is a sorcerer's
apprentice, calling up forces he will not be able to control.
Iran is a weak, divided, poverty-stricken country which possesses an immense latent wealth
in oil and a crucial strategic position. This is very different from neighboring Turkey, a
strong, united, determined and advanced nation, which can afford to deal with the Russians
because she has nothing to fear -and therefore the West has nothing to fear. Thanks largely
to Dr. Mossadegh, there is much to fear in Iran.
My feeling is that the biggest sin that our society has is forgetting history. If we
remembered history I would think that it would be very difficult to pull off coups but most
media does not revisit history which proves US coups even against democracies. I actually
think that the coup that occurred in Ukraine was similar to the attempted coup in Venezuela
in 2002 with snipers on rooftops, immediate blame for the deaths on Hugo Chavez where media
manipulated the footage, immediate acceptance of the temporary coup government by the US
Government, immediately offering IMF loans for the new coup government, government positions
for many of the coup plotters, and let us not leave out the funding for the coup coming from
USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy. I also remember seeing the New York Times
immediately blaming Chavez and praising the coup but when the coup was overturned and US
fingerprints started to become revealed (with many of the coup plotters fleeing to the US)
then the New York Times wrote a limited retraction buried in their paper. Shameless.
SFOMARCO , April 11, 2016 at 15:16
How was NED able to finance "scores of projects inside Ukraine training activists,
paying for journalists and organizing business groups", not to mention to host such
dignitaries as Cookie Nuland, Loser McCain and assorted Bidens? Seems like a recipe for a
coup "hidden in plain sight".
Bob Van Noy , April 11, 2016 at 14:36
Ukraine, one would hope, represents the "Bridge Too Far" moment for the proponents of
regime change. Surely Americans must be catching on to what we do for selected nations in the
name of "giving them their freedoms". The Kagan Family, empowered by their newly endorsed
candidate for President, Hillary Clinton, will feel justified in carrying on a new cold war,
this time world wide. Of course they will not be doing the fighting, they, like Dick Cheney
are the self appointed intellects of geopolitical chess, much like The Georgetown Set of the
Kennedy era, they perceive themselves as the only ones smart enough to plan America's
future.
Helen Marshall , April 11, 2016 at 17:11
I wish. How many Americans know ANYTHNG about what has happened in Ukraine, about Crimea
and its history, and/or could even locate them on a map?
Pastor Agnostic , April 12, 2016 at 04:11
Nuland is merely the inhouse, PNAC female version of Sidney Blumenthal. Which raises the
scary question. Who would she pick to be SecState?
"... Washington has made many policies strongly influenced by' the demonizing of Putin -- a personal vilification far exceeding any ever applied to Soviet Russia's latter-day Communist leaders. ..."
"... As with all institutions, the demonization of Putin has its own history'. When he first appeared on the world scene as Boris Yeltsin's anointed successor, in 1999-2000, Putin was welcomed by' leading representatives of the US political-media establishment. The New York Times ' chief Moscow correspondent and other verifiers reported that Russia's new leader had an "emotional commitment to building a strong democracy." Two years later, President George W. Bush lauded his summit with Putin and "the beginning of a very' constructive relationship."' ..."
"... But the Putin-friendly narrative soon gave away to unrelenting Putin-bashing. In 2004, Times columnist Nicholas Kristof inadvertently explained why, at least partially. Kristof complained bitterly' of having been "suckered by' Mr. Putin. He is not a sober version of Boris Yeltsin." By 2006, a Wall Street Journal editor, expressing the establishment's revised opinion, declared it "time we start thinking of Vladimir Putin's Russia as an enemy of the United States." 10 , 11 The rest, as they' say, is history'. ..."
"... In America and elsewhere in the West, however, only purported "minuses" reckon in the extreme vilifying, or anti-cult, of Putin. Many are substantially uninformed, based on highly selective or unverified sources, and motivated by political grievances, including those of several Yeltsin-era oligarchs and their agents in the West. ..."
"... Putin is not the man who, after coming to power in 2000, "de-democratized" a Russian democracy established by President Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s and restored a system akin to Soviet "totalitarianism." ..."
"... Nor did Putim then make himself a tsar or Soviet-like autocrat, which means a despot with absolute power to turn his will into policy, the last Kremlin leader with that kind of power was Stalin, who died in 1953, and with him his 20-year mass terror. ..."
"... Putin is not a Kremlin leader who "reveres Stalin" and whose "Russia is a gangster shadow of Stalin's Soviet Union." 13 , 14 These assertions are so far-fetched and uninfoimed about Stalin's terror-ridden regime, Putin, and Russia today, they barely warrant comment. ..."
"... Nor did Putin create post-Soviet Russia's "kleptocratic economic system," with its oligarchic and other widespread corruption. This too took shape under Yeltsin during the Kremlin's shock-therapy "privatization" schemes of the 1990s, when the "swindlers and thieves" still denounced by today's opposition actually emerged. ..."
"... Which brings us to the most sinister allegation against him: Putin, trained as "a KGB thug," regularly orders the killing of inconvenient journalists and personal enemies, like a "mafia state boss." ..."
"... More recently, there is yet another allegation: Putin is a fascist and white supremacist. The accusation is made mostly, it seems, by people wishing to deflect attention from the role being played by neo-Nazis in US-backed Ukraine. ..."
"... Finally, at least for now. there is the ramifying demonization allegation that, as a foreign-policy leader. Putin has been exceedingly "aggressive" abroad and his behavior has been the sole cause of the new cold war. ..."
"... Embedded in the "aggressive Putin" axiom are two others. One is that Putin is a neo-Soviet leader who seeks to restore the Soviet Union at the expense of Russia's neighbors. Fie is obsessively misquoted as having said, in 2005, "The collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century," apparently ranking it above two World Wars. What he actually said was "a major geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century," as it was for most Russians. ..."
"... The other fallacious sub-axiom is that Putin has always been "anti-Western," specifically "anti-American," has "always viewed the United States" with "smoldering suspicions." -- so much that eventually he set into motion a "Plot Against America." ..."
"... Or, until he finally concluded that Russia would never be treated as an equal and that NATO had encroached too close, Putin was a full partner in the US-European clubs of major world leaders? Indeed, as late as May 2018, contrary to Russiagate allegations, he still hoped, as he had from the beginning, to rebuild Russia partly through economic partnerships with the West: "To attract capital from friendly companies and countries, we need good relations with Europe and with the whole world, including the United States." 3 " ..."
"... A few years earlier, Putin remarkably admitted that initially he had "illusions" about foreign policy, without specifying which. Perhaps he meant this, spoken at the end of 2017: "Our most serious mistake in relations with the West is that we trusted you too much. And your mistake is that you took that trust as weakness and abused it." 34 ..."
"... <img src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/amazon-avatars-global/default._CR0,0,1024,1024_SX48_.png"> P. Philips ..."
"... "In a Time of Universal Deceit -- Telling the Truth Is a Revolutionary Act" ..."
"... Professor Cohen is indeed a patriot of the highest order. The American and "Globalists" elites, particularly the dysfunctional United Kingdom, are engaging in a war of nerves with Russia. This war, which could turn nuclear for reasons discussed in this important book, is of no benefit to any person or nation. ..."
"... If you are a viewer of one of the legacy media outlets, be it Cable Television networks, with the exception of Tucker Carlson on Fox who has Professor Cohen as a frequent guest, or newspapers such as The New York Times, you have been exposed to falsehoods by remarkably ignorant individuals; ignorant of history, of the true nature of Russia (which defeated the Nazis in Europe at a loss of millions of lives) and most important, of actual military experience. America is neither an invincible or exceptional nation. And for those familiar with terminology of ancient history, it appears the so-called elites are suffering from hubris. ..."
THE SPECTER OF AN EVIL-DOING VLADIMIR PUTIN HAS loomed over and undermined US thinking about Russia for at least a decade. Inescapably,
it is therefore a theme that runs through this book. Henry' Kissinger deserves credit for having warned, perhaps alone among prominent
American political figures, against this badly distorted image of Russia's leader since 2000: "The demonization of Vladimir Putin
is not a policy. It is an alibi for not having one." 4
But Kissinger was also wrong. Washington has made many policies strongly influenced by' the demonizing of Putin -- a personal
vilification far exceeding any ever applied to Soviet Russia's latter-day Communist leaders. Those policies spread from growing complaints
in the early 2000s to US- Russian proxy wars in Georgia, Ukraine, Syria, and eventually even at home, in Russiagate allegations.
Indeed, policy-makers adopted an earlier formulation by the late Senator .Tolm McCain as an integral part of a new and more dangerous
Cold War: "Putin [is] an unreconstructed Russian imperialist and K.G.B. apparatchik.... His world is a brutish, cynical place....
We must prevent the darkness of Mr. Putin's world from befalling more of humanity'." 3
Mainstream media outlets have play'ed a major prosecutorial role in the demonization. Far from aty'pically', the Washington Post's
editorial page editor wrote, "Putin likes to make the bodies bounce.... The rule-by-fear is Soviet, but this time there is no ideology
-- only a noxious mixture of personal aggrandizement, xenophobia, homophobia and primitive anti-Americanism." 6 Esteemed
publications and writers now routinely degrade themselves by competing to denigrate "the flabbily muscled form" of the "small gray
ghoul named Vladimir Putin." 7 , 8 There are hundreds of such examples, if not more, over many years. Vilifying
Russia's leader has become a canon in the orthodox US narrative of the new Cold War.
As with all institutions, the demonization of Putin has its own history'. When he first appeared on the world scene as Boris Yeltsin's
anointed successor, in 1999-2000, Putin was welcomed by' leading representatives of the US political-media establishment. The New
York Times ' chief Moscow correspondent and other verifiers reported that Russia's new leader had an "emotional commitment to building
a strong democracy." Two years later, President George W. Bush lauded his summit with Putin and "the beginning of a very' constructive
relationship."'
But the Putin-friendly narrative soon gave away to unrelenting Putin-bashing. In 2004, Times columnist Nicholas Kristof inadvertently
explained why, at least partially. Kristof complained bitterly' of having been "suckered by' Mr. Putin. He is not a sober version
of Boris Yeltsin." By 2006, a Wall Street Journal editor, expressing the establishment's revised opinion, declared it "time we start
thinking of Vladimir Putin's Russia as an enemy of the United States." 10 , 11 The rest, as they' say, is history'.
Who has Putin really been during his many years in power? We may' have to leave this large, complex question to future historians,
when materials for full biographical study -- memoirs, archive documents, and others -- are available. Even so, it may surprise readers
to know that Russia's own historians, policy intellectuals, and journalists already argue publicly and differ considerably as to
the "pluses and minuses" of Putin's leadership. (My own evaluation is somewhere in the middle.)
In America and elsewhere in the West, however, only purported "minuses" reckon in the extreme vilifying, or anti-cult, of Putin.
Many are substantially uninformed, based on highly selective or unverified sources, and motivated by political grievances, including
those of several Yeltsin-era oligarchs and their agents in the West.
By identifying and examining, however briefly, the primary "minuses" that underpin the demonization of Putin, we can understand
at least who he is not:
Putin is not the man who, after coming to power in 2000, "de-democratized" a Russian democracy established by President
Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s and restored a system akin to Soviet "totalitarianism." Democratization began and developed in
Soviet Russia under the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, in the years from 1987 to 1991.
Yeltsin repeatedly dealt that historic Russian experiment grievous, possibly fatal, blows. Among his other acts, by using tanks,
in October 1993, to destroy Russia's freely elected parliament and with it the entire constitutional order that had made Yeltsin
president. By waging two bloody' wars against the tiny breakaway province of Chechnya. By enabling a small group of Kremlin-connected
oligarchs to plunder Russia's richest assets and abet the plunging of some two-thirds of its people into poverty' and misery',
including the once-large and professionalized Soviet middle classes. By rigging his own reelection in 1996. And by' enacting a
"super-presidential" constitution, at the expense of the legislature and judiciary but to his successor's benefit. Putin may have
furthered the de-democratization of the Yeltsin 1990s, but he did not initiate it.
Nor did Putim then make himself a tsar or Soviet-like autocrat, which means a despot with absolute power to turn his
will into policy, the last Kremlin leader with that kind of power was Stalin, who died in 1953, and with him his 20-year mass
terror. Due to the increasing bureaucratic routinization of the political-administrative system, each successive Soviet leader
had less personal power than his predecessor. Putin may have more, but if he really is a "cold-blooded, ruthless" autocrat --
"the worst dictator on the planet" 1 " -- tens of thousands of protesters would not have repeatedly appeared in Moscow
streets, sometimes officially sanctioned. Or their protests (and selective arrests) been shown on state television.
Political scientists generally agree that Putin has been a "soft authoritarian" leader governing a system that has authoritarian
and democratic components inherited from the past. They disagree as to how to specify, define, and balance these elements, but
most would also generally agree with a brief Facebook post, on September 7, 2018, by the eminent diplomat-scholar Jack Matlock:
"Putin ... is not the absolute dictator some have pictured him. His power seems to be based on balancing various patronage networks,
some of which are still criminal. (In the 1990s, most were, and nobody was controlling them.) Therefore he cannot admit publicly
that [criminal acts] happened without his approval since this would indicate that he is not completely in charge."
Putin is not a Kremlin leader who "reveres Stalin" and whose "Russia is a gangster shadow of Stalin's Soviet Union."
13 , 14 These assertions are so far-fetched and uninfoimed about Stalin's terror-ridden regime, Putin, and Russia
today, they barely warrant comment. Stalin's Russia was often as close to unfreedom as imaginable. In today's Russia, apart from
varying political liberties, most citizens are freer to live, study, work, write, speak, and travel than they have ever been.
(When vocational demonizers like David Kramer allege an "appalling human rights situation in Putin's Russia," 1 " they
should be asked: compared to when in Russian history, or elsewhere in the world today?)
Putin clearly understands that millions of Russians have and often express pro-Stalin sentiments. Nonetheless, his role in
these still-ongoing controversies over the despot's historical reputation has been, in one unprecedented way, that of an anti-Stalinist
leader. Briefly illustrated, if Putin reveres the memory of Stalin, why did his personal support finally make possible two memorials
(the excellent State Museum of the History of the Gulag and the highly evocative "Wall of Grief') to the tyrant's millions of
victims, both in central Moscow? The latter memorial monument was first proposed by then-Kremlin leader Nikita Khrushchev, in
1961. It was not built under any of his successors -- until Putin, in 2017.
Nor did Putin create post-Soviet Russia's "kleptocratic economic system," with its oligarchic and other widespread corruption.
This too took shape under Yeltsin during the Kremlin's shock-therapy "privatization" schemes of the 1990s, when the "swindlers
and thieves" still denounced by today's opposition actually emerged.
Putin has adopted a number of "anti-corruption" policies over the years. How successful they have been is the subject of legitimate
debate. As are how much power he has had to rein in fully both Yeltsin's oligarchs and his own, and how sincere he has been. But
branding Putin "a kleptocrat" 16 also lacks context and is little more than barely informed demonizing.
A recent scholarly book finds, for example, that while they may be "corrupt," Putin "and the liberal technocratic economic
team on which he relies have also skillfully managed Russia's economic fortunes." 1 ' A former IMF director goes further,
concluding that Putin's current economic team does not "tolerate corruption" and that "Russia now ranks 35th out of 190 in the
World Bank's Doing Business ratings. It was at 124 in 2010." 18
Viewed in human teims, when Putin came to power in 2000, some 75 percent of Russians were living in poverty. Most had lost
even modest legacies of the Soviet era -- their life savings; medical and other social benefits: real wages; pensions; occupations;
and for men life expectancy, which had fallen well below the age of 60. In only a few years, the "kleptocrat" Putin had mobilized
enough wealth to undo and reverse those human catastrophes and put billions of dollars in rainy-day funds that buffered the nation
in different hard times ahead. We judge this historic achievement as we might, but it is why many Russians still call Putin "Vladimir
the Savior."
Which brings us to the most sinister allegation against him: Putin, trained as "a KGB thug," regularly orders the killing
of inconvenient journalists and personal enemies, like a "mafia state boss." This should be the easiest demonizing axiom to dismiss
because there is no actual evidence, or barely any logic, to support it. And yet, it is ubiquitous. Times editorial writers and
columnists -- and far from them alone -- characterize Putin as a "thug" and his policies as "thuggery" so often -- sometimes doubling
down on "autocratic thug" 19 -- that the practice may be specified in some internal manual. Little wonder so many politicians
also routinely practice it, as did US Senator Ben Sasse: "We should tell the American people and tell the world that we know that
Vladimir Putin is a thus. He's a former KGB aaent who's a murderer." 20
Leaving aside other world leaders with minor or major previous careers in intelligences services. Putin's years as a KGB intelligence
officer in then -East Germany were clearly formative. Many years later, at age 67. he still spoke of them with pride. Whatever
else that experience contributed, it made Putin a Europeanized Russian, a fluent Geiman speaker, and a political leader with a
remarkable, demonstrated capacity for retaining and coolly analyzing a very wide range of information. (Read or watch a few of
his long interviews.) Not a bad leadership trait in very fraught times.
Moreover, no serious biographer would treat only one period in a subject's long public career as definitive, as Putin demonizers
do. Why not instead the period after he left the KGB in 1991, when he served as deputy to the mayor of St. Petersburg, then considered
one of the two or three most democratic leaders in Russia? Or the years immediately following in Moscow, where he saw first-hand
the full extent of Yeltsin-era corruption? Or his subsequent years, while still relatively young, as president?
As for being a "murderer" of journalists and other ''enemies." the list has grown to scores of Russians who died, at home or
abroad, by foul or natural causes -- all reflexively attributed to Putin. Our hallowed tradition puts the burden of proof on the
accusers. Putin's accusers have produced none, only assumptions, innuendoes, and mistranslated statements by Putin about the fate
of "traitors." The two cases that firmly established this defamatory practice were those of the investigative journalist Anna
Politkovskaya, who was shot to death in Moscow in 2006; and Alexander Litvinenko, a shadowy one-time KGB defector with ties to
aggrieved Yeltsin-era oligarchs, who died of radiation poisoning in London, also in 2006.
Not a shred of actual proof points to Putin in either case. The editor of Politkovskaya's paper, the devoutly independent Novaya
Gazeta. still believes her assassination was ordered by Chechen officials, whose human-rights abuses she was investigating. Regarding
Litvinenko, despite frenzied media claims and a kangaroo-like "hearing" suggesting that Putin was "probably" responsible, there
is still no conclusive proof even as to whether Litvinenko's poisoning was intentional or accidental. The same paucity of evidence
applies to many subsequent cases, notably the shooting of the opposition politician Boris Nemtsov, "in [distant] view of the Kremlin,"
in 2015.
About Russian journalists, there is, however, a significant overlooked statistic. According to the American Committee to Protect
Journalists, as of 2012, 77 had been murdered -- 41 during the Yeltsin years, 36 under Putin. By 2018, the total was 82 -- 41
under Yeltsin, the same under Putin. This strongly suggests that the still -- pairtially corrupt post-Soviet economic system,
not Yeltsin or Putin personally, led to the killing of so many journalists after 1991, most of them investigative reporters. The
former wife of one journalist thought to have been poisoned concludes as much: "Many Western analysts place the responsibility
for these crimes on Putin. But the cause is more likely the system of mutual responsibility and the culture of impunity that began
to form before Putin, in the late 1990s.""
More recently, there is yet another allegation: Putin is a fascist and white supremacist. The accusation is made mostly, it
seems, by people wishing to deflect attention from the role being played by neo-Nazis in US-backed Ukraine. Putin no doubt regards
it as a blood slur, and even on the surface it is, to be exceedingly charitable, entirely uninformed. How else to explain Senator
Ron Wyden's solemn warnings, at a hearing on November 1, 2017, about "the current fascist leadership of Russia"? A young scholar
recently dismantled a senior Yale professor's nearly inexplicable propounding of this thesis.' 3 My own approach is
compatible, though different.
Whatever Putin's failings, the fascist allegation is absurd. Nothing in his statements over nearly 20 years in power are akin
to fascism, whose core belief is a cult of blood based on the asserted superiority of one ethnicity over all others. As head of
a vast multi-ethnic state -- embracing scores of diverse groups with a broad range of skin colors -- such utterances or related
acts by Putin would be inconceivable, if not political suicide. This is why he endlessly appeals for harmony in "our entire multi-ethnic
nation" with its "multi-ethnic culture," as he did once again in his re-inauguration speech in 2018. 24
Russia has, of course, fascist-white supremacist thinkers and activists, though many have been imprisoned. But a mass fascist
movement is scarcely feasible in a country where so many millions died in the war against Nazi Geimany, a war that directly affected
Putin and clearly left a formative mark on him. Though he was born after the war, his mother and father barely survived near-fatal
wounds and disease, his older brother died in the long German siege of Leningrad, and several of his uncles perished. Only people
who never endured such an experience, or are unable to imagine it, can conjure up a fascist Putin.
There is another, easily understood, indicative fact. Not a trace of anti-Semitism is evident in Putin. Little noted here but
widely reported both in Russia and in Israel, life for Russian Jews is better under Putin than it has ever been in that country's
long history."
Finally, at least for now. there is the ramifying demonization allegation that, as a foreign-policy leader. Putin has been
exceedingly "aggressive" abroad and his behavior has been the sole cause of the new cold war.26 At best, this is an
"in-the-eve-of-the-beholder" assertion, and half-blind. At worst, it justifies what even a German foreign minister characterized
as the West's "war-mongering" against Russia."
In the three cases widely given as examples of Putin's "aggression," the evidence, long cited by myself and others, points
to US-led instigations, primarily in the process of expanding the NATO military alliance since the late 1990s from Germany to
Russia's borders today. The proxy US-Russian war in Georgia in 2008 was initiated by the US-backed president of that country,
who had been encouraged to aspire to NATO membership. The 2014 crisis and subsequent proxy war in Ukraine resulted from the longstanding
effort to bring that country, despite large regions' shared civilization with Russia, into NATO.
And Putin's 2015 military intervention
in Syria was done on a valid premise: either it would be Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus or the terrorist Islamic
State -- and on President Barack Obama's refusal to join Russia in an anti-ISIS alliance. As a result of this history, Putin is
often seen in Russia as a belatedly reactive leader abroad, as a not sufficiently "aggressive" one.
Embedded in the "aggressive Putin" axiom are two others. One is that Putin is a neo-Soviet leader who seeks to restore the Soviet
Union at the expense of Russia's neighbors. Fie is obsessively misquoted as having said, in 2005, "The collapse of the Soviet Union
was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century," apparently ranking it above two World Wars. What he actually
said was "a major geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century," as it was for most Russians.
Though often critical of the Soviet system and its two formative leaders, Lenin and Stalin, Putin, like most of his generation,
naturally remains in part a Soviet person. But what he said in 2010 reflects his real perspective and that of very many other Russians:
"Anyone who does not regret the break-up of the Soviet Union has no heart. Anyone who wants its rebirth in its previous form has
no head." 28 , 29
The other fallacious sub-axiom is that Putin has always been "anti-Western," specifically "anti-American," has "always viewed
the United States" with "smoldering suspicions." -- so much that eventually he set into motion a "Plot Against America."30
, 31 A simple reading of his years in power tells us otherwise. A Westernized Russian, Putin came to the presidency in
2000 in the still prevailing tradition of Gorbachev and Yeltsin -- in hope of a "strategic friendship and partnership" with the United
States.
How else to explain Putin's abundant assistant to US forces fighting in Afghanistan after 9/1 1 and continued facilitation of
supplying American and NATO troops there? Or his backing of harsh sanctions against Iran's nuclear ambitions and refusal to sell
Tehran a highly effective air-defense system? Or the information his intelligence services shared with Washington that if heeded
could have prevented the Boston Marathon bombings in April 2012?
Or, until he finally concluded that Russia would never be treated as an equal and that NATO had encroached too close, Putin was
a full partner in the US-European clubs of major world leaders? Indeed, as late as May 2018, contrary to Russiagate allegations,
he still hoped, as he had from the beginning, to rebuild Russia partly through economic partnerships with the West: "To attract capital
from friendly companies and countries, we need good relations with Europe and with the whole world, including the United States."
3 "
Given all that has happened during the past nearly two decades -- particularly what Putin and other Russian leaders perceive to
have happened -- it would be remarkable if his views of the W^est, especially America, had not changed. As he remarked in 2018, "We
all change." 33
A few years earlier, Putin remarkably admitted that initially he had "illusions" about foreign policy,
without specifying which. Perhaps he meant this, spoken at the end of 2017: "Our most serious mistake in relations with the West
is that we trusted you too much. And your mistake is that you took that trust as weakness and abused it." 34
"In a Time of Universal Deceit -- Telling the Truth Is a Revolutionary Act" is a well known quotation (but probably not of
George Orwell). And in telling the truth about Russia and that the current "war of nerves" is not in the interests of either the
American People or national security, Professor Cohen in this book has in fact done a revolutionary act.
Like a denizen of Plato's cave, or being in the film the Matrix, most people have no idea what the truth is. And the questions
raised by Professor Cohen are a great service in the cause of the truth. As Professor Cohen writes in his introduction To His
Readers:
"My scholarly work -- my biography of Nikolai Bukharin and essays collected in Rethinking the Soviet Experience and Soviet
Fates and Lost Alternatives, for example -- has always been controversial because it has been what scholars term "revisionist"
-- reconsiderations, based on new research and perspectives, of prevailing interpretations of Soviet and post-Soviet Russian
history. But the "controversy" surrounding me since 2014, mostly in reaction to the contents of this book, has been different
-- inspired by usually vacuous, defamatory assaults on me as "Putin's No. 1 American Apologist," "Best Friend," and the like.
I never respond specifically to these slurs because they offer no truly substantive criticism of my arguments, only ad hominem
attacks. Instead, I argue, as readers will see in the first section, that I am a patriot of American national security, that
the orthodox policies my assailants promote are gravely endangering our security, and that therefore we -- I and others they
assail -- are patriotic heretics. Here too readers can judge."
Cohen, Stephen F.. War with Russia (Kindle Locations 131-139). Hot Books. Kindle Edition.
Professor Cohen is indeed a patriot of the highest order. The American and "Globalists" elites, particularly the dysfunctional
United Kingdom, are engaging in a war of nerves with Russia. This war, which could turn nuclear for reasons discussed in this
important book, is of no benefit to any person or nation.
Indeed, with the hysteria on "climate change" isn't it odd that other than Professor Cohen's voice, there are no prominent
figures warning of the devastation that nuclear war would bring?
If you are a viewer of one of the legacy media outlets, be it Cable Television networks, with the exception of Tucker Carlson
on Fox who has Professor Cohen as a frequent guest, or newspapers such as The New York Times, you have been exposed to falsehoods
by remarkably ignorant individuals; ignorant of history, of the true nature of Russia (which defeated the Nazis in Europe at a
loss of millions of lives) and most important, of actual military experience. America is neither an invincible or exceptional
nation. And for those familiar with terminology of ancient history, it appears the so-called elites are suffering from hubris.
I cannot recommend Professor Cohen's work with sufficient superlatives; his arguments are erudite, clearly stated, supported
by the facts and ultimately irrefutable. If enough people find Professor Cohen's work and raise their voices to their oblivious
politicians and profiteers from war to stop further confrontation between Russia and America, then this book has served a noble
purpose.
If nothing else, educate yourself by reading this work to discover what the *truth* is. And the truth is something sacred.
America and the world owe Professor Cohen a great debt. "Blessed are the peace makers..."
A Reprise of the Iraq-WMD Fiasco? February 3, 2017 • 39
Comments
Exclusive: Official Washington's new "group think" – accepting evidence-free charges
that Russia "hacked the U.S. election" – has troubling parallels to the Iraq-WMD
certainty, often from the same people, writes James W Carden.
The controversy over Russia's alleged interference in the 2016 presidential election shows
no sign of letting up. A bipartisan group of U.S. senators recently introduced legislation that would
impose sanctions on Russia in retaliation for its acts of "cyber intrusions."At a press event in Washington on Tuesday, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, called Election Day
2016 "a day that will live in cyber infamy." Previously, Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, called
the Russian hacks of the Democratic National Committee "an act of war," while Sen. Lindsey
Graham, R-South Carolina, has claimed that there is
near unanimity among senators regarding Russia's culpability.
Despite all this, the question of who exactly is responsible for the providing WikiLeaks
with the emails of high Democratic Party officials does not lend itself to easy answers. And
yet, for months, despite the lack of publicly disclosed evidence, the media, like these
senators, have been as one: Vladimir Putin's Russia is responsible.
Interestingly, the same neoconservative/center-left alliance which endorsed George W. Bush's
case for war with Iraq is pretty much the same neoconservative/center-left alliance that is
now, all these years later, braying for confrontation with Russia. It's largely the same cast
of characters reading from the Iraq-war era playbook.
It's worth recalling Tony Judt's observation in September 2006 that "those centrist voices
that bayed most insistently for blood in the prelude to the Iraq war are today the most
confident when asserting their monopoly of insight into world affairs."
While that was true then, it is perhaps even more so the case today.
The prevailing sentiment of the media establishment during the months prior to the
disastrous March 2003 invasion of Iraq was that of certainty: George Tenet's now infamous
assurance to President Bush, that the case against Iraq was a "slam drunk," was essentially
what major newspapers and television news outlets were telling the American people at the time.
Iraq posed a threat to "the homeland," therefore Saddam "must go."
The Bush administration, in a move equal parts cynical and clever, engaged in what we would
today call a "disinformation" campaign against its own citizens by planting false stories
abroad, safe in the knowledge that these stories would "bleed over" and be picked up by the
American press.
WMD 'Fake News'
The administration was able to launder what were essentially "fake news" stories, such as
the aluminum tubes fabrication , by
leaking to Michael R. Gordon and
Judith Miller of The New York Times. In September 2002, without an ounce of skepticism, Gordon
and Miller regurgitated the claims of unnamed U.S. intelligence officials that Iraq "has sought
to buy thousands of specially designed aluminum tubes intended as components of centrifuges to
enrich uranium." Gordon and Miller
faithfully relayed "the intelligence agencies' unanimous view that the type of tubes that
Iraq has been seeking are used to make centrifuges."
By 2002, no one had any right to be surprised by what Bush and Cheney were up to; since at
least 1898 (when the U.S. declared war on Spain under the pretense of the fabricated Hearst
battle cry "Remember the Maine!") American governments have repeatedly lied in order to promote
their agenda abroad. And in 2002-3, the media walked in lock step with yet another
administration in pushing for an unnecessary and costly war.
Like The New York Times, The Washington Post also relentlessly pushed the administration's
case for war with Iraq. According
to the journalist Greg Mitchell , "By the Post 's own admission, in the months
before the war, it ran more than 140 stories on its front page promoting the war." All this,
while its editorial page assured readers that the evidence Colin Powell presented to the United
Nations on Iraq's WMD program was "irrefutable." According to the Post, it would be "hard to
imagine" how anyone could doubt the administration's case.
But the Post was hardly alone in its enthusiasm for Bush's war. Among the most prominent
proponents of the Iraq war was The New Yorker's Jeffrey Goldberg , who, a full year
prior to the invasion, set out to link Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. Writing for The New Yorker
in March 2002, Goldberg retailed former CIA Director
James Woolsey's opinion that "It would be a real shame if the C.I.A.'s substantial
institutional hostility to Iraqi democratic resistance groups was keeping it from learning
about Saddam's ties to Al Qaeda in northern Iraq."
Indeed, according to Goldberg ,
"The possibility that Saddam could supply weapons of mass destruction to anti-American terror
groups is a powerful argument among advocates of regime change," while Saddam's "record of
support for terrorist organizations, and the cruelty of his regime make him a threat that
reaches far beyond the citizens of Iraq."
Writing in Slate in October 2002, Goldberg was of the opinion that "In five years . . . I
believe that the coming invasion of Iraq will be remembered as an act of profound
morality."
Likewise, The New Republic's Andrew Sullivan was certain
that "we would find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. I have no doubt about that." Slate's
Jacob Weisberg supported the invasion because
he thought Saddam Hussein had WMD and he "thought there was a strong chance he'd use them
against the United States."
Even after it was becoming clear that the war was a debacle, the neoconservative pundit
Charles Krauthammer declared that the inability to find WMDs was "troubling" but "only because
it means that the weapons remain unaccounted for and might be in the wrong hands. The idea that
our inability to thus far find the weapons proves that the threat was phony and hyped is simply
false."
Smearing Skeptics
Opponents of the war were regularly accused of unpatriotic disloyalty. Writing in National
Review, the neoconservative writer David Frum
accused anti-intervention conservatives of going "far, far beyond the advocacy of
alternative strategies." According to Frum, "They deny and excuse terror. They espouse a
potentially self-fulfilling defeatism. They publicize wild conspiracy theories. And some of
them explicitly yearn for the victory of their nation's enemies."
Similarly, The New Republic's Jonathan Chait castigated anti-war liberals for turning
against Bush. "Have Bush haters lost their minds?" asked Chait . "Certainly some have.
Antipathy to Bush has, for example, led many liberals not only to believe the costs of the Iraq
war outweigh the benefits but to refuse to acknowledge any benefits at all."
Yet of course we now know, thanks, in part, to a
new book by former CIA analyst John Nixon, that everything the U.S. government thought it
knew about Saddam Hussein was indeed wrong. Nixon, the CIA analyst who interrogated Hussein
after his capture in December 2003, asks "Was Saddam worth removing from power?" "The answer,"
says Nixon, "must be no. Saddam was busy writing novels in 2003. He was no longer running the
government."
It turns out that the skeptics were correct after all. And so the principal lesson the
promoters of Bush and Cheney's war of choice should have learned is that blind certainty is the
enemy of fair inquiry and nuance. The hubris that many in the mainstream media displayed in
marginalizing liberal and conservative anti-war voices was to come back to haunt them. But not,
alas, for too long.
A Dangerous Replay?
Today something eerily similar to the pre-war debate over Iraq is taking place regarding the
allegations of Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election. Assurances from the
intelligence community and from anonymous Obama administration "senior officials" about the
existence of evidence is being treated as, well, actual evidence.
State Department spokesman John Kirby told CNN that he is "100%
certain" of the role that Russia played in U.S. election. The administration's expressions of
certainty are then uncritically echoed by the mainstream media. Skeptics are likewise written
off, slandered as " Kremlin cheerleaders " or
worse.
Unsurprisingly, The Washington Post is reviving its Bush-era role as principal publicist for
the government's case. Yet in its haste to do the government's bidding, the Post has published
two widely debunked stories relating to Russia (one on the scourge of Russian inspired "fake
news", the other on a non-existent Russian hack of a Vermont electric utility) onto which the
paper has had to append "editor's notes" to correct the original stories.
Yet, those misguided stories have not deterred the Post's opinion page from being equally
aggressive in its depiction of Russian malfeasance. In late December, the Post published an
op-ed by Rep. Adam Schiff and former Rep. Jane Harmon claiming "Russia's
theft and strategic leaking of emails and documents from the Democratic Party and other
officials present a challenge to the U.S. political system unlike anything we've
experienced."
On Dec. 30, the Post editorial board
chastised President-elect Trump for seeming to dismiss "a brazen and unprecedented attempt
by a hostile power to covertly sway the outcome of a U.S. presidential election." The Post
described Russia's actions as a "cyber-Pearl Harbor."
On Jan. 1, the neoconservative columnist Josh Rogin
told readers that the recent announcement of
sanctions against Russia "brought home a shocking realization that Russia is using hybrid
warfare in an aggressive attempt to disrupt and undermine our democracy."
Meanwhile, many of the same voices who were among the loudest cheerleaders for the war in
Iraq have also been reprising their Bush-era roles in vouching for the solidity of the
government's case.
Jonathan Chait, now a columnist for New York magazine, is clearly convinced by what the
government has thus far provided. "That Russia wanted Trump to win has been obvious for
months," writes Chait.
"Of course it all came from the Russians, I'm sure it's all there in the intel," Charles
Krauthammer told Fox News on Jan. 2. Krauthammer is certain.
And Andrew Sullivan is certain as to the motive. "Trump and Putin's bromance," Sullivan told MSNBC's Chris Matthews on Jan. 2, "has
one goal this year: to destroy the European Union and to undermine democracy in Western
Europe."
David Frum,
writing in The Atlantic , believes Trump "owes his office in considerable part to illegal
clandestine activities in his favor conducted by a hostile, foreign spy service."
Jacob Weisberg agrees, tweeting: "Russian covert action threw the election to Donald Trump.
It's that simple." Back in 2008, Weisberg
wrote that "the first thing I hope I've learned from this experience of being wrong about
Iraq is to be less trusting of expert opinion and received wisdom." So much for that.
Foreign Special Interests
Another, equally remarkable similarity to the period of 2002-3 is the role foreign lobbyists
have played in helping to whip up a war fever. As readers will no doubt recall, Ahmed Chalabi,
leader of the Iraqi National Congress, which served, in effect as an Iraqi government-in-exile,
worked hand in hand with the Washington lobbying firm Black, Kelly, Scruggs & Healey (BKSH)
to sell Bush's war on television and on the op-ed pages of major American
newspapers.
Chalabi was also a trusted source of Judy Miller of the Times, which, in an apology to its
readers on May 26,
2004, wrote : "The most prominent of the anti-Saddam campaigners, Ahmad Chalabi, has been
named as an occasional source in Times articles since at least 1991, and has introduced
reporters to other exiles. He became a favorite of hard-liners within the Bush administration
and a paid broker of information from Iraqi exiles." The pro-war lobbying of the American
Israel Public Affairs Committee has also been exhaustivelydocumented .
Though we do not know how widespread the practice has been as of yet, something similar is
taking place today. Articles calling for confrontation with Russia over its alleged "hybrid
war" with the West are
appearingwithincreasingregularity
. Perhaps the most egregious example of this newly popular genre appeared on Jan. 1 in
Politico
magazine. That essay, which claims, among many other things, that "we're in a war" with
Russia comes courtesy of one Molly McKew.
McKew is seemingly qualified to make such a pronouncement because she, according to her bio
on the Politico website, served as an "adviser to Georgian President Saakashvili's government
from 2009-2013, and to former Moldovan Prime Minister Filat in 2014-2015." Seems reasonable
enough. That is until one discovers that McKew is actually registered with the
Department of Justice as a lobbyist for two anti-Russian political parties, Georgia's UMN
and Moldova's PLDM.
Records show her work for the consulting firm Fianna Strategies frequently takes her to
Capitol Hill to lobby U.S. Senate and Congressional staffers, as well as prominent U.S.
journalists at The Washington Post and The New York Times, on behalf of her Georgian and
Moldovan clients.
"The truth," writes McKew, "is that fighting a new Cold War would be in America's interest.
Russia teaches us a very important lesson: losing an ideological war without a fight will ruin
you as a nation. The fight is the American way." Or, put another way: the truth is that
fighting a new Cold War would be in McKew's interest – but perhaps not America's.
While you wouldn't know it from the media coverage (or from reading deeply disingenuous
pieces like McKew's) as things now stand, the case against Russia is far from certain. New
developments are emerging almost daily. One of the latest is a report from the
cyber-engineering company Wordfence, which concluded that "The IP
addresses that DHS [Department of Homeland Security] provided may have been used for an attack
by a state actor like Russia. But they don't appear to provide any association with
Russia."
Indeed, according to Wordfence, "The malware sample is old, widely used and appears to be
Ukrainian. It has no apparent relationship with Russian intelligence and it would be an
indicator of compromise for any website."
On Jan. 4,
BuzzFeed reported that, according to the DNC, the FBI never carried out a forensic
examination on the email servers that were allegedly hacked by the Russian government. "The
FBI," said DNC spokesman Eric Walker, "never requested access to the DNC's computer
servers."
What the agency did do was rely on the findings of a private-sector, third-party vendor that
was brought in by the DNC after the initial hack was discovered. In May, the company,
Crowdstrike, determined that the hack was the work of the Russians. As one unnamed intelligence
official told BuzzFeed, "CrowdStrike is pretty good. There's no reason to believe that anything
that they have concluded is not accurate."
Perhaps not. Yet Crowdstrike is hardly a disinterested party when it comes to Russia.
Crowdstrike's founder and chief technology officer, Dmitri Alperovitch , is also a senior fellow at the
Washington think tank, The Atlantic Council, which has been at the forefront of escalating
tensions with Russia.
As I
reported in The Nation in early January , the connection between Alperovitch and the
Atlantic Council is highly relevant given that the Atlantic Council is funded in part by the State
Department, NATO, the governments of Latvia and Lithuania, the Ukrainian World Congress, and
the Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk. In recent years, it has emerged as a leading voice
calling for a new Cold War with Russia.
Time to Rethink the 'Group Think'
And given the rather thin nature of the declassified evidence provided by the Obama
administration, might it be time to consider an alternative theory of the case? William Binney,
a 36-year veteran of the National Security Agency and the man responsible for creating many of
its collection systems, thinks so. Binney believes that the DNC emails were leaked, not hacked,
writing
that "it is puzzling why NSA cannot produce hard evidence implicating the Russian
government and WikiLeaks. Unless we are dealing with a leak from an insider, not a
hack."
None of this is to say, of course, that Russia did not and could not have attempted to
influence the U.S. presidential election. The intelligence community may have
intercepted damning evidence of the Russian government's culpability. The government's
hesitation to provide the public with more convincing evidence may stem from an
understandable and wholly appropriate desire to protect the intelligence community's sources
and methods. But as it now stands the publicly available evidence is open to question.
But meanwhile the steady drumbeat of "blame Russia" is having an effect. According to a
recent you.gov/Economist
poll, 58 percent of Americans view Russia as "unfriendly/enemy" while also finding that 52
percent of Democrats believed Russia "tampered with vote tallies."
With Congress back in session, Armed Services Committee chairman John McCain is set to hold
a series of hearings focusing on Russian malfeasance, and the steady drip-drip-drip of
allegations regarding Trump and Putin is only serving to box in the new President when it comes
to pursuing a much-needed detente with Russia.
It also does not appear that a congressional inquiry will start from scratch and critically
examine the evidence. On Friday, two senators – Republican Lindsey Graham and Democrat
Sheldon Whitehouse –
announced a Senate Judiciary subcommittee investigation into Russian interference in
elections in the U.S. and elsewhere. But they already seemed to have made up their minds about
the conclusion: "Our goal is simple," the senators said in a joint statement "To the fullest
extent possible we want to shine a light on Russian activities to undermine democracy."
So, before the next round of Cold War posturing commences, now might be the time to stop,
take a deep breath and ask: Could the rush into a new Cold War with Russia be as disastrous and
consequential – if not more so – as was the rush to war with Iraq nearly 15 years
ago? We may, unfortunately, find out.
James W Carden is a contributing writer for The Nation and editor of The American Committee
for East-West Accord's eastwestaccord.com. He previously served as an advisor on Russia to the
Special Representative for Global Inter-governmental Affairs at the US State Department.
"... The purpose is very simple: to create the perception that the government of Russia still somehow controls or manipulates the US government and thus gains some undeserved improvements in relations with the U.S. Once such perception is created, people will demand that relations with Russia are worsened to return them to a "fair" level. While in reality these relations have been systematically destroyed by the Western establishment (CFR) for many years. ..."
"... It's a typical inversion to hide the hybrid war of the Western establishment against Russian people. Yes, Russian people. Not Putin, not Russian Army, not Russian intelligence services, but Russian people. Russians are not to be allowed to have any kind of industries, nor should they be allowed to know their true history, nor should they possess so much land. ..."
"... Russians should work in coal mines for a dollar a day, while their wives work as prostitutes in Europe. That's the maximum level of development that the Western establishment would allow Russians to have (see Ukraine for a demo version). Why? Because Russians are subhumans. ..."
"... The end goal of the Western establishment is a complete military, economic, psychological, and spiritual destruction of Russia, secession of national republics (even though in some of them up to 50% of population are Russians, but this will be ignored, as it has been in former Soviet republics), then, finally, dismemberment of what remains of Russia into separate states warring with each other. ..."
"... The very concept of Russian nation should disappear. Siberians will call their language "Siberian", Muscovites will call their language "Moscovian", Pomorians will call their language "Pomorian", etc. The U.S. Department of State will, of course, endorse such terminology, just like they endorse the term "Montenegrian language", even though it's the same Serbo-Croatian language with the same Cyrillic writing system. ..."
The purpose is very simple: to create the perception that the government of Russia still somehow controls or manipulates
the US government and thus gains some undeserved improvements in relations with the U.S. Once such perception is created, people
will demand that relations with Russia are worsened to return them to a "fair" level. While in reality these relations have been
systematically destroyed by the Western establishment (CFR) for many years.
It's a typical inversion to hide the hybrid war of the Western establishment against Russian people. Yes, Russian people.
Not Putin, not Russian Army, not Russian intelligence services, but Russian people. Russians are not to be allowed to have any
kind of industries, nor should they be allowed to know their true history, nor should they possess so much land.
Russians should work in coal mines for a dollar a day, while their wives work as prostitutes in Europe. That's the maximum
level of development that the Western establishment would allow Russians to have (see Ukraine for a demo version). Why? Because
Russians are subhumans.
Whatever they do, it's always wrong, bad, oppressive, etc. Russians are bad because they're bad. They must be "taught a lesson",
"put into their place". It would, of course, be beneficial and highly profitable for Europeans to break with Anglo-Saxons and
to live in peace and harmony with Russia, but Europeans simply can not overcome their racism towards Russians. The young Europeans
are just as racist, with their incessant memes about "squatting Russians in tracksuits", "drunken Russians", etc., as if there's
nothing else that is notable about a country of 147 million people.
The end goal of the Western establishment is a complete military, economic, psychological, and spiritual destruction of
Russia, secession of national republics (even though in some of them up to 50% of population are Russians, but this will be ignored,
as it has been in former Soviet republics), then, finally, dismemberment of what remains of Russia into separate states warring
with each other.
The very concept of Russian nation should disappear. Siberians will call their language "Siberian", Muscovites will call
their language "Moscovian", Pomorians will call their language "Pomorian", etc. The U.S. Department of State will, of course,
endorse such terminology, just like they endorse the term "Montenegrian language", even though it's the same Serbo-Croatian language
with the same Cyrillic writing system.
They lost control of Saudi Arabia, after trying to take down MBS and then betraying him by unexpectedly allowing waivers on
Iranian oil in November.
The U.S. cannot take down Iran without Venezuelan oil. What is worse, right now they don't have access to enough heavy oil
to meet their own needs.
Controlling the world oil trade is central to Trump's strategy for the U.S. to continue its empire. Without Venezuelan oil,
the U.S. is a bit player in the energy markets, and will remain so.
Having Russia block the U.S. in Venezuela adds insult to injury. After Crimea and Syria, now Venezuela, Russia exposes the
U.S. as a loud mouthed-bully without the capacity to back up its threats, a 'toothless tiger', an 'emperor without clothes'.
If the U.S. cannot dislodge Russia from Venezuela, its days as 'global hegemon' are finished. For this reason the U.S. will
continue escalating the situation with ever-riskier actions, until it succeeds or breaks.
In the same manor, if Russia backs off, its resistance to the U.S. is finished. And the U.S. will eventually move to destroy
Russia, like it has been actively trying to do for the past 30 years. Russia cannot and will not back off.
Venezuela thus becomes the stage where the final act in the clash of empires plays out. Will the world become a multi-polar
world, in which the U.S. becomes a relatively isolated and insignificant pole? Or will the world become more fully dominated by
a brutal, erratic hegemon?
So Russiagate smoothly transferred in Neo-McCarthyism and it will poison the US political atmosphere for a decade or two.
Notable quotes:
"... But as I foresaw well before the summary of Mueller's "Russia investigation" appeared, there is unlikely to be much, if any. Too many personal and organizational interests are too deeply invested in Russiagate. Not surprisingly, leading perpetrators instead immediately met the summary with a torrent of denials, goal-post shifts, obfuscations, and calls for more Russiagate "investigations." ..."
"... Clamorous allegations that the Kremlin "attacked our elections" and thereby put Trump in the White House, despite the lack of any evidence, cast doubt on the legitimacy of American elections ..."
"... Persistent demands to "secure our elections from hostile powers" -- a politically and financially profitable mania, it seems -- can only further abet and perpetuate declining confidence in the entire electoral process ..."
"... Still more, if some crude Russian social-media outputs could so dupe voters, what does this tell us about what US elites, which originated these allegations, really think of those voters, of the American people? ..."
"... Mainstream media are, of course, a foundational institution of American democracy, especially national ones, newspapers and television, with immense influence inside the Beltway and, in ramifying synergic ways, throughout the country. Their Russiagate media malpractice, as I have termed it, may have been the worst such episode in modern American history. ..."
"... Almost equally remarkable and lamentable, we learn that even now, after Mueller's finding is known, top executives of the Times and other leading Russiagate media outlets, including The Washington Post and CNN, " have no regrets ." ..."
"... Leading members of the party initiated, inflated, and prolonged it. They did nothing to prevent inquisitors like Representatives Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell from becoming the cable-news face of the party. Or to rein in or disassociate the party from the outlandish excesses of "The Resistance." With very few exceptions, elected and other leading Democrats did nothing to stop -- and therefore further abetted -- the institutional damage being done by Russiagate allegations. ..."
"... Rachel Maddow continues to hype "the underlying reality that Russia did in fact attack us." By any reasonable definition of "attack," no, it did not, and scarcely any allegation could be more recklessly warmongering, a perception the Democratic Party will for this and other Russiagate commissions have to endure, or not. (When Mueller's full report is published, we will see if he too indulged in this dangerous absurdity. A few passages in the summary suggest he might have done so.) ..."
"... Finally, but potentially not least, the new Cold War with Russia has itself become an institution pervading American political, economic, media, and cultural life. Russiagate has made it more dangerous, more fraught with actual war, than the Cold War we survived, as I explain in War with Russia? Recall only that Russiagate allegations further demonized "Putin's Russia," thwarted Trump's necessary attempts to "cooperate with Russia" as somehow "treasonous," criminalized détente thinking and "inappropriate contacts with Russia" -- in short, policies and practices that previously helped to avert nuclear war. Meanwhile, the Russiagate spectacle has caused many ordinary Russians who once admired America to now be " derisive and scornful " toward our political life. ..."
But as I foresaw well before the summary
of Mueller's "Russia investigation" appeared, there is unlikely to be much, if any. Too many personal and organizational interests
are too deeply invested in Russiagate. Not surprisingly, leading perpetrators instead immediately met the summary with a torrent
of denials, goal-post shifts, obfuscations, and calls for more Russiagate "investigations." Joy Reid of MSNBC, which has been
a citadel of Russiagate allegations along with CNN, even suggested that Mueller and Attorney General William Barr were themselves
engaged in " a cover-up
."
Contrary to a number of major media outlets, from Bloomberg News to The Wall Street Journal , nor does Mueller's
exculpatory finding actually mean that "
Russiagate
is dead " and indeed that " it expired
in an instant ." Such conclusions reveal a lack of historical and political understanding. Nearly three years of Russiagate's
toxic allegations have entered the American political-media elite bloodstream, and they almost certainly will reappear again and
again in one form or another.
This is an exceedingly grave danger, because the real costs of Russiagate are not the estimated $25–40 million spent on the Mueller
investigation but the corrosive damage it has already done to the institutions of American democracy -- damage done not by an alleged
"Trump-Putin axis" but by Russsigate's perpetrators themselves. Having examined this collateral damage in my recently published book
War with Russia? From Putin and Ukraine to Trump and Russiagate , I will only note them here.
§ Clamorous allegations that the Kremlin "attacked our elections" and thereby put Trump in the White House, despite the lack
of any evidence, cast doubt on the legitimacy of American elections everywhere -- national, state, and local. If true, or even
suspected, how can voters have confidence in the electoral foundations of American democracy? Persistent demands to "secure our
elections from hostile powers" -- a politically and financially profitable mania, it seems -- can only further abet and perpetuate
declining confidence in the entire electoral process.
Still more, if some crude Russian social-media outputs could so dupe voters, what does this tell us about what US elites,
which originated these allegations, really think of those voters, of the American people?
§ Defamatory Russsiagate allegations that Trump was a "Kremlin puppet" and thus "illegitimate" were aimed at the president but
hit the presidency itself, degrading the institution, bringing it under suspicion, casting doubt on its legitimacy. And if an "agent
of a hostile foreign power" could occupy the White House once, a "Manchurian candidate," why not again? Will Republicans be able
to resist making such allegations against a future Democratic president? In any event, Hillary Clinton's failed campaign manager,
Robby Mook, has already told us that there will be a "
next time ."
§ Mainstream media are, of course, a foundational institution of American democracy, especially national ones, newspapers
and television, with immense influence inside the Beltway and, in ramifying synergic ways, throughout the country. Their Russiagate
media malpractice, as I have termed it, may have been the worst such episode in modern American history. No mainstream media
did anything to expose, for example, two crucial and fraudulent Russiagate documents -- the so-called Steele Dossier and the January
2017 Intelligence Community Assessment -- but instead relied heavily on them for their own narratives. Little more need be said here
about this institutional self-degradation. Glenn Greenwald and a few others followed and exposed it throughout, and now Matt Taibbi
has given us a meticulously documented
account of that systematic malpractice , concluding that Mueller's failure to confirm the media's Russiagate allegations "is
a death-blow for the reputation of the American news media."
Nor, it must be added, was this entirely inadvertent or accidental. On August 8, 2016, the trend-setting New York Times
published on its front page
an astonishing editorial manifesto by its media critic. Asking whether "normal standards" should apply to candidate Trump, he
explained that they should not: "You have to throw out the textbook American journalism has been using for the better part of the
past half-century." Let others decide whether this Times proclamation unleashed the highly selective, unbalanced, questionably
factual "journalism" that has so degraded Russiagate media or instead the publication sought to justify what was already underway.
In either case, this remarkable -- and ramifying -- Times rejection of its own professed standards should not be forgotten.
Almost equally remarkable and lamentable, we learn that even now, after Mueller's finding is known, top executives of the
Times and other leading Russiagate media outlets, including The Washington Post and CNN, "
have no regrets ."
§ For better or worse, America has a two-party political system, which means that the Democratic Party is also a foundational
institution. Little more also need be pointed out regarding its self-degrading role in the Russiagate fraud. Leading members of the
party initiated, inflated, and prolonged it. They did nothing to prevent inquisitors like Representatives Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell
from becoming the cable-news face of the party. Or to rein in or disassociate the party from the outlandish excesses of "The Resistance."
With very few exceptions, elected and other leading Democrats did nothing to stop -- and therefore further abetted -- the institutional
damage being done by Russiagate allegations.
As for Mueller's finding, the party's virtual network, MSNBC, remains undeterred.
Rachel Maddow
continues to hype "the underlying reality that Russia did in fact attack us." By any reasonable definition of "attack," no, it
did not, and scarcely any allegation could be more recklessly warmongering, a perception the Democratic Party will for this and other
Russiagate commissions have to endure, or not. (When Mueller's full report is published, we will see if he too indulged in this dangerous
absurdity. A few passages in the summary suggest he might have done so.)
§ Finally, but potentially not least, the new Cold War with Russia has itself become an institution pervading American political,
economic, media, and cultural life. Russiagate has made it more dangerous, more fraught with actual war, than the Cold War we survived,
as I explain in War with Russia? Recall only that Russiagate allegations further demonized "Putin's Russia," thwarted Trump's
necessary attempts to "cooperate with Russia" as somehow "treasonous," criminalized détente thinking and "inappropriate contacts
with Russia" -- in short, policies and practices that previously helped to avert nuclear war. Meanwhile, the Russiagate spectacle
has caused many ordinary Russians who once admired America to now be "
derisive and scornful
" toward our political life.
"... All of these people who are in or have passed through leadership positions in America are entirely valid representatives of Americans in general. You may imagine they are faking cluelessness to avoid acknowledging responsibility for their crimes, but the cluelessness is quite real and extends to the entire population. ..."
"... Decades ago while in a leftist organization debate was raised as to how to find valid information to inform ourselves with. It was well understood that the vast majority of the western corporate mass media was a brainwashing operation to keep the masses clueless and supporting imperialist war but, we reasoned, the ruling class itself would need to be kept informed with quality information in order to feel confident that they were making good decisions. ..."
"... But things change. Note how the Russiagate skeptics in the US were attacked by the desperately faithful: If you focused attention on flaws in the Russiagate conspiracy theory then the general consensus was that you were defending Trump. ..."
"... This condition has arisen from literally generations of propaganda instilling as reality in American media consumers the myth of "American Exceptionalism" . The current crop of American adults have been raised by parents who themselves have been thoroughly indoctrinated in this alter reality. The disease is literally universal across the nation, from lowliest and most oppressed Black transvestites to the CEOs of the biggest corporations. ..."
"... The Washington Post used to be one of the journals that the elites looked to in order to help inform their decisions, but now in the post-truth, or relative truth, world these information sources have increasingly sought to align their information products with the "proper" relative truths that reinforce the myth of "American Exceptionalism" , even if that is in conflict with objective and empirical reality. ..."
"... In short, Washington Bezos Post writers are not moronic or drunk. They are delusional . They are in the grips of a delusion that afflicts the entire United States, and portions of the rest of the world as well ..."
"... WashingtonBezos Post writers are moronic or
drunk."
What ails them is far more complicated and vastly more sinister.
One often hears people say of other countries "It isn't the people of Elbonia whom I
hate, it is their government." It may be difficult for some in Europe, where there
remains a vestige of an imperative to foster a worldview based upon objective reality, to
come to grips with the fact that the problem with America has metastasized and spread to the
level of the individual citizens... all of them, to one degree or another. You don't
like Trump? Bolton? Clinton?
All of these people who are in or have passed through leadership positions in America are
entirely valid representatives of Americans in general. You may imagine they are faking
cluelessness to avoid acknowledging responsibility for their crimes, but the cluelessness is
quite real and extends to the entire population.
How did this happen to America?
Decades ago while in a leftist organization debate was raised as to how to find valid
information to inform ourselves with. It was well understood that the vast majority of the
western corporate mass media was a brainwashing operation to keep the masses clueless and
supporting imperialist war but, we reasoned, the ruling class itself would need to be kept
informed with quality information in order to feel confident that they were making good
decisions.
With this in mind we identified journals and sources that the capitalist elites
themselves relied upon to inform their decisions.
Things like the CIA World Factbook,
for instance, even though created by an organization devoted to disinformation, could be
trusted back then to be relatively dependable.
But things change. Note how the Russiagate skeptics in the US were attacked by the
desperately faithful: If you focused attention on flaws in the Russiagate conspiracy theory
then the general consensus was that you were defending Trump. The possibility that you could
be defending reason and truth is still dismissed out of hand. Why is that? Because in America
(it's a mind disease spreading to Europe, apparently) truth is relative and reason has become
just whatever justifies what you wish to be the truth; therefore, those who propose a
"truth" that conflicts with what people want to believe are agents of some enemy.
This condition has arisen from literally generations of propaganda instilling as reality
in American media consumers the myth of "American Exceptionalism" . The current crop
of American adults have been raised by parents who themselves have been thoroughly
indoctrinated in this alter reality. The disease is literally universal across the nation,
from lowliest and most oppressed Black transvestites to the CEOs of the biggest corporations.
As prior generations of the ruling elites from the post WWII era who still retained some
sense for the importance of objective reality have died off they have been replaced by the
newer generation for whom reality is entirely subjective. If they want to believe their
gender is mountain panda then that's their right as Americans! Likewise if they want to
believe that America's bombing is humanitarian and god's gift to the species, then anyone who
suggests otherwise is obviously a KGB troll.
The Washington Post used to be one of the journals that the elites looked to in order to
help inform their decisions, but now in the post-truth, or relative truth, world these
information sources have increasingly sought to align their information products with the
"proper" relative truths that reinforce the myth of "American Exceptionalism" ,
even if that is in conflict with objective and empirical reality.
To do otherwise would be to
aid and give comfort to America's "enemies" (do keep in mind that America is a nation
at war - has been for decades - and that workers in the corporate mass media are very much
conscious of their roles in that ongoing war effort, to the point that they see themselves as
information warriors fighting shadowy enemies that only exist in their own relative reality
bubbles).
In short, WashingtonBezos Post writers are not moronic or drunk.
They are delusional . They are in the grips of a delusion that afflicts the
entire United States, and portions of the rest of the world as well.
Some Americans have
broken free from this Matrix-like delusion, but the numbers remain somewhat small...
certainly less than one or two percent of the population, and those who have broken free of
the delusion will never be given a soapbox to speak to the rest of the population from by the
corporate elites.
I think you have wildly underestimated the number of Americans who are very aware of what is
going on with our country and the world. More than 40% of eligible voters elect not to
participate in elections realizing the futility of it, and withholding their consent to this
regime. It's a feature of propaganda to engender feelings of hopelessness, helplessness, and
feelings of isolation by falsely portraying a consensus among the population for the policies
of the regime. Resist!
"... It may look like Russiagate was a failure, but it was actually a success. It deflected the left's attention from endemic corruption within the leadership of the Democratic party, which supposedly represents the left. It rechannelled the left's political energies instead towards the convenient bogeymen targets of Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin. ..."
"... What Mueller found – all he was ever going to find – was marginal corruption in the Trump camp. And that was inevitable because Washington is mired in corruption. In fact, what Mueller revealed was the most exceptional forms of corruption among Trump's team while obscuring the run-of-the-mill stuff that would have served as a reminder of the endemic corruption infecting the Democratic leadership too. ..."
"... Further, in focusing on the Trump camp – and relative minnows like Paul Manafort and Roger Stone – the Russiagate inquiry actually served to shield the Democratic leadership from an investigation into the much worse corruption revealed in the content of the DNC emails. ..."
"... What should have been at the front and centre of any inquiry was how the Democratic party sought to rig its primaries to prevent party members selecting anyone but Hillary as their presidential candidate. ..."
"... Trump faces opposition from within the establishment not because he is "anti-establishment" but because he refuses to decorate the pig's snout with lipstick. He is tearing the mask off late-stage capitalism's greed and self-destructiveness ..."
"... The corporate media, and the journalists they employ, are propagandists – for a system that keeps them wealthy. When Trump was a Republican primary candidate, the entire corporate media loved him because he was TV's equivalent of clickbait, just as he had been since reality TV began to usurp the place of current affairs programmes and meaningful political debate. ..."
"... The "[neo]liberal" corporate media shares the values of the Democratic party leadership. In other words, it is heavily invested in making sure the pig doesn't lose its lipstick. By contrast, Fox News and the shock-jocks, like Trump, prioritise making money in the short term over the long-term credibility of a system that gives them licence to make money. They care much less whether the pig's face remains painted. ..."
"... Just as too many on the left sleep-walked through the past two years waiting for Mueller – a former head of the FBI, the US secret police, for chrissakes! – to save them from Trump, they have been manipulated by liberal elites into the political cul-de-sac of identity politics. ..."
"... The "[neo]liberal" elites exploited identity politics to keep us divided by pacifying the most maginalised with the offer of a few additional crumbs. Trump has exploited identity politics to keep us divided by inflaming tensions as he reorders the hierarchy of "privilege" in which those crumbs are offered. In the process, both wings of the elite have averted the danger that class consciousness and real solidarity might develop and start to challenge their privileges. ..."
"... Were the US to get its own Corbyn as president, he or she would undoubtedly face a Mueller-style inquiry, and one far more effective at securing the president's impeachment than this one was ever going to be. ..."
Here are three important lessons for the progressive left to consider now that it is clear the inquiry by special
counsel Robert Mueller into Russiagate is never going to
uncover collusion between Donald Trump's camp and the Kremlin in the 2016 presidential election.
Painting the pig's face
The left never had a dog in this race. This was always an in-house squabble between different wings
of the establishment. Late-stage capitalism is in terminal crisis, and the biggest problem facing our corporate elites is how to
emerge from this crisis with their power intact. One wing wants to make sure the pig's face remains painted, the other is
happy simply getting its snout deeper into the trough while the food lasts.
Russiagate was never about substance, it was about who gets to image-manage the decline of a turbo-charged,
self-harming neoliberal capitalism.
The leaders of the Democratic party are less terrified of Trump and what he represents than they are of us
and what we might do if we understood how they have rigged the political and economic system to their permanent advantage.
It may look like Russiagate was a failure, but it was actually a success. It deflected the left's attention
from endemic corruption within the leadership of the Democratic party, which supposedly represents the left. It rechannelled the
left's political energies instead towards the convenient bogeymen targets of Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin.
Mired in corruption
What Mueller found – all he was ever going to find – was marginal corruption in the Trump camp. And that was
inevitable because Washington is mired in corruption. In fact, what Mueller revealed was the most exceptional forms of corruption
among Trump's team while obscuring the run-of-the-mill stuff that would have served as a reminder of the endemic corruption infecting
the Democratic leadership too.
An anti-corruption investigation would have run much deeper and exposed far more. It would have highlighted
the Clinton Foundation, and the role of mega-donors like James Simons, George Soros and Haim Saban who funded Hillary's campaign
with one aim in mind: to get their issues into a paid-for national "consensus".
Further, in focusing on the Trump camp – and relative minnows like Paul Manafort and Roger Stone – the
Russiagate inquiry actually served to shield the Democratic leadership from an investigation into the much worse corruption revealed
in the content of the DNC emails. It was the leaking / hacking of those emails that provided the rationale for Mueller's investigations.
What should have been at the front and centre of any inquiry was how the Democratic party sought to rig its primaries to prevent
party members selecting anyone but Hillary as their presidential candidate.
So, in short, Russiagate has been two years of wasted energy by the left, energy that could have been spent
both targeting Trump for what he is really doing rather than what it is imagined he has done, and targeting the Democratic leadership
for its own, equally corrupt practices.
Trump empowered
But it's far worse than that. It is not just that the left wasted two years of political energy on
Russiagate. At the same time, they empowered Trump, breathing life into his phony arguments that he is the anti-establishment president,
a people's president the elites are determined to destroy.
Trump faces opposition from within the establishment not because he is "anti-establishment" but because he
refuses to decorate the pig's snout with lipstick. He is tearing the mask off late-stage capitalism's greed and self-destructiveness.
And he is doing so not because he wants to reform or overthrow turbo-charged capitalism but because he wants to remove the last,
largely cosmetic constraints on the system so that he and his friends can plunder with greater abandon – and destroy the planet more
quickly.
The other wing of the neoliberal establishment, the one represented by the Democratic party leadership, fears
that exposing capitalism in this way – making explicit its inherently brutal, wrist-slitting tendencies – will awaken the masses,
that over time it will risk turning them into revolutionaries. Democratic party leaders fear Trump chiefly because of the threat
he poses to the image of the political and economic system they have so lovingly crafted so that they can continue enriching themselves
and their children.
Trump's genius – his only genius – is to have appropriated, and misappropriated, some of the language of the
left to advance the interests of the 1 per cent. When he attacks the corporate "liberal" media for having a harmful agenda, for serving
as propagandists, he is not wrong. When he rails against the identity politics cultivated by "liberal" elites over the past two decades
– suggesting that it has weakened the US – he is not wrong. But he is right for the wrong reasons.
TV's version of clickbait
The corporate media, and the journalists they employ, are propagandists – for a system that keeps them
wealthy. When Trump was a Republican primary candidate, the entire corporate media loved him because he was TV's equivalent of clickbait,
just as he had been since reality TV began to usurp the place of current affairs programmes and meaningful political debate.
The handful of corporations that own the US media – and much of corporate America besides – are there both
to make ever-more money by expanding profits and to maintain the credibility of a political and economic system that lets them make
ever more money.
The "[neo]liberal" corporate media shares the values of the Democratic party leadership. In other
words, it is heavily invested in making sure the pig doesn't lose its lipstick. By contrast, Fox News and the shock-jocks, like Trump,
prioritise making money in the short term over the long-term credibility of a system that gives them licence to make money. They
care much less whether the pig's face remains painted.
So Trump is right that the "liberal" media is undemocratic and that it is now propagandising against him. But
he is wrong about why. In fact, all corporate media – whether "liberal" or not, whether against Trump or for him – is undemocratic.
All of the media propagandises for a rotten system that keeps the vast majority of Americans impoverished. All of the media cares
more for Trump and the elites he belongs to than it cares for the 99 per cent.
Gorging on the main course
Similarly, with identity politics. Trump says he wants to make (a white) America great again, and uses the
left's obsession with identity as a way to energize a backlash from his own supporters.
Just as too many on the left sleep-walked through the past two years waiting for Mueller – a former head
of the FBI, the US secret police, for chrissakes! – to save them from Trump, they have been manipulated by liberal elites into the
political cul-de-sac of identity politics.
Just as Mueller put the left on standby, into waiting-for-the-Messiah mode, so simple-minded, pussy-hat-wearing
identity politics has been cultivated in the supposedly liberal bastions of the corporate media and Ivy League universities – the
same universities that have turned out generations of Muellers and Clintons – to deplete the left's political energies. While we
argue over who is most entitled and most victimised, the establishment has carried on raping and pillaging Third World countries,
destroying the planet and siphoning off the wealth produced by the rest of us.
These liberal elites long ago worked out that if we could be made to squabble among ourselves about who was
most entitled to scraps from the table, they could keep gorging on the main course.
The "[neo]liberal" elites exploited identity politics to keep us divided by pacifying the most maginalised
with the offer of a few additional crumbs. Trump has exploited identity politics to keep us divided by inflaming tensions as he reorders
the hierarchy of "privilege" in which those crumbs are offered. In the process, both wings of the elite have averted the danger that
class consciousness and real solidarity might develop and start to challenge their privileges.
The Corbyn experience
3. But the most important lesson of all for the left is that support among its ranks for the Mueller inquiry
against Trump was foolhardy in the extreme.
Not only was the inquiry doomed to failure – in fact, not only was it designed to fail – but it has set a precedent
for future politicised investigations that will be used against the progressive left should it make any significant political gains.
And an inquiry against the real left will be far more aggressive and far more "productive" than Mueller was.
If there is any doubt about that look to the UK. Britain now has within reach of power the first truly progressive
politician in living memory, someone seeking to represent the 99 per cent, not the 1 per cent. But Jeremy Corbyn's experience as
the leader of the Labour party – massively swelling the membership's ranks to make it the largest political party in Europe – has
been eye-popping.
I have documented Corbyn's travails regularly in this blog over the past four years at the hands of the British
political and media establishment. You can find many examples
here.
Corbyn, even more so than the small, new wave of insurgency politicians in the US Congress, has faced a relentless
barrage of criticism from across the UK's similarly narrow political spectrum. He has been attacked by both the rightwing media and
the supposedly "liberal" media. He has been savaged by the ruling Conservative party, as was to be expected, and by his own parliamentary
Labour party. The UK's two-party system has been exposed as just as hollow as the US one.
The ferocity of the attacks has been necessary because, unlike the Democratic party's success in keeping a
progressive leftwinger away from the presidential campaign, the UK system accidentally allowed a socialist to slip past the gatekeepers.
All hell has broken out ever since.
Simple-minded identity politics
What is so noticeable is that Corbyn is rarely attacked over his policies – mainly because they have
wide popular appeal. Instead he has been hounded over fanciful claims that, despite being a life-long and very visible anti-racism
campaigner, he suddenly morphed into an outright anti-semite the moment party members elected him leader.
I will not rehearse again how implausible these claims are. Simply look through these previous
blog posts
should you be in any doubt.
But what is amazing is that, just as with the Mueller inquiry, much of the British left – including prominent
figures like Owen Jones and the supposedly countercultural Novara Media – have sapped their political energies in trying to placate
or support those leading the preposterous claims that Labour under Corbyn has become "institutionally anti-semitic". Again, the promotion
of a simple-minded identity politics – which pits the rights of Palestinians against the sensitivities of Zionist Jews about Israel
– was exploited to divide the left.
The more the left has conceded to this campaign, the angrier, the more implacable, the more self-righteous
Corbyn's opponents have become – to the point that the Labour party is now in serious danger of imploding.
A clarifying moment
Were the US to get its own Corbyn as president, he or she would undoubtedly face a Mueller-style inquiry, and
one far more effective at securing the president's impeachment than this one was ever going to be.
That is not because a leftwing US president would be more corrupt or more likely to have colluded with a foreign
power. As the UK example shows, it would be because the entire media system – from the New York Times to Fox News – would be against
such a president. And as the UK example also shows, it would be because the leaderships of both the Republican and Democratic parties
would work as one to finish off such a president.
In the combined success-failure of the Mueller inquiry, the left has an opportunity to understand in a much
more sophisticated way how real power works and in whose favour it is exercised. It is moment that should be clarifying – if we are
willing to open our eyes to Mueller's real lessons.
In itself, criminal justice reform for non-violent offenders is not anathema to Trump's libertarian supporters (check).
For what it symbolizes in the broader political context, however, the passing of the
First Step Act -- as the criminal justice reform bill is called -- is a bit of an abomination.
Good or bad, the First Step Act is Jared Kushner's baby. And Kushner, Trump's liberal son-in-law, should not be having legislative
coups!
Yes, Jared and Ivanka are on a tear. The midterm congressional elections of President Trump's first-term have culminated in a
legislative victory for an anemic man, who provides a perfect peg on which to hang the forceful first daughter's ambition.
In no time at all have Jared and Ivanka Trump moved to consolidate power. This, as intellects like the Steven Bannon and Stephen
Miller were either fired, or confined to the basement, so to speak.
Today, Bannon is just a flinty glint in Ivanka's eyes. But by January, 2017, the president's former White House chief strategist
had already "assembled a list of more than 200 executive orders to issue in the first 100 days. The very first EO, in his view, had
to be a crackdown on immigration. After all, it was one of Trump's core campaign promises." So said Bannon to Michael Wolff, author
of Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House .
Many a pundit has suggested that Trump give a kick-ass rah-rah address to explain immigration to the nation.
Nonsense on stilts. The Make America Great Again (S.O.S.) agenda needed to be explained daily and repetitively by someone with
a brain. It should have been MAGA every morning with Steve Miller, or Gen. John Kelly or Kirstjen Nielsen. Instead, we got stumblebum
Sarah Huckabee issuing a meek, meandering daily apologia.
About that promise to put in place only "the best of people": Ice princess Kirstjen Nielsen is super smart with a cool temperament
and looks to match. Homeland Security Secretary Nielsen had been brought into the Trump Administration by retired United States Marine
Corps Gen. John Kelly, formerly White House chief of staff. Nielsen might not be optimal in her current position. But she
would've made a great MAGA mouthpiece.
It's quite clear that President Trump's promise to hire only "the best" ought to have begun with firing The Family. Instead, Mr.
Kushner's national security portfolio has expanded in a manner incommensurate with his skills. It now includes, I believe, China,
Mexico, Iraq, Israel and Saudi Arabia.
The same can be said of Ivanka, who was soon briefing the South Korean president on sanctions against North Korea. That Ivanka
lacked a permanent security clearance was the least of the country's worries, given Steve Bannon's assessment of her cerebral acuity:
"as dumb as a
brick" .
Alas, political connections ensured that two branding experts beat Braveheart Bannon of the mighty Breitbart.com! "'The Trump
presidency that we fought for, and won, is over," he lamented, in August of 2017.
If
Breitbart.com is to be believed -- and it should -- Ivanka was the one to give Bannon the boot (or, rather, the
Choo ): "Trump's daughter Ivanka pushed Bannon out because of his
'far-right views' clashing with her [recently acquired] Jewish faith." (Funny that, because my own rightist views clash not at all
with my Jewish faith.)
"Jarvanka" (the Jared-Ivanka organism) were also said to have orchestrated the ousting of the last of the old MAGA Guard, John
Kelly, aforementioned, a most excellent man. Kelly took his role as chief of staff seriously. He was a hardliner who limited Ivanka's
access to Pater.
One of Trump's superb personnel choices, Kelly's fate, however, was sealed when he stated how sick-and-tired he was of the first
daughter "playing
government." The Goldman-Sachs wing of the White House, commandeered by the Kushners, had always wished him away. So, Kelly got
the Choo , too.
Of former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, archconservative Heather Mac Donald
observed the following: Sessions was "the only member of the Trump administration who was absolutely staunch in speaking up for
the right of Americans to determine what the character of their country should be."
It takes a strong woman (Mac Donald) to recognize a scheming one. Mac Donald
has recently expressed "'no confidence' that the president will stop being advised by his daughter, Ivanka Trump, on the issue
of immigration."
It so happened that Ayers chose not to play. A trial balloon was quickly floated, but was punctured just as fast. The idea that
Jared would be chief of staff was just too preposterous. But oh, the audacity of that fleeting experiment!
So, here we are. The promised land (America) is without the promised Wall. But, liberal legislation in hand, the "Honorable" Kushners
(
so listed ) are off to hobnob at the World Economic Forum in Davos, in
January of 2019 .
First Lady Melania has been shoved aside, or ceremonially shivved, to use prison parlance. The first couple in-waiting will get
to press flesh with local and global elites, while flashing their liberal credentials: criminal justice reform.
Oh how fun it is to schmooze the gilded globalists, rather than to woo Trump voters.
This is probably the most comprehensive outline of the color revolution against Trump. Bravo, simply bravo !!!
Reads like Agatha Christi Murder on the Orient
Express ;-) Rosenstein role is completely revised from a popular narrative. Brennan role clarifies and detailed. Obama
personal role hinted. Victoria Nuland role and the role of the State Department in Russiagate is documented for the first
time, I think.
Notable quotes:
"... The "insurance policy" appears to have been the effort to legitimize the Trump–Russia collusion narrative so that an FBI investigation, led by McCabe, could continue unhindered. ..."
"... Ohr, one of the highest-ranking officials in the DOJ, was communicating on an ongoing basis with Steele, whom he had known since at least 2006 , well into mid-2017. He is also married to Nellie Ohr, an expert on Russia and Eurasia who began working for Fusion GPS sometime in late 2015 . Nellie Ohr likely played a significant role in the construction of the dossier. ..."
"... The Obama administration provided a simultaneous layer of protection and facilitation for the entire effort. One example is provided by Section 2.3 of Executive Order 12333 , also known as Obama's data-sharing order . With the passage of the order, agencies and individuals were able to ask the NSA for access to specific surveillance simply by claiming the intercepts contained relevant information that was useful to a particular mission. ..."
"... Leaking, including felony leaking of classified information, has been widespread. The Carter Page FISA warrant -- likely the unredacted version -- has been in the possession of The Washington Post and The New York Times since March 2017. Traditionally, the intelligence community leaked to The Washington Post while the DOJ leaked to sources within The New York Times. This was a historical pattern that stood until this election. The leaking became so widespread, even this tradition was broken. ..."
"... The information contained within both articles likely came via felony leaks from James Wolfe, former director of security for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, who was arrested on June 7, 2018, and charged with one count of lying to the FBI. Wolfe's indictment alleges that he was leaking classified information to multiple reporters over an extended period of time. ..."
"... The Steele dossier was fed into U.S. channels through several different sources. One such source was Sir Andrew Wood, the former British ambassador to Russia, who had been briefed about the dossier by Steele. Wood later relayed information regarding the dossier to Sen. John McCain, who dispatched David Kramer, a fellow at the McCain Institute, to London to meet with Steele in November 2016. McCain would later admit in a Jan. 11, 2017, statement that he had personally passed on the dossier to then-FBI Director James Comey. ..."
"... Trump, after issuing an order for the declassification of documents and text messages related to the Russia-collusion investigations -- including parts of the Carter Page FISA warrant application -- received phone calls from two U.S. allies saying, "Please, can we talk." Those "allies" were almost certainly the UK and Australia. ..."
"... Questions to be asked are why is it that two of our allies would find themselves so opposed to the release of these classified documents that a coordinated plea would be made directly to the president? And why would these same allies have even the slightest idea of what was contained in these classified U.S. documents? ..."
Spygate: The True Story of Collusion [Infographic] How America's most powerful agencies were weaponized against President
Donald Trump
Although the details remain complex, the structure underlying Spygate -- the creation of the false narrative that candidate Donald
Trump colluded with Russia, and the spying on his presidential campaign -- remains surprisingly simple:
CIA Director John Brennan, with some assistance from Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, gathered foreign intelligence
and fed it throughout our domestic Intelligence Community.
The FBI became the handler of Brennan's intelligence and engaged in the more practical elements of surveillance.
The Department of Justice facilitated investigations by the FBI and legal maneuverings, while providing a crucial shield of
nondisclosure.
The Department of State became a mechanism of information dissemination and leaks.
Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee provided funding, support, and media collusion.
Obama administration officials were complicit, and engaged in unmasking and intelligence gathering and dissemination.
The media was the most corrosive element in many respects. None of these events could have transpired without their willing
participation. Stories were pushed, facts were ignored, and narratives were promoted.
Let's start with a simple premise: The candidacy of Trump presented both an opportunity and a threat.
Initially not viewed with any real seriousness, Trump's campaign was seen as an opportunistic wedge in the election process. At
the same time, and particularly as the viability of his candidacy increased, Trump was seen as an existential threat to the established
political system.
The sudden legitimacy of Trump's candidacy was not welcomed by the U.S. political establishment. Here was a true political outsider
who held no traditional allegiances. He was brash and boastful, he ignored political correctness, he couldn't be bought, and he didn't
care what others thought of him -- he trusted himself.
Governing bodies in Britain and the European Union were also worried. Candidate Trump was openly challenging monetary policy,
regulations, and the power of special interests. He challenged Congress. He challenged the United Nations and the European Union.
He questioned everything.
Brennan played a crucial role in the creation of the Russia-collusion narrative and the spying on the Trump campaign. (Don Emmert/AFP/Getty
Images)
Brennan became the point man in the operation to stop a potential Trump presidency. It remains unclear whether his role was self-appointed
or came from above. To embark on such a mission without direct presidential authority seems both a stretch of the imagination and
particularly foolhardy.
Brennan took unofficial foreign intelligence compiled by contacts, colleagues, and associates --
primarily from the UK , but also from other Five Eyes members, such as Australia.
Individuals in official positions in UK intelligence, such as Robert Hannigan -- head of the UK Government Communications Headquarters
(GCHQ, Britain's equivalent of the National Security Agency) -- partnered with former UK foreign intelligence members. Former MI6
head Sir Richard Dearlove
, former Ambassador Sir Andrew Wood, and private UK intelligence firm
Hakluyt all played a role.
In the summer of 2016, Hannigan traveled to Washington to
meet with Brennan
regarding alleged communications between the Trump campaign and Moscow. On Jan. 23, 2017 -- three days after Trump's inauguration
-- Hannigan abruptly announced
his retirement. The Guardian openly
speculated that Hannigan's
resignation was directly related to the sharing of UK intelligence.
One method used to help establish evidence of collusion was the employment of "spy traps." Prominent among these were ones set
for Trump campaign advisers George Papadopoulos and Carter Page. The intent was to provide or establish connections between the Trump
campaign and Russia. The content and context mattered little as long as a connection could be established that could then be publicized.
The June 2016 Trump Tower meeting was another such attempt.
Western intelligence assets were used to initiate and establish these connections, particularly in the cases of Papadopoulos and
Page.
Ultimately, Brennan formed an inter-agency task
force comprising an estimated six agencies and/or government departments. The FBI, Treasury, and DOJ handled the domestic inquiry
into Trump and possible Russia connections. The CIA, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the National Security Agency
(NSA) handled foreign and intelligence aspects.
Brennan's inter-agency task force is not to be confused with the July 2016 FBI counterintelligence investigation, which was formed
later at Brennan's urging.
During this time, Brennan also employed the use of
reverse targeting , which relates to the targeting of a foreign individual with the intent of capturing data on a U.S. citizen.
This effort was uncovered and
made public by Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) in a March 2017
press conference :
"I have seen intelligence reports that clearly show the president-elect and his team were monitored and disseminated out in
intelligence-reporting channels. Details about persons associated with the incoming administration, details with little apparent
foreign-intelligence value were widely disseminated in intelligence community reporting.
"From what I know right now, it looks like incidental collection. We don't know exactly how that was picked up but we're trying
to get to the bottom of it."
As this foreign intelligence -- unofficial in nature and outside of any traditional channels -- was gathered, Brennan began a
process of feeding his gathered intelligence to the FBI. Repeated transfers of foreign intelligence from the CIA director pushed
the FBI toward the establishment of a formal counterintelligence investigation. Brennan repeatedly noted this during
a May 23, 2017, congressional testimony :
"I made sure that anything that was involving U.S. persons, including anything involving the individuals involved in the Trump
campaign, was shared with the [FBI]."
Brennan also admitted that his intelligence helped establish
the FBI investigation:
"I was aware of intelligence and information about contacts between Russian officials and U.S. persons that raised concerns in
my mind about whether or not those individuals were cooperating with the Russians, either in a witting or unwitting fashion, and
it served as the basis for the FBI investigation to determine whether such collusion [or] cooperation occurred."
Once the FBI began its counterintelligence investigation on July 31, 2016, Brennan shifted his focus. Through a series of meetings
in August and September 2016, Brennan informed the congressional Gang of Eight regarding intelligence and information he had gathered.
Notably, each Gang of Eight member was briefed separately, calling into question whether each of the members received the same information.
Efforts to
block the release of the transcripts from each meeting remain ongoing.
This final report was used to continue pushing the Russia-collusion narrative following the election of President Donald Trump.
Notably, Admiral Mike Rogers of the NSA publicly dissented from the findings of the ICA, assigning only a moderate confidence level.
Although the FBI is technically part of the DOJ, it is best for the purposes of this article that the FBI and DOJ be viewed as
separate entities, each with its own related ties.
The FBI itself was comprised of various factions, with a particularly active element that has come to be known as the "insurance
policy group." It appears that this faction was led by FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and comprised other notable names such as
FBI agent Peter Strzok, FBI lawyer Lisa Page, and FBI general counsel James Baker.
The FBI established the counterintelligence investigation into alleged Russia collusion with the Trump campaign on July 31, 2016.
Comey initially refused to say whether the FBI was investigating possible connections between members of the Trump campaign and Russia.
He would continue to refuse to provide answers until March 20, 2017, when he disclosed the existence of the FBI investigation
during congressional testimony.
Comey also testified that he did not provide notification to the Gang of Eight until early March 2017 -- less than one month earlier.
This admission was in stark contrast to actions taken by Brennan, who had notified members of the Gang of Eight individually during
August and September 2016. It's likely that Brennan never informed Comey that he had briefed the Gang of Eight in 2016. Comey did
note that the DOJ "had been aware" of the investigation all along.
Comey opened the counterintelligence investigation into Trump on the urging of CIA Director John Brennan.
Following Comey's firing on May 9, 2017, the FBI's investigation was transferred to special counsel Robert Mueller. The
Mueller investigation remains ongoing.
The FBI's formal involvement with the
Steele dossier began on July 5, 2016,
when Mike Gaeta, an FBI agent and assistant legal attaché at the US Embassy in Rome, was dispatched to visit former MI6 spy Christopher
Steele in London. Gaeta would return from this meeting with a copy of Steele's first memo. This memo was given to Victoria Nuland
at the State Department, who passed it along to the FBI.
Gaeta, who also headed the FBI's Eurasian Organized Crime unit, had known Steele since at least 2010, when Steele had provided
assistance to the FBI's investigation into the
FIFA corruption
scandal .
Prior to the London meeting, Gaeta may also have met on a less formal basis with Steele
several weeks earlier.
"In June, Steele flew to Rome to brief the FBI contact with whom he had cooperated over FIFA," The Guardian reported. "His information
started to reach the bureau in Washington."
It's worth noting that there was no "dossier" until it was fully compiled in December 2016. There was only a sequence of documents
from Steele -- documents that were passed on individually -- as they were created. Therefore, from the FBI's legal perspective, they
didn't use the dossier. They used individual documents.
For the next month and a half, there appeared to be little contact between Steele and the FBI. However, the FBI's interest in
the dossier suddenly accelerated in late August 2016, when the bureau
asked Steele "for all information in his possession and for him to explain how the material had been gathered and to identify
his sources."
In September 2016, Steele traveled back to Rome to meet with the FBI's Eurasian squad once again. It's likely that the meeting
included several other FBI officials as well. According to a
House Intelligence Committee
minority memo , Steele's reporting reached the FBI counterintelligence team in mid-September 2016 -- the same time as Steele's
September trip to Rome.
The reason for the FBI's renewed interest had to do with an adviser to the Trump campaign -- Carter Page -- who had been in
contact with Stefan Halper, a CIA
and FBI source, since July 2016. Halper
arranged to meet with Page for the first time on July 11, 2016, at a
Cambridge symposium , just three days after Page took a trip
to Moscow. Speakers at the symposium included Madeleine Albright, Vin Webber, and Sir Richard Dearlove, the former head of MI6.
Page was now the FBI's chosen target for a FISA warrant that would be obtained on Oct. 21, 2016. The Steele dossier would be the
primary evidence used in obtaining the FISA warrant, which would be renewed three separate times, including after Trump took office,
finally expiring in September 2017.
Former volunteer Trump campaign adviser Carter Page on Nov. 2, 2017. The FBI obtained a retroactive FISA spy warrant
on Page.
After being in contact with Page for 14 months, Halper stopped contact exactly as the final FISA warrant on Page expired. Page,
who has steadfastly maintained his innocence, was never charged with any crime by the FBI. Efforts for the declassification of the
Page FISA application are currently ongoing through the DOJ's Office of the Inspector General.
Peter Strzok and Lisa Page
Peter Strzok and Lisa Page were two prominent members of the FBI's "insurance policy" group. Strzok, a senior FBI agent, was the
deputy assistant director of FBI's Counterintelligence Division. Lisa Page, an FBI lawyer, served as special counsel to FBI Deputy
Director Andrew McCabe.
Strzok was in charge of the investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server for government business. He helped
FBI Director James Comey draft the statement exonerating Clinton and was personally responsible for changing specific wording within
that statement that reduced Clinton's legal liability. Specifically, Strzok changed the words "grossly negligent," which could be
a criminal offense, to "extremely careless."
Strzok also personally led the FBI's counterintelligence investigation into the alleged Trump–Russia collusion and signed the
documents that opened the investigation on July 31, 2016. He was one of the FBI agents who interviewed Trump's national security
adviser, Gen. Michael Flynn. Strzok met multiple times with DOJ official Bruce Ohr and received information from Steele at those
meetings.
Following the firing of FBI Director James Comey, Strzok would join the team of special counsel Robert Mueller. Two months later,
he was removed from that team after the DOJ inspector general discovered a lengthy series of texts between Strzok and Page that contained
politically charged messages. Strzok would be fired from the FBI in August 2018.
Both Strzok and Page engaged in strategic
leaking to the press. Page did so at the direction of McCabe, who directly
authorized Page to share information with Wall Street
Journal reporter Devlin Barrett. That information was used in an Oct. 30, 2016, article headlined
"FBI in Internal Feud Over Hillary Clinton Probe ." Page leaked to Barrett thinking she had been granted legal and official authorization
to do so.
McCabe would later initially deny providing such
authorization to the Office of Inspector General. Page, when confronted with McCabe's denials, produced texts refuting his statement.
It was these texts that led to the inspector general uncovering the texts between Strzok and Page.
The two exchanged thousands of texts, some of them indicating surveillance activities, over a two-year period. Texts sent between
Aug. 21, 2015, and June 25, 2017, have been made
public . The series comes
to an end with a final text by Page telling Strzok, "Don't ever text me again."
On Aug. 8, 2016, Stzrok wrote that they would prevent candidate Trump from becoming president:
Page: "[Trump is] not ever going to become president, right? Right?!"
Strzok: "No. No he won't. We'll stop it."
On Aug. 15, 2016, Strzok sent a text referring to an "insurance policy":
"I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy's office -- that there's no way [Trump] gets elected --
but I'm afraid we can't take that risk. It's like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you're 40."
The "insurance policy" appears to have been the effort to legitimize the Trump–Russia collusion narrative so that an FBI investigation,
led by McCabe, could continue unhindered.
Department of Justice
The Department of Justice, which comprises 60 agencies , was transformed
during the Obama years. The department is forbidden by federal law from hiring employees based on political affiliation.
However, a
series
of investigative articles by PJ Media published during Eric Holder's tenure as attorney general revealed an unsettling pattern
of ideological conformity among new hires at the DOJ: Only lawyers from the progressive left were hired. Not one single moderate
or conservative lawyer made the cut. This is significant as the DOJ enjoys significant latitude in determining who will be subject
to prosecution.
The DOJ's job in Spygate was to facilitate the legal side of surveillance while providing a protective layer of cover for all
those involved. The department became a repository of information and provided a protective wall between the investigative efforts
of the FBI and the legislative branch. Importantly, it also served as the firewall within the executive branch, serving as the insulating
barrier between the FBI and Obama officials. The department had become legendary for its stonewalling tactics with Congress.
DOJ Official Bruce Ohr on Aug. 28, 2018. Ohr passed on information from Christopher Steele to the FBI.
The DOJ, which was fully aware of the actions being taken by James Comey and the FBI, also became an active element acting against
members of the Trump campaign. Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, along with Mary McCord, the head of the DOJ's National Security
Division, was actively
involved in efforts to remove Gen. Michael Flynn from his position as national security adviser to President Trump.
To this day, it remains unknown which individual was responsible for making public Flynn's call with the Russian ambassador. Flynn
ultimately pleaded guilty to a process crime: lying to the FBI. There have been
questions raised in Congress regarding the possible alteration of FD-302s, the written notes of Flynn's FBI interviews. Special
counsel Robert Mueller has repeatedly deferred Flynn's sentencing hearing.
David Laufman, deputy assistant attorney general in charge of counterintelligence at the DOJ's National Security Division, played
a key role in both the Clinton email server and Russia hacking investigations. Laufman is currently the attorney for Monica McLean,
the long-time friend of Christine Blasey Ford, who recently accused Judge Brett Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her while in high
school. McLean was also
employed
by the FBI for 24 years.
Bruce Ohr was a significant DOJ official who played a
key role in Spygate. Ohr held
two important positions at the DOJ: associate deputy attorney general, and director of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task
Force. As associate deputy attorney general, Ohr was just four offices away from then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, and he
reported directly to her. As director of the task force, he was in charge of a program described as "the centerpiece of the attorney
general's drug strategy."
Ohr, one of the highest-ranking officials in the DOJ, was communicating on an ongoing basis with Steele, whom he had known
since at
least 2006 , well into mid-2017. He is also married to Nellie Ohr,
an expert on Russia and Eurasia who began working
for Fusion GPS sometime in
late 2015 . Nellie Ohr likely played a significant role in the construction of the dossier.
According to testimony from FBI agent Peter Strzok, he and Ohr met at least five times during 2016 and 2017. Strzok was working
directly with then-Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe.
Additionally, Ohr met with the FBI at least
12 times between late November 2016 and May 2017 for a series of interviews. These meetings could have been used to
transmit information from Steele to the FBI. This came after the FBI had formally severed contact with Steele in late October
or early November 2016.
John Carlin is another notable figure with the DOJ. Carlin was an assistant attorney general and the head of the DOJ's National
Security Division until October 2016. His role will be discussed below in the section on FISA abuse.
The Battle Between Rosenstein and McCabe
Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe held a pivotal role in what has become known as "Spygate." He directed the activities of Peter
Strzok and Lisa Page and was involved in all aspects of the Russia investigation. He was also mentioned in the infamous "insurance
policy" text message.
McCabe was a major component of the insurance policy.
On April 26, 2017, Rosenstein found himself appointed as the new deputy attorney general. He was placed into a somewhat chaotic
situation, as Attorney General Jeff Sessions had recused himself from the ongoing Russia investigation a little less than two months
earlier, on March 2, 2017. This effectively meant that no one in the Trump administration had any oversight of the ongoing investigation
being conducted by the FBI and the DOJ.
Additionally, the leadership of then-FBI Director James Comey was coming under increased scrutiny as the result of actions taken
leading up to and following the election, particularly Comey's handling of the Clinton email investigation.
On May 9, 2017, Rosenstein wrote a memorandum recommending that Comey be fired. The subject of the memo was "Restoring Public
Confidence in the FBI." Comey was fired that day. McCabe was now the acting director of the FBI and was immediately under consideration
for the permanent position.
On the same day Comey was fired, McCabe would lie during an interview with agents from the FBI's Inspection Division (INSD) regarding
apparent leaks that were used in an Oct. 30, 2016, Wall Street Journal article, "FBI in Internal Feud Over Hillary Clinton Probe"
by Devlin Barrett. This would later be disclosed in the inspector general report, "A Report of Investigation of Certain Allegations
Relating to Former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe."
At the time, nobody, including the INSD agents, knew that McCabe had lied, nor were the darker aspects of McCabe's role in Spygate
fully known.
In late April or early May 2016, McCabe opened a federal criminal investigation on Sessions, regarding potential lack of candor
before Congress in relation to Sessions's contacts with Russians. Sessions was unaware of the investigation.
Sessions would later be cleared of any wrongdoing by special counsel Robert Mueller.
On the morning of May 16, 2017, Rosenstein reportedly suggested to McCabe that he secretly record President Trump. This remark
was reported in a New York Times article that was sourced from memos from the now-fired McCabe, along with testimony taken from former
FBI general counsel James Baker, who relayed a conversation he had with McCabe about the occurrence. Rosenstein issued a statement
denying the accusations.
The alleged comments by Rosenstein occurred at a meeting where McCabe was "pushing for the Justice Department to open an investigation
into the president." An unnamed participant at the meeting, in comments to The Washington Post, framed the conversation somewhat
differently, noting Rosenstein responded sarcastically to McCabe, saying, "What do you want to do, Andy, wire the president?"
Later, on the same day that Rosenstein had his meetings with McCabe, President Trump met with Mueller, reportedly as an interview
for the FBI director job. On May 17, 2017, the day after President Trump's meeting with Mueller -- and the day after Rosenstein's
encounters with McCabe -- Rosenstein appointed Mueller as special counsel.
The May 17 appointment of Mueller in effect shifted control of the Russia investigation from the FBI and McCabe to Mueller. Rosenstein
would retain ultimate authority for the probe and any expansion of Mueller's investigation required authorization from Rosenstein.
Interestingly, without Comey's memo leaks, a special counsel might not have been appointed -- the FBI, and possibly McCabe, would
have remained in charge of the Russia investigation. McCabe was probably not going to become the permanent FBI director, but he was
reportedly under consideration. Regardless, without Comey's leak, McCabe would have retained direct involvement and the FBI would
have retained control.
On July 28, 2017, McCabe lied to Inspector General Michael Horowitz while under oath regarding authorization of the leaking to
The Wall Street Journal. At this point, Horowitz knew McCabe was lying, but did not yet know of the May 9 INSD interview with McCabe.
On Aug. 2, 2017, Rosenstein secretly issued Mueller a revised memo on "the scope of investigation and definition of authority"
that remains heavily redacted. The full purpose of this memo remains unknown. On this same day, Christopher Wray was named as the
new FBI director.
Two days later, on Aug. 4, 2017, Sessions announced that the FBI had created a new leaks investigation unit. Rosenstein and Wray
were tasked with overseeing all leak investigations.
That Aug. 2 memo from Rosenstein to Mueller may have been specifically designed to remove any residual FBI influence -- specifically
that of McCabe -- from the Russia investigation. The appointment of Wray as FBI director helped cement this. McCabe was finally completely
neutralized.
On March 16, 2018, McCabe was fired for lying under oath at least three different times and is currently the subject of a grand
jury investigation.
State Department
The State Department, with its many contacts within foreign governments, became a conduit for the flow of information. The transfer
of Christopher Steele's first dossier memo was personally
facilitated by Victoria Nuland, the assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs. Nuland gave approval for
FBI agent Michael Gaeta to travel to London to obtain the memo from Steele. The memo may have passed directly from her to FBI leadership.
Secretary of State John Kerry was also given a copy.
Steele was already well-known within the State Department. Following Steele's involvement in the FIFA scandal investigation, he
began to provide reports
informally to the State Department. The reports were written for a "private client" but were "shared widely within the U.S. State
Department, and sent up to Secretary of State John Kerry and Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, who was in charge of
the U.S.
response to Putin's annexation of Crimea and covert invasion of eastern Ukraine," the Guardian reported.
Nuland passed on parts of the Steele dossier to the FBI. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)
In July 2016, when the FBI wanted to send Gaeta to visit Steele in London, the bureau
sought permission from the office of Nuland, who provided this version of events during a Feb. 4, 2018,
appearance on CBS's "Face the Nation":
"In the middle of July, when [Steele] was doing this other work and became concerned, he passed two to four pages of short
points of what he was finding and our immediate reaction to that was, this is not in our purview. This needs to go to the FBI
if there is any concern here that one candidate or the election as a whole might be influenced by the Russian Federation. That's
something for the FBI to investigate."
Steele also
met with Jonathan Winer, a former deputy assistant secretary of state for international law enforcement and former special envoy
for Libya. Steele and Winer had known each other since at least 2010. In an opinion article in The Washington Post, Winer wrote the
following:
"In September 2016, Steele and I met in Washington and discussed the information now known as the 'dossier.' Steele's sources
suggested that the Kremlin not only had been behind the hacking of the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign
but also had compromised Trump and developed ties with his associates and campaign."
In a strange turn of events, Winer also received a
separate dossier , very similar to Steele's, from long-time Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal. This "second dossier" had been
compiled by another longtime Clinton operative, former journalist Cody Shearer, and echoed claims made in the Steele dossier. Winer
then met with Steele in late September 2016 and gave Steele a copy of the "second dossier." Steele went on to
share this second dossier with the FBI, which may have used it to corroborate his dossier.
Winer passed on memos from Christopher Steele to Victoria Nuland. (State Department)
Other foreign officials also used conduits into the State Department. Alexander Downer, Australia's high commissioner to the UK,
reportedly funneled his conversation
with Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos -- later used as a reason to open the FBI's counterintelligence investigation --
directly to the U.S. Embassy in London.
"The Downer details landed with the embassy's then-chargé d'affaires, Elizabeth Dibble, who previously served as a principal deputy
assistant secretary in Mrs. Clinton's State Department," The Wall Street Journal's Kimberley Strassel wrote in a May 31, 2018,
article .
If true, this would mean that neither Australian intelligence nor the Australian government alerted the FBI to the Papadopoulos
information. What happened with the Downer details, and to whom they were ultimately relayed, remains unknown.
Curiously, details surprisingly similar to the Papadopoulos–Downer conversation show up in the
first memo written
by Steele on June 20, 2016:
"A dossier of compromising information on Hillary Clinton has been collated by the Russian Intelligence Services over many
years and mainly comprises bugged conversations she had on various visits to Russia and intercepted phone calls. It has not yet
been distributed abroad, including to Trump."
Clinton Campaign and the DNC
The Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee both occupied a unique position. They had the most to gain but they
also had the most to lose. And they stood willing and ready to do whatever was necessary to win. Hillary Clinton's campaign manager,
Robby Mook, is credited with being the first to raise the specter of candidate Donald Trump's alleged collusion with Russia.
The entire Clinton campaign willfully promoted the narrative of Russia–Trump collusion despite the uncomfortable fact that they
were the ones who had engaged the services of Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele through their law firm Perkins Coie. Information
flowed from the campaign -- sometimes through Perkins Coie, other times through affiliates -- ultimately making its way into the
media and sometimes to the FBI. Information from the Clinton campaign may also have ended up in the Steele dossier.
Jennifer Palmieri, the communications director for the Clinton campaign, in tandem with Jake Sullivan, the senior policy adviser
to the campaign,
took the lead in briefing the press on the Trump–Russia collusion story.
Another example of this behavior can be seen from an instance when Perkins Coie lawyer Michael Sussmann
leaked information from Steele and Fusion GPS to Franklin Foer of Slate magazine. This event is described in the House Intelligence
Committee's final report on
Russian active measures
, in footnote 43 on page 57. Foer then published the article
"Was a Trump Server Communicating With Russia? " on Oct. 31, 2016. The article concerns allegations regarding a server in the
Trump Tower.
The Slate article managed to attract the immediate attention of Clinton, who posted a
tweet on the same day the article was
published:
"Computer scientists have apparently uncovered a covert server linking the Trump Organization to a Russian-based bank."
Attached to her tweet was a
statement from Sullivan:
"This could be the most direct link yet between Donald Trump and Moscow. Computer scientists have apparently uncovered a covert
server linking the Trump Organization to a Russian-based bank.
"This secret hotline may be the key to unlocking the mystery of Trump's ties to Russia. It certainly seems the Trump Organization
felt it had something to hide, given that it apparently took steps to conceal the link when it was discovered by journalists."
These statements, which were later proven to be incorrect, are all the more disturbing with the hindsight knowledge that it was
a senior Clinton/DNC lawyer who helped plant the story. And given the prepared statement by Sullivan, the Clinton campaign knew this.
This type of behavior would be engaged in repeatedly -- damning leaks leading to media stories, followed by ready attacks from
the Clinton campaign.
Alexandra Chalupa is a Ukrainian-American operative who was consulting for the Democratic National Committee. Chalupa
met with top officials in the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington in an effort to expose ties between Trump, Paul Manafort, and Russia.
Chalupa began investigating
Manafort in 2014. In late 2015, Chalupa expanded her opposition research on Manafort to include Trump's ties to Russia. In January
2016, Chalupa shared her information with a senior DNC official.
Chalupa's meetings with DNC and Ukrainian officials would continue. On April 26, 2016, investigative reporter Michael Isikoff
published a story
on Yahoo News about Manafort's business dealings with Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. It was later learned from a DNC email leaked
by Wikileaks that Chalupa had been working with Isikoff
-- the same journalist Christopher Steele
leaked to
in September 2016. Manafort would later be indicted for Foreign Agents Registration Act violations that occurred during the Obama
administration.
Perkins Coie
International law firm Perkins Coie served as the legal arm for both the Clinton campaign and the DNC. Ties to Perkins Coie extended
beyond the DNC into the Obama White House.
Bob Bauer, a partner at the law firm and founder of its political law practice, served as
White House counsel to President Barack Obama throughout 2010 and 2011. Bauer was also
general counsel to Obama's campaign organization, Obama for America, in 2008 and 2012.
Perkins Coie partners Marc Elias and Michael Sussmann each played critical roles and were the ones who hired Fusion GPS and Steele.
Sussmann
personally handled the alleged hack of the DNC server. He also transmitted information, likely from Steele and Fusion GPS, to
James Baker, then-chief counsel at the FBI, and to several members of the press.
Perkins Coie partner Michael Sussmann. Sussmann transmitted information to FBI chief counsel James Baker and several
journalists. (Courtesy Perkins Coie)
According to a
letter
dated Oct. 24, 2017, written by Matthew Gehringer, general counsel at Perkins Coie, the firm was approached by Fusion GPS founder
Glenn Simpson in early March 2016 regarding the possibility of hiring Fusion GPS to continue opposition research into the Trump campaign.
Simpson's overtures were successful, and in April 2016, Perkins Coie
hired
Fusion GPS on behalf of the DNC.
Sometime in April or May 2016, Fusion GPS
hired Christopher Steele. During
this same period, Fusion also reportedly
hired Nellie Ohr, the wife of Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr. Steele would complete his first memo on June 20, 2016,
and send it to Fusion via enciphered mail.
Perkins Coie appears to have also been acting as a conduit between the DNC and the FBI.
Documents suggest that Sussmann was feeding information to FBI general counsel James Baker and at least one journalist ahead
of the FBI's application for a FISA warrant on the Trump campaign.
The information provided by Sussmann may have been used by the FBI as "corroborating information."
Obama Administration
The Obama administration provided a simultaneous layer of protection and facilitation for the entire effort. One example is
provided by
Section
2.3 of Executive Order 12333 , also known as Obama's
data-sharing
order . With the passage of the order, agencies and individuals were able to ask the NSA for access to specific surveillance
simply by claiming the intercepts contained relevant information that was useful to a particular mission.
Section 2.3 had been expected to be finalized by early to mid-2016. Instead, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper didn't
sign off on Section 2.3 until Dec. 15, 2016. The order was finalized when Attorney General Loretta Lynch signed it on Jan. 3, 2017.
The reason for the delay could relate to the fact that while the executive order made it easier to share intelligence between
agencies, it also limited certain types of information from going to the White House.
An example of this was provided by Evelyn Farkas during a March 2, 2017,
MSNBC interview , where she detailed how the Obama administration
gathered and disseminated intelligence on the Trump team:
"I was urging my former colleagues and, frankly speaking, the people on the Hill 'Get as much information as you can. Get as
much intelligence as you can before President Obama leaves the administration.'
"The Trump folks, if they found out how we knew what we knew about the Trump staff's dealing with Russians, [they] would try
to compromise those sources and methods, meaning we would no longer have access to that intelligence. That's why you have the
leaking."
Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia/Ukraine/Eurasia Evelyn Farkas on May 6, 2014. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Many of the Obama administration's efforts appear to have been structural in nature, such as establishing new procedures or creating
impediments to oversight that enabled much of the surveillance abuse to occur.
DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz was appointed by Obama in 2011. From the very start, he found his duties throttled by the
attorney general's office. According to congressional
testimony by Horowitz:
"We got access to information up to 2010 in all of these categories. No law changed in 2010. No policy changed. It was simply
a decision by the General Counsel's Office in 2010 that they viewed, now, the law differently. And as a result, they weren't going
to give us that information."
These new restrictions were
put in place by Attorney General Eric Holder and Deputy Attorney General James Cole.
On Aug. 5, 2014, Horowitz and other inspectors general sent a
letter to Congress asking for unimpeded access to all records. Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates responded on July 20, 2015,
with a 58-page
memorandum . The memo specifically denied the inspector general access to any information collected under Title III -- including
intercepted communications and national security letters.
The New York Times recently
disclosed that national security letters were used in the surveillance of the Trump campaign.
At other times, the Obama administration's efforts were more direct. The
Intelligence Community assessment was released
internally on Jan. 5, 2017. On this same day, Obama held an undisclosed White House meeting to discuss the dossier with national
security adviser Susan Rice, FBI Director James Comey, and Yates. Rice would later send herself an email
documenting
the meeting.
The following day, Brennan, Clapper, and Comey attached a written summary of the Steele dossier to the classified briefing they
gave Obama. Comey then met with President-elect Trump to inform him of the dossier. This meeting took place just hours after Comey,
Brennan, and Clapper formally briefed Obama on both the Intelligence Community assessment and the Steele dossier.
Comey would only inform Trump of the "salacious" details contained within the dossier. He later
explained on CNN in an April 2018 interview
why:
"Because that was the part that the leaders of the Intelligence Community agreed he needed to be told about."
Shortly after Comey's meeting with Trump, both the Trump–Comey meeting and the existence of the dossier were leaked to CNN. The
significance of the meeting was material, as Comey
noted in
a Jan. 7 memo he wrote:
"Media like CNN had them and were looking for a news hook. I said it was important that we not give them the excuse to write
that the FBI has the material."
Clapper leaked information to CNN, after which he publicly condemned the leaks. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
The media had widely dismissed the dossier as unsubstantiated and, therefore, unreportable. It was only after learning that Comey
briefed Trump that
CNN reported
on the dossier. It was later
revealed that DNI James Clapper personally leaked Comey's meeting with Trump to CNN.
The Obama administration also directly participated in a series of
intelligence unmaskings
, the process whereby a U.S. citizen's identity is revealed from collected surveillance. U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha
Power reportedly engaged in hundreds of unmasking requests. Rice has admitted to doing the same.
The Obama administration engaged in the ultimately successful effort to oust Trump's newly appointed national security adviser,
Gen. Michael Flynn. Yates, along with Mary McCord, head of the DOJ's National Security Division,
led that effort
.
Executive Order 13762
President Barack Obama issued a last-minute executive order on Jan. 13, 2017, that altered the line of succession within the DOJ.
The action was not done in consultation with the incoming Trump administration.
Acting Attorney General Sally Yates was fired on Jan. 30, 2017, by a newly inaugurated President Trump for refusing to uphold
the president's executive order limiting travel from certain terror-prone countries. Yates was initially supposed to serve in her
position until Jeff Sessions was confirmed as attorney general.
Obama's executive order placed the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia next in line behind the department's senior leadership.
The attorney at the time was Channing Phillips.
Phillips was first hired by former Attorney General Eric Holder in 1994 for a position in the D.C. U.S. attorney's office. Phillips,
after serving as a senior adviser to Holder, stayed on after he was replaced by Attorney General Loretta Lynch.
It appears the Obama administration was hoping the Russia investigation would default to Channing in the event Sessions was forced
to recuse himself from the investigation. Sessions, whose confirmation hearings began three days before the order, was already coming
under intense scrutiny.
The implementation of the order may also tie into Yates's efforts to remove Gen. Michael Flynn over his call with the Russian
ambassador.
Trump ignored the succession order, as he is legally allowed to do, and instead appointed Dana Boente, the U.S. attorney for the
Eastern District of Virginia, as acting attorney general on Jan. 30, 2017, the same day Yates was fired.
Trump issued a new executive order on Feb. 9, 2017, the same day Sessions was sworn in, reversing Obama's prior order.
On March 10, 2017, Trump fired 46 Obama-era U.S. attorneys, including Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan. These firings
appear to have been unexpected.
Media
In some respects, the media has played the most disingenuous of roles. Areas of investigation that historically would have proven
irresistible to reporters of the past have been steadfastly ignored. False narratives have been all-too-willingly promoted and facts
ignored. Fusion GPS personally made a
series of payments to several as-of-yet-
unnamed reporters .
The majority of the mainstream media has represented positions of the DNC and the Clinton campaign.
Steele met with members of certain media with relative frequency. In
September 2016 ,
he met with a number of U.S. journalists for "The New York Times, the Washington Post, Yahoo! News, the New Yorker and CNN," according
to The Guardian. It was during this period that Steele met with Michael Isikoff of Yahoo News.
In mid-October
2016, Steele returned to New York and met with reporters again. Toward the end of October, Steele spoke via Skype with Mother
Jones reporter David Corn.
Leaking, including felony leaking of classified information, has been widespread. The Carter Page FISA warrant -- likely the
unredacted version -- has been in the possession of The Washington Post and The New York Times since March 2017. Traditionally, the
intelligence community leaked to The Washington Post while the DOJ leaked to sources within The New York Times. This was a historical
pattern that stood until this election. The leaking became so widespread, even this tradition was broken.
On April 3, 2017, BuzzFeed reporter Ali Watkins wrote the article "
A Former Trump Adviser Met With a Russian Spy ." In the article, she identified "Male-1," referred to in
court documents
relating to the case of Russian spy Evgeny Buryakov, as Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, who had provided the FBI with assistance
in the case. Just over a week later, on April 11, 2017, a Washington Post article, "
FBI Obtained FISA Warrant to Monitor Former Trump Adviser Carter Page ," confirmed the existence of the October 2016 Page FISA
warrant.
The information contained within both articles likely came via felony leaks from James Wolfe, former director of security
for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, who was arrested on June 7, 2018, and
charged with one count of lying
to the FBI. Wolfe's indictment
alleges that he was leaking classified information to multiple reporters over an extended period of time.
Reporter Ali Watkins likely received the undredacted FISA application on Carter Page from James Wolfe.
It appears probable that Wolfe leaked unredacted copies of the Page FISA application. According to the
indictment , Wolfe
exchanged 82 text messages with
Watkins on March 17, 2017. That same evening they engaged in a 28-minute phone call. The original Page FISA application is 83 pages
long, including one final signatory page.
In the public version of the application, there are 37 fully redacted pages. In addition to that, several other pages have redactions
for all but the header. There are only two pages in the entire document that contain no redactions.
Why would Wolfe bother to send 37 pages of complete redactions? It seems more than plausible that Wolfe took pictures of the original
unredacted FISA application and sent them by text to Watkins.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes has repeatedly
stated that evidence within the FISA application
shows the counterintelligence agencies were abused by the Obama administration. Most of the mainstream media has known this.
Despite this, most major news organizations for over two years have promoted the Russia-collusion narrative. Despite ample evidence
having come out to the contrary, they have not admitted they were wrong, likely because doing so would mean they would have to admit
their complicity.
Foreign Intelligence
UK and Australian intelligence agencies also played meaningful roles during the 2016 presidential election.
Britain's GCHQ was involved in
collecting information regarding then-candidate Trump and transmitting it to the United States. In the summer of 2016, Robert
Hannigan, the head of GCHQ, flew from London to
meet personally
with then-CIA Director John Brennan, The Guardian reported.
Former GCHQ head Robert Hannigan in this file photo. Hannigan transmitted information regarding Donald Trump to John
Brennan in the summer of 2016. (Romeo Gacad/AFP/Getty Images)
Hannigan's meeting was noteworthy because Brennan wasn't Hannigan's counterpart. That position belonged to NSA Director Mike Rogers.
In the following year, Hannigan
abruptly announced
his retirement on Jan. 23, 2017 -- three days after Trump's inauguration.
As GCHQ was gathering intelligence, low-level Trump campaign foreign-policy adviser George Papadopoulos appears to have been targeted
after a series of highly coincidental meetings. Maltese professor Josef Mifsud, Australian diplomat Alexander Downer, FBI informant
Stefan Halper, and officials from the UK's Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) all crossed paths with Papadopoulos -- some repeatedly
so.
Christopher Steele, who authored the dossier on Trump, was an MI6 agent while the agency was headed by Sir Richard Dearlove. Steele
retains close ties with Dearlove.
Dearlove has ties to most of the parties mentioned. It was he who advised Steele and his business partner, Chris Burrows, to
work with a top British government official to pass along information to the FBI in the fall of 2016. He also was a speaker at
the July 2016 Cambridge symposium that Halper invited Carter
Page to attend.
Dearlove knows Halper through their
mutual association at the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar. Dearlove also knows Sir Iain Lobban, a former head of GCHQ, who is
an advisory board member at British strategic intelligence
and advisory firm Hakluyt , which was founded by former MI6 members and
retains close ties to UK intelligence services.
Halper has historical connections to Hakluyt through Jonathan Clarke, with whom he has
co-authored two books.
Downer, who
met Papadopoulos in a May 2016 meeting
established through a chain
of two intermediaries, served on the advisory board of Hakluyt
from 2008 to 2014. He reportedly still
maintains contact with Hakluyt officials. Information from his meeting with Papadopoulos was later used by the FBI to establish
the bureau's counterintelligence investigation into Trump–Russia collusion. Downer has changed his version of events multiple times.
The Steele dossier was fed into U.S. channels through several different sources. One such source was Sir Andrew Wood, the
former
British ambassador to Russia, who had been briefed about the dossier by Steele. Wood later
relayed information regarding the dossier to Sen. John McCain, who dispatched David Kramer, a fellow at the McCain Institute,
to London to meet with Steele in November 2016. McCain would later admit in a Jan. 11, 2017,
statement that he had personally passed on the dossier to then-FBI Director James Comey.
Trump, after issuing an order for the declassification of documents and text messages related to the Russia-collusion investigations
-- including parts of the Carter Page FISA warrant application -- received phone calls from two U.S. allies saying, "Please, can
we talk." Those "allies" were almost certainly the UK and Australia.
In a Twitter post , Trump wrote that
the "key Allies called to ask not to release" the documents.
Questions to be asked are why is it that two of our allies would find themselves so opposed to the release of these classified
documents that a coordinated plea would be made directly to the president? And why would these same allies have even the slightest
idea of what was contained in these classified U.S. documents?
Britain and Australia appear to know full well what those documents contain, and their attempt to prevent their public release
appears to be because they don't want their role in events surrounding the 2016 presidential election to be made public.
Fusion GPS/Orbis/Christopher Steele
Glenn Simpson, a former Wall Street Journal reporter, is co-founder of Fusion GPS, along with Peter Fritsch and Tom Catan. Fusion
was hired by the DNC and the Clinton campaign through law firm Perkins Coie to produce and disseminate the Steele dossier used against
Trump. The dossier would later be the primary evidence used to obtain a FISA warrant on Carter Page on Oct. 21, 2016.
The company was hired by the Clinton campaign and the DNC–through law firm Perkins Coie–to produce the dossier on Trump.
Christopher Steele, who retains close ties to UK intelligence, worked for MI6 from 1987 until his retirement in 2009, when he
and his partner, Chris Burrows, founded Orbis Intelligence. Steele
maintains contact with British intelligence,
Sir Richard Dearlove
, and UK intelligence firm Hakluyt.
Steele appears to have been
represented
by lawyer Adam Waldman, who also represented Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. We know this from
texts sent by Waldman. On April 10, 2017, Waldman sent this to Sen. Mark Warner:
"Hi. Steele: would like to get a bi partisan letter from the committee; Assange: I convinced him to make serious and important
concessions and am discussing those w DOJ; Deripaska: willing to testify to congress but interested in state of play w Manafort.
I will be with him next tuesday for a week."
Steele also appears to have
lobbied on behalf of Deripaska, who was discussed in
emails between Bruce Ohr and Steele that were recently
disclosed by the Washington Examiner:
"Steele said he was 'circulating some recent sensitive Orbis reporting' on Deripaska that suggested Deripaska was not a 'tool'
of the Kremlin. Steele said he would send the reporting to a name that is redacted in the email."
Fusion GPS was also employed by Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya in a previous case. Veselnitskaya was involved in litigation
pitting Russian firm Prevezon Holdings against British-American financier William Browder. Veselnitskaya hired U.S. law firm BakerHostetler,
who, in turn, hired Fusion GPS to dig up dirt on Browder. Veselnitskaya was one of the participants at the June 2016 Trump Tower
meeting, at which she discussed the
Magnitsky Act .
Fox News reported on Nov. 9, 2017, that Simpson
met with Veselnitskaya immediately before and after the Trump Tower meeting.
A declassified top-secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court report released on April 26, 2017, revealed that government
agencies, including the FBI, CIA, and NSA, had improperly accessed Americans' communications. The FBI specifically provided outside
contractors with access to raw surveillance data on American citizens without proper oversight.
Communications and other data of members of the Trump campaign may have been accessed in this way.
Nellie Ohr, the wife of high-ranking DOJ official Bruce Ohr, was hired by Fusion GPS to work on the dossier on Trump.
Bruce and Nellie Ohr have
known Simpson since at least 2010 and have known Steele since at least 2006. The Ohrs and Simpson worked together on a
DOJ report in 2010 . In that report, Nellie Ohr's biography
lists her as working for Open Source Works, which is part of the CIA. Simpson met with Bruce Ohr
before and after the 2016 election.
Bruce Ohr had been in
contact repeatedly with Steele during the 2016 presidential campaign -- while Steele was constructing his dossier. Ohr later
actively shared information he received from Steele with the FBI, after the agency had terminated Steele as a source. Interactions
between Ohr and Steele stretched for months into the first year of Trump's presidency and were documented in a number of FD-302s
-- memos that summarize interviews with him by the FBI.
Spy Traps
In an effort to put forth evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, it appears that several different spy traps
were set, with varying degrees of success. Many of these efforts appear to center around Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos
and involve London-based professor Joseph Mifsud, who has
ties to Western intelligence, particularly in the UK.
Papadopoulos and Mifsud
both worked
at the London Centre of International Law Practice (LCILP). Mifsud appears to have joined LCILP around
November
2015 . Papadopoulos reportedly
joined
LCILP sometime in late February 2016 after leaving Ben Carson's presidential campaign. However, some
reports indicate Papadopoulos joined LCILP in November
or December of 2015. Mifsud and Papadopoulos reportedly never crossed paths
until March 14, 2016, in Italy.
Mifsud introduced Papadopoulos to several Russians, including Olga Polonskaya, whom Mifsud introduced as "Putin's niece," and
Ivan Timofeev, an official at a state-sponsored think tank called the Russian International Affairs Council. Both Papadopoulos and
Mifsud were interviewed by the FBI. Papadopoulos was ultimately charged with a process crime and was recently sentenced to 14 days
in prison for lying to the FBI. Mifsud was never charged by the FBI.
Throughout this period, Papadopoulos continuously pushed for meetings between Trump campaign officials and Russian contacts but
was ultimately unsuccessful in establishing any meetings.
Papadopoulos met with Australian diplomat Alexander Downer on May 10, 2016. The Papadopoulos–Downer meeting has been portrayed
as a
chance encounter in a bar. That does not appear to be the case.
Papadopoulos was introduced
to Downer through a chain of two intermediaries who said Downer wanted to meet with Papadopoulos. Another individual happened
to
be in London at exactly the same time: the FBI's head of counterintelligence, Bill Priestap. The purpose of Priestap's visit
remains unknown.
The Papadopoulos–Downer
meeting was later used to establish the FBI's counterintelligence investigation into Trump–Russia collusion. It was repeatedly
reported that Papadopoulos told Downer that Russia had Hillary Clinton's emails. This is incorrect.
Foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign was approached by several individuals with ties to UK and U.S. intelligence
agencies. (Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images)
According to Downer, Papadopoulos at some point
mentioned the Russians had damaging information on Hillary Clinton.
"During that conversation, he [Papadopoulos] mentioned the Russians might use material that they have on Hillary Clinton in the
lead-up to the election, which may be damaging,'' Downer told
The Australian about the Papadopoulos meeting in an April 2018 article. "He didn't say dirt, he said material that could be damaging
to her. No, he said it would be damaging. He didn't say what it was."
Downer, while serving as Australia's foreign minister, was
responsible for one of the largest foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation: $25 million from the Australian government.
Unconfirmed media reports, including a Jan. 12, 2017,
BBC article , have suggested that the FBI attempted
to obtain two FISA warrants in June and July 2016 that were denied by the FISA court. It's likely that Papadopoulos was an intended
target of these failed FISAs.
Interestingly, there is no mention of Papadopoulos in the Steele dossier. Paul Manafort, Carter Page, former Trump lawyer Michael
Cohen, Gen. Michael Flynn, and former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski are all listed in the Steele dossier.
Papadopoulos may have started out assisting the FBI or CIA and later discovered that he was being set up for surveillance himself.
After failing to obtain a spy warrant on the Trump campaign using Papadopoulos, the FBI set its sights on campaign volunteer Carter
Page. By this time, the counterintelligence investigation was in the process of being established, and we know now that it was formalized
with no official intelligence. The FBI needed some sort of legal cover. They needed a retroactive warrant. And they got one on Oct.
21, 2016. The Page FISA warrant would be renewed three times and remain in force until September 2017.
Stefan Halper met with Page for the first time on July 11, 2016, at a
Cambridge symposium , just three days after Page's July 2016
Moscow trip. As noted previously, former MI6 head Sir Richard Dearlove was a speaker at the symposium. Halper and Dearlove have known
each other for years and maintain several mutual associations.
Page was already known to the FBI. The Page FISA warrant application references the Buryakov spy case and an FBI interview with
Page. Current information suggests there was only
one meeting between Page and the FBI in 2016. It happened on March 2, 2016. It was in relation to Victor Podobnyy, who was named
in the Buryakov case.
Page, who
cooperated with the FBI on the case, almost certainly was providing testimony or details against Podobnyy. Page had been contacted
by Podobnyy in 2013 and had previously provided information to the FBI. Buryakov
pleaded guilty on March 11, 2016 -- nine days after Page met with the FBI on the case -- and was
sentenced to 30 months in prison on May 25, 2016. On April 5, 2017, Buryakov was granted early release and was
deported to Russia.
FBI informant Stefan Halper approached Trump campaign advisers George Papadopoulos and Carter Page.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes
said in August that exculpatory evidence
on Page exists that wasn't included by the DOJ and the FBI in the FISA application and subsequent renewals. The exculpatory evidence
likely relates specifically to Page's role in the Buryakov case.
If the FBI failed to disclose Page's cooperation with the bureau or materially misrepresented his involvement in its application
to the FISA Court, it means that the FBI's Woods procedures, which govern FISA applications, were violated.
Page has not been arrested or charged with any crime related to the investigation.
FISA Abuse
Admiral Mike Rogers, while director of the NSA, was personally responsible for
uncovering an unprecedented level of FISA abuse that would later be documented in a 99-page
unsealed FISA
court ruling . As the FISA court noted in the April 26, 2017, ruling, the abuses had been occurring since at least November 2015:
"The FBI had disclosed raw FISA information, including but not limited to Section 702-acquired information, to private contractors.
"Private contractors had access to raw FISA information on FBI storage systems.
"Contractors had access to raw FISA information that went well beyond what was necessary to respond to the FBI's requests."
The FISA Court report is particularly focused on the FBI:
"The Court is concerned about the FBI's apparent disregard of minimization rules and whether the FBI may be engaging in similar
disclosures of raw Section 702 information that have not been reported."
The FISA Court
disclosed that illegal NSA database searches were endemic. Private contractors, employed by the FBI, were given full access to
the NSA database. Once in the contractors' possession, the data couldn't be traced.
In April 2016, after Rogers became aware of
improper
contractor access to raw FISA data on March 9, 2016, he
directed the NSA's Office
of Compliance to conduct a "fundamental baseline review of compliance associated with 702."
On April 18, 2016, Rogers shut down all outside contractor access to raw FISA information -- specifically outside contractors
working for the FBI.
Then-NSA Director Adm. Mike Rogers on May 23, 2017. Rogers uncovered widespread abuse of FISA data by the FBI. (Saul
Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)
DOJ National Security Division (NSD) head John Carlin filed the government's proposed
2016 Section 702 certifications on Sept. 26, 2016. Carlin knew the general status of compliance review by Rogers. The NSD was
part of the review. Carlin failed to disclose a critical Jan. 7, 2016,
report by the Office
of the Inspector General and associated FISA abuse to the FISA Court in his 2016 certification. Carlin also failed to disclose
Rogers's ongoing Section 702 compliance review.
The following day, on Sept. 27, 2016, Carlin
announced his resignation, effective Oct. 15, 2016.
After receiving a briefing by the NSA compliance officer on Oct. 20, 2016, detailing
numerous "about query"
violations from the 702 NSA compliance audit, Rogers shut down all "about query" activity the next day and
reported his findings
to the DOJ. "About queries" are searches based on communications containing a reference "about" a surveillance target but that are
not "to" or "from" the target.
On Oct. 21, 2016, the DOJ and the FBI sought and received a Title I FISA probable-cause order authorizing electronic surveillance
on Carter Page from the FISA Court.
At this point, the FISA Court was still unaware of the Section 702 violations.
On Oct. 24, 2016, Rogers verbally
informed
the FISA Court of his findings. On Oct. 26, 2016, Rogers appeared formally before the FISA Court and presented the written findings
of his audit.
The FISA Court had been unaware of the query violations until they were presented to the court by Rogers.
Carlin didn't disclose his knowledge of FISA abuse in the annual Section 702 certifications in order to avoid raising suspicions
at the FISA Court ahead of receiving the Page FISA warrant.
The FBI and the NSD were literally racing against Rogers's investigation in order to obtain a FISA warrant on Carter Page.
While all this was transpiring, DNI James Clapper and Defense Secretary Ash Carter submitted a
recommendation that Rogers be removed from his post as NSA director.
The move to fire Rogers, which ultimately failed, originated sometime in mid-October 2016 -- exactly when Rogers was preparing
to present his findings to the FISA Court.
The Insurance Policy
Ever since the release of FBI text messages revealing the existence of an "insurance policy," the term has been the subject of
wide speculation.
Some observers have suggested that the insurance policy was the FISA spy warrant used to monitor Trump campaign adviser Carter
Page and, by extension, other members of the Trump campaign. This interpretation is too narrow and fails to capture the underlying
meaning of the text.
The insurance policy was the actual process of establishing the Trump–Russia collusion narrative.
It encompassed actions undertaken in late 2016 and early 2017, including the leaking of the Steele dossier and James Clapper's
leaks of James Comey's briefing to President Trump. The intent behind these actions was simple. The legitimization of the investigation
into the Trump campaign.
The strategy involved the recusal of Trump officials with the intent that Andrew McCabe would end up running the investigation.
The Steele dossier, which was paid for by the Clinton presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee, served as the
foundation for the Russia narrative.
The intelligence community, led by CIA Director John Brennan and DNI James Clapper, used the dossier as a launching pad for creating
their Intelligence Community assessment.
This report, which was presented to Obama in December 2016, despite NSA Director Mike Rogers having only moderate confidence in
its assessment, became one of the core pieces of the narrative that Russia interfered with the 2016 elections.
Through intelligence community leaks, and in collusion with willing media outlets, the narrative that Russia helped Trump win
the elections was aggressively pushed throughout 2017.
Spygate
Spygate represents the biggest political scandal in our nation's history. A sitting administration actively colluded with a political
campaign to affect the outcome of a U.S. presidential election. Government agencies were weaponized and a complicit media spread
intelligence community leaks as facts.
But a larger question remains: How long has the United States been subject to interference from the intelligence community and
our political agencies? Was the 2016 presidential election a one-time aberration, or is this episode symptomatic of a larger pattern
extending back decades?
The intensity, scale, and coordination suggest something greater than overzealous actions taken during a single election. They
represent a unified reaction of the establishment to a threat posed by a true outsider -- a reaction that has come to be known as
Spygate.
Jeff Carlson is a regular contributor to The Epoch Times. He also runs the website TheMarketsWork.com and can be followed
on Twitter @themarketswork.
"... The transfer of Christopher Steele's first dossier memo was personally facilitated by Victoria Nuland, the assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs. Nuland gave approval for FBI agent Michael Gaeta to travel to London to obtain the memo from Steele. The memo may have passed directly from her to FBI leadership. Secretary of State John Kerry was also given a copy. ..."
"... Steele was already well-known within the State Department. Following Steele's involvement in the FIFA scandal investigation, he began to provide reports informally to the State Department. The reports were written for a "private client" but were "shared widely within the U.S. State Department, and sent up to Secretary of State John Kerry and Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, who was in charge of the U.S. response to Putin's annexation of Crimea and covert invasion of eastern Ukraine," the Guardian reported. ..."
The State Department, with its many contacts within foreign governments, became a conduit for the flow of information. The transfer
of Christopher Steele's first dossier memo was personally
facilitated by Victoria Nuland, the assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs. Nuland gave approval for
FBI agent Michael Gaeta to travel to London to obtain the memo from Steele. The memo may have passed directly from her to FBI leadership.
Secretary of State John Kerry was also given a copy.
Steele was already well-known within the State Department. Following Steele's involvement in the FIFA scandal investigation, he
began to provide reports
informally to the State Department. The reports were written for a "private client" but were "shared widely within the U.S. State
Department, and sent up to Secretary of State John Kerry and Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, who was in charge of
the U.S.
response to Putin's annexation of Crimea and covert invasion of eastern Ukraine," the Guardian reported.
Nuland passed on parts of the Steele dossier to the FBI. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)
In July 2016, when the FBI wanted to send Gaeta to visit Steele in London, the bureau
sought permission from the office of Nuland, who provided this version of events during a Feb. 4, 2018,
appearance on CBS's "Face the Nation":
"In the middle of July, when [Steele] was doing this other work and became concerned, he passed two to four pages of short
points of what he was finding and our immediate reaction to that was, this is not in our purview. This needs to go to the FBI
if there is any concern here that one candidate or the election as a whole might be influenced by the Russian Federation. That's
something for the FBI to investigate."
Steele also
met with Jonathan Winer, a former deputy assistant secretary of state for international law enforcement and former special envoy
for Libya. Steele and Winer had known each other since at least 2010. In an opinion article in The Washington Post, Winer wrote the
following:
"In September 2016, Steele and I met in Washington and discussed the information now known as the 'dossier.' Steele's sources
suggested that the Kremlin not only had been behind the hacking of the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign
but also had compromised Trump and developed ties with his associates and campaign."
In a strange turn of events, Winer also received a
separate dossier , very similar to Steele's, from long-time Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal. This "second dossier" had been
compiled by another longtime Clinton operative, former journalist Cody Shearer, and echoed claims made in the Steele dossier. Winer
then met with Steele in late September 2016 and gave Steele a copy of the "second dossier." Steele went on to
share this second dossier with the FBI, which may have used it to corroborate his dossier.
Winer passed on memos from Christopher Steele to Victoria Nuland. (State Department)
Other foreign officials also used conduits into the State Department. Alexander Downer, Australia's high commissioner to the UK,
reportedly funneled his conversation
with Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos -- later used as a reason to open the FBI's counterintelligence investigation --
directly to the U.S. Embassy in London.
"The Downer details landed with the embassy's then-chargé d'affaires, Elizabeth Dibble, who previously served as a principal deputy
assistant secretary in Mrs. Clinton's State Department," The Wall Street Journal's Kimberley Strassel wrote in a May 31, 2018,
article .
If true, this would mean that neither Australian intelligence nor the Australian government alerted the FBI to the Papadopoulos
information. What happened with the Downer details, and to whom they were ultimately relayed, remains unknown.
Curiously, details surprisingly similar to the Papadopoulos–Downer conversation show up in the
first memo written
by Steele on June 20, 2016:
"A dossier of compromising information on Hillary Clinton has been collated by the Russian Intelligence Services over many
years and mainly comprises bugged conversations she had on various visits to Russia and intercepted phone calls. It has not yet
been distributed abroad, including to Trump."
In Ber 2018 Kusher security clearance wasdongraded.
Notable quotes:
"... Among those nations discussing ways to influence Kushner to their advantage were the United Arab Emirates, China, Israel and Mexico, the current and former officials said. ..."
"... Kushner's interim security clearance was downgraded last week from the top-secret to the secret level, which should restrict the regular access he has had to highly classified information, according to administration officials. Washpost ..."
" Officials in at least four countries have privately discussed ways they can manipulate Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law
and senior adviser, by taking advantage of his complex business arrangements, financial difficulties and lack of foreign policy experience,
according to current and former U.S. officials familiar with intelligence reports on the matter.
Among those nations discussing ways to influence Kushner to their advantage were the United Arab Emirates, China, Israel and Mexico,
the current and former officials said.
It is unclear if any of those countries acted on the discussions, but Kushner's contacts with certain foreign government officials
have raised concerns inside the White House and are a reason he has been unable to obtain a permanent security clearance, the officials
said.
Kushner's interim security clearance was downgraded last week from the top-secret to the secret level, which should restrict the
regular access he has had to highly classified information, according to administration officials. Washpost
------------------
Most people will probably be struck by the fall from grace of Kushner and other WH staff dilettantes. I am not terribly interested
in that. What strikes me is that this is the third major compromise of US SIGINT products in the last year. The first was the felonious
disclosure to the press of US intelligence penetration of Russian diplomatic communications. the second was the disclosure to the
press of penetration of GRU communications. In this one the oral or written discussions among the officials of several foreign countries
are revealed. These conversations were probably encrypted.
Is Jeff Sessions still alive? Why are there no prosecutions for these felonies? pl
"... "After reading several articles, it seemed clear that key difficulties for Russians communicating in English include: definite and indefinite articles, the use of presuppositions and correct usage of say/tell and said/told. Throughout 2017, I constructed a corpus of Guccifer 2.0's communications and analyzed the frequency of different types of mistakes. The results of this work corroborate Professor Connolly's assessment. ..."
"... Overall, it appears Guccifer 2.0 could communicate in English quite well but chose to use inconsistently broken English at times in order to give the impression that it wasn't his primary language. The manner in which Guccifer 2.0's English was broken, did not follow the typical errors one would expect if Guccifer 2.0's first language was Russian. ..."
"... Access and motive . . .here are two who had both: Seth Rich and Imran Awan. That our fake news organizations have no interest in either, that should tell you something. ..."
"I didn't really address the case that Russia hacked the DNC, content to stipulate it for
now." - exce
The State Department paused its investigation of the Secretary's emails so as not to
interfere with the Mueller investigation. Here we see Taibbi writes an exhaustive
condemnation of the Western press while leaving out the very crux of the story, the very
source of the stolen DNC emails was Clapper and Brennan pretending to be Guccifer 2.0.
Pitiful attempt at redemption there Matt. Seriously, go **** your self.
"After reading several articles, it seemed clear that key difficulties for Russians
communicating in English include: definite and indefinite articles, the use of
presuppositions and correct usage of say/tell and said/told. Throughout 2017, I constructed a corpus of Guccifer
2.0's communications and analyzed the frequency of different types of mistakes. The
results of this work
corroborate
Professor Connolly's assessment.
Overall, it appears Guccifer 2.0 could communicate in English quite well but chose to use
inconsistently broken English at times in order to give the impression that it wasn't his
primary language. The manner in which Guccifer 2.0's English was broken, did not follow the
typical errors one would expect if Guccifer 2.0's first language was Russian.
To date, Connolly's language study has not drawn any significant objections or
criticism."
DNC emails were downloaded at 22.3Mbs, a speed which is not possible to achieve remotely, or even local. It is the exact
download speed of a thumb drive.
All russian "fingerprints" were embedded in error codes, which had to be affirmatively copied. They were not an accident.
And please remind me, who exactly was it that examined the DNC servers and pointed at Russia?
Access and motive . . .here are two who had both: Seth Rich and Imran Awan. That our fake news organizations have no
interest in either, that should tell you something.
"... The bent cops at the FBI and the madmen like Brennan, Clapper and Comey, who treacherously used the government's forces against the Constitution, must be punished so severely as to make an example that will dissuade other midgets on horseback from making similar attempts to overturn the results of elections. ..."
"... At the bottom of the cauldron overflowing with political misdeeds shines the face of Hillary Clinton and the army of clever people who ran her 2016 campaign. They devised the clever, clever idea of creating the Steele Dossier in cahoots with Washington co-conspirators and the even more clever idea of marketing it back into the US political bloodstream through British intelligence channels by feeding it to the erratic and spiteful senator from Arizona whose staff peddled it all over Washington and New York. There must be retribution for this. ..."
"... I would be most interested if one of the legally competent members of this Committee – Robert Willman perhaps? – could give us us an idea of what charges could be leveled against Christopher Steele under U.S. law in relation to his clearly central role in this conspiracy. ..."
"... It also seems reasonably clear that he was not acting in isolation, and that there is a strong 'prima facie' case that senior figures in the British 'intelligence community' – notably Robert Hannigan and probably Sir Richard Dearlove – were involved, in which case the complicity is likely to have gone very much further. ..."
"... They devised the clever, clever idea of creating the Steele Dossier in cahoots with Washington co-conspirators and the even more clever of marketing it back into the US political bloodstream through British intelligence channels, by feeding it to the erratic and spiteful senator from Arizona whose staff peddled it all over Washington and New York. ..."
"... Both sides were furiously engaged in throwing mud at each other. Situation normal. Then an odd thing happens. A particularly foolish piece of mud comes along. All that Golden Showers nonsense. Regard that as normal if we please. I expect worse comes along sometimes. Then it turns out that that piece of mud comes from an Intelligence source. Situation no longer normal. ..."
"... The coup may be over, but the witch hunt will continue; ..."
"... Col. Lang is absolutely correct that those involved in attempting to reverse the results of the 2016 election, de-legitimize an elected president, and remove him should be thoroughly pursued through all avenues and procedures of the civil and criminal law. ..."
"... It's a dirty business. If half this stuff is true, and not just layers of increasingly unbelievable cover stories (I mean, a tangential example, is the whole Skripal thing a weirdly, too obviously fake cover show for what was in reality a "witness protection" operation? A witness who could and would reveal much? On this matter even, perhaps. Such obvious deceptions are harmful to respect for authority and the law.) ..."
There were no major disagreements between Mueller and his managers at the U.S. Department of
Justice (DOJ).
The Russians who tried to interfere in the 2016 election were exposed and charged -- but no
American was charged with any effort to conspire with Moscow and hijack the election.
the "Steele dossier" that was the main FISA evidence was paid for with funds
from Hillary Clinton
's campaign and the Democratic Party;
Christopher Steele, the dossier's author, had told a senior DOJ official he was desperate to
defeat Trump;
most of the dossier was not verified before it was used as evidence of alleged Trump-Russia
collusion; and
agents collected statements from key defendants such as Papadopoulos and Carter Page during
interactions with an FBI informant that strongly suggested their innocence.
Such omissions are so glaring as to constitute defrauding a federal court. And each and
every participant to those omissions needs to be brought to justice.
An upcoming DOJ inspector general's report should trigger the beginning of that
accountability in a court of law, and President Trump can assist the effort by declassifying
all evidence of wrongdoing by FBI, CIA and DOJ officials. " The Hill
------------
Pilgrims, the seditious conspiracy to depose the elected president of the United States for
conspiracy to commit treason with the Government of the Russian Federation has been
defeated.
The bent cops at the FBI and the madmen like Brennan, Clapper and Comey, who treacherously
used the government's forces against the Constitution, must be punished so severely as to make
an example that will dissuade other midgets on horseback from making similar attempts to
overturn the results of elections.
At the bottom of the cauldron overflowing with political misdeeds shines the face of Hillary
Clinton and the army of clever people who ran her 2016 campaign. They devised the clever,
clever idea of creating the Steele Dossier in cahoots with Washington co-conspirators and the
even more clever idea of marketing it back into the US political bloodstream through British
intelligence channels by feeding it to the erratic and spiteful senator from Arizona whose
staff peddled it all over Washington and New York. There must be retribution for this.
The leftist press is already discounting the results of Mueller's investigation while
gloating over how long the Democratic held House of Representatives can continue to search
through Trump's life trying to find criminality.
AG Barr should stand Mueller up next to him at a press conference to make clear the results
of his report and to answer questions about it. After that the prosecutions should begin.
pl
I would be most interested if one of the legally competent members of this Committee –
Robert Willman perhaps? – could give us us an idea of what charges could be leveled
against Christopher Steele under U.S. law in relation to his clearly central role in this
conspiracy.
It also seems reasonably clear that he was not acting in isolation, and that there is a
strong 'prima facie' case that senior figures in the British 'intelligence community' –
notably Robert Hannigan and probably Sir Richard Dearlove – were involved, in which
case the complicity is likely to have gone very much further.
The argument that declassification of relevant documentation would harm the intelligence
relationship between the U.S. and U.K. has clearly been made with great emphasis from this
side.
In fact, it is pure bollocks. A serious investigation on your side, which could lead to
the kind of clean-out which should have happened when the scale of the corruption of
intelligence in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq became clear, might pave the way for us
to reconstruct reasonably functional intelligence services.
Doing this on both sides of the Atlantic might pave the way for a reconstruction of an
intelligence relationship which was actually beneficial to both countries, as in recent years
it patently has not been.
Whether there is a realistic prospect of people on your side opening the cans of worms on
ours, as well as your own, of course remains a moot point.
I'm glad the Steele affair has been examined at the American end -
"They devised the clever, clever idea of creating the Steele Dossier in cahoots with
Washington co-conspirators and the even more clever of marketing it back into the US
political bloodstream through British intelligence channels, by feeding it to the erratic and
spiteful senator from Arizona whose staff peddled it all over Washington and New York.
"
What about the UK end? We're fussing over some little local difficulties in the UK at the
moment and at our end the questions still remain - Who in the UK authorised it and how high did it go?
The problem with criminal prosecution is one must cite a Brit or US law which was violated.
The only ones in US law that I am aware of stipulate that the plotting must be by means of
violence, "by force". All this appears to me to be only the propagation of rumors.
I think it might be more the investigation of the propagation of rumours. Think back to that election campaign, and to the period before the inauguration.
Both sides were furiously engaged in throwing mud at each other. Situation normal. Then an
odd thing happens. A particularly foolish piece of mud comes along. All that Golden Showers
nonsense. Regard that as normal if we please. I expect worse comes along sometimes. Then it
turns out that that piece of mud comes from an Intelligence source. Situation no longer normal.
With respect it is not propagating rumours to ask how that happened. As for my own
interest in the affair, it is not propagating rumours to ask how a senior UK ex-Intelligence
Officer comes to be mixed up in it all. I suppose I started to look on it as rather more than a prank or a few cogs slipping when
that senior UK ex-Intelligence Officer got whisked away to a safe house. We're a penny
pinching lot over here and we don't run to that sort of thing for nothing.
An investigation could certainly be predicated on the reasonable suspicion that Steele, et
al, conspired to defraud the United States, in this case a purposeful and knowing smear of a
candidate for office; also, another potential violation could be lying to the FBI, T 18 USC
1001.
The problem, as I see it, is sorting out the malignant from the merely incompetent. As I've
argued many times, the dossier should have been dismissed from the outset as a pile of
garbage, empty of actionable content, because the ultimate sources could not be vetted: the
information could not be said to be either credible or reliable. The information was acted on
by screening it behind the reliabilty and credibility, so called, of Steele. So it would be
necessary to show that Steele knew that the information, point by point, was false. This
could be difficult. Steele's first line of defense would be that he threw everything that he
heard from anyone at all into the mix in the expectation that the "professionals" would
figure it out.
Yes, they were all partisan, Steele, his sources, his bosses, the so called
professionals, and their partisanship would be easy to prove; and yes, almost assuredly their
partisanship contributed, perhaps even explained, their defective judgement as to how to
handle the scurrilous information, especially on the part of the so called professionals, but
proving they actually knew the materials to be false would be difficult.
They couldn't know
that it was false because they had no ability to run down the sources. The professionals
would defend themselves by saying they had no ability to vet the sources but the information
represented such a serious security threat that they had no alternative but to try to vet the
information by launching the investigation against the targets. This puts the cart before the
horse, represents an astonishing lack of judgement, especially considering the "exalted"
positions in the Intel Community the people exercising the bad judgement occupied, but there
it is - "we thought we were doing the right thing."
Perhaps this defense could be overcome by
demonstrating that people at such high and important heights of government could not possible
be so stupid... maybe.
And of course we have the orchestrated leaks to various media, the orchestrated unmaskings,
all of which kept the media frenzy fired up. All in all, it was the greatest political dirty
trick ever attempted in American Politics, and did devastating damage to both domestic
tranquility and national security. Trump survived, but the damage done is incalculable.
So It pains me greatly to think that the reckoning will likely have to be political rather
than criminal because the malice that can be demonstrated is so admixed and even overshadowed
by incompetence and judgement flaws; and even a political reckoning given the state of the
country is so uncertain.
I hope that I am wrong and that some kind of prosecution can be fashioned because of the
sheer enormity of violence that was done to our electoral system, surpassing by far the
chickenshit case Mueller brought against the Russian troll farm; but I fear that I am right.
It hurts to think that so much damage can be caused by scheming little political weasels and
that they all may well walk away scot free; and even be lionized by their political confreres
as having tried to do the right thing. This is the state of American politics today!!!
I see that some of the midgets on horseback are saying that they will bring Mueller before
congress to explain himself. Their knight in shining armor has failed to return with the holy
grail. A couple even suggested that perhaps Mueller has been influenced by the Russians or
somehow intimated by Trump.
The coup may be over, but the witch hunt will continue;
and that
+ all the crazy Marxism (social and economic), bad immigration policy and Green New Deal is
going to doom the Democrats in 2020. They look like they are jumping off a final sake fueled
banzai charge. Maybe they think the best defense is a good offense re; the prosecutions that
should happen. What is the chance that Mueller will pass *all* he has learned to help get the
criminal cases under way?
On 13 July 2018, when announcing the indictment of 12 Russian military officers by the
Mueller group for "conspiring to interfere" in the 2016 presidential election, Deputy
Attorney General Rod Rosenstein admitted that no "interference" actually happened. In this
video of his announcement, starting at 5 minutes, 52 seconds into it and ending at the 6
minute, 5 second mark, he says--
"There is no allegation in this indictment that any American citizen committed a crime.
There is no allegation that the conspiracy changed the vote count or affected any election
result."
Col. Lang is absolutely correct that those involved in attempting to reverse the results
of the 2016 election, de-legitimize an elected president, and remove him should be thoroughly
pursued through all avenues and procedures of the civil and criminal law.
However, I am concerned that the new attorney general, William Barr, will not do so based
on his past associations and work. I hope I am wrong about that, but I am not optimistic.
It's a dirty business. If half this stuff is true, and not just layers of increasingly
unbelievable cover stories (I mean, a tangential example, is the whole Skripal thing a
weirdly, too obviously fake cover show for what was in reality a "witness protection"
operation? A witness who could and would reveal much? On this matter even, perhaps. Such
obvious deceptions are harmful to respect for authority and the law.)
I'm wrestling with the idea that 'twas ever thus and now with the internet its workings
are revealed to a "lay" audience with no connection to the dark arts of the spy business. But
I am curious, with the good Colonel's indulgence, if the new tools of the trade have made
things which should be secret not possible to be kept secret?
Amen to the prosecutions. If there is seen to be no accountability for this fraud then we are
seriously damaging what's left of democracy. Who, in their right mind, is going to publicly
support and assist a political candidate who is not "Swamp approved" if they face the threat
of thereby triggering their own, and their family's destruction by the judicial system?
I suggest that even a pardon is not enough for those entrapped in this mess. There needs
to be restitution.
To put that another way, in my opinion, "birther" allegations could be passed off as
political tactics. Nobody got hurt. It is just good luck that Russiagate hasn't resulted in
suicide or worse - so far.
I certainly agree that consequences must be brought to bear: lying politicians without a
shred of evidence, nor did they offer any for their lies; press for their utter and complete
malfeasance and corruption without a shred of evidence, the doj/fbi corrupted and coup
plotting officials,and finally the shame to all who shrieked about "evil" putin, russia the
aggressor, etc. It has set our discourse back decades, forced any critics of this insanity
into the shadows, and completely killed any attempt at normal diplomacy between nations.
I noted one astute writer as equating this russiagate insanity to the lies surrounding wmd
and the destruction of iraq. Close. The damage from this criminality is incalculable!
Will the shrillest of all in the press lose their jobs? Nah, not a chance. Prob get raise
or promotion.Will the brennans, clintons, clappers, et al do the perp walk. Nah, not a
chance. High paid lawyers will tie the courts up for years if not decades.
And america has the institutional memory of a gnat. And of course, the question is as to
high up did this criminality go? I personally do not believe it is a question-it is obvious
to me. The major question for me is how high up the prosecution, if any, will go.
Problem is...who's going to do the prosecuting?
The DOJ - protector of the swamp - has become thoroughly corrupted as an arm of the
Democrat-media party.
Should (can) Trump appoint a special prosecutor as far as possible from the DOJ?
The president might use this and any Republican-led prosecutions as leverage to work out
deals that will allow him to achieve his agenda. I think he'll need to given how the
Democrats intend to use their house majority to launch investigations and hearings to find
something, anything to howl about and impede his agenda.
Still need to see the full report. I hope it is releasable. Otherwise the conspiracy theories
or leaks will never let up. The article cited is a partisan opinion piece, not a news report.
It accepts the fallback stance that yes, crimes were committed but collusion by Trump was not
among them. This actually seems possible if only in light of the chaotic condition of the
campaign.
That said, I would not be surprised to find collusion discounted. Not that the Russians
didn't interfere. That would be entirely in character. But I don't know any reason for
supposing that they would have a better understanding of American political dynamics than the
Americans who make good livings being the best in that arena. The Russians seem to have been
doing the same things as numerous other players. They shouldn't have been in that game, but
there is no strong reason for according them Superman status. Their strongest feature seems
to have been sheer quantity. Outrage over their actions often seems to flow from a poor grasp
of the real nature of normal political process.
"The Russians seem to have been doing the same things..."
Multiple members of the FBI and DOJ seem to have been interfering in the 2016 Presidential
election. How many other federal and state elections did they interfere with?
Can you cite a single piece of hard evidence, not simply allegation, that proves the Russians
interfered in the 2016 election? If so, please cite it, since I know of none. Thank you.
"... Back in November of 2016, the American people were so fed up with the neoliberal oligarchy that everyone knows really runs the country that they actually elected Donald Trump president ..."
"... The oligarchy that runs the country responded to the American people's decision by inventing a completely cock-and-bull story about Donald Trump being a Russian agent who the American people were tricked into voting for by nefarious Russian mind-control operatives, getting every organ of the liberal corporate media to disseminate and relentlessly promote this story on a daily basis for nearly three years, and appointing a special prosecutor to conduct an official investigation in order to lend it the appearance of legitimacy. Every component of the ruling establishment (i.e., the government, the media, the intelligence agencies, the liberal intelligentsia, et al.) collaborated in an unprecedented effort to remove an American president from office based on a bunch of made-up horseshit which kind of amounts to an attempted soft coup. ..."
"... It now appears that the world will see that the so-called "Russia Gate" investigation was nothing more than the pro-Clintonista BS that Trump always claimed it was. ..."
"... As for the Clintons, both Bill and Hillary, they should be treated like the creeps they are: corrupt, opportunistic and power hungry. Like Typhoid Mary, they infect everything they touch ..."
"... I'm also convinced that Trump and Clinton colluded, but that they did so in order to get her elected. I don't think he really wanted the job. But still, Hillary can do nationalist, and the designs of the Empire would have proceeded either way. ..."
"... Trump is a crook who takes money wherever he can get it, from subcontractors foolish enough to work for him to bankers dumb enough to believe his financial statements. No doubt he has helped Russian crooks sanitize their booty, but that is apparently too difficult for Mueller to prove. ..."
"... It is not good news that this troglodyte was not indicted, but it is good news that Russia was not found guilty of electing him. Russiagate is an existential issue for the "national security" establishment and just another propaganda offensive designed to justify the largely useless & destructive activities of the Pentagon. ..."
"... It is time to build cooperation not continue the stupidity of US unilateralism and pursuit of global hegemony. Trump and his team have to be removed from office. Democrats don't need Russiagate to do it. The truth will work better. ..."
Back in November of 2016, the American people were so fed up with the neoliberal oligarchy
that everyone knows really runs the country that they actually elected Donald Trump
president. They did this fully aware that Trump was a repulsive, narcissistic ass clown who
bragged about "grabbing women by the pussy" and jabbered about building "a big, beautiful
wall" and making the Mexican government pay for it. They did this fully aware of the fact
that Donald Trump had zero experience in any political office whatsoever, was a loudmouth
bigot, and was possibly out of his gourd on amphetamines half the time. The American people
did not care. They were so disgusted with being conned by arrogant, two-faced, establishment
stooges like the Clintons, the Bushes, and Barack Obama that they chose to put Donald Trump
in office, because, fuck it, what did they have to lose?
The oligarchy that runs the country responded to the American people's decision by
inventing a completely cock-and-bull story about Donald Trump being a Russian agent who the
American people were tricked into voting for by nefarious Russian mind-control operatives,
getting every organ of the liberal corporate media to disseminate and relentlessly promote
this story on a daily basis for nearly three years, and appointing a special prosecutor to
conduct an official investigation in order to lend it the appearance of legitimacy. Every
component of the ruling establishment (i.e., the government, the media, the intelligence
agencies, the liberal intelligentsia, et al.) collaborated in an unprecedented effort to
remove an American president from office based on a bunch of made-up horseshit which kind of
amounts to an attempted soft coup.
It now appears that the world will see that the so-called "Russia Gate" investigation was
nothing more than the pro-Clintonista BS that Trump always claimed it was. The Clintons once
again, both Bill and Hillary, have managed to raise a vicious, loud mouthed thug in the White
House to the status of some kind of martyr. What a country America it is. One thing should be
clear however. Any politician or media pundit that towed the pro-Clintonista line should be
barred from public office or the media forever.
As for the Clintons, both Bill and Hillary,
they should be treated like the creeps they are: corrupt, opportunistic and power hungry.
Like Typhoid Mary, they infect everything they touch. There is one difference between Typhoid
Mary, and Bill and Hillary: Typhoid Mary didn't realize what she was doing, the Clintons did!
sorry to double post, but it just occurred to me that they pulled a classic DC move: if you
have something humiliating or horrible to admit, do it on a friday night.
i have to wonder if the entire western media is cynically praying for a (coincidentally
distracting) school shooting or terrorist attack within the next two days.
I have close friends that have been on the MSNBC/Maddow Kool-Ade for years. Constantly
declaring Mueller was on the verge of closing in on Trump and associates for treason with the
Russians. On Friday night after dinner at our home, the TV was tuned to MSNBC so they could
watch their spiritual leader Rachel Maddow....what a pitiful sight (both Maddow and friends).
No one was going to jail or be impeached for conspiring with Putin.....how on how could that
be true. Putin personally stole the election from Clinton and THEY are just going to let him
walk was the declaration a few feet from my chair. Normally, I would recommend grieve
counseling, but they are still my friends ... now they can go back to blaming Bernie for
Clinton's loss. Maybe I will recommend grieve counseling!
DontBelieveEitherPropaganda , Mar 23, 2019 2:27:18 PM |
link
@dltravers: Apart from the "goyim" you may be right.. But if you want to claim with that
Trumps opponents where under the pressure of the Zionists, you got it all wrong man.. ;) No
presidents been more under the Zionist thumb than DJT.
That ofc doesnt make Hillarys Saudi and Muslim brotherhood connections better.. ;)
Anyway, cheers to the end of this BS! And lets hope that Trump has now payed off his debts
with Adelson now that he secured Bibis reelection. But dont hold your breath.. ;)
"very politician, every media figure, every Twitter pundit and everyone who swallowed this
moronic load of bull spunk has officially discredited themselves for life".
I wish so, but that's not how the exceptional nation of US of A works, as demonstrated by
the Iraq WMD fiasco case. In fact, very politician, every media figure, every Twitter pundit
(about Saddam's WMD" BS) is alive and well, spreading more BS. What is even more depressing
is that the huge chunk of this exceptional nation cannot have enough of the BS and is
chanting "give me more, give me more...".
The Dems were stupid to gin up the Russian collusion.
However some good things have come out of the investigation. It cost taxpayers 2 million
but recouped over 25 million from those convicted of fraud and tax evasion.
And its not over, Mueller has sent 5 to 7 referrals or evidence/witnesses to SDNY, EDNY, DC,
EDVA, plus the National Security and Criminal Divisions. These from information turned up
crimes unrelated to his Russia probe and allegedly concerning Trump or his family business, a
cadre of his advisers and associates. They are being conducted by officials from Los Angeles
to Brooklyn.
The bad news is it exposed how wide spread and corrupt the US has become...in private and
political circles.
The other bad news is most of the Trump lovers and Trump haters are too stupid to drop
their partisan and personal blinders and recognize that ....ITS THE CORRUPTION STUPID.
b you have repeatedly made the case that this whole thing was kicked off by the Steele
dossier. That is factually incorrect. The first investigation was already running before the
dossier ever materialized. That investigation spawned the special prosecutors investigation
when Trump fired Comey and then went on TV and said it was because of the Russia
investigation. The Russia investigation was originally kicked off by Papadopoulos drinking
with the the Australian ambassador and bragging about what the campaign was doing with
Russia. Remember the original evidence was presented to the leadership of both the House and
the Senate when they were both controlled by the Republican party and every one that was
briefed came out on camera and said the Justice dept was doing the right thing in pursuing
this.
I think the Democrats should lose Hillary down a deep hole and not let her near any of the
coming campaign events. But this came about because of the actions of the people around
Trump. Not because Hillary controls the US government from some secret bunker some where.
One could argue Russiagate was on the contrary quite a success. The Elites behind the scheme
never believed it would end up with Trump's impeachment. What they did accomplish though is a
deflection via "Fake News" from the Dem's election failures & shenanigans and refocus the
attention towards the DNC's emerging pedophilia scandals (Weiner, the Podesta's, Alefantis,
etc) & suspicious deaths (Seth Rich, etc) towards a dead-end with the added corollary of
preventing US/Ru rapprochement for more then half an administration..
Blooming Barricade , Mar 23, 2019 3:10:02 PM |
link
The deeply tragic thing about this for the media, the neocons, and the liberals is that they
brought it upon themselves by moving the goalposts continuously. If, after Hillary lost, they
had stuck to the "Russia hacked WikiLeaks" lie, then they probably have sufficient proof from
their perspective and the perspective of most of the public that Russia helped Trump win. In
this case it would be remembered by the Democrats like the stolen election of 2000 (albeit
the fact that it was a lie this time). They had multiple opportunities to jump off this
train. Even the ridiculous DNI report could have been their final play: "Russia helped
Trump." Instead of going with 2000 they went with 2001, aka 9-11, with the same neocon
fearmongers playing the pipe organ of lies. As soon as they accepted the Steele Dossier,
moving the focus to "collusion" they discredited themselves forever. Many of the lead
proponents were discredited Iraq war hawks. Except this time it was actually worse because
the whole media bought into it. This leaves an interesting conundrum: there were at least
some pro-Afghanistan anti-Iraq warmongers who rejected the Bush premise in the media, so they
took over the airwaves for about two years before the real swamp creatures returned. This
time, it will be harder to issue a mea culpa. They made this appear like 9-11, well, this
time the truthers have won, and they are doomed.
Societies collapse when their systems (institutions) become compromised. When they are no
longer capable of meeting the needs of the population, or of adapting to a changing world.
Societal systems become compromised when their decision making structures, which are
designed to ensure that decisions are taken in the best interest of the society as a whole,
are captured by people who have no legitimacy to make the decisions, and who make decisions
for the benefit of themselves, at the expense of society as a whole.
Russia-gate is a flagrant example of how the law enforcement and intelligence institutions
have been captured. Their top officials, no longer loyal to their country or their
institution, but rather to an international elite (including the likes of Soros, the
Clintons, and far beyond) have used these institutions in an attempt to delegitimize a
constitutionally elected president and to over turn an election. This is no less than treason
of the highest order.
Indeed, the actions much of the Washington establishment, as well as a number
international actors, since Trump was elected seems suspiciously like one of the 'Color
Revolutions' that are visited upon any country who's citizens did not 'vote right' the first
time. Over-throw the vote, one way or another, until the result that is wanted is achieved.
None of these 'Color Revolutions' has resulted in anything good for the country involved.
Rather they have resulted in the destruction of each country's institutions, and eventually
societal collapse.
In the U.S. the capturing of systems' decision making structures is not limited to
Russia-Gate and the overturning of the electoral system. Their are other prime examples:
- The capture of the Air Transport Safety System by Boeing that has resulted in the recent
737 Max crashes, and likely the destruction of the reputation of the U.S. aviation industry,
in an industry where reputation is everything.
- The capture of the Financial Regulatory System, by Wall Street, who in 1998 rewrote the
rules in their own favor, against the best interests of the population as a whole. The result
was the 2008 financial crisis and the inability of the U.S. economy to effectively recover
from that crisis.
- This capture is also seen in international diplomatic systems, where the U.S. is
systematically by-passing or subverting international law and international institutions,
(the U.N. I.C.J., I.N.F. treaty) etc., and in doing so is destroying these institutions and
the ability to maintain peace.
The result of system (institution) capture is difficult to see at first. But, in time, the
damage adds up, the ability of the systems to meet the needs of the population disappears,
and societal decline sets in.
It looks today like the the societal decline is acellerating. Russia-gate is just one of
many indicators.
Your comment on the BBC is on the mild side. I listen to it when I drive in in the morning
and also get annoyed sometimes. When it is reporting on the Westminster bubble it is
factually accurate as far as I can judge. Apart from that, and particularly in the case of
the BBC news, we're in information control territory.
But accept that and the BBC turns into quite a valuable resource. It's well staffed, has
good contacts, and picks up what the politicians want us to think with great accuracy.
In that respect it's better than the newspapers and better also than the American media.
Those news outlets have several masters of which the political elite is only one. The BBC has
just the one master, the political elite, and is as sensitive as a stethoscope to the
shifting currents within that political elite.
So I wouldn't despise the BBC entirely. It tells us how the politicians want us to think.
In telling us that it sometimes gives us a bearing on what the politicians et al are doing
and what they intend to do.
The never-Trumpers will never let their dreams die. Of course, they never oppose Trump on
substantive issues like attempting a coup in Venezuela, withdrawing from the INF treaty,
supporting the nazis in Ukraine, supporting Al Qaeda forces in Syria, etc. But somehow
they're totally against him and ready to haul out the latest stupid thing he said as their
daily fodder for conversation...
renfro @ 10 said;"The Dems were stupid to gin up the Russian collusion."
Uh no, just doing their job of distracting the public, while ignoring the real issues
the
American workers care about. You know, the things DJT promised the workers, but has never
delivered.(better health care for all, ending the useless wars overseas, an
infrastructure
plan to increase good paying jobs), to name just a few.
The corporate Dems( which is the lions share of them), are bought and paid for to
distract, and they've done it well.
The Bushes, the Clintons, the Obamas, and most who have come before, are of the same
ilk.
Bend over workers and lube up, for more of the same in 2020...
I profoundly disagree with the notion that Russiagate had anything to do with Hillary's
collusion with the DNC. Gosh, that is naive at best.
1) Hillary didn't need to collude against Sanders - the additional money that she got from
doing so was small change compared the to overall amount she raised for her campaign.
2) Sanders was a long-time friend of the Clintons. He boasted that he's known Hillary
for over 25 years.
3) Sanders was a sheepdog meant to keep progressives in the Democratic Party. He was
never a real candidate. He refused to attack Hillary on character issues and remained loyal
even after Hillary-DNC collusion was revealed.
When Sanders had a chance to total disgrace Hillary, he refused to do so. Hillary
repeatedly said that she had NEVER changed for vote for money but Warren had proven that
she had: Hillary changed her vote on the Bankruptcy Bill for money from the credit card
industry.
4) Hillary didn't try to bury her collusion with the DNC (as might be expected), instead
she used it to alienate progressive voters by bring Debra Wasserman-Shultz into her
campaign.
5) Hillary also alienated or ignored other important constituencies: she wouldn't
support an increase in the minimum wage but accepted $750,000 from Goldman Sachs for a
speech; she took the black vote for granted and all-but berated a Black Lives Matters
activist; and she called whites "deplorables".
Hillary threw the race to her OTHER long-time friend in the race: Trump. The
Deep-State wanted a nationalist and that's just what they got.
6) Hillary and the DNC has shown NO REMORSE whatsoever about colluding with Sanders and
Sanders has shown no desire whatsoever to hold them accountable.
IMO Russiagate (Russian influence on Trump) and accusations of "Russian meddling" in the
election are part of the same McCarthyist psyop to direct hate at Russia and stamp out any
dissent. Trump probably knowingly, played into the Deep State's psyop by:
> hiring Manafort;
> calling on Russia to release Hillary's emails;
> talking about Putin in a admiring way.
And it accomplished much more than hating on Russia:
> served as excuse for Trump to do Deep State bidding;
> distracted from the real meddling in the 2016 election;
> served as a device for settling scores:
- Assange isolated
(Wikileaks was termed an "agent of a foreign power");
- Michael Flynn forced to resign
(because he spoke to the Russian ambassador).
hopehely , Mar 23, 2019 3:49:15 PM |
link The US owes Russia an official apology. And also Russia should get its stolen
buildings and the consulate back. And maybe to get paid some compensation for the injustice
and for damages suffered. Without that, the Russiagate is not really over.
If memory serves me correctly, the initial accusations of collusion between DJT's
presidential campaign and the Kremlin came from Crowdstrike, the cybersecurity company hired
by the Democratic National Committee to oversee the security of its computers and databases.
This was done to deflect attention away from Hillary Clinton's illegal use of a personal
server at home to conduct government business during her time as US State Secretary (2009 -
2013), business which among other things included plotting with the US embassy in Libya (and
the then US ambassador Chris Stevens) to overthrow Muammar Gaddhafi's government in 2011, and
conspiring also to overthrow the elected government in Honduras in 2010.
The business of Christopher Steele's dossier (part or even most of which could have been
written by Sergei Skripal, depending on who you read) and George Papadopoulos' conversation
with the half-wit Australian "diplomat" Alexander Downer in London were brought in to bolster
the Russiagate claims and make them look genuine.
As B says, Crowdstrike does indeed have a Ukrainian nationalist agenda: its founder and
head Dmitri Alperovich is a Senior Fellow at The Atlantic Council (the folks who fund
Bellingcat's crapaganda) and which itself receives donations from Ukrainian oligarch Viktor
Pinchuk. Crowdstrike has some association with one of the Chalupa sisters (Alexandra or
Andrea - I can't be bothered dredging through DuckDuckGo to check which - but one of them was
employed by the DNC) who donated money to the Maidan campaign that overthrew Viktor
Yanukovych's government in Kiev in February 2014.
thanks b... i would like russiagate to be finished, but i tend to see it much like kadath
@2.. the link @2 is worth the read as a reminder of how far the usa has sunk in being a
nation of passive neocons... emptywheel can't say no to this as witnessed by her article
from today.. ) as a consequence, i agree with @14 dh-mtl's conclusion - "It looks today
like the the societal decline is acellerating. Russia-gate is just one of many indicators."
the irony for those of us who don't live in the usa, is we are going to have watch this
sad state of affairs continue to unravel, as the usa and the west continue to unravel in
tandem.. the msm as corporate mouthpiece is not going to be tell us anything of relevance..
instead it will be continued madcow, or maddow bullshit 24-7... amd as kadath notes @2 - if
any of them are to step up as a truth teller - they will be marginalized or silenced... so
long as the mainstream swallow what they are fed in the msm, the direction of the titanic is
still on track...
@19 hopehely... you can forget about anything like that happening..
What Difference Does it Make?
They don't really need Russia-gate anymore. It bought them time. As we speak nuclear bombers
make runs near Russian borders every day and Russian consulates get attacked with heavy
weaponry in the EU and no Russian outlet is even making a reference,while Israel is ready to
move heavy artillery in to Golan targeting Russia bases in Syria and China raking all their
deals for civilian projects in the Med.
Russia got stuffed in the corner getting all the punches.
What a horrible witch hunt, but the msm will keep on denying and keep creating new hoaxes
about Trump, Russia.
Heck the media even deny there was no collussion, they keep spinning it in different ways!
Thanks for citing Caitlin Johnstone's wonderful epitaph, b--Russiavape indeed!
During the fiasco, the Outlaw US Empire provided excellent proof to the world that it does
everything it accused Russia of doing and more, while Russia's cred has greatly risen.
Meanwhile, there're numerous other crimes Trump, his associates, Clinton, her
associates--like Pelosi--ought to be impeached, removed from office, arrested, then tried in
court, which is diametrically opposed to the current--false--narrative.
Scotch Bingeington , Mar 23, 2019 4:47:39 PM |
link
The people who steered us into two years of Russiavape insanity are the very last people
anyone should ever listen to ever again when determining the future direction of our world.
Yes, absolutely. And not just regarding the world's future, but even if you happen to be
in the same building with one of them and he/she bursts into your already smoke-filled room
yelling that the house is on fire.
Btw, whatever authority has ever ruled that "ex-MI6 dude" Steele (who doesn't remind me of
steel at all, but rather of a certain nondescript entity named Anthony Blair) is in fact
merely 'EX'? He himself? The organisation? The Queen perhaps?
Expose them at every opportunity, they should not get away with this like nothing
happend:
If you think a single Russiagate conspiracist is going to be held accountable for media
malpractice, you clearly haven't been awake the past 2 decades. No one will pay for being
wrong. This profession is as corrupt & rotten as the kleptocracy it serves
defeatism isn't the answer -- should remind & mock these hacks every opportunity.
Just need to be aware of the beast we're up against.
The establishment plays on peoples fears and so we all sink together as we all cling to
our "lesser evils", tribal allegiances, and try to avoid the embarrassment of being
wrong.
Although everyone is aware of the corruption and insider dealing, no one seems to want to
acknowledge the extent, or to think critically so as to reveal any more than we already
know.
It's almost as though corruption (the King's nudity) is a national treasure and revealing
it would be a national security breach in the exceptional nation.
And so to the Deep State cabal continues to rule unimpeded.
The oligarchy that runs the country responded to the American people's decision by
inventing a completely cock-and-bull story about Donald Trump being a Russian agent who the
American people were tricked into voting for by nefarious Russian mind-control operatives,
getting every organ of the liberal corporate media to disseminate and relentlessly promote
this story on a daily basis for nearly three years
Posted by: Ken | Mar 23, 2019 2:09:31 PM | 4
You people don't get it do you?
'The Plan' was to get rid of Turkey-Russia-Israel (and a few others) with one fell
swoop....
Russia gate was both a diversion from the real collusions (Russian Mafia , China and Israel)
and a clever ruse to allow Trump to back off from his campaign promise to improve relations
with Russia. US policy toward Russia is no different under Trump than it was during Obamas
administration. Exactly what the Russia Gaters wanted and Trump delivered.
That Mueller could find nothing more than some tax/money laundering/perjury charges in
which the culprits in the end get pardoned is hardly surprising given his history. Want
something covered up? Put Mueller on it.
To show how afraid Trump was of Mueller he appointed his long term friend Barr as AJ and
pretended he didn't know how close they were when it came out. There is no lie people wont
believe. Lol
Meanwhile Trumps Russian Mafia connections stay under the radar in MSM, Trump continues as
Bibi's sock puppet, the fake trade war with China continues as Ivanka is rolling in China
trademarks .
The Rothschild puppet that bailed out Trumps casinos as Commerce Secretary overseeing
negotiations that will open the doors for more US and EU (they willy piggy back on the deal
like hyenas) jobs to go to China (this time in financial/services) and stronger IPR
protections that will facilitate this transfer, and will provide companies more profits in
which to buyback stocks but wont bring manufacturing jobs back.
The collusion story has been hit badly and it will likely lose its momentum, but I wonder how
far reaching this loss of momentum is. There are many variants. The 'unwitting accomplice' is
an oxymoron which isn't finished yet. The Russians hacking the election: not over. The
Russians sowing discord and division. Not over. Credibility of the Russiagate champions
overall? Not clear. Some could take a serious hit. Brennan and other insiders who made it
onto cable tv?
It is possible that the whole groupthink about Russiagate changes drastically
and that 'the other claims' also lose their credibility but it's far from certain. After
years of building up tension Russia's policies are also changing. I think they have shown
restraint but their paranoia and aggressiveness is also increasing and some claims will
become true after all.
"Russiagate" has always been a meaningless political fraud.
When folks like Hillary Clinton sign on to something and give it a great deal of weight,
you really do know you are talking about an empty bag of tricks. She is a psychopathic liar,
one with a great deal of blood on her hands.
My problem with this official result is that it may tend to give Trump a boost, new
credibility.
The trouble with Trump has never been Russia - something only blind ideologues and people
with the minds of children believe - it is that he is genuinely ignorant and genuinely
arrogant and loud-mouthed - an extremely dangerous combination.
And in trying to defend himself, this genuine coward has completely surrendered American
foreign policy to its most dangerous enemies, the Neocons.
Blaming Russiagate on Hillary is very easy for those who hate her or hope that Trump will
deliver on his faux populist fake-agenda.
No one wants to contemplate the possibility that Hillary and Trump, and the duopoly they
lead, fixed the election and planned Russiagate in advance.
It seems a bridge too far, even for the smart skeptics at MoA.
So funny.
Trump has proven himself to be a neocon. He broke his campaign promise to investigate
Hillary within DAYS of being elected. He has brought allies of his supposed enemies into his
Administration.
Yet every one turns from the possibility that the election was fixed. LOL.
The horrible possibility that our "democracy" is managed is too horrible to contemplate.
Lets just blame it all on Hillary.
Those who have been holding their breath for two years can finally exhale. I guess the fever
of hysteria will have to be attended a while longer. A malady of this kind does not easily
die out overnight. Those who have been taken in, and duped for so long, can not so easily
recover. The weight of so much cognitive dissonance presses down on them like a boulder. The
dust of the stampeded herd behind Russiagate is enough paralyze the will of those who have
succumbed.
As Joseph Conrad once wrote, "The ways of human progress are inscrutable."
Russiagate is a pendulum, it reached the dead point, it would hange in the air for a moment,
then it would start swinging right backwards at full speed crashign everything in the way!
It would be revealed, it was Russia who paid Muller to start that hysteria and stole money
from American tax-payers and make America an international laughing stock. "Putin benefited
from it", highly likely!
Muller's investigation is paid for with Manafort's seized cash and property and Manafort
has made Yanukovich king of Ukraine, so Manafort is Putin's agent, so Muller is working of
Putin's money, so it was Putin's collusion everything that Muller is doing! Highly
likely.
There is no "Liberal Media". Those whom claim to be Liberal and yet support the Warmonger
Democratic Party (Republican lite) are frauds. Liberalism does not condone war and it most
certainly does not support wars of aggression - especially those wars waged against
defenseless nations. Neither can liberalism support trade sanctions or the subjugation of
Palestinians in the Apartheid State of ISreal.
We must be very careful with the words we choose, in order to paint the correct
conjuncture and not to throw the bathtub with the baby inside.
It's one thing to say Bernie Sanders is not a revolutionary; it's another completely
different thing to say he was in cahoots with the Clintons.
If Bernie Sanders really was a "friend" of the Clintons, then he wouldn't even have
disputed the primaries against Hillary. Not only he chose to do so, but he only didn't win
because the DNC threw all its weight against him.
Now, I agree he's not a revolutionary socialist. He's an imperialist who believes the
spoils of the empire should be also used to build a Scandinavian-style Welfare State for the
American people only. A cynic would tell you this would make him a Nazi without the race
theme, but you have to keep in mind societies move in a dialectical patern, not a linear one:
if you preach for "democratic socialism", you're bringing the whole package, not only the
bits you want.
I believe the rise of Bernie Sanders had an overall positive impact in the world as it
exists. Americans are more aware of their own contradictions (more enlightened) now than
before he disputed those faithful primaries of 2016. And the most important ingredient for
that, in my opinion, was the fact he was crushed by both parties; that the "establishment"
acted in unison not to let him get near the WH. That was a didactic moment for the American
people (or a signficant part of it).
But I agree Russiagate went well beyond just covering the Clintons' dirt in the DNC.
It may have be born like that, but, if that was the case, the elites quickly realized it
had other, ampler practical uses. The main one, in my opinion, was to drive a wedge between
Trump's Clash of Civilizations's doctrine -- which perceives China as the main long term
enemy, and Russia as a natural ally of the West -- and the public opinon. The thing is most
of the American elite is far too dependent on China's productive chain; Russia is not, and
can be balkanized.
There is a funny video compilation of the TV talking heads predicting the end of Trump, new
bombshells, impeachment, etc., over the last two years.
Unfortunately, the same sort of compilation could be made of sane people predicting "this new
information means the end of Russiagate" over the same time period.
The truth is that the truth doesn't matter, only the propaganda, and it has not stopped, only
spun onto new hysteria.
As others have said, hard core Russiagaters will likely not be convinced that they have been
wrong all along. They have too much emotional investment in the grand conspiracy theory to
simply let it go. Rather, they will forever point to what they believe are genuine bits of
evidence and curse Mueller for not following the leads. And the Dems in the House of
Representatives will waste more time and resources on pointless investigations in an effort
to keep the public sufficiently distracted from more important matters, such as the endless
wars and coups that they support. A pox on all their houses, both Democrats and
Republicans.
"...hard core Russiagaters will likely not be convinced that they have been wrong all along."
Wrong about what? There seems to be "narrative" operative here that there are only two
positions on this matter: the "right" one and the "wrong" one and nothing else.
Ben's and other comments might make this a little bit superfluous but it's short.
A case of divide and conquer against the population
This time it was a fabricated scandal.
Continued control over "facts" and narratives, the opportunity for efficient misdirection
and distraction, stealing and wasting other people's time and effort, spurious disagreements,
wearing down relations.
The illusion of choice, (false) opposition, blinded "oversight", and mythical claims
concerning a civilian government (in the case of the US: "of, for, and by" or something like
that).
Who knew or knows is irrelevant as long as the show goes on. There's nothing to prove
anything significant about who if anyone may or may not be behind the curtain and thus on
towards the next big or small scandal we go because people will be dissatisfied and hungry
and ready to bite as hard as possible on some other bait for or against something.
Maybe "Russiagate" was impeccably engineered or maybe it organically outcompeted other
distractions on offer that would ultimately also waste enormous amounts of time and
effort.
Management by crisis
The scandals, crises, "Science says" games and rubbish, outrage narratives, and any other
manipulations attempt and perhaps succeed at controlling the US and the world through
spam.
Jonathan @39: Of course it was fixed. That's what the Electoral College is for.
Well, you can say the same think about money-as-speech , gerrymandering, voter
suppression, etc. Despite all these, Americans believe that their democracy works.
I contend that what we witnessed in 2016 was a SHOW. Like American wrestling. It was
(mostly) fake. The proper term for this is kayfabe .
My advice to the yanks mourning Russiagate: move to the UK. The sick Brits will keep the
Russia hating cult alive even after they spend a decade puking over Brexit.
Jackrabbit @18
So, you don't think HRC qualifies as a nationalist? She can't fake populist, but she can do
nationalist.
I also think she is much too ambitious to have intentionally thrown the election. It was her
turn dammit! Take a look at her behavior as First Lady if you think she's the kind of
personality that is content to wield power from behind the scenes.
They didn't fall for the Steele dossier. I recall that emptywheel had discredited the dossier
during the election as it was known to have been rejected by major media outlets leading up
to the election. I think they merely fell behind the others as the outgoing administration,
the Democrats, the CIA, and the media chose to use the dossier to 'blackmail' Trump.
The most important fruit of russiagate, from the view of the establishment of the hegemon, is
that America has now taken a giant step towards full bore censorship.
We must be very careful ... and not to throw the bathtub with the baby
inside.
Don't we already have plenty of evidence that there is no precious democratic baby in the
bath? What do you think the Yellow Vests are doing every weekend?
If Bernie Sanders really was a "friend" of the Clintons, then he wouldn't even have
disputed the primaries against Hillary.
Why not? Do you know him personally? Can you vouch for him?
Bernie referred to Hillary as "my friend" many times on the campaign trail. He told
Politico that he's known her for 25 years but they are not "best friends". That's Sander's
typical word judo. Like when he was asked about Zionism, his response: what's
that?
The fact is, Bernie is friendly with all the top Democrats: Obama campaigned for him
and Schumer wouldn't allow funding for democratic candidates that opposed him.
Then there's other strangeness. Like Bernie's refusal to release his 2014 tax
returns. Bernie said his returns were "boring" but when his 2015 tax return was delayed the
press asked him to release his 2014 return (Hillary boasted that she had released 10 years of
returns). Bernie refused.
Now, I agree he's not a revolutionary socialist.... I believe the rise of Bernie
Sanders had an overall positive impact in the world as it exists.
Really? LOL. Sanders REFUSED to lead a Movement for real change. That might've changed things
for the better Mi>- like the Yellow Vests are changing things for the better.
What have we seen from the Democratics since 2016? Bullshit like Russiagate,
meaningless astroturf activism around bathrooms and statues, and outlandish policies like
open borders. These things just irritate most Americans and will lead to more failure for the
Democrats and another 4 years for Trump.
Lastly, you said nothing about Bernie's refusal to attack Hillary on character
issues and to counter her assertion that she NEVER changed her vote for money. Other
examples: Bernie refused to discuss Hillary's home email server, never mentioned Hillary's
well known work to squash investigations of Bill Clinton for abusing women (Jennifer
Flowers), and didn't talk about other scandals like Benghazi ("What difference does it make")
and her glee at the overthrow of Quadaffi ("we came, we saw, we kicked his ass").
And what of Trump? He was the ONLY republican populist in a field of 19. Do you find
that even a little bit strange?
We must be very careful ... and not to throw the bathtub with the baby
inside.
Don't we already have plenty of evidence that there is no precious democratic baby in the
bath? What do you think the Yellow Vests are doing every weekend?
If Bernie Sanders really was a "friend" of the Clintons, then he wouldn't even have
disputed the primaries against Hillary.
Why not? Do you know him personally? Can you vouch for him?
Bernie referred to Hillary as "my friend" many times on the campaign trail. He told
Politico that he's known her for 25 years but they are not "best friends". That's Sander's
typical word judo. Like when he was asked about Zionism, his response: what's that?
The fact is, Bernie is friendly with all the top Democrats: Obama campaigned for him and
Schumer wouldn't allow funding for democratic candidates that opposed him.
Then there's other strangeness. Like Bernie's refusal to release his 2014 tax returns.
Bernie said his returns were "boring" but when his 2015 tax return was delayed the press
asked him to release his 2014 return (Hillary boasted that she had released 10 years of
returns) . Bernie refused.
Now, I agree he's not a revolutionary socialist.... I believe the rise of Bernie
Sanders had an overall positive impact in the world as it exists.
Really? LOL. Sanders REFUSED to lead a Movement for real change. That might've changed things
for the better Mi>- like the Yellow Vests are changing things for the better.
What have we seen from the Democratics since 2016? Bullshit like Russiagate, meaningless
astroturf activism around bathrooms and statues, and outlandish policies like open borders.
These things just irritate most Americans and will lead to more failure for the Democrats and
another 4 years for Trump.
Lastly, you said nothing about Bernie's refusal to attack Hillary on character issues and
to counter her assertion that she NEVER changed her vote for money. Other examples: Bernie
refused to discuss Hillary's home email server, never mentioned Hillary's well known work to
squash investigations of Bill Clinton for abusing women (Jennifer Flowers), and didn't talk
about other scandals like Benghazi ("What difference does it make") and her glee at the
overthrow of Quadaffi ("we came, we saw, we kicked his ass").
And what of Trump? He was the ONLY republican populist in a field of 19. Do you find that
even a little bit strange?
mourning dove @57: Exactly! It's the Electoral College that decides elections, not
voters.
Do you think Hillary didn't know that? She refused to campaign in the three mid-western
states that would've won her the electoral college. Each of the states were won by Trump by a
thin margin.
Gosh and Blimey!
Comment #56 in a thread about an utterly corrupt political system and no-one has mentioned
the pro-"Israel" Lobby?
Words fail me. So I'll use someone else's...
From Xymphora March 21, 2019.
"Truth or Trope?" (Sailer):
"Of the top 50 political donors to either party at the federal level in 2018, 52 percent
were Jewish and 48 percent were gentile. Individuals who identify as Jewish are usually
estimated to make up perhaps 2.2 percent of the population.
Of the $675 million given by the top 50 donors, 66 percent of the money came from Jews and 34
percent from gentiles.
Of the $297 million that GOP candidates and conservative causes received from the top 50
donors, 56 percent was from Jewish individuals.
Of the $361 million Democratic politicians and liberal causes received, 76 percent came from
Jewish givers.
So it turns out that Rep. Omar and Gov. LePage appear to have been correct, at least about
the biggest 2018 donors. But you can also see why Pelosi wanted Omar to just shut up about
it: 76 percent is a lot."
Next up another false flag operation. The thing is, it would have be non-trivial and
involving the harming of people to jolt the narrative back to that favoring the deep state.
And taking off the proverbial media table, that Mueller found no collusion. Yes, election in
2016 no collusion, but Putin was behind the latest horrific false flag, "oh look, Trump is
not confronting Putin"...
Not even getting into the "treason", "putin's c*ckholster", "what's the time on Moscow,
troll!" crap we've been subjected to for 3 years, please enjoy this mashup: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjUvfZj-Fm0.
I've said before that she's a terrible strategist and she ran a terrible campaign and she's
terribly out of touch. I think she expected a cake walk and was relying on Trump being so
distasteful to voters that they'd have no other option.
I think Trump legitimately won the election and I don't believe for a second that she won the
popular vote. There were so many problems with the election but since they were on the losing
side, nobody cares. In 2012 I didn't know anyone else who was voting for Jill Stein, way too
many people were still in love with Obama. She got .4% of the vote. In 2016 most of the
people I knew were voting for Jill Stein, she drew a large crowd from DemExit, but they say
she got .4% of the vote. Total bullshit. There was also ballot stuffing and lots of other
problems, but it still wasn't enough.
I'm also convinced that Trump and Clinton colluded, but that they did so in order to get her
elected. I don't think he really wanted the job. But still, Hillary can do nationalist, and
the designs of the Empire would have proceeded either way.
Trump is a crook who takes money wherever he can get it, from subcontractors foolish enough
to work for him to bankers dumb enough to believe his financial statements. No doubt he has
helped Russian crooks sanitize their booty, but that is apparently too difficult for Mueller
to prove.
It is not good news that this troglodyte was not indicted, but it is good news that
Russia was not found guilty of electing him. Russiagate is an existential issue for the
"national security" establishment and just another propaganda offensive designed to justify
the largely useless & destructive activities of the Pentagon.
It is time to build
cooperation not continue the stupidity of US unilateralism and pursuit of global hegemony.
Trump and his team have to be removed from office. Democrats don't need Russiagate to do it.
The truth will work better.
"... RussiaGate was never a sustainable narrative. It was ludicrous from the beginning. And now that it has ended with a whimper there are a lot of angry, confused and scared people out there. ..."
"... And now his report is in. There are no new indictments. And by doing so he is saving his reputation for the future. And that is your biggest tell that Hillary's blackmail is now worthless. ..."
"... They don't fear her anymore because RussiaGate outed her as the architect. Anything else she has is irrelevant in the face of trying to oust a sitting president from power. ..."
"... The Deep State and The Davos Crowd stand revealed and reviled. If they don't do something dramatic then the anger from the rest of the country will also be palpable come election time. Justice is not done simply by saying, "No evidence of collusion." ..."
"... It's clear that RussiaGate is a failure of monumental proportions. Heads will have to roll. But who will be willing to fall on their sword at this point? Comey? No. McCabe? No. ..."
"... If there is no collusion, if RussiaGate is a scam, then all roads lead back to Hillary as the sacrificial lamb. ..."
"... If there is any hope of salvaging the center of this country for the Democrats, the ones that voted against Hillary in 2016, then there is no reason anymore not to indict Hillary as the architect of RussiaGate. ..."
"... And hope that is enough bread and circuses to distract from the real storm ahead of us. ..."
"... Hillary is the epitome of evil. ..."
"... I don't think Hillary is enough. I want McCabe, Comey, Mueller, Rosenstein, Loretta Lynch, Obama, Lois Lerner, Blasey Ford, Brennan, Clapper, Abedin, Weiner, Cheryl Mills, Susan Rice, Strzok, Page, Sally Yates, all of the phony FISA cohort brought to justice. ..."
"... Her DNC cabal cooked in less than 24 hours from the election defeat a conspiracy of Russian meddling and now, when more information became available, HCR is involved in two separate cases of foreign collusion, The Steele dossier, with Russo-Anglo meddling and another a Ukrainian one, which is now under investigation and the purpose was getting their help for becoming elected. ..."
"... Without a doubt the Russian collusion is the most serious one, because it deliberately sabotaged diplomatic relations with Russia and lead into to a new cold war era. This also raised substantially risks for a direct confrontation with catastrophic consequences. The damage from these treacherous acts is huge and the felony bears pretty much all hallmarks of treason. Se deliberately undermined her own nation´s interests and rather risked even a war simply, because she is a psychopath, who refused to concede the defeat in due elections and instead wanted to hide real reasons for her loss to any cost for everybody else, "because it was her turn to get elected". ..."
"... HIS NAME WAS SETH RICH ..."
"... It is clear that from the beginning, fraudulent FISA warrants, that it was a case of Obama's administration digging dirt on Trump believing that when Hillary wins there will be nobody to hold them responsible ..."
"... When Hillary lost there was only one way out for them to justify that kind of abuse, to find something, anything on Trump so they can say that they were right. Worse than Watergate by orders of magnitude, involving FBI, DOJ and WH itself. ..."
During most of the RussiaGate investigation against Donald Trump I kept saying that all
roads lead to Hillary Clinton.
Anyone with three working brain cells knew this, including
'Miss' Maddow, whose tears of disappointment are particularly delicious.
Robert Mueller's investigation was designed from the beginning to create something out of
nothing. It did this admirably.
It was so effective it paralyzed the country for more than two years, just like Europe has
been held hostage by Brexit. And all of this because, in the end, the elites I call The Davos
Crowd refused to accept that the people no longer believed their lies about the benefits of
their neoliberal, globalist agenda.
Hillary Clinton's ascension to the Presidency was to be their apotheosis along with the
Brexit vote. These were meant to lay to rest, once and for all time, the vaguely libertarian
notion that people should rule themselves and not be ruled by philosopher kings in some distant
land.
Hillary's failure was enormous. And the RussiaGate gambit to destroy Trump served a laundry
list of purposes to cover it:
Undermine his legitimacy before he even takes office.
Accuse him of what Hillary actually did: collude with Russians and Ukrainians to effect
the outcome of the election
Paralyze Trump on his foreign policy desires to scale back the Empire
Give aid and comfort to hurting progressives and radicalize them further undermining our
political system
Polarize the electorate over the false choice of Trump's guilt.
Paralyze the Dept. of Justice and Congress so that they would not uncover the massive
corruption in the intelligence agencies in the U.S. and the U.K.
Isolate Trump and take away every ally or potential ally he could have by turning them
against him through prosecutor overreach.
Hillary should have been thrown to the wolves after she failed. When you fail the people she
failed and cost them the money she cost them, you lose more than just your funding. What this
tells you is that Hillary has so much dirt on everyone involved, once this thing started
everyone went along with it lest she burn them down as well.
Burnin' Down da House
Hillary is the epitome of envy. Envy is the destructive sin of coveting someone else's life
so much they are obsessed with destroying it. It's the sin of Cain. She envies what Trump has,
the Presidency. And she was willing to tear it down to keep him from having it no matter how
much damage it would do. She's worse than the Joker from The Dark Knight.
Because while the Joker is unfathomable to someone with a conscience there's little stopping
us from excising him from the community completely., even though Batman refuses.
Hillary hates us for who we are and what we won't give her. And that animus drove her to
blackmail the world while putting on the face of its savior.
And that's what makes what comes next so obvious to me. RussiaGate was never a sustainable
narrative. It was ludicrous from the beginning. And now that it has ended with a whimper there
are a lot of angry, confused and scared people out there.
Mueller thought all he had to do was lean on corrupt people and threaten them with
everything. They would turn on Trump. He would resign in disgrace from the public outcry. It
didn't work. In the end Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen and Roger Stone all held their ground or
perjured themselves into the whole thing falling apart.
Andrew Weissman's resignation last month was your tell there was nothing. Mueller would
pursue this to the limit of his personal reputation and no further. Just like so many other
politicians.
Vote Your Pocketbook
With respect to Brexit I've been convinced that it would come down to reputations. Would the
British MP's vote against their own personal best interests to do the bidding of the EU? Would
Theresa May eventually realize her historical reputation would be destroyed if she caves to
Brussels and betrays Brexit in the end? Always bet on the fecklessness of politicians. They
will always act selfishly when put to the test. While leading RussiaGate, Mueller was always
headed here if he couldn't get someone to betray Trump.
And now his report is in. There are no new indictments. And by doing so he is saving his
reputation for the future. And that is your biggest tell that Hillary's blackmail is now
worthless.
They don't fear her anymore because RussiaGate outed her as the architect. Anything else she
has is irrelevant in the face of trying to oust a sitting president from power. The
progressives that were convinced of Trump's treason are bereft; their false hope stripped away
like standing in front of a sandblaster. They will be raw, angry and looking for blood after
they get over their denial.
Everyone else who was blackmailed into going along with this lunacy will begin cutting deals
to save their skins. The outrage over this will not end. Trump will be President when he stands
for re-election.
The Wolves Beckon
The Democrats do not have a chance against him as of right now. When he was caving on
everything back in December it looked like he was done. That there was enough meat on the
RussiaGate bones to make Nancy Pelosi brave. Then she backed off on impeachment talk.
Oops....
... ... ...
The Deep State and The Davos Crowd stand revealed and reviled. If they don't do something
dramatic then the anger from the rest of the country will also be palpable come election time.
Justice is not done simply by saying, "No evidence of collusion."
It's clear that RussiaGate is
a failure of monumental proportions. Heads will have to roll. But who will be willing to fall
on their sword at this point? Comey? No. McCabe? No. There is only one answer. And Obama's
people are still in place to protect him. I said last fall that " Hillary would
indict herself. " And I meant it. Eventually her blackmail and drive to burn it all down
led to this moment.
The circumstances are different than I expected back then, Trump didn't win the mid-terms.
But the end result was always the same. If there is no collusion, if RussiaGate is a scam, then
all roads lead back to Hillary as the sacrificial lamb.
Because the bigger project, the erection of a transnational superstate, is bigger than any
one person. Hillary is expendable. Lies are expensive to maintain. The truth is cheap to
defend. Think of the billions in opportunity costs associated with this. Once the costs rise
above the benefits, change happens fast. If there is any hope of salvaging the center of this
country for the Democrats, the ones that voted against Hillary in 2016, then there is no reason
anymore not to indict Hillary as the architect of RussiaGate.
We all know it's the truth. So, the cheapest way out of this mess for them is to give the
MAGApedes what they want, Hillary.
And hope that is enough bread and circuses to distract from the real storm ahead of us.
I don't think Hillary is enough. I want McCabe, Comey, Mueller, Rosenstein, Loretta Lynch,
Obama, Lois Lerner, Blasey Ford, Brennan, Clapper, Abedin, Weiner, Cheryl Mills, Susan Rice,
Strzok, Page, Sally Yates, all of the phony FISA cohort brought to justice. Think of the
taxpayer money wasted on this ridiculous Mueller investigation! The Roger Stone arrest was an
outrage. Who tipped off CNN? Who ordered it? What was with the attack dogs and machine guns?
And now we have Nadler trying to destroy anyone and everyone who ever did business with
Trump. All those 80 people who got letters from him asking for documents will now be
bankrupted by legal fees.
According to Scott Adams, one recipient is refusing to
cooperate -- he's saying "I can't afford for me and family to be destroyed." He put the request
for documents in a drawer. He has no money for lawyers.
This insanity and abuse of power has
got to stop. Meanwhile, nothing gets done in Congress. We're all looking at censorship,
tilted search engines, de-monetization, being beat up on campus for trying to express an
opinion, being accosted in a restaurant (or, VP Pence, from the stage ("Hamilton"), getting
sucker-punched for wearing a MAGA hat, having elections stolen through myriad Dem cheating
methods, and NOTHING is being done.
Her DNC cabal cooked in less than 24 hours from the election defeat a conspiracy of Russian
meddling and now, when more information became available, HCR is involved in two separate
cases of foreign collusion, The Steele dossier, with Russo-Anglo meddling and another a
Ukrainian one, which is now under investigation and the purpose was getting their help for
becoming elected.
Without a doubt the Russian collusion is the most serious one, because it deliberately
sabotaged diplomatic relations with Russia and lead into to a new cold war era. This also
raised substantially risks for a direct confrontation with catastrophic consequences. The
damage from these treacherous acts is huge and the felony bears pretty much all hallmarks of
treason. Se deliberately undermined her own nation´s interests and rather risked even a
war simply, because she is a psychopath, who refused to concede the defeat in due elections
and instead wanted to hide real reasons for her loss to any cost for everybody else, "because
it was her turn to get elected".
It is clear that from the beginning, fraudulent FISA warrants, that it was a case of
Obama's administration digging dirt on Trump believing that when Hillary wins there will be
nobody to hold them responsible.
When Hillary lost there was only one way out for them to
justify that kind of abuse, to find something, anything on Trump so they can say that they
were right. Worse than Watergate by orders of magnitude, involving FBI, DOJ and WH itself.
"The Special Counsel's investigation did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone
associated with it conspired or coordinated with Russia in its efforts to influence the 2016
U.S. presidential election. As the report states: `[T]he investigation did not establish that
members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its
election interference activities.' |"
From page one of the Barr letter to the Democratic and Republican leaders of the House and
Senate Judiciary Committees.
https://www.scribd.com/document/402973432/AG-March-24-2019-Letter-to-House-and-Senate-Judiciary-Committees#from_embed
Some call this merely the "end of the beginning." Further revelations will be emerging,
including from Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz. " J ustice Department
Inspector General Michael Horowitz confirmed Thursday his office is still investigating
possible abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act by the DOJ and FBI in their
investigation into President Trump and associates of his 2016 campaign," reported the
Washington Examiner this week.
However, AG Barr's letter retells the tale of Russian Interference in our elections,
according to Mr. Mueller and his team's investigation and indictments. So, the anti-Trump
camp will undoubtedly continue to question the 2016 election results, and blame the defeat of
HRC on the "Reds." One could wish that DOJ IG Horowitz could investigate and sanction British
Intelligence for its use of official and non-official officials in starting this debacle.
"... Sites that use Disqus that allow shadow banning or steal and sell your information are just plain evil. ..."
"... The marketing of Russiagate™ was no act of "stupidity". News outlets didn't erroneously "swallow" anything. They acted as agents of the Globalist American Establishment/Deep State which was attempting to shake an interloper (Trump) off its back or, at the very least, to completely tie his hands in policy-making terms. Too bad that same Deep State has created a "Cadillac of (P)residential prerogative over the years which Trump has been driving right over their little blood-stained hands....as an added benefit, this new brand of hyper-partisan "Yellow Journalism" sold papers...to some ..."
"... How many fake headlines were created? How many panels of propaganda spreading "experts" were assembled? How many drooling sycophant hosts made this their everyday routine to stir the 'divide the nation' pot as they swore to God and the American People that the President was an asset of a foreign provocateur subverting the Republic? ..."
One thing left out is the ability of readers to call BS on a story i.e. a robust comment section for debates. In other words,
the Media's ability to simply ignore criticism enabled them to go off into their own Russiagate universe. Places that still allow
competing narratives and diverse opinions, like ZeroHedge, are the main places I read anymore. If a link leads to WaPo or NYT,
I bail instantly.
Sites that use Disqus that allow shadow banning or steal and sell your information are just plain evil.
Won't even go there.
Bananaamerican , 4 hours ago (Edited)
One thing I massively disagree with Taibbi on: "news outlets once again 'swallowed' a massive disinformation campaign, only
this error is many orders of magnitude more stupid than any in the recent past, WMD included"
The marketing of Russiagate™ was no act of "stupidity". News outlets didn't erroneously "swallow" anything.
They acted as agents of the Globalist American Establishment/Deep State which was attempting to shake an interloper (Trump) off
its back or, at the very least, to completely tie his hands in policy-making terms. Too bad that same Deep State has created a
"Cadillac of (P)residential prerogative over the years which Trump has been driving right over their little blood-stained hands....as
an added benefit, this new brand of hyper-partisan "Yellow Journalism" sold papers...to some
4 hours ago
(Edited)
Spot on. There was no misunderstanding. Everyone in The Swamp and MSM knew and accepted their assigned roles. That's why their
was nary a retraction. Retractions played no part in their goals.
Nael, 1 hour ago
Agreed. They were totally complicit. How many fake headlines were created? How many panels of propaganda spreading "experts" were
assembled? How many drooling sycophant hosts made this their everyday routine to stir the 'divide the nation' pot as they swore
to God and the American People that the President was an asset of a foreign provocateur subverting the Republic?
So Brennan conspired with MI6 and Clinton wing of Dems to bring down Trump. Trump was falsely
accused of colliding with Russia while he openly collided with Israel. Of course colliding with
Israel is not a crime in the USA as political establishment assumes that the interests of both
countries are identical. This is pretty far from being true. Israel plays its own and sometime
harmful for the USA game in the Middle East. And Israel agents of influence like Kushner, Pompeo,
Haley and Bolton really infiltrated the Trump administration, unlike mythical Russian.
Now the question is: was Brennan acted in the interests of MI6 only, or only of Mossad?
Brennan's pipe dream was all but obliterated on Friday when Mueller submitted his
report to the Justice Department. Officials at the agency said that no more
indictments will be submitted in the 22-month old investigation. There are also no
indictments that have been issued under seal. The last indictment in the investigation was
handed down on Jan. 24 against Trump confidant Roger
Stone .
Of the three dozen indictments or guilty pleas obtained in the investigation, none have
involved charges of conspiracy between Trump associates and Russian government officials.
It does remain unclear whether Mueller recommended Trump for impeachment proceedings, or
whether he found non-criminal evidence of links between Trumpworld and the Kremlin. Attorney
General William Barr said in a letter Friday afternoon that he will likely provide a summary of
the investigation to the Houe and Senate Judiciary Committees as soon as this weekend.
"... Once the fingerprints and bread crumbs led away from Russia to Israel, and Netanyahoo and his oligarch friends, Mueller stopped looking further as the writing on the wall became clear. Mueller stopped following the money the moment he realized it was all leading back to Israel. ..."
"... Manafort was the fall guy for Trump. ..."
"... This investgation was a convenient sham to cover for the real collusion and Trump was the Zionist one percenters choice and nothing was going to foil that and many of you here fell for the entire charade hook, line and sinker believing Trump was a poor victim all along. ..."
Max Blumenthal has it right on, but the proxy war in Syria was also about stopping a gas
pipeline from Iran through Syria as a shortcut to EU market to compete with the Levant
Israeli gas route.
I disagree with any analogy drawn between the Golan Heights and Crimea for various
reasons. It's wrong and counterproductive to draw such analogy. If anything sanctions should
have been imposed on Israel for usurping and settling that land which is a war crime under
the Geneva Conventions.
Crimea went back and forth changing hands throughout history. Finally when Catherine the
Great defeated the Ottoman Empire, Crimea was traded in a treaty to Russia. So technically,
legally it was always Russian territory and merely went back to its lawful owner with the
present inhabitants of Crimea totally in agreement.
The Golan Heights were throughout history mostly under Arab control and later also part of
the Ottoman Empire until it was under French control and then became part of Syria, so Israel
has no legitimate claim whatsoever and sanctions should have been imposed on Israel for its
illegal occupation of the Golan Heights and not on Russia for taking back what was
legitimately Russian territory for centuries minus the brief blunder by the Soviet Presidium
of 1954 which transfer decree violated the Russian Constitution of 1937. So in essence it was
an illegal transfer and now that error has been rectified, therefore sanctions on Russia are
illegal.
◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇
The nothing-burger Mueller Report is done and arrived at the Justice Dept. What will be
missing from the report is how Trump colluded with Zionists to become President. Zionist
oligarchs funded Trump at various stages of his campaign and were involved in influencing
American public perception funding Cambridge Analytica and other cyber outfits.
Facebook's Zionist owner also helped in the operation to get Trump elected.
Once the fingerprints and bread crumbs led away from Russia to Israel, and Netanyahoo and
his oligarch friends, Mueller stopped looking further as the writing on the wall became
clear. Mueller stopped following the money the moment he realized it was all leading back to
Israel.
Manafort was the fall guy for Trump. Originally, I thought Flynn was the fall guy and in a
way he was because he quit and lied for him (I don't believe he was fired) to save Trump's
neck at the time. Trump was never in jeopardy because his Zionist masters ensured there were
others around him they knew were compromised and would end up having to take the fall for
their Chosen one.
This investgation was a convenient sham to cover for the real collusion and Trump was the
Zionist one percenters choice and nothing was going to foil that and many of you here fell for
the entire charade hook, line and sinker believing Trump was a poor victim all along.
"... No one says Trump is a saint. But the deep state wanted to cover its tracks. Dems and deep state hated that their preferred candidate didn't win. They ended up achieving their goal of delegitimizing 2016 and distracting the country for 2 years. ..."
"... They tried to delegitimize the 2016 Election but failed to do so. ..."
The Mueller investigation is complete and this is a simple fact that will never go away: not one single American was charged,
indicted or convicted for conspiring with Russia to influence the 2016 election - not even a low-level volunteer. The number is zero.
Compare what cable hosts (let's leave them unnamed) & Democratic operatives spent two years claiming this would lead to - the
imprisonment of Don, Jr., Jared, even Trump on conspiracy-with-Russia charges - to what it actually produced. A huge media reckoning
is owed.
Don't even try to pretend the point of the Mueller investigation from the start wasn't to obtain prosecutions of Americans guilty
of conspiring with Russia to influence the outcome of the election or that Putin controlled Trump through blackmail. Nobody will
believe your denials.
Are we now ready to rid ourselves of the thrilling espionage fantasy that Trump is controlled by Putin and the Kremlin using blackmail?
There's no way Robert Mueller would have gone 18 months without telling anyone about this if it were true, right? How could that
be justified?
Perhaps now we can focus on the actually consequential actions the Trump administration is taking and finally move past the deranged
conspiracy theories that have drowned US discourse for 2+ years. A side benefit will be not ratcheting up tension between 2 nuclear-armed
powers.
Giving up these exciting conspiracy theories about international blackmail & convening panels to decipher all the genius hidden
maneuvers of Mueller will be bad for cable ratings, book sales & the Patreon accounts of online charlatans. But it'll be very healthy
in all other ways.
The desperate attempts to salvage something from this debacle by the Mueller dead-enders are just sad. Yes, the public hasn't
read the Mueller report. But we *know* he ended his investigation without indicting a single American for conspiring with Russia
to influence the election
Trump, Jr. testified for hours and hours before Congress, including about the Trump Tower meeting. If he lied there, or to Mueller,
why didn't Mueller indict him for perjury, lying to Congress or obstruction? Same questions for Kushner. Stop embarrassing yourselves.
If Mueller found evidence that Putin controls Trump & forces him to act against US interests & in favor of Russia - not just with
a pee-pee tape but with financial blackmail - what could possibly justify keeping that a secret through the end of the investigation?
It's ludicrous.
US discourse has been drowned for 2+ years with conspiratorial, unhinged, but highly inflammatory and unhinged idiocy - playing
games with two nuclear-armed powers because of anger over the 2016 election. It's time to stop. Mueller ended his work. We see the
public indictments.
So many in the media devoted endless airtime & print & pixels misleading people to believe Mueller was coming to arrest & prosecute
Trump, Jr, Kushner & so many others for conspiring with Russia over the election & obstruction. None of that happened. You can't
pretend it away.
They was never the point. No one says Trump is a saint. But the deep state wanted to cover its tracks. Dems and deep state hated
that their preferred candidate didn't win. They ended up achieving their goal of delegitimizing 2016 and distracting the country
for 2 years.
Can you trust the BBC news? How many journalists are working for the security services?
Notable quotes:
"... Can you trust the BBC news? How many journalists are working for the security services? ..."
"... "Most tabloid newspapers - or even newspapers in general - are playthings of MI5." ..."
"... Bloch and Fitzgerald, in their examination of covert UK warfare, report the editor of "one of Britain's most distinguished journals" as believing that more than half its foreign correspondents were on the MI6 payroll. ..."
"... The heart of the secret state they identified as the security services, the cabinet office and upper echelons of the Home and Commonwealth Offices, the armed forces and Ministry of Defence, the nuclear power industry and its satellite ministries together a network of senior civil servants. ..."
"... As "satellites" of the secret state, their list included "agents of influence in the media, ranging from actual agents of the security services, conduits of official leaks, to senior journalists merely lusting after official praise and, perhaps, a knighthood at the end of their career". ..."
"... Stephen Dorril, in his seminal history of MI6, reports that Orwell attended a meeting in Paris of resistance fighters on behalf of David Astor, his editor at the Observer and leader of the intelligence service's unit liasing with the French resistance. ..."
Can you trust the BBC news? How many journalists are working for the security services? The following extracts are from
an article at the excellent Medialens
And so to Nottingham University (on Sunday 26 February) for a well-attended conference...
I focus in my talk on the links between journalists and the intelligence services: While it might be difficult to identify precisely
the impact of the spooks (variously represented in the press as "intelligence", "security", "Whitehall" or "Home Office" sources)
on mainstream politics and media, from the limited evidence it looks to be enormous.
As Roy Greenslade, media specialist at the Telegraph (formerly the Guardian), commented:
"Most tabloid newspapers - or even newspapers in general - are playthings of MI5."
Bloch and Fitzgerald, in their examination of covert UK warfare, report the editor of "one of Britain's most distinguished
journals" as believing that more than half its foreign correspondents were on the MI6 payroll.
And in 1991, Richard Norton-Taylor revealed in the Guardian that 500 prominent Britons paid by the CIA and the now defunct
Bank of Commerce and Credit International, included 90 journalists.
In their analysis of the contemporary secret state, Dorril and Ramsay gave the media a crucial role. The heart of the secret
state they identified as the security services, the cabinet office and upper echelons of the Home and Commonwealth Offices, the armed
forces and Ministry of Defence, the nuclear power industry and its satellite ministries together a network of senior civil servants.
As "satellites" of the secret state, their list included "agents of influence in the media, ranging from actual agents of
the security services, conduits of official leaks, to senior journalists merely lusting after official praise and, perhaps, a knighthood
at the end of their career".
Phillip Knightley, author of a seminal history of the intelligence services, has even claimed that at least one intelligence agent
is working on every Fleet Street newspaper.
A brief history
Going as far back as 1945, George Orwell no less became a war correspondent for the Observer - probably as a
cover for intelligence work. Significantly most of the men he met in Paris on his assignment, Freddie Ayer, Malcolm Muggeridge, Ernest
Hemingway were either working for the intelligence services or had close links to them.
Stephen Dorril, in his seminal history of MI6, reports that Orwell attended a meeting in Paris of resistance fighters on behalf
of David Astor, his editor at the Observer and leader of the intelligence service's unit liasing with the French resistance.
The release of Public Record Office documents in 1995 about some of the operations of the MI6-financed propaganda unit, the
Information Research Department of the Foreign Office, threw light on this secret body - which even Orwell aided
by sending them a list of "crypto-communists". Set up by the Labour government in 1948, it "ran" dozens of Fleet Street journalists
and a vast array of news agencies across the globe until it was closed down by Foreign Secretary David Owen in 1977.
According to John Pilger in the anti-colonial struggles in Kenya, Malaya and Cyprus, IRD was so successful that the journalism
served up as a record of those episodes was a cocktail of the distorted and false in which the real aims and often atrocious behaviour
of the British intelligence agencies was hidden.
And spy novelist John le Carré, who worked for MI6 between 1960 and 1964, has made the amazing statement that the British secret
service then controlled large parts of the press – just as they may do today.
In 1975, following Senate hearings on the CIA, the reports of the Senate's Church Committee and the House of Representatives'
Pike Committee highlighted the extent of agency recruitment of both British and US journalists.
And sources revealed that half the foreign staff of a British daily were on the MI6 payroll.
David Leigh, in The Wilson Plot, his seminal study of the way in which the secret service smeared through the mainstream media
and destabilised the Government of Harold Wilson before his sudden resignation in 1976, quotes an MI5 officer: "We have somebody
in every office in Fleet Street"
Leaker King
And the most famous whistleblower of all, Peter (Spycatcher) Wright, revealed that MI5 had agents in newspapers and publishing
companies whose main role was to warn them of any forthcoming "embarrassing publications".
Wright also disclosed that the Daily Mirror tycoon, Cecil King, "was a longstanding agent of ours" who "made it clear
he would publish anything MI5 might care to leak in his direction".
Selective details about Wilson and his secretary, Marcia Falkender, were leaked by the intelligence services to sympathetic Fleet
Street journalists. Wright comments: "No wonder Wilson was later to claim that he was the victim of a plot". King was also closely
involved in a scheme in 1968 to oust Prime Minister Harold Wilson and replace him with a coalition headed by Lord Mountbatten.
Hugh Cudlipp, editorial director of the Mirror from 1952 to 1974, was also closely linked to intelligence, according
to Chris Horrie, in his recently published history of the newspaper.
David Walker, the Mirror's foreign correspondent in the 1950s, was named as an MI6 agent following a security
scandal while another Mirror journalist, Stanley Bonnet, admitted working for MI5 in the 1980s investigating the Campaign for Nuclear
Disarmament.
Maxwell and Mossad
According to Stephen Dorril, intelligence gathering during the miners' strike of 1984-85 was helped by the fact that during the
1970s MI5's F Branch had made a special effort to recruit industrial correspondents – with great success.
In 1991, just before his mysterious death, Mirror proprietor Robert Maxwell was accused by the US investigative
journalist Seymour Hersh of acting for Mossad, the Israeli secret service, though Dorril suggests his links with MI6
were equally as strong.
Following the resignation from the Guardian of Richard Gott, its literary editor in December 1994 in the wake of allegations that
he was a paid agent of the KGB, the role of journalists as spies suddenly came under the media spotlight – and many of the leaks
were fascinating.
For instance, according to The Times editorial of 16 December 1994: "Many British journalists benefited from CIA or MI6 largesse
during the Cold War."
The intimate links between journalists and the secret services were highlighted in the autobiography of the eminent newscaster
Sandy Gall. He reports without any qualms how, after returning from one of his reporting assignments to Afghanistan, he was asked
to lunch by the head of MI6. "It was very informal, the cook was off so we had cold meat and salad with plenty of wine. He wanted
to hear what I had to say about the war in Afghanistan. I was flattered, of course, and anxious to pass on what I could in terms
of first-hand knowledge."
And in January 2001, the renegade MI6 officer, Richard Tomlinson, claimed Dominic Lawson, the editor of the Sunday Telegraph
and son of the former Tory chancellor, Nigel Lawson, provided journalistic cover for an MI6 officer on a mission to the Baltic to
handle and debrief a young Russian diplomat who was spying for Britain.
Lawson strongly denied the allegations.
Similarly in the reporting of Northern Ireland, there have been longstanding concerns over security service disinformation. Susan
McKay, Northern editor of the Dublin-based Sunday Tribune, has criticised the reckless reporting of material from "dodgy security
services". She told a conference in Belfast in January 2003 organised by the National Union of Journalists and the Northern Ireland
Human Rights Commission: "We need to be suspicious when people are so ready to provide information and that we are, in fact, not
being used." (www.nuj.org.uk/inner.php?docid=635)
Growing power of secret state
Thus from this evidence alone it is clear there has been a long history of links between hacks and spooks in both the UK and US.
But as the secret state grows in power, through massive resourcing, through a whole raft of legislation – such as the Official
Secrets Act, the anti-terrorism legislation, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act and so on – and as intelligence moves into
the heart of Blair's ruling clique so these links are even more significant.
Since September 11 all of Fleet Street has been awash in warnings by anonymous intelligence sources of terrorist threats.
According to former Labour minister Michael Meacher, much of this disinformation was spread via sympathetic journalists by
the Rockingham cell within the MoD.
A parallel exercise, through the office of Special Plans, was set up by Donald Rumsfeld in the US. Thus there have been constant
attempts to scare people – and justify still greater powers for the national security apparatus.
Similarly the disinformation about Iraq's WMD was spread by dodgy intelligence sources via gullible journalists.
Thus, to take just one example, Michael Evans, The Times defence correspondent, reported on 29 November 2002: "Saddam Hussein
has ordered hundred of his officials to conceal weapons of mass destruction components in their homes to evade the prying eyes of
the United Nations inspectors." The source of these "revelations" was said to be "intelligence picked up from within Iraq". Early
in 2004, as the battle for control of Iraq continued with mounting casualties on both sides, it was revealed that many of the lies
about Saddam Hussein's supposed WMD had been fed to sympathetic journalists in the US, Britain and Australia by the exile group,
the Iraqi National Congress.
Sexed up – and missed out
During the controversy that erupted following the end of the "war" and the death of the arms inspector Dr David Kelly (and the
ensuing Hutton inquiry) the spotlight fell on BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan and the claim by one of his sources that the government
(in collusion with the intelligence services) had "sexed up" a dossier justifying an attack on Iraq.
The Hutton inquiry, its every twist and turn massively covered in the mainstream media, was the archetypal media spectacle that
drew attention from the real issue: why did the Bush and Blair governments invade Iraq in the face of massive global opposition?
But those facts will be forever secret.
Significantly, too, the broader and more significant issue of mainstream journalists' links with the intelligence services was
ignored by the inquiry.
Significantly, on 26 May 2004, the New York Times carried a 1,200-word editorial admitting it had been duped in its coverage of
WMD in the lead-up to the invasion by dubious Iraqi defectors, informants and exiles (though it failed to lay any blame on the US
President: see Greenslade 2004). Chief among The Times' dodgy informants was Ahmad Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress
and Pentagon favourite before his Baghdad house was raided by US forces on 20 May.
Then, in the Observer of 30 May 2004, David Rose admitted he had been the victim of a "calculated set-up" devised to foster the
propaganda case for war. "In the 18 months before the invasion of March 2003, I dealt regularly with Chalabi and the INC and published
stories based on interviews with men they said were defectors from Saddam's regime." And he concluded: "The information fog is thicker
than in any previous war, as I know now from bitter personal experience. To any journalist being offered apparently sensational disclosures,
especially from an anonymous intelligence source, I offer two words of advice: caveat emptor."
Let's not forget no British newspaper has followed the example of the NYT and apologised for being so easily duped by the intelligence
services in the run up to the illegal invasion of Iraq.
~
Richard Keeble's publications include Secret State, Silent Press: New Militarism, the Gulf and the Modern Image of Warfare (John
Libbey 1997) and The Newspapers Handbook (Routledge, fourth edition, 2005). He is also the editor of Ethical Space: The International
Journal of Communication Ethics. Richard is also a member of the War and Media Network.
"... General Electric, the world's largest military contractor, still controls the message over at the so-called "liberal" MSNBC. MSNBC's other owner is Comcast, the right wing media conglomerate that controls the radio waves in every major American Market. Over at CNN, Mossad Asset Wolf Blitzer, who rose from being an obscure little correspondent for an Israeli Newspaper to being CNN's Chief "Pentagon Correspondent" and then was elevated to supreme anchorman nearly as quickly, ensures that the pro-Israeli Message is always in the forefront, even as the Israeli's commit one murderous act after another upon helpless Palestinian Women and Children. ..."
"... Every single "terrorism expert", General or former Government Official that is brought out to discuss the next great war is connected to a military contractor that stands to benefit from that war. Not surprisingly, the military option is the only option discussed and we are assured that, if only we do this or bomb that, then it will all be over and we can bring our kids home to a big victory parade. I'm 63 and it has never happened in my lifetime--with the exception of the phony parade that Bush Senior put on after his murderous little "First Gulf War". ..."
"... The Generals in the Pentagon always want war. It is how they make rank. All of those young kids that just graduated from our various academies know that war experience is the only thing that will get them the advancement that they seek in the career that they have chosen. They are champing at the bit for more war. ..."
"... the same PR campaign that started with Bush and Cheney continues-the exact same campaign. Obviously, they have to come back at the apple with variations, but any notion that the "media will get it someday" is willfully ignorant of the obvious fact that there is an agenda, and that agenda just won't stop until it's achieved-or revolution supplants the influence of these dark forces. ..."
"... The US media are indeed working overtime to get this war happening ..."
"... In media universe there is no alternative to endless war and an endless stream of hyped reasons for new killing. ..."
"... The media machine is a wholly owned subsidiary of the United States of Corporations. ..."
"... Oh, the greatest propaganda arm the US government has right now, bar none, is the American media. It's disgraceful. we no longer have journalists speaking truth to power in my country, we have people practicing stenography, straight from the State Department to your favorite media outlet. ..."
"... But all that research from MIT, from the UN, and others, has been buried by the American media, and every single story on Syria and Assad that is written still refers to "Assad gassing his own people". It's true, it's despicable, and it's just one example of how our media lies and distorts and misrepresents the news every day. ..."
The American Public has gotten exactly what it deserved. They have been dumbed-down in our poor-by-intention school systems. The
moronic nonsense that passes for news in this country gets more sensational with each passing day. Over on Fox, they are making
the claim that ISIS fighters are bringing Ebola over the Mexican Border, which prompted a reply by the Mexican Embassy that won't
be reported on Fox.
We continue to hear and it was even reported in this very fine article by Ms. Benjamin that the American
People now support this new war. Really? I'm sorry, but I haven't seen that support anywhere but on the news and I just don't
believe it any more.
There is also the little problem of infiltration into key media slots by paid CIA Assets (Scarborough and brainless Mika are
two of these double dippers). Others are intermarried. Right-wing Neocon War Criminal Dan Senor is married to "respected" newsperson
Campbell Brown who is now involved in privatizing our school system. Victoria Nuland, the slimey State Department Official who
was overheard appointing the members of the future Ukrainian Government prior to the Maidan Coup is married to another Neo-Con--Larry
Kagan. Even sweet little Andrea Mitchell is actually Mrs. Alan Greenspan.
General Electric, the world's largest military contractor, still controls the message over at the so-called "liberal" MSNBC.
MSNBC's other owner is Comcast, the right wing media conglomerate that controls the radio waves in every major American Market.
Over at CNN, Mossad Asset Wolf Blitzer, who rose from being an obscure little correspondent for an Israeli Newspaper to being
CNN's Chief "Pentagon Correspondent" and then was elevated to supreme anchorman nearly as quickly, ensures that the pro-Israeli
Message is always in the forefront, even as the Israeli's commit one murderous act after another upon helpless Palestinian Women
and Children.
Every single "terrorism expert", General or former Government Official that is brought out to discuss the next great war is
connected to a military contractor that stands to benefit from that war. Not surprisingly, the military option is the only option
discussed and we are assured that, if only we do this or bomb that, then it will all be over and we can bring our kids home to
a big victory parade. I'm 63 and it has never happened in my lifetime--with the exception of the phony parade that Bush Senior
put on after his murderous little "First Gulf War".
Yesterday there was a coordinated action by all of the networks, which was clearly designed to support the idea that the generals
want Obama to act and he just won't. The not-so-subtle message was that the generals were right and that the President's "inaction"
was somehow out of line-since, after all, the generals have recommended more war. It was as if these people don't remember that
the President, sleazy War Criminal that he is, is still the Commander in Chief.
The Generals in the Pentagon always want war. It is how they make rank. All of those young kids that just graduated from our
various academies know that war experience is the only thing that will get them the advancement that they seek in the career that
they have chosen. They are champing at the bit for more war.
Finally, this Sunday every NFL Game will begin with some Patriotic "Honor America" Display, which will include a missing man
flyover, flags and fireworks, plenty of uniforms, wounded Vets and soon-to-be-wounded Vets. A giant American Flag will, once again,
cover the fields and hundreds of stupid young kids will rush down to their "Military Career Center" right after the game. These
are the ones that I pity most.
Let's be frank: powerful interests want war and subsequent puppet regimes in the half dozen nations that the neo-cons have been
eyeing (Iraq, Iran, Libya, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan). These interests surely include industries like banking, arms and oil-all of
whom make a killing on any war, and would stand to do well with friendly governments who could finance more arms purchases and
will never nationalize the oil.
So, the same PR campaign that started with Bush and Cheney continues-the exact same campaign. Obviously, they have to come
back at the apple with variations, but any notion that the "media will get it someday" is willfully ignorant of the obvious fact
that there is an agenda, and that agenda just won't stop until it's achieved-or revolution supplants the influence of these dark
forces.
IanB52, 10 October 2014 6:57pm
The US media are indeed working overtime to get this war happening. When I'm down at the gym they always have CNN on (I can
only imagine what FOX is like) which is a pretty much dyed in the wool yellow jingoist station at this point. With all the segments
they dedicate to ISIS, a new war, the "imminent" terrorist threat, they seem to favor talking heads who support a full ground
war and I have never, not once, heard anyone even speak about the mere possibility of peace. Not ever.
In media universe there
is no alternative to endless war and an endless stream of hyped reasons for new killing.
I'd imagine that these media companies have a lot stock in and a cozy relationship with the defense contractors.
Damiano Iocovozzi, 10 October 2014 7:04pm
The media machine is a wholly owned subsidiary of the United States of Corporations. The media doesn't report on anything but
relies on repeating manufactured crises, creating manufactured consent & discussing manufactured solutions. Follow the oil, the
pipelines & the money. Both R's & D's are left & right cheeks of the same buttock. Thanks to Citizens United & even Hobby Lobby,
a compliant Supreme Court, also owned by United States of Corporations, it's a done deal.
Oh, the greatest propaganda arm the US government has right now, bar none, is the American media. It's disgraceful. we no longer
have journalists speaking truth to power in my country, we have people practicing stenography, straight from the State Department
to your favorite media outlet.
Let me give you one clear example. A year ago Barack Obama came very close to bombing Syria to
kingdom come, the justification used was "Assad gassed his own people", referring to a sarin gas attack near Damascus. Well, it
turns out that Assad did not initiate that attack, discovered by research from many sources including the prestigious MIT, it
was a false flag attack planned by Turkey and carried out by some of Obama's own "moderate rebels".
But all that research from
MIT, from the UN, and others, has been buried by the American media, and every single story on Syria and Assad that is written
still refers to "Assad gassing his own people". It's true, it's despicable, and it's just one example of how our media lies and
distorts and misrepresents the news every day.
"... It appears the FBI, CIA, and NSA have great difficulty in differentiating between Russians and Democrats posing as Russians. ..."
"... Maybe the VIPS should look into the murder of Seth Rich, the DNC staffer who had the security clearance required to access the DNC servers, and who was murdered in the same week as the emails were taken. In particular, they should ask why the police were told to stand down and close the murder case without further investigation. ..."
"... What a brilliant article, so logical, methodical & a forensic, scientific breakdown of the phony Russiagate project? And there's no doubt, this was a co-ordinated, determined Intelligence project to reverse the results of the 2016 Election by initiating a soft coup or Regime change op on a elected Leader, a very American Coup, something the American Intelligence Agencies specialise in, everywhere else, on a Global scale, too get Trump impeached & removed from the Whitehouse? ..."
"... Right. Since its purpose is to destroy Trump politically, the investigation should go on as long as Trump is in office. Alternatively, if at this point Trump has completely sold out, that would be another reason to stop the investigation. ..."
"... Nancy Pelosi's announcement two days ago that the Democrats will not seek impeachment for Trump suggests the emptiness of the Mueller investigation on the specific "collusion" issue. ..."
"... We know and Assange has confirmed Seth Rich, assassinated in D.C. for his deed, downloaded the emails and most likely passed them on to former British ambassador Craig Murray in a D.C. park for transport to Wikileaks. ..."
"... This so-called "Russiagate" narrative is an illustration of our "freedom of the press" failure in the US due to groupthink and self censorship. He who pays the piper is apt to call the tune. ..."
"... Barr, Sessions, every congressmen all the corporate MSM war profiteer mouth pieces. They all know that "Russia hacked the DNC" and "Russia meddled" is fabricated garbage. They don't care, because their chosen war beast corporate candidate couldn't beat Donald goofball Trump. So it has to be shown that the war beast only lost because of nefarious reasons. Because they're gonna run another war beast cut from the same cloth as Hillary in 2020. ..."
"... Mar 4, 2019 Tom Fitton: President Trump a 'Crime Victim' by Illegal Deep State DOJ & FBI Abuses: https://youtu.be/ixWMorWAC7c ..."
"... Trump is a willing player in this game. The anti-Russian Crusade was, quite simply, a stunningly reckless, short-sighted effort to overturn the 2016 election, removing Trump to install Hillary Clinton in office. ..."
"... Much ado about nothing. All the talk and chatter and media airplay about "Russian meddling" in the 2016 election only tells me that these liars think the American public is that stupid. ..."
"... Andrew Thomas I'm afraid that huge amounts of our History post 1947 is organized and propagandized disinformation. There is an incredible page that John Simpkin has organized over the years that specifically addresses individuals, click on a name and read about them. https://spartacus-educational.com/USAdisinformation.htm ..."
"... It's pretty astonishing that Mueller was more interested in Roger Stone and Jerome Corsi as credible sources about Wikileaks and the DNC release than Craig Murray! ..."
"... Yes, he has done his job. And his job was to bring his royal Orangeness to heel, and to make sure that detente and co-operation with Russia remained impossible. The forever war continues. Mission Accomplished. ..."
I could not suffer through reading the whole article. This is mainly because I have
watched the news daily about Mueller's Investigation and I sincerely believe that Mueller is
Champion of the Democrats who are trying to depose President Donald Trump at any cost.
For what Mueller found any decent lawyer with a Degree and a few years of experience could
have found what Mueller found for far far less money. Mueller only found common crimes AND NO
COLLUSION BETWEEN PRESIDENT TRUMP AND PUTIN!
The Mueller Investigation should be given to an honest broker to review, and Mueller
should be paid only what it would cost to produce the commonplace crimes Mueller, The
Democrats, and CNN has tried to convince the people that indeed Trump COLLUDED with RUSSIA.
Mueller is, a BIG NOTHING BURGER and THE DEMOCRATS AND CNN ARE MUELLER'S SINGING CANARYS!
Mueller should be jailed.
Bogdan Miller , March 15, 2019 at 11:04 am
This article explains why the Mueller Report is already highly suspect. For another thing,
we know that since before 2016, Democrats have been studying Russian Internet and hacking
tactics, and posing as Russian Bots/Trolls on Facebook and other media outlets, all in an
effort to harm President Trump.
It appears the FBI, CIA, and NSA have great difficulty in differentiating between Russians
and Democrats posing as Russians.
B.J.M. Former Intelligence Analyst and Humint Collector
vinnieoh , March 15, 2019 at 8:17 am
Moving on: the US House yesterday voted UNANIMOUSLY (remember that word, so foreign these
days to US governance?) to "urge" the new AG to release the complete Mueller report.
A
non-binding resolution, but you would think that the Democrats can't see the diesel
locomotive bearing down on their clown car, about to smash it to pieces. The new AG in turn
says he will summarize the report and that is what we will see, not the entire report. And
taxation without representation takes a new twist.
... ... ...
Raymond Comeau , March 15, 2019 at 12:38 pm
What else would you expect from two Political Parties who are really branches of the ONE
Party which Represents DEEP STATE".
DWS , March 15, 2019 at 5:58 am
Maybe the VIPS should look into the murder of Seth Rich, the DNC staffer who had the
security clearance required to access the DNC servers, and who was murdered in the same week
as the emails were taken. In particular, they should ask why the police were told to stand
down and close the murder case without further investigation.
Raymond Comeau , March 15, 2019 at 12:47 pm
EXACTLY! But, Deep State will not allow that. And, it would ruin the USA' plan to continue
to invade more sovereign countries and steal their resources such as oil and Minerals. The
people of the USA must be Ostriches or are so terrified that they accept anything their
Criminal Governments tell them.
Eventually, the chickens will come home to roost and perhaps the USA voters will ROAST
when the crimes of the USA sink the whole country. It is time for a few Brave Men and Women
to find their backbones and throw out the warmongers and their leading Oligarchs!
KiwiAntz , March 14, 2019 at 6:44 pm
What a brilliant article, so logical, methodical & a forensic, scientific breakdown of
the phony Russiagate project? And there's no doubt, this was a co-ordinated, determined
Intelligence project to reverse the results of the 2016 Election by initiating a soft coup or
Regime change op on a elected Leader, a very American Coup, something the American
Intelligence Agencies specialise in, everywhere else, on a Global scale, too get Trump
impeached & removed from the Whitehouse?
If you can't get him out via a Election, try
& try again, like Maduro in Venezuela, to forcibly remove the targeted person by setting
him up with fake, false accusations & fabricated evidence? How very predictable & how
very American of Mueller & the Democratic Party. Absolute American Corruption, corrupts
absolutely?
Brian Murphy , March 15, 2019 at 10:33 am
Right. Since its purpose is to destroy Trump politically, the investigation should go on
as long as Trump is in office. Alternatively, if at this point Trump has completely sold out, that would be another
reason to stop the investigation.
If the investigation wraps up and finds nothing, that means Trump has already completely
sold out. If the investigation continues, it means someone important still thinks Trump retains some
vestige of his balls.
DH Fabian , March 14, 2019 at 1:19 pm
By last June or July the Mueller investigation has resulted in roughly 150 indictments
for perjury/financial crimes, and there was a handful of convictions to date. The report did
not support the Clinton wing's anti-Russian allegations about the 2016 election, and was
largely brushed aside by media. Mueller was then reportedly sent back in to "find something."
presumably to support the anti-Russian claims.
mike k , March 14, 2019 at 12:57 pm
From the beginning of the Russia did it story, right after Trump's electoral victory, it
was apparent that this was a fraud. The democratic party however has locked onto this
preposterous story, and they will go to their graves denying this was a scam to deny their
presidential defeat, and somehow reverse the result of Trump's election. My sincere hope is
that this blatant lie will be an albatross around the party's neck, that will carry them down
into oblivion. They have betrayed those of us who supported them for so many years. They are
in many ways now worse than the republican scum they seek to replace.
DH Fabian , March 14, 2019 at 1:26 pm
Trump is almost certain to be re-elected in 2020, and we'll go through this all over
again.
The very fact that the FBI never had access to the servers and took the word of a private
company that had a history of being anti-Russian is enough to throw the entire ruse out.
LJ , March 14, 2019 at 2:39 pm
Agreed!!!! and don't forget the FBI/Comey gave Hillary and her Campaign a head's up before
they moved to seize the evidence. . So too, Comey said he stopped the Investigation , thereby
rendering judgement of innocence, even though by his own words 'gross negligence' had a
occurred (which is normally considered grounds for prosecution). In doing so he exceeded the
FBI's investigative mandate. He rationalized that decision was appropriate because of the
appearance of impropriety that resulted from Attorney General Lynch having a private meeting
on a plane on a runway with Bill and Hillary . Where was the logic in that. Who called the
meeting? All were Lawyers who had served as President, Senator, Attorney General and knew
that the meeting was absolutely inappropriate. . Comey should be prosecuted if they want to
prosecute anyone else because of this CRAP. PS Trump is an idiot. Uhinfortunately he is just
a symptom of the disease at this point. Look at the cover of Rolling Stone magazine , carry a
barf bag.
Jane Christ , March 14, 2019 at 6:51 pm
Exactly. This throws doubt on the ability of the FBI to work independently. They are
working for those who want to cover -up the Hillary mess . She evidently has sufficient funds
to pay them off. I am disgusted with the level of corruption.
hetro , March 14, 2019 at 10:50 am
Nancy Pelosi's announcement two days ago that the Democrats will not seek impeachment for
Trump suggests the emptiness of the Mueller investigation on the specific "collusion" issue.
If there were something hot and lingering and about to emerge, this decision is highly
unlikely, especially with the reasoning she gave at "so as not to divide the American
people." Dividing the people hasn't been of much concern throughout this bogus witch hunt on
Trump, which has added to his incompetence in leavening a growing hysteria and confusion in
this country. If there is something, anything at all, in the Mueller report to support the
collusion theory, Pelosi would I'm sure gleefully trot it out to get a lesser candidate like
Pence as opposition for 2020.
We know and Assange has confirmed Seth Rich, assassinated in D.C. for his deed, downloaded
the emails and most likely passed them on to former British ambassador Craig Murray in a D.C.
park for transport to Wikileaks.
We must also honor Shawn Lucas assassinated for serving DNC with a litigation notice
exposing the DNC conspiracy against Sanders.
hetro , March 14, 2019 at 3:18 pm
Where has Assange confirmed this? Assange's long-standing position is NOT to reveal his
sources. I believe he has continued to honor this position.
Skip Scott , March 15, 2019 at 7:15 am
It has merely been insinuated by the offering of a reward for info on Seth's murder. In
one breath he says wikileaks will never divulge a source, and in the next he offers a $20k
reward saying that sources take tremendous risk. Doesn't take much of a logical leap to
connect A to B.
DH Fabian , March 14, 2019 at 1:30 pm
Are you aware that Democrats split apart their 0wn voting base in the 1990s, middle class
vs. poor? The Obama years merely confirmed that this split is permanent. This is particularly
relevant for Democrats, as their voting base had long consisted of the poor and middle class,
for the common good. Ignoring this deep split hasn't made it go away.
hetro , March 14, 2019 at 3:24 pm
Even more important is how the Democrats have sold out to an Establishment view favoring
neocon theory, since at least Bill Clinton. Pelosi's recent behavior with Ilhan Omar confirms
this and the split you're talking about. My point is it is distinctly odd that Pelosi is
discouraging impeachment on "dividing the Party" (already divided, of course, as you say),
whereas the Russia-gate fantasy was so hot not that long ago. Again it points to a cynical
opportunism and manipulation of the electorate. Both parties are a sad excuse to represent
ordinary people's interests.
Skip Scott , March 15, 2019 at 7:21 am
She said "dividing the country", not the party. I think she may have concerns over Trump's
heavily armed base. That said, the statement may have been a ruse. There are plenty of
Republicans that would cross the line in favor of impeachment with the right "conclusions" by
Mueller. Pelosi may be setting up for a "bombshell" conclusion by Mueller. One must never
forget that we are watching theater, and that Trump was a "mistake" to be controlled or
eliminated.
Mueller should be ashamed that he has made President Trump his main concern!! If all this
investigation would stop he could save America millions!!! He needs to quit this witch-hunt
and worry about things that really need to be handled!!! If the democrats and Trump haters
would stop pushing senseless lies hopefully this would stop ? It's so disgusting that his
democrat friend was never really investigated ? stop the witch-hunt and move forward!!!!
torture this , March 14, 2019 at 7:29 am
According to this letter, mistakes might have been made on Rachel Maddow's show. I can't
wait to read how she responds. I'd watch her show, myself except that it has the same effect
on me as ipecac.
Zhu , March 14, 2019 at 3:37 am
People will cling to "Putin made Trump President!!!" much as many cling "Obama's a Kenyan
Muslim! Not a real American!!!". Both nut theories are emotionally satisfying, no matter what
the historical facts are. Many Americans just can't admit their mistakes and blaming a
scapegoat is a way out.
O Society , March 14, 2019 at 2:03 am
Thank you VIPS for organizing this legit dissent consisting of experts in the field of
intelligence and computer forensics.
This so-called "Russiagate" narrative is an illustration of our "freedom of the press"
failure in the US due to groupthink and self censorship. He who pays the piper is apt to call
the tune.
It is astounding how little skepticism and scientifically-informed reasoning goes on in
our media. These folks show themselves to be native advertising rather than authentic
journalists at every turn.
DH Fabian , March 14, 2019 at 1:33 pm
But it has been Democrats and the media that market to middle class Dems, who persist in
trying to sell the Russian Tale. They excel at ignoring the evidence that utterly contradicts
their claims.
Oh, we're well beyond your "Blame the middle class Dems" stage.
The WINNING!!! team sports bullshit drowns the entire country now the latrine's sprung a
leak. People pretend to live in bubbles made of blue or red quite like the Three Little Pigs,
isn't it? Except instead of a house made of bricks saving the day for the littlepiggies, what
we've got here is a purple puddle of piss.
Everyone's more than glad to project all our problems on "THEM" though, aren't we?
Meanwhile, the White House smells like a urinal not washed since the 1950s and simpletons
still get their rocks off arguing about whether Mickey Mouse can beat up Ronald McDonald.
T'would be comic except what's so tragic is the desperate need Americans have to believe,
oh just believe! in something. Never mind the sound of the jackhammer on your skull dear,
there's an app for that or is it a pill?
I don't know, don't ask me, I'm busy watching TV. Have a cheeto.
Very good analysis clearly stated, especially adding the FAT timestamps to the
transmission speeds.
Minor corrections: "The emails were copied from the network" should be "from the much
faster local network" because this is to Contradict the notion that they were copied over the
internet network, which most readers will equate with "network." Also "reportedin" should be
"reported in."
Michael , March 13, 2019 at 6:25 pm
It is likely that New Knowledge was actually "the Russians", possibly working in concert
with Crowdstrike. Once an intelligence agency gets away with something like pretending to be
Russian hackers and bots, they tend to re-use their model; it is too tempting to discard an
effective model after a one-off accomplishment. New Knowledge was caught interfering/
determining the outcome in the Alabama Senate race on the side of Democrat Doug Jones, and
claimed they were merely trying to mimic Russian methods to see if they worked (they did; not
sure of their punishment?). Occam's razor would suggest that New Knowledge would be competent
to mimic/ pretend to be "Russians" after the fact of wikileaks' publication of emails. New
Knowledge has employees from the NSA and State department sympathetic to/ working with(?)
Hillary, and were the "outside" agency hired to evaluate and report on the "Russian" hacking
of the DNC emails/ servers.
DH Fabian , March 13, 2019 at 5:48 pm
Mueller released report last summer, which resulted in (the last I checked) roughly 150
indictments, a handful of convictions to date, all for perjury/financial (not political)
crimes. This wasn't kept secret. It simply wasn't what Democrats wanted to hear, so although
it was mentioned in some lib media (which overwhelmingly supported neoliberal Hillary
Clinton), it was essentially swept under the carpet.
Billy , March 13, 2019 at 11:11 pm
Barr, Sessions, every congressmen all the corporate MSM war profiteer mouth pieces. They
all know that "Russia hacked the DNC" and "Russia meddled" is fabricated garbage. They don't
care, because their chosen war beast corporate candidate couldn't beat Donald goofball Trump.
So it has to be shown that the war beast only lost because of nefarious reasons. Because
they're gonna run another war beast cut from the same cloth as Hillary in 2020.
Realist , March 14, 2019 at 3:22 am
You betcha. Moreover, who but the Russians do these idiots have left to blame? Everybody
else is now off limits due to political correctness. Sigh Those Catholics, Jews, "ethnics"
and sundry "deviants" used to be such reliable scapegoats, to say nothing of the
"undeveloped" world. As Clapper "authoritatively" says, only this vile lineage still carries
the genes for the most extremes of human perfidy. Squirrels in your attic? It must be the
damned Russkies! The bastards impudently tried to copy our democracy, economic system and
free press and only besmirched those institutions, ruining all of Hillary's glorious plans
for a worldwide benevolent dictatorship. All this might be humorous if it weren't so
funny.
And those Chinese better not get to thinking they are somehow our equals just because all
their trillions invested in U.S. Treasury bonds have paid for all our wars of choice and MIC
boondoggles since before the turn of the century. Unless they start delivering Trump some
"free stuff" the big man is gonna cut off their water. No more affordable manufactured goods
for the American public! So there!
As to the article: impeccable research and analysis by the VIPS crew yet again. They've
proven to me that, to a near certainty, the Easter Bunny is not likely to exist. Mueller
won't read it. Clapper will still prance around a free man, as will Brennan. The Democrats
won't care, that is until November of 2020. And Hillary will continue to skate, unhindered in
larding up the Clinton Foundation to purposes one can only imagine.
Joe Tedesky , March 14, 2019 at 10:02 pm
Realist,
I have posted this article 'the Russia they Lost' before and from time to time but
once again it seems appropriate to add this link to expound upon for what you've been saying.
It's an article written by a Russian who in they're youth growing up in the USSR dreamed of
living the American lifestyle if Russia were to ever ditch communism. But . Starting with
Kosovo this Russian's youthful dream turned nightmarishly ugly and, as time went by with more
and yet even more USA aggression this Russian author loss his admiration and desire for all
things American to be proudly envied. This is a story where USA hard power destroyed any hope
of American soft power for world unity. But hey that unity business was never part of the
plan anyway.
right you are, joe. if america was smart rather than arrogant, it would have cooperated
with china and russia to see the belt and road initiative succeed by perhaps building a
bridge or tunnel from siberia to alaska, and by building its own fleet of icebreakers to open
up its part of the northwest passage. but no, it only wants to sabotage what others propose.
that's not being a leader, it's being a dick.
i'm gonna have to go on the disabled list here until the sudden neurological problem with
my right hand clears up–it's like paralysed. too difficult to do this one-handed using
hunt and peck. at least the problem was not in the old bean, according to the scans. carry
on, sir.
Brian James , March 13, 2019 at 5:04 pm
Mar 4, 2019 Tom Fitton: President Trump a 'Crime Victim' by Illegal Deep State DOJ &
FBI Abuses: https://youtu.be/ixWMorWAC7c
DH Fabian , March 13, 2019 at 5:55 pm
Trump is a willing player in this game. The anti-Russian Crusade was, quite simply, a stunningly reckless,
short-sighted effort to overturn the 2016 election, removing Trump to install Hillary Clinton in office. Trump and the
Republicans continue to win by default, as Democrats only drive more voters away.
Thank you Ray McGovern and the Other 17 VIPS C0-Signers of your National Security Essay
for Truth. Along with Craig Murray and Seymour Hirsch, former Sam Adams Award winners for
"shining light into dark places", you are national resources for objectivity in critical
survival information matters for our country. It is more than a pity that our mainstream
media are so beholden to their corporate task masters that they cannot depart from the
company line for fear of losing their livelihoods, and in the process we risk losing life on
the planet because of unconstrained nuclear war on the part of the two main adversaries
facing off in an atmosphere of fear and mistrust. Let me speak plainly. THEY SHOULD BE
TALKING TO YOU AND NOT THE VESTED INTERESTS' MOUTHPIECES. Thank you for your continued
leadership!
Roger Ailes founder of FOX news died, "falling down stairs" within a week of FOX news
exposing to the world that the assassinated Seth Rich downloaded the DNC emails.
DH Fabian , March 13, 2019 at 6:03 pm
Google the Mueller investigation report from last June or July. When it was released, the
public response was like a deflated balloon. It did not support the "Russian collusion"
allegations -- the only thing Democrats still had left to sell. The report resulted in
roughly 150 indictments for perjury/financial crimes (not political), and a handful of
convictions to date -- none of which had anything to do with the election results.
Hank , March 13, 2019 at 6:19 pm
Much ado about nothing. All the talk and chatter and media airplay about "Russian
meddling" in the 2016 election only tells me that these liars think the American public is
that stupid. They are probably right, but the REAL reason that Hillary lost is because there
ARE enough informed people now in this nation who are quite aware of the Clinton's sordid
history where scandals seem to follow every where they go, but indictments and/or
investigations don't. There IS an internet nowadays with lots of FACTUAL DOCUMENTED
information. That's a lot more than I can say about the mainstream corporate-controlled
media!
I know this won't ever happen, but an HONEST investigation into the Democratic Party and
their actions during the 2016 election would make ANY collusion with ANY nation look like a
mole hill next to a mountain! One of the problems with living in this nation is if you are
truly informed and make an effort 24/7 to be that way by doing your own research, you
more-than-likely can be considered an "island in a sea of ignorance".
We know that the FBI never had access to the servers and a private company was allowed to
handle the evidence. Wasnt it a crime scene? The evidence was tampered with And we will never
know what was on the servers.
Mark McCarty , March 13, 2019 at 4:10 pm
As a complement to this excellent analysis, I would like to make 2 further points:
The Mueller indictment of Russian Intelligence for hacking the DNC and transferring their
booty to Wikileaks is absurd on its face for this reason: Assange announced on June 12th the
impending release of Hillary-related emails. Yet the indictment claims that Guccifer 2.0 did
not succeed in transferring the DNC emails to Wikileaks until the time period of July 14-18th
– after which they were released online on July 22nd. Are we to suppose that Assange, a
publisher of impeccable integrity, publicly announced the publication of emails he had not
yet seen, and which he was obtaining from a source of murky provenance? And are we further to
suppose that Wikileaks could have processed 20K emails and 20K attachments to insure their
genuineness in a period of only several days? As you will recall, Wikileaks subsequently took
a number of weeks to process the Podesta emails they released in October.
And another peculiarity merits attention. Assange did not state on June 12th that he was
releasing DNC emails – and yet Crowdstrike and the Guccifer 2.0 personna evidently knew
that this was in store. A likely resolution of this conundrum is that US intelligence had
been monitoring all communications to Wikileaks, and had informed the DNC that their hacked
emails had been offered to Wikileaks. A further reasonable prospect is that US intelligence
subsequently unmasked the leaker to the DNC; as Assange has strongly hinted, this likely was
Seth Rich. This could explain Rich's subsequent murder, as Rich would have been in a position
to unmask the Guccifer 2.0 hoax and the entire Russian hacking narrative.
Curious that Assange has Not explicitly stated that the leaker was Seth Rich, if it was,
as this would take pressure from himself and incriminate the DNC in the murder of Rich.
Perhaps he doesn't know, and has the honor not to take the opportunity, or perhaps he knows
that it was not Rich.
View the Dutch TV interview with Asssange and there is another interview available on
youtube in which Assange DOES subtly confirmed it was Seth Rich.
Assange posted a $10,000 reward for Seth Rich's murders capture.
Abby , March 13, 2019 at 10:11 pm
Another mistaken issue with the "Russia hacked the DNC computers on Trump's command" is
that he never asked Russia to do that. His words were, "Russia if you 'find' Hillary's
missing emails let us know." He said that after she advised congress that she wouldn't be
turning in all of the emails they asked for because she deleted 30,000 of them and said that
they were personal.
But if Mueller or the FBI wants to look at all of them they can find them at the NYC FBI
office because they are on Weiner's laptop. Why? Because Hillary's aid Huma Abedin, Weiner's
wife sent them to it. Just another security risk that Hillary had because of her private
email server. This is why Comey had to tell congress that more of them had been found 11 days
before the election. If Comey hadn't done that then the FBI would have.
But did Comey or McCabe look at her emails there to see if any of them were classified? No
they did not do that. And today we find out that Lisa Page told congress that it was Obama's
decision not to charge Hillary for being grossly negligent on using her private email server.
This has been known by congress for many months and now we know that the fix was always in
for her to get off.
robert e williamson jr , March 13, 2019 at 3:26 pm
I want to thank you folks at VIPS. Like I have been saying for years now the relationship
between CIA, NSA and DOJ is an incestuous one at best. A perverse corrupted bond to control
the masses. A large group of religious fanatics who want things "ONE WAY". They are the
facilitators for the rogue government known as the "DEEP STATE"!
Just ask billy barr.
More truth is a very good thing. I believe DOJ is supporting the intelligence community
because of blackmail. They can't come clean because they all risk doing lots of time if a new
judicial mechanism replaces them. We are in big trouble here.
Apparently the rule of law is not!
You folks that keep claiming we live in the post truth era! Get off me. Demand the truth
and nothing else. Best be getting ready for the fight of your lives. The truth is you have to
look yourself in the mirror every morning, deny that truth. The claim you are living in the
post truth era is an admission your life is a lie. Now grab a hold of yourself pick a
dogdamned side and stand for something,.
Thank You VIPS!
Joe Tedesky , March 13, 2019 at 2:58 pm
Hats off to the VIP's who have investigated this Russian hacking that wasn't a hacking for
without them what would we news junkies have otherwise to lift open the hood of Mueller's
never ending Russia-gate investigation. Although the one thing this Russia-gate nonsense has
accomplished is it has destroyed with our freedom of speech when it comes to how we citizens
gather our news. Much like everything else that has been done during these post 9/11 years of
continual wars our civil rights have been marginalized down to zero or, a bit above if that's
even still an argument to be made for the sake of numbers.
Watching the Manafort sentencing is quite interesting for the fact that Manafort didn't
conclude in as much as he played fast and loose with his income. In fact maybe Manafort's
case should have been prosecuted by the State Department or, how about the IRS? Also wouldn't
it be worth investigating other Geopolitical Rain Makers like Manafort for similar crimes of
financial wrongdoing? I mean is it possible Manafort is or was the only one of his type to do
such dishonest things? In any case Manafort wasn't charged with concluding with any Russians
in regard to the 2016 presidential election and, with that we all fall down.
I guess the best thing (not) that came out of this Russia-gate silliness is Rachel
Maddow's tv ratings zoomed upwards. But I hate to tell you that the only ones buying what Ms
Maddow is selling are the died in the wool Hillary supporters along with the chicken-hawks
who rally to the MIC lobby for more war. It's all a game and yet there are many of us who
just don't wish to play it but still we must because no one will listen to the sanity that
gets ignored keep up the good work VIP's some of us are listening.
Andrew Thomas , March 13, 2019 at 12:42 pm
The article did not mention something called to my attention for the first time by one of
the outstanding members of your commentariat just a couple of days ago- that Ambassador
Murray stayed publicly, over two years ago, that he had been given the thumb drive by a
go-between in D.C. and had somehow gotten it to Wikileaks. And, that he has NEVER BEEN
INTERVIEWED by Mueller &Company. I was blown away by this, and found the original
articles just by googling Murray. The excuse given is that Murray "lacks credibility ", or
some such, because of his prior relationship with Assange and/or Wikileaks. This is so
ludicrous I can't even get my head around it. And now, you have given me a new detail-the
meeting with Pompeo, and the complete lack of follow-up thereafter. Here all this time I
thought I was the most cynical SOB who existed, and now I feel as naive as when I was 13 and
believed what Dean Rusk was saying like it was holy writ. I am in your debt.
Bob Van Noy , March 13, 2019 at 2:33 pm
Andrew Thomas I'm afraid that huge amounts of our History post 1947 is organized and
propagandized disinformation. There is an incredible page that John Simpkin has organized
over the years that specifically addresses individuals, click on a name and read about
them. https://spartacus-educational.com/USAdisinformation.htm
Mark McCarty , March 13, 2019 at 4:18 pm
A small correction: the Daily Mail article regarding Murray claimed that Murray was given
a thumbdrive which he subsequently carried back to Wikileaks. On his blog, Murray
subsequently disputed this part of the story, indicating that, while he had met with a leaker
or confederate of a leaker in Washington DC, the Podesta emails were already in possession of
Wikileaks at the time. Murray refused to clarify the reason for his meeting with this source,
but he is adamant in maintaining that the DNC and Podesta emails were leaked, not hacked.
And it is indeed ludicrous that Mueller, given the mandate to investigate the alleged
Russian hacking of the DNC and Podesta, has never attempted to question either Assange or
Murray. That in itself is enough for us to conclude that the Mueller investigation is a
complete sham.
Ian Brown , March 13, 2019 at 4:43 pm
It's pretty astonishing that Mueller was more interested in Roger Stone and Jerome Corsi
as credible sources about Wikileaks and the DNC release than Craig Murray!
LJ , March 13, 2019 at 12:29 pm
A guy comes in with a pedigree like that, """ former FBI head """ to examine and validate
if possible an FBI sting manufactured off a phony FISA indictment based on the Steele Report,
It immediately reminded me of the 9-11 Commission with Thomas Kean, former Board member of
the National Endowment for Democracy, being appointed by GW Bush the Simple to head an
investigation that he had previously said he did not want to authorize( and of course bi
partisan yes man Lee Hamilton as #2, lest we forget) . Really this should be seen as another
low point in our Democracy. Uncle Sam is the Limbo Man, How low can you go?
After Bill and
Hillary and Monica and Paula Jones and Blue Dresses well, Golden Showers in a Moscow luxury
hotel, I guess that make it just salacious enough.
Mueller looks just like what he is. He
has that same phony self important air as Comey . In 2 years this will be forgotten.. I do
not think this hurts Trumps chances at re-election as much as the Democrats are hurting
themselves. This has already gone on way too long.
Mueller has nothing and he well knows it. He was willingly roped into this whole pathetic
charade and he's left grasping for anything remotely tied to Trump campaign officials and
Russians.
Even the most tenuous connections and weak relationships are splashed across the mass
media in breathless headlines. Meanwhile, NONE of the supposed skulduggery unearthed by
Mueller has anything to do with the Kremlin "hacking" the election to favor Trump, which was
the entire raison d'etre behind Rosenstein, Brennan, Podesta and Mueller's crusade on behalf
of the deplorable DNC and Washington militarist-imperialists. It will be fascinating to
witness how Mueller and his crew ultimately extricate themselves from this giant fraudulent
edifice of deceit. Will they even be able to save the most rudimentary amount of face?
So sickening to see the manner in which many DNC sycophants obsequiously genuflect to
their godlike Mueller. A damn prosecutor who was likely in bed with the Winter Hill Gang.
Jack , March 13, 2019 at 12:21 pm
You have failed. An investigation is just that, a finding of the facts. What would Mueller
have to extricate himself from? If nothing is found, he has still done his job. You are a
divisive idiot.
Skip Scott , March 13, 2019 at 1:13 pm
Yes, he has done his job. And his job was to bring his royal Orangeness to heel, and to
make sure that detente and co-operation with Russia remained impossible. The forever war
continues. Mission Accomplished.
@Jack,
Keep running cover for an out of control prosecutor, who, if he had any integrity, would have
hit the bully pulpit mos ago declaring there's nothing of substance to one of the most
potentially dangerous accusations in world history: the Kremlin hacking the election. Last I
checked it puts two nuclear nation-states on the brink of potential war. And you call me
divisive? Mueller's now a willing accomplice to this entire McCarthyite smear and
disinformation campaign. It's all so pathetic that folks such as yourself try and mislead and
feed half-truths to the people.
Drew, you might enjoy this discussion Robert Scheer has with Stephen Cohen and Katrina
vanden Heuvel.
Realist , March 15, 2019 at 3:38 am
Moreover, as the Saker pointed out in his most recent column in the Unz Review, the entire
Deep State conspiracy, in an ad hoc alliance with the embarrassed and embarrassing Democrats,
have made an absolute sham of due process in their blatant witch hunt to bag the president.
This reached an apex when his personal lawyer, Mr. Cohen, was trotted out before congress to
violate Trump's confidentiality in every mortifying way he could even vaguely reconstruct.
The man was expected to say anything to mitigate the anticipated tortures to come in the
course of this modern day inquisition by our latter day Torquemada. To his credit though,
even with his ass in a sling, he could simply not confabulate the smoking gun evidence for
the alleged Russian collusion that this whole farce was built around.
Mueller stood with Bush as he lied the world into war based on lies and illegally spied on
America and tortured some folks.
George Collins , March 13, 2019 at 2:02 pm
QED: as to the nexus with the Winter Hill gang wasn't there litigation involving the
Boston FBI, condonation of murder by the FBI and damages awarded to or on behalf of convicted
parties that the FBI had reason to know were innocent? The malfeasance reportedly occurred
during Mueller time. Further on the sanctified diligence of Mr. Mueller can be gleaned from
the reports of Coleen Rowley, former FBI attorney stationed in Milwaukee??? when the DC FBI
office was ignoring warnings sent about 9/11. See also Sibel Edmonds who knew to much and was
court order muzzled about FBI mis/malfeasance in the aftermath of 9/11.
I'd say it's game, set, match VIPS and a pox on Clapper and the
complicit intelligence folk complicit in the nuclear loaded Russia-gate fibs.
Kiers , March 13, 2019 at 11:47 am
How can we expect the DNC to "hand it " to Trumpf, when, behind the scenes, THEY ARE ONE
PARTY. They are throwing faux-scary pillow bombs at each other because they are both
complicit in a long chain of corruptions. Business as usual for the "principled" two party
system! Democracy! Through the gauze of corporate media! You must be joking!
Skip Scott , March 13, 2019 at 11:28 am
"We believe that there are enough people of integrity in the Department of Justice to
prevent the outright manufacture or distortion of "evidence," particularly if they become
aware that experienced scientists have completed independent forensic study that yield very
different conclusions."
I wish I shared this belief. However, as with Nancy Pelosi's recent statement regarding
pursuing impeachment, I smell a rat. I believe with the help of what the late Robert Parry
called "the Mighty Wurlitzer", Mueller is going to use coerced false testimony and fabricated
forensics to drop a bombshell the size of 911. I think Nancy's statement was just a feint
before throwing the knockout punch.
If reason ruled the day, we should have nothing to worry about. But considering all the
perfidy that the so-called "Intelligence" Agencies and their MSM lackeys get away with daily,
I think we are in for more theater; and I think VIPS will receive a cold shoulder outside of
venues like CN.
I pray to God I'm wrong.
Sam F , March 13, 2019 at 7:32 pm
My extensive experience with DOJ and the federal judiciary establishes that at least 98%
of them are dedicated career liars, engaged in organized crime to serve political gangs, and
make only a fanatical pretense of patriotism or legality. They are loyal to money alone,
deeply cynical and opposed to the US Constitution and laws, with no credibility at all beyond
any real evidence.
Eric32 , March 14, 2019 at 4:24 pm
As near I can see, Federal Govt. careers at the higher levels depend on having dirt on
other players, and helping, not hurting, the money/power schemes of the players above
you.
The Clintons (through their foundation) apparently have a lot of corruption dirt on CIA,
FBI etc. top players, some of whom somehow became multi-millionaires during their civil
service careers.
Trump, who was only running for President as a name brand marketing ploy with little
desire to actually win, apparently came into the Presidency with no dirt arsenal and little
idea of where to go from there.
Bob Van Noy , March 13, 2019 at 11:09 am
I remember reading with dismay how Russians were propagandized by the Soviet Press
Management only to find out later the depth of disbelief within the Russian population
itself. We now know what that feels like. The good part of this disastrous scenario for
America is that for careful readers, disinformation becomes revelatory. For instance, if one
reads an editorial that refers to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, or continually refers to
Russian interference in the last Presidential election, then one can immediately dismiss the
article and question the motivation for the presentation. Of course the problem is how to
establish truth in reporting
Jeff Harrison , March 13, 2019 at 10:41 am
Thank you, VIPs. Hopefully, you don't expect this to make a difference. The US has moved
into a post truth, post reality existence best characterized by Karl Rove's declaration:
"we're an empire now, when we act, we create our own reality." What Mr. Rove in his arrogance
fails to appreciate is that it is his reality but not anyone else's. Thus Pompous can claim
that Guaido is the democratic leader in Venezuela even though he's never been elected .
Thank you. The next time one of my friends or family give me that glazed over stare and
utters anymore of the "but, RUSSIA" nonsense I will refer them directly to this article. Your
collective work and ethical stand on this matter is deeply appreciated by anyone who values
the truth.
Russiagate stands with past government propaganda operations that were simply made up out
of thin air: i.e. Kuwaiti incubator babies, WMD's, Gaddafi's viagra fueled rape camps, Assad
can't sleep at night unless he's gassing his own people, to the latest, "Maduro can't sleep
at night unless he's starving his own people."
The complete and utter amorality of the deep state remains on display for all to see with
"Russiagate," which is as fact-free a propaganda campaign as any of those just mentioned.
Marc , March 13, 2019 at 10:13 am
I am a computer naif, so I am prepared to accept the VIPS analysis about FAT and transfer
rates. However, the presentation here leaves me with several questions. First, do I
understand correctly that the FAT rounding to even numbers is introduced by the thumb drive?
And if so, does the FAT analysis show only that the DNC data passed through a thumb drive?
That is, does the analysis distinguish whether the DNC data were directly transferred to a
thumb drive, or whether the data were hacked and then transferred to a thumb drive, eg, to
give a copy to Wikileaks? Second, although the transatlantic transfer rate is too slow to fit
some time stamps, is it possible that the data were hacked onto a local computer that was
under the control of some faraway agent?
Jeff Harrison , March 13, 2019 at 11:12 am
Not quite. FAT is the crappy storage system developed by Microsoft (and not used by UNIX).
The metadata associated with any file gets rewritten when it gets moved. If that movement is
to a storage device that uses FAT, the timestamp on the file will end in an even number. If
it were moved to a unix server (and most of the major servers run Unix) it would be in the
UFS (unix file system) and it would be the actual time from the system clock. Every storage
device has a utility that tells it where to write the data and what to write. Since it's
writing to a storage device using FAT, it'll round the numbers. To get to your real question,
yes, you could hack and then transfer the data to a thumb drive but if you did that the dates
wouldn't line up.
Skip Scott , March 14, 2019 at 8:05 am
Jeff-
Which dates wouldn't line up? Is there a history of metadata available, or just metadata
for the most recent move?
David G , March 13, 2019 at 12:22 pm
Marc asks: "[D]oes the analysis distinguish whether the DNC data were directly transferred
to a thumb drive, or whether the data were hacked and then transferred to a thumb drive, eg,
to give a copy to Wikileaks?"
I asked that question in comments under a previous CN piece; other people have asked that
question elsewhere.
To my knowledge, it hasn't been addressed directly by the VIPS, and I think they should do
so. (If they already have, someone please enlighten me.)
Skip Scott , March 13, 2019 at 1:07 pm
I am no computer wiz, but Binney has repeatedly made the point that the NSA scoops up
everything. If there had been a hack, they'd know it, and they wouldn't only have had
"moderate" confidence in the Jan. assessment. I believe that although farfetched, an argument
could be made that a Russian spy got into the DNC, loaded a thumb drive, and gave it to Craig
Murray.
David G , March 13, 2019 at 3:31 pm
Respectfully, that's a separate point, which may or may not raise issues of its own.
But I think the question Marc posed stands.
Skip Scott , March 14, 2019 at 7:59 am
Hi David-
I don't see how it's separate. If the NSA scoops up everything, they'd have solid evidence
of the hack, and wouldn't have only had "moderate" confidence, which Bill Binney says is
equivalent to them saying "we don't have squat". They wouldn't even have needed Mueller at
all, except to possibly build a "parallel case" due to classification issues. Also, the FBI
not demanding direct access to the DNC server tells you something is fishy. They could easily
have gotten a warrant to examine the server, but chose not to. They also purposely refuse to
get testimony from Craig Murray and Julian Assange, which rings alarm bells on its own.
As for the technical aspect of Marc's question, I agree that I'd like to see Bill Binney
directly answer it.
The final Mueller report should be graded "incomplete," says VIPS, whose forensic work proves the speciousness of the story that
DNC emails published by WikiLeaks came from Russian hacking.
MEMORANDUM FOR: The Attorney General
FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)
SUBJECT: Mueller's Forensics-Free Findings
Executive Summary
Media reports are predicting that Special Counsel Robert Mueller is about to give you the findings of his probe into any
links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump.
If Mueller gives you his "completed" report anytime soon, it should be graded "incomplete."
Major deficiencies include depending on a DNC-hired cybersecurity company for forensics and failure to consult with those who
have done original forensic work, including us and the independent forensic investigators with whom we have examined the data. We
stand ready to help.
We veteran intelligence professionals (VIPS) have done enough detailed forensic work to prove the speciousness of the prevailing
story that the DNC emails published by WikiLeaks came from Russian hacking. Given the paucity of evidence to support that story,
we believe Mueller may choose to finesse this key issue and leave everyone hanging. That would help sustain the widespread belief
that Trump owes his victory to President Vladimir Putin, and strengthen the hand of those who pay little heed to the unpredictable
consequences of an increase in tensions with nuclear-armed Russia.
There is an overabundance of "assessments" but a lack of hard evidence to support that prevailing narrative. We believe that there
are enough people of integrity in the Department of Justice to prevent the outright manufacture or distortion of "evidence," particularly
if they become aware that experienced scientists have completed independent forensic study that yield very different conclusions.
We know only too well -- and did our best to expose -- how our former colleagues in the intelligence community manufactured fraudulent
"evidence" of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
We have scrutinized publicly available physical data -- the "trail" that every cyber operation leaves behind. And we have had
support from highly experienced independent forensic investigators who, like us, have no axes to grind. We can prove that the conventional-wisdom
story about Russian-hacking-DNC-emails-for-WikiLeaks is false. Drawing largely on the unique expertise of two VIPS scientists who
worked for a combined total of 70 years at the National Security Agency and became Technical Directors there, we have regularly published
our findings. But we have been deprived of a hearing in mainstream media -- an experience painfully reminiscent of what we had to
endure when we exposed the corruption of intelligence before the attack on Iraq 16 years ago.
This time, with the principles of physics and forensic science to rely on, we are able to adduce solid evidence exposing mistakes
and distortions in the dominant story. We offer you below -- as a kind of aide-memoire -- a discussion of some of the key
factors related to what has become known as "Russia-gate." And we include our most recent findings drawn from forensic work on data
associated with WikiLeaks' publication of the DNC emails.
We do not claim our conclusions are "irrefutable and undeniable," a la Colin Powell at the UN before the Iraq war. Our judgments,
however, are based on the scientific method -- not "assessments." We decided to put this memorandum together in hopes of ensuring
that you hear that directly from us.
If the Mueller team remains reluctant to review our work -- or even to interview willing witnesses with direct knowledge, like
WikiLeaks' Julian Assange and former UK Ambassador Craig Murray, we fear that many of those yearning earnestly for the truth on Russia-gate
will come to the corrosive conclusion that the Mueller investigation was a sham.
In sum, we are concerned that, at this point, an incomplete Mueller report will fall far short of the commitment made by then
Acting Attorney General Rod Rosenstein "to ensure a full and thorough investigation," when he appointed Mueller in May 2017. Again,
we are at your disposal.
Discussion
The centerpiece accusation of Kremlin "interference" in the 2016 presidential election was the charge that Russia hacked Democratic
National Committee emails and gave them to WikiLeaks to embarrass Secretary Hillary Clinton and help Mr. Trump win. The weeks following
the election witnessed multiple leak-based media allegations to that effect. These culminated on January 6, 2017 in an evidence-light,
rump report misleadingly labeled "Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA)." Prepared by "handpicked analysts" from only three of
the 17 U.S. intelligence agencies (CIA, FBI, and NSA), the assessment expressed "high confidence" in the Russia-hacking-to-WikiLeaks
story, but lacked so much as a hint that the authors had sought access to independent forensics to support their "assessment."
The media immediately awarded the ICA the status of Holy Writ, choosing to overlook an assortment of banal, full-disclosure-type
caveats included in the assessment itself -- such as:
" When Intelligence Community analysts use words such as 'we assess' or 'we judge,' they are conveying an analytic assessment
or judgment. Judgments are not intended to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact. Assessments are based on
collected information, which is often incomplete or fragmentary High confidence in a judgment does not imply that the assessment
is a fact or a certainty; such judgments might be wrong."
To their credit, however, the authors of the ICA did make a highly germane point in introductory remarks on "cyber incident attribution."
They noted: "The nature of cyberspace makes attribution of cyber operations difficult but not impossible. Every kind of cyber
operation -- malicious or not -- leaves a trail." [Emphasis added.]
Forensics
The imperative is to get on that "trail" -- and quickly, before red herrings can be swept across it. The best way to establish
attribution is to apply the methodology and processes of forensic science. Intrusions into computers leave behind discernible physical
data that can be examined scientifically by forensic experts. Risk to "sources and methods" is normally not a problem.
Direct access to the actual computers is the first requirement -- the more so when an intrusion is termed "an act of war" and
blamed on a nuclear-armed foreign government (the words used by the late Sen. John McCain and other senior officials). In testimony
to the House Intelligence Committee in March 2017, former FBI Director James Comey admitted that he did not insist on physical access
to the DNC computers even though, as he conceded, "best practices" dictate direct access.
In June 2017, Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Richard Burr asked Comey whether he ever had "access to the actual hardware
that was hacked." Comey answered, "In the case of the DNC we did not have access to the devices themselves. We got relevant forensic
information from a private party, a high-class entity, that had done the work. " Sen. Burr followed up: "But no content? Isn't content
an important part of the forensics from a counterintelligence standpoint?" Comey: "It is, although what was briefed to me by my folks
is that they had gotten the information from the private party that they needed to understand the intrusion by the spring of 2016."
The "private party/high-class entity" to which Comey refers is CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity firm of checkered reputation and multiple
conflicts of interest, including very close ties to a number of key anti-Russian organizations. Comey indicated that the DNC hired
CrowdStrike in the spring of 2016.
Given the stakes involved in the Russia-gate investigation – including a possible impeachment battle and greatly increased tension
between Russia and the U.S. -- it is difficult to understand why Comey did not move quickly to seize the computer hardware so the
FBI could perform an independent examination of what quickly became the major predicate for investigating election interference by
Russia. Fortunately, enough data remain on the forensic "trail" to arrive at evidence-anchored conclusions. The work we have done
shows the prevailing narrative to be false. We have been suggesting this for over two years. Recent forensic work significantly strengthens
that conclusion.
We Do Forensics
Recent forensic examination of the Wikileaks DNC files shows they were created on 23, 25 and 26 May 2016. (On June 12, Julian
Assange announced he had them; WikiLeaks published them on July 22.) We recently discovered that the files reveal a FAT (File Allocation
Table) system property. This shows that the data had been transferred to an external storage device, such as a thumb drive,
before WikiLeaks posted them.
FAT is a simple file system named for its method of organization, the File Allocation Table. It is used for storage only and is
not related to internet transfers like hacking. Were WikiLeaks to have received the DNC files via a hack, the last modified times
on the files would be a random mixture of odd-and even-ending numbers.
Why is that important? The evidence lies in the "last modified" time stamps on the Wikileaks files. When a file is stored under
the FAT file system the software rounds the time to the nearest even-numbered second. Every single one of the time stamps in the
DNC files on WikiLeaks' site ends in an even number.
We have examined 500 DNC email files stored on the Wikileaks site. All 500 files end in an even number -- 2, 4, 6, 8 or 0. If
those files had been hacked over the Internet, there would be an equal probability of the time stamp ending in an odd number. The
random probability that FAT was not used is 1 chance in 2 to the 500th power. Thus, these data show that the DNC emails posted by
WikiLeaks went through a storage device, like a thumb drive, and were physically moved before Wikileaks posted the emails on the
World Wide Web.
This finding alone is enough to raise reasonable doubts, for example, about Mueller's indictment of 12 Russian intelligence officers
for hacking the DNC emails given to WikiLeaks. A defense attorney could easily use the forensics to argue that someone copied the
DNC files to a storage device like a USB thumb drive and got them physically to WikiLeaks -- not electronically via a hack.
Role of NSA
For more than two years, we strongly suspected that the DNC emails were copied/leaked in that way, not hacked. And we said so.
We remain intrigued by the apparent failure of NSA's dragnet, collect-it-all approach -- including "cast-iron" coverage of WikiLeaks
-- to provide forensic evidence (as opposed to "assessments") as to how the DNC emails got to WikiLeaks and who sent them. Well before
the telling evidence drawn from the use of FAT, other technical evidence led us to conclude that the DNC emails were not hacked over
the network, but rather physically moved over, say, the Atlantic Ocean.
Is it possible that NSA has not yet been asked to produce the collected packets of DNC email data claimed to have been hacked
by Russia? Surely, this should be done before Mueller competes his investigation. NSA has taps on all the transoceanic cables leaving
the U.S. and would almost certainly have such packets if they exist. (The detailed slides released by Edward Snowden actually show
the routes that trace the packets.)
The forensics we examined shed no direct light on who may have been behind the leak. The only thing we know for sure is that the
person had to have direct access to the DNC computers or servers in order to copy the emails. The apparent lack of evidence from
the most likely source, NSA, regarding a hack may help explain the FBI's curious preference for forensic data from CrowdStrike. No
less puzzling is why Comey would choose to call CrowdStrike a "high-class entity."
Comey was one of the intelligence chiefs briefing President Obama on January 5, 2017 on the "Intelligence Community Assessment,"
which was then briefed to President-elect Trump and published the following day. That Obama found a key part of the ICA narrative
less than persuasive became clear at his last press conference (January 18), when he told the media, "The conclusions of the intelligence
community with respect to the Russian hacking were not conclusive as to how 'the DNC emails that were leaked' got to WikiLeaks.
Is Guccifer 2.0 a Fraud?
There is further compelling technical evidence that undermines the claim that the DNC emails were downloaded over the internet
as a result of a spearphishing attack. William Binney, one of VIPS' two former Technical Directors at NSA, along with other former
intelligence community experts, examined files posted by Guccifer 2.0 and discovered that those files could not have been downloaded
over the internet. It is a simple matter of mathematics and physics.
There was a flurry of activity after Julian Assange announced on June 12, 2016: "We have emails relating to Hillary Clinton which
are pending publication." On June 14, DNC contractor CrowdStrike announced that malware was found on the DNC server and claimed there
was evidence it was injected by Russians. On June 15, the Guccifer 2.0 persona emerged on the public stage, affirmed the DNC statement,
claimed to be responsible for hacking the DNC, claimed to be a WikiLeaks source, and posted a document that forensics show
was synthetically tainted with "Russian fingerprints."
Our suspicions about the Guccifer 2.0 persona grew when G-2 claimed responsibility for a "hack" of the DNC on July 5, 2016, which
released DNC data that was rather bland compared to what WikiLeaks published 17 days later (showing how the DNC had tipped the primary
scales against Sen. Bernie Sanders). As VIPS
reported in a wrap-up
Memorandum for the President on July 24, 2017 (titled "Intel Vets Challenge 'Russia Hack' Evidence)," forensic examination of the
July 5, 2016 cyber intrusion into the DNC showed it NOT to be a hack by the Russians or by anyone else, but rather a copy onto an
external storage device. It seemed a good guess that the July 5 intrusion was a contrivance to preemptively taint anything WikiLeaks
might later publish from the DNC, by "showing" it came from a "Russian hack." WikiLeaks published the DNC emails on July 22, three
days before the Democratic convention.
As we prepared our July 24 memo for the President, we chose to begin by taking Guccifer 2.0 at face value; i. e., that the documents
he posted on July 5, 2016 were obtained via a hack over the Internet. Binney conducted a forensic examination of the metadata contained
in the posted documents and compared that metadata with the known capacity of Internet connection speeds at the time in the U.S.
This analysis showed a transfer rate as high as 49.1 megabytes per second, which is much faster than was possible from a remote online
Internet connection. The 49.1 megabytes speed coincided, though, with the rate that copying onto a thumb drive could accommodate.
Binney, assisted by colleagues with relevant technical expertise, then extended the examination and ran various forensic tests
from the U.S. to the Netherlands, Albania, Belgrade and the UK. The fastest Internet rate obtained -- from a data center in New Jersey
to a data center in the UK -- was 12 megabytes per second, which is less than a fourth of the capacity typical of a copy onto a thumb
drive.
The findings from the examination of the Guccifer 2.0 data and the WikiLeaks data does not indicate who copied the information
to an external storage device (probably a thumb drive). But our examination does disprove that G.2 hacked into the DNC on July 5,
2016. Forensic evidence for the Guccifer 2.0 data adds to other evidence that the DNC emails were not taken by an internet spearphishing
attack. The data breach was local. The emails were copied from the network.
Presidential Interest
After VIPS' July 24, 2017 Memorandum for the President, Binney, one of its principal authors, was invited to share his insights
with Mike Pompeo, CIA Director at the time. When Binney arrived in Pompeo's office at CIA Headquarters on October 24, 2017 for an
hour-long discussion, the director made no secret of the reason for the invitation: "You are here because the President told me that
if I really wanted to know about Russian hacking I needed to talk with you."
Binney warned Pompeo -- to stares of incredulity -- that his people should stop lying about the Russian hacking. Binney then started
to explain the VIPS findings that had caught President Trump's attention. Pompeo asked Binney if he would talk to the FBI and NSA.
Binney agreed, but has not been contacted by those agencies. With that, Pompeo had done what the President asked. There was no follow-up.
Confronting James Clapper on Forensics
We, the hoi polloi, do not often get a chance to talk to people like Pompeo -- and still less to the former intelligence
chiefs who are the leading purveyors of the prevailing Russia-gate narrative. An exception came on November 13, when former National
Intelligence Director James Clapper came to the Carnegie Endowment in Washington to hawk his memoir. Answering a question during
the Q&A about Russian "hacking" and NSA, Clapper said:
" Well, I have talked with NSA a lot And in my mind, I spent a lot of time in the SIGINT business, the forensic evidence
was overwhelming about what the Russians had done. There's absolutely no doubt in my mind whatsoever." [Emphasis added]
Clapper added: " as a private citizen, understanding the magnitude of what the Russians did and the number of citizens in our
country they reached and the different mechanisms that, by which they reached them, to me it stretches credulity to think they didn't
have a profound impact on election on the outcome of the election."
(A transcript of the interesting Q&A can be found
here and a commentary
on Clapper's performance at Carnegie, as well as on his longstanding lack of credibility, is
here .)
Normally soft-spoken Ron Wyden, Democratic senator from Oregon, lost his patience with Clapper last week when he learned that
Clapper is still denying that he lied to the Senate Intelligence Committee about the extent of NSA surveillance of U.S. citizens.
In an unusual outburst, Wyden said: "James Clapper needs to stop making excuses for lying to the American people about mass surveillance.
To be clear: I sent him the question in advance. I asked him to correct the record afterward. He chose to let the lie stand."
The materials brought out by Edward Snowden in June 2013 showed Clapper to have lied under oath to the committee on March 12,
2013; he was, nevertheless, allowed to stay on as Director of National Intelligence for three and half more years. Clapper fancies
himself an expert on Russia, telling Meet the Press on May 28, 2017 that Russia's history shows that Russians are "typically,
almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever."
Clapper ought to be asked about the "forensics" he said were "overwhelming about what the Russians had done." And that, too, before
Mueller completes his investigation.
For the steering group, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity:
William Binney , former NSA Technical Director for World Geopolitical & Military Analysis; Co-founder of NSA's Signals
Intelligence Automation Research Center (ret.)
Richard H. Black , Senator of Virginia, 13th District; Colonel US Army (ret.); Former Chief, Criminal Law Division,
Office of the Judge Advocate General, the Pentagon (associate VIPS)
Bogdan Dzakovic , former Team Leader of Federal Air Marshals and Red Team, FAA Security (ret.) (associate VIPS)
Philip Girald i, CIA, Operations Officer (ret.)
Mike Gravel , former Adjutant, top secret control officer, Communications Intelligence Service; special agent of the
Counter Intelligence Corps and former United States Senator
James George Jatras , former U.S. diplomat and former foreign policy adviser to Senate leadership (Associate VIPS)
Larry C. Johnson , former CIA and State Department Counter Terrorism officer
John Kiriakou , former CIA Counterterrorism Officer and former senior investigator, Senate Foreign Relations Committee
Karen Kwiatkowski , former Lt. Col., US Air Force (ret.), at Office of Secretary of Defense watching the manufacture
of lies on Iraq, 2001-2003
Edward Loomis , Cryptologic Computer Scientist, former Technical Director at NSA (ret.)
David MacMichael , Ph.D., former senior estimates officer, National Intelligence Council (ret.)
Ray McGovern , former US Army infantry/intelligence officer & CIA analyst; CIA Presidential briefer (ret.)
Elizabeth Murray , former Deputy National Intelligence Officer for the Near East, National Intelligence Council & CIA
political analyst (ret.)
Todd E. Pierce , MAJ, US Army Judge Advocate (ret.)
Peter Van Buren , US Department of State, Foreign Service Officer (ret.) (associate VIPS)
Sarah G. Wilton , CDR, USNR, (ret.); Defense Intelligence Agency (ret.)
Kirk Wiebe , former Senior Analyst, SIGINT Automation Research Center, NSA
Ann Wright , retired U.S. Army reserve colonel and former U.S. diplomat who resigned in 2003 in opposition to the Iraq
War
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) is made up of former intelligence officers, diplomats, military officers
and congressional staffers. The organization, founded in 2002, was among the first critics of Washington's justifications for launching
a war against Iraq. VIPS advocates a US foreign and national security policy based on genuine national interests rather than contrived
threats promoted for largely political reasons. An archive of
VIPS memoranda is available at Consortiumnews.com.
Unfortunately, I have been taken up with the doings of another Christopher – surnamed
Donnelly – whose antics with the 'Institute for Statecraft' and 'Integrity Initiative'
seem just as ludicrous as those of Steele, and equally destructive.
I hope to come back to the implications of what has been coming out on your side about the
dossier attributed to Steele in more depth in the none-too-distant future, particular if in
fact the depositions made by him and David Kramer are unsealed reasonably promptly, but some
background remarks may be worth throwing into the discussion.
It cannot be repeated often enough that an enormous amount of damage has been done as a
result of people forming their impressions of MI6 from David Cornwell, aka John Le
Carré, rather than Graham Greene.
A critical point is that, while if 'humint' is pursued by competent people, it can be
invaluable, if pursued by incompetents, like so many of those Greene had known in his time in
the wartime MI6, and portrayed so marvellously in 'Our Man in Havana', it is common for an
'echo chamber' to be set up, where people are told what they want to hear.
Those providing the 'echo' may genuinely share the delusions involved – or they may
cynically exploit these, as part of a deliberate strategy of making the incompetents
instruments of their own agendas (as MI5 and the Naval Intelligence Division did with the
Abwehr during the war. MI6, largely incompetent apart from the section Philby ran, was
marginal.)
That precisely this kind of 'echo chamber' had been set up by the Berezovsky group with
people like Steele was the thrust of a pointed remark made by Andrei Lugovoi in the press
conference on 31 May 2007 where he responded to the Crown Prosecution Service request for his
extradition.
Looks like Orr was one of the central figures of the conspiracy against Trump in Justice Department. And it was Orr wife
who probably had written parts of the dossier at the request of CIA Brennan and other conspirators in CIA (who were acting via
controlled by them counterintelligence division at FBI)
Notable quotes:
"... Christopher Steele, a "former" MI-6 officer, had been a paid FBI informant for several years. ..."
"... Bruce Ohr met with Glenn Simpson in August 2016, which totally contradicts Simpson's previous sworn testimony that he did not meet with Ohr until after the 2016 election. ..."
"... Ohr informed FBI and senior DOJ officials, who signed off on the FISA application in October 2016 to spy on Carter Page, that the "dossier" had a tainted political history. ..."
"... What is truly remarkable about Ohr's testimony is that his explanation for repeated meetings and contacts with Christopher Steele do not make sense. I am referring specifically to Ohr's claim that Steele wanted him, Ohr, to pass info to the FBI. ..."
"... This guy is a senior DOJ official. He is a former prosecutor. He knows that the minute he accepts anything from Steele and then passes it on to the FBI that he, Ohr, became a fact witness. He is part of the chain of custody. More importantly, Ohr, knowing that Steele is on the FBI payroll, should have refused to accept any information and direct Steele to talk to his Agent/handler. Period. ..."
"... One other important sidetone--there has been a longstanding agreement among the 5 Eyes (i.e., US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) to NOT recruit as assets each other's spies. ..."
"... In light of all of this one can only conclude that Bruce Ohr is lying about the real reason for meeting with Steele or that he is a complete moron. There is no other possible explanation or excuse. I do not think that Ohr is a moron. He does not strike me as a man of limited intelligence. I think he is lying. I believe that the reason Steele approached Ohr was to provide some insulation to the FBI, which was engaged in an act of sedition. The FBI was interfering in the 2016 election and working to destroy Donald Trump. ..."
"... As more transcripts and documents come into the sunlight, we will get a clearer picture of the corruption at both the FBI and the DOJ. The FISA applications to spy on a US citizen, Carter Page, are without foundation. I am sure that William Barr appreciates this point and will press for action against those who willingly engaged in such despicable actions. ..."
Sorry to have been out of pocket (I've fled the wintry north for a new home in Florida). I
am back, so to speak, and ready to write a bit. Last week's release by Congressman Collins of
the interview transcript of Bruce Ohr, who appeared before the House Judiciary Committee last
year is quite damning of the FBI and the DOJ. If our system of justice is truly blind and
committed to fairness, there is little doubt that former FBI and DOJ officials--Comey, McCabe,
Yates and Rosenstein--will be facing serious legal jeopardy. They have lied.
The biggest "revelations" from Ohr are as follows:
Christopher Steele, a "former" MI-6 officer, had been a paid FBI informant for several years.
Bruce Ohr met with Glenn Simpson in August 2016, which totally contradicts Simpson's previous
sworn testimony that he did not meet with Ohr until after the 2016 election.
Ohr informed FBI
and senior DOJ officials, who signed off on the FISA application in October 2016 to spy on
Carter Page, that the "dossier" had a tainted political history.
I put "revelations" in quotations because we already knew most of this--specifically
Steele's status as a paid informant and the failure of the FBI and DOJ to verify the accuracy
of the so-called dossier. The new meat on the bone is Ohr's claim that he met with Simpson in
August 2016. Simpson swore under oath that no such meeting took place. That's a substantive lie
and, if the Flynn case is a guide, Mr. Simpson will be looking at prison.
What is truly remarkable about Ohr's testimony is that his explanation for repeated meetings
and contacts with Christopher Steele do not make sense. I am referring specifically to Ohr's
claim that Steele wanted him, Ohr, to pass info to the FBI. Think about this for a moment--Ohr
knows that Steele is a paid FBI informant. That means Steele has an FBI agent who is his
conduit into the FBI. That Agent handles interviews and writes up reports. Why in the hell
would Steele approach Ohr and not his FBI handler? Because Steele did not want to create a
record, i.e., a 302, that would have been generated if he had followed protocol and gone thru
normal channels.
And Ohr? This guy is a senior DOJ official. He is a former prosecutor. He knows that the
minute he accepts anything from Steele and then passes it on to the FBI that he, Ohr, became a
fact witness. He is part of the chain of custody. More importantly, Ohr, knowing that Steele is
on the FBI payroll, should have refused to accept any information and direct Steele to talk to
his Agent/handler. Period.
One other important sidetone--there has been a longstanding agreement among the 5 Eyes
(i.e., US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) to NOT recruit as assets each other's spies.
Christopher Steele's employ with the FBI violates this policy.
In light of all of this one can only conclude that Bruce Ohr is lying about the real reason
for meeting with Steele or that he is a complete moron. There is no other possible explanation
or excuse. I do not think that Ohr is a moron. He does not strike me as a man of limited
intelligence. I think he is lying. I believe that the reason Steele approached Ohr was to
provide some insulation to the FBI, which was engaged in an act of sedition. The FBI was
interfering in the 2016 election and working to destroy Donald Trump.
As more transcripts and documents come into the sunlight, we will get a clearer picture of
the corruption at both the FBI and the DOJ. The FISA applications to spy on a US citizen,
Carter Page, are without foundation. I am sure that William Barr appreciates this point and
will press for action against those who willingly engaged in such despicable actions.
Yes, in a slightly modified form this is a very true statement: "Disinformation destroys
reality. The USA is master of this -- they have built a parallel reality."
But the real issues here is the neoliberalism is in decline, and to compensate for loss of power of neoliberal propaganda
Western MSM now use neo-McCarthyism. That is a very sad but pretty understandable story.
Just as disturbing is an analysis of Russia's worldwide fake news
campaign , which spreads contradictory reports and Kremlin-friendly propaganda.
"The Russians understand Western media far better than the Western media understands
itself," one interviewee says. "And they play to the Western media's short attention span."
Another says: "Disinformation destroys reality. The Russians are masters of this -- they
have built a parallel reality."
Unfortunately the article does not mention the term McCarthyism, which is fully applicable. Also the role of CNN of the
voice of Clinton wing of Democratic Party presuppose the attitudes the Caitlin is complaining about. This is a party MSM
masquerading as impendent new outlet. This are neoliberal presstitutes and warmongers, for the lack of stronger worlds.
Also correlation with RT policies does undermine the US foreign policy. We need only decide whether this is a good or bad
thing and whether the US imperial policies are good for American people, or only for large transnational corporations. I
think Tucker Carlson also undermines the US foreign policy and as such you can find a correlation between his positions and
RT position. Now what ?
Money quote: "the possibility of
an American opposing US warmongering and the political establishment which drives it without
being ordered to by a rubles-dispensing FSB officer was a completely alien idea to them."
Yes, they actually care only in the "politically correct" reason for suppression. So the only new moment is blatant
hypocrisy. But that's how all societies work and in this sense there is nothing special in the fact that dissident voices
are suppressed. In middle ages heretics were burned at the stake.
The situation is interesting because neoliberalism is definitely on the decline and as such represent now (unlike
say 10 year ago) and rich target of attack and as the USA support it neoliberal empire such attacks usually attack the US
foreign policy. The real question is what alternative the particular outlet proposes -- the return to the New Deal
Capitalism in some form or shape, or new socialist experiment is some form of shape.
Notable quotes:
"... CNN knew that Facebook was going to be suspending the pages of her company Maffick Media before she did, suggesting a creepy degree of coordination between the two massive outlets to silence an alternative media platform. ..."
"... the US government has found a legal loophole to suppress speech, in this case speech that is critical of destructive US government policies around the world. ..."
"... Thirdly, and in my opinion weirdest of all, the article goes to great lengths to make the fact that a dissident media outlet supports the same foreign policy positions as Russia look like something strange and nefarious, instead of the normal and obvious thing that it is. ..."
"... the possibility of an American opposing US warmongering and the political establishment which drives it without being ordered to by a rubles-dispensing FSB officer was a completely alien idea to them. ..."
"... Nimmo said the tone of Maffick's pages is 'broadly anti-US and anti-corporate. That's strikingly similar to RT's output. Maffick may technically be independent, but their tone certainly matches the broader Kremlin family.' ..."
"... This is a truly obnoxious mind virus we're seeing the imperial narrative controllers pushing more and more aggressively into mainstream consciousness today : that anyone who opposes the beltway consensus on western interventionism is not simply an individual with a conscience who is thinking critically for themselves, but is actually "boosting the Kremlin narrative" ..."
"... Don't even subscribe to an anti-establishment subreddit. Those things are all Russian. Listen to Big Brother instead. Big Brother will protect you from their filthy Russian lies. ..."
"... "If CNN would like to hire me to present facts against destructive US wars and corporate ownership of our political system, I'll gladly accept," Khalek told me when asked for comment ..."
"... Russian media influence is not their actual target. Their actual target is leftist, antiwar and anti-establishment voices. That's what they're really trying to eliminate. ..."
"... It doesn't take any amount of sympathy for Russia to see that the unipolar empire is toxic for humanity, and most westerners who oppose that toxicity have no particular feelings about Russia any more than they have about Turkey or the Philippines ..."
In an extremely weird article titled " Russia is backing a viral video company aimed at American
millennials ", CNN reports that Facebook has suspended popular dissident media outlet "In
The Now" and its allied pages for failing to publicly "disclose" its financial ties to a
subsidiary of RT.
According to CNN, such disclosures are not and have never been an actual part of Facebook's
official policy, but Facebook has made the exceptional precondition of public disclosure of
financial ties in order for In The Now to return to its platform.
I say the article is extremely weird for a number of reasons.
Firstly , according to In The Now CEO Anissa Naouai, CNN knew that Facebook was going to be
suspending the pages of her company Maffick Media before she did, suggesting a creepy degree of
coordination between the two massive outlets to silence an alternative media platform.
Secondly, the article reports that CNN found out about Maffick's financial ties thanks to a
tip-off from the German Marshall Fund, a narrative control firm which receives funding from the
US government. In The Now 's Rania Khalek has described this tactic as
"a case where the US government has found a legal loophole to suppress speech, in this case
speech that is critical of destructive US government policies around the world."
Thirdly, and in my opinion weirdest of all, the article goes to great lengths to make the
fact that a dissident media outlet supports the same foreign policy positions as Russia look
like something strange and nefarious, instead of the normal and obvious thing that it is.
The article repeatedly mentions the fact that all the people working for In The Now "claim"
to be editorially independent as opposed to being told what to report by Kremlin officials, a
notion which Khalek says was met with
extreme skepticism when she was interviewed for the piece by CNN. As though the possibility of
an American opposing US warmongering and the political establishment which drives it without
being ordered to by a rubles-dispensing FSB officer was a completely alien idea to them.
Check out the following excerpt, for example of this bizarre attitude:
"Ben Nimmo, a senior fellow for information defense at the Atlantic Council's Digital
Forensic Research Lab, told CNN that while Russian state-backed outlets claim to be
editorially independent, 'they routinely boost Kremlin narratives, especially those which
portray the West negatively.'
"Nimmo said the tone of Maffick's pages is 'broadly anti-US and anti-corporate. That's
strikingly similar to RT's output. Maffick may technically be independent, but their tone
certainly matches the broader Kremlin family.' "
This is a truly obnoxious mind virus we're seeing the imperial narrative controllers pushing
more and more aggressively into mainstream consciousness today : that anyone who opposes the
beltway consensus on western interventionism is not simply an individual with a conscience who
is thinking critically for themselves, but is actually "boosting the Kremlin narrative". If you
say it in an assertive and authoritative tone like Mr Nimmo does, it can sound like a perfectly
reasonable position if you don't think about it too hard. If you really look at it directly,
though, what these manipulators are actually saying is "Russia opposes western interventionism,
therefore anyone who opposes western interventionism is basically Russian."
Which is of course a total non-argument. You don't get to just say "Russia bad" for two
years to get everyone riled up into a state of xenophobic hysteria and then say "That's
Russian!" at anything you don't like. That's not a thing. More to the point, though, there is
no causal relationship between the fact that Russia opposes western interventionism and the
fact that many westerners do.
As we
discussed recently , there will necessarily be inadvertent agreement between Russia and
westerners who oppose western interventionism, because Russia, like so many other sovereign
nations, opposes western interventionism. If you discover that an American who opposes US
warmongering and establishment politics is saying the same things as RT, that doesn't mean
you've discovered a shocking conspiracy between western dissidents and the Russian government,
it means people who oppose the same things oppose the same things.
We're seeing this absurd gibberish spouted over and over again by the mainstream media now.
The other day the delightful pro-Sanders subreddit WayOfTheBern was
smeared as a Russian operation by the Washington Times, not because the Washington Times
had any evidence anywhere supporting that claim, but because the subreddit's members are
hostile to Democratic presidential hopefuls other than Sanders, and because its posts
"consistently support positions that would be amenable to the Kremlin." All this means is that
the subreddit is full of people who support Bernie Sanders and oppose US government
malfeasance, yet an entire article was published in a mainstream outlet treating this as
something dangerous and suspicious.
If you really listen to what the CNNs and Ben Nimmos and Washington Timeses are actually
trying to tell you, what they're saying is that it's not okay for anyone to oppose any part of
the unipolar world order or the establishment which runs it . Never ever, under any
circumstances. Don't work for a media outlet that's funded by the Russian government even
though no mainstream outlets will ever platform you. Don't even subscribe to an
anti-establishment subreddit. Those things are all Russian. Listen to Big Brother instead. Big
Brother will protect you from their filthy Russian lies.
"If CNN would like to hire me to present facts against destructive US wars and corporate
ownership of our political system, I'll gladly accept," Khalek told me when asked for
comment.
"But the corporate media doesn't allow antiwar voices a platform. In The Now does. I've
worked for dozens of different outlets, from Vice to Al Jazeera to RT, and my message has
always been the same: leftist, antiwar and pro justice and equality. People should be asking
why US mainstream media outlets that claim to be free and independent refuse to air critical
and adversarial voices like mine."
Why indeed? Actually, if CNN is so worried about Russian media influence in America, all
they'd have to do is put on a few shows featuring leftist, antiwar and pro-justice voices and
that would be the end of it. They could easily out-spend RT by a massive margin, buy up all the
talent like Khalek, Lee Camp and Chris Hedges, put on a sleek, high-budget show and steal RT
America's audience, killing it dead and drawing all anti-establishment energy to their
material.
But they don't. They don't, and they never will. Because Russian media influence is not
their actual target. Their actual target is leftist, antiwar and anti-establishment voices.
That's what they're really trying to eliminate.
So yes, Moscow will of course elevate some western voices who oppose the power establishment
that is trying to undermine and subvert Russia. Those voices will not require any instruction
to speak out against that establishment, since that's what they'd be doing anyway and they're
just grateful to finally have a platform upon which to speak. And it is good that they're
getting a platform to speak. If western power structures have a problem with it, they should
stop universally refusing to platform anyone who opposes the status quo that is destroying
nations abroad and squeezing the life out of citizens at home.
It doesn't take any amount of sympathy for Russia to see that the unipolar empire is toxic
for humanity, and most westerners who oppose that toxicity have no particular feelings about
Russia any more than they have about Turkey or the Philippines. Sometimes Russia will come in
and give them a platform in the void that has been left by the mainstream outlets which are
doing everything they can to silence them. So what? The alternative is all dissident voices
being silenced. The fact that Russia prevents a few of them from being silenced is not the
problem. The problem is that they are being silenced at all.
* * *
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"... When the Soviet Empire collapsed, America appeared poised to establish the first truly world empire. The developed countries were American vassals in effect if not in name, many of them occupied by American troops: Among others, Europe, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Latin America, Saudi Arabia, and Australia. The US had by far the dominant economy and the biggest military, controlled the IMF, NATO, the dollar, SWIFT, and enjoyed technological superiority.. Russia was in chaos, China a distant smudge on the horizon. ..."
"... Current foreign policy openly focuses on dominating the planet. The astonishing thing is that some people don't notice. ..."
"... A major purpose of the destruction of Iraq was to get control of its oil and put American forces on the border of Iran, another oil power. The current attempt to starve the Iranians aims at installing a American puppet government. The ongoing coup in Venezuela seeks control of another vast oil reserve. It will also serve to intimidate the rest of Latin America by showing what can happen to any country that defies Washington. Why are American troops in Nigeria? Guess what Nigeria has. ..."
"... America cannot compete with China commercially ..."
"... Beijing's advantages are too great: A huge and growing domestic market, a far larger population of very bright people, a for-profit economy that allows heavy investment both internally and abroad, a stable government that can plan well into the future. ..."
"... Increasingly America's commercial power is as a consumer, not a producer. Washington tells other countries, "If you don't do as we say, we won't buy your stuff." ..."
"... As America's competitiveness declines, Washington resorts to strong-arm tactics. It has no choice. A prime example is the 5G internet, a Very Big Deal, in which Huawei holds the lead. Unable to provide a better product at a better price, Washington forbids the vassals to deal with Huawei–on pain of not buying their stuff. In what appears to be desperation, the Exceptional Nation has actually made a servile Canada arrest the daughter of Huawei's founder. ..."
When the Soviet Empire collapsed, America appeared poised to establish the first truly world
empire. The developed countries were American vassals in effect if not in name, many of them
occupied by American troops: Among others, Europe, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Latin America,
Saudi Arabia, and Australia. The US had by far the dominant economy and the biggest military,
controlled the IMF, NATO, the dollar, SWIFT, and enjoyed technological superiority.. Russia was
in chaos, China a distant smudge on the horizon.
Powerful groups in Washington, such as PNAC, began angling towed aggrandizement, but the
real lunge came with the attack on Iraq. Current foreign policy openly focuses on dominating
the planet. The astonishing thing is that some people don't notice.
The world runs on oil. Controlling the supply conveys almost absolute power over those
countries that do not have their own. (For example, the Japanese would soon be eating each
other if their oil were cut off.) Saudi Arabia is an American protectorate,and, having seen
what happened to Iraq, knows that it can be conquered in short order if it gets out of line.
The U. S. Navy could easily block tanker traffic from Hormuz to any or all countries.
A major purpose of the destruction of Iraq was to get control of its oil and put American
forces on the border of Iran, another oil power. The current attempt to starve the Iranians
aims at installing a American puppet government. The ongoing coup in Venezuela seeks control of
another vast oil reserve. It will also serve to intimidate the rest of Latin America by showing
what can happen to any country that defies Washington. Why are American troops in Nigeria?
Guess what Nigeria has.
Note that Iraq and Iran, in addition to their oil, are geostrategically vital to a world
empire. Further, the immensely powerful Jewish presence in the US supports the Mid-East wars
for its own purposes. So, of course, does the arms industry. All God's chillun love the
Empire.
For the Greater Empire to prevail, Russia and China, the latter a surprise contender, must
be neutralized. Thus the campaign to crush Russia by economic sanctions. At the same time
Washington pushes NATO, its sepoy militia, ever eastward, wants to station US forces in Poland,
plans a Space Command whose only purpose is to intimidate or bankrupt Russia, drops out of the
INF Treaty for the same reasons, and seeks to prevent commercial relations between Russia and
the European vassals (e.g., Nordstream II).
China of course is the key obstacle to expanding the Empire. Ergo the trade war. America
has to stop China's economic and technological progress, and stop it now, as it
will not get another chance.
The present moment is an Imperial crunch point. America cannot compete with China
commercially or, increasingly, in technology. Washington knows it. Beijing's advantages are too
great: A huge and growing domestic market, a far larger population of very bright people, a
for-profit economy that allows heavy investment both internally and abroad, a stable government
that can plan well into the future.
America? It's power is more fragile than it may seem. The United States once dominated
economically by making better products at better prices, ran a large trade surplus, and barely
had competitors. Today it has deindustrialized, runs a trade deficit with almost everybody,
carries an astronomical and uncontrolled national debt, and makes few things that the world
can't get elsewhere, often at lower cost.
Increasingly America's commercial power is as a consumer, not a producer. Washington tells
other countries, "If you don't do as we say, we won't buy your stuff." The indispensable
country is an indispensable market. With few and diminishing (though important) exceptions, if
it stopped selling things to China, China would barely notice, but if it stopped buying, the
Chinese economy would wither. Tariffs, note, are just a way of not buying China's stuff.
Since the profligate American market is vital to other countries, they often do as ordered.
But Asian markets grow. So do Asian industries.
As America's competitiveness declines, Washington resorts to strong-arm tactics. It has no
choice. A prime example is the 5G internet, a Very Big Deal, in which Huawei holds the lead.
Unable to provide a better product at a better price, Washington forbids the vassals to deal
with Huawei–on pain of not buying their stuff. In what appears to be desperation, the
Exceptional Nation has actually made a servile Canada arrest the daughter of Huawei's
founder.
The tide runs against the Empire. A couple of decades ago, the idea that China could compete
technologically with America would have seemed preposterous. Today China advances at startling
speed. It is neck and neck with the US in supercomputers, launches moonlanders, leads in 5G
internet, does leading work in genetics, designs world-class chipsets (e.g., the Kirin 980 and
920) and smartphones. Another decade or two of this and America will be at the trailing
edge.
The American decline is largely self-inflicted. The US chooses its government by popularity
contests among provincial lawyers rather than by competence. American education deteriorates
under assault by social-justice faddists. Washington spends on the military instead of
infrastructure and the economy. It is politically chaotic, its policies changing with every new
administration.
The first rule of empire is, "Don't let your enemies unite." Instead, Washington has pushed
Russia, China, and Iran into a coalition against the Empire. It might have been brighter to
have integrated Iran tightly into the Euro-American econosphere, but Israel would not have let
America do this. The same approach would have worked with Russia, racially closer to Europe
than China and acutely aware of having vast empty Siberia bordering an overpopulated China. By
imposing sanctions of adversaries and allies alike, Washington promotes dedollarization and
recognition that America is not an ally but a master.
It is now or never. If America's great but declining power does not subjugate the rest of
the world quickly, the rising powers of Asia will swamp it. Even India grows. Either sanctions
subdue the world, or Washington starts a world war. Or America becomes just another
country.
To paraphrase a great political thinker, "It's the Empire, Stupid."
"Washington has pushed Russia, China, and Iran into a coalition against the Empire."
Turkey may soon join them, then Iraq might revolt. South Korea has tired of the
warmongering and may join too, which is why Washington is giving them the lead in dealing
with North Korea. But a united Korea identifes more with China than the USA, so the USA wants
to block that idea. The Germans are unhappy too, with all the warmongering, immigration, and
American arrogance.
Sorry Fred, but you're too late. It's all over. Just that your maniacal rulers, i.e. Pompeo,
Bolton et al can't see it. Or, Cognitive Dissonance being painful, refuse to.
Warsaw recently was a case in point. The two biggest European countries, Germany and France
refused to even send a senior representative. All people did was listen in an embarrassed
silence while Pompeo tried to make like a latter day Julius Cesear. At the same time, Russia,
Turkey and Iran met in Sochi, and worked out how they were going to take the next solving the
mess in Syria, the way they want it.
Incidentally, you could also go onto YouTube and watch RT's subtitled [also horrible voice
over, but you can't have everything I guess] of President Putin's "Address to Parliament and
the Nation". It runs for close to 1.5 hours. You will hear the problems Russia has, how Putin
addresses the concerns of the people, their complaints re poor access in country areas to
medicine, and his orders on how this is to be fixed.
But you will also hear the moves forward, that Russia now has a trade surplus [remember
those?] and can afford all the programs it needs. It's the world leading exporter of Wheat,
and other commodities are catching up.
Then he will tell you and show videos of the latest 2 defense weapons – and they are
things America cannot defend against. He also in light of the US withdrawing from the INF
treaty made a very clear statement, should the US be so stupid as to think it can use Europe
as it's war ground, and have Europeans get killed instead of Americans. "Put Intermediate
sites in Europe and use just one, and not only will we fire on the European site that sent
it, but we will also take out the "decision making centre", wherever this is".
Ponder that for a while. There is nothing US can do. The dollar is slowly being rejected and
dumped. The heartland is reamed out after billions took the productive facilities and put
them in China [so kind]. The homeless and desperate are growing in numbers.
It's all over, Fred. Time to start planning what to do when the mud really hits the fan.
Can't argue with that! Usually, I read Fred for amusement, but this is all spot on. I
particularly liked:
The American decline is largely self-inflicted. The US chooses its government by
popularity contests among provincial lawyers rather than by competence. American education
deteriorates under assault by social-justice faddists. Washington spends on the military
instead of infrastructure and the economy.
Incredible. US government cooks up lies to invade and wreck Iraq, destroy Libya, and subvert
Syria. It pulled off a coup in Ukraine with Neo-Nazis. US and its allies Saudis and Israel
gave aid, direct and indirect, to ISIS and Al-Qaida to bring down Assad or turn Syria upside
down.
But, scum like Pompeo puts forth hard-line stance against terrorists. What a bunch of vile
phonies and hypocrites.
It might have been brighter to have integrated Iran tightly into the Euro-American
econosphere, but Israel would not have let America do this. The same approach would have
worked with Russia, racially closer to Europe than China and acutely aware of having vast
empty Siberia bordering an overpopulated China.
Russia is more than racially closer, Russia is culturally much closer and by culturally I
don't mean this cesspool of new "culture". But, as you brilliantly noted:
The US chooses its government by popularity contests among provincial lawyers rather
than by competence.
Britain's time of full spectrum dominance (well trade, industry and navy really) did not
emerge fully formed from isolation as did America. England and the UK played balance of power
politics. The US can still do that for a very long time, given some basic diplomatic sense.
India, China & Pakistan present an interesting triangle. Indonesia and Vietnam are no
friends of China. Nigeria is heading for 400m people and will want to exert its own power,
not take instructions from Peking, etc, etc. Balance of power requires more fluidity than the
US has shown to date. Seeing Russia as an hereditary enemy illustrates this failure.
Can the US make the changes necessary to play balance of power politics?
The astonishing thing is that some people don't notice.
.
Not to notice (or rather, not to notice one's own noticing) what the majority doesn't
notice (OK: they don't notice that they notice, actually) is part of humankind's cerebral
package too.
You once called it the law of the pack. It can be given innumerable names -- just it doesn't
change.
The American decline is largely self-inflicted.
.
It's what follows ripe democracy, invariably -- meanjng that it can arguably not be
helped.
@Godfree Roberts
Finally a bright spot in an otherwise depressingly-fairly-truthful article. Less Government
spending is a GOOD thing, I mean, unless you are a flat-out Communist, of course ohhhhh .
And yes, the scale is WAY off. How could those 0.8 to 2.05% numbers seem even close to
reality to anyone who has a clue. I can't vouch for China, but the US number is off by a
factor of 20 to 25 . Come on, Godfree, you're (a tad bit) better than that!
That's not a bad article in general, but, as usual, Mr. Reed doesn't really have that
analytical mind to know what's really been, and is, going on.
1) There were PLENTY of Americans, many of them even politicians who wanted a "peace
dividend" after the Cold War was won. G.H.W Bush and the neocons put the kibosh on that. The
current version of empire-building didn't have to be. The Israeli-influenced neocons are most
of the reason for the post-Cold-War empire building.
2) It's not ALL about oil anymore – it seems to be a diminishing factor, what with
the US producing more oil than it imports, at this point. Mr. Reed could use a dose of
Zerohedge.com, as, along with their gloom-and-doom, they have opened my eyes to the American
meddling around the world to keep support of the Reserve Currency, the US dollar. Lots of the
countries in which the US causes trouble were trying to get out of the dollar world with
their trade.
3) Related to (2) here, China and Russia both want to eliminate the use of the dollar in
trade, including with each other. That bothers a lot of people who understand how bad the
outlook for the US economy really is, and what it would mean for the dollar to no longer be
used around the world for trade.
4) American government has handed China a completely one-sided deal (FOR China) in trade
since the mid-1990's and Bill Clinton. It's time to end that, which is what the trade war is
about. I don't dispute that American could be in a whole lot more pain over it than the
Chinese, but it's like medicine – take it now, or suffer even more later.
America? It's power is more fragile than it may seem. The United States once
dominated economically by making better products at better prices, ran a large trade
surplus, and barely had competitors. Today it has deindustrialized, runs a trade deficit
with almost everybody, carries an astronomical and uncontrolled national debt, and makes
few things that the world can't get elsewhere, often at lower cost.
@peterAUS I agree ..
Canada is "not" under America's boot. As a Canadian I respect the security America provides
Canada on the world stage but it would be a cold day in hell when i would submit to an
America with a gun in his hand. And im pretty sure our best buddies in jolly ol England might
have something to say. This isnt a pissing match. Empire is a fickle bitch.
@Bruce County Pretty
much.
As far as Australia and New Zealand are concerned it's crystal clear. Somebody has to provide
security for our way of life here; before it was United Kingdom, now it's USA.
Hehe definitely preferable to China.
Or Japan.
Or anyone here in Pacific.
If Americans want to deploy a full corps, whatever, no prob. Again, as far as "fair
skinned" English speaking citizens here are concerned. I'd even say it applies to Polynesians
around.
Now, can't say it applies to our Mohammedan citizens, and definitely not to Chinese.
It's amusing to see Westerners around here keen on replacing USA empire with Chinese. Hehe
talking about self-hate.
Granted, there are people among them who really believe in all that propaganda coming from
Beijing. Well better than taking Prozac or similar, I guess, so all good.
"Current foreign policy openly focuses on dominating the planet. The astonishing thing is
that some people don't notice." That is pretty astonishing, given that most of the columns on
sites like this & even in more MSM-style publications rehash this theme ad infinitum. It
may, in fact, be more a matter of people simply getting tired of hearing it over and over
that leads them to shrug and turn to something different. It's not news anymore. How many
columns can anyone squeeze out of the same threadbare topic. Many years ago, during first
Cold War, it was still somewhat daring to expose this partially hidden truth; but now it's
old hat on both the left & right.No one really needs someone to tell them again what
everyone already knows, that's easy – but what to do about it, that's the hard part!
@Philip Owen This is
a subset of government spending and only covers R&D.
It doesn't cover corporate R&D spending, though I'm guessing that in that regard, the
two countries are even. If anyone has the numbers I'd be grateful if they'd share them.
"... Tulsi Gabbard has recently launched a new attack on New World Order agents and ethnic cleansers in the Middle East, and one can see why they would be upset with her ..."
"... Gabbard is smart enough to realize that the Neocon path leads to death, chaos, and destruction. She knows that virtually nothing good has come out of the Israeli narrative in the Middle East -- a narrative which has brought America on the brink of collapse in the Middle East. Therefore, she is asking for a U-turn. ..."
"... The first step for change, she says, is to "stand up against powerful politicians from both parties" who take their orders from the Neocons and war machine. These people don't care about you, me, the average American, the people in the Middle East, or the American economy for that matter. They only care about fulfilling a diabolical ideology in the Middle East and much of the world. These people ought to stop once and for all. Regardless of your political views, you should all agree with Gabbard here. ..."
Tulsi Gabbard has recently launched a new attack on New World Order agents and ethnic
cleansers in the Middle East, and one can see why they would be upset with her. She said:
" We must stand up
against powerful politicians from both parties who sit in their ivory towers thinking up
new wars to wage, new places for people to die, wasting trillions of our taxpayer dollars and
hundreds of thousands of lives and undermining our economy, our security, and destroying our
middle class."
It is too early to formulate a complete opinion on Gabbard, but she has said the right thing
so far. In fact, her record is better than numerous presidents, both past and present.
As we have documented in the past, Gabbard is an Iraq war veteran, and she knew what
happened to her fellow soldiers who died for Israel, the Neocon war machine, and the military
industrial complex. She also seems to be aware that the war in Iraq alone will cost American
taxpayers at least six trillion dollars.
[1] She is almost certainly aware of the fact that at least "360,000 Iraq and Afghanistan
veterans may have suffered brain injuries."
[2]
Gabbard is smart enough to realize that the Neocon path leads to death, chaos, and
destruction. She knows that virtually nothing good has come out of the Israeli narrative in the
Middle East -- a narrative which has brought America on the brink of collapse in the Middle
East. Therefore, she is asking for a U-turn.
The first step for change, she says, is to "stand up against powerful politicians from both
parties" who take their orders from the Neocons and war machine. These people don't care about
you, me, the average American, the people in the Middle East, or the American economy for that
matter. They only care about fulfilling a diabolical ideology in the Middle East and much of
the world. These people ought to stop once and for all. Regardless of your political views, you
should all agree with Gabbard here.
[1] Ernesto Londono, "Study: Iraq, Afghan war costs to top $4 trillion," Washington
Post , March 28, 2013; Bob Dreyfuss, The $6 Trillion Wars," The Nation , March 29,
2013; "Iraq War Cost U.S. More Than $2 Trillion, Could Grow to $6 Trillion, Says Watson
Institute Study," Huffington Post , May 14, 2013; Mark Thompson, "The $5 Trillion War
on Terror," Time , June 29, 2011; "Iraq war cost: $6 trillion. What else could have
been done?," LA Times , March 18, 2013.
[2] "360,000 veterans may have brain injuries," USA Today , March 5, 2009.
"We must stand up against powerful politicians from both parties who sit in their ivory towers thinking up new wars to wage, new
places for people to die, wasting trillions of our taxpayer dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives and undermining our economy,
our security, and destroying our middle class."
That's a natural reaction to the revelation of Andrew G. McCabe, the former deputy FBI
director, that top Justice Department officials, alarmed by Donald Trump's firing of former
Bureau director James Comey, explored a plan to invoke the 25th Amendment and kick the duly
elected president out of office.
According to New York Times reporters Adam Goldman and Matthew Haag, McCabe made the
statement in an NBC 60 Minutes interview to be aired on Sunday. He also reportedly said
that McCabe wanted the so-called Russia collusion investigation to go after Trump for
obstructing justice in firing Comey and for any instances they could turn up of his working in
behalf of Russia.
The idea of invoking the 25th Amendment was discussed, it seems, at two meetings on May
16, 2017. According to McCabe, top law enforcement officials pondered how they might recruit
Vice President Pence and a majority of cabinet members to declare in writing, to the Senate's
president pro tempore and the House speaker, that the president was "unable to discharge the
powers and duties of his office." That would be enough, under the 25th Amendment, to install
the vice president as acting president, pushing aside Trump.
But to understand what kind of constitutional crisis this would unleash and the precedent it
would set, it's necessary to ponder the rest of this section of the 25th Amendment. The text
prescribes that, if the president, after being removed, transmits to the same congressional
figures that he is indeed capable of discharging his duties, he shall once again be president
after four days. But if the vice president and the cabinet majority reiterate their declaration
within those four days that the guy can't govern, Congress is charged with deciding the issue.
It then takes a two-thirds vote of both houses to keep the president removed, which would have
to be done within 21 days, during which time the elected president would be sidelined and the
vice president would govern. If Congress can't muster the two-thirds majority within the
prescribed time period, the president "shall resume the powers and duties of his office."
It's almost impossible to contemplate the political conflagration that would ensue under
this plan. Citizens would watch those in Washington struggle with the monumental question of
the fate of their elected leader under an initiative that had never before been invoked, or
even considered, in such circumstances. Debates would flare up over whether this comported with
the original intent of the amendment; whether it was crafted to deal with physical or mental
"incapacitation," as opposed to controversial actions or unsubstantiated allegations or even
erratic decision making; whether such an action, if established as precedent, would destabilize
the American republic for all time; and whether unelected bureaucrats should arrogate to
themselves the power to set in motion the downfall of a president, circumventing the
impeachment language of the Constitution.
For the past two years, the country has been struggling to understand the two competing
narratives of the criminal investigation of the president.
One narrative -- let's call it Narrative A -- has it that honorable and dedicated federal
law enforcement officials developed concerns over a tainted election in which nefarious Russian
agents had sought to tilt the balloting towards the candidate who wanted to improve
U.S.-Russian relations and who seemed generally unseemly. Thus did the notion emerge, quite
understandably, that Trump had "colluded" with Russian officials to cadge a victory that
otherwise would have gone to his opponent. This narrative is supported and protected by
Democratic figures and organizations, by adherents of the "Russia as Threat" preoccupation, and
by anti-Trumpers everywhere, particularly news outlets such as CNN, The Washington Post
, and The New York Times .
The other view -- Narrative B -- posits that certain bureaucratic mandarins of the
national security state and the outgoing Obama administration resolved early on to thwart
Trump's candidacy. After his election, they determined to undermine his political standing, and
particularly his proposed policy toward Russia, through a relentless and expansive
investigation characterized by initial misrepresentations, selective media leaks, brutal law
enforcement tactics, and a barrage of innuendo. This is the narrative of most Trump supporters,
conservative commentators, Fox News, and The Wall Street Journal editorial page, notably
columnist Kimberley Strassel.
The McCabe revelation won't affect the battle of the two narratives. As ominous and
outrageous as this "deep state" behavior may seem to those who embrace Narrative B, it will be
seen by Narrative A adherents as evidence that those law enforcement officials were out there
heroically on the front lines protecting the republic from Donald J. Trump.
And those Narrative A folks won't have any difficulty tossing aside the fact that McCabe was
fired as deputy FBI director for violating agency policy in leaking unauthorized information to
the news media. He then allegedly violated the law in lying about it to federal investigators
on four occasions, including three times while under oath.
Indeed, Narrative A people have no difficulty at all brushing aside serious questions posed
by Narrative B people. McCabe is a likely liar and perjurer? Doesn't matter. Peter Strzok, head
of the FBI's counterespionage section, demonstrated his anti-Trump animus in tweets and emails
to Justice official Lisa Page? Irrelevant. Christopher Steele's dossier of dirt on Trump,
including an allegation that the Russians were seeking to blackmail and bribe him, was compiled
by a man who had demonstrated to a Justice Department official that he was "desperate that
Donald Trump not get elected and passionate about him not being president"? Not important. The
dossier was paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party? Immaterial.
Nothing in the dossier was ever substantiated? So what?
Now we have a report from a participant of those meetings that top officials of the
country's premier law enforcement entity sat around and pondered how to bring down a sitting
president they didn't like. The Times even says that McCabe "confirmed" an earlier
report that deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein suggested wearing a wire in meetings with
Trump to incriminate him and make him more vulnerable to the plot.
There is no suggestion in McCabe's interview pronouncements or in the words of Scott Pelley,
who conducted the interview and spoke to CBS This Morning about it, that these federal
officials ever took action to further the aim of unseating the president. There doesn't seem to
be any evidence that they approached cabinet members or the vice president about it. "They were
speculating, 'This person would be with us, this person would not be,' and they were counting
noses in that effort," said Pelley. He added, apparently in response to Rosenstein's
insistence that his comments about wearing a wire were meant as a joke, "This was not perceived
to be a joke."
What are we to make of this? Around the time of the meetings to discuss the 25th Amendment
plot, senior FBI officials also discussed initiating a national security investigation of the
president as a stooge of the Russians or perhaps even a Russian agent. These talks were
revealed by The New YorkTimes and CNN in January, based on closed-door
congressional testimony by former FBI general counsel James Baker. You don't have to read very
carefully to see that the reporters on these stories brought to them a Narrative A sensibility.
The Times headline: "F.B.I. Opened Inquiry into Whether Trump Was Secretly Working on
Behalf of Russia." CNN's: "Transcripts detail how FBI debated whether Trump was 'following
directions' of Russia." And of course, whoever leaked those hearing transcripts almost surely
did so to bolster the Narrative A version of events.
The independent journalist Gareth Porter, writing at Consortium News, offers a penetrating
exposition of the inconsistencies, fallacies, and fatuities of the Narrative A matrix, as
reflected in how the Times and CNN handled the stories that resulted from what were
clearly self-interested leaks.
Porter notes that a particularly sinister expression in May 2017 by former CIA director
John O. Brennan, a leading Trump antagonist, has precipitated echoes in the news media ever
since, particularly in the Times . Asked in a committee hearing if he had intelligence
indicating that anyone in the Trump campaign was "colluding with Moscow," Brennan dodged the
question. He said his experience had taught him that "the Russians try to suborn individuals,
and they try to get them to act on their behalf either wittingly or unwittingly."
Of course you can't collude with anybody unwittingly. But Brennan's fancy expression has the
effect of expanding what can be thrown at political adversaries, to include not just conscious
and nefarious collaboration but also policy advocacy that could be viewed as wrongheaded or
injurious to U.S. interests. As Porter puts it, "The real purpose is to confer on national
security officials and their media allies the power to cast suspicion on individuals on the
basis of undesirable policy views of Russia rather than on any evidence of actual collaboration
with the Russian government."
That seems to be what's going on here. There's no doubt that McCabe and Rosenstein and
Strzok and Brennan and Page and many others despised Trump and his resolve to thaw relations
with Russia. They viewed him as a president "who needed to be reined in," as a CNN report
described the sentiment among top FBI officials after the Comey firing.
So they expanded the definition of collusion to include "unwitting" collaboration in order
to justify their machinations. It's difficult to believe that people in such positions would
take such a cavalier attitude toward the kind of damage they could wreak on the body
politic.
Now we learn that they actually sat around and plotted how to distort the Constitution, just
as they distorted the rules of official behavior designed to hold them in check, in order to
destroy a presidential administration placed in power by the American people. It's getting more
and more difficult to dismiss Narrative B.
Robert W. Merry, longtime Washington journalist and publishing executive, is the
author most recently of President McKinley: Architect of the American Century. MORE FROM THIS
AUTHOR
You're right, it didn't change a thing in the full-throated support to depose an elected
President they disagree with. The bureaucratic cabal has long had a more informal absolute
veto over who can even run for President. This guy challenged that hegemony of insider power
brokers, and caused the revelation that we have morphed into a Potemkin-style, managed
democracy, in which we don't choose who gets to run, just which of their choices we are allowed
to approve.
Such is the decadent trajectory, of republics that transition into empires, where
democratic accountabilty to the governed, domestic and foreign, decays in favor of empire
administrators and their elite beneficiaries and their sinecures at the expense of the
majority.
People rail against Trump as some sort of would-be Caesar, but he is elected, while those
permanent unaccountable "national security" czars acting in secrecy they are willing to
transfer all power to, are not.
No form of popular government can survive when secret police recording everything and spying
on the population become the real power.
"It's difficult to believe that people in such positions would take such a cavalier attitude
toward the kind of damage they could wreak on the body politic."
What we don't want to recognize is that people in such positions are, in fact, just that
dumb. It is unfortunately true. While not a Trump supporter, I would be out on the streets with
them if these jacka$$es had tried to pull this off. They should ALL be immediately terminated
and any benefits revoked.
Last night (Feb 14, 2019) Tucker Carlson interviewed retired Harvard law professor Alan
Dershowitz (1:04-3:36):
Carlson: "Professor, thanks very much for coming on. So now the suspicions of many are
confirmed by one of the players in it. The Department of Justice discussed trying to remove the
President using the 25 Amendment. What's your reaction to that?
Dershowitz: "Well, if that's true, it is clearly an attempt at a coup d'état.
Relating to what your former guest said, let's take the worst case scenario: Let's assume the
President of the United States was in bed with the Russians, committed treason, committed
obstruction of justice -- the 25 Amendment simply is irrelevant to that. That's why you have an
impeachment provision. The 25th amendment is about Woodrow Wilson having a stroke. It's about a
president being shot and not being able to perform his office. It's not about the most
fundamental disagreements. It's not about impeachable offenses. And any Justice Department
official who even mentioned the 25th Amendment in the context of President Trump has committed
a grievous offense against the Constitution. The framers of the 25th amendment had in mind
something very specific. And trying to use the 25th amendment to circumvent the impeachment
provisions, or to circumvent an election is a despicable act of unconstitutional
power-grabbing. And you were right when you said it reminded me of what happens in third world
countries. Look, these people may have been well-intentioned. They may believe that they were
serving the interests of the United States. But you have to obey the law and the law is the
Constitution and the 25th Amendment is as clear as could be: incapacity, unable to perform
office. That's what you need. That's why you need 2/3 of the House and 2/3 of the Senate
agreeing. And it has to be on the basis of a medical or psychological incapacity. Not on the
basis of even the most extreme crimes -- which there is no evidence were committed -- but even
if they were, that would not be basis for invoking the 25th Amendment. And I challenge any
left-wing person to get on television and to defend the use of the 25th Amendment. I challenge
any of my colleagues who are in the "Get Trump At Any Cost" camp to come on television and
justify the use of the 25 Amendment other than for physical or psychiatric incapacity.
Carlson: I bet they're doing that right now. This is an attack on our system, I would say,
not just the President. Alan Dershowitz, thank you very much.
Dershowitz: It is an attack on our system. It's an attack on the constitution. Thank
you.
How many millions of dollars did Bill and Hill receive from Russians? How much of America's
uranium deposits did Hillary sell to Russians during her time in the Obama administration? The
New York Times informs us:
" . . . the sale gave the Russians control of one-fifth of all uranium production capacity
in the United States. Since uranium is considered a strategic asset, with implications for
national security, the deal had to be approved by a committee composed of representatives from
a number of United States government agencies. Among the agencies that eventually signed off
was the State Department, then headed by Mr. Clinton's wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton.
"As the Russians gradually assumed control of Uranium One in three separate transactions
from 2009 to 2013, Canadian records show, a flow of cash made its way to the Clinton
Foundation. Uranium One's chairman used his family foundation to make four donations totaling
$2.35 million. Those contributions were not publicly disclosed by the Clintons, despite an
agreement Mrs. Clinton had struck with the Obama White House to publicly identify all donors.
Other people with ties to the company made donations as well.
"And shortly after the Russians announced their intention to acquire a majority stake in
Uranium One, Mr. Clinton received $500,000 for a Moscow speech from a Russian investment bank
with links to the Kremlin that was promoting Uranium One stock.
"At the time, both Rosatom and the United States government made promises intended to ease
concerns about ceding control of the company's assets to the Russians. Those promises have been
repeatedly broken, records show."
I wonder how much howling and how many allegations of "collusion" with Russia we'd be
hearing if the name Clinton were removed from the NY Times article and the name Trump were
inserted?
The article states: " top officials of the country's premier law enforcement entity sat around
and pondered how to bring down a sitting president they didn't like."
-- -- -- --
Which makes one wonder if "The rule of law" is becoming the rule of outlaws? When the
non-elected in the justice profession appear to have their own agenda.
Trump is an idiot, but his enemies in the lib-Dem-media Establishment are far worse: corrupt,
deceitful, arrogant, and lawless. Exhibit A is Andrew McCabe.
That's why I'll vote for the Idiot-in-Chief (again) in 2020. Because the alternative makes
me vomit.
"The pages of this publication drift further and further into utter insanity and
despicable defense of Trump. Stand up for the values of the Constitution, or something, but
not for this man who is no more than a self-enriching demagogue with no understanding of the
reactionary politics he uses to delude the rubes and attract asinine threadbare pieces like
this one."
Actually no. Consider me the inverse of Peter. I didn't vote for Trump due to the character
weaknesses Peter describes. However, what I see is a seriously flawed man who has served the
useful purpose of revealing an echo chamber of flawed and self-serving biases shared by the
media and political establishment of this country. I see CNN, the NY Times, the Washington
Post, and even some key leaders of our security services in a completely different light than I
did two years ago. I am thankful for the clarity. I consider Merry's article to be a
contribution in that direction.
"Peter" sez: "Can't imagine why career law enforcement officials were concerned with a guy they
knew to be a criminal taking over the office of the presidency."
Weird but no one has shown any actual criminal behavior by said President. Two years later
still no charges. But Peter and these "career law enforcement officials" KNEW he was a
criminal. Then Peter appeals to the Constitution, apparently oblivious to the fact that the
Constitution doesn't make any provisions for plotting to remove the lawfully elected President
because you don't like just because you "know" he is a "criminal", in spite of any actual
evidence.
"After his election, they (the deep state) determined to undermine his political standing, and
particularly his proposed policy toward Russia, through a relentless and expansive
investigation characterized by initial misrepresentations, selective media leaks, brutal law
enforcement tactics, and a barrage of innuendo. This is the narrative of most Trump supporters,
conservative commentators, Fox News, and The Wall Street Journal editorial page, notably
columnist Kimberley Strassel."
The trouble with that is it completely ignores the ton of evidence pointing to really
nefarious stuff.
Lots of times, when there's smoke, there's fire. And when the smoke is overwhelming there
probably is a fire. A big one.
Trump has been going after the Russians since his inauguration. Therefore, those trying to
remove him from office are likely the actual Russian agents. Of course they would need smoke
and mirrors to hide that fact and deflect attention from themselves. It just so happens that
Russian spies are trained by the FSB to accuse others of being a spy, for just this purpose.
I'm looking at you, John O. (Oleg?) Brennan
No matter who the President is, there is some group of people in Washington is ALWAYS trying to
bring him down. Who those people are, and how large and powerful the group is, depends on a
variety of factors. But a competent president manages to enact his agenda while staying one
step ahead of his intriguers. Obama and GWB accomplished both, more or less because they were
intelligent men of good character (though Obama was much smarter and better man than W)
While Bill Clinton's character was too low to avoid impeachment he was a smart and able
administrator. Trump has both low character and low intellect so it is not surprising A. that
many people want to bring him down and B. that they have been pretty effective.
Politics may be a blood sport in Washington but that's not the same as a "deep state". And
Trump can't compete and win with anyone in Washington who doesn't grovel before him like the
supine Senate Republicans. And that is no one's fault but his.
You wanting Trump to be a Russian agent does not make him one. It never
will. Get over it. , ,
February 16, 2019 at 12:08 am
"If it turns out that Trump IS a Russian asset, will you apologize, Robert Merry? Because he
certainly acts like one. And, as REAL Republicans used to say, if it looks like a duck, walks
like a duck, and quacks like a duck, maybe it's a duck."
@One Guy Yeah, because sending deadly aid to Ukraine is so pro-Russian. What an idiot you
are!
"Can't imagine why career law enforcement officials were concerned with a guy they knew to be a
criminal taking over the office of the presidency. Shame on them!"
They also "knew" Martin Luther King Jr. was a Soviet agent.
The issue with the 25th amendment, is that the President's character flaws or mental deficiency
were known and very visible before the election. Is it constitutionally proper for Congress to
suspend a President for a preexisting condition that was known to and unhidden from voters? If
Congress did that, it means Congress has a veto over who the public is allowed to vote in as
President.
Forget the Covington students, Andrew McCabe and his lady co-workers have some pretty punchable
faces. (Ok, I'm enough of a sexist to not punch a lady. I'd use eye-rolling and mocking
gestures instead.)
The problem is not the existence of the deep state. It's inevitable that there will be
unelected officials who will continue to shape policy regardless of who is elected President.
The problem is that the deep state is blatantly working to undermine its elected
leadership. If you can't in good conscience work with your President, the honorable thing
to do is resign as some undoubtedly have. It's not an excuse for insubordination.
The ability of those in power to manipulate
the ways ordinary people think, act and vote has allowed for an
inverted totalitarianism
which turns the citizenry into their own prison wardens, allowing those with real power to continue doing as they please unhindered
by the interests of the common man.
In neoliberal MSM there is positive feedback loop for "Trump is a Russian agent" stories. So the meme feeds on itself.
Notable quotes:
"... And yet the trending, most high-profile stories about Trump today all involve painting him as a Putin puppet who is working to destroy America by taking a weak stance against an alarming geopolitical threat. This has had the effect of manufacturing demand for even more dangerous escalations against a nuclear superpower that just so happens to be a longtime target of U.S. intelligence agencies. ..."
"... the mass media is not in the business of reporting facts, it's in the business of selling narratives. Even if those narratives are so shrill and stress-inducing that they imperil the health of their audience. ..."
"... Trump is clearly not a Russian asset, he's a facilitator of America's permanent unelected government just like his predecessors, and indeed as far as actual policies and administration behavior goes he's not that much different from Barack Obama and George W Bush. Hell, for all his demagogic anti-immigrant speech Trump hasn't even caught up to Obama's peak ICE deportation years ..."
"... Used to be that the U.S. mass media only killed people indirectly, by facilitating establishment war agendas in repeating government agency propaganda as objective fact and promulgating narratives that manufacture support for a status quo which won't even give Americans health insurance or safe drinking water ..."
"... Now they're skipping the middle man and killing them directly by psychologically brutalizing them so aggressively that it ruins their health, all to ensure that Democrats support war and adore the U.S. intelligence community . ..."
"... The social engineers responsible for controlling the populace of the greatest military power on the planet are watching France closely, and understand deeply what is at stake should they fail to control the narrative and herd ordinary Americans into supporting U.S. government institutions. ..."
"... The ability of those in power to manipulate the ways ordinary people think, act and vote has allowed for an inverted totalitarianism which turns the citizenry into their own prison wardens, allowing those with real power to continue doing as they please unhindered by the interests of the common man. ..."
The always excellent Moon of Alabama blog has just
published a sarcasm-laden piece documenting the many, many aggressive maneuvers that this administration has made against the
interests of Russia, from pushing for more NATO funding to undermining Russia's natural gas interests to bombing Syria to sanctioning
Russian oligarchs to dangerous military posturing.
<picture deleted>
And yet the trending, most high-profile stories about Trump today all involve painting him as a Putin puppet who is working
to destroy America by taking a weak stance against an alarming geopolitical threat. This has had the effect of manufacturing demand
for even more dangerous escalations against a nuclear superpower that just so happens to be a longtime target of U.S. intelligence
agencies.
If the mass media were in the business of reporting facts, there would be a lot less "Putin's puppet" talk and a lot more "Hey,
maybe we should avoid senseless escalations which could end all life on earth" talk among news media consumers. But there isn't,
because the mass media is not in the business of reporting facts, it's in the business of selling narratives. Even if those narratives
are so shrill and stress-inducing that they imperil the health of their audience.
Like His Predecessors
Trump is clearly not a Russian asset, he's a facilitator of America's permanent unelected government just like his predecessors,
and indeed as far as actual policies and administration behavior goes he's
not that much different
from Barack Obama and George W Bush. Hell, for all his demagogic anti-immigrant speech Trump
hasn't even caught up to Obama's peak ICE deportation years.
If the mass media were in the business of reporting facts, people would be no more worried about this administration than they
were about the previous ones, because when it comes to his administration's actual behavior, he's just as reliable an upholder of
the establishment-friendly status quo as his predecessors.
Used to be that the U.S. mass media only killed people indirectly, by facilitating establishment war agendas in repeating
government agency propaganda as objective fact and promulgating narratives that manufacture support for a status quo which won't
even give Americans health insurance or safe drinking water.
They do this for a reason, of course. The Yellow Vests protests in France have continued unabated for their
ninth consecutive week , a decentralized populist uprising resulting from ordinary French citizens losing trust in their institutions
and the official narratives which uphold them.
The social engineers responsible for controlling the populace of the greatest military power on the planet are watching France
closely, and understand deeply what is at stake should they fail to control the narrative and herd ordinary Americans into supporting
U.S. government institutions. Right now they've got Republicans cheering on the White House and Democrats cheering on the U.S.
intelligence community, but that could all change should something happen which causes them to lose control over the thoughts that
Americans think about their rulers.
Propaganda is the single most-overlooked and under-appreciated aspect of human society. The ability of those in power to manipulate
the ways ordinary people think, act and vote has allowed for an
inverted totalitarianism
which turns the citizenry into their own prison wardens, allowing those with real power to continue doing as they please unhindered
by the interests of the common man.
The only thing that will lead to real change is the people losing trust in corrupt institutions and
rising like lions against them. That gets increasingly likely as those
institutions lose control of the narrative, and with trust in the mass media at an all-time low, populist uprisings restoring power
to the people in France, and media corporations
acting increasingly weird and insecure , that looks more and more likely by the day.
"... This is the behavior of a media class that is interested in selling narratives, not reporting truth. And yet the mass media talking heads are all telling us today that we must continue to trust them. ..."
"... More accountability in media than in politics, Chuck? Really? Accountability to whom? Your advertisers? Your plutocratic owners? Certainly not to the people whose minds you are paid exorbitant sums to influence; there are no public elections for the leadership of the mass media. ..."
"... CNN, for the record, has been guilty of an arguably even more embarrassing Russiagate flub than Buzzfeed 's when they wrongly reported that Donald Trump Jr had had access to WikiLeaks' DNC email archives prior to their 2016 publication, an error that was hilariously due to to the simple misreading of an email date by multiple people ..."
"... The mass media, including pro-Trump mass media like Fox News, absolutely deserves to be distrusted. It has earned that distrust. It had earned that distrust already with its constant promotion of imperialist wars and an oligarch-friendly status quo, and it has earned it even more with its frenzied promotion of a narrative engineered to manufacture consent for a preexisting agenda to shove Russia off the world stage. ..."
"... The mainstream media absolutely is the enemy of the people; just because Trump says it doesn't mean it's not true. The only reason people don't rise up and use the power of their numbers to force the much-needed changes that need to happen in our world is because they are being propagandized to accept the status quo day in and day out by the mass media's endless cultural engineering project . ..."
"... They are the reason why wars go unopposed, why third parties never gain traction, why people consent to money hemorrhaging upward to the wealthiest of the wealthy while everyone else struggles to survive. The sooner people wake up from the perverse narrative matrix of the plutocratic media, the better. ..."
Following what the Washington Post
has described as "the highest-profile misstep yet for a news organization during a period
of heightened and intense scrutiny of the press," mass media representatives are now flailing
desperately for an argument as to why people should continue to place their trust in mainstream
news outlets.
On Thursday Buzzfeed News delivered
the latest "bombshell" Russiagate report to fizzle within 24 hours of its publication, a
pattern that is now so consistent that I've personally made a practice of declining to comment
on such stories until a day or two after their release. "BOOM!" tweets were issued by
#Resistance pundits on Twitter, "If true this means X, Y and Z" bloviations were made on mass
media punditry panels, and for about 20 hours Russiagaters everywhere were riding the high of
their lives, giddy with the news that President Trump had committed an impeachable felony by
ordering Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about a proposed Trump office tower in Moscow, a
proposal which died within weeks
and the Kremlin never touched .
There was reason enough already for any reasonable person to refrain from frenzied
celebration, including the fact that the story's two authors, Jason Leopold and Anthony
Cormier, were giving the press two very different accounts of
the information they'd based it on, with Cormier telling CNN that he had not personally seen
the evidence underlying his report and Leopold telling MSNBC that he had. Both Leopold and
Cormier, for the record, have already previously suffered a
Russiagate faceplant with the clickbait viral story that Russia had financed the 2016
election, burying the fact that it was a Russian election .
Then the entire story came crashing down when Mueller's office took the extremely rare step
of issuing an
unequivocal statement that the Buzzfeed story was wrong , writing simply, "BuzzFeed's
description of specific statements to the special counsel's office, and characterization of
documents and testimony obtained by this office, regarding Michael Cohen's congressional
testimony are not accurate."
According to journalist and economic analyst Doug Henwood, the print New York Times covered
the Buzzfeed report on its front page when the story broke, but the report on Mueller's
correction the next day was shoved back to page 11 .
This appalling journalistic malpractice makes it very funny that NYT's Wajahat Ali had the gall
to tweet , "Unlike the Trump
administration, journalists are fact checking and willing to correct the record if the Buzzfeed
story is found inaccurate. Not really the actions of a deep state and enemy of the people,
right?"
This is the behavior of a media class that is interested in selling narratives, not
reporting truth. And yet the mass media talking heads are all telling us today that we must
continue to trust them.
"Those trying to tar all media today aren't interested in improving journalism but
protecting themselves," tweeted NBC's Chuck Todd.
"There's a lot more accountability in media these days than in our politics. We know we
live in a glass house, we hope the folks we cover are as self aware."
More accountability in media than in politics, Chuck? Really? Accountability to whom? Your
advertisers? Your plutocratic owners? Certainly not to the people whose minds you are paid
exorbitant sums to influence; there are no public elections for the leadership of the mass
media.
"Mueller didn't do the media any favors tonight, and he did do the president one,"
griped
the odious Chris Cuomo on CNN. "Because as you saw with Rudy Giuliani and as I'm sure
you'll see with the president himself, this allows them to say 'You can't believe it! You can't
believe what you read, you can't believe what you hear! You can only believe us. Even the
Special Counsel says that the media doesn't get it right.'"
"The larger message that a lot of people are going to take from this story is that the
news media are a bunch of leftist liars who are dying to get the president, and they're
willing to lie to do it, and I don't think that's true" said Jeffrey Toobin on a CNN panel , adding "I
just think this is a bad day for us."
"It does reinforce bad stereotypes about the news media," said Brian Stelter on the same CNN
panel.
"I am desperate as a media reporter to always say to the audience, judge folks
individually and judge brands individually. Don't fall for what these politicians out there
want you to do. They want you to think we're all crooked. We're not. But Buzzfeed now, now
the onus is on Buzzfeed. "
CNN, for the record, has been guilty of an arguably
even more embarrassing Russiagate flub than Buzzfeed 's when they wrongly reported that
Donald Trump Jr had had access to WikiLeaks' DNC email archives prior to their 2016
publication, an error that was hilariously due to to the simple misreading of an email date by
multiple people.
The mass media, including pro-Trump mass media like Fox News, absolutely deserves to be
distrusted. It has earned that distrust. It had earned that distrust already with its constant
promotion of imperialist wars and an oligarch-friendly status quo, and it has earned it even
more with its frenzied promotion of a narrative engineered to manufacture consent for a
preexisting agenda to shove Russia off the world stage.
The mainstream media absolutely is the enemy of the people; just because Trump says it
doesn't mean it's not true. The only reason people don't rise up and use the power of their
numbers to force the much-needed changes that need to happen in our world is because they are
being propagandized to accept the status quo day in and day out by the mass media's endless
cultural engineering project .
They are the reason why wars go unopposed, why third parties
never gain traction, why people consent to money hemorrhaging upward to the wealthiest of the
wealthy while everyone else struggles to survive. The sooner people wake up from the perverse
narrative matrix of the plutocratic media, the better.
Looks like all of them were Brennan men. CIA used FBI counterintelligence and counter-terrorism personnel to kick start the investigation/scandal.
Notable quotes:
"... We return, now, to this issue and specifically the research of Chris Blackburn, to place the final nail in the coffin of the Trump-Russia collusion charade. Blackburn's insights are incredible not only because they return us to the earliest reporting on the role of British intelligence figures in manufacturing the Trump-Russia collusion narrative, but because they also implicate members of Mueller's investigation. ..."
"... If you factor in the dreadful reporting to discredit Joseph Mifsud and leaks, it is pretty clear something rather strange happened to George Papadopoulos during the campaign while he was shuttling around Europe and the Middle East. He was working with people who have intelligence links at the London Centre of International Law Practice ..."
"... A recent article in The Telegraph also alludes to MI5, MI6, and CIA using counter-terrorism assets which would tie into the London Centre of International Law Practice (LCILP), and its sister organizations, doing counter-terrorism work for the Australian, UK and US governments. They quote anonymous officials who believe that their intelligence agencies used counter-terrorism personnel to kick start the investigation/scandal." ..."
"... Continuing, Blackburn pinpointed the significance of defining counter-terrorism as the starting point of the investigation, saying: "It shows that there is a high probability that intelligence was deliberately abused to make Papadopoulos' activities look like they were something else. ..."
"... It's more likely that the CIA played the FBI with the help of close allies who were suspicious and frightened of a Trump presidency." ..."
"... Zainab Ahmad , a member of Mueller's legal team, is the former Assistant United States Attorney in the Eastern District of New York. As pointed out by Blackburn , Ahmad attended a Global Center on Cooperative Security event in 2017 ..."
"... "Zainab Ahmad was one of the first DOJ prosecutors to have seen the Steele dossier. In May 2017, she attended a counter-terrorism conference in New York with the Global Center on Cooperative Security (GCCS), an organization which Joseph Mifsud, the alleged Russian spy, had been working within London and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia ..."
"... I don't think it's a coincidence that Global Center on Cooperative Security is connected to various elements that popped up in the Papadopoulos case. The fact that a prosecutor on Mueller's team was at Global Center before Mueller was appointed as special counsel is also troubling ..."
"... Days ago, The Hill reported on Congressional testimony by Bruce Ohr, revealing that when served as a DOJ official, he warned FBI and DOJ figures that the Steele dossier was problematic and linked to the Clintons ..."
"... Last year, Blackburn noted the connection between Mifsud and Arvinder Sambei , writing: "LCILP director and FBI counsel, works with Mike Smith at the Global Center. They ran joint counter-terrorism conferences and training with Mifsud's London Academy. Sambei then brought Mifsud over to the [London Centre of International Law Practice]. [Global Center works with Aussies, UK and US State too." ..."
"... Disobedient Media previously reported that Robert Hannigan, then head of British spy agency GCHQ, flew to Washington DC to share 'director-to-director' level intelligence with then-CIA Chief John Brennan in the summer of 2016. This writer noted that " The Guardian reported Hannigan's announcement that he would step down from his leadership position with the agency just three days after the inauguration of President Trump, on 23 January 2017. ..."
"... Jane Mayer, in her profile of Christopher Steele published in the New Yorker, also noted that Hannigan had flown to Washington D.C. to personally brief the then-CIA Director John Brennan on alleged communications between the Trump campaign and Moscow. What is so curious about this briefing "deemed so sensitive it was handled at director-level" is why Hannigan was talking director-to-director to the CIA and not Mike Rogers at the NSA, GCHQ's Five Eyes intelligence-sharing partner." ..."
"... There are more and more articles saying that the FBI, CIA, M14 15,16 yada yada, were overly concerned about Trump. Their sin...caring too much for the USA. They attempted a coup de'etat for "our" own good...we... being "we the people". To quote Abe Lincoln "You will find that all the arguments in favour of kingcraft were of this class; they always bestrode the necks of the people, -- not that they wanted to do it, but because the people were better off for being ridden." Lincoln did not mince words ..."
In April last year, Disobedient Media broke coverage of the British involvement in the Trump-Russia collusion narrative, asking
why
All Russiagate Roads Lead To London , via the quasi-scholar Joseph Mifsud and others.
The issue was also raised by WikiLeaks's Julian Assange , just days before
the Ecuadorian government silenced him last March. Assange's Twitter thread cited research by
Chris Blackburn , who spoke with
Disobedient Media on multiple occasions covering Joseph Mifsud's ties to British intelligence figures and organizations, as well
as his links to
Hillary Clinton's Presidential campaign, the FBI, CIA and the private cyber-security firm Crowdstrike.
We return, now, to this issue and specifically the research of Chris Blackburn, to place the final nail in the coffin of the
Trump-Russia collusion charade. Blackburn's insights are incredible not only because they return us to the earliest reporting on
the role of British intelligence figures in manufacturing the Trump-Russia collusion narrative, but because they also implicate members
of Mueller's investigation. What we are left with is an indication of collusion between factions of the US and UK intelligence
community in fabricating evidence of Trump-Russia collusion: a scandal that would have rocked the legacy press to its core, if Western
establishment-backed media had a spine.
In
Disobedient Media's previous coverage of Blackburn's work, he described his experience in intelligence:
"I've been involved in numerous investigations that involve counter-intelligence techniques in the past. I used to work for
the
9/11 Families United to Bankrupt Terrorism , one of the biggest tort actions in American history. I helped build a profile
of Osama bin Laden's financial and political network, which was slightly different to the one that had been built by the
CIA's Alec Station , a dedicated task force which was focused on Osama bin
Laden and Al-Qaeda. Alec Station designed its profile to hunt Osama bin Laden and disrupt his network. I thought it was flawed.
It had failed to take into account Osama's historical links to Pakistan's main political parties or that he was the figurehead
for a couple of organizations, not just Al-Qaeda."
"I also ran a few conferences for US intelligence leaders during the Bush administration. After the 9/11 Commission published
its report into the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon it created a public outreach program. The US National Intelligence
Conference and Exposition (
Intelcon ) was one of the avenues it used. I was responsible for creating the 'View from Abroad' track. We had guidance from
former Senator Slade Gorton and Jamie Gorelick, who both sat on the 9/11 Commission. We got leaders such as Sir John Chilcot and
Baroness Pauline Neville Jones to come and help share their experiences on how the US would be able to heal the rifts after 9/11."
"The US intelligence community was suffering from severe turf wars and firewalls, which were hampering counter-terrorism efforts.
They were concentrating on undermining each other rather than tackling terrorism. I had mainly concentrated on the Middle East,
but in 2003 I switched my focus to terrorism in South Asia."
Counter Terrorism, Not Counter Intelligence, Sparked Probe
In an article published by The Telegraph last November, the paper acknowledged
the following:
"It forces the spotlight on whether the UK played a role in the FBI's investigation launched before the 2016 presidential election
into Trump campaign ties to the Kremlin... Mr. Trump's allies and former advisers are raising questions about the UK's role in
the start of the probe, given many of the key figures and meetings were located in Britain... One former top White House adviser
to Mr. Trump made similar insinuations, telling this newspaper: "You know the Brits are up to their neck." The source added on
the Page wiretap application: "I think that stuff is going to implicate MI5 and MI6 in a bunch of activities they don't want to
be implicated in, along with FBI, counter-terrorism and the CIA. " [Emphasis Added]
The article cites George Papadopoulos, who asked why the "British intelligence
apparatus was weaponized against Trump and his advisers." Papadopoulos has also addressed the issue at length via Twitter. In response
to the Telegraph's coverage of the issue, Chris Blackburn wrote via Twitter
:
"The Telegraph story on Trump Russia acknowledges that activities involving counter-terrorism are at the heart of the scandal...not
counter-intelligence. If the [London Centre for International Law Practice] was British state, not private, some Commonwealth
countries are going to be seriously pissed off."
Blackburn spoke with Disobedient Media, saying:
" If you factor in the dreadful reporting to discredit Joseph Mifsud and leaks, it is pretty clear something rather strange
happened to George Papadopoulos during the campaign while he was shuttling around Europe and the Middle East. He was working with
people who have intelligence links at the London Centre of International Law Practice.
A recent article in The Telegraph also alludes to MI5, MI6, and CIA
using counter-terrorism assets which would tie into the London Centre of International Law Practice (LCILP), and its sister organizations,
doing counter-terrorism work for the Australian, UK and US governments. They quote anonymous officials who believe that their
intelligence agencies used counter-terrorism personnel to kick start the investigation/scandal." [Emphasis Added]
Blackburn discussed this differentiation with Disobedient Media:
"Counter-terrorism is obviously involved in more kinetic, violent political actions-concerning mass casualty events, bombings,
assassinations, poisonings, and hacking. But, the lines are blurring between them. Counter-intelligence cases have been known
to stretch for decades- often relying on nothing more than paranoia and suspicion to fuel investigations. Counter-terrorism is
also a broader discipline as it involves tactical elements like hostage rescue, crime scene investigations, and explosive specialists.
Counter-Terrorism is a collaborative effort with counter-terrorism officers working closely with local and regional police forces
and civic organizations. There is also a wider academic field around countering violent, and radical ideology which promotes terrorism
and insurgencies. Cybersecurity has become the third major discipline in intelligence. The London Center of International Law
Practice, the mysterious intelligence company that
employed
both Papadopoulos and Mifsud , had also been working in that area."
Continuing, Blackburn pinpointed the significance of defining counter-terrorism as the starting point of the investigation,
saying: "It shows that there is a high probability that intelligence was deliberately abused to make Papadopoulos' activities look
like they were something else.
As counter-terrorism and counterintelligence are close in tactics and methods, it would seem that they were used because they
share the same skill sets - covert evidence gathering and deception. It's basically sleight of hand. A piece of theatre would be
more precise. However, we don't know if the FBI knew it was real or make-believe. It's more likely that the CIA played the FBI
with the help of close allies who were suspicious and frightened of a Trump presidency."
Mueller's Team And Joseph Mifsud
Zainab Ahmad , a
member of Mueller's legal team, is the former Assistant United States Attorney in the Eastern District of New York. As pointed
out by Blackburn , Ahmad attended a Global Center on Cooperative Security event
in 2017. In recent days, Blackburn wrote via Twitter :
"Zainab Ahmad is a major player in the Russiagate scandal at the DOJ. Does she work for SC Mueller? She was at a GCCS event
in May 2017. Arvinder Sambei, a co-director of the [London Centre of International Law Practice], worked with Joseph Mifsud, [George
Papadopoulos] and [Simona Mangiante]. She's a GCCS consultant."
Blackburn told this author:
"Zainab Ahmad was one of the first DOJ prosecutors to have seen the Steele dossier. In May 2017, she attended a counter-terrorism
conference in New York with the Global Center on Cooperative Security (GCCS), an organization which Joseph Mifsud, the alleged
Russian spy, had been working within London and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia."
Zainab Ahmad (AHMAD). Image via the Combatting Terrorism Center, West Point
"Richard Barrett, the Former Chief of Counter-Terrorism at MI6, Britain's foreign intelligence department traveled with Mifsud
to Saudi Arabia to give a talk on terrorism in 2017. Ex-CIA officers, US Defense, and US Treasury officials were also there. The
London Centre of International Law Practice's relationship to the Global Center had been established in 2014. The Global Center
on Cooperative Security made Martin Polaine and Arvinder Sambei consultants, they then became directors at the London Centre of
International Law Practice."
"The Global Center on Cooperative Security's first major UK conference was at Joseph Mifsud's London Academy of Diplomacy (LAD).
Mifsud then followed Arvinder Sambei and Nagi Idris over to the London Centre of International Law Practice. Sources have told
me that Mifsud was moonlighting as a specialist on counter-terrorism and Islamism while working at LAD which explains why he went
to work in counter-terrorism after LAD folded."
"I don't think it's a coincidence that Global Center on Cooperative Security is connected to various elements that popped
up in the Papadopoulos case. The fact that a prosecutor on Mueller's team was at Global Center before Mueller was appointed as
special counsel is also troubling."
Days ago, The Hill reported on Congressional
testimony by Bruce Ohr, revealing that when served as a DOJ official, he warned FBI and DOJ figures that the Steele dossier was problematic
and linked to the Clintons. Critically, The Hill
writes:
"Those he briefed included Andrew Weissmann, then the head of DOJ's fraud section; Bruce Swartz, longtime head of DOJ's international
operations, and Zainab Ahmad , an accomplished terrorism prosecutor who, at the time, was assigned to work with Lynch as a senior
counselor. Ahmad and Weissmann would go on to work for Mueller, the special prosecutor overseeing the Russia probe." [Emphasis
Added]
This point is essential, as it not only describes Ahmad's role in Mueller's team but places her at a crucial pre-investigation
meeting.
Last year, Blackburn noted the connection
between Mifsud and Arvinder Sambei , writing: "LCILP director and FBI counsel,
works with Mike Smith at the Global Center. They ran joint counter-terrorism conferences and training with Mifsud's London Academy.
Sambei then brought Mifsud over to the [London Centre of International Law Practice]. [Global Center works with Aussies, UK and US
State too."
Sambei has been described elsewhere as a "Former
practising barrister, Senior Crown Prosecutor with the Crown Prosecution Service of England & Wales, and Legal Adviser at the Permanent
Joint Headquarters (PJHQ), Ministry of Defence." [British spelling has been retained]
Arvinder Sambei. Image via the Public International Law Advisory Group
That Sambei has been so thoroughly linked to organizations where Mifsud was a central figure is yet another cause of suspicion
regarding allegations that Joseph Mifsud was a shadowy, unknown Russian agent until the summer of 2016 . She is also a direct link
between Robert Mueller and Mifsud.
Blackburn wrote via Twitter : "Arvinder Sambei helped to organize LCILP's
counter-terrorism and corruption events. She used her contacts in the US to bring in Middle Eastern government officials that were
seen to be vulnerable to graft. Lisa Osofsky, former FBI Deputy General Counsel, was working with her." Below, Arvinder is pictured
at a London Centre of International Law Practice (LCILP) event.
Arvinder Sambei, pictured at an LCILP event. Image via Chris Blackburn, Twitter
As Chris Blackburn told this author:
" Mifsud and Papadopoulos's co-director Arvinder Sambei was also the former FBI British counsel working 9/11 cases for Robert
Mueller. She also runs a consultancy which deals with Special Investigative Measure (SIMs) which is just a posh description for
covert espionage and evidence gathering. She has worked for major intelligence and national law agencies in the past. She wore
two hats as a director of London Centre and a consultant for the Global Center on Cooperative Security (GCCS), a counter-terrorism
think tank which is sponsored by the Australia, Canada, UK and US governments. Alexander Downer's former Chief of Staff while
at the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade now works for the Global Center. Mifsud was also due to meet with Australian
private intelligence figures in Adelaide in March 2016. So. Australia is certainly a major focus for the investigation." [Emphasis
Added]
Lisa Osofsky, pictured at an LCILP event. Image via Chris Blackburn, Twitter
An Embarrassment For John Brennan?
Disobedient Media previously reported that Robert Hannigan, then head of British spy agency GCHQ, flew to Washington DC to share
'director-to-director' level intelligence with then-CIA Chief John Brennan in the summer of 2016. This writer noted that "
The Guardian reported Hannigan's announcement that
he would step down from his leadership position with the agency just three days after the inauguration of President Trump, on 23
January 2017.
Jane Mayer, in her profile of Christopher Steele published in the
New Yorker, also noted that Hannigan had flown
to Washington D.C. to personally brief the then-CIA Director John Brennan on alleged communications between the Trump campaign and
Moscow. What is so curious about this briefing "deemed
so sensitive it was handled at director-level" is why Hannigan was talking director-to-director to the CIA and not Mike Rogers
at the NSA, GCHQ's Five Eyes intelligence-sharing partner."
Blackburn told Disobedient Media:
"Former Congressman Trey Gowdy, who has seen most of the information gathered by Congress from the intelligence community concerning
the Russia investigation, said that if President Trump were to declassify files and present the truth to the American public,
it would " embarrass John Brennan ." I think that
is pretty concrete for me, but it's not definitive. I know the polarization and spin in Washington has become perverse, but that
statement is pretty specific for me. If Brennan is involved, it is most probably through Papadopoulos who sparked off the 'official'
investigation at the FBI. He also made sure the Steele dossier was spread through the US government."
Blackburn added: "Chris Steele was also working on FIFA projects, and a source has told me that he was working to investigate
the Russian and Qatari World Cup bids. The London Centre of International Law Practice has been working with Majed Garoub, the former
Saudi legal representative of FIFA, the world governing body for soccer. He's also been working against the Qatari bid. Steele likes
to get paid twice for his investigations."
"Mifsud has also been associated with Prince Turki the former Saudi intelligence chief, Mifsud and the London Academy of Diplomacy
used to train Saudi diplomats and intelligence figures while Turki was the Saudi Ambassador to London. Turki is a close friend
of Bill Clinton and John Brennan. Nawaf Obaid was also courting Mifsud and tried to get him a cushy job working with CNN's Freedom
Project at Link Campus in Rome. He also knows John Brennan. Intelligence agencies like to give out professional gifts like this
plum academic position for completing missions. In the US, it is widely known that intelligence agencies gift the children of
assets to get them into prestigious Ivy League schools."
At minimum, we can surmise that Mifsud was not a Russian agent, but was an asset of Western intelligence agencies. We are left
with the impression that the Mifsud saga served as a ploy, whether he participated knowingly or not. It seems reasonable to conclude
that the gambit was initially developed with participation of John Brennan and UK intelligence. Following this, Mueller inherited
and developed the Mifsud narrative thread into the collusion soap opera we know today.
Ultimately, we are faced with the reality that British and US interests worked together to fabricate a collusion scandal to subvert
a US Presidency, and in doing so, intentionally raised tensions between the West and a nuclear-armed power.
What ********. Britain was part of the group pulling of 911 along with the American and Jewish establishment. Blackburn was
the inside guy, posing as an outsider, to deflect attention from the real perpetrators. These people always have agents on both
sides of every issue in the same way they fund two "opposing" political parties and fund two "opposing" sides in the media.
Ultimately, we are faced with the reality that British and US interests worked together to fabricate a collusion scandal
to subvert a US Presidency , and in doing so, intentionally raised tensions between the West and a nuclear-armed power .
It's called TREASON .
Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies , giving them aid and
comfort within the United States or elsewhere , is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than
five years
SteeleGate---his mate Skripal, boss Pablo Miller----novichok---Porton Down---anything to blame Russia in the end. After 30
dys of shutdown personnel of CIA, FBI and DOJ can be changed legally: draining of the swamp and DECLAS can begin with proper Military
Tribunals in place. This according to Q who shared all of this, so it was not a conspiracy theory that the Q team exposed, but
just MSM and Deep State in their last panic mode. Justice will now be able to follow: maybe rel end of endless wars too!
There are more and more articles saying that the FBI, CIA, M14 15,16 yada yada, were overly concerned about Trump. Their sin...caring
too much for the USA. They attempted a coup de'etat for "our" own good...we... being "we the people". To quote Abe Lincoln "You will find that all the arguments in favour of kingcraft were of this class; they always bestrode the necks of the people, -- not that they wanted to do it, but because the people were better off for being ridden." Lincoln did not mince words
So now we have an international conspiracy of care. Not one power grubber in the group. A syndicate of misunderstood do gooders.
But not having the consent of the people, but rather trying to undo, and foil the consent of the people.
This part of the Declaration applies
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,
-- That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish
it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them
shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Ultimately, we are faced with the reality that British and US interests worked together to fabricate a collusion scandal
to subvert a US Presidency, and in doing so, intentionally raised tensions between the West and a nuclear-armed power..."
Why do you not call it a coup d'etat? That is what it is, nothing less. If it were about something Trump did you would use
the harshest possible language. Why not tell the truth here. Let the American people know what happened.
"... You can take this to the bank. Hardcore Russiagaters will never give up their belief in collusion and Russian influence in the 2016 campaign -- never. Congress and Mueller will be accused of engaging in a coverup. ..."
"... Thus, even if the Mueller report is underwhelming, I think that the Democrats and TDS-saturated Trump opponents will attempt to rehabilitate it by pretending that it contains important loose ends that need to be pursued. In other words, to perpetuate the Mueller-driven political Russophobia by all other available means. ..."
"... Russiagate has exposed the great degree of corruption within the Justice Department bureaucracy, particularly within FBI, and within the entire Democrat Party. ..."
"... Since this is obviously not going to be allowed to happen, and since these people get away with everything, expect this to never end, despite all evidence to the contrary. It doesn't matter if they've been exposed as CIA propagandists or Integrity Initiative stooges, the game goes on...and on.... the job security of these disgraced columnists is the greatest in the Western world. ..."
"... Stephen Cohen discusses how rational viewpoints are banned from the mainstream media, and how several features of US life today resemble some of the worst features of the Soviet system. https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/02/12/stephen-cohen-on-war-with-russia-and-soviet-style-censorship-in-the-us/ ..."
"... The US needs an enemy, how else can they ask NATO members to cough up 2% of GDP [just for one example Germany's GDP is nearly 4 Trillion dollars [2017] for defence spending, what a crazy sum all NATO members must fork out to please the US, but then most of that money must be spent on the US MIC 'interoperability' of course. ..."
"... Another great damage of Russiagate was the instigating of a nuclear arms race directed primarily at Russia, and ideologically justified by its diabolical policies. ..."
"... Russiagate was very successful. You just have to understand the objectives. It was a great distraction. Diverting peoples attention from the continued fleecing of the "real people" which are the bottom 90% by the "Corporate People" and their Government Lackeys. ..."
"... It provided an excuse for the acting CEO (a figurehead) of the Corporate Empire to go back on many of the promises made that got him elected, and to fill the swamp with Neocon and Koch Brother creatures with the excuse the Deep State made him do it. More proof that there is no deception that is too ridiculous to be believed so long as you have enough pundits claiming it to be so ..."
"... If you've done just a cursory look into Seth Rich, you'd be very suspicious about the story of his life and death. IMO Assange/Wikilleaks were set up. And Flynn was set up too. What they are doing is Orwellian: White Helmets, election manipulation, propaganda, McCarthism, etc. If you're not angry, you're not paying attention. ..."
"... See also this primer on Mueller's MO. ..."
"... The button pushers behind the Trump collusion and Russia election hacking false narratives got what they wanted: to walk the democrats and republicans straight into Cold War v2; to start their campaign to suppress alternative voices on the internet; to increase military spending; and more, more, more war. ..."
"... Russiagate was very successful <=pls read, re-read Pft @ 46.. he listed many things. divide and conquer accomplished. a nation state is defined as an armed rule making structure, designed by those who control a territory, and constructed by the lawyers, military, and wealthy and run by the persons the designers appoint, for the appointed are called politicians. ..."
"... At the beginnng of Russiagate, I wrote on Robert Parry's Consirtium News that Russiagate is Idiocracy piggy-backing on decades and literally billions of dollars of anti-Soviet and anti-Russian propaganda. How hard would it be to brainwash an already brainwashed population? ..."
"... The purveyors of Russiagate will re-compose themselves, brush off all reports and continue on. One just cannot get away from one's nature, even when that nature is pure idiocy. ..."
"... Russiagate will not go away unfortunately because it has evolved in the "Russiagate Industry". As mentioned by others, the Russiagate Industry has been very profitable for many industries and people. Russiagate has generated an entire cottage industry of companies around censorship and "find us a Russian". Dow Jones should have an index on the Russiagate Industry. ..."
For more than two years U.S. politicians, the media and some bloggers hyped a conspiracy theory. They claimed that Russia had
somehow colluded with the Trump campaign to get him elected.
An obviously fake 'Dirty Dossier' about Trump, commissioned by the Clinton campaign, was presented as evidence. Regular business
contacts between Trump flunkies and people in Ukraine or Russia were claimed to be proof for nefarious deals. A Russian
click-bait company was accused of manipulating the U.S. electorate by posting puppy pictures and crazy memes on social media.
Huge investigations were launched. Every rumor or irrelevant detail coming from them was declared to be - finally - the evidence
that would put Trump into the slammer. Every month the walls were closing in on Trump.
Finally the conspiracy theory has run out of steam. Russiagate
is finished :
After two years and 200 interviews, the Senate Intelligence Committee is approaching the end of its investigation into the 2016
election, having uncovered no direct evidence of a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia, according to both Democrats
and Republicans on the committee.
...
Democrats and other Trump opponents have long believed that special counsel Robert Mueller and Congressional investigators would
unearth new and more explosive evidence of Trump campaign coordination with Russians. Mueller may yet do so, although Justice
Department and Congressional sources say they believe that he, too, is close to wrapping up his investigation.
Nothing, zero, nada was found to support the conspiracy theory. The Trump campaign did not collude with Russia. A few flunkies
were indicted for unrelated tax issues and for lying to the investigators about some minor details. But nothing at all supports the
dramatic claims of collusion made since the beginning of the affair.
In a recent statement House leader Nancy Pelosi was reduced
to accuse Trump campaign officials of doing their job:
"The indictment of Roger Stone makes clear that there was a deliberate, coordinated attempt by top Trump campaign officials to
influence the 2016 election and subvert the will of the American people. ...
No one called her out for spouting such nonsense.
Russiagate created a lot of damage.
The alleged Russian influence campaign that never happened was used to
install censorship on social media. It was used
to undermine the election of progressive Democrats. The weapon salesmen used it to push for more NATO aggression against Russia.
Maria Butina, an innocent Russian woman interested in good relation with the United States, was
held in solitary confinement
(recommended) until she signed a paper which claims that she was involved in a conspiracy.
In a just world the people who for more then two years hyped the conspiracy theory and caused so much damage would be pushed out
of their public positions. Unfortunately that is not going to happen. They will jump onto the next conspiracy train continue from
there.
Posted by b on February 12, 2019 at 01:38 PM |
Permalink
Comments next
page " Legally, Maria Butina was suborned into signing a false declaration. If there were the rule of law, such party or
parties that suborned her would be in gaol. Considering Mueller's involvement with Lockerbie, I am not holding my breath. FWIW the
Swiss company that made the timers allegedly involved in Lockerbie have some
comments of its own .
I will be really glad when this 'get Russia' craziness is over, but I suspect even if the Mueller investigation has nothing,
all the same creeps will be pulling out the stops to generate something... Skripal, Integrity Initiative, and etc. etc. stuff
like this just doesn't go away overnight or with the end of this 'investigation'... folks are looking for red meat i tell ya!
as for Maria Butina - i look forward to reading the article.. that was a travesty of justice but the machine moves on, mowing
down anyone in it's way... she was on the receiving end of all the paranoia that i have come to associate with the western msm
at this point...
Hillary's loss is actually best explained as her throwing the election to Trump . The Deep State wanted a nationalist
to win as that would best help meet the challenge from Russia and China - a challenge that they had been slow to recognize.
= ... to smear Wikileaks as a Russian agent
The DNC leak is best explained as a CIA false flag.
= ... to remove and smear Michael Flynn
Trump said that he fired Flynn for lying to VP Pence but Flynn's conversations with the Russian Ambassador after Obama threw
them out for "meddling" in the US election was an embarrassment to the Administration as Putin's Putin's decision not to respond
was portrayed as favoritism toward the Trump Administration.
You can take this to the bank. Hardcore Russiagaters will never give up their belief in collusion and Russian influence in
the 2016 campaign -- never. Congress and Mueller will be accused of engaging in a coverup. This is typical behavior for conspiracy
theorists.
I hope that Russiagate is indeed "finished", but I think it needs to be draped with garlic-clove necklaces, shot up with silver
bullets, sprinkled with holy water, and a wooden stake driven through its black heart just to make sure.
I don't dispute the logical argument B. presents, but it may be too dispassionately rational. I know that the Russiagate
proponents and enthralled supporters of the concept are too invested psychologically in this surrealistic fantasy to let go, even
if the official outcome reluctantly admits that there's no "there" there.
The Democratic Party, one of the major partners mounting the Russophobic psy-op, has already resolved to turn Democratic committee
chairmen loose to dog the Trump administration with hearings aggressively flogging any and all matters that discredit and undermine
Trump-- his business connections, social liaisons, etc.
They may hope to find the Holy Grail: the elusive "bombshell" that "demands" impeachment, i.e., some crime or illicit conduct
so heinous that the public will stand for another farcical impeachment proceeding. But I reckon that the Dems prefer the "soft"
impeachment of harassing Trump with hostile hearings in hopes of destroying his 2020 electability with the death of a thousand
innuendoes and guilt-by-association.
Thus, even if the Mueller report is underwhelming, I think that the Democrats and TDS-saturated Trump opponents will attempt
to rehabilitate it by pretending that it contains important loose ends that need to be pursued. In other words, to perpetuate
the Mueller-driven political Russophobia by all other available means.
Put more succinctly, I fear that Russiagate won't be finished until Rachel Maddow says it's finished. ;)
Once a hypothesis is fixed in people's minds, whether true or not, it's hard to get them to let go of it. And let's not forget
how many times the narrative changed (and this is true in the Skripal case as well), with all past facts vanishing to accommodate
a new narrative.
So I, like others, expect the fake scandal to continue while many, many other real crimes (the US attempted
coup in Venezuela and the genocidal war in Yemen, for instance) continue unabated.
Putin solicits public input for essential national
policy goals . If ever there was a template to follow for an actual MAGAgenda, Putin's Russia provides one. While US politicos
argue over what is essentially Bantha Pudu, Russians are hard at work improving their nation which includes restructuring their
economy.
Russiagate has exposed the great degree of corruption within the Justice Department bureaucracy, particularly within FBI,
and within the entire Democrat Party.
I very much doubt it it is over. Trump is corrupt and has links to corrupt Russians. Collusion, maybe not, but several
stinking individuals are in the frame for, guess what - ...bring it on... The fact that Hilary was arguably even worse (a point
made ad-nauseum on here) is frankly irrelevant. The vilification of Trump will not affect the warmongers efforts. He is a useful
idiot
for a take on the alternative reality some are living in
emptywheel has an article up on the nbc link b provides and the article on butina is discussed in the comments section...
as i said - they are looking for red meat and will not be happy until they get some... they are completely zonkers...
Blooming Barricade , Feb 12, 2019 2:55:18 PM |
link
Now that this racket has been admitted as such, I expect all of the media outlets that devoted banner headlines, hundreds of thousands
of hours of cable TV time, thousands of trees, and free speech online to immediately fire all of their journalists and appoint
Glenn Greenwald as the publisher of the New York Times, Michael Tracey at the Post, Aaron Matte at the Guardian, and Max Blumenthal
at the Daily Beast.
Since this is obviously not going to be allowed to happen, and since these people get away with everything, expect this
to never end, despite all evidence to the contrary. It doesn't matter if they've been exposed as CIA propagandists or Integrity
Initiative stooges, the game goes on...and on.... the job security of these disgraced columnists is the greatest in the Western
world.
The US needs an enemy, how else can they ask NATO members to cough up 2% of GDP [just for one example Germany's GDP is nearly
4 Trillion dollars [2017] for defence spending, what a crazy sum all NATO members must fork out to please the US, but then most
of that money must be spent on the US MIC 'interoperability' of course.
Then of course Russia has to be surrounded by NATO should they try and take over Europe by surging through the Fulda gap./s
Then of course there are the professional pundits who have built careers on anti Russian propaganda, Rachel Maddow for instance
who earns 30,000$ per day to spew anti Russian nonsense.
Another great damage of Russiagate was the instigating of a nuclear arms race directed primarily at Russia, and ideologically
justified by its diabolical policies.
I'm sorry b is so down on Conspiracy Theories, since they reveal quite real staged homicidal false flag operations of US power.
Feeding into the stigmatizing of the truth about reality is not in the interests of the earth's people.
somehow I see this "revelation: tied to Barr's approaching tenure. I think they (FBI/DOJ) didn't want his involvement in their
noodle soup of an investigation and the best way to accomplish that was to end it themselves. I also suspect that a deal has been
made with Trump, possibly in exchange for leaving his family alone.
So we will see no investigation of Hillary, her 650,000
emails or the many crimes they detailed (according to NYPD investigation of Weiner's laptop) and the US will continue to be at
war all day, every day. Team Swamp rules.
Meanwhile, MSM is prepping its readers for the possibility that the Mueller report will never be released to us proles. If that's
the case, I'm sure nobody will try to use innuendo to suggest it actually contains explosive revelations after all...
Harry, its vitally important as the US desperately wants to keep Europe under its thumb and to stop this European army which
means Europe lead by Paris and Berlin becomes a world power. Trump's attempts to make nice with Russia is to keep it out of the
EU bloc.
Well, the liberal conspiracy car crash ensured downmarket Mussolini a second term, it appears...Hard Brexit Tories also look likely
to win thanks to centrist sabatoge of the left. You reap what you sow, corporate presstitutes!
Sane people have predicted the end of Russiagate almost as many times as insane people have predicted that the "smoking gun that
will get rid of Trump" has been found. And yet the Mighty Wurlitzer grinds on, while social media is more and more censored.
I expect it all to continue until the 2020 election circus winds up into full-throated mode, and no one talks about anything but
the next puppet to be appointed. Oops, I mean "elected".
You also need to behead the corpse, stuff the mouth with a lemon and then place the head down in the coffin with the body in
supine (facing up) position. Weight the coffin with stones and wild roses and toss it into a fast-flowing river.
Russiagate won't be finished until a wall is built around Capitol Hill and all its inhabitants and worker bees declared insane
by a properly functioning court of law.
I also suspect that a deal has been made with Trump, possibly in exchange for leaving his family alone. So we will see no
investigation of Hillary ...
Underlying your perspective is the assumption that USA is a democracy where a populist "outsider" could be elected President,
Yet you also believe that Hillary and the Deep State have the power to manipulate government and the intelligence agencies and
propose a "conspiracy theory" based on that power.
Isn't it more likely that Trump made it clear (behind closed doors, of course) that he was amenable to the goals of the Deep
State and that the bogus investigation was merely done to: 1) cover their own election meddling; 2) eliminate threats like Flynn
and Assange/Wikileaks; 3) anti-Russian propaganda?
Dowd, Trump's former lawyer on Russiagate stated there may not even be a report. If this is the case then the Zionist rulers have
gotten to Mueller who no doubt figured out that the election collusion breadcrumbs don't lead to Putin, they lead to Netanyahu
and Zionist billionaire friends! So Mueller may have to come up with a nothing burger to hide the truth.
B is the only alternative media blogger I've followed for a significant amount of time without becoming disenfranchised. Not because
he has no blind spot - his is just one I can deal with... optimism.
I will believe Russiagate is finished when expelled Russian staff gets back, when the US returns the seized Russian properties,
when the consulate is Seattle reopens and when USA issues formal apology to Russia.
Posted by: hopehely | Feb 12, 2019 5:14:49 PM |
link
Nobody has ever advanced the tiniest shred of credible evidence that 'Russia' or its government at any level was in any way implicated
either in Wikileaks' acquisition of the DNC and Podesta emails or in any form of interference with the Presidential election.
This has been going on for three years and not once has anything like evidence surfaced.
On the other hand there has been an abundance of evidence that those alleging Russian involvement consistently refused to listen
to explore the facts.
Incredibly, the DNC computers were never examined by the FBI or any other agency resembling an official police agency. Instead
the notorious Crowdstrike professionally russophobic and caught red handed faking data for the Ukrainians against Russia were
commissioned to produce a 'report.'
Nobody with any sense would have credited anything about Russiagate after that happened.
Thgen there was the proof, from VIPS and Bill Binney (?) that the computers were not hacked at all but that the information
was taken by thumbdrive. A theory which not only Wikileaks but several witnesses have offered to prove.
Not one of them has been contacted by the FBI, Mueller or anyone else "investigating."
In reality the charges from the first were ludicrous on their face. There is, as b has proved and every new day's news attests,
not the slightest reason why anyone in the Russian government should have preferred Trump over Clinton. And that is saying something
because they are pretty well indistinguishable. And neither has the morals or brains of an adolescent groundhog.
Russiagate is over, alright, The Nothingburger is empty. But that means nothing in this 'civilisation': it will be recorded
in the history books, still to be written, by historians still in diapers, that "The 2016 Presidential election, which ended in
the controversial defeat of Hillary Clinton, was heavily influenced by Russian agents who hacked ..etc etc"
What will not be remembered is that every single email released was authentic. And that within those troves of correspondence
there was enough evidence of criminality by Clinton and her campaign to fill a prison camp.
Another thing that will not be recalled is that there was once a young enthusiastic man, working for the DNC, who was mugged
one evening after work and killed.
The 'no collusion' result will only spur the 'beginning of the end' baboons to shout even more, they'll never stop until they
die in their beds or the plebs of the Republic made them adore the street lamp posts, you'll see. The former is by far more likely,
the unwashed of American have never had a penchant for foreign affairs except for the few spasms like Vietnam.
There was collusion alright but the only Russians who helped Trump get elected and were in on the collusion are citizens of ISRAEL
FIRST, likewise for the American billionaires who put Trump in the power perch. ISRAEL FIRST.
That's why Trump is on giant billboards in Israel shaking hands with the Yahoo. Trump is higher in the polls in Israel than
in the U.S. If it weren't that the Zionist upper crust need Trump doing their dirty work in America, like trying today get rid
of Rep. Omar Ilhan, then Trump would win the elections in Ziolandia or Ziostan by a landslide cause he's been better for the Joowish
state than all preceding Presidents put together. Mazel tov to them bullshet for the rest of us servile mass in the vassal West
and Palestinians the most shafted class ever. Down with Venezuela and Iran, up with oil and gas. The billionare shysters' and
Trump's payola is getting closer. Onward AZ Empire!
He proved himself so easy to troll during the election. It wouldn't surprise me if aim of the domestic intelligence agencies all
along was to get him elected and have a candidate they could manipulate.
At least Germany has the good sense not to throw taxpayer money at the F-35.
German F-35 decision sacrifices NATO capability for Franco-German industrial cooperation I don't know what they have
in mind with a proposed airplane purchase. If they need fighters, buy or lease Sweden's Gripen. If attack airplanes are what they're
after, go to Boeing and get some brand new F-15X models. If the prickly French are agreeable to build a 6th generation aircraft,
that would be worth a try.
Regarding Rachel Maddow, I recently had an encounter with a relative who told me 1) I visited too many oddball sites and 2)
he considered Rachel M. to be the most reliable news person in existence. I think we're talking "true believer" here. :)
It wouldn't surprise me if aim of the domestic intelligence agencies all along was to get him elected and have a candidate
they could manipulate.
Considering how those "intelligence agencies" are hard pressed to find their own tails, even if you allow them to use both
hands, it would surprise me.
That Trump would turn out to be a tub of jello in more than just a physical way has been a surprise to an awful lot of us.
Russiagate was very successful. You just have to understand the objectives. It was a great distraction. Diverting
peoples attention from the continued fleecing of the "real people" which are the bottom 90% by the "Corporate People" and their
Government Lackeys.
It provided an excuse for the acting CEO (a figurehead) of the Corporate Empire to go back on many of the promises made
that got him elected, and to fill the swamp with Neocon and Koch Brother creatures with the excuse the Deep State made him do
it. More proof that there is no deception that is too ridiculous to be believed so long as you have enough pundits claiming it
to be so
Allowed the bipartisan support for the clamp down on alt media with censorship by social media (Deep State Tools) and funded
by the Ministry of Truth set up by Obama in his last days in office to under the false pretense of protecting us from foreign
governments interference in elections (except Israel of course) . Similar agencies have been set up or planned to be in other
countries followig the US example such as UK, France, Russia, etc.
Did anyone really expect Mr "Cover It Up " Mueller to find anything? Mueller is Deep State all the way and Trump is as well,
not withstanding the "Fake Wrestling " drama that they are bitter enemies. All the surveillance done over the past 2-3 decades
would have so much dirt on the Trumpet they could silence him forever . Trump knew that going in and I sometimes wonder if he
was pressured to run as a condition to avoid prosecution. Pretty sure every President since Carter has been "Kompromat"
If you've done just a cursory look into Seth Rich, you'd be very suspicious about the story of his life and death. IMO
Assange/Wikilleaks were set up. And Flynn was set up too. What they are doing is Orwellian: White Helmets, election manipulation,
propaganda, McCarthism, etc. If you're not angry, you're not paying attention.
Russians and likely at the behest of the Russian state interfered and it was fair payback for Yeltsin's election. It is time to
move on but not in feigned ignorance of what was done. Was it "outcome" affecting, possibly, but not clearly and if the US electoral
college and electoral system generally is so decrepit that a second level power in the world can influence then its the US's fault.
It's not like the 2000 election wasn't a warning shot about the rottenness of system and a system that doesn't understand a
warning shot deserves pretty much what it gets. But there's enough non-hype evidence of acts and intent to say yes, the Russians
tried and may have succeeded. They certainly are acting guilty enough. but still close the book move and move on to Trump's 'real'
crimes which were done without a Russian assist.
I seem to recall former UK Ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray saying that it was not a hack and that he had been handed
a thumb drive in a field near American University by a disgruntled Democrat whistleblower. Further, I seem to recall William Binney,
former NSA Technical Leader for intelligence, conducting an experiment to show that internet speeds at the time would not allow
the information to be hacked - they knew the size of the files and the period over which they were downloaded. Plus, Seth Rich.
So why does anyone even believe it was a hack, @32 THN?
Just another comment re Mueller. There is a great documentary by (Dutch, not Israeli---different person) Gideon Levy, Lockerbie
Revisited. The narration is in Dutch, but the interviews are in English, and there is a small segment of a German broadcast. The
documentary ends abruptly where one set of FBI personnel contradict statements by another set of FBI personnel. See also
this primer on Mueller's MO.
reply to Les 42
"It wouldn't surprise me if aim of the domestic intelligence agencies all along was to get him elected and have a candidate they
could manipulate."
Not the intelligence agencies, the Military IMO. They knew HC for what she was; horrifically corrupt and,again IMO,they know
she is insane.
They saw and I think still see Trump as someone they could work with, remember Rogers (Navy) of the NSA going to him immediately
once he was elected? That was the Military protecting him as best they could.
They IMO have kept him alive and as long as he doesn't send any troops into "real" wars, they will keep on keeping him alive.
This doesn't mean Trump hasn't gone over to the Dark Side, just that no military action will take place that the military command
doesn't fully support.
Again, I could be wrong, he could be backed by fiends from Patagonia for all I really know:)
The button pushers behind the Trump collusion and Russia election hacking false narratives got what they wanted: to walk the
democrats and republicans straight into Cold War v2; to start their campaign to suppress alternative voices on the internet; to
increase military spending; and more, more, more war.
Boy, I hope Jackrabbit sees this. Everyone knows I believe Trump is the anointed chosen of the Zionist 1%. There was no Russia
collusion; it was Zionist collusion with a Russian twist...
Oh yeah! Forgot to mention the latest. Trump is asking Kim to provide a list of his nuclear scientists! Before Kim acts on this
request, he should call up the Iranian government for advise 'cause they have lots of experience and can warn Kim of what will
happen to each of those scientists. They'll be put on a kill-list and will be extrajudicially wacked as in executed. Can you believe
the chutzpah? Trump must think Kim is really stupid to fall for that one!
Aye! The thought of six more years of Zionist pandering Trump. Barf-inducing prospect is too tame.
The view from the hermitage is, we are in the age of distractions. Russiagate will be replaced with one of a litany of distractions,
purely designed to keep us off target. The target being, corruption, vote rigging, illegal wars, war crimes, overthrowing sovereign
governments, and political assasinations, both at home and abroad. Those so distracted, will focus on sillyness; not the genuine
danger afoot around the planet. Get used to it; it's become the new normal.
@76Hw
I have yet to read anything more delusional, nay, utterly preposterous. Methinks you over-project too much. Even Trump would have
a belly-ache laugh reading that sheeple spiel. You're the type that sees the giant billboard of Zionist Trump and Yahoo shaking
hands and drones on and on that our lying eyes deceive us and it's really Trump playing 4-D chess. I suppose when he tried to
pressure Omar Ilhan into resigning her seat in Congress yesterday, that too was reverse psychology?
Trump instagramed the billboard pic, he tweeted it, he probably pasted it on his wall; maybe with your kind of wacky, Trump
infatuation, you should too!
Russiagate is finished because Mueller discovered an embarrassing fact: The collusion was and always will be with Israel. Here's
Trump professing his endless love for Zionism:
Trump Resign
Russiagate was very successful <=pls read, re-read Pft @ 46.. he listed many things. divide and conquer accomplished.
a nation state is defined as an armed rule making structure, designed by those who control a territory, and constructed by the
lawyers, military, and wealthy and run by the persons the designers appoint, for the appointed are called politicians.
Most designs of armed nation states provide the designers with information feedback and the designers use that information
to appoint more obedient politicians and generals to run things, and to improve the design to better serve the designers. The
armed rule making structure is designed to give the designers complete control over those targeted to be the governed. Why so
stupid the governed? ; always they allow themselves to be manipulated like sheep.
When 10 angry folks approach you with two pieces of ropes: one to throw over the tree branch under which your horse will be
supporting you while they tie the noose around your neck and the other shorter piece of rope to tie your hands behind ..your back
you need at that point to make your words count , if five of the people are black and five are white. all you need do is
say how smart the blacks are, and how stupid the whites are, as the two groups fight each other you manage your escape. democrat
vs republican= divide to conquer. gun, no gun = divide to conquer, HRC vs DJT = divide to conquer, abortion, no abortion = divide
to conquer, Trump is a Russian planted in a high level USA position of power = divide to conquer, They were all in on it together,,
Muller was in the white house to keep the media supplied with XXX, to keep the law enforcement agencies in the loop, and to advise
trump so things would not get out of hand ( its called Manipulation and the adherents to the economic system called Zionism
For the record, Zionism is not related to race, religion or intelligence. Zionism is a system of economics that take's no captives,
its adherents must own everything, must destroy and decimate all actual or imaginary competition, for Zionist are the owners and
masters of everything? Zionism is about power, absolute power, monopoly ownership and using governments everywhere to abuse the
governed. Zionism has many adherents, whites, blacks, browns, Christians, Jews, Islamist, Indians, you name it among each class
of person and walk of life can be found persons who subscribe to the idea that they, and only they, should own everything, and
when those of us, that are content to be the governed let them, before the kill and murder us, they usually end up owning everything.
1. why the Joint non nuclear agreement with Iran and the other nuclear power nations, that prevented Iran from developing nuclear
weapons, was trashed? Someone needs to be able to say Iran is developing ..., at the right time.
2. Why Netanyohu made public a video that claimed Iran was developing nuclear stuff in violation of the Iran non nuclear agreement,
and everybody laughed,
3. Why the nuclear non proliferation agreement with Russia, that terminated the costly useless arms race a decade ago, has
been recently terminated, to reestablish the nuclear arms race, no apparent reason was given the implication might be Russia could
be a target, but
4. why it might make sense to give nukes to Saudi Arabia or some other rogue nation, and
5. why no one is allowed to have nuclear weapons except the Zionist owned and controlled nation states.
Statement: Zionism is an economic system that requires the elimination of all competition of whatever kind. It is a winner
get's all, takes no prisoners, targets all who would threaten or be a challenge or a threat; does not matter if the threat is
in in oil and gas, technology or weapons as soon as a possibility exist, the principles of Zionism would require that it be taken
out, decimated, and destroyed and made where never again it could even remotely be a threat to the Empire, that Zionism demands..
Hypothesis: A claim that another is developing nuclear weapon capabilities is sufficient to take that other out?
I am glad that most commenters understand that Russiagate will not go away. But the majority appear to miss the real reason. Russiagate
is not an accusation, it is the state of mind.
At the beginnng of Russiagate, I wrote on Robert Parry's Consirtium News that Russiagate is Idiocracy piggy-backing on
decades and literally billions of dollars of anti-Soviet and anti-Russian propaganda. How hard would it be to brainwash an already
brainwashed population?
The purveyors of Russiagate will re-compose themselves, brush off all reports and continue on. One just cannot get away
from one's nature, even when that nature is pure idiocy. Of course, the most ironic in the affair is that it is the so called
US "intellectuals", academics and other assorted cretins who are the most fervent proponents. If you were wondering how Russia
can make such amazing defensive weapons that US can only deny exist and wet dream of having, there is your answer. It is the state
of mind. The whole of US establishment are legends in their on lunch time and totally delusional about the reality surrounding
them - both Russiagate and MAGA cretins, no report can help the Russiagate nation.
Finally, I am thinking of that crazy and ugly professor bitch from the British Cambridge University who gives her lectures
naked to protest something or other. I am so lucky that I do not have to go to a Western university ever again. What a catastrophic
decline! No Brexit can help the Skripal nation.
Russiagate is finished, but is DJT also among the rubble?
Hardly any money for the border wall and still lingering in the ME?
If Hoarsewhisperer proves to be correct above re: DJT, he will really have to knock our socks off before election 2020. To
do this he will have to unequivocally and unceremoniously withdraw from the MENA and Afghanistan and possibly declare a National
Emergency for more money for the wall.
The problem is, when he does this, he will look impulsively dangerous and this may harm his mystique to the lemmings who need
a president to be more "presidential."
My money is on status quo all the way to 2020 and the rethugz hoping the Dems will eat their own in an orgy of warring identities.
The collusion story may be faltering, but the blame for Russia poisoning the Skripals lives on. The other night on The News Hour,
"Judy" led off the program with this: "It has been almost a year since Kremlin intelligence officers attempted to kill a Russian
defector in the British city of Salisbury by poisoning him with a nerve agent. That attack, and the subsequent death of a British
woman, scared away tourists and shoppers, but authorities and residents are working to get the town's economy back on track. Special
correspondent Malcolm Brabant reports."
Russiagate will not go away unfortunately because it has evolved in the "Russiagate Industry". As mentioned by others,
the Russiagate Industry has been very profitable for many industries and people. Russiagate has generated an entire cottage industry
of companies around censorship and "find us a Russian". Dow Jones should have an index on the Russiagate Industry.
Here is one recent example. You know the measles outbreak in the US Pacific Northwest. Yup, the Russians. How do we know.
A government funded research grant. The study found that 899 tweets caused people to doubt vaccines. Looks like money is
to be had even by academics for the right results.
"... Cohen said the censorship that he has faced in recent years is similar to the censorship imposed on dissidents in the Soviet Union. ..."
"... Washington Post ..."
"... "Katrina and I had a joint signed op-ed piece in the New York Times ..."
"... Washington Post ..."
"... "The alternatives have been excluded from both. I would welcome an opportunity to debate these issues in the mainstream media, where you can reach more people. And remember, being in these pages, for better or for worse, makes you Kosher. This is the way it works. If you have been on these pages, you are cited approvingly. You are legitimate. You are within the parameters of the debate." ..."
"... "When I lived off and on in the Soviet Union, I saw how Soviet media treated dissident voices. And they didn't have to arrest them. They just wouldn't ever mention them. Sometimes they did that (arrest them). But they just wouldn't ever mention them in the media." ..."
"... "And something like that has descended here. And it's really alarming, along with some other Soviet-style practices in this country that nobody seems to care about – like keeping people in prison until they break, that is plea, without right to bail, even though they haven't been convicted of anything." ..."
"... "That's what they did in the Soviet Union. They kept people in prison until people said – I want to go home. Tell me what to say – and I'll go home. That's what we are doing here. And we shouldn't be doing that." ..."
"... Russell Mokhiber is the editor of the Corporate Crime Reporter.. ..."
Cohen has largely been banished from mainstream media.
"I had been arguing for years -- very much against the American political media grain --
that a new US/Russian Cold War was unfolding -- driven primarily by politics in Washington, not
Moscow," Cohen writes in War with Russia. "For this perspective, I had been largely
excluded from influential print, broadcast and cable outlets where I had been previously
welcomed."
On the stage at Busboys and Poets with Cohen was Katrina vanden Heuvel, the editor of
The Nation magazine, and Robert Borosage, co-founder of the Campaign for America's
Future.
Cohen said the censorship that he has faced in recent years is similar to the censorship
imposed on dissidents in the Soviet Union.
"Until some period of time before Trump, on the question of what America's policy toward
Putin's Kremlin should be, there was a reasonable facsimile of a debate on those venues that
had these discussions," Cohen said. "Are we allowed to mention the former Charlie Rose for
example? On the long interview form, Charlie would have on a person who would argue for a very
hard policy toward Putin. And then somebody like myself who thought it wasn't a good idea."
"Occasionally that got on CNN too. MSNBC not so much. And you could get an op-ed piece
published, with effort, in the New York Times or Washington Post ."
"Katrina and I had a joint signed op-ed piece in the New York Times six or
seven years ago. But then it stopped. And to me, that's the fundamental difference between this
Cold War and the preceding Cold War."
"I will tell you off the record – no, I'm not going to do it," Cohen said. "Two
exceedingly imminent Americans, who most op-ed pages would die to get a piece by, just to say
they were on the page, submitted such articles to the New York Times , and they were
rejected the same day. They didn't even debate it. They didn't even come back and say –
could you tone it down? They just didn't want it."
"Now is that censorship? In Italy, where each political party has its own newspaper, you
would say – okay fair enough. I will go to a newspaper that wants me. But here, we are
used to these newspapers."
"Remember how it works. I was in TV for 18 years being paid by CBS. So, I know how these
things work. TV doesn't generate its own news anymore. Their actual reporting has been
de-budgeted. They do video versions of what is in the newspapers."
"Look at the cable talk shows. You see it in the New York Times and Washington
Post in the morning, you turn on the TV at night and there is the video version. That's
just the way the news business works now."
"The alternatives have been excluded from both. I would welcome an opportunity to debate
these issues in the mainstream media, where you can reach more people. And remember, being in
these pages, for better or for worse, makes you Kosher. This is the way it works. If you have
been on these pages, you are cited approvingly. You are legitimate. You are within the
parameters of the debate."
"If you are not, then you struggle to create your own alternative media. It's new in my
lifetime. I know these imminent Americans I mentioned were shocked when they were just told no.
It's a lockdown. And it is a form of censorship."
"When I lived off and on in the Soviet Union, I saw how Soviet media treated dissident
voices. And they didn't have to arrest them. They just wouldn't ever mention them. Sometimes
they did that (arrest them). But they just wouldn't ever mention them in the media."
"Dissidents created what is known as samizdat – that's typescript that you circulate
by hand. Gorbachev, before he came to power, did read some samizdat. But it's no match for
newspapers published with five, six, seven million copies a day. Or the three television
networks which were the only television networks Soviet citizens had access to."
"And something like that has descended here. And it's really alarming, along with some
other Soviet-style practices in this country that nobody seems to care about – like
keeping people in prison until they break, that is plea, without right to bail, even though
they haven't been convicted of anything."
"That's what they did in the Soviet Union. They kept people in prison until people said
– I want to go home. Tell me what to say – and I'll go home. That's what we are
doing here. And we shouldn't be doing that."
Cohen appears periodically on Tucker Carlson's show on Fox News. And that rankled one person
in the audience at Busboys and Poets, who said he worried that Cohen's perspective on Russia
can be "appropriated by the right."
"Trump can take that and run on a nationalistic platform – to hell with NATO, to
hell with fighting these endless wars, to do what he did in 2016 and get the votes of people
who are very concerned about the deteriorating relations between the U.S. and Russia," the
man said.
Cohen says that on a personal level, he likes Tucker Carlson "and I don't find him to be a
racist or a nationalist."
"Nationalism is on the rise around the world everywhere," Cohen said. "There are
different kinds of nationalism. We always called it patriotism in this country, but we have
always been a nationalistic country."
"Fox has about three to four million viewers at that hour," Cohen said. "If I am not
permitted to give my take on American/Russian relations on any other mass media, and by the
way, possibly talk directly to Trump, who seems to like his show, and say – Trump is
making a mistake, he should do this or do that instead -- I don't get many opportunities
– and I can't see why I shouldn't do it."
"I get three and a half to four minutes," Cohen said. "I don't see it as consistent with my
mission, if that's the right word, to say no. These articles I write for The Nation ,
which ended up in my book, are posted on some of the most God awful websites in the world. I
had to look them up to find out how bad they really are. But what can I do about it?"
"... it is important to remember that Wasserman-Schultz and Snipes are merely the public faces of an extensive, deeply problematic system of corruption. It is then also essential to understand who, and what mechanisms, have allowed figures like Wasserman-Schultz, Snipes, the Awan brothers, and others to go unprosecuted. ..."
"... As readers may recall , Snipes illegally destroyed ballots from the 2016 primary race between Wasserman-Schultz and Tim Canova. The Sun Sentinel explained Snipes's direct involvement in the destruction of ballots, writing: ..."
"... Canova's contention that US Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein may have been responsible for preventing legal consequences for Brenda Snipes is profoundly concerning. Last year, Rosenstein faced heavy criticism in the wake of the publication of the infamous FISA Memo. Last year, The Daily Beast described the memo's account of surveillance abuse, saying: "[The memo] specifically names FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein along with former FBI Director James Comey." ..."
"... Needless to say, the fact that Rosenstein was directly involved with the strongly partisan activities documented by the FISA memo makes it unsurprising that he would interfere on behalf of associates of Hillary Clinton. ..."
"... Setting the possibility that Wasserman-Schultz's brother may also have been involved in protecting Snipes from prosecution aside for the moment, Canova's allegations raise a myriad of new questions, including: who benefits from protecting Snipes? ..."
"... "In stories like this, the image painted of the Department of Justice is one of a federal agency that functions in a manner far more akin to organized crime than to a governmental body." ..."
A vast caldera of public rage has rightfully been aimed at Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and
Brenda Snipes over the last few years. However, it is important to remember that
Wasserman-Schultz and Snipes are merely the public faces of an extensive, deeply problematic
system of corruption. It is then also essential to understand who, and what mechanisms, have
allowed figures like Wasserman-Schultz, Snipes, the Awan brothers, and others to go
unprosecuted.
This issue became clearer earlier this week when former congressional candidate Tim Canova
Tweeted:
As readers
may recall , Snipes illegally destroyed ballots from the 2016 primary race between
Wasserman-Schultz and Tim Canova. The Sun Sentinel explained Snipes's
direct involvement in the destruction of ballots, writing:
"Canova, who was checking for voting irregularities in the race, sought to look at the paper
ballots in March 2017 and took Elections Supervisor Brenda Snipes to court three months later
when her office hadn't fulfilled his request. Snipes approved the destruction of the ballots in
September, signing a certification that said no court cases involving the ballots were pending.
Snipes called the action a "mistake" during testimony she gave in the case, saying the boxes
were mislabeled and there was "nothing on my part that was intentional" about destroying the
contested ballots."
Big League Politics also reported: "On
May 11, 2018, the Florida Circuit Court granted Plaintiff Canova summary judgment, and found
that Snipes had violated numerous state and federal statutes, including laws punishable as
felonies with up to five years in prison. The Court's ruling made clear that Snipes'
destruction of ballots was illegal on several separate counts."
Disobedient Media spoke with Tim Canova, who told us:
"I was recently informed by election officials in Florida that it's the Deputy AG, Rod
Rosenstein, who would have been the DOJ official making the decision not to move forward with
a criminal investigation in our ballot destruction case. I also believe that Steve Wasserman,
an Assistant US Attorney at the DOJ headquarters in Washington, DC, may well have been
involved in the decision, particularly since Wasserman spoke out publicly against prosecuting
Awan in the days before Awan's sentencing."
A Floridian official set to prosecute Snipes was also said to have backed down after a trip
to Washington DC, which involved meetings with the DOJ. Canova stated:
"Last May, the acting US Attorney for South Florida, Ben Greenberg, was about to open a
criminal investigation into Snipes's destruction of our ballots when he flew to DC for a week
of meetings at DOJ. When he returned, the investigation was off."
Canova's contention that US Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein may have been responsible
for preventing legal consequences for Brenda Snipes is profoundly concerning. Last year,
Rosenstein faced heavy criticism in the wake of the publication of the infamous FISA Memo. Last
year, The Daily
Beast described the memo's account of surveillance abuse, saying: "[The memo] specifically
names FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein along with
former FBI Director James Comey."
The Washington Times reported: "The
memo from Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee shows that at least one questionable
surveillance warrant application was signed by Mr. Rosenstein, who already had a difficult
relationship with President Trump. The memo said information supporting the application was
obtained from a partisan anti-Trump dossier funded by Hillary Clinton's campaign and the
Democratic Party."
Needless to say, the fact that Rosenstein was directly involved with the strongly partisan
activities documented by the FISA memo makes it unsurprising that he would interfere on behalf
of associates of Hillary Clinton.
Setting the possibility that Wasserman-Schultz's brother may also have been involved in
protecting Snipes from prosecution aside for the moment, Canova's allegations raise a myriad of
new questions, including: who benefits from protecting Snipes?
Undeniably, the most obvious answer is Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, the alleged beneficiary of
Snipes's illegal ballot destruction. Similarly, one wonders what connection such a decision may
have with the DOJ's refusal to prosecute the Awan scandal, a move from which Debbie
Wasserman-Schultz also directly benefited.
In light of this, we are led to ask: Who benefits from shielding Debbie Wasserman-Schultz
from the blowback of multiple national scandals? What would induce the DOJ to prop up such an
embarrassment?
Farts and Leaves,
"In stories like this, the image painted of the Department of Justice is one of a federal agency that functions in
a manner far more akin to organized crime than to a governmental body."
If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...
Taras Bulba
Dis ob Media-good report-thanks.
This abolute outrageous info about snipes, the wassermanschultzes, awans, dimocrats in congress shouts loudly that we really
have no system of justice in this country, at least for the powerful and connected. This is outrageous-where in the hell is
the DOJ, oh, that is the problem with ,rosenstein, prob the clintons, et al
My guess is wasserman schultz is mossad-to my mind, there can be no other explanation.
It appears that George Webb has been shut down, he was bird dogging this info, now daily caller luke has cut him off.
The vomit factor on this one is off the scale!
Ajax-1
At the very least, why hasn't Trump or his new AG fired Rosenstein?
space junk
Probably because the stay behind networks from the Sessions/Obama/Holder and even Bush eras, have so much entanglement
into the system, that change cannot be made in quick order. One only can hope that T-man will chop off the head of the snake
and not just the tail.
hooligan2009
the two key extracts from the article are these:
"... the Department of Justice is one of a federal agency that functions in a manner far more akin to organized
crime than to a governmental body. The DOJ's refusal prosecute the Awans, and Rosenstein's alleged decision to prevent
legal consequences for Brenda Snipes shows us that corruption allowed to stagnate in Broward County affected the whole
country. "
and
"... the Department of Justice refuses to prosecute such crimes as detailed in the Awan scandal and as committed by
Snipes, how can the public hope to hold their government accountable for election interference and other forms of
corruption? "
the case is clear. the DoJ has, again, acted against the national interest and the staff involved are guilty of electoral
fraud, sedition and treason. the awan brothers sold congressional secrets to Pakistan (and mossad probably).
cui bono? from not prosecuting these blatant, obvious AND DISCLOSED crimes? there is a fetid swamp of criminality here and a
flagrant, in your face, contempt for the american people and their security.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? where is the oversight of this criminality? the inspector general? internal affairs? where
are the lawyers that leap to defend civil rights abuses against covington schoolkids, but not issues such as this?
" Congress paid the Awans more than $4 million between 2004 and 2016 at their $165,000 salary level, a sum that some sources
suggest to be three or four times higher than the norm for government contractor IT specialists performing similar work at
the same level of alleged competence. "
-ALIEN-
The US Dept of INjustice is a criminal organization, of course it is protecting those who subvert elections at the
direction of the Oligarchs.
Our whole system of voting has been carefully crafted and tuned to ensure the USA Citizen has almost no effect on the
functioning of government.
boattrash
One thing not mentioned in the article, was the dead body of federal prosecutor Beranton J. Whisenant Jr. found on the
beach in Debbie's District...Dead from a suicide gunshot to the head...he used a "magic gun" I suppose, because local police
think in "floated off in the surf" FFS
Go to a large library and cross-reference James Jesus Angleton, Kim Philby, Miles Copeland and Nicholas Elliott in the "spy" books.
Soon you will begin to see that MI6 was there at the OSS and later CIA inceptions.
At the hidden deep levels, both these agencies serve the GLOBALIST' enterprise, and have since the start.
Then you will understand Steele and the "five eyes" involvement in the Russia hoax.
This article from 2017 looks like it was written yesterday. Trump betrayal of his elctorate on multiple levels, essentially on all
key poin of his election program mkes him "Republican Obama".
What is interesting about Trump foreign policy is his version of neoliberal "gangster capitalism" on foreign arena:
might is right principle applied like universal opener. Previous administrations tried to put a lipstick on the pig. Trump
does not even bother.
In terms of foreign policy, and even during the transition before Trump's inauguration, there were other, more disturbing signs
of where Trump would be heading soon. When Fidel Castro died on November 25, 2016,
Trump seemed jubilant as if he had somehow been vindicated, and took the opportunity to slander Castro as a "brutal dictator" who
"oppressed his own people" and turned Cuba into a "totalitarian island".
Notable quotes:
"... However, when he delivered his inaugural address on January 20, 2017, Trump appeared to reaffirm his campaign themes of anti-interventionism. In particular he seemed to turn the government's back on a long-standing policy of cultural imperialism , stating: "We do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone". In addition he said his government would "seek friendship and goodwill with the nations of the world," and he understood the importance of national sovereignty when he added, "it is the right of all nations to put their own interests first". ..."
"... Yet when it came to Russia, Trump could have instantly removed sanctions that were imposed by Obama in his last weeks in office -- an irresponsible and dangerous act by Obama, where foreign policy was used as a partisan tool in the service of shoring up a crummy conspiracy theory about "Russian hacking" in order to deny the Democrats any culpability in their much deserved defeat. ..."
"... The entire conflict with Russia that has developed in recent years, on the US side, was totally unnecessary, illogical, and quite preventable. ..."
"... Just two weeks after violating his promise to end the US role as the world's policeman and his vow to extricate the US from wars for regime change, Trump sold out again. "I love WikiLeaks -- " -- this is what Trump exclaimed in a speech on October 10, 2016. Trump's about-face on WikiLeaks is thus truly astounding. ..."
"... AP: If I could fit a couple of more topics. Jeff Sessions, your attorney general, is taking a tougher line suddenly on Julian Assange, saying that arresting him is a priority. You were supportive of what WikiLeaks was doing during the campaign with the release of the Clinton emails. Do you think that arresting Assange is a priority for the United States? ..."
"... AP: But that didn't mean that you supported what Assange is doing? ..."
"... AP: Can I just ask you, though -- do you believe it is a priority for the United States, or it should be a priority, to arrest Julian Assange? ..."
"... While there is no denying the extensive data about the severe impacts of NAFTA on select states and industries in the US, witnessed by the closure of tens of thousands of factories and the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs, there is little support for the claim that Canada and Mexico, as wholes, have instead fared well and that the US as a whole has been the loser thanks to them. ..."
"... Since NAFTA was implemented, migration from Mexico to the US skyrocketed dramatically. US agricultural industries sent millions of Mexican farmers into food poverty, and ultimately drove them away from agriculture ..."
"... As for per capita GDP, so treasured by economists, NAFTA had no positive impact on Mexico -- in fact, per capita GDP is nearly a flat line for the entire period since 1994. Finally, Trump does not mention that in terms of the number of actual protectionist measures that have been implemented, the US leads the world . ..."
"... To put Trump's position on NAFTA in bold relief, it is not that he is decidedly against free trade. In fact, he often claims he supports free trade, as long as it is "fair". However, his notion of fairness is very lopsided -- a trade agreement is fair only when the US reaps the greater share of benefits. ..."
"... As argued in the previous section, if Trump is to be the newfound champion of this imperialism -- empire's prodigal son -- then what an abysmally poor choice he is ..."
"... On the one hand, he helped to unleash US anti-interventionism (usually called "isolationism" not to call it anti-imperialism, which would then admit to imperialism which is still denied by most of the dominant elites). On the other hand, in trying to now contain such popular sentiment, he loses credibility -- after having lost credibility with the groups his campaign displaced. ..."
"... As for Trump's domestic opposition, what should be most pertinent are issues of conflict of interest and nepotism . Here members of Trump's base are more on target yet again, when they reject the presence of Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner in the White House ("we didn't elect Ivanka or Jared"), than are those distracted by identity politics. ..."
"... As Trump leverages the presidency to upgrade the Trump family to the transnational capitalist class, and reinforces the power of US imperialism which that class has purchased, conflict of interest and nepotism will be the main political signposts of the transformation of the Trump presidency, but they could also be the targets for a refined strategy of opposition. ..."
Trump could have kept quiet, and lost nothing. Instead what he was attacking -- and the irony was missed on his fervently right
wing supporters -- was someone who was a leader in the anti-globalist movement, from long before it was ever called that. Fidel Castro
was a radical pioneer of independence, self-reliance, and self-determination.
Castro turned Cuba from an American-owned sugar plantation and brothel, a lurid backwater in the Caribbean, into a serious international
actor opposed to globalizing capitalism. There was no sign of any acknowledgment of this by Trump, who instead chose to parrot the
same people who would vilify him using similar terms (evil, authoritarian, etc.). Of course, Trump respects only corporate executives
and billionaires, not what he would see as some rag-tag Third World revolutionary. Here Trump's supporters generally failed, using
Castro's death as an opportunity for tribal partisanship, another opportunity to attack "weak liberals" like Obama who made minor
overtures to Cuba (too little, too late).
Their distrust of "the establishment" was nowhere to be found this time: their ignorance of Cuba and their resort to stock clichés
and slogans had all been furnished to them by the same establishment they otherwise claimed to oppose.
Just to be clear, the above is not meant to indicate any reversal on Trump's part regarding Cuba. He has been consistently anti-communist,
and fairly consistent in his denunciations of Fidel Castro. What is significant is that -- far from overcoming the left-right divide
-- Trump shores up the barriers, even at the cost of denouncing others who have a proven track record of fighting against neoliberal
globalization and US interventionism. In these regards, Trump has no track record. Even among his rivals in the Republican primaries,
senators Ted Cruz and Rand Paul had more of an anti-interventionist track record.
However, when he delivered his inaugural address
on January 20, 2017, Trump appeared to reaffirm his campaign themes of anti-interventionism. In particular he seemed to turn the
government's back on a long-standing policy of
cultural imperialism
, stating: "We do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone". In addition he said his government would "seek friendship and goodwill
with the nations of the world," and he understood the importance of national sovereignty when he added, "it is the right of all nations
to put their own interests first".
Russia
Yet when it came to Russia, Trump could have instantly removed sanctions that were imposed by Obama in his last weeks in office
-- an irresponsible and dangerous act by Obama, where foreign policy was used as a partisan tool in the service of shoring up a crummy
conspiracy theory about "Russian hacking" in order to deny the Democrats any culpability in their much deserved defeat.
Instead, Trump continued the sanctions, as if out of meek deference to Obama's policy, one founded on lies and antagonism
toward Trump himself. Rather than repair the foul attempt to sabotage the US-Russian relationship in preparation for his presidency,
Trump simply abided and thus became an accomplice. To be clear,
Trump has done precisely nothing
to dampen the near mass hysteria that has been manufactured in the US about alleged -- indeed imaginary -- "Russian intervention".
His comments, both during the electoral campaign and even early into his presidency, about wanting good relations with Russia,
have been replaced by Trump's admissions that US relations with Russia are at a low point (Putin agreed: "I would say the level of
trust [between Russia and the US] is at a workable level, especially in the military dimension, but it hasn't improved. On the contrary,
it has degraded " and his spokesman called
the relations " deplorable ".)
Rather than use the power of his office to calm fears, to build better ties with Russia, and to make meeting with Vladimir Putin
a top priority, Trump has again done nothing , except escalating tensions. The entire conflict with Russia that has
developed in recent years, on the US side, was totally unnecessary, illogical, and quite preventable. Russia had actively facilitated
the US' war in Afghanistan for over a decade, and was a consistent collaborator on numerous levels. It is up to thinking American
officials to honestly explain what motivated them to tilt relations with Russia, because it is certainly not Russia's doing. The
only explanation that makes any sense is that the US leadership grew concerned that Russia was no longer teetering on the edge of
total socio-economic breakdown, as it was under the neoliberal Boris Yeltsin, but has instead resurfaced as a major actor in international
affairs, and one that champions anti-neoliberal objectives of enhanced state sovereignty and self-determination.
WikiLeaks
Just two weeks after violating his promise to end the US role as the world's policeman and his vow to extricate the US from
wars for regime change, Trump sold out again.
"I love WikiLeaks --
" -- this is what Trump exclaimed in a speech on October 10, 2016. Trump's about-face on WikiLeaks is thus truly astounding.
After finding so much use for WikiLeaks' publication of the Podesta emails, which became incorporated into his campaign speeches,
and which fuelled the writing and speaking of journalists and bloggers sympathetic to Trump -- he was now effectively declaring WikiLeaks
to be both an enemy and a likely target of US government action, in even more blunt terms than we heard during the past eight years
under Obama. This is not mere continuity with the past, but a dramatic escalation. Rather than praise Julian Assange for his work,
call for an end to the illegal impediments to his seeking asylum, swear off any US calls for extraditing and prosecuting Assange,
and perhaps meeting with him in person, Trump has done all of the opposite. Instead we learn that Trump's administration may
file arrest charges against Assange
. Mike Pompeo ,
chosen by Trump to head the CIA, who had himself
cited WikiLeaks as a reliable source of proof about how the Democratic National Committee had rigged its campaign, now declared
WikiLeaks to be a "
non-state hostile intelligence service ," along with vicious personal slander against Assange.
Trump's about-face on WikiLeaks was one that he defended in terms that were not just a deceptive rewriting of history, but one
that was also fearful -- "I don't support or unsupport" WikiLeaks, was what Trump was now saying in his dash for the nearest exit.
The backtracking is so obvious in this
interview
Trump gave to the AP , that his shoes must have left skid marks on the floor:
AP: If I could fit a couple of more topics. Jeff Sessions, your attorney general, is taking a tougher line suddenly on
Julian Assange, saying that arresting him is a priority. You were supportive of what WikiLeaks was doing during the campaign with
the release of the Clinton emails. Do you think that arresting Assange is a priority for the United States?
TRUMP: When Wikileaks came out never heard of Wikileaks, never heard of it. When Wikileaks came out, all I was just saying
is, "Well, look at all this information here, this is pretty good stuff." You know, they tried to hack the Republican, the RNC,
but we had good defenses. They didn't have defenses, which is pretty bad management. But we had good defenses, they tried to hack
both of them. They weren't able to get through to Republicans. No, I found it very interesting when I read this stuff and I said,
"Wow." It was just a figure of speech. I said, "Well, look at this. It's good reading."
AP: But that didn't mean that you supported what Assange is doing?
TRUMP: No, I don't support or unsupport. It was just information .
AP: Can I just ask you, though -- do you believe it is a priority for the United States, or it should be a priority, to
arrest Julian Assange?
TRUMP: I am not involved in that decision, but if Jeff Sessions wants to do it, it's OK with me. I didn't know about that decision,
but if they want to do it, it's OK with me.
First, Trump invents the fictitious claim that WikiLeaks was responsible for hacking the DNC, and that WikiLeaks also tried to
hack the Republicans. Second, he pretends to be an innocent bystander, a spectator, in his own administration -- whatever others
decide, is "OK" with him, not that he knows about their decisions, but it's all up to others. He has no power, all of a sudden.
Again, what Trump is displaying in this episode is his ultimate attachment to his class, with all of its anxieties and its contempt
for rebellious, marginal upstarts. Trump shuns any sort of "loyalty" to WikiLeaks (not that they ever had a working relationship)
or any form of gratitude, because then that would imply a debt and therefore a transfer of value -- whereas Trump's core ethics are
those of expedience and greed (he admits that much).
This move has come with a cost , with members of Trump's support base openly denouncing the betrayal. 6
NAFTA
On NAFTA , Trump claims he has not changed his position -- yet, from openly denouncing the free trade agreement and promising
to terminate it, he now vows only to seek modifications and amendments, which means supporting NAFTA. He appeared to be
awfully quick to obey the diplomatic pressure of Canada's Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, and Mexico's President, Enrique Peńa
Nieto. Trump's entire position on NAFTA now comes into question.
While there is no denying the extensive data about the severe impacts of NAFTA on select states and industries in the US,
witnessed by the closure of tens of thousands of factories and the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs, there is little support
for the claim that Canada and Mexico, as wholes, have instead fared well and that the US as a whole has been the loser thanks to
them.
This really deserves to be treated at length, separately from this article. However, for now, let's keep in mind that when
Trump complains about Canadian softwood lumber and dairy exports to the US, his argument about NAFTA is without merit. Neither commodity
is part of the NAFTA agreement.
Moreover, where dairy is concerned, the problem is US overproduction.
Wisconsin alone has more
dairy cows than all of Canada . There is a net surplus , in the US' favour, with respect to US dairy exports to Canada.
Overall,
the US has a net surplus in the trade in
goods and services with Canada. Regarding Mexico, the irony of Trump's denunciations of imaginary Mexican victories is that he
weakens his own criticisms of immigration.
Since NAFTA was implemented,
migration from Mexico to
the US skyrocketed dramatically. US agricultural industries sent millions of Mexican farmers into food poverty, and ultimately
drove them away from agriculture.
As for per capita GDP, so treasured by economists, NAFTA had no positive impact on Mexico -- in fact,
per capita GDP is nearly a flat
line for the entire period since 1994. Finally, Trump does not mention that in terms of the number of actual protectionist measures
that have been implemented, the
US leads the world .
To put Trump's position on NAFTA in bold relief, it is not that he is decidedly against free trade. In fact, he often claims
he supports free trade, as long as it is "fair". However, his notion of fairness is very lopsided -- a trade agreement is fair only
when the US reaps the greater share of benefits.
His arguments with respect to Canada are akin to those of a looter or raider. He wants to block lumber imports from Canada, at
the same time as he wants to break the Canadian dairy market wide open to absorb US excess production. That approach is at the core
of what defined the US as a "new empire" in the 1800s. In addition, while Trump was quick to tear up the TPP, he has said nothing
about TISA and TTIP.
Mexico
Trump's argument with Mexico is also disturbing for what it implies. It would seem that any
evidence of production
in Mexico causes Trump concern. Mexico should not only keep its people -- however many are displaced by US imports -- but it should
also be as dependent as possible on the US for everything except oil. Since Trump has consistently declared his antagonism to OPEC,
ideally Mexico's oil would be sold for a few dollars per barrel.
China
Trump's turn on China almost provoked laughter from his many domestic critics. Absurdly, what figures prominently in most renditions
of the story of Trump's change on China (including his own), is a big piece of chocolate cake. The missile strike on Syria was, according
to Wilbur Ross, the "
after-dinner entertainment ". Here, Trump's loud condemnations of China on trade issues were suddenly quelled -- and it is not
because chocolate has magical properties. Instead it seems Trump has been willing to settle on
selling out citizens' interests , and
particularly those who voted for him, in return for China's assistance on North Korea. Let's be clear: countering and dominating
North Korea is an established favourite among neoconservatives. Trump's priority here is fully "neocon," and the submergence of trade
issues in favour of militaristic preferences is the one case where neoconservatives might be distinguished from the otherwise identical
neoliberals.
North Korea
Where North Korea is concerned, Trump chose to manufacture a "
crisis ". North Korea has actually done nothing
to warrant a sudden outbreak of panic over it being supposedly aggressive and threatening. North Korea is no more aggressive than
any person defending their survival can be called belligerent. The constant series of US military exercises in South Korea, or near
North Korean waters, is instead a deliberate provocation to a state whose existence the US nearly extinguished. Even last year the
US Air Force publicly boasted of having
"nearly destroyed" North Korea -- language one would have expected from the Luftwaffe in WWII. The US continues to maintain roughly
60,000 troops on the border between North and South Korea, and continues to refuse to formally declare an end to the Korean War and
sign a peace treaty
. Trump then announced he was sending an "armada" to the Korean peninsula, and boasted of how "very powerful" it was. This was in
addition to the US deploying the THAAD missile system in South Korea. Several of his messages in Twitter were written using highly
provocative and threatening language. When asked if he would start a war, Trump glibly replied: "
I don't know. I mean, we'll see ". On another occasion Trump stated, "There is a chance that we could end up having a
major, major conflict with North
Korea. Absolutely". When the world's leading military superpower declares its intention to destroy you, then there is nothing you
can do in your defense which anyone could justly label as "over the top". Otherwise, once again Trump posed as a parental figure,
the world's chief babysitter -- picture Trump, surrounded by children taking part in the "Easter egg roll" at the White House, being
asked about North Korea and responding "they gotta behave". Trump would presume to teach manners to North Korea, using the only tools
of instruction that seem to be the first and last resort of US foreign policy (and the "defense" industry): bombs.
Syria
Attacking Syria , on purportedly humanitarian grounds, is for many (including vocal supporters) one of the most glaring contradictions
of Trump's campaign statements about not embroiling the US in failed wars of regime change and world policing. During the campaign,
he was in favour of Russia's collaboration with Syria in the fight against ISIS. For years he had condemned Obama for involving the
US in Syria, and consistently opposed military intervention there. All that was consigned to the archive of positions Trump declared
to now be worthless. That there had been a change in Trump's position is not a matter of dispute --
Trump made the point himself :
"I like to think of myself as a very flexible person. I don't have to have one specific way, and if the world changes, I go
the same way, I don't change. Well, I do change and I am flexible, and I'm proud of that flexibility. And I will tell you, that
attack on children yesterday had a big impact on me -- big impact. That was a horrible, horrible thing. And I've been watching
it and seeing it, and it doesn't get any worse than that. And I have that flexibility, and it's very, very possible -- and I will
tell you, it's already happened that my attitude toward Syria and Assad has changed very much. And if you look back over the last
few weeks, there were other attacks using gas. You're now talking about a whole different level".
Bending to the will of the prevailing Cold War and neo-McCarthyist atmosphere in the US, rife with anti-Russian conspiracy theories,
Trump found an easy opportunity to score points with the hostile media, ever so mindful as he is about approval ratings, polls, and
media coverage. Some explain Trump's reversals as arising from his
pursuit
of
public adulation -- and while the media play the key role in purveying celebrity status, they are also a stiff bastion of imperialist
culture. Given his many years as a the host of a popular TV show, and as the owner of the Miss Universe Pageant, there is some logical
merit to the argument. But I think even more is at work, as explained in paragraphs above.
According to Eric Trump it was at the urging of Ivanka that Donald Trump decided to strike a humanitarian-militarist pose. He
would play the part of the Victorian parent, only he would use missiles to teach unruly children lessons about violence. Using language
typically used against him by the mainstream media, Trump now felt entitled to pontificate that Assad is "evil," an "
animal ," who would
have
to go . When did he supposedly come to this realization? Did Assad become evil at the same time Trump was inaugurated? Why would
Trump have kept so silent about "evil" on the campaign trail? Trump of course is wrong: it's not that the world changed and he changed
with it; rather, he invented a new fiction to suit his masked intentions. Trump's supposed opponents and critics, like the Soros-funded
organizer of the women's march Linda Sarsour, showed her
approval of even more drastic
action by endorsing messages by what sounded like a stern school mistress who thought that 59 cruise missiles were just a mere "slap
on the wrist". Virtually every neocon who is publicly active applauded Trump, as did most senior Democrats. The loudest
opposition
, however, came from Trump's
own base , with a number of articles
featuring criticism from Trump's
supporters , and one conservative publication calling him outright a "
weakling
and a political ingrate ".
Members of the Trump administration have played various word games with the public on intervention in Syria. From unnamed officials
saying the missile strike was a "one off," to named officials
promising more if there
were any other suspected chemical attacks (or use of barrel bombs -- and this while the US dropped the biggest non-nuclear bomb in
existence on Afghanistan); some said that
regime change was not the goal,
and then others made it clear that was the ultimate
goal ; and then Trump saying, "Our policy is the same, it hasn't changed.
We're not going into Syria " -- even
though
Trump himself greatly increased the number of US troops he deployed to Syria , illegally, in an escalation of the least
protested invasion in recent history. Now we should know enough not to count this as mere ambiguity, but as deliberate obfuscation
that offers momentary (thinly veiled) cover for a
renewal of neocon policy .
We can draw an outline of Trump's liberal imperialism when it comes to Syria, which is likely to be applied elsewhere. First,
Trump's interventionist policy regarding Syria is one that continues to treat that country as if it were terra nullius ,
a mere playground for superpower politics. Second, Trump is clearly continuing with the
neoconservative agenda and its hit list of
states to be terminated by US military action, as famously confirmed by Gen. Wesley Clark. Even Trump's strategy for justifying the
attack on Syria echoed the two prior Bush presidential administrations -- selling war with the infamous "incubator babies" myth and
the myth of "weapons of mass destruction" (WMDs). In many ways, Trump's presidency is thus shaping up to be either the seventh term
of the George H.W. Bush regime, or the fifth straight term of the George W. Bush regime. Third, Trump is taking ownership of an extremely
dangerous conflict, with costs that could surpass anything witnessed by the war on Iraq (which also continues). Fourth, by highlighting
the importance of photographs in allegedly changing his mind, Trump has placed a high market value on propaganda featuring dead babies.
His actions in Syria will now create an effective demand for the pornographic trade in pictures of atrocities. These are matters
of great importance to the transnational capitalist class, which demands full global penetrability, diminished state power (unless
in the service of this class' goals), a uniformity of expectations and conformity in behaviour, and an emphasis on individual civil
liberties which are the basis for defending private property and consumerism.
Venezuela
It is very disturbing to see how Venezuela is being framed as ripe for US intervention, in ways that distinctly echo the lead
up to the US war on Libya. Just as disturbing is that Trump's Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, has a clear conflict of interest
regarding Venezuela, from his recent role as CEO of
Exxon
and its conflict with the government of Venezuela over its nationalization of oil. Tillerson is, by any definition, a clear-cut
member of the transnational capitalist class. The Twitter account of the
State
Department has a battery of messages sternly lecturing Venezuela about the treatment of protesters, while also pontificating
on the Venezuelan Constitution as if the US State Department had become a global supreme court. What is impressive is the seamless
continuity in the nature of the messages on Venezuela from that account, as if no change of government happened between Obama's time
and Trump's. Nikki Haley, Trump's neocon ambassador to the UN, issued
a statement that read like it had been written by her predecessors, Samantha Power and Susan Rice, a statement which in itself
is an unacceptable intervention in Venezuelan internal affairs. For Trump's part, from just days
before the election, to a couple of weeks
after his inauguration, he has sent explicit
messages of support for anti-government
forces in Venezuela. In February, Trump
imposed sanctions on Venezuela's
Vice President. After Syria and North Korea, Venezuela is seeming the likely focus of US interventionism under Trump.
NATO
Rounding out the picture, at least for now (this was just the first hundred days of Trump's presidency), was Trump's outstanding
reversal on NATO -- in fact, once again he stated the reversal himself, and without explanation either: "
I said it was obsolete. It's no longer obsolete ". This came just days after the US missile strike against Syria, and just as
Ivanka Trump was about to represent
his government at a meeting of globalist women, the
W20 . NATO has served as
the transnational military alliance at the service of the transnational capitalist class, and particularly the military and political
members of the TCC. 7
Saving Neoliberalism?
Has Trump saved neoliberal capitalism from its ongoing demise? Has he sustained popular faith in liberal political ideals? Are
we still in the dying days of liberalism
? If there had been a centrally coordinated plan to plant an operative among the ranks of populist conservatives and independents,
to channel their support for nationalism into support for the persona of the plant, and to then have that plant steer a course straight
back to shoring up neoliberal globalism -- then we might have had a wonderful story of a masterful conspiracy, the biggest heist
in the history of elections anywhere. A truly "rigged system" could be expected to behave that way. Was Trump designated to take
the fall in a rigged game, only his huge ego got in the way when he realized he could realistically win the election and he decided
to really tilt hard against his partner, Hillary Clinton? It could be the basis for a novel, or a Hollywood political comedy. I have
no way of knowing if it could be true.
Framed within the terms of what we do know, there was relief by the ousted group of political elites and the liberal globalist
media at the sight of Trump's reversals, and a sense that
their vision had been vindicated.
However, if they are hoping that the likes of Trump will serve as a reliable flag bearer, then theirs is a misguided wishful thinking.
If someone so demonized and ridiculed, tarnished as an evil thug and racist fascist, the subject of mass demonstrations in the US
and abroad, is the latest champion of (neo)liberalism, then we are certainly witnessing its dying days.
Is Trump Beneficial for Anti-Imperialism?
Once one is informed enough and thus prepared to understand that anti-imperialism is not the exclusive preserve of the left (a
left which anyway has mostly shunned it over the last two decades), that it
did not originate with the
left , and that it has a long and distinguished history
in the US itself , then we can move
toward some interesting realizations. The facts, borne out by surveys and my own online immersion among pro-Trump social media users,
is that one of the
significantreasons
why Trump won is due to the growth in popularity of basic anti-imperialist principles (even if not recognized under that name): for
example, no more world policing, no transnational militarization, no more interventions abroad, no more regime change, no war, and
no globalism. Nationalists in Europe, as in Russia, have also pushed forward a basic anti-imperialist vision. Whereas in Latin America
anti-imperialism is largely still leftist, in Europe and North America the left-right divide has become blurred, but the crucial
thing is that at least now we can speak of anti-imperialism gaining strength in these three major continents. Resistance against
globalization has been the primary objective, along with strengthening national sovereignty, protecting local cultural identity,
and opposing free trade and transnational capital. Unfortunately, some anti-imperialist writers (on the left in fact) have tended
to restrict their field of vision to military matters primarily, while almost completely neglecting the economic and cultural, and
especially domestic dimensions of imperialism. (I am grossly generalizing of course, but I think it is largely accurate.) Where structures
such as NAFTA are concerned, many of these same leftist anti-imperialists, few as they are, have had virtually nothing to say. It
could be that they have yet to fully recognize that the transnational capitalist class has, gradually over the last seven decades,
essentially purchased the power of US imperialism. Therefore the TCC's imperialism includes NAFTA, just as it includes open borders,
neoliberal identity politics, and drone strikes. They are all different parts of the same whole.
As argued in the previous section, if Trump is to be the newfound champion of this imperialism -- empire's prodigal son --
then what an abysmally poor choice he is. 8
On the one hand, he helped to unleash US anti-interventionism (usually called "isolationism" not to call it anti-imperialism,
which would then admit to imperialism which is still denied by most of the dominant elites). On the other hand, in trying to now
contain such popular sentiment, he loses credibility -- after having lost credibility with the groups his campaign displaced.
In addition to that, given that his candidacy aggravated internal divisions in the US, which have not subsided with his assumption
of office, these domestic social and cultural conflicts cause a serious deficit of legitimacy, a loss of political capital. A declining
economy will also deprive him of capital in the strict sense. Moreover, given the kind of persona the media have crafted, the daily
caricaturing of Trump will significantly spur anti-Americanism around the world. If suddenly even Canadian academics are talking
about boycotting the US, then the worm has truly turned. Trump can only rely on "hard power" (military violence), because "soft power"
is almost out of the question now that Trump has been constructed as a barbarian. Incompetent and/or undermined governance will also
render Trump a deficient upholder of the status quo. The fact that nationalist movements around the world are not centrally coordinated,
and their fortunes are not pinned to those of Trump, establishes a well-defined limit to his influence. Trump's antagonism toward
various countries -- as wholes -- has already helped to stir up a deep sediment of anti-Americanism. If Americanism is at the heart
of Trump's nationalist globalism, then it is doing all the things that are needed to induce a major heart attack.
As for Trump's domestic opposition, what should be most pertinent are issues of conflict of interest and nepotism
. Here members of Trump's base are more on target yet again, when they reject the presence of Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner
in the White House ("we didn't elect Ivanka or Jared"), than are those distracted by identity politics.
As Trump leverages the presidency to upgrade the Trump family to the transnational capitalist class, and reinforces the power
of US imperialism which that class has purchased, conflict of interest and nepotism will be the main political signposts of the transformation
of the Trump presidency, but they could also be the targets for a refined strategy of opposition.
"... Professor Cohen is indeed a patriot of the highest order. The American and "Globalists" elites, particularly the dysfunctional United Kingdom, are engaging in a war of nerves with Russia. This war, which could turn nuclear for reasons discussed in this important book, is of no benefit to any person or nation. ..."
"In a Time of Universal Deceit -- Telling the Truth Is a Revolutionary Act" is a well known quotation (but probably not of George
Orwell). And in telling the truth about Russia and that the current "war of nerves" is not in the interests of either the American
People or national security, Professor Cohen in this book has in fact done a revolutionary act.
Like a denizen of Plato's cave, or being in the film the Matrix, most people have no idea what the truth is. And the questions
raised by Professor Cohen are a great service in the cause of the truth. As Professor Cohen writes in his introduction To His
Readers:
"My scholarly work -- my biography of Nikolai Bukharin and essays collected in Rethinking the Soviet Experience and Soviet
Fates and Lost Alternatives, for example -- has always been controversial because it has been what scholars term "revisionist"
-- reconsiderations, based on new research and perspectives, of prevailing interpretations of Soviet and post-Soviet Russian history.
But the "controversy" surrounding me since 2014, mostly in reaction to the contents of this book, has been different -- inspired
by usually vacuous, defamatory assaults on me as "Putin's No. 1 American Apologist," "Best Friend," and the like. I never respond
specifically to these slurs because they offer no truly substantive criticism of my arguments, only ad hominem attacks. Instead,
I argue, as readers will see in the first section, that I am a patriot of American national security, that the orthodox policies
my assailants promote are gravely endangering our security, and that therefore we -- I and others they assail -- are patriotic
heretics. Here too readers can judge."
Cohen, Stephen F.. War with Russia (Kindle Locations 131-139). Hot Books. Kindle Edition.
Professor Cohen is indeed a patriot of the highest order. The American and "Globalists" elites, particularly the dysfunctional
United Kingdom, are engaging in a war of nerves with Russia. This war, which could turn nuclear for reasons discussed in this
important book, is of no benefit to any person or nation.
Indeed, with the hysteria on "climate change" isn't it odd that other than Professor Cohen's voice, there are no prominent
figures warning of the devastation that nuclear war would bring?
If you are a viewer of one of the legacy media outlets, be it Cable Television networks, with the exception of Tucker Carlson
on Fox who has Professor Cohen as a frequent guest, or newspapers such as The New York Times, you have been exposed to falsehoods
by remarkably ignorant individuals; ignorant of history, of the true nature of Russia (which defeated the Nazis in Europe at a
loss of millions of lives) and most important, of actual military experience. America is neither an invincible or exceptional
nation. And for those familiar with terminology of ancient history, it appears the so-called elites are suffering from hubris.
I cannot recommend Professor Cohen's work with sufficient superlatives; his arguments are erudite, clearly stated, supported
by the facts and ultimately irrefutable. If enough people find Professor Cohen's work and raise their voices to their oblivious
politicians and profiteers from war to stop further confrontation between Russia and America, then this book has served a noble
purpose.
If nothing else, educate yourself by reading this work to discover what the *truth* is. And the truth is something sacred.
America and the world owe Professor Cohen a great debt. "Blessed are the peace makers..."
This is a compelling book that documents and examines the senseless and dangerous demonizing of Russia and Putin. Unfortunately,
the elites in Washington and mass media are not likely to read this book. Their minds are closed. I read this book because I was
hoping for an explanation about the cause of the new cold war with Russia. Although the root cause of the new cold war is beyond
the scope of this book, the book documents baseless accusations that grew in frequency and intensity until all opposition was
silenced. The book documents the dangerous triumph of group think.
"On my planet, the evidence linking Putin to the assassination of Litvinecko, Nemtsov, and Politkovskaya and the attempt
on the Skripals is strong and consistent with spending his formative years in the KGB. The naive view from Cohen's planet is
presented on p 6 and 170."
Ukrainian history. That's evident to any attentive reader. I just want to state that Ukrainian EuroMaydan was a color revolution
which exploited the anger of population against the corrupt neoliberal government of Yanukovich (with Biden as the best friend,
and Paul Manafort as the election advisor) to install even more neoliberal and more corrupt government of Poroshenko and cut Ukraine
from Russia. The process that was probably inevitable in the long run (so called Baltic path), but that was forcefully accelerated.
Everything was taken from the Gene Sharp textbook. And Ukrainians suffered greatly as a result, with the standard of living dropping
to around $2 a day level -- essentially Central Africa level.
The fact is that the EU acted as a predator trying to get into Ukraine markets and displace Russia. While the USA neocons (Nuland
and Co) staged the coup using Ukrainian nationalists as a ram, ignoring the fact that Yanukovich would be voted out in six months
anyway (his popularity was in single digits, like popularity of Poroshenko those days ;-). The fact that Obama administration
desperately wanted to weaken Russia at the expense of Ukrainians eludes you. I would blame Nuland for the loss of Crimea and the
civil war in Donbass.
Poor Ukrainians again became the victim of geopolitical games by big powers. No that they are completely blameless, but still...
It looks like you inhabit a very cold populated exclusively with neocons planet called "Russiagate." So Professor Cohen really
lives on another planet. And probably you should drink less American exceptionalism Kool-Aid.
Buzzfeed was once notorious for
traffic-generating "listicles" , but has since become an impressive outlet for deep
investigative journalism under editor-in-chief Ben Smith. That outlet was prominently in the
news this week thanks to its "bombshell" story about President Trump and Michael Cohen: a story
that, like so many others of its kind,
blew up in its face , this time when the typically mute Robert Mueller's office took the
extremely rare step to
label its key claims "inaccurate."
But in homage to BuzzFeed's past viral glory, following are the top ten worst media failures
in two-plus-years of Trump/Russia reporting. They are listed in reverse order, as measured by
the magnitude of the embarrassment, the hysteria they generated on social media and cable news,
the level of journalistic recklessness that produced them, and the amount of damage and danger
they caused. This list was extremely difficult to compile in part because news outlets
(particularly CNN and MSNBC) often delete from the internet the video segments of their most
embarrassing moments. Even more challenging was the fact that the number of worthy nominees is
so large that highly meritorious entrees had to be excluded, but are acknowledged at the end
with (dis)honorable mention status.
Note that all of these "errors" go only in one direction: namely, exaggerating the grave
threat posed by Moscow and the Trump circle's connection to it. It's inevitable that media
outlets will make mistakes on complex stories. If that's being done in good faith, one would
expect the errors would be roughly 50/50 in terms of the agenda served by the false stories.
That is most definitely not the case here. Just as was true in 2002 and 2003, when the media
clearly wanted to exaggerate the threat posed by Saddam Hussein and thus all of its "errors"
went in that direction, virtually all of its major "errors" in this story are devoted to the
same agenda and script:
10. RT Hacked Into and Took Over C-SPAN (Fortune)
On June 12, 2017, Fortune claimed that RT had hacked into and taken over C-SPAN and that
C-SPAN "confirmed" it had been hacked. The whole story was false :
9. Russian Hackers Invaded the U.S. Electricity
Grid to Deny Vermonters Heat During the Winter (WashPost)
On December 30, 2016, the Washington Post reported that "Russian hackers penetrated the U.S.
electricity grid through a utility in Vermont," causing predictable outrage and panic, along
with threats from U.S. political leaders. But then they kept diluting the story with editor's
notes – to admit that the malware was found on a laptop not connected to the U.S.
electric grid at all – until finally acknowledging, days later, that the whole story was
false, since the malware had nothing to do with Russia or with the U.S. electric grid:
8. A New, Deranged, Anonymous Group Declares
Mainstream Political Sites on the Left and Right to be Russian Propaganda Outlets and WashPost
Touts its Report to Claim Massive Kremlin Infiltration of the Internet (WashPost)
On November 24, 2016, the Washington Post
published one of the most inflammatory, sensationalistic stories to date about Russian
infiltration into U.S. politics using social media, accusing "more than 200 websites" of being
"routine peddlers of Russian propaganda during the election season, with combined audiences of
at least 15 million Americans." It added: "stories planted or promoted by the disinformation
campaign [on Facebook] were viewed more than 213 million times."
Unfortunately for the paper, those statistics were provided by a new, anonymous group that
reached these conclusions by classifying long-time, well-known sites – from the Drudge
Report to Clinton-critical left-wing websites such as Truthout, Black Agenda Report, Truthdig,
and Naked Capitalism, as well as libertarian venues such as Antiwar.com and the Ron Paul
Institute. – as "Russian propaganda outlets," producing one of the longest Editor's Note
in memory appended to the top of the article (but
not until two weeks later , long after the story was mindlessly spread all throughout the
media ecosystem):
7. Trump Aide Anthony Scaramucci is Involved in a
Russian Hedge Fund Under Senate Investigation (CNN)
On June 22, 2017, CNN reported that Trump aide Anthony Scaramucci was involved with the
Russian Direct Investment Fund, under Senate investigation. He was not. CNN retracted the story
and forced the three reporters who published it to leave the network.
6. Russia Attacked
U.S. "Diplomats" (i.e. Spies) at the Cuban Embassy Using a Super-Sophisticated Sonic Microwave
Weapon (NBC/MSNBC/CIA)
On September 11, 2017, NBC News and MSNBC
spread all over its airwaves a claim from its notorious CIA puppet Ken Dilanian that Russia
was behind a series of dastardly attacks on U.S. personnel at the Embassy in Cuba using a sonic
or microwave weapon so sophisticated and cunning that Pentagon and CIA scientists had no idea
what to make of it.
But then teams of neurologists began calling into doubt that these personnel had suffered
any brain injuries at all – that instead they appear to have experienced collective
psychosomatic symptoms – and then biologists published findings that the "strange sounds"
the U.S. "diplomats" reported hearing were identical to those emitted by a common Caribbean
male cricket during mating season.
5. Trump Created a Secret Internet Server to
Covertly Communicate with a Russian Bank (Slate)
4. Paul Manafort Visited Julian Assange Three
Times in the Ecuadorian Embassy and Nobody Noticed (Guardian/Luke Harding)
On November 27, 2018, the Guardian
published a major "bombshell" that Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort had somehow managed
to sneak inside one of the world's most surveilled buildings, the Ecuadorian Embassy in London,
and visit Julian Assange on three different occasions. Cable and online commentators
exploded.
Seven weeks later,
no other media outlet has confirmed this ; no video or photographic evidence has emerged;
the Guardian refuses to answer any questions; its leading editors have virtually gone into
hiding; other media outlets have expressed serious doubts about its veracity; and an Ecuadorian
official who worked at the embassy has called the story a complete fake:
3. CNN Explicitly Lied About Lanny Davis Being Its
Source – For a Story Whose Substance Was Also False: Cohen Would Testify that Trump Knew
in Advance About the Trump Tower Meeting (CNN)
On July 27, 2018, CNN
published a blockbuster story : that Michael Cohen was prepared to tell Robert Mueller that
President Trump knew in advanced about the Trump Tower meeting. There were, however, two
problems with this story: first, CNN got caught blatantly lying when its reporters claimed that
"contacted by CNN, one of Cohen's attorneys, Lanny Davis, declined to comment" (in fact, Davis
was one of CNN's key sources, if not its only source, for this story), and second, numerous
other outlets retracted the story after the source, Davis, admitted it was a lie. CNN, however,
to this date has refused to do either:
2. Robert Mueller Possesses Internal Emails and
Witness Interviews Proving Trump Directed Cohen to Lie to Congress (BuzzFeed)
1. Donald Trump Jr. Was Offered Advanced Access to
the WikiLeaks Email Archive (CNN/MSNBC)
The morning of December 9, 2017, launched
one of the most humiliating spectacles in the history of the U.S. media. With a tone so
grave and bombastic that it is impossible to overstate, CNN went on the air and announced a
major exclusive: Donald Trump, Jr. was offered by email advanced access to the trove of DNC and
Podesta emails published by WikiLeaks – meaning before those emails were made public.
Within an hour, MSNBC's Ken Dilanian, using a tone somehow even more unhinged, purported to
have "independently confirmed" this mammoth, blockbuster scoop, which, they said, would have
been the smoking gun showing collusion between the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks over the hacked
emails (while the YouTube clips have been removed, you can still watch one of the amazing MSNBC
videos
here ).
There was, alas, just one small problem with this massive, blockbuster story: it was totally
and completely false. The email which Trump, Jr. received that directed him to the WikiLeaks
archive was sent after WikiLeaks published it online for the whole world to see, not before.
Rather than some super secretive operative giving Trump, Jr. advanced access, as both CNN and
MSNBC told the public for hours they had confirmed, it was instead just some totally pedestrian
message from a random member of the public suggesting Trump, Jr. review documents the whole
world was already talking about. All of the anonymous sources CNN and MSNBC cited somehow all
got the date of the email wrong.
To date, when asked how they both could have gotten such a massive story so completely wrong
in the same way, both CNN and MSNBC have adopted the posture of the CIA by maintaining complete
silence and refusing to explain how it could possibly be that all of their "multiple,
independent sources" got the date wrong on the email in the same way, to be as incriminating
– and false – as possible. Nor, needless to say, will they identify their sources
who, in concert, fed them such inflammatory and utterly false information.
Sadly, CNN and MSNBC have deleted most traces of the most humiliating videos from the
internet, including demanding that YouTube remove copies. But enough survives to document just
what a monumental, horrifying, and utterly inexcusable debacle this was. Particularly amazing
is the clip of the CNN reporter (see below) having to admit the error for the first time, as he
awkwardly struggles to pretend that it's not the massive, horrific debacle that it so obviously
is:
Dishonorable Mention:
ABC News' Brian Ross is fired for
reporting Trump told Flynn to make contact with Russians when he was still a candidate;
in fact, Trump did that after he won.
The New York Times c laimed Manafort provided
polling data to Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, a person "close to the Kremlin"; in fact, he
provided them to Ukrainians, not Russians.
Crowdstrike, the firm hired by the DNC, claimed they had evidence that Russia hacked
Ukrainian artillery apps;
they then retracted it .
Bloomberg and the WSJ reported Mueller subpoenaed Deustche Bank for Trump's financial
records; the NYT said
that never happened .
Rachel Maddow devoted 20 minutes at the start of her show to very melodramatically
claiming a highly sophisticated party tried to trick her by sending her a fake Top Secret
document modeled after the one published by the Intercept, and said it could only have come
from the U.S. Government (or the Intercept) since the person obtained the document before it
was published by us and thus must have had special access to it; in fact,
Maddow and NBC completely misread the metadata on the document ; the fake sent to Maddow
was created after we published the document, and was sent to her by a random member of the
public who took the document from the Intercept's site and doctored it to see if she'd fall
for an obvious scam. Maddow's entire timeline, on which her whole melodramatic conspiracy
theory rested, was fictitious.
The U.S. media and Democrats spent six months claiming that all "17 intelligence
agencies" agreed Russia was behind the hacks; the NYT finally
retracted that in June, 2017: "The assessment was made by four intelligence agencies --
the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Central Intelligence Agency, the
Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency. The assessment was not
approved by all 17 organizations in the American intelligence community."
AP claimed on February 2, 2018, that the Free Beacon commissioned the Steele Dossier;
they thereafter acknowledged that was false and
noted, instead: "Though the former spy, Christopher Steele, was hired by a firm that was
initially funded by the Washington Free Beacon, he did not begin work on the project until
after Democratic groups had begun funding it."
Widespread government and media claims that accused Russian agent Maria Butina offered
"sex for favors" were
totally false (and scurrilous).
After a Russian regional jet crashed on February 11, 2018, shortly after it took off from
Moscow, killing all 71 people aboard, Harvard Law Professor and frequent MSNBC contributor
Laurence Tribe
strongly implied Putin purposely caused the plane to go down in order to murder Sergei
Millian, a person vaguely linked to George Papadopoulos and Jared Kushner; in fact, Millian
was not on the plane nor, to date, has anyone claimed they had any evidence that Putin
ordered his own country's civilian passenger jet brought down.
Special mention:
As I've said many times, the U.S. media has become quite adept at expressing extreme
indignation when people criticize them; when politicians conclude that it is advantageous to
turn the U.S. media into their main adversary; and when people turn to "fake news" sites.
If, however, they were willing to devote just a small fraction of that energy to examining
their own conduct, perhaps they would develop the tools necessary to combat those problems
instead of just denouncing their critics and angrily demanding that politicians and news
consumers accord them the respect to which they believe they are entitled.
And, one last bit from the BBC report on March 8, 2018:
"...Meanwhile, a doctor who was one of the first people at the scene has described how she
found Ms Skripal slumped unconscious on a bench, vomiting and fitting. She had also lost
control of her bodily functions.
The woman, who asked not to be named, told the BBC she moved Ms Skripal into the
recovery position and opened her airway, as others tended to her father.
She said she treated her for almost 30 minutes, saying there was no sign of any chemical
agent on Ms Skripal's face or body.
The doctor said she had been worried she would be affected by the nerve agent, but added
that she "feels fine"
Doctor, nurse, Chief Nursing Officer of the Army, whatever...
"... But Abby's mum now feels the time is right for her daughter to be recognised for the "incredible" way she dealt with the scenario. Alison nominated her for the Lifesaver Award at Spire FM's Local Hero Awards, and the judges were unanimous in their decision that Abigail was a very worthy winner. ..."
"... Colonel McCourt was appointed Chief Nursing Officer on February 1 2018, just one month before the Skripal incident happened. Colonel McCourt lives in Larkhill, a garrison town some 11 miles from Salisbury. She is known to visit elsewhere. ..."
"... That is such a great article b. I have had a great wry chuckle at the folly of human hubris. Fancy setting up your own daughter for an award. Certainly looks less and less like novichok and more like novifraud with every passing day. ..."
"... Not only is the military mother Britain's most senior soldier on the virulent battlefield against ebola , she is also the last line of defence for the Army medics and other healthcare workers fighting the deadly disease ..."
"... what a stroke of luck Britain's most senior soldier on the virulent battlefield against ebola was there, arguably the most qualified person in all of Britain to attend to the Skripals. ..."
"... The story of the heroic Abigail McCourt in helping to save the Skripals must be too good for the likes of The Fraudian and other so-called "progressive" MSM outlets to resist. Strange that such a narrative was not brought up until now, coming close to the anniversary of the poisoning and the deadline for Britain's exit from the EU. ..."
"... Curious that Abigail McCourt received basic first aid training at school (in which she would have been taught CPR) yet when Spire FM hosts spoke to her, she says that her training was not needed. In almost the same sentence, she says Julia Skripal was not breathing. ..."
"... Off-Guardian on Twitter wonders if Alison McCourt had been involved in Exercise Toxic Dagger (chemical weapons training exercise) staged by The Defence Science and Technology Laboratory and the Royal Marines in February 2018: ..."
"... The main area for shoppers to park in Salisbury is just north of the Maltings (site of the alleged attack) so it's not surprising that someone shopping in Salisbury would pass the bench the Skripals were found on. What is surprising it that none of the family seems to have suffered any effects from the Novichok. ..."
"... The Skirpal case, the Maidan coup and the related MH17 downing, the various gas attacks in Syria, the most recent bombing incident also in Syria, the Mueller investigation in its entirety - the sheer incompetence shown by the US and British deep states is simply staggering, and in sharp contrast to the investigative ability of this and other sites. ..."
"... It all adds up to stasi state bullshit. They are so arrogant and cocksure of the controlled media that they can even draw attention to the provocation by seeking an award for a family member despite the prominence of the mother and her role in the power structure. Knowledge, of course, will remain limited to those who are canny enough not to believe the received propaganda wisdom of the five eyes spy state. ..."
"... So in all the police press briefings and all of the political posturing it was not deemed to be important to mention that the Skripals-on-the-park-bench were attended to by the Chief Nurse Of the British Army? ..."
"... Even though this could have gone a long, long way to explaining the biggest discrepancy in the government narrative (i.e. Novicock is way, way deadly only, err, umm, they didn't die). How odd. How very, very odd. You'd almost think that the government considered that acknowledging that fact would open up more questions than it would answer. Hard to see why..... ..."
"... Recall that it was recently established and published that the Steele Dossier was compiled to act as an Insurance Policy in the event Trump won the election. See here . I posted this news as a comment and b picked up on it too, but that aspect of the Dossier is omitted from his essay above. We can see that the Dossier--like Blair's Dodgy Dossier to sell the illegal war on Iraq--has had a massive impact on Trump's presidency, which, whether you like Trump or not, is a matter of grave concern for the institutions of governance of the USA, and IMO is very close to treason. ..."
"... Sure, the nurse revelation is curious to say the least, but I'm far more interested in the entire disinformation network built by the British along with previous and current versions operated by CIA here in USA. Think back to what Bill Casey said, "We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false," then Rove's boast: "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors...and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do." ..."
"... Add those to all the 100% evidence free accusations made against Russia, China, Venezuela, Syria, other nations and private individuals--the "universal sports doping" by Russian athletes was a massive smear proven to be 100% false--and you can understand why I call it BigLie Media. Clearly, the Skripal story's utter fantasy. But the Brits will kill their own to insure the story isn't compromised--Dr. David Kelly, Dawn Sturgess, and quite likely Sergei Skripal, and likely others from incidents in the further past. ..."
"... The Integrity Initiative was also heavily involved in promoting an anti-Russian agenda such as the Skripal affair. ..."
"... reminds me of the kuwaiti ambassador's daughter in the runup to the first gulf war. ..."
"... 'So in all the police press briefings and all of the political posturing it was not deemed to be important to mention that the Skripals-on-the-park-bench were attended to by the Chief Nurse Of the British Army?' And how embarrassing for our 'fearless' journalists and tabloid truth seekers! Let the crowd cry out 'shame'! ..."
On March 4 2018 the British/Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia
were found incapacitated on a bench in Salisbury. The British government asserts that they were affected by a chemical poison
of the so called Novichok group. The case led to a diplomatic conflict as Britain accused Russia of an attempt to kill the
Skripals. No evidence was provided by the British government to support those accusations. The Skripals have since been
vanished.
Today an intriguing new detail of the case came to light. Spire FM , a local
radio station in Salisbury,
reports of a young woman, Abigail McCourt, who was given a 'Lifesaver Award' for her
involvement in the Skripal case:
The 16 year old, from Larkhill, was the first to spot two people collapsed on a bench in
the Maltings on March 4th and didn't hesitate to help. Abigail quickly alerted her mum, a
qualified nurse, who was nearby and together they gave first aid to the victims until
paramedics arrived.
It soon became clear this was no ordinary medical incident, but the poisoning of a
former Russian spy Sergei Skripal, and his daughter Yulia, with Novichok.
...
Immediately following the incident and with the world's media focused on Salisbury, the
pair didn't want any want press attention and kept their involvement quiet.
But Abby's mum now feels the time is right for her daughter to be recognised for the
"incredible" way she dealt with the scenario. Alison nominated her for the Lifesaver Award
at Spire FM's Local Hero Awards, and the judges were unanimous in their decision that
Abigail was a very worthy winner.
Earlier reports mentioned that a 'military nurse' had attended to the Skripals. Following
the above report Elena Evdokimova checked the name of the young women's mothers and found a
curiosity:
We were right, it was Alison McCourt who was that"unknown military nurse" who,
absolutely randomly, happened to be near the bench where #Skripals collapsed . Spire FM
alleges that it was her daughter Abigail alerted her, but no one mentioned her before
...
Colonel A L McCourt OBE ARRC QHN - Assistant Head Health Strategy / Chief Nursing Officer
(Army) - Senior Health Advisor (Army) Department.
Colonel McCourt was appointed Chief Nursing Officer on February 1 2018, just one month
before the Skripal incident happened. Colonel McCourt lives in Larkhill, a garrison town some
11 miles from Salisbury. She is known to visit elsewhere.
As I read this I had two thoughts. The first one is that the Brits have lost the competence
they once had with this stuff. "Operation Mincemeat" was, according to all accounts, a marvel
in planning, execution, and getting the desired reactions from the German High Command. The
"Double-Cross System" turned the extremely risky invasion at Normandy into a success. The
recent stuff is a comedy by comparison.
excellent reporting.. still we have little written collaborative evidence.. just as in 9/11
just top dogs saying improbable things.
What seems to me important now is to develop as you have done a set of hypotheses. and to
hack at them until we hit the ones which all evidence cannot dispute. Using your summary I
rewrite in hypothesis form,
hypothesis 1: Steele's dirty dossier is not related to the Skripal case.
hypothesis 2: Steele's dossier is not the result of an integrity initiative.
hypothesis 3: Downing street personnel were not involved in integrity initiative
hypothesis 4: media reported only supportable facts.
hypothesis 5: Neither the USA or any of its agencies were involved
hypothesis 6: Neither Israel or any of its agencies were involved
hypothesis 7: Neither Saudi Arabia or any of its Arab partners were involved
hypothesis 6: Neither Republicans or Democrats in America were involved.
hypothesis 8: the FBI had no part in this.
hypothesis 9: Developing sufficient misinformation to justify attacking Nord 2
pipeline was not one of the objectives of the integrity initiative.
hypothesis 10: No private interest supported organizing a false flag op against
Russia
Too good. That is such a great article b. I have had a great wry chuckle at the folly of
human hubris. Fancy setting up your own daughter for an award. Certainly looks less and less like novichok and more like novifraud with every passing
day.
Not only is the military mother Britain's most senior soldier on the virulent
battlefield against ebola , she is also the last line of defence for the Army medics
and other healthcare workers fighting the deadly disease.
what a stroke of luck Britain's most senior soldier on the virulent battlefield against
ebola was there, arguably the most qualified person in all of Britain to attend to the
Skripals.
Coincidence? Probably like most here, I think not. But isn't this something of an own goal?
If indeed things are as we suspect, why would you put the daughter up for an award? Wouldn't
you want the can of worms this presents to remain unopened? Can they be this incompetent?
Well, looking at the Brexit process, I guess we know the answer to that last by now
rhetorical question.
The story of the heroic Abigail McCourt in helping to save the Skripals must be too good for
the likes of The Fraudian and other so-called "progressive" MSM outlets to resist. Strange
that such a narrative was not brought up until now, coming close to the anniversary of the
poisoning and the deadline for Britain's exit from the EU.
b, you are too suspicious. Nothing to see here.
Clearly way beyond a serious matter, this dastardly attack on Skripals by the Soviets, er,
the Russians, er, Putin.
In Canada our eloquent foreign Minister, in a barrage of outraged talking the talk that
was accompanied by making four Russian diplomats walk the walk home, said in words that will
surely take their high place in the history of inspired speeches, along with Churchill's
'Never have so many done so much for so few', and MLK's 'I have a nightmare':
And her words re the March 4 nerve agent attack on a close ally and partner of Canada "a
despicable, heinous and reckless act" that potentially endangered the lives of hundreds"
Strange - no military hospital in Salisbury but then there aren't military hospitals in
Britain anymore. Instead the military use civilian hospitals with a Ministry of Defence
Hospital Unit attached but none near Salisbury. The Ministry of Defence Hospital Units do not
treat operational casualties who are treated at the Royal Centre for Defence Medicine at
Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH) in Birmingham. You'd think the Chief Nursing Officer for the
British Army, Colonel McCourt would work out off the most important site for defence medicine
in the UK (QEH in Birmingham) but instead she's based at Larkhill which from memory is where
the Royal Artillery is located.
Not so strange - The area inhabited by the British Army north of Salisbury (more specifically
north of the A303 road was classified as deprived because of the lack of shopping facilities,
so most residents of this area do their shopping in Salisbury which has the best shopping in
the area. There are now a Tesco superstore and a branch of Lidl in Tidworth so perhaps it's
not so deprived anymore.
The main area for shoppers to park in Salisbury is just north of the Maltings (site of the alleged attack) so it's not surprising that someone shopping in
Salisbury would pass the bench the Skripals were found on. What is surprising it that none of
the family seems to have suffered any effects from the Novichok.
The Skirpal case, the Maidan coup and the related MH17 downing, the various gas attacks in
Syria, the most recent bombing incident also in Syria, the Mueller investigation in its
entirety - the sheer incompetence shown by the US and British deep states is simply
staggering, and in sharp contrast to the investigative ability of this and other sites.
The US is fracturing, the EU is fracturing, and therein lies the greatest danger. With the
overplayed sanctions only making the sanctioned effect work arounds to the point that the
primacy of the US dollar is threatened, with the contain China train having left the station
and recently pulling into a station purpose built on the dark side of the moon, their only
options look to be to either go nuclear or go away.
2019 looks to be a most interesting year!
exiled off mainstreet , Jan 19, 2019 6:05:32 PM |
link
It all adds up to stasi state bullshit. They are so arrogant and cocksure of the controlled
media that they can even draw attention to the provocation by seeking an award for a family
member despite the prominence of the mother and her role in the power structure. Knowledge,
of course, will remain limited to those who are canny enough not to believe the received
propaganda wisdom of the five eyes spy state.
So in all the police press briefings and all of the political posturing it was not deemed to
be important to mention that the Skripals-on-the-park-bench were attended to by the Chief
Nurse Of the British Army?
Even though this could have gone a long, long way to explaining the biggest discrepancy in
the government narrative (i.e. Novicock is way, way deadly only, err, umm, they didn't
die). How odd.
How very, very odd. You'd almost think that the government considered that acknowledging that fact would open
up more questions than it would answer. Hard to see why.....
I am beginning to wonder if Sir Humphrey Appleby and some of his colleagues are conducting a
deliberate hoax, piling impossibility upon impossibility and contradiction upon
contradiction, just to see how long it takes the unbelievably gullible British public to get
the joke and start throwing cabbages and rotten fruit. Not so funny for the poor woman who died - but then, as Sir Humphrey has often been heard
to remark, one cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs.
Recall that it was recently established and published that the Steele Dossier was compiled to
act as an Insurance Policy in the event Trump won the election.
See here . I posted this news as a comment and b picked up on it too, but that aspect of
the Dossier is omitted from his essay above. We can see that the Dossier--like Blair's Dodgy
Dossier to sell the illegal war on Iraq--has had a massive impact on Trump's presidency,
which, whether you like Trump or not, is a matter of grave concern for the institutions of
governance of the USA, and IMO is very close to treason.
Sure, the nurse revelation is curious to say the least, but I'm far more interested in the
entire disinformation network built by the British along with previous and current versions
operated by CIA here in USA. Think back to what Bill Casey said, "We'll know our
disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false,"
then Rove's boast: "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're
studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new
realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's
actors...and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
Add those to all the 100% evidence free accusations made against Russia, China, Venezuela,
Syria, other nations and private individuals--the "universal sports doping" by Russian
athletes was a massive smear proven to be 100% false--and you can understand why I call it
BigLie Media. Clearly, the Skripal story's utter fantasy. But the Brits will kill their own
to insure the story isn't compromised--Dr. David Kelly, Dawn Sturgess, and quite likely
Sergei Skripal, and likely others from incidents in the further past.
So, while it seems comical, this is all deadly serious.
The Integrity Initiative was also heavily involved in promoting an anti-Russian agenda such
as the Skripal affair.
Either Chris Donnelly of the Institute for Statecraft (IoS), (formally of the British
Army's Soviet Studies Research Centre at Sandhurst), or UK General Sir Richard Barrons
reportedly stated that "if no catastrophe happens to wake people up and demand a response,
then we need to find a way to get the core of government to realise the problem and take it
out of the political space."
great coverage b.. thank you... it's either a coincidence theory, or a conspiracy theory...
no other choices, until the uk gets down to doing an open investigation on integrity
initiative...the investigators investigating the investigators.. ain't going to happen...
similar deal in the usa now.. basically this will be when hell freezes over - a very long
time if ever.. meanwhile the skripals are persona non grata... it would be very interesting
to find out where they are kept... it looks like their is no chance for any type of normal
life for them here on out... even if the novihoax didn't kill them, the uk has done the
equivalent.. it is hard not to tie operation toxic dagger into all of this... the
coincidences are just too great..
@ petri.. thanks for the that.. how did you manage to figure that one out? does that mean
that allison mccourt is the daughter of pablo miller, or was allison from another
relationship/marriage? of course m16 and some folks know the answer to this amazing
coincidences and probably are unable to openly say..
@ Glen Brown and bevin with their correction to my comment.....thanks
I was not in my best of mind and along with misspelling his name I projected my desire for
more movement by the UK opposition in light of having the government paying folks to work
against them.....my bad idealism........
If it is true that Alison McCourt is married to Pablo Miller as Petri Kohn asserts in
comment #1 then it looks like the daughter is being groomed for big things in the UK
government.....16 years old and already an award for criminal complicity.
Petri Krohn@1 - ? Only thing I could find is a reference to her husband Hugh - a
prison officer - and her two kids, Abagail (now 16) and Cameron (now 14). That was from a
DailyMail
article (I know...) from Dec. 20, 2014. She was spending time away from them during
Christmas when she was sent to Sierra Leone for the Ebola outbreak. The article also mentions
time away from Hugh and Abagail in 2003 when she was deployed to Iraq. Couldn't find anything
about Pablo Miller being married or having kids, but many mentions of his home in Salisbury.
Nice conjecture, except that those who devised the Dossier specifically said it was to be
used as insurance in case Trump won. Please see article I linked to in my comment.
The daughter is what's know as a "cutout". You can't have the "nurse of all nurses" be the
first on the scene. But, they didn't even bother with the daughter having to call mama at
home. She was luckily "nearby", presumably lurking behind a tree.
She might have been the commanding officer of 22 Field Hospital but now she's moved
on.
From the QARANC website:
Following promotion to Lieutenant Colonel in 2011, Alison attended the Advanced Command and
Staff Course. Her initial SO1 appointment was as Chief of Staff, Headquarters 2nd Medical
Brigade in York in Aug 2012. Alison assumed Command of 22 Field Hospital in July 2013 and
deployed the Unit to Sierra Leone on Op GRITROCK in Oct 14. She was awarded an OBE for her
leadership of 22 Field during Op GRITROCK.
On promotion to Colonel in Dec 2015 she assumed an appointment in the newly established
Senior Health Advisors department and has been the lead for Assurance and now Health
Strategy in that area.
Alison assumed the appointment of Chief Nursing Officer for the Army on 1 Feb 18.
@1 petri... unless they hooked up after 2014, your theory doesn't look very likely...
further to @36 paveways comment from the daily mail dec 20 2014 article - Even though
Lieut Col McCourt is a veteran of campaigns in Iraq and the Balkans, she admits this tour of
duty has taken a toll, and that she has depended on the support of her husband Hugh, a prison
officer, to help her through it. While this is her first Christmas apart from her children,
she is accustomed to leaving them and her husband behind. In 2003, she left Abigail, then
aged just eight months, in Hugh's arms while she went to Iraq to treat British soldiers
wounded in the Gulf War. She returned there in 2008 for a second tour of duty.
Lieut Col McCourt said: 'I have a very supportive husband. On both occasions I went to
Iraq he took sabbaticals from his job to ensure that our family life was maintained. Yes, it
was hard to say goodbye so soon after having my first child but you immerse yourself in your
work, and on an operational tour everyone is missing someone. This Christmas he'll be with
the children and my mum will join them at the family home in Aldershot. Of course I miss them
all but our focus has to be saving lives here.'
Suppose you were Russian and believed that the west would not attack because of the checks
and controls that exist in western democracy. Suppose a deadly incident occurred and Russia
was blamed and an attack became more likely. Suppose that (as a Russian) you knew Russia
wasn't involved and that the evidence was very sketchy and didn't make sense. Suppose this
was was all in the public domain but instead of the incident being questioned it was just
accepted and Russia was sanctioned and other western and allied countries (despite knowing it
was nonsense) joined in.
You might as a Russian come to believe that evidence didn't matter, that the west could
manipulate their populations at will and the idea that there was some "restraint" on western
attacks would be shown to be fanciful. You might, as a Russian, become very concerned that
you might be attacked and there was a lack of restraint on the west.
The west are blaming Russia for something they didn't do but, also, showing that they know
that Russia didn't do it and, more, letting Russia know they framed them, and showing Russia
that the evidence doesn't matter. Perhaps, not UK incompetence, maybe, it's all psyops.
Mr Moon, you have excelled yourself! A brilliant article, worthy of a standing ovation!
'So in all the police press briefings and all of the political posturing it was not deemed
to be important to mention that the Skripals-on-the-park-bench were attended to by the Chief
Nurse Of the British Army?' And how embarrassing for our 'fearless' journalists and tabloid truth seekers! Let the
crowd cry out 'shame'!
John Helmer raises an important question, why does the roof of Sergei's house need to be
removed? Tongue firmly planted in cheek. The air leakage through the front door of Sergei's
house must be through the roof! How else does the fumes from novichok get from the front door
handle to the roof? Sure hope they do a proper energy efficient rebuild. Can't go wasting
that soon to be arriving at Perfidious Albion's shores horror of horrors, Russian gas. North
Sea gas wont last much longer.
All links are going to Brennan and CIA. Rosenstein was just a tool, necessary to appoint the Special Prosecutor. And launching
the prove was the meaning of "insurance" that Strock mentioned to his mistress. Both Strzok and McCabe have their liasons
(read bosses) at CIA, so in essence they were "CIA infiltration group" within the FBI. And it is also important to understand that Obama was just a CIA snowperson.
There is Stalin's NKVD chief Beria shadow over CIA and FBI now. He famously said "Show me the man and I'll find you the
crime."
Notable quotes:
"... The Daily Caller 's Chuck Ross has made a brilliant observation, noting Peter Strzok - then the FBI's deputy chief of counterintelligence, admitted to his FBI lawyer mistress, Lisa Page, that there was no merit to the investigation. ..."
"... Interestingly, another series of Strzok-Page texts refers to "coordinating investigation" after Strzok apparently met with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who both recommended Comey's firing, then authorized the special counsel probe ..."
"... As Ross notes in The Daily Caller , there were other text messages that between Strzok and Page which raise suspicion over whether the FBI was working on a "gotcha" against Trump. ..."
As FBI Ramped Up "Witch Hunt" When Trump Fired Comey, Strzok Admitted Collusion
Investigation A Joke
A Friday report in the New York Times revealing that the FBI supercharged its Trump-Russia
collusion investigation after President Trump fired FBI director James Comey appears to have
backfired - especially when one reviews internal FBI communications from the time period in
question.
The Daily Caller 's Chuck Ross has made a brilliant observation, noting Peter Strzok - then
the FBI's deputy chief of counterintelligence, admitted to his FBI lawyer mistress, Lisa Page,
that there was no merit to the investigation.
Nine days after Comey was fired and the DOJ "sought to determine whether Mr. Trump was
knowingly working for Russia," Strzok texted Page on May 18, 2017: "You and I both know the
odds are nothing. If I thought it was likely I'd be there no question. I hesitate in part
because of my gut sense and concern there's no big there there. "
It is unclear from The Times report what information was used as a predicate to open the
investigation. The article suggests that the FBI had long considered the move and that
Comey's firing and Trump's subsequent comments marked a tipping point.
...
A source close to Strzok told The Daily Caller News Foundation on Jan. 26, 2018, shortly
after the text was released, that the message reflected Strzok's concern that the FBI would
not find evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia . - Daily Caller
The Times' explanation for the FBI's rationale that Trump may have been a Russian asset
consists of Trump's call for Moscow to release Hillary Clinton's emails an election debate, and
allegations contained within the unverified Steele Dossier. The Times was also quick to note
that Trump may have "unwittingly fallen under Moscow's influence," to temper the accusation
that he was an agent of a foreign power. In short, weak sauce.
It's no wonder Strzok was hesitant to join Mueller's team.
Interestingly, another series of Strzok-Page texts refers to "coordinating investigation"
after Strzok apparently met with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who both recommended
Comey's firing, then authorized the special counsel probe.
As Ross notes in The Daily Caller , there were other text messages that between Strzok and
Page which raise suspicion over whether the FBI was working on a "gotcha" against Trump.
" And we need to open the case we've been waiting on now while Andy is acting ," Strzok
texted Page the day Comey was fired, referring to then-deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe.
Meanwhile, Page - who served as McCabe's deputy, provided some additional color on the text
messages during her July 2018 congressional testimony, suggesting that the "case we've been
waiting on" text referred to an investigation separate of the obstruction probe we already knew
about.
"Well, other than obstruction, what could it have been?" one lawmaker asked Page in her
interview, details of which were published by The Epoch Times on Friday.
" I can't answer that, sir. I'm sorry ," she replied.
"If I was able to explain in more depth why the Director firing precipitated this text, I
would," she continued while declining to say if the text message referred to an obstruction
of justice investigation or something more. - Daily Caller
That said, Page admitted that Comey's firing prompted the text exchange.
"So the firing of Jim Comey was the precipitating event as opposed to the occupant of the
Director's office?" asked one lawmaker.
"Yes, that's correct," replied Page.
Meanwhile, The Times went to great lengths to imply that the FBI was justified in their
ratcheted-up collusion investigation - failing to mention who started the probe, who led it,
and more importantly - waiting until the 9th paragraph to mention the fact that it turned up
nothing .
"No evidence has emerged publicly that Mr. Trump was secretly in contact with or took
direction from Russian government officials. An F.B.I. spokeswoman and a spokesman for the
special counsel's office both declined to comment."
VideoEng_NC
"It is unclear from The Times report what information was used as a predicate to open the investigation."
Should be pretty simple with one question. "Was it Hillary who was the responsible party to open an investigation on Trump?".
About as direct as it gets & we already know the answer.
adampeart
TDS sufferers hate Trump so bad that they have become (at 70%) pro-warmonger. Pathetic. I guess that I shouldn't be
surprised. They were fine with Black Jesus starting wars, overthrowing governments and bombing brown people for 8 years.
Teeter
McCabe initiated the investigation. Nobody likes McCabe, so he is likely to be the one guy that gets thrown under the bus.
Of course what he knows may protect him to some extent... they won't want a trial.
Duc888
Sedition? Treason?
Yippie21
7 Days in May.... except for current version we use the DOJ and FBI! Interesting times.
Voters around the world revolt against leaders who won't improve their lives.
Newly-elected Utah senator Mitt Romney kicked off 2019 with an op-ed in the Washington Post
that savaged Donald Trump's character and leadership. Romney's attack and Trump's response
Wednesday morning on Twitter are the latest salvos in a longstanding personal feud between the
two men. It's even possible that Romney is planning to challenge Trump for the Republican
nomination in 2020. We'll see.
But for now, Romney's piece is fascinating on its own terms. It's well-worth reading. It's a
window into how the people in charge, in both parties, see our country.
Romney's main complaint in the piece is that Donald Trump is a mercurial and divisive
leader. That's true, of course. But beneath the personal slights, Romney has a policy critique
of Trump. He seems genuinely angry that Trump might pull American troops out of the Syrian
civil war. Romney doesn't explain how staying in Syria would benefit America. He doesn't appear
to consider that a relevant question. More policing in the Middle East is always better. We
know that. Virtually everyone in Washington agrees.
Corporate tax cuts are also popular in Washington, and Romney is strongly on board with
those, too. His piece throws a rare compliment to Trump for cutting the corporate rate a year
ago.
That's not surprising. Romney spent the bulk of his business career at a firm called Bain
Capital. Bain Capital all but invented what is now a familiar business strategy: Take over an
existing company for a short period of time, cut costs by firing employees, run up the debt,
extract the wealth, and move on, sometimes leaving retirees without their earned pensions.
Romney became fantastically rich doing this.
Meanwhile, a remarkable number of the companies are now bankrupt or extinct. This is the
private equity model. Our ruling class sees nothing wrong with it. It's how they run the
country.
Mitt Romney refers to unwavering support for a finance-based economy and an internationalist
foreign policy as the "mainstream Republican" view. And he's right about that. For generations,
Republicans have considered it their duty to make the world safe for banking, while
simultaneously prosecuting ever more foreign wars. Modern Democrats generally support those
goals enthusiastically.
There are signs, however, that most people do not support this, and not just in America. In
countries around the world -- France, Brazil, Sweden, the Philippines, Germany, and many others
-- voters are suddenly backing candidates and ideas that would have been unimaginable just a
decade ago. These are not isolated events. What you're watching is entire populations revolting
against leaders who refuse to improve their lives.
Something like this has been in happening in our country for three years. Donald Trump rode
a surge of popular discontent all the way to the White House. Does he understand the political
revolution that he harnessed? Can he reverse the economic and cultural trends that are
destroying America? Those are open questions.
But they're less relevant than we think. At some point, Donald Trump will be gone. The rest
of us will be gone, too. The country will remain. What kind of country will be it be then? How
do we want our grandchildren to live? These are the only questions that matter.
The answer used to be obvious. The overriding goal for America is more prosperity, meaning
cheaper consumer goods. But is that still true? Does anyone still believe that cheaper iPhones,
or more Amazon deliveries of plastic garbage from China are going to make us happy? They
haven't so far. A lot of Americans are drowning in stuff. And yet drug addiction and suicide
are depopulating large parts of the country. Anyone who thinks the health of a nation can be
summed up in GDP is an idiot.
The goal for America is both simpler and more elusive than mere prosperity. It's happiness.
There are a lot of ingredients in being happy: Dignity. Purpose. Self-control. Independence.
Above all, deep relationships with other people. Those are the things that you want for your
children. They're what our leaders should want for us, and would want if they cared.
But our leaders don't care. We are ruled by mercenaries who feel no long-term obligation to
the people they rule. They're day traders. Substitute teachers. They're just passing through.
They have no skin in this game, and it shows. They can't solve our problems. They don't even
bother to understand our problems.
One of the biggest lies our leaders tell us that you can separate economics from everything
else that matters. Economics is a topic for public debate. Family and faith and culture,
meanwhile, those are personal matters. Both parties believe this.
Members of our educated upper-middle-classes are now the backbone of the Democratic Party
who usually describe themselves as fiscally responsible and socially moderate. In other words,
functionally libertarian. They don't care how you live, as long as the bills are paid and the
markets function. Somehow, they don't see a connection between people's personal lives and the
health of our economy, or for that matter, the country's ability to pay its bills. As far as
they're concerned, these are two totally separate categories.
Social conservatives, meanwhile, come to the debate from the opposite perspective, and yet
reach a strikingly similar conclusion. The real problem, you'll hear them say, is that the
American family is collapsing. Nothing can be fixed before we fix that. Yet, like the
libertarians they claim to oppose, many social conservatives also consider markets sacrosanct.
The idea that families are being crushed by market forces seems never to occur to them. They
refuse to consider it. Questioning markets feels like apostasy.
Both sides miss the obvious point: Culture and economics are inseparably intertwined.
Certain economic systems allow families to thrive. Thriving families make market economies
possible. You can't separate the two. It used to be possible to deny this. Not anymore. The
evidence is now overwhelming. How do we know? Consider the inner cities.
Thirty years ago, conservatives looked at Detroit or Newark and many other places and were
horrified by what they saw. Conventional families had all but disappeared in poor
neighborhoods. The majority of children were born out of wedlock. Single mothers were the rule.
Crime and drugs and disorder became universal.
What caused this nightmare? Liberals didn't even want to acknowledge the question. They were
benefiting from the disaster, in the form of reliable votes. Conservatives, though, had a ready
explanation for inner-city dysfunction and it made sense: big government. Decades of
badly-designed social programs had driven fathers from the home and created what conservatives
called a "culture of poverty" that trapped people in generational decline.
There was truth in this. But it wasn't the whole story. How do we know? Because virtually
the same thing has happened decades later to an entirely different population. In many ways,
rural America now looks a lot like Detroit.
This is striking because rural Americans wouldn't seem to have much in common with anyone
from the inner city. These groups have different cultures, different traditions and political
beliefs. Usually they have different skin colors. Rural people are white conservatives,
mostly.
Yet, the pathologies of modern rural America are familiar to anyone who visited downtown
Baltimore in the 1980s: Stunning out of wedlock birthrates. High male unemployment. A
terrifying drug epidemic. Two different worlds. Similar outcomes. How did this happen? You'd
think our ruling class would be interested in knowing the answer. But mostly they're not. They
don't have to be interested. It's easier to import foreign labor to take the place of
native-born Americans who are slipping behind.
But Republicans now represent rural voters. They ought to be interested. Here's a big part
of the answer: male wages declined. Manufacturing, a male-dominated industry, all but
disappeared over the course of a generation. All that remained in many places were the schools
and the hospitals, both traditional employers of women. In many places, women suddenly made
more than men.
Now, before you applaud this as a victory for feminism, consider the effects. Study after
study has shown that when men make less than women, women generally don't want to marry them.
Maybe they should want to marry them, but they don't. Over big populations, this causes a drop
in marriage, a spike in out-of-wedlock births, and all the familiar disasters that inevitably
follow -- more drug and alcohol abuse, higher incarceration rates, fewer families formed in the
next generation.
This isn't speculation. This is not propaganda from the evangelicals. It's social science.
We know it's true. Rich people know it best of all. That's why they get married before they
have kids. That model works. But increasingly, marriage is a luxury only the affluent in
America can afford.
And yet, and here's the bewildering and infuriating part, those very same affluent married
people, the ones making virtually all the decisions in our society, are doing pretty much
nothing to help the people below them get and stay married. Rich people are happy to fight
malaria in Congo. But working to raise men's wages in Dayton or Detroit? That's crazy.
This is negligence on a massive scale. Both parties ignore the crisis in marriage. Our
mindless cultural leaders act like it's still 1961, and the biggest problem American families
face is that sexism is preventing millions of housewives from becoming investment bankers or
Facebook executives.
For our ruling class, more investment banking is always the answer. They teach us it's more
virtuous to devote your life to some soulless corporation than it is to raise your own
kids.
Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook wrote an entire book about this. Sandberg explained that our
first duty is to shareholders, above our own children. No surprise there. Sandberg herself is
one of America's biggest shareholders. Propaganda like this has made her rich.
We are ruled by mercenaries who feel no long-term obligation to the people they rule.
They're day traders. Substitute teachers. They're just passing through. They have no skin in
this game, and it shows.
What's remarkable is how the rest of us responded to it. We didn't question why Sandberg was
saying this. We didn't laugh in her face at the pure absurdity of it. Our corporate media
celebrated Sandberg as the leader of a liberation movement. Her book became a bestseller: "Lean
In." As if putting a corporation first is empowerment. It is not. It is bondage. Republicans
should say so.
They should also speak out against the ugliest parts of our financial system. Not all
commerce is good. Why is it defensible to loan people money they can't possibly repay? Or
charge them interest that impoverishes them? Payday loan outlets in poor neighborhoods collect
400 percent annual interest.
We're OK with that? We shouldn't be. Libertarians tell us that's how markets work --
consenting adults making voluntary decisions about how to live their lives. OK. But it's also
disgusting. If you care about America, you ought to oppose the exploitation of Americans,
whether it's happening in the inner city or on Wall Street.
And by the way, if you really loved your fellow Americans, as our leaders should, if it
would break your heart to see them high all the time. Which they are. A huge number of our
kids, especially our boys, are smoking weed constantly. You may not realize that, because new
technology has made it odorless. But it's everywhere.
And that's not an accident. Once our leaders understood they could get rich from marijuana,
marijuana became ubiquitous. In many places, tax-hungry politicians have legalized or
decriminalized it. Former Speaker of the House John Boehner now lobbies for the marijuana
industry. His fellow Republicans seem fine with that. "Oh, but it's better for you than
alcohol," they tell us.
Maybe. Who cares? Talk about missing the point. Try having dinner with a 19-year-old who's
been smoking weed. The life is gone. Passive, flat, trapped in their own heads. Do you want
that for your kids? Of course not. Then why are our leaders pushing it on us? You know the
reason. Because they don't care about us.
When you care about people, you do your best to treat them fairly. Our leaders don't even
try. They hand out jobs and contracts and scholarships and slots at prestigious universities
based purely on how we look. There's nothing less fair than that, though our tax code comes
close.
Under our current system, an American who works for a salary pays about twice the tax rate
as someone who's living off inherited money and doesn't work at all. We tax capital at half of
what we tax labor. It's a sweet deal if you work in finance, as many of our rich people do.
In 2010, for example, Mitt Romney made about $22 million dollars in investment income. He
paid an effective federal tax rate of 14 percent. For normal upper-middle-class wage earners,
the federal tax rate is nearly 40 percent. No wonder Mitt Romney supports the status quo. But
for everyone else, it's infuriating.
Our leaders rarely mention any of this. They tell us our multi-tiered tax code is based on
the principles of the free market. Please. It's based on laws that the Congress passed, laws
that companies lobbied for in order to increase their economic advantage. It worked well for
those people. They did increase their economic advantage. But for everyone else, it came at a
big cost. Unfairness is profoundly divisive. When you favor one child over another, your kids
don't hate you. They hate each other.
That happens in countries, too. It's happening in ours, probably by design. Divided
countries are easier to rule. And nothing divides us like the perception that some people are
getting special treatment. In our country, some people definitely are getting special
treatment. Republicans should oppose that with everything they have.
What kind of country do you want to live in? A fair country. A decent country. A cohesive
country. A country whose leaders don't accelerate the forces of change purely for their own
profit and amusement. A country you might recognize when you're old.
A country that listens to young people who don't live in Brooklyn. A country where you can
make a solid living outside of the big cities. A country where Lewiston, Maine seems almost as
important as the west side of Los Angeles. A country where environmentalism means getting
outside and picking up the trash. A clean, orderly, stable country that respects itself. And
above all, a country where normal people with an average education who grew up in no place
special can get married, and have happy kids, and repeat unto the generations. A country that
actually cares about families, the building block of everything.
What will it take a get a country like that? Leaders who want it. For now, those leaders will
have to be Republicans. There's no option at this point.
But first, Republican leaders will have to acknowledge that market capitalism is not a
religion. Market capitalism is a tool, like a staple gun or a toaster. You'd have to be a fool
to worship it. Our system was created by human beings for the benefit of human beings. We do
not exist to serve markets. Just the opposite. Any economic system that weakens and destroys
families is not worth having. A system like that is the enemy of a healthy society.
Internalizing all this will not be easy for Republican leaders. They'll have to unlearn
decades of bumper sticker-talking points and corporate propaganda. They'll likely lose donors
in the process. They'll be criticized. Libertarians are sure to call any deviation from market
fundamentalism a form of socialism.
That's a lie. Socialism is a disaster. It doesn't work. It's what we should be working
desperately to avoid. But socialism is exactly what we're going to get, and very soon unless a
group of responsible people in our political system reforms the American economy in a way that
protects normal people.
If you want to put America first, you've got to put its families first.
Adapted from Tucker Carlson's monologue from "Tucker Carlson Tonight" on January 2,
2019.
"... America's "ruling class," Carlson says, are the "mercenaries" behind the failures of the middle class -- including sinking marriage rates -- and "the ugliest parts of our financial system." He went on: "Any economic system that weakens and destroys families is not worth having. A system like that is the enemy of a healthy society." ..."
"... He concluded with a demand for "a fair country. A decent country. A cohesive country. A country whose leaders don't accelerate the forces of change purely for their own profit and amusement." ..."
"... The monologue and its sweeping anti-elitism drove a wedge between conservative writers. The American Conservative's Rod Dreher wrote of Carlson's monologue, "A man or woman who can talk like that with conviction could become president. Voting for a conservative candidate like that would be the first affirmative vote I've ever cast for president. ..."
"... The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Parents Are Growing Broke ..."
"... Carlson wanted to be clear: He's just asking questions. "I'm not an economic adviser or a politician. I'm not a think tank fellow. I'm just a talk show host," he said, telling me that all he wants is to ask "the basic questions you would ask about any policy." But he wants to ask those questions about what he calls the "religious faith" of market capitalism, one he believes elites -- "mercenaries who feel no long-term obligation to the people they rule" -- have put ahead of "normal people." ..."
"... "What does [free market capitalism] get us?" he said in our call. "What kind of country do you want to live in? If you put these policies into effect, what will you have in 10 years?" ..."
"... Carlson is hardly the first right-leaning figure to make a pitch for populism, even tangentially, in the third year of Donald Trump, whose populist-lite presidential candidacy and presidency Carlson told me he views as "the smoke alarm ... telling you the building is on fire, and unless you figure out how to put the flames out, it will consume it." ..."
"... Trump borrowed some of that approach for his 2016 campaign but in office has governed as a fairly orthodox economic conservative, thus demonstrating the demand for populism on the right without really providing the supply and creating conditions for further ferment. ..."
"... Ocasio-Cortez wants a 70-80% income tax on the rich. I agree! Start with the Koch Bros. -- and also make it WEALTH tax. ..."
"... "I'm just saying as a matter of fact," he told me, "a country where a shrinking percentage of the population is taking home an ever-expanding proportion of the money is not a recipe for a stable society. It's not." ..."
"... Carlson told me he wanted to be clear: He is not a populist. But he believes some version of populism is necessary to prevent a full-scale political revolt or the onset of socialism. Using Theodore Roosevelt as an example of a president who recognized that labor needs economic power, he told me, "Unless you want something really extreme to happen, you need to take this seriously and figure out how to protect average people from these remarkably powerful forces that have been unleashed." ..."
"... But Carlson's brand of populism, and the populist sentiments sweeping the American right, aren't just focused on the current state of income inequality in America. Carlson tackled a bigger idea: that market capitalism and the "elites" whom he argues are its major drivers aren't working. The free market isn't working for families, or individuals, or kids. In his monologue, Carlson railed against libertarian economics and even payday loans, saying, "If you care about America, you ought to oppose the exploitation of Americans, whether it's happening in the inner city or on Wall Street" -- sounding very much like Sanders or Warren on the left. ..."
"... Capitalism/liberalism destroys the extended family by requiring people to move apart for work and destroying any sense of unchosen obligations one might have towards one's kin. ..."
"... Hillbilly Elegy ..."
"... Carlson told me that beyond changing our tax code, he has no major policies in mind. "I'm not even making the case for an economic system in particular," he told me. "All I'm saying is don't act like the way things are is somehow ordained by God or a function or raw nature." ..."
"All I'm saying is don't act like the way things are is somehow ordained by God."
Last Wednesday, the conservative talk show host Tucker Carlson started a fire on the right after airing a prolonged
monologue on his show that was, in essence, an indictment of American capitalism.
America's "ruling class," Carlson says, are the "mercenaries" behind the failures of the middle class -- including sinking
marriage rates -- and "the ugliest parts of our financial system." He went on: "Any economic system that weakens and destroys families
is not worth having. A system like that is the enemy of a healthy society."
He concluded with a demand for "a fair country. A decent country. A cohesive country. A country whose leaders don't accelerate
the forces of change purely for their own profit and amusement."
The monologue was stunning in itself, an incredible moment in which a Fox News host stated that for generations, "Republicans
have considered it their duty to make the world safe for banking, while simultaneously prosecuting ever more foreign wars." More
broadly, though, Carlson's position and the ensuing controversy reveals an ongoing and nearly unsolvable tension in conservative
politics about the meaning of populism, a political ideology that Trump campaigned on but Carlson argues he may not truly understand.
Moreover, in Carlson's words: "At some point, Donald Trump will be gone. The rest of us will be gone too. The country will remain.
What kind of country will be it be then?"
The monologue and its sweeping anti-elitism drove a wedge between conservative writers. The American Conservative's Rod Dreher
wrote of Carlson's monologue,
"A man or woman who can talk like that with conviction could become president. Voting for a conservative candidate like that would
be the first affirmative vote I've ever cast for president." Other conservative commentators scoffed. Ben Shapiro wrote in
National Review that Carlson's monologue sounded far more like Sens. Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren than, say, Ronald Reagan.
I spoke with Carlson by phone this week to discuss his monologue and its economic -- and cultural -- meaning. He agreed that his
monologue was reminiscent of Warren, referencing her 2003
bookThe Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Parents Are Growing Broke . "There were parts of the book that I disagree
with, of course," he told me. "But there are parts of it that are really important and true. And nobody wanted to have that conversation."
Carlson wanted to be clear: He's just asking questions. "I'm not an economic adviser or a politician. I'm not a think tank
fellow. I'm just a talk show host," he said, telling me that all he wants is to ask "the basic questions you would ask about any
policy." But he wants to ask those questions about what he calls the "religious faith" of market capitalism, one he believes elites
-- "mercenaries who feel no long-term obligation to the people they rule" -- have put ahead of "normal people."
But whether or not he likes it, Carlson is an important voice in conservative politics. His show is among the
most-watched television programs in America. And his raising questions about market capitalism and the free market matters.
"What does [free market capitalism] get us?" he said in our call. "What kind of country do you want to live in? If you put
these policies into effect, what will you have in 10 years?"
Populism on the right is gaining, again
Carlson is hardly the first right-leaning figure to make a pitch for populism, even tangentially, in the third year of Donald
Trump, whose populist-lite
presidential candidacy and presidency Carlson told me he views as "the smoke alarm ... telling you the building is on fire, and unless
you figure out how to put the flames out, it will consume it."
Populism is a rhetorical approach that separates "the people" from elites. In the
words of Cas
Mudde, a professor at the University of Georgia, it divides the country into "two homogenous and antagonistic groups: the pure people
on the one end and the corrupt elite on the other." Populist rhetoric has a long history in American politics, serving as the focal
point of numerous presidential campaigns and powering William Jennings Bryan to the Democratic nomination for president in 1896.
Trump borrowed some of that approach for his 2016 campaign but in office has governed as a fairly orthodox economic conservative,
thus demonstrating the demand for populism on the right without really providing the supply and creating conditions for further ferment.
When right-leaning pundit Ann Coulter
spoke with Breitbart Radio about Trump's Tuesday evening Oval Office address to the nation regarding border wall funding, she
said she wanted to hear him say something like, "You know, you say a lot of wild things on the campaign trail. I'm speaking to big
rallies. But I want to talk to America about a serious problem that is affecting the least among us, the working-class blue-collar
workers":
Coulter urged Trump to bring up overdose deaths from heroin in order to speak to the "working class" and to blame the fact
that working-class wages have stalled, if not fallen, in the last 20 years on immigration. She encouraged Trump to declare, "This
is a national emergency for the people who don't have lobbyists in Washington."
Ocasio-Cortez wants a 70-80% income tax on the rich. I agree! Start with the Koch Bros. -- and also make it WEALTH tax.
These sentiments have even pitted popular Fox News hosts against each other.
Sean Hannity warned his audience that New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's economic policies would mean that "the rich people
won't be buying boats that they like recreationally, they're not going to be taking expensive vacations anymore." But Carlson agreed
when I said his monologue was somewhat reminiscent of Ocasio-Cortez's
past comments on the economy , and how even a strong economy was still leaving working-class Americans behind.
"I'm just saying as a matter of fact," he told me, "a country where a shrinking percentage of the population is taking home
an ever-expanding proportion of the money is not a recipe for a stable society. It's not."
Carlson told me he wanted to be clear: He is not a populist. But he believes some version of populism is necessary to prevent
a full-scale political revolt or the onset of socialism. Using Theodore Roosevelt as an example of a president who recognized that
labor needs economic power, he told me, "Unless you want something really extreme to happen, you need to take this seriously and
figure out how to protect average people from these remarkably powerful forces that have been unleashed."
"I think populism is potentially really disruptive. What I'm saying is that populism is a symptom of something being wrong," he
told me. "Again, populism is a smoke alarm; do not ignore it."
But Carlson's brand of populism, and the populist sentiments sweeping the American right, aren't just focused on the current
state of income inequality in America. Carlson tackled a bigger idea: that market capitalism and the "elites" whom he argues are
its major drivers aren't working. The free market isn't working for families, or individuals, or kids. In his monologue, Carlson
railed against libertarian economics and even payday loans, saying, "If you care about America, you ought to oppose the exploitation
of Americans, whether it's happening in the inner city or on Wall Street" -- sounding very much like Sanders or Warren on the left.
Carlson's argument that "market capitalism is not a religion" is of course old hat on the left, but it's also been bubbling on
the right for years now. When National Review writer Kevin Williamson
wrote
a 2016 op-ed about how rural whites "failed themselves," he faced a massive backlash in the Trumpier quarters of the right. And
these sentiments are becoming increasingly potent at a time when Americans can see both a booming stock market and perhaps their
own family members struggling to get by.
Capitalism/liberalism destroys the extended family by requiring people to move apart for work and destroying any sense
of unchosen obligations one might have towards one's kin.
At the Federalist, writer Kirk Jing
wrote of Carlson's
monologue, and a
response
to it by National Review columnist David French:
Our society is less French's America, the idea, and more Frantz Fanon's "Wretched of the Earth" (involving a very different
French). The lowest are stripped of even social dignity and deemed
unworthy of life . In Real America, wages are stagnant, life expectancy is crashing, people are fleeing the workforce, families
are crumbling, and trust in the institutions on top are at all-time lows. To French, holding any leaders of those institutions
responsible for their errors is "victimhood populism" ... The Right must do better if it seeks to govern a real America that exists
outside of its fantasies.
J.D. Vance, author of
Hillbilly Elegy
, wrote that the [neoliberal] economy's victories -- and praise for those wins from conservatives -- were largely meaningless
to white working-class Americans living in Ohio and Kentucky: "Yes, they live in a country with a higher GDP than a generation ago,
and they're undoubtedly able to buy cheaper consumer goods, but to paraphrase Reagan: Are they better off than they were 20 years
ago? Many would say, unequivocally, 'no.'"
Carlson's populism holds, in his view, bipartisan possibilities. In a follow-up email, I asked him why his monologue was aimed
at Republicans when many Democrats had long espoused the same criticisms of free market economics. "Fair question," he responded.
"I hope it's not just Republicans. But any response to the country's systemic problems will have to give priority to the concerns
of American citizens over the concerns of everyone else, just as you'd protect your own kids before the neighbor's kids."
Who is "they"?
And that's the point where Carlson and a host of others on the right who have begun to challenge the conservative movement's orthodoxy
on free markets -- people ranging from occasionally mendacious bomb-throwers like Coulter to writers like
Michael Brendan Dougherty -- separate
themselves from many of those making those exact same arguments on the left.
When Carlson talks about the "normal people" he wants to save from nefarious elites, he is talking, usually, about a specific
group of "normal people" -- white working-class Americans who are the "real" victims of capitalism, or marijuana legalization, or
immigration policies.
In this telling, white working-class Americans who once relied on a manufacturing economy that doesn't look the way it did in
1955 are the unwilling pawns of elites. It's not their fault that, in Carlson's view, marriage is inaccessible to them, or that marijuana
legalization means more teens are smoking weed (
this probably isn't true ). Someone,
or something, did this to them. In Carlson's view, it's the responsibility of politicians: Our economic situation, and the plight
of the white working class, is "the product of a series of conscious decisions that the Congress made."
The criticism of Carlson's monologue has largely focused on how he deviates from the free market capitalism that conservatives
believe is the solution to poverty, not the creator of poverty. To orthodox conservatives, poverty is the result of poor decision
making or a
lack of virtue that can't be solved by government programs or an anti-elite political platform -- and they say Carlson's argument
that elites are in some way responsible for dwindling marriage rates
doesn't make sense .
But in French's response to Carlson, he goes deeper, writing that to embrace Carlson's brand of populism is to support "victimhood
populism," one that makes white working-class Americans into the victims of an undefined "they:
Carlson is advancing a form of victim-politics populism that takes a series of tectonic cultural changes -- civil rights, women's
rights, a technological revolution as significant as the industrial revolution, the mass-scale loss of religious faith, the sexual
revolution, etc. -- and turns the negative or challenging aspects of those changes into an angry tale of what they are
doing to you .
And that was my biggest question about Carlson's monologue, and the flurry of responses to it, and support for it: When other
groups (say, black Americans) have pointed to systemic inequities within the economic system that have resulted in poverty and family
dysfunction, the response from many on the right has been, shall we say,
less than
enthusiastic .
Really, it comes down to when black people have problems, it's personal responsibility, but when white people have the same
problems, the system is messed up. Funny how that works!!
Yet white working-class poverty receives, from Carlson and others, far more sympathy. And conservatives are far more likely to
identify with a criticism of "elites" when they believe those elites are responsible for the
expansion of trans
rights or creeping secularism
than the wealthy and powerful people who are investing in
private prisons or an expansion
of the
militarization of police . Carlson's network, Fox News, and Carlson himself have frequently blasted leftist critics of market
capitalism and efforts to
fight
inequality .
I asked Carlson about this, as his show is frequently centered on the turmoils caused by "
demographic change
." He said that for decades, "conservatives just wrote [black economic struggles] off as a culture of poverty," a line he
includes in his monologue .
He added that regarding black poverty, "it's pretty easy when you've got 12 percent of the population going through something
to feel like, 'Well, there must be ... there's something wrong with that culture.' Which is actually a tricky thing to say because
it's in part true, but what you're missing, what I missed, what I think a lot of people missed, was that the economic system you're
living under affects your culture."
Carlson said that growing up in Washington, DC, and spending time in rural Maine, he didn't realize until recently that the same
poverty and decay he observed in the Washington of the 1980s was also taking place in rural (and majority-white) Maine. "I was thinking,
'Wait a second ... maybe when the jobs go away the culture changes,'" he told me, "And the reason I didn't think of it before was
because I was so blinded by this libertarian economic propaganda that I couldn't get past my own assumptions about economics." (For
the record, libertarians have
critiqued Carlson's
monologue as well.)
Carlson told me that beyond changing our tax code, he has no major policies in mind. "I'm not even making the case for an
economic system in particular," he told me. "All I'm saying is don't act like the way things are is somehow ordained by God or a
function or raw nature."
And clearly, our market economy isn't driven by God or nature, as the stock market soars and unemployment dips and yet even those
on the right are noticing lengthy periods of wage stagnation and dying little towns across the country. But what to do about those
dying little towns, and which dying towns we care about and which we don't, and, most importantly, whose fault it is that those towns
are dying in the first place -- those are all questions Carlson leaves to the viewer to answer.
"... By Mark Ames, co-host of the Radio War Nerd podcast , author of Going Posta l and publisher of The eXile, and Max Blumenthal, an award-winning journalist and the author of books including best-selling Republican Gomorrah , Goliath , The Fifty One Day War , and The Management of Savagery , which will be published in March 2019 by Verso. He has also produced numerous print articles for an array of publications, many video reports and several documentaries including Killing Gaza and Je Ne Suis Pas Charlie . Originally published at the Greyzone Project ..."
"... The Integrity Initiative has mobilized an international disinformation campaign across Europe. Now, with government and right-wing foundation money, this massive "political smear unit" is infiltrating the US. ..."
The Integrity Initiative has mobilized an international disinformation campaign across Europe. Now, with government and right-wing
foundation money, this massive "political smear unit" is infiltrating the US.
A bombshell
domestic spy scandal has been unfolding in Britain, after hacked internal communications exposed a covert UK state military-intelligence
psychological warfare operation targeting its own citizens and political figures in allied NATO countries under the cover of fighting
"Russian disinformation."
The leaked documents revealed a secret network of spies, prominent journalists and think-tanks colluding under the umbrella of
a group called "Integrity Initiative" to shape domestic opinion -- and to smear political opponents of the right-wing Tory government,
including the leader of the opposition Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn.
Until now, this Integrity Initiative domestic spy scandal has been ignored in the American media, perhaps because it has mostly
involved British names. But it is clear that the influence operation has already been activated in the US. Hacked documents reveal
that the Integrity Initiative is cultivating powerful allies inside the State Department, top DC think tanks, the FBI and the DHS,
where it has gained access to
Katharine Gorka and her
husband, the
fascist-linked cable news pundit
Sebastian Gorka .
The Integrity Initiative has spelled out plans to expand its network across the US, meddling in American politics and recruiting
"a new generation of Russia watchers" behind the false guise of a non-partisan charity. Moreover, the group has hired one of the
most notorious American "perception management" specialists, John Rendon, to train its clusters of pundits and cultivate relationships
with the media.
Back in the UK, Member of Parliament Chris Williamson has clamored for an investigation into the Integrity Initiative's abuse
of public money.
In a
recent editorial , Williamson drew a direct parallel between the group's collaboration with journalists and surreptitious payments
the CIA made to reporters during the Cold War.
"These tactics resemble those deployed by the CIA in Operation Mockingbird that was launched at the height of the cold war in
the early 1950s. Its aims included using the mainstream news media as a propaganda tool," Williamson wrote.
"They manipulated the news agenda by recruiting leading journalists to write stories with the express purpose of influencing public
opinion in a particular way," the Labour parliamentarian continued. "Now it seems the British Establishment have dusted off the CIA's
old playbook and is intent on giving it another outing on this side of the Atlantic."
Unmasking a British Military-Intelligence Smear Machine
The existence of the Integrity Initiative was virtually unknown until this November, when the email servers of a previously obscure
British think tank called the Institute for Statecraft were hacked, prompting allegations of Russian intrusion. When the group's
internal documents appeared at a website hosted by Anonymous Europe, the public learned of a covert propaganda network seed-funded
to the tune of over $2 million dollars by the Tory-controlled UK Foreign Office, and run largely by military-intelligence officers.
Through a series of cash inducements, off the record briefings and all-day conferences, the Integrity Initiative has sought to
organize journalists across the West into an international echo chamber hyping up the supposed threat of Russian disinformation --
and to defame politicians and journalists critical of this new Cold War campaign.
A bid for
funding submitted by the Integrity Initiative in 2017 to the British Ministry of Defense promised to deliver a "tougher stance
on Russia" by arranging for "more information published in the media on the threat of Russian active measures."
The Integrity Initiative has also worked through its fronts in the media to smear political figures perceived as a threat to its
militaristic agenda. Its targets have included a Spanish Department of Homeland Security appointee, Pedro Banos, whose nomination
was scuttled thanks a media blitz it secretly orchestrated; Jeremy Corbyn, whom the outfit and its
media cutouts
painted as a useful idiot of Russia; and a Scottish member of parliament, Neil Findlay, whom one of its closest media allies
accused of adopting "Kremlin messaging" for daring to protest the official visit of the far-right Ukrainian politician Andriy
Parubiy -- the founder of two neo-Nazi parties and author of a white nationalist memoir,
"View From The Right."
These smear campaigns and many more surreptitiously orchestrated by the Integrity Initiative offer a disturbing preview of the
reactionary politics it plans to inject into an already toxic American political environment.
Lessons from "The Man Who Sold the War"
A newly released Integrity Initiative document reveals that the outfit plans an aggressive expansion across the US.
The Integrity Initiative claims to have already established a "simple office" in Washington DC, though it does not say where.
It also boasts of partnerships with top DC think tanks like the Atlantic Council, the Center for European Policy Analysis, CNA, and
close relationships with US officials.
A major hub of Integrity Initiative influence is the State Department's Global Engagement Center, a
de facto US government propaganda operation that was established by President Barack Obama to battle online ISIS recruitment,
but which was rapidly repurposed to counter Russian disinformation following the election of Trump.
He is John Rendon, best known as "The Man Who Sold
The War" -- several wars, in fact, but most notoriously the Iraq invasion. Rendon was the self-described "information warrior"
who planted fake news in the major US-UK media about non-existent WMD threats. With deep ties to the CIA and other military-intelligence
agencies, his PR firm was paid $100 million to organize and sell Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress. In 2002, the New York Times
exposed a Pentagon program using Rendon to plant "disinformation" -- including "false stories" and "the blackest of black PR"
-- in media outlets around the world, in order to shape public opinion and sell the Iraq invasion.
John Rendon (left) with Maj. Gen. Michael Snodgrass, US Africa Command Chief of Staff (photo by US Africom Public Affairs)
Journalist James Bamford outlined a catalogue
of disinformation feats Rendon performed for the Pentagon, such as identifying "the biases of specific journalists and potentially
obtain an understanding of their allegiances, including the possibility of specific relationships and sponsorships." Bamford also
found proposals and programs Rendon was involved in that aimed to "'coerce' foreign journalists and plant false information overseas
[and] find ways to 'punish' those who convey the 'wrong message.'"
These tactics seem particularly relevant to his work with the Integrity Initiative, especially considering the internal documents
that reveal further Rendon-style plans to produce reports and studies to be
"fed anonymously into local media." (Among
the outlets listed as friendly hosts in Integrity Initiative internal memos are Buzzfeed and El Pais, the center-left Spanish daily.)
Keeping Up with the Gorkas
Internal documents also refer to interactions between Integrity Initiative Director Chris Donnelly and top Trump officials like
Katharine Gorka , a vehemently anti-Muslim Department of Homeland Security official, as well as her husband, Sebastian, who earned
right-wing fame during his brief tenure in Trump's White House.
The latter Gorka is an
open supporter of the Hungarian Vitezi Rend, a proto-fascist order that collaborated with Nazi Germany during its occupation
of Hungary. Following Trump's election victory in 2016, Gorka appeared for televised interviews in a black Vitezi Rend uniform.
Sebastian Gorka, in Vitezi Rend garb, with his wife, Katharine, on Election Night
Gorka was among the first figures listed on an itinerary for Donnelly to Washington this September 18 to 22. The itinerary indicates
that the two had breakfast before Donnelly delivered a presentation on "Mapping Russian Influence Activities" at the federally funded
military research center, CNA .
According to the itinerary, Donnelly was granted access to Pentagon officials like
Mara Karlin
, an up-and-coming neoconservative cadre
, and John McCain Institute executive director
Kurt Volker
, another neoconservative operative who also serves as the US Special Representative for Ukraine. Numerous meetings with staffers
inside the State Department's Office of Global Engagement were also detailed.
A Foreign Agent in the State Department?
Of all the State Department officials named in Integrity Initiative documents, the one who appeared most frequently was Todd Leventhal.
Leventhal has been a staffer at the State Department's Global Engagement Center, boasting of "20 years of countering disinformation,
misinformation, conspiracy theories, and urban legends." In an April 2018 Integrity Initiative memo, he is listed as a current team
member:
Funded to the tune of $160 million this year to beat back Russian disinformation with "counter-propaganda," the State Department's
Global Engagement Center
has refused to deny targeting American citizens with information warfare of its own. "My old job at the State Department was
as chief propagandist," confessed former
Global Engagement Center Director Richard Stengel. "I'm not against propaganda. Every country does it and they have to do it to their
own population and I don't necessarily think it's that awful."
Like so many of the media and political figures involved in the Integrity Initiative's international network, the Global Engagement
Center's Leventhal has a penchant for deploying smear tactics against prominent voices that defy the foreign policy consensus. Leventhal
appeared in an outtake of a recent NBC documentary on Russian
disinformation smugly explaining how he would take down a 15-year-old book critical of American imperialism in the developing world.
Rather than challenge the book's substance and allegations, Leventhal boasted how he would marshall his resources to wage an ad hominem
smear campaign to destroy the author's reputation. His strategic vision was clear: when confronting a critic, ignore the message
and destroy the messenger.
Integrity Initiative documents reveal that Leventhal has been paid $76,608 dollars (60,000 British pounds) for a 50% contract.
While those same documents claim he has retired from the State Department, Leventhal's own
Linkedin page lists him as a current "Senior Disinformation
Advisor" to the State Department. If that were true, it would mean that the State Department was employing a de facto foreign agent.
As a cut-out of the British Foreign Office and Defense Ministry, the Integrity Initiative's work with current and former US officials
and members of the media raises certain legal questions. For one, there is no indication that the group has registered under the
Justice Department's Foreign Agent Registration Act, as most foreign agents of influence are required to do.
Grants from the Neocons' Favorite Foundation
An Integrity Initiative memo states that the right-wing Smith Richardson Foundation has also committed to ponying up funding for
its US network as soon as the group receives 501 c-3 non-profit status. The foundation has already provided it with about $56,000
for covert propaganda activities across Europe.
The Smith Richardson Foundation has old ties to the US intelligence community and controversial cold war influence operations.
According to reporter
Russ Bellant , the foundation was secretly bankrolling radical right-wing "indoctrination campaigns for the American public on
cold war and foreign policy issues" -- programs that got the attention of Senator William Fulbright, who warned then-President Kennedy
of their dangers. At one of these indoctrination seminars, a Smith Richardson Foundation director "told attendees that 'it is within
the capacity of the people in this room to literally turn the State of Georgia into a civil war college,' in order to overcome their
opponents."
Smith Richardson has funded a who's who of the neoconservative movement, from hyper-militaristic think tanks like the American
Enterprise Institute and the Institute for the Study of War. "To say the [Smith Richardson] foundation was involved at every level
in the lobbying for and crafting of the so-called global war on terror after 9/11 would be an understatement,"
wrote journalist
Kelley Vlahos.
Besides Smith Richardson, the Integrity Initiative has stated its intention to apply for grants from the State Department "to
expand the Integrity Initiative activities both within and outside of the USA." This is yet another indicator that the US government
is paying for propaganda targeting its own citizens.
The "Main Event" in Seattle
An Integrity Initiative internal
document argues that because
"DC is well served by existing US institutions, such as those with which the Institute [for Statecraft] already collaborates," the
organization should "concentrate on extending the work of the Integrity Initiative into major cities and key State capitals [sic]
across the USA."
This December 10, the Integrity Initiative organized what it called its "main event" in the US. It was a conference on disinformation
held in Seattle, Washington
under the auspices
of a data firm called Adventium Labs. Together with the Technical Leadership Institute at the University of Minnesota, the Integrity
Initiative listed Adventium Labs as one of its "first partners outside DC."
Adventium is Minneapolis-based research and development firm that has reaped contracts from the US military, including a
recent $5.4 million cyber-security grant from the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA.
Inside a modest-sized hotel conference room, the Adventium/Integrity event
began with a speech by the Integrity Initiative's Simon Bracey-Lane. Two
years prior, Bracey-Lane appeared on the American political scene as a field worker for Bernie Sanders' 2016 presidential primary
run, earning media write-ups as the
"Brit for Bernie." Now, the young operator was back in the US as the advance man for a military-intelligence cut-out that specialized
in smearing left-wing political figures like Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader widely regarded as the British version of Sanders.
Bracey-Lane opened his address by explaining that Integrity Initiative director Chris Donnelly had been unable to appear at the
event, possibly because he was bogged down in the scandal back home. He proceeded to read remarks prepared by Donnelly that offered
a window into the frighteningly militaristic mindset the Integrity Initiative aims to impose on the public through their media and
political allies.
According to Donnelly's comments, the West was no longer in a "peace time, rules based environment." From the halls of government
to corporate boardrooms to even the UK's National Health System, "the conclusion is that we have to look for people who suit a wartime
environment rather than peacetime."
During Q&A, Bracey-Lane remarked that "we have to change the definition of war to encompass everything that war now encompasses,"
referring vaguely to various forms of "hybrid warfare."
"There is a great deal to be done in communicating that to young people," he continued. "When we mean being at war we don't mean
sending our boys off to fight. It's right here in our homes."
The emphasis on restructuring society along martial lines mirrored the disturbing thinking also on display in
notes of a private meeting
between Donnelly and Gen. Richard Barrons in 2016. During that chat, the two officers decided that the British military should
be removed from democratic supervision and be able to operate as "an independent body outside politics."
While Bracey-Lane's presentation perfectly captured the military mindset of the Integrity Initiative, the speakers that followed
him offered a diverse array of perspectives on the concept of disinformation, some more nuanced than others. But one talk stood out
from the rest -- not because of its quality, but because of its complete lack thereof.
Reanimating the "Red-Brown" Grifter
Alexander Reid Ross (left) and Emmi Bevensee at the Integrity Initiative's "main event" in Seattle
The presentation was delivered by Alexander Reid Ross, a half-baked political researcher who peddles computer-generated spiderweb
relationship charts to prove the existence of a vast hidden network of "red-brown" alliances and "syncretic media" conspiracies controlled
by puppeteers in Moscow.
Ross is a lecturer on geography at Portland State University with no scholarly or journalistic credentials on Russia. His students
have given him dismal marks at Rate My
Professors, complaining about his "terrible monotone lectures" and his penchant for "insert[ing] his own ideologies into our class."
But with a book, "Against the Fascist Creep," distributed by the well-known anarchist publishing house, AK Press, the middling academic
has tried to make his name as a maverick analyst.
Before the Integrity Initiative was exposed as a military-intelligence front operation, Ross was among a small coterie of pundits
and self-styled disinformation experts that followed the
group's Twitter account. The Integrity Initiative even retweeted his smear of War Nerd podcast co-host John Dolan.
In a series of articles for the Southern Poverty Law Center last year, Ross attempted to bring his warmed-over Cold War theories
to the broader public. He wound up trashing everyone from the co-author of this piece, Max Blumenthal, to Nation magazine publisher
Katrina Vanden Heuvel to Harvard University professor of international relations Stephen Walt as hidden shadow-fascists secretly
controlled by the Kremlin.
The articles ultimately
generated an embarrassing scandal and a series of public
retractions by the editor-in-chief of the Southern Poverty Law Center, Richard Cohen. And then, like some Dr. Frankenstein for
discredited and buried journalism careers, the British Ministry of Defense-backed Integrity Initiative moved in to reanimate Ross
as a sought-after public intellectual.
Before the Integrity Initiative-organized crowd, Ross offered a rambling recitation of his theory of a syncretic fascist alliance
puppeteered by Russians: "The alt right takes from both this 'red-brown,' it's called, or like left-right syncretic highly international
national of nationalisms, and from the United States' own paleoconservative movement, and it's sort of percolated down through college
organizing, um, and anti-interventionism meets anti-imperialism. Right?"
In a strange twist, Ross appeared on stage at the Integrity Initiative's Seattle event alongside
Emmi Bevensee , a contributor to the left-libertarian
Center for a Stateless Society (C4SS) think tank, whose tagline, "a left market anarchist think-tank" expresses its core aim of uniting
far-left anarchists with free-market right-libertarians.
Bevensee , a PhD candidate at the University of Arizona
and self-described "Borderlands anarcho into tech and crypto," concluded her presentation by asserting a linkage between the alternative
news site, Zero Hedge, and the "physical militarized presence in the borderlands" of anti-immigrant vigilantes. Like Bevensee, Ross
has written for C4SS in the past.
The irony of contributors to an anarchist group called the "Center for a Stateless Society" auditioning before The State – the
most jackbooted element of it, in fact – for more opportunities to attack anti-war politicians and journalists, can hardly be overstated.
But closer examination of the history of C4SS veers from irony into something much darker and more unsettling.
Pedophile Co-Founder, White Nationalist Associates
C4SS was co-founded in 2006 by a confessed
child rapist and libertarian activist, Brad Spangler, who set the group up to promote "Market anarchism" to
"replace Marxism on the
left."
When Spangler's child rape confessions emerged in 2015, the Center for Stateless Society founder was
finally drummed out by his colleagues.
There's more: Spangler's understudy and
deputy in the C4SS, Kevin
Carson -- currently listed as the group's "Karl Hess Chair in Social Theory"
-- turned out to be a longtime friend and defender
of white nationalist Keith Preston. Preston's name is prominently plastered on the back of Kevin Carson's book, hailing the C4SS
man as "the Proudhon of our
time" -- a loaded compliment, given Proudhon's unhinged
anti-Semitism . Carson
only disowned Preston in 2009,
shortly before Preston helped white nationalist leader Richard Spencer launch his alt-right webzine, Alternative Right.
The C4SS group currently participates in the annual Koch-backed International
Students For Liberty conference in Washington DC,
LibertyCon, a who's
who of libertarian think-tank hacks and Republican Party semi-celebrities like Steve Forbes, FCC chairman Ajit Pai, and Alan Dershowitz.
In 2013, C4SS's Kevin Carson tweeted out his dream fantasy that four Jewish leftists -- Mark Ames, Yasha Levine, Corey Robin,
and Mark Potok -- would die in a plane crash while struggling over a single parachute. Potok was an executive editor at the Southern
Poverty Law Center, which last year retracted every one of the crank articles that Alexander Reid Ross published with them and
formally apologized for having run them.
For some reason, the super-sleuth Ross conveniently failed to investigate the libertarian group, C4SS, that he has chosen to partner
with and publish in. That ability to shamelessly smear and denounce leftists over the most crudely manufactured links to the far-right
-- while cozying up to groups as sleazy as C4SS and authoritarian as the Integrity Initiative -- is the sort of adaptive trait that
MI6 spies and the Rendon Group would find useful in a covert domestic influence operation.
Ross did not respond to our request for comment on his involvement with the Integrity Initiative and C4SS.
Disinformation for Democracy
As it spans out across the US, the Integrity Initiative has
stated
its desire to "build a younger generation of Russia watchers." Toward this goal, it is supplementing its coterie of elite journalists,
think tank hacks, spooks and State Department info-warriors with certifiable cranks like Ross.
Less than 24 hours after Ross's appearance at the Integrity Initiative event in Seattle, he
sent a menacing email to the co-author
of this article, Ames, announcing his intention to recycle an old and discredited smear against him and publish it in the Daily Beast
-- a publication that appears to enjoy a
special relationship
with Integrity Initiative personnel.
Despite the threat of investigation in the UK, the Integrity Initiative's "network of networks" appears to be escalating its covert,
government-funded influence operation, trashing the political left and assailing anyone that gets in its way -- all in the name of
fighting foreign disinformation.
"We have to win this one," Integrity Initiative founder Col. Chris Donnelly
said , "because if we don't, democracy will be undermined."
making up lies to get paid. james angleton was paranoid (not that it seemed to make him more effective in counterintelligence)–these
people are just con artists, paid to be con artists.
i'm just waiting for "we have to undermine democracy in order to save it".
Agreed. Not only are they paid to make things up, but they have an ingenious scheme for paying themselves from narcotics and
arms dealing.
The most amazing feat of confidence artistry (apart from maybe the TARP bailout (c.f.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troubled_Asset_Relief_Program
) is their remarkable ability to convince the population they are needed and working on our behalf instead of being in jail
where they belong.
I submitted a long comment on this about an hour ago, which seems to have been eaten by the system. I won't repost it now,
but I'll do so later if it doesn't surface.
This is something that has repeatedly happened to me too recently – it often takes 2 or more hours for most of my recent posting
to surface on the site. It rarely disappears altogether, so I would assume your post will eventually arrive.
Same here on the delays. Keep a copy.
But anyway, very glad you posted this piece. Whatever we make of Patreon, it's one way to support Mark Ames' work.
Sir Alan Duncan, responding on behalf of the Government to Emily Thornberry's urgent question (Dec 12) on recent allegations
that the Foreign Office funded a company which carried out a smear campaign against the official Opposition.
What a frightful fellow that Alan Duncan is eh? Talks like a Mafia lawyer and he's supposed to be a national leader. He reminds
that other MP, the POS who interrogated David Kelly on TV, they both use the same style. Is it a qualification for legislator?
Just a minor note to start off. That image of "Sebastian Gorka, in Vitezi Rend garb". I think that Vitezi Rend actually refers
to the medal he wears on the left. The jacket itself more resembles the patrol jacket that British officers wore in the 19th century.
Moving on! Notice how the same players keep on coming up again and again in all these stories of skulduggery? John Rendon, the
Atlantic Council, Ajit Pai and Alan Dershowitz – the same scum-bags with a few new wannabe players. As an example.
The penchant that Brad Spangler, C4SS co-founder, has for under-age girls is disgusting of course but you have to put it into
the context of the people that you are talking about. If Spengler was more rich or more powerful, you might see his name on a
manifest for the "Lolita Express" but his activities would not be splashed about in an article like this one. That sort of activity
is given a level of protection if you are in the right group. And it is a good thing that that British General Richard Barrons
is retired as his comments are deserving of being cashiered.
Funny how a group that claims to be about protecting democracy wants to push it aside and install propaganda on a "1984" level
in the pursuit of their aims. I cannot decide if their target of Russia is a means or an end. If it is a means, that means using
the boogy-man of Russia to radically restructure western society to their tastes. If it is an end, well, it is true that Russia
has about $75 trillion in resources, mostly in Siberia and the east, so if it was broken up eventually, that would be a bonanza
of wealth appropriation.
I was thinking about the activities of this group and how they go about their activities, especially the smearing of anybody that
talks truth to power. I wonder if anybody here made the connection with this story and the PropOrNot website that came out of
nowhere about two years ago and that had the stamp of approval of the Washington Post. I would not be surprised if it turns out
to be that PropOrNot was a trial balloon in the United States for the Integrity Initiative to establish what it was capable of.
Just a thought.
He looks like an extra from Star Wars – one of those nazi guys working the bridge of the Death Star. The "look and feel" of
a lot of pre-war fascism strikes us as silly in retrospect, though it really wasn't at the time.
That tailored black jacket Sebastian wears looks like something Winston Churchill would have changed out of before that last
cavalry charge at Omdurman. It seems intentionally designed to mimic 19th century great power imperial army officer garb. Nostalgia
for the good times, apparently. Goes with his fascist priorities.
Let us not get carried away with the exuberance of discovering skulduggery among fascist elements of the media and politics.
This does not mean that the conspiracy means Russia is thereby a Goodie Twoshoes. It also does not mean that Russia is any less
a pain in the ass than it has heretorfore be characterized.
It does mean that there is less reason (any?) than ever to put much faith in FoxNews (already a mere propaganda machine) or
other orgs. I am uncomfortable hearing CNA is caught up in this as they are a pseudo government thinktank with some Pentagon influence.
If true, the story should be used to clear out some journalists and analyst riffraff. However, this story is surely not going
to restore, much less create, any integrity among the Beltway Punditry.
The article and related matters may also shed more light on the abrupt resignation of
Robert Hannigan from the leadership of GCHQ in January 2017 a few days after Trump's inauguration. Given previous revelations
about GCHQ and NSA spying on each other's citizens, what else is next in the UK and in the US and elsewhere?
After reading about that Carson character and others I am ready for a shower to try to wash off the disgust.
Yves Smith: Thanks for this. I am wondering about two stories that have been flapping around here for a few days: That odd
New Knowledge company that produced the report about Russian influence on the elections as well as the story about the case before
the Supreme Court of the US in which a company is invoking claims of sovereign immunity.
I have a feeling that New Knowledge definitely fits into the framework outlined by Ames above. A contractor that appears out
of nowhere with a "distinguished" board of concerned semi-liberals (at the trough)?
But what do I know? Some guy named Volodya showed up at my house and bought my vote in 2016 for two bottles of pickled mushrooms
Perfideus Albion is not just a neat saying, but a truth that the Irish, French and
Germans (etc.) have known forever, the people don't deserve it, but the
jumped up Tories do in spades.
Thank you for highlighting this article! It names names and connects some dots, including some connections reaching into the
U.S. It also describes propaganda mechanisms that have been around forever but have become pervasive today. A few protruding tips
of a massive iceberg, in my view. I'm sure *this* "bombshell" story will get the massive coverage it deserves in the MSM -- not!
That was interesting. Well argued all the way through I thought, but they could take a closer look at the unwinding of Yugoslavia;
what Serbia and Syria have in common is having been targeted by outside state powers for dissolution, responses did vary.
Thank you diptherio for posting the C4SS response. Such responses are helpful in evaluating issues like this, and we should
always be open to the other side when they take the time to reply. However, I can't agree that the response was "well argued."
The author does make some valid points, but mainly she resorts to ad hominem attacks on Ames (based on some juvenile antics at
eXile that are often used to smear him), or on both authors because they may have agreed with "Assadists" like Ambassador Peter
Ford or "9/11 Truthers" like Piers Robinson, whose claims about Syria or the White Helmets are, of course, Kremlin propaganda.
Which brings up why Blumenthal would have changed his position on Syria; it was not because of his gradual understanding of what
was really happening there. Rather, while he had once grasp the truth of the "revolution," he made the mistake of going to a Kremlin
gala and the Rooskies (and RT) got to him. Now he is just another propagandist. Nowhere that I can see does the author discuss
the major claims made in Ames and Blumenthal's article, or the evidence cited (except to say that if it was in RT or Sputnik,
we can ignore it anyway as propaganda). Nor does she address the actual defamation made by Alexander Ross-Reid through the SPLC
that pissed off Blumenthal in the first place. There are other problems (don't get me started on the "red-brown" smear), but that's
enough.
Having said all that, I do think that in their criticism of C4SS, Ames and Blumenthal perhaps did some unnecessary punching
down. They could have made clearer the distinction between organizations like the Integrity Initiative, that are pretty clearly
intelligence operatives or cut-outs, versus groups like C4SS that function more like "useful idiots" because of their ideological
position (e.g. equating U.S. and Russian imperialism in this case in their "anarchist" appeal). The latter are in no way as evil
as the former, in my mind.
You are clearly much more engaged with the related debates than I. I read the piece as a response to the punching down you
mention in your last paragraph and felt like I got a respectable read on someone still developing their arguments. I'm not informed
enough to argue with much of it, but having read Diana Johnstone's "Fools Crusade", the Syria/Serbia bit stuck in my craw.
I had thought about commenting on the ad hominems directed at Ames, but didn't want to get into the whole identity argument
embedded in much of the language of the post. While I disagree with many of her positions and attitudes on the state actions she
criticizes without, in my opinion, adequate grounding, I judged it a mostly good faith effort trying to find solid footing in
a world increasingly thick with distorted narratives.
It's hard to argue now, from anywhere with out power, without being someone's "useful idiot": trust has decayed to the point
where language impedes communication in the political sphere.
It's funny you should mention Johnstone's book. I normally would not use the derogatory term "useful idiot" for the very reason
you imply; most such people are acting in good faith. I admit that her comments on Syria irritated me. But the reason I sometimes
overreact to that sort of narrative is because of my own experiences as a useful idiot, starting with Yugoslavia. I fell for the
liberal "humanitarian" argument hook, line, and sinker in the 1990s, even though I considered myself a knowledgeable progressive
at the time. It wouldn't be the last time I was duped, but I'd like to think I'm a little wiser today.
I appreciate your comment. We definitely need to distinguish empire propagandists from the beliefs of people honestly trying
to find their way.
I thought the later part of Ames' piece was unnecessary. It's kind of the same sort of guilt-by-attending-same-conference thing
that I find annoying about the Russophobes.
Keep focused on government malfeasance, not basement brown-shirts.
Oh well, there would be a lot to argue here. In one side it is nice to see that the "Initiative" is being exposed although
it doesn't appear yet to trigger any significant response from supposedly democratic institutions like, let's say the english
parliament (at ransom by brexit).
Just to demonstrate how this article is well focused and pointed I wanted to comment on this bit:
(Among the outlets listed as friendly hosts in Integrity Initiative internal memos are Buzzfeed and El Pais, the center-left
Spanish daily .)
YES! iIt is so true that the former "center-left" –if you wish– daily that years ago was a must read but has been degraded
to levels that I wouldn't have imagined, in a case that makes the Guardian as the "guardian of reporting-as-it should-be". One
has to bear in mind that the current most important shareholder of Grupo Prisa (owner of El Pais) is an english hedge fund Amber
Capital whose CEO,
Joseph
Oughorlian is chairman at Grupo Prisa and probably responsible for the Russia!Russia!Russia! campaign observed in this medium
that surprised me so much. You don't find nothing similar in Spain even in rigth and rigth of the rigth news outlets.
I believe this UK-based shareholder is clearly associated with the peculiar Russia!Russia!Russia! stance of the supposedly
centre-left daily.
For those of us from way back way back, these kooks relate to offshoots of the Watergate scandal, the original one, where people
working on those burglaries of psychiatrist's offices and Democratic headquarters got their start organizing small gangs of crooks
to infiltrate what was then a porous but trustable system of government – on they went to propose surveillance and collection
of data that was at first publicly laughed about but on they went. On they went. Technology with all its pluses has these minuses
we at first were able to counter (Church hearings) but the rats have scurried into all the back alleys and secretive pathways
that need a thorough cleanup. It can be done, but it needs to be done periodically. Hopefully this is finally the year when that
will happen.
Thank you, Yves. I believe these folk don't end up in a good place, but meanwhile they are wreaking havoc. The place to start,
after the brooms and mops, is to get money OUT of politics and restore a verifiable voting system that happens methodically and
is trustworthy. The citizenry will be behind this. We the people don't care how long it takes to vote or to find out who won.
We don't! Haste makes waste in more ways than we know.
Let's do this. And please, judges, do your duty or go to jail yourselves.
It's obvious that neither Ames or Blumenthal read the actual documents they're quoting from. Which is a shame considering the
relevant one involving the CIA's Operation Mockingbird comparison was only seven pages long. The CIA were merely imitating British
intelligence during the war and it is clearly stated as such when one of the replies involving General Sir Richard Barrons states
that they've done this before during the 1930s. The US didn't possess a foreign intelligence agency at the time and I'd fervently
argue that we still don't to this day.
but I've already commented about British Security Coordination in the aftermath of PropOrNot though and I'm reluctant to beat
a dead horse.
Ah, the smell (or should we say stench) of domestic propaganda in the morning, ironically by some of the same individuals who
brought us Iraq WMDs. While First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and other civil rights must be protected, it seems to
me that a careful balance can be drawn under new legislation that insulates us from such government-sponsored propaganda. We should
be able to rely on our government's representations. Instead, as with a former president who openly acknowledged, "My job is to
catapult the propaganda," the reverse, together with a related loss of trust, unfortunately seems to be increasingly the case.
Stop lying! What part of "of the People, by the People, for the People," is difficult to understand?
"... Look at Russiagate. An excellent recent article by Ray McGovern for Consortium News titled "A Look Back at Clapper's Jan. 2017 'Assessment' on Russia-gate" reminds us on the two-year anniversary of the infamous ODNI assessment that the entire establishment Russia narrative is built upon nothing but the say-so of a couple dozen intelligence analysts hand-picked and guided by a man who helped deceive the world into Iraq, a man who is so virulently Russophobic that he's said on more than one occasion that Russians are genetically predisposed to subversive behavior. ..."
"... That January 2017 intelligence assessment has formed the foundation underlying every breathless, conspiratorial Russia story you see in western news media to this very day, and it's completely empty. The idea that Russia interfered in the US election in any meaningful way is based on an assessment crafted by a known liar , from which countless relevant analysts were excluded, which makes no claims of certainty, and contains no publicly available evidence. It's pure narrative from top to bottom, and therefore the "collusion" story is as well since Trump could only have colluded with an actual thing that actually happened, and there's no evidence that it did. ..."
"... So now you've got Trump being painted as a Putin lackey based on a completely fabricated election interference story, despite the fact that Trump has actually been far more hawkish towards Russia than any administration since the fall of the Soviet Union. ..."
"... The narrative matrix of America's political/media landscape is a confusing labyrinth of smoke and funhouse mirrors distorting and manipulating the public consciousness at every turn. It's psychologically torturous, which is largely why people who are deeply immersed in politics are so on-edge all the time regardless of where they're at on the political spectrum. The only potentially good thing I can see about this forceful brutalization of the public psyche is that it might push people over the edge and shatter the illusion altogether. ..."
"... Trust in the mass media is already at an all-time low while our ability to network and share information that casts doubt on official narratives is at an all-time high, which is why the establishment propaganda machine is acting so weird as it scrambles to control the narrative, and why efforts to censor the internet are getting more and more severe. ..."
Earlier this week, President Donald Trump tweeted the following:
"Endless Wars, especially those which are fought out of judgement mistakes that were made
many years ago, & those where we are getting little financial or military help from the
rich countries that so greatly benefit from what we are doing, will eventually come to a
glorious end!"
The tweet was warmly received and celebrated by Trump's supporters, despite the fact that it
says essentially nothing since "eventually" could mean anything.
Indeed, it's
looking increasingly possible that nothing will come of the president's stated agenda to
withdraw troops from Syria other than a bunch of words which allow his anti-interventionist
base to feel nice feelings inside. Yet everyone laps it up, on both ends of the political
aisle, just like they always do:
Trump supporters are acting like he's a swamp-draining, war-ending peacenik...
...his enemies are acting like he's feeding a bunch of Kurds on conveyor belts into
Turkish meat grinders to be made into sausages for Vladimir Putin's breakfast, when in
reality nothing has changed and may not change at all.
How are such wildly different pictures being painted about the same non-event? By the fact
that both sides of the Trump-Syria debate have thus far been reacting solely to narrative.
This has consistently been the story throughout Trump's presidency: a heavy emphasis on
words and narratives and a disinterest in facts and actions. A rude tweet can dominate
headlines for days, while the actual behaviors of this administration can go almost completely
ignored. Trump continues to more or less advance the same warmongering Orwellian globalist
policies and agendas as his predecessors along more or less the same trajectory, but frantic
mass media narratives are churned out every day painting him as some unprecedented deviation
from the norm. Trump himself, seemingly aware that he's interacting entirely with perceptions
and narratives instead of facts and reality, routinely makes things up whole cloth and often
claims he's "never said" things he most certainly has said. And why not? Facts don't matter in
this media environment, only narrative does.
Look at Russiagate. An
excellent recent article by Ray McGovern for Consortium News titled "A Look Back at
Clapper's Jan. 2017 'Assessment' on Russia-gate" reminds us on the two-year anniversary of the
infamous ODNI assessment that the entire establishment Russia narrative is built upon nothing
but the say-so of a couple dozen intelligence analysts hand-picked and guided by a man who
helped deceive the world into Iraq, a man who is so virulently Russophobic that he's
said on more than one occasion that Russians are genetically predisposed to subversive
behavior.
That January 2017 intelligence assessment has formed the foundation underlying every
breathless, conspiratorial Russia story you see in western news media to this very day, and
it's completely empty. The idea that Russia interfered in the US election in any meaningful way
is based on an assessment crafted by a known liar , from which countless relevant
analysts were excluded, which makes no claims of certainty, and contains no publicly available
evidence. It's pure narrative from top to bottom, and therefore the "collusion" story is as
well since Trump could only have colluded with an actual thing that actually happened, and
there's no evidence that it did.
So now you've got Trump being painted as a Putin lackey based on a completely fabricated
election interference story, despite the fact that Trump has actually
been far more hawkish towards Russia than any administration since the fall of the Soviet
Union. With the nuclear brinkmanship this administration has been playing with its only nuclear
rival on the planet, it would be so incredibly easy for Trump's opposition to attack him on his
insanely hawkish escalation of a conflict which could easily end all life on earth if any
little thing goes wrong, but they don't. Because this is all about narrative and not facts,
Democrats have been paced into supporting even more sanctioning, proxy conflicts and nuclear
posturing while loudly objecting to any sign of communication between the two nuclear
superpowers, while Republicans are happy to see Trump increase tensions with Moscow because it
combats the collusion narrative. Now both parties are supporting an anti-Russia agenda which
existed in secretive US government agencies
long before the 2016 election .
And this to me is the most significant thing about Trump's presidency. Not any of the things
people tell me I'm supposed to care about, but the fact that the age of Trump has been
highlighting in a very clear way how we're all being manipulated by manufactured narratives all
the time.
Humanity
lives in a world of mental narrative . We have a deeply conditioned societal habit of
heaping a massive overlay of mental labels and stories on top of the raw data we take in
through our senses, and those labels and stories tend to consume far more interest and
attention than the actual data itself. We use labels and stories for a reason: without them it
would be impossible to share abstract ideas and information with each other about what's going
on in our world. But those labels and stories get imbued with an intense amount of belief and
identification; we form tight, rigid belief structures about our world, our society, and our
very selves that can generate a lot of fear, hatred and suffering. Which is why it feels so
nice to go out into nature and relax in an environment that isn't shaped by human mental
narrative.
This problem is exponentially exacerbated by the fact that these stories and labels are
wildly subjective and very easily manipulated. Powerful people have learned that they can
control the way everyone else thinks, acts and votes by controlling the stories they tell
themselves about what's going on in the world using mass media control and financial political
influence, allowing ostensible democracies to be conducted in a way which serves power far more
efficiently than any dictatorship.
See how both A and B herd the public away from opposing the dangerous pro-establishment
agendas being advanced by this administration? The dominant narratives could not possibly be
more different from what's actually going on, and the only reason they're the dominant
narratives is because an alliance
of plutocrats and secretive government agencies exerts an immense amount of influence over
the stories that are told by the political/media class.
The narrative matrix of America's political/media landscape is a confusing labyrinth of
smoke and funhouse mirrors distorting and manipulating the public consciousness at every turn.
It's psychologically torturous, which is largely why people who are deeply immersed in politics
are so on-edge all the time regardless of where they're at on the political spectrum. The only
potentially good thing I can see about this forceful brutalization of the public psyche is that
it might push people over the edge and shatter the illusion altogether.
Trust in the mass media is already at an all-time low while our ability to network and share
information that casts doubt on official narratives is at an all-time high, which is why the
establishment propaganda machine is
acting so weird as it scrambles to control the narrative, and why efforts to censor the
internet are getting more and more severe. It is possible that this is what it looks like when
a thinking species evolves into a sane and healthy relationship with thought. Perhaps the
cracks that are appearing all over official narratives today are like the first cracks
appearing in an eggshell as a bird begins to hatch into the world.
Hacking syndicate Anonymous has just released its fourth tranche of documents hacked from
the internal servers of the Institute for Statecraft and its subsidiary, the Integrity
Initiative. Several explosive files raise serious questions about the shadowy British state and
NATO-funded 'think tank' and its connections with the Skripal affair.
The files were
released just after 2:30pm GMT on January 4 -- I've barely scratched the surface of the
content, but what I've seen so far contains a panoply of bombshell revelations -- to say the
least, the organization(s) now have serious questions to answer about what role they played in
the poisoning of Sergei Skripal in March, and its aftermath both nationally and
internationally.
Sinister Timeline
One file
apparently dating to "early 2015" -- "Russian Federation Sanctions" -- written by the
Institute's Victor Madeira outlines "potential levers" to achieve Russian "behaviour change",
"peace with Ukraine", "return [of] Crimea", "regime change" or "other?". The suggested "levers"
span almost every conceivable area, including "civil society", "sports", "finance" and
"technology".
In the section marked "intelligence", Madeira suggests simultaneously expelling "every RF
[Russian Federation] intelligence officer and air/defense/naval attache from as many countries
as possible". In parentheses, it references 'Operation Foot' , the expulsion of over
1000 Soviet officials from the UK in September 1971, the largest expulsion of intelligence
officials by any government in history.
The section on sports also suggests "advocating the view [Russia] is unworthy of hosting
[sporting] events" -- and the section marked "information" recommends the sanctioning of
'Russian' media "in West for not complying with regulators' standards".
2015 File
Written By Victor Madeira on Possible Anti-Russian Actions
In April that year, Institute for Statecraft chief Chris Donnelly was
promoted to Honorary Colonel of SGMI (Specialist Group Military Intelligence), and
in
October he met with General Sir Richard Barrons. Notes from the meeting don't make clear
who said what, but one despaired that "if no catastrophe happens to wake people up and demand a
response, then we need to find a way to get the core of government to realise the problem and
take it out of the political space."
"We will need to impose changes over the heads of vested interests. We did this in the
1930s. My conclusion is it is we who must either generate the debate or wait for something
dreadful to happen to shock us into action. We must generate an independent debate outside
government. We need to ask when and how do we start to put all this right? Do we have the
national capabilities [and/or] capacities to fix it? If so, how do we improve our harnessing of
resources to do it? We need this debate now. There is not a moment to be lost," they said.
Operation IRIS Begins
On 4 March 2018, former Russian military officer and double agent for MI6 Sergei Skripal and
his daughter Yulia were poisoned in Salisbury, England.
Within days, the Institute had submitted a proposal to the Foreign & Commonwealth
Office, "to study social media activity in respect of the events that took place, how news
spread and evaluate how the incident is being perceived" in a number of countries.
The bid was accepted, and the Initiative's 'Operation Iris' was launched. Under its
auspices, the Institute employed 'global investigative solutions' firm Harod Associates to
analyze social media activity related to Skripal the world over.
It also conducted media monitoring of its own, with Institute 'research fellow' Simon
Bracey-Lane
producing regular 'roundups' of media coverage overseas, based on insights submitted by
individuals connected to the Initiative living in several countries. One submission, from an
unnamed source in Moldova, says they "cannot firmly say" whether the country's media had its
"own point of view" on the issue, or whether news organizations had taken "an obvious
pro-Russian or pro-Western position", strongly suggesting these were key questions for the
Initiative.
Integrity Initiative Seeks Intelligence On How Overseas Media Reported Skripal
Incident
Moreover though, there are clear indications the Institute sought to shape the news
narrative on the attack -- and indeed the UK government's response.
One file dated March 11 appears to be a briefing document on the affair to date, with key
messages bolded throughout.
It opens by setting out "The Narrative" of the incident -- namely "Russia has carried out
yet another brutal attack, this time with a deadly nerve agent, on someone living in
Britain".
"Use of the nerve agent posed a threat to innocent British subjects, affecting 21 people and
seriously affecting a police officer. This is not the first time such an attack has been
carried out in the UK 14 deaths are believed to be attributable to the Kremlin Russia has
poisoned its enemies abroad on other occasions, most notably then-candidate for the Presidency
of Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko, in 2004. Russian political activist Vladimir Kara-Murza has been
poisoned twice; and the journalist Anna Politkovskaya was also poisoned and later shot dead.
Since Putin has been running Russia, the Kremlin has a history of poisoning its opponents in a
gruesome way," the "narrative" reads.
The file goes on to declare the British response has been "far too weak it's essential the
government makes a much stronger response this time" -- and then lists "possible, realistic,
first actions", including banning RT and Sputnik from operating in the UK, boycotting the 2018
World Cup, withdrawing the UK ambassador from Moscow and expelling the Russian ambassador to
the UK, and refusing/revoking visas to leading Russians within Vladimir Putin's "circle", and
their families.
Post-Skripal Incident Anti-Russian Actions Recommended by Integrity Initiative
It's not clear who the document was distributed to -- but it may have been given to
journalists within the Initiative's UK 'cluster', if not others. This may explain why the
Institute's "narrative", and its various recommended "responses" utterly dominated mainstream
media reporting of the affair for months afterwards, despite the glaring lack of evidence of
Russian state involvement in the attack.
It's extremely curious so many of the briefing document's recommendations almost exactly --
if not exactly -- echo several of the suggested "levers" outlined in the 2015 document. It's
also somewhat troubling the "Global Operation Foot" spoken of in that file duly came to pass on
March 28 2018, with over 20 countries expelling over 100 Russian diplomats.
Likewise, it's striking Victor Madeira, the Institute staffer who made the recommendations
in 2015, made many media appearances discussing the poisoning following the incident
routinely documented by the Institute. Security consultant Dan Kaszeta also wrote a number
of articles for the Integrity Initiative website about chemical weapons following the attack --
including a July 14 article, How could Novichok have poisoned people four months after the
Skripal attack? --receiving 40
pence per word .
Invoice submitted to
Integrity Initiative by Dan Kaszeta Strange Connections
The Institute's bizarrely intimate connections with the incident don't end there. Another document
apparently dating to July 2018 contains the contact details of Pablo Miller, Skripal's MI6
recruiter, handler and -- unbelievably -- neighbor in Salisbury. Anonymous claims the document
is an invitee list for a meeting the Institute convened between a number of individuals and
Syria's highly controversial White Helmets group, but this is yet to be verified.
Whatever the truth of the matter, the latest document dump raises yet further questions
about how and why it was BBC Diplomatic and Defense Editor Mark Urban -- who was in the same
tank regiment as Miller after leaving University -- came to meet with Skripal in the year
before his poisoning. When I attended the
launch of his book on the affair in October -- The Skripal Files -- he was evasive
on whether he played a role in connecting him with Skripal, and denied Miller was Skripal's
recruiter.
The latest trove also raises yet further questions about the activities of the Institute for
Statecraft and Integrity Initiative. In light of these revelations, reading the record of
Donnelly's meeting with General Barrons takes on an acutely chilling quality. It may be that
purely serendipitously the pair got their "catastrophe", their "something dreadful", which
"[woke] people up" and made the government "realise the problem" posed by Russia -- or it could
be they one way or another played a facilitative role of some kind.
After months of refusing to answer the vast number of questions I and thousands of others
have submitted to the paired organizations, it's high time for them to break cover, and be
honest with the public.
Images removed. Please brose the original to view them.
Notable quotes:
"... "Russian disinformation." ..."
"... "network of networks" ..."
"... It's notable that many of the draconian anti-Russia measures that the group advocated as far back as 2015 were swiftly implemented following the Skripal affair – even as London refused to back up its finger-pointing with evidence. ..."
"... "study social media activity in respect of the events that took place, how news spread, and evaluate how the incident is being perceived" ..."
"... "global investigative solutions" ..."
"... What role did # IntegrityInitiative play in the # Skripal affair? I looked for answers from a brief look at the newly released files. More very much to follow.... ..."
"... "pro-Russia troll accounts" ..."
"... "bombarding the audience with pro-Kremlin propaganda and disinformation relevant to the Skripal case." ..."
"... Another document , dated March 11, 2018 – and titled "Sergei Skripal Affair: What if Russia is Responsible?" – contains a "narrative" ..."
"... These included boycotting the 2018 World Cup, starting campaigns to boycott the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany, blocking Russian access to the SWIFT international banking system, and banning "RT TV and Sputnik from operating in the UK." ..."
"... "to publicize what has been happening with their Muslim brethren in Crimea since the Russian invasion [sic]" ..."
"... "threat Russia poses." ..."
"... This would certainly explain the evidence-deficient echo chamber that emerged in the aftermath of Skripal's poisoning ..."
"... One of the more intriguing revelations from the fresh leaks is a document from 2015, in which Victor Madeira of the Institute for Statecraft proposes a series of measures targeting Russia, including mass expulsion of diplomats along the lines of 1971's Operation Foot. ..."
"... "the largest collective expulsion of Russian intelligence officers in history." ..."
"... "Makes you think " ..."
"... The new trove of hacked documents also revealed an unexplained link between the II and Skripal himself – a connection made all the more noteworthy by the group's central role in coordinating an evidence-free campaign to blame and punish Moscow for the alleged nerve-agent attack. A document from July 2018 contains contact details for Pablo Miller, Skripal's MI6 recruiter, handler and (conveniently) neighbor in Salisbury. Miller, it seems, had been invited to a function hosted by the Institute. ..."
"... It was already known that Pablo Miller, the MI6 handler of Sergej Skripal, attended # IntegrityInitiative meetings. There is now more material to draw a connection. It is indeed possible that IfS/II initiated the affair. ..."
"... Ł2,276.80 in July 2018 during the # Skripal # Novichok affair for writing articles on the subjects of poison gas; nerve agents; treatment; nerve agent persistency & # PortonDown @ RTUKproducer 160 1:24 PM - Jan 4, 2019 ..."
"... It's not clear to what degree Miller is or was involved with the group, but his appearance on an Integrity Initiative guest list adds another layer of mystery to a coordinated campaign which sought to impose punishments on Moscow that were drawn up years in advance. ..."
The Integrity Initiative, a UK-funded group exposed in leaked files as psyop network, played a key role in monitoring and molding
media narratives after the poisoning of double agent Sergei Skripal, newly-dumped documents reveal. Created by the NATO-affiliated,
UK-funded Institute for Statecraft in 2015, the Integrity Initiative was
unmasked in November after hackers
released documents detailing a web of politicians, journalists, military personnel, scientists and academics involved in purportedly
fighting "Russian disinformation."
The secretive, government-bankrolled "network of networks" has found itself under scrutiny for
smearing UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn
as a Kremlin stooge – ostensibly as part of its noble crusade against anti-Russian disinformation. Now, new
leaks show that the organization played a central role in shaping media narratives after Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia
were mysteriously poisoned in Salisbury last March.
It's notable that many of the draconian anti-Russia measures that the group advocated as far back as 2015 were swiftly implemented
following the Skripal affair – even as London refused to back up its finger-pointing with evidence.
Operation Iris
Days after the Skripals were poisoned, the Institute solicited its services to the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, offering to
"study social media activity in respect of the events that took place, how news spread, and evaluate how the incident is being
perceived" in a number of countries.
After receiving the government's blessing, the Integrity Initiative (II)
launched
'Operation Iris,' enlisting "global investigative solutions" firm Harod Associates to analyze social media activity
related to Skripal.
What role did # IntegrityInitiative
play in the # Skripal affair? I looked for answers
from a brief look at the newly released files. More very much to follow....
However, Harod's confidential
report
did more than just parse social media reactions to the Skripal affair: It compiled a list of alleged "pro-Russia troll accounts"
accused of "bombarding the audience with pro-Kremlin propaganda and disinformation relevant to the Skripal case."
Among those who found themselves listed as nefarious thought-criminals were Ukrainian-born pianist Valentina Lisitsa, and a gentleman
from Kent who goes by Ian56 on Twitter.
Neocon Fascist, al-Qaeda Supporting Treasonous Scumbag @ Benimmo
is having a laugh with Ł2m of Taxpayers money. Nimmo should be IN JAIL for Fraud & Treason
"The Insider" - the same "Insider", that was credited by Bellingcat with "outing Boshirov and Petrovas GRU agents"
- has investigated and found me guilty of passing Putin orders to French yellow jackets. I kid you not.
Another
document , dated March 11, 2018 – and titled "Sergei Skripal Affair: What if Russia is Responsible?" – contains a "narrative"
of the Skripal incident, which blames Russia and President Vladimir Putin personally, as well as containing a number of recommended
actions.
These included boycotting the 2018 World Cup, starting campaigns to boycott the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to
Germany, blocking Russian access to the SWIFT international banking system, and banning "RT TV and Sputnik from operating in the
UK."
Other suggestions included propaganda directed at British Muslims "to publicize what has been happening with their Muslim
brethren in Crimea since the Russian invasion [sic]" and getting members of parliament to publicize the "threat Russia poses."
It's not clear who the document was drawn up for, but it may have been provided to II-affiliated journalists in the UK and other
countries.
This would certainly explain the evidence-deficient echo chamber that emerged in the aftermath of Skripal's poisoning
– which the UK and its allies unanimously blamed on Moscow.
Ahead of its time?
One of the more intriguing revelations from the fresh leaks is a
document from 2015, in which Victor Madeira of the Institute for Statecraft proposes a series of measures targeting Russia, including
mass expulsion of diplomats along the lines of 1971's Operation Foot.
Coincidentally, more than 100 Russian diplomats were expelled from 20 Western countries in an apparently show of solidarity with
the UK following the Skripal attack. At the time, UK Prime Minister Theresa May welcomed what she said was "the largest collective
expulsion of Russian intelligence officers in history."
Former MP George Galloway noted that the documents, written long before the Salisbury events, also call for the arrest of RT and
Sputnik contributors (such as himself), adding: "Makes you think "
The new trove of hacked documents also revealed an unexplained link between the II and Skripal himself – a connection made
all the more noteworthy by the group's central role in coordinating an evidence-free campaign to blame and punish Moscow for the
alleged nerve-agent attack. A document from July 2018 contains contact details for Pablo Miller, Skripal's MI6 recruiter, handler
and (conveniently) neighbor in Salisbury. Miller, it seems, had been invited to a function hosted by the Institute.
It was already known that Pablo Miller, the MI6 handler of Sergej Skripal, attended
# IntegrityInitiative meetings. There
is now more material to draw a connection. It is indeed possible that IfS/II initiated the affair.
It's not clear to what degree Miller is or was involved with the group, but his appearance on an Integrity
Initiative guest list adds another layer of mystery to a coordinated campaign which sought to impose punishments on Moscow that were
drawn up years in advance.
"... If I had the talent and energy, I might write a sequel to the 'Quiet American', to be entitled 'The Noisy Englishmen.' It would feature a series of inept conspiracies, involving ludicrous means used in support of preposterous ends, necessitating one ham-fisted cover-up after another. ..."
"... The central characters might be loosely based on Christopher Steele, Matt Tait, Eliot Higgins, and our former UN Ambassador Matthew Rycroft, author of the July 2002 Downing Street memorandum, in which Sir Richard Dearlove was quoted explaining how, in Washington, 'the intelligence and the facts were being fixed around the policy.' ..."
"... There is a 1990's British historian (whose name I've been trying to rediscover without success) who wrote a sunny book saying Britain should return to its imperialist ways to bring light to the dark and repressive world we live in. It was a great hit with Blair and his henchmen. Blair used its arguments in his notorious 1999 Chicago neo-conservative/liberal interventionist speech. ..."
"... I'd draw attention to "The Brideshead Revisited" generation especially at Oxford in the early 80's. Unashamedly celebrating their wealth and upper middle class privately-educated backgrounds, they viewed themselves as a gilded, golden generation, preened in narcissism, adept at networking and self-promotion. They are the generation now in power - politically, financially, in the deep state. Their fantasy of again ruling the world (with American and Zionist aid) has led to a series of catastrophic blunders and overreaches in both foreign and domestic policies. ..."
"... Our economic power - the base of any imperial power - is shrinking daily. All the Oxfordites (chief amongst them Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove) are still playing Oxford Union/PPE games and stabbing each other joyously in the back as though there's no tomorrow. It most ressembles the halluciogenic decadence of the court of late Imperial Rome. ..."
After contemplating the likely intelligence and propaganda efforts of HMG over the last 15 years or so I am puzzled as to motivation.
Why? Why? The UK is now a regional power for which events in places like Syria would seem to have little to do with the welfare
of Britain. Why? I suppose that the same question can be asked for the US and I have.
In re "Our man in Havana" I think there
are many issues raised in the work that apply directly to the trade of espionage.
The question why? is a very interesting but also very dispiriting one, but also one which it is quite hard to get one's head
round. I hope to have something more coherent to say about it.
Among many reasons, however, there has been a kind of intellectual disintegration.
If I had the talent and energy, I might write a sequel to the 'Quiet American', to be entitled 'The Noisy Englishmen.'
It would feature a series of inept conspiracies, involving ludicrous means used in support of preposterous ends, necessitating
one ham-fisted cover-up after another.
The central characters might be loosely based on Christopher Steele, Matt Tait, Eliot Higgins, and our former UN Ambassador
Matthew Rycroft, author of the July 2002 Downing Street memorandum, in which Sir Richard Dearlove was quoted explaining how, in
Washington, 'the intelligence and the facts were being fixed around the policy.'
Subsequently, of course, he set about colluding in the process. And, sixteen years later, Dearlove is still at it, with 'Russiagate'
-- and the product being actually accepted much more uncritically by the MSM than it was then.
And that is one of the problems -- nobody any longer pays any penalty for failure, or indeed feels any sense of shame about
it..
There is a 1990's British historian (whose name I've been trying to rediscover without success) who wrote a sunny book saying
Britain should return to its imperialist ways to bring light to the dark and repressive world we live in. It was a great hit with
Blair and his henchmen. Blair used its arguments in his notorious 1999 Chicago neo-conservative/liberal interventionist speech.
As the Colonel eloquently asks:
"I am puzzled as to motivation. Why? Why? The UK is now a regional power for which events in places like Syria would seem
to have little todo with the welfare of Britain. Why?"
I'd draw attention to "The Brideshead Revisited" generation especially at Oxford in the early 80's. Unashamedly celebrating
their wealth and upper middle class privately-educated backgrounds, they viewed themselves as a gilded, golden generation, preened
in narcissism, adept at networking and self-promotion. They are the generation now in power - politically, financially, in the deep state. Their fantasy of again ruling the world
(with American and Zionist aid) has led to a series of catastrophic blunders and overreaches in both foreign and domestic policies.
Our economic power - the base of any imperial power - is shrinking daily. All the Oxfordites (chief amongst them Theresa May,
Boris Johnson and Michael Gove) are still playing Oxford Union/PPE games and stabbing each other joyously in the back as though
there's no tomorrow. It most ressembles the halluciogenic decadence of the court of late Imperial Rome.
(I don't include the Maurice Cowling-ites in this fandango because they strike me as more Little Englanders. Though Peterhouse
is of course, shamefully, the HQ of the Henry Jackson Society).
"... That's pretty rich, coming from a country and from people who actually genuinely, and in proven ways, have subverted democracy in Europe since the late 1940s - Italy being one of the clearest cases. ..."
"... For the life of me I cannot figure why Americans want a war/conflict with Russia. I can't believe it has to do with the economy. There's got to be a far better nefarious reason. Even during the real cold war we tried to avoid conflict. Absolute insanity. ..."
"... American media has graduated from simply repeating the lies of "unnamed government sources" to repeating the lies of any organization unofficially blessed by the powers that be. ..."
"... In that The Narrative is tightly controlled in the corporate media, not matter how strong the proofs or arguments about the falsity of these propaganda campaigns are, little or no circulation of those proofs or arguments wlll reach the general public. ..."
"... The thing that bothers me, is the fact that the MIC Globalists don't care what we think or how poor their deceptions are. ..."
"... The cleverest trick used in propaganda against a specific country is to accuse it of what the accuser itself is doing. ..."
"... I've always put it down to the Washington Establishment having a severe case of psychological projection. ..."
"... The warmongering is not intended to make any sense - not many people are trained in critical thinking and logic, and even when they are, they can be swamped by their own emotions or other people's emotions. ..."
"... Propaganda is intended to appeal to people's emotions and fears. You can try reading works by Edward Bernays - "Crystallizing Public Opinion" (1923) and "Propaganda" (1928) - to see how he uses his uncle Sigmund Freud's theories of the mind to create strategies for manipulating public opinion. ..."
"... The American Security State needs enemies to exist, otherwise there's no need for the "security" which translates into big bucks for the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Media Complex. They can't agree on the ranking of the enemies: North Korea is a threat to the world! Iran is....! Russia is...! China is....! But the threats are there, and they are pure evil (TPTB contend). ..."
"... Sad but definitely correct. The first casualty of war is the truth. It's dead in the USA and allies. Therefore, they're at war with Russia and China. If Russia is down, China will be dealt with. ..."
"... Some years ago, I noticed the American media and politicians were sort of going soft (actually mushy) in the brain department, but I was told not to be so judgemental. As the months went by, I saw more and more people saying "they have gone nuts". So, it turns out I am not alone after all. ..."
"... That madness comes from having no behavioural limits, no references outside of your own opinion but groupthink, and manipulating the language to suit your ambitions (the Orwellism of the US media has been repeatedly pointed at). Simply put, you don't know anymore what's what outside of the narrative your group pushes, you go nuts. The manipulators ends up caught in their lies. All the more when they makes money out of it, which would be the case of all those think tanks and media. ..."
"... Honestly, the story of democracy (by capitalist/liberal class) is a grand BS, to be modest. The only thing what was truthful, paradoxically, is who is "lesser evil" of two. Or the Bigger one in unrestrained capitalism, savage and monopoly, predatory and a fascists one. ..."
"... War or the threat of war is needed to distract attention from rapidly devolving societal bonds and immense economic inequality. ..."
"... The US is progressing toward a fascist police state; therefore, Russia is said to be a horrible dictatorship run by Putin. The US traditionally meddles in elections around the world, including Russia; therefore, the Russians are said to meddle in US elections. The US is the most aggressive country on the planet, occupying and bombing dozens of countries; therefore, the Russians are accused of "aggression." And so on ..."
"... The US actually spends $75 billion per year---more than Russia's entire $69 billion defense budget---spying on and meddling in the politics of virtually every nation on earth. An outfit within NSA called Tailored Access Operations (TAO) has a multi-billion annual budget and does nothing put troll the global internet and does so with highly educated, highly paid professionals, not $4 per hour keyboard jockeys." ..."
"... Zbignew Brzezenski explained in his 1997 book "The Grand Chessboard" why global hegemony required taking control over Russia (and how to do it, which boils down to taking the other chess pieces off the board (Iraq/Ukraine/etc. and then pulling off a "color revolution," coup or military conquest). ..."
"... Msm, bellingcat and other think tanks - they push their anti Russian racism too far making a large section of westerners just tired of their hysteria. Exposing their own racism and paranoia. ..."
"... Globalization . . . is a program to create private corporate rights to trade, invest, lend or borrow money and buy and own property anywhere in the world without much hindrance by national governments. It would bar governments from most of the common methods of helping or protecting their national industries and employment. It is a winners' program promoted chiefly by some business interests, governments and neoclassical economists in Europe and the United States. ..."
"... One of its purposes is to intensify international competition for jobs. Together with other Right policies it is likely to maintain some unemployment in the rich countries and reduce the wage rates of their lower-paid workers, and reduce the proportion of secure employment. Hugh Stretton, Economics: A New Introduction ..."
"... The anti-russian think tanks, msm, bellingcat etc push this too much, making them look stupid. ..."
"... Assange: "Regardless of whether IRA's activities were audience building through pandering to communities or whether a hare-brained Russian government plan to "heighten the differences" existed, its activities are clearly strategically insignificant compared to the other forces at play." ..."
The U.S. mainstream media are going nuts. They now make up and report stories based on the
uncritical acceptance of an algorithm they do not want to understand and which is known to
produce fake results.
SAN FRANCISCO -- One hour after news broke about the school shooting in Florida last week,
Twitter accounts suspected of having links to Russia released hundreds of posts taking up
the gun control debate.
The accounts addressed the news with the speed of a cable news network. Some adopted the
hashtag #guncontrolnow. Others used #gunreformnow and #Parklandshooting. Earlier on
Wednesday, before the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland,
Fla., many of those accounts had been focused on the investigation by the special counsel
Robert S. Mueller III into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.
In other words - the "Twitter accounts suspected of having links to Russia" were following
the current news just as cable news networks do. When a new sensational event happened they
immediately jumped onto it. But the NYT authors go to length to claim that there is some
nefarious Russian scheme behind this that uses automated accounts to spread divisive
issues.
Those claims are based on this propaganda project:
Last year, the Alliance for Securing Democracy, in conjunction with the German Marshall
Fund, a public policy research group in Washington, created a website that tracks hundreds
of Twitter accounts of human users and suspected bots that they have linked to a Russian
influence campaign.
The "Alliance for Securing Democracy" is
run by military lobbyists, CIA
minions and neo-conservative propagandists. Its
claimed task is:
... to publicly document and expose Vladimir Putin's ongoing efforts to subvert democracy
in the United States and Europe.
There is no evidence that Vladimir Putin ever made or makes such efforts.
The ASD "Hamilton 68" website shows graphics with rankings of "top items"
and "trending items" allegedly used by Russian bots or influence agents. There is nothing
complicate behind it. It simply tracks the tweets of 600 Twitter users and aggregates the
hashtags they use. It does not say which Twitter accounts its algorithms follows. It
claims
that the 600 were selected by one of three criteria: 1. People who often tweet news that also
appears on RT (Russia Today) and Sputnik News, two general news sites
sponsored by the Russian government; 2. People who "openly profess to be pro-Russian"; 3.
accounts that "appear to use automation" to boost the same themes that people in group 1 and
2 tweet about.
Nowhere does the group say how many of the 600 accounts it claims to track belong to which
group. Are their 10 assumed bots or 590 in the surveyed 600 accounts? And how please does one
"openly profess" to be pro-Russian? We don't know and the ASD won't say.
On December 25 2017 the "Russian influence" agents or bots who - according to NYT - want
to sow divisiveness and subvert democracy,
wished everyone
a #MerryChristmas.
The real method the Hamilton 68 group used to select the 600 accounts it tracks is
unknown. The group does not say or show how it made it up. Despite that the NYT reporters,
Sheera Frenkel and Daisuke Wakabayashi, continue with the false assumptions that most or all
of these accounts are automated, have something to do with Russia and are presumably
nefarious:
Russian-linked bots have rallied around other divisive issues, often ones that President
Trump has tweeted about. They promoted Twitter hashtags like #boycottnfl,
#standforouranthem and #takeaknee after some National Football League players started
kneeling during the national anthem to protest racial injustice.
The automated Twitter accounts helped popularize the #releasethememo hashtag , ...
The Daily Beast reported earlier that the last claim is
definitely false :
Twitter's internal analysis has thus far found that authentic American accounts, and not
Russian imposters or automated bots, are driving #ReleaseTheMemo . There are no preliminary
indications that the Twitter activity either driving the hashtag or engaging with it is
either predominantly Russian.
The same is presumably true for the other hashtags.
The Dutch IT expert and blogger Marcel van den Berg was wondering how Dutch
keywords and hashtags showed up on the Hamilton 68 "Russian bots" dashboard. He found (
Dutch ,
English auto translation) that the dashboard is a total fraud:
In recent weeks, I have been keeping a close eye on Hamilton 68. Every time a Dutch hashtag
was shown on the website, I made a screenshot. Then I noted what was playing at that moment
and I watched the Tweets with this hashtag. Again I could not find any Tweet that seemed to
be from a Russian troll.
In all cases, the hash tags that Hamilton 68 reported were trending topics in the
Netherlands . In all cases there was much to do around the subject of the hashtag in the
Netherlands. Many people were angry or shared their opinion on the subject on Twitter. And
even if there were a few tweets with Russian connections between them, the effect is zero.
Because they do not stand out among the many other, authentic Tweets.
Van den Berg lists a dozen examples he analyzed in depth.
The anti-Russian Bellingcat group around couch blogger Eliot Higgins is sponsored
by the NATO propaganda shop Atlantic Council . It sniffs through open source stuff
to blame Russia or Syria wherever possible. Bellingcat was recently a victim of the
"Russian bots" - or rather of the ASD website. On February 10 the hashtag #bellingcat trended
to rank 2 of the
dashboard.
Bellingcat was thus, according to the Hamilton 68 claims, under assault by hordes
of nefarious Russian government sponsored bots.
The Bellingcat folks looked into the issue and found
that only six people on Twitter, none
of them an automated account , had used the #bellingcat hashtag in the last 48 hours. Some of
the six may have opinions that may be "pro-Russian", but as Higgins himself
says :
[I]n my opinion, it's extremely unlikely the people listed are Russian agents
The pro-NATO propaganda shop Bellingcat thus debunked the pro-NATO propaganda
shop Alliance for Securing Democracy.
The fraudsters who created the Hamilton 68 crap seem to have filled their database with
rather normal people from all over the world who's opinions they personally dislike. Those
then are the "Russian bots" who spread "Russian influence" and divisiveness.
Moreover - what is the value of its information when six normal people out of millions of
active Twitter users can push a hashtag with a handful of tweets to the top of the
dashboard?
But the U.S. media writes long gushing stories about the dashboard and how it somehow
shows automated Russian propaganda. They go to length to explain that this shows "Russian
influence" and a "Russian" attempt to sow "divisiveness" into people's minds.
This is nuts.
Last August, when the Hamilton 68 project was first released, the Nation was the
only site critical of it. It
predicted :
The import of GMF's project is clear: Reporting on anything that might put the US in a bad
light is now tantamount to spreading Russian propaganda.
It is now even worse than that. The top ranking of the #merrychristmas hashtag shows that
the algorithm does not even care about good or bad news. The tracked twitter accounts are
normal people.
The whole project is just a means to push fake stories about alleged "Russian influence"
into U.S. media. Whenever some issue creeps up on its dashboard that somehow fits its false
"Russian bots" and "divisiveness" narrative the Alliance for Securing Democracy
contacts the media to spread its poison. The U.S. media, - CNN, Wired, the New York Times -
are by now obviously devoid of thinking journalists and fact checkers. They simple re-package
the venom and spread it to the public.
How long will it take until people die from it?
Posted by b on February 20, 2018 at 03:15 PM |
Permalink
Comments next page " It's all too reminiscent of Duck Soup:
"to publicly document and expose Vladimir Putin's ongoing efforts to subvert democracy in the
United States and Europe."
That's pretty rich, coming from a country and from people who actually genuinely, and in
proven ways, have subverted democracy in Europe since the late 1940s - Italy being one of the
clearest cases.
For the life of me I cannot figure why Americans want a war/conflict with Russia. I can't
believe it has to do with the economy. There's got to be a far better nefarious reason. Even
during the real cold war we tried to avoid conflict. Absolute insanity.
Gee, what could go wrong formulating policy founded upon a series of Big Lies? Kim Dotcom says he has
important info the FBI refuses to hear. At the Munich
Security Conference , neocon Nicholas Burns, former US Ambassador to NATO, details my
assertion's factual basis that current policy is being formed on a series of Big Lies: "Will
NATO strengthen itself to contain Russian power in Eastern Europe giving what Russian
[sic] has done illegally in Crimea, in the Donbass, and in Georgia ?" [Bolded text are
the Big Lies.]
Clearly, this entire psyop was premeditated and its design was hastily done
contemporaneously with Russia's Syria intervention. NSA/CIA/FBI knew of HRC's security
breeches and rightly assumed their contents would find their way into the election, so the
general plan was ready to go prior to WikiLeaks publications. b has uncovered much, and I
hope he's planning to publish a book about the entire affair.
Ken @ 4: There doesn't necessarily need to be One Major Reason for going to war. There may be
several reasons all feeding and reinforcing one another and creating a psychological climate
in which Going To War is seen as the only solution and is inevitable. The reasons are not
just economic and political but cultural and historical.
In some countries allied with the US, the politicians in power are the ideological
descendants of those who collaborated with Nazi Germany - so in a sense they are committed to
"correcting" what they see as wrong. In the case of current Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo
Abe, he is the grandson of a former prime minister who once served in General Tojo's World
War II cabinet.
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2012/12/26/national/formed-in-childhood-roots-of-abes-conservatism-go-deep/#.WoyZCG9uaUk
That's why pinning down the reason for wanting a war against Russia is so difficult.
Since the FBI never inspected the DNC's computers first-hand, the only evidence comes from
an Irvine, California, cyber-security firm known as CrowdStrike whose chief technical
officer, Dmitri Alperovitch, a well-known Putin-phobe, is a fellow at the Atlantic Council,
a Washington think tank that is also vehemently anti-Russian as well as a close Hillary
Clinton ally.
Thus, Putin-basher Clinton hired Putin-basher Alperovitch to investigate an alleged
electronic heist, and to absolutely no one's surprise, his company concluded that guilty
party was Vladimir Putin. Amazing! Since then, a small army of internet critics has chipped
away at CrowdStrike for praising the hackers as among the best in the business yet
declaring in the same breath that they gave themselves away by uploading a document in the
name of "Felix Edmundovich," i.e. Felix E. Dzerzhinsky, founder of the Soviet secret
police.
As noted cyber-security expert Jeffrey Carr observed with regard to Russia's two main
intelligence agencies: "Raise your hand if you think that a GRU or FSB officer would add
Iron Felix's name to the metadata of a stolen document before he released it to the world
while pretending to be a Romanian hacker. Someone clearly had a wicked sense of humor."
muddy waters.. paid for propaganda.... look at all the russian bots, lol... cold war 2 / mccarthyism 2 is in effect... the historic parallels are marked. thank you
neo cons! it's working... the ordinary person in the usa can't be this stupid can they?
when does ww3 kick in? is that really what these idiots want? or is it just to prolong the
huge defense budget?
This is about conditioning voters in Europe and the United States for a long war with Russia
and China. In other words, a return to the 1950s. It is not working and becoming increasingly
hysterical because societies are not nearly as cohesive as they once were, and the mainstream
political parties, while better funded and more top-down organized, are basically hollow. The
collapse is coming. Four years or ten, take your pick.
@4 "For the life of me I cannot figure why Americans want a war/conflict with Russia."
Most Americans probably don't. Just the chosen few with the deepest fall-out shelters. The
idea is to keep piling the pressure on to countries like Iran and Russia in the hope that
their populations will rise up and demand the freedoms that we enjoy in the West....things
like uncensored wardrobe malfunctions and transgender washrooms.
let's imagine that we have the pyramid of evilness, by which we measure bestiality of one
regime and its constituency. my firm belief is that us would be on the top of that pyramid.
Only dilemma would be between Zionist entity and the US.
"How could the masses be made to desire their own repression?" was the question Wilhelm
Reich famously asked in the wake of the Reichstagsbrandverordnung (Reichstag Fire Decree,
February 28, 1933), which suspended the civil rights protections afforded by the Weimar
Republic's democratic constitution.
Hitler had been appointed chancellor on January 30, 1933
and Reich was trying to grapple with the fact that the German people had apparently chosen
the authoritarian politics promoted by National Socialism against their own political
interests.
Ever since, the question of fascism, or rather the question of why might people
vote for their own oppression, has never ceased to haunt political philosophy.2 With Trump
openly campaigning for less democracy in America -- and with the continued electoral
success of far-right antiliberal movements across Europe -- this question has again become
a pressing one.
An American people is in perfect harmony with its regime.
Remember the "USS MAINE"! Media have long agitated for War in US History. Nothing sells newspapers
like a good ole war! Demonizing is a way to achieve it. What is sure is that this is a one way street.
Once over the cliff, there is no turning back.
How do you tell people that, at the flick of your magic switch, Putin is in fact
a swell guy and wonderful human being? Once love is gone who goes back
to the filthy, abhorrent and estranged spouse?
Surely the US establishment is playing with fire thinking they will successfully
ride out any conflict and come out on top secure in their newly reestablished
hegemony on the smoldering ruins of Humanity.
Make no mistake, we are all on the road to hell. Better enjoy todays peace as
tomorrow word will be filled with the sweet music of cemeteries.
@15 "An American people is in perfect harmony with its regime."
I'm not so sure. I think there are many Americans who deeply distrust their government.
But of course they don't want to appear unpatriotic. There are also many who are apathetic
and many simply don't know how to change things.
It's horrible I know to quote a Nazi, but Goring had this right:
Göring: Why, of course, the people don't want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm
want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his
farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in
England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all,
it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to
drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or
a Communist dictatorship.
Gilbert: There is one difference. In a democracy, the people have some say in the matter
through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare
wars.
Göring: Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always
be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they
are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country
to danger. It works the same way in any country.
American media has graduated from simply repeating the lies of "unnamed government sources"
to repeating the lies of any organization unofficially blessed by the powers that be. The
skills required to repeat the text verbatim serve them well in both cases. Skepticism is only
reserved to anyone who tries to introduce logic or facts into the equation--such as when Jill
Stein was interviewed on MSNBC recently. How dare Ms. Stein try to bring FACTS into the
discussion!
In that The Narrative is tightly controlled in the corporate media, not matter how strong the
proofs or arguments about the falsity of these propaganda campaigns are, little or no
circulation of those proofs or arguments wlll reach the general public.
Thanks Jen. It still makes no sense. As a veteran of the Vietnam fiasco, I was pretty much
government oriented until McNamara outed the whole thing whining about haw sorry he was.
59,000 dead and he's sorry. They were able to hide the Gulf of Tonkin BS until then. After
that I researched the reasons for each war/conflict the USA started and could find no logical
reasons except hunger for power. But the little sandbox wars won't destroy the world like a
major war/conflict with Russia and it goes nuclear. Almost every politician, and major news
organizations are pushing for a war/conflict with Russia. This is insanity as no one will win
a war like this and I am sure they know that,,, but they keep the war drums beating anyhow.
It simply doesn't make sense. But Thanks again.
Same for dh, #14. Things are soooo stupid, your joking may be closer to the truth than you
know. :-)
Thank you for the post. I will save it and use it liberally, with proper attributions.
When one challenges the tribe on places like Twitter, it is hard to tell who is a real idiot
and who is a bot. How do you know? Maybe that the bots go away fairly quickly and the idiots
hang around to argue ad infinitum.
The thing that bothers me, is the fact that the MIC Globalists don't care what we think or how
poor their deceptions are. The public perception that "russia did it!!" continues to rise. I
wonder what the public acceptance level needs to be for them to execute a MAJOR false flag
event. They seem to think they are still on target, and its just a short matter or time...
They are going to do this when the perception management is complete... We really do not need another one of their disasters
The bully pushes and pushes until stopped by the first serious push back. The dynamic of the
west and the neocon/Zionists at the core is essentially that of the bully. Nations like
Venezuela and the Philippines have started to push back, and I hope and feel fairly confident
that they will both survive the rage of the US. In some part, they have begun to show the
actual powerlessness of the bully.
But the really killer nations - Russia and China - are holding their water as they
strengthen their force. I believe that one very serious push back from either of them in the
right circumstances will stop the bully. And yet, as they bide their time, we see a curious
phenomenon wherein the US is destroying itself from the inside.
It's as if all of the forces that exist to control the country - the lockstep media, the
fully rigged markets, the hysterical military, the bought legislature and the crooked courts
- are all acting far more strongly than should be necessary. The entire system is
over-reacting, over-reaching, over-boiling. And in the course of this, the US is actually
shedding power, and at an amazing rate. But not from the action of Russia but from its
non-action, the empty space that that allows the bully's dynamic to over-reach, all the way
to complete failure.
Is it possible that deep in the security states of Russia and China there's even a study
and a model for this? Is the collapse of the US actually being gamed by Russia and China -
and through the totally counter-intuitive action of non-action?
Hey b,
Just wanted to let you know that Joe Lauria mentioned your blog and the article you wrote on
the indictment of the 13 Russians. He was on Loud and Clear (Sputnik Radio, Washington DC)
today and brought you up at the start of the program.
Glad to see you get some recognition for all the great work you've been doing :)
Ken @ 24: The warmongering is not intended to make any sense - not many people are trained in
critical thinking and logic, and even when they are, they can be swamped by their own
emotions or other people's emotions.
Propaganda is intended to appeal to people's emotions
and fears. You can try reading works by Edward Bernays - "Crystallizing Public Opinion"
(1923) and "Propaganda" (1928) - to see how he uses his uncle Sigmund Freud's theories of the
mind to create strategies for manipulating public opinion. https://archive.org/details/EdwardL.BernaysPropaganda
Bernays' books influenced Nazi and Soviet propaganda and Bernays himself was hired by the
US government to justify in the public mind the 1954 US invasion of Guatemala.
You may be aware that Rupert Murdoch, head of News Corporation which owns the Wall Street
Journal, FOX News and 20th Century Fox studios, is also on the Board of Directors of Genie
Energy which owns a subsidiary firm that was granted a licence by an Israeli court to explore
and drill for oil and natural gas in Syria's (and Israeli-occupied) Golan Heights.
The national media speaks as one -with one consistent melody day after day. Who is the
conductor?
When will one representative of the mainstream media sing solo? There must be a Ray
McGovern somewhere among the flock.
Many of my thoughts as well.
The U.S.'s greatest fault is its tacit misunderstanding of just what russia is in fact.
They utterly fail to understand the Russian character; forged over 800 years culminating with
the defeat of Nazi Germany, absorbing horrific losses; the U.S. fails to understand the
effect upon the then Soviets, become todays Russians.
Even the god's have abandoned the west...
I watched bbc news this am in the hope that I would get to see the most awful creature at the
2018 olympics cry her croc tears (long story - a speed skater who cuts off the opposition but
has been found out so now when she swoops in front of the others they either skate over her
leading to tearful whines from perp about having been 'pushed', or gets disqualified for
barging. Last night she got disqualified so as part of my study on whether types like this
believe their own bullshit I thought I'd tune in but didn't get that far into the beebs
lies)
The bulk of the bulletin was devoted to a 'lets hate Russia' session which featured a
quisling who works for the russian arm of BBC (prolly just like cold war days staffed
exclusively by MI6/SIS types). This chap, using almost unintelligible english, claimed he had
proof at least 50 Russian Mercenaries (question - why are amerikan guns for hire called
contractors [remember the Fallujah massacre of 100,000 civilians because amerikan contractors
were stupid] yet Russian contractors are called mercenaries by the media?) had been killed in
Syria last week. The bloke had evidence of one contractor's death not 50 - the proof was a
letter from the Russian government to the guy's mother telling her he didn't qualify for any
honours because he wasn't in the Russian military.
The quisling (likely a Ukranian I would say) went on to rabbit about the bloke having also
fought in Donbass under contract - to which the 'interviewer (don't ya love it when media
'interview' their own journos - a sure sign that a snippet of toxic nonsense is being
delivered) led about how the deceitful Russians had claimed the only Russians fighting in
Donbass were contractors - yeah well this bloke was a contractor surely that proves the
Russians were telling the truth.
It's not what these propagandists say; they adopt a tone and the audience is meant to hate
based on that even when the facts as stated conflict with the media outlet's point of view.
Remember the childhood trick of saying "bad dog" ter yer mutt in loving tones - the dog comes
to ya tail wagging & licks yer hand. This is that.
The next item was more Syria lies - white helmets footage (altho the beeb is now mostly
giving them an alternative name to dodge the facts about white helmets) of bandaged children
with flour tipped on their heads.
The evil Syrians and Russians are bombarding Gouta - nary a word about the continuous
artillery barrage Gouta has subjected the citizens of Damascus to for the past 4 years, or
that the Syrians have repeatedly offered truces and safe passage for civilians. Any injured
children need to ask their parents why they weren't allowed to take advantage of the frequent
offers of transport out. Maybe the parents are worried 'the resistance' will do its usual and
blow up the busloads of children after luring them over with candy.
Anyway I switched off after that so never did learn if little miss cheat had a cry.
Thank you for reporting on this. The people behind the so-called Alliance for Securing
Democracy need to be exposed for the warmongering frauds that they are. Regardless of what
one thinks of him, Trump was correct when he said that NATO is obsolete.
The American Security State needs enemies to exist, otherwise there's no need for the
"security" which translates into big bucks for the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Media
Complex. They can't agree on the ranking of the enemies: North Korea is a threat to the
world! Iran is....! Russia is...! China is....! But the threats are there, and they are pure
evil (TPTB contend).
So the whole scenario makes perfect sense from that standpoint.
re Felix E. Dzerzhinsky: Ukrainian fascists have a particular hatred of Felix because he was
both a Bolshevik and a Pole.
I hate to do this but I just posted this elsewhere, at Off Guardian, where the Guardian is
back into its highest gears promoting war.
"The wardrums are beating in a way not heard since 1914-there is no reason for war except the
best reason of all: an imperial ruling class sees its grip slipping and will chance
everything rather than endure the humiliation of adjusting to reality.
"China is in the position that the US was in 1914-it can prevent the war or wait until the
combatants are too exhausted to defend their paltry gains.
Given the realities of nuclear warfare-which seem not to have sunk in among the Americans,
perhaps because they mistake a bubble for a bomb shelter- the wise option is to prevent war
by publicly warning against it. In the hope that brought face to face with reality the masses
will besiege their governments, as we can easily do, and prevent war.'
Sad but definitely correct. The first casualty of war is the truth. It's dead in the USA and
allies. Therefore, they're at war with Russia and China. If Russia is down, China will be
dealt with.
The horrible thing with the US attitude is that you do a white thing, you're attacking them
and if you do a black thing, you're attacking them too. This attitude is building hostility
against Russia. It's like programming a pet to be afraid of something. The western people are
being programmed into hating Russia, dehumanizing her people, cutting every tie with Russia
and transforming any information from Russia into life threatening propaganda. A war for our
hearts is running. The US population is being coerced into believing that war against Russia
is a vital necessity.
It will be a war of choice from the US "elites". Clinton announced it and the population
had chosen Trump for that reason.
You're wondering why they're doing it. I suppose that their narrative is losing its grip on
the western populations. They're also conscious of it. If they lose it, they'll have to face
very angry mobs and face the void of their lives. Everything they did was either useless or
poisonous. It means to be in a very bad spot. They're are therefore under an existential
threat.
Russia proved time and again that it's possible to get out of their narrative. Remember their
situation when Eltsin was reelected with the western help.
The Chicago boys were telling the
Russian authorities how to run the economy and they made out of the word democrat a synonym
of thief. They were in the narrative and the result was a disaster. Then, they woke up and
started to clean the house. I remember the "hero" of democracy whose name was "Khodorovsky
(?)". In the west he was a freedom fighter and in Russia he stole something like Rosneft.
This guy and others of the same sort were described in the west as heroes, pionniers and so
on. They were put back into submission to the law. The western silence about their stealings,
lies and cheating is still deafening me.
It was the first Russian crime. The second one was
to survive the first batch of sanctions against them (I forgot the reason of the sanctions).
They not only survived they thrived. It was against the western leading economic ideology. A
third crime was to push back Saakachvili and his troops with success.
The fourth was to put
back into order the Tchechen. Russia was back into the world politics and history. They were
not following the script written for them in Washington and Brussels. They were having a
political system putting limits to the big companies. And, worst of it, it works.
Everybody in the west who can read and listen would have noticed that they are making it.
More, with RT and Sputnik giving info outside the allowed ones or asking annoying questions
(western journalists lost that habit with their new formation in the schools of journalism -
remember the revolution in their education was criticised and I missed why - very curious to
discover why), they were exposing weaknesses of the western narrative. On the other side
their narrative became so poor and so limited that any regular reader would feel bored
reading the same things time and again and being asked to pay for it at a time his salary was
decreased in the name of competitivity. The threat to their narrative was ready. They had to
fight it.
It's becoming a crime to think outside their marks. It's becoming a crime to read outside
their marks. I don't even talk about any act outside their marks. Now, it's going to be a
crime of treason to them in war time.
I do feel sadness because many will die from their fear of losing their grip on our minds. I
do feel sadness because they have lost and are in denial about it. I do feel sadness because
those death aren't necessary. I do feel sadness because those people can't face the
consequences of their actions. They don't have the necessary spine. Their lives were useless
and even toxic. They could start repairing or mitigating their damages but it would need a
very different worldview, a complete conversion to another meaning of life outside the
immediate and maximal profit.
You have aptly described the most dangerous country on this planet.
That country must not be appeased, at any cost, because it would surely end us forever...
Conclusion regarding IP address data:
What we're seeing in this IP data is a wide range of countries and hosting providers. 15% of
the IP addresses are Tor exit nodes. These exit nodes are used by anyone who wants to be
anonymous online, including malicious actors.
Overall Conclusion:
The IP addresses that DHS provided may have been used for an attack by a state actor like
Russia. But they don't appear to provide any association with Russia. They are probably used
by a wide range of other malicious actors, especially the 15% of IP addresses that are Tor
exit nodes.
The malware sample is old, widely used and appears to be Ukrainian. It has no apparent
relationship with Russian intelligence and it would be an indicator of compromise for any
website.
Partisan @15: "With Trump openly campaigning for less democracy in America -- and with the
continued electoral success of far-right antiliberal movements across Europe -- this question
has again become a pressing one."
The above is entirely backwards. The bottom 2/3rds is frustrated by the LACK of democracy
in the US and that's a major reason many voted against the (in fact anti-democratic) elite's
desired candidate, Hillary.
70% of the voting age public was dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with both candidates,
and 40% of Americans didn't vote, so that means whichever of Clinton/Trump won, she/he would
win with approval of only 10% of the electorate. That's the best example possible of our
anti-democratic reality (it's not a worry or a threat, it's already here).
In the case of both Europe and the US, many people are generally very dissatisfied with
the anti-democratic response by the elite to 'the will of the people' that there be much less
immigration into countries with high unemployment and 'race to the bottom' labor conditions.
That's nearly the entire basis of what the corporate media calls 'the move right'... When in
fact restricting immigration is a pro-labor and therefore 'left' policy ... Except in the
confused and deliberately stupid political discourse the elite media pushes so hard.
Some years ago, I noticed the American media and politicians were sort of going soft
(actually mushy) in the brain department, but I was told not to be so judgemental. As the
months went by, I saw more and more people saying "they have gone nuts". So, it turns out I
am not alone after all.
That madness comes from having no behavioural limits, no references outside of your own
opinion but groupthink, and manipulating the language to suit your ambitions (the Orwellism
of the US media has been repeatedly pointed at). Simply put, you don't know anymore what's
what outside of the narrative your group pushes, you go nuts. The manipulators ends up caught
in their lies. All the more when they makes money out of it, which would be the case of all
those think tanks and media.
One could argue that they are not going mad, that they know full well they are lying, but
I beg to differ: they don't see anymore how ridiculous or how dumb or smart their arguments
are. That would be congruent with a real loss of touch with reality. One wonders what
they see when they look at themselves in a mirror, a garden variety propagandist or a
fearless anti-Putin crusader?
Well, it is not...if you are believer in "democracy". Honestly, the story of democracy (by capitalist/liberal class) is a grand BS, to be
modest. The only thing what was truthful, paradoxically, is who is "lesser evil" of two. Or
the Bigger one in unrestrained capitalism, savage and monopoly, predatory and a fascists
one.
One way or other result is the same, it is: Barbarism.
When "trending on Twitter" became a news item in and of itself, I began to despair for the
future of reporting, political discourse and ultimately, democracy in America. Twitter and FB
are at best a source of information for news reporting, but not a source of news in
themselves.
We made ourselves vulnerable to any and every sort of pernicious manipulation and in the
end, we just about deserve everything we get.
The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the
same time over the means of mental production. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the
ideal expression of the dominant material relationships.
It is partially tied direct to the economy of the warmongers as trillions of dollars of
new cold war slop is laying on the ground awaiting the MICC hogs. American hegemony is
primarily about stealing the natural resources of helpless countries. Now in control of all
the weak ones, it is time to move to the really big prize: The massive resources of Russia.
They (US and their European Lackeys) thought this was a slam dunk when Yeltsin, in his
drunken stupors, was literally giving Russia to invading capitalist. Enter Putin, stopped the
looting .........connect the dots.
Media and its politicians have lost it completely,
and if you criticize them, well then of course you are a... "russian bot". Unfortunately 90% of westerners buy this western
MSM influence propaganda campaign, WW3
with Russia will come easy.
At risk of being censored and/or convicted of Thought Crime - it is *remarkable* how very
highly disproportionate the number of Jewish Zionists is who are in the media and in Congress
and in ThinkTankistan and shouting about Russian meddling, 'aggression,' and the like.
It's too bad it is forbidden to examine this phenomena as one part of the matrix of power
and lies leading the US into conflict with Russia, no?
I don't think Bill Kristol and David Frum and Jeff Goldberg are either honest nor
primarily concerned with American national security, nor the lives of MENA civilians. I think
they care only about using American blood and treasure to facilitate Israeli lebensraum,
however bloody and expensive.
Trump survives only if he dances for the Deep State *and* Likud.
Chris Hedges has an article on the similar situation in Germany almost 100 years ago.
"In 1923 the radical socialist and feminist Clara Zetkin gave a report at the Communist
International about the emergence of a political movement called fascism. ...." https://www.truthdig.com/articles/how-we-fight-fascism/
Partisan @54: The facts contradict the statement in the quote that Trump was "openly
campaigning for less democracy." He wasn't. He in fact campaigned in part as a populist who
would oust (or at least repeatedly ridicule) an anti-democratic elite. If you've overlooked
that and believe more or less the opposite, you can't understand the 2016 election or the
elite's virulently anti-democratic reaction to it.
Earlier I wrote about the following relationship: Khodorkovsky - The Interpreter -
Henry Jackson Society (UK) .
With Bush and the Iraq War, Dutch PM Balkenende and FM de Hoop Scheffer were seen as the
poodle of the White House. In recent years PM Mark Rutte [of MH-17 crash fame] can be
considered its puppy. Perhaps a parrot would suit better.
I noticed a former journalist Hubert Smeets hs partnered with some people to found a
"knowledge center" Window on Russia [Raam op Rusland]. Laughable, funded by the Dutch Foreign
Ministry and a Dutch-Russia cultural exchange Fund. Preposturous in its simplicity and harm
for honest reporting.
US media has gone bonkers. The original claim was Russian meddling and Russian
interference in the election. Then, a sort of bridging meme showed up (see also b
above), undermining democracy or subverting it. This in turn then morphed into
promoting divisive issues which is new (circa 2018, not before?)
Imho. US pols make it their business to create divisive issues, diviusses
(neologism), to the point of inventing rubbish ones. Part of the US public embraces that sh*t
as well, > tribalism and religious economics in lieu of policy politics. So such actions
should be viewed as gloriously democratic, ;) - ok easy to make fun.
The emphasis on 'divisive' is curious, it signals that some managers are calling for
'union' - 'cohesion' - 'group soldering' facing the outside enemy, threat.
Russia has really become the all-purpose épouvantail scarecrow, specter of
doom, etc. An awareness of the high costs of divisiveness if uncontrolled -> massive
social unrest, at extreme, civil war -- and that these are to be avoided, is evidenced.
Heh, or the whole storm is just fluff that distracts, occupies the pixels, airwaves, a
jamboree of knee-jerk reactions irrelevant to the present World Situation, with practically
no important body - faction of the PTB, Trump, the MIC, lame outsiders like the EU, etc.
having any clue.
The accusation is a lot like accusing somebody of despoiling an outhouse by crapping in
it, along with everyone else, but the outhouse in question had a sign on its door that read
"No Russians!" and the 13 Russians just ignored it and crapped in it anyway.
The reason the Outhouse of American Democracy is posted "No Russians!" is because Russia
is the enemy. There aren't any compelling reasons why it should be the enemy, and treating it
as such is incredibly foolish and dangerous, but that's beside the point. Painting Russia as
the enemy serves a psychological need rather than a rational one: Americans desperately need
some entity onto which they can project their own faults.
The US is progressing toward a
fascist police state; therefore, Russia is said to be a horrible dictatorship run by Putin.
The US traditionally meddles in elections around the world, including Russia; therefore, the
Russians are said to meddle in US elections. The US is the most aggressive country on the
planet, occupying and bombing dozens of countries; therefore, the Russians are accused of
"aggression." And so on
@Noirette 70
Yes, claiming that Russians are promoting polical division is silly -- the divisions were
already there. gizmodo
, Jun 12, 2014: It's Been 150 Years Since the U.S. Was This Politically Polarized
Nevertheless, now in WIRED
magazine: Their [Agency] goal was to enflame "political intensity through supporting radical
groups, users dissatisfied with [the] social and economic situation, and oppositional social
movements."
Bernie Sanders said he on Wednesday, "felt compelled to address Russian interference
during the US election. Sunday.... he was not aware and believes Russian bot promoting
him and went as far to said WikiLeaks published Hillary's email stolen by the
Russia....."
Can you really trust that lying basted? I'm probably one of the few MoA refused to
believe and trust Bernie Sanders and the fuckup Democrats .
Excellent article summarizing much of what B has posted and more.
"Finally, and as long was we are on the topic, here is what a real troll farm looks like.
[Picture of NSA] Yet this vast suite of offices in Fort Meade, Maryland, where 20,000 SIGINT
spies and technicians work for the NSA, is only the tip of the iceberg.
The US actually spends $75 billion per year---more than Russia's entire $69 billion
defense budget---spying on and meddling in the politics of virtually every nation on earth.
An outfit within NSA called Tailored Access Operations (TAO) has a multi-billion annual
budget and does nothing put troll the global internet and does so with highly educated,
highly paid professionals, not $4 per hour keyboard jockeys."
Great article. Great comments. I LOVE MoA! And it's great to see b getting recognition.
james wrote: "There aren't any compelling reasons why it should be the enemy"
You know the following; I think you're just too decent a human being to understand how
psychopaths operate. Russia is a huge area with enormous natural resources as well as a
large, educated populace. Zbignew Brzezenski explained in his 1997 book "The Grand
Chessboard" why global hegemony required taking control over Russia (and how to do it, which
boils down to taking the other chess pieces off the board (Iraq/Ukraine/etc. and then pulling
off a "color revolution," coup or military conquest).
Ziggy also noted that once Russia was incorporated, China is the next, and largely last
target.
Jen: NICE JOB putting together a big picture, from Bernays' control of the masses all the
way to Genie Energy. Add in Oded Yinon and PNAC and the "foreign policy blunders" that led to
the present situation in MENA look like a carefully-constructed, long-game being played "by
the book."
Fairleft. Any leftist/socialist movement which is not global is doomed to failure. This
has always been true, but with "offshoring" of manufacturing jobs and the internet
untethering many "white collar" jobs from any given geological location(s), workers must see
ourselves as a global entity rather than national or regional players - because that is
certainly how the 0.01% see us (and themselves).
"Workers of the world UNITE" is more true today than a century and a half ago.
nations that do not have to face costs arising from environmental, health or safety
legislation will almost always prevail in the world market over those that have some concern
for the environment and the workers.
That is the main issue I have with globalization.
Competing on wages is one thing; that can be a great impetus to become more efficient and
productive, but if we do nothing to force other countries to clean up their act, they will
have no impetus to do so and we will continue to lose jobs to the international competition,
no matter how efficiently we work.
Msm, bellingcat and other think tanks - they push their anti Russian racism too far making a
large section of westerners just tired of their hysteria. Exposing their own racism and
paranoia.
"....borderless globalization has been a catastrophe for most of the underdeveloped world's
businesses and workers."
it is always annoying when I see the 'globalization" argument is used whether from the
right or left. The globalization has started by the moment when us humans begin to roaming on this
planet. there are millions of examples yet somehow globalization is of recent phenomenon.
Lapis Lazuli mineral used in making blue color and paint is found on clay pottery in
Mesopotamia's ancient city of Ur. That city is also place where many legend originated which
were taken by major religion and can be found in their holy books. See even the myth are globalizied from very early on.
Most of the people do not even know what it is, not those who are writing about it.
Globalization . . . is a program to create private corporate rights to trade, invest, lend
or borrow money and buy and own property anywhere in the world without much hindrance by
national governments. It would bar governments from most of the common methods of helping
or protecting their national industries and employment. It is a winners' program promoted
chiefly by some business interests, governments and neoclassical economists in Europe and
the United States.
One of its purposes is to intensify international competition for jobs.
Together with other Right policies it is likely to maintain some unemployment in the rich
countries and reduce the wage rates of their lower-paid workers, and reduce the proportion
of secure employment.
the observable and demonstrable attempts are clearly futile, and have been pretty
much reduced to spasms and tantrums, largely devoid of cognizance, not to mention legality,
but certainly dangerous nonetheless.
no sir ree bob, we get our multipolar world or we scavenge a dead landscape of Alamogordo glass .
Assange: "Regardless of whether IRA's activities were audience building through pandering
to communities or whether a hare-brained Russian government plan to "heighten the
differences" existed, its activities are clearly strategically insignificant compared to the
other forces at play."
Cybersecurity "experts" in the United States have long alleged that "Russian bots" were used
to meddle in the 2016 elections.
But, as it turns out, the authors of a Senate report on "Russian election meddling" actually
ran the false flag meddling operation themselves.
A week before Christmas, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a report accusing Russia
of depressing Democrat voter turnout by targeting African-Americans on social media. Its
authors , New Knowledge , quickly became a household name. Described by the New
York Timesas a
group of "tech specialists who lean Democratic," New Knowledge has ties to both the U.S.
military and the intelligence agencies.
Morgan and Fox have both struck gold in the " Russiagate " scheme, which sprung into being
after Hillary Clinton blamed Moscow for Donald Trump's presidential victory in 2016. Morgan,
for example, is one of the developers of the Hamilton 68 Dashboard, the online tool that
purports to monitor and expose narratives being pushed by the Kremlin on Twitter. And also
worth mentioning, that dashboard is bankrolled by the German Marshall Fund's Alliance for
Securing Democracy – a collection of Democrats and neoconservatives funded in part by
NATO (North AtTreaty Tready Organization) and
USAID (United States Agency for International Development).
It is worth noting that the 600 " Russia-linked " Twitter accounts monitored by the
dashboard is not disclosed to the public either, making it impossible to verify these claims.
This inconvenience has not stopped Hamilton 68 from becoming a go-to source for hysteria-hungry
journalists, however. Yet on December 19, a New York Times
story revealed that Morgan and his crew had created the fake army of Russian bots, as well
as several fake Facebook groups, in order to discredit Republican candidate Roy Moore in
Alabama's 2017 special election for the U.S. Senate.
Working on behalf of the Democrats, Morgan and his crew created an estimated 1,000 fake
Twitter accounts with Russian names, and had them follow Moore. They also operated several
Facebook pages where they posed as Alabama conservatives who wanted like-minded voters to
support a write-in candidate instead . In an internal memo, New Knowledge boasted that it had
" orchestrated an elaborate 'false flag' operation that planted the idea that the Moore
campaign was amplified on social media by a Russian botnet ." – RT
This scandal is being perpetrated by the
United States media and has so far deceived millions, if not more. The botnet claim made a
splash on social media and was further amplified by
Mother Jones , which based its story on "expert opinion" from Morgan's dubious creation,
Hamilton 68.
Things got even weirder when it turned out that Scott Shane, the author of the Tim es
piece, had known about the meddling for months because he spoke at an event where the
organizers boasted about it!
Shane was one of the speakers at a meeting in September, organized by American Engagement
Technologies, a group run by Mikey Dickerson, President Barack Obama's former tech czar.
Dickerson explained how AET spent $100,000 on New Knowledge's campaign to suppress Republican
votes, "enrage " Democrats to boost turnout, and execute a " false flag " to hurt Moore. He
dubbed it " Project Birmingham ." -RT
There really was meddling in American democracy by " Russian bots. " Except those bots
weren't run from Moscow or St. Petersburg but from the offices of Democrat operatives chiefly
responsible for creating and amplifying the " Russiagate " hysteria over the past two years in
a
textbook case of psychological projection ,
brainwashing, and
Nazi-style propaganda campaigns.
At the inception of this entire RussiaGate spectacle I suggested that it was a political
distraction to take the attention away from the rejection by the people of neoliberalism which
has been embraced by the establishments of both political parties.
And that the result of the investigation would be indictments for perjury in the covering up
of illicit business deals and money laundering. But that 'collusion to sway the election' was
without substance, if not a joke.
Everything that has been revealed to date tends to support that.
One thing that Aaron overlooks is the evidence compiled by William Binney and associates
that strongly suggests the DNC hack was no hack at all, but a leak by an insider who was
appalled by the lies and double dealing at the DNC.
In general, RussiaGate is a farcical distraction from other issues as they say in the video.
And this highlights the utterly Machiavellian streak in the corporate Democrats and the Liberal
establishment under the Clintons and their ilk who care more about money and power than the
basic principles that historically sustained their party. I have lost all respect for them.
But unfortunately this does open the door for those who use this to approve of the
Republican establishment, which is 'at least honest' about being substantially corrupt servants
to Big Money who care nothing about democracy, the Constitution, or the public. The best of
them are leaving or have already left, and their party is ruined beyond repair.
This all underscores the paucity of the Red v. Blue, monopoly of two parties, 'lesser of two
evils' model of political thought which has come to dominate the discussion in the US.
We are heavily propagandized by the owners of the corporate media and influencers of the
narrative, and a professional class that has sold its soul for economic advantage and access to
money and power.
Is this shadow of Integrity Initiative in the USA ? This false flag open the possibility that other similar events like
DNC (with very questionable investigation by Crowdstrike, which was a perfect venue to implement a false flag; cybersecurity area is
the perfect environment for planting false flags), MH17 (might be an incident but later it definitely was played as a false flag), Skripals
(Was Skripals poisoning a false flag decided to hide the fact that Sergey Skripal was involved in writing Steele dossier?) and Litvinenko
(probably connected with lack of safety measures in the process of smuggling of Plutonium by Litvinenko himself, but later played a
a false flag). All of those now should be re-assessed from the their potential of being yet another flag flag operation
against Russia. While Browder was a MI6 operation from the very beginning (and that explains
why he abdicated the US citizenship more convincingly that the desire to avoid taxes) .
Notable quotes:
"... Democratic operative Jonathon Morgan - bankrolled by LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, pulled a Russian bot "false flag" operation against GOP candidate Roy Moore in the Alabama special election last year - creating thousands of fake social media accounts designed to influence voters . Hoffman has since apologized, while Morgan was suspended by Facebook for "coordinated inauthentic" behavior. ..."
"... Really the bigger story is here is that these guys convincingly pretended to be Russian Bots in order to influence an election (not with the message being put forth by the bots, but by their sheer existence as apparent supporters of the Moore campaign). ..."
"... By all appearances, they were Russian bots trying to influence the election. Now we know it was DNC operatives. Yet we are supposed to believe without any proof that the "Russian bots" that supposedly influenced the 2016 Presidential election were, actually, Russian bots, and worthy of a two year long probe about "Russian collusion" and "Russian meddling." ..."
"... The whole thing is probably a farce, not only in the sense that there is no evidence that Russia had any influence at all on a single voter, but also in the sense that there is no evidence that Russia even tried (just claims and allegations by people who have a vested interest in convincing us its true). ..."
For over two years now, the concepts of "Russian collusion" and "Russian election meddling" have been shoved down our throats
by the mainstream media (MSM) under the guise of legitimate concern that the Kremlin may have installed a puppet president in Donald
Trump.
Having no evidence of collusion aside from a largely unverified opposition-research dossier fabricated by a former British spy,
the focus shifted from "collusion" to "meddling" and "influence." In other words, maybe Trump didn't actually collude with Putin,
but the Kremlin used Russian tricks to influence the election in Trump's favor. To some, this looked like nothing more than an establishment
scheme to cast a permanent spectre of doubt over the legitimacy of President Donald J. Trump.
Election meddling "Russian bots" and "troll farms" became the central focus - as claims were levied of social media operations
conducted by Kremlin-linked organizations which sought to influence and divide certain segments of America.
And while scant evidence of a Russian influence operation exists outside of a handful of indictments connected to a St. Petersburg
"Troll farm" (which a liberal journalist
cast serious doubt ov er), the MSM - with all of their proselytizing over the "threat to democracy" that election meddling poses,
has largely decided to ignore actual evidence of "Russian bots" created by Democrat IT experts, used against a GOP candidate in the
Alabama special election, and amplified through the Russian bot-detecting "Hamilton 68" dashboard developed by the same IT experts.
Democratic operative Jonathon Morgan - bankrolled by LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, pulled a Russian bot "false flag" operation
against GOP candidate Roy Moore in the Alabama special election last year - creating thousands of fake social media accounts designed
to influence voters . Hoffman has since apologized, while Morgan was suspended by Facebook for "coordinated inauthentic" behavior.
As Russian state-owned RT puts
it - and who could blame them for being a bit pissed over the whole thing, "it turns out there really was meddling in American democracy
by "Russian bots." Except they weren't run from Moscow or St. Petersburg, but from the offices of Democrat operatives chiefly responsible
for creating and amplifying the "Russiagate" hysteria over the past two years in a textbook case of psychological projection. "
A week before Christmas, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a report accusing Russia of depressing Democrat voter turnout
by targeting African-Americans on social media. Its authors, New Knowledge, quickly became a household name.
Described by the
New York Times
as a group of "tech specialists who lean Democratic," New Knowledge has ties to both the US military and intelligence agencies.
Its CEO and co-founder Jonathon Morgan previously worked for DARPA, the US military's advanced research agenc y. His partner,
Ryan Fox, is a 15-year veteran of the National Security Agency who also worked as a computer analyst for the Joint Special Operations
Command (JSOC). Their unique skill sets have managed to attract the eye of investors, who pumped $11 million into the company
in 2018 alone.
...
On December 19, a New York Times story revealed that Morgan and his crew had created a fake army of Russian bots, as well as
fake Facebook groups, in order to discredit Republican candidate Roy Moore in Alabama's 2017 special election for the US Senate.
Working on behalf of the Democrats, Morgan and his crew created an estimated 1,000 fake Twitter accounts with Russian names,
and had them follow Moore. They also operated several Facebook pages where they posed as Alabama conservatives who wanted like-minded
voters to support a write-in candidate instead.
In an internal memo, New Knowledge boasted that it had "orchestrated an elaborate 'false flag' operation that planted the idea
that the Moore campaign was amplified on social media by a Russian botnet."
It worked. The botnet claim made a splash on social media and was further amplified by Mother Jones, which based its story
on expert opinion from Morgan's other dubious creation, Hamilton 68. -
RT
Moore ended up losing the Alabama special election by a slim margin of just
In other words: In November 2017 – when Moore and his Democratic opponent were in a bitter fight to win over voters – Morgan
openly promoted the theory that Russian bots were supporting Moore's campaign . A year later – after being caught red-handed orchestrating
a self-described "false flag" operation – Morgan now says that his team never thought that the bots were Russian and have no idea
what their purpose was . Did he think no one would notice? -
RT
Disinformation warrior @ jonathonmorgan attempts to control
damage by lying. He now claims the "false flag operation" never took place and the botnet he promoted as Russian-linked (based
on phony Hamilton68 Russian troll tracker he developed) wasn't Russian https://www.
newknowledge.com/blog/about-ala bama
Even more strange is that Scott Shane - the journalist who wrote the New York Times piece exposing the Alabama "Russian bot" scheme,
knew about it for months after speaking at an event where the organizers bragged about the false flag on Moore .
Shane was one of the speakers at a meeting in September, organized by American Engagement Technologies, a group run by Mikey
Dickerson, President Barack Obama's former tech czar. Dickerson explained how AET spent $100,000 on New Knowledge's campaign to
suppress Republican votes, " enrage" Democrats to boost turnout, and execute a "false flag" to hrt Moore. He dubbed it "Project
Birmingham." - RT
Shane told BuzzFeed that he was "shocked" by the revelations, though hid behind a nondisclosure agreement at the request of American
Engagement Technologies (AET). He instead chose to spin the New Knowledge "false flag" operation on Moore as "limited Russian tactics"
which were part of an "experiment" that had a budget of "only" $100,000 - and which had no effect on the election.
New Knowledge suggested that the false flag operation was simply a "research project," which Morgan suggested was designed "to
better understand and report on the tactics and effects of social media disinformation."
While the New York Times seemed satisfied with his explanation, others pointed out that Morgan had used the Hamilton 68 dashboard
to give his "false flag" more credibility – misleading the public about a "Russian" influence campaign that he knew was fake.
New Knowledge's protestations apparently didn't convince Facebook, which
announced last week that five
accounts linked to New Knowledge – including Morgan's – had been suspended for engaging in "coordinated inauthentic behavior."
- RT
They knew exactly what they were doing
While Morgan and New Knowledge sought to frame the "Project Birmingham" as a simple research project, a leaked copy of the operation's
after-action report reveals that they knew exactly what they were doing .
"We targeted 650,000 like AL voters, with a combination of persona accounts, astroturfing, automated social media amplification
and targeted advertising," reads the report published by entrepreneur and executive coach Jeff Giesea.
The rhetorical question remains, why did the MSM drop this election meddling story like a hot rock after the initial headlines
faded away?
criminal election meddling, but then who the **** is going to click on some morons tactic and switch votes?
anyone basing any funding, whether it is number of facebook hits or attempted mind games by egotistical cuck soyboys needs a serious
psychological examination. fake news is fake BECAUSE IT ISNT REAL AND DOES NOT MATTER TO ANYONE but those living in the excited misery
of their tiny bubble world safe spaces. SOCIAL MEDIA IS A CON AND IS NOT IMPORTANT OR RELEVANT TO ANYONE.
far more serious is destroying ballots, writing in ballots without consent, bussing voters around to vote multiple times in different
districts, registering dead voters and imperosnating the corpses, withholding votes until deadlines pass - making them invalid.
Herdee , 10 minutes ago
NATO on behalf of the Washington politicians uses the same bullsh*t propaganda for continual war.
Mugabe , 20 minutes ago
Yup "PROJECTION"...
Yippie21 , 21 minutes ago
None of this even touches on the 501c3 or whatever that was set up , concerned Alabama voters or somesuch, and was funneled
a **** load of money to be found to be in violation of the law AFTER the election and then it all just disappeared. Nothing to
see here folks, Democrat won, let's move on. There was a LOT of " tests " for the smart-set in that election and it all worked.
We saw a bunch of it used in 2018, especially in Texas with Beto and down-ballot races. Democrats cleaned up like crazy in Texas,
especially in Houston.
2020 is going to be a hot mess. And the press is in on it, and even if illegal or unseemly things are done, as long as Democrats
win, all good... let's move on. Crazy.
LetThemEatRand , 21 minutes ago
The fact that MSM is not covering this story -- which is so big it truly raises major questions about the entire Russiagate
conspiracy including why Mueller was appointed in the first place -- is proof that they have no interest in journalism or the
truth and that they are 100% agenda driven liars. Not that we needed more proof, but there it is anyway.
Oldguy05 , 19 minutes ago
Dimz corruption is a nogo. Now if it were conservatives.......
CosineCosineCosine , 23 minutes ago
I'm not a huge fan, but Jimmy Dore has a cathartic and entertaining 30 minutes on this farce. Well worth the watch:
Really the bigger story is here is that these guys convincingly pretended to be Russian Bots in order to influence an election
(not with the message being put forth by the bots, but by their sheer existence as apparent supporters of the Moore campaign).
By all appearances, they were Russian bots trying to influence the election. Now we know it was DNC operatives. Yet we
are supposed to believe without any proof that the "Russian bots" that supposedly influenced the 2016 Presidential election were,
actually, Russian bots, and worthy of a two year long probe about "Russian collusion" and "Russian meddling."
The whole thing is probably a farce, not only in the sense that there is no evidence that Russia had any influence at all
on a single voter, but also in the sense that there is no evidence that Russia even tried (just claims and allegations by people
who have a vested interest in convincing us its true).
dead hobo , 30 minutes ago
I've been watching Scandal on Netflix. Still only in season 2. Amazing how nothing changes.They nailed it and memorialized
it. The MSM are useful idiots who are happy to make money publicizing what will sell the best.
chunga , 30 minutes ago
The media is biased and sucks, yup.
The reason the reds lost the house is because they went along with this nonsense and did nothing about it, like frightened
baby chipmunks.
JRobby , 33 minutes ago
Only when "the opposition" does it is it illegal. Total totalitarian state wannabe stuff.
divingengineer , 22 minutes ago
Amazing how people can contort reality to justify their own righteous cause, but decry their opposition for the EXACT same
thing. See trump visit to troops signing hats as most recent proof. If DJT takes a piss and sprinkles the seat, it's a crime.
DarkPurpleHaze , 33 minutes ago
They're afraid to expose themselves...unlike Kevin Spacey. Trump or Whitaker will expose this with one signature. It's
coming.
divingengineer , 20 minutes ago
Spacey has totally lost it. See his latest video, it will be a powerful piece of evidence for an insanity plea.
CosineCosineCosine , 10 minutes ago
Disagree strongly. I think it was excellent - perhaps you misunderstood the point? 6 minutes Diana Davidson look at it clarifies
Craig Murray is right that "As the Establishment feels its grip slipping, as people wake up to the appalling economic exploitation by the few that underlies
the very foundations of modern western society, expect the methods used by the security services to become even dirtier."
Collapse of neoliberal ideology and rise of tentions in neoliberal sociarties resulted in unprecedented increase of covert and false
flag operations by British intelligence services, especially against Russia, which had been chosen as a convenient scapegoat.
With Steele dossier and Skripal affair as two most well known.
New Lady Macbeth (Theresa May) Russophobia is so extreme that her cabinet derailed the election of a Russian to head
Interpol.
Looks like neoliberalism cannot be defeated by and faction of the existing elite. Only when shepp oil end mant people will
have a chance. The US , GB and EU are part of the wider hegemonic neoliberal system. In fact rejection of neoliberal
globalization probably will lead to "national neoliberals" regime which would be a flavor of neo-fascism, no more no less.
Notable quotes:
"... The British state can maintain its spies' cover stories for centuries. ..."
"... I learnt how highly improbable left wing firebrand Simon Bracey-Lane just happened to be on holiday in the United States with available cash to fund himself, when he stumbled into the Bernie Sanders campaign. ..."
"... It is, to say the least, very interesting indeed that just a year later the left wing, "Corbyn and Sanders supporting" Bracey-Lane is hosting a very right wing event, "Cold War Then and Now", for the shadowy neo-con Institute for Statecraft, at which an entirely unbalanced panel of British military, NATO and Ukrainian nationalists extolled the virtues of re-arming against Russia. ..."
"... the MOD-sponsored Institute for Statecraft has been given millions of pounds of taxpayers' money by the FCO to spread covert disinformation and propaganda, particularly against Russia and the anti-war movement. Activities include twitter and facebook trolling and secretly paying journalists in "clusters of influence" around Europe. Anonymous helpfully leaked the Institute's internal documents. Some of the Integrity Initiative's thus exposed alleged covert agents, like David Aaronovitch, have denied any involvement despite their appearance in the documents, and others like Dan Kaszeta the US "novichok expert", have cheerfully admitted it. ..."
"... By sleuthing the company records of this "Scottish charity", and a couple of phone calls, I discovered that the actual location of the Institute for Statecraft is the basement of 2 Temple Place, London. This is not just any basement – it is the basement of the former London mansion of William Waldorf Astor, an astonishing building . It is, in short, possibly the most expensive basement in London. ..."
"... Which is interesting because the accounts of the Institute for Statecraft claim it has no permanent staff and show nothing for rent, utilities or office expenses. In fact, I understand the rent is paid by the Ministry of Defence. ..."
"... I have a great deal more to tell you about Mr Edney and his organisation next week, and the extraordinary covert disinformation war the British government wages online, attacking British citizens using British taxpayers' money. Please note in the interim I am not even a smidgeon suicidal, and going to be very, very careful crossing the road and am not intending any walks in the hills. ..."
"... I am not alleging Mr Bracey-Lane is an intelligence service operative who previously infiltrated the Labour Party and the Sanders campaign. He may just be a young man of unusually heterodox and vacillating political opinions. He may be an undercover reporter for the Canary infiltrating the Institute for Statecraft. All these things are possible, and I have no firm information. ..."
"... one of the activities the Integrity Initiative sponsors happens to be the use of online trolls to ridicule the idea that the British security services ever carry out any kind of infiltration, false flag or agent provocateur operations, despite the fact that we even have repeated court judgements against undercover infiltration officers getting female activists pregnant. The Integrity Initiative offers us a glimpse into the very dirty world of surveillance and official disinformation. If we actually had a free media, it would be the biggest story of the day ..."
"... As the Establishment feels its grip slipping, as people wake up to the appalling economic exploitation by the few that underlies the very foundations of modern western society, expect the methods used by the security services to become even dirtier. ..."
"... You can bank on continued ramping up of Russophobia to supply "the enemy". ..."
The British state can maintain its spies' cover stories for centuries. Look up Eldred Pottinger, who for 180 years appears
in scores of British history books – right up to and including William Dalrymple's Return of the King – as a British officer who
chanced to be passing Herat on holiday when it came under siege from a partly Russian-officered Persian army, and helped to organise
the defences. In researching
Sikunder Burnes, I discovered and published from the British Library incontrovertible and detailed documentary evidence that
Pottinger's entire journey was under the direct instructions of, and reporting to, British spymaster Alexander Burnes. The first
historian to publish the untrue "holiday" cover story, Sir John Kaye, knew both Burnes and Pottinger and undoubtedly knew he was
publishing lying propaganda. Every other British historian of the First Afghan War (except me and latterly
Farrukh Husain) has just followed Kaye's official propaganda.
Some things don't change. I was irresistibly reminded of Eldred Pottinger just passing Herat on holiday, when I learnt how
highly improbable left wing firebrand Simon Bracey-Lane
just happened to be on holiday in the
United States with available cash to fund himself, when he stumbled into the Bernie Sanders campaign.
Recent university graduate Simon Bracey-Lane took it even further. Originally from Wimbledon in London, he was inspired to
rejoin the Labour party in September when Corbyn was elected leader. But by that point, he was already in the US on holiday. So
he joined the Sanders campaign, and never left.
"I had two weeks left and some money left, so I thought, Fuck it, I'll make some calls for Bernie Sanders," he explains. "I just
sort of knew Des Moines was the place, so I just turned up at their HQ, started making phone calls, and then became a fully fledged
field organiser."
It is, to say the least, very interesting indeed that just a year later the left wing, "Corbyn and Sanders supporting" Bracey-Lane
is hosting a very right wing event, "Cold War Then and Now", for the shadowy neo-con Institute for Statecraft, at which an entirely
unbalanced panel of British
military, NATO and Ukrainian nationalists extolled the virtues of re-arming against Russia.
Nor would it seem likely that Bracey-Lane would be involved with the Integrity Initiative. Even the mainstream media has been
forced to give a few paragraphs to the outrageous Integrity Initiative, under which the MOD-sponsored Institute for Statecraft
has been given millions of pounds of taxpayers' money by the FCO to spread covert disinformation and propaganda, particularly against
Russia and the anti-war movement. Activities include twitter and facebook trolling and secretly paying journalists in "clusters of
influence" around Europe. Anonymous helpfully leaked the Institute's internal documents. Some of the Integrity Initiative's thus
exposed alleged covert agents, like David Aaronovitch, have denied any involvement despite their appearance in the documents, and
others like Dan Kaszeta the US "novichok expert", have cheerfully admitted it.
The mainstream media have
tracked down
the HQ of the "Institute for Statecraft" to a derelict mill near Auchtermuchty. It is owned by one of the company directors, Daniel
Lafayeedney, formerly of D Squadron 23rd SAS Regiment and later of Military Intelligence (and incidentally born the rather more prosaic
Daniel Edney).
By sleuthing the company records of this "Scottish charity", and a couple of phone calls, I discovered that the actual location
of the Institute for Statecraft is the basement of 2 Temple Place, London. This is not just any basement – it is the basement of
the former London mansion of William Waldorf Astor, an astonishing building.
It is, in short, possibly the most expensive basement in London.
Which is interesting because the accounts of the Institute for Statecraft claim it has no permanent staff and show nothing
for rent, utilities or office expenses. In fact, I understand the rent is paid by the Ministry of Defence.
Having been told where the Institute for Statecraft skulk, I tipped off journalist Kit Klarenberg of Sputnik Radio to go and physically
check it out. Kit did so and was
aggressively
ejected by that well-known Corbyn and Sanders supporter, Simon Bracey-Lane. It does seem somewhat strange that our left wing
hero is deeply embedded in an organisation that
launches troll attacks on Jeremy Corbyn.
I have a great deal more to tell you about Mr Edney and his organisation next week, and the extraordinary covert disinformation
war the British government wages online, attacking British citizens using British taxpayers' money. Please note in the interim I
am not even a smidgeon suicidal, and going to be very, very careful crossing the road and am not intending any walks in the hills.
I am not alleging Mr Bracey-Lane is an intelligence service operative who previously infiltrated the Labour Party and the
Sanders campaign. He may just be a young man of unusually heterodox and vacillating political opinions. He may be an undercover reporter
for the Canary infiltrating the Institute for Statecraft. All these things are possible, and I have no firm information.
But one of the activities the Integrity Initiative sponsors happens to be the use of online trolls to ridicule the idea that the
British security services ever carry out any kind of infiltration, false flag or agent provocateur operations, despite the fact that
we even have repeated court judgements against undercover infiltration officers getting female activists pregnant. The Integrity
Initiative offers us a glimpse into the very dirty world of surveillance and official disinformation. If we actually had a free media,
it would be the biggest story of the day.
As the Establishment feels its grip slipping, as people wake up to the appalling economic exploitation by the few that underlies
the very foundations of modern western society, expect the methods used by the security services to become even dirtier.
You can
bank on continued ramping up of Russophobia to supply "the enemy".
As both Scottish Independence and Jeremy Corbyn are viewed as
real threats by the British Establishment, you can anticipate every possible kind of dirty trick in the next couple of years, with
increasing frequency and audacity
"... In his just published book, War With Russia? ..."
"... To paraphrase Putin: "You are making Russia a threat by declaring us to be one, by discarding facts and substituting orchestrated opinions that your propagandistic media establish as fact via endless repetition." ..."
"... Cohen is correct that during the Cold War every US president worked to defuse tensions, especially Republican ones. Since the Clinton regime every US president has worked to create tensions. What explains this dangerous change in approach? The end of the Cold War was disadvantageous to the military/security complex whose budget and power had waxed from decades of cold war. Suddenly the enemy that had bestowed such wealth and prestige on the military/security complex disappeared. ..."
"... The New Cold War is the result of the military/security complex's resurrection of the enemy. In a democracy with independent media and scholars, this would not have been possible. But the Clinton regime permitted in violation of anti-trust laws 90% of the US media to be concentrated in the hands of six mega-corporations, thus destroying an independence already undermined by the CIA's successful use of the CIA's media assets to control explanations. Many books have been written about the CIA's use of the media, including Udo Ulfkotte's "Bought Journalism," the English edition of which was quickly withdrawn and burned. ..."
Throughout the long Cold War Stephen Cohen, professor of Russian studies at Princeton University and New York University was a
voice of reason. He refused to allow his patriotism to blind him to Washington's contribution to the conflict and to criticize only
the Soviet contribution. Cohen's interest was not to blame the enemy but to work toward a mutual understanding that would remove
the threat of nuclear war. Although a Democrat and left-leaning, Cohen would have been at home in the Reagan administration, as Reagan's
first priority was to end the Cold War. I know this because I was part of the effort. Pat Buchanan will tell you the same thing.
In 1974 a notorious cold warrior, Albert Wohlstetter, absurdly accused the CIA of underestimating the Soviet threat. As the CIA
had every incentive for reasons of budget and power to overestimate the Soviet threat, and today the "Russian threat," Wohlstetter's
accusation made no sense on its face. However he succeeded in stirring up enough concern that CIA director George H.W. Bush, later
Vice President and President, agreed to a Team B to investigate the CIA's assessment, headed by the Russiaphobic Harvard professor
Richard Pipes. Team B concluded that the Soviets thought they could win a nuclear war and were building the forces with which to
attack the US.
The report was mainly nonsense, and it must have have troubled Stephen Cohen to experience the setback to negotiations that Team
B caused.
Today Cohen is stressed that it is the United States that thinks it can win a nuclear war. Washington speaks openly of using "low
yield" nuclear weapons, and intentionally forecloses any peace negotiations with Russia with a propaganda campaign against Russia
of demonization, vilification, and transparent lies, while installing missile bases on Russia's borders and while talking of incorporating
former parts of Russia into NATO. In his just published book, War With Russia? , which I highly recommend, Cohen makes a
convincing case that Washington is asking for war.
I agree with Cohen that if Russia is a threat it is only because the US is threatening Russia. The stupidity of the policy toward
Russia is creating a Russian threat. Putin keeps emphasizing this. To paraphrase Putin: "You are making Russia a threat by declaring
us to be one, by discarding facts and substituting orchestrated opinions that your propagandistic media establish as fact via endless
repetition."
Cohen is correct that during the Cold War every US president worked to defuse tensions, especially Republican ones. Since the
Clinton regime every US president has worked to create tensions. What explains this dangerous change in approach? The end of the Cold War was disadvantageous to the military/security complex whose budget and power had waxed from decades of
cold war. Suddenly the enemy that had bestowed such wealth and prestige on the military/security complex disappeared.
The New Cold War is the result of the military/security complex's resurrection of the enemy. In a democracy with independent media
and scholars, this would not have been possible. But the Clinton regime permitted in violation of anti-trust laws 90% of the US media
to be concentrated in the hands of six mega-corporations, thus destroying an independence already undermined by the CIA's successful
use of the CIA's media assets to control explanations. Many books have been written about the CIA's use of the media, including Udo
Ulfkotte's "Bought Journalism," the English edition of which was quickly withdrawn and burned.
The demonization of Russia is also aided and abetted by the Democrats' hatred of Trump and anger from Hillary's loss of the presidential
election to the "Trump deplorables." The Democrats purport to believe that Trump was installed by Putin's interference in the presidential
election. This false belief is emotionally important to Democrats, and they can't let go of it.
Although Cohen as a professor at Princeton and NYU never lacked research opportunities, in the US Russian studies, strategic studies,
and the like are funded by the military/security complex whose agenda Cohen's scholarship does not serve. At the Center for Strategic
and International Studies, where I held an independently financed chair for a dozen years, most of my colleagues were dependent on
grants from the military/security complex. At the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, where I was a Senior Fellow for three
decades, the anti-Soviet stance of the Institution reflected the agenda of those who funded the institution.
I am not saying that my colleagues were whores on a payroll. I am saying that the people who got the appointments were people
who were inclined to see the Soviet Union the way the military/security complex thought it should be seen.
As Stephen Cohen is aware, in the original Cold War there was some balance as all explanations were not controlled. There were
independent scholars who could point out that the Soviets, decimated by World War 2, had an interest in peace, and that accommodation
could be achieved, thus avoiding the possibility of nuclear war.
Stephen Cohen must have been in the younger ranks of those sensible people, as he and President Reagan's ambassador to the Soviet
Union, Jack Matloff, seem to be the remaining voices of expert reason on the American scene.
If you care to understand the dire threat under which you live, a threat that only a few people, such as Stephen Cohen, are trying
to lift, read his book.
If you want to understand the dire threat that a bought-and-paid-for American media poses to your existence, read Cohen's accounts
of their despicable lies. America has a media that is synonymous with lies.
If you want to understand how corrupt American universities are as organizations on the take for money, organizations to whom
truth is inconsequential, read Cohen's book.
If you want to understand why you could be dead before Global Warming can get you, read Cohen's book.
"... What Are the Democrats Hiding?" http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2017/07/what-are-the-democrats-hiding-by-publius-tacitus.html "Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) demanded that Capitol Police Chief Matthew Verderosa return equipment belonging to her office that was seized as part of the investigation -- or face "consequences." ..."
"... "FBI agents seized smashed computer hard drives from the home of Florida Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz's information technology (IT) administrator, according to two sources with knowledge of the investigation. Pakistani-born Imran Awan, long-time right-hand IT aide to the former Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairwoman, has since desperately tried to get the hard drives back." ..."
"... This is not your phony Russia-gate or McCain-commissioned funny dossier on Trump. This is the documented "serious, potentially illegal, violations of the House IT network," which is a case of a free access to classified information by a group of the proven blackmailers. Would this matter be treated with the same urgency of "patriotism" as the cases of Manning and Assange? ..."
Virtually no one [from MSM] is paying attention to the fact that a group of Pakistani
Muslims, working for a Jewish Congresswoman from Florida, had full computer access to a large
number of Democrat Representatives. Most of the press is disinterested in pursuing this
matter."
"FBI agents seized smashed computer hard drives from the home of Florida Democratic
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz's information technology (IT) administrator, according to two
sources with knowledge of the investigation. Pakistani-born Imran Awan, long-time right-hand
IT aide to the former Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairwoman, has since desperately
tried to get the hard drives back."
This is not your phony Russia-gate or McCain-commissioned funny dossier on Trump. This
is the documented "serious, potentially illegal, violations of the House IT network," which
is a case of a free access to classified information by a group of the proven blackmailers.
Would this matter be treated with the same urgency of "patriotism" as the cases of Manning
and Assange?
"... Sounds to me like that Integrity initiative dude needs to go on a 'de-radicalisation program !!! ..."
"... the powerbrokers have always been in London and now its hypercentralized endgame in Brussels. You can say that it is the US through and through, but ask yourself who has more to gain from US FP abroad: average Americans or the global elites? ..."
"... Those former-Eastern Bloc countries, i.e. Poland and Ukraine, do not count as power brokers. They have and will always be pawns in the game. So what if they still worship Icons of Americanism which is a remnant culture of their F*ed up narrative where they still believe they are fighting the commies. ..."
"... Integrity Initiative ..."
"... From his curriculum vitae (pdf) we learn that Donnelly was a long time soldier in the British Army Intelligence Corps where he established and led the Soviet Studies Research Centre at RMA Sandhurst. He later was involved in creating the US Army's Foreign Military Studies Office (FMSO) at Ft. Leavenworth. ..."
"... He worked at the British Ministry of Defence and as an advisor to several Secretaries General of NATO. He is a director of the Statecraft Institute since 2010. Donnelly also advises the Foreign Minister of Lithuania. He is a "Security and Justice Senior Mentor" of the UK's Stabilisation Unit which is tasked with destabilizing various countries. He serves as a Honorary Colonel of the Specialist Group Military Intelligence (SGMI). ..."
"... This was an order from the core of the British thinking to Donnelly to get even deeper into the inner-British influence business. Hype Russia as a threat so more money can be taken from the 'vested interests' of the people and dumped into the military machine. ..."
"... That particular advise of General Barrons was accepted. In 2017 the Integrity Initiative bid for funding from the Ministry of Defence (pdf) for various projects to influence the public, the parliament and the government as well as foreign forces. The bid lists "performance indicators" that are supposed to measure the success of its activities. The top indicator for the Initiative's proposed work is a "Tougher stance in government policy towards Russia" ..."
"... In March 2014, shortly after Crimea split from the Ukraine, Donnelly suggested Military measures (pdf) to be taken by the Ukraine with regards to Crimea: ..."
"... Think for a moment how Russia would have responded to a mining of Sevastopol harbor, the frying of its satellites or the destruction of its fighter jets in Crimea. Those "guestures" would have been illegal acts of war against the forces of a nuclear power which were legally stationed in Crimea. And how was the west to immediately supply gas to Ukraine and Ukraine's pipeline network is designed to unidirectionally receive gas from Russia? ..."
"... Yes, Putin really believes his own propaganda ..."
"... Putin's paranoia is driving his foreign adventures ..."
"... Russian information warfare - airbrushing reality ..."
"... Distract, deceive, destroy: Putin at war in Syria ..."
"... Russian penetration in Germany ..."
"... Russian conspiracy theory and foreign policy ..."
"... The most recent release of Integrity Initiative documents includes lots of in-depth reports (pdf) about foreign media reactions to the Skripal affair. One wonders why the Initiative commissioned such research (pdf) and paid for it. ..."
"... Here is an interesting look at how little the Russia-linked entities spent on advertising on Google during the 2016 election: https://viableopposition.blogspot.com/2018/12/google-russia-and-4700-in-advertising.html Slowly but surely, the Russian meddling narrative is falling apart. ..."
"... McCarthyesque smear campaigns to discredit opponents and squash dissent has become normal practice. Integrity Initiative tweets against Corbyn is a stark example, but there have been MANY other people and groups that have been tarred with claims of being sponsored/led/influenced by Russia, including Catalonian independence activists and Yellow vest protesters. ..."
"... Dear god, what has gotten into the minds of the military and political "elite" within the UK! Mining Sevastopol would have been an obvious act of war against Russia and Russia would have responded with force. ..."
"... It looks like one of the decision was to get closer to France (after getting very close friends in Homs and Aleppo?) See the list of people in the French II cluster dumped yesterday by Anonymous: half the names work at the fr Min of F Affairs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancaster_House_Treaties and http://www.gmfus.org/publications/frances-defense-partnerships-and-dilemmas-brexit ..."
"... This group may have officially formed in 2015, but its work is no different from the British propaganda that swamped the MSM when MH17 was downed. Tied into the Steel dossier and Russian collusion in the US. This is the anglosphere or five eyes permanent state. ..."
"... it is apparent that this "Integrity Initiative" was engaged in to ensure that the regime was in the safe hands of the harpy. ..."
"... It is interesting that Trudeau, the Canadian figurehead, clothes his country's kidnapping of the Chinese business figure as "in defence of the rule of law." All in all, it is now apparent we would be far better off if the Kaiserreich, with all of its militaristic and bombastic flaws, had triumphed in the Great War. No Hitler, no Stalin, no five eyes fascism. ..."
"... Rules of the game are made up as the game is played to suit the players. There you have it real life imitates art. ..."
"... Better yet, can anyone name an NGO, any NGO ever, that's not closely if not directly linked to "a secret military intelligence operation." Anyone? Mueller? ..."
"... Thank you very much for this terrific analysis. Donnelly: "... it is we who must either generate the debate or wait for something dreadful to happen to shock us into action. " Numerous American publications featured very similar language in the years ahead of 9/11, with "Islamic terrorist threat" substituted for the Russians. ..."
"... Vesti News has published an excellent documentary on how "clusters" work....not only to spread Russophobia...but also on continuous intends to overthrown Russian legitimate government... https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=7&v=E8-Stfrl5aM ..."
"... The last two periods of the US FP could be understood thusly: (1) Pre-Soviet collapse which was marked by a horrifically tragic and misplaced ideal of defending against communism (Good guys v. Bad Guys); and (2) Post-Soviet collapse which has been a period of coup d'etats where our hijacked military has been used for a Globalist Agenda for increasingly opaque (less defensible) reasons and missions. ..."
"... right after 2016 US elections there was a facade of split between military and intelligence differentiation. Seems that veil has been dispensed with ..."
"... Yeah, they hijacked a few other countries too, including Russia. Or if not hijacking, setting the mood right for some shenanigans in the near future... I think you're quite right about the cheif host of the globalist neolib parasite. Hijacked near fully. Being bled dry. That unaccounted for 21 Trillion at the pentagon is a bit of a giveaway. All under the guise of free markets and democracy. ..."
"... 'Integrity Initiative' - A Military Intelligence Operation Designed To Create A New Enemy ..."
Sounds to me like that Integrity initiative dude needs to go on a 'de-radicalisation
program !!! How many billions is that guna save us all ! not to mention lives saved.
Wrong JR. It seems quite the obvious that the big boy in the west, the US, would seem to be
the one spearheading the whole globalist agenda.
But this is a retarded proposition.
The US is nothing more than a Golem. It has been reduced to somnambulism and hijacked,
utilized for the ends of these Non-National elites. Sure, like many posters here, it feels good
to blame the US for everything. But the powerbrokers have always been in London and now its
hypercentralized endgame in Brussels. You can say that it is the US through and through, but
ask yourself who has more to gain from US FP abroad: average Americans or the global
elites?
Those former-Eastern Bloc countries, i.e. Poland and Ukraine, do not count as power
brokers. They have and will always be pawns in the game. So what if they still worship Icons of
Americanism which is a remnant culture of their F*ed up narrative where they still believe they
are fighting the commies.
Muntadhar al-Zaidi was arrested and tortured for it...
"They broke my teeth, my nose, my leg, they electrocuted me, lashed me, they would beat me,
they even broke a table or a chair over my back. I don't know, they had my eyes covered,"
al-Zaidi recalled. "This was one thing I never experienced before. Torture by the
authorities, by the rule of law."
I wish it had been a hand grenade.
The British government financed Integrity Initiative is tasked with spreading
anti-Russian propaganda and with influencing the public, military and governments of a number
of countries. What follows is an incomplete analysis of the third batch of the Initiative's
papers which was
dumped yesterday.
Christopher Nigel Donnelly (CND) is the co-director of The Institute for Statecraft and founder of its offshoot
Integrity Initiative . The
Initiative claims to "Defend Democracy Against Disinformation".
Both, the Institute as well as the Initiative, claim to be independent Non-Government
Organizations. Both are financed by the British government, NATO and other state donors.
Among the documents
lifted by some anonymous person from the servers of the Institute we find several papers
about Donnelly as well as some memos written by him. They show a russophobe mind with a lack of
realistic strategic thought.
There is also
a file (pdf) with a copy of his passport:
From his
curriculum vitae (pdf) we learn that Donnelly was a long time soldier in the British Army
Intelligence Corps where he established and led the Soviet Studies Research Centre at RMA
Sandhurst. He later was involved in creating the US Army's Foreign Military Studies Office
(FMSO) at Ft. Leavenworth.
He worked at the British Ministry of Defence and as an advisor to several Secretaries
General of NATO. He is a director of the Statecraft Institute since 2010. Donnelly also advises
the Foreign Minister of Lithuania. He is a "Security and Justice Senior Mentor" of the UK's
Stabilisation Unit which
is tasked with destabilizing various countries. He serves as a Honorary Colonel of the
Specialist Group Military Intelligence (SGMI).
During his time as military intelligence analyst in the 1980s Donnelly wrote several books
and papers about the Soviet Union and its military.
Our problem is that, for the last 70 years or so, we in the UK and Europe have been living in
a safe, secure rules-based system which has allowed us to enjoy a holiday from history.
... ... ...
Unfortunately, this state of affairs is now being challenged. A new paradigm of conflict
is replacing the 19th & 20th Century paradigm.
... ... ...
In this new paradigm, the clear distinction which most people have been able to draw
between war and peace, their expectation of stability and a degree of predictability in life,
are being replaced by a volatile unpredictability, a permanent state of instability in which
war and peace become ever more difficult to disentangle . The "classic" understanding of
conflict being between two distinct players or groups of players is giving way to a world of
Darwinian competition where all the players – nation states, sub-state actors, big
corporations, ethnic or religious groups, and so on – are constantly striving with each
other in a "war of all against all". The Western rules-based system, which most westerners
take for granted and have come to believe is "normal", is under attack from countries and
organisations which wish to replace our system with theirs. This is not a crisis which faces
us; it is a strategic challenge, and from several directions simultaneously.
In reality the "Western rules-based system", fully implemented after the demise of the
Soviet Union, is a concept under which 'the west' arbitrarily makes up rules and threatens to
kill anyone who does not follow them. Witness the wars against Serbia, the war on Iraq, the
destruction of Libya, the western led coup in Ukraine and the war by Jihadi proxies against the
people of Syria and Iraq. None of these actions were legal under international law. Demanding a
return to strict adherence to the rule of international law, as Russia,
China and others now do, it is not an attempt to replace "our system with theirs". It is a
return to the normal state of global diplomacy. It is certainly not a "Darwinian
competition".
In October 2016 Donnelly had a Private
Discussion with Gen Sir Richard Barrons (pdf), marked as personal and confidential. Barrons
is a former commander of the British Joint Forces Command. The nonsensical top line is: "The UK
defence model is failing. UK is at real risk."
Some interesting nuggets again reveal a paranoid mindset. The talk also includes some
realistic truthiness about the British military posture Barrons and others created:
There has been a progressive, systemic demobilisation of NATO militarily capability and a run
down of all its members' defences
...
We are seeing new / reinvented ways of warfare – hybrid , plus the reassertion of hard
power in warfare
...
Aircraft Carriers can be useful for lots of things, but not for war v China or Russia, so we
should equip them accordingly. ...
The West no longer has a military edge on Russia. ...
Our Nuclear programme drains resources from conventional forces and hollows them out. ...
The UK Brigade in Germany is no good as a deterrent against Russia. ...
Our battalion in Estonia are hostages, not a deterrent. ...
The general laments the lack of influence the military has on the British government and its
people. He argues for more government financed think tank research that can be fed back into
the government:
So, if no catastrophe happens to wake people up and demand a response, then we need to find a
way to get the core of government to realise the problem and take it out of the political
space. We will need to impose changes over the heads of vested interests. NB We did this in
the 1930s
My conclusion is that it is we who must either generate the debate or wait for something
dreadful to happen to shock us into action. We must generate an independent debate outside
government .
...
We need to ask when and how do we start to put all this right? Do we have the national
capabilities / capacities to fix it? If so, how do we improve our harnessing of resources to
do it? We need this debate NOW. There is not a moment to be lost.
This was an order from the core of the British thinking to Donnelly to get even deeper
into the inner-British influence business. Hype Russia as a threat so more money can be taken
from the 'vested interests' of the people and dumped into the military machine.
That particular advise of General Barrons was accepted. In 2017 the Integrity Initiative
bid for funding from the Ministry of Defence (pdf) for various projects to influence the
public, the parliament and the government as well as foreign forces. The bid lists "performance
indicators" that are supposed to measure the success of its activities. The top indicator for
the Initiative's proposed work is a "Tougher stance in government policy towards Russia"
.
Asking for government finance to influence the government to take a "tougher stand towards
Russia" seems a bit circular. But this is consistent with the operation of other Anglo-American
think tanks and policy initiatives in which one part of the government, usually the hawkish
one, secretly uses NGO's and think-tanks to lobby other parts of the government to support
their specific hobbyhorse and budget.
Here is how it is done. The 'experts' of the 'charity' Institute for Statecraft and
Integrity Initiative
testified
in the British parliament. While they were effectively paid by the government they lobbied
parliament under the cover of their NGO. This circularity also allows to use international
intermediates. Members of the Spanish cluster
(pdf) of the Initiative
testified in the British Parliament about the Catalan referendum and related allegations
against Wikileaks publisher Julian Assange. (It is likely that this testimony led to the change
in the position of the Ecuadorian government towards Assange.)
Unfortunately, or luckily, such lobbying operations are mostly run by people who are
incompetent in the specific field they are lobbying for. Chris Donnelly, despite a life long
experience in military intelligence, has obviously zero competence as a military strategist or
planner.
In March 2014, shortly after Crimea split from the Ukraine, Donnelly suggested
Military
measures (pdf) to be taken by the Ukraine with regards to Crimea:
If I were in charge I would get the following implemented asp
Set up a cordon sanitaire across the Crimean Isthmus and on the coast N. of Crimea with
troops and mines
Mine Sevastopol harbour/bay. Can be done easily using a car ferry if they have no
minelayers. Doesn't need a lot of mines to be effective. They could easily buy some
mines.
Get their air force into the air and activate all their air defences. If they can't fly
the Migs on the airfield in Crimea those should be destroyed as a gesture that they are
serious. Going "live" electronically will worry the Russians as the Ukrainians have the
same electronic kit. If the Russians jam it they jam their own kit as well.
Ukraine used to have some seriously important weapons, such as a big microwave
anti-satellite weapon. If they still have this, they should use it.
The government needs a Strategic communication campaign-so far everything is coming
from Moscow. They need to articulate a long-term vision that will inspire the people,
however hard that is to do. Without it, what have people to fight for?
They should ask the west now to start supplying Oil and gas. There is plenty available
due to the mild winter.
I am trying to get this message across
Think for a moment how Russia would have responded to a mining of Sevastopol harbor, the
frying of its satellites or the destruction of its fighter jets in Crimea. Those "guestures"
would have been illegal acts of war against the forces of a nuclear power which were legally
stationed in Crimea. And how was the west to immediately supply gas to Ukraine and Ukraine's
pipeline network is designed to unidirectionally receive gas from Russia?
Such half-assed thinking is typical for the Institute and its creation of propaganda. One of
its employees/contractors is Hugh Benedict Nimmo who the Initiative paid to produce
anti-Russian propaganda that was then disseminated through various western publications.
According to the (still very incomplete) Initiative files Ben Nimmo
received a monthly consultancy fee of £2.500 between December 2015 and March 2016. In
August 2016 he sent an invoice
(pdf) of £5,000 for his "August work on Integrity Initiative". A
Production Timetable (pdf) for March to June 2016 lists the following Nimmo outputs and
activities:
17 March Atlantic Council: Yes, Putin really believes his own propaganda , Ben
Nimmo
21 March Newsweek: Putin's paranoia is driving his foreign adventures , Ben
Nimmo
22 March, UK House of Commons: Russian information warfare - airbrushing
reality , Jonathan Eyal and Ben Nimmo
Mid May: Atlantic Council: Distract, deceive, destroy: Putin at war in Syria .
Ben Nimmo et al (Major study)
Early May timeframe: Russian penetration in Germany , Harold Elletson, Ben
Nimmo et al - 10,000 words
June timeframe: Atlantic Council, major report on Russian conspiracy theory and
foreign policy , Ben Nimmo (potential launch events in London and / or
Washington)
End-June: Mapping Russia's whole influence machine , Ben Nimmo - 10,000
words
One wonders how often Ben Nimmo double billed his various sponsors for these copy-paste
fantasy pamphlets.
In late 2017 Ben Nimmo and Guardian 'journalist' Carole Cadwalladr disseminated
allegations that Russia used Facebook ads to influence the Brexit decision. Cadwalladr even
received a price for her work. Unfortunately the price was not revoked when Facebook revealed
that "Russia linked" accounts had spend a total of 97 cents on Brexit ads. It is unexplained
how that was enough to achieve their alleged aim.
Cadwalladr is listed
as a speaker (pdf) at a "skill sharing" conference the Institute organized for November 1-2
under the headline: "Tackling Tools of Malign Influence - Supporting 21st Century
Journalism".
This year Ben Nimmo became notorious for claiming that
several real persons with individual opinions were "Russian trolls". As we
noted :
Nimmo, and several other dimwits quoted in the piece, came to the conclusion that Ian56 is
a Kremlin paid troll, not a real person. Next to Ian56 Nimmo 'identified' other 'Russian
troll' accounts:
One particularly influential retweeter (judging by the number of accounts which then
retweeted it) was @ValLisitsa, which posts in English and Russian. Last year, this account
joined the troll-factory #StopMorganLie campaign.
Had Nimmo, a former NATO spokesperson, had some decent education he would have
know that @ValLisitsa, aka Valentina Lisitsa , is a famous
American- Ukrainian pianist. Yes, she sometimes tweets in Russian language to her many fans
in Russia and the Ukraine. Is that now a crime? The videos of her world wide
performances on Youtube have more than 170 million views. It is absurd to claim that she is a
'Russian troll' and to insinuate that she is taking Kremlin money to push 'Russian troll'
opinions.
The
Institute for Statecraft Expert Team (pdf) list several people with military intelligence
backgrounds as well as many 'journalists'. One of them is:
Mark Galeotti
Specialist in Russian strategic thinking; the application of Russian disinformation and
hybrid warfare; the use of organised crime as a weapon of hybrid warfare. Educational and
mentoring skills, including in a US and E European environment, and the corporate world.
Russian linguist
Galeotti is the infamous inventor of the 'Gerasimov doctrine' and of the propaganda about
Russia's alleged 'hybrid' warfare. In February 2013 the Russian General Valery Gerasimov, then
Russia's chief of the General Staff, published a paper that analysed the way the 'west' is
waging a new type of war by mixing propaganda, proxy armies and military force into one unified
operation.
Galeotti claimed that Gerasimov's analysis of 'western' operations was a new Russian
doctrine of 'hybrid war'. He invented the term 'Gerasimov doctrine' which then took off in the
propaganda realm. In February 2016 the U.S. Army Military Review
published a longer analysis of Gerasimov's paper that debunked the nonsense (pdf). It
concluded:
Gerasimov's article is not proposing a new Russian way of warfare or a hybrid war, as has
been stated in the West.
But anti-Russian propagandist
repeated Galeotti's nonsense over and over. Only in March 2018, five years after Galeotti
invented the 'Germasimov doctrine' and two years after he was thoroughly debunked, he finally
recanted
:
Everywhere, you'll find scholars, pundits, and policymakers talking about the threat the
"Gerasimov doctrine" -- named after Russia's chief of the general staff -- poses to the West.
It's a new way of war, "an expanded theory of modern warfare," or even "a vision of total
warfare."
There's one small problem. It doesn't exist. And the longer we pretend it does, the longer
we misunderstand the -- real, but different -- challenge Russia poses.
I feel I can say that because, to my immense chagrin, I created this term, which has since
acquired a destructive life of its own, lumbering clumsily into the world to spread fear and
loathing in its wake.
The Institute for Statecraft's "Specialist in Russian strategic thinking", an expert of
disinformation and hybrid warfare, created a non-existing Russian doctrine out of hot air and
used it to press for anti-Russian measures. Like Ben Nimmo he is an aptly example of the
quality of the Institute's experts and work.
One of the newly released documents headlined CND Gen list 2
(pdf) (CND= Chris Nigel Donnelly) includes the names and email addresses of a number of
military, government and think tank people. The anonymous releaser of the documents claims that
the list is "of employees who attended a closed-door meeting with the white helmets". (No
document has been published yet that confirms this.) One name on the list is of special
interest:
Pablo Miller was the handler and friend of Sergej Skripal, the British double agent who was
"novichoked" in Salisbury. When Miller's name was mentioned in the press the British government
issued a D-Notice to suppress its further publishing,
Pablo Miller, a British MI6 agent, had
recruited Sergej Skripal. The former MI6 agent in Moscow, Christopher Steele, was also
involved in the case. Skripal was caught by the Russian security services and went to jail.
Pablo Miller, the MI6 recruiter, was also the handler of Sergej Skripal after he was released
by Russia in a spy swap. He reportedly also lives in Salisbury. Both Christopher Steele and
Pablo Miller work for Orbis Business Intelligence which created the "Dirty Dossier" about
Donald Trump.
At the very beginning of the Skripal affair, before there was any talk of 'Novichok', we
asked
if Skripal was involved in creating the
now debunked "Dirty Dossier" and if that was a reason for certain British insiders to move
him out of the way:
Here are some question:
Did Skripal help Steele to make up the "dossier" about Trump?
Were Skripal's old connections used to contact other people in Russia to ask about
Trump dirt?
Did Skripal threaten to talk about this?
If there is a connection between the dossier and Skripal, which seems very likely to me,
then there are a number of people and organizations with potential motives to kill him. Lots
of shady folks and officials on both sides of the Atlantic were involved in creating and
running the anti-Trump/anti-Russia campaign. There are several investigations and some very
dirty laundry might one day come to light. Removing Skripal while putting the blame on Russia
looks like a convenient way to get rid of a potential witness.
The
most recent release of Integrity Initiative documents includes lots of in-depth
reports (pdf) about foreign media reactions to the Skripal affair. One wonders why the
Initiative commissioned
such research (pdf) and paid for it.
After two years the Muller investigation found zero
evidence for the 'collusion' between Russia and the Trump campaign that the fake Steele
dossier suggested. The whole collusion claim is a creation by 'former' British intelligence
operatives who likely acted on request of U.S. intelligence leaders Clapper and Brennan. How
deep was the Russia specialist Chris Donnelly and his Institute for Statecraft involved in this
endeavor?
Checking through all the released Initiative papers and lists one gets the impression of a
secret military intelligence operation, disguised as a public NGO. Financed by millions of
government money the Institute for Statecraft and the Integrity Initiative work under a charity
label to create and disseminate disinformation to the global public and back into the
government and military itself.
The paranoia about Russia, which does way less harm than the 'western' "rules based system"
constantly creates, is illogical and not based on factual analysis. It creates Russia as an
"enemy" when it is none. It hypes a "threat" out of hot air. The only people who profit from
this are the propagandists and the companies and people who back them.
The Initiatives motto "Defend Democracy Against Disinformation" is a truly Orwellian
construct. By disseminating propaganda and using it to influence the public, parliament, the
military and governments, the Institute actively undermines the democratic process that depends
on the free availability of truthful information.
It should be shut down immediately.
---
Note: There have already been attempts to delete the released files from the Internet. A
complete archive of all Integrity Initiative files published so far is here . Should
the public links cease to work, you can contact the author of this blog for access to private
backups.
Aside from the fact that the government itself funds this organization, the creepiest thing
about it is that the "non-governmental individuals" that help fund it are the same people
that run the think tanks: a bunch of Rhodesians.
"Such half-assed thinking...Think for a moment how Russia would have responded to a mining of
Sevastopol harbor, the frying of its satellites or the destruction of its fighter jets in
Crimea. Those "gestures" would have been illegal acts of war against the forces of a nuclear
power which were legally stationed in Crimea."
It sure seems like this half-assed thinking isn't just the domain of a fringe element, but
is increasingly mainstream among the elites. Doesn't bode well.
Thank you B. It is truly amazing to watch the UK elites unravel as they have become truly
unhinged by their own connivances. It is a bad joke at the commoner's expense that they
propagandize and demonize in the name of the 'Western rules based system' even as they are
busy shooting themselves in both feet by committing Brexit. Although there are legitimate
grievances with the EU, it is clear that Brexit is a Tory power play that is all politics and
zero governance. Alas, Perfidious Albion has succumbed to Mad Cow disease.
What remains mysterious (not really) is why --if these initiatives are truly meant to save
and strengthen democracy-- they aren't proudly proclaimed and advertised, in the open,
transparent, for everyone one to see and judge, like an adult democracy that they claim to
stand for might want to debate and form an opinion on.
The fact that it isn't, is testimony to the nefarious anti-democratic, authoritarian and
totalitarian streak that runs in between every two lines that they put on paper.
McCarthyesque smear campaigns to discredit opponents and squash dissent has become normal
practice. Integrity Initiative tweets against Corbyn is a stark example, but there have been
MANY other people and groups that have been tarred with claims of being
sponsored/led/influenced by Russia, including Catalonian independence activists and Yellow
vest protesters.
Every time one scratches the surface of such smears, it seems there is a connection to
US/British MIC, Ukraine, or Israel - essentially, those who benefit (financially or
otherwise) from greater tensions with Russia.
At what point does neocon doubling-down on failed foreign policy become more than just
picking our pockets and warping our minds? At what point do they start killing our kids in
another unnecessary war?
Cold War has been over for nearly 30 years. It's time enough for Western countries to send
into real retirement every single cold-warrior, their time is over, their mindset is quaint
and useless, if not downright dangerous and counter-productive.
Thank you 'b'
I'll just say -- - there is safety in numbers ! Already valuable information, important to
the public good and democracy has been spread wide enough to be certain, this gene won't go
back in the bottle ! D notice or no ! And by doing that, has made the fearless journalists
and investigators lives all the safer ! Safety in numbers, spread this wide everyone?
Thanks for the continued exposition of this story b.....may it go viral
I want to comment on some of the wording you quote Donnelly as writing
" .....is giving way to a world of Darwinian competition where all the players
– nation states, sub-state actors, big corporations, ethnic or religious groups, and
so on – are constantly striving with each other in a "war of all against all".
"
This is Donnelly's characterization of a world in which finance is a public utility
instead of the private jackboot that it currently is. This is the delusion these people have
been led to believe.
So instead of his "war of all against all" that some might call human cooperation on the
basis of merit we have a mythical God of Mammon religion that continues to instantiate the
private finance led world of the West with it parasitic elite and fawning acolytes.
Dear god, what has gotten into the minds of the military and political "elite" within the
UK! Mining Sevastopol would have been an obvious act of war against Russia and Russia would
have responded with force.
Thankfully it wasn't done but the fact this was even discussed by senior figures confirms
that there was at least a sizable minority pushing for it. 30 years after the fall of the
Soviet Union, the Western elite have truly abandoned all sense of reality and embraced a
consequence free view of the use of force. After Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya they haven't
learned a thing! I'm becoming more and more certain that a peaceful transition to the
multipolar world is impossible and that it will only happen after the US or one of its'
vassal states blunder into a proxy war and get utterly and comprehensively defeated, forcing
a radical world realignment, but with nuts like John Bolton and the neocons in the Whitehouse
it could easily lead to a nuclear war
This group may have officially formed in 2015, but its work is no different from the
British propaganda that swamped the MSM when MH17 was downed. Tied into the Steel dossier and
Russian collusion in the US. This is the anglosphere or five eyes permanent state.
exiled off mainstreet , Dec 15, 2018 2:22:39 PM |
link
As an aside this happens to be "Bill of Rights Day", the anniversary of the passage of the
Bill of Rights as amendments to the yankee constitution. This reveals again how far from the
rule of law the yankee imperium, now the key element of the British Empire they supposedly
seceded from, has strayed, since it is apparent that this "Integrity Initiative" was
engaged in to ensure that the regime was in the safe hands of the harpy.
It has also ensured that the victorious candidate has been neutered and faithfully follows
the world control line put forward by the five eyes spy-masters making up the empire in its
present iteration. This also shows what a farce the regime, based on the rule of law, now
presents.
It is interesting that Trudeau, the Canadian figurehead, clothes his country's
kidnapping of the Chinese business figure as "in defence of the rule of law." All in all, it
is now apparent we would be far better off if the Kaiserreich, with all of its militaristic
and bombastic flaws, had triumphed in the Great War. No Hitler, no Stalin, no five eyes
fascism.
The "Western-based rules system" described in this article reminds me of a game called
"Calvin Ball" which appeared in the former comic strip "Calvin and Hobbes." In the strip
Calvin a wildly imaginative adolescent boy who plays a free-form of football with his
imaginary pet toy tiger (Hobbes). Rules of the game are made up as the game is played to
suit the players. There you have it real life imitates art.
b, I downloaded the zip file, and had also downloaded all the PDF's from pdf-archive
yesterday. There are more files in the zip, but the following were on pdf-archive and are NOT
in the zip:
integrity-france.pdf (this is a dud, looks like html, prob. response from a failed
attempt to put a file up on pdf-archive)
Better yet, can anyone name an NGO, any NGO ever, that's not closely if not directly
linked to "a secret military intelligence operation." Anyone? Mueller?
Thank you very much for this terrific analysis. Donnelly: "... it is we who must either
generate the debate or wait for something dreadful to happen to shock us into action. "
Numerous American publications featured very similar language in the years ahead of 9/11,
with "Islamic terrorist threat" substituted for the Russians.
Emmanuel Goldstein , Dec 15, 2018 4:21:51 PM |
link
The transcript of his conversation with the general shows very starkly that we would last
about two minutes in a nuclear exchange, but about half a day in a conventional one. No
reserves, no equipment stockpiles, a navy consisting of two fat targets, neither of which has
any aircraft and some destroyers which have propulsion problems, a smallish air force and
very small numbers of troops. The tripwire force in Estonia is wholly sacrificial. In fact he
lays bare the whole fallacy of biting the bear. With the armed forces in the state he
describes, and with the recruitment and retention problems, wouldn't it be better, as one
defense minister said, 'to go away and shut up'...
Thanks b and especially the link to Valentina Lisitsa who I had tinkling in the background as
I read your grand expose. These people are seditious morons, parasites infesting the state
apparatus. Shut these fools down. Nice touch publishing the passport image. I can just
imagine the frenzied aftermath of Kit's visit to the basement. Big thanks to anonymous and
Craig Murray too. Their IT personel are probably visiting Devil's Island or Diego Garcia as
we read.
Vesti News has published an excellent documentary on how "clusters" work....not only to
spread Russophobia...but also on continuous intends to overthrown Russian legitimate
government... https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=7&v=E8-Stfrl5aM
The British and US connections to loot and evade Russian riches and funds are exposed, as
well as the origin of sanctions, supposed "alt-media" "truth-seakers" like Meduza...or
supposed "pro-Russian" US intelligence operatives married to Russian women....
Amongst the many issues he usually passes over trying to make himself the fool, while at
the same time trying to convince us of the oustanding intellectual capacities, honesty and
classy stance of him and his "comittee"...
For that travel, to end bluntly and in such public view siding with the nazis of the "Azov
Regiment" and other criminals of war, there was no need of so many saddlebags, so as
pretending that the people who supported Trump as if there was no tomorrow, were enlightened
people who only wanted to rescue "America" for the "Americans", as if there would not be a
sign of blatant exceptionalism in appropriating of the term "Americans" for themselves in
such a huge continent....
In my view, the USA's FP has been undermined by EURO elites which is forcing a game of
chicken with Russia.
The FP pre-Soviet collapse consisted of one MO: GET THE COMMIES!
Since then, Neocons and Neolibs which are frontmen for this Non-National Globalized Elite,
have hijacked our country's military and have steered it to a Global agenda where dominance
in the ME means either superiority for these EURO elites or Vassal-hood.
The last two periods of the US FP could be understood thusly: (1) Pre-Soviet collapse
which was marked by a horrifically tragic and misplaced ideal of defending against communism
(Good guys v. Bad Guys); and (2) Post-Soviet collapse which has been a period of coup d'etats
where our hijacked military has been used for a Globalist Agenda for increasingly opaque
(less defensible) reasons and missions.
The average American could care less about the ME and the US would be 1000x better-off
reverting to an isolationist stance.
But this will not happen so long as Nationalism in the US and UK is repeatedly put-down.
It seems as though there is going to be another Brexit vote. Does anyone doubt that
miraculously the people by then will have second-guessed their will to Brexit and so will
vote against it given another crack at a vote?
Import IT workers and staff science faculties from abroad w dual citizens while kkr
buys wafer labs that outsource to mainland for manufacturing
Cry boo hoo hoo to wake up with indigenous capacity decades behind world players like
Russia, China, India, etc who operate on fractional budgets...
But this drama also exposes ashura/emigods intra necine warfare: right after 2016 US
elections there was a facade of split between military and intelligence differentiation.
Seems that veil has been dispensed with , but it invites other questions, insofar as UK
is Her Majesty's Service, so are we to read this with Prince Harry or Philip's culture, or a
"consent by silence") in mind? Defending crown or EU "Saturnus Sattelitus"?
Yeah, they hijacked a few other countries too, including Russia. Or if not hijacking,
setting the mood right for some shenanigans in the near future... I think you're quite right
about the cheif host of the globalist neolib parasite. Hijacked near fully. Being bled dry.
That unaccounted for 21 Trillion at the pentagon is a bit of a giveaway. All under the guise
of free markets and democracy.
Good to see Trump finally give it a face... 'you need freedom and security now pay up
bitches'
In my view, the USA's FP has been undermined by EURO elites which is forcing a game of
chicken with Russia.... Globalist Agenda
I think the opposite is true.
The US-led Empire and their globalist sycophants seek to weaken Europe so that it can not
act independently in its own best interests. They will do what ever they can to ensure that
the vassals never join with Russia/China and the SCO.
Russian scare-mongering and immigration have been effective in furthering this agenda.
Also note: what USA has termed "new Europe" - eastern European states like Poland and Ukraine
- are solidly pro-American.
"... MI6, along with elements of the CIA, was behind the Steele Dossier. Representatives of John Brennan met in London to discus before the go ahead was given. They later put Michael Steele onto the project; he was a guy with credible Russian contacts. Basically, the scam worked like this: ..."
"... They funneled an MI6 intelligence file to Michael Steele (governments routinely keep such files on influential foreigners and what they are up to) so he could use his contacts to launder the information and make it appear that it came from sources within Russia; they then funneled the report back to elements of the FBI so they could use it to justify to the FISA court a spying campaign on Trump ..."
"... the Obama regime purposely mishandled information in regards to the spying program (ex: Michael Steele leaked his document to various news sources before the election and later lied to congress about it), ensuring it would leak to the press; the Obama regime illegally unmasked elements of Trump's personal contacts so they could clandestinely leak suggested targets off the record to the right people ..."
"... They lost the election anyway, so they then planted dirt and negative press to make the document look legit – lies about Manafort meeting Assange (Guardian is funded by the British government to police the left), WaPo lies claiming a vast Russian conspiracy just as Trump came into office (it was an effort to delegitimize him and create calls for Hillary to take his place), leaking bank records, the special counsel .and leaking information on Trump policies to the media using a secret security clearance credentials program enacted by Obama. ..."
"... The government takes CCTV footage of you at a grocery store; in the background there is an attractive woman. The woman then goes missing. The government illegally reads your emails and finds that you like sexual jokes. The government then interviews a friend of yours who claims that you once made a risque rape joke back in college. They also plant a mole in your workplace who befriends you and reports back all of your politically incorrect humor. Then the cops find the woman's body and the government claims that you killed her because you were in the area at the time and you make bad jokes, which has been confirmed by multiple credible people. You look guilty, don't you? The government 1) took information out of context 2) laundered circumstantial evidence through a credible witness when they originally obtained it elsewhere using nefarious sources. That's what they did to Trump, but much much much worse. ..."
"... And don't forget the Skripals' affair and the relationships (via M16) between Mr. Steele and Mr. Skripal: https://thedeepstate.com/steele-skripal/ ..."
"You don't say; British Collusion to influence the 2016 US Presidential elections."
MI6, along with elements of the CIA, was behind the Steele Dossier. Representatives of
John Brennan met in London to discus before the go ahead was given. They later put Michael
Steele onto the project; he was a guy with credible Russian contacts. Basically, the scam
worked like this:
They funneled an MI6 intelligence file to Michael Steele (governments routinely keep such
files on influential foreigners and what they are up to) so he could use his contacts to
launder the information and make it appear that it came from sources within Russia; they then
funneled the report back to elements of the FBI so they could use it to justify to the FISA
court a spying campaign on Trump (the FBI illegally withheld the source of the document);
they found nothing proving any Russian connection but they kept the spy program going; they
tried justifying the spy program with a fake story involving a reliable asset that once
passed information from Jimmy Carter's campaign to George H.W. Bush in an effort to help
Reagan win the 1980 election; they later paid the asset nearly a quarter million dollars for
his efforts using a fake "India-China" grant despite the grant running to 2018, the asset
attempted to get a job in the Trump administration so he could act as a mole ; the Obama
regime purposely mishandled information in regards to the spying program (ex: Michael Steele
leaked his document to various news sources before the election and later lied to congress
about it), ensuring it would leak to the press; the Obama regime illegally unmasked elements
of Trump's personal contacts so they could clandestinely leak suggested targets off the
record to the right people
They lost the election anyway, so they then planted dirt and negative press to make the
document look legit – lies about Manafort meeting Assange (Guardian is funded by the
British government to police the left), WaPo lies claiming a vast Russian conspiracy just as
Trump came into office (it was an effort to delegitimize him and create calls for Hillary to
take his place), leaking bank records, the special counsel .and leaking information on Trump
policies to the media using a secret security clearance credentials program enacted by Obama.
They also ran interference through CIA guys like Mark Warner in an effort to cover up the
mole they planted; they falsely asserted this was a national security issue when the man's
identity was well-known to the press and he was never an undercover spy like Jarret was, at
least not in recent history.
To put this all into perspective, imagine the following scenario:
The government takes CCTV footage of you at a grocery store; in the background there is an
attractive woman. The woman then goes missing. The government illegally reads your emails and
finds that you like sexual jokes. The government then interviews a friend of yours who claims
that you once made a risque rape joke back in college. They also plant a mole in your
workplace who befriends you and reports back all of your politically incorrect humor. Then
the cops find the woman's body and the government claims that you killed her because you were
in the area at the time and you make bad jokes, which has been confirmed by multiple credible
people. You look guilty, don't you? The government 1) took information out of context 2)
laundered circumstantial evidence through a credible witness when they originally obtained it
elsewhere using nefarious sources. That's what they did to Trump, but much much much
worse.
"... Having said that, still worrying that the CIA devotes time to finding out what Maureen Dowd might write! ..."
"... It is true that Mazzetti's emails with the CIA do not shock or surprise in the slightest. But that's the point. With some noble journalistic exceptions (at the NYT and elsewhere), these emails reflect the standard full-scale cooperation – a virtual merger – between our the government and the establishment media outlets that claim to act as "watchdogs" over them." ..."
"... A few years ago the New York Times reported that there had been a successful coup in Venezuela - toppling Chavez. The story turned out to be inaccurate. The NY Times finally revealed their source - US State Dept... who were using NYT to give critical mass and support to their dream end to a thorn in their side. ..."
"... The New York Times-all the news the CIA decided is fit to print. ..."
Great column. The NYT does do some good things, such as give us Paul Krugman three times a
week, some important reporting and articulate editorial opposition to the republican
nightmare, but they are much, much too close to the government, as evidenced by their asking
for permission to print news the White House disapproves of.
They are also devoted to denying their readers an accurate picture of American foreign
policy. I frequently comment on threads there and my contributions nearly always get posted,
except when I use the word empire. I have never succeeded in getting that word onto their
website , nor have I seen it make it into anyone else's comment. It is like the famous
episode of Fawlty Towers. "Don't mention the empire.'' Stories and commentaries sometimes
describe specific aspects of US policy in negative terms, but connecting the dots is
obviously forbidden.
Bill Keller is like a character from The Wire. The perfect example of the kind of
authority-revering careerist that butt-kisses his way to the top in institutions.
most of the story seems to come down to the usual kind of thing we see from Judicial
Watch - manufactured outrage over almost nothing
I think part of the outrage here is the extent to which it's almost hard to muster the
energy because it's become so much the norm for the NYTimes to be in bed with whoever is in
power in Washington at any given time. It's the sort of thing that should be "they did
what!!!!?" but instead it's "yeah, well, Judith Miller, Wen Ho Lee, etcetc ... >long
drawn-out sigh<." So, perhaps there is some manufacturing of outrage, but not unreasonably
so if you take a step back and look at what's going on.
Having said that, still worrying that the CIA devotes time to finding out what Maureen
Dowd might write!
"This cynicism – oh, don't be naive: this is done all the time – is precisely
what enables such destructive behavior to thrive unchallenged.
It is true that Mazzetti's emails with the CIA do not shock or surprise in the slightest.
But that's the point. With some noble journalistic exceptions (at the NYT and elsewhere),
these emails reflect the standard full-scale cooperation – a virtual merger –
between our the government and the establishment media outlets that claim to act as
"watchdogs" over them."
Once a corrupt practice is sufficiently perceived as commonplace, then it is transformed
in people's minds from something objectionable into something acceptable. Indeed, many
people believe it demonstrates their worldly sophistication to express indifference toward
bad behavior by powerful actors on the ground that it is so prevalent. This cynicism
– oh, don't be naive: this is done all the time – is precisely what enables
such destructive behavior to thrive unchallenged.
This is extremely important, and manifestly true. One runs into such people all the
time.
I haven't read any comments yet, but it would not surprise me to find some of them already
here.
Even worse, I've done it myself on occasion, most recently just the other day on a Cif
thread. Though I will say this; this kind of bullshit is not so much "transformed in people's
minds from something objectionable into something acceptable ", as grudgingly
transformed into something unstoppable , but still toxic and objectionable.
That's mighty thin gruel as an alibi, but the reality for a lot of ordinary working people
is they get fucking tired of it, and yes, they do get discouraged, then cynical and hardened
to it all.
That, of course, is part of the plan.
I'm unaware of a "source" being a person who requests documents from the reporter for doing
damage control on behalf of the boss. (Not that I'd worry about Dowd either.) How exactly is
this secret national intel? I'm glad this came out. We are being manipulated by the govt.
through its minions in the media. The entire incident, from the glorious movie to this
revelation is a fraud.
I found this interesting example of media manipulation at nakedcapitalsim.org:
"Pro-marijuana group endorses Obama The Hill. This purported group, which claims 10,000
members, appears to be just one guy with a PO Box and a press list. But don't count on your
average reporter digging deeper than the news release.":
Read more at http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/08/links-82812.html#717LX1oL7dfPsb7I.99
The breadth and depth of propagandizing of citizens is astounding. I wonder what it's like
to have so little integrity. What kind of person so readily sells out their fellow citizen
with lies? It's scary because people read these things and they have no idea they are lies.
People are making decisions based on manufactured "facts". It's very difficult to find actual
information and I can tell you from personal experience, Obama supporters cling desperately
to "authorities" like the NYTimes to maintain their belief in the goodness of dear
leader.
This weird big-brother relationship goes both ways.
A few years ago the New York Times reported that there had been a successful coup in
Venezuela - toppling Chavez. The story turned out to be inaccurate.
The NY Times finally revealed their source - US State Dept... who were using NYT to give
critical mass and support to their dream end to a thorn in their side.
Nice investigative journalism. A couple of years ago the NYTmade a big deal of publicly
firing a low level writer for making up articles from his NY apt when he was supposed to be
in the field. He was hardly the worst of the bunch.
Great article and thankfully I do not trust big newspapers in the USA especially the New York
Times since it has being caught lying about Weapons of Mass Destructions in Iraq to justify
the Iraq War. Judith Millar was the liar then.
Read CounterPunch and smaller publications for the truth.
The NYT is all about selling ads on a Sunday. It really is a corrupt rag.
"this didn't come from me and please delete after you read." -- Mazzetti
This could serve as the epitaph for our times. This (Shock and Awe, drones, the Apache
Massacre, Guantanamo, killing children, etc.) didn't come from US (even though it did)
because ...our crimes can be deleted through that magical "we're too big and bad to fail"
button.
See, nothing to worry about.
(Except future historians who will not be blindfolded and gagged and who will
therefore have some choice things to say about the journalists who were fully complicit
in the crimes of this lawless era.)
They are not only presstitutes, they are degenerative presstitutes...
Notable quotes:
"... I love how the NYT mentions how no public evidence has emerged, to skirt around the fact that if there were internal evidence (from some gov agency or private citizen) it would've leaked by now. There is no such thing as evidence which hasn't been leaked in an alleged scandal of this size. ..."
"... Further, the corporate news media gave Trump something like $2 billion dollars worth of advertising in free airtime. That's a much larger impact -- around 20 times Clinton's campaign costs IIRC -- than any alleged hacked e-mails (though the e-mails were leaked not hacked, and that played a role. As well as the FBI's investigation into Clinton's illegal email server which was public fact at the time) or social media interference. ..."
"... Banks, defense contractors and oil companies decide who the President is and what their Cabinet will look like (see Obama's leaked CitiBank memo "recommending" executives to his 2009 Cabinet). Russians and the American people do not. ..."
"... John Pilger's essay: Hold the Front Page, the Reporters are Missing appropriately describes this BigLie media item b dissected, while also observing, "Although journalism was always a loose extension of establishment power, something has changed in recent years," prior to providing Why this is so. ..."
"... but a journalism self-anointed with a false respectability: a liberal journalism that claims to challenge corrupt state power but, in reality, courts and protects it, and colludes with it. ..."
"... The amorality of the years of Tony Blair, whom the Guardian has failed to rehabilitate, is its echo. [My emphasis] ..."
"... on journalism and it being usurped by social media behemoths google, facebook, twitter and etc - i found this cbc radio) interview last night worth recommending.. ..."
"... That New York Times piece was amazing. Belief anything the US Gov't/anti-Russian lobby and other nut cases tell you, unquestioningly. Investigative journalism at its best! ..."
"... Accept the most stupid evidence with blinking an eye. Even if one believes the collusion argument, try to be a bit critical. And always believe that a GRU hacker will put Felix Dzerzinnsky's name in their program. For heaven's sake he was Cheka, the forerunner of the KGB, not the GRU which was military intelligence. ..."
"After the security briefing and everyone cleared out, McCabe shut the door to
Priebus's office. This is very weird, thought Priebus, who was standing by his
desk.
"You know this story in The New York Times?" Priebus knew it all too well.
McCabe was referring to a recent Times story of February 14 that stated, "Phone records
and intercepted calls show that members of Donald J. Trump's 2016
presidential campaign and other Trump associates had repeated contacts with
senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the elections, according to four
current and former American officials."
The story was one of the first bombs to go off about alleged Trump-Russian
connections after Flynn's resignation.
"It's total bullshit," McCabe said. "It's not true, and we want you to know
that. It's grossly overstated."
Oh my God, thought Priebus.
"Andrew," he said to the FBI deputy, "I'm getting killed."
The story about Russia and election meddling seemed to be running 24/7 on
cable news, driving Trump bananas and therefore driving Priebus bananas.
"This is crazy," Trump had told Priebus. "We've got to stop it. We need to
end the story."
McCabe had just walked in with a big gift, a Valentine's Day present. I'm
going to be the hero of this entire West Wing, Priebus thought.
"Can you help me?" Priebus asked. "Could this knockdown of the story be
made public?"
"Call me in a couple of hours," McCabe said. "I will ask around and I'll let
you know. I'll see what I can do."
Priebus practically ran to report to Trump the good news that the FBI would
soon be shooting down the Times story
Two hours passed and no call from McCabe. Priebus called him."I'm sorry, I can't," McCabe
said.
"There's nothing I can do about it. I tried, but if we start issuing comments on individual
stories, we'll be doing statements
every three days." The FBI could not become a clearinghouse for the accuracy of news stories.
If the FBI tried to debunk certain stories, a failure to comment could be seen as a
confirmation.
"Andrew, you're the one that came to my office to tell me this is a BS story,
and now you're telling me there's nothing you can do?"
McCabe said that was his position.
"This is insanity," Priebus said. "What am I supposed to do? Just suffer, bleed out?"
"Give me a couple more hours."
Nothing happened. No call from the FBI. Priebus tried to explain to Trump,
who was waiting for a recanting. It was another reason for Trump to distrust and
hate the FBI, a pernicious tease that left them dangling.
About a week later on February 24 CNN reported an exclusive: "FBI Refused
White House Request to Knock Down Recent Trump-Russia Story." Priebus
was cast as trying to manipulate the FBI for political purposes.
The White House tried and failed to correct the story and show that McCabe
had initiated the matter.
Four months later on June 8, Comey testified under oath publicly that the
original New York Times story on the Trump campaign aides' contacts with
senior Russian intelligence officials "in the main was not true."
The Mueller Hoax is unraveling.
Posted by: Sid2 | Sep 20, 2018 3:03:44 PM | 3
The Mueller Hoax is unraveling, and concommittently the NYT is digging in; ergo ,
the NYT is also unravelling! The NYT will permanently damage its reputation with its own
readers.
I love how the NYT mentions how no public evidence has emerged, to skirt around the
fact that if there were internal evidence (from some gov agency or private citizen) it
would've leaked by now. There is no such thing as evidence which hasn't been leaked in
an alleged scandal of this size.
Further, the corporate news media gave Trump something like $2 billion dollars worth of
advertising in free airtime. That's a much larger impact -- around 20 times Clinton's
campaign costs IIRC -- than any alleged hacked e-mails (though the e-mails were leaked
not hacked, and that played a role. As well as the FBI's investigation into Clinton's illegal
email server which was public fact at the time) or social media interference.
Banks, defense contractors and oil companies decide who the President is and what their
Cabinet will look like (see Obama's leaked CitiBank memo "recommending" executives to his
2009 Cabinet). Russians and the American people do not.
John Pilger's essay: Hold
the Front Page, the Reporters are Missing appropriately describes this BigLie media
item b dissected, while also observing, "Although journalism was always a loose extension of
establishment power, something has changed in recent years," prior to providing Why this is
so.
Want to highlight this additional bit from Pilger:
"Journalism students should study this [New book from Media Lens Propaganda Blitz ]
to understand that the source of "fake news" is not only trollism, or the likes of Fox news,
or Donald Trump, but a journalism self-anointed with a false respectability: a liberal
journalism that claims to challenge corrupt state power but, in reality, courts and protects
it, and colludes with it.
The amorality of the years of Tony Blair, whom the Guardian has
failed to rehabilitate, is its echo. [My emphasis]
IMO, the bolded text well describes BigLie Media. I wonder what George Seldes would say
differently from Pilger if he were alive. Unfortunately, Pilger failed to include MoA as a
source in his short list of sites having journalistic integrity.
on journalism and it being usurped by social media behemoths google, facebook, twitter and
etc - i found
this cbc radio) interview last night worth recommending..
That New York Times piece was amazing. Belief anything the US Gov't/anti-Russian lobby and
other nut cases tell you, unquestioningly. Investigative journalism at its best!
Accept the most stupid evidence with blinking an eye. Even if one believes the collusion
argument, try to be a bit critical. And always believe that a GRU hacker will put Felix
Dzerzinnsky's name in their program. For heaven's sake he was Cheka, the forerunner of the
KGB, not the GRU which was military intelligence.
"... One thing that has puzzled me about Trump methods is his constant tweeting of witch hunt with respect to Mueller but his unwillingness to actually disclose what Brennan, Clapper, Comey, et al actually did by declassifying all the documents and communications among them. In your opinion what is he trying to accomplish with his method here? ..."
I believe you are spot on in your analysis of the Trump methods. No doubt based on your
personal observations up close of similar sole proprietor business hustlers. I think one
problem that Trump methods face is that he needs people around him who can make things happen
despite the byzantine ways of the vast federal bureaucracy who have their own agenda.
One thing that has puzzled me about Trump methods is his constant tweeting of witch
hunt with respect to Mueller but his unwillingness to actually disclose what Brennan,
Clapper, Comey, et al actually did by declassifying all the documents and communications
among them. In your opinion what is he trying to accomplish with his method here?
"... I've come to believe that Trump's role is not as a conventional president who promises to get certain things achieved to the
Congress and then does. I don't think he's capable. I don't think he's capable of sustained focus. I don't think he understands the
system. I don't think the Congress is on his side. I don't think his own agencies support him. He's not going to do that. ..."
"... I think Trump's role is to begin the conversation about what actually matters. We were not having any conversation about immigration
before Trump arrived in Washington. ..."
"... Trump asked basic questions like' "Why don't our borders work?" "Why should we sign a trade agreement and let the other side
cheat?" Or my favorite of all, "What's the point of NATO?" The point of NATO was to keep the Soviets from invading western Europe but
they haven't existed in 27 years, so what is the point? These are obvious questions that no one could answer. ..."
"... I mean let me just be clear. I'm not against an aristocratic system. I'm not against a ruling class. I think that hierarchies
are natural, people create them in every society. I just think the system that we have now the meritocracy, which is based really on
our education system, on a small number of colleges has produced a ruling class that doesn't have the self-awareness that you need to
be wise. ..."
"... it was only after the financial crisis of 08 that I noticed that something was really out of whack, because Washington didn't
really feel the crisis. ..."
"... If you leave Washington and drive to say Pittsburgh, which is a manufacturing town about three and a half hours to the west,
you drive through a series of little towns that are devastated. There are no car dealerships, there are no restaurants. There's nothing.
They have not recovered. I remember driving out there one day, maybe eight or nine years ago and thinking, boy, this is a disaster.
..."
"... That's kind of strange since we're the capital city in charge of making policy for everybody else... Massive inequality does
not work in a democracy... ..."
"... If you make above a certain income, or if you live in my neighborhood, you have zero physical contact with other Americans.
In other words, the elite in our country is physically separated in a way that's very unhealthy for a democracy, very unhealthy. ..."
"... The Democratic Party, which for 100 years was the party of average people is now the party of the rich. ..."
"... He served the purpose of bringing the middle class into the Republican Party, which had zero interest, no interest in representing
them at all. Trump is intuitive, he felt, he could smell that there was this large group of voters who had no one representing them
and he brought them to the Republican side, but the realignment is still ongoing. ..."
"... In other words, the Democratic Party used to represent the middle class, it no longer does, it now hates the middle class.
..."
"... I do think, going forward the Republican Party will wake up and realize these are our voters and we're going to represent them
whether we want it or not. ..."
"... I am deeply suspicious of foreign adventurism, voluntary wars, wars of self-defense are not controversial, I'm for them completely,
there's an invasion repellent. The idea that you would send 100,000 troops to a country to improve its political system is grotesque
to me. It would've been grotesque to them. ..."
"... The Vietnam War was horrifying to them because it was a voluntary war, waged for theoretical reasons, geostrategic reasons
which they rejected, and I do too. ..."
"... We can make autonomous choices about how we respond to market forces. People get crushed beneath its wheels. ..."
"... Capitalism drives change, innovation change, the old ways give way to new ways of doing things, and in the process of change
the weak get hurt always, this was true in industrialization 100 years ago and it's true in the digital revolution now. What's changed
is that nobody is standing up on behalf of the people who are being crushed by the change. ..."
"... In your book, you say they've vanishing but they seem to come back again. ..."
"... Have you ever seen this amount of discontent and aggression here in your lifetime? ..."
"... How close to a revolution is your country? ..."
"... The country is getting redder and bluer. ..."
"... Do you think that Europe will get in control of the migration? ..."
The Swiss are very suspicious of anybody who is boastful. That's why I have a question about Trump
I hate that about him. I hate that it's not my culture. I didn't grow up like that.
In your book you speak a lot about people who attack Trump, but you actually don't say very much about Trump's record.
That's true.
Do you think he has kept his promises? Has he achieved his goals?
No. He hasn't?
No. His chief promises were that he would build the wall, de-fund planned parenthood, and repeal Obamacare, and he hasn't done
any of those things. There are a lot of reasons for that, but since I finished writing the book, I've come to believe that Trump's
role is not as a conventional president who promises to get certain things achieved to the Congress and then does. I don't think
he's capable. I don't think he's capable of sustained focus. I don't think he understands the system. I don't think the Congress
is on his side. I don't think his own agencies support him. He's not going to do that.
I think Trump's role is to begin the conversation about what actually matters. We were not having any conversation about immigration
before Trump arrived in Washington. People were bothered about it in different places in the country. It's a huge country, but
that was not a staple of political debate at all. Trump asked basic questions like' "Why don't our borders work?" "Why should
we sign a trade agreement and let the other side cheat?" Or my favorite of all, "What's the point of NATO?" The point of NATO was
to keep the Soviets from invading western Europe but they haven't existed in 27 years, so what is the point? These are obvious questions
that no one could answer.
Apart from asking these very important questions has he really achieved nothing?
Not much. Not much. Much less than he should have. I've come to believe he's not capable of it.
Why should he be not capable?
Because the legislative process in this country by design is highly complex, and it's designed to be complex as a way of diffusing
power, of course, because the people who framed our Constitution, founded our country, were worried about concentrations of power.
They balanced it among the three branches as you know and they made it very hard to make legislation. In order to do it you really
have to understand how it works and you have to be very focused on getting it done, and he knows very little about the legislative
process, hasn't learned anything, hasn't and surrounded himself with people that can get it done, hasn't done all the things you
need to do so. It's mostly his fault that he hasn't achieved those things. I'm not in charge of Trump.
The title of your book is "Ship of Fools". You write that an irresponsible elite has taken over America. Who is the biggest
fool?
I mean let me just be clear. I'm not against an aristocratic system. I'm not against a ruling class. I think that hierarchies
are natural, people create them in every society. I just think the system that we have now the meritocracy, which is based really
on our education system, on a small number of colleges has produced a ruling class that doesn't have the self-awareness that you
need to be wise. I'm not arguing for populism, actually. I'm arguing against populism. Populism is what you get when your leaders
fail. In a democracy, the population says this is terrible and they elect someone like Trump.
When did you first notice that this elite is getting out of touch with the people?
Well, just to be clear, I'm not writing this from the perspective of an outsider. I mean I've lived in this world my whole life.
Which world exactly?
The world of affluence and the high level of education and among-- I grew up in a town called La Jolla, California in the south.
It was a very affluent town and then I moved as a kid to Georgetown here in Washington. I've been here my whole life. I've always
lived around people who are wielding authority, around the ruling class, and it was only after the financial crisis of 08 that
I noticed that something was really out of whack, because Washington didn't really feel the crisis.
If you leave Washington and drive to say Pittsburgh, which is a manufacturing town about three and a half hours to the west,
you drive through a series of little towns that are devastated. There are no car dealerships, there are no restaurants. There's nothing.
They have not recovered. I remember driving out there one day, maybe eight or nine years ago and thinking, boy, this is a disaster.
Rural America, America outside three or four cities is really falling apart. I thought if you're running the country, you should
have a sense of that. I remember thinking to myself, nobody I know has any idea that this is happening an hour away. That's kind
of strange since we're the capital city in charge of making policy for everybody else... Massive inequality does not work in a democracy...
You become Venezuela.
You write about vanishing middle class. When you were born over 60 % of Americans ranked middle class. Why and when did
it disappear?
If you make above a certain income, or if you live in my neighborhood, you have zero physical contact with other Americans.
In other words, the elite in our country is physically separated in a way that's very unhealthy for a democracy, very unhealthy.
The Democratic Party is out of touch with the working class.
Well, that's the remarkable thing. For 100 years the Democratic Party represented wage earners, working people, normal people,
middle class people, then somewhere around-- In precisely peg it to Clinton's second term in the tech boom in the Bay Area in Francisco
and Silicon Valley, the Democratic Party reoriented and became the party of technology, of large corporations, and of the rich. You've
really seen that change in the last 20 years where in the top 10 richest zip codes in the United States, 9 of them in the last election
just went for Democrats. Out of the top 50, 42 went for Democrats. The Democratic Party, which for 100 years was the party of
average people is now the party of the rich.
Donald Trump, who is often seen as this world-changing figure is actually a symptom of something that precedes him that I sometimes
wonder if he even understands which is this realignment. He served the purpose of bringing the middle class into the Republican
Party, which had zero interest, no interest in representing them at all. Trump is intuitive, he felt, he could smell that there was
this large group of voters who had no one representing them and he brought them to the Republican side, but the realignment is still
ongoing.
In other words, the Democratic Party used to represent the middle class, it no longer does, it now hates the middle class.
The Republican Party which has never represented the middle class doesn't want to. That is the source of really all the confusion
and the tension that you're seeing now. I do think, going forward the Republican Party will wake up and realize these are our
voters and we're going to represent them whether we want it or not.
They have to, or they will lose.
They have to, or they will die. Yes.
You're writing in an almost nostalgic tone about the old liberals? People like Miss Raymond, your first-class teacher. You
describe her wonderfully in the book. You say that they have vanished. What happened?
I find myself in deep sympathy with a lot of the aims of 1970s liberals. I believe in free speech, and I instinctively side with
the individual against the group. I think that the individual matters, I am deeply suspicious of foreign adventurism, voluntary
wars, wars of self-defense are not controversial, I'm for them completely, there's an invasion repellent. The idea that you would
send 100,000 troops to a country to improve its political system is grotesque to me. It would've been grotesque to them.
The Vietnam War was horrifying to them because it was a voluntary war, waged for theoretical reasons, geostrategic reasons
which they rejected, and I do too. They were also suspicious of market capitalism. They thought that somebody needed to push
back against the forces of the market, not necessarily because capitalism was bad, capitalism is not bad, it's also not a religion.
We don't have to follow it blindly. We can make autonomous choices about how we respond to market forces. People get crushed
beneath its wheels.
Capitalism drives change, innovation change, the old ways give way to new ways of doing things, and in the process of change
the weak get hurt always, this was true in industrialization 100 years ago and it's true in the digital revolution now. What's changed
is that nobody is standing up on behalf of the people who are being crushed by the change.
Is that really so? Look at the grassroot movement on the left: Alexandra Ocasio Cortez and her socialist group. It is probably
a 100 years ago when Americans last saw a socialist movement of substance emerging?
Yes. You're absolutely right. That's the future.
In your book, you say they've vanishing but they seem to come back again.
Well, you're absolutely right. You're incisive correct to say that the last time we saw this was 100 years ago, which was another
pivot point in our economic and social history. Where, after 10,000 years of living in an Agrarian society, people moved to the cities
to work in factories and that upended the social order completely. With that came huge political change and a massive reaction.
In the United States and in Western Europe labor unions moderated the forces of change and allowed us to preserve capitalism in
the form that we see it now... You're seeing the exact same dynamic play out today, we have another, as I said, economic revolution,
the digital age, which is changing how people work, how they make money, how families are structured. There is a huge reaction to
that, of course, because there always is, because normal people can't handle change at this pace. People are once again crying out
for some help. They feel threatened by the change. What bothers me is that there is no large group of sensible people asking, how
can we buffer this change? How can we restrain it just enough, not to stop it, but to keep people from overreacting and becoming
radical?
Talking about radical. Recently, a radical left-wing group have threatened to storm your Washington home. How is your wife?
How is your family?
They are fine, they're pretty tough. They're rattled.
The Antifa-mob came right to the door of your home?
Yes, they did and threatened my wife.
Which must have been absolutely scary?
Yes, it was. My wife was born in the city, my four children were born here, we're not moving.
Your attackers have a goal, they're trying to silence you.
Of course. I would never, of course, that's a cornerstone of Western civilization is expression and freedom of conscience. You
can tell me how to behave, you can force me not to sleep or take my clothes off in public, that's fine. Every society has the right
to control behavior. But no one has the right to control what you believe. You can't control my conscience, that's mine alone. Only
totalitarian movements do that, and that's what they're attempting. Of course, I would die first I'm never going to submit to that.
Have you ever seen this amount of discontent and aggression here in your lifetime?
No, I've never seen anything like this. What's so striking is that [chuckles] this is really... The radicalism is not on behalf
of people who are actually suffering, fellow Americans who are suffering, on behalf of the 70,000 people who died of drug ODs last
year, or on behalf of the people displaced by automation in GM, or whatever, on behalf of those dying American low class, it's really
on behalf of theoretical goals.
They're saying that I [Tucker Carlson] am saying naughty things that shouldn't be allowed to be expressed in public. Basically,
it's a totalitarian movement. Totally unhelpful. I would say childish. What they're really doing is defending the current order.
They're the shock troops of the elites actually. Actually, what you're seeing is something amazing, you're seeing for the first time
in history a revolution being waged against the working class. When does that happen?
Your way of debating is very tough. You're sitting there, hammering your guests. Sometimes we have a bit of a problem to
understand that. For us it's a bit disturbing.
Of course, it is. It's disturbing for me too!
How tough do you need to be nowadays to have an audience?
Less, I think than sometimes we put into it or I put into it. I'm actually, in my normal life, I think a pretty gentle person.
I've never had a yelling fight with my wife in 34 years. I mean, I've never yelled at my children. No, I don't ever.
Never?
Not one time. No, it's not how I communicate. I never want to be impolite. I have been impolite. I've lost my temper a couple
times, but I don't want to. I don't like that. I believe in civility.
... ... ...
How close to a revolution is your country?
By revolution, let me be clear, I don't think that we're anywhere near an outbreak of civil war, armed violence between two sides
for a bunch of different reasons... Testosterone levels are so low and marijuana use is so high that I think the population is probably
too ... What you don't have, prerequisite fall revolution, violent revolution, is a large group of young people who are comfortable
with violence and we don't have that. Maybe that will change. I hope it doesn't. I don't want violence for violence. I appall violence,
but I just don't see that happening. What I see happening most likely is a kind of gradual separation of the states.
If you look at the polling on the subject, classically, traditionally, Americans had antique racial attitudes. If you say, "Would
you be okay with your daughter marrying outside her race?" Most Americans, if they're being honest, would say, "no, I'm not okay
with that. I'm not for that." Now the polling shows people are much more comfortable with a child marrying someone of a different
race than they are marrying someone of a different political persuasion.
"I'd rather my daughter married someone who's Hispanic than liberal", someone might say. That is one measure. There are many measures,
but that's one measure of how politically divided we are and I just think that over time, people will self-segregate. It's a continental
country. It's a very large piece of land and you could see where certain states just become very, very different. Like if you're
Conservative, are you really going to live in California in 10 years? Probably not.
Orange County is now purely Democrat.
That's exactly right. You're going to move and if you're very liberal, are you really going to want to live in Idaho? Probably
not.
The country is getting redder and bluer.
Exactly.
This revolution you are warning about - What needs to be done to stop it from happening?
Just the only thing you can do in a democracy which is address the legitimate concerns of the population and think more critically
and be more wise in your decision making. Get a handle on technology. Technology is the driver of the change, so sweep aside the
politics, the fundamental fact about people is they can't metabolize change at this pace because as an evolutionary matter, they're
not designed to, they're not. If you asked your average old person what's the most upsetting thing about being old? You expect them
to say, "Well, my friends are dead". But that's not what they say. Or "I have to go to the bathroom six times a night". That's not
what they say.
You know what they say? "Things are too different. This is not the country I grew up in. I don't recognize this." All people hate
that. It doesn't mean you're a bigot, it means you're human. Unless you want things to fall apart, become so volatile that you can't
have a working economy, you need to get a handle on the pace of change. You have to slow it down.
How important is migration in terms of change?
It's central because nothing changes the society more quickly or more permanently than bringing in a whole new population and
that's not an attack on anybody. There are lots of populations- there are lots of immigrants who are much more impressive than I
am. I have no doubt about that. I'm not attacking immigrants. I'm merely saying that the effect on the people who already live here
is real and they're not bigots for feeling that way.
You come from an ancient country with a series of ancient cultures within it and if you woke up one morning and everyone was speaking
Amharic and you didn't recognize any of your surroundings, that would be deeply upsetting to you.
What you saying, it's necessary to slow it down, control it?
You have to slow it down. Look at the Chinese. I abhor, I despise the Chinese government. However, I'm willing to acknowledge
wise behavior when I see it. The Chinese would never accept this pace of demographic change not simply because they're racist, though
of course, they are, but that's not the point. The point is because they don't want their society to fall apart because they're in
charge of it.
The childlike faith that we have in America, and America is the worst at this, that all change is good and that progress is inevitable
and if something is new and fresh and more expensive, it's got to be better.
It is kind of refreshing for Europeans that even Hillary Clinton tells Europeans, "You have got to stop this. You've got
to get control of migration or you disintegrate."
John Kerry said the same thing, amazingly. They're telling the truth.
Do you think Europe is going to be able to get in control of that? We have 28 countries in the EU. And Switzerland is not
a member?
So smart, so smart... You know why? Because they're mountain people. Love them. You know why? Because they're suspicious, that's
what I like about them.
[laughter]
Do you think that Europe will get in control of the migration?
The EU has been doomed since the first day because it's inconsistent with human nature. The reason we have nation states is because
people wanted them, it's organic. A nation-state is just a larger tribe and it's organized along lines that make sense. They evolved
over thousands of years. To ignore it and destroy it because you think that you've got a better idea, is insane!
[And with that, our interview concludes. It has already run far past the allotted 40 minutes. I offer to take Carlson, who seems
to be very passionate about Switzerland, on a ski run in our Alps soon. Perhaps a smoke in one of the outdoor saunas I tell him smell
like rotten eggs. Ambassador Grenell is on the phone line patiently waiting.]
"... Rather, they seem to appear to reveal a plot by the British intelligence and security services working in collusion with then CIA Director John Brennan to subvert the course of the 2016 election in favor of the Deep State and Establishment favorite Hillary Clinton. How did that one work out? ..."
And there are other friends in unlikely
places. Beleaguered British Prime Minister Theresa May is wailing loudly
against a Trump threat
to reveal classified documents relating to Russiagate. The real problem is that
the documents apparently don't expose anything done by the Russians.
Rather, they seem to appear to reveal
a plot by the British intelligence and security services
working in collusion with then CIA Director
John Brennan to subvert the course of the 2016 election in favor of the Deep State and Establishment
favorite Hillary Clinton. How did that one work out?
So how about it? Teenagers who get in
trouble often have to ditch their bad friends to turn their lives around. There is still a chance for the
United States if we keep our distance from the bad friends we have been nurturing all around the world,
friends who have been convincing us to make poor choices. Get rid of the ties the bind to the Saudis,
Israelis, Ukrainians, Poles, and yes, even the British. Deal fairly with all nations and treat everyone the
same, but bear in mind that there are only two relationships that really matter – Russia and China. Make a
serious effort to avoid a war by learning how to get along with those two nations and America might actually
survive to celebrate a tricentennial in 2076.
You don't say; British Collusion to influence the 2016 US Presidential elections. Why, if the
beneficiary was anyone other than a Democrat, much less one named Clinton, someone might
actually appoint a Special Counsel to look into it, not to mention the misdeeds of the
various agencies and departments who aided and abetted it.
"You don't say; British Collusion to influence the 2016 US Presidential elections."
MI6, along with elements of the CIA, was behind the Steele Dossier. Representatives of
John Brennan met in London to discus before the go ahead was given. They later put Michael
Steele onto the project; he was a guy with credible Russian contacts. Basically, the scam
worked like this:
They funneled an MI6 intelligence file to Michael Steele (governments routinely keep such
files on influential foreigners and what they are up to) so he could use his contacts to
launder the information and make it appear that it came from sources within Russia; they then
funneled the report back to elements of the FBI so they could use it to justify to the FISA
court a spying campaign on Trump (the FBI illegally withheld the source of the document);
they found nothing proving any Russian connection but they kept the spy program going; they
tried justifying the spy program with a fake story involving a reliable asset that once
passed information from Jimmy Carter's campaign to George H.W. Bush in an effort to help
Reagan win the 1980 election; they later paid the asset nearly a quarter million dollars for
his efforts using a fake "India-China" grant despite the grant running to 2018, the asset
attempted to get a job in the Trump administration so he could act as a mole ; the Obama
regime purposely mishandled information in regards to the spying program (ex: Michael Steele
leaked his document to various news sources before the election and later lied to congress
about it), ensuring it would leak to the press; the Obama regime illegally unmasked elements
of Trump's personal contacts so they could clandestinely leak suggested targets off the
record to the right people
They lost the election anyway, so they then planted dirt and negative press to make the
document look legit – lies about Manafort meeting Assange (Guardian is funded by the
British government to police the left), WaPo lies claiming a vast Russian conspiracy just as
Trump came into office (it was an effort to delegitimize him and create calls for Hillary to
take his place), leaking bank records, the special counsel .and leaking information on Trump
policies to the media using a secret security clearance credentials program enacted by Obama.
They also ran interference through CIA guys like Mark Warner in an effort to cover up the
mole they planted; they falsely asserted this was a national security issue when the man's
identity was well-known to the press and he was never an undercover spy like Jarret was, at
least not in recent history.
To put this all into perspective, imagine the following scenario:
The government takes cctv footage of you at a grocery store; in the background there is an
attractive woman. The woman then goes missing. The government illegally reads your emails and
finds that you like sexual jokes. The government then interviews a friend of yours who claims
that you once made a risque rape joke back in college. They also plant a mole in your
workplace who befriends you and reports back all of your politically incorrect humor. Then
the cops find the woman's body and the government claims that you killed her because you were
in the area at the time and you make bad jokes, which has been confirmed by multiple credible
people. You look guilty, don't you? The government 1) took information out of context 2)
laundered circumstantial evidence through a credible witness when they originally obtained it
elsewhere using nefarious sources. That's what they did to Trump, but much much much
worse.
a plot by the British intelligence and security services to subvert the course of the 2016
election in favor of the Deep State and Establishment favorite Hillary Clinton. How did that
one work out?
Deep State and Establishment stooge Donald Trump.
There is still a chance for the United States if we
"... As for the self-licking ice cream cone that "mainstream media" have become, and how they overlook little peccadilloes like feeding at the government PR trough and helping Cheney and Bush attack Iraq, well – now, now – let's not be nasty. Here's how Jill Abramson, The New York Times Washington Bureau Chief from 2000 to 2003, while the Times acted as drum major for the war, lets Bob Woodward off the hook for his own abysmal investigative performance. ..."
"... Are we to believe that the Abramsons, Woodwards, et al. of the media elite simply missed the WMD deception? ..."
Dishonest (not "mistaken") intelligence greased the skids for the
widespread killing and maiming in the Middle East that began with the Cheney/Bush "Shock and
Awe" attack on Iraq. The media reveled in the unconscionable (but lucrative) buzzword
"shock-and-awe" for the initial attack. In retrospect, the real shock lies in the awesome
complicity of virtually all "mainstream media" in the leading false predicate for this war of
aggression – weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
Only one major media group, Knight Ridder, avoided the presstitution, so to speak. It
faced into the headwinds blowing from the "acceptable" narrative, did the investigative
spadework, and found patriotic insiders who told them the truth. Karen Kwiatkowski, who had a
front-row seat at the Pentagon, was one key source for the intrepid Knight Ridder
journalists. Karen tells us that her actual role is accurately portrayed by the professional
actress in the Rob Reiner's film Shock and Awe .
Other members of the Sam Adams Associates were involved as well, but we will leave it to
them to share on Saturday evening how they helped Knight Ridder accurately depict the prewar
administration/intelligence/media fraud.
Intelligence Fraud
More recently, former National Intelligence Director James Clapper added a coda to
pre-Iraq-War intelligence performance. Clapper was put in charge of imagery analysis before
the Iraq war and was able to conceal the fact that there were were no weapons of mass
destruction in Iraq. In his memoir, Clapper writes that Vice President Cheney "was pushing"
for imagery analysis "to find (emphasis in original) the WMD sites."
For the record, none were found because there were none, although Clapper –
"eager to help" – gave it the old college try. Clapper proceeds, in a matter-of-fact
way, to blame not only pressure from the Cheney/Bush administration, but also "the
intelligence officers, including me, who were so eager to help that we found what wasn't
really there."
Regarding those Clapper-produced "artist renderings" of "mobile production facilities for
biological agents"? Those trucks "were in fact used to pasteurize and transport milk,"
Clapper admits nonchalantly. When challenged on all
this while promoting his memoir at the Carnegie Endowment in Washington, Clapper gave not the
slightest hint that it occurred to him his performance was somewhat lacking.
Media: Consequential Malfeasance
As for the self-licking ice cream cone that "mainstream media" have become, and how
they overlook little peccadilloes like feeding at the government PR trough and helping Cheney
and Bush attack Iraq, well – now, now – let's not be nasty. Here's how Jill
Abramson, The New York Times Washington Bureau Chief from 2000 to 2003, while the
Times acted as drum major for the war, lets Bob Woodward off the hook for his own abysmal
investigative performance.
Reviewing Woodward's recent book on the Trump White House, Abramson praises his "dogged
investigative reporting," noting that he has won two Pulitzer Prizes, and adds: "His work has
been factually unassailable." Then she (or perhaps an editor) adds in parenthesis: "(His
judgment is certainly not perfect, and he has been self-critical about his belief, based on
reporting before the Iraq War, that there were weapons of mass destruction.)"
Are we to believe that the Abramsons, Woodwards, et al. of the media elite simply
missed the WMD deception? (Hundreds of insiders knew of it, and some were willing to
share the truth with Knight Ridder and some other reporters.) Or did the media moguls simply
hunker down and let themselves be co-opted into helping Cheney/Bush start a major war? The
latter seems much more likely: and transparent attempts to cover up for one another, still,
is particularly sad – and consequential. Having suffered no consequences (for example,
in 2003 Abramson was promoted to Managing Editor of the NYT ), the "mainstream media"
appear just as likely to do a redux on Iran.
This is why there will be a premium on honest insider patriots, like Karen Kwiatkowski, to
rise to the occasion and try to prevent the next war. Bring along your insider friends on
Saturday; they need to know about Karen and about Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in
Intelligence.
Please do come and join us in congratulating Karen Kwiatkowski and the other SAAII members
who also helped Knight Ridder get the story right. (Those others shall remain unnamed until
Saturday.) And let insiders know this: they are not likely to hear about all this
otherwise.
Date : Saturday, December 8, 2018
Time : 6:30 PM Showing of film, "Shock and Awe" – 8:00 PM Presentation 17th
annual Sam Adams Award – Ceremony will include remarks by Larry Wilkerson, 7th SAAII
awardee (in 2009)
Place : The Festival Center, 1640 Columbia Road, NW, Washington, DC 20009
FREE : But RSVP, if you can, to give us an idea of how many to expect; email:
[email protected]
ALL WELCOME : Lots of space in main conference room
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the
Saviour in inner-city Washington. His 27-year career as a CIA analyst includes serving as
Chief of the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch and preparer/briefer of the President's Daily
Brief. He is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). William
Binney worked for NSA for 36 years, retiring in 2001 as the technical director of world
military and geopolitical analysis and reporting; he created many of the collection systems
still used by NSA. Reprinted with permission from Consortium News .
Essentially Mueller witch hunt repeat the trick invented by Bolsheviks leadership during
Stalin Great Terror: the accusation of a person of being a foreign agent is a 'slam dank" move
that allows all kind to nasty things to be performed to convict the person no matter whether he
is guilty of not.
Consolidation of power using Foreign Counter Intelligence as a tool is a classic and a very
dirty trick.
Notable quotes:
"... It would be of great value to know what the underlying predicate crime(s) are that are sustaining Mueller's scorched earth approach to what looks to be 'all things Trump,' whether the crimes relate to counter intelligence jurisdiction (treason, espionage), illicit overseas business transactions relating to sanctions violations or something of that sort, or election law violations, the smoke of which got the whole Mueller jihad underway ..."
"... This would not be unusual in a Foreign Counter Intelligence case which are almost by definition open ended; it would be very unusual, in fact prohibited, in a criminal case where a factual predicate needs to be articulated that constitutes reasonable suspicion that a crime has been committed. ..."
"... It seems Mueller has been riding the FCI horse whither he pleases to round up interviews, compare them, and then take the chicken shit route of charging 1001 violations to leverage his way forward. If that seems to smell bad, it is because it does. ..."
"... IMO, Trump is not helping himself or the American people get to the objective truth by declassifying all the documents and communications. Unless all the documents are released unredacted, all we have are theories and speculation. And Trump will be on the losing end of that as the news media and their Deep State collaborators have all the means to drive the narrative and attempt to convict in the court of public opinion through constant innuendo. ..."
"... In the mean time the Mueller investigation itself creates the crimes as pretty much most Trump associates have been indicted for perjury. Even Manafort was prosecuted for money laundering that took place over a decade ago ..."
"... Trump has stated that he doesn't want to declassify as the American people shouldn't know how corrupt their government is. This seems to contradict his Drain the Swamp rhetoric. ..."
"... Mueller may have created more crimes than existed before his inquiry. ..."
It would be of great value to know what the underlying predicate crime(s) are that are
sustaining Mueller's scorched earth approach to what looks to be 'all things Trump,' whether
the crimes relate to counter intelligence jurisdiction (treason, espionage), illicit overseas
business transactions relating to sanctions violations or something of that sort, or election
law violations, the smoke of which got the whole Mueller jihad underway .
It certainly does give every appearance, at least from the outside perspective, of an
investigation looking for a crime.
This would not be unusual in a Foreign Counter Intelligence case which are almost by
definition open ended; it would be very unusual, in fact prohibited, in a criminal case where
a factual predicate needs to be articulated that constitutes reasonable suspicion that a
crime has been committed.
It seems Mueller has been riding the FCI horse whither he pleases to round up
interviews, compare them, and then take the chicken shit route of charging 1001 violations to
leverage his way forward. If that seems to smell bad, it is because it does.
Precisely the same approach could have been taken vis a vis the Uranium mattter or any of
the Clinton Foundation speaker forays into foreign lands and almost certainly a boatload of
1001 violations would have come into port.
IMO, Trump is not helping himself or the American people get to the objective truth by
declassifying all the documents and communications. Unless all the documents are released
unredacted, all we have are theories and speculation. And Trump will be on the losing end of
that as the news media and their Deep State collaborators have all the means to drive the
narrative and attempt to convict in the court of public opinion through constant
innuendo.
In the mean time the Mueller investigation itself creates the crimes as pretty much
most Trump associates have been indicted for perjury. Even Manafort was prosecuted for money
laundering that took place over a decade ago .
There have been no claims from Mueller that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to
steal the 2016 election.
Trump has stated that he doesn't want to declassify as the American people shouldn't
know how corrupt their government is. This seems to contradict his Drain the Swamp
rhetoric. With the Democrats gonna run the House come January. I think Trump will come
under increased pressure from all sides. I don't believe the Mueller investigation will ever
wind down until Trump is defeated either via impeachment or loss of the next presidential
election.
Skripal events probably helped to advance this line of investigation. So in a way UK intelligence services put their own
stooge on the line of fire.
Notable quotes:
"... Russian prosecutors on Monday claimed that Magnitsky and several other people familiar with Browder's illicit activities in Russia may have been killed on his order. They said a new criminal case has been opened against Browder in Russia, and that Moscow will seek his extradition as an alleged ringleader of an international criminal enterprise involved in money laundering ..."
"... The prosecutors identified four people who were suspects in the Browder case, all of whom died over the course of less than two years as the investigation against him unfolded. Oktay Gasanov was the first of the four, dying in October 2007; while Magnitsky's death in November 2009 was the last. By the time of his death, Magnitsky had spent almost a year in pre-trial detention. The two others were Valery Kurochkin and Sergey Korobeinikov, who died in April 2008 and September 2008, respectively. ..."
"... Considering that the three individuals, with the exception of Magnitsky, died within months of each other while being investigated as part of Browder's case, "it is highly likely that they were killed to get rid of accomplices who could give an incriminating testimony against Browder," a senior official with the Russian General Prosecutor's office told journalists. The same may be true for Magnitsky, he said. The prosecutor stressed that Russia didn't conduct detailed studies into how the suspected poison affects living organisms, but several research institutions based in the US, France and Italy did. ..."
"... The prosecutors claim that Browder was the party who benefited most from the death of Magnitsky. They cited journalist Oleg Lurie, who shared a prison cell with Magnitsky before the latter's death. Speaking under oath during a court hearing in New York, Lurie said that his cellmate had complained to him that Browder's lawyers were pressuring him into signing a false statement. Magnitsky's testimony claimed that he had uncovered a conspiracy to embezzle taxpayers' money involving Russian officials. ..."
"... The Russian prosecutors said Browder allegedly wanted to silence his employee after obtaining the false claim. The statement itself was used to blame Russian officials for Magnitsky's death and accuse the Russian government of a cover-up. ..."
"... Described by critics as a 'vulture capitalist,' Browder seemed quite comfortable earning millions of dollars in the financial wild west. In 2005, as fallen oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky was standing trial for tax evasion, Browder scolded him on the BBC for using personal wealth to grasp at political power, and for leaving "in his wake aggrieved investors too numerous to count." He was also a staunch public supporter of the policies of Russian President Vladimir Putin. ..."
"... The investor then reinvented himself as an anti-Putin figure, using the death of Magnitsky to lobby various countries to impose sanctions on the Russian officials he blamed for his employee's death. The US Magnitsky Act was passed in 2012, allowing people accused by Washington of human rights violations to be targeted. However, it is perceived by the Kremlin as just a tool to restrain Russia for the sake of global political and economic competition. ..."
"... Among Browder's latest exploits is playing a role in the 'Russiagate' story. A key part of the elusive search for collusion between US President Donald Trump and the Russian government is a meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer. The meeting was apparently organized with a view to lobbying for the repeal of the Magnitsky Act. Its architect, Browder, has therefore been eager to lend his expertise on 'Russian machinations' to US lawmakers and media outlets. ..."
"... If you like this story, share it with a friend! ..."
Kremlin
critic Bill Browder may have given the order for his employee Sergei Magnitsky to be poisoned
with a rare toxin in a Russian prison cell, along with other suspects in a tax-evasion probe
against him, prosecutors have said. British financier Browder was once a well-connected
investor in post-Soviet Russia, but he became a fugitive from the law in the country after
being accused of financial crimes. In the West, however, he is best known as the employer of
Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian accountant who died in police custody while being investigated in
connection to the Browder case. Magnitsky's death became an international scandal, with Browder
accusing Russian officials of killing him.
Russian prosecutors on Monday claimed that Magnitsky and several other people familiar with
Browder's illicit activities in Russia may have been killed on his order. They said a new
criminal case has been opened against Browder in Russia, and that Moscow will seek his
extradition as an alleged ringleader of an international criminal enterprise involved in money
laundering.
The prosecutors identified four people who were suspects in the Browder case, all of whom
died over the course of less than two years as the investigation against him unfolded. Oktay
Gasanov was the first of the four, dying in October 2007; while Magnitsky's death in November
2009 was the last. By the time of his death, Magnitsky had spent almost a year in pre-trial
detention. The two others were Valery Kurochkin and Sergey Korobeinikov, who died in April 2008
and September 2008, respectively.
Korobeinikov died after falling off a high-rise building, while the others had health
complications. The Russian prosecutors believe all four of them may have been killed with a
rare water-soluble compound of aluminum. Each of the men showed symptoms consistent with being
poisoned by the toxin prior to their deaths, while Korobeinikov had traces of it in his liver,
according to a post mortem. An investigation into four possible murders has been
opened.
Considering that the three individuals, with the exception of Magnitsky, died within
months of each other while being investigated as part of Browder's case, "it is highly likely
that they were killed to get rid of accomplices who could give an incriminating testimony
against Browder," a senior official with the Russian General Prosecutor's office told
journalists. The same may be true for Magnitsky, he said. The prosecutor stressed that Russia
didn't conduct detailed studies into how the suspected poison affects living organisms, but
several research institutions based in the US, France and Italy did.
The prosecutors claim that Browder was the party who benefited most from the death of
Magnitsky. They cited journalist Oleg Lurie, who shared a prison cell with Magnitsky before the
latter's death. Speaking under oath during a court hearing in New York, Lurie said that his
cellmate had complained to him that Browder's lawyers were pressuring him into signing a false
statement. Magnitsky's testimony claimed that he had uncovered a conspiracy to embezzle
taxpayers' money involving Russian officials.
The Russian prosecutors said Browder allegedly wanted to silence his employee after
obtaining the false claim. The statement itself was used to blame Russian officials for
Magnitsky's death and accuse the Russian government of a cover-up.
Last year, Browder was sentenced by a Russian court to nine years in prison for tax evasion.
The trial was held in absentia and Moscow failed to have him extradited to serve the term. The
prosecutors said that they will renew attempts to get custody of Browder as part of the new
criminal case, using a UN convention on fighting transnational crime to have him arrested.
Browder is a US-born British financier, whose change of citizenship had the benefit of
allowing him to avoid paying tax on foreign earnings. However, he claimed the switch was
prompted by his family being persecuted in the US during the McCarthyism witch hunt, while the
UK seemed like the land of law and order.
He made a fortune in Russia during the country's chaotic transition to a market economy,
having invested before there was a stock exchange in Moscow. His Hermitage Capital Management
fund was a leading foreign investment entity in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Described by critics as a 'vulture capitalist,' Browder seemed quite comfortable earning
millions of dollars in the financial wild west. In 2005, as fallen oil tycoon Mikhail
Khodorkovsky was standing trial for tax evasion, Browder scolded him on the BBC for using personal
wealth to grasp at political power, and for leaving "in his wake aggrieved investors too
numerous to count." He was also a staunch public supporter of the policies of Russian President
Vladimir Putin.
The transformation of his public image from a financial shark into a human rights crusader
started when Browder himself entered the spotlight of Russian law enforcement. In 2007, the
foundation he ran was targeted by a probe into possible large-scale embezzlement of Russian
taxpayers' money. Magnitsky, who worked for Browder and had knowledge of his firms' finances,
was arrested and held in pre-trial detention until his death in November 2009. The British
businessman insisted that the entire case was fabricated and that Magnitsky had been
assassinated for exposing a criminal scheme involving several Russian tax officials.
The investor then reinvented himself as an anti-Putin figure, using the death of
Magnitsky to lobby various countries to impose sanctions on the Russian officials he blamed for
his employee's death. The US Magnitsky Act was passed in 2012, allowing people accused by
Washington of human rights violations to be targeted. However, it is perceived by the Kremlin
as just a tool to restrain Russia for the sake of global political and economic
competition.
Browder's new-found status as a rights advocate and self-proclaimed worst enemy of Putin
helps him deflect Russia's attempts to prosecute him. On several occasions, Russia filed
international arrest warrants against him with Interpol, which even led to his brief detention
in Spain last May.
Among Browder's latest exploits is playing a role in the 'Russiagate' story. A key part
of the elusive search for collusion between US President Donald Trump and the Russian
government is a meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer. The meeting was
apparently organized with a view to lobbying for the repeal of the Magnitsky Act. Its
architect, Browder, has therefore been eager to lend his expertise on 'Russian machinations' to
US lawmakers and media outlets.
"... Trump's memo on the Saudis begins with the headline "The world is a very dangerous place!" Indeed, it is and behavior by the three occupants of the White House since 2000 is largely to blame. ..."
"... Indeed, a national security policy that sees competitors and adversaries as enemies in a military sense has made nuclear war, unthinkable since the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991, thinkable once again. ..."
"... George Washington's dictum in his Farewell Address , counseling his countrymen to "observe good faith and justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all." And Washington might have somehow foreseen the poisonous relationships with Israel and the Saudis when he warned that " a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification." ..."
"... Cautious optimism may be better than none, but futile nonetheless. Bullying, dispossession, slavery and genocide constitute the very bedrock, the essence and soul of the founding of our country. ..."
"... Truth be told we simply know of no other kinder, gentler alternatives to perpetual war and destruction as the cornerstone of our foreign policy. Normality? Not in my lifetime. ..."
"... Your CNI and 'If Americans Knew' informed me about Rand Paul's courageous move. I plan to call his office today to give him encouragement and call my Senators and Representative to urge them to support him (fat chance of that but I have to stick it in their face). ..."
"... America doesn't have a policy because America is no longer a real nation. It's an empire filled with diverse groups of peoples who all hate each other and want to use the power of the government for the benefit of their overseas co-ethnics. ..."
President Donald Trump's
recent statement on the Jamal Khashoggi killing by Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince might well be considered a metaphor for his foreign
policy. Several commentators have suggested that the text appears to be something that Trump wrote himself without any adult supervision,
similar to the poorly expressed random arguments presented in his tweeting only longer. That might be the case, but it would not
be wise to dismiss the document as merely frivolous or misguided as it does in reality express the kind of thinking that has produced
a foreign policy that seems to drift randomly to no real end, a kind of leaderless creative destruction of the United States as a
world power.
Lord Palmerston, Prime Minister of Britain in the mid nineteenth century, famously said that "Nations have no permanent friends
or allies, they only have permanent interests."The United States currently has neither real friends nor any clearly defined interests.
It is, however, infested with parasites that have convinced an at-drift America that their causes are identical to the interests
of the United States. Leading the charge to reduce the U.S. to "bitch" status, as Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard
has artfully put it , are Israel and Saudi
Arabia, but there are many other countries, alliances and advocacy groups that have learned how to subvert and direct the "leader
of the free world."
Trump's memo on the Saudis begins with the headline "The world is a very dangerous place!" Indeed, it is and behavior by the
three occupants of the White House since 2000 is largely to blame. It is difficult to find a part of the world where an actual
American interest is being served by Washington's foreign and global security policies. Indeed, a national security policy that
sees competitors and adversaries as enemies in a military sense has made nuclear war, unthinkable since the demise of the Soviet
Union in 1991, thinkable once again. The fact that no one is the media or in political circles is even talking about that terrible
danger suggests that war has again become mainstreamed, tacitly benefiting from bipartisan acceptance of it as a viable foreign policy
tool by the media, in the U.S. Congress and also in the White House.
The part of the world where American meddling coupled with ignorance has produced the worst result is inevitably the Middle East...
... ... ...
All of the White House's actions have one thing in common and that is that they do not benefit Americans in any way unless one
works for a weapons manufacturer, and that is not even taking into consideration the dead soldiers and civilians and the massive
debt that has been incurred to intervene all over the world. One might also add that most of America's interventions are built on
deliberate lies by the government and its associated media, intended to increase tension and create a casus belli where
none exists.
So what is to be done as it often seems that the best thing Trump has going for him is that he is not Hillary Clinton? First of
all, a comprehensive rethink of what the real interests of the United States are in the world arena is past due. America is less
safe now than it was in 2001 as it continues to make enemies with its blundering everywhere it goes. There are now
four times as many designated terrorists as there were in 2001, active in 70 countries. One would quite plausibly soon arrive
at George Washington's dictum in his Farewell Address
, counseling his countrymen to "observe good faith and justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all." And Washington
might have somehow foreseen the poisonous relationships with Israel and the Saudis when he warned that " a passionate attachment
of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary
common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former
into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification."
George Washington or any of the other Founders would be appalled to see an America with 800 military bases overseas, allegedly
for self-defense. The transfer of wealth from taxpayers to the military industrial complex and related entities like Wall Street
has been catastrophic. The United States does not need to protect Israel and Saudi Arabia, two countries that are armed to the teeth
and well able to defend themselves. Nor does it have to be in Syria and Afghanistan. And
If the United States were to withdraw its military from the Middle East and the rest of Asia tomorrow, it would be to nearly everyone's
benefit. If the armed forces were to be subsequently reduced to a level sufficient to defend the United States it would put money
back in the pockets of Americans and end the continuous fearmongering through surfacing of "threats" by career militarists justifying
the bloated budgets.
... ... ...
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational
foundation that seeks a more interests [email protected]
.
but even small steps in the right direction could initiate a gradual process of turning the United States into a more normal
country in its relationships with the rest of the world rather than a universal predator and bully.
Cautious optimism may be better than none, but futile nonetheless. Bullying, dispossession, slavery and genocide constitute
the very bedrock, the essence and soul of the founding of our country.
To expect mutations -- no matter how slow or fast in a
trait that appears deeply embedded in our DNA is to be naive. Add to that the intractable stranglehold Zionists and organized
world Jewry has on our nuts and decision making. A more congruent convergence of histories and DNAs would be hard to come by among
other nations. Truth be told we simply know of no other kinder, gentler alternatives to perpetual war and destruction as the cornerstone
of our foreign policy. Normality? Not in my lifetime.
Your CNI and 'If Americans Knew' informed me about Rand Paul's courageous move. I plan to call his office today to give
him encouragement and call my Senators and Representative to urge them to support him (fat chance of that but I have to stick
it in their face).
Hey, how about a Rand Paul-Tulsi Gabbard fusion ticket in 2024, not a bad idea, IMHO.
Going back to the Administration you can see the slimy Zionist hands of Steven Miller on all of those foreign policy statements.
Trump is allowing this because he has to protect his flanks from Zionists, Christian or otherwise. He might be just giving Miller
just enough rope to jettison him (wishful thinking on my part). Or he doesn't care or is unaware of the texts, a possibility.
1. Because that defies human nature. See all of history if you disagree.
2. America doesn't have a policy because America is no longer a real nation. It's an empire filled with diverse groups of peoples
who all hate each other and want to use the power of the government for the benefit of their overseas co-ethnics.
The beginning of USA foreign policy for me is the 1820 or 1830 Monroe Declaration: south America is our backyard, keep out.
Few people know that at the time European countries considered war on the USA because of this beginning of world domination.
When I told this to a USA correspondent the reply was 'but this declaration still is taught here in glowing terms'.
What we saw then was the case until Obama, USA foreign policy was for internal political reasons.
As Hollings stated in 2004 'Bush promising AIPAC the war on Iraq, that is politics'.
No empire ever, as far as I know, ever was in the comfortable position to be able to let foreign policy to be decided (almost)
completely by internal politics.
This changed during the Obama reign, the two war standard had to be lowered to one and a half.
All of a sudden the USA had to develop a foreign policy, a policy that had to take into consideration the world outside the USA.
Not the whole USA understands this, the die hards of Deep State in the lead.
What a half war accomplishes we see, my opinion, in Syria, a half war does not bring victory on an enemy who wages a whole
war.
Assad is still there, Russia has airforce and naval bases in Syria.
Normally, as any history book explains, foreign policy of a country is decided on in secret by a few people.
British preparations for both WWI and WWII included detailed technical talks with both the USA and France, not even all cabinet
members knew about it.
One of Trump's difficulties is that Deep State does not at all has the intention of letting the president decide on foreign policy,
at the time of FDR he did what he liked, though, if one reads for example Baruch's memoirs, in close cooperation with the Deep
State that then existed.
The question 'why do we not leave the rest of the world alone', hardly ever asked.
The USA is nearly autarcic, foreign trade, from memory, some five percent of national income, a very luxurious position.
But of course, leaving the rest of the world alone, huge internal consequences, as Hinckley explains with an example, politically
impossible to stop the development of a bomber judged to be superfluous.
Barbara Hinckley Sheldon Goldman, American Politics and Government, Glenview Ill.,1990
Good luck. A fight over resources with the biggest consumer of resources, the People That Kill People and all their little buddies
in the Alphabet Soup of Law Enforcement and Intelligence Depravity..
That could get a fella hurt. Ask Jack and Bob Kennedy.
"The bilateral relationship between the U.S. and Russia is now worse than it was towards the end of the Cold War". Classic American
cold warrior mentality. The present-day Russian Federation is assimilated to the former Soviet Union.
Tragically for America, and the West in general, President Trump is unrecognizable from
candidate Trump :
'This is a crossroads in the history of our civilization that will determine whether or not we the people reclaim control over
our government. The political establishment that is trying to stop us is the same group responsible for our disastrous trade deals,
massive illegal immigration and economic and foreign policies that have bled our country dry Their financial resources are virtually
unlimited, their political resources are unlimited, their media resources are unmatched, and most importantly, the depths of their
immorality is absolutely unlimited.'
"... The Telegraph adds that the UK's dispute with the Trump administration is so politically sensitive that staff within the British Embassy in D.C. have been barred from discussing it with journalists. Theresa May has also "been kept at arms-length and is understood to have not raised the issue directly with the US president ." ..."
"... In September , we reported that the British government "expressed grave concerns" over the material in question after President Trump issued an order to the DOJ to release a wide swath of materials, "immediately" and "without redaction." ..."
"... Trump walked that order back days later after the UK begged him not to release them. ..."
"... MI6 agents have a reputation for writing fiction. Ian Fleming comes to mind. Its is interesting to reflect on the similarities of fiction and so called intelligence. ..."
"... Six U.S. agencies created a stealth task force, spearhead by CIA's Brennan, to run domestic surveillance on Trump associates and possibly Trump himself. ..."
"... To feign ignorance and to seemingly operate within U.S. laws, the agencies freelanced the wiretapping of Trump associates to the British spy agency GCHQ ..."
"... The decision to insert GCHQ as a back door to eavesdrop was sparked by the denial of two FISA Court warrant applications filed by the FBI to seek wiretaps of Trump associates. ..."
"... GCHQ did not work from London or the UK. In fact the spy agency worked from NSA's headquarters in Fort Meade, MD with direct NSA supervision and guidance to conduct sweeping surveillance on Trump associates. ..."
"... The illegal wiretaps were initiated months before the controversial Trump dossier compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele. ..."
"... The Justice Department and FBI set up the meeting at Trump Tower between Trump Jr., Manafort and Kushner with controversial Russian officials to make Trump's associates appear compromised. ..."
"... Following the Trump Tower sit down, GCHQ began digitally wiretapping Manafort, Trump Jr., and Kushner. ..."
"... After the concocted meeting by the Deep State, the British spy agency could officially justify wiretapping Trump associates as an intelligence front for NSA because the Russian lawyer at the meeting Natalia Veselnitskaya was considered an international security risk and prior to the June sit down was not even allowed entry into the United States or the UK, federal sources said. ..."
"... By using GCHQ, the NSA and its intelligence partners had carved out a loophole to wiretap Trump without a warrant. While it is illegal for U.S. agencies to monitor phones and emails of U.S. citizens inside the United States absent a warrant, it is not illegal for British intelligence to do so. Even if the GCHQ was tapping Trump on U.S. soil at Fort Meade. ..."
"... The wiretaps, secured through illicit scheming, have been used by U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller's probe of alleged Russian collusion in the 2016 election, even though the evidence is considered "poisoned fruit. ..."
"... Add: GCHQ (UK NSA) was in agreement with HilBarry Inc to block the US 2016 election for U.K. candidate Hillary aka Clinton 'Rhodes scholar' Brit colonial agent. Study who 'Rhodes' was. CIA and MI6 are UK siblings. Note nickname for CIA is "Langley" = 'The English' in French L'Anglai. Trump Tower - Russkie atty Natalia met with Simpson GPS Fusion to debrief before & after meeting. Natalia was granted US entry by Mueller Spec Counsel teamster Preet Baharara (conflict in that Preet is compromised witness and also SC "investigator"). Russkie Ahkmedishin met with Obama WH in prep for meeting (see Jan 2016 WH log). The 'translator' at meeting was Obama WH translator. ..."
"... The evidence for false Trump Russkie bank connections is a phony server set up by CIA agent McMullen that robo scammed Russian Alfa Bank to robo talk to the phony server the CIA named with miss-spell Trump OrGAINization. See godaddy domain registration. Hillary slandered Trump with this scam on Twitter Oct 31, 2016 - her witchy day. ..."
"... Obama used the intelligence agencies to spy on all political opponents, not just the Trump campaign and eventually the administration. NSA databases were being queried by Democrat contractors with content feed to Obama's National Security staff where communications were "unmasked" by Rice and others. Rodgers shut down the scheme. So much Marxist criminality and fraud left unpunished. ..."
"... George Papadopoulos was not the reason the FBI opened their 2016 Counterintelligence Investigation into the Trump Campaign. John Brennan was the reason. ..."
"... Brennan was the man pushing the entire Russian Narrative that consumed Washington D.C. – and ultimately led to the Mueller Investigation. He did this based on little or no evidence. The Electronic Communication should prove interesting. John Brennan's Role in the FBI's Trump-Russia Investigation ..."
"... In the summer of 2016, Robert Hannigan, head of Britain's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) traveled to Washington D.C. to meet with then-CIA Head John Brennan regarding alleged communications between the Trump Campaign and Moscow. ..."
"... The Trump Team was being surveiled the entire time by Breanan via the GCHQ. The CIA are Analysts. That's it. They had to involve the FBI to begin the Surveillance & Criminal Investigation into the Counter Intelligence Operation. Thus, Criminal at Large Breanan's trip up to Capital Hill to meet with Harry Reid to brief him on Steele. Brennan the "Puppet Master" has been quarter backing the entire Deep State Intelligence Psychological Operation & Parallel Construction Surveillance from the very start. ..."
"... They've been reverse engineering their lies ever since they lost the election to cover their tracks and use the excuse of "Plausible Deniability" as the Pure Evil War Criminal Treasonous Seditious Psychopaths at the CIA always claim. ..."
"... Why get a FISA warrant for Cater Paige after he left the Trump Team? Because folks, the FISA Warrant is RETROACTIVE. ..."
The UK's Secret Intelligence Service, otherwise known as MI6, has been scrambling to prevent
President Trump from publishing classified materials linked to the Russian election meddling
investigation, according to
The Telegraph , stating that any disclosure would "undermine intelligence gathering if he
releases pages of an FBI application to wiretap one of his former campaign advisers."
Trump's allies, however, are fighting back - demanding transparency and suggesting that the
UK wouldn't want the documents withheld unless it had something to hide.
The Telegraph has talked to more than a dozen UK and US officials, including in American
intelligence, who have revealed details about the row.
British spy chiefs have "genuine concern" about sources being exposed if classified parts
of the wiretap request were made public, according to figures familiar with discussions.
" It boils down to the exposure of people ", said one US intelligence official, adding: "
We don't want to reveal sources and methods ." US intelligence shares the concerns of the
UK.
Another said Britain feared setting a dangerous "precedent" which could make people less
likely to share information, knowing that it could one day become public. -
The Telegraph
The Telegraph adds that the UK's dispute with the Trump administration is so politically
sensitive that staff within the British Embassy in D.C. have been barred from discussing it
with journalists. Theresa May has also "been kept at arms-length and is understood to have not
raised the issue directly with the US president ."
In September , we reported that the British government "expressed grave concerns" over the
material in question after President Trump issued an order to the DOJ to release a wide swath
of materials, "immediately" and "without redaction."
Mr Trump wants to declassify 21 pages from one of the applications. He announced the move
in September, then backtracked, then this month said he was "very seriously" considering it
again. Both Britain and Australia are understood to be opposing the move.
The New
York Times reported at the time that the UK's concern was over material which " includes
direct references to conversations between American law enforcement officials and Christopher
Steele ," the former MI6 agent who compiled the infamous "Steele Dossier." The UK's objection,
according to former US and British officials, was over revealing Steele's identity in an
official document, "regardless of whether he had been named in press reports."
We noted in September, however, that Steele's name was contained within the Nunes Memo
- the House Intelligence Committee's majority opinion in the Trump-Russia case.
Steele also had
extensive contacts with DOJ official Bruce Ohr and his wife Nellie , who - along with
Steele - was paid by opposition research firm Fusion GPS in the anti-Trump campaign. Trump
called for the declassification of FBI notes of interviews with Ohr, which would ostensibly
reveal more about his relationship with Steele. Ohr was demoted twice within the Department of
Justice for
lying about his contacts with Fusion GPS.
Perhaps the Brits are also concerned since much of the espionage performed on the Trump
campaign was conducted on UK soil throughout 2016 . Recall that Trump aid George Papadopoulos
was lured to London in March, 2016, where Maltese professor Joseph Mifsud fed him the rumor
that Russia had dirt on Hillary Clinton. It was later at a London bar that Papadopoulos would
drunkenly pass the rumor to Australian diplomat Alexander Downer (who Strzok flew to London to
meet with).
Also recall that CIA/FBI "informant" (spy) Stefan Halper met with both Carter Page
and Papadopoulos in
London.
Halper, a veteran of four Republican administrations, reached out to Trump aide George
Papadopoulos in September 2016 with an offer to fly to London to write an academic paper on
energy exploration in the Mediterranean Sea.
Papadopoulos accepted a flight to London and a $3,000 honorarium. He claims that during a
meeting in London, Halper asked him whether he knew anything about Russian hacking of
Democrats' emails.
Papadopoulos had other contacts on British soil that he now believes were part of a
government-sanctioned surveillance operation. - Daily Caller
In total, Halper received
over $1 million from the Obama Pentagon for "research," over $400,000 of which was granted
before and during the 2016 election season.
Papadopoulos, who was sentenced to 14 days in prison for lying about his conversations with
a shadowy Maltese professor and self-professed member of the
Clinton Foundation , has publicly claimed he was targeted by UK spies, and told The
Telegraph that he demands transparency. Trump's allies in Washington, meanwhile, have suggested
that the facts laid out before us mean that the ongoing Russia investigation was invalid from
the start .
In short, it's understandable that the UK would prefer to hide their involvement in the
"witch hunt" of Donald Trump since much of the counterintelligence investigation was conducted
on UK soil. And if the Brits had knowledge of the operation, it will bolster claims that they
meddled in the 2016 US election by assisting what appears to have been a
set-up from the start .
Steele's ham-handed dossier is a mere embarrassment, as virtually none of the claims
asserted by the former MI6 agent have been proven true.
Steele, a former MI6 agent, is the author of the infamous and unverified anti-Trump
dossier. He worked as a confidential human source for the FBI for years before the
relationship was severed just before the election because of Steele's unauthorized contacts
with the press.
He shared results of his investigation into Trump's links to Russia with the FBI beginning
in early July 2016.
The FBI relied heavily on the unverified Steele dossier to fill out applications for four
FISA warrants against Page. Page has denied the dossier's claims, which include that he was
the Trump campaign's back channel to the Kremlin. - Daily Caller
That said, Steele hasn't worked for the British government since 2009, so for their excuse
focusing on the former MI6 agent while ignoring the multitude of events which occurred on UK
soil, is curious.
Trump talks the talk but so far no walking of the walk. Not falling for it anymore, Tyler. No Swamp Draining from Pres. Cheeto anymore than we got Hope or Change from Superfly
When fraud is coming to light, the cockroaches scramble. The so-called intelligence
agencies have run amuck for way too long and leave a trail of lies, murder and deception.
That is the reason Obama and Clinton went to New Zealand and Australia. They have access
to the Five Eyes network in New Zealand and Australia without their requests being recorded
whereas if they had asked in the US their requests and all documents given to them would have
been recorded. . They are both traitors to not only the sitting President and the US people
but also to the United States.
That said, Steele hasn't worked for the British government since 2009, so for their
excuse focusing on the former MI6 agent while ignoring the multitude of events which
occurred on UK soil, is curious.
MI6 agents have a reputation for writing fiction. Ian Fleming comes to mind. Its is
interesting to reflect on the similarities of fiction and so called intelligence.
I think we all know now that the UK not Russia was the dirtbags working for Obama/HRC to
trap Trump. Release the declass Trump and let's start cleaning up the swamp. Let the SHTF those Brits
have never been friends to freedom.
If they released audio-video evidence of public officials indulging in cannibalistic
pedophilia at their state desks, they would still get off the hook.
Their MSM fiends oops I meant friends would scramble to the rescue and create another AV
to counter the actual one, and their idiot Democrat audiences would fall for it.
No matter what is exposed on 5 December the perps will get off the hook.
Six U.S. agencies created a stealth task force, spearhead by CIA's Brennan, to run
domestic surveillance on Trump associates and possibly Trump himself.
To feign ignorance and to seemingly operate within U.S. laws, the agencies freelanced
the wiretapping of Trump associates to the British spy agency GCHQ.
The decision to insert GCHQ as a back door to eavesdrop was sparked by the denial of
two FISA Court warrant applications filed by the FBI to seek wiretaps of Trump
associates.
GCHQ did not work from London or the UK. In fact the spy agency worked from NSA's
headquarters in Fort Meade, MD with direct NSA supervision and guidance to conduct sweeping
surveillance on Trump associates.
The illegal wiretaps were initiated months before the controversial Trump dossier
compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele.
The Justice Department and FBI set up the meeting at Trump Tower between Trump Jr.,
Manafort and Kushner with controversial Russian officials to make Trump's associates appear
compromised.
Following the Trump Tower sit down, GCHQ began digitally wiretapping Manafort, Trump
Jr., and Kushner.
After the concocted meeting by the Deep State, the British spy agency could officially
justify wiretapping Trump associates as an intelligence front for NSA because the Russian
lawyer at the meeting Natalia Veselnitskaya was considered an international security risk
and prior to the June sit down was not even allowed entry into the United States or the UK,
federal sources said.
By using GCHQ, the NSA and its intelligence partners had carved out a loophole to
wiretap Trump without a warrant. While it is illegal for U.S. agencies to monitor phones
and emails of U.S. citizens inside the United States absent a warrant, it is not illegal
for British intelligence to do so. Even if the GCHQ was tapping Trump on U.S. soil at Fort
Meade.
The wiretaps, secured through illicit scheming, have been used by U.S. Special Counsel
Robert Mueller's probe of alleged Russian collusion in the 2016 election, even though the
evidence is considered "poisoned fruit."
Add: GCHQ (UK NSA) was in agreement with HilBarry Inc to block the US 2016 election for U.K.
candidate Hillary aka Clinton 'Rhodes scholar' Brit colonial agent. Study who 'Rhodes'
was. CIA and MI6 are UK siblings. Note nickname for CIA is "Langley" = 'The English' in French
L'Anglai. Trump Tower - Russkie atty Natalia met with Simpson GPS Fusion to debrief before &
after meeting. Natalia was granted US entry by Mueller Spec Counsel teamster Preet Baharara
(conflict in that Preet is compromised witness and also SC "investigator"). Russkie
Ahkmedishin met with Obama WH in prep for meeting (see Jan 2016 WH log). The 'translator' at
meeting was Obama WH translator.
GPS Fusion wrote the Dossier with UK spy Steele and was paid by Hillary/DNC.
The evidence for false Trump Russkie bank connections is a phony server set up by CIA
agent McMullen that robo scammed Russian Alfa Bank to robo talk to the phony server the CIA
named with miss-spell Trump OrGAINization. See godaddy domain registration. Hillary slandered
Trump with this scam on Twitter Oct 31, 2016 - her witchy day.
Obama used the intelligence agencies to spy on all political opponents, not just the Trump
campaign and eventually the administration. NSA databases were being queried by Democrat
contractors with content feed to Obama's National Security staff where communications were
"unmasked" by Rice and others. Rodgers shut down the scheme. So much Marxist criminality and
fraud left unpunished.
George Papadopoulos was not the reason the FBI opened their 2016 Counterintelligence
Investigation into the Trump Campaign. John Brennan was the reason.
Brennan was the man pushing the entire Russian Narrative that consumed Washington D.C.
– and ultimately led to the Mueller Investigation. He did this based on little or no
evidence. The Electronic Communication should prove interesting. John Brennan's Role in the FBI's Trump-Russia Investigation
April 9, 2018 by Jeff Carlson, CFA
In the summer of 2016, Robert Hannigan, head of Britain's Government Communications
Headquarters (GCHQ) traveled to Washington D.C. to meet with then-CIA Head John Brennan
regarding alleged communications between the Trump Campaign and Moscow.
That summer, GCHQ's then head, Robert Hannigan, flew to the US to personally brief CIA
chief John Brennan. The matter was deemed so important that it was handled at "director
level", face-to-face between the two agency chiefs. The meeting between Hannigan and Brennan appears somewhat unusual.
The US and the UK are two of the so-called Five Eyes -- along with Canada, Australia and
New Zealand -- that share a broad range of intelligence through a formalized alliance.
The GCHQ is responsible for Britain's Signals Intelligence. The NSA is responsible for the United States' Signals Intelligence. Hannigan's U.S. counterpart was not CIA Director Brennan. Hannigan's U.S. counterpart was NSA Director Mike Rogers. Luke Harding of the Guardian originally reported the meeting in an April 13, 2017 article
on Britain's spy agencies early role in the Trump-Russia investigation:
GCHQ first became aware in late 2015 of suspicious "interactions" between figures
connected to Trump and known or suspected Russian agents. This intelligence was passed to the
US as part of a routine exchange of information
Over the next six months, until summer 2016, a number of western agencies shared further
information on contacts between Trump's inner circle and Russians.
See above about phony robot "suspicious communications" set up by CIA McMullen to smear
Trump with Trump Tower falsely named server and data created in robo call response with
Russian Alfa bank.
Russian "communications" was e-data of the Russkie Bank and the non-Trump server named
"Trump OrGAINization". It was just two robo-computers pinging back and forth.
The Trump Team was being surveiled the entire time by Breanan via the GCHQ. The CIA are
Analysts. That's it. They had to involve the FBI to begin the Surveillance & Criminal
Investigation into the Counter Intelligence Operation. Thus, Criminal at Large Breanan's trip
up to Capital Hill to meet with Harry Reid to brief him on Steele. Brennan the "Puppet
Master" has been quarter backing the entire Deep State Intelligence Psychological Operation
& Parallel Construction Surveillance from the very start.
They've been reverse engineering their lies ever since they lost the election to cover
their tracks and use the excuse of "Plausible Deniability" as the Pure Evil War Criminal
Treasonous Seditious Psychopaths at the CIA always claim.
Feb 13th, Don Bongino Podcast.
"I'll include an article from NPR. NPR, not a by any stretch a right Wing outlet. Ok? But
it's actually a decent piece. Now, it describes the three hop rule. It's from 2013, but it describes it very shortly
& ce scintillating in about 400 words. And it's done well so I'll include it in todays
show notes.
Remember, It's now the "Two Hop Rule" but you just have to know what a "Hop" is to
understand how dangerous this is.
Here's how they explain it.
It says, "testimony before Congress on Wednesday, remember this is written in 2013 Joe.
Showed how easy it is for Americans, with no connection to Terrorism to unwittingly have
their calling patterns analyzed by the Government." This is really wacko stuff. It hinges on
what is known as a "Hop."
Or chain analysis. When the NSA identifies a suspect, it can look not just at his phone
records Joe, but also the records of everyone he calls, everyone who calls those people and
everyone who calls those people." Chain Migration.
You ain't kidding! Right!? Chain spying!
It goes on...though....this is good.
"If the average person Joe, called 40 unique people. "Three Hop Analysts" would allow the
Government to mine the records....this is a staggering number...of 2.5 Million Americans when
investigating one suspected terrorist."
"Holy Moly!" Holly Moly is right.
Why get a FISA warrant for Cater Paige after he left the Trump Team? Because folks, the
FISA Warrant is RETROACTIVE.
All the the emails he sent in the past to Trump Team members, combine that with "Two Hops"
you basically have everybody in the known universe that could of ever contacted the Trump
Team.
Paige sends an email, whatever to Kushner. I don't know who he sends emails to. He
probably didn't. But you get the point. Then you go to another "Hop." Kushner, who'd he send
an email to? Now you got the while Trump Team.
That's the whole point. That's why I constantly say to you that they were trying to put a
legal face on this thing after they realized the election was coming up and they could
lose.
They were like. Man, we've been spying on these people the whole time. We already got most
of their emails and their communications. How do we legally do it now?
Oh, we get a FISA Warrant, we use couple of "Hops" and we're Golden."
"... Operating on a budget of Ł1.9 million (US$2.4 million), the secretive Integrity Initiative consists of "clusters" of local politicians, journalists, military personnel, scientists and academics. The team is dedicated to searching for and publishing "evidence" of Russian interference in European affairs , while themselves influencing leadership behind the scenes, the documents claim. ..."
"... The Integrity Initiative "clusters" currently operate out of Spain, France, Germany, Italy, Greece, Montenegro, Serbia, Norway, Lithuania and the netherlands. According to the leak by Anonymous, the Integrity Initiative is working to aggressively expand its sphere of influence throughout eastern Europe, as well as the US, Canada and the MENA region ..."
"... The work done by the Initiative - which claims it is not a government body, is done under "absolute secrecy via concealed contacts embedded throughout British embassies," according to the leak. It does, however, admit to working with unnamed British "government agencies." ..."
The hacking collective known as "Anonymous" published a
trove of documents on November 5 which it claims exposes a UK-based psyop to create a " large-scale information secret service
" in Europe in order to combat "Russian propaganda" - which has been blamed for everything from
Brexit to US President Trump winning the 2016 US election.
The primary objective of the " Integrity Initiative " - established
in 2015 by the Institute for Statecraft - is "to provide a coordinated
Western response to Russian disinformation and other elements of hybrid warfare."
And while the notion of Russian disinformation has become the West's favorite new bogeyman to excuse things such as Hillary Clinton's
historic loss to Donald Trump, we note that "Anonymous" was called out by WikiLeaks in October 2016 as an FBI cutout, while the report
on the Integrity Initiative that Anonymous exposed comes from Russian state-owned network
RT - so it's anyone's guess whose 400lb
hackers are at work here.
Operating on a budget
of Ł1.9 million (US$2.4 million), the secretive Integrity Initiative consists of "clusters" of local politicians, journalists,
military personnel, scientists and academics. The team is dedicated to searching for and publishing "evidence" of Russian interference
in European affairs , while themselves influencing leadership behind the scenes, the documents claim.
The UK establishment appears to be conducting the very activities of which it and its allies have long-accused the Kremlin,
with little or no corroborating evidence. The program also aims to "change attitudes in Russia itself" as well as influencing
Russian speakers in the EU and North America, one of the leaked
documents states. -
RT
The Integrity Initiative "clusters" currently operate out of Spain, France, Germany, Italy, Greece, Montenegro, Serbia, Norway,
Lithuania and the netherlands. According to the leak by Anonymous, the Integrity Initiative is working to aggressively expand its
sphere of influence throughout eastern Europe, as well as the US, Canada and the MENA region .
The work done by the Initiative - which claims it is not a government body, is done under "absolute secrecy via concealed contacts
embedded throughout British embassies," according to the leak. It does, however, admit to working with unnamed British "government
agencies."
The initiative has received Ł168,000 in funding from HQ NATO Public Diplomacy and Ł250,000 from the
US State Department , the
documents allege.
Some of its purported members include British MPs and high-profile " independent" journalists with a penchant for anti-Russian
sentiment in their collective online oeuvre, as showcased by a brief glance at their Twitter feeds. -
RT
Noted examples of "inedependent" anti-Russia journalists:
Spanish "Op"
In one example of the group's activities, a "Moncloa Campaign" was successfully conducted by the group's Spanish cluster to block
the appointment of Colonel Pedro Banos as the director of Spain's Department of Homeland Security. It took just seven-and-a-half
hours to accomplish, brags the group in the
documents .
"The [Spanish] government is preparing to appoint Colonel Banos, known for his pro-Russian and pro-Putin positions in the Syrian
and Ukrainian conflicts, as Director of the Department of Homeland Security, a key body located at the Moncloa," begins Nacho Torreblanca
in a seven-part tweetstorm describing what happened.
Others joined in. Among them – according to the leaks – academic Miguel Ángel Quintana Paz, who wrote that "Mr. Banos is to
geopolitics as a homeopath is to medicine." Appointing such a figure would be "a shame." -
RT
The operation was reported in Spanish media, while Banos was labeled "pro-Putin" by UK MP Bob Seely.
In short, expect anything counter to predominant "open-border" narratives to be the Kremlin's fault - and not a natural populist
reflex to the destruction of borders, language and culture.
"... It lists Bellingcat and the Atlantic Council as "partner organisations" ..."
"... "The UK's Secret Intelligence Service, otherwise known as MI6, has been scrambling to prevent President Trump from publishing classified materials linked to the Russian election meddling investigation. ... much of the espionage performed on the Trump campaign was conducted on UK soil throughout 2016." ..."
"... "Gregory R. Copley, editor and publisher of Defense & Foreign Affairs, posited that Sergei Skripal is the unnamed Russian intelligence source in the Steele dossier. ... In Skripal's pseudo-country-gentleman retirement, the ex-GRU-MI6 double agent was selling custom-made "Russian intelligence"; he had fabricated "material" that went into the Steele dossier..." ..."
"... this movement in the west by gov'ts to pay for generating lies, hate and propaganda towards russia is really sick... it is perfect for the military industrial complex corporations though and they seem to be calling the shots in the west, much more so then the voice of the ordinary person who is not interested in war ..."
"... Seems to me that this shows the primacy of the City of London, with its offshore network of illicit capital accumulation, within Britain. It is a state within a state or even a financial empire within a state, which, for deep historical reasons isn't subject to the same laws as the rest of the UK. ..."
"... The UK's pathological obsession with Russia only makes sense to me as the city's insistence on continued 90s style appropriation of Russia's wealth ..."
"... British hypocrisy publicly called out. How this all unravels is one to watch. Extra large popcorn and soda for me ..."
"... It seems to me that the UK has far more to lose from doxxing than Russia does. The interference in sovereign allied states to 'manage' who the UK thinks they should appoint does not bode well for such relations ..."
"... A separate subcluster of so-called journalists names Deborah Haynes, David Aaronovitch of the London Times and Neil Buckley from the FT." Subcluster. Love it. Just how crap do you have to be to fail to make it to membership of a full cluster of smear merchants? ..."
"... I doubt very seriously that the British launched this operation without the CIA's implicit and explicit support. This has all the markings of a John Brennan operation that has been launched stealthily to prevent anyone from knowing its real origins. ..."
"... The Brits don't act alone, and a project of this magnitude did not begin without Langley's explicit approval. ..."
"... Now check out the wording in the above document: "Funding from institutional and national governmental sources in the US has been delayed by internal disputes within the US government, but w.e.f. March 2018 that deadlock seems to have been resolved and funding should now flow." Think about that. What would have blocked the flow of USG support for this project?? Why, the allegations of collusion against Trump, of course. Naturally, the Republicans are not going to provide money to an operation that threatens to destroy the head of their own party. So, there has been no bipartisan agreement on funding for anti-Russia propaganda ..."
"... This mob was created in the autumn of 2015, according to their site. That would have been about the time -- probably just after -- the Russians intervened in Syria. The Brits had plans for an invasion of Syria in 2009, according to their fave Guardian fish wrap. ..."
"... Pat Lang posted a report that strongly implies that charges of Russian influence on Trump are a deliberate falsification ..."
"... It seems quite possible that what is alleged as "Russian meddling" is actually CIA-MI6 meddling ..."
"... As I have said before, MAGA is a POLICY RESPONSE to the challenge from Russia and China. The election of a Republican faux populist was necessary and Trump, despite his many flaws, was the best candidate for the job. ..."
"... The Integrity Initiative's goal is to defend democracy against the truth about Russia. All this is so Orwellian. When will we get the Ministry of Love? ..."
"... They shot at an elephant and failed to kill it. So yes, out of the combo of frustration, resentment, and fear they hate the resurgent Russia and prefer Cold War II, and if necessary WWIII, to peaceful co-existence. Of course the usual corporate imperative (in this case weapons profiteering) reinforces the mass psychological pathology among the elites. ..."
"... The ironic thing is that Putin doesn't prefer to challenge the neoliberal globalist "order" at all, but would happily see Russia take a prominent place within it. It's the US and its UK poodle who are insisting on confrontation. ..."
"... Great article! It reminded me of what I read in George Orwell's novella "1984." He summed it all up brilliantly in nine words: "War is Peace"; "Freedom is Slavery"; "Ignorance is Strength." The three pillars of political power. ..."
"... Since UK has always blocked the "European Intelligence" initiative, on the basis of his pertenence to the "Five Eyes", and as UK is leaving the European Union, where it has always been the Troyan Horse of the US, one would think that all these people belonging to the so called "clusters" should register themselves as "foreign agents" working for UK government. ..."
British Government Runs Secret Anti-Russian Smear CampaignsSteveg , Nov 24,
2018 11:43:44 AM |
link
In 2015 the government of Britain launched a secret operation to insert anti-Russia
propaganda into the western media stream.
We have already seen
many consequences of this and similar programs which are designed to smear anyone who
does not follow the anti-Russian government lines. The 'Russian collusion' smear campaign
against Donald Trump based on the Steele dossier was also a largely British operation but
seems to be part of a different project.
The ' Integrity
Initiative ' builds 'cluster' or contact groups of trusted journalists, military
personal, academics and lobbyists within foreign countries. These people get alerts via
social media to take action when the British center perceives a need.
On June 7 it took the the Spanish cluster only a few hours to derail the appointment of
Perto Banos as the Director of the National Security Department in Spain. The cluster
determined that he had a too positive view of Russia and launched a coordinated social media
smear
campaign (pdf) against him.
The Initiative and its operations were unveiled when someone liberated some of its
documents, including its budget applications to the British Foreign Office, and
posted them under the 'Anonymous' label at cyberguerrilla.org .
The Integrity Initiative was set up in autumn 2015 by The Institute for Statecraft in
cooperation with the Free University of Brussels (VUB) to bring to the attention of
politicians, policy-makers, opinion leaders and other interested parties the threat posed
by Russia to democratic institutions in the United Kingdom, across Europe and North
America.
It lists Bellingcat and the Atlantic Council as "partner organisations" and
promises that:
Cluster members will be sent to educational sessions abroad to improve the technical
competence of the cluster to deal with disinformation and strengthen bonds in the cluster
community. [...] (Events with DFR Digital Sherlocks, Bellingcat, EuVsDisinfo, Buzzfeed,
Irex, Detector Media, Stopfake, LT MOD Stratcom – add more names and propose cluster
participants as you desire).
The Initiatives Orwellian slogan is 'Defending Democracy Against Disinformation'. It
covers European countries, the UK, the U.S. and Canada and seems to want to expand to the
Middle East.
On its About page
it claims: "We are not a government body but we do work with government departments and
agencies who share our aims." The now published budget plans show that more than 95% of the
Initiative's funding is coming directly from the British government, NATO and the U.S. State
Department. All the 'contact persons' for creating 'clusters' in foreign countries are
British embassy officers. It amounts to a foreign influence campaign by the British
government that hides behind a 'civil society' NGO.
The organisation is led by one Chris N. Donnelly who
receives (pdf) £8,100 per month for creating the smear campaign network.
To counter Russian disinformation and malign influence in Europe by: expanding the
knowledge base; harnessing existing expertise, and; establishing a network of networks of
experts, opinion formers and policy makers, to educate national audiences in the threat and
to help build national capacities to counter it .
The Initiative has a black and white view that is based on a "we are the good ones"
illusion. When "we" 'educate the public' it is legitimate work. When others do similar, it
its disinformation. That is of course not the reality. The Initiative's existence itself,
created to secretly manipulate the public, is proof that such a view is wrong.
If its work were as legit as it wants to be seen, why would the Foreign Office run it from
behind the curtain as an NGO? The Initiative is not the only such operation. It's
applications seek funding from a larger "Russian Language Strategic Communication Programme"
run by the Foreign Office.
The 2017/18 budget application sought FCO funding of £480,635. It received
£102,000 in co-funding from NATO and the Lithuanian Ministry of Defense. The 2018/19
budget application shows a
planned spending (pdf) of £1,961,000.00. The co-sponsors this year are again NATO
and the Lithuanian MoD, but
also include (pdf) the U.S. State Department with £250,000 and Facebook with
£100,000. The budget lays out a strong cooperation with the local military of each
country. It notes that NATO is also generous in financing the local clusters.
One of the liberated papers of the Initiative is a talking points memo labeled
Top 3 Deliverable for FCO (pdf):
Developing and proving the cluster concept and methodology, setting up clusters in a
range of countries with different circumstances
Making people (in Government, think tanks, military, journalists) see the big
picture, making people acknowledge that we are under concerted, deliberate hybrid attack
by Russia
Increasing the speed of response, mobilising the network to activism in pursuit of
the "golden minute"
Under top 1, setting up clusters, a subitem reads:
- Connects media with academia with policy makers with practitioners in a country to impact
on policy and society: ( Jelena Milic silencing pro-kremlin voices on Serbian TV )
Defending Democracy by silencing certain voices on public TV seems to be a
self-contradicting concept.
Another subitem notes how the Initiative secretly influences foreign governments:
We engage only very discreetly with governments, based entirely on trusted personal
contacts, specifically to ensure that they do not come to see our work as a problem, and to
try to influence them gently, as befits an independent NGO operation like ours, viz;
- Germany, via the Zentrum Liberale Moderne to the Chancellor's Office and MOD
- Netherlands, via the HCSS to the MOD
- Poland and Romania, at desk level into their MFAs via their NATO Reps
- Spain, via special advisers, into the MOD and PM's office (NB this may change very soon
with the new Government)
- Norway, via personal contacts into the MOD
- HQ NATO, via the Policy Planning Unit into the Sec Gen's office.
We have latent contacts into other governments which we will activate as needs be as the
clusters develop.
A look at the 'clusters' set up in U.S. and UK shows some prominent names.
Members of the Atlantic Council, which has a contract to
censor Facebook posts , appear on several cluster lists. The UK core cluster also
includes some prominent names like tax fraudster William Browder , the daft Atlantic Council
shill Ben Nimmo and the neo-conservative Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum. One person
of interest is Andrew Wood who
handed the Steele 'dirty dossier' to Senator John McCain to smear Donald Trump over
alleged relations with Russia. A separate subcluster of so-called journalists names Deborah
Haynes, David Aaronovitch of the London Times, Neil Buckley from the FT and Jonathan Marcus
of the BBC.
A ' Cluster
Roundup ' (pdf) from July 2018 details its activities in at least 35 countries. Another
file reveals (pdf) the local
partnering institutions and individuals involved in the programs.
The Initiatives Guide
to Countering Russian Information (pdf) is a rather funny read. It lists the downing of
flight MH 17 by a Ukranian BUK missile, the fake chemical incident in Khan Sheikhoun and the
Skripal Affair as examples for "Russian disinformation". But at least two of these events,
Khan Sheikun via the UK run White Helmets and the Skripal affair, are evidently products of
British intelligence disinformation operations.
The probably most interesting papers of the whole stash is the 'Project Plan' laid out at
pages 7-40 of the
2018 budget application v2 (pdf). Under 'Sustainability' it notes:
The programme is proposed to run until at least March 2019, to ensure that the clusters
established in each country have sufficient time to take root, find funding, and
demonstrate their effectiveness. FCO funding for Phase 2 will enable the activities to be
expanded in scale, reach and scope. As clusters have established themselves, they have
begun to access local sources of funding. But this is a slow process and harder in some
countries than others. HQ NATO PDD [Public Diplomacy Division] has proved a reliable source
of funding for national clusters. The ATA [Atlantic Treaty Association] promises to be the
same, giving access to other pots of money within NATO and member nations. Funding from
institutional and national governmental sources in the US has been delayed by internal
disputes within the US government, but w.e.f. March 2018 that deadlock seems to have been
resolved and funding should now flow.
The programme has begun to create a critical mass of individuals from a cross society
(think tanks, academia, politics, the media, government and the military) whose work is
proving to be mutually reinforcing . Creating the network of networks has given each
national group local coherence, credibility and reach, as well as good international
access. Together, these conditions, plus the growing awareness within governments of the
need for this work, should guarantee the continuity of the work under various auspices and
in various forms.
The
third part of the budget application (pdf) list the various activities, their output and
outcome. The budget plan includes a section that describes 'Risks' to the initiative. These
include hacking of the Initiatives IT as well as:
Adverse publicity generated by Russia or by supporters of Russia in target countries, or by
political and interest groups affected by the work of the programme, aimed at discrediting
the programme or its participants, or to create political embarrassment.
We hope that this piece contributes to such embarrassment.
Posted by b on November 24, 2018 at 11:24 AM |
Permalink
"The UK's Secret Intelligence Service, otherwise known as MI6, has been scrambling to
prevent President Trump from publishing classified materials linked to the Russian election
meddling investigation. ... much of the espionage performed on the Trump campaign was conducted on UK soil
throughout 2016."
"Gregory R. Copley, editor and publisher of Defense & Foreign Affairs, posited that
Sergei Skripal is the unnamed Russian intelligence source in the Steele dossier. ... In
Skripal's pseudo-country-gentleman retirement, the ex-GRU-MI6 double agent was selling
custom-made "Russian intelligence"; he had fabricated "material" that went into the Steele
dossier..."
For M16 to expose this level of stupidity is stunning.
this movement in the west by gov'ts to pay for generating lies, hate and
propaganda towards russia is really sick... it is perfect for the military industrial complex
corporations though and they seem to be calling the shots in the west, much more so then the
voice of the ordinary person who is not interested in war.. i guess the idea is to get the
ordinary people to think in terms of hating another country based on lies and that this would
be a good thing... it is very sad what uk / usa leadership in the past century has come down
to here.... i can only hope that info releases like this will hasten it's demise...
Seems to me that this shows the primacy of the City of London, with its offshore network of
illicit capital accumulation, within Britain. It is a state within a state or even a
financial empire within a state, which, for deep historical reasons isn't subject to the same
laws as the rest of the UK.
The UK's pathological obsession with Russia only makes sense to
me as the city's insistence on continued 90s style appropriation of Russia's wealth
@6 ingrian... things didn't go as planned for the expropriation of Russia after the fall of
the Soviet Union.. it seems the west is still hurting from not being able to exploit Russia
fully, as they'd intended...
Let the Doxx wars begin! Sure, Anonymous is not Russian but it will surely now be targeted
and smeared as such which would show that it has hit a nerve. British hypocrisy publicly
called out. How this all unravels is one to watch. Extra large popcorn and soda for me.
I think we've all noticed the euro-asslantic press (and friends) on behalf of, willingly
and in cooperation with the British intelligence et al 'calling out' numerous Russians as
G(R)U/spies/whatever for a while now yet providing less than a shred of credible
evidence.
It seems to me that the UK has far more to lose from doxxing than Russia does. The
interference in sovereign allied states to 'manage' who the UK thinks they should appoint
does not bode well for such relations.
Meanwhile in Brussels they are having their cake and eating it, i.e. bemoaning Europe's
'weak response' to Russian propaganda:
"A separate subcluster of so-called journalists names Deborah Haynes, David Aaronovitch of
the London Times and Neil Buckley from the FT." Subcluster. Love it. Just how crap do you
have to be to fail to make it to membership of a full cluster of smear merchants?
Yet another example of the pot calling the kettle black when in fact the kettle may not be
black at all; it's just the pot making up things. "These Russian criminals are using
propaganda to show (truths) like the fact the DNC and Clinton campaigns colluded to prevent
Sanders from being nominated, so we need to establish a clandestine propaganda network to
establish that the Russians are running propaganda!"
"In 2015 the government of Britain launched a secret operation to insert anti-Russia
propaganda into the western media stream."
I doubt very seriously that the British launched this operation without the CIA's implicit
and explicit support. This has all the markings of a John Brennan operation that has been
launched stealthily to prevent anyone from knowing its real origins.
The Brits don't act alone, and a project of this magnitude did not begin without Langley's
explicit approval.
Now check out the wording in the above document: "Funding from institutional and national governmental sources in the US has been delayed
by internal disputes within the US government, but w.e.f. March 2018 that deadlock seems to
have been resolved and funding should now flow." Think about that. What would have blocked the flow of USG support for this project?? Why, the allegations of collusion against Trump, of course. Naturally, the Republicans are
not going to provide money to an operation that threatens to destroy the head of their own
party. So, there has been no bipartisan agreement on funding for anti-Russia propaganda
BUT...the author assures us that the "deadlock seems to have been resolved and funding
should now flow" Huh?? In other words, the fix is in. Mueller will pardon Trump on collusion charges but the
propaganda campaign against Russia will continue...with the full support of both parties. I could be wrong, but that's how I see it...
This mob was created in the autumn of 2015, according to their site. That would have been
about the time -- probably just after -- the Russians intervened in Syria. The Brits had
plans for an invasion of Syria in 2009, according to their fave Guardian fish wrap.
A lot of
sour grapes with this so-called 'integrity initiative', IMO. BP was behind a lot of this, I
would also think. When Assad pulled the plug on the pipeline through the Levant in 2009, the
Brits hacked up a fur ball. It's gone downhill for them ever since. Couldn't happen to a
nicer lot. If you can't invade or beat them with proxies, you can at least call them names.
If Trump was taking dirty money or engaged in criminal activity with Russians then he
was doing it with Felix Sater, who was under the control of the FBI... And who was in
charge of the FBI during all of the time that Sater was a signed up FBI snitch? You got it
-- Robert Mueller (2001 thru 2013) ...
It seems quite possible that what is alleged as "Russian meddling" is actually CIA-MI6
meddling, including:
Steele dossier: To create suspicion in government, media, and later the public
Leaking of DNC emails to Wikileaks (but calling it a "hack"):
To help with election of Trump and link Wikileaks (as agent) to Russian election
meddling
Cambridge Analytica: To provide necessary reasoning for Trump's (certain) win of the electoral college.
Note: We later found that dozens of firms had undue access to Facebook data. Why did the
campaign turn to a British firm instead of an American firm? Well, it had to be a British
firm if MI6 was running the (supposed) Facebook targeting for CIA.
As I have said before, MAGA is a POLICY RESPONSE to the challenge from Russia and China. The
election of a Republican faux populist was necessary and Trump, despite his many flaws, was
the best candidate for the job.
The Integrity Initiative's goal is to defend democracy against the truth about Russia. All this is so Orwellian. When will we get the Ministry of Love?
"things didn't go as planned for the expropriation of russia after the fall of the soviet
union.. it seems the west is still hurting from not being able to exploit russia fully, as
they'd intended..."
They shot at an elephant and failed to kill it. So yes, out of the combo of frustration, resentment, and fear they hate the resurgent
Russia and prefer Cold War II, and if necessary WWIII, to peaceful co-existence. Of course
the usual corporate imperative (in this case weapons profiteering) reinforces the mass
psychological pathology among the elites.
The ironic thing is that Putin doesn't prefer to challenge the neoliberal globalist
"order" at all, but would happily see Russia take a prominent place within it. It's the US
and its UK poodle who are insisting on confrontation.
Great article! It reminded me of what I read in George Orwell's novella "1984." He summed it
all up brilliantly in nine words: "War is Peace"; "Freedom is Slavery"; "Ignorance is
Strength." The three pillars of political power.
Since UK has always blocked the "European Intelligence" initiative, on the basis of his
pertenence to the "Five Eyes", and as UK is leaving the European Union, where it has always
been the Troyan Horse of the US, one would think that all these people belonging to the so
called "clusters" should register themselves as "foreign agents" working for UK
government...and in this context, new empowerished sovereign governemts into the EU should
consider the possibility expelling these traitors as spies of the UK....
Country list of agents of influence according to the leak:
Germany: Harold Elletson ,Klaus NaumannWolf-Ruediger Bengs, Ex Amb Killian, Gebhardt v Moltke, Roland
Freudenstein, Hubertus Hoffmann, Bertil Wenger, Beate Wedekind, Klaus Wittmann, Florian
Schmidt, Norris v Schirach
Sweden, Norway, Finland: Martin Kragh , Jardar Ostbo, Chris Prebensen, Kate Hansen Bundt, Tor Bukkvoll, Henning-Andre
Sogaard, Kristen Ven Bruusgard, Henrik O Breitenbauch, Niels Poulsen, Jeppe Plenge, Claus
Mathiesen, Katri Pynnoniemi, Ian Robertson, Pauli Jarvenpaa, Andras Racz
Netherlands: Dr Sijbren de Jong, Ida Eklund-Lindwall, Yevhen Fedchenko, Rianne Siebenga, Jerry Sullivan,
Hunter B Treseder, Chris Quick
Spain: Nico de Pedro, Ricardo Blanco Tarno, Eduardo Serra Rexach, Dionisio Urteaga Todo, Dimitri
Barua, Fernando Valenzuela Marzo, Marta Garcia, Abraham Sanz, Fernando Maura, Jose Ignacio
Sanchez Amor, Jesus Ramon-Laca Clausen, Frances Ghiles, Carmen Claudin, Nika Prislan, Luis
Simon, Charles Powell, Mira Milosevich, Daniel Iriarte, Anna Bosch, Mira Milosevich-Juaristi,
Tito, Frances Ghiles, Borja Lasheras, Jordi Bacaria, Alvaro Imbernon-Sainz, Nacho Samor
US, Canada:
Mary Ellen Connell, Anders Aslund, Elizabeth Braw, Paul Goble, David Ziegler
Evelyn Farkas, Glen Howard, Stephen Blank, Ian Brzezinski, Thomas Mahnken, John Nevado,
Robert Nurick, Jeff McCausland
Todd Leventhal
UK: Chris Donnelly
Amalyah Hart William Browder John Ardis
Roderick Collins, Patrick Mileham Deborah Haynes
Dan Lafayeedney Chris Hernon Mungo Melvin
Rob Dover Julian Moore Agnes Josa David Aaronovitch Stephen Dalziel Raheem Shapi Ben
Nimmo
Robert Hall Alexander Hoare Steve Jermy Dominic Kennedy
Victor Madeira Ed Lucas Dr David Ryall
Graham Geale Steve Tatham Natalie Nougayrede Alan Riley [email protected]Anne Applebaum Neil Logan Brown James Wilson
Primavera Quantrill
Bruce Jones David Clark Charles Dick
Ahmed Dassu Sir Adam Thompson Lorna Fitzsimons Neil Buckley Richard Titley Euan Grant
Alastair Aitken Yusuf Desai Bobo Lo Duncan Allen Chris Bell
Peter Mason John Lough Catherine Crozier
Robin Ashcroft Johanna Moehring Vadim Kleiner David Fields Alistair Wood Ben Robinson Drew
Foxall Alex Finnen
Orsyia Lutsevych Charlie Hatton Vladimir Ashurkov
Giles Harris Ben Bradshaw
Chris Scheurweghs James Nixey
Charlie Hornick Baiba Braze J Lindley-French
Craig Oliphant Paul Kitching Nick Childs Celia Szusterman
James Sherr Alan Parfitt Alzbeta Chmelarova Keir Giles
Andy Pryce Zach Harkenrider
Kadri Liik Arron Rahaman David Nicholas Igor Sutyagin Rob Sandford Maya Parmar Andrew Wood
Richard Slack Ellie Scarnell
Nick Smith Asta Skaigiryte Ian Bond Joanna Szostek Gintaras Stonys Nina Jancowicz
Nick Washer Ian Williams Joe Green Carl Miller Adrian Bradshaw
Clement Daudy Jeremy Blackham Gabriel Daudy Andrew Lucy Stafford Diane Allen Alexandros
Papaioannou
Paddy Nicoll
"... When you are paid a lot of money to come up with plots "psyops", you tend to come up with plots for "psyops". The word "entrapment" comes to mind. Probably "self-serving" also. ..."
"... Anti-Russian is just a code word for Globalist, Internationalist. ..."
"... This is such BS. Since when does Russia have the resources to pull all this off? They have such a complex program that they need the coordinated efforts of all the resources of the WEST? This is nuts. ..."
One of the documents lists a series of propaganda weapons to be used against Russia. One is
use of the church as a weapon. That has already been started in Ukraine with Poroshenko
buying off regligious leader to split Ukraine Orthodoxy from Russian Orthodoxy. It also
explicitly states that the Skripal incident is a 'Dirty Trick' against Russia.
The British political system is on the verge of collapse. BREXIT has finally demonstrated
that the Government/ Opposition parties are clearly aligned against the interests of the
people. The EU is nothing more than an arm of the Globalist agenda of world domination.
The US has shown its true colours - sanctioning every country that stands for independent
sovereignty is not a good foreign policy, and is destined to turn the tide of public opinion
firmly against global hegemony, endless wars, and wealth inequity.
The old Empire is in its death throes. A new paradigm awaits which will exclude all those
who have exploited the many, in order to sit at the top of the pyramid. They cannot escape
Karma.
The Western world needs to come to terms with the collapse of the Soviet Union and its
aftermath. Today, Russia is led by Putin and he obviously has objectives as any national
leader has.
Western "leaders" need to decide whether Putin:
Is trying to create Soviet Union 2.0, to have a 2nd attempt at ruling the world thru
communism and to do this by holding the world to ransom over oil/gas supplies. OR
Is wanting Russia to become a member of the family of nations and of a multi-polar world to improve the lives of
Russian people, but is being blocked at every twist and turn by manufactured events like Russia-gate and the Skripal affair
and now this latest revelation of anti-Russian propaganda campaigns being coordinated and run out of London.
Both of the above cannot be true because there are too many contradictions. Which is it??
Yes because imagine that that we lived in 1940 without any means to inform ourselves and
that media was still in control over the information that reaches us. We would already be in
a fullblown war with Russia because of it but now with the Internet and information going
around freely only a whimpy 10% of we the people stand behind their desperately wanted war.
Imagine that, an informed sheople.
Can't have that, they cannot do their usual stuff anymore.... good riddance.
"250,000 from the US State
Department , the documents allege."....... Interesting.
"During the third
Democratic debate on Saturday night, Hillary Clinton called for a "Manhattan-like
project" to break encrypted terrorist communications. The project would "bring the government and the tech communities together" to find a way
to give law enforcement access to encrypted messages, she said. It's something that some
politicians and intelligence officials have wanted for awhile,"........
***wasn't the Manhatten project a secret venture?????? Hummmmm"
Hillary Clinton has all of our encryption keys, including the FBI's . "Encryption keys" is
a general reference to several encryption functions hijacked by Hillary and her surrogate
ENTRUST. They include hash functions (used to indicate whether the contents have been altered
in transit), PKI public/private key infrastructure, SSL (secure socket layer), TLS (transport
layer security), the Dual_EC_DRBG
NSA algorithm and certificate authorities.
The convoluted structure managed by the "Federal Common Policy" group has ceded to
companies like ENTRUST INC the ability to sublicense their authority to third parties who in
turn manage entire other networks in a Gordian knot of relationships clearly designed to fool
the public to hide their devilish criminality. All roads lead back to Hillary and the Rose
Law Firm."- patriots4truth
When you are paid a lot of money to come up with plots "psyops", you tend to come up with
plots for "psyops". The word "entrapment" comes to mind. Probably "self-serving" also.
FBI/Anonymous can use this story to support a narrative that social media bots posting
memes is a problem for everybody, and it's not a partisan issue. The idea is that fake news
and unrestricted social media are inherently dangerous, and both the West and Russia are
exploiting that, so governments need to agree to restrict the ability to use those platforms
for political speech, especially without using True Names.
Oilygawkies in the UK and USSA seem to be letting their spooks have a good-humored (rating
here on the absurd transparency of these ops) contest to see who can come up with the most
surreal propaganda psy-ops.
But they probably also serve as LHO distractions from something genuinely sleazy.
Anti-Russian is just a code word for Globalist, Internationalist. Anything that is
remotely like Nationalism is the true enemy of these Globalist/Internationalists, which is
what the Top-Ape Bolshevik promoted: see Vladimir Lenin and his quotes on how he believed
fully in "internationalism" for a world without borders. Ironic how they Love the butchers of
the Soviet Union but hate Russia. It is ALL ABOUT IDEOLOGY to these people and "the means
justify the ends".
Basically, if one acquires factual information from an internet source, which leads to
overturning the propaganda to which we're all subjected, then it MUST have come from Putin.
This is the direction they're headed. Anyone speaking out against the official story is
obviously a Russian spy.
Better to call it the Anti-Integrity Initiative. UK cretins up to their usual dirty tricks - let them choke on their poison. The judgement of history will eventually catch up with them.
A good 'ole economic collapse will give western countries a chance to purge their crazy
leaders before they involve us all in a thermonuclear war. Short everything with your entire
accounts.
This is such BS. Since when does Russia have the resources to pull all this off? They have
such a complex program that they need the coordinated efforts of all the resources of the
WEST? This is nuts.
Isn't it just as likely someone in the WEST planted this cache, intending Anonymous to
find it?
Any propaganda coming from the UK or US is strictly zionist. EVERYTHING they put out is to
the benefit of Israel and the "lobby". Russia isn't perfect, but if they're an enemy of the
latter, then they should NOT be considered a foe to all thinking and conscientious
people.
Yesterday, the BBC had a thing on Thai workers in Israel, and how they keep dying of
accidents, their general level of slavery etc. Very odd to have a negative Israel story, so I
wonder who upset whom, and what the ongoing status will be.
Thai labourers in Israel tell of harrowing conditions
A year-long BBC investigation has discovered widespread abuse of Thai nationals living
and working in Israel - under a scheme organized by the two governments.
Many are subjected to unsafe working practices and squalid, unsanitary living
conditions. Some are overworked, others underpaid and there are dozens of unexplained
deaths.
England and the U.S. don't like their very poor and rotten social conditions put out for
the public to see. Both countries have severely deteriorating problems on their streets
because of bankrupt governments printing money for foreign wars.
More of the same fraudulent duality while alleged so called but not money etc continues to
flow (everything is criminal) and the cesspool of a hierarchy pretends it's business as
usual.
This isn't about maintaining balance in a lie this is about disclosing the truth and
agendas (Agenda 21 now Agenda 2030 = The New Age Religion is Never Going To Be Saturnism).
The layers of the hierarchy are a lie so unless the alleged so called leaders of those layers
are publicly providing testimony and confession then everything that is being spoon fed to
the pablum puking public through all sources is a lie.
Operating on a budget of £1.9 million (US$2.4 million), the secretive Integrity
Initiative consists of "clusters" of (((local politicians, journalists, military personnel,
scientists and academics))).
The (((team))) is dedicated to searching for and publishing "evidence" of Russian
interference in European affairs, while themselves influencing leadership behind the scenes,
the documents claim.
"... Veterans Day is not a holiday to honor the men and women who have dutifully protected their country. The youngest Americans who arguably defended their nation from a real threat to its shores are in their nineties, and soon there won't be any of them left. ..."
"... Every single person who has served in the US military since the end of the second World War has protected nothing other than the agendas of global hegemony, resource control and war profiteering. They have not been fighting and dying for freedom and democracy, they have been fighting and dying for imperialism, Raytheon profit margins, and crude oil. ..."
"... Veterans Day, like so very, very much in American culture, is a propaganda construct designed to lubricate the funneling of human lives into the chamber of a gigantic gun. It glorifies evil, stupid, meaningless acts of mass murder to ensure that there will always be recruits who are willing to continue perpetrating it, and to ensure that the US public doesn't wake up to the fact that its government's insanely bloated military budget is being used to unleash unspeakable horrors upon the earth. ..."
"... Your rulers have never feared the Koreans, the Vietnamese, the Iraqis, the terrorists, the Iranians, the Chinese or the Russians. They fear you. They fear the American public suddenly waking up to the evil things that are being done in your name and using your vast numbers to shrug off the existing power structures without firing a shot, as easily as removing a heavy coat on a warm day. If enough of you loudly withdraw your consent for their insatiable warmongering, that fear will be enough to keep them in check. ..."
The US will be celebrating Veterans Day, and many a striped flag shall be waved. The social
currency of esteem will be used to elevate those who have served in the US military, thereby
ensuring future generations of recruits to be thrown into the gears of the globe-spanning war
machine
Veterans Day is not a holiday to honor the men and women who have dutifully protected their
country. The youngest Americans who arguably defended their nation from a real threat to its
shores are in their nineties, and soon there won't be any of them left.
Every single person who
has served in the US military since the end of the second World War has protected nothing other
than the agendas of global hegemony, resource control and war profiteering. They have not been
fighting and dying for freedom and democracy, they have been fighting and dying for
imperialism, Raytheon profit margins, and crude oil.
I just said something you're not supposed to say. People have dedicated many years of their
lives to the service of the US military; they've given their limbs to it, they've suffered
horrific brain damage for it, they've given their very lives to it. Families have been ripped
apart by the violence that has been inflicted upon members of the US Armed Forces; you're not
supposed to let them hear you say that their loved one was destroyed because some sociopathic
nerds somewhere in Washington decided that it would give America an advantage over potential
economic rivals to control a particular stretch of Middle Eastern dirt. But it is true, and if
we don't start acknowledging that truth lives are going to keep getting thrown into the gears
of the machine for the power and profit of a few depraved oligarchs. So I'm going to keep
saying it.
Last week I saw the hashtag #SaluteToService trending on Twitter. Apparently the NFL had a
deal going where every time someone tweeted that hashtag they'd throw a few bucks at some
veteran's charity. Which sounds sweet, until you consider three things:
2. The NFL has taken millions of
dollars from the Pentagon for displays of patriotism on the field, including for the
policy of bringing all players out for the national anthem every game starting in 2009 (which
led to Colin Kaepernick's demonstrations and the obscene backlash against him).
3. VETERANS SHOULD NOT HAVE TO RELY ON FUCKING CHARITY.
Seriously, how is "charity for veterans" a thing, and how are people not extremely weirded
out by it? How is it that you can go out and get your limbs blown off for slave wages after
watching your friends die and innocent civilians perish, come home, and have to rely on charity
to get by? How is it that you can risk life and limb killing and suffering irreparable
psychological trauma for some plutocrat's agendas, plunge into poverty when you come home, and
then see the same plutocrat labeled a "philanthropist" because he threw a few tax-deductible
dollars at a charity that gave you a decent prosthetic leg?
Taking care of veterans should be factored into the budget of every act of military
aggression . If a government can't make sure its veterans are housed, healthy and happy in a
dignified way for the rest of their lives, it has no business marching human beings into harm's
way. The fact that you see veterans on the street of any large US city and people who fought in
wars having to beg "charities" for a quality mechanical wheelchair shows you just how much of a
pathetic joke this Veterans Day song and dance has always been.
They'll send you to mainline violence and trauma into your mind and body for the power and
profit of the oligarchic rulers of the US-centralized empire, but it's okay because everyone
gets a long weekend where they're told to thank you for your service. Bullshit.
Veterans Day, like so very, very much in American culture, is a propaganda construct
designed to lubricate the funneling of human lives into the chamber of a gigantic gun. It
glorifies evil, stupid, meaningless acts of mass murder to ensure that there will always be
recruits who are willing to continue perpetrating it, and to ensure that the US public doesn't
wake up to the fact that its government's insanely bloated military budget is being used to
unleash unspeakable horrors upon the earth.
The only way to honor veterans, really, truly honor them, is to help end war and make sure
no more lives are put into a position where they are on the giving or receiving end of evil,
stupid, meaningless violence. The way to do that is to publicly, loudly and repeatedly make it
clear that you do not consent to the global terrorism being perpetrated in your name. These
bastards work so hard conducting propaganda to manufacture your consent for endless
warmongering because they need that consent . So don't give it to them.
Your rulers have never feared the Koreans, the Vietnamese, the Iraqis, the terrorists, the
Iranians, the Chinese or the Russians. They fear you. They fear the American public suddenly
waking up to the evil things that are being done in your name and using your vast numbers to
shrug off the existing power structures without firing a shot, as easily as removing a heavy
coat on a warm day. If enough of you loudly withdraw your consent for their insatiable
warmongering, that fear will be enough to keep them in check.
This Veterans Day, don't honor those who have served by giving reverence and legitimacy to a
war machine which is exclusively used for inflicting great evil. Honor them by disassembling
that machine.
* * *
Thanks for reading! The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see
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Caitlin Johnstone , or my previous book
Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers .
So the USA Congress operates under CIA surveillance... Due to CIA access to Saudi money the situation is probably much
worse then described as CIA tried to protect both its level of influence and shadow revenue streams.
Notable quotes:
"... The idea that the CIA would monitor communications of U.S. government officials, including those in the legislative branch, is itself controversial. But in this case, the CIA picked up some of the most sensitive emails between Congress and intelligence agency workers blowing the whistle on alleged wrongdoing. ..."
"... I am not confident that Congressional staff fully understood that their whistleblower-related communications with my Executive Director of whistleblowing might be reviewed as a result of routine [CIA counterintelligence] monitoring." -- Intelligence Community Inspector General 2014 ..."
"... The disclosures from 2014 were released late Thursday by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). "The fact that the CIA under the Obama administration was reading Congressional staff's emails about intelligence community whistleblowers raises serious policy concerns as well as potential Constitutional separation-of-powers issues that must be discussed publicly," wrote Grassley in a statement. ..."
"... According to Grassley, he originally began trying to have the letters declassified more than four years ago but was met with "bureaucratic foot-dragging, led by Brennan and Clapper." ..."
"... Back in 2014, Senators Grassley and Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) had asked then-Director of National Intelligence Clapper about the possibility of the CIA monitoring Congressional communications ..."
"... CIA security compiled a report that include excerpts of whistleblower-related communications and this reports was eventually shared with the Director of the Office of Security and the Chief of the Counterintelligence Center" who "briefed the CIA Deputy Director, Deputy Executive Director, and the Chiefs of Staff for both the CIA Director and the Deputy Director ..."
"... During Director Clapper's tenure, senior intelligence officials engaged in a deception spree regarding mass surveillance," said Wyden upon Clapper's retirement in 2016. ..."
CIA intercepted Congressional emails about whistleblowers in 2014
The Inspector General expressed concern about "potential compromise to whistleblower confidentiality" and "chilling effect"
Newly-declassified documents show the CIA intercepted sensitive Congressional communications about intelligence community whistleblowers.
The intercepts occurred under CIA Director John Brennan and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. The new disclosures
are contained in two letters of "Congressional notification" originally written to key members of Congress in March 2014, but kept
secret until now.
In the letters, then-Intelligence Community Inspector General Charles McCullough tells four key members of Congress that during
"routing counterintelligence monitoring of Government computer systems," the CIA collected emails between Congressional staff and
the CIA's head of whistleblowing and source protection. McCullough states that he's concerned "about the potential compromise to
whistleblower confidentiality and the consequent 'chilling effect' that the present [counterintelligence] monitoring system might
have on Intelligence Community whistleblowing."
The idea that the CIA would monitor communications of U.S. government officials, including those in the legislative branch,
is itself controversial. But in this case, the CIA picked up some of the most sensitive emails between Congress and intelligence
agency workers blowing the whistle on alleged wrongdoing.
"Most of these emails concerned pending and developing whistleblower complaints," McCullough states in his letters to lead Democrats
and Republicans on the House and Senate Intelligence Committees at the time: Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-California) and Saxby Chambliss
(R-Georgia); and Representatives Michael Rogers (R-Michigan) and Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Maryland). McCullough adds that the type
of monitoring that occurred was "lawful and justified for [counterintelligence] purposes" but
"I am not confident that Congressional staff fully understood that their whistleblower-related communications with my Executive
Director of whistleblowing might be reviewed as a result of routine [CIA counterintelligence] monitoring." -- Intelligence Community
Inspector General 2014
The disclosures from 2014 were released late Thursday by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). "The
fact that the CIA under the Obama administration was reading Congressional staff's emails about intelligence community whistleblowers
raises serious policy concerns as well as potential Constitutional separation-of-powers issues that must be discussed publicly,"
wrote Grassley in a statement.
According to Grassley, he originally began trying to have the letters declassified more than four years ago but was met with
"bureaucratic foot-dragging, led by Brennan and Clapper."
Grassley adds that he repeated his request to declassify the letters under the Trump administration, but that Trump intelligence
officials failed to respond. The documents were finally declassified this week after Grassley appealed to the new Intelligence Community
Inspector General Michael Atkinson.
History of alleged surveillance abuses
Back in 2014, Senators Grassley and Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) had asked then-Director of National Intelligence Clapper about the
possibility of the CIA monitoring Congressional communications. A Congressional staffer involved at the time says Clapper's
response seemed to imply that if Congressional communications were "incidentally" collected by the CIA, the material would not be
saved or reported up to CIA management.
"In the event of a protected disclosure by a whistleblower somehow comes to the attention of personnel responsible for monitoring
user activity," Clapper wrote to Grassley and Wyden on July 25, 2014, "there is no intention for such disclosure to be reported
to agency leadership under an insider threat program."
However, the newly-declassified letters indicate the opposite happened in reality with the whistleblower-related emails:
"CIA security compiled a report that include excerpts of whistleblower-related communications and this reports was eventually
shared with the Director of the Office of Security and the Chief of the Counterintelligence Center" who "briefed the CIA Deputy
Director, Deputy Executive Director, and the Chiefs of Staff for both the CIA Director and the Deputy Director."
Clapper has previously come under fire for his 2013 testimony to Congress in which he denied that the national Security Agency
(NSA) collects data on millions of Americans. Weeks later, Clapper's statement was proven false by material leaked by former NSA
contractor Edward Snowden.
"During Director Clapper's tenure, senior intelligence officials engaged in a deception spree regarding mass surveillance,"
said
Wyden upon Clapper's retirement in 2016.
"Top officials, officials who reported to Director Clapper, repeatedly misled the American people and even lied to them."
Clapper has repeatedly denied lying, and said that any incorrect information he provided was due to misunderstandings or mistakes.
Clapper and Brennan have also acknowledged taking part in the controversial practice of "unmasking" the protected names of U.S.
citizens - including people connected to then-presidential candidate Donald Trump - whose communications were "incidentally" captured
in US counterintelligence operations. Unmaskings within the US intelligence community are supposed to be extremely rare and only
allowed under carefully justified circumstances. This is to protect the privacy rights of American citizens. But it's been revealed
that Obama officials requested unmaskings on a near daily basis during the election year of 2016.
Clapper and Brennan have said their activities were lawful and not politically motivated. Both men have become vocal critics of
President Trump.
Can you imagine what kind of place the US would have been under Clinton?!!!!!!
All the illegality, spying, conniving, dirty tricks, arcancides, selling us out to the highest bidder and full on attack against
our Constitution would be in full swing!
When intel entities can operate unimpeded and un-monitored, it spells disaster for everyone and everything outside that parameter.
Their operations go unnoticed until some stray piece of information exposes them. There are many facilities that need to be purged
and audited, but since this activity goes on all over the world, there is little to stop it. Even countries that pledge allegiance
and cooperation are blindsiding their allies with bugs, taps, blackmails, and other crimes. Nobody trusts nobody, and that's a
horrid fact to contend with in an 'advanced' civilization.
Forget the political parties. When the intelligence agencies spy on everyone, they know all about politicians of both parties
before they ever win office, and make sure they have enough over them to control them. They were asleep at the switch when Trump
won, because no one, including them, believed he would ever win. Hillary was their candidate, the State Department is known overseas
as "the political arm of the CIA". They were furious when she lost, hence the circus ever since.
From its founding by the Knights of Malta the JFK&MLK-assassinating, with Mossad 9/11-committing CIA has been the Vatican's
US Fifth Column action branch, as are the FBI and NSA: with an institutional hiring preference for Roman Catholic "altared boy"
closet-queen psychopaths "because they're practiced at keeping secrets."
Think perverts Strzok, Brennan, and McCabe "licked it off the wall?"
I agree with you 100%. Problem is, tons of secret technology and information have been passed out to the private sector. And
the private sector is not bound to the FOIA requests, therefore neutralizing the obligation for government to disclose classified
material. They sidestepped their own policies to cooperate with corrupt MIC contractors, and recuse themselves from disclosing
incriminating evidence.
Everyone knows that spying runs in the fam. 44th potus Mom and Gma BOTH. An apple doesn't fall from the tree. If ppl only knew
the true depth of the evil and corruption we would be in the hospital with a heart attack. Gilded age is here and has been, since
our democracy was hijacked (McCain called it an intervention) back in 1963. Unfortunately it started WAY back before then when
(((they))) stole everything with the installation of the Fed.
The FBI and CIA have long since slipped the controls of Congress and the Constitution. President Trump should sign an executive
order after the mid terms and stand down at least the FBI and subject the CIA to a senate investigation.
America needs new agencies that are accountable to the peoples elected representatives.
A determined care has been used to cultivate in D.C., a system that swiftly decapitates the whistleblowers. Resulting in an
increasingly subservient cadre of civil servants who STHU and play ostrich, or drool at what scraps are about to roll off the
master's table as the slide themselves into a better position, taking advantage to sell vice, weapons, and slaves.
What the hell does the CIA have to do with ANYTHING in the United States? Aren't they limited to OUTSIDE the U.S.? So why would
they be involved in domestic communications for anything? These clowns need to be indicted for TREASON!
"... There is something very, very COINTELPRO about the idea of "protecting" Americans from "foreign influence", and that should give liberals the heebie-jeebies. There is also an ongoing structural witch-hunt effect, unchanged from the McCarthy era, when internet firm heads are called to testify before congress. ..."
"... Bottom line - the Russians may have had no more effect on the election than the loose change in your house has on your salary. ..."
"... "Even more extreme measures are being planned and implemented, motivated by the basic principle that the greater the lie, the more aggressive the methods required to enforce it." ..."
"... "While the extortionate salaries commanded by the BBC's biggest stars are justified by "market rates," this underlying premise is never challenged by the women who are leading the gender pay fight. They don't oppose the capitalist market; they just want a bigger slice of the pie, with the working class footing the bill via contributions to the Ł4 billion annual license fee." - BBC gender pay row: Selective outrage of wealthy women ..."
"... The greater the inequality, the greater the lie to enforce it. ..."
"... While WSWS was uniquely correct in exposing Bush, Powell, and the ruling-elite structure of the U.S. as using deceit and lies to start an 'aggressive war' (the ultimate war crime), your description of this corrupt system of global power headquartered in the U.S. did not fully diagnose and expose it for what it was; a disguised global capitalist EMPIRE. ..."
"... Your description could have more effectively warned American citizen/'subjects' and the world that "Rather, it is a war of colonial (Empire) conquest, driven by a series of economic and geo-political aims that center on the seizure of Iraq's oil resources and the assertion of US global (Empire, not merely) hegemony." ..."
"... In any case, Andre and Joseph, thanks for reminding readers of this dark and deceitful moment of U.S. history in starting another 'aggressive war' almost two decades ago --- which wars will unfortunately continue until Americans themselves expose and ignite an essential Second America "Revolution Against Empire" [Justin duRivage] ..."
"... The Anglo-American-Israelite Empire is globally entrenched and enjoying expansion since 1945 ..."
"... I must admit myself I am disturbed by the sheer volume of unchallenged propaganda regarding these claims in the past few months. The media talking heads and various analysts don't ever really say what the implication of what their claims really mean-war. We are in an age of new mccarthyism ..."
"... What was amazing about Powell's charade was that even if Old Bad Ass as I call Saddam had had some Wombars of Mass Destruction they posed no danger whatsoever! It was obvious 9/11 had put the masses into a tizzy and they would have attacked Mars if told to! ..."
"... Yes, the "New Pearl Harbour" called for and carried out by the authors of the "Project for a New American Century" worked as planned. ..."
"... Quite right. My late father was a structural design engineer, specializing in large steel structures like the WTC and he called it as soon as the buildings imploded! ..."
"... Yes, Michael, the 'media/propaganda-sector' of this seven-sectored Disguised Global Capitalist EMPIRE is currently the most effective sector --- but the other six; corporate, financial, militarist, extra-legal, CFR 'Plot-Tanks', and of course the dual-party Vichy-political facade of the 'rougher-talking' neocon 'R' Vichy Party and the 'smoother-lying' neoliberal-con 'D' Vichy Party are all helping to keep the Empire sound, hidden, and empowered over the only American citizen/'subjects' who could possibly form a "Political Revolution against Empire" ..."
"... While it is true that D.C. is run by delusional psychotics that does not mean they are irrational as far as their greed is concerned. ..."
"... As R. Luxemburg pleaded that WWI was not "our" war but war of bunch of aristocrats wanting to divide colonies and bunch of bankers wanted their bad speculative loans repaid, using working class flesh and blood. ..."
This is one of the most sensible editorials on the Russia issue I've seen, and it is true, insofar as it goes. There is something
very, very COINTELPRO about the idea of "protecting" Americans from "foreign influence", and that should give liberals the heebie-jeebies.
There is also an ongoing structural witch-hunt effect, unchanged from the McCarthy era, when internet firm heads are called to
testify before congress.
That said, I wouldn't dismiss the effect of the Russian involvement, or the relevance of the charges against Trump and his
people. Bear in mind that the Party of McCarthy has been all about spying on its opponents from the days of HUAC. Nixon's break-in
at the Watergate Hotel didn't singlehandedly decide the election ... but who would believe that was the only underhanded tactic
he used? Republicans believe that if you're not cheating, you're not trying -- holding out for any ethical standard makes you
inherently disloyal and unworthy of support. Something like Kavanaugh's involvement in the hacking of Democrats in 2003 (
http://www.foxnews.com/poli... ) should be no surprise; neither should the "Guccifer" hack that put the Democrats' data in
the hands of Wikileaks. (Their subsequent attempts to demand Wikileaks not publish such a newsworthy leak, of course, is the sort
of thing that undermines their position with me!)
Bottom line - the Russians may have had no more effect on the election than the loose change in your house has on your salary.
But if you go back in your house after the Republicans were minding it, don't be surprised if together with the missing couch
change you notice some missing silverware, your kitchen tap has been sawed off, and the laptop is short half its RAM. By the time
you've catalogued everything missing, the stolen brass part from the gas main downstairs might have blown you to smithereens.
"Even more extreme measures are being planned and implemented, motivated by the basic principle that the greater the lie,
the more aggressive the methods required to enforce it."
There are many reasons the bourgeoisie is unfit to rule. Each one of them is bound up with the lies required to enforce
its rule. The greater its unfitness, "the greater the lie, the more aggressive the methods required to enforce it.
"While the extortionate salaries commanded by the BBC's biggest stars are justified by "market rates," this underlying premise
is never challenged by the women who are leading the gender pay fight. They don't oppose the capitalist market; they just
want a bigger slice of the pie, with the working class footing the bill via contributions to the Ł4 billion annual license fee."
- BBC gender pay row: Selective outrage of wealthy women
The greater the inequality, the greater the lie to enforce it.
While WSWS was uniquely correct in exposing Bush, Powell, and the ruling-elite structure of the U.S. as using deceit and lies
to start an 'aggressive war' (the ultimate war crime), your description of this corrupt system of global power headquartered in
the U.S. did not fully diagnose and expose it for what it was; a disguised global capitalist EMPIRE.
Your description could have more effectively warned American citizen/'subjects' and the world that "Rather, it is a war of
colonial (Empire) conquest, driven by a series of economic and geo-political aims that center on the seizure of Iraq's oil resources
and the assertion of US global (Empire, not merely) hegemony."
In any case, Andre and Joseph, thanks for reminding readers of this dark and deceitful moment of U.S. history in starting another
'aggressive war' almost two decades ago --- which wars will unfortunately continue until Americans themselves expose and ignite
an essential Second America "Revolution Against Empire" [Justin duRivage]
The Anglo-American-Israelite Empire is globally entrenched and enjoying expansion since 1945. It is time radical critiques of
its values, power and methods should call it by its right name.
I must admit myself I am disturbed by the sheer volume of unchallenged propaganda regarding these claims in the past few months.
The media talking heads and various analysts don't ever really say what the implication of what their claims really mean-war.
We are in an age of new mccarthyism
What was amazing about Powell's charade was that even if Old Bad Ass as I call Saddam had had some Wombars of Mass Destruction
they posed no danger whatsoever! It was obvious 9/11 had put the masses into a tizzy and they would have attacked Mars if told
to!
just because it was a convenient act for them to do what they wanted in conquering iraq is not reason that idiots like that are
capable of planning and concealing the numerous co-conspirators to arrange something like 9..11. imperialism can always count
on blowback to have occasion for further crimes. there is the slim chance that they knew what was being planned and that they
let it happen - except that none of those folks is evil enough for that. not even dick cheney. what i love about all conspiracy
theories of the american kind is that they never nam or show an actual conspirator conspiring. look at one of the truly great
failed conspiracy, that of the 20th july 1944 in germany that was meant to kill hitler and how many people were arrested in no
time at all and executed..
A "conspiracy" is just any two or more people getting together to discuss something affecting one or more other people without
them being party to the discussion. Like a surprise birthday party, for instance. Obviously the "official" version of the 9/11
events is also a "conspiracy theory" that 19 mostly Saudi Arabians led by a guy hiding in a cave in Afghanistan conspired to carry
out co-ordinated attacks that just happened to coincide with most of the USAF being conveniently off in Alaska and northern Canada
on an exercise that day, and another "coinciding exercise" simulating a multiple hijacking being carried out in the northeast
US thereby confusing the Air Traffic Controllers as to whether the hijackings were "real world or exercise", significantly delaying
the response, among other things.
Do you really believe that WTC 7, a steel frame building which was not adjacent to WTC 1 & 2, and was NOT hit by any airplanes,
coincidentally collapsed due to low temperature paper and furniture office fires? Something that has never happened before or
since? Or that such low temperature fires would cause the massive heavily reinforced concrete central core/elevator shaft to collapse
first, pulling the rest of the building inward onto it in classic controlled demolition technique?
It is getting more difficult to find the videos showing that now as Google, as with WSWS articles, is pushing them off the
front pages of results, while Snopes has put out a some very misleading reports that set up false "straw man" claims and then
"disprove" them. Even the "disproofs" are false.
For instance, a Snopes report on the WTC 7 collapse states: "relied heavily on discredited claims, none of which were new,
including:
Jet fuel cannot melt steel beams (This claim is misleading, as steel beams do to not need to melt completely to be compromised
structurally).
A sprinkler system would have prevented temperatures from rising high enough to cause to cause structural damage. (This claim
ignores the fact that a crash from a 767 jet would likely destroy such a system.)
The structural system would have been protected by fireproofing material (similarly, such a system would have been damaged
in a 767 crash). "
Jet fuel, which is Kerosene, burns at around 575ş in open air, which was the case in WTC buildings 1 & 2. Most of it was vaporized
by the impact with the buildings and burned of within minutes. At any rate, 575ş is far below the point at which structural steel
specifically designed to withstand high temperature fires like that used in the World Trade Centre buildings is weakened.
All of which is irrelevant, as are the other "points" made by Snopes, because Building 7 was not hit by an airplane and there
was no jet fuel involved. Something conveniently "overlooked" by Snopes and other similar misleading "disproofs". Not to mention
that the Intelligence establishment is busy putting out false trails constantly which use, for instance, obviously faked photos
or videos of the three WTC buildings collapsing to discredit the real videos and photos by setting up "straw men" they can then
"disprove" and point to as "evidence" that people who don't believe the official version are "creating fake news".
Quite right. My late father was a structural design engineer, specializing in large steel structures like the WTC and he called
it as soon as the buildings imploded!
"The perpetrators and their conspiracy is not a theory since it has been proved."
By "proved" I assume you are referring to "proofs" such as the fantastical claim that Mohammed Atta's passport was allegedly
and fortuitously "found" when it supposedly survived the 600 mph impact of the 767 he was supposedly piloting with a huge steel
and concrete building, survived the huge fireball it was supposedly in the middle of unscorched, and conveniently fluttered to
the ground intact to land at the feet of an FBI agent who immediately realized it must have belonged to one of the hijackers!
Even Hans Christian Andersen couldn't invent Fairy Tales like that.
the best that conspiracy theorist can do is, invariably, to call proven facts "just another theory " which only proves that they
are actually aware that they are full of hot air! zarembas father as a structural engineer unless a fantasy is certainly better
off among the dead than among the living and perpetrating his ignorance of steel and weight and fire onto the world!
Just because all the details aren't known as to who conspired and why there's enough holes in the "official conspiracy theory"
of 19 hijackers to conclude that this could not have been pulled off without some conspiring on the American side. Certainly the
the neocons benefited greatly from these attacks. So motive is there for sure.
Yes, Michael, the 'media/propaganda-sector' of this seven-sectored Disguised Global Capitalist EMPIRE is currently the most
effective sector --- but the other six; corporate, financial, militarist, extra-legal, CFR 'Plot-Tanks', and of course the dual-party
Vichy-political facade of the 'rougher-talking' neocon 'R' Vichy Party and the 'smoother-lying' neoliberal-con 'D' Vichy Party
are all helping to keep the Empire sound, hidden, and empowered over the only American citizen/'subjects' who could possibly form
a "Political Revolution against Empire"
While it is true that D.C. is run by delusional psychotics that does not mean they are irrational as far as their greed is
concerned.
There is nothing to win in global nuke war, all know it while the outcome would be surely the current global oligarchy loosing
grip on population destroying the system that works for them so well giving chance to what they dread socialist revolution they
would have been much weaker to counter.
Regional conflicts are just positioning of oligarchy for management of global oligarchic country club while strict class morality
is maintained.
What I do not we are conditions for war (split of global ruling elites) while what I see is broad propaganda of war as a excuse
to clamp down on fake enemy in order to control respective populations while there is factual unity among world oligarchy.
As R. Luxemburg pleaded that WWI was not "our" war but war of bunch of aristocrats wanting to divide colonies and bunch
of bankers wanted their bad speculative loans repaid, using working class flesh and blood.
She died abandoned by those on the left who embraced the war for their political aspirations, she was murdered for her true
internationalism i.e. No war fought between working people of one country and working people of another country.
Kalen, it's only effective to use the correct and understandable term 'Empire' in exposing, warning, and motivating average Americans
--- since very few even know what words like; oligarchy, plutocracy, fascism, authoritarianism, corporate-state, or Wolin's 'inverted
totalitarianism' mean --- let alone could ever serve as rallying cries for the coming essential Second American Revolution against
EMPIRE.
As Pat would have shouted if Tom had taken the Paine to edit his call, "Give me Liberty over EMPIRE, or Give me Death!"
"Sweet Carolyn" OH OH OH --- Yes, only a very small percentage of Americans understand that our former country, the U.S. of America,
is categorically, provably, and absolutely a new form of Empire, and is inexorably the first in world history an; 'effectively-disguised',
'truly-global', 'dual-party Vichy', and 'capitalist-fueled' EMPIRE --- an EMPIRE, really just an EMPIRE!
Just do an honest survey, "Sweet Carolyn", yourself, and if you're not a "Sweet Liarlyn", you will have to admit that essentially
ZERO of the first 1000 people you ask, will say --- "Oh ya, Carolyn, of course I know that this whole effin 'system' that others
less informed may still be so stupid that they think they live in a real country, when I (enter their name) do solemnly swear
is just an effin EMPIRE, which is so well disguised, that these few idiots who don't understand that they are just citizen/'subjects'
of this monsterous EMPIRE."
Do the survey, "Sweet Carolyn" and if you don't lie to yourself --- which maybe you do, because HELL, your job is to lie to
others (so it's quite likely that you'll lie about anything) --- you'll find that exactly zero average Americans have the effin
slightest idea in the world that their great 'country' is actually an effin EMPIRE.
HELL, Carolyn, almost half the Americans repeatedly yell, "We're number ONE", "We're number ONE", that their brains would rather
rattle themselves to death than even let logic, history, knowledge, or anything into their addled and propaganda filled heads!
Excellent article, and it did a particularly good job of tying together the foreign policy and domestic policy stratagems of a
major faction of the U.S. ruling class. I, for one, do not doubt that the Russians conduct some sort of cyber warfare against
the U.S.; but that must be understood by considering the fact that every major governmental, political, military, and business
organization on the face of the Earth must now operate in this manner. A friend of mine's son, who was in the Army, pointed out
that the big players, by a wide margin, in spying on and to some degree interfering in the U.S. domestic scene are China and Israel.
Kevin Barrett has written and said on various radio shows that much of what is attributed to the "Russians" are actually the actions
of Russian/Israeli dual citizens, many of whom move freely between the U.S., Russia, and Israel. And, of course, the U.S. runs
major spy and manipulation operations in more countries than any other nation of Earth, and U.S. based corporations are busy both
inside the U.S. and in foreign places in similar activities.
It is clearly a desire of significant sectors, of the Capitalist rulers of the U.S., to repress dissent and political activities
that oppose their agendas. It took them a few years to realize that their old methods using TV, hate radio, magazines, direct
mail, and newspapers were losing their effectiveness. They have been increasing their attacks on leftist websites, hacking into
websites, closing websites using phonied-up "national security" justifications, employing numerous trolls, and establishing and
funding more far right websites, such as Breitbart and Infowars. These efforts are most effective when they are not overpowering
and heavy handed.
The classic book on this was the 1988 book "Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media"
by Noam Chomsky and Edward Hermann. Rob Williams has updated the concept for the internet age in
<http:
www.vermontindependent.org ="" the-post-truth-world-reviving-the-propaganda-model-of-news-for-our-digital-age=""/>.
The strategy
is nothing new, the methods are merely updated and use the latest technologies.
I guess the lesson to be learned here is that rigging elections through byzantine electoral laws and billion dollar corporate
slush funds is a thing of the past. All you need now is 13 amateur IT goomba's with a marketing scheme and twitter accounts. Well, sure is a fragile "World's Sole Superpower" we got here. Go Team?
John Bolton suffers a crippling shortage of olives.
Notable quotes:
"... "As far as I remember, the US coat of arms features a bald eagle that holds 13 arrows in one talon and an olive branch in another, which is a symbol of a peace-loving policy," ..."
"... "Looks like your eagle has already eaten all the olives; are the arrows all that is left?" ..."
Meeting with US national security adviser John Bolton in Moscow, Russian President Vladimir
Putin made a comment about Washington's hostility that went right over the hawkish diplomat's
head. "As far as I remember, the US coat of arms features a bald eagle that holds 13 arrows
in one talon and an olive branch in another, which is a symbol of a peace-loving policy,"
Putin said in a meeting with Bolton in Moscow on Tuesday.
"I have a question," the Russian president added. "Looks like your eagle has
already eaten all the olives; are the arrows all that is left?"
About 15-20 minutes to get through (the facilitator seems like a bit of a wet blanket), but
fascinating to read, if like me, most of what you hear about Putin has been filtered through
the MSM.
A couple of reflections:
Putin does detail. He is courteous and patient. He is highly pragmatic and appears to be
widely (and, for my money, effectively) briefed.
For those of us lucky enough to follow VVP in his native language – it is indeed a
delight. (And – mind you – it was only after I took the time to follow him in his
native language that I was able to appreciate this person and his leadership abilities. If one
follows him through NYT – no chance that would give one an accurate picture.) He is erudite, informed, and has a wicked sense of humour, as shown in this clip: https://www.rt.com/news/442068-putin-olives-eagle-bolton/
"... Now there is new information, courtesy of the National Security Agency aka NSA, that confirms that the NSA has Top Secret and Secret documents that are responsive to a FOIA request for material on Seth Rich and his contacts with Julian Assange. While the content of these documents remain classified for now, they may provide documentary proof that Seth Rich "dropped boxed" the emails to Julian. If these documents are declassified, a big hole could be blown in the claim that Russia hacked the DNC. ..."
"... Another case of "Arkancide"? ..."
"... I came to this summary today after I had turned my T.V. off since all the news is now about the "bombs" being mailed to the Clintons and Obamas. (I was afraid a story line would soon continue that the bombs were from Russia via the White House. I can no longer feel certain that anything reported in the "news" is true and wonder what part of it is made up from thin air. ..."
"... And I am sad that such a huge number of American citizens simply no longer care what is true or what is not true. They believe only what they want to believe. Mostly I am sad that Seth Rich lived and died and few seem to want to know the facts surrounding his death. ..."
"... Guccifer 2.0 was nothing but an elaborate joke. ..."
If Russia had actually "hacked" the DNC emails then the National Security Agency would have had proof of such activity. In fact,
the NSA could have tracked such activity. But they did not do that. That lack of evidence did not prevent a coordinated media campaign
from spinning up to pin the blame on Russia for the "theft" and to portray Donald Trump as Putin's lackey and beneficiary.
Any effort to tell an alternative story has met with stout opposition. Fox News, for example, came under withering fire after
it published an article in May 2017 claiming that Seth Rich, a young Democrat operative, had leaked DNC emails to Julian Assange
at Wikileaks. The family of Seth Rich reacted with fury and sued Fox, Malia Zimmerman and Ed Butowsky, but that suit subsequently
was dismissed.
Now there is new information, courtesy of the National Security Agency aka NSA, that confirms that the NSA has Top Secret and
Secret documents that are responsive to a FOIA request for material on Seth Rich and his contacts with Julian Assange. While the
content of these documents remain classified for now, they may provide documentary proof that Seth Rich "dropped boxed" the emails
to Julian. If these documents are declassified, a big hole could be blown in the claim that Russia hacked the DNC.
PT, thank for the very detailed description of the entire story surrounding the supposed Russian hack of the DNC emails.
I always find myself screaming at the T.V. whenever a supposed reporter mentions the supposed Russian hack of the DNC computers
as if such an event is settled history.
I came to this summary today after I had turned my T.V. off since all the news is now about the "bombs" being mailed to the
Clintons and Obamas. (I was afraid a story line would soon continue that the bombs were from Russia via the White House. I can no longer feel certain that anything reported in the "news" is true and wonder what part of it is made up from thin air.
And I am sad that such a huge number of American citizens simply no longer care what is true or what is not true. They believe
only what they want to believe. Mostly I am sad that Seth Rich lived and died and few seem to want to know the facts surrounding his death.
UK politicians in Skripal story behaved by cheap clowns. Their story with door knob was pathetic. They tried to invent
the legend with poisoning on the fly and that shows. There is definitely something else brewing here and Shamir proposed his
version with Skripal double dealings or something along those line is quite plausible.
We will never know, but I think British discredited themselves for the whole world in this story. Trump was not better will
using this tory to impose additional sanctions on Russia. This is just another proof that he is another neocon who during election
campaign like Obama played the role of isolationalist and then appointed Haley to UN and hired Pompeo as his Secretary of
state and Bolton as his security advisor -- a typical "bat and switch" operation in US politics.
Notable quotes:
"... Vrublevsky thinks that British intelligence convinced the GRU (probably we should say that GRU is not called GRU anymore but GU, the Chief Directorate of the General Staff, but it hardly matters) that Mr Skripal wanted to return home to Russia. Probably they were told that Mr Skripal intended to bring some valuable dowry with him, including Porton Down data and the secrets of the Golden Rain dossier. It is possible that Skripal had been played, too; perhaps he indeed wanted to go back to Russia, the country he missed badly. ..."
"... As we had learned from videos and stills published by the Brits, the two men had been carefully followed from the beginning to the end. Meanwhile, British intelligence staged a 'poisoning' of Skripal and his daughter, and the two agents quickly returned home. ..."
"... There is not a single man close to Russian intelligence who thinks that Skripal had actually been poisoned by the Russians. First, there was absolutely no reason to do it, and second, if the Russians would poison him, he would stay poisoned, like the Ukrainian Quisling Stepan Bandera was. ..."
"... However, by playing this card, the British secret service convinced the Foreign Office to expel all diplomats who had contacts and connection to the exposed GRU agents. The massive expulsion of 150 diplomats caused serious damage to the Russian secret services. ..."
"... Such a massive operation against Russian agents and their contacts could signal forthcoming war. In normal circumstances, states do not reveal their full knowledge of enemy agents. ..."
"... I do not know what is the truth. At this point I no longer care because we will never know but it will be the British version that will be the most popular. I like most people like good stories. Unfortunately for Russia the Brits have better script writers, director and actors. ..."
Vrublevsky thinks that British intelligence convinced the GRU (probably we should say that
GRU is not called GRU anymore but GU, the Chief Directorate of the General Staff, but it hardly
matters) that Mr Skripal wanted to return home to Russia. Probably they were told that Mr
Skripal intended to bring some valuable dowry with him, including Porton Down data and the
secrets of the Golden Rain dossier. It is possible that Skripal had been played, too; perhaps
he indeed wanted to go back to Russia, the country he missed badly.
Two GRU agents, supposedly experts on extraction (they allegedly sneaked the Ukrainian
president Yanukovych from Ukraine after the coup and saved him from lynching mob) were sent to
Salisbury to test the ground and make preparations for Skripal's return. As we had learned from
videos and stills published by the Brits, the two men had been carefully followed from the
beginning to the end. Meanwhile, British intelligence staged a 'poisoning' of Skripal and his
daughter, and the two agents quickly returned home.
There is not a single man close to Russian intelligence who thinks that Skripal had actually
been poisoned by the Russians. First, there was absolutely no reason to do it, and second, if
the Russians would poison him, he would stay poisoned, like the Ukrainian Quisling Stepan
Bandera was.
However, by playing this card, the British secret service convinced the Foreign Office to
expel all diplomats who had contacts and connection to the exposed GRU agents. The massive
expulsion of 150 diplomats caused serious damage to the Russian secret services.
Still, the Russians had no clue how the West had learned identities of so many diplomats
connected to GRU. They suspected that there was a mole, and a turncoat who delivered the stuff
to the enemy.
That is why Vladimir Putin decided to dare them. As he knew that the two men identified by
the British service had no connection to the alleged poisoning, he asked them to appear on the
RT in an interview with Ms Simonyan. By acting as village hicks, they were supposed to provoke
the enemy to disclose its source. The result was unexpected: instead of revealing the name of a
turncoat, the Belling Cat, a site used by the Western Secret Services for intentional leaks,
explained how the men were traced by using the stolen databases. Putin's plan misfired.
The Russian secret service is not dead. Intelligence services do suffer from enemy action
from time to time: the Cambridge Five infiltrated the upper reaches of the MI-5 and delivered
state secrets to Moscow for a long time, but the Intelligence Service survived. Le Carre's
novels were based on such a defeat of the intelligence. However they have a way to recover.
Identity of their top agents remain secret, and they are concealed from the enemy's eyes.
But in order to function properly, the Russians will have to clean their stables, remove
their databases from the market place and keep its citizenry reasonably safe. Lax, and
not-up-to-date agents do not apparently understand the degree the internet is being watched.
Considering it should have been done twenty years ago, and meanwhile a new generation of
Russians has came of age, perfectly prepared to sell whatever they can for cash, it is a
formidable task.
There is an additional reason to worry. Such a massive operation against Russian agents and
their contacts could signal forthcoming war. In normal circumstances, states do not reveal
their full knowledge of enemy agents. It made president Putin worry; and he said this week: we'll
go to heaven as martyrs, the attackers will die as sinners. In face of multiple and recent
threats, this end of the world is quite possible.
Great story. If told many people would believe it. But now it is kind of late. So why it
wasn't told within few days or weeks of Skripal affair? Why it is the British media that has
initiative and Russian media is reactive and defensive? The story that Skripal wanted to
return and that two agents were lured in there should have been told right away and that it
turned out be MI5 provocation should have been insinuated. And the two agents should have
been interviewed on Russian media. Instead we get defensive inept and indolent Russian
reactions.
I do not know what is the truth. At this point I no longer care because we will never
know but it will be the British version that will be the most popular. I like most people
like good stories. Unfortunately for Russia the Brits have better script writers, director
and actors.
@utu " Instead we get
defensive inept and indolent Russian reactions."
The reaction 'if we want to kill somebody that somebody does not survive' I cannot see as
inept and indolent.
Excellent piece by Israel Shamir which I think gives the correct explanation of the Skripal
poisoning. This was a classic fishing, 'click bait' operation which produced a very valuable
haul for Western Intelligence. The only question is whether Skripal cooperated with it
– which I think he did – not knowing that both he and his daughter were meant to
die. Hence Putin's rage against Skripal a few weeks ago ( calling him a scumbag traitor etc,
etc) after the Russian operatives were identified because retired agents are supposed to stay
retired.
Russia made a very serious mistake with the RT interview with the 2 operatives. Better not
to say anything if you can't give the whole story. The GU weren't happy to show their
incompetence, but compounded the original mistake with obvious lying. That was a propaganda
gift to the Western media and has helped convince original disbelievers of Russian
perfidy.
Russia needs to step up its game especially in the media dept.
@Anatoly Karlin " British
or American human capital, but there are certainly consummate professionals relative to what
passes for today's Russian intelligence services. "
On what this 'certainly' is based, I see no argument whatsoever.
Already a long time ago, I must admit, the CIA director had to admit to senator Moynihan that
he had lied about the CIA not laying mines in Havana harbour.
A professional in espionage does not get caught.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan, 'Secrecy', New Haven 1998
Anyone acquinted with Sept 11 understands that the USA's secret army, the CIA, was
involved.
Another blunder.
As far as I know British secret services never get caught.
How clever the Russians are, suppose quite clever, I for one do not think that the stupid
stories about for example Skripal have any truth in them.
Until now the asserted Russian meddling in USA elections have not been proved.
Do not know of anything credible that Russian intelligence people are said to have done.
But of course Russian intelligence does exist.
"A related problem is that since there is now a free market economy, with many more
attractive career options for talented people, the high quality people go to work in other
spheres, leaving the intelligence agencies with the dregs;" .
A direct result of erasing ideology so as to erase personality cult towards highly
respected people in former USSR .When you have no ideology ( or worst, share ideology with
your opponent, i.e free market .) all what you have, from values to secrets, from scientific
human capital to secret service officials, are out there in the global market for possible
selling to the best postor .this is the principle of capitalism .. after all, it is said,
almost everybody has a price .The challenge is finding out where that little bunch who have
not are ..Obviously, in this scenario, the one who has the printing machine has a "little"
advantage How to overcome this would be part of "what is to be done" ..
If the Russians wanted to kill them they would be dead. Period. It is all FN hoax.
The latest English came up with was that poison was smeared on the door handle and that both
touched the door handle. Give me a break. Such a idiocy. Just imagine the exit procedure
where both are touching the door knob.
And than both Russians went to garbage dump carrying the little bottle and thru it there.
What an exemplary citizen neat behavior by Russians,
All English story is such a stupid idiocy that it turns my stomach.
However, the presence of Russian spies in Salisbury can be explained by its nearness to
Porton Down, the secret British chemical lab and factory for manufacturing chemical weapons
applied by the White Helmets in Syria in their false-flag operation in Douma and other
places. It is possible that a resident of Salisbury (Mr Skripal?) had delivered samples
from Porton Down to the Russian intelligence agents. This makes much more sense than the
dubious story of Russians trying to poison an old ex-spy who did his stretch in a Russian
jail.
If Mr. Skripal has been poisoned by the stuff of which he himself took samples in Porton
Down, this would run completely parallel to the earlier poisoning of Mr. Alexander
Valterovich Litvinenko, who also became ill because of carrying poison (polonium) around.
If [Yulia Skripal] had not had the courage to make this call while slipping the
observance of British intelligence, she would probably be dead by now.
Both Skripals are most likely DEAD, murdered by British "intelligence"
services.
The formulaic and curiously uninterested treatment of the matter in the British media
seems inconsistent with the Skripals still being alive.
The article above suggests that the Skripals were unwitting or witting participants in a
sting to expose Russian intelligence agents. More importantly, Sergey Skripal appears to have
had a role in the creation of the DNC's "dossier" to undermine the Trump presidencey.
Whatever the background, Sergey Skripal became privy to important secrets that the Brits
and their seditious allies in the U.S. Deep State do not want exposed.
In the Skripal case the British have not explained why, after claiming to have found the
closest approach to a smoking gun in the form of traces of novichok in that hotel room, the
hotel was not then immediately quarantined.
And assuredly, with Putin's name on the line, the Russians have to do a better job if they
are to refute the standing accusations – the RT interview was something of a PR
disaster.
The Belloncat data, although superficially convincing, could so easily have been faked by
anybody with reasonable knowledge of Russian internet infrastructure and some proficiency in
Photoshop.
But I did not know about these massive intelligence security breaches in Russia. Wow,
that's huge. Even though it's not clear to me how this indicates Putin's plan misfired. If
anything he got exactly what he wanted: confirmation that the "West" had access to the entire
passport database. Knowing what your enemy has in intelligence is a huge win, now they can
work on correcting it (hard as it may be, it would be impossible without knowing).
But the fact is Russia has not really disputed the results so I am fairly confident that
not only was Belling Cat right, but Israel is right, and now we have the situation where
Russia knows that Western intelligence has full access to Russia's passport database.
@Tyrion 2 Had some
experiences with Chinese and Mossad spies, not to mention Russian Jewish hard-drug dealers.
Here are a few examples.
There was an AMES postdoc at UCSD, a Chinese applied-math brain who had a 10-plus female
handler. She'd stop by occasionally to check up on him. He always get extremely anxious when
she was around. Couldn't figure out if it was fear, sexual excitement, or a combination of
both.
There was an old Chinese man and his foxy young female protege, who enjoyed filming U.S.
military maneuvers along the San Diego coast. I observed their operation for days.
There was a swing-shift cleaning crew in a Southern California high-tech mfg facility that
was all Chinese, in an area that typically employed Latin American crews. Its head honcho was
a beautiful Chinese lady. They made it their job to sort through trash bins and save papers.
The feds busted them.
As far as the Mossad, I spent two years on a rental property in SD county, which was
occupied by them as well. Mostly Israeli kids using the property and a local Israeli-owned
vegetarian restaurant as their "scorpion den." Got fairly familiar with some of their
espionage work and methods.
I don't go looking for this stuff. I'm just able to recognize it. As an empath I can read
people, quite well. It's a natural gift.
Can't stomach Israel's insensitive nature. That's why you'll typically find me pointing
out their self-serving bullshit.
This is a pretty good article but also falls on its face at the end
Mr Shamir's 'inside' information confirms my own take on Petrov and Boshirov which I
published a few days after that RT interview with Ms Simonyan
I wrote this on Col Lang's blog on Sept 14
'Yeah those two 'tourists' do look the part don't they I would say they are probably GRU
or something similar but nobody 'poisoned' the Skripals that's total kabuki theater another
Potemkin village production from the reality masters
Something is afoot here though perhaps these two were lured to Salisbury as part of a
frame up plot, perhaps by Skripal himself or perhaps the Brits caught wind of their plans
to visit [on some standard spying mission, certainly not assassination] and put in motion
the elaborate hoax
Everybody there protested loudly including Andrey Martyanov [Smoothie] I also added
this
' I disagree with everyone here it seems these guys aren't tourists but they also didn't
try to kill anyone that's stupid
It's some sort of spy game
Here's one scenario double agent Skripal makes convincing noises about flipping back
someone at GRU [or some similar outfit] sends these two to Salisbury to check it out a very
stupid move which is why Putin is now miffed enough to display these guys publicly and
their field career surely over also a slap in the face to the silly Limeys for playing
dirty pool even in the cloak and dagger game there are unwritten rules '
This is now exactly the story that Mr Shamir is presenting here but he is a day late and a
dollar short
I also don't agree with his take that this is all somehow a big loss for Russian intel the
Brits are the ones who have painted themselves in a corner their Skripal story is a wet paper
bag waiting to fall apart the fact that they lured the Russians to Salisbury, under whatever
pretext, be it Skripal or Porton Down/white helmets etc was their only small tactical victory
because they could then later expose those two after months of Russian denials in order to
show the Russians were in fact somehow involved
But that exposure came months later all that time the Russians would have known that
Boshirov and Petrov had been captured on candid camera and would have had time to work on
their countermove
Mr Shamir writes this like the game is over that is ridiculous the Brits have no way out
of the Skripal hoax there was never any poisoning the original diagnosis of the Skripals in
the Salisbury hospital was opioid overdose that came out in the first BBC interview with the
hospital staff months after the 'poisoning'
It was not until 48 hours after the Skripals were admitted to hospital and the convenient
intervention of Porton Down that the medical diagnosis was 'changed' to nerve agent
poisoning
BUT this is an unsustainable story that WILL FALL APART the simple reason is medical and
chemical fact both nerve agents and agricultural pesticides are based on the exact
same chemical compound organophosphates
'There are nearly 3 million poisonings per year resulting in two hundred thousand
deaths.'
That is the simple reason why emergency doctors EVERYWHERE are trained to recognize and
treat this kind of poisoning especially in rural, agricultural areas like
Salisbury
That is why it took months for media to gain access to the medical staff at that hospital
the British spooks needed to do a lot of 'persuading' with medical professionals that would
have wanted no part in such trickery and fakery
But this is a ticking time bomb that is bound to blow up in the faces of the very stupid
Brits
So yes they pulled off a minor coup in luring those two to Salisbury but the game is very
very far from over
As for Skripal he is in on it for sure as I speculated in my original comment on the
matter..the Russian intel services are perfectly aware of this, yet Mr Shamir's supposedly
well connected source has zero knowledge of this which tells me this source is actually a
useless clown who 'knows' exactly what an internet commenter [myself] already knew two months
ago
PS the fact that the Brits supposedly have all kinds of database info on the Russian intel
apparatus and personnel files etc doesn't mean anything the author is a making a big deal out
of this, but his story lacks meat on its bones most 'intel' is open source material
anyway
As for sensitive stuff that may have been 'sold' by 'corrupt' bureaucrats one must ask if
such 'info' is actually real or a clever plant providing fake info is the oldest spy trick in
the book and this article simply takes for granted that such a trick would not have been
employed why not ?
@FB How would a fake
database leak include the real data on the two GRU agents that just happened to be sent to
UK? Maybe it was to make the data leak seem real?
In spycraft it is always impossible to know how deep the deception goes. That's why the
very article to which you are responding started with:
It is hard to evaluate the exact measure of things in the murky world of spies and
counter-spies, but it appears that the Western spies have had extraordinary success in the
subterranean battle.
I think that a clear strategy by the western "intelligence" services is starting to emerge
vis-a-vis the Russians. By accusing any Russian that they can get their hands on, of being a
spy, they want to scare the ordinary Russians from visiting the west, so afterwards any
Russian actually caught traveling to the west can be safely assumed to be a spy – since
by the calculations of the clever western intelligence – only someone who is actually a
spy while at the same time being Russian, would dare to travel to the west. How smart is
that?
Joking aside, it really is becoming unsafe for Russian nationals to travel to the west.
Even though the west reserves the generosity of calling somebody equal only for those that
are from the 3rd world – Russians clearly don't deserve such generosity.
Despite this, exceptions can be made and some unfortunate Russian soul could be accused of
being equal with those highly evolved westerners and against their will can be offered
protection from Mother Russia.
Pretty much like it happened to Yulia Skripal. She was only visiting her gastarbeiter
father in GB, who apparently expressed desire to return to Russia, against pretty much
everybody's wishes, and all of a sudden Yulia Skripal found herself bestowed with the western
generosity of being declared equal, and was disappeared from public eye in order to protect
her from those with whom she is clearly not equal – the Russians.
Thank God at least MI-6 proved equal to the task and discovered her equalness in a nick of
time and saved her. The moral of the story: Only democracy has the power to recognize who is
equal and who is not. Then, on the other hand, capitalism can keep acquiring new monikers
such as "democracy" – all they want, Russia still has better quality of equality,
despite ditching socialism.
@CalDre Yes I 'stubbornly'
refuse to take at face value this silly statement
it appears that the Western spies have had extraordinary success in the subterranean
battle.'
Because it's not backed up by anything other than hot air as for that supposed 'data'
about Petrov and Boshirov
that was put out by Bellingcat
Ie mickey mouse stuff as with everything these clowns do, it is meant only to bamboozle
the most utterly stupid bipeds
A very nice clue is the fact that a Russian website called 'The Insider' is Bellingcat's
acknowledged partner here
If you read the article in English they claim to have 'dug' up a lot of info from various
sources such the central Russian resident database and passenger check in data for their
flight to the UK
Big deal that Shamir is building a mountain out of a molehill is more than clear
In fact this entire Shamir tale appears to have one subtle purpose to publicize and
glorify the Bellingcat outfit
which irredeemably lost any credibility a few weeks back when illiterate poofter Eliott
Higgins refused a debate challenge by the distinguished MIT physicist and former presidential
advisor Ted Postol actually calling Postol an 'idiot' a move that astounded even those
willing to entertain Higgins on a semi-credible level
@Anatoly Karlin Be that as
it may, the "Western side" had (publicly known) Aldrich, Hanssen and Benghazi fiasco.
Boils down to, from the comment below:
When you have no ideology ( or worst, share ideology with your opponent, i.e free market
.) all what you have, from values to secrets, from scientific human capital to secret
service officials, are out there in the global market for possible selling to the best
postor .this is the principle of capitalism .. after all, it is said, almost everybody has
a price..
and
Obviously, in this scenario, the one who has the printing machine has a "little"
advantage.
And, on top of it, in West, since the fall of The Wall, we've been having "Cooking the
Intelligence to Fit the Political Agenda".
This commenter begs to differ with M. Karlin's assessment (8) of the relative competence of
Russian sovok and CIA. "consummate professionals relative to what passes for today's Russian
intelligence services"? Mais non.
CIA always gets caught. All they do is step on their crank, again and again. They depend
not on professionalism but on what Russ Baker describes as a strange mix of ruthlessness and
ineptitude. Both stem from impunity in municipal law.
For example: CIA torture and coercive interference got comprehensively exposed, worldwide,
in the '70s. What happened? Don Gregg gave the Church and Pike committees an ultimatum: Back
off or it's martial law. CIA got busted again in the '80s for the criminal enterprises under
the Iran/Contra rubric. By then CIA had installed Tom Polgar, Former Saigon Station Chief, as
chief investigator for the cognizant Senate Select committee, and Polgar assured Gregg that
his hearings would not be a repeat of the abortive Pike and Church flaps.
So CIA are clowns. They can afford to be clowns because they know they can get away with
it. Getting away with it is their only skill, and the only skill they need.
The persistent category error at this site is failing to realize that CIA is the state.
They rule the USA.
"... There has been an ongoing campaign on the part of the US, to get out the idea that China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran have massive armies of hackers that are constantly looking to steal American secrets. The absurdity of the US' claims is pretty obvious. As I pointed out in my book The Myth of Homeland Security ..."
"... "The Great US/China Cyberwar of 2010" is one cyberwar that didn't happen, but was presaged with a run-up of lots of claims that the Chinese were hacking all over the place. I'm perfectly willing to accept the possibility that there was Chinese hacking activity, but in the industry there was no indication of an additional level of attack or significance. ..."
"... One thing that did ..."
"... US ideology is that "we don't start wars" -- it's always looking for an excuse to go to war under the rubric of self-defense, so I see these sorts of claims as justification in advance for unilateral action. I also see it as a sign of weakness; if the US were truly the superpower it claims it is, it would simply accept its imperial mantle and stop bothering to try to justify anything. I'm afraid we may be getting close to that point. ..."
"... My assumption has always been that the US is projecting its own actions on other nations. At the time when the US was talking the loudest about Chinese cyberwar, the US and Israel had launched STUXNET against the Iranian enrichment plant at Natanz, and the breeder reactor at Bushehr (which happens to be just outside of a large city; the attack took some of its control systems and backup generators offline). Attacks on nuclear power facilities are a war crime under international humanitarian law, which framework the US is signatory to but has not committed to actually follow. This sort of activity happens at the same time that the US distributes talking-points to the media about the danger of Russian hackers crashing the US power grid. I don't think we can psychoanalyze an entire government and I think psychoanalysis is mostly nonsense -- but it's tempting to accuse the US of "projection." ..."
"... All of this stuff happens against the backdrop of Klein, Binney, Snowden, and the Vault 7 revelations, as well as solid attribution identifying the NSA as "equation group" and linking the code-tree of NSA-developed malware to STUXNET, FLAME, and DUQU. ..."
"... the US has even admitted to deploying STUXNET -- Obama bragged about it. When Snowden's revelations outlined how the NSA had eavesdropped on Angela Merkel's cellphone, the Germans expressed shock and Barack Obama remarkably truthfully said "that's how these things are done" and blew the whole thing off by saying that the NSA wasn't eavesdropping on Merkel any more. [ bbc ] ..."
"... It's hard to keep score because everything is pretty vague, but it sounds like the US has been dramatically out-spending and out-acting the other nations that it accuses of being prepared for cyberwar. ..."
"... it's hard not to see the US is prepared for cyberwar, when both the NSA and the CIA leak massive collections of advanced tools. ..."
"... My observation is that the NSA and CIA have been horribly sloppy and have clearly spent a gigantic amount of money preparing to compromise both foreign and domestic systems -- that's bad enough. With friends like the NSA and CIA, who needs Russians and Chinese? ..."
"... The Russian and Chinese efforts are relatively tiny compared to the massive efforts the US expends tens of billions of dollars on. The US spends about $50bn on its intelligence agencies, while the entire Russian Department of Defense budget is about $90bn (China is around $139bn) -- maybe the Russians and Chinese have such a small footprint because they are much smaller operations? ..."
"... That brings us to the recent kerfuffle about taps on the Supermicro motherboards. That's not unbelievable at all -- not in a world where we discover that Intel has built a parallel management CPU into every CPU since 2008, and that there is solid indications that other processors have similar backdoors. ..."
"... There are probably so many backdoors in our systems that it's a miracle it works at all. ..."
"... So, with respect to "propaganda" I would say that the US intelligence community has been consistently pushing a propaganda agenda against the US government, and the citizens in order to justify its actions and defend its budget. ..."
"... What little I've been able to find out the new Trump™ cybersecurity plan is that it doesn't involve any defense, just massive retribution against (perceived) foes. ..."
"... Funny how those obsessed with "false flag" operations work so hard to invite more of same. ..."
Bob Moore asks me to comment on an article about propaganda and security/intelligence. [
article ] This is going to be a mixture of opinion and references to facts; I'll try to be
clear which is which.
Yesterday several NATO countries ran a concerted propaganda campaign against Russia. The
context for it was a NATO summit in which the U.S. presses for an intensified cyberwar
against NATO's preferred enemy.
On the same day another coordinated campaign targeted China. It is aimed against China's
development of computer chip manufacturing further up the value chain. Related to this is
U.S. pressure on Taiwan, a leading chip manufacturer, to cut its ties with its big
motherland.
It is true that the US periodically makes a big push regarding "messaging" about hacking.
Whether or not it constitutes a "propaganda campaign" depends on how we choose to interpret
things and the labels we attach to them -- "propaganda campaign" has a lot of negative
connotations and one person's "outreach effort" is an other's "propaganda." An
ultra-nationalist or an authoritarian submissive who takes the government's word for anything
would call it "outreach."
There has been an ongoing campaign on the part of the US, to get out the idea that
China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran have massive armies of hackers that are constantly looking
to steal American secrets. The absurdity of the US' claims is pretty obvious. As I pointed out
in my book The Myth of Homeland Security (2004) [
wc ] claims such as that the Chinese had "40,000 highly trained hackers" are flat-out
absurd and ignore the reality of hacking; that's four army corps. Hackers don't engage in
"human wave" attacks.
"The Great US/China Cyberwar of 2010" is one cyberwar that didn't happen, but was
presaged with a run-up of lots of claims that the Chinese were hacking all over the place. I'm
perfectly willing to accept the possibility that there was Chinese hacking activity, but in the
industry there was no indication of an additional level of attack or significance.
One thing that did happen in 2010 around the same time as the nonexistent
cyberwar was China and Russia proposed trilateral talks with the US to attempt to define
appropriate limits on state-sponsored hacking. The US flatly rejected the proposal, but there
was virtually no coverage of that in the US media at the time. The UN also called for a
cyberwar treaty framework, and the effort was killed by the US. [ wired ] What's
fascinating and incomprehensible to me is that, whenever the US feels that its ability to claim
pre-emptive cyberwar is challenged, it responds with a wave of claims about Chinese (or Russian
or North Korean) cyberwar aggression.
John Negroponte, former director of US intelligence, said intelligence agencies in the
major powers would be the first to "express reservations" about such an accord.
US ideology is that "we don't start wars" -- it's always looking for an excuse to go to
war under the rubric of self-defense, so I see these sorts of claims as justification in
advance for unilateral action. I also see it as a sign of weakness; if the US were truly the
superpower it claims it is, it would simply accept its imperial mantle and stop bothering to
try to justify anything. I'm afraid we may be getting close to that point.
My assumption has always been that the US is projecting its own actions on other
nations. At the time when the US was talking the loudest about Chinese cyberwar, the US and
Israel had launched STUXNET against the Iranian enrichment plant at Natanz, and the breeder
reactor at Bushehr (which happens to be just outside of a large city; the attack took some of
its control systems and backup generators offline). Attacks on nuclear power facilities are a
war crime under international humanitarian law, which framework the US is signatory to but has
not committed to actually follow. This sort of activity happens at the same time that the US
distributes talking-points to the media about the danger of Russian hackers crashing the US
power grid. I don't think we can psychoanalyze an entire government and I think psychoanalysis
is mostly nonsense -- but it's tempting to accuse the US of "projection."
The anti-Russian campaign is about alleged Russian spying, hacking and influence
operations. Britain and the Netherland took the lead. Britain accused Russia's military
intelligence service (GRU) of spying attempts against the Organisation for the Prohibition of
Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague and Switzerland, of spying attempts against the British
Foreign Office, of influence campaigns related to European and the U.S. elections, and of
hacking the international doping agency WADA. British media willingly
helped to exaggerate the claims: [ ]
The Netherland [sic] for its part released
a flurry
of information about the alleged spying attempts against the OPCW in The Hague. It claims
that four GRU agents traveled to The Hague on official Russian diplomatic passports to sniff
out the WiFi network of the OPCW. (WiFi networks are notoriously easy to hack. If the OPCW is
indeed using such it should not be trusted with any security relevant issues.) The Russian
officials were allegedly very secretive, even cleaning out their own hotel trash, while they,
at the same, time carried laptops with private data and even taxi receipts showing their
travel from a GRU headquarter in Moscow to the airport. Like in the Skripal/Novichok saga the
Russian spies are, at the same time, portrayed as supervillains and hapless amateurs. Real
spies are neither.
There's a lot there, and I think the interpretation is a bit over-wrought, but it's mostly
accurate. The US and the UK (and other NATO allies, as necessary) clearly coordinate when it
comes to talking points. Claims of Chinese cyberwar in the US press will be followed by claims
in the UK and Australian press, as well. My suspicion is that this is not the US Government and
UK Government coordinating a story -- it's the intelligence agencies doing it. My
opinion is that the intelligence services are fairly close to a "deep state" -- the
CIA and NSA are completely out of control and the CIA has gone far toward building its own
military, while the NSA has implemented completely unrestricted surveillance worldwide.
All of this stuff happens against the backdrop of Klein, Binney, Snowden, and the Vault
7 revelations, as well as solid attribution identifying the NSA as "equation group" and linking
the code-tree of NSA-developed malware to STUXNET, FLAME, and DUQU. While the attribution
that "Fancy Bear is the GRU" has been made and is probably fairly solid, the attribution of NSA
malware and CIA malware is rock solid; the US has even admitted to deploying STUXNET --
Obama bragged about it. When Snowden's revelations outlined how the NSA had eavesdropped on
Angela Merkel's cellphone, the Germans expressed shock and Barack Obama remarkably truthfully
said "that's how these things are done" and blew the whole thing off by saying that the NSA
wasn't eavesdropping on Merkel any more. [ bbc ]
It's hard to keep score because everything is pretty vague, but it sounds like the US
has been dramatically out-spending and out-acting the other nations that it accuses of being
prepared for cyberwar. I tend to be extremely skeptical of US claims because: bomber gap,
missile gap, gulf of Tonkin, Iraq WMD, Afghanistan, Libya and every other aggressive attack by
the US which was blamed on its target. The reason I assume the US is the most aggressive actor
in cyberspace is because the US has done a terrible job of protecting its tool-sets and
operational security: it's hard not to see the US is prepared for cyberwar, when both the
NSA and the CIA leak massive collections of advanced tools.
Meanwhile, where are the leaks of Russian and Chinese tools? They have been few and far
between, if there have been any at all. Does this mean that the Russians and Chinese have
amazingly superior tradecraft, if not tools? I don't know. My observation is that the NSA
and CIA have been horribly sloppy and have clearly spent a gigantic amount of money preparing
to compromise both foreign and domestic systems -- that's bad enough. With friends like the NSA
and CIA, who needs Russians and Chinese?
The article does not have great depth to its understanding of the situation, I'm afraid. So
it comes off as a bit heavy on the recent news while ignoring the long-term trends. For
example:
The allegations of Chinese supply chain attacks are of course just as hypocritical as the
allegations against Russia. The very first know case of computer related supply chain
manipulation goes
back to 1982 :
A CIA operation to sabotage Soviet industry by duping Moscow into stealing booby-trapped
software was spectacularly successful when it triggered a huge explosion in a Siberian gas
pipeline, it emerged yesterday.
I wrote a piece about the "Farewell Dossier" in 2004. [ mjr
] Re-reading it, it comes off as skeptical but waffly. I think that it's self-promotion by the
CIA and exaggerates considerably ("look how clever we are!") at a time when the CIA was
suffering an attention and credibility deficit after its shitshow performance under George
Tenet. But the first known cases of computer related supply chain manipulation go back to the
70s and 80s -- the NSA even compromised Crypto AG's Hagelin M-209 system (a mechanical
ciphering machine) in order to read global communications encrypted with that product. You can
imagine Crypto AG's surprise when the Iranian secret police arrested one of their sales reps
for selling backdoor'd crypto -- the NSA had never told them about the backdoor, naturally. The
CIA was also on record for producing Xerox machines destined for the USSR, which had recorders
built into them So, while the article is portraying the historical sweep of NSA dirty tricks,
they're only looking at the recent ones. Remember: the NSA also weakened the elliptic curve
crypto library in RSA's Bsafe implementation, paying RSADSI $13 million to accept their tweaked
code.
Why haven't we been hearing about the Chinese and Russians doing that sort of thing? There
are four options:
The Russians and Chinese are doing it, they're just so darned good nobody has
caught them until just recently.
The Russians and Chinese simply resort to using existing tools developed by the
hacking/cybercrime community and rely on great operational security rather than fancy
tools.
The Russian and Chinese efforts are relatively tiny compared to the massive efforts
the US expends tens of billions of dollars on. The US spends about $50bn on its intelligence
agencies, while the entire Russian Department of Defense budget is about $90bn (China is
around $139bn) -- maybe the Russians and Chinese have such a small footprint because they are
much smaller operations?
Something else.
That brings us to the recent kerfuffle about taps on the Supermicro motherboards. That's
not unbelievable at all -- not in a world where we discover that Intel has built a parallel
management CPU into every CPU since 2008, and that there is solid indications that other
processors have similar backdoors.
Was the Intel IME a "backdoor" or just "a bad idea"? Well, that's tricky. Let me put my
tinfoil hat on: making a backdoor look like a sloppily developed product feature would be the
competent way to write a backdoor. Making it as sneaky as the backdoor in the Via is
unnecessary -- incompetence is eminently believable.
&
(kaspersky)
I believe all of these stories (including the Supermicro) are the tip of a great big, ugly
iceberg. The intelligence community has long known that software-only solutions are too
mutable, and are easy to decompile and figure out. They have wanted to be in the BIOS of
systems -- on the motherboard -- for a long time. If you go back to 2014, we have disclosures
about the NSA malware that hides in hard drive BIOS: [
vice ] [
vice ] That appears to have been in progress around 2000/2001.
Of note, the group recovered two modules belonging to EquationDrug and GrayFish that were
used to reprogram hard drives to give the attackers persistent control over a target machine.
These modules can target practically every hard drive manufacturer and brand on the market,
including Seagate, Western Digital, Samsung, Toshiba, Corsair, Hitachi and more. Such attacks
have traditionally been difficult to pull off, given the risk in modifying hard drive
software, which may explain why Kaspersky could only identify a handful of very specific
targets against which the attack was used, where the risk was worth the reward.
But
Equation Group's malware platforms have other tricks, too. GrayFish, for example, also has
the ability to install itself into computer's boot record -- software that loads even
before the operating system itself -- and stores all of its data inside a portion of
the operating system called the registry, where configuration data is normally stored.
EquationDrug was designed for use on older Windows operating systems, and "some of the
plugins were designed originally for use on Windows 95/98/ME" -- versions of Windows so old
that they offer a good indication of the Equation Group's age.
This is not a very good example of how to establish a "malware gap" since it just makes the
NSA look like they are incapable of keeping a secret. If you want an idea how bad it is,
Kaspersky labs' analysis of the NSA's toolchain is a good example of how to do attribution
correctly. Unfortunately for the US agenda, that solid attribution points toward Fort Meade in
Maryland. [kaspersky]
Let me be clear: I think we are fucked every which way from the start. With backdoors in the
BIOS, backdoors on the CPU, and wireless cellular-spectrum backdoors, there are probably
backdoors in the GPUs and the physical network controllers, as well. Maybe the backdoors in the
GPU come from the GRU and maybe the backdoors in the hard drives come from NSA, but who cares?
The upshot is that all of our systems are so heinously compromised that they can only be
considered marginally reliable. It is, literally, not your computer: it's theirs. They'll let
you use it so long as your information is interesting to them.
Do I believe the Chinese are capable of doing such a thing? Of course. Is the GRU? Probably.
Mossad? Sure. NSA? Well-documented attribution points toward NSA. Your computer is a free-fire
zone. It has been since the mid 1990s, when the NSA was told "no" on the Clipper chip and
decided to come up with its own Plan B, C, D, and E. Then, the CIA came up with theirs. Etc.
There are probably so many backdoors in our systems that it's a miracle it works at
all.
From my 2012 RSA conference lecture "Cyberwar, you're doing it wrong."
The problem is that playing in this space is the purview of governments. Nobody in the
cybercrime or hacking world need tools like these. The intelligence operatives have huge
budgets, compared to a typical company's security budget, and it's unreasonable to expect any
business to invest such a level of effort on defending itself. So what should companies do?
They should do exactly what they are doing: expect the government to deal with it; that's what
governments are for. The problem with that strategy is that their government isn't on their
side, either! It's Hobbes' playground.
In case you think I am engaging in hyperbole, I assure you I am not. If you want another
example of the lengths (and willingness to bypass the law) "they" are willing to go, consider
'stingrays' that are in operation in every major US city and outside of every interesting hotel
and high tech park. Those devices are not passive -- they actively inject themselves into the
call set-up between your phone and your carrier -- your data goes through the stingray, or it
doesn't go at all. If there are multiple stingrays, then your latency goes through the roof.
"They" don't care. Are the stingrays NSA, FBI, CIA, Mossad, GRU, or PLA? Probably a bit of all
of the above depending on where and when.
Whenever the US gets caught with its pants down around its ankles, it blames the Chinese or
the Russians because they have done a good job of building the idea that the most serious
hackers on the planet at the Chinese. I don't believe that we're seeing complex propaganda
campaigns that are tied to specific incidents -- I think we see ongoing organic
propaganda campaigns that all serve the same end: protect the agencies, protect their budgets,
justify their existence, and downplay their incompetence.
So, with respect to "propaganda" I would say that the US intelligence community has been
consistently pushing a propaganda agenda against the US government, and the citizens in order
to justify its actions and defend its budget.
The government also engages in propaganda, and is influenced by the intelligence
community's propaganda as well. And the propaganda campaigns work because everyone
involved assumes, "well, given what the NSA has been able to do, I should assume the Chinese
can do likewise." That's a perfectly reasonable assumption and I think it's probably true that
the Chinese have capabilities. The situation is what Chuck Spinney calls "A self-licking ice
cream cone" -- it's a justifying structure that makes participation in endless aggression seem
like a sensible thing to do. And, when there's inevitably a disaster, it's going to be like a
cyber-9/11 and will serve as a justification for even more unrestrained aggression.
Want to see what it looks like? A thousand thanks to Commentariat member [redacted] for this
link. If you don't like video, there's an article here. [ toms ]
Is this an NSA backdoor, or normal incompetence? Is Intel Management Engine an NSA-inspired
backdoor, or did some system engineers at Intel think that was a good idea? There are other
scary indications of embedded compromise: the CIA's Vault7 archive included code that appeared
to be intended to embed in the firmware of "smart" flatscreen TVs. That would make every LG
flat panel in every hotel room, a listening device just waiting to be turned on.
We know the Chinese didn't do that particular bug but why wouldn't they do
something similar, in something else? China is the world's oldest mature culture -- they
literally wrote the book on strategy -- Americans acting as though it's a great
surprise to learn that the Chinese are not stupid, it's just the parochialism of a 250 year-old
culture looking at a 3,000 year-old culture and saying "wow, you guys haven't been asleep at
the switch after all!"
What little I've been able to find out the new
Trump™ cybersecurity plan is that it doesn't involve any defense, just massive
retribution against (perceived) foes.
Funny how those obsessed with "false flag" operations work so hard to invite more of
same.
Pierce R. Butler@#1: What little I've been able to find out the new Trump™ cybersecurity plan is that
it doesn't involve any defense, just massive retribution against (perceived) foes.
Yes. Since 2001, as far as most of us can tell, federal cybersecurity spend has been 80%
offense, 20% defense. And a lot of the offensive spend has been aimed at We, The
People.
Your mention of Operation Sundevil and Kevin Mitnick in a previous post made me think
that maybe the reason we haven't seen the kind of leaks from the Russian and Chinese
hacking operations that we've seem from the NSA is that they're running a "Kevin Mitnick
style" operation; that is, relying less on technical solutions and using instead
old-fashioned "social engineering" and other low-tech forms of espionage (like running
troll farms on social media). I mean, I've seen interviews with retired US intelligence
people since the 90s complain that since the late 1980s, the intelligence agencies have
been crippled by management in love with hi-tech "SIGINT" solutions to problems that never
deliver and neglecting old-fashioned "HUMINT" intelligence-gathering.
The thing is, Kevin Mitnick got away with a lot of what he did because people didn't
take security seriously then, and still don't. On a similar nostalgia vibe, I remember
reading an article by Keith Bostic (one of the researchers who helped in the analysis of
the Morris worm
that took down a significant chunk of the Internet back in 1988) where he did a follow-up a
year or so afterwards and some depressing number of organisations that had been hit by it
still hadn't patched the holes that had let the worm infect them in the first
place.
Cat Mara@#3: Your mention of Operation Sundevil and Kevin Mitnick in a previous post made me think
that maybe the reason we haven't seen the kind of leaks from the Russian and Chinese
hacking operations that we've seem from the NSA is that they're running a "Kevin Mitnick
style" operation; that is, relying less on technical solutions and using instead
old-fashioned "social engineering" and other low-tech forms of espionage (like running
troll farms on social media).
I think that's right, to a high degree. What if Edward Snowden was an agent provocateur
instead of a well-meaning naive kid? A tremendous amount of damage could be done, as well
as stealing the US' expensive toys. The Russians have been very good at doing exactly that
sort of operation, since WWII. The Chinese are, if anything, more subtle than the
Russians.
The Chinese attitude, as expressed to me by someone who might be a credible source is,
"why are you picking a fight with us? We don't care, you're too far away for us to threaten
you, we both have loads of our own fish to fry. To them, the US is young, hyperactive, and
stupid.
The FBI is not competent, at all, against old-school humint intelligence-gathering.
Compared to the US' cyber-toys, the old ways are probably more efficient and cost
effective. China's intelligence community is also much more team-oriented than the CIA/NSA;
they're actually a disciplined operation under the strategic control of policy-makers.
That, by the way, is why Russians and Chinese stare in amazement when Americans ask things
like "Do you think Putin knew about this?" What a stupid question! It's an autocracy; they
don't have intelligence operatives just going an deciding "it's a nice day to go to England
with some Novichok." The entire American attitude toward espionage lacks maturity.
On a similar nostalgia vibe, I remember reading an article by Keith Bostic (one of
the researchers who helped in the analysis of the Morris worm that took down a significant
chunk of the Internet back in 1988) where he did a follow-up a year or so afterwards and
some depressing number of organisations that had been hit by it still hadn't patched the
holes that had let the worm infect them in the first place.
That as an exciting time. We were downstream from University of Maryland, which got hit
pretty badly. Pete Cottrel and Chris Torek from UMD were also in on Bostic's dissection. We
were doing uucp over TCP for our email (that changed pretty soon after the worm) and our
uucp queue blew up. I cured the worm with a reboot into single-user mode and a quick 'rm
-f' in the uucp queue.
Thanks. I appreciate your measured analysis and the making explicit of the bottom line:
" agencies, protect their budgets, justify their existence, and downplay their
incompetence."
But in blaming "revenge on behalf of the Clintons" for the sexual misconduct allegations
against him, the Supreme Court nominee is drawing new attention to his time on the Kenneth
Starr team investigating Bill Clinton. And in doing so, he's shown he can deliver a Trump-like
broadside against detractors even if it casts him in a potentially partisan light.
As a young lawyer, Kavanaugh played a key role on Starr's team investigating sexual
misconduct by then-President Bill Clinton, helping to shape one of the most salacious chapters
in modern political history.
Kavanaugh spent a good part of the mid-1990s jetting back and forth to Little Rock,
Arkansas, digging into the Clintons' background, according to documents that were made public
as part of his nomination to the Supreme Court
An interesting hypothesis. CIA definitly became a powerful political force in the USA -- a rogue political force which starting from JFK assasination tries to control who is elected to important offices. But in truth Cavanaugh is a pro-CIA candidate so to speak. So why CIA would try to derail him.
Notable quotes:
"... I think I've figured out why they had to go to couples counseling about an outside door and why she came up with claim that she needed an outside bedroom door because she'd been assaulted 37 years ago. The Palo Alto building codes for single family homes were created to make sure single family homes remained single family and weren't chopped up into apartments. ..."
"... An outside door into a master bedroom with attached bathroom is a red flag that it's intended for an illegal what's called in law apartment ..."
"... So she wants the door. Husband says waste of money and trouble. Contractor says call me when you're ready. So they go to counseling Husband explains why the door's unreasonable. Therapist asks wife why she " really deep down" needs the door. Wife makes up the story about attempted rape 35 years ago flashbacks If only there were 2 doors in that imaginary bedroom she could have escaped. ..."
"... Kacanaugh was nominated. CIA searched for sex problems in his working life. Found nothing Searched law school and college found nothing. In desperation searched high school found nothing. Searched CIA personnel records which go back to grade school and found one of their own employees was about Kavanaugh's age and attended a high school near his and the students socialized. ..."
"... She's 3rd generation CIA. grandfather assistant director. Father CIA contractor who managed CIA unofficial band accounts. And she runs a CIA recruitment office. ..."
I think I've figured out why they had to go to couples counseling about an outside door and why she came up with claim
that she needed an outside bedroom door because she'd been assaulted 37 years ago. The Palo Alto building codes for single family
homes were created to make sure single family homes remained single family and weren't chopped up into apartments.
Outside doors enter public areas kitchen sunroom living rooms not bedrooms. An outside door into a master bedroom with
attached bathroom is a red flag that it's intended for an illegal what's called in law apartment
There's a unit It's a stove 2 ft counter space and sink. The stoves electric and plugs into an ordinary household electricity.
It's backed against the bathroom wall. Break through the wall, connect the pipes running water for the sink. Add an outside door
and it's a small apartment.
Assume they didn't want to make it an apartment just a master bedroom. Usually the contractor pulls the permits routinely.
But an outside bedroom door is complicated. The permits will cost more. It might require an exemption and a hearing They night
need a lawyer. And they might not get the permit.
So she wants the door. Husband says waste of money and trouble. Contractor says call me when you're ready. So they go to
counseling Husband explains why the door's unreasonable. Therapist asks wife why she " really deep down" needs the door. Wife
makes up the story about attempted rape 35 years ago flashbacks If only there were 2 doors in that imaginary bedroom she could
have escaped.
Kacanaugh was nominated. CIA searched for sex problems in his working life. Found nothing Searched law school and college
found nothing. In desperation searched high school found nothing. Searched CIA personnel records which go back to grade school
and found one of their own employees was about Kavanaugh's age and attended a high school near his and the students socialized.
She's 3rd generation CIA. grandfather assistant director. Father CIA contractor who managed CIA unofficial band accounts.
And she runs a CIA recruitment office.
"... Steele also had extensive contacts with DOJ official Bruce Ohr and his wife Nellie, who - along with Steele - was paid by opposition research firm Fusion GPS in the anti-Trump campaign. Trump called for the declassification of FBI notes of interviews with Ohr, which would ostensibly reveal more about his relationship with Steele. Ohr was demoted twice within the Department of Justice for lying about his contacts with Fusion GPS. ..."
"... Perhaps the Brits are also concerned since much of the espionage performed on the Trump campaign was conducted on UK soil throughout 2016 . Recall that Trump aid George Papadopoulos was lured to London in March, 2016, where Maltese professor Joseph Mifsud fed him the rumor that Russia had dirt on Hillary Clinton. It was later at a London bar that Papadopoulos would drunkenly pass the rumor to Australian diplomat Alexander Downer (who Strzok flew to London to meet with). ..."
"... Papadopoulos accepted a flight to London and a $3,000 honorarium. He claims that during a meeting in London, Halper asked him whether he knew anything about Russian hacking of Democrats' emails. ..."
"... Papadopoulos had other contacts on British soil that he now believes were part of a government-sanctioned surveillance operation. - Daily Caller ..."
"... In total, Halper received over $1 million from the Obama Pentagon for "research," over $400,000 of which was granted before and during the 2016 election season. ..."
"... In short, it's understandable that the UK would prefer to hide their involvement in the "witch hunt" of Donald Trump since much of the counterintelligence investigation was conducted on UK soil. And if the Brits had knowledge of the operation, it will bolster claims that they meddled in the 2016 US election by assisting what appears to have been a set-up from the start . ..."
"... Steele's ham-handed dossier is a mere embarrassment, as virtually none of the claims asserted by the former MI6 agent have been proven true. ..."
"... Steele, a former MI6 agent, is the author of the infamous and unverified anti-Trump dossier. He worked as a confidential human source for the FBI for years before the relationship was severed just before the election because of Steele's unauthorized contacts with the press. ..."
"... That said, Steele hasn't worked for the British government since 2009, so for their excuse focusing on the former MI6 agent while ignoring the multitude of events which occurred on UK soil, is curious. ..."
"... I find it interesting that the Theresa May Govt in UK has the temerity to interfere with US politics (until they got caught out!), yet can't find the spine to stand up to the EU. ..."
"... THE UNITED KINGDOM along with ISRAEL & SAUDI ARABIA have always been the ones behind US Politics making, pulling the strings behind the curtains since the Petrodollar Inception, The Greater Israel project & the NWO initiative - only this time around Trump was not the UK's pick... ..."
"... England dominates the offshore money laundering havens where the super rich hide their money and evade taxes. They need to be brought down. No more African dictators looting their nation's resources and hiding the money first in offshore banks and then in JP Morgan and Brit banks. ..."
"... It is a test. If Trump doesn't go ahead with declassification, we know for sure he is no better than the globalists and neocons whose goal has always been to destroy and depopulate America. ..."
"... 'focusing on the former MI6 agent while ignoring the multitude of events which occurred on UK soil, is curious' ..."
"... Not at all. It's obvious - the problem ISN'T Steele. They're living in fear, as are many in DC and elsewhere, that Trump is going to pry the lid open and reveal at least some of their activities. If killing him would fix the problem, they would. It's too late, considering what Trump is threatening to do. I wonder if he'll back down, at least some? ..."
"... U.K. does not want the jurisdiction. U.S. spies lure you overseas then...compromise you. ..."
"... Duh. This Started In London! Britain is the "foreign country" involved in our elections. Wake up everyone. It's LONDONGATE ..."
"... May gonna owe Vlad an apology when Skripal is revealed to be Steele's source. Steele himself hadn't been to Russian in 15 years. Will he get life in prison for attempted murder? ..."
"... "t's hard to tell who's telling the truth and who isn't in this whole Russia narrative. Fact is, NOBODY is telling the truth. That is what I've determined after doing my own research.": https://youtu.be/2AA5BIfGj3g ..."
"... Trump made promises before being elected, then lied and sold America out, just like every other corrupted assklown politician. he is no different than clinton bush obama, just as arrogant, just as corrupt, and just as much a traitor. ..."
UK Begged Trump Not To Declassify Russia Docs; Cited "Grave Concerns" Over Steele
Involvement
by Tyler Durden
Sun, 09/23/2018 - 11:15 4.6K SHARES
The British government "expressed grave concerns" to the US government over the
declassification and release of material related to the Trump-Russia investigation, according
to the New
York Times . President Trump ordered a wide swath of materials "immediately" declassified
"without redaction" on Monday, only to
change his mind later in the week by allowing the DOJ Inspector General to review the
materials first.
The Times reports that the UK's concern was over material which "includes direct references
to conversations between American law enforcement officials and Christopher Steele," the former
MI6 agent who compiled the infamous "Steele Dossier." The UK's objection, according to former
US and British officials, was over revealing Steele's identity in an official document,
"regardless of whether he had been named in press reports."
We would note, however, that Steele's name was contained within the Nunes Memo
- the House Intelligence Committee's majority opinion in the Trump-Russia case.
Steele also had
extensive contacts with DOJ official Bruce Ohr and his wife Nellie, who - along with Steele
- was paid by opposition research firm Fusion GPS in the anti-Trump campaign. Trump called for
the declassification of FBI notes of interviews with Ohr, which would ostensibly reveal more
about his relationship with Steele. Ohr was demoted twice within the Department of Justice for
lying about his contacts with Fusion GPS.
Perhaps the Brits are also concerned since much of the espionage performed on the Trump
campaign was conducted on UK soil throughout 2016 . Recall that Trump aid George Papadopoulos
was lured to London in March, 2016, where Maltese professor Joseph Mifsud fed him the rumor
that Russia had dirt on Hillary Clinton. It was later at a London bar that Papadopoulos would
drunkenly pass the rumor to Australian diplomat Alexander Downer (who Strzok flew to London to
meet with).
Also recall that CIA/FBI "informant" (spy) Stefan Halper met with both Carter Page
and Papadopoulos in
London.
Halper, a veteran of four Republican administrations, reached out to Trump aide George
Papadopoulos in September 2016 with an offer to fly to London to write an academic paper on
energy exploration in the Mediterranean Sea.
Papadopoulos accepted a flight to London and a $3,000 honorarium. He claims that during a
meeting in London, Halper asked him whether he knew anything about Russian hacking of
Democrats' emails.
Papadopoulos had other contacts on British soil that he now believes were part of a
government-sanctioned surveillance operation. - Daily Caller
In total, Halper received over $1 million from the Obama Pentagon for "research," over
$400,000 of which was granted before and during the 2016 election season.
In short, it's understandable that the UK would prefer to hide their involvement in the
"witch hunt" of Donald Trump since much of the counterintelligence investigation was conducted
on UK soil. And if the Brits had knowledge of the operation, it will bolster claims that they
meddled in the 2016 US election by assisting what appears to have been a
set-up from the start .
Steele's ham-handed dossier is a mere embarrassment, as virtually none of the claims
asserted by the former MI6 agent have been proven true.
Steele, a former MI6 agent, is the author of the infamous and unverified anti-Trump
dossier. He worked as a confidential human source for the FBI for years before the
relationship was severed just before the election because of Steele's unauthorized contacts
with the press.
He shared results of his investigation into Trump's links to Russia with the FBI beginning
in early July 2016.
The FBI relied heavily on the unverified Steele dossier to fill out applications for four
FISA warrants against Page. Page has denied the dossier's claims, which include that he was
the Trump campaign's back channel to the Kremlin. - Daily Caller
That said, Steele hasn't worked for the British government since 2009, so for their excuse
focusing on the former MI6 agent while ignoring the multitude of events which occurred on UK
soil, is curious.
StychoKiller , 54 minutes ago
I find it interesting that the Theresa May Govt in UK has the temerity to interfere with
US politics (until they got caught out!), yet can't find the spine to stand up to the EU. If
I were Trump, not only would the shoe be dropping re: UK Govt involvement in US politics, but
said shoe would be making an imprint across her face! (stoopid twat!)
texantim , 1 hour ago
I say release the docs and put sanctions on UK.
BitchesBetterRecognize , 1 hour ago
So the Motherland ******* up with the ex-colony yet again, huh?
THE UNITED KINGDOM along with ISRAEL & SAUDI ARABIA have always been the ones behind
US Politics making, pulling the strings behind the curtains since the Petrodollar Inception,
The Greater Israel project & the NWO initiative - only this time around Trump was not the
UK's pick...
Oh, but those "civilized" Allies backstabbing each other for more power grip on the
USA....
Baron von Bud , 2 hours ago
England dominates the offshore money laundering havens where the super rich hide their
money and evade taxes. They need to be brought down. No more African dictators looting their
nation's resources and hiding the money first in offshore banks and then in JP Morgan and
Brit banks.
Many hedge funds are deep into this game. I'd wager on Carlyle Group and the Bush
clan. Billions of people can't get ahead because the super rich are ******* crooks running
the banks and governments. They don't pay taxes but force a small dry cleaner to pay 45% in
fed/state taxes. These criminals include Hillary Clinton and many members of congress.
Feinstein, Pelosi, Maxine and many more of both parties need to be investigated. How do they
get so rich on a congressman's salary. Deep into tax evasion and payoffs? Release the
documents and let MI6 hang.
Malvern Joe , 3 hours ago
It is a test. If Trump doesn't go ahead with declassification, we know for sure he is no
better than the globalists and neocons whose goal has always been to destroy and depopulate
America. It would represent the biggest sellout of this country since the creation of the Fed
in 1913, He will go down as the biggest fraud ever and his base will deport his *** to the
sums of India where he can defecate in public.
Bricker , 3 hours ago
You dont get to supply a rogue agent, that was probably told to do it in the first place,
and then tell Trump not to do it out of harm, harm is all you BRIT DEEP STATES deserve
Moving and Grooving , 3 hours ago
'focusing on the former MI6 agent while ignoring the multitude of events which occurred on
UK soil, is curious'
Not at all. It's obvious - the problem ISN'T Steele. They're living in fear, as are many
in DC and elsewhere, that Trump is going to pry the lid open and reveal at least some of
their activities. If killing him would fix the problem, they would. It's too late,
considering what Trump is threatening to do. I wonder if he'll back down, at least some?
The sheer corruption of the Global Government is on display here, revealing itself, if you
watch for it. Whether planned or not, the last 6 months or so have been astonishing to watch.
The entire media has been shown to be liars, academia is shown to be an expensive provider of
unprepared students, the corporate world is furiously rent-seeking and finding new ways to
destroy humanity, and government is too busy selling Americans out to write a budget. In all
countries around the world, adjusting for national status. Lawsuits in the west, machetes in
the third world.
Ban KKiller , 4 hours ago
U.K. does not want the jurisdiction. U.S. spies lure you overseas then...compromise you.
John C Durham , 4 hours ago
Duh. This Started In London! Britain is the "foreign country" involved in our elections.
Wake up everyone. It's LONDONGATE .
Anunnaki , 4 hours ago
May gonna owe Vlad an apology when Skripal is revealed to be Steele's source. Steele himself hadn't been to Russian in 15 years. Will he get life in prison for attempted murder?
PeaceForWorld , 4 hours ago
"t's hard to tell who's telling the truth and who isn't in this whole Russia narrative.
Fact is, NOBODY is telling the truth. That is what I've determined after doing my own
research.": https://youtu.be/2AA5BIfGj3g
I really like this woman "Shut the **** up!". She is a former Bernie supporter just like
me. She has turned against Democrats just like me. She doesn't trust any of the Establishment
parties.
Buddha71 , 4 hours ago
Trump made promises before being elected, then lied and sold America out, just like every other
corrupted assklown politician. he is no different than clinton bush obama, just as arrogant,
just as corrupt, and just as much a traitor. he has broken the promises upon which he was
elected, just like all the other fkn liars before him. no different. just a pos. he has not
made america great again, just more of the same, unemployment is a lie, it is closer to
17%.
"... If the so-called "Resistance" to Trump was ever actually interested in opposing this administration in any meaningful way, this would be the top trending news story in America for days, like how "bombshell" revelations pertaining to the made-up Russiagate narrative trend for days. Spoiler alert: it isn't, and it won't be. ..."
"... The US Senate has just passed Trump's mammoth military spending increase by a landslide 92–8 vote . The eight senators who voted "nay"? Seven Republicans, and Independent Bernie Sanders. Every single Democrat supported the most bloated war budget since the height of the Iraq war . Rather than doing everything they can to weaken the potential damage that can be done by a president they've been assuring us is a dangerous hybrid of equal parts Benedict Arnold and Adolf Hitler, they've been actively increasing his power as Commander-in-Chief of the most powerful military force the world has ever seen. ..."
"... They're on the same team, wearing different uniforms. ..."
"... US politics is pretty much the same; two mainstream parties owned by the same political class, engaged in a staged bidding war for votes to give the illusion of competition. ..."
"... In reality, the US political system is like the unplugged video game remote that kids give their baby brother so he stops whining that he wants a turn to play. No matter who they vote for they get an Orwellian warmongering government which exists solely to advance the agendas of a plutocratic class which has no loyalties to any nation; the only difference is sometimes that government is pretending to care about women and minorities and sometimes it's pretending to care about white men. In reality, all the jewelers work for the same plutocrat, and that video game remote won't impact the outcome of the game no matter how many buttons you push. ..."
"... The only way to effect real change is to stop playing along with the rigged system and start waking people up to the lies. As long as Americans believe that the mass media are telling them the truth about their country and their partisan votes are going somewhere useful, the populace whose numbers should give it immense influence is nullified and sedated into a passive ride toward war, ecocide and oppression. ..."
"... Reprinted with author's permission from Medium.com . ..."
"... Support Ms. Johnstone's work on Patreon or Paypal ..."
A new article from the Wall Street
Journal reports that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
lied to congress about the measures Saudi Arabia is taking to minimize the civilian
casualties in its catastrophic war on Yemen, and that he did so in order to secure two billion
dollars for war profiteers.
This is about as depraved as anything you could possibly imagine. US-made bombs have
been conclusively tied to civilian deaths in a war which has caused the single worst
humanitarian crisis on earth, a crisis which sees
scores of Yemeni children dying every single day and has
placed five million children at risk of death by starvation in a nation where families are
now eating
leaves to survive . CIA veteran Bruce Riedel
once said that "if the United States of America and the United Kingdom tonight told King
Salman that this war has to end, it would end tomorrow, because the Royal Saudi Airforce cannot
operate without American and British support." Nobody other than war plutocrats benefits from
the US assisting Saudi Arabia in its monstrous crimes against humanity, and yet Pompeo chose to
override his own expert advisors on the matter for fear of hurting the income of those very war
plutocrats.
If the so-called "Resistance" to Trump was ever actually interested in opposing this
administration in any meaningful way, this would be the top trending news story in America for
days, like how "bombshell" revelations pertaining to the made-up Russiagate narrative trend for
days. Spoiler alert: it isn't, and it won't be.
It would be so very, very easy for Democratic party leaders and Democrat-aligned media to
hurt this administration at the highest level and cause irreparable political damage based on
this story. All they'd have to do is give it the same blanket coverage they've given the
stories about Michael Flynn, George Papadopoulos and Paul Manafort which
end up leading nowhere remotely near impeachment or proof of collusion with the Russian
government. The footage of the starving children is right there, ready to be aired to pluck at
the heart strings of rank-and-file Americans day after day until Republicans have lost all hope
of victory in the midterms and in 2020; all they'd have to do is use it. But they don't. And
they won't.
The US Senate has just passed Trump's mammoth military spending increase by
a landslide 92–8 vote . The eight senators who voted "nay"? Seven Republicans, and
Independent Bernie Sanders. Every single Democrat supported the most bloated war budget
since the
height of the Iraq war . Rather than doing everything they can to weaken the potential
damage that can be done by a president they've been assuring us is a dangerous hybrid of equal
parts Benedict Arnold and Adolf Hitler, they've been actively increasing his power as
Commander-in-Chief of the most powerful military force the world has ever seen.
The reason for this is very simple: President Trump's ostensible political opposition does
not oppose President Trump. They're on the same team, wearing different uniforms. This is the
reason they attack him on Russian collusion accusations which the brighter bulbs among them
know full well will never be proven and have no basis in reality. They don't stand up to Trump
because, as Julian Assange once said , they are
Trump.
In John Steinbeck's The Pearl, there are jewelry buyers set up around a fishing community
which are all owned by the same plutocrat, but they all pretend to be in competition with one
another. When the story's protagonist discovers an enormous and valuable pearl and goes to sell
it, they all gather round and individually bid far less than it is worth in order to trick him
into giving it away for almost nothing. US politics is pretty much the same; two mainstream
parties owned by the same political class, engaged in a staged bidding war for votes to give
the illusion of competition.
In reality, the US political system is like the unplugged video game remote that kids give
their baby brother so he stops whining that he wants a turn to play. No matter who they vote
for they get an Orwellian warmongering government which exists solely to advance the agendas of
a plutocratic class which has no loyalties to any nation; the only difference is sometimes that
government is pretending to care about women and minorities and sometimes it's pretending to
care about white men. In reality, all the jewelers work for the same plutocrat, and that video
game remote won't impact the outcome of the game no matter how many buttons you push.
The only way to effect real change is to stop playing along with the rigged system and start
waking people up to the lies. As long as Americans believe that the mass media are telling them
the truth about their country and their partisan votes are going somewhere useful, the populace
whose numbers should give it immense influence is nullified and sedated into a passive ride
toward war, ecocide and oppression.
If enough of us keep throwing sand in the gears of the lie
factory, we can wake
the masses up from the oligarchic lullaby they're being sung. And then maybe we'll be big
enough to have a shot at grabbing one of the real video game controllers.
Reprinted with author's permission from
Medium.com .
'Assume, for the sake of argument, that powerful, connected people in the intelligence community and in politics worried that a
wildcard Trump presidency, unlike another Clinton or Bush, might expose a decade-plus of questionable practices. Disrupt long-established
money channels. Reveal secret machinations that could arguably land some people in prison.
'What exactly might an "insurance policy" against Donald Trump look like?'
All this leads me back to the suspicion that Steele's involvement may have been less in crafting the dossier, than making it
possible to conceal its actual origins while giving it an appearance of credibility. It could also be the case that Nellie Ohr's sudden
interest in radio transmissions had to do with communications inside the United States, rather than with Steele.
Notable quotes:
"... A great deal of evidence, I think, suggests that practically all those involved in 'Russiagate' were caught totally unprepared by Trump's victory, that they then went rushing around like headless chickens, and that part of this process involved a decision being taken to publish the dossier, without consulting British intelligence. If people like Younger were not consulted, then it would seem to me unlikely that Steele was. ..."
"... And I have immense difficulty seeing how any competent media lawyer would not have recommended, at the minimum, the redaction of the names of Aleksej Gubarev and his company from the final December 2016 memorandum. This would have made legal action unlikely, without greatly diminishing the effect of the claims. ..."
"... But if this was so, and if what they thought was accurate information was actually disinformation, the likely conduit would not have been through Steele, but from FSB cybersecurity people to their FBI counterparts. ..."
"... It it is I think material that intelligence agencies commonly include a great variety of people, ranging from very able analysts and operators to complete dolts. So, the CIA has employed both Philip Giraldi and John Brennan, MI6 both Alastair Crooke and also Christopher Steele and Alex Younger. ..."
"... It is however somewhat revealing that one now finds Giraldi and Crooke appearing on a Russian site, 'Strategic Culture Foundation', while Brennan and Younger are treated as authoritative figures by the MSM. ..."
"... My strong suspicion is that 'Russiagate' is a kind of nemesis, arising from the fact that key figures in British and American intelligence have, over a protracted period of time, got involved in intrigues where they are way out of their depth. The unintended consequences of these have meant that people like Brennan and Younger, and also Hannigan, have ended up having to resort to desperate measures to cover their backsides. ..."
"... There are many aspects to this story that don't make any sense to me if one looks at it from a rational perspective. One of course being concerns about libel litigation and the related legal discovery that you note. The second being no real contingency planning in the event Hillary loses the election. Admittedly they must have bought the media line and Nate Silver's forecast of a greater than 75% probability of a Hillary win. ..."
"... The purported "arms length" relationships don't make any sense. There's Fusion GPS and Glenn Simpson playing a central role. They hire Nellie Ohr, a possible CIA asset and the wife of Bruce Ohr, the 4th highest ranking official at the DOJ. ..."
"... Glenn Simpson also hires Christopher Steele who he knows from previous "spook" associations. Steele had numerous and continuous communications including telephone, Skype, email and personal meetings with Bruce and Nellie Ohr during all this. ..."
"... Then there is Mifsud and Halper. Apparently both are CIA and FBI assets. ..."
"... You have Brennan ginning up concerns giving super secret and individual briefings to the Gang of 8 in Congress. There's Democratic Senator Mark Warner, the minority leader on the Senate Intelligence Committee texting and calling Adam Waldman, Deripaska's US attorney about setting up clandestine meetings with Steele. ..."
"... Not to be left behind there's Sen. McCain doing the same. His top aide even travels to London to meet Steele. And then there's Strzok and his mistress Lisa Page busily spending every waking moment texting each other about every twist and turn in all the political games being played. Of course there's Admiral Rogers investigating unusual searches by FBI officials and contractors on the NSA database. And he briefs President-elect Trump at Trump Tower which prompts the entire transition team to move to Trump's golf course in NJ. ..."
"... In fact the IG report on the Clinton "investigation" states that many at the FBI were accepting "gifts" from various media personalities for a quid pro quo ..."
"... There's Rod Rosenstein, Bruce Ohr's direct boss who testifies he knew nothing about Ohr being a conduit to Strzok for Steele. Of course he knew nothing but signed the FISA application on Carter Page. ..."
"... At this point I don't buy that Christopher Steele dug up real intelligence from his contacts at the highest levels of the Russian government, which caught Brennan, Clapper, Comey and Lynch's pants on fire, who then launched a formal investigation of Russia collusion with Trump. Many things just don't pass the smell test. Now of course I have no qualifications nor experience in spookdom. ..."
"... I agree that it (and Skripalmania) are almost impossible to make sense of unless you think of a bunch of highly politicised not very bright people sinking deeper and deeper into what looked like a bright idea at the time. ..."
"... I ask because, if one tries to look at it in a non-partisan way, the Western IC seemed to be a failure when it came to predicting Russian reactions in the Donbass, the Crimea, and it seems in Syria. I link this to various comments from Colonel Lang indicating that true experts were replaced over the years by less experienced and knowledgeable people. Does being "highly politicised" mean that they're not up to much when it comes to minding the shop? ..."
"... I thought I detected a protest against the politicisation of the US in the world some years ago. And we must not forget that Gen Flynn (DIA) and Adm Rogers (NSA) acted strongly against this. Flynn was the first casualty of the Trump/Russia hysteria and the Clapper claque tried to fire Rogers. ..."
"... I was born in the Depression and have seen vitriolic politics but never have seen such a massive opposition by the media, the pundits and the establishment of both parties. Over 500 print publications endorsed Hillary. Only some 20 endorsed Trump. Yet he confounds the pundits by winning the election. Clearly many voters are at odds with the political media class. ..."
"... I think there is an ideological background to this, on which the piece by Alastair Crooke – himself former MI6 – to which Patrick Armstrong links, and the piece by James George Jatras to which Crooke links, are both to the point. The 'end of history' crowd thought they were inhabiting a realised utopia, and cannot cope with the fact that their dream is collapsing. ..."
"... In relation to the millenarian undercurrents on which Crooke focuses, however, it is also worth noting that a traditional conservative suspicion has been that millenarianism is naturally linked to antinomianism: the belief that the moral law is not binding on the elect. ..."
"... It is obviously possible that Ohr did not report up the chain of command, and if so, he and his wife become pivotal figures in the conspiracy. Alternatively, it could be that Rosenstein is lying – in which case, we have large questions about who else is implicated, and specifically whether the termination of Steele by the FBI was anything more than a ruse. ..."
"... 'Yet, Simpson allegedly acknowledged that most of the information Fusion GPS and British intelligence operative Christopher Steele developed did not come from sources inside Moscow. "Much of the collection about the Trump campaign ties to Russia comes from a former Russian intelligence officer (? not entirely clear) who lives in the U.S.," Ohr scribbled in his notes.' ..."
"... And it confirms my strong suspicion that the dossier is actually a composite product, much of it assembled at Fusion, which could indeed contain material from a range of people from the former Soviet space, who could living in the United States, Britain, or elsewhere – Ukraine and the Baltics being obvious possibilities. ..."
"... So Sergei Skripal and Sergei Millian, neither of whom fit the description by Simpson, have been mentioned as possible sources, and there is also the very curiously ambiguous role of Rinat Akhmetshin. ..."
"... All these people, obviously, could simply have fabricated material or retailed gossip, and Steele himself was involved in fabricating material on an industrial scale to cover up what actually happened to Alexander Litvinenko. ..."
"... All this leads me back to the suspicion that Steele's involvement may have been less in crafting the dossier, than making it possible to conceal its actual origins while giving it an appearance of credibility. It could also be the case that Nellie Ohr's sudden interest in radio transmissions had to do with communications inside the United States, rather than with Steele. ..."
"... Apparently that organisation is doing rather well in sustaining the claiming that 'fair report privilege' could circumvent any requirement to prove truth – and a key question now is whether documents which the DOJ is being forced to produce will establish that the dossier was being used by officials in ways that would trigger the privilege as of 10 January 2017. ..."
"... That said, what Ohr reports Simpson as telling him raises fundamental questions about how anyone could have relied upon the dossier for anything – and should push people back to actually asking hard questions about its origins. ..."
"... To add: Steele was on the FBI's payroll, in addition to being on Fusion GPS's payroll. And on the payroll of Her Majesty's Government. After he got caught leaking to the media he was apparently "fired" by the FBI. But he was continuing to communicate and brief through Bruce Ohr at the DOJ. ..."
"... I think the circle of Glenn Simpson. Chris Steele, Bruce & Nellie Ohr, Adam Waldman. Peter Strzok, and Sen. Mark Warner will be very interesting to pursue. ..."
"... The other circle that should be investigated is the Brennan, Clapper, Lynch, Comey, Yates, Susan Rice. ..."
"... No investigation can exclude the active participation of key people from the media complex including people like Comey's good friend Benjamin Wittes. ..."
"... In its original version, the 'Statement of Principles' explained, among other things, that the Society: 'Believes that only modern liberal democratic states are truly legitimate, and that any international organization which admits undemocratic states on an equal basis is fundamentally flawed.' ..."
"... Ironically, it was shortly after the publication of the dossier that Anatol Lieven published in the 'National Interest' an article entitled 'Is America Becoming a Third World Country?' (See https://nationalinterest.or... .) ..."
"... Also in June, Sergei Karaganov published a piece in 'Russia in Global Affairs', of which he is publisher, entitled 'Ideology of Eastward Turn.' ..."
"... I do not think Karaganov's article is simply a reflection of changes in Russian attitudes. The changes, it seems to me, are global. ..."
"... I do think that we in the West really blew it. In 1990, we could have said, in all humility, that our way of life (IMO the key word is pluralism) had proven more survivable. So we should welcome the others into the tent. Instead, we were right and that was that. ..."
"... Just as you're asking about the origins of the dossier I wonder if it was orchestrated or something that evolved organically? If it was orchestrated, then who was the mastermind? Did Brennan, Clapper and Come sit down and hatch it or was Simpson the brains? What is astounding is the scale. So many people involved. Were they all motivated by ideology or by the need to protect their racket? ..."
"... It seems there are many sub-plots. There's the Deripaska, Steele, Waldman, Mueller, Sen. Warner angle. Then there's the Simpson, Steele, Ohr, Strzok, Page, McCabe angle. There's also the Simpson, Steele, media reporters angle. Then there's the whole Mifsud, Halper, Carter Page, Papadopolous, Downer bit. There's the Comey, Rosenstein, Yates, Strzok FISA application piece. Then there's all the stuff happening in the UK including Hannigan's resignation as soon as Trump is elected. Of course the whole Mueller appointment and the obstruction of justice thread to tie Trump's hand. There are so many elements. Who initiated and coordinated? Was each element separate? ..."
"... Together, these methods are likely to have produced a mass of information. It is important to remember, for example, that at the time of his mysterious death on 23 March 2013 Boris Berezovsky was negotiating to return to Russia, and that his head of security, Sergei Sokolov did return, with a 'cache' of documents. ..."
"... The purpose was to demonstrate that Alexei Navalny was the instrument of a 'régime change' plot in which William Browder was acting as an agent of MI6. ..."
"... An important role in the Apelbaum piece is played by the private security company Hakluyt. A quick look at the entries on Wikipedia and Powerbase will make clear that, if there is a British 'deep state', this is likely to be at its core. ..."
"... It is against this background that on has to see a specific claim which Apelbaum makes, for which I do not think any evidence is produced, about two figures whose role in 'Russiagate' is clearly central. So Luke Harding is described as 'A Guardian reporter and a Hakluyt and Orbis contractor' (note word.) Meanwhile, Edward Baumgartner is described as 'Co-founder of Edward Austin. Contractor at Orbis and Hakluyt.' ..."
"... That Harding is corrupt, as also Sir Robert Owen's 'Inquiry' into the death of the late Alexander Litvinenko, I can prove. When Owen's report was published in January 2016, a preliminary response by me was posted here on SST, which among other things listed some of the evidence establishing that the interviews supposedly recorded with Litvinenko by Detective Inspector Brent Hyatt immediately before his death were blatant forgeries. ..."
"... In relation to that part of the evidence discussed in my January 2016 post which exposes the fumbling attempts by Steele and his colleagues to cover up the truth about when and how Litvinenko travelled into central London on the day he was supposedly killed, most of this had been among a mass of material submitted by me to the Inquiry Team, which I have e-mails to prove was read. ..."
"... Further study of Owen's report has confirmed my suspicion that a strong 'prima facie case' of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice exists against very many of those involved in it. ..."
"... At the same time, materials produced on the Russian side have confirmed my suspicion that the reason why Steele and others have been able to get away with their cover-up is that the Russian intelligence services are no more enthusiastic than their British counterparts about having anything like the whole truth about how Litvinenko lived and died made public. ..."
"... Additionally, the text itself displays an odd parallelism with his assertion regarding the Steele Dossier- that is, the likelihood of multiple authors, of diverse origins. ..."
"... My curiosity about who Apelbaum might be is reinforced by the fact that the intimations he gives about his background in his responses to comments, while not incompatible with what he has said in the past, do not sit so easily with it. ..."
"... So, questions naturally arise about Apelbaum's intelligence career, in particular, who he is likely to have been employed by, and associated with, in the past, and whether he is still involved with any of those agencies which have employed him. ..."
"... 'Also, there is a large Hakluyt/Orbis "commercial intelligence" network in the US that regularly services political and federal agencies and has the power to summon Nazgűls the likes of John Brennan. So Steele is not the new kid on the block, he has been doing this type of work long before 2016. This is also why he has such a cozy relationship with the brass at the DOJ and state.' ..."
"... This is that he, the Ukrainian nationalist former KGB person Yuri Shvets, the convicted Italian disinformation peddler Mario Scaramella, and quite possibly the sometime key FBI expert on Mogilevich, Robert 'Bobby' Levinson, were involved in trying to suggest that Mogilevich was an instrument of a plot by Putin to equip Al Qaeda with a 'mini nuclear bomb.' ..."
"... In his prepared statement, Lugovoi claimed that his supposed victim used to say that everyone in Britain were ''retards', to use the translation submitted in evidence to Owen's Inquiry, or 'idiots', to use that by RT. And according to this version, the British believed in everything that 'we' – that is, the Berezovky group – said was happening in Russia. ..."
"... Whether or not Litvinenko expressed this cynical contempt, the credulity with which the claims of the 'information operations' people around Berezovsky have been accepted – well illustrated by Owen's report and perhaps most ludicrous in Harding's journalism – makes clear it is justified. ..."
"... Perhaps then, cartoons about Trump as a puppet, with the strings pulled by another puppet representing Manafort, whose strings are in turn pulled by Putin, should be replaced by ones in which Mueller is seen as a puppet manipulated by the ghost of Boris Berezovsky. ..."
"... But that is the irony. The relationship with Berezovsky blew up in the faces of all concerned, when in the wake of the successsful corruption of the investigation into the death of Litvinenko by him and his 'information operations' people, he attempted to recoup his fortunes by suing Roman Abramovich, and got taken to pieces by Lord Sumption. ..."
"... The 'Vesti Nedeli' piece uses what Elizaveta Berezovskaya says in support of the claim that Berezovsky was murdered by British 'special forces', because he was planning to return to Russia, and he 'knew too much about them.' ..."
"... One of the things I've never understood about the Trump Dossier story is the lack of any forensic analysis of its content and style anywhere in the media, even the alt media. Who was supposed to have actually written it? Steele? The style does not match someone of his background and education, and the formatting and syntax were atrocious. The font actually varied from "report" to "report." It certainly did not give me the impression of being the product of a high-end, Belgravia consultancy. ..."
"... I wonder whether it was produced by an American of one sort or another and then "laundered" by being accorded association with the UK firm. Given that Steele just happened to be hired by the USG to help in the anti-FIFA skulduggery, he and his firm seem very much to be a concern that does dirty little jobs that need discretely to be done, though in this case, the discretion was undermined. ..."
"... Most of the memos were issued before October and Fusion/Simpson authorized Steele to release information to the FBI starting in July. The question is why the memos were released after the election when a release before the election would have been enough to sink Trump. Instead the FBI and presumably those paying Fusion on Hillarys behalf sat on it, and Comey comes out days before the election ..."
"... Kind of looks like they all wanted Trump in office and the disclosure was to give Trump the excuse needed to back track on his promises to improve relations with Russia and blame that on pressure from the Deep State and Russia Gate. ..."
"... Looking at Trumps history with Sater (FBI/CIA asset) and his political aspirations that began following his Moscow visit in 1987 it seems likely Trump has been a Deep State asset for 30 years and fed intelligence to CIA/FBI on Russian oligarchs and mafia . Indeed he may well have duped Russians into believing he was working for them when in fact it was the CIA/FBI who had the best Kompromat with US RICO laws that could have beggared him ..."
"... One thing to remember about the FBI is Sy Hersh. Hersh claims the FBI has been sitting on a report for two years that fingers murdered DNC staffer Seth Rich as the Wikileaks DNC email leaker (or one of them, at least.) ..."
"... I suspect the decision to publish the dossier was political. It was required to enable Clapper, Brennan, and others to opine on national media and create further media hysteria prior to the vote as well as to justify the counter-intelligence investigations underway. They were throwing the kitchen sink to sink Trump's electoral chances. I don't think a lot of thought was given about the legal ramifications. ..."
"... This seems to be a pattern. Leak information. Then use the leaked story to justify actions like apply for a FISA warrant or fan the media flames. ..."
"... I find it incredulous that former leaders of the intelligence and law enforcement agencies have gained paid access to powerful media platforms and they have used it to launch vicious attacks on a POTUS. ..."
"... I find it amazing that McCabe and Peter Strzok are raising hundreds of thousands of dollars on social media platforms. ..."
"... If the GOP retains the House and Jim Jordan becomes speaker, then there may be a possibility that Sessions, Rosenstein and Wray may be fired and another special counsel appointed who will then convene a grand jury. ..."
My strong impression is that nobody on the British side vetted the dossier for publication. A striking feature of the early news
coverage is that there appeared to be total confusion, with some of the reporting suggesting that the sources quoted wanted to hang
him out to dry, others that they wanted to defend him.
An interesting aspect is that not only were anonymous sources linked to MI6 quoted on both sides of the argument -- which could
have been explained by disagreements within the organisation: in different stories, not however far apart in date, its head, Sir
Alex Younger, was portrayed as holding radically different views.
When CNN publicised the existence of the dossier on 10 January 2017, the same day that it was published by 'BuzzFeed', it suggested
that the author was British. The following day, the WSJ named Steele.
On 13 January, Martin Robinson, UK Chief Reporter for 'Mail Online', published a report whose headlines seem worth quoting in
full:
'I introduced him to my wife as James Bond': Former spy Chris Steele's friends describe a "show-off" 007 figure but MI6 bosses
brand him "an idiot" for an "appalling lack of judgement" over the Trump "dirty dossier": Intelligence expert Nigel West says friend
is like Ian Fleming's famous character; He said: "He's James Bond. I actually introduced him to my wife as James Bond'; Mr West says
Steele dislikes Putin and Kremlin for ignoring rules of espionage; Angry spy source calls him 'idiot' and blasts decision to take
on the Trump work; Current MI6 boss Sir Alex Younger is said to be livid about reputation damage.'
On 15 January, however, Kim Sengupta, Defence Editor of the 'Independent', produced a report headlined: 'Head of MI6 used information
from Trump dossier in first public speech; Warnings on cyberattacks show ex-spy's work is respected.'
A great deal of evidence, I think, suggests that practically all those involved in 'Russiagate' were caught totally unprepared
by Trump's victory, that they then went rushing around like headless chickens, and that part of this process involved a decision
being taken to publish the dossier, without consulting British intelligence. If people like Younger were not consulted, then it would
seem to me unlikely that Steele was.
This leads me on to another puzzle about the dossier to which I have been having a difficulty finding a solution. Long years
ago I was reasonably familiar with libel law in relation to journalism. Anyone who 'served indentures', as very many of us did in
those days, had to study it. Later, I got involved in a protracted libel suit -- successfully, I hasten to add -- in relation to
a programme I made, and had the sobering experience of having a top-class libel barrister requiring me to justify every assertion
I had made.
In the jargon then, a crucial question when an article, or programme, was being 'vetted' before publication was whether it represented
a 'fair business risk.' This involved both the technical legal issues, and also judgements as to whether people were likely to sue,
and how if they did the case would be likely to pan out.
On the face of things, one would not have expected that people at 'BuzzFeed' would have gone ahead and make the dossier public,
without having it 'vetted' by competent lawyers. And I have difficulty seeing how, if they did, the advice could have been to publish
what they published.
I have some difficulty seeing how the advice could have been to include the memorandum with the claims about the Alfa Group oligarchs,
unless either these could be seriously defended or it was assumed that contesting them effectively would involve revealing more 'dirty
linen' than these wanted to see aired in public.
And I have immense difficulty seeing how any competent media lawyer would not have recommended, at the minimum, the redaction
of the names of Aleksej Gubarev and his company from the final December 2016 memorandum. This would have made legal action unlikely,
without greatly diminishing the effect of the claims.
Trying to make sense of why such an obvious precaution was not taken, I find myself wondering whether, in fact, the reason may
have been that the people responsible for the dossier may have actually believed this part of it at least.
If that is so, however, the most plausible explanation I can see is that while other claims in the dossier may well be total fabrication,
either by the people at Fusion and Steele or by some of their questionable contacts, this information at least did come from what
Glenn Simpson, Nellie Ohr et al thought were reliable Russian government sources.
But if this was so, and if what they thought was accurate information was actually disinformation, the likely conduit would
not have been through Steele, but from FSB cybersecurity people to their FBI counterparts.
I think that the cases involving Karim Baratov and Dmitri Dokuchaev and his colleagues may be much more complex than is apparent
from what looks to me like patent disinformation put out both on the Western and Russian sides.
It it is I think material that intelligence agencies commonly include a great variety of people, ranging from very able analysts
and operators to complete dolts. So, the CIA has employed both Philip Giraldi and John Brennan, MI6 both Alastair Crooke and also
Christopher Steele and Alex Younger.
It is however somewhat revealing that one now finds Giraldi and Crooke appearing on a Russian site, 'Strategic Culture Foundation',
while Brennan and Younger are treated as authoritative figures by the MSM.
If you want to get a clear picture of quite how low-grade the latter figure is, incidentally, it is worth looking at the speech
to which Kim Sengupta refers.
A favourite line of mine comes in Younger's discussion of the -- actually largely mythical -- notion of 'hybrid warfare': 'In
this arena, our opponents are often states whose very survival owes to the strength of their security capabilities; the work is complex
and risky, often with the full weight of the State seeking to root us out.'
Leaving aside the fact that this is borderline illiterate, what it amazing is Younger's apparent blindness to clearly unintended
implications of what he writes. If indeed, the 'very survival' of the Russian state 'owes to the strength of [its] security capabilities',
the conclusions, seen from a Russian point of view, would seem rather obvious: vote Putin, and give medals to Patrushev and Bortnikov.
My strong suspicion is that 'Russiagate' is a kind of nemesis, arising from the fact that key figures in British and American
intelligence have, over a protracted period of time, got involved in intrigues where they are way out of their depth. The unintended
consequences of these have meant that people like Brennan and Younger, and also Hannigan, have ended up having to resort to desperate
measures to cover their backsides.
There are many aspects to this story that don't make any sense to me if one looks at it from a rational perspective. One
of course being concerns about libel litigation and the related legal discovery that you note. The second being no real contingency
planning in the event Hillary loses the election. Admittedly they must have bought the media line and Nate Silver's forecast of
a greater than 75% probability of a Hillary win.
The purported "arms length" relationships don't make any sense. There's Fusion GPS and Glenn Simpson playing a central
role. They hire Nellie Ohr, a possible CIA asset and the wife of Bruce Ohr, the 4th highest ranking official at the DOJ.
Glenn Simpson also hires Christopher Steele who he knows from previous "spook" associations. Steele had numerous and continuous
communications including telephone, Skype, email and personal meetings with Bruce and Nellie Ohr during all this. They even
have discussions about Deripaska and about his visa application to visit the US. Bruce is a conduit to Strzok at FBI. Glenn Simpson
also is part of these discussions with Steele and the Ohrs.
Simpson also arranges for Steele to brief "reporters" like David Corn and others at the NY Times, WaPo, WSJ, Politico and others.
Then there is Mifsud and Halper. Apparently both are CIA and FBI assets. They are communicating with Carter Page and
Papadopolous, who in turn is drinking and yapping with Aussie ambassador Downer.
You have Brennan ginning up concerns giving super secret and individual briefings to the Gang of 8 in Congress. There's
Democratic Senator Mark Warner, the minority leader on the Senate Intelligence Committee texting and calling Adam Waldman, Deripaska's
US attorney about setting up clandestine meetings with Steele. There's Sen. Harry Reid passing on the Steele "dossier" to
Comey.
Not to be left behind there's Sen. McCain doing the same. His top aide even travels to London to meet Steele. And then
there's Strzok and his mistress Lisa Page busily spending every waking moment texting each other about every twist and turn in
all the political games being played. Of course there's Admiral Rogers investigating unusual searches by FBI officials and contractors
on the NSA database. And he briefs President-elect Trump at Trump Tower which prompts the entire transition team to move to Trump's
golf course in NJ.
Oh, there is also Nellie Ohr setting up ham radio to avoid detection in her communications with Steele. Then we have everyone
leaking and spinning to their "cohorts" in the premier media like the NY Times, CNN and WaPo.
Comey even has his buddy a professor and ostensibly his legal counsel on the payroll of the FBI as a contractor with access
to all the sensitive databases leaking to the media.
Andy McCabe has his legal counsel Lisa Page spin stories around his wife's huge campaign contributions from Clinton consigliere
McAuliffe.
In fact the IG report on the Clinton "investigation" states that many at the FBI were accepting "gifts" from various media
personalities for a quid pro quo.
As if all this was not enough there's AG Loretta Lynch, meeting with Bill Clinton on a tarmac ostensibly to discuss their grandkids.
Not to forget there were these "unmaskings" of surveillance information by Susan Rice, Samantha Power.
There's Rod Rosenstein, Bruce Ohr's direct boss who testifies he knew nothing about Ohr being a conduit to Strzok for Steele.
Of course he knew nothing but signed the FISA application on Carter Page. Then there are the FISC judges who never believed
their mandate required them to verify the evidence before issuing sweeping surveillance warrants. Now all this is what I as an
old farmer and winemaker have read. Those more in tune would easily add to these convoluted machinations.
I don't know how to make sense of all this. All I see is the extent of effort to prevent Donald Trump from being elected and
after he won from governing. The most obvious observation is that the leadership in our law enforcement and intelligence agencies
are so busy politicking spinning and leaking they have neither the time or the inclination let alone competence to do their real
job for which they get paid a handsome wage and sterling benefits.
At this point I don't buy that Christopher Steele dug up real intelligence from his contacts at the highest levels of the
Russian government, which caught Brennan, Clapper, Comey and Lynch's pants on fire, who then launched a formal investigation of
Russia collusion with Trump. Many things just don't pass the smell test. Now of course I have no qualifications nor experience
in spookdom.
If you have any speculative theories that connects some of the dots it would be my great pleasure to read.
I agree that it (and Skripalmania) are almost impossible to make sense of unless you think of a bunch of highly politicised
not very bright people sinking deeper and deeper into what looked like a bright idea at the time.
Confident that their horse is going to win the race and that the media will cover it all up and nobody will ever hear anything
about anything. Now that the unexpected happened, they're just spinning and denying faster hoping the Dems win in Nov and stop
all the investigations. And, they're getting nervous wondering who's going to sell out whom next. Up and down, around and around.
Gerbils -- there really isn't anything very consistent, planned or thought-out.
"I agree that it (and Skripalmania) are almost impossible to make sense of unless you think of a bunch of highly politicised
not very bright people sinking deeper and deeper into what looked like a bright idea at the time."
I believe your summary of what's happening is more accurate than Alastair Crooke's as set out in the article linked to.
But bright or not, what are these people in the IC doing being "highly politicised"? Does that not render them considerably
less efficient?
I ask because, if one tries to look at it in a non-partisan way, the Western IC seemed to be a failure when it came to
predicting Russian reactions in the Donbass, the Crimea, and it seems in Syria. I link this to various comments from Colonel Lang
indicating that true experts were replaced over the years by less experienced and knowledgeable people. Does being "highly politicised"
mean that they're not up to much when it comes to minding the shop?
I thought I detected a protest against the politicisation of the US in the world some years ago. And we must not forget
that Gen Flynn (DIA) and Adm Rogers (NSA) acted strongly against this. Flynn was the first casualty of the Trump/Russia hysteria
and the Clapper claque tried to fire Rogers.
Usually the incumbent party loses the mid-term election. The Democrats lost big in Obama's first mid-term. The Republicans
won the House and gained six senators. While the punditry claims a Blue Wave and Nate Silver is giving the Dems the odds. I'm
not so sure. I think the GOP will increase their majority in the Senate putting any conviction of Trump out of question.
I was born in the Depression and have seen vitriolic politics but never have seen such a massive opposition by the media,
the pundits and the establishment of both parties. Over 500 print publications endorsed Hillary. Only some 20 endorsed Trump.
Yet he confounds the pundits by winning the election. Clearly many voters are at odds with the political media class.
Yeah. My bet is that the Repubs hold onto both. 1) the economy is getting better 2) what do the Dems have to offer other than
this crazy Trump/Russia thing?
Economy will slow down sharply in 2019 but there should be enough momentum to help with the mid-terms. Trump needs to stop
with the endless sanction stuff. The House does look like a close one.
At a very general level, a 'speculative theory' which I have been mulling over for some time was rather well set out in a commentary
in 'The Hill' on 9 August by Sharyl Attkisson, which opens:
'Let's begin in the realm of the fanciful.
'Assume, for the sake of argument, that powerful, connected people in the intelligence community and in politics worried that
a wildcard Trump presidency, unlike another Clinton or Bush, might expose a decade-plus of questionable practices. Disrupt long-established
money channels. Reveal secret machinations that could arguably land some people in prison.
'What exactly might an "insurance policy" against Donald Trump look like?'
And Attkisson goes on to outline precisely the developments that appear to have happened.
I think there is an ideological background to this, on which the piece by Alastair Crooke – himself former MI6 – to which
Patrick Armstrong links, and the piece by James George Jatras to which Crooke links, are both to the point. The 'end of history'
crowd thought they were inhabiting a realised utopia, and cannot cope with the fact that their dream is collapsing.
In relation to the millenarian undercurrents on which Crooke focuses, however, it is also worth noting that a traditional
conservative suspicion has been that millenarianism is naturally linked to antinomianism: the belief that the moral law is not
binding on the elect. And in turn, according to a familiar skeptical view, antinomianism can easily end up in in straightforward
rascality.
On the rascality – to which Attkisson is pointing – I am working on how parts of the picture can be fleshed out. A few preliminary
points raised by your remarks.
As you note, 'There's Rod Rosenstein, Bruce Ohr's direct boss who testifies he knew nothing about Ohr being a conduit to Strzok
for Steele.' So, we know that Ohr and Steele were conspiring together to ensure that the latter could continue to be intimately
involved in the Mueller investigation, despite the FBI termination,
It is obviously possible that Ohr did not report up the chain of command, and if so, he and his wife become pivotal figures
in the conspiracy. Alternatively, it could be that Rosenstein is lying – in which case, we have large questions about who else
is implicated, and specifically whether the termination of Steele by the FBI was anything more than a ruse.
If, as seems to me likely, although not certain, the second possibility is closer to the truth than the former, then before
Ohr testifies on 28 August before the House Judiciary and Oversight Committees he will have to consider whether he is prepared
to 'take the rap' for his superiors, or 'sing sweetly.'
The fact that in a report in 'The Hill', I think on the same day as the Attkisson piece, John Solomon was quoting from Ohr's
handwritten notes of a meeting with Glenn Simpson in December 2016 makes me wonder whether he may not already have made a decision.
A key paragraph from the report:
'Yet, Simpson allegedly acknowledged that most of the information Fusion GPS and British intelligence operative Christopher
Steele developed did not come from sources inside Moscow. "Much of the collection about the Trump campaign ties to Russia comes
from a former Russian intelligence officer (? not entirely clear) who lives in the U.S.," Ohr scribbled in his notes.'
There is I think a need for caution here. There is no guarantee that Simpson was telling the literal truth to Ohr, or indeed
the latter reproducing with absolute accuracy with he was told (handwritten notes can be disposed of easily, but they can also
be rewritten.)
One is I think on firmer ground in relation to what it suggests was not the case – that there is any substance whatsoever in
the ludicrous story of someone running a private security company in London sending out hired employees who then gain access to
top Kremlin insiders, with these, of course, telling them precisely what they actually think.
And it confirms my strong suspicion that the dossier is actually a composite product, much of it assembled at Fusion, which
could indeed contain material from a range of people from the former Soviet space, who could living in the United States, Britain,
or elsewhere – Ukraine and the Baltics being obvious possibilities.
So Sergei Skripal and Sergei Millian, neither of whom fit the description by Simpson, have been mentioned as possible sources,
and there is also the very curiously ambiguous role of Rinat Akhmetshin.
All these people, obviously, could simply have fabricated material or retailed gossip, and Steele himself was involved
in fabricating material on an industrial scale to cover up what actually happened to Alexander Litvinenko.
That said, I continue to think it possible that both the second and final memoranda may incorporate some 'glitter', as well
as 'chickenfeed' fed from FSB cybersecurity people to their FBI counterparts, to hark back to George Smiley says to the Minister,
quite possibly included in the hope that the BS involved would be reproduced in contexts where it could provoke legal action.
All this leads me back to the suspicion that Steele's involvement may have been less in crafting the dossier, than making
it possible to conceal its actual origins while giving it an appearance of credibility. It could also be the case that Nellie
Ohr's sudden interest in radio transmissions had to do with communications inside the United States, rather than with Steele.
It could then be that Steele has been, in effect, hoist with his own petard, in that he is having to sustain the fiction that
he had some kind of grounds for making the claims about Aleksej Gubarev and XBT. How far this matters, at least in relation to
the action bought against 'BuzzFeed' in Florida, remains moot at the moment.
Apparently that organisation is doing rather well in sustaining the claiming that 'fair report privilege' could circumvent
any requirement to prove truth – and a key question now is whether documents which the DOJ is being forced to produce will establish
that the dossier was being used by officials in ways that would trigger the privilege as of 10 January 2017.
That said, what Ohr reports Simpson as telling him raises fundamental questions about how anyone could have relied upon
the dossier for anything – and should push people back to actually asking hard questions about its origins.
Mr Habakkuk, you mention "ambiguous role of Rinat Akhmetshin" - I am not sure if you meant Akhmetov.
I am surprised and curious about you mentioning him - if you meant Akhmetov - because that is one name among all the oligarchs
which has so far not been prominent. Thank you for your posts, these posts and the SST comments could and should serve as help
to the congressional investigations and hearings.
To add: Steele was on the FBI's payroll, in addition to being on Fusion GPS's payroll. And on the payroll of Her Majesty's
Government. After he got caught leaking to the media he was apparently "fired" by the FBI. But he was continuing to communicate
and brief through Bruce Ohr at the DOJ.
I think the circle of Glenn Simpson. Chris Steele, Bruce & Nellie Ohr, Adam Waldman. Peter Strzok, and Sen. Mark Warner
will be very interesting to pursue.
The other circle that should be investigated is the Brennan, Clapper, Lynch, Comey, Yates, Susan Rice.
No investigation can exclude the active participation of key people from the media complex including people like Comey's
good friend Benjamin Wittes.
Younger isn't the brightest bulb in the box, is he?
"If you doubt the link between legitimacy and effective counter-terrorism, then – albeit negatively – the unfolding tragedy
in Syria will, I fear, provide proof. I believe the Russian conduct in Syria, allied with that of Assad's discredited regime,
will, if they do not change course, provide a tragic example of the perils of forfeiting legitimacy. In defining as a terrorist
anyone who opposes a brutal government, they alienate precisely that group that has to be on side if the extremists are to
be defeated. Meanwhile, in Aleppo, Russia and the Syrian regime seek to make a desert and call it peace. The human tragedy
is heart-breaking"
Those were indeed some of the most inane comments in an inane piece.
But then, if you read an interview given to Jay Elwes of 'Prospect' magazine in May last year by Younger's predecessor Sir
Richard Dearlove, who looks to have been a significant background presence in what has been going on, you will find that, although
he is much more coherent than than his successor, it is almost as inane.
As it happens, Dearlove was one of the signatories of the 'Statement of Principles' of something called the 'Henry Jackson
Society.'
This was founded in 2005, in Cambridge, by a group in whom acolytes of an historian called Maurice Cowling were prominent –
Dearlove is himself a graduate in history from that university.
In its original version, the 'Statement of Principles' explained, among other things, that the Society: 'Believes that
only modern liberal democratic states are truly legitimate, and that any international organization which admits undemocratic
states on an equal basis is fundamentally flawed.'
Ironically, it was shortly after the publication of the dossier that Anatol Lieven published in the 'National Interest'
an article entitled 'Is America Becoming a Third World Country?' (See
https://nationalinterest.or...
.)
Among other things, he harked back to the way that, in 1648, a century and a half of bloody ideological strife in Europe had
been ended with a recognition that the legitimacy of different state forms had to be accepted, if a kind of 'war of all against
all' was to be avoided.
And Lieven went on to reflect on the way that, at what was then widely seen as the end of the Cold War, the abandonment of
universalisitic pretensions by Russia and China was interpreted as justifying an embrace of these by the the West.
This, he went on to argue, had actually had the paradoxical effect of relegitimising 'régimes' which do not conform to Western
'democratic' models, concluding by noting what appears to our new, quasi-Soviet, preference for not letting experience interfere
with ideological dogma:
'Finally – even after the catastrophes of Iraq and Libya – there is almost no awareness among US policymakers of the fact that
US attempts to change the regimes of other countries are likely to be seen not only by the elites of those countries but also
by their populations as leading to – and intended to lead to – the destruction of the state itself, leading to disaster for its
society and population. When the Communist regime in the USSR collapsed (though only in part under Western pressure), it took
the Soviet state with it. The Russian state came close to following suit in the years that followed, Russia was reduced to impotence
on the world stage, and large parts of the Russian and other populations suffered economic and social disaster. Remembering their
own past experiences with state collapse, warlordism, famine and foreign invasion, Chinese people looked at this awful spectacle
and huddled closer to the Chinese state – one that they may dislike in many ways, but which they certainly trust more than anything
America has to offer – especially given the apparent decay of democracy throughout the West.'
I read with interest your piece back in June entitled 'Putin Once Dreamed the American Dream', reprinting Charles Heberle's
account of the 'Transforming Subjects Into Citizens' project, and the attitude of some people close to Putin to it.
One of the things which struck me was that the question why the American Revolution succeeded, and so many others failed, which
was concerning the intellectuals to whom Heberle talked, is one of the central questions of modern political thought, from Tocqueville
on.
(Indeed, the question of the preconditions for what might be called 'constitutional' government, has been central to 'republican'
thought, ever since it was revived by Italian thinkers, including prominently Machiavelli, when the 'Renaissance' made them reactivate
and rework debates from ancient Rome and Greece.)
However, to hark back to the anxieties expressed by Lieven, nothing in the analysis of the great French thinker necessary guarantees
that the success of 'Democracy in America' is stable and permanent, or indeed that the relatively civilised order of the post-war
'Pax Americana' is necessarily durable in Western Europe.
Also in June, Sergei Karaganov published a piece in 'Russia in Global Affairs', of which he is publisher, entitled 'Ideology
of Eastward Turn.' A paragraph that struck me:
'Russian society should by no means abdicate from its mostly European culture. But it should certainly stop being afraid,
let alone feel ashamed, of its Asianism. It should be remembered that from the standpoint of prevailing social mentality and
society's attitude to the authorities Russia, just as China and many other Asian states, are offspring of Chengiss Khan's Empire.
This is no reason for throwing up hands in despair or for beginning to despise one's own people, contrary to what many members
of intelligencia sometimes do. It should be accepted as a fact of life and used as a strength. The more so, since amid the
harsh competitive environment of the modern world the authoritarian type of government – in the context of a market economy
and equitable military potentials – is certainly far more effective than modern democracy. This is what our Western partners
find so worrisome. Of course, we should bear in mind that authoritarianism – just like democracy – may lead to stagnation and
degradation. Russia is certainly confronted with such a risk.'
Unlike you, I cannot claim serious expertise on Russia. But, as a reasonably alert generalist television current affairs producer,
I took note of the indications which were emerging in the course of 1987 that the Gorbachev 'new thinking' was underpinned by
a realisation that Soviet institutions and ideas had become fundamentally dysfunctional, to which you have referred repeatedly
over the years.
And, after long tedious months trying interest the powers that were in British broadcasting in what was happening, I ended
up producing a couple of programmes for BBC Radio in February/March 1989 in which we interviewed some of the leading 'new thinkers',
among them Karaganov's then immediate superior at the Institute of Europe, Vitaly Zhurkin.
At the Institute for the USA and Canada, by contrast, we did not interview its head, Georgiy Arbatov, but his deputy, Andrei
Kokoshin, and one of the latter's mentors on military matters and collaborators General-Mayor Valentin Larionov, who I later realised
had earlier been one of the foremost Soviet nuclear strategists. (At the Institute for World Economy and International Relations,
we interviewed Arbatov's son, Alexei.)
Talking to these people we got a sense, although it had to be fleshed out later, of the scale of the disillusion with Soviet
models, and indeed – which began to frighten me not long after – of the way many of them were romanticising the West.
What Karaganov now writes is I think a hardly very surprising reaction to the way that the Western powers responded to the
'new thinking.' Moreover, it seems to me that the disillusionment involved is in no sense particular Russian, but rather global.
If one regards 'democracy' as though it were quoted on the stock exchange, before 1914 there were very many buyers, including
among the Russian élite. By 1931, in very many places, including large sections of the 'intelligentsia' in Western countries,
it was a sellers' market, to put it mildly.
After 1945, a kind of long 'bull market' in 'democracy' started: for very good reasons.
The – largely but very far from entirely – peaceful retreat and collapse of Soviet power was to a very significant extent the
product of this. The subsequent behaviour of Western élites has generated a vicious 'bear market', a fact they appear unable to
understand.
I do not think Karaganov's article is simply a reflection of changes in Russian attitudes. The changes, it seems to me,
are global.
I do think that we in the West really blew it. In 1990, we could have said, in all humility, that our way of life (IMO
the key word is pluralism) had proven more survivable. So we should welcome the others into the tent. Instead, we were right and
that was that.
PS, in light of the Henry Jackson society and all Younger's references to "values" this one rather stands out "A vital lesson
I take from the Chilcot Report is the danger of group think."
Yeah. Group think, the very opposite of what I mean by pluralism.
Sharyl Atkinson describes well the conspiracy. When one steps back and look at all the machinations we know now, it seems incredible.
Just as you're asking about the origins of the dossier I wonder if it was orchestrated or something that evolved organically?
If it was orchestrated, then who was the mastermind? Did Brennan, Clapper and Come sit down and hatch it or was Simpson the brains?
What is astounding is the scale. So many people involved. Were they all motivated by ideology or by the need to protect their
racket?
It seems there are many sub-plots. There's the Deripaska, Steele, Waldman, Mueller, Sen. Warner angle. Then there's the
Simpson, Steele, Ohr, Strzok, Page, McCabe angle. There's also the Simpson, Steele, media reporters angle. Then there's the whole
Mifsud, Halper, Carter Page, Papadopolous, Downer bit. There's the Comey, Rosenstein, Yates, Strzok FISA application piece. Then
there's all the stuff happening in the UK including Hannigan's resignation as soon as Trump is elected. Of course the whole Mueller
appointment and the obstruction of justice thread to tie Trump's hand. There are so many elements. Who initiated and coordinated?
Was each element separate?
There's no doubt a political thriller movie could be made.
I guess the comedy part is that there actually exist people with medically functioning brains, who are somehow able to contort
such a worldview...Aleppo as peaceful 'desert' indeed...who knew that having bearded fanatics in charge is somehow 'better'...[and
not 'heart-breaking']...
Some here may find blogpost from March of this year interesting as it speaks to the production of the Steele dossier. I have
not seen it mentioned here before and a site search produced no results.
https://apelbaum.wordpress....
Some sections seem to have gotten David Cay Johnston's hackles up.
I had seen Yaacov Apelbaum's piece referred to by Clarice Feldman in a post on the 'American Thinker' site a few days back,
but not looked at it properly.
It is indeed fascinating, and clearly repays a closer study than I have so far had time to give it. I was however relieved
to find that what Apelbaum writes 'meshes' quite well with my own views of the likely authorship of the dossier.
A question I have is whether the monumental amount of labour involved in producing it can really be the work of a single IT
person – however wide-ranging his abilities and interests. My suspicion is that there may be input from Russian intelligence.
This is not said in order to discredit Apelbaum's work. In matters where I have had occasion critically to examine claims from
official Russian sources, I have found several unsurprising, but recurring, patterns. Sometimes, the information provided can
be shown to be essentially accurate, and it is reasonably clear how it has been obtained.
At other times, claims are made which information from other sources suggests either are, or may well be, true, but the 'sources
and methods' involved are deliberately obscured, making evaluation more difficult.
And then, there are many occasions when what one gets is quite patently a mixture of accurate information and disinformation.
Analysing these can be very productive, if one can both sift out the accurate information, and attempt to see what the disinformation
is designed to obscure.
One thing of which I am absolutely certain is that the networks which are outlined by Apelbaum are precisely those which Russian
intelligence will have spent a great deal of time and ingenuity penetrating.
This will have been attempted by 'SIGINT' and surveillance methods, and also through infiltrating agents and turning people.
(There are often grounds to suspect that some of those most vociferously denouncing Putin are colluding with Russian intelligence.)
Together, these methods are likely to have produced a mass of information. It is important to remember, for example, that
at the time of his mysterious death on 23 March 2013 Boris Berezovsky was negotiating to return to Russia, and that his head of
security, Sergei Sokolov did return, with a 'cache' of documents.
Some of these were used back in April 2016 in a 'Vesti Nedeli' edition presented by Dmitry Kiselyov, who manages Russia's informational
programming resources, and an accompanying documentary on the 'Pervyi Kanal' station.
The purpose was to demonstrate that Alexei Navalny was the instrument of a 'régime change' plot in which William Browder was
acting as an agent of MI6.
There is a good discussion of this, which highlights some of the problems with the documents, by Gilbert Doctorow, and Sokolov
appears to have been involved in some murky activities since.
But whatever the credibility or lack of it of the material, its appearance illustrates a general pattern, where the political
disintegration of the London-based opposition to Putin has meant that more and more people involved in it have been supplying
information to the Russians.
If, as I strongly suspect, there is fire beneath the smoke in those Russian television programmes, and if a great part of a
series of projects of a related kind orchestrated in conjunction by elements in American and British intelligence were actually
large run from this side, this will be creating headaches for people in Washington, as well as London.
An important role in the Apelbaum piece is played by the private security company Hakluyt. A quick look at the entries
on Wikipedia and Powerbase will make clear that, if there is a British 'deep state', this is likely to be at its core.
It is against this background that on has to see a specific claim which Apelbaum makes, for which I do not think any evidence
is produced, about two figures whose role in 'Russiagate' is clearly central. So Luke Harding is described as 'A Guardian reporter
and a Hakluyt and Orbis contractor' (note word.) Meanwhile, Edward Baumgartner is described as 'Co-founder of Edward Austin. Contractor
at Orbis and Hakluyt.'
That Harding is corrupt, as also Sir Robert Owen's 'Inquiry' into the death of the late Alexander Litvinenko, I can prove.
When Owen's report was published in January 2016, a preliminary response by me was posted here on SST, which among other things
listed some of the evidence establishing that the interviews supposedly recorded with Litvinenko by Detective Inspector Brent
Hyatt immediately before his death were blatant forgeries.
If this is the case, then questions are raised about how much of the apparently compelling forensic evidence is forged – and
close examination suggests that key parts of it are.
In relation to that part of the evidence discussed in my January 2016 post which exposes the fumbling attempts by Steele
and his colleagues to cover up the truth about when and how Litvinenko travelled into central London on the day he was supposedly
killed, most of this had been among a mass of material submitted by me to the Inquiry Team, which I have e-mails to prove was
read.
Likewise, also in January 2016, I sent the key relevant evidence on this crucial matter to Harding and senior figures at the
'Guardian', and have reason to believe it was read.
Further study of Owen's report has confirmed my suspicion that a strong 'prima facie case' of conspiracy to pervert the
course of justice exists against very many of those involved in it.
At the same time, materials produced on the Russian side have confirmed my suspicion that the reason why Steele and others
have been able to get away with their cover-up is that the Russian intelligence services are no more enthusiastic than their British
counterparts about having anything like the whole truth about how Litvinenko lived and died made public.
Given the central role which Steele has now assumed in what looks like one of the biggest political scandals in American history,
and the fact that in his book 'Collusion' Harding was again coming out in support of him, it would be of the greatest possible
interest if indeed the latter had combined being a senior 'Guardian' correspondent with being paid by both Orbis and – even more
important – Hakluyt.
And, particularly given the peculiar ambiguities of the role both of Fusion GPS and Baumgartner in the 'Trump Tower' meeting,
it would be of great interest if the latter could be tied not only to Fusion, but to Orbis and – again even more important – Hakluyt.
This in turn might be relevant in trying to make sense of whether the fact that he and Simpson appear to have been working
against Trump and Browder at the same time was or was not part of an elaborate ploy to give credibility to 'information operations'
against the former.
There are accordingly two possibilities. It may be that, while much else in the Apelbaum material can be shown to be accurate,
such accurate information is being used to give credibility to disinformation.
Alternatively, he is being used as a conduit for accurate and really explosive information about the British end of 'Russiagate',
which he is unlikely to have unearthed all by himself, and the actual sources of which are – for very understandable reasons –
being obscured.
Thank you for your reply. You have given me much to think about and I am very grateful that you took the time to respond in
such a comprehensive manner, and that you have provided me and others here with some really compelling information and notions.
In particular, the issue of sources and methods you note seems spot on. The author(s)'s information gathering methodologies
and expertise are certainly not those of the laiety. In fact in the comments below his post YA mentions intelligence work.
Additionally, the text itself displays an odd parallelism with his assertion regarding the Steele Dossier- that is, the
likelihood of multiple authors, of diverse origins.
One thing that did catch my eye was a response he made to David Cay Johnston's pissy request for a retraction about Jacoby
involvement. YA included a quote in Latin from Cicero's accusations against Cataline. Here is the English: What is there that
you did last night, what the night before -- where is it that you were -- who was there that you summoned to meet you -- what
design was there which was adopted by you, with which you think that any one of us is unacquainted?
While this sort of riposte isn't exactly hyper-erudite, it ain't chopped liver either. What I mean to say is that exceptional
cyber skills, algorithm coding (I'm guessing crawlers) are not commonly coupled with that sort of classical formation. His recourse
to various biblical quotes suggests an unusual level of education as well. And no way is he younger than 38 or so.
At any rate, thank you for the article and your kind and informative reply.
Thanks. I have now read both a good few of Apelbaum's earlier posts, and also the comments on his discussion of the dossier.
Given the importance of his analysis of that document closer study is clearly needed of all this material, but I have some preliminary
reactions.
My curiosity about who Apelbaum might be is reinforced by the fact that the intimations he gives about his background in
his responses to comments, while not incompatible with what he has said in the past, do not sit so easily with it.
In a July 2010 post, he explained that: 'In my previous life, I was a civil engineer. I worked for a large power marine construction
company doing structural design and field engineering.' According to the account he gave then, he subsequently shifted to software
development.
What he now tells us is that: 'As far as how I first started, I do have an intelligence background and have been developing
OSINT/cyber/intelligence platforms for many years.'
That makes sense in terms of the analysis, which – whatever other inputs there may or may not have been – looks to me like
the work of someone who has a serious background in these kinds of methodology, and moreover, is clearly not any kind of 'Fachidiot.'
So, questions naturally arise about Apelbaum's intelligence career, in particular, who he is likely to have been employed
by, and associated with, in the past, and whether he is still involved with any of those agencies which have employed him.
Even if he is not, questions would obviously rise about present connections arising from past work. This is in addition to
the possibility that the logic of events may have provoked him to collaborate with those who might earlier have been his adversaries.
Reading Apelbaum's work, I am reminded of another interesting intervention in an embittered argument relating to the Middle
East and the post-Soviet space, from what turned out to be an unexpected source.
In the period following the 'false flag' sarin attack at Ghouta on 21 August 2013 an incisive demolition of the conventional
wisdom was provided in the 'crowdsourced' investigation masterminded by one 'sasa wawa' on a site entitled 'Who Attacked Ghouta?'
And then, in December 2016, an Israeli high technology entrepreneur called Saar Wilf, a former employee of Unit 8200, that
country's equivalent of the NSA or GCHQ, who had subsequently made a great deal of money when he and his partner sold their company
to Paypal, co-founded a site called 'Rootclaim.'
The site, it was explained, was dedicated to applying Bayesian statistics to 'current affairs' problems. This is a methodology,
whose modern form owes much to work done at Bletchley Park in the war, which is invaluable in 'SIGINT' analysis and also combating
online fraud.
At the outset, 'Rootclaim' posted a recycled version of some of the key material from the 'Who Attacked Ghouta?' investigation.
So, it seems likely, if not absolutely certain, that Saar Wilf and 'sasa wawa' are one and the same.
Following the Salisbury incident on 4 March, a blogger using the name 'sushi' produced a series of eleven posts under the title
'A Curious Incident' on the 'Vineyard of the Saker' blog.
Again, there are some very clear resemblances to 'sasa wawa' and Saar Wilf, which made me wonder whether the same person may
be reappearing under yet another 'moniker.'
While the 'flavour' of Apelbaum seems to be different, the combination of what looks like serious technical expertise in IT
techniques relating to intelligence with broad general intellectual interests looks to me similar.
I was amused by the combination of his quotation of the words from John 8:32 etched into the wall of the original CIA headquarters
– 'And you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free' – and the following remarks:
'The June 2016 start date of Steele's contract with Fusion GPS is the start of the "billable" activity, not the beginning of
the research. Steele and Simpson/Jacoby have been collaborating on Trump/Russia going back to 2009.
'Also, there is a large Hakluyt/Orbis "commercial intelligence" network in the US that regularly services political and
federal agencies and has the power to summon Nazgűls the likes of John Brennan. So Steele is not the new kid on the block, he
has been doing this type of work long before 2016. This is also why he has such a cozy relationship with the brass at the DOJ
and state.'
As it happens, I think that many of the collaborations involved may have started significantly earlier than this. In his response
to David Cay Johnston, Apelbaum links to an April 2007' WSJ' article by Simpon and Jacoby which, among other things, deals with
Semyon Mogilevich.
This is behind a paywall, but, fortunately, the fact that Ukrainian nationalists have had an obvious interest in treating it
as a source of reliable information has meant that it is easily accessible.
It should I think be clear from my January 2016 post why I find this particularly interesting, in that it has to be interpreted
in the context of a crucial 'key' to the mystery of the death of Alexander Litvinenko.
This is that he, the Ukrainian nationalist former KGB person Yuri Shvets, the convicted Italian disinformation peddler
Mario Scaramella, and quite possibly the sometime key FBI expert on Mogilevich, Robert 'Bobby' Levinson, were involved in trying
to suggest that Mogilevich was an instrument of a plot by Putin to equip Al Qaeda with a 'mini nuclear bomb.'
So, I then come back to the question of whether this notion of a 'large Haluyt/Orbis "commercial intelligence" network in the
US', playing the role of Sauron with Brennan, perhaps, as the 'Witch-king of Angmar', does or does not have substance.
If it does, there would be very good reasons for a variety of people, with a range of different attitudes to events in the
post-Soviet space and the Middle East, to think that they had an interest in collaborating with Russian intelligence against a
common enemy.
If it does not, then there is a real possibility that Apelbaum may be involved in using accurate intelligence to disseminate
inaccurate. (It seems to me that he is much too intelligent to be a plausible candidate for the role of 'useful idiot.')
One further point that may, or may not, be relevant. Many of the most influential American and British Jews, for reasons which
I find somewhat hard to understand, seem to have decided that the heirs of the architects of the Lvov pogrom are nice and cuddly.
So, for example, Chrystia Freeland, the unrepentant granddaughter of the notorious Nazi collaborator Michael Chomiak, has been
able to end up as Canadian Foreign Minister because made a successful journalistic career on the London 'Financial Times', a paper
with a strong Jewish presence.
That the editorial staff of such a paper thought it appropriate to have someone like Freeland as their Moscow correspondent
gives you a good insight into how moronic British élites have become. This may well be relevant, in trying to evaluate claims
about Hakluyt and other matters.
In relation to Apelbaum, it may be quite beside the point that other Jews from a Russian/East European background, both in
Russia, Israel, and the United States, have very different views on Ukraine, Russia, and the dangers posed – not least to Israel
– by jihadists. It is however a fact which needs to be born in mind, when one comes across people whose views cut across conventional
dividing lines in the United States and Britain.
Beside the point in relation to Apelbaum, I am confident, but also needing to be kept in mind, is the possibility that elements
in the United States 'intelligence community', seeing the 'writing on the wall', may think it appropriate to shift from trying
to pass the buck by blaming the Russians to doing so by blaming the Brits.
It seems apparent that Putin's reordering of the Russian economy after the collapse of Long-Term Capital Management, Republic
Bank's difficulites and the death of Edmund Safra left a bitter taste in the mouths of many who had hoped to exercise rentier
rights over the Russian economy and resources. Why so much US resources and energy have been committed to recovering a contested
deed is a real conundrum.
I was unaware of Freeland's grandfather and his lamentable CV. Thank you. It's funny that you mentioned both the Ghouta post
and the Vineyard of the Saker. I recall reading those and thinking- this is not like common fare on the intertubes.
Your last points about failings in the quality of elite decision-making is extremely important. This dynamic of the dumb (US,
UK, EU) at the wheel is, for me, the most frightening feature of the current state of play. In the worst moments I fear we are
all on a bus driven by a drunk monkey, careening through the Andes. It's going to hurt all the way to the bottom.
Again, I am very grateful for your replies and all the great information and thought.
I think the question of why large elements in both American and British élites got so heavily invested, in essence, in supporting
the oligarchs who refused Putin's terms in what turned into a kind of 'bare knuckles' struggle they were always likely to lose
is a very interesting one.
It has long seemed to me that, even if one looked at matters from the most self-interested and cynical point of view, this
represented a quite spectacular error of judgement. And, viewing the way in which 'international relations' are rearranging themselves,
I am reasonably confident that this was one matter on which I got things right.
A central reason for this, I have come to think, is that Berezovsky and the 'information operations' people round him – Litvinenko
is important, but the pivotal figure, the 'mastermind', if you will, was clearly Alex Goldfarb, and Yuri Shvets and Yuri Felshtinsky
both played and still play important supporting roles – were telling people in the West what these wanted to hear.
It is a truth if not quite 'universally acknowledged', at least widely recognised by those who have acquired some 'worldly
wisdom', that intellectually arrogant people, with limited experience of the world and a narrow education, can commonly be 'led
by the nose' by figures who have more of the relevant kinds of intelligence and experience, and few scruples.
This rather basic fact is central to understanding the press conference on 31 May 2007 where the figure whom the Berezovsky
group and Christopher Steele had framed in relation to the death of Litvinenko, Andrei Lugovoi, responded to the Crown Prosecution
Service request for his extradition.
In his prepared statement, Lugovoi claimed that his supposed victim used to say that everyone in Britain were ''retards',
to use the translation submitted in evidence to Owen's Inquiry, or 'idiots', to use that by RT. And according to this version,
the British believed in everything that 'we' – that is, the Berezovky group – said was happening in Russia.
Whether or not Litvinenko expressed this cynical contempt, the credulity with which the claims of the 'information operations'
people around Berezovsky have been accepted – well illustrated by Owen's report and perhaps most ludicrous in Harding's journalism
– makes clear it is justified.
What moreover became very evident, when Glenn Simpson testified to the House Intelligence and Senate Judiciary Committees,
was that he was once again recycling the Berezovsky's group's version of Putin 'sistema' as the 'return of Karla.'
Given what has been emerging on the ways in which Fusion GPS and Steele were both integrated into networks involving top-level
people in the FBI, DOJ, State Department and CIA, it seems clear that the 'retards'/'idiots' label is as applicable to people
on your side as to people on ours.
Perhaps then, cartoons about Trump as a puppet, with the strings pulled by another puppet representing Manafort, whose
strings are in turn pulled by Putin, should be replaced by ones in which Mueller is seen as a puppet manipulated by the ghost
of Boris Berezovsky.
But that is the irony. The relationship with Berezovsky blew up in the faces of all concerned, when in the wake of the
successsful corruption of the investigation into the death of Litvinenko by him and his 'information operations' people, he attempted
to recoup his fortunes by suing Roman Abramovich, and got taken to pieces by Lord Sumption.
As to what happened next, a recent item on 'Russian Insider', providing a link to and transcript of a more recent piece presented
by Dmitry Kiselyov on 'Vesti Nedeli is a good illustration of where accurate information and disinformation can be mixed in material
from Russian sources.
The piece, which appeared in July, discusses, and quotes from, an interview given the previous month to Dmitry Gordon, who
runs a Ukrainian nationalist site, by Berezovsky's daughter Elizaveta. Among other things, this deals with Berezovsky's death.
(See
https://gordonua.com/public...
. A little manipulation will get you a reasonably serviceable English translation, although
it becomes comic because Berezovsky is referred to as 'pope'.)
The 'Vesti Nedeli' piece uses what Elizaveta Berezovskaya says in support of the claim that Berezovsky was murdered by
British 'special forces', because he was planning to return to Russia, and he 'knew too much about them.'
As it happens, this is a patently tendentious reading of what she says. However, interesting features of the actual text of
the interview are 1. that it does provide what to my mind is compelling evidence that her father was murdered, and 2. while she
clearly suggests that this was covered up by the British, she is not suggesting that they were responsible – but also not making
Putin 'prime suspect.'
Whether the suggestion by his daughter that her father might have been murdered by people who knew that by so doing they might
get control of assets he might otherwise recoup has any merit I cannot say: I doubt it but cannot simply rule the possibility
out.
What remains the case is that at that point there were very many people, including but in no way limited to elements in Western
intelligence agencies, who had strong interests in avoiding a return by Berezovsky to Russia.
And the same people had the strongest possible interest in avoiding his being treated at the Inquest into Litvinenko's death
by a competent barrister representing the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation in the way he had been treated by
Lord Sumption.
Ironically, it may have been partly because Lugovoi had made a dramatic announcement that he was withdrawing from the proceedings
less than a fortnight before Berezovsky's death that before this happened a lot of people were staring at an absolutely worst-case
scenario.
Time and again, in Owen's report, one finds matters where he recycles patent disinformation, which a well-briefed barrister
acting for the ICRF could have easily ripped to shreds. At the same time, in this situation, the Russians could most probably
have made a reasonable fist of coping with the multiple contradictions in claims made on their own side.
And, crucially, their patent weak suit – the need to obscure the actual role of Russian intelligence in the smuggling of the
polonium into London, which had nothing to do with any murder plot – could have been reasonably well 'covered.'
Precisely because of these facts, the one scenario which can very easily be completely ruled out is that which is basic to
the 'information operations' now coming out of London and Washington. In this, Berezovsky's death is portrayed as a key element
in a systematic attempt by the Putin 'sistema' to eradicate the supposedly heroic opposition, much of it located in London.
That sustaining this fable is critical to defending the credibility of Steele, and therefore of the whole 'Russiagate' narrative,
is quite evident from the 'From Russia With Blood' materials published by 'BuzzFeed' in July last year.
This, however, leads on to a paradox, which is highlighted by a piece posted by James George Jatras on the 'Strategic Culture
Foundation' site on 18 August, entitled 'Have You Committed Your Three Felonies Today?'
Among the points Jatras – who I think is an Orthodox Christian – makes is that the logic of contesting the 'Russiagate' narrative
has had some strange consequences. Among these, there is one on which the actual history of the activities of Berezovsky and his
'information operations' people bears directly:
'Flipping the "Russians did it" narrative: Among the President's defenders, on say Fox News, no less than among his detractors,
Russia is the enemy who (altogether now!) "interfered in our elections" in order to "undermine our democracy." Mitt Romney was
right! The only argument is over who was the intended beneficiary of Muscovite mendacity, Trump or Hillary – that's the variable.
The constant is that Putin is Hitler and only a traitor would want to get along with him. All sides agree that the Christopher
Steele dossier is full of "Russian dirt" – though there's literally zero actual evidence of Kremlin involvement but a lot pointing
to Britain's MI6 and GCHQ.'
For reasons I have already discussed, I think what while Jatras is substantially right, 'zero evidence' is only partially correct:
It seems to me that disinformation supplied by elements in Russian intelligence could quite possibly have found its way into the
second and final memoranda.
That said, Jatras has pointed to a fundamental feature of the current situation, which involves multiple ironies.
The total destruction of Steele's credibility could easily be achieved by anyone who was interested in looking at the evidence
about the life and death of the late Alexander Litvinenko seriously. However, because a central tactic of most of those who are
attacking the 'Russiagate' narrative has generally been 'Flipping the "Russians did it" narrative', they are like people who ought
to be able to see Steele's 'Achilles' heel', but in practice, often end up attacking him where his armour is, without being, not
at its weakest.
Meanwhile, as I have already stressed, the ability of the Russian authorities to undermine the 'narrative' produced by the
'information operations' people around Berezovsky, of whom the most important are Alex Goldfarb and Yuri Shvets, is compromised
by their fear of having to 'own up to' their actual role in the smuggling of the polonium into London in October-November 2007.
The person who had a strong interest in blowing this structure of illusion to pieces was actually Lugovoi. But it seems to
me at least possible that there has been a kind of disguised covert conspiracy by elements in Western and Russian intelligence
to ensure there was no risk of him doing so.
One of the things I've never understood about the Trump Dossier story is the lack of any forensic analysis of its content
and style anywhere in the media, even the alt media. Who was supposed to have actually written it? Steele? The style does not
match someone of his background and education, and the formatting and syntax were atrocious. The font actually varied from "report"
to "report." It certainly did not give me the impression of being the product of a high-end, Belgravia consultancy.
I wonder whether it was produced by an American of one sort or another and then "laundered" by being accorded association
with the UK firm. Given that Steele just happened to be hired by the USG to help in the anti-FIFA skulduggery, he and his firm
seem very much to be a concern that does dirty little jobs that need discretely to be done, though in this case, the discretion
was undermined.
Most of the memos were issued before October and Fusion/Simpson authorized Steele to release information to the FBI starting
in July. The question is why the memos were released after the election when a release before the election would have been enough
to sink Trump. Instead the FBI and presumably those paying Fusion on Hillarys behalf sat on it, and Comey comes out days before
the election
Saying he was reopening the HC email investigation.
Kind of looks like they all wanted Trump in office and the disclosure was to give Trump the excuse needed to back track
on his promises to improve relations with Russia and blame that on pressure from the Deep State and Russia Gate.
Looking at Trumps history with Sater (FBI/CIA asset) and his political aspirations that began following his Moscow visit
in 1987 it seems likely Trump has been a Deep State asset for 30 years and fed intelligence to CIA/FBI on Russian oligarchs and
mafia . Indeed he may well have duped Russians into believing he was working for them when in fact it was the CIA/FBI who had
the best Kompromat with US RICO laws that could have beggared him
One thing to remember about the FBI is Sy Hersh. Hersh claims the FBI has been sitting on a report for two years that fingers
murdered DNC staffer Seth Rich as the Wikileaks DNC email leaker (or one of them, at least.)
Now can we imagine that not everyone in a senior position at the FBI knows about that report? I can't. Literally everyone from
the supervisor of the Special Agent or computer forensic investigator who examined Rich's computer right up to the Director HAD
to know that report exists - and covered it up.
That right there is obstruction of justice and conspiracy. Literally everyone at the FBI who can't PROVE he didn't know about
that report will be going to jail. The entire top administration of the FBI is going to go down.
And how many people at the Department of Justice are aware of that report? Did Rosenstein know? Who else in the Obama administration
knew?
That would be motivation for a lot of desperate maneuvering. Add to that who was really behind the Steele Dossier and even
more people are likely to end up in jail.
You haven't heard that yet? It's the infamous audio tape that Hersh was caught on discussing it. He's since obfuscated what
he said, but the tape stands on its own, and he has never said that anything he said on the tape wasn't true, despite that a lot
of Democrats and Trump-bashers claim he has.
I have told you several times and I will tell you again probably hopelessly that Hersh PERSONALLY has told me that the "tape"
was made without his permission or knowledge when he was aimlessly speculating on possibilities.
I am unaware of your explicitly telling me that he personally told you that the tape was "aimless speculation." My apologies
if I missed that response.
Of course the tape was made without his permission. We all know that. It's irrelevant to what he said on the tape.
What I'm saying is that despite what he may have told you, nothing on that tape sounds like "aimless speculation".
When you consider that he has four good reasons for dissembling about the tape, I view it as far more likely that everything
he said was true.
1) If what he said is true, he may have compromised his FBI contact. Not good for his line of work.
2) If what he said is true, compromising that contact may well make all his other contacts wary about talking to him in the
future - a bad deal for a journalist who relies on his contacts.
3) If what he said is true, he may have compromised his ability to get his "long form journalism" article published - a problem
he already has had in the past.
4) If what he said is true, he's accusing the FBI of sitting on that report for two years, which might well make him a target
of retaliation in some way.
If you believe that everything he said on the tape is untrue and that is what he explicitly told you, fine. I'm waiting for
his "long form journalism" report to explain it. So far everything he has said publicly about it has not contradicted what he
said on the tape, but merely waved his hands about it.
Sy Hersh talks a lot both loudly and profanely. He never intended to tell Buttowski that there was more than a possibility
that the FBI held more than a rumor that this might be true. He talked to Buttowski because a mutual friend of him and me asked
him to do so for no good reason. Please go talk to all the other people you pester and not on SST. You are an argumentative nuisance.
I have no stake in the debate about Rich, DNC, wikileaks. But I do notice some loose ends. Hersh may well have engaged in speculation, but it is interesting speculation:
quote: 55. During his conversation with Butowsky, Mr. Hersh claimed that he had received information from an "FBI report." Mr. Hersh
had not seen the report himself, but explained: "I have somebody on the inside who will go and read a file for me. And I know
this person is unbelievably accurate and careful. He's a very high level guy."
56. According to Mr. Hersh, his source told him that the FBI report states that, shortly after Seth Rich's murder, the D.C.
police obtained a warrant to search his home. When they arrived at the home, the D.C. police found Seth Rich's computer, but were
unable to access it.The computer was then provided to the D.C. police Cyber Unit, who also were unable to access the computer.
At that point, the D.C. police contacted the Cyber Unit at the FBI's Washington D.C. field office. Again, according to the supposed
FBI report, the Washington D.C. field office was able to get into the computer and found that in "late spring early summer [2016],
[Seth Rich][made] contact with Wikileaks." "They found what he had done. He had submitted a series of documents, of emails. Some
juicy emails from the DNC." Mr. Hersh told Butowsky that Seth Rich "offered a sample [to WikiLeaks][,] an extensive sample, you
know I'm sure dozens, of emails, and said I want money." . . . "I hear gossip," Hersh tells NPR on Monday. "[Butowsky] took two and two and made 45 out of it."
. . . The clip is definitely worth listening to in its entirety if you haven't already. Hersh is heard telling Butowsky that he had
a high-level insider read him an FBI file confirming that Seth Rich was known to have been in contact with WikiLeaks prior to
his death, which is not even a tiny bit remotely the same as having "heard rumors". Hersh's statements in the audio recording
and his statement to NPR cannot both be true. endquote https://medium.com/@caityjo...
You may very well be right. There may be a large element of 'amateur night out' about this.
But then I come back to the question of who decided that the dossier be published, and who, if anyone, was consulted before
the decision was made. For the reasons I gave, I am reasonably confident that those on this side who had been in one way or another
complicit in its production and covert dissemination were taken aback by the publication.
It is not clear to me whether anything significant can be inferred from the publicly available evidence about whether those
on your side who had been complicit were involved in the decision to publish without taking even elementary precautions, or whether
the 'Buzzfeed' people just had a rush of blood to the head.
I suspect the decision to publish the dossier was political. It was required to enable Clapper, Brennan, and others to
opine on national media and create further media hysteria prior to the vote as well as to justify the counter-intelligence investigations
underway. They were throwing the kitchen sink to sink Trump's electoral chances. I don't think a lot of thought was given about
the legal ramifications.
This seems to be a pattern. Leak information. Then use the leaked story to justify actions like apply for a FISA warrant
or fan the media flames.
And now they are turning on one another. Hayden just slammed Clapper for making too much of losing the security clearance the
he abuse for political reasons.
Looks like both Clapper and Haydon made the same comment about Brennan. they said "his rhetoric was becoming a problem. Ah,
the USAF intel rats are swimming for the shore. Lets see how many others (not all USAF) decide to try to save themselves.
I find it incredulous that former leaders of the intelligence and law enforcement agencies have gained paid access to powerful
media platforms and they have used it to launch vicious attacks on a POTUS.
I find it amazing that McCabe and Peter Strzok are raising hundreds of thousands of dollars on social media platforms.
IMO, everyone on the list that Sarah Sanders noted, should not just lose their clearance but should be testifying to a grand
jury.
Not really incredulous. Just expected behavior from swamp creatures whose self-assumed importance and "rights" (that the rest
of us peasants don't have) are coming under threat.
It seems to me absolutely appalling, and I am also appalled that people on this side appear to have been playing a central
role in all this.
One question. It seems to me that if what seems likely to be true does prove true, a range of these people must have committed
very serious offences indeed.
However, I am too ignorant to know what precisely those offences might be. If you, or anyone else, had a clear understanding,
I would be interested.
"It seems to me absolutely appalling, and I am also appalled that people on this side appear to have been playing a central
role in all this."
That says it all. We got the more discreditable side of the affair outsourced to us. Ugh. Is that all we're fit for now in
the UK? White helmets and Khan Sheikhoun and Steele, all the scrubby stuff? Is that what the famous "Special Relationship" now
consists of? We get to do the scrubby stuff because it's what we're fit for and we can be relied upon to keep it quiet?
Because at least on the American side there are people concerned about the political/PR involvement of parts of their own Intelligence
Community, and seeking to have it looked into. Here - am I right? - it's dead silence.
I've been permitted to say before on SST that I don't think the Americans are going to resolve this affair satisfactorily until
more light is cast on the UK side. But I also think that, for our own sakes, we should be looking at what exactly our IC does,
and in particular, how much UK political involvement there was in what is now clear was a direct PR attack on an American President.
I'm not a lawyer and have no experience with the federal criminal statutes. Having said that I suspect that the following could
be considered crimes:
intentionally misleading FISC
perjury
leaking classified information
launching investigations on the basis of known false information
surveillance of US citizens on the basis of false information
conspiracy to subvert the constitution
sedition/treason
There may also be certain professional agreements with the government that may have been violated. The only way any of these
people will face a grand jury is if Donald Trump chooses to take action. Left to the natural devices of the law enforcement institutions
nothing will happen and they will sweep everything under the rug. The intensity of Trump's tweets and the accusations therein
are rising. If the GOP retains the House and Jim Jordan becomes speaker, then there may be a possibility that Sessions, Rosenstein
and Wray may be fired and another special counsel appointed who will then convene a grand jury.
Considering what has been uncovered by Congressional investigators and the DOJ IG, I am truly surprised that Sessions has resisted
the appointment of a special counsel. But of course that could go the way of the Owens inquiry in your country.
"... There is less shame in being undone by a "master of deceit." When J. Edgar Hoover coined that description, he had Communists in mind. Back then, though, "Ruskies" and "Commies" – it was all the same. Americans were conditioned to live in fear that the Russians were coming. ..."
"... That nonsense should have ended when Communism more or less officially expired in 1989, followed two years later by the demise of the Soviet Union itself. For a long time, it seemed that it had. At first, the reaction in Western, especially American, political and media circles was triumphalist. The war was over and our side won. Beneath the surface, however, there was mourning in America. ..."
"... With the Cold War, the death merchants, the masters of war, the neocons, and a host of others had had a good thing going. Having been born into it, the political class was comfortable with the status quo too; and generations of Americans had grown up imbibing Russophobia in their mother's milk (or infant formula). ..."
"... Before long, it became clear that our economic and political masters had nothing to worry about, that Cold War anti-Communism was more robust than Communism itself. ..."
"... That suited Bill Clinton and his First Lady, the former Goldwater Girl. Boris Yeltsin, Russia's leader, was their man. He was a godsend, a Trump-like cartoon character and a drunkard to boot – with an economy in tatters, and no rightwing base egging him on. ..."
"... The time was therefore right for a return of the repressed -- for full-blooded, fifties-style, anti-Communist (= anti-Russian) hysteria, or, since that still seemed far-fetched, for anti-Communist (= anti-Chinese) hysteria. ..."
"... Exactly what "Putin," the shorthand name for all that is Russian and nefarious, did, or is still doing, remains unclear. But this does not seem to bother purveyors of the conventional wisdom. Neither is ostensibly informed public opinion fazed by the fact that the evidence supporting the consensus view comes mainly from American intelligence services and from their counterparts in the UK and other allied nations. ..."
"... How ironic therefore that nowadays it is mainly bamboozled Trump supporters in the Fox News demographic -- people who could care less about peace or, for that matter, about truth -- who are wary of the CIA and skeptical of the FBI's claims! ..."
"... They do not even seem to notice that what they allege, vague as it is, is trifling compared to the massive and very open meddling of American plutocrats, Republican vote suppressers and gerrymanderers, and the governments of supposedly friendly nations – like Saudi Arabia, the Gulf monarchies, and Israel ..."
"... Cold War revivalists can therefore rest easy, confident that their propagandists will have at least a few facts with which they can work to restore the perils of their vanished youth. ..."
"... Even so, the level of their hypocrisy is appalling. Russia, along with former Soviet republics and former members of the Warsaw Pact, has been bearing the brunt of far worse American meddling for far longer than anything sanctimonious defenders of so-called American "democracy" can plausibly allege. ..."
"... Hypocrisy reigns here too. It was the Obama administration – run through with neocons, liberal imperialists, and other holdovers from Hillary Clinton's tenure as Secretary of State – that did all it could to exacerbate longstanding tensions between that country's Ukrainian and Russian speaking populations, the better to complete NATO's encirclement of the Russian federation. And it was American meddling that led to the empowerment of virulently anti-Russian, fascisant Ukrainian politicians, much to the detriment of Russian speaking Ukrainians in the east. ..."
"... The Cold War that began after World War II involved a clash of rival political economic systems. The Cold War that reignited a few years ago involves a clash of rival imperialist centers. Its world more nearly resembles the one that existed before World War I than the one that emerged after World War II. ..."
"... However, the difference may be more superficial than it seems. The ease with which Cold War revivalists have been able to get the Cold War up and running again, even without Communism, suggests what a few observers have long maintained -- that the Cold War, on Russia's part, had little, if anything, to do with spreading Communism around the world, and everything to do with maintaining a cordon sanitaire around Russia's borders in order to protect against a demonstrably aggressive "free world." ..."
"... That part of Brzezinski's plan was at least a partial success. But inasmuch as Bush's "they" are still there, still spreading murder and mayhem throughout the Greater Middle East, America and the world has been paying a high price for the benefits, such as they were, that ensued. ..."
"... The never-ending wars set in motion by the "pivot" towards radical Islamism decades ago never quite succeeded in producing an enemy as serviceable as the USSR. But now that Putin's Russia has been pressed into service, that problem is potentially "solved." ..."
"... Efforts to recycle Bush's "they hate our freedom" nonsense ought to be non-starters. But this is the best Cold War revivalists have come up with so far. The Russians, they say, simply cannot deal with the fact that we Americans are so damned free. ..."
"... From a geopolitical point of view, Russia does have an interest in doing all it can to ward off Western aggression. It also has an interest in undermining strategic alliances aimed at blocking anything and everything that challenges American supremacy. And, until sanity prevails in Washington and other Western capitals, it arguably also has an interest in aiding and abetting rightwing nationalists in order to exacerbate tensions within Western societies. ..."
"... Clinton is bad, but Trump is worse -- not just by most measures but by all. Her fondness for war and preparations for war was alarming; she was bellicosity personified. But it was plain even before the election that Trump, a mentally unhinged narcissist, would be even more likely than she to bring on massive devastation. A vote for Trump was and still is a vote for catastrophe. ..."
"... For now, though, the hard and very relevant fact is that Trump has done nothing to help, and quite a few things to harm, Russia. ..."
"... It isn't just ordinary Russians who have been made worse off. Trump has been at least as hard on oligarchs close to Putin as Clinton would have been. ..."
"... If those damned Russians were half as smart as they are made out to be, they would have realized long ago that, for getting anything done that bucks the tide, Trump is too inept to be of any use at all; and that anything he sets out to do is likely to turn out badly not just for America and its allies but for Russia too. ..."
There is less shame in being undone by a "master of deceit." When J. Edgar Hoover coined that description, he had Communists in mind. Back then, though,
"Ruskies" and "Commies" – it was all the same. Americans were conditioned to live in fear
that the Russians were coming.
That nonsense should have ended when Communism more or less officially expired in 1989,
followed two years later by the demise of the Soviet Union itself. For a long time, it seemed
that it had. At first, the reaction in Western, especially American, political and media circles was
triumphalist. The war was over and our side won. Beneath the surface, however, there was mourning in America.
With the Cold War, the death merchants, the masters of war, the neocons, and a host of
others had had a good thing going. Having been born into it, the political class was
comfortable with the status quo too; and generations of Americans had grown up imbibing
Russophobia in their mother's milk (or infant formula).
It turned out, though, that American triumphalism was only a phase. Before long, it became
clear that our economic and political masters had nothing to worry about, that Cold War
anti-Communism was more robust than Communism itself.
However, in the final days of Bush 41 and then at the dawn of the Clinton era, nobody knew
that. Nobody gave America's propaganda system the credit it deserved.
Also, nobody quite realized how devastating Russia's regression to capitalism would be, and
nobody quite grasped the savagery of the kleptocrats who had taken charge of what remained of
the Russian state.
For more than a decade, the situation in that late great superpower was too dire to sustain
the old fears and animosities. Capitalism had made Russia wretched again.
That suited Bill Clinton and his First Lady, the former Goldwater Girl. Boris Yeltsin,
Russia's leader, was their man. He was a godsend, a Trump-like cartoon character and a drunkard
to boot – with an economy in tatters, and no rightwing base egging him on.
But anti-Communism (without Communism) and its close cousin, Russophobia, could not remain
in remission forever. The need for them was too great.
In the Age of Obama, the Global War on Terror, with or without that ludicrous Bush 43-era
name, wasn't cutting it anymore. It was, and still is, good for keeping America's perpetual war
regime going and for undoing civil liberties, but there had never been much glory in it, only
endless misery for all. Also it was getting old and increasingly easy to see through.
The time was therefore right for a return of the repressed -- for full-blooded,
fifties-style, anti-Communist (= anti-Russian) hysteria, or, since that still seemed
far-fetched, for anti-Communist (= anti-Chinese) hysteria.
This was not the only factor behind the Obama administration's "pivot towards Asia," its
largely failed attempt to take China down a notch or two, but it was an important part of the
story.
However, by the time Obama and his team decided to pivot, China had become too important to
the United States economically to make a good Cold War enemy. Worse still, it had for too long
been an object of pity and contempt, not fear.
When the Soviet Union was an enemy, China was an enemy too, most glaringly during the Korean
War. It remained an enemy even after the Sino-Soviet split became too obvious to deny. However,
unlike post-1917 Russia, it had never quite become an historical foe.
Moreover, as Russia began to recover from the Yeltsin era, the Russian political class, and
many of the oligarchs behind them, sensing the popular mood, decided that the time was ripe "to
make Russia great again." Putin is not so much a cause as he is a symptom – and symbol
– of this aspiration.
And so, there it was: the longed for new Cold War would be much like the one that seemed
over a quarter century ago.
***
As everyone who has seen, heard or read anything about the 2016 election "knows," Russian
intelligence services (= Putin) meddled. Everyone also "knows" that, with midterm elections
looming, they are at it again.
This, according to the mainstream consensus view, is a bona fide casus belli , a
justification for war. To be sure, what they want is a war that remains cold; ending life on
earth, as we know it, is not on their agenda.
But inasmuch as cold wars can easily turn hot, this hardly mitigates the recklessness of
their machinations. Humankind was extraordinarily lucky last time; there is no guarantee that
all that luck will hold.
Exactly what "Putin," the shorthand name for all that is Russian and nefarious, did, or is
still doing, remains unclear. But this does not seem to bother purveyors of the conventional
wisdom. Neither is ostensibly informed public opinion fazed by the fact that the evidence supporting
the consensus view comes mainly from American intelligence services and from their counterparts
in the UK and other allied nations.
Time was when anyone with any sense understood that these intelligence services, the
American ones especially, are second to none in meddling in the affairs of other nations, and
that the American national security state – essentially our political police -- is
comprised, by design, of liars and deceivers.
How ironic therefore that nowadays it is mainly bamboozled Trump supporters in the Fox News
demographic -- people who could care less about peace or, for that matter, about truth -- who
are wary of the CIA and skeptical of the FBI's claims!
Try as they might, the manufacturers and guardians of conventional wisdom have so far been
unable to concoct a plausible story in which Russian meddling affected the outcome of the 2016
election in any serious way. The idea that the Russians defeated Hillary, not Hillary herself,
is, to borrow a phrase from Jeremy Bentham, "nonsense on stilts." Leading Democrats and their
media flacks don't seem to mind that either.
They do not even seem to notice that what they allege, vague as it is, is trifling compared
to the massive and very open meddling of American plutocrats, Republican vote suppressers and
gerrymanderers, and the governments of supposedly friendly nations – like Saudi Arabia,
the Gulf monarchies, and Israel.
Nevertheless, it probably is true that the Russians meddled. Cold War revivalists can
therefore rest easy, confident that their propagandists will have at least a few facts with
which they can work to restore the perils of their vanished youth.
Even so, the level of their hypocrisy is appalling. Russia, along with former Soviet
republics and former members of the Warsaw Pact, has been bearing the brunt of far worse
American meddling for far longer than anything sanctimonious defenders of so-called American
"democracy" can plausibly allege.
Moreover, it should go without saying that the democracy they purport to care so much about
has almost nothing to do with "the rule of the demos." It doesn't even have much to do with
free and fair competitive elections – unless "free and fair" means that anything goes, so
long as the principals and perpetrators are homegrown or citizens of favored nations.
Self-righteous posturing aside, Putin's real sin in the eyes of the American power elite is
that, in his own small way, he has been defying America's "right" to run the world as it sees
fit.
When Clinton was president, Serbia did that, and lived to regret it. Cuba has been suffering
for nearly six decades for the same reason, and now Venezuela is paying its dues. The empire is
merciless towards nations that rebel.
With Soviet support and then with sheer determination and grit, Cuba has been able to
withstand the onslaught to some extent from Day One. Venezuela may not be so lucky –
especially now that Republicans and Democrats feel threatened by the growing number of
"democratic socialists" in their midst. Already, the propaganda system is targeting Venezuelan
"socialism," blaming it for that country's woes, and warning that if our newly minted,
homegrown socialists prevail, a similar fate will be in store for us.
This is ludicrous, of course – American hostility and the vagaries of the global oil
market deserve the lion's share of the blame. But the on-going propaganda blitz could
nevertheless pave the way for horrors ahead, should Trump decide to start a war America could
actually win.
Inconsequential Russian meddling is a big deal on the "liberal" cable networks, on NPR, and
in the "quality" press. Democrats and a few Republicans love to bleat on about it. But it is
Ukraine that made Russia our "adversary" and its president Public Enemy Number One.
Hypocrisy reigns here too. It was the Obama administration – run through with neocons,
liberal imperialists, and other holdovers from Hillary Clinton's tenure as Secretary of State
– that did all it could to exacerbate longstanding tensions between that country's
Ukrainian and Russian speaking populations, the better to complete NATO's encirclement of the
Russian federation. And it was American meddling that led to the empowerment of virulently
anti-Russian, fascisant Ukrainian politicians, much to the detriment of Russian
speaking Ukrainians in the east.
But never mind: Putin – that is, the Russia government – violated international
law by sending troops briefly into beleaguered Russian-speaking parts of the country. That they
were generally welcomed by the people living there is of no importance.
Worst of all, Russia annexed Crimea – a territory integral to the Russian empire since
the eighteenth century. Since long before the Russian Revolution, Crimea has been home to a
huge naval base vital to Russia's strategic defense.
The story line back in the day was that anything that could be described as Russian
aggression outside the Soviet Union's agreed upon sphere of influence had to do with spreading
Communism. In fact, the Soviets did everything they could to keep Communist and other
insurgencies from upending the status quo. The mainstream narrative was wrong.
Now Communism is gone and nothing has taken its place. Even so, the idea that Russia has
designs on its neighbors for ideological reasons is hard to shake – in part because it is
actively promoted by propagandists who have suddenly and uncharacteristically become defenders
of international law.
Meanwhile, of course, the hypocrisies keep piling on. It is practically a tenet of the
American civil religion that international law applies to others, not to the United States.
This is why, when it suits some perceived purpose, America flaunts its violations
shamelessly.
Thus nothing the Russians did or are ever likely to do comes close to the shenanigans Bill
Clinton displayed – successfully, for the most part – in his efforts to tear Kosovo
away from Serbia. Clinton even went so far as to bomb Belgrade; Putin never bombed Kiev.
The Cold War that began after World War II involved a clash of rival political economic
systems. The Cold War that reignited a few years ago involves a clash of rival imperialist
centers. Its world more nearly resembles the one that existed before World War I than the one
that emerged after World War II.
However, the difference may be more superficial than it seems. The ease with which Cold War
revivalists have been able to get the Cold War up and running again, even without Communism,
suggests what a few observers have long maintained -- that the Cold War, on Russia's part, had
little, if anything, to do with spreading Communism around the world, and everything to do with
maintaining a cordon sanitaire around Russia's borders in order to protect against a
demonstrably aggressive "free world."
George W. Bush claimed that 9/11 happened because "they hate our freedom." "They" would be
radical Islamists of the kind stirred into action in Afghanistan by Zbigniew Brzezinski and his
co-thinkers in the Carter administration. Their objective was to undermine the Soviet Union by
getting it bogged down in a quagmire like the one that did so much harm to the United States in
Vietnam.
That part of Brzezinski's plan was at least a partial success. But inasmuch as Bush's "they"
are still there, still spreading murder and mayhem throughout the Greater Middle East, America
and the world has been paying a high price for the benefits, such as they were, that
ensued.
The never-ending wars set in motion by the "pivot" towards radical Islamism decades ago
never quite succeeded in producing an enemy as serviceable as the USSR. But now that Putin's
Russia has been pressed into service, that problem is potentially "solved."
However, the American public is not as naïve as it used to be, and it is impossible to
say, at this point, how well this new story line will work.
Efforts to recycle Bush's "they hate our freedom" nonsense ought to be non-starters. But
this is the best Cold War revivalists have come up with so far. The Russians, they say, simply
cannot deal with the fact that we Americans are so damned free.
It is hard to believe, but there are people who are actually buying this but, with a lot of
corporate media assistance, there are. No matter how clear it is that they are not worth being
taken seriously, Cold War mythologies just won't die.
However, it is worth pondering why today's Russia would do what it is alleged to have done;
and why, as is also alleged, it is still doing it.
From a geopolitical point of view, Russia does have an interest in doing all it can to ward
off Western aggression. It also has an interest in undermining strategic alliances aimed at
blocking anything and everything that challenges American supremacy. And, until sanity prevails
in Washington and other Western capitals, it arguably also has an interest in aiding and
abetting rightwing nationalists in order to exacerbate tensions within Western societies.
However, in view of prevailing power relations, these are interests it cannot do much to
advance. Acting as if this were not the case only puts Russia in a bad light -- not for
meddling, but for meddling stupidly.
No doubt, for reasons both fair and foul, Putin wanted Hillary to lose the election two
years ago. So, but for one little problem, would anyone whose head is screwed on right. That
problem's name is Donald Trump.
Clinton is bad, but Trump is worse -- not just by most measures but by all. Her fondness for war and preparations for war was alarming; she was bellicosity personified.
But it was plain even before the election that Trump, a mentally unhinged narcissist, would be
even more likely than she to bring on massive devastation. A vote for Trump was and still is a
vote for catastrophe.
Putin's enemy was Trump's enemy, and it is axiomatic that "the enemy of my enemy is my
friend" -- except sometimes it isn't. Sometimes, my enemy's enemy is an enemy far worse.
For reasons that remain obscure, Putin and Trump seem to have a "thing" going on between
them. Some day perhaps we will know what that is all about. For now, though, the hard and very
relevant fact is that Trump has done nothing to help, and quite a few things to harm,
Russia.
It isn't just ordinary Russians who have been made worse off. Trump has been at least as
hard on oligarchs close to Putin as Clinton would have been.
If those damned Russians were half as smart as they are made out to be, they would have
realized long ago that, for getting anything done that bucks the tide, Trump is too inept to be
of any use at all; and that anything he sets out to do is likely to turn out badly not just for
America and its allies but for Russia too.
Therefore, if there really was Russian meddling, as there probably was, Putin should be
ashamed – not so much for the DNC reasons laid out 24/7 on MSNBC and CNN, but for
overestimating Trump's abilities and for underestimating the extent to which what started out
as a maneuver of Hillary Clinton's, concocted to excuse her incompetence, would take a
perilously "viral" turn, becoming a major threat to peace in a political culture that never
quite got beyond the lunacy of the First Cold War.
The root of the current aggressive policy is the desire to preserve global neoliberal empire the US role as the metropolia
with the rest of the world as vassals.
Notable quotes:
"... The crisis of U.S. foreign policy -- a series of radical missteps -- are systemic. Having little to do with personalities, they pass from one administration to the next with little variance other than at the margins. ..."
"... It began with that hubristic triumphalism so evident in the decade after the Cold War's end ..."
"... There was also the "Washington consensus." The world was in agreement that free-market capitalism and unfettered financial markets would see the entire planet to prosperity. ..."
"... The neoliberal economic crusade accompanied by neoconservative politics had its intellectual ballast, and off went its true-believing warriors around the world. ..."
"... Failures ensued. Iraq post–2003 is among the more obvious. Nobody ever planted democracy or built free markets in Baghdad. Then came the "color revolutions," which resulted in the destabilization of large swathes of the former Soviet Union's borderlands. The 2008 financial crash followed. I was in Hong Kong at the time and recall thinking, "This is not just Lehman Brothers. An economic model is headed into Chapter 11." One would have thought a fundamental rethink in Washington might have followed these events. There has never been one. ..."
"... Midway through the first Obama administration, a crucial turn began. What had been an assertion of financial and economic power, albeit coercive in many instances, particularly with the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, took on further strategic and military dimensions. ..."
"... The NATO bombing campaign in Libya, ostensibly a humanitarian mission, became a regime-change operation -- despite Washington's promises otherwise. Obama's "pivot to Asia" turned out to be a neo-containment policy toward China. The "reset" with Russia, declared after Obama appointed Hillary Clinton secretary of state, flopped and turned into the virulent animosity we now live with daily ..."
"... The U.S.-cultivated coup in Kiev in 2014 was a major declaration of drastic turn in policy towards Moscow. So was the decision, taken in 2012 at the latest , to back the radical jihadists who were turning civil unrest in Syria into a campaign to topple the Assad government in favor of another Islamist regime. ..."
"... In 2015, the last of the three years I just noted, Russia intervened militarily and diplomatically in the Syria conflict, in part to protect its southwest from Islamist extremism and in part to pull the Middle East back from the near-anarchy then threatening it as well as Russia and the West. ..."
"... Meanwhile, Washington had cast China as an adversary and committed itself -- as it apparently remains -- to regime change in Syria. Three months prior to the treaty that established the EAEU, the Americans helped turn another case of civil unrest into a regime change -- this time backing not jihadists in Syria but the crypto-Nazi militias in Ukraine on which the government now in power still depends. ..."
"... If there is a president to blame -- and again, I see little point in this line of argument -- it would have to be Barack Obama. To a certain extent, Obama was a creature of those around him, as he acknowledged in his interview with Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic ..."
"... The New York Times ..."
"... The Washington Post ..."
"... Think of Russia, China, and Iran, the three nations now designated America's principal adversaries. Each one is fated to become (if it is not already) a world or regional power and a key to stability -- Russia and China on a global scale, Iran in the Middle East. But each stands resolutely -- and this is not to say with hostile intent -- outside the Western-led order. They have different histories, traditions, cultures, and political cultures. And they are determined to preserve them. ..."
"... If you valued this original article, please consider making a donation to Consortium News so we can bring you more stories like this one. ..."
"... You don't mention corruption and profiteering, which go hand-in-hand with American Exceptionalism and the National Security State (NSS) formed in 1947. The leader of the world which is also an NSS requires enemies, so the National Security Strategy designates enemies, a few of them in an Axis of Evil. Arming to fight them and dreaming up other reasons to go to war, including a war on terror of all things, bring the desired vast expenditures, trillions of dollars, which translate to vast profits to those involved. ..."
"... How many Americans were against the assault by the Coalition of the Willing upon Iraq? Very few. ..."
"... Even in the lead up the war when the public was force fed a diet comprised entirely of State Dept. lies about WMDs by a sycophantic media, there was still a significant 25-40 percent of the public who opposed the war. ..."
"... "Conformism and its consequences, probably derived in part from Puritanism and further cemented by the alternating racisms of anti-indigenous and anti black attitudes- the history of the lynch mob and various wars against the poor which ended up in the anti-communist frenzies of the day before yesterday constitute the backbone of American history- is the disease which afflicts Washington." ..."
"... I have often wondered why the US was unable to accept the position of first among equals. Why does it have to rule the World? I know it believes that its economic and political systems are the best on the planet, but surely all other nations should be able to decide for themselves, what systems they will accept and live under? Who gave the US the right to make those decisions for everyone else? The US was more than willing to kill 20 million people either directly or indirectly since the end of WWII to make its will sovereign in all nations of the World! ..."
"... That is why I invariably raise JFK's Assassination as a logical starting point. If a truly independent commission would fix the blame, we could move on from there. Sam F., on this forum, has mentioned a formal legal undertaking many times on this site, but now is the time to begin the discussion for a formal Truth And Reconciliation Commission in America Let's figure out how to begin. ..."
"... A very good article. Spoiler and bully describe US foreign policy, and foreign policy is in the driver's seat while domestic policy takes the pickings, hardly anything left for the hollowed-out society where people live paycheck to paycheck, homelessness and other assorted ills of a failing society continue to rise while oligarchs and the MIC rule the neofeudal/futile system. ..."
"... When are we going to make that connection of the wasteful expenditure on military adventurism and the problem of poverty in the US? ..."
"... To substantiate this "crucial turn," Lawrence makes the unwarranted assumption that the goal post Soviet Union was simply worldwide free-market capitalism, not global domination: "Failures ensued. Iraq post–2003 is among the more obvious. Nobody ever planted democracy or built free markets in Baghdad"; and the later statement that the US wanted the countries it invaded to be "Just like us." ..."
"... Though he doesn't mention (ignores) US meddling in Russia after the collapse of the USSR, I presume from its absence that he attributes that, too, to the expansion of capital. Indeed, it was that, but with the more malevolent goal of control. "Just like us" is the usual "progressive" explanation for failures. "Controlled by us" was more like it, if we face the history of the country squarely. ..."
"... Is it really so wise to be speaking in terms of nationhood after we've undergone 50 years of Kochian/libertarian dismantlement of the nation-state in favor of bank and transnational governance? Remember the words of Zbigniew Brzezinski: ..."
"... "The "nation-state" as a fundamental unit of man's organized life has ceased to be the principal creative force: International banks and multinational corporations are acting and planning in terms that are far in advance of the political concepts of the nation-state." ~ Zbigniew Brzezinski, Between Two Ages, 1970 ..."
"... Globalists themselves are drawn together by an ideology. They have no common nation, they have no common political orientation, they have no common cultural background or religion, they herald from the East just as they herald from the West. They have no true loyalty to any mainstream cause or social movement. ..."
"... What do they have in common? They seem to exhibit many of the traits of high level narcissistic sociopaths, who make up a very small percentage of the human population. These people are predators, or to be more specific, they are parasites. They see themselves as naturally superior to others, but they often work together if there is the promise of mutual benefit." ..."
"... Yet there is a thread that leads through US foreign policy. It all started with NSC 68. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSC_68 . Already in the 1950's, leading bankers were afraid of economic depression which would follow from a "peace dividend" following the end of WWII. ..."
"... To avoid this, and to avoid "socialism", the only acceptable government spending was on defense. This mentality never ended. Today 50% of discretionary govenmenrt spending is on the military. http://www.unz.com/article/americas-militarized-economy/ . ..."
"... The "why" behind the US foreign policies was spoken with absolute honest clarity in the "Statement of A. Wess Mitchell Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs" to the Senate on August 21 this year. The transcript is at : https://www.foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/082118_Mitchell_Testimony.pdf ..."
"... Quote the esteemed gentleman (inter alia): "It continues to be among the foremost national security interests of the United States to prevent the domination of the Eurasian landmass by hostile powers. The central aim of the administration's foreign policy is to prepare our nation to confront this challenge by systematically strengthening the military, economic and political fundamentals of American power. " ..."
"... Patrick Lawrence's essay makes perfect sense only when it is applied to US foreign policy since the end of WW2. It is conventional wisdom that the US is now engaged in Cold War 2.0. In fact, Cold War 2.0 is an extension of Cold War 1.0. There was merely a 20 year interregnum between 1990 and 2010. ..."
"... Most analysts think that Cold War 1.0 was an ideological war between "Communism" and "Democracy". The renewal of the Cold War against both Russia and China however shows that the ideological war between East and West was really a cover for the geopolitical war between the two. ..."
"... Russia, China and Iran are the main geopolitical enemies of the US as they stand in the way of the global, imperialist hegemony of the US. In order to control the global periphery, i.e. the developing world and their emerging economies, the US must contain and defeat the big three. This was as true in 1948 as it is in 2018. Thus, what's happening today under Trump is no different than what occurred under Truman in 1948. Whatever differences exist are mere window dressing. ..."
"... There is no Cold War 2.0. It's a fallacy to create a false flag for regime change in Russia. Ms. Clinton, the Kagan family, the MIC, etc., figure if we can take out Yanukovich and replace him with Fascists/Nazis, what could stop us from doing the same to Russia. The good news: all empires fail. ..."
"... Mr. Lawrence is much too accommodating with his analysis. Imagine, linking US "foreign policy" in the same thought as "global stability", as if the two were somehow related. On the contrary, "global instability" seems to be our foreign policy goal, especially for those regions that pose a threat to US hegemony. Why? Because it is difficult to extract a region's wealth when its population is united behind a stable government that can't be bought off. ..."
"... I agree, Gerald. Enforcing the petro-dollar system seems to be the mainspring for much of our recent foreign policy militarism. If it were to unravel, the dollar's value would tank, and then how could we afford our vast system of military bases. Death Star's aren't cheap, ya know. ..."
"... +1 Gerald Wadsworth. It's not necessarily "Oil pure and simple" but "Currency Pure and Simple." If the US dollar is no longer the world's currency, the US is toast. ..."
"... And note (2) that Wall Street is mostly an extension of The City; the UK still thinks it owns the entire world, and the UK has been owned by the banks ever since it went off tally sticks ..."
"... Putin said years ago, and I cannot quote him, but remember most of it, that it doesn't matter who is the candidate for President, or what his campaign promises are, or how sincere he is in making them, whenever they get in office, it is always the same policy. ..."
"... Anastasia, I saved it: From Putin interview with Le Figaro: "I have already spoken to three US Presidents. They come and go, but politics stay the same at all times. Do you know why? Because of the powerful bureaucracy. When a person is elected, they may have some ideas. Then people with briefcases arrive, well dressed, wearing dark suits, just like mine, except for the red tie, since they wear black or dark blue ones. These people start explaining how things are done. And instantly, everything changes. This is what happens with every administration." ..."
"... Pres. Putin explained this several times when he was asked about preferring Trump to Hillary Clinton, and he carefully said that he would accept whoever the US population chose, he was used to dealing with Hillary and he knew that very little changed between Administrations. This has been conveniently cast aside by the Dems, and Obama's disgraceful expulsion of Russian diplomats started the avalanche of Russiagate. ..."
"... Many of the people involved in JFK's murder are now dead themselves, yet the "system" that demands confrontation rather than cooperation continues. These "personalities" are shills for that system, and if they are not so willingly, they are either bribed or blackmailed into compliance. ..."
"... Remember when "Dubya" ran on a "kinder and gentler nation" foreign policy? Obama's "hope and change" that became "more of the same"? And now Trump's views on both domestic and foreign policy seemingly also doing a 180? There are "personalities" behind this "system", and they are embedded in places like the Council on Foreign Relations. The people that run our banking system and the global corporate empire demand the whole pie, they would rather blow up the world than have to share. ..."
"... Bob and Joe, here's a solid review of Woodward's book Fear that points out his consistent service to the oligarchy, including giving Trump a pass for killing the Iran deal. Interesting background on Woodward in the comments as well. https://mondoweiss.net/2018/09/woodward-national-security/ ..."
"... "America's three principal adversaries signify the shape of the world to come: a post-Western world of coexistence. But neoliberal and neocon ideology is unable to to accept global pluralism and multipolarity, argues Patrick Lawrence." ..."
The bitter reality is that U.S. foreign policy has no definable objective other than
blocking the initiatives of others because they stand in the way of the further expansion of
U.S. global interests. This impoverished strategy reflects Washington's refusal to accept the
passing of its relatively brief post–Cold War moment of unipolar power.
There is an error all too common in American public opinion. Personalizing Washington's
regression into the role of spoiler by assigning all blame to one man, now Donald Trump,
deprives one of deeper understanding. This mistake was made during the steady attack on civil
liberties after the Sept. 11 tragedies and then during the 2003 invasion of Iraq: namely that
it was all George W. Bush's fault. It was not so simple then and is not now.
The crisis of U.S.
foreign policy -- a series of radical missteps -- are systemic. Having little to do with
personalities, they pass from one administration to the next with little variance other than at
the margins.
Let us bring some history to this question of America as spoiler. What is the origin of this
undignified and isolating approach to global affairs?
It began with that hubristic triumphalism so evident in the decade after the Cold War's end.
What ensued had various names. There was the "end of history" thesis. American liberalism was humanity's highest
achievement, and nothing would supersede it.
There was also the "Washington consensus." The world was in agreement that free-market
capitalism and unfettered financial markets would see the entire planet to prosperity. The
consensus never extended far beyond the Potomac, but this sort of detail mattered little at the
time.
The neoliberal economic crusade accompanied by neoconservative politics had its intellectual
ballast, and off went its true-believing warriors around the world.
Failures ensued. Iraq post–2003 is among the more obvious. Nobody ever planted
democracy or built free markets in Baghdad. Then came the "color revolutions," which resulted
in the destabilization of large swathes of the former Soviet Union's borderlands. The 2008
financial crash followed. I was in Hong Kong at the time and recall thinking, "This is not just Lehman Brothers. An
economic model is headed into Chapter 11." One would have thought a fundamental rethink in
Washington might have followed these events. There has never been one.
The orthodoxy today remains what it was when it formed in the 1990s: The neoliberal crusade
must proceed. Our market-driven, "rules-based" order is still advanced as the only way out of
our planet's impasses.
A Strategic and Military Turn
Midway through the first Obama administration, a crucial turn began. What had been an
assertion of financial and economic power, albeit coercive in many instances, particularly with
the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, took on further strategic and military dimensions.
The
NATO bombing campaign in Libya, ostensibly a humanitarian mission, became a regime-change
operation -- despite Washington's promises otherwise. Obama's "pivot to Asia" turned out to be
a neo-containment policy toward China. The "reset" with Russia, declared after Obama appointed
Hillary Clinton secretary of state, flopped and turned into the virulent animosity we now live
with daily.
The U.S.-cultivated coup in Kiev in 2014 was a major declaration of drastic turn in
policy towards Moscow. So was the decision, taken in 2012 at
the latest , to back the radical jihadists who were turning civil unrest in Syria into a
campaign to topple the Assad government in favor of another Islamist regime.
Spoilage as a poor excuse for a foreign policy had made its first appearances.
I count 2013 to 2015 as key years. At the start of this period, China began developing what
it now calls its Belt and Road
Initiative -- its hugely ambitious plan to stitch together the Eurasian landmass, Shanghai
to Lisbon. Moscow favored this undertaking, not least because of the key role Russia had to
play and because it fit well with President Vladimir Putin's Eurasian Economic
Union (EAEU), launched in 2014.
In 2015, the last of the three years I just noted, Russia intervened militarily and
diplomatically in the Syria conflict, in part to protect its southwest from Islamist extremism
and in part to pull the Middle East back from the near-anarchy then threatening it as well as
Russia and the West.
Meanwhile, Washington had cast China as an adversary and committed itself -- as it
apparently remains -- to regime change in Syria. Three months prior to the treaty that
established the EAEU, the Americans helped turn another case of civil unrest into a regime
change -- this time backing not jihadists in Syria but the crypto-Nazi militias in Ukraine on
which the government now in power still depends.
That is how we got the U.S.-as-spoiler foreign policy we now have.
If there is a president to blame -- and again, I see little point in this line of argument
-- it would have to be Barack Obama. To a certain extent, Obama was a creature of those around
him, as he acknowledged in his interview
with Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic toward the end of his second term. From
that
"Anonymous" opinion piece published in The New York Times on Sept. 5, we know
Trump is too, to a greater extent than Obama may have feared in his worst moments.
The crucial question is why. Why do U.S. policy cliques find themselves bereft of
imaginative thinking in the face of an evolving world order? Why has there been not a single
original policy initiative since the years I single out, with the exception of the
now-abandoned 2015 accord governing Iran's nuclear programs? "Right now, our job is to create
quagmires until we get what we want," an administration official
told The Washington Post 's David Ignatius in August.
Can you think of a blunter confession of intellectual bankruptcy? I can't.
Global 'Equals' Like Us?
There is a longstanding explanation for this paralysis. Seven decades of global hegemony,
the Cold War notwithstanding, left the State Department with little to think about other than
the simplicities of East-West tension. Those planning and executing American diplomacy lost all
facility for imaginative thinking because there was no need of it. This holds true, in my view,
but there is more to our specific moment than mere sclerosis within the policy cliques.
As I have argued numerous times elsewhere, parity between East and West is a 21st century
imperative. From Woodrow Wilson to the post-World War II settlement, an equality among all
nations was in theory what the U.S. considered essential to global order.
Now that this is upon us, however, Washington cannot accept it. It did not count on
non-Western nations achieving a measure of prosperity and influence until they were "just like
us," as the once famous phrase had it. And it has not turned out that way.
Think of Russia, China, and Iran, the three nations now designated America's principal
adversaries. Each one is fated to become (if it is not already) a world or regional power and a
key to stability -- Russia and China on a global scale, Iran in the Middle East. But each
stands resolutely -- and this is not to say with hostile intent -- outside the Western-led
order. They have different histories, traditions, cultures, and political cultures. And they
are determined to preserve them.
They signify the shape of the world to come -- a post-Western world in which the Atlantic
alliance must coexist with rising powers outside its orbit. Together, then, they signify
precisely what the U.S. cannot countenance. And if there is one attribute of neoliberal and
neoconservative ideology that stands out among all others, it is its complete inability to
accept difference or deviation if it threatens its interests.
This is the logic of spoilage as a substitute for foreign policy. Among its many
consequences are countless lost opportunities for global stability.
Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for the International
Herald Tribune, is a columnist, essayist, author, and lecturer. His most recent book is
Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century (Yale). Follow him @thefloutist.
His web site is www.patricklawrence.us. Support his work via www.patreon.com/thefloutist .
If you valued this original article, please consider
making a donation to Consortium News so we can bring you more stories like this
one.
This really is an excellent analysis. I would highlight the following point:
"There is a longstanding explanation for this paralysis. Seven decades of global hegemony,
the Cold War notwithstanding, left the State Department with little to think about other than
the simplicities of East-West tension. Those planning and executing American diplomacy lost
all facility for imaginative thinking because there was no need of it. This holds true, in my
view, but there is more to our specific moment than mere sclerosis within the policy cliques
"
Conformism and its consequences, probably derived in part from Puritanism and further
cemented by the alternating racisms of anti-indigenous and anti black attitudes- the history
of the lynch mob and various wars against the poor which ended up in the anti-communist
frenzies of the day before yesterday constitute the backbone of American history- is the
disease which afflicts Washington.
Don Bacon , September 14, 2018 at 6:03 pm
You don't mention corruption and profiteering, which go hand-in-hand with American
Exceptionalism and the National Security State (NSS) formed in 1947. The leader of the world
which is also an NSS requires enemies, so the National Security Strategy designates enemies,
a few of them in an Axis of Evil. Arming to fight them and dreaming up other reasons to go to
war, including a war on terror of all things, bring the desired vast expenditures, trillions
of dollars, which translate to vast profits to those involved.
This focus on war has its roots in the Christian bible and in a sense of manifest destiny
that has occupied Americans since before they were Americans, and the real Americans had to
be exterminated. It certainly (as stated) can't be blamed on certain individuals, it's
predominate and nearly universal. How many Americans were against the assault by the
Coalition of the Willing upon Iraq? Very few.
Homer Jay , September 14, 2018 at 10:09 pm
"How many Americans were against the assault by the Coalition of the Willing upon Iraq?
Very few."
Are you kidding me? Here is a list of polls of the American public regarding the Iraq War
2003-2007;
Even in the lead up the war when the public was force fed a diet comprised entirely of
State Dept. lies about WMDs by a sycophantic media, there was still a significant 25-40
percent of the public who opposed the war. You clearly are not American or you would remember
the vocal minority which filled the streets of big cities across this country. And again the
consent was as Chomsky says "manufactured." And it took only 1 year of the war for the
majority of the public to be against it. By 2007 60-70% of the public opposed the war.
Judging from your name you come from a country whose government was part of that coalition
of the willing. So should we assume that "very few" of your fellow country men and women were
against that absolute horror show that is the Iraq war?
Don Bacon , September 14, 2018 at 11:05 pm
You failed to address my major point, and instead picked on something you're wrong on.
PS: bevin made approximately the same point later (w/o the financial factor).
"Conformism and its consequences, probably derived in part from Puritanism and further
cemented by the alternating racisms of anti-indigenous and anti black attitudes- the history
of the lynch mob and various wars against the poor which ended up in the anti-communist
frenzies of the day before yesterday constitute the backbone of American history- is the
disease which afflicts Washington."
Archie1954 , September 14, 2018 at 2:39 pm
I have often wondered why the US was unable to accept the position of first among equals.
Why does it have to rule the World? I know it believes that its economic and political
systems are the best on the planet, but surely all other nations should be able to decide for
themselves, what systems they will accept and live under? Who gave the US the right to make
those decisions for everyone else? The US was more than willing to kill 20 million people
either directly or indirectly since the end of WWII to make its will sovereign in all nations
of the World!
Bob Van Noy , September 14, 2018 at 9:54 pm
Archie 1954, because 911 was never adequately investigated, our government was
inappropriately allowed to act in the so-called public interest in completely inappropriate
ways; so that in order for the Country to set things right, those decisions which were made
quietly, with little public discussion, would have to be exposed and the illegalities
addressed. But, as I'm sure you know, there are myriad other big government failures also
left unexamined, so where to begin?
That is why I invariably raise JFK's Assassination as a logical starting point. If a truly
independent commission would fix the blame, we could move on from there. Sam F., on this
forum, has mentioned a formal legal undertaking many times on this site, but now is the time
to begin the discussion for a formal Truth And Reconciliation Commission in America Let's
figure out how to begin.
So,"Who gave the US the right to make those decisions for everyone else?", certainly not
The People
A very good article. Spoiler and bully describe US foreign policy, and foreign policy is
in the driver's seat while domestic policy takes the pickings, hardly anything left for the
hollowed-out society where people live paycheck to paycheck, homelessness and other assorted
ills of a failing society continue to rise while oligarchs and the MIC rule the
neofeudal/futile system.
When are we going to make that connection of the wasteful
expenditure on military adventurism and the problem of poverty in the US? The Pentagon
consistently calls the shots, yet we consistently hear about unaccounted expenditures by the
Pentagon, losing amounts in the trillions, and never do they get audited.
nondimenticare , September 14, 2018 at 12:18 pm
I certainly agree that the policy is bereft, but not for all of the same reasons. There is
the positing of a turnaround as a basis for the current spoiler role: "What had been an
assertion of financial and economic power, albeit coercive in many instances, particularly
with the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, took on further strategic and military
dimensions."
To substantiate this "crucial turn," Lawrence makes the unwarranted assumption that the
goal post Soviet Union was simply worldwide free-market capitalism, not global domination:
"Failures ensued. Iraq post–2003 is among the more obvious. Nobody ever planted
democracy or built free markets in Baghdad"; and the later statement that the US wanted the
countries it invaded to be "Just like us."
Though he doesn't mention (ignores) US meddling in Russia after the collapse of the USSR,
I presume from its absence that he attributes that, too, to the expansion of capital. Indeed,
it was that, but with the more malevolent goal of control. "Just like us" is the usual
"progressive" explanation for failures. "Controlled by us" was more like it, if we face the
history of the country squarely.
That is the blindness of intent that has led to the spoiler role.
Unfettered Fire , September 14, 2018 at 11:15 am
Is it really so wise to be speaking in terms of nationhood after we've undergone 50 years
of Kochian/libertarian dismantlement of the nation-state in favor of bank and transnational
governance? Remember the words of Zbigniew Brzezinski:
"The "nation-state" as a fundamental unit of man's organized life has ceased to be the
principal creative force: International banks and multinational corporations are acting and
planning in terms that are far in advance of the political concepts of the nation-state." ~
Zbigniew Brzezinski, Between Two Ages, 1970
"Make no mistake, what we are seeing in geopolitics today is indeed a magic show. The
false East/West paradigm is as powerful if not more powerful than the false Left/Right
paradigm. For some reason, the human mind is more comfortable believing in the ideas of
division and chaos, and it often turns its nose up indignantly at the notion of "conspiracy."
But conspiracies and conspirators can be demonstrated as a fact of history. Organization
among elitists is predictable.
Globalists themselves are drawn together by an ideology. They have no common nation, they
have no common political orientation, they have no common cultural background or religion,
they herald from the East just as they herald from the West. They have no true loyalty to any
mainstream cause or social movement.
What do they have in common? They seem to exhibit many of the traits of high level
narcissistic sociopaths, who make up a very small percentage of the human population. These
people are predators, or to be more specific, they are parasites. They see themselves as
naturally superior to others, but they often work together if there is the promise of mutual
benefit."
"In our society, real power does not happen to lie in the political system, it lies in the
private economy: that's where the decisions are made about what's produced, how much is
produced, what's consumed, where investment takes place, who has jobs, who controls the
resources, and so on and so forth. And as long as that remains the case, changes inside the
political system can make some difference -- I don't want to say it's zero -- but the
differences are going to be very slight." ~ Noam Chomsky
Yet there is a thread that leads through US foreign policy. It all started with NSC 68.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSC_68 . Already in
the 1950's, leading bankers were afraid of economic depression which would follow from a
"peace dividend" following the end of WWII.
To avoid this, and to avoid "socialism", the only
acceptable government spending was on defense. This mentality never ended. Today 50% of
discretionary govenmenrt spending is on the military. http://www.unz.com/article/americas-militarized-economy/
.
We live in a country of military socialism, in which military citizens have all types of
benefits, on condition they join the military-industrial-complex. This being so, there is no
need for real "intelligence", there is no need to "understand" what goes on is foreign
countries, there no need to be right about what might happen or worry about consequences.
What is important is stimulate the economy by spending on arms. From Korean war, when the US
dropped more bombs than it had on Nazi Germany, through Viet Nam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya
etc etc the US policy was a winning one not for those who got bombed (and could not fight
back) but for the weapons industry and military contractors. Is the NYTimes ever going to
discuss this aspect? Or any one in the MSM?
Walter , September 14, 2018 at 9:26 am
The "why" behind the US foreign policies was spoken with absolute honest clarity in the
"Statement of A. Wess Mitchell
Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs" to the Senate on August 21
this year. The transcript is at :
https://www.foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/082118_Mitchell_Testimony.pdf
Quote the esteemed gentleman (inter alia): "It continues to be among the foremost national security interests of the United States to
prevent the domination of the Eurasian landmass by hostile powers. The central aim of the
administration's foreign policy is to prepare our nation to confront this challenge by
systematically strengthening the military, economic and political fundamentals of American
power. "
Tellingly the "official" State Department copy is changed and omits the true spoken
words
I would propose that the Zionism aspect exists due to the perceived necessity of "Forward
Operating Base Israel" look it a map, Comrade The ISIS?Saudi?Zionist games divides the New
Silk Road and the Eurasian land mass and exists to throttle said pathways.
Interestingly the latter essay is attributed to Eldar Ismailov and Vladimir Papava
Brother Comrade Putin knows the game. The US has to maintain the fiction for the public
that it does not know the game, and is consequently obliged to maintain a vast public
delusion, hence "fake news" and all the rest.
OlyaPola , September 14, 2018 at 1:49 pm
"I would propose that the Zionism aspect exists due to the perceived necessity of "Forward
Operating Base Israel" lookit a map, Comrade"
Some have an attraction to book-ends. Once upon a time the Eurasian book-ends were Germany and Japan, and the Western Asian
book-ends Israel and Saudi Arabia. This "strategy" is based upon the notion that bookend-ness is a state of inertia which in
any interactive system is impossible except apparently to those embedded in "we the people
hold these truths to be self-evident".
Consequently some have an attraction to book-ends.
Patrick Lawrence's essay makes perfect sense only when it is applied to US foreign policy
since the end of WW2. It is conventional wisdom that the US is now engaged in Cold War 2.0.
In fact, Cold War 2.0 is an extension of Cold War 1.0. There was merely a 20 year interregnum
between 1990 and 2010.
Most analysts think that Cold War 1.0 was an ideological war between
"Communism" and "Democracy". The renewal of the Cold War against both Russia and China
however shows that the ideological war between East and West was really a cover for the
geopolitical war between the two.
Russia, China and Iran are the main geopolitical enemies of
the US as they stand in the way of the global, imperialist hegemony of the US. In order to
control the global periphery, i.e. the developing world and their emerging economies, the US
must contain and defeat the big three. This was as true in 1948 as it is in 2018. Thus,
what's happening today under Trump is no different than what occurred under Truman in 1948.
Whatever differences exist are mere window dressing.
Rob Roy , September 15, 2018 at 12:16 am
Mr. Etler,
I think you are mostly right except in the first Cold War, the Soviets and US Americans were
both involved in this "war." What you call Cold War 2.0 is in the minds and policies of only
the US. Russian is not in any way currently like the Soviet Union, yet the US acts in all
aspects of foreign attitude and policy as though that (very unpleasant period in today's
Russians' minds) still exists. It does not. You says there was "merely a 20 year interregnum"
and things have picked up and continued as a Cold War. Only in the idiocy of the USA,
certainly not in the minds of Russian leadership, particularly Putin's who now can be
distinguished as the most logical, realistic and competent leader in the world.
Thanks to H. Clinton being unable to become president, we have a full blown Russiagate which
the MSM propaganda continues to spread.
There is no Cold War 2.0. It's a fallacy to create a
false flag for regime change in Russia. Ms. Clinton, the Kagan family, the MIC, etc., figure
if we can take out Yanukovich and replace him with Fascists/Nazis, what could stop us from
doing the same to Russia. The good news: all empires fail.
Maxwell Quest , September 13, 2018 at 1:41 pm
"This is the logic of spoilage as a substitute for foreign policy. Among its many
consequences are countless lost opportunities for global stability."
Mr. Lawrence is much too accommodating with his analysis. Imagine, linking US "foreign
policy" in the same thought as "global stability", as if the two were somehow related. On the
contrary, "global instability" seems to be our foreign policy goal, especially for those
regions that pose a threat to US hegemony. Why? Because it is difficult to extract a region's
wealth when its population is united behind a stable government that can't be bought off.
Conjuring up Heraclitus..Time is a River, constantly changing. And we face downstream,
unable to see the Future and gazing upon the Past.
The attempt has an effect, many effects, but it cannot stop Time.
The Russian and the Chinese have clinched the unification of the Earth Island, "Heartland"
This ended the ability to control global commerce by means of navies – the methods of
the Sea Peoples over the last 500 years are now failed. The US has no way of even seeing this
fact other than force and violence to restore the status quo ante .
Thus World War, as we see
Recollecting Heraclitus again, the universe is populated by opposites as we see, China and
Russia represent a cathodic opposite to the US
Jeff Harrison , September 13, 2018 at 1:29 pm
I guess I missed this one, Patrick. Great overview but let me put it in a slightly
different context. You start with the end of the cold war but I don't. I could go all the way
back to the early days of the country and our proclamation of manifest destiny. The US has
long thought that it was the one ring to rule them all. But for most of that time the
strength of individual members of the rest of the world constrained the US from running amok.
That constraint began to be lifted after the ruling clique in Europe committed seppuku in
WWI. It was completely lifted after WWII. But that was 75 years ago. This is now and most of
the world has recovered from the world wide destruction of human and physical capital known
as WWII. The US is going to have to learn how to live with constraints again but it will take
a shock. The US is going to have to lose at something big time. Europe cancelling the
sanctions? The sanctions on Russia don't mean squat to the US but it's costing Europe
billions. This highlights the reality that the "Western Alliance" (read NATO) is not really
an alliance of shared goals and objectives. It's an alliance of those terrified by fascism
and what it can do. They all decided that they needed a "great father" to prevent their
excesses again. One wonders if either the world or Europe would really like the US to come
riding in like the cavalry to places like Germany, Poland, and Ukraine. Blindly following
Washington's directions can be remarkably expensive for Europe and they get nothing but
refugees they can't afford. Something will ultimately have to give.
The one thing I was surprised you didn't mention was the US's financial weakness. It's
been a long time since the US was a creditor nation. We've been a debtor nation since at
least the 80s. The world doesn't need debtor nations and the only reason they need us is the
primacy of the US dollar. And there are numerous people hammering away at that.
Gerald Wadsworth , September 13, 2018 at 12:59 pm
Why are we trying to hem in China, Russia and Iran? Petro-dollar hegemony, pure and
simple. From our initial deal with Saudi Arabia to buy and sell oil in dollars only, to the
chaos we have inflicted globally to retain the dollar's rule and role in energy trading, we
are finding ourselves threatened – actually the position of the dollar as the sole
trading medium is what is threatened – and we are determined to retain that global
power over oil at all costs. With China and Russia making deals to buy and sell oil in their
own currencies, we have turned both those counties into our enemies du jour, inventing every
excuse to blame them for every "bad thing" that has and will happen, globally. Throw in
Syria, Iran, Venezuela, and a host of other countries who want to get out from under our
thumb, to those who tried and paid the price. Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, and
more. Our failed foreign policy is dictated by controlling, as Donald Rumsfeld once opined,
"our oil under their sand." Oil. Pure and simple.
Maxwell Quest , September 13, 2018 at 2:18 pm
I agree, Gerald. Enforcing the petro-dollar system seems to be the mainspring for much of
our recent foreign policy militarism. If it were to unravel, the dollar's value would tank,
and then how could we afford our vast system of military bases. Death Star's aren't cheap, ya
know.
Maxwell Quest , September 13, 2018 at 3:33 pm
I agree, Gerald. Along with ensuring access to "our" off-shore oil fields, enforcing the
petro-dollar system is equally significant, and seems to be the mainspring for much of our
recent foreign policy militarism. If this system were to unravel, the dollar's value would
tank, and then how could we afford our vast system of military bases which make the world
safe for democracy? Death Star's aren't cheap, ya know.
Anonymous Coward , September 13, 2018 at 10:40 pm
+1 Gerald Wadsworth. It's not necessarily "Oil pure and simple" but "Currency Pure and
Simple." If the US dollar is no longer the world's currency, the US is toast. Also note that
anyone trying to retain control of their currency and not letting "The Market" (private
banks) totally control them is a Great Devil we need to fight, e.g. Libya and China.
And note
(2) that Wall Street is mostly an extension of The City; the UK still thinks it owns the
entire world, and the UK has been owned by the banks ever since it went off tally sticks
MichaelWme , September 13, 2018 at 12:18 pm
It's called the Thucydides trap. NATO (US/UK/France/Turkey) have said they will force
regime change in Syria. Russia says it will not allow regime change in Syria. Fortunately, as
a Frenchman and an Austrian explained many years ago, and NATO experts say is true today,
regime change in Russia is a simple matter, about the same as Libya or Panamá. I
forget the details, but I assume things worked out well for the Frenchman and the Austrian,
and will work out about the same for NATO.
Putin said years ago, and I cannot quote him, but remember most of it, that it doesn't
matter who is the candidate for President, or what his campaign promises are, or how sincere
he is in making them, whenever they get in office, it is always the same policy.
Truer words were never spoken, and it is the reason why I know, at least, that Russia did
not interfere in the US elections. What would be the point, from his viewpoint, and it is not
only just his opinion. You cannot help but see at this point that that he said is obviously
true.
TJ , September 13, 2018 at 1:47 pm
What an excellent point. Why bother influencing the elections when it doesn't matter who
is elected -- the same policies will continue.
Bart Hansen , September 13, 2018 at 3:43 pm
Anastasia, I saved it: From Putin interview with Le Figaro: "I have already spoken to three US Presidents. They come and go, but politics stay the
same at all times. Do you know why? Because of the powerful bureaucracy. When a person is
elected, they may have some ideas. Then people with briefcases arrive, well dressed, wearing
dark suits, just like mine, except for the red tie, since they wear black or dark blue ones.
These people start explaining how things are done. And instantly, everything changes. This is
what happens with every administration."
rosemerry , September 14, 2018 at 8:02 am
Pres. Putin explained this several times when he was asked about preferring Trump to
Hillary Clinton, and he carefully said that he would accept whoever the US population chose,
he was used to dealing with Hillary and he knew that very little changed between
Administrations. This has been conveniently cast aside by the Dems, and Obama's disgraceful
expulsion of Russian diplomats started the avalanche of Russiagate.
Great to see Patrick Lawrence writing for Consortium News.
He ends his article with: "This is the logic of spoilage as a substitute for foreign
policy. Among its many consequences are countless lost opportunities for global stability.
"
Speaking of consequences, how about the human toll this foreign policy has taken on so
many people in this world. To me, the gravest sin of all.
Bob Van Noy , September 13, 2018 at 8:46 am
I agree with Patric Lawrence when he states "Personalizing Washington's regression into
the role of spoiler by assigning all blame to one man, now Donald Trump, deprives one of
deeper understanding." and I also agree that 'Seven decades of global hegemony have left the
State Department, Cold War notwithstanding, left the State Department with little to think
about other than the simplicities of East-West tension.' But I seriously disagree when he
declares that: "The crisis of U.S. foreign policy -- a series of radical missteps -- are
systemic. Having little to do with personalities, they pass from one administration to the
next with little variance other than at the margins.'' Certainly the missteps are true, but I
would argue that the "personalities" are crucial to America's crisis of Foreign Policy. After
all it was likely that JFK's American University address was the public declaration of his
intention to lead America in the direction of better understanding of Sovereign Rights that
likely got him killed. It is precisely those "personalities" that we must understand and
identify before we can move on
Skip Scott , September 13, 2018 at 9:35 am
Bob-
I see what you're saying, but I believe Patrick is also right.
Many of the people involved
in JFK's murder are now dead themselves, yet the "system" that demands confrontation rather
than cooperation continues. These "personalities" are shills for that system, and if they are
not so willingly, they are either bribed or blackmailed into compliance.
Remember when
"Dubya" ran on a "kinder and gentler nation" foreign policy? Obama's "hope and change" that
became "more of the same"? And now Trump's views on both domestic and foreign policy
seemingly also doing a 180? There are "personalities" behind this "system", and they are
embedded in places like the Council on Foreign Relations. The people that run our banking
system and the global corporate empire demand the whole pie, they would rather blow up the
world than have to share.
Bob Van Noy , September 13, 2018 at 2:42 pm
You're completely right Skip, that's what we all must recognize and ultimately react to,
and against.
Thank you.
JWalters , September 13, 2018 at 6:46 pm
I would add that human beings are the key components in this system. The system is built
and shaped by them. Some are greedy, lying predators and some are honest and egalitarian. Bob
Parry was one of the latter, thankfully.
JWalters , September 13, 2018 at 6:30 pm
Skip, very good points. For those interested further, here's an excellent talk on the
bankers behind the manufacutured wars, including the role of the Council on Foreign Relations
as a front organization and control mechanism. "The Shadows of Power; the CFR and decline of America" https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=6124&v=wHa1r4nIaug
Joe Tedesky , September 13, 2018 at 9:42 am
Bob, you are right. I find it most interesting and sad at the same time that in Woodward's
new book 'Fear' that he describes a pan 'almost tragic incident' whereas Trump wanted to sign
a document removing our missiles and troops out of S Korea, but save for the steady hand of
his 'anonymous' staffers who yanked the document off his presidential desk . wow, close one
there we almost did something to enforce a peace. Can't have that though, we still have lots
to kill in pursue of liberty and freedom and the hegemonic way.
Were these 'anonymous' staffers the grandchildren of the staffers and bureaucracy that
undermined other presidents? Would their grandparents know who the Gunmen were on the grassy
knoll? Did these interrupters of Executive administrations fudge other presidents dreams and
hopes of a peaceful world? And in the end were these instigators rewarded by the war
industries they protected?
The problem is, is that this bureaucracy of war has out balanced any other rival agency,
as diversity of thought and mission is only to be dealt with if it's good for military
purposes. Too much of any one thing can be overbearingly bad for a person, and likewise too
much war means your country is doing something wrong.
Bob Van Noy , September 13, 2018 at 2:51 pm
Many thanks Joe, I admire your persistence. Clearly Bob Woodward has been part of the
problem rather than the solution. The swamp is deep and murky
JWalters , September 13, 2018 at 6:36 pm
Bob and Joe, here's a solid review of Woodward's book Fear that points out his
consistent service to the oligarchy, including giving Trump a pass for killing the Iran deal.
Interesting background on Woodward in the comments as well.
https://mondoweiss.net/2018/09/woodward-national-security/
The document Gary Cohen removed off Trump's desk –
which you can read here – states an intent to end a free trade agreement with South
Korea.
"White House aides feared if Trump sent the letter, it could jeopardize a top-secret US
program that can detect North Korean missile launches within seven seconds."
Sounds like Trump wanted to play the "I am such a great deal maker, the GREATEST deal
maker of all times!" game with the South Koreans. Letter doesn't say anything about
withdrawing troops or missiles.
Funny how ***TOP-SECRET US PROGRAMS*** find their way into books and newspapers these
days, plentiful as acorns falling out of trees.
You're welcome, Joe. These things get confusing. Who knows anymore what is real and what
isn't?
Trump did indeed say something about ending military exercises and pulling troops out of
South Korea. His staff did indeed contradict him on this. It just wasn't in relation to the
letter Cohn "misplaced," AFAIK.
Nobody asked me, but if they did, I'd say the US interfered enough in Korean affairs by
killing a whole bunch of 'em in the Korean War. Leave'em alone. Let North and South try to
work it out. Tired of hearing about "regime change.'
Bob, you are right. I find it most interesting and sad at the same time that in Woodward's
new book 'Fear' that he describes a pan 'almost tragic incident' whereas Trump wanted to sign
a document removing our missiles and troops out of S Korea, but save for the steady hand of
his 'anonymous' staffers who yanked the document off his presidential desk . wow, close one
there we almost did something to enforce a peace. Can't have that though, we still have lots
to kill in pursue of liberty and freedom and the hegemonic way.
Were these 'anonymous' staffers the grandchildren of the staffers and bureaucracy that
undermined other presidents? Would their grandparents know who the Gunmen were on the grassy
knoll? Did these interrupters of Executive administrations fudge other presidents dreams and
hopes of a peaceful world? And in the end were these instigators rewarded by the war
industries they protected?
The problem is, is that this bureaucracy of war has out balanced any other rival agency,
as diversity of thought and mission is only to be dealt with if it's good for military
purposes. Too much of any one thing can be overbearingly bad for a person, and likewise too
much war means your country is doing something wrong.
Kiwiantz , September 13, 2018 at 8:20 am
Spoiler Nation of America! You got that dead right! China builds infrastructure in other
Countries & doesn't interfere with the citizens & their Sovereignty. Contrast that
with the United Spoiler States of America, they run roughshod over overs & just bomb the
hell out of Countries & leaves devastation & death wherever they go! And there is
something seriously wrong & demented with the US mindset concerning, the attacks on 9/11?
In Syria the US has ended up arming & supporting the very same organisation of Al
QaedaTerrorists, morphed into ISIS, that hijacked planes & flew them into American
targets! During 2017 & now in 2018, it defies belief how warped this US mentality is when
ISIS can so easily & on demand, fake a chemical attack to suck in the stupid American
Military & it's Airforce & get them to attack Syria, like lackeys taking orders from
Terrorist's! The US Airforce is the airforce of Al Qaeda & ISIS! Why? Because the US
can't stomach Russia, Syria & Iran winning & defeating Terrorism thus ending this
Proxy War they started! Russia can't be allowed to win at any cost because the humiliation
& loss of prestige that the US would suffer as a Unipolar Empire would signal the decline
& end of this Hegemonic Empire so they must continue to act as a spoiler to put off that
inevitable decline! America can't face reality that it's time in the sun as the last Empire,
is over!
Sally Snyder , September 13, 2018 at 7:57 am
Here is what Americans really think about the rabid anti-Russia hysteria coming from
Washington:
Washington has completely lost touch with what Main Street America really believes.
Waynes World , September 13, 2018 at 7:37 am
Finally some words of truth about how we want our way not really democracy. A proper way
to look at the world is what you said toward the end a desire to make people's lives
better.
mike k , September 13, 2018 at 7:14 am
Simply put – the US is the world's biggest bully. This needs to stop. Fortunately
the bully's intended victims are joining together to defeat it's crazy full spectrum
dominance fantasies. Led by Russia and China, we can only hope for the success of the
resistance to US aggression.
This political, economic, military struggle is not the only problem the world is facing
now, but is has some priority due to the danger of nuclear war. Global pollution, climate
disaster, ecological collapse and species extinction must also be urgently dealt with if we
are to have a sustainable existence on Earth.
OlyaPola , September 13, 2018 at 4:39 am
Alpha : "America's three principal adversaries signify the shape of the world to come: a
post-Western world of coexistence. But neoliberal and neocon ideology is unable to to accept
global pluralism and multipolarity, argues Patrick Lawrence."
Omega: "Among its many consequences are countless lost opportunities for global
stability."
Framing is always a limiter of perception.
Among the consequences of the lateral trajectories from Alpha to Omega referenced above,
is the "unintended consequence" of the increase of the principal opponents, their resolve and
opportunities to facilitate the transcendence of arrangements based on coercion by
arrangements based on co-operation.
Opening Pandora's box was/is only perceived as wholly a disadvantage for those seeking to
deny lateral process.
HomoSapiensWannaBe , September 13, 2018 at 8:23 am
John Chuckman,
Wow. Thanks! I have just begun reading your commentaries this week and I am impressed with
how clearly you analyze and summarize key points about many topics.
Thank you so much for writing what are often the equivalent of books, but condensed into
easy to read and digest summaries.
I have ordered your book and look forward to reading that.
"... The myth of BBC being some standard for news reporting died with the advent of the availability of international and independent news in Western countries ..."
"... Ironic when the BBC has been ceaselessly pushing fake news for at least 15 years, with disastrous results. (Iraq; Libya; what caused the deficit and who should be forced to pay it down; Russia/Syria false flags; Corbyn A/S.) ..."
"... I find it impossible to watch BBC News, primarily because most of the editorial staff and senior correspondents seem to be working for MI5/6 and are more interested in disseminating Geo-political propaganda than upholding their journalistic responsibilities as defined in the BBC charter. ..."
"... The book is obviously part of a propaganda campaign. It seems hugely fortuitous that Mark Urban should have had "hours" of interviews with Skripal before the poisoning incident. ..."
"... Isn't it much more likely that the Urban "interviews" would have happened after the event? But Urban can't say that because that would lead to demands from other journalists or news bodies to have access to Skripal. ..."
"... I'm open to alternative hypotheses but right now I think the most likely explanation for Urban's pre-poisoning contact with Sergei Skripal is that, at the time, it was assumed the Orbis dossier would be a key component of the successful takedown of Trump and Urban was putting together a mutually flattering account by interviewing the main players. ..."
"... With regard to your tongue-in-cheek point. Urban could have interviewed Skripal anytime after Trump was gone, unless he believed Skripal might be unavailable (for some reason). The fact he interviewed Skripal before does indicate foresight. If Urban really did interview Skripal before the event then he would be wiser to pull the book and burn every copy in existence (as well as all his notes). ..."
"... Urban pretends to research a book exposing Russia and part of his research is to interview Skripal. His objective is to find dirt on Putin in order to swing the war in Syria in favour of USUKIS bombing Assad to smithereens, bayonets bums etc. ..."
"... Interestingly Mark Urbans' book on Sergei Skripal was available to purchase on Amazon in July. I added it to my Amazon wishlist on 28/7/18. I've just looked at my wishlist and was rather surprised to find it is no longer available. It has been pulled. ..."
"... Can't help thinking that the answer to all this lies in Estonia. Sergei went to Estonia in June 2016, Pablo was in Estonia, the Estonians passed on sigint about Trump-Russian collusion in the summer of 2016. A Guardian article of 13 April 2017 said: ..."
"... No doubt in my mind that the Skripal affair is a planned operation carried out by US/UK intelligence. What has actually taken place is still to be determined, but the propaganda operation itself is clear. ..."
"... I know about Ireland, and I agree, it was NOT a nerve agent. That said, I don't believe anyone was 'attacked', including the Skripals. ..."
"... All foreign correspondents of major newspapers too work with MI6. Nobody who is close to them has any kind of doubt about this. ..."
"... I despise everyone who says that free markets are the solution for the problems of the third world. What they mean is mass starvation and an enormous population cull. There are international "foundations" that pay academics and politicians large amounts of money to spout this obscene line. One of them is called the John Templeton Foundation. They have had their fangs in to British universities for a long time. ..."
"... When the Tories talk about 'free markets', they are talking about markets free from democracy. ..."
BBC is skanky state propaganda. The myth of BBC being some standard for news reporting died with the advent of the availability
of international and independent news in Western countries. The main thing that BBC used to have which propped up the illusion
of it being a respectable news source is that there was no competition or alternative to compare its narratives against. Since
that time is over, so is BBC's masquerading as an impartial or accurate news source.
Agree, Dave. That's what's informing the push to rubbish dissenting sites as fake news and eventually have them removed.
Ironic when the BBC has been ceaselessly pushing fake news for at least 15 years, with disastrous results. (Iraq; Libya;
what caused the deficit and who should be forced to pay it down; Russia/Syria false flags; Corbyn A/S.)
Well I was convinced of fake BBC news during 9/11 and not for the reasons of building 7 coming down too early but the fact
that the female journalist was facing a camera standing in front of a glass window and there was no reflection of her or the camera
person from the glass. Not even a faint shadow.
That's when I knew the BBC were employing vampires and have been ever since.
Green Screen technology I discovered later. All the On the spot reporters are at it apparently. Or repeating Reuters or PA.
I find it impossible to watch BBC News, primarily because most of the editorial staff and senior correspondents seem to
be working for MI5/6 and are more interested in disseminating Geo-political propaganda than upholding their journalistic responsibilities
as defined in the BBC charter. People should not only boycott the BBC but refuse to pay the license fee on the grounds that
it's a compulsory political subscription.
Dear Mark,
In a BBC article on 4 July 2018, you wrote: "I have not felt ready until now to acknowledge explicitly that we had met, but do
now that the book is nearing completion."
Could you please explain that comment? I do not see why your acknowledgement of your meetings with Sergei Skripal should be
delayed until your book is nearing completion.
If you felt that it was right to reveal those meetings in July, then why was it not right to do so in March, soon after the
poisoning occurred? What difference would it have made if you had done so four months earlier?
I cannot think of any negative consequences of an earlier acknowledgement of the meetings. In fact, disclosures of any possible
conflict of interest are generally considered to be desirable in journalism, regardless of whether the conflict of interest is
real.
The book is obviously part of a propaganda campaign. It seems hugely fortuitous that Mark Urban should have had "hours"
of interviews with Skripal before the poisoning incident.
Isn't it much more likely that the Urban "interviews" would have happened after the event? But Urban can't say that because
that would lead to demands from other journalists or news bodies to have access to Skripal.
And that can't happen because either Skripal would be asked about what happened on the day of the poisoning, or can't be guaranteed
to stick to the script, or is no longer alive. And that leads to a suspicion that whatever Skripal is supposed to have said in
his interviews with Urban has really just been made up by the British security services.
I'm open to alternative hypotheses but right now I think the most likely explanation for Urban's pre-poisoning contact
with Sergei Skripal is that, at the time, it was assumed the Orbis dossier would be a key component of the successful takedown
of Trump and Urban was putting together a mutually flattering account by interviewing the main players.
Tongue in cheek, it'd be worth asking Urban if his decision to cover the Skripal poisoning in his new book was made before
or after the Skripals were actually poisoned.
The consensus seems to be that it was an anti-Russia book, but that doesn't conflict with what you say (there is overlap, your
view is just more specific). But, I just find it hard to believe that Urban and the conspirators would waste their time "counting
their chickens ". Not least because such a book would form a handy list of traitors (together with confessions) if Trump were
to prevail and it fell into the right hands. This is "101 – How to Organise a Revolution" (secrecy / don't put anything in writing);
surely British security services know that?
With regard to your tongue-in-cheek point. Urban could have interviewed Skripal anytime after Trump was gone, unless he
believed Skripal might be unavailable (for some reason). The fact he interviewed Skripal before does indicate foresight. If Urban
really did interview Skripal before the event then he would be wiser to pull the book and burn every copy in existence (as well
as all his notes).
Regardless, it looks like the master of the universe are losing their ability to create reality.
Last month, Mark Urban was promoting the reports that the Russian assassins had been identified from CCTV footage:
"There are now subjects of interest in the police Salisbury investigation. ( ) analytic and cyber techniques are now being
exploited against the Salisbury suspects by people with a wealth of experience in complex investigations." https://twitter.com/MarkUrban01/status/1020366761848385536
The BBC relies on it's interpretation of the Act because it is held for the purposes of 'journalism, art or literature.' but
this relies on a usually unrelated precedent and the opinions of a number of Judges which contradict this view. I'm in the process
of challenging this with ICO but don't expect anything will change until another supreme court ruling:
I can see the value in asking writers, journalists and artists to pose exactly the same questions as Eccles' original letter
but I'm not convinced about Craig's email.
A quick google shows me that a man named Mark Urban has written a book on the Skripals. Isn't it likely that Urban was keeping
the interviews to himself in order to keep his book alive?
It wouldn't surprise me if Urban cares far more about his writing career than his job at the BBC. I'm sure most journalists
would rather be authors. He's written a number of books on war and military intelligence. If his sources have nothing to do with
the BBC then why should he answer to an on line mob?
" Isn't it likely that Urban was keeping the interviews to himself in order to keep his book alive?"
No, entirely unlikely. a chance to plug his forthcoming book and his Skripal contacts to a massive worldwide televion audience
was eschewed.
The book is now about the Skripal attack. Presumably that was not the original subject he was researching, as it hadn't happened
yet. The book will just be a rehash of the "noble defector – Putin revenge" line and none of the questions I asked about the genesis
of his involvement will be answered in it.
"Presumably that was not the original subject he was researching, as it hadn't happened yet." Or it was prescience ie that
it was part of the planning for the incident?
@BBC, Summer 2017, in an executive office:
"Hey Mark, why don't you go down to have a chat with this guy in Salisbury. I have a hunch that a story might be going to happen
involving him, you know, as an ex-Soviet spy. Spend time with him, get to know him, be able to write in depth about him. Say it's
for a book ."
Urban is never one-sided in his BBC reports on the Middle East. I would rather have him as Foreign Secretary than a bumbling
idiot like Hubris Johnson or a Tory racketeer Hunt, because however clunky the formula of BBC balance Urban is at least pretending
to be governed by normal rules. After Thatcher went anyone with half a brain left the Conservative party, leaving dolts like Johnson
and nasties like May and Cameron to pick up the pieces after Blair and Brown.
There's money to be made from Russian billionaires and tory shit will follow the money like flies on d**t**d.
Urban pretends to research a book exposing Russia and part of his research is to interview Skripal. His objective is to
find dirt on Putin in order to swing the war in Syria in favour of USUKIS bombing Assad to smithereens, bayonets bums etc.
Tory shit Hubris Johnson finds this political research floating around the Foreign Office and decides to twist it into Russia
murders Skripal by Novichok. Unfortunately Johnson is already known to be a liar and gravy-trainer Tory and nobody believes him
at all. Mrs May , realising that Johnson, Fox, Rees-Mogg and Hunt are completely bonkers, does Chequers her own way.
Interestingly Mark Urbans' book on Sergei Skripal was available to purchase on Amazon in July. I added it to my Amazon
wishlist on 28/7/18. I've just looked at my wishlist and was rather surprised to find it is no longer available. It has been pulled.
From memory the books description said that Mark had interviewed Skripal 'extensively' during 2017 and also mentioned the 'new'
spying war now happening between Britain and Russia.
Salisbury poisoning: Skripals 'were under Russian surveillance'
Mark Urban Diplomatic and defence editor, Newsnight
4 July 2018
'My meetings with Sergei Skripal
I met Sergei on a few occasions last summer and found him to be a private character who did not, even under the circumstances
then prevailing, wish to draw attention to himself.
He agreed to see me as a writer of history books rather than as a news journalist, since I was researching one on the post-Cold
War espionage battle between Russia and the West.
Information gained in these interviews was fed into my Newsnight coverage during the early days after the poisoning. I have
not felt ready until now to acknowledge explicitly that we had met, but do now that the book is nearing completion.
As a man, Sergei is proud of his achievements, both before and after joining his country's intelligence service.
He has a deadpan wit and is remarkably stoical given the reverses he's suffered in his life; from his imprisonment following
conviction in 2006 on charges of spying for Britain, to the loss of his wife Liudmila to cancer in 2012, and the untimely death
of his son Alexander (or Sasha) last summer.'
Laughable given that the whole world and virtually all heads of State were under US surveillance by the NSA – at least until
Edward Snowden made all his revelations.
I have pasted and copied your Email regarding the above with a few slight alterations, it will be interesting to see the response
I receive if any being just a concerned citizen of the U.
Is this not a matter for the Police? (Even if you're not too sure if they'd do anything about it) These would be files that
are to do with an attempted murder case. And definitely not Journalism if the story is fabricated.
It feels as if you are moving in the right direction in linking Sergei to Steele. I'm intrigued by the very early media references
to Sergei wanting to return home to see his elderly mother for perhaps the last time. He had apparently written to Putin making
his request but again according to newspapers hadn't received a reply.
I would suggest Julia was bringing the answer via her own secret services contacts, her boyfriend and his mother, apparently
Senior in the Russian Intelligence Agency. Perhaps a sentimental man Sergei was aware his mother couldn't travel so the plea to
Putin was his best bet.
Such a request must have disturbed MI6 if Sergei had anything at all to do with the Steele dossier because inevitably if he
returned to Russia he'd be debriefed by his old colleagues. But how can you rely on a mercenary double agent? If he decided he
might want to stay in Russia with his family that might well have been attractive, away from the lonely existence in a Salisbury
cul de sac with only spies for company. But the Steele dossier has great potential to turn sour on the British.
It's author was a Senior spy and Head of the Russian Desk for some years. It is – perhaps you'd agree? – inconceivable that
he didn't require permission to prepare it, especially as much of it was based on his experience as a spy in Russia. Yet it's
equally inconceivable that the Agency bosses didn't know the identity of the commissioners or the use to which it would be put
in the US election – to boost Clinton's bid. If she'd won everything would have been fine but as it is any discussion of foreign
interference in that election would have to include MI6 leading the list (they probably didn't tell any politician?) To have Sergei
supporting and highlighting that embarrassment would be problematic for US-UK relations. Of course Sergei may have had other nuggets
to expose as well as Steele.
Soon after Julia's arrival the pair fell ill. They both survived but are now locked away, presumably for life and never able
to explain their side of the story.
It was a bodged job with a poor cover story from the start and could only be carried because of D Notices and media complicity.
Is his mother still alive? Would he still like to see her before she dies? Would Russia allow it? Would MI6 allow it? I think
that's 3 yeses and a resounding No.
Following the deaths of 55 Palestinians on the Gaza 'border' and the wounding of thousands, in this video, Urban asks the questions
but the Israeli government spokesman, David Keyes, is allowed to spout all the usual propaganda against Hamas.
Gaza deaths: Who's to blame? – BBC Newsnight
Published on 15 May 2018
Subscribe 256K
Fresh protests against Israel are expected in the Palestinian territories, a day after Israeli troops killed 58 people in the
Gaza Strip.
David Keyes is the spokesman for the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Mark Urban asked him whether it was appropriate
for the US to open their embassy on the 70th anniversary of Israel's creation, a day that is hugely controversial for the Palestinian
people.
Mr Keyes' pronounced American accent was heard. The Occupation was not mentioned. A Palestinian voice was not heard.
This is another of his videos. On the same subject and on the opening of the Israeli Embassy in Jerusalem. This time, Jonathan
Conricus spoke for the IDF.
"Urban asks the questions but the Israeli government spokesman, David Keyes, is allowed to spout all the usual propaganda against
Hamas."
Yes indeed : Urban asked the questions and allowed the interviewee to answer. Perhaps you would have preferred him to interrupt
the interviewee continually 'a la Today programme, or to have shouted at him similarly to the way I understand some people shout
at customers inside or outside supermarkets?
This may or may not be relevant regarding Russia, chemical weapons and BBC/MSM bovine effluent:
"US Poised to Hit Syria Harder: The Russian Defense Ministry issued a statement on Aug. 25 stating that the Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham
militants had brought eight containers of chlorine to Idlib in order to stage a false-flag attack with the help of UK intelligence
agencies. A group of Tahrir al-Sham fighters trained to handle chemical warfare agents by the UK private military company Olive
arrived in the suburbs of the city of Jisr ash-Shugur, Idlib, 20 km. from the Turkish border."
Can't help thinking that the answer to all this lies in Estonia. Sergei went to Estonia in June 2016, Pablo was in Estonia,
the Estonians passed on sigint about Trump-Russian collusion in the summer of 2016. A Guardian article of 13 April 2017 said:
"Over the next six months, until summer 2016, a number of western agencies shared further information on contacts between Trump's
inner circle and Russians, sources said. The European countries that passed on electronic intelligence – known as sigint – included
Germany, Estonia and Poland."
Perhaps not the Dossier, as such, but some material on collusion?
No doubt in my mind that the Skripal affair is a planned operation carried out by US/UK intelligence. What has actually
taken place is still to be determined, but the propaganda operation itself is clear.
Catch my last post Doodlebug, sadly MI6 diabolical elements can be traced back to Ireland in the 70's early 80's assassinations
theRealTerror (theRealElvis) understands.
Often it's been open. There was the BBC monitoring station at Caversham Park. The BBC's Foreign Broadcast Information Service
split the world into two parts with the CIA.
All foreign correspondents of major newspapers too work with MI6. Nobody who is close to them has any kind of doubt about
this.
Theresa May says a no deal Brexit "wouldn't be the end of the world".
This is not a negotiating strategy. This is not a pantomime where one giant on the stage can wink to his supporters (using
the British media) without his opponent (EU27) noticing.
The subconscious doesn't work well with negation. Whatever you do, please DON'T imagine an elephant at this time.
I would love to know what the preparations are at Trinity College, Cambridge, for food shortages. They own the port of
Felixstowe, which handles more than 40% of Britain's containerised trade. They also own a 50% stake in a portfolio of Tesco
stores. Soon food distribution will be what everyone is talking about. I am never going to stop making the point that the god
of the Tory party is Thomas Malthus.
" As a Prime Minister who believes both in free markets and in nations and businesses acting in line with well-established
rules and principles of conduct, I want to demonstrate to young Africans that their brightest future lies in a free and thriving
private sector. "
I despise everyone who says that free markets are the solution for the problems of the third world. What they mean is mass
starvation and an enormous population cull. There are international "foundations" that pay academics and politicians large amounts
of money to spout this obscene line. One of them is called the John Templeton Foundation. They have had their fangs in to British
universities for a long time.
They are keen on Prince Philip, the guy who said he wanted to come back as a virus so he could kill a large part of the population.
Never trust anyone who has received a Templeton scholarship or prize or who has anything to do with these people or with the message
that free markets and the private sector are the key to "development"
When the Tories talk about 'free markets', they are talking about markets free from democracy.
May's rhetoric is laughable .basically all her speeches read : 'the sky is green, the snow is black etc etc' -- totally detached
from reality and a spent political force, as their recent membership numbers showed, with more revenues from legacies left in
wills than from actual living members.
I agree with the Skripal relatives that Sergei is dead. He hasn't been seen or heard of and would have called his mother. Mind
boggling deception at all levels and I struggle to believe any of it.
Sergei Skripal could be in US custody, either in the US itself or in a US facility somewhere.
If he is dead, then the rehospitalisation of Charlie Rowley may be to assist with the narrative. "Once you've had a drop of
Novvy Chockk, you may recover but you can fall down ill at any time, and here's an Expert with a serious voice to confirm it."
I follow this blog closely, particularly in relation to the Skripal case, but this is my first comment. I just watched Sky
News piece on 'super recognisers' and couldn't help but wonder why, in an age of powerful facial recognition technology, the police
and security services seem to have drawn such a blank. The surveillance state in the UK is known to be one of the most advanced
in the world but when it comes to this highly important geopolitical crisis our technological infrastructure seems to be redundant
to the point where 'human eyes' are deemed to be more accurate than the most powerful supercomputers available. Psychologically,
all humans have an inherent facial recognition ability from a very young age, but the idea that some police officers have this
ability developed to such an extent that they supercede computer recognition is, i feel, laughable. To me this announcement through
the ever subservient Sky News reeks of desperation on the part of the ;official story'. Are we about to be shown suspects who,
although facial recognition technology fails to identify them, a 'super recogniser' can testify that it actually is person A or
person B and we are all supposed to accept that? Seems either a damning indictment of the judicial process, or a damning indictment
of the ŁŁŁŁŁ's of taxpayers money that is spent on places like GCHQ etc whose technology is now apparently no better than a highly
perceptive human brain. Give me a break !
People do die Trowbridge. I know you haven't, but you have the motivation of outliving your persecutors. With Muckin about
with Isis gone and covert operations isn't social work Kissinger looking as though he's on daily blood transfusions, you have
rejected Trump for some reason. But Trump has undone much of John McCain's worst mischief in one year. If McCain was an example
of a politician, we don't need politicians.
Give me an example, other than the Coopers. of a healthy couple one day that is found dying the next day like the Skripals.
And while i tried on another site to be generous about McCain. he got Navy Secretary John Lehman, Jr. to scare the Soviets
for prevailing in the Vietnam War so much about what NATO was up to in the fallout from shooting Swedish PM Olof Palme that Moscow
gave up the competition for fear that it would blow up the world, helping bring on the crappy one we have.
McCain was a continuing Cold Warrior who we don't need since we still have Trump who is just trying to do it another way.
Dead men tell no tales, especially about their role in trying to set up and take down U.S. President Donald Trump.
Notable quotes:
"... DNC lawyers wrote in court filings Friday that Joseph Mifsud, who spoke to Papadopoulos during the 2016 presidential election, "is missing and may be deceased," Bloomberg News reported. The lawyers did not elaborate. ..."
"... "The DNC's counsel has attempted to serve Mifsud for months and has been unable to locate or contact him. In addition, public reports have said he has disappeared and hasn't been seen for months," DNC spokeswoman Adrienne Watson said. ..."
The Democratic National Committee (DNC) on Friday raised the prospect that the London-based professor who told former Trump campaign
adviser George Papadopoulos that Russia had "dirt" on
Hillary Clinton may be dead.
DNC lawyers wrote in court filings Friday that Joseph Mifsud, who spoke to Papadopoulos during the 2016 presidential election,
"is missing and may be deceased,"
Bloomberg News reported. The lawyers did not elaborate.
The DNC stood by its claim in a statement to The Hill on Friday. The committee indicated that an investigator had been used to
find Mifsud, who has been missing for months, and was told the Maltese professor may be dead.
"The DNC's counsel has attempted to serve Mifsud for months and has been unable to locate or contact him. In addition, public
reports have said he has disappeared and hasn't been seen for months," DNC spokeswoman Adrienne Watson said.
Mifsud was reportedly teaching at a private university in Rome before he
vanished late
last year , shortly after his name emerged as a key figure in the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
The professor had reportedly not been in contact with prosecutors in Italy seeking to question him over allegations of financial
wrongdoing and his fiancée
told Business Insider
earlier this year that she could not reach him.
The DNC's revelation came in court filings Friday in their lawsuit against Russia, the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks for interfering
in the 2016 presidential election. According to Bloomberg, the DNC said it believed all of the defendants in the case had been served,
with the exception of Mifsud.
"... The letter by Mister or Ms Anonymous is very well written. By someone like, say, Thomas Friedman. That is, someone on the NYT staff. It is very cleverly composed to achieve quite obvious calculated aims. It is a masterpiece of treacherous deception. ..."
"... This anonymous enemy of amorality claims to approve of all the most extreme right-wing measures of the Trump administration as "bright spots": deregulation, tax reform, a more robust military, "and more" – cleverly omitting mention of Trump's immigration policy which could unduly shock the New York Times' liberal readers. The late Senator John McCain, the model of bipartisan bellicosity, is cited as the example to follow. ..."
"... The "resistance" proclaimed is solely against the facets of Trump's foreign policy which White House insiders are said to be working diligently to undermine: peaceful relations with Russian and North Korea. ..."
"... Trump's desire to avoid war is transformed into "a preference for autocrats and dictators". (Trump gets no credit for his warlike rhetoric against Iran and close relations with Netanyahu, even though they must please Anonymous.) ..."
"... The purpose of this is stunningly obvious. The New York Times has already done yeoman service in rounding up liberal Democrats and left-leaning independents in the anti-Trump lynch mob. But now the ploy is to rally conservative Republicans to the same cause of overthrowing the elected President. The letter amounts to an endorsement of future President Pence. ..."
"... This is the Iago ploy. Shakespeare's villain destroyed Othello by causing him to distrust those closest to him, his wife and closest associates. Like Trump in Washington, Othello, the "Moor" of Venice, was an outsider, that much easier to deceive and betray. ..."
"... The New York Times is playing Iago, whispering that Putin in the Kremlin is surrounded by secret "informants", and that Trump in the White House is surrounded by people systematically undermining his presidency. Putin is not likely to be impressed, but the trick might work with Trump, who is truly the target of open and covert enemies and whose position is much more insecure. There is certainly some undermining going on. ..."
"... Was the New York Times oped written by the paper's own writers or by the CIA? It hardly matters since they are so closely entwined. ..."
"... The military-industrial-congressional-deep state-media complex is holding its breath to breathe that great sigh of relief. The intruder is gone. Hurrah! Now we can go right on teaching the public to hate and fear the Russian enemy, so that arms contracts continue to blossom and NATO builds up its aggressive forces around Russia in hopes that this may frighten the Russians into dumping Putin in favor of a new Boris Yeltsin, ready to let the United States pursue the Clintonian plan of breaking up the Russian Federation into pieces, like the former Yugoslavia, in order to take them over one by one, with all their great natural resources. ..."
"... When dialogue is impossible, all that is left is force and violence. That is what is being promoted by the most influential media in the United States. ..."
The New York Times continues to outdo itself in the production of fake news. There is no
more reliable source of fake news than the intelligence services, which regularly provide their
pet outlets (NYT and WaPo) with sensational stories that are as unverifiable as their sources
are anonymous. A prize example was the August 24 report that US intelligence agencies don't
know anything about Russia's plans to mess up our November elections because "informants close
to Putin and in the Kremlin" aren't saying anything. Not knowing anything about something for
which there is no evidence is a rare scoop.
A story like that is not designed to "inform the public" since there is no information in
it. It has other purposes: to keep the "Russia is undermining our democracy" story on front
pages, with the extra twist in this case of trying to make Putin distrustful of his entourage.
The Russian president is supposed to wonder, who are those informants in my entourage?
But that was nothing compared to the whopper produced by the "newpaper of record" on
September 5. (By the way, the "record" is stuck in the same groove: Trump bad, Putin bad
– bad bad bad.) This was the sensational oped headlined "I am Part of the Resistance
Inside the Trump Administration", signed by nobody.
The letter by Mister or Ms Anonymous is very well written. By someone like, say, Thomas
Friedman. That is, someone on the NYT staff. It is very cleverly composed to achieve quite
obvious calculated aims. It is a masterpiece of treacherous deception.
The fictional author presents itself as a right-wing conservative shocked by Trump's
"amorality" – a category that outside the Washington swamp might include betraying the
trust of one's superior.
This anonymous enemy of amorality claims to approve of all the most extreme right-wing
measures of the Trump administration as "bright spots": deregulation, tax reform, a more robust
military, "and more" – cleverly omitting mention of Trump's immigration policy which
could unduly shock the New York Times' liberal readers. The late Senator John McCain, the model
of bipartisan bellicosity, is cited as the example to follow.
The "resistance" proclaimed is solely against the facets of Trump's foreign policy which
White House insiders are said to be working diligently to undermine: peaceful relations with
Russian and North Korea.
Trump's desire to avoid war is transformed into "a preference for autocrats and
dictators". (Trump gets no credit for his warlike rhetoric against Iran and close relations
with Netanyahu, even though they must please Anonymous.)
The purpose of this is stunningly obvious. The New York Times has already done yeoman
service in rounding up liberal Democrats and left-leaning independents in the anti-Trump lynch
mob. But now the ploy is to rally conservative Republicans to the same cause of overthrowing
the elected President. The letter amounts to an endorsement of future President Pence.
Just get rid of Trump and you'll have a nice, neat, ultra-right-wing Republican as
President.
The Democrats may not like Pence, but they are so demented by hatred of Trump that they are
visibly ready to accept the Devil himself to get rid of the sinister clown who dared defeat
Hillary Clinton. Down with democracy; the votes of deplorables shouldn't count.
That is treacherous enough, but even more despicable is the insidious design to destabilize
the presidency by sowing distrust. Speaking of Trump, Mr and/or Ms Anonymous declare: "The
dilemma – which he does not fully grasp – is that many of the senior officials in
his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and
his worst inclinations" (meaning peace with Russia).
This is the Iago ploy. Shakespeare's villain destroyed Othello by causing him to
distrust those closest to him, his wife and closest associates. Like Trump in Washington,
Othello, the "Moor" of Venice, was an outsider, that much easier to deceive and
betray.
The New York Times is playing Iago, whispering that Putin in the Kremlin is surrounded
by secret "informants", and that Trump in the White House is surrounded by people
systematically undermining his presidency. Putin is not likely to be impressed, but the trick
might work with Trump, who is truly the target of open and covert enemies and whose position is
much more insecure. There is certainly some undermining going on.
Was the New York Times oped written by the paper's own writers or by the CIA? It hardly
matters since they are so closely entwined.
No trick is too low for those who consider Trump an intolerable intruder on THEIR power
territory. The New York Times "news" that Trump is surrounded by traitors is taken up by other
media who indirectly confirm the story by speculating on "who is it?" The Boston Globe (among
others) eagerly rushed in, asking:
"So who's the author of the op-ed? It's a question that has many people poking through the
text, looking for clues. Meanwhile, the denials have come thick and fast. Here's a brief look
at some of the highest-level officials in the administration who might have a motive to write
the letter."
Isn't it obvious that all this is designed to make Trump distrust everyone around him? Isn't
that a way to drive him toward that "crazy" where they say he already is, and which is fallback
grounds for impeachment when the Mueller investigation fails to come up with nothing more
serious than the fact that Russian intelligent agents are intelligent agents?
The White House insider (or insiders, or whatever) use terms like "erratic behavior" and
"instability" to contribute to the "Trump is insane" narrative. Insanity is the alternative
pretext to the Mueller wild goose chase for divesting Trump of the powers of the presidency. If
Trump responds by accusing the traitors of being traitors, that will be final proof of his
mental instability. The oped claims to provide evidence that Trump is being betrayed, but if he
says so, that will be taken as a sign of mental derangement. To save our exemplary democracy
from itself, the elected president must be thrown out.
The military-industrial-congressional-deep state-media complex is holding its breath to
breathe that great sigh of relief. The intruder is gone. Hurrah! Now we can go right on
teaching the public to hate and fear the Russian enemy, so that arms contracts continue to
blossom and NATO builds up its aggressive forces around Russia in hopes that this may frighten
the Russians into dumping Putin in favor of a new Boris Yeltsin, ready to let the United States
pursue the Clintonian plan of breaking up the Russian Federation into pieces, like the former
Yugoslavia, in order to take them over one by one, with all their great natural
resources.
And when this fails, as it has been failing, and will continue to fail, the United States
has all those brand new first strike nuclear weapons being stationed in European NATO
countries, aimed at the Kremlin. And the Russian military are not just sitting there with their
own nuclear weapons, waiting to be wiped out. When nobody, not even the President of the United
States, has the right to meet and talk with Russian leaders, there is only one remaining form
of exchange. When dialogue is impossible, all that is left is force and violence. That is
what is being promoted by the most influential media in the United States.
Sara h
Huckabee Sanders has a tiny request: Please stop asking her about that pesky little
New York Times op-ed written by an anonymous White House official.
... ... ...
On Thursday, Sanders tweeted a message addressed to all the people "asking for the identity
of the anonymous coward" (basically, everyone).
The media's wild obsession with the identity of the anonymous coward is recklessly
tarnishing the reputation of thousands of great Americans who
proudly serve our country and work for President Trump. Stop. If you want to know who this
gutless loser is, call the opinion desk of the failing NYT at 212-556-1234, and ask them.
They are the only ones complicit in this deceitful act.
We stand united together and fully support our President Donald J.Trump.
"... At that point, Lovinger wouldn't have known was a spy working with the FBI/DOJ on operation " Crossfire Hurricane " - the code name for the Obama administration's counterintelligence operation against the Trump campaign. ..."
"... Halper - an Oxford University professor, former US government official and longtime FBI / CIA asset (who was married to the CIA deputy director's daughter at one point), received over $400,000 for a 2016 contract which Lovinger complained about. ..."
"... According to USASpending.gov, Mr. Halper was paid $411,000 by Washington Headquarters Services on Sept. 26, 2016 , for a contract that ran until this March. - Washington Times ..."
"... In total, the American citizen teaching abroad received over $1 million from contracts dated between 2012 and 2016. ..."
"... "As it turns out, one of the two contractors Mr. Lovinger explicitly warned his ONA superiors about misusing in 2016 was none other than Mr. Halper ," wrote Bigley in the ethics complaint, which referred to the contracts as " cronyism and corruption ." ..."
"... " Nobody in the office seemed to know what Halper was doing for his money ," said Bigley. "Adam said Jim Baker, the director, kept Halper's contracts very close to the vest. And nobody seemed to have any idea what he was doing at the time. He subcontracted out a good chunk of it to other academics. He would compile them all and then collect the balance as his fee as a middleman . That was very unusual." ..."
"... A longtime CIA and FBI asset who once reportedly ran a spy-operation on the Jimmy Carter administration, Halper was enlisted by the FBI to spy on several Trump campaign aides during the 2016 U.S. election, including Carter Page and George Papadopoulos. ..."
"... The unassuming university professor approached Page during an election-themed conference at Cambridge on July 11, 2016, six weeks after the September 26 DoD award start date. The two would stay in contact for the next 14 months, frequently meeting and exchanging emails . ..."
"... And as the Daily Caller reported, Halper used a decades-old association with Paul Manafort to break the ice with Page. ..."
"... In the email to Page, Halper asks what his plans are post-election, possibly probing for more information. " It seems attention has shifted a bit from the 'collusion' investigation to the ' contretempts' [sic] within the White House and, how--or if--Mr. Scaramucci will be accommodated there," Halper wrote. ..."
A Pentagon whistleblower was stripped of his security clearance and demoted after complaining about questionable government contracts
with both FBI informant spy Stefan Halper and a company headed by Chelsea Clinton's "best friend" for whom then-Secretary
of State Hillary Clinton arranged meetings, reports the
Washington
Times .
Adam Lovinger, a Trump supporter and 12-year veteran of the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment (ONA), filed a whistleblower reprisal
complaint with the Defense Department's inspector general in May against ONA boss James Baker - who hired Halper, 73, to "conduct
foreign relations" and kept the details of the spy's contracts "close to the vest." Baker was appointed chief of the ONA in 2015
by Obama Defense Secretary, Ashton Carter.
At that point, Lovinger wouldn't have known was a spy working with the FBI/DOJ on operation "
Crossfire Hurricane " - the code name for the Obama administration's counterintelligence operation against the Trump campaign.
In an internal October 2016 email to higher-ups, Mr. Lovinger wrote of " the moral hazard associated with the Washington Headquarters
Services contracting with Stefan Halper ," the complaint said. It said Mr. Baker hired Mr. Halper to "conduct foreign relations,"
a job that should be confined to government officials.
...
In the fall of 2016, as the election loomed, Mr. Lovinger sent emails to Mr. Baker and other officials at the Office of Net
Assessment complaining about the entire outside contracting process. He also said the office failed to write papers on long-term
threats presented by radical Islam, China and Iran .
And in September 2016, Lovinger sent an email directly to
Baker summing up the perceived problems, which
reads in part:
"Some of our contractors distribute to others their ONA work for personal and professional self-promotion," wrote Lovinger.
"Another part is the growing narrative that ONA's most high-profile contractors are known for getting paid a lot to do rather
peripheral work ."
"On the issue of pay, our contractors boast about how much they get paid from ONA . Such boasting, of course, generates jealously
among those outside the club, and particularly from those who have tried to secure ONA contracts unsuccessfully."
"On the issue of quality, more than once I have heard our contractor studies labeled 'derivative,' 'college-level' and based
heavily on secondary sources . One of our contractor studies was literally cut and pasted from a World Bank report that I just
happened to have read the week before reading the contractor study itself. Even the font was the same."
Halper - an Oxford University professor, former US government official and longtime FBI / CIA asset (who was married to the CIA
deputy director's daughter at one point),
received over $400,000 for a 2016 contract which Lovinger complained about.
According to USASpending.gov, Mr. Halper was paid $411,000 by Washington Headquarters Services on Sept. 26, 2016 , for a contract
that ran until this March. -
Washington Times
In total, the American citizen teaching abroad received over
$1 million from contracts dated between 2012 and 2016.
Lovinger's attorney, Sean M. Bigley, filed the second of four complaints on July 18 with the Pentagon's senior ethics official,
claiming that Lovinger's bosses punished him on May 1, 2017 by abusing the security clearance process to yank his credentials and
relegate him to clerical chores. Lovinger's complaint also names the Washington Headquarters Services, a support agency within the
Pentagon that awarded the Halper contracts.
"As it turns out, one of the two contractors Mr. Lovinger explicitly warned his ONA superiors about misusing in 2016 was none
other than Mr. Halper ," wrote Bigley in the ethics complaint, which referred to the contracts as " cronyism and corruption ."
" Nobody in the office seemed to know what Halper was doing for his money ," said Bigley. "Adam said Jim Baker, the director,
kept Halper's contracts very close to the vest. And nobody seemed to have any idea what he was doing at the time. He subcontracted
out a good chunk of it to other academics. He would compile them all and then collect the balance as his fee as a middleman . That
was very unusual."
A longtime CIA and FBI asset who once reportedly
ran a spy-operation on the Jimmy Carter administration, Halper was enlisted by the FBI to spy on several Trump campaign aides
during the 2016 U.S. election, including Carter Page and George Papadopoulos.
Halper's $411,575 award came three days after a September 23
Yahoo! News article by Michael Isikoff about Trump aide Carter Page, which used information fed to Isikoff by "Steele dossier"
creator Christopher Steele . The FBI would use the Yahoo! article along with the largely unverified dossier as
supporting evidence in an FISA warrant application for Page.
The unassuming university professor approached Page during an election-themed conference at Cambridge on July 11, 2016, six weeks
after the September 26 DoD award start date. The two would stay in contact for the next 14 months,
frequently meeting and exchanging
emails .
He said that he first encountered the informant during a conference in mid-July of 2016 and that they stayed in touch. The
two later met several times in the Washington area. Mr. Page said their interactions were benign. -
New York
Times
And as the Daily Caller reported, Halper used a decades-old association with Paul Manafort to break the ice with Page.
Page noted that in their first conversation at Cambridge, Halper said he was longtime friends with then-campaign chairman Paul
Manafort . A person close to Manafort told TheDCNF that Manafort has not seen Halper since the Gerald Ford administration . Manafort
and Page are accused in the Steele dossier of having worked together on the campaign's collusion conspiracy, but both men say
they have never met. -
Daily Caller
Halper would continue to spy on Page after the election. Two days after the second installment of Halper's 2016 DoD contract,
On July 28, he emailed Page with what the Trump campaign aide describes as a "cordial" communication, which did not seem suspicious
to him at the time.
In the email to Page, Halper asks what his plans are post-election, possibly probing for more information. " It seems attention
has shifted a bit from the 'collusion' investigation to the ' contretempts' [sic] within the White House and, how--or if--Mr. Scaramucci
will be accommodated there," Halper wrote.
Clinton connection
The other complaint lodged by Lovinger concerns a string of contracts totaling $11 million to Long Term Strategy Group - a D.C.
consulting firm headed by self-described "best friend" of Chelseal Clinton, Jacqueline Newmyer Deal.
In October, the
Washington Free Beacon reported that then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arranged meetings in 2009 between Deal and Pentagon
officials to discuss contracts - to which Deal says no award "resulted directly or indirectly from the actions or influence of Secretary
Clinton ."
According to one 2009 email, Clinton said she recommended Deal to Michele Flournoy, the newly installed undersecretary of defense
for policy, who was seeking young women to mentor.
Deal, a specialist in China affairs who worked at the White House as a press aide for First Lady Clinton in the 1990s, wrote
back to Clinton saying she would meet Flournoy on May 5, 2009, and stated "thank you very much for making this happen."
Later that month, Deal thanked Clinton for "all your encouragement and help with DoD, " shorthand for the Defense Department.
-
Free Beacon
In a statement, Deal said: "Jacqueline Deal and the Long Term Strategy Group (LTSG) are justifiably proud of their collaboration
with the US Department of Defense across multiple administrations over the last two decades, beginning under the administration of
President George W. Bush. LTSG's work has consistently earned the highest respect and confidence of its clientele in government and
has won LTSG a reputation for producing research and analysis of exceptional quality."
"Door handle" theory is dead on arrival. the main theory now is that UK government gave Skripals different agent BX
(similar to LSD and which caused hallucinations) and they voluntarily took it in order to start preplanned Skripal false flag
provocation. That's why military nurse accidentally appeared near Skripals soon after poisoning.
Notable quotes:
"... Following the attack on the Skripals, European and US allies took Britain's side on the attack, ordering the largest expulsion of Russian diplomats since the height of the Cold War, reports Reuters . In response, Russia retaliated by expelling Western diplomats, while the Kremlin has repeatedly denied involvement in the attacks - while accusing the UK intelligence agencies of staging the attack in order to inflame anti-Russia tensions. ..."
"... Prior to the investigation's focus on the door handle, for a period of almost three weeks there were at least nine other theories proposed by the authorities as to where the Skripals came into contact with the poison. These included the restaurant, the pub, the bench, the cemetery, the car, the flowers, the luggage, the porridge and even a drone. During that time, police officers and investigators were entering and leaving the house, by the door, since it was not known to be the place where the poison was located. ..."
"... Once the door handle theory was established, those who had been in and out of the property during the previous three weeks would naturally have been concerned about the possibility that they had been contaminated. ..."
"... Every officer who entered the house after 4th March, and before the door handle became an object of interest, should have been given a medical examination to check for signs of poisoning. ..."
"... Initial reports about Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey stated that he was poisoned at the bench, after coming to the aid of Mr Skripal and Yulia. However, on 9th March, Lord Ian Blair stated that D.S. Bailey had actually become poisoned after visiting Mr Skripal's house. Since he was thought to have been poisoned with a military grade nerve agent, and since it was thought that this had occurred at Mr Skripal's house, the immediate next step should have been to seal off the house and set up a mobile decontamination unit outside. However, numerous photographs show officers in normal uniforms standing close to the door long after Lord Blair's claim ..."
"... Can the authorities explain how these decisions did not put the health and even the lives of those officers in jeopardy? ..."
"... Before the door handle theory was settled on, the majority of competing theories put out by the authorities tended to assume that Mr Skripal was poisoned long before he went to Zizzis. For example, the flowers, the cemetery, the luggage, the porridge and the car explanations all assume this to be the case. What this means is that according to the assumptions of police at that time, when Mr Skripal fed the ducks near the Avon Playground with a few local boys, at around 1:45pm, he was already contaminated. Yet although this event was caught on CCTV camera, it was more than two weeks before the police contacted the parents of these boys. ..."
"... Can the authorities comment on why they did not air the CCTV footage on national television, in an effort to appeal to the boys or their parents to come forward, and whether the delay in tracking them down might have put them in danger? ..."
"... If the door handle was the place of poisoning, it is extremely likely that the bread handed by Mr Skripal to the boys would have been contaminated. Certainly, areas that he visited after this incident were deemed to be so much at risk that they were either closed down (for example, The Mill and Zizzis, which are both still closed), or destroyed (for instance, the restaurant table, the bench and – almost certainly – the red bag near the bench have all been destroyed). ..."
"... It has been said that one of the reasons the Government is/was so sure that the ultimate culprit behind the poisoning was the Russian state, is the apparent existence of an "FSB handbook" which, amongst other things, allegedly features descriptions of how to apply nerve agent to a door handle. Given that the Prime Minister first made a formal accusation of culpability on 12th March in her speech to the House of Commons, the Government must therefore have been in possession of this manual prior to that day. However, claims about the door handle being the location of the poison did not appear until late March (the first media reports of it were on 28th March). What this means is there was a delay of several weeks between the Government making its accusation, based partly on the apparent existence of the "door handle manual", and the door handle of Mr Skripal's house being a subject of interest to investigators. ..."
"... "We are learning more about Sergei and Yulia's movements but we need to be clearer around their exact movements on the morning of the incident. We believe that at around 9.15am on Sunday, 4 March, Sergei's car may have been in the areas of London Road, Churchill Way North and Wilton Road. Then at around 1.30pm it was seen being driven down Devizes Road, towards the town centre. We need to establish Sergei and Yulia's movements during the morning, before they headed to the town centre. Did you see this car, or what you believe was this car, on the day of the incident? We are particularly keen to hear from you if you saw the car before 1.30pm. If you have information, please call the police on 101." ..."
"... Now that Sergei and Yulia Skripal have been awake and able to communicate for around four months, these details are presumably now all known to investigators. In the normal course of such a high profile investigation, details such as these would be relayed to the public in the hope of jogging memories to prompt more information. And in fact, many such details have been released to the public in this case. Yet, confirmation of Mr Skripal's and Yulia's movements that day remain conspicuous by their absence. ..."
"... These questions have nothing to do with any conspiracy theory. On the contrary, they are all based on the assumption that the two central claims made by the authorities regarding the mode and the method used in this incident are correct. They are, however, very serious and perfectly legitimate questions about the way the authorities have dealt with this incident, on their own terms and on the basis of their own claims . ..."
"... "Reports that the United Kingdom is planning to ask Russia to extradite suspects in a Salisbury poisoning incident are nothing more than a "speculation," a spokesperson for the UK Foreign Office told Sputnik on Monday. ..."
The British government has prepared an extradition request to Moscow for two
Russians they claim carried out the Salisbury nerve agent attack, according to The Guardian ,
citing Whitehall and security sources.
Former Russian double-agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found unconscious on
a public bench in Salisbury in early March - which UK authorities believe was due to a nerve
agent called Novichok.
Months later on June 30, nearby residents Charlie Rowley and Dawn Sturgess, a 44-year-old
mother of three, were subsequently treated for exposure to the nerve agent. Rowley recovered
while Sturgess died.
Authorities are operating on the assumption that the Skripals were poisoned using a
novichok-laced perfume bottle or a door handle smeared with the nerve agent, while Rowley may
have picked up said bottle and given to Sturgess, who applied it to her wrists.
Sturgess received a much higher dose than the other three after apparently smearing the
substance on her wrists, having sprayed it from the bottle. Rowley's recovery was helped,
according to a source, by one of the first responders being familiar with the nerve agent,
having been involved in helping the Skripals.
The Porton Down military defence laboratory near Salisbury has examined the novichok found
on the Skripals' doorknob and the perfume bottle, but police have not yet said whether they
are from the same batch. -
The Guardian
UK authorities believe they have pieced together the movements of the two Russians, from
their entry into the UK to their departure after the alleged assassination attempt.
Following the attack on the Skripals, European and US allies took Britain's side on the
attack, ordering the largest expulsion of Russian diplomats since the height of the Cold War,
reports
Reuters . In response, Russia retaliated by expelling Western diplomats, while the Kremlin
has repeatedly denied involvement in the attacks - while accusing the UK intelligence agencies
of staging the attack in order to inflame anti-Russia tensions.
Oddly, Sergei Skripal was linked by
The Telegraph to a consultant with former UK spy Christopher Steele's Orbis Business
Intelligence, who he reportedly had repeated contacts with.
The motive for trying to assassinate the 66-year-old skripal is unknown. Skripal moved to
the UK in a Kremlin-approved "spy swap" in 2010, causing many to question why they would
suddenly try to take him out a decade later.
In July, journalist Rob Slane compiled
10 questions for the UK authorities on the ever-confusing Skripal case:
***
The two most basic claims made by the Government and investigators regarding the method and
the mode in the Salisbury poisoning are these:
That military grade nerve agent was used to poison Mr Skripal
That it was applied to the door handle of his house
These claims raise a number of very obvious questions. For example, how did the assassin(s)
apply such a powerful chemical without wearing protective clothing? How did the people who are
said to have come into contact with the substance not die immediately, or at the very least
suffer irreparable damage to their Central Nervous Systems? How did this military grade nerve
agent manage not only to have a delayed onset, but also managed to affect a large 66-year-old
man and his slim 33-year-old daughter, both of whom would have vastly different metabolic
rates, at exactly the same time?
These are perfectly reasonable questions that deserve reasonable answers. I am aware,
however, that no matter how obvious and rational such questions might be, doing so places one
– at least in the eyes of the authorities – in the camp of the conspiracy theorist.
This is disingenuous. One of the marks of a true conspiracy theorist is that he is someone who
refuses to accept an explanation for an event, even after being presented with facts which fit
and explain it coherently . But when the "facts" presented in a case do not fit the event they
are supposed to explain, and are neither rational nor coherent -- as in the Salisbury case --
then calling the person who raises legitimate questions a "conspiracy theorist" is a bit rich,
is it not?
Nevertheless, for the purposes of this piece, what I'd like to do is work on the assumption
that the "Military Grade Nerve Agent on the Door Handle" claim is correct. And working from
this assumption, I want to ask some questions about how the authorities have handled the case.
The point is this: These questions are not really intended to challenge the official claims;
rather the intention is to ask whether the authorities have handled the case correctly on their
own terms .
1. Prior to the investigation's focus on the door handle, for a period of almost three weeks
there were at least nine other theories proposed by the authorities as to where the Skripals
came into contact with the poison. These included the restaurant, the pub, the bench, the
cemetery, the car, the flowers, the luggage, the porridge and even a drone. During that time,
police officers and investigators were entering and leaving the house, by the door, since it
was not known to be the place where the poison was located.
Can the authorities explain how these officers and investigators were not poisoned?
2. Once the door handle theory was established, those who had been in and out of the
property during the previous three weeks would naturally have been concerned about the
possibility that they had been contaminated.
Can the authorities tell us what steps were taken to reassure these officers?
3. Every officer who entered the house after 4th March, and before the door handle became an
object of interest, should have been given a medical examination to check for signs of
poisoning.
Can the authorities confirm that this took place for every officer?
4. Initial reports about Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey stated that he was poisoned at the
bench, after coming to the aid of Mr Skripal and Yulia. However, on 9th March, Lord Ian Blair
stated that D.S. Bailey had actually become poisoned after visiting Mr Skripal's house. Since
he was thought to have been poisoned with a military grade nerve agent, and since it was
thought that this had occurred at Mr Skripal's house, the immediate next step should have been
to seal off the house and set up a mobile decontamination unit outside. However, numerous
photographs show officers in normal uniforms standing close to the door long after Lord Blair's
claim.
Can the authorities confirm why the house was not sealed off and a decontamination unit set
up immediately after it became known that D.S. Bailey had been there, and why officers with no
protective clothing on were allowed to continue standing guard outside the house for the next
few weeks?
5. Can the authorities explain how these decisions did not put the health and even the lives
of those officers in jeopardy?
6. Before the door handle theory was settled on, the majority of competing theories put out
by the authorities tended to assume that Mr Skripal was poisoned long before he went to Zizzis.
For example, the flowers, the cemetery, the luggage, the porridge and the car explanations all
assume this to be the case. What this means is that according to the assumptions of police at
that time, when Mr Skripal fed the ducks near the Avon Playground with a few local boys, at
around 1:45pm, he was already contaminated. Yet although this event was caught on CCTV camera,
it was more than two weeks before the police contacted the parents of these boys.
Can the authorities explain why it took more than two weeks to track down the boys, who
– as the CCTV apparently shows – were given bread by Mr Skripal?
7. Can the authorities comment on why they did not air the CCTV footage on national
television, in an effort to appeal to the boys or their parents to come forward, and whether
the delay in tracking them down might have put them in danger?
8. If the door handle was the place of poisoning, it is extremely likely that the bread
handed by Mr Skripal to the boys would have been contaminated. Certainly, areas that he visited
after this incident were deemed to be so much at risk that they were either closed down (for
example, The Mill and Zizzis, which are both still closed), or destroyed (for instance, the
restaurant table, the bench and – almost certainly – the red bag near the bench
have all been destroyed).
Can the authorities comment on how the boys, who were handed bread by Mr Skripal, managed to
avoid contamination?
9. It has been said that one of the reasons the Government is/was so sure that the ultimate
culprit behind the poisoning was the Russian state, is the apparent existence of an "FSB
handbook" which, amongst other things, allegedly features descriptions of how to apply nerve
agent to a door handle. Given that the Prime Minister first made a formal accusation of
culpability on 12th March in her speech to the House of Commons, the Government must therefore
have been in possession of this manual prior to that day. However, claims about the door handle
being the location of the poison did not appear until late March (the first media reports of it
were on 28th March). What this means is there was a delay of several weeks between the
Government making its accusation, based partly on the apparent existence of the "door handle
manual", and the door handle of Mr Skripal's house being a subject of interest to
investigators.
Can the authorities therefore tell us whether the Government's failure to pass on details of
the "door handle manual" put the lives of the officers going in and out of Mr Skripal's house
from 5th March to 27th March in jeopardy?
10. On 17th March, Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu said:
"We are learning more about Sergei and Yulia's movements but we need to be clearer around
their exact movements on the morning of the incident. We believe that at around 9.15am on
Sunday, 4 March, Sergei's car may have been in the areas of London Road, Churchill Way North
and Wilton Road. Then at around 1.30pm it was seen being driven down Devizes Road, towards
the town centre. We need to establish Sergei and Yulia's movements during the morning, before
they headed to the town centre. Did you see this car, or what you believe was this car, on
the day of the incident? We are particularly keen to hear from you if you saw the car before
1.30pm. If you have information, please call the police on 101."
Now that Sergei and Yulia Skripal have been awake and able to communicate for around four
months, these details are presumably now all known to investigators. In the normal course of
such a high profile investigation, details such as these would be relayed to the public in the
hope of jogging memories to prompt more information. And in fact, many such details have been
released to the public in this case. Yet, confirmation of Mr Skripal's and Yulia's movements
that day remain conspicuous by their absence.
Can the authorities confirm that the movements of the Skripals that day are now understood,
and that they will be made known shortly, in order that more information from the public might
then be forthcoming?
These questions have nothing to do with any conspiracy theory. On the contrary, they are all
based on the assumption that the two central claims made by the authorities regarding the mode
and the method used in this incident are correct. They are, however, very serious and perfectly
legitimate questions about the way the authorities have dealt with this incident, on their own
terms and on the basis of their own claims .
"Reports that the United Kingdom is planning to ask Russia to extradite suspects in a
Salisbury poisoning incident are nothing more than a "speculation," a spokesperson for the UK
Foreign Office told Sputnik on Monday.
"This is just more speculation. The police investigation is ongoing and anything on the
record will need to come from the Police," the spokesperson said."
So British were involved in fabricating of 'Guccifer 2.0' persona. Nice...
Notable quotes:
"... It was Matt Tait who, using the 'Twitter' handle @pwnallthethings, identified the name and patronymic of Dzerzhinsky in the 'metadata' of the 'Guccifer 2.0' material on 15 June 2016, the day after Ellen Nakashima first disseminated the BS from 'CrowdStrike' in the 'WP.' ..."
"... 'Matt Tait is a senior cybersecurity fellow at the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the University of Texas at Austin. Previously he was CEO of Capital Alpha Security, a consultancy in the UK, worked at Google Project Zero, was a principal security consultant for iSEC Partners, and NGS Secure, and worked as an information security specialist for GCHQ.' ..."
"... As I have noted before on SST, a cursory examination of records at 'Companies House' establishes that 'Capital Alpha Security', which was supposed to have provided Tait with an – independent – source of income at the time he unearthed this 'smoking gun' incriminating the GRU, never did any business at all. So, a question arises: how was Tait making ends meet at that time: busking on the London underground, perhaps? ..."
"... The document, when available, may clarify a few loose ends, but the general picture seems clear. Last November, Tait filed 'dormant company accounts' for the company's first year in existence, up until February 2017. One can only do this if one has absolutely no revenue, and absolutely no expenditure. Not even the smallest contract to sort out malware on someone's computer, or to buy equipment for the office. ..."
"... He then failed to file the 'Confirmation statement', which every company must is legally obliged to produce annually, if it is not to be struck off. This failure led to a 'First Gazette notice for compulsory strike-off' in May. ..."
"... However, Tait may well anticipate that there is there will never be any call for him to go back into the big wide world, as the large organisation in which he has now found employment is part of a 'Borgist' network. So much is evident from another entry on the 'Lawfare' site: ..."
"... Also relevant here is the fact that, rather transparently, this placing of the GRU centre stage is bound up with the attempt to suggest that there is some kind of 'Gerasimov doctrine', designed to undermine the West by 'hybrid warfare.' Unfortunately, the original author of this claptrap, Mark Galeotti, who, I regret to say, is, like Tait, British, has now recanted and confessed. In March, he published a piece on the 'Foreign Policy' site, under the title: 'I'm Sorry for Creating the 'Gerasimov Doctrine'; I was the first to write about Russia's infamous high-tech military strategy. One small problem: it doesn't exist.' ..."
"... Quite clearly, the 'Guccifer 2.0' persona is a crude fabrication by someone who has absolutely no understanding of, or indeed interest in, the bitter complexities of both of the history of Russia and of the 'borderlands', not only in the Soviet period but before and after. ..."
"... Jeffrey Carr is one of the latter, and his familiarity with intelligence matters is clear from his organization of the annual "Suits and Spooks" Conference. I believe he was the first to raise questions about the DNC hack which didn't pass his smell test. ..."
"... One quick way to know their bias is the AC test. Google their name plus "Atlantic Council". Ridd fails badly. ..."
"... The Comey, Brennan, Mueller claim - indeed a central one upon which the recent indictment rests- that Guccifer 2.0 was a Russian State agent that hacked the DNC- was discredited and put to rest last year by the forensics conducted by Bill Binney and his colleagues. The Guccifer 2.0 metadata was analyzed for its transmission speed, and based on the internet speeds to and from numerous test locations abroad and in the U.S., it was determined to have been impossible for the so-called Guccifer 2.0 to have hacked the DNC computers over the internet. The transmission speed however did correspond to the speed of the transfer to a thumb drive. Additionally, it was found that the data had been manipulated and split into two parts to simulate a July and a September transfer, when in fact the parts merge perfectly as single file, and where, according to Binney, the probability of the split being a coincidence would be 100 to the 50th power. ..."
"... There is a pattern of abuse of formerly well regarded institutions to achieve the propaganda aims of the Deep State establishment. The depths that were plumbed to push the Iraq WMD falsehoods are well known. Yet no one was held to account nor was there any honest accounting of the abuse. There have been pretenses like the Owen inquiry that you note. ..."
"... It seems that we are marching towards a credibility crisis similar to what was experienced in the Soviet Union when no one trusted the contents in Pravda. ..."
"... What is to be gained by the leadership in Britain in promoting these biological weapons cases since Litvinenko? In the US it is quite apparent that the Deep State have become extremely powerful and the likelihood that Trump recognizes that resistance is futile is very high. Schumer may be proven right that they have six ways from Sunday to make you kowtow to their dictats. ..."
"... I agree that taken by itself, the Dzerzinsky thing would be an anomaly only and could be dismissed as "black humor" of a kind often found in hackers. However, taken with all the other evidence produced by Adam Carter, it becomes much more obviously an attempt to support a false flag "Russian hacker" narrative that otherwise is porous. ..."
"... You want us to believe that the GRU are so sloppy and so inexperienced that they would launch a hack on the DNC and not take every measure to ensure there was no link whatsoever to anything Russian? Any former intel officer worth a damn knows that an operation to disrupt the election in a country the size of the United States would start with a risk/reward assessment, would require a team of at least 100 persons and would not be writing any code that could in any way be traced to Russia. ..."
"... Doctrine-mongering and repeating birth of new faux-academic "entities", such as a "hybrid war" (any war is hybrid by definition), is a distinct feature of the Western "political science-military history" establishment. Galeotti, who for some strange reason passes as Russia "expert" is a perfect example of such "expertise" and doctrine-mongering. Military professionals largely met this "hybrid warfare" BS with disdain. ..."
"... I have to say that the more I look into this whole Russiagate affair, which is mostly in the minds of democrats (and a few republicans) and the MSM, the more it seems that there is indeed a foreign conspiracy to meddle in the internal affairs of the US (and in the presidential elections) but the meddling entity is not Russia. It is the British! ..."
"... So many (ex-) MI6 operators (Steele, Tait, etc) involved in the story. It is interesting that the media don't question the intense involvement of the British in all this. And of course, the British haven't been laggards in adding fuel to the fire by the whole novichok hoax. ..."
As some commenters on SST seem still to have difficulty grasping that the presence of 'metadata' alluding to 'Iron Felix' in the
'Guccifer 2.0' material is strong evidence that the GRU were being framed over a leak, rather than that they were responsible for
a hack, an update on the British end of the conspiracy seems in order.
If you look at the 'Lawfare' blog, in which a key figure is James Comey's crony Benjamin Wittes, you will find a long piece published
last Friday, entitled 'Russia Indictment 2.0: What to Make of Mueller's Hacking Indictment.'
Among the authors, in addition to Wittes himself, is the sometime GCHQ employee Matt Tait. It appears that the former head of
that organisation, the Blairite 'trusty' Robert Hannigan, who must know where a good few skeletons are buried, is a figure of some
moment in the conspiracy.
It was Matt Tait who, using the 'Twitter' handle @pwnallthethings, identified the name and patronymic of Dzerzhinsky in the 'metadata'
of the 'Guccifer 2.0' material on 15 June 2016, the day after Ellen Nakashima first disseminated the BS from 'CrowdStrike' in the
'WP.'
The story was picked up the following day in a report on the 'Ars Technica' site, and Tait's own account appeared on the 'Lawfare'
site, to which he has been a regular contributor, on 28 July.
According to the CV provided in conjunction with the new article:
'Matt Tait is a senior cybersecurity fellow at the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the University
of Texas at Austin. Previously he was CEO of Capital Alpha Security, a consultancy in the UK, worked at Google Project Zero, was
a principal security consultant for iSEC Partners, and NGS Secure, and worked as an information security specialist for GCHQ.'
As I have noted before on SST, a cursory examination of records at 'Companies House' establishes that 'Capital Alpha Security',
which was supposed to have provided Tait with an – independent – source of income at the time he unearthed this 'smoking gun' incriminating
the GRU, never did any business at all. So, a question arises: how was Tait making ends meet at that time: busking on the London
underground, perhaps?
Actually, there has been a recent update in the records. Somewhat prematurely perhaps, there is an entry dated 24 July 2018, entitled
'Final Gazette dissolved via compulsory strike-off. This document is being processed and will be available in 5 days.'
The document, when available, may clarify a few loose ends, but the general picture seems clear. Last November, Tait filed 'dormant
company accounts' for the company's first year in existence, up until February 2017. One can only do this if one has absolutely no
revenue, and absolutely no expenditure. Not even the smallest contract to sort out malware on someone's computer, or to buy equipment
for the office.
He then failed to file the 'Confirmation statement', which every company must is legally obliged to produce annually, if it is
not to be struck off. This failure led to a 'First Gazette notice for compulsory strike-off' in May.
It is, of course, possible that at the time Tait set up the company he was genuinely intending to try to make a go of a consultancy,
and simply got sidetracked by other opportunities.
However – speaking from experience – people who have set up small 'one man band' companies to market skills learnt in large organisations,
and then go back into such organisations, commonly think it worth their while to spend the minimal amount of time required to file
the documentation required to keep the company alive.
If one sees any realistic prospect that one may either want to or need to go back into the big wide world again, this is the sensible
course of action: particularly now when, with the internet, filing the relevant documentation takes about half an hour a year, and
costs a trivial sum.
However, Tait may well anticipate that there is there will never be any call for him to go back into the big wide world, as the
large organisation in which he has now found employment is part of a 'Borgist' network. So much is evident from another entry on
the 'Lawfare' site:
'Bobby Chesney is the Charles I. Francis Professor in Law and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the University of Texas School
of Law. He also serves as the Director of UT-Austin's interdisciplinary research center the Robert S. Strauss Center for International
Security and Law. His scholarship encompasses a wide range of issues relating to national security and the law, including detention,
targeting, prosecution, covert action, and the state secrets privilege; most of it is posted here. Along with Ben Wittes and Jack
Goldsmith, he is one of the co-founders of the blog.'
Also relevant here is the fact that, rather transparently, this placing of the GRU centre stage is bound up with the attempt to
suggest that there is some kind of 'Gerasimov doctrine', designed to undermine the West by 'hybrid warfare.' Unfortunately, the original author of this claptrap, Mark Galeotti, who, I regret to say, is, like Tait, British, has now recanted
and confessed. In March, he published a piece on the 'Foreign Policy' site, under the title: 'I'm Sorry for Creating the 'Gerasimov
Doctrine'; I was the first to write about Russia's infamous high-tech military strategy. One small problem: it doesn't exist.'
If anyone wants to grasp what the Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, General Valery Gerasimov,
was actually saying in the crucial February 2013 article which Galeotti was discussing, and how his thinking has developed subsequently,
the place to look is, as so often, the Foreign Military Studies Office at Fort Leavenworth.
In relation to the ongoing attempt to frame the GRU, it is material that, in his 2013 piece, Gerasimov harks back to two pivotal
figures in the arguments of the interwar years. Of these, Georgy Isserson, the Jewish doctor's son from Kaunas who became a Civil
War 'political commissar' and then a key associate of Mikhail Tukhachevsky, was the great pioneer theorist of 'deep operations.'
The ideas of the other, Aleksandr Svechin, the former Tsarist 'genstabist', born in Odessa into an ethnically Russian military
family, who was the key opponent of Tukhachevky and Isserson in the arguments of the 'Twenties, provided key parts of the intellectual
basis of the Gorbachev-era 'new thinking.'
The 'Ars Technica' article in which Tait's claims were initially disseminated opened:
'We still don't know who he is or whether he works for the Russian government, but one thing is for sure: Guccifer 2.0 – the nom
de guerre of the person claiming he hacked the Democratic National Committee and published hundreds of pages that appeared to prove
it – left behind fingerprints implicating a Russian-speaking person with a nostalgia for the country's lost Soviet era.'
In his 2013 article, Gerasimov harks back to the catastrophe which overcame the Red Army in June 1941. Ironically, this was the
product of the Stalinist leadership's disregard of the cautions produced not only by Svechin, but by Isserson. In regard to the latter,
the article remarks that:
'The fate of this "prophet of the Fatherland" unfolded tragically. Our country paid in great quantities of blood for not listening
to the conclusions of this professor of the General Staff Academy.'
As it happens, while both Svechin and Tukhachevsky were shot by the heirs of 'Felix Edmundovich', the sentence of death on Isserson
was commuted, and he spent the war in prison and labour camps, while others used his ideas to devastating effect against the Germans.
Quite clearly, the 'Guccifer 2.0' persona is a crude fabrication by someone who has absolutely no understanding of, or indeed
interest in, the bitter complexities of both of the history of Russia and of the 'borderlands', not only in the Soviet period but
before and after.
Using this criterion as a 'filter', the obvious candidates are traditional Anglo-Saxon 'Russophobes', like Sir Richard Dearlove
and Christopher Steele, or the 'insulted and injured' of the erstwhile Russian and Soviet empires, so many of them from the 'borderlands',
of the type of Victoria Nuland, or the various Poles, Ukrainians and Balts and Jews who have had so much influence on American policy.
(I should note that other Jews, not only in Russia, but outside, including in Israel, think quite differently, in particular as
they are very well aware, as Isserson would have been, of the extent to which 'borderlands' nationalists were enthusiastic collaborators
with the Germans in the 'Final Solution'. On this, there is a large and growing academic literature.)
It is not particularly surprising that many of the victims of the Russian and Soviet empires have enjoyed seeing the tables turned,
and getting their own back. But it is rather far from clear that this makes for good intelligence or sound policy. We were unable
to load Disqus. If you are a moderator please see our troubleshooting
guide .
How does the objective truth get disclosed in an environment of extreme deceit by so many parties?
How to trust western intelligence when they have such a long and sordid track record of deceit, lies and propaganda? At the
same time there is such a long history of Russian and Chinese intelligence and information operations against the west.
Then there is the nexus among the highest levels of US law enforcement and intelligence as well as political elites in both
parties and key individuals in the media complex.
We are living in a hall of mirrors and it seems the trend is towards confirmation bias in information consumption.
Excellent post, especially the debunking of the 'Gerasimov doctrine' which I always thought was more hand-waving and Russian mind-reading.
It's important to realize that there are a number of people in the infosec community who have biases against Russia, just as
there are in the general population. Then there are more cautious people, who recognize the difficulty in attributing a hack to
any specific person absent solid, incontrovertible, non-circumstantial and non-spoofable (and preferably offline) evidence.
Tait doesn't appear to be one of the latter. Thomas Rid would be another. There are others.
Jeffrey Carr is one of the latter, and his familiarity with intelligence matters is clear from his organization of the annual
"Suits and Spooks" Conference. I believe he was the first to raise questions about the DNC hack which didn't pass his smell test.
There are also a number of companies in infosec who rely on latching onto a particular strain of hacker, the more publicly
exploitable for PR purposes the better, as a means of keeping the company name in front of potential high-profile and highly billable
clients. CrowdStrike and its Russia obsession isn't the only one that's been tagged with that propensity.
Mandiant could be referred to as the "Chinese, all the time" company, for example. Richard Bejtlich was at Fireeye and the
became Chief Security Officer when they acquired Mandiant. He spent quite a bit of effort on his blog warning about the Chinese
military buildup as a huge threat to the US. He's former USAF so perhaps that's not surprising.
Glad David's comment has been reproduced as a post in its own right, this is a critically important topic. IMO Matt Tait plays
the role of midwife in this conspiracy. His
Twitter thread
The Comey, Brennan, Mueller claim - indeed a central one upon which the recent indictment rests- that Guccifer 2.0 was a Russian
State agent that hacked the DNC- was discredited and put to rest last year by the forensics conducted by Bill Binney and his colleagues.
The Guccifer 2.0 metadata was analyzed for its transmission speed, and based on the internet speeds to and from numerous test
locations abroad and in the U.S., it was determined to have been impossible for the so-called Guccifer 2.0 to have hacked the
DNC computers over the internet. The transmission speed however did correspond to the speed of the transfer to a thumb drive.
Additionally, it was found that the data had been manipulated and split into two parts to simulate a July and a September transfer,
when in fact the parts merge perfectly as single file, and where, according to Binney, the probability of the split being a coincidence
would be 100 to the 50th power.
As for the crude trace fingerprints (e.g. the referencing of Dzerzinsky), one of the Wikileaks data dumps (Vault 7 Marble)
during a period when Assange was negotiating with the Administration - there were two at the time (Vault 7 Marble and Vault 7
Grasshopper), the release of which apparently enraged Mike Pompeo- was designed to obfuscate, fabricate and frame countries such
as Russia, Iran or North Korea by pretending to be the target country, including in the use of target's alphabet and language.
VIPs has written numerous articles on this in Consortium News. See also the report by Patrick Lawrence Smith in The Nation
at:
https://www.thenation.com/a... . (It was apparently so hot at the time- and disputed by several other VIPs members- that The
Nation sought an independent assessment by third party, though those comments were easily addressed and dismissed in seriatim
by Binney in an annex to the article.)
Binney has explained his forensic analysis and conclusions at numerous forums, and in a sit-down with Secretary Pompeo in October,
2017- though Mueller, the FBI, and mainstream and some of the alternative press seem either deaf, dumb and blind to it all, or
interested in discrediting the study. The irony is, I'd venture to guess, that Binney, with his 40 years of experience, including
as Technical Director and technical guru at the NSA, is, even in retirement, more sophisticated in these matters than any one
at the Agency, or the FBI, or CIA, or certainly, the Congressional Intelligence Committees. So, it is astounding that any or all
of them could have, but did not, invite him to testify as an expert.
Moreover, the NSA has a record of every transmission, and also would have it on backup files. And, the FBI has been sitting
on Seth Rich's computer and his communications with Wikileaks, and presumably has a report that it has not released. And of course,
as Trump asked in his press conference, where's the DNC server, any or all of which would put this question to rest.
The last clause of the first paragraph should have said: "according to Binney, the probability of the split being a coincidence
would be one over 100 to the 50th power
There is a pattern of abuse of formerly well regarded institutions to achieve the propaganda aims of the Deep State establishment.
The depths that were plumbed to push the Iraq WMD falsehoods are well known. Yet no one was held to account nor was there any
honest accounting of the abuse. There have been pretenses like the Owen inquiry that you note.
We see the same situation of sweeping under the rug malfeasance and even outright criminality through obfuscation and obstruction
in the case of the meddling in the 2016 election by top officials in intelligence and law enforcement. Clearly less and less people
are buying what the Deep State sells despite their overwhelming control of the media channels.
It seems that we are marching towards a credibility crisis similar to what was experienced in the Soviet Union when no
one trusted the contents in Pravda.
What is to be gained by the leadership in Britain in promoting these biological weapons cases since Litvinenko? In the
US it is quite apparent that the Deep State have become extremely powerful and the likelihood that Trump recognizes that resistance
is futile is very high. Schumer may be proven right that they have six ways from Sunday to make you kowtow to their dictats.
That was one of the changes being hoped for when Obama was first elected. Instead we got little, except for things such as
bailed out bankers and the IRS scandal which lasted until the end of his 2nd term. The panic from the left over the 2016 election
issues the are still going on is that the expected candidate isn't in office and they are being exposed. Whether they get prosecuted
is another story.
I think Matt Tait, David Habakkuk and many others are reading far more into this Dzerzinsky thing than what it warrants. The government
dependent ID cards used by my family while I was working as a clandestine case officer overseas were signed by Robert Ludlum.
Intelligence officers often have an odd sense of humor.
On a different note, I fully endorse David Habakkuk's recommendation of the writings of Bartles, McDermott and many others
at the Foreign Military Studies Office at Fort Leavenworth. They are top notch. I learned a lot from Tim Thomas many years ago.
I agree that taken by itself, the Dzerzinsky thing would be an anomaly only and could be dismissed as "black humor" of a kind
often found in hackers. However, taken with all the other evidence produced by Adam Carter, it becomes much more obviously an
attempt to support a false flag "Russian hacker" narrative that otherwise is porous.
I believe there is a phrase going something like "an attempt to add verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative."
You want us to believe that the GRU are so sloppy and so inexperienced that they would launch a hack on the DNC and not
take every measure to ensure there was no link whatsoever to anything Russian? Any former intel officer worth a damn knows that
an operation to disrupt the election in a country the size of the United States would start with a risk/reward assessment, would
require a team of at least 100 persons and would not be writing any code that could in any way be traced to Russia.
Unfortunately, the original author of this claptrap, Mark Galeotti, who, I regret to say, is, like Tait, British, has now recanted
and confessed.
Doctrine-mongering and repeating birth of new faux-academic "entities", such as a "hybrid war" (any war is hybrid by definition),
is a distinct feature of the Western "political science-military history" establishment. Galeotti, who for some strange reason
passes as Russia "expert" is a perfect example of such "expertise" and doctrine-mongering. Military professionals largely met
this "hybrid warfare" BS with disdain.
I have to say that the more I look into this whole Russiagate affair, which is mostly in the minds of democrats (and a few
republicans) and the MSM, the more it seems that there is indeed a foreign conspiracy to meddle in the internal affairs of the
US (and in the presidential elections) but the meddling entity is not Russia. It is the British!
So many (ex-) MI6 operators (Steele, Tait, etc) involved in the story. It is interesting that the media don't question
the intense involvement of the British in all this. And of course, the British haven't been laggards in adding fuel to the fire
by the whole novichok hoax.
This needs to be looked at in more detail by the alternative media and well informed commentators like the host of this site.
Intelligence community is a new Praetorian guard which since JFK murder can decide the fate of presidents.
Notable quotes:
"... Peter Strzok, the disgraced and disgraceful Federal Bureau of Investigation official, is the very definition of a slimy swamp creature. Strzok twitched, grimaced and ranted his way to infamy during a joint hearing of the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees, on July 12. ..."
"... Strzok is the youthful face of the venerated "Intelligence Community," itself part of the sprawling political machine that makes up the D.C. comitatus ..."
"... Smug, self-satisfied, cheating creature that he is, Strzok can't take responsibility for his own misconduct, and blames Russia for dividing America. In the largely progressive bureau, moreover, Agent Strzok is neither underling nor outlier, for that matter. ..."
"... A "blind bootlicking faith in spooks" is certainly unwarranted and may even be foolish. What of odious individuals like former FBI Director Andrew McCabe, and his predecessor, James Comey, now openly campaigning for the Democrats? Are these leaders outliers in the "Intelligence Community"? ..."
"... Similarly, it's hard to think of a more partisan operator than John O. Brennan -- he ran the CIA under President Obama. True to type, he cast a vote for Communist Party USA, back in 1976, when the current Russia monomania would have been justified. Brennan has dubbed President Trump a traitor for having dared to doubt people like himself. ..."
"... The very embodiment of the Surveillance State at its worst is Michael V. Hayden. Hayden has moved seamlessly from the National Security Agency and the CIA to CNN where he beats up on Trump. The former Bush employee hollered treason: "One of the most disgraceful performances of an American president in front of a Russian leader," Hayden inveighed. Not only had POTUS dared to explore the possibility of a truce with Russia, which is a formidable nuclear power; but the president had the temerity to express a smidgen of skepticism about a community littered with spooks like Mr. Hayden. ..."
"... Pray tell, since when does the Deep State -- FBI, CIA, DIA, NSA, DNI, (Director of National Intelligence), on and on -- represent, or stand for, the American People? The president, conversely, actually got the support of at least 60 million Americans. ..."
"... Outside the Beltway, ordinary folks -- Deplorables, if you will -- have to sympathize with the president's initial and honest appraisal of the Intelligence Community's collective intelligence. This is the community that has sent us into quite a few recreational, hobby wars. ..."
Peter Strzok, the disgraced and disgraceful Federal Bureau of Investigation official, is the very definition of a slimy swamp
creature. Strzok twitched, grimaced and ranted his way to infamy during a joint hearing of the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees,
on July 12.
In no way had he failed to discharge his professional unbiased obligation to the public, asserted Strzok. He had merely
expressed the hope that "the American population would not elect somebody demonstrating such horrible, disgusting behavior."
But we did not elect YOU, Mr. Strzok. We elected Mr. Trump.
Strzok is the youthful face of the venerated "Intelligence Community," itself part of the sprawling political machine that
makes up the D.C. comitatus , now writhing like a fire breathing mythical monster against President Donald Trump.
As Ann Coulter observed, the FBI is not the FBI of J. Edgar Hoover. Neither is the Intelligence Community
Philip Haney's IC
any longer. Haney was a heroic, soft-spoken, demure employee at the Department of Homeland Security. Agents like him are often fired
if they don't get with the program. He didn't. Haney's method and the
authentic intelligence he mined and developed might have stopped the likes of the San Bernardino mass murderers and many others.
Instead, his higher-ups in the "Intelligence Community" made Haney and his data disappear.
Post Haney, the FBI failed to adequately screen and stop Syed Farook and blushing bride Tashfeen Malik.
A "blind bootlicking faith in spooks" is certainly unwarranted and may even be foolish. What of odious individuals like former
FBI Director Andrew McCabe, and his predecessor, James Comey, now openly campaigning for the Democrats? Are these leaders outliers
in the "Intelligence Community"?
As Peter Strzok might say to his paramour in a private tweet, "Who ya gonna believe, the Intelligence Community or your
own lying eyes?" The Bureau in particular and the IC cabal, in general, appear to be dominated by the likes of the dull-witted Mr.
Strzok.
Similarly, it's hard to think of a more partisan operator than John O. Brennan -- he ran the CIA under President Obama. True
to type, he cast a vote for Communist Party USA, back in 1976, when the current Russia monomania would have been justified. Brennan
has dubbed President Trump a traitor for having dared to doubt people like himself.
The very embodiment of the Surveillance State at its worst is Michael V. Hayden. Hayden has moved seamlessly from the National
Security Agency and the CIA to CNN where he beats up on Trump. The former Bush employee hollered treason: "One of the most disgraceful
performances of an American president in front of a Russian leader," Hayden inveighed. Not only had POTUS dared to explore the possibility
of a truce with Russia, which is a formidable nuclear power; but the president had the temerity to express a smidgen of skepticism
about a community littered with spooks like Mr. Hayden.
As one wag
noted
, not unreasonably, ours is "a highly-politicized intelligence community, infiltrated over decades by cadres of Deep State operatives
and sleeper agents, whose goal is to bring down this presidency."
Pray tell, since when does the Deep State --
FBI, CIA, DIA, NSA, DNI, (Director of National Intelligence), on and on -- represent, or stand for, the American People? The
president, conversely, actually got the support of at least 60 million Americans.
That's a LOT of support. Outside the Beltway, ordinary folks -- Deplorables, if you will -- have to sympathize with the president's
initial and honest appraisal of the Intelligence Community's collective intelligence. This is the community that has sent us into
quite a few recreational, hobby wars.
And this is the community that regularly intercepts but fails to surveys and stop the likes of mass murderers Syed Farook and
bride Tashfeen Malik. Or, Orlando nightclub killer Omar Mateen, whose father the Bureau saw fit to
hire as an informant. The same "community" has invited the Muslim Public Affairs Council and the Arab-American Institute to help
shape FBI counterterrorism training.
The FBI might not be very intelligent at all. About the quality of that intelligence, consider: On August 3, 2016, as the mad
media were amping up their Russia monomania, a frenzied BuzzFeed -- it calls itself a news org -- reported that "the Russian foreign
ministry had wired nearly $30,000 through a Kremlin-backed bank to its embassy in Washington, DC."
Intercepted by American intelligence, the Russian wire
stipulated
that the funds were meant "to finance the election campaign of 2016." Was this not "meddling in our election" or what? Did
we finally have irrefutable evidence of Kremlin culpability? The FBI certainly thought so. "Worse still, this was only one of 60
transfers that were being scrutinized by the FBI,"
wrote
the Economist, in November of 2017. "Similar transfers were made to other countries." As it transpired, the money was wired from
the Kremlin to embassies the world over. Its purpose? Russia was preparing to hold parliamentary elections in 2016 and had sent funds
to Russian embassies "to organize the polling for expatriates."
While it did update its Fake News factoids, Buzzfeed felt no compunction whatsoever to remove the erroneous item or publicly question
their sources in the unimpeachable "Intelligence Community."
Most news media are just not as inquisitive as President Trump.
Looks like another Steele dossier and it has Brennan fingertips all over. Looks like another
exercise in creation of a parallel reality. The content of the document implies that malware was
installed in GRU computers and those computers were monitored 24/7 by CIA. The documents
describes both GNU officers and DNC employees as unsophisticated idiots. DNC employees who who
should undergo some basic security training were easily deceived by fishing emails from a foreign
country. And a good practice is to disable hotlinks in emails.
I always suspected that Guccifer 2.0 was a false flag operation to hide the leak of DNC
documents. If this is true this was really sophisticated false flag.
BTW GRU is military intelligence unit, so to hack into civil computers is kind of out of
their main sphere of activities. They also should be aware about NSA capabilities of intercepting
the traffic.
I especially like the following tidbit: "On or about June 1,2016, the Conspirators attempted
to delete traces of their presence on the DCCC network using the computer program CCleaner." This
is how third rate hackers (wannabes) behave.
First of all the investigation of DNC was botched by hiring a private, connected to
Democratic Party security company (Crowdstrike), so no data from it are acceptable in court. FBI
did not have any access to the data.
Which means that Mueller is a patsy of more powerful forces
How about speed of download that proved to be excessive for Internet connection? Nothing is
said about Dmitri
Alperovitch role is all this investigation, which completely discredit all that results? See for example diuscusstion at
Why
Crowdstrike's Russian Hacking Story Fell Apart- Say Hello to Fancy Bear And, again, the question is: Was Guccifer 2.0 in itself a USA false flag operation ?
Looks like Mueller is acting as an operative of Democratic Party. Could not dig up enough
dirt on Trump, so he now saddled his beloved horse, trying to provoke Russia to respond.
And this John Le Carre style details about individuals supposedly involved. Probably were
provided by CIA ;-)
4. By in or around April 2016, the Conspirators also hacked into the computer networks of
the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee ("DCCC") and the Democratic National Committee
("DNC"). The Conspirators covertly monitored the computers of dozens of DCCC and DNC employees,
implanted hundreds of files containing malicious computer code ("malware"), and stole emails
and other documents from the DCCC and DNC.
5. By in or around April 2016, the Conspirators began to plan the release of materials
stolen from the Clinton Campaign, DCCC, and DNC.
6. Beginning in or around June 2016, the Conspirators staged and released tens of thousands
of the stolen emails and documents. They did so using fictitious online personas, including
"DCLeaks" and "Guccifer 2.0."
7. The Conspirators also used the Guccifer 2.0 persona to release additional stolen
documents through a website maintained by an organization ("Organization Iй), that had
previously posted documents stolen from U.S. persons, entities, and the U.S. government The
Conspirators continued their U.S. election-interference operations through in or around
November 2016.
8. To hide their connections to Russia and the Russian government, the Conspirators used
false identities and made false statements about their identities. To further avoid detection,
the Conspirators used a network of computers located across the world, including in the United
States, and paid for this infrastructure using cryptocurrency.
... ... ...
13. Defendant ALEKSEY VIKTOROVICH LUKASHEV
(Лукашсв
Алексей
Викторович) was a Senior Lieutenant
in the Russian military assigned to ANTONOV's department within Unit 26165. LUKASHEV used
various online personas, including "Den Katenberg" and "Yuliana Martynova." In on around 2016,
LUKASHEV sent spcarphisliing emails to members of the Clinton Campaign and affiliated
individuals, including the chairman of the Clinton Campaign.
14. Defendant SERGEY ALEKSANDROVICH MORGACHEV
(Моргачев
Сергей
Александрович)
was a Lieutenant Colonel in the Russian military assigned to Unit 26165. MORGACHEV oversaw a
department within Unit 26165 dedicated to developing and managing malware, including a hacking
tool used by the GRU known as "X-Agent." During the hacking of the DCCC and DNC networks,
MORGACHEV supervised the co-conspirators who developed and monitored the X-Agent malware
implanted on those computers.
15. Defendant NIKOLAY YURYEVICH KOZACHEK (Козачек
Николай
Юрьевич) was a Lieutenant Captain in the Russian
military assigned to MORGACHEV's department within Unit 26165. KOZACHEK used a variety of
monikers, including "kazak" and "blablablal234565 " KOZACHEK developed, customized, and
monitored X-Agent malware used to hack the DCCC and DNC networks beginning in or around April
2016.
16. Defendant PAVEL VYACHESLAVOVICH YERSHOV (Ершов
Павел
Вячеславович) was a
Russian military officer assigned to MORGACHEV's department within Unit 26165. In or around
2016, YERSHOV assisted KOZACHEK and other co-conspirators in testing and customizing X-Agent
malware before actual deployment and use.
17. Defendant ARTEM ANDREYEVICH MALYSHEV (Малышев
Арт е м
Андреевич) was a Second Lieutenant in the
Russian military assigned to MORGACHEV's department within Unit 26165. MALYSIIEV used a variety
of monikers, including "djangomagicdev" and "realblatr." In or around 2016, MALYSHEV monitored
X-Agent malware implanted on the DCCC and DNC networks.
18. Defendant ALEKSANDR VLADIMIROVICH OSADCHUK
(Осадчук
Александр В
ладимирович) was a Colonel in
the Russian military and the commanding officer of Unit 74455. Unit 74455 was located at 22
Kirova Street, Khimki, Moscow, a building referred to within the GRU as the 'Tower." Unit 74455
assisted in the release of stolen documents through the DC Leaks and Guccifer 2.0 personas, the
promotion of those releases, and the publication of anti-Clinton content on social media
accounts operated by the GRU.
19. Defendant ALEKSEY ALEKSANDROVICH POTEMKIN
(Потемкин
Алексей
Александрович)
was an officer in the Russian military assigned to Unit 74455. POTEMKIN was a supervisor in a
department within Unit 7445f responsible for the administration of computer infrastructure used
in cyber operations. Infrastructure and social media accounts administered by POTEMKIN'S
department were used, among other things, to assist in the release of stolen documents through
the DCLeaks and Guccifer 2 0 personas.
21, ANTONOV, BADIN, YKRMAKOV, LUKASHEV, and their co-conspiratore targeted victims using a
technique known as spearphishing to steal victims' passwords or otherwise gain access to their
computers. Beginning by at least March 2016, the Conspirators targeted over 300 individuals
affiliated with the Clinton Campaign, DCCC, and DNC.
a. For example, on or about March 19, 2016, LUKASHEV and his co-conspirators created and
sent a spearphishing email to the chairman of the Clinton Campaign. LUKASHEV used the account
"John356gh" at an online service that abbreviated lengthy website addresses (referred to as a
"URL-shortcning service"). LIJKASHEV used the account to mask a link contained in the
spearphishing email, which directed the recipient to a GRU-created website. LUKASHEV altered
the a security notification from Google (a technique known as "spoofing"), instructing the user
to change his password by clicking the embedded link. Those instructions wore followed. On or
about March 21, 2016, LUKASHEV, YERMAKOV, and their co-conspirators stole the contents of the
chairman's email account, which consisted of over 50,000 emails.
Starting on or about March 19, 2016, LUKASHEV and his co-conspirators sent spearphishing
emails to the personal accounts of other individuals affiliated with the Clinton Campaign,
including its campaign manager and a senior foreign policy advisor. On or about March 25, 2016,
LUKASHEV used the same john356gh account to mask additional links included in spearphishing
emails sent to numerous individuals affiliated with the Clinton Campaign, including Victims 1
and 2. LUKASliEV sent these emails from the Russia-based email account [email protected] that he spoofed to appear to be from
Google. On or about March 28,2016, YERMAKOV researched the names of Victims 1 and 2 and their
association with Clinton on various social media sites. Through their spearphishing operations,
LUKASHEV, YERMAKOV, and their co-conspirators successfully stole email credentials and
thousands of emails from numerous individuals affiliated with the Clinton Campaign. Many of
these stolen emails. Including those from Victims 1 and 2, were later released by the
Conspirators through DCLeaks.
On or about April 6, 2016, the Conspirators created an email account in the name (with a
one-letter deviation from the actual spelling) of a known member of the Clinton Campaign. The
Conspirators then used that account to send spearphishing emails to the work accounts of more
than thirty different Clinton Campaign employees. In the spearphishipg emails, LUKASHEV and his
co-conspirators embedded a link purporting to direct the recipient to a document titled
"hillary-clinton-favorable-rating.xlsx " In fact, this link directed the recipients' computers
to a GRU-crcatcd website.
22. The Conspirators spearphished individuals affiliated with the Clinton Campaign
throughout the summer of 2016. For example, on or about July 27, 2016, the Conspirators
attempted after hours to spearphish for the first time email accounts at a domain hosted by a
third-
party provider and used by Clinton's personal office. At or around the same time, they also
targeted seventy-six email addresses at the domain for the Clinton Campaign.
Hacking into the DCCC Network
23. Beginning in or around March 2016, the Conspirators, in addition to their spearphishing
efforts, researched the DCCC and DNC computer networks to identify technical specifications and
vulnerabilities.
For example, beginning on or about March 15,2016, YERMAKOV ran a technical query for the
DNC's internet protocol configurations to identify connected devices.
On or about the same day, YERMAKOV searched for opcn-source information about the DNC
network, the Democratic Party, and Hillary Clinton.
On or about April 7. 2016. YKRMAKOV ran я technical query for the DNC's internet
protocol configurations to identify connected devices.
24. By in or around April 2016, within days of YERMAKOV's searches regarding the DCCC, the
Conspirators hacked into the DCCC computer network. Once they gained access, they installed and
managed different types of malware to explore the DCCC network and steal data.
a. On or about April 12,2016. the Conspirators used the stolen credentials of a I )CCC On or
about April 12,2016, the Conspirators used the stolen credentials of a DCCC Employee ('"DCCC
Employee 1") to access the DCCC network. DCCC Employee 1 had received a spearphishing email
from the Conspirators on or about April 6,2016, and entered her password after clicking on the
link.
b. Between in or around April 2016 and June 2016, the Conspirators installed multiple
versions of their X-Agent malware on at least ten DCCC computers, which allowed them to monitor
individual employees' computer activity, steal passwords, and maintain access to the DCCC
network.
c. X-Agent malware implanted on the DCCC network transmitted information from the victims'
computers to a GRU-leased server located in Arizona. The Conspirators referred to this server
as their "AMS" panel. KOZACHEK, MALYSHEV, and their со-conspirators logged into the
AMS panel to use X-Agent's keylog and screenshot functions in the course of monitoring and
surveilling activity on the DCCC computers. 'Ibe keylog function allowed the Conspirators to
capture keystrokes entered by DCCC employees. The screenshot function allowed the Conspirators
to take pictures of the DCCC employees' computer screens.
d. For example, on or about April 14, 2016, the Conspirators repeatedly activated X-Agent's
keylog and screensiot functions to surveil DCCC Employee 1's computer activity over the course
of eight hours. During that time, the Conspirators captured DCCC Employee 1 's communications
with co-workers and the passwords she entered while working on fundraising and voter outreach
projects. Similarly, on or about April 22, 2016, the Conspirators activated X-Agcnt's keylog
and screenshot functions to capture the discussions of another DCCC Employee ("DCCC Employee
2") about the DCCC's finances, as well as her individual banking information and other personal
topics.
25. On or about April 19, 2016, KOZAC1IEK, YERSIIOV, and their co-conspirators remotely
configured an overseas computer to relay communications between X-Agent malware and the AMS
panel and then tested X-Agent's ability to connect to this computer. The Conspirators referred
to this computer as a "middle server." The middle server acted as a proxy to obscure the
connection between malware at the DCCC and the Conspirators' AMS panel. On or about April 20,
2016, the Conspirators directed X-Agent malware on the DCCC computers to connect to this middle
server and receive directions from the Conspirators.
Hacking into the DNC Network
26. On or about April 18, 2016, the Conspirators hacked into the DNC's computers through
their access to the DCCC network. The Conspirators then installed and managed different types
of malware (as they did in the DCCC network) to explore the DNC network and steal documents, a.
On or about April 18, 2016, the Conspirators activated X-Agent's keylog and screenshot
functions to steal credentials of a DCCC employee who was authorized
to access the DNC network. The Conspirators hacked into the DNC network from the DCCC network
using stolen credentials. By in or around June 2016, they gained access to approximately
thirty-three DNC computers.
In or around April 2016, the Conspirators installed X Agent malware on tho DNC network,
including the same versions installed on the DCCC network.
MALYSHEV and his co-conspifators monitored the X-Agent malware from the AMS panel and captured
data from the victim computers. The AMS panel collected thousands of keylog and screenshot
results from the DCCC and DNC computers, such as a screenshot and keystroke capture of DCCC
Employee 2 viewing the DCCC's online banking information.
Theft of DCCC and DNC Documents
27. The Conspirators searched for and identified computers within the DCCC and DNC networks
that stored information related to the 2016 U.S. presidential election, for example, on or
about April 15, 2016, the Conspirators searched one hacked DCCC computer for terms that
included "hillary," "cruz," and "trump." The Conspirators also copied select DCCC folders,
including "Benghazi Investigations." The Conspirators targeted computers containing information
such as opposition research and field operation plans for the 2016 elections.
28. To enable them to steal a large number of documents at once without detection, the
Conspirators used a publicly available tool to gather and compress multiple documents on the
DCCC and DNC networks. The Conspirators then used other GRU malware, known as "X-Tunncl," to
move the stolen documents cutside the DCCC and DNC networks through encrypted channels.
a. For example, on or about April 22, 2016, the Conspirators compressed gigabytes of data
from DNC computers, including opposition research. The Conspirators later moved the compressed
DNC data using X-Tunnel to a GRU-leased computer located in Illinois.
b. On or about April 28, 2016, the Conspirators connected to and tested the same computer
located in Illinois. Later that day, the Conspirators used X-Tunnel to connect to that computer
to steal additional documents from the DCCC network.
29. Between on or about May 25, 2016 and June 1, 2016, the Conspirators hacked the DNC
Microsoft Exchange Server and stole thousands of emails from the work accounts of DNC
employees. During that time, YERMAKOV researched PowerShell commands related to accessing and
managing the Microsoft Exchange Server.
30. On or about May 30, 2016, MALYSHEV accessed the AMS panel in order to upgrade custom AMS
software on die server. That day, the AMS panel received updates from approximately thirteen
different X-Agent malware implants on DCCC and DNC computers.
31. During the hacking of the DCCC and DNC networks, the Conspirators covered their tracks
by Intentionally deleting logs and computer flies. For example, on or about May 13, 2016, the
Conspirators cleared the event logs from a DNC computer. On or about June 20, 2016, the
Conspirators deleted logs from the AMS panel that documented their activities on the panel,
including the login history. Efforts to Remain on the X'CC and PNC Networks
32. Despite the Conspirators' efforts to hide their activity, beginning in or around May
2016, both the DCCC and DNC became aware that they had been hacked and hired a security company
("Company 1") to identify the extent of the intrusions. By in or around June 2016, Company 1
took steps to exclude intruders from the networks. Despite these efforts, a Linux-based version
of X-Agent, programmed to communicate with the GRU-registercd domain linuxkml.net, remained on
the DNC network until in or around October 2016.
33. In response to Company Ts efforts, the Conspirators took countermeasures to maintain
access to the DCCC and DNC networks.
a. Oil 01 about May 31, 2016, YERMAKOV searched for opcn-sourcc information about Company 1
and its reporting on X-Agent and X-Tunnel. On or about June 1,2016, the Conspirators attempted
to delete traces of their presence on the DCCC network using the computer program CCleaner.
b. On or about June 14, 2016, the Conspirators registered the domain actblues.com,
which mimicked the domain of a political fundraising platform that included a
DCCC donations page. Shortly thereafter, the Conspirators used stolen DCCC
credentials to modify the DCCC website and redirect visitors to the actblucs.com
On or about June 14, 2016, the Conspirators registered the domain actblues.com,
which mimicked the domain of a political fundraising platform that included a
DCCC donations page. Shortly thereafter, the Conspirators used stolen DCCC
credentials to modify the DCCC website and redirect visitors to the actblucs.com
domain.
On or about June 20, 2016, after Company 1 had disabled X-Agent on the DCCC
network, the Conspirators spent ever seven hours unsuccessfully trying to connect
to X-Agent. The Conspirators also tried to access the DCCC network using
previously stolen credentials.
34. In or around September 2016, the Conspirators also successfully gained access to DNC
computers hosted on a third-party cloud-computing service. These computers contained test
applications related to the DNC's analytics. After conducting reconnaissance, the
Conspirators
gathered data by creating backups, or "snapshots," of the DNC's eloud-based systems using
the
cloud provider's own technology. The Conspirators then moved the snapshots to cloud-based
accounts they had registered with the same service, thereby stealing the data from the DNC.
Stolen Documents Released through DCLcaks
35. More than a month before the release of any documents, the Conspirators constructed the
online persona DCLeaks to release and publicize stolen election-related documents. On or about
April 19, 2016, after attempting to register the domain clcctionleaks.com, the Conspirators
registered the domain dcleaks.com through a service that anonymizcd the registrant. The funds
used to pay for the dcleaks.com domain originated from an online cryptocutrrecy service that
the Conspirators also used to fund the lease of a virtual private server registered with the
operational email account [email protected]. The dirbinsaabol email account was also used
to register the john356gh URL-shortening account used by LUKASHEV to spearphish the Clinton
Campaign chairman and other campaign-related individuals.
36. On or about June 8,2016, the Conspirators launched the public website dcleaks.com, which
they used to release stolen emails. Before it shut down in or around March 2017, the site
received over one million page views. The Conspirators falsely claimed on the site that DCLeaks
was started by a group of "American hacktivists," when in fact it was started by the
Conspirators.
37. Starting in or around June 2016 and continuing through the 2016 U.S. presidential
election, the Conspirators used DCLeaks to release emails stolen from individuals affiliated
with the Clinton Campaign. The Conspirators also released documents they had stolen in other
spearphishing operations, including those they had conducted in 2015 that collected emails from
individuals affiliated with the Republican Party.
38. On or about June 8,2016, and at approximately the same time that the dcleaks.com website
was launched, the Conspirators created a DCLeaks Facebook page using a preexisting social media
account under the fictitious name "Alice Donovan." In addition to the DCLeaks Facebook page,
the Conspirators used other social media accounts in the names of fictitious U.S. persons such
as "Jason Scott" and "Richard Gingrey" to promote the DCLeaks website. The Conspirators
accessed these accounts from computers managed by POTEMKFN and his co-conspirators.
39. On or about June 8, 2016, the Conspirators created the Twitter account @dcleaks_. The
Conspirators operated the @dclcaks_ Twitter account from the same computer used for other
efforts to interfere with the 2016 U.S. presidential election. For example, the Conspirators
used the same computer to operate the Twitter account @BaltimorcIsWhr, through which they
encouraged U.S. audiences to "[j]oin our flash mob" opposing Clinton and to post images with
the hashtag #BlacksAgainstHillary.
Stolen Documents Released through Guccifer 2.0
40. On or about June 14, 2016, the DNC -- through Company 1 -- publicly announced that it
had been hacked by Russian government actors. In response, the Conspirators created the online
persona Guccifer 2.0 and falsely claimed to be a lone Romanian hacker to undermine the
allegations of Russian responsibility for the intrusion.
41. On or about June 15,2016, the Conspirators logged into a Moscow-based server used and
managed by Unit 74455 and, between 4:19 PM and 4:56 PM Moscow Standard Time, searched for
certain words and phrases, including:
Search terms
"some hundred sheets"
"some hundreds of sheets"
dcleaks
illuminati
широко
известный
перевод [widely known translation]
"worldwide known"
"think twice about"
"company's competence"
42. Later that day, at 7:02 PM Moscow Standard Time, the online persona Guccifer 2.0
published its first post on a blog site created through WordPress. Titled "DNC's servers hacked
by a lone hacker," the post used numerous English words and phrases that the Conspirators had
searched for earlier that day (bolded below):
Worldwide known cyber security company [Company 1] announced that the Democratic National
Committee (DNC) servers had been hacked by
"sophisticated" hacker groups.
I'm very pleased the company appreciated my skills so highly))) [...]
Here are just a few docs from many thousands I extracted when hacking
into DNC's network. [...]
Some hundred sheets! This's a serious case, isn't it? [...]
I guess [Company 1] customers should think twice about company's competence.
F[***J the Illuminati and their conspiracies! МШШ F[***]
[Company 1] !!!!!!!!
43. Between in or around June 2016 and October 2016, the Conspirators used Guccifer 2.0 to
release documents through WordPrcss that they had stolen from the DCCC and DNC. The
Conspirators, posing as Guccifer 2.0, also shared stolen documents with certain
individuals.
a. On or about August 15,2016, the Conspirators, posing as Guccifer 2.0, received a request
for stolen documents from a candidate for the U.S. Congress. The Conspirators responded using
the Guccifer 2.0 persona and sent the candidate stolen documents related to the candidate's
opponent. On or about August 22,2016, the Conspirators, posing as Guccifer 2.0, transferred
approximately 2.5 gigabytes of data stolen from the DCCC to a then-registered state lobbyist
and online source of political news. The stolen data included donor records and personal
identifying information for more than 2,000 Democratic donors.
On or about August 22, 2016, the Conspirators, posing as Guccifer 2.0, sent a reporter
stolen documents pertaining to the Black Lives Matter movement. The reporter responded by
discussing when to release the documents and offering to write an article about their
release.
44. The Conspirators, posing as Guccifer 2.0, also communicated with U.S. persons about the
release of stolen documents. On or about August 15, 2016, the Conspirators, posing as Guccifer
2.0, wrote to a person who was in regular contact with senior members of the presidential
campaign of Donald J. TVump, "thank u for writing back... do u find anyt[h]ing interesting in
the docs i posted?" On or about August 17, 2016, the Conspirators added, "please tell me if i
can help u anyhow ... it would be a great pleasure to me." On or about September 9,2016, the
Conspirators, again posing as Guccifer 2.0, referred to a stolen DCCC document posted online
and asked the person, "what do u think of the info on the tunout model for the democrats entire
presidential campaign." The person responded, "[p]retty standard."
45. The Conspirators conducted operations as Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks using overlapping
computer infrastructure and financing.
a. For example, between on or about March 14, 2016 and April 28. 2016, the Conspirators used
the same pool of bitcoin funds to purchase a virtual private network ("VPN") account and to
lease a server in Malaysia. In or around June 2016, the Conspirators used the Malaysian server
to host the dcleaks.com website.
On or about July 6, 2016, the Conspirators used the VPN to log into the @Guccifcr_2 Twitter
account. The Conspirators opened that VPN account from
the same server that was also used to register malicious domains for the hacking of the DCCC
and DNC networks.
On or about June 27, 2016, the Conspirators, posing as Guccifer 2.0, contacted a U.S.
reporter with an offer to provide stolen emails from "Hillary Clinton's staff." The
Conspirators then sent the reporter the password to access a nonpublic, password-protected
portion of dc.eaks.com containing emails stolen from Victim 1 bу LUKASHEV, YERMAKOV, and
thier co-conspirators in or around March 2016.
46. On or about January 12,2017, the Conspirators published a statement on the Guccifer 2.0
WordPrcss blog, falsely claiming that the intrusions and release of stolen documents had
"totally no relation to the Russian government"
Use of Organization 1
47. In order to expand their interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, the
Conspirators transferred many of the documents they stole from the DNC and the chairman of the
Clinton Campaign to Organization 1. The Conspirators posing as Guccifer 2.0, discussed the
release of the stolen documents and the timing of those releases with Organization 1 to
heighten their impact on the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
a. On or about Juno 22, 2016, Organization 1 sent a private message to Guccifer 2.0 to
"[s]end any new material [stolen from the DNC] here for us to review and it will have a much
higher impact than what you are doing." On or about July 6, 2016, Organization 1 added, "if you
have anything hillary related we want it in the next tweo [sic] days prefable [sic] because the
DNC [Democratic National Convention] is approaching and she will solidify bernie supporters
behind her after." The Conspirators responded, "ok... i see." Organization I explained, "we
think trump has only a 25% chance of winning against hillary ... so conflict between bernie and
hillary is interesting "
b After failed attempts to transfer the stolen documents starting in late June 2016, on or
about July 14, 2016, the Conspirators, posing as Guccifer 2.0, sent Organization 1 an email
with an attachment titled "wk dnc linkl.txt.gpg." The Conspirators explained to Organization 1
that the encrypted file contained Instructions on how to access an online archive of stolen DNC
documents. On or about July 18, 2016, Organization 1 confirmed it had "the 1Gb or so archive"
and would make a release of the stolen documents "this week."
48. On or about July 22, 2016, Organization 1 released over 20,000 emails and other
documents stolen from the DNC network by the Conspirators. This release occurred approximately
three days before the start of the Democratic National Convention. Organization 1 did not
disclose Guccifer 2.0's role in providing them. The latest-in-time email released through
Organization 1 was dated on or about May 25,2016, approximately the same day the Conspirators
hacked the DNC Microsoft Exchange Server.
49. On or about October 7, 2016, Organization 1 released the first set of emails from the
chairman of the Clinton Campaign that had been stolen by LUKASHEV and his co-conspirators.
Between on or about October 7, 2016 and November 7, 2016, Organization 1 released approximately
thirty-three tranches of documents mat had been stolen from the chairman of the Clinton
Campaign. In total, over 50,000 stolen documents were released.
"... the Obama administration intelligence agencies worked with Clinton to block " Siberian candidate " Trump. ..."
"... The template was provided by ex-MI6 Director Richard Dearlove , Halper's friend and business partner. Sitting in winged chairs in London's venerable Garrick Club, according to The Washington Post , Dearlove told fellow MI6 veteran Christopher Steele, author of the famous "golden showers" opposition research dossier, that Trump "reminded him of a predicament he had faced years earlier, when he was chief of station for British intelligence in Washington and alerted US authorities to British information that a vice presidential hopeful had once been in communication with the Kremlin." ..."
"... Apparently, one word from the Brits was enough to make the candidate in question step down. When that didn't work with Trump, Dearlove and his colleagues ratcheted up the pressure to make him see the light. A major scandal was thus born – or, rather, a very questionable scandal. Besides Dearlove, Steele, and Halper, a bon-vivant known as "The Walrus" for his impressive girth , other participants include: Robert Hannigan, former director Government Communications Headquarters, GCHQ, UK equivalent of the NSA. Alexander Downer, top Australian diplomat. Andrew Wood, ex-British ambassador to Moscow. Joseph Mifsud, Maltese academic. James Clapper, ex-US Director of National Intelligence. John Brennan, former CIA Director (and now NBC News analyst). ..."
"... Dearlove and Halper are now partners in a private venture calling itself "The Cambridge Security Initiative." Both are connected to another London-based intelligence firm known as Hakluyt & Co. Halper is also connected via two books he wrote with Hakluyt representative Jonathan Clarke and Dearlove has a close personal friendship with Hakluyt founder Mike Reynolds, yet another MI6 vet. Alexander Downer served a half-dozen years on Hakluyt's international advisory board, while Andrew Wood is linked to Steele via Orbis Business Intelligence, the private research firm that Steele helped found, and which produced the anti-Trump dossier, and where Wood now serves as an unpaid advisor . ..."
"... Everyone, in short, seems to know everyone else. But another thing that stands out about this group is its incompetence. Dearlove and Halper appear to be old-school paranoids for whom every Russian is a Boris Badenov or a Natasha Fatale . In February 2014, Halper notified US intelligence that Mike Flynn, Trump's future national security adviser, had grown overly chummy with an Anglo-Russian scholar named Svetlana Lokhova whom Halper suspected of being a spy – suspicions that Lokhova convincingly argues are absurd. ..."
"... As head of Britain's foreign Secret Intelligence Service, as MI6 is formally known, Dearlove played a major role in drumming up support for the 2003 Anglo-American invasion of Iraq even while confessing at a secret Downing Street meeting that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the [regime-change] policy." When the search for weapons of mass destruction turned up dry, Clapper, as then head of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, argued that the Iraqi military must have smuggled them into neighboring Syria, a charge with absolutely no basis in fact but which helped pave the way for US regime-change efforts in that country too. ..."
"... Brennan was meanwhile a high-level CIA official when the agency was fabricating evidence against Saddam Hussein and covering up Saudi Arabia's role in 9/11. Wood not only continues to defend the Iraqi invasion, but dismisses fears of a rising fascist tide in the Ukraine as nothing more than "a crude political insult" hurled by Vladimir Putin for his own political benefit. Such views now seem distressingly misguided in view of the alt-right torchlight parades and spiraling anti-Semitism that are now a regular feature of life in the Ukraine. ..."
"... The New York Times ..."
"... describes Mifsud as "an enthusiastic promoter of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia" and "a regular at meetings of the Valdai Discussion Club, an annual conference held in Sochi, Russia, that Mr. Putin attends," which tried to suggest that he is a Kremlin agent of some sort. ..."
"... But WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange later tweeted photos of Mifsud with British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and a high-ranking British intelligence official named Claire Smith at a training session for Italian security agents in Rome. Since it's unlikely that British intelligence would rely on a Russian agent in such circumstances, Mifsud's intelligence ties are more likely with the UK. ..."
"... Stefan Halper then infiltrated the Trump campaign on behalf of the FBI as an informant in early July, weeks before the FBI launched its investigation. Halper had 36 years earlier infiltrated the Carter re-election campaign in 1980 using CIA agents to turn information over to the Reagan campaign. Now Halper began to court both Page and Papadopoulous, independently of each other. ..."
"... The rightwing Federalist website speculates that Halper was working with Steele to flesh out a Sept. 14 memo claiming that "Russians do have further 'kompromat' on CLINTON (e-mails) and [are] considering disseminating it." Clovis believes that Halper was trying "to create an audit trail back to those [Clinton] emails from someone in the campaign so they could develop a stronger case for probable cause to continue to issue warrants and to further an investigation." Reports that Halper apparently sought a permanent post in the new administration suggest that the effort was meant to continue after inauguration. ..."
"... Notwithstanding Clovis's nutty rightwing politics , his description of what Halper may have been up to makes sense as does his observation that Halper was trying " to build something that did not exist ." Despite countless hyper-ventilating headlines about mysterious Trump Tower meetings and the like, the sad truth is that Russiagate after all these months is shaping up as even more of a "nothing-burger" than Obama administration veteran Van Jones said it was back in mid-2017. Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller has indicted Papadopoulos and others on procedural grounds, he has indicted former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort for corruption, and he has charged a St. Petersburg company known as the Internet Research Agency with violating US election laws. ..."
"... As The Washington Post noted in an oddly, cool-headed Dec. 2 article , 2, 700 suspected Russian-linked accounts generated just 202,000 tweets in a six-year period ending in August 2017, a drop in a bucket compared to the one billion election-related tweets sent out during the fourteen months leading up to Election Day. ..."
"... Opposition research is intended to mix truths and fiction, to dig up plausible dirt to throw at your opponent, not to produce an intelligence assessment at taxpayer's expense to "protect" the country. And Steele was paid for it by the Democrats, not his government. ..."
"... Although Kramer denies it, The New Yorker ..."
"... But how could Trump think otherwise? As Consortium News founding editor Robert Parry observed a few days later, the maneuver "resembles a tactic out of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's playbook on government-style blackmail: I have some very derogatory information about you that I'd sure hate to see end up in the press." ..."
"... It sounds more like CIA paranoia raised to the nth degree. But that's what the intelligence agencies are for, i.e. to spread fear and propaganda in order to stampede the public into supporting their imperial agenda. In this case, their efforts are so effective that they've gotten lost in a fog of their own making. If the corporate press fails to point this out, it's because reporters are too befogged themselves to notice. ..."
"... "Russiagate" continues to attract mounting blowback at Clinton, Obama and the Dems. Might well be they who end up charged with lawbreaking, though I'd be surprised if anyone in authority is ever really punished. https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-06-02/fbi-spying-trump-started-london-earlier-thought-new-texts-implicate-obama-white ..."
"... I've always thought that the great animus between Obama and Trump stemmed from Trump's persistent birtherist attacks on Obama followed by Obama's public ridicule of Trump at the White House Correspondants' Dinner. Without the latter, Trump probably would not have been motivated to run for the presidency. Without the former, Obama would probably not have gotten into the gutter to defeat and embarrass Trump at all costs. Clinton and Obama probably never recruit British spooks to sabotage and provide a pretense for spying on the campaigns of Jeb, Ted or Little Marco. Since these were all warmongers like Hillary and Obama, the issues would have been different, Russia would not have been a factor, and Putin would have had no alleged "puppet." ..."
"... The irony is that Clinton and Obama wanted Trump as her opponent. They cultivated his candidacy via liberal media bias throughout the primaries. (MSNBC and Rachel Maddow were always cutting away to another full length Trump victory speech and rally, including lots of jibber jabber with the faithful supporters.) Why? Because they thought he was the easiest to beat. The polls actually had Hillary losing against the other GOP candidates. The Dems beat themselves with their own choice of candidate and all the intrigue, false narratives and other questionable practices they employed in both the primaries and the general. That's what really happened. ..."
"... I agree that Hillary wanted Trump as an opponent, thought she could easily win. I've underestimated idiot opponents before, always to my detriment. Why is it that they are always the most formidable? The "insiders" are so used to voters rolling over, taking it on the chin. They gave away their jobs, replaced them with the service industry, killed their sons and daughters in wars abroad, and still the American people cast their ballots in their favor. This time was different. The insiders just did not see the sea change, not like Trump did. ..."
"... Long-time CIA asset named as FBI's spy on Trump campaign By Bill Van Auken https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/05/21/poli-m21.html ..."
"... What the MSM really needed was a bait which they could use to lure more dollars just like a horse race where the track owners needed a fast underdog horse to clean up. I believe the term is to be "hustled". The con men of the media hustlers decided they needed a way to cause all of the candidates to squirm uneasily and to then react to the news that Donald Trump was "in the lead". ..."
"... Those clever media folks. What a gift the Supreme Court handed them. But there was one little (or big) problem. The problem was the result of the scam put Trump in the White House. Something that no conservative republican would ever sign onto. Trump had spent years as a democrat, hobnobbed with the Clinton's and was an avowed agnostic who favored the liberal ideology for the most part. ..."
"... The new guy in the White House with his crazy ideas of making friends with Vladimir Putin horrified a national arms industry funded with hundreds of billions of our tax dollars every year propped up by all the neocons with their paranoid beliefs and plans to make America the hegemon of the World. Our foreign allies who use the USA to fight their perceived enemies and entice our government to sell them weapons and who urge us to orchestrate the overthrow of governments were all alarmed by the "not a real republican" peace-nick occupying the White House. ..."
"... It is probable that the casino and hotel owner in the White House posed an very threatening alternate strategy of forming economic ties with former enemies which scared the hell out of the arms industry which built its economy on scaring all of us and justifying its existence based on foreign enemies. ..."
"... So the MSM and the MIC created a new cold war with their friends at the New York Times and the Washington Post which published endless stories about the new Russian threat we faced. It had nothing to do with the 0.02% Twitter and Facebook "influence" that Russia actually had in the election. It was billed as the crime of the century. The real crime was that they committed the crime of the century that they mightily profited from by putting Trump in the White House in the first place with a plan to grab all the election cash they could grab. ..."
As the role of a well-connected group of British and U.S. intelligence agents begins to
emerge, new suspicions are growing about what hand they may have had in weaving the Russia-gate
story, as Daniel Lazare explains.
Special to Consortium News
With the news that a Cambridge academic-cum-spy
named Stefan Halper infiltrated the Trump campaign, the role of the intelligence agencies in
shaping the great Russiagate saga is at last coming into focus.
It's looking more and more massive. The intelligence agencies initiated reports that Donald
Trump was colluding with Russia, they nurtured them and helped them grow, and then they spread
the word to the press and key government officials. Reportedly, they even tried to use these
reports to force Trump to step down prior to his inauguration. Although the corporate press
accuses Trump of conspiring with Russia to stop Hillary Clinton, the reverse now seems to be
the case: the Obama administration intelligence agencies worked with Clinton to block "
Siberian
candidate " Trump.
The template was provided by ex-MI6 Director Richard Dearlove , Halper's friend and business
partner. Sitting in winged chairs in London's venerable Garrick Club, according to The
Washington Post , Dearlove
told fellow MI6 veteran Christopher Steele, author of the famous "golden showers"
opposition research dossier, that Trump "reminded him of a predicament he had faced years
earlier, when he was chief of station for British intelligence in Washington and alerted US
authorities to British information that a vice presidential hopeful had once been in
communication with the Kremlin."
Apparently, one word from the Brits was enough to make the candidate in question step down.
When that didn't work with Trump, Dearlove and his colleagues ratcheted up the pressure to make
him see the light. A major scandal was thus born – or, rather, a very questionable
scandal. Besides Dearlove, Steele, and Halper, a bon-vivant known as "The Walrus" for
his impressive girth , other participants include: Robert Hannigan, former director
Government Communications Headquarters, GCHQ, UK equivalent of the NSA. Alexander Downer, top
Australian diplomat. Andrew Wood, ex-British ambassador to Moscow. Joseph Mifsud, Maltese
academic. James Clapper, ex-US Director of National Intelligence. John Brennan, former CIA
Director (and now NBC News analyst).
In-Bred
A few things stand out about this august group. One is its in-bred quality. After helping to
run an annual confab known as the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar, Dearlove and Halper are now
partners in a private venture calling itself "The Cambridge Security Initiative." Both are
connected to another London-based intelligence firm known as Hakluyt & Co. Halper is also
connected via two books he wrote with Hakluyt representative Jonathan Clarke
and Dearlove has a close personal friendship with Hakluyt founder Mike Reynolds, yet another
MI6 vet. Alexander Downer
served a half-dozen years on Hakluyt's international advisory board, while Andrew Wood is
linked to Steele via Orbis Business Intelligence, the private research firm that Steele helped
found, and which produced the anti-Trump dossier, and where Wood now serves as an
unpaid
advisor .
Everyone, in short, seems to know everyone else. But another thing that stands out about
this group is its incompetence. Dearlove and Halper appear to be old-school paranoids for whom
every Russian is a Boris
Badenov or a Natasha Fatale . In February 2014, Halper notified US intelligence that Mike
Flynn, Trump's future national security adviser, had grown overly chummy with an Anglo-Russian
scholar named Svetlana Lokhova whom Halper suspected of being a spy – suspicions that
Lokhova convincingly
argues are absurd.
Halper: Infiltrated Trump campaign
In December 2016, Halper and Dearlove both resigned from the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar
because they suspected that a company footing some of the costs was tied up with Russian
intelligence – suspicions that Christopher Andrew, former chairman of the Cambridge
history department and the seminar's founder, regards as " absurd " as well.
As head of Britain's foreign Secret Intelligence Service, as MI6 is formally known,
Dearlove played a major role in drumming up support for the 2003 Anglo-American invasion of
Iraq even while confessing at a secret Downing Street meeting that "the intelligence and facts
were being fixed around the [regime-change] policy." When the search for weapons of mass
destruction turned up dry, Clapper, as then head of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency,
argued that the Iraqi
military must have smuggled them into neighboring Syria, a charge with absolutely no basis in
fact but which helped pave the way for US regime-change efforts in that country too.
Brennan was meanwhile a high-level CIA official when the agency was fabricating evidence
against Saddam Hussein and covering up Saudi Arabia's role in 9/11. Wood not only continues to defend
the Iraqi invasion, but dismisses
fears of a rising fascist tide in the Ukraine as nothing more than "a crude political insult"
hurled by Vladimir Putin for his own political benefit. Such views now seem distressingly
misguided in view of the alt-right torchlight parades and
spiraling anti-Semitism that are now a regular feature of life in the Ukraine.
The result is a diplo-espionage gang that is very bad at the facts but very good at public
manipulation – and which therefore decided to use its skill set out to create a public
furor over alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
It Started Late 2015
The effort began in late 2015 when GCHQ, along with intelligence agencies in Poland,
Estonia, and Germany, began monitoring
what they said were " suspicious 'interactions' between figures connected to Trump and
known or suspected Russian agents."
Since Trump was surging ahead in the polls and scaring the pants off the foreign-policy
establishment by calling for a rapprochement with Moscow, the agencies figured that Russia was
somehow behind it. The pace accelerated in March 2016 when a 30-year-old policy consultant
named George Papadopoulos joined the Trump campaign as a foreign-policy adviser. Traveling in
Italy a week later, he ran into Mifsud, the London-based Maltese academic, who reportedly set
about cultivating him after learning of his position with Trump. Mifsud claimed
to have "substantial connections with Russian government officials," according to prosecutors.
Over breakfast at a London hotel, he told Papadopoulos that he had just returned from Moscow
where he had learned that the Russians had "dirt" on Hillary Clinton in the form of "thousands
of emails."
This was the remark that supposedly triggered an FBI investigation. The New York
Timesdescribes
Mifsud as "an enthusiastic promoter of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia" and "a regular at
meetings of the Valdai Discussion Club, an annual conference held in Sochi, Russia, that Mr.
Putin attends," which tried to suggest that he is a Kremlin agent of some sort.
But WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange later
tweeted photos of Mifsud with British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and a high-ranking
British intelligence official named Claire Smith at a training session for Italian security
agents in Rome. Since it's unlikely that British intelligence would rely on a Russian agent in
such circumstances, Mifsud's intelligence ties are more likely with the UK.
After Papadopoulos caused a minor political ruckus by
telling a reporter that Prime Minister David Cameron should apologize for criticizing
Trump's anti-Muslim pronouncements, a friend in the Israeli embassy put him in touch with a
friend in the Australian embassy, who introduced him to Downer, her boss. Over drinks, Downer
advised him to be more diplomatic. After Papadopoulos then passed along Misfud's tip about
Clinton's emails, Downer informed his government, which, in late July, informed the FBI.
Was Papadopoulos Set Up?
Suspicions are unavoidable but evidence is lacking. Other pieces were meanwhile clicking
into place. In late May or early June 2016, Fusion GPS, a private Washington intelligence firm
employed by the Democratic National Committee, hired Steele to look into the Russian angle.
On June 20, he turned in the first of eighteen memos that would eventually comprise
the
Steele dossier , in this instance a three-page document asserting that Putin "has been
cultivating, supporting and assisting TRUMP for at least 5 years" and that Russian intelligence
possessed "kompromat" in the form of a video of prostitutes performing a "golden showers" show
for his benefit at the Moscow Ritz-Carlton. A week or two later, Steele
briefed the FBI on his findings. Around the same time, Robert Hannigan flew to Washington
to brief CIA Director John Brennan about additional material that had come GCHQ's way, material
so sensitive that it could only be handled at "director level."
One player was filling Papadopoulos's head with tales of Russian dirty tricks, another was
telling the FBI, while a third was collecting more information and passing it on to the bureau
as well.
Page: Took Russia's side.
On July 7, 2016 Carter Page delivered a lecture on
U.S.-Russian relations in Moscow in which he complained that " Washington and other western
capitals have impeded potential progress through their often hypocritical focus on ideas such
as democratization, inequality, corruption, and regime change." Washington hawks expressed "
unease " that someone representing the presumptive Republican nominee would take Russia's
side in a growing neo-Cold War.
Stefan Halper then
infiltrated the Trump campaign on behalf of the FBI as an informant in early July, weeks
before the FBI launched its investigation. Halper had 36 years earlier infiltrated the Carter
re-election campaign in 1980 using CIA agents to turn information over to the Reagan campaign.
Now Halper began to court both Page and Papadopoulous, independently of each other.
On July 11, Page showed up at a Cambridge symposium at which Halper and Dearlove both spoke.
In early September, Halper sent Papadopoulos an email offering $3,000 and a paid trip to London
to write a research paper on a disputed gas field in the eastern Mediterranean, his specialty.
"George, you know about hacking the emails from Russia, right?" Halper asked when he got there,
but Papadopoulos said he knew nothing. Halper also sought out Sam Clovis, Trump's national
campaign co-chairman, with whom he chatted about China for an hour or so over coffee in
Washington.
The rightwing Federalist website
speculates that Halper was working with Steele to flesh out a Sept. 14 memo claiming that
"Russians do have further 'kompromat' on CLINTON (e-mails) and [are] considering disseminating
it." Clovis believes
that Halper was trying "to create an audit trail back to those [Clinton] emails from someone in
the campaign so they could develop a stronger case for probable cause to continue to issue
warrants and to further an investigation." Reports that Halper apparently sought
a permanent post in the new administration suggest that the effort was meant to continue
after inauguration.
Notwithstanding Clovis's nutty
rightwing politics , his description of what Halper may have been up to makes sense as does
his observation that Halper was trying " to build something that did not exist ." Despite
countless hyper-ventilating headlines about mysterious Trump Tower meetings and the like, the
sad truth is that Russiagate after all these months is shaping up as even more of a
"nothing-burger" than Obama administration veteran Van Jones said
it was back in mid-2017. Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller has indicted Papadopoulos and others
on procedural grounds, he has indicted former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort for
corruption, and he has charged a St. Petersburg company known as the Internet Research Agency
with violating US election laws.
But the corruption charges have nothing to do with Russian collusion and nothing in the
indictment against IRA indicates that either the Kremlin or the Trump campaign were involved.
Indeed, the activities that got IRA in trouble in the first place are so unimpressive –
just $46,000 worth of Facebook
ads that it purchased prior to election day, some pro-Trump, some anti, and some with
no particular slant
at all – that Mueller probably wouldn't even have bothered if he hadn't been under
intense pressure to come up with anything at all.
The same goes for the army of bots that Russia supposedly deployed on Twitter. As The
Washington Post noted in an oddly, cool-headed Dec. 2
article , 2, 700 suspected Russian-linked accounts generated just 202,000 tweets in a
six-year period ending in August 2017, a drop in a bucket compared to the one
billion election-related tweets sent out during the fourteen months leading up to Election
Day.
The Steele dossier is also underwhelming. It declares on one page that the Kremlin sought to
cultivate Trump by throwing "various lucrative real estate development business deals" his way
but says on another that Trump's efforts to drum up business were unavailing and that he thus
"had to settle for the use of extensive sexual services there from local prostitutes rather
than business success."
Why would Trump turn down business offers when he couldn't generate any on his own? The idea
that Putin would spot a U.S. reality-TV star somewhere around 2011 and conclude that he was
destined for the Oval Office five years later is ludicrous. The fact that the Democratic
National Committee funded the dossier via its law firm Perkins Coie renders it less credible
still, as does the fact that the world has heard nothing more about the alleged video despite
the ongoing deterioration in US-Russian relations. What's the point of making a blackmail tape
if you don't use it?
Steele: Paid for political research, not intelligence.
Even Steele is backing off. In a legal paper filed in response to a libel suit last May, he
said the document "did not represent (and did not purport to represent) verified facts, but
were raw intelligence which had identified a range of allegations that warranted investigation
given their potential national security implications." The fact is that the "dossier" was
opposition research, not an intelligence report. It was neither vetted by Steele nor anyone in
an intelligence agency. Opposition research is intended to mix truths and fiction, to dig
up plausible dirt to throw at your opponent, not to produce an intelligence assessment at
taxpayer's expense to "protect" the country. And Steele was paid for it by the Democrats, not
his government.
Using it Anyway
Nonetheless, the spooks have made the most of such pseudo-evidence. Dearlove and Wood both
advised Steele to take his "findings" to the FBI, while, after the election, Wood pulled
Sen. John McCain aside at a security conference in Halifax, Nova Scotia, to let him know that
the Russians might be blackmailing the president-elect. McCain dispatched long-time aide David
J. Kramer to the UK to discuss the dossier with Steele directly.
Although Kramer denies it, The New Yorker found a former national-security
official who
says he spoke with him at the time and that Kramer's goal was to have McCain confront Trump
with the dossier in the hope that he would resign on the spot. When that didn't happen, Clapper
and Brennan arranged for FBI Director James Comey to confront Trump instead. Comey later
testified that he didn't want Trump to think he was creating "a J. Edgar Hoover-type
situation – I didn't want him thinking I was briefing him on this to sort of hang it over
him in some way."
But how could Trump think otherwise? As Consortium News founding editor Robert Parry
observed a few
days later, the maneuver "resembles a tactic out of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's playbook on
government-style blackmail: I have some very derogatory information about you that I'd sure
hate to see end up in the press."
Since then, the Democrats have touted the dossier at every opportunity, TheNew
Yorker
continues to defend it , while Times columnist Michelle Goldberg cites it as well,
saying it's a
"rather obvious possibility that Trump is being blackmailed." CNN, for its part, suggested not
long ago that the dossier may actually be Russian
disinformation designed to throw everyone off base, Republicans and Democrats alike.
It sounds more like CIA paranoia raised to the nth degree. But that's what the
intelligence agencies are for, i.e. to spread fear and propaganda in order to stampede the
public into supporting their imperial agenda. In this case, their efforts are so effective that
they've gotten lost in a fog of their own making. If the corporate press fails to point this
out, it's because reporters are too befogged themselves to notice.
Daniel Lazare is the author of The Frozen Republic: How the Constitution Is Paralyzing
Democracy (Harcourt Brace, 1996) and other books about American politics. He has written for a
wide variety of publications from The Nation to Le Monde Diplomatique , and his articles about
the Middle East, terrorism, Eastern Europe, and other topics appear regularly on such websites
as Jacobin and The American Conservative.
Mueller is trying to omit the normal burden of legal liability, "wilful intent" in his
charges against the St Petersburg, social media operation. In a horrifically complex area
such as tax, campaign contributions or lobbying, a foreign entity can be found guilty of
breaking a law that they cannot reasonably have been expected to have knowledge of.
But the omission or inclusion of "wilful intent" is applied on a selective basis depending on
the advantage to the deep state.
From a practical standpoint, omission of "wilful intent" makes it easier for Mueller to get a
guilty verdict (in adsentia assuming this is legally valid in America). Once the "guilt" of
the St Petersburg staff is established, any communication between an American and them
becomes "collusion".
I've always thought that the great animus between Obama and Trump stemmed from Trump's
persistent birtherist attacks on Obama followed by Obama's public ridicule of Trump at the
White House Correspondants' Dinner. Without the latter, Trump probably would not have been
motivated to run for the presidency. Without the former, Obama would probably not have gotten
into the gutter to defeat and embarrass Trump at all costs. Clinton and Obama probably never
recruit British spooks to sabotage and provide a pretense for spying on the campaigns of Jeb,
Ted or Little Marco. Since these were all warmongers like Hillary and Obama, the issues would
have been different, Russia would not have been a factor, and Putin would have had no alleged
"puppet."
The irony is that Clinton and Obama wanted Trump as her opponent. They cultivated his
candidacy via liberal media bias throughout the primaries. (MSNBC and Rachel Maddow were
always cutting away to another full length Trump victory speech and rally, including lots of
jibber jabber with the faithful supporters.) Why? Because they thought he was the easiest to
beat. The polls actually had Hillary losing against the other GOP candidates. The Dems beat
themselves with their own choice of candidate and all the intrigue, false narratives and
other questionable practices they employed in both the primaries and the general. That's what
really happened.
backwardsevolution , June 3, 2018 at 2:50 pm
Realist – good post. I think what you say is true. Trump got too caught up in the
birther crap, and Obama retaliated. But I think that Trump had been thinking about the
presidency long before Obama came along. He sees the country differently than Obama and
Clinton do. Trump would never have built up China to the point where all American technology
has been given away for free, with millions of jobs lost and a huge trade deficit, and he
would have probably left Russia alone, not ransacked it.
I saw Obama as a somewhat reluctant globalist and Hillary as an eager globalist. They are
both insiders. Trump is not. He's interested in what is best for the U.S., whereas the
Clinton's and the Bush's were interested in what their corporate masters wanted. The
multinationals have been selling the U.S. out, Trump is trying to put a stop to this, and it
is going to be a fight to the death. Trump is playing hardball with China (who ARE U.S.
multinationals), and it is working. Beginning July 1, 2018, China has agreed to reduce its
tariffs:
"Import tariffs for apparel, footwear and headgear, kitchen supplies and fitness products
will be more than halved to an average of 7.1 percent from 15.9 percent, with those on
washing machines and refrigerators slashed to just 8 percent, from 20.5 percent.
Tariffs will also be cut on processed foods such as aquaculture and fishing products and
mineral water, from 15.2 percent to 6.9 percent.
Cosmetics, such as skin and hair products, and some medical and health products, will also
benefit from a tariff cut to 2.9 percent from 8.4 percent.
In particular, tariffs on drugs ranging from penicillin, cephalosporin to insulin will be
slashed to zero from 6 percent before.
In the meantime, temporary tariff rates on 210 imported products from most favored nations
will be scrapped as they are no longer favorable compared with new rates."
Trade with China has been all one way. At least Trump is leveling the playing field. He at
least is trying to bring back jobs, something the "insiders" could care less about.
I agree that Hillary wanted Trump as an opponent, thought she could easily win. I've
underestimated idiot opponents before, always to my detriment. Why is it that they are always
the most formidable? The "insiders" are so used to voters rolling over, taking it on the
chin. They gave away their jobs, replaced them with the service industry, killed their sons
and daughters in wars abroad, and still the American people cast their ballots in their
favor. This time was different. The insiders just did not see the sea change, not like Trump
did.
Abe , June 2, 2018 at 2:20 am
"Pentagon documents indicate that the Department of Defense's shadowy intelligence arm,
the Office of Net Assessment, paid Halper $282,000 in 2016 and $129,000 in 2017. According to
reports, Halper sought to secure Papadopoulos's collaboration by offering him $3,000 and an
all-expenses-paid trip to London, ostensibly to produce a research paper on energy issues in
the eastern Mediterranean.
"The choice of Halper for this spying operation has ominous implications. His deep ties to
the US intelligence apparatus date back decades. His father-in-law was Ray Cline, who headed
the CIA's Directorate of Intelligence at the height of the Cold War. Halper served as an aide
to Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and Alexander Haig in the Nixon and Ford administrations.
"In 1980, as the director of policy coordination for Ronald Reagan's presidential
campaign, Halper oversaw an operation in which CIA officials gave the campaign confidential
information on the Carter administration and its foreign policy. This intelligence was in
turn utilized to further back-channel negotiations between Reagan's campaign manager and
subsequent CIA director William Casey and representatives of Iran to delay the release of the
American embassy hostages until after the election, in order to prevent Carter from scoring a
foreign policy victory on the eve of the November vote.
"Halper subsequently held posts as deputy assistant secretary of state for
political-military affairs and senior adviser to the Pentagon and Justice Department. More
recently, Halper has collaborated with Richard Dearlove, the former head of MI6, the British
intelligence service, in directing the Cambridge Security Initiative (CSi), a security think
tank that lists the US and UK governments as its principal clients.
"Before the 2016 election, Halper had expressed his view – shared by predominant
layers within the intelligence agencies – that Clinton's election would prove 'less
disruptive' than Trump's.
"The revelations of the role played by Halper point to an intervention in the 2016
elections by the US intelligence agencies that far eclipsed anything one could even imagine
the Kremlin attempting."
Sorry for not commenting on other posts as of yet. But I think I have a different
perspective. Russia Gate is not about Hillary Clinton or Putin but it is about Donald Trump.
Specifically an effort to get rid of him by the intelligence agencies and the MSM. The fact
is the MSM created Trump and were chiefly responsible for his election. Trump is their
brainchild starlet used to fleece all the republican campaigns like a huckster fleeces an
audience. It all ties to key Supreme Court rulings eliminating campaign finance regulations
which ushered in the age of dark money.
When billionaires can donate unlimited amounts of money anonymously to the candidate of
their choosing what ends up is a field of fourteen wannabes in a primary race each backed by
their own investor(s). The only way these candidates can win is to convince us to vote. The
only way they can do that is to spend on advertising.
What the MSM dreamed of in a purely capitalistic way was a way to drain the wallets of
every single one of the republican Super PACs. The mission was fraught with potential
checkmates. Foe example, there could be an early leader who snatched up the needed delegates
for the nomination early on which would have stopped the flow of advertising cash flowing to
the MSM. Such possibilities worried the MSM and caused great angst since this might just be
the biggest haul they ever took in during a primary season. How would they prevent a
premature end of the money river. Like financial vampire bats, ticks and leeches they needed
a way to keep the money flowing from the veins of the republican Super PACs until they were
sucked dry.
What the MSM really needed was a bait which they could use to lure more dollars just like
a horse race where the track owners needed a fast underdog horse to clean up. I believe the
term is to be "hustled". The con men of the media hustlers decided they needed a way to cause
all of the candidates to squirm uneasily and to then react to the news that Donald Trump was
"in the lead".
It was a pure stroke of genius and it worked so well that Carl Rove is looking for a job
and Donald Trump is sitting in the White House.
Those clever media folks. What a gift the Supreme Court handed them. But there was one
little (or big) problem. The problem was the result of the scam put Trump in the White House.
Something that no conservative republican would ever sign onto. Trump had spent years as a
democrat, hobnobbed with the Clinton's and was an avowed agnostic who favored the liberal
ideology for the most part.
What to do? Trump was now the Commander in Chief and was spouting nonsense that the
establishment recoiled at such as Trumps plans to form economic ties with Russia rather than
continue to wage a cold war spanning 65 years which the MIC used year after year to spook us
all and guarantee their billions annual increase in funding. Trump directly attacked defense
projects and called for de-funding major initiatives like F35 etc.
The new guy in the White House with his crazy ideas of making friends with Vladimir Putin
horrified a national arms industry funded with hundreds of billions of our tax dollars every
year propped up by all the neocons with their paranoid beliefs and plans to make America the
hegemon of the World. Our foreign allies who use the USA to fight their perceived enemies and
entice our government to sell them weapons and who urge us to orchestrate the overthrow of
governments were all alarmed by the "not a real republican" peace-nick occupying the White
House.
What to do? There was clearly a need to eliminate this bad guy since his avowed policies
were in direct opposition to the game plan that had successfully compromised the former
administration. They felt powerless to dissuade the Administration to continue the course and
form strategies to eliminate Iran, Syria, North Korea, Libya, Ukraine and other vulnerable
targets swaying toward China and Russia. They faced a new threat with the Trump
Administration which seemed hell bent to discontinue the wars in these regions robbing them
of many dollars.
It is probable that the casino and hotel owner in the White House posed an very
threatening alternate strategy of forming economic ties with former enemies which scared the
hell out of the arms industry which built its economy on scaring all of us and justifying its
existence based on foreign enemies.
So the MSM and the MIC created a new cold war with their friends at the New York Times and
the Washington Post which published endless stories about the new Russian threat we faced. It
had nothing to do with the 0.02% Twitter and Facebook "influence" that Russia actually had in
the election. It was billed as the crime of the century. The real crime was that they
committed the crime of the century that they mightily profited from by putting Trump in the
White House in the first place with a plan to grab all the election cash they could grab.
In the interim, they also forgot on purpose to tell anyone about the election campaign
finance fraud that they were the chief beneficiaries of. They also of course forgot to tell
anyone what the fight was about for the Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch. Twenty seven
million dollars in dark money was donated by dark money donors enabled by the Supreme Court's
decisions to eliminate campaign finance regulations which enabled these donors to buy out
Congress and elect and confirm a Supreme Court Justice who would uphold the laws which
eliminate all the election rules and campaign finance regulations dating back to the Tillman
Act of 1907 which was an attempt to eliminate corporate contributions in political campaigns
with associated meager fines as penalties. The law was weak then and has now been
eliminated.
In an era of dark money in politics protected by revisionist judges laying at the top of
our federal judicial branch posing as strict constructionists while being funded by the
corporatocracy that viciously fights over control of the highest court by a panicked
republican party that seeks to tie up their domination in our Congress by any means including
the abdication of the Constitutional authority granted to the citizens of the nation we now
face a new internal enemy.
That enemy is not some foreign nation but our own government which conspires to represent
the wealthy and the powerful and which exalts them and which enacts laws to defend their
control of our nation. Here is a quote:
When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they
create for themselves in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it and a moral
code that glorifies it.
Frederic Bastiat – (1801-1850) in Economic Sophisms
Realist , June 1, 2018 at 4:32 am
Different journalist covering much the same ground:
"Russiagate" is strictly a contrivance of the Deep State, American & British Spookery,
and the corporate media propagandists. It clearly needs to be genuinely investigated (unlike
the mockery being orchestrated by Herr Mueller from the Ministry of Truth), re-christened
"Intellgate" (after the real perpetrators of crime), pursued until all the guilty traitors
(including Mueller) who really tried to steal our democratic election are tried, convicted
and incarcerated (including probably hundreds complicit from the media) and given its own
lengthy chapter in all the history books about "The Election They Tried to Steal and Blame on
Russia: How America Nearly Lost its Constitution." If not done, America will lose its
constitution, or rather the incipient process will become totally irreversible.
Vivian O'Blivion , June 1, 2018 at 6:25 am
Your timing of events is confused.
The deep state didn't try and steal the election because they were overly complacent that
their woman would win. Remember, they didn't try to use the dodgy, Steele dossier before the
election.
What the deep state has done is reactively try to overcome the election outcome by launching
an investigation into Trump. The egregious element of the investigation is giving it the
title "investigation into collusion" when they in all probability knew that collusion was
unlikely to have taken place. To achieve their aim (removing Trump) they included the line
"and matters arising" in the brief to give them an open ended remit which allowed them to
investigate Trump's business dealings of a Russian / Ukrainian nature (which may venture
uncomfortably close to Semion Mogilevich).
If as you state (and I concur) there was no Russian collusion, then barring fabrication of
evidence by Mueller (and there is little evidence of that to date) you have nothing to worry
about on the collusion front. Remember, to date, Mueller has stuck (almost exclusively) to
meat and potatoes charges like tax evasion and money laundering. If however the investigation
leads to credible evidence that Trump broke substantive laws in the past for financial gain,
then it is not reasonable to cry foul.
Seer , June 1, 2018 at 7:02 am
The Deep State assisted the DNC in knocking out Sanders. THAT was ground zero. Everything
since then has been to cover this up and to discredit Trump (using him as the distraction).
Consider that the Deep State never bothered to investigate the DNC servers/data; reason being
is that they'd (Deep State) be implicated.
Skip Scott , June 1, 2018 at 7:29 am
Very true Seer. That is the real genesis of RussiaGate. It was a diversion tactic to keep
people from looking at the DNC's behavior during the primaries. They are the reason Trump is
president, not the evil Ruskies.
Vivian O'Blivion , June 1, 2018 at 8:13 am
We all seem agreed that the Russia collusion is an exercise in distraction. I can't say I
know enough to comment with authority on whether the DNC would require assistance from the
deep state to trash Bernie. From an outsider perspective it looked more like an application
of massively disproportionate spending and standard, back room dirty tricks.
There is a saying; don't attribute to conspiracy that which can be explained by incompetence.
In this case, try replacing incompetence with MONEY.
dikcheney , June 2, 2018 at 5:09 pm
Totally agree with you Skip and the Mueller performance is there to keep up the
intimidation and distraction by regularly finding turds to throw at Trump. Mueller doesnt
need to find anything, he just needs to create vague intimations of 'guilty Trump' and
suspicious associates so that no one will look at the DNC or the Clinton corruption or the
smashing of the Sanders campaign.
Their actual agenda is to smother analysis and clear thinking. Thankfully there is the
forensicator piecing the jigsaw as well as consortium news.
robjira , June 1, 2018 at 11:55 am
Spot on, Seer.
michael , June 1, 2018 at 4:49 pm
Those servers probably had a lot more pay-to-play secrets from the Clinton Foundation and
ring-kissing from foreign big donors than what was released by Wikileaks, which mostly was
just screwing over Bernie, which the judge ruled was Hillary's prerogative. Some email chains
were probably construed as National Security and were discreetly not leaked.
The 30,000 emails Hillary had bit bleached from her private servers are likely in the hands
of Russians and every other major country, all biding their time for leverage. This was the
carrot the British (who undoubtedly have copies as well) dangled over idiot Popodopolous.
Uncle Bob , June 1, 2018 at 10:33 pm
Seth Rich
anon , June 1, 2018 at 7:42 am
Realist is likely referring to events before the election which involved people with
secret agency connections, such as the opposition research (Steele dossier and Skripal
affair).
Realist , June 1, 2018 at 9:32 am
Realist responded but is being "moderated" as per usual.
Realist , June 1, 2018 at 9:31 am
Hillary herself was a prime force in cooking up the smear against Trump for being "Putin's
puppet." This even before the Democratic convention. Then she used it big time during the
debates. It wasn't something merely reactive after she lost. Certainly she and her
collaborators inside the deep state and the intelligence agencies never imagined that she
would lose and have to distract from what she and her people did by projecting the blame onto
Trump. That part was reactive. The rest of the conspiracy was totally proactive on her part
and that of the DNC, even during the primaries.
Don't forget, the intel agencies led by Clapper, Brennan and Comey were all working for
Obama at the time and were totally acquiescent in spying on the Trump campaign and
"unmasking" the identities and actions of his would-be administration, including individuals
like General Flynn. The cooked up Steele dossier was paid for by money from the Clinton
campaign and used as a pretext for the intel agencies to spy on the Trump campaign. There is
no issue on timing. The establishment was fully behind Clinton by hook or crook from the
moment Trump had the delegates to win the GOP nomination. (OBTW, I am not a Trump supporter
or even a Republican, so I KNOW that I "have nothing to worry about on the collusion front."
I'm a registered Dem, though not a Hillary supporter.)
Moreover, if you think that Mueller (and the other intel chiefs) have been on the
impartial up-and-up, why did the FBI never seize and examine the DNC servers? Why simply
accept the interpretation of events given by the private cybersecurity firm (Crowdstrike)
that the Clinton campaign hired to very likely mastermind a cover-up? That is exceptional
(nay, unheard of!) "professional courtesy." Why has Mueller to this day not deposed Julian
Assange or former British Ambassador Craig Murray, both of whom admit to knowing precisely
who provided the leaked (not hacked) Podesta and DNC emails to Wikileaks? Why has Mueller not
pursued the potential role of the late Seth Rich in the leaking of said emails? Why has
Mueller not pursued the robust theory, based on actual evidence, proposed by VIPS, and
supported by computer experts like Bill Binney and John McAfee, that the emails were not, as
the Dems and the intel agencies would have you believe on NO EVIDENCE, hacked (by the
"Russians" or anyone else) but were downloaded to a flash drive directly from the DNC
servers? Why has Mueller not deposed Binney or Ray McGovern who claim to have evidence to
bear on this and have discussed it freely in the media (to the miniscule extent that the
corporate media will give them an audience)? Is Mueller after the truth, or is this a
kangaroo court he is running? Is the media really independent and impartial or are they part
of a cover-up, perpetrating numerous sins of both commission and omission in their highly
flawed reportage?
I don't see clarity in what has been thus far been propounded by Mueller or any of Trump's
other accusers, but I don't think I am the one who is confused here, Vivian. If you want to
meet a thoroughly confused individual on what transpired leading up to this moment in
American political history, just go read Hillary's book. Absolutely everyone under the sun
shares in the blame but her for the fact that she does not presently reside in the White
House.
Vivian O'Blivion , June 1, 2018 at 1:48 pm
You have presented your case with a great deal more detail and clarity than the original
post that prompted my reply. You are also a great deal more knowledgeable than I on the
details. I think we are 98% in agreement and I wouldn't like to say who's correct on the
remaining 2%.
For clarity, I didn't follow the debates and wouldn't do so now if they were repeated. Much
heat very little light.
The "pretext" that the intel agencies claim launched their actions against Trump was not the
Steele dossier, at least that is what the intel agencies say. Either way your assertion that
it was the dossier that set things off is just that, an assertion. I think this is a minor
point.
On the DNC servers and the FBI we are 100% singing from the same hymn book and it all sticks.
Mueller's apparent disinterest in the question of hack or USB drive does rather taint his
investigation and thanks for pointing this out, I hadn't thought of that angle. I still think
Mueller will stick to tax and money laundering and stay well clear of "collusion", so yes he
may be running a kangaroo court investigation but the charges will be real world.
The MSM as a whole are a sick joke which is why we collectively find ourselves at CN, Craig
Murray's blog, etc. I wouldn't like to attribute "collaboration" to any individual in the
media. It was the reference to hundreds of journalists being sent to jail in your original
post that set me off in the first place. When considering the "culpability" of any individual
journalist you can have any position on a spectrum from; fully cognisant collaborator with a
deep state conspiracy, to; a bit dim and running with the "sexy" story 'cause it's the
biggest thing ever, the bosses can't get enough of it and the overtime is great. If American
journalists are anything like their UK counterparts, 99% will fall into the latter
category.
Don't have any issue with your final point. Hillary on stage and on camera was phoney as
rocking horse s**te and everyone outside her extremely highly remunerated team could see
it.
Sorry for any inconvenience, but your second post makes your points a hell of a lot clearer
than the original.
Realist , June 1, 2018 at 4:26 pm
My purpose for the first post in this thread was to direct readers to the article in Unz
by Mike Whitney, not to compress a full-blown amateur expose' by myself into a three-sentence
paragraph. You would have found much more in the way of facts, analysis and opinion in his
article to which my terse comments did not even serve as an abstract.
Quoting his last paragraph may give you the flavor of this piece, which is definitely not
a one-off by him or other actual journalists who have delved into the issues:
"Let's see if I got this right: Brennan gets his buddies in the UK to feed fake
information on Russia to members of the Trump campaign, after which the FBI uses the
suspicious communications about Russia as a pretext to unmask, wiretap, issue FISA warrants,
and infiltrate the campaign, after which the incriminating evidence that was collected in the
process of entrapping Trump campaign assistants is compiled in a legal case that is used to
remove Trump from office. Is that how it's supposed to work?
It certainly looks like it. But don't expect to read about it in the Times."
backwardsevolution , June 1, 2018 at 4:49 pm
Vivian – 90% of all major media is owned by six corporations. There most definitely
was and IS collusion between some of them to bring down the outsider, Trump.
As far as individual journalists go, yeah, they're trying to pay their mortgage, I get it,
and they're going to spin what their boss bloody well tells them to spin. But there is
evidence coming out that "some" journalists did accept money from either Fusion GPS, Perkins
Coie (sp) or Christopher Steele to leak information, which they did.
Bill Clinton passed the Telecommunications Act of 1996 that enabled these six media
conglomerates to dominate the news. Of course they're political. They need to be split up,
like yesterday, into a thousand pieces (ditto for the banks). They have purposely and with
intent been feeding lies to the American people. Yes, some SHOULD go to jail.
As Peter Strzok of the FBI said re Trump colluding with Russia, "There was never any
there, there." The collusion has come from the intelligence agencies, in cahoots with Hillary
Clinton, perhaps even as high as Obama, to prevent Trump being elected. When that failed,
they set out to get him impeached on whatever they could find. Of course Mueller is going to
stick with tax and money laundering because he already KNOWS there was never any collusion
with Russia.
This is the Swamp versus the People.
backwardsevolution , June 1, 2018 at 1:52 pm
Realist – another excellent post. "Is Mueller after the truth, or is this a kangaroo
court he is running?" As you rightly point out, Mueller IS being very selective in what he
examines and doesn't examine. He's not after the whole truth, just a particular kind of
truth, one that gets him a very specific result – to take down or severely cripple the
President.
Evidence continues to trickle out. Former and active members of the FBI are now even
begging to testify as they are disgusted with what is being purposely omitted from this
so-called "impartial" investigation. This whole affair is "kangaroo" all the way.
I'm not so much a fan of Trump as I am a fan of the truth. I don't like to see him –
anyone – being railroaded. That bothers me more than anything. But he's right about
what he calls "the Swamp". If these people are not uncovered and brought to justice, then the
country is truly lost.
Realist , June 1, 2018 at 4:38 pm
Precisely. Destroy the man on false pretenses and you destroy our entire system, whether
you like him and his questionable policies or not.
Some people would say it's already gone, but we do what we can to get it back or hold onto
to what's left of it. Besides, all the transparent lies and skullduggery in the service of
politics rather than principles are just making our entire system look as corrupt as
hell.
michael , June 1, 2018 at 5:00 pm
When Mueller arrested slimy Manafort for crimes committed in the Ukraine and gave a pass
to the Podesta Brothers who worked closely with Manafort, it was clear that Russiagate was a
partisan operation.
backwardsevolution , June 1, 2018 at 6:17 pm
Michael – good point!
KiwiAntz , June 1, 2018 at 1:00 am
Its becoming abundantly clear now, that the whole Russiagate charade was had nothibg to do
with Russia & is about a elaborate smokescreen & shellgame coverup designed to divert
attention away from, firstly the Democratic Party's woeful defeat & its lousy Candidate
choice in the corrupt Hillary Clinton? & also the DNC's sabotaging of Bernie Saunders
campaign run! But the most henious & treacherous parts was Obama's, weaponising the
intelligence agencies to spy (Halper) on the imaginary Mancharian Candidate Trump & to
set him up as a Russia stooge? Obama & Hillary Clinton are complicent in this disgraceful
& illegal activity to get dirt on Trump withe goal of ensuring Clinton's election win?
This is bigger than Watergate & more scandalous? But despite the cheating & stacking
of the card deck, she still lost out to the Donald? And this isn't just illegal its
treasonous & willful actions deserving of a lengthy jail incarceration? HRC & her
crooked Clinton foundation's funding of the fraudulent & discredited "Steele Dosier" was
also used to implement Trump & Russia in a made up, pile of fictitious gargage that was
pure offal? Obama & HRC along with their FBI & CIA spys need to be rounded up,
convicted & thrown in jail? Perhaps if Trump could just shut his damn mouuth for once
& get off twitter long enough to be able too get some Justice Dept officials looking into
this, without being distracted by this Russiagate shellgame fakery, then perhaps the real
criminal's like Halpert, Obama,HRC & these corrupt spooks & spies can be rounded up
& held to account for this treasonous behaviour?
Sean Ahern , May 31, 2018 at 7:25 pm
Attention should be paid also to the role of so called progressive media outlets such as
Mother Jones which served as an outlets for the disinformation campaign described in Lazare's
article.
Here from David Corn's Mother Jones 2016 article:
"And a former senior intelligence officer for a Western country who specialized in Russian
counterintelligence tells Mother Jones that in recent months he provided the bureau with
memos, based on his recent interactions with Russian sources, contending the Russian
government has for years tried to co-opt and assist Trump -- and that the FBI requested more
information from him."
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/10/veteran-spy-gave-fbi-info-alleging-russian-operation-cultivate-donald-trump/
Not only was Corn and Mother Jones selected by the spooks as an outlet, but these so
called progressives lauded their 'expose' as a great investigative coup on their part and it
paved the way for Corn's elevation on MSNBC for a while as a 'pundit.'
Paul G. , May 31, 2018 at 8:46 pm
In that vein did the spooks influence Rachel Maddow or is her $30,000. a day salary
adequate to totally compromise her microscopic journalistic integrity.
dikcheney , June 3, 2018 at 6:57 am
Passing around references to Mother Jones is like passing round used toilet paper for
another try. MJ is BS it is entirely controlled fake press.
Abby , May 31, 2018 at 6:23 pm
Stefan Halper was being paid by the Clinton's foundation during the time he was spying on
the Trump campaign. This is further evidence that Hillary Clinton's hands are all over
getting Russia Gate started. Then there's the role that Obama's justice department played in
setting up the spying on people who were working with the Trump campaign. This is worse than
Watergate, IMO.
Rumors are that a few ex FBI agents are going to testify to congress in Comey's role in
covering up Hillary's crimes when she used her private email server to send classified
information to people who did not have clearance to read it. Sydney Bluementhol was working
for Hillary's foundation and sending her classified information that he stole from the
NSA.
Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills were concerned about Obama knowing that Hillary wasn't using
her government email account after he told the press that he only found out about it at the
same time they did. He had been sending and receiving emails from her Clintonone email
address during her whole tenure as SOS.
Obama was also aware of her using her foundation for pay to play which she was told by
both congress and Obama to keep far away from her duties. Why did she use her private email
server? So that Chelsea could know where Hillary was doing business so she could send Bill
there to give his speeches to the same organizations, foreign governments and people who had
just donated to their foundation.
Has any previous Secretary of State in history used their position to enrich their spouses
or their foundations? I think not.
The secrets of how the FBI covered for Hillary are coming out. Whether she is charged for
her crimes is a different matter.
F. G. Sanford , May 31, 2018 at 7:48 pm
If Hillary paid a political operative using Clinton Foundation funds – those are tax
exempt charitable contributions – she would be guilty of tax fraud, charity fraud and
campaign finance violations. Hillary may be evil, but she's not stupid. The U.S.Government
paid Halper, which might be "waste, fraud and abuse", but it doesn't implicate Hillary at
all. Not that she's innocent, mind you
Rob , June 1, 2018 at 2:14 am
I need some references to take any of your multitude of claims seriously. With all due
respect, this sound like something taken from info wars and stylized in smartened up a little
bit.
the idea that Stefan Halper was some sort a of mastermind spy behind the so called
"Russiagate" fiasco
seems very implausible considering what he seems to have spent doing for the past 40
years
going back to the Iran hostage crisis of 1979-1980 and his efforts then.
i think he must have had a fairly peripheral role as to whatever or not was going on
behind the scenes from 2016 election campaign, and the campaign to first stop Trump getting
elected, and secondly, when that failed, to bring down his Presidency.
of course, the moment his name was revealed in recent days, would have shocked or
surprised those of in the general
public, but not certainly amongst those in Government aka FBI/CIA/Military-industrial
circles.
backwardsevolution , May 31, 2018 at 4:36 pm
chris m – Halper is probably one of those people who hide behind their professor (or
other legitimate) jobs, but are there at the ready to serve the Deep State. "I understand.
You want me to set up some dupes in order to make it look like there was or could be actual
Russian meddling. Gotcha." All you've got to do is make it "look like" something nefarious
was going on. This facilitates a "reason" to have a phony investigation, and of course they
make it as open-ended an investigation as possible, hoping to get the target on something,
anything.
Well, they've no doubt looked long and hard for almost two years now, but zip. However, in
their zeal to get rid of their opponent, who they did not think would win the election, they
left themselves open, left a trail of crimes. Whoops!
This is the Swamp that Trump talked about during the election. He's probably not squeaky
clean either, but he pales in comparison to what these guys have done. They have tried to
take down a duly-elected President.
F. G. Sanford , May 31, 2018 at 5:09 pm
His role may have been peripheral, but I seem to recall that the Office of Net Assessments
paid him roughly a million bucks to play it. That office, run from the Pentagon, is about as
deep into the world of "black ops" spookdom as you can get. Hardly "peripheral", I'd say.
backwardsevolution , May 31, 2018 at 7:13 pm
F. G. Sanford – yes, a million bucks implies something more than just a peripheral
involvement, more like something essential to the plot, like the actual setting up of the
plot. Risk of exposure costs money.
ranney , May 31, 2018 at 6:17 pm
Chris, I think the Halper inclusion in this complex tale is simply an example of how these
things work in the ultra paranoid style of spy agencies. As Lazare explains, every one knew
every one else – at least at the start of this, and it just kind of built from there,
and Halper may have been the spark – but the spark landed on a highly combustible pile
of paranoia that caught on fire right away. This is how our and the UK agencies function.
There is an interesting companion piece to this story today at Common Dreams by Robert Kohler
titled The American Way of War. It describes basically the same sort of mind set and action
as this story. I'd link it for you if I knew how, but I'm not very adept at the computer.
(Maybe another reader knows how?)
We (that is the American people who are paying the salaries of these brain blocked, stiff
necked idiots) need to start getting vocal and visible about the destructive path our
politicians, banks and generals have rigidly put us on. Does any average working stiff still
believe that all this hate, death and destruction is to "protect" us?
backwardsevolution , May 31, 2018 at 7:07 pm
ranney – when you are on the page that you want to link to, take your cursor (the
little arrow on your screen) to the top of the page to the address bar (for instance, the
address for this article is:
"https://consortiumnews.com/2018/05/31/spooks-spooking ")
Once your cursor is over the address bar, right click on your mouse. A little menu will
come up. Then position your cursor down to the word "copy" and then left click on your mouse.
This will copy the link.
Then proceed back to the blog (like Consortium) where you want to provide the link in your
post. You might say, "Here is the link for the article I just described above." Then at this
point you would right click on your mouse again, position your cursor over the word "paste",
and then left click on your mouse. Voila, your link magically appears.
If you don't have a mouse and are using a laptop pad, then someone else will have to help
you. That's above my pay grade. Good luck, ranney.
irina , May 31, 2018 at 8:13 pm
If you are using a Mac, either laptop w/touch screen or with a mouse, the copy/paste
function
works similarly. Use either the mouse (no need to 'right click, left click') or the touch
screen
to highlight the address bar once you have the cursor flashing away on the left side of
it.
You may need to scroll right to highlight the whole address. Then go up to Edit (there's
also
a keyboard command you can use, but I don't) in your tool bar at the top of your screen.
Click on 'copy'. Now your address is in memory. Then do the same as described above to
get back to where you want to paste it. Put your cursor where you want it to be 'pasted'.
Go back to 'edit' and click 'paste'. Voila !
This is a very handy function and can be used to copy text, web addresses, whatever you
want.
Explore it a little bit. (Students definitely overuse the 'paste and match style' option,
which allows
a person to 'paste' text into for example an essay and 'match the style' so it looks
seamless, although
unless carefully edited it usually doesn't read seamlessly !)
Remember that whatever is in 'copy' will remain there until you 'copy' something else. (Or
your
computer crashes . . . )
ranney , June 1, 2018 at 3:39 pm
Irina and Backwards Evolution – Thanks guys for the computer advice! I'll try it,
but I think I need someone at my shoulder the first time I try it.
backwardsevolution , June 1, 2018 at 8:53 pm
ranney – you're welcome! Snag one of your kids or a friend, and then do it together.
Sometimes I see people posting things like: "Testing. I'm trying to provide a link, bear with
me." Throw caution to the wind, ranney. I don't worry about embarrassing myself anymore. I do
it every day and the world still goes on.
I heard a good bit of advice once, something I remind my kids: when you're young, you
think everybody is watching you and so you're afraid to step out of line. When you're
middle-aged, you think everybody is watching you, but you don't care. When you're older, you
realize nobody is really watching you because they're more concerned about themselves.
Good luck, ranney.
irina , June 2, 2018 at 10:00 pm
I find it helpful to write down the steps (on an old fashioned piece of paper, with old
fashioned ink)
when learning to use a new computer tool, because while I think I'll remember, it doesn't
usually
'stick' until after using it for quite a while. And yes, definitely recruit a member of the
younger set
or someone familiar with computers. My daughter showed me many years ago how to 'cut &
paste'
and to her credit she was very gracious about it. Remember that you need a place to 'paste'
what-
ever you copied -- either a comment board like this, or a document you are working on, or
(this is
handy) an email where you want to send someone a link to something. Lots of other
possibilities too!
mike , June 1, 2018 at 7:43 pm
No one is presenting Halper as a mastermind spy. He was a tool of the deep state nothing
more.
It seems a mistake to frame the "Russiagate" nonsense as a "Democrat vs Republican"
affair, except at the most surface level of understanding in terms of our political
realities. If one considers that the Bush family has been effectively the Republican Party's
face of the CIA/deep state nexus for decades, as the Clinton/Obama's have been the Democratic
Party's face for decades now, what comes into focus is Trump as a sort of unknown, unexpected
wild card not appropriately tethered to the control structure. Simply noting that the U.S.
and Russia need not be enemies is alone enough to require an operation to get Trump into
line.
This hardly means this is some sort of "partisan" issue as the involvement of McCain and
others demonstrates.
One of the true "you can't make this stuff up" ironies of the Bush/Clinton CIA/deep state
nexus history is worth remembering if one still maintains any illusions about how the CIA
vets potential presidents since they killed JFK. During Iran/Contra we had Bush, the former
CIA director now vice president, running a drugs for arms operation out the White House
through Ollie North, WHILE then unknown Arkansas governor Bill Clinton was busy squashing
Arkansas State Police investigations into said narcotics trafficking. Clinton obviously
proved his bona fides to the CIA/deep state with such service and was appropriately rewarded
as an asset who could function as a reliable president. Here in one operation we had two
future presidents in Bush and Clinton both engaged in THE SAME CIA drug running operation.
You truly can't make this stuff up.
Russiagate seems to be in the end all about keeping deep state policy moving in the "right
direction" and "hating Russia" is the only entree on the menu at this time for the whole
cadre of CIA/deep state, MIC, neocons, Zionists, and all their minions in the MSM. The Obama
White House would have gladly supported Vlad the Impaler as the Republican candidate that
beat Hillary if Vlad were to have the appropriate foaming at the mouth "hate-Russia" vibe
going on.
backwardsevolution , May 31, 2018 at 7:18 pm
Gary – great post.
irina , May 31, 2018 at 8:18 pm
Roger that. I would really like to see an inquiry re-opened into the
teenage boys who died 'on the train tracks' in Arkansas during the
early years of the Clinton-Bush trafficking. Many questions are still
unanswered. Speculation is that they saw something they weren't
supposed to see.
Mark Thomason , May 31, 2018 at 1:12 pm
This all grows out of the failure to clean up the mess revealed by the Iraq fiasco.
Instead, those who did that remained, got away with it, and are doing more of the same.
Babyl-on , May 31, 2018 at 12:46 pm
So, here is my question – Who, ultimately does the
permanent/bureaucratic/deep/Imperial* state finally answer to? Who's interests are they
serving? How do they know what those interests are?
It could be, and increasingly it looks as if, the answer is – no one in particular
– but the Saud family, the Zionist cabal of billionaires, the German industrialist
dynasties, the Japanese oligarchy and never forget the arms dealers, all of them once part of
the Empire now fighting for themselves so we end up with the high level apparatchiks not
knowing what to do or who to follow so they lie outright to Congress and go on TV and babble
more lies for money.
It's a great contradiction that the greatest armed force ever assembled with cutting edge
robotics and AI yet at the same time so weak and pathetic it can not exercise hegemony over
the Middle East as it seems to desire more than anything. Being defeated by forces with less
than 20% of the US spend.
Abby , May 31, 2018 at 6:36 pm
You're right. They answer to no one because they are not just working in this country, but
they think that the whole world is theirs.
To these people there are no borders. They meet at places like the G20, Davos and wherever
the Bilderberg group decides to meet every year. No leader of any country gets to be one
unless they are acceptable to the Deep State. The council of foreign relations is one of the
groups that run the world. How we take them down is a good question.
Abe , May 31, 2018 at 12:43 pm
Following the pattern of mainstream media, Daniel Lazare assiduously avoids mentioning
Israel and pro-Israel Lobby interference in the 2016 presidential election, and the
Israel-gate reality underlying all the Russia-gate fictions.
For example, George Papadopoulos is directly connected to the pro-Israel Lobby, right wing
Israeli political interests, and Israeli government efforts to control regional energy
resources.
Lazare mentions that Papadapoulos had "a friend in the Israeli embassy".
But Lazare conspicuously neglects to mention numerous Israeli and pro-Israel Lobby players
interested in "filling Papadopoulos's head" with "tales of Russian dirty tricks".
Papadopoulos' LinkedIn page lists his association with the right wing Hudson Institute.
The Washington, D.C.-based think tank part of pro-Israel Lobby web of militaristic security
policy institutes that promote Israel-centric U.S. foreign policy.
The Hudson Institute confirmed that Papadopoulos was an intern who left the pro-Israel
neoconservative think tank in 2014.
In 2014, Papadopoulos authored op-ed pieces in Israeli publications.
In an op-ed published in Arutz Sheva, media organ of the right wing Religionist Zionist
movement embraced by the Israeli "settler" movement, Papadopoulos argued that the U.S. should
focus on its "stalwart allies" Israel, Greece, and Cyprus to "contain the newly emergent
Russian fleet".
In another op-ed published in Ha'aretz, Papadopoulos contended that Israel should exploit
its natural gas resources in partnership with Cyprus and Greece rather than Turkey.
In November 2015, Papadapalous participated in a conference in Tel Aviv, discussing the
export of natural gas from Israel with a panel of current and past Israeli government
officials including Ron Adam, a representative of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
and Eran Lerman, a former Israeli Deputy National Security Adviser.
Among Israel's numerous violations of United Nations Resolution 242 was its annexation of
the Syrian Golan Heights in 1981. Recent Israeli threatened military threats against Lebanon
and Syria have a lot to do with control of natural gas resources, both offshore from Gaza and
on land in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights region.
Israeli plans to develop energy resources and expand territorial holdings in the Syrian
Golan are threatened by the Russian military presence in Syria. Russian diplomatic efforts,
and the Russian military intervention that began in September 2015 after an official request
by the Syrian government, have interfered with the Israeli-Saudi-U.S. Axis "dirty war" in
Syria.
Israeli activities and Israel-gate realities are predictably ignored by the mainstream
media, which continues to salivate at every moldy scrap of Russia-gate fiction.
Lazare need no be so circumspect, unless he has somehow been spooked.
"Among Israel's numerous violations of United Nations Resolution 242 was its annexation of
the Syrian Golan Heights in 1981. Recent Israeli threatened military threats against Lebanon
and Syria have a lot to do with control of natural gas resources, both offshore from Gaza and
on land in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights region."
And water. Rating energy and water, what's at the top for Israel. Israel would probably
say both but Israel shielded by the US will take what it wants. That is already true with the
Palestinians.. The last figure I heard is that the Palestinians are allocated one fifth per
capita what is allocated to Israel's
mike k , May 31, 2018 at 11:59 am
A large swamp is actually an ancient and highly organized ecosystem. Only humans could
create a lawless madness like Washington DC.
irina , May 31, 2018 at 8:24 pm
Yes that is a good description of a swamp. BUT, if it loses what sustains it --
water, in the case of a 'real' swamp and money in the case of this swamp --
it changes character very quickly and becomes first a bog, then a meadow.
I am definitely ready for more meadowland ! But the only way to create it
is to voluntarily redirect federal taxes into escrow accounts which stipulate
that the funds are to be used for (fill in the blank) Public Services at the
Local and Regional levels. Much more efficient than filtering them through
the federal bureaucracy !
Sam F , May 31, 2018 at 10:21 pm
But how would one avoid prosecution for nonpayment of taxes?
That seems a very quiet way to be rendered ineffective as a resister.
irina , June 1, 2018 at 2:30 am
The thing is, you don't 'nonpay' them. The way it used to work, through the
Con$cience and Military Tax Campaign Escrow Account, was that you filed
your taxes as usual. (This does require having less withholding than you owe).
BUT instead of paying what is due to the IRS, you send it to the Escrow Account.
You attach a letter to your tax return, explaining where the money is and why it
is there. That is, you want it to be spent on _________________(fill in the blank)
worthy public social service. Then you send your return to the IRS.
When I used to do this, I stated that I wanted my tax dollars to be spent to develop
public health clinics at neighborhood schools. Said clinics would be staffed by nurse
practitioners, would be open 24-7 and nurses would be equipped with vans to make
House Calls. Security would be provided.
So you're not 'nonpaying' your taxes, you are (attempting) to redirect them.
Eventually,
after several rounds of letters back and forth, the IRS would seize the monies from the
escrow account, which would only release them to the IRS upon being told to by the
tax re-director. Unfortunately, not enough people participated to make it a going
concern.
But the potential is still there, and the template has been made and used. It's very
scale-
able, from local to international. And it would not take that many 're-directors' to shift
the
focus of tax liability from the collector to the payor. Because ultimately we are liable
for
how our funds are used !
Bill , June 2, 2018 at 3:19 pm
this was done a lot during the Vietnam conflict, especially by Quakers. the first thing,
if you are a wage earner, is to re-file a W2 with maximum withholdings-that has two effects:
1) it means you owe all your taxes in April. 2) it means the feds are deprived of the hidden
tax in which they use or invest your withholding throughout the year before it's actually
due(and un-owed taxes if you over over-withhold). Pretty sure that if a large number of
people deprive the government of that hidden tax by under-withholding, they will begin to
take notice.
Abe , May 31, 2018 at 11:54 am
Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) is an intelligence agency of the government
and armed forces of the United Kingdom.
In 2013, GCHQ received considerable media attention when the former National Security
Agency contractor Edward Snowden revealed that the agency was in the process of collecting
all online and telephone data in the UK. Snowden's revelations began a spate of ongoing
disclosures of global surveillance and manipulation.
For example, NSA files from the Snowden archive published by Glenn Greenwald reveal
details about GCHQ's Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG) unit, which uses "dirty
trick" tactics to covertly manipulate and control online communities.
In 2017, officials from the UK and Israel made an unprecedented confirmation of the close
relationship between the GCHQ and Israeli intelligence services.
Robert Hannigan, outgoing Director-General of the GCHQ, revealed for the first time that
his organization has a "strong partnership with our Israeli counterparts in signals
intelligence." He claimed the relationship "is protecting people from terrorism not only in
the UK and Israel but in many other countries."
Mark Regev, Israeli ambassador to the UK, commented on the close relationship between
British and Israeli intelligence agencies. During remarks at a Conservative Friends of Israel
reception, Regev opined: "I have no doubt the cooperation between our two democracies is
saving British lives."
Hannigan added that GCHQ was "building on an excellent cyber relationship with a range of
Israeli bodies and the remarkable cyber industry in Be'er Sheva."
The IDF's most important signal intelligence–gathering installation is the Urim
SIGINT Base, a part of Unit 8200, located in the Negev desert approximately 30 km from Be'er
Sheva.
Snowden revealed how Unit 8200 receives raw, unfiltered data of U.S. citizens, as part of
a secret agreement with the U.S. National Security Agency.
After his departure from GCHQ, Hannigan joined BlueteamGlobal, a cybersecurity services
firm, later re-named BlueVoyant.
BlueVoyant's board of directors includes Nadav Zafrir, former Commander of the Israel
Defense Forces' Unit 8200. The senior leadership team at BlueVoyant includes Ron Feler,
formerly Deputy Commander of the IDF's Unit 8200, and Gad Goldstein, who served as a division
head in the Israel Security Agency, Shin Bet, in the rank equivalent to Major General.
In addition to their purported cybersecurity activities, Israeli. American, and British
private companies have enormous access and potential to promote government and military
deception operations.
mike k , May 31, 2018 at 12:23 pm
Thanks Abe. Sounds like a manual for slave owners and con men. What a tangled wed the rich
bastards weave. The simple truth is their sworn enemy.
Sam F , May 31, 2018 at 10:19 pm
Interesting that a foreign power would be given all US communications data, which implies
that the US has seized it all without a warrant and revealed it all in violation of the
Constitution. If extensive, this use of information power amounts to information warfare
against the US by its own secret agencies in collusion with a foreign power, an act of
treason.
Seer , June 1, 2018 at 7:18 am
This has been going on for a LONG time, it's nothing new. I seem to recall 60 Minutes
covering it way back in the 70s(?). UK was allowed to do the snooping in the US (and, likely,
vice versa) and then providing info to the US. This way the US govt could claim that it
didn't spy/snoop on its citizens. Without a doubt Israel has been extensively intercepting
communications in the US..
Secrecy kills.
Sam F , June 1, 2018 at 8:23 am
Yes, but the act of allowing unregulated foreign agencies unwarranted access to US
telecoms is federal crime, and it is treason when it goes so far as to allow them full
access, and even direct US bulk traffic to their spy agencies. If this is so, these people
should be prosecuted for treason.
F. G. Sanford , May 31, 2018 at 11:36 am
To listen to the media coverage of these events, it is tempting to believe that two
entirely different planets are being discussed. Fox comes out and says Mueller was "owned" by
Trump. Then, CNN comes out and says Trump was "owned" by Clapper. Clapper claims the evidence
is "staggering", while video clips of his testimony reveal irrefutable perjury. Some of
President Trump's policies are understandably abhorrent to Democrats, while Clinton's email
server and charity frauds are indisputably violations of Federal statutes. Democrats are
attempting to claim that a "spy" in the Trump campaign was perfectly reasonable to protect
"national security", but evidence seems to indicate that the spy was placed BEFORE there was
a legitimate national security concern. Some analysts note that, while Mueller's team appears
to be Democratic partisan hacks, their native "skill set" is actually expertise in money
laundering investigations. They claim that although Mr. Trump may not be compromised by the
Russian government, he is involved with nefarious Russian organized crime figures. It
follows, according to them, that given time, Mueller will reveal these illicit connections,
and prosecution will become inevitable.
Let's assume, for argument, that both sides are right. That means that our entire
government is irretrievably corrupt. Republicans claim that it could " go all the way to
Obama". Democrats, of course, play the "moral high ground" card, insinuating that the current
administration is so base and immoral that somehow, the "ends justify the means". No matter
how you slice it, the Clinton campaign has a lot more liability on its hands. The problem is,
if prosecutions begin, people will "talk" to save their own skins. The puppet masters can't
really afford that.
"All the way to Obama", you say? I think it could go higher than that. Personally, I think
it could go all the way to Dick Cheney, and the 'powers that be' are in no mood to let that
happen.
Vivian O'Blivion , May 31, 2018 at 12:19 pm
The issue as I see it is that from the start everyone was calling the Mueller probe an
investigation into collusion and not really grasping the catch all nature of his brief.
It's the "any matters arising " that is the real kicker. So any dodgy dealing / possible
criminal activity in the past is fair game. And this is exactly what in happening with
Manafort.
Morally you can apply the Nucky Johnson defence and state that everyone knew Trump was a
crook when they voted for him, but legally this has no value.
There is an unpleasant whiff of deep state interference with the will of the people
(electoral college). Perhaps if most bodies hadn't written Trump's chances off in such an off
hand manner, proper due diligence of his background would have uncovered any liabilities
before the election.
If there is actionable dirt, can't say I am overly sympathetic to Trump. Big prizes sometimes
come with big risks.
David G , May 31, 2018 at 5:14 pm
My own feeling from the start has been that Mueller was never going to track down any
"collusion" or "meddling" (at least not to any significant degree) because the whole,
sprawling Russia-gate narrative – to the extent one can be discerned – is
obviously phony.
But at the same time, there's no way the completely lawless, unethical Trump, along with
his scummy associates, would be able to escape that kind of scrutiny without criminal conduct
being exposed.
So far, on both scores, that still seems to me to be a likely outcome, and for my part I'm
fine with it.
Vivian O'Blivion , June 1, 2018 at 5:29 am
My thoughts exactly. Collusion was never a viable proposition because the Russians aren't
that stupid. Regardless of any personal opinion regarding the intelligence and mental
stability of Donald Snr., the people he surrounds himself with are weapons grade stupid. I
don't see the Russians touching the Trump campaign with a proverbial barge pole.
Bill , June 2, 2018 at 3:26 pm
it just happens that Trump appears to have been involved (wittingly or not), with the
laundering a whole lot of Russian money and so many of his friends seem to be connected with
wealthy Russian oligarchs as well plus they are so stupid, they keep appearing to (and
probably are) obstructing justice. The Cohen thing doesn't get much attention here, but it's
significant that they have all this stuff on a guy who is clearly Trump's bagman.
Steve Naidamast , May 31, 2018 at 3:15 pm
There is also quite an indication that the entire Mueller investigation is a complete
smoke screen to be used as cannon fodder in the mainstream media.
On the one hand, Mueller and his hacks have found nothing of import to link Trump to
anything close to collusion with members of the Russian government. And I am by no means a
Trump supporter by any stretch of the imagination, except as a foil to Clinton. However, even
my minimalist expectations for Trump have not worked out either.
In addition. the Mueller investigation has been spending what appears to be a majority of
its time on ancillary matters that were not within the supposed scope and mandate of this
investigation. Further, a number of indictments have come down against people involved with
such ancillary matters.
The result is that if Mueller is going beyond the scope of his investigatory mandate, this
may come in as a technicality that will allow indicted persons to escape prosecution on
appeal.
Such a mandate, I would think, is the same thing as a police warrant, which can find only
admissible evidence covered by the warrant. Anything else found to be criminally liable must
be found to be as a result of a completely different investigation that has nothing to do
with the original warrant.
In other words, it appears that the Mueller investigation was allowed to commence under a
Republican controlled Congress for the very reason that its intent is simply to go in circles
long enough for Republicans to get their agendas through, which does not appear to be working
all too well as a result of their high levels of internecine party conflicts.
This entire affair is coming to show just how dysfunctional, corrupt, and incompetent the
entirety of the US federal government has become. And to the chagrin of all sincere
activists, no amount of organized protesting and political action will ever rid the country
of this grotesque political quagmire that now engulfs the entirety of our political
infrastructure.
Sam F , May 31, 2018 at 8:48 pm
Very true that the US federal government is now "dysfunctional, corrupt, and
incompetent."
What are your thoughts on forms of action to rid us this political quagmire?
(other than ineffective "organized protesting and political action")
Have you considered new forms of public debate and public information?
Seer , June 1, 2018 at 7:34 am
All of this is blackmail to hold Trump's feet to the fire of the Israel firsters (such
actions pull in all the dark swampy things). By creating the Russia blackmail story they've
effectively redirected away from themselves. The moment Trump balks the Deep State will reel
in some more, airing innuendos to overwhelm Trump. Better believe that Trump has been fully
"briefed" on all of this. John Bolton was able to push out a former OPCW head with threats
(knew where his, the OPCW head's children were). And now John Bolton is sitting right next to
Trump (whispering in his ear that he knows ways in which to oust Trump).
What actual "ideas" were in Trump's head going in to all of this (POTUS run) is hard to
say. But, anything that can be considered a threat to the Deep State has been effectively
nullified now.
Vivian O'Blivion , June 1, 2018 at 8:22 am
Possible, but Manafort already tried to get his charges thrown out as being the outcome of
investigations beyond the remit He failed.
Brendan , May 31, 2018 at 10:26 am
There's no doubt at all that Joseph Mifsud was closely connected with western
intelligence, and with MI6 in particular. His contacts with Russia are insignificant compared
with his long career working amongst the elite of western officials.
Lee Smith of RealClearInvestigations lists some of the places where Mifsud worked, including
two universities:
"he taught at Link Campus University in Rome, ( ) whose lecturers and professors include
senior Western diplomats and intelligence officials from a number of NATO countries,
especially Italy and the United Kingdom.
Mifsud also taught at the University of Stirling in Scotland, and the London Academy of
Diplomacy, which trained diplomats and government officials, some of them sponsored by the
UK's Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the British Council, or by their own governments."
Two former colleagues of Mifsud's, Roh and Pastor, recently interviewed him for a book
they have written. Those authors could very well be biased, but one of them makes a valid
point, similar to one that Daniel Lazare makes above:
"Given the affiliations of Link's faculty and staff, as well as Mifsud's pedigree, Roh thinks
it's impossible that the man he hired as a business development consultant is a Russian
agent."
Politically, Mifsud identifies with the Clintons more than anyone else, and claims to
belong to the Clinton Foundation, which has often been accused of being just a way of
funneling money into Hillary Clinton's campaign.
As Lee Smith says, if Mifsud really is a Russian spy, "Western intelligence services are
looking at one of the largest and most embarrassing breaches in a generation. But none of the
governments or intelligence agencies potentially compromised is acting like there's anything
wrong."
From all that we know about Joseph Mifsud, it's safe to say that he was never a Russian
spy. If not, then what was he doing when he was allegedly feeding stories to George
Papadopoulos about Russians having 'dirt' on Clinton?
I read somewhere that Mifsud had disappeared. Was that true? If so, is he back, or still
missing?
Chet Roman , May 31, 2018 at 6:21 pm
Here are some excerpts that will answer your question from an article by Lee Smith at
Realclearinvestigations, "The Maltese Phantom of Russiagate".
A new book by former colleagues of Mifsud's – Stephan Roh, a 50-year-old
Swiss-German lawyer, and Thierry Pastor, a 35-year-old French political analyst –
reports that he is alive and well. Their account includes a recent interview with him.
Their self-published book, "The Faking of Russia-gate: The Papadopoulos Case, an
Investigative Analysis," includes a recent interview with Mifsud in which he denies saying
anything about Clinton emails to Papadopoulos. Mifsud, they write, stated "vehemently that he
never told anything like this to George Papadopoulos." Mifsud asked rhetorically: "From where
should I have this [information]?"
Mifsud's account seems to be supported by Alexander Downer, the Australian diplomat who
alerted authorities about Papadopoulos. As reported in the Daily Caller, Downer said
Papadopoulos never mentioned emails; he spoke, instead, about the Russians possessing
material that could be damaging to Clinton. This new detail raises the possibility that
Mifsud, Papadopoulos' alleged source for the information, never said anything about
Clinton-related emails either.
In interviews with RealClearInvestigations, Roh and Pastor said Mifsud is anything but a
Russian spy. Rather, he is more likely a Western intelligence asset.
According to the two authors, it was a former Italian intelligence official, Vincenzo
Scotti, a colleague of Mifsud's and onetime interior minister, who told the professor to go
into hiding. "I don't know who was hiding him," said Roh, "but I'm sure it was organized by
someone. And I am sure it will be difficult to get to the bottom of it."
Toby McCrossin , June 1, 2018 at 1:54 am
" The Papadopoulos Case, an Investigative Analysis," includes a recent interview with
Mifsud in which he denies saying anything about Clinton emails to Papadopoulos. Mifsud, they
write, stated "vehemently that he never told anything like this to George Papadopoulos.""
Thank you for providing that explosive piece of information. If true, and I suspect it is,
that's one more nail in the Russiagate narrative. Who, then, is making the claim that Misfud
mentioned emails? The only source for the statement I can find is "court documents".
Sam F , May 31, 2018 at 9:20 am
The election scams serve only to distract from the Israel-gate scandal and the oligarchy
destruction of our former democracy. Mr. Lazare neglects to tell us about that. All of
Hillary's top ten campaign bribers were zionists, and Trump let Goldman-Sachs take over the
economy. KSA and big business also bribed heavily.
We must restrict funding of elections and mass media to limited individual donations, for
democracy is lost.
We must eliminate zionist fascism from our political parties, federal government, and
foreign policy. Obviously that has nothing to do with any ethnic or religious preference.
Otherwise the United States is lost, and our lives have no historical meaning beyond
slavery to oligarchy.
Joe Tedesky , May 31, 2018 at 9:51 am
You are right Sam. Israel does work the fence under the guise of the Breaking News.
Joe
Sam F , May 31, 2018 at 8:18 pm
My response was that Israel massacres at the fence, ignored by the zionist US mass
media.
mike k , May 31, 2018 at 11:48 am
The extreme wealth and privileges of oligarchy depend on the poverty and slavery of
others. Inequality of income is the root cause of most of our ills. Try to imagine what a
world of economic equals would be like. No striving for more and more wealth at the expense
of others. No wars. What would there be to fight over – everyone would be content with
what they already had.
If you automatically think such a world would be impossible, try to state why. You might
discover that the only obstacle to such a world is the greedy bastards who are sitting on top
of everybody, and will do anything to maintain their advantages.
mike k , May 31, 2018 at 11:52 am
How do the oligarchs ensure your slavery? With the little green tickets they have hoarded
that the rest of us need just to eat and have a roof over our heads. The people sleeping in
the streets tell us the penalty for not being good slaves.
Sam F , May 31, 2018 at 12:50 pm
Very true, Mike. Those who say that equality or fairness of income implies breaking the
productivity incentive system are wrong. No matter how much or how little wage incentive we
offer for making an effort in work, we need not have great disparities of income. Those who
can work should have work, and we should all make an effort to do well in our work, but none
of us need the fanciest cars or grand monuments to live in, just to do our best.
Getting rid of oligarchy, and getting money out of mass media and elections, would be the
greatest achievement of our times.
Joe Tedesky , May 31, 2018 at 5:30 pm
An old socialist friend of my dad's generation who claimed to have read the biography of
Andrew Carnegie had told me over a few beers that Carnegie said, "that at a time when he was
paying his workers $5 a week he 'could' have been paying them $50 a day, but then he could
not figure out what kind of life they would lead with all that money". Think about it mike,
if his workers would have had that kind of money it would not be long before Carnegie's
workers became his competition and opened up next door to him the worst case scenario would
be his former workers would sell their steel at a cheaper price, kind of, well no exactly
like what Rockefeller did with oil, or as Carnegie did with steel innovation. How's that
saying go, keep them down on the farm . well. Remember Carnegie was a low level stooge for
the railroads at one time, and rose to the top .mike. Great point to make mike, because there
could be more to go around. Joe
Steve Naidamast , May 31, 2018 at 3:16 pm
"We must restrict funding of elections and mass media to limited individual donations, for
democracy is lost.
We must eliminate zionist fascism from our political parties, federal government, and
foreign policy. Obviously that has nothing to do with any ethnic or religious
preference."
Good luck with that!!!
Sam F , May 31, 2018 at 8:19 pm
Well, you are welcome to make suggestions on how to save the republic.
john wilson , May 31, 2018 at 9:10 am
The depths of the deep state has no limits, but as a UK citizen, I fail to see why the
American "spooks" need any help from we Brits when it comes state criminal activity. Sure, we
are masters at underhand dirty tricks, but the US has a basket full of tricks that 'Trump'
(lol) anything we've got. It was the Russians wot done mantra has been going on for many
decades and is ever good for another turn around the political mulberry tree of corruption
and underhand dealings. Whether the Democrats or the Republicans win its all the same to the
deep state as they are in control whoever is in the White House. Trump was an outsider and
there for election colour and the "ho ho ho" look what a great democracy we are, anyone can
be president. He is in fact the very essence of the 'wild card' and when he actually won
there was total confusion, panic, disbelief and probably terror in the caves and dungeons of
the deep state.
Realist , May 31, 2018 at 9:33 am
I'm sure the result was so unexpected that the shadowy fixers, the IT mavens who could
have "adjusted" the numbers, were totally caught off guard and unable to do "cleanly." Not
that they didn't try to re-jigger the results in the four state recounts that were ordered,
but it was simply too late to effectively cheat at that point, as there were already massive
overvotes detected in key urban precincts. Such a thing will never happen again, I am
sure.
Sam F , May 31, 2018 at 9:36 am
It appears that UK has long had a supply of anti-Russia fearmongers, presumably backed by
its anti-socialist oligarchy as in the US. Perhaps the US oligarchy is the dumbest salesman,
who believes that all customers are even dumber, so that UK can sell Russophobia here thirty
years after the USSR.
Bob Van Noy , May 31, 2018 at 8:49 am
"But how could Trump think otherwise? As Consortium News founding editor Robert Parry
observed a few days later, the maneuver "resembles a tactic out of FBI Director J. Edgar
Hoover's playbook on government-style blackmail: I have some very derogatory information
about you that I'd sure hate to see end up in the press."
Perfect.
Recently, while trying to justify my arguement that a new investigation into the RFK Killing
was necessary, I was asked why I thought that, and my response was "Modus operandi," exactly
what Robert Parry learned by experience, and that is the fundamental similarity to all of the
institutionalized crime that takes place by the IC. Once one realizes the literary approach
to disinformation that was fundamental to Alan Dulles, James Jesus Angleton, even Ian
Fleming, one can easily see the Themes being applied. I suppose that the very feature of
believability offered by propaganda, once recognized, becomes its undoing. That could be our
current reality; the old Lines simply are beginning to appear to be ridiculous
Thank you Daniel Lazar.
Sam F , June 1, 2018 at 8:39 am
The recognition of themes of propaganda as literary themes and modus operandi is helping
to discredit propaganda. The similarities of the CW false-flag operations (Iraq, Syria, and
UK), and the fake assassinations (Skripal and Babchenko) by the anti-Russia crowd help reveal
and persuade on the falsehood of the Iraq WMD, Syria CW, and MH-17 propaganda ops. Just as
the similarities of the JFK/MLK/RFK assassinations persuade us that commonalities exist long
before we see evidence.
Bob Van Noy , June 1, 2018 at 1:11 pm
Many thanks Sam F for recognizing that. As we begin to achieve a resolution of the 60's
Kllings, we can begin to see the general and specific themes utilized to direct the programs
of Assassination. The other aspect is that real investigation Never followed; and that took
Real Power.
In a truly insightful book by author Sally Denton entitled "The Profiteers" she puts
together a very cogent theory that it isn't the Mafia, it's the Syndicate, which means (for
me at least) real, criminal power with somewhat divergent interests ok with one another, to
the extent that they can maintain their Own Turf. I think that's a profound insight
Too, in a similar vain, the Grand Deceptions of American Foreign Policy, "scenarios" are
simply and only that, not a Real possible solution. Always resulting in failure
Sam F , June 1, 2018 at 9:23 pm
Yes, it is difficult to determine the structure of a subculture of gangsterism in power,
which can have many specialized factions in loose cooperation, agreeing on some general
policy points, like benefits for the rich, hatred of socialism, institutionalized bribery of
politicians and judges, militarized policing, destruction of welfare and social security,
deregulation of everything, essentially the neocon/neolib line of the DemReps. The party line
of oligarchy in any form.
Indeed the foreign policy of such gangsters is designed to "fail" because destruction of
cultures, waste, and fragmentation most efficiently exploits the bribery structure available,
and serves the anti-socialist oligarchy. Failure of the declared foreign policy is success,
because that is only propaganda to cover the corruption.
You know, not only Gay Trowdy but even Dracula Napolitano think people like Lazare ,
McGovern, etc. are overblown on this issue.
backwardsevolution , May 31, 2018 at 1:47 pm
SocraticGadfly – Trey Gowdy hasn't even seen the documents yet, so he's hardly in a
position to say anything. The House Intelligence Committee, under Chairman Nunes, are being
stymied by the FBI and the Department of Justice who are refusing to hand over documents.
Refusing! Refusing to disclose documents to the very people who, by law, have oversight.
Nunes is threatening to hit them with Contempt of Congress.
Let's see the documents. Then Trey Gowdy can open his mouth.
What I take from this head spinning article is the paragraph about Carter Page.
"On July 7, 2016 Carter Page delivered a lecture on U.S.-Russian relations in Moscow in
which he complained that "Washington and other western capitals have impeded potential
progress through their often hypocritical focus on ideas such as democratization, inequality,
corruption, and regime change." Washington hawks expressed "unease" that someone representing
the presumptive Republican nominee would take Russia's side in a growing neo-Cold War
Mr. Page hit the nail on the head. There is no greater sin to entrenched power than to
spell out what is going on with Russia. It helps us understand why terms like dupe and
naïve were stuck on Carter Page's back.. Truth to power is not always good for your
health.
Sam F , May 31, 2018 at 10:07 am
The tyrant accuses of disloyalty, all who question the reality of his foreign
monsters.
And so do his monster-fighting agencies, whose budgets depend upon the fiction.
backwardsevolution , May 31, 2018 at 7:25 am
Daniel Lazare – good report. "It sounds more like CIA paranoia raised to the nth
degree." This wasn't a case of paranoia. This was a blatant attempt to bring down a rival
opponent and, failing that, the President of the United States. This was intentional and
required collusion between top officials of the government. They fabricated the phony Steele
dossier (paid for by the Clinton campaign), exonerated Hillary Clinton, and then went to town
on bringing down Trump.
"Was George Popodopolous set up?" Of course he was. Set up a patsy in order to give you
reason to carry out a phony investigation.
"If the corporate press fails to point this out, it's because reporters are too befogged
themselves to notice." They're not befogged; they're following orders (the major television
and newspaper outfits). Without their 24/7 spin and lies, Russiagate would never have been
kept alive.
These guys got the biggest surprise of their life when Hillary Clinton lost the election.
None of this would have come out had she won. During the campaign, as Trump gained in the
polls, she was heard to say, "If they ever find out what we've done, we'll all hang."
I hope they see jail time for what they've done.
backwardsevolution , May 31, 2018 at 7:38 am
Apparently what has come out so far is just the tip of the iceberg. Some are saying this
could lead all the way up to Obama. I hope not, but they have certainly done all they can to
ruin the Trump Presidency.
JohnM , May 31, 2018 at 9:58 am
I'm adjusting my tinfoil hat right now. I'm wondering if Skripal had something to do with
the Steel dossier. The iceberg may be even bigger than thought.
Sam F , May 31, 2018 at 10:18 am
It is known that Skripal's close friend living nearby was an employee of Steele's firm
Orbis.
Chet Roman , May 31, 2018 at 2:58 pm
Exactly, his name is Pablo Miller and he is the MI6 agent who initially recruited Sergei
Skripal. Miller worked for Orbis, Steele's company and listed that in his resume on LinkedIn
but later deleted it. But once it's on the internet it can always be found and it was and it
was published.
robjira , May 31, 2018 at 2:13 pm
John, both Moon Of Alabama and OffGuardian have had excellent coverage of the Skripal
affair. Informed opinions wonder if Sergei Skripal was one of Steele's "Russian sources," and
that he may have been poisoned for the purpose of either a) bolstering the whole "Russia =
evil" narrative, or b) a warning not to ask for more than what he may have conceivably
received for any contribution he may or may not have made to the "dossiere."
mike k , May 31, 2018 at 7:20 am
Interesting details in this article, but we have known this whole Russiagate affair was a
scam from the get go. It all started the day after Trump's unexpected electoral win over
Hillary. The chagrined dems came together and concocted their sore loser alibi – the
Russians did it. They scooped up a lot of pre-election dirt, rolled it into a ball and
directed it at Trump. It is a testament to the media's determination to stick with their
story, that in spite of not a single scrap of real evidence after over a year of digging by a
huge team of democratic hit men and women, this ridiculous story still has supporters.
David G , May 31, 2018 at 10:31 am
"It all started the day after Trump's unexpected electoral win over Hillary."
Not so.
Daniel Lazare's first link in the above piece is to Paul Krugman's July 22, 2016 NY Times
op-ed, "Donald Trump, the Siberian Candidate". (Note how that headline doesn't even bother to
employ a question mark.)
I appreciate that that Krugman column gets pride of place here since I distinctly remember
reading it in my copy of the Times that day, months before the election, and my immediate
reaction to it: nonplussed that such a risible thesis was being aired so prominently, along
with a deep realization that this was only the first shot in what would be a co-ordinated
media disinformation campaign, à la Saddam's WMDs.
Chet Roman , May 31, 2018 at 3:37 pm
Actually, I think the intelligence agencies' (CIA/FBI/DNI) plan started shortly after
Trump gave the names of Page and Papadopoulos to the Washington Post (CIA annex) in a meeting
on March 21, 2016 outlining his foreign policy team.
Carter Page (Naval Academy distinguished graduate and Naval intelligence officer) in 2013
worked as an "under-cover employee" of the FBI in a case that convicted Evgeny Buryakov and
it was reported that he was still an UCE in March of 2016. The FBI never charged or even
hinted that Page was anything but innocent and patriotic. However, in October 2016 the FBI
told the FISA Court that he was a spy to support spying on him. Remember the FISA Court
allows spying on him AND the persons he is in contact, which means almost everyone on the
Trump transition team/administration.
Here is an excerpt from an article by WSJ's Kimberley Strassel:
In "late spring" of 2016, then-FBI Director James Comey briefed White House "National
Security Council Principals" that the FBI had counterintelligence concerns about the Trump
campaign. Carter Page was announced as a campaign adviser on March 21, and Paul Manafort
joined the campaign March 29. The briefing likely referenced both men, since both had
previously been on the radar of law enforcement. But here's what matters: With this briefing,
Mr. Comey officially notified senior political operators on Team Obama that the bureau had
eyes on Donald Trump and Russia. Imagine what might be done in these partisan times with such
explosive information.
And what do you know? Sometime in April, the law firm Perkins Coie (on behalf the Clinton
campaign) hired Fusion GPS, and Fusion turned its attention to Trump-Russia connections.
David G , May 31, 2018 at 4:56 pm
Most interesting, Chet Roman. Thanks.
My understanding is that Trump more or less pulled Page's name out of a hat to show the
WashPost that he had a "foreign policy team", and thus that his campaign wasn't just a hollow
sham, but that at that point he really had had no significant contact at all with Page
– maybe hadn't even met him. It was just a name from his new political world that
sprang to "mind" (or the Trumpian equivalent).
Of course, the Trump campaign *was* just a sham, by conventional Beltway standards: a
ramshackle road show with no actual "foreign policy team", or any other policy team.
So maybe that random piece of B.S. from Trump has caused him a heap of trouble. This is
part of why – no matter how bogus "Russia-gate" is – I just can't bring myself to
feel sorry for old Cheeto Dust.
backwardsevolution , May 31, 2018 at 6:56 am
Kimberly Strassel of the Wall Street Journal had some good advice:
"Mr. Trump has an even quicker way to bring the hostility to an end.
He can – and should – declassify everything possible, letting Congress and the
public see the truth.
That would put an end to the daily spin and conspiracy theories. It would puncture
Democratic arguments that the administration is seeking to gain this information only for
itself, to "undermine" an investigation.
And it would end the Justice Department's campaign of secrecy, which has done such harm to
its reputation with the public and with Congress."
What do you bet he does?
RickD , May 31, 2018 at 6:44 am
I have serious doubts about the article's veracity. There seems to be a thread running
through it indicating an attempt to whitewash any Russian efforts to get Trump elected. To
dismiss all the evidence of such efforts, and , despite this author's words, there is enough
such evidence, seems more than a bit partisan.
What evidence? I've seen none so far. A lot of claims that there is such evidence but no
one seems to ever say what it is.
backwardsevolution , May 31, 2018 at 7:06 am
RickD – thanks for the good laugh before bedtime. I'm with Mr. Merrell and I
actually want to see some evidence. Maybe it was Professor Halper in the kitchen with the
paring knife.
Realist , May 31, 2018 at 9:21 am
Unfortunately, what this guy says is what most Americans still seem to believe. When I ask
people what is the actual hard evidence for "Russiagate" (because I don't know of any that
has been corroborated), I get a response that there have been massive examples of Russian
hacks, Russian posts, tweets and internet adverts–all meant to sabotage Hillary's
candidacy, and very effective, mind you. Putin has been an evil genius worthy of a comic book
villain (to date myself, a regular Lex Luthor). Sez who, ask I? Sez the trustworthy American
media that would never lie to the public, sez they. You know, professional paragons of virtue
like Rachel Maddow and her merry band.
Nobody seems aware of the recent findings about Halpern, none seem to have a realistic
handle on the miniscule scope of the Russian "offenses" against American democracy. Rachel,
the NY Times and WaPo have seen to that with their sins of both commission and omission. Even
the Republican party is doing a half-hearted job of defending its own power base with
rigorous and openly disseminated fact checking. It's like even many of the committee chairs
with long seniority are reluctant to buck the conventional narrative peddled by the media.
Many have chosen to retire rather than fight the media and the Deep State. What's a better
interpretation of events? Or is one to believe that the silent voices, curious retirements
and political heat generated by the Dems, the prosecutors and the media are all independent
variables with no connections? These old pols recognise a good demonizing when they see it,
especially when directed at them.
Personally, I think that not only the GOPers should be fighting like the devil to expose
the truth (which should benefit them in this circumstance) but so should the media and all
the watchdog agencies (ngo's) out there because our democracy WAS hijacked, but it was NOT by
the Russians. Worse than that, it was done by internal domestic enemies of the people who
must be outed and punished to save the constitution and the republic, if it is not too late.
All the misinformation by influential insiders and the purported purveyors of truth
accompanied by the deliberate silence by those who should be chirping like birds suggests it
may well be far too late.
backwardsevolution , May 31, 2018 at 7:53 pm
Realist – a most excellent post! Some poll result I read about the other day
mentioned that well over half of the American public do NOT believe what they are being told
by the media. That was good to hear. But you are right, there are still way too many who
never question anything. If I ever get in trouble, I wouldn't want those types on my jury.
They'd be wide awake during the prosecution's case and fast asleep during my defense.
This is the Swamp at work on both sides of the aisle. Most of the Republicans are hanging
Trump out to dry. They've probably got too much dirt they want to keep hidden themselves, so
retirement looks like a good idea. Get out of Dodge while the going is good, before the real
fighting begins! The Democrats are battling for all they're worth, and I've got to hand it to
them – they're dirty little fighters.
Yes, democracy has been hijacked. Hard to say how long this has been going on –
maybe forever. If there is anything good about Trump's presidency, it's that the Deep State
is being laid out and delivered up on a silver platter for all to see.
There has never been a better chance to take back the country than this. If this
opportunity passes, it will never come again. They will make sure of it.
The greatest thing that Trump could do for the country would be to declassify all
documents. Jeff Sessions is either part of the Deep State or he's been scared off. He's not
going to act. Rosenstein is up to his eyeballs in this mess and he's not going to act. In
fact, he's preventing Nunes from getting documents. It is up to Trump to act. I just hope
he's not being surrounded by a bunch of bad apple lawyers who are giving him bad advice. He
needs to go above the Department of Justice and declassify ALL documents. If he did that, a
lot of these people would probably die of a heart attack within a minute.
mike k , May 31, 2018 at 7:11 am
You sure came out of the woodwork quickly to express your "serious doubts" RickD.
Skip Scott , May 31, 2018 at 8:07 am
Please provide "such evidence". I've yet to see any. The entire prosecution of RussiaGate
has been one big Gish Gallop.
strgr-tgther , May 31, 2018 at 9:39 pm
RickD – Thank you for pointing that out! You were the only one!!! It is a very
strange article leaving Putin and the Russians evidence out and also not a single word about
Stromy Daniels witch is also very strange. I know Hillary would never have approved of any of
this and they don't say that either.
John , June 1, 2018 at 2:26 am
What does Stormy Daniels have to do with RussiaGate?
You know that someone who committed the ultimate war crime by lying us into war to destroy
Libya and re-institute slavery there, and who laughed after watching video of a man that
Nelson Mandela called "The Greatest Living Champion of Human Rights on the Planet" be
sodomized to death with a knife, is somehow too "moral" to do such a thing? Really?
It amazes me how utterly cultish those who support the Red Queen have shown themselves to
be – without apparently realizing that they are obviously on par with the followers of
Jim Jones!
strgr-tgther , June 1, 2018 at 12:17 pm
That is like saying what does income tax have to do with Al Capone. Who went to Alctraz
because he did not pay income tax not for being a gangster. So we know Trump has sexual
relations with Stormy Daniels, then afterward PAID her not to talk about it. So he paid Story
Daniels for sex! That is Prostitution! Same thing. And that is inpeachable, using womens
bodies as objects. If we don't prosecute Trump here then from now on all a John needs to say
to the police is that he was not paying for sex but paying to keep quiet about it. And
Cogress can get Trump for prostitution and disgracing the office of President. Without Russia
investigations we would never have found out about this important fact, so that is what it
has to do with Russia Gate.
"... That did not prevent the "handpicked" authors of that poor excuse for intelligence analysis from expressing "high confidence" that Russian intelligence "relayed material it acquired from the Democratic National Committee to WikiLeaks." Handpicked analysts, of course, say what they are handpicked to say. ..."
"... The June 12, 14, & 15 timing was hardly coincidence. Rather, it was the start of a pre-emptive move to associate Russia with anything WikiLeaks might have been about to publish and to "show" that it came from a Russian hack. ..."
"... "No one has challenged the authenticity of the original documents of Vault 7, which disclosed a vast array of cyber warfare tools developed, probably with help from NSA, by CIA's Engineering Development Group. That Group was part of the sprawling CIA Directorate of Digital Innovation – a growth industry established by John Brennan in 2015. [ (VIPS warned President Obama of some of the dangers of that basic CIA reorganization at the time.] ..."
"... "Scarcely imaginable digital tools – that can take control of your car and make it race over 100 mph, for example, or can enable remote spying through a TV – were described and duly reported in the New York Times and other media throughout March. But the Vault 7, part 3 release on March 31 that exposed the "Marble Framework" program apparently was judged too delicate to qualify as 'news fit to print' and was kept out of the Times at the time, and has never been mentioned since . ..."
"... "More important, the CIA reportedly used Marble during 2016. In her Washington Post report , Nakashima left that out, but did include another significant point made by WikiLeaks; namely, that the obfuscation tool could be used to conduct a 'forensic attribution double game' or false-flag operation because it included test samples in Chinese, Russian, Korean, Arabic and Farsi." ..."
"... The CIA's reaction to the WikiLeaks disclosure of the Marble Framework tool was neuralgic. Then Director Mike Pompeo lashed out two weeks later, calling Assange and his associates "demons," and insisting; "It's time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is, a non-state hostile intelligence service, often abetted by state actors like Russia."Our July 24 Memorandum continued: "Mr. President, we do not know if CIA's Marble Framework, or tools like it, played some kind of role in the campaign to blame Russia for hacking the DNC. Nor do we know how candid the denizens of CIA's Digital Innovation Directorate have been with you and with Director Pompeo. These are areas that might profit from early White House review. [ President Trump then directed Pompeo to invite Binney, one of the authors of the July 24, 2017 VIPS Memorandum to the President, to discuss all this. Binney and Pompeo spent an hour together at CIA Headquarters on October 24, 2017, during which Binney briefed Pompeo with his customary straightforwardness. ] ..."
"... Another false flag operation? Suddenly false flag operations have become the weapon of choice. Interestingly enough, they are nefariously (always) committed by the US or US allies. MH17 was a false flag with an SU-25 Ukraine jet responsible for downing the passenger jet (to blame Russia). All of the chemical attacks in Syria were false flag operations with the supply of sarin/chlorine made in Turkey or directly given to the "rebels" by the CIA or US allies. The White Helmets were of course in on all of the details. Assad was just simply not capable of doing that to "his" people. Forget that the sarin had the chemical signature of the Assad regime sarin supply. Next it was the snipers who used a false flag operation during the Maidan revolution to shoot protesters and police to oust Yanukovych. Only the neo-Nazis could be capable of shooting the Maidan protesters so they could take power. And then Seth Rich was murdered so he couldn't reveal he was the "real" source of the leak. This was hinted by Assange when he offered a reward to find the killers. ..."
"... The author tosses out that the DNC hack was (potentially) a false flag operation by the CIA obviously to undermine Trump while victimizing Russia. ..."
"... I don't seen any cause to say that any false-flag theory you don't like is merely "tossed out" propaganda. One cannot tell in your comment where you think the accounts are credible and where not. No evidence that the Syria CW attacks "had the chemical signature of the Assad regime sarin supply." ..."
"... There can be no doubt that counterintelligence tools would be pursued by our intelligence agencies as a means to create narratives and false evidence based on the production of false flags which support desired geopolitical outcomes. There would be a need to create false flags using technology to support the geopolitical agenda which would be hard or impossible to trace using the forensic tools used by cyber sleuths. ..."
"... Russia-gate is American Exceptionalism writ large which takes on a more sinister aspect as groups like BLM and others are "linked" to alleged "Russian funding"on one and and Soros funding on another ..."
"... (FWIW, this is a new neoliberal phenomenon when the ultra-rich "liberals" can quietly fund marches on Washington and "grassroots" networking making those neophyte movements too easy targets with questionable robust foundation (color revolutions are possible when anyone is able to foot the cost of 1,000 or 2000 "free" signs or t-shirts -- impecccably designed and printed. ..."
"... Excellent post. Thanks also for reminding me I need to revisit the Vault 7 information as source material. These are incredibly important leaks that help connect the dots of criminal State intelligence activities designed to have remained forever hidden. ..."
"... Actually, both Brennan and Hayden testified to Congress that only 3 agencies signed off on their claim. They also said that they'd "hand picked" a special team to run their "investigation," and no other people were involved. So, people known to be perjurers cherry picked "evidence" to make a claim. Let's invade Iraq again. ..."
"... Mueller is not interested in the truth. He can't handle the truth. His purpose is not to divulge the truth. He has no use for truthtellers including the critical possessors of the truth whom you mentioned. This aversion to the truth is the biggest clue that Mueller's activities are a complete sham. ..."
"... Thanks, Ray, for revealing that the CIA's Digital Innovation Directorate is the likely cause of the Russiagate scams. ..."
"... Your disclaimer is hilarious: "We speak and write without fear or favor. Consequently, any resemblance between what we say and what presidents, politicians and pundits say is purely coincidental." ..."
"... For whatever reason, Ray McGovern chose not to mention the murder of Seth Rich, which pretty clearly points to the real source of the leak being him, as hinted by Assange offering a reward for anyone uncovering his killer. The whole thing stinks of a democratic conspiracy. ..."
"... Ray, from what I have seen in following his writing for years, meticulously only deals in knowns. The Seth Rich issue is not a known, it is speculation still. Yes, it probably is involved, but unless Craig Murray states that Seth Rich was the one who handed him the USB drive, it is not a known. ..."
"... There is a possibility that Seth Rich was not the one who leaked the information, but that the DNC bigwigs THOUGHT he was, in which case, by neither confirming nor denying that Seth Rich was the leaker, it may be that letting the DNC continue to think it was him is being done in protection of the actual leaker. Seth Rich could also have been killed for unrelated reasons, perhaps Imran Awan thought he was on to his doings. ..."
"... Don't forget this Twitter post by Wikileaks on October 30, 2016: Podesta: "I'm definitely for making an example of a suspected leaker whether or not we have any real basis for it." https://www.wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/36082#efmAGSAH- ..."
"... Mueller has nothing and he well knows it. He was willingly roped into this whole pathetic charade and he's left grasping for anything remotely tied to Trump campaign officials and Russians. Even the most tenuous connections and weak relationships are splashed across the mass media in breathless headlines. Meanwhile, NONE of the supposed skulduggery unearthed by Mueller has anything to do with the Kremlin "hacking" the election to favor Trump. Which was the entire raison d'etre behind Rosenstein and Mueller's crusade on behalf of the deplorable DNC and Washington militarist-imperialists. Sure be interesting to see how Mueller and his crew ultimately extricate themselves from this giant fraudulent edifice of deceit. Will they even be able to save the most rudimentary amount of face? ..."
"... If they had had any evidence to inculpate Russia, we would have all seen it by now. They know that by stating that there is an investigation going on: they can blame Russia. The Democratic National Committee is integrated by a pack of liars. ..."
"... My question is simple, when will we concentrate on reading Hillary's many emails? After all wasn't this the reason for the Russian interference mania? Until we do, take apart Hillary's correspondence with her lackeys, nothing will transpire of any worth. I should not be the one saying this, in as much as Bernie Sanders should be the one screaming it for justice from the highest roof tops, but he isn't. So what's up with that? Who all is involved in this scandalous coverup? What do the masters of corruption have on everybody? ..."
If you are wondering why so little is heard these days of accusations that Russia hacked
into the U.S. election in 2016, it could be because those charges could not withstand
close scrutiny . It
could also be because special counsel Robert Mueller appears to have never bothered to
investigate what was once the central alleged crime in Russia-gate as no one associated with
WikiLeaks has ever been questioned by his team.
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity -- including two "alumni" who were former
National Security Agency technical directors -- have long since concluded that Julian Assange
did not acquire what he called the "emails related to Hillary Clinton" via a "hack" by the
Russians or anyone else. They found, rather, that he got them from someone with physical access
to Democratic National Committee computers who copied the material onto an external storage
device -- probably a thumb drive. In December 2016 VIPS explained
this in some detail in an open Memorandum to President Barack Obama.
On January 18, 2017 President Obama admitted
that the "conclusions" of U.S. intelligence regarding how the alleged Russian hacking got to
WikiLeaks were "inconclusive." Even the vapid FBI/CIA/NSA "Intelligence Community Assessment of
Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent U.S. Elections" of January 6, 2017, which tried to
blame Russian President Vladimir Putin for election interference, contained
no direct evidence of Russian involvement. That did not prevent the "handpicked" authors of
that poor excuse for intelligence analysis from expressing "high confidence" that Russian
intelligence "relayed material it acquired from the Democratic National Committee to
WikiLeaks." Handpicked analysts, of course, say what they are handpicked to say.
Never mind. The FBI/CIA/NSA "assessment" became bible truth for partisans like Rep. Adam Schiff
(D-CA), ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, who was among the first off the
blocks to blame Russia for interfering to help Trump. It simply could not have been that
Hillary Clinton was quite capable of snatching defeat out of victory all by herself. No, it had
to have been the Russians.
Five days into the Trump presidency, I had a chance to
challenge Schiff personally on the gaping disconnect between the Russians and WikiLeaks.
Schiff still "can't share the evidence" with me or with anyone else, because it does not
exist.
WikiLeaks
It was on June 12, 2016, just six weeks before the Democratic National Convention, that
Assange announced the pending publication of "emails related to Hillary Clinton," throwing the
Clinton campaign into panic mode, since the emails would document strong bias in favor of
Clinton and successful attempts to sabotage the campaign of Bernie Sanders. When the emails
were published on July 22, just three days before the convention began, the campaign decided to
create what I call a Magnificent Diversion, drawing attention away from the substance of the
emails by blaming Russia for their release.
Clinton's PR chief Jennifer Palmieri later admitted that she golf-carted around to various
media outlets at the convention with instructions "to get the press to focus on something even
we found difficult to process: the prospect that Russia had not only hacked and stolen emails
from the DNC, but that it had done so to help Donald Trump and hurt Hillary Clinton." The
diversion worked like a charm. Mainstream media kept shouting "The Russians did it," and gave
little, if any, play to the DNC skullduggery revealed in the emails themselves. And like Brer'
Fox, Bernie didn't say nothin'.
Meanwhile, highly sophisticated technical experts, were hard at work fabricating "forensic
facts" to "prove" the Russians did it. Here's how it played out:
June 12, 2016: Assange announces that WikiLeaks is about to publish "emails related to
Hillary Clinton."
June 14, 2016: DNC contractor CrowdStrike, (with a dubious professional record and multiple
conflicts of interest) announces that malware has been found on the DNC server and claims there
is evidence it was injected by Russians.
June 15, 2016: "Guccifer 2.0" affirms the DNC statement; claims responsibility for the
"hack;" claims to be a WikiLeaks source; and posts a document that the forensics show was
synthetically tainted with "Russian fingerprints."
The June 12, 14, & 15 timing was hardly coincidence. Rather, it was the start of a
pre-emptive move to associate Russia with anything WikiLeaks might have been about to publish
and to "show" that it came from a Russian hack.
Enter Independent Investigators
A year ago independent cyber-investigators completed the kind of forensic work that, for
reasons best known to then-FBI Director James Comey, neither he nor the "handpicked analysts"
who wrote the Jan. 6, 2017 assessment bothered to do. The independent investigators found
verifiable evidence from metadata found in the record of an alleged Russian hack of July 5,
2016 showing that the "hack" that day of the DNC by Guccifer 2.0 was not a hack, by Russia or
anyone else.
Rather it originated with a copy (onto an external storage device – a thumb drive, for
example) by an insider -- the same process used by the DNC insider/leaker before June 12, 2016
for an altogether different purpose. (Once the metadata was found and the "fluid dynamics"
principle of physics applied, this was not difficult to
disprove the validity of the claim that Russia was responsible.)
One of these independent investigators publishing under the name of The Forensicator on May
31
published new evidence that
the Guccifer 2.0 persona uploaded a document from the West Coast of the United States, and not
from Russia.
In our July 24, 2017 Memorandum to President Donald Trump we stated ,
"We do not know who or what the murky Guccifer 2.0 is. You may wish to ask the FBI."
Our July 24 Memorandum continued: "Mr. President, the disclosure described below may be
related. Even if it is not, it is something we think you should be made aware of in this
general connection. On March 7, 2017, WikiLeaks began to publish a trove of original CIA
documents that WikiLeaks labeled 'Vault 7.' WikiLeaks said it got the trove from a current or
former CIA contractor and described it as comparable in scale and significance to the
information Edward Snowden gave to reporters in 2013.
"No one has challenged the authenticity of the original documents of Vault 7, which
disclosed a vast array of cyber warfare tools developed, probably with help from NSA, by CIA's
Engineering Development Group. That Group was part of the sprawling CIA Directorate of Digital
Innovation – a growth industry established by John Brennan in 2015. [ (VIPS warned
President Obama of some of the dangers of that basic CIA reorganization at the time.]
Marbled
"Scarcely imaginable digital tools – that can take control of your car and make it
race over 100 mph, for example, or can enable remote spying through a TV – were described
and duly reported in the New York Times and other media throughout March. But the Vault 7, part
3 release on March 31 that exposed the "Marble Framework" program apparently was judged too
delicate to qualify as 'news fit to print' and was kept out of the Times at the time, and has
never been mentioned since .
"The Washington Post's Ellen Nakashima, it seems, 'did not get the memo' in time. Her March
31
article bore the catching (and accurate) headline: 'WikiLeaks' latest release of CIA
cyber-tools could blow the cover on agency hacking operations.'
"The WikiLeaks release indicated that Marble was designed for flexible and easy-to-use
'obfuscation,' and that Marble source code includes a "de-obfuscator" to reverse CIA text
obfuscation.
"More important, the CIA reportedly used Marble during 2016. In her Washington Post
report , Nakashima left that out, but did include another significant point made by
WikiLeaks; namely, that the obfuscation tool could be used to conduct a 'forensic attribution
double game' or false-flag operation because it included test samples in Chinese, Russian,
Korean, Arabic and Farsi."
A few weeks later William Binney, a former NSA technical, and I commented on
Vault 7 Marble, and were able to get a shortened op-ed version
published in The Baltimore Sun
The CIA's reaction to the WikiLeaks disclosure of the Marble Framework tool was
neuralgic. Then Director Mike Pompeo lashed out two weeks later, calling Assange and his
associates "demons," and insisting; "It's time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is, a
non-state hostile intelligence service, often abetted by state actors like Russia."Our July 24
Memorandum continued: "Mr. President, we do not know if CIA's Marble Framework, or tools like
it, played some kind of role in the campaign to blame Russia for hacking the DNC. Nor do we
know how candid the denizens of CIA's Digital Innovation Directorate have been with you and
with Director Pompeo. These are areas that might profit from early White House review. [
President Trump then directed Pompeo to invite Binney, one of the authors of the July 24, 2017
VIPS Memorandum to the President, to discuss all this. Binney and Pompeo spent an hour together
at CIA Headquarters on October 24, 2017, during which Binney briefed Pompeo with his customary
straightforwardness. ]
We also do not know if you have discussed cyber issues in any detail with President Putin.
In his interview with NBC's Megyn Kelly he seemed quite willing – perhaps even eager
– to address issues related to the kind of cyber tools revealed in the Vault 7
disclosures, if only to indicate he has been briefed on them. Putin pointed out that today's
technology enables hacking to be 'masked and camouflaged to an extent that no one can
understand the origin' [of the hack] And, vice versa, it is possible to set up any entity or
any individual that everyone will think that they are the exact source of that attack.
"'Hackers may be anywhere,' he said. 'There may be hackers, by the way, in the United States
who very craftily and professionally passed the buck to Russia. Can't you imagine such a
scenario? I can.'
New attention has been drawn to these issues after I discussed them in a widely published
16-minute
interview last Friday.
In view of the highly politicized environment surrounding these issues, I believe I must
append here the same notice that VIPS felt compelled to add to our key Memorandum of July 24,
2017:
"Full Disclosure: Over recent decades the ethos of our intelligence profession has eroded in
the public mind to the point that agenda-free analysis is deemed well nigh impossible. Thus, we
add this disclaimer, which applies to everything we in VIPS say and do: We have no political
agenda; our sole purpose is to spread truth around and, when necessary, hold to account our
former intelligence colleagues.
"We speak and write without fear or favor. Consequently, any resemblance between what we say
and what presidents, politicians and pundits say is purely coincidental." The fact we find it
is necessary to include that reminder speaks volumes about these highly politicized times.
Ray McGovern works for Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the
Savior in inner-city Washington. He was an Army infantry/intelligence officer before serving as
a CIA analyst for 27 years. His duties included preparing, and briefing one-on-one, the
President's Daily Brief.
ThomasGilroy , June 9, 2018 at 9:44 am
"More important, the CIA reportedly used Marble during 2016. In her Washington Post
report, Nakashima left that out, but did include another significant point made by
WikiLeaks; namely, that the obfuscation tool could be used to conduct a 'forensic
attribution double game' or false-flag operation because it included test samples in
Chinese, Russian, Korean, Arabic and Farsi."
Another false flag operation? Suddenly false flag operations have become the weapon of
choice. Interestingly enough, they are nefariously (always) committed by the US or US allies.
MH17 was a false flag with an SU-25 Ukraine jet responsible for downing the passenger jet (to
blame Russia). All of the chemical attacks in Syria were false flag operations with the
supply of sarin/chlorine made in Turkey or directly given to the "rebels" by the CIA or US
allies. The White Helmets were of course in on all of the details. Assad was just simply not
capable of doing that to "his" people. Forget that the sarin had the chemical signature of
the Assad regime sarin supply. Next it was the snipers who used a false flag operation during
the Maidan revolution to shoot protesters and police to oust Yanukovych. Only the neo-Nazis
could be capable of shooting the Maidan protesters so they could take power. And then Seth
Rich was murdered so he couldn't reveal he was the "real" source of the leak. This was hinted
by Assange when he offered a reward to find the killers.
The author tosses out that the DNC hack was (potentially) a false flag operation by the
CIA obviously to undermine Trump while victimizing Russia. It must be the Gulf of Tonkin all
over again. While Crowdstrike might have a "dubious professional record and multiple
conflicts of interest", their results were also confirmed by several other cyber-security
firms (Wikipedia):
cybersecurity experts and firms, including CrowdStrike, Fidelis Cybersecurity, Mandiant,
SecureWorks, ThreatConnect, and the editor for Ars Technica, have rejected the claims of
"Guccifer 2.0" and have determined, on the basis of substantial evidence, that the
cyberattacks were committed by two Russian state-sponsored groups (Cozy Bear and Fancy
Bear).
Then there was Papadopoulas who coincidentally was given the information that Russia had
"dirt" on Hillary Clinton in the form of thousands of emails. Obviously, they were illegally
obtained (unless this was another CIA false flag operation). This was before the release of
the emails by WikiLeaks. This was followed by the Trump Tower meeting with Russians with
connections to the Russian government and the release of the emails by WikiLeaks shortly
thereafter. Additionally, Russia had the motive to defeat HRC and elect Trump. Yesterday,
Trump pushed for the reinstatement of Russia at the G-7 summit. What a shock! All known
evidence and motive points the finger directly at Russia.
Calling everything a false flag operation is really the easy way out, but ultimately, it
lets the responsible culprits off of the hook.
anon , June 9, 2018 at 11:28 am
I don't seen any cause to say that any false-flag theory you don't like is merely "tossed
out" propaganda.
One cannot tell in your comment where you think the accounts are credible and where not.
No evidence that the Syria CW attacks "had the chemical signature of the Assad regime sarin
supply."
CitizenOne , June 8, 2018 at 11:40 pm
There can be no doubt that counterintelligence tools would be pursued by our intelligence
agencies as a means to create narratives and false evidence based on the production of false
flags which support desired geopolitical outcomes. There would be a need to create false
flags using technology to support the geopolitical agenda which would be hard or impossible
to trace using the forensic tools used by cyber sleuths.
In pre computer technology days there were also many false flags which were set up to
create real world scenarios which suited the geopolitical agenda. Even today, there are many
examples of tactical false flag operations either organized and orchestrated or utilized by
the intelligence agencies to create the narrative which supports geopolitical objectives.
Examples:
The US loaded munitions in broad daylight visible to German spies onto the passenger ship
Lusitania despite German warnings that they would torpedo any vessels suspected of carrying
munitions. The Lusitania then proceeded to loiter unaccompanied by escorts in an area off the
Ireland coast treading over the same waters until it was spotted by a German U-Boat and was
torpedoed. This was not exactly a false flag since the German U-Boat pulled the trigger but
it was required to gain public support for the entrance of the US into WWI. It worked.
There is evidence that the US was deliberately caught "off guard" in the Pearl Harbor
Attack. Numerous coded communication intercepts were made but somehow the advanced warning
radar on the island of Hawaii was mysteriously turned off in the hours before and during the
Japanese attack which guaranteed that the attack would be successful and also guaranteed that
our population would instantly sign on to the war against Japan. It worked.
There is evidence that the US deliberately ignored the intelligence reports that UBL was
planning to conduct an attack on the US using planes as bombs. The terrorists who carried out
the attacks on the twin towers were "allowed" to conduct them. The result was the war in Iraq
which was sold based on a pack of lies about WMDs and which we used to go to war with
Iraq.
The Tonkin Gulf incident which historians doubt actually happened or believe if it did was
greatly exaggerated by intelligence and military sources was used to justify the war in
Vietnam.
The Spanish American War was ginned up by William Randolph Hearst and his yellow
journalism empire to justify attacking Cuba, Panama and the Philippines. The facts revealed
by forensic analysis of the exploded USS Maine have shown that the cataclysm was caused by a
boiler explosion not an enemy mine. At the time this was also widely believed to not be
caused by a Spanish mine in the harbor but the news sold the story of Spanish treachery and
war was waged.
In each case of physical false flags created on purpose, or allowed to happen or just made
up by fictions based on useful information that could be manipulated and distorted the US was
led to war. Some of these wars were just wars and others were wars of choice but in every
case a false flag was needed to bring the nation into a state where we believed we were under
attack and under the circumstances flocked to war. I will not be the judge of history or
justice here since each of these events had both negative and positive consequences for our
nation. What I will state is that it is obvious that the willingness to allow or create or
just capitalize on the events which have led to war are an essential ingredient. Without a
publicly perceived and publicly supported cause for war there can be no widespread support
for war. I can also say our leaders have always known this.
Enter the age of technology and the computer age with the electronic contraptions which
enable global communication and commerce.
Is it such a stretch to imagine that the governments desire to shape world events based on
military actions would result in a plan to use these modern technologies to once again create
in our minds a cyber scenario in which we are once again as a result of the "cyber" false
flag prepared for us to go to war? Would it be too much of a stretch to imagine that the
government would use the new electronic frontier just as it used the old physical world
events to justify military action?
Again, I will not go on to condemn any action by our military but will focus on how did we
get there and how did we arrive at a place where a majority favored war.
Whether created by physical or cyberspace methods we can conclude that such false flags
will happen for better or worse in any medium available.
susan sunflower , June 8, 2018 at 7:52 pm
I'd like "evidence" and I'd also like "context" since apparently international electoral
"highjinks" and monkey-wrenching and rat-f*cking have a long tradition and history (before
anyone draws a weapon, kills a candidate or sicc's death squads on the citizenry.
The DNC e-mail publication "theft" I suspect represents very small small potatoes for so
many reasons As Dixon at Black Agenda Report put it . Russia-gate is American Exceptionalism
writ large which takes on a more sinister aspect as groups like BLM and others are "linked"
to alleged "Russian funding"on one and and Soros funding on another
(FWIW, this is a new neoliberal phenomenon when the ultra-rich "liberals" can quietly fund
marches on Washington and "grassroots" networking making those neophyte movements too easy
targets with questionable robust foundation (color revolutions are possible when anyone is
able to foot the cost of 1,000 or 2000 "free" signs or t-shirts -- impecccably designed and
printed.
Excellent post. Thanks also for reminding me I need to revisit the Vault 7 information as
source material. These are incredibly important leaks that help connect the dots of criminal
State intelligence activities designed to have remained forever hidden.
Skip Scott , June 8, 2018 at 1:07 pm
I can't think of any single piece of evidence that our MSM is under the very strict
control of our so-called intelligence agencies than how fast and completely the Vault 7
releases got flushed down the memory hole. "Nothing to see here folks, move along."
I don't think anyone can predict whether or not Sanders would have won as a 3rd party
candidate. He ran a remarkable campaign, but when he caved to the Clinton machine he lost a
lot of supporters, including me. If he had stood up at the convention and talked of the DNC
skullduggery exposed by Wikileaks, and said "either I run as a democrat, or I run as a Green,
but I'm running", he would have at least gotten 15 pct to make the TV debates, and who knows
what could have happened after that. 40 pct of registered voters didn't vote. That alone
tells you it is possible he might have won.
Instead he expected us to follow him like he was the f'ing Pied Piper to elect another
Wall St. loving warmonger. That's why he gets no "pass" from me. He (and the Queen of Chaos)
gave us Trump. BTW, Obama doesn't get a "pass" either.
willow , June 8, 2018 at 9:24 pm
It's all about the money. A big motive for the DNC to conjure up Russia-gate was to keep
donors from abandoning any future
Good Ship Hillary or other Blue Dog Democrat campaigns: "Our brand/platform wasn't flawed. It
was the Rooskies."
Vivian O'Blivion , June 8, 2018 at 8:22 am
An earlier time line.
March 14th. Popadopoulos has first encounter with Mifsud.
April 26th. Mifsud tells Popadopoulos that Russians have "dirt" on Clinton, including "thousands of e-mails".
May 4th. Trump last man standing in Republican primary.
May 10th. Popadopoulos gets drunk with London based Australian diplomat and talks about "dirt" but not specifically
e-mails.
June 9th. Don. Jr meets in Trump tower with Russians promising "dirt" but not specifically in form of e-mails.
It all comes down to who Mifsud is, who he is working for and why he has been "off grid" to journalists (but not presumably
Intelligence services) for > 6 months.
Specific points.
On March 14th Popadopoulos knew he was transferring from team Carson to team Trump but this was not announced to the
(presumably underwhelmed) world 'till March 21st. Whoever put Mifsud onto Popadopoulos was very quick on their feet.
The Australian diplomat broke chain of command by reporting the drunken conversation to the State Department as opposed to his
domestic Intelligence service. If Mifsud was a western asset, Australian Intelligence would likely be aware of his status.
If Mifsud was a Russian asset why would demonstrably genuine Russians be trying to dish up the dirt on Clinton in June?
There are missing pieces to this jigsaw puzzle but it's starting to look like a deep state operation to dirty Trump in the
unlikely event that he went on to win.
Realist , June 8, 2018 at 4:28 pm
Ms. Clinton was personally trying to tar Trump with allusions to "Russia" and being
"Putin's puppet" long before he won the presidency, in fact, quite conspicuously during the
two conventions and most pointedly during the debates. She was willing to use that ruse long
before her defeat at the ballot box. It was the straw that she clung to and was willing to
use as a pretext for overturning the election after the unthinkable happened. But, you are
right, smearing Trump through association with Russia was part of her long game going back to
the early primaries, especially since her forces (both in politics and in the media) were
trying mightily to get him the nomination under the assumption that he would be the easiest
(more like the only) Republican candidate that she could defeat come November.
Wcb , June 8, 2018 at 5:25 pm
Steven Halper?
Rob Roy , June 8, 2018 at 1:33 am
I might add to this informative article that the reason why Julian Assange has been
ostracized and isolated from any public appearance, denied a cell phone, internet and
visitors is that he tells the truth, and TPTB don't want him to say yet again that the emails
were leaked from the DNC. I've heard him say it several times. H. Clinton was so shocked and
angry that she didn't become president as she so confidently expected that her, almost
knee-jerk, reaction was to find a reason that was outside of herself on which to blame her
defeat. It's always surprised me that no one talks about what was in those emails which
covered her plans for Iran and Russia (disgusting).
Trump is a sociopath, but the Russians had nothing to do with him becoming elected. I was
please to read here that he or perhaps just Pompeo? met with Binney. That's a good thing,
though Pompeo, too, is unstable and war hungry to follow Israel into bombing yet another
innocent sovereign country. Thank, Mr. McGovern for another excellent coverage of this
story.
MLS , June 7, 2018 at 9:59 pm
"no one associated with WikiLeaks has ever been questioned by his team"
Do tell, Ray: How do you know what the GOP Congress appointed Special Prosecutor's investigation –
with its unlimited budget, wide mandate, and notable paucity of leaks – has and has not
done?
strgr-tgther , June 8, 2018 at 12:14 am
MLS: Thank you! No one stands up for what is right any more. We have 17 Intelligency
agencies that say are election was stolen. And just last week the Republicans Paul Ryan,
Mitch McConnel and Trey Gowdy (who I detest) said the FBI and CIA and NSA were just doing
there jobs the way ALL AMERICANS woudl want them to. And even Adam Schiff, do you think he
will tell any reporter what evidence he does have? #1 It is probably classified and #2 he is
probably saving it for the inpeachment. We did not find out about the Nixon missing 18
minutes until the end anyways. All of these articles sound like the writer just copied Sean
Hannity and wrote everything down he said, and yesterday he told all suspects in the Mueller
investigation to Smash and Bleach there mobile devices, witch is OBSTRUCTION of justice and
witness TAMPERING. A great American there!
Rob Roy , June 8, 2018 at 1:48 am
strgr-tgther:
Sean Hannity??? Ha, ha, ha.
As Mr. McGoven wrote .."any resemblance between what we say and what presidents,
politicians and pundits say is purely coincidental."
John , June 8, 2018 at 5:48 am
Sorry I had to come back and point out the ultimate irony of ANYONE who supports the
Butcher of Libya complaining about having an election stolen from them (after the blatant
rigging of the primary that caused her to take the nomination away from the ONE PERSON who
was polling ahead of Trump beyond the margin of error of the polls.)
It is people like you who gave us Trump. The Pied Piper Candidate promoted by the DNC
machine (as the emails that were LEAKED, not "hacked", as the metadata proves conclusively,
show.)
incontinent reader , June 8, 2018 at 7:14 am
What is this baloney? Seventeen Intelligence agencies DID NOT conclude what you are
alleging, And in fact, Brennan and his cabal avoided using a National intelligence Estimate,
which would have shot down his cherry-picked 'assessment' before it got off the ground
– and it would have been published for all to read.
The NSA has everything on everybody, yet has never released anything remotely indicating
Russian collusion. Do you think the NSA Director, who, as you may recall, did not give a
strong endorsement to the Brennan-Comey assessment, would have held back from the Congress
such information, if it had existed, when he was questioned? Furthermore, former technical
directors of the NSA, Binney, Wiebe and Loomis- the very best of the best- have proven
through forensics that the Wikileaks disclosures were not obtained by hacking the DNC
computers, but by a leak, most likely to a thumb drive on the East Coast of the U.S. How many
times does it have to be laid out for you before you are willing and able to absorb the
facts?
As for Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan, (and Trey Gowdy, who was quite skilled on the
Benghazi and the Clinton private email server investigations- investigations during which
Schiff ran interference for Clinton- but has seemed unwilling to digest the Strozk, Page,
McCabe, et al emails and demand a Bureau housecleaning), who cares what they think or say,
what matters is the evidence.
I suggest you familiarize yourself with the facts- and start by rereading Ray's articles,
and the piece by Joe diGenova posted on Ray's website.
Realist , June 8, 2018 at 4:12 pm
The guy's got Schiff for brains. Everyone who cares about the truth has known since before
Mueller started his charade that the "17 intelligence agency" claim was entirely a ruse,
bald-faced confected propaganda to anger the public to support the coup attempted by Ms.
Clinton and her zombie followers. People are NOT going to support the Democratic party now or
in the future when its tactics include subverting our public institutions, including the
electoral process under the constitution–whether you like the results or not! If the
Democratic party is to be saved, those honest people still in it should endeavor to drain the
septic tank that has become their party before we can all drain the swamp that is the federal
government and its ex-officio manipulators (otherwise known as the "deep state") in
Washington.
Farmer Pete , June 8, 2018 at 7:30 am
"We have 17 Intelligency agencies that say are election was stolen."
You opened up with a talking point that is factually incorrect. The team of hand-picked
spooks that slapped the "high confidence" report together came from 3 agencies. I know, 17
sounds like a lot and very convincing to us peasants. Regardless, it's important to practice
a few ounces of skepticism when it comes to institutions with a long rap sheet of crime and
deception. Taking their word for it as a substitute for actual observable evidence is naive
to say the least. The rest of your hollow argument is filled with "probably(s)". If I were
you, I'd turn off my TV and stop looking for scapegoats for an epically horrible presidential
campaign and candidate.
strgr-tgther , June 8, 2018 at 12:50 pm
/horrible presidential campaign and candidate/ Say you. But we all went to sleep
comfortable the night before the election where 97% of all poles said Clinton was going to be
are next President. And that did not happen! So Robert Mueller is going to find out EXACTLY
why. Stay tuned!!!
irina , June 8, 2018 at 3:40 pm
Not 'all'. I knew she was toast after reading that she had cancelled her election night
fireworks
celebration, early on the morning of Election Day. She must have known it also, too.
And she was toast in my mind after seeing the ridiculous scene of her virtual image
'breaking the glass ceiling' during the Democratic Convention. So expensively stupid.
Realist , June 8, 2018 at 3:50 pm
Mueller is simply orchestrating a dramatic charade to distract you from the obvious reason
why she lost: Trump garnered more electoral votes, even after the popular votes were counted
and recounted. Any evidence of ballot box stuffing in the key states pointed to the
Democrats, so they gave that up. She and her supporters like you have never stopped trying to
hoodwink the public either before or after the election. Too many voters were on to you,
that's why she lost.
Realist , June 8, 2018 at 3:57 pm
Indeed, stop the nonsense which can't be changed short of a coup d'etat, and start
focusing on opposing the bad policy which this administration has been pursuing. I don't see
the Dems doing that even in their incipient campaigns leading up to the November elections.
Fact is, they are not inclined to change the policies, which are the same ones that got them
"shellacked" at the ballot box in 2016. (I think Obama must own lots of stock in the shellack
trade.)
Curious , June 8, 2018 at 6:27 pm
Ignorance of th facts keep showing up in your posts for some unknown reason. Sentence two:
"we have 17 intelligency (sic) agencies that say ". this statement was debunked a long time
ago.
Have you learned nothing yet regarding the hand-picked people out of three agencies after all
this time? Given that set of lies it makes your post impossible to read.
I would suggest a review of what really happened before you perpetuate more myths and this
will benefit all.
Also, a good reading of the Snowden Docs and vault 7 should scare you out of your shell since
our "intelligeny" community can pretend to be Chinese, Russian, Iranian just for starters,
and the blame game can start after hours instead of the needed weeks and/or months to
determine the veracity of a hack and/or leak.
It's past trying to win you over with the actual 'time lines' and truths. Mr McGovern has
re-emphasized in this article the very things you should be reading.
Start with Mr Binney and his technical evaluation of the forensics in the DNC docs and build
out from there This is just a suggestion.
What never ceases to amaze me in your posts is the 'issue' that many of the docs were
bought and paid for by the Clinton team, and yet amnesia has taken over those aspects as
well. Shouldn't you start with the Clintons paying for this dirt before it was ever
attributed to Trump?
Daniel , June 8, 2018 at 6:38 pm
Actually, both Brennan and Hayden testified to Congress that only 3 agencies signed off on
their claim. They also said that they'd "hand picked" a special team to run their
"investigation," and no other people were involved. So, people known to be perjurers cherry
picked "evidence" to make a claim. Let's invade Iraq again.
More than 1/2 of their report was about RT, and even though that was all easily viewable
public record, they got huge claims wrong. Basically, the best they had was that RT covered
Occupy Wall Street and the NO DAPL and BLM protests, and horror of horrors, aired third party
debates! In a democracy! How dare they?
Why didn't FBI subpoena DNC's servers so they could run their own forensics on them? Why
did they just accept the claims of a private company founded by an Atlantic Council board
member? Did you know that CrowdStrike had to backpedal on the exact same claim they made
about the DNC server when Ukraine showed they were completely wrong regarding Ukie
artillery?
Joe Lauria , June 8, 2018 at 2:12 am
Until he went incommunicado Assange stated on several occasions that he was never
questioned by Muellers team. Craig Murray has said the same. And Kim Dotcom has written to
Mueller offering evidence about the source and he says they have never replied to him.
Realist , June 8, 2018 at 3:40 pm
Mueller is not interested in the truth. He can't handle the truth. His purpose is not to
divulge the truth. He has no use for truthtellers including the critical possessors of the
truth whom you mentioned. This aversion to the truth is the biggest clue that Mueller's
activities are a complete sham.
MLS wrote, "How do you know what the GOP Congress appointed Special Prosecutor's
investigation – with its unlimited budget, wide mandate, and notable paucity of leaks
– has and has not done?"
Robert Mueller is NOT a Special Prosecutor appointed by the Congress. He is a special
counsel appointed by the Deputy Attorney General, Rod Rosenstein, and is part of the
Department of Justice.
I know no one who dislikes Trumps wants to hear it. But all Mueller's authority and power
to act is derived from Donald J. Trump's executive authority because he won the 2016
presidential election. Mueller is down the chain of command in the Executive Department.
That's why this is all nonsense. What we basically have is Trump investigating himself.
The framers of the Constitution never intended this. They intended Congress to investigate
the Executive and that's why they gave Congress the power to remove him or her via
impeachment.
As long as we continue with this folly of expecting the Justice Department to somehow
investigate and prosecute a president we end up with two terrible possibilities. Either a
corrupt president will exercise his legitimate authority to end the investigation like Nixon
did -or- we have a Deep State beyond the reach of the elected president that can effectively
investigate and prosecute a corrupt president, but also then has other powers with no
democratic control.
The solution to this dilemma? An empowered Congress elected by the People operating as the
Constitution intended.
As to the rest of your post? It is an example of the "will to believe." Me? I'll not act
as if there is evidence of Russian interference until I'm shown evidence, not act as if it
must be true, because I want to believe that, until it's fully proven that it didn't
happen.
F. G. Sanford , June 7, 2018 at 8:22 pm
There must be some Trump-Russia ties.
Or so claim those CIA spies-
McCabe wants a deal, or else he won't squeal,
He'll dissemble when he testifies!
No one knows what's on Huma's computer.
There's no jury and no prosecutor.
Poor Adam Schiff hopes McCabe takes the fifth,
Special council might someday recruit her!
Assange is still embassy bound.
Mueller's case hasn't quite come unwound.
Wayne Madsen implies that there might be some ties,
To Israelis they haven't yet found!
Halper and Mifsud are players.
John Brennan used cutouts in layers.
If the scheme falls apart and the bureau is smart,
They'll go after them all as betrayers!
They needed historical fiction.
A dossier with salacious depiction!
Some urinous whores could get down on all fours,
They'd accomplish some bed sheet emiction!
Pablo Miller and Skripal were cited.
Sidney Blumenthal might have been slighted.
Christopher Steele offered Sidney a deal,
But the dossier's not copyrighted!
That story about Novichok,
Smells a lot like a very large crock.
But they can't be deposed or the story disclosed,
The Skripals have toxic brain block!
Papadopolis shot off his yap.
He told Downer, that affable chap-
There was dirt to report on the Clinton cohort,
Mifsud hooked him with that honey trap!
She was blond and a bombshell to boot.
Papadopolis thought she was cute.
She worked for Mifsud, a mysterious dude,
Now poor Paps is in grave disrepute!
But the trick was to tie it to Russians.
The Clinton team had some discussions.
Their big email scandal was easy to handle,
They'd blame Vlad for the bad repercussions!
There must have been Russian collusion.
That explained all the vote count confusion.
Guccifer Two made the Trump team come through,
If he won, it was just an illusion!
Lisa Page and Pete Strzok were disgusted
They schemed and they plotted and lusted.
If bald-headed Clapper appealed to Jake Tapper,
Brennan's Tweets might get Donald Trump busted!
There had to be cyber subversion.
It would serve as the perfect perversion.
They would claim it was missed if it didn't exist,
It's a logically perfect diversion!
F.G., you've done it again, and I might add, topped even yourself! Thanks.
KiwiAntz , June 7, 2018 at 7:30 pm
What a joke, America, the most dishonest Country on Earth, has meddled, murdered &
committed coups to overturn other Govts & interfered & continues to do so in just
about every Country on Earth by using Trade sanctions, arming Terrorists & illegal
invasions, has the barefaced cheek to puff out its chest & hypocritcally blame Russia for
something that it does on a daily basis?? And the point with Mueller's investigation is not
to find any Russian collusion evidence, who needs evidence when you can just make it up? The
point is provide the US with a list of unfounded lies & excuses, FIRSTLY to slander &
demonise RUSSIA for something they clearly didn't do! SECONDLY, was to provide a excuse for
the Democrats dismal election loss result to the DONALD & his Trump Party which just
happens to contain some Republicans? THIRDLY, to conduct a soft Coup by trying to get Trump
impeached on "TRUMPED UP CHARGES OF RUSSIAN COLLUSION"? And FOURTLY to divert attention away
from scrutiny & cover up Obama & Hillary Clinton's illegal, money grubbing activities
& her treasonous behaviour with her private email server?? After two years of Russiagate
nonsense with NOTHING to show for it, I think it's about time America owes Russia a public
apology & compensation for its blatant lying & slander of a innocent Country for a
crime they never committed?
Sam F , June 7, 2018 at 7:11 pm
Thanks, Ray, for revealing that the CIA's Digital Innovation Directorate is the likely
cause of the Russiagate scams.
I am sure that they manipulate the digital voting machines directly and indirectly. True
elections are now impossible.
Your disclaimer is hilarious: "We speak and write without fear or favor. Consequently, any
resemblance between what we say and what presidents, politicians and pundits say is purely
coincidental."
Antiwar7 , June 7, 2018 at 6:23 pm
Expecting the evil people running the show to respond to reason is futile, of course. All
of these reports are really addressed to the peanut gallery, where true power lies, if only
they could realize it.
Thanks, Ray and VIPS, for keeping up the good fight.
mike k , June 7, 2018 at 5:55 pm
For whatever reason, Ray McGovern chose not to mention the murder of Seth Rich, which
pretty clearly points to the real source of the leak being him, as hinted by Assange offering
a reward for anyone uncovering his killer. The whole thing stinks of a democratic
conspiracy.
And BTW people have become shy about using the word conspiracy, for fear it will
automatically brand one as a hoaxer. On the contrary, conspiracies are extremely common, the
higher one climbs in the power hierarchy. Like monopolies, conspiracies are central to the
way the oligarchs do business.
John , June 8, 2018 at 5:42 am
Ray, from what I have seen in following his writing for years, meticulously only deals in
knowns. The Seth Rich issue is not a known, it is speculation still. Yes, it probably is
involved, but unless Craig Murray states that Seth Rich was the one who handed him the USB
drive, it is not a known.
There is a possibility that Seth Rich was not the one who leaked the information, but that
the DNC bigwigs THOUGHT he was, in which case, by neither confirming nor denying that Seth
Rich was the leaker, it may be that letting the DNC continue to think it was him is being
done in protection of the actual leaker. Seth Rich could also have been killed for unrelated
reasons, perhaps Imran Awan thought he was on to his doings.
" whether or not"?!! Wow. That's an imperialistic statement.
Drew Hunkins , June 7, 2018 at 5:50 pm
Mueller has nothing and he well knows it. He was willingly roped into this whole pathetic
charade and he's left grasping for anything remotely tied to Trump campaign officials and
Russians. Even the most tenuous connections and weak relationships are splashed across the
mass media in breathless headlines. Meanwhile, NONE of the supposed skulduggery unearthed by
Mueller has anything to do with the Kremlin "hacking" the election to favor Trump. Which was
the entire raison d'etre behind Rosenstein and Mueller's crusade on behalf of the deplorable
DNC and Washington militarist-imperialists. Sure be interesting to see how Mueller and his
crew ultimately extricate themselves from this giant fraudulent edifice of deceit. Will they
even be able to save the most rudimentary amount of face?
So sickening to see the manner in which many DNC sycophants obsequiously genuflect to
their godlike Mueller. A damn prosecutor who was arguably in bed with the Winter Hill
Gang!
jose , June 7, 2018 at 5:13 pm
If they had had any evidence to inculpate Russia, we would have all seen it by now. They
know that by stating that there is an investigation going on: they can blame Russia. The
Democratic National Committee is integrated by a pack of liars.
Jeff , June 7, 2018 at 4:35 pm
Thanx, Ray. The sad news is that everybody now believes that Russia tried to "meddle" in
our election and, since it's a belief, neither facts nor reality will dislodge it. Your
disclaimer should also probably carry the warning – never believe a word a government
official says especially if they are in the CIA, NSA, or FBI unless they provide proof. If
they tell you that it's classified, that they can't divulge it, or anything of that sort, you
know they are lying.
john wilson , June 7, 2018 at 4:09 pm
I suspect the real reason no evidence has been produced is because there isn't any. I know
this is stating the obvious, but if you think about it, as long as the non extent evidence is
supposedly being "investigated" the story remains alive. They know they aren't going to find
anything even remotely plausible that would stand up to any kind of scrutiny, but as long as
they are looking, it has the appearance that there might be something.
Joe Tedesky , June 7, 2018 at 4:08 pm
I first want to thank Ray and the VIPS for their continuing to follow through on this
Russia-Gate story. And it is a story.
My question is simple, when will we concentrate on reading Hillary's many emails? After
all wasn't this the reason for the Russian interference mania? Until we do, take apart
Hillary's correspondence with her lackeys, nothing will transpire of any worth. I should not
be the one saying this, in as much as Bernie Sanders should be the one screaming it for
justice from the highest roof tops, but he isn't. So what's up with that? Who all is involved
in this scandalous coverup? What do the masters of corruption have on everybody?
Now we have Sean Hannity making a strong case against the Clinton's and the FBI's careful
handling of their crimes. What seems out of place, since this should be big news, is that CNN
nor MSNBC seems to be covering this story in the same way Hannity is. I mean isn't this news,
meant to be reported as news? Why avoid reporting on Hillary in such a manner? This must be
that 'fake news' they all talk about boy am I smart.
In the end I have decided to be merely an observer, because there are no good guys or gals
in our nation's capital worth believing. In the end even Hannity's version of what took place
leads back to a guilty Russia. So, the way I see it, the swamp is being drained only to make
more room for more, and new swamp creatures to emerge. Talk about spinning our wheels. When
will good people arrive to finally once and for all drain this freaking swamp, once and for
all?
Realist , June 7, 2018 at 5:25 pm
Ha, ha! Don't you enjoy the magic show being put on by the insiders desperately trying to
hang onto their power even after being voted out of office? Their attempt to distract your
attention from reality whilst feeding you their false illusions is worthy of Penn &
Teller, or David Copperfield (the magician). Who ya gonna believe? Them or your lying
eyes?
Joe Tedesky , June 7, 2018 at 10:00 pm
Realist, You can bet they will investigate everything but what needs investigated, as our
Politico class devolves into survivalist in fighting, the mechanism of war goes
uninterrupted. Joe
F. G. Sanford , June 7, 2018 at 5:34 pm
Joe, speaking of draining the swamp, check out my comment under Ray's June 1 article about
Freddy Fleitz!
Sam F , June 7, 2018 at 6:59 pm
That is just what I was reminded of; here is an antiseptic but less emphatic last
line:
"Swamp draining progresses apace.
It's being accomplished with grace:
They're taking great pains to clean out the drains,"
New swamp creatures will need all that space!
Unfettered Fire , June 8, 2018 at 11:00 am
We must realize that to them, "the Swamp" refers to those in office who still abide by New
Deal policy. Despite the thoroughly discredited neoliberal economic policy, the radical right
are driving the world in the libertarian direction of privatization, austerity, private bank
control of money creation, dismantling the nation-state, contempt for the Constitution,
etc.
In his final report in a three-part series, Guccifer 2's West
Coast Fingerprint , the Forensicator discovers evidence that at least one operator behind
the Guccifer 2.0 persona worked from the West Coast of the United States.
The Forensicator's earlier findings stated that Guccifer 2.0's NGP-VAN files were
accessed locally on the East Coast, and in another analysis they suggested
that a file published by Guccifer 2.0 was created in the Central time zone of the United
States. Most recently, a former DNC official refuted the DNC's initial allegations that Trump opposition files
had been ex-filtrated from the DNC by Russian state-sponsored operatives.
So, if Guccifer 2.0's role was negated by the statements of the DNC's own former "official"
in a 2017 report by the Associated Press
, why do we now return our attention to the Guccifer 2.0 persona, as we reflect on the last
section of new findings from the Forensicator?
The answer: Despite almost two years having passed since the appearance of the Guccifer 2.0
persona, legacy media is still trotting
out the shambling corpse of Guccifer 2.0 to revive the legitimacy of the Russian hacking
narrative. In other words, it is necessary to hammer the final nail into the coffin of the
Guccifer 2.0 persona.
As previously noted, In his final report in
a three-part series, the Forensicator
discusses concrete evidence that at least one operator behind the Guccifer 2.0 persona worked
from the West Coast of the United States. He writes:
"Finally, we look at one particular Word document that Guccifer 2 uploaded, which had
"track changes" enabled. From the tracking metadata we deduce the timezone offset in effect
when Guccifer 2 made that change -- we reach a surprising conclusion: The document was likely
saved by Guccifer 2 on the West Coast, US ."
The Forensicator spends the first part of his report evaluating indications that Guccifer
2.0 may have operated out of Russia. Ultimately, the Forensicator discards those tentative
results. He emphatically notes:
"The PDT finding draws into question the premise that Guccifer 2 was operating out of
Russia, or any other region that would have had GMT+3 timezone offsets in force. Essentially,
the Pacific Timezone finding invalidates the GMT+3 timezone findings previously
described."
The Forensicator's new West Coast finding is not the first evidence to indicate that
operators behind the Guccifer 2.0 persona were based in the US. Nine months ago,
Disobedient Media , reported on the Forensicator's analysis ,
which showed (among other things) that Guccifer 2.0's "ngpvan" archive was created on the East
Coast. While that report received the vast majority of attention from the public and legacy
media,
Disobedient Media later reported on another analysis done by the Forensicator, which
found that a file published by Guccifer 2.0 (on a different occasion) was probably created in
the Central Timezone of the US.
Adding to all of this, UK based analyst and independent journalist Adam Carter presented his own analysis which also showed
that the Guccifer 2.0 Twitter persona interacted on a schedule which was best explained by
having been based within the United States.
The chart above shows a box which spans regular working hours. It indicates that unless
Guccifer 2.0 worked the night shift, they were likely working out of the US. Though this last
data point is circumstantial, it is corroborated by the previously discussed pieces of
independently verifiable hard evidence described by the Forensicator.
When taking all of these separate pieces into account, one observes a convergence of
evidence that multiple US-based operators were behind the Guccifer 2.0 persona and its
publications. This is incredibly significant because it is based on multiple pieces of concrete
data; it does not rely on "anonymous sources within the government," nor contractors hired by
the DNC. As a result, much of the prior legacy press coverage of Guccifer 2.0 as a Russia-based
agent can be readily debunked.
Such tangible evidence stands in contrast to the claims made in a recently published
Daily Beast article, which reads more
like a gossip column than serious journalism. In the Daily Beast's recital, the outlet cites an
anonymous source who claims that a Moscow-based GRU agent was behind the Guccifer 2.0
operation, writing :
"Guccifer 2.0, the "lone hacker" who took credit for providing WikiLeaks with stolen
emails from the Democratic National Committee, was in fact an officer of Russia's military
intelligence directorate (GRU), The Daily Beast has learned. It's an attribution that
resulted from a fleeting but critical slip-up in GRU tradecraft.
But on one occasion, The Daily Beast has learned, Guccifer failed to activate the VPN
client before logging on. As a result, he left a real, Moscow-based Internet Protocol address
in the server logs of an American social media company, according to a source familiar with
the government's Guccifer investigation.
Working off the IP address, U.S. investigators identified Guccifer 2.0 as a particular GRU
officer working out of the agency's headquarters on Grizodubovoy Street in Moscow."
[The Daily Beast , March 22, 2018]
Clearly, the claim made in the Daily Beast's report is in direct contradiction with the
growing mound of evidence suggesting that Guccifer 2.0 operated out of the United States. A
detailed technical breakdown of the evidence confirming a West-Coast "last saved" time and how
this counters the claims of the Daily Beast can be found in the Forensicator's
work.
The Forensicator explained to Disobedient Media that their discovery process was initiated
by the following Tweet by Matt Tait ( @pwnallthings ), a security blogger and journalist.
Tait noticed a change revision entry in one of the Word documents published in Guccifer 2.0's
second
batch of documents, (uploaded 3 days after Guccifer 2.0 first appeared on the scene).
The Forensicator corrects Tait, stating that the timestamp is in "wall time," (local time)
not UTC. The Forensicator explains that Tait's mistake is understandable because the "Z" suffix
usually implies "Zulu" (GMT) time, but that isn't the case for "track changes" timestamps. The
Forensicator writes that the document Tait refers to in his Tweet is named
Hillary-for-America-fundraising-guidelines-from-agent-letter.docx ; it has Word's "track
changes" feature enabled. Guccifer 2.0 made a trivial change to the document, using the
pseudonym, "Ernesto Che," portrayed below:
The Forensicator correlated that timestamp ("12:56:00 AM") with the document's "last saved"
timestamp expressed in GMT, as shown below courtesy of the Forensicator's
study :
Based on the evidence discussed above, the Forensicator concludes that Guccifer 2.0 saved
this file on a system that had a timezone offset of -7 hours (the difference between 0:56 AM
and 7:56 AM GMT). Thus, the system where this document was last changed used Pacific Timezone
settings.
The logical conclusion drawn from the preceding analysis is that Guccifer 2.0 was operating
somewhere on the West Coast of the United States when they made their change to that document .
This single finding throws into shambles any other conclusions that might indicate that
Guccifer 2.0 was operating out of Russia. This latest finding also adds to the previously cited
evidence that the persona was probably operated by multiple individuals located in the United
States.
Taken all together, the factual basis of the Russian hacking story totally collapses. We are
left instead with multiple traces of a US-based operation that created the appearance of
evidence that Kremlin-allied hackers had breached the DNC network. Publicly available data
suggests that Guccifer 2.0 is a US-based operation. To this, we add:
The Forensicator's
recent findings that Guccifer 2.0 deliberately planted "Russian fingerprints" into his first
document, as reported by
Disobedient Media.
A former DNC official's statement that a document with so-called "Russian fingerprints"
was not in fact taken from the DNC, as reported by Disobedient
Media .
In the course of the last nine months this outlet has documented the work of the
Forensicator, which has indicated that not only were Guccifer 2.0's "ngp-van" files accessed
locally on the East Coast of the US, but also that several files published by the Guccifer 2.0
persona were altered and saved within the United States. The "Russian fingerprints" left on
Guccifer 2.0's first document have been debunked, as has the claim that the file itself was
extracted from the DNC network in the first place. On top of all this, a former DNC official
withdrew the DNC's initial allegations that supported the "Russian hack" claim in the first
place.
One hopes that with all of this information in mind, the long-suffering Guccifer 2.0 saga
can be laid to rest once and for all, at least for unbiased and critically thinking
observers.
Snowden talked about the NSA or is it CIA, had the ability to leave Russian
fingerprints.
All of this was the "insurance" to frame Trump who they knew would win when they saw that
Hillary rallies had 20 people only showing up few old lesbians and nobody else.
Meanwhile, Snowden risked his life and liberty to show us evidence that the NSA developed
technology to make it appear even with expert analysis that NSA hacking originated from a
foreign power.
"... FUsion GPS arranged the meeting at trump tower. ..."
"... IF Misfud told papaD that he had access to Hillary's emails, why did they not bother looking for him for 9 months and then let him walk free? Because he was a set up. ..."
'Collusion' would mean actively conspiring with a foreign government. To this day there is no evidence that the Russian lawyer
was working for the Russian government (I have seen some media simply assert that she has Kremlin 'connections', whatever that's
supposed to mean). Also, why exactly would the Trump campaign have any need to meet with someone promising dirt if, as the Steele
Dossier claims, Trump had been a Russian agent for 5 years? The Kremlin would surely have already been providing any possible
dirt, and more besides.
And is this really where we are now? Is this what we've come to? Russia is a country of 144 million people. Is simply being
Russian, or talking to a Russian, now a crime? Because that's what our current atmosphere seems to think. It's shocking to see
so many people, especially supposedly tolerant and multicultural liberals, ignore any distinction between a government and private
citizens, and engage in what can only be called bigotry about 'Russians'. Replace 'Russian' with 'Jew', or a slur like 'Jap',
and how incredibly ugly the atmosphere has become in the last 18 months or so becomes obvious.
That Trump is comically corrupt is a given. But the two central claims of Russiagate were that a. Trump is a Russian agent
(or at least being blackmailed by Russia), and that b. Russia in some way hacked or interfered in the election to get Trump elected.
There is, to this day, exactly zero evidence for either.
No, his son meeting with a Russian citizen promising political dirt (even if dirt had been exchanged, which it wasn't because
she was lying and just wanted to get a meeting to lobby for some business interests), doesn't constitute 'collusion', or interference
by a foreign government.
Nor does some St. Petersburg company spending a paltry amount of money to run a clickbait ad revenue scheme on Facebook. Nor
do Macedonian teenagers running troll accounts (Macedonia isn't even in Russia, and to this day I've never seen any evidence that
any Russian, much less the Russian government, is behind their activities).
The above two are especially damning, because they make it painfully obvious that Russiagate has exactly nothing. In the absence
of any evidence that Russia hacked the election, proponents have been forced to venture far and wide to find something, anything,
they can remotely pin on Russia. A few hundred thousand dollars spent on social media ads, including ads for Clinton and Sanders,
many of which were seen by literally no one, and half of which didn't run until AFTER the election? Are you freaking kidding me?
As for 'shady Russian money', maybe Trump has taken some. It certainly wouldn't surprise me that he's done something like launder
money for Russian oligarchs. Now prove to me took money from the Russian government. Because, again, those are two very different
prospects. And if you think the Kremlin and Russian oligarchs are interchangeable or in lockstep with each other, you clearly
don't know much about recent Russian history.
The Russiagate claim wasn't that Trump is skeevy and corrupt. Of course he is. The claim is that he is corrupt in very specific
ways, ways that constitute treason.
Vivian O'Blivion , May 21, 2018 at 6:30 am
Marasmus.
Difficult to argue with any of your points.
Mueller has filed charges against some of the staff in the St Petersburg operation, if you can connect Trump to this entity
then cooperation becomes criminal collusion. As charges have already been filed it matters not whether the St Petersburg staff
are private or state employees.
The fact that America has laws prohibiting foreign interference in its elections is I guess understandable, but hypocritical
and exceptionalist in the extreme given the cart blanch attitude America takes to interfering in the internal affairs of other
nations.
The Donald Jr meeting with Russians is just a rats nest of conflicting stupidities. If as many others state (and I don't disagree)
everyone tries to get dirt on the opposition and foreign sources of information are regularly tapped, then the secret is not to
get caught. The Democrats have a plausible cut out (or two) in place between the Russian sources for the Steele dossier and themselves.
As Steve Bannon has stated, meeting directly with the Russians was weapons grade stupid, but hey it's Don Jr. and Jared Kushner
we're talking about.
The really odd part is that the Russians would attend given that they must have known that their names would be logged by the
Secret Service detail providing security for the Republican candidate. To me, this does not suggest an attempt to help Trump as
"their man", but rather to dirty by association a candidate that could become President. This interpretation would concur with
analysis of the activities of the St Petersburg operation, which was to sow chaos into American social and political discourse.
andy--s , May 23, 2018 at 12:13 am
Heres the problem with that. FUsion GPS arranged the meeting at trump tower. The Russians paid them to connect with the trump campaign in order to
discuss the magnitsky act. They did not come to the meeting with any notion of DIRT. Trump Jr was told they had DIRT.
THe problem the FBI has, is that they never investigated the Russian contacts to the extent that they investigated the Americans
being contacted. Dig? :) IF Misfud told papaD that he had access to Hillary's emails, why did they not bother looking for
him for 9 months and then let him walk free? Because he was a set up.
PapaD got nailed for not being able to remember if the meeting was the tuesday prior or after joing the trump Campaign. It
doesnt make sense unless the FBI was looking to spy
Let's all assume for one second that all the fantasies of Russia gate are true. That every Russian that Trump and his associates/family
ever had any contact with are directed by Putin himself. Who believes for one second that this collusion has had more of a negative
impact 2016 election then the collusion that occured between Clinton and the DNC to subvert Sanders, Clinton and the media to
1st subvert Sanders and then Trump (side note, why doesn't Clinton/MSM collusion against Trump balance with the Trump/Russian
collusion for Trump?) How about the collusion between Wall Street and the DNC to such an extent that Citi Group was exposed as
having picked Obama's cabinet. And then let's remember that the Trump collusion with Kremlin has alot of guilt by association
through 6 degrees of separation and the Clinton/DNC/MSM/Wall Street collusion was proven in black and white through the publication
of Clinton/DNC/Podesta emails in Wikileaks.
That this point gets ignored by the MSM, is proof to me that they have lost all objectivity.
andy--s , May 23, 2018 at 12:16 am
MOre so.. Homer If Clintons personal server was a nothing burger not worthy of a single indictment, then why was it a national
security issue when some stranger offered the emails to Papadopoulos? They didnt bother investigating the stranger. they investigated
Papadopoulos!
Nobody will touch that with a ten foot poll in the main stream media.
"... At this point I have no belief that we'll ever see the entirety of the shenanigans or that any will be held to account. The bureaucratic gamesmanship with Nunes, Grassley and others to block, obfuscate and prevent any disclosure on one side and the complexity and extensiveness of the misuse of law enforcement and intelligence powers ensures that the American people will never know how warped their national security institutions have become. ..."
"... Net net, it seems to me that our national security apparatus along with our equally compromised political establishment will through sheer hubris and ineptitude, bungle into a situation that could be very dangerous not only to us but to the world at large. ..."
"... In other news: the Praetorian Guard is so embroiled in extracurricular activities that it doesn't actually spend any time guarding the Emperor. ..."
"... It is interesting that I don't see a headline on WSJ which reads something like "FBI spy infiltrated the Trump campaign". Of course I don't see such a headline on CNN or the NYTimes. To think that I once looked down my nose at Fox News. ..."
"... This article by Andy McCarthy reviews some of the Page-Strzok text messages and looks at what was redacted especially in light of Nunes pushing for the unredaction of the name of the person who is apparently associated with both US and British intelligence and apparently met with George Papadapolous prior to his meeting with the Australian ambassador Downer. ..."
"... A couple of interesting posts on Nunes. The Deep State Mob Targets Nunes https://www.zerohedge.com/n... Devin Nunes is a Badass https://amgreatness.com/201... ..."
"... The Trump campaign and presidency show similar characteristics. Placing a mole in that chaos seems to have been about the easiest possible intelligence operation. If we knew the details, would we find ANYONE who made the effort and failed to get past Trump level "vetting"? Does anyone think that Michael Wolf's experience was unique? It seems plausible that over time more and more of the real work is getting done by such people simply because they are careful not to do the sorts of things that lead to actual believers leaving at such impressive rates. ..."
"... The significance is pretty simple. What was the actual intelligence information to launch the counter-intelligence investigation of the Trump campaign? None. It was all a fabrication by Brennan and Clapper that was then laundered through to Comey to use the investigatory authorities and tools. ..."
"... The bottom line is that an incumbent administration used the national security apparatus to spy and frame a presidential campaign of the other party and directly intervene and manipulate a presidential election. And when they failed created media hysteria to launch an effort to find impeachable offenses of a duly elected president. This is what happens in a banana republic. We are one now, That is the significance. ..."
"... In my mind after 2 years of investigation both by the FBI/DOJ and then Mueller they've yet to provide any evidence that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian government. On the other hand there is increasing evidence that the FBI/DOJ were weaponized for political purposes. ..."
"... The executive branch of government, in this case the Obama administration, planting a federal agent inside the political campaign of the Democratic Party's opponent to entrap members of that campaign or the candidate himself. ..."
"... I recall Carter Page being identified several months back in a SST comments section as the probable US intel source enabling the broad FISA order ..."
"... I suppose that this is the usual foreign (often ME) belief that America is about them rather than about itself. In fact Trump is leading an attempt at counter-revolution, a revolt of the heartland against the elites of the left and right coasts and islands in the stream like Chicago. The counter-revolution is against globalist internationalism that discounts the welfare of the heartland as well as against "progressivism" which denies the faith writ large of the heartland. ..."
As the onion gets slowly peeled back what we are seeing is staggering in its scope and depth. It is starting to make sense to
me as to why the immense failures across the entire national security and law enforcement apparatus. Their leadership have been
far too busy and immersed in playing political games, bureaucratic games and engaging in media operations. They've had no time
or mental energy remaining to do the actual work that they've been paid to do.
At this point I have no belief that we'll ever see the entirety of the shenanigans or that any will be held to account.
The bureaucratic gamesmanship with Nunes, Grassley and others to block, obfuscate and prevent any disclosure on one side and the
complexity and extensiveness of the misuse of law enforcement and intelligence powers ensures that the American people will never
know how warped their national security institutions have become.
The other side is that it seems that for Trump himself it is not about getting it out to the public as he could declassify
all these documents with a stroke of a pen, but to use this to play up his victimization and rile up his base. That seems to be
working if the attendance at his recent public rallies are an indicator.
Net net, it seems to me that our national security apparatus along with our equally compromised political establishment
will through sheer hubris and ineptitude, bungle into a situation that could be very dangerous not only to us but to the world
at large.
It is interesting that I don't see a headline on WSJ which reads something like "FBI spy infiltrated the Trump campaign".
Of course I don't see such a headline on CNN or the NYTimes. To think that I once looked down my nose at Fox News.
This article by Andy McCarthy reviews some of the Page-Strzok text messages and looks at what was redacted especially in light
of Nunes pushing for the unredaction of the name of the person who is apparently associated with both US and British intelligence
and apparently met with George Papadapolous prior to his meeting with the Australian ambassador Downer.
The incoherence is stunning. And in the same kind of way as the hullabaloo on the left over Russian interference in the 2016 elections.
Let's start with the Russian participation since we now know a lot more about that. It was obnoxious. It showed potential for
future serious damage to the US electoral system. But did it elect Donald Trump? No. The Russians were dabbling in a game being
run at much larger scale by world class practitioners. They brought to the table neither the sophisticated understanding of American
politics not the resources required to make a difference. They picked some targets of opportunity and were able to use pre-existing
cleavages to their advantage.
The Trump campaign and presidency show similar characteristics. Placing a mole in that chaos seems to have been about the
easiest possible intelligence operation. If we knew the details, would we find ANYONE who made the effort and failed to get past
Trump level "vetting"? Does anyone think that Michael Wolf's experience was unique? It seems plausible that over time more and
more of the real work is getting done by such people simply because they are careful not to do the sorts of things that lead to
actual believers leaving at such impressive rates.
And what is the significance of the possible mole? Do we see a pattern of Trump administration initiatives being frustrated
by subtle maneuvers by people who always seem to know what is the next planned move? No. Even their closest allies don't seem
to have any idea what to expect. What would be the content of reports from such a mole?
So the contention is that that the FBI (or CIA?) opened up a channel of communication with someone in an inside position. Or
placed someone in an inside position. For valid reasons or bad. I'm inclined to think probably good reasons; the WSJ writers are
inclined to think bad. Did this happen before or after the famous Papadopoulis drunken indiscretions? If before, then indeed they
need to have had reasons beyond what they have expressed.
But again, what is the significance? The WSJ article makes a brief foray into the suspicious nature of other (non-Russian)
foreigners and leaves it at that. Did the intelligence agencies then undertake investigations that they shouldn't have? Regardless
of where allegations come from, do we really want an intelligence service that follows up only on data from "approved" sources?
If there was nothing going on, the proper action for the intelligence agencies was to determine that fact.
The significance is pretty simple. What was the actual intelligence information to launch the counter-intelligence investigation
of the Trump campaign? None. It was all a fabrication by Brennan and Clapper that was then laundered through to Comey to use the
investigatory authorities and tools.
The bottom line is that an incumbent administration used the national security
apparatus to spy and frame a presidential campaign of the other party and directly intervene and manipulate a presidential election.
And when they failed created media hysteria to launch an effort to find impeachable offenses of a duly elected president. This
is what happens in a banana republic. We are one now, That is the significance.
What I meant by significance was actual use of the data obtained. Discerning that can be logically dicey, but in general the investigation
seems to have held data about as tight as it can be held. Other investigators don't seem to have much trouble turning up interesting
(and embarrassing) history, but nobody seems to know what the FBI investigation has or doesn't have.
You do reference a "media
hysteria to launch an effort to find impeachable offenses". That did happen. Media hysteria is how America does things these days.
But any connection to the FBI investigation is problematic. That seems to have started with people deliberately going around the
FBI and CIA, which initially wouldn't even confirm the existence of an investigation.
You don't like the fact that they investigated at all, and you may be right. But rightness or wrongness of initiating an investigation
is certain to be contentious and to depend on facts that you and I don't have. Please correct me if in fact you do have access
to the detailed fact set and timeline that went into the decision making. In the meantime I will assume only access to publicly
available data. If the investigation was started capriciously, that would qualify as a serious problem. If facts or allegations
with major national security implications only became available after other less damning data had caused investigation to begin,
I am not very interested. This is about protecting the country, not about checking the right boxes. In the long term, failing
to investigate serious charges will seem a lot more damning than overreacting to spurious ones.
This all seems to come down to matters of trust. Do we trust the FBI to have done its job professionally and without any overriding
partisan bias? Yeah. My trust levels are pretty low, actually but I don't see much evidence to stoke the suspicions that are being
so flagrantly marketed. To begin with, if you wanted to locate a cabal of hard-core leftist partisans in the US government, FBI
agents would seem an unlikely place to look. If anything the known occurrences of bias seem to been directed against Hillary Clinton
as much as than Donald Trump. Then there is the lack of instances of using investigation data in blatantly political ways. Their
data is held very tightly. And what is the theory of how such a widespread conspiracy could have been put in place without anyone
noticing at the time?
In the real world trustworthiness is always limited and relative. For this issue, would you trust the FBI more than self-interested
politicians? Devin Nunes in particular with his history of leaking out-of-context mini-quotes, but really any politician. Would
you trust the current FBI more than any replacement that could be formed? Would you trust that they are not carrying on the sort
of activities uncovered by the Church committee? I know of no reason to withhold trust at that level.
And again we come back to significance. It might be worth digging out all the details if the investigation was being used to
blackmail and intimidate people. (How would you set about intimidating Donald Trump?) Or if false charges were being filed against
people. (The charges don't look false. The scandal may be that no one seems to have looked before at some of this. In any case
false charges are a technique for people without the resources to defend themselves. Not these guys.) What has occurred to justify
throwing away the system we have built over the years?
I don't see American political players being abused by an out-of-control FBI. I see some American political players desperately
wanting to keep facts from coming out. "If you have an innocent client, act like it!"
This whole Russia collusion affair speaks volumes about the state of our nation.
The testimony from Brennan, Clapper and Comey points to Electronic Communication as the original basis for the launch of the
counter-intelligence probe of the Trump campaign. The DOJ and FBI have not been forthcoming on what exactly that was. They've
continuously fought disclosure and then when the pressure rose from Congressional oversight they redacted critical elements. When
some of the redactions were unredacted it showed it had nothing to do with national security and everything to do with preventing
malfeasance and politicization from being disclosed. Nunes has disclosed that the electronic communication did not originate from
a 5 Eyes party. From testimony and other public disclosures it seems that the electronic communication originated from Brennan
and Clapper.
There's something fishy for sure that happened during the Summer/Fall 2016. In my mind after 2 years of investigation both
by the FBI/DOJ and then Mueller they've yet to provide any evidence that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian government.
On the other hand there is increasing evidence that the FBI/DOJ were weaponized for political purposes.
"...dabbling in a game being run at much larger scale by world class practitioners."
And who might those practitioners be?
You ask about significance twice: "And what is the significance of the possible mole?" and "But again, what is the significance?"
The executive branch of government, in this case the Obama administration, planting a federal agent inside the political
campaign of the Democratic Party's opponent to entrap members of that campaign or the candidate himself.
Those are Alinsky's rules, not constitutional principles in a democratic society. The follow on question is how many other
times was this done in political campaigns inside the US to favor the political party in power, in this case the Democratic Party?
Trump by chance may have hired someone who came already with a past (and unrelated to anything Trump) FBI or CIA relationship.
So it may not be a case of "planting" but of asset activation, or the source itself may have initiated the contact with law enforcement
regarding possible crimes.
You mean it was just oh so coincidental that "someone who came with a past....FBI" How many other elections for President,
or any other elected office, did this happen in previously? Perhaps an audit of all the FISA applications previously made would
be helpful.
"To entrap members of the campaign or the candidate himself"
You are assuming a motive. I have long since learned not to make assumptions about other people's motives. My mind-reading
credentials expired long ago. In any case, one of the very first rules of intelligence is to avoid such assumptions.
In any case, your theory suffers from a lack of examples of such entrapment. The embarassments experienced all seem to have
derived from much more basic and public sources. Whatever the intelligence agencies found on their own has remained private except
for actual indictments. None of those qualify in my mind as "entrapment".
I suppose that this is the usual foreign (often ME) belief that America is about them rather than about itself. In fact Trump
is leading an attempt at counter-revolution, a revolt of the heartland against the elites of the left and right coasts and islands
in the stream like Chicago. The counter-revolution is against globalist internationalism that discounts the welfare of the heartland
as well as against "progressivism" which denies the faith writ large of the heartland.
The Iran as enemy issue is derived from generations of pro-Zionist propaganda from those coastal elites. This has had a profound
effect on the Christian evangelicals of the heartland who think Zion fulfills prophecy as a harbinger of the end of days. They
are many of Trump's "troops."
"... Skripal's MI6 recruiter and handler, Pablo Miller, listed himself as a consultant to Orbis Business Intelligence, Christopher Steele's British company, on his LinkedIn profile. When the Telegraph called attention to the Orbis reference, it was removed from the LinkedIn profile. Steele, who worked on the Trump dossier through his company Orbis, has denied that Miller worked directly on the Trump dossier. ..."
"... Theresa May and her foreign minister Boris Johnson insist there is only one person who could be responsible for the poisoning, described as an act of war, and that is Vladimir Putin. No evidence has been offered to support this claim. In fact, there is a substantial doubt whether the putative nerve agent, Novichok, even exists. ..."
"... Rather than following the protocols of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which require that evidence of the alleged agent be presented to Russia, the eccentric and unpopular May instead delivered an ultimatum to Russia and whipped up war fever throughout the UK. ..."
"... Thus, just like Christopher Steele's dirty dossier against Donald Trump, the British claims against Putin are an evidence-free exercise of raw power. The Anglo- American establishment instructed us, with respect to Steele: "trust him, ignore the stinky factless content presented in this dossier, just note that he is backed by very important intelligence agencies who could cook your goose if you object." The same can be said for Teresa May's crazed assertions now. ..."
"... Steele was an MI6 agent in Moscow around the time Skripal was recruited. He also later ran the MI6 Russia desk and would have known everything there was to know about Skripal. Pablo Miller, who recruited Skripal, according to his LinkedIn profile, worked for Steele's firm and lived in the same town as Skripal. ..."
"... Since Steele has been discredited in the United States, a huge fawning publicity campaign has been undertaken on his behalf. The campaign involves journalists who have collaborated directly with Steele in his smear job against Trump. Books by Luke Harding and Michael Isikoff seek to rebuild Steele's reputation. A fawning piece by Jane Mayer in the New Yorker , as implausible as it is long, has been foisted on the public for the same reason. There are some fascinating facts, however, in all this fawning prose: ..."
"... Steele and his partners are mentored by Sir Richard Dearlove, former head of MI6 and a critical player in the infamous "sexing up" and fabrication of the claim that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, creating the rationale for the disastrous and genocidal Iraq War. ..."
"... Aside from Skripal's relationship to the central figure in the British led coup against Donald Trump, there are questions whether the nerve agent the British claim was used on the Skripals even exists, and even more troubling questions for Theresa May's "Russia did it" claim, if it does. ..."
"... Dr. Robin Black, Head of the Detection Laboratory at Porton Down as of 2016, and a colleague of the murdered British Iraq War dissident David Kelly, called the existence of Novichoks speculative, noting that "no independent confirmation of the structures or the properties of such compounds has been published." ..."
"... The Skripal poisoning is being compared in the British press to the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko in 2006. The former KGB and FSB officer was granted asylum in London and worked for the infamous anti-Putin British intelligence directed oligarch Boris Berezovsky in information warfare and other attacks on the Russian state, inclusive of McCarthyite accusations against any European politician seeking sane relations with Putin. ..."
"... Litvinenko's case officer was none other than Christopher Steele, and Christopher Steele conducted MI6's investigation of the case, which, of course, found Putin himself culpable. Berezovsky's use of the disgraced British PR firm Bell, Pottinger is also credited with a significant role in public acceptance of this result. Berezovsky was a prime suspect in organizing the murder of American journalist Paul Klebnikov. Many believe that Berezovsky arranged Litvinenko's demise. Berezovsky himself died in Britain in mysterious circumstances following the loss of a major court case to another Russian oligarch, Roman Abramovich. ..."
"... In the parliamentary debate in which Theresa May issued her provocation, opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn cautioned against a rush to judgment and pointed to the bloody playing field of Russian oligarchs and Russian organized crime as alternative areas for investigation. Had Corbyn added to that mix, "Western intelligence agencies," he would have been entirely on the right track. ..."
"... The insane McCarthyite reactions to Corbyn's simple statements of fact show that he hit the nail on the head. If you want to find Skripal's poisoners, then, like Edgar Allen Poe, you must take in the whole picture first. The field of play involves the British intelligence services and the anti-Putin Russian oligarchs who service each other, acting on behalf of British strategic objectives. It is no accident that the coup against Donald Trump and the latest British intelligence fraud, putting the entire world in peril, absolutely intersect one another. ..."
This statement explores the strategic significance of major events in the world starting in February of 2018. Our goal is to precisely
situate Theresa May's March 12–14 mad effort to manufacture a new "weapons of mass destruction" hoax using the same people (the MI6
intelligence grouping around Sir Richard Dearlove) and script (an intelligence fraud concerning weapons of mass destruction) which
were used to draw the United States into the disastrous Iraq War. The Skripal poisoning fraud also directly involves British agent
Christopher Steele, the central figure in the ongoing coup against Donald Trump. This time the British information warfare operation
is aimed at directly provoking Russia while maintaining their targeting of the U.S. population and President Trump.
As the fevered war-like media coverage and hysteria surrounding the case makes clear, a certain section of the British elite seems
prepared to risk everything on behalf of their dying imperial system. Despite the hype, economic warfare and sanctions appear to
be the British weapons of choice. Putin, as we shall see,
recently called the West's nuclear bluff. With their Russiagate coup against Donald Trump fizzling, exposing British agent Christopher
Steele and a slew of his American friends to criminal prosecution, a new tool was desperately needed to back the President of the
United States into the British geopolitical corner shared by most of the American establishment. The tool is an intelligence hoax,
a tried and true British product.
According to the British spy tale, a former Russian military intelligence colonel, Sergei Skripal who spied for Great Britain
in Russia from the early 1990s until 2004 was poisoned, along with his daughter, on March 4 in Salisbury, England, using a nerve
agent "of a type developed by the former Soviet Union." In 2010, Skripal had been exchanged in a spy swap between the United States
and Russia. He had served six years in a Russian prison for spying for Britain. He had been living in the open in Britain for the
last eight years. Skripal's MI6 recruiter and handler, Pablo Miller, listed himself as a consultant to Orbis Business Intelligence,
Christopher Steele's British company, on his LinkedIn profile. When the Telegraph called attention to the Orbis reference, it was
removed from the LinkedIn profile. Steele, who worked on the Trump dossier through his company Orbis, has denied that Miller worked
directly on the Trump dossier.
Theresa May and her foreign minister Boris Johnson insist there is only one person who could be responsible for the poisoning,
described as an act of war, and that is Vladimir Putin. No evidence has been offered to support this claim. In fact, there is a substantial
doubt whether the putative nerve agent, Novichok, even exists. No plausible motive has been provided as to why Putin would order
such a provocative murder now, ahead of the World Cup, when the Russiagate coup against him in the United States has lost all momentum.
Rather than following the protocols of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which require that evidence
of the alleged agent be presented to Russia, the eccentric and unpopular May instead delivered an ultimatum to Russia and whipped
up war fever throughout the UK. She now seeks to pull Donald Trump and NATO into ever more aggressive moves against Russia.
Thus, just like Christopher Steele's dirty dossier against Donald Trump, the British claims against Putin are an evidence-free
exercise of raw power. The Anglo- American establishment instructed us, with respect to Steele:
"trust him, ignore the stinky factless content presented in this dossier, just note that he is backed by very important intelligence
agencies who could cook your goose if you object."
The same can be said for Teresa May's crazed assertions now.
A short statement of the reasons why the British are now staging the Skripal provocation can be found in a March 14 London
Sunday Telegraph call to arms by Allister Heath, who rants:
"We need a new world order to take on totalitarian capitalists in Russia and China Such an alliance would dramatically shift
the global balance of power, and allow the liberal democracies finally to fight back. It would endow the world with the sorts of
robust institutions that are required to contain Russia and China Britain needs a new role in the world; building such a network
would be our perfect mission."
Across the pond, as they say, a similar foundational statement was made by 68 former Obama Administration officials who have
formed a group called National Security Action, aimed at securing Trump's impeachment and attacking Russia and China.
As visitors to the LaRouchePAC website know, Russia and China have embarked on a massive infrastructure building project in Eurasia,
the center of all British geopolitical fantasies since the time of Halford MacKinder. Moreover, China's Belt and Road Initiative
now encompasses more than 140 nations in the largest infrastructure-building project ever undertaken in human history. This project
is a true economic engine for the future, while neo-liberal economies continue to see their productive potentials sucked dry by the
massive mound of debt they have created since the 2008 financial collapse. This debt is now on a hair trigger for implosion. It is
estimated by banking insiders that the City of London is sitting on a derivatives powderkeg of $700 trillion with over-the-counter
derivatives accounting for another $570 trillion. The City of London will bear the major impact of the derivatives collapse.
In this strategic geometry, President Trump's support of peaceful collaboration with Russia during the campaign and his personal
friendship with President Xi, marked him for the relentless coup against him waged by the British and their U.S. friends.
On top of that, President Putin delivered a mammoth strategic shock on March 1, showing new Russian weapons systems based on new
physical principles which render present U.S. ABM systems and much of current U.S. war-fighting doctrine obsolete, together with
the vaunted first strike capacity with which NATO has surrounded Russia. Not only is the West sitting on a new financial collapse;
its vaunted military superiority has just been flanked.
It is very clear that a strategic choice now confronts the human race. In 1984, Lyndon LaRouche wrote a very profound document,
"Draft Memorandum of Agreement Between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R." In it, he developed the concrete basis for peace between the
two superpowers at the moment when the U.S. had adopted the LaRouche/Reagan doctrine of strategic defense. Both Reagan and LaRouche
had proposed that the Russians and the United States cooperate in building and developing strategic defense against offensive nuclear
weapons based on new physical principles, thereby eliminating the threat of nuclear annihilation.
According to the LaRouche Doctrine,
"The political foundation for durable peace must be: a) the unconditional sovereignty of each and all nation states, and b) cooperation
among sovereign states to the effect of promoting unlimited opportunities to participate in the benefits of technological progress,
to the mutual benefit of each and all."
Both China, in President Xi's October Address to the Party Congress, and Russia, in Putin's March 1 address, have set a course
to produce "technological progress capable of being shared in by all," outlining major infrastructure projects and dedicating massive
funding to exploring the frontiers of science, technology, and space exploration. Donald Trump, in both his campaign and his presidency,
has embraced similar views. The British and their American friends, however, are devotees of a completely different and failing economic
system, a system soundly rejected in Brexit, the election of Donald Trump, and most recently in the Italian elections.
Just look at the events of February and March from this standpoint. It is no accident that Christopher Steele turns up, smack
dab in the middle of the Skripal poisoning hoax.
The Coup Against Trump Begins to Be Reversed; British Are Exposed as Actual U.S. Election Meddlers
On February 2, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence released a memo demonstrating that the Obama Justice Department
and FBI committed an outright fraud on the FISA court in obtaining surveillance warrants on Carter Page, a volunteer to Donald Trump's
2016 presidential campaign. The bogus warrant applications relied heavily on the dirty British dossier authored by MI6's "former"
Russian intelligence chief, Christopher Steele, who had been paid by Hillary Clinton's campaign and the Democratic National Committee,
to paint Donald Trump as a Manchurian candidate, a pawn of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
According to the House Intelligence memo and other aspects of its investigation, Steele confided to Bruce Ohr, a high official
in the DOJ, that he, Steele, hated Trump with a passion and would do "anything" to prevent Trump's election. Steele was using the
fact of an FBI investigation of his allegations as part of a "full spectrum" British information warfare campaign conducted against
candidate Trump with the full complicity of Obama's intelligence chiefs. 1
Peter Van Buren, "Christopher Steele: The Real Foreign Influence in the 2016 U.S. Election?" American Conservative, February
15, 2018. None of the true facts about the actual motive for, and sponsors of, the DOJ applications about Carter Page were
revealed to the FISA Court in the filings made by former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, former FBI Director James Comey, or
current Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
The House Intelligence Committee memo was quickly followed by a declassified letter on February 5, in which Senators Chuck Grassley
and Lindsay Graham referred Christopher Steele to the Department of Justice for criminal prosecution based on false statements he
made to the FBI about his contacts with the news media. No doubt the criminal referral sent chills down the spines not only of Christopher
Steele and his British colleagues but also of those Obama officials conspiring against Trump.
In the same week, House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes announced that he would be conducting investigations of the role of
the Obama State Department and intelligence chiefs in the circulation and use of Christopher Steele's dirty dossier. These investigations
have been widely reported to focus on John Brennan and James Clapper: Brennan for widely promoting the dirty British work product
and Clapper for leaks associated with BuzzFeed's publication and legitimization of the dirty British work product. Remind yourself
every time you hear media explosions against Trump by either Clapper (Congressional perjurer and proponent of the theory that the
Russians are genetically predisposed to screw the United States) or Brennan (gopher for George Tenet's perpetual war and torture
regime and Grand Inquisitor for Barack Obama's serial assassinations by baseball card). They are next in the barrel, so to speak.
The January 11, 2017 BuzzFeed publication of the Steele dossier was meant to permanently poison Trump's incoming administration
and is the subject of libel suits in both Florida and London. In the London case, the British are ready to invoke the Official Secrets
Act to protect Christopher Steele. In the Florida case, Steele has been ordered to sit for deposition despite numerous delays and
stalling tactics.
The Congressional investigation of the State Department is focused on John Kerry, Kerry's aide Jonathan Winer, Victoria Nuland,
and Clinton operative Cody Shearer. Nuland utilized Christopher Steele as a primary intelligence source while running the U.S. regime
change operations in Ukraine in alliance with neo-Nazis. She greenlighted Steele's initial meetings with the FBI about Donald Trump.
Winer deployed himself to vouch for Steele with various news publications collaborating with British agent Steele and his U.S. employer,
Fusion GPS, in Steele's media warfare operations against Trump.
On March 12, the House Intelligence Committee announced that it had completed its Russia investigation. It stated that it found
"no collusion, coordination, or conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia." Its draft final report was to have been
provided to the Democrats on the Committee on March 13 for comment and then submitted to declassification review.
On March 15, four U.S. Senators from the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senators Chuck Grassley, Lindsey Graham, John Cornyn, and
Thom Tillis, called for the appointment of a Special Counsel to investigate the DOJ and FBI with respect to the Russiagate investigation.
They particularly focused on the use of the Steele dossier, FISA abuse, the disclosure of classified information to the press, and
the criminal investigation and case of former Trump National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. Separately, House Oversight Chairman
Trey Gowdy and House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte have asked the Justice Department to appoint a Special Counsel on similar grounds.
On March 16, James Comey's Deputy FBI Director, Andrew McCabe, was fired as the result of recommendations by the FBI's Office
of Professional Responsibility (OPR). The OPR recommendation resulted from Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz's
investigation of McCabe's actions with respect to the Clinton email investigation and the Clinton Foundation. McCabe claimed that
this was part of a plot against himself, Comey, and Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Michael Horowitz, however, is an actual Washington
straight shooter appointed to his post by Barack Obama. The OPR is the FBI's own disciplinary agency. Horowitz's report is expected
to be extremely critical of McCabe, citing a "lack of candor," (i.e., lying) with respect to the investigation. Whatever the corrupt
media might claim, the facts here have been thoroughly investigated by McCabe's former FBI subordinates. They think his lies and
other actions disgrace the FBI and don't entitle him to a pension.
Horowitz's report on the Clinton investigations, which already unearthed the texts between former Russiagate lead case agent Peter
Strzok and his mistress, FBI lawyer Lisa Page, proclaiming their hatred of Donald Trump and the need for an "insurance policy" against
his election, is expected to be released very soon. According to the House Intelligence Committee, the Strzok/Page texts also reveal
that Strzok was a close friend of U.S. District Court Judge Rudolph Contreras. Contreras sits on the FISA court, took Michael Flynn's
guilty plea, and then promptly recused himself from Michael Flynn's case for reasons which remain undisclosed.
Despite its exoneration of the President, and thorough discrediting of the British Steele operation, the House Intelligence Committee
dangerously accepts the myth that the Russians hacked the Democratic National Committee, the DCCC, and the emails of Clinton Campaign
Chairman John Podesta, and then provided the hacked information to WikiLeaks for publication. It states, however, that Putin's intervention
was not in support of Donald Trump, as previously claimed by Obama's intelligence chiefs. The Senators seeking a new Special Counsel
also salute this dangerous fraud.
As we have previously reported, the myth that Putin hacked the Democrats and provided the hacked emails to WikiLeaks, has been
substantively refuted by the investigations of the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. In summary, the evidence points
to a leak rather than a hack in the case of the DNC. Further, the NSA would have the evidence of any such hack or hacks, according
to former NSA technical director Bill Binney, and would have provided it, even if in a classified setting. It is clear that the NSA
has no such evidence. It is also clear that the U.S. and the British have cyber warfare capabilities fully capable of creating "false
flag" cyber war incidents.
North Korea Talks Planned; Russia and China Continue to Create the Conditions for a New Human Renaissance
In addition to the fizzling of the coup, the Western elites otherwise suffered through February and March. To the shock of the
entire smug Davos crowd, Donald Trump, working with Russia, China, and South Korea, appears to have gotten Kim Jong-un to the negotiating
table concerning denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. Substantive talks have been scheduled for May. The breakthrough was announced
by President Trump and South Korea on March 8.
On March 1, President Putin gave his historic two-hour address to the Russian assembly and the Russian people. Like President
Xi's address to the Chinese Party Congress in October of 2017, Putin focused on the goal of deeply reducing poverty in Russian society.
Xi vowed in October to eliminate it from Chinese society altogether. In addition, Putin emphasized that Russia would undertake a
huge city-building project across its vast rural frontiers and dramatically expand its modern infrastructure, including Russia's
digital infrastructure. He put major emphasis on directing funds to basic scientific and technological progress. He emphasized that
harnessing and stimulating the creative powers of individual human beings was the true driver of all economic progress. Those knowledgeable
in the West could not help but recognize the suppressed formulas for continuing economic prosperity advocated by Alexander Hamilton
and advanced by Lyndon LaRouche.
China's Belt and Road Initiative also continued to advance. Great infrastructure projects are popping up throughout the world,
including most specifically in Africa, which had been consigned to be a permanent primitive looting ground for Western interests.
Among the recent breakthroughs is the great project to refurbish Lake Chad, a project known as "Transaqua," involving the Italian
engineering firm Bonifica, the Chinese engineering and construction firm PowerChina, and the Lake Chad Basin Commission, which represents
the African countries directly benefiting from the project.
But the biggest strategic news of the last six weeks was contained in the last part of President Putin's speech. He showed various
weapons, developed by Russian scientists in the wake of the U.S. abrogation of the ABM treaty and the Anglo-American campaign of
color revolutions and NATO base-building in the former Soviet bloc. The weapons, based on new physical principles, render U.S. ABM
defenses obsolete, together with many utopian U.S. war fighting doctrines developed under the reigns of Obama and Bush. Putin emphasized
that the economic and "defense" aspects of his speech were not separate. Rather, the scientific breakthroughs were based on an in-depth
economic mobilization of the physical economy. He stressed that Russia's survival was dependent upon marshaling continuous creative
breakthroughs in basic science and the high technology spinoffs which result, and their propagation through the entire population.
He stressed that such breakthroughs are the product of providing an actually human existence to the entire society.
Compare what Russia and China have set out to accomplish with the physical economy of the earth, and the second and third paragraphs
of Lyndon LaRouche's prescription for a durable peace in the LaRouche Doctrine:
"The most crucial feature of present implementation of such a policy of durable peace is a profound change in the monetary, economic,
and political relations between dominant powers and those relatively subordinated nations often classed as 'developing nations.'
Unless the inequities lingering in the aftermath of modern colonialism are progressively remedied, there can be no durable peace
on this planet.
"Insofar as the United States and the Soviet Union acknowledge the progress of the productive powers of labor throughout the
planet to be in the vital strategic interests of each and both, the two powers are bound to that degree and in that way by a common
interest. This is the kernel of the political and economic policies of practice indispensable to the fostering of a durable peace
between those two powers."
This is the perspective which has the British terrified and acting out, insanely. Were Trump, Putin, and Xi to enter into negotiations
based on the LaRouche Doctrine, a breakthrough will have occurred for all of mankind, a breakthrough to a permanent and durable peace.
No neo-liberal, post-industrial, unipolar order can match this, no matter how much Mr. Heath, Ms. May, or Boris Johnson rant and
rave about it.
Christopher Steele's British Playground
As is well known by now, Christopher Steele was a long time MI6 agent before "retiring" to form his own extremely lucrative private
intelligence firm. The firm is said to have earned $200 million since its formation. Steele was an MI6 agent in Moscow around the
time Skripal was recruited. He also later ran the MI6 Russia desk and would have known everything there was to know about Skripal.
Pablo Miller, who recruited Skripal, according to his LinkedIn profile, worked for Steele's firm and lived in the same town as Skripal.
Since Steele has been discredited in the United States, a huge fawning publicity campaign has been undertaken on his behalf. The
campaign involves journalists who have collaborated directly with Steele in his smear job against Trump. Books by Luke Harding and
Michael Isikoff seek to rebuild Steele's reputation. A fawning piece by Jane Mayer in the New Yorker , as implausible as it
is long, has been foisted on the public for the same reason. There are some fascinating facts, however, in all this fawning prose:
Steele described his business to Luke Harding as primarily providing research and reports to competing and feuding Russian oligarchs,
many of whom use London as a base of operations. This is obviously a perfect cover for intelligence operations. It is also a very
violent theater of operations. The oligarchs intersect both Western intelligence operations and Russian organized crime. They engage
in deadly gang warfare.
Steele and his partners are mentored by Sir Richard Dearlove, former head of MI6 and a critical player in the infamous "sexing
up" and fabrication of the claim that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, creating the rationale for the disastrous and
genocidal Iraq War.
Steele had been tasked to claim that Russia was interfering in Western elections during the entire post-Ukraine coup time frame
in which this black propaganda line began to be circulated widely. According to Jane Mayer's account, Steele called this Project
Charlemagne, completing his report in April, 2016, just before he undertook his hit job against Donald Trump. In his report, Steele
claimed that Russia was interfering in the politics of France, Italy, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Turkey. He claimed that Russia
was conducting social media warfare aimed at "inflaming fear and prejudice and had provided opaque financial support to favored politicians."
He specifically targeted Silvio Berlusconi and Marine La Pen. Steele also suggested that Russian aid was given to "lesser known right
wing nationalists" in the United Kingdom and elsewhere, implying that the Russians were behind Brexit, with an overall goal of destroying
the European Union.
Aside from Skripal's relationship to the central figure in the British led coup against Donald Trump, there are questions whether
the nerve agent the British claim was used on the Skripals even exists, and even more troubling questions for Theresa May's "Russia
did it" claim, if it does.
Former British Ambassador Craig Murray reports that the British chemical weapons laboratory at Porton Down, just 8 miles from
where the Skripals were found, is unsure about what substance, if any, was actually involved in the Skripal poisoning. According
to Murray's sources at Porton Down, the scientists were pressured to say that it was a nerve agent of a "type developed by Russia."
This is supposed to refer to a whole family of chemical weapons, the Novichoks, which were supposedly produced in the 1980s in a
Soviet laboratory in Uzbekistan. This production facility was completely dismantled by the United States, according to multiple accounts.
Dr. Robin Black, Head of the Detection Laboratory at Porton Down as of 2016, and a colleague of the murdered British Iraq War dissident
David Kelly, called the existence of Novichoks speculative, noting that "no independent confirmation of the structures or the properties
of such compounds has been published."
The main account supporting the existence of the chemical weapons cited by Theresa May was written by a Soviet dissident chemist
named Vil Mirzayanov who now lives in the United States and published a book about his work at the Uzbekistan laboratory. In his
much-publicized book, Mirzayanov sets out the formulas for the claimed substances. According to the Wall Street Journal of March
16, that publicity led to Novichok's chemical structure being leaked, making it readily available for reproduction elsewhere. Ralf
Trapp, a France-based consultant and expert on the control of chemical and biological weapons, told the Journal,
"The chemical formula has been publicized and we know from publications from
then-Czechoslovakia that they had worked on similar agents for defense in the 1980s . I'm sure other countries with developed programs
would have as well."
But it does not seem that those "other countries" include Russia. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the
independent agency charged by treaty with investigating claims like those just made by the British government, certified in September
of 2017 that the Russian government had destroyed its entire chemical weapons program, inclusive of its nerve agent production capabilities.
In addition to Mirzayanov, Seamus Martin, writing in the Irish Times of March 14, posits, based on personal knowledge, that Novichoks
were widely expropriated by East Bloc oligarchs and criminal elements in the Russian economic chaos of the 1990s.
Thus, Novichoks are the product of the mind of a dissident Russian chemist living in the United States whose formulas have been
widely copied by other countries, according to the press accounts. Porton Downs, the very laboratory now asserting their existence,
stated as of 2016 that even this published "fact" was to be substantially doubted.
Further trouble for May's attempted hoax is found in the condition of the Skripals and a police officer who went to their home.
All were made critically ill, although they are still alive. Yet emergency personnel who treated the Skripals, allegedly the victims
of a deadly and absolutely lethal nerve poison, suffered no ill effects whatsoever.
The Skripal poisoning is being compared in the British press to the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko in 2006. The former KGB
and FSB officer was granted asylum in London and worked for the infamous anti-Putin British intelligence directed oligarch Boris
Berezovsky in information warfare and other attacks on the Russian state, inclusive of McCarthyite accusations against any European
politician seeking sane relations with Putin.
Litvinenko's case officer was none other than Christopher Steele, and Christopher Steele conducted MI6's investigation of the
case, which, of course, found Putin himself culpable. Berezovsky's use of the disgraced British PR firm Bell, Pottinger is also credited
with a significant role in public acceptance of this result. Berezovsky was a prime suspect in organizing the murder of American
journalist Paul Klebnikov. Many believe that Berezovsky arranged Litvinenko's demise. Berezovsky himself died in Britain in mysterious
circumstances following the loss of a major court case to another Russian oligarch, Roman Abramovich.
In the parliamentary debate in which Theresa May issued her provocation, opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn cautioned against a rush
to judgment and pointed to the bloody playing field of Russian oligarchs and Russian organized crime as alternative areas for investigation.
Had Corbyn added to that mix, "Western intelligence agencies," he would have been entirely on the right track. Corbyn also pointed
out that these oligarchs had contributed millions to May's Conservative party. The reaction by the British media, May's conservatives,
and Tony Blair's faction of the Labor Party was to paint Corbyn as a Putin dupe, including photo-shopped images of the Labor leader
in a Russian winter hat in front of the Kremlin widely circulated in the news media.
The insane McCarthyite reactions to Corbyn's simple statements of fact show that he hit the nail on the head. If you want
to find Skripal's poisoners, then, like Edgar Allen Poe, you must take in the whole picture first. The field of play involves the
British intelligence services and the anti-Putin Russian oligarchs who service each other, acting on behalf of British strategic
objectives. It is no accident that the coup against Donald Trump and the latest British intelligence fraud, putting the entire world
in peril, absolutely intersect one another.
"... We finally have the most concrete evidence yet of shadowy actors using dirty tricks in order to rig elections ..."
"... In a series of tweets Thursday night, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange suggested that there is evidence indicating that the British government and intelligence agencies were involved in a plot to bring down the Trump presidency. Assange laid out the possible role that he believes MI6 and the government played in the so called 'dirty dossier' scandal ..."
"... Misfud worked in Riyadh for a "think tank" run by the former head of Saudi intelligence, Prince Turki al Faisal. (BBC) ..."
"... Misfud and Claire Smith of the UK Joint Intelligence Committee and eight year member of the UK Security Vetting panel both trained Italian security services at the Link university in Rome and appear to be both present in this phone https://t.co/HAbldyx73m pic.twitter.com/xtaGEiZxQG ..."
"... It was Alexander Downer in London, closely associated with Hakluyt (now Holdingham Group Ltd) a private MI6 outfit, that met with Papadopulos. The FBI used AD's statement about Misfud to open the FISA interception warrants against the Trump camp. https://t.co/O9wT5ufPQE ..."
In a series of tweets Thursday night, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange suggested that
there is evidence indicating that the British government and intelligence agencies were
involved in a plot to bring down the Trump presidency. Assange laid out the possible role that
he believes MI6 and the government played in the so called 'dirty dossier' scandal :
There is something very odd about the Joseph Mifsud story and the role of the UK in the
2016 US presidential election:
(thread)
Assange notes that back in November, British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson was pictured
meeting with Joseph Mifsud, a professor with strong Kremlin ties who also worked for a group
run by the former head of Saudi intelligence.
3/ Misfud and Claire Smith of the UK Joint Intelligence Committee and eight year member of
the UK Security Vetting panel both trained Italian security services at the Link university
in Rome and appear to be both present in this phone https://t.co/HAbldyx73mpic.twitter.com/xtaGEiZxQG
Assange notes that The FBI used MI6 associate Alexander Downer's statement about Misfud to
open the FISA interception warrants against the Trump camp:
4/ It was Alexander Downer in London, closely associated with Hakluyt (now Holdingham
Group Ltd) a private MI6 outfit, that met with Papadopulos. The FBI used AD's statement about
Misfud to open the FISA interception warrants against the Trump camp. https://t.co/O9wT5ufPQE
8/ Steele used former UK ambassador Sir Andrew Wood to funnel the dossier to the Trump
hating Senator John McCain; seemingly deliberately moving the handover out of London, to
Canada. https://t.co/hzMAuTasFn
9/ UK government TV then "verified" the dossier. The reporter? Paul Wood, a reporter who
has been repeatedly operated within UK military and intelligence covert operation zones.
https://t.co/jyN0XLHgKjpic.twitter.com/vKpk7Cbzzg
Assange followed up with a tweet concerning election interference at the hands of the
British government.
"We finally have the most concrete evidence yet of shadowy actors using dirty tricks in
order to rig elections. But these characters aren't operating from Moscow Instead, they are
British, Eton educated, and have close ties to Her Majesty " https://t.co/14nQXGa90H
Clearly the Wikileaks head is suggesting that rather than 'muh Russians' being the shady
actors trying to rig the election in favor of Trump, of which there has been no evidence, it
may in fact have been British government and intelligence operatives attempting to rig the
election to stop Trump getting into office.
"... According to the British spy tale, a former Russian military intelligence colonel, Sergei Skripal, who spied for Great Britain in Russia from the early 1990s until 2004, was poisoned, along with his daughter, on March 4 in Salisbury, England, using a nerve agent "of a type developed by Russia." In 2010, Skripal had been exchanged in a spy swap between the United States and Russia. He had served six years in a Russian prison for spying for Britain. He had been living in the open in Britain for the last eight years. Skripal's MI6 recruiter and handler, Pablo Miller, listed himself as a consultant to Orbis Business Intelligence, Christopher Steele's British company, on his LinkedIn profile. When the London Daily Telegraph called attention to the Orbis reference, it was removed from the profile. Steele, who worked on the Trump dossier through his company Orbis, has denied that Miller worked directly on that dossier. ..."
"... Rather than following the protocols of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which require that evidence of the alleged agent be presented to Russia, the eccentric and unpopular May instead delivered an ultimatum to Russia, and whipped up war fever throughout the UK. She now seeks to pull Donald Trump and NATO into ever more aggressive moves against Russia. ..."
"... A short statement of the reasons why the British are now staging the Skripal provocation can be found in a March 14 London Daily Telegraph call to arms by Allister Heath, who rants: "We need a new world order to take on totalitarian capitalists in Russia and China. Such an alliance would dramatically shift the global balance of power, and allow the liberal democracies finally to fight back. It would endow the world with the sorts of robust institutions that are required to contain Russia and China. Britain needs a new role in the world; building such a network would be our perfect mission." Across the pond, as they say, a similar foundational statement was made by 68 former Obama Administration officials who have formed a group called National Security Action, aimed at securing Trump's impeachment and attacking Russia and China. ..."
"... China's "Belt and Road Initiative" now encompasses more than 140 nations in the largest infrastructure-building project ever undertaken in human history. This project is a true economic engine for the future. At the same time, the neo-liberal economies of the trans-Atlantic region continue to see their productive potentials sucked dry by the massive piles of debt they have created since the 2008 financial collapse. ..."
"... Just look at the events of February and March from this standpoint. It is no accident that Christopher Steele turns up, smack dab in the middle of the Skripal poisoning hoax. ..."
"... None of the true facts about the actual motive for, and sponsors of, the DOJ applications involving Carter Page were revealed to the FISA Court in the filings made by former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, former FBI Director James Comey, or current Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. ..."
"... Since Steele has been discredited in the United States, a huge fawning publicity campaign has been undertaken on his behalf. The campaign involves journalists who have collaborated directly with Steele in his smear job against Trump. Books by Luke Harding and Michael Isikoff seek to rebuild Steele's reputation. ..."
"... A fawning piece by Jane Mayer in the New Yorker, as implausible as it is long, has been foisted on the public for the same reason. ..."
"... Steele described his business to Luke Harding as primarily providing research and reports to competing and feuding Russian oligarchs, many of whom use London as a base of operations. This is obviously a perfect cover for intelligence operations. It is also a very violent theater of operations. The oligarchs intersect both Western intelligence operations and Russian organized crime. They engage in deadly gang warfare. ..."
"... Steele and his partners are mentored by Sir Richard Dearlove, former head of MI6 and a critical player in the infamous "sexing up" and fabrication of the claim that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, ..."
"... Steele had been tasked to claim that Russia was interfering in Western elections during the entire post-Ukraine coup time-frame, when this black propaganda line began to be circulated widely. ..."
"... The background to Porton Down's reluctance, is of course former Prime Minister Blair's phony dossier on Iraqi WMD, which Lyndon LaRouche fought, alongside the late British arms expert David Kelly, who exposed the "dodgy dossier," at the time. ..."
"... Thus, after being disclosed by a dissident Russian chemist living in the United States, novichoks have been widely copied by other countries, according to the press accounts. ..."
"... The insane McCarthyite reactions to Corbyn's simple statements of fact show that he hit the nail on the head. If you want to find Skripal's poisoners, then, like Edgar Allen Poe, you must take in the whole picture first. The field of play involves the British intelligence services and the anti-Putin Russian oligarchs, each of which services the other, acting on behalf of British strategic objectives. It is no accident that the coup against Donald Trump and the latest British intelligence fraud, putting the entire world in peril, absolutely intersect one another. ..."
March 18 -- In this report, we will explore the strategic significance of major events in the world starting in February 2018.
Our goal is to precisely situate British Prime Minister Theresa May's March 12-14 mad effort to manufacture a new "weapons of mass
destruction" hoax based on the alleged Skripal poisoning, using the same people (the MI6 intelligence grouping around Sir Richard
Dearlove) and script (an intelligence fraud concerning weapons of mass destruction) which were used to draw the United States into
the disastrous Iraq War.
The Skripal poisoning fraud also directly involves British agent Christopher Steele, the central figure in the ongoing coup against
Donald Trump. This time the British information warfare operation is aimed at directly provoking Russia, while maintaining the targeting
of the U.S. population and President Trump.
As the fevered, war-like media coverage and hysteria surrounding the case make clear, a certain section of the British elite seems
prepared to risk everything on behalf of its dying imperial system. Despite the hype, economic warfare and sanctions appear to be
the British weapons of choice -- Vladimir Putin, as we shall see, recently called the West's nuclear bluff. With the British "Russiagate"
coup against Donald Trump fizzling, exposing British agent Christopher Steele and a slew of his American friends to criminal prosecution,
a new tool was desperately needed to back the President of the United States into the British geopolitical corner shared by most
of the American establishment. The tool they are using to do this is an intelligence hoax, a tried-and-true British product.
According to the British spy tale, a former Russian military intelligence colonel, Sergei Skripal, who spied for Great Britain
in Russia from the early 1990s until 2004, was poisoned, along with his daughter, on March 4 in Salisbury, England, using a nerve
agent "of a type developed by Russia." In 2010, Skripal had been exchanged in a spy swap between the United States and Russia. He
had served six years in a Russian prison for spying for Britain. He had been living in the open in Britain for the last eight years.
Skripal's MI6 recruiter and handler, Pablo Miller, listed himself as a consultant to Orbis Business Intelligence, Christopher Steele's
British company, on his LinkedIn profile. When the London Daily Telegraph called attention to the Orbis reference, it was removed
from the profile. Steele, who worked on the Trump dossier through his company Orbis, has denied that Miller worked directly on that
dossier.
Theresa May and her foreign minister, Boris Johnson, insist there is only one person who could be responsible for the poisoning
-- described as an act of war -- and that person is Vladimir Putin. No evidence has been offered to support this claim. No plausible
motive has been provided as to why Putin would order such a provocative murder now, ahead of the World Cup, when the Russiagate coup
in the United States has lost all momentum.
Rather than following the protocols of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical
Weapons (OPCW), which require that evidence of the alleged agent be presented to Russia, the eccentric and unpopular May instead
delivered an ultimatum to Russia, and whipped up war fever throughout the UK. She now seeks to pull Donald Trump and NATO into ever
more aggressive moves against Russia.
Thus, as with Christopher Steele's dirty dossier against Donald Trump, the British claims against Putin are an evidence-free exercise
of raw power. The Anglo-American establishment instructs us: "trust this, ignore the stinky factless content presented in this dossier
-- just note that it is backed by very important intelligence agencies which could cook your goose if you object."
A short statement of the reasons why the British are now staging the Skripal provocation can be found in a March 14 London
Daily Telegraph call to arms by Allister Heath, who rants: "We need a new world order to take on totalitarian capitalists in Russia
and China. Such an alliance would dramatically shift the global balance of power, and allow the liberal democracies finally to fight
back. It would endow the world with the sorts of robust institutions that are required to contain Russia and China. Britain needs
a new role in the world; building such a network would be our perfect mission." Across the pond, as they say, a similar foundational
statement was made by 68 former Obama Administration officials who have formed a group called National Security Action, aimed at
securing Trump's impeachment and attacking Russia and China.
Russia and China have embarked on a massive infrastructure building project in Eurasia, the center of all British geopolitical
fantasies since the time of Halford Mackinder. China's "Belt and Road Initiative" now encompasses more than 140 nations in the
largest infrastructure-building project ever undertaken in human history. This project is a true economic engine for the future.
At the same time, the neo-liberal economies of the trans-Atlantic region continue to see their productive potentials sucked dry by
the massive piles of debt they have created since the 2008 financial collapse. This debt is now on a hair trigger for implosion.
It is estimated by banking insiders that the City of London is sitting on a derivatives powderkeg of $700 trillion, with over-the-counter
derivatives accounting for another $570 trillion. The City of London will bear the major impact of the coming derivatives collapse.
In this strategic geometry, President Trump's support for peaceful collaboration with Russia during the campaign, and his personal
friendship with China's President Xi Jinping, have marked him for the relentless coup-drive waged by the British and their U.S. friends.
On top of that, President Putin delivered a mammoth strategic shock on March 1, showing new Russian weapons systems based on new
physical principles, which render present U.S. ABM systems and much of current U.S. war-fighting doctrine obsolete, together with
the vaunted first strike capacity with which NATO has surrounded Russia. Not only is the West sitting on a new financial collapse,
its vaunted military superiority has just been flanked.
It is very clear that a strategic choice now confronts the human race. In 1984, Lyndon LaRouche wrote a very profound document,
"
Draft Memorandum of Agreement Between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. " In it, he developed the concrete basis for peace between the
two superpowers at the moment when the United States had adopted the LaRouche/Reagan doctrine of strategic defense. Both Reagan and
LaRouche had proposed that the Russians and the United States cooperate in building and developing strategic defense against offensive
nuclear weapons, based on new physical principles, thereby eliminating the threat of nuclear annihilation.
According to the LaRouche Doctrine, "The political foundation for durable peace must be: a) the unconditional sovereignty of each
and all nation states, and b) cooperation among sovereign states to the effect of promoting unlimited opportunities to participate
in the benefits of technological progress, to the mutual benefit of each and all."
Both China, in President Xi's October Address to the Party Congress, and Russia, in Putin's March 1 address to the Federal Assembly,
have set a course to produce technological progress capable of being shared in by all. They both outline major infrastructure projects
and dedicating massive funding to exploring the frontiers of science, technology, and space exploration. Donald Trump, in both his
campaign and his presidency, has embraced similar views. The British and their American friends, however, are devotees of a completely
different and failing economic system, a system soundly rejected in Brexit, in the election of Donald Trump, and most recently in
the Italian elections.
Just look at the events of February and March from this standpoint. It is no accident that Christopher Steele turns up, smack
dab in the middle of the Skripal poisoning hoax.
Exposure of British as U.S. Election Meddlers Weakens Anti-Trump Coup
On Feb. 2, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence released a memo demonstrating that the Obama Justice Department
and FBI committed an outright fraud on the FISA court in obtaining surveillance warrants on Carter Page, a volunteer for Donald Trump's
2016 presidential campaign. The bogus warrant applications relied heavily on the dirty British dossier authored by MI6's "former"
Russian intelligence chief, Christopher Steele, who had been paid by Hillary Clinton's campaign and the Democratic National Committee
to paint Donald Trump as a Manchurian candidate -- as a pawn of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
According to the House Intelligence memo and other aspects of its investigation, Steele confided to Bruce Ohr, a high official
in the DOJ, that he, Steele, hated Trump with a passion and would do "anything" to prevent Trump's election. Steele was using the
fact of an FBI investigation of his allegations as part of a "full spectrum" British information warfare campaign conducted against
candidate Trump with the full complicity of Obama's intelligence chiefs. (See Peter Van Buren, "
Christopher Steele: The Real Foreign Influence in the 2016 U.S. Election? " The American Conservative, February 15, 2018.)
None of the true facts about the actual motive for, and sponsors of, the DOJ applications involving Carter Page were revealed
to the FISA Court in the filings made by former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, former FBI Director James Comey, or current
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
The House Intelligence Committee memo was quickly followed by a declassified letter on Feb. 5, in which Senators Chuck Grassley
and Lindsay Graham referred Christopher Steele to the Department of Justice (DOJ) for criminal prosecution, based on false statements
he made to the FBI about his contacts with the news media. No doubt the criminal referral sent chills down the spines not only of
Christopher Steele and his British colleagues, but also of those former Obama officials conspiring against Trump.
In the same week, House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes announced that he would be conducting investigations into the role of
the Obama State Department and intelligence chiefs in the circulation and use of Christopher Steele's dirty dossier. These investigations
have been widely reported to focus on John Brennan and James Clapper -- Brennan for widely promoting the dirty British work product,
and Clapper for leaks associated with BuzzFeed's publication and legitimization of the dirty British work product. Remind yourself
every time you hear media explosions against Trump by either Clapper (congressional perjurer and proponent of the theory that the
Russians are genetically predisposed to screw the United States) or Brennan (gopher for George Tenet's perpetual war and torture
regime and Grand Inquisitor for Barack Obama's serial
assassinations by baseball card). They are next in the barrel, so to speak.
The January 11, 2017 BuzzFeed publication of the Steele dossier was meant to permanently poison Trump's incoming administration,
and is the subject of libel suits both in Florida and London. In the London case, the British are ready to invoke the Official Secrets
Act to protect Christopher Steele. In the Florida case, Steele has been ordered to sit for deposition despite numerous delays and
stalling tactics.
The Congressional investigation of the State Department is focused on John Kerry, Kerry's aide Jonathan Winer, Victoria Nuland,
and Clinton operative Cody Shearer. Nuland utilized Christopher Steele as a primary intelligence source while running the U.S. regime
change operations in Ukraine in alliance with neo-Nazis. She greenlighted Steele's initial meetings with the FBI about Donald Trump.
Winer deployed himself to vouch for Steele to various news publications collaborating with British agent Steele and his U.S. employer,
Fusion GPS, in Steele's media warfare operations against Trump.
On March 12, the House Intelligence Committee announced that it had completed its Russia investigation. It stated that it
found "no collusion, coordination, or conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia." Its draft final report was to have been
provided to the Democrats on the Committee on March 13 for comment and then submitted to declassification review.
On March 15, four U.S. Senators from the Senate Judiciary Committee, Chuck Grassley, Lindsey Graham, John Cornyn, and Thom
Tillis, called for the appointment of a Special Counsel to investigate the DOJ and FBI with respect to the Russiagate investigation.
They particularly focused on the use of the Steele dossier, FISA abuse, the disclosure of classified information to the press,
and the criminal investigation and case of former Trump National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. Separately, House Oversight Chairman
Trey Gowdy and House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte have asked the Justice Department to appoint a Special Counsel on similar
grounds.
On March 16, James Comey's Deputy FBI Director, Andrew McCabe, was fired as the result of recommendations by the FBI's Office
of Professional Responsibility (OPR). The OPR recommendation resulted from Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz's
investigation of McCabe's actions with respect to the Clinton email investigation and the Clinton Foundation. McCabe claimed that
this was part of a plot against himself, Comey, and Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Michael Horowitz, however, is an actual Washington
straight shooter appointed to his post by Barack Obama. The OPR is the FBI's own disciplinary agency. Horowitz's report is expected
to be extremely critical of McCabe, citing a "lack of candor" (i.e., lying) with respect to the investigation. Whatever the corrupt
media might claim, the facts here have been thoroughly investigated by McCabe's former FBI subordinates. They think his lies and
other actions disgrace the FBI and don't entitle him to a pension.
Horowitz's report on the Clinton investigations -- which have already unearthed the texts between former Russiagate lead case
agent Peter Strzok and his mistress, FBI lawyer Lisa Page, proclaiming their hatred of Donald Trump and the need for an "insurance
policy" against his election -- is expected to be released very soon. According to the House Intelligence Committee, the Strzok/Page
texts also reveal that Strzok was a close friend of U.S. District Court Judge Rudolph Contreras. Contreras sits on the FISA court,
took Michael Flynn's guilty plea, and then promptly recused himself from Michael Flynn's case for reasons which remain undisclosed.
Despite its exoneration of the President and thorough discrediting of the British Steele operation, the House Intelligence Committee
dangerously accepts the myth that the Russians hacked the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee,
and the emails of Clinton Campaign Chairman John Podesta, and then provided the hacked information to WikiLeaks for publication.
Its final report states, however, that Putin's intervention was not in support of Donald Trump, as previously claimed by Obama's
intelligence chiefs. The Senators seeking a new Special Counsel also salute this dangerous fraud.
As we have previously reported, the myth that Putin hacked the Democrats and provided the hacked emails to WikiLeaks, has been
substantively refuted by the investigations of the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). In summary, the evidence
points to a leak rather than a hack in the case of the DNC. Further, the NSA would have the evidence of any such hack or hacks, according
to former NSA technical director Bill Binney, and would have provided it, even if in a classified setting. It is clear that the NSA
has no such evidence. It is also clear that the United States and the British have cyber warfare capabilities fully capable of creating
"false flag" cyber war incidents.
North Korea Talks Planned, While Russia and China Continue to Create the Conditions for a New Human Renaissance
In addition to the fizzling of the coup, the Western elites suffered through February and March for additional reasons. To the
shock of the entire, smug Davos crowd, Donald Trump, working with Russia, China, and South Korea, appears to have gotten Kim Jong-un
to the negotiating table concerning denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. Substantive talks have been scheduled for May. The
breakthrough was announced by President Trump and South Korea on March 8.
On March 1, President Putin gave his historic two-hour address to the Russian Federal Assembly and the Russian people. Like President
Xi's address to the Chinese Party Congress in October 2017, Putin focused on the goal of deeply reducing poverty in Russian society.
Xi vowed in October to eliminate poverty from Chinese society altogether by 2020. In addition, Putin emphasized that Russia would
undertake a huge city-building project across its vast rural frontiers and dramatically expand its modern infrastructure, including
Russia's digital infrastructure. He put major emphasis on directing funds to basic scientific and technological progress. He emphasized
that harnessing and stimulating the creative powers of individual human beings is the true driver of all economic progress.
China's Belt and Road Initiative also continued to advance. Great infrastructure projects are popping up throughout the world,
including most specifically in Africa, which had been consigned to be a permanent, primitive looting-ground for Western interests.
Among the recent breakthroughs is the great project to refill Lake Chad, a project known as "Transaqua," involving the Italian engineering
firm Bonifica, the Chinese engineering and construction firm PowerChina, and the Lake Chad Basin Commission, which represents the
African countries directly benefiting from the project. But the biggest strategic news of the last six weeks was contained in the
last part of President Putin's speech. He showed various weapons, developed by Russian scientists in the wake of the U.S. abrogation
of the ABM treaty and the Anglo-American campaign of color revolutions and NATO base-building in the former Soviet bloc. These weapons,
based on new physical principles, render U.S. ABM defenses obsolete, together with many U.S. utopian war-fighting doctrines developed
under the reigns of Obama and Bush. Putin emphasized that the economic and "defense" aspects of his speech were not separate. Rather,
the scientific breakthroughs were based on an in-depth economic mobilization of the physical economy. He stressed that Russia's survival
was dependent upon marshalling continuous creative breakthroughs in basic science and the high-technology spinoffs which result,
and their propagation through the entire population. He stressed that such breakthroughs are the product of providing an actually
human existence to the entire society.
Compare what Russia and China have set out to accomplish with respect to the physical economy of the Earth, with the second and
third paragraphs of Lyndon LaRouche's prescription for a durable peace in the LaRouche Doctrine:
The most crucial feature of present implementation of such a policy of durable peace is a profound change in the monetary, economic,
and political relations between dominant powers and those relatively subordinated nations often classed as "developing nations."
Unless the inequities lingering in the aftermath of modern colonialism are progressively remedied, there can be no durable peace
on this planet.
Insofar as the United States and the Soviet Union acknowledge the progress of the productive powers of labor throughout the planet
to be in the vital strategic interests of each and both, the two powers are bound to that degree and in that way by a common interest.
This is the kernel of the political and economic policies of practice indispensable to the fostering of a durable peace between those
two powers.
This is the perspective which has the British terrified and acting-out, insanely. Were Trump, Putin, and Xi to enter into negotiations
based on the LaRouche Doctrine, a breakthrough will have occurred for all of mankind, a breakthrough to a permanent and durable peace.
No neo-liberal, post-industrial, unipolar order can match this, no matter how much Allister Heath, Ms. May, or Boris Johnson rant
and rave about it.
Christopher Steele's British Playground
As is well known by now, Christopher Steele was a long-time MI6 agent before "retiring" to form his own extremely lucrative private
intelligence firm. The firm is said to have earned $200 million since its formation. Steele was an MI6 agent in Moscow around the
time Skripal was recruited. He also later ran the MI6 Russia desk and would have known everything there was to know about Skripal.
Pablo Miller, who recruited Skripal, worked for Steele's firm according to Miller's LinkedIn profile, and lived in the same town
as Skripal.
Since Steele has been discredited in the United States, a huge fawning publicity campaign has been undertaken on his behalf.
The campaign involves journalists who have collaborated directly with Steele in his smear job against Trump. Books by Luke Harding
and Michael Isikoff seek to rebuild Steele's reputation.
A fawning piece by Jane Mayer in the New Yorker, as implausible as it is long, has been foisted on the public for the same
reason.
There are some fascinating facts, however, in all this fawning prose:
Steele described his business to Luke Harding as primarily providing research and reports to competing and feuding Russian
oligarchs, many of whom use London as a base of operations. This is obviously a perfect cover for intelligence operations. It
is also a very violent theater of operations. The oligarchs intersect both Western intelligence operations and Russian organized
crime. They engage in deadly gang warfare.
Steele and his partners are mentored by Sir Richard Dearlove, former head of MI6 and a critical player in the infamous
"sexing up" and fabrication of the claim that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, creating the rationale for
the disastrous and genocidal Iraq War.
Steele had been tasked to claim that Russia was interfering in Western elections during the entire post-Ukraine coup time-frame,
when this black propaganda line began to be circulated widely. According to Jane Mayer's account, Steele called this "Project
Charlemagne," and completed his report on it in April 2016, just before he undertook his hit job against Donald Trump. In his
report, Steele claimed that Russia was interfering in the politics of France, Italy, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Turkey.
He claimed that Russia was conducting social media warfare aimed at "inflaming fear and prejudice and had provided opaque financial
support to favored politicians." He specifically targeted Silvio Berlusconi and Marine Le Pen. Steele also suggested that Russian
aid was given to "lesser known right wing nationalists" in the United Kingdom and elsewhere, implying that the Russians were behind
Brexit, with an overall goal of destroying the European Union.
Leaving aside Sergei Skripal's relationship with the central figure in the British-led coup against Donald Trump, it is clear
that the May government's claim that he and his daughter were poisoned by a "novichok" nerve-agent, even if it is true, by no means
makes a case that Putin's government was responsible. (It is of interest that as we were going to press on March 19, the foreign
ministers of the European Union, after a briefing by British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson that indicted Putin as responsible,
issued a statement which condemned the poisoning of Skripal and his daughter, but pointedly failed to blame Putin or Russia.)
Craig Murray, a former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan who maintains contacts in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, wrote March
16 that Britain's chemical-warfare scientists at Porton Down, "are not able to identify the nerve agent as being of Russian manufacture,
and have been resentful of the pressure being placed on them to do so. Porton Down would only sign up to the formulation of a type
developed by Russia, after a rather difficult meeting where this was agreed as a compromise formulation. The Russians were allegedly
researching, in the novichok program, a generation of nerve agents which could be produced from commercially available precursors
such as insecticides and fertilizers. This substance is a novichok in that sense. It is of that type. Just as I am typing on a laptop
of a type developed by the United States, though this one was made in China."
The background to Porton Down's reluctance, is of course former Prime Minister Blair's phony dossier on Iraqi WMD, which Lyndon
LaRouche fought, alongside the late British arms expert David Kelly, who exposed the "dodgy dossier," at the time.
"To anybody with a Whitehall background this has been obvious for several days," Murray continues. "The government has never said
the nerve agent was made in Russia, or that it can only be made in Russia. The exact formulation of a type developed by Russia was
used by Theresa May in Parliament, used by the U.K. at the UN Security Council, used by Boris Johnson on the BBC yesterday and, most
tellingly of all, 'of a type developed by Russia,' is the precise phrase used in the joint communique‚ issued by the U.K., U.S.A.,
France, and Germany yesterday."
The main account of the chemical weapons cited by Theresa May was written by a Soviet dissident chemist named Vil Mirzayanov who
now lives in the United States and published a book about his work at the Soviets' Uzbekistan chemical-warfare laboratory. In his
much-publicized book, Mirzayanov sets out the formulas for the claimed substances. According to the March 16 Wall Street Journal,
that publicity led to the novichoks' chemical structure being leaked, making them readily available for reproduction elsewhere. Ralf
Trapp, a France-based consultant and expert on the control of chemical and biological weapons, told the Journal, "The chemical formula
has been publicized and we know from publications from then-Czechoslovakia that they had worked on similar agents for defense in
the 1980s. I'm sure other countries with developed programs would have as well."
But it does not seem that those "other countries" include Russia. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW),
the independent agency charged by treaty with investigating claims like those just made by the British government, certified in September
2017 that the Russian government had destroyed its entire chemical weapons program, inclusive of its nerve agent production capabilities.
In addition to Trapp's account, Seamus Martin, writing in the March 14 Irish Times, posits, based on personal knowledge, that novichoks
were widely expropriated by East Bloc oligarchs and criminal elements in the Russian economic chaos of the 1990s.
Thus, after being disclosed by a dissident Russian chemist living in the United States, novichoks have been widely copied
by other countries, according to the press accounts.
Further trouble for May's attempted hoax is found in the condition of the Skripals and of a police officer who went to their home.
All were made critically ill, although they are still alive. Yet the emergency personnel who treated the Skripals, allegedly the
victims of a deadly and absolutely lethal nerve poison, suffered no ill effects whatsoever.
The Skripal poisoning is being compared in the British press to the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko in 2006. The former KGB
and FSB officer was granted asylum in London and worked for the infamous anti-Putin British-intelligence-directed oligarch Boris
Berezovsky in information warfare and other attacks on the Russian state, inclusive of McCarthyite accusations against any European
politician seeking sane relations with Putin.
Litvinenko's case officer was none other than Christopher Steele, and Christopher Steele conducted MI6's investigation of the
case, which, of course, found Putin himself culpable. Berezovsky's use of the disgraced British PR firm Bell, Pottinger is also credited
with a significant role in public acceptance of this result. Berezovsky was a prime suspect in organizing the murder of American
journalist Paul Klebnikov. Many believe that Berezovsky arranged Litvinenko's demise. Berezovsky himself died in Britain in mysterious
circumstances following the loss of a major court case to another Russian oligarch, Roman Abramovich.
In the parliamentary debate in which Theresa May issued her provocation, opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn cautioned against a rush
to judgment and pointed to the bloody playing field of Russian oligarchs and Russian organized crime as alternative areas for investigation.
Had Corbyn added to that mix, "Western intelligence agencies," he would have been entirely on the right track. Corbyn also pointed
out that these oligarchs had contributed millions to May's Conservative Party. The reaction by the British media, May's Conservatives,
and Tony Blair's faction of the Labour Party was to paint Corbyn as a Putin dupe, including photoshopped images of the Labour leader
in a Russian winter hat in front of the Kremlin.
The insane McCarthyite reactions to Corbyn's simple statements of fact show that he hit the nail on the head. If you want
to find Skripal's poisoners, then, like Edgar Allen Poe, you must take in the whole picture first. The field of play involves the
British intelligence services and the anti-Putin Russian oligarchs, each of which services the other, acting on behalf of British
strategic objectives. It is no accident that the coup against Donald Trump and the latest British intelligence fraud, putting the
entire world in peril, absolutely intersect one another.
There is reason to suspect that some former and very likely current employees of the FBI have been colluding with elements in other American and British intelligence agencies, in particular the CIA and MI6, in support of an extremely ambitious foreign policy agenda for a very long time.
It also seems clear that influential journalists, such as Glenn Simpson was before founding Fusion GPS, along with his wife Mary Jacoby, have been strongly involved in this
Notable quotes:
"... There is reason to suspect that some former and very likely current employees of the FBI have been colluding with elements in other American and British intelligence agencies, in particular the CIA and MI6, in support of an extremely ambitious foreign policy agenda for a very long time. It also seems clear that influential journalists, such as Glenn Simpson was before founding Fusion GPS, along with his wife Mary Jacoby, have been strongly involved in this. ..."
"... Important support for these strategies was provided by the 'StratCom' network centred around the late Boris Berezovsky, which clearly collaborated closely with MI6. As was apparent from the witness list at Sir Robert Owen's Inquiry into the death of Alexander Litvinenko, which produced a report based essentially on a recycling of claims made by the network's members, key players were on your side of the Atlantic – notably Alex Goldfarb, Yuri Shvets, and Yuri Felshtinsky. ..."
"... it seems to me the usa and uk have been tied at the hip for a very long time... when it comes to foreign affairs policy and wars - the one will always vouch for the other without hesitation... it tells me the relationship is really deep.. ..."
"... I and my friends consider it a given that most, if not all, anglo-zionist moves in the ME are to "provide a definitive solution to the – inherently intractable – security problems of a Jewish settler state in the area. " It is an open secret that the izzies are the reason why a few Russians, some Turks, lots of Kurds and countless Arabs are dying in the Syrian battlefields. Another open secret: the takfiris and kurds have been, and are, supported by the West. That the "masters of the universe™" have been conceiving and doubling down on such disastrous policies give lie to their much-vaunted "intelligence". ..."
"... It is the very FACT of Trump even getting elected at ALL which outrages and terrifies them so much. They are used to seeing themselves as successful manipulators and engineers of every major event. They were engineering the whole electoral battlespace to get Clinton elected. The mere fact of Trump's victory in the teeth of their Electoral Engineering for Clinton is an act of defiance which they will not tolerate. ..."
"... And if they fail to bring Trump down at all, they will stand revealed as being defeatable. And this is their big fear. That if people see they have defeated the Borg once on keeping Trump in the teeth of Borg's efforts, that people might try to defeat and smash down the Borg on another issue. And then another. And then another after that. ..."
"... Because it is not possible to do on fundamental level yet, especially with US foreign policy establishment and so called consensus being built almost entirely, in ideological and, most importantly, cadres senses, on the ultimate exceptionalist agenda in which Russia is the ultimate obstacle and enemy. Establishment in saturated with neocons and likes. They are the swamp. ..."
"... They act and believe that they are Olympians. You have to wait for them to age and die before any substantive change in Fortress West's posture; say 2040 ..."
"... In 1977 Zbigniew Brzezinski, as President Carter's National Security Adviser, forms the Nationalities Working Group (NWG) dedicated to the idea of weakening the Soviet Union by inflaming its ethnic tensions. ..."
"... State Department official Henry Precht will later recall that Brzezinski had the idea "that Islamic forces could be used against the Soviet Union. The theory was, there was an arc of crisis, and so an arc of Islam could be mobilized to contain the Soviets." [Scott, 2007, pp. 67] In November 1978, President Carter appointed George Ball head of a special White House Iran task force under Brzezinski. Ball recommends the US should drop support for the Shah of Iran and support the radical Islamist opposition of Ayatollah Khomeini. This idea is based on ideas from British Islamic expert Dr. Bernard Lewis, who advocates the balkanization of the entire Muslim Near East along tribal and religious lines. The chaos would spread in what he also calls an "arc of crisis" and ultimately destabilize the Muslim regions of the Soviet Union ..."
"... About relation Steele-MI6, well, you never leave your IS. Or to put it in another way, you are never out of the scope of your past IS ..."
"... No, three years at tops and could be much sooner if dimes starting dropping by exposed people that don't want to take the fall for their superiors whom they always detested. One possible thing to get the process started sooner is if the recent Russian Intelligence delegation to DC that Smoothie mentions on another thread gave the current administration, as a diplomatic courtesy of course, the audio recordings of Madame Sectary Nuland's infamous mental meltdown at Kaliningrad. No telling what beans were spilled in her moment of panic, but I am willing to bet key names were dropped. Either way the time is coming. ..."
"... Especially, once American policy-makers who saw and experienced war (Ike, George Marshall's generation) departed things started to roll down hill with Reagan bringing on board a whole collection of neocons. ..."
"... Unawareness is always dangerous, a complete blackout in relations between two nuclear powers is more than dangerous--it is completely reckless. Again, the way CW 1.0 is perceived in the current US "elites" it becomes extremely tempting to repeat it. Electing Hillary was another step in unleashing CW 2.0 by people who have no understanding of what they were doing. ..."
"... Obama started crushing US-Russian relations before any campaigns were launched and before Trump was even seriously considered a GOP nominee, let alone a real contender. New confrontation hinged on HRC being elected. In fact, she was one of the major driving forces behind a serious of geopolitical anti-Russian moves. Visceral Russo-phobia became a feature in HRC campaign long before any Steele's Dossier. This was a program. ..."
"... IMO, the bigger problem for American not shying away from wars, or being silent about them , is when your home, your mom and dad' home, the town you grew up in, are immune and away from the war. ..."
"... The security and safety of the two oceans, encourages or at least, in an all volunteer military makes it a secondary problem for regular people, to worry about. ..."
"... A particular interesting feature of those on the British side – in which we now know Christopher Steele must have played a leading role – were the bizarre gyrations those responsible were going through trying to explain away the extraordinary fact that when he had broken the story of his poisoning, Litvinenko had pointed the finger of suspicion at his Italian associate Mario Scaramella. ..."
"... Of course later reports in the Steele Dossier go hand in hand with a larger public relations campaign. Creating reality? Irony alert: as informer/source I would by then know what the other side wants to hear. ..."
Steele, Shvets, Levinson, Litvinenko and the 'Billion Dollar Don.'
In the light of the suggestion in the Nunes memo that Steele was 'a longtime FBI source' it seems worth sketching out some background,
which may also make it easier to see some possible reasons why he 'was desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate
about him not being president.'
There is reason to suspect that some former and very likely current employees of the FBI have been colluding with elements
in other American and British intelligence agencies, in particular the CIA and MI6, in support of an extremely ambitious foreign
policy agenda for a very long time. It also seems clear that influential journalists, such as Glenn Simpson was before founding Fusion
GPS, along with his wife Mary Jacoby, have been strongly involved in this.
This agenda has involved hopes for 'régime change' in Russia, whether as the result of an oligarchic coup, a popular revolt, or
some combination of both. Also central have been hopes for a further 'rollback' of Russia influence in the post-Soviet space, both
in areas now independent, such as Ukraine, and also ones still part of the Russian Federation, notably Chechnya.
And, crucially, it involved exploiting the retreat of Russian power from the Middle East for 'régime change' projects which it
was hoped would provide a definitive solution to the – inherently intractable – security problems of a Jewish settler state in the
area.
Important support for these strategies was provided by the 'StratCom' network centred around the late Boris Berezovsky, which
clearly collaborated closely with MI6. As was apparent from the witness list at Sir Robert Owen's Inquiry into the death of Alexander
Litvinenko, which produced a report based essentially on a recycling of claims made by the network's members, key players were on
your side of the Atlantic – notably Alex Goldfarb, Yuri Shvets, and Yuri Felshtinsky.
The question of what links these had, or did not have, with elements in U.S. intelligence agencies is thus a critical one.
In making some sense of it, the fact that one key figure we know to have been involved in this network was missing at the Inquiry
– the former FBI agent Robert Levinson, who disappeared on the Iranian island of Kish in March 2007 – is important.
Unfortunately, I only recently came across a book on Levinson published in 2016 by the 'New York Times' journalist Barry Meier,
which is now hopefully winging its way across the Atlantic. From the accounts of the book I have seen, such as one by Jeff Stein
in 'Newsweek', it seems likely that its author did not look at any of the evidence presented at Owen's Inquiry.
Had he done so, Meier might have discovered that his subject had been, as it were, 'top supporting actor' in the first fumbling
attempt by Christopher Steele et al to produce a plausible-sounding scenario as to the background to Litvinenko's death. A Radio
4 programme on 16 December 2006, presented by the veteran BBC presenter Tom Mangold, had been wholly devoted to an account by Shvets,
backed up by Levinson. Both of these were, like Litvinenko, supposed to be impartial 'due diligence' operatives.
The notion that any of them might have connections with Western intelligence agencies was not considered. The – publicly available
– evidence of the involvement of Shvets, whose surname means 'cobbler' or 'shoemaker' in Ukrainian, in the processing of the tapes
of conversations involving the former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma supposedly recorded by Major Melnychenko, which had played
a crucial role in the 2004-5 'Orange Revolution' was not mentioned.
Still less was it mentioned that claims that the – very dangerous – late Soviet Kolchuga system, which made it possible the kind
of identification of incoming aircraft which radar had traditionally done, without sending out signals which made the destruction
of the facilities doing it possible, had been sold by Kuchma to Iraq had proven spurious.
What Shvets had done had been to take – genuine – audio in which Kuchma had discussed a possible sale, and edit it to suggest
a sale had been completed.
(See http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160613090333/https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/evidence .)
As a former television current affairs producer, I can talk to you of the marvels which London audio editors can produce, very
happily. Unfortunately, the days when not all BBC and 'Guardian' journalists were corrupt stenographers for corrupt and incompetent
spooks, as Mangold and his like have been for Steele and Levinson, are long gone.
All this has become particularly relevant now, given that Simpson has placed the notorious Jewish Ukrainian mobster Semyon Mogilevich
and the 'Solntsevskaya Bratva' mafia group centre stage in his accounts not simply of Trump and Manafort, but also of William Browder.
For most of the 'Nineties, Levinson had been a, if not the, lead FBI investigator on Mogilevich.
(On this, see the 1999 BBC 'Panorama' programme 'The Billion Dollar Don', also presented by Tom Mangold, which has extensive interviews
both with Mogilevich and Levinson at
In the months leading up to Levinson's disappearance, a key priority for the advocates of the strategy I have described was to
prevent it being totally derailed by the patently catastrophic outcome of the Iraqi adventure.
Compounding the problem was the fact that this had created the 'Shia Crescent', which in turn exacerbated the potential 'existential
threat' to Israel posed by the steadily increasing range, accuracy and numbers of missiles available to Hizbullah in hardened positions
north of the Litani.
These, obviously, provided both a 'deterrent' for that organisation and Iran, and also a radical threat to the whole notion that
somehow Israel could ever be a 'safe haven' for Jews, against the supposedly ineradicable disposition of the 'goyim' sooner or later
to, as it were, revert to type. The dreadful thought that Israel might not be necessary had to be resisted at all costs.
What followed from the disaster unleashed by the – Anglo-American – 'own goal' in toppling Saddam was, ironically, a need on the
part of key players to 'double down.' Above all, it was necessary for many of those involved to counter suggestions from the Russian
side that going around smashing up 'régimes' that one might not like sometimes blew up in one's face.
Even more threatening were suggestions from the Russian side that it was foolish to think one could use jihadists without risking
'blowback', and that there might be an overwhelming common interest in combating Islamic extremism.
Another priority was to counter the pushback in the American 'intelligence community' and military, which was to produce the drastic
downgrading of the threat posed by the Iranian nuclear programme in the November 2007 NIE and then the resignation of Admiral William
Fallon as head of 'Centcom' the following March.
So in 2005 Shvets came to London. He and his audio editors had another 'bite at the cherry' of the Melnychenko tapes, so that
material that did in fact establish that both the SBU and FSB had collaborated with Mogilevich could be employed to make it seem
that Putin had a close personal relationship with the mobster.
All kinds of supposedly respectable American and British academics, like Professors Karen Dawisha and Robert Service, have fallen
for this, hook, line and sinker. It gives a new meaning to the term 'useful idiot.'
(See http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160613090333/https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/evidence .)
In a letter sent in December that year by Litvinenko to the 'Mitrokhin Commission', for which his Italian associate Mario Scaramella
was a consultant, this was used in an attempt to demonstrate that Mogilevich, while acting as an agent for the FSB and under Putin's
personal 'krysha', had attempted to supply a 'mini atomic bomb' – aka 'suitcase nuke' – to Al Qaeda. Shortly after the letter was
sent Scaramella departed on a trip to Washington, where he appears to have got access to Aldrich Ames.
(See http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160613090333/https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/evidence .)
At precisely this time, as Meier explains, Levinson was in the process of being recruited by a lady called Anne Jablonski who
then worked as a CIA analyst. It appears that she was furious at the failure of the operational side at the Agency to produce evidence
which would have established that Iran did indeed have an ongoing nuclear programme, and she may well have hoped would implicate
Russia in supplying materials.
There are grounds to suspect that one of the things that Berezovsky and Shvets were doing was fabricating such 'evidence.' Whether
Levinson was involved in such attempts, or genuinely looking for evidence he was convinced must be there, I cannot say. It appears
that he fell for a rather elementary entrapment operation – which could well have been organised with the collaboration of Russian
intelligence. (People do get fed up with being framed, particular if 'régime change' is the goal.)
It also seems likely that, quite possibly in a different but related entrapment operation, related to propaganda wars in which
claims and counter claims about a polonium-beryllium 'initiator' as the crucial missing part which might make a 'suitcase nuke' functional,
Litvinenko accidentally ingested fatal quantities of polonium. A good deal of evidence suggests that this may have been at Berezovsky's
offices on the night before he was supposedly assassinated.
It was, obviously, important for Steele et al to ensure that nobody looked at the 'StratCom' wars about 'suitcase nukes.' Here,
a figure who has played a key role in such wars in relation to Syria plays an interesting minor one in the story.
Some time following the destruction of the case for an immediate war by the November 2007 NIE, a chemical weapons specialist called
Dan Kaszeta, who had worked in the White House for twelve years, moved to London.
In 2011, in addition to founding a consultancy called 'Strongpoint Security', he began a writing career with articles in 'CBRNe
World.' Later, he would become the conduit through which the notorious 'hexamine hypothesis', supposedly clinching proof that the
Syrian government was responsible for the sarin incidents at Khan Sheikhoun, Ghouta, Saraqeb, and Khan Al-Asal, was disseminated.
Having been forced by the threat of a case being opened against them under human rights law into resuming the inquest into Litvinenko's
death, in August 2012 the British authorities appointed Sir Robert Owen to conduct it. (There are many honest judges in Britain,
but obviously, if one sets out to find someone who will 'cover up' for the incompetence and corruption of people like Steele, as
Lord Hutton did before him, you can find them.)
That same month, a piece appeared in 'CBRNe World' with the the strapline: 'Dan Kaszeta looks into the ultimate press story: Suitcase
nukes', and the main title 'Carry on or checked bags?' Among the grounds he gives for playing down the scare:
'Some components rely on materials with shelf life. Tritium, for example, is used in many nuclear weapon designs and has a twelve
year half-life. Polonium, used in neutron initiators in some earlier types of weapon designs, has a very short halflife. US documents
state that every nuclear weapon has "limited life components" that require periodic replacement (do an internet search for nuclear
limited life components and you can read for weeks).'
What Kaszeta has actually described are the reasons why polonium is a perfect 'StratCom' instrument. In terms of scientific plausibility,
in fact there were no 'suitcase nukes', and in any case 'initiators' using polonium had been abandoned very early on, in favour of
ones which lasted longer.
For 'StratCom' scenarios, as experience with the 'hexamine hypothesis' has proved, scientific plausibility can be irrelevant.
What polonium provides is a means of suggesting that Al Qaeda have in fact got hold of a nuclear device which they could easily
smuggle into, say, Rome or New York, or indeed Moscow, but there is a crucial missing component which the FSB is trying to provide
to them. By the same token, of course, that missing component could be depicted as one that Berezovsky and Litvinenko are conspiring
to suppl to the Chechen insurgents.
In addition, the sole known source of global supply is the Avangard plant at Sarov in Russia, so the substance is naturally suited
for 'StratCom' directed against that country, which its intelligence services would – rather naturally – try to make 'boomerang.'
According to Glenn Simpson, Christopher Steele is a 'boy scout.' This seems to me quite wrong – but, even if it were true, would
you want to unleash a 'boy scout' into these kinds of intrigue?
As it is not clear why Kaszeta introduced his – accurate but irrelevant – point about polonium into an article which was concerned
with scientific plausibility, one is left with an interesting question as to whether he cut his teeth on 'StratCom' attempting to
ensure that nobody seriously interested in CBRN science followed an obvious lead.
In relation to the question of whether current FBI personnel had been involved in the kind of 'StratCom' exercises, I have been
describing, a critical issue is the involvement of Shvets and Levinson in the Alexander Khonanykhine affair back in the 'Nineties,
and the latter's use of claims about the Solntsevskaya to prevent the key figure's extradition. But that is a matter for another
day.
A corollary of all this is that we cannot – yet at least – be absolutely confident that the account in the Nunes memo, according
to which Steele was suspended and then dismissed as an FBI source for what the organisation is reported to define as 'the most serious
of violations' – the unauthorised disclosure of a relationship with the organisation – is necessarily wholly accurate.
Who did and did not authorise which disclosures to the media, up to and including the extraordinary decision to have the full
dossier, including claims about Aleksej Gubarev and the Alfa oligarchs, in flagrant disregard of the obvious risks of defamation
suits, and who may be trying to pass the buck to others, remains I think less than totally clear.
thanks david... fascinating overview and conjecture..
it seems to me the usa and uk have been tied at the hip for a very long time... when it comes to foreign affairs policy
and wars - the one will always vouch for the other without hesitation... it tells me the relationship is really deep..
Thank you very. As ever you have illuminated a few more things for me. Kaszeta's involvement is interesting. He is someone
I am in the middle of researching in relation to Higgins and Bellingcat.
I think the English are using you, they are unsentimental empirical people that only do these that benefit the Number One.
The chief beneficiary of the Coup in Iran was England and not US.
That Newsweek piece about Levinson is very superficial to me.
Re: Levinson
# Who suggested to who 'first' the Iran caper...Anne Jablonski to Levinson or Levinson to Jablonski? It was reported earlier
by Meier that in December 2005, when Levinson was pitching Jablonski on projects he might take on when his CIA contract was approved
he sent her a lengthy memo about Dawud's potential as an informant.
# Ira Silverman, the Iran hating NBC guy, pitched a Iraq caper to Levinson with Dawud Salahuddin, as his Iran contact and Levinson
went to Jablonski with it.
# And what was with Boris Birshstein, a Russian organized crime figure who had fled to Israel and Oleg Deripaska, the "aluminum
czar" of Russia whose organized crime contacts have kept him from entering the United States jumping in to help find Levinson?
The FBI allowed Deripaska in for two visits in 2009 in exchange for his alleged help in locating Levinson but obviously nothing
came of it.
I think there were more little agents/agendas in this than Levinson and Jablonski and US CIA.
As usual a wonderful analysis. I admire your insight, integrity and courage. I wish you could write more on why the Borg
is so much against Trump, even though they have Kushner, Adelson and Co. running interference for them.
I and my friends consider it a given that most, if not all, anglo-zionist moves in the ME are to "provide a definitive
solution to the – inherently intractable – security problems of a Jewish settler state in the area. " It is an open secret that
the izzies are the reason why a few Russians, some Turks, lots of Kurds and countless Arabs are dying in the Syrian battlefields.
Another open secret: the takfiris and kurds have been, and are, supported by the West. That the "masters of the universe™" have
been conceiving and doubling down on such disastrous policies give lie to their much-vaunted "intelligence".
"There is reason to suspect that some former and very likely current employees of the FBI have been colluding with elements
in other American and British intelligence agencies, in particular the CIA and MI6, in support of an extremely ambitious foreign
policy agenda for a very long time. "
David as usual fascinating work connecting the dots. One question that comes to my mind is about the above point you are making.
Is it your understanding or believe that these IC individuals on both side of Atlantic, are pursuing/forcing their (on behalf
of the Borg) foreign policy agenda outside of their respected seating governments? If not, why is it that incoming administration
cannot stop them? So far I can't see any strategic changes on US foreign policy toward ME or Russia, at tactical level yes but
not fundamentally.
I am not David Habakkuk, obviously. But I will venture a little opinion anyway. It is not enough that the Borgists get their
policy preferences. If it were, then Kushner, Adelson and Co. running interference would be enough for them.
It is the very FACT of Trump even getting elected at ALL which outrages and terrifies them so much. They are used to seeing
themselves as successful manipulators and engineers of every major event. They were engineering the whole electoral battlespace
to get Clinton elected. The mere fact of Trump's victory in the teeth of their Electoral Engineering for Clinton is an act of
defiance which they will not tolerate.
And if they fail to bring Trump down at all, they will stand revealed as being defeatable. And this is their big fear.
That if people see they have defeated the Borg once on keeping Trump in the teeth of Borg's efforts, that people might try to
defeat and smash down the Borg on another issue. And then another. And then another after that.
So that is why the Borg cares so much. They view the Trump election as an insurgency, and they view themselves as waging a
counterinsurgency, which they dare not lose.
Thanks for your analysis. I always enjoy and learn from your posts. I wish you would post more often.
In my non-expert opinion, the Borg and the media were all in for Hillary. They were convinced that she was gonna win. To curry
favor with the Empress who would be certainly crowned after the election they were eager and convinced that their lawlessness
would become a badge for promotion and plum positions in her administration. In their conceit, they believed they could kill two
birds with one stroke. They could vilify Putin and create the mass hysteria to checkmate him, while at the same time disparage
and frame Trump as The Manchurian Candidate to seal their certain electoral victory.
Unfortunately for them voters in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin didn't buy their sales pitch despite the overwhelming
media barrage from all corners. Even news publications who have only endorsed Republican candidates for President for over a century
endorsed her.
Trump's election win caused panic among the political establishment, the media and the Deep State. They were already all-in.
Their only choice was to double down and get Trump impeached. Now their conspiracy is beginning to unravel. They are doing everything
possible to forestall their Armageddon. Of course they have many allies. This battle is gonna be interesting to watch. Trump is
clearly getting many Congressional Republicans on side as his base of Deplorables remains solidly behind him. That is what's befuddling
the Borg pundits.
So far I can't see any strategic changes on US foreign policy toward ME or Russia, at tactical level yes but not fundamentally.
Because it is not possible to do on fundamental level yet, especially with US foreign policy establishment and so called
consensus being built almost entirely, in ideological and, most importantly, cadres senses, on the ultimate exceptionalist agenda
in which Russia is the ultimate obstacle and enemy. Establishment in saturated with neocons and likes. They are the swamp.
This swamp (Borg, deep state, etc.) still thinks that it can use Cold War 1.0 Playbook and address very real and dangerous
American economic issues. They are wrong, since most of them didn't read the playbook correctly to start with.
They act and believe that they are Olympians. You have to wait for them to age and die before any substantive change in Fortress
West's posture; say 2040.
You are right CWII is very much desired and on agenda, but i am not sure of setup, the setup/board has been changed tremendously
and IMO benefits the Asian side of Bosphorus, for one thing technology is no longer exclusive, and financial burden is heavier
on atlantic side.
''Establishment in saturated with neocons and likes. They are the swamp. ''
The locust keep trying and trying, destruction is their life's work.
'1977-1981: Nationalities Working Group Advocates Using Militant Islam Against Soviet Union'
In 1977 Zbigniew Brzezinski, as President Carter's National Security Adviser, forms the Nationalities Working Group (NWG)
dedicated to the idea of weakening the Soviet Union by inflaming its ethnic tensions. The Islamic populations are regarded
as prime targets. Richard Pipes, the father of Daniel Pipes, takes over the leadership of the NWG in 1981. Pipes predicts that
with the right encouragement Soviet Muslims will "explode into genocidal fury" against Moscow. According to Richard Cottam, a
former CIA official who advised the Carter administration at the time, after the fall of the Shah of Iran in 1978, Brzezinski
favored a "de facto alliance with the forces of Islamic resurgence, and with the Republic of Iran." [Dreyfuss, 2005, pp. 241,
251 - 256]
'November 1978-February 1979: Some US Officials Want to Support Radical Muslims to Contain Soviet Union'
State Department official Henry Precht will later recall that Brzezinski had the idea "that Islamic forces could be used
against the Soviet Union. The theory was, there was an arc of crisis, and so an arc of Islam could be mobilized to contain the
Soviets." [Scott, 2007, pp. 67] In November 1978, President Carter appointed George Ball head of a special White House Iran task
force under Brzezinski. Ball recommends the US should drop support for the Shah of Iran and support the radical Islamist opposition
of Ayatollah Khomeini. This idea is based on ideas from British Islamic expert Dr. Bernard Lewis, who advocates the balkanization
of the entire Muslim Near East along tribal and religious lines. The chaos would spread in what he also calls an "arc of crisis"
and ultimately destabilize the Muslim regions of the Soviet Union
"There is reason to suspect that some former and very likely current employees of the FBI have been colluding with elements
in other American and British intelligence agencies, in particular the CIA and MI6, in support of an extremely ambitious foreign
policy agenda for a very long time."
Yes, that is what appears to be just what is coming to light. I wonder just what position Trey Gowdy is going to have since
he won't be running for re-election. The rage from the left is palpable. I'm sure the next outraged guy on the left will know
how to shoot straighter than the ones who shot up Congressman Scalise or the concert goers at Mandalay Bay.
"They are wrong, since most of them didn't read the playbook correctly to start with."
-- If they have read the important books at all... The ongoing scandal has been revealing a stunning incompetence of the "deciders."
Too often they look comical, ridiculous, undignified. This is dangerous, considering their power.
England preferred NAZI Germany to USSR, this is well known. As to what would have happened, the outcome of the war, in my opinion,
did not depend on US participation in the European Theatre. All of Europe would have become USSR satellite or joined USSR.
"unsentimental empirical people"? Absolutely disagree with you. Now the Iranians, they strike me as a singularity unsentimental
people. Just general impressions, mind you.
Yes, US was the first country to proudly deliver Manpads to be used by "rebels" (Mojahadin later Taleban) against USSR in Afghanistan
back in 80s. And, as per the architect of support for the rebels (Zbigniew Brzezinski) very proud of it with no regret. With that
in mind, I don't see how western politicians, the western governments and their related proxy war planers, will be regretting,
even sadden, once god forbid we see passenger planes with loved ones are shot down taking off or landing at various western airports
and other places around the word. Just like how superficialy with crocodile tears in their eyes they acted in aftermath of the
terrorist events in various western cities in this past 16 years. Gods knows what will happens to us if the opposite side start
to supply his own proxies with lethal anti air weapons. "Proudly", I don't think anybody in west cares or will regret of such
an escalation.
I think it likely that what Meier produces is only a 'limited hangout', and am hoping that when the book arrives it will contain
more pointers.
It is important to be clear that one is often dealing with people playing very complicated double games.
An interesting document is the 'Petition for Writ of Habeus Corpus' made on behalf of Khodorkovsky's close associate Alexander
Konanykhin back in 1997,when the Immigration and Naturalization Service were – apparently at least – cooperating with Russian
attempts to get hold of him. An extract:
'During the immigration hearing FBI SA Robert Levinson, an INS witness, confirmed that in 1992 Petitioner was kidnapped and
afterwards pursued by assassins of the Solntsevskaya organized criminal group. This organized criminal group is reportedly the
largest and the most influential organized criminal group in Russia, and operates internationally.'
Note the similarities between the 'StratCom' that Khonanykin and his associates were producing in the 'Nineties, and that which
Simpson and his associates have been producing two decades later.
Another useful example is provided by a 2004 item in the 'New American Magazine', reproduced on Konanykhin's website:
'One of those who testified on behalf of Konanykhine was KGB defector Yuri Shvets, who declared: "I have a firsthand knowledge
on similar operations conducted by the KGB." Konanykhine had brought trouble on himself, Shvets continued, when he "started bringing
charges against people who were involved with him in setting up and running commercial enterprises. They were KGB people secretly
smuggling from Russia hundreds of millions of dollars . This is [a] serious case, and I know that KGB ... desperately wants to
win this case, and everybody who won't step to their side would face problems."'
So – 'first hand knowledge', from a Ukrainian nationalist – look at what the Chalupas have been doing, it seems not much has
changed.
For a rather different perspective on what Konanykhin had actually been up to, from someone in whose honesty – if not always
judgement – I have complete confidence, see the testimony of Karon von Gerhke-Thompson to the House Committee on Banking and Financial
Services hearings on Russian Money Laundering. In this, she described how she had been approached by him in 1993:
'"Konanykhine alleged that Menatep Bank controlled $1.7bn [Ł1bn] in assets and investment portfolios of Russia's most prominent
political and social elite," she recalled. She said he wanted to move the bank's assets off shore and asked her to help buy foreign
passports for its "very, very special clients".
'In her testimony to the committee Ms Von Gerhke-Thompson said she informed the CIA of the deal, and the agency told her that
it believed Mr Konanykhine and Mr Khodorkovsky "were engaged in an elaborate money laundering scheme to launder billions of dollars
stolen by members of the KGB and high-level government officials".
Coming back to Steele's 'StratCom', in July 2008, an item appeared on the 'Newnight' programme of the BBC – which some of us
think should by then have been rechristened the 'Berezovsky Broadcasting Corporation' – in which the introduction by the presenter,
Jeremy Paxman, read as follows:
'Good evening. The New Russian President, Dmitri Medvedev, was all smiles and warm words when he met Gordon Brown today. He
said he was keen to resolve all outstanding difficulties between the two countries. Yada yada yada. Gordon Brown smiled, but he
must know what Newsnight can now reveal: that MI5 believes the Russian state was involved in the murder of Alexander Litvinenko
by radioactive poisoning. They also believe that without their intervention another London-based Russian, Boris Berezovsky, would
have been murdered. Our diplomatic editor, Mark Urban, has this exclusive report.'
When Urban repeated the claims on his blog, there was a positive eruption from someone using the name 'timelythoughts', about
the activities of someone she referred to as 'Berezovsky's disinformation specialist' – when I came across this later, it was
immediately clear to me that she was Karon von Gerhke, and he was Shvets.
She then described a visit by Scaramella to Washington, details of which had already been unearthed by my Italian collaborator,
David Loepp. Her claim to have e-mails from Shvets, from the time immediately prior to Litvinenko's death, directly contradicting
the testimony he had given, fitted with other evidence I had already unearthed.
Later, we exchanged e-mails over a quite protracted period, and a large amount of material that came into my possession as
a result was submitted by me to the Inquest team, with some of it being used in posts on the 'European Tribune' site.
What I never used publicly, because I could only partially corroborate it from the material she provided, was an extraordinary
claim about Shvets:
'He was responsible for bringing in a Kremlin initiative that was walked Vice President Cheney's office on a US government
quid pro quo with the Kremlin FSB SVR involving the arrest of Mikhail Khodorkovsky – a cease and desist on allegations of a politically
motivated arrest of Khodorkovsky, violations of rules of law and calls from Russia's expulsion from the G 8 in exchange for favorable
posturing of U.S. oil companies on Gazprom's Shtokman project and intelligence on weapon sales during the Yeltsin era to Iraq,
Iran and Syria, all documented in reports I submitted to the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and MI6.
'Berezovsky's DS could not be on both sides on that isle. His Kremlin FSB SVR sources had been vetted by the CIA and by the
National Security Council. They proved to be as represented. As we would later learn, however, he was on Berezovsky's payroll
at same time. The FSB SVR general he was coordinating the Kremlin initiative through was S. R. Subbotin, the same FSB SVR general
who was investigating Berezovsky's money laundering operations in Switzerland during the same timeframe. His FSB SVR sources surrounding
Putin were higher than any Lugovoy could have ever hoped to affiliate with.
'R. James Woolsey (former CIA DCI), Marshall Miller (former law partner of the late CIA DCI William Colby), who I coordinated
the Kremlin initiative through that Berezovsky's DS had brought in were shocked to learn that he was affiliated with Berezovsky
and Litvinenko. He was in Berezovsky's inner circle and engaged in vetting Russian business with Litvinenko. He operated Berezovsky's
Ukraine website, editing and dubbing the now infamous Kuchma tapes throughout the lead up to the elections in the Ukraine. Berezovsky
contributed $41 million to Viktor Yushchenko's campaign, which he used in an attempt to force Yushchenko to reunite with Julia
Tymoschenko. It failed but would succeed later after Berezovsky orchestrated a public relations initiative through Alan Goldfarb
in the U.S. on behalf of Tymoschenko.'
Having got to know Karon von Gerhke quite well, and also been able to corroborate a great deal of what she told me about many
things, and discussed these matters with her, it is absolutely clear to me that she was neither fabricating nor fantasising. What
later became apparent, both to her and to me, was that in the 'double game' that Shvets was playing, he had succeeded in fooling
her as to the side for which he was working.
It seems likely however that the reason Shvets could do what he did was that quite precisely that many high-up people in the
Kremlin and elsewhere were playing a 'double game.' In this, Karon von Gerhke's propensity for indiscretion – of which I, like
others, was both beneficiary and victim – could be useful.
An exercise in 'positioning', which could be used to disguise the fact that Shvets was indeed 'Berezovsky's disinformation
specialist', could be used to make it appear that 'intelligence on weapon sales during the Yeltsin era to Iraq, Iran and Syria'
was actually credible.
This could have been used to try to rescue Cheney, Bush and their associates from the mess they had got into as a result of
the failure of the invasion to provide any evidence whatsoever supporting the case which had been made for it. It could also have
been used to provide the kind of materials justifying military action against Iran for which Levinson and Jablonski were looking,
and for similar action against Syria.
Among reasons for bringing this up now is that we need to make sense of the paradox that Simpson – clearly in collusion with
Steele – was using Mogilevich and the 'Solnsetskaya Bratva' both against Manafort and Trump and against Browder.
There are various possible explanations for this. I do not want to succumb to my instinctive prejudice that this may have been
another piece of 'positioning', similar to what I think was being done with Shvets, but the hypothesis needs to be considered.
A more general point is that people in Washington and London need to 'wise up' to the kind of world with which they are dealing.
This could be done quite enjoyably: reading some of Dashiell Hammett's fictions of the United States in the Prohibition era, or
indeed buying DVDs of some of the classics of 'film noir', like 'Out of the Past' (in its British release, 'Build My Gallows High')
might be a start.
Very much of the coverage of affairs in the post-Soviet space since 1991 has read rather as though a Dashiell Hammett story
had been rewritten by someone specialising in sentimental children's, or romantic, fiction (although, come to think of it, that
is really what Brigid O'Shaughnessy does in 'The Maltese Falcon.')
The testimony of Glenn Simpson seems a case in point. The sickly sentimentality of these people does, rather often, make one
feel as though one wanted to throw up.
"They act and believe that they are Olympians. You have to wait for them to age and die before any substantive change in Fortress
West's posture; say 2040.}
No, three years at tops and could be much sooner if dimes starting dropping by exposed people that don't want to take the
fall for their superiors whom they always detested. One possible thing to get the process started sooner is if the recent Russian
Intelligence delegation to DC that Smoothie mentions on another thread gave the current administration, as a diplomatic courtesy
of course, the audio recordings of Madame Sectary Nuland's infamous mental meltdown at Kaliningrad. No telling what beans were
spilled in her moment of panic, but I am willing to bet key names were dropped. Either way the time is coming.
- If they have read the important books at all... The ongoing scandal has been revealing a stunning incompetence of the "deciders."
Too often they look comical, ridiculous, undignified. This is dangerous, considering their power.
My coming book is precisely about that. Especially, once American policy-makers who saw and experienced war (Ike, George
Marshall's generation) departed things started to roll down hill with Reagan bringing on board a whole collection of neocons.
Unawareness is always dangerous, a complete blackout in relations between two nuclear powers is more than dangerous--it
is completely reckless. Again, the way CW 1.0 is perceived in the current US "elites" it becomes extremely tempting to repeat
it. Electing Hillary was another step in unleashing CW 2.0 by people who have no understanding of what they were doing.
Obama started crushing US-Russian relations before any campaigns were launched and before Trump was even seriously considered
a GOP nominee, let alone a real contender. New confrontation hinged on HRC being elected. In fact, she was one of the major driving
forces behind a serious of geopolitical anti-Russian moves. Visceral Russo-phobia became a feature in HRC campaign long before
any Steele's Dossier. This was a program.
I think the failure of Deciders is nothing new - Fath Ali Shah attacking Russia, or the abject failure of the Deciders in 1914.
Europe is still not where she was in 1890.
I read the post and responses early on, so forgive me if this point has been addressed in the meantime. If the memo information
on non-disclosure of material evidence to the warrant issuing court is accurate, as soon as that information came to the attention
of the authorities (clearly some time ago) there was a duty on them (including the judge(s) who issued the warrants) to have the
matter brought back before the court toot sweet. If that had happened it would surely be in the public domain, so on the assumption
the prosecutors and maybe even the judge didn't see the need to review the matter, even purely on a contempt/ethics basis, the
memo information only seems convincing if the FISA system is a total sham. I really doubt that.
IMO, the bigger problem for American not shying away from wars, or being silent about them , is when your home, your mom and
dad' home, the town you grew up in, are immune and away from the war.
The security and safety of the two oceans, encourages or at least, in an all volunteer military makes it a secondary problem
for regular people, to worry about. As I remember that wasn't the case at the end of VN war when i first landed here. At
that time even though the war was on the other side of the planet and away from homeland, still people, especially young ones
in colleges were paying more attention to the cost of war.
Diana West has uncovered some interesting "Red Threads" (6 part article at dianawest-dot-net) on all the Fusion GPS folks. Seems
ole Russian speaking Nellie Ohr got herself a ham radio license recently. Wonder why she would suddenly need one of those? They
are all Marxists with potential connections back to Russia.
Been there. I am also a latecomer to SST. You have to read the back numbers. How? My IT expertise dates from the dawn of the internet
and was lamentable then but I find Wayback sometimes allows easier searches than the SST search engine. A straight search on google
also allows searches with more than one term. This link -
- gets you to a chronological list and for recent material is sometimes quicker than fiddling around with search engines. "Categories"
on the RH side is useful but then you don't get some very informative comments that cross-refer.
If those sadly elementary procedures fail resort to the nearest infant. There's a blur of fingers on the keyboard and what
you want then usually appears. Never ask them how they did it. They get so fed up when you ask them to explain it again.
"Who is David Habakkuk?" That's a quantum computer sited, from internal evidence you pick up from time to time, somewhere in
the Greater London area. Cross references like you wouldn't believe and over several fields, so maybe he's two quantum computers.
The "Borg"?. Try Wittgenstein. Likely a prog but you can't be choosy these days. Early on in "Philosophical Investigations"
(hope I get this right) he discusses the problem of how you can view as an entity something that has ill-defined or overlapping
boundaries. The "Borg" is that "you know it when you see it" sort of thing. A great merit of this site is that the owner and many
of the contributors know it from inside.
In general you may regard your new found site as a microcosm of the great battle that is raging in the West. It's a battle
between the (probably apocryphal but adequately stated) Roveian view of reality that regards truth as an adjunct to or as a by-product
of ideology and Realpolitik and the objective view of reality as something that is damned difficult to get at, and sometimes impossible,
but that has a truth in it somewhere that is independent of the views and convictions of the observer. It's a battle that's never
going to be won but unless it tilts back closer to common sense it can certainly be lost and the West with it.
Clearly the Labor Party in the UK preferred the USSR to Nazi Germany. (cepting that short interlude where the Soviets signed the
Agreement with Hitler, and the Left Organized Leadership all across Europe, for the most part, lined up with Hitler). But for
the most part, Labor was Left.
Elements (the ones that won out in the end) of the Conservative Party loathed both Hitler and Stalin. An element of the Conservative
Party was sympathetic, but only up to a certain point, with the Nazis. This ended in 1939, sept.
So I don't think it fair, or accurate, to say 'England prefered the Nazis....and even if it not those things, it certainly
not "well known", except to the people who have used the false premise to butter their wounds from supporting Stalin in his Pact
with Hitler. Or are inclined to bash the British in general.
All right, perhaps I should have said "The English Government". Google "Litvinov", you may discover how the English Government
pushed Stalin to make a deal with Hitler to buy USSR time.
Witness the infamous State Department protest memo calling for more war on Syria.
The State Department employees that signed that memo were sure that HRC would win and that their diligent work in pushing the
Deep State agenda would sure be rewarded.
Since entering office, Trump appears to have taken the line that if he gives the Deep State everything it demands, he will
be allowed to remain in office, even if he is not allowed to remain in power.
jonst That's broadly accurate, but specifically Attlee brought the motion of no confidence in Chamberlain, which the conservative
appeasers won but which led to Churchill's opportunity. Attlee was essential in cabinet to Churchill's resistance after the retreat
of the BEF.
FM
What are you doing here? You said you dislike the military. Are you really in the Spanish Basque country? Bilbao maybe? break
- David Habakkuk is a private scholar of the Litvinenko murder and Soviet/Russian politics and intelligence affairs. His surname
comes from Wales where in the 18th (?) Century the ancestral village were all "chapel" and changed their surnames to Old Testament
names. His father was master of one of the Cambridge colleges and David is himself a graduate of Cambridge. pl
The hard, blinding truth:
https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2018/02/05/will-conspiracy-trump-american-democracy-go-unpunished/
"In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it,
and it will rise up a thousand fold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting
their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations." – Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn
This troll showed up recently at b's place doing the same accusations. There is group that is running sacred and pulling out
all the stops in "info ops" side of the spectrum. The damn fools don't or, most probably, won't get thru their thick heads and
even thicker hearts that it is a failed strategy that turns bystanders into their opponents.
Here for your edification is the definitive analysis of the GOP memo by Alexander Mercouris over at The Duran.
And it is a masterpriece - and quite long, possibly his longest analysis of anything so far. He buries the counterarguments
being passed around by the Democratic opposition and the anti-Trump media.
Mercouris writes on legal affairs alongside his foreign policy stuff and he writes with a lawyer's precision. And in this article
he points out that the GOP memo is writter as a legal document - probably by Trey Gowdy - with additional political insertions
by Nunes. So it should properly be referred to as the "GOP memo" or the "Gowdy memo", not the Nunes memo."
Why this is important is that the GOP memo is basically written as a defense lawyer would in contesting a case -- this case
being the FISA warrant application. Which means its orientation is proving failure to disclose relevant and material information
to the FISA court and in some cases rising to the point of contempt of court.
"Seeking transparency and cooperation should not be this challenging," Grassley said in a statement after posting a heavily
redacted version of the criminal referral that he and GOP Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina sent to the Justice Department
last month. " The government should not be blotting out information that it admits isn't secret. "
I suppose DOJ/FBI believe that by obstructing, stalling and obfuscating they can buy time and that the Republicans in Congress
will get tired of the games and go home. This seems like a pretty straightforward memo, highlighting the discrepancy between Steele's
court filings and the FBI's version of Steele's discussions with them. Grassley is pointing out that either Steele or the FBI
is lying.
What is interesting is the difference in process and ability between the House & Senate. The House can release their memos
on its own, even if not declassified by the Executive, whereas the Senate requires the Executive to declassify it's memos that
are based on classified documents.
We have not had a self declared communist on SST before although LeaNder in her youth may have come close to that exalted status.
You might want to read the wiki on me and the CV I have posted on the blog to avoid tedious accusations of this or that. I am
thought by some to have some knowledge of the ME so please do not try to lecture me about how much you love the Arabs. I speak
their language and have lived with them for a long time. There are people who write to SST who are pro-Trump and some who are
anti-Trump. I seek a mixture of views so long as personal insult and invective are eschewed. Personally, I do not belong to a
political party and would describe myself as an original intent, strict constructionist.
Trump is the constitutionally and legally elected president of the United States. Your descriptors with regard to him are,
in my opinion, only plausible if seen from the point of view of various kinds of leftist including Marxist-Leninists like you.
You sound very smug and self-satisfied but we will see if you can have an open mind at all. pl
Found him, Ali Babacan XVPM, XFM and M of finance. Yes god forbid, if he is a decendent of Ardisher Babakan and another claimant
to Iranian throne, which CIA and Soros can jump on. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Babacan MBA from
Northeestern
I do not believe Trump is a misogynists - he stated publicly that he likes beautiful women. I also do not think he is a racist.
I think he is the first US leader in many decades who has been willing to publicly talk about US problems. For most other US politicians
- they largely live in "the best of all possible worlds".
Colonel - sincere apologies if my comment above disrupted the discussion on a fascinating article.
David Habakkuk - I should say that "Quantum Computer" referred solely to the ability to gather and collate great amounts of
material. It's an ability I admire. On Steele, you are among other things setting out something that is unfamiliar to me though
not to most others here, I imagine, and that is the milieu in which he is or was working as a UK Intelligence operative. That
you have also done in previous articles; it doesn't seem to be a particularly savoury milieu. As far as Steele's US activities
are concerned, from you I'm not getting the picture of a lone operative, all ties with MI6 neatly severed, working solo in the
States on some chance assignment in 2016. I'm getting the picture of someone still very much in the swim and selected because
of that.
The only problem with that second picture is the dossier, or the 30% or so of it - what Comey, I think it was, described as
"salacious and unverified". Surely that's got to be amateur night. Not something that a practised professional working with other
professionals would put his hand to. Does that not support the picture of an ex-operative who's gone off the rails and is fumbling
around unsupervised?
The Steele affair touched a nerve. One is always I suppose aware that IC professionals are getting up to all sorts and it doesn't
seem improbable that "all sorts" includes political stuff and smear campaigns. But it's not heaps of corpses in Syria or farm
boys being sent to certain death in the Ukraine. And even within the UK Intelligence Community and their contractors or whatever
they're called, compared with what our IC people have done in the ME or compared with what one fears Hamish de Bretton Gordon
might have got himself involved in, Christopher Steele's just a choirboy. Nevertheless there's something deeply repellent about
what he did. Whatever your view of Trump there he was, newly elected, obviously wanting to make a go of it, and already faced
with difficulties. Then some chancer throws "Golden Showers" in his face and makes his position, not maybe for the insiders but
for the general public, that bit more untenable.
So from a UK perspective the question of whether Steele was acting in concert with others in the UK becomes important. If he
was truly working solo then that from a UK point of view is regrettable but one of those things. In that case MI6 would just have
to tighten up its controls on what ex-operatives get up to, put out the appropriate disclaimers, and that's the end of it as far
as the UK is concerned. But if Golden Showers and the rest of it was a "Welcome Mr President" from UK IC professionals as a group
then those professionals should be hung drawn and quartered together with whoever set them on.
I've read your article several times now and apart from the fact that much of what you pull together isn't material I'm up
on, it doesn't seem to me that you're definitely coming to one conclusion or the other. There are many more facts to come out
so perhaps this question is premature, but do you think Steele was acting in concert with others in the UK or was he, at least
as far as the UK is concerned, working solo?
Most Iranian females Named Fatima/ Fatimah after prophet' daughter, call themselves Fati, and if they are of aristocrat type,
they are called Bibi Fati Khanam, which is honorable lady Fati and if they are westernized they become Fay or Fifi.
Much of your commentary seems directed to David Habakkuk and PT rather than I. I don't think the FBI would have started to
pay him until he left UK service. pl
Colonel - Further apologies - I should have submitted comment 79 as two items.
Yes, the question about Steele was in response to DH's article. The UK side of the affair is I suppose only a small part of
the question you and your Committee are examining but it's a dubious part however one looks at it. Although it's early days yet
I was hoping DH, with his encyclopaedic knowledge of the UK intelligence scene, might feel able to cast more light on that UK
side.
Cortes - " ... where, exactly, do you expect the great public to look beyond the initial scabrously defamatory storytelling about
the "golden showers"? "
I don't think one can expect the public, at least in the UK, to look very far beyond the initial scandal. The investigations
and enquiries presently under way in the US are complex and are taking place in a different system. This member of the UK public
wouldn't be able to give you a coherent account of those enquiries and I doubt many of my fellows could.
So we have to take on trust, most of us, what we're told. As far as I can tell the underlying theme from the BBC and the media
is generally that Trump is subverting the American Justice system in order to ensure his own misdemeanours aren't investigated.
Some of us take that as gospel. Others of us assume that the politicians and the media are untrustworthy and ignore them. I
doubt many of us go into much more detail than that. Therefore the original story will stick in our minds.
But for some in the UK there are questions in there as well. How come the UK got mixed up in all this? How much did the UK
get mixed up in it?
When I belatedly started looking at the Litvinenko mystery, as a result of a strange email provoked by comments of mine on
SST which arrived in my inbox in March 2007 from someone who turned out to be a key protagonist, it was rather obvious that improvised
and chaotic 'StratCom' operations had been put into place on both the Russian and British sides to cover up what had happened.
A particular interesting feature of those on the British side – in which we now know Christopher Steele must have played
a leading role – were the bizarre gyrations those responsible were going through trying to explain away the extraordinary fact
that when he had broken the story of his poisoning, Litvinenko had pointed the finger of suspicion at his Italian associate Mario
Scaramella.
When I started delving, I came across some very interesting pieces on Scaramella and related matters posted on the 'European
Tribune' website by a Rome-based blogger using the name 'de Gondi' in the period after the story broke.
His actual name is David Loepp, by profession he is an artisan jeweller specialising in ancient and traditional goldsmith techniques,
and I already knew and respected his work from his contributions to the transnational internet investigation into the Niger uranium
forgeries – an earlier MI6 clusterf**ck.
So in May 2008 I posted a longish piece on that site, setting out the problems with the evidence about the Litvinenko case
as I saw them, in the hope of reactivating his interest. This paid off in spades, when he linked to, and translated a key extract
from, the request from Italian prosecutors to use wiretaps of conversations with Senator Paolo Guzzanti in connection with their
prosecution of Scaramella for 'aggravated calumny.'
The request, which up to not so long ago was freely available on the website of the Italian Senate, was denied, but the extensive
summaries of the transcripts provided a lot of material.
The extract from the wiretap request which David Loepp posted, which like Litvinenko's letter containing the claims he and
Yuri Shvets had concocted about Putin using Mogilevich to attempt to supply Al Qaeda with a 'mini nuclear bomb' is dated 1 December
2005, contains key pointers to the conspiracy. It concludes:
'A passage on Simon Moghilevic and an agreement between the camorra to search for nuclear weapons lost during the Cold War
to be consigned to Bin Laden, a revelation made by the Israeli. According to Scaramella the circle closes: camorra, Moghilevic-
Russian mafia- services- nuclear bombs in Naples.'
Subsequent conversations make clear that Scaramella left on 6 December 2005 for Washington, on a trip where he was to meet
Shvets. The summary of a report on this to Guzzanti reads:
'12) conversation that took place on number [omissis] on December 18, 2005, at 9:41:51 n. 1426, containing explicit references
to the authenticity of the declarations of Alexander Litvinenko acquired by Scaramella, to the trustworthiness of the affirmations
made by Scaramella in his reports to the commission and to the meetings Scaramella had with Talik after having denounced them
[presumably Talik and his alleged accomplices]. (They can talk with HEIMS thanks to the help of MILLER. SHVEZ says that he had
been a companion of CARLOS at the academy; SHVEZ has already made declarations and is willing to continue collaboration. Guzzanti
warns that a document in Russian arrived in commission in which the name of SCARAMELLA appears several times, these [sic] say
that directives to the contrary had been given to Litvinenko. Scaramella says that he went to the meeting with TALIK in the company
of two treasury [police] and a cop, Talik spoke of a person from the Ukrainian GRU who would be willing to talk and a strange
Chechen ring in Naples. Assassination attempt against the pope, CASAROLI was a Soviet agent.)'
The summary of a later conversation also refers to 'MILLER':
'conversation that took place on number [omissis] on January 13, 2006, at 11:22:11 n. 2287, containing references to Scaramella's
sources in relation to facts referred in the Commission, the means by which they were obtained by Scaramella from declarations
made abroad, the role of Litvinenko, also on the occasion of declarations made by third parties and the credibility of the news
and theses given by Scaramella to the commission (Scaramella reads a text in English on the relation between the KGB and PRODI.
Guzzanti asks if its credibility can be confirmed and if the taped declarations can be backed up; Scaramella answers that there
were two testimonies, Lou Palumbo and Alexander (Litvinenko), and that the registration made in London at the beginning of the
assignment [Scaramella's?] had been authenticated by a certain BAKER of the FBI. As he translates the text from English, Scaramella
notes that the person testifying does not say he knows Prodi but only that he thinks that Prodi ...; all those who worked for
the person testifying in Scandinavia said that Prodi was "theirs." The affair in Rimini, Bielli is preparing the battle in Rimini.
Meetings with MILLER for the three things that are needed. Polemic about Pollari over the pressure exerted on Gordievski.)'
In the exchanges on my May 2008 post, I mentioned and linked to some extraordinary comments on a crucial article by Edward
Jay Epstein, in which Karon von Gerhke claimed that his sceptical account fitted with what her contacts in the British investigation
had told her. When that July I came across her equally extraordinary claims in response to the BBC's Mark Urban piece of stenography
– which Steele may also have had a hand in organising – I found she was referring to precisely that visit to Washington by Scaramella
which had been described in the wiretap request.
As you can perhaps imagine, the fact that 'Miller' had featured in the conversations with Guzzanti both as a key contact, who
could introduce Scaramella to Aldrich Ames (which is who 'Heims' clearly is), and with whom there had been meetings about 'the
three things that are needed' made me inclined to take seriously what Karon von Gerhke said about his role.
In December 2008, I put up another post on 'European Tribune', putting together the material from David Loepp and that from
Karon von Gerhke – but not discussing the references to 'Miller.' As I had hoped, this led to her getting in touch.
Among the material with which she supplied me, which I in turn supplied to the Solicitor to the Inquest, were covers of faxes
to John Rizzo, then Acting General Counsel of the CIA. From a fax dated 23 October 2005.
'John: See attached email to Chuck Patrizia. Berezovsky alleges he is in possession of a copy of a classified file given to
the CIA by Russia's FSB, which he further alleges the CIA disseminated to British, French, Italian and Israeli intelligence agencies
implicating him in business associations with the Mafia and to ties with terrorist organizations. Yuri Shvets was authorised/directed
by Berezovsky to raise the issue with Bud McFarlane scheduled for Thursday. McFarlane is unaware the issue will be raised with
him.'
From a fax dated 7 November 2005:
'John: I am attaching an email exchange between Yuri Shvets and me re: 1) article he published on his Ukraine website on alleged
sale of nuclear choke to Iran, which I reproached him on as having been planted by Berezovsky and 2 the alleged FSB/CIA document
file that Berezovsky obtained from Scaramella, which Yuri acknowledges in his e-mail to me. Like extracting wisdom teeth to get
him to put anything on paper, especially in an e-mail! [NAME REDACTED BY ME – DH] is the source McFarlane referred Yuri to re:
Berezovsky's visa issue. She proposed meeting Berezovsky in London. Alleged it would take a year to clear up USG issues and even
then could not guarantee him a visa. She too has access to USG intelligence on Berezovsky. Open book.'
From a fax dated 5 December 2005:
'John. From Mario Scaramella to Yuri Shvets to my ears, the DOJ has authorised Mario Scaramella to interview Aldrich Ames with
regard to members of the Italian Intelligence Service agent recruited by Ames for the KGB. Scaramella, as you may recall, is who
gave Boris Berezovsky's aide, a former FSB Colonel [LITVINENKO – DH], that alleged document number to the FSB file that the CIA
disseminated on Berezovsky – a file that Bud McFarlane's "Madam Visa" [NAME REDACTED BY ME – DH] is alleged is totting off to
London for a meeting with Berezovsky, who has agreed to retain her re: his visa issue. Quid pro quo's with Berezovsky and Scaramella
on the CIA agent currently facing kidnapping charges for the rendition of the Muslim cleric? Scott Armstrong has a most telling
file on Scaramella. Not a single redeeming quality.'
In the course of very extensive exchanges with Karon von Gerhke subsequently, we had some rather acute disagreements. It was
unfortunate that her filing was a shambles – a crucial hard disk failed without a backup, and the 'hard copies' appeared to be
in a chaotic state.
However, the only occasion when I can recall having reason to believe that was deliberately lying to me was when David Loepp
unearthed a cache of documentation including the full Italian text of the letter from Litvinenko containing the 'StratCom' designed
to suggest that Putin had attempted to supply a 'mini nuclear bomb' to Al Qaeda. Having been asked to keep this between ourselves
for the time being, Karon insisted on immediately sending it to her contacts in Counter Terrorism Command, and then produced bogus
justifications.
Time and again, moreover, I found that I could confirm statements that she made – see for example the two posts I put up on
the legal battles following the death in February 2008 of Berezovsky's long-term partner Arkadi 'Badri' Patarkatsishvili in June
and July 2009, which were based on careful corroboration of what she told me.
(I should also say that I acquired the greatest respect for her courage.)
And while Owen and his team suppressed all the evidence from her, and almost all of that from David Loepp, which I had I provided
to them, the dossier about Berezovsky is described in a statement made by Litvinenko in Tel Aviv in April 2006, presented in evidence
in the Inquiry.
Other evidence, moreover, strongly inclines me to believe that there were overtures for a 'quid pro quo', purporting to come
from Putin, but that this was a ruse orchestrated by Berezovsky.
Part of the purpose of this would almost certainly have been to supply probably bogus 'evidence' about arms sales in the Yeltsin
years to Iraq, Iran and Syria. Moreover, I think there was an article on the second 'Fifth Element' site run by Shvets about the
supposed sale of a nuclear 'choke' – whatever that is – to Iran.
The likelihood of the involvement of elements in the FBI in these shenanigans seems to quite high, given what has already emerged
about the activities of Levinson. Also relevant may be the fact that the 'declaration' which was part of the attempt to frame
Romano Prodi was authenticated, in London, by 'a certain BAKER of the FBI.')
The critical issue here is the provenance of the samples and not the sophistication of the techniques used in the analysis
itself or its instrumentation.
The paragraph that you have quoted:
"To figure out signatures based on various synthetic routes and conditions, Chipuk says that the synthetic chemists on his
team will make the same chemical threat agent as many as 2,000 times in an ..." reeks of intellectual intimidation - trying to
brow-beat any skeptic by the size of one's instrument - as it were."
And then there is a little matter of confidence level in any of the analysis - such things are normally based on prior statistics
- which did not and could not exist in this situation.
David, it's no doubt interesting to watch how attention on Victor Ivanov in another deficient inquiry on the British Isles, was
managed in that inquiry. If I may, since he pops up again in the Steele dossier. You take what's available? Is that all there
is to know?
I know its hard to communicate basics if you are deeply into matters. Usually people prefer to opt out. It's getting way too
complicated for them to follow. You made me understand this experience. But isn't this (fake) intelligence continuity "via" Yuri
Svets what connects your, no harm meant I do understand your obsession with the case, with what we deal with now in the Steele
Dossier? Again, one of the most central figures is Ivanov.
Of course later reports in the Steele Dossier go hand in hand with a larger public relations campaign. Creating reality?
Irony alert: as informer/source I would by then know what the other side wants to hear.
By the way, babbling mode, I found your Tom Mangold transcription. It felt it wasn't there on the link you gave. I used the
date, and other search terms. Maybe I am wrong. Haven't looked at what the judge ruled out of the collection. Yes, cozy session/setting.
why California, Kooshy #18? California among other things left this verbal trace, since I once upon time thought a luggage storage
in SF might be free/available now: this is my home, lady.
Tourists from many -- but not all -- foreign nations wishing to enter Kish Free Zone from legal ports are not required to
obtain any visa prior to travel. For those travelers, upon-arrival travel permits are stamped valid for 14 days by Kish officials.
Who are the not all? Can we assume Britain is not one of those?
The German link is different. How about the Iranian?
another Ivanov. I struggled with names (...) in Russian crime novels, admittedly. But that's long ago from times Russian crime
and Russian money flows and rogues getting hold of its nuclear material surfaced more often in Europe. 90s
"... There is reason to suspect that some former and very likely current employees of the FBI have been colluding with elements in other American and British intelligence agencies, in particular the CIA and MI6, in support of an extremely ambitious foreign policy agenda for a very long time. It also seems clear that influential journalists, such as Glenn Simpson was before founding Fusion GPS, along with his wife Mary Jacoby, have been strongly involved in this. ..."
"... Important support for these strategies was provided by the 'StratCom' network centred around the late Boris Berezovsky, which clearly collaborated closely with MI6. As was apparent from the witness list at Sir Robert Owen's Inquiry into the death of Alexander Litvinenko, which produced a report based essentially on a recycling of claims made by the network's members, key players were on your side of the Atlantic – notably Alex Goldfarb, Yuri Shvets, and Yuri Felshtinsky. ..."
"... it seems to me the usa and uk have been tied at the hip for a very long time... when it comes to foreign affairs policy and wars - the one will always vouch for the other without hesitation... it tells me the relationship is really deep.. ..."
"... I and my friends consider it a given that most, if not all, anglo-zionist moves in the ME are to "provide a definitive solution to the – inherently intractable – security problems of a Jewish settler state in the area. " It is an open secret that the izzies are the reason why a few Russians, some Turks, lots of Kurds and countless Arabs are dying in the Syrian battlefields. Another open secret: the takfiris and kurds have been, and are, supported by the West. That the "masters of the universe™" have been conceiving and doubling down on such disastrous policies give lie to their much-vaunted "intelligence". ..."
"... It is the very FACT of Trump even getting elected at ALL which outrages and terrifies them so much. They are used to seeing themselves as successful manipulators and engineers of every major event. They were engineering the whole electoral battlespace to get Clinton elected. The mere fact of Trump's victory in the teeth of their Electoral Engineering for Clinton is an act of defiance which they will not tolerate. ..."
"... And if they fail to bring Trump down at all, they will stand revealed as being defeatable. And this is their big fear. That if people see they have defeated the Borg once on keeping Trump in the teeth of Borg's efforts, that people might try to defeat and smash down the Borg on another issue. And then another. And then another after that. ..."
"... Because it is not possible to do on fundamental level yet, especially with US foreign policy establishment and so called consensus being built almost entirely, in ideological and, most importantly, cadres senses, on the ultimate exceptionalist agenda in which Russia is the ultimate obstacle and enemy. Establishment in saturated with neocons and likes. They are the swamp. ..."
"... They act and believe that they are Olympians. You have to wait for them to age and die before any substantive change in Fortress West's posture; say 2040 ..."
"... In 1977 Zbigniew Brzezinski, as President Carter's National Security Adviser, forms the Nationalities Working Group (NWG) dedicated to the idea of weakening the Soviet Union by inflaming its ethnic tensions. ..."
"... State Department official Henry Precht will later recall that Brzezinski had the idea "that Islamic forces could be used against the Soviet Union. The theory was, there was an arc of crisis, and so an arc of Islam could be mobilized to contain the Soviets." [Scott, 2007, pp. 67] In November 1978, President Carter appointed George Ball head of a special White House Iran task force under Brzezinski. Ball recommends the US should drop support for the Shah of Iran and support the radical Islamist opposition of Ayatollah Khomeini. This idea is based on ideas from British Islamic expert Dr. Bernard Lewis, who advocates the balkanization of the entire Muslim Near East along tribal and religious lines. The chaos would spread in what he also calls an "arc of crisis" and ultimately destabilize the Muslim regions of the Soviet Union ..."
"... About relation Steele-MI6, well, you never leave your IS. Or to put it in another way, you are never out of the scope of your past IS ..."
"... No, three years at tops and could be much sooner if dimes starting dropping by exposed people that don't want to take the fall for their superiors whom they always detested. One possible thing to get the process started sooner is if the recent Russian Intelligence delegation to DC that Smoothie mentions on another thread gave the current administration, as a diplomatic courtesy of course, the audio recordings of Madame Sectary Nuland's infamous mental meltdown at Kaliningrad. No telling what beans were spilled in her moment of panic, but I am willing to bet key names were dropped. Either way the time is coming. ..."
"... Especially, once American policy-makers who saw and experienced war (Ike, George Marshall's generation) departed things started to roll down hill with Reagan bringing on board a whole collection of neocons. ..."
"... Unawareness is always dangerous, a complete blackout in relations between two nuclear powers is more than dangerous--it is completely reckless. Again, the way CW 1.0 is perceived in the current US "elites" it becomes extremely tempting to repeat it. Electing Hillary was another step in unleashing CW 2.0 by people who have no understanding of what they were doing. ..."
"... Obama started crushing US-Russian relations before any campaigns were launched and before Trump was even seriously considered a GOP nominee, let alone a real contender. New confrontation hinged on HRC being elected. In fact, she was one of the major driving forces behind a serious of geopolitical anti-Russian moves. Visceral Russo-phobia became a feature in HRC campaign long before any Steele's Dossier. This was a program. ..."
"... IMO, the bigger problem for American not shying away from wars, or being silent about them , is when your home, your mom and dad' home, the town you grew up in, are immune and away from the war. ..."
"... The security and safety of the two oceans, encourages or at least, in an all volunteer military makes it a secondary problem for regular people, to worry about. ..."
"... A particular interesting feature of those on the British side – in which we now know Christopher Steele must have played a leading role – were the bizarre gyrations those responsible were going through trying to explain away the extraordinary fact that when he had broken the story of his poisoning, Litvinenko had pointed the finger of suspicion at his Italian associate Mario Scaramella. ..."
"... Of course later reports in the Steele Dossier go hand in hand with a larger public relations campaign. Creating reality? Irony alert: as informer/source I would by then know what the other side wants to hear. ..."
Steele, Shvets, Levinson, Litvinenko and the 'Billion Dollar Don.'
In the light of the suggestion in the Nunes memo that Steele was 'a longtime FBI source' it seems worth sketching out some background,
which may also make it easier to see some possible reasons why he 'was desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate
about him not being president.'
There is reason to suspect that some former and very likely current employees of the FBI have been colluding with elements
in other American and British intelligence agencies, in particular the CIA and MI6, in support of an extremely ambitious foreign
policy agenda for a very long time. It also seems clear that influential journalists, such as Glenn Simpson was before founding Fusion
GPS, along with his wife Mary Jacoby, have been strongly involved in this.
This agenda has involved hopes for 'régime change' in Russia, whether as the result of an oligarchic coup, a popular revolt, or
some combination of both. Also central have been hopes for a further 'rollback' of Russia influence in the post-Soviet space, both
in areas now independent, such as Ukraine, and also ones still part of the Russian Federation, notably Chechnya.
And, crucially, it involved exploiting the retreat of Russian power from the Middle East for 'régime change' projects which it
was hoped would provide a definitive solution to the – inherently intractable – security problems of a Jewish settler state in the
area.
Important support for these strategies was provided by the 'StratCom' network centred around the late Boris Berezovsky, which
clearly collaborated closely with MI6. As was apparent from the witness list at Sir Robert Owen's Inquiry into the death of Alexander
Litvinenko, which produced a report based essentially on a recycling of claims made by the network's members, key players were on
your side of the Atlantic – notably Alex Goldfarb, Yuri Shvets, and Yuri Felshtinsky.
The question of what links these had, or did not have, with elements in U.S. intelligence agencies is thus a critical one.
In making some sense of it, the fact that one key figure we know to have been involved in this network was missing at the Inquiry
– the former FBI agent Robert Levinson, who disappeared on the Iranian island of Kish in March 2007 – is important.
Unfortunately, I only recently came across a book on Levinson published in 2016 by the 'New York Times' journalist Barry Meier,
which is now hopefully winging its way across the Atlantic. From the accounts of the book I have seen, such as one by Jeff Stein
in 'Newsweek', it seems likely that its author did not look at any of the evidence presented at Owen's Inquiry.
Had he done so, Meier might have discovered that his subject had been, as it were, 'top supporting actor' in the first fumbling
attempt by Christopher Steele et al to produce a plausible-sounding scenario as to the background to Litvinenko's death. A Radio
4 programme on 16 December 2006, presented by the veteran BBC presenter Tom Mangold, had been wholly devoted to an account by Shvets,
backed up by Levinson. Both of these were, like Litvinenko, supposed to be impartial 'due diligence' operatives.
The notion that any of them might have connections with Western intelligence agencies was not considered. The – publicly available
– evidence of the involvement of Shvets, whose surname means 'cobbler' or 'shoemaker' in Ukrainian, in the processing of the tapes
of conversations involving the former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma supposedly recorded by Major Melnychenko, which had played
a crucial role in the 2004-5 'Orange Revolution' was not mentioned.
Still less was it mentioned that claims that the – very dangerous – late Soviet Kolchuga system, which made it possible the kind
of identification of incoming aircraft which radar had traditionally done, without sending out signals which made the destruction
of the facilities doing it possible, had been sold by Kuchma to Iraq had proven spurious.
What Shvets had done had been to take – genuine – audio in which Kuchma had discussed a possible sale, and edit it to suggest
a sale had been completed.
(See http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160613090333/https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/evidence .)
As a former television current affairs producer, I can talk to you of the marvels which London audio editors can produce, very
happily. Unfortunately, the days when not all BBC and 'Guardian' journalists were corrupt stenographers for corrupt and incompetent
spooks, as Mangold and his like have been for Steele and Levinson, are long gone.
All this has become particularly relevant now, given that Simpson has placed the notorious Jewish Ukrainian mobster Semyon Mogilevich
and the 'Solntsevskaya Bratva' mafia group centre stage in his accounts not simply of Trump and Manafort, but also of William Browder.
For most of the 'Nineties, Levinson had been a, if not the, lead FBI investigator on Mogilevich.
(On this, see the 1999 BBC 'Panorama' programme 'The Billion Dollar Don', also presented by Tom Mangold, which has extensive interviews
both with Mogilevich and Levinson at
In the months leading up to Levinson's disappearance, a key priority for the advocates of the strategy I have described was to
prevent it being totally derailed by the patently catastrophic outcome of the Iraqi adventure.
Compounding the problem was the fact that this had created the 'Shia Crescent', which in turn exacerbated the potential 'existential
threat' to Israel posed by the steadily increasing range, accuracy and numbers of missiles available to Hizbullah in hardened positions
north of the Litani.
These, obviously, provided both a 'deterrent' for that organisation and Iran, and also a radical threat to the whole notion that
somehow Israel could ever be a 'safe haven' for Jews, against the supposedly ineradicable disposition of the 'goyim' sooner or later
to, as it were, revert to type. The dreadful thought that Israel might not be necessary had to be resisted at all costs.
What followed from the disaster unleashed by the – Anglo-American – 'own goal' in toppling Saddam was, ironically, a need on the
part of key players to 'double down.' Above all, it was necessary for many of those involved to counter suggestions from the Russian
side that going around smashing up 'régimes' that one might not like sometimes blew up in one's face.
Even more threatening were suggestions from the Russian side that it was foolish to think one could use jihadists without risking
'blowback', and that there might be an overwhelming common interest in combating Islamic extremism.
Another priority was to counter the pushback in the American 'intelligence community' and military, which was to produce the drastic
downgrading of the threat posed by the Iranian nuclear programme in the November 2007 NIE and then the resignation of Admiral William
Fallon as head of 'Centcom' the following March.
So in 2005 Shvets came to London. He and his audio editors had another 'bite at the cherry' of the Melnychenko tapes, so that
material that did in fact establish that both the SBU and FSB had collaborated with Mogilevich could be employed to make it seem
that Putin had a close personal relationship with the mobster.
All kinds of supposedly respectable American and British academics, like Professors Karen Dawisha and Robert Service, have fallen
for this, hook, line and sinker. It gives a new meaning to the term 'useful idiot.'
(See http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160613090333/https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/evidence .)
In a letter sent in December that year by Litvinenko to the 'Mitrokhin Commission', for which his Italian associate Mario Scaramella
was a consultant, this was used in an attempt to demonstrate that Mogilevich, while acting as an agent for the FSB and under Putin's
personal 'krysha', had attempted to supply a 'mini atomic bomb' – aka 'suitcase nuke' – to Al Qaeda. Shortly after the letter was
sent Scaramella departed on a trip to Washington, where he appears to have got access to Aldrich Ames.
(See http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160613090333/https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/evidence .)
At precisely this time, as Meier explains, Levinson was in the process of being recruited by a lady called Anne Jablonski who
then worked as a CIA analyst. It appears that she was furious at the failure of the operational side at the Agency to produce evidence
which would have established that Iran did indeed have an ongoing nuclear programme, and she may well have hoped would implicate
Russia in supplying materials.
There are grounds to suspect that one of the things that Berezovsky and Shvets were doing was fabricating such 'evidence.' Whether
Levinson was involved in such attempts, or genuinely looking for evidence he was convinced must be there, I cannot say. It appears
that he fell for a rather elementary entrapment operation – which could well have been organised with the collaboration of Russian
intelligence. (People do get fed up with being framed, particular if 'régime change' is the goal.)
It also seems likely that, quite possibly in a different but related entrapment operation, related to propaganda wars in which
claims and counter claims about a polonium-beryllium 'initiator' as the crucial missing part which might make a 'suitcase nuke' functional,
Litvinenko accidentally ingested fatal quantities of polonium. A good deal of evidence suggests that this may have been at Berezovsky's
offices on the night before he was supposedly assassinated.
It was, obviously, important for Steele et al to ensure that nobody looked at the 'StratCom' wars about 'suitcase nukes.' Here,
a figure who has played a key role in such wars in relation to Syria plays an interesting minor one in the story.
Some time following the destruction of the case for an immediate war by the November 2007 NIE, a chemical weapons specialist called
Dan Kaszeta, who had worked in the White House for twelve years, moved to London.
In 2011, in addition to founding a consultancy called 'Strongpoint Security', he began a writing career with articles in 'CBRNe
World.' Later, he would become the conduit through which the notorious 'hexamine hypothesis', supposedly clinching proof that the
Syrian government was responsible for the sarin incidents at Khan Sheikhoun, Ghouta, Saraqeb, and Khan Al-Asal, was disseminated.
Having been forced by the threat of a case being opened against them under human rights law into resuming the inquest into Litvinenko's
death, in August 2012 the British authorities appointed Sir Robert Owen to conduct it. (There are many honest judges in Britain,
but obviously, if one sets out to find someone who will 'cover up' for the incompetence and corruption of people like Steele, as
Lord Hutton did before him, you can find them.)
That same month, a piece appeared in 'CBRNe World' with the the strapline: 'Dan Kaszeta looks into the ultimate press story: Suitcase
nukes', and the main title 'Carry on or checked bags?' Among the grounds he gives for playing down the scare:
'Some components rely on materials with shelf life. Tritium, for example, is used in many nuclear weapon designs and has a twelve
year half-life. Polonium, used in neutron initiators in some earlier types of weapon designs, has a very short halflife. US documents
state that every nuclear weapon has "limited life components" that require periodic replacement (do an internet search for nuclear
limited life components and you can read for weeks).'
What Kaszeta has actually described are the reasons why polonium is a perfect 'StratCom' instrument. In terms of scientific plausibility,
in fact there were no 'suitcase nukes', and in any case 'initiators' using polonium had been abandoned very early on, in favour of
ones which lasted longer.
For 'StratCom' scenarios, as experience with the 'hexamine hypothesis' has proved, scientific plausibility can be irrelevant.
What polonium provides is a means of suggesting that Al Qaeda have in fact got hold of a nuclear device which they could easily
smuggle into, say, Rome or New York, or indeed Moscow, but there is a crucial missing component which the FSB is trying to provide
to them. By the same token, of course, that missing component could be depicted as one that Berezovsky and Litvinenko are conspiring
to suppl to the Chechen insurgents.
In addition, the sole known source of global supply is the Avangard plant at Sarov in Russia, so the substance is naturally suited
for 'StratCom' directed against that country, which its intelligence services would – rather naturally – try to make 'boomerang.'
According to Glenn Simpson, Christopher Steele is a 'boy scout.' This seems to me quite wrong – but, even if it were true, would
you want to unleash a 'boy scout' into these kinds of intrigue?
As it is not clear why Kaszeta introduced his – accurate but irrelevant – point about polonium into an article which was concerned
with scientific plausibility, one is left with an interesting question as to whether he cut his teeth on 'StratCom' attempting to
ensure that nobody seriously interested in CBRN science followed an obvious lead.
In relation to the question of whether current FBI personnel had been involved in the kind of 'StratCom' exercises, I have been
describing, a critical issue is the involvement of Shvets and Levinson in the Alexander Khonanykhine affair back in the 'Nineties,
and the latter's use of claims about the Solntsevskaya to prevent the key figure's extradition. But that is a matter for another
day.
A corollary of all this is that we cannot – yet at least – be absolutely confident that the account in the Nunes memo, according
to which Steele was suspended and then dismissed as an FBI source for what the organisation is reported to define as 'the most serious
of violations' – the unauthorised disclosure of a relationship with the organisation – is necessarily wholly accurate.
Who did and did not authorise which disclosures to the media, up to and including the extraordinary decision to have the full
dossier, including claims about Aleksej Gubarev and the Alfa oligarchs, in flagrant disregard of the obvious risks of defamation
suits, and who may be trying to pass the buck to others, remains I think less than totally clear.
thanks david... fascinating overview and conjecture..
it seems to me the usa and uk have been tied at the hip for a very long time... when it comes to foreign affairs policy
and wars - the one will always vouch for the other without hesitation... it tells me the relationship is really deep..
Thank you very. As ever you have illuminated a few more things for me. Kaszeta's involvement is interesting. He is someone
I am in the middle of researching in relation to Higgins and Bellingcat.
I think the English are using you, they are unsentimental empirical people that only do these that benefit the Number One.
The chief beneficiary of the Coup in Iran was England and not US.
That Newsweek piece about Levinson is very superficial to me.
Re: Levinson
# Who suggested to who 'first' the Iran caper...Anne Jablonski to Levinson or Levinson to Jablonski? It was reported earlier
by Meier that in December 2005, when Levinson was pitching Jablonski on projects he might take on when his CIA contract was approved
he sent her a lengthy memo about Dawud's potential as an informant.
# Ira Silverman, the Iran hating NBC guy, pitched a Iraq caper to Levinson with Dawud Salahuddin, as his Iran contact and Levinson
went to Jablonski with it.
# And what was with Boris Birshstein, a Russian organized crime figure who had fled to Israel and Oleg Deripaska, the "aluminum
czar" of Russia whose organized crime contacts have kept him from entering the United States jumping in to help find Levinson?
The FBI allowed Deripaska in for two visits in 2009 in exchange for his alleged help in locating Levinson but obviously nothing
came of it.
I think there were more little agents/agendas in this than Levinson and Jablonski and US CIA.
As usual a wonderful analysis. I admire your insight, integrity and courage. I wish you could write more on why the Borg
is so much against Trump, even though they have Kushner, Adelson and Co. running interference for them.
I and my friends consider it a given that most, if not all, anglo-zionist moves in the ME are to "provide a definitive
solution to the – inherently intractable – security problems of a Jewish settler state in the area. " It is an open secret that
the izzies are the reason why a few Russians, some Turks, lots of Kurds and countless Arabs are dying in the Syrian battlefields.
Another open secret: the takfiris and kurds have been, and are, supported by the West. That the "masters of the universe™" have
been conceiving and doubling down on such disastrous policies give lie to their much-vaunted "intelligence".
"There is reason to suspect that some former and very likely current employees of the FBI have been colluding with elements
in other American and British intelligence agencies, in particular the CIA and MI6, in support of an extremely ambitious foreign
policy agenda for a very long time. "
David as usual fascinating work connecting the dots. One question that comes to my mind is about the above point you are making.
Is it your understanding or believe that these IC individuals on both side of Atlantic, are pursuing/forcing their (on behalf
of the Borg) foreign policy agenda outside of their respected seating governments? If not, why is it that incoming administration
cannot stop them? So far I can't see any strategic changes on US foreign policy toward ME or Russia, at tactical level yes but
not fundamentally.
I am not David Habakkuk, obviously. But I will venture a little opinion anyway. It is not enough that the Borgists get their
policy preferences. If it were, then Kushner, Adelson and Co. running interference would be enough for them.
It is the very FACT of Trump even getting elected at ALL which outrages and terrifies them so much. They are used to seeing
themselves as successful manipulators and engineers of every major event. They were engineering the whole electoral battlespace
to get Clinton elected. The mere fact of Trump's victory in the teeth of their Electoral Engineering for Clinton is an act of
defiance which they will not tolerate.
And if they fail to bring Trump down at all, they will stand revealed as being defeatable. And this is their big fear.
That if people see they have defeated the Borg once on keeping Trump in the teeth of Borg's efforts, that people might try to
defeat and smash down the Borg on another issue. And then another. And then another after that.
So that is why the Borg cares so much. They view the Trump election as an insurgency, and they view themselves as waging a
counterinsurgency, which they dare not lose.
Thanks for your analysis. I always enjoy and learn from your posts. I wish you would post more often.
In my non-expert opinion, the Borg and the media were all in for Hillary. They were convinced that she was gonna win. To curry
favor with the Empress who would be certainly crowned after the election they were eager and convinced that their lawlessness
would become a badge for promotion and plum positions in her administration. In their conceit, they believed they could kill two
birds with one stroke. They could vilify Putin and create the mass hysteria to checkmate him, while at the same time disparage
and frame Trump as The Manchurian Candidate to seal their certain electoral victory.
Unfortunately for them voters in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin didn't buy their sales pitch despite the overwhelming
media barrage from all corners. Even news publications who have only endorsed Republican candidates for President for over a century
endorsed her.
Trump's election win caused panic among the political establishment, the media and the Deep State. They were already all-in.
Their only choice was to double down and get Trump impeached. Now their conspiracy is beginning to unravel. They are doing everything
possible to forestall their Armageddon. Of course they have many allies. This battle is gonna be interesting to watch. Trump is
clearly getting many Congressional Republicans on side as his base of Deplorables remains solidly behind him. That is what's befuddling
the Borg pundits.
So far I can't see any strategic changes on US foreign policy toward ME or Russia, at tactical level yes but not fundamentally.
Because it is not possible to do on fundamental level yet, especially with US foreign policy establishment and so called
consensus being built almost entirely, in ideological and, most importantly, cadres senses, on the ultimate exceptionalist agenda
in which Russia is the ultimate obstacle and enemy. Establishment in saturated with neocons and likes. They are the swamp.
This swamp (Borg, deep state, etc.) still thinks that it can use Cold War 1.0 Playbook and address very real and dangerous
American economic issues. They are wrong, since most of them didn't read the playbook correctly to start with.
They act and believe that they are Olympians. You have to wait for them to age and die before any substantive change in Fortress
West's posture; say 2040.
You are right CWII is very much desired and on agenda, but i am not sure of setup, the setup/board has been changed tremendously
and IMO benefits the Asian side of Bosphorus, for one thing technology is no longer exclusive, and financial burden is heavier
on atlantic side.
''Establishment in saturated with neocons and likes. They are the swamp. ''
The locust keep trying and trying, destruction is their life's work.
'1977-1981: Nationalities Working Group Advocates Using Militant Islam Against Soviet Union'
In 1977 Zbigniew Brzezinski, as President Carter's National Security Adviser, forms the Nationalities Working Group (NWG)
dedicated to the idea of weakening the Soviet Union by inflaming its ethnic tensions. The Islamic populations are regarded
as prime targets. Richard Pipes, the father of Daniel Pipes, takes over the leadership of the NWG in 1981. Pipes predicts that
with the right encouragement Soviet Muslims will "explode into genocidal fury" against Moscow. According to Richard Cottam, a
former CIA official who advised the Carter administration at the time, after the fall of the Shah of Iran in 1978, Brzezinski
favored a "de facto alliance with the forces of Islamic resurgence, and with the Republic of Iran." [Dreyfuss, 2005, pp. 241,
251 - 256]
'November 1978-February 1979: Some US Officials Want to Support Radical Muslims to Contain Soviet Union'
State Department official Henry Precht will later recall that Brzezinski had the idea "that Islamic forces could be used
against the Soviet Union. The theory was, there was an arc of crisis, and so an arc of Islam could be mobilized to contain the
Soviets." [Scott, 2007, pp. 67] In November 1978, President Carter appointed George Ball head of a special White House Iran task
force under Brzezinski. Ball recommends the US should drop support for the Shah of Iran and support the radical Islamist opposition
of Ayatollah Khomeini. This idea is based on ideas from British Islamic expert Dr. Bernard Lewis, who advocates the balkanization
of the entire Muslim Near East along tribal and religious lines. The chaos would spread in what he also calls an "arc of crisis"
and ultimately destabilize the Muslim regions of the Soviet Union
"There is reason to suspect that some former and very likely current employees of the FBI have been colluding with elements
in other American and British intelligence agencies, in particular the CIA and MI6, in support of an extremely ambitious foreign
policy agenda for a very long time."
Yes, that is what appears to be just what is coming to light. I wonder just what position Trey Gowdy is going to have since
he won't be running for re-election. The rage from the left is palpable. I'm sure the next outraged guy on the left will know
how to shoot straighter than the ones who shot up Congressman Scalise or the concert goers at Mandalay Bay.
"They are wrong, since most of them didn't read the playbook correctly to start with."
-- If they have read the important books at all... The ongoing scandal has been revealing a stunning incompetence of the "deciders."
Too often they look comical, ridiculous, undignified. This is dangerous, considering their power.
England preferred NAZI Germany to USSR, this is well known. As to what would have happened, the outcome of the war, in my opinion,
did not depend on US participation in the European Theatre. All of Europe would have become USSR satellite or joined USSR.
"unsentimental empirical people"? Absolutely disagree with you. Now the Iranians, they strike me as a singularity unsentimental
people. Just general impressions, mind you.
Yes, US was the first country to proudly deliver Manpads to be used by "rebels" (Mojahadin later Taleban) against USSR in Afghanistan
back in 80s. And, as per the architect of support for the rebels (Zbigniew Brzezinski) very proud of it with no regret. With that
in mind, I don't see how western politicians, the western governments and their related proxy war planers, will be regretting,
even sadden, once god forbid we see passenger planes with loved ones are shot down taking off or landing at various western airports
and other places around the word. Just like how superficialy with crocodile tears in their eyes they acted in aftermath of the
terrorist events in various western cities in this past 16 years. Gods knows what will happens to us if the opposite side start
to supply his own proxies with lethal anti air weapons. "Proudly", I don't think anybody in west cares or will regret of such
an escalation.
I think it likely that what Meier produces is only a 'limited hangout', and am hoping that when the book arrives it will contain
more pointers.
It is important to be clear that one is often dealing with people playing very complicated double games.
An interesting document is the 'Petition for Writ of Habeus Corpus' made on behalf of Khodorkovsky's close associate Alexander
Konanykhin back in 1997,when the Immigration and Naturalization Service were – apparently at least – cooperating with Russian
attempts to get hold of him. An extract:
'During the immigration hearing FBI SA Robert Levinson, an INS witness, confirmed that in 1992 Petitioner was kidnapped and
afterwards pursued by assassins of the Solntsevskaya organized criminal group. This organized criminal group is reportedly the
largest and the most influential organized criminal group in Russia, and operates internationally.'
Note the similarities between the 'StratCom' that Khonanykin and his associates were producing in the 'Nineties, and that which
Simpson and his associates have been producing two decades later.
Another useful example is provided by a 2004 item in the 'New American Magazine', reproduced on Konanykhin's website:
'One of those who testified on behalf of Konanykhine was KGB defector Yuri Shvets, who declared: "I have a firsthand knowledge
on similar operations conducted by the KGB." Konanykhine had brought trouble on himself, Shvets continued, when he "started bringing
charges against people who were involved with him in setting up and running commercial enterprises. They were KGB people secretly
smuggling from Russia hundreds of millions of dollars . This is [a] serious case, and I know that KGB ... desperately wants to
win this case, and everybody who won't step to their side would face problems."'
So – 'first hand knowledge', from a Ukrainian nationalist – look at what the Chalupas have been doing, it seems not much has
changed.
For a rather different perspective on what Konanykhin had actually been up to, from someone in whose honesty – if not always
judgement – I have complete confidence, see the testimony of Karon von Gerhke-Thompson to the House Committee on Banking and Financial
Services hearings on Russian Money Laundering. In this, she described how she had been approached by him in 1993:
'"Konanykhine alleged that Menatep Bank controlled $1.7bn [Ł1bn] in assets and investment portfolios of Russia's most prominent
political and social elite," she recalled. She said he wanted to move the bank's assets off shore and asked her to help buy foreign
passports for its "very, very special clients".
'In her testimony to the committee Ms Von Gerhke-Thompson said she informed the CIA of the deal, and the agency told her that
it believed Mr Konanykhine and Mr Khodorkovsky "were engaged in an elaborate money laundering scheme to launder billions of dollars
stolen by members of the KGB and high-level government officials".
Coming back to Steele's 'StratCom', in July 2008, an item appeared on the 'Newnight' programme of the BBC – which some of us
think should by then have been rechristened the 'Berezovsky Broadcasting Corporation' – in which the introduction by the presenter,
Jeremy Paxman, read as follows:
'Good evening. The New Russian President, Dmitri Medvedev, was all smiles and warm words when he met Gordon Brown today. He
said he was keen to resolve all outstanding difficulties between the two countries. Yada yada yada. Gordon Brown smiled, but he
must know what Newsnight can now reveal: that MI5 believes the Russian state was involved in the murder of Alexander Litvinenko
by radioactive poisoning. They also believe that without their intervention another London-based Russian, Boris Berezovsky, would
have been murdered. Our diplomatic editor, Mark Urban, has this exclusive report.'
When Urban repeated the claims on his blog, there was a positive eruption from someone using the name 'timelythoughts', about
the activities of someone she referred to as 'Berezovsky's disinformation specialist' – when I came across this later, it was
immediately clear to me that she was Karon von Gerhke, and he was Shvets.
She then described a visit by Scaramella to Washington, details of which had already been unearthed by my Italian collaborator,
David Loepp. Her claim to have e-mails from Shvets, from the time immediately prior to Litvinenko's death, directly contradicting
the testimony he had given, fitted with other evidence I had already unearthed.
Later, we exchanged e-mails over a quite protracted period, and a large amount of material that came into my possession as
a result was submitted by me to the Inquest team, with some of it being used in posts on the 'European Tribune' site.
What I never used publicly, because I could only partially corroborate it from the material she provided, was an extraordinary
claim about Shvets:
'He was responsible for bringing in a Kremlin initiative that was walked Vice President Cheney's office on a US government
quid pro quo with the Kremlin FSB SVR involving the arrest of Mikhail Khodorkovsky – a cease and desist on allegations of a politically
motivated arrest of Khodorkovsky, violations of rules of law and calls from Russia's expulsion from the G 8 in exchange for favorable
posturing of U.S. oil companies on Gazprom's Shtokman project and intelligence on weapon sales during the Yeltsin era to Iraq,
Iran and Syria, all documented in reports I submitted to the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and MI6.
'Berezovsky's DS could not be on both sides on that isle. His Kremlin FSB SVR sources had been vetted by the CIA and by the
National Security Council. They proved to be as represented. As we would later learn, however, he was on Berezovsky's payroll
at same time. The FSB SVR general he was coordinating the Kremlin initiative through was S. R. Subbotin, the same FSB SVR general
who was investigating Berezovsky's money laundering operations in Switzerland during the same timeframe. His FSB SVR sources surrounding
Putin were higher than any Lugovoy could have ever hoped to affiliate with.
'R. James Woolsey (former CIA DCI), Marshall Miller (former law partner of the late CIA DCI William Colby), who I coordinated
the Kremlin initiative through that Berezovsky's DS had brought in were shocked to learn that he was affiliated with Berezovsky
and Litvinenko. He was in Berezovsky's inner circle and engaged in vetting Russian business with Litvinenko. He operated Berezovsky's
Ukraine website, editing and dubbing the now infamous Kuchma tapes throughout the lead up to the elections in the Ukraine. Berezovsky
contributed $41 million to Viktor Yushchenko's campaign, which he used in an attempt to force Yushchenko to reunite with Julia
Tymoschenko. It failed but would succeed later after Berezovsky orchestrated a public relations initiative through Alan Goldfarb
in the U.S. on behalf of Tymoschenko.'
Having got to know Karon von Gerhke quite well, and also been able to corroborate a great deal of what she told me about many
things, and discussed these matters with her, it is absolutely clear to me that she was neither fabricating nor fantasising. What
later became apparent, both to her and to me, was that in the 'double game' that Shvets was playing, he had succeeded in fooling
her as to the side for which he was working.
It seems likely however that the reason Shvets could do what he did was that quite precisely that many high-up people in the
Kremlin and elsewhere were playing a 'double game.' In this, Karon von Gerhke's propensity for indiscretion – of which I, like
others, was both beneficiary and victim – could be useful.
An exercise in 'positioning', which could be used to disguise the fact that Shvets was indeed 'Berezovsky's disinformation
specialist', could be used to make it appear that 'intelligence on weapon sales during the Yeltsin era to Iraq, Iran and Syria'
was actually credible.
This could have been used to try to rescue Cheney, Bush and their associates from the mess they had got into as a result of
the failure of the invasion to provide any evidence whatsoever supporting the case which had been made for it. It could also have
been used to provide the kind of materials justifying military action against Iran for which Levinson and Jablonski were looking,
and for similar action against Syria.
Among reasons for bringing this up now is that we need to make sense of the paradox that Simpson – clearly in collusion with
Steele – was using Mogilevich and the 'Solnsetskaya Bratva' both against Manafort and Trump and against Browder.
There are various possible explanations for this. I do not want to succumb to my instinctive prejudice that this may have been
another piece of 'positioning', similar to what I think was being done with Shvets, but the hypothesis needs to be considered.
A more general point is that people in Washington and London need to 'wise up' to the kind of world with which they are dealing.
This could be done quite enjoyably: reading some of Dashiell Hammett's fictions of the United States in the Prohibition era, or
indeed buying DVDs of some of the classics of 'film noir', like 'Out of the Past' (in its British release, 'Build My Gallows High')
might be a start.
Very much of the coverage of affairs in the post-Soviet space since 1991 has read rather as though a Dashiell Hammett story
had been rewritten by someone specialising in sentimental children's, or romantic, fiction (although, come to think of it, that
is really what Brigid O'Shaughnessy does in 'The Maltese Falcon.')
The testimony of Glenn Simpson seems a case in point. The sickly sentimentality of these people does, rather often, make one
feel as though one wanted to throw up.
"They act and believe that they are Olympians. You have to wait for them to age and die before any substantive change in Fortress
West's posture; say 2040.}
No, three years at tops and could be much sooner if dimes starting dropping by exposed people that don't want to take the
fall for their superiors whom they always detested. One possible thing to get the process started sooner is if the recent Russian
Intelligence delegation to DC that Smoothie mentions on another thread gave the current administration, as a diplomatic courtesy
of course, the audio recordings of Madame Sectary Nuland's infamous mental meltdown at Kaliningrad. No telling what beans were
spilled in her moment of panic, but I am willing to bet key names were dropped. Either way the time is coming.
- If they have read the important books at all... The ongoing scandal has been revealing a stunning incompetence of the "deciders."
Too often they look comical, ridiculous, undignified. This is dangerous, considering their power.
My coming book is precisely about that. Especially, once American policy-makers who saw and experienced war (Ike, George
Marshall's generation) departed things started to roll down hill with Reagan bringing on board a whole collection of neocons.
Unawareness is always dangerous, a complete blackout in relations between two nuclear powers is more than dangerous--it
is completely reckless. Again, the way CW 1.0 is perceived in the current US "elites" it becomes extremely tempting to repeat
it. Electing Hillary was another step in unleashing CW 2.0 by people who have no understanding of what they were doing.
Obama started crushing US-Russian relations before any campaigns were launched and before Trump was even seriously considered
a GOP nominee, let alone a real contender. New confrontation hinged on HRC being elected. In fact, she was one of the major driving
forces behind a serious of geopolitical anti-Russian moves. Visceral Russo-phobia became a feature in HRC campaign long before
any Steele's Dossier. This was a program.
I think the failure of Deciders is nothing new - Fath Ali Shah attacking Russia, or the abject failure of the Deciders in 1914.
Europe is still not where she was in 1890.
I read the post and responses early on, so forgive me if this point has been addressed in the meantime. If the memo information
on non-disclosure of material evidence to the warrant issuing court is accurate, as soon as that information came to the attention
of the authorities (clearly some time ago) there was a duty on them (including the judge(s) who issued the warrants) to have the
matter brought back before the court toot sweet. If that had happened it would surely be in the public domain, so on the assumption
the prosecutors and maybe even the judge didn't see the need to review the matter, even purely on a contempt/ethics basis, the
memo information only seems convincing if the FISA system is a total sham. I really doubt that.
IMO, the bigger problem for American not shying away from wars, or being silent about them , is when your home, your mom and
dad' home, the town you grew up in, are immune and away from the war.
The security and safety of the two oceans, encourages or at least, in an all volunteer military makes it a secondary problem
for regular people, to worry about. As I remember that wasn't the case at the end of VN war when i first landed here. At
that time even though the war was on the other side of the planet and away from homeland, still people, especially young ones
in colleges were paying more attention to the cost of war.
Diana West has uncovered some interesting "Red Threads" (6 part article at dianawest-dot-net) on all the Fusion GPS folks. Seems
ole Russian speaking Nellie Ohr got herself a ham radio license recently. Wonder why she would suddenly need one of those? They
are all Marxists with potential connections back to Russia.
Been there. I am also a latecomer to SST. You have to read the back numbers. How? My IT expertise dates from the dawn of the internet
and was lamentable then but I find Wayback sometimes allows easier searches than the SST search engine. A straight search on google
also allows searches with more than one term. This link -
- gets you to a chronological list and for recent material is sometimes quicker than fiddling around with search engines. "Categories"
on the RH side is useful but then you don't get some very informative comments that cross-refer.
If those sadly elementary procedures fail resort to the nearest infant. There's a blur of fingers on the keyboard and what
you want then usually appears. Never ask them how they did it. They get so fed up when you ask them to explain it again.
"Who is David Habakkuk?" That's a quantum computer sited, from internal evidence you pick up from time to time, somewhere in
the Greater London area. Cross references like you wouldn't believe and over several fields, so maybe he's two quantum computers.
The "Borg"?. Try Wittgenstein. Likely a prog but you can't be choosy these days. Early on in "Philosophical Investigations"
(hope I get this right) he discusses the problem of how you can view as an entity something that has ill-defined or overlapping
boundaries. The "Borg" is that "you know it when you see it" sort of thing. A great merit of this site is that the owner and many
of the contributors know it from inside.
In general you may regard your new found site as a microcosm of the great battle that is raging in the West. It's a battle
between the (probably apocryphal but adequately stated) Roveian view of reality that regards truth as an adjunct to or as a by-product
of ideology and Realpolitik and the objective view of reality as something that is damned difficult to get at, and sometimes impossible,
but that has a truth in it somewhere that is independent of the views and convictions of the observer. It's a battle that's never
going to be won but unless it tilts back closer to common sense it can certainly be lost and the West with it.
Clearly the Labor Party in the UK preferred the USSR to Nazi Germany. (cepting that short interlude where the Soviets signed the
Agreement with Hitler, and the Left Organized Leadership all across Europe, for the most part, lined up with Hitler). But for
the most part, Labor was Left.
Elements (the ones that won out in the end) of the Conservative Party loathed both Hitler and Stalin. An element of the Conservative
Party was sympathetic, but only up to a certain point, with the Nazis. This ended in 1939, sept.
So I don't think it fair, or accurate, to say 'England prefered the Nazis....and even if it not those things, it certainly
not "well known", except to the people who have used the false premise to butter their wounds from supporting Stalin in his Pact
with Hitler. Or are inclined to bash the British in general.
All right, perhaps I should have said "The English Government". Google "Litvinov", you may discover how the English Government
pushed Stalin to make a deal with Hitler to buy USSR time.
Witness the infamous State Department protest memo calling for more war on Syria.
The State Department employees that signed that memo were sure that HRC would win and that their diligent work in pushing the
Deep State agenda would sure be rewarded.
Since entering office, Trump appears to have taken the line that if he gives the Deep State everything it demands, he will
be allowed to remain in office, even if he is not allowed to remain in power.
jonst That's broadly accurate, but specifically Attlee brought the motion of no confidence in Chamberlain, which the conservative
appeasers won but which led to Churchill's opportunity. Attlee was essential in cabinet to Churchill's resistance after the retreat
of the BEF.
FM
What are you doing here? You said you dislike the military. Are you really in the Spanish Basque country? Bilbao maybe? break
- David Habakkuk is a private scholar of the Litvinenko murder and Soviet/Russian politics and intelligence affairs. His surname
comes from Wales where in the 18th (?) Century the ancestral village were all "chapel" and changed their surnames to Old Testament
names. His father was master of one of the Cambridge colleges and David is himself a graduate of Cambridge. pl
The hard, blinding truth:
https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2018/02/05/will-conspiracy-trump-american-democracy-go-unpunished/
"In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it,
and it will rise up a thousand fold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting
their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations." – Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn
This troll showed up recently at b's place doing the same accusations. There is group that is running sacred and pulling out
all the stops in "info ops" side of the spectrum. The damn fools don't or, most probably, won't get thru their thick heads and
even thicker hearts that it is a failed strategy that turns bystanders into their opponents.
Here for your edification is the definitive analysis of the GOP memo by Alexander Mercouris over at The Duran.
And it is a masterpriece - and quite long, possibly his longest analysis of anything so far. He buries the counterarguments
being passed around by the Democratic opposition and the anti-Trump media.
Mercouris writes on legal affairs alongside his foreign policy stuff and he writes with a lawyer's precision. And in this article
he points out that the GOP memo is writter as a legal document - probably by Trey Gowdy - with additional political insertions
by Nunes. So it should properly be referred to as the "GOP memo" or the "Gowdy memo", not the Nunes memo."
Why this is important is that the GOP memo is basically written as a defense lawyer would in contesting a case -- this case
being the FISA warrant application. Which means its orientation is proving failure to disclose relevant and material information
to the FISA court and in some cases rising to the point of contempt of court.
"Seeking transparency and cooperation should not be this challenging," Grassley said in a statement after posting a heavily
redacted version of the criminal referral that he and GOP Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina sent to the Justice Department
last month. " The government should not be blotting out information that it admits isn't secret. "
I suppose DOJ/FBI believe that by obstructing, stalling and obfuscating they can buy time and that the Republicans in Congress
will get tired of the games and go home. This seems like a pretty straightforward memo, highlighting the discrepancy between Steele's
court filings and the FBI's version of Steele's discussions with them. Grassley is pointing out that either Steele or the FBI
is lying.
What is interesting is the difference in process and ability between the House & Senate. The House can release their memos
on its own, even if not declassified by the Executive, whereas the Senate requires the Executive to declassify it's memos that
are based on classified documents.
We have not had a self declared communist on SST before although LeaNder in her youth may have come close to that exalted status.
You might want to read the wiki on me and the CV I have posted on the blog to avoid tedious accusations of this or that. I am
thought by some to have some knowledge of the ME so please do not try to lecture me about how much you love the Arabs. I speak
their language and have lived with them for a long time. There are people who write to SST who are pro-Trump and some who are
anti-Trump. I seek a mixture of views so long as personal insult and invective are eschewed. Personally, I do not belong to a
political party and would describe myself as an original intent, strict constructionist.
Trump is the constitutionally and legally elected president of the United States. Your descriptors with regard to him are,
in my opinion, only plausible if seen from the point of view of various kinds of leftist including Marxist-Leninists like you.
You sound very smug and self-satisfied but we will see if you can have an open mind at all. pl
Found him, Ali Babacan XVPM, XFM and M of finance. Yes god forbid, if he is a decendent of Ardisher Babakan and another claimant
to Iranian throne, which CIA and Soros can jump on. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Babacan MBA from
Northeestern
I do not believe Trump is a misogynists - he stated publicly that he likes beautiful women. I also do not think he is a racist.
I think he is the first US leader in many decades who has been willing to publicly talk about US problems. For most other US politicians
- they largely live in "the best of all possible worlds".
Colonel - sincere apologies if my comment above disrupted the discussion on a fascinating article.
David Habakkuk - I should say that "Quantum Computer" referred solely to the ability to gather and collate great amounts of
material. It's an ability I admire. On Steele, you are among other things setting out something that is unfamiliar to me though
not to most others here, I imagine, and that is the milieu in which he is or was working as a UK Intelligence operative. That
you have also done in previous articles; it doesn't seem to be a particularly savoury milieu. As far as Steele's US activities
are concerned, from you I'm not getting the picture of a lone operative, all ties with MI6 neatly severed, working solo in the
States on some chance assignment in 2016. I'm getting the picture of someone still very much in the swim and selected because
of that.
The only problem with that second picture is the dossier, or the 30% or so of it - what Comey, I think it was, described as
"salacious and unverified". Surely that's got to be amateur night. Not something that a practised professional working with other
professionals would put his hand to. Does that not support the picture of an ex-operative who's gone off the rails and is fumbling
around unsupervised?
The Steele affair touched a nerve. One is always I suppose aware that IC professionals are getting up to all sorts and it doesn't
seem improbable that "all sorts" includes political stuff and smear campaigns. But it's not heaps of corpses in Syria or farm
boys being sent to certain death in the Ukraine. And even within the UK Intelligence Community and their contractors or whatever
they're called, compared with what our IC people have done in the ME or compared with what one fears Hamish de Bretton Gordon
might have got himself involved in, Christopher Steele's just a choirboy. Nevertheless there's something deeply repellent about
what he did. Whatever your view of Trump there he was, newly elected, obviously wanting to make a go of it, and already faced
with difficulties. Then some chancer throws "Golden Showers" in his face and makes his position, not maybe for the insiders but
for the general public, that bit more untenable.
So from a UK perspective the question of whether Steele was acting in concert with others in the UK becomes important. If he
was truly working solo then that from a UK point of view is regrettable but one of those things. In that case MI6 would just have
to tighten up its controls on what ex-operatives get up to, put out the appropriate disclaimers, and that's the end of it as far
as the UK is concerned. But if Golden Showers and the rest of it was a "Welcome Mr President" from UK IC professionals as a group
then those professionals should be hung drawn and quartered together with whoever set them on.
I've read your article several times now and apart from the fact that much of what you pull together isn't material I'm up
on, it doesn't seem to me that you're definitely coming to one conclusion or the other. There are many more facts to come out
so perhaps this question is premature, but do you think Steele was acting in concert with others in the UK or was he, at least
as far as the UK is concerned, working solo?
Most Iranian females Named Fatima/ Fatimah after prophet' daughter, call themselves Fati, and if they are of aristocrat type,
they are called Bibi Fati Khanam, which is honorable lady Fati and if they are westernized they become Fay or Fifi.
Much of your commentary seems directed to David Habakkuk and PT rather than I. I don't think the FBI would have started to
pay him until he left UK service. pl
Colonel - Further apologies - I should have submitted comment 79 as two items.
Yes, the question about Steele was in response to DH's article. The UK side of the affair is I suppose only a small part of
the question you and your Committee are examining but it's a dubious part however one looks at it. Although it's early days yet
I was hoping DH, with his encyclopaedic knowledge of the UK intelligence scene, might feel able to cast more light on that UK
side.
Cortes - " ... where, exactly, do you expect the great public to look beyond the initial scabrously defamatory storytelling about
the "golden showers"? "
I don't think one can expect the public, at least in the UK, to look very far beyond the initial scandal. The investigations
and enquiries presently under way in the US are complex and are taking place in a different system. This member of the UK public
wouldn't be able to give you a coherent account of those enquiries and I doubt many of my fellows could.
So we have to take on trust, most of us, what we're told. As far as I can tell the underlying theme from the BBC and the media
is generally that Trump is subverting the American Justice system in order to ensure his own misdemeanours aren't investigated.
Some of us take that as gospel. Others of us assume that the politicians and the media are untrustworthy and ignore them. I
doubt many of us go into much more detail than that. Therefore the original story will stick in our minds.
But for some in the UK there are questions in there as well. How come the UK got mixed up in all this? How much did the UK
get mixed up in it?
When I belatedly started looking at the Litvinenko mystery, as a result of a strange email provoked by comments of mine on
SST which arrived in my inbox in March 2007 from someone who turned out to be a key protagonist, it was rather obvious that improvised
and chaotic 'StratCom' operations had been put into place on both the Russian and British sides to cover up what had happened.
A particular interesting feature of those on the British side – in which we now know Christopher Steele must have played
a leading role – were the bizarre gyrations those responsible were going through trying to explain away the extraordinary fact
that when he had broken the story of his poisoning, Litvinenko had pointed the finger of suspicion at his Italian associate Mario
Scaramella.
When I started delving, I came across some very interesting pieces on Scaramella and related matters posted on the 'European
Tribune' website by a Rome-based blogger using the name 'de Gondi' in the period after the story broke.
His actual name is David Loepp, by profession he is an artisan jeweller specialising in ancient and traditional goldsmith techniques,
and I already knew and respected his work from his contributions to the transnational internet investigation into the Niger uranium
forgeries – an earlier MI6 clusterf**ck.
So in May 2008 I posted a longish piece on that site, setting out the problems with the evidence about the Litvinenko case
as I saw them, in the hope of reactivating his interest. This paid off in spades, when he linked to, and translated a key extract
from, the request from Italian prosecutors to use wiretaps of conversations with Senator Paolo Guzzanti in connection with their
prosecution of Scaramella for 'aggravated calumny.'
The request, which up to not so long ago was freely available on the website of the Italian Senate, was denied, but the extensive
summaries of the transcripts provided a lot of material.
The extract from the wiretap request which David Loepp posted, which like Litvinenko's letter containing the claims he and
Yuri Shvets had concocted about Putin using Mogilevich to attempt to supply Al Qaeda with a 'mini nuclear bomb' is dated 1 December
2005, contains key pointers to the conspiracy. It concludes:
'A passage on Simon Moghilevic and an agreement between the camorra to search for nuclear weapons lost during the Cold War
to be consigned to Bin Laden, a revelation made by the Israeli. According to Scaramella the circle closes: camorra, Moghilevic-
Russian mafia- services- nuclear bombs in Naples.'
Subsequent conversations make clear that Scaramella left on 6 December 2005 for Washington, on a trip where he was to meet
Shvets. The summary of a report on this to Guzzanti reads:
'12) conversation that took place on number [omissis] on December 18, 2005, at 9:41:51 n. 1426, containing explicit references
to the authenticity of the declarations of Alexander Litvinenko acquired by Scaramella, to the trustworthiness of the affirmations
made by Scaramella in his reports to the commission and to the meetings Scaramella had with Talik after having denounced them
[presumably Talik and his alleged accomplices]. (They can talk with HEIMS thanks to the help of MILLER. SHVEZ says that he had
been a companion of CARLOS at the academy; SHVEZ has already made declarations and is willing to continue collaboration. Guzzanti
warns that a document in Russian arrived in commission in which the name of SCARAMELLA appears several times, these [sic] say
that directives to the contrary had been given to Litvinenko. Scaramella says that he went to the meeting with TALIK in the company
of two treasury [police] and a cop, Talik spoke of a person from the Ukrainian GRU who would be willing to talk and a strange
Chechen ring in Naples. Assassination attempt against the pope, CASAROLI was a Soviet agent.)'
The summary of a later conversation also refers to 'MILLER':
'conversation that took place on number [omissis] on January 13, 2006, at 11:22:11 n. 2287, containing references to Scaramella's
sources in relation to facts referred in the Commission, the means by which they were obtained by Scaramella from declarations
made abroad, the role of Litvinenko, also on the occasion of declarations made by third parties and the credibility of the news
and theses given by Scaramella to the commission (Scaramella reads a text in English on the relation between the KGB and PRODI.
Guzzanti asks if its credibility can be confirmed and if the taped declarations can be backed up; Scaramella answers that there
were two testimonies, Lou Palumbo and Alexander (Litvinenko), and that the registration made in London at the beginning of the
assignment [Scaramella's?] had been authenticated by a certain BAKER of the FBI. As he translates the text from English, Scaramella
notes that the person testifying does not say he knows Prodi but only that he thinks that Prodi ...; all those who worked for
the person testifying in Scandinavia said that Prodi was "theirs." The affair in Rimini, Bielli is preparing the battle in Rimini.
Meetings with MILLER for the three things that are needed. Polemic about Pollari over the pressure exerted on Gordievski.)'
In the exchanges on my May 2008 post, I mentioned and linked to some extraordinary comments on a crucial article by Edward
Jay Epstein, in which Karon von Gerhke claimed that his sceptical account fitted with what her contacts in the British investigation
had told her. When that July I came across her equally extraordinary claims in response to the BBC's Mark Urban piece of stenography
– which Steele may also have had a hand in organising – I found she was referring to precisely that visit to Washington by Scaramella
which had been described in the wiretap request.
As you can perhaps imagine, the fact that 'Miller' had featured in the conversations with Guzzanti both as a key contact, who
could introduce Scaramella to Aldrich Ames (which is who 'Heims' clearly is), and with whom there had been meetings about 'the
three things that are needed' made me inclined to take seriously what Karon von Gerhke said about his role.
In December 2008, I put up another post on 'European Tribune', putting together the material from David Loepp and that from
Karon von Gerhke – but not discussing the references to 'Miller.' As I had hoped, this led to her getting in touch.
Among the material with which she supplied me, which I in turn supplied to the Solicitor to the Inquest, were covers of faxes
to John Rizzo, then Acting General Counsel of the CIA. From a fax dated 23 October 2005.
'John: See attached email to Chuck Patrizia. Berezovsky alleges he is in possession of a copy of a classified file given to
the CIA by Russia's FSB, which he further alleges the CIA disseminated to British, French, Italian and Israeli intelligence agencies
implicating him in business associations with the Mafia and to ties with terrorist organizations. Yuri Shvets was authorised/directed
by Berezovsky to raise the issue with Bud McFarlane scheduled for Thursday. McFarlane is unaware the issue will be raised with
him.'
From a fax dated 7 November 2005:
'John: I am attaching an email exchange between Yuri Shvets and me re: 1) article he published on his Ukraine website on alleged
sale of nuclear choke to Iran, which I reproached him on as having been planted by Berezovsky and 2 the alleged FSB/CIA document
file that Berezovsky obtained from Scaramella, which Yuri acknowledges in his e-mail to me. Like extracting wisdom teeth to get
him to put anything on paper, especially in an e-mail! [NAME REDACTED BY ME – DH] is the source McFarlane referred Yuri to re:
Berezovsky's visa issue. She proposed meeting Berezovsky in London. Alleged it would take a year to clear up USG issues and even
then could not guarantee him a visa. She too has access to USG intelligence on Berezovsky. Open book.'
From a fax dated 5 December 2005:
'John. From Mario Scaramella to Yuri Shvets to my ears, the DOJ has authorised Mario Scaramella to interview Aldrich Ames with
regard to members of the Italian Intelligence Service agent recruited by Ames for the KGB. Scaramella, as you may recall, is who
gave Boris Berezovsky's aide, a former FSB Colonel [LITVINENKO – DH], that alleged document number to the FSB file that the CIA
disseminated on Berezovsky – a file that Bud McFarlane's "Madam Visa" [NAME REDACTED BY ME – DH] is alleged is totting off to
London for a meeting with Berezovsky, who has agreed to retain her re: his visa issue. Quid pro quo's with Berezovsky and Scaramella
on the CIA agent currently facing kidnapping charges for the rendition of the Muslim cleric? Scott Armstrong has a most telling
file on Scaramella. Not a single redeeming quality.'
In the course of very extensive exchanges with Karon von Gerhke subsequently, we had some rather acute disagreements. It was
unfortunate that her filing was a shambles – a crucial hard disk failed without a backup, and the 'hard copies' appeared to be
in a chaotic state.
However, the only occasion when I can recall having reason to believe that was deliberately lying to me was when David Loepp
unearthed a cache of documentation including the full Italian text of the letter from Litvinenko containing the 'StratCom' designed
to suggest that Putin had attempted to supply a 'mini nuclear bomb' to Al Qaeda. Having been asked to keep this between ourselves
for the time being, Karon insisted on immediately sending it to her contacts in Counter Terrorism Command, and then produced bogus
justifications.
Time and again, moreover, I found that I could confirm statements that she made – see for example the two posts I put up on
the legal battles following the death in February 2008 of Berezovsky's long-term partner Arkadi 'Badri' Patarkatsishvili in June
and July 2009, which were based on careful corroboration of what she told me.
(I should also say that I acquired the greatest respect for her courage.)
And while Owen and his team suppressed all the evidence from her, and almost all of that from David Loepp, which I had I provided
to them, the dossier about Berezovsky is described in a statement made by Litvinenko in Tel Aviv in April 2006, presented in evidence
in the Inquiry.
Other evidence, moreover, strongly inclines me to believe that there were overtures for a 'quid pro quo', purporting to come
from Putin, but that this was a ruse orchestrated by Berezovsky.
Part of the purpose of this would almost certainly have been to supply probably bogus 'evidence' about arms sales in the Yeltsin
years to Iraq, Iran and Syria. Moreover, I think there was an article on the second 'Fifth Element' site run by Shvets about the
supposed sale of a nuclear 'choke' – whatever that is – to Iran.
The likelihood of the involvement of elements in the FBI in these shenanigans seems to quite high, given what has already emerged
about the activities of Levinson. Also relevant may be the fact that the 'declaration' which was part of the attempt to frame
Romano Prodi was authenticated, in London, by 'a certain BAKER of the FBI.')
The critical issue here is the provenance of the samples and not the sophistication of the techniques used in the analysis
itself or its instrumentation.
The paragraph that you have quoted:
"To figure out signatures based on various synthetic routes and conditions, Chipuk says that the synthetic chemists on his
team will make the same chemical threat agent as many as 2,000 times in an ..." reeks of intellectual intimidation - trying to
brow-beat any skeptic by the size of one's instrument - as it were."
And then there is a little matter of confidence level in any of the analysis - such things are normally based on prior statistics
- which did not and could not exist in this situation.
David, it's no doubt interesting to watch how attention on Victor Ivanov in another deficient inquiry on the British Isles, was
managed in that inquiry. If I may, since he pops up again in the Steele dossier. You take what's available? Is that all there
is to know?
I know its hard to communicate basics if you are deeply into matters. Usually people prefer to opt out. It's getting way too
complicated for them to follow. You made me understand this experience. But isn't this (fake) intelligence continuity "via" Yuri
Svets what connects your, no harm meant I do understand your obsession with the case, with what we deal with now in the Steele
Dossier? Again, one of the most central figures is Ivanov.
Of course later reports in the Steele Dossier go hand in hand with a larger public relations campaign. Creating reality?
Irony alert: as informer/source I would by then know what the other side wants to hear.
By the way, babbling mode, I found your Tom Mangold transcription. It felt it wasn't there on the link you gave. I used the
date, and other search terms. Maybe I am wrong. Haven't looked at what the judge ruled out of the collection. Yes, cozy session/setting.
why California, Kooshy #18? California among other things left this verbal trace, since I once upon time thought a luggage storage
in SF might be free/available now: this is my home, lady.
Tourists from many -- but not all -- foreign nations wishing to enter Kish Free Zone from legal ports are not required to
obtain any visa prior to travel. For those travelers, upon-arrival travel permits are stamped valid for 14 days by Kish officials.
Who are the not all? Can we assume Britain is not one of those?
The German link is different. How about the Iranian?
another Ivanov. I struggled with names (...) in Russian crime novels, admittedly. But that's long ago from times Russian crime
and Russian money flows and rogues getting hold of its nuclear material surfaced more often in Europe. 90s
"... To be precise, CrowdStrike did provide the FBI with allegedly "certified true images" of the DNC servers allegedly involved in the alleged "hack." They also allegedly provided these images to FireEye and Mandiant, IIRC ..."
"... Of course, given the CrowdStrike itself is a massively compromised organization due to its founder and CEO, those "certified true images" are themselves tainted evidence. ..."
"... In addition, regardless of whether the images were true or not, the evidence allegedly contained therein is painfully inadequate to confirm that APT28 or APT29 were involved, nor that the Russian government was involved, or even that there was a real hack involved, and even less evidence that any emails that might have been exfiltrated were given to Wikileaks as opposed to another leak such as that alleged by Sy Hersh to have been done by Seth Rich. ..."
Re this: " In the case of Russian meddling there is no forensic evidence available to the IC
because the Democratic National Committee did not permit the FBI to investigate and examine
the computers and the network that was allegedly attacked."
To be precise, CrowdStrike did provide the FBI with allegedly "certified true images"
of the DNC servers allegedly involved in the alleged "hack." They also allegedly provided
these images to FireEye and Mandiant, IIRC .
All three allegedly examined those images and concurred with CrowdStrike's analysis.
Of course, given the CrowdStrike itself is a massively compromised organization due to
its founder and CEO, those "certified true images" are themselves tainted evidence.
In addition, regardless of whether the images were true or not, the evidence allegedly
contained therein is painfully inadequate to confirm that APT28 or APT29 were involved, nor
that the Russian government was involved, or even that there was a real hack involved, and
even less evidence that any emails that might have been exfiltrated were given to Wikileaks
as opposed to another leak such as that alleged by Sy Hersh to have been done by Seth
Rich.
The "assessment" that Putin ordered any of this is pure mind-reading and can be utterly
dismissed absent any of the other evidence Publius points out as necessary.
The same applies to any "estimate" that the Russian government preferred Trump or wished
to denigrate Clinton. Based on what I read in pro-Russian news outlets, Russian officials
took great pains to not pick sides and Putin's comments were similarly very restrained. The
main quote from Putin about Trump that emerged was mistranslated as approval whereas it was
more an observation of Trump's personality. At no time did Putin ever say he favored Trump
over Clinton, even though that was a likely probability given Clinton's "Hitler"
comparison.
As an aside, I also recommend Scott Ritter's trashing of the ICA. Ritter is familiar with
intelligence estimates and their reliability based on his previous service as a UN weapons
inspector in Iraq and in Russia implementing arms control treaties.
The sad but reasonable conclusion from all those Russiagate events is that an influential part of the US elite wants to
balance on the edge of war with Russia to ensure profits and flow of taxpayer money. that part of the elite include top
honchos on the US intelligence community and Pentagon (surprise, surprise)
The other logical conclusion is that intelligence agencies now determine the US foreign policy and control all major political
players (there were widespread suspicions that Clinton, Bush II and Obama were actually closely connected to CIA). Which neatly fits
into hypotheses about the "deep state".
This "can of worms" that the US political scene now represents is very dangerous for the future on mankind indeed.
Notable quotes:
"... Most objective observers would concede that the DNI has been a miserable failure and nothing more than a bureaucratic boondoggle. ..."
"... "The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations. The recent disclosures of alleged hacked e-mails on sites like DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks and by the Guccifer 2.0 online persona are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts. These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the US election process. Such activity is not new to Moscow -- the Russians have used similar tactics and techniques across Europe and Eurasia, for example, to influence public opinion there. We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia's senior-most officials could have authorized these activities." ..."
"... More telling was the absence of any written document issued from the Office of the DNI that detailed the supposed intel backing up this judgment. Notice the weasel language in this release ..."
"... If there was actual evidence/intelligence, such as an intercepted conversation between Vladimir Putin and a subordinate ordering them to hack the DNC or even a human source report claiming such an activity, then it would have and should have been referenced in the Clapper/Johnson document. It was not because such intel did not exist. ..."
"... "We have 17 intelligence agencies, civilian and military, who have all concluded that these espionage attacks, these cyberattacks, come from the highest levels of the Kremlin, and they are designed to influence our election," Clinton said. "I find that deeply disturbing." ..."
"... The basic job of an analyst is to collect as much relevant information as possible on the subject or topic that is their responsibility. There are analysts at the CIA, the NSA, the DIA and State INR that have the job of knowing about Russian cyber activity and capabilities. That is certain. But we are not talking about hundreds of people. ..."
"... Let us move from the hypothetical to the actual. In January of 2017, DNI Jim Clapper release a report entitled, " Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections " (please see here ). In subsequent testimony before the Congress, Clapper claimed that he handpicked two dozen analysts to draft the document . That is not likely. There may have been as many as two dozen analysts who read the final document and commented on it, but there would never be that many involved in in drafting such a document. In any event, only analysts from the CIA, the NSA and the FBI were involved ..."
"... This report includes an analytic assessment drafted and coordinated among The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and The National Security Agency (NSA), which draws on intelligence information collected and disseminated by those three agencies. ..."
"... That is how the process is supposed to work. But the document produced in January 2017 was not a genuine work reflecting the views of the "Intelligence Community." It only represented the supposed thinking (and I use that term generously) of CIA, NSA and FBI analysts. In other words, only three of 16 agencies cleared on the document that presented four conclusions ..."
"... Russian efforts to influence the 2016 US presidential election represent the most recent expression of Moscow's longstanding desire to undermine the US-led liberal democratic order, but these activities demonstrated a significant escalation in directness, level of activity, and scope of effort compared to previous operations. ..."
"... We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election. Russia's goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. ..."
"... We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump. ..."
"... We assess Moscow will apply lessons learned from its Putin-ordered campaign aimed at the US presidential election to future influence efforts worldwide, including against US allies and their election processes. ..."
"... It is genuinely shocking that DNI Jim Clapper, with the acquiescence of the CIA, the FBI and NSA, would produce a document devoid of any solid intelligence. There is a way to publicly release sensitive intelligence without comprising a the original source. But such sourcing is absent in this document. ..."
"... The Intelligence Community was used as a tool to misinform the public and persuade them that Russia was guilty of something they did not do. That lie remains unchallenged. ..."
"... "The Intelligence Community was used as a tool to misinform the public and persuade them that Russia was guilty of something they did not do. That lie remains unchallenged.'" Yes it was and so remains the lie unchallenged. ..."
"... Conjectural garbage appears first to have been washed through the FBI, headquarters no less, then probably it picked up a Triple A rating at the CIA, and then when the garbage got to Clapper, it was bombs away - we experts all agree. There were leaks, but they weren't sufficient to satisfy Steele so he just delivered the garbage whole to the Media in order to make it a sure thing. The garbage was placed securely out there in the public domain with a Triple A rating because the FBI wouldn't concern itself with garbage, would it? ..."
"... Contrast this trajectory with what the Russian policy establishment did when it concluded that the US had done something in the Ukraine that Russia found significantly actionable: it released the taped evidence of Nuland and our Ambassador finishing off the coup. ..."
"... To be precise, CrowdStrike did provide the FBI with allegedly "certified true images" of the DNC servers allegedly involved in the alleged "hack." They also allegedly provided these images to FireEye and Mandiant, IIRC ..."
"... Of course, given the CrowdStrike itself is a massively compromised organization due to its founder and CEO, those "certified true images" are themselves tainted evidence. ..."
"... In addition, regardless of whether the images were true or not, the evidence allegedly contained therein is painfully inadequate to confirm that APT28 or APT29 were involved, nor that the Russian government was involved, or even that there was a real hack involved, and even less evidence that any emails that might have been exfiltrated were given to Wikileaks as opposed to another leak such as that alleged by Sy Hersh to have been done by Seth Rich. ..."
"... My interpretation is: In 1990 +- Bush 41 sold us the 1st Iraq war using fudged intelligence, then Bush 43 sold us the second Iraq war using fabricated intelligence. And now the Obama Administration tried to sell us fake intelligence in regard to Russia in order to get Clinton elected ..."
"... Mueller has had 18 months and has proceeded to reveal exactly nothing related to either Trump "collusion" with Russia nor Russia as a state actually doing anything remotely described as "meddling." ..."
"... His expected indictment of some Russians for the DNC hack is going to be more of the same in all likelihood. I predict there will be next to zero evidence produced either that the Russians named are in fact members of APT28 or APT29 or that they had any direct connection with either the alleged DNC hack or Wikileaks or the Russian government. ..."
"... It's a witch hunt, nothing more. People holding their breath for the "slam dunk" are going to pass out soon if they haven't already. ..."
"... Mueller is investigating some aspects. But there is another aspect - the conspiracy inside law enforcement and the IC. That is also being investigated. There are Congressional committees in particular Nunes, Goodlatte and Grassley. Then there is the DOJ IG. And today AG Sessions confirms there is a DOJ prosecutor outside Washington investigating. ..."
"... But such evidence (corroborating the Steele dossier) was not forthcoming. If it had existed than Jim Comey could have claimed in his June 2017 testimony before Congress that the parts of the "Dossier" had been verified. He did not do so. Testifying under oath Comey described the "Dossier" as "salacious and unverified." ..."
"... ... was UK Intelligence, or an ex-UK intelligence officer, used to get material through the US evaluation process, material that would not have got through that US evaluation process had it originated within the US itself?" I would say yes and especially yes if the contact for this piece of data was conducted at the highest level within the context of the already tight liaison between the US IC and Mi-6/GCHQ ..."
"... Was it Hitler or Stalin who said "show me the man and I will find his crime?" As I have said before, Trumps greatest vulnerability lies in his previous business life as an entrepreneurial hustler. ..."
"... Re 'baby adoption' meeting between Trump, Jr. and Veselnitskaya, I recall a comment here linking to an article speculating the email initiating the meeting originated in Europe, was set up by the playboy son of a European diplomat, and contained words to trip data-gathering monitors which would have enabled a FISA request to have Trump, Jr. come under surveillance. ..."
"... "We don't have the evidence yet because Mueller hasn't found it yet!" is a classic argument from ignorance, in that is assumes without evidence (there's that pesky word again!) that there is something to be found. ..."
"... The fact is Flynn has pled guilty to perjury. Nothing else like collusion with the Russians. ..."
"... Manafort has been indicted for money laundering, wire fraud, etc for activities well before the election campaign. Sure, it is good that these corrupt individuals should be investigated and prosecuted. However, this corruption is widespread in DC. How come none of these cheering Mueller on to destroy Trump care about all the foreign money flowing to K Street? Why aren't they calling for investigations of the Clinton Foundation or the Podesta brothers where probable cause exist of foreign money and influence? What about Ben Cardin and all those recipients of foreign zionist money and influence? It would be nice if there were wide ranging investigations on all those engaged in foreign influence peddling. But it seems many just want a witch hunt to hobble Trump. It's going to be very difficult to get the Senate to convict him for obstruction of justice or tax evasion or some charge like that. ..."
"... What does "hacking our elections" mean? Does it means breaking into voting systems and changing the outcome by altering votes? Or does it mean information operations to change US voters' minds about for whom they would vote? ..."
"... As for McMasters, I am unimpressed with him. He displays all the symptoms of Russophobia. He has special information? Information can be interpreted many ways depending on one's purpose. pl ..."
"... IMO the perpetrators in the Steel Memo case are and were merely hiding behind claims of sources and methods protection in order to protect themselve. ..."
"... So now we are supposed to believe unquestioningly the word of torturers, perjurers and entrapment artists, all talking about alleged evidence that we are not allowed to see? Did you learn nothing from the "Iraqi WMD" fiasco or the "ZOMG! Assad gassed his own peoples ZOMG!" debacle? Funny how in each of these instances, the intelligence community's lies just happened to coincide with the agenda of empire. ..."
Americans tend to be a trusting lot. When they hear a high level government official, like former Director of National Intelligence
Jim Clapper, state that Russia's Vladimir ordered and monitored a Russian cyber attack on the 2016 Presidential election, those trusting
souls believe him. For experienced intelligence professionals, who know how the process of gathering and analyzing intelligence works,
they detect a troubling omission in Clapper's presentation and, upon examining the so-called "Intelligence Community Assessment,"
discover that document is a deceptive fraud. It lacks actual evidence that Putin and the Russians did what they are accused of doing.
More troubling -- and this is inside baseball -- is the fact that two critical members of the Intelligence Community -- the DIA and
State INR -- were not asked to coordinate/clear on the assessment.
You should not feel stupid if you do not understand or appreciate the last point. That is something only people who actually have
produced a Community Assessment would understand. I need to take you behind the scenes and ensure you understand what is intelligence
and how analysts assess and process that intelligence. Once you understand that then you will be able to see the flaws and inadequacies
in the report released by Jim Clapper in January 2017.
The first thing you need to understand is the meaning of the term, the "Intelligence Community" aka IC. Comedians are not far off
the mark in touting this phrase as the original oxymoron. On paper the IC currently is comprised of 17 agencies/departments:
Air Force Intelligence,
Army Intelligence,
Central Intelligence Agency aka CIA,
Coast Guard Intelligence,
Defense Intelligence Agency aka DIA,
Energy Department aka DOE,
Homeland Security Department,
State Department aka INR,
Treasury Department,
Drug Enforcement Administration aka DEA,
Federal Bureau of Investigation aka FBI,
Marine Corps Intelligence,
National Geospatial Intelligence Agency aka NGIA or NGA,
National Reconnaissance Office aka NRO,
National Security Agency aka NSA,
Navy Intelligence
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
But not all of these are "national security" agencies -- i.e., those that collect raw intelligence, which subsequently is packaged
and distributed to other agencies on a need to know basis. Only six of these agencies take an active role in collecting raw foreign
intelligence. The remainder are consumers of that intelligence product. In other words, the information does not originate with them.
They are like a subscriber to the New York Times. They get the paper everyday and, based upon what they read, decide what is going
on in their particular world. The gatherers of intelligence are:
The CIA collects and disseminates intelligence from human sources, i.e., foreigners who have been recruited to spy for us.
The DIA collects and disseminates intelligence on the activities and composition of foreign militaries and rely primarily
on human sources but also collect documentary material.
The State Department messages between the Secretary of State and the our embassies constitutes the intelligence reviewed and
analyzed by other agencies.
NGIA collects collects, analyzes, and distributes geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) in support of national security. NGA was
known as the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) until 2003. In other words, maps and photographs.
NRO designs, builds, and operates the reconnaissance satellites of the U.S. federal government, and provides satellite intelligence
to several government agencies, particularly signals intelligence (SIGINT) to the NSA, imagery intelligence (IMINT) to the NGA,
and measurement and signature intelligence (MASINT) to the DIA.
NSA analyzes signal intelligence, including phone conversations and emails.
Nine of the other agencies/departments are consumers. They do not collect and package original info. They are the passive recipients.
The analysts in those agencies will base their conclusions on information generated by other agencies, principally the CIA and the
NSA.
The astute among you, I am sure, will insist my list is deficient and will ask, "What about the FBI and DEA?" It is true that
those two organizations produce a type of human intelligence -- i.e., they recruit informants and those informants provide those
agencies with information that the average person understandably would categorize as "intelligence." But there is an important difference
between human intelligence collected by the CIA and the human source intelligence gathered by the FBI or the DEA. The latter two
are law enforcement agencies. No one from the CIA or the NSA has the power to arrest someone. The FBI and the DEA do.
Their authority as law enforcement agents, however, comes with limitations, especially in collecting so-called intelligence. The
FBI and the DEA face egal constraints on what information they can collect and store. The FBI cannot decide on its own that skinheads
represent a threat and then start gathering information identifying skinhead leaders. There has to be an allegation of criminal activity.
When such "human" information is being gathered under the umbrella of law enforcement authorities, it is being handled as potential
evidence that may be used to prosecute someone. This means that such information cannot be shared with anyone else, especially intelligence
agencies like the CIA and the NSA.
The "17th" member of the IC is the Director of National Intelligence aka DNI. This agency was created in the wake of the September
11, 2001 terrorist attacks for the ostensible purpose of coordinating the activities and products of the IC. In theory it is the
organization that is supposed to coordinate what the IC collects and the products the IC produces. Most objective observers would
concede that the DNI has been a miserable failure and nothing more than a bureaucratic boondoggle.
An important, but little understood point, is that these agencies each have a different focus. They are not looking at the same
things. In fact, most are highly specialized and narrowly focused. Take the Coast Guard, for instance. Their intelligence operations
primarily hone in on maritime threats and activities in U.S. territorial waters, such as narcotic interdictions. They are not responsible
for monitoring what the Russians are doing in the Black Sea and they have no significant expertise in the cyber activities of the
Russian Army military intelligence organization aka the GRU.
In looking back at the events of 2016 surrounding the U.S. Presidential campaign, most people will recall that Hillary Clinton,
along with several high level Obama national security officials, pushed the lie that the U.S. Intelligence agreed that Russia had
unleashed a cyber war on the United States. The initial lie came from DNI Jim Clapper and Homeland Security Chief, Jeb Johnson, who
released the following memo to the press on
7 October 2016 :
"The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails
from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations. The recent disclosures of alleged hacked e-mails on
sites like DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks and by the Guccifer 2.0 online persona are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed
efforts. These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the US election process. Such activity is not new to Moscow
-- the Russians have used similar tactics and techniques across Europe and Eurasia, for example, to influence public opinion there.
We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia's senior-most officials could have authorized these
activities."
This was a deliberate deceptive message. It implied that the all 16 intelligence agencies agreed with the premise and "evidence
of Russian meddling. Yet not a single bit of proof was offered. More telling was the absence of any written document issued from
the Office of the DNI that detailed the supposed intel backing up this judgment. Notice the weasel language in this release:
"The USIC is confident . . ."
"We believe . . ."
If there was actual evidence/intelligence, such as an intercepted conversation between Vladimir Putin and a subordinate ordering
them to hack the DNC or even a human source report claiming such an activity, then it would have and should have been referenced
in the Clapper/Johnson document. It was not because such intel did not exist.
Hillary Clinton helped perpetuate this myth during the late October debate with Donald Trump, when she declared as fact that:
"We have 17 intelligence agencies, civilian and military, who have all concluded that these espionage attacks, these cyberattacks,
come from the highest levels of the Kremlin, and they are designed to influence our election," Clinton said. "I find that deeply
disturbing."
What is shocking is that there was so little pushback to this nonsense. Hardly anyone asked why would the DEA, Coast Guard, the
Marines or DOE have any technical expertise to make a judgment about Russian hacking of U.S. election systems. And no one of any
importance asked the obvious -- where was the written memo or National Intelligence Estimate laying out what the IC supposedly knew
and believed? There was nothing.
It is natural for the average American citizen to believe that something given the imprimatur of the Intelligence Community must
reflect solid intelligence and real expertise. Expertise is supposed to be the cornerstone of intelligence analysis and the coordination
that occurs within the IC. That means that only those analysts (and the agencies they represent) will be asked to contribute or comment
on a particular intelligence issue. When it comes to the question of whether Russia had launched a full out cyber attack on the Democrats
and the U.S. electoral system, only analysts from agencies with access to the intelligence and the expertise to analyze that intelligence
would be asked to write or contribute to an intelligence memorandum.
Who would that be? The answer is simple -- the CIA, the DIA, the NSA, State INR and the FBI. (One could make the case that there
are some analysts within Homeland Security that might have expertise, but they would not necessarily have access to the classified
information produced by the CIA or the NSA.) The task of figuring out what the Russians were doing and planned to do fell to five
agencies and only three of the five (the CIA, the DIA and NSA) would have had the ability to collect intelligence that could inform
the work of analysts.
Before I can explain to you how an analyst work this issue it is essential for you to understand the type of intelligence that
would be required to "prove" Russian meddling. There are four possible sources -- 1) a human source who had direct access to the
Russians who directed the operation or carried it out; 2) a signal intercept of a conversation or cyber activity that was traced
to Russian operatives; 3) a document that discloses the plan or activity observed; or 4) forensic evidence from the computer network
that allegedly was attacked.
Getting human source intel is primarily the job of CIA. It also is possible that the DIA or the FBI had human sources that could
have contributed relevant intelligence.
Signal intercepts are collected and analyzed by the NSA.
Documentary evidence, which normally is obtained from a human source but can also be picked up by NSA intercepts or even an old-fashioned
theft.
Finally there is the forensic evidence . In the case of Russian meddling there is no forensic evidence available to the IC because
the Democratic National Committee did not permit the FBI to investigate and examine the computers and the network that was allegedly
attacked.
What Do Analysts Do?
Whenever there is a "judgment" or "consensus" claimed on behalf to the IC, it means that one or more analysts have written a document
that details the evidence and presents conclusions based on that evidence. On a daily basis the average analyst confronts a flood
of classified information (normally referred to as "cables" or "messages"). When I was on the job in the 1980s I had to wade through
more than 1200 messages -- i.e., human source reports from the CIA, State Department messages with embassies around the world, NSA
intercepts, DIA reports from their officers based overseas (most in US embassies) and open source press reports. Today, thanks to
the internet, the average analyst must scan through upwards of 3000 messages. It is humanly impossible.
The basic job of an analyst is to collect as much relevant information as possible on the subject or topic that is their responsibility.
There are analysts at the CIA, the NSA, the DIA and State INR that have the job of knowing about Russian cyber activity and capabilities.
That is certain. But we are not talking about hundreds of people.
Let us move from the hypothetical to the actual. In January of 2017, DNI Jim Clapper release a report entitled, "
Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent
US Elections " (please see
here ). In subsequent testimony before the Congress, Clapper claimed that he handpicked
two dozen analysts to draft the document . That is not likely. There may have been as many as two dozen analysts who read the
final document and commented on it, but there would never be that many involved in in drafting such a document. In any event, only
analysts from the CIA, the NSA and the FBI were involved :
This report includes an analytic assessment drafted and coordinated among The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), The Federal
Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and The National Security Agency (NSA), which draws on intelligence information collected and disseminated
by those three agencies.
Limiting the drafting and clearance on this document to only the CIA, the NSA and the FBI is highly unusual because one of the
key analytical conclusions in the document identifies the Russian military intelligence organization, the GRU, as one of the perpetrators
of the cyber attack. DIA's analysts are experts on the GRU and there also are analysts in State Department's Bureau of INR who should
have been consulted. Instead, they were excluded.
Here is how the process should have worked in producing this document:
One or more analysts are asked to do a preliminary draft. It is customary in such a document for the analyst to cite specific
intelligence, using phrases such as: "According to a reliable source of proven access," when citing a CIA document or "According
to an intercept of a conversation between knowledgeable sources with access," when referencing something collected by the NSA.
The analyst does more than repeat what is claimed in the intel reports, he or she also has the job of explaining what these facts
mean or do not mean.
There always is an analyst leading the effort who has the job of integrating the contributions of the other analysts into
a coherent document. Once the document is completed in draft it is handed over to Branch Chief and then Division Chief for editing.
We do not know who had the lead, but it was either the FBI, the CIA or the NSA.
At the same time the document is being edited at originating agency, it is supposed to be sent to the other clearing agencies,
i.e. those agencies that either provided the intelligence cited in the draft (i.e., CIA, NSA, DIA, or State) or that have expertise
on the subject. As noted previously, it is highly unusual to exclude the DIA and INR.
Once all the relevant agencies clear on the content of the document, it is sent into the bowels of the DNI where it is put
into final form.
That is how the process is supposed to work. But the document produced in January 2017 was not a genuine work reflecting the views
of the "Intelligence Community." It only represented the supposed thinking (and I use that term generously) of CIA, NSA and FBI analysts.
In other words, only three of 16 agencies cleared on the document that presented four conclusions:
Russian efforts to influence the 2016 US presidential election represent the most recent expression of Moscow's longstanding
desire to undermine the US-led liberal democratic order, but these activities demonstrated a significant escalation in directness,
level of activity, and scope of effort compared to previous operations.
We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election.
Russia's goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability
and potential presidency.
We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump.
We assess Moscow will apply lessons learned from its Putin-ordered campaign aimed at the US presidential election to future
influence efforts worldwide, including against US allies and their election processes.
Sounds pretty ominous, but the language used tells a different story. The conclusions are based on assumptions and judgments.
There was nor is any actual evidence from intelligence sources showing that Vladimir Putin ordered up anything or that his government
preferred Trump over Clinton.
How do I know this? If such evidence existed -- either documentary or human source or signal intercept -- it would have been cited
in this document. Not only that. Such evidence would have corroborated the claims presented in the Steele dossier. But such evidence
was not forthcoming. If it had existed than Jim Comey could have claimed in his June 2017 testimony before Congress that the parts
of the "Dossier" had been verified. He did not do so. Testifying under oath Comey described the "Dossier" as "salacious and unverified."
It is genuinely shocking that DNI Jim Clapper, with the acquiescence of the CIA, the FBI and NSA, would produce a document devoid
of any solid intelligence. There is a way to publicly release sensitive intelligence without comprising a the original source. But
such sourcing is absent in this document.
That simple fact should tell you all you need to know. The Intelligence Community was used as a tool to misinform the public and
persuade them that Russia was guilty of something they did not do. That lie remains unchallenged.
Good summary argument, PT. Thanks. Helpful reminder.
But, makes me feel uncomfortable. Cynical scenario. I'd prefer them to be both drivers and driven, somehow stumbling into the
chronology of events. They didn't hack the DNC, after all. Crowdstrike? Steele? ...
********
But yes, all the 17 agencies Clinton alluded to in her 3rd encounter with Trump was a startling experience:
One other point on which Tacitus and I differ is the quality of the analysts in the "minors." The "bigs" often recruit analysts
from the "minors" so they can't be all that bad. And the analysts in all these agencies receive much the same data feed electronically
every day. There are exceptions to this but it is generally true. I, too, read hundreds of documents every day to keep up with
the knowledge base of the analysts whom I interrogated continuously. "How do you know that?" would have been typical. pl
"The Intelligence Community was used as a tool to misinform the public and persuade them that Russia was guilty of something they
did not do. That lie remains unchallenged.'"
Yes it was and so remains the lie unchallenged.
Conjectural garbage appears first to have been washed through the FBI, headquarters no less, then probably it picked up a Triple
A rating at the CIA, and then when the garbage got to Clapper, it was bombs away - we experts all agree. There were leaks, but
they weren't sufficient to satisfy Steele so he just delivered the garbage whole to the Media in order to make it a sure thing.
The garbage was placed securely out there in the public domain with a Triple A rating because the FBI wouldn't concern itself
with garbage, would it?
Contrast this trajectory with what the Russian policy establishment did when it concluded that the US had done something in the
Ukraine that Russia found significantly actionable: it released the taped evidence of Nuland and our Ambassador finishing off
the coup.
The whole sequence reminds me in some ways of the sub prime mortgage bond fiasco: garbage risk progressively bundled, repackaged,
rebranded and resold by big name institutions that should have known better.
I have only two questions: was it misfeasance, malfeasance, or some ugly combination of the two? And are they going to get away
with it?
Re this: " In the case of Russian meddling there is no forensic evidence available to the IC because the Democratic National Committee
did not permit the FBI to investigate and examine the computers and the network that was allegedly attacked."
To be precise, CrowdStrike did provide the FBI with allegedly "certified true images" of the DNC servers allegedly involved
in the alleged "hack." They also allegedly provided these images to FireEye and Mandiant, IIRC.
All three allegedly examined those images and concurred with CrowdStrike's analysis.
Of course, given the CrowdStrike itself is a massively compromised organization due to its founder and CEO, those "certified
true images" are themselves tainted evidence.
In addition, regardless of whether the images were true or not, the evidence allegedly contained therein is painfully inadequate
to confirm that APT28 or APT29 were involved, nor that the Russian government was involved, or even that there was a real hack
involved, and even less evidence that any emails that might have been exfiltrated were given to Wikileaks as opposed to another
leak such as that alleged by Sy Hersh to have been done by Seth Rich.
The "assessment" that Putin ordered any of this is pure mind-reading and can be utterly dismissed absent any of the other evidence
Publius points out as necessary.
The same applies to any "estimate" that the Russian government preferred Trump or wished to denigrate Clinton. Based on what
I read in pro-Russian news outlets, Russian officials took great pains to not pick sides and Putin's comments were similarly very
restrained. The main quote from Putin about Trump that emerged was mistranslated as approval whereas it was more an observation
of Trump's personality. At no time did Putin ever say he favored Trump over Clinton, even though that was a likely probability
given Clinton's "Hitler" comparison.
As an aside, I also recommend Scott Ritter's trashing of the ICA. Ritter is familiar with intelligence estimates and their
reliability based on his previous service as a UN weapons inspector in Iraq and in Russia implementing arms control treaties.
This is a wonderful explanation of the intelligence community. And I thank you for the explanation. My interpretation is: In 1990
+- Bush 41 sold us the 1st Iraq war using fudged intelligence, then Bush 43 sold us the second Iraq war using fabricated intelligence.
And now the Obama Administration tried to sell us fake intelligence in regard to Russia in order to get Clinton elected. However
inadequate my summary is it looks like the Democrats are less skilled in propaganda than the Repubs. And what else is the difference?
Mueller has had 18 months and has proceeded to reveal exactly nothing related to either Trump "collusion" with Russia nor Russia
as a state actually doing anything remotely described as "meddling."
His expected indictment of some Russians for the DNC hack is going to be more of the same in all likelihood. I predict there
will be next to zero evidence produced either that the Russians named are in fact members of APT28 or APT29 or that they had any
direct connection with either the alleged DNC hack or Wikileaks or the Russian government.
It's a witch hunt, nothing more. People holding their breath for the "slam dunk" are going to pass out soon if they haven't
already.
Mueller is investigating some aspects. But there is another aspect - the conspiracy inside law enforcement and the IC. That is also being investigated. There are
Congressional committees in particular Nunes, Goodlatte and Grassley. Then there is the DOJ IG. And today AG Sessions confirms
there is a DOJ prosecutor outside Washington investigating.
IMO, the conspiracy is significantly larger in scale and scope than anything the Russians did.
Yes, indeed we'll have to wait and see what facts Mueller reveals. But also what facts these other investigations reveal.
Thank you for setting out the geography and workings of this complex world.
Might I ask how liaison with other Intelligence Communities fits in? Is intelligence information from non-US sources such as
UK intelligence sources subject to the same process of verification and evaluation?
I ask because of the passage in your article -
"But such evidence (corroborating the Steele dossier) was not forthcoming. If it had existed than Jim Comey could have claimed
in his June 2017 testimony before Congress that the parts of the "Dossier" had been verified. He did not do so. Testifying under
oath Comey described the "Dossier" as "salacious and unverified." "
Does this leave room for the assertion that although the "Dossier" was unverified in the US it was accepted as good information
because it had been verified by UK Intelligence or by persons warranted by the UK? In other words, was UK Intelligence, or an ex-UK intelligence officer, used to get material through the US evaluation process,
material that would not have got through that US evaluation process had it originated within the US itself?
" ... was UK Intelligence, or an ex-UK intelligence officer, used to get material through the US evaluation process, material
that would not have got through that US evaluation process had it originated within the US itself?" I would say yes and especially
yes if the contact for this piece of data was conducted at the highest level within the context of the already tight liaison
between the US IC and Mi-6/GCHQ. PT may think differently. pl
Was it Hitler or Stalin who said "show me the man and I will find his crime?" As I have said before, Trumps greatest vulnerability
lies in his previous business life as an entrepreneurial hustler. If he is anything like the many like him whom I observed in
my ten business years, then he has cut corners legally somewhere in international business. they pretty much all do that. Kooshy,
a successful businessman confirmed that here a while back. These other guys were all business hustlers including Flynn and their
activities have made them vulnerable to Mueller. IMO you have to ask yourself how much you want to be governed by political hacks
and how much by hustlers. pl
hy this socialist pub would fing it surprising that former public servants seek elected office is a mystery to me. BTW, in
re all the discussion here of the IC, there are many levels in these essentially hierarchical structures and one's knowledge of
them is conditioned by the perspective from which you viewed them. pl
Re 'baby adoption' meeting between Trump, Jr. and Veselnitskaya, I recall a comment here linking to an article speculating the
email initiating the meeting originated in Europe, was set up by the playboy son of a European diplomat, and contained words to
trip data-gathering monitors which would have enabled a FISA request to have Trump, Jr. come under surveillance.
Also, the Seymour Hersh tape certainly seems authentic as far as Seth Rich being implicated in the DNC dump.
You insist (I guess you rely on MSNBC as your fact source) that Manafort, Page, etc. all "have connections to Russia or Assange."
You are using smear and guilt by association. Flynn's so-called connection to Russia was that he accepted an invite to deliver
a speech at an RT sponsored event and was paid. So what? Nothing wrong with that. Just ask Bill Clinton. Or perhaps you are referring
to the fact that Flynn also spoke to the Russian Ambassador to the US after the election in his capacity as designated National
Security Advisor. Zero justification for investigation.
Stone? He left the campaign before there had even been a primary and only had text exchanges with Assange.
Your blind hatred of Trump makes you incapable of thinking logically.
The most sarcastic irony was intended. This is what the real left looks like, its very different from Clintonite Liberals, not that I agree with their ideological
program, though I believe parts have their place.
And to your second comment, yes I agree about the complexity of institutions and how situationally constrained individual experiences
are, if that was the point.
I'll also concede my brief comments generalize very broadly, but it's hard to frame things more specific comments without direct
knowledge, such as the invaluable correspondents here. I try to avoid confirmation bias by reading broadly and try to provide
outside perspectives. My apologies if they're too far outside.
I suppose it would be interesting to see a side by side comparison of how many former IC self affiliated with which party in
choosing to run. I'm just guessing but I'll bet there's more CIA in the D column and more DIA among the Rs.
"We don't have the evidence yet because Mueller hasn't found it yet!" is a classic argument from ignorance, in that is assumes
without evidence (there's that pesky word again!) that there is something to be found.
That said, I have no doubt that Mueller will find *something*, simply because an aggressive and determined prosecutor can always
find *something*, especially if the target is engaged in higher level business or politics. A form unfiled, an irregularity in
an official document, and overly optimistic tax position.
If nothing else works, there's always the good old standby of asking question after question until the target makes a statement
that can be construed as perjury or lying to investigators.
My perspective, after reading that linked article by the WSWS, is that both, the IC and the DoD, are trying to take over the
whole US political spectrum, in fact, militarizing de facto the US political life....
Now, tell me that this is not an
intend by the MIC ( where all the former IC or DoD people finally end when they leave official positions )to take over the
government ( if more was needed after what has happened with Trump´s ) to guarantee their profit rate in a moment where
everything is crimbling....
Btw, have you read the recently released paper, "WorldWide Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community" by Daniel R.
Coats ( DNI )? You smell fear from the four corners....do not you?
Those immortal words are attributed to Lavrentiy Beria, Colonel and you are not the first to draw the comparison re Mueller's
investigation. For those who do not know Beria was head of the NKVD under Stalin.
The BBC reported this morning that a police officer who was amongst the earliest responders to the "nerve gas" poisoning of Col.
Skripal is also being treated for symptoms. How was it that many "White Helmets" who were filmed where the sarin gas was dropped
on Khan Sheikhoun last April suffered no symptoms?
That's a good way to present it political hacks vs hustlers. The fact is Flynn has pled guilty to perjury. Nothing else like collusion with the Russians.
And his sentencing is on hold
now as the judge has ordered Mueller to hand over any exculpatory evidence. Clearly something is going on his case for the judge
to do that.
Manafort has been indicted for money laundering, wire fraud, etc for activities well before the election campaign. Sure, it is good that these corrupt individuals should be investigated and prosecuted. However, this corruption is widespread
in DC. How come none of these cheering Mueller on to destroy Trump care about all the foreign money flowing to K Street? Why aren't
they calling for investigations of the Clinton Foundation or the Podesta brothers where probable cause exist of foreign money
and influence? What about Ben Cardin and all those recipients of foreign zionist money and influence? It would be nice if there
were wide ranging investigations on all those engaged in foreign influence peddling. But it seems many just want a witch hunt
to hobble Trump. It's going to be very difficult to get the Senate to convict him for obstruction of justice or tax evasion or
some charge like that.
The select group of several dozen analysts from CIA, NSA and FBI who produced the January 2017 ICA are very likely the same group
of analysts assembled by Brenner in August 2016 to form a task force examining "L'Affaire Russe" at the same time Brennan brought
that closely held report to Obama of Putin's specific instructions on an operation to damage Clinton and help Trump. I've seen
these interagency task forces set up several times to address particular info ops or cyberattack issues. Access to the work of
these task forces was usually heavily restricted. I don't know if this kind of thing has become more prevalent throughout the
IC.
I am also puzzled by the absence of DIA in the mix. When I was still working, there were a few DIA analysts who were acknowledged
throughout the IC as subject matter experts and analytical leaders in this field. On the operational side, there was never great
enthusiasm for things cyber or info ops. There were only a few lonely voices in the darkness. Meanwhile, CIA, FBI and NSA embraced
the field wholeheartedly. Perhaps those DIA analytical experts retired or moved on to CYBERCOM, NSA or CIA's Information Operations
Center.
I predict there will be next to zero evidence produced either that the Russians named are in fact members of APT28 or APT29
...
Richard, over here the type of software is categorized under Advanced Persistent Threat, and beyond that specifically labeled
the "Sofacy Group". ... I seem to prefer the more neutral description 'Advanced Persistent Threat' by Kaspersky. Yes, they seem
to be suspicious lately in the US. But I am a rather constant consumer, never mind the occasional troubles over the years.
APT: Helps to not get confused by all the respective naming patterns in the economic field over national borders. APT 1 to
29 ...? Strictly, What's the precise history of the 'Bear' label and or the specific, I assume, group of APT? ...
Ever used a datebase checking a file online? Would have made you aware of the multitude of naming patterns.
******
More ad-hoc concerning one item in your argument above. To what extend does a standard back-up system leave relevant forensic
traces? Beyond the respective image in the present? Do you know?
Admittedly, I have no knowledge about matters beyond purely private struggles. But yes, they seemed enough to get a vague glimpse
of categories in the field of attribution. Regarding suspected state actors vs the larger cybercrime scene that is.
Even mentioning those is just further evidence that something really did happen.
I appreciate you are riding our partially shared hobby horse, Fred. ;)
But admittedly this reminds me of something that felt like a debate-shift, I may be no doubt misguided here. Nitwit! In other
words I may well have some type of ideological-knot in the relevant section dealing with memory in my brain as long-term undisciplined
observer of SST.
But back on topic: the argument seemed to be that "important facts" were omitted. In other words vs earlier times were are
now centrally dealing with omission as evidence. No?
General McMaster has seen the evidence and says the fact of Russian meddling can no longer be credibly denied.
That doesn't stop the right-wing extremists from spinning fairy tales.
The right wing (re: Hannity and Limbaugh) have been trying mightily to discredit this investigation by smearing Mueller's reputation,
even though he is a conservative republican.
They are doing this so that if Mueller's report is damning, they can call it a "witch hunt."
I would think that if Trump is innocent, he would cooperate with this investigation fully.
You are insinuating that McMaster is a liar even though he has access to information that you don't.
"omission as evidence. " Incorrect. Among the omissions was the fact that the dossier was paid for by a political campaign
and that the wife of a senior DOJ lawyer's wife was working for Fusion GPS. Then there's the rest of the political motivations
left out.
If you have seen the classified information that would be necessary to back up your conclusions, it should not be discussed in
this forum. As you are well aware sources and methods cannot be made public so I fail to see how you believe this should have
been publically done. Having said that, I pretty much agree with your conclusion except for the indication that the analysts lied.
What does "hacking our elections" mean? Does it means breaking into voting systems and changing the outcome by altering votes?
Or does it mean information operations to change US voters' minds about for whom they would vote?
If the latter you must know
that we (the US) have done this many times in foreign elections, including Russian elections, Israeli elections, Italian elections,
German elections, etc., or perhaps you think that a different criterion should be applied to people who are not American.
As for
McMasters, I am unimpressed with him. He displays all the symptoms of Russophobia. He has special information? Information can
be interpreted many ways depending on one's purpose. pl
PT does not have access to the classified information underlying but your argument that "As you are well aware sources and
methods cannot be made public so I fail to see how you believe this should have been publicly done." doesn't hold water for me
since I have seen sources and methods disclosed by the government of the US many times when it felt that necessary. One example
that I have mentioned before was that of the trial of Jeffrey Sterling (merlin) for which I was an expert witness and adviser
to the federal court for four years.
In that one the CIA and DoJ forced the court to allow them to de-classify the CIA DO's operational
files on the case and read them into the record in open court. I had read all these files when they were classified at the SCI
level. IMO the perpetrators in the Steel Memo case are and were merely hiding behind claims of sources and methods protection
in order to protect themselve. pl
Mueller cleared his ridiculous indictment relating to the Russian troll farm, a requirement that at one time would have been
SOP for any FBI Office or USAtty Office bringing an indictment of this kind.
Not aware of this. Can you help me out?
No doubt vaguely familiar with public lore, in limited ways. As always.
So now we are supposed to believe unquestioningly the word of torturers, perjurers and entrapment artists, all talking about alleged
evidence that we are not allowed to see?
Did you learn nothing from the "Iraqi WMD" fiasco or the "ZOMG! Assad gassed his own peoples ZOMG!" debacle? Funny how in each of these instances, the intelligence community's lies just happened to coincide with the agenda of empire.
Ok, true. I forgot 'Steele'* was used as 'evidence'. Strictly, Pat may have helped me out considering my 'felt' "debate-shift". Indirectly. I do recall, I hesitated to try to clarify
matters for myself.
Depends on what crime the "hack" committed. Fudging on taxes or cutting corners? Big whoop. Laundering $500 mil for a buddy of
Vlad's? Now you got my attention and should have the voters' attention.
This is a political process in the end game. Clinton lied about sex in the oval Office and was tried for it. Why don't we exercise
patience in the process and see if this President should be tried?
I ain't a lawyer but don't prosecutors hold their cards (evidence) close to their chests until the court has a criminal charge
and sets a date for discovery?
Linda,
You betray your ignorance on this subject. You clearly have not understood nor comprehended what I have written. So i will put
it in CAPS for you. Please read slowly.
THIS TYPE OF DOCUMENT, IF IT HAD A SOURCE OR SOURCES BEHIND IT, WOULD REFERENCE THOSE SOURCES. AN ANALYST WOULD NOT WRITE "WE
ASSESS." IF YOU HAVE A RELIABLE HUMAN SOURCE OR A RELIABLE PIECE OF SIGINT THE YOU DO NOT HAVE TO ASSESS. YOU SIMPLY STATE, ACCORDING
TO A KNOWLEDGEABLE AND RELIABLE SOURCE.
GOT IT. And don't come back with nonsense that the sources are so sensitive that they cannot be disclose. News flash genius--the
very fact that Clapper put out this piece of dreck would have exposed the sources if they existed (but they do not). In any event,
there would be reference to sources that provided the evidence that such activity took place at the direction of Putin.
I notice other Intelligence Community Assessments also use the term "we assess" liberally. For example, the 2018 Worldwide
Threat Assessment and the 2012 ICA on Global Water Security use the "we assess" phrase throughout the documents. I hazard to guess
that is why they call these things assessments.
The 2017 ICA on Russian Interference released to the public clearly states: "This report is a declassified version of a highly
classified assessment. This document's conclusions are identical to the highly classified assessment, but this document does not
include the full supporting information, including specific intelligence on key elements of the influence campaign. Given the
redactions, we made minor edits purely for readability and flow."
I would hazard another guess that those minor edits for readability and flow are the reason that specific intelligence reports
and sources, which were left out of the unclassified ICA, are not cited in that ICA.
As far as I know, no one has reliably claimed that election systems, as in vote tallies, were ever breached. No votes were
changed after they were cast. The integrity of our election system and the 2016 election itself was maintained. Having said that,
there is plenty of evidence of Russian meddling as an influence op. I suggest you and others take a gander at the research of
someone going by the handle of @UsHadrons and several others. They are compiling a collection of FaceBook, twitter and other media
postings that emanated from the IRA and other Russian sources. The breadth of these postings is quite wide and supports the assessment
that enhancing the divides that already existed in US society was a primary Russian goal.
I pointed this stuff out to Eric Newhill a while back in one of our conversations. He jokingly noted that he may have assisted
in spreading a few of these memes. I bet a lot of people will recognize some of the stuff in this collection. That's nothing.
Recently we all learned that Michael Moore did a lot more than unwittingly repost a Russian meme. He took part in a NYC protest
march organized and pushed by Russians. This stuff is open source proof of Russian meddling.
TTG
Nice try, but that is bullshit just because recent assessments come out with sloppy language is no excuse. Go back and look at
the assessment was done for iraq to justify the war in 2003. Many sources cited because it was considered something Required to
justify going to war. As we have been told by many in the media that the Russians meddling was worse or as bad as the attack on
Pearl Harbor and 9-11. With something so serious do you want to argue that they would downplay the sourcing?
"... How did Simpson know with such confidence what the "Intelligence Community" was "saying", and who were Simpson's and Steele's sources in the "Intelligence Community"? Rooney failed to inquire. Instead, he and Simpson exchanged question and answer regarding the approach Simpson and Steele made to the FBI when they delivered their dossier. In the details of that, Simpson repeated what he had already told the Senate Judiciary Committee. ..."
"... Sources in London are divided on the question of where Steele's sources came from -- CIA, MI6, or elsewhere. What has been clear for the year in which the dossier's contents have been in public circulation is that the sources the dossier referred to as "Russian" were not. For details of the sourcing . The subsequent identification of the Maltese source Joseph Mifsud, and the Greek-American George Papadopoulos, corroborates their lack of direct Russian sources. Instead, the sources identified in the dossier were either Americans, Americans of Russian ethnic origin, or Russians with no direct knowledge repeating hearsay three or four times removed from source. ..."
"... Another reported version of the FIFA contract is that Steele, Burrows and Orbis were hired by the British Football Association to collect materials on FIFA corruption, and provide them to the FBI and other US investigators, and then to the press. The scheme's objective was reportedly to advance the British bidding for the World Cup in 2018 or 2022 by discrediting the rival bids from Russia and Qatar. Click to read . Were MI6 and CIA sources mobilized by Orbis to feed the FBI with evidence the US investigators were unable to turn up, or was Orbis the conduit through which disinformation targeting Russia was fed to make it appear more credible to the FBI, and to the media? ..."
"... US Congressional investigators have so far failed to notice the similarities between the FIFA and the Trump dossier operations. Early this month two Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee announced that they have called for a Justice Department and FBI investigation of Steele for providing false information to the FBI. The provision of the US code making lying a federal crime requires the falsehoods occur "within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the Government of the United States." Simpson has testified that when Steele briefed the FBI on the dossier, he did so at meetings in Rome, Italy. ..."
"... With Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, there is some evidence that Clinton and Co. actually wanted to run against Donald Trump, and tried to get their allies to manipulate the Republican primary in favor of a Trump victory (hence all the free corporate media coverage of the Donald). The dossier, fabricated or not, seems to have been one of many 'ace in the holes' that the Clinton campaign thought they could use to discredit Trump (including the Access Hollywood tape, etc.) in the general election. If so, this strategy really blew up in their face – they thought they could manipulate the process, so they could ignore the Rust Belt concerns, and that's what handed Trump the presidency. ..."
"... If the Clintonites were to admit this, however, they'd have to step down from party leadership and let the Sanders Democrats take over, and that's what this is really all about now, their effort to prevent that outcome. ..."
"... And I say "fed to him" when I'm in a generous mood, giving him the benefit of the doubt, because usually I am of the opinion that he's either a really crappy CIA agent posing as a journalist or just a garden variety rat f*!@er. A black job political operative, stitching together a few almost-believable "facts" and out-and-out fabrications with squishy words like "collusion" and "ties." ..."
"... The London experts believe the Senate Committee transcript shows Simpson and Steele were hired for the black job of discrediting the target of their research, Trump; did a poor job; failed in 2016; and now are engaged in bitter recriminations against each other to avoid multi-million dollar court penalties. ..."
"... A source at a London firm which is larger and better known than Steele's Orbis says "standard due diligence means getting to the truth. It's confidential to the client, and not leaked. There are also black jobs, white jobs, and red jobs. Black means the client wants you to dig up dirt on the target, and make it look credible for publishing in the press. White means the client wants you to clear him of the wrongdoing which he's being accused of in the media or the marketplace; it's also leaked to the press. A red job is where the client pays the due diligence firm to hire a journalist to find out what he knows and what he's likely to publish, in order to bribe or stop him. The Steele dossier on Trump is an obvious black job. Too obvious." ..."
"... A bigger bombshell, which of course none of them mentioned, is that Simpson, with his client's consent, was secretly briefing Clinton-friendly reporters on information from Steele's memos, and they used it to write stories based on "unnamed sources." He even admitted that he didn't verify the information before feeding it to the media, said he didn't feel he needed to, because it came from a trustworthy source. Where have we heard that before? ..."
"... I'm wondering why it's that much of a stretch to believe that the CIA might have engineered the whole thing. It's well-established that the State Department often acts as a cover for the CIA, and the agency under Secretary Clinton had a strong anti-Russia faction that's on the record as meddling in Ukraine's presidential election. And how much doubt could there be that both Clintons kept the CIA connections they made while in office? ..."
"... Then there was the whole "Grizzly Steppe" report just before Trump's inauguration, presented as a consensus among "17 intelligence agencies" that the Russians "hacked the election" to help Trump win. ..."
"... I'm not 100-percent convinced that U.S. intelligence was behind the dossier, but it's enough of a possibility that I'm not writing it off as some nutty "conspiracy theory." ..."
"... Few in the NC commentariat, at least from what I saw, had any problem accepting that the DNC and the Clinton campaign funded the dossier, so I'm wondering why it's that much of a stretch to believe that the CIA might have engineered the whole thing. ..."
"... In fact I am fairly certain that it is the case, although from what I understand the FBI and MI6 were also involved. ..."
According to Simpson, "foreign intelligence services hacking American political operations is not that unusual, actually, and
there's a lot of foreign intelligence services that play in American elections." He mentioned the Chinese and the Indians, not the
Israelis. The Mossad, Simpson did tell the Committee, was his source for his belief that Russian intelligence has been operating
through the Jewish Orthodox Chabad movement, and the Russian Orthodox Church. "The Orthodox church is also an arm of the Russian
State now the Mossad guys used to tell me about how the Russians were laundering money through the Orthodox church in Israel, and
that it was intelligence operations."
There are just two references in the Committee transcript to the CIA. One was a passing remark to imply the Russians cannot "break[ing]
into the CIA, [so instead] you are breaking into, you know, places where, you know, an open society leaves open."
The second was a bombshell. It dropped during questioning by Congressman Thomas Rooney (right), a 3-term Republican representative
from Florida with a career as an army lawyer. Rooney asked Simpson: "Do you or anyone else independently verify or corroborate any
information in the dossier?"
Simpson replied by saying, "Yes. Well, numerous things in the dossier have been verified. You know, I don't have access to the
intelligence or law enforcement information that I see made reference to, but, you know, things like, you know, the Russian Government
has been investigating Hillary Clinton and has a lot of information about her."
Then Simpson contradicted himself, disclosing what he had just denied. "When the original memos came in saying that the Kremlin
was mounting a specific operation to get Donald Trump elected President , that was not what the Intelligence Community was saying.
The Intelligence Community was saying they are just seeking to disrupt our election and our political process, and that this is sort
of kind of just a generally nihilistic, you know, trouble-making operation. And, you know, Chris turned out to be right, it was specifically
designed to elect Donald Trump President."
How did Simpson know with such confidence what the "Intelligence Community" was "saying", and who were Simpson's and Steele's
sources in the "Intelligence Community"? Rooney failed to inquire. Instead, he and Simpson exchanged question and answer regarding
the approach Simpson and Steele made to the FBI when they delivered their dossier. In the details of that, Simpson repeated what
he had already told the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Rooney then asked what contact had been made with the CIA or "any other intelligence officials". Simpson claimed he didn't understand
the question at first, then he stumbled.
What Simpson was concealing in the two pauses, reported in the transcript as hyphens, Rooney did not realize. Simpson was implying
that none from Fusion GPS, his consulting company, had been in contact with the CIA, nor him personally. But Simpson left open that
Steele had been in contact with the CIA. Rooney followed with a question about "anyone", but that was so imprecise, Simpson recovered
his confidence to say "No". That was a cover-up -- and the House Intelligence Committee let it drop noiselessly.
Intelligence community sources and colleagues who know Simpson and Steele say Simpson was notorious at the Wall Street Journal
for coming up with conspiracy theories for which the evidence was missing or unreliable. He told the Committee that disbelief on
the part of his editors and management had been one of his reasons for leaving the newspaper. "One of the reasons why I left the
Wall Street Journal was because I wanted to write more stories about Russian influence in Washington, D.C., on both the Democrats
and the Republicans eventually the Journal lost interest in that subject. And I was frustrated that was where I left my journalism
career."
When Simpson was asked "do you -- did you find anything to -- that you verified as false in the dossier, since or during?" Simpson
replied: "I have not seen anything -- ". Note the hypthen, the stenographer's signal that Simpson was pausing.
"[Question]. So everything in that dossier, as far as you're concerned, is true or could be true?"
"MR. SIMPSON: I didn't say that. What I said was it was credible at the time it came in. We were able to corroborate various things
that supported its credibility."
Sources in London are divided on the question of where Steele's sources came from -- CIA, MI6, or elsewhere. What has been
clear for the year in which the dossier's contents have been in public circulation is that the sources the dossier referred to as
"Russian" were not. For details of the
sourcing . The subsequent identification of the Maltese source Joseph Mifsud, and the Greek-American George Papadopoulos, corroborates
their lack of
direct Russian sources. Instead, the sources identified in the dossier were either Americans, Americans of Russian ethnic origin,
or Russians with no direct knowledge repeating hearsay three or four times removed from source.
So were the allegations of the dossier manufactured by a CIA disinformation unit, and fed back to the US through the British agent,
Steele? Or were they a Simpson conspiracy theory of the type that failed to pass veracity testing when Simpson was at the Wall Street
Journal? The House Intelligence Committee failed to inquire.
One independent clue is what financial and other links Simpson and Steele and their consulting firms, Fusion GPS and Orbis Business
Intelligence, have had with US Government agencies other than the FBI, and what US Government contracts they were paid for, before
the Republican and Democratic Party organizations commissioned the anti-Trump job?
The House Committee has subpoenaed business records from Fusion, but Simpson's lawyers say they will refuse to hand them over.
The financial records of Steele's firm are openly accessible through the UK government company registry, Companies House. Click to
read here .
Because the Trump dossier work ran from the second half of 2015 to November 2016, the financial reports of Orbis for the financial
years ending March 31, 2016, and March 31, 2017, are the primary sources. For FY 2016 and FY 2017, open this
link to read.
The papers reveal that Orbis was a small firm with no more than 7 employees. Steele's business partner and co-shareholder, Christopher
Burrows, is another former MI6 spy. They had been hoping for MI6 support of their private business, but it failed to materialize,
says an London intelligence source. "Chris Burrows is another from the same background. They all hope to be Hakluyt [a leading commercial
intelligence operation in London] but didn't get the nod on departure."
They do not report the Orbis income. Instead, for 2016 the company filings indicate Ł155,171 in cash at the bank, and income of Ł245,017
owed by clients and contractors. Offsetting that figure, Orbis owed Ł317,848 -- to whom and for what purposes is not reported. The
unaudited accounts show Orbis's profit jumped from Ł121,046 in 2015 to Ł199,223 in 2016, and Ł441,089 in 2017.
The financial data are complicated by the operation by Steele and Burrows of a second company, Orbis Business Intelligence International,
a subsidiary they created in 2010, a year after the parent company was formed. Follow its affairs
here .
According to British press
reports , Orbis and Steele
were paid Ł200,000 for the dossier. Simpson told the House Intelligence Committee the sum was much less -- $160,000 (about Ł114,000).
Simpson's firm, he also testified, was being paid at a rate of about $50,000 per month for a total of about $320,000. If the British
sources are more accurate than Simpson's testimony, Steele's takings from the dossier represented roughly half the profit on the
Orbis balance-sheet.
British sources also report that a US Government agency paid for Orbis to work on evidence and allegations of corruption at the
world soccer federation, Fédération Internationale de Football (FIFA). Indictments in this case were issued by the US Department
of Justice in
May 2015 , and the following
December . What role the two-partner British consultancy played in the complex investigations by teams from the Justice Department,
the FBI and also the Internal Revenue Service is unclear. That Steele, Burrows and Orbis depended on US government sources for their
financial well-being appears to be certain.
Another reported version of the FIFA contract is that Steele, Burrows and Orbis were hired by the British Football Association
to collect materials on FIFA corruption, and provide them to the FBI and other US investigators, and then to the press. The scheme's
objective was reportedly to advance the British bidding for the World Cup in 2018 or 2022 by discrediting the rival bids from Russia
and Qatar. Click to
read . Were MI6 and CIA sources mobilized by Orbis to feed the FBI with evidence the US investigators were unable to turn up,
or was Orbis the conduit through which disinformation targeting Russia was fed to make it appear more credible to the FBI, and to
the media?
US Congressional investigators have so far failed to notice the similarities between the FIFA and the Trump dossier operations.
Early this month two Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee
announced that they
have called for a Justice Department and FBI investigation of Steele for providing false information to the FBI. The
provision of the US code making lying a federal crime
requires the falsehoods occur "within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the Government of the
United States." Simpson has testified that when Steele briefed the FBI on the dossier, he did so at meetings in Rome, Italy.
Now then, Part I and this
sequel of the Simpson-Steele story having been read and thoroughly mulled over, what can the meaning be?
In the short run, this case was a black job assigned by Republican Party candidates for president, then the Democratic National
Committee, for the purpose of discrediting Trump in favour of Hillary Clinton. It failed on Election Day in 2016; the Democrats are
still trying.
In the long run, the case is a measurement of the life, or the half-life, of truth. Giuseppe di Lampedusa wrote once that nowhere
has truth so short a life as in Sicily. On his clock, that was five minutes. He didn't know the United States, or shall we say the
stretch from Washington through New York to the North End of Boston. There, truth has an even shorter life. Scarcely a second.
"The primary reason I generally don't believe in conspiracies is that they can usually be better explained as the result of
sheer incompetence and hubris."
I divide conspiracy notions into two categories: grand mal and petit mal . The former are generally implausible
due to the large number of participants involved and while occassionally attempted, they are typically exposed pretty quickly.
They may still have significant effects – for example, there was a large conspiracy to sell the Iraqi WMD story to the public,
involving top levels of the British and American governments and a good section of the corporate media. That's the grand mal
version.
Petit mal is your typical small criminal conspiracy. The FBI, for example, almost always includes 'conspiracy to commit
mail fraud' on the list of federal charges.
With Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, there is some evidence that Clinton and Co. actually wanted to run against Donald
Trump, and tried to get their allies to manipulate the Republican primary in favor of a Trump victory (hence all the free corporate
media coverage of the Donald). The dossier, fabricated or not, seems to have been one of many 'ace in the holes' that the Clinton
campaign thought they could use to discredit Trump (including the Access Hollywood tape, etc.) in the general election. If so,
this strategy really blew up in their face – they thought they could manipulate the process, so they could ignore the Rust Belt
concerns, and that's what handed Trump the presidency.
If the Clintonites were to admit this, however, they'd have to step down from party leadership and let the Sanders Democrats
take over, and that's what this is really all about now, their effort to prevent that outcome.
I pay pretty close attention to this topic and I must say I sometimes wonder if the Russians haven't sold the rope to the American
political elite. I read all 311 pages of Simpson's testimony. I was struck that much of what he was "fed" by Steele confirmed
his "OMG Russia corruption" biases.
And I say "fed to him" when I'm in a generous mood, giving him the benefit of the doubt, because usually I am of the opinion
that he's either a really crappy CIA agent posing as a journalist or just a garden variety rat f*!@er. A black job political operative,
stitching together a few almost-believable "facts" and out-and-out fabrications with squishy words like "collusion" and "ties."
London due diligence firms say the record of Simpson's firm Fusion GPS and Steele's Orbis Business Intelligence operations
in the US has discredited them in the due diligence market. The London experts believe the Senate Committee transcript
shows Simpson and Steele were hired for the black job of discrediting the target of their research, Trump; did a poor job;
failed in 2016; and now are engaged in bitter recriminations against each other to avoid multi-million dollar court penalties.
A source at a London firm which is larger and better known than Steele's Orbis says "standard due diligence means getting
to the truth. It's confidential to the client, and not leaked. There are also black jobs, white jobs, and red jobs. Black means
the client wants you to dig up dirt on the target, and make it look credible for publishing in the press. White means the client
wants you to clear him of the wrongdoing which he's being accused of in the media or the marketplace; it's also leaked to the
press. A red job is where the client pays the due diligence firm to hire a journalist to find out what he knows and what he's
likely to publish, in order to bribe or stop him. The Steele dossier on Trump is an obvious black job. Too obvious."
I read all 311 pages of Simpson's testimony. I was struck that much of what he was "fed" by Steele confirmed his "OMG Russia
corruption" biases.
Same here, but not just about what he was fed by Steele. Simpson claimed to have done some of his own research and said it
was consistent with what he got from Steele.
I'm about three-quarters of the way through the transcript of Simpson's interrogation by the House Intelligence Committee,
and I've read all 312 pages of the Senate Judiciary Committee transcript, which bears little resemblance to what was reported
in the major media – shocking, I know.
Among the "bombshells" the mainstream reported was "proof" that it wasn't the dossier that launched the FBI's investigation
of Trump, and therefore the dossier couldn't have been used as justification for a FISA warrant. A bigger bombshell, which
of course none of them mentioned, is that Simpson, with his client's consent, was secretly briefing Clinton-friendly reporters
on information from Steele's memos, and they used it to write stories based on "unnamed sources." He even admitted that he didn't
verify the information before feeding it to the media, said he didn't feel he needed to, because it came from a trustworthy source.
Where have we heard that before?
Few in the NC commentariat, at least from what I saw, had any problem accepting that the DNC and the Clinton campaign funded
the dossier, so I'm wondering why it's that much of a stretch to believe that the CIA might have engineered the whole thing.
It's well-established that the State Department often acts as a cover for the CIA, and the agency under Secretary Clinton had
a strong anti-Russia faction that's on the record as meddling in Ukraine's presidential election. And how much doubt could there
be that both Clintons kept the CIA connections they made while in office?
Then there was the whole "Grizzly Steppe" report just before Trump's inauguration, presented as a consensus among "17 intelligence
agencies" that the Russians "hacked the election" to help Trump win.
I'm not 100-percent convinced that U.S. intelligence was behind the dossier, but it's enough of a possibility that I'm
not writing it off as some nutty "conspiracy theory."
Few in the NC commentariat, at least from what I saw, had any problem accepting that the DNC and the Clinton campaign funded
the dossier, so I'm wondering why it's that much of a stretch to believe that the CIA might have engineered the whole thing.
FWIW this NC commenter has never had any problem believing that this may be the case. In fact I am fairly certain that
it is the case, although from what I understand the FBI and MI6 were also involved.
Adding: Heh. I posted this before looking at Rev Kev's link to the Raimondo article, which comes to the same conclusions. Interesting
times!
I believe that Seth Abramson or someone put photographs to the Steele dossier showing people in the places & at the times delineated
in the Steele dossier. From the very first Steele said he would not & could not reveal his sources. It was from the first indicated
that it would be to the FBI & CIA to discover. He said he believed that his sources were credible.
When I was studying Intelligence services the CIA was said to be the private army of the CIA. These days I don't know exactly
who the CIA works for, or answers to. I certainly don't think well of the CIA believing they are wrapped up working for their
Front businesses more than focusing on the mission of spying in the interests of the American people. Of private intelligence
companies I get what I can from IHS Jane's. That the CIA lost 20 assets, human beings, in China for incompetent secret communications
methods would lead professionals to withhold as much of identities as possible.
For awhile there I believe Steele was worried about his own health.
David Corn at Mother Jones was reticent to break the story. So now what I see to look for is what Steele said needed to be
done, & that being what Mueller is doing at the behest of the DOJ.
The US has been at war, albeit Hybrid war since the imposition of sanctions for their violations of international law as regarded
the annexation of Crimea & the attack on the Ukraine. Sanctions are Economic Warfare.
That the US feels the right to engage in warfare of any kind Economic or Hot over violations of International Law leads me
to believe that the UN will fail to prevent the apocalyptic riot. But that as regards Trump becomes neither here nor there, correct?
William Binney, former NSA technical official and whistleblower, comments on the FISA memo, that has apparently just been released.
Obviously, a major development in 'Russia-gate'.
"... Not only large elements of the American and British intelligence services, but the 'Borgistas' in both countries, now including large elements of the academic/research apparatus and most of the MSM, really are joined at the hip. ..."
"... A relevant element of such collusion has to do with the creation of the Yeltsin-era Russian oligarchy. On this, a crucial source are interviews given by Christian Michel and Christopher Samuelson, who used to run a company called 'Valmet', to Catherine Belton, then with the 'Moscow Times', later with the 'Financial Times', in the days leading up to the conviction of Mikhail Khodorkovsky in May 2005. ..."
"... On the subject of the competence of MI6, what seems to me a total apposite judgement was provided by the man whom Steele and his associates framed over the death of Litvinenko, Andrei Lugovoi. ..."
"... 'Litvinenko used to say: They are total retards in the UK, they believe everything we are telling them about Russia.' ..."
"... Throughout life, I have repeatedly come across a game played on certain kinds of élite Westerners, which, in honor of Kipling, who gave brilliant depictions of it, I call 'fool the stupid Sahib.' Both people from other societies, and their own, often play this game, and the underlying mentality not infrequently involves a combination of a sense of inferiority and contempt for the gullibility of people who are thought of -- commonly with justice -- as not knowing how the world really works, and thus being open to manipulation if one tells them what they want to hear. ..."
"... Irrespective of whether Lugovoi was accurately reporting what Litvinenko said, however, a mass of 'open source' evidence testifies to the extreme credulity with which officials and journalists on both sides of the Atlantic treat claims made by members of the 'StratCom' groups created by the oligarchs whose initial training was done by Valmet. ..."
"... (One good example is provided by the way that Sir Robert Owen and his team took what the surviving members of the Berezovsky group told them on trust. Another is the extraordinary way MSM figures continue to claim made by Khodorkovsky and his associates seriously.) ..."
"... When I discover that John Sipher is a 'former member of the CIA's Clandestine Service', who also worked 'on Russian espionage issues overseas, and in support of FBI counterintelligence investigations domestically,' then his apologetics for Steele seem not only to suggest he may be another 'total retard' -- but to point towards how the Anglo-American collaboration actually worked. (See https://www.politico.eu/article/devin-nunes-donald-trump-the-smearing-of-christopher-steele/ .) ..."
"... Another characteristic of these 'retards' is that they seem unable to get their story straight. In his piece last September defending the dossier, Sipher wrote that 'While in London he worked as the personal handler of the Russian defector Alexander Litvinenko.' Apparently he didn't know that the 'party line' had changed -- that when Steele emerged from hiding in May, his mouthpiece, Luke Harding of the 'Guardian', had explained: 'As head of MI6's Russia desk, Steele led the inquiry into Litvinenko's polonium poisoning, quickly concluding that this was a Russian state plot. He did not meet Litvinenko and was not his case officer, friends said.' ..."
"... The whole situation with Russia, of which, be it her economy, history, military, culture etc., is not known to those people, is a monstrous empirical evidence of a complete professional inadequacy of most people populating this bubble. ..."
"... Most of those people are badly educated (I am not talking about worthless formal degrees they hold) and cultured. In dry scientific language it is called a "confirmation bias", in a simple human one it is called being ignorant snobs, that is why this IC-academic-political-media "environment" in case of Russia prefers openly anti-Russian "sources" because those "sources" reiterate to them what they want to hear to start with, thus Chalabi Moment is being continuously reproduced. ..."
1. Not only large elements of the American and British intelligence services, but the 'Borgistas' in both countries, now
including large elements of the academic/research apparatus and most of the MSM, really are joined at the hip.
It is thus an open question how far it is useful to speak of British intelligence intervening in the American election, rather
than the American section of the 'Borg' and their partners in crime 'across the pond' colluding in an attempt to mount such an
intervention with a greater appearance of 'plausible deniability.'
2. A relevant element of such collusion has to do with the creation of the Yeltsin-era Russian oligarchy. On this, a crucial
source are interviews given by Christian Michel and Christopher Samuelson, who used to run a company called 'Valmet', to Catherine
Belton, then with the 'Moscow Times', later with the 'Financial Times', in the days leading up to the conviction of Mikhail Khodorkovsky
in May 2005.
This describes the education in 'Western banking practices' given to him and his Menatep associates by Michel and Samuelson,
starting as early as 1989, and also their crucial involvement with Berezovsky.
We are told by Belton that: 'With the help of British government connections, Valmet had already built up a wealthy clientele
that included the ruling family of Dubai.' As to large ambitions which Michel and Samuelson had, she tells us: 'Used to dealing
with the riches of Arab leaders, they found Menatep, by comparison still relatively small fry. By 1994, however, Menatep had started
moving into all kinds of industries, from chemicals to textiles to metallurgy. But for Valmet, which by that time had already
partnered up with one of the oldest banks in the United States, Riggs Bank, and for Menatep, the real prize was oil.'
Try Googling 'Riggs Bank' -- a lot of interesting information emerges, on matters such as their involvement with Prince Bandar.
So, what we are dealing with is a joint Anglo-American attempt to create a 'comprador' oligarchy who could loot Russia's raw materials
resources.
3. On the subject of the competence of MI6, what seems to me a total apposite judgement was provided by the man whom Steele
and his associates framed over the death of Litvinenko, Andrei Lugovoi.
In the press conference in May 2007 where he responded to the request for his extradition submitted by the Crown Prosecution
Service, he claimed that: 'Litvinenko used to say: They are total retards in the UK, they believe everything we are telling them
about Russia.'
It seems to me quite likely, although obviously not certain, that this did indeed represent the view of many of the 'StratCom'
operators around Berezovsky of people like Steele.
Throughout life, I have repeatedly come across a game played on certain kinds of élite Westerners, which, in honor of
Kipling, who gave brilliant depictions of it, I call 'fool the stupid Sahib.' Both people from other societies, and their own,
often play this game, and the underlying mentality not infrequently involves a combination of a sense of inferiority and contempt
for the gullibility of people who are thought of -- commonly with justice -- as not knowing how the world really works, and thus
being open to manipulation if one tells them what they want to hear.
Some fragments of a mass of evidence that this was precisely what Litvinenko did were presented by me in a previous post.
Irrespective of whether Lugovoi was accurately reporting what Litvinenko said, however, a mass of 'open source' evidence
testifies to the extreme credulity with which officials and journalists on both sides of the Atlantic treat claims made by members
of the 'StratCom' groups created by the oligarchs whose initial training was done by Valmet.
(One good example is provided by
the way that Sir Robert Owen and his team took what the surviving members of the Berezovsky group told them on trust. Another
is the extraordinary way MSM figures continue to claim made by Khodorkovsky and his associates seriously.)
Accordingly, when I read of anyone treating practically anything that Steele claims as plausible, I try to work out how much
of a 'retard' they must be, starting with a baseline of about 50%.
4. In the light of the way that the reliance on the dossier in the FISA applications absent meaningful corroboration is being
defended by Comey and others on the basis that Steele was 'considered reliable due to his past work with the Bureau', the question
is how many people in the FBI must be considered to have a 'retard' rating somewhere over 90%.
When I discover that John Sipher is a 'former member of the CIA's Clandestine Service', who also worked 'on Russian espionage
issues overseas, and in support of FBI counterintelligence investigations domestically,' then his apologetics for Steele seem
not only to suggest he may be another 'total retard' -- but to point towards how the Anglo-American collaboration actually worked.
(See https://www.politico.eu/article/devin-nunes-donald-trump-the-smearing-of-christopher-steele/
.)
5. Another characteristic of these 'retards' is that they seem unable to get their story straight. In his piece last September
defending the dossier, Sipher wrote that 'While in London he worked as the personal handler of the Russian defector Alexander
Litvinenko.' Apparently he didn't know that the 'party line' had changed -- that when Steele emerged from hiding in May, his mouthpiece,
Luke Harding of the 'Guardian', had explained: 'As head of MI6's Russia desk, Steele led the inquiry into Litvinenko's polonium
poisoning, quickly concluding that this was a Russian state plot. He did not meet Litvinenko and was not his case officer, friends
said.'
6. In his attempts to defend the credibility of the dossier, Sipher also explains that its -- supposed -- author was President
of the Cambridge Union. Here, two profiles of Steele on the 'MailOnline' site are of interest.
In one a contemporary is quoted:
"'When you took part in politics at the Cambridge Union, it was very spiteful and full of people spreading rumours," he said.
"Steele fitted right in. He was very ambitious, ruthless and frankly not a very nice guy."
The other tells us that he born in Aden in 1964, and that his father was in the military, before going on to say that contemporaries
recall an 'avowedly Left-wing student with CND credentials', while a book on the Union's history says he was a 'confirmed socialist'.
From my own -- undistinguished and mildly irreverent -- Cambridge career, I can testify that there was indeed a certain kind
of student politician, whom, if I may mix metaphors, fellow-students were perfectly well aware were going to arse-lick their way
up some greasy pole or other in later life.
It was a world with which I came back in contact when, after living abroad and a protracted apprenticeship in print journalism,
I accidentally found employment with what was then one of the principal television current affairs programmes in Britain. In the
early 'Eighties I overlapped with Peter -- now Lord -- Mandelson, who became one of the principal architects of 'New Labour.'
7. Given that at this time British intelligence agencies were somewhat paranoid about CND, there is a small puzzle as to why
on his graduation in 1986 Steele should have been recruited by MI6. In more paranoid moments I wonder whether he did not already
have intelligence contacts through his father, and served as a 'stool pigeon' as a student.
But then, people like Sir John Scarlett and Sir Richard Dearlove may simply have concluded that someone with 'form' in smearing
rivals at the Union was ideally suited for the kind of organisation they wanted to run.
8. From experience with Mandelson, and others, there are however other relevant things about this type. One is that they commonly
love Machiavellian intrigue, and are very good at it, within the worlds they know and understand.
If however they have to try to cope with alien environments, where they do not know the people and where such intrigues are
played much more ruthlessly, they are liable to find themselves hopelessly outclassed. (This can happen not simply with the politics
of the post-Soviet space and the Middle East, but with some of the murkier undergrowths of local politics in London.)
Another limitation on their understanding is that the last thing they are interested in his how the world outside the bubbles
they prefer to inhabit operates, and they commonly have absolutely contempt for 'deplorables', be they Russian, British or American.
This can lead to political misjudgements.
9. So it is not really so surprising that, when Berezovsky's 'StratCom' people told them that the Putin 'sistema' really was
the 'return of Karla', people like Steele believed everything they said, precisely as Lugovoi brought out.
There is I think every reason to believe that, from first to last, the intrigues in which he has been involved have involved
close collusion between them and elements in American intelligence -- including the FBI. As a result, a lot of people on both
sides of the Atlantic have repeatedly got into complex undercover contests in the post-Soviet space which ran right out of control,
creating a desperate need for cover-ups. A similar pattern applies in relation to the activities of such people in the Middle
East.
Another limitation on their understanding is that the last thing they are interested in his how the world outside the bubbles
they prefer to inhabit operates, and they commonly have absolutely contempt for 'deplorables', be they Russian, British or American.
This can lead to political misjudgements.
It is not just "can" it very often does. The whole situation with Russia, of which, be it her economy, history, military,
culture etc., is not known to those people, is a monstrous empirical evidence of a complete professional inadequacy of most people
populating this bubble.
Most of those people are badly educated (I am not talking about worthless formal degrees they hold) and cultured. In dry
scientific language it is called a "confirmation bias", in a simple human one it is called being ignorant snobs, that is why this
IC-academic-political-media "environment" in case of Russia prefers openly anti-Russian "sources" because those "sources" reiterate
to them what they want to hear to start with, thus Chalabi Moment is being continuously reproduced.
In case of Iraq, as an example, it is a tragedy but at least the world is relatively safe. With Russia, as I stated many times
for years--they simply have no idea what they are dealing with. None. It is expected from people who are briefed by "sources"
such as Russian fugitive London Oligarchy or ultra-liberal and fringe urban Russian "tusovka". Again, the level of "Russian Studies"
in Anglophone world is appalling. In fact, it is clear and present danger since removes or misinterprets crucial information about
the only nation in the world which can annihilate the United States completely in such a light that it creates a real danger even
for a disastrous military confrontation. I would go on a limb here and say that US military on average is much better aware of
Russia and not only in purely military terms. In some sense--it is an exception. But even there, there are some trends (and they
are not new) which are very worrisome.
"... An investigation of the State Dept should bring the focus around to issues of substance. ..."
"... DNC collusion with Ukrainian IT "Security" company Crowdstrike tied to the Atlantic Council to push false narrative of DNC hack and malware to influence US election ..."
"... DNC consultant Andrea Chalupa, unregistered foreign agent whose entire family is tied to Ukrainian Intelligence ..."
"... Further research revealed that Andrea Chalupa and her two siblings are actively involved with other sources of digital terrorism, disinformation and spamming, like TrolleyBust com, stopfake org, and informnapalm. ..."
"... Ms. Chalupa kept cooperating with the Khodorovky owned magazine "The Interpreter." Now, it's a part of RFE/RL run by the government funded Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) whose director, Dr. Leon Aron also a director of Russian Studies at the American Enterprise Institute ..."
Sessions is not recused from a Ukraine investigation. An investigation of the State Dept should bring the focus around
to issues of substance.
Obama repeal of Smith-Mundt to allow State Dept propaganda in the domestic US
Obama coup of Ukraine
Obama / McCain support of Nazis in Ukraine
Adam Schiff relationship with Ukrainian arms dealer Igor Pasternak
DNC collusion with Ukrainian IT "Security" company Crowdstrike tied to the Atlantic Council to push false narrative
of DNC hack and malware to influence US election
DNC consultant Andrea Chalupa, unregistered foreign agent whose entire family is tied to Ukrainian Intelligence
Further research revealed that Andrea Chalupa and her two siblings are actively involved with other sources of digital
terrorism, disinformation and spamming, like TrolleyBust com, stopfake org, and informnapalm.
Ms. Chalupa kept cooperating with the Khodorovky owned magazine "The Interpreter." Now, it's a part of RFE/RL run by
the government funded Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) whose director, Dr. Leon Aron also a director of Russian Studies
at the American Enterprise Institute.
"... Six U.S. agencies created a stealth task force, spearhead by CIA's Brennan, to run domestic surveillance on Trump associates and possibly Trump himself. ..."
"... To feign ignorance and to seemingly operate within U.S. laws, the agencies freelanced the wiretapping of Trump associates to the British spy agency GCHQ. ..."
"... GCHQ did not work from London or the UK. In fact the spy agency worked from NSA's headquarters in Fort Meade, MD with direct NSA supervision and guidance to conduct sweeping surveillance on Trump associates. ..."
"... Following the Trump Tower sit down, GCHQ began digitally wiretapping Manafort, Trump Jr., and Kushner. ..."
"... OK Ron Johnson (R-WI), the author was Steven Boyd, Assistant for Legislative Affairs / DOJ - Hold him in contempt of congress. ..."
Six U.S. agencies created a stealth task force, spearhead by CIA's Brennan, to run
domestic surveillance on Trump associates and possibly Trump himself.
To feign ignorance and to seemingly operate within U.S. laws, the agencies freelanced
the wiretapping of Trump associates to the British spy agency GCHQ.
The decision to insert GCHQ as a back door to eavesdrop was sparked by the denial of
two FISA Court warrant applications filed by the FBI to seek wiretaps of Trump
associates.
GCHQ did not work from London or the UK. In fact the spy agency worked from NSA's
headquarters in Fort Meade, MD with direct NSA supervision and guidance to conduct sweeping
surveillance on Trump associates.
The illegal wiretaps were initiated months before the controversial Trump dossier
compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele.
The Justice Department and FBI set up the meeting at Trump Tower between Trump Jr.,
Manafort and Kushner with controversial Russian officials to make Trump's associates appear
compromised.
Following the Trump Tower sit down, GCHQ began digitally wiretapping Manafort, Trump
Jr., and Kushner.
After the concocted meeting by the Deep State, the British spy agency could officially
justify wiretapping Trump associates as an intelligence front for NSA because the Russian
lawyer at the meeting Natalia Veselnitskaya was considered an international security risk
and prior to the June sit down was not even allowed entry into the United States or the UK,
federal sources said.
By using GCHQ, the NSA and its intelligence partners had carved out a loophole to
wiretap Trump without a warrant. While it is illegal for U.S. agencies to monitor phones
and emails of U.S. citizens inside the United States absent a warrant, it is not illegal
for British intelligence to do so. Even if the GCHQ was tapping Trump on U.S. soil at Fort
Meade.
The wiretaps, secured through illicit scheming, have been used by U.S. Special Counsel
Robert Mueller's probe of alleged Russian collusion in the 2016 election, even though the
evidence is considered "poisoned fruit."
OK Ron Johnson (R-WI), the author was Steven Boyd, Assistant for Legislative Affairs / DOJ
- Hold him in contempt of congress. Have him arrested. During questioning, press him to the
wall, get him to tell him who in the FBI told him 'they couldn't find them.' Then go arrest
that guy too. Rinse and repeat. Look what these bastards did to Mike Flynn. Go get 'em.
NOW!!!
One of the silver linings in this mess is the clear view that the FBI is ridiculously
compromised & has chucked its standard of non-political leanings right out the window.
Shutting it down may have once seemed a long shot, now maybe not so much. If you haven't
noticed, another Trump boomerang has happened to the Left with their favorite word starting
with the letter S. This time I'm thinking Storm is what's about to follow instead of hole or
house.
If the republican leadership hiccup here on the release of the memo then it's things as
usual and forget a full on war from them. I don't trust those bastards as far as I can throw
them. Trump then needs to fire Sessions and Mueller and go full on attack mode with a press
conference doing what he does and light the left's hair on fire like never before. This is
war and it needs kicked off in grand fashion. The left's ability to guilt shame has been
neutered and they know it and are scared to death.
The Genius has lost control. Washington is oozing and dripping its corrupt, manipulating,
narcissistic and deceiving bile. Just one thin mint is all it will take. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJZPzQESq_0
At one point, Peter Strzok made reference to a phone that "could not be traced". He
probably had a 2nd phone for a period. I'd be willing to bet it was a BlackBerry. While he
had (if he had) that 2nd phone, he could have used that more secure phone for his
communications with Lisa Page.
The IG may have all of Strzok's text messages with Lisa Page from his official phone, but
none from the 2nd phone.
The article says that it was Lisa Page who suggested using the 2nd phone. That message
from her was in March 2016.
"Also in March, Page seems to be concerned about whether the things they say about Mr.
Trump can be found out. "So look, you say we can text on that phone when we talk about
Hillary because it cant be traced," she wrote."
Haven't read through the entire thread here, but the end date of the interval for the
missing data is also the date that Mueller was appointed.
All of this shit is at the NSA Blufdale, Utah, facility. Why are the taxpayers spending
umpteen billion dollars collecting and storing this stuff if the government is going to
pretend it doesn't exist? You can bet this internet post, and anyone who replies to it, is
archived there. We are supposed to be afraid of being surveiled by assholes like Clapper and
Brennan. Guess what? We're not.
If Horowitz now claims he really didn't receive all the text messages he requested, then
he too is part of a massive cover-up and any report that is issued by the DOJ's Inspector
General's office can't be believed by definition.
It's possible Horowitz lied then to placate the Congressional inquiry. I believe that the
Deep State believes that they can get Trump impeached before the shit hits the fan with the
Sedition by the FBI. There is always Plan B for the Deep State but 50 years after they rid
the world of 2 Kennedys the general population isn't buying it.
If I understand how US communication systems work, every network has a splitter which
copies all transmissions to NSA, or related agencies, storage devices. I would be shocked if
they didn't collect everything from FBI or DOJ employees, and I mean everything, from FBI
devices or their private devices. If the files are sitting safe and secure on NSA storage
devices, only the NSA could really "lose" them. And this would also be true for every one of
Clinton's messages. Why don't we ever see Congress ask NSA for anything? Is that
verboten?
FBI and DOJ and the Weasel Liar Rosenstein are LIARS. They don't want the world and the
American people know what Liars, corrupt, in the tank for Hilray to know what they did are
still trying to due. Trump needs to clean house of the FBI and DOJ of all Clinton and Obama
people.
• April 1990 to April 1993. MI6 agent Christopher Steele stationed in Moscow.
• 1998. British Embassy in Paris, serving officially as First Secretary
Financial.
• 1999. Outed online as MI6 agent.
• 2006. MI6 Russia desk in London.
• 2009. Left MI6 to set up Orbis (22 years in MI6).
• 2010. Fusion GPS set up by Glenn Simpson in 2010.
• According to Luke Harding, author of Collusion , Simpson specialized as a
journalist on the intersection between organized crime and the Russian state.
• According to Harding, Steele and Simpson knew the same FBI agents, shared expertise
on Russia, and began a professional partnership.
• Harding, the author of Collusion, was a correspondent for the London
Guardian in Russia from 2007 until 2011, after which he was refused re-entry to
Russia. In 2011 book Mafia State, he describes Russia under Putin as a mafia
state.
Chronology, 2010 to Present2010
• In the summer of 2010, members of a New York-based FBI squad assigned to
investigate "Eurasian Organized Crime" met Steele in London to discuss allegations of
possible corruption in FIFA, the Zurich, Switzerland-based body that also organizes the World
Cup tournament.
• FBI agent Andrew McCabe began work as a supervisory special agent at the Eurasian
Organized Crime Task Force in 2003.
2014
• Steele authored more than 100 reports on Russia and Ukraine between 2014 and 2016,
which were written for an unidentified private client and shared with the U.S. State
Department; sent to Secretary of State John Kerry and Victoria Nuland.
• The FBI obtains a FISA warrant to surveil Paul Manafort in 2014, based on his
political consulting work in Ukraine. Were Steele's reports used to obtain the 2014
authorization to surveil Manafort?
• Ukrainian President Yanukovych was forced to flee Kiev on Feb. 22, 2014, following
a coup d'etat by followers of Ukrainian World War II Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera.
According to Stephen Dorril, author of MI6: Inside the Covert World of Her Majesty's
Secret Intelligence Service , Bandera's organization, OUN-B, was re-formed in 1946 under
the sponsorship of MI6. The organization had been receiving some support from MI6 since the
1930s. Bandera was recruited by MI6 to work in London in 1948. Bandera's second in command,
Mykola Lebed, was brought to New York City in the same year by the CIA's Allen Dulles.
• Flynn wrote a letter in 2014 on behalf of Supervisory Special Agent Robyn Gritz on
his official Pentagon stationery. He gave a public interview in 2015 supporting Gritz and
offered to testify on her behalf. His offer put him as a hostile witness in a case against
McCabe, who was accused by Gritz of sexual discrimination. McCabe never recused himself from
Flynn investigation.
2015
• McCabe attends a meeting in March 2015 with Clinton ally Virginia Governor Terry
McAuliffe, for the purpose of gaining support for his wife Jill McCabe to run for state
legislature against State Senator Richard Black, a leading opponent of Obama's regime change
policy and supporter of General Flynn. McCabe is now being investigated for violation of the
Hatch Act.
• Donald Trump announces candidacy for President on June 16, 2015.
• GCHQ surveilled Trump associates beginning late 2015. The alleged intelligence was
passed to the United States over the next several months.
2016
FEBRUARY
• Andrew McCabe in February 2016 becomes Deputy Director of FBI, gains oversight of
Clinton email server investigation, despite the fact that his wife Jill McCabe received
several hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions from Clinton supporter McAuliffe.
He only recuses himself on November 1, 2016 after the investigation is over.
APRIL
• The DNC and Clinton campaign in April 2016 hired Fusion GPS through Perkins Coie
law firm and attorney Marc Elias.
• Fusion GPS hired Steele at end of April 2016. His first assignment to investigate
Paul Manafort.
JUNE
• Steele issues his first memo in June 2016; total of 16 memos June to early Nov.
2016.
• Steele flew in June 2016 to Rome to brief his FBI contact in the Eurasian serious
crime division, a unit previously supervised in New York City by Andrew McCabe.
• Robert Hannigan, head of GCHQ flew to U.S. in the Summer of 2016 to brief John
Brennan. Brennan launched interagency investigation; meanwhile the FBI had already been
briefed by Steele through the FBI Eurasian serious crime division contact.
JULY
• July 2. FBI led by Peter Strzok interviews Hillary Clinton.
• July 5. FBI Director James Comey reports there will be no charges against Hillary
Clinton, language changed from earlier drafts from "grossly negligent" to "extremely
recklessly," reportedly at insistence of Strzok.
• July 19. Trump wins the Republican nomination for President.
• July 22. WikiLeaks publishes the first DNC emails, Democrats claim Russia
responsible, FBI never inspects the server.
• July. Investigation opened into collusion between Trump campaign and Russia.
Document signed by Peter Strzok.
SEPTEMBER
• Steele flew back to Rome to meet the "FBI leadership team," possibly including
Peter Strzok.
• According to NY Times , Steele heard back from his FBI contact that the
agency wanted to see the material he collected right away, while offering to pay him
$50,000.
• Later in September, Steele held meetings with the NY Times ,
Washington Post , Yahoo, New Yorker and CNN.
• FISA court authorized surveillance of Carter Page in Sept. 2016.
OCTOBER
• Mid-October. Steele visited New York City and met reporters again.
• Late October. Steele spoke to Mother Jones . Article appeared Oct. 31,
2016.
NOVEMBER
• Nov. 8. Andrew Weismann, now the lead attorney of Robert Mueller's Special Council
team, attends Hillary Clinton's election night party.
2017
JANUARY
• Strzok, on January 24, interviews Michael Flynn. Strzok's mistress Lisa Page, an
FBI lawyer, works for Andrew McCabe. Andrew McCabe called Flynn to tell him FBI agents were
coming to the White House to meet with him, without telling Flynn it was a criminal
investigation interview.
FEBRUARY
• CNN, on February 17, reports "The FBI interviewers believed Flynn was cooperative
and provided truthful answers."
MAY
• Comey is fired May 9.
• Rosenstein appoints Mueller Special Counsel May 17.
AUGUST
• Mueller removes Strzok August 16, stonewalls Congressional requests for information
on Strzok firing for nearly 4 months.
DECEMBER
• Flynn pleads guilty to lying to FBI on Dec. 1.
• The Washington Post and NY Times receive a leak on Dec. 2 that
Strzok removed from Special Counsel team.
• Bruce G. Ohr, Associate Deputy Attorney General under Deputy Attorney General Rod
Rosenstein, ousted on Dec. 7 after House Intelligence discovered he met during the 2016
campaign with Christopher Steele. He also met shortly after the election around Thanksgiving
with Glenn Simpson. It is believed that Ohr and Simpson were put in contact by Steele, whose
contacts with Ohr are said by senior DOJ officials to date back to 2006. According to his
biography, "Mr. Ohr was an Assistant United States Attorney in the United States Attorney's
Office for the Southern District of New York (1991-99), and was Chief of the Violent Gangs
Unit in that office (1998-99). Mr. Ohr joined the Criminal Division in 1999 and served as
Chief of the Organized Crime and Racketeering Section until 2011, when he became Counselor
for Transnational Organized Crime and International Affairs in the Criminal Division, serving
in that position until November 2014." Bruce Ohr's wife Nellie Ohr works for Fusion GPS
throughout the 2016 campaign.
Essentially CIA dictates the US foreign policy. The tail is wagging the dog. The current Russophobia hysteria mean
additional billions for CIA and FBI. As simple as that.
The article contain some important observation about self-sustaining nature of the US
militarism. It is able to create new threats and new insurgencies almost at will via CIA activities.
The key problem is that wars are highly profitable for important part of the ruling elite,
especially representing finance and military industrial complex. Also now part of the US
ruling elite now consists of "colonial administrators" which are directly interested in maintaining
and expanding the US empire. This is trap from which nation might not be able to escape.
Notable quotes:
"... The U.S. government may pretend to respect a "rules-based" global order, but the only rule Washington seems to follow is "might makes right" -- and the CIA has long served as a chief instigator and enforcer, writes Nicolas J.S. Davies. ..."
"... Once the CIA went to work in Vietnam to undermine the 1954 Geneva Accords and the planned reunification of North and South through a free and fair election in 1956, the die was cast. ..."
"... No U.S. president could extricate the U.S. from Vietnam without exposing the limits of what U.S. military force could achieve, betraying widely held national myths and the powerful interests that sustained and profited from them. ..."
"... The critical "lesson of Vietnam" was summed up by Richard Barnet in his 1972 book Roots of War . "At the very moment that the number one nation has perfected the science of killing," Barnet wrote, "It has become an impractical means of political domination." ..."
"... Even the senior officer corps of the U.S. military saw it that way, since many of them had survived the horrors of Vietnam as junior officers. The CIA could still wreak havoc in Latin America and elsewhere, but the full destructive force of the U.S. military was not unleashed again until the invasion of Panama in 1989 and the First Gulf War in 1991. ..."
"... Half a century after Vietnam, we have tragically come full circle. With the CIA's politicized intelligence running wild in Washington and its covert operations spreading violence and chaos across every continent, President Trump faces the same pressures to maintain his own and his country's credibility as Johnson and Nixon did. ..."
"... Trump is facing these questions, not just in one country, Vietnam, but in dozens of countries across the world, and the interests perpetuating and fueling this cycle of crisis and war have only become more entrenched over time, as President Eisenhower warned that they would, despite the end of the Cold War and, until now, the lack of any actual military threat to the United States. ..."
"... U.S. Air Force Colonel Fletcher Prouty was the chief of special operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1955 to 1964, managing the global military support system for the CIA in Vietnam and around the world. Fletcher Prouty's book, The Secret Team: The CIA and its Allies in Control of the United States and the World , was suppressed when it was first published in 1973. Thousands of copies disappeared from bookstores and libraries, and a mysterious Army Colonel bought the entire shipment of 3,500 copies the publisher sent to Australia. But Prouty's book was republished in 2011, and it is a timely account of the role of the CIA in U.S. policy. ..."
"... The main purpose of the CIA, as Prouty saw it, is to create such pretexts for war. ..."
"... The CIA is a hybrid of an intelligence service that gathers and analyzes foreign intelligence and a clandestine service that conducts covert operations. Both functions are essential to creating pretexts for war, and that is what they have done for 70 years. ..."
"... Prouty described how the CIA infiltrated the U.S. military, the State Department, the National Security Council and other government institutions, covertly placing its officers in critical positions to ensure that its plans are approved and that it has access to whatever forces, weapons, equipment, ammunition and other resources it needs to carry them out. ..."
"... Many retired intelligence officers, such as Ray McGovern and the members of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), saw the merging of clandestine operations with intelligence analysis in one agency as corrupting the objective analysis they tried to provide to policymakers. They formed VIPS in 2003 in response to the fabrication of politicized intelligence that provided false pretexts for the U.S. to invade and destroy Iraq. ..."
"... But Fletcher Prouty was even more disturbed by the way that the CIA uses clandestine operations to trigger coups, wars and chaos. The civil and proxy war in Syria is a perfect example of what Prouty meant ..."
"... The role of U.S. "counterterrorism" operations in fueling armed resistance and terrorism, and the absence of any plan to reduce the asymmetric violence unleashed by the "global war on terror," would be no surprise to Fletcher Prouty. As he explained, such clandestine operations always take on a life of their own that is unrelated, and often counter-productive, to any rational U.S. policy objective. ..."
"... This is a textbook CIA operation on the same model as Vietnam in the late 1950s and early 60s. The CIA uses U.S. special forces and training missions to launch covert and proxy military operations that drive local populations into armed resistance groups, and then uses the presence of those armed resistance groups to justify ever-escalating U.S. military involvement. This is Vietnam redux on a continental scale. ..."
"... China is already too big and powerful for the U.S. to apply what is known as the Ledeen doctrine named for neoconservative theorist and intelligence operative Michael Ledeen who suggested that every 10 years or so, the United States "pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show we mean business." ..."
"... As long as the CIA and the U.S. military keep plunging the scapegoats for our failed policies into economic crisis, violence and chaos, the United States and the United Kingdom can remain the safe havens of the world's wealth, islands of privilege and excess amidst the storms they unleash on others. ..."
"... But if that is the only "significant national objective" driving these policies, it is surely about time for the 99 percent of Americans who reap no benefit from these murderous schemes to stop the CIA and its allies before they completely wreck the already damaged and fragile world in which we all must live, Americans and foreigners alike. ..."
"... Douglas Valentine has probably studied the CIA in more depth than any other American journalist, beginning with his book on The Phoenix Program in Vietnam. He has written a new book titled The CIA as Organized Crime : How Illegal Operations Corrupt America and the World, in which he brings Fletcher Prouty's analysis right up to the present day, describing the CIA's role in our current wars and the many ways it infiltrates, manipulates and controls U.S. policy. ..."
"... In Venezuela, the CIA and the right-wing opposition are following the same strategy that President Nixon ordered the CIA to inflict on Chile, to "make the economy scream" in preparation for the 1973 coup. ..."
"... The U.S. willingness to scrap the Agreed Framework in 2003, the breakdown of the Six Party Talks in 2009 and the U.S. refusal to acknowledge that its own military actions and threats create legitimate defense concerns for North Korea have driven the North Koreans into a corner from which they see a credible nuclear deterrent as their only chance to avoid mass destruction. ..."
"... Obama's charm offensive invigorated old and new military alliances with the U.K., France and the Arab monarchies, and he quietly ran up the most expensive military budge t of any president since World War Two. ..."
"... Throughout history, serial aggression has nearly always provoked increasingly united opposition, as peace-loving countries and people have reluctantly summoned the courage to stand up to an aggressor. France under Napoleon and Hitler's Germany also regarded themselves as exceptional, and in their own ways they were. But in the end, their belief in their exceptionalism led them on to defeat and destruction. ..."
The U.S. government may pretend to respect a "rules-based" global order, but the only rule Washington
seems to follow is "might makes right" -- and the CIA has long served as a chief instigator and enforcer,
writes Nicolas J.S. Davies.
As the recent PBS documentary on the American War in Vietnam acknowledged, few American officials
ever believed that the United States could win the war, neither those advising Johnson as he committed
hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops, nor those advising Nixon as he escalated a brutal aerial bombardment
that had already killed millions of people.
As conversations tape-recorded in the White House reveal, and as other writers have documented,
the reasons for wading into the Big Muddy, as
Pete Seeger satirized it
, and then pushing on regardless, all came down to "credibility": the domestic political credibility
of the politicians involved and America's international credibility as a military power.
Once the CIA went to work in Vietnam to undermine the
1954 Geneva Accords
and the planned reunification of North and South through a free and fair election in 1956, the die
was cast. The CIA's support for the repressive
Diem regime and its successors
ensured an ever-escalating war, as the South rose in rebellion, supported by the North. No U.S. president
could extricate the U.S. from Vietnam without exposing the limits of what U.S. military force could
achieve, betraying widely held national myths and the powerful interests that sustained and profited
from them.
The critical "lesson of Vietnam" was summed up by Richard Barnet in his 1972 book
Roots
of War . "At the very moment that the number one nation has perfected the science of killing,"
Barnet wrote, "It has become an impractical means of political domination."
Even the senior officer corps of the U.S. military saw it that way, since many of them had survived
the horrors of Vietnam as junior officers. The CIA could still wreak havoc in Latin America and elsewhere,
but the full destructive force of the U.S. military was not unleashed again until the invasion of
Panama in 1989 and the First Gulf War in 1991.
Half a century after Vietnam, we have tragically come full circle. With the CIA's politicized
intelligence running wild in Washington and its covert operations spreading violence and chaos across
every continent, President Trump faces the same pressures to maintain his own and his country's credibility
as Johnson and Nixon did. His predictable response has been to escalate ongoing wars in Syria, Iraq,
Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia and West Africa, and to threaten new ones against North Korea, Iran and
Venezuela.
Trump is facing these questions, not just in one country, Vietnam, but in dozens of countries
across the world, and the interests perpetuating and fueling this cycle of crisis and war have only
become more entrenched over time, as
President Eisenhower warned that they would, despite the end of the Cold War and, until now,
the lack of any actual military threat to the United States.
Ironically but predictably, the U.S.'s aggressive and illegal war policy has finally provoked
a real military threat to the U.S., albeit one that has emerged only in response to U.S. war plans.
As I explained in a recent article , North Korea's discovery in 2016 of a U.S. plan to assassinate
its president, Kim Jong Un, and launch a Second Korean War has triggered a crash program to develop
long-range ballistic missiles that could give North Korea a viable nuclear deterrent and prevent
a U.S. attack. But the North Koreans will not feel safe from attack until their leaders and ours
are sure that their missiles can deliver a nuclear strike against the U.S. mainland.
The CIA's Pretexts for War
U.S. Air Force Colonel Fletcher Prouty was the chief of special operations for the Joint Chiefs
of Staff from 1955 to 1964, managing the global military support system for the CIA in Vietnam and
around the world. Fletcher Prouty's book,
The Secret Team: The CIA and its Allies in Control of the United States and the World ,
was suppressed when it was first published in 1973. Thousands of copies disappeared from bookstores
and libraries, and a mysterious Army Colonel bought the entire shipment of 3,500 copies the publisher
sent to Australia. But Prouty's book was republished in 2011, and it is a timely account of the role
of the CIA in U.S. policy.
Prouty surprisingly described the role of the CIA as a response by powerful people and interests
to the abolition of the U.S. Department of War and the creation of the Department of Defense in 1947.
Once the role of the U.S. military was redefined as one of defense, in line with the United Nations
Charter's
prohibition against the threat or use of military force in 1945 and similar moves by other military
powers, it would require some kind of crisis or threat to justify using military force in the future,
both legally and politically. The main purpose of the CIA, as Prouty saw it, is to create such
pretexts for war.
The CIA is a hybrid of an intelligence service that gathers and analyzes foreign intelligence
and a clandestine service that conducts covert operations. Both functions are essential to creating
pretexts for war, and that is what they have done for 70 years.
Prouty described how the CIA infiltrated the U.S. military, the State Department, the National
Security Council and other government institutions, covertly placing its officers in critical positions
to ensure that its plans are approved and that it has access to whatever forces, weapons, equipment,
ammunition and other resources it needs to carry them out.
Many retired intelligence officers, such as Ray McGovern and the members of Veteran Intelligence
Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), saw the merging of clandestine operations with intelligence analysis
in one agency as corrupting the objective analysis they tried to provide to policymakers. They formed
VIPS in 2003 in response to the fabrication of politicized intelligence that provided false pretexts
for the U.S. to invade and destroy Iraq.
CIA in Syria and Africa
But Fletcher Prouty was even more disturbed by the way that the CIA uses clandestine operations
to trigger coups, wars and chaos. The civil and proxy war in Syria is a perfect example of what Prouty
meant. In late 2011, after destroying Libya and aiding in the torture-murder of Muammar Gaddafi,
the CIA and its allies began
flying fighters
and weapons from Libya to Turkey and infiltrating them into Syria. Then, working with Saudi Arabia,
Qatar, Turkey, Croatia and other allies, this operation poured
thousands of tons of weapons across Syria's borders to ignite and fuel a full-scale civil war.
Once these covert operations were under way, they ran wild until they had unleashed a savage Al
Qaeda affiliate in Syria (Jabhat al-Nusra, now rebranded as Jabhat Fateh al-Sham), spawned the even
more savage "Islamic State," triggered
the heaviest
and
probably the deadliest U.S. bombing campaign since Vietnam and drawn Russia, Iran, Turkey, Israel,
Jordan, Hezbollah, Kurdish militias and almost every state or armed group in the Middle East into
the chaos of Syria's civil war.
Meanwhile, as Al Qaeda and Islamic State have expanded their operations across Africa, the U.N.
has published a report titled
Journey to Extremismin Africa: Drivers, Incentives and the Tipping Point for Recruitment
, based on 500 interviews with African militants. This study has found that the kind of special operations
and training missions the CIA and AFRICOM are conducting and supporting in Africa are in fact the
critical "tipping point" that drives Africans to join militant groups like Al Qaeda, Al-Shabab and
Boko Haram.
The report found that government action, such as the killing or detention of friends or family,
was the "tipping point" that drove 71 percent of African militants interviewed to join armed groups,
and that this was a more important factor than religious ideology.
The conclusions of Journey to Extremism in Africa confirm the findings of other similar
studies. The Center for Civilians in Conflict interviewed 250 civilians who joined armed groups in
Bosnia, Somalia, Gaza and Libya for its 2015 study,
The People's Perspectives: Civilian Involvement in Armed Conflict . The study
found that the most common motivation for civilians to join armed groups was simply to protect themselves
or their families.
The role of U.S. "counterterrorism" operations in fueling armed resistance and terrorism, and
the absence of any plan to reduce the asymmetric violence unleashed by the "global war on terror,"
would be no surprise to Fletcher Prouty. As he explained, such clandestine operations always take
on a life of their own that is unrelated, and often counter-productive, to any rational U.S. policy
objective.
"The more intimate one becomes with this activity," Prouty wrote, "The more one begins to realize
that such operations are rarely, if ever, initiated from an intent to become involved in pursuit
of some national objective in the first place."
The U.S. justifies the deployment of 6,000 U.S. special forces and military trainers to
53 of the 54 countries in Africa as a response to terrorism. But the U.N.'s Journey to Extremism
in Africa study makes it clear that the U.S. militarization of Africa is in fact the "tipping
point" that is driving Africans across the continent to join armed resistance groups in the first
place.
This is a textbook CIA operation on the same model as Vietnam in the late 1950s and early
60s. The CIA uses U.S. special forces and training missions to launch covert and proxy military operations
that drive local populations into armed resistance groups, and then uses the presence of those armed
resistance groups to justify ever-escalating U.S. military involvement. This is Vietnam redux on
a continental scale.
Taking on China
What seems to really be driving the CIA's militarization of U.S. policy in Africa is China's growing
influence on the continent. As Steve Bannon put it in an
interview with the Economist in August, "Let's go screw up One Belt One Road."
China is already too big and powerful for the U.S. to apply what is known as the Ledeen doctrine
named for neoconservative theorist and intelligence operative Michael Ledeen who suggested that every
10 years or so, the United States "pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against
the wall, just to show we mean business."
China is too powerful and armed with nuclear weapons. So, in this case, the CIA's job would be
to spread violence and chaos to disrupt Chinese trade and investment, and to make African governments
increasingly dependent on U.S. military aid to fight the militant groups spawned and endlessly regenerated
by U.S.-led "counterterrorism" operations.
Neither Ledeen nor Bannon pretend that such policies are designed to build more prosperous or
viable societies in the Middle East or Africa, let alone to benefit their people. They both know
very well what Richard Barnet already understood 45 years ago, that America's unprecedented investment
in weapons, war and CIA covert operations are only good for one thing: to kill people and destroy
infrastructure, reducing cities to rubble, societies to chaos and the desperate survivors to poverty
and displacement.
As long as the CIA and the U.S. military keep plunging the scapegoats for our failed policies
into economic crisis, violence and chaos, the United States and the United Kingdom can remain the
safe havens of the world's wealth, islands of privilege and excess amidst the storms they unleash
on others.
But if that is the only "significant national objective" driving these policies, it is surely
about time for the 99 percent of Americans who reap no benefit from these murderous schemes to stop
the CIA and its allies before they completely wreck the already damaged and fragile world in which
we all must live, Americans and foreigners alike.
Douglas Valentine has probably studied the CIA in more depth than any other American journalist,
beginning with his book on
The Phoenix Program in Vietnam. He has written a new book titled
The CIA as Organized Crime: How Illegal Operations Corrupt America and the World, in which he brings Fletcher Prouty's
analysis right up to the present day, describing the CIA's role in our current wars and the many
ways it infiltrates, manipulates and controls U.S. policy.
The Three Scapegoats
In
Trump's speech to the U.N. General Assembly, he named North Korea, Iran and Venezuela as his
prime targets for destabilization, economic warfare and, ultimately, the overthrow of their governments,
whether by coup d'etat or the mass destruction of their civilian population and infrastructure.
But Trump's choice of scapegoats for America's failures was obviously not based on a rational reassessment
of foreign policy priorities by the new administration. It was only a tired rehashing of the CIA's
unfinished business with two-thirds of Bush's "axis of evil" and Bush White House official
Elliott Abrams'
failed 2002 coup in Caracas, now laced with explicit and illegal threats of aggression.
How Trump and the CIA plan to sacrifice their three scapegoats for America's failures remains
to be seen. This is not 2001, when the world stood silent at the U.S. bombardment and invasion of
Afghanistan after September 11th. It is more like 2003, when the U.S. destruction of Iraq split the
Atlantic alliance and alienated most of the world. It is certainly not 2011, after Obama's global
charm offensive had rebuilt U.S. alliances and provided cover for French President Sarkozy, British
Prime Minister Cameron, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the Arab royals to destroy Libya,
once ranked by the U.N. as the
most developed country
in Africa , now mired in intractable chaos.
In 2017, a U.S. attack on any one of Trump's scapegoats would isolate the United States from many
of its allies and undermine its standing in the world in far-reaching ways that might be more permanent
and harder to repair than the invasion and destruction of Iraq.
In Venezuela, the CIA and the right-wing opposition are following the same strategy that President
Nixon ordered the CIA to inflict on Chile, to
"make the economy
scream" in preparation for the 1973 coup. But the
solid victory of Venezuela's
ruling Socialist Party in recent nationwide gubernatorial elections, despite a long and deep
economic crisis, reveals little public support for the CIA's puppets in Venezuela.
The CIA has successfully discredited the Venezuelan government through economic warfare, increasingly
violent right-wing street protests and a global propaganda campaign. But the CIA has stupidly hitched
its wagon to an extreme right-wing, upper-class opposition that has no credibility with most of the
Venezuelan public, who still turn out for the Socialists at the polls. A CIA coup or U.S. military
intervention would meet fierce public resistance and damage U.S. relations all over Latin America.
Boxing In North Korea
A U.S. aerial bombardment or "preemptive strike" on North Korea could quickly escalate into a
war between the U.S. and China, which has reiterated
its commitment to North
Korea's defense if North Korea is attacked. We do not know exactly what was in the
U.S. war plan discovered by North Korea, so neither can we know how North Korea and China could
respond if the U.S. pressed ahead with it.
Most analysts have long concluded that any U.S. attack on North Korea would be met with a North
Korean artillery and missile barrage that would inflict unacceptable civilian casualties on Seoul,
a metropolitan area of 26 million people, three times the population of New York City. Seoul is only
35 miles from the frontier with North Korea, placing it within range of a huge array of North Korean
weapons. What was already a no-win calculus is now compounded by the possibility that North Korea
could respond with nuclear weapons, turning any prospect of a U.S. attack into an even worse nightmare.
U.S. mismanagement of its relations with North Korea should be an object lesson for its relations
with Iran, graphically demonstrating the advantages of diplomacy, talks and agreements over threats
of war. Under the
Agreed Framework
signed in 1994, North Korea stopped work on two much larger nuclear reactors than the small experimental
one operating at Yongbyong since 1986, which only produces 6 kg of plutonium per year, enough for
one nuclear bomb.
The lesson of Bush's Iraq invasion in 2003 after Saddam Hussein had complied with demands that
he destroy Iraq's stockpiles of chemical weapons and shut down a nascent nuclear program was not
lost on North Korea. Not only did the invasion lay waste to large sections of Iraq with hundreds
of thousands of dead but Hussein himself was hunted down and condemned to death by hanging.
Still, after North Korea tested its first nuclear weapon in 2006, even its small experimental
reactor was shut down as a result of the
"Six Party Talks" in
2007, all the fuel rods were removed and placed under supervision of the International Atomic Energy
Agency, and the cooling tower of the reactor was demolished in 2008.
But then, as relations deteriorated, North Korea conducted a second nuclear weapon test and again
began reprocessing spent fuel rods to recover plutonium for use in nuclear weapons.
North Korea has now conducted six nuclear weapons tests. The explosions in
the first five tests increased gradually up to 15-25 kilotons, about the yield of the bombs the
U.S. dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but estimates for the yield of the 2017 test range
from 110
to 250 kilotons , comparable
to a small hydrogen bomb.
The even greater danger in a new war in Korea is that the U.S. could unleash part of its arsenal
of
4,000 more powerful weapons (100 to 1,200 kilotons), which could kill millions of people and
devastate and poison the region, or even the world, for years to come.
The U.S. willingness to scrap the Agreed Framework in 2003, the breakdown of the Six Party Talks
in 2009 and the U.S. refusal to acknowledge that its own military actions and threats create legitimate
defense concerns for North Korea have driven the North Koreans into a corner from which they see
a credible nuclear deterrent as their only chance to avoid mass destruction.
China has proposed a
reasonable framework for diplomacy to address the concerns of both sides, but the U.S. insists
on maintaining its propaganda narratives that all the fault lies with North Korea and that it has
some kind of "military solution" to the crisis.
This may be the most dangerous idea we have heard from U.S. policymakers since the end of the
Cold War, but it is the logical culmination of a
systematic normalization of deviant and illegal U.S. war-making that has already cost millions
of lives in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Yemen and Pakistan. As historian Gabriel Kolko
wrote in Century of War in 1994, "options and decisions that are intrinsically dangerous
and irrational become not merely plausible but the only form of reasoning about war and diplomacy
that is possible in official circles."
Demonizing Iran
The idea that Iran has ever had a nuclear weapons program is seriously contested by the IAEA,
which has examined every allegation presented by the CIA and other Western "intelligence" agencies
as well as Israel. Former IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei revealed many details of this wild
goose chase in his 2011 memoir,
Age of Deception: Nuclear Diplomacy in Treacherous Times .
When the CIA and its partners reluctantly acknowledged the IAEA's conclusions in a 2007 National
Intelligence Estimate (NIE), ElBaradei issued
a press release confirming that, "the agency has no concrete evidence of an ongoing nuclear weapons
program or undeclared nuclear facilities in Iran."
Since 2007, the IAEA has resolved all its outstanding concerns with Iran. It has verified that
dual-use technologies that Iran imported before 2003 were in fact used for other purposes, and it
has exposed the mysterious "laptop documents" that appeared to show Iranian plans for a nuclear weapon
as forgeries. Gareth Porter thoroughly explored all these questions and allegations and the history
of mistrust that fueled them in his 2014 book,
Manufactured
Crisis: the Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare , which I highly recommend.
But, in the parallel Bizarro world of U.S. politics, hopelessly poisoned by the CIA's
endless disinformation campaigns, Hillary Clinton could repeatedly take false credit for disarming
Iran during her presidential campaign, and neither Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump nor any corporate
media interviewer dared to challenge her claims.
"When President Obama took office, Iran was racing toward a nuclear bomb," Clinton fantasized
in a
prominent foreign policy speech on June 2, 2016, claiming that her brutal sanctions policy "brought
Iran to the table."
In fact, as Trita Parsi documented in his 2012 book,
A Single
Roll of the Dice: Obama's Diplomacy With Iran , the Iranians were ready, not just
to "come to the table," but to sign a comprehensive agreement based on a U.S. proposal brokered by
Turkey and Brazil in 2010. But, in a classic case of "tail wags dog," the U.S. then rejected its
own proposal because it would have undercut support for tighter sanctions in the U.N. Security Council.
In other words, Clinton's sanctions policy did not "bring Iran to the table", but prevented the U.S.
from coming to the table itself.
As a senior State Department official told Trita Parsi, the real problem with U.S. diplomacy with
Iran when Clinton was at the State Department was that the U.S. would not take "Yes" for an answer.
Trump's ham-fisted decertification of Iran's compliance with the JCPOA is right out of Clinton's
playbook, and it demonstrates that the CIA is still determined to use Iran as a scapegoat for America's
failures in the Middle East.
The spurious claim that Iran is the world's greatest sponsor of terrorism is another CIA canard
reinforced by endless repetition. It is true that Iran supports and supplies weapons to Hezbollah
and Hamas, which are both listed as terrorist organizations by the U.S. government. But they are
mainly defensive resistance groups that defend Lebanon and Gaza respectively against invasions and
attacks by Israel.
Shifting attention away from Al Qaeda, Islamic State, the
Libyan Islamic Fighting Group and other groups that actually commit terrorist crimes around the
world might just seem like a case of the CIA "taking its eyes off the ball," if it wasn't so transparently
timed to frame Iran with new accusations now that the manufactured crisis of the nuclear scare has
run its course.
What the Future Holds
Barack Obama's most consequential international achievement may have been the triumph of symbolism
over substance behind which he expanded and escalated the so-called "war on terror," with a vast
expansion of covert operations and proxy wars that eventually triggered the
heaviest U.S.
aerial bombardments since Vietnam in Iraq and Syria.
Obama's charm offensive invigorated old and new military alliances with the U.K., France and
the Arab monarchies, and he quietly ran up the
most expensive military budget of any president since World War Two.
But Obama's expansion of the "war on terror" under cover of his deceptive global public relations
campaign created many more problems than it solved, and Trump and his advisers are woefully ill-equipped
to solve any of them. Trump's expressed desire to place America first and to resist foreign entanglements
is hopelessly at odds with his aggressive, bullying approach to every foreign policy problem.
If the U.S. could threaten and fight its way to a resolution of any of its international problems,
it would have done so already. That is exactly what it has been trying to do since the 1990s, behind
both the swagger and bluster of Bush and Trump and the deceptive charm of Clinton and Obama: a "good
cop – bad cop" routine that should no longer fool anyone anywhere.
But as Lyndon Johnson found as he waded deeper and deeper into the Big Muddy in Vietnam, lying
to the public about unwinnable wars does not make them any more winnable. It just gets more people
killed and makes it harder and harder to ever tell the public the truth.
In unwinnable wars based on lies, the "credibility" problem only gets more complicated, as new
lies require new scapegoats and convoluted narratives to explain away graveyards filled by old lies.
Obama's cynical global charm offensive bought the "war on terror" another eight years, but that only
allowed the CIA to drag the U.S. into more trouble and spread its chaos to more places around the
world.
Meanwhile, Russian President Putin is winning hearts and minds in capitals around the world by
calling for a recommitment to the
rule of international
law , which
prohibits
the threat or use of military force except in self-defense. Every new U.S. threat or act of aggression
will only make Putin's case more persuasive, not least to important U.S. allies like South Korea,
Germany and other members of the European Union, whose complicity in U.S. aggression has until now
helped to give it a false veneer of political legitimacy.
Throughout history, serial aggression has nearly always provoked increasingly united opposition,
as peace-loving countries and people have reluctantly summoned the courage to stand up to an aggressor.
France under Napoleon and Hitler's Germany also regarded themselves as exceptional, and in their
own ways they were. But in the end, their belief in their exceptionalism led them on to defeat and
destruction.
Americans had better hope that we are not so exceptional, and that the world will find a diplomatic
rather than a military "solution" to its American problem. Our chances of survival would improve
a great deal if American officials and politicians would finally start to act like something other
than putty in the hands of the CIA
Nicolas J. S. Davies is the author of Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction
of Iraq . He also wrote the chapters on "Obama at War" in Grading the 44th President: a Report Card
on Barack Obama's First Term as a Progressive Leader .
The fact that he is employed by Guardia tells a lot how low Guardian fall. It's a yellow press (owned by intelligence agencies
if we talk about their coverage of Russia).
Notable quotes:
"... In theory, it would be hard to find two journalists more qualified to debate each side of this important issue. In practice, it was a one-sided thrashing that The Intercept 's Jeremy Scahill accurately described as "brutal". ..."
"... Russiagate only works if you allow it to remain zoomed out, where the individually weak arguments of this giant Gish gallop fallacy form the appearance of a legitimate argument. ..."
"... That's not how you're going to get the truth about Russia. He's all appeals to authority - Steele's most of all, even name dropping Kerry. To finally land on "oh well if you would read my whole book" is just getting to the silly season. Also "well this is the kind of person Putin is" is a terrible argument. This isn't about either Putin or Trump really, its about the long history of US-Russia relations and all that has occurred. Also, the ubiquitous throwing around of accusations of the murder of journalists in Russia is a straw man argument, especially when it is just thrown in as some sort of moral shielding for a shabby argument. ..."
Have you ever wondered why mainstream media outlets, despite being so fond of dramatic panel
debates on other hot-button issues, never have critics of the Russiagate narrative on to debate
those who advance it? Well, in a recent Real News interview we received an extremely
clear answer to that question, and it was so epic it deserves its own article.
Real News host and producer Aaron Maté has recently emerged as one of the most
articulate critics of the establishment Russia narrative and the Trump-Russia conspiracy
theory, and has published in The Nation some of the
clearest
arguments against both that I've yet seen. Luke Harding is a journalist for The Guardian
where he has been
writing prolifically in promotion of the Russiagate narrative, and is the author of
New
York Times bestseller Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald
Trump Win.
In theory, it would be hard to find two journalists more qualified to debate each side of
this important issue. In practice, it was a one-sided thrashing that The Intercept 's Jeremy
Scahill accurately described as "brutal".
The term Gish gallop
, named after a Young Earth creationist who was notoriously fond of employing it, refers to a
fallacious debate tactic in which a bunch of individually weak arguments are strung together in
rapid-fire succession in order to create the illusion of a solid argument and overwhelm the
opposition's ability to refute them all in the time allotted. Throughout the discussion the
Gish gallop appeared to be the only tool that Luke Harding brought to the table, firing out a
deluge of feeble and unsubstantiated arguments only to be stopped over and over again by
Maté who kept pointing out when Harding was making a false or fallacious claim.
In this part here , for
example, the following exchange takes place while Harding is already against the ropes on the
back of a previous failed argument. I'm going to type this up so you can clearly see what's
happening here:
Harding: Look, I'm a journalist. I'm a storyteller. I'm not a kind of head of the CIA or
the NSA. But what I can tell you is that there have been similar operations in France, most
recently when President Macron was elected ? -
Harding: Yeah. But, if you'll let me finish, there've been attacks on the German parliament ?
-
Maté: Okay, but wait Luke, do you concede that the France hack that you just claimed
didn't happen?
Harding: [pause] What? -- ?that it didn't happen? Sorry?
Maté: Do you concede that the Russian hacking of the French election that you just
claimed actually is not true?
Harding: [pause] Well, I mean that it's not true? I mean, the French report was inconclusive,
but you have to look at this kind of contextually. We've seen attacks on other European
states as well from Russia, they have very kind of advanced cyber capabilities.
Maté: Where else?
Harding: Well, Estonia. Have you heard of Estonia? It's a state in the Baltics which was
crippled by a massive cyber attack in 2008, which certainly all kind of western European and
former eastern European states think was carried out by Moscow. I mean I was in Moscow at the
time, when relations between the two countries were extremely bad. This is a kind of ongoing
thing. Now you might say, quite legitimately, well the US does the same thing, the UK does
the same thing, and I think to a certain extent that is certainly right. I think what was
different last year was the attempt to kind of dump this stuff out into kind of US public
space and try and influence public opinion there. That's unusual. And of course that's a
matter of congressional inquiry and something Mueller is looking at too.
Maté: Right. But again, my problem here is that the examples that are frequently
presented to substantiate claims of this massive Russian hacking operation around the world
prove out to be false. So France as I mentioned; you also mentioned Germany. There was a lot
of worry about Russian hacking of the German elections, but it turned out? -- ?and there's
plenty of articles since then that have acknowledged this? - ? that actually there was no
Russian hack in Germany.
In the above exchange, Maté derailed Harding's Gish gallop, and Harding actually
admonished him for doing so, telling him "let me finish" and attempting to go on listing more
flimsy examples to bolster his case as though he hadn't just begun his Gish gallop with a
completely
false example .
That's really all Harding brought to the debate. A bunch of individually weak arguments, the
fact that he speaks Russian and has lived in Moscow, and the occasional straw man where he tries to imply that
Maté is claiming that Vladimir Putin is an innocent girl scout. Meanwhile Maté
just kept patiently dragging the debate back on track over and over again in the most polite
obliteration of a man that I have ever witnessed.
The entire interview followed this basic script. Harding makes an unfounded claim,
Maté holds him to the fact that it's unfounded, Harding sputters a bit and tries to zoom
things out and point to a bigger-picture analysis of broader trends to distract from the fact
that he'd just made an individual claim that was baseless, then winds up implying that
Maté is only skeptical of the claims because he hasn't lived in Russia as Harding
has.
jeremy scahill 0
@jeremyscahill
This @aaronjmate interview is brutal. He makes mincemeat of Luke Harding, who can't seem to
defend the thesis, much less the title, of his own book: Where's the 'Collusion' -
YouTube
11:03 AM-Dec 25, 2017
Q 131 11597 C? 1,148
The interview ended when Harding once again implied that Maté was only skeptical of
the collusion narrative because he'd never been to Russia and seen what a right-wing oppressive
government it is, after which the following exchange took place:
Maté: I don't think I've countered anything you've said about the state of Vladimir
Putin's Russia. The issue under discussion today has been whether there was collusion, the
topic of your book.
Harding: Yeah, but you're clearly a kind of collusion rejectionist, so I'm not sure what sort
of evidence short of Trump and Putin in a sauna together would convince you. Clearly nothing
would convince you. But anyway it's been a pleasure.
At which point Harding abruptly logged off the video chat, leaving Maté to wrap up
the show and promote Harding's book on his own.
You should definitely watch this debate for yourself , and enjoy
it, because I will be shocked if we ever see another like it. Harding's fate will serve as a
cautionary tale for the establishment hacks who've built their careers advancing the Russiagate
conspiracy theory , and it's highly unlikely that any of them will ever make the mistake of
trying to debate anyone of Maté's caliber again.
The reason Russiagaters speak so often in broad, sweeping terms? - saying there are too many
suspicious things happening for there not to be a there there, that there's too much smoke for
there not to be fire? - ? is because when you zoom in and focus on any individual part of their
conspiracy theory, it falls apart under the slightest amount of critical thinking (or as
Harding calls it, "collusion rejectionism"). Russiagate only works if you allow it to remain
zoomed out, where the individually weak arguments of this giant Gish gallop fallacy form the
appearance of a legitimate argument.
Well, Harding did say he's a storyteller.
* * *
Thanks for reading! My work here is entirely reader-funded so if you enjoyed this piece
please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook , following me on Twitter , bookmarking my website , throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal , or buying my new book
Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers . Our Hidden History4
days ago (edited) That Harding tells Mate to meet Alexi Navalny, who is a far right
nationalist and most certainly a tool of US intelligence (something like Russia's Richard
Spencer) was all I needed to hear to understand where Luke is coming from.
He's little more than an intelligence asset himself if his idea of speaking to "Russians" is
to go and speak to a bunch of people who most certainly have their own ties back to the western
intelligence agencies.
That's not how you're going to get the truth about Russia. He's all appeals to authority -
Steele's most of all, even name dropping Kerry. To finally land on "oh well if you would read
my whole book" is just getting to the silly season. Also "well this is the kind of person Putin
is" is a terrible argument. This isn't about either Putin or Trump really, its about the long
history of US-Russia relations and all that has occurred. Also, the ubiquitous throwing around
of accusations of the murder of journalists in Russia is a straw man argument, especially when
it is just thrown in as some sort of moral shielding for a shabby argument.
Few in the US know
about these cases or what occurred, or of the many forces inside of Russia that might be
involved in murdering journalists just as in Mexico or Turkey. But these cases are not
explained - blame is merely assigned to Putin himself. Of course if someone here discusses he
death of Michael Hastings, they're a "conspiracy theorist", but if the crime involves a Russian
were to assign the blame to Vladimir Putin and, no further explanation is required.
If this is true, then this is definitely a sophisticated false flag operation. Was malware Alperovich people injected specifically
designed to implicate Russians? In other words Crowdstrike=Fancy Bear
Images removed. For full content please thee the original source
One interesting corollary of this analysis is that installing Crowdstrike software is like inviting a wolf to guard your chicken.
If they are so dishonest you take enormous risks. That might be true for some other heavily advertized "intrusion prevention" toolkits.
So those criminals who use mistyped popular addresses or buy Google searches to drive lemmings to their site and then flash the screen
that they detected a virus on your computer a, please call provided number and for a small amount of money your virus will be removed
get a new more sinister life.
"... Disobedient Media outlines the DNC server cover-up evidenced in CrowdStrike malware infusion ..."
"... In the article, they claim to have just been working on eliminating the last of the hackers from the DNC's network during the past weekend (conveniently coinciding with Assange's statement and being an indirect admission that their Falcon software had failed to achieve it's stated capabilities at that time , assuming their statements were accurate) . ..."
"... To date, CrowdStrike has not been able to show how the malware had relayed any emails or accessed any mailboxes. They have also not responded to inquiries specifically asking for details about this. In fact, things have now been discovered that bring some of their malware discoveries into question. ..."
"... there is a reason to think Fancy Bear didn't start some of its activity until CrowdStrike had arrived at the DNC. CrowdStrike, in the indiciators of compromise they reported, identified three pieces of malware relating to Fancy Bear: ..."
"... They found that generally, in a lot of cases, malware developers didn't care to hide the compile times and that while implausible timestamps are used, it's rare that these use dates in the future. It's possible, but unlikely that one sample would have a postdated timestamp to coincide with their visit by mere chance but seems extremely unlikely to happen with two or more samples. Considering the dates of CrowdStrike's activities at the DNC coincide with the compile dates of two out of the three pieces of malware discovered and attributed to APT-28 (the other compiled approximately 2 weeks prior to their visit), the big question is: Did CrowdStrike plant some (or all) of the APT-28 malware? ..."
"... The IP address, according to those articles, was disabled in June 2015, eleven months before the DNC emails were acquired – meaning those IP addresses, in reality, had no involvement in the alleged hacking of the DNC. ..."
"... The fact that two out of three of the Fancy Bear malware samples identified were compiled on dates within the apparent five day period CrowdStrike were apparently at the DNC seems incredibly unlikely to have occurred by mere chance. ..."
"... That all three malware samples were compiled within ten days either side of their visit – makes it clear just how questionable the Fancy Bear malware discoveries were. ..."
Of course the DNC did not want to the FBI to investigate its "hacked servers". The plan was well underway to excuse Hillary's
pathetic election defeat to Trump, and
CrowdStrike would help out by planting evidence to pin on those evil "Russian hackers." Some would call this
entire DNC server hack an
"insurance policy."
All signs of sophisticated false flag operation, which probably involved putting malware into DNC servers and then
detecting and analyzing them
Notable quotes:
"... 6 May 2016 when CrowdStrike first detected what it assessed to be a Russian presence inside the DNC server. Follow me here. One week after realizing there had been a penetration, the DNC learns, courtesy of the computer security firm it hired, that the Russians are doing it. Okay. Does CrowdStrike shut down the penetration. Nope. The hacking apparently continues unabated. ..."
"... The Smoking Gun ..."
"... I introduce Seth Rich at this point because he represents an alternative hypothesis. Rich, who reportedly was a Bernie Sanders supporter, was in a position at the DNC that gave him access to the emails in question and the opportunity to download the emails and take them from the DNC headquarters. Worth noting that Julian Assange offered $20,000 for information leading to the arrest of Rich's killer or killers. 8. 22 July 2016. Wikileaks published the DNC emails starting on 22 July 2016. Bill Binney, a former senior official at NSA, insists that if such a hack and electronic transfer over the internet had occurred then the NSA has in it possession the intelligence data to prove that such activity had occurred. ..."
"... Notwithstanding the claim by CrowdStrike not a single piece of evidence has been provided to the public to support the conclusion that the emails were hacked and physically transferred to a server under the control of a Russian intelligence operative. ..."
"... Please do not try to post a comment stating that the "Intelligence Community" concluded as well that Russia was responsible. That claim is totally without one shred of actual forensic evidence. Also, Julian Assange insists that the emails did not come from a Russian source. ..."
"... Wikileaks, the protector of the accountability of the top, has announced a reward for finding the murderers of Seth Rich. In comparison, the DNC has not offered any reward to help the investigation of the murder of the DNC staffer, but the DNC found a well-connected lawyer to protect Imran Awan who is guilty (along with Debbie Wasserman-Schultz) in the greatest breach of national cybersecurity: http://dailycaller.com/2017/07/29/wasserman-schultz-seemingly-planned-to-pay-suspect-even-while-he-lived-in-pakistan/ ..."
"... I'm afraid you're behind the times. Wheeler is no longer relevant now that Sy Hersh has revealed an FBI report that explicitly says Rich was in contact with Wikileaks offering to sell them DNC documents. ..."
"... It's unfortunate for the Rich family, but now that the connection is pretty much confirmed, they're going to have to allow the truth to come out ..."
"... Mr. Dmitri Alperovitch, of Jewish descent (and an emigre from Russia), has been an "expert" at the Atlantic Council, the same organization that cherishes and provides for Mr. Eliot Higgins. These two gentlemen - and the directorate of Atlantic Council - are exhibit one of opportunism and intellectual dishonesty (though it is hard to think about Mr. Higgins in terms of "intellect"). ..."
"... Alperovitch is not just an incompetent "expert" in cybersecurity - he is a willing liar and war-mongering, for money. ..."
"... One could of course start earlier. What is the exact timeline of the larger cyberwar post 9/11, or at least the bits and pieces that surfaced for the nitwits among us, like: Stuxnet? ..."
"... Scott Ritter's article referenced in PT's post is terrific, covering a ton of issues related to CrowdStrike and the DNC hack. You need to read it, not just PT's timeline. In case you missed the link in PT's post: ..."
"... His article echoes and reinforces what Carr and others have said about the difficulty of attribution of infosec breaches. Namely that the basic problem of both intelligence and infosec operations is that there is too much obfuscation, manipulation, and misdirection involved to be sure of who or what is going on. ..."
"... The Seth Rich connection is pretty much a done deal, now that Sy Hersh has been caught on tape stating that he knows of an FBI report based on a forensic analysis of Rich's laptop that shows Rich was in direct contact with Wikileaks with an attempt to sell them DNC documents and that Wikileaks had access to Rich's DropBox account. Despite Hersh's subsequent denials - which everyone knows are his usual impatient deflections prior to putting out a sourced and organized article - it's pretty clear that Rich was at least one of the sources of the Wikileaks email dump and that there is zero connection to Russia. ..."
"... None of this proves that Russian intelligence - or Russians of some stripe - or for that matter hackers from literally anywhere - couldn't or didn't ALSO do a hack of the DNC. But it does prove that the iron-clad attribution of the source of Wikileaks email release to Russia is at best flawed, and at worst a deliberate cover up of a leak. ..."
Notwithstanding the conventional wisdom that Russia hacked into the DNC computers, downloaded emails and a passed the stolen missives
to Julian Assange's crew at Wikileaks, a careful examination of the timeline of events from 2016 shows that this story is simply
not plausible.
Let me take you through the known facts:
1. 29 April 2016 , when the DNC became aware its servers had been penetrated (https://medium.com/homefront-rising/dumbstruck-how-crowdstrike-conned-america-on-the-hack-of-the-dnc-ecfa522ff44f).
Note. They apparently did not know who was doing it. 2, 6 May 2016 when CrowdStrike first detected what it assessed to be a Russian
presence inside the DNC server. Follow me here. One week after realizing there had been a penetration, the DNC learns, courtesy of
the computer security firm it hired, that the Russians are doing it. Okay. Does CrowdStrike shut down the penetration. Nope. The
hacking apparently continues unabated. 3. 25 May 2016. The messages published on Wikileaks from the DNC show that 26 May 2016
was the last date that emails were sent and received at the DNC. There are no emails in the public domain after that date. In other
words, if the DNC emails were taken via a hacking operation, we can conclude from the fact that the last messages posted to Wikileaks
show a date time group of 25 May 2016. Wikileaks has not reported nor posted any emails from the DNC after the 25th of May. I think
it is reasonable to assume that was the day the dirty deed was done. 4. 12 June 2016, CrowdStrike purged the DNC server of all malware.
Are you kidding me? 45 days after the DNC discovers that its serve has been penetrated the decision to purge the DNC server is finally
made. What in the hell were they waiting for? But this also tells us that 18 days after the last email "taken" from the DNC, no additional
emails were taken by this nasty malware. Here is what does not make sense to me. If the DNC emails were truly hacked and the malware
was still in place on 11 June 2016 (it was not purged until the 12th) then why are there no emails from the DNC after 26 May 2016?
an excellent analysis of Guccifer's role : Almost immediately after the one-two punch of the Washington Post article/CrowdStrike
technical report went public, however, something totally unexpected happened -- someone came forward and took full responsibility
for the DNC cyber attack. Moreover, this entity -- operating under the persona Guccifer 2.0 (ostensibly named after the original
Guccifer , a Romanian hacker who stole the emails of a number of high-profile celebrities and who was arrested in 2014 and sentenced
to 4 ˝ years of prison in May 2016) -- did something no state actor has ever done before, publishing documents stolen from the DNC
server as proof of his claims.
Hi. This is Guccifer 2.0 and this is me who hacked Democratic National Committee.
With that simple email, sent to the on-line news magazine,
The Smoking
Gun , Guccifer 2.0 stole the limelight away from Alperovitch. Over the course of the next few days, through a series of
emails, online posts and
interviews
, Guccifer 2.0 openly mocked CrowdStrike and its Russian attribution. Guccifer 2.0 released a number of documents, including a massive
200-plus-missive containing opposition research on Donald Trump.
Guccifer 2.0 also directly contradicted the efforts on the part of the DNC to minimize the extent of the hacking,
releasing the very donor lists
the DNC specifically stated had not been stolen. More chilling, Guccifer 2.0 claimed to be in possession of "about 100 Gb of data"
which had been passed on to the online publisher, Wikileaks, who "will publish them soon." 7. Seth Rich died on 10 July 2016.
I introduce Seth Rich at this point because he represents an alternative hypothesis. Rich, who reportedly was a Bernie Sanders supporter,
was in a position at the DNC that gave him access to the emails in question and the opportunity to download the emails and take them
from the DNC headquarters. Worth noting that Julian Assange offered
$20,000 for information leading to the arrest of Rich's killer or killers. 8. 22 July 2016. Wikileaks published the DNC emails
starting on 22 July 2016. Bill Binney, a former senior official at NSA, insists that if such a hack and electronic transfer over
the internet had occurred then the NSA has in it possession the intelligence data to prove that such activity had occurred.Notwithstanding the claim by CrowdStrike not a single piece of evidence has been provided to the public to support the conclusion
that the emails were hacked and physically transferred to a server under the control of a Russian intelligence operative.Please do not try to post a comment stating that the "Intelligence Community" concluded as well that Russia was responsible.
That claim is totally without one shred of actual forensic evidence. Also, Julian Assange insists that the emails did not come from
a Russian source.
Wikileaks, the protector of the accountability of the top, has announced a reward for finding the murderers of Seth Rich.
In comparison, the DNC has not offered any reward to help the investigation of the murder of the DNC staffer, but the DNC found
a well-connected lawyer to protect Imran Awan who is guilty (along with Debbie Wasserman-Schultz) in the greatest breach of national
cybersecurity:
http://dailycaller.com/2017/07/29/wasserman-schultz-seemingly-planned-to-pay-suspect-even-while-he-lived-in-pakistan/
Seth Rich's family have pleaded, and continue to plead, that the conspiracy theorists leave the death of their son alone and have
said that those who continue to flog this nonsense around the internet are only serving to increase their pain. I suggest respectfully
that some here may wish to consider their feelings. (Also, this stuff is nuts, you know.)
"We also know that many people are angry at our government and want to see justice done in some way, somehow. We are asking
you to please consider our feelings and words. There are people who are using our beloved Seth's memory and legacy for their own
political goals, and they are using your outrage to perpetuate our nightmare."
"Wheeler, a former Metropolitan Police Department officer, was a key figure in a series of debunked stories claiming that Rich
had been in contact with Wikileaks before his death. Fox News, which reported the story online and on television, retracted it
in June."
I'm afraid you're behind the times. Wheeler is no longer relevant now that Sy Hersh has revealed an FBI report that explicitly
says Rich was in contact with Wikileaks offering to sell them DNC documents.
It's unfortunate for the Rich family, but now that the connection is pretty much confirmed, they're going to have to allow
the truth to come out.
Mr. Dmitri Alperovitch, of Jewish descent (and an emigre from Russia), has been an "expert" at the Atlantic Council, the same
organization that cherishes and provides for Mr. Eliot Higgins. These two gentlemen - and the directorate of Atlantic Council
- are exhibit one of opportunism and intellectual dishonesty (though it is hard to think about Mr. Higgins in terms of "intellect").
Take note how Alperovitch coded the names of the supposed hackers: "Russian intelligence services hacked the Democratic National
Committee's computer network and accessed opposition research on Donald Trump, according to the Atlantic Council's Dmitri Alperovitch.
Two Russian groups ! codenamed FancyBear and CozyBear ! have been identified as spearheading the DNC breach." Alperovitch
is not just an incompetent "expert" in cybersecurity - he is a willing liar and war-mongering, for money.
The DNC hacking story has never been about national security; Alperovitch (and his handlers) have no loyalty to the US.
PT, I make a short exception. Actually decided to stop babbling for a while. But: Just finished something successfully.
And since I usually need distraction by something far more interesting then matters at hand. I was close to your line of thought
yesters.
But really: Shouldn't the timeline start in 2015, since that's supposedly the time someone got into the DNC's system?
One could of course start earlier. What is the exact timeline of the larger cyberwar post 9/11, or at least the bits and
pieces that surfaced for the nitwits among us, like: Stuxnet?
But nevermind. Don't forget developments and recent events around Eugene or Jewgeni Walentinowitsch Kasperski?
The Russia thing certainly seems to have gone quiet.
Bannon's chum says the issue with pursuing the Clinton email thing is that you would end up having to indict almost all of
the last administration, including Obama, unseemly certainly. Still there might be a fall guy, maybe Comey, and obviously it serves
Trump's purposes to keep this a live issue through the good work of Grassley and the occasional tweet.
Would be amusing if Trump pardoned Obama. Still think Brennan should pay a price though, can't really be allowed to get away
with it
Scott Ritter's article referenced in PT's post is terrific, covering a ton of issues related to CrowdStrike and the DNC hack.
You need to read it, not just PT's timeline. In case you missed the link in PT's post:
Also, the article Carr references is very important for understanding the limits of malware analysis and "attribution". Written
by Michael Tanji, whose credentials appear impressive: "spent nearly 20 years in the US intelligence community. Trained in both
SIGINT and HUMINT disciplines he has worked at the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, and the National
Reconnaissance Office. At various points in his career he served as an expert in information warfare, computer network operations,
computer forensics, and indications and warning. A veteran of the US Army, Michael has served in both strategic and tactical assignments
in the Pacific Theater, the Balkans, and the Middle East."
His article echoes and reinforces what Carr and others have said about the difficulty of attribution of infosec breaches.
Namely that the basic problem of both intelligence and infosec operations is that there is too much obfuscation, manipulation,
and misdirection involved to be sure of who or what is going on.
The Seth Rich connection is pretty much a done deal, now that Sy Hersh has been caught on tape stating that he knows of
an FBI report based on a forensic analysis of Rich's laptop that shows Rich was in direct contact with Wikileaks with an attempt
to sell them DNC documents and that Wikileaks had access to Rich's DropBox account. Despite Hersh's subsequent denials - which
everyone knows are his usual impatient deflections prior to putting out a sourced and organized article - it's pretty clear that
Rich was at least one of the sources of the Wikileaks email dump and that there is zero connection to Russia.
None of this proves that Russian intelligence - or Russians of some stripe - or for that matter hackers from literally
anywhere - couldn't or didn't ALSO do a hack of the DNC. But it does prove that the iron-clad attribution of the source of Wikileaks
email release to Russia is at best flawed, and at worst a deliberate cover up of a leak.
And Russiagate depends primarily on BOTH alleged "facts" being true: 1) that Russia hacked the DNC, and 2) that Russia was
the source of Wikileaks release. And if the latter is not true, then one has to question why Russia hacked the DNC in the first
place, other than for "normal" espionage operations. "Influencing the election" then becomes a far less plausible theory.
The general takeaway from an infosec point of view is that attribution by means of target identification, tools used, and "indicators
of compromise" is a fatally flawed means of identifying, and thus being able to counter, the adversaries encountered in today's
Internet world, as Tanji proves. Only HUMINT offers a way around this, just as it is really the only valid option in countering
terrorism.
"... ..."Multiple reports show that my former colleagues in the intelligence community have decided that they must leak or withhold classified information due to unsettling connections between President Trump and the Russian Government... ..."
"... The deep state is running scared! I never+ attribute to coincidence that which is the FBI trampling the bill of rights. It is coincidence the deep state (fbi, nsa, various CIA and DoD spooks) tapped Russia spies who talk to private citizens who have no opportunity at espionage. Then the innuendo is leaked to the Clinton media! ..."
"... Worse on Trump for calling them out for leaking rather than as a civil liberty trampling Gestapo. Ben Franklin was right, give the democrat run spooks the power to protect you and you lose liberty and protection! ..."
This is running now on FoxNews.com, total fabrication especially the last sentence but Trumpers believe this Fake News. I think
this is where ilsm gets his intell insights from, phoney former intell officers, they sound exactly like him - check it out for
yourself
"I'm a Democrat (and ex-CIA) but the spies plotting against Trump are out of control"
By Bryan Dean Wright...February 18, 2017...Foxnews.com
..."Multiple reports show that my former colleagues in the intelligence community have decided that they must leak or
withhold classified information due to unsettling connections between President Trump and the Russian Government...
Days ago, they delivered their verdict. According to one intelligence official, the president "will die in jail."..."
The deep state is running scared! I never+ attribute to coincidence that which is the FBI trampling the bill of rights. It
is coincidence the deep state (fbi, nsa, various CIA and DoD spooks) tapped Russia spies who talk to private citizens who have
no opportunity at espionage. Then the innuendo is leaked to the Clinton media!
Worse on Trump for calling them out for leaking rather than as a civil liberty trampling Gestapo. Ben Franklin was right,
give the democrat run spooks the power to protect you and you lose liberty and protection!
"... In principle, every router between the DNC server and Russia has the potential to be hacked, with a tunnel added to send the traffic somewhere else in the world with new source and destination addresses. This is known as router table poisoning. It is preventable but the mechanisms are rarely ever used because the security services want to be able to do this themselves. There are some nice logs of the NSA using this. ..."
"... In principle, someone at an ISP or backbone service could have had a laptop plugged into a switch or router to do the same thing, or lit up a strand of dark fibre to let some uber-wealthy business do this. And there's no shortage of uber-wealthy businesses who aren't keen on Democrats. This technique is used for local and remote network diagnostics, no reason it can't be used nefarious, it's not like the hardware cares why a wire is plugged in. ..."
"... Russia has an independent foreign policy and acts in what it perceives as it's own best interests. It has refused to become a vassal state of the West and is a threat to the Empire's full-spectrum dominance. Worst of all it has begun trading outside the $US in energy and other resources with China and Iran. ..."
"... Mainstream media are now busy repressing any news and any questioning about facts ..."
"... Western media are in full panic as Aleppo falls with all sorts of gruesome tales about the mistreatment of their favorite terrorists in Aleppo and a strange silence on the whereabouts of their '250K civilians' under siege ..."
"... I cant believe the Fake News outlets are still making a big deal about this issue. Obomber is leaving in a cloud of failure as he deserves ..."
"... "Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state." ― Noam Chomsky, Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda. ..."
"... New Canadian documentary - All Governments Lie. "It lucidly argues that powerful interests have been creating supercharged fake stories for decades to advance their own nefarious interests. And the institutional media have too often blithely played along." The Globe and Mail. ..."
"... No comments about Seth Rich the DNC staffer Assange hinted had leaked the Podesta emails to Wikileaks and was subsequently shot multiple times and died at 04:20 on a Washington DC street in a 'motiveless' crime in which none of his possessions were taken. ..."
"... The rise of the right wing in Europe is due to the fact that Social Democratic parties have completely sold out to neo-liberal agenda. ..."
"... So Putin's plan to undermine U.S. voter confidence was to simply show what actually happens behind the scenes at the DNC, how diabolical! ..."
"... Peter Schweizer, the author of Clinton Cash, has published a report that claims that that Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta was on the executive board of a foreign company that received $35 million from the Kremlin. "The company was a transparent Russian front, and how much Podesta was compensated - and for what - is unclear. In addition, Podesta failed to disclose his position on that board to the Federal government, as required by law," John Schindler of the Observer wrote. ..."
"... So it's true because the CIA said so. That's the gold standard for me. ..."
"... "Truth is Treason in the Empire of Lies" - Ron Paul ..."
"... At least Tucker Carlson is able to see through the BS and asks searching question. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRkeGkCjdHg ..."
"... President-elect Donald Trump's transition team said in a statement Friday afternoon that the same people who claim Russia interfered in the presidential election had previously claimed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. ..."
"... The neoliberal corporate machine is wounded but not dead. They will use every trick, ploy and opportunity to try to regain power. The fight goes on. ..."
"... Good occasion to substantiate the accusation which ,substantiated or not,will remind the "useful idiots" of the "change of regime " US policy and who started the Ukrainian crisis. ..."
"... Just another chapter in the sad saga of the Democrats unwillingness to admit they ran the worst candidate & the worst campaign in recent memory. It's not our fault! Them dirty Russkies did it! ..."
Well, if Rupert Mudroach, an American citizen, can influence the Australian elections, who gives a stuff about anyone else's
involvement in US politics?
The US loves demonising Russia, even supporting ISIS to fight against them.
The United States of Amnesia just can't understand that they are run by the military machine.
As Frank Zappa once correctly stated: The US government is just the entertainment unit of the Military.
Altogether the only thing people are accusing the Russians of is the WikiLeaks scandal. And in hindsight of the enormous media
bias toward Trump it really comes of as little more than leveling the playing field. Hardly the sort of democratic subversion
that is being suggested.
And of course there is another problem and that is in principle, the DNC server could have had malware in an e-mail that set
up a NAT entry that made the connecting computer appear somewhere else, with the entry deleted afterwards. Typically, IP table
modifications aren't logged, so this would not be detectable.
In principle, the DNC server could have had malware in an e-mail that ran a SED script at a specific time that changed any
occurrence of one IP address with another. Not sure anyone would bother with this, but it's why good system admins place so much
emphasis on securing logs. However, it's obvious we're not talking about good admins.
In principle, every router between the DNC server and Russia has the potential to be hacked, with a tunnel added to send the
traffic somewhere else in the world with new source and destination addresses. This is known as router table poisoning. It is
preventable but the mechanisms are rarely ever used because the security services want to be able to do this themselves. There
are some nice logs of the NSA using this.
In principle, someone along the way could tap into the fibre, spoofing IP addresses and injecting/sniffing packets. The US
even has a submarine designed for this, but optics aren't complex and any number of neo-phone phreaks could have the hardware.
In principle, someone at an ISP or backbone service could have had a laptop plugged into a switch or router to do the same
thing, or lit up a strand of dark fibre to let some uber-wealthy business do this. And there's no shortage of uber-wealthy businesses
who aren't keen on Democrats. This technique is used for local and remote network diagnostics, no reason it can't be used nefarious,
it's not like the hardware cares why a wire is plugged in.
In principle, the supposed destination machine could have been hacked to relay the packets in encrypted form to the South Pole
or a college campus in Texas. There are many examples of client machines being hacked to do this. It's basically what zombie machines
are in botnets.
In practice, it is flat-out guaranteed that none of the security agencies could distinguish this from a Russian attack. Nothing
in the area monitored could tell the difference. We know, for a fact, that college kids spoofing a scan from China have fooled
the DoD and NSA on previous occasions, it has caused international incidents.
So we have known forms of attack that are known to exist, aren't complex and in some cases are already used for attacks. They
are 100% untraceable.
Don't know about Russians, but in the early 2000's the Ukrainian hackers had some nasty viruses embedded in email attachments
that could fuckup ARM based computers.
Russia has an independent foreign policy and acts in what it perceives as it's own best interests. It has refused to become
a vassal state of the West and is a threat to the Empire's full-spectrum dominance. Worst of all it has begun trading outside
the $US in energy and other resources with China and Iran.
Mainstream media are now busy repressing any news and any questioning about facts, as the last battle in their support to jidaists
fighting the Syrian Army. This is the dark pit where our so called free press has fallen into.
Yep had a chat with an army mate yesterday asked him what the fcuk the supposed head of MI6 was on about regarding Russian support
for Syrian govt suggesting Russian actions made terrorism more likely here in UK. He shrugged his shoulders and said he hoped
Putin wiped the terrorists out...
Western media are in full panic as Aleppo falls with all sorts of gruesome tales about the mistreatment of their favorite terrorists
in Aleppo and a strange silence on the whereabouts of their '250K civilians' under siege
Of course no news on the danger to the civilians of W,Aleppo, who have been bombarded indiscriminately for months by the 'moderates'
in the east of the city or the danger to the civilians of Palmyra, Mosul or al Bab.
I cant believe the Fake News outlets are still making a big deal about this issue. Obomber is leaving in a cloud of failure as
he deserves.
I´ll still look for the Guardian articles on football which are excellent.
Cheers!
The Sanders movement inside the Democratic party did offer some hope but this was snuffed out by the DNC and the Clinton campaign
in collusion with the media. This is what likely caused her defeat in November and not some Kremlin intrigue.
"Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state."
― Noam Chomsky, Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda.
New Canadian documentary - All Governments Lie. "It lucidly argues that powerful interests have been creating supercharged fake
stories for decades to advance their own nefarious interests. And the institutional media have too often blithely played along."
The Globe and Mail.
No comments about Seth Rich the DNC staffer Assange hinted had leaked the Podesta emails to Wikileaks and was subsequently shot
multiple times and died at 04:20 on a Washington DC street in a 'motiveless' crime in which none of his possessions were taken.
Distract the masses with bullsh*t , nothing new...
Trump needs to double up on his personal security, he has doubled down on the CIA tonight bringing upmtheir bullsh*t on WMD. Thing
are getting interesting...
"If we can revert to the truth, then a great deal of one's suffering can be erased, because a great deal of one's suffering is
based on sheer lies. "
R. D. Laing
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
US politicians and the MSM depend on sheer lies.....
They are playing a game. They are playing at not playing a game. If I show them I see they are, I shall break the rules and they
will punish me. I must play their game, of not seeing I see the game.
R. D. Laing
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
I'm sick of jumping through their hoops - how about you?
"Tin Foil Hat" Hillary--
"This is not about politics or partisanship," she went on. "Lives are at risk, lives of ordinary people just trying to go about
their days to do their jobs, contribute to their communities. It is a danger that must be addressed and addressed quickly."
We fail to see how Russian propaganda has put people's lives directly at risk. Unless, of course, Hillary is suggesting that
the increasingly-bizarre #Pizzagate swarm journalism campaign (which apparently caused a man to shoot up a floor tile in a D.C.
pizza shop) was conjured up by a bunch of Russian trolls.
And this is about as absurd as saying Russian trolls were why Trump got elected.
"It needs to be said," former counterintelligence agent John R. Schindler (who, by the way, believes Assange and Snowden are
both Russian plants), writes in the Observer, "that nearly all of the liberals eagerly pontificating about how Putin put Trump
in office know nothing about 21st century espionage, much less Russia's unique spy model and how it works. Indeed, some of the
most ardent advocates of this Kremlin-did-it conspiracy theory were big fans of Snowden and Wikileaks -- right until clandestine
Russian shenanigans started to hurt Democrats. Now, they're panicking."
(Nonetheless, #Pizzagate and Trump, IMHO, are manifestations of a population which deeply deeply distrusts the handlers and
gatekeepers of the status quo. Justified or not. And with or without Putin's shadowy fingers strumming its magic hypno-harp across
the Land of the Free. This runs deeper than just Putin.)
Fake news has always been around, from the fake news which led Americans to believe the Pearl Harbor attack was a surprise
and completely unprovoked .
To the fake news campaigns put out by Edward Bernays tricking women into believing cigarettes were empowering little phallics
of feminism. (AKA "Torches of Freedom.")
This War on Fake News has more to do with the elites finally realizing how little control they have over the minds of the unwashed
masses. Rather, this is a war on the freaks, geeks and weirdos who've formed a decentralized and massively-influential media right
under their noses.
and there may be some truth to that. An article says has delved into financial matters in Russia.
Kremlin Connection? The TRUTH About Hillary's Shady Ties To Russia REVEALED
Find out why insiders say Clinton has some explaining to do.
Americans have no idea just how closely Hillary Clinton is tied to the Kremlin! That's the shocking claim of a new report that
alleges the Democratic nominee is secretly pals with Vladimir Putin and his countrymen.
Peter Schweizer, the author of Clinton Cash, has published a report that claims that that Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta
was on the executive board of a foreign company that received $35 million from the Kremlin. "The company was a transparent Russian
front, and how much Podesta was compensated - and for what - is unclear. In addition, Podesta failed to disclose his position
on that board to the Federal government, as required by law," John Schindler of the Observer wrote.
As Radar previously reported, when Clinton was secretary of state, she profited from the "Russian Reset," a failed attempt
to improve relations between the U.S. and Russia.
chweizer wrote, "Many of the key figures in the Skolkovo process - on both the Russian and U.S. sides - had major financial ties
to the Clintons. During the Russian reset, these figures and entities provided the Clintons with tens of millions of dollars,
including contributions to the Clinton Foundation, paid for speeches by Bill Clinton, or investments in small start-up companies
with deep Clinton ties." Schweizer also details "Skolkovo," a Silicon Valley-like campus that both the U.S. and Russia worked
on for developing biomed, space, nuclear and IT technologies. He told the New York Post that there was a "pattern that shows a
high percentage of participants in Skolkovo who happen to be Clinton Foundation donors."
So it's true because the CIA said so.
That's the gold standard for me.
So let me be the first to thank Russia for providing us with their research.
Instead of assassination, coup or invasion, they simply showed us our leaders' own words when written behind the public's backs.
I'm no fan of Putin, but this was a useful bit of intelligence you've shared with us.
Happy Christmas, Vlad.
Next time why not provide us with the email of all our banks and fossil fuel companies; you can help us clean up both political
parties with one fell swoop that way.
The U.S. is getting what it deserves, IF Russia was even dumb enough to meddle. The government in this country has been meddling
in other countries' affairs sixty years, in the Middle East, in South America and other places we don't even know about. The result
is mayhem, all in the 'interests' of the U.S., as it is described.
Where's the gap in this logic:
A) The American public has been offered ZERO proof of hacking by the Russian government to alter our election.
B) Even if true, no one has disputed the authenticity of the emails hacked.
C) Therefore, the WORST Russia could have done is show us who are own leader are when they don't think we're listening.
D) Taken together, this article is pretty close to fake news, and gives us nothing that should outrage us much at this time --
unless we are trying to foment war with Russia or call for a military coup against the baboon about to take the oath of office.
Hacking by unnamed individuals. No direct involvement of the Russian government, only implied, alleged, etc. Seems to me that
if Hillary had obeyed the law and not schemed behind the scenes to sabotage Bernie S. there would have been nothing to leak! Really
this is all about being caught with fer fingers in the cookie jar. Does it matter who leaked it? Did the US public not have a
right to know what the people they were voting for had been up to? It's a bit like the governor of a province being filmed burgling
someone's house and then complaining that someone had leaked the film to the media, just when he was trying to get re-elected!
It is called passing the buck, and because of the underhanded undermining of Bernie Sanders, who was winning, we have Trump. Thank
you Democratic party.
I am disappointed that the Guardian gives so much prominence to such speculation which is almost totally irrelevant. Why would
we necessarily (a) believe what the superspies tell us and (b) even if it is true why should we care?
I am also very disappointed at the Guardians attitude to Putin, the elected leader of Russia, who was so badly treated by the
US from the moment he took over from Yeltsin. I was in Russia as a visitor around that time and it was obvious that Putin restored
some dignity to the Russian people after the disastrous Yeltsin term of office. If the US had been willing to deal with him with
respect the world could be a much better place today. Instead the US insisted in trying to subvert his rule with the support of
its supine NATO allies in order to satisfy its corporate rulers.
If this is true, the US can hardly complain. After all, the US has a long record of interfering in other countries' elections--including
CIA overthrow of elected governments and their replacement with murderous, oppressive, right-wing dictatorships.
If the worst that Russia did was reveal the truth about what Democratic Party figures were saying behind closed doors, I'd
say it helped correct the unbalanced media focus on preventing Trump from becoming President. Call it the globalization of elections.
First, the government has yet to present any persuasive evidence that Russia hacked the DNC or anyone else. All we have is that
there is Russian code (meaningless according to cyber-security experts) and seemingly baseless "conclusions" by "intelligence"
officials. In other words, fake news at this point.
Second, even if true, the allegation amounts to an argument that Russia presented us with facts that we shouldn't have seen.
Think about that for a while. We are seeing demands that we self-censor ourselves from facts that seem unfair. What utter idiocy.
This is particularly outrageous given that the U.S. directly intervenes in the governance of any number of nations all the
time. We can support coups, arm insurgencies, or directly invade, but god forbid that someone present us with unsettling facts
about our ruling class.
This nation has jumped the shark. The fact that Trump is our president is merely confirmation of this long evident fact. That
fighting REAL NEWS of emails whose content has not been disputed is part of our war on "fake news," and the top priority for some
so-called liberals, promises only worse to come.
>> Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee, said Russia had "succeeded" in "sow[ing] discord" in the
election, and urged as much public disclosure as is possible.
What utter bullshit. The DNC's own dirty tricks did that. Donna Brasille stealing debate questions and handing them to Hillary
so that she could cheat did that. The FBIs investigation into Hillary did that. Podesta's emails did that. The totally one-sided
press coverage (apart from Fox) of the election did that. But it seems the american people were smart enough to see through the
BS and voted for trump. Good for them.
And we're gonna need a lot more than the word of a few politicised so-called intelligence agencies to believe this russo-hacking
story. These are the same people who lied about Iraqi WMDs so they are proven fakers/liars. These are also the same people who
hack EVERYONE else so I, quite frankly, have no sympathy even of the story turns out to be true.
Announce "consensus" (not unanimous) "conclusion" based in circumstantial evidence now, before the Electoral College vote,
then write a report with actual details due by Jan 20.
Put a proven liar in charge of writing the report on Russian hacking.
Fail to mention that not one of the leaked DNC or Podesta emails has been shown to be inauthentic. So the supposed Russian hacking
simply revealed truth about Hillary, DNC, and MSM collusion and corruption.
Fail to mention that if hacking was done by or for US government to stop Hillary, blaming the Russians would be the most likely
disinformation used by US agencies.
Expect every pro-Hillary lapdog journalist - which is virtually all of them - in America will hyperventilate (Twitter is currently
on fire) about this latest fact-free, anti-Trump political stunt for the next nine days.
Or, as a reader put it, this is a soft coup attempt by leaders of Intel community and Obama Admin to influence the Electoral College
vote, similar to the 1960s novel "Seven Days in May."
When the Department Of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Election Security release a joint
statement it is not without very careful consideration to the wording.
Therefore, to understand what is known by the US intelligence services one must analyse the language used.
This is very telling:
"The recent disclosures of alleged hacked e-mails on sites like DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks and by the Guccifer 2.0 online persona
are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts."
Alleged:
adjective [attributive]
said, without proof, to have taken place or to have a specified illegal or undesirable quality
Consistent:
adjective
acting or done in the same way over time
Method:
noun
a particular procedure for accomplishing or approaching something
Motivation:
noun
a reason or reasons for acting or behaving in a particular way
So, what exactly is known by the US intelligence services?
Well what we can tell is:
the alleged (without proof) hacks were consistent (done in the same way) with the methods (using a particular procedure) and motivations
(and having reason for doing so) with Russian State actions.
There is absolutely no certainty about this whatsoever.
Thank God Obama will be out of office soon. He is the biggest disappointment ever. He has ordered the death of THOUSANDS via drone
strikes in other people's countries and most of the deaths were innocent bystanders. If President Xi of China or Putin were to
do that we would all be calling them tyrannical dictators and accusing them of a back door invasions. But somehow people are brainwashed
into thinking its ok of the US president to do such things. Truly sickening.
Says the CIA the organisation set up to destabilise governments all over the world. Lol.....
Congratulations for keeping a straight face I hope Trump makes urgently needed personnel changes in the alphabet soup agencies
working against humanity for very many years.
This is an extremely dangerous game that Obama and the political elites are playing.
The American political elites - including senetors, bankers, investors, multinationals et al, can feel power and control slipping
away from them.
This makes them very dangerous people indeed - as self-preservation and holding onto power is their number one priority.
What they're aiming to do ( a child can see what's coming ), is to call into question the validity of Trump's victory and blame
the Russians for it.
The elites are looking to create chaos and insurrection, to have the result nullified and to vilify Putin and Russia.
American and Russian troops are already lined up and facing each other along the Eastern European borders and all it takes
is one small incident from either side.
And all because those that have ruled the roost for so many decades ( in the White house, the 2 houses of Congress and Wall
St ), simply cannot face losing their positions of power, wealth and political influence.
They're out to get Trump, the populists and President Putin.
This is starting to feel like an attempt to make the Trump presidency appear illegitimate. The problem is that it could actually
make the democrats look like sore losers instead. We've had the recount, now it's foreign interference. This might harm them in
2020.
I don't like that Trump won, but he did. The electoral college system is clearly in the constitution and all sides understood
and agreed to it at the campaign commencement. Also some, by no means all, of commenters saying that the popular vote should win
have also been on referendum BTL saying the result isn't a legitimate leave vote, make your minds up!
I don't want Trump and I wanted to remain but, by the rules, my sides lost.
Yet in August, Snowden warned that the recent hack of NSA tied cyber spies was not designed to expose Hillary Clinton, but rather
a display of strength by the hackers, showing they could eventually unmask the NSA's own international cyber espionage and prove
the U.S. meddles in elections around the world.
Will the CIA be providing evidence to support these allegations or is it a case of "just trust us guys"? In any event, hypocrisy
is a national sport for the Yanks. According to a Reuters article 9 August 2016 "NSA operations have, for example, recently delved
into elections in Mexico, targeting its last presidential campaign. According to a top-secret PowerPoint presentation leaked by
former NSA contract employee Edward Snowden, the operation involved a "surge effort against one of Mexico's leading presidential
candidates, Enrique Peńa Nieto, and nine of his close associates." Peńa won that election and is now Mexico's president.
The NSA identified Peńa's cellphone and those of his associates using advanced software that can filter out specific phones
from the swarm around the candidate. These lines were then targeted. The technology, one NSA analyst noted, "might find a needle
in a haystack." The analyst described it as "a repeatable and efficient" process.
The eavesdroppers also succeeded in intercepting 85,489 text messages, a Der Spiegel article noted.
Another NSA operation, begun in May 2010 and codenamed FLATLIQUID, targeted Pena's predecessor, President Felipe Calderon.
The NSA, the documents revealed, was able "to gain first-ever access to President Felipe Calderon's public email account."
At the same time, members of a highly secret joint NSA/CIA organization, called the Special Collection Service, are based in
the U.S. embassy in Mexico City and other U.S. embassies around the world. It targets local government communications, as well
as foreign embassies nearby. For Mexico, additional eavesdropping, and much of the analysis, is conducted by NSA Texas, a large
listening post in San Antonio that focuses on the Caribbean, Central America and South America."
Breaking news! CIA admits people in USA aren't smart enough to vote for the person right person. Why blame Russians now?
Come on. Let's move on and enjoy the mess Trump will start. This is going to be worse than GWB.
We should all just enjoy the political comedy programs.
The CIA accusing a foreign power of interfering in the election of a showman for president - it would take me all day top cite
the times that this evil criminal organisation has interfered in the affairs of other countries, ordered assassinations, coups
etc. etc. etc
Yes like the "help" the CIA gave to the Taliban, Bin Laden and Co. when the Russians were in Afghanistan.
Then these dimwits from the CIA who taught Bin Laden and Co guerrilla warfare totally "missed" 9/11 and Twin Towers with all their
billions of funding.
So basically this is a total load of crap and if you think we are going to believe any reports vs. Russia these fools at the CIA
are going to publish then think again.
During the election our media was exposed as in essence a propaganda tool for the Democrat campaign and they continue the unholy
alliance after the election
Pathetic move from an organisation that created ISIS and is single handling every single conflict in the world. Here we have a
muppet president that for once wants to look after USA affairs internally and here we have a so alleged independent organisation
that wants to keep bombing and destabilising the world. Didn't Trump said he wanted to shake the FBI and CIA ? Who is going to
stop this machine of treachery ? : south America, middle east ...Asia ... they put their fingers on to create a problem- solution
caveat wereas is to create weapons contracts /farma or construction and sovereign debt . But it never tricles down to the layperson
..
"We are Not calling into question the election results"
next White House sentence - "Just the integrity.. " WTF
What more do you need to know - Bullshit Fake News.. propaganda, spoken by the youngest possible puppet boy White House Rep.
who almost managed to have his tie done up..
I am bookmarking this guy, for a laugh! White House Fake Newscaster ..:)
Worth watching the sides of his mouth onto his attempt to engage you with the eyes, but blinking way too much before, during
and after the word "Integrity".. FAKE!
His hand signals.. lmfao, so measured, how sweet.. now sack the sycophants --
People should know that these Breaking News stories we see in Western media on BBC, Guardian etc, about Russian interference are
in fact from Wash Post and NY Times quoting mysterious sources within the CIA
Of course we know that Wash Post and NY Times were completely objective during the election and didn't favor any party
Russia made Hillary run the most expensive campaign ever, spending 1.2 billion dollars.
Russia stole Hillary's message to the working people and gave her lousy slogans
My real comment is below, but work with me, for a moment.
So, since 2008, eh? Barack has thought carefully, with a legal mind.
Can't we somehow blame the Russians for the whole Economic collapse.. coming soon, Wall Street Cyber Crash, screwed up sKewed
up systems of Ponzi virus spiraling out of control..
blame the Russians , logic, the KGB held the FED at gunpoint and said "create $16.2 Trillion in 5 working days"
jeez, blame anything and anybody except peace prize guy Obama, the Pope, Bankers & Israel..
Now can we discuss the Security of the Pound against Cyber Attack.. what was it 6% in 2 minutes, early on Sunday morning, just
over month ago.. whoosh!
It seems more important than discussing an election where the result was always OBVIOUS!
And we called it, just like Kellyanne Conway..
Who is Huma Abedin? I wish to know and hear her talking to Kellyanne Conway, graciously in defeat.. is that so unreasonable?
********
Obama wishes to distract from exceedingly poor judgement, at the very minimum....
after his Greek Affair with Goldman Sachs.. surely.
As for his other Foreign Policy: Eternal Shame, founded on Fake News!
Obama the Fake News Founder to flounder over the Russians, who can prove that he, Obama supports & supported Terrorism!
Thus this article exists, to create doubt over the veracity of evidence to be presented over NATO's involvement in SYRIA! Obama
continues to resist, or loose face completely..
Just ask Can Dundar.... what he knows now and ask Obama to secure the release of Can Dundar's wife's passport, held for no
legitimate reason in Turkey! This outrageous stand off, from Erdogan & Obama to address their failures and arrogant disrespect
of Woman and her Legal Human Rights is Criminal.. & a Sickness of Mind that promotes Dictatorship!
Mainstream Media - Fake News.. for quite some time!
& Obama is guilty!
The one certainty of the US/EU led drive to remove an elected leader just in their 2nd year after an election that saw them
gain 47% of the popular vote was the Russki response, its borders were immediately at open 'threat' from any alliance. NATO or
otherwise, the deep sea ports of eastern Ukraine which had always been accessed by the Russki fleets would lose guaranteed access
etc....to believe the West was surprised by this action, would be to assume the US Generals were as stupid as the US administration,
they knew exactly the response of the Russkis & would have made no difference if their leader had been named Putin or Uncle Tom
Cobbly.
In some ways the Russkis partitioning of the East of Ukraine could well minimise the possibility of a world conflict as the
perceived threat is neutralised by the buffer.
The Russkis cyber doodah is no different to our own the US etc, they're all 'at it' & all attempt to inveigle the others in
terms of making life difficult.....not too sure Putin will be quite as comfortable with the Pres Elects 3 Trumpeteers though as
the new Pressie looks likely to open channels of communications but those negotiations might well see a far tougher stance......still,
in truth, all is never fair in love or war
.....that the CIA is not only suddenly involved, but suddenly at the forefront, may well reflect President-elect Trump's stated
policy intentions being far removed from those that the CIA has endorsed, and might be done with an eye toward undermining Trump's
position in those upcoming policy battles.
At the center of those Trump vs. CIA battles is Syria, as the CIA has for years pushed to move away from the ISIS war and toward
imposing regime change in Syria. Trump, by contrast, has said he intends to end the CIA-Saudi program arming the Syrian rebels,
and focus on fighting ISIS. Trump was even said to be seeking to coordinate anti-ISIS operations with Russia.
The CIA allegations could easily imperil that plan, as so long as the allegations remain part of the public discourse, evidence
or not, anything Trump does with respect to Russia is going to have a black cloud hanging over it. http://news.antiwar.com/2016/12/09/cia-claims-russia-intervened-to-get-trump-elected
/
Oh dear Obama trolls? Food for your starved thoughts:
Your degree of understanding IT is disturbing, especially given how dependent we are on it.
This is all very simple. The process by which you find out if and how a machine was hacked was clearly documented in the Russian
"Internet Audit", run by a group of Grey Hats.
Grey Hats: People concerned about security who perform unauthorized hacks for relatively benign purposes, often just notifying
people of how their system is flawed. IT staff have mixed reactions(!), the illegality is not disputed but the benefit of not
being hit by a Black Hat first can be considerable at times. Differentiation is rare, especially as some hacktivist groups belong
here, causing no damage beyond reputational by flagging activity that is not acceptable to the hacktivists.
Black Hats: These are the guys to worry about. These include actually destructive hacktivists. These are the ones who steal
data for malicious purposes, disrupt for malicious purposes and just generally act maliciously.
Nothing in reports indicates if the DNC hack was Grey Hat or Black Hat, but it should be obvious that there is a difference.
IP addresses and hangouts - worthless as evidence. Anyone can spoof the former, happens all the time (NMap used to provide
the option, probably still does), Grey Hats and Black Hats alike have the latter and may break into other people's. It's all about
knowing vulnerabilities.
That voting machines were even on the Internet is disturbing. That they and the DNC server were improperly configured for such
an environment is frightening - and possibly illegal.
The standard sequence of events is thus:
Network intrusion detector system identifies crafted packet attacking known vulnerability.
In a good system, the firewall is set to block the attack at that instant.
If the attacker scans the network, the only machine responding to such knocks should be a virtual machine running a honeypot
on attractive-looking port numbers. The other machines in the zone should technically violate the RFCs by not responding to ICMP
or generating recognized error codes on unused/blocked ports.
The system logger picks up an event that creates a process that shouldn't be happening.
In a good system, this either can't happen because the combination of permissions needed doesn't exist, or it doesn't matter because
the process is root jailed and hasn't the privileges to actually do any harm.
The file alteration logger (possibly Tripwire, though the Linux kernel can do this itself) detects that a process with escalated
privileges is trying to create, delete or alter a file that it isn't supposed to be able to change.
In a good system with mandatory access controls, this really is impossible. In a good system with logging file systems, it doesn't
matter as you can instruct the filesystem to revert those specific alterations. Even in adequate but feeble systems, checkpoints
will exist. No use in a voting system, but perfectly adequate for a campaign server. In all cases, the system logs will document
what got damaged.
The correct IT manager response is thus:
Find out why the firewall wasn't defaulting to deny for all unknown sources and for unnecessary ports.
Find out why the public-facing system wasn't isolated in the firewall's DMZ.
Find out why NIDS didn't stop the attack.
Non-public user mobility should be via IPSec using certificates. That deals with connecting from unknown IP addresses without
exposing the innards of the system.
Lock down misconfigured network systems.
Backup files identified by file alteration detection as corrupt for forensic purposes.
Revert files identified by file alteration detection as corrupt to last good version.
Close permission loopholes. Everything should run with the fewest privileges necessary, OS included. On Linux, kernel permissions
are controlled via capabilities.
Establish from the logs if the intruder came through a public-facing application, an essential LAN service or a non-essential
service.
If it's a LAN service, block access to that service outside the LAN on the host firewall.
Run network and host vulnerability scanners to detect potential attack vectors.
Update any essential software that is detected as flawed, then rerun the scanners. Repeat until fixed.
Now the system is locked down against general attacks, you examine the logs to find out exactly what failed and how. If that line
of attack got fixed, good. If it didn't, then fix it.
Password policy should prevent rainbow attacks, not users. Edit as necessary, lock accounts that aren't secure and set the password
control system to ban bad passwords.
It is impossible from system logs to track where an intruder came from, unsecured routers are common and that means a skilled
attacker can divert packets to anywhere. You can't trust brags, in security nobody is honest. The sensible thing is to not allow
such events in the first place, but when (not if) they happen, learn from them.
If the USA is to investigate the effect of foreign governments 'corrupting' the free decisions of the American people in elections,
perhaps they could look into the fact that for the past three decades every Republican candidate for president, after they have
won the nomination of their party, has gone to just one foreign country to pledge their firm commitment/allegiance to that foreign
power, for the purpose of shoring up large blocks of donors prior to the actual presidential election. The effect is probably
more 'corrupting' than any leak of emails!
Obama should confess to creating ISIS, sustaining ISIS & utilising ISIS as a proxy army to have them do things that he knew US
soldiers could never be caught doing!!!
They then spoon fed you bullshit propaganda about who the bad guys were, without ever being to properly explain why the US
armed forces were prevented from taking any hostile action against ISIS, until they were FORCED TO, that is, when Putin let the
the cat out of the bag!!!
Hilarious. One would've thought Obama of all presidents would be reluctant to delve too deeply into this particular midden. As
the author of the weakest and most incompetent American foreign policy agenda since Carter's, it's much the likeliest that if
China or Russia have been hacking US elections, then by far the biggest beneficiary will have been himself.
cdm Begin forwarded message: > From: Lynn Forester de Rothschild <[email protected]> > Date: May 28, 2015 at 9:44:12 AM
EDT > To: Nick Merrill <[email protected]>, "Cheryl Mills ([email protected])" <[email protected]> > Subject: FW:
POLITICO Playbook > > Morning, > I am sure you are working on this, but clearly, the opposition is trying to undercut Hillary's
reputation for honesty (the number one characteristic people look for in a President according to most polls) ..and also to benefit
from an attack on wealth that Dems did the most to start I am sure we need to fight back against both of these attacks. > Xoxo
> Lynn > > By Mike Allen (@mikeallen; [email protected]), and Daniel Lippman (@dlippman; [email protected]) > > > > QUINNIPIAC
POLL, out at 6 a.m., "Rubio, Paul are only Republicans even close to Clinton": "In a general election, ... Clinton gets 46 percent
of American voters to 42 percent for Paul and 45 percent of voters to 41 percent for Rubio." Clinton leads Christie 46-37 ...
Huckabee 47-40 ... Jeb 47-37 ... Walker 46-38 ... Cruz 48-37 ... Trump 50-32. > > --"[V]oters say 53-39 percent that Clinton is
NOT honest and trustworthy, but say 60-37 ... that she has strong leadership qualities. Voters are divided 48-47 ... over whether
Clinton cares about their needs and problems." > > --RNC's new chart - "'Dead Broke' Clintons vs. Everyday Americans": "Check
out the chart below to see how many households in each state it would take to equal the 'Dead Broke' Clintons."
http://bit.ly/1Avg8iE
Blind leading the Blind.. & Obama knows that very well after it was clear that Clinton was NEVER trusted by the Voters, which
makes Debbie and the DNC look like a complete bunch of..
Idiots?!?! STILL BLAMING The RUSSIANS.... instead of themselves!
She was and always will be unelectable due to exceedingly poor judgement, across the board.
Who is in charge of Internet security in the US government? Because it seems full of holes. Last time it was the Chinese and this
time it's the Russians, yet not one piece of evidence to say where hacks have come from. How much are these world class Internet
security people paid? And why do they still have a job? People sitting in their bedrooms on a pc from stores like staples have
hacked their security regularly.
In 2016, he said, the government did not detect any increased cyber activity on election day itself but the FBI made public
specific acts in the summer and fall, tied to the highest levels of the Russian government. "This is going to put that activity
in a greater context ... dating all the way back to 2008."
Extremely vague. Seems like there is no evidence at all to suggest any Russian involvement, but they need to pretend otherwise.
Blah, blah, blah, Weapons of mass destruction... Apollo mission, etc
Ole, Russians exposed the DNC emails, we knew about that. I though this should investigate Russians vote rigging, but I guess
not. I for once welcome anyone who hacks my government and exposes their skeletons, so I can see what kind of dirty garbage I
had leading or potentially leading my country.
Maybe the DNC should play fair and not dirty next time and put a candidate forward without skeletons that still reek of rotting
flesh.
Don't believe any of this at all.
American has been thee most corrupt and disgusting western nation for decades, run by people who are now being shown for who they
really are and they're shitting themselves big time. The stakes don't get higher than this.
What a total load of double talk. There is zero integrity in anything CIA says or does since the weapons of mass destruction deal
or before that it was the Iran Contra deal and before that it was the Bay of Pigs. Now we have this rigging os the election results
based on zero evidence. The whole thing is just idiocy. What is Obama trying to achieve?The end game will be for Obama to go down
in history as ... let's just say he is not the smartest tool in the shed when it comes to being a so called world leader. Well
done Obama you have now completely trashed what is left of your legacy.
"CIA concludes Russia interfered to help Trump win election – report "
You might as well ask accountants to do a study on wether it's worthwhile to use an accountant. Part of the CIAs job is to
influence elections around the world to get US-Corporation friendly gov'ts in to power. So yes of course they are going to say
that a gov't can influence elections, if they said otherwise then they'd be admitting they're wasting money.
So, it was the Russians! I knew it must've been them, they're so sneaky. All HFC had was the total backing of the entire establishment,
including prominent Republican figures, the total fawning support of the entire main-stream media machine which carefully controlled
the "she's got a comfortable 3 point lead maybe even double-digit lead" narrative and the "boo and hiss" pantomime slagging of
her opponent. Plus the endless funds from the crooked foundation and murderous fanatics from the compliant Gulf states, and lost.
But hey, do keep this going please, it'll help the Trumpster get a second term! Trump/Nugent 2020.
Good point. Add that the whole election was dogged is the most glaring media bias and suddenly Russia comes off as simply leveling
the playing field a bit
The 'secret' enquiry reported to Congress that the CIA concludes etc, etc, etc. Then yet more revelations from 'anonymous sources'
are quoted in the Washington Post and The New York Times reaching the same conclusions.....talk about paranoia, or are the Democrats
guilty of news fakery of the highest order to deny the US voters....
Ooh Obama...there's a little snag about this investigation.
In principle, the DNC server could have had malware in an e-mail that set up a NAT entry that made the connecting computer
appear somewhere else, with the entry deleted afterwards. Typically, IP table modifications aren't logged, so this would not be
detectable.
In principle, the DNC server could have had malware in an e-mail that ran a SED script at a specific time that changed any
occurrence of one IP address with another. Not sure anyone would bother with this, but it's why good system admins place so much
emphasis on securing logs. However, it's obvious we're not talking about good admins.
In principle, every router between the DNC server and Russia has the potential to be hacked, with a tunnel added to send the
traffic somewhere else in the world with new source and destination addresses. This is known as router table poisoning. It is
preventable but the mechanisms are rarely ever used because the security services want to be able to do this themselves. There
are some nice logs of the NSA using this.
In principle, someone along the way could tap into the fibre, spoofing IP addresses and injecting/sniffing packets. The U.S.
even has a submarine designed for this, but optics aren't complex and any number of neo-phone phreaks could have the hardware.
In principle, someone at an ISP or backbone service could have had a laptop plugged into a switch or router to do the same
thing, or lit up a strand of dark fibre to let some uber-wealthy business do this. And there's no shortage of uber-wealthy businesses
who aren't keen on Democrats. This technique is used for local and remote network diagnostics, no reason it can't be used nefarious,
it's not like the hardware cares why a wire is plugged in.
In principle, the supposed destination machine could have been hacked to relay the packets in encrypted form to the South Pole
or a college campus in Texas. There are many examples of client machines being hacked to do this. It's basically what zombie machines
are in botnets.
In practice, it is flat-out guaranteed that none of the security agencies could distinguish this from a Russian attack. Nothing
in the area monitored could tell the difference. We know, for a fact, that college kids spoofing a scan from China have fooled
the DoD and NSA on previous occasions, it has caused international incidents.
So we have known forms of attack that are known to exist, aren't complex and in some cases are already used for attacks. They
are 100% untraceable.
Of course the Americans would never interfere in other people's elections would they?...........I imagine the Russians wanted
to avoid a nuclear war with war monger Hilary & who can blame them?
Y'know really all they seem to be looking possibly guilty of is the wikileaks scandal. Compare that to the enormous media bias
regarding Trump and suddenly the Russians at worst come off as evening the playing field so as to help an election be less biased...
Paranoia about Russia has arrived at the laughable, almost like the fable of the boy who cried wolf! Even the way the CIA statement
is worded makes you smile. "silk purse sows ear"? Everyone is clutching at straws rather than looking down the barrel at the truth......that
folks is what is missing from Western Politics......"The Truth" --
Obama expected the review to be completed before he leaves office...
Really?? Obama wants a "deep review" of internet activities surrounding the elections of 2008, 2012, and 2016; and he wants
this done in less than 40 days? And it encompasses voting stations throughout the 50 states? That's the definition of political
shenanigans.
Seeing as how the CIA interfered with Ukraine before and during the overthrow of Yanukovich, and with Moscow protests a few years
ago...... seems like everyone is always trying to interfere with each-other. Hypocrisy abounds
This is not really a fight against Trump. That is lost. This is an intramural fight among Democrats.
This is desperate efforts by the corporate Democrats to hang on to power after Hillary (again) lost.
Excuses. Allegations without sources given, anonymous.
Remember that the same people used the same media contacts to spread fake news that the Podesta leaks were faked, and tried
to shift attention from what was revealed to who revealed it.
if the Ruskies did it, there's something funny: they did it on Obama's watch and her protege, Hillary, lost it. The system is
a real mess in this case.
Interesting link. It raises a particularly salient question: assuming the Russians did indeed do it - and after the whole CIA
yellow cake thing in Iraq, no one could possibly doubt national intelligence agencies any more - does it particularly matter?
Did the Russians write the emails? The betrayal of Sanders, the poor protection on classified materials, the cynical,
vicious nonsense spewed out by the HRC campaign, the media collusion with the DNC and HRC: did the Russians do these things too?
Or was that Clinton and the DNC? Silly question, I'm sure.
Well, chief, the Wisconsin recount is in and the results are staggering: after the recount, Clinton has gained on Trump by 3 votes...
and Trump gained on Clinton by a heady six votes. One begins to wonder at the 'Manchurian candidate' claim.
It is precisely charades like this that millions in the US and around the world have given up on the establishment. Business as
usual or rather lying as usual will only alienate more not-so-stupid citizens. It speaks volumes about their desperation that
they're are actually employing such obviously infantile tactics on the Russia even as they continue to paper over Hillary's tattered
past. The result of the investigation is totally predictable..................Yes, the Russians were involved in hacking the elections,
but..........for reasons of national security, details of the investigative process and evidence cannot be revealed.
If the Russians really wanted Trump to win that means they helped Hillary win the Democratic primaries because Bernie would have
beat Trump.. There was a mess of hanky-panky going on to defeat Bernie, and deflecting the blame to a foreign actor should keep
the demonstrators off the streets.
If someone is gullible enough to believe the Russians did it they'd also believe that Elvis made Bigfoot hack the DNC. That's
even more plausible since bigfoot is just a guy who spends so much time sitting at his computer he lost all interest in personal
hygiene.
The Democrats are really desperate to find anything they can use to challenge the results of the election.
Either way they look foolish - openly investigating the possibility of Russian hacking which acknowledges that their electoral
systems aren't well secured, OR look really foolish if they find anything (whether real or faked).
The big question now is if, and how much, they will fake the findings of the investigation so that they can declare the
election results wrong, and put Clinton into the White House.
Clearly, it is a case of desperate times calling for desperate measures. It is incredible that one man can make the largest Western
nation look so ridiculous in the eyes of the world.
Pot calling the kettle black. Reveal fully what the CIA get up to all over the planet. The phoney intel America has used to go
to war causing countries to implode. The selective way they release information to project the picture they want. I am not convinced
that Russia is any better or any worse than the USA.
I can understand the Russians wanting Obama in 2008 and 2012 because he is a weak leader and totally incompetent.
I can also understand Putin preferring DJT to HRC.
It's about time the planet settled down a little bit, Trump and Putin will do more for world peace in the next year than Obama
achieved in his 8 wasted years in charge.
The Democrats have yet to realise the reason for their demise was not the racists, the homophobes, the KKK, the Deplorables,
the misogynists, the xenophobes etc etc etc.
It was Hillary Clinton.
Get over it, move on, stop whining, get out of your safe room, put the puppy down, throw the play dough away, stop protesting,
behave like an adult.
As much as I am enjoying the monumental meltdown of the left, it is getting sad now and I am starting to feel very sorry for
you.
What a sad bunch of clowns. But the time is ripe. You and your sort are done Obama, Hillary Clinton, Juncker, Merkel, Hollande,
Mogherini, Kerry, Tusk, Nuland, Albright, Breedlove, SaManThe Power and the rest of the reptiles. With all respect - mwuahahaha!
- you will soon sink into the darkness of the darkest places of history, but you won't be forgotten, no you won't!
As for the Podesta email. John Podesta was so stupid that he gave out his password in a simple email scam that any 8 year old
kid could have conducted. I wouldn't be surprised if Assange did it himself. Assange will be celebrating at the demise of Hillary.
Guys! Your side lost the election. Get over it & stop looking for excuses.
I don't think it was the Russians, it was just a lot of people got sick of being told what to think & how to behave by your
side of politics.
It is because people who disagree with you are either ignored, shut-down or called names with weaponised words such as "racist,
bigot, xenophobe, homophobe, islamophobe, you name it. You go out onto the streets chanting mindless slogans aimed at shutting
down debate. You have infiltrated academia and no journalism graduate comes out of a western univerity without a 60 degree lean
to the left. People of alternative views to what is now the dominant social paradigm are not permitted to speak at universities.
Once they were the vanguard of dangerous ideas. Now they are just sheep pens.
You have infiltrated the mainstream media so of course people need to go to Info Wars, Breitbart & Project Veritas to get the
other side to your one-sided argument.
Your side of politics has regulated the very words we speak so that we can't even express a thought anymore without being chanted
down, or shut down, prosecuted or sued.
There was once a time when it was the left who spoke up for freedom of speech. It was the left who demanded that a man be judged
by the content of his character & not the color of his skin & it was once the right who used to be worried about the Russians
taking over our institutions.
Have a look at yourselves. Look at what you've become. You've stopped being the guardians of freedom & now you have become
the very anti-freedom totalitarians you thought you were campaigning against.
Bleating about the "popular vote" doesn't cut it either. That's like saying, the other side scored more goals than us but we
had possession of the ball more times. It is sad for you but it is irrelevant.
Trump won the election! Get over it!
Let's see what sort of job he does before deciding what to do next.
In principle, the DNC server could have had malware in an e-mail that set up a NAT entry that made the connecting computer
appear somewhere else, with the entry deleted afterwards. Typically, IP table modifications aren't logged, so this would not be
detectable.
In principle, the DNC server could have had malware in an e-mail that ran a SED script at a specific time that changed any
occurrence of one IP address with another. Not sure anyone would bother with this, but it's why good system admins place so much
emphasis on securing logs. However, it's obvious we're not talking about good admins.
In principle, every router between the DNC server and Russia has the potential to be hacked, with a tunnel added to send the
traffic somewhere else in the world with new source and destination addresses. This is known as router table poisoning. It is
preventable but the mechanisms are rarely ever used because the security services want to be able to do this themselves. There
are some nice logs of the NSA using this.
In principle, someone along the way could tap into the fibre, spoofing IP addresses and injecting/sniffing packets. The U.S.
even has a submarine designed for this, but optics aren't complex and any number of neo-phone phreaks could have the hardware.
In principle, someone at an ISP or backbone service could have had a laptop plugged into a switch or router to do the same
thing, or lit up a strand of dark fibre to let some uber-wealthy business do this. And there's no shortage of uber-wealthy businesses
who aren't keen on Democrats. This technique is used for local and remote network diagnostics, no reason it can't be used nefarious,
it's not like the hardware cares why a wire is plugged in.
In principle, the supposed destination machine could have been hacked to relay the packets in encrypted form to the South Pole
or a college campus in Texas. There are many examples of client machines being hacked to do this. It's basically what zombie machines
are in botnets.
In practice, it is flat-out guaranteed that none of the security agencies could distinguish this from a Russian attack. Nothing
in the area monitored could tell the difference. We know, for a fact, that college kids spoofing a scan from China have fooled
the DoD and NSA on previous occasions, it has caused international incidents.
So we have known forms of attack that are known to exist, aren't complex and in some cases are already used for attacks. They
are 100% untraceable.
Joe Biden unwittingly gave the game up when he spoke to the press with indignation of the Russian hacks. The US would respond
in kind with a covert cyber operation run by the CIA First of all it would be the NSA, not the CIA Secondly, it's not covert when
you tell the press! Oh Joe, you really let the Obama administration down with that gaffe! Who would believe them now? A lot of
people it would seem. Mainly those still reeling from an election they were so vested in
Unfortunately our media has lost all credibility.
For years we were told it was necessary to remove the dictator Assad in Syria. The result, a country destroyed, migrant crisis
that fuelled Brexit and brought EU to its knees.
Now they are going to sell the 'foreign entities decided the US election'.
It's just a sad situation
Syria has been destroyed because Western client states in the Middle East wanted this to happen. Assad had a reasonably successful
secular government and our medieval gulf state allies felt. threatened by his regime. there was the little business of a pipeline,
but of course that would be called a "conspiracy theory".
If Obama has resources to spend on investigations, he should be investigating why the US is providing guided missiles to the terrorist
in Syria. We had such great hopes for him, and he has proved to be totally useless as a president. Rather than giving us leadership
and guidance he is looking under his bed for spooks. Just another example of his incompetence at a time when we needed leadership.
Looking for proof of espionage will be like trying to prove a negative and only result in a possible or at best a likely type
of result for no purpose. It would just be another case of an unsupported accusation being thrown about.
Facing up to the question of who is supplying weapons to terrorist would require the courage to take on the Military Industrial
Complex and he hasn't got it. Trump will be different.
If the russians did interfere in the USA elections perhaps is a bit of poetic justice.
The USA has interfere in Latin America for over hundred years and they have given us Batista, Somoza, Trujillo, Noriega, Pinochet,
Duvaliers , military juntas in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Streener in Paraguay to name a few. They all were narcissists, racists
and insecure. The american people love this type of leader now they got him in the white house may be from Russia with love. Empires
get destroyed from within, look at Little Britain now, maybe the same will happen soon in the USA.
Viva China , is far from Latin America
So if the US managed to somehow get rid of Russia and China, what would they do then? How would it justify hundreds of billions
in defense spending? Just remember, the US military industry desperately needs an external enemy to exist. Without it, there is
no industry.
No I disagree. I don't think it was a conpriscy. It was just decades of misinformation, lies, usually perpertrated by our esteemed
foreign minister. The man is a buffoon , liar and incompetent. It is quite amusing to see how inept, Incompotent and totally unsuited
this man child is to public office.
Another red herring that smacks of desperation. The final death throes of a failed administration. These carefully chosen words
reveal a lot. The email leaks were "consistent with the methods and motivations" of Russian hackers. In layman's terms its the
equivalent of saying "we haven't got a clue who it was but it's the kind of thing they would probably do". Don't expect a smoking
gun because it doesn't exist, otherwise we would have known about it by now.
It's not just the US who has accused Putin of meddling in their domestic affairs. Germany and the UK have made the same allegations.
Are they wrong too?
I think anyone with reasonable intelligence would take each accusation on a case by case basis. There is no doubt that Russia
conducts cyber operations, as the US and UK and Germany does. There is also little doubt that significant Russophobia exists,
particularly since the failed foreign attempt of regime change in Syria that was thwarted by Russia. On that last point many citizens
of the West are coming to the realisation that a secular government in Syria is preferable to one run by jihadists installing
crude sharia law (Libya was certainly a lesson). Furthermore, if Hillary Clinton had succeeded one dreads to think of the consequences
of her no-fly-zone plans. Thankfully she didn't succeed, no doubt in part to wikileaks revelations, who for the record stated
that did not result from Russian hacks
Hows the election recount going? You know the one this paper kept going on about a few weeks ago in Wisconsin that was supposed
to be motivated by "Russian Hacking" in the election? Not very well but you have gone quiet. Also I see the Washington Post has
been forced to backtrack for implying news outlets like Breitbart are Russian controlled on the advice of their own lawyers....after
all calling someone a Russian agent without a shred of evidence is seriously libellous and they know it. Russian agents to blame
yeah ok Obama no doubt the Easter Bunny will be next in your sights you fraud.
Look no further than Hillarys private server. Classified information sent and received and Obam was part of it. Obama is a liar
and a fraud who is now blaming the Russians for crooked Hillarys loss.
Feed the flames of the war mongers that want Russia and Putin to be our bogeyman.Feed the military industrial complex more billions.The
U.S. Defense budget is already 10 times that of Russia ,feed NATO already on Russia's boarder with tanks ,troops and heavy weapons.i
did expect more from this pres,... The lies ,mis information and propaganda has worked so well since the end of WW2,upon a public
who has been fed those lies {and is to busy with sports ,gadgets,games, alcohol and other drugs }for 70 yrs by a compliant,for
profit lap dog media more interested in producing infotainment and profits than supplying information..If you don't think the
"public" isn't very poorly informed and will believe anything ,..just look at who the next prez will be..
I don't think it's true that Trump voters were less informed than Clinton voters. The public knows that they all lie, they simply
choose the one who's lies most appeal to them.
Unfortunately Obama is not leaving office with dignity.
This action is another attempt to delegitimize the election of Trump. We already have the recount farce going on.
If Republicans had tried to delegitimize the election of Obama we know what the reaction from media would have been. An outcry
against antidemocratic and racist behaviour
The corporate media is so predictable at this point. The news cranks up the anti-Russia hysteria while the guys over in entertainment
roll out a slick fantasy about anti-Nazi resistance. It all adds up to a big steaming pile of crap but you hope it will push enough
buttons to keep the citizens chained to their their desks for another quarter. Don't bet on it. As a great American said at another
time of upheaval, you can't fool everyone forever...
Kremlin Connection? The TRUTH About Hillary's Shady Ties To Russia REVEALED
Find out why insiders say Clinton has some explaining to do.
Americans have no idea just how closely Hillary Clinton is tied to the Kremlin! That's the shocking claim of a new report that
alleges the Democratic nominee is secretly pals with Vladimir Putin and his countrymen.
Peter Schweizer, the author of Clinton Cash, has published a report that claims that that Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta
was on the executive board of a foreign company that received $35 million from the Kremlin. "The company was a transparent Russian
front, and how much Podesta was compensated - and for what - is unclear. In addition, Podesta failed to disclose his position
on that board to the Federal government, as required by law," John Schindler of the Observer wrote.
As Radar previously reported, when Clinton was secretary of state, she profited from the "Russian Reset," a failed attempt
to improve relations between the U.S. and Russia.
chweizer wrote, "Many of the key figures in the Skolkovo process - on both the Russian and U.S. sides - had major financial ties
to the Clintons. During the Russian reset, these figures and entities provided the Clintons with tens of millions of dollars,
including contributions to the Clinton Foundation, paid for speeches by Bill Clinton, or investments in small start-up companies
with deep Clinton ties." Schweizer also details "Skolkovo," a Silicon Valley-like campus that both the U.S. and Russia worked
on for developing biomed, space, nuclear and IT technologies. He told the New York Post that there was a "pattern that shows a
high percentage of participants in Skolkovo who happen to be Clinton Foundation donors."
Sour grapes at the liberation of Aleppo and their loss of face.
I'm surprised they haven't started asking about the missing 250K civilians,who must even now be languishing in Assad's dungeons.
Keeping that one for tomorrow probably.
When Cheney used the terror alert levels to keep the US population in the constant state of fear, the Democrats denounced it as
fear mongering. Now they're embracing the same tactics in the constant demonization of Russia. Look, it's raining today! Russia
must be trying to control the weather in the US! Get them! Utterly ridiculous.
The US has been the most bloodthirsty, aggressive nation in my lifetime. Where the US goes we obediently follow. Yet as Obama
(7 countries he's bombed in his presidency, not bad for a Nobel Prize Winner) continues to circle Russia with NATO on their borders.
We're continually spun headline news that Russia is the aggressor and is continually meddling in foreign affairs. We are the aggressors,
we are the danger to ourselves and it's we who are run by megalomaniac elites who pump us full of fear and propaganda.
Malicious cyberactivity... has no place in international community... No? When West does it, then it's for democratic purposes?
But invading countries on a humanitarian pretense does? So Democrats are still looking to blame Russia for everything not going
their way I see. This rhetoric didn't work for Clinton in the election and it won't now. Stop with this nonsense
The Egyptian Empire lasted millenum,
The Greek and Roman Empires a thousand years, give or take.
The Holy Roman Empire centuries.
The British and French circa 200 years.
The USSR about 70, the USA 70 and counting
This is just the cyclical death throes of empires played out at ever increasing speed before our very eyes.
This is exactly why we should never move to electronic voting. Can you imagine the lengths the IPA would go to ensure their men
security the power they need to roll out their neoliberal agenda? As a tax-free right wing think tank composed of rich like Rinehart,
Murdoch, Forrest, et al. the sky's the limit.
The five stages of dealing with psychological trauma: Anger, Denial, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance. Hillary and the Democrats
are still at stage one and two. Obama is only beginning stage one as events dawn on him.
I really do feel the established media and its elite hierarchy are vexed by both the Trump victory and Brexit here in the UK.
Now the media attention turns to a report on another of its perpetual campaigns, namely Russia, and corruption in sport.
I'm not going to doubt the 'findings', but I know humans are corrupt ALL over the world, but it does strike me that no Western
outlet, ever prints anything positive about Russia. I mean - nothing, zero!
If, indeed, the Russian government gathered the DNC and Podesta info released by Wikileaks, the Russians did the American people
a favor by pulling back the curtain on behind the scenes scheming by Clinton campaign potentates.
Of course, I don't believe the Democratic claim that Clinton lost the election because of the Russians and the FBI.
US backed a coup, or set up a coup, to overthrow the democratically elected government in Ukraine which led to war. Putin's payback
seems fully justified.
Oh my, a foreign country may have had a tiny influence on a US Election.
How about investigating the overthrow of the Democratically elected Govt in Ukraine, or the influence the US has had on the
Syrian Govt, or even in Australia, where the Chinese Govt donates massive amounts of money to Political Parties (note, there's
no link of course between Chinese Govt donations and Chinese Companies being able to buy most of Australia and employ Chinese
Nationals in Australia on Chinese conditions and 500,000 Chinese Nationals being able to buy Real Estate in Sydney alone... none
whatsoever).
I'm not a policy or think tank wonk, but isn't Russia just a euphemism for China. Aren't their geopolitical interests linked.
You just say Russia because China has us by the financial balls (I'm sure the Guardian would prefer to NOT be censored on the
mainland) right? Package it that way and I'm on board. My love of Dostoevsky goes out the window. Albeit I still think Demons
one of the best novels ever written. Woke me up.
I'm all in favor of delegitimizing the incoming semi-fascist Trump/Pence regime, and find Obama's talk of a smooth transition
disgusting. However, I reject the appeal to Russophobia or other Xenophobia.
BTW, Obama and his collaborators like Diane Feinstein have done a lot to prepare the legal basis for fascistic repression under
the new POtuS.
I already know what the comission will find. They will find evidences that Iraq holds vast ammonúnt of weapons of mass destruction!
Oh wait, that was already used.
Obama has been as useless as his predecessor young Bush. His policies generally are in tatters and the US neo cons evil fantasy
of full spectrum dominance has met its death in Syria. Bravo.
After an election cycle with proven collusion between the DNC/Hillary Clinton campaign and our media, our media has the nerve
to come up with the term 'fake news'.
Hypocrisy at its finest
Nobody does paranoia like the yanks. To the rest of the world, the unedifying spectacle of the world's biggest bullies, snoops,
warmongers, liars and hypocrites complaining about how unfair life is, is pretty nauseating. Most of America's problems are home-grown.
And the final report will conclude with something along the lines of:
'After a thorough, exhaustive investigation of all relevant evidence concerning the potential of foreign interference in the United
States electoral process, the results of the investigation have shown that, although there remain troubling questions about the
integrity of U.S. cyber-security which should prompt immediate Congressional review, there has been uncovered no conclusive evidence
to support the conjecture that cyber attacks originating with any foreign actor, state or individual had any significant effect
on the outcome of the 2016 Presidential election, and that there is no cause or justification for the American People to question
the fairness of or lose faith in the electoral process and laid out by and carried out according to the Constitution.'
I do Holiday cards too.
Georgia's Secretary of State is accusing someone at the Department of Homeland Security of illegally trying to hack its computer
network, including the voter registration database.
In a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, copied to the full Georgia congressional delegation, Georgia Secretary
of State Brian Kemp alleges that a computer with a DHS internet address attempted to breach its systems.
http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/309530-state-of-georgia-allegedly-accusing-homeland-security-of-attempted-hack
Wake up and smell the BS, the hacking is being done by people a lot nearer home.....
Oh dear, the GOP seem to have forgotten what they were saying about Putin and the Kremlin a short while back:
The continuing erosion of personal liberty and fundamental rights under the current officials in the Kremlin. Repressive
at home and reckless abroad, their policies imperil the nations which regained their self-determination upon the collapse of
the Soviet Union. We will meet the return of Russian belligerence with the same resolve that led to the collapse of the Soviet
Union. We will not accept any territorial change in Eastern Europe imposed by force, in Ukraine, Georgia, or elsewhere, and
will use all appropriate constitutional measures to bring to justice the practitioners of aggression and assassination.
..... prohibiting "fake" or "false" news would be a cure worse than the disease, i.e., censorship by other means. The government
cannot be trusted with distinguishing fake from genuine news because it has ulterior motives. News the government dislikes would
be conflated with fakery, and news the government approved would be conflated with truthfulness. Private businesses like Facebook
cannot be trusted with distinguishing fake from genuine news because its overriding mission is to make money and to win popularity,
not to spread truth. It would suppress news that risked injury to its reputation or profits but leave news that did the opposite
undisturbed. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/dec/5/reflections-fake-news
/
Uh excuse me but that sort of introspection doesn't fly. She was flawless and the blame rests solely on Russia/alt-right/Sanders/Third
Parties/Racism/Misogyny/Alignment of the stars/etc/etc
I thnk the idea that russia has world domination is quite laughable, what else they gonna be blamed for next, reduction of giraffe
population!Lol
I think a teeny wee paranoia is setting in, or outright deliberate propaganda, too obvious
Is this worse than when the two CIA operatives were caught searching through files in the Offices of the British Labour Party
about thirty years ago. What goes around comes around.
The CIA hacks have been destabalisuping Government for a at least seventy years.
One thing is pretty obvious paper ballots and a different ballot for each is much harder to rig.
It is ironic it takes a despot life key Trump to bring the issue to a head AFTER unexpectedly won.
"Is this worse than when the two CIA operatives were caught searching through files in the Offices of the British Labour Party
about thirty years ago. What goes around comes around."
The CIA were caught hacking into the US Congressional computers just 6 or so months ago. Nothing came out of it.
Based on the fact that the US 2000 (and possibly 2004) election was outright stolen by George Bush Jr., perhaps the propagandists
in the White House and media ought to be looking for a "Russian connection" in regards to our illustrious former president.
I'm shocked--shocked--to hear that our close Russian allies have done anything to influence and undermine the stability of other
countries. Preposterous accusation! And to try to become huge winners in the Western Hemisphere, by cheating? Vitriolic nonsense!
Many posters here actually believe that Good Old Russia should just stick with what they do best. That's poison!
Rather like the Litvenenko inquiry...full of maybe's and possibilities, with not a shred of hard, factual proof shown - demonstrating
that the order came from the Kremlin.
It's just a total accident that Putin's most vocal opponents keep getting shot in the head, gunned down on bridges, suffering
'accidents' or strange miscarriages of (sometimes post-mortem) 'justice' and fall victim to radiological state-enacted terrorism
in foreign countries. No pattern there, whatsoever.
I am at a loss. On the one hand, I hear about Russian economy in tatters, gas station posing as a country, deep crisis, economy
the size of Italy, rusty old military toys, aircraft carrier smoking out the whole Northern hemisphere, etc. On the other hand,
I hear about Russian threat all the time, which must be countered by massive build up of the US and EU military, Russia successfully
interfering in the elections in the beacon of democracy, the US, with 20 times greater economy, with powerful allies, the best
armed forces in the world, etc. Are we talking about two different Russias, or is this schizophrenia, pure and simple?
It's always easy to find reasons to fear something, added to that the psychology of the unknown, and we have the makings of very
powerful propaganda. Whatever Russia's level of corruption, and general society, I feel I cannot trust the Western media anymore
100%. There seems to be a equally sinister hidden agenda deep within Western Elites - accessing Russia's land, political and potential
wealthly resources must surely be one of them!? The longterm Western agenda/mission?
The Democratic Party's problem is Russia, which the President is rightly putting front and center. All Russians are the summit
of eviality, and must be endlessly scapegoated in order for Democrats to regain power for the nation's greater good.
Democrats' problems have nothing to do with corruption, glaring conflicts of interest, favoritism, ass-licking editors, crappy
data, lacking enthusiasm, and horribly poor judgement.
None of these issues need to be publicly addressed, being of no consequence to independent voters, and the President, Guardian,
et al. must continue their silent -- and "independent" -- vigil on such silly topics, if Democrats are to have any hope of cultivating
enough mindless, enraged, and abandoned sheep to bring them future victories.
I admire Trump, Putin & Farage. Don't agree with them but I have admiration for them. They show all the cunning, calculating,
resourcefulness that put the European race on top. Liberals don't like that and want to see the own people fall to the bottom.
Thankfuly the neoliberal elite are finishedm
Absurd nonsense - the third anti-Russian story of the day. Very little of this has much traction because of the sheer volume of
misinformation coming out about Russia. there are very good cogent reasons why the Democrats lost the US election - none of them
have anything to do with Russia.
I can't see a thing wrong with reviewing the last three election cycles, if there is any doubt at all and to put speculation to
bed, it should be done.
So the US intelligence servies aren't doing similar operations?
If they werent, heads would roll as they have a considerable budget. Did we learn nothing from Edward Snowden? Are Russia just
better at this? I doubt it.
I think both sides conduct themselves in a despicable manner so please dont call me a Putin apologist. Well, feel free actually,
I could'nt care less.
Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election
US interference:
COUNTRY OR STATE Dates of intervention Comments
VIETNAM l960-75 Fought South Vietnam revolt & North Vietnam; one million killed in longest U.S. war; atomic bomb threats in
l968 and l969.
CUBA l961 CIA-directed exile invasion fails.
GERMANY l961 Alert during Berlin Wall crisis.
LAOS 1962 Military buildup during guerrilla war.
142 more rows
the vietnam fiasco alone is enough to disqualify america from any criticism about interference in internal affairs
they practically destroyed the country
The pathetic way the media are pushing this big-bad-Russians meme is a little depressing.
This "hack" is totally fictional, the wikileaks e-mails were almost certainly that...leaks. As most o their output has been
over the years. For 95% of the Wikileaks existence there have been absolutely zero connections with "the Kremlin", in fact they
have leaked stuff damaging to Russia before now.
The Russian's did not hack the DNC, or rig the election, this is yet another example of the political establishment hysterically
pointing fingers and making up lies when their chosen side loses an election.
I remember how North Korea was blamed for Sony hack. I think they were even cut from the internet for a day and there was all
this talk of punishing them. And then later it came out that very likely wasn't North Korea. Only the news cycle already moved
on and nobody cared.
Traditionally, the best Cold Warriors have been right-wing liberals. In the absence of policies that concretely benefit the people
they engage in threat inflation and demagoguery.
In 90s US set all figures in Russia - from president to news program anchor. Elections of 96 were ripped by American "advisors"
so that Eltsyn with 3% rating "won" them. It's payback time.
And yet the so-called "Russian trolls" (which is apparently anyone who exercise a modicum of skepticism) seem to be winning here
at CiF based on the number of likes per comment, which is likely why the NSA sponsored propagandists and clueless dopes are getting
so increasingly shrill.
If you take a wider view, this is all really about keeping the Dems in the game, trying to undo the Trump validity and give them
another go in 4 or so years. Really, seems quite desperate that a man that allowed 270000 wild horses to be sold for horsemeat
this year across the border to Mexico, brought HC in to his own cabinet having said 'she will say anything and do nothing', knowing
what a nightmare that would make, and is going to watch his healthcare get ripped to shreds, needs more accomplishments in his
last year, aka Obama, ergo, let's investigate the evil russians and their female athletes with male DNA ( you would think I am
making this stuff up, but I am not ) ... Come on Grandma, where are you when we need you most
we must somehow, subvert the despicable populace that elected trump. we must erase from history the conceding of president elect
clinton - newpeak from the ministry of truth. we'll get her into the white house if it takes more cash, lies, and corruption.
after all, who needs democracy in the democratic party when we have big brother. democracy just confuses the members. we'll send
the despicables through the ministry of love to re-educate them, of course, this IS 1984 after all....we will vote for you, the
intelligentsia of the left knows what is best for you.
"Malicious cyber activity, specifically malicious cyber activity tied to our elections , has no place in the international
community. Unfortunately this activity is not new to Moscow. We've seen them do this for years ... The president has made it clear
to President Putin that this is unacceptable."
Note how carefully it specifies that it is cyber activity tied to the american elections that is inappropriate. I presume that
is simply to avoid openly saying that mass-surveillance by the US government of everyone's private email, and social network accounts
doesn't come under that "no place in the international community" phrase. You know, one does wonder how these people's faces don't
come off in shame when whinning about potential interference by foreign governemnts after a full 8 years or so of constant revelations
of permanent spying and mass-surveillance by the US government of international leaders and ordinary citizens worldwide.
So the DNC was hacked - so what. Hacking is so common these days as to be expected. A quick perusal of the internet provides some
SIGNIFICANT hacks that deserved some consternation:
9/4/07 The Chinese government hacked a noncritical Defense Department computer system in June, a Pentagon source told FOX News
on Tuesday.
Spring 2011 Foreign hackers broke into the Pentagon computer system this spring and stole 24,000 files - one of the biggest
cyber-attacks ever on the U.S. military,
On the 12th of July 2011, Booz Allen Hamilton the largest U.S. military defence contractor admitted that they had just suffered
a very serious security breach, at the hands of hacktivist group AntiSec.
5/28/13 The confidential version of a Defense Science Board report compiled earlier this year reportedly says Chinese hackers
accessed designs for more than two dozen of the U.S. military's most important and expensive weapon systems.
June 2014 The UK's National Crime Agency has arrested an unnamed young man over allegations that he breached the Department
of Defense's network last June.
1/12/15 The Twitter account for U.S. Central Command was suspended Monday after it was hacked by ISIS sympathizers (OK twitter
accounts shouldn't be a big deal. Why does US CentCom even HAVE a twitter account???)
5/6/15 OPM hack: China blamed for massive breach of US government data
And so the neocon propaganda machine trundles on, churning out this interesting material day after day. The elephant in the room
is that if you get hacked you have no knowledge of this until your private stuff is all over the internet, and the chances of
finding out who did it are zilch. Everyone in IT security knows this.
Another "fake news" story. Does anybody with a pulse really believe that Russia hacked the DNC? The US Security Services admitted
that it was NOT Russia; the likelihood is that the leaks were provided to Wikileaks by insiders within the US Administration -
they wanted to ensure that Hillary did not win. None of the actual revelations were covered by the MSM, and "the Russians did
it" was a convenient distraction.
All people that on earth do dwell have no clue who hacked the DNC to the amusing end that Podesta's e-mails ended up on the internet,
but it suits a dangerous political narrative to demonise Russia until it becomes plain logical to attack them.
YES YES let attack Russia, YES YES YES, Russia Russia we should carry on attacking Russia. We the journalists are well paid by
the man from Australia. YES YES we must to carry on attacking Russia and forget the shit happening in other countries. YES YES
it is our duty.
Election hacking: Obama orders 'full review' of Russia interference
And I guess Obama has also ordered the Guardian to do a full court press of anti-Russian propaganda, just judging by the articles
pumped out on today's rag alone.
The US government is seemingly attempting the "Big Lie" tactic of Joseph Goebbels and instigating support in the public for
war against Russia. By repeating the completely unsubstantiated allegations that Russia has somehow "interfered with the election"
they hope, without any genuine basis, to strong arm the public into accepting a further ramping of tensions and starting yet another
illegal war for profit.
There's nothing wrong with conducting the investigation, but shouldn't it have been done before accusing Russia?
And aren't all the people cited in the article political appointees, Democrats or avowed Trump enemies, and then there's closing,
" A spokesman for the director of national intelligence declined to comment."
Surely of all the Orders Obama might issue during his last weeks in office, why does he choose to give a stupid Order that effectively
makes US some sort of Banana Republic? This man was/is more hype than real! At a stroke of a pen he seriously undermines the integrity
of the US Electoral System. Whatever credibility was left has now been eroded by these constant and silly claims that somehow
Russians installed Trump as President. Doesn't that make Trump some sort of Russian Agent?
Meanwhile MSM keeps on streaming some fake news and theories and then Obama Orders US intelligence to dig deeper. This is lunacy!
Obama certainly understands that Russia is not the reason why Trump was elected. However, he wants to create new obstacles on
the way of normalization of relations between the US and Russia and make it more difficult for Trump.
However, Trump is not a weak man, not a skinny worm; and he can hit these opponents back so hard that international court for
them (for invasions into sovereign countries) will lead to their life sentences.
Only two weeks ago the Obama Administration publicly stated there was no evidence of cybersecurity breaches affecting the electoral
process,
as reported in the NYT :
The administration, in its statement, confirmed reports from the Department of Homeland Security and intelligence officials
that they did not see "any increased level of malicious cyberactivity aimed at disrupting our electoral process on Election
Day."
The administration said it remained "confident in the overall integrity of electoral infrastructure, a confidence that was
borne out." It added: "As a result, we believe our elections were free and fair from a cybersecurity perspective."
Is there any limit to the ridicolous, Mr. Obama? what is this? a tragicomic play of the inept?
Here we are with the most childish fabrication that it must be the Russians' fault if Trump won the election. I'll be laughing
for an entire cosmic era! And all this after US publically announced that they were going to launch a devastating acher attack
against the badies: the Russians, which of course didn't work out. Come on, this is more comedy that a serious play.
What probably is going on, the readers can gather by having a look at the numberless articles that are being published by maistream
media against the Russians.
Why this histeric insurgence of Russofobia? Couldn't it be that it is intolerable for the US and their allies to see the Russians
winning in Aleppo, and most of all restoring peace and tollerance among the population returning to their abbandoned homes.
I think Hillary, in part, lost the election due to all the fake news being pumped out by the mainstream corporate media, doing
her bidding. People are tired of it, along with all the corruption and lies that came to the surface through the likes of Wikileaks.
Trump is a terrible alternative, but the only alternative people were given, so many went with it.
Now we see fake news making out the Russians to be the bad guys again, pumping out story after story, trying to propagandize the
population into sucking up these new memes. Russia has its problems, and will always act in its own self-interest, but it's nothing
compared to the tactics the US uses, bullying countries around the world to pander to its own will, desperately trying to maintain
its Empire.
The scripture tells us those who live by the sword will perish by it.
America was in the interference of other countries' elections before its ugly 2016 presidential election. Remember Ukraine
and Secretary Hillary Clinton's employee Victoria F****the EU Nuland in Ukraine. Now we have the makings of some kind of conflict
with Russia over its alleged meddling in America's elections. More global tension= More cash flowing into the US equity market,
money printing by another means.
I'd be surprised if the Russians weren't trying to affect the outcome of the election. The Brits had a debate in Parliament on
Trump, Obama made threats to the UK on the Brexit vote, so who knows what we're all doing in each others elections behind closed
doors while we are clear to do so publically.
The MSM's absolute refusal to address the leaks in a meaningful way (other than the stuff about recipes) suggests to be no
one felt it a big deal at the time.
Obama could realise that Hillary's viewes on Putin and Russia did not help her at all. People are not that stupid, they see well,
use own brains and not so easily impressed by whatever CNN says to them.
John McAfee said that any organization sophisticated enough to do these hacks is also sophisticated enough to make it look as
though any country they want did it. So it could have been anyone.
It's reported today on Ars Technica : ThyssenKrupp suffered a "professional attack"
The steelmaker, which makes military subs, says it was targeted from south-east Asia.
..the design of its plants were penetrated by a "massive," coordinated attack which made off with an unknown amount of "technological
know-how and research."
Neoliberals are just desperately losing ideological competition at home and abroad. They cannot convince people that they are
right because it's not what's going on.
It does not matter what some others say, it's what really goes on matters.
But there is innate, basic self-interest in all people (that does not depend on education, ethnicity, race) and people know it
instinctively well. They will not go against it even if all around will tell otherwise.
I love how this has now become solid fact. No confirmation, nothing official but it is no common fact that the Russians interfered.
How many reports do we hear about US interference with foreign countries infastructure through covert means.
Meh. Seems like tampering happens all the time. How many elections in South America did the USA fix? How many in the middle
east and Africa? I think this "russian's did it" rhetoric is counterproductive as it is stopping Democrats from doing the introspective
needed to really understand why HRC lost the election.
Imagine if the shoe were on the other foot and there was credible evidence that the Russians had rigged the election in favor
of the Democrat. The right-wing echo chamber would be having seizures! These people are UTTER HYPOCRITES. And they would obviously
rather win with the help of a hostile foreign power than try to preserve the integrity of our elections.
Russia may or may not have hacked the DNC. I'd like to find out. I hope the DNC aren't enough of doofusses to assume this wouldn't
be in the realm of possibility.
I presume that the U.S. has its own group of hackers doing the same Worldwide. This is not a criticism; I would expect the U.S.
intelligence community to learn what our rivals, and even some of our friends, are up to.
This is getting to be pretty lame. I have doubts that "Russia" could interfere to any great extent with our elections any more
than we could with theirs. Sure, individuals or organizations, and more than likely in THIS country, could do so. And they have,
as we saw with the DNC and Sanders campaign (and vice versa). Let's not go into an almost inevitable nuclear war over what is
quite possibly "fake news".
Russia did this, Russia did that
its getting very boring now, you have lost all credibility
you have cried wolf to many times
stop trying to manipulate us
When will the Democrats get it? It wasn't the Russians, who are blamed for everything, including the weather, by desperate Western
failed leaders, but an unsuitable candidate in Clinton, which lost them the Election. Bernie Sanders would have walked it.
Regarding the notorious "fuck the EU " on the part of the US "diplomat" Victoria Nuland "the State Department and the White House
suggested that an assistant to the deputy prime minister of Russia Dmitry Rogozin was the source of the leak, which he denied
" Wiki
Good occasion to substantiate the accusation which ,substantiated or not,will remind the "useful idiots" of the "change of regime
" US policy and who started the Ukrainian crisis.
Boy, oh boy, fake news is everywhere just read this headline!
Election hacking: Obama orders 'full review' of Russia interference
Which states as fact there was interference by Russia and that the investigation is to determine how bad it was. NO EVIDENCE WHAT SO EVER has been offered by anyone that Russia interfered in any way. FAKE NEWS!!
Voting machine hacking is a very serious problem but you generally need physical access to a voting machine to hack it.
Anyone notice thousands of Russians hanging around in Detriot, Los Angeles, etc election HQs? How about Clinton drones?
If the DNC hadn't rigged the primary we'd be celebrating president-elect Bernie. If they hadn't rigged the general Hillary
would have lost by a landslide.
1000 Russian athletes were doping in the 2012 Olympics - but it's taken until now to realise it?!
Russia influenced the 2016 US election?!
Russia is presently "influencing" the German elections?!
Russia is killing civilians and destroying hospitals with impunity in Syria?!
etc
Wow! Russia is taking over the world, it must be stopped, can anyone save us? Obama? Trump? NATO?
Look out! Russian armies are massing on the border ready to sweep into Europe.......arrhhh!
"..ex-prime minister Anthony Charles Lynton Blair of the United Kingdom, and Hillary Rodham Clinton of the United States
of America, have formally announced a new transatlantic political party to be named: The Neoliberal Elite Party for bitter
anti-Brexiters and sore anti-Trumpettes.
Rather rich coming from my country which has interfered in elections around the world for decades. I suppose it's only cheating
if the other team does it.
Not that they'll find any evidence. Just another chapter in the sad saga of the Democrats unwillingness to admit they ran the
worst candidate & the worst campaign in recent memory. It's not our fault! Them dirty Russkies did it!
The Last but not LeastTechnology is dominated by
two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt.
Ph.D
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![a group of people standing next to a person in a suit and tie: Joseph R. Biden Jr. last week in Wilmington, Del. A new intelligence assessment said Russia continues to interfere in the election on President Trump's behalf, while China prefers Mr. Biden.]({"default":{"load":"default","w":"80","h":"45","src":"//img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/BB17HDgI.img?h=450&w=799&m=6&q=60&o=f&l=f"},"size3column":{"load":"default","w":"62","h":"35","src":"//img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/BB17HDgI.img?h=351&w=624&m=6&q=60&o=f&l=f"},"size2column":{"load":"default","w":"62","h":"35","src":"//img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/BB17HDgI.img?h=351&w=624&m=6&q=60&o=f&l=f"}})
© Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times Joseph R. Biden Jr. last week in Wilmington, Del. A
new intelligence assessment said Russia continues to interfere in the election on President
Trump's behalf, while China prefers Mr. Biden.
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matsb
Jul
9, 2020 at 3:39 pm
FILE PHOTO December 01, 2017 Gen. Michael Flynn, former national
security adviser to US President Donald Trump, leaves Federal Court in Washington, DC © AFP /
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Trump 'strongly considering' Michael Flynn pardon,
points at FBI 'conveniently losing' his records
Russian
rocket engines
? 
I will be shocked if the
judge does anything about it beyond a slap on the wrist an an admonition not to get caught
again.
Explain, would you? Maybe I
didn't read carefully enough.
thanks larry.. what are the
chances seth rich was an intel asset?
Very unlikely that he was an
intel asset.
Sid Finster,
In fairness to the FBI, they
didn't say there were no emails, they said they used a search of CRS and that didn't identify
any emails. It isn't clear to me from what was provided in this post whether the search would
have included records from the WFO.
The sorry fact is this: Out
here in places like my town in flyover country, I could mention Seth Rich and no one would have
the slightest idea who he was and why he should get justice--or at least that the truth about
his life and death should be told.
Diana Croissant
David H et al
January 20, 2020 © Photo: Flickr / DonkeyHotey On
the 17 September 1656, Oliver Cromwell, a Protestant Puritan, who had won a civil war, and had
the English king beheaded in public, railed against England's enemies. There was, he told
Parliament that day, an axis of evil abroad in the world. And this axis – led by Catholic
Spain – was, at root, the problem of a people that had placed themselves at the service
of 'evil'. This 'evil', and the servitude that it beget, was the evil of a religion
– Catholicism – that refused the English peoples' desire for simple liberties: "
[an evil] that put men under restraint under which there was no freedom and under which, there
could be 'no liberty of individual consciousness'".
Robert Bridge
<
2015 File
Written By Victor Madeira on Possible Anti-Russian Actions
Integrity Initiative Seeks Intelligence On How Overseas Media Reported Skripal
Incident
Post-Skripal Incident Anti-Russian Actions Recommended by Integrity Initiative
Invoice submitted to
Integrity Initiative by Dan Kaszeta Strange Connections
